"Jack Dann - Kaddish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

The waves slapped against the hull, which bobbed up and down and
to the left and right; and Nathan could feel the sea pulling him toward
death and its handmaiden of unbearable revelation.
He looked behind him, but there was not a shadow of land. Just open
sea, liquid turquoise hills descending and rising. He tried to start the
engines, but they wouldn't catch. The console lights dimmed from the
drainage of power. He looked in the sidewells for extra fuel and oars
but found only canvas, an opened package of plastic cups, and a very
good brand of unblended scotch. No first-aid kit, no flares, for his
neighbor was not fastidious, nor did he ever take the boat out of the
intercoastal. This was probably the first time that the throttle had ever
been turned to full. The boat was a status symbol, nothing more.
The compass read East, which was impossible, for if that were so, he
would see land.
But east was the direction of God.
And the sea had become a manifestation of that direction.
The swells were higher now, and the boat rose and dipped, each time
being pulled farther out, and the hours passed like days, and Nathan
felt hungry and thirsty and frightened.
He thought he saw something on the horizon and stood up as best he
could in the boat; he held tight to the chrome pillar of the windshield,
and yes, there was something out there. A ship, a tanker, perhaps. He
shouted into the soughing silence of the sea, but it was futile. It was as
if he were being hidden in the troughs of the waves.
Hours later, when he was cried out and hoarse, cowed by the infinities
of sea and sky and the desiccating heat of the sun, which had
transformed itself into a blinding, pounding headache, he turned
around. As if he could hide in his own shadow from the sun.
And as if turned to stone, he gazed into the past.
But not far into the past.
Not far enough to savor a moment of comfort before the tsunamis of
guilt and grief.
Nathan returns to the morning that burns him still. He is shaving, his
face lathered with soap from his chipped shaving mug that had once
belonged to his grandfather, when Helen calls him. He can hear the
muffled argument that has been going on downstairs between his wife
and son, but he ignores it for as long as he can.
He simply can't face any more tension.
"Nathan!" Helen shouts, pushing the bathroom door open. "Didn't you
hear me calling you?" She is a tiny woman, slender and heart-faced,
with long, thick brown hair. She does not look thirty-eight, although
Nathan, who is considered good-looking, if not handsome, because of
his weathered, broad-featured face and shock of gray hair, looks every
one of his forty years. "Michael's late for school again," she says.
"He's missed the bus. And when I told him I'd take him to school, he
told me to fuck off."
"That's not what I said." Michael appears behind his mother; he is
sixteen and dressed in baggy slacks and a carefully torn T-shirt. His
hair is swept back from his forehead and sprayed to a lacquered shine.
He looks like his mother, and has her temperament. Flushed with