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

sea-bass, dolphin and barracuda, all circling, until the sea in all
directions was filled with all manner of fish, from the smallest four-
eye to sixty-foot star-speckled whale sharks.
It grew dark, and the water was lit now by moonlight and pocked by
the rain that began to fall. The rain was cold on Nathan's raw skin,
and it looked as if its own silvery light illuminated each droplet.
And as the rain struck the water, the fish became frenzied. They
began to tear at each other, as if in a feeding madness. Huge white
sharks snapped and gored the smaller tiger and mako sharks, while
the barracuda cut sailfish and cobia and tarpon into bloody gobbets of
meat.
Nathan could feel them smashing against the hull like hammers, and
the ocean began to boil with the carnage.
Then, as if in concert, the storm exploded in claps and rolls of thunder
and torrents of rain; and the ocean responded with high waves that
almost turned over the speedboat. Reeking fish slammed into the
cigarette's cockpit, as if thrown from the sky, splashing Nathan with
blood and entrails. Lightning veined the moon, magnified by the
atmosphere into a lifeless sun.
Nathan huddled inside the boat, pressing his legs and back against the
fiberglass to prevent himself from being flung into the sea. The rain
was cold, as was the seawater spraying over him, yet each raindrop
and salty spindrift burned him. He raised his head one last time to
look around, only to see that it was raining fire. The ocean was
illuminated, as if by blue flame; and the sky glowed like cinders.
The sea was a bloodbath.
And as his heart stopped and his breath caught in his throat --
Nathan sits behind his desk in his three-windowed, mahogany-
paneled office. He is looking at the rouged and concerned face of a
wealthy dowager client as he learns of the death of his wife and son.
He listens to the voice on the phone describing the accident and feels
himself freezing into shock. He can only stare at the dowager's huge
emerald earrings, as if the green stones are tiny tablets: the emerald
grimoires of Solomon, which contain all the answers to the mysteries
of life and death and guilt and anger.
Dawn revealed the bloated bodies and remains of thousands of fish
that floated like gray driftwood on the calm swells of the ocean. A
few cumulus clouds drifted across the sky, as if to separate the chilly
perfection of Heaven from the ruin below. Nathan awakened with a
jolt, as if from a nightmare, only to find that all was as it had been.
Repelled, he threw an eel and an ugly, spiny sargassum fish back into
the sea.
He felt nauseated, but he had had the dry heaves during the night;
there was nothing left in his stomach to expel. He had even tried to eat
the fish that had landed in the cockpit of the speedboat, but the reek
was so great that he couldn't manage to bite into the putrescent flesh.
He was thirsty, but the sea was salt. Here was food and water all
around him, yet he was starving and dehydrated. And naked. His
clothes were not anywhere to be seen. Perhaps he had torn them off to
relieve his burning skin. Nathan's flesh seemed to be pulling away