"Thomas M. Disch - The Roaches" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

upsetting a shelf of oddlots. Simultaneously the roaches disappeared over the
edge of the sink and into the drain.
Mr. Silversmith, coming downstairs to inquire the source of Marcia's
alarm, found her supine and unconscious. He sprinkled her face with tapwater,
and she awoke with a shudder of nausea. She refused to explain why she had
screamed and insisted that she must leave Mr. Silversmith's employ
immediately. He, supposing that the pimply stockboy (who was his son) had made
a pass at Marcia, paid her for the three days she had worked and let her go
without regrets. From that moment on, cockroaches were to be a regular feature
of Marcia's existence.

On Thompson Street Marcia was able to reach a sort of stalemate with the
cockroaches. She settled into a comfortable routine of pastes and powders,
scrubbing and waxing, prevention (she never had even a cup of coffee without
washing and drying cup and coffeepot immediately afterward) and ruthless
extermination. The only roaches who trespassed upon her two cozy rooms came up
from the apartment below, and they did not stay long, you may be sure. Marcia
would have complained to the landlady, except that it was the landlady's
apartment and her roaches. She had been inside, for a glass of wine on
Christmas Eve, and she had to admit that it wasn't exceptionally dirty. It
was, in fact, more than commonly clean-but that was not enough in New York. If
everyone, Marcia thought, took as much care as I, there would soon be no
cockroaches in New York City.

Then (it was March and Marcia was halfway through her sixth year in the
city) the Shchapalovs moved in next door. There were three of them--two men
and a woman--and they were old, though exactly how old it was hard to say:
they had been aged by more than time. Perhaps they weren't more than forty.
The woman, for instance, though she still had brown hair, had a face wrinkly
as a prune and was missing several teeth. She would stop Marcia in the hallway
or on the street, grabbing hold of her coatsleeve, and talk to her--always a
simple lament about the weather, which was too hot or too cold or too wet or
too dry. Marcia never knew half of what the old woman was saying, she mumbled
so. Then she'd totter off to the grocery with her bagful of empties.
The Shchapalovs, you see, drank. Marcia, who had a rather exaggerated
idea of the cost of alcohol (the cheapest thing she could imagine was vodka),
wondered where they got the money for all the drinking they did. She knew they
didn't work, for on days when Marcia was home with the flu she could hear the
three Shchapalovs through the thin wall between their kitchen and hers
screaming at each other to exercise their adrenal glands. They're on welfare,
Marcia decided. Or perhaps the man with only one eye was a veteran on pension.
She didn't so much mind the noise of their arguments (she was seldom home
in the afternoon), but she couldn't stand their singing. Early in the evening
they'd start in, singing along with the radio stations. Everything they
listened to sounded like Guy Lombardo. Later, about eight o'clock they sang a
cappella. Strange, soulless noises rose and fell like Civil Defense sirens;
there were bellowings, bayings, and cries. Marcia had heard something like it
once on a Folkways record of Czechoslovakian wedding chants. She was quite
beside herself whenever the awful noise started up and had to leave the house
till they were done. A complaint would do no good: the Shchapalovs had a right