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

days, that they all would. They would do anything she told them to. They would
eat poison out of her hand. Well, not exactly out of her hand, but it amounted
to the same thing. They were devoted to her. Slavishly.
It is the end, she though, of my roach problem. But of course it was only
the beginning.
Marcia did not question too closely the reason the roaches obeyed her.
She had never much troubled herself with abstract problems. After expending so
much time and attention on them, it seemed only natural that she should
exercise a certain power over them. However, she was wise enough never to
speak of this power to anyone else--even to Miss Bismuth at the insurance
office. Miss Bismuth read the horoscope magazines and claimed to be able to
communicate with her mother, aged sixty-eight, telepathically. Her mother
lived in Ohio. But what would Marcia have said: that she could communicate
telepathically with cockroaches? Impossible.
Nor did Marcia use her power for any other purpose than keeping the
cockroaches out of her own apartment. Whenever she saw one, she simply
commanded it to go to the Shchapalov apartment and stay there. It was
surprising then that there were always more roaches coming back through the
pipes. Marcia assumed that they were younger generations. Cockroaches are
known to breed fast. But it was easy enough to send them to the Shchapalovs.
"Into their beds," she added as an afterthought. "Go into their beds."
Disgusting as it was, the idea gave her a queer thrill of pleasure.
The next morning, the Shchapalov woman, smelling a little worse than
usual (Whatever was it, Marcia wondered, that they drank?), was waiting at the
open door of her apartment. She wanted to speak to Marcia before she left for
work. Her housedress was mired from an attempt at scrubbing the floor, and
while she sat there talking, she tried to wring out the scrubwater.
"No idea!" she exclaimed. "You ain't got no idea how bad! 'S terrible!"
"What?" Marcia asked, knowing perfectly well what.
"The boogs! Oh, the boogs are just everywhere. Don't you have 'em,
sweetheart? I don't know what to do. I try to keep a decent house, God
knows--" She lifted her rheumy eyes to heaven, testifying. "--but I don't know
what to do." She leaned forward, confidingly. "You won't believe this,
sweetheart, but last night . . ." A cockroach began to climb out of the limp
strands of hair straggling down into the woman's eyes. ". . . they got into
bed with us! Would you believe it? There must have been a hundred of 'em. I
said to Osip, I said--What's wrong, sweetheart?"
Marcia, speechless with horror, pointed at the roach, which had almost
reached the bridge of the woman's nose. "Yech!" the woman agreed, smashing it
and wiping her dirtied thumb on her dirtied dress. "Goddam boogs! I hate 'em,
I swear to God. But what's a person gonna do? Now, what I wanted to ask,
sweetheart, is do you have a problem with the boogs? Being as how you're right
next door, I thought--" She smiled a confidential smile, as though to say this
is just between us ladies. Marcia almost expected a roach to skitter out
between her gapped teeth.
"No," she said. "No, I use Black Flag." She backed away from the doorway
toward the safety of the stairwell. "Black Flag," she said again, louder.
"Black Flag," she shouted from the foot of the stairs. Her knees trembled so,
that she had to hold onto the metal banister for support.
At the insurance office that day, Marcia couldn't keep her mind on her