"George Alec Effinger - Unferno" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

UNFERNO
George Alec Effinger
This is a lesson story. It doesn't start out that way, and it doesn't read
that way. It doesn't strike you until it's over that George Effinger isn't
being funny-funny ha-ha in "Unferno." That's because it is funny. Why,
it's as downright amusing as Hell can be.
It's not that complicated, really. One of those
mistake-in-transportation stories. We've seen them before. Poor schnook
ends up in a place where he doesn't belong and has to cope. I've written
some myself. Inevitably, he or she ends up coping, and in the coping lies
the story.
The central character in "Unferno" copes too. Methodically,
bewilderingly, but he copes. Nothing so surprising about that, is there?
That's what's so shocking.



MORTON ROSENTHAL WAS A SMALL, mousy man who, in another
story, had murdered his wife and ground her into hamburger. We'd better
get a good look at him here while he's still vaguely connected to his earthly
form; he'd just died, you see, and he was standing before a battered
wooden desk, understandably dazed and bewildered. If they were still
producing new episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," Morton Rosenthal
would be played by John Fiedler. If you know who John Fiedler is, you
have an immediate and rather complete image of Morton Rosenthal; if
you don't know, John Fiedler played one of Dr. Hartley's patients on "The
Bob Newhart Show," the henpecked Mr. Peterson. But they're not making
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" anymore, or that "Bob Newhart Show,"
either, and Morton Rosenthal himself was dead, too. He hadn't adjusted to
it yet he had never been a brilliant person. For thirty-five years he'd been
a butcher, a competent, honest, and hardworking butcher; but he'd been
pretty much of a washout as a human being. He would have made a
terrific porcupine, and he had the stuff to have been a truly first-rate
weasel. But you get the idea.
"You got that?" asked the angel with the deep voice.
 Rosenthal just blinked. The angel drummed his fingers on the desk,
looking virtuous but as nearly impatient as an angel can look. "No," said
Rosenthal at last.
"Fill out the card. We got a whole crowd of people waiting behind you."
"Sorry," muttered Rosenthal. He really hated causing any
inconvenience.
" 'S all right," said the angel. "Number thirty-four?" A fat black woman
raised her hand timidly and walked slowly and painfully to the desk.
Rosenthal looked at the card he held in one hand, the pencil he held in the
other. He didn't remember receiving either. He didn't even remember
coming here. He didn't remember
dying. His eyes opened wide. He was dead, really dead. "Oh, my God,"
he said to himself. He knew what being dead meant; it meant that
everyone who had ever lived would know every little humiliating thing
about him. They were all waiting for him here, especially Rose, his USDA