"Kathleen Ann Goonan - The Bones of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

atmosphere. The shower passed in minutes, and, as always, the
birds took up their chatter ten minutes before the tropical dawn
began to grow.
Lynn had not reflected on these events; they occurred and were
noted. The old roshi knocked the wooden tima and the chanting
began like some deep, remote, alien energy source and ran through
Lynn’s bones.
She remembered rising for kinhin, walking meditation, and
stepping slowly around the room. Then her stomach lurched and she
ran down the hallway and out onto the porch. She knew they could
all hear her puking her guts out, all the old men in there who
weren’t even sure they wanted a woman in their midst but taking
her because she insisted, because on community night she went to
archery instead of flower arranging. At least she was entirely
Japanese; probably the only point in her favor. Of course they
thought “nothing,” or else, “woman.”
“Not-married, disgraceful.” Something like that, as completely
old-fashioned as her father and proud of it. Then they forgot that
thought, and the next, and the next. Lynn’s thoughts stubbornly
stuck to her like grease on dishes. Wiping sweat from her forehead
she had walked over to the drinking fountain and rinsed her mouth.
And then had she walked the few blocks home? No! The sky was a
brilliant, delicate deep blue, and dawn was so swift, so full, that she
could watch it come and feel a part of full morning and there was
no time for her attention to waver. There was nothing as stunning
as equatorial light. Ignoring the pain, which seemed to be
increasing, she had slipped her sunglasses out of her pocket and
turned on her heel, started to run… that would fix it!
Was it getting worse? She wasn’t sure. Lynn switched to a
Two-Part Invention with a glance to the upper right quadrant of her
sunglasses, skipping through traditional Japanese music and Billie
Holiday until she reached the Bach, which blended with her stride.
Salty sweat slid into her eyes, and she mopped her forehead with the
bandanna she carried.
She drank in the scent of plumeria blossoms that were falling in a
breeze-tossed flurry to vine-draped Nuuanu Stream. The stream
roared in her ears, and two young boys zipboarded toward her,
yelling at each other, and parted without a glance at her to pass her
on each side. Nana’s whispery old voice overrode the Bach: “You are
crazy, girl, to run every day with a baby inside you. You were crazy
to put it in you. You picked the father from a catalog? It can’t be a
real baby. Getting your doctorate only made you stupid, I think!
Why don’t you get married and have a real baby? A baby needs a
father. You’re not too old yet to find a man. Thirty-five is not too
old.” Every day, the same thing. But Nana’s acerbity was probably
why she’d lived to be over a hundred. Every day she sharpened her
brain, as if it were a knife, on uncooperative shopkeepers, her
family, and the world at large with absolutely no discrimination.
Two blocks from Nana’s house, Lynn gasped at sudden,
wrenching pain. She clutched her abdomen and bent over.