"Koja-LadyLazarus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

scentless, dangerously cold.

You could burn to death, in cold like that.

The baby began whimpering in earnest; she rose, back twingeing, to check on him,
moving quiet and surely as upon the surface of a lake, frozen water slick and
hard as promises, depthless as the edge of the knife, the smile in the darkness,
the heavy scent of gas.

Now it was three thirty, quarter to four; she had thought of making coffee, tea,
something hot but in the end the poem held her, kept her cramping hands busy.
What if-- head to one side, sinusitis ache but she was too busy, now, to notice
-- what if there were a way to make of the stones more than monuments, what if
instead they were weapons, but weapons to be used on others rather than self?
And take the step, not a long step at all, a logical motion to make of the
stones themselves an army, who was it sowed the dragon's teeth? She did not
remember, English major, Smith girl, she should remember. Perhaps the poem
itself was a stone. Perhaps it was her stone, perhaps she ought to throw it at
someone, good and hard, no secret about that and she almost laughed; or did she?
Did the baby stir? Sweet baby, sometimes it was so hard to look after him, to
look after them both; fatherless woman with her fatherless children, alone on a
plain of black stones. Set the children down awhile, give them your flesh on
which to sleep, to make a carpet keeping them from the cold; she loved her
children; it was so hard.

The pen in her hand moved a moment; she ignored it; stubbornly it moved again
and the stones shifted, now they were a path, built deliberate and strong for
the wheels of iron, the chariots of the queen: warrior queen, and what a grand
tradition that was, bare breasts and hair like eagles, their very gaze enough to
split a rock, split the boulders in their paths and beside them the men, running
panting, trying to keep up. They knew, those women -- with a smile, there was no
denying it, a smile there in the sober light -- they knew all about war, about
tactics and plans, about ways to thwart the enemy even when he lies beside you
(and how he lies); they were not fooled, they were not afraid. It was crippling
fear, debilitating as the cold; it yeas cold, fear, like a stone on your heart.
A warrior queen, what would she do? smash the stone, or the heart it breaks?
Smash your head open like a stone, and let the cold brain bleed out like jelly
through the cracks.

Tired, now, of thinking, the brief exhilaration making her instead ready to
weep, like the false gaiety of alcohol, giddy champagne nerves, when had she
last drunk champagne? When had she last had reason? To friends she had
determinedly crowed in false bravado of her newfound escape from the suffocation
of pure domesticity, she was free now, she was doing what she had always wanted
to do; her work was tremendous in its new liberation, well that was true, these
poems were the best of her life. Her life: what else? Again her thoughts
circling, thinking of him, then of her baby boy, a little tyrant too to one
woman, one day? -- or more, her mouth turning down again, long tragedian's mask
but subtle, subtle, she had suffered so long she knew how it was done, without
fanfare, without tears if possible, certainly without the long distorting