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

grimace; a pale frown would do as well, as well. What about him, this boy-baby,
her son? and what about her daughter, plump toddler's cheek and trusting eyes,
innocent of the need for weapons, she did not even guess there was a war. How to
look at such innocence, both of them, neither of them knew a thing about men and
women, love and envy, the way it feels when the black millstone grinds against
your heart, the way it feels to breathe blood and call it air. How to keep them
safe, how to save herself? how to understand, these stones so real she could
feel them, feel them in her hands like Medusa's breasts, big, contemptuous and
cold. She put her hands to her face and did not cry, but felt somewhere--in the
gripe of her belly, the somber turn of the blood in her womb -- the tears,
rolling, turning like acid in a vase, the shivering sea undrowned by all the
stones in all the world.

And how could she change that?

Finished, now, with the poem; done thinking anti her hands loose and empty on
the table, pen down and paper folded; she had left a note downstairs, pinned to
the hallway pram. No solution but an elegance of decision, there was calm in a
decision, a space delicious as the pure moments post-fever where the scorched
body can relax for a heartbeat's minute before taking up the sterner work of
health. She knew what needed to be done, as surely as any warrior queen, sure as
the wheels of chariots grinding sparks from the stones below.

Turning on the gas, hand on the dial like the hand of the angel who opens at
last the book of life, the silent seeping odor and she bent, half-kneeling, to
the door, one toweled hand to steady her motion -- she was so tired, up all
right and she was so tired -- the other past her bending head, bending as if in
benediction to slip into growing warmth the metal tray of muffins, breakfast for
the children, for herself: hard little pumpernickel muffins like black stones to
be heated till they were soft; and warm; and ready. She filled the three mugs
with milk; already it was light outside.