"Barry N. Malzberg - Le Croix" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

“Just trying to help a mate on the stations, that's all.”
“Help Yourself,” the second thief grumbles. “That's the only possibility. If
I
had looked out for myself I wouldn't be in this mess.”
“I quite agree,” I say. “That's exactly my condition, exactly.”
“Ah, stuff it, mate,” the thief says.
It is really impossible to deal with these people. The texts imbue them with
sentimental focus but truly they are swine. I can grasp Pilate's dilemma.
Thinking of Pilate leads into another channel, but before I can truly
consider
the man's problems a pain of particular dimension slashes through me and there
I
am, there I am, suspended from the great cross groaning, all the syllables of
thought trapped within.
“Ah,” I murmur, “ah,” he murmurs, “ah monsieurs, c'est le plus,” but it is
not,
to be sure, it is not le plus at all. Do not be too quick to judge.
It goes on, in fact, for an unsatisfactorily extended and quite spiritually
laden period of time. The lot-casting goes quickly and there is little to
divert
on the hillside; one can only take so much of that silly woman weeping before
it
loses all emotional impact. It becomes a long and screaming difficulty, a
passage broken only by the careless deaths of the thieves who surrender in
babble and finally, not an instant too soon, the man's brain bursts . . . but
there is time, crucifixion being what it is, for slow diminution beyond that.
Lessening color; black and grey, if there is one thing to be said about this
process, it is exceedingly generous. One will be spared nothing.
Of course I had pointed out that I did not want to be spared anything. “Give
me
Jesus,” I had asked and cooperating in their patient way they had given me
Jesus. There is neither irony nor restraint to the process, which is exactly
the
way that it should be.
Even to the insult of the thieves abusing me.
****
Alive to the tenor of the strange and difficult times, I found myself moved
to
consider the question of religious knowledge versus fanaticism. Hard choices
have to be made even in pursuit of self-indulgence. Both were dangerous to
the
technocratic state of 2219, of course, but of the two religion was considered
the more risky because fanaticism could well be turned to the advantage of
the
institutions. (Then there were the countervailing arguments of course that
they
were partners, but these I chose to dismiss.) Sexuality was another pursuit
possibly inimical to the state but it held no interest for me; the general
Privacy and Social Taboo acts of the previous century had been taken very
seriously by my subdivision and