"Ian McDonald - The Little Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

Kathmandu as a virgin girl of low caste, to spite their haughtiness. I could not read its end in the
darkness, but I did not need to. I was its end, or one of the other nine low-caste girls in the god-house of
the devi.

Then the doors burst open wide and firecrackers exploded and through the rattle and smoke red demons
leaped into the hall. Behind them men in crimson beat pans and clappers and bells. At once two of the
girls began to cry and the two women came and took them away. But I knew the monsters were just silly
men. In masks. These were not even close to demons. I have seen demons, after the rain clouds when
the light comes low down the valley and all the mountains leap up as one. Stone demons, kilometers high.
I have heard their voices, and their breath does not smell like onions. The silly men danced close to me,
shaking their red manes and red tongues, but I could see their eyes behind the painted holes and they
were afraid of me.

Then the door banged open again with another crash of fireworks and more men came through the
smoke. They carried baskets draped with red sheets. They set them in front of us and whipped away the
coverings. Buffalo heads, so freshly struck off the blood was bright and glossy. Eyes rolled up, lolling
tongues still warm, noses still wet. And the flies, swarming around the severed neck. A man pushed a
basket towards me on my cushion as if it were a dish of holy food. The crashing and beating outside rose
to a roar, so loud and metallic it hurt. The girl from my own Shakya village started to wail; the cry spread
to another and then another, then a fourth. The other woman, the tall pinched one with a skin like an old
purse, came in to take them out, carefully lifting her gown so as not to trail it in the blood. The dancers
whirled around like flame and the kneeling man lifted the buffalo head from the basket. He held it up in
my face, eye to eye, but all I thought was that it must weigh a lot; his muscles stood out like vines, his arm
shook. The flies looked like black jewels. Then there was a clap from outside and the men set down the
heads and covered them up with their cloths and they left with the silly demon men whirling and leaping
around them.

There was one other girl left on her cushion now. I did not know her. She was of a Vajryana family from
Niwar down the valley. We sat a long time, wanting to talk but not knowing if silence was part of the
trial. Then the door opened a third time and two men led a white goat into the devi hall. They brought it
right between me and the Niwari girl. I saw its wicked, slotted eye roll. One held the goat’s tether, the
other took a big ceremonial kukri from a leather sheath. He blessed it and with one fast strong stroke
sent the goat’s head leaping from its body.

I almost laughed, for the goat looked so funny, its body not knowing where its head was, the head
looking around for the body and then the body realizing that it had no head and going down with a kick,
and why was the Niwari girl screaming, couldn’t she see how funny it was, or was she screaming
because I saw the joke and she was jealous of that? Whatever her reason, smiling woman and weathered
woman came and took her very gently away and the two men went down on their knees in the spreading
blood and kissed the wooden floor. They lifted away the two parts of the goat. I wished they hadn’t
done that. I would have liked someone with me in the big wooden hall. But I was on my own in the heat
and the dark and then, over the traffic, I heard the deep-voiced bells of Kathmandu start to swing and
ring. For the last time the doors opened and there were the women, in the light.

“Why have you left me all alone?” I cried. “What have I done wrong?”

“How could you do anything wrong, goddess?” said the old, wrinkled woman who, with her colleague,
would become my mother and father and teacher and sister. “Now come along with us and hurry. The
King is waiting.”
Smiling Kumarima and Tall Kumarima (as I would now have to think of them) took a hand each and led