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

floorboards but it was Smiling Kumarima drew back in the corridor as we hurried
towards the darshan hall, hesitated a moment, said, softly, smiling as always,
“How you’re growing, devi. Are you still. . . ? No, forgive me, of course. . . .
Must be this warm weather we’re having, makes children shoot up like weeds. My
own are bursting out of everything they own, nothing will fit them.”
The next morning as I was dressing a tap came on my door, like the scratch of a
mouse or the click of an insect.
“Devi?”
No insect, no mouse. I froze, palmer in hand, earhook babbling the early morning
news reports from Awadh and Bharat into my head.
“We are dressing.”
“Yes, devi, that is why I would like to come in.”
I just managed to peel off the palmer and stuff it under my mattress before the
heavy door swung open on its pivot.
“We have been able to dress ourselves since we were six,” I retorted.
“Yes, indeed,” said Smiling Kumarima, smiling. “But some of the priests have
mentioned to me a little laxness in the ritual dress.”
I stood in my red and gold night-robe, stretched out my arms and turned, like
one of the trance-dancers I saw in the streets from my litter. Smiling Kumarima
sighed.
“Devi, you know as well as I . . .”
I pulled my gown up over my head and stood unclothed, daring her to look, to
search my body for signs of womanhood.
“See?” I challenged.
“Yes,” Smiling Kumarima said, “but what is that behind your ear?”
She reached to pluck the hook. It was in my fist in a flick.
“Is that what I think it is?” Smiling Kumarima said, soft smiling bulk filling
the space between the door and me. “Who gave you that?”
“It is ours,” I declared in my most commanding voice but I was a naked
twelve-year-old caught in wrongdoing and that commands less than dust.
“Give it to me.”
I clenched my fist tighter.
“We are a goddess, you cannot command us.”
“A goddess is as a goddess acts and right now, you are acting like a brat. Show
me.”
She was a mother, I was her child. My fingers unfolded. Smiling Kumarima
recoiled as if I held a poisonous snake. To her eyes of her faith, I did.
“Pollution,” she said faintly. “Spoiled, all spoiled. Her voice rose. “I know
who gave you this!” Before my fingers could snap shut, she snatched the coil of
plastic from my palm. She threw the earhook to the floor as if it burned her. I
saw the hem of her skirt raise, I saw the heel come down, but it was my world,
my oracle, my window on the beautiful. I dived to rescue the tiny plastic fetus.
I remember no pain, no shock, not even Smiling Kumarima’s shriek of horror and
fear as her heel came down, but I will always see the tip of my right index
finger burst in a spray of red blood.

The pallav of my yellow sari flapped in the wind as I darted through the Delhi
evening crush-hour. Beating the heel of his hand off his buzzer, the driver of
the little wasp-colored phatphat cut in between a lumbering truck-train painted
with gaudy gods and apsaras and a cream Government Maruti and pulled into the