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

parents found I was not shrieking, not a sob or a tear or even a pout, that was
when they knew I was destined to become the goddess. I was smiling in my wire
cage.
* * *
I remember best the festivals, for it was only then that I left the Kumari Ghar.
Dasain, at the end of summer, was the greatest. For eight days the city ran red.
On the final night I lay awake listening to the voices in the square flow
together into one roar, the way I imagined the sea would sound, the voices of
the men gambling for the luck of Lakshmi, devi of wealth. My father and uncles
had gambled on the last night of Dasain. I remember I came down and demanded to
know what all the laughing was about and they turned away from their cards and
really laughed. I had not thought there could be so many coins in the world as
there were on that table but it was nothing compared to Kathmandu on the eighth
of Dasain. Smiling Kumarima told me it took some of the priests all year to earn
back what they lost. Then came the ninth day, the great day and I sailed out
from my palace for the city to worship me.
I traveled on a litter carried by forty men strapped to bamboo poles as thick as
my body. They went gingerly, testing every step, for the streets were slippery.
Surrounded by gods and priests and saddhus mad with holiness, I rode on my
golden throne. Closer to me than any were my Kumarimas, my two Mothers, so
splendid and ornate in their red robes and headdresses and make-up they did not
look like humans at all. But Tall Kumarima’s voice and Smiling Kumarima’s smile
assured me as I rode with Hanuman and Taleju through the cheering and the music
and the banners bright against the blue sky and the smell I now recognized from
the night I became a goddess, the smell of blood.
That Dasain the city received me as never before. The roar of the night of
Lakshmi continued into the day. As Taleju Devi I was not supposed to notice
anything as low as humans but out of the corners of my painted eyes I could see
beyond the security robots stepping in time with my bearers, and the streets
radiating out from the stupa of Chhetrapati were solid with bodies. They threw
jets and gushes of water from plastic bottles up into the air, glittering,
breaking into little rainbows, raining down on them, soaking them, but they did
not care. Their faces were crazy with devotion.
Tall Kumarima saw my puzzlement and bent to whisper.
“They do puja for the rain. The monsoon has failed a second time, devi.”
As I spoke, Smiling Kumarima fanned me so no one would see my lips move. “We
don’t like the rain,” I said firmly.
“A goddess cannot do only what she likes,” Tall Kumarima said. “It is a serious
matter. The people have no water. The rivers are running dry.”
I thought of the river that ran far down deep below the house where I was born,
the water creamy and gushing and flecked with yellow foam. I saw it swallow my
uncle and could not imagine it ever becoming thin, weak, hungry.
“So why do they throw water then?” I asked.
“So the devi will give them more,” Smiling Kumarima explained. But I could not
see the sense in that even for goddesses and I frowned, trying to understand how
humans were and so I was looking right at him when he came at me.
He had city-pale skin and hair parted on the left that flopped as he dived out
of the crowd. He moved his fists to the collar of his diagonally striped shirt
and people surged away from him. I saw him hook his thumbs into two loops of
black string. I saw his mouth open in a great cry. Then the machine swooped and