“I also have my own talent,” Valerie says, stuffing a lock of copper hair into her mouth. Her nipples seem to stare at Stephen.
“Roger said you were a terrific educator.”
- No, I'm talking about something else. - Valerie with an absent air is fingering her ovulation meter. “When the person I'm talking to has his lips pressed in a certain way, I know how he feels.” He will look in some strange way - and I feel the flow of his thoughts. - She lowers her voice. “I watched you this morning at the baptism ceremony.” The archbishop would be unhappy with how you perceived this, am I right?
Stephen examines his bare feet. It is strange that only a partner in the copulatory expects such frankness from him.
- I'm right? Valerie insists, sliding her index finger across her large, sunken navel.
Stephen is seized with fear. What if this woman works for the Immortality Guard? And if he gives his answer in heresy, will she arrest him here, on the spot?
- Well, Stephen? Would the archbishop be angry or not?
“Maybe,” he confesses. Before his inner gaze, Madeline Dunphy's mouth is submerged under water, bubbles rising one after the other, like beads of a rosary.
“My microphone is not hidden in my belly button,” Valerie assures him, referring to the beloved technique of the Immortality Guard. “I'm not a spy.”
“I didn't say that.”
“But you thought that.” I understood this from the way you raised your eyebrows. - She kisses his lips with a deep, wet kiss. “Will Roger ever learn how to hold a pencil properly?”
- I'm afraid not.
- This is bad.
Finally, the mattress to the left of Stephen is freed, they climb on it and take for the implementation of the Dogmat about Positive Fertility. Candle lights are like spearheads. Stephen closes his eyes, but the result is only an even more heightened sense of presence here. The moist creaking of the flesh against the flesh sounds clearer, the smell of heated paraffin and warm seed becomes more acute. For a few seconds he manages to convince himself that the woman underneath is Kate; but this illusion is as fluid as the light of the candles surrounding it.
When the sacrament ends, Valerie says:
“I have something for you.” Present.
- On what occasion?
“Before St. Patrick's Day, less than a week. ”
- Since when did they begin to give gifts to St. Patrick?
Instead of answering, she goes to her side of the room, rummaging through her pile of clothes and returns, holding a plastic cube with a flower pressed into it.
“Consider this your ticket,” she says in a whisper, taking off Steven's shirt from the hook and stuffing the flower into his pocket.
- Where is the ticket?
Valerie puts a raised index finger to her lips.
“We will find out when we get there.”
Stephen swallows loudly. Sweat accumulates under his sperm counter. Only fools can think of sailing off the Boston Island. Only madmen can neglect the punishment assigned for this by the Guard. Men who surrender to sperm pumps, women in the predatory embrace of artificial inseminators - each parishioner's imagination is haunted by these classic stories featured every Sunday evening in the program “Let These Babies Come”, inspiring horror in them no less than “Strangulation of David Hume by the Archangel Chamuel "work of Spinelli. Of course, there were rumors - unverifiable reports of parishioners who managed to outwit the patrol boats and flee to the Quebec Sandbank, Seattle Reef or the Texas Archipelago.But to believe such tales was already in itself a kind of sin, which threatened a place in Paradise with the same certainty as if you had deprived them of their unreadable rights.
“Tell me one thing, Stephen.” - Valerie fastens the bra. “Here you are, a history teacher.” Is it true that Saint Patrick expelled all snakes from Ireland, or is it just a legend?
“Well, I don't think it should be taken literally,” says Stephen. “However, I admit that maybe in some mythological sense ...”
“It's about the penis, isn't it?” Says Valerie, hiding in the darkness. “Our saints have always been disapproving of members.”
Although the Harbor Administrative Tower was originally intended to house the merchant and shipowning aristocracy, whose ambitions still depended on the weak economy of Boston, the very form of the building, as Connie now understands, perfectly corresponded to its new, additional function: to provide shelter to the chancery, courts and archives of the diocese the archbishop. When Connie looks up at the facade soaring up, sacred forms come to mind - spiers and vaulted windows, Sinai and Zion, Jacob's ladder and palms folded for prayer.
Perhaps all this happens according to the will of the Lord, he muses, waving his church pass in front of the guard's nose. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with commerce and grace doing their business within the same walls.
Until then, Connie had only seen Archbishop Xallibos in the flesh - it was five years ago when the majestic prelate was present as an “honorary Irishman” at the annual demonstration of Charleston Parish on St. Patrick's Day. Standing on the sidewalk, Connie watched as Xallibos glides along Lind Street on a huge motorized shamrock. The archbishop then looked very impressive; he looked impressive and now - according to Connie's estimates, he had at least six feet four inches [7] and not an ounce less than three hundred pounds [8] of weight. His eyes were red, like a laboratory rat.
“Father Cornelius Dennis Monegan,” the priest says, following the custom that a visitor, entering the archbishop's chambers, begins a conversation with what he calls himself.
“Get closer, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan.”
Connie enters the office, clapping her boots on the polished bronze floor. Xallibos rises to meet him from behind his table - a sparkling cube of black marble.
“The Charleston parish has a special place among my affections,” says the archbishop. “What brings you to this part of the city?”
Connie uneasily steps over, moving first to the left, then to the right, until he sees a reflection of his face in the image of St. Cyril, the size of a cap from the car wheel that adorns the chest of Xallibos.
“My soul is tormented, Your Eminence.”
- "In torment" ... A weighty definition.
“I cannot find another.” The fact is that last Thursday I repose the soul of a two-week-old baby ...
- The final baptism?
Connie stares at her reflection. It is wrinkled; it seems that air was released from it, as if from a balloon bought for a long past festival.
- I have this eighth.
“I understand your feelings.” I myself, after I sent my first infertile child into the world - he did not have a left testicle, and the right shriveled without the possibility of recovery - could not sleep for a whole week. - Xallibos fixes the gaze of burning, like molten rubies, eyes directly into Connie's face. - Where did you attend the seminary?
- On the island of Denver.
“Have you been taught on Denver Island that there are actually two Churches, one of which is invisible and eternal, and the other ...”
- Temporary and finite.
- In that case, you were also taught that the latter was empowered to revise her sacraments in accordance with the dictates of the era. - The archbishop's gaze flares up brighter, hotter, cleaner. “Do you doubt that the needs of the present tense require us to prematurely lead to the immortality of those who cannot secure the rights of the non-conceived?”
“You see, the problem is that the girl I immortalized had a twin sister.” - Connie swallows nervously. “And her mother carried her away before I could perform the second baptism.”
- How is it - carried away?
- I ran away from the church in the middle of the sacrament.
“Is the second child as barren as the first?”
- The left ovary - two hundred and ninety rudiments, the right - three hundred and ten.
- God merciful! - from the inside of the archbishop comes a piercing his
s, as if from a boiling kettle. “And what, does she intend to leave the island?”
“I fully hope not, Your Grace,” the priest says, shuddering at the thought. - Most likely, she has no immediate plans, except to protect her child and try ...
Connie interrupts herself, frightened by the sudden appearance of a small, chubby man in a white robe with a hood.
“Brother James Woolf, MD,” the monk says.
“Get closer, brother Dr. James Wolfe, ”Xallibos says.
“Good if you signed it soon.” - James Wolfe pulls a sheet of parchment paper from under his mantle and puts it on the table to the archbishop. Connie furtively glances at the report, hoping to find out the fertility rate of the child, but the statistics are written too faded. “The priest in question should serve the liturgy ...” James Wolfe checked the wristwatch, pulling his falling sleeve, “... less than an hour later.” And this is in Brooklyn, not dipped.
Walking up to the table with great strides, the archbishop pulls out a silver fountain pen from the stand and adorns the parchment with his famous hooked painting.
“Dominus vobiscum [9], brother Dr. Wolfe, ”he says, handing the document to him.
Wolfe hastily leaves the office, and Xallibos approaches Connie - so close that the priest's nostrils are filled with the lemon scent of the archbishop's aftershave.
“This person never has any entertainment,” says Xallibos, pointing in the direction of the vanishing monk. “And what kind of entertainment do you have, Father Monaghan?”
- Entertainment, Your Eminence?
- Do you eat ice cream? Follow the fate of the Celts? - The word "Celts" he pronounces with a solid "ka", approved by the Third Lateran Council [10].
Connie draws in a bountiful amount of citrus fumes.
- I'm baking.
- Do you bother? What do you bake? Bread?
“Baking, Your Eminence.” Chocolate cakes, cheesecakes with cottage cheese, pies. By Christmas, I baked gingerbread magicians.
- Wonderful. I love when my priests have fun ... However, listen - in any case, the rite must be perfect. If Angela Dunphy does not come to you, you must go to her yourself.
“She will run away again.”
- Maybe so, and maybe not. I really believe in you, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan.
“More than I believe in myself,” the priest says, biting his cheeks from the inside so hard that his eyes are filled with tears.
“No,” says Kate, for the third time this night.
“Yes,” Stephen insists, doubly enjoying Kate's hip under his palm and the Erbutus rum washing his brain.
Holding a cigarette in one hand, the other, Kate strokes the baby's forehead Malcolm, lulling him.
- This is vicious! She protests, laying Malcolm on the rug next to the bed. - This is a crime against the future!
Stephen grabs a bottle of Erbutus, pours himself another glass and, having added the necessary amount of Doctor Pepper, he eagerly takes a sip. He puts the bottle back on the bedside table - next to the mysterious flower Valerie Galloger gave him.
- To spit on those who are not conceived! He says, throwing himself into his wife's arms.
On Friday, he showed a flower to Gail Whittington, the most savvy of Dougherty's high school teachers, but her verdict could not shed light on this issue. It was Epigaea repens or “Erbutus creeping” - a plant that had at least two reasons for pride: it served as the state emblem of the Massachusetts archipelago, and it also loaned its name to the very brand of alcohol that Stephen now absorbs.
“No,” Kent says again. She throws the cigarette on the floor, crushes it with her slipper and puts her arms around it. “I'm not ovulating,” she explains, sticking her hard and slippery tongue into his mouth. “And your sperm isn't ...”
“Last night a vision was sent to the Holy Father,” Xallibos announces from the video screen. “These were pictures taken directly from Satan's flaming possessions.” Hell is a fact, my friends! It is as real as a callus on a foot.
Stephen pulls off a shirt with Kate no less dexterously than Father Monaghan, who removes baptismal clothes from a child. Rum, of course, also plays a significant role in their mutual readiness (four glasses for each, only slightly diluted by Dr. Pepper), but without taking Erbutus into account, they both fully deserve this moment. Neither one nor the other never missed the liturgy. Neither one nor the other has ever evaded the mystery of Fornication. And although any act of infertile love formally lies outside the power of the Church to forgive sins, no doubt Christ will forgive them their only apostasy. They zealously take up the matter - this is a sterile union, this forbidden infertility, this copulation, from which no soul can come.
“Hedonists floundering in tanks of molten sulfur,” Xallibos says.
The bedroom door creaks open. One of Kate's middle children enters the room, Beatrice - a slender six-year-old girl with flaky skin; in her hand is a makeshift toy boat roughly cut from a piece of bark.
“Mom, look what I did yesterday at school!”
“We're busy,” Kate tells her, covering her nakedness with a ragged muslin sheet.
“Do you like my boat, Stephen?” Beatrice asks.
He slaps a pillow over his loins.
“Very sweet, dear.”
“Go back to bed,” Kate orders her daughter.
“Onanists are drowning in lakes of boiling semen,” Xallibos broadcasts.
Beatrice does not take her sunken eyes from Stephen.
“And can we launch it tomorrow at Pastorsky Pond?”
- Sure. Of course. I beg you, get out of here.
“Just the two of us, okay, Stephen?” Without Claude, and without Tommy, without Yolanda - without anyone!
“Special fresh-air machines,” Xallibos says, “they sinning sinners like ripe bananas.”
“Do you want to be torn out?” - boils Kate. “That is exactly what you will achieve now, my dear, the most cruel bashing in your whole life!”
The child answers with a fulfilled shrug and, pouting, leaves the room.
“I love you,” Stephen says to his wife, removing the pillow from his genitals with the gesture of the cook removing the lid from the pan with the roast.
They again cling to each other, investing in this action everything that is in them, each member, and the gland, and the hole, without any restrictions, not embarrassed by any position.
“Unforgivable,” Kate groans.
“Unforgivable,” Stephen agrees. He never felt such a lift. His whole body is now only an appendage to his loins.
- We will be damned! She says.
- Forever! He echoes.
- Kiss Me! She commands.
- See you again, friends! - says Xallibos. - And let these babies come!
Pulling a plastic font from the trunk of his car, Connie reflects on the similarity of this sacred vessel with a bird bath. This is the place, he thinks, where pious sparrows can perform their bird baths. But when he, having set the vessel on his shoulder more firmly, sets off, and the edges of the font cut into the flesh, another metaphor comes to his mind. If this font is Connie's cross, and Constitution Road is his Via Dolorosa [11], then what role does this play for Angela Dunphy's upcoming mission? Is he not about to complete a mystical act of offering an atoning sacrifice?
- Good morning, Father!
He takes off the font from his shoulder, placing it on the edge near the fire hydrant. One of the parishioners, Valerie Galloger, dressed in a well-worn woolen park, squeezes through the crowd to him.
- Gathered far? She asks cheerfully.
- Until the end of the quarter.
- Can I help you?
- Nothing, it will not hurt me to stretch a little.
Valerie holds out his hand and they shake hands, mittens in the mittens.
“Any special plans for St. Patrick's Day? ”
“I'm going to bake trefoil cakes.”
- Greens?
- I can not afford to buy food coloring.
; “I think I have a little green, so welcome!” And who lives at the end of the quarter?
- Angela Dunphy.
A shadow runs across Valerie's face.
“And her daughter?”
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