Tours of the Black Clock (Steve Erickson) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

30

SHE ISN’T THERE WHEN I get back for her. Maybe she didn’t hear me when I told her I’d be back. But she isn’t there at any rate. None of the Indians is there. Indians that have been living here longer than I’ve been alive have up and left everything, all the huts deserted. The pyre of Jainlight rises like Babel in the north. In the dead of morning the shouts of the whole countryside to the sight of it can be heard. The shouts and laughter, the applause to God.

God had nothing to do with it.

I walk on, the moonlight before me turned dappled by the new clouds. I leave the valley. I’m ashamed that I’ve succumbed to the monstrous nature of a monstrous body. I would like to leave that nature in the valley behind me. If I could leave my body with it, I would. Eight miles out of Pittsburgh I catch a train going east.