"Bridge of Clay" е новата книга от Маркъс Зюсак, която ще излезе тази есен на английски език

"Growing up the dunbar way

So there they were, way up in the far-flung future:
A cantankerous bird.
An acrobatic goldfish.
Two bloody boys.
And look here at Clay, in the backstory.
What can we say about him?
How did life begin, as a boy and a son and a Dunbar?
It was pretty simple, really, with a multitude lying within:
Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there were five brothers, but the fourth of us was the best of us, and a boy of many traits.
How did Clay become Clay, anyway?
In the beginning there was all of us - each our own small part to tell the whole - and our father had helped at each birth; he was first to be handed to hold us. As Penelope liked to tell it, he’d be standing there, acutely aware, and he’d cried at the bedside, beaming. He never flinched at the slop or the burnt-looking bits, as the room began to spin. For Penelope, that was everything.
When it was over, she’d succumb to dizziness.
Her heartbeat leapt in her lips.
It was funny, they liked to tell us, how when we were born, we all had something they loved:
Me, it was my feet. The newborn crinkly feet.
Rory, it was his punched-up nose when he first came out, and the noises he made in his sleep; something like a world title fight, but at least they knew he was alive.
Henry had ears like paper.
Tommy was always sneezing.
And of course, there was Clay, between us:
The boy who came out smiling.
As the story went, when Penny was in labor with Clay, they left Henry, Rory, and me with Mrs. Chilman. On the drive to the hospital they nearly pulled over; Clay was coming quickly. As Penny would later tell him: the world had wanted him badly, but what she didn’t do was ask why.
Was it to hurt, to humiliate?
Or to love and make great?
Even now it’s hard to decide.
It was morning, summer and humid, and when they made it to the maternity ward, Penny was shouting, still walking, and his head was starting to crown. He was very nearly torn rather than born, as if the air had reefed him out.
In the delivery room, there was a lot of blood.
It was splayed on the floor like murder.
As for the boy, he lay in the muggy atmosphere, and was strangely, quietly, smiling; his bloodcurdled face dead silent. When an unsuspecting nurse came in, she stood openmouthed and blaspheming. She stopped and said, "Jesus Christ."
It was our mother, all dizzy, who replied.
"I hope not," she said, and our father still grinned. "We know what we did to Him."
As a boy, as I said, he was the best of us.
To our parents, in particular, he was the special one, I’m sure of it, for he rarely fought, hardly cried, and loved everything they spoke of and told him. Night for night, while the rest of us made excuses, Clay would help with the dishes, as a trade for one more story. To Penny he’d say, "Can you tell me about Vienna again, and all those bunk beds? Or what about this one?" His face was in the dinner plates, the suds across his thumbs. "Can you tell me about the statue of Stalin? And who was Stalin anyway?"
To Michael, he’d say, "Can you tell me all about Moon, Dad, and the snake?”
He was always in the kitchen, while the rest of us watched TV, or fought in the lounge or the hallway.
Of course, as things go, though, our parents were also editors:

The stories were almost-everythings."
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