"Cory Doctorow - A Place So Foreign" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

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Miss Tannenbaum, a spinster lady with a moustache and a bristling German accent
terrorised the little kids in the elementary school -- I'd been stuck in her
class for five long years. Mr Adelson, who was raised in San Francisco and who
had worked as a roustabout, a telegraph operator and a merchant seaman taught
the Academy, and his wild stories were all Oly could talk about.

He raised one eyebrow quizzically when I came through the door at 8:00 that
morning. He was tall, like my Pa, but Pa had been as big as an ox, and Mr
Adelson was thin and wiry. He wore rumpled pants and a shirt with a wilted
celluloid collar. He had a skinny little beard that made him look like a
gentleman pirate, and used some shiny pomade to grease his hair straight back
from his high forehead. I caught him reading, thumbing the hand-written pages of
a leatherbound volume.

"Mr Adelson?"

"Why, James Nicholson! What can I do for you, sonny?" New Jerusalem only had but
2,000 citizens, and only a hundred or so in town proper, so of course he knew
who I was, but it surprised me to hear him pronounce my name in his creaky,
weatherbeaten voice.

"My mother says I have to go to the Academy."

"She does, hey? How do you feel about that?"

I snuck a look at his face to see if he was putting me on, but I couldn't tell
-- he'd raised up his other eyebrow now, and was looking hard at me. There might
have been the beginning of a smile on his face, but it was hard to tell with the
beard. "I guess it don't matter how I feel."

"Oh, I don't know about that. This is a school, not a prison, after all. How old
are you?"

"Fourteen. Sir."

"That would put you in with the seniors. Do you think you can handle their
course of study? It's half-way through the semester now, and I don't know how
much they taught you when you were over in," he swallowed, "France."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just stared at my hard, uncomfortable
shoes.

"How are your maths? Have you studied geometry? Basic algebra?"

"Yes, sir. They taught us all that." And lots more besides. I had the feeling of
icebergs of knowledge floating in my brain, ready to crest the waves and crash
against the walls of my skull.