"Alexander Green - The Seeker Of Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Alexander)

Alexander Grin



THE SEEKER OF ADVENTURE


translated by Barry Scherr


PROGRESS PUBLISHING HOUSE
Moscow
1978
__________________________________________________
__________


...Denn eben wo Begriffe
fehlen,
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten
Zeit sich ein.
(Faust)



I. A TRIP


The traveller Ammon Root returned to his native land after an absence
of several years. He stayed with Tonar, an old friend of his, who was the
director of a joint-stock company and a person with a shady past-but also
a fanatic for decorum and probity. On the very day of his arrival Ammon
quarrelled with Tonar over a newspaper editorial, called his friend a
minion of the minister, and stepped outside for a walk.
 Ammon Root was one of those people who are more serious than they
appear at first glance. His travels were not mentioned by the newspapers,
nor did they cause a single map to make the slightest change in its
depiction of the continents, but they were still absolutely necessary for
him. "To live means to travel," he would say to those people who were
attached to life just on the side of it that is most warm and steamy, like a
hot pie. Ammon's eyes-two eternally greedy abysses-ransacked heaven and
earth in their search for new spoils; abysses-everything he saw plunged
headlong into them and was packed away once and for all in the fearful
crush at the bottom of his memory, to be kept for his own use. In contrast
to tourists Ammon saw far more than the museums and churches where
the viewers, pretending to be experts, seek ethereal beauty in
poorly-executed paintings.
Out of curiosity Ammon Root stopped in at a cafeteria that served
vegetarian food. About a hundred people were sitting in the large rooms,
which smelled of varnish, paint, freshly-dried wall-paper, and some other