"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - The Final Circle Of Paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

of plans, secretly and openly anticipated happy days ahead, and
now thirsted to surmount the white counter as quickly as
possible. Sedate London clerks and their athletic-looking
brides, pushy Oklahoma farmers in bright shirts hanging outside
Bermuda shorts and sandals over bare feet, Turin workers with
their well-rouged wives and numerous children, small-time
Catholic bosses from Spain, Finnish lumbermen with their pipes
considerately banked, Hungarian basketball players, Iranian
students, union organizers from Zambia...
The customs man gave me my receipt and counted out
twenty-eight cents change.
"Well -- there is all the formality. I hope I haven't
detained you too long. May I wish you a pleasant stay!"
"Thank you," I said and took my suitcase.
He regarded me with his head slightly bent sideways,
smiling out of his bland, smooth face.
"Through this turnstile, please. Au revoir. May I
once more wish you the best."
I went out on the plaza following an Italian pair with
four kids and two robot redcaps.
The sun stood high over mauve mountains. Everything in the
plaza was bright and shiny and colorful. A bit too bright and
colorful, as it usually is in resort towns. Gleaming
orange-and-red buses surrounded by tourist crowds, shiny and
polished green of the vegetation in the squares with white,
blue, yellow, and gold pavilions, kiosks, and tents. Mirrorlike
surfaces, vertical, horizontal, and inclined, which flared with
sunbursts. Smooth matte hexagons underfoot and under the wheels
-- red, black, and gray, just slightly springy and smothering
the sound of footsteps. I put down the suitcase and donned


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sunglasses.
Out of all the sunny towns it has been my luck to visit,
this was without a doubt the sunniest. And that was all wrong.
It would have been much easier if the day had been gray, if
there had been dirt and mud, if the pavilion had also been gray
with concrete walls, and if on that wet concrete was scratched
something obscene, tired, and pointless, born of boredom. Then
I would probably feel like working at once. I am positive of
this because such things are irritating and demand action. It's
still hard to get used to the idea that poverty can be wealthy.
And so the urge is lacking and there is no desire to begin
immediately, but rather to take one of these buses, like the
red-and-blue one, and take off to the beach, do a little scuba
diving, get a tan, play some ball, or find Peck, stretch out on
the floor in some cool room and reminisce on all the good stuff