"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - The Ugly Swans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

and handed it to Diana. Then he stretched out. To his left was a stream of cold air, and to his right it was
warm, silky, and soft. Now he could hear that the carousing was still going onтАФthe guests were singing in
chorus.
"How long are they going to keep at it?" he asked.
"At what?" said Diana sleepily.
"At this howling."
"I don't know. What difference does it make?" She turned on her side and put her cheek on his shoulder.
"I'm cold," she complained.
They disentangled and crawled under the blanket.
"Don't sleep," he said.
"Uhuh," she mumbled.
"Are you happy?"
"Uhuh."
"What if we try your ear?"
"Uhuh _ Leave me alone, it hurts!"
"Look, do you think I could stay here for a week?"
"Sure."
"Where?"
"I want to sleep. Let a poor drunken woman get some sleep."
Victor fell silent but didn't move. Diana was already sleep-ing. "So that's what I'll do," he thought. "It'll be
nice and quiet here. Except at night. Or maybe even at night. He's not going to booze it up every night.
After all, he's taking a cure here. Stay here for three or four days ... or five or six. Drink less . . . not drink
at all . . . and get some work done. It's been a long time. To start working, you have to get really bored, so
bored
36 The Ugly Swans

that you don't feel like doing anything else." He dozed off, then jerked awake. "Oh, yeah, Irma. I'll write to
Rots-Tusov, that's what I'll do. If only he doesn't squirm out of it, the coward. Owes me nine hundred
crowns. When it comes to Mr. President, nothing really matters, we all turn into cowards. Wonder why?
What are we all so afraid of? Change, that's what. No more going into the writers' bar and polishing off a
glass of hundred-and-fifty-proof, no more bows from the doorman, no more doormenтАФthey'll make you the
doorman. If they send you to the mines, that's really bad. But that's an exception, times have changed, a
weakening of morals. I've thought about it a hundred times, and a hundred times I've decided that there's
nothing to be afraid of, but I still am. Because it's a blind force," he thought. "It's a terrible thing when
there's a blind, pigheaded, pig-bodied force pitted against you, imper-vious to logic and emotion. No Diana
either."
He dozed off and woke up again. Through his open window came loud talk and hoarse animal laughter.
Branches were snapping.
"I can't lock them up," said the drunken voice of the police chief. "There's no law for that."
"There will be," said the voice of Rosheper. "Am I a legis-lator or not?"
"Where is the law that says there has to be a hotbed of in-fection right outside of town?" barked the
burgomaster.
"There will be," said Rosheper stubbornly.
"They're not infectious," bleated the falsetto of the middle-school director. "I mean medically speaking."
"Hey, middle school," said Rosheper. "Don't forget to pull your zipper down."
 "Where is the law that says you can bankrupt honest citi-zens?" barked the burgomaster. "Where does it
say that?"
"There will be, I'm telling you," Rosheper said. "Am I a legislator or not?"
"What can I throw at those assholes?" Victor thought.
The Ugly Swans 37