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

The boy walked next to him, stiff, severe, and wet. Victor
io The Ugly Swans

overcame a certain indecisiveness and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. Nothing special happened; the
boy tolerated it. Al-though, most likely, he'd simply decided that his shoulder was needed for utilitarian
purposes, to hold up someone in shock.
"I must say," remarked Victor in his most confiding tone, "that you and Irma have a very strange way of
expressing your-selves. When we were kids we didn't talk that way."
"Really?" said Bol-Kunats politely. "And how did you talk?"
"Well, for example, with us your question would have sounded something like this: Whaaa?"
Bol-Kunats shrugged his shoulders. "Do you mean to say that it would be better like that?"
"God forbid! I only meant that it would be more natural."
"It is precisely that which is most natural," Bol-Kunats ob-served, "that is least fitting for man."
Victor felt a chill deep inside himself. An uneasiness. Or even fear. As if a cat had laughed in his face.
"The natural is always primitive," Bol-Kunats continued. "But man is a complex being, and naturalness is
not becoming to him. Do you understand me, Mr. Banev?"
"Yes," said Victor. "Of course."
There was something incredibly false in the fatherly way he had placed his hand on the shoulder of this
boy, who wasn't a boy. His elbow even began to ache. He carefully removed his hand and put it in his
pocket.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Fourteen," said Bol-Kunats absentmindedly.
"Oh."
Any ordinary boy in Bol-Kunats's place would have certainly been intrigued by the irritatingly indefinite
"oh," but Bol-Kunats was not an ordinary boy. He said nothing. Intriguing interjections left him cold. He
was reflecting on the interrela-tionship of the natural and the primitive in nature and society. He regretted
having come upon such an unintelligent com-panion, the more so one who'd just been hit over the head.
The Ugly Swam 11
 They came out onto the Avenue of the President. Here there were many streetlights, and pedestrians,
men and women hunched up under the incessant rain, hurried past. Store win-dows were lit up, and under
an awning by the neon-bathed entrance to a movie house stood a crowd of young people of indeterminate
sex, in shining raincoats down to their heels. And above everything, through the rain, shone incantations in
blue and gold: "Our President is the Father of His People," "The Legionnaire of Freedom is the True Son of
the President," "The Army is Our Awesome Glory."
Out of inertia they continued to walk in the roadway. A passing car honked and chased them back onto
the sidewalk, splashing them with dirty water.
"And I thought you were about eighteen," said Victor.
"Whaa?" asked Bel-Kunats in a repulsive voice, and Victor laughed, relieved. All the same, this was a
boy, one of your ordinary prodigies who had devoured Geibor, Zurzmansor, Fromm, and maybe even coped
with Spengler.
"When I was a kid," said Victor, "I had a friend who got the idea of reading Hegel in the original. He did
it, but he turned into a schizophrenic. At your age, you undoubtedly know what a schizophrenic is."
"Yes, I know," said Bol-Kunats.
"And you're not afraid?"
"No."
They reached the hotel.
"Maybe you'll come up to my room and dry off?" proposed Victor.
"Thank you. I was just about to ask your permission to come up. First of all, there is something I have to
tell you, and sec-ond, I have to make a telephone call. You don't object?"
Victor didn't object. They went through the revolving door past the doorman, who took off his cap to