"Alexander Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Journey Across Three Worlds (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Alexander Abramov, Sergei Abramov.

Journey Across Three Worlds


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Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1973
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 б http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Original title: "Хождение за три мира"
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PART ONE. THE STRANGE STORY OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, TOLD ANEW ...



No, this was a different
Mr. Golyadkin, absolutely
different, but at the same
time absolutely similar
to the former...
F. Dostoevsky, The Double


Nil admirari! Be astonished at nothing!
A proposition borrowed from the philosophy of Pythagoras

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WHO AM I?


I was returning home by way of Tverskoi Boulevard, walking up from the
Nikitskie Vorota. It was somewhere around five o'clock in the afternoon, but
the Saturday crowds usually teeming the streets at this hour by-passed the
boulevard, and the side-alleys were as deserted and quiet as they are in the
morning. The September sky, utterly cloudless of a sudden, gave no hint of
the nearness of autumn. Not one yellow leaf rustled underfoot and, after
last night's rain, even the faded late-summer grass between the trees seemed
as luxuriantly green as in May.
I strolled leisurely along an alley, hesitating at every bench with the
vague idea of sitting down. Finally I did, stretching out my legs; and the
very same second I felt as if everything around me was slipping off
somewhere, fading out and spinning in circles. I don't usually have dizzy
spells, but now I gripped the bench so as not to fall. Everything opposite
me on the boulevard - trees and passers-by - vanished in a lilac-tinted
mist. Exactly like in the mountains when clouds creep to your feet and
everything around disintegrates and melts into the thick, wet, cottony
flakes. But this was no rain: a pure dry mist swooped down, lapped all the
green from the boulevard, and then vanished.