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

"I've never seen the names anywhere, nor have I forgotten."
"And that's the most interesting point in all your somnambulistic
story. Physics, my dear, physics. The Institute of New Problems in Physics.
New, remember!" And Galya turned to Olga. "You know what? Call Zoya and find
out about Zargaryan. She knows everybody."
We decided to call Zoya in the morning.

THE SHEET FROM THE NOTEBOOK


I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly right through till morning.
Dreams, I might say, are a peculiarity of mine that sets me apart from
other mortals. It wasn't by accident that Galya asked if I still had dreams.
I have them. They repeat themselves, persistently, and are almost unchanged
in content, oddly like fragments of travelogue films.
Naturally I also have ordinary dreams in which everything is confused
and foggy, both as to proportion and distortion, like in a Fun House mirror.
My recall of such dreams is so vacillating and short-lived that they are
hard to recapture and describe. But the dreams I'm talking about I shall
remember all my life, and I can describe them just as precisely as I can my
flat.
They are always in colour, and the colours are as true and harmonious
as in nature. In one I see a spring-time meadow appearing out of the night
mist, flowering as profusely as in real life. Arid I even remember the
designs on a girl's cotton-print dress that flashes for a moment through the
sunny dream. Nothing special happens in these dreams: they do not frighten
or alarm me, but have something alluring about them, like getting a tiny
peep into somebody else's life.
The one I see most frequently shows a corner in a strange city, the
view of a street which I've never actually seen though I can remember all
the details: the balconies, shop windows, the lindens along the pavement,
the iron grilles. I can call them all to mind as clearly as if I had seen
them but yesterday. I can even recall the passers-by, for they are always
the same, even the black cat with white spots that runs across the road. It
always crosses at one and the same corner, near one and the same house.
Sometimes I see myself in an arcade surrounded by shops off galleries
like in Moscow's GUM department store. But the arcade has only one storey
and branches off into numerous side alleys that run lengthwise and
crosswise. For some reason I am always waiting by a stationery shop, or
slowly strolling past a shop-window displaying draperies and miraculously
lit by a sort of odd iridescent lighting. I have never seen this arcade in
real life, yet I not only remember the windows but even the shape of the
goods, the tall glass archways and the coloured mosaic on the pavement.
Sometimes the dream carries me into the interior of a town flat which I
have never been in, or else into an idyllic village landscape. Often there
is a road running between naked earthen slopes sparsely scattered here and
there with patches of dusty grass. The road runs down to a blue strip of
water, gay with golden water-lilies. Sometimes a woman in white walks ahead
of me, sometimes an old man with a fishing-rod; but neither of them ever
turns round and I never overtake them. I see only a strip of water,