"Lev Kassil. The black book and Schwambrania (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

hours on end, from one corner to another, like tiny waves in a bathtub
splashing first against one side and then another. The girls from the
outlying farms walked down the middle of the street. They seemed to be
sailing along unhurriedly, swaying slightly as they walked, like the
floating watermelon rinds hitting the Volga piers. The dry, staccato sound
of roasted sunflower seeds being cracked floated above the crowd. The
sidewalks were black from discarded sunflower shells. The roasted seeds were
known locally as "Pokrovsk conversation".
Standing on the sidelines were young fellows wearing rubber galoshes
over their boots. They would flick away a garland of empty seed shells stuck
to their lip with a magnificent movement of a pinky. A young man would
address a girl with true politesse: "Mind if I latch on? How's about telling
us your name? What is it? Marusya? Katya?"
"Go on! Doesn't he think he's something!" the girl would scoff. "Oh,
well, what the heck, you might as well walk along."
All evening long the babbling, sunflower seed-cracking crowd of country
boys and girls would stomp up and down in front of our windows.
We would sit on the windowsill in the dark parlour, looking out at the
darkening street. As busy Breshka Street floated by us, invisible palaces
and castles rose on the windowsill and palm fonds waved, and cannonade we
two alone could hear resounded all around us. The destructive shrapnel of
our imagination tore through the night. We were firing upon Breshka Street
from our windowsill, which was Schwambrania.
We could hear the whistles of the river boats on the Volga. They came
to us from the darkness of the night like streamers bridging the distance.
Some were very high and vibrated like the coiled wire in bulb, while others
were low and rumbling like a piano's bass string. A boat was attached to the
other end of each streamer, lost in the dampness of the great river. We knew
the entire ledger of these boat calls by heart, and could read the whistles
and blasts like the lines of a book. Here was a velvety, majestic,
high-rising and slowly descending "arrival" whistle of the Rus. A
hoarse-voiced tug pulling a heavy barge scolded a rowboat. Two short, polite
blasts followed. That was the Samolyot and the Kavkaz-Mercury approaching
each other. We even knew that the Samolyot was heading upstream to Nizhny
Novgorod, while the Kavkaz-Mercury was heading downstream to Astrakhan,
since the Mercury, obeying the rules of river etiquette, was the first to
say hello.

JACK, THE SAILOR'S COMPANION

Our world was a bay jam-packed with boats. Life was an endless journey,
and each given day was a new voyage. It was quite natural, therefore, that
every Schwambranian was a sailor. Each and every one had a boat tied up in
his back yard. Jack, the Sailor's Companion, was far and away the most
highly respected of all Schwambranians.
This great statesman came into being because of a small handbook
entitled: The Sailor's Pocket Companion and Dictionary of Most-Used Phrases.
We bought this dog-eared treasure at the market second-hand for five kopeks
and endowed our new hero, Jack, the Sailor's Companion, with all the wisdom
between its covers.