"Yuri Olesha. The three fat men (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

He struck a pose, but had no time to tell them what sort of words they
should use. For, like all dancing masters, he was in the habit of looking at
the ground and at people's feet. Alas! He did not see what was happening
above.
The balloon man's slipper fell right on his head. Since his head was
rather small, the large straw slipper fitted it like a hat.
Then the elegant dancing master bellowed like a cow. The slipper
covered half his face.
The children nearly burst from laughing.
"Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!"

The dancing master One-Two-Three
Does not look up like you or me.
He can't distinguish right from wrong,
His voice is shrill, his nose is long.
It serves him right, just look at that!
He got a straw shoe for a hat!

This is what the boys sang as they sat on a fence, ready to jump down
on the other side and run away at a moment's notice.
"Oh!" moaned the dancing master. "Oh, how terrible this is! If only it
were a dancing slipper, and not this horrid old boot!"
In the end, the dancing master was arrested.
"My good man," the officer said, "your appearance is disgusting. You're
disturbing the peace. Such things should never be done and especially not in
troubled times like these."
The dancing master wrung his hands.
"This is all a terrible lie!" he wept. "What a misunderstanding! I, who
have always lived among waltzes and smiles, I, who am so graceful-can I ever
disturb the peace? Oh, Oh...."
No one knows what else happened to the dancing master that day. And it
is not of much importance to our story.
What is important is the fate of the flying balloon man. There he was,
flying along, like a piece of dandelion fuzz.
"This is ridiculous!" he howled. "I don't want to fly! I simply don't
know how to fly!"
But it was no use. The wind grew stronger, it swept the balloons higher
and higher, over the town and towards the Palace of the Three Fat Men.
Now and then the balloon man would get a peep at things below. Then he
would see the rooftops, the dirty tiles, the blocks of houses, the narrow
blue ribbon of water, the tiny people and green patches of gardens. The
whole town was spinning around below him.
Things looked very bad, indeed.
"If I keep on in this direction, I'll tumble right into the park of the
Three Fat Men!" The balloon man shuddered at the thought.
The next minute he was sailing slowly and gracefully over the park,
getting lower and lower. The wind was dying down.
"I'll land any minute now. They'll catch me, then they'll beat me, then
they'll put me in jail. Maybe they'll even chop my head right off, so as not
to be bothered."