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

He was lying on top of a pile of broken bricks. The tower had crumbled,
all but a narrow piece of wall that stuck up out of the ground like a bone.
He could hear the sound of music coming from afar. It was a lively waltz,
carried on the wind. The doctor raised his head. Black broken beams hung
above him. Stars were shining in the blue-green evening sky.

"I wonder where the music's coming from?" The doctor was beginning to
feel chilly without his cape. There was not a sound to be heard in the
square. He groaned as he picked himself up from among the fallen stones.
Then he stumbled on someone's large boot. The locksmith was lying across a
beam, gazing up at the sky. The doctor shook him. But the locksmith did not
move. He was dead.
The doctor raised his hand to take off his hat. "I've lost my hat,
too," he said. "Now, where shall I go?" He left the square. There were
people lying in the road. The doctor bent over each one and saw the stars
reflected in their eyes. He touched their foreheads. They were dead.
"So that's how it is!" he whispered. "That means the people have been
beaten. What will become of us?"
Half an hour later he reached a crowded, brightly lit street. He was
very tired. He was hungry and thirsty, too. Here the town looked as it
always did.
The doctor stood at a crossing, resting from his long walk. "How
strange," he thought. "There are coloured lights shining in the windows,
carriages roll by, glass doors open and shut. People are dancing in that
house. They're probably having a party. There are Chinese lanterns swinging
over the dark waters. It's just as if it were yesterday here. Don't they
know what happened this morning? Didn't they hear the shooting and the cries
of the wounded? Don't they know that the people's leader, Prospero the
Gunsmith, has been captured? But perhaps nothing really happened, perhaps it
was all a bad dream?"
There was a street lamp on the corner and carriages were lined up along
the sidewalk. Flower girls were selling roses, and coachmen were talking to
them.
"He was dragged through the town with a rope round his neck. Poor man!"
"They've put him in an iron cage. And the cage is in the Palace of the
Three Fat Men," said a fat driver in a light-blue top hat with a ribbon on
it.
Just then a fine lady and a little girl came up to buy some roses.
"Who have they put in a cage?" the fine lady asked.
"Prospero the Gunsmith. The Guards captured him."
"Thank goodness!" she said.
Her daughter began to sniffle.
"Why are you crying, silly?" the fine lady said. "Are you sorry for the
gunsmith? You shouldn't be. He's a very bad man. Now, just look at these
lovely roses."
There, in bowls that were full of water and leaves, the large roses
floated as slowly as swans.
"Take these three. And stop crying. They're all rebels. If you don't
put such people in iron cages, they'll take away our houses, our fine
clothes and our roses. And then they'll kill us."