"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

IN WHICH AN EXPERIMENT NOT ENTIRELY SUITABLE FOR THE HOME IS DESCRIBED


"Are you sure the knife fell overboard, Rita?" Anatole Benedictov said.
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Quite sure?"
"Well, really!" Rita laid aside her book and rose from the sofa.
"Don't be angry, darling. You see, a couple of men have hunted for the
knife on the sea bottom at that place and they failed to find it."
"It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack."
"You've changed lately. Your attitude to my work is different. That's
why I asked."
"You're the one who's changed, Anatole. You're simply stopped noticing
me. Do give up those experiments. Please give them up. They'll drive you
crazy. They've already come between us. Think of how wonderfully we were
getting along before that ill-fated discovery."
"That's true," said Benedictov.
"We were, weren't we?" Rita asked hopefully.
Benedictov glanced at his watch. "A person is coming to see me in a few
minutes. We'll be doing some work together."
Rita shook her head and silently left the study.


Anatole Benedictov had fallen in love with Rita several years earlier,
when he was teaching at the University and she was a gay, vivacious biology
student there. Shortly before that he had presented a brilliant thesis for
an advanced degree dealing with electric currents in living organisms, and
had published a study of electric fish which had aroused much discussion
among biologists. During one of his lectures he had noticed several girls
giggling and whispering as they passed a sheet of paper through the
auditorium. He strode rapidly over to them and snatched up the paper. He
looked down at it and frowned. What he saw was a sketch of himself,
shaggy-haired, thickset, with a fish's tail, conducting with a trident as
fish danced round him. Beneath the sketch were the words, written in a fine
handwriting:
Neither fish nor fowl, neither physicist nor biologist, He's an
intermediate class electro-ichthyologist.
"Whose work is this?" he asked, letting his angry eyes roam over the
auditorium.
A slender blonde girl rose. "It's mine," she said politely, her brown
eyes gazing boldly into Benedictov's.
It was an announcement rather than a statement.
"Thank you," Benedictov said slowly, in a slightly nasal voice,
thrusting the drawing into his pocket and continuing his lecture.
After they were married, Benedictov admitted to Rita that when she said
"It's mine" he had suddenly felt a wave of heat engulf him.
As for Rita Matveyev, she had long been in love with the brilliant
lecturer.
Rita graduated from the University the year they were married and
started teaching biology in a secondary school. That same year Benedictov