The Dreamers
Àíãëèéñêàÿ âåðñèÿ ðàññêàçà "Ìå÷òàòåëè"
Ðóññêàÿ âåðñèÿ - http://www.proza.ru/2006/08/03-178
Ïåðåâîä - Åëèçàâåòà Áðîâöåâà
---
The Dreamers
In the air that was hot like heat having wallowed from the oven the insects were exterminated by birds sparkling with hyaline flecks of sunlight. This summer there were lots of small midges and fat flies aglint with the green armor suits thus there was no feathered creature left hungry. The insects were dying with the evident indifference, without any attempt to elude the agile bird bills as if they admitted their guilt in multiplicity of their population.
Igor Makarenkov was lying on the roof of a twenty two storied building and viewing the happenings around. He was lying upon a cardboard case formerly belonging to a “Morozko” fridge like it was a spread out mattress through which his back felt the hot tar. Igor loved secretly to get to the house-top and simply lie there looking at the clouds and dreaming of his future. His consciousness was painting bright pictures of the glowing prospects where his personality was outstanding and totally different from what he was in reality. He was fancying himself as an owner of the largest Wal Mart in the world with such tons of money on his account that he wasn’t even able to sum up, then he saw himself as an elected president standing on the rostrum, holding a national emblem and delivering wise and beautiful speech while hundreds of eyes were hanging on his lips. Sometimes Igor imagined himself as a beloved and honored movie star, he saw his apple-cheeked photographs on the cover pages of glossy magazines and crowds of leggy fans eager to share their beds with him. These dreams put a sweet smile on Igor’s face and he subconsciously talked to those people whom he knew and disliked: “So, do you see now who you're dealing with?” They had nothing to say back but to hang their heads, throw up their cards and reply “Yes. We see now”.
Igor could lie hours in such a manner. The breeze was lazily touching his cheeks, gluttonous birds were squalling in the sky and Igor felt happy. Now Igor imagined like he was the most famous singer standing on the stage in multicolored spotlights, he was haughtily peering into the audience of thousands, singing a song with his incredibly velvet voice making the young ladies cry with rain of datelike tears and go crazy with passion and love to their idol. At the very moment when the last song of the grandiose concert was sung and the crowd showered at him with ocean of flowers and storm of applauses a huge green fly sat on the Dreamer’s chest. The fly stood motionless as if the life inside of its small body was over. Igor overcame the momentary temptation to shoo the fly from his chest, then he raised his head and peered attentively into the stark God’s creature.
It was obvious that the fly was one-of-a-kind; among the follow creatures it was notable for its size. Beefy, like a stag-beetle, it was shining under the sunbeams thus it looked rather like a skillfully made jewel than an alive creature. The biggest flying insect Igor had ever seen in his life was a bumble-bee although he sometimes saw even more large-scale representatives of the chetin-wing creatures on TV but all of them inhabited warm and exotic countries therefore they couldn’t be met here in this city. The fly was two or even three times bigger than the bumble-bee. Suddenly Igor remembered that a very poisonous varmint called tsetse fly exists in the world. Foreboding the deathful kiss his heart ran cold nevertheless he stood still not daring to hunt away the blood-sucker who was nestling on his chest, because the fly could bite his palm attempting its life. Trying to overcome his fear Makarenkov bended his neck and took a good look at the insect in a hope to find the killing sting. However, he didn’t find it, but he saw something imaginable. Something that a fly couldn’t ever have. There was a lettering of golden veins “Tsyolkovsky” showing through on the shining side of the unknown creature.
Igor didn’t believe his eyes, he thought the letters had been just a dream caused by his long staying in the summer heat. On closer view to the shining side of the huge fly he assured himself that the lettering was not a phantom of his imagination but existed in reality indeed.
The indescribable creature suddenly moved and spread the wings intending to fly up. Guided by a certain reflective instinct Igor grabbed the unusual insect in less than no time. The caught fly buzzed in Igor’s palm like a mobile phone in a vibration mode. With his free hand he took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket fishing out the traces of tobacco and carefully put the fly into the cardboard pyxis. The insect kept on buzzing inside the empty package meanwhile certainly excited Igor was thinking what he would do next with the great catch.
Before everything else he decided to bring the fly home and peruse it. He was afraid of doing it outside as the chances that it could simply fly away were high. Igor put the pack of cigarettes back into the pocket and made off the house-top hastily.
When Igor came home he put his great catch into a three liter jar where without any further delay it began to fly around making hell of noise that was faded up by acoustics of its new cage. Having put two and two together the fly fatefully sat down at the bottom of the jar and stood put. Igor perused the lettering on the insect’s body once again, then he flung to the bookshelves and reached out a fat encyclopedia standing there among other funds of knowledge that were tightly snuggling up to one another.
As Makarenkov had suspected it was easy to find the name of Tsyolkovsky in the encyclopedia. This surname dimly recalled in Igor’s memory a feeling that he had heard it before. He found that Tsyolkovsky was born in 1875, that he was a scientist and inventor in the fields of aerodynamics, rocket dynamics, and theories of airplanes and dirigibles. Nothing was told about flies there. Igor kept on reading and as he read further his pupils began to quiver convulsively like buoys on ripples of the heavy sea. The encyclopedia imparted that Tsyolkovsky was a founding father of the interplanetary relations theory, that in his far-off astronautic science era he had foreseen a capability of space flights and that he was a kind of a genius. And again Igor found nothing about flies.
However one of the paragraphs kindled Makarenkov’s genuine interest.
“Ts. - is the first ideologist and theoretic of human space exploration; he saw its final purpose in a total rearrangement of biochemical nature of the intellectual beings that were generated by the Earth. In that context he brought forward his projects of a new arrangement of humankind in which ideas of social Utopias of different historical epochs were mixed up in a very peculiar way. Ts. – is the author of a number of science-fiction works as well as researches in other fields of knowledge: linguistics, biology, etc.”
- said the wise book. And then Igor understood everything! He understood who was sitting prisoned with glass in his room. Undoubtedly it was none other than the scientist Tsyolkovsky who was reborn into the insect in virtue of his genius!
“Well, well, well!” – thought Igor maliciously. He slammed the encyclopedia so that it made a whirl of dust; he threw it on the coach and resolutely made his way towards the caught creature. He was blazing with fury…
***
Eduard Konstantinovich Tsyolkovsky loaded by strong tea was reclining on his favorite armchair and looking at the window. It was September outside, foliage on trees had almost been painted with motley colors and as it was falling from the branches it was blown away by the wind as if it was dancing its last waltz. He was a trifle sad nevertheless his heart was warmed with his anticipations of the first startup of dirigible which was making from his drawings in Moscow. He had been waiting for this moment for all his life; he came a long way from the total non-admission of his ideas to their absolute recognition.
Eduard Konstantinovich stroked his pepper-and-salt beard, cat-like stretched himself and smiled.
At present time he lived in his own house in Kaluga waging his steady and measured way of life but it could only seem so exteriorly to the average man in the street who had absolutely no idea of who that scientist was in reality and what kind of trips he could make with the help of his thought only. At heart he was a desperate Dreamer.
Properly speaking this story goes back to the times of Eduard’s childhood when he could pile in a hayloft and stare all night long at the bottomless sky full of milliards of tiny stars that were burning like coals. He wasn’t lying like a useless log but was making interplanetary flights, he was visiting other planets and discovering new worlds. At times his dreams seemed to be not dreams at all but a fully paid-up reality. As he was sinking into his dreams he felt the windy breath of unfamiliar planets, he sniffed the aromas of singular flowers, basked in the gleams of marvelous binary stars and congealed in the ice of faraway and ever-frozen planets. He felt everything so deeply inside of him that sometimes it seemed like his consciousness was drifting out of the tough covering of his body and levitating freely and fitting every thing like a woman of fashion in a Parisian atelier.
At this very moment Eduard Konstantinovich noticed how the fly squeezed through the split in the window trying to save its life from autumn; not being a child any more he involuntarily imagined as if he himself was that small annoying insect. All at once his interest was picked by the question how the fly saw this world, how it looked like in its eyes. Tsyolkovsky closed his eyes and flew. At first he flew out of the window, bravely like a shot from a gun, he reached the apple garden and whirled between aromatic overripe fruits. Then he flew up and now he could see the whole city beneath, with all its old streets, rare walkers and houses. He flew up higher and higher trying to get closer to the sun that was moving away from the Earth. Then he flew through time. Space was wriggling like hairpin curves and splashing with fantastic fountain of sparkles; he heard marvellous music that seemed to stream from the very frame of the world which he so easily dislocated. He stopped and the air around him, primarily tight like a fog, began to disappear and then he saw an amazing city beneath, where monotonous high buildings lined up for thousand of kilometers around, the sun was shining in the plate glasses of gigantic houses, and the ordered motion could be seen in the streets like in a huge termite nest.
There were cars of different modes and constructions. First and foremost Tsyolkovsky loved his fantasies because they abounded with plenty of details that he used in his further scientific works. For the first time he saw all of these ships, rockets, and wonderful aeronautic crafts when he was fantasizing. He wondered how real the fantasies could be as if they weren’t fantasies at all and sure enough he could travel through time and see the future. Here one of his fey thoughts made him smile when he realized that of course it couldn’t be so in reality and he flew further exploring his new dream. He had been whirling over the strange city with beehive-like houses for a long while. Here he noticed the thoughtful young man lying on the top of one of these houses and he flew near to him and landed on his chest only by way of joking …
***
Igor guessed that the scientist who lived more than one hundred years ago had invented the way of eternal life by implanting his consciousness into the insect. But the most hurtful thing was that he did it secretly. Igor had always been dreaming to live for ever but he couldn’t understand that he was too far from reaching it like the top of the mountain to be reached by the lame man. He suddenly realized he hated geniuses for their greed and meanness.
- If you reveal a secret of the eternal life – Igor threatened – I’ll let you go!
Tsyolkovsky-The-Fly was stilly sitting inside of the jar and it didn’t manifest any intellectual ability.
- I’m asking for the last time! – In witness of his words Igor rolled newspaper and fetched a wipe at the jar. The fly shuddered but didn’t share any secret of eternal life with Igor.
- All of you, scientists, are dirtbags! – spoke out the long-liver manqu;. He slightly opened the jar and squeezed his hand through the opening grabbing the wings of Tsyolkovsky. Having brought the fly a little way off his nose Igor looked narrowly at the insect and realized he would never know the secret of the eternal life…
Pure and simple the fly didn’t have the organs of speech. Instead of them there was a thin black snout with small sucker which looked like a nail head sticking out on Tsyolkovsky’s head.
- You shouldn’t live either! – said the torturer with the icy voice. In the turning of his hand Igor tore the wings of the fly off, hurtled the insect on the table so that it jumped up inactively and slapped it with newspaper with all his might...
***
Tsyolkovsky died from a heart attack on September, 19th at 22.34 pm in his house in Kaluga. The world had lost an outstanding and ingenious scientist. Tsyolkovsky died at the age of 78 years not being able to last till the first flight of his dirigible. There is an interesting fact that anatomical pathologist who anatomized braincase of the torch of Russian engineering learning found out his brain being squashed like a toadstool crushed by mushroom picker’s boot. This phenomenon has not been explained scientifically up to the present day. Information about it was blacked out without delay and it is not given to publicity even today.
Michael Bo (Mikhail Bochkaryov)