Читать книгу A Man from the Future. 1856 - Евгений Платонов - Страница 17

1. The Museum

Dmitry pushed open the heavy museum door and stepped inside. The door closed with a creak. Silence fell upon him like water – thick, dense, almost tangible. Outside the windows the city hummed, cars roared, people rushed, but here, behind these old walls, time seemed to have stopped.

Like in a church, he thought. The same solemn silence, the same feeling that you’ve entered another world.

In the foyer, behind an old writing desk, sat an elderly woman in glasses, reading something. When she saw the visitor, she looked up and smiled in greeting, but somehow strangely – as if she’d known him for a long time.

“Good evening, young man,” she said in a quiet voice. “Is this your first time with us?”

“Yes,” Dmitry answered, reaching for his wallet. “How much is admission?”

“Three hundred rubles,” she said, handing him a small ticket on thick yellowish paper, the kind they used to make long ago. “Come in. The exhibition is on the second floor. But please, don’t touch anything with your hands.”

Don’t touch anything, echoed in his head. Like I’m a child.

Dmitry climbed the wide wooden staircase with carved railings. The steps creaked under his feet – a pleasant, cozy creak of old wood. On the walls hung portraits in heavy gilded frames: men in uniforms, women in evening gowns, children with serious faces. They all looked at him with a particular, almost living attentiveness.

Funny, Dmitry thought. Dead people who lived two hundred years ago, and it seems to me they see right through me. That they know something about me that I don’t know myself.

On the second floor the exhibition began. The first room was devoted to the eighteenth century – the time of Catherine the Great. In the display cases lay old fans, snuffboxes, gloves, journals. On mannequins were dressed gowns and coats. In the corner stood a harpsichord – a real one, not a replica – and Dmitry involuntarily imagined someone playing it while ladies in full skirts danced a minuet.

That’s when people knew how to live, he thought, slowly going around the cases. Unhurried, beautifully, with dignity. Not like now – everyone’s running somewhere, fussing, never keeping up. And for what? To make money? Buy a new phone? Take a vacation once a year?

In the second room were objects from the nineteenth century – an era he knew best. There were books in antique bindings, writing implements, photographs in oval frames. Dmitry stopped at a display case with books and read the titles on the spines: Мертвые души (Dead Souls) by Gogol, Герой нашего времени (A Hero of Our Time) by Lermontov, Отцы и дети (Fathers and Sons) by Turgenev.

First editions, he thought respectfully. How old are they? A hundred and fifty years? A hundred and sixty? And they’re still here, still alive, still able to tell their stories.

Further on were household items: samovars, candlesticks, lamps, dishes. On the wall hung a clock – large, round, with Roman numerals and a heavy pendulum. It was running – ticking steadily, solemnly, marking time that was long gone.

A paradox, Dmitry thought. A clock showing time that no longer exists. But it still runs, still ticks. For what? For whom?