Читать книгу A Man from the Future. 1856 - Евгений Платонов - Страница 21

And Dmitry fell.

Not down – not up – but sideways, into some unknown dimension where there was neither up nor down, neither light nor darkness. He flew through the void, feeling his mind grasping at the last threads of reality.

I’m dying, he realized. This is death. My brain is dying, and it seems to me I’m flying somewhere.

But then the void began to fill. First came sounds – distant, unclear. A noise like that of a big city, but different – no roar of motors, no screech of brakes.

The clop of hooves, the creak of wheels, the shouts of street vendors, the ringing of church bells.

Church bells? Dmitry wondered. Where are church bells coming from?

Then came the smells. Sharp, strong, unfamiliar. The smell of horse manure, the smell of smoke from stoves, the smell of unwashed bodies and cheap perfume, the smell of the river, the smell of bread, the smell of kerosene.

Kerosene? He tried to remember where he could have smelled that. No, this is something else. This is the smell of oil lamps.

Then came the colors. Gray. Yellow. Brown. Black. The sky – covered in clouds. The walls of houses – peeling, dirty. The street – wet, with puddles. People – in long overcoats, in hats, in shawls.

Lord, Dmitry thought, I really…

And at that moment he fell. A real fall – onto hard, cold, wet cobblestones. He hit his knees, his hands, almost smashed his face. The glasses flew off and rolled across the stones. He lay there for a few seconds, unable to move. Then slowly he lifted his head and looked around.

He was on a street. A narrow, dirty, cobblestone street. Around him stood houses – old, four or five stories high, with peeling plaster and dark windows. People walked along the street – men in long frock coats and top hats, women in full skirts and bonnets, children in short pants and stockings.

On the corner of the street stood a lamp – old-fashioned, oil-burning, not yet lit. Beside it a beggar in rags begged for alms, extending a dirty hand to passersby.

This is impossible, Dmitry thought. This can’t be real. I’m asleep. Or hallucinating. Or dead.

He tried to stand – and then noticed his clothes. Jeans. A sweatshirt. Sneakers. Modern clothing that here looked like an alien’s costume.

The passersby looked at him with confusion and fear. An old woman crossed herself and hurried away. A cabdriver passing by nearly dropped his reins when he saw the strangely dressed man lying on the street.

“Sir, are you alive?” someone asked in pure русском (Russian), but with some unusual intonation. “Are you unwell?”

Dmitry lifted his head and saw a man about forty in a worn frock coat and crushed hat. His face was kind, worried, but his eyes looked with distrust – as if they didn’t understand what kind of character this was.

“I… who?…” Dmitry began, then stopped. Because he understood: this wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a hallucination. This was reality.

He really had arrived in the nineteenth century.