---------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
© Copyright 1973 translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
From the compilation "JOURNEY ACROSS THREE WORLDS"
Mir Publishers Moscow 1973
___________________________________________________
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
---------------------------------------------------------------
I was only a boy at the time, and there was much I did not understand
then and much I later forgot--perhaps the most interesting parts. It was
night time, so I did not even see the man's face. And his voice was not at
all exceptional, maybe a little sad and husky, and he coughed now and then
as if from embarrassment. In a word, if we happened to meet again, on the
street somewhere or, let us say, at a mutual friend's, it is more than
likely I would not recognize him.
We met on the beach. I had just been in for a swim, and was sitting on
a rock. Then I heard the rattle of falling shale behind me--him coming down
the embankment--there was a whiff of tobacco smoke, and he stopped beside
me. As I have already said, this happened at night. The sky was overcast and
a gale was rising out at sea. A strong, warm wind whipped along the beach.
The stranger was smoking, and the wind cut long orange sparks from his
cigarette, whisking them over the deserted sands till they vanished. It was
pretty to see, I remember that well. I was only sixteen, and it never even
occurred to me that he would speak. But he began to talk. And his opening
words were rather strange.
"The world is full of marvellous things," he said.
I decided that he was merely thinking aloud, and kept silent. I turned
to look at him, but could discern nothing. It was too dark.
"The world is full of marvellous things," he repeated, then took a
drag, shedding a shower of sparks my way.
Again I did not answer: I was very shy then. He finished his cigarette,
lit another, and sat down on the rock beside me. From time to time he would
mutter something, but the roar of the surf drowned the words and I heard
only an indecipherable mumble.
Finally, he declared in a loud voice: "No, it's really too much. I must
tell somebody about it."
And then he spoke to me directly, for the first time since his
appearance.
"You won't refuse to hear me out, will you?"
Naturally, I didn't refuse.
"Only, I must work up to it, because if I tell you right off what it's
all about, you won't understand, nor believe it either. And it's very
important to me that you do believe it. Nobody believes me, and now it's
gone so far...."
He fell silent, and then continued.
"It began when I was still a child. I was learning to play the violin,
and I broke four glasses and a saucer."
"How was that?" I asked. A sort of funny story flashed through my mind
about a lady who said to another: 'Just imagine, yesterday the janitor threw
us some wood, and broke the chandelier.' There is such an old joke.
The stranger gave a sad laugh.
"Just picture it. This happened the very first month I started taking
lessons. Even then my teacher said he had never seen anything like that in
all his life."
I said nothing, but I also thought it must have looked quite odd. I
imagined him waving the bow and occasionally sweeping it against the
sideboard. That certainly could have led him too far.
"It's a well-known law of physics," he explained, unexpectedly. "The
phenomenon of resonance." And in the same breath, he related the amusing
example given in the school physics textbook, the one about a bridge
collapsing when a column of soldiers marched across it all in step. Then he
explained that glasses and saucers could also be broken by resonance, if you
selected vibrations of the required frequency. I must admit that only from
that moment did I really begin to realize that sound was also vibration.
The stranger told me that resonance in everyday life (in domestic
economy, as he put it) was a very rare thing, and he took much delight in
the fact that a certain ancient law-book included such a bare possibility by
stipulating the punishment for the owner of a cock whose crowing broke a
© Copyright by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
© Copyright 1973 translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
From the compilation "JOURNEY ACROSS THREE WORLDS"
Mir Publishers Moscow 1973
___________________________________________________
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
---------------------------------------------------------------
I was only a boy at the time, and there was much I did not understand
then and much I later forgot--perhaps the most interesting parts. It was
night time, so I did not even see the man's face. And his voice was not at
all exceptional, maybe a little sad and husky, and he coughed now and then
as if from embarrassment. In a word, if we happened to meet again, on the
street somewhere or, let us say, at a mutual friend's, it is more than
likely I would not recognize him.
We met on the beach. I had just been in for a swim, and was sitting on
a rock. Then I heard the rattle of falling shale behind me--him coming down
the embankment--there was a whiff of tobacco smoke, and he stopped beside
me. As I have already said, this happened at night. The sky was overcast and
a gale was rising out at sea. A strong, warm wind whipped along the beach.
The stranger was smoking, and the wind cut long orange sparks from his
cigarette, whisking them over the deserted sands till they vanished. It was
pretty to see, I remember that well. I was only sixteen, and it never even
occurred to me that he would speak. But he began to talk. And his opening
words were rather strange.
"The world is full of marvellous things," he said.
I decided that he was merely thinking aloud, and kept silent. I turned
to look at him, but could discern nothing. It was too dark.
"The world is full of marvellous things," he repeated, then took a
drag, shedding a shower of sparks my way.
Again I did not answer: I was very shy then. He finished his cigarette,
lit another, and sat down on the rock beside me. From time to time he would
mutter something, but the roar of the surf drowned the words and I heard
only an indecipherable mumble.
Finally, he declared in a loud voice: "No, it's really too much. I must
tell somebody about it."
And then he spoke to me directly, for the first time since his
appearance.
"You won't refuse to hear me out, will you?"
Naturally, I didn't refuse.
"Only, I must work up to it, because if I tell you right off what it's
all about, you won't understand, nor believe it either. And it's very
important to me that you do believe it. Nobody believes me, and now it's
gone so far...."
He fell silent, and then continued.
"It began when I was still a child. I was learning to play the violin,
and I broke four glasses and a saucer."
"How was that?" I asked. A sort of funny story flashed through my mind
about a lady who said to another: 'Just imagine, yesterday the janitor threw
us some wood, and broke the chandelier.' There is such an old joke.
The stranger gave a sad laugh.
"Just picture it. This happened the very first month I started taking
lessons. Even then my teacher said he had never seen anything like that in
all his life."
I said nothing, but I also thought it must have looked quite odd. I
imagined him waving the bow and occasionally sweeping it against the
sideboard. That certainly could have led him too far.
"It's a well-known law of physics," he explained, unexpectedly. "The
phenomenon of resonance." And in the same breath, he related the amusing
example given in the school physics textbook, the one about a bridge
collapsing when a column of soldiers marched across it all in step. Then he
explained that glasses and saucers could also be broken by resonance, if you
selected vibrations of the required frequency. I must admit that only from
that moment did I really begin to realize that sound was also vibration.
The stranger told me that resonance in everyday life (in domestic
economy, as he put it) was a very rare thing, and he took much delight in
the fact that a certain ancient law-book included such a bare possibility by
stipulating the punishment for the owner of a cock whose crowing broke a
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