"Valentin Katayev. The Cottage in the Steppe (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

a mechanical piano whose keys were pressed down and raced back and forth
automatically, instilling in the audience a greater feeling of awe towards
the inventions of the 20th century. Usually there were slot-machines in the
foyer, and if you put five kopeks in the slot a bar of chocolate would slip
out mysteriously, or brightly-coloured sugar eggs would roll out from under
a bronze hen. Sometimes there would be a wax figure on exhibition in a glass
case. As yet there were no specially built theatres for the "illusions," and
the general practice was to rent a flat and use the largest room for the
screen.
Madame Valiadis, widow of a Greek, an enterprising and highly
imaginative woman, owned the "Bioscope Realite." She decided to wipe out all
her rivals at once. To this end she first engaged Mr. Zingertal, a famous
singer of topical ditties, to appear before each showing, and second, she
decided to revolutionize the silent film by introducing sound effects.
Crowds thronged to the "Bioscope Realite."
Mr. Zingertal, the popular favourite, duly appeared before each
performance in front of a small screen in the former dining-room decorated
with old flowered paper, a room as long and narrow as a pencil-box.
Zingertal, a tall, thin Jew, wore a rather long frock-coat, yellowed pique
vest, striped trousers, white spats and a black top hat which pressed down
on his protruding ears. With a Mephistophelian smile on his long,
clean-shaven, lined and hollow-cheeked face, he sang the popular tunes of
the day, accompanying himself on a tiny violin, tunes such as "The Odessa
girl is the girl for me," "The soldier boys are marching," and, finally, his
hit song "Zingertal, my robin, play me on your violin." Then Madame Valiadis
came on, wearing an ostrich hat and opera gloves minus the fingers to show
off her rings; she sat at the battered old piano and, as the lights dimmed,
began pounding out the accompaniment.
The lamp of the projector hissed, the film buzzed and rattled on, and
tiny, cramped red or blue captions, which seemed to have been typed on a
typewriter, appeared on the screen. Then, in quick succession, carne the
shorts: a panorama of a cloudy Swiss lake that moved along jerkily and with
great effort, followed by a Pathe news-reel with a train thundering into a
station and a parade of helmeted, goose-stepping foreign soldiers who
flashed by so quickly that they seemed to be running-all this was seen as if
through a veil of rain or snow. Then Bleriot's monoplane emerged from the
clouds for an instant-his famous Channel flight from Calais to Dover. Then
came the comedy, and this was Madame Valiadis' greatest moment. Behind the
flickering veil of raindrops a little monkey-like man called Knucklehead,
learning to ride a bicycle, kept bumping into things and knocking them over;
the audience not only saw all this, they heard it as well. The crash and
tinkle of falling glass accompanied the shattering of street lamps on the
screen. Pails banged and clattered as house-painters in blouses tumbled off
ladders and landed on the pavement. Dozens of dinner-sets were smashed to
bits as they slid and dropped from the display window of a china shop. A cat
mewed hysterically when the bicycle wheels rolled over its tail. The enraged
crowd shook their fists and chased the fleeing Knucklehead. Police whistles
screamed. Dogs barked. A fire-engine tore past. Bursts of laughter shook the
darkened "illusion" room. And all the while, unseen by the audience, Gavrik
sweated, earning his fifty kopeks a day. It was he who waited for his cue to