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

to set out immediately to see all the sights of this most wonderful city,
the panorama of which was so close that they could see the ant-like coming
and going of crowds of people, the cupolas of the broad, tall mosques and
the spires of the minarets.
They decided to forego breakfast and waited impatiently for a
shrewd-looking Turkish official, who had been given several silver piastres,
to scribble something in Father's passport; the scribble turned out to be
the Sign of Osman. The moment the Bacheis went down the gangway, they were
pounced upon by artful boatmen. Finally, they flopped on to the velvet
cushions of a wherry and, for two lire, were rowed ashore.
Everything that happened afterwards merged for Petya into a sensation
of an endless, scorching, tiring day - the deafening babble of the truly
Eastern bazaars, the equally Eastern deathly quiet of the huge deserted
courts around the mosques and the stony museum-like iciness inside. At every
step they parted with a steady stream of lire, piastres, paras, and copper
medjidies, coins which delighted the boys with their inscriptions in Turkish
and the strange Sign of Osman.
In Turkey the Bachei family first came in contact with that terrible
phenomena known as guides, and guides pursued them for the remainder of
their trip. There were Greek guides, Italian guides, and Swiss guides.
Despite specific national traits, they all had something in common: they
stuck like leeches. But the Constantinople guides left the others far
behind.
The minute the Bacheis set foot on the pavements of Constantinople they
were besieged by guides. The scene with the rival boatmen was repeated. The
guides battled for their prey; it was a real free-for-all and massacre, to
which no one paid the slightest heed.
The guides poured torrents of filth on each other in every language and
dialect of the Levant; they tore at each other's starched dickeys, swung
their sticks with contorted faces, elbowed each other, turned round and
kicked out like mules.
In the end the Bacheis were claimed by an impressive-looking guide who
had vanquished his opponents with the help of a policeman friend. He wore a
morning coat that had faded badly under the arms, striped trousers, and a
red fez. His wildly-dilated nostrils and coal-black janissary moustache
expressed a determination to conquer or to die; however, in every other
aspect his face, and especially his frightened baggy eyes, wreathed in
smiles, bespoke a desire immediately to show the tourists all there was to
see in Constantinople: Pera, Galata, Yildiz Kiosk, the Fountain of Snakes,
the Seven-Towered Palace, the ancient water-line, the catacombs, the wild
dogs, the famous St. Sophia Mosque, Sultan Ahmed's Mosque, Suleiman's
Mosque, Osman's Mosque, Selim's Mosque, Bayezid's Mosque, and all the two
hundred and twenty-seven other large and six hundred and sixty-four smaller
mosques in the city-in other words, he was at their complete disposal.
He bundled them into a gleaming phaeton drawn by two horses, jumped on
the step, looked round wildly, and told the driver not to spare the whip.
They were all in by evening, so much so that Pavlik fell asleep in the
boat on the way back to the ship and had to be carried up the gangway.
Vasily Petrovich was aghast at the day's expenditure, not counting the
fact that the breakfast and lunch due them on the ship had gone to waste. He