"Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky. Monday begins on Saturday (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

answer. I was convinced I was asleep.
"Sayings from the Upanishads," the voice replied readily.
"And what are the Upanishads?" I wasn't sure I was asleep anymore.
"I don't know," said the voice.
I got up and tiptoed to the mirror. I couldn't see my reflection. The
curtain, the corner of the stove, and a whole lot of things were reflected
in the cloudy glass. But I wasn't among them.
"What's the matter?" asked the voice. "Are there questions?"
"Who's talking?" I asked, peering behind the mirror. Many dead spiders
and a lot of dust were there. Then I pressed my left eye with my index
finger. This was an old formula for detecting hallucinations, which I had
read in To Believe or Not to Believe?, the gripping book by B. B. Bittner.
It is sufficient to press on the eyeball, and all the real objects, in
contradistinction to the hallucinated, will double. The mirror promptly
divided into two and my worried and sleep-dulled face appeared in it. There
was a draft on my feet. Curling my toes, I went to the window and looked
out.
There was nobody there and neither was the oak. I rubbed my eyes and
looked again. The moss-covered frame of the well with its windlass, my car,
and the gates were distinctly visible directly in front of me. Still asleep,
I decided, to calm myself. My glance fell on the disheveled book on the
windowsill. In the last dream, it was the third volume of Lives of the
Martyrs; now I read the title as: P.I. Karpov, Creativity of the Mentally
Ill and Its influence on the Development of Science, Art, and Technology.
Teeth chattering from a sudden chill, I thumbed the pages and looked through
the colored illustrations. Next I read "Verse No. 2":
Up high in a cumulus ring
An ebon-winged sparrow
With loneliness shuddering
Glides swift as an arrow.
He flies through the night
By the pale moonlight
And, through all undaunted,
Sees all below him.
Proud predator enraged
Flying silent as a shadow,
Eyes ablaze with fire.
The floor suddenly swayed beneath me. There was a piercing and
prolonged creaking, then, like the rumble of a distant earthquake, sounded a
rolling "Ko-o . . . Ko-o. . .Ko-o . . ." The house swayed as though it were
a boat in the waves. The yard behind the window slid sideways, and a
gargantuan chicken leg stretched out from beneath, stuck its claws into the
ground, raked deep furrows in the grass, and disappeared below. The floor
tilted steeply, and I sensed that I was falling. I grabbed something soft,
struck something solid with head and side, and fell off the sofa. I was
lying on the boards clutching the pillow that had fallen with me. It was
quite bright in the room. Behind the window somebody was methodically
clearing his throat.
"So-o, then . . ." said a well-poised male voice. "In a certain
kingdom, in an ancient tsardom, there was and lived a tsar by the name of .