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

finally located a small, clean tearoom, No. 16/27. It was a pleasant sort of
place. There weren't too many customers, but those were indeed drinking tea,
talking about simple and comprehensible things such as that over by Korobetz
the little bridge had finally fallen in and one had to ford the stream; that
it was a week since they had removed the Main Motor Vehicle Inspection
Station at the fifteen-kilometer milepost and that, "The spark is a beast--
it will knock an elephant down-- but won't do its job worth a damn." There
was a smell of gasoline and fried fish. Those who were not involved in
conversation were eyeing my jeans, and I was happy to recall that on my rear
there was a highly professional spot-- the day before yesterday I had sat
down most propitiously on my grease gun.
I took a full plate of fried fish, three glasses of tea, three
sandwiches, paid up with a heap of the coppers from my crone friend ("Been
out begging on the church steps." muttered the cashier), and settled in a
cozy corner and proceeded to eat, enjoying the sight of those hoarse-voiced,
heavy-smoking types. It was a pleasure to take in their sunburned, wiry,
independent countenances with that I've-seen-it-all look, and watch how they
ate with appetite, smoked with appetite, and talked with appetite. They were
making use of their free time to the last second before the long hours on a
bumpy, tiresome, dusty road in their hot and stuffy cabs under a hot sun. If
I weren't a programmer, I would surely become a driver, and, of course, of
no light-weight truck or even a bus, but of some freight monster with a
ladder to the cab and a small crane for changing a wheel.
The neighboring table was occupied by a pair of young men who didn't
look like drivers, and for this reason I didn't pay them any heed at first.
Just as they didn't notice me, either. But as I was finishing my second
glass of tea, the word "sofa" floated into my consciousness. Then, one of
them said, ". . . In that case it doesn't make sense to have the hen's-legs
cottage at all," so I began to listen. To my regret, they spoke quietly, and
I had my back to them, so I couldn't hear too well. But the voices seemed
familiar.
"no thesis. . . the sofa only. . ."
"..... to such a hairy one . . ."
"...sofa . . . the sixteenth stage . ."
".....with only fourteen stages in transvection..."
"...it's easier to model a translator. ."
"...does it matter who's tittering!"
"... I'll make a gift of a razor..."
"...we can't do without the sofa. .."
At this point, one of them began to clear his throat, and in such a
familiar way that I associated it instantly with last night and I turned
around, but they were already on their way to the exit-- two big men with
square shoulders and strong, athletic necks. For some time, I could see them
through the window as they crossed the square, circumnavigated the garden,
and disappeared behind the diagrams. I finished my tea and sandwiches and
also went out. There you have it. The mermaid didn't excite them. The
talking cat did not intrigue them. But they couldn't do without the sofa. .
. . I tried to remember what that sofa looked like, but nothing unusual came
to mind. A proper sofa. A good sofa. Comfortable. Except when one slept on
it, one dreamed of a strange reality.