"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire
economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents
that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of
dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first
impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the
common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense
realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him.
He sat staring at the blankness.

He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the latter-day
substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room
with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.

He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. The clearness
of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of
streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came
back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague
universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; it had not
really struck him vividly at the time that he was the Sleeper. He had to
recall precisely what they had said.

He walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals of the
revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noise of
machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. Though the
perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the little
intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue-black almost, with a dust of
little stars.

He resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of opening
the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. His
feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for
information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He
tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently he
became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh
sensations.

He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled out
the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it came into
his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so
that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred years. The
haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first
it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognized what
appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tannhauser. The
music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was realistic, and with a
contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not go to a Venusberg, but to a
Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? A dream, surely, the fancy of a
fantastic, voluptuous writer.

He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour of
strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He liked it