Читать онлайн
Classics fantasy – 8
A. Belyaev
© A. Belyaev, 2019
ISBN 978-5-0050-1124-4 (т. 8)
ISBN 978-5-0050-0936-4
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
HEAD OF PROFESSOR DOUEL
I devote to the wife my Margarita Konstantinovna Belyaeva
FIRST MEETING
– I ask to sit down.
Mari Laurent fell to a deep leather chair.
While professor Kern opened an envelope and read the letter, she fluently examined an office.
What gloomy room! But it is good to be engaged here: nothing distracts attention. The lamp with the deaf lamp shade lights only the desk which is filled up with books, manuscripts, proof-sheets. An eye hardly distinguishes solid furniture of a black oak. Dark wall-paper, dark drapr. In the twilight only gold of imprinted covers in heavy cases gleams. The long pendulum of the old wall clock moves measuredly and smoothly.
Having translated a look on the Core, Laurent involuntarily smiled: professor entirely corresponded to style of an office. As if the cut-down from an oak, heavy, severe figure of the Core seemed a part of furniture. Big points in a tortoise frame reminded two dials of hours. As pendulums, moved his eyes of gray-ashy color, passing from a line to a line of the letter. The rectangular nose, a direct section of eyes, a mouth and the square, given forward chin gave to the face a type of the stylized decorative mask molded by the sculptor-cubist.
«To decorate a fireplace with such mask» – Laurent thought.
– The colleague Sabatye spoke already about you. Yes, I need the assistant. You medichka? Perfectly. Forty francs a day. Calculation is weekly. Breakfast, lunch. But I lay down one condition…
Having drummed a dry finger on a table, professor Kern asked an unexpected question:
– You are able to be silent? All women are talkative. You the woman – it is bad. You are beautiful – it is even worse.
– But what relation…