Сергей Огольцов – The Tallest Story Ever (страница 8)

Glancing at the wordless though generously promising kaleidoscope, I felt eager to share my impressions. My head turned to the left, until the same side ear pressed against the faux leather seat back.

Nope. Uncleton-Blackseasky was clearly not the type to let himself be pinned. He simply slid away from that defeated stance. However, the back of his seat is far from being empty. A vague resemblance of a pail made of, half a dozen coiled rope rows. The coils rise around a dark, hole in between of the pail’s walls built up from that same rope spirals wound upon each other.

The rope pop art bears an aspect of a bucket belonging to a long-established group of fishing enthusiasts.

[–]

Bucket, considered as an object, is a sure sign of a cohesive fishing group, and also a hint at their rich collective history. Myths, tales, and endless group yarn might spin forever. But unless you're Brothers Grimm engaged in the field of folkloric exhumation, then the practical side of the matter – specifics about the bucket – is, of course, more important and dear to you.

Now, the object is used when cooking fish soup for all their legendary shobla-vobla mob. Noteworthy that plastic or tin bucket can't withstand the heated courtship of fire, its licking tongues also combined into grouped flames.

That's why experienced fishermen cook their fish soup in a cauldron: cast iron one stays the constant choice of seasoned fishermen, copper would do for novice wet behind their ears, and an aluminum thing is for the complete idiots…

But let's get to the recipe!

The first stuffing to put into a water-filled cauldron are small fish no larger than a middle finger, which is also a handy tool used to gut the catch. Once the boiling has reduced the small fish to flakes, the broth is strained into a group bucket (yes, the legendary one), then poured back into the turf rinsed cauldron: cast iron, copper, or aluminum, depending on the status of a particular group.

The broth is touching stone of the fish soup perfection, namely, by the stickiness of it. (Firm adhesion is the key to the cohesion of anything.)

The broth glueyness is readily enhanced by adding chunks of larger fish.

The over-boiled ide-carp-perch-&-Co are simply scooped away (attentive cooks have already figured out what into and how far). The mentioned carp-at-al. ingredients are ousted from the cauldron to be replaced with sliced carrots, onions cut up to half-rings, black peppercorns, and salt to taste.

For the next half hour, make sure the licking fire doesn't get overly excited under the cauldron hanging above it. Let the brew simmer tamely, without excessive splashes or scenes of ecstasy…

And finally, the most crucial stage in the process – the concluding 30 minutes, when the cauldron cools off on the ground, and the fish soup pricks its ears to the tall stories the men around it know by heart already.

And… (the timpani roll, the lid is off, the fish soup sniffed at from all the quarters) – Enjoy!

[–]

However fleeting, my glance did notice a certain hairiness in the walls of the pail-shaped contraption. The hoary growth didn't allow me to classify the coiled boa constrictor as a subspecies of Jungle Kaa Kiplinganus. (The scruples of a self-made scientist, you know.)

No, it rather looked like… Ha! I recognized the beards of Uncleton + Blackseasky, none of who was anywhere near there.

A thin leather strap interweaves the salt-and-pepper curly coils to form the round walls, whose rim is fixed with that same strap bearing a plastic suitcase handle.

The trick of the fakir-faker exposed! The bugger obviously After pulling his beard down under his sweater, and letting the end, exit at about his crotch, the bugger pleated a kinda travel bundle to haul around as carry-on luggage. Like, here's my ticket, please, but this is just a bag woven from a piece of hoary Manila rope. Handmade, by the by. A note to those willing to support third-world manufacturers.

What's more, the beard is removable! After all, going thru boarding security, baggage and passengers are scanned separately. And once on the Airbus, he slips his contraband under the seat and perches on it like a hoopoe on the spotty eggs. Oh, what a cunning beaver! And a very strange fellow indeed, this Middle English Lingo-Mystic.

Alerted by the deductive discovery, I involuntarily listened up, just in case. A steady ticking sound came from the hairy nest. The stars, above the well-mouth hole left by the missing part of the fuselage, wide opened their multicolored eyes framed with the tangled fuzzy prominences in their crowns.

0-7th’s reflexes, honed by endless special training for impossible special missions, told me at once: ‘Vasya, it's better get going!’

Tearing off the steel buckle of my seat belt, I darted upward in crazy leaps of a panicked chimpanzee. Without any safety cords or vines, to and fro across the aisle, zigzagging thru the air from a slippery armrest to a seat back in the otherwise side…

In an eye-blink, I sprinted outa the well mouth onto the thin-lipped orifice produced by the transverse section of the giant fuselage tube.

Oh wow! It's not an only well here! A similar tube pressed affectionately to the one whose orifice I erupted thru. The nose part of the airliner, cut off by the cross-section, stretched vertically downwards fringed with its duralumin rim like a bottomless well, revealing the back view of the cramped, diminishing rows of passenger seats, empty and silent.

The situation left no time for a detailed study of the perspective to the bottom of the gloomy tube. There wasn't even time to ponder more deeply the incredible discovery of ultra-short-term memory, USTM (!), made just a moment ago.

Eureko! Memory has three types! Who would have thought… But no… The ominous "tick-tock!" sounds incessantly in my ears. The bloody reflexes tripped my mind. Prevented grasping in full the epochal significance of the USTM discovery. Yet, who, if not the ultra-short-term memory, drives and spurs me to further the armrests jumping, down, and down, and down… . And even in the business class parts, there's no safety cords, not a single vine in view…

Through the overhead hatch for emergency escape of pilots from the cockpit, I hung out at arm's length and unleashed the grasp of my fingers to pass over into free fall. The flat surface, barely touched by the nose of the airliner, looked thru the hatch so close.

The moment, when my shoes’ soles made contact with the surface, the trained body flawlessly fell on its side, and a split-second later jumped up to dash away, just in case.

My body and I don't need unnecessary risks – there definitely was a ticking sound from the shorthair beaver’s hair Manila purse. I can swear, it tick-tocked. An old good C-flat in the second octave. That sound is still fresh in my memory.

And when if you doubt your own perfect pitch, and USTM, who else can you trust then?

Bookoff

_

05

The evening had already become a night, but Bookoff was in no hurry to go to bed. He still sat in his chair, even though it had turned clear already that one more day of waiting was spent to no avail.

The light in the living room was on, reflected murkily in the pitch-black pane glass. The back of the chair got to his skinny sides and shoulder blades, but Bookoff somehow gave in to it, not wanting to let them ache or disturb any other bones by rising on his feet.

He wasn't particularly keen on going to bed. It would be his usual, boring, known to the last detail routine. He'd squeeze into the space between the wardrobe and the nightstand, pull down his jeans, and lean his butt freed to the trunks onto the stand to pull the jeans completely off, one leg after the other. They would be hung over the back of a chair put nearby. The vest knitted by his wife would cover the jeans and in its turn be covered with a shirt.

Then he’d make for the bed in the corner by the door, next to it there stood a chair with a light bulb clasped to it. Beside a plastic pin, the buld had a long flexible neck. The thing was borrowed from his daughter’s room some time ago to be used as a pin-clasped long-necked night light. His daughter kept, when she lived in the big house. Some time ago… But, maybe, long stretch back…

From his bunk, for a couple of minutes he'd watch the spherical, shade woven of linden splint rind dancing under the ceiling. The lamp in the shade was too bright and Bookoff left it unlit, so the dancer was watched in the light shed from the chair by the goose-neck fixed with a pin.

And he was perfectly aware that the rind ball hung motionless, and the otters' dancing was nothing more than an illusory game of his completely ruined sight. Yet he continued to watch the ball’s twist-and-roll to no music, like a topsy-turvy top swerving up there.

But Bookoff refrained from looking at the large puzzle in the center of the opposite wall. There loomed an ancient castle in the dark brown tones of the Middle Ages, and the frame around the puzzle also moved and quacked in ripples, matching the dancing shade. However, the towers, walls, and embrasures in the gloomy structure were making goddamn ugly faces at Bookoff. And all those evil critters were itching to break out of the over-strained wavering frame…