But I was fond again. Many associations cling to each thought.
We flew day and night. At night – on radio beacons. Night beacons in millions of candles now are not done, radio successfully replaces light signals. Only in big airfields everything is filled in with light when you fly up to them at night.
In Shakhtyorsk we decreased, and I changed the train which went to Yuzhkhim. These names speak to you little. The new cities – children of a five-years period – considerably changed the USSR card. And the Soviet school students should remember the much bigger number of the cities, than to children of an old regime. Every year the number of the cities everything increases. If here the geography was learned as learn in Europe – the Soviet school students had a rough time. But they acquire it very quickly thanks to absolutely new methods of school training in which “the book of life” has paramount value. But about school I still will write to you.
So, I changed the car and drove. The tractors similar from height to tanks, and the combines reminding huge insects with long legs and short moustaches like ants pottered near railroad tracks. And somehow absolutely imperceptibly we rolled directly in the big station hotel. The train stopped in the tunnel. I went out of the car, I was met by very young man, almost the boy, and, having kindly concerned the hat, told:
– Hello, companion Fit! The commission on reception of foreign tourists charged to me to meet you.
I was not surprised to the fact that he recognized me, number of the car and the place were known to him: besides before departure to the USSR I sent the picture to Intourist. This card was multiplied, and copies were broadcast to each new place together with the telegram about my arrival. Perhaps, you will be shocked by such way of the notice – but not about one criminals, really, to care, sending on radio of their image why this way not to apply to convenience of all citizens? And it, this way, is really convenient.
– My name is Nick (in abbreviated form from Nikolay) – the young man in German continued. Many young men here perfectly know foreign languages. – Be so kind as to follow me, I will lead you to number of your hotel.
Directly against the car the wide door where mine went to the chicherena was seen. The elevator lifted us on the third floor, several steps along the corridor – and we were included into clean small number.
– In this hotel for visitors all numbers identical – Nick explained and began to acquaint me with number equipment. – In a desk – the typewriter. Rises here so. Wash basin. A locker – near a wash basin, in a wall. You press this ball, the door opens. Here you will find… yes here, look! – The nickname opened a locker, and I found a snow-white towel, a small piece of soap, paste for teeth, a new toothbrush, cologne, crests, head brushes there – all for a toilet. – Phone – Nick explained further. – Radio telephone. Book of telephone subscribers. Information bureau. Bureau of instructions and orders. Car. On this number you will be answered on any your question. If you want to pass to the neighboring cities, do not take with yourself anything superfluous rather take anything. In trains there are buffets. In each hotel you can receive the Macintosh, a suitcase, the camera, the field-glass – in general everything that to you will want to be had at present. Why, for example, to drag with itself the camera if you can hire, make it pictures, give to show or use laboratory of the house commune to show most. You can call me by phone 5-89-67. The call becomes automatically. And this … – the Nickname opened a case door in a wall – illuminated signs. Here, turning a rychazhok, you can learn what occurs today interesting in the city where to go. Here be curious! – Nick pressed a rychazhok. In a twilight of a case the shining screen flashed, moving lines flared fires. – Наркомздрав very much limited application of the advertizing which are especially shining – Nick continued. – These advertizing – one of the reasons of nervousness of people of the big European cities. In our cities advertizing does not climb importunately to you in eyes, does not torment your ears, does not shout paints, sounds, light, diversity, brightness, unexpected flashes. In Europe, and in particular in America, you know, from advertizing there is no rescue. It pursues you everywhere: above, below, from sides, in front, behind. Advertizing on sidewalks, on walls, on clouds, on skyscrapers, on roofs, on rocks, at windows, on pages of newspapers, on things… Besides that it irritates, advertizing disfigures, vulgarizes all it touches. Therefore our departments of improvement of the City Councils also against the shouting unnecessary advertizing, as well as zdravotdet. We have an advertizing and even announcements are hidden, but it is easy to find them when it is required to learn about a performance or a meeting. And at you in number – advertizing is hidden, put under the lock here, it cannot disturb you. But when data will be necessary for you, you will open шкап and will press one of these buttons with inscriptions under them: “Meetings”, “Museums”, “Theatres”, “Cinema”, “Lectures”…
I expressed desire to look what becomes today. Advertizing immediately entered me into interests of today of Yuzhkhim. I was surprised to a variety and abundance of public and cultural life.
Here the little from what I remembered:
In the Big hall of Palace of culture accomodating twenty thousand people there was a report of the member of the government who arrived from the center. In a number of trade-union clubs reports and debates, mainly concerning the organization of production and general political were appointed. At the plants and factories big production meetings had to take place. In the Bolshoi opera Theatre there was a new opera “Winner” with participation of actors of the State academic working opera. In the Conservatory hall – a concert of an elektrofonist the Curtain which had to execute on the new tool the orchestral symphony of the young talented composer Dulin, working chemical plant. In the second studio – a concert of a choral circle of chemists. In drama theater – the new comedy “Mechanic”. In theater of youth – the historical play “Marik”, from life of children of workers before revolution; in children’s theater “Mimus” – the play executed by the trained animals. In audience of the Art museum – the report on ancient art accompanied by cinema which shows works of art and ancient monuments in paints (picture) and in a three-dimensional three-dimensional type (sculpture). The lecturer is professor Gulinov… In club of engineers – the lecture “About Transmission of Energy at Distance” and “About Destruction of Factory Pipes”. In the same place – “About beams Sonora”…
No, you will not reconsider everything! I addressed Nick and told that in all this it is possible to be lost. How to choose from a lot at least of theatrical entertainments what most corresponds to my tastes?
– Very simply – Nick answered. – You are interested in the opera “Winner”. Now you can just learn its contents, the main motives, see the operating l of ides, scenery if you want, will listen to all libretto. – The nickname tinkered at buttons, and the invisible loud-hailer began to sound. The human voice told about the opera. Several melodies, a part of the overture sounded. At the same time on the screen, in a reduced form, the scene, the moving actors seemed.
– But then it is not necessary to go to the opera! – I exclaimed.
– If to you it nezdorovitsya, you can, certainly, and listen to the opera to houses and to look at it. But nevertheless in theater it is more interesting! – Nick answered. – Thus you will be able to receive data on all shows, on all lectures, reports. You on – to phone can order to yourself the place. If you have nothing against, I will spend you to sight-see the city – Nick offered.
I willingly agreed.
– Advise – I addressed Nick in a lobby of hotel – whom to me to address to register?
From the arrival I almost did not see servants. In bourgeois hotels it is a scourge of visitors, these are marauders who, using the established custom, gather you, extend from you money low bows, unnecessary complaisance, boorish servility… or execute holuysky contempt if you tip to them a little.
There is no it also a trace. Here same workers, employees, as well as everywhere. They do not watch at you as on a ram who should be cut and do not release to you courtesies or cold ice arrogance, depending on a condition of your suit and your finance. They do not probe you, trying to guess how many it is possible to extort from you money. No, they meet and talk to you as the companion with the companion.
I got acquainted with all this, having lived in hotel about a week.
The nickname calmed me: he already reported about my arrival, and no other registrations are required. “As for servants, they do not need to be an eyesore to you at all. If to you that – — is necessary, you can cause them, and they watch purity when you are not in number: will tidy up, will sweep out, will clean”.
There were we hotel not towards the railway tunnel cutting all building through any more, and on other side. Directly before us the wide platform surrounded with the park opened. In the middle, on graceful concrete columns, the canopy under which cars settled down rose. Near the parking of cars was big, in two square meters, the city map drawn on opaque glass. All streets and public buildings were renamed in the special list, and against each name the button was seen. If I needed to go, for example, to “Revolution Square”, then I pressed the button against this name, and on the plan from the station where I am, stretched the shining arrow, clearly specifying in what direction I had to go or go.
– If you want, it is possible to take the bicycle – Nick told me – and to reach to the center. However, it is not so far. It is possible to employ a taxi or to get on a bus. You look, on the plan number of the bus is specified.
– I thank you, morning fine, and I prefer to walk on foot – I answered. Nick willingly volunteered to accompany me.
We passed by the taxi stand and went deep into the park.
I would like to give you my first impression of the city perhaps more stoutly. In it there was some originality which at once I could not understand. It is remembered, similar I tested something when I with a working excursion arrived to Venice. Venice – the special city.
The train with a usual roar and noise is rolled in the covered station. You leave directly to the channel – and you are covered by silence, extraordinary for the city. In all Venice there is no car and any horse, except for those that stand on St. Mark’s Basilica, but they are bronze! And when you go on narrow Venetian ulichka and on Mark Square, you are pursued by strange feeling – as if it is not the city, and… the house without roof. Similar I tested something when I left hotel and went to wander about the city of Yuzhkhim. Here everything was differently, not as in our noisy, confused, mad cities of the West and America. Others were also people here. Neither slackness, nor sluggishness! All whom I met were vigorous, cheerful and mobile, but without the excess fussiness and nervousness characterizing the residents of the big capitalist city who are eternally hurrying, worrying, stepping each other on legs.
Parks and Yuzhkhima Street seemed to me, perhaps, even too poorly populated for the city accomodating sixty thousand people. “Why it?” – I thought and immediately answered myself: “It is the city of workers, and workers are at work now”. This explanation was correct, but not absolutely exact as subsequently I was convinced. Besides that the fifth part of all workers were “days off”, workers worked in three changes, and actually, so at the plant there was no more than a third. The relative malolyudstvo was explained by many reasons. In Yuzhkhim there was no division of the city into the boring uncomfortable suburbs and the elegant center which is pulling together almost all population to the show-windows and fires of cinema. By Dezurbanization it was shown not only that people refused construction of the unhealthy huge cities octopuses with the multimillion population here, but also that within the city all public places are decentralized, except, of course, city Soviet institutions of city value (the City Council with all its departments is located on Revolution Square). Theaters, cinema, the museums, clubs, libraries and other cultural institutions evenly of a raskinuta on all city, and cinema of the suburb differs in nothing from cinema in the downtown.
Walking are also scattered on all city evenly, all city – the continuous park; a part of the population was chosen to the country by boats, on foot and in cars. Besides, in Yuzhkhim there is no most mobile and fussy street passerby – the buyer and in particular customers. I will not tell that they are absent at all. But dump from the account only the housewives and women of fashion who are absent here and flooding our shops, and you will see as far as will become silence! I Feel that you represent a little what I write about. New words or long descriptions are necessary. Here, for example, I told “traffic”, you, of course, represent sidewalks, quite narrow, near gray bulks of buildings. And on these sidewalks the continuous moving mass of people, dense, as a school of the going herring. And in the middle of the street “ice drift” of cars. But it is far from what I see. There is no “street” in sense of this word usual, habitual to us even. There is no solid wall of the houses pressed to each other closely. You even not always see houses. You go on the beautiful park. Trains of the suspended railroad almost silently blow over tops of trees in hours of the beginning and completion of works at the plants. You go on a beautiful twisting path to shadows of chestnuts, lindens, elms, oaks, hornbeams, maples. Continually – benches with convenient backs, beds of flowers.
Flowers, flowers! Your Marta has to forgive for these flowers a lot of things that would not be pleasant to her in this original city. But I am sure that if Marta lived though month here, she would not want to return to the pathetic flowerpots on a balcony. It seems, so do not love flowers anywhere as here. And the chief flower growers-gardeners are children. They go from a bed to a bed and bring order. But strange thing: the walking children in parks are not enough, and there are no nurses with babies on hands at all. Only adults wander about parks and the flock of children only occasionally will flutter out and will disappear or there will pass mother with children.
At my first acquaintance with the socialist city this absence of children I charged to shortcomings. It is bad when children rustle, disturb and bother seniors, but it is boring also without children… Subsequently I was convinced that children take the much bigger place in city life, than I assumed and that they take in city life the most live part almost in all areas of life and especially in improvement maintenance. Obviously, just there was such hour when children were at school or in the country.
Near a path for pedestrians the bicycle path stood at attention. Easy hissing of tires is continuously heard – it athletes and sportswomen rush, having cheerfully something in common. Behind a bicycle path – again the site of the park, and further – the bus, well asphalted road. There are no trams here, they are replaced with buses long ago. Behind the road one more park layer, behind it a house wall, but you can not see it as houses are scattered at considerable distance from each other here. They stand as the locks surrounded with parks.