Victor Sonkin. Look into the eyes of monsters

Look into the eyes of monsters
S. Aksakov. The Scarlet Flower

Victor Sonkin

Publication date: April 6, 2001

Have you met people without seeing them? Did you jump up at night, listen to the crackle of the modem, talk over the air, across oceans, across time zones? Did you send other people’s photographs, or in desperate moments called on some acquaintance of Cyrano for help? No? No?! Read no further. Because Aksakov did not write down his fairy tale for you.

Well, a scarlet flower - that’s understandable. Here it is, bottom right. For now it’s scarlet, but if we want it, it will become green, the likes of which don’t exist. Because where does it come from in flowers, chlorophyll?

However, you can do without it. Maybe you have a personal dislike for ICQ and the like; maybe you haven't bothered to study Shahidzhanian and master the blind ten-finger method or, worse, your interlocutors can barely move their fingers. It can be done differently, like this: “Before she had time to write the letter and seal it with a seal, the letter disappeared from her hands and from her eyes, as if it had never been there . ”

It’s amazing how accurately this fairy tale conveys all the stages of devirtualization. First, the monster writes texts - ” “on the white marble wall with words of fire . Then Nastenka gets a little tired of this, and she wants to “listen to his voice... have a conversation with him, without going to the white marble chamber, without reading fiery words . ” The monster, of course, resists (wouldn’t you resist?) - “he doesn’t quickly agree to her request, he’s afraid of scaring her with his voice” - then he can’t stand it and breaks down. The result is predictable: “At first the young merchant’s daughter, a beautiful woman, shuddered when she heard the voice of a forest animal, a miracle of the sea, but she only controlled her fear and did not show that she was afraid, and soon she began to listen to his kind and friendly words, his smart and reasonable speeches and she listened, and her heart became joyful . "

How can you not flinch? A smooth, sometimes even re-read and edited text is one thing, an immediate, direct conversation without a teleprompter is another. And you imagined the voice differently - lower, higher. You didn't know he stuttered. You didn't know he had a lisp. You didn't know that he couldn't pronounce "l". And in general, what if the person who wrote “calling” actually says “calling ” ? Although this, of course, is nonsense. It would have become clear by now.

And finally the third stage. The most difficult one. Aksakov presents the situation more simply than it happens in reality: Nastenka does not know what the beast looks like, but the beast knows what Nastenka looks like; the test is one-sided. In life, both the monster and Nastenka have to pass an exam. Even if you are an excellent student, even if you have never failed a single exam in your life, even if you are as good as Apollo (although this is unlikely), you will be nervous and fastidiously examine your owl eyes and hooked nose in the mirror. at the golden eagle, and then, standing at the meeting place in the agreed upon clothes, eagerly scan the crowd: this one? is it really that one? Even if you have already seen one hundred and twenty photographs. And at first everything will be awkward, clumsy, you won’t know how to say hello, what to say, whether to look them in the eyes and whether you should have carried these flowers. And then - then, most likely, too.

And if suddenly she was very lucky, then “the next day she saw a forest animal, a miracle of the sea, in the light of the red sun, and although at first, when she saw it, she was afraid, but did not show it, and soon her fear completely passed. Then they began to talk more than ever: day after day, almost, they were not separated, at lunch and dinner they ate sugar dishes, cooled off with honey drinks, walked through green gardens, rode without horses through dark forests . "

A fairy tale is just a fairy tale, so that the monster eventually turns into a handsome prince, despite the treachery of the three-dimensional sisters, despite the rearranged clocks, despite the plucked scarlet flower. But it doesn’t happen like that, it doesn’t happen like that: we’re in the twenty-first century here, and everything is different, and maybe it’s better to still go to the white marble chamber to see fiery words and not know that they’re being written by a monster with shaggy fur and hoarse voice, beast, dragon, The Beast.

Then, however, you will never know that he is bewitched. Nastenka, after all, was in the fairy-tale palaces of the twelfth; the previous candidates were not brave enough to fall in love with the monster.

Well, try it. Or don't try. I won’t really give you advice. Except this: read fairy tales.

---

Web presence