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Chapter 4. About Russian slang and Japanese poets
Old man Methodius was sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with raspberries when the doorbell rang.
«How fast they are,» he shook his head and went to open it.
Mother Nature did not endow the old man with a height of a meter with a cap, if not lower.
Jumping, he hung on the handle, and the door opened. On the threshold stood a tall, broad-shouldered man, a thin girl slightly shorter than her companion, and a pet dragon clutching a colorful notebook to its chest.
– Did you call me, gentlemen? – the grandfather lisped into his beard.
And the old man’s hair was thick, long, and curly. Even his light brown hair had not turned grey, despite the fact that this man could have been at least a hundred years old. And if you take into account the specifics of life on the second layer, then all three hundred. But judging by his behavior and the energy that was overflowing, it was as if my grandfather had turned twenty a week ago.
«Yes, dear Methodius,» the necromancer said, putting his hand on his heart. – My name is Daniel, this is my friend Alina, and this is my black dragon.
«Come in, come in,» muttered the magician, opening the door to the library for the guests.
And all three entered the only room, which the owner rightly called a book depository.
The abode of the polyglot magician was no different from the traditional housing of Russians of the twentieth century: a single room, a workplace and a bedroom at the same time, a narrow corridor, a kitchen three by three meters. And, being lined from floor to ceiling with dictionaries of all kinds, such an apartment looked even smaller than what was noted in the warrant.
Methodius covered the windows in the only room with black curtains that did not let in a single ray of light. It was possible to see at least something only thanks to a small lamp standing on a small round table in the middle of the room. All the furniture was made exclusively of wood, and instead of carpets, the old man laid out bear skins on the floor.
«Here,» the grandfather complained, taking a stepladder from around the corner, «he lived in the village, he had a good house, a pine frame, so they demolished it, the damned trolls, they, you see, expanded the city, and so as not to get angry and send letters to the Council, they gave me an apartment.
Grumbling, he placed the ladder at one of the shelves and walked to a round table, on which, in addition to the lamp, lay a large notebook covered in small handwriting. This is how only students write cheat sheets and experienced magicians encode their wisdom.
– Yes, dear guests, what languages would you like to learn? Modern ones – one hundred dollars, ancient ones – one thousand, encryption – five.
«I want to know modern Russian,» Dan said, picking in his pocket for money.
When he found a hundred dollar bill, he placed it on the table in front of his grandfather.
The satisfied old man smiled and, lifting up the hem of his long linen shirt, groaning, climbed onto the stepladder and took out a small soft-bound book from the top shelf.
– Does the Great and Mighty take up so little space? – Alina was surprised.
Then she began to read the inscriptions on the remaining dictionaries: English, Spanish, Italian. It was as if she had ended up in the foreign literature department. But all the other books were much thicker than the dictionary that her grandfather got, and this alarmed her. But, alas, it’s too late. Before she had time to share her suspicions with Dan, the old man began to perform witchcraft.
Methodius seated the necromancer at the round table opposite him. The magician, who turned out to be almost twice as tall as the old polyglot, felt very uncomfortable on the small, low three-legged stool. But he endured, because investing knowledge in five minutes is much faster than learning the language on your own.
In general, the magic of polyglots has always been considered very dangerous. Any magical effect on the brain is like this. One wrong word in a spell, and a person may forever lose his memory or knowledge of his native language. Therefore, as Dan managed to tell Alina on the way to Methodius, in childhood all wizards and sorcerers studied one or two foreign languages, and then, at the age of twenty, they were allowed to visit a polyglot magician so that they could correct their grammar and remove their accent. Such actions are not too dangerous; it is difficult to make mistakes in spells to improve knowledge. Why is that? The whole point is not the science of magic, but the fact that nothing can be given for nothing. And even if a licensed polyglot magician teaches someone to speak gibberish in five minutes, on the other side of the world a co
Methodius wrapped the dictionary in skin and placed it in front of the client. After that, he quickly ran to the kitchen and brought a kettle. Judging by the way the grandfather carried it, it was heavy, filled to the brim. From there he poured a viscous black liquid (was it tar?) into a bowl that stood on the window, and then splashed the substance onto the skin in which the book was wrapped. As soon as the first drop touched the fur, the fur began to glow bright blue. Having finished with the impregnation, the old man removed the skin from the book and wrapped it around the head of Dan, who was sitting at the table.
The black dragon sat comfortably in a corner and immersed himself in his favorite pastime. Alina looked at everything that was happening with her mouth open. She had seen similar actions more than once in television programs on the first layer, where various psychics and other suspicious individuals who considered themselves magicians performed.
When the skin stopped glowing, the old man removed the bandage from Dan’s head. The necromancer sat on a chair, closed his eyes, and was afraid to move.
«Well,» the grandfather lisped, «say something in the new Russian.»
– Cool, bro! – the magician slapped the old man on the shoulder, so that he could not stand on his feet and sat down in surprise.
– Whaaaat?!?!?! – Alina was indignant.
– Oh, great, chick! – Dan smiled, hugging the girl’s hips.
Five minutes ago, this intelligent Czech guy addressed her so respectfully: «beautiful girl,» but what if… something is wrong… Is it possible that along with knowledge of the language, a person acquires disgusting character traits?
«Dan,» she said offended, pulling his hand away. – What do you say?
She grabbed the guy by the shoulders and started shaking him in the hope of knocking out this gross nonsense.
– What a cool bazaar, absolutely nothing! Are you, like, not getting it?
«I get it, I get it,» the sorceress mimicked him, «but why, having learned a foreign language, start being rude in it?»
– I’m freaking out! – the necromancer rolled his eyes, picking up a thin dictionary.
«Modern Russian slang and obscene expressions,» Alina read what was written on the cover.
«Dear Methodius,» she shouted at her grandfather, «do you even pay attention to what you teach a respectable foreigner?»
– Why the hell stare?
The old man chuckled, took the book from the girl and put it in its place, and then began to look for something.
– Isn’t this necessary? – she asked, taking out from under the leg of the stepladder Ozhegov’s thick black Explanatory Dictionary.
Almost every Russian schoolchild knew this book very well. But… the ladder, from under which the thick book was taken out, naturally fell to one side along with the old man.
It turned out that the grandfather carelessly touched his lamp and it, coming into contact with the bear’s skin, started a serious fire. With the number of books in the room, everyone present could have burned alive in a matter of minutes.
The dragon jumped up on its hind legs, clutching the precious manuscript to its chest. Dan, deprived of any vocabulary except Russian Newspeak, stomped on the tabletop and shouted heart-rendingly:
– The author is burning! Ftopku sovar of the Russian language!
Methodius, numb with horror, watched as the fire approached both him and his precious collection.
And only Alina, who by some miracle did not lose her composure, stretched out her hand, free from the dictionary, and shouted:
– Sandstorm!
The spell again spontaneously surfaced in her memory, from which book or film – she did not remember. The girl imagined how the earth began to move under her feet, how dust rose in a column and circulated around her feet, and then dispersed and was covered by fire, which had almost reached the dictionaries of the polyglot magician. The grandfather sat on his knees, looking with fear at the burnt wool on one of the skin-carpets, and tears welled up in his clear blue eyes. His collection was saved!!!
When Alina lowered her hand, the tornado stopped circulating, and the sand fell to the ground in an even circle around the girl. Definitely, after this spell, the magician’s apartment required cleaning.
The sorceress put Ozhegov’s dictionary on the table at Dan’s feet and stared at the old man with an imperious gaze:
– Teach him Russian back! Correct your mistakes.
Grateful for saving the collection, Methodius agreed, despite the fact that the fire happened due to Alina’s carelessness. Somehow the old man quickly forgot the bad things, but he seemed to remember the good things well for a long time. He did not demand a hundred dollars from the brave sorceress in exchange for the necromancer’s half-burnt bill sticking out of the sandy hill.
Grandfather shook the sand out of his sandals and asked Dan to get off the table and sit on a chair.
– Shave yourself! – the client stuck his tongue out at the grandfather.
– I’ll shave you! – the magician groaned, kicking one of the table legs.
Dan expected anything from the old man, but not that his leg would be kept on his word of honor. As a result, he fell painfully on his back, hitting his head on a stack of dictionaries.
– You’re a fool, rotten old man, ax-head! – he hissed through his teeth, picking up the extinguished lamp from the floor.
Alina took it from the magician’s hands and, snapping her fingers, lit the wick, wanting to give the lamp to her grandfather, but that was not the case. The necromancer held it by the base with a strong grip and was not going to give it up. He jerked the lamp towards himself so that the sorceress almost fell nose-first into the dusty, scattered books of the old man Methodius. Dan squeezed the lamp in his left hand, and with his right began to move over the flame, as if he was writing fancy runes in the air. So this is how necromancers cast their spells!
The magician with the lamp walked straight towards the old polyglot, who at that time was reciting a spell over Ozhegov’s dictionary.
The dragon diligently scribbled quatrains without raising his head. At such moments, the muse came to him without asking and did not leave until the poet’s owner accomplished a feat.