Johnson’s thought refused to perceive that this decrepit old man also is his son… The old man the son also could not recognize in young, blossoming, as the twenty-fifth anniversary to the young man of the father…
And they sat confused, in awkward silence looking at each other…
VIII. AGASFER
There passed nearly two months after Johnson returned to life.
In cold, windy September day it played in a garden with the great-grandson George.
This game consisted that the boy took seat in the small flying car – a computer-controlled aviette. Johnson adjusted management personnel, launched the motor, and the boy, loudly shouting from delight, flew around a garden at the height of three meters from the earth. After several circles the device smoothly fell by in advance defined place.
Johnson long could not get used to this new children’s entertainment unknown in his life. He was afraid that to the mechanism there can be something and the child will fall and rasshibtsya. However the aircraft operated perfectly.
«To put the child on the bicycle too it seemed to us once dangerous» – Johnson thought, watching the flying great-grandson.
Suddenly the sharp wind gust rejected an aviette aside. Mechanical control was regained immediately by the broken balance, but wind carried the device aside. An aviette, having changed the direction of flight, flew on an apple-tree and got stuck in tree branches.
The child in a fright cried. Johnson, in not a smaller fright, rushed to the aid of the great-grandson. He quickly scrambled on an apple-tree and began to remove little George.
– And how many times I spoke to you that you did not arrange your flights in a garden! – suddenly Johnson heard a voice of the son Samuel. The old man stood on a porch and in anger shook by a fist.
– There is, apparently, a platform for flights – no, by all means it is necessary in a garden! Not rumors! A trouble with these boys! Here you will break to me apple-trees, I you!.
Johnson was revolted by this old man egoism. The old man Samuel very much loved baked apples and worried for an integrity of apple-trees more, than for life of the grandson.
– Well you, be not forgotten! – Johnson exclaimed, addressing the old man to the son. – This garden was for the first time divorced by me when still you did not exist! Also shout at someone else. Do not forget that I am your father!
– Well, that father? – peevishly the old man answered. – On favor of destiny, my father was a boy! You to me almost in grandsons are fit! Seniors should obey! – tutorially it finished.
– Parents should obey! – Johnson was not appeased, lowering the great-grandson on the earth. – And besides, I also am more senior than you. I am ninety eight years old!
Little George ran to the house to mother.
The old man stood a little more, moving lips, then angrily waved a hand and too left.
Johnson brought an aviette to the big garden arbor replacing a hangar and there wearily fell by a bench among shovels and a rake.
He felt lonely.
With the old man the son he did not have relations at all. The twenty-five-year-old father and the seventy-five-year-old son is the ratio of years, not corresponding to anything, put a barrier between them. As Johnson strained the imagination, it refused to connect together two images: little two-year-old Samuel and this decrepit old man.
Most closer he met with the great-grandson – George. Youth is eternal. The spirit of modern times did not leave the mark on George. Child at the age of George rejoices to both a ray of sunlight, and a tender smile, and red apple the same as children of its age rejoiced thousands years ago. Besides and the person he reminded his son – Samuel child… George’s mother, Elaine, also resembled to Johnson Frederik, and he stopped on her a look of the grieving tenderness more than once. But in the opinion of Elaine, directed on it, he saw only the pity mixed with curiosity and fear as though he was a native of a grave.