120
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
ticed it. Some of them rose silently from their seats. A second flower on the
table opened its petals, and along with it a third and a fourth.
“Eee!” the elderly woman who looked like a teacher exclaimed in an ec-
static child’s voice, and she began to clap. The hall broke out in applause.
The handsome young woman who was the professor’s wife ran from the hall
toward the professor, who had stepped aside from the exultant children by
the flower and was wiping his temple. She flung her arms around his neck
and began kissing his cheeks and lips.
The red-haired girl took a step toward her kissing parents, but the little
boy reporter held her back. She jerked her arm away, but after taking a few
steps she turned around, went right up to him, rebuttoned the unbuttoned
button on his shirt, smiled, and turning quickly, ran to her hugging parents.
More and more people from the hall came up to the table. Some picked
up their children. Some shook the young speaker’s hand. He stood there,
holding out his hand for shaking, and with his second hand pressed the but-
ton just buttoned by the red-haired girl.
Someone started playing something halfway between a Russian and
Gypsy song on the bayan. An old man started tapping his foot on the stage,
and a stoutish woman walked out to him like a plump swan. Two young fel-
lows began a rollicking squatting dance, and the flower with its opened
petals turned toward the rollicking Russian dance, which was drawing more
and more people with its daring.
