CHAPTER NINETEEN
If not for Professor Dergunov, Sidelnikov would have never chanced upon those wonderful golden-and-purple pieces of glass that let any human see with their own eyes utterly indescribable, inordinately beautiful and fearsome things.
It is hard to tell exactly what it was that the old professor had against his student. It might be that the fatal reason for Dergunov’s antipathy was the insufficient rapture and the lack of reverence on Sidelnikov’s face during those sacred moments when the University patriarch was affectionately narrating to the green first-year students his cherished reminiscences of his years of friendship with the great Urals storyteller Pazhov. At that time, Pazhov had not yet grown a long folklore beard, he was wearing a leather jacket and carrying a gu
