Ruby copper box. Copper box (collection)

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1

“So how are you going to surprise me this time?” Yvane Howell glanced askance at his interlocutor. “You look like you have a multi-million dollar deal in store for us…”

He smiled at his own simple joke, took a glass of greenish sparkling wine from a low polished table, and handed the second to the guest. The head of the corporation could afford to treat visitors to ten-year-old “Mermaid's Soul” not only on holidays. Especially such dear guests.

“Oh, nothing,” sighed Ronald Howell, Yvain's younger companion, his twin brother, with a mock sigh. Just one interesting rumor...

"Ron, your way of talking is going to drive me crazy someday," he remarked. - You're not trying to persuade partners now. Get out of the role at least with me!

“For some reason, you are still sure that this is a role,” Ronald smiled. “Didn’t it occur to you that everything could turn out exactly the opposite?” - Without waiting for an answer (this conversation was not the first and certainly not the last time between the brothers), he continued: - Well, I'll try to save your already frayed nerves and be brief. So…

He paused and settled himself comfortably in the deep armchair. Yvaine waited patiently for his brother to speak. It was impossible to remake Ronald, for more than forty years he was convinced of this, and he made attempts to somehow influence the twin only out of habit.

Although the Howell brothers were twins, finding more dissimilar people would be a daunting task. Outwardly, they, as befits the twins, looked like a friend like two peas in a pod. They even dressed alike and, appearing at major events, tried not to differ too much in behavior. The hired killer would certainly have hesitated even a second, deciding which of the twins was Yvain and which was Ronald, there were already ... precedents. A second - it is sometimes worth a lot!

Their difference was manifested in the character and mentality. Yvain - assertive, but prudent, cautious and extremely resourceful, early showed a penchant for corporate affairs, in which, of course, his father encouraged him in every possible way. Barely a quarter of a century old, Yvain has already gained a reputation as the shark of the business world and earned his first million. By the age of thirty, he had done away with his competitors within the corporation. With those whom he failed to win over to his side or intimidate, he acted very simply and very clearly - there were no new ones who wanted to challenge Yvain Howell's right to be listed as the successor to the head of the corporation. Soon, the desired fruit fell right into his hands: an assassin hired by competitors shot the old man right on the street (evil tongues claimed that Howell himself was involved in this, who was tired of waiting), and Yvain became the youngest head of the corporation in its entire history. He has remained in this capacity to this day.

Ronald, as if in contrast to his older brother (he was born only a few minutes earlier), did not possess a craving for such accomplishments. Oh, he easily comprehended the science of the business world, but he was not a leader. He was more interested in what was hidden behind certain actions of those around him, the background of what was happening, and in the art of bringing to light a variety of secrets (sometimes worthy of attention, sometimes small and dirty), Ronald was very successful. Information - that's what he needed, and this craving for knowledge of a certain kind he quite successfully satisfied. Of course, the elder brother was well aware of this and easily put Ronald's skills at the service of his interests. He did not mind: if the older Howell was attracted by real, visible power, expressed in respect for others, in hard currency, in the vast possessions of a corporation, one of the most powerful in the inhabited world, then the younger one liked to hold all the strings in his hands, knowing that at any moment he can pull one of them, and then... He pulled when Yvain needed it.

In fact, the corporation had two leaders - more than unusual in a world in which you can not turn your back on your neighbor, even if he is your own brother. You never know when he'll get into his head to strike... especially if he knows you as himself! Many listened with bewilderment to Yvain Howell's decision to share powers with his younger brother and began to wait until the two strong spiders could no longer get along in one bank. They even made bets on who would survive. Most chose Yvain, but some, on reflection, put on Ronald - he, in their opinion, could well circle his brother around his finger.

The "spiders", however, were not going to devour each other, they coexisted quite peacefully and more than fruitfully: over the years of their joint management, the corporation crushed two or three smaller competitors under itself and now sharpened its teeth for an opponent of equal strength. Things did not go quickly: Ronald collected information bit by bit, painstakingly sifting through official data and the most incredible rumors in search of something really valuable, while his brother dealt with pressing problems.

Apparently, this time Ronald managed to unearth something curious ...

Have you heard about the new mine? he finally asked.

- Gold? Yvane asked.

- What gold! Ronald winced. - There, in Muscovy, the roof of the Palace of Commerce was gilded, that it became more beautiful from this, or what? I'm talking about those deposits of erinite that have been discovered recently.

“Ah, about him,” Yvain nodded. How could such news pass him by! “But it’s in Carmichael territory, I don’t think we’ve managed to snatch anything!”

“I'm not talking about that at all,” Ronald grimaced at the mention of the name of a competitor corporation.

– About what then?

- You understand, the learned fraternity rushed there. Ronald closed his eyes. His eyelids, like all Howells, were heavy, which gave him a perpetually tired and slightly sleepy look. - Such discoveries have not been made for many years, there was something to profit from ...

Did they dig up something? Yvaine asked bluntly, knowing that his brother could still beat around the bush for a long time. Only let him out for negotiations!

“They dug up erinite and nothing else,” Ronald chuckled. - But there was one intelligent little man among them, who took the trouble to look at the deposit more closely.

- So what? The elder Howell was alert.

“The deposit is weak,” Ronald sighed and poured himself another. The brothers knew a lot about drinks and never denied themselves the pleasure of savoring expensive wine. You could say it's a shard. Tail.

He spread his fingers about an inch, indicating the exact size of the deposit that went to the Carmichael Corporation, their longtime and bitter rival.

Yvaine was silent, waiting for the continuation. Something already came to his mind, but he preferred his brother to speak to the end.

“So there it is,” he said. – This man did some research, after which he stated with confidence: that piece of land where erinite was found was thrown there during the Catastrophe. I saw the reports, he is not mistaken: in those parts the soil composition is completely different, and the erinite vein ... ends as if cut off with a knife.

Yvain nodded. He knew such scientists: for many decades they tried to restore the original picture of the world, the fragments of which were mixed up during the Catastrophe, like fragments of a mosaic. Sometimes they even managed to figure out which fragment was out of place and where it actually came from. But what's the point? There is no way to return them back anyway, and there’s no point in it ...

“All right,” he said slowly. - This means nothing. After all, the land we are now on, according to the researchers, was also moved out of nowhere.

"You're wrong," Ronald smiled thinly. - AT this case it doesn't mean much. You see,” he touched his lips to the wine, smiled contentedly, and his brother did not understand whether this smile was a sign of satisfaction with the taste of the drink or an anticipation of the news that Ronald was preparing to tell, “I have been keeping an eye on this scientist for a long time. He's a little out of his mind, like most of them, but he's got a good head. He did not just establish that the erinite-bearing area landed on that place from somewhere else. He figured out exactly where...

Yvaine leaned forward in anticipation. A brother wouldn't just say something like that. Means…

- Where did it come from? he asked curtly.

Ronald got up, walked leisurely across the large office, rummaged through the shelf, returned and unfolded a map of the inhabited world on the table.

“Most likely from these parts,” he pointed to a vast spot filled with pale green paint.

“Almost in the heart of the Territories…” Yvaine frowned. But how can he be sure?

"He's…not quite sure," Ronald chuckled. - Of course, he will not give a 100% guarantee. However ... there are some details on which he can claim that presumably this is exactly the place...

- What exactly are the details? - A businessman woke up in the elder Howell, who wants to know all the details of the planned deal. What are his assumptions based on? By the way, what is the name of this man of yours?

“Stefan,” he replied, and under the twin’s searching gaze, he added reluctantly: “Tove Stefan.”

“Is that so…” Yvaine frowned. He did not like to deal with such people, although he often had to - a large corporation would be nowhere without those who called themselves touvs. So what's with the guesses?

“He has been dealing with such problems for a long time,” Ronald continued unperturbed. “I won't go into details, but he figures that if what the Carmichael captured is just the tip of the field, then it must be many times larger.

- In many times? In what time? At two, at three? Yvane squinted derisively.

“Tens,” Ronald replied calmly, and the smile disappeared from his older brother's face.

Erinite! A rare mineral, nondescript, difficult to process, insanely expensive, but ... It was worth any money. Because…

Killing a magician is almost impossible for an ordinary person. They - even green students - heal any wounds and neutralize any poison. But add erinite to steel when brewing, and a dagger made from it will pierce the magician like a mere mortal, and he will not be able to perform any of his tricks. Cuff him with erinium steel, and he will not be able to free himself with a wave of his hand or incinerate the walls of his dungeon. Sprinkle some crushed erinite into his food, and after the meal, do with him what you want. You can poison, you can kill: he will not feel the poison and will not feel threatened. Simply because erinite completely blocks magical abilities. For a while, not forever, but a lot of time is not required if you want to do something with a magician ...

Yvane had an erinium steel dagger he bought once. Just like that, just in case. But here's the problem: erinite loses its features over time, and soon this dagger will be no different from any other weapon.

Magicians know about this property of a mineral so dangerous to them, they have already studied it far and wide! They know that as long as corporate shooters have erinite bullets, while erinium steel shackles await them in prisons, they don’t even have to think about raising their heads, but sooner or later the already meager reserves of a rare mineral will be depleted, and then ... Mages will wait. They live a very, very long time, an ordinary person never dreamed of so much ...

Buying a new dagger would be extremely expensive, that's what Yvain thought. But if his corporation has an erinite deposit at its disposal, even if it is not ten times greater in mineral reserves than what the competitor got, but at least equal to it, then ... The rest will have to make room. For what magicians cannot be forced to do for money (and they were paid very, very generously, so long as they did not go over to competitors!), It is quite possible to be forced to do when you have enough weapons. Difficult weapon...

Is this Stefan sure? Yvane asked his brother. He watched him with interest, apparently trying to guess the course of his thoughts. Or maybe not: after all, Ronald knew him as well as he knew himself, there was little need to guess.

“As for the size of the deposit, yes,” he replied. - As for its location ... Let's say, sixty percent, no more.

“That section, after all, could also have been abandoned at least to the Black Continent,” Yvane twisted his lips.

- I don't recognize you! Ronald chuckled. “I mean sixty percent. That's over half, Yves. Yes, and ... there is something that I did not have time to talk about.

- Well, don't stomp!

“I told you who Stefan is,” Ronald said. “He used to explore the Territories when he was young.

Apparently unsuccessful...

- Well, why? He managed to achieve something,” the younger twin chuckled. - He lost his leg, for example ... But I'm not talking about that. He climbed quite far into the depths of the Territories, this is the first. Secondly, as the Touvs usually do, for several years he portrayed a shaman in the Karau tribe. They go much further than civilized people dare to poke their noses... And since they obey their shamans, they brought something from there. He chuckled. - I can imagine how perplexed the brave warriors were when they were ordered to take a soil sample!

“Yeah,” Yvane grumbled. - It turns out, it came together one to one?

- Exactly. Those soil samples that Stefan has and those at the new deposit are the same. But if I were you, I wouldn’t flatter myself too much,” Ronald warned, seeing the predatory light flare up in his brother’s eyes. “I wasted no time and made inquiries. Here, - a thin dry finger again buried in the center of a green spot on the map, - once there were several states. Well, yes, you also studied history, you must remember ...

“I don’t understand why memorize what happened before the Catastrophe,” Yvane muttered, but continued to listen with great attention - Ronald never said anything just like that. But I can remember something. Some dwarf kingdoms and principalities, right?

“Let's say some were smaller than our zone of influence,” Ronald chuckled, “but it doesn't matter. If my and Stefan's research is correct, then the deposit must be located on the territory of one of these kingdoms.

- So what? The older brother raised an eyebrow. - Who cares?

- In fact, no ... - his companion jerked his shoulder. “But don't get too carried away. Calculations are calculations, but, as you correctly noted, during the Catastrophe, the rest of the deposit could have been carried away.

- Let's hope for the best. Yvain chuckled as he poured the wine into the glasses again.

Are you going to send someone there?

- Of course. - The head of the corporation shook the glass in his palm. The "mermaid's soul" had to be drunk a little warm, otherwise the delicate taste of the wine would not be fully revealed. - Do you have something against it?

- In no case. I just wanted to warn you that Stefan, like any tove, is completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut. The whole world should know about its discovery,” Ronald spread his hands.

Yvane, frowning in displeasure - a deep crease lay on his high forehead - thought. Tovs, half-baked magicians, or, as they preferred to call themselves, "persons with limited magical abilities", most often labored in the role of researchers, scientists. Some, however, went to the village sorcerers or shamans out there, according to Howell, they were more useful, and less of a headache. Alas, few did this, and the rest climbed out of their skin, so that if they didn’t invent something (normal magicians did it), then at least unearth some curiosity in the past, prove that they were also good for something, since didn't get to be a full-fledged magician...

Naturally, Tov Stefan rang the whole world about his landmark discovery. Magicians already know for sure. Competitors, most likely, too.

It is impossible not to send anyone deep into the Territories. It's just impossible: if one of the competitors believes Stefan, if the deposit really exists ... The whole profit will go to the one who will be in time first. The lands are no man's land, the nomadic savages can be ignored, which means that the race will begin - who will have time to stake out the site ahead of the others! So it was during the "gold rush" in the southern part of Muscovy, only there the matter was further complicated by the fact that the locals quite successfully drove strangers from their ancestral lands. They wanted to sneeze at corporations, and the fact that in the end they managed to negotiate peace with them can be attributed to the greatest success of modern entrepreneurial art! Another thing is that the lazy Muscovites tore completely obscene taxes from other people's developments (if only they themselves would not do anything, as Howell believed), and riding gold soon dried up, and no matter how hard the pits beat, they did not find anything else ... Only the wealthy were left in the profit miners and cunning (or simply more knowledgeable) Muscovites, from whom corporations, being greedy, rented these lands for a hundred years in advance. With annual rent indexation, of course…

So, you have to send people. More than one team, it's more reliable. Good specialists, several fighters - you never know what can happen on the way. After all, these are the Territories, and not the park at the residence of the head of the corporation! And even if competitors do not yet know about Stefan's discovery, their spies will certainly notice the competitor's suspicious activity. They can't help but notice, they get paid for it, and generously.

Well, porridge is brewed! Not a single corporation will miss the opportunity to clamp the magicians into Erin's fist. Here you have both profit and security... It seems that serious skirmishes are coming, the most unexpected alliances will be made, and old partners will gnaw to death... Even if there is no erinite on those shabby lands, it will not be possible to win back.

Wherever you throw it, everywhere is a wedge, Yvane chuckled. He looked up at his brother, as if looking into a mirror. Ronald's eyes twinkled, as if he had some news in reserve. As far as Yvaine knew his brother, it was true.

- Something else? he inquired.

“Yes,” he replied, hiding a grin. “You see, I, unlike you, have always been interested in ancient history. Gathered a good library ...

- I know. - Yvaine just sighed: Ronald spent crazy money on old books. “And what did you read in your… hmm… tomes?”

- You see, - Ronald paused, as if choosing the right wording, - there are curious things in the chronicles. For example, the mention that in one royal family a sword was passed down from generation to generation, with which an ancestor slew either a dragon, or a mighty sorcerer, or both at once. And also armor that protected from any spell.

“Erinium steel?” Yvain said.

“That’s enough lining from her, you know,” his brother chuckled. - Nothing like this happened in neighboring states, if, again, the chronicles are to be believed.

- So you think that you have established in which kingdom that deposit was located? Yvane arched a thick eyebrow ironically. “What if it was an accident?” If the sword and armor were brought from other lands, they received it as a gift, finally!

“I myself understand that the assumption is unsteady,” Ronald sighed. He liked to argue with his brother: with his impenetrable practicality and iron logic, he often left no stone unturned from his hypotheses. Few others were capable of such a thing. – But I don’t have another… But listen: they also write about amulets from the evil eye and witchcraft that many local residents had and, most importantly, they worked. Also, you say, gifts? Or were they purchased? Why then in the surrounding lands did not occur?

- Well, well, what else? Yvane encouraged. His eyes were laughing.

“In fact, everything,” his brother was taken aback. “But if it’s true that the kingdom I’m talking about was located right here,” he pointed at the map again, “and if you believe the ancient maps and combine them with the current ones, then it turns out ... An extremely entertaining thing emerges ...

Evan was stubbornly silent. It was clear that Ronald had something amazing in store for last, and he wasn't going to spoil his pleasure with inappropriate questions.

“This kingdom is mentioned more than once in the chronicles, not only thanks to the magic sword and armor of the ruler,” said Ronald after a pause.

– What else?

Smiling, the younger Howell leaned over to the older one and quietly outlined the essence of his latest research.

There was silence for a moment. Finally, Yvaine shook his head and stood up.

“That changes things,” he said, going to the window. He pushed back the heavy curtain and looked out: the evening turned out to be dark and rainy.

- There are also many pitfalls. Ronald joined his brother.

A large bird in a cage by the window, exactly the same as the one on the coat of arms of the corporation, was brought in after waking up. She snorted hoarsely and stared at her master with unblinking yellow eyes.

“I agree,” he nodded. “But if it works…

- It's just a legend.

“You yourself know that any legend can turn into reality. Yvane reached between the bars of the cage and stroked his pet's shiny back. The bird affectionately pinched its owner's wrist. - Here's the bastard, begging for a handout again ...

“It won’t take off anytime soon if you stick pieces of it in,” Ronald warned.

“As long as I’m alive,” Yvain looked sharply at his brother, “ this the bird will fly as high as it can.

"I don't doubt it," he chuckled. - So what do you suggest?

- Let's proceed as follows ...

Both Howells delved into the discussion of the plan for the upcoming operation. The forgotten bird, after whose ancestor the corporation was once named, tried to get Yvane's attention, failed, and dozed off again. Its plumage shone bright blue in the soft light of the lamps.

2

It was a dream that I didn't want to wake up from. Every time different, but always gentle, warm and affectionate, like dandelion fluff under the July sun, like a kitten's fur, like a mother's breath ...

It is not known how long it lasted, she knew - a long time, but it should be so, so there is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all, because sooner or later the allotted time will expire, and the dream will become light, weightless, and horses will be heard in the courtyard of the castle, and steps will be heard ... Someone will gently touch her face, and she will open her sleepy eyes, sigh and say softly: "How long have I been asleep!" She will look into the face of the one who woke her up, and it will, of course, be beautiful, because it cannot be otherwise! And the awakening castle will make a noise, and the dog that has fallen asleep at the feet of her bed will burst into barking, and mother will run into the room, father will quickly enter, trying not to lose his dignity, but utterly excited ...

It would be so, she knew it for sure, so she was not at all surprised when, through a dream, she began to distinguish extraneous sounds: a rustle, as if branches were scratching at the window, bird chirping, the rustle of rain ... It only meant that soon, soon the one she waited so long!

And finally, she heard footsteps. Quiet, cautious, as if sneaking steps. It must have just seemed to her: they should have been confident and clear, the steps of a winner, the steps of a hero! How else?

The heavy door creaked. The footsteps sounded closer, closer ... The man froze near her bed, it seemed to her as if she could hear his breathing.

If she could, she would wake up immediately, but she could only wait until what was said in the prediction would happen.

It's done. She only had time to smell a strange smell, to feel the touch of someone else's lips - not at all light, weightless, as she expected, but quite ... palpable, - and ... Nothing has changed. All the same sounds were heard - as if from afar, as if through a dense veil, and thoughts flowed slowly, slowly, sleepily ...

“Not him…” she thought ruefully. Or the time hasn't come. What a pity ... It's good if there is a year or two left, but what if ten? After all, he will not wait ... "

He really did not wait: she felt a burning pain, then again, again, and did not immediately realize that it was from a slap in the face. But who dared…who dared to hit her?! Her!!

"Wake up, you damn doll!" - someone picked her up and shook her hard, so that her head shook, and bruises from strong fingers probably remained on her shoulders. - Enough sleep!

She was dropped back on the bed. And again a slap. And then the one who so rudely tried to wake her decided, apparently, to resort to the last resort: he took and clamped her mouth and nose with a rough palm. She so clearly felt the touch of a rough man's hand on her face, smelled - perhaps the hands of this man were not very clean - that she was seized with indignation. But who is he that dares to behave like that, to say such words in her presence, to touch her and even... to beat?!

There was nothing to breathe, and in an attempt to free herself from someone else's hand, she tried to turn her head, and ... she succeeded. Almost succeeded.

However, the man noticed her slight movement, picked it up again, shook it...

- Come on, baby! he muttered. “Just don’t try to die right here, I have big plans for you!”

Opening her eyes was an overwhelming task, but she was used to forcing herself, even if it was hard and painful. Everything floated in front of her, but she still made out the contours of a large figure, made a movement to pull away, and almost succeeded in this.

- Well, thank you, Lord! the stranger said sincerely and, without permission, sat down on the edge of her luxurious bed. Now she could see him clearly enough to make out his features. - She came to life!

- Didn't you recognize it? The man narrowed his eyes, twisted his lips, and she did not immediately realize that it turned out to be a smile. "I'm your Prince Charming, baby!" And I did wake you up, for which honor and praise to me ...

“You are not a prince,” she said with conviction. Oh, someone, and she had seen so many princes that others never dreamed of! “You… can’t be a prince…”

The man looked at her point-blank, and in his eyes there was neither warmth nor joy from her miraculous awakening. It turned out to be something completely different, and the girl could not yet make out what it was.

He wasn't a prince, she could have sworn. Princes aren't so... so... dorks, she picked the right word. Tall as far as the seated man could be judged, broad-shouldered, almost black-tanned, he looked so strange and out of place in her exquisite bedchamber that he wanted to close his eyes again and convince himself that this was just a dream. But this dream wore strange-looking clothes - pants made of coarse gray fabric with leather patches, a leather jacket with a simple shirt underneath, boots and an incredible-looking hat with turned-up brim - smelled strongly of horse (and not only) sweat, on a tanned face his bristles were golden, and his bright eyes looked intently, appraising.

“Get up,” said the one who came instead of the promised prince. - Let's go to.

She looked at him in such a way that it would have become clear to anyone: the princess was offended, the princess deigns to be angry and does not intend to move.

“You’re little, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you away if you roam about,” the stranger promised, and there was something in his voice that the girl understood that he was not joking. She will throw it over and take it away, and she will humbly hang upside down in front of ...

– Where is everyone? she asked, listening. – Where are my parents? Where are the servants, finally? Why so quiet?

“Oh, well, now I see, I just woke up,” the man chuckled. - You look around. Look, look, take a closer look!

She glanced around the room. She suppressed the urge to rub her eyes. Looked again...

Decayed tapestries on the walls. Furniture that retained its former shape, but ready to turn into dust at any touch - it was noticeable. The panes in the high window are broken, and those that survived in the frequent binding are dimmed, nothing can be seen through them, and why, if there are holes in which the sky can be seen? The door warped, almost fell off its hinges: no wonder it creaked so! And a thick layer of dust on everything around - the traces of a stranger were clearly imprinted in it. She is everywhere, even - the princess looked at herself - on her dress, on the bed, everywhere!

She tried to dust off the hem - a cloud of dust flew into the air, and the man staggered back, covering his face with his sleeve.

- Well, you did it! He stood up and stepped aside. "Get away from me!"

The girl said nothing - he was a commoner, it can be seen at first sight, and talking with commoners ... Parents believed that it was shameful, and, as always, they were right.

Her gaze fell on a small mound at the foot of the once luxurious bed. Some rags, a gold chain ... and thin bones. All that is left of her faithful watchman, of the affectionate dog that fell asleep with her, along with the whole castle ...

Any other would have burst into tears of grief, but she froze, struck by a much more terrible thought: if this happened to a dog, then ... what about people? Her parents, courtiers, servants, finally? What's up with them...

“It finally came,” the man, who was carefully watching her, stated. - Get up already. I don't like this crypt. That and look, the ceiling will collapse!

She silently sat on the edge of the bed, looking at one point. The new knowledge had yet to fit in the head. She will grieve later if this “later” comes ...

“The rest…” escaped dry lips.

- Whom I saw along the way, they all decayed, - the man answered willingly. - How many years have passed!

- How?

He looked thoughtful, apparently counting.

“More than four hundred. Yes, the fifth century is approaching the middle, how do you sleep, ”he said, seemingly with a mockery, but at the same time a little wary.

Here, then, how ... Almost five centuries instead of the promised hundred years. And the prince, whom she never knew, but who was supposed to wake her and take her as his wife, if he was born, galloped past the enchanted forest where her castle was hiding. And then he married another princess, saw children and grandchildren, then he died, and his grandchildren died too, while she remained here, in a high tower, and ...

“Where were your parents when… everything happened?” the man suddenly asked. Or who is there? Only father?

“Father and mother,” she answered mechanically. “They should be in the throne room. They decided so: to stay there, with all the regalia, in full dress. And the courtiers are also there, and the servants ... So that when the prince wakes me up, we are met as it should be ...

- And how to get there? The stranger didn't care about her thoughts. What interests him, the girl did not want to know. She briefly explained how to get into the throne room, he nodded - so he understood. - Come on, get moving. Time to go.

“Leave me,” she snapped.

"Don't show off," the man frowned. “I warned you… I won’t fuss, whether you’re a princess or something!”

“I will go with you,” she said arrogantly and coldly, barely hiding her true feelings behind this coldness. But for now, leave me alone. You seem to want to get into the throne room?

- Well, yes ... - The man slightly tilted his head to the side, looking at her. “Don’t be crazy, do you hear? You try to hang yourself or poison yourself ...

“I will not take upon myself the sin of suicide,” she replied contemptuously. Does he consider her a peasant woman, ready to get into a noose because her friend went for a walk with another? And even though a misfortune befell her more serious than the betrayal of her beloved, she can still control herself. She must. “You can safely leave me.

Princess with a revolver Kira Izmailova

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Title: Princess with a revolver

About the book "Princess with a Revolver" by Kira Izmailov

Four hundred years ago, the catastrophe turned the planet upside down: after another magical experiment, the forces of nature went rogue, the continents changed their shape, and the surviving people are trying to adapt to the shifting world.

Hired by the owners of one of the ruling corporations, Henry Montrose must go to the Forbidden Territories in search of metal deposits that can deprive magicians of their abilities, and at the same time find an enchanted castle with a sleeping princess.

Finding what you are looking for is not so difficult, but getting out of the Territories, when competitors are on your tail, when not only technology, but also ancient magic is against you, turned out to be much more difficult ...

On our site about books lifeinbooks.net you can download for free without registration or read online book"Princess with a Revolver" by Kira Izmailov in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from literary world, find out the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Copper box (collection)

Dina Ilyinichna Rubina

Stories of poignant human destinies, everyday and amazing stories, told simply, like a monologue of a fellow traveler, full of colors and authenticity - in the new collection of stories by Dina Rubina.

Dina Rubina

Copper box (collection)

If there's anything that has worried me over the years, it's the stories of human destinies. Told without much detail, simply, even detachedly, they are like a monologue of a fellow traveler on a long-distance train. And after a sleepless night, everything will mix up: the names of people and cities, the dates of meetings and partings. I will remember the yellow streaks of light from the lamps at the half-stations, the dormer window that flickered in an abandoned house, and a muffled voice, sometimes hovering in an attempt to find a word ... The most precious thing here: the voice of the narrator. How he will stop in an unexpected place, or suddenly soften in a smile, or freeze, as if surprised anew by what he has lived for a long time.

By the way, I heard many of these stories on the train or on the plane - in a word, on the way. Apparently, the very feeling of the road prompts us to rethink old events, thinking out loud about what is already impossible to change.

Dina Rubina

copper box

- Is it okay that I keep talking, talking? .. Tell me, when you get bored, do not be shy, okay? It's just that you listen so well, and the conversation flows so nicely on the train ...

Here we were talking about family predestination. If I may, I'm talking about my family. Don't worry, it won't be boring. The stories of the last century are in any case entertaining.

So, imagine a girl from the townspeople, a schoolgirl-egozu, spelled out by books to the last lightest curl. A town near Moscow with summer pavilions, where hastily put together troupes of visiting actors give performances on stage rotten from the rain. How can you not fall in love with a broad-shouldered, well-spoken hero? How can one not be lost in his smile, in the roar of his baritone, how can one calm an enthusiastic tremor when he - Hamlet - pronounces the opening phrases of his famous monologue?

I won't bore you with the trappings of romantic passion: all those bouquets, little notes, appointments made in a gazebo over the river. I will say right away: she ran away with the troupe. It was my grandmother.

Five years later, the hero left her alone in another city near Moscow, with two children; the eldest was four, the youngest, my father, was a year old. Now imagine her position: she is not accustomed to hard work, not a penny of money, the children are starving, the baby knits her hands. What did you earn? Occasionally she gave lessons in German or Latin grammar to girls from not too scrupulous families, because such an immoral person, too, is not allowed on every threshold. She wrote a letter of repentance to her relatives, but she did not receive a word in reply; my great-grandfather was already cool, but here is a special case: his daughter slandered him in such a way - for the whole city! It was hard for him to swallow the shame. In a word, trouble, real trouble, even hang yourself.

And at such a difficult moment, a married couple suddenly comes to her with a secret visit: her second cousin with her husband. The address, therefore, was extracted from her very letter, every letter of which screamed about salvation. They were wealthy, decent people and had been married for ten years, but ... God did not give a baby, and the hope for this completely melted away. And even now I admire their calculation: how intelligently they thought everything over, how competently they set the trap! After two hours of idle chatter, my grandmother's sister suddenly burst into tears and said:

- Sonya, give us the youngest! We will help you, like a pension. You breathe, feed, look around. You will feel like a human. And you will save yourself, and you will stretch the elder ...

Such a profitable offer: sell, they say, your son. Unless, of course, you want to disappear with both ... And where to go? Life is a vile, evil thing. And the three of them were sitting: the women roared like beluga, the man was also very worried. You understand, it's not about a lap dog, but about a living baby.

And she decided. Accepted this inevitable choice of fate. How else could she save both children?

Only one condition was set for her, but it was cruel: not to appear. Once a year, she could come and look at her son from afar, from around the corner of the house or into the window of a pastry shop, where his nanny took him to treat him with cakes. Terribly sad, terribly! But I was happy every time, because I saw: my son was dressed and shod, and with nannies, but he was so handsome and ... he looked so much like her!

Look at me carefully: did you notice a slight braid in your left eye? This is an ancestral seal. My grandmother had one, my father had it, I had one. And although she agreed with his adoptive parents that they would bury the box with birth documents under a pear tree in their garden - you never know what happens to people, it will be safer - this light, characteristic braid, if anything, served as the best proof of kinship. It was immediately clear who belonged to whom and to whom.

And then what? Then the revolution broke out. The guy was already seventeen years old, and he - tall, handsome, impudent - rushed into this very revolution headlong and heartily. By nature, you know, he was a ringleader. As they say now: a born leader. Through the revolution and the Civil War, he passed like a knife through butter, from all the stands in a bright future, the people touted. Apparently, he inherited the artistry of his father. He was already a big shot in the NKVD, a married man, the father of two sons. His adoptive father long ago, at the beginning of the revolutionary meat grinder, died of a broken heart. Still: to see how they take away your weaving factory, take away your house and everything acquired. And most importantly - to see that the child you raised is leading this whole gang! Here, anyone from horror and grief would give the ends. Well, his unfortunate wife followed him. Didn't want to live. She swallowed something, I don’t know what exactly, and died.

And then…

You know, I love this turning circle in any story, the primordial, ancient, still from Greek tragedies, the turn of a rusty lever, releasing a new or partially forgotten character onto the stage. It happens that you listen, listen to someone's story, and you can't wait: when will this very thing finally be said, and then? ..

And then the mother appeared on the scene.

You know what's interesting - I remember that day. You won’t believe it: he was a baby, three years old, but for some reason this scene was imprinted in his memory. Surely there was such a glow in her, such a dramatic force ... after all, children, they are like animals - they feel the tension in the air. My older brother and I played on the floor, built a stable out of blocks for a wooden horse, because of which we constantly fought. And the mother was spinning in the kitchen, rolling out the dough for pies. Why remember that dough? And her hands were in flour. Well listen...

They rang the doorbell, the mother opened it. Was on the threshold elderly woman. Here I close my eyes, and in front of me - she stands and stands. He is silent and does not cross the threshold. And the mother is silent and anxiously looks at her inquiringly.

You see, in a sober, attentive look, she didn’t have to prove anything - her son was like her, like two drops of water. Just one face. This braid is characteristic, which directs the eye in such a special way, so slyly. So what

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amazing: the daughter-in-law, our mother, received her with open arms, - I remember that both floury mother's five fingers were imprinted on the back of the guest on the mac. She told us, the children: this is your grandmother, she immediately began to call her “mother”.

When he returned from work, he listened to the story with a stone face and said: I have one mother, the one who raised me. I don't have another and never will. I don’t believe in these tales ... Then the guest says to him: “Son, I could prove to you, because there in your garden under a pear tree there is a copper box with documents about your birth buried ...” And her father: “Kan-e-eshna, casket! "Headless horseman!" He waved his hand and turned away.

In that house for a long time, already ten years, as the palace of pioneers was. But the garden was preserved, and the old pear tree, as it grew, remained the same, however, it did not bear fruit. You could dig up that box. But only why: what kind of box is there when mother and son have the same face. But her father didn't even want to talk to her. And henceforth remained like a flint ...

Grandmother by that time was completely alone. Her eldest son, Semyon, Uncle Senya, died of typhus while still in Civil War. And it is clear that she was so burned in her youth that her female fate was uninteresting, meager.

She came to look after us, took care of the housework, did all the work around the house, helped her mother a lot, and she respected and loved her. But the father was silent, and so, by tacit mutual agreement, by the time he returned from work, his grandmother had to leave. Rarely, rarely will it be delayed if one of us children is sick.

I remember one such day. I am lying with a camphor compress on my neck, and my grandmother baked hot shanezhki for me to swallow softly ... And then my father returned, and she fussily put a plate of hot shanezhki on his table, and strong, sweet tea. And he, lowering his head, suddenly with such bitterness:

- Sofya Kirillovna, why did you give me away, and not your brother?

And in response - silence ...

Haven't you tired of me yet with my relatives? An interesting thing: you start telling a new person the events of almost eighty years ago, and as soon as you remember this bottomless defenseless silence to the question of an adult man, your throat will intercept ...

Do you know what talent she had? She counted instantly in her mind. In her old age, she went shopping with a wand, stood in lines. And if the cashier cheats for a penny or two, she will stretch out her hand with the change and stand, look, look, until the furious aunt throws the missing coin into her palm.

So I see her: she stands and looks, silently looks into her palm with two pennies ...

This is what has been tormenting me all my life: do you think she grieved when her newfound son was taken to death, or was she relieved? And I can’t forgive myself that, having grown up, I didn’t dig out that copper box with documents about my father’s birth under a pear tree. What for? And God knows her. Still a family heirloom...

Medallion

- Oh ... such an unseen distance - my mother was born in the eighteenth year!

By the way, it's a great idea to publish a gallery of twentieth century destinies in the newspaper. It turns out real portrait era. Personally, I think in this case, as in antiques: any, even a simple little thing, becomes valuable after a hundred years. And it’s a pity that we were late: three years ago you could have interviewed your mother personally - she remained in a clear memory until the last minute. But I'll try.

So, the eighteenth year, the outskirts of the collapsed empire, Vladivostok, the authorities walk from the whites to the reds, and the gangs of these different gangs of green-brown lakes - there are no number of those at all. And my grandfather, my mother's father, went from white to red and back in the same way, and on the way he taxied to some bandits. He was still an activist, as I understand it. It appeared in the family as if the full moon - well, if once a month.

And now it's time for my grandmother to give birth; grabbed her right on the boulevard, and since no one came to help (many knew her husband and walked around the woman in labor for a hundred meters), she bent over in a uniform way. She sat down on a bench, hugged her stomach, and there was no way to get up or move.

At that very moment, a cavalcade was passing along the boulevard, headed by the mistress of Ataman Semenov.

Have you ever heard or read about her? It's a pity: it was an amazing figure, one of those who are called a charismatic personality. However, she was called differently: Masha the Gypsy, Maria Nakhichevanskaya, Masha Khanum. She was beautiful, extravagant, she traveled on her own train, all in furs and jewelry. Japanese journalists called her the queen of diamonds. In a word, true: atamansha.

Seeing the heartbreaking scene of rapid childbirth, Masha the gypsy stopped, dismounted and ordered her bullies to carry the woman in labor to the nearest house. And she ordered the owners of this house to help the woman, threatening that she would burn the "chalabuda" to the last coal with her own hands if they did not run away for the midwife at that moment. And they, of course, ran very quickly, the wind whistling in their ears. The midwife was brought in, the cab was paid for, and my grandmother safely gave birth to my mother.

The next day, the ataman's mistress came to visit the mother and child she had saved, named the girl Maria (in honor of herself, incomparable), removed the medallion from her neck and gave it to her goddaughter. She said: for memory and a happy fate.

Well, at first the fate of the little girl was not very happy: four years later her mother, my grandmother, died of some mysterious "hepatic colic", dad, and previously quite useless, by that time had generally melted in the haze of the sea, flying away on the last ship in an unknown direction. And the girl was identified by distant relatives in ... what was it called then: an orphanage? orphanage? It doesn't matter, because she didn't stay there long. Apparently, the happy fate appointed by the chieftain woke up and began to inflate the couples and arrange "random circumstances."

An accidental circumstance turned out to be a business trip to Vladivostok of a well-known Soviet writer, a very kind and, by the way, childless person, who flew in to collect material for a long essay on the shock port everyday life of Soviet Far Easterners.

And all on the same Primorsky Boulevard, where the hospitable port workers treated the Moscow guest with beer, and the teacher was walking a group of orphans, a little girl ran up to the writer - under the bench, you see, where he was sitting, a rubber ball rolled, her favorite toy ... Tell me after this, that fate does not play forfeits! Still how he plays - otherwise why would the famous Soviet writer waddle all night in a hotel room, remembering the pale face, and this grown-up polite: “Thank you, citizen!” when he handed the ball to the girl?

So my mother got into the family of a famous writer, the author of several books, which few people remember now, but in those years they read avidly.

Actually, there was a family - he, "Uncle Ruva", and his wife, Irina Markovna, "Irusya". They have my mother and grew up in love and respect.

“Uncle Ruva,” my mother recalled, “guests often came. Irusya cooked well and baked divinely, so we have feasts

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have not been translated. They were Paustovsky, Fedin, Babel... I didn't know then that they were celestials. For me, they were just friends of Uncle Ruva.

Of course, my mother graduated from one of the best Moscow schools, played the piano - until old age, you know, and very fluently! - knew four foreign languages. As one of my friends says: a fortune was invested in the girl. Well, "state" is, of course, a metaphor, but ... Yes, I noticed: you are looking around carefully. Sometimes people admire, sometimes they condemn, someone once called our apartment an “antique shop”. But I used to live among beautiful antiques, I grew up among them. You see, Uncle Ruva was a great connoisseur and collector of various curiosities, and from childhood he was addicted to his mother, as he himself said - "to admiration, to admiring beauty and craftsmanship." And later, when she became a certified doctor, surgeon, and even the wife of a diplomat, she herself loved to wander around the shops, all sorts of collapses, buying markets. Her eye was, papa said, “surgically accurate”: from a pile of rubbish she would suddenly pry out with her little finger some old Venetian glass bottle cap for one franc ...

Here, for example ... Look at the shelf - there, next to the blue vase, so inconspicuous, dull. This is an incredibly precious thing, a museum item: the Skanderbeg Cup... How - don't you know? National Albanian hero. Well, yes, you are so young, for you the word "Albanian" means something Internet, right? Of course, you have not seen the old film of the 53rd, it seems, the year "The Great Warrior of Albania Skanderbeg"? To the ear it sounds somehow ... mossy, in the Soviet way. His name was George Kastrioti, he was of Venetian roots, lived in the fifteenth century, converted to Islam, then renounced Islam, led an uprising against the Turks, won such military glory that the Albanians named him after the great Alexander (Iskander): Skander-beg .

So, my mother stumbled upon this goblet God knows where - in a village in the Albanian Alps. You see, her husband, my father, was a well-known diplomat, and in the prime of his career he was an ambassador to France, Great Britain, and Sweden ... And in his youth, he and his mother had to live in Mongolia and Afghanistan. Here it is in Albania. And my mother never sat idly by, she was never an "ambassador's wife" - in the sense that many embassy wives were. She always worked, and worked in her specialty. She operated a lot, sometimes in unthinkable conditions.

As soon as she settled in a new place, she immediately found a use for herself in some clinic. And everywhere she remained herself, only herself. She, you know, was not beautiful in the ordinary idea of \u200b\u200bthe inhabitants of beauty. But there was so much charm in her: a short, fragile hat of wonderful ash curls; getting acquainted with her, people could not imagine that in front of them was a doctor, a cardiac surgeon.

And I remember the strength of my mother's character! Once, as a child, I set out to go on a bet on the railing of the balcony of the third floor - then I was doing gymnastics and fancied myself a future world champion. I managed to climb into a chair and even put my foot on the railing. She looked down ... and froze with fear. And to refuse means to be afraid, an impossible shame! God, I think, save me from this idiocy! .. And saved me! Out of nowhere, my mother flew in like a whirlwind, pulled me by the hair and gave me such a beating - I still remember the weighty weight of her graceful hand.

Yes ... Mom lived a brilliant life - as in such cases they write in obituaries and monographs? - a life full of events. Of course, I will show you all the family albums, but you need it for the article. Countries, cities, various conferences… hundreds of saved lives, and so on. Not in this case! You see, she traveled almost the whole world with my father, she knew famous actors, writers, artists, met with presidents and prime ministers, dined in royal palaces in the company of almost all European nobility. She was friends with Picasso, Jean Gabin, Simone Signoret… It is impossible to list them all. And I imagine a bench on the boulevard and an unfortunate woman in labor, who was taken right in front of people. And I also imagine a benefactress in luxurious furs and diamonds and a gift for a newborn - a medallion taken directly from the swan's neck. Such a “start in life” was given to the girl by Maria, the lover of Ataman Semenov.

Yeah, I remembered: she was also called Masha-sharaban, after the well-known tavern song, which, they say, no one performed better than her. Unpretentious such couplets:

Oh, what are you, honey,

Don't you come

Al freeze

Do you want me?

I sell a shawl

I sell earrings

I will buy my dear

Ah, the boots!

Heaven-heaven-heaven-heaven-yeah

Heaven-heaven-heaven-heaven-yeah...

Well, and so on... It's funny, isn't it? By the way, when in 1920 Father Seraphim was carrying through Chita the body of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of the last Empress, who was executed by the Bolsheviks, it was Masha the Sharaban who helped him - both with money and personal participation - to successfully complete the mournful mission. So thanks to her, the remains of Elizabeth Feodorovna now rest in the tomb of the church of Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane, in Jerusalem! Masha herself joined this mission and eventually ended up in Beirut, where she began new life- of course, not from scratch, but with a certain amount of gold bars. Later, she married Khan George of Nakhichevan, once again changing her name to Maria Khanum, gave birth to two sons (they later became officers of the Egyptian army), - in short, she lived a long life, right up to 1974! And she was buried in Cairo, in the cemetery of the Greek Orthodox monastery.

- And the fate of the medallion? the guest suddenly asked, who had not made a single note in her notebook. She was listening, afraid to interrupt the hostess.

She paused, got up and went into the next room. She returned two minutes later. Hanging from her hand, swaying on a long chain, was a small medallion sprinkled with small diamonds: old gold, an illegible monogram ... An elegant little thing, a guarantee of a happy fate.

Ah, my chariot,

Oh my chariot

There will be no money

I will sell you

Heaven-heaven-heaven-heaven-yeah

Oh my chariot

My chariot...

gold paint

He was a typical pub frequenter: red-faced, tall, with a thick neck and a victorious belly ... In short, he was the way one would like to imagine a German beer cattle. And he clung to us precisely in the pub, a huge Munich pub, stretching almost hundreds of meters. Our local friend, a native of Dnepropetrovsk, but now a patriot of Germany, persuaded us to take a mug of beer - here, they say, is a special place, and beer is brought from some special brewery.

We began to discuss varieties, raising our voices to shout over the dapper, in Bavarian hats with feathers, a trio in the center of the hall - a violin, a double bass and a drum, without a break beat something brave, to which ruddy beers with mugs sang loudly. And then a cliff separated from the noisy company at the next table - it seemed especially high because we were sitting - and with a wide smile headed towards us. If not for that smile, a clear message of good intentions, then it would be just right to be afraid of his buffalo might.

Need something here

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explain...

This meeting took place about fifteen years ago, on our first trip to Germany. And it lasted about forty minutes at most, and the conversation was clumsy, abrupt, sometimes we just shouted over each other if the trio entered with fresh enthusiasm. In fact, the first trip to Germany, with a stop in Heidelberg, Berlin and Frankfurt, Nuremberg and Dresden, with a dozen performances in front of a new audience, with museums and incredible parks and palaces, was such a strong impression that now one can only wonder: what made me record the same evening the story of our random drinking companion? what made me remember it from time to time and think about it, and most importantly: what made me now extract it literally from the ashes of a handful of shabby pages notebook and take its rightful place in the chain of these short stories?

Lord, he could hardly speak Russian! And our friend spoke German with even greater difficulty, although she was the best student in their language study group.

I have no idea why it stung into me: a smoky dim beer hall, a red-faced block nearby, attempts to connect naughty words ...

Of course, I will not literally portray his language attempts. He turned out to be an East German, born before the war, he studied Russian at school. He sat down with us because he heard familiar words. And he kept repeating enthusiastically: Russia, Russia… – as if the best part of his life had passed in some Leningrad.

“Obviously he’s a fool?” - Shrugging and turning away, my husband said to me. - What kind of enthusiasm for the country that crippled his childhood?

And, as if out of stubbornness, he interrupted his interlocutor and corrected: we are not from Russia at all, but from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. He freaked out. I was delighted… “This is also familiar to us,” I thought, “the joyful participation of the Germans in the well-being of the country, created for the reason and in the wake of their crimes.”

But this one… I took a closer look: he had a pretty physiognomy of a workaholic. He immediately reported that by profession he was a truck driver and in this moment rest between flights. And tomorrow morning - bye-bye! – returns to Dresden on his trailer.

He began to tell his story, his real story, on the move, without preambles, as if in a hurry to dump everything and return to his comrades. So I remembered him: disheveled, with a sweaty red face, from time to time he waves his large palm away from the calls of drinking companions to return to the table and now and then stumbles in an attempt to find the correct Russian word.

I retell literally the way I wrote it down in a notebook twenty years ago, almost concisely. For some reason, it seems that in such a poor and hasty style, the fateful power of his simple story most truthfully appears.

His father's first marriage was to a Jewish woman. They were young, fell in love with each other, it's normal. But they didn’t get along, they were very different, and fled. Little does it happen! My father married a second time, this time to a German woman, and a year later he was born, Wilbert - yes, it's nice to meet you ...

And so, when Hitler came to power and it all began ... in a word, when it really smelled of fried, one night my father silently left and returned not alone, but with a young woman - black-haired, curly, with huge green eyes, in a shiny black raincoat (It was raining heavily!). And her mother accepted her. Mother was a wonderful person, although too straightforward. He, Wilbert, was then quite small, about four years old, so he did not follow his mother's face, which is a pity: now he would give a lot to see how these two women looked at each other.

Her father helped her down to the basement and, you know what? - until the very end of the war, Esther (her name was Esther) did not leave the basement. She's been sitting there all these years! Throughout the war, Wilbert's father and mother hid a Jewish woman in their basement. His father's brother, Klaus, he was a real Nazi, served in the Gestapo, knew that his brother was hiding his first wife, but did not betray ... And when Wilbert grew up, they began to instruct him to carry her food. And he managed. The stairs were steep, but he is an adult, almost a man, and is not afraid of steepness and darkness! Besides, there was a light in the basement, and although Esther turned pale as death and her huge eyes glowed so strangely in the semi-darkness, he was not at all afraid of her. On the contrary, he became terribly attached to her. They became very friendly.

We were with her closer friend to a friend than I to my mother…” he said.

Long ago, before the war, Esther graduated from the Academy of Arts and participated in exhibitions. She painted small landscapes, until ... in a word, before all this shit. In the basement, she was very homesick, saying that this was the most difficult thing: her hands ached without work, they really hurt. Then Wilbert stole gold paint for her. Just stole, God forgive me! In their church nearby, in the Frauenkirche, a master worked in the back room, correcting this and that, some curls on the altar, on wooden choir stalls. Leaving for lunch, he left everything. It was necessary to steal so that imperceptibly. Most of all there were cans of gold paint ... and Wilbert not only robbed the master, but also ... stole. He sneaks up, removes the lid from the bucket and scoops it into a jar. But the paper was in bulk! The late grandfather owned a stationery shop before the war, and there was a lot of it left - good, thick wrapping paper ... Esther wrote and painted her landscapes with gold paint: golden trees, a golden lake, a golden bridge over a stream ...

And you know, she outlasted the Fuhrer! When the Soviet troops arrived, she crawled out of the basement, began to receive ration cards and fed them all - the whole family. They survived on these ration cards.

“My parents died early,” he said. - I was still a jerk. But Esther lived to eighty-nine and died quite recently. And all my life she was the closest person to me.

Of course, she worked to the last, painted watercolors - mostly landscapes. She was a famous artist. But you know what? I never used gold paint again. What for? The other is full, all different. All her landscapes are so transparent, light, - just angelic. In a word, art historians and critics knew Esther precisely from these weightless landscapes.

After her death - and Wilbert, of course, was the only heir - after death, experts from museums and galleries poured into Esther's workshop.

- We saw her golden basement landscapes - we almost went crazy! She never exhibited them, didn't want to. She said: this is a very special, atypical stage in creativity. They grabbed it, gave a lot of money. I refused ... And then they sent all the letters, with museum seals and coats of arms, sent some of their messengers, increased the amount, tried to persuade. But I - na-a-yn! I didn't sell! I hung them all over the house - let them shine! Golden forest, golden lake, golden cathedral...

“I'm a truck driver,” he added, and the mug in his red hairy paw looked like a small cup. “I don’t go home for five or six days. And when I return and enter my room, especially if it is noon and the sun is in the windows, waves of golden light meet me!

Tatyana Ginzburg

“... I am writing to you from Poltava, where everything is now in blooming old chestnut trees, in a stunningly fragrant lilac, and at sunset

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small blue-green bullets chirp and chirp overhead: Maybugs, Ukrainian-style Khrushchev.

In the courtyard of our house, under an old hazel tree, there is still a rickety table. Dad, I remember, every now and then knocked out his hoof, and he kept swaying. That's how it swings. But there is no dad ... She promised to write how the funeral went. But I can’t gather my strength in any way: it’s sad. I'd rather describe to you my nightly conversations with my mother. She can’t come to her senses, although all the time she childishly persuades me and my sister that dad “died joyfully.” We do not contradict: yes, he died instantly, as they say, easily. But is it happy? This is the whole mother with her oddities.

So, I'd rather describe to you our nightly conversations with her. I try to distract her and, on your advice, I ask, I ask - about everything. About her childhood, for example. She says what? childhood is like childhood, like everyone had ... But I don’t think so. Judge for yourself.

Mom was born in 1928. Her father died early, and her mother fell ill during the Holodomor, and so severely, it seems, with typhoid fever that she could no longer get up from illness and hunger, she completely reached ...

My three-year-old mother and her older sister (she was barely six) walked along the sleepers from their village to Kremenchug - the relatives kindly showed the way ... I'm still trying to imagine those few days when the girls stomped along the railway track. The eldest, Nata, was looking for leftover food between the sleepers - she kept saying that passengers (they are rich, who else can ride on trains!) Throw leftovers out the window. Once, with a joyful cry, she picked up a piece: she thought it was a crust of bread, she bit it - it turned out to be a piece of dried shit ...

But they made it safely to the city, did not die, and the train did not crush them, and for some time they lived in the garbage, until one woman ran into them. She worked as a nanny in an orphanage; I went to work in the morning, I saw two girls who were rummaging through a pile of garbage, I remembered that they were busy here yesterday and the day before yesterday. She simply took them both by the hand and took them to a large warm house, where the first thing they did was pour them full bowls of pea soup.

This soup made such an indelible impression on my three-year-old mother that then all my life the words “soup”, “soup”, “soup”, “supension” were pronounced with a breath, almost on a par with the word “Almighty” - and I don’t remember we have lunch without a first. Seriously: I don’t know another family where so many types of soups, pickles, cabbage soup, fish soup, beetroots, broths would be cooked ... This is me to the fact that childhood shocks affect our lives more powerfully than other wise educators.

So, the orphanage… It became the most dear place in the world for the sisters.

Once the younger group was returning home, mother and girlfriend Galka closed the line, and suddenly she saw: an old woman was standing at the fence in a torn scarf, in some kind of antediluvian zipun and drilling each of the children with a fixed look of sunken eyes. Mom says: - I don’t understand how, not because I found out, no, but just pushed her towards me! And the old woman only shook her head and finger to her lips:

- Shut up! Don't come! Don't come!!!

When all the guys entered the gate, my mother fell behind and, hiding, ran up to the fence grate. Her mother wept bitterly, touched her daughter through the bars, kissed her hands and begged her to come back and not tell anyone anything. She was afraid that with a living mother, the children would be driven out of the orphanage, and then - the end, starvation.

That's when mother and Nata began to slowly collect the crusts, to hide in their fist pieces of buckwheat porridge stuck together, fragments of yellow sugar. And in the evening, after lights out, they ran through a hole in the fence to the railway station, where their mother, my grandmother, slept on the benches to give her this miserable, this beautiful pile of leftovers.

I look at my mother - she has grown fat lately, and I don’t remember her thin, and I can’t imagine these dangerous night outings, this mighty childish devotion, this nobility ...

“Mom,” I ask, noticing that she froze again, putting both hands on the table, and looking at the wedding ring, which means she’s thinking about dad again. - What about the war? How did you meet her?

- What a war. It's June, the orphanage was in a summer camp. We occupied a rural school, went every summer. We loved these holidays very much: the forest, the river, the supply manager Uncle Sasha caught such bream for us! I remember how they fled under the bombardment naked. Our director Gurevich David Samoylovich of all children - one hundred and fifty people! – safely brought to the Urals. But he didn’t have time to evacuate his own family, everyone died in the occupied Kremenchug ...

You see, - says my mother, - to bring all my wards safely alive - this, of course, is a feat. But it was much more fortunate that David Samoylovich got us, the elders, at a military factory. It's food cards! Moreover, we worked about thirty people, and the products were divided among all. Very little kids suffered from malnutrition. Because winter has begun...

- And how did you warm up?

- Well, they gave out overalls: wadded pants, sweatshirt, earflaps. The hat had to be tied under the chin without fail, so as not to be torn off. And on the legs - Chuni.

- What are those boots?

- What are you. Boots! Who then could dream of boots? Just thick quilted felted stockings that were threaded into wooden blocks. Wow, and there was a roar when we ran - it could be heard for a kilometer. At the bazaar, the hostesses hid everything from the counters, we were like locusts, one word: “orphanage” ... They stole, of course! The biggest treat was a saucer of milk. It froze, and was sold, frozen discs. So you lick it - for a long time, intoxicatingly. More precisely, you pass in a circle, and they lick everything in turn. We, you know, were very strict about equality. No privileges ... They also sold resin everywhere, chewing resin, something like modern gum: you chew it, and hunger does not torment you so much.

- Listen, mom ... And when did you first eat, eat? Just ate like that, so that to satiety, to the very “not a crumb more”?

Here she comes to life:

- And in Ulan-Ude, in the dining room, at the military airfield. This was my first job after the war. Also David Samoylovich built it. His distant relative worked there. He wrote to her, and she just accepted me as her own. I lived with her for three years. There are a lot of good people in the world, Tanya, she tells me sternly.

“So what are you so fed up with, huh?”

- Pose! Mom answers. - Such a dish of poses, like Central Asian manti. There are even signs in Ulan-Ude: instead of "Pelmennaya" - "Poznaya". A funny word ... That's how dad and I met.

They arrived at dawn, military pilots from the mainland. They flew for a long time, it was cold, December ... That day I arrived before everyone else, my duty was. The dining room is still closed, but as soon as I saw their blue faces through the glass, I immediately unlocked it and let it in. I say: “Guys, we haven’t opened yet, you can warm up with tea for now, and I’ll quickly make poses for you.” I look, they looked at each other in such a strange way, and one, the youngest, says to me, smiling: “Oh, thank you, we are not up to the variety show. We would like something hot. Maybe you have some soup left from yesterday?

And as soon as I heard “soup”, I became attached to this pilot. I immediately realized that I would cook for him all my life when we got married.

And, as if recollecting himself, he breaks away from the story and shouts into the house where his sister

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trampling in the kitchen by the stove:

– Ira, add a pinch of basil! And turn the fire down.

And we are sitting under a hazel tree at a table that has been swaying for forty years already - how many soups-soups have been gulped down behind it! - and over our heads and shoulders they squawk, squawk like bullets, golden sunset crackers ... "

blockade stories

Elena Nedoshivina

“You see, I am a props. Boo-ta-for! What a word: capacious, savvy, playful! Spectators come to the puppet theater, watch the performance and rarely think about who built all this - all these funny faces, terrible hari, bared faces ... And this is all we, prop artists. And how much is needed here ... what do you think I will say: skill? No, dare! Although skill, of course, is not superfluous, you can’t go anywhere without it.

Here a young impudent director comes into our workshop, a year after he graduated from the institute; holds some scattered objects in his hands and says with a guilty look:

This is the head of a hare. And this is the torso of a Greek soldier from "Lysistrata" ... In general, I don’t know how, I need to make Mukha out of them. And, mind you, I need it - yesterday!

And what do you order props to do? Staff magicians, artisans of his majesty the Puppet Theater?

And I know myself: the more difficult the task, the more passionately my heart beats, the greater the risk, and the more dazzling the results. True, I felt sorry for letting the Hare's head under the Fly, maybe it will come in handy for some other Elephant. I found the head of Cipollone lying in the box, enlarged my eyes, twisted the proboscis from the wire. And she brushed it all off. Head done! Now, using a technique hitherto unheard of in puppetry, I cut out and glued the fly's body.

Then the nervous director appeared:

- Well, well, how? Lena, where did you see this technique?

“Nowhere, I thought to myself.

- Oh, I feel that with your insolence you will make such dolls for me that the children's mind will go beyond reason!

And running. Well, they are supposed to be nervous, directors. Nothing, the actor will appreciate this Fly ... I began to build up her belly and paws with velvet equipment, she almost buzzed in my hands! She made the wings so insect-like, and the eyes were faceted ... and the whole fly began to stir, it was about to take off!

And then he comes running, a stone's throw from the premiere, looks at this crazy Fly, looks for a minute, another ... And suddenly he utters words that are sweeter to me than a declaration of love:

- Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!

Sometimes it seems to me that my art ... well, let's say more modestly: I owe my craft to my grandmothers. I remember both of them very well: grandmother Nina and grandmother Tanya. Both were born and lived in Leningrad, both survived the blockade - the same age, they were twenty years old, very young. It is amazing how differently they reacted to this terrible experience of theirs. Grandmother Nina never told anything about the war. As if she didn't exist. She seemed to live in some kind of her own cozy world, which she tirelessly created around herself.

I loved staying overnight in her room in the big communal apartment. The whole wide window sill of her only window was lined with pots, jars, vases in which roses grew. And the aroma was such that, having entered and inhaled, the person stopped, slightly stunned. “A languid spirit,” my grandmother used to say contentedly, probably meaning “languishing, sweet.” But most of all I was fascinated by the trellis in her room - I could see in it my own head, with two pretzels of pigtails behind my ears. In general, I liked everything here: a round table, at which my grandmother and I drank tea from beautiful thin cups, biting with sugar. He lay in a square glass jar, and he had to be pricked with a nutcracker crocodile: the grandmother put a piece between the crocodile teeth, covered the long muzzle of the crocodile with her hand, pressed ... crack! - and held out sugar fragments on a plump palm. How delicious it was!

There was also a stove, next to which felt boots languished in winter, and a large lordly bed with a round-legged feather bed. The Moser floor clock and wardrobe completed the decor, and on it was a radio. Very high. Now I'm thinking: it was impossible so simply to reduce or increase the sound, or even turn it off? And no one thought about it. The radio never turned off.

At eleven o'clock we went to bed, and the ritual of going to bed was always the same. At first, my grandmother asked me riddles that had long been known. "He sits on a spoon with his legs dangling - what is it?" - "Vermicelli!" I guessed happily. Then for another twenty minutes we whispered, giggling and sighing. Finally, the last one, already in a foggy half-sleep, counted the midnight time of the radio, which then only squeaked every half hour all night ...

Recently, I watched blockade chronicles, where the announcer behind the scenes said that the blockade survivors had a habit of never turning off the radio for life. While the radio worked, the city was alive. By the way, I also notice a painful attachment to the constantly muttering sound background. Apparently, it was inherited.

So, all my love for needlework, rags, lace, buttons and wires comes from my grandmother Nina. How much I have left after her - all these immortal knitted things: handbags, napkins, gloves and collars ... and, of course, rag dolls, which she very quickly knitted for me as a child, and then I, taught by her, knitted and gave everyone around. They were surprisingly alive, begged to be held, even caressed - probably since then, since childhood, I have chosen soft materials. And now I prefer them at work.

And from the second grandmother, from Tanya, I have, as my mother says, "all exaltation." And I think this is such an innate "puppetry", which distinguishes a person of our profession from other normal people. I am convinced that an actress died in Tanya's grandmother, and an actress of a puppet theater. I still have a photograph of her in the pose of a vamp woman, with a dagger in her hand and with the inscription: “I will take revenge!”

She, grandmother Tanya, told me so many stories of the siege! And for some reason, all of them, even the most terrible, seemed unreal, some kind of ... puppet, although I know that they all happened in reality. And it also seems to me that I could make all these people - both relatives and strangers - in such detail, so for sure, that our young impudent director would freeze for a long time, considering these stories, and then exclaim from the bottom of his heart: “Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!"

Story one

How my grandmother almost got eaten

During the blockade, Tanya's grandmother was a donor. Donated blood for the wounded soldiers, received reinforced rations for this. She probably didn't look as goofy as the others.

Once she was handed a note from a stranger who allegedly returned from the front and brought her a package. And this parcel is waiting for her at such and such an address, somewhere on the Petrograd side. By a strange coincidence, it was the day when the grandmother received her reinforced ration. After work, she went on foot to collect the package.

The apartment indicated in the note turned out to be in a large, gloomy house, on the mezzanine. The door was opened by an old woman, invited to enter the house, said that the package was about to be brought. Grandma Tanya

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she went into the room, sat down at the table, looked around ... This old woman looked for some reason intimidated, somehow nailed down, and Tanya felt sorry for her. She unwrapped the ration and offered her some bread. The old woman took a piece and suddenly burst into tears. "Get out of here, girl! - she said. "Get out of this damned house!" There will be no parcel for you, but there will be a knife and death ... ”And in a hasty whisper she admitted that it was her two sons who planned to kill my“ plump ”grandmother and sell the meat. Such was the terrible fishery in those years because of the general famine, if we remember the blockade honestly and to the end.

As soon as the old woman said this, a key clattered in the door. Grandmother, without even saying "thank you", without saying goodbye, rushed to the window (I remind you - the mezzanine, quite high from the ground), jumped onto the window sill, pulled the sash and rushed down. Well, a bunch of some kind of rubbish and rags was thrown on the ground, and everything worked out well ... “I rushed to run headlong, like a hare from a hound!” exclaimed Grandma Tanya.

As a child, I imagined this story in the spirit of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and my heart always began to beat faster at this phrase: "... the key clattered in the door!" - because the grandmother theatrically put her hand to her chest and rolled her eyes. Now, for some reason, I imagine a small puppet scene, and my grandmother in the role of Petrushka, who "headlong", with a cry, rushes somewhere down, into the underworld ...

Story two

How causeless laughter saved grandmother Tanya from death

Once Grandma Tanya was walking somewhere with a friend. Suddenly - an air raid! According to the instructions, it was necessary to immediately run and hide - wherever possible: in a bomb shelter, in the gateway, in the entrance. The girls ran into the entrance of the nearest house, pressed their backs against the wall ... But still, they were girls, very young, and, while finishing speaking, continued to giggle over something funny. Then people around began to shush them and shame them: war, they say, trouble, people are dying, and you are laughing here, shameless! The girls, in order not to provoke people to a scandal, jumped out and ran to another house. And when, bending down, they ran across the road, an explosion was heard behind their backs: a bomb hit the house where they had just been giggling and where they were so ashamed...

When my grandmother told me this incident in childhood, she did not forget to add: “So laughter saved my life.” And you laugh! she said. “Never be shy about laughing out loud!” - And she herself began to laugh theatrically, throwing her head back and clapping her hands.

Story three

How a fox terrier saved my grandmother from cannibalism

Somehow, grandmother Tanya managed to buy a piece of meat in the market. Incredible gem! She brought it home, and all the surviving tenants of the apartment gathered in the kitchen so as not to waste even the smell of boiled meat. But somehow his appearance and smell - sweetish - seemed strange.

“You know what, Tatyana,” said the neighbor Mirra Grigoryevna, “we should check this meat on Churchill.

Churchill was the name of Uncle Fima's fox terrier, a professor from the third floor. The real miracle was that Churchill is still alive - after all, during the years of the blockade, domestic animals did not exist, they were all eaten long ago, like pigeons, mice, stray cats and rats. And Uncle Fima safely hid his friend from strangers, and most importantly, he divided his ration exactly in half. So Churchill not only prospered, but nevertheless continued to rake in with his paws on the sly.

They ran to the third floor, called "Lady with a dog." Reluctantly, the grandmother cut off a little scarlet piece from her treasure and offered it to the dog. And he suddenly roar like ak, how he backs up, but how he shakes his head. And immediately it became clear to everyone: human!

And while the neighbors were arguing what was the right thing to do - throw this piece in the trash or bury it like a Christian, burying it in the ground, Grandma Tanya rushed to the restroom, where she was twisted and turned inside out for half an hour.

“There are terrible times, my child,” Uncle Fima told her later, pressing Churchill to his chest, “when animals can teach a person a lesson in humanity ... Take, for example, the namesake of my noble dog. They say he is a worthy person. But I have no doubt that in terms of morality, under our conditions, my Churchill would have given him a hundred points ahead!

Story four

Rats on the Leshtukov Bridge

“No, it’s not true,” my mother corrects me after reading these notes. - There were rats, and even as they were - a huge number. And the stories associated with them are so creepy ... I don’t even want to tell. I will only tell you one thing - about the rat-mistress.

In our room, where Grandma Tanya lived with her mother, your great-grandmother Lisa, there was a large old renaissance stove. Cast iron, luxurious, with a patterned lattice, with convex roses. In peacetime, it was covered with a tablecloth and used as a table. And during the war, she really saved her family: they drowned her with pieces of furniture, boiled water on her, cooked some gruel, just sat around her, absorbing the heat.

So, when Grandma Tanya was left alone in the room, from somewhere in the underground, an old huge rat with a gray-haired muzzle came out from behind the stove and slowly, in a businesslike way, not paying attention to Tanya, went around her possessions ... The rat was not frightened by any stamping legs, or objects thrown at her. He throws up his muzzle, freezes and stares at his grandmother with black sharp beads of eyes, as if pricking. This was really scary!

Grandmother climbed onto the stove, pulled up her legs and desperately banged on the burners, watching every step of the creepy tenant. Yes, what kind of tenants are there! Tanya felt that she was not the mistress here, but the rat.

For many years afterwards she dreamed of these leisurely visits. And also, on especially difficult nights, I recalled a picture seen not far from the BDT theater. There, near the wooden bridge, also called the Leshtukov Bridge, stood a lone horse harnessed to a wagon, left by the owner for about ten minutes. A very skinny horse... And suddenly, out of nowhere, a resilient river of gray rats rushed onto the bridge and flowed. In an instant, the predatory mass soared onto the horse, clung to it, and for about five minutes the moving monster sighed and squeaked ... Then it collapsed to the ground and crumbled into gray skins. Only a cleanly gnawed horse skeleton remained on the ground.

“You know,” Mom says after a pause. - I have always been sure that various medical experiments are carried out on rats because they resemble humans in many ways. Both in behavior and intelligence. Maybe it's some kind of civilization that exists next to us?

reflection in the mirror

And in the room, in addition to a luxurious stove, there was a luxurious mirror - in a walnut frame, rising in waves above the flawless surface. And the biggest wave, as it were, hung over the oval mirror, not daring to spill down. I don’t know, maybe from which palace this mirror came to us, but everyone loved it terribly and were very proud of it.

Before the war, it reflected a large and beautiful family, including great-grandmother Liza. She had always been a fragile, graceful woman, with a magnificent chestnut wave above her forehead, and during the blockade she became so emaciated and weak that she began to walk with a stick, like an old woman. Not to mention the fact that all her luxurious curls came out from a lack of calcium. And - that's indestructible

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woman's nature! I could not see myself like this, I covered the mirror with a rag.

When the blockade was already coming to an end and it became a little easier with food, great-grandmother Lisa got the feeling that she had recovered and got prettier. Maybe it was the expectation of an early denouement, the end of the war, high spirits, hope for the future.

In short, she dared, she dared to look at herself. Came up, uncovered the mirror ...

Here it should certainly be noted that, according to the stories of mother and grandmother, great-grandmother Lisa was a patient and kind person, she was an incredibly meek person. No joke: for twenty-seven years she devotedly cared for her paralyzed husband.

So, looking at herself in a luxurious palace mirror, the pride and love of the whole family, she slams it with her stick with all her might! Shattered to smithereens. Apparently, she was so shocked and horrified by the old woman whom she saw there instead of herself.

Oh-oh-oh, I would solve this scene with two different dolls, I even know what I would make both of them from. One, young and beautiful Liza, I would make with a charming porcelain head. And the other ... here you still need to think. What is the main thing here? So that the heart of the viewer from compassion and love will go, so that tears will flow, which in our business are the real ones!

"Red Moscow"

But this is not a family story, and not a “puppet” one - I would not undertake to make characters from it. Because everything in it is connected ... with the smell. And smell is not a theatrical entity: it is not a color, it is not a sound, it is not a gesture. Although the smell that will be discussed was familiar to the majority of the population of the Soviet country. It was the famous perfume "Red Moscow". And my mother's friend Lyusya, who was five years old at the beginning of the blockade, also perfectly distinguished this smell. Every morning she ran on her own Kindergarten- kindergartens continued to work during the years of the blockade. Every morning she ran to the “date” with her favorite perfume smell, which was used by one very beautiful woman: she brought her son to the same kindergarten and the same group. From her inexpressibly, magically smelled of "Red Moscow"! Apparently, hunger somehow sharpened the sense of smell; in any case, as soon as she crossed the threshold, Lucy felt the scent of perfume and realized that the woman and the boy had already arrived. It was a completely new boy for them, as it happened when several groups were merged into one - after all, very often the groups thinned out. Lucy wanted to make friends with him, but she was shy and every day she thought: today ... today. Sometimes she even accompanied the woman with her son all the way to the house, just walked a few steps behind, as if in the same direction; walked in the thinnest trail of the smell of "Red Moscow" until they entered their entrance.

One morning, running into the garden, Lucy realized from the dull emptiness of the air that for some reason the woman and the boy had not come today. She was worried all day, she just couldn’t find a place for herself. And in the evening, as soon as the teacher let the children go home, she ran to a familiar house. She turned the corner and stood up, speechless... She stared for a long time at the broken roof, at the windows shattered by the bomb. Then she slowly approached the entrance and, out of breath, began to climb up the dilapidated stairs. She stopped on the third floor: the faint aroma of “Red Moscow” hovered farewell over the stink of lime and burning ...

She cried, realizing that she would never see this amazingly beautiful woman again, never know her story, never make friends with the boy.

I see this girl, her light legs running up the ruined stairs, as clearly as if it were me.

You see, puppet theater, real Puppet show- this is not Cinderella, or rather, not only her. In puppet language, you can talk about everything: about great love, about betrayal, about the intoxicating joy of life, even about the inevitability of death. But this story cannot be translated into puppet language. Why? Yes, I'm all about the smell. Not a theatrical entity...

Inheritance

to Richard Kerner

I remember the sculptor Jerzy Terletsky very well. He has been friends with my parents since the time when my father, cultural attaché at the Polish Embassy in Moscow, secured Polish citizenship for him. Rather, he helped with the return thereof. As you know, in 1939, Polish Jews fled from Hitler to the USSR, but returning to Poland after the war was not at all easy. In addition, underage orphans, and Jerzy was just like that, got lost on collective farms, in small towns, or were simply taken to Asian republics to orphanages ... In short, I’m not strong in details, but it just so happened that my father helped Jerzy return original citizenship.

Jerzy returned to Warsaw, from there - in 1963 - he moved to Paris and, having lived there most of his life, died in 1997, already a respectable old man of about eighty.

"Venerable" - I blurted out without thinking. "Venerable" Jerzy never became, but lived a long and turbulent life, was a famous sculptor.

By the way, if you have to visit the residence of the Prime Minister of Israel, pay attention to several busts of Israeli presidents made by Jerzy Terlecki. Strong, expressive modeling... In Moscow, I remember the monument to Alexander Herzen by his work, and the bas-relief "Pushkin and Mickiewicz", - in my opinion, a little pompous: the era of socialist realism had its own notions of greatness.

So, at the funeral of Jerzy Terlecki at the cemetery in Banya, there was an unexpected scandal. However, why unexpected? This man was accompanied by endless scandals in his life, one might say, he, like the king of scandals, dragged along a whole escort of long-burning or recently flared up, as well as fading intrigues, outrages, stories, anecdotes and dramas. And all were exclusively connected with his weakness for the weaker sex. Outwardly, Jerzy was nothing special. His physiognomy was rather impudent than pleasant, in any case, it always seemed to me that this physiognomy of his from the threshold announced itself - get acquainted, they say, I belong to the first scoundrel. But he was tall and broad-shouldered - probably, this means something in the ladies' idea of \u200b\u200bthe beauty of a man? And he was physically strong, as, in fact, it should be for a man of his profession. At one time, I remember, I was fond of karate, but not the philosophy of teaching, but this ostentatious nonsense, when boards, bricks or whatever comes to hand are broken with the edge of a hardened palm ... Then he threw it away, but once I saw how, surrounded by shocked ladies, Jerzy broke with the palm of an object, probably still quite useful, so that marble fragments flew like a fan around.

In short, over his grave, two of his widows converged in grief, or rather, fought to glory, two of his widows, pretty, although not very young women, completely unfamiliar with each other, and each was convinced that she was Jerzy's only legal girlfriend for the last ten years of his life.

But this is not the most remarkable and sad thing in his history; on the contrary, one can even approach this with a fair amount of humor, as did his “main” woman, Rufka, one of the fake widows, who still talks about the tomb tournament to everyone with a sweet reckless smile.

The saddest, I would even say tragic, in history

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Jerzy, in the thoughtless story of his life, these are two sons, abandoned by him to the mercy of fate. Two sons whom he never saw in his life.

It seems that Jerzy completely forgot about the existence of one of them, the "Moscow" son, since he did not pay alimony for him. The mother of this child turned out to be very proud to stoop to requests or litigation. A well-known translator from Polish into Russian, she was generally a well-deserved personality in Russian literature: it was she who, with a certain risk, sent the manuscript of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak to Poland, from where it was then sent to Italy. Several times we met with her in Moscow, we had tea for a long time. She had something to say. Her son from Jerzy Terletsky, Sasha Bolshakov, became a physicist, doctor of sciences, and did well without the attention of such a worthless dad ...

But for his first son, Marek, born to a certain Polish girl Katarzynka, Jerzy paid hefty alimony, as it should be, until adulthood, although he did not see his son in the eyes and did not even want to recognize him as his own, cattle. And all because he was terribly angry with Katarzynka, who masterfully simply managed to make him pay. Listen to how she did it.

Having become pregnant from Jerzy, who by that time had already flown to another flower in search of sweet pollen, she wrote him a letter in which she informed him of her, or rather, of their general position. Jerzy got furious, panicked, and in a response letter, in fact, ordered to get rid of the child - they say, he has neither the time nor the means to mess around with babies, and in general, as they say in such cases, “we parted like ships in the sea” …

But this same Katarzynka, apparently, turned out to be a tough nut to crack and far from being a fool. And when, due time later, Jerzy was called to court, he spun like a snake, fighting off paternity and even transparently alluding to the allegedly unworthy behavior of the plaintiff, who, according to him, paid attention to everyone who asked, so the child - he is convinced of this - has nothing to do with him, the highly moral Jerzy Terletsky.

After these words of his, the judge (by the way, a woman) took out from the folder the same, badly crumpled letter from him to Katarzynka.

“Then take the trouble to explain,” she asked dryly, “why the hell did you interfere in other people’s affairs and demand to get rid of a child with whom you had nothing to do with?”

In short, Jerzy, as he himself later said, "did it up to his ears." He was ordered to pay alimony, and, in addition, the newborn received the father's surname. Meet Marek Terletsky...

Jerzy paid alimony according to the law, but he didn’t want to hear about his son, and when he managed to flee to Paris, he would have completely forgotten about his existence, if not for the hefty amount that monthly descended from his bank account - automatically, but sensitively.

But all this is the beginning, so to speak, of history. And the story itself begins in the early eighties, when the already adult and married son of Jerzy, Marek Terlecki, moved with his wife and two sons to Sweden, became a bus driver there, and played the guitar in a jazz club for the soul in his spare time. And, you know, he played well - you see, he inherited his father's musical abilities. Jerzy, according to the recollections of my parents, he himself liked to sit down at the piano and strum some popular tune, which helped him to seduce the fair sex.

In addition, Marek joined the community of Polish Jews there, in Stockholm, and actively participated in various meetings, assemblies and charity concerts. In a word, just in this he turned out to be the complete opposite of his father - he could not stand cooperating with anyone. And there, in this community, Marek Terletsky met an old Parisian, Monsieur Liechtenstein, who was visiting relatives in Stockholm. They started talking, Marek admitted that he had been looking for his father for a long time, he allegedly also lives in Paris, and it is quite likely ...

- Excuse me, what is his name?

- Terletsky.

– Ezhi?! Lord, I know him very well!

And although he knew that Jerzy could not stand any mention of his offspring and did not want to recognize his son, he was so moved that he decided to give Marek the address of his father - not an apartment, of course, but a workshop in one of the small lanes of the Latin Quarter.

Unfortunately, our good Monsieur Liechtenstein did not know how to keep his mouth shut, and, returning to Paris, he rang about his kindness to everyone he came across, including my parents. Moreover, he knew when Marek was going to come to visit his father.

From this unexpected misfortune, Jerzy was pretty scared - in those years he had already begun to develop paranoia that everyone around him was only eager to rob him - and fled to Spain for the whole summer, leaving the keys to the atelier Rufka, his main mistress.

Marek Terletsky, who arrived at a tender meeting with his parent, wandered around Paris, went on a tour of the castles of the Loire and returned to Stockholm without salt, before leaving, leaving a letter in the mailbox on the doors of the workshop.

Rufka showed me this letter, and she pulled it out of the box. Written in Polish, and, reading, it is difficult to keep from tears:

“Dear Father! I don’t need anything from You, I am provided for everything, I dream of only one thing: to show You my boys, so that they also have a grandfather, whom they have the right to be proud of ”... - and so on, another half page in the same vein.

Rufka had no idea about any sons, secretive Jerzy never told her anything. Upon his return from Spain, she quarreled, of course, promised to lower him down the stairs "for cheating." But then everything settled down. After all, it's a long time ago...

In the last years of his life, Jerzy, like Adam Kozlevich, was seduced by some priests. They promised him to arrange an order for a bust of the Pope, the same one who was a Pole. Such an order, Jerzy imagined, would certainly bring him worldwide fame, these are not portraits of some Israeli presidents. By that time, he managed to sculpt busts of many famous people, for example, Czesław Milosz, a Polish poet and Nobel laureate, but even that was not enough for him, it all seemed that he was not sufficiently awarded prizes and criticism.

However, all these plans and dreams were not destined to come true: Jerzy had a stroke. He was operated on at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Paris, but he never came to his senses. True, when I visited him in the intensive care unit, it seemed to me that he recognized me and even tried to raise his left hand, which had not withdrawn, in greeting ... But perhaps it only seemed to me.

By the way, the nurses attacked me in the ward, finding out who I was and what I had to do with the patient. “There are some women hanging around all the time, and you can’t make out who he is. You see, only relatives are allowed into the intensive care unit… Doesn’t he have any relatives?”

“No, no one,” I said. I don't remember anyone...

A week later, all of us, acquaintances and friends of the sculptor, met at his funeral. Came from Stockholm and his son Marek, notified of the death of his father by the same compassionate and troublesome Monsieur Liechtenstein.

And here it turned out that, due to the lack of a written (as well as oral) will, Marek Terletsky is the only legal

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the heir to Jerzy’s entire property, which, in fact, consisted in his sculptures ... Priests, who appeared at the funeral as a suspiciously monolithic group, rolled up to Marek, claiming that Jerzy allegedly bequeathed his sculptures to the Polish Catholic Center, but due to lack of documentary evidence, they were forced to back off . Rufka associated with the Jewish cultural center in Paris, she tried to persuade Marek to donate at least some of the sculptures to the Center - those in which one could see something more or less Jewish. But she also received a turn from the gate, and not even a very polite one.

After the funeral of his father, Marek received the appropriate document from the notary, confirming his exclusive rights to the inheritance, and Rufka, no matter how she resisted, had to give him the keys to the workshop ...

... A couple of weeks later, old Liechtenstein told me with horror what happened in Jerzy Terlecki's studio on the night before his son's return to Stockholm.

“You can’t even imagine what this young vandal did!” He broke all the sculptures!

- How did you break it? How?!

Well, there is no shortage of tools there. A sculptural hammer, a chisel… I don't know what else sculptors use in their work. He completely killed everything, took the fragments in bags to the trash.

- But why the neighbors ... there was a terrible roar there?

- Excuse me, what are the neighbors? Workshops are empty at night. And if anyone stayed the night, then the noise and drinking among this public can surprise anyone?

He sighed heavily and said:

- Just think: he was not attracted by the money. It is terrible to imagine what bitterness has accumulated in his soul!

I didn’t ask anything more, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t have any special desire to find out the details. But for some reason, a picture immediately appeared before my eyes: with the edge of a hardened palm, young Jerzy is chopping into pieces in front of enthusiastic ladies either a sculpture or a flower pot ... Quite a useful thing.

But some time later, Sasha Bolshakov, another unrecognized son of Jerzy Terletsky, surfaced in Paris. He arrived at some conference on physics there and (his mother had already died by that time) decided to look for traces of his unfamiliar father. You know, when the older generation leaves, there is an unbearable desire to find at least a grain of truth about their youth, dramas, betrayals and love. And then, even after Jerzy's death, I sent Sasha several young photographs of his father, which I found in our family album, two or three catalogs of exhibitions and newspaper clippings - in those days I myself went through the archives of my own father after his death. For Sasha, all this was the only evidence of the connection between Jerzy and his mother, apart from the main and most significant evidence reflected in each mirror.

- Tell me, do you think I look like the sculptor Terletsky? – That was the first question Sasha asked when he met me in Paris. Do you think I'm really his son?

And it seemed that no words, no assurances could completely convince him. God knows why it was so important to him.

On the very first day, he visited the address of Jerzy's former workshop. He knocked on the door of the Algerian concierge and asked if the sculptor Terletsky worked here.

“How, how,” came the reply. “He was a good man, although a bit strange. And you, for an hour, aren't you his son?

- Why did you decide so? Sasha perked up.

- Why?! Lord... Bera, come here! he called his wife. “Look, the guy is asking about Monsieur Terlecki. Look at his paws, at his shoulders ... - the spitting image of a father! It turns out that he also had a son, you think ... It's a pity that the entire inheritance was gone. Your brother did his best ... All night long he was pecking like a woodpecker. At first I thought - should I call the police? And then I said to myself: mind your own business. After all, he was the rightful heir, wasn't he? So, he had the right to settle scores with dad. - He sighed: - And there were these sculptures ... - and spread his arms: - To the ceiling! Needless to say, no one was spared. And why did his father so dopek him?

plum blossom

to Richard Kerner

... I am absolutely sure that one can learn from each nation a special wisdom - poetic. Of course, it is difficult to penetrate the culture of the people without knowing the language. But sometimes something can be grasped even from such a “little thing” as proverbs, sayings, ditties, counts, some jokes or even anecdotes. As for the little things: there are such forms of creativity that are inherent only to this people. The Japanese have haiku, short poems.

Take Jewish jokes. They come directly from the tradition of midrashim - brief cautionary tales that contain a question worth thinking about. Moreover, the answer to the question is often contained in the story itself, you just need to think about it with your brains.

The Japanese have something similar - koan. It's a tiny cryptic sketch or an unexpected question, such as: “By clapping two hands, you make a sound. But what can be extracted with one hand?

The answer to this is: "You are unlikely to succeed if you act alone." Instructive, right?

And here is another koan, more complicated: “On a dark, moonless night, a blind man wanders around the square, holding a lit lamp in front of him. What is she to him?

And the answer ... you will never guess: “He, let's say, does not see anything, but a lit lamp will help the sighted that goes towards the blind. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to think about others.” Oh how! It smells like some kind of moral position.

In general, the Japanese often resort to quoting koans or haiku when they find it inconvenient to say something directly to a person's face. To hint at the excessive talkativeness of the interlocutor, the Japanese will quote a couplet:

Cherry petals have already fallen,

And the sage is slowing down with an answer ...

If it is embarrassing to talk about a topic, he will quote a well-known couplet:

The Nightingale asked the Poet: “Sing my trills with verses!”

The poet replied: “I don’t know anything ...”

Why am I fooling you with all this Japanese preamble? Forgive my many years of teaching habit of explaining everything, chewing and preface each story with a preface. And here's what I wanted to tell you.

About a month ago, my Japanese colleague Ikuo Sogami, a professor at the University of Kyoto, visited me in Paris.

We met him a long time ago, about fifteen years ago, at one of the congresses on theoretical physics (I remember his interesting report very well). Then we met a few more times at other scientific gatherings of this kind in Paris, New York, London ...

The last time was at a conference in Kyoto, where my colleague from Marseilles and I were the only Europeans, despite the fact that more than half of the reports were read in Japanese. Luckily, mathematical formulas are universal all over the world and still managed to grasp some sense of individual performances.

Taking advantage of the position of an emeritus professor, Ikuo once a year travels to Europe, then to America, participates in seminars and at the same time visits old friends. He emailed me that he was going to Paris, asked if I could set aside time for a meeting - he wanted to show his latest papers on particle physics and discuss them. Of course, I gladly responded by inviting him

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have dinner somewhere in a cozy place.

Once, Ikuo lived for several months in Paris, warmly remembered the streets of the Latin Quarter, where he went to dine with his French colleagues from Ecole Normale. So I took him in the evening to Pot de Fer Street, to the familiar restaurant Robert's. I love to go there… You know, you live in some famous European capital for about forty years, you have at your disposal countless restaurants, cafes, trattorias, brasseries… But you will certainly choose and settle in five establishments dear to your heart and stomach and all the guests, visiting relatives and distant acquaintances you take there from year to year. Force of human habit, or what? Or maybe it would be better to say - the routine of preferences.

So, Robert serves traditional French dishes: snails, rooster in red wine, pork offal sausages, Burgundy beef. Haven't tried? It looks like Hungarian goulash. In short, we had a pleasant evening, discussed the latest news from CERN, talked about our views on the future of theoretical physics ... and had a rather hearty dinner, not denying ourselves good wine. It seems that my Japanese friend was satisfied, I’m not even talking about myself - it’s nice to break out of the dungeons of a home diet.

The next day, Ikuo, as it should be for visitors, drove to museums and shops, and on the third, last day of his visit to Paris, he decided to thank me by inviting me to a Japanese restaurant on one of the inconspicuous streets leading from the Panthéon to the Seine. I tried to deny it, but it turned out that Ikuo even had time to look there and book a table for two for the evening.

“You must go to a real Japanese restaurant,” he said. “Most of the local eateries called “sushi bars” are run by Chinese who pretend to be Japanese and have Arabs or Indians in their kitchens. Nothing to do with real Japanese food...

And in the evening we met at the restaurant "At Master Kenzhi". We were escorted to the best table, addressing each by name, with the addition of "sensei".

While we studied the menu, watching from the corner of our eye how the Japanese chef carefully cleans and cuts the fish, a pretty waitress brought us a shrimp cocktail.

"It's a sign of respect," Ikuo explained. – Shrimps are the symbol of the old wise sensei.

- Why shrimp?

He smiled.

“They are bent over like bent old men.

Immediately, we were poured into miniature bowls of sake, a rice alcoholic drink, which is mistakenly called rice vodka or rice wine. Do you know that sake is supposed to be drunk when its temperature is the same as human body temperature, 36 degrees? The strength of the drink was, by our standards, small, eighteen degrees, but it must be borne in mind that the Japanese are generally quite sensitive to alcohol. And even after a meager dose of it, they blush and cheer up, like Europeans after a liter of wine, and Russians or Poles after half a liter of vodka, only not rice, but real. But I again launched into my teaching, sorry!

Well, we drank moderately: both were aged and with a set of native ailments, and the sake in the pot was only two hundred and fifty grams - a sparrow portion! Thinly sliced raw fish with soy sauce, rice and green Japanese wasabi horseradish turned out to be excellent, and after it they also served tempura - these are shrimp, veal and slices of vegetables in dough, fried in boiling oil. In a word, overeating, and nothing more. Moreover, the food is unusually light.

At first we talked all about the same physics, about acquaintances, then somehow by chance we switched to family matters. Ikuo asked if I already have grandchildren? Unpleasant topic! I briefly complained about my three sons, two of whom have already married and divorced, and only the youngest is happily married to his school friend. But all three still somehow have no time to have children, a general European problem, some kind of thoughtlessness and irresponsibility - forgive my categoricalness. Apparently, my wife and I are not destined to experience these joys, which, according to the stories of many, are even deeper and more reverent than the joys of fatherhood.

“Wait, don’t worry,” Ikuo said. “It can still happen. Here, listen to what I'm going to tell you.

And he calmly and even dispassionately, as befits a representative of his people, told me that several years ago he and his wife experienced a tragedy: their eldest forty-year-old son suddenly died, leaving a widow - childless, so this thread of the family was broken.

- remained with us younger son, who then turned thirty-nine, is also married, and also - as my wife said - "empty". We have already come to terms with the idea that we will not see the continuation of the paths of the family ... And suddenly a miracle happened last year: our daughter-in-law gave birth to a daughter! The daughter-in-law is only two years younger than our son, a bit old for a primipara, but the birth went well, and now ... Let me show you!

He pulled his wallet out of his inside jacket pocket, took out a small plastic card the size of a credit card, and handed it to me. It was a photograph of a granddaughter - a tiny Japanese doll no older than six months, lying on a luxuriously embroidered pillow framed with flowers ... The child himself was dressed in a miniature red and blue kimono embroidered with gold, and on an almost bald head there was a hood, also embroidered with flowers and decorated with bells .

“This is my granddaughter,” Ikuo said with solemn pride.

- What was her name?

- Yuno, named after the ancient Roman goddess, the wife of Jupiter. My son has been obsessed with ancient mythology ever since he read comics. But the name Yuno sounds good in Japanese too.

“She is so elegantly dressed up ...” I remarked, looking at a very expensive, apparently, outfit for such a baby: after all, like all babies, she will soon grow out of it. “Pretty expensive,” I said to myself.

“This is a traditional Japanese wedding attire,” Ikuo explained with an enigmatic smile.

Well, yes, how did I not guess! Two years ago, my wife and I visited Japan, in Kyoto, and in one of Sundays went out to walk along the alleys of a luxurious park in the city center. And there, not far from the ancient temple, they saw several couples in anticipation of the marriage ceremony. A very colorful sight: grooms in samurai costumes, and brides in silk, amazingly painted kimonos, in high headdresses with bells. A barely audible thin ringing accompanied the steps of beautiful girls ...

“My sister-in-law came up with the idea of ordering this picture especially for me,” Ikuo said, still smiling. - Handing it to me, she bowed, as it should be according to tradition, at the waist, and said: “My dear father-in-law, Ikuo-san! May your years last to a hundred years and more! But the spirits of the ancestors can yearn and call you to them. ahead of time. And when the time comes for your granddaughter Yuno to step on the wedding carpet, it may happen that you will not be present at her wedding, and this will overshadow her joy. Then I will show her this picture so that she knows that you saw her in a wedding dress, and therefore, as if you were present at her wedding ... "

Satisfied and proud grandfather, Ikuo-san put a photo of his granddaughter into his wallet, winked at me, and suddenly sang

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said:

Remember, friend: in the wilderness

Plum flower hiding...

Even spoken in English, these lines were Japanese in their essence. As is the consolation of my colleague. I thanked him for his sympathy and the hint of a happy future, and we parted as best friends.

And his consolation had an effect on me in the strangest way. I fully realized that I would not have to attend my granddaughter's wedding, especially since she was not even born. And another transparent shadow fell on the soul.

At home, I looked on the Internet and found that mysterious, like everything Japanese, subtly sad poem by Mitsuo Basho, written in the seventeenth century. Perhaps you have to be born Japanese to understand it to the end:

He grew melons

In this garden, and now -

The chill of the evening is here.

planted a palm tree

And upset for the first time

That the reed has risen.

Remember buddy

In the thicket of the forest

A plum flower is hiding.

The snow is spinning, but

This year is the last

Full moon day.

Barguzin

Margarita Chernaya

The name is - Barguzi? n - you, of course, have heard? "Hey, Barguzin, move the shaft!" - this is from a song; remember, in the novel "The Master and Margarita" it is sung by the choir of Soviet officials under the control of the devil?

The song refers to the mighty Baikal wind, a harbinger of sunny weather. And there is also the Barguzin River, which flows into Baikal - all places are extremely picturesque ...

But few people know that this is also the name of an ancient settlement on the banks of the river, which in the middle of the seventeenth century arose as a Cossack prison. My mother was born there (I wanted to joke: “in a prison,” but she resisted, but in vain: her life was a real prison there). But I'm running...

The town, therefore, is tiny, one name, around for boundless versts is the primordially local population - Buryats and Orochs, all excellent hunters and fishermen. You can imagine how many animals there were in those forests: a red wolf, a manul, a snow leopard, and most importantly, the famous Barguzin sable; the river and the lake are full of seals and now almost extinct omul.

Now, do you mind? - a bit of history, you do not know too much. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Barguzin became a place of exile for the political and unreliable, in short, those who posed a threat to the "foundations of society." Well, the former convicts were settled there, because there is nowhere further, further - China. Almost the first exiles were the Küchelbecker brothers; the eldest is still buried at the Barguzinsky cemetery.

And now I don’t know for what reason, but it was Barguzin that became the place of exile for many disgraced Jews.

These settlers, basically educated intelligentsia, being at the mercy of the local icy winds, were forced to take up subsistence farming and trade - somehow they had to survive! And as they mastered these places, as well as with the influx of population, the town expanded and revived incredibly, because, in addition to furs and salted omul, gold mines became a source of profit!

As time went on, over the years, the spontaneous trading operations of the Barguzin dealers and storekeepers acquired more and more civilized forms of exchange of goods, so that, despite the inaccessibility of this truly bearish corner, by the end of the nineteenth century, the brilliance of gold nuggets attracted even cunning Chinese to Barguzin.

It's strange, you know... Now I'm thinking: the Russian settlers in the town did not settle for a long time, and I don't know why. But the fact remains: “in the depths of the Siberian ores”, in a place surrounded by tall rocks of the Barguzinsky Range, on the picturesque banks of the river, originating in the spurs of the wooded mountains, such a peculiar Buryat-Jewish-Chinese international has developed. And, you know, quite harmoniously formed. Maybe the nature of this "Siberian Switzerland", with its harsh stormy winters and scalding short summer contributed to the harmony of such an unusual Buddhist-Jewish symbiosis?

According to the recollections of my mother (to the story of whose life I will soon pick up), this “Babylon in miniature” lived hard, but amicably, in mutual assistance and mutual support. By the way, I inherited from my mother a material confirmation of the Jewish-Chinese cooperation of those times - the “dimensionless” split into two halves Golden ring with a dragon. “That’s why it fell apart,” she said, “because pure gold is very fragile.”

The ring was ordered by the grandfather for his beautiful wife and made by a Chinese jeweler from a gold nugget found on the river bank by one of the Maisels himself.

So we rolled to my taiga ancestors ...

The first Barguzin Meisel, with classic name Abram, appeared here in the second half (if not in the middle) of the nineteenth century. The family legend is always evasive, but what do we have besides fragmentary information supplied by the memory of previous generations? So, according to family legend, Abram Meisel, a man of unbridled disposition, in his youth was involved in political unrest either in Poland or in Germany, because of which he was forced to flee to Russia - or run around Russia - choose whichever is more Like. But the unrestrained sweep of the accursed soul did lead him into the bosom of Narodnaya Volya, and one can only guess what this frantic man did, or at least planned, if as a result he was shackled and sent by stage to Siberia.

The story about the shackles and the stage was even printed in the newspaper. Whether it was "Pravda", "Sibirskaya Pravda" or "Barguzinskaya Pravda" (as well as whether it was true at all) - I can't remember. I remember only a crumpled, half-worn on the folds page, which happened to be held in my hands. It was a long time ago, adolescence when a person does not care about the history of the family, the roots of the clan and other old man's nonsense; so the content of the article has disappeared from memory. But here's the portrait of the legendary progenitor - the "revolutionary", restored from an old photograph (from milestone accompanying documents?) Impressed for life. From the yellowed newspaper page, the completely robber, even brutal physiognomy of great-grandfather Abram looked at me severely: a ferocious gaze from under bushy eyebrows converging on the bridge of an aquiline nose, a disheveled beard ... As far as I managed to find out later, "political" people were not shackled, let alone shackles throughout the stage were the lot of especially notorious thugs. So I am inclined to think that great-grandfather appeared in Barguzin, having left the settlement from hard labor. And why did he end up in hard labor ... I would like to know!

What was Barguzin like in the years when my robber ancestor showed up there? It was as if some kind of free-thinking magnet attracted various “subverters” to those remote taiga places! Kropotkin also walked around the surrounding forests there - as a young officer, he participated in geological expeditions.

At the end of the nineteenth century, quite a few "political" Jews already lived in Barguzin, including the "grandmother of the Russian revolution" Breshko-Breshkovskaya, who subsequently made a daring but unsuccessful escape. The family of the famous talmudist Novomeisky, expelled from Odessa, settled here and grew up, whose son launched gold mining on an impressive scale. He owned several mines and tirelessly

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he sought to introduce technologies that were progressive for those times: he even sent his son Moshe to study mining at one of the best universities in Germany.

But then the revolution arrived, nationalizing all the Siberian mines and enterprises of the Novomeyskys, so that Moshe, who was always remembered with great reverence in our family, abandoned his entire business, including the first industrial dredge in Siberia, transported from England with great difficulty and trouble, very on time, in 1920, he moved with his family to where it is hotter, but calmer - to Palestine. Yes, you are right: this is the same Moshe Novomeisky, the founder of the chemical industry in Israel, who, while still studying in Germany, was carried away by the idea of exploring the mineral wonders of the Dead Sea.

But back to my family. It is not surprising that with such a number of "revolutionaries" per capita of only three thousand people, the families of the exiles in Barguzin were treated with respect. Maybe that is why the “political” version was put at the basis of the family legend of the Barguzin Maisels, which later, under Soviet rule, came in very handy, although it did not save them from dispossession.

So, having appeared “on the map of the area”, my ancestor, the former convict Abram, looked around, settled down, founded a strong economy and, despite his terrifyingly ferocious appearance, married a sweet Jewish girl who, for short term gave birth to a bunch of children for him, a whole platoon of strong, wiry and wayward Maisels - including my grandfather Alexander.

Great-grandfather Abram Meisel himself did not last too long - apparently, the years of hard labor took their toll, but his wife lived a remarkably long life, saved the household, raised children, survived dispossession, the horrors of the Civil War, in which almost all of her sons were dragged and ground, and although she went blind, mourning six coffins at the same time, she lived for a hundred and six years! - up to a ripe old age, protecting the family and busying over numerous grandchildren.

For some reason, she called my mother, her granddaughter Gita, a prosecutor.

So I got to the story of my mother, which I never stop thinking about even years after her departure: about her life and actions. There was not a day that I didn’t think for a moment about her fate, about her innate adventurism, about resisting circumstances and recklessly overcoming obstacles. About my unlucky birth ... In short, about what has been haunting me for many years.

My mother, Maizel Gita Alexandrovna, was born into the family of Alexander Abramovich Maizel and Revekka Yakovlena Potekhina, representatives of the last generation of “real” Barguzin Jews: hard-working, having many children, devoutly attached to the area and their household. Do you know where I saw such families? In Israeli kibbutzim, but I will not be distracted. In their family, all the children from childhood were accustomed to constant work: who cleaned the flocks of cattle, who grazed horses, who looked after the younger ones, who looked after the oven, who - like the older brothers Yakov and Joseph - prepared hay for the winter. The farm was not small, prosperous - and there were cattle, and horses, and a large farmstead, so there was enough work for everyone.

Mother told little about her father Alexander: he was laconic and stern. But about her mother, my grandmother Riva, she always spoke with adoration, called a wise patient. I didn’t find my grandfather or grandmother, but I still have their photographs behind the glass of the bookshelf: grandfather is an almost exact copy of Abram Meisel, grandmother, even in old age, is a biblical beauty with a kind tired face. By the way, these two physiognomic types continued in the family: either the coarse-hewn “Christ-sellers” after the grandfather, or after the grandmother, even mixed with other blood: at least write the icons of Christ and the Mother of God from them. But in the characters of many Maisels, the adventurism and freedom-loving ancestor Abram always dominated.

Outwardly, the mother went to grandmother Riva, she was very beautiful! But in terms of character, she raked all the will of the Maisels, all the imperiousness and contempt for any reflection. Her favorite phrase, which became the nightmare of my childhood and youthful years: "Through hardship to the stars!" - pronounced by her in Latin for any reason. This family desire “through thorns” for any goal was enough for her to break out of a deaf corner of the taiga, study as a doctor in Irkutsk, become a “star of Vladivostok”, fall in love with the youngest and brilliant Rear Admiral of the Pacific Fleet ... And at once lose all the moment I was born.

But in order.

She studied well at school, but most importantly, she stood out for such artistry and glibness in the drama circle that the leader even advised her to go to Moscow "for reading courses" or something like that. Grandfather Alexander heard this news not at the best moment and was directly furious. He barked: “My daughter is an actor?! I will kill! Go out to the flock, clean the Dawn ... "

And she had already bitten the bit, already felt an itch in her shoulder blades, already realized that her whole future life will be buried in a flock for cattle.

At night, she collected a bundle with the most necessary things, persuaded her younger brother Abrashka to help her, and in the morning left the house allegedly “for a minute, to her friend.” Waiting outside the outskirts of her brother, she is without money! on translations! rides! - I got to Irkutsk, where I entered ... for some reason, a medical institute (maybe it was there that I found a place in the hostel?), Which, however, I never regretted.

Grandfather then forgave his prodigal daughter - not immediately, of course - but when she came to visit already a certified doctor; forgave, hugged, kissed ... and was proud of the rest of his life. But all this was later, later, and her studies fell just during the years of the Great Patriotic War, and her mother, working after lectures as a nurse in an evacuation hospital, still managed to run to the “Plyatt studio”, organized at the evacuated Moscow City Council Theater. And when did everything work out?

She chose a strange, masculine specialization: a dermatovenereologist. But this specialization was surprisingly suited to her character: sharp, stubborn, truly masculine. No sentiment!

After graduating from the institute, she was assigned to the Tuva Autonomous Republic: there were enough syphilis and other “diseases from love” there. Mother had so many stories about those three years of hard practice! She willingly told them in my presence, in no way protecting my childish imagination from the harsh prose of the relationship between the sexes. Vice versa. Growing up with her, I learned a lot of things first hand in the very early age and understood a lot of things about real, and not bookish life, for which I am still grateful to my mother.

“They gave me a horse, since I have been in the saddle since childhood! - said the mother. “They were told to go to some remote area. So I jumped there, I look: a yurt, a shaman runs around it, beats a tambourine, and in a yurt a woman gives birth, suspended from the ceiling ... Well, for three whole years I lived alone in a separate yurt - like the Queen of Tuva, - with shamans I fought, twice escaped poisoning, I was shot twice, the lice almost ate me to death ... And what a luxurious practice: syphilis, gonorrhea, gonorrhea, hard chancre! Practiced for a lifetime! But ordinary Tuvans respected me, they even gave me a fur coat as a parting gift!”

By the way, I remember this coat very well:

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from forbidden sable, heavy, oily, black-brown with a golden spark ... it served us for many years.

Having trumpeted in Tuva, as it should be, for exactly three years, mother moved to Ulan-Ude, where for some time she worked in a railway hospital; and there a certain patient who asked a young but experienced doctor for a secret consultation on a “sudden problem” that overtook him after a long-distance flight - this rather high-ranking patient offered her a transfer to Vladivostok.

The offer at that time was tempting, even stunning: a closed military port, a Far Eastern salary supplement, good supplies, a separate room in a communal apartment, romance, the sea ... Finally, the sailors. The height of dreams of a young unmarried doctor.

She agreed, of course. She said: “And I opened a new page in my life!” She was always a little exalted, and all this somehow got along with professional medical harshness and mocking cynicism.

Here it would be necessary to somehow describe, somehow “draw a picture”, so that you feel the unique atmosphere of Vladivostok covered with maritime romance of those years, a closed Pacific outpost, decorated with kumach streamers with the famous Leninist quote: “Vladivostok is far away, but the city is ours!"

Despite the closed regime, the cultural life of the city was much richer and richer than other central and completely open cities of the Union. Notable artists- musicians and entertainers - aspired to go on tour in front of the enthusiastic and grateful connoisseurs of the art of the hospitable and generous city. The glory of the troupe of the local drama theater thundered throughout the Far East, the intelligentsia and officers of the fleet met at literary and musical evenings in the House of Officers - a kind of elite club, in luxury and brilliance second only to the legendary Golden Horn restaurant, where sailors who returned from long trips and their chic girlfriends are, as a rule, graduates of the Institute of Arts and the Faculty of Humanities of the Far Eastern University ... And in the summer, the joys of seaside life were added to all this cultural feast: evening promenades along the embankment, trips to distant bays with exotic names Shamora and Humora (to sunbathe on city beaches considered trivial), as well as trips to the most picturesque Sikhote-Alin Reserve for an exquisite spectacle: blooming lotuses.

And in this city, my mother, as a promising young specialist, received a room with a balcony in a spacious communal apartment: only six families have two kitchens and two bathrooms - an incredible luxury! - in a house known to the residents of Vladivostok as the “Grey Horse” (either the sculptures of horses on the pediment contributed to the strange name, or the color of the uniform of the railway workers, the main inhabitants of this departmental housing).

But it really was a “new page” in her fate!

She quickly settled in, instantly acquired friends and a whole staff of admirers (her own sarcastic words: “there were always enough males!”) And began to live the life of a young socialite.

My mother always dressed in style, which would seem surprising to those who knew the origins of her fate, which began in a flock of cattle. For new outfits, using, as a doctor of a railway clinic, free travel to any part of the country, she visited the Riga Fashion House. Her friends told me, after her death, that the neighbors at the Gray Horse guarded every mother's exit from the house: "lick off the cut."

She regularly visited literary evenings in the House of Navy Officers, and she herself participated in theatrical productions, where she recited with pleasure and considerable success. That's where it splashed out, where her crushed stage gift blossomed! Particularly popular in her performance were the scene of Katyusha Maslova's parting with Nekhlyudov, the scene at the fountain of Marina Mniszek with False Dmitry, and Olga Bergholz's poem "The Leningrad Metronome". I remembered these texts to a ripe old age.

Her inner circle included well-known artists in the city, journalists, doctors. Yes, she herself was considered one of the best doctors in her field ...

In a word, the "star of Vladivostok" lived beautifully, elegantly and cheerfully. But getting married somehow did not work. Either her character was too independent and sharp, or she didn’t meet her prince, but by the age of thirty-five, the usual thoughts of a normal woman began to visit her about the fact that youth is not eternal, that years are flying; about that notorious glass of water in old age ...

All my life my mother used to set goals and achieve them. So, to a new goal - to give birth to a baby - she rushed in her usual manner: not headlong, but having built a clear plan. She herself repeatedly admitted this to me, never hid it, never threw a romantic veil on her thoughts and actions. Her famous phrase "there were always enough males!" that's how it sounds in my ears. But here, after all, it was not about the male, but about the father of the unborn child. Well, if you give birth for yourself in a planned, so to speak, order, then, of course, from a manufacturer with high quality parameters: so that you have excellent health, and some kind of intellect, and outwardly ... so that you don’t spoil your maternal genes. A man with such a combination of physical and mental qualities could be found in the conditions of Vladivostok - where? And here is where: among the navigators of long-distance navigation. They are hardened by the sea, and they regularly pass a medical examination, and they have a serious profession, not for fools.

This plan required a transfer from the railway department to the maritime department, namely, to the medical board of the polyclinic of the Far Eastern Shipping Company, through which almost the entire “seafarers” passed. The place is thieves, it is not easy to get there. But mother did not recognize obstacles in her path. She swept them away with almost the power of thought. To solve the problem, all connections were involved, not to mention personal charm and frenzied pressure, before which any obstacles crumbled and someone else's will sank. So this intermediate peak was soon conquered.

The matter now remained small: to scan the frames and choose the best option for the “producer”, and mother never doubted her ability to charm and fall in love with anyone.

Quite often I look at her photographs of that time. They are black and white, so neither the deep blue of her expressive eyes nor the amazing complexion can be seen on them. However, it is the uncompromising black-and-white picture that gives a dispassionate account of a lithe figure, a lush wave of black shiny hair and a smile that is simply impossible to resist.

I don’t know how long the process of studying potential fathers lasted, but as a result, the choice fell on the ideal candidate, according to my mother: a stately handsome Estonian, a future sea captain.

My mother never spoke much about him and thought that it was not necessary for me to know the details. I think, if it were her will, she would have presented my birth as the result of an immaculate conception. From the meager information that I managed to extract from her in moments of good mood,

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I only realized that at the time of their short romance, the “manufacturer” was married and had a three-year-old daughter. All this suited the mother: the daughter is a confirmation of the ability to become a biological father, the family is an excuse for her refusal to further relations. True, much later, mother's friends said that the modest, laconic "donor" was so blinded by the attention of the "star of Vladivostok" to him that he was ready to terminate his marriage for her sake.

I never found out what his name was - my mother was stubbornly silent. According to the recollections of her friends, some unusual name - either Holger, or Härmel ... Everyone called him just Zhenya. After an affair with his mother - a blinding flash that illuminated his reserved life - he returned to the family and subsequently became the father of two more girls. So somewhere I have three sisters... There was a period when I tried to find them and every time I ran into incomprehensible violent resistance of my mother. And now, as they say, the train has left. Well, sisters ... So what? What, in the end, is all this DNA, or what is identical in the blood and appearance of strangers to each other?

In a word, mother achieved her goal: after several meetings, she triumphantly made sure that she was pregnant. It remained only to safely endure and give birth to a child, and then ... Then happy maternal cares awaited her.

And here life gave her a slap in the face! She fell in love for the first time ... Fell in love so that all her abilities to plan, command, insist and achieve went to hell somewhere!

They met at a party with mutual friends and an hour later they just left together, unable to separate their clasped hands. He was the youngest rear admiral of the Pacific Fleet, even his name is so elegant, catchy: Boris Orestovich Korsak! - dizzy. He wasn't handsome, and he wasn't tall, but he was damn charming, gallant, with a chased bearing... Pitchy hair, a thin nose, burning black eyes, impetuous movements, charming humor... In a word, a brilliant officer! They were even somewhat similar to their mother - a wonderful couple. The novel was fast-paced and stormy. The Rear Admiral, who lost his head, gave Matushkina honor "a salute from all the Pacific ships", filled her with gifts, sweets and daily baskets of flowers ...

Needless to say, mother instantly turned the Estonian, who was still “entangled underfoot”, one hundred and eighty degrees in the direction of the former family, so that even against the background of the picture it would not accidentally appear, and ...

Here this smartest cold-blooded woman gave up, committed major mistake own life. She presented to Boris the child conceived with an Estonian, the fruit of their crazy love with Boris!

By some sayings, I know that the unlucky and innocent "producer" several times made an attempt to sort things out, for which he received the stigma of "bastard" in her mouth for the rest of his life (perhaps she did not quite understand that the "bastard" was like if not him, but I, the child so famously and so stupidly conceived by her). In a word, the "bastard" resisted and did not want to give up their positions. She even had to use all the levers and connections available to her in order to transfer him - albeit with a promotion - to the Yuzhno-Sakhalin Shipping Company, where he then trumpeted for many years as a sea captain.

Needless to say, throughout the pregnancy, mother was surrounded by the reverent care of the Rear Admiral. He practically left the family, leaving his wife and two teenage sons. The only misfortune: my mother was already finishing the time when Boris Orestovich was forced to go for five months to command some kind of training campaign, so my mother went to the maternity hospital on Tigrovaya Gora alone, on foot - fortunately, it was not far away.

And so I was born...

I think it was the hardest blow in her life. For some reason, she decided, and all these months she persuaded herself, that the burning Jewish blood would prevail over the cool Baltic, and outwardly the child will go to her relatives, at the same time reminiscent of Boris ... But contrary to her confidence, I was born white, gray-eyed, "alien" - an exact copy of the "bastard" and the complete opposite of my mother. In the maternity hospital, everyone was touched, congratulated her and praised the “little white”, “dandelion”, the mother turned to stone ... Her diary has survived to this day, even years later she did not consider it necessary to black out this entry - she always did not care who and what about her thinks, even if it was me, her only child. Sometimes I flip through this diary, wondering why she didn't destroy it? It is impossible to make a mistake in the recording date, this is my birthday: “All in him, in this bastard! How I do it - a dork, this chump! I hated my whole pregnancy! Everyone congratulates me, rejoices for me, and no one knows WHAT is going on in my soul right now!

And the rear admiral from his training campaign sent her hot letters with deep implications, choked in passionate declarations of love and dreams of “seeing your baby as soon as possible”, for which, during the squadron’s entry into Indonesia, “dad bought a lovely dress!”. Mother kept this dress all her life as the most precious relic, periodically taking it out of a beautiful cardboard box and saying: “The rear admiral brought this from Indonesia for you!” beautiful ... Why are you so shaking over him?

And now he's back! And straight from the ship - to her, or rather, to them - to his dear beloved and dear baby ...

I often tried to imagine this moment: how he tinkles without lifting his finger from the bell button, bursts in, grabs it in the hallway, how he rushes into the room, bends over and freezes over my bed ... And each time my imagination retreated embarrassedly, turning away from this blasphemous scene.

It is strange that of all his letters - ardent, feverish, in love - she left not destroyed only this coldly polite letter, a thick dot over the "i", as if she wanted it to remind her all her life ... of what? About the failure of a brilliant plan? Or would it serve as a kind of scourge in order to whip yourself on the shoulders, on the cheeks for the rest of your life?

There are only a few sentences, rather colorless for such a strength of offended feelings. Apparently, the rear admiral, a true gentleman, an officer, a real man, restrained himself to the last of his strength so as not to trample the woman he loved, not to destroy with a word. An uninteresting, in essence, letter: they say, “you yourself understand that after such a monstrous deliberate lie, relations between us can no longer ...” and so on.

Nothing, she survived ... She always survived.

In the column "father" of my birth certificate, I entered some unknown Cherny Leonid Semenovich - God knows what kind of phantom it was.

She worked hard, lifting me up, always grabbing extra duty - it was not easy alone, the cheerful life of the “star of Vladivostok” ended in all respects. Perhaps she could arrange her own fate - it seems that way it sounds? But she didn’t, although she was in excellent shape for many more years and, according to her favorite saying, there were still enough males. Nobody, nobody hurt her...

When - already a deep old woman - she went unconscious

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from life, without uttering an intelligible word for many days, before the very end she suddenly called out in a clear voice:

- Boris! Boris! Don't leave...

By the way, I have nothing to complain about, she was a good mother: she tried to give the best education for those times, from the age of six she took me to figure skating, to music. She was assigned to the most prestigious English school in the Far East. From the fourth grade, she sent me to the best camp "Sailor" for the whole summer, and later, when I grew up, she took me with her on various trips: either for a whole month across the country on a tourist train, where she got a job as a doctor during the holidays, then on a ship , on the tour "On the islands and lands of the Far East" ...

Yes, she was a good, strict mother, she always proudly emphasized that she kept me in a "hedgehog". And this, by God, was not out of place: I grew up as a self-willed, stubborn impudent girl: all the same, for some part I inherited the character of the taiga Maisels - a character without which none of them would have survived there, at the foot of the Barguzinsky ridge.

Jerusalem, September 2015

Topolev Lane

Sofia Shurovskaya

Topolev lane has long been demolished from the face of the earth ...

It flowed in the area of Meshchansky streets - a cobblestone pavement, houses no higher than two or three floors, front gardens behind a low wooden fence, and there among dahlias, sunflowers and "golden balls" tall poplars grew, so that in due time it swirled over the alley and flew into deep arches of innumerable courtyards, weightless fluff huddled in dirty heaps.

To imagine Topolev, you just need to mentally draw the letter G, one of the crossbars of which rests on Durov Street, and the second on Vypolzov Lane. In the corner of this very letter G stood a three-story house with another huge passage yard lined with shacks with front gardens. House number seven. The inhabitants of the alley said: house seven. It is not far, they said, behind the family; get out of the house, turn left, and there - at hand.

It was a stone's throw to Durov Street, where the famous Durov's Corner lived its complex life. Every morning little man in breeches he took the elephant Punchi and the camel Rancho for a walk, so that in Poplar Lane these animals were not considered exotic.

It was also within easy reach of the Burevestnik stadium - in fact, a deserted place where they got simply by climbing over the fence from the house.

It was also within easy reach to the CDSA complex - and there was a park, a club, a cinema; in winter - a skating rink, real, with music (Sonya had “eiders” popular at that time on black boots), in summer - yellow dandelions in green grass and a pond around which social life circled slowly: girls walked decorously with officers.

It was a stone's throw to the famous star-shaped theater, where the magnificent funerals of the military took place. Dressed-up neighbors ran to them, as if to performances. And how - after all, beauty!

The change of seasons took place in the cramped land of front gardens. The grass, short and weak in the spring, grew enormously by the time they returned from the dacha at the end of August and always made a stunning impression on Sonya, like the girlfriends from the yard, who also grew like grass and changed beyond recognition over the summer. In autumn and spring, on the bare land, the boys played "knives": they drew a circle where everyone got their own allotment, and the next piece was chopped off as the knife fell into someone else's share. When there was no longer anything to stand on and had to balance on one leg - like a silly peasant in a picture in a textbook - a person was expelled from society. Nice educational game.

Even mushrooms grew in the front gardens, they were collected by Korzinkina long before mushrooms were considered mushrooms in cultural circles. She curls up like a pretzel, looking out for a white tuber of a mushroom under the window, and at the same time she quarrels with her son: “When are you getting married?” “And when you, mother, die, then I will marry. There is nowhere to bring your wife.” The son, a sensible man, sat by the window and talked to his mother - as if from a podium - from the height of the windowsill.

At Easter, the front gardens were covered with painted eggshells - green, golden, ocher, purple; iridescent rubbish of national forgiveness. And when the Buntovnikovs' neighbors once a year received guests on Tatyana's Day, the whole family went out into the front garden and cleaned the cutlery, sticking knives and forks into the ground with force. As if a gang of murderers tormented the chest of the crucified victim.

The surroundings of Topolev all consisted of passage yards - endless, bottomless and inescapable, lined with huts.

These lovely bedbugs, mostly wooden, were mainly inhabited by the thieves' public. It is rare that no one was in a family. In childhood, for some reason, this did not seem strange to Sonya: life, stitched with burrow paths of courtyards, did not seem to reject and even assumed some kind of ornateness in relations with the law.

However, there were also Tatars, a more cultured stratum of the population. Their fine turquoise mosque stood at the crossroads of Vypolzov and Durov. On Fridays, clean, polite old men went there to pray - in boots, which were wearing pointed galoshes, and on holidays young people crowded (looking for acquaintances), prayers were broadcast on the street, and tram number 59 always got stuck at the crossroads. On weekdays, horse meat was sold near the mosque, there was a quiet trade, although not everyone approved of this trade: whatever you say, a horse is a man’s friend.

But the presence of the mosque even had an ennobling effect on the current life: in 1956, for example, the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Yemen, Emir Seif al-Islam Mohammed al-Badr, visited their region - how! By the time the Shah-in-Shah and his wife Sureya arrived, Vypolzov Lane had not only been asphalted in one night, but the facades of the nearest houses had also been painted. So Topolev was, one might say, in the thick of political events.

And on the corner of Durov and Topolev stood the GINTSVETMET building - State Institute non-ferrous metals. Behind the high fence one could see a brick departmental house for specialists - the intelligentsia lived there. The house was privileged, as if separated from the rest of the population of Topolev Lane. For example, Sonya's family lived in a separate apartment. But no phone. The phone was in a communal apartment on the second floor, and they called my mother there; neighbor Claudia pounded the heating pipe with a knife, and her mother responded to her - under the ribbed silver battery there was always a copper pestle at the ready. Claudia spoke sedately into the phone:

- Wait a minute! Now she fits...

This apartment - a huge, two-room apartment - they received in those days when dad served as deputy director of the institute for scientific work. Mom said that he was a talented scientist, but unhappy. According to the warehouse of intellect - a generator of ideas. He invented processes that were twenty years ahead of technology. Before the introduction of many did not live. In the era of the heyday of cosmopolitanism, true well-wishers came to their house one evening, and dad was offered ... In general, this quiet choked speech in the hallway looked something like this in my mother’s program: “We appreciate you, Arkady Naumych, and do not want to lose. Until a fire is lit under us, leave of your own free will. Dad

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And so he did: he took the laboratory. As a child, Sonya did not understand how this was done: "take a laboratory." I imagined how dad takes under his arm all the employees, drafting tables, appliances, a whole corridor on the second floor ... and proudly walks into the distance. Nonsense! And there was no longer any opportunity to ask him himself: dad died when Sonya was five years old. Dad died, but his family - mom, Sonya and the much older brother Lenya - remained to live in the same two-room apartment. And everything remained the same: in the large room there was a round table on confident legs, always covered with a tablecloth, which mother was very proud of - brown coarse velvet, with fine embroidery in dark gold thread. On a heavy Riga trellis stood two porcelain figurines of slender girls in sundresses. When rubbing the furniture, the housekeeper each time put them twenty centimeters to the right, which my mother liked. And each time, my mother silently rearranged them. This went on for years...

Fingers, Barashkov, Samarsky, Vypolzov - in fifty years the names of all these lanes will sound for Sonya with distant aching music ...

By the way, everyone loved music, fragments of songs, marches, opera and operetta arias, concerts at the request of radio listeners rushed from everywhere. Concerts were arranged by the public itself in the yards. Uncle Lesha, a compositor at the Pravda printing house, took his green mother-of-pearl accordion and, resting his gray head on it, almost with tears in his eyes bulging behind glasses, he wrote out the same thing in the very upper register - “Across the wild steppes of Transbaikalia” .

An iron outer staircase led to the second floor of the house. Everyone who wanted to sit down there, the artists dressed up in all sorts of things. Girlfriend Lidka climbed into her open window, put on a record at full volume, and the concert began: “Fly pigeons, fly-and-and-those ...”

Lidka especially beautifully turned out viscous compassionate songs, she had a piercing soprano:

It pours and pours

Like years

In wild haunts

Miracle water…

Everyone was talented and constantly inspired. Vova Suleymanov, a fat, flabby boy, loved by his mother and older sisters, folded his breasts until a hollow formed, pulled over his mother’s Khokhloma scarf (dress to the floor!), He announced himself: “Margarita Lugovaya is speaking!” - and sang:

Here comes the morning

The waters blush,

A fast seagull flies over the lake.

She has a lot of freedom

And a lot of space...

The beam of the soo-o-o-o-sun of a seagull silvers its wing ...

What the hell, Robertino! Even adults could not stand it: “Margarita Lugovoi”, so as not to be offended, was allowed to salt a couple of verses, and then the whole yard entered. It was super powerful! And only the poplar fluff rose and fell in time with the heaving breasts.

Needless to say, everyone easily went to each other, helped in big and small, quarreled, put up, drank, gossip, because they knew everything about each other the most intimate.

And if we are talking about the secret ...

... But first - about the family. After my father's death, there were three of them left: mother, Sonya and Lenya, brother. Or rather, like this: first Lenya, and then, oh, oh, already Sonya - on the exhale, as my mother used to say, "a female career." She liked to repeat: from the first husband I have a son, from the second - a daughter and a heart attack. Lenya was short, smiling, obsessed with butterflies since childhood. It is strange that at the same time he graduated from the naval school in Leningrad, after which he received a distribution to the North - Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya, Severomorsk ... So far from Topolev Lane! I was in Moscow on business trips, and on vacation I went to catch butterflies, some endemic that is found on a single hill behind a certain small Armenian village. Once he was arrested - in shorts and with a net - a stone's throw from the state border. From there, they contacted his command, and they said: “Do not hesitate, this is our crazy man on vacation” ... In Sonya’s childhood, coming on a business trip, Lenya (black uniform, with gold, and a dagger!) Ride her on a boat in the CDSA park and lied I was scared that he couldn't swim.

Once - Sonya was six years old - he took her to visit a famous entomologist. He lived in two huge rooms in a bottomless communal apartment somewhere on the Patriarchs, and all the walls of these two rooms from floor to ceiling were sewn up with shelving, on which flat white boxes stood close, ribbed, so that it seemed: on all sides you were surrounded by a deaf wall. The owner, one by one, took out completely identical boxes with some kind of boring cabbages, which millions flew in the country, and Lenya gasped in shock, screamed, clicked his tongue ...

Finally, the brother remembered her, said: “Oh, yes, I have a little sister here. Could you show her something?"

He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance, grunted: “Well, well ... is this, perhaps?”

He went to the opposite wall, hung with a long white curtain, pulled it back ...

There, right on the wall, there were glazed boxes with a wonderful, stunning, breathtaking world! They were probably not butterflies, butterflies simply could not be: iridescent fans, an Indian dream, a magic lantern, colored placers of precious stones - that's what it was! Sonya stood rooted to the spot with a sigh stuck in her throat and looked, looked, could not tear her eyes away.

Five minutes later, almost without looking, the owner mechanically drew the curtain, and he and Lenya returned to their boring cabbage girls. And for a long time Lenya continued to examine boxes with dull white cabbages, groaning admiringly and shaking his head.

The characters of Topolev lane over the years after his disappearance have not been erased from Sonya's memory at all, and have not even faded at all. They were remembered in a certain perspective - an endless pulsating clip, assembled from flashes of memory, sun-drenched poplar fluff and spreading stucco of alabaster July clouds.

And in the background is a leisurely morning caravan: Punchi the elephant with a trunk twisted up like a teapot handle, and Rancho the camel with a sullenly incorruptible face. Growing up, growing old, never dying now - now that all the old essences have rapidly changed and new ones have arisen, unprecedented and unthinkable in her childhood and youth - the characters of Sonya's childhood changed, at the same time remaining themselves.

For example, Lidka-vruha, Sonya's main girlfriend from the family, remained a skinny yard girl who assured that she didn’t have a dad, because he was on guard at the Mausoleum, and at the same time - a young woman with a baby in the fold of a full white arm. For Lidka grew up, became handsome, married a petty employee of either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the KGB - something from the lower echelon - who was called by the mossy name Poluekt. They had all the boys in the family were called Poluektami. Lidkin's husband, therefore, was called Poluekt Poluektovich, like some merchant from Ostrovsky's play. And when Lidka's son was born, he was also named Poluekt by his official order - you can’t argue against family tradition. And soon Lidka's husband was sent to Paris - either as a security guard, or as a driver, or as a tramp at the embassy, and Lidka, shaking the boy on the bend of a full elbow, gently blowing an eyelash from his rounded cheek, with inspiration repeated how great it was, what exactly Paris because

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there will be Semi-Ectic in Paris - Paul!

The Sindorovskys, a family of proud Poles - all tall, lean, arrogant! - lived in the GINTSVETMET house. Their servant Nyura was just as lean and tall. Klavdia, who knew everything about everyone, assured that “himself” every day takes to work a fresh handkerchief starched by Nyura, and if it is not ironed flawlessly, she silently crumples it and throws it in the dirty ...

In the same apartment, a huge room was occupied by the Queen of Spades - an old, smoky, flat, as if cut out of plywood, in a long skirt, with a fox crawling out on her shoulders. (Interesting: did she go with the fox in the summer, or did Sonya’s memory choose this particular picture for the video?) In the yard they said that the Queen of Spades was a former maid of honor, but later Sonya came to the conclusion that this was a myth, because both in childhood and in her youth met similar women with a supposedly palace past. Apparently, for the common people's imagination, a certain attractive mystery still lurked in this plot.

Sonya was not at all interested in the past of the Queen of Spades, but her daughter was interested in her - a powerful woman with a lion's mane, who picked up men for herself, as a lion chooses his prey, lazily discarding the victim with his paw. Once, Sonya and Lidka the liar personally saw how the daughter of the Queen of Spades was walking along the alley of the CDSA park, and a man followed her with a desperate jump, timidly grabbing her by the arm, then by the shoulder. Finally, he ran ahead and somehow suddenly fell at her feet (Sonya assured Lidka that she stumbled, she swore that she collapsed in prayer!). This in itself was damn exciting, but what followed that struck the girls on the spot: the Lioness simply stepped over the lying boyfriend and, without slowing down her step, but without adding it, and without looking back, she followed on.

A giant lived in their apartment: the grandson of the Queen of Spades and the son or nephew of the Lioness, named Sergey - a very handsome boy of very tall stature. At ten years old, he looked like a normal man. At fifteen, he was taller than everyone else in Topolyov Lane. At seventeen he became a real giant, so he could only sit in public transport.

And a separate brilliant bookmark in her memory is Kolya, her first love from the day when in the yard (he and Sonya were five years old), Kolya authoritatively told her that the whole world consists of yolk.

He lived in the next entrance and was a genius from birth: he wrote poetry, drew, always read some popular science books. The physical education teacher followed Kolya on his heels, begging the family to send the boy to professional sports, because "such jumping occurs once every hundred years."

From the age of nine, he studied some unusual, non-main languages. For some reason, he was interested in Georgian, Tatar, Armenian. He even went to the mosque at the corner of Durov and Vypolzov (he spoke, for practice), where he pestered the old people with long, halting monologues in Tatar. He told Sonya that he saw Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser there - he was sitting on the carpet in Turkish, like an ordinary Tatar: in his socks, without shoes.

Kolya's grandmother - she came from a family of Volga merchants - although she had lived in Moscow for forty years, she still sang and sang, uttered tricky rhyming proverbs: "Boil once - burn, cook twice - wake up fat ...". And grandfather was a hunchback, black-browed, bearded, with large moles on his face. He looks like Chernomor from the book "Pushkin's Tales", where he drags a well-fed hero in gray chain mail and embroidered with gold boots through the forests, across the seas, on his shaggy beard.

Sonya was terribly afraid of him, and when dinner time approached (in those years everyone went home to dine), she tried to disappear from the yard. But sometimes it didn't work. The hunchback - in a shirt girded with a belt, like Leo Tolstoy in the Ogonyok magazine - approached her, smiling, and kissed her. He definitely kissed her! A kind sweet man, he was the nightmare of her childhood. She froze in the middle of the alley, her legs became cottony, her whole body was filled with icy horror ... The hunchback leaned to her cheek with all his moles, kissed her and went on to dine. He was the chief accountant of GINTSVETMET, Spiridon Samsonych. His terrible innocent kiss was erased with disgust by both palms. And the boy Kolya, big love Sonya's childhood, he was his grandson, so-and-so ...

As a teenager, Kolya fell in love with Olka Salamatova from the ninth "B". I didn’t eat sweets at home, I took everything to her. His grandmother, the one from the Volga merchants, said to her grandson and the flier:

- And well, oh, we also have wedding rings ... Nikolai and Olga, well, oh ...

But for some reason Olka's family did not accept Kolya. Her dad was some kind of tough guy in the city police and he considered Kolya "crazy". Once or twice the guy received verbal, so to speak, warnings, and in the end, in one of the darkest courtyards, he was hard on his sides. In a word, they fought him off Olka so stubbornly that she gave up. Kolya was terribly worried, then he reconciled ... Five years later he married some kind of swindler, began to drink, go crazy, wander around anywhere ... The grandmother, who was from the Volga merchants, was still alive, she grieved very much. She sighed, said, singing: “The fourth one is her own mother, half a damask is her own father ...”

She grieved very much: she had another grandson, Lesha, Colin's younger brother. Normal boy. Ordinary. And Kolya was her favorite ...

Circus circuses lived in Topolevoe as a separate shalapy and shably colony. They occupied a huge communal apartment on the third floor of the family house, open to all winds, with a door forever beaten out, never locked. They did not belong to the Durov Corner, but to the Circus on Tsvetnoy. It was a strange traveling family, and although inside it, like larvae, real families swarmed, it still seemed that, despite the fights and endless skirmishes, each neighbor had a kinship relation to the other.

For the local children, all the circus people were courtyard idols, friends, local gods ... Hanging around among the drinking circus people, one could hear amazing stories:

Chimpanzees are precious animals! They have a diet, you know, - any count will envy: both fruits and fish, sometimes they put out a wine for them, but what about ... So the Burovtsev couple, trainers, went on vacation last year, left their precious chimpanzees on the stage worker with five boxes excellent food, including, excuse me, Madeira. They returned, found a picture: that drunken dunce was sitting, boiling potatoes in their uniforms in a pot. Around him, five monkeys gathered in a circle with outstretched arms. And from time to time he throws a potato over his shoulder. Those poor fellows catch, blow, burn themselves, roll the potato in their hands and piss like pretty little ones on both cheeks ...

Aerial gymnast Valka Mazrukhina, before each performance, put a penny to the icon of St. Nicholas, considered him her patron. And after the performance, she got drunk - subtly, imperceptibly, no one knows where. And then, until night, she hung around the yard with a dull, dumbfounded look, clinging to everyone who caught her eye, running into a fight. Cursing earnestly, passionately - like she was doing a prayer. When drunk, she did not know another language.

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The next morning, having smeared a fresh black eye, as if nothing had happened, she went out to the arena. She boasted that she never rehearsed, that she had done the number a long time ago, back in her youth, and was not going to change until retirement ... Apparently, she was pulling out the memory of muscles, accumulated from her youth, - so an old alcoholic who forgot the address of his house, no longer distinguishes between familiar faces in a daze Shalman, continues to mutter unsteadily under his breath what he had learned in the fourth grade: “A storm covers the sky with darkness, twisting snow whirlwinds ...”

Almost every circus performance was attended by a handful of "friends" from the yard. And Sonya and Lidka the liar almost every week followed Valka Mazrukhina, she even brought them to the dressing room. If there were no seats in the hall, they watched the performance from wherever they had to - even from the aisle, pushing with their shoulders and at the most terrible moments of transcendental heights pushing each other away or clasping their hands. A mighty whirlwind of circus smells: fresh sawdust, rat urine, the perfumes of numerous ladies... - this primordial circus smell excited, inflated and poured into the veins a happy feeling of a holiday.

Valkin's drinking buddy and friend Nora Bulygina soared high. In her youth, she worked in the room of her husband Andryukha - "gymnasts on perches." Andryukha was a handsome guy - tall, charming: an athletic turn of the shoulders, a victorious smile and kind Brown eyes. The real Ivan Tsarevich, and makeup is not required.

Andryukha drank so that the experienced drunks at the point were numb. Three times he ended up in a psychiatric hospital with delirium tremens.

Finally, they gave him “easy work” - coaching. And Nora bought the number “Aerialist with an Eagle” from one of the retiring artists: a motor turned the trapezoid over the arena, and a live eagle tied doomedly sat on the stamber of the trapeze - spread its wings when moving - such an illusion of flight. Under this proud eagle, Nora took thoughtful poses to dreamy music ...

With her heraldic bird, she traveled all over the Union. And on the eve of the tour, she took him to her place. She tied an old gouty man in the stairwell by the paw to the railing, which created considerable inconvenience for the neighbors: the bird is not small, it eats, as is known from the myth of Prometheus, exclusively on meat; accordingly, it recycles. Usually Nora cleaned up after him, but if he got drunk, she forgot about everything. And then, at the entrance to the porch, such a thick spirit was kicking from their feet that people fell.

Once, before the next tour, Valka and Nora buzzed in black. The unfortunate bird became completely wild, dirtied the stairs so that there was no way to pass by. Yes, and scary: a huge eagle, a beak like an axe. People were outraged, there was a scandal. On the evening of the third day, a small platoon of angry neighbors gathered below.

Nora and Valka had been buzzing for the third day; the insignificant problems of insignificant people did not bother either of them at all.

And when the completely brutalized neighbors went on the attack, Nora, without thinking twice, untied the eagle, and shouting: “Ah, whores! Don’t you understand like a human?!” - kicked him to the invaders. The eagle was very old, but it looked awesome. And yes, it smelled terrible. After a good kick in the ass, he jumped to the people. The riot was suppressed instantly, the crowd dispersed in panic, people fled to spend the night according to their acquaintances.

But in the morning, before leaving for the station, Nora washed the stairwell in the most accurate way.

And Andryukha died not for a pinch of tobacco. From the usual Russian reason - from the drunken longing that gnawed at him for many years. He has already tried to jump out of the window twice (the third floor, but high). Once, miraculously, one of his drinking buddies held him by his sweater, another time, while drinking with a friend, he nevertheless jumped out, but fell on a gazebo under the window, broke his arm and two ribs.

The third time he managed to complete everything by.

Andryukha threw himself out of the window of the landing on the third floor of the family house and was still alive for some time. All broken, he asked for a smoke from the runaway people. A lighted cigarette was brought to his lips, and he lay, greedily drawing in the smoke, looking into the blue September sky ...

- There is Nora, Mink is coming! - someone said and ran to Nora coming from the store. She listened to the news with a calm angry face. Looks like she hasn't had a drink today, she hasn't gotten better yet.

She approached the flattened body of her husband, with a cigarette sticking out of a bloody, teeth-stained mouth... She silently looked at him for several moments with empty eyes.

She spoke clearly:

- Well, fuck you!

... Here we would not forget Anna Karenina ...

From the first to the seventh grade, Sonya went to school behind the Burevestnik stadium. Lidka the vrukha and I walked through the “yards,” fascinating and confusing, among one-story, dilapidated wooden houses with amazing, in some places carved architraves on the windows, with tiny palisades in which sunflowers gleefully turned yellow.

It was a typical Soviet school. The teachers went about in heavy suits with a white blouse, with an indispensable brooch on their chests, with a scythe lined above their foreheads from ear to ear. There were actually two suits: winter, black checkered on a green or brown field, and summer burgundy.

Anna Karenina wore exactly the same burgundy suit with a white blouse and laid out a braid over her forehead in the same way, only it was a king-braid: tar over a high white forehead and bluish-white temples. And she didn’t look like a kokoshnik, but a crown, so regally stately the librarian carried herself, even when she carefully made her way sideways between the shelves, clutching a high stack of books to her chest. And the suit sat on her like a glove.

Actually, her name was Zinaida Alekseevna. She was born and raised in Topolevoy, and therefore, when Sonya and Lidka appeared in the library once a week to exchange books, she smiled warmly at them: “My neighbors!”

The girls took "Two Captains", "King Solomon's Mines", "Stories of Sherlock Holmes" ... The librarian sighed and patiently repeated each time:

- Girls, read Anna Karenina!

Sonya said:

- So it's not in the school curriculum!

There were a lot of books in the house, but they were all kind of boring - signed collections of essays, supplements to Ogonyok. For several years they received Zola, volume after volume; my mother read volume after volume, read all eighteen. They then forever stood up so evenly behind the glass of the shelf, just fit in, a feast for the eyes!

In other houses of Topolev Lane, they didn’t keep books; not all the elders there even “knew the letter”. But Sonya and Lidka ran to the library regularly. And every week: "Amphibian Man", "Ivanhoe", "The Secret of Two Oceans", "Woman in White" ... Lidka was embarrassed to ask for something about love, nudged Sonya with her elbow, and she politely asked "something with a romantic plot ".

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Footnotes

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About the book "Princess with a Revolver" by Kira Izmailov

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