The Countesss mother, lady-in-waiting of the old Russian Empress, blowing from Russia and her place in the aristocratic society by revolution strong wind, left Russia together with the mother of murdered last Russian Tzar, with one of her Cossack and her dear spouse. She was pregnant with our Countess at that distant and shaking time. They had taken out of Russia some of the royal furniture, pictures and, of course, compact and smart diamonds which they had sewn in all bras of their dresses.
The Countesss mother delivered her daughter in a foreign land, and the desperate mother of the last Russian Tzar became her godmother and in heritage her a large Faberge egg with the gold wagon inside and studded with a lot of Siberian blue diamonds.
This egg was now standing on the table of our Countess, and it had been there for more than eighty years of her long life, but the countess did not dare to take it to the antique specialists, because she was afraid that a somebody could replace the diamonds with glass beads, and she couldnt distinguish real diamonds from fake ones.
Her mother did not learn the language of the country that had given shelter to her and her husband, so they spoke Russian at home. It was a beautiful old language of Pushkins time with rich French expressions inside. So the Russian language of the First World War had stuck in that aristocratic family, which was fighting for their survival in new to them, wet and not too friendly Scandinavian country.
The Countesss mother was busy with Russian church, which became the center of the Russian emigration at that time, and her father earned his living as a sale consultant in a large international company. He learned a new language quickly and even enjoyed this working life, which was new for him.
The little countess finished best private school and got married a German baron, who didnt have any money, but title. Then the Second World War broke out, and her Baron as good German went to Hitlers troops, and she lost her job as laboratory assistant at local hospital because of her German name and her husbands nazi sympathy.
After her mother and father passed away, she continued doing her mothers job in the Russian church, where they opened a hospital for Russian soldiers. Her faith in God was undoubted, and she was involved in organisation of everything connected with the church, including the financial part. It gave her some money for existence and possibilities to play the role of the real Russian Countess. She had often appeared on local radio and sent the articles about the history of Russian church of source old Russian church and her personal stories of Russian Countess living in exile to womans magazines. These old magazines with her interviews and yellowed faded pages from past time, were gathering now dust on her coffee table, waiting for the new visitors, who came round to see her less and less.
She kept her personal stories for them, which she polished to perfection over many years of practice, repeating them again and again. She liked the story of the ladder, which is hold by the angels, and the souls of the dead climbing up on it to the sky, most of all. She used to tell this story a lot, as an example of Russian faith in God. Now, when she became old and was sick, she would not want to accept that it was her time to climb the ladder, wreathed with flowers and supported by angels, preferring to take medicine and suffer, but to be there on the Earth and play the role of the real Russian Countess.
Who knows what will happen to her, in the heavens and what role she would have to play in the company of God? The role of the Earths Russian Countess had made her happy, and she did not want to part with it.
The Countess closed her eyes, with clumsy made every morning makeup done with her shaking hand, and her sick body fell asleep. But even in her sleep she dreamed of admiration, diamonds, and herself, young and beautiful, who was endlessly dancing at the court ball. That was just a dream.
The Countess deceived herself all her life, couldnt see what was going on, either in this small Scandinavian country or in remote and incomprehensible to her Russia, lulling herself and the others with fairytales about tzars, princes and countesses. That was her role in the life. And she was playing this role, which she had got by chance, until her last breath.
That day, she fell asleep in her old faded royal chair forever, having played the role until the very end of play, the role of last real Russian Countess.
Dedicated to my close friend Countess Tatiana Sergeyevna Ladyzhenskaya.
The Danish Miss Pigli
Miss Pigli was thinking, while lying on her side. She was feeling warm and comfortable. Her relatives and friends were next to her. They were standing or lying around in this yard, which was full of wonderful, tasty smelling food, poured into metal trays.
The room wasnt very big and Miss Pigli heard other pigs behind other walls. There were oinking and squealing, but there was neither fear nor anger in the voices around her. Everything was quiet and very nice in this pigs world.
Miss Pigli, her relatives and friends had been here in this yard for two hours already. They were taken here in a big spacious truck, and she remembered the road and the bumpy way with an unpleasant feeling. Why were they taken here from her home?
One of the door opened, while she was thinking about it, and a man, wearing an overall came in with a spade in his hands. Miss Pigli was used to these people with spades wearing overalls from her childhood and wasnt afraid of them. She knew that these people were there to feed them, to wash and to take care of them every day. She thought that their pigs kin was probably very important, otherwise why people would serve them and fulfill all their whims and wishes. And they didnt have many wishes: just to eat well delicious food, to play with friends, to wallow in a puddle, and to have a warm sleep.
People in overalls did all these things for pigs: they washed them under the water jet, removing their excrements, cleaning their yards, pouring them warm hogwash made from steamed barley or wheat.
Sometimes pigs were given the leavings from beer production being to ferment oil cakes of barley with wort and hop. It was favourite dainty for sows and for herself, Miss Pigli.
Miss Pigli was born in Denmark on a pig farm, her mum was an old pig, who had many piglets. She didnt know that there were three pigs corresponding to every living person in Denmark and that due to them, pigs, this small country had the opportunity to build free schools, hospitals and the seniors centres. Sows were an important chain in assistance for unemployed people as the taxation from selling pork (Denmark took the third place in the world selling pork to Japan, England and other countries) was sufficient enough for developing the tiny kingdom of Denmark.
Miss Pigli didnt know about it, but she sensed herself as an important person who people worked for, devoting their time, strength and life. Miss Pigli really enjoyed such a position.
She liked her pig farm, her mum, her brothers and sisters and the people, who made her life easy and comfortable. In these peoples world pigs money was respectable and desired and moreover, pork had been preferred food for Vikings since olden times. They enjoyed eating fried cracklings of well done fore ends of pork cooked in a stove with mustard and horseradish.
Sows played an important part in the womens beauty as well: lipsticks and facial cream had some lard and the beauties legs were warmed with the boots made from the pigs skin. Danish men used strong hog leather to produce trousers belts and for irreplaceable wallets which were made from the same hog leather for keeping indispensable money. Diabetic patients were grateful to pigs for insulin, produced from viscera of these farm animals.
People used pigs for their senseless social animals experiments, because pigs were the next intelligent animals after dogs and monkeys.
Miss Pigli didnt know anything about it, but she had an idea that she was an important figure in this world. Why then neither Muslims nor Jews liked her or her brothers, she couldnt understand that.
Was she really worse than silly rams or always frightened, dung smelling sheep with felted hair? Her meat was more delicate than old goats or smelling mutton one. She looked like a small plump baby as by structure as by smell.
Miss Pigli couldnt understand these people with their religions, the God, and thousands of silly rules, but here in Denmark she was loved and she was considered as the national animal, even the holly one for the descendants of great Vikings, for whom the Christmas and the fried pork were almost the synonyms.
When the representatives of the Allah countries started to move to Denmark in the 90-s, who didnt love those pink snots and curious round eyes, Miss Pigli and her family thought that their time was over and people would no longer serve the pigs family, but nothing like that happened.
Farms were not closed and pork processing plants didnt stop working, so pigs money flew through the taxes distribution system into the pockets of orthodox Muslims as well as their five-times prayer Salat (Namaz). They went to the Danish municipalities and received their benefits for life, paid for with the money from porks sale, they kept those obtained without any labour money in wallets, which were made from pigs skin, and their wives and daughters put on their lips bright lipsticks made from pork fat.
And what about Allah? Maybe he had not seen these deviations from its rules, as he didnt notice the migration of orthodox Muslims to the country of atheists, pig-eaters and alcohol drinkers?
Miss Pigli looked at the man, who nodded his head:
It is time, dear, he started to push her to the open door gently but firm.
Miss Pigli looked once more into the mans eyes and saw there no anger, no danger. She grunted funny and went into a long corridor. Her brothers and sisters were following behind her without fear or doubt. The next door opened in front of her, and she found herself in a dark room. While she was thinking out where the exit was, she suddenly lost her consciousness. There was no air around her but some gas, made her close her eyes and calling her to sleep. Miss Pigli fell down on her side and at the same moment fell asleep without pain, without violence. The floor under her went away, but she was fast asleep. When her body left this dark room on the transporter, the trusting heart of Danish Miss Pigli was still beating as calmly as it did when she was alive.
She was driven up to the man clothed in iron gloves and an apron like a medieval knight in the last tournament. He picked up the pig carcass by a hook and suddenly thrust a tube, sharpened on one side like a knife into Miss Piglis chest. The tube was very sharp and went straight into the heart of Miss Pigli. From there, a stream of lively, warm blood of definitely dead piglet gushed out. The blood flowed into the special container and later black bloody pudding and medical drugs would be made from it.
The Miss Piglets carcass went on for a further butchery. The transporter was long and there were about twenty people, each doing their job, transforming Miss Piglis body into meat, viscera, skin and bones. There was a packing machine at the end of the transporter and boxes, already packed with pieces of fresh pork.
Most fresh meat and heads with eyes and noses were sent by air to Japan, where the price depended on the freshness of the meat and was reduced with each hour passed. The remaining parts were sent for processing with slower traffic to different parts of the world.
Miss Piglis parts found themselves in Paris, London, Hong Kong, Berlin, Parma, and many other places of our planet. Even in the small shops of Damascus, with their leather goods, even in hospitals of Tel Aviv and Tehran, where the insulin was used to treat local Muslim people eating too many sweets, and therefore suffering from diabetes.
Miss Pigli was omnipresent and indestructible, continuing to live her lives in the bodies and on the skin of others. She kissed the lips of Parisian women and covered with hijab Syrian ones. She was keeping the lives of children in hospitals in Iraq. She warmed old legs of the Jews in Jerusalem with her skin. She was indestructible and eternal. Like the God who created her. Like the Allah himself, who cursed her.
The Pilot
Carl was born and lived in cold, rainy Scandinavia. He was blond, blue-eyed, and tall with a trained athletic, muscular body. He was a pilot in international Scandinavian airline. He earned good money and loved his work. He travelled all around the Globe and visited almost every corner of our small, but comfortable for life, planet.
He was part of the international brotherhood of pilots, who met each other in the bars of five-star hotels, where pilots stop at night, resting between their flights. In the bars they drank beer, whiskey, soda and exchanged flight news. English was the language used to communicate in with a special pilot accent.
Many pilots knew each other by face, some even by name, from years of stopping in the same hotels, where the windows were tightly shut and could not be opened sealed like the windows in airplanes, locking out almost all the noise around the never sleeping airports. But pilots were accustomed to these strange, artificial conditions of life and felt great in these elite five-star night shelters offering first class breakfast.
Carl was married and had three children blond, blue-eyed Scandinavian pretty babies nice and slender. His wife worked as a priest (or perhaps more correctly priestess) in the Protestant Church after her theological education at the university and specialisation as a Protestant priest.
She read sermons on Sundays and holidays for parishioners who believed in the Protestant God. She dressed in a black long dress with a white starched collar that made her head, with her short slightly curly hair, look like a cauliflower on a plate. She handed out to the parishioners small, round, crispy wafers in their mouth as a sign of the renunciation of all the sins they accumulated over the week, or for a longer period, and gave them sweet port wine to drink in silver glasses, wishing that they forget their sinful deeds forever.
But they came again and again, maybe because they forgot about their promises to God, or maybe because they liked port wine. They sang Protestant hymns together with great enthusiasm, calling to the Protestant God in their churches and hoping that he would like their songs.
The church had a separate house where the family lived, the pilot along with his wife-priestess for free, as a supplement to her professional activities. Priest in Scandinavia receive a fixed salary, not from God or the parishioners who visited Gods house very irregularly, but from the state, which through the tax system ensured the existence of a state religion with the church buildings, priests (both sexes) and their families, limited official support only by only one, Protestant God, as reflecting of the Scandinavian system of believes.