She had cut off her lovely frivolous curls and now sported a boyish half-box, and overly bright make-up looked like the war paint of an Indian about to scalp his enemies. Mostly relatives were sitting at the table, but this did not make it easier for her. Curiosity brought them all here to look at someone who was unlucky in love.
Only her grandfather, who did not have a soul in her, fussed around her, protecting his pet. And looking at the old trembling hands, which awkwardly tried to put a piece of better cake on her plate, she finally burst into tears. For the first time in six months. Love still won.
Meeting
Once, on Sretensky Boulevard, I met God himself. It was a nondescript bearded old man of a rather shabby appearance. Sitting on a bench with his eyes shut and his toothless mouth wide open.
He was overshadowed by a rose bush growing right out of his bald head. And bees flew in and out of his mouth, swarming around the multi-colored rosebuds on the old mans spiked tiara. Amber gold of honey oozed from his eyes, and next to him, on a bench, lay a string bag with a bottle of cahors, a bible, and a loaf of bread.
I never thought HE looked so ridiculous was the first thing that came to my mind. I decided to see this MIRACLE of nature better and went closer to it. And unceremoniously stared at him, not at all worried that HE would notice me: his eyes were flooded.
Imagine my surprise when the old man unclenched his left fist, and in it was an eye that looked at me so that it immediately became clear that HE sees me.
Thats what it means self-existing and good, the only thing that came to my mind. I also wondered if Chukovsky snorted cocaine when he wrote his Moidodyr. There was an irresistible desire to grab the old man, the very Lord God, by the beard. In order to put into practice a well-known proverb in narrow circles.
But then the pigeons spoiled everything. And not one and white, as the iconography promises us, but a whole flock. Grey. They say about such: Born to spoil can only fly.
God, with his right hand, plucked a hefty piece of bread from the loaf and began to crumble it and throw the crumbs right in front of him. And then I felt these winged creatures mocking me. Organized seraglio rushed to feed.
A cloud of birds covered the old man, and when a gust of wind swept them in different directions, an empty bench appeared before my eyes. All in bird droppings. And a lonely bottle of wine, untouched by pigeons.
Lucky, so lucky, however, I thought, trying on a homeless drink. And then, as if hearing my thoughts, an old woman of the most domestic appearance hurriedly crossed the boulevard. And she expropriated the drink of the Old and New Testaments for her own benefit.
I had no choice but to go home empty-handed, surprised at what I saw:
I wanted to grab God by the beard, but in fact he grabbed the devil by the shameful hair. However.
That also happens.
Choice
The house was cold and hot. There was deafening silence in the street. The table was bursting with empty abundance. It was so bright you couldnt see anything. I wanted to go and sit. My heart is joyful and bitter: so bitter that you laugh; so happy that immediately into the loop. Life flowed and stood. Nothing happened and everything changed. Sincerity or lies, what to choose? You dont understand, but you have to. Is there a choice?
Nail
Its strange, but it feels like a rusty nail is hammered into the head of each of our people at birth. Right in the hospital: so that he lives and then does not think about anything, as long as the nail in the brain rusts. At the same time, exceptions occur, one might say misunderstandings, which lead to the appearance of any undesirable intelligentsia among our people. Take, for example, a doctor-villain and, through an oversight or just out of some whim, he will drive in a baby instead of an ordinary galvanized nail, as if wishing him to brighten up his miserable life. And only then, poor fellow, he lives and suffers for the rest of his life. And, which is characteristic, the intellectuals from this everything goes into a rage and against the people. And all because this nail is galvanized: it glows, an infection, like a real antenna, receiving suggestive signals from abroad, and makes you doubt the correctness of the existence and structure of our state all the time. Instead of being like everyone else, with ordinary rusty nails in my head, Im bullshitting and listening to the Chanson radio. Enjoy life.
Hero of our time
Her name is Zosia. A remarkable name in our unremarkable time. God deprived her of beauty and endowed her with a frantic temperament. She doesnt walk, she dances. He does not speak, but recites. Not silent, but pauses before bringing down an avalanche of words.
Her irrepressible thirst for life is manifested in the fact that she constantly organizes poetry evenings, at which the same blissful obscenities like her jump over each others heads, and Zosia sings songs of the most obscene content to them, accompanying herself on a fairly out of tune toy piano, which always carries with it on a string.
She proudly calls these outrages mysteries, arguing that our whole life is one continuous mystery. Mystery Buff. From the outside, it looks like a real coven of all city wickedness, but she calls her evenings art. This is how she lives. Zosia is the queen of burlesque. Unknown hero of our time.
Gogol decided to listen
Here, in one restaurant, they decided to introduce the people to culture. And they began to broadcast Gogols stories. Through speakers. In the toilet! You come in, you understand, just to relieve yourself, and they read Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka in such a soulful voice. To the accompaniment of running water. Somehow, after the innovation, two friends, with a difference of several minutes, visited such a corner of spiritual corruption due to small needs: the first closed himself in a booth, and the second, who later came in and did not suspect that he was not alone, attached himself to the urinal. He looks at the ceiling, murmurs so cheerfully and listens to how immortal prose is read to him. And then the door suddenly opens behind him and the first one, the one in the booth, loudly and reproachfully throws at the back of the second: What, did you decide to listen to Gogol? The poor fellow who peed had a heart attack from fright. They were taken away in an ambulance. They didnt bail. At his grave, a friend who joked so unsuccessfully ordered an epitaph from Gogol: You need to be honest with words. And in the toilet, after this incident, Gogol was replaced with a mazurka. To stay away from sin.
Head
From childhood, there was a rumor that he had a bright head. Parents of the soul doted on him, they showed him to everyone as a miracle of nature. The father and mother were Jews, and they simply revered their son. First Saturdays, then kashrut, and everything ended with a synagogue, Tanakh, Torah and immersion in the Talmud. In his 20s, he acquired a reputation as a tzaddik and emigrated to Israel, where he took up the study of Kabbalah.
For the next thirty years of his life, he ruined the Sephiroth tree and the study of 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, earned a lot of money, a family and hemorrhoids, and ended his life with a lamppost. On the eve of his dizzying finale, he celebrated the Jewish New Year in a close family circle and served fish heads on the festive table, which amazed everyone except him with their repulsive appearance.
He did not attach any importance to this, pondering the mystery of deciphering the name of God, and the next morning he smashed his head to smithereens, crashing his bicycle into a lamppost. Evil tongues gossiped that damn fish heads were to blame, but no name, even if it is the name of the Lord God himself, is worth losing your head for it.
Voice
One woman decided to go to Israel. Just like that, for no apparent reason. You see, she had a voice that said: Drop everything and run. To the homeland of your ancestors.
She left her husband, son, and parents here. They did not want to go with her, because they did not consider themselves Jews. And on the contrary, they dissuaded her in every possible way. But the woman firmly stood her ground. She divorced her husband and accepted conversion. That is Judaism.
Before leaving, a neighbor came to her and asked her to repay the debt. Well, since they say, you are leaving, it would be good to pay off, otherwise it somehow turns out not humanly. And do you know what the woman said to her neighbor?
And about duty, you understand, her voice said nothing.
Hospitality
In the troubled 90s, one promising businessman Gosha calls his friend Lesha and asks: Friend, shelter people for the evening. It is very important for me. And I will pay you well for it. Straightaway. When it works. Lyosha, a purely Soviet person, readily agreed. After the Yeltsin reforms, he was as naked as a falcon, and any reason to serve someone has a chance of boredom. He fusses, goes to the market. Buys three kilograms of pork with all the money and sets the table. Guests arrive 6 Chechens. Serious people. In essence, abreks. He feeds them a frying pan and two pots of tea. Puts to sleep. In the morning, for breakfast, the leftovers of fried meat are eaten, and when they say goodbye, Lesha from the bottom of his heart wonders if they liked the pork? In response from the abreks, icy silence. And until now Lesha does not understand why Gosha did not pay him. Disappeared suddenly, the devil, and no one knows where. Somewhere and in something, apparently, Gosha miscalculated in his business. Or maybe the devil beguiled. And Lesha? Everyone is waiting for a call from a friend. He hopes that all the same he will be paid for his hospitality.
Citizen and boy
The nameless hero enters Red Square on legs half-bent with fear and tries to scream at the top of his voice, but comes out somehow unconvincingly, almost in a whisper and for some reason in falsetto:
I learned the truth about our government. Its not real! We are ruled from abroad, and the main enemy is in the Kremlin. Do you hear me? Do you hear?
A citizen passing by stops and looks at the hero with surprise.
Did you hear what I was shouting? the hero shudders in fear.
And then, every word, confirms the citizen, Every student knows this only. What are you so upset about? Do not believe? Let me prove it.
He stops the first guy he comes across in punk clothes and asks:
What do you think of our president?
Are you talking about this bald asshole in the Kremlin? The boy spits at his feet with contempt, So he is a bespontovy thief. Id strangle the bitch if I could.
And it goes on like that, as if nothing had happened.
Well, I made sure that what you were shouting about is already known to everyone. So go home from here. Swell up and live like everyone else, pretending that everything suits you.
The disgraced hero leaves Red Square with his head held low.
And an hour later, the citizen and the boy stand at attention in front of the commandant of the Kremlin.
Well done, comrade officers. Stopped an attempt at an unauthorized rally. Killed hope in another person. They prevented, so to speak, the birth of a hero in time. Well done.
We serve Russia, a citizen and a boy shout at the top of their lungs.
Grimaces of nature
Imagine that you stumbled upon a deer at a watering hole in the forest. Surely this will set you in a romantic mood, you will immediately remember Bambi and all that: Disney rubbish. And if he also dies right in front of your eyes, taking his last sip of water before death, then this sight will surely break your heart. And you involuntarily shed tears. Think, I suppose, how tragic, damn it, what is there to hide. A kind of drama in nature. Immediately all sorts of philosophical little thoughts will come into your head, like here it is, the circle of life. And so on. But heres whats amazing. Cockroaches, like deer, also come to drink before they die. But this somehow does not inspire anyone the sight of a dead cockroach in the kitchen sink. Even somehow the other way around. Causes disgust. Maybe because the cockroach does not have branched horns and it lives with us, and not in the forest. But, in fact, these are two phenomena of the same order. As they say, before death you will not get drunk and you will not inhale. What can I say, grimaces of nature.
Heavens Gift
He had a stout figure, almost square. A large, shaggy head with a cozy face and a large mouth with fleshy lips. He looked like a real Balda from Pushkins fairy tale. A kind of cunning little man with a double bottom: either a saint, or a murderer, or maybe both at the same time.
The movements are smooth, the speech is unhurried. And the voice?! And the voice is enveloping, warm and bewitching. In a word, charming. The real voice of a storyteller. As once in childhood, in the Baby Monitor, when the radio began to sound: And now, my friend, I will tell you a fairy tale.
It turned out that he served as an actor. At the Youth Theater. Played Winnie the Pooh. The children adored him. Thats what the voice means. Heavens gift.
Two extreme
Somewhere out there, beyond the borders of our sovereign Internet, where no one wears chastity belts to their homeland and everyone strives to despise any spiritual bonds, shamelessly flaunting their intellectual exhibitionism, here in this God-damned land, where milk rivers flow among jelly banks, any self-respecting artist values his name more than his own health. After all, his name is everything to him. Not just a trademark, but much more style, individuality, handwriting. Ultimately reputation. These weirdos spend their whole lives trying to get people to associate all their work directly with their names. And when they tell you Picasso, you know for sure this one will portray you in such a way that your mother will not recognize you in the portrait. Well, if Andy Warhol, then it will be a hand-colored silkscreen of a very large size. And if you come to Chagall to order a portrait, it is useless to ask him to paint you in the style of Modigliani. He will only portray you as Chagall, hugging a cow, and such a request will simply offend him. In fact, he doesnt understand her. Because if you dont like Chagall, why would you order a job from him? Go to Modigliani if you like him. And Chagall under Modigliani will not be forged, he has a name! Reputation! But they have it, but its not like that with us, oh, its not like that, guys. With us, the Customer comes to the Artist not for the sake of his creativity, but to assert himself. Naturally, at the expense of the Artist. And the first question that the Customer asks our Artist, even if he is at least three times famous, will he be able to write like such and such or such and such an artist. Our Maestro, of course, is mortally offended at first, but when he is offered a double or triple price, he still agrees. Because he understands very well that in our country reputation and name mean nothing. And that means only money, on which this very reputation is created. The most expensive. The most sold. The most successful. Well, what can I say two worlds, two extremes.
Girl without complexes
With false eyelashes and no panties. Amazing self esteem.
Delicate person
Arriving at sea, he found that his wife was snoring. Unpleasant surprise on honeymoon. Hearing in the middle of the night the monstrous sounds made by a rather slender and in daylight even very pretty creature, which was his chosen one, the first night he struggled with the desire to wake her up and tell her the whole truth about her snoring, on the second night he wanted to strangle her with a pillow, and on the third I was going to divorce her. Finally, after three sleepless nights, he went to the pharmacy, a secret from his wife, bought earplugs and has been living with her soul to soul ever since. Thats what a delicate person means.