I'd rather stay there... Igor Punt - I’d rather stay there... Igor Punt: “Russia is a free country

Igor Pound

I'd rather stay there...

Part one

I am Second!

Five-thirty in the morning.

We have to go to the parade. “Okay,” he calmed down and seemed to wake up. Turned on the light. Room. Dorm. It's a terrible mess! I'm alone in the room. Everything possible has been destroyed. Need to go. Lie down. A friend, Seryoga, unceremoniously stumbles through the door. He is the owner of this room. Therefore, he immediately, in a businesslike manner, puts a bottle of Andropovka and a glass on the traditional bedside table, and immediately pours it: “Well, for the Great October Socialist Revolution!”

I reach out lazily, manage to touch it and... suddenly the bell rings - sharp, piercing!

Reality sweeps away the remnants of the dream - never! never get used to it. How does a saving glass of vodka disappear into the unattainable past on a festive half past five in the morning, and did it exist at all?

Ten minutes - toilet, queue for a point, filling up the beds. Is it possible to fill a metal shkonar with three pieces of cotton wool?

The dense, impenetrable air hurts your eyes: vomiting or defecating - there is no difference, the smell is the same! – he is inseparable from the inhabitants of the three by two cell.

“Covered” hums with a low aluminum bass, waking up. In twenty minutes there is a morning inspection. God is examining the earth from above from space - He sees everything, He must see - but why, why does He not linger on the roofs of Central, washed with tears of despair? - here they are! - from a height equal to infinity, just a moment of Your attention - and hundreds of grateful eyes will ascend to the sky. Why, why does Your gaze slip past?

I was crawling on the sheets then - November sixth, eighty-four - only the second floor! Strong knots of sheets, strong arm muscles - and we are at a dance in the dorm of the Machine Tool Plant. Lots of strength, spring! Strength, strength! – added anabolic portions of native “wheat”. Then – my head is spinning! Legs shaking, hands bloody, fight... peace. Love, first... for the first time. Dancing again! Failure, oblivion... In the morning - vodka, parade!

It was then, after fifteen long years, that Seryoga’s old friend, Sergei Vladimirovich, would complete the construction of his hypermarket on thirty hectares of the former Machine-Tool Building (the same one). And now, between the first and second - uh-oh! - it’s time: Seryoga to the factory (party organizer, table manager), me to my jazz friends from the music school, wrapped in red banners, to drink Zubrovka, laughing to Kuzmin: “When we were seventeen years old!” - and nearby, with all their might, discordantly but cheerfully, a brass band breaks the autumn frost: “Courage, comrades, in the no-o-gu!” – They just want to drink too, but... work.

- Stand up, face the wall! Hands behind your back, prepare for inspection. – The feeder falls simultaneously with the last order-bark of the senior warrant officer.

Something went wrong with this ensign, somehow right away, at first glance, somewhere on a subconscious level. The door opened - the illusion of a breath of fresh air ended with blows from a rubber club on the bolts tightly welded to the walls. The officer on duty who entered first checked the contents of the beds - the club slid onto the shoulders and heads of the convicts standing with their backs. God forbid something clangs or falls out. Closely.

– Raise your hands! – Pressing our elbows tightly against each other, our foreheads pressed against the edge of the second tier, we wait for the end of the inspection and search. No! - he, the second inspector, junior inspector Yasenev, deliberately rummages through me a little longer, a little more dirty, painfully piercing the crotch with the edge of his palm. He touches the skin with his nails, he feels my hatred compressed with his lips, and at the back of my head I see his disgusting half-smile: “Do you read books? – the sweaty hands of the controller nervously ask. - Don't smoke? Do you squat while walking?”

“You stink, citizen ensign.”

After the army, at the end of the eighties, he was still unable to connect the halves of his life torn apart by service. Everything is not the same: the thoughtless fun is gone, the soviet regularity has been replaced by the incomprehensible bustle of the cooperative movement. The parade of revolutionary ideas turned into a clown show. They blew their noses into a red flag and wiped themselves with it.

He returned to the unit for extended duty: he conducted sports training for future military intelligence officers. I meditated at night. I had to forget about my musical past. What kind of jazz is this? Soon I met Lyudmila. There was a real romance, romance... We enjoyed life and made plans. And, the devil pulled me, I was a fool: I took the decommissioned optics to the market. That's where I got caught. Swept it up. They put him in jail. They said “theft of state property”: they gave me three years. I had to meditate on the bunk. I got hooked on the library and read everything. I prayed for a quick meeting and wedding... for a year.

Now, in May two thousand and seven, when I write these lines, I feel absolutely free. They transferred me to prison again - until the trial. The prison epic is coming to an end. Here I again met an old friend from the “special” zone, Sanka - “citizen chief”. He, already a major, was appointed chief of the operational unit as during his time in the camp - godfather! - young and early. I became friends with him in a maximum security colony. Smart, insightful person. The right cop is a new formation, so to speak, hmm... And then...

Fifteen days in a punishment cell is dust for the right kid. Teeth? I'll go out and put it in! Cough - burning in your chest? – nothing-oh-oh! - that’s why he’s a chif.

- Nits, you won’t go for a walk today!

Teeth chatter in response:

- A-y-I-i-don’t-h-h-feel...

- Eat, you nit!

And again icy oblivion. How long have I been here? Winter? Why isn't it cold?

- Y-y-y, I'm full, great citizen... creature.

– Raise your hands! - And a stench in the ear: - What, there won’t be a wedding?!

Suddenly a wave of hatred hit me: “Bitch!” – He’s a normal-looking guy: older than me, athletic, tall, not ugly. But some kind of rottenness... smelly. He read the letters and knew about the wedding. It was he who killed her! But for six months I lived only for this, breathed for this, endured. Wedding – Love – Freedom! Let it be three days. Three. But how, how they were needed!

He lowered his hands and turned to face him. He looked straight into his eyes, silently.

- Face the wall! Face the wall! Face...

They beat me in the exercise yard. They were beaten by experienced special forces. The sound of slurping blows fell and rolled under the sound of rain. I wriggled on the wet concrete, covering my head. It was ninety-one.

Intractability, hospitalization after Yasenev’s humiliating moral teaching - physically weakened, he became a completely authoritative prisoner who lived in isolation. Broken ribs gradually healed, unlike mental injuries. Lyudochka fed her as best she could, wrote letters, and tried not to grumble about fate. And we’ll have a wedding, and what a wedding! - soon very soon.

And again...

Five thirty.

Morning inspection.

22.08.2016 14:30

To the 145th anniversary of L.N. Andreeva

“Every hour is a continuous overcoming of pain!”

If you don’t believe me, go to the nearest madhouse and listen... L. Andreev

Nature knows no higher interests than those concerning the species, for the species is to the individual as the infinite is to the finite. E. Hartman

Laughter through tears. He died with a smile on his face.
...Drama, sprinkled with black humor, taken to the point of absurdity. - This is how I would outline the course, the flow of my reasoning on the eve of the preparation of the anniversary text of St. Andrew. My memory immediately brought to mind the circus madness with painted clown masks - the tragic ending of the play “The One Who Gets Slapped.” Where the lace of the mise-en-scène is woven into an unimaginable tangle of love, family, and friendly relationships. Friend is enemy. Hate with happiness. Light with black. Dirty - clean. This is what Andreev is all about.
But let's get started...

Rifles black belts
All around - lights, lights, lights...
There is a cigarette in his teeth, he has taken a cap,
You need the Ace of Diamonds on your back!

…Revolutionary, keep your step!
The restless enemy never sleeps!
Comrade, hold the rifle, don’t be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet into Holy Rus'... Block.

“In the face of an orangutan I will find more related features and will respectfully call him “grandfather” than in these faces that took the wrong road” - ... He was never able to bury Russia to the end. Until the end.
Although all his thoughts and aspirations, like his works, spoke and shouted about this: bury Russia, forget it; Christ can no longer be resurrected, forgotten!
Alles, “unannounced” end, coda: “Lazarus gave up the ghost in the tomb.” - But even in the coffin, the deceased did not lose the ability to smell the stink and decay flowing from the corpse of the fatherland that had died in the gods. To the whole honest world: “I stink, brother, I stink!” - The last years of life, the last thoughts and words are so terrible and depressing: in the kingdom of “hopelessness and death.” Where Satan rules the roost: “Someone in Gray” is the forerunner of Bulgakov’s Woland. In total hell, the Hades of disgusting Jesuits and natives.

God kill Lenin.

L. Andreev, by the way, never wrote, or rather, did not finish (there were several unfinished ones: “Pyatakov”, “The Deaf Composer”, a tragedy about “kings and devils” - author) a story about one black scientist. Studied at Cambridge. Who, pompous and educated, returned to his homeland in white gloves and collars. With a pretentious and inappropriate huge yellow suitcase.
I shunned the forgotten “banana” atmosphere. He abhorred fried crocodiles - a common local food. Calling loved ones only as "natives and black men."
Not much time passed - everything returned to normal...
The main character, a recent gentleman, also ate the yellow suitcase along with foreign belongings. And, smugly licking his lips, he began to prepare a sauce from the fried missionaries who had fallen into the hands of the “receiving the light” cannibal. Using lessons from Cambridge gastronomy.
Primly saying with an English accent:
- Do you natives even understand a little about cooking?
In the future, this unrealized “Negro” madness will result in the development of a certain collective Lenin - in the guise of an insane “collective Fool”: - the madness going on in Russia. Mainly, of course, in diaries. The most qualitatively published in 1994 (Davis - Hellman. “S.O.S.: Diary. Letters. Memoirs.” M.; St. Petersburg: Atheneum; Phoenix):
“Lenin still reigns with the same extraordinary simplicity and ease: he prints money and pays the Red Guards to shoot “those who do not recognize.” This is the entire basis of the state system. And everything looks like this, that until they destroy all the paper for money and shoot all the cartridges, the reign of the insane will continue. They won’t be able to make new paper and new cartridges, and then it’s the end, a straitjacket.”
Towards the end of his life, Leonid Nikolaevich recalled how once, at one of Teleshov’s “Wednesdays” - where he went on the recommendation of Gorky in 1900 - a generally cheerful and good-natured conversation, full of friendly squabbles and jokes, suddenly in a strange way escalated and became heavier . The conversation turned to “The Fog” (1902), which everyone was whispering about at the time.
Someone present mentioned an unpleasant rumor about a high school student who committed suicide after reading “The Fog.” Which made those around him become gloomy. Up to the point of threat - in the form of eyes awkwardly looking to the side, pale faces, pursed lips...
“But this is just a rumor,” Andreev objected.
- What if someone really gets in trouble because of your things? What do you say then? - they turned to him.
Andreev angrily and mercilessly said:
- I’ll say: I’m satisfied.
The conversation ended immediately - with a shrug of the shoulders - and everyone dispersed. It's hard and boring.

Then suddenly a vague flash flashed... Deja vu. Like, he already said something on this topic. But the feeling quickly disappeared. There was no time for that. Students. Revolutionary circle. Khlebnikov's run, gallop, "trembling" of the universe.
Only much later, summing up the bleak results in a tragic premonition of catharsis, he found youthful things that were subject to no alternative destruction, but were not destroyed in 1891.
He's twenty. He had not yet written any essays, except for gymnasium ones. And all this at first looked like elementary bravado on the part of a provincial youth who had read Hartmann:
“...I want to show that the whole life of a person (wow!) from beginning to end is one continuous senseless self-deception, something monstrous, to understand which means to kill oneself. ...I want to show the complete inconsistency of those fictions with which humanity has hitherto supported itself: God, morality, the afterlife, the immortality of the soul... I want to show that death alone gives happiness, equality, and freedom, that only in death is truth and justice.
And when at least one person who has read my book kills himself, I will consider myself satisfied and can then die in peace. I will know then that the seed thrown by me will not die, because its soil is that which never dies - human stupidity.”
How could a boy have developed so strongly, - together with the “late” Andreev, I ask about that extraordinary youthful foresight: - how could this boy so clearly, albeit naively, chart his path?
The name of Leonid Andreev, which became truly terrible, was the realization of that childhood dream, which was realized 10 years later with the story “In the Fog.” Where an internally persecuted, morally disfigured hero dies painfully. Together with him, taking into the next world an innocent person, a complete stranger to him - a prostitute. Thus, striking down the reader, who is not armed with Andreev’s antidote - unbearable cynicism and disgust for existence.

The general coloring of my dreams is heavy.

Subsequently, he will mercilessly throw mud at his friends at the Moscow literary conglomerate. He will hate the “hypocrite” Gorky, who inspires disgust and serves as a “model of stupidity.” On the lips of the kissing Lunacharsky and looking at him with those loving eyes that he “knows how to do so well”: “Gorky is forgiven everything, nothing to me!” (Although it was Gorky who was one of the first to create memories of Andreev in 1922.)
He spits at Chaliapin, who spoke at an evening in memory of Karl Marx. He will insult the “dishonest, dirty” Kuprin along with Sologub, who participated and “served” in Lunacharsky’s meetings. He will slap Blok, who published “nasty things” under the “edition of Kamkov.” He will call human rights activist and social activist V. Korolenko a thoroughbred liar and opportunist, a “Russian-rich” blockhead.
Everything is covered with outright malice and ignorance of the situation in the great fires of blazing Russia.
Thus, Chaliapin, being the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater, could not help but perform in concerts organized by the RSDLP. The cunning Kuprin (from time immemorial - both ours and yours!) pushed through with all his might the opening of the World Literature publishing house. F. Sologub, in turn, strongly criticized the activities of the People's Commissariat for Education, headed by Lunacharsky. Not intending to serve anyone, and even vice versa - fighting with the latter against the abolition, in particular, of the Academy of Arts.
Regarding Blok, let us add that Ivanov-Razumnik was his immediate editor. B. Kamkov is only a member of the editorial board of Banner of Labor. An opportunist, a “pleaser and a prophet,” Korolenko desperately opposed the violence of the Bolsheviks and the cruelties of the “uneradicated Russian Middle Ages,” also against the death penalty and “military” reprisals. And so on and so forth…
And no wonder.

While his family and people close to him are oppressed and driven by thoughts about food and the search exclusively for food, he feeds on newspaper ducks, which often distort reality. Encouraging him. Falsely caressing the ear.
They say that drunken sailors in St. Petersburg are already, thank God, beaten and rolled under the paving stones. Kornilov and Czechoslovak troops are inexorably approaching Moscow. And Lenin and Co. completely ran away to hell (to Krondstadt, to Aurora - and on it to abroad?). The long-awaited Liquidation of Bolshevism with a capital letter is coming, the liquidation of true cannibalism with unjustified vicious executions, murders, hunger and cholera is approaching - in the hopeless cordon of St. Bartholomew’s Nights: executions, executions, executions...
Judging by all these false newspaper signs, there is very little left - albeit in a pharisaical way! - endure and endure here, in the European “moderate rudeness”: at least some food, silence and eternally beautiful nature; and his beloved “palace” home, and the seaside dacha Lobek. But…
Even so, he thinks. - Moscow, for example, has been taken, and we need to go back. He is by no means in a hurry to get to the first act: what’s there to get in the way…
Fight the generals? - hopeless and stupid. Support the inevitably “returnable” dictatorship and quartering of communism? - therefore, to destroy the nervous force, the potential of emotions in the detonator of ideas, oh how necessary for act three! “My task,” writes Andreev, “is to come when the matter is half organized, when the streak of blood, screaming and all this inevitable dirt is left behind.” - Yes, he is far from suicidal. (Which he already proved with an unsuccessful shot in 1894.) He is a suffering pragmatist.
It is connected to Russia by a thin invisible thread flowing through the pre-dawn sky, through space, from here to there - from the well-being of “naked egoism” to the land of atrocities, betrayals and merciless stupidity.
And alas, it is not a revolutionary impulse that will sweep Lenin and Co. into the underworld, but some terrible, external, not yet understood, but clearly foreign, alien and indifferent force: it will take it and throw it away! And we will rejoice... - Like Faust, he rushes about in a whirlpool of a confused, seething stream of dreams, dreams, other people’s sayings and phrases. As if gradually changing the center of gravity - now up, now head down, then suddenly suddenly sideways. Plaguing the children, the spouse, the mother, everyone living nearby and those who remained in the “Sovdepia” and are connected with it by an electric telegraph thread with the “demon of perversity.”
In Russia, in reality, especially after the assassination attempt on Ilyich, the Red Terror is gaining strength: religion is being abolished, priests and former ministers are being exterminated “in bulk.” In advance, in advance, ordinary people are unceremoniously taken hostage in case of another attack on the leader. Which, by the way, was recovering well and getting better.

The dream had already completely placed me in the yellow house.

Having given up drinking with the advent of the First World War (though not without breakdowns, but nevertheless: his well-being and form have completely improved), he is weighed heavily and tragically by distance... And there is absolutely nothing to plug the voids of a spirit torn to shreds. Maybe the past.
It is full of memories of the gymnasium Orel, St. Petersburg, Moscow. About travels from Helsingfors to Terijoki on a small ship “Dalyokiy”. About an accidental, bright, unforgettable morning meeting with the yacht “Standart” off Kursalo Island (1913) - a symbol of the splendor of the Empire.
He peers into the faces of people passing by, soldiers, peasants, comparing them with those - pre-revolutionary, pre-war. Again and again he looks for scraps of old newspapers. He reads old news from there. Compares, compares... Toiling, suffering. Cursing and praising.
Praising the people for Tolstoy and Uspensky. At the same time cursing for the eternal desire to get into teeth, being in a purely “prisoner’s negligee.” Scolding even the weather for the fact that it can never get rid of the Devil of all-Russian melancholy and unrest - Lenin - from his head, from his thoughts, surrounded by ugly saints: social idiots. Those who even devoured Easter during Holy Week: “Rejoice now, Marx, Russian bungling is in vain!” - ...Out of habit, having entered the church for matins, he realizes with bitterness that Christ is “hardly likely to rise again” today.
But there was a case, he attended the funeral of Alexander III in the Moscow Kremlin. He remembers the coronation of Emperor Nicholas, overshadowed by the disaster at Khodynka. He remembers an unexpected meeting with him in the State Duma (1916) - he looked at Nikolai carefully and for a long time. (Whose arrival did not in the least justify the hopes for a rapprochement between the Government and the Duma. They came to general discord - enmity and suspicion - due to the craziest actions of Alexandra Fedorovna and Rasputin. Despite the frantic deputy shout: “God save the Tsar!”).
He returns with horror to the lines from the newspaper “Our Century” (No. 122, dated July 20, 1918): “The former Tsar Nicholas was shot by order of the Ural Council,” and tries to imagine this unimaginable “herring tail”: how was Nicholas killed? Probably somewhere in the backyard, near the outhouse. Surely they were firing from rifles at scary, bastard, unshaven faces. And it was empty, dark and boring with that “hellish boredom that people are bored in hell.” Were there even spectators? Or did they bring one and shoot him? Where did the bullets hit? How did he lie afterwards? Who took the boots?
He writes down the events of almost every day in a diary, certainly not counting on anyone reading it.

He called the treasured notebook “everyday life”:
“It’s amazing how these Finns managed to maintain their innocence while cohabiting with our Bolsheviks. The conditions of all of Russia and Bolshevism are such that the individual almost inevitably decays and the fragile internal law falls - and these, with rare exceptions, are just like college girls. Very interesting, worth thinking about. And what a pity for the Red Guard: they fought just as honestly and courageously for the “people's cause” (as they understood it) and died like all of Russia, only from betrayal and treason.”
The Finnish life of L. Andreev - years of chaos, isolation from the reader and publisher - is imbued with a feeling of grave despair, helplessness, even mental weakness: “In these days he wrote only a personal diary, not intended for publication, where words are painful, unfair and cruel , were interspersed with lyrical digressions that spoke of his deep loneliness,” his son Vadim characterizes his father’s condition shortly before his death.

Soul and body are so at the mercy of the weather,
that you have to keep something like a maritime journal.

In general, the chronicle of the fate and life of Leonid Andreev, like none of his contemporaries, was subject to reinterpretation and distortion. Disputes and gossip. Despite the efforts of the children Vadim and Vera; younger brother Andrey; Rimma's sisters, who later reproduced wonderful, unbiased memoirs.
The biographical chapter of the Finnish years could be called “Hunger. Bullying. North". The Finns who served the family - the janitors and office workers - were extremely indifferent to them, cold, and careless. Stone-cold indifferent.
There used to be Russian servants. Undoubtedly, she was better, more sensitive, warmer, but - with the onset of war - she fled. Where? Why?.. Save Russia? Join the ranks of the humiliated and insulted? There are no answers.
It came to a joke.

One missing lackey, who had gained “talents” from Andreev, became a teacher (!) of drawing somewhere on the periphery. Although he was fundamentally typical of Smerdyakov - stupid and ignorant.
Leonid Nikolaevich did not blame anyone, he forgave. And at one time I even corresponded with one of those who escaped. And by the way, in the 1910s. An escaped convict under the fictitious name Abram even managed to check in and work with him. And he even fired a gun at the owner. Thank God, it was unsuccessful, for which thanks to my wife Anna, who sacrificially stood under a flying bullet, reasoning with and stopping the offender.
Not at all old (not even fifty), colorfully handsome, noticeably thinner, he is incinerated by a feeling of worthless decrepitude and uselessness. Some kind of stupidly vile conviction, as if “I was late.” That he is no longer capable of love - God forbid he would have enough strength to write! He simply has no right to it... With inescapable longing, plunging into memory the St. Petersburg Kuindzhev Fridays: it was no coincidence that the women’s eyes met there; seemingly random(!) touches of hands, shoulders; attachments, attachments... ending in infrequent (but still!) betrayals. (Biographers have different opinions about “betrayal,” author.) Also recalling with lust the luxurious boarding dinners at a traditionally common table (table d’ hȏte) in Germany and Switzerland at the beginning of the century.
The past doesn't let go. It oppresses and presses. Moreover, seasoned with rumors that, unlike himself, his bosom friends - publishers, writers - saved a lot and, above all, made good money from the revolution. By stashing money in American banks in a timely manner.
A suicidal loser, he constantly thinks about death...

At the same time hitting on the neighbor’s wife (and more than one - author) from the growing number of Russian colonies in Tyuresevo: “Vera Petrovna!.. [Trotskaya-Senyutovich] my poor woman. She is tall, slender, thoroughbred, smart, thin and... she should borrow the ability to describe women from Turgenev’s old shoe.” - Feeling sorry for her unloved husband no less than for herself.
Death and Love. Love and death. Flavored with a fierce hatred of “socialist bragging,” the wanderers of the Apocalypse who always accompanied him: “...I feel like a person who is already waist-deep in the grave and from there looks at the world and the lives of other people.”

Occasionally I see Hoffmannian dreams with an admixture of Bolsheviks...

Yes, he is ready without hesitation to give Lenin a mandate for the gallows, if such a thing were in his power.
So intolerant of cynical, misanthropic ideology: “And if I ever write true hell, I will abandon complacent prejudices and take Lenin’s kingdom as a model.” - Moreover, he completely extends intolerance and painful grief to the entire “bad” people - the “cheap little people.” Accused of lack of respect for the individual and total “herddom.” In the absence of an internal sense of hierarchy along with boorish servility. Allowing herself very unfounded attacks, attacks either on friends and colleagues, or on members of an already exhausted family: “... the children are completely running wild without supervision, here Anna is completely bad. I only know how to yell and put people in a corner, which, of course, they are used to.”
This was facilitated by both the material deprivations of the civil war and the loss of rights as a citizen of the Russian Empire. And the loss of all savings in Petrograd banks as a result of Finland’s declaration of independence in December 1917. And, unfortunately, a stable - extremely disturbing illness: “... I was sick of the Bolsheviks all night.” - Liver and stomach hurt. I am tormented by hemorrhoids, insomnia, heart and... lack of light. Trivially there is no kerosene. And there is no firewood: “Anna can’t cope with such things at all, and she has to look into the future with fear.” (He fiercely hates his wife as a person in everyday life. And he loves madly as an integral part of his own nature. And this is also the whole of Andreev!!)
The manager of press affairs, a member of the political council under General Yudenich, A. Kartashev, together with the former editor of the cadet newspaper “Rech” I. Gessen, are trying to attract Andreev to participate in the journalistic activities of the Committee for Russian Affairs in Finland: in the publication “Russian Life”. But…
Excessive conceit, undisguised contempt for local newspapermen, professionally obvious: with his journalistic experience. Also accompanying this are the exorbitant demands put forward by the “semi-disabled” Andreev: no less than the post of Minister of Public Education in the Political Conference (successor to the Committee - author) plus 10,000 marks of salary! - the officials turned away from him.

It's hard to write, my brain won't move. What!

...The “Diary of Satan” has long been conceived, pessimistically gloomy, anxiously suffered in captivity in emigration. Called to fuse out all his current anger and gloom. But the work isn’t going well, it’s barely moving. (He never completed the novel, interrupting the narrative at the “most interesting” point. For me, this is the real, according to Andreev, in Hartmann’s style, “unannounced” end: after all, death is the Macrocosm; they are endless.)
A dear “palace” house in Vammelsuu, purchased ten years ago, has been mortgaged. Hunger and lack of money consume my strength. Successes of the Red troops. Anxiety and pity. To yourself, to the country, to abandoned friends. To the intelligentsia and workers - “birthday people without a cake.” To everyone and everything.
In the summer of 1919, Andreev, who moved from the coastal town of Tyurisevo (hiding from the bombing) to a playwright friend in Neyvola, was rushing around with a project to leave for the USA as soon as possible.
With painful haste, he planned a creative tour with anti-Bolshevik lectures. In a vague, vague hope for a more accurate, intelligible understanding of his plans by the Americans than by his Finnish compatriots. Which, undoubtedly, was a utopia. (Taking into account also the lack of knowledge of the language.)
There were only a few days left until relief from daily torment, mental and physical...

It seems there is a way to get drunk without vodka. This is fatigue and self-hypnosis. All these days I am positively truly drunk. I like. There is a strange feeling in my soul, as if from youth and drunkenness. Love is the one that He speaks about*. No wonder the scoundrel was drawn to the diary; I suppose he wouldn’t write about the case. According to my calculations, I should die in 1917. L. Andreev. 01/14/1917

* An allusion to the clown from the play “The One Who Gets Slapped.” With which this text began.

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Igor Punt: “Russia is a free country. That’s why no one has canceled the installation yet.”

Igor Pound- writer, editor of the magazine “Russian Life” (project “Chronos” - world history on the Internet), publishing house "Aelita" ("Ural Pathfinder")and the web magazine “Peremeny.ru”.

Born in 1964 in Vyatka, Russia. Graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Culture. Started writing in 2010. Published in magazines“New Beach”, “Khreshchatyk”, “Zinziver”, “Studio”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Siberian Lights”. Portal “Chronos” - World history on the Internet: “Russian Life”, “Milk”, “Sail”, “Rumyantsev Museum”, “Judgments” (articles on history), etc. Eurasian magazine portal “Megalith”. Magazines: “Moscow”, “Moscow Writer”, “Notes on Jewish History” and “Seven Arts” by E. Berkovich. “Ural Pathfinder”, “Likbez”, “Tram”, “Florida” (USA), literary and philosophical railway. "Topos". Newspaper "Informspace" (Israel), literary-public “Voice of the Epoch”, etc.

Regular author of the online magazine “Foreign Backyards” (Germany); “Tolstoy web magazine Peremena.ru” by Gleb Davydov; media kit of the newspaper “Private Correspondent”; literary-historical magazines “Velikoross”, “Kamerton”; magazines “Our Generation” (Chisinau), “Union of Writers” (Novokuznetsk); the weekly "Obzor" and the newspaper "Russian Kaleidoscope" published by "Continent" (USA); portal "Free Press" (chief editor S. Shargunov); blog “Echo of Moscow”, “Amurburg” by Oleg Potapenko, etc.

Over the years, his works have been included in longlist for the Yasnaya Polyana Prize,longlist of the detective competition of the post-Soviet twentieth anniversary “Inspector NOS”-2014 of the M. Prokhorov Foundation (crime novel “I’d better stay there ...”) and long-list of the literary award NOS-2013. In 2013 he took1st place in the International Short Prose Competition “WHITE TABLET”.

Igor, don’t you think that the Internet today has simplified not only relationships between people, but also changed the person himself within the information society. A person goes on, for example, Facebook or Twitter - and writes; takes out a mobile phone and writes an SMS; he receives a lot of letters in business and private correspondence and is forced, again, to unsubscribe. That is, man today is a writer more than in any other historical era. He is technically equipped for this, and technology with various gadgets is always at hand, around the bush. And you, by the nature of your work, are more and more in the virtual world than in the real one. Not scary? Karl Jaspers, when analyzing technology, formulated the idea that a person needs to be wary of technology; he can “get lost in it” and forget about himself. Is a virtual person, a kind of virtual writer, the crown of creation and evolution?
You hit the nail on the head, dear American friend Gennady. Joke. (It’s easier to make fun of on the Internet; you won’t get punched in the face.) But I hit the nail on the head, because I am a typical representative of the Internet environment. Flesh of the flesh. Just as Chaliapin’s land is flesh, the salt of the Vyatka land, so I am a network fosterling in the full sense of the word. In a short period of time, 4-5 years, being in our common information space, the air, he was published in so many publications that in Soviet, “paper” times, a writer, and an authoritative one at that, could only do it in a couple of lifetimes. And the unfortunate authors hoped for a single publication, a book, all their lives. Sometimes they didn’t wait. I'm talking about geniuses, unlike myself, who were a crime not to publish.

With all the openness of the Internet, with its blogs, its own resources and platforms, which each user can organize if desired - and be heard! - The Infosphere, or more precisely, the universal Slovosphere, is quite delimited by consumer baskets.

A person who is professionally engaged, for example, in journalism, would never get into the multimillion-dollar (in terms of saturation) Samizdat of Maxim Moshkov. Standing, by the way, at the top of the attendance ratings. Where hosts and hosts of people who were passionate about literature without any hesitation found shelter.

On the contrary, M. Moshkov’s super library (Lib.ru) will be opened by any self-respecting professional - due to its extreme abundance of material, which not every “paper” library will offer. The Internet, without a doubt, has decisively defeated offline in terms of speed of accessibility to almost any field of activity. With the exception of specialized household, military, scientific industries.

Therefore, lovers of “easy”, unpretentious quick reading and uncomplicated access to self-realization and self-publishing will find a worthy place on the Internet, just like people who are published and printed professionally, for money. Simultaneously creatively varying and transforming. Thus, from amateur blogs, real journalistic-populist gurus emerge, truly leading thousands. On the contrary, the authors of generally recognized officialdom suddenly become a laughing stock. Who regulates this? The answer is simple - the Internet.

Since we started our virtual conversation with technology and computer science, don’t you think that many of today’s troubles stem from current achievements in science and the online sphere. Informatization of society increases the desire for authoritarianism. The ability, on the one hand, to obtain accurate information about each citizen, and on the other hand, to manipulate masses of people, increases extremely when using computer networks. Don’t you think that literally in a matter of weeks, the Russian people, who rethought their closest neighbor and immediately saw in him a fascist, a “Judeo-Bandera” and the root of all evil thanks to propaganda that showed how modern media technologies influence the minds today, is just a small thing? compared to the dumbing down that technological ideologists will be capable of in the near future? Do you have an answer to the question: why was the consciousness of a Russian person, to whom, back in February of this year, a Ukrainian man was a brother, with all the fraternal history of relations spanning several centuries, so instantly recoded?
The answer is simple. Russia is a free country. Therefore, no one has canceled the installation yet. So it’s better not to understand the question than not to get home in the evening. Seriously though, geopolitics is too complex a thing to ask me about it. A simple Vyatka felt boot.

By the way, who are the Russians today? After all, if there is a protest movement in Russia, it is mainly in large cities. If politics, culture, technology, science exist in Russia, then again, not in regional centers. In contrast, by the way, from the same USA, where science is distributed among universities located in small towns, and advanced technologies are located somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in some Silicon Valley.

I found an interesting article of yours about the province in which you write: “ We have come to the point where “provincialism” sounds like a curse word. But it is not the concept that is criticized, but the attitude towards it. Why? This is both difficult and simple at the same time. It’s difficult, because such is the tragedy of past Russian history, tradition, century. Simply, because history is overgrown with vulgarity, tradition has rotted at the root, and the century has taught nothing...»

What is the Russian outback today? Are the provincials really the same silent majority as I remembered from the times of the USSR, and with the same two Russian troubles and problems, since the time of the Marquis de Custine, the author of “La Russie en 1839”?
The specificity is more likely in “Yes” than in “No”. And instead of an answer - a small sketch on the topic “the view from the wagon.”

So, a friend from Moscow recently arrived here - he was selling antiques - icons, samovars - at the Izmailovsky market. (There are enduring values in life!) He says he hasn’t been to Moscow for a long time - it’s all work, work. (Buying antiques is also work, by the way.) He says he only looked at the cars that drive around there in a fresh auto gloss - they don’t exist in Europe. I saw some specimens for the first time in my life. Although he himself drives a Kruzak - peripheral, ugh. It was amazing - the cars give way even at the zebra crossings: “Polite, damn it. We would immediately have a pumpkin, and obscenities in the mug! - mata-hari, damn it."

In the heat, Muscovites wear fur coats, wide-brimmed hats and leggings. It’s the same for women and men: “Faggots, in general,” he summed up.

Prostitutes are cheaper, more accessible and kinder than in our village. (By nature, a friend of the intelligentsia, I might add, warehouse.) I never noticed any working Russians (taxi drivers, cafe sellers), although I drove around and walked around a bunch of hot spots and eateries. Totally “foreigners,” I’ll say softly.

Having earned decently from selling people's property, the friend, satisfied, returned home “to Russia” together with a pretty neighbor in the carriage.

Where are you from? - he asked the girl.
“From Maaaaskva,” she responded.
- What are you doing?
“I work on design, I work on orders,” it was impossible to hide the homespun accent.
- Will you call a taxi, my battery is dead?

She called a taxi from memory and, for a happy fee, went with a friend to rest in a familiar hostelry. A bad head does not give rest to the legs...

But I don’t know anything about the irreconcilable opposition and global extraterrestrial protest - I’ll end with a small lyrical digression. Well, Vyatka: here a raven pecks at a peasant’s eye, but he doesn’t even lead his nose. Cars are sold on credit. There is sausage. Criminals in prisons, deputies in towers - the glass will not crack.

To Turkey on vacation - please! Entire pages in newspapers are devoted to saunas “with services”. Casino, girls, drugs - whistle twice - they will come running, load up, inject, suck.

Leontyev comes to give concerts, Rosenbaum. Mamenko with jokes. Singer Valeria, perhaps. What the hell else does a rural sucker need? Power, state business? - but who will give them away for free from the strong male hands of Nikita Yuryevich.

And another question about the province. Fresh and new Russian province, about Crimea. In 2013, you wrote about the Russian south, about the time of year called Indian Summer: “ The beach season is over. The sun, of course, will warm the blessed Kuban and the blessed Caucasus for a long time, but the main stream of vacationers has already subsided home. Who are these daredevils - poor, rich, why did they choose such an extreme type of vacation?.. The Russian south is an atavism long ago thrown into the dustbin of history. It will never get better, more comfortable, or finally cheaper. Just as the vulgar Russian pop music “Petrosyanovka” will never become better and “more expensive”, in terms of quality. This is a fait accompli, a given - the Russian south, like Russian-language pop music, is always creepy, wretched and imperfect. Fake».

In your description of the “Russian south” you are categorical. Does Russia need Crimea as a resort? Does Russia really need Crimea, or are there only geopolitical games here, and all the promises about a flourishing Black Sea resort (at the expense of the pension fund of Russians and Russian taxpayers) are just fluctuations in the air? Why does it suddenly work out in Crimea, but in the Kuban and Caucasus “it won’t get better, more comfortable, cheaper...”?
You know, your bold theme reminded me of the hoarse speaker from Radiola in the 70s. Like, we present to you a certain Pound, who finally got out to freedom. And here is his first uncensored interview on “The Voice”... - a cold voice broadcasts from the speaker.

Everything has been mixed up lately in the Russian house, brother. And if a year ago the Russian south boldly swarmed, people were neither hot nor cold. Now I wouldn't do that. Because the current criticism is not related to sour pasties and underfilled beer at the kiosk, which no one cares about from a high tower, frankly. And with the tectonic fault of countries, continents and the destinies of peoples. What the whole world is looking at. And cautiously. (What if he gets a ride?!) And here is the newly minted writer Pound - the mare’s tail has not been sewn on with his resonant spread of obscenity. Here Homer is needed, no less. Parmenides.

In 2010 you started writing. At least that's what it says in your biography. That is, having gathered your will into a fist, on some historical day you sat down in front of a computer monitor, pressed the keys of the cyberboard - and off you go? Or was it a quill pen and a blank sheet of paper? Why suddenly, in adulthood, does a person who graduated from a decent jazz department, who has been honorably engaged in business for years, begin to get involved in something strange and inexplicable for the average person: writing out letters and putting them into sentences? What, without going into pathos, exposed? And why do you need this, since, as far as I know from many other similar online publications, it doesn’t give you money in order to stand confidently on your feet?
Doesn't give me any money at all. Exactly. I don't know the rest at all. I don’t know why this attachment. Probably for peace of mind. The quill pen hobby began with a great personal and family tragedy. It was impossible to cope with the departure of a loved one except by sitting at the table and calming down, not twitching: “Oh, Kirei, you couldn’t find the door!..”. Otherwise, there weren't many options left. They could all end badly. Because Russian nature is inexplicable. Writer, poet, bandit, cormorant, gambler, demon, terrorist bomber, communist columnist, utopian, democrat - all merged into a single bundle of nerves, feelings and experiences. And if you muffle one thing, another will creep out; If you strangle him, with an effort, a wheeze, a third, monstrous one will come out. Monster. If you stroke it, blow on it, it will fall off, turn sour, wilt, and meow. If you kick him, he’ll get so furious that you can’t calm him down! Until you are cursed forever or blessed with the holy cross - which sometimes has the same effect.

You are closely associated with online publications: “Changes”, “Private Correspondent”, “Russian Field”... How competitive are they today with well-known “thick” magazines, with recognized printed literary almanacs? In general, what is the difference - semantic, strategic, cultural - between a virtual publication and a printed publication?
Knowing many “printed” online people, and even you for example, I will say that all Internet fields, “Russian-non-Russian”, no matter, are necessary in order to have your own personal platform for expression independent of anyone . Further, only the public determines the value of these resources depending on consumer needs and genres. And if the “conservative” Magazine Hall is visited by 1 million people a month, that means the hall is in demand. But, in essence, there is no competition. I will note, however, that many literary portals live (in terms of traffic) solely from the authors themselves who publish there. In contrast to journalistic ones - bright, fashionable, non-standard - well-formed, formulated and presented. Which can accumulate colossal citation indices in a year. Comparable to 5 - 10 years of work from well-known resources. Crowdfunding again... But that's a different story.

Personally, I tried to work both ways. Honestly, I prefer to go to the library the old fashioned way - sit with my book friends. Peace again.

The surname “Pound” after the publication of the novel “The Golden Calf” became synonymous with a figurehead in Russian speech. The chairman (sitz - from German sitzen - “to sit”) is a minor character in the novel, but memorable. Why did Igor Vladislavovich Popov, which sounds quite decent, by the way, after all, not just some Nestor Kukolnik or William Pokhlebkin, take the pseudonym Igor Pound for himself? Is it really so that curious journalists would ask about this in interviews?
When I started, I didn’t think about interviews. (In rhyme.) “Pound” - yes, a nickname from “The Calf.” That’s what my friends jokingly called me in the 90s because I became the director of the company. True, not a fake one, but still.

He left the pseudonym for mercantile reasons. After all, there are quite a few Popov writers (and what kind!). And the Pound is one. That's all.

Recently, freedom of speech in Russia has become increasingly tougher, and there is more and more concern about the impending time of widespread censorship and litanization of texts, as in the old years in the USSR. The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopts laws according to which it is not only forbidden to use profanity, but also, in the near future, a number of letters of the Russian alphabet, which in themselves are negative and offensive to the Russian ear. Let’s say the letters “x”, “p”, “b” are at least consonant. Or from vowels - “u”, “i”, “a”, “ya”... What should a writer, essayist, journalist do? Judging by your texts, you write as you see fit. Whatever you want. And you are not going to adapt to anyone. Or give it all up and return to jazz?
I never parted with jazz. I'm listening to him. And I’m not worried about lithuania. Writing, literature, texts are an interesting hobby, nothing more. True, it passionately occupies almost my entire life without a trace. But that’s why it’s valuable, damn it. On Monday Vaska is a miller, and on Tuesday Vaska is a saddler. And all around, across the heavens, the din of bells spreads. Ringing. He is a testament to Matins... And if by chance the moment comes when someone blathers something for the letters you mentioned, or at least hints, it’s an infection, I’ll simply take off the hook the “alarming bag” that has always been hanging in the corridor as a reminder of eternal youth , - and I’ll rush, brother, to you, to New York. Which, by the way, I intended to do a couple of times: in ’91 and ’98. Yes, something was holding everything back: youth, business, new family, children; then enemies-friends, old hatred-love; then elementary laziness... Russia in general. RUSSIA. With the heart of a rich man - with the bag of a beggar, as Sarukhanov once sang.

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US news in Russian

Igor Punt: “Russia is a free country. That’s why no one has canceled the installation yet.”

With all the openness of the Internet, with its blogs, its own resources and platforms, which each user can organize if desired - and be heard! – The infosphere is quite differentiated by consumer baskets...
Read more > > >

“In the West, no one remembers Solzhenitsyn...”

Pension divorce

What is not clear? It is clear to a fool: when the retirement age is raised, life expectancy automatically increases. What is not clear here, who is not being stupid like a child? Is it bad that you started living longer in “Mordor” in quotes? Even longer than in this other, uh, foreign country without quotes. What, the stupidity is off the charts, huh?! Life has become longer, yes, no. Watch football and don’t worry, don’t think about death. 5,6,7:0.

And about the “Solzhenitsyn mafia”...

“I generally don’t strive to publish too much in magazines (maybe this is due to the Western habit of valuing books more than books). I received a letter from the publisher and wrote them a response. This is good. Three-volume set “Place”, “Tales and Stories”, “Psalm”. And “Banner” doesn’t bother me at all. (...) It’s sad that liberalism in literature is led by people like Baklanov and Shatrov. On top of everything else, the Solzhenitsyn mafia, judging by the periodicals, is launching its campaign, which is turning into psychosis. They used to rage here, near American funds, but now they are everywhere. In the West, except for certain Slavists and certain emigrants, no one remembers Solzhenitsyn. This means that your atmosphere is disgusting. The disorientation is the same in culture as in the economy. Of course, publicity is a great achievement. But the absence of genuine cultural guidelines (which existed back in the 30s) and the presence of false guidelines (that arose in the 60s) does not allow those, especially those who begin in literature and those who participate in literature, to take advantage of these achievements. process. To be outside the process, to be a renegade like I was - not many people will dare to do this. The price is too high." F. Gorenshtein - L. Lazarev. 1990

Philosophy in kind

I thought for a long time. Days 3-4. I wrote on more than one sticker. After all, if there is no God, then there is no Putin. And then everything falls into place.

World Cup 2018

A friend from Moscow wrote, he is involved in betting. He said in confidence that Kokorin secretly bet $1.5 million on the last place in the group. Will raise about two $lams. Which is quite rational in difficult times - you have to live, you have to spin... And he added that half the team there are clients of bookmakers.

Exchange

That is, if I decide to move to Moscow and sell my room in a communal apartment, then first I’ll immediately buy Bitcoin (they’re growing all the time). And only then I will calmly decide what to exchange it for in the capital. I think real estate will be more reliable, especially since it has fallen in price. It’s quite possible to take one meter in an underground garage... near the Kremlin!

Mite

Yesterday a tick stuck to a friend at a fun, noisy barbecue. Hefty, nasty, juicy. Somewhere, apparently, already in the evening. They found him in the morning and took him to the hospital to pull him out. There, the good doctor carefully took out the beast, somehow quickly checked it for viruses and affectionately said to his friend: “The eukaryote (tick in parentheses) drank your blood - and recovered.”

Dog work

When my wife, without saying a word, dragged the first dog, I was silent. When I brought the second one, I was silent. Hissing something under his breath.

Time has passed... Stupidly counting on a calculator the number of steps passed, how long I spend in the fresh air - taking into account the number of gigabytes, well-being, lightness and mobility - considering that for many years every (!) morning begins with a “dog” warm-up, I pay tribute to the silent “ soft" feminine power.

Author Igor Funt

BG. Bottom line

Don't know. Someone from the “right” philosophical circle praises him. But he remained at the level of his ever-memorable “old goat-eater.” The only thing is that I didn’t learn to play the guitar. Which, in general, is the same thing: Makarevich, for example, is generally dead about the guitar. And the main thing is that neither one nor the other admits it. That they can’t... They just sing about something: one is nasal, the other is vibrating like a clown. They sing... now about absolutely unnecessary and unimportant things.

Beer and inflation

Beer has gone up in price. I ask the saleswomen at the bar who say it’s expensive, why did they raise the price again? “The director of the plant [and we have our own local brewery] said at the planning meeting that gasoline has skyrocketed. And he raised the price of beer,” the guys answered: “Obviously out of malice,” they added, giggling. “Hee-hee, damn it,” I walked out into the street light from the “golden” pub, remembering the blessed 44 kopecks. for our native Soviet liter. And queues, queues, queues... - But now at least drink up!” - Yes, but there’s nothing to it.

And about dynasties

According to Arab media reports, the King of Saudi Arabia bin Abdulaziz, for the first time in the country's 85 years of history, appointed the Minister of Culture - the king's nephew. Fool, Medinsky has a son.

Tolstoy

I listened to a recording of L. Tolstoy from 1908. I felt a thin thread stretched through the century and the events surrounding it. Tolstoy talks about what will happen when he is gone. He thought about the children, the future of the country, all of us: those whom he did not know, but foresaw clearly. Not a word about yourself, or only in the past tense.

Boy writer

I received a story in the mail about overcoming myself through hard hockey training. They say that sport helped to overcome adversity in a difficult life situation. An excellent boy’s text, considering my cry to teenagers, schoolchildren, and kids in general about the ongoing competition for future bloggers “Black Chicken” at the children's Center for Personal Growth. I corrected the spelling and punctuation (they love to play tricks on smartphones). I posted the story on the “Chicken” page on VK. I gave the author a link.

The author writes: they say, what is it and what is the further fate of the text, and can I even give an unbiased assessment of the author’s work. [And a youthful cursive writing of one and a half pages was sent: 7 thousand characters.]

I ask, say, tell me a few words about yourself: how old, what school do you go to, etc. (Well, to make a small announcement: Vanya P., 13 years old, loves hockey, wrote a story...)

He replied that he was writing under a pseudonym and that he would not tell me anything more. Like the kibalchish boy is so reserved.

I say, okay, well, at least tell me your age.

I went through my channels, it’s not difficult. It turned out to be a famous journalist from RBC.

Dog

We went for a walk with the dog. There is a beautiful fenced-in lawn outside. And a large sign with bright, intelligible letters: like Comrade. citizens, have a conscience, do not shit in decently maintained places, value work, be vigilant and etc. Who would doubt that, being of my blood, the wolf was immediately under the sign and shitted. Then he grinned so crookedly, shooting a thieves’ fix and, looking me straight in the eyes, said: “I know my rights. But whether you clean up my shit or not depends on your civic conscience.”

Well, according to tradition, a couple of final anecdotes

She looks like such a quiet, decently intelligent Moscow girl. And this is the only punishment: “Hop, trash, don’t give me time!” revealed her true nature.

On the occasion of Pushkin’s birthday, I heard a passing joke from Igor Volgin, saying that the writer comes to the clinic with tests: feces, urine, blood. He passed, a day later he returned for the result: it turned out that he was a genius.

You woke up and stretched. Turned on the computer. Let's go down the FB feed. On VKontakte. Sechin earned 8,600 rubles in this minute.

I won't forget mother-board native

Well, come on, tell me another joke about Shufutinsky.

Igor Pound

I'd rather stay there...

Part one

I am Second!

Five-thirty in the morning.

I reach out lazily, manage to touch it and... suddenly the bell rings - sharp, piercing!

Ten minutes - toilet, queue for a point, filling up the beds. Is it possible to fill a metal shkonar with three pieces of cotton wool?

The dense, impenetrable air hurts your eyes: vomiting or defecating - there is no difference, the smell is the same! – he is inseparable from the inhabitants of the three by two cell.

- Stand up, face the wall! Hands behind your back, prepare for inspection. – The feeder falls simultaneously with the last order-bark of the senior warrant officer.

“You stink, citizen ensign.”

Fifteen days in a punishment cell is dust for the right kid. Teeth? I'll go out and put it in! Cough - burning in your chest? – nothing-oh-oh! - that’s why he’s a chif.

- Nits, you won’t go for a walk today!

Teeth chatter in response:

- A-y-I-i-don’t-h-h-feel...

- Eat, you nit!

And again icy oblivion. How long have I been here? Winter? Why isn't it cold?

- Y-y-y, I'm full, great citizen... creature.

– Raise your hands! - And a stench in the ear: - What, there won’t be a wedding?!

He lowered his hands and turned to face him. He looked straight into his eyes, silently.

- Face the wall! Face the wall! Face...

And again...

Five thirty.

Morning inspection.

- Face the wall!

I'm already unaccustomed to cockroaches falling outside the gate.

- Raise your hands! - Ensign Yasenev grabbed the book from my saddlebag and began to flip through it nervously.

- There's a photograph...

- Be silent!

- Leave the letter.

– Face the wall!!

“The letter is there...” I turned towards the sound of pages being torn. The duty officer and his assistant were waiting outside the door in the corridor. Prapor screaming “To the wall-ee!!” scattered scraps of my freedom across the mucus of the cockpit... With the tip of my stiff right open palm, a poke under the Adam’s apple. The left short hook without a swing - an ensign to the temple, and the third finishing uppercut from bottom to top - to the jaw. Yasenev fell as he stood, bag down. One and a half seconds - three blows killed him. He was not breathing, covered in mucus and cockroaches.

I don’t know how I survived then. For the life of the sub-inspector, he returned half of his own, but remained alive. Threw away love (Lyudka ordered to forget, not to write). Gave away his health. Before his death he meditated - no! – did not ask for forgiveness or mercy. I was ready to answer for every breath I took. He prayed without knowing prayers. The moratorium on death sent me on endless wanderings through Siberian camps and prisons. H-ha! The nickname stuck: “One second!” “The lads jokingly pointed their fingers at the unwanted, evil cops: “Wait a second! Figure it out quietly!”

In the late nineties, in a colony, I met an opera. We got along about books and sports. The library and the gym - I was free there. Taught him meditation, how to rise above consciousness. Above awareness. With his help, he organized a small sports section - in his free time, the boys lifted iron, played volleyball - anyone who wanted to. They couldn’t blame me: according to the rules, I used communication with the cop for the benefit of the common fund. The authority, the article, the title and the “ten” under his belt spoke for themselves.

…End. Eighteen years. What's waiting behind the gate? I moved here when the country was diving from the flames of socialism into capitalism, without having time to burn and wash away the red color behind it. What now? Just questions.

- Just a second, go out. Godfather is calling!

Sanya often invited me for tea... To chat about the inevitability of near freedom. Thank you, Sanek. Maybe he begged God for you back then in the early nineties, before his death. Only now I realized that this is the answer. There is no other way. He, God, sees and hears, sending everyone what they ask for. It’s just that not everyone is ready to accept the message from above today, immediately: everything has its time... as was bequeathed by the ancient, Delphic times.