We present the winners of the competition dedicated to the Defender of the Fatherland Day. Third place.
On the morning of June 1991, five people stood in front of the one-story building of the headquarters. Two sergeants - in parades, with badges, with stripes on their shoulder straps, on which the letters "SA" were yellow, in caps with visors gleaming in the sun; three privates - in civilian clothes.
Yura was the closest to the checkpoint. His shirt, tucked into his trousers, slightly swelled from the steppe wind that walked through the military unit.
The battalion commander himself went out to see them off.
“Every time I apologize to demobels,” said Lieutenant Colonel Zhanibekov. - That in December, then in June. I could have let you go early. But while these boobies, your change, will teach you wits, while the tolerances come up, while the curator approves … Training is one thing, the troops are another, you know yourself. Our part is restricted, every person counts. I’m looking at you,”for some reason he glanced at Yura,“and I feel like a school teacher on the last bell. Sorry to part with you guys. Correct your cap, brave demobilization. No not like this. - Zhanibekov himself adjusted the cap to Sergeant Orlov. - Thanks for the service, guys.
The lieutenant colonel shook hands with everyone.
- And you, Yura, - having reached the last in Yuri's rank, the commander for some reason turned to him in a polite manner, - send your poems to Yunost or Smena. The special officer said you have wonderful poems. In my opinion, he understands this issue. Well-read.
- Thank you … - Yuri said in response. He felt embarrassed. - I'm not Lermontov, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel …
“I’ll wait for a parcel with a magazine from you,” Zhanibekov said sternly. - And now - be!
The line immediately disintegrated.
- Do not remember it dashingly! - the lieutenant colonel shouted to the former soldiers in the backs, as they walked in a short chain to the checkpoint.
The commander's UAZ was waiting at the gate.
- Happy! - said the driver. - I have to drag the service for another six months.
- Sit in the front. - Orlov pushed Yura. - You are the farthest home.
Leaving behind the gate with red stars, the overcrowded UAZ drove along a concrete fence lined with maples. On the parade ground, the formation for divorce will now begin, but this does not concern Yura. Orlov with the guys in the back seat began to sing "A soldier is walking through the city," and Yura laughed, and then pulled him up.
At the bus station in p. T., Having said goodbye to the commander's driver, demobels departed on suburban and intercity buses - some to the east, some to the west, some to the north. Yura was on the way with Orlov - to the regional center, and there to the airport.
They rode in a lax "LAZ", rattling with iron and bouncing on the broken road. Together with "LAZ" we jumped on the harsh slippery seats and demobilized.
- The girl is waiting for something? - Orlov asked too loudly, as it seemed to Yura.
Yura nodded.
- You have a cool girl, Yurka! - continued Orlov. - You wrote poetry to her! I also had to write poetry to my Jackdaw. Maybe she would have waited then. Only I do not know how to write poetry. No talent!
Green fields stretched outside the windows. The sky was clear blue over the fields.
Yura thought that Galka probably did not like Orlov. If you love - how can you not wait?
If no one had waited, it would have been long ago to draw a conclusion: no love exists.
Yura and Orlov bought air tickets in advance, in May, having presented military requirements at the airport ticket office and paid the difference, because only a trip by rail was redeemed according to the requirements. Now they had to wait for registration - each his own - and take off in the Tu-134 or Tu-154.
At the airport, they ate tasteless milk ice cream, and then a woman's voice in the speakers announced the registration for the Tyumen flight. At counter number seven, two hugged goodbye.
In flight, Yura looked out the window, at the white, gray clouds and the endless sky. "Tu" fell into air pockets, as if falling, suddenly and swiftly, and goose bumps ran down Yuri's head, down his neck and shoulders. From the unsmiling stewardess, Yura accepted a cardboard glass with mineral water. The strangely gloomy stewardess brought nothing but water on her cart. The women in the front seats talked in low voices about the country's deficit. The mineral water turned out to be warm and salty-nasty, but Yura finished his drink to the end. Then he threw back the chair and closed his eyes.
First of all, he will go to Mary. On the thirty-fifth minibus it will reach the air agency, to the final stop, and there - on foot. This is what he wrote to her in his last letter. Maria does not have a telephone at home, but ordering long-distance calls in advance, getting from the military unit to the point of the city, where there was a telegraph and a long-distance communication point, is a whole story. Therefore, having bought a plane ticket, Yura wrote to Masha on the same day: “There is no need to meet. Be at home."
A couple of hours later, the Tu-154 landed in Roshchino. Yura did everything as planned: he stood in a small queue for a fixed-route taxi, climbed into a tight "rafik" and for thirty-five kopecks drove to Tyumen, to the Aeroflot agency. From there, admiring the lilacs that have not yet faded, recently washed by the rain, knocking down the city dust from the delicate matte leaves, with a suitcase in his hand and a smile on his lips that probably looked silly, childish, Yura moved towards Maria - across the road along a traffic light, along Republic street, along Odessa, then courtyards. He walked and thought that it was good that he hid his dress uniform and cap in a suitcase, and did not put it on. Otherwise, he would have stood out, they would have looked at him. And he didn't want people to stare at him - happy, with a childish smile. His happiness, the happiness of returning, he wanted to share first with Maria. Two years! One hundred and forty-eight letters from Mary, full of love, lay in his suitcase. The first letters were dripped with tears, her tears: ink from a ballpoint hand on notebook sheets in some places changed blue to pink.
Here is her yard. Brick five-story building, a strip of asphalt, birch, lilac and acacia at the entrances. Everything is familiar - maybe just a little older. On a field fenced with a net, boys of about twelve were playing the ball. The short-haired striker, who looked older than the others, deftly bypassed the young midfielders and defenders and, under the screams of several snotty fans, was inexorably leading the ball to the goal. Yura thought with annoyance that he had not bought Maria any flowers - no daffodils, no tulips, no roses at last.
On the sidewalk, by the path to the porch, there were brand new white Zhigulis of the seventh model. With wedding ribbons. A black Volga with the same ribbons and rings on the roof froze behind the Zhiguli.
Grasping the door handle, Yura heard a scream somewhere behind.
- Ouya-I-I!
So the boys scream in pain. When they get kicked or hit.
Turning around, running - and Yura behind the net, on the sand of the field. The short-haired boy who recently dribbled the ball into the goal bent over the defeated kid. He lay on his back, like an animal that recognized the primacy of another animal, covering his face with his elbows.
- You, bitch, gave me a trip? I know you. - The attacker straightened up, looked to the side, caught Yura with his eyes, spat. His face was wrinkled and angry. Such an old face.
- Leave him alone. - Yura approached.
- Get out of here, rookie! - The attacker looked up at him.
Yura was taken aback. Salaga? The kid is breathing into his chest!
- Don't you suck, freak? I'll cut you, bitch, into belts!.. - A blade flashed in the boy's left hand. Razor.
- Well, stop it!
A woman with a shapeless figure, covered in a dress, hobbled towards the audience.
- Damned felon! - said the big woman, looking with hatred at the wrinkled old face, which pierced her with a cheeky look. The teenager's razor has disappeared. As if she was not there.
“I'm not a criminal, Aunt Clara.
- Your brother is a criminal. And you will sit down. You are all the same,”said Aunt Clara. - Get up, Borechka. How many times have I told you: don't play football with this rabble.
- Where can he go! - The wrinkled face spat into the sand and smiled as he watched Borechka get up and dust himself off. - We live in the same yard.
- Nothing, we'll move soon.
- I will dream of you, Bo-rech-ka! - And he laughed hoarsely in a breaking voice, breaking into a squeal. “And you, salaga,” he said, instantly removing his smile from his face and wrinkling his narrow forehead, “already a corpse. I know who you are leaning on. To Masha.
Yura caught Aunt Clara's eye. She looked back from the edge of the net. Curiosity froze in her eyes. Little Borechka from her feet also looked back.
- Go, kondybai, which zenki goggled, - said the striker. - Let's meet again. Do you know Lyoshka Poker?.. You don't know anything. This is my brother. He grazes your Arkadyevich.
"What else is Arkadyevich?"
- Now get out. Stomp to your slut. You are demobilized, right? The wrinkled man shook his head, just like an adult.
Without looking back, Yura went from the field after the fat aunt, hearing behind him a quiet conversation and shrill boys laughing. Aunt Klara, stopping for a second at the entrance next to Maria's, looked at Yura again, but did not say a word. She opened the door and let Borechka go ahead. The door squeaked with a spring and banged. Yura noticed that many colored confetti were scattered around the Mary's porch and on the steps. As if someone took out New Year's crackers and pampered. Oh yeah, somebody's got a wedding. These machines with ribbons … Dance music was heard from above. "Modern Talking". Yura met Masha at a disco in a technical school just under these songs. Masha came with a group of girls from the culinary school - so shy, so slender, in a modest dress with a belt. Then, with a smile, she told Yura that she had dressed like that on purpose - in order to be different from others. “So you noticed me,” she whispered. And Yura told her that he thought that all the girls from the culinary area were plump bbw.
He went up to the fourth floor. Music came from behind Maria's door. On the leatherette someone attached a scarlet paper heart pierced by an arrow with safety pins.
"Has she moved?"
Yura examined the landing. Confetti was sprinkled on the steps leading to the fifth floor.
“Maybe the wedding is there? But why is the picture here?"
A crazy, almost fantastic thought crossed his mind.
Masha made an agreement with her mother and father, signed up ahead of time for registration at the registry office, handed whoever needed invitations, agreed on the cars - and now Yura is waiting for him at the wedding. To their wedding! On the day of his return. There is nothing more wonderful. And the music turned on exactly the one under which they met.
- She's waiting for me! Remembers our disco! - Yura whispered so quietly that he barely heard himself.
He must not hesitate. They need to hurry - or they will be late at the registry office.
And he pressed the bell button.
The button was the same, smeared around the edges with paint. But instead of the usual crackling "zzrrrrrr", the speaker inside the apartment chirped like a bird deafeningly. Yura shuddered and again thought that maybe Masha had moved. No, no, she would have written to him about it.
Door opened. In the hallway stood Maria's father - in a white shirt unbuttoned to the belly, in black trousers with crumpled arrows and in house slippers. His face was filled with an alcoholic crimson, his eyes glittered, and his mouth smelled strongly of vodka and tobacco.
- Oh, Yurok … And what is in the suitcase? Present?
- I'm from the army, - said Yura.
- Straight from there? Well, you're done. Directly to the wedding! I praise.
The tape recorder in the apartment was silent.
- Who came there, dad?
Her voice.
- Georgy Fedorovich, who is this?
Unfamiliar male voice.
And there were also different voices in the living room.
Well, yes, a wedding.
Confetti on the street, confetti on the stairs, Volga with rings and Zhiguli with ribbons. And the picture on the leatherette.
Yura stood in the hallway, holding the suitcase in front of him with both hands - as if he was hiding behind it.
Georgy Fedorovich is married to Albina Iosifovna. He did not seem to be going to divorce and marry another woman. Masha would have written, of course.
And here is Albina Iosifovna herself, holding her chin high. Such women are not divorced.
Maria has no brothers and sisters.
- Hi, Yura! - Smart Maria, in a bright cornflower blue dress up to the knees, with short sleeves, with a shallow cut on the chest, hugged him lightly - through a suitcase that he did not let out of his hands - and kissed him on the cheek, doused with the smell of perfume and champagne. - Come on in. Don't be embarrassed. This is Yuri Arkadievich, well, Yura, how are you. Your namesake.
Behind her, embracing her shoulders, accentuated by foam rubber under the dress, smiled a shabby, dark-haired comrade with the appearance of a bureaucratic worker. Thirty years or more. In a black two-piece suit, with a blue striped tie. A typical owner of an office in the district committee of the Komsomol or in some other bureaucratic house. His soft smile inspired trust and affection.
The dark-haired one held out a small hand to him, Yura shook it carefully.
“We just call him Arkadyevich,” said Maria. - Oh, I didn't say … He is the groom, that is, my husband. Yesterday we had registration, and today we are walking for the second day. Put your suitcase down. She squatted down and began to unhook his fingers from the suitcase handle. A gold ring flashed on her ring finger. - Well, you're like a child. Everything is fine. Life goes on. Now you will drink vodka. Brandy. Do you want three-year-old Crimean champagne?.. Why are you all crowded here? She got up and spoke louder. - Arkadyevich, who turned off the music? Do you all need instructions? You men, without a solid female hand, will surely bend everything.
- Ttaak sickening! - barked Mary's father. - And Yure - a penalty kick!
- I don’t need a penalty.
“He doesn't need a penalty,” said Maria. - Dad, you drank a lot today. Think better of the liver.
- I'm thinking about you, daughter. About your holiday. If I don't have fun, what kind of wedding will it be?
- Yura, come on in. Sit down here.
In the living room, Yura sat down where Maria had indicated to him, on a slightly wobbly chair. An unoccupied chair, a clean plate - they seemed to be waiting for him. A wide folding table covered with a pink tablecloth was covered with crystal, china and bottles. Strangers were sitting on the couch and chairs. They introduced themselves, Yura nodded or shook hands with them - and immediately forgot their names. There were about ten guests. Except for Masha's uncle, the younger brother of Georgy Fedorovich, who occupied a chair in the corner, Yura had never seen any of these people before. Albina Iosifovna explained to him that today is the second wedding day, for relatives. The first day was yesterday: after registration we gathered in a cooperative cafe.
“There were ninety guests,” she said proudly.
Yura began to eat, trying not to look at anyone. Turns out he was hungry as hell. He ate a salad, then another. I ate wheat bread, cut into triangles, like in a restaurant. Maria herself brought him hot - steaming potatoes, pork with onions and sauce. He did not drink vodka, cognac, or champagne, but drank black tea.
The guests were already good, they were shouting over the tape recorder, they repeated "bitterly" in chorus, forcing Maria and Arkadyevich to kiss for a long time, Arkadyevich, rustling, crawled with thin fingers on Maria's blue back, and Yura, thinking about the fat, pork and gravy, kissing lips, swallowed tea, adding boiling water from an electric samovar and forgetting to add sugar, and told himself that he was in a parallel world. Into a world where everything is twisted, distorted, spoiled, brought to the point of absurdity, where everything does not go the way it does in the native, present world.
Tearing himself away from the reddened, as if crying, bride, the groom rose from his place at the head of the table. Yura looked into his approaching eyes. Arkadyevich, already without a jacket, without a tie, was reaching out to him with a bottle of vodka.
- Have a glass with us. What are you - tea and tea …
The bottle was lemonade. Vodka was poured into such short-necked bottles under Gorbachev. On the label of “Russkaya”, Yura saw an obliquely placed blue stamp: “Regional executive committee”. Not otherwise, the groom not only bought vodka, but got it.
Arkadyevich poured him into a glass, helpfully but too sharply pushed by Georgy Fyodorovich, spilled vodka on the tablecloth. Not wanting to speak or listen to any toasts, Yura drank. The vodka was warm and disgusting. Yura felt his face twist. Arkadyevich himself knew how to drink vodka with a smile. A rare skill, I guess. Or maybe the muscles of his face have long been adjusted for a constant smile.
Maria's father pushed back the curtains, opened the window.
- Something stifling.
Having washed down vodka with tea, Yura got up, pushing back his chair. The carpet under my feet was soft, new. Yura went to the window, thinking, maybe Georgy Fyodorovich will tell him what. Someone had to tell him something.
Instead of Mary's father, Arkadyevich spoke to him. With a cup of tea, he stood at the windowsill, drummed his fingers on it, trying to catch the beat of the music.
“It smells good of lilacs,” he said.
A sweetish aroma wafted from the street.
Yura shrugged his shoulders.
"You seem to have served without leave," said Arkadyevich. - Maria said you were at the missile "point".
“It's bad with vacations there,” said Yura.
“I see,” said the groom-husband.
- Did you serve?
- It was not possible.
"Then what do you understand?"
The groom-husband drank some tea. He coughed.
Turning away from the window, Yura caught the glances of several guests. Among others, Albina Iosifovna looked at him. Pity flashed in her eyes. Fast, tiny such a pity. Or maybe it seemed to him. Albina Iosifovna is a stern woman. At work - the boss. You can't wait for veal tenderness from her. But to get a portion of ridicule and poisonous remarks is easy. She would rather declare him, Yura, a loser than feel sorry for him and pat him on the head.
Will Maria not tell him anything? “I love, I'm waiting” - this is in the letters. What is there? Sticky kisses and going first to the movies, and then to the registry office with this thirty-year-old bureaucrat, or who is he there? Impossible to believe! There must be some explanation. Accidental pregnancy? The thought made Yura feel hot.
- Arkadyevich, I'll talk to Yurik, - said Maria, getting up. She said this in the pause between the tape songs, and everyone heard her words.
“Of course,” Arkadyevich replied with a smile from the window. - You need to talk.
- Come on, Yurochka the fool. - Maria gracefully gave him her hand. - To the bedroom. Nobody will bother us there.
- Yes, yes, to the bedroom! Arkadyevich repeated happily, and laughed. The guests laughed at him.
- Here it is, democracy! - said Georgy Fedorovich. - Didn't have time to get married, as the husband sends his wife to the bedroom with … with … with a familiar guy.
“This is what I am called now,” thought Yura, walking along the wall behind Maria.
He remembered how, in the hallway, she hugged him - so lightly, barely touching. Probably, this is how the girls hug their acquaintances.
The guests behind him laughed. "Modern Talking" started playing louder. A relative of Arkadyevich sang along with a school accent, trying to raise his baritone to tenor and therefore out of tune. The guests laughed again. They laughed at the singer, but it seemed to Yura that they were over him. Through the corridor, their laughter sounded muffled, gravely.
- Yes, you put something racial! - said the voice of Mary's uncle.
Masha led Yura to the room that she used to call "hers". His, that's all. And now this is the "bedroom".
She closed the door with the latch, leaned against the door with her back.
- Sit down.
Yura sat down on the made bed. The mattress springs creaked slightly. Perhaps on this very bed Maria and Arkadyevich arranged their wedding night yesterday. Or does Arkadyevich have his own apartment? Cozy, furnished? And he just doesn't want to scratch and destroy it, turn it into a drunken wedding mess?
Maria unrolled the dressing table mirrors, ran lipstick over her lips. The lips that Arkadyevich had kissed shone.
The cutout dress - probably made to measure by a tailor - made Maria look older. And also cosmetics. The line is here, the eyeliner is there, the line is here. And she is no longer twenty years old, but all twenty-five.
He left an eighteen-year-old girl waiting for him, and now there is a mature woman in front of him.
- You know, Yurik, we have big plans. Arkadyevich and me. Maria sat down beside her and moved closer. Yura felt her warm side. - You need to get used to and understand.
"And what first - get used to or understand?"
- Why are you silent? I couldn't miss the chance! - She moved him warm side. He swayed while sitting. - Sorry. Well, I'm not saying that … You see, while you served, a lot has changed. That is, not much - everything. You can't yawn. Those who did not have time were late. You see a piece - grab it and pop it before the others gobble it up.
"What is this piece?" - Yura thought.
- Arkadyevich - he works in the city committee of the Komsomol, - said Maria.
She named the position. Yura looked into the glass of the bookcase in front of him. In the glass, he saw a dark Maria looking into his face from the side, apparently trying to read his thoughts, his attitude to the announced position. And Yura thought that he had almost guessed, only not her fiancé from the district committee, but from the city committee. Take it higher!
- Connections, friends, opportunities, - Maria listed. - Well, and one more thing … He has a car, an apartment. Capital garage. Dacha by the Andreevskoye Lake. It is foolish to live in the present, you have to look into the future.
"Is Arkadyevich your future?"
“Arkadyevich and I see our life this way,” she said. - Business. It's its own business, you know?.. Cafe, then another cafe. And then, probably, more. In general, we are not going to stop. Arkadyevich now has one cafe, but a cooperative one, on shares. And we want ours. There is one dining room on the city committee's balance sheet, and the district is just that. She paused. - We want to open a special cafe. With a twist. Art cafe. Let's say literary. You will love this idea.
Yura felt with his cheek how Maria was gazing at his profile. I should have told her not to look at him, but to look in front of her, into the bookcase, like him.
- Wine, poetry, candles - it's so romantic! Arkadyevich also came up with the name: "Northern Muse". Yesterday we walked in a cafe, well, in a cooperative, Arkadyevich's friends from Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk came to the wedding, so he came up with the northern name. And we will invite poets to the literary cafe. And we'll read something ourselves.
By yourself? Her Arkadyevich also writes poetry? Or did she start writing? But why then did she not send a single poem to him in the army? Isn't it all the same to him? Or do they want him to participate in this… family business? Hell no!
The bed springs creaked under his hands.
- Don't freak out, Yurochka the fool. Who is waiting for two years now? The best years are passing. Don't be so willow.
- Ivnyak?
- Well, they say that.
- Never heard.
- You did not hear a lot of things there, in your steppes, at your "point". Don’t be naive, well? All of these missiles of yours will soon be cut and cut into scrap metal. Life has changed, you know, friend? Everything became different, Yura. The communists are now in flight.
- Do not rush things.
- You do not understand anything. Arkadyevich - he's a city committee member. He's up to date. And on TV they talk about a market economy. The rails of socialism have led to a dead end and all that. A commodity exchange has opened in Tyumen. In "Rodnichka", American cigarettes are sold and French cognac "Napoleon". Milwaukee beer in cans!..
Tsoi's tape voice came from the living room. “Our hearts demand changes! Our eyes demand changes!"
- Didn't you have a telly in the unit, Yur?
- Was. We watched "Time". According to the daily routine …
Yura remembered Gorbachev's gloomy, worried face on the Rubin TV. Earlier, in April eighty-fifth, Gorbachev looked different: cheerful, cheerful. It seemed that he had already stepped into the future and is now calling the country after him. Next year - the party congress, standing ovation. Acceleration, publicity. Yura believed Gorbachev. But in 1989, the secretary general started talking too much and too often. As if trying to resist with words the strong current that carried him somewhere. And you will not understand: either a shitty swimmer, or a cunning enemy of the people.
- You can have a normal lunch in a cooperative cafe, but for fifteen rubles. And in the dining room - for a ruble and a half, but there you will be given water instead of soup, bread instead of cutlets and a brown pile instead of tea. People deserve the best, and it's not a sin to charge them the best bit of money.
“My father earns 200 rubles a month, my mother - 180, - thought Yura. - How much better will they "deserve" prices for the Cars?"
“Poverty is inevitable under capitalism,” Maria spat, as if answering his thoughts. - That is why it is important to be not among those who buy, but among those who are selling.
This phrase seemed to Yuri memorized. Masha is beautiful and slender, but she does not know how to speak smartly and stylishly. Probably picked up from Arkadyevich. From the Komsomol market leader.
How is it: today is a member of the Komsomol, tomorrow - the enemy of socialism and communism? How so: the United States - the ideologue of the Cold War and an enemy, and now - a peacemaker and friend? In the USSR, speculators were imprisoned, and now they will be declared the best people, a role model? In literature lessons at school, they taught that opportunists are nits and scum, and now these skins are going to rule the show? Life inside out? Yura believed that all this would not go beyond talk and small cooperative activities. And those who try to sell their homeland will be given a hand. And they will give it hard. So that the fingers fly. It is only necessary to end the deficit, to establish the system. There were difficult times for the country, but everything was always getting better.
But how is that? Yesterday - his bride, and today - someone else's wife?
"Have you made plans for me too?" - asked Yuri, looking at Mariino's reflection in the bookcase door. A strange calm seized him suddenly. He looked at Maria.
Her face glowed pink.
- Well, you see - you guessed it yourself! No, you are not completely lost to the market economy. I'll get you in. You will go far with me, Yurik the Fool. If I said, it will be so. She patted him on the shoulder.
- Yah? - Yura almost laughed. - In your letters you said that you were waiting for me and that you loved me. A…
- And I have not stopped loving you. Why do you think so? I wrote to you. Do you think she was lying? You don't understand anything, Yurik the Fool. I just didn't say everything.
She folded her fingers in her lap. Like an old woman.
They were both sitting on the bed now, staring at their dim reflections in the doors of the bookcase.
Faces showing through the multi-colored spines of the books.
I wrote.
Squinting, Yura looked out the window at the sky. Lots of clouds. They stretch one after the other. Oblong, thick, gray. It will be raining.
Yes, she wrote to him. Frequently at first, two or three letters a week. They accumulated quickly, creating a thick stack. Yura kept them in a bedside table, wrapped in cellophane. Closer to winter, Masha began to write less often - one letter a week. Under demobilization, he received from her only a couple of letters a month. Now it became clear: letters were getting harder and harder for her. It was getting harder and harder to call Yura beloved, to say “I’m waiting,” “I am sending a long passionate kiss,” and to fill out paper sheets with other suitable ones. And yet she coped with the task.
I wrote.
The lines, drawn in the notebook cells, lined up in front of his eyes in straight and oblique rows. His visual memory is like film.
“Do you remember Kostya Kislov? He's still the same sour, as if he justifies his name! " - “Vasya Gorsky conveyed his greetings to you. He collects all the stamps. Funny, huh? Some brands … Tweezers, stock books … And he loves to tinker with model cars. "Young Technician" subscribes. And it looks like a child. " - “Greetings from your friend Sasha Sivtsov. Met him in the market. He asked how you are served there. " - “Yurik-murik, do you remember how you and I went sledding in the quarry in winter? How did I screech with fear? What a fool! Is it possible to be afraid of something with you? " - "Do you remember our first disco at the technical school?" - "Do you remember…"
Remember, remember, remember!
Letters from the past. Well, of course. These were letters from the past. How could she tell about the present? Especially about the future?
Say, say hello to him not from Sashka Sivtsov, but from Arkadyevich. From the Komsomol-Gorkomovskaya boss, an enviable smiling groom with an apartment, a dacha, a car and even a major garage. List the material in the letter and summarize: everything is built, everything is bought, there is only left to live. Start as usual: “Do you remember …” And then, somewhere at the end of the letter, dump the main thing in one paragraph: “Yes, I almost forgot. Listen, Yurik-murik, I'm getting married here …"
I wonder when there was a change in her? Months ago? A year ago? One and half year? How long has she been cheating on him?
Maria was saying something.
- … No, my friend, I have not stopped loving you. Come on, stop souring. Compare yourself to Arkadyevich. Well this is so, half-man, future henpecked, greedy for sweets … And I want you, Yurochka the fool. Both of you are called Yura. You can't go wrong in bed! She giggled. - You will be mine, barefoot duck. You will be my lover. I will teach you the Kama Sutra.
Yura turned to the window. Felt that he was blushing. Why he blushes, I do not understand. Human feelings are faster than thoughts.
Probably Masha is right. He's naive. And stupid, it must be.
But for some reason he wanted to remain both naive and stupid.
And he blushed because he really wanted to hug Masha, to undress Masha. And lie with her, here, behind a locked room door. And at the same time it was disgusting, disgusting. He wanted her and wanted to push her away, but the first felt more than the second, and that is why he blushed. And Masha, of course, noticed his sudden blush of embarrassment. It is incredibly difficult for women to argue, Yura realized.
Maria got up, straightened her ultramarine dress. From the bookcase she took out a magazine on top of the books. She flipped it through with a rustle of paper.
- You asked about the plans. Look.
Yura silently accepted the opened magazine. It was the most popular youth publication. The circulation is several million copies.
From the page, Maria's face looked at him. The photographer filmed her leaning against a birch. Under the black-and-white photograph there are cursive lines: “… I dreamed of writing poetry since childhood”, “finally the dream came true”, “a young poetess promising” and so on.
Below is the name of the poetess: Maria Nekrasova.
- I kept my maiden name. It sounds so poetic, right?.. Arkadyevich's surname is not at all literary, well, her in the ass.
So she writes poetry. And they are published in the capital. Well, you can congratulate her. But what has he got to do with it?
His eyes slid from the name to the poetry. To names, stanzas, rhymes. Yura turned a page, another.
“You have a cool girl, Yurka! You wrote poetry to her!"
Someone - probably the editor of the poetry department, the executive secretary, or whoever else is doing this for them - has changed other lines. Corrected and edited a little here and there. In some places it was corrected well, but with some things Yuri would not agree.
However, he was not asked.
And you can't prove anything to anyone now. The letters in which he sent these verses are from Masha. Hidden somewhere. No, rather, they were burned. Yura chuckled. It seems that he is beginning to think in the spirit of modern times.
She wrote him letters full of love and passion, and he sent her poems in return. She, preparing to marry a garage with a car, was all she needed. He called her and his letters a love story and thought that, upon returning from the army, he would collect them all and tie them up with a thread, and then, 20 or 40 years later, he would turn to this love document - together with her, Maria.
And she extracted poetic material from his letters. Like rock ore. She received a letter, opened an envelope, rewrote poems with a pen or typed on some Komsomol typewriter, signed each sheet with her maiden name, and destroyed the letters. Over time, a collection of poetry for the magazine has accumulated. And no evidence. The mosquito will not undermine the nose.
She says she hasn't stopped loving him, but isn't that a lie? In this world, they lie almost without thinking. Moreover: here they believe in a lie as in the truth.
Yura watched the poem to the end.
He composed the first poem from the selection at the age of nineteen, on the train, on the way to the army, to school. I composed it without paper, in my head. The last poem was written and posted this spring, in March. It was quickly printed, however.
- I especially like this, "The Road to Heaven." - Maria sat down beside her, jabbed her finger at the lines. The marigold hit the paper. Yura got hurt. It was as if his heart had been pricked. - The last stanza is generally chic and brilliant:
I will be cheerful, fresh and young
Old age wrinkles you in the shade.
But there will be a green loach
A portrait where a genius is young.
Yura was silent.
- And where did you get such thoughts? Maria asked. - You're twenty-one in total. Such inspiration, right?
He felt Mary's hand embracing him. I closed my eyes. They sat side by side, close, close, her fingers moving on his stomach, and it was like many, many years ago. Yura forced himself to open his eyes. In front of him was the same closet. Disturbed specks of dust swirled in the air.
- In short, just awesome! Maria sighed with open envy. The hand that hugged Yura quietly pulled away. - This is the editor in Moscow who told me so. Well, not quite so … Awesome … No, penetrating … that is, penetrating … I forgot how. And he said that such verses are unusual for a woman's poetic gaze. Something like that. You write at least a little bit like a woman, okay, Yur?
For a poetess, albeit a fake, she expressed herself too vulgarly. Even primitive. She would have to expand the lexicon. To read the classics. Instead of apologists for the market economy.
- Publications in magazines, then a book, a second … Writers' Union … Translations into English, French, German … into Japanese!
Surprisingly, a woman was sitting next to him, cherishing someone else's dream.
“Poetess with her husband-restaurateur,” thought Yura. - One came out of the Komsomol canteen, the other - from other people's poems. And this is what the modern market people are, showing the unenlightened crowds the bright path to capitalism?"
Masha twirled a wide (too wide) gold ring on her ring finger. Such a ring would look harmoniously on the plump finger of some forty-year-old Western bourgeois woman: ladies with a gilded handbag and a hat, from under which mocking disdainful eyes look out.
- You would write, and I would seek publications. We will share the fees. Let's agree. I won't hurt you, you firefly fool. You know, the second role is also great. This is not extras for you. One writes, the other builds and sells - that's okay.
“Division of labor,” thought Yura. He chuckled to himself. They have everything thought out.
“In America it would simply be called a business,” Maria said.
"I will wait for a parcel with a magazine from you." Lieutenant Colonel Zhanibekov said this today, but it seemed that a whole historical era had passed since then, and Zhanibekov turned nine hundred, like the biblical Methuselah.
- In your opinion, I am not able to send poems to "Youth" or "New World"?
- My sun!.. I had to go to Moscow and lie under the editor. So that the poems appear in the magazine. Now they have appeared, not a year later. And so that they appear at all. Now everything is done for the interest, you still do not understand, dear, right? So I'll explain it to you. - She reached for the dressing table, fished out a cigarette with her thin fingers from a half-open red-and-white pack of "Marlboro", flicked a lighter, lit a cigarette, let a stream of bluish smoke towards the door. - You yourself will not break through, you are my naive fool. Listen to me and you will come to success.
“To success,” Yura responded like an echo.
Where did the girl from the culinary school go? Before him sat, blowing smoke through his nostrils and teaching him life, some kind of cinematic creature. Not real! It seemed that the session would end, the film in the reel would rustle, the mechanic would stop the movie projector, and the creature would fade and dissolve in the dusty air. Yura could not believe that next to him was the living Maria. He needs to get out of bed, leave. Leave, think. Be alone. So he comes home, remembers how everything was with them before the army, and it will all return. You just need to remember how. And this is not all that is happening here. It seems to him.
No, it doesn’t seem to be. It was as if someone took his life and slipped him another.
The ghostly wrinkled face of a football field teenager swayed in the tobacco smoke. "Stomp to your slut." A yard kid with a blade, the brother of some gopnik, suddenly grew to a moralist.
- Hey where are you? Maria got up and stubbed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray on the desk.
It would be necessary to answer something - you can't sit like that and be silent. But what is your answer? He could talk about something with the Masha whom he met at the disco. He could have talked to Zhanibekov or Orlov, or other guys from their military unit. But with cinematic characters, with aliens, Yura could not speak.
“You have to digest everything, I understand,” said the future owner of the literary cafe. She seemed to be talking about food. - A bit unexpected, huh? You know, nowadays life is all about turns. And they are all fast, turns. How not to miss. Hey, miracle in feathers, wake up!
- I'll go, - said Yura, looking into the glass of the bookcase. - I'll go.
- I got a phone. Arkadyevich struck the installation on the GTS. Call. We are still living here, renovation in Arkadyevich's apartment …
He wearily thought that she hadn’t written to him about the phone either. Apparently she was afraid that he would call. Anyone could pick up the receiver: Arkadyevich, Albina Iosifovna or Georgy Fedorovich. It is unlikely that Maria devoted her relatives and new lover to the intricacies of her game.
Maria turned to the table, tore off a piece of paper from the notebook. She wrote out the number on a scrap of paper with a pen - it looks like the same one that she wrote to him in the army. The ink color was exactly the same. Only tears have not dripped on the lines for a long time.
- Call if that. Payphones have been installed near your house on Tulskaya.
"What is she doing outside my house?"
- I went to yours. To visit.
“She made fools of my parents too. I love, I wait. Well, of course. Mine, too, must be sure that she is waiting for me. If I had learned from someone that she was not expecting me, she would have been left without poetry. So she was collecting greetings from Vasya and Sasha, and others, deliberately meeting with them - in order to inform me that she was waiting for me and loves me. She started a wedding just before my demobilization just because she was afraid that someone would find out and write to me. How does is called? Prudence? Is there no stronger word? Mother and father probably think that Masha and I will soon get married and give them grandchildren. Father kondrashka will be enough if I tell him about Arkadyevich and the poems in the magazine to tell him. And most importantly, she did not stop loving. Why, she “hasn't stopped”, it seems, she believes! He sleeps with her Komsomol husband, steals poetry and loves the robbed poet."
Yura's thoughts began to get confused.
- Arkadyevich would give you a lift, he has a Zhiguli, but he's drunk, - said Maria.
- I'll go, - Yura repeated, staying on the bed.
- Listen, no one will come in here. Holding her dress, Maria knelt in front of him. - Door with a latch. Arkadyevich will not come here, he is well-trained with me. And there they have a tape recorder …
As if a frightened boy, Yura moved away from Masha on the bed, resting his hands on the spring mattress. She was still on her knees, following his gaze. Yura jumped up from the edge of the bed, rushed to the door, as if he was fleeing from the plague.
The music had just stopped in the living room. Passing along the corridor, Yura saw that the dark-haired Arkadyevich, showing the emerging bald patch, was rummaging through the cassettes.
- Ah, Yurok … - said Maria's father. His face turned purple like that of a drunken alcoholic. The voice sounded horribly drunk. - You are…
Maria's uncle was dozing in an armchair.
- Drink vodka with us, namesake! - the groom-husband shouted joyfully, and from his cry the uncle blinked and reached for a glass.
Arkadyevich's happy mood struck Yura. Here, right in this apartment, dystopia was born. Not bookish, not fictional, but genuine. One of the centers of the new world was formed here. An eerie, inverted world into which he, Yura, would never fit in. A world in which they say they love and wait, but go to bed with another. And for the sake of interest, they also sleep with the third. It is possible that this is not the limit.
In the kitchen, two people were smoking by the open window, he and she, who said nothing to Yura. Both staggered; he supported her by the waist. Yura completely forgot who they were. Absolutely everything in this apartment was a stranger. On the windowsill were two glasses, a half-empty bottle of cognac, a plate with the remains of Olivier and one fork. The street wind drove tobacco smoke into the hallway. Yura's eyes began to water. Whether from smoke, or from grief.
He laced up his sneakers and lifted the briefcase.
- Take the magazine. - Maria handed him a number with verses. - I have one more.
Like a child, ready to cry, but hiding future tears, Yura shook his head. Clutching the suitcase between his legs, he turned, clicked the English lock and got out into the cool concrete of the stairwell.
- Bye, Yurochka the fool!
He did not answer this ghost. A terrible ghost, half-alive, half-dead, one half of which kept the past in itself, the other carried the future. Somewhere in the middle between the halves was the thinnest layer of the present. And this is something real Yura did not want to admit to him. To take a magazine from Masha, reminiscent of the present that had broken into his destiny unbidden, meant to let the nightmarish ghost home.
Leaving Maria, Yura repeated his previous route. The path of a person who returned to one world and ended up in another. Odessa street, central street of the Republic, traffic light, crossing. The Aeroflot agency was still the same, but life around was already different. Trying to get rid of the glamor, Yura shook his head.
He passed the "Start" store, which always smelled strongly of brand new rubber (the favorite smell of a city boy), and now there was a sign "Accounting" on the shabby doors, crossed the Geological Prospecting Passage, rounded the 6th school and stopped at a career where, as a child, he caught minnows with a bait. Over the quarry, now silted up, duckweed along the banks and densely overgrown with cattails, a lonely seagull flew silently. On the other bank, on which there was more naked sand, a couple were sunbathing, spreading a blanket. Two were arguing about something: they raised themselves on their elbows and bickered. The brave new world haunts them, Yura thought.
A young unshaven guy in sports leotards and a crumpled T-shirt approached him, swaying and, seemingly, jumping up a bit, as if on springs. Tip stood in front of the stand "at ease", keeping a small distance. His lips danced.
- Hey, man, give me a ruble!
Yura's suitcase fell out, and his tongue and teeth formed an answer of their own accord:
- And in the ear?
He would gladly trim the insolent man to a cutlet state. His head was numb, his fists clenched; vision focused on a human target. The whole damned new world was concentrated, it seemed, in this rough face, in these loose movements. The master's demand "give" was calculated exclusively for the cowardly and pliant. But the trick is that the most cowardly and malleable are just such types.
The lips danced opposite.
- What are you, bro? Do you understand the joke?
“I don’t understand,” Yuri snapped.
- Che, because of the ruble you are ready to kill your neighbor, right?
Looking around often, the neighbor began to move away, absurdly jumping up and down.
I wish I could shake off this whole new world the same way. Tell him: "And in the ear?" - and make a false movement with the body. So that he gets scared and disappears. Forever and ever.
He took the key to the apartment from his neighbor, aunt Anya, a pensioner. It was not yet five o'clock, mother and father would not return from their jobs until six. Aunt Anya said that Yura had grown up a lot, and she remembered him “like that” (which was surprising: it was as if he had been taken from the kindergarten to the army), and she had just bought sugar in the grocery store with coupons, and here on the stairwells in the evenings and at night it is dark, even if you gouge out your eyes, there are no bulbs anywhere, because the thieves who hunt in the entrances unscrew them and then sell them at exorbitant prices at the bazaar. “They say,” said a neighbor, “you need to smear the light bulbs with toothpaste so as not to steal. The pasta will bake to the glass, you can't wash it off. But you also need to get it, pasta. Everything is now in short supply, Yurochka. They say that there is no deficit in a market economy”.
In the two-room apartment in which Yura lived from the age of seven, everything was the same as before he was drafted into the army. He even smiled. An islet of the past. The same things, the same desk with a cracked polish since school days (on the table there is a ceramic pencil, a lamp under a woven lampshade, a stack of books, a couple of cassettes and a radio tape recorder "Aelita" - everything is as before, as if Yura did not leave anywhere), a paper political a map of the world on a whitewashed wall, on the opposite wall - a black-and-white portrait of a gloomy Lermontov and a quietly ticking round clock with Roman numerals. On the windowsill there are white geraniums in green plastic pots.
On the bookshelf, leaning against the spines of books, is a photograph of him and Masha, from June 1989. Filmed on "Zenith" by his father, at the military registration and enlistment office of the Leninsky district - before Yura sat down with other conscripts on a bus, which then took them to the regional military registration and enlistment office, where they were later dismantled by officers-"buyers". Yura spent about six months in training, and then got to the "point" for distribution. Masha was eighteen in the picture, he was nineteen. He looked at the photograph and thought that this Masha and the one he saw today were different. It cannot be that they are the same.
In another photo, Yura was captured with his best friend. January, school ski competitions, eighth graders in tracksuits, knitted hats, skiing, with poles. Yura and Sashka Sivtsov have tense faces, ready to dash forward into the snow. In the background - physical education instructor Pal Palych, holding a whistle to his mouth. All school physical instructors are called Pal Palychas or San Sanychas.
- I'll call Sasha, - whispered Yura.
He reached into his pocket, counted the money, clutched a two-kopeck coin in his palm, closed the apartment, ran down the steps, said "hello" to the old alcoholic Makar Kuzmich, who appeared on the steps of the first floor (he stared at him like a ghost, probably didn't recognize), and went out into the yard. I went around the house. On the corner, near the overgrown acacias, two telephone booths were really blue.
Having visited one and the other booth, Yura said:
- Barbarians.
Someone snatched the pipes from both phones, as they say, with meat. The crippled springs that hid the wires looked like mutilated arms with hanging tendons.
Why would someone need pipes? It is clear why they steal, unscrew the light bulbs: they can be sold or screwed into the socket, but what to do with the pipe from the machine?
The telephones themselves, enclosed in metal cases, were cut with knives, speckled with small and large inscriptions. Rock signs, the site of primitive people.
The inscriptions were less often obscene, more often offensive. It was as if they did not come to these booths to call, but to take revenge.
The booth on the right smelled of urine.
“I'll go by taxi,” Yura thought as he walked along Tulskaya. "If taxis are not yet in short supply here."
The sky was dark. From the grayness slowly floating, swelling in the sky, the brick houses acquired a steel shade. The windows of the five-story buildings and the glass showcases of the Yubileiny grocery store turned black. A drop of rain crashed on Yura's palm.
He caught a taxi at the Fairy Tale cafe.
- Not on the counter, - announced the driver. - Before Maurice Torez? For three rubles. If to the entrance, then four hazel grouse.
Three rubles for such a distance was a triple price.
- No need to go to the entrance.
Yura was silent all the way. Before leaving the "Volga", he gave the taxi driver a three-ruble note. The man looked at him strangely from his seat.
- We agreed on four rubles.
- This is if before the entrance. Are you having problems with your memory? Or is it really all fake? - Yura added unexpectedly for himself.
The chauffeur withdrew his outstretched hand.
- Where are you from such a philosopher?
- From the army.
- Dembel, or what? Did you serve somewhere in places forgotten by God and the devil?.. Everything is clear with you. Hey, brother, you need to fill your glass with something. Will you take Vodyar for a quarter? Or chattering. I'll give it for a tag. You will not find cheaper from anyone. For fourteen - as a demobilizer. So I'll wrap it in a newspaper.
With a bottle of 72, wrapped in Sovetskaya Rossiya, Yura took the elevator to the ninth floor. The door, without removing the chain, was opened slightly by a disheveled, curly-haired guy, in whom Yura recognized the matured Sasha. We haven't seen each other for three years! Sashka unfastened the chain and opened the door wider. But only in order to slip out onto the platform, onto the mat.
- Hey…
- Hey! You will spoil all the raspberries for me, Juran! - Sashka whispered hotly. “I’ve got a thirty-year-old chick here, very relish. Married. Neighbor, count! The husband and son stayed at the dacha, to add potatoes, and by eight in the morning she was on duty at the hospital by eight in the morning, well, she returned to the city. And in the city she became bored. And here - me. You won't get bored with me. My ancestors also drove off to the dacha. Sorry, Juran, but you are superfluous today. I'm going to burn with the fire of love here until the morning.
And he closed the door without even saying goodbye.
After a few seconds, the door opened. Yura was still standing at the rug. Sasha's hand gently took the wrapped bottle from him.
- What did you bring there? Oh thanks, the ink will come in handy.
The door closed again. A chain clinked behind her.
It was anyone but Sashka Sivtsov.
With the real Sivtsov, Yura went to the same school until the eighth grade inclusive. Then Sasha's parents moved from Tulskaya to a new apartment on Maurice Torez. But the friendship lasted until the army itself - where Sasha, a student of an industrial institute, was taken in June 1988, a year earlier than Yura. And in August 1989, Gorbachev's decree sent Sivtsov and other university students who had been drafted into the "ranks" after their first year. The Motherland decided that students should not be taken away from training in a deafening army.
Yura pressed the button to call the elevator. Well, of course! He did not see Sasha for too long. He has been in civilian life for almost two years. It's a lot. During this time, the brave new world made Sasha its own man. Little by little, day after day, Sashka got used to this world, grew into it, became its organic part. And he, Yura, seemed to have frozen at the "point", mothballed.
Yura perceived all this, fixed it with his consciousness. But his mind did not want to put up with the changed reality, and his heart could not.
In the direction of the Kosmos cinema, the buses drove overcrowded, tilting to the side of the road, almost touching the orange sides of the sidewalk curbs. The floors of jackets, fragments of sweaters, shirts and trousers trapped in the bus doors were sticking out. Rain froze. The sky became lower, the air darkened. Without hurrying anywhere else, Yura went home on foot.
People who came across him on the way did not smile. The faces of the men and women seemed eerily gloomy. As if at their jobs, men and women left misfortune, to which tomorrow they will have to return, and at home in the evening they were also grief awaited. To the bitter expressions on their faces, the rain painted wet streaks on the cheeks. Everyone seemed to be crying. Here and there, umbrellas opened overhead. They covered people from Yuri's curiosity.
Yura looked under the umbrellas, hoping to catch at least one happy or carefree face through the veil of rain. But not one came across. Yura, a man in a wet shirt, tried to smile at passers-by, but this did not work, and once caused an effect opposite to the intended one: the old woman shied away from him, as if from a psycho, knocked quickly on the sidewalk with a stick. At the Rodnichok grocery store, the rain stopped pouring, the sun peeped out, the windows of the houses shone, steam began to rise from the asphalt, but even here no one smiled, as if a smile thief who had long taken over all the streets without exception was acting in the city.
And Maria didn't smile, Yura suddenly realized. Despite the wedding. Mary's face could be persuasive, persuasive, arrogant, or one that can say "you don't understand anything" and teach life. But Yura did not see a smile on her lips. Anything one could expect from this face, from sighs to, perhaps, hysteria, but not just a simple happy smile.
All people are here, he thought, waiting. Waiting for the future. The coming of the day when they will finally be allowed to smile. The onset of the moment when the kidnapper of smiles takes yes to announce that the game is over, and distributes smiles to their owners.
But isn't Arkadyevich happy? A smile, joyful toasts, kisses with a young wife, finally, a cafe-machine-apartment …
"Well this is so, half-man, future henpecked …"
Instead of turning to Geologorazvedchikov, Yura ended up on Odessa. Feet themselves carried him to the house of Mary. No, he was not going to climb to her. To see Arkadyevich, drunken guests, Albina Iosifovna, pleased that 90 guests gathered in the cafe for the wedding, Maria's crimson father, herself - no, no, not a thousand times. He just wanted to stand outside her house on the west side, throw his head back, look at the window of her room. A small desire, after the fulfillment of which he will return home, shake hands with his father and hug his mother.
When he got up where needed and raised his head, his shirt was almost dry. The evening sun bathed Mary's brick house with yellow light and warmed the back of Yurin's head.
It’s good, Yura thought, that she didn’t lean out the window with a cigarette. It would be awful.
He looked at the window, burning yellow fire from the sun's rays. The window was exactly the same, and the five-story building itself was exactly the same as two years earlier. And it seemed to Yura - for the sake of this moment, he came here - that time turned its shafts and gears back, and he was nineteen again. Maria will now go down to him, they will walk around the city, holding hands, intertwining fingers, they will smell all around of the summer that has begun, rain, lilacs, and …
- Ah-ah-ah!..
This scream, dissolved in the wind, seemed to continue aloud to Yurin a fantasy that was about to slide into a nightmare.
They shouted from there - from the lilac thickets behind the steel makeshift garages. Behind the lilac bushes, half a century of poplars rose and rustled noisily.
- Way-ti!.. - came to Yura.
And everything was silent. Only the wind rustled in the crowns of the poplars.
Flying by the rusty garages that smelled of urine, feeling the elasticity of the wind with his cheeks, Yura flew into the lilac with a crash.
In his ears were someone's words, flying in with the wind:
- He has no attendants. With Parfyon to his forest. Everything.
The speaker's lips moved. He probably said something else, but Yura did not hear. Between the lilacs and the poplars, Yura saw three: an almost bald-haired one of his age with a small gray and somehow shrunken face, very reminiscent of some other face; a dark-skinned man lying on his back with his mouth plastered over with a plaster and his body tied with a rope - from feet to chest; the boy from the football field - with a wrinkled face. The tied man had blood on his hand - apparently, a young aggressive football player, who was now holding an awl in his lowered hand, had worked with his fingers.
- Great, demobilization, - said the teenager quietly. - Meet, - he nodded at the elder, - this is my brother, Lyoshka.
Lyoshka looked at his younger brother with hostility.
- Why did you bring him here?
- I brought? What are you, persecuting, Poker?.. He hangs out at his shmara, at Masha Nekrasova's. I saw him during the day. Basurman, - he pointed to the tied man, - yelled when I asked about the grandmother, this one pinned down. Staggering here, probably, waiting for his Masha in the bushes … Hera is not clear here …
“Oh,” said Poker. - Well, forgive me, brother, I didn’t drive over on business. So he was waiting for Masha. Or have you forgotten something else here, citizen? Basurman - not your spine? He pointed to the tied man with a glance.
“You’re asking for it, you fraer,” the younger put in, lighting a match. There was blood on his fingers, and his cigarette was stained with blood. - They ripped off the nose of a curious Varvara at the bazaar. You still owe me money for football.
- Masha told me that she was waiting for this warrior from the army. Poker laughed hoarsely. - She unbuttoned my fly, and she chatted about him, you fraera. This is psychology or something. Maybe she imagined him in my place. Dick will take them apart, these slut. Hey, demobilization, your bixa served me for a whole week. Every day. Arkadyevich owed me money for the roof, and she worked out the interest. Arkadyevich, think, decided that we went to meet him. Well, I later explained to him who went to meet whom. And then he'd be more important, the Komsomol member is crappy. - Poker laughed softly. - Masha is a good bitch, but to marry such …
Yura hit him precisely for these words. He beat him not for the guy whose mouth was taped and an awl was stuck under his nails, he attacked the bandit for insulting Maria - the one who lived outside the window and who was no more than eighteen years old.
- She served me too.
The youngest was still saying these words, and Yura's fist was already flying into Poker's cheekbone. Lyosha's face, a little bewildered, turned slightly, as if in order to better examine the enemy, and a fist hit him in the nose. Knowing what to do next, Yura pushed the bandit under the gut with his left, and then, striving for the hand with his entire body, cut into the jaw with his right from below.
Lyoshka disappeared from sight. And then something flashed briefly in the air. Somewhere from below and from the side flashed the enchanted, frozen-eyed face of Lyoshkin's brother, losing its clarity in movement. Yura did not recognize his name.
Dry lips on a blurry wrinkled face moved, but Yura did not hear a word. All the sounds of this world suddenly disappeared, as if they had been turned off.
Something was pulled out of Yura, firmly stuck in it. Like a plug from an outlet. For a moment the picture cleared up: a boy with a twisted face, with an open mouth, a hand, whitened fingers clasped around the handle of a knife, from which red drops were dripping.
Yuri's legs trembled and gave way, the poplars recoiled, and the lilacs overturned. Yura suddenly felt soft dandelion leaves with his palms, and with his back - the firmament of the earth. The sky rushed into his eyes. A lot, a lot of sky.
It is real, he thought.
The sky was obscured by two dark figures, but Yura could no longer see them.
