Heaven’s Gift
He had a stout figure, almost square. A large, shaggy head with a cozy face and a large mouth with fleshy lips. He looked like a real Balda from Pushkin’s fairy tale. A kind of cunning little man with a double bottom: either a saint, or a murderer, or maybe both at the same time.
The movements are smooth, the speech is unhurried. And the voice?! And the voice is enveloping, warm and bewitching. In a word, charming. The real voice of a storyteller. As once in childhood, in the Baby Monitor, when the radio began to sound: “And now, my friend, I will tell you a fairy tale.”
It turned out that he served as an actor. At the Youth Theater. Played Winnie the Pooh. The children adored him. That’s what the voice means. Heaven’s gift.
Two extreme
Somewhere out there, beyond the borders of our sovereign Internet, where no one wears chastity belts to their homeland and everyone strives to despise any spiritual bonds, shamelessly flaunting their intellectual exhibitionism, here in this God-damned land, where milk rivers flow among jelly banks, any self-respecting artist values his name more than his own health. After all, his name is everything to him. Not just a trademark, but much more – style, individuality, handwriting. Ultimately reputation. These weirdos spend their whole lives trying to get people to associate all their work directly with their names. And when they tell you Picasso, you know for sure – this one will portray you in such a way that your mother will not recognize you in the portrait. Well, if Andy Warhol, then it will be a hand-colored silkscreen of a very large size. And if you come to Chagall to order a portrait, it is useless to ask him to paint you in the style of Modigliani. He will only portray you as Chagall, hugging a cow, and such a request will simply offend him. In fact, he doesn’t understand her. Because if you don’t like Chagall, why would you order a job from him? Go to Modigliani if you like him. And Chagall under Modigliani will not be forged, he has a name! Reputation! But they have it, but it’s not like that with us, oh, it’s not like that, guys. With us, the Customer comes to the Artist not for the sake of his creativity, but to assert himself. Naturally, at the expense of the Artist. And the first question that the Customer asks our Artist, even if he is at least three times famous, will he be able to write like such and such or such and such an artist. Our Maestro, of course, is mortally offended at first, but when he is offered a double or triple price, he still agrees. Because he understands very well that in our country reputation and name mean nothing. And that means only money, on which this very reputation is created. The most expensive. The most sold. The most successful. Well, what can I say – two worlds, two extremes.
Girl without complexes
With false eyelashes and no panties. Amazing self esteem.
Delicate person
Arriving at sea, he found that his wife was snoring. Unpleasant surprise on honeymoon. Hearing in the middle of the night the monstrous sounds made by a rather slender and in daylight even very pretty creature, which was his chosen one, the first night he struggled with the desire to wake her up and tell her the whole truth about her snoring, on the second night he wanted to strangle her with a pillow, and on the third I was going to divorce her. Finally, after three sleepless nights, he went to the pharmacy, a secret from his wife, bought earplugs and has been living with her soul to soul ever since. That’s what a delicate person means.
Dementia
Wife to husband. “Today you need to deliver a note from me to Vera. Come to her room 205 at 11 o’clock, she is just having a break between couples, she is waiting for you. “And who is Vera? I know her?” “You introduced us. Have you forgotten? “What are you doing! Do you know what my memory is! “I know. Holed like a colander. You suffer from dementia.” “And what is it?” “senile dementia. Or don’t you remember? “Well, how, how, I remember very well. Dementia! What a word! But I don’t have it. Exactly. Otherwise, I would have remembered it.”
An hour later, husband and Vera. “Excuse me, but who are you?” “I am Vera, your wife’s friend. Don’t you remember?” “How, how, I remember very well. I have business for you. I have to give you something. That’s just what? I don’t remember, – he feverishly pats his pockets, – That’s a memory, everyone would like this. Remembered! Well, exactly! How, how. I have to give you dementia, but in which pocket I put it, I’ll never know.”
A day in the life
White tablecloth. Flawless white porcelain. White wine. Cheese with white mold. White grapes. White cool shade. White sand at the edge of the sea. White lambs of the waves. White clouds in the sky whitened from the heat. Another day in the life of a “white” man.
Rustic hospitality
The apples were on the table. Yellow and red. The table stood in the middle of a hut, naked as a baby, like a throne in a temple. Surrounded by the aroma of ripe fruit, in a thick and impenetrable veil of shadow, and outside the flames of a summer day raged. Bumblebees and bees hummed in the garden. Daggers of white-hot beams burst dangerously through the closed shutters, smoking with rage in the cold, creaking twilight of the old house. A loaf of rye bread darkened among the apples, and a long-necked jar of milk, covered with a towel, proudly rose. Real gifts of the transubstantiation of a fertile summer, offered to us by the very providence of rural hospitality.
Rooster
Chickens are usually despised, considered the most brainless creatures in the world. If they want to offend someone, then they directly compare it with a chicken. Or with a rooster. What is even more offensive – for men. But there is always an exception to every rule. It’s about a rooster who cheated his death. Neighbor Galya, nicknamed “summer resident”, in the village only had chickens for the summer: in the spring she bought chickens, and in the fall she slaughtered them for meat; she kept only laying hens, and closer to the middle of summer, when they began to lay, she bought them a rooster. All summer with their eggs, and back to Moscow already with their meat. And so every year, until one day there was an embarrassment: a rooster, watching how his chickens were killed right in front of him, one after another, got scared; realized that his death from the butcher’s knife was waiting for him and fled, flying into the neighbor’s yard. As Galya did not look for him, she could not find him. She spat in her hearts and drove off to her Moscow, closing the season. A rooster a couple of days later showed up in a neighbor’s chicken coop, where it safely overwintered and even came to the yard. It would seem that life is a success: trample chickens and know yourself crow. An, no. In the spring, the summer resident Galya returned. And not alone, but with a fresh brood of chickens, which soon grew up and turned into neat young chickens. The cock, looking at them, went completely crazy: he abandoned his chickens and kept rushing to Galya’s yard – to trample on her chickens. When she bought them a rooster, he pulled it up, not tolerating a competitor. In the end, he moved back to her. He exhausted everyone, but he achieved his goal – he again became Galina’s rooster. Despite the fact that at the end of the summer season, death awaits him. But what is love without mortal risk. Even the roosters.
Village
Since we are talking about a rooster, it’s just right to find a couple of words for a pig. The saleswoman Lyubka somehow broke off happiness. The truth is not happiness, but a pig, but what a pig! Other villagers will live their whole lives, but they will never learn to behave like people. And this pig did not need to learn. Clean and without words understands everything. Clever is just awful. Well, real person. She found it by accident: a car knocked down a piglet near her yard, and she picked it up and carried it to the barn, not hoping that it would survive. And take the piglet and get well, then independently got out and showed up to her straight into the hut. Just like any cat. He even had the most suitable color for this – black. It’s wonderful, and that’s all. Well, what kind of pig is it? The pig is big, pink and dirty, like the neighbor’s boar Borka. And this one is small, thin and black. Real pet. For the soul. Although she also had something to hide, a tail, a piglet and hooves. Just like a real pig. Neighbors, seeing such happiness of Lyubkina, involuntarily became envious, and decided to spoil it for her. They came to her without an invitation and announced that it was not a pig at all, but a mini-pig: the animal is so terribly expensive and overseas, and it probably has an owner. Lyubka is an honest person, she does not need someone else’s good for nothing. She wrote an ad and posted it on the door of the general store where she works. So, they say, and so, a piglet, black, mini-pig was found, the owner is wanted. A day later, an unfamiliar pockmarked woman with a bag comes to her store and announces: “My, they say, piglet.” Well, Lyubka gives it to her and asks: “What do you need, such a slut, this overseas miracle Yudo in the household?” And she answered: “Yes, I bought it on occasion from my hands. For meat. I’ve been fattening for the third month, and he, the parasite, doesn’t grow a damn thing. And, which is characteristic, he behaves in a completely un-swinish way: he runs away from the barn and everything rushes into the house like a madman; he walks only along the paths and is terribly curious, like a small child – he cares about everything. I don’t know how the further fate of this very mini-pig turned out, they made lard or jelly out of it, but Lyubka is still in shock. You have to be such a dense person to take a rare pet for an ordinary pig. One word – “village”.
Tree
It was an old pear, fairly worn by time. She grew up in the backyard and under her shadow grew more than one generation of the inhabitants of the grandfather’s house. The best place in the whole wide world. In the spring, when the pear blossomed, we played in its shade, and in the summer we sat on the branches all day long and ate the still green fruits, and these were the most delicious pears in my life. When autumn came, it was always mourning for the best days of the year: the pear dropped its leaves, and we were forcibly separated from it and sent to school. Only on New Year’s Eve did we meet again and rejoiced at the opportunity that had happened to spend the entire winter holidays together again. Only now the branches served as a place for hanging homemade bird feeders for bullfinches and tits, and around the trunk they made a snowman and played snowballs and drove each other on sleds. And so from year to year, until one day we grew up and stopped noticing the old pear: our world tree, huge as the sky, strewn with the fruits of goodness, around which our entire childhood passed and which raised us and let us out into the world. And I am grateful to fate that such a tree happened in my life, a real tree of the knowledge of goodness.
Dilemma
Just now, a friend broke his arm. Well, not exactly a hand, but a finger. On the foot. But it still hurts. I met him in a cast and with a black eye. I’m keenly interested in what happened. And he in response, they say, slipped and fell. I sympathize with him and assume that this happened due to obvious negligence on the part of city utilities in the face of idle janitors. It would be necessary to sue them, if only for the sake of compensation for moral damage. He sadly agrees with me, but clarifies that he was not quite sober at the time when he actually fell. Why, he’s not sober, but he was downright drunk in zyuzyu. About what in the emergency room they made a corresponding entry in his medical record. There, you know, he got excited with the doctor, who, because of his intoxication, refused to treat him, and cleaned his clyster mug for him. Well, so as not to forget the Hippocratic Oath and know that the victims also have some pride and rights to free medicine. In the same place, he broke his finger on his leg while kicking the doctor. And he knocked out his eye. Now this victim of “gravity” does not know whether to write a complaint against the Aesculapius, or to thank him for the help in eliminating the consequences of the fracture, when he plastered his finger. A real moral dilemma.
Debt Above All
– Well, Katenka, how will you please us today?
The student lays out the drawings of her ridiculous club on the table in front of the teachers and looks wistfully at the professor, trying to understand from his expression whether she will be able to agree on her idea or will have to redo everything again. And the professor stared into her empty black eyes and imagines what he would do now if he were given free rein.
“Don’t you have any ideas?” “Nope.”
“Do you want me to show you now why you need your head?”
Without waiting for the student’s answer, the professor takes out a hammer with an elongated claw-claw from his briefcase and hits the student on the head with all his strength, breaking her skull. There is a crunch of bones and the lazy voice of his assistant comments:
“However, I did not expect, colleague. Pleased, at least some variety, otherwise you can die of boredom.
The professor laughs ominously and with the help of a nail puller deftly opens the student’s skull like a tin can, licks his lips carnivorously and exhales:
“Fresh brains. Colleague, do not lend your spoon, I forgot mine at home. I’ll give it to you as soon as I try.”
Having received a spoon, he scoops up a pink gelatinous mass from his opened head with a slide and swallows it greedily, squinting like a cat with pleasure.
“Well, how?” the assistant asks.
“Fresh,” exhales the professor and greedily stuffs two more spoons into himself, munching loudly.
“Shouldn’t I call other colleagues, what is now in the department?” – the assistant is interested when the professor returns the spoon to him and kindly gives him the opportunity to taste the contents of the student’s head.
“You eat, colleague, eat. There is nothing to scatter the brains of our students. They have their own. If there is anything left, then we will invite you.”
Alternately changing the spoon, they devour the brains until they are saturated.
“That’s it, I can’t do it anymore,” the professor sighs and orders, “Call the rest, colleague.”
The assistant exits and immediately returns with a group of professors, mincing one after another and happily mumbling: “Brains. Brain. Brain”.
The meal continues until there is nothing left of the student but an unsuccessful club project on paper.
The professor sighs, slowly pulls the drawings closer to him and begins to correct them, cursing himself for the fact that professional duty is always above all for him.
Job title
Petrov, having spent half his life trying to become a director, found himself in an absurd situation. Because of the epidemic, which happened as a childish surprise, he felt humiliated and insulted. Petrov could not go to work because of the quarantine and refused to believe it. All ways to get around the ban did not work. The state did not need his services, and all attempts to obtain a permanent electronic pass failed. His company was not included in the list of enterprises vital for the city and he was forced to stay at home. As everybody. This was something that pissed me off. As everybody? But he could not be like everyone else, Petrov was a director and, therefore, he should have had privileges. Which, as it turned out, was not. From resentment for being leveled with everyone, Petrov could not find a place for himself. He sat at home like some kind of castrated cat, and gloomily looked out the window at the street, along which only couriers moved freely, as if quarantine was nothing to them. And it dawned on Petrov. He decided to enroll in couriers. Fictitious, of course, to get the coveted pass. I sent out my questionnaires to agencies and waited. But all his attempts to secure a vacancy for a courier were a complete fiasco. Nobody wanted to hire a director. Even the former. Apparently, they either did not believe him, or were afraid that he would sit up. Petrov became a victim of his own ambitions, because there are no former directors.
Dear Lenin
My mother once gave me a whole two rubles for my birthday. metal. Anniversary. Both with a chased strong forehead profile of Ilyich. And she promised that one day they would be worth a fortune. I put them in a beautiful metal montpensier box and waited. It was my very first investment in my bright future. Years passed, a lot of things changed in life: both in my and the whole country, but the rubles remained lying at the bottom of the same box where I put them as a child. I just didn’t need them. Do you know why? I grew up, but the future is gone. Together with the country in which I was born. But Lenin remained. It still lies in the granite box like the fiat ruble where Stalin put it. The main value of our entire state. An investment in the bright future of my entire country, which is also gone. Apparently, when they put Lenin in the box of the mausoleum, they believed that he would grow in value. And they were wrong too. And it’s a pity to bury it, this mistake cost everyone too much. I, too, cannot throw away these two rubles, the toad is choking. I’d rather leave it to the kids, maybe they’ll be lucky. Get rich.
A worthy end
When they met, they immediately came up with playful nicknames for each other. He called her Baby, she was his dad Carla.
When they began to live together, she turned into a bee, and he into a bear. Having married, he became a Boy, and she became a Cannibal. Children appeared and they did not even notice how they changed the luxurious Boy with the Cannibal to the banal Father and Mother. Hello Mother. Hello Father.
And so for twenty years, until they suddenly discovered that everyone called him Grandfather behind his back, and her Boy-Baba or, in short, Boyboy. So she remained Boyboy for him, as if she had always been called that.
But for her, the evolution of his nickname on the banal Grandfather did not end. Pretty soon he became Old Man, then Old Stump, then Senile, Beast, and finally just Animal.
When she buried him, she wrote on his gravestone: “Here lies the animal that ruined my whole life.”
A worthy end to an obsolete love.
Friend
I have a friend. No, neither he nor I think so. Let’s just say, a friend. Although this is too strong a word. More like an interlocutor, but so unpleasant that I prefer not to talk to him. I can’t see him, his face is so annoying to me. He is a complete egoist: he always and everywhere speaks only about himself, as if there were no other topics. He is convinced that he is a genius. And I am sure that the genius is me. Least. Or maybe someone higher. And he is nothing, in essence, so – a burp of God. Therefore, we always argue, but silently. He is condescendingly silent when he sees me, hinting with all his appearance that I am nobody for him – a real bunch: a shameful misunderstanding. You could say it’s nothing. But I don’t go into my pocket for a word and eloquently keep silent in response, loudly hinting that I don’t notice him either. When he calls me on the phone, I know for sure, without further ado, that it is he. At the other end of the tube, they are so expressively silent. And there is no point in fussing and saying “Alla, I can’t hear you” or “Speak”. He has no suitable words for me, only contemptuous silence. I answer him the same. So we, sometimes, are silent for an hour or two, until we are separated. But, here’s what’s strange – I can’t be without him for a long time, and he can’t be without me: he immediately stops missing something. There is nothing to breathe, as if from within the breath intercepts. Therefore, once a week we meet on neutral territory, take a bottle of vodka for two and drink it silently. Like two old friends who no longer need words to speak. And then we silently disperse. Without even shaking hands, without looking into the eyes. This is all because a person desperately needs someone whom he can hate sincerely and from the bottom of his heart. At least once a week, but to really, like the last time. And for this, you need someone like him. Real. Friend.