Arkady Gaidar
Horsemen of the inaccessible mountains
Part one
For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage landing, a window into which fresh air rushes in. night wind, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks.
And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.
But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.
And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.
Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.
All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.
I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.
That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.
I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.
And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.
- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.
“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”
“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.
Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.
She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:
- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.
“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.
- What am I?
- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.
Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.
I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!
– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.
But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat”, even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because twice and thrice last years the world is broken. And I answered him:
– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.
Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.
On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.
It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.
“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.
- What?
– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.
- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.
Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.
- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.
- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!
- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.
“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.
“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.
- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:
“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”
- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:
- Don't know.
And she said:
- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.
The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.
At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of the strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.
Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.
One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.
Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.
“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.
For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .
And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.
But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.
And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.
Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.
All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.
I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.
That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.
I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.
And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.
- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.
“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”
“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.
Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.
She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:
- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.
“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.
- What am I?
- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.
Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.
I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!
– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.
But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat,” even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because the world had broken down twice and thrice in recent years. And I answered him:
– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.
Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.
On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.
It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.
“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.
- What?
– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.
- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.
Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.
- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.
- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!
- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.
“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.
“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.
- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:
“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”
- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:
- Don't know.
And she said:
- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.
The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.
At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of a strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.
Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.
One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.
Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.
“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.
“It’s not true,” I answered, throwing away the cigarette butt. - You're fantasizing. From the European part of the city a narrow-gauge railway already reaches the skullcap shops of the dilapidated bazaar. Near the box stores where sleepy traders smoke chili, I have already seen signs of state trade stores, and across the street near the Koshchi union there will be a red banner.
Nikolai threw away his cigarette butt in annoyance and answered:
“I know all this, and I see all this myself.” But to clay walls The red poster doesn’t stick well, and it seems out of time, thrown here from the distant future, and in any case, not reflecting today. Yesterday I was at the grave of the great Tamerlane. There, at the stone entrance, gray-bearded old men play ancient chess from morning to night, and a blue banner and a ponytail bend over a heavy gravestone. This is beautiful, at least because there is no falsehood here, as there would be if they put a red flag there instead of a blue one.
“You’re stupid,” I answered him calmly. “The lame Tamerlane has only the past, and the traces of his iron heel are erased from the face of the earth by life day after day. His blue banner has long faded, and his ponytail is moth-eaten, and the old sheikh-gatekeeper probably has a son, a Komsomol member, who, perhaps still secretly, but already eats flatbread before sunset on the great fast of Ramadan and knows Budyonny’s biography better , who took Voronezh in the nineteenth, than the story of Tamerlane, who destroyed Asia five hundred years ago.
- No, no, it’s not true! – Nikolai objected hotly. – What do you think, Rita?
She turned her head to him and answered briefly:
– I probably agree with you on this. I also love beautiful things...
I smiled.
– You are obviously blinded by the sun, Rita, because...
But at that moment, an old, hunched woman wrapped in a burqa came out from around the bend like a blue shadow. Seeing us, she stopped and muttered something angrily, pointing her finger at a broken stone exit in the wall. But, of course, we didn’t understand anything.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai told me, standing up embarrassedly. - Maybe it’s not allowed here... Maybe this is some kind of sacred stone, and we sat on it and lit a cigarette?
We got up and went. We found ourselves in dead ends, walked through narrow streets along which two people could just barely pass each other, and finally came out onto a wide outskirts. On the left there was a small cliff, on the right there was a hill on which old people were sitting. We walked along the left side, but suddenly screams and howls were heard from the mountain. We turned around.
The old men jumped up from their seats, shouting something to us, waving their arms and staves.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai said, stopping. - Maybe it’s not allowed here, maybe there’s some kind of sacred place here?
- Nonsense! – I answered sharply, “What a sacred place is this, when horse manure is piled up all around!”
I didn’t finish, because Rita screamed and jumped back in fear, then a crash was heard, and Nikolai fell waist-deep into some dark hole. We barely managed to pull him out by the arms, and when he got out, I looked down and understood everything.
We had long since turned off the road and were walking along the rotten, earth-covered roof of the caravanserai. There were camels below, and the entrance to the caravanserai was from the side of the cliff.
We got back out and, guided by the glances of the silently seated and calmed old men, we walked on. We entered the empty and crooked street again and suddenly, around a bend, we came face to face with a young Uzbek woman. She quickly threw the black veil over her face, but not completely, but halfway; then she stopped, looked at us from under the veil and, quite unexpectedly, threw it back again.
– Russian is good, Sart is bad.
We walked side by side. She knew almost nothing in Russian, but we still talked.
- And how they live! - Nikolai told me. – Closed, cut off from everything, locked in the walls of the house. Still, what a wild and unapproachable East it is! It’s interesting to know how she lives, what she’s interested in...
“Wait,” I interrupted him. - Listen, girl, have you ever heard about Lenin?
She looked at me in surprise, not understanding anything, and Nikolai shrugged.
“About Lenin...” I repeated.
Suddenly a happy smile played on her face, and, happy with that that she understood me, she answered warmly:
- Lelnin, Lelnin I know!.. - She nodded her head, but did not find the appropriate Russian word and continued to laugh.
Then she became wary, jumped to the side like a cat, dully threw on her veil and, bowing her head low, walked along the wall with a small, hasty gait. She obviously had good hearing, because a second later a thousand-year-old mullah came out from around the corner and, leaning on his staff, he silently looked for a long time, first at us, then at the blue shadow of the Uzbek woman; he was probably trying to guess something, he was probably guessing, but he was silent and with dull glassy eyes he looked at the two strangers and at the European girl with a laughing open face.
Nikolai has slanting Mongolian eyes, a small black beard and an active dark face. He is thin, wiry and tenacious. He's four years older than me, but that doesn't mean anything. He writes poems that he doesn’t show to anyone, dreams of the nineteenth year and automatically dropped out of the party in the twenty-second.
And as a motivation for this departure, he wrote a good poem, full of sorrow and pain for the “dying” revolution. Thus, having fulfilled his civic “duty,” he washed his hands of it and stepped aside to watch with bitterness the impending, in his opinion, death of everything that he sincerely loved and had lived by until now.
But this aimless observation soon tired of him. Death, despite all his forebodings, did not come, and he embraced the revolution a second time, remaining, however, with the deep conviction that the time would come, the years of fire would come, when at the cost of blood it would be necessary to correct the mistake committed in the twenty-first damned year.
He loves the tavern and, when he drinks, he certainly bangs his fist on the table and demands that the musicians play the revolutionary Budennovsky March: “About how on clear nights, how on stormy days we are bold and proud”... etc. But since this march for the most part is not included in the repertoire of entertainment venues, it is reconciled on the favorite gypsy romance: “Eh, everything that was, everything that ached, everything floated away a long time ago.”
During a musical performance, he taps his foot to the beat, spills his beer, and, worse, makes repeated attempts to rip his shirt collar. But due to the categorical protest of his comrades, he does not always succeed, but he still manages to tear off all the buttons from his collar. He is a soulful guy, a good comrade and a good journalist.
And it's all about him.
However, one more thing: he loves Rita, he has loved her for a long time and deeply. Ever since the time when Rita rang recklessly with a tambourine and threw her hair over her shoulders, performing the gypsy dance of Brahms - a number that caused mad clapping of tipsy people.
I know that he privately calls her “the girl from the tavern,” and he really likes this name because it’s... romantic.
We walked through a field strewn with pieces of moldy brick. Underfoot in the ground lay the bones of Tamerlane’s once buried thirty thousand soldiers. The field was gray and dry; every now and then we came across holes in fallen graves, and gray stone mice, at the rustle of our steps, silently hid in dusty holes. It was just the two of us. Me and Rita. Nikolai disappeared somewhere else in the early morning.
“Gaidar,” Rita asked me, “why do you love me?”
I stopped and looked at her with surprised eyes. I didn't understand this question. But Rita stubbornly took my hand and persistently repeated the question.
“Let’s sit on a rock,” I suggested. “It’s true that it’s too hot here, but there’s still no shadow anywhere.” Sit here, relax and don't ask me stupid questions.
Rita sat down, but not next to me, but opposite. With a sharp blow of her bamboo cane, she knocked down the thorny flower at my feet.
“I don’t want you to talk to me like that.” I ask you, and you must answer.
- Rita! There are questions that are difficult to answer and which are also unnecessary and useless.
“I don’t know at all what you want from me?” When Nikolai talks to me, I see why he likes me, but when you are silent, I see nothing.
- And why do you need it?
Rita threw her head back and, without squinting her eyes from the sun, looked into my face.
“Then to make you love me longer.”
“Okay,” I replied. - Fine. I'll think about it and tell you later. Now let’s go and climb to the top of the old mosque, and from there we will be able to see the gardens of all of Samarkand. The stone steps of the staircase had collapsed there, and with no girl but you, I would not have risked climbing there.
The sun's rays instantly smoothed out the wrinkles between Rita's dark eyebrows, and, pushing off my shoulder with her hand, hiding a smile, she jumped onto a nearby stone cliff.
The wind blew from the sandy deserts from the mountain peaks sprinkled with sugar snow. With the fury of a caressed puppy, he unwound Rita’s red scarf and tugged at her short gray skirt, throwing it just above her knees. But Rita... just laughs, choking slightly from the wind:
I agree. I now need the story of thirty thousand decayed skeletons less than one warm smile from Rita.
And we, laughing, climb onto the mosque. The steep curves are dark and cool. I feel Rita in front of me stop, lingering for a minute, and then my head falls into the loop of her flexible arms.
- Cute! How nice and what a wonderful city Samarkand is!..
And below, under the gray slabs, under the yellow earth, iron Timur sleeps in centuries-old peace in the rust of unsmoothed wrinkles.
Money was running out. But this did not upset us much, we had long known that sooner or later we would have to be left without them. We decided to take tickets to Bukhara, and whatever happens there.
The fading disk of the evening sun swayed among the petals of falling apricots and the greenery of blossoming gardens. Finally, we sat on the balcony, saturated with the spicy smell of a stuffy evening, and chatted peacefully. It was calm and warm. Ahead there was a long road, mysterious, like a haze of snow-capped mountains, glittering with white peaks, like horizons beyond a yellow sea of shifting sand, like any other road not yet traveled and unexperienced.
- Hell no! - Nikolai said, slamming his notebook. – Are you going to lure me to Russia now? What is Russia? Is there anything like that there?...” And he vaguely waved his hand around him. - Everything is the same, yes, the same. Tired, disgusted and in general... Look, just look... Down below, the old sheikh is sitting at the gate, and his beard hangs to the ground. He reminds me of the sorcerer from One Thousand and One Nights. You know how it is there... well, where is Ali-Akhmet...
– Did you take the change from the owner? – I interrupted him.
– I took it... I heard a legend today. The old man was talking. Interesting. Do you want me to tell you?
- No. You will certainly misrepresent and then add half of your own.
- Nonsense! – he was offended. – Do you want me to tell you, Rita?
He sat down next to her and, apparently imitating the monotonous voice of the narrator, began to speak. Rita listened attentively at first, but then he captivated her and lulled her to sleep with a fairy tale.
“Once upon a time there lived a prince who loved a certain beauty. And the beauty loved another. After a whole series of tricks in order to persuade the unapproachable girl, he kills her lover. Then the beauty dies of melancholy, ordering her to be buried next to her loved one before her death. Her wish is fulfilled. But the proud prince kills himself and out of spite orders himself to be buried between them, and then... Two white roses grew over the outermost graves and, bending their tender stems, tenderly reached out to each other. But a few days later a wild red rose hip grew among them and... And so after his death, his criminal love separated them. And who is right and who is wrong - may the great Allah judge on the Day of Judgment...
When Nikolai finished telling his story, his eyes sparkled, and his hand tightly squeezed Rita’s hand.
“There is no such love now,” Rita answered slowly and lazily, either mockingly or bitterly.
- Yes... Yes, Rita! – he objected hotly. “There are people who are capable of...” But he broke off and fell silent.
– Are you hinting at your abilities? – I said, patting him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, standing up. - Let's go to bed, we'll have to get up early tomorrow.
Nikolai left. Rita stayed.
“Wait,” she said, pulling my sleeve. - Sit with me, sit for a while.
I sat down. She was silent.
“You recently promised to tell me why you love me.” Tell!..
I was amazed. I thought it was a momentary whim and forgot about it; I was not at all prepared for the answer, and therefore I said at random:
- For what? What a weirdo you are, Rita! Because you are young, because you are a good skier, because you love me, for your laughing eyes and stern eyebrows and, finally, because you have to love someone.
- Someone! So you don't care?
- Why doesn’t it matter?
- So, if you had not met me, you would still love someone now?
- Maybe…
Rita fell silent, reached out to the flowers, and I heard a broken apricot branch crunch in the darkness.
“Listen,” she said, “but somehow this doesn’t turn out well.” Like animals. The time has come - it means, like it or not, love. That's how it turns out in your opinion!
“Rita,” I answered, getting up, “it seems to me that over the past few days you have been strangely suspicious and nervous.” I don't know why this is. Maybe you're not feeling well, or maybe you're pregnant?
She flushed. The twig, broken into pieces, crunched again. Rita stood up and shook the crumbled twigs from her hem.
- You are saying nonsense! You will always find nastiness in everything. You are a callous and dry person at heart!
Then I put her on my lap and did not let her go until she was convinced that I was not as callous and dry as she thought.
On the way, in a dark fourth-class carriage, someone stole a suitcase with our things.
Nikolai discovered this loss. Waking up at night, he rummaged around on the top shelf, cursed several times, then pushed me away:
- Get up, get up! Where is our suitcase? He's gone!
- Stolen, or what? – I asked in my sleep, raising myself onto my elbow. - Sadly. Let's have a smoke.
We lit a cigarette.
- What bestiality! There are such crooks. If I had noticed, I would have smashed the son of a bitch all over his face. You need to tell the conductor. He steals candles, you scoundrel, and it’s dark in the carriage... Why are you silent?
Rita woke up. She scolded us both as idiots, then said that she was having an interesting dream, and so as not to be disturbed, she covered herself with a blanket and turned on her other side.
The rumor about the missing suitcase went around every corner of the carriage. People woke up, frightenedly rushed to their things and, finding them in place, sighed with relief.
- Who was it stolen from? – someone asked in the darkness.
- Over there, on the middle shelf.
- Well, what about them?
- Nothing, they lie and smoke.
The carriage came to life. A conductor arrived with candles, and the stories of eyewitnesses, victims and doubters began. There should have been enough conversation to last the whole night. Individuals tried to express sympathy and condolences to us. Rita was fast asleep and smiling at something in her sleep. The indignant Nikolai began to argue with the conductor, accusing him of money-grubbing and greed, and I went out onto the platform of the carriage.
He lit a cigarette again and leaned out of the window.
A huge disk of the moon hung over the desert like a Japanese lantern. The sandy hills running towards the distant horizons were sprinkled with blue moon dust, the stunted bushes froze in the stony calm and did not bend.
Blown by the wind of the rushing carriages, the cigarette decayed and was consumed in half a minute. I heard a cough behind me, I turned around and only now noticed that I was not alone on the site. Before me stood a man in a raincoat and one of those wide, holey hats that shepherds in the southern provinces often wear. At first he seemed young to me. But, looking closer, I noticed that his poorly shaven face was covered with deep wrinkles and that he was breathing quickly and unevenly.
- May I have a cigarette, young man? – he said politely, but at the same time demandingly.
I gave. He lit a cigarette and cleared his throat.
“I heard that something bad happened to you.” Of course it's mean. But pay attention to the fact that now thefts on the roads, and not only on the roads, but everywhere, have become commonplace. The people have lost all understanding of the law, of morality, of honor and decency.
He cleared his throat, blew his nose into a huge handkerchief and continued:
– And what can you ask the people if those in power themselves set an example in their time by legitimizing robbery and violence?
I became wary.
“Yes, yes,” he continued again with sudden sharpness. - They broke everything, incited the masses: take it, they say, rob it. And now you see what they have led to... A tiger that has tasted blood will not eat apples! So it is here. There is nothing left to rob someone else's. Everything has been plundered, so now they are sharpening their teeth on each other. Has there been theft before? Do not deny. But then who stole? A thief, a professional, and now the calmest person, no, no, and he’ll think: can’t I heat up my neighbor? Yes, yes... Don't interrupt, young man, I'm older than you! And don't look suspicious, I'm not afraid. I'm used to it already. At one time I was dragged to both the Cheka and the GPU, and I say straight out: I hate, but I am powerless. Counter-revolutionary, but I can’t do anything. Old and weak. If he were young, he would do everything possible in defense of order and honor... Prince Ossovetsky,” he introduced himself, changing his voice. - And mind you, not the former, as many scoundrels who have joined the service now write, but the real one. The way I was born is the way I will die. I could do it myself, but I don’t want to. I am an old horse breeder, a specialist. I was invited to your People's Commissariat of Agriculture, but I didn’t go - my grandfather’s servants are sitting there, and I said: no, I’m poor, but I’m proud.
Part one
For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .
And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.
But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.
And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.
Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.
All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.
I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.
That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.
I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.
And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.
- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.
“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”
“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.
Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.
She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:
- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.
“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.
- What am I?
- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.
Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.
I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!
– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.
But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat,” even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because the world had broken down twice and thrice in recent years. And I answered him:
– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.
Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.
On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.
It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.
“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.
- What?
– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.
- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.
Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.
- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.
- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!
- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.
“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.
“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.
- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:
“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”
- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:
- Don't know.
And she said:
- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.
The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.
At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of a strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.
Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.
One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.
Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.
“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.
“It’s not true,” I answered, throwing away the cigarette butt. - You're fantasizing. From the European part of the city a narrow-gauge railway already reaches the skullcap shops of the dilapidated bazaar. Near the box stores where sleepy traders smoke chili, I have already seen signs of state trade stores, and across the street near the Koshchi union there will be a red banner.
Nikolai threw away his cigarette butt in annoyance and answered:
“I know all this, and I see all this myself.” But the red poster does not stick well to the clay walls, and it seems out of time, thrown here from the distant future, and in any case, not reflecting today. Yesterday I was at the grave of the great Tamerlane. There, at the stone entrance, gray-bearded old men play ancient chess from morning to night, and a blue banner and a ponytail bend over a heavy gravestone. This is beautiful, at least because there is no falsehood here, as there would be if they put a red flag there instead of a blue one.
“You’re stupid,” I answered him calmly. “The lame Tamerlane has only the past, and the traces of his iron heel are erased from the face of the earth by life day after day. His blue banner has long faded, and his ponytail is moth-eaten, and the old sheikh-gatekeeper probably has a son, a Komsomol member, who, perhaps still secretly, but already eats flatbread before sunset on the great fast of Ramadan and knows Budyonny’s biography better , who took Voronezh in the nineteenth, than the story of Tamerlane, who destroyed Asia five hundred years ago.
- No, no, it’s not true! – Nikolai objected hotly. – What do you think, Rita?
She turned her head to him and answered briefly:
– I probably agree with you on this. I also love beautiful things...
I smiled.
– You are obviously blinded by the sun, Rita, because...
But at that moment, an old, hunched woman wrapped in a burqa came out from around the bend like a blue shadow. Seeing us, she stopped and muttered something angrily, pointing her finger at a broken stone exit in the wall. But, of course, we didn’t understand anything.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai told me, standing up embarrassedly. - Maybe it’s not allowed here... Maybe this is some kind of sacred stone, and we sat on it and lit a cigarette?
We got up and went. We found ourselves in dead ends, walked through narrow streets along which two people could just barely pass each other, and finally came out onto a wide outskirts. On the left there was a small cliff, on the right there was a hill on which old people were sitting. We walked along the left side, but suddenly screams and howls were heard from the mountain. We turned around.
The old men jumped up from their seats, shouting something to us, waving their arms and staves.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai said, stopping. - Maybe it’s not allowed here, maybe there’s some kind of sacred place here?
- Nonsense! – I answered sharply, “What a sacred place is this, when horse manure is piled up all around!”
I didn’t finish, because Rita screamed and jumped back in fear, then a crash was heard, and Nikolai fell waist-deep into some dark hole. We barely managed to pull him out by the arms, and when he got out, I looked down and understood everything.
We had long since turned off the road and were walking along the rotten, earth-covered roof of the caravanserai. There were camels below, and the entrance to the caravanserai was from the side of the cliff.
We got back out and, guided by the glances of the silently seated and calmed old men, we walked on. We entered the empty and crooked street again and suddenly, around a bend, we came face to face with a young Uzbek woman. She quickly threw the black veil over her face, but not completely, but halfway; then she stopped, looked at us from under the veil and, quite unexpectedly, threw it back again.
– Russian is good, Sart is bad.
We walked side by side. She knew almost nothing in Russian, but we still talked.
- And how they live! - Nikolai told me. – Closed, cut off from everything, locked in the walls of the house. Still, what a wild and unapproachable East it is! It’s interesting to know how she lives, what she’s interested in...
“Wait,” I interrupted him. - Listen, girl, have you ever heard about Lenin?
She looked at me in surprise, not understanding anything, and Nikolai shrugged.
“About Lenin...” I repeated.
Suddenly a happy smile appeared on her face, and, pleased that she understood me, she answered warmly:
- Lelnin, Lelnin I know!.. - She nodded her head, but did not find the appropriate Russian word and continued to laugh.
Then she became wary, jumped to the side like a cat, dully threw on her veil and, bowing her head low, walked along the wall with a small, hasty gait. She obviously had good hearing, because a second later a thousand-year-old mullah came out from around the corner and, leaning on his staff, he silently looked for a long time, first at us, then at the blue shadow of the Uzbek woman; he was probably trying to guess something, he was probably guessing, but he was silent and with dull glassy eyes he looked at the two strangers and at the European girl with a laughing open face.
Nikolai has slanting Mongolian eyes, a small black beard and an active dark face. He is thin, wiry and tenacious. He's four years older than me, but that doesn't mean anything. He writes poems that he doesn’t show to anyone, dreams of the nineteenth year and automatically dropped out of the party in the twenty-second.
And as a motivation for this departure, he wrote a good poem, full of sorrow and pain for the “dying” revolution. Thus, having fulfilled his civic “duty,” he washed his hands of it and stepped aside to watch with bitterness the impending, in his opinion, death of everything that he sincerely loved and had lived by until now.
But this aimless observation soon tired of him. Death, despite all his forebodings, did not come, and he embraced the revolution a second time, remaining, however, with the deep conviction that the time would come, the years of fire would come, when at the cost of blood it would be necessary to correct the mistake committed in the twenty-first damned year.
He loves the tavern and, when he drinks, he certainly bangs his fist on the table and demands that the musicians play the revolutionary Budennovsky March: “About how on clear nights, how on stormy days we are bold and proud”... etc. But since this march for the most part is not included in the repertoire of entertainment venues, it is reconciled on the favorite gypsy romance: “Eh, everything that was, everything that ached, everything floated away a long time ago.”
During a musical performance, he taps his foot to the beat, spills his beer, and, worse, makes repeated attempts to rip his shirt collar. But due to the categorical protest of his comrades, he does not always succeed, but he still manages to tear off all the buttons from his collar. He is a soulful guy, a good comrade and a good journalist.
And it's all about him.
However, one more thing: he loves Rita, he has loved her for a long time and deeply. Ever since the time when Rita rang recklessly with a tambourine and threw her hair over her shoulders, performing the gypsy dance of Brahms - a number that caused mad clapping of tipsy people.
I know that he privately calls her “the girl from the tavern,” and he really likes this name because it’s... romantic.
We walked through a field strewn with pieces of moldy brick. Underfoot in the ground lay the bones of Tamerlane’s once buried thirty thousand soldiers. The field was gray and dry; every now and then we came across holes in fallen graves, and gray stone mice, at the rustle of our steps, silently hid in dusty holes. It was just the two of us. Me and Rita. Nikolai disappeared somewhere else in the early morning.
“Gaidar,” Rita asked me, “why do you love me?”
I stopped and looked at her with surprised eyes. I didn't understand this question. But Rita stubbornly took my hand and persistently repeated the question.
“Let’s sit on a rock,” I suggested. “It’s true that it’s too hot here, but there’s still no shadow anywhere.” Sit here, relax and don't ask me stupid questions.
Rita sat down, but not next to me, but opposite. With a sharp blow of her bamboo cane, she knocked down the thorny flower at my feet.
“I don’t want you to talk to me like that.” I ask you, and you must answer.
- Rita! There are questions that are difficult to answer and which are also unnecessary and useless.
“I don’t know at all what you want from me?” When Nikolai talks to me, I see why he likes me, but when you are silent, I see nothing.
- And why do you need it?
Rita threw her head back and, without squinting her eyes from the sun, looked into my face.
“Then to make you love me longer.”
“Okay,” I replied. - Fine. I'll think about it and tell you later. Now let’s go and climb to the top of the old mosque, and from there we will be able to see the gardens of all of Samarkand. The stone steps of the staircase had collapsed there, and with no girl but you, I would not have risked climbing there.
The sun's rays instantly smoothed out the wrinkles between Rita's dark eyebrows, and, pushing off my shoulder with her hand, hiding a smile, she jumped onto a nearby stone cliff.
The wind blew from the sandy deserts from the mountain peaks sprinkled with sugar snow. With the fury of a caressed puppy, he unwound Rita’s red scarf and tugged at her short gray skirt, throwing it just above her knees. But Rita... just laughs, choking slightly from the wind:
I agree. I now need the story of thirty thousand decayed skeletons less than one warm smile from Rita.
And we, laughing, climb onto the mosque. The steep curves are dark and cool. I feel Rita in front of me stop, lingering for a minute, and then my head falls into the loop of her flexible arms.
- Cute! How nice and what a wonderful city Samarkand is!..
And below, under the gray slabs, under the yellow earth, iron Timur sleeps in centuries-old peace in the rust of unsmoothed wrinkles.
Money was running out. But this did not upset us much, we had long known that sooner or later we would have to be left without them. We decided to take tickets to Bukhara, and whatever happens there.
The fading disk of the evening sun swayed among the petals of falling apricots and the greenery of blossoming gardens. Finally, we sat on the balcony, saturated with the spicy smell of a stuffy evening, and chatted peacefully. It was calm and warm. Ahead there was a long road, mysterious, like a haze of snow-capped mountains, glittering with white peaks, like horizons beyond a yellow sea of shifting sand, like any other road not yet traveled and unexperienced.
- Hell no! - Nikolai said, slamming his notebook. – Are you going to lure me to Russia now? What is Russia? Is there anything like that there?...” And he vaguely waved his hand around him. - Everything is the same, yes, the same. Tired, disgusted and in general... Look, just look... Down below, the old sheikh is sitting at the gate, and his beard hangs to the ground. He reminds me of the sorcerer from One Thousand and One Nights. You know how it is there... well, where is Ali-Akhmet...
– Did you take the change from the owner? – I interrupted him.
– I took it... I heard a legend today. The old man was talking. Interesting. Do you want me to tell you?
- No. You will certainly misrepresent and then add half of your own.
- Nonsense! – he was offended. – Do you want me to tell you, Rita?
He sat down next to her and, apparently imitating the monotonous voice of the narrator, began to speak. Rita listened attentively at first, but then he captivated her and lulled her to sleep with a fairy tale.
“Once upon a time there lived a prince who loved a certain beauty. And the beauty loved another. After a whole series of tricks in order to persuade the unapproachable girl, he kills her lover. Then the beauty dies of melancholy, ordering her to be buried next to her loved one before her death. Her wish is fulfilled. But the proud prince kills himself and out of spite orders himself to be buried between them, and then... Two white roses grew over the outermost graves and, bending their tender stems, tenderly reached out to each other. But a few days later a wild red rose hip grew among them and... And so after his death, his criminal love separated them. And who is right and who is wrong - may the great Allah judge on the Day of Judgment...
When Nikolai finished telling his story, his eyes sparkled, and his hand tightly squeezed Rita’s hand.
“There is no such love now,” Rita answered slowly and lazily, either mockingly or bitterly.
- Yes... Yes, Rita! – he objected hotly. “There are people who are capable of...” But he broke off and fell silent.
– Are you hinting at your abilities? – I said, patting him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, standing up. - Let's go to bed, we'll have to get up early tomorrow.
Nikolai left. Rita stayed.
“Wait,” she said, pulling my sleeve. - Sit with me, sit for a while.
I sat down. She was silent.
“You recently promised to tell me why you love me.” Tell!..
I was amazed. I thought it was a momentary whim and forgot about it; I was not at all prepared for the answer, and therefore I said at random:
- For what? What a weirdo you are, Rita! Because you are young, because you are a good skier, because you love me, for your laughing eyes and stern eyebrows and, finally, because you have to love someone.
- Someone! So you don't care?
- Why doesn’t it matter?
- So, if you had not met me, you would still love someone now?
- Maybe…
Rita fell silent, reached out to the flowers, and I heard a broken apricot branch crunch in the darkness.
“Listen,” she said, “but somehow this doesn’t turn out well.” Like animals. The time has come - it means, like it or not, love. That's how it turns out in your opinion!
“Rita,” I answered, getting up, “it seems to me that over the past few days you have been strangely suspicious and nervous.” I don't know why this is. Maybe you're not feeling well, or maybe you're pregnant?
She flushed. The twig, broken into pieces, crunched again. Rita stood up and shook the crumbled twigs from her hem.
- You are saying nonsense! You will always find nastiness in everything. You are a callous and dry person at heart!
Then I put her on my lap and did not let her go until she was convinced that I was not as callous and dry as she thought.
On the way, in a dark fourth-class carriage, someone stole a suitcase with our things.
Nikolai discovered this loss. Waking up at night, he rummaged around on the top shelf, cursed several times, then pushed me away:
- Get up, get up! Where is our suitcase? He's gone!
- Stolen, or what? – I asked in my sleep, raising myself onto my elbow. - Sadly. Let's have a smoke.
We lit a cigarette.
- What bestiality! There are such crooks. If I had noticed, I would have smashed the son of a bitch all over his face. You need to tell the conductor. He steals candles, you scoundrel, and it’s dark in the carriage... Why are you silent?
Rita woke up. She scolded us both as idiots, then said that she was having an interesting dream, and so as not to be disturbed, she covered herself with a blanket and turned on her other side.
The rumor about the missing suitcase went around every corner of the carriage. People woke up, frightenedly rushed to their things and, finding them in place, sighed with relief.
- Who was it stolen from? – someone asked in the darkness.
- Over there, on the middle shelf.
- Well, what about them?
- Nothing, they lie and smoke.
The carriage came to life. A conductor arrived with candles, and the stories of eyewitnesses, victims and doubters began. There should have been enough conversation to last the whole night. Individuals tried to express sympathy and condolences to us. Rita was fast asleep and smiling at something in her sleep. The indignant Nikolai began to argue with the conductor, accusing him of money-grubbing and greed, and I went out onto the platform of the carriage.
He lit a cigarette again and leaned out of the window.
A huge disk of the moon hung over the desert like a Japanese lantern. The sandy hills running towards the distant horizons were sprinkled with blue moon dust, the stunted bushes froze in the stony calm and did not bend.
Blown by the wind of the rushing carriages, the cigarette decayed and was consumed in half a minute. I heard a cough behind me, I turned around and only now noticed that I was not alone on the site. Before me stood a man in a raincoat and one of those wide, holey hats that shepherds in the southern provinces often wear. At first he seemed young to me. But, looking closer, I noticed that his poorly shaven face was covered with deep wrinkles and that he was breathing quickly and unevenly.
- May I have a cigarette, young man? – he said politely, but at the same time demandingly.
I gave. He lit a cigarette and cleared his throat.
“I heard that something bad happened to you.” Of course it's mean. But pay attention to the fact that now thefts on the roads, and not only on the roads, but everywhere, have become commonplace. The people have lost all understanding of the law, of morality, of honor and decency.
He cleared his throat, blew his nose into a huge handkerchief and continued:
– And what can you ask the people if those in power themselves set an example in their time by legitimizing robbery and violence?
I became wary.
“Yes, yes,” he continued again with sudden sharpness. - They broke everything, incited the masses: take it, they say, rob it. And now you see what they have led to... A tiger that has tasted blood will not eat apples! So it is here. There is nothing left to rob someone else's. Everything has been plundered, so now they are sharpening their teeth on each other. Has there been theft before? Do not deny. But then who stole? A thief, a professional, and now the calmest person, no, no, and he’ll think: can’t I heat up my neighbor? Yes, yes... Don't interrupt, young man, I'm older than you! And don't look suspicious, I'm not afraid. I'm used to it already. At one time I was dragged to both the Cheka and the GPU, and I say straight out: I hate, but I am powerless. Counter-revolutionary, but I can’t do anything. Old and weak. If he were young, he would do everything possible in defense of order and honor... Prince Ossovetsky,” he introduced himself, changing his voice. - And mind you, not the former, as many scoundrels who have joined the service now write, but the real one. The way I was born is the way I will die. I could do it myself, but I don’t want to. I am an old horse breeder, a specialist. I was invited to your People's Commissariat of Agriculture, but I didn’t go - my grandfather’s servants are sitting there, and I said: no, I’m poor, but I’m proud.
Part one
For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .
And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.
But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.
And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.
Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.
All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.
I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.
That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.
I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.
And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.
- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.
“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”
“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.
Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.
She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:
- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.
“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.
- What am I?
- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.
Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.
I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!
– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.
But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat,” even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because the world had broken down twice and thrice in recent years. And I answered him:
– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.
Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.
On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.
It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.
“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.
- What?
– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.
- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.
Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.
- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.
- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!
- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.
“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.
“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.
- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:
“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”
- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:
- Don't know.
And she said:
- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.
The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.
At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of a strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.
Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.
One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.
Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.
“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.
“It’s not true,” I answered, throwing away the cigarette butt. - You're fantasizing. From the European part of the city a narrow-gauge railway already reaches the skullcap shops of the dilapidated bazaar. Near the box stores where sleepy traders smoke chili, I have already seen signs of state trade stores, and across the street near the Koshchi union there will be a red banner.
Nikolai threw away his cigarette butt in annoyance and answered:
“I know all this, and I see all this myself.” But the red poster does not stick well to the clay walls, and it seems out of time, thrown here from the distant future, and in any case, not reflecting today. Yesterday I was at the grave of the great Tamerlane. There, at the stone entrance, gray-bearded old men play ancient chess from morning to night, and a blue banner and a ponytail bend over a heavy gravestone. This is beautiful, at least because there is no falsehood here, as there would be if they put a red flag there instead of a blue one.
“You’re stupid,” I answered him calmly. “The lame Tamerlane has only the past, and the traces of his iron heel are erased from the face of the earth by life day after day. His blue banner has long faded, and his ponytail is moth-eaten, and the old sheikh-gatekeeper probably has a son, a Komsomol member, who, perhaps still secretly, but already eats flatbread before sunset on the great fast of Ramadan and knows Budyonny’s biography better , who took Voronezh in the nineteenth, than the story of Tamerlane, who destroyed Asia five hundred years ago.
- No, no, it’s not true! – Nikolai objected hotly. – What do you think, Rita?
She turned her head to him and answered briefly:
– I probably agree with you on this. I also love beautiful things...
I smiled.
– You are obviously blinded by the sun, Rita, because...
But at that moment, an old, hunched woman wrapped in a burqa came out from around the bend like a blue shadow. Seeing us, she stopped and muttered something angrily, pointing her finger at a broken stone exit in the wall. But, of course, we didn’t understand anything.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai told me, standing up embarrassedly. - Maybe it’s not allowed here... Maybe this is some kind of sacred stone, and we sat on it and lit a cigarette?
We got up and went. We found ourselves in dead ends, walked through narrow streets along which two people could just barely pass each other, and finally came out onto a wide outskirts. On the left there was a small cliff, on the right there was a hill on which old people were sitting. We walked along the left side, but suddenly screams and howls were heard from the mountain. We turned around.
The old men jumped up from their seats, shouting something to us, waving their arms and staves.
“Gaidar,” Nikolai said, stopping. - Maybe it’s not allowed here, maybe there’s some kind of sacred place here?
- Nonsense! – I answered sharply, “What a sacred place is this, when horse manure is piled up all around!”
I didn’t finish, because Rita screamed and jumped back in fear, then a crash was heard, and Nikolai fell waist-deep into some dark hole. We barely managed to pull him out by the arms, and when he got out, I looked down and understood everything.
We had long since turned off the road and were walking along the rotten, earth-covered roof of the caravanserai. There were camels below, and the entrance to the caravanserai was from the side of the cliff.
We got back out and, guided by the glances of the silently seated and calmed old men, we walked on. We entered the empty and crooked street again and suddenly, around a bend, we came face to face with a young Uzbek woman. She quickly threw the black veil over her face, but not completely, but halfway; then she stopped, looked at us from under the veil and, quite unexpectedly, threw it back again.
– Russian is good, Sart is bad.
We walked side by side. She knew almost nothing in Russian, but we still talked.
- And how they live! - Nikolai told me. – Closed, cut off from everything, locked in the walls of the house. Still, what a wild and unapproachable East it is! It’s interesting to know how she lives, what she’s interested in...
“Wait,” I interrupted him. - Listen, girl, have you ever heard about Lenin?
She looked at me in surprise, not understanding anything, and Nikolai shrugged.
“About Lenin...” I repeated.
Suddenly a happy smile appeared on her face, and, pleased that she understood me, she answered warmly:
- Lelnin, Lelnin I know!.. - She nodded her head, but did not find the appropriate Russian word and continued to laugh.
Then she became wary, jumped to the side like a cat, dully threw on her veil and, bowing her head low, walked along the wall with a small, hasty gait. She obviously had good hearing, because a second later a thousand-year-old mullah came out from around the corner and, leaning on his staff, he silently looked for a long time, first at us, then at the blue shadow of the Uzbek woman; he was probably trying to guess something, he was probably guessing, but he was silent and with dull glassy eyes he looked at the two strangers and at the European girl with a laughing open face.
Nikolai has slanting Mongolian eyes, a small black beard and an active dark face. He is thin, wiry and tenacious. He's four years older than me, but that doesn't mean anything. He writes poems that he doesn’t show to anyone, dreams of the nineteenth year and automatically dropped out of the party in the twenty-second.
And as a motivation for this departure, he wrote a good poem, full of sorrow and pain for the “dying” revolution. Thus, having fulfilled his civic “duty,” he washed his hands of it and stepped aside to watch with bitterness the impending, in his opinion, death of everything that he sincerely loved and had lived by until now.
Part one
For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .
And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.
But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.
And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.
Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.
All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.
I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.
That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17, he served in the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
But in the editorial office I came across a locked door, near which the guard, cracking seeds, explained to me that today the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr began and there was no one in the editorial office and there would be no one for three days in a row.
"Hello! It's starting! - I thought.
Evening was approaching, and there was nowhere to spend the night. We accidentally came across a broken stone wall; got into the hole. Behind the wall is a deserted garden. There are some ruins in the depths of the garden. We chose a quieter nook - a room without a floor and with the roof half blown away. We brought an armful of soft fragrant grass, covered the entrance to our lair with some cast-iron benches, covered ourselves with cloaks and went to bed.
Rita! - Nikolai asked, touching her warm hand. - Are you scared?
No,” Rita answered, “I’m not scared, I feel good.”
Rita! - I asked, wrapping her tightly with a hollow cloak. - Are you cold?
No,” Rita answered, “I’m not cold, I feel good.” - And she laughed.
What are you doing?
So. Now we are completely homeless and homeless. I've never spent the night in ruins before. But I once spent the night on the roof of a carriage, because soldiers were coming at me in the carriage at night.
Who? Red?
Not true. The Reds couldn't climb, you're making it up. - Nikolai was indignant.
“They could do it as much as they wanted,” I said. - Believe me, I was there more than you and I know better than you.
But he doesn’t want to give up and adds one last thing:
If it is true that they attacked a defenseless woman, then they were obviously selected scoundrels and former deserters who they forgot to shoot in time.
Nikolai’s judgments are colorful and categorical, and his system of drawing conclusions always baffles me, and I say:
Look simpler.
Gaidar! - the indignant Rita whispers in my ear. - And you also looked simpler before?
And I answer:
Yes, I did.
But Rita clings to me and whispers warmly:
You're lying, you're definitely lying. I don't believe you are like that.
And he puts my head in his favorite place - on right side my chest.
Nikolai lies silently. He can't sleep, and he calls out to me.
You know? In my opinion, you are still... still... a very unprincipled person!
May be. And you?
Me? - He is laughing. - I have basic provisions that I never change. In this respect I am a knight.
For example?
Well, you never know... For example, you... no matter what bad things happen around you, and in general, you always find an excuse for everything. It's not fair, in my opinion.
Not excuses, but explanations,” I correct, closing my eyes.
A minute, another. Let's fall asleep. A green ray breaks through the gap in the broken roof and falls on Rita’s blue hair. Rita smiles. Rita is sleeping. Rita has a dream that I don’t see...
We woke up early. It was a bright sunny morning. Warm, aromatic steam rose from the dew-washed grass. It was quiet in the abandoned garden. Somewhere not far away the water was gurgling: in the corner of the garden there was a fountain pool overgrown with moss.
Having washed from the pool of light, cold water, we got out through the gap onto a tree-lined street and began to wander around an unfamiliar city. We went to the market, bought churek - a round fluffy flatbread worth two and a half pounds, bought sausages and headed to a dirty market teahouse, one of those in which a whole kettle of liquid green drink is served for seven kopecks. And while the old Tekin man was busy near the huge five-bucket samovar, wiping the cups intended for us with the hollow of his robe, Nikolai took out a knife and cut the sausage into large slices.
The old man was already bringing us a tray with dishes and a teapot, but before reaching the table, he suddenly stopped, almost dropped the dishes and, twisting his haggard face, shouted to us:
Hey, Yaldash, you can’t!.. Uh, you can’t!.. - And he himself pointed to our table.
And we immediately realized that it was the delicious slices of sausage that brought the venerable old man into such furious indignation.
Eh, us! - I said to Nikolai, hastily putting the sausage into my pocket. - How come we didn’t realize this earlier?
The old man put the device on our table and left, remembering the name of Allah and spitting.
But we still outwitted him. We sat in an empty dark corner, and under the table I passed pieces to Rita and Nikolai. The guys pushed them into the middle of the bread crumb and then, almost choking with laughter, began to eat the churek stuffed with forbidden filling.
Let's go out of town. Outside the city there are hills, on the hills there are people. Holiday, party...
The Uzbeks of Samarkand are for the most part short and overweight. They are dressed in greasy cotton robes with sleeves that extend a full quarter below their fingers. There are turbans on their heads and shoes on their feet. Here the Turkmens wear thin, red robes, tightly tied with narrow belts; on their heads there are huge black hats, thickly hanging with curly sheep's wool.
I took one of these papas and was horrified. I think she weighed at least three or four pounds.
We also saw local women. Again, nothing like Uzbekistan. The faces of the Mongolian type are open, there is a round kamilavka on the head, the sleeve of a bright colored robe is pulled over the kamilavka; the other sleeve flutters uselessly around the back. On the arms are copper bracelets, length from hand to elbow; breasts in shiny copper hemispheres, like those of the mythical Amazons; gold coins stretch across the forehead, descending on both sides of the face; on his feet are wooden shoes painted with metal nails; high, higher than Moscow, heels. Armenian women in capes and Persian women in black silk blankets, looking like strict Catholic nuns, walked past.
We climbed the hills. Below there was a valley, and not far away a chain of mountains began. White patches of unmelted snow were visible on the mountains. There, behind the peaks, a few kilometers from here, is a foreign side, a foreign land - Persia!
We descended into a dry sandy ravine. It was interesting to walk along the twisting and curling bed of the dry stream, for from behind the sheer cliffs there was nothing but the scorching sun - damn it! - it was not visible and it was impossible to determine where you would go out.
Look! - Rita shouted, jumping away. - Look, a snake! We stopped. Across the road, wriggling like a black ribbon, a one and a half arshin viper was crawling. Nikolai picked up a large stone and threw it at her, but missed, and the snake, flashing its steel scales, darted forward. But Nikolai and Rita became indescribably excited: on the shore, picking up stones, they rushed after the escaping snake until a heavy cobblestone hit its head; she stopped, squirmed and hissed. For a long time they threw stones at her, and only when she stopped moving completely did they come closer.
“I’ll take it in my hands,” said Rita.
All sorts of crap! - Nikolai was indignant.
Nothing is nasty. Look, it seems like we smashed it all with huge bricks, but there’s not a single blood or scratch on it! She is all like steel. - Rita touched the snake with a cane, then wanted to touch it with her finger, but did not dare.
Look, she's still alive!
Can't be! - Nikolai objected. “I finally threw a ten-pound block on her head.”
But the snake was alive. We sat on the ledge and lit a cigarette. The snake moved, then slowly, as if waking up from a deep sleep, it bent and quietly, like a sick person staggering from weakness, crawled on.
Nikolai and Rita looked at each other, but did not throw a single stone, not a single piece of clay after her. Then I stood up and with one jerk of a sharp hunting knife cut off the viper’s head.
A cry of indignation and rage escaped Rita's lips.
How dare you! - she shouted to me. -Who allowed you?...
We'll be relaxing on the lawn here, and I don't want a snake crawling around next to us, angry that it wasn't finished off. And then... why weren’t you and Nikolai fuming when you yourself finished her off with stones three minutes ago?
Yes, but she still survived! She was terribly clinging to life, and it would be possible to leave her,” Nikolai stood up for Rita, a little embarrassedly. - You know, there was a custom that a criminal who escaped the noose was given life.
“Stupid custom,” I replied. “Either there is no need to start, or, if there is something to blame, then let him break loose ten times, but on the eleventh he should still be hanged.” What does chance have to do with it and what does romance have to do with it?
We slept there again. At night I was awakened by a sudden noise. Somewhere nearby they were talking. And we decided that these were some homeless tramps looking for a place to stay for the night.
Let them go. And there’s enough room for them,” I said. - And besides, the entrance to our den is blocked, and it’s unlikely that they will climb here in the dark.
We were about to doze off again, but suddenly the light of an electric lantern flashed in the darkness of the ruins.
These are not homeless people, this is a police patrol,” I whispered. - Let's be silent, maybe they won't notice.
There is no one,” someone said loudly. “And there’s nothing to see there, everything is littered with garden benches.”
Come on, climb anyway.
Someone climbed, but the poorly piled benches flew down with a roar. Loud curses were heard. Then the flashlight flashed again, and, breaking through the resulting passage, a narrow yellow beam found us.
“Aha,” a triumphantly gloating voice was heard. - Three even and one woman. Demchenko, here!
In the darkness, the turning drum of the revolver clicked. I felt that Rita’s hand was trembling a little and that Kolka was about to open a furious verbal attack.
Calm down and don't say a word. You'll ruin everything. I'm the only one talking.
Come on, come on, don't waste your time. Come out! - a categorical order was heard. - And if someone runs, a bullet will immediately shoot.
They gave it to us. We got out and, groping by the light of a flashlight, stopped, not seeing anyone.
What were you doing here? - asked the senior patrolman.
“We were asleep,” I answered calmly. -Where should I go now?
What kind of place did they find for sleeping? March to the department!
I smiled. I deliberately did not enter into arguments, because I knew that in twenty to thirty minutes they would let us go. The chief of the round was a little embarrassed that we were calm, and even looked at him mockingly. He immediately lowered his tone and said more politely:
Follow us, we'll sort it out now.
But then what I feared most happened happened. One of the agents pointed a light at Rita’s face and said to his comrade, grinning:
A prostitute, and what a prostitute... Ew! - And before I had time to do anything, Nikolai, rushing out of his seat, hit the speaker in the face with all his might. The lantern fell at my feet and went out. I rushed to Rita. Nikolai's hands were tightly twisted. I spat out of frustration and silently allowed myself to be twisted. Rita's hands were not tied. And under the escort of four wary people, who lowered their revolvers to the ground, we set off along the dark streets.
You bastards, someone hit me on the lips in a fight, and I’m bleeding,” Nikolai said, spitting.
By God, it’s not enough for you,” I muttered frankly. - And why the hell is this your unnecessary knightly intercession? Who asked you for it?
You're kind of crazy! - Rita whispered to him. - Well, what was left out of me when they called me?... An eccentric, really!
And she took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped his parched lips.
We stayed at the police station until the morning. In the morning we were interrogated by a senior policeman. He demanded to see the documents and was very puzzled when he read in mine that “the bearer of this is really the own correspondent of the newspaper Zvezda, a special correspondent of the newspaper Smychka,” etc.
He scratched his head and said, perplexed:
So you are sort of like a worker correspondent. Tell me, please, why aren’t you ashamed to spend the night in such places?
You see, comrade,” I explained to him, “that’s our business.” And we spent the night there because it was necessary for the experience. What's in the hotel? Everything is the same at the hotel. And here you can stumble upon something interesting.
He looked at me incredulously, then shook his head:
Does this mean that in order to describe everything, you have to spend the night in other people’s gardens? What's so interesting about that?
Like what? You never know! Well, for example, yesterday's round. After all, this is a topic for a whole story!
Hm,” he cleared his throat. And, frowning, he dipped his pen into the inkwell. - And you always look for this very topic in this way?
Always! - I answered with excitement. - We sleep at train stations, visit dirty teahouses, travel in the holds of steamships and wander around various remote corners.
He looked at me again and, apparently convinced by the fervor of my arguments, said with regret:
So this is a dog's service! And I’m thinking, how can I get the newspapers, and where do they describe everything? - But then he slyly narrowed his eyes and, shaking his head at Nikolai, sitting with Rita at a distance, asked me:
Did he also go yesterday for the policeman topic?
I then explained how it was, and, lowering my voice, I lied that this man was a famous poet, that is, he wrote poetry, and that he was like that from birth - a little touched. That he absolutely must not be irritated, because then he will attack people until he is taken to a psychiatric hospital.
The policeman listened in silence, then again scratched the back of his head with his hand and said authoritatively:
Yes, of course, if the poet... These are all such people. - And he waved his hand. - I read this in the newspaper - one hanged himself in Moscow recently.
Of course, he hanged himself,” I confirmed. - Why is there one, they will soon hang themselves by the dozens, because the people are all unbalanced, except maybe Mayakovsky... Have you heard about Mayakovsky, comrade?
Which one?
I'm talking about Mayakovsky.
No,” he said after thinking. - It seems like a familiar surname, but I can’t say for sure.
I liked this calm, phlegmatic policeman. We were soon released, but they nevertheless drew up a report against Nikolai and made him obligated to pay a 25 ruble fine upon arrival at his place of permanent residence.
We lived in this city like birds of the air. During the day we wandered until we were stupefied, lying in the sun, along the steep hills near the city. Sometimes during the day, Nikolai or I would go to the editorial office, write essays, feuilletons, take three-ruble advances towards the fee, and we kept the fee itself to buy tickets for the further journey.
We managed to spend the night this way: the station there is small, not a hub. The last train leaves at ten in the evening, after which the entire public is swept out of the station, and then twenty to thirty people are let in, those who, in order to save money, arrived here on a free-class passenger train in order to board a second-class train passing further.
Then I went to the agent, showed my correspondent ID and said that there were no available rooms in the city, and we would only go further tomorrow. The agent gave a note for one night. The agents were on duty in shifts. There were seven of them, and seven times, seven nights I received permission; but on the eighth time I saw the man on duty the first night...
In a small, dimly lit station room, we then met a man whom we nicknamed “the third year.”
Here is how it was. We were lying on the stone floor near the table and were about to fall asleep, when suddenly someone’s huge holey shoe ended up on the tip of the bench above my head and the black face of a man overgrown with shaggy stubble flashed above me, unceremoniously climbing onto the table to sleep.
Hey, hey, uncle, get off the table! - shouted a sleepy Red Army soldier of the railway guard. - And where did you come from here?
But due to the fact that the man did not pay any attention to the shout, the Red Army soldier came up to us and, not being able to get to the table, took off his rifle and lightly hit the lounging stranger with the butt. He raised his head and said indignantly:
Please do not interrupt the rest of a tired person.
Give me the documents!
The man rummaged around, took out the greasy paper and handed it over.
What year of birth? - the Red Army soldier drawled in surprise after reading the paper.
1903,” he answered. - It seems to be written there, comrade.
Third year! Well well! - The guard shook his head. - Yes, my dear, I can’t give you less than three dozen! What a uncle! - And, returning the documents, he asked with curiosity. - What kind of province will you be in?
Please do not ask me questions that are not related to the performance of your direct duties! - he answered proudly and, calmly turning around, went to bed.
From that time on, we met here with him every evening. We met.
Nekoparov,” he introduced himself to us. - An artist in general, but at this moment, due to human lack of integrity, he was forced by force of circumstances to enter the despicable service as an accountant at the railway department.
He was wearing torn huge boots, extremely tattered trousers that were treacherously falling apart at the knees, old, oily pajamas, and on his huge, disheveled head sat a Panama hat that was barely holding on to the back of his head.
His suit was also remarkable in that it did not have a single button even where they were most supposed to be, and everything was held together by a whole system of scraps of twine and washcloth and pins. He spoke in a thick, modulating voice, authoritatively, calmly and slightly floridly.
At six o'clock in the morning, porters appeared with brooms, shouted, and unceremoniously pulled the legs of those who were especially fast asleep. In the clouds of dust raised from the floor, coughs and yawns were heard from people being escorted out into the street.
We went out onto the porch of the station. It was too early to go - not a single tavern was open yet. The sun was just beginning to rise above the green caps of the poplars, and it was cool.
“It’s cold,” our new acquaintance said, shuddering. - My suit is defective and does not warm well. Game of fate. During the revolution he was a food commissar, then after the NEP he was an agent for monitoring the collection of nuts near the Athos monastery, and finally he was Lately an artist, and now an artist at heart. And imagine, he played Neschastlivtsev in Sarokomyshev’s troupe! We’ve traveled to so many cities, and success everywhere! We got to Baku. But this rogue Sarokomyshev was imprisoned for something, and the troupe broke up. I then met a decent person. We started talking. Yes, I tell him, and so. “My friend! - he tells me. - Yes, you are the very person whom I have been looking for, maybe for three years. Let's go to Tashkent! My troupe there is almost ready. They can't wait. You see, they are sending telegram after telegram!” Showed two. It’s really short and clear: “Come. We can’t wait any longer.” Well, naturally, we bought tickets with him, crossed the Caspian Sea, got here, he said: “We need to stop for three days. The actress lives here alone, we’ll take her with us.” Well, we stopped. We live in a hotel one day, then we live another. Why, I tell him, won’t you introduce me to the actress? “It’s impossible,” he answers me, “be patient a little. She’s a proud woman and doesn’t like people hanging around her with nothing to do.” And I think to myself: you’re lying, that you’re proud, but you’ve probably been playing tricks with her and that’s why, given my conspicuous appearance, you’re afraid to introduce me to her. And only this I wake up on the third day and look: my God! Where are my trousers, as well as all the other toilet accessories?
So did he disappear? - Rita asked, choking with laughter.
And so he disappeared!
Did you declare?
No. That is, I wanted to, but preferred to remain silent in order to avoid any complications.
What complications? - I asked. But he ignored this question and continued:
Then I knock on the wall. Some kind of face comes to me, and I say: call me the owner of the hotel. “So and so,” I say to the owner, “I have nothing to go out with because of the theft that took place, be so philanthropic, get into the situation!” “What do I care about your situation? - he answers. “You’d better tell me who will now pay me for the room, and, in addition, for the samovar, and forty kopecks for registration?” - Clearly, I say, no one! And besides, do you have any used trousers? “He didn’t want to listen to anything, but then I, being driven to despair by events, told him: well, in that case, without them, in kind, I will now go out to your dining room, as a result of which there will be a colossal scandal, as I saw through the door that a visiting lady with her daughter from room thirteen has just passed there, and besides, your elderly aunt is sitting there at the buffet - a respectable and positive woman.
Then he burst out with curses, left and, returning, brought me this rag. I was horrified, but there was no choice.
What are you planning to do now?
A suit... First of all, as soon as you get your first paycheck, you get a suit. Otherwise, no one wants to talk to me like this. And then I'll get married.
I'm getting married, I say. There are a lot of widows in this city. They come here specifically for this. All are former officers' wives, and their husbands are in exile. Here you can do it in no time. Our courier promised to introduce me to one. She says she has her own house, a front garden with flowers and a piano. You just need a suit. Surely you won’t show up to get married dressed like this? - And he shrugged his shoulders sadly.
A glass of tea would be nice,” said Rita, getting up. - The buffet in third class has already opened.
We got up and invited him with us.
“I would love to,” he answered, bowing gallantly. - However, I’m warning you: I’m temporarily as poor as a church rat, and I don’t have a centime, but, if I may...
With Rita, he was extremely polite, behaved with dignity, like a real gentleman, although every now and then he imperceptibly pulled up his pants with his right hand.
Subsequently, when we were hopelessly kicked out of the station, he rendered us an invaluable service: on the sidings he found somewhere an old freight car, in which oilmen on duty, tipsy switchmen and randomly arriving railway workers usually spent the night.
He first settled there himself, then he made a fuss about us with the local residents, and we moved in there too.
One evening, all the filthy inhabitants of the leaky carriage greeted Nekoparov's return with friendly claps and shouts of encouragement.
He was dressed in new striped trousers, an apache shirt, and on his feet were yellow Jimmy boots with narrow, long socks. All the stubble was removed, his hair was combed back, and he looked proud and self-satisfied.
You are awesome! - I told him. - Your success with the widow is guaranteed, and you can safely begin the attack.
Nekoparov took out a pack of “Java, 1st grade, b” cigarettes and offered to smoke; then he took an orange out of his pocket and presented it to Rita. Obviously, he was pleased that in turn he could do something nice for us.
All evening he delighted the ears of the inhabitants of the carriage with arias from “Silva”. He did not have a strong but pleasant baritone.
The tipsy depot mechanic, who lives here because his wife had not let him home for three days because he had drunk his pay, became completely emotional, took half a bottle out of his pocket and, in front of everyone, single-handedly drank straight from the bottle “to the health and happiness of our respected comrade, the artist Nekoparov.” "
And Nekoparov delivered a speech in response, in which he thanked everyone present for the joyful reception he received. Then someone made a sensible suggestion that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to share a drink for such a joyful occasion. The proposal was accepted. And Nekoparov, as the hero of the occasion, laid out two rubles, and the rest - some fifty kopecks, some two kopecks. In general, we got it. They sent Petka the homeless man for a quarter of vodka, for sieve and for jelly. Not for the jelly that the station traders with dirty paws sell for ten kopecks per pound, but for the one that at the cooperative kiosk is weighed into paper for thirty kopecks per kilo.
And it was such a fun night! It goes without saying that Nekoparov singular depicted the entire first act of Ostrovsky’s play “The Forest”! Or that grimy Petka the homeless man, tapping gnawed bones like castanets, sang Rostov’s “Yablochko”! In the end, harmony came from somewhere. And Nekoparov, staggering, stood up and said:
Please pay attention, dear citizens! By a happy coincidence of circumstances in our dark and unsightly shelter, among rude and uncultured, but at the same time very nice people...
“In the middle of rucks,” someone corrected.
That’s right, among the people who, by the will of fate, sank to the dirty floor of a carriage that smelled of oil, there was a woman from another, unknown world, the world of art and beauty! And I take the liberty on behalf of everyone gathered here to ask her to take part in our modest holiday.
He approached Rita and, bowing politely, offered her his hand. The accordion player blew a tango. And Nekoparov, proud of his lady, stepped into the middle of the silently parted circle.
It was semi-dark in the smoky, dim carriage. In the corner, a flame crackled furiously in a red-hot iron stove, and red spots and black shadows ran across tanned, stubbled faces, and yellow lights flashed in the eyes, greedily peering into the curves of the gloomy dance.
Why dance?
So... Eh, people exist and live! - he said with a hint of envy.
But no one understood what he was actually talking about.
Then Rita, accompanied by clapping and whistling, danced “Russian” with Petka the street child. A security guard approached the carriage and, knocking on the door with his rifle butt, shouted to make no noise. But the guard was sent away in a friendly chorus, and he left, cursing.
However, in the end they got very drunk: before going to bed, they dragged some women into the carriage, then they turned out the lights and fussed with the women in dark corners until dawn.
The city was starting to get boring. The city is boring and sleepy. One day I opened the newspaper and laughed: there was a notice that “a special interdepartmental commission is being convened to regulate street traffic.” What is there to regulate? Except that very rarely you will have to stop a couple of donkeys loaded with saxaul and let a dozen loaded camels go to the sands of the Merv oasis.
Three days later, we used the money we earned to buy tickets to Krasnovodsk. We went into the carriage to say goodbye. Nekoparov was sad.
The devil knows! - he said. - I received my salary, bought a suit, and there are still ten days until the next payday. There's nothing to eat. Therefore, you will have to sell your shoes tomorrow.
I think that by the time of payday he was again in his wonderful attire.
On the left are mountains, on the right are sands. On the left are green meadows irrigated by mountain streams, on the right is the desert. On the left are tents like brown mushrooms, on the right are saxaul branches, like dead snakes, dried up by the sun. Then came bare, cracked clay. Under the hot sun, a white coating of salt appeared like spots of eczema.
Are you hot, Rita?
It's hot, Gaidar! Even on the court it’s no better. Dust and wind. I'm waiting for everything - we'll come to the sea, we'll swim. Look out the window, over there. Well, what kind of life is this?
I watched. On the flat, salt-corroded clay, surrounded by consumptive patches of gray grass, a tattered wagon stood alone. Near her sat a skinned dog and, with his legs tucked under him, a shabby camel, as if scalded by boiling water, was slowly chewing the cud; Without turning his head, he stared indifferently into the past of thousands of years, into the dead wall of the endless chain of Persian mountains.
For two weeks now, Nikolai and I have been working as loaders in Krasnovodsk. For two long weeks we carried bags of salt and dried fish, barrels of rancid oil and bales of prickly compressed hay.
We return home to a tiny room on the outskirts of the city, near the foot of a sad mountain, and there Rita feeds us stew and porridge. For two weeks in a row, fish soup and millet porridge. Nikolai and I earn twenty rubles a day, and we need to make money at all costs to cross the sea, because there is no other way from Krasnovodsk.
“Cursed by God”, “convict exile”, “prison barracks” - these are not all the epithets applied by the population to Krasnovodsk. The city is located on the Asian shore of the Caspian Sea, a sea off the coast of which there is more fatty oil than water. Around the city there is a dead desert - not a single tree, not a single green clearing. Square, barracks-type houses; dust that eats into the throat, and the constant shine of the yellow, dusty, hot, merciless sun.
In the evening, when it became a little cooler, we spread our raincoats on the sand of the yard, cooked dinner, shared our impressions and chatted.
Well, how much more money do we need?
Ten more. That means a week of work with a deduction for food.
Wow, hurry up! Every day when the ship leaves here, I find no place for myself! I would go crazy if I was forced to live here. Well, how can you live here?
They live, Rita, they live and don’t go crazy. They are born, get married, fall in love - everything is honorable.
Rita remembered something and laughed.
You know, I was at the market today. A Greek approached me. So, quite an intelligent face. He sells fruit. In general, we started talking. He walked me all the way home. But the cunning one invited everyone to visit him. He kept hinting that he liked me and all that. Then I went to his shop and asked him to weigh me a pound of compote. I saw that he weighed not a pound, but two, and, in addition, he put on a bag full of apples. I ask him: how much? And he laughed and said: “It’s a ruble for everyone, but nothing for you.” I took everything, said “thank you” and left.
Did you take it? - Nikolai asked indignantly. -Are you crazy, or what?
What nonsense! Of course I took it. Who pulled him by the tongue to offer him? What does a ruble mean to him? And for us, you see, we’ll leave one day earlier.
However, Nikolai frowned and fell silent. And he was silent until she whispered something quietly in his ear.
Before going to bed, Rita came up to me and hugged my neck.
Why are you so strange?
How strange, Rita?
Why “after all”, Rita? She was embarrassed, caught at her word:
Why are you nagging? Honey, don't! Tell me better, what do you think?
And I answered:
I’m thinking that tomorrow the steamship Karl Marx is due to arrive with cargo, and we will have a lot of work.
And nothing else? Well, talk to me, ask me something?
I saw that she wanted to challenge me to talk, I felt that I would ask her something that I had been planning to ask for a long time. And so I answered with restraint:
It is useless to ask directions from a person who himself is at a crossroads. And I won’t ask you anything, Rita, but when you want to tell me something, say it yourself.
She thought about it and left. I was left alone. I sat, smoked cigarette after cigarette, listened to the rustling of the sand crumbling from the rock and the pebbles rolling along the sloping shore.
Entered the room. Rita was already asleep. For a long time he silently admired the haze of lowered eyelashes. He looked at the familiar features of the dark face, then wrapped the slipping edge of the blanket around her legs and kissed her on the forehead - carefully, carefully, so that she wouldn’t hear.
That day our work was in full swing. The barrels rolled like skittles, we almost ran along the sacks of salt along the bending stage, and clouds of white dust, one after another, rose up over the dumped five-pound dumpsters of flour.
We worked in the hold, helping the sailors secure the load onto the hook of the crane's steel cable. We were drenched in sweat, our wet chests felt sticky with flour dust, but there was no time to rest.
The iron chains of the crane creaked, the escaping steam hissed, and hundred-pound bundles of cargo flew up every now and then.
I can not take it anymore! - Nikolai muttered with dry lips, approaching me. “My throat is all clogged with dirt and my eyes are filled with flour.”
“Nothing, hold on,” I answered, licking my lips with my tongue. - Be strong, Kolka, just another day or two.
Half-hearted! - the holdman shouted angrily. - Out of sight!
And Nikolai barely had time to jump away, because a lowered stack of poorly fitted bags fell heavily from above; one of them fell and hit Nikolai on the hand with a dry, hard edge.
Eh, you!.. God loved your mother! - the sailor cursed angrily. - Don't put your head under the tap!
A few minutes later, Nikolai, citing pain in his bruised elbow, went home.
We worked for about two more hours. The sailor continually scolded me loudly, either in the form of warnings, or in the form of encouragement, or just like that. I worked as an artillery gunner in the smoke of gunpowder. He turned the sacks, rushed to the boxes, pulled off the felt bales. All this had to be quickly attached to the chains laid out on the floor, and immediately everything flew from the hold up into the square of the yellow, burnt sky...
Staggering from fatigue, we climbed onto the deck, sat on a bench, and lit a cigarette. The body was sticky, hot, ached and itched. But I didn’t want to wash myself or go down the gangplank to the shore. I wanted to sit silently, smoke and not move. And only when the ship’s siren roared did he descend and lazily walk home.
The siren roared again, the clanging of chains, the shouts of the crew, the bubbling of boiling water were heard and, sparkling with lights, the steamer slowly sailed further, to the shores of Persia.
Rita and Nikolai were sitting by the fire. They didn't notice that I was approaching them. Nikolai said:
All the same... Sooner or later... You, Rita, are sensitive, receptive, but he is dry and callous.
“Not always,” Rita answered after a pause, “sometimes he’s different.” Do you know, Nikolai, what I like about him? He is stronger than many and stronger than you. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but it seems to me that without him it would be much more difficult for us now.
What does power have to do with it? It's just more frayed. What is this for him, for the first time, or what? Habit, that's all!
I went. They stopped talking. Rita brought me to wash my face.
The cold water had a calming effect on my head, and I asked:
Have you had lunch?
Not yet. We've been waiting for you.
What else was there to expect? You must be as hungry as dogs!
Before going to bed, Rita suddenly asked:
Gaidar, you know fairy tales. Tell me!
No, Rita, I don't know fairy tales. I knew when I was very little, but since then I have forgotten.
Why does he know, why hasn’t he forgotten? He's older than you! Why are you smiling? Tell me, please, what is your way of always talking about Nikolai somehow condescendingly, as if talking about a little boy? He notices it too. He just doesn’t know how to prevent this from happening.
Grow up a little. There's nothing more you can do about it, Rita. Where did you get these flowers from?
He got it. You know, today he hurt his hand and, despite this, climbed that peak over there. There is a spring there, and some grass grows near it. It's very difficult to get there. Why don't you ever get me flowers?
I answered her:
I don't have much time for flowers.
The next day was payday. Leaving tomorrow. We felt festive. Let's go swimming. Rita was cheerful, swam through the waves like a mermaid, splashing and screaming so that we wouldn’t dare catch her. However, some kind of stupidity came over Nikolai. Despite Rita's warning, he swam towards her. And either because I was swimming far away at that time, and she felt awkward alone with Nikolai, or because she was angry at his emphasized familiarity, but only she shouted something sharp, which made him turn pale and stop. A few strong strokes - and Rita floated away, around the bend, to the place where she was undressing.
After getting dressed, Nikolai was gloomy and did not say a word.
We need to go buy tickets for tomorrow. Who will go?
“I,” he answered sharply.
Apparently it was hard for him to stay with us.
Go. - I took out the money and handed it to him. - We'll probably be at home.
He left. We spent a long time warming up and drying in the sun. Rita came up with a new activity - throwing pebbles into the sea. She was angry that she could do no more than two circles, while I could do three and four. When the stone she threw accidentally flew up over the water five times, she clapped her hands, declared herself the winner and declared that she no longer wanted to throw, but wanted to climb the mountain.
For a long time that evening we climbed with her, laughed, talked, and approached the house tired, satisfied, tightly squeezing each other’s hands.
Nicholas, however, was not yet there.
“He probably came already, didn’t find us and went looking for us,” we decided.
However, an hour passed, then another, and he still did not return. We got worried.
Nikolai returned at twelve o'clock at night. He couldn’t stand on his feet, was absolutely drunk, cursed me as a bastard, told Rita that he loved her madly, then called her... a prostitute and, swaying, fell to the floor. He muttered something for a long time and finally fell asleep.
Rita was silent, burying her head in the pillow, and I saw that she was about to burst into tears.
I found twenty-seven kopecks in Nikolai’s pockets; there were no tickets, and everything else was drunk, apparently in a tavern with the porters.
It was a hard morning. Nikolai was silent for a long time, apparently only now beginning to realize what he had done.
“I’m a scoundrel,” he said dully, “and the best thing would be to throw myself off the mountain headfirst.”
Nonsense,” I calmly interrupted. - Nonsense... It doesn’t happen to anyone. Well, it happened... Well, nothing can be done. Today I’ll go to the office and tell them to sign us up for loading again. Let's work again. What a disaster!
During the day, Nikolai lay in bed. He had a headache after yesterday. And again I carried sacks, barrels of rancid oil and bundles of wet, untreated leather.
When I returned, Rita was not at home.
How are you feeling, Nikolai? Where is Rita?
The headache is gone, but I feel bad. But Rita is not there. She went somewhere while I was still sleeping.
Rita returned about two hours later. Without going into the room, she sat down on a stone in the yard, and it was only by chance that I saw her.
“Rita,” I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder. - What's wrong with you, baby?
She shuddered, silently squeezed my hand... I quietly stroked her head, without asking anything, then I felt a large warm tear fall onto my palm.
What happened to you? What are you talking about? - And I pulled her towards me. But instead of answering, she buried her head in my shoulder and burst into tears.
“Yes,” she said after a few minutes. - Yes, I'm tired of it. Damn city, sands... Hurry, hurry, we need to get out of here!
Okay,” I said firmly. - We will work sixteen hours loading, but we will make sure that we stay here no more than ten days.
However, everything turned out a little differently. The next day, when I returned, Nikolai gloomily handed me the money.
Where did you get it? - I asked in surprise.
“It’s all the same,” he answered, without looking me in the eyes. - It doesn’t matter where!
And in the evening, a huge old galosh - the rusty ship "Marat" - set sail with us from the yellow shores, from the clay rocks of the "convict" city.
The Caucasus greeted us warmly. In three days in Baku we earned almost as much as in two weeks of work in Krasnovodsk.
We settled in a poor room in some semi-prostitute den. We were tattered, worn out, and among the punks who filled the neighboring pubs we passed for our own. Rita, in the minds of Finnish and cocaine heroes, was our creep, and they didn’t bother her... We dined in dirty taverns scattered around the market. In them, for two kopecks you could get “hashi” - a dish that Rita and Nikolai did not dare touch for a long time, but then they got used to it.
“Khashi” is a dish of the Caucasian proletarian. This is boiled tripe, rinsed, cut into small pieces, mainly the stomach and head of a lamb. They fill up a full cup of tripe, then liquid mustard is poured into it and the whole thing is thickly sprinkled with coarse salt and crushed garlic.
These taverns are always crowded. There are the unemployed, and loaders, and people without certain profession, those who hang around other people's suitcases at marinas and train stations. Helpful individuals scurry around in thick coats, in the inner pockets of which there are always bottles of strong moonshine.
A dime in the hand - and imperceptibly, in an incomprehensible way, a tea glass is filled, then quickly tipped into the customer’s throat, and again the thick coat is buttoned up - and on to the next table.
Sometimes a policeman will appear at the door, cast an inquisitive glance at those sitting, hopelessly shake his head and leave: there are no drunks lying around, there are no fights, no obvious bandits are visible, in general, sit, they say, sit, my dears, for the time being.
And in one of these taverns I accidentally met Yashka Sergunin - Yashka, dear from the past, from the friendship of the fiery years.
The gramophone wheezed like a horse dying from glanders. Thick clouds of steam smelling of garlic and moonshine rose above the plates. Yashka sat at the end table and, contrary to the warnings of the Greek owner, took half a bottle openly from his pocket, drank straight from the neck and began to eat again.
For a long time I peered into the puffy, blue face, looked at the bags under the sunken eyes and recognized Yashka, but could not recognize him. Only when he turned his right side towards the light, when he saw a wide strip of saber scar across his neck, did I get up and go up to him, slap him on the shoulder and shout joyfully:
Yashka Sergunin... Dear friend! Do you recognize me?
He, not hearing the question, raised his dull eyes, poisoned by cocaine and vodka, with hostility at me, wanted to curse, and maybe hit me, but he stopped, looked intently for half a minute, apparently straining all his memory. Then he hit the table with his fist, pursed his lips and shouted:
I'll die if it's not you, Gaidar!
It's me, Yashka. You're such an idiot! You bastard... Dear friend, how many years have we not seen each other? After all, ever since then...
Yes, he answered. - Right. Since then... Ever since. He fell silent, frowned, took out the bottle, drank from the neck and repeated:
Yes, ever since then.
But there was something embedded in these words that made me wary. Pain, like a drop of blood coming out of a torn old wound, and hostility towards me, like a stone, because of which this wound was torn...
Do you remember? - I told him. But he cut me off right away.
Leave it! You never know what happened. Here, drink if you want,” and added mockingly: “Drink to your peace.”
For the peace of what?
Total! - he answered rudely. Then even hotter and sharper: “Yes, everything, everything that happened!”
“It was good,” I started again. - Do you remember Kyiv, do you remember Belgorodka? Do you remember how you and I cooked everything and couldn’t finish cooking the goose? So they ate it half raw! And all because of Green.
Because of the Angel,” he corrected gloomily.
No, because of Green. You forgot, Yashka. It was near Tiraspol. What about our brigade? And Sorokina? Do you remember how you helped me out when that damn witch Petliura locked me in the closet?
I remember. I remember everything! - he answered. And a pale shadow of Yashka’s good, old smile fell on her dull face. - Is this all... Will you forget all this, Gaidar! Eh-eh! - the last exclamation escaped him like a groan. His lips twisted, and hoarsely, frantically, he said to me: “Leave it, you’ve been told!.. There’s no point in all this.” Leave it, you bastard!
I was enveloped in clouds of tobacco smoke, finished my glass of moonshine to the end, and the ghostly shadow of Yashka’s smile melted away forever.
Why are you in Baku? So are you wandering around or climbing on the screen?
What are you, maybe you're still in the party?
So. The scoundrel sits astride the scoundrel. Bureaucrats are all...
Is that all? He said nothing.
I was on kitsch. I came out and wanted a job, but no. There are thousands of unemployed people hanging around the port. I went to Vaska. Do you remember Vaska, he was our commissar of the second battalion? Here now. He works at the Council of People's Commissars here. I waited for him in the waiting room for two hours. So, he didn’t let me into the office, but he left on his own. “Sorry,” he says, “I was busy.” You know. As for work, I can’t do anything. There is unemployment here, hundreds of people come every day. And besides, you’re not a member of the union.” I almost choked. Hold it for two hours, and then: “I can’t do anything!” Bastard, I tell him, even though I’m not a member of the union, you know me, who I am and what I’m like! It made him shudder. There were people in the waiting room, and I wrapped this up. “Go away,” he says, “I can’t do anything. And be careful how you express yourself - this is not the division headquarters in 1919.” A! - I tell him. - Not the division headquarters, you scoundrel! How he turned around and hit him in the face!
I sat there for three months. I don’t care, even if it’s three years. Now I don't care at all. We have outlived our time.
“We,” he answered stubbornly. - Those who hated... knew nothing, didn’t look at anything, didn’t look ahead and fought like devils, but now no one needs anything...
Yashka! Why, you’re not even red now!
No! - he answered with hatred. - I would strangle everyone - red, white, blue, and green!
He fell silent. He rummaged through his bottomless, torn pockets and pulled out half a bottle again.
I wake up. It was hard.
And I looked again at Yashka, the same one whose bed stood next to mine, whose head was hot with mine! Yashka the cadet, Yashka the talented machine gunner, the best friend of the fire years! I remembered how near Kiev, with his head cut off, he writhed in agony and smiled. And it became even heavier from the pain that he did not die then with a proud smile, with a lock tightly clutched in his hand, snatched from the box of a machine gun that had fallen to the Petliurists...
The Kura rushes about, squeezed by slabs of stone banks, and beats in muddy waves against the stone walls of the ancient buildings of Tiflis. The old witch Kura turns over the stones, smokes with foam, hits the rocks and gets angry.
In Tiflis there are more lights at night than stars in August.
The Tiflis night is like an owl: flutters, screams in the dark, laughs, excites and does not let you sleep...
But with us it’s all the same: train stations, cold stone slabs, sleep like after a dose of chloroform, and a push in the back.
Hey, get up, citizens, documents!
In Tiflis, agents of the road Cheka are tied into a glass with narrow straps. A Mauser with a silver plate, spurs with a Polish ringing, boots in star spangles, and a face - always fresh from the hairdresser.
Get up and get out of the station, comrade! Who are you? I give the documents, but he doesn’t look.
Give me another one. Show me what kind of thick paper you have in your notebook?
This... this is a contract.
What kind of agreement is it?
Spit, comrade agent! Nothing dangerous: an agreement is not a conspiracy. I just wrote a book, sold it and signed a contract.
Oh, so you are a bookseller! No, you can't at the station. Get out!
There are stars in the sky, under the stars there is earth. On the ground in the corner, behind the station, there is a pile of logs dumped. We sat down.
A policeman floats like a black, ominous shadow. Passed once, passed twice, stopped. And he didn’t even say a word, but simply waved his hand, which means: “Come on, get out, you can’t sit here, you’re not supposed to.”
Gone. But understand, comrade policeman! There will be no holes in the asphalt of the damp sidewalk or in the logs for construction because three tired tramps will rest on them.
The striped miles, like the suits of convicts, showed us that the first hundred had been completed. Far behind Tiflis, far away is the sunny valley of ancient Mtskheta, behind is the stone fortress of collapsed Anauri. And the road winds and circles, takes you into the mountains, and the snowy peaks of the Gudaur Pass are getting closer and closer.
We are walking across Georgia. We are going on the fifth day, spending the night in the mountains near the fire. We drink cheap, but cold and tasty spring water, cook lamb stew, boil smoky tea and move on.
Gaidar! - Rita, sunburned and ragged, finally told me. - Tell me, why all this? Why did you invent this road? I don’t want any more Georgia, or the Caucasus, or collapsed towers. I'm tired and want to go home!
Nikolai echoed irritably:
It would have been much easier to take the train in Tiflis, go to Stalingrad, and from there go home. You will exhaust her, and in general, forcing a woman to climb these damn mountains is stupid. I got angry:
It’s even easier and smarter to sleep on a soft bunk in a first-class carriage or sit at home. Is not it? Look, Rita, do you see the white claw of a snowy mountain ahead? The sun is burning at your back, and a cold snowy wind is blowing from there!
But Nikolai continued to mutter:
What good did you find? Madness! It will end with her catching pneumonia. You're playing with her health!
It’s always like this: the more tender, the more caring he becomes, the colder and more reserved I am...
When Rita liked a flower, Nikolai almost broke his head while climbing a steep cliff. He picked it and brought it to her. And that same evening, returning with a piece of lamb meat bought in a house, which, if you get to it twice in a row, you will die on the third, I saw Nikolai kissing Rita on the lips by the fire. “Obviously, for a flower,” I thought and, grinning, looked at my hands, but I didn’t have a flower in my hands, but only a piece of meat for dinner...
In the evening of that day, an oncoming detachment of mounted police warned us that riders from the gang of Chalakaev, a mountain vulture, an elusive and notorious counter-revolutionary, were prowling somewhere nearby.
I couldn't sleep at night. All the time I could hear a rustling sound below, someone whispering and a horse snorting. I went down to the stream and, carefully parting the bushes, I saw five horsemen in the moonlight.
Alarmed, I quickly crawled back to warn my sleeping comrades and put out the coals of the fire. As I ran, I ran into a man who hit me in the shoulder with all his might. In the darkness we held each other in a deathly, tenacious grip. I was obviously stronger, because I knocked the man down and strangled him by the throat, stepping with my knee on his outstretched hand, which was clutching a dagger.
The man could not swing and, pointing the blade towards my right thigh, slowly pressed the tip into my body. And the blade went deeper and deeper. Petrified, gritting my teeth, I continued to squeeze his throat until he wheezed. Finally he put his left hand under my chest and tried to grab the blade in it. If he had succeeded, I would have died for sure.
I let go of his throat and twisted his hand; the blade, clanking, fell somewhere on the stones, and we, squeezing each other, began to roll on the ground. I saw that he was trying to pull a revolver out of his holster. “Okay,” a happy thought flashed through my mind, “let him pull it out.” I quickly let go of his hands. While he was unfastening the button of the holster, I lifted a heavy stone and hit him on the head with all my might. He screamed and rushed: the broken bushes crunched, and without letting go of each other, we both flew down.
When I woke up, the stranger was lying under me and not breathing. He crashed on the rocks. I unclenched my fingers. Hurry up, hurry to Rita. He stood up, took a step, but immediately staggered and sat down.
“Okay,” I thought, “good, but still I’ll raise the alarm and they’ll have time to escape.” Taking the revolver out of the dead man’s belt, I pressed the trigger and banged into the air twice.
The mountain echo rumbled through the gorge like thunder rolls. And before the echoes of the shots entangled in the ledges of the rocks had yet died down, alarming cries were heard far to the right.
They will rush here now, the whole gang, probably. But I can't run! My head is spinning from the impact. But immediately I remembered Rita. Rita, who had to be saved at all costs! Sitting down on the stones, I grinned and, raising the hot black revolver, began to shoot shot after shot into the stars.
About five minutes later a horse's tramp was heard. I crawled two steps to the shore, under which the waves of the crazy Aragva were bubbling. The horsemen were talking about something in Georgian, but I understood only the two words I needed most: “They ran away!”
I didn't need anything else. The next second, the horse of one of the riders began to snore, stumbling over the corpse of my opponent. They stopped and jumped out of their saddles. Screams and curses rained down. Then a match was lit. And the paper lit by someone flared up brightly.
But before the eyes of the bandits could see anything, I, closing my eyes, rushed down into the black waves of the furious Aragva.
