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Those who, for various reasons, were not able to take part in the madness, which, as the knowledgeable party members claimed, was approaching, almost on the verge of almost "foreseeable" communism, technical progress, in the form of an invention called a TV, came to the rescue. But even then everything is not so simple. Since at that time there existed people who, not wanting to be distracted by general celebrations (and perhaps only pretending), dreamed of valiant labor, dragged the great country to the "bright future", without lifting the calloused hands from the steel controls, levers, rudders, Shovels and sledge hammers, even on holidays.
It is to these that three old men, day and night, who worked in one of the garages, no different from their counterparts lined up in the wasteland, formed an auto Cooperative "Barvinok", near the railroad tracks, in several uneven rows, near the house of Comrade Navalyayev. These people, whom we would like to talk about, were elders and aksakals of the Soviet period, since they were born before the October revolution, and therefore remembered the Soviet Union in its infancy.
So: the main inspirer of the ideas, among the "old men of the fighters", as the neighbors called in the garages called the merry company, was the legendary man Epifan Osipovich Cardupa, the eternal Budenec and the ardent advocate of the ideas of the CPSU, and, in the past, one of the many staff members, Implementing the armored power of the Red Army in life. Epifan, who in the intergrown environment was simply called Peaf, turned eighty, so that this heroic old man was familiar even with many of the legends of the revolution. Fighting on the fronts of the Civil War, fate reduced him to Voroshilov, Frunze, Budyonny, Ordzhonikidze, Tukhachevsky, talked, he saw even Lenin. And so, when the threat of imperialist revenge died down, Cardup joined the ranks of the Red Army under the leadership of the future Marshal Tukhachevsky, who broke his forehead in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. However Epifan Osipovich, in this campaign, unlike many, did not get into the environment, escaped captivity, and was not interned. He returned home, alive and well, where, by a fluke of luck, and thanks to his outstanding abilities to handle the equipment, he was tagged by Innokenty Andreevich Khalepsky, who introduced Pif to the group that worked on the development of the first Soviet tanks. The special organization, the Chief Design Bureau of the Weapons and Arsenal Trust, was supposed to develop the tanks, and our hero got into it. And so, staying among the specialists who designed the T-17 tanket, the light tank of the T-16 infantry and the heavier T-12 tank, Cardupa, stuffed the first lumps of the designer for himself – for the benefit of the case, at the Sormovo plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the French trophy "Renault" FT-17, carefully measuring every detail. In the forties, avoiding the Finnish and the Great Patriotic War, he was put in one of the "sharaga", where Cardupa stayed and labored until victory and rehabilitation.
Business, at the Sormovo plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the French trophy Renault Renault FT-17, carefully measuring every detail. In the forties, avoiding the Finnish and the Great Patriotic War, he was put in one of the "sharaga", where Cardupa stayed and labored until victory and rehabilitation.
And now, today, in the days of prosperity of "socialism with a human face", in a separate territory, an honorary pensioner, often moving in a wheelchair, headed his own production. Epifan Osipovich, dreamed of revealing to the world a car that had not yet been seen by the Light. Enlisting the support of colleagues – "locksmith on all hands" Afinogen Artemievich Kutsenko, nicknamed Aftogen, who worked all his life in various factories of an immense homeland. As well as masterful prostitutes (because he did not share Pyth's political views), and the diploma chemist – Athanasius Germanovich Pirduprichdinsky, nicknamed Afonya, Pif, with his young team, because Aftogen was under seventy, and Afon, only sixty-five, Day after day, in garages Nos. 13 and 14, from a pile of scrap metal and other auto-cars, he imagined a masterpiece – a car of the future.
On that day, the sunrise which we will not describe in detail, everything went according to plan. And this means that the three "dinosaurs" of the Soviet machine-building industry, set to work as usual in the morning, at 6:30.
In the same early morning, in apartment number 12, along Stepan Khalturin Street 17, where, besides all the others, the family of Navalyaevs also lived, as usual, at this time of day, the fuss reigned. Sofya Markovna collected her husband "to replace the marten", that is, to the stove, to the restaurant "Red Star", where he had reckless work Evgeny Leibovich. She, with a quick step, with a teapot and a red hot iron in her hands, was getting sick from the table to the stove and back, panicked, worried that she would not have time to list, and put the list on paper, all the products Geza had to bring home from work, for Subsistence of the family.
Grandma Varka, with her hands on her hips at the stove, watched two chicken eggs turning on the surface of the "glazun", which crackled on the surface of a cast-iron frying pan. A glass of tea, in a cup holder, two slices of white bread and fried eggs, was such an indispensable complex breakfast, for any and every relative who arrived to the old woman for a visit. What, as we remember, happened quite often.
Serafima Samoilovna, falling asleep in a cup of boiling water, two spoons of "Summer" drink, which roughly resembled coffee, lit a cigarette, not looking up from a small round mirror, which allowed her to apply to the remnants of her former beauty, combat coloring, in the form of desperately bold makeup. Next to her, in the corner where Smichkovskaya's desk was, sat Tolyan, hiccuping from the morning beer, with a stupid half-drunk smile watching the Navalyaev family.
– Children at school gather, wash, be ready, have a good time.
He jabbed like a stallion.
In the opposite corner of the kitchen, at a distance of some ten meters from the huddled Krysyuk, at the table belonged to the family of Navalyaevs, waiting for breakfast, Kallistrat Ippolitovich sat looking at the drawing of Mark I, the British heavy tank of the period of the First World War, developed in 1916. The first in the history of the tank, applied in combat operations – September 15, 1916, in the Battle of Somme and the ancestor of the family of British "diamond-shaped" tanks, which provoked, even in Navalyaev's indifferent to all military jokes, the wildest interest. Despite the son's enthusiasm, however, without interrupting the process of preparing the food, Amalia Apollinarevna drilled the site with instructions for today:
– So, Callistrat Ippolitovich, since your office is under renovation, and you were given a couple of days off. And outside is charming weather, I strongly recommend that you, today, paint the gates of the grandfather's garage. And then before the winter is already at hand, and we have a gate is not painted. They'll rust.
"Mother, it's July in the outside!" Where is that winter?!
"Oh, I'm begging you." You remember that Napoleon – the ruler of the world. So he, too, was thinking – "where is that winter". And remember, how did it go? And no Soult with Murat did not help.
– Mom, as far as about Joachim Murat, I will not say anything, but Marshal Soult did not participate in the campaign against Russia.
– What difference does it makes for me? But the winter will killed all. So listen to me go eat get ready to paint the gate. This is not 1812 war for you back and forth, I declare this to you precisely and ultimately.
Sighing heavily, Navalyaev set to work on the pasta in naval fashion, piled up with mother's caring hands, a slide, into a ceramic bowl that was sized to the size of a basin for washing clothes.
Here we would like to clarify, to the kind reader, where the Navalyaev family came from, such wealth as a car, the more so the garage. So, the garage, Navalyaev got from the legendary grandfather, Albert Robertovich, who was an invalid and veteran of everything in the world, so, in fact, was granted a means of transportation. Yes, it is a means of transportation. Since hardly, a two-seater four-wheeled C3A stroller, commonly known as the "Toad", serially produced by the Serpukhov motorcycle factory, with the same motorcycle engine Izh-49 and 8 hp, can be called a car with confidence. Afterwards, after giving, forgive for the expression, the blessings, the persistent veteran "knocked out" the right to erect another garage, in the co-operative "Barvinok", near the railway tracks, which we mentioned more than once.
And now, it was to the metal sarcophagus, the miracle of Soviet engineering that was melting in its belly, that our young friend Navalyaev was going to go this summer morning. After breakfast, Callistratus Ippolitovich, opening the door of the old cupboard piled up in the nursery, that is, in his room, looked inquisitively at the piles of rags neatly folded by the hand of a caring mother on numerous shelves. Having found the woolen mother's sweater stitched in some places, he began to look for canvas trousers, inherited from the second cousin on the maternal line, which once worked as an erectionist, somewhere on the construction sites of the North. Sensing the futility of the search, Callistrat Ippolitovich, decided to ask for help to Mom, who again went to bed when, suddenly, in the general corridor, the phone rang. At the same instant, as if this child was vigilantly guarding the apparatus, a neighbor Romik's voice was heard outside the door.
– Hello, it's Roman Butcher, you're calling the twelfth apartment, who are you looking for?
There was a crackling and hissing in the phone, and only after all this, a worried female voice belonging to Amalia Apollinarevna's sister, screamed.
"Boy, boy, call Aunt Amalia Navalyaev to the phone urgently!"
– First of all may be for someone she is an Aunt Amalia,but for me she is just Amalia Apollinarievna. And in the second place, have you rolled down the Potemkin Stairs, it's half past eight in the morning, they're still sleeping!
– Haven't your parrents thought you any manners?
– No, we just moved from Odessa.
– In this case stop fulling! and call hwo I said!!!
At that moment, Amalia Apollinarevna appeared from behind the door that led to the Navalyaevs' apartment, a shawl thrown on her shoulders, and a night cap, from which a glass gleam glittered with spectacles, hastily puffed up, from under the lace frill.
"What's all this noise, Roman?" I have not slept for a long time, I already have about twenty years of insomnia, and if I count only after fifty. If there is me, and there is some urgency, do not torment that person inside the phone, and send the phone.
Romik did not argue, passed the receiver without regret, hiding in the darkness of the corridor. As soon as the one who was at the other end of the wire, heard native rhonics of old breathing Navalyaeva-mother, immediately yelled:
"Amachka, is that you?" Have you took the phone from that juvenile bandit?! Let him be ealthy!
– Yes Sofochka, it's me, but what happened there?
– Oey wey what happened?! Grisha is already tired!
– What, that's it?!
"Not so much, but these "butchers" took him in the morning, along with his sore in to the October's Hospital.
"And what are those monsters say?"
– They say that yes, get ready!
"And what he says?"
"But he is against it, but what are we going to do?"
"So you take him off that thought."
"Do not you know Grisha?" He is stuborn like that bull from crazy karida!
– And what are we going to do now?
– I don't know, but they persistently hint, there is one sradity. Only Icelandic moss can save him.
"And this is for the moss?"
"Does the devil know his mother?" I looked at the directory, so it grows not only from Iceland, but also our child, near the tundra.
"And what kind of moss is it, are you going to the tundra?"
– I'm afraid that I can not make it, but this is not the case! We need that moss, it's growing just in Iceland, and only near the waterfall… er… how do you call it?
"What waterfall?"
– Güdlfoss.
I read from a piece of paper, according to syllables, my sister.
– This is understandable, do not swear the current, tell the ray, what is the name of the otot waterfall?
– So I'm saying, it's so called!
– A shob he beat healthy and three hundred years did not know the war! From the names of people!
"Ama, hell with it, with that waterfall!" Tell the ray, do we have someone from that damned Iceland?!
"Do not put the phone down, I'll find out right away!"
"And how will you know if I do not put the phone down?" You shaw, will you go to Iceland?!
"Oh, Sofa, you've put pressure on mine!" Put that fucking pipe already, Toko do not go far from the phone, I can ring at any minute as an officer of the NKVD!
After the conversation, Amalia Apollinarievna wrote down in red pencil on a scrap of wallpaper – "Güdlfoss", and dialed the phone number of her friend Asya, a pharmacist with 50 years of experience.
"A little girl, sweetheart, good morning!"
"I'm afraid that you hurried with the fact that it's still" kind. " Little Sam ordered pancakes, and I'll have to run to Vladimirsky for home-made milk.
"And what about the Vladimirsky?" As long as you get there, it's nine in the morning, you can not find anything decent there.
"So, what should I do?"
– Oh, I called her for help, but I had a headache with her pancakes.
"Ama, do not hurt my soul!" You know, hand is washing his hand.
– So run already on the Haymarket, there at least for sure.
"Oh, and that's for sure on Senna!"
– There, at the booth shoemaker Yasha is Galina Savelyevna. Tell her you are from Tatiana Lvovna, a relative of Rimma Mikhailovna, who "took out" oranges for her nephew, Zhenya, he came to the "regional" with angina. So she still will find you milk, even if it has already ended in the entire Kiev region and its surroundings!"But the mine is closer to Vladimirsky."– Oh, I beg you, with your asthma, three miles is not a circle. Especially as there, you will take without misfiring!There was a thoughtful champing at the other end of the wire.– Asinka, a rabbit, but I do not call because of pancakes, your grief is not worse."Azokhn wei, what's war again?"– No, but not many rays. Sofina Grisha was in October with his ulcer!– And sho him there?"What him there." He is said to be there "zey gesutt".– And sho, absolutely?!– Not yet, but very similar.– So, but what am I?– Asinka, cat, you're hoping for hope! Icelandic moss is needed! Right from there, from Iceland, Schaub she was healthy to us and for a long time she sparkled at the ice.All the same champing came from the tube."Sho, are you smacking there?" Do you eat shoto, or have not yet clothed your teeth?– Both that and another, but I remember the hundredth ray to go to your sunny Iceland.– Where from! From the windward side. And what did you come up with?– While only small Sema comes to his head, he will remain without pancakes."So while you're without teeth, go to the Haymarket's Zhora, and make a decision yourself."– Amalia, you here chtoto, write down the phone, and run to the main post office, you will call from Warsaw Aunt Zoya Pshimishkelsovskaya, for her husband. She has a course to see…Only managed to Navalyaeva-mother put the receiver, as from the door the head of a worried son appeared.– Mom, I had difficulties with Uncle Sanya's trousers, he brought back from Surgut."No, Kalinka, not from Surgut but from Tyumen." And the difficulty is kada, just without pants, the more so if your grief fades against the background of the ulcers of Uncle Grisha."And your pants?"– Pants do not fade, they are brasent. Look at the second shelf, between the jumper, what I bought you from Svaliava, and the sporty tights, which was torn to you by the rabid Zahryukins from the 14th dacha.After giving her son detailed instructions, Amalia Apollinarevna, having postponed all the cases, went to the Kalinin square, where the Kiev chief post office was located.On the same July morning, an airplane from Italy arrived to Kiev's main airport, bringing on board 13 members of the delegation of the FIAT plant. The fact is that, as many readers may remember, on July 20, 1966, after analyzing 54 different construction sites, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a decision was made to build a new large automobile plant in the city of Togliatti, which 1964 bears the name of the Italian Communist Palmiro Togliatti. Preparation of the technical project was entrusted to the Italian car concern FIAT. And already on August 15, 1966, in Moscow, the head of FIAT, Gianni Agnelli, signed a contract with the Minister of Automotive Industry of the USSR, Alexander Tarasov, to create an automobile plant in Togliatti with a full production cycle. Under the contract for the same concern was assigned the technological equipment of the plant, and the training of specialists.And so, on March 1, 1970, the first 10 bodies of future cars issued a welding shop, and on April 19 1970 from the main assembly line of the plant, the first six VAZ-2101 Zhiguli cars were to descend, following the design of the Italian model "FIAT-124". And now, after the Volga Automobile Plant visited Henry Ford Jr. on April 15, 1970, a delegation from Italy arrived in the USSR on April 16, which was honored to be present when the first Zhiguli was produced. But this was not the only thing. And today, on the morning of July 1972, another delegation from Italy arrived in Kiev to depart to Moscow in the evening, from where, together with Soviet colleagues,
To go to Togliatti.
Thus, today, July 10, 1972, the "devil's dozen" arrived from the Apennines, descended the ladder to the takeoff field of the airport "Borispol". The Italians, after breakfast, were to visit
The Kiev motorcycle plant, established in September 1945 on the basis of the former Armored Repair Plant No. 8 in the Shevchenkivskyi district of the city, was working on Wanderer equipment obtained from German reparation. Arriving at the Lybid Hotel, on the comfortable LAZ-697M Tourist bus, surrounded by the friendly staff of the State Security Committee, the Italians were escorted to the hotel restaurant, where they were located at the served tables.
"Oh, signor… forgive me, comrade…"
One of the Italians addressed, a gray-haired man in a chic suit, a waiter, in beautiful Russian.
– … I need to go to the toilet, where is it?
He spoke almost without an accent.
"Please, comrade."
The waiter answered with a formal international smile, which a citizen of a "free" country could afford, under the stern views of numerous agents of state security. Joyful Italian, as if he pulled out a lucky ticket, under the vigil of vigilant KGBists, headed after the waiter.
The same morning, at 7 o'clock, in one of the Kiev hospitals, in surgery, in room number 17, where the victim of a collision with a truck Vovchik Kobelkovsky lay, a nurse entered.
– A sick Kobelkovsky, you have a wife.
She said dryly, letting in a hospital room a tearful woman. On the bed, with a bandaged head and a leg suspended in a snow-white gypsum, lay a faithful husband who greeted his wife with a rather strange appeal.
"Vera, listen here…"
Vovchik yelled, trying to get up.
"… call urgently to Minya Kuma Plum!" Hear, urgently!
The woman looked at her husband with sincere regret.
– From the impact, you, you see, unscrewed the only nut on which the brains remained.
– Oh really! Do it, they say! And come on quickly!
Once in the toilet of the restaurant, our Italian, named Vittorio Toldo, took out of his briefcase a white coat and a cap. Having dressed in such unusual clothes that Signora Vittorio made very inconspicuous in the outskirts of the public catering facility, he slipped into the kitchen and then, through the service exit, left the restaurant building, dropping snow-white overalls, which enabled him to dissolve among the dull-gray crowds of Soviet citizens.
Arriving at the main post office, Amalia Apollinarievna ordered "on urgent" talks with Warsaw, and, after waiting for a three-hour turn, heard the low voice of Pani Pshimishkelsovskaya.
"Hwo is it?"
– Aunt Zoya, this calls Amalia from Kiev, I'm from Asya, Musi's daughter and Nikolai, who lived before the war near Ev. Baza, under the stadium "Lokomotiv", next to Uncle Yarik, nephew of your brother Stas.
From the Polish accent of Pan Zoe, there is no trace left.
– From Asychka! From Kiev! How lovely!
After an enthusiastic exclamation, a pause followed, during which, in the head of Pani Zoe, came the thought that sounded like a shot:
"Sho, do you want a shot?"
– Aunt Zoe, we need the Icelandic moss, which grew up near the Güdlfoss waterfall.
"Why not sample soil from Mercury?"
– Aunt Zoyechka, at your hands the life of a native man's mine!
– Well, well, do not shout, not animals, not leopards… I'll try to invent a shoto. Speak your home phone, and sit next to it as a Cerberus, until I call.
After putting the receiver, Pani Zoya, without delay, scored Switzerland.
– Alie, is it Bern, or am I not yet at the Alps?
"It's Berne, because you were not going to Innsbruck, you have not got up yet."
– So it's good, closer will go down. Yasha, is that you?
"Sho, do you call Bern before someone else?"
– You are quite satisfied with us. Sho there that Bern, shob on him to spend two Yash?
– So thanks.
– Yashenka, zolotse, Minya is interested in Icelandic moss, sho grows Toko under the Güdlfoss waterfall.
"You know, Madame Zoya, because of such whims the Bismarck cruiser sank." Schaub you did not know me…
"Yasha, do not make mine a gun."
Crudely interrupted by his Panikshkelsovskaya.
"Sho, you're starting, I'm not Kaltybruner, I'll try."
The distress signal sent by Amalie Appolinarevna caused a chain reaction, then, like the dominoes placed on the edge, when they were pushing one another, they telephones around the world, only confirming the perfection of the "Domino Principle".
At the same time, in Kiev, in apartment number 12, where she returned from the main post office Navalyaeva-mother, there was a phone call. Carrying out the role of Cerberus, as Pani Zoya recommended to her, Amalia Apollinarevna tore off the receiver.
– Yes, I'm listening! Navalyayev at the office!
– Amalushka-ah!
There was a cry from Sophia's sister in the tube, like the death cry of a wounded hyena.
"I mistook the waterfall!"
Even fearing to think about what she guessed at once, Navalyayev was more likely to be frustrated with the question.
"What waterfall?"
– Icelandic, where you need to tear moss! It's called not Güdlfoss, but Scofafoss!
Navalyaeva collected full lungs of air, so that a mighty tsunami of reproaches and perturbations could take her sister from an island called sclerosis, as a click was heard in the tube, and the connection was interrupted. For a few moments, the phone cracked again. Navalyaeva grabbed the receiver.
"You are an old, brainless fool!"
"Excuse me, is this Navalyaev's apartment?"
Amaly Apollinarevna, numb with surprise, whispered:
– Yes.
– You are called Warsaw.
After a series of strange sounds broke voice Pani Pshimishkelsovskaya.
"Alie, Pani Navaliaeva, this is Zoya!" I gave your request, on what address to send the moss?
– Kiev, Pank Street…, that is, Stepan Khalturin Street 17, apartment 12.
– Well, wait…
"Zoyechka, my dear, only we have confused these damn waterfalls." It is called not Güdlfoss, but Scofafoss
An angry cry was heard in the receiver.
– Halera is clear!
After that, short beeps came to Navalyaeva.
But the avalanche of calls could not be stopped, and Pani Zoya, went on the trail of a saving drug, like a thoroughbred pugilist.
"Alie, is this a barn?"
"Oh, Asya, you've again confused it, it's not his barn, it's Sarajevo!"
"Well, to hell with him." This is me from excitement.
"What happened?"
– She even asks "sho happened"?! Do you remember Grisha, Sof's husband, Sho Amalia's sister from Kiev?
– No.
– That ray. So he needs ott iceland moss.