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© Gleb Karpinsky, 2025
ISBN 978-5-0068-0270-4
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
A guest from the past
1
“I’m going to give it to the chickens,” my wife sighed, and taking the pot of buckwheat that was missing, she went to put on her shoes.
He frowned after her, at the rough, ugly dress that looked like it was made out of dusty sacks, at the way this bedraggled woman put galoshes on her bare leg, and everything in him began to rattle. Buckwheat was a pity.
“Just think! An entire pot was missing, and how could she have forgotten to put it in the refrigerator overnight!”
He suddenly wanted to chase after his wife and punch her in the face, or pull хорher back by the hair, but he restrainedhimself, having a wealth of experience as a diplomat.
“Check the trap, too. Мож"gotcha…” he called after her casually and reached for the half-opened bottle of braga.
Then, when the front door closed and his wife’s gray shadow flitted across the yard like a swift mouse, he sucked deliciously on the bottle, and began to smack it like a hungry baby. Not that he wanted to get drunk. The braga was sour and tasteless. It was just that there were big things waiting for him this afternoon, and it took a little courage.
Predictably, the alcohol didn’t go well, and he choked, coughed, looked frantically for a snack on the table, grabbed a bunch of young parsley and began to chew it greedily, like a starving goat.
“But really,” he thought, scratching his stubble, “I am the goat, and I didn’t even shave when she arrived. I wonder if she’ll recognize me if I don’t wear a silk garrote when I meet her. I need to ask my wife where my Armani double-breasted jacket Armaniis. Although, well, to hell with it! It won’t fit yet.” Look what a paunch you’ve grown!”
The thought of him looking like a goat amused him. He even began to sniff at his sweaty shirt from hard physical labor, to touch himself under his thick, wet arms, and, after making sure that hemust smell bad, took a long, more confident sip this time. Then, as always, his powerful fist crashed down on the table, and everything rang aroundhim, fluttered, trembled, became somehow uneasy, and he felt a slight suffocation, as if his уже душил tie was already choking him. His wife had just returned, and with her arrival the fresh morning air rushed in, smelling sweet and intoxicating lilac. Still, it’s a good thing he didn’t cut сдуруdown those bushes like a fool…
The alcohol started to take effect, but it didn’t hit my head, but my legs, which became wobbly and heavy. He wiggled them, tried to get up from the bench. For some reason, he was beginning to like his wife, who was carefully rinsing the pot over the sink, нравиться and he had thought that it would be nice if he let off some steam before the guest arrived. His brown, narrowed eyes still looked with a kind of obsession at this stooped back, at the skinny sides covered with this stupid burlap, at the bare sloping shoulders, but the strong desire to take this tired, nervous woman, to shake her properly, like an old dusty pillow, blurred his vision, and he got up.
My wife didn’t turn around. She had long been used to his rudeness, perhaps even waiting for him to come up behind her, pull up her dress, and press his drunken lips to her buttocks. Then, as always, he will burst into tears and ask for forgiveness on his knees.
“Gotcha, then?” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her waist.
For some reason she thought that he meant her, that she was the one who had been caught, and she nodded mechanically, because she had really been caught, and had been caught a long time ago – exactly five years ago, when he had brought her here to the village, and she had been walking around the garden like a madwoman and enjoying the chirping of sparrows.
“Five years, oh my God! How long ago it was! I was thirty-three years old then, very young, and now I am,” and she glanced down at her hands, red from the cold water.
The smell of sour brew wafted up her neck. Her husband began to squeeze her breasts, kneading them, and her wife wanted to moan languidly, as before, to tilt her head back, exposing her neck for kisses, but something stopped her, disturbed her. Maybe it was the cold water spurting from the faucet that reminded her that time was running out, or maybe it was an unforgiven resentment that all illusions had been completely destroyed, that they were now drowning in the muck of chicken droppings instead of walking through the French streets and eating croissants.
“Just think! Even five years ago, sheо could speak French fluently на-французском… " and his wife looked regretfully at her hands, which were red from the cold.
The boiler has not worked for a week, repairs on their own did not give anything, and to купиbuy a new one, there were not enough funds yet.
“Fat?” “What is it?” he asked again, nuzzling the top of her head and inhaling the scent of her already graying hair.
“Who’s fat?” she shrugged her shoulders in displeasure, trying to pull away. – You mean the rat?” No, крысенышI got the rat.
“So there’s still …” he grumbled, letting go of the hug. “When I go to meet you, maybe I’ll buy a couple more traps.”
Then he walked up and down the room, thinking about something, and his wife listened patiently as the floorboards creaked under the weight of his slow feet.
“Can you make us something fancy?” Well, cook some chicken. They’re fat anyway, and they don’t lay eggs.
My wife suddenly turned around, as if she had woken up from hibernation.
“How do you get behind the wheel?” You’re drunk!
“Don’t be afraid! I’ll take the back road, “he assured her with a grin. – There were no cops there. Well, even if something happens, I’ll show ksiv.
“So it’s overdue…”
– Overdue, non-overdue… There areno former attaches in the Council of Europe either.
Then her attention shifted to French, and she tried to remember a few well-worn phrases to prove to herself that she wasn’t completely down yet, that nothing was lost yet, and that once she started a new life, everything would be back to normal… Mymemory seemed to have been completely wiped out. Her mind was spinning with the arrival of a friend of her husband’s, about whom she had never known anything before, at a very bad time.
The husband was already dressed and starting the car in the garage, and the wife was stilltrying to concentrate on her own, feminine side. “Excuse mon français, mais qu”est ce…” (Sorry for my French, but what the fuck…", – she will say directly, looking into the eyes of this disaster that has fallen on her head.
This guest, apparently, promised to be here in less, than an hour. The train station was close by, perhaps two kilometers away, and the sound of trains honking along the gleaming rails kept coming. This morning there were so many of them that even my head ached.
“Please, just be careful!” – she ran out, alarmed and all disheveledона, into the courtyard when УАЗикher husband’s UAZ truck abruptly took off and almost knocked over a post at the gate.
She barely had time to jump out of the way, and in a suffocating cloud of carbon monoxide fumes, she froze, involuntarily following the car that was rapidly disappearing from sight.
Her husband’s words rang in her head, and she obedientlytook the hatchet in her hand and went back to the barn, to those whom she had just fed with the lost buckwheat.
2.
When she heard the horn of a car approaching, her heart ached and ached. It was necessary to open the gate, to meet the guest, and she had not yet set the table. In a hurry, she finished a haphazardly sliced tomato salad, added salt and pepper, and drizzled olive oil over it. Of course, there was a lack of three-layer sheep’s cheese, but where to get it in Russia, especially in the outback, a hundred kilometers from the capital?
My husband was already opening the gate. She saw him through the window, looking as pompous and importantas a neighbor’s turkey.
I’m surprised he didn’t shave, she thought, wiping her hands on a towel. “These pampered French women are used to cleanliness and neatness.”
Then the wife went out into the yard and exchanged a silent glance with her husband, who was getting back into the car to drive her closer to the house. In the salon sat a pretty girl in a light cotton dress, with some simple scarf wrapped around her swan neck, her hair was light brown, very young, somehow pale.
“How could the husband know this girl? And she doesn’t really look like a flighty Frenchwoman, either, although… “Les eaux mortes sont profondes” (There are devils in a quiet pool), his wife reasoned, taking a step forward to meet him. “They must have met at one of the embassy banquets in Paris. Twigs often graze there. But that was about five years ago! So, at that time, she was no more than fifteen, and maybe even less.”
– Bonjour. Bienvenue! (Hello there. Welcome!) – What is it? “she asked in French, about to kiss her guest on both cheeks. – Et vous devez être Lise? (You must be Lisa?)
The girl who arrived got out of the car herself, pulled her eyebrows down slightly, as if angry about something, and held out her weak hand to shake hands, thereby showing that she did not want to get too close to the hostess and that this whole visit was forced and short-term. At this time, the husband came up. He was a little late parking in the garage when his wife and a young guest shook hands.
“Have you girls met yet?” he laughed, being in a very exalted state. “That’s good. I can’t stand all the “puis-je vous présenter…” and “enchanté…", (let me introduce you… " and “very nice”. All this is here Sidandt! he touched the edge of his palm to his adam’s apple.
“Yes, I’m Lisa,” the guest replied coldly, with a slight accent, looking into the hostess’s eyes. “Really, let’s not speak French. That frog croak will probably always remind me of my late daddy.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” his wife said, letting her go first. “Please accept my sincere condolences.
“That’s all right. I have long shed bitter tears…
The girl hurried up the steps.
“Is she slim… Thin, but slender, —for some reason the thought flashed through the mind of the hostess. “And with a claim.”
Beautiful French high-heeled shoes haunted her. They flashed before the eyes of a tired woman and reminded her of the pavement streets of Paris with their ringing clatter…
“It’s been a long time since Iос've worn such shoes…” she thought almost enviouslyона.
Everyone came into the hall in a hectic crowd and began to take off their shoes, except for the guest. She looked at them quizzically, as if they were doing something obscene and unthinkable in front of her.
– I don’t remember telling you… – the husband turned to his wife, considering that it was finally time to clarify the whole situationwith the arrival of the guest. – Otetz Lisa was a well-known dissident. The same writer who fled the USSR in the mid-80s… you probably heard all this scandalous story when they gave Gromyko a cap? Just think, I had just entered the Academyof Sciences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs…
Then the man sighed heavily, nostalgically recalling his glorious student days, and when he noticed that the guest was still hesitating and watching him pull off his right shoe with the toe of his left foot, he laughed again. In general, he was a little too cheerful today, and this could not help but alarm his wife, but she, as always, showed composure and did not show that such changes in his behavior somehow concern her.
“Yes, yes… I remember something…” she barely had time to run to the kitchen stove and lift the hot lid with her bare hands.
Pain burned through my fingers, and the lidfell to the floor. The room smelled of boiling chicken broth, and steam rose from the pot. In this awkward situation, everyone froze, as if waiting for a grenade to explode. But nothing happened, and the guest decided to be the first to take the initiative and sat down at the table herself, looking around with interest. There were signs of-то decay everywhere, and when her gaze fell on the cobwebs in the corner, she grimaced and exclaimed, “Oh-la-la-la-la.”
“I think it was a French-Russian literary evening organized in honor of Balzac’s work,” my wife said, picking up the lid from the floor and going to rinseit out.
“Not Balzac, but Zola!” her husband corrected her roughly, as if it was very important.
– Vanya, and the suitcase? – What is it? “she exclaimed suddenly, as if the conversation about her late father didn’t interest her at all. – I have a present for your wife there!”
And this familiar “Vanya” and this impending surprise quickly brought the hostess out of her already fragile balance, and she again dropped the lid on the floor, and again an unpleasant rattling in her ears.
“Yes, what’s the matter with you?” Can’t hold your hands? My husband swore under his breath as he sat down at the table and glared at the single plate of hastily sliced tomatoes. Then he seemed to catch himself and broke into a sweet smile as he addressed his guest. “A suitcase, Lizzie?” So it’s in the trunk. It’s not going anywhere… Vera, give us a drink for coming!
“No, please bring it!” The girl insisted petulantly, and the man obeyed.
When he left, Lisa carefully picked up a slice of tomato with two fingers and raised it to her lips. My wife only now realized that she had forgotten about the forks.
“I don’t like it when people talk about my daddy, especially since your husband was far from his friend,” the guest confessed to the woman standing at the sink. “I’d better tell you myself.” So in Paris, my father married a Polish immigrant waitress, but not successfully. She gave birth to a baby girl, which is me, and immediately filed for divorce, left for a better life in the United States, well, good riddance to her…
“This is often the case with Polish women…” the hostess remarked with a certain amount of annoyance.
“Perhaps,” she said, nodding. – We freedom-loving women of Europe always lack something… I think she’s biting her elbows right now. My daddy then became a very rich man with extensive connections…
“How long are you staying with us?”
“Big cities and civilization make me a little tired,” Lisa said matter-of-factly, chuckling. – After my nervous breakdown, the doctors advise me to spend more time traveling. Wherever I’ve been! and in Hawaii, and in Majorca, and in the Canary Islands… No it’s all wrong… There are people everywhere, wild, uncouth people who are obsessed with sex and drugs… So I must admit that when your husband invited me to a Russian village, I thought it was a joke at first… But the fresh air of the once lost Homeland, as you can see, has a positive effect on my lungs… You know, I usually suffer from asthma attacks, literally suffocating, especially at night. They say it’s a nervous…”
At that moment, the door opened and my husband appeared in the kitchen doorway, out of breath. With great difficulty, he dragged a huge suitcase on wheels, bound with transparent airport tape, into the house.
“Well, well,” he said, looking around suspiciously, and feeling that something was being hidden from him, he added, “So you’ve already told me, Liz?” Well, that’s nice!
My wife took a board and began peeling the onion husks and slicing them for soup. The guest rose from the table and approached her.
“Let me cut it!” she offered to help her hostess, and suddenly, without waiting for an answer, her small hand fell on the hostess’s onion-slicing hand.
She let go of the knife and watched in silence as this fragile girl with a fashionable manicure deftly wielded the knife, crumbling the onion into small pieces. The spray of acrid juice dissolved into thin air.
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