Were not were

Like lifeless

Two return from the funeral and share fresh impressions with each other.

– Gorgeous funeral. I would like to be in his place.

– And it seemed to me that the dead man did not look like himself. He lay in a coffin as if lifeless.

Lies like a navigator

I do believe in progress. Well, how could it be without him. There are different gadgets, all sorts of Google and Glonass. This is our everything! I get out, you know, from the house, I go to the bus stop and ask my navigator on the phone, like a progressive person: “When will the bus be?” He regularly shows: “In one minute.” I am waiting. A minute or two passes. There is no bus. I look at the navigator, and he regularly reports: “The bus has already been. The next one is in fifteen minutes.” And so every time. One of two things: either I don’t see the bus, or our “famous” Glonass… that still global ass! Now about all those who wishful thinking, I firmly say: “He’s lying like a navigator.”

Liar

There are people who lie as they breathe. They seem to be born to make any fiction come true. The only thing that gives them away is the details. After all, as the architect Fomin said, God is in the details. I knew one of those. He was always late for work and always found excuses: first one thing, then another. The masterpiece of his lies was the following story. Justifying his regular absenteeism, he fervently argued that he could not leave the apartment all day just because a counterweight from the elevator was put on the outside of his front door, which was changed to a new one that day. Here’s just one thing: his apartment was on the second floor, which for some reason he mentioned at the very end, trying to add credibility. But in vain. They almost believed him.

Everything ingenious is simple

A toddler helping his mother take care of his twin brothers is asked what their names are. The peanut frowns businesslike and points his finger at the brothers in turn:

– This one is called Uovka, and this one is another Uovka.

Everything ingenious is simple!

Still won

She was frighteningly beautiful and unhappy. In the depths of her blue eyes, crystals of pain froze, preventing her from smiling. Just six months ago, her husband left her and everyone at the table knew about it. Celebrated her birthday. She saw this and could not calm down, demonstrating to everyone the icy indifference of a wounded woman. Her whole appearance said that she was at war.

She had cut off her lovely frivolous curls and now sported a boyish half-box, and overly bright make-up looked like the war paint of an Indian about to scalp his enemies. Mostly relatives were sitting at the table, but this did not make it easier for her. Curiosity brought them all here to look at someone who was unlucky in love.

Only her grandfather, who did not have a soul in her, fussed around her, protecting his pet. And looking at the old trembling hands, which awkwardly tried to put a piece of “better” cake on her plate, she finally burst into tears. For the first time in six months. Love still won.

Meeting

Once, on Sretensky Boulevard, I met God himself. It was a nondescript bearded old man of a rather shabby appearance. Sitting on a bench with his eyes shut and his toothless mouth wide open.

He was overshadowed by a rose bush growing right out of his bald head. And bees flew in and out of his mouth, swarming around the multi-colored rosebuds on the old man’s spiked tiara. Amber gold of honey oozed from his eyes, and next to him, on a bench, lay a string bag with a bottle of cahors, a bible, and a loaf of bread.

“I never thought HE looked so ridiculous” was the first thing that came to my mind. I decided to see this MIRACLE of nature better and went closer to it. And unceremoniously stared at him, not at all worried that HE would notice me: his eyes were flooded.

Imagine my surprise when the old man unclenched his left fist, and in it was an eye that looked at me so that it immediately became clear that HE sees me.

“That’s what it means – self-existing and good,” – the only thing that came to my mind. I also wondered if Chukovsky snorted cocaine when he wrote his Moidodyr. There was an irresistible desire to grab the old man, the very Lord God, by the beard. In order to put into practice a well-known proverb in narrow circles.

But then the pigeons spoiled everything. And not one and white, as the iconography promises us, but a whole flock. Grey. They say about such: “Born to spoil can only fly.”

God, with his right hand, plucked a hefty piece of bread from the loaf and began to crumble it and throw the crumbs right in front of him. And then I felt these winged creatures mocking me. Organized seraglio rushed to feed.

A cloud of birds covered the old man, and when a gust of wind swept them in different directions, an empty bench appeared before my eyes. All in bird droppings. And a lonely bottle of wine, untouched by pigeons.

“Lucky, so lucky, however,” I thought, trying on a homeless drink. And then, as if hearing my thoughts, an old woman of the most domestic appearance hurriedly crossed the boulevard. And she expropriated the drink of the Old and New Testaments for her own benefit.

I had no choice but to go home empty-handed, surprised at what I saw:

“I wanted to grab God by the beard, but in fact he grabbed the devil by the shameful hair. However”.

That also happens.

Choice

The house was cold and hot. There was deafening silence in the street. The table was bursting with empty abundance. It was so bright you couldn’t see anything. I wanted to go and sit. My heart is joyful and bitter: so bitter that you laugh; so happy that immediately into the loop. Life flowed and stood. Nothing happened and everything changed. Sincerity or lies, what to choose? You don’t understand, but you have to. Is there a choice?

Nail

It’s strange, but it feels like a rusty nail is hammered into the head of each of our people at birth. Right in the hospital: so that he lives and then does not think about anything, as long as the nail in the brain rusts. At the same time, exceptions occur, one might say misunderstandings, which lead to the appearance of any undesirable intelligentsia among our people. Take, for example, a doctor-villain and, through an oversight or just out of some whim, he will drive in a baby instead of an ordinary galvanized nail, as if wishing him to brighten up his miserable life. And only then, poor fellow, he lives and suffers for the rest of his life. And, which is characteristic, the intellectuals from this everything goes into a rage and against the people. And all because this nail is galvanized: it glows, an infection, like a real antenna, receiving suggestive signals from abroad, and makes you doubt the correctness of the existence and structure of our state all the time. Instead of being like everyone else, with ordinary rusty nails in my head, I’m bullshitting and listening to the Chanson radio. Enjoy life.

Hero of our time

Her name is Zosia. A remarkable name in our unremarkable time. God deprived her of beauty and endowed her with a frantic temperament. She doesn’t walk, she dances. He does not speak, but recites. Not silent, but pauses before bringing down an avalanche of words.

Her irrepressible thirst for life is manifested in the fact that she constantly organizes poetry evenings, at which the same blissful obscenities like her jump over each other’s heads, and Zosia sings songs of the most obscene content to them, accompanying herself on a fairly out of tune toy piano, which always carries with it on a string.

She proudly calls these outrages mysteries, arguing that our whole life is one continuous mystery. Mystery Buff. From the outside, it looks like a real coven of all city wickedness, but she calls her evenings art. This is how she lives. Zosia is the queen of burlesque. Unknown hero of our time.

Gogol decided to listen

Here, in one restaurant, they decided to introduce the people to culture. And they began to broadcast Gogol’s stories. Through speakers. In the toilet! You come in, you understand, just to relieve yourself, and they read “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” in such a soulful voice. To the accompaniment of running water. Somehow, after the innovation, two friends, with a difference of several minutes, visited such a corner of spiritual corruption due to small needs: the first closed himself in a booth, and the second, who later came in and did not suspect that he was not alone, attached himself to the urinal. He looks at the ceiling, murmurs so cheerfully and listens to how immortal prose is read to him. And then the door suddenly opens behind him and the first one, the one in the booth, loudly and reproachfully throws at the back of the second: “What, did you decide to listen to Gogol?” The poor fellow who peed had a heart attack from fright. They were taken away in an ambulance. They didn’t bail. At his grave, a friend who joked so unsuccessfully ordered an epitaph from Gogol: “You need to be honest with words.” And in the toilet, after this incident, Gogol was replaced with a mazurka. To stay away from sin.

Head

From childhood, there was a rumor that he had a bright head. Parents of the soul doted on him, they showed him to everyone as a miracle of nature. The father and mother were Jews, and they simply revered their son. First Saturdays, then kashrut, and everything ended with a synagogue, Tanakh, Torah and immersion in the Talmud. In his 20s, he acquired a reputation as a tzaddik and emigrated to Israel, where he took up the study of Kabbalah.

For the next thirty years of his life, he ruined the Sephiroth tree and the study of 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, earned a lot of money, a family and hemorrhoids, and ended his life with a lamppost. On the eve of his dizzying finale, he celebrated the Jewish New Year in a close family circle and served fish heads on the festive table, which amazed everyone except him with their repulsive appearance.

He did not attach any importance to this, pondering the mystery of deciphering the name of God, and the next morning he smashed his head to smithereens, crashing his bicycle into a lamppost. Evil tongues gossiped that damn fish heads were to blame, but no name, even if it is the name of the Lord God himself, is worth losing your head for it.

Voice

One woman decided to go to Israel. Just like that, for no apparent reason. You see, she had a voice that said: “Drop everything and run. To the homeland of your ancestors.”

She left her husband, son, and parents here. They did not want to go with her, because they did not consider themselves Jews. And on the contrary, they dissuaded her in every possible way. But the woman firmly stood her ground. She divorced her husband and accepted conversion. That is Judaism.

Before leaving, a neighbor came to her and asked her to repay the debt. Well, since they say, you are leaving, it would be good to pay off, otherwise it somehow turns out not humanly. And do you know what the woman said to her neighbor?

And about duty, you understand, her voice said nothing.

Hospitality

In the troubled 90s, one promising businessman Gosha calls his friend Lesha and asks: “Friend, shelter people for the evening. It is very important for me. And I will pay you well for it. Straightaway. When it works.” Lyosha, a purely Soviet person, readily agreed. After the Yeltsin reforms, he was as naked as a falcon, and any reason to serve someone has a chance of boredom. He fusses, goes to the market. Buys three kilograms of pork with all the money and sets the table. Guests arrive – 6 Chechens. Serious people. In essence, abreks. He feeds them a frying pan and two pots of tea. Puts to sleep. In the morning, for breakfast, the leftovers of fried meat are eaten, and when they say goodbye, Lesha from the bottom of his heart wonders if they liked the pork? In response from the abreks, icy silence. And until now Lesha does not understand why Gosha did not pay him. Disappeared suddenly, the devil, and no one knows where. Somewhere and in something, apparently, Gosha miscalculated in his business. Or maybe the devil beguiled. And Lesha? Everyone is waiting for a call from a friend. He hopes that all the same he will be paid for his hospitality.

Citizen and boy

The nameless hero enters Red Square on legs half-bent with fear and tries to scream at the top of his voice, but comes out somehow unconvincingly, almost in a whisper and for some reason in falsetto:

“I learned the truth about our government. It’s not real! We are ruled from abroad, and the main enemy is in the Kremlin. Do you hear me? Do you hear?

A citizen passing by stops and looks at the hero with surprise.

“Did you hear what I was shouting?” the hero shudders in fear.

“And then, every word,” confirms the citizen, “Every student knows this only. What are you so upset about? Do not believe? Let me prove it.”

He stops the first guy he comes across in punk clothes and asks:

“What do you think of our president?”

“Are you talking about this bald asshole in the Kremlin?” The boy spits at his feet with contempt, “So he is a bespontovy thief. I’d strangle the bitch if I could.”

And it goes on like that, as if nothing had happened.

“Well, I made sure that what you were shouting about is already known to everyone. So go home from here. Swell up and live like everyone else, pretending that everything suits you.

The disgraced hero leaves Red Square with his head held low.

And an hour later, the citizen and the boy stand at attention in front of the commandant of the Kremlin.

“Well done, comrade officers. Stopped an attempt at an unauthorized rally. Killed hope in another person. They prevented, so to speak, the birth of a hero in time. Well done.”

“We serve Russia,” a citizen and a boy shout at the top of their lungs.

Grimaces of nature

Imagine that you stumbled upon a deer at a watering hole in the forest. Surely this will set you in a romantic mood, you will immediately remember Bambi and all that: Disney rubbish. And if he also dies right in front of your eyes, taking his last sip of water before death, then this sight will surely break your heart. And you involuntarily shed tears. Think, I suppose, how tragic, damn it, what is there to hide. A kind of drama in nature. Immediately all sorts of philosophical little thoughts will come into your head, like here it is, the circle of life. And so on. But here’s what’s amazing. Cockroaches, like deer, also come to drink before they die. But this somehow does not inspire anyone – the sight of a dead cockroach in the kitchen sink. Even somehow the other way around. Causes disgust. Maybe because the cockroach does not have branched horns and it lives with us, and not in the forest. But, in fact, these are two phenomena of the same order. As they say, before death you will not get drunk and you will not inhale. What can I say, grimaces of nature.

Heaven’s Gift

He had a stout figure, almost square. A large, shaggy head with a cozy face and a large mouth with fleshy lips. He looked like a real Balda from Pushkin’s fairy tale. A kind of cunning little man with a double bottom: either a saint, or a murderer, or maybe both at the same time.

The movements are smooth, the speech is unhurried. And the voice?! And the voice is enveloping, warm and bewitching. In a word, charming. The real voice of a storyteller. As once in childhood, in the Baby Monitor, when the radio began to sound: “And now, my friend, I will tell you a fairy tale.”

It turned out that he served as an actor. At the Youth Theater. Played Winnie the Pooh. The children adored him. That’s what the voice means. Heaven’s gift.

Two extreme

Somewhere out there, beyond the borders of our sovereign Internet, where no one wears chastity belts to their homeland and everyone strives to despise any spiritual bonds, shamelessly flaunting their intellectual exhibitionism, here in this God-damned land, where milk rivers flow among jelly banks, any self-respecting artist values his name more than his own health. After all, his name is everything to him. Not just a trademark, but much more – style, individuality, handwriting. Ultimately reputation. These weirdos spend their whole lives trying to get people to associate all their work directly with their names. And when they tell you Picasso, you know for sure – this one will portray you in such a way that your mother will not recognize you in the portrait. Well, if Andy Warhol, then it will be a hand-colored silkscreen of a very large size. And if you come to Chagall to order a portrait, it is useless to ask him to paint you in the style of Modigliani. He will only portray you as Chagall, hugging a cow, and such a request will simply offend him. In fact, he doesn’t understand her. Because if you don’t like Chagall, why would you order a job from him? Go to Modigliani if you like him. And Chagall under Modigliani will not be forged, he has a name! Reputation! But they have it, but it’s not like that with us, oh, it’s not like that, guys. With us, the Customer comes to the Artist not for the sake of his creativity, but to assert himself. Naturally, at the expense of the Artist. And the first question that the Customer asks our Artist, even if he is at least three times famous, will he be able to write like such and such or such and such an artist. Our Maestro, of course, is mortally offended at first, but when he is offered a double or triple price, he still agrees. Because he understands very well that in our country reputation and name mean nothing. And that means only money, on which this very reputation is created. The most expensive. The most sold. The most successful. Well, what can I say – two worlds, two extremes.

Girl without complexes

With false eyelashes and no panties. Amazing self esteem.

Delicate person

Arriving at sea, he found that his wife was snoring. Unpleasant surprise on honeymoon. Hearing in the middle of the night the monstrous sounds made by a rather slender and in daylight even very pretty creature, which was his chosen one, the first night he struggled with the desire to wake her up and tell her the whole truth about her snoring, on the second night he wanted to strangle her with a pillow, and on the third I was going to divorce her. Finally, after three sleepless nights, he went to the pharmacy, a secret from his wife, bought earplugs and has been living with her soul to soul ever since. That’s what a delicate person means.

Dementia

Wife to husband. “Today you need to deliver a note from me to Vera. Come to her room 205 at 11 o’clock, she is just having a break between couples, she is waiting for you. “And who is Vera? I know her?” “You introduced us. Have you forgotten? “What are you doing! Do you know what my memory is! “I know. Holed like a colander. You suffer from dementia.” “And what is it?” “senile dementia. Or don’t you remember? “Well, how, how, I remember very well. Dementia! What a word! But I don’t have it. Exactly. Otherwise, I would have remembered it.”

An hour later, husband and Vera. “Excuse me, but who are you?” “I am Vera, your wife’s friend. Don’t you remember?” “How, how, I remember very well. I have business for you. I have to give you something. That’s just what? I don’t remember, – he feverishly pats his pockets, – That’s a memory, everyone would like this. Remembered! Well, exactly! How, how. I have to give you dementia, but in which pocket I put it, I’ll never know.”

A day in the life

White tablecloth. Flawless white porcelain. White wine. Cheese with white mold. White grapes. White cool shade. White sand at the edge of the sea. White lambs of the waves. White clouds in the sky whitened from the heat. Another day in the life of a “white” man.

Rustic hospitality

The apples were on the table. Yellow and red. The table stood in the middle of a hut, naked as a baby, like a throne in a temple. Surrounded by the aroma of ripe fruit, in a thick and impenetrable veil of shadow, and outside the flames of a summer day raged. Bumblebees and bees hummed in the garden. Daggers of white-hot beams burst dangerously through the closed shutters, smoking with rage in the cold, creaking twilight of the old house. A loaf of rye bread darkened among the apples, and a long-necked jar of milk, covered with a towel, proudly rose. Real gifts of the transubstantiation of a fertile summer, offered to us by the very providence of rural hospitality.

Rooster

Chickens are usually despised, considered the most brainless creatures in the world. If they want to offend someone, then they directly compare it with a chicken. Or with a rooster. What is even more offensive – for men. But there is always an exception to every rule. It’s about a rooster who cheated his death. Neighbor Galya, nicknamed “summer resident”, in the village only had chickens for the summer: in the spring she bought chickens, and in the fall she slaughtered them for meat; she kept only laying hens, and closer to the middle of summer, when they began to lay, she bought them a rooster. All summer with their eggs, and back to Moscow already with their meat. And so every year, until one day there was an embarrassment: a rooster, watching how his chickens were killed right in front of him, one after another, got scared; realized that his death from the butcher’s knife was waiting for him and fled, flying into the neighbor’s yard. As Galya did not look for him, she could not find him. She spat in her hearts and drove off to her Moscow, closing the season. A rooster a couple of days later showed up in a neighbor’s chicken coop, where it safely overwintered and even came to the yard. It would seem that life is a success: trample chickens and know yourself crow. An, no. In the spring, the summer resident Galya returned. And not alone, but with a fresh brood of chickens, which soon grew up and turned into neat young chickens. The cock, looking at them, went completely crazy: he abandoned his chickens and kept rushing to Galya’s yard – to trample on her chickens. When she bought them a rooster, he pulled it up, not tolerating a competitor. In the end, he moved back to her. He exhausted everyone, but he achieved his goal – he again became Galina’s rooster. Despite the fact that at the end of the summer season, death awaits him. But what is love without mortal risk. Even the roosters.

Village

Since we are talking about a rooster, it’s just right to find a couple of words for a pig. The saleswoman Lyubka somehow broke off happiness. The truth is not happiness, but a pig, but what a pig! Other villagers will live their whole lives, but they will never learn to behave like people. And this pig did not need to learn. Clean and without words understands everything. Clever is just awful. Well, real person. She found it by accident: a car knocked down a piglet near her yard, and she picked it up and carried it to the barn, not hoping that it would survive. And take the piglet and get well, then independently got out and showed up to her straight into the hut. Just like any cat. He even had the most suitable color for this – black. It’s wonderful, and that’s all. Well, what kind of pig is it? The pig is big, pink and dirty, like the neighbor’s boar Borka. And this one is small, thin and black. Real pet. For the soul. Although she also had something to hide, a tail, a piglet and hooves. Just like a real pig. Neighbors, seeing such happiness of Lyubkina, involuntarily became envious, and decided to spoil it for her. They came to her without an invitation and announced that it was not a pig at all, but a mini-pig: the animal is so terribly expensive and overseas, and it probably has an owner. Lyubka is an honest person, she does not need someone else’s good for nothing. She wrote an ad and posted it on the door of the general store where she works. So, they say, and so, a piglet, black, mini-pig was found, the owner is wanted. A day later, an unfamiliar pockmarked woman with a bag comes to her store and announces: “My, they say, piglet.” Well, Lyubka gives it to her and asks: “What do you need, such a slut, this overseas miracle Yudo in the household?” And she answered: “Yes, I bought it on occasion from my hands. For meat. I’ve been fattening for the third month, and he, the parasite, doesn’t grow a damn thing. And, which is characteristic, he behaves in a completely un-swinish way: he runs away from the barn and everything rushes into the house like a madman; he walks only along the paths and is terribly curious, like a small child – he cares about everything. I don’t know how the further fate of this very mini-pig turned out, they made lard or jelly out of it, but Lyubka is still in shock. You have to be such a dense person to take a rare pet for an ordinary pig. One word – “village”.