I. God bless. It was him. Iskander Raulevich Indyukov. Great Russian historian. A little haggard (I wish I could!). And aged (here everything works out for me). But - fundamentally the same as I saw him in the flesh the previous time of God, immediately after the New Year, in pre-war Moscow in 2022. We then sat down in a Japanese bar near the Kursky railway station. And they talked, talked, talked, as if for the last time and for show. Luckily, no one was interested in our conversation.

Continuation of Stanislav Belkovsky's novel "Synopsis". First part ; second part ; third part ; fourth part ; fifth part ; sixth part ; seventh part ; eighth part ; ninth part ; tenth ; eleventh part ; twelfth part ; thirteenth part ; fourteenth part ; fifteenth part ; sixteenth part ; seventeenth part ; eighteenth part ; nineteenth part ; twentieth part ; twenty-first part ; twenty second part ; twenty-third part ; twenty-fourth part . I.

I. Despite COVID-19 and, as it were, through it, we continued to cooperate with Iskander Raulevich Indyukov. It gave me direction and meaning that I had (almost) lost before. And it’s okay that he called me “you” and I called him “you”, even though he was fifteen years older. That's how it's supposed to be. In the early twenties, I was forced to admit that life had reached a complete dead end, and the past was a triple failure, like overheated cologne.

I. As a child, I wanted to become a historian. Maybe even an art critic. No, still a historian. An art critic - that would be completely feminine. But I'm not like that. It seemed to me, at least. Although an art critic can go somewhere to Italy. For a year, or even a year and a half. For example. To the monastery of Eremo delle Carcere near Assisi. And then write a dissertation on Quattrocento mosaics. Alesso Baldovinetti.

I. Our village is small, but right by the sea. There are no beaches. Only rocky slopes descending to the lip of the bay. On their surface there are risky paths 1.25 linear meters wide. If someone is very drunk, or has simply stumbled through life, and even in (un)natural darkness, he can fall down and hit painfully on the multi-faceted stones covering the imaginary entrance to uninhabited waters. The main people of the village are cats. Passionate leaders stand out among them.

The beginning is right here . I. In the second decade of the 21st century, I had a (major) problem with alcohol. AlkoGolem - what a suitable name for an elite booze store! Ideally, such a store should be located in the basement of an Orthodox synagogue. And Rabbi Lev is in charge of it, even if he is not a Jew at all.

Epstein and Frankenstein. Received indifferently... A. S. Pushkin Epstein and the vampires. How to kill a mother. Part I. ​ A. Shylock Kholmsky fed the young cats Childe and Harold. Chalika and Garika. Red and gray. They are a year and a half to two years old, no more. Near Regents Park tube station. The best dry food is Grandorf. When the elderly Countess Europe de Agenor called him. From Paris, I think. When they call on a mobile phone, it’s not immediately clear where they’re coming from.

I. We have just celebrated 30 years since the death of I. A. Brodsky. And almost recently - in 2016 - they celebrated only 20 years. More than a year before that previous anniversary, at the end of 2014, when the World War had already begun, but we still did not understand what and to what extent it was all about, a warmly familiar literary critic approached me. - Listen, Belkovsky. Should we make a film for the 20th anniversary? You just wanted some kind of movie. Yes, here it is.

I. One day, when I was still drinking whiskey and other similar nasty things, a round man of indeterminate age sat down with me in the Academy cafe, on the corner of Malaya and Bolshaya Bronny. His face looked like a sketch of the Orange house, which was never built by the widow—that is, the then wife—of the mayor of Moscow. E. N. Baturina. It seems to be somewhere in the area of ​​the Park of Culture.

I. Ivan Chunyevich Memetyev decided to celebrate the New Year at home. In a solid apartment of 62 sq. m. on Vorobyovy Gory. It was possible, of course, to celebrate at the Aquamarine restaurant in the Luzhnikov pool. 1,500 rub. for a night without drinking. But. 1. Booze, look, it’s the new 1,500. If you drink normally, and just watch others get drunk. 2. No one will give you a separate table for one person.

I. Once upon a time, even before Covid, Ivan Chunevich Memetyev was friends with the homeless man Makarych. They sometimes drank vodka on benches and generally appreciated each other. During quarantine, Makarych died. What was left of him were two movable properties. 1. The book of the writer Belkovsky “Repentance”. 2. Batman costume - a homeless man walked around the inflamed Moscow in it. Where and from where Makarych got this ancient costume is unknown.

I. There was one producer with whom I was friends. Many years passed before I became completely disillusioned with the word “friend.” There, in Russia, it should be prohibited by law, as they like. Along with the words “never” and “always.” Why allow words that are obviously misleading to be emphasized on the second syllable?! She just called me a “hypertext person” for my ability to lose my thoughts. And even when a person disappears, his hypertext remains. That's the advantage.

I. Having left Russia, I lost my notes for the play “Demons” by Mikhail Mokeev. The production where I, if you remember - for the first and last time - played on the stage of a professional theater. The author, that is, the narrator, as if F. M. Dostoevsky himself. The performance began with my (Dostoevsky) letter to V.V. Nabokov. Composed and directed in response to Nabokov lectures on Dostoevsky, i.e. About me.

I. In distant childhood, I read in the Soviet encyclopedic dictionary. That this one, which everyone knows, the poem of Shota Rustaveli was called "Vityaz in the Barskaya skin." And not the "knight in the tiger skin", as many people think. And then I went to school and said to everyone: they heard, they say, about a knight in a leopard skin. Especially to ask: in which one? And so, proudly: in Barsova. And you, miserable ostents, still believed that in a simple tiger.

I. Sixteen days before the big war, I went to the Academy cafe, which is in Moscow, the corner of Malaya and Big Bronny. - You are a Caesar salad with chicken, as usual? - waiter Alexander Lvovich asked me. Why he was with a patronymic, I can’t remember. Strange, by the way, a question. I never ordered Caesar. Not that I did not like. No, it is impossible, so to speak. Simply - did not order. Probably - from an unconsciously growing aversion to the imperial paradigm.