In society

Remembering the Arcana

March 22, 2015 Sergey Avdeenko

The most famous bike about Arkan, Arkady Mikhailovich Arkanov, is connected with the Moscow Hippodrome, where he usually went together with Alexander Shirvindt as a job. Both friends, being gambling people, not just stupidly made bets, but also studied the biographies of horses, their physical condition, did not disdain their insider information on the eve of the next run ... And finally their star hour came: in the previous race the “dark horse”, on which they put, and now, knowing the winner of the upcoming run, friends in double -navig It remained only to put on the “lantern” as much as possible. One of them relied, the race began, and the “lantern” burst forward, without losing the championship until the finish. The issuance in double single was incredible - with this money it was possible not only to return the lost over many years, but also to buy two “Volga” ... Only, making a bet, one of the friends at the last moment put “on a hunch” on another horse ... Shirvind, telling about this, says that it was Arkan, Arkanov assures that Alexander Anatolyevich “bent”. Oddly enough, after such an unprofit, they did not quarrel.

Arkanov was a classic embodiment of a joker, a comedian and satirist - almost always a gloomy face, rare, as if filled with the internal editor of the word, and even if he allowed himself something like sharpness, she was pronounced in such an afterlife that not all interlocutors could appreciate his joke. The mask of a gloomy, unperturbed person was especially suitable for stage monologues performed by Arkan in the hall setting with laughter. But Grigory Gorin, his co -author for many years, loved a smile and a lightning improvisation. Now it is no longer to recall which of them explained the collapse of their creative duet by the fact that the famous lines “I go out on the road” is true poetry, and if we say “we go together on the road” - this is already pure robbery. But it is known that it was Arkanov who came up with the classic, almost folk, “piano in the bushes” and he also gave the shitty name “Gadeny” to one not very clean athlete ...

The former doctor, like his co-author (for some reason, many doctors in our country became great writers-we remember the joke of Gorin-Arkanov about the fact that it is not known whether the literature was acquired with their arrival, where there were “doctors” of Bulgaks and Chekhov, but it is known that medicine has not lost anything ”), and a wonderful satirist, in addition to everything else, was a great player. The player almost in everything that and what you can play for. He had his own cue in the billiard Center, he headed the chess team of writers, adored preference and poker, made bets on sporting events long before the show of bookmakers appeared in us-he put “Mazes” with friends of comrades. And many of us had to give the last ruble a successful expert. Well, tell me, who, besides Arkan, in the mid -seventies could have assumed that in the final of the Dynamo Cup Cup, Kyiv will take Bavaria? .. But this gambling soul was not enough - he still loved all sorts of lotteries. And he still won the Volga, ten years after the failure on the run-on the lottery ticket, as in some bad film!

He was fond of football, was on the “Torpedo” of Streltsov and Ivanov (once we met at the Moscow Krasnaya Presnya stadium, where the Sagittarius recently emerged in the factory torpedo team) fell in love with the little famous coach Valery Lobanovsky, who then brought some Dnipro there to the Higher League, and could talk about him hours. He brought Harry Kasparov adored by him to the Central House of Artists, and he told us about the just interrupted scandalous match with Anatoly Karpov before a overflowing large hall. Needless to say, Arkan convinced all his interlocutors to “take the idols” of Streltsov, Lobanovsky and Kasparov ...

In the 60-70s, we all already knew the “very funny” Gorin and Arkanov-the authors of the club “12 chairs” in the “Literary Newspaper”, successful playwrights (recall at least “Wedding for All Europe” and “Little Comedies of the Big House”). The paradox consisted in the fact that they were not accepted as members of the Writers' Union: without a book, you could not become a full -fledged writer, and there was still no book - either the line of members of the Union in publishing houses, or the fears of literary officials about the display of acute satire. But, since this conflict became more and more indecent, in the end they were accepted without a book as an exception - the famous Gorinskaya “I want Kharcho” and the Arkanovskaya “manuscripts do not return” came out much later.

And after breaking up with Gorin, Arkanov initially continued to write what both of them once succeeded in the best - stories. Just ridiculous, often satirical - some of the latter entered the “underground” almanac “Metropol”, after which the writer closed trips abroad and stopped printing in “Literature”, not to mention books and collections.

As you know, in Russia it is necessary to live for a long time ... Arkanov was (scary to say) for 80, so that he went through fire, water, and everything that relies on the ninth ten. More than 30 years ago, he made a monospace for anyone that was not known to Vladimir Vinokur and Levon Oganezov. We all remember the television “White Parrot” and “Around Laughter”-with the “sad” Arkanovsky mask-charism. And he understood everything in our life - both good and not very, and about us, and about power. And he never ricked down, never let himself out of himself. He traveled a lot, visited his sons-Petya in Paris, Vasya in New York, catching up in the USSR: he flew to play casino in Las Vegas and Atlantic-City. He was incredibly surprised when, during the first, Prushchenkovsky, Maidan, the words of his famous song “Orange Sky” became the anthem of the Orange Revolution, and someone in Kyiv demanded that he be given the title of People's Artist of Ukraine. It’s good that they did not give.

Alas, living for a long time, there is a risk of living to his cancer ... And now Arkan reunited with Grigory Gorin. Now forever.

And, of course, it is very sorry for Alexander Shirvindt. He lost not only another friend, but also ... the opportunity to blame everything on the Arcana.


Photo by TASS/ Vyacheslav Prokofiev