Nina Gorlanova: Drying

Within the framework of the section “Lukomorye (Political)” “Polit.ru” publishes the story “Sucking” from Nina Gorlanova’s book “Bright prose” ( Gorlanova N.V. Bright prose: Stories / Nina Gorlanova. M.: OGI , 2005. 320 p. ). Nina Gorlanova is a Perm writer, author of the books “Rainbow every day”, “Native people”, “All Perm”, “Love in rubber gloves”, “House with all inconvenience”. The book "Bright Prose" includes stories written by the author over the past ten years. These are a kind of record of everyday incidents in which the statements of acquaintances, and jokes, and memories, and observations are recorded; Gradually, they all develop into a single plot, into a single panorama of a provincial Russian life - at the same time everyday and fantastic.

In the city of Panic: the offender travels to the "com" and puts some vaccinations for the children. Already two deaths. All children's institutions have been warned. And in the publishing house Lisa reads my novel of education.

- You write gloomily! She summarizes. - Good, but gloomy!

“There is nothing to blame on the mirror,” I try to defend myself. - Our reality is even darker.

- So what! We will not print it, mother! - The appeal is put in the hope of brightening up the refusal, because we are considered friends.

- The people are called: "They beat and do not cry." Children have nothing.

Lisa caught herself, climbed into her bag and pulled out of there heaps with a kilogram of drying. Pushes me - for children.

- The average earnings of the writer in the USSR are 70 rubles per month. What do you want?

- And what about the people do you think at all? This is what people need: what I write. You are the best editor of the publishing house and should understand ...

- It will not leave the people. After death, print. This is called "mustard after dinner." - Lisa laughs, not understanding that in our time there can be no such faith. I begin to talk about a girl from the shoe factory, once I wrote an essay about her. The girl was embarrassed by the fact that it was an advanced production, and no one takes their shoes in the store. In the warehouse of waste paper under the knife, all the products of our book publishing house are going on, but Lisa is proud that she is an advanced editor of the publisher.

- And you find the Azopov language! - calls Lisa. - Picasso, as he said: "I am not looking, I find it."

- What does Picasso? - I shout to my husband who is looking for his socks throughout the house. “Can you explain the thought to Lizin?”

“Unlike Picasso, I am looking for, but I don’t find it,” he answers, referring to socks. - And how much the trash under our feet! Why is this broken chair?

I take a chair and take out the door - throw it away. He served on his birthday for his guest’s board, usually for Lisa. And now she has left my guests.

But then the husband found socks and drew in front of his eyes, began to justify Lisa: they say, she is smart, he understands everything, but she would not break through. However, it is impossible to condemn for this. Wrestling qualities should be born in a person: a base is needed for them. And Lisa saw what she saw: betrayal by her lover, then - betrayal by her husband. Another mother-in-law poisoned all her life, where did she take a support?

“Well, there is nothing to go to the editors without wrestling qualities,” I do not give up, starting my daily work on circumcision, rot from apples, the so-called “food-breeze”, which cost only 25 kopecks of a kilogram.

- Mom, do you like to cut apples? - asks the daughter. - You always smile when you work.

- What you do for children are always doing without irritation, okay? And instead of writing stories, I cut apples for hours.

- But you will write well! Balzac sniffed rotten apples to be written, ”the son explains. - Can I take drying?

- Can. And give me ... Oh! The tooth broke. Of course, why will the teeth be strong when we eat like that ... what to do? Send your stories to the magazine?

- Went. Scripture in the table is the same love unanswered ... It seems to me that you write the best. Am I really biased?

- How, dear, can you be objective if we have four children?

And I am sending stories and a novel to the Moscow magazine. From there comes the package. A certain lovely editor Natalya Dmitrievna (this name is forever crashed into memory!) Send the package: buckwheat, butter, condensed milk.

- Buckwheat smells of buckwheat! -The children are sniffed.

- And the oil is yellow like oil! - says the husband.

- But she writes, she couldn’t break stories, she even quits herself, for she was tired of looking into the empty eye sockets of the boss.

And I tear my last story to pieces, then I attribute it to the garbage bucket standing in the toilet. The people are called this: "I will dig up one eye for myself, let my mother -in -law be a son -in -law curve!"

I decide: I will earn a reprint on a typewriter. All. Stop starving! We have already reached the point that the life of the family is at the level of military communism: some spiritual problems and no life that befell the era. I’m going to Tsum for paper and carbon copy - I will be a driver.

At Tsum, a drinking man did not get along with the southern seller of flowers. Here the South man with ours stole a hat. Then our flowers overturned him - the whole bucket on the asphalt. And passers -by began to collect and take with them. Then another southern man drove up in a taxi, brought flowers even. Throwing off without a hat to the trunk flew up - throw flowers! And people from Tsum leave - and see: flowers! They collected half, then the southern sellers rushed to trample the remaining flowers - if only they would not get anyone for free. Topped and left. I looked at the blots of red carnations, and something moved inside. And then a woman passed, saw two empty buckets from under the colors, poured water and took them. I returned home. And they did not buy paper with copying paper.

“I will never tear my stories anymore!” I myself will go to Moscow, I will take them. And what: they don’t know me in the face - how to print?!

“Homer still does not know in the face, but print,” the husband answered.

“Yes, and there’s nothing to go to,” I agreed. - But it is still a pity that the story tore ...

“I have already got it for a long time,” said the daughter, “put it only to glue with what?”

I was delighted and revealed the secret: the glue was hidden, because recently my daughter splashed into their eye, which was then saved for a long time.

- Take it where there was cosmetics.

- Mom, why do you call this box of the cabinet “where there was cosmetics”?

- Because before there was cosmetics. So far I have not started writing stories. There was money, there was cosmetics.

My husband realized that I had come, and waved his hand: okay, hand over the books to the Bukinist and go to Moscow.

In the train, I read a note in the newspaper that the reduction of protein in the diet lengthens life.

“Soon we will have everything long -livers here,” they said in the carriage, reading the article after me.

“One critic reproached me that I could not reflect the originality of my hometown,” I said. - The husband then proposed to send by mail our basket with dirty linen of this criticism; We cannot wash it for six months: either there is no water, then electricity, then powder. Otherwise he does not believe that there are those

The difficulties that I describe.

- Are you a writer? How did you start writing?

-And she began to write because of the flooding. Once I found myself in the kitchen writing a story, the benefit of the kitchen is narrow: with one hand I interfere with the porridge, I write with the other. Something suddenly happened to me. And the words come. I describe the house, garden, but there are no people there. And I don’t know which people to settle there.

- Do you have a positive hero? The neighbor asked.

Somewhere he gained such a terminology, but that the author himself can be a positive hero, people have not heard, I suppose it’s a great secret. Unless, with closed doors, the teacher could say: “Children! And besides, a positive hero may be laughter or author. But you don't tell anyone about this! "

Adventures in Moscow began on the first day. I arrived in a fur coat and winter boots, and in the capital of heat 24 degrees. I immediately wiped my legs into the blood and crawled into the Shoe store. I was immediately let me in the line into the department where I bought sandals. There was not enough money for the shoes. So I ended up in a fur coat and sandals.

In the thick magazine, my stories praised, but refused to print. Like, the policy in literature has not yet been defined, and the stories are too sharp. They gave me a whole bag of food: stew, sweets, buckwheat, as well as one sweater and three trousers for children. So not in vain, one might say, went to the capital.

“I said that Homer also did not know in the face,” the husband grumbled.

I realized: you need to do something. Here our friend came - the famous critic Andrei Valentinovich - and said: and said:

- I’ll write an article about your stories - I will praise them. They will still print you!

- Is it true? Do you write? Is this nothing that we are friends?

- Let them read stories if they do not believe!

Six months have passed. He never wrote an article, but once he came with a bottle of vodka. We poured it into glasses.

Once Andrei Valentinovich read my manuscripts from friends. And even before that, Nekrasov and Belinsky read the manuscript of Dostoevsky and went to him early in the morning to say: they say, a new genius in your face was born. So Andrei Valentinovich, feeling at the same time Nekrasov and Belinsky, came to me early in the morning, but I had already taken the children to the nursery. Of course, he became insulting, and he once again told this story now.

I must say that I never want to drink. But now I saw a drink and got to the review, that is, it seemed to me that there was a good review of my stories and printed. And I thought what beautiful people around: you only need to get drunk before the review - and everything will be fine.