About libraries

By the way, I studied at a wonderful Moscow school at number 59. This former gymnasium is composed with love and care, conveniently and firmly. I entered there in 1958, when more than half a century has passed since the construction time, but the heavy front oak door with carvings still made it, and the copper handle even added in splendor. Inside, the railing polished by thousands of the asses of the rains of the railing also flashed, and an old parquet rested in some places. Physicists rested in the office of pre -revolutionary appliances, in the biological - plausible stuffed animals of small animals and birds, which have not been in the world for a long time. Sometimes I want after death and from me to be filled with the same believable and durable stuffed animal.

Despite the total barbarism of the Bolsheviks, on the fourth floor the incomparable library survived: tall starchy ceilings, incompetent tables built around the perimeter huge bookcases stuffed with knowledge and designed for eternity. The gold roots of Brockhaus and Efron, the pood volumes of Bram with drawings, from which it is impossible to tear up. And there are many more cabinets that were swollen from knowledge. Each book appealed: read me! Green lamps grabbed a magic circle from the darkness of centuries, packed to failure with brave heroes, tense thoughts, unexpected rhymes, and grains of truth. Here I wanted to be thoughtful and did not want to blow my nose into the sleeve.

The librarian with an excessively inspired face followed your form with a yellow owl. She gave advice what else to read - as if she fed chicks from dry hands. I have never offered a bad one, providing stable spiritual growth. This world was unhealthy, and it ruined it. One at all, it was not a great day the library was destroyed - the dimensionless cabinets were burned to the ground, books with nasty “yates” were digested in an amorphous paper mass, and the wall perimeter was curtained with dull Swedish walls, which can only rise two meters above the floor - you will not soar. The thoughtfulness was expelled, a cheerful teenage mother walked between the handball gate. Previously, there was one physical room and one reading room at the school, now two sports and not a single reading one. This change of scenery became the final sentence of the gymnasium - it turned into a Soviet school.

After receiving a certificate of maturity, I studied for a long time: at the university, at the courses of synchronous translation, in graduate school. But even after the defense of the library dissertation, I was a second home for a long time, which, unfortunately, was closed at night. Most of all I liked the eastern hall of the historical library, where random people did not wander, who did not know the sense in the hieroglyphs and Arabic Vyazi. In this second house, I forever realized that the library is not only educational, but also educational. It is useful for curbing pride. When you see how much wisdom is collected here, you not only involuntarily overtake it, but at the same time you feel your little. This is especially useful for young people who imagine what they do. It is clear that first of all I mean myself. Many years later, on the facade of my cottage, I hung a wooden board with hieroglyphs carved on it: "Deep your shine, mix with dust." The curious neighbors that I had to explain this maxim looked at me with a slight contempt. They lived so that their radiance could be seen by every person. The board hangs high and looks at them also from top to bottom.

They say that money requires silence. I don’t know, I probably never had so much money to admire them without words. When they suddenly appeared with me, I was noisily happy, just as noisy and spent. Books - so they really require silence. For years, I did not make my acquaintance for the years in the libraries, although among the readers there were also preho -natives. But for pretty women, I took away other interiors. I spent silently even in smokers - so as not to disturb the shy thought. The smoke there changed the aggregate state and turned into an almost solid body, which was asked to cut it with a sharp knife into blue cubes. In this stuffy fog, sluggish ghosts swam, little reminiscent of people. What can you talk about with ghosts?

No, lying, once I still met in a smoking room with one person. Rather, I did not meet, but he tried to make my acquaintance. No, he did not smoke. He took a real egg from the real Reidicul, neatly clicked on the wall, threw back his head and drank one fell swoop. It was evident that this was not the first to him. Then he suddenly asked anxiously: “Sorry for the anxiety. Do you think it will not turn an egg in my stomach into a chicken? ” I choked with smoke and did not find an answer. Then, looking directly into my eyes, he said: “Yes, you don’t be afraid! I have crazy only on the maternal line. ” Having taken out the door from the ridical, he began to look at me. “Perhaps you suit me, and I will ask you to provide me with one service,” he whispered mysteriously and gave a hand: “Boris, a guest from the future.” From confusion, I shook his palm, slightly stained with yellow, but our acquaintance did not last long - I threw an undercuted cigarette into the urn and retreated.

It was believed that after defending the dissertation, your ideological level has risen to the extent that allows you to read the book prohibited for the popular use. I received admission to special security! Like ordinary "special services", this "special security" was pronounced with a fainting sraft. Still! Thousands of books, billions of letters compiled in a criminal manner. The door without a sign is for their own, the X -ray gaze of the keeper, dark walls, no windows, dead fluorescent light from the ceiling. In general, the bunker. Berdyaev with Frank, Solzhenitsyn with Hitler, Freud and Nietzsche. What was not there! Salvador's album Dali. Renegat Roger Harodi. I did not agree with him in everything, but the name sounded magical. Vigilant special services and the “hammer of the witches” plugged in the specialords-witches in the USSR were strictly prohibited. Distribution - not a single laudable word in defense of communism! The garbage of some evil authorkhanov, I looked around at the same time: it seemed that you were buried in the underground, the soldier with a sniper rifle was about to burst and you will be immediately bought into shackles, they would take it into clean water without the right of correspondence and immediately shot in the library courtyard. Only you saw you. That's how impressionable I was. However, like all of us.

What has the beginning has an end. And libraries are no exception. Many sloths rejoiced at the Internet: now you don’t need to go anywhere! What a saving of weak forces, transport expenses and invaluable time! How much they promised - these poor nineties of the twentieth century! But at the same time the Internet killed libraries, he also wounded paper books. Once I followed my many and not always decent guests, so that one of them is not stubborn by the book, but now they would not be stolen even in depopulated libraries. The housekeepers left the book shelves untouched. And they did the right thing: complete collected works in accordance with the garbage dumps. Now the racks have ceased to overshadow the beauty of photo wallpaper. From that time, I know one single case of book theft: having climbed into the apartment of a famous pianist, the thief left a concert piano in its former place, but took with him “Masters and Margarita”. But this case is a clear misunderstanding, which is why the incident was widely covered by newspapers that have not yet gone out of use.

Well, death is a natural event. But this does not mean that we should rejoice at her.

Once I dreamed of a nightmare: as if I had been locked in the bookstore in my sin, and the glasses were taken away. Such a torture: he sees an eye, yes, a jumper. There are no errors only in the crossed off. There is no person without sin either. In any case, I am not familiar with this. I condemn mortal sins, with life - put on a loot. It seems to me that without sin, a person would not get completeness. However, sins follow the punishment. Ask me what punishment I would not want for anything in the world, and I will answer: I do not want the bailiffs to seal my library. So you have to behave quietly.

Alexander Meshcheryakov