Initiation

This is the story of one of my human falls of forty years ago, and at the same time - a whistle sketch of morals of that time. I would not repent - to kill two birds with one stone: it is a sin to reset with a recognition of, and my own conscience, going to the eye, demonstrate, but the whole focus is that this fall was made not for the sake of bad goals, but only from the desire to grow in the eyes of very good and dear people - father and mother.

And now I will praise myself a little for the then for a boring contrast - I’ll start, so to speak, for health. I already happened to briefly describe the customs of the Moscow court of the late 1950s and early 60s. Nothing special, a courtyard childhood as a courtyard childhood: we played the robbers and the Startor on the Mozhaik, hung cats, drove to stupid on bicycles, poisoned the weak and strange, measured their marriage and dirty about women, played "knives", fought, put up, etc. In these children's jungle, I was not in these children's jungle "White and fluffy", but did not catch up with cowardice, although Bacillo picked up the sucking gastric fear - and I will not get out. But, nevertheless, I once had the determination to build the neighboring Gavriks of a “pig”, in order to beat, finally, Sidor, finally, the great-age flavore. (Rushing forward with a draft scream and flying into a reptile, I turned around and saw my army standing, where it stood.) And two, and it happened, I put me my mother’s “cold” to the nose, broken as a result of intercession for a smaller kogan, “Jew and Zhirtres”, or for the old man-shirt of Svetik, a meek icon-iconostasis from the orders Foil under the squall fire of snowballs. This is all to the fact that someone is kem, and the adaptive is quieter than the water, I was not below the grass: the influence of a worthy family was affected and, of course, reading. God imagine the news of himself what kind of Stevenson, and an hour later meekly demolished the dentists in the gateway, it was somehow not possible to strain, in the very least bringing dreams and reality in line.

Then I became a lad, decided to confuse the writer and transferred, contrary to his parental will, from a mathematical class to the humanitarian, where Vera Romanovna Weinberg, a graduate of Ifli, a smart, noble, beautiful and lonely woman, apparently, because all her cavaliers were lying in the war, taught literature. She spoiled and praised me beyond measure. Probably, thanks to her, I timidly believed in my star. Almost daily, we sat up with her until late in the teacher’s beautiful conversations. Suddenly she looked at her watch, caught on, I caught a taxi for her, and he went home - absentmindedly preparing lessons and mentally continue the recent beautiful conversation.

How long I got a short time for sixteen - it is time to get a passport. And somehow after the Sunday dinner, my father recalled me a couple of words, face to face. Not literally, but quite reliably I can reproduce the long -standing father's monologue.

• Of course, you understand that nationality is a complete fiction, game, barbaric prejudice. There is no forgery to sign up with the Russians, for you: you were born and live in Russia, and your mother is one hundred percent Russian. By the way, the Jews, may you know, nationality is transmitted by mother. I hope that you are an adult and for the sake of a boyish front, you will not break firewood.

So my caring dad took me “weakly” at a point that was quite painful for any young man - in the desire to seem older ... And then to be an adult meant, among other things, to bring the skill to automatism - to think one thing, and to say the other, in the best case, keep his mouth shut. After all, it sounded repeatedly after the feast of the parental friendly circle referred to me: “I hope that you are already an adult and understand that not all of what is said in home walls should be repeated in the yard or at school” ...

And the father’s trick acted, especially since I could not but upset me when my father frowned from time to time for my tirade: "Oh, this youthful maximalism is already." In a word, I decided, like a pig from an English rhyme, to say my mature “dick” instead of a boy ”and became the owner of an impeccable passport.

My act seemed successful to me myself, even in something spectacular, with a bitterness of adulthood, or something ... otherwise why would I get a conversation on this topic with Vera Romanovna?

• You will go far. She said after a terrible pause. - Not only does society keep your father in a special account, from him still his own son shies away.

My happiness is that I did not see myself at that moment from the side. But I had enough and from the inside.

Of course, his father was fatherly right, and his syllogism regarding his sons of nationality was tempting, like any casuistry to which love resorts. But what did I, after all the Stevens and court experience, allowed me to peck at this sacrificial demagogy? Why didn't I give my father a reason to secretly be proud of me?