How I became a traitor

One installation of the modern Polish artist Richard Goretski is called "You can scream here." Richard made a large poster with a reproduction of the film “Scream” and two inscriptions in Russian and German - “You can scream here”. In October of this year, as part of one exhibition project, he fixed it in Kaliningrad on a lamppost, on a wooden bridge (almost the only one from the mathematician Aleler on the seven Koenigsberg bridges) overlooking the Peregel River and the cathedral restored in the 90s.

A small retreat. The Cathedral was almost completely destroyed during the 1945 bombing, stood in ruins until the mid-90s. My mother’s childhood passed in these ruins, and part of mine too. I remember the game with my own voice-you shout some nonsense or just pull the endless “aaaaaaaaaa”, and with an echo jumps from the charred walls, rolls somewhere in weeds, you won’t find it.

After Richard hung his poster, I asked my friend to take the camera, go with me to the bridge and take it off, as I would scream. She asked: "Do you really want to do it?" Yes, sure. A friend did not lag behind: “Why? To support Richard? " Yes, and not only. Recently, strange things have been happening, and if I do not scream now, then it will be very bad for me. We came to the bridge. "Maybe you will practice before I press the rivers?" No, come on so. I go to the poster, look at the river, then at the camera lens. I am trying to collect all my anger, discontent, resentment, disappointment, despair in one sound, I open my mouth, but I can’t do anything. I just smile stupidly and look into the camera. A friend says instructively: “Still, it was necessary to try to practice. Two double. "

I turn away again to the river, look at dark water, fishermen, the cathedral, again return to all my insults, to all my horror, I call to the aid of all the offenders and all my internal monsters. I even imagine how, from grief and horror, German inhabitants could scream from war and bombing, from the joy of victory - Soviet soldiers, how happy brides scream here and how already tipsy guests chanted a friendly “bitterly” - they love to walk newlywood ... But I can’t do anything. The internal monsters decide to be silent. Yes, and I am not a resident of Koenigsberg, not a Soviet soldier and certainly not a happy bride or a drunk guest at someone else's wedding.

We take pictures at this poster for memory. The plate "You can scream here" will sag for a week. She will be removed before arriving in Kaliningrad Putin or Medvedev, I don’t remember exactly who, just before the visit of such people in my city, lampposts and aphage cabinets are especially carefully cleaned. And I still do not know if anyone had managed to shout then.

The feeling that I can’t say anything, shout anything, and most importantly-suddenly, completely unexpectedly, I do not want anything, I had on December 10 in St. Petersburg on Theater Square.

On the eve of a round table in a large cuisine of a communal apartment in the hay in honor of my arrival (purely worker, just coincided-a business trip and rallies) all my friends gathered together: art critics and architectural critics, young artists and students of Smolny, just loafers and those who write on Openspace. Each creature pair. Everyone drank a glass of wine and explained why he went to the polls and why tomorrow goes to a rally. General explanation: because you can’t help but go, because it is so impossible further. It is impossible to live in a country in which people who are endlessly lying and deceiving you endlessly, in which you are endlessly lying and deceiving, impose fake heroes and almost forced to abandon the real heroes. In addition to common, everyone had a couple of arguments - I went not only because I could not, but also for my other close people and relatives. For those who were accused of what they did, for those who have been listening to phones and read personal mail, for those who were forced to abandon the decisions and words said.

Posters and banners seemed unconvincing. A man with an accordion, singing dashing songs, wanted to place in an inaccessibility radius. The young man in a colorful scarf, climbing a tree and from there expressed his protest, wanted to shake off a branch, like a rotten fruit so that the view would not spoil. White ribbons caused almost a seizure of the one that the St. George ribbons call me when they began to distribute them a week before the day of victory at gas stations and in supermarkets.

“You know, I don’t really like the“ war ”group, but, in my opinion, their statement on the foundry of the bridge is still more convincing, more relevant songs about bear and fox and other folk art. And most importantly, it was much more timely. I froze, went to bask, ”I said to my friend. We wandered a little more.

After half an hour, a crowd of middle -aged people entered the cafe where we warmed up. Someone had a megaphone in his hands. The ruddy woman with a disheveled hairstyle and a man in a sheepskin coat led a dozen frozen and excited people. This man had an unpleasant voice, his face, flushed from the frost, he took out a waitress in a cafe, demanding good cognac, and when he became warm, he rolled up the sleeves of the sweater and it turned out that on his entire hand there was a greasy black tattoo of calligraphy-Putin-Vorus from his elbow to the wrist.

I have a fairly clear feeling that in the 89th this whole company was definitely on the barricades, but after it ended, it was calmly settled in a wardrobe for twenty years, packed with no need for anyone, worn shoes, peppers and all kinds of rubbish. The cabinet was solid, the news from the radio station in the kitchen or from the TV in the living room did not reach it, and then someone opened the doors and said: “Guys, you have been sitting here for so many years and all this time we have been fucking. During this time, this happened, this and that, they killed this, that and that, and now the worst thing may happen-your voice will be stolen, I don’t know what you are whispering there on a pile of rags, but the fact that soon you can’t talk at all. ” And so they shook themselves away from Naftalin and went out into the white light.

Now they are satisfied, they praise a disheveled woman, calling her “the one thanks to which today's rally” is invited to take her word and drink immediately. The woman says she is very tired. I believe her.

BBC shows a rally in Moscow. Putin-Vor, a disheveled active woman, thanks to which a rally was held, and other associates in the ideological struggle are reviving. The sound is turned off, but they read the running line aloud. And just as out loud, people read at neighboring tables, who went just to eat. “Well, yes,” the man who did not take off the warm jacket says something, “there is, of course, not here, but we also had a tie. Although, yes, the wrong scale. " One of my friends pulls with dreary envy: "There are all ours now from the School Rodchenko with banners." News on the BBC are replaced by an animal program. A tanned presenter feeds the elephant's hand.

The organizers of the rally ordered vodka and discuss what the failure of the Navalny system, shoot each other on mobile phones, cameras and cameras (at some point the rumpled woman does not stand up and shouts: “Yes, you stop shooting, don’t take me off, I don’t know where you will post it”), and they decide that in January the next, that is, their team must unite and register the organization with the organization. "A horizontal management system where all communication will be built on mutual trust and respect." The words “trust” and “respect” are interrupted by the obscenities of a disheveled woman-one of the sitting at the table clicked the camera again. The man has an expression on his face in the vest and with a white man that he does not disdain, does not fertilize and splashes vodka in the face of the heroine of the revolution.

They brought us an account. The commissioning girl, hugging the tray, looks at the plasma panel of the screen-the BBC again shows the rally in Moscow. The girl sighs: "But February was with us." This, of course, explains a lot. I ask her: would you go? No, the girl smiles, I’m at work, you are well done, go. I’m blushing, I know that we are not well done, that we actually walked this rally, that with any revolutionary romance it all has nothing in common, that instead of people with banners, I would like to see people with black bandages in their mouths, because I have nothing to say there, and how to explain it all, I do not know.

Kaliningrad