About Anapa

By the way, 1980 turned out to be extraordinary for the country - that summer the Olympics happened in Moscow. I was mobilized there as a translator. I got to work with Nikon, which gave reporters the cameras made to her. It was forbidden to take money from them, because at that time, according to the covenants of Pierre Cububerten, the Olympiad was considered non -profit.

But I did not have time to provide translation services: on the second day of work, I was poisoned by the “phantom” from the machine gun installed in the press center on Zubovskaya Square. Of course, “fantas” is not the most useful drink for health, but this one turned out to be doubly monstrous, because the local craftsmen, as usual, diluted it with some kind of self-firmness. At night I felt bad, but I moved myself and came to work. From there, together with the firms, we went to a solemn reception to the Arbat restaurant on Kalininsky Prospekt. There I felt completely bad, but I still drank a glass of vodka for disinfection. As soon as I reached the exit, I stood, staggering, on granite steps. I would have to sit down on them, but only one thought knocked in the brain poisoned by the Soviet government: if you sit down, they consider me drunk and “notice” - the city was crammed with a police, which was habitually perceived not as a defender from criminals, but as a personal threat. In my soul, I considered myself a more or less independent person from the Council of State, but this turned out to be not so. In a word, instead of slowly recovering the steps, in the “standing” position, I lost consciousness and crashed at them. I could greatly disfigure my face, but the sports habit of grouping when falling saved me and this time-being already in a swoon, I still fell in my arms, my head was not injured, but my fingers and brushes are still, it happens.

Since the Western athletes of Moscow disdained the western athletes in revenge for the invasion of Afghanistan, that Olympiad became the triumph of Soviet athletes. But this did not give me joy.

After the fainting, my head twisted, I walked along the wall, from the general damage to the body I even decided to shave the mustache. Deprived of vegetation, the face has changed so much that friends ceased to recognize me. Therefore, I called them on the phone and asked not to be surprised at the meeting. But even without a mustache, the head continued to spin. And then I spit on my head and flew to Anapa at the call of good friends who had been resting there for several years.

I settled on Gogol Street in Tanya Olshanskaya’s house, a literature teacher who had no one to talk to in winter about literature in this sleepy town with a summer view of the blue sea, who had seen both the Scythians and the Greeks. Therefore, Tanya welcomed the frozen northeast artists, actors and writers who shamelessly enjoyed her hospitality. She beat them, fed them, and usually did not take the money-despite her modest teaching wealth. It is difficult to take money from the people with whom you talk on fateful topics by day-noch. However, the language also does not turn to call these guests rich either. There were no rich people at all, which was very reconciled with a life that did not make material claims. The guests were paid by bright summer paintings, poems and long winter dried letters.

Tanya knew a lot about poetry, I learned the name of Ksenia Nekrasova from her. Seeing how I liked the poem, where it was said, how we, intellectuals, love to soak in bed, and therefore “the splendor of the dawn goes to the workers,” Tanya gave me her collection, which was, in that scarce times, great generosity. The poem made me think about my lifestyle and change it, and Tanya gave me a book with pleasure - with the same pleasure, she threw her outrageous dumplings with cherries and burning borscht. Actually, there was an unusual heat, the brains melted, I wanted something fresh-frozen, but Tanin Borsch did not know the temperature restrictions. He poured in a throat, as a hot metal flows into a submissive clergy.

Tanin Dvor lived a tense life. The name of Gogol Street made his inhabitants similar to literary characters. The mother of adult children, the voluminous saleswoman of the light, having lost the same voluminous husband, began to wait for another and did an operation to return virginity. In the evening, when the tenants returned home, the exchange of useful products grinded from work was arranged: someone brought bread, someone dairy product, and Ira dragged alcohol from the plant of non-alcoholic beverages in branded bottles of Pinocchio lemonade-the recipe of this muck required pipetal pouring truly male fluid. So they changed - alcohol for milk, milk - for bread. And only Tanya could not offer anything sensible. In her school, there was nothing to steal, except for the conjugation of the verb and ordinal numbers, which no one needed.

Tired by the sun and spreading along the pebble of the Anapa beach of the body resembled a parade of freaks. But from the high shore it was visible how the dolphins flash the wrinkled sea with powerful stitches; On the shore of bays, where the wave of pile of brown algae, smelled of fermented iodine, which cleared the lungs from Moscow sorrows. The stomach rumbled in welcoming fruits and berries, a huge flounder hissed in a pan sought out obediently. When I went to bathe at night, on the way to the sublunum water from under each cherry or apricot wood, voluptuous groaning of resorters were heard, the hunt on which was considered among local youth the main summer sport. Victories were especially appreciated, as a result of which the main action happened in a cemetery located near the cliff at sea. By windy, dank winters, exhausted young people fell asleep with strong drinks. So they walked sperm for future achievements. By the age of forty, they turned into ruins, who have nothing to remember. There were no names in their track record - carried away by the wind, washed off by a wave, dissolved by a sour local Vinets. Deprived of memory, they died early. After bathing, I sat down at the tannin table, and from my swimming trunks, it used to be a wet sea pebble fell on the floor with a knock.

In general, I rested for glory, my head stopped spinning. It's time to return. I got up to the airplane for a ticket. A huge man came up to me with slightly slanting cheekbones and a young son, he began to blame: “I had a rest here one hundred percent, but only now there is not enough for a ticket.” According to his courageous person, it was clear that he needed money and really for a ticket, and not on a boot. In general, I added him.

We flew on neighboring chairs. Volodya turned out to be a former military pilot. For my generosity, he told how he drove the Commander -in -Chief of the Ural Military District to the XXV Congress of the CPSU in 1976. “They landed already in Moscow, and he for me:“ The civilian costume in Sverdlovsk forgot. Make it back. ” I to him: “Can I take a break at least an hour?” - "No, wind." One thing is good - the air corridor has opened, blow yourself one hundred percent. Eggs, of course, came to the throat. But he turned quickly. "

The fact of his biography was prayed significantly and told the second most importantly the fact of his biography: "And I only drink beer from my neck."

What kind of decisions were made at this very congress - he did not know either a dream or a spirit. Like all of us, however.

A few years ago I visited Anapa. Then, in 1980, she was a dusty and provincial town. I liked it. It took a little money for life - cherries, apricots and mulberries grew on the streets, who in vain pulled their good branches to you. Now Anapa has taken off - hotels, restaurants, attractions, dust was covered with paving slabs. But at the foot of the skyscrapers you can still find rickety houses in which old people and old women live their centuries. They live in the shadow of new buildings, because of them they are not visible to the sea, at which they are used to looking with their eyes faded from the sun. The cemetery was wrapped, and in its place some bandit built a palace for himself. I did not see the bandit himself, only saw his servants - dense people in camouflage with the empty eyes of the killers. They sat in the garden and shone seeds. Cold by the breeze, Luzga dragged through those places that were cleaned from corpses and love deals.

Alexander Meshcheryakov