About history and historians

By the way, at one time I was gloriously traveling through the vast Russian expanses - on my two, on the hoodies. In trains that carried me into infinity along slippery rails, other people moved on other matters. All of them were not on their own, but with some kind of good-huge suitcases, dimensionless bags, puffy strokes. In the smoked vestibule, they shared the last news, in the common carriage someone threw ditties-there was no drunken words to make out. In another train, a gypsies with wire black curls dangled on an accordion. A purely Russian man with hanging snot asked him an accordion, the gypsies turned away. He explained to me: “I don’t give an instrument to anyone, they will break. And people are offended and beat in the face. And why beat? The tool must be protected. " Entering the Russian role, he "tossed" slightly. Was he a gypsy? According to his weathered and shredded face with a crushed nose, it was guessed that he was used to fighting the blood. Behind his belt, a terrible whip was shut up, which he used to defend a frustrated tool.

In these travels it became especially clear that Russians are people of space, not time. Therefore, they do not do work on their historical mistakes. These people do not want to be a "people", everyone wants to be on their own. In order to become a “people”, they do not have enough imagination: how can you be at the same time with those tens of millions that you have never seen by person? Perhaps it is for the better - the more soldered people, the worse they are for others. The Germans with the Japanese proved this. Crupting the whole story, they imagined that they were better than others and took up arms against the world. As for the Russians, the past time does not exist for them. If, when asked by a fellow traveler about my profession, I answered the “historian”, disgust was reflected in the eyes of the interlocutor in relation to the useless alien from the past. These people lived today, yesterday it was not interesting to them. Therefore, I preferred to be certified by the translator. The lesson is also exotic, but still at least somewhat understandable.

***

My friend Kyoko for some time led the Russian language lessons on Japanese television. She brought to Moscow the director with the operator to remove the plot about our country life. I took them to the rich cottage of my friends. It was September. The director really wanted to shoot how we collect mushrooms here. The cottage was really rich, but there were no mushrooms in a pledged rifle. We went to the market, purchased beautiful white. I placed them under the trees. The mushrooms were collected by a Russian actress with a chic blossom of the patch scythe. True, there was no kokoshnik. Seeing the mushroom, the actress squealed: "Ah, what a wonderful mushroom!" They took off a few takes. The director said displeasedly: "These mushrooms will look bad on the screen." With these words, he rushed to the half-exhausted log and tore off a couple of poisonous yellow growths from him, similar to his tentacles to corals. Turning away, put in a basket over the whites: "Now what you need!" The operator aimed the camera. I screamed: “These are the whores! Russians will laugh! " It did not help, the operator removed the guess from all angles. He also highlighted. I took a word with Kyoko that they would not show this frame on TV.

In the next stage, the main character was already me. According to the scenario, I had to raise a full glass and make it articulate: "Let's drink vodka!" So that these words are better to crash into the memory of the Japanese lover of the Russian language, they hung a cardboard with these very words on my chest. I reminded myself to the partisan before the execution. I got simple words, the souffler was not required. I cheerfully uttered the laid remark, knocked over a glass and exclaimed: "Good!" The exclamation in the script was not listed, but the director said that this was a successful find. However, a friend found that I said "we will drink vodka!" Too quickly - the program was intended for beginners. Repeated. Now it turned out too slowly and unnaturally. In general, they made five takes without a snack. Each time, my voice added to the volume. As a result, everyone was satisfied.

We sat down to evening. I asked the director: "How many spectators do your program?" He honestly replied that there were a lot of before, but now there was little. I also asked: "Are they not going to close you?" He smiled condescendingly. “You see, the program began to be released in the sixties of the last century. Who will dare to close it? With such a story? "

The program was really not closed, but the frame with films was never cut out.

* * *

Academician Raushenbach used to say this: "I do not want to live in the States, because there was no Middle Ages there." And one Chinese, who emigrated to America, blamed his son, who did not have time in history: “You, a scoundrel, don’t understand how lucky you were: you would have lived in your homeland, you would have to call the dates for two hundred years, but four thousand.”

* * *

Our school historian suffered from military concussion, easily fell into a frenzy. Honestly, there was something from: in the classroom they shot from the tubes with chewing a blot, let paper aircraft, confused Assyria with Babylon, and the first Russian revolution with the second. Then the historian shouted to the undergrowths: “At your age, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya has already been hanged!” But we were not ashamed. It was not terrible: the historian suffered exaggeration, and before the age of Zoya there was still a couple of years that seemed eternity. Now they do not seem.

* * *

In Soviet times, in our huge apartment in Taganka there were many guests at that time, some were delayed for several days. The range of my then dating was monstrous, and not all guests turned out to be anti -Soviet. The opera singer Nelli who firmly assimilated the school program discussed historical problems with me: “Before the revolution, not everything was as good as your guests tell. Workers were sleeping on the bed in turn, and the opera singers did not always sleep with those with whom they would like. " The singer came from Saratov, in Moscow it was difficult for her to find an understanding person who would sympathize with her views on the story. In the morning, out of habit, she decided to break out - the chandeliers trembled with delight and her trimmed voice. I did not dare to sing to her.

* * *

I composed my candidate dissertation in libraries. In the current century, the Internet almost ruined the library as a place for reading and work, but we could not do without it. Most of all I loved the office of the East in the historical library in Starosadsky Lane. The hall is small, but with huge windows, without a clear upper light, but with cozy table lamps, from the mysterious glow of which water signs of forgotten fate appeared on paper. Stiring a leather root, I recalled about the Chinese sages who read the manuscripts in the light of fireflies and pure snow sparkling under the moon. Looking around the hall filled with silent readers, I rejoiced at the silence and was surprised how little noise was produced by these collectors of shadows.

Passing the corridor with endless catchers, I felt my little every time. The visibility of the bouts of pride made before you and without you, which, in my youth, at times I suffered from. On others, this vastness acted in a paralyzing way: why compose it yourself, if everything is already written? I had an excited excitement, even more I wanted to cooperate in the global stream of meanings, to stick to people with whom to talk so glorious. This desire was not clogged with a crappy buffet, after a visit to which inevitably overtaken heartburn, nor a smoking room filled with dense poisonous smoke, approaching in their consistency to a semi -hard body. People engaged in the same smoking business looked like thoughtful crazy people in the clouds, I tried to visit the smoking room more often.

The library day flew quickly, I left the library, when it was already darkly dark, turned not to the left, to the Metro "Square of Nogin", but to the right, where the beer was located. The excellent steps were lowered into the dungeon, where I facilitated the head stuffed with firm words and stared at people who did not need the knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet, Latin or hieroglyphs for happiness. Behind the backbone, the call “Demand the valve of the beer after the detachment of foam!”, Reminding that you were in the enemy’s lair. It smelled of urine and wobble, a muddy beer diluted with rusty water, and visitors - clean vodka. The young black man with an impeccable Russian language was a regulating there. He was always sad and pulled the mournful African song. We pulled a liquid beer, standing at tall tables, and I marveled how many animals of sounds were able to produce people of different nationalities and beliefs. I also rustled in my head, strongly and rudely, a tongue was untied, from which words that were not accepted in the library community flew. It was smoked in the beer, but the local smoke seemed to the place and to the place, a man without cigarettes looked like a foreign body, a final eccentric.

It remains to add that I have saved love for a historian for life. In the office of the East, the same cute librarians worked for years, they were poorly dressed and day after day, year after year old with me. The playful girls were more warm and turned into women who were preoccupied with the family, then into the intelligent elderly ladies. Inhalation of book dust informed their eyes the color of peace and humility with fate.

* * *

Stockholm stands on granite, and everything there is solid, durable. There such heavy doors are not made for flimsy people. To cope with them, Swedish babies are born with callouses. And adult hard workers there are pot -bellied ones and with a mustache mustache right from the 19th century. In the local historical museum there is a sign with this warning: cruel Vikings are not us, but we, Swedes, are good and kind. But we, good and good, although we observed neutrality during the Second World War, are still sinful - because we allowed German compositions to rush on our land. And these trains brought death to people.

Such work on mistakes delights me.

* * *

On the Yugoslav machine "Unis" I printed a lot of my works. I got so close with her that even the transition to a computer did not make me throw it out. How can a historical monument be thrown into a landfill? When in 2010 I arrived in Serbia to present the “Book of Japanese Symbols” translated there, I saw my native “Unis” at the local librarian. I wanted to hug both the librarian and its machine - we had a common past. Serbia is generally an amazing country, there everyone wants to hug. After the lecture in the same library, a woman who saw the views came up to me, handed a business card and said without any preparation: “I am not against you become my husband.” On a business card, her profession was indicated: a psychologist. Alas, on this day I was not destined to hug.

* * *

Edik Kulpin loved the warmth and the scientific discipline that he called a sociocal history. She is engaged in the relationship of man and nature. That year, Edik arranged a conference next to Tuapse. Here, a dozen people on the shore of the warm Black Sea gathered in the break. Sepaled. But instead of enjoying the sun and the sea, they made up the sunbeds in the circle and talked about what worried: about global warming, about human intervention in the affairs of nature and God ... The words “catastrophe”, “disaster” and “anthropogenic factor” were broken from heavy lips. For a month hot beach sand, a marital couple of middle -aged years passed by. We looked at us with an undisguised fright. Overlapping the discussion, I came to a sympathetic female voice: "Pogorelsy, probably."

Alexander Meshcheryakov