Victor Sonkin. Play it again

Play it again
Edgar L. Doctorow. Ragtime. Translation by V. Aksenov

Victor Sonkin

Publication date: August 31, 2001

At the beginning of this century, Peary did not go to conquer the South Pole. There are no places left in the world that are worth conquering. There is an American Antarctic station at the South Pole. The Stars and Stripes flag flutters above it. Or it stands like a stake, frosty from the sixty-degree frost. Piri would be pleased.

At the beginning of this century, Mother's Younger Brother did not bother with pyrotechnic trifles. He sat in his locked room, ate hamburgers and Coca-Cola, and hacked government websites out of idleness. He quickly became bored with his job as a programmer at Father's company. He found his beloved on the Internet, and she tried in vain to change her email addresses: he always found her. He jerked off, successively placing the bodies of different beauties from porn sites against her photographic head. Otherwise, he remained completely harmless and never saw in the flesh the one for whom he sighed. Then he became the webmaster of an Arab terrorist organization. When his masterminds turned him over to the FBI after a particularly bloody explosion, he went to prison. From there he gave terse interviews to computer magazines. He treated the numerous hacker groups that staged campaigns and demonstrations in his support with indifference.

At the beginning of this century, Dr. Freud did not become the founder of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, he said, was founded by Freud a hundred years ago, and we are still dealing with the consequences. Sexuality has long been removed from the sphere of the subconscious. Psychoanalysts, who have multiplied like uncut rabbits, torment clients with questions about moms and dads. They do not notice that the psyche of modern man has long been controlled by something else. Under the guise of sex, it crawled into the subconscious, and the task of psychoanalysis at the beginning of this century is to find out what it is. He called the new entity the word "uns", went to America and stayed there forever.

At the beginning of this century, American Jews do not buy Ford cars. They remember that Ford was a virulent anti-Semite. It's unpleasant for them.

At the beginning of this century, illusionist David Copperfield (real name Dodik Kotkin) sat alone in a luxurious room at another luxury hotel. He bit the nails on his beautiful long fingers. He didn't care what the manicurist said. He thought that a hundred years ago Harry Houdini (real name Erich Weiss) performed such tricks that people still remember him. And in a hundred years no one will remember about him, Dodik Copperfield.

At the beginning of this century, African-American musician Coalhouse Walker saw his black Ford Scorpio hit by a fire truck rushing to a call. He did not go to the police to demand justice. He turned to a journalist he knew, and he wrote a series of articles about racism among firefighters. When a rival newspaper discovered that the driver of the truck was a black man, it did not change the situation: the fire chief was white. He was forced to apologize on a national talk show. He lost his job, divorced his wife and moved to Arizona. There he died two years later from cirrhosis of the liver. Coalhouse Walker continued to receive lucrative offers from music managers for almost a year. Его композиция "We Ain't No Black Niggers" две недели держалась на шестом месте в чартах.

At the beginning of this century, Emma Goldman lost the ideals of her sixties youth. Free love and contraception, she said from the pulpit of a large East Coast university, were just the new tricks of the man's world. The ugly students applauded wildly. Emma Goldman has been working on Sex: The Ultimate Deception for six years. Three New York publishing houses competed for the right to receive the manuscript.

At the beginning of this century, Archduke Franz Ferdinand came to Sarajevo. He toured with interest the impressive UN mission building - a former student dormitory - and gave a press conference at the Holiday Inn. The peace process is going well, he said, and the international community will not allow the Balkans to become the fuse of a new world war. The liberal Bosnian press complained that public money was again being spent on welcoming a third-rate duke from a second-rate Western country.

At the beginning of this century, a widowed Jewish immigrant was unable to interest Hollywood with his scripts: they were written in Russian, and there was not enough money for a translator. He died in poverty, remembering how well he had lived in Soviet Latvia. By this time, his grown daughter could not talk to him: he had never learned English, and she had already forgotten her native language. They explained themselves by drawing pictures in a notebook.

Don't play ragtime so fast. This doesn’t make him feel good, can’t you see? Play it again, Sam. Just slow down, for God's sake, slow down.

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