Ups and downs

The Publishing House "New Literary Review" represents the book of Tatyana Shcherbina , "Research. Collection of stories. "

“But how not to give up a hawk circling in the sky, a poisonous creature lurking under the bush, a psycho who came out of the fog, took a knife out of his pocket? Just carefully look out the window overlooking the nearby streets or to the whole big world - the global network window, sit in an ambush and everyone is in its entirety armed. ” The stories collected in the book of Tatyana Shcherbin are devoted, at first glance, far from each other in the topics: from the memories of perestroika Russia to series and ancient Greek philosophy. However, they are connected by a common goal - an attempt to unravel the course of time, inexorably next from one disaster to another. The heroes of these stories are peculiar mirrors in which you can consider a variety of ways to live difficult times. The author records the most important points of our common and his personal history, then returning to memory several decades ago, then turning his view to the alarming modernity. Tatyana Shcherbina is a poet, prose writer, essayist, journalist, translator, author of the books “0-0 (zero-zero)” (1991), “Life without” (1997), “Escape of meaning” (2008), “Petament of the individual” (2010), “Chronicle” (2017).

We offer to read one of the stories included in the book.

Two types of deserts

From my window, and even more so from the viewing platform of the balcony, I see everything, that is, Moscow in the endless change of its scenery - from the church where Pushkin was married and from which the bell tower had recently grown up to the “books” of the new Arbat laid in my early childhood. After all, Moscow is the theater of architecture, where every year old scenery are removed, new ones are placed.

I see the Kremlin tips. The red star of one tower and the golden onion of the bell tower of Ivan the Great. And from somewhere from there it is often, it is not known for what occasion, the salute shoots. I used to see the two towers of the Kremlin, imagined how they are at war - this is an eternal Soviet theme: that everything is explained by the conflict of two towers, pigeons and hawks. I also see pigeons, in the rain, they, in the form of a bas -relief, are tightly seated on the cornice of the British embassy’s house, it is close, and my closed courtyard is opened on my view, where they drink tea and make a barbecue in the summer.

A few years ago, one of the towers absorbed Lukoil, having built a tall house for his people - at least they said that it was their house. All these years, the house seems empty, but he fenced himself so that between the two fences (also a new house), only a not very well -fed person can go through, but the open umbrella is no longer placed. The fences are tall, hands are short to raise the dome of the umbrella above. We assume that the pushed tower is pigeon, and one hawk was left. Or vice versa. The view from the window means a lot. What you look at - you think about that.

Once a year, I find myself in the Jewish desert, in a settlement, fenced with prickly (and maybe not prickly) wire, I live in a guest house. From there, as from the window of any local house, and just when you walk around the territory, the same view is the same stone desert. Somewhere the tree grows, somewhere the desert goes down or slightly hills, but these are minor blots, marks in a monotonous infinity. The sea is also infinite and homogeneous, but it moves, shimmers, makes noise, here is dead silence and immobility. To identify the signs of life - you look closely: to dry blades, to palm trees and acacia, mysteriously growing from stones, to the path of ants, climbing the wall of the house with large black beetles. Harmless. They say that snakes, scorpions and scolopenders are found here, but they did not meet me - God was merciful. Here God is disposed of, religious settlement.

I go in a long skirt and a closed jacket, as expected. And I think that life here is a contrasting substance implanted into the void of the desert, juice, color, pulp, which only miraculously could appear in this dryness and isolation of the earth. Life is not like a granted reality, but as an incredible event. And people of the local give birth and give birth to the children, as if not only to fulfill the commandment “DRIVE and multiply”, but in order to also affirm life in this lifeless wasteland. Another and still be surprised to be the very opportunity to be, a gift, and not the natural course of things, as it seems in the context of civilization.

Civilization, on the contrary, restrains the "nature". Life in it at every step, the people themselves and created, and the original, biological, a person in itself - is akin to that monotonous desert. Just eat. His dignity is what he creates. Racan, “Primordial Earth” is a long -term stage. Moscow was once a swamp-also a desert, only wet and viscous, with clouds of mosquitoes. There were also forests with wolves and bears - and here is what I look at now. Slender streets, exquisite buildings, cunning bridges, herds of cars, a rumble of life that never calms down. In the city, the Creator is a man, in the desert - God.

The houses in the settlement are different, but one color, that in French is called “broken white”, and in Russian is expressed by the addition of “cotton”: yellowish, beige. In Greece, where I also visit every year, the sea is blue with a white trim of the lamb, the clouds are the sky, white with a blue rim is at home. And here are the shades of the desert color - so it could be called and the dice of dwellings set by a row, two tones lighter. Little boys in checkered shirts constantly run out of them, girls in multi -colored dresses, men and boys over thirteen years old in black costumes and white shirts, women in dark clothes and hats or wigs come out degree. No one should see what a married woman has a married woman. They have a temptation (at the same time saving on a hairdresser).

Everyone or there is such: Muslims in black with slots for the eyes, European women until the twentieth century could not show ankle, and a deep neckline - it is possible, the Indianes can not be a neckline, but a stomach can be. In many tribes, the body is completely naked, but should be decorated. The object of temptation is convention, each has its own. And men, it turns out, are never seductive and nowhere.

There are no temptations in the desert, only willpower and fear - God and before the poisonous enemies of the human race. At night, jackals also howl with otherworldly female voices. They are not terrible, they are not suitable for houses, but the sound itself reminds of the limbs, especiallyness and mission of human life. About the danger to turn into such jackals. Here they believe in reincarnation. Still, it happens, sirens howl are real danger, shelling. We must immediately run to the bomb shelter, and everyone knows how many seconds are required in order to run from home to the nearest. Fifteen seconds in reserve - the time from turning on the siren to the fall of the rocket. Until they fell, God was merciful.

And now I look at this landscape - and I feel like a link of a long chain of the genus, which hangs with a multi -colored garland over this dull desert and thanks the creator for being glowing, not interrupted and raised so highly. There are no enthusiasm, despair, compromises - here the kingdom of the ideal, which needs to be striving for: so that everything should be written in the original book, here a person is modest and in a sense is a symbiosis of a small child and an old man. The child is not separated from the parents, they are his divine patrons, mentors, breadwinner. The old man knows the laws of life, all the passions, fears and dreams addressed to the future, he has behind him. A resident of the Big City is the impudent demiurge, who will try to knock out of the saddle all his life, if he surrenders, then he is a helpless sufferer. And this is in two ways of life, secular and religious, the common one cannot give up.

From my balcony, I see the main Soviet skyscraper - the Foreign Ministry. Unlike the architecturally variable Moscow, his relations with the world are unchanged from the darkness of centuries when this territory was called Tartar, Tartaria, Gogh and Magog and horrified all the peoples of ancient civilizations and inherited it. When I look at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it seems to me that I am all in the same desert of Tartar, which is all enemies and she is all enemy.

I saw a Foreign Ministry without a tower when she was taken to restoration after a loud raid on Ukraine - the tower could not stand it. I saw with the old tower, gray, in the color of a spraying building, I see with a new, bleached, but now my head seems separate from the body that remained gray. The old gray body, enormous, like a tyrannosaurus, says: “Do not forget why we are the largest country in the world. Because our ancestors gradually conquered the world. ” And the new white head replies: “Now everything is different, you need to act secretly, otherwise they will tear your head off. Since I am a head, the prospect of being divorced does not suit me. ” “The same head was torn off - and nothing, we live,” objects the body. All night in the windows of stone tyrannosaur, light is on fire. I look at these windows and hear the teams replace each other: “Full forward”, “full back”. Between the two teams, those who performed this or another manage to die in distant countries.

No, I don't look there anymore. I look in the opposite direction: where Pushkin and Pushkinskaya, theaters, once the actor’s house, in the restaurant of which a cheerful theater life was buzzing at night. Now there are some shops. And the actor’s house itself moved to Arbat, and the cheerful theatrical life did not spend the night in it. She is no more, the theater is arrests. The written solidarity of the theater community with the arrested remains lying under the cloth of pieces of paper, possibly under the comments of those who are clinked under this, “when the theater was serfs, this was right.” So the theater is now a sad topic. Of course, there are a lot of theaters, and the audience walks and rejoices, but everyone knows that something is wrong as with the head of culture himself is not at all like that. But the authorities have changed: it is not afraid of any revelations or shame - only arrest. He, his bosses, is also now regularly arrested.

All this knowledge prevents the idyllically contemplating the panorama of the city center - more and more buildings are marked with misfortune or shame, and there are places marked with horror. Psychologically, all this turns into a desert, where jackals howl, where the poisonous owners of the desert can appear on the threshold. There is no one to complain - just to be on the alert. The strange paradox of today's Moscow - everything is in it for Epicurean joy, it is polished and embarrassed, the youth is cheerful and relaxed, not a zone with shepherds, as it was, but the hawk is already methodically cutting a pigeon carcass.

I look out the window and I see neither scorpions nor scolopendra, but I see a beautiful city, but I know that they are here and that their population is growing. I see the New Arbat “Book”, which is located the editors of “Echo of Moscow”. And there came from Israeli deserts a crazy with a knife and stabbed the girl. Psycho, without saying a word, decided that it was enough for them to indulge in the dreams of their Napoleonic greatness, it was time to become surgeons with or without gorns - the world has become a crazy house, which means that they are power, and not those who imagine themselves normal. Normal repeat: do not give up. But how not to give up a hawk circling in the sky, a poisonous creature lurking under the bush, a psycho who came out of the fog, took a knife out of his pocket? Just carefully look out the window overlooking the nearby streets or to the whole big world - the global network window, sit in an ambush and everyone is in its entirety armed. The feeling that life is beautiful accompanies me more than ever before, because at any moment it can become much less beautiful and completely disappear.