Morning after the coup

Designer Kirill Kuvyrdin lived in Leninsky, in the cooperative house of architects. Azamat and I went to him. They drank. Then Cyril went to bed, we sat in the kitchen, talked about something, and thought that it would be nice to take another vodka. It is unclear why, in those years it was customary to run after the addition in the evenings, now, in my opinion, no one is doing.

In short, Azik and I thought that it would be nice to take more, taking into account the fact that we had one dollar with one piece of paper and two rubles with two pieces of paper. For two rubles we were taken to Arbat, because we did not know other night stores. What was the name of this store? I don’t remember, but do not think what I mean by the Gastron “Smolensky”. It was a little further deep into Arbat.

A policeman stood on the porch, and it was to him that we sold our dollar. After 26 years, I poorly remember at which course, but it seems for thirty -one rubles. We took the battles at a commercial price, a package of juice, and we still had. We went to the machine to call Pavlov (Bear was a cooperator, he published a brochure about taxes, as well as Osip Mandelstam and other poets).

The machine did not work, we went to another booth, there the device was also turned off. We went around two or three machine guns, and everyone did not work! Azamat joked: "Well, the Communists made a revolution and turned off all the machines."

It was a warm night, it was an empty garden ring, Mishka could not call, and without a call to go inconveniently - suddenly he had personal life.

We took a wheelbarrow and returned to Leninsky to Kuvyrdin (we prudently did not slam the door). We sat with the azamat in the kitchen near Cyril, drank vodka, drank it with juice and talked about commercial exchanges. Without understanding anything in the economy, we believed that the development of commercial exchanges was flooding life -giving blood into the country's economic arteries and it will be able to stand from the knees. We really wanted it.

And in the morning we woke up, there was a hangover, I wanted to drink, we drank cold tea. I needed to work in the editor, Azamat also needed somewhere, and we went to the subway.

In the subway, we met a former classmate of Azamat from a law facet. He held on to the handrail with a very mysterious face and led his eyes in different directions.

"Happy New Year!" - said the classmate in a significant voice.
- What's happened?
- Do you know what? - Pasha had an arrogant expression on his face, like a person who recognized something first.
- Come on, the stokers already.
- The red -button made a coup. State of emergency. In the Park of Culture, tanks.

Azamat and I looked at each other. Azamat was in a leather jacket and glass glasses. He had the most anti -Soviet facial expression in this metro car.

We, as you already understood, were driving just along the red branch and went out in the culture park. Near the sixteenth -century residential chambers there were three armored personnel carriers. On the roof of one of them, a sergeant smoked, in the appearance of a demobilization: in stuck pants and with dandy hard shoulder straps.

I ran to the machine and called the editor. Muratov picked up the phone. He spoke in an irritated voice, as if I were distracting him from something important, however, it was so.

- Dima, what to do?
- Do what you want ...

The answer offended me. In another way, I imagine a relationship in a good, coordinated team. Well, if you do what you want, so be it. We still decided to go to Pavlov. Bear lived in the courtyard of Neopalimovsky Lane, in an ordinary Khrushchev. When we climbed to him to the fifth floor, Azamat wittily remarked: “We argue, he is sitting in the kitchen now, drinks the whisk and listening to“ freedom ”?

We stopped at the door and looked at each other. We just could not call, not the moment. Azamat knocked on the door with his fist. Outside the door, the voice of the Dictor of Radio "Freedom" was heard. When Azik knocked a second time, his voice was silent, silence was established, Azamat knocked again and again. It was quiet, then the floorboards creaked in the hallway.

I said in a low, changed voice:

- Comrade Pavlov! Open! We know that you are at home!

Silence.

- Pavlov! Open! This is in your interests - the Azamat continued our innocent draw.

But I still regretted Pavlov and said, they say, okay, Mikhas, open it, we came.

Pavlov stood in the hallway in his underpants, a gas gun was put behind the elastic band behind the elastic band. We went to the kitchen and drank the whisk. On the Radio "Freedom" they talked about the fact that some State Emergency Committee was created, and Gorbachev in Foros was declared patients.

“They lie,” Mishka said weightily about the disease of his namesake.

We drank more whiskey. What to do? It was a question of the day. We decided to go to Bob Greenoll, who worked in the BBC Corcourt and could advise us in case we would need to cross the border and ask for political asylum.

Bear did not go - he had a circulation in the warehouse and he had to be transferred to the implementation. Pavlov was a romantic of commerce, and believed that it was still possible.

Bob lived on Baumanskaya with his young wife Oksana, a party -minded person and a secular lady ...

Oh, I almost forgot: when we left Pavlov to the garden ring, we met another cooperator, Gene Filippov, nicknamed Genius, from the Faculty of Economics. I knew him at the university, once I came to him with a three -liter jar of beer and he told me all the “capital” of Karl Marx in one night, in the end I received four in political economy.

The genius was all some kind of dull. In his hand, he had a shabby plastic bag with a large Marlboro logo. We lit a cigarette, and prayed significantly, looking at the armored personnel carriers. Then Gene launched his hand into the bag and rustled the contents. He took out a pack of five -ruble bills, tattered by a bank piece of paper.

- Guys, do you need money? Take it, I probably will not come in handy so much!

We hugged and rushed to Smolensky. On Baumanskaya, to Bob with Oksana, we arrived by taxi, with generous gifts and in the raised mood of the spirit: we were ready to fight the communist regime.

Bob and Oksana sat at the TV and watched the press conference of the GKChP. During the press conference, our classmate Tanya Malkina asked her famous question about the coup. Yanaev shook his hands, no matter how trite it sounds today.

It turned out that our friends were waiting for the arrival of familiar girls from London. This visit was planned for a long time, so coincided. Soon a bell rang - the girls called from the Sheremetyevsky machine gun.

“Let's not tell them anything,” Azamat suggested, slyly shiny with glasses, and we turned off the TV.

(However, while the girls were driving, we listened a little “freedom”, and found out that Yeltsin announced the resistance to the patchy and urged everyone to come to the White House.)

And so, Betsi and Harriet arrived. Betsy was a busty blonde, lively and smart. I could call her a typical sex tourist one, but it is somehow embarrassed, and at least I changed her name here in the story. Harriet is more difficult. She lived in rural areas in a real castle (I heard that she lives there now), and wrote poetry. Harriet was a real English poetess! She was silent more, hid a little behind Betsy, but smiled very nicely, with her foggy English smile. Our alignment with Azamat was clear at first glance, without any discussion.

We drank rum and did a little Small Talk, and then Betsy asked - guys, where is you in Moscow in Moscow? We can’t wait for a walk and see Moscow!

Well, of course! Walk! Azamat explained in detail that usually at this time of the day Muscovites walk on the Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, near the parliament building, which is called the White House, just like in America, Hehe.

The taxi driver, having learned that we were going to Krasnopresnenskaya, warned that he was carrying us for free. Azamat raised two fingers - Victory.

When we unloaded from a taxi, Betsi and Harriet squealed with surprise, delight and fear - they already erected barricades there, some flags and slogans were visible, a rally was on the porch of the White House. We still have mercy and read the girls a brief political information about what was happening.

We went to the porch - nothing was blocked, and we could move freely. They saw friends, Azamat took a bottle of the Bulgarian "Sunny Beach" from his bag. I began to open it, but opened it somehow awkwardly, dropped a step, and the neck broke off at the bottle ... Well, you can say, opened it.

However, when I frantically tried to catch a bottle, I cut my palm, quite strongly (I still have a scar). Blood went. And then Harriet turned to me, with all the determination of the English poetess. She took up the hem of her long, beautiful purple skirt, lifted it, and under the skirt a snow -white silk lift was discovered. She took up him with both hands and tore off a big flap!

While Harrit was lining my hand, I whispered to her:

- Oh no, who, you do -lave to do this ...
- I am happy to do house for Russian freedom!

Eh, guys, you would see these huge brown eyes that looked at me at that moment ...

* * *

But no, we did not remain to protect the White House. Azamat and I thought that if we are shot right now, then we would be to blame for the deaths of two completely innocent subjects of the English queen, and we could not send them home either. Well, you understand - many factors hesitated on the scales. In short, we went to the Kremlin, see what is happening in the vicinity of Red Square.

We descended along Gorky Street in a huge stream of people, greeted acquaintances, sipped the Bulgarian “Sunny Coast”, held Betsy and Harriet by the hands, and it seemed to us that we were participating in an event of a colossal significance, and we did not feel sand in this stream at all, we were participants and heroes of anxious, but great events and were ready for everything.

Manezhnaya was blocked by a chain of soldiers in helmets. The soldiers had frightened children's faces. Behind the chain, a gabesh provocateur in a checkered shirt was raging. He lifted up people who accumulated in front of the chain, literally shouted obscenities and insulted them. He shouted to me - “Well, what came here! You have your hands in blood! " - And he was right, of course, but why he screamed all this, I still do not understand. We translated everything to our friends, but we gradually became bored, the evening came, stars performed in a pure Moscow sky, and we decided to go to Kuvyrerdin on Leninsky.

We arrived on the subway and on the way from the University, on the Stroitelov Street, Harriet said that while she was traveling, poems occurred to her.

We walked along the Builders drowning in August greenery, Betsy ate ice cream, Harriet has a chant for reading poems without rhyme, we pretended that we understand it well, but of course I don’t remember the lines now, although I am sure that these verses were beautiful.

In the kitchen sat gloomy Kuvyrdin (now he has his own designer company in America). He said something in the style of Gesha from the "Brillant hand": "Everything was gone! It is gone! This is the end of everything! " And we comforted him, and said that the White House has a powerful focus of resistance, and tomorrow we will do everything possible so that communism would not pass.

Then Betsy and Azik went into the free room, then Cyril left, and Harriet and I were left alone in a spacious kitchen. Harriet's brown eyes were full of tears, they dripped on her purple skirt, and she asked how now we would all live here in Russia. She was not at all worried about how she herself would return home if the borders were overlapsed. Her heart was full of pain and love for this huge, strange, crazy and unhappy country.

I reassured her ... and you know what? I did not have a drop of sensual attraction to this young and beautiful woman, I experienced only love and tenderness, and stroked her head, and then we did not undress on the knitted Kuvirdinsky sofa, and quietly fell asleep, hugging each other with children's virgin hugs.

And the next morning, early in the morning I went to the editor, and a completely different story began. Harriet I have never seen again.

How is she doing there, in her castle?

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