Was it?

On August 19, 1991, I met in the writing house of creativity - Maleevka.

On that day, my ticket ended, and I was going to Moscow, where things were waiting for me. The wife and little grandson remained for another period, and I left. Things were collected in the evening, the car was ordered at ten in the morning: I was going to go immediately after breakfast.

Usually I wake up at eight hours. But that morning, some kind of power raised me two hours earlier. Realizing that I wouldn’t fall asleep, he quickly pulled jeans, a shirt and carefully, on tiptoe, so as not to wake his wife and grandson, he went out into the corridor. And he immediately stumbled upon Yura Davydov, who beckoned me with a finger and in a whisper - although in the corridor we were alone and no one could hear us - asked:

- Do you already know?

And only then I saw that on him, as they say, there was no face.

He quickly retold everything that he had just heard on the radio, and I immediately felt how the old, long -forgotten fear moved under the spoon and quickly began to fill my entire chest cage.

But I am invigorated. He told Yura that this was not long. From strength for six months. Maybe for a year.

“No,” Yura shook his head. - This is the end.

The second person I saw that morning was Sergo Lominadze. He was also completely killed by the news and reacted to my sedative speeches with irritation.

“Nobody will support them,” I was not too sluggishly, I myself did not believe it, I tried to reassure it.

- Even as they support! - he was fried. And he repeated - word for word - what I already heard from Yura Davydov:

- No, this is the end.

I was still trying to invigorate, but I sucked under the spoon. The old fear made itself felt.

Not knowing where to put myself, I trudged into the dining room. My table neighbor - a youthful, with a short gray -haired hedgehog writer -science fiction in a denim jacket - was surprised:

- What are you so early today?

“And you, I see, do not know anything,” I said. - We have a coup d'etat.

In a nutshell, I retold a sad news, expecting to hear about the same in response that I had already heard from Sergo and Yura. But the science fiction writer reacted to my message differently.

- Benedict Mikhailovich! he said, shrugging his shoulders. - After all, this is agony!

“Agony is agony,” I thought. “But how much will it last? And to which of us will it take her to survive?”

Yura and Sergo still infected me with their pessimism.

When I got into the car, Yura took my wife aside and rather impressively advised her to take her grandson and go to Moscow with me.

“At such moments,” he said, “close people should not be separated.”

But the wife only waved her hand in response.

All the way I thought about how differently reacted to the events of Yura, Sergo, I, my table neighbor and my wife. The scheme was built quite clear. Yura was older than me. And he was an old prisoner, a camp. Sergo was the same with me, but he was the son of the same Lominadze, who was so annoying to Stalin that even after his violent death he brought his old scores with him, contemptuously mentioning in a “brief course” of some political freaks like Lominadze, Shatskin and others. ” And Sergo himself, since the age of fifteen, was picked up by Stalin's camps. It is no wonder that I looked into the future not as gloomy as them. The science fiction writer was a man of another generation: for fifteen years, and maybe even twenty younger than me. This was explained by his reaction.

The harmony of my scheme was slightly violated by my wife. But her opinion could not be taken into account. She was only important to her: for the child to be in the fresh air. And there at least the grass is not to grow!

Tanks moved along the Minsk highway to meet us. Really leave? No, the same long tank column moved in the opposite direction, to Moscow.

I was depressed again. But, having arrived at the White House, he saw a overturned trolley, a barricade - and again was slightly cheerful.

The long circular paths with my taxi driver still managed to get to my house. At the entrance, my son met me. Having easily read everything that I felt on my face, he, grabbing my suitcase, sedatively said:

- Dad, what are you worried about? This is for three days!

My son was about as much younger than the science writer as a science fiction writer was younger than me. And the next morning I learned that the son of my editor, who was seventeen - that is, he was younger than my son for the same fifteen years - did not discuss the situation at all, but simply phoned his friends -agents and, not succumbing to the persuasion of his parents, they together went to the White House, where they spent the night - and the next night, and the next night in anticipation of the assault.

The scheme I built has thus gained final harmony. I was very proud of this home-made sociological study, I told everyone about it, but I did not attach much importance to him, realizing that there was still too little material for serious conclusions at my disposal.

In any case, I did not even remember him, when - a few months later - I had a small verbal skirmish with Anatoly Rybakov.

On August 19, the “Independent Gazeta” turned to writers, public figures and other famous people of our country with a request to answer the question: how do they relate to the appeal of the GKChP? Among the most diverse answers, Rybakov’s answer was printed there, the slurred meaning of which came down to the fact that he could not say anything definite about what happened, since he has too little information.

Our skirmish began on a completely different reason. But in the course of her, I remembered him and this shameful, in my opinion, answer.

“Seventeen -year -old boys,” I said in steadily, “there was enough information to understand what was happening, and you were not enough with your life experience?”

As for the information and understanding of the essence of what was happening, I, of course, was right. But as for life experience ... After all, it was the life experience of Anatoly Naumovich who prompted him that timid, cautious answer. He perfectly understood what was happening! And for sure he would have managed to find clear and clear words to answer. But he did not answer that question of the correspondent: he answered the survivor, a longtime, since his first exile, since 1934, having a dozing fear at the bottom of his consciousness.

No, I did not have to reproach Anatoly Naumovich with the more evasive answer. It was necessary to recall my sociological experiment, about the difference in generations and biographies.

But I ran ahead. And on that day, on August 19, neither to me, nor my son, unlike seventeen -year -olds, and it never occurred to me to go to the White House to join those who were going to spend the night there in order to prevent the assault on the Hecachepists.

But in the morning of the 20th we went there.

The square in front of the White House was full of people. In the crowd, I saw several familiar faces, including those whom I did not expect to see here. Not far from me stood Leva Kopelev, and next to him was Kronid Lubarsky. It was like a dream: Kopelev at that time lived in Cologne, and Lyubarsky in Munich. How did they suddenly end up in Moscow? (Then it turned out that exactly on that very day they flew to Moscow for some previously planned meeting with "our foreign compatriots.")

But not only that - everything that happened around was like a dream. And tanks on the streets of the hometown, and the crowd of many thousands not frightened by these tanks ...

The rally began.

The side of the side with me stood a man of about forty, with whom we did not talk to - they were simply transferred from time to time with short remarks, expressing our full unanimity. And at some point I asked him:

- Are you scared? After all, if they defeat ... Do you understand that they will do with all of us then?

“I understand,” he nodded. “But if they win, I don't want to live.”

Somewhere he is now, that man? Is it alive? And if he is alive, what does he think about what he feels today, twenty years later, when it turned out that they still won?

Benedict Sarnov

Source: facets