Translated material
Kazarosis
The chapter is the twelfth
Soft sign
21
In nine -story houses, on the other side of the street, lights went out, only the windows of the entrances with yellow overwhelming wells stood in the dark.
Behind these houses there was a zoo, broken on the site of the old cemetery for eminent citizens. Under the cells and enclosures lay officials in the rank not lower than the state adviser, merchants of the 1st Guild, retired generals and colonels, owners of iron-bearing and medical-smelly factories, doctors with German surnames. The place was good, inhabited, with a view of the Kama and the Zarechny gave, and at the same time almost in the center of the city. Svechnikov then decided that Kazarosis should lie here, but, fortunately, they did not agree with him in the foreign executive committee. It was not possible to obtain permission, or all these lions, bears, monkeys, rabbits, who surrounded the tiny woman painted by Yakovlev, would have copied and shove over her head for decades.
***
She buried her in the main city cemetery. It spread over the fugitives over the River Egoshikha, on the edge of the wide log, which separated the central part of the city from the settlement of the cannon factory. The graves have long got out from under the canopy of Lip, surrounding a single-faith all-Site church with its once modest graveyard, and with two unequal wings slid along the slope, flowing clearly outlined rectangles of foreign cemeteries. On the left was Jewish, closer to the church - Tatar. In his rich part, there were tetrahedral pillars crowned with stone turban, also displaced of stone, a mossy Arabic ligature on plates was green. The other, large half is full of plywood or tin crescent on the poles and pegs randomly dug into the ground. Between the extreme of them and the magnificent necropolis of the Czech legionnaires who died from typhoid in local hospitals, the language of recent Orthodox burials wedged. At the very tip, on a mound made of dark, not yet dried clay, a fresh pine cross with a scorched nail was whitewashed: 'Zinaida Georgievna Kazaroza-Scheshsheva, an actress. Mind. July 1, 1920. '
When born, it is unknown. Perhaps she is always only fifteen years old. No one should know how many of them really were. Apparently, enough to not indicate the year of birth. A real woman hides her age even after death.
“We were going here in the same car,” Neumann said nearby. - In Glazov at the station we went with her for boiling water, in line she told me a joke. The German goes by rail and asks a fellow traveler: why are all stations called the same in Russia? He is surprised: how is it, they say? The German explains: at all stations the same thing is written: boiling water, boiling water, boiling water ... In the morning they arrived in place. The train has not stopped yet, we are standing with her by the window, suddenly she says: 'The boiling water station. We arrived. ' I look, she has the whole face in tears.
From here, enveloping the same, not yet duned mounds, reached back to the church, to the three -stage arch of cemetery gates, where transparent girls traded paper flowers, and the poor sat in hot dust. There was an editorial breach drawn by the globe.
They moved with a goose. Ahead was Vagin, even on the way here, who managed to retell his night conversation with Osipov in all details. Now it was clear whom Kazaroza saw in the back rows, but could not remember.
“We sewed everything there in the morning,” Neumann, who was walking behind, said quietly. - They did not find a revolver.
- Maybe someone lived before you? - suggested Svechnikov.
- It is unlikely. We started dutifully.
- It turns out that he shot no gunpowder?
- It is very possible. In any case, he still has not admitted. It stands on the fact that there was someone else in the yard.
- And who could it be?
- Don't know. Varankin disappears, until the morning he sat in our basement.
However, there is hope that gunpowder is still recognized. If not, Karavaev will do this business.
- What are you?
- They call me to Moscow. An hour later a train.
We went to the central alley. The blackened wooden crosses were replaced by forged, or even cast, cast -iron. There were fences, bars, benches, mourning gypsum virgins with broken noses, pedestals with marble urns full of last year's leaves, family crypts similar to mineral water pavilions, but even here the tombstone of Platonov was erected near the road itself. Sikorsky considered him his teacher.
Platonov was a merchant of the 2nd guild, the owner of a shoe store and a dozen shoe workshops. Esperanto, he became interested in old age, but with such a passion that the heirs tried to declare him crazy when he bequeathed almost all his fortune to promote the ideas of Dr. replacement. Part of this money was now in the bank of Friedman and Ertla in London. Platonov sold his shoes with a half discount on his Amikaro. Ads of this were published in the journal 'International Language', orders flocked to him from everywhere, up to Moscow and St. Petersburg. All Russian Esperantists wore his boots. It happened that by these boots they recognized each other in a street crowd.
“A telegram came this morning,” Numan explained. - Alferiev, it turns out, was hiding in Moscow.
- He was arrested?
- He shot himself during his arrest.
Outside the gates, he signaled the car.
- Come on, I will throw you to the theater.
“Thank you,” Svechnikov refused. - I have my own transport.
Somewhere in the foliage, a tit was sadly squeaked. According to bright greenery, Lip the shadow from the bell tower stretched to the log. There, in the poor land, not like this black and fatty, lay a dead Tahitan, a magic bird, Alice, who was afraid of mice. The man who gave her a cat survived her for a day.
She sang about him:
This pink house,
Where did we live with you
Where we were happy
Our quiet fate.
From now on, he knew where this small house is located, over which river this pink light poured.
Neumann left, Svechnikov remained standing in front of Platonov's tombstone.
A granite cross with Shcherbins from the bullets that remained since a year and a half ago, the fighters of the Tribunal company, have been holding the defense at the edge of the log, growing up to stop stopping the Siberian shooters coming from the cannon factory. Under the sun, a half -stroke epitaph in Russian and on Esperanto dull the sun: Blessed are the glorious gentlemen in one language!
The date of death is 1912. The boots purchased with a discount have long been worn out, broken, only samovars are suitable.
And still - blessed!
***
The wake was arranged in one of the theater restrooms. Osipov modestly put a bottle of Kumysku on the table, Milashevskaya stroke the horse sausage and cut bread, making sandwiches by the principle that the sausage falls on the slices thinner. The thicker were good on their own. Plates and glasses took from the props. On a luxurious earthenware dish, sorry for the kutia with uniformly interspersed in it with priceless raisins. Luke and radishes were plenty.
Of the Esperantists, only Sikorsky was present, but in just the table there were fifteen people - St. Petersburg guesters, the local orchestra, the director of the theater with the face of a peasant and the eyes of a cocaine. He received this position as a former red partisan. A fragmented lady, who turned out to be a ticket, frankly poured to him. She did not see her in the cemetery of the candles, but now she alone appeared in a noisy silk mourning clearly from the dressing room and on this basis tried to lead the feast until the initiative intercepted the capital's baritone, similar to Kerensky. In a short speech, he remembered the deceased as an example of disinterested service to art and over the entire table reached out his glass to the director’s glass. The ticket had to remind him that they were not clinking at the commemoration.
The baritone swallowed the Osipov kumyshka and twisted with disgust.
- To die in this hole ... Brr-r!
Sikorsky stood up for the honor of his hometown in the only way accessible to him - began to list the names of those who were exiled here by an autocracy. The name of Yakov Sverdlov shone in this galaxy of the star of the first magnitude. Korolenko and Herzen, a couple of Decembrists and one student who stuck a proclamation against serfdom in Moscow adjoined Korolenko with Herzen, a couple of Decembrists. Then, with a gap of half a century, there was a Vologda clerk of cottage cheese, an impostor. Under Catherine the Great, he pretended to be Prince Golkondad, deceiving deprived of the throne and forced to escape to Russia. Cottage made poems in the Golkondad language, and in Russian - the story of his distant, ungrateful, but still infinitely sweet homeland. Then he was exposed, he was sent to the Urals and here at six months burned from the consumption, as if in fact he was the homeland of the country where he could not count the diamonds in stone caves, not to count the pearls in the sea of midday. Before his death, he prayed to Shiva and Brahma, but he took communion according to the Orthodox rite. He was buried in the Egoshikhinsky cemetery, like that student. It was understood that Kazarosis is not shameful to be in such a society.
- Dogs in the cemetery! I see? - suddenly asked the director of the theater.
He did not address anyone specifically, but several votes responded at once:
- See, Avenir Ivanovich!
- Yes, divorced them!
- Because they began to bury smallly. In the spring, the stink stood, Lord does not bring!
“There is a resolution of the provincial executive committee,” said the director, “to bury at a depth of at least three arshins.” But not fulfilled! Hence the dogs.
- Do the graves break? - guessed someone.
“They now know everything about us.” We were brutalized, so the beast to understand us - Ugh! They see through ... Here in the Cherdyn there was a case. Belyakov was knocked out from there, entered the city, two male male pester us. Skinny, torn, eating manure. And curl and curl! They are so and so! They will run away, pull - and again to me. Well, I think they are leading, not otherwise. He followed them. And what? They showed where the Pepelyaev officers are hiding. And then let's begging: pay, they say, commander, for the service.
“And what did you do with them?” the accompanist asked quietly.
- With the officers? Nothing, handed over to the headquarters. And I myself shot these male, with my hand. Something disgusted to me.
“Eternal memory to them,” Osipov said, taking out another bottle from the portfolio.
Of the money he had stolen by his wife, something seemed to be settled in his pocket and was spent not in vain.
- Bogatyr! - he answered Svechnikov’s request to tell something about Alferiev. - I threw a two -pound weight through the hut.
- Two -pound? - He did not believe the candles.
- Well, Pudovaya for sure.
- And through the roof?
- Could well. Such men like such women.
- Which?
“Here are tashenki,” Osipov showed with two fingers.
In the cemetery, he was already drunk, and now from the last forces he kept on his face a squeamish grimace of an excellent student, who knew everything that the teacher will explain in advance. This grimace always appeared in front of him before a complete disconnection.
It was useless to speak with him, and the candles sat down to Milashevskaya. She pointed with her eyes to Osipova:
- Money for the funeral brought that brunette.
- I already know. They were once familiar.
- Maybe this Zinochka wanted to see here?
- No, just five years ago she came here with Alferiev. I probably wanted to remember the past.
“Why didn't you tell me before?”
- I just found out.
“I also remembered one story from her childhood today,” said Milashevskaya. - Zinochka told me.
- Where did she come from?
- From Kronstadt.
- And who are the parents?
- Father of a marine engineer ... So, as a child, she did not eat well, and her grandmother cut her pies into small pieces, lined up a cup of milk and began to squeak for different voices for them: 'I am the first!' - "No, I'm the first! Let Zinochka eat me forward! ' Then she quickly rushed them. I also persuaded: they say, do not push, everything will be there.
- And why did they divorce Yakovlev?
- Because of Alferiev.
“Please,” Svechnikov asked, “tell me about him.”
- What to tell you?
- What do you want. Everything is interesting to me.
- Appearance?
- Yes. It is too.
- Well, as a man he is quite attractive. Bald, however, but this did not spoil him. Medium height, sinewy, albeit thin. Such a nervous body, very expressive in movements. And the face, on the contrary, is motionless. The facial expressions are the most banal - grin, squint, gaze from underneath. About four years ago, he became interested in Esperanto, led a circle of melodeckamation in the club of blind escarantants. Once, Zinochka brought me there to a rehearsal, and I thought that he himself resembles a blind man's death. But for all that - an actor. True, from failed. He and Zinochka began together with Meyerhold, in the house of interludes. There was such a theater in St. Petersburg, closed two years before the war.
“You are confusing something.” It existed back in the eighteenth year.
- Where?
- On the salt town. Panteleimonovskaya, two.
- This is the pale shadow of that house of interludes. He, the first, was on the gallery. There they and Zinochka came together ... You probably want to ask how he got on the stage with such facial expressions? I don’t know, somehow he managed. Moreover, at one time he was even a favorite of the public. Behind this stillness, the faces were seen by the restrained passion.
“Was she not?”
- Well, why? It was, only he did not know how to restrain her. At first he was an anarchist, then Socialist Revolutionaries. After the revolution, he was friends with the Bolsheviks, but soon he quarreled with them and left for Kyiv. I blew up some German general there.
“Fedmarshala Eichhorn,” said Svechnikov.
- That's it. Once Zinochka showed me his letter. He, you see, fundamentally did not write a soft sign after hissing at the end of the word and demanded the same from it. For some reason, it was important to him. In Ukraine, he fought with this soft sign, with the Germans, with the Bolsheviks, with someone else. Then Denikin began to advance, he went to fight with Denikin, and made peace with the Bolsheviks. When Denikin was defeated, the Bolsheviks again became bad. Zinochka, of course, tormented him in all these years.
“That's why she broke up with him?”
- No, it turned out somehow by itself. After the death of Chiki, she left the scene, and Alferiev wanted to draw her into the affairs of her party. He needed a wife-rifle. For such a role, Zinochka was the least.
“Did she love him?”
- At one time - very.
- And he is her?
- How can I tell you ... In that past life, he needed it. She complemented him, softened his stiffness. The conventions of the hostel then played a big role then than now. After the revolution, he had the need to have a soft sign with him. It only interfered with him. Do you understand?
Nodding, Svechnikov took out a ticket with verses written on the back:
I am a woman
But open my soul -
She is black and cold like ice ...
- Her handwriting? he asked.
- Yes ... Where did you get from?
- I dropped before the performance. I picked up, but I did not have time to give her, ”said Svechnikov.
I did not want to admit that I rummaged in her purse.
“It’s sad, but for sure,” Milashevskaya appreciated, reading. - It was in this state that she has been all the last months.
Around everything floated in tobacco smoke. Osipov already snoring his face to the table, a ticket with a view of the winner was on his knees with the director of the theater. The former partisan told her how he put in the place of pilots from an air detachment at the headquarters of the West Army.
“I tell them,” he shouted, clutching an invisible saber in his fist, “this is what victory is mined!” And not your gasoline stink!
The accompanist was inquired from Sikorsky, whether it was true that here you can cheaply buy a goat wool, the baritone admired the width of the Kama.
- Almost like Neva! he said.
They answered him:
- Wider! Wider!
“Yes, here's another thing,” Milashevskaya recalled. - The day before yesterday, Zinochka went to your club directly from the theater, and she had a handbag with her. I remember well. Do not know where she is?
“At Vagin,” said Svechnikov. - This is the guy who was with me today.
“And how can I get it?”
- What is she for you?
- So. For memory.
- Vagin is now in the editorial office, and his handbag is at his place. I will tell him to bring you to you. In the evening you will be at home?
- Today I have a concert in a garrison club. Better I myself will come to him when I get rid of it. Does he live far?
- Near. Let's draw, ”Svechnikov volunteered.
Finishing the drawing, he noticed Danevich in the doorway. He showed with signs that he needed to talk.
“Yesterday I ordered gunpowder to approach the Stefanovsky school,” he said when Svechnikov went out into his corridor. - Did he come?
- Yes. Why didn't you come?
- I could not. Mother became bad with her heart. I had to do in the injection.
- Do not lie.
- Honestly! I ran after the doctor.
Svechnikov pushed Danevich into a corner, grabbed his chest shirt and, pulling her up to the very throat, so that she got out of her pants from below, asked:
- Did you shoot me?
He shook him and released him, seeing that Sikorsky was entering the corridor. Danevich rushed to him.
- Ivan Fedorovich, tell me that you were with us last night!
“Yes,” said Sikorsky. - What's the matter?
Svechnikov silently passed between them and moved to the exit.
On the stairs, it smelled of someone who escaped from someone’s pot, a deserted lobby was guarded by a plywood giant-red-airman with a toothy mouth, stretched out as a harmonica. From the bayonet of his rifle, the stuffed generals of Kolchakovsky generals hung by the clusters: Pepelyaev, Zinevich, Verzhbitsky, Sakharov, Ukko-Kopetv.
Theatrical Square was filled with the sun, the posters of the Petrograd troupe had already faded under it. Romasero Algambra, songs of Russian plains.
He untied the globe, sat in a Brichka, and when Sikorsky appeared from the entrance, he called out to him:
- Ivan Fedorovich! Give you?
- Where are you?
- Doesn't matter. I’ll take it where you say.
- I am at Voznesenskaya.
- Wonderful. Sit down, ”Svechnikov invited, taking up the reins.
При этом возникло непонятное и неприятное чувство, которое вот-вот, казалось, должно было дозреть до воспоминания о чем-то очень важном, но так и не дозрело, оставшись жить лишь в кончиках пальцев, пульсируя там вместе с кровью, мучительно-бессловесное, как забытый сон.
Выехали на Сибирскую, по ней двинулись вверх, в сторону Загородного сада.
- Случайно не знаете, - спросил Свечников, - откуда эти две строчки? Бабилоно, Бабилоно, алта диа доно!
- I know. Из 'Поэмы Вавилонской башни' Печенега-Гайдовского.
- Того самого?
- Да, он пишет и стихи, и прозу. Плодовитый автор.
08/15/2002 /