Let's go wild

Text for the newspaper “Dikorosiya” published by the horizontal collective “Make Culture”.

I can’t remember exactly how or why I left the yard then and walked along our long street towards a sandy ravine, behind which a forest began. Having recently returned from a big city, there is always a need to wander: your legs are used to it, and the boredom of the quiet, measured life of the village does not allow you to sit still. This street became so narrow and quiet as soon as I grew up, and the fences seemed to have sunk halfway into the ground, just like their owners, our parents. My classmates left here for the nearest city and were lost, some for good, some completely lost - that is, they come here solely out of need and pity. There's no money here. The possibilities will make locals laugh even in the middle of a word. Our village is emptying out, and despite the TV, it is turning into a real suburb. The “urban” cottages occupy new parts of the collective farm fields. Lawns and pickup trucks - the American dream - pictures on the website of a real estate office. Only, for some reason, it’s hard for me to imagine a video of another emo band or their own version of The Simpsons in these rough settings. Too cartoonish.

The ravine, which once gave me a sandbox, and my father the foundation for our house, is now completely overgrown with wormwood, the rusty bucket frozen in the next row created the impression that time was suddenly stopped and they forgot to turn it on again. Free grass was already rising at the very bend of the rusty stump. This forest behind the ravine was never wild; rather, it was always run wild by the accidents that happened in it: the found corpse of a neighbor’s dog, which impressed me at six, quickly faded into memory when Vitka the Fool hanged himself in this forest. He was about forty when he seemed to remember everything that had happened since his severe shell shock near Grozny. And he was very offended by everyone. He was removed from a huge tree when his face was completely dry and blue. He lived with his sister Marina, whom I was told to call Aunt Marina, and was her house worker - literally working for food and clothes. All that Vitka remembered about life and himself was that he was a Black corporal and that a grenade explodes three seconds after you release the pin. He incredibly impressed us boys with his knowledge of a dozen skillful ways of killing a person with a simultaneous and apparently disinterested good nature. But Vitka, as he himself would say, was “cooked,” and the wildness was just beginning in the forest. Here I got into a fight for the first time, set a tree on fire, exploded on a Corsair firecracker, and found out that my classmate Ksyusha goes here with a boy from 8 “be” and shows him not the stamps in the album.

The forest has also aged, like the street, it has become visually smaller and drier, many of the branches of the black trees on the first line have become noticeably sharper and more dangerous, hinting to people - stop wandering! The place where in the winter we built a fire and cooked perch in a pot, and even the horizontal bar that the unknown elders made between two strong nearby trees disappeared, only memory visually etched them into reality. The trees were thickening, but I was aiming for a turn, beyond which a series of paths lead the local to a crowd. This is what they called the river here, which became shallow during the existence of the village to a narrow stream.

I imagined, making my way through the branches deep into the forest, how scared I would be if I suddenly saw a high-rise building here, like on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment or Arbat, and the traffic nearby. I wanted to photograph these unsightly, at first glance, crooked trunks, which outlined in space an endless number of logos for black metal bands that had not yet been created. If you cut a high-rise building among the branches and decorate it with this font, you will get a funny meme: about how in Siberia space invents heavy music simply by existing. I don’t remember how there were about a dozen photographs, I remember that I bent down and photographed the mushrooms under my feet. A very cute unknown baby with a long leg and a tiny puffy hat. And then, if you look closely at the photo: someone tore off the bark at the very roots, but the holes from the roots are oily. This is already sentimental, for yourself exclusively.

The stream has finally dried up or the space has become so wild - changed that it is impossible to find it. There was a little less than an hour left before darkness when I came across headlights in the middle of a narrow road, on the side of which Max and I buried my puppy who died of distemper. I knew this long way home, but I didn’t think that there were cars driving here... The headlights suddenly went out and I saw that a police officer had caught me in the middle of my wild forest in the evening hour. The window opened and the ordinary face of a policeman appeared from the cabin. Like everyone else.

- Why are we wandering around?

- A?

- Why are we wandering around, I say, where are we going from, do you have documents?

The second policeman who was driving lit a cigarette and opened the window. It’s strange to remember how you feel at such a moment, but every person who has lived in a big city knows how any question from a policeman knocks the ground out from under his feet, especially at such an hour, and especially in the middle of such a place.

“Yes, I was... walking,” I answered quietly and squeezed the keys inside the pocket of my sweatshirt.

- Let's go.

- Where, I... I live here? — I got more scared and squeezed the keys painfully.

- In the forest?

- No, it’s nearby, on Cherry Street.

“Look, you’re completely stunned,” the driver said indignantly, “They’re digging right next to the house!”

“We’ll pass,” the policeman repeated sternly and opened the door.

“Ask for documents? Remember your rights, remember your ancestors... so, maybe ask for a call? In the forest? Damn, but if OVD-Info, it doesn’t seem like a rally... Isn’t that illegal? Damn, I don’t know what they do in such situations... and I remembered that no one seems to remember. And then I realized who was digging what and what they wanted from me.”

- A…. documents?

- Everything will be in the department. Let's go.

- Lekha, why are you bothering with him, give him a glass.

The sun went out on the horizon, lights came on in the windows of the houses.

- Smart fucking? - the policeman hissed. He’ll raise his voice right now, then prove that he has “weight”

- How does it “weigh”? What are you talking about?

- Were you really walking here? Mmm... now let's look at your phone at the police station and find out what you did, how much and to what extent.

I wanted to rush into the forest, run and run far. I felt like I was one breath away from home and one breath away from the burning plan of these cops. I didn’t know where to run, where my eyes were looking, all the ways were now home. And I ran. And probably in vain. Dark branches cut my face. The sounds of screaming and my breathing became long and drawn out. The grenade exploded in my head much faster than Vitka promised. And the fear stopped.

- How am I going to fill out the protocol, you fucker, if I have blood all over my hands? - the first one shouted

- Why are you yelling, why are you yelling? We’ll fill it out right now, don’t bother.

I tried to move and realized that I was sitting in either a box or a cage and hissed in pain. There was a dull pain in the back of my head.

- Shut your mouth, rooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo — the policeman’s voice rumbled abruptly in my head.

“Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaa!” - came next. I fell asleep and woke up. It seemed like we were driving forever. And the ride took twenty minutes. To the district department.

- But the password needs to be changed, it was a walk, date of birth, this is not a password.

- Here's the bark, here's the hole, here, here, here... well, it's all crap!

“The forest is not a danger, you need to be afraid of people,” the father said and came out from behind the tree with a gun behind his back.

Verenitsyn took out a notebook and began reading his story out loud:

— I know more than a hundred alleys in Moscow where you can hide from people, a forest of buildings and traffic signs, huh? How do you like it?

- What are you talking about? - Anya was surprised, and tightly squeezed my palm in her hands - wildness...

“Shklovsky, with this expression, opened the whole mast, the sail that you and I inflate every time, using this phrase,” Sergei Ivanovich walked away from the pulpit and smiled contentedly. It was clear how happy he was to share these words.

-Where is he going? - Eremchuk, take the two hundredth, ha-ha-ha, take him to the whips! Let's ventilate. — the officer took a sip from a mug of aromatic tea with bergamot.

“Every turn inside,” Verenitsyn continued, “within the ring, this is a new round of the huge chain of the technical nature of the city!”

“Everything survives in the forest that loses its meaning outside its boundaries, only man has meaning because he invents it,” the father took a last drag and put out the slobbering bull with his foot.

- What are you doing, everyone here is innocent! - Shiryaikin noted hoarsely

- Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, there is a crime, well, look at the photo! Bark!

- Why the fuck did you touch his phone? - The major looked at the lieutenant.

- “The forest is wild from human savagery!” - the father read the crooked inscription on the wooden fence of the DPMK - and that’s true!

Moscow. October 2021.