Leipzig is worth it

Our special correspondent Dmitry Bykov was tortured by the Germans at the fair as the author of the book “Justification”
Socialist times in Leipzig are remembered without nostalgia, even though everyone was terribly confident in the future. The role of Russians in the post-war history of the Germans is evidenced by Gorbi vodka - after all, Gorbachev united Germany - completely forgotten in our country. The only reminders of the war in Leipzig are the cute souvenirs in antique shops - toys from the thirties and forties. Small tin soldiers of the Wehrmacht, wooden airplanes with black crosses on the wings. I wanted to buy it, but changed my mind - I bought porcelain fawns in the same antique store. My grandfather brought approximately the same ones from Konigsberg as a trophy in 1946. Let there be a couple, I think.
The Leipzig Book Fair benefited the most from the unification of Germany - the famous Messe, with which the name of the city is associated with everyone except Muscovites (Muscovites associate it with the Leipzig store). From the center, where it occupied several rather modest premises, this largest book exhibition in Europe migrated to the outskirts, into three glass pavilions connected by completely greenhouse-like passages. This fair occupies an area quite comparable to our All-Russian Exhibition Center, also known as VDNKh. Two hundred thousand people visit the fair every day.
Luzhkov arrived in the form of “Laws...”
This time Muscovites brought the largest stand and the most crowded delegation in the entire history of the Leipzig Fair: so many of the Moscow government came that it’s surprising, really, how Moscow lived these three days. They were waiting for Luzhkov - he turned out to be busy, but was present invisibly: Mikhail Shcherbachenko was presenting his book “Luzhkov’s Laws”; on the next stand there was a gorgeously published encyclopedia of beekeeping. Vladimir Grigoriev, Deputy Minister of Press, arrived. There were also plenty of writers: from the luminaries - Bitov and Sorokin, from contemporary literature - Dashkova, actively translated into German, from the generation of forty-year-olds - Aleshkovsky (Peter), Shishkin, Levkin and Polyakov, from the thirty-year-old - me. Among the critics, Andrei Nemzer was present, heroically reading everything. In a foreign land, all these people, with whom I often and not always delicately polemicized, seemed terribly nice. It turns out that writers can easily get along and at least say hello: the main thing is not to read each other, and then everything will be fine.
“Radio operator Kat” worked as a translator
Visitors to the fair are for the most part young, incredibly inquisitive and very patient. The Russian stand was full of people. In Germany, the practice of “literary readings,” which was abandoned long ago in Russia, is still alive: our people are impatient, they live at a different pace. The Germans are able to listen to prose read aloud for half an hour and then ask questions to the author. Such an event was carried out with me three times. First, the translator Kat, the spitting image of a “radio operator,” read six pages from me, and everyone listened heroically. Then the youth asked questions.
“Tell me,” one student asked, “what is the meaning of the title of your novel “Justification”?”
I explained as best I could, Katya translated.
“Tell me,” the next student stood up, “why is your book called “Justification”?”
I explained, Kat explained.
“Could you explain,” asked the third listener, “what idea do you put into the word “Justification”?
I explained, Kat laughed.
That's pretty much how we communicated. Shishkin (“The Taking of Ishmael”, “Booker”-2000) was always asked how his work relates to creativity. He works in Switzerland, where he has lived for the last few years, as a translator for the police and immigration service, where they are supposed to give refugee status, but they don’t give it to anyone.
The Baltic states, it turns out, are being raped in Chechnya
“The stories there are very interesting,” Shishkin politely explained in response. He is generally such a pleasant person, delicate. — A boy comes from Russia and says that he is from Chechnya. His brother and mother were killed by the feds; he heard their screams, hiding in the bushes near the house. Then another boy arrives and says that he is from an orphanage, where the director rapes him all the time. “Why don’t you go to the police?” - the Swiss ask. And he answered: what kind of police are they when they take me and two other girls from our orphanage to the chief of the city police for orgies once a month?
And two weeks later it turns out that both young men came from the completely prosperous Baltic states. And we have never been to an orphanage or to Chechnya. They just already know what they want to hear from them. Like most Russian writers,” Shishkin adds in a low voice.
Here he is absolutely right. Russia has been out of fashion for a long time. There are now places in the world where it is much worse than in Russia. But the fashion for us has ended irrevocably - all of Europe knows and will know those who came there on the crest of perestroika: Bitov, Makanin, Petrushevskaya, Tolstoy, Akhmadulina, etc. The best we can count on is polite interest; This state of affairs suits me quite well - fashion goes away, literature remains.
Germans for the war of the sexes
True, there are special requirements for literature. Even now I’m not sure whether they will transfer me to Germany, even though there were plenty of offers. The Germans are confused by ideology; they really don’t like it. None. They remember too well what ideology can do to them.
“If only you could write something gender-specific,” a good Slavicist told me. — About the war of the sexes. About how difficult it is for a man and a woman to live together...
- Who came up with this? It's hard for them to live apart!
- Well, then about how difficult it is for a woman in a man’s world...
“Let me better write to you how difficult it is for an adult in Children’s World.” The prices are terrible.
- Well, maybe you have homosexual friends, and this is about how difficult it is for them in the heterosexual world... What are you writing a book about now?
“About the eighteenth year,” I said.
“Ah, Mein Gott,” said the Slavist. — Probably ideology again?
“It’s solid,” I said. - And plus great mutual love without any gender issues. I'm Russian, that explains a lot.
Putin was taken with a whistle
To say that German life is going smoothly would be a gross exaggeration. The transition to the euro led to a wild rise in prices. Everything has gone up in price by one and a half times. A wave of layoffs and strikes swept across Germany, unemployment rose from three to five, and in some places to seven percent. For Germany this is a terrible figure. Everything is seething. From Leipzig you can clearly see that we live in general wow.
Previously, they knew about the Russians that there was Gorbachev and a breakthrough to freedom. Now they know that Chechnya and Putin are there, who in turn knows German. Germany also has a complex attitude towards Putin: on the one hand, he is one of our own, dear. He speaks German. On the other hand, Chechnya and all that. But goodwill wins out: it cannot be that a person who speaks German so well would torment Chechnya completely without any reason. The “Twelve Moods of the President” calendar, presented at the fair, sold out like a whistle. You will laugh, but even three presidential biographies, including the unbearable book by Oleg Blotsky, aroused genuine interest. This is understandable: there is no ideology in these books. One gender issue is the love of men who write for the ruling man.
In Germany, they seriously believe that it was a good knowledge of the German language that helped Putin win the love of Russians. At the very least, the German traits of his character should help him in governing Russia. That's what they think. For our part, we hope that the Russian traits of his character will help us conquer Germany again - just as he conquered the Bundestag, speaking there in pure German. In general, we'll see.