OUR TICKLE

Thirty years - on his way

I pass by Yura’s grave again. Until recently there were a lot of wreaths on it and around it, then there were a lot of flowers. Sometimes passing cars (and the grave is clearly visible from the bridge over Setun) honked their horn. Individual bouquets are already being viewed. There are also fresh...

I walk along the short road to the station. I was once robbed here. Or rather, not once, but in 1995, shortly before the parliamentary elections. What does this have to do with elections?

Shchekochikhin was then included in the YABLOKO party list, but again that’s not the point. Another thing is more important: he had just returned from Chechnya and, as almost always and from everywhere, he brought with him the person he liked - in order to further (in the long term, all progressive humanity) expand his circle of friends. This time, such a person turned out to be San Sanych Chikunov, a colonel of the internal troops, who began writing real songs in Chechnya. One was especially striking - with the line “Motherland, don’t betray me!”

Shchekoch “gave” me San Sanych along with his songs, and then said: “Listen, let’s give him an evening at the Central House of Writers!” I put it in the sense that it is possible to arrange it, it’s a simple matter, but who will come to the evening of a completely unknown bard... “Then let’s call all our famous acquaintances so that they speak at this evening against the war in Chechnya.”

That's what we did. Many famous writers agreed to come, and among politicians, naturally, Yavlinsky and Lukin. For some reason, Yurka insisted that I host the evening.

So, just the night before, on this narrow path along the tracks, three shadows appeared behind my back, threw me into the snow, and while two were holding me, the third emptied my pockets and bag. When I tried to resist, they kicked me lightly in the ribs. But then someone appeared on the path - and the villains instantly ran away. I only remembered the backs.

But my losses were not so significant: there was little money. The most unpleasant thing is that there is not a single cigarette left.

I trudged to my Peredelkino home and began calling Yurka on the pager. He didn’t have a telephone at the dacha or a cell phone then.

I conveyed the text roughly as follows: “Yur, here at the station I was kicked a little, and most importantly, I was robbed; Please bring some cigarettes." I didn’t go to any of my neighbors: I knew that everyone nearby didn’t smoke. And anyway, who else should you knock on when trouble happens, if not Tickle; everyone knew: if anything happened, go to him immediately. He helped even when no one asked him for help...

In general, I handed over my “telephonogram” to Tickle and began to wait.

And suddenly an avalanche of calls hit me. For some reason (with varying degrees of delicacy) the alarmed voices of relatives, friends and acquaintances were asking about one thing: am I alive?

It turned out that when I called Yurka on the pager, he was not sitting at his dacha, as I imagined, but at the NTV studio, live, and, having read my message, he immediately informed the whole country that the poet Khlebnikov was brutally beaten at the Peredelkino station and this, no less, was done in order to disrupt the tomorrow evening rally at the Central House of Writers against the war in Chechnya, which the above-mentioned should lead.

In my opinion, this was Shchekoch’s most successful political PR. But he wouldn’t be himself if he limited himself to PR: soon two nice “cabinets” sent by Yurka knocked on my door, and not only handed me a pack of cigarettes, but also tried to find out the signs of the robbers. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I couldn’t help them, and they left.

And the next day, according to the poster, I still had to lead an anti-war evening at the Central House of Writers.

...Seeing me with no damage to my head, Shchekoch was delighted, and when he realized that my face was also almost unharmed, he began to laugh loudly. “You,” he says, “like Mark Twain, say that the rumors about your death are greatly exaggerated.”

By the way, it later turned out that this evening became the main election event of YABLOKO in Moscow. At least the most noticeable ones.

...At Peredelkino station I board the train. Solnechnaya - Vostryakovo, and here is Ochakovo. Here, on the first floor of an old house near the school, in a small one-room apartment with a large kitchen, which, at someone’s suggestion, Shchekoch liked to call the Cruiser, many happy years of our friendship passed.

Often at night Yurka wrote, and I slept on the famous (because who didn’t sleep there!) kitchen sofa (on which sometimes one of our mutual friends would fall out of the window in the middle of the night). In the morning, Shchekoch woke me up and immediately began reading the text I had just written (some later became famous). Understanding the cruelty of such an early wake-up, he softened it with a glass of beer, or even champagne (in this case, he said: “Well, where else did they bring you champagne to bed in the morning?!”).

No, the Cruiser was not just a bachelor’s apartment or a variant of one of the many hospitable Moscow kitchens during the stagnation. It was a way of life that presupposed a natural disregard for everyday comforts and material things in general, and also unconditional aristocratic equality with all living things. Therefore, here, during frequent “trainings” (Shchekocha’s word), the police chief and the leader of Spartak fans easily got along; a famous writer, an aspiring actor and an Arkhangelsk hippie who had just been released from the “monkey barn”, who decided to give flowers to strangers in the center of Moscow... Besides us, the chicks of Yuriypetrovichev’s nest, birds such as Rolan Bykov, Alexey German, Eduard Uspensky, Alexander Aronov, Yuliy Kim, Yuri Rost, Boris Zhutovsky, Pavel Lungin flew here...

Then, here, on the Cruiser, there was Yurina’s wedding, after which almost all the guests stayed and slept on the floor, the table, and also the closet (!) and even on the Airedale terrier Woolley brought into the house by the bride. Surprisingly, the change in Yura's marital status did not change the established way of life.

Only later, after the second wedding, the Ochakov apartment was exchanged for another, larger and closer to the center, which was subsequently left to the second wife. So the Cruiser was gone.

But Yura received a small “literary newspaper” dacha in Michurinets. And now the “training” took place there. They were not bothered by Shchekoch's parliamentary position. Except that there are too many participants in such “gatherings”. And this, perhaps, despite the time, in which “Moscow cuisines” and the mutual desire of people to meet more often were no longer observed.

But Yurka finally got his own apartment, but only recently. He was happy to tell us exactly how.

When his first deputy term in the State Duma ended, the chief Kremlin business executive called him in great amazement: “Yuri Petrovich, they say you, the only one of the deputies, don’t have an apartment?” Tickle confirmed. “Well then, right today we can issue you a warrant for a one-room apartment in a good house, but it’s better if you add twenty thousand dollars now and you’ll get a two-room apartment.” “I don’t have twenty thousand,” Shchekoch honestly admitted. “Well, what's the matter? — the chief Kremlin business executive was surprised. “Go home and bring it, I’ll wait.” It is clear that the experienced government official could not even imagine that the people’s choice of the Yeltsin era would not have such small change in his pockets as $20,000.

In general, Yurka received a one-room apartment. Like here in Ochakovo. Only in a completely different house - with powerful security. Which, however, did not protect Tickle from anything.

...Again - the train. The next station is Matveevskaya. Yurkin’s mother Raisa Stepanovna has lived here for many years.

Tickle often brought his friends, including me, to visit her. And when he called her in front of his old friends, he always handed her the phone - he wanted Raisa Stepanovna to know that it wasn’t only her son who was not forgetting her.

Raisa Stepanovna said that when Yurka was little, he, on his own initiative, took her turn at the hairdresser early in the morning and stood for hours - he wanted his mother to be beautiful...

He was just as attentive to other elders, whom he considered his own, or rather, ours. Sometimes he specifically called me to say: “Hey, you haven’t come in for a long time and called N.” And I felt ashamed, and I started dialing my older friend’s number...

Few people were as naturally interested in other people as Tickle.

...There are these “other people” - there are as many of them as you want on the subway, even more than are needed to have something to breathe. But this is how I react...

And Yurka loved and often sang Okudzhava’s song “I’m never cramped in my subway...”, rearranging the words in the same way as in almost all songs...

Well, here is Chistye Prudy. “And a white swan swims along Chistye Ponds, distracting the carriage drivers...” - this is Alik Gorodnitsky, also Yurkin’s friend, and the song is from the times of the former “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, which was then located here, on Chistye, and in which the very young Shchekoch began...

His last place of work was also here, but at Novaya Gazeta, which he and I came to almost simultaneously.

Once upon a time, my current office was his office (then the editorial office underwent a big “change”). But, having moved, for some reason I didn’t throw away many of the papers that he no longer needed. Did you have a presentiment of something? Hardly. And in another drawer of the table there are still letters to Shchekochu - a small stream from the stream that fell on him both in the Duma and in the newspaper.

Thirty years ago, a letter containing my poems fell into his hands. The answer was: first, a completely unexpected - the first in Moscow - publication in the "Scarlet Sail" (now they would say: a page for teenagers) "Komsomolskaya Pravda", and then - his short note with an offer to come to Moscow, come to the "Scarlet Sail" and with the strange word "thank you" (this is for the poetry!) at the end.

It was with this note that my Moscow and literary life began. Thanks to Yurka, I met Slutsky, Voznesensky and Aronov. And - oh! - how their blessing inspired me... But that’s not even the main thing. Thanks to Tickle then, sixteen years old, I saw a completely different scale and way of life. And most of all I was struck by him himself: always in a leather “journalist” jacket, impetuous, witty... And very warm. I even immediately composed a poem and dedicated it to Yu.Sh.:

The main thing about him is not that he is always in a leather jacket,
like a young commissar during the times of road turmoil,
and what speaks so quickly and so hotly -
They won’t even hear him, but they will still understand him...

And it ended like this, somewhat pathetically:

And if they tell me how they will give me advice,
that he is no longer the same: he resigned himself and calmed down, -
I won’t believe them, these naive people.
I won't believe them as long as I believe in them.

However, he really did not resign himself and did not calm down.

...One day, when I once again came to Moscow, and Shchekoch was not there - he served in the army, near Rostov - it suddenly became clear to me that without him Moscow was a completely different city. Not that Moscow. There was something sorely missing from her.

The same thing happened now.

But then it was still possible to at least try to see Shchekoch outside of Moscow. This is what Lenka Zagalsky, who worked under Yurkin and, of course, also his friend, and I decided to do immediately.

It was an easy time to get up (in terms of plane ticket prices) - and we ended up in Rostov-on-Don that same day.

Lenka’s Komsomolskaya Pravda ID and the solidity of Komsomolskaya Pravda’s correspondent in the Rostov region, restrained only by a trouser belt (unlike us, in jeans, the rights of which in the USSR Yurka defended on the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda) did their job: the army authorities brought Shchekoch to us.

The soldier's uniform did not fit on him, did not even hang, but was bristling in all possible directions at once. Nevertheless, as Yurka told us, the general, under whose command the airfield where Shchekoch served was located, had serious plans for him. Firstly, with Yurina’s help, write a book of his memoirs and, secondly, marry him to his daughter. Yurka categorically did not want to do either one or the other and really wanted to consult with us without witnesses on how best to “slope down.”

The Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent understood the psychology of commanders and somehow very opportunely quoted Brezhnev, after which the army authorities let Shchekoch go with us until the evening. True, he was given a lieutenant as an accompanying person (we, of course, easily got rid of him, quickly giving him a drink and putting him to sleep in our hotel room).

It was a fun and happy day.

And three years later, arriving in Ochakovo early in the morning (from the train), I found a very solidly sleeping man on the valiant floor of the Cruiser. “This is my commander,” Yurka explained affectionately, “Lieutenant General.” “The one who wanted to marry you?” - “Meow-meow...” - Tickle was embarrassed. “Why are you keeping him on the floor?” - “But the sofa is occupied!” Indeed, someone was sleeping on the sofa, and I, forgetting about the general, began to figure out which plane to settle on the next night...

...Well, I’m writing all this now, and next to the computer lies a little thing that remained in the office after Tickle - an anti-wiretapping device, although it’s already old and damaged...

We, of course, understood how dangerous what Yurka was doing was. But they probably didn’t feel it completely. He himself reduced the pathos, as if saying: “But I’ve never been killed yet!”

...Replace Yurka... Tickling... Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin, neither in my life, nor in the lives of many of his friends, nor in the newspaper. As our editor-in-chief Dima Muratov said: “It feels like I was personally blatantly robbed.”

And when we are robbed, at first we are confused, then we are indignant at the injustice of what happened. But weeks and months pass and we get used to the loss.

Will the pain of such a loss really dull over time? But it will never go away. And yet, the faces of the lucky ones who knew Yura will brighten again at the mere mention of this kind and untarnished name - Shchekoch.

Oleg KHLEBNIKOV
"Novaya Gazeta" No. 58, 08/11/2003