V. Pooh. The platform will remain

Asar Eppel. Champignon of my life. - M.: Vagrius, 2000.

Oh, if I could understand all this,
The sawdust would be in order!
Otherwise it’s mysterious to me! - sleepy
From all these Difficult Riddles!

The book consists of two cycles of stories: “Grass Street” and “The Champignon of My Life” itself, the name of which comes from the story of the same name, which is no coincidence. This story is the center of both the cycle and the entire book as a whole. All other stories in one way or another echo it and develop the theme set in it. The theme is as old as time: life is a path and every moment is “again the station of our life . ” And life begins at the Landfill, “spring and necessary . ” The landfill encourages you to rush somewhere, act, and not sit too long. The whole tragedy of human life is that a person loses the Landfill and then cannot find it, but the dirt from which he came remains with him forever.

I'm moving forward
(Tirlim-bom-bom),
And it's snowing
(Tirlim-bom-bom),
Even though we are completely -
Not at all on the road!..

And this Landfill is gray, overgrown, dirty, stinking, but at the same time shiny, and every piece of glass here is Padishah, and every puddle is Louis the Sun, and the reservoir is Ramses. And the dirt is not only in the landfill, it is all around, it is impenetrable and omnipresent: “It’s scary to think that even Princess Ligovskaya could have inherited it from her cousin in the sofa . ” And this “dirt” dooms everything , all of Russia, and not figuratively. The dirt “thickened in the blood and stuck to the skills . ” And only love can save you from it.

What does love mean according to Eppel? Lolita-Pani drives bald-headed Bulya into a frenzy, and he pulls stockings on her in a public toilet (“Stockings with an arrow”)... Tongue-tied Olga throughout the entire story proves to Vaska that he is her second, and she lies, the bastard, and he she’s “blizzarded” (“You’re my second”)... A young gym teacher is excited about playing “goat” with high school students (“It’s bad here”)... A special officer’s wife seduces a student in Aunt Dusin’s barracks (“Sandwiches with red caviar” ")...

Tara-tara-tara-ra!
Tram-pam-pam-tiriram-pam-pa!
Tiri-tiri-tiri-ri.
Tram-pam-pam-tiririm-pim-pi!

Eppel calls all this love. All this is above dirt, because it does not fit into the framework invented by someone and for someone. All this makes the dirt that is around sparkle. And only this love helps the heroes rise above everyday vulgarity and darkness.

Only she helps the “whore” Lyudka (“Destroy the Pyramid”), who is cursed by her mother, at whom the whole settlement laughs, to explain to her friend Zola, who escaped from captivity, how it happened that a daughter was born in his absence: “Through my external genitals, he let in my internal genital organs from their external genital organs are lively, and this lively thing - and they are so small and fidgety - making spiral movements in my body, reached my ripe egg, and it began to turn out to be a girl... who is now... in that room " . And Zola understands and accepts everything. And life ahead of them is “mean, sorrowful, holy and suburban . ”

Ah, in the blue, blue sky
Order and comfort -
That's why all Clouds
They sing merrily there!

The definition of “slobodskaya” is very important for Eppel. The action of all the stories takes place in the world of the old Moscow outskirts of the forties. This is not yet a city, but it is no longer a village, and people here live according to their own, not yet urban, but no longer rural, unwritten laws.

And this, of course, is also connected with the road - no longer there, but not yet here. As the hero of one of the stories says, “You can see it far away, but that’s all . ” What is important to a writer is the state of “We are inside!” A closed little world is a short stop on a long road towards something, even if it is not yet clear what.

A stop on the outskirts of Moscow during the times of youth, war and post-war years. Eppel's love for streets and settlements is akin to Gilyarovsky's love; what is worth one description of the Koptevsky market with all its “display eggplants made of papier-mâché, typographical letters of the royal letter “yat”, Viennese chairs, handwritten originals of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, bound together with the brochure “Learn from Stakhanov to work again”, pounds rivets from the Crimean Bridge, which the Moscow Soviet has already missed..." ("For now and since").

Does it really matter where you live - in a palace or in a barracks? And does it matter who you are - a rich man or a poor man? Yes, there is a plush tablecloth on his round table, but you don’t have one and never will. It doesn’t matter when you live, because “people live their lives essentially the same way, although it is believed that they live differently . ” And the old man Nikitin easily transforms into the Old Testament Tobit, and among the German planes bombing Moscow, the blind Khinya sees the bright angel Raphael (“Two Tobits”). And the old physics teacher Samson Yeseich can swim to Colchis for fleece, and deceive the Minotaur, and compose the Iliad, and incriminate the Queen of Sheba, “telling her friends that she has hairy legs” (“For now and since”). And the old man is ready to become a tree, and he already has two branches, and on each there are five twigs, and on each there is a yellow and hard leaf (“The Anointed One and Faith”). The road that Eppel describes turns out to be endless in both time and space.

What is important for this eternity is not some individual heroic deeds, but the course of life itself. And in war, Eppel is primarily interested not in exploits, but in the time itself, when life goes on as usual (as in the “Sevastopol Stories” of the young Tolstoy). In spite of everything, life goes on, and “rabbits are fucking” , and schoolchildren “spit in the head teacher’s eye” , and “Kokyn shits” ...

...Lying on my stomach,
I remembered the Muse
But she forgot the Poet (me).
What to do!..

...And another champignon of another life grows in a landfill.

Attachment to everyday life fills Eppel's stories with a huge number of strange, half-forgotten, but still alive things. The writer wants the “stop” to last as long as possible. And fills the pages with endless broken chairs, cane stands, faded children's skis, painted white tables with padlocks, barrels, buckets, shovels, sofas with rounded backs...

The bookcase is silent, the ottoman is silent -
You won't get an answer from them.
Why is this “xta” - it’s obligatory
And the “zherka”, as a rule, is this!..

Everything dies. Both people and things. But although this dear “station” will end, life will go on. And a new Easter will come, and there will be no need to be afraid, and there will be no need, after blowing out a candle, to hide the thing in a piece of paper through which we can feel the subtle relief... And there will be no need to listen to any rustle and be afraid of any knock... Let it be now " low clouds of a terrible time are rushing across the sky" - this will pass, as everything passes ("You will not be afraid of the fear of the night"). Dark autumn will be replaced by shining and sparkling spring. And the streams will run, and the puddles will sparkle, and the Landfill will sparkle with “myriads of glass . ” And at the Landfill you can see a path leading somewhere, and where is unknown, but you can see far away - you can see everything. “And if that’s it, then the space is closed . ”

I see -
Not so easy to write
Very good line
And everything would be better
First start
But it’s easier to put an end to it.