Andrey Stepanov. Pour Sasha

For Sasha
Today Sasha Sokolov turns 60

Andrey Stepanov

Publication date: November 6, 2003

Dear author so-and-so, I remember very well this fence, high and long, I leaned against it, getting out of the trolleybus in which I was going to school, which was called the highest, because we were taught there to read and even write a little, and this there was an empty trolleybus, that is, there was no one in it except me, the driver and the gray houses outside the windows - and in order to fill it, it and time, I took out of my bag a magazine on which was written October number three, although there was March number two, that is, the end of March, I remember this exactly, because the snow had already completely melted, and where there was still some left, I looked embarrassed and guilty - although no, I’m confusing everything, the magazine was called a river, which is now mostly known the fact that you lived and worked on it, that is, you were engaged in hunting, although I didn’t know this yet, because I didn’t know that you existed at all - and I began to read this magazine, and after a while I heard the driver’s voice, who was interested in my health and plans for life, because it was already the final stop - and then I got out of the trolleybus and leaned against the fence with a book in my hands, and stood there for a long time, and when I turned the last page of your novel, it turned out that I had fallen twilight, the light had ended and it was too late to go to school to learn to read, I still don’t know how to read your book, that is, what kind of reading it could have, and I walked along the fence, thinking to myself - here’s a fence, I built it around my at home author so-and-so, when he decided that he no longer wanted to be photographed or receive letters, he built it, even though he knew that the boy he came up with really wanted to write him a letter to ask where the ducks go when the river Summer freezes and they begin to skate on it, but this boy did not know the address, like me, and so he asked everyone he met and met along the long and life path - and then I remembered how I later drove through the country called Eastern kingdom, although there never was and never will be any Western kingdom, I was driving a car, or, more precisely, in a car, because I was a passenger, and behind the wheel was a woman who was once your ex-wife, and we you were traveling with her in a car, very large and beautiful, in the trunk of this car your ex-wife was taking refugees from an even more eastern country where a civil war was going on, she took them to her non-existent, but very happy Western-Eastern kingdom, where the war had long ended, and I think that each time two or even three refugees fit in the trunk and they were not at all cramped, and I still did not dare ask her about you, and when I asked, it turned out that she had not seen you for a very long time, almost since time when I took you out of the easternmost country, and you decided to go to the westernmost one - and then I remembered how I later ended up in this western country, and there was evening, and I was sitting at a table by the window with a bearded man, your friend, and outside the window it was snowing and some people with ski poles on their shoulders, they were going down the mountain to the river, and on the river and along the river other people were skating and skating, and this was the country in which you once were born, your first second homeland, and for a long time I did not dare to ask him about you, and when I asked, it turned out that your new book did not burn down at all, it’s just that its author, author so-and-so, disappeared, like ducks, twilight and desire disappear taking pictures in a simple shirt against the backdrop of a door that doesn’t lead anywhere, although maybe it does lead somewhere, because recently someone said that you are in Paraguay, and I asked everyone again, but no one knows, not even Rusya Google, my friend and neighbor, maybe this is Uruguay, not Paraguay, please urgently answer what the first letter is, do you exist in the world, and why are they lying that you are sixty years old today.