They give - take!

Vladimir Makanin completed his novel

Vladimir Makanin published fragments of what eventually became the novel “Fright” (M., “Geleos”) in Novy Mir for five years (2001-2006). First, with references to the emerging cycle “High, High Moon”; in the autumn issues of this year, where the stories “Nymph”, “Old Men and the White House” and “Old Age, the Fifth Button” appeared - to a novel, the release of which practically coincided with the latest magazine publications.

Building the novel, Makanin brought three stories beyond its boundaries - “One-Day War” (with which it all began once upon a time - even without the participation of the old man Pyotr Petrovich Alabin, who was hungry for a young female body), the sluggish “Centenarians”, “Could Democrats Write hymn" (many people especially liked this maliciously desperate, scratching opus, and some, for example me, plunged into melancholy and annoyance) and the story "The Scythe - Until the Dew", in which the irrepressible life-loving Pyotr Petrovich had to calm down in in the arms of the eternal old woman (as you can easily guess from the title, no one can escape her). I wrote about this story upon its release (two years ago). The question of why the author, having sent Pyotr Petrovich’s friends and peers to the next world (“Old Age, the Fifth Button”, only in the book the story “Peter Ivanovich in Free Flight” was published), wrapped up the story about the protagonist’s finishing throw, in theory should be exciting interpretive fantasy. But I can’t come up with anything interesting. Maybe, Makanin decided, that an exception would be made for Pyotr Petrovich, that the bony one would not get to the lively one, who in psychoanalytic sessions preferred the living lame leg in the next window (“Nymph”) to the magical nymphs from paintings, and to the “fifth button” (TV channel “Culture” with its noble fairy tales), unlike his old friend and many other peers, did not get hooked (that is, during the guest evening he was still drawn into Pushkin-Matisse-Beethoven oblivion, but then, albeit with difficulty, he realized: it’s too early), and he always escaped from the beauties enraged by his encroachments and their dull roommates (albeit not without losses) (the cross-cutting motif of the novel is energetically developed in new fragments - “Massacre” and “My Nights of Thieves”, the latter prepares a short story about the victory of death, appears in it the shadow of an old cleaning lady, but still the hero is not up to par with her)... Or maybe the writer just felt sorry for his old man. And at the same time, the reader - they say, of course, no one can escape, but let others bury Petrovich.

Who don’t even know how to bury human beings. In "Borjomi", the story about Petrovich's first lunar-erotic adventure, there is a side story - the story of a strange aunt who is kept locked up by her relatives. Petrovich and Ivanovich dream of a date and a joint drink with the prisoner (in fact, Petrovich, who went on reconnaissance, “got lost” and ended up in bed with his beautiful niece), but she unexpectedly dies. Her coffin is carried by four young strong schizophrenics from a neighboring madhouse. “I could swear that in my long life this is the first time that the carriers correspond. When they correspond to the burden...” That’s it, death is moronic. And “exactly” old age is just as stupid. At least sit on the “fifth button”, at least try to arrange a legal marriage for her (strong, already middle-aged children will come and simply punch the “bride and groom” in the face), at least swallow historical novels about how our people fought off the Polovtsians with the Mongols and the Germans, at least heal, looking at the masterpieces of world painting, from satyr complexes, at least gaze at the White House being shelled in October 1993, amusing myself with the dream that a new Russia is being born here...

Fuck you, not the new Russia. You will have new power. With my troubles. With a new ferocity worse than before. “If a guy loosens up and gains intense anger through sex, this is the norm (no matter how creepy it sounds), this is normal, and he will still have time to do everything in life... (As Olezhka “managed” to talk about the bitter fate of his great-nephew, shell-shocked in Chechnya , our Pyotr Petrovich. Or did he not get it, even though he scattered his wives, whose names are now confused, and his nameless children? and “violence” changes everything. And if the guy’s emancipation began with violence and murder, there is no continuation in sight - and there are no other emancipating roads. These people in the future (these guys) are not necessarily criminals. They are not necessarily evil, ruthless and tough to kill. They are not necessarily our bosses. People can be the sweetest and most peaceful. (After killing others.) They are like us. However, it will always be clearer and preferable for them to see the world (and people) through the crosshairs of “who has mastered whom.” And not through the keyhole “who has who... loves or doesn’t love.”

The stories about the conquered impotent Olezhka, hidden before the book’s publication - “In the Womb” and (especially) “The Tanks Passed By” - are difficult to correlate with the “revolutionary” plot developed in “The White House without Politics” (formerly simply “Without Politics”) and "Old people and the White House." Some shoot, others stare. Those who shot will not even be able to stare later. Those who were staring don't look like anything. It’s better to rush to the White House with a twenty-year-old drug-addicted slut (there she hopes to get hold of the proper life-saving poison from her friends) than to stare at it as if it were a spectacular shot of a heart-warming historical film. It’s better to run naked on the roof of the Supreme Soviet and urinate at the “historical moment” than to fall off the roof of your own rotten dacha, which poor fellow Ivanovich, hounded by the reproaches of his bitch daughters, had to repair. You can sympathize with both “cultural drug addicts” (old people who got hooked first on politics and then on art) and “wild drug addicts” (“tank” youth). To sympathize without thinking for a moment about why it happened to these and those people this way and not otherwise, why you yourself wasted such a life and what it cost your loved ones (not to mention your country) - we are always ready . And we will live under the high, high moon - not believing the false fear of the lustful nymph, muffling our own stupid fear imposed by all sorts of Apollos (Petrovich remembers that the god of the sun and the arts tore off the skin of the presumptuous satyr Marcia), psychiatrists and rulers. Life is given to a person only once, but it can be given (in the person of many women who differ only in appearance) for a long time - as long as you demand it.

Makanin called the novel about Pyotr Petrovich "Fright", probably only because the title was more correct - "Hero of Our Time" - he had already used before.

Andrey NEMZER