Brick and umbrella

From philosophical notes of the night watchman

A brick falling from the roof to the head is one of the fundamental problems of philosophy. Vic. Erofeev, for example, claims that Lev Shestov as a philosopher formed precisely in the light of this brick, and only then grew up in a rather significant thinker who significantly influenced European existentialism.

Here, as you know, everything is by no means easy. The brick should either fall very slowly, or only threaten a fall, otherwise you will not have time to create any philosophy. The first one is unacceptable from the point of view of physics, the second, like most threats, undermines its own epistemological and cognitive-on-on-on, in the end causes a feeling of disappointment, emotional soreness and desire to rudely ask: “Well, why are you not falling?”

All this is me to the fact that one day a woman under an umbrella went past the window of my guard, on the other side of the street. She could already be called elderly, but somehow I did not want to. A completely normal woman, I emphasize. Well dressed, according to the concepts of the city outskirts, with a tired and closed expression on the face, which is more often called independent and is considered just the right sign of the very norm. It was obvious that she was going home from work.

But under the umbrella. That is, under the usual rain umbrella in a flower, although dark tones.

There was a quiet, clear earlier evening. There was not a drop of the third day and was not expected. The sun has long passed for old poplars, and then for the powerful, ugly buildings of the near factory.

So, weather conditions fell off, the woman did not cause any suspicion, and the observer automatically became the next candidate, i.e. I myself.

“So, let's see what we have,” I said for some reason (many watchmen over time develops the habit of talking with themselves aloud).

There was a 13th hour of daily duty, the hour when you already begin to feel like a wooden place. The forces are approaching any reasonable activity to the end, and the hope that the duty will someday end, is still too ghostly, unrealistic and does not cause any resonance in the soul. Of course, you can’t call such a person fresh, like a cucumber, but so that so? .. so that to such an extent? ..

I tried to turn on the flashlight and rummage in my head, -it was getting dark much faster than outside -but I came across only a word “provocative”, stuck from some television program. Some strange word, bad. And besides, nothing explains.

Meanwhile, the woman, although she did not go fast, went further.

Soon she will reach the corner and turn - to the right to the tram stop or left - to the bus. It was necessary to do something. But what?

To run after her, ask for begging ... The street is low -haired, nearby a narcological dispensary and a 24 -hour store ... he will scream, perhaps ... or an umbrella on the Repea ...

And here-maybe, because of this virtual concussion, something began to move inside me, clap a creak, as if the doors of some forgotten cabinets were reluctant to open and where the skeletons fall out of the normal people, I had a brick.

Like in a fever, without even locked the gatehouse, I rushed across the road. The house on the other side was the same as all neighboring ones: the two -story barak of Dokhrushchev’s times painted with ocher with amenities in the yard. When the same house was demolished on a neighboring street after the fire, the former tenants, quiet, wandered around a relatively small pile of garbage for a long time, in which there were few charred bricks, gradually realizing what they lived for so many years. But this had one difference: since it was adapted to the office, there was a fire staircase at the end. To her, as if on purpose, the ancient concrete slabs thrown here in time immemorial were moved here. When I was still a novice, inexperienced watchman, I once told the manager that it would be nice, they say, to move these plates from the stairs and at the same time from sin. “Yes, yes, it would be nice,” he said thoughtfully and squinted at me. In our relationship there was some cooling.

I climbed onto the stoves, and it turned out to be not as simple as it looked from the side, when observing the local determin, - from here the part of the roof was already visible, but I was not satisfied with this and climbed the stairs.

The roof for a long time demanded a new roofing material, was unsightly, but, not counting a few dry leaves and meager bird droppings, is empty. As far as it was visible behind the topopoli branches, other roofs too. I began to slow down slowly.

Women with an umbrella had gone for a long time, but a police “goat” turned out from behind a turn: our inspector arrived, Major Mikhalych. He got out of the car and, a little watching me, asked: - Well, how are the successes?

- Yes, I'm chasing the children. No matter how the fire is arranged, ”I said hopelessly. There were no children nearby, as luck would have it. Trying not to grunt, I went down the slabs, and we went to the gatehouse. Along the way, Mikhalych regretted me, as a beloved, trying to imperceptibly, but deeper into my eyes and even smell me. I saw all this perfectly, but I did not experience any response feelings, one devastation. It only spun in my head: left ... left forever ...

And imagine, since then I can’t force myself to read Shestov. Bergson there or Wittgenstein, not to mention Sartre or Camus - please, as much as you like, and Shestova is not, not in any. And who is to blame for this - the philosopher himself with his brick, a stranger under a mysterious umbrella or Vic. Erofeev - I don't know, I don't know ...

Valery Zhelyabovsky