Trombone, glade, wheelchair

This story is almost eleven years old.

After school, I managed to join the orchestra of the Military Medical Academy. Pupil.

The pupil is a person of unknown status in military uniform. Boys of different ages (I knew one street child, he started trumpeting in kindergarten from the age of seven) become members of the orchestra, wash floors, play instruments, go to funerals, parades and other mandatory military events. If you are lucky with the orchestra, then at the same time they study music. If not, they drink themselves to death. However, those who are lucky also become drunkards.

The boys serve quite freely. They cannot be imprisoned, they cannot be sent to serve in another region. And, having reached the age of eighteen, they are guaranteed to end up in the same orchestra and serve their term in their hometown among people they have known for a long time and well. In short, not service, but freemen, by army standards.

Although, according to my idea of ​​​​life, it was hard labor. I ate so many instant noodles that I almost turned into one myself. There they taught me to swear, drink vodka, not close my eyes at the sight of a corpse, not to feel too sorry for unfamiliar inconsolable widows, and to fight off aging homosexuals. In a word, in a year and a half they almost turned me into a completely cynical redneck with the beginnings of manhood. With the beginnings, because among this category of poor, angry people, everything with dignity is not very healthy.

One of the oldest orchestra members was Uncle Misha. A man of incredible size. They giggled that they had made a custom-made jacket and trousers for him. Despite his age and build, Uncle Misha was sometimes forced to go with the orchestra to funerals, walk in full parades, stand guard and suffer through all the other crap.

Perhaps Uncle Misha was not the most disgusting guy in the orchestra. In general, to my surprise, from time to time in almost each of these people I discovered something human and even pleasant. Only when this little man was stuck in, it was always nailed down very deeply and securely, and it broke through extremely rarely, and only in private. All these men, in a one-on-one conversation, could seem like completely normal people with their own weaknesses and strengths. But as soon as anyone else appeared, especially one of their own, they all became very similar cynics, with low-level humor and a pathetic hint of wit.

Uncle Misha was loud. His booming voice could be heard from the street, even during an orchestra rehearsal. One day, in the first months of my education, when the spring thaw was ending and dirty rivers had stopped flowing along the sidewalks, he came to the studio with a wheelchair. There was a sack lying on the chair, carefully wrapped in a woolen blanket.

After a rehearsal, a trip to Zhmur and the standard two hundred grams, he sat down in a chair, one of the musicians, named Tolik, took his hands and took Uncle Misha away, deftly maneuvering a clearly familiar vehicle.

This was repeated two or three times over the course of a week.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked Uncle Misha why he needed a wheelchair. “Carrying potatoes!” he snapped. “It’s none of your business!”

Not mine, not mine, I forgot. One day, Uncle Misha refused to go with the orchestra to some regular outing and drove off with Tolik right in the middle of the day. The authorities, of course, became furious, stomped their feet, shouted at me because they didn’t report it right away, and forgot. Uncle Misha showed up as if nothing had happened with a cart and Tolik in the evening for the traditional two hundred grams per snout. Looking at the piano with a bottle of vodka and a pathetic snack, he contemptuously collected all this stuff in a garbage bag, handed it to me and covered a luxurious clearing with cognac and grapes on the piano lid.

When by midnight they had already taught how to drink cognac (before that, the training had not gone beyond cheap vodka), I asked the other musicians:

— Why does Uncle Misha need a wheelchair? He's as healthy as a bull!

- He carries potatoes! — the Orextrants laughed and raised a toast to the potato harvest. In the month of April.

Soon the worst thing in the life of a military musician came - May 9, and then the city day, May 27. On this day we again walked along Nevsky with marches and aiguillettes under the languid flashes of bored young ladies. That time we did not go in full force. In general, it was a common thing; once, eight of us went to a funeral - and nothing happened, we played. Uncle Misha was not among us either. When the orchestra walked past the Lutheran Church, opposite Gostiny Dvor, I heard some dreary jazz music through the noise, horns and military march.

Looking closer, I realized that two people were standing on the corner and playing. Looking even more closely, I saw Tolik with a trumpet and Uncle Misha with a Trombone. Uncle Misha was sitting in a wheelchair, with a blanket wrapped around his legs (in the serious heat, by the way). On the asphalt in front of him lay an open trombone case. One of the musicians poked me in the side with his elbow:

- Do you see why there is a stroller? So they throw more. Today Uncle Misha will cover the clearing again.

And he began to laugh, seasoned with a swear word.