Hippopotamus | Colta.ru

In the St. Petersburg publishing house Vita Nova , the new book of Edward Kochergin “Notes of the Tablet Rat” was published. Formally - the highest sample of memoir prose, the portrait gallery of theatrical artisans, with which fate and profession reduced the outstanding scenograph. In fact, a pre -welded story “ The Bronze Goga ” , published at the end of last year in the “Ban”, a requiem in the past era, the Titanic Lamento of the last of the Mogican, doomed silently to observe the ruin of generic nests. Having survived the years of timelessness, today the keeper of the traditions of the Tovstonogovsky Theater stands at the origins of the new BDT, reconfigured by the Hudruck of the theater Andrei Mighty . It is in the great dramatic, with the history of which the name of Kochergin is inextricably linked, in September, the presentation of “Notes of the Tablet Rat” will be held. The first publication of a fragment of the book Publishing House "Vita Nova" kindly granted Colta.ru.

You will sigh of one, but everyone sorry ...
Gavrilikha, cleaning lady of the theater of theater. V.F. Komissarzhevskaya

- To our hippopotamus, the kingdom of heaven to him, the wisdom of the Blagian world “The greed of the fraer ruined” at once approaches. And he ended with fright right in court in front of the eyes of people who came to listen to the case. In the first time, no one understood what happened to him. The judge for the second time asks Claudius Ippolitovich, that is, the hippo, about some glasses of the Venetian glass, and he is no longer-he is squinting from the floor from the other world. And somehow everything happened in speed. At first, sitting on a prison chair, suddenly shook all, quietly snored, then closed and slowly so stack from him to the floor. Already lying down, he still snoring for the last time-and the end, the tryn-drill, there is no him, only one brook murmur from under him along the tiles ...

So he reported in the carpentry to his comrade-in-arms delegated by theatrical workshops to the Petrograd District Court of the Frontier-Harder, a tree turner Egoriy Gavrilov. They sent him to the court as a representative of the theater local committee from the workshops, and judged there our artist Claudia Ippolitovich, by local review of the Hippo, for speculation with antiques in especially large sizes.

All this happened at the beginning of the famous sixties of the last century, in the era of the construction of corn communism and the stormy construction of Khrushchevs in our glorious city. Then, from high -flowing communal apartments, many families moved to small, but individual apartments - the dream of the then St. Petersburg humanity.

Ancient bulky furniture: cabinets, buffets, slides, living rooms and dining rooms of oak, walnut, red tree and Karelian birch, not placed in new apartments, were handed over to commission stores for a penny or taken out in the trash. There was no cheaper antiques anywhere in the world, never and at any time. Dishes, chandeliers, lamps, mirrors, paintings, household items and clothes were also sold for funny money. Few knew the real price to all these things.

In the twentieth-thirties, gepaushniki, enkavedeshniki, and party workers received apartments of repressed citizens with the entire atmosphere of the former owners. In the blockade, entire houses of the city died out of hunger, and everything that remained in them turned into the property of janitors, district police officers, managers and their servants. They themselves and especially their heirs did not understand the intricacies of material culture - for them, an old man was a jam, nothing more. But in the city there were people who understood the value of antiques, who realized that how much. Many of them made the state at this temporary surprise and literally for small pennies gathered entire museums. Our hero Claudius Ippolitovich, a hippopotamus, stuck to them. Everything happened as if by chance, or maybe not.

A little earlier, the sad events of me, the production artist from the small regional theater, were invited by the main artist to the famous city drama theater. Having taken up post, I naturally decided to get acquainted with my future artists and drove into the courtyard of the corner house on Belinsky Street and Litein Prospekte, where the art and production workshops of the Leningrad Drama Theater lived in the courtyard outbuilding. I already knew that remarkable theater craftsmen worked in them: joiners, a locksmith, one of the best butafors of the city-Arkady Zakharovich, who was the captain of the “sea hunter” in the war, and a good one, but with cockroaches, as I was certified, the artist Claudius Ippolitovich, a little Klyubemotushka blocker on a local unexpected call.

Having familiarized myself with all the carpentry and locksmith masters of the first floor, I climbed the second and, having passed through the famous fake workshop, ended up in the picturesque hall. About twenty meters, at the end of the entrance from the entrance, a pear-shaped woman of incomprehensible age, without a neck, broken, with hanging cheeks, reminiscent of the caricature of the French artist Daumier on King Louis Philip, found a pear-like table.

Approaching this aunt better, I politely asked her:

- Tell me, please, where is the artist Claudius Ippolitovich here?

- How where? This is me Claudius Ippolitovich, ”said the figure with a woman’s touchy voice, completely inconsistent and patronymic. “What do you need from me, young man?”

From such a surprise, I was dumbfounded and at first I could not immediately explain that I had come on purpose - to get acquainted with him. But after that, having learned who I am and where he came from, he suddenly turned to me with some coquetry:

“Fu, how young you are, however ... I represented you more sainless.”

“Unfortunately, it was not solid to blame, but, I hope, over time, I’ll have a time,” I answered.

"Yes, on" he "is not pulling it-it is it, nothing more."

Going into the carpentry, I thought that Claudius was more consistent with the clicks than the imperial name and ancient Greek patronymic. Leaving the workshops, he complained to the joiners that their Claudia Ippolitovich at first took for a woman.

- No, we don’t have a woman, they have a daughter.

- Well, what, my aunts also have a daughter.

“But they have a wife, they call her a mother’s mother, and her daughter is a tutel.” The Tutelka was a success half a head below dad, a kind of pear of the Duches varieties on the legs, ”the main carpenter Vasily Stepanovich explained to me with some squint.

- And why do you lower it to the average kind?

“You see, they have no male appearance.” Not a single hair was born on their fat chin. It doesn’t seem to be a woman and just a woman, but just some kind of hemopher, God forgive me, ”the old Stepanych answered me. - And the woman is not a woman, and a man is not a man. And that’s neither, and damn what. Do not dare to cross them: that they don’t immediately fall into the hysteria, they squeal all day-like the cartilage cut, they shake some offense at everyone, even in our carpentry you can hear. It is better not to approach them at these moments. Yes, on “he” it is not pulling-it is it, nothing more. It does not go down to us, they have nothing to do from their mountain hill in our gloss, it is other blood. We are for them - the bugs of the village spill. And it is a figure soaring in a cloud fog, raising itself over a bag of life. Their gut of the saw does not stand it, begins to flutter. We are pine chips for them, nothing more. Some funny words about them and fall out of their mouth ...

- What to say? The blot is spreading, the ass without the king, the bag with the eyes, the emperor of the cherov, the turkey turkey, African hippo - everything approaches them! -Squeezing, an exhausted insult at the local artist, the carpenter-corner-bearer Yegor Gavrilov.

“He is up there, when he enters, he begins to stomp over us, imagining that he was trampling us,” added the theater carpenter Ivan, Veps, by the way.

The trouble is just some!

What did they not share, but what should they share? Drama on the scrapes of workshops - a braid with a stone agreed. But I will have to work with everyone in this trouble.

- You do not take our trifles to heart. Claudius Ippolitovich is great pride, and he is not bad, and a good specialist in your part is good, ”Vasily Stepanovich reassured me goodbye.

In those poor years, people in the workshops organized a folding - they cooked and dined in their fenes fenced off from the carpentry hall. Products were prepared ahead of time. Potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, garlic, cucumbers brought in early autumn from cottages and villages. The cabbage was fermented in early November. On weekends of September, they drove on a theater bus in the forests of the region for mushrooms.

All the eating was kept in a sensible cold underground directly under the stairwell. The wife of the Tokarniye - Gavrilikh, in the official rank, was preparing dinners - a cleaning lady, a large artisan on the salting of mushrooms, cabbage, cucumbers and our other goodies.

Lunch consisted of a good piece of stew, boiled or fried potatoes with sauerkraut, on the table there were always clay bowls with salty cucumbers and mushrooms. The portions were served by the Gulliver, and all this for the then fifty dollars. Fresh meat was supplied from the corner gastronom, which on Litein Prospekt, the butcher themselves, the friends of our joiners. For this, the last knives sharpened the butchers and treated the first -class moonshine for sauerkraut.

Claudius-tagemotushka the only one of all workshop workers did not participate in artificial dinners.

- We don’t have a lunch, they smell of acidic cabbage. Yes, from her, our carpentry wombs produce inhuman sounds, which is bad for them. At the top of it, a sweet mamutkin is a hotel with a seagull digested. A greedy indispensional type, in a word ... - the Tokar commented on the absence of an artist in a workshop fold.

“The blot is spreading, the ass without the tsar, the bag with the eyes, the emperor of the cherov, the turkey turkey, African hippo - everything approaches them!”

“Well, what about the fact that he loves sweet,” Gavrilich defended him. - Claudia Ippolitovich, probably, is spoiled for our simple food. And greedy - it is from the blockade, starved for a long time. But look at what pleasure he writes out letters for advertising. At that moment, even the tongue sticks out from his mouth and the saliva is dripping.

Indeed, something in my performer was strange and inanimate. With his spreading figure, frozen, pale face, a woman's voice and habits, he looked like an enusha, eunuch or hermaphrodite Mamyandu and Papindu, who lived on a buckle in the fifties.

But they do not drink water from the face, it is important that he owned the craft and feel the color. At first, of course, I got a lot from him, since he turned out to be ugly, corresponding to all jokes about female logic. What was not on him - he fell into hysteria and grumbled all day, shaking his grudge from himself. Before the new work he broke out, naughty, offended incomprehensibly what. He scared me and himself that he wouldn’t succeed, that to fulfill, as I want, it is impossible, and not necessary. “Do yourself, if you are sure” - and so on. My attempts to find a peaceful, working method of communicating with him were unsuccessful. In the end, I had to recall the bad, state -owned Stalinist childhood and to flog Claudia Ippolitovich according to all the rules of a multi -storey Russian language. Oddly enough, he understood this music right away and, giving me out, obeyed with surprise and fright, recognizing me as the chief artist of the theater. Later, after some time, he carefully asked where I studied such a Russian language, it was painfully hypnotic.

The artist was the hippo turned out to be professional, he felt absolutely, he owned a pattern, worked honestly, and I began to treat him with respect.

Before earnings, the hunt was painful. He made his main money on advertising, the font knew completely and really wrote it with pleasure, tilting his head and sticking out his tongue. I took a lot of orders from the outside. I did not mind - it’s good when a person knows how to earn money. He made excuses:

- In my house on the shelves, two large birds with open mouths - a mother and a tutel are sitting, they demand food. And here for each letter the money goes on prices. Everything is legal, only have dexterity. Look - AP! - And the letter is ready, twenty kopecks, and another to it is OP! - Already forty. From below, the joiners envy that I earn a lot and quickly - let them try. I cope with two works-both the artist-performer, and I do all the advertisement for the theater. They pay more for advertising than painting. But to be honest, I was terribly tired of the work of the work, what would be to find another - more and more incorporative.

One of my first works in the theater was the play “My Mocking Happiness” based on the play by Malyugin. This is a talented work created by the correspondence of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov with different people, decided to make the entourage as reliable as possible, that is, all the furniture, all the details, part of the costumes of the characters from the population of our old city. I already had a successful experience of this kind in joint work with director Kama Ginkas on the play “The Last” by Maxim Gorky at the Drama and Comedy Theater. Sorezhiser on the “mockery” Agamirzyan-Waiter also invited Ginkas, and he and I decided to continue this fruitful idea.

On city radio, it was announced that the Komissarzhevskaya Drama Theater for the play “My Mocking Happiness” was buying furniture, props, costumes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And literally the next day, crowds began. Administrators did not have time to record the addresses and phones of those who were eager to sell anything, much more than what we asked.

In the morning, at each scheduled Tuesday - the output theater - the Komissarzhevka lobby was scored by a huge number of St. Petersburg old women with wallets, old suitcases, bauls, filled with all sorts of things: candlesticks, ink devices, cigarettte, pocket clocks on and without, frames with photographs and just frames, old photo albums with. gilded monograms, remains of porcelain service, various figurines, umbrellas, stacks, pince -nez, monocles, all kinds of fans, tailcoats, frock coats, hats, cylinders, sewn beads and glass of dresses and so on and so on.

In short, for me the day off turned into a wild nightmare. The performance needed to be acquired only a few things, but the old women insisted that I took everything from them, and still threatened to drag paintings, books, like gloves, mitches, hats, pre-revolutionary playing cards and so on, so on. In addition to buying the props, it was necessary to travel to the addresses and select the necessary furniture. Simultaneously with purchases, it was necessary to monitor the manufacture of decorations, paint materials for costumes and try on costumes for actors.

I clearly could not cope and therefore turned to Claudius Ippolitovich for help. He saw my sketches, the layout, received copies of all the drawings of furniture and props. To my surprise, the hippopotamus without hesitation agreed to take on this difficult work to acquire all the things necessary for the performance.

The theater administrators handed him a whole mountain of addresses of St. Petersburg old women. He began to work on this part very sensible. I found the necessary furniture in St. Petersburg houses, I bought an absolutely Chekhov collection of umbrellas, canes, pence, glasses and so on.

For more fruitful work, the hippo created a whole system. In a careful way, he played many sheets of a large barn notebook, where he painted in detail: the name, patronymic, seller’s surname, his address, phone, that he sells, what time is, from what material, in what condition, a claim for the price. Well, all the questionnaires are directly. I even felt something wrong with this too business approach, not characteristic of most artists. But then I forgot; He saved me from this kind of Kuteria hated for me. I was grateful to him at that time.

We released the performance with success, everything turned out excellent, the decoration aroused great interest. Everyone was satisfied with the work, including Claudius. I forgot about the Grossbukh he made with the addresses of the old women. The theater no longer needed them. But it turned out that our hippopotamus continued to use them and secretly peeling the unfortunate theater by the theater, buying up a cheap unique museum things for their own money. He turned his room in a huge communal apartment on Bolshaya Zelenina Street, on the Petrograd side, turned into a vault of antiques.

Filling out the room to the cramped bought goods, began to trade little things with rich collectors, and toughly bargaining with them, not inferior to the assigned price. And from a professional artist he interviewed the antique “bug”, as such figures were called at that time. After some time, the exploits of our hippopotamia, which did not count with the laws of the criminal environment, his intransigence and unwillingness to share with the "authorities" did not like the steep collars of the antique market, and they passed its police. They were joined by communal neighbors who observed the artist’s illegal activity and hosted him for many years.

The police, which appeared in the apartment of Claudius Ippolitovich, discovered in his room a whole warehouse of expensive antique things in the museum level. The underground millionaires took the hands under the white, took them to the coping and, having put them in the pre -trial, began to sew a case of speculation in especially large sizes. В ту советскую пору существовал закон о спекуляции, в народе называемый «законом о подпольных миллионерах», по которому могли приговорить и к «вышке». Бегемотушка, как известно, не дожил до приговора — умер на пути к нему, умер с испугу.

— Покойного не судят, а кто старое помянет, тому глаз вон, — сказал бригадир столяров Василий Степанович после доклада Егория Гаврилова.

Поминали Клавдия Ипполитовича всеми мастерскими в столярке, стоя за верстаком, новой пшеничной водочкой, только что появившейся в магазинах города. Бутафор Аркадий Захарович, морской офицер в отставке, после третьей рюмки вспомнил, что имя и отчество усопшего — Клавдий Ипполитович — с латино-греческого языков означает «хромой конь», а «гиппопотам», то есть бегемот, с греческого — «водяной конь» — вот так-то… После этого сообщения все надолго замолчали и призадумались. В тишине вдруг прорвалась уборщица — Гаврилиха:

— Домовину-то для Бегемотушки не купить. Он у нас несоответственный был. Свою, мужики, постройте, мерка-то на него у вас в глазах торчит. А я в Николе Морском в память о нем свечку поставлю да вражду вашу былую отмолю.