View from the metromost

Time and place with Denis Dragunsky

Late in the evening - it was July, and it was still quite light - Nikita and Masha climbed to the metromost. Moscow lay in blue twilight. In the sky - especially in the west and south - were played by flashes of the northern lights. Radioactive clouds went to Moscow. There was two weeks to live. But these were beautiful two weeks. Books, apples and love

- Patriotism! Although the name is wild, but it caresses me, ”said Nikita.

- Not "patriotism", but "panmongolism"! - said Masha.

“I know,” Nikita answered.

“And not“ name ”, but“ word, ”said Masha. - And not “to me”, but “to us”.

“I quote the epigraph to the Scythians,” Nikita laughed.

- You can’t quote on epigraphs! - Masha was angry.

But the conversation was not talking about Alexander Blok and Vladimir Solovyov.

The conversation was about emigration.

For a long time everyone said that we need to leave, run away, take away their legs from here. First, businessmen and intellectuals spoke, then officials and managers, and then, in fact, everything, everything, including the most, so to speak, simple people.

They spoke in kitchens and living rooms, in shops and metro, in yards and on the streets-and then this wind of words raised people like autumn leaves, and carried in different directions-someone south, someone to the west.

We left alone, families, friendly companies and entire entrances, houses, quarters, persuading that there, in distant lands, they will help each other. Those who did not hope to get into the prosperous Western or developed eastern countries went to Africa or Latin America, or to the rural areas of China. They gathered in groups so that there were doctors, teachers, hunters, cooks, tailors, stoves, strong men for security and healthy young women for future children.

Nikita and Masha did not want to leave.

They lived in a beautiful three -room apartment on the corner of Lomonosovsky and Leninsky. They just bought this apartment with great difficulties, repaired and furnished, and it would be stupid to leave all this beauty in fear of which it is not known what .

“Moreover,” Nikita laughed, “if everyone leaves Russia, then nothing bad here will happen!”

Friends grunted - and left. They said: "You will stay here among a continuous gopot and migrant workers!"

However, migrant workers scattered quite quickly - faster than a prosperous middle class. And after the middle class, a gopot went somewhere, literally in a month. Masha was afraid that robberies would begin. But no. And if so, then quite a bit.

Once, a dry April morning, Nikita reached the University metro station. He entered the door. The cash desks were closed. He walked next to the turnstile, where the controller was before. The escalator did not work. Nikita stood on a fixed upper step. He listened. It was quiet. He did not want to go down, and there was no need. He returned home on an empty street. The elevator button poured. The elevator did not come. It’s good that they lived on the third floor.

Masha was asleep. Nikita did not wake her up, took a sharp piece of iron in the pantry, went out onto the stairs, found a wooden door on the fifth floor and hacked it. In the kitchen on the floor - two cylinders of drinking water, excellent. Turned on the TV. There was no current. I found a receiver on the batteries. Something hissed there. He took water and receiver, pretended the door and went down to him. Masha was still sleeping, she recovered after a cold. He drank water, ate yesterday's chicken with potatoes.

The next day he heard some noise. He looked out the window. In the direction of Leninsky, a trolley drawn by a motorcycle rode towards the region, it was already far away and it was no longer visible who was sitting on it and what was loaded there. The dog ran after, she limped and was very far behind. Probably, she was not taken with them.

Nikita went outside, in the middle of the avenue. In three hundred meters, something blackened. He came closer - it was that dog. She was lying, breathing heavily. The dog was a good breed, but old. Nikita looked into her eyes. She looked at him, blinked and died. Near the lawn there was a planed booth, there were brooms and shovels. Nikita began to dig a hole to bury the dog. When he almost completely burst it out, there was a crack from above. Nikita, just in case, hid in a booth. Through the gap, he saw a helicopter flew over the avenue and disappeared into the distance.

It was the last loud sound in his life.

He and Masha found a mansion - more precisely, the outbuilding at the mansion - on the slope of the Sparrow Mountains, in the apple garden. There were a fireplace, a Dutch stove and an old woody plate. Dry trees were around as much as you want. Factories and factories no longer worked, and therefore the water in the Moscow River became clean-it was possible to swim without fear. In addition, fat roach appeared.

In the house there was an old expensive transistor "Gryundi" and a lot of batteries in a chest of drawers. Nikita and Masha listened to how radio stations of the whole world were broadcasting with malevolent sympathy that everyone left Russia, literally all to one; Something burst for help to refugees. But in general, Nikita and Masha rarely listened to the radio. They chatted about all sorts of things, walking along the embankment, they watched how the blue metro train, frozen in the glass case of the Vorobyovy Mountain station, looked beautifully, they recalled how previously a strange, cramped, noisy life, and sat in the evenings by the fireplace and read books. In the next mansion was a luxurious library - a whole room, forced by deep bookcases of red tree with twisted columns. Ah, what was not there! Life is not enough to read or at least scroll. They agreed to read different things, and then retell to each other.

And then, when it was getting dark, they went to bed and loved each other - they were only thirty years old.

So winter has passed. Water was taken in the hole - wonderful! Then ice drift, spring, blue March snow, yellow stars of coltsfoot on the slope ...

One trouble: starting on the radio, strange words began to say on the radio: the Australian bridgehead, the Brazilian disaster, the battle for the Arctic, the African war, the Indo-Arab boiler . Then, in mid-June- the Sino-Natovsky crisis . A week later, the radio fell silent. Nikita threw out the old batteries and set up new ones. It did not help. I walked around the neighboring houses, found several receivers. Exactly the same silence.

Late in the evening - it was July, and it was still quite light - Nikita and Masha climbed to the metromost. Moscow lay in blue twilight. In the sky - especially in the west and south - were played by flashes of the northern lights.

Radioactive clouds went to Moscow.

There was two weeks to live.

But these were beautiful two weeks. Books, apples and love.