War and peace

Once I became - not a participant, no - rather a witness to a very small and, happiness, completely bloodless Crimean war.

And why I remembered this not too fateful moment of my own biography these days - I think that it is clear.

I'll start with the beginning.

For a very long time, namely in August 1968, I was in the company of my older brother and his wife in the city of Sevastopol. In this city, where I traveled with my mother all my childhood, our uncle lived, but we, despite his persistent cordial invitations, still decided not to burden him and rented a room and a veranda in the suburbs, next to the "wild" sandy beach.

I generally remember this trip of our trip. I remembered a couple of strange episodes.

For example, once on this beach a densely tattooed young man approached me and asked if I was from Moscow. I confirmed his guess. Having asked the inevitable ritual question, from the “myself” of Moscow, and having received the answer that yes, from myself, he said: “I live there, Zhorik. When you return to Moscow, tell him that I will agree on everything. He will understand.” I honestly promised. But, not frivolously asking where I will get Zhorik there, for some reason I asked for some reason from whom to convey to Zhorik this is a short, but apparently important message. "Do you, or something, do not know me? I am Kostya Bamboo. Everyone knows me here. By the way, if you have any problems here, say only" bamboo Kostya ", and there will be no problems." “Good,” I answered bowedly, “I’ll say so if that.” “If that, thank God, did not happen, and the omnipotent name has remained not uttered by me until today.

And there was one episode and completely sinister. Once a cool windy evening, I walked on a deserted beach, depicting a inspired lyrics to myself, trying to configure my inner rhythm in unison with the rhythm of the sea surf. An ordinary thing for a twenty -year -old romantic dreamer.

And so, walking on wet sand, I literally stumbled upon a voluminous object and did not immediately understand what it was. And "this" turned out to be an exorbitantly swollen body of a person in a vest and sailor pants. Immediately forgetting about the search for PIITHITS, I took a stubs to the side of the house to tell mine about a terrible find. When my brother and I returned to this place, there was no drowned man there. My brother, who knew me from my birth, of course, suspected me of understanding what. What I was, of course, was insulting: I really saw it.

However, all these picturesque details are not directly related to the main topic of my ingenuous narrative and are given here exclusively as the background and in the interests of historical and geographical reliability.

And only one evening is related to the given topic. The same evening, when we, stunned by plant existence, as well as from capricious weather, decided to go to the city to go to a restaurant. So we went. And we went to the restaurant.

The day was a weekday, and the restaurant was empty. Actually, in addition to our table, two more were busy there. For some reason, a ruddy waitress named Galya was remembered for some reason-such a typical "Natalka-Poltavka". Funny, setting, rather stupid and terribly leisurely. However, we were especially in no hurry. We drank some local wine, enjoyed urban civilization and, so to speak, watched life.

They are busy, as I already said, except for ours there were two more tables. Behind them were two rather noisy companies. As we determined from conversations that came to our hearing, the Muscovites company sat at one table, and Kiev residents after another.

There were also musicians who entertained the audience with domestic poppies. However, this is an anachronism - the words "pop" then was not yet. Then it was called the "Soviet pop." So she was.

Apparently, in the interests of observing the cultural and political equilibrium and mutual enrichment of two fraternal cultures, they alternately sang in Russian or Ukrainian.

Among other songs that did not shine with a noticeable difference from one another, two, very popular that season stood out there. One-which in Russian-"a wonderful neighbor settled in our house", the other-which is in Ukrainian-"Cheremshina".

And it was they, these two of these quite disgusting to my taste of the holler, became that heavy artillery, through which a fierce battle for Sevastopol turned right before our eyes.

This battle looked like this. Because of the "Moscow" table, a young man was nominated, approached the musicians, dumped one of them Troyak (in those years the money is not so conditional) and asked to fulfill a "wonderful neighbor." The neighbor sounded. After that, a man with the same Troyak came out from behind the "Kyiv" table and ordered Cheremshin. She was performed. Well, then it’s clear.

What we did, too, is probably understandable. We thought. It is also interesting that both of these songs, quite terrifying, but repeated many times, gradually began to cause us something like ecstatic delight. Which is not surprising - magic is always built on an endless repetition of homogeneous elements.

And we counted. And, it seems, they even arranged something like a totalizer - who will win this crazy competition. The result turned out to be a draw. Both songs sounded exactly eleven times, and - which is also significant, - ammunition synchronously ended in both armies.

But who still defeated this funeral war, if the warring parties were left with his own and both without money?

So who?

Well, how? Firstly, we can say that eternal art won the battle-such as it turned out to be at that particular moment and in those specific circumstances.

It is safe to say that the restaurant Labukhs won, who managed to extract quite intelligible material benefits from the drunken ambitions of two opposed forces.

We can say that we won, which became caring, albeit neutral witnesses of this not only a funny, but also instructive event. Instructive at least in the sense that it once again convinces us that if anyone wins in wars, then certainly not those who are fighting.