On March 6, the first part of Dina Rubina’s “Russian Canary” trilogy, entitled “Zheltukhin,” will arrive in bookstores. The family saga tells the story of several generations of two very different families - open Odessa residents and secretive Almaty residents. All characters are connected by the canary Zheltukhin and his descendants. And although love ultimately turns out to be at the center of the narrative of “Russian Canary,” the writer herself calls her trilogy both a spy novel and a thriller—both families once had a common secret. The second book in the Voice trilogy will be released on April 1st. "Lenta.ru" publishes a fragment of the fourth chapter of "Zheltukhin", which was published by the publishing house "Eksmo".

The grandmother carefully and jealously hid the fact that the Trapper was a desperate gambler. She was also a varnisher of reality . Everything that she regarded as a “family disgrace” was hidden in such basement-annals that little came out of these dungeons. It's surprising that she didn't destroy the entire archive. It burned a lot of things, that’s for sure, and it’s useless to guess now what exactly. (However, why is it useless? Surely everything that could connect Ilya with his unfortunate mother after his grandmother’s death. Although she lived for so long that she could well have outlived her mysterious criminal daughter.)

In her very old age, one thing or another came to light. So, my great-grandfather’s stud farm appeared - apparently, the old woman considered it safe (funny: safe for whom?). And before her death, she suddenly told how exactly Zverolov squandered his money: he cut off all his gladioli, put them in a suitcase, flew to Moscow, handed over the flowers to a friend at the market - and immediately to the hippodrome. It all ended the same way, judging by the bunch of monotonous telegrams discovered by Ilya in her grandmother’s office after her death: “Zinaida urgently by telegraph 50 (or 100) point Nikolay.”

Ilya also developed the biography of Zverolov in the most general terms, many years after his death. And it was strange to realize that this man, imbued with love for small birds, fought, fought and fought: first in His Majesty’s Grenadier Regiment, then in Kotovsky’s cavalry brigade, then in the Finnish, Patriotic... He built, of course, Turksib, for example, and probably a lot more.

But the main thing was something else: his unique ability to instantaneously and suddenly disappear and move in space. He never lived anywhere for a long time. My favorite saying, if I happened to be away somewhere - no matter how long, for a quarter of an hour or six months - was: “I’ll be there in a jiffy!”, and therefore, unlike the other brothers and sisters, this one is very the noticeable “figara” never got into the camps - they couldn’t keep up with him.

In the end, I remembered only that warm, familiar thing that had the most direct relation to Ilya: how in the evenings he rocked on the Trapper’s leg, riding on a huge foot in a felt slipper. And he was reading or listening to the radio, as if not noticing the little rider who was hugging a powerful calf, pressing his cheek against the soft trouser leg of his flannel pajamas. When Oginsky’s “Polonaise” was broadcast, he cried: huge, with black bushy eyebrows and a thick nose, he cried and wiped his tears with his large checkered handkerchief.

- Why are you crying? - the boy was interested. - From music?
“From music,” he agreed. - This play was played by one dear, lovely girl. Many, many years ago.

Here’s what else I remember: the quarrel between the adults before Ilyusha’s sixth birthday, when the grandmother, wringing her hands, followed the Trapper around the apartment, persuading him not to give the boy a donkey brought from Tashkent. Ilyusha did not sleep and heard every word; I was terribly worried about where the donkey would be sent - to the dining room? to the veranda? The neighbors would not allow him to be kept in the yard - they shared a yard. The grandmother either screamed in a drawling whisper, or tenderly begged: well, what else do you need, and it’s no longer an apartment, but a branch of the zoo: turtles, hedgehogs, hamsters, canaries!

I finally persuaded her. But the day was hard, and the evening turned out to match: both sat gloomy on opposite sides of the table, each playing their own solitaire. They were silent.

By the way, everyone in the family was guessing. In general, cards were physically and visibly present in the house, although it was forbidden to play them. When one day in childhood Ilyusha - he was lying around with a sore throat - came to visit his yard friends, the twins Ninka and Yasya, and, seeing cards on the table, began to persuade him to learn how to “play the fool”, the grandmother, having caught this blasphemy, tore the cards out of the house with an oath. Nina’s hands, thereby confirming the reputation of the “evil one.”

She herself wondered silently, without telling anyone, and did not give her cards to anyone. There was no trace of mysticism or other nonsense in her tough character. But... the cards are always in hand. Spread it out and immediately mix it with one movement of the hand.

A week before Gulina’s birth, I laid out - Ilya accidentally saw - all the death cards. She got scared, turned white, quickly mixed them up... And fell silent.

Cover of Dina Rubina's book

* * *

In recent years, Trapper was diagnosed with glaucoma; he did not treat her in any way. It seems that he even admired some of the changes she brought to the world around her. In any case, Ilyusha boasted:
- Do you see the confessional? Just a closet, right? Wow. And I have it all in a purple shimmer... Do you see the window? Window and window, right? And for me it’s all covered in a radiance, like the northern one: sharp rays - from white to lilac.

Why did everything end so absurdly and sadly; why did the still vigorous, mighty old man leave to die (he went to a communal apartment, to his boring teacher, who had just left for two months to visit her sister in Semipalatinsk, and the entire communal apartment, all three rooms - as only happens in plays for the plot to come together - moved away for the holidays. He lay there alone until the very end), for a long time it remained a mystery for Ilya, as did his grandmother’s mysterious phrase about his light head.

The grandmother explained to everyone that the Trapper was afraid of going blind and becoming helpless, a burden to his family.

Nonsense! Its regular varnished version.

How did he torture himself? — Ilyusha tried to imagine. It was difficult to imagine, completely impossible: after all, the Trapper still had to finally see his gentle rainbow, leave as a charmed wanderer, with a light head , in the halo of its sharp white-lilac rays...

That, in fact, is all about him. It only remains to add that the ottoman on which he slept was called “rydvan”; the suitcase that was stored under it was a “locker”. There were also crayon pencils lying all over the house—I fell in love with them with Grazhdanskaya and assured me that they were convenient to write with.

Ilya subsequently came across these pencils for a long time in different corners, picked them up once and became addicted himself; True, it’s convenient: the stylus has drooled, and now, sorry, “you can’t cut it out with an axe.”

* * *

In the locker under the “rydvan” were:
a Civil War cowhide cape;
long johns, shirt, glasses;
green, lightest camel blanket;
reference books “Gladioli” and “Russian Canary”;
an unsightly white coin of royal minting: on one side there is a worn double-headed eagle, on the reverse there are the letters: “3 rubles for silver 1828 St. Petersburg”;
and a folder with documents.

The folder contained a mandate from the twenties to carry firearms signed by a certain Yakov Mikhailov, a telegram requesting the supply of frogs for the Tashkent Zoo, notes from people who unsuccessfully searched for it between Tashkent and Alma-Ata, and an old brownish card with broken corners ( at the bottom is written in Slavic script: “Court photograph of Y. Tiraspolsky and A. Gornstein, Odessa”), in which a mannered, sultry-looking girl stretched her lips to a canary on a perch.

The cloak was familiar to Ilyusha before - huge, heavy, made of thick cowhide, it could stand on the floor by itself, without a person inside. It smelled quite nice: leather and a little bit of castor oil - they lubricated it for the summer to prevent it from cracking. In early childhood, Ilyusha played in it as if in a hut. So the cloak was an old acquaintance - I remember that in the summer she and her grandmother together carried it out into the yard (it weighed seven or eight kilograms), passed it over a rope and kept watch, taking turns sitting in the middle of the yard on an old Viennese chair, which had been thrown out of use because of the cracked seat. ceremonial chairs of the dining room rank.

Yes, the cloak was outstanding, and the cut was excellent. Ilya later saw something similar to Zheglov from the meeting place, which cannot be changed: two rows of buttons, slits pockets, a leather belt with a buckle and a large collar fastened at the throat - then there is still a small collar left. A long black cloak, long even for a trapper: to mid-calf.

Allegedly, there was a romantic trail behind it: my grandmother said that in this cloak the Trapper spent the night in the winter under the windows of some Odessa ballerina. Well, whether he spent the night or not, the ballerinas or whoever else, but only the grandmother gave the cloak to Abdurashitov. Ilya himself slept under the lightest green camel blanket (a useful thing!) for many years, and later his only, adored precious daughter, who...

No! It's too early to talk about her.
First about the canaries.

Of course, there was no one to care for all this bird population. They invited old man Morkovny from Tatarka, and he took all the birds, including Zheltukhin the Second, for next to nothing—and grandma didn’t even have the strength to bargain. And most importantly, he took the confessional box. This is what Ilya could not forgive his grandmother for a long time: she always dreamed of getting rid of “this sarcophagus.” Although, if you think about it, you shouldn’t deprive such an outstanding artist, such, in the words of Zverolov, a “passionate maestro” like Zheltukhin II, of his rightful home.

The deal was completed while the boy was at school. When he returned, he found a strangely empty, strangely shabby and, most importantly, strangely silent room. “Our garden is empty, you’ve been gone for a long time...” Now Razumovich could play his damned flute until he lost consciousness.

This shocked Ilyusha more than the death of the Trapper itself, than the funeral, than his light head floating in a coffin on the shoulders of unfamiliar and gloomy men - the head of a man who suddenly wanted to die and therefore did not suffer .

Ilyusha cried all evening, as if only now he realized that the Trapper would never return. Or maybe, in this birdlessness and silence, his heart latently glimpsed the image of another silence - the one that many years later would fall on his beloved creature?..

"Where do they define a hake?"