Mournful mats of import substitution

Food is one of the best barometers of the state of post -apocalypse. Today, the director of the department of outrageously great things, Julia Dudkin, who told you about the gigantic charlotte of an old age , the cathedral cake of the discord and the sovereign jelly of death , again does what she knows the best, looks at an outrageously large food. This time - on a rug in the form of Russia.

In those days when the messenger of the bees of the bee Yuri Luzhkov ruled, in Tsaritsyno and in the Manege, the Fair of Honey took place every now and then: these days, each granny in the subway rang with banks and was in a hurry to feed her grandchildren with products of bee life. Each Muscovite (and even more so the guest of the capital) knew for sure when a fair named after the Great Pasechnik was taking place in the city. But then in 2012, when the beekeeper of all Rus' had already retired, the ubiquitous Sergey Sobyanin began to get rid of all the reminders of Luzhkov with the same excitement with which Germany carried out denazification after the war. And since people who are rarely in the center need an occasion to get out of their apartments and courtyards at least once a year, leave the tournaments and dress decently, now everyone is going to at the jam festival, where children are taught to play with food , and young girls are dressed in old women. Meanwhile, the fashion fairs are still passing. Ready to argue, dear reader, that you have no idea when and where. But the next fair is going right now in the Gostiny Dvor. Everyone forgot about Luzhkov’s beloved fun that now, now, so that at least someone came and bought this damn honey, the organizers decide to resort to the last, trouble-free tool: to treat people with giant free food.

Before my eyes, Muscovites have already managed to feed a giant jelly, universal dimensions of Easter cakes and a titanic charlotte, and each time the intensity of the situation increased. Around the junction they danced with St. George ribbons and sang Katyusha, people pressed each other and kicks for Easter cake, and during the charlotte they arranged a real genocide of the elderly, driving fierce youth into complete madness. But today in the Gostiny Dvor the atmosphere is already completely different - everyone was exhausted. In the midst of a large and echoing room, similar to an unpreded temple, something large and white was flattened - it looks like a piece of cardboard in the form of Russia sprinkled with snow. This is the largest rug in Russia. Why not in the world? Unknown. Maybe just no other country bake rugs in any other country. Or maybe Russia just no longer cares about the rest of the world.

The organizers arrange the barriers and bring the tables: "Oh, look, why is this a table with blood?" - one of them is surprised. I think in horror that the tables did not wash after the battle for the Easter cake. An hour before cutting the rugs, a small group of people gathered in front of the barriers: it turns out that these are collectors of giant food, who managed to compete for the Charlotte and Kulich and remained alive over the past year. They enthusiastically share their memories:
- And remember, there were such blue fences there, they pressed us into them, and we all painted?
- Yes, we still saved the little girl there, she was almost crushed!
- And that time, imagine, next to me, one woman fainted!
- But how is there no non -nonsense today? He always does a gigantic food, but today some others!

“Some others” are a confectionery workshop, the names of which I will not disclose. His employee carefully lays out a rug in the form of Russia for nesting dolls-one for each city city. She tells me that the things of the confectioners are now bad-without imported chocolate, you have to switch to Soviet retro trains-a honey and bird's milk. But the rug is completely imported, so there were no problems with it. They just did not know at first how to bake - not a single giant stove was found (apparently, everyone was busy burning sanctions products). As a result, many small rectangular rugs were baked and they have already built a large one of them. I look closely - indeed, Russia is divided into white rectangles, as if a piece of a brick wall.
On the poster near the entrance there was also a map of Russia, and I looked closely for a long time if there was Crimea on it. It turned out that he still has, but he acted slyly: against the background of the map, they put a giant bear, and he blocked the peninsula with his eared head, so only the edge and part of the name were visible. I go around the rug to find out what the Crimea was blocked here, but no - he is in place and waits for him to eat him.

Surprisingly, there are no children here - probably they are still at school. I see only one sleepy girl who weaves after her mother to a slowly gathering line. Mom drags a huge school backpack on her back - so large that the rug can be cut into pieces and fit all there. I am considering this miracle-condemnation and I do not immediately realize that a man was chatting with me for several minutes-he says that he was at the Gaidar forum, and it seemed to him that Herman Gref no longer wanted to occupy his position, and that Su-24 is such an old man that he should never be left without cover. A man (his name is Anatoly) admits to me that he would like to go to Syria to write a report, but he is not allowed by age. “I am sixty -nine,” he explains coquettishly, and I have to be surprised that, they say, for sixty -nine he does not look at all, not like David Bowie that rested. Satisfied, he continues to flirt:
-And you yourself will not go to Syria?
- Where am I to Syria, my mother and dad will worry about me.

Then he begins to probe the soil: "Mom, dad and, probably, a young man?" Touching the question, will a young man be worried about me, I am changing the topic: “Why do you need a report to write? Are you also a journalist? ”
- Of course, I worked in an environmental journal!
- Yes? And so, the preparation of giant food is associated with ecology? Does it harm her somehow?
- No, but the exhaust gases are harmful. Especially women. But you still have to give birth! All hope is on you!

Outraged by such a manifestation of sexism, I decide to interrupt our relations and return to the line behind the rug - people taught by experience dutifully and silently line up in a long column. The elderly, like children, is a few - basically the line consists of people of indefinite age and gender - they, like shadows, quietly move around the hall. Only a few old women at the very beginning of the queue are enthusiastically discussing:
- Here, look, the recipes of our grandmothers revive with you! Brilliant, simple recipes! Feel how it smells of honey and cinnamon?

I’m trying to ask my grandmothers how they survived the crush near the Charlotte and whether they went to the exposure of Kulich, but suddenly a gloomy elderly man gets in:
- And what are you asking - who was where, who was not where? Why are you so interesting? Ah, are you a press? Discuss? Discuss to yourself. And I don’t have to smile here!

This evil man stands in the pose of a football player - clasping his hands at the groin level. He is the first in line and carefully monitors where they cut the ribbon to open access to the rug. When the organizers move a couple of centimeters to the right or left, he takes a step in the same direction.

From somewhere on the side, a guy with a tunnel in the ear and a young girl in a bright jacket suddenly come up-in this purgatory they look like aliens.
- Is it called a rug?
“I'll knock you now,” the girl replies. Apparently, this guy was the initiator of the campaign for free food.
- Well, wait, what if it is delicious?

Trying to enter into a conversation with them, I say that the entire rug is made of import substitution products. The girl makes a characteristic sound - as if she is sick - and turns to the companion: "I will knock you now!"

The queue begins to move. People talk reluctantly and look exhausted. Having received a piece of rugs, they sit at the white tables, quickly eat and make room for the following. On the side of the rug - from the side of the Crimea - journalists gathered. They even came from Channel One-after all, it is very important to show everyone, all-all that we still have a giant food. This is even more important than telling about the friendship of a tiger with a goat (by the way, are they still alive?). I squeeze out among photographers who enthusiastically discuss honey Crimea:
- Look, why is he so small? Nevertheless, they specially came to get the Crimea!
- Yes, there wasn’t enough test for him.

The organizers mercilessly cut Russia with snow. They started somewhere in the Voronezh area-maybe they wanted to remind you that we would bomb when NATO invades Syria. Then they switched to Krasnodar, but the Republic of Crimea remains intact. It seems to be specifically cut off from the rug-as if they are afraid of something. Pieces of Russia baked from honey dough are shifted and broken by sweet tectonic plates, they crumble and layered on each other. Someone Zorky says:
-Look, but Siberia is still lying!

I’m waiting for Siberia to start lifting Siberia, and a hunched old woman crawls through me through the crowd of photographers and compartlessly asks the girl who ripped off Russia:
- Granddaughter, can I have one piece here? The line is long, I will not stand it. Well, please, well, a piece.
“Sorry, no,” she answers and continues to shred towards Moscow. There are less and less from Russia.

A surging crowd obscures a giant rug from me, but it seems that I already know which piece will be given to the last.