Translated material
Russian centaurs in Paris
Sometimes fate throws an ordinary Russian gopnik into another world. He is in Paris, New York, Tokyo-and carries his habits and concepts to this new universe for him.
In the next issue from the Russian Gothic series, writer Mikhail Bokov writes about such people: Russian pitching from the hinterland, which became the stars of the international circus. But they did not cease to be themselves and even in Paris drink vodka and listen to Leps.
https://batenka.ru/heading/26
The centaurs drank in a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Paris. Music sounded: Leps, Circle, Combination. It seemed to me that this is a mirage: I should not hear a “combination” in the city of Picasso and Brev. The centaurs drank vodka. Six bodies were angry hot, arranged a real bath. It smelled of centaur then. It rained outside the window. Winter, silent, came to Paris.
I called them with centaurs. They were Russian artists of a vagrant circus. Athletes. Heated from vodka - they drank vodka, specially searched for it in Paris - they took off T -shirts. We sat wet, hopped, played with muscles. The Circus was a day off in the circus. In addition, one of the centaurs celebrated his birthday.
A modern circus is a well -organized camp. Centaurs, demigods, ghosts, people who know how to turn into frogs, people with fish scales instead of skin, people who know how to leave fire from the womb, move around the world on airplanes and ships. They are accompanied by children: many children are worn everywhere when the circus rides. These children speak all the languages of the world, and some are born with tattoos on their faces.
Even with the circus, women, mothers of children are traveling. They flaunt cold, calm fatigue. Going to the circle, they say quietly and dream of the day when it will be possible to settle. Once they gave their souls and hearts to the centaurs, they gave birth to the to the centaurs of the children, but they know: they could not tame centaurs. Centaurs can have a human appearance six days a week. They can prank on the circus arena, make the children oatmeal in the morning, maintain the appearance of a person - such that the central hooves are almost not heard. But then a day will happen, like today, a day off or someone’s name day-and hooves will germinate again. Everyone will climb from the centaur: it will drag the air with swollen nostrils in search of violence, he will want to desecrate women and trample hostile males. Such is the Russian centaur. The next morning he will again become a man.
With one of them, I ran into the streets of Paris.
- Bear? You? - He flew at me from behind. Figure, horse musk, and funaled from him. - What fate? And we drink, Aida with us.
He dragged me, won me into the subway, fell ill, held out a bottle, applied to it himself - I noticed that his legs were already ceasing to be human, that they are covered with brown centauric wool. And now we were already traveling with him to the outskirts, to La Defens, to a cheap hotel where their circus placed the centaurs.
I came to Paris to arrange my book, a novel about the black diggers "Grandfather". They did not want to take it. I went all day with a full bag of my books, met with literary agents, publishers, with people who impersoned those and others, and Paris watered me with icy rain, blew me with the wind and showed me in every possible way that I was not happy to. Perhaps because of this I gave myself to captivate the centaur-the only familiar soul in an unfamiliar city. Grinya called him. We have known each other for a thousand years. Back in Moscow, Grinya worked for different circuses, and I worked for different newspapers, and we sometimes drank together.
- How are you, old? - Pushed and hugged me with a cheerful drunken centaur. “I am terribly, terribly glad to see you.” Now we will come to ours, and there is that! There is fun, old, there is vodka flows the river, everyone will be happy.
The centaurs lived as part of the circus of a separate group. For many years of travel, they never learned the tongue: they explained poorly with the rest of the inhabitants of the circus - all negotiations were taken by the senior centaur Pasha, their coach. Most centaurs were born somewhere near Smolensk. They went astray into the group there, in their homeland, and this group got into the international circus. Later, two or three Muscovites were nailed to them.
“Russian sticks” - that was the name of their number. The strongholds-centaurs held poles on their shoulders, a man stood on the poles. They threw a man into the air and again caught a pole. The man made three, five, six somersaults in the air and landed exactly onto the stick. The audience applauded.
The centaurs broke the applause in Tokyo, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, and now they have arrived for their fraction of applause to Paris. These appliances undermined their centauric souls, settled in them of vanity worms. I saw this according to Green, who was with each of our meetings-and we met in Brussels and St. Petersburg-I thought more and more chaotically. Success, money, sparkling cities stupefied it, a centaur from Smolensk. His head became muddy from thoughts that he was not able to express. The eyes wandered, the words were looking for a way out. "I! - Having gained, sometimes he began to beat himself with his fist in his chest. - I earned everything here! I contain everyone! ”
In Russia, a wife and son were waiting for a centaur. The son was born in Los Angeles during the American tour of the circus. By birth, he received an American passport. Grinya was terribly proud of this - by the fact that he arranged the fate of her son so successfully: "He will grow up, and return to the States, and take the dad with him." Soon after the birth, he sent his back to Russia. I bought an apartment in a mortgage. Monthly sent them a salary. If you figure it out, he really paid for everything.
It turned out to be sad in place.
The centaurs, friends Grini, had already drank too much vodka. In addition, an embarrassment happened. For the birthday, the birthday was presented with an expensive watch-Tisso or something like that. But it turned out that one of the centaurs in the troupe had such a watch. Therefore, the birthday person was upset.
“I knew,” he said whipping when we entered. “I knew that you did not respect me, Rebza.”
The culprit of the celebration stood in his underpants in the middle of the room. Huge knife knives protruded from her underpants. On the table - cucumbers, vodka, meat, typical centaurus. A small child looked in the corner. When everyone drank, they clung to his bottle of milk in pens.
“We respect,” the rest voted vied with vying. - We respect thee.
- Do not respect.
- Respect!
Green whispered in my ear:
- This is Sasha. Go to the bathroom and you will see everything there. To be in uniform, Sasha hobs on a testosterone. From this he is so wild. Look: now he will cry, and then gets into a fight.
Green grabbed a glass from the table, and his face broke into the sweetest smile. He handed the second glass to me.
- Alexander! - And when all the centaurs, continuing to vote, did not pay attention to him, he yelled. - Alexander!
Everyone was quiet.
- I want to congratulate you, my dear friend, on the names! - Greenin’s smile already broke into the whole room - she was so sweet and kind. “I want to congratulate you, Anya, that you have such a husband!” - Only now I saw a girl, beautiful, black -haired, until that time she was sitting next to the child silently. - You are handsome guys! Stay as cool! - And Green raised his glass.
Everyone stretched to clink, and for a second even a centaur-ironic forgot about his grief with a clock-he handed his glass too.
Green drank in one gulp, threw a piece of meat into his mouth. He winked at the birthday of the birthday:
“You're just shocking today, Anka.”
“Oh, Grishenka, you are flattering me,” the black -haired Anya also drank and smiled at him too.
“Three cats! Three tails! " - Cartoon characters on TV sang a song. In front of the TV, in the middle of a strange Russian feast in Paris, there was a hypnotized baby.
Green leaned over through the child and said something in Ana's ear. She laughed. Green stroked her shoulder. I was surprised to realize that I was in the very center of the centaurian flirt.
Verka Serduchka sang from the other corner of the room. The centaurs danced, stomping. The heat stood hellish. Outside the window, the rain gave way to hail. White cereal knocked out the window. If you look closely, in the distance, through the blankets of cereals, you could see the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower.
Then the centaur Sasha ached again:
-Well, yo-mine, reer, how are you so ...
“And you hand over,” someone advised.
- What? - did not understand Sasha. He already sat on a chair, dropped his head on his hand.
“Three cats. Three tails-ah-ah ”-a new cartoon series began on the TV. Green leaned toward Ana and kissed her on the lips.
“And my friend ...” he suddenly broke away from the girl.
- Yes? Yes? Who is your friend? - asked the centaurs.
- And my friend is a writer! - proudly finished Green and pulled me to him with a mighty centaurian hand. And also kissed. On the cheek.
For a second, bewilderment arose. Ah, then, interrupting Verka Serduchuka and “Three Cats,” someone said:
- And if he is a writer, then let him write about us!
- Exactly! - the rest supported. - Let him write. We are oh! - And a few hands took off into the air: they strained the biceps similar to beer banks.
“I was in Tokyo, I had love there, hear,” a drunken centaur fell on me on the side, blew meat in the face. - Japanese. Here is such a thing, ”he showed his hand at the level of his chest. - Small. As I recall, my heart signs, understand? Write about it.
“He struck all the women there ...” they barked from the side. - Not his heart signs, but below.
“Hey,” the drunk let me go, darted to the side. The bottles of the table from the push of two male bodies clicked on the table.
- And you don't hear me ...
- Hey ...
“Guys guys,” the rest rushed to separate.
- Eh, you! - the birthday man Sasha raised his head from the table. - You are bitches! And if not bitches, then who? Who chose this watch? - He shook for hours and threw them into a corner.
The tape recorder hiccuped, the voice of Verka Serduchka broke off. The body fell, or maybe, on the contrary, it rose. On the TV, the Pippa pig began. Now Green pulled me by the breasts.
“Hey, Mishan, and why you won’t write about me?”
I looked into his eyes: drunk, stupid, half-hearted.
“I am the texture, Mishan.” I’m crying here for everyone, ”the centauric hairy legs with hooves crossed the floor, Grinya kept his balance with difficulty. “You know who has the same watch as Sasha?” He pulled me to him and breathed, giggling in his ear. - I have! Only Sasha has a lana with a leather strap. And with me, - he shook his hand with the clock - pure steel! In! Tissso! With an engraving!
I thought it was time to leave, and pulled away.
- Will you write a story about me? - Green did not let me go, held on his neck tightly, hell. - Do you write?
- Leave me alone! - Anya squeezed between us with a hot body. - Misha, you are not angry with them, hear? They work, work - you know what hard work it is? My Sasha comes home after two performances, lies on the sofa and is silent. At another troupe, not at ours, last month the acrobat fell from the trapezoid, broke to death. And ours ... on our such responsibility. What if the pole is not substituted?
“I love Ty-I-I, Bunny, Hearing,” Sasha’s face was imprinted in Anya, he kissed her cheek. - To hell with a watch! All to hell, except for you and me!
“Do not be angry with them,” Anya repeated, opening the door for me.
- Write the story! - yelled after Green.
I fell out of the Russian bath to Paris - a dank, ice, gray. I got to the hotel and sat down the same evening and wrote.