Epidemic as a mirror brought to face

In fact, this is a real life. Not in the sense that the virus, pestilence, smooth, coward, war is good, but in the sense that the test is the moment of truth. The moment that gives humanity to us to overcome the usual, glamorous, vulgar, excessive - all that, as it turned out, can be dispensed with. And when the husk disappears, the core remains - what is it. And it becomes clear who is who.

Once I really loved Anatoly France’s novel about the Great French Revolution “Gods crave”, I don’t remember the exact quote, but there is one phrase-when blood pours, the gods in heaven laugh. They laugh and rejoice not because everyone is bad and scary, but because the human soul grows to heaven - or falls into such abysses that no one looks into the usual time. Because there is a great reassessment of everything that exists, and that yesterday it seemed unusually important - the games of ambition, beautiful dresses, jewelry, exquisite speeches - no longer mean anything, and a piece of bread extended to the hungry, a blanket given to the freezing, a simple smile and a good word suddenly become unusually important. Someone is able to share food purchased with the last money, and someone-as an elderly Italian priest-to give their apparatus Il in a younger person in order to save his life, and not his own. And it is not for us to guess on which weights both will be weighed: the gods crave our hearts - which we do not know.

Yes, we do not know ourselves and in ordinary life we cannot find out. How do we know if we would have handed over our friends if we were tortured in 1937, and how would we behave in a camp hut or in the trenches - and God forbid to recognize. But now you can understand a lot of things to yourself that I didn’t think about yesterday: and if we are not screaming after the old people who are cautiously stolen into the store - where they are driving, let them sit at home and do not infect anyone! But we will not gloating about those who are stuck abroad - so they need to go to the resorts! But we are not turning away from restaurateurs calling for help - who went to their restaurants, let him help, all of them are all the same crooks. And at the mention of the domestic mess, at least the same lack of protective equipment among doctors-whether we nod ockingly at the conditional West-they say, look at New York or Madrid, even worse there.

The epidemic is not just a common trouble, it is also a mirror brought to our face

The epidemic is not just a common trouble, it is also a mirror brought to our face.
And what a blessing that such grimaces are far from everything that is reflected there. Yes, there is a noble official, spinning at the bishop’s service in the temple, declared closed from behind the virus-demonstratively trampling the law. But there are people who throw the cry in networks: see how many poor, rummaging in garbage dumps, let's buy products and hang on the fence - and here they are, bags with pinned notes: “Take it who needs”. Yes, there are cops (otherwise the language does not rotate), fines the sobbing mommy for taking the Astmatika child in a stroller; And there is a cry for help on Facebook - a laptop on which I work, borrow at least a thousand for repairs - and an instant response of guys from a repair workshop: come, we will fix it just like that. From a large project, when cafes and restaurants feed doctors for free, to a bag of foods brought by an elderly neighbor, from public organizations, in non-stop mode, without sleeping and resting masks and protective costumes at the request of hospitals, to the proposal to entertain a bunch of chilled children, from sewing masks at home and their free distribution to organizing script concerts to the organization Courtyards-collars-all this is our face in the mirror of a fallen test. And the expression of this face cannot be hidden, because all people are not divided into rich and poor, smart and stupid, white -skinned and dark -skinned - but only on evil and kind. Everything else is details.

On the one hand, a lot is opening today, on the other, all this was known a long time ago. Yes, it seems that the Covid-19 virus appeared in neuropsychiatric boarding schools and nursing homes-the St. Petersburg governor recognizes this, and dozens of old people fell ill in Vyazma-and that, did public organizations helping these people not shouted at all a voice that the conditions of detention in these places are shameful, that they could not be self-respecting, driving old people and disabled people of 70 people per 70 people. Branch with one toilet at the end of the corridor? This ulcer was sick for decades, just now it has sharply aggravated.

Yes, the Irkutsk family, where a mother with two children went to Thailand, and then a 7-year-old child found a virus that he tolerates asymptomatic, threatened the neighbors, all their addresses-parols are laid out in social networks-and we thought, doesn’t happen? This family did not violate anything, obediently spent two weeks on quarantine, and only after that one test turned out to be positive, but the police are guarded now - but what, we did not know what social stratification we have, like grandmothers from the entrance to the possessors of even old “Lada”, not to mention the vouchers for foreign resorts? This disease is not only ours (although this is not easier) - the same in February near Kharkov threw stones a bus with those who arrived from China and threatened to set fire to a sanatorium, where they were brought to quarantine. It is still unknown what is more in pogrom moods - the fear of getting sick or hatred of the rich.

Whoever is someone becomes clear very quickly, because the pink bubbles of propaganda burst one after another. After all, it is useless to puff out the cheeks and repeat that everything is under control, when you do not even have the means of protection for doctors, and hospitals - as predicted - become the foci of infection. And it turns out that the Master of Telegypnosis on straight lines, the national macho and Santa Claus, as the trouble came, suddenly disappeared somewhere, and when he appeared, the only necessary words were not supposed to pronounce: here you have money, just sit at home. Of course, he didn’t say - sit at home and die of hunger, we don’t care - but the meaning of unpaid “holidays” will sooner or later reach everyone. It turned out that the Crimeannash does not go against the infection, and that the regions are somehow not too tightly strung on a vaunted vertical, since they were thrown through their teeth-do it yourself.

How many shouted - "Wolves, wolves!" - And the wolves came, but not from there. It turned out that it was not necessary to put the gates, not to sprinkle the rocket with the holy water, and the hospitals do not close and do not drive the doctors from there. But how many citizens screamed, how much they begged-do not close our hospital, and do not close this one, and this one-did anyone hear them? Nobody heard. How much warned-do not reduce budget places in universities, pay more doctors-in response, ministerial juggles came out and threw beautiful numbers-they say, all the TOP, the average salaries we have more, give birth to more, only your maternity hospital will now close, pass for 100 kilometers, do not fall apart. And we will also close this infectious hospital. They were ridiculous.

We know their faces - just now they were displayed to Gogol's clarity. You are sitting there at home, and how your old men will buy food or reach the pharmacy, we don’t care how your children are moldy without walking in tight apartments, this is not our care, you will stick your nose out - we’ll finish it, and the servants descend, how many protocols per day are to make. But the rehearsals of the parade we also conducted and we will conduct, and no pandemic is a decree for us. As they were called into the army, we will be called up from prisons either from prisons either, even those who have stolen a package of potatoes in the store, let at least everyone recharge there, in these pre -trial detention centers and military commissariats.

Everything is clear with them, and it is no longer a matter of them, but in us. The fact is which of the two forces is prevailing - the centrifugal power of hatred and separation, the enmity of all with everyone - or the centripetal power of active love and mutual assistance. They work on the first, destructive power - it is important for them to divide and quarrel us in order to further parasitize on the remnants of our country and our soul. And it is important for us not to lead to their tricks and remain people - to help each other, doctors, the elderly, build new communities - and therefore their own country and our own soul. As this is done today by everyone who unites for the help of their neighbors. And then our mirror will definitely smile at us.

Sofya Rogacheva - journalist, poet

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office