Poison, war and pasta. Ivan Davydov about returning to childhood, "Breakfast of a tourist" and seaweed

In 1978, in London, the Soviet special services killed Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov. He was persecuted in his homeland, he fled, actively collaborated with the BBC. In Bulgaria, they feared that Markov had some kind of slaughter compromise on Todora Zhivkov-the then leader of the country. The KGB of the USSR came to the aid of the allies, a special operation was prepared, and Markov died. A special umbrella shooting ricin was used against him. The then committees worked better than the current ones. If General Oleg Kalugin had not fled to the west, no one would have recognized the details of this story.

Why remembered? Well, firstly, it is clear-a rhyme. And secondly, 1978 is my early childhood. The longer you live, the more you think about childhood. Still happy time, sorry for the banality. Despite deuces, fights, cones, bruises, hooligans from the neighboring courtyard and other measles with chickenpox. Would return, but. Alas, alas.

Of course, at that time I did not know anything about death of Markov (and indeed in 1978 I was three years old, but at that time a person has no problems; well, or he could not remember about them, in a sense, this is the same thing). Serious problems from the adult world began to break into life later. In the first half of the eighties, a hint that in the adult world is not entirely comfortable, shelves in grocery stores became. No, not empty. They were not empty at all. They were filled with cans. Saleswriters (always - large -scale women in moderately clean robes and hats) built a pyramid and other intricate structures from the tinning cans of the pyramid. Probably from boredom. "Tourist breakfast" and sea cabbage. "Tourist breakfast" regularly bought alcoholics. He was worth a penny, he was used as a snack. Homogeneous pale brown mass. I never dared to try. Nobody ever bought sea cabbage at all. In vain, of course. They say she is useful.

Bread, kefir, cans. And, of course, the ice cream in stalls with ice cream. The most delicious seal in the world, as some now say. By the way, yes, it really was delicious.

Everything else was either “thrown away” or “got out”. The meaning of these words is now only intelligible to the old -timers. “Throw away”-it means that something that usually does not fall into the shelves, dissolving mysteriously somewhere in the back rooms, for the unknown layman, reasons were on sale. It doesn’t matter that shoes, meat, sausage, blue chickens, most likely, who lived a short, but hard life on a state farm factory, and dead from hunger, because the employees plundered feed. Then it was generally customary to steal at work. They did not see much sin in this.

Threw it off - it means a queue. Not a kind of humming crowd. If you threw a lot of things at once, there are a few queues. In one mother gets up herself, puts me in the other. This is scary: the counter with a formidable saleswoman is getting closer, there is no mother, now she will sparkle her eyes at me, this terrible aunt, and what will I tell her?

Those who knew the road not to the counter, but to the back room were able to “get”. Who had the right dating. In general, these are not children's affairs, I knew about this only by hearsay.

In the summer, relatives from Moscow came on vacation. With huge bags full of miracles. Chocolates. Finnish servel. And even chickens - but not blue suicide bombers, but chubby, packed in beautiful cellophane bags. It seems that they were from Hungary, these hens. Or maybe from Bulgaria, like George Markov. Oranges with tangerines, bananas. Better - green, which to ripen on the windowsill. Ripe may not survive the roads.

At the school, in the biology office, a poster hung on the wall: "Food program - to the population." HORSHOKA, KOBITS SOVERS, MOUNTS OF VEARS. And in the store - seaweed and "Tourist breakfast."

Another trouble was fear. The more active the Soviet Union fought for peace around the world, the more clearly it became that nuclear war could not be avoided. No, I was a faithful Soviet child, I knew that the American imperialists would be untied, but this, in general, did not change things. It did not cancel the fact that one day everything can disappear. Absolutely everything. Our house. School. Trees. Parents. Cat. I. And even a grandmother, who knows how to protect from everything, will no longer be able to do anything.

I was shy about this fear and did not tell anyone about him. Later, an adult already hinted at him about him-and was surprised to find that I was not alone. Many people from the last Soviet generation felt exactly the same.

Years passed. About everything has changed. One country collapsed, the other, we, as it were softer to say, profiled, the third is completed from some nasty smelling materials or even the fourth-I think, postcrymal Russia is not equal to Pozhkrymskaya. Everything else is now, but, listening to the leader’s next speech about the best missiles in the world, I suddenly felt a familiar chill inside. This is not the same fear-childhood has ended. But it seems that the one is quite recognizable. So the Russian Federation for peace around the world is desperately fighting, which, it seems, cannot be avoided. And there is no more grandmother, there is no one to protect.

And now here is these conversations about the inadmissibility of price growth for pasta. On the TV is the most human person in the world who is breaking negligent ministers, who wants our family to be in Flot to be available to everyone. And for some reason, the same shelves with intricate pyramids from cans of cans.

I wonder if there were masters who remember the secret recipe for “Tourist Breakfast”? How we are without him. Will there be craftsmen capable of drawing a poster on a food program? There is little hope for the current designers. I do not believe in the resistance of the young.

They returned me, in general, my childhood. Thanks, of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich, but somehow I imagined all this in a different way.

I now feel like a hero of a stupid joke-also from somewhere in childhood-who caught a goldfish and could not correctly formulate a desire. Well, he is to blame.