About books

By the way, books are grateful creatures and respond to love with love. But here you need not to gleze: they will surpass and twist their heads. When I get a couple of weeks to live alone, the books immediately move to my bed and crowd the body that does not straighten up to full growth. But I sleep still firmly, because I have no allergies for book dust.

***

The evening in preschool childhood is a glorious time: mom will come home from work, we will have dinner, she will put you to bed, tame a blanket, reads the book. About Pinocchio, Dunno or Chipollino. I did not know and did not want to know the names of the authors. A little man is interested in a little person-why does he need some other uncle, bored with a pen? Listening to the Marshakovsky saying “This is a stupid kitten!”, I was touched and dreamed of getting the same stupid and game of a kitten, but in a huge communal apartment in the Sivtsevo enemy there were too many residents so that they allowed other mammals there. Only bugs and cockroaches survived there.

My first books sound in a delicate voice with the taste of maternal mlex. Voice ligaments are irritated about time not as ruthlessly as the skin-my mother’s voice always remained young, and somehow it could not believe that a person with such a sonorous voice could someday die.

In general, the book for me is originally a creature of a female mother family, I treat it with tenderness and love, as is appropriate to treat a woman. True, it should be resented that in many years of love of books I have accumulated a lot, so you can hardly consider me a monogue.

***

The books that I wrote are collected in me in a separate closet. They look like new ones. I have never read them. If I lived a century ago, they would also remain unstable. I don’t want to read my books. I want to write my books. The old Chinese said: up to forty years - read books, after forty - books to write. I have long been more than forty, and it would be consolation to know that in other houses my books look worse than in mine. The more the book dilapidated, the more honest it has fulfilled her duty.

***

Serbian publisher Volodya Medenitsa released two of my books. He is still printing books on Cyrillic, although many began to shun it: Latin, they say, more beautiful and practical-for joining the world community. But the Serbs talk still in Slavic, in Slavic: everything is clear. These words are pleasant by ear and touch. Volodya loves his country for real: "We, Serbs, the last romantic people in Europe." Of course, not all the Serbs are like that. I'm afraid that Volodya confuses herself the so -called "people." Well, romantics - they are romance. He spoke uncompromisingly about the owner of the hotel where Volodya settled me in Belgrade: “We studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, we lived in the dormitory in the same room. He was inclined to positivism, and I - to existentialism. So in life it turned out: he is a rich man, and I am a beggar. ” And then which of them is the Serbian people?

***

Western humanities often devote their books to their wives. Like, thank you for the patience. This is such a weak consolation to the wife for many years of a poor and boring life. Humanitarians - they are also abroad of humanitarians, society gives them exclusively out of a sense of compassion. One word is wretched: in the skull-some kind of muddy brain suspension, no sense. But natural people do not devote books to their wives. They don’t write books at all. Only articles: while you write a book, it is already outdated. For example, it was previously believed that a person came from a monkey, and now some think that the situation was exactly the opposite. It’s somehow embarrassed to write dedication in the article-I composed too little. In addition, the naturalist has many co -authors. Each wife is a dedication - ink is not enough. It’s better to give a friend to a girlfriend a house or a car. Means allow. And humanitarism can be by a dedication. In extreme cases - a bouquet.

***

I read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, published by one glorious publishing house with the letter "E". I was surprised: the corrector is indicated, but the translator is not. Then it happened to reduce the acquaintance with two editors from this publishing house: one Japanese writer asked to help to explain with them in the expectation that they would publish her book. The editor looked like a serial killer, the editor - to his victim. He is a barrel -shaped ghoul with a stopped look - a former judoka, she is aniline pole - a former volleyball player, a master of sports. Both worked in the detective department of the publishing house called the letter "E". It detached the judoka to meet as a specialist in Japan, I don’t know why. Maybe then, so that the Japanese woman is not so scared of the ghoul. The writer composed about mental loneliness in a big city.

The meeting was held in the Noev Ark restaurant, occupied by noisy people of a medium -vegetable type, who for the sake of such a case went down from Ararat. In this ark, they were saved not from the flood, but from the police. Despite the difference in complexion, both editors ate well, vodka also climbed in them decently, closed with pleasure - fair compensation over many years of sports abstinence. The food was really tasty, they didn’t come up with another in the Caucasus. "For a book that brings the peoples!" - proclaimed the fighter. "Let there be a sales level of our product!" - sang a volleyball player. “And the content to us, in truth, tell the drum,” the judoka was braided with his tongue.

The writer consisted of some boiled green algae, clouded the brown Coca-Cola and shyly tried to pinch off a piece from a huge glitter of bloody meat. And still felt lonely. The dough that will never suit. The conversation was not glued, even though you crack, a book about mental loneliness in Russian never came out. Maybe it is for the better.

***

For the book "Emperor Meiji and his Japan" I received the Enlightener Award. In the field of natural sciences, Vladimir Surdin became the laureate. For the first time in my life, I am sorry for the hand of a real astronomer. I used to think that astronomers were in the clouds, but Surdin turned out to be a strong and similar person and talked about the stars as if he was born there. I told him about that long -standing Japan where I have never been. So we found that there is something in common between astronomy and history.

At the ceremony of bouquet awarding, so much was given that there were not enough home vases, and I had to put flowers in a garbage bucket. Not only a wonderful silky mantle and an absurd burgundy quadrangular hat with a gold brush, but also a weighty bronze figurine: a thin man who looks like an Egyptian priest, reads a thick book on the move. A bad example for the younger generation: you can inadvertently get into the pit. And at the same time, for some reason the person is naked. He seemed indecent to her daughter Glash, and she put on a beautiful looting bandage on the reader.

The press and television reacted calmly: they are interested in presidents, actors and killers. Around the same days they shot criminal authority - Grandfather Hassan. There was already noise! And I did not kill anyone and will not kill. What to take from me, what to give me?

***

They shot me in an advertising video - what a good university we have. So that the applicants are falling to us, and not somewhere else. On the shooting, I appeared in a jacket and tie, and shot me against the backdrop of a shabby brickwork. To expose it, the studio was partially shot down in the studio. In childhood, at such a broken wall, the guys fuck more played in the premium. I just trained, but did not play - there was no money. I asked the director: “Maybe it’s better to take a picture against the background of books? Still, people go to the university. ” The director was thirty, she did not hear about the premises and was not going to abandon her creative developments. “Young people better like the young. In addition, books are non -original. Everyone thinks that they will have to read books at the university. Who will like it? Believe me, not the first year in the profession. ” I did not believe, but by the weakness of the soul nevertheless starred. Then he looked. That's the truth - the erysipelas of brick asks! So there were few people who wanted to come to us. I would not act myself.

***

I was born in a country called the USSR, which is no longer. My toys were made of wood and iron, and not from disposable plastic. As a child, I drank crystal water from streams, along which a smelly slurry is now stretching. I was socialized in a culture that disappears before my eyes: by inertia, good books are still written, but there is no one to read them. I used to envy the young: how much happiness they have ahead of those books that I have already read! Now I do not envy, but I regret it, because they will not receive this pleasure. Actually, in life without books, I do not see anything tragic, but the world lived once and without them. But for me personally, this means the disappearance of the habitat, and in the incoming electronic world I have few interlocutors: more and more people whom I love are moving into another world. There are few new interlocutors. Their life will be more difficult than mine. I always remained in the minority, there are even fewer interlocutors at their feast. I would like to wish them courage.

Alexander Meshcheryakov