The city of Kuldiga

Excerpt from the book of Andrei Levkin "Place without properties"

“A place without properties” is a collection of a short prose of the writer Andrei Levkin who died at the beginning of this year. We bring to your attention one of the six of its texts included in the book.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Andrey Levkin. Place without properties. SPb.: Jaromír Hladík Press, 2023. Content

Pothole, pit or stone: the bus shook, and the skull was precisely put on a spine. It took time to get out of pain.

The bus rumbled softly, swayed in a lifting; Outside the window, changing the forest, breaking off with soundless, like in the subway (paper puff -puffed heap) tunnel, the fields began. Soft, fitting into each other and one other continuing bulges: green, faded-green, straw, adolescence, lightweight surfaces.

The bus could be accommodated by a man of thirty sitting, double seats, a passage between the rows of double seats, above the windows against the corresponding seats of their number: non-account,

non-account

blue paint on the stencil. Red seats are not scarlet, rather cranberry color, maybe lingonberry: dermatin upholstery, pleasant, soft, raspberry color to the touch.

The salon was light, gray-white, festive-brown, the same-the sky outside the window. On the bus, not counting the driver, there are six people: peasants, in warm and good, solid, not colored, obviously very comfortable clothes. The faces of the peasants were turned off, from birth, put on one of the largest granular operating modes, here, outside of him, they were closed to themselves in an incomprehensible one (the end of the road) expectation. They have flexible faces, then there is a lot of something, then something is not: either the lower lip is a chin, then the eyebrows are eyelids.

They were, as it were, not balanced by themselves, because they could not be thought of and depicted without an instrument in their hands. The grass outside the windows is green, the peasants have empty bags in their hands, they probably go to the city, it seems, it was now late morning.

Resolutely nothing coincided with himself and did not want to coincide, only itchy-hanging sound of the bus engine was pleasant to his vague familiarity or simply woolen warmth. I could not understand that I

that there is a bus and where is I why I am here.

In the middle of the bus there was a passage, at the bottom of it lay a rubber path made of corrugated rubber, several to the path stuck to the path, from linden and from maple, leaves.

The touch of the fingers to the glass created a feeling of slightly greasy coolness, the itching of the motor resonated in the head, it was bluish-gray, similar to hammer paint.

With soft not scales, even by influxes; It seems that I was driving somewhere home, sitting in an almost familiar place-the pose was natural, the right shoe warmed on a bus pipe; Outside the window it began to drift.

The peasants talked among themselves, their conversation took place at someone else's frequency, and they could be pulled away from their voices, as if removing the head above or below the layer of tobacco smoke in the room

It is not known where the one is. A horse with a body was overtaken, the horse walked slammedly, crazy, as if half a lord-front-legs danced from half a lord-and-foot-legs.

The stops clicked without stopping, there were few of them, five or six, no one wanted to go, once a rushing chain of people was seen near the house in a hundred-meter distance from the road-they were late, the driver did not see or did not want to see them. He was dressed important, in a jacket, in a knitted vest, in a light shirt,

Looking forward importantly, he slightly turned the steering wheel to the left - the road went smoothly into the highway, which was noted by the chain traceful in the size of the trees.

The asphalt hissed, the shaking ended, outside the windows - the first houses of the city, not country, not rural and not urban - suburban, with front gardens, purely painted or plastered.

It was autumn, there were high bright flowers in the front garden.

The bus proceeded over the river and, having a little extinguished to the right, rose to the city - here the city was already going seriously: stone dense houses, an ancient church (a gray cone on a white cylinder - a spire), near the church there is still water, it fell into a large river; Two- and one-story houses, standing close to each other closely and are still involved in the road, as if there was no sidewalk; Another quarter and the bus were wounded, everyone began to get out, probably it was necessary to get out; There was no one left on the bus, it was necessary to get out.

It smelled of smoke, stove smoke,

The bus went somewhere further, but there was a square, small, similar to a short and wide street. Two-story gray and dark blue houses, near a newspaper kiosk, a long string of people, they bought a new newspaper, for a week for the future.

It felt that the city was small; The area was consistent with the houses surrounding it, and, obviously, the size of the whole city, the feelings of the uncomfortable that did not cause, on the contrary, the reliability in these puppy walls and the frames of the windows, gray, cracked

It was nice to be, to stand, look around, stare at the windows of the hairdresser, where in electric light white sheets, glare on scissors and rings

Among the dampness and stove smoke, felt not with a nasopharynx, but womb; The pharmacy symmetrically (relative to the newspaper kiosk) hairdresser, then the streets go down, the building of the official appearance, the clock on it, the clock show the correct, go time, which balances between weather and bad weather, warmth and cold, rain and fog,

it was easy and, as if walking down the street

inhaled the smell of bread or play (albeit gamma) in the window,

some kind of cloud went bright, the corners became rounder and all the gray planes, browned dust became brighter

Through his inherent skepticism, as it might seem from the side, and, of course, not from the very upper angle

Gray planes, dust from them browned rounded the city from an episode of the city in two or three buildings in the tourist scheme in the fact that you are here. The city, he had some kind of face, the muzzle, like a cat or a bird, he looked at the visitor either from the crack, not from under the wing.

It was necessary to go so as not to clutter up the sidewalk - they all walked, the sidewalks here were narrow, two oncoming could disperse only by turning his shoulders by moving; They all walked forward and, four steps later, turned right, it seems that on the main highway in the city - a hundred -meter or rectum; Short, widest, crowded and living - here even three floors rose here (a little at a distance, fifty meters from the intersection)

Fifty meters from the intersection, at the intersection (passing the wine store and a barn with a photo exhibition), at the level of the second floor of the three -story building, a mirror was inclined. Round, convex, reflecting half of everything.

I turned out to be a fair -haired man, quite caric. I was wearing a blue jacket and jeans. The jacket was with a hood, thrown out, white and red narrow stripes on the sleeves.

The street went forward straight, shops on both sides, all sorts of all sorts; Another thing is appropriate to have any city: offices and so on, blue glass in the dishwasher

The hospital, around which people in bike robes, was smelled of stretchers and bread, wet gypsum and cabbage soup, a car with a red stripe stood on the city, it seems, the only one.

Stone smoke (mustard, cloves, burning, stove smoke), orphan, cool, chill hands. Department of communication, a state-owned building, of course, raw damp, smelling of rusty iron of door loops and old age of an official, hard tree room, dried up ink in

acidic to sore inks;

The street was tired, more and more often the pauses between socially significant houses, she obviously had to end soon, having erupted in state square with state bodies and a state monument-it was already visible the empty space on the right,

Where on holidays the whole population goes in a circle.

On the other side of the street, five steps from the square, a tree with green, yellow, red and all between the niches of intermediate tones with leaves grows; The houses on the street were stone, gray and earthen flowers, while the grass in those few places where it was green, luminous while it was, was still; Mostly tiled roofs

The square with a department store, a restaurant, a monument, institutions, a hotel - forced by cars and excursion buses.

I wanted to eat heat, in a hotel on the ground floor of a cafe, the outer doors from damp swollen, with difficulty opened;

The saleswoman in a cafe politely or someone confused nodded and brought coffee-brown, liquid,

liquid, brown, muddy, water colors in the late autumn streams, it demanded the smell of rot of both leaves and snags slippery, squat

Someone I am in this city

That's what

Over the surface of the drink, steam flooded and flew up, curved figures ran across the surface, folded into a flat surface and again crushed onto the cells; There and there were flies dryly died. Falling on the floor and on the tables of a polished tree, turning over on the backs, buzzing-as if jerking a stop crank in itself-in agony, wanting to quickly cleanse the rest of his life, opening the gate for emergency disappearance of themselves-others were able to, others, having come to their senses, made a new attempt by agony, shaking their lives from a bottle of bottles with a bottle liquor;

The line of city roofs, tiled and low, did not cause surprise or envy, she was familiar, was by hand,

Like a familiar pen or sigarette variety.

Like fog, it was as if I were, that I opened the door with the rubber sound of a swollen tree, fed and warm, habitually from coffee on naked shallow-concrete area

Singing, lighting

left? right? Around? Attack steps? forward? Grass, here in the square, on the lawns there was very bright grass, juicy, not a single yellowness.

No one slyed until no one needed a collection point on this square

There is no plank with a punctured curve with an inscription on a notebook sheet with a “collection point” button, where they should spit on ten years a saliva forward men.

The streets did not mean here, the names of the streets did not mean anything here - from the standard, dozen clips for every city, count their first, seventh - much easier, much easier

At home, barely three human heights, so small that their layout is clear, where and how the sofa, and the table and the stove costs.

Other streets, away from the central and to the central adjacent, were sandy, the houses are surrounded by palisades with bright colors. There were white houses with green frames (there were green grass and a clear-white sky in the city), white houses with green frames and shutters, gray-blue houses with red, burgundy-challenges, there were gray, just wooden, houses with preserved inscriptions of past years, yellow and red brick houses, houses, houses, houses.

It was autumn, half of the leaves still remained on the branches, half lay below: yellow on fresh grass, and red and brown

Beautiful-filed, round-lacked acorns,

crushed chestnuts, which no one has the strength to collect all and all pockets are clogged

Legs walked like the route themselves familiarly, like a needle on a record, or a ball or a sled in a groove

Forcing the body to make a way, but a walk, they have already forced the path of the path to cross itself

And, past the central square, hooking it along the tangent, and then again to the side, through the empty space with the stage, the empty, the benches in front of which the spit on the water could not be dispersed

Where would be a walk

With a big feet on the bricks on the road and corners to grate this body

where it is not clear who directs past the houses of others - small

houses with thick, like heavy and slow, dried, plastered fish, walls

The walls of the gouging trucks or the owners left forever; The park, in the Pond Park, it is glazed with half -touched leaves;

The quarter behind the city fleet, without a tree, houses (one -story, windows at a pile level, floors in houses at the sidewalk level, wrinkled tulle curtains in the windows, through them warm and raw smells).

There should be some kind of house here, the corner behind the cupboard of the bed, the time of departure of the buses on three to five routes, the calendar two years ago and something else, and something else, is stolen to the closet.

A glossy sofa with a garden with a wiped pattern, a nightstand with an alarm clock, a muddy, as if reflecting a long time

Milk mirror

There is a kind of corner to be:

It smells of gas from the cylinder, warm damp and warm, onions from the kitchen. A tin of an arrangel under a tiled roof.

Now it was raining, dragged through the hair, continuing them to the waist.

The body stopped with a dog, a trace in front of which bifurcated or disappeared: there was a house, half -destroyed, from one of the ends had three more walls and a roof; Here, the Rukhlyad and the Syny, forever used light were dumped. The house was left alone in a small quarter, cut off according to the foundations, as if on which, as necessary, strengthening them, put new houses in two and a half human growth

In neighboring quarters, they fiddled with firewood, dragging them from the yard under the halt - where they were dumped by the truck - under the canopies, into the basements.

The smell of firewood, fluctuating in bewilderment, moved the body (fell like a school bad glider - on the wing, and) dived into the street on the left. The cobblestone on it is small, with a fist, blue and red, but, wet, it reflected the gray sky; There were gray walls of confrontant houses, one under a tiled roof, a tree with crimson leaves near the other, the gaps between the cobblers are thickets of grass, small and neat.

The street immediately brought to the same park;

There must be some service

Some people were dark, barely noticeable, but already getting dark, some people, some kind of service, some woman should be with the usual gait, in the usual ones that stiffened, that tight-fitting fabrics, smelling of later, dropping on the backs of the bed and chairs, colorful and faded; a woman with the usual, deaf and slippery clicks of the joints, when she, settling on her back, spreads her legs;

knocked down nails of the toes, overgrown caviar, loose hips;

It was dark, the ongoing rain drizzled, pedestrians thickened on the main street, there were a lot of them, they had someone, they barely diverged on narrow sidewalks, their breath came out their nostrils; It was raining, falling to the ground, on the cornices, on the leaves, with a rustle, as if dry;

Out of the street is deserted, tiny prayer house; The red-brown church, enormous over the gardens, is a white church with a short dummy spire; The river, whose shores were at home

Some kind of paper angle where the mouse lives at night gnawing bones and chairs.

He spoke, consisted of icing boots - brilliant and slippery supports, two vertical rags, a doll made of chemical fabric, crowned with a cheese dome, on which sewer, differently decorated holes gaped, surrounding one of which was compressed and fidgeted, bulging and tormented in the allocation of sounds, then he disappeared, leaving the fright from the unexpected disappearance, tragic-bad, bringing together a bone of raisins.

descent to the rivulet, stone,

in six steps, a low, ten -centimeter threshold on the water - a magnifying long water;

thrown into the water

Dark green flat leaves stretch along the course of long flat, chestnuts thrown into the water, went to the bottom and slowly, along a secret curve, like an infantry-jerking-to a roller of smooth water and suddenly disappeared into the foam

Steps, chestnuts, bones of life,

Pattern on the gate, acorns, cats,

Two strange

Light in the gaps of crushed stone under the feet under the feet The window is drenched in the nozzle dinner in the lumen of the puddle smells of the smoke of the intersection of stop-igne noisy leaves Autumn Smoke heavyweight shields Light inscription are rustle rustle rustle dog Zelesty Georgin Zapor. Shy damp shadow on a tidal pitch Dark steps dark steps Motor outside the city flap music cloud Blue grass leaves pale full moon pour macs in the wind wind Fast shadow gates smell of firewood yard and unreasonable canopy over the frontier warm sawdust

body, strong and uncomfortable corrugated mokritsy,

raw -raw firewood smell of firewood

Triangular on the wire, made of yellow tin, light.