Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 1)
Сергей Огольцов
Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub
This best of the worlds does not stand stock-still. The shows go on, life conditions improve, the gross product of happiness per capita grows drastically. The quality of mass-products in the field of book industry mutates along the lines of trendier juxtaposition.
Perfectly aware of impossibility to roll out a work (by the by, this here one is nicknamed Sonny. Hey, Sonny, take a look at all these good people about! And now let Pop finish talking, okay?) answering the high standards of streamlined digestibility cultivated in readers by the unrivaled exaples of bestseller traditions, I still take risk of suggesting it to the public’s attention. At least, to air out once in a while.
Sonny! Wave and say «mwah!» to all these good people, then go find a hillock, sit upon it and with the eyes in your head watch the world speeding round!… ound… ound… ound…
The first book in The Rascally Romance series is a shot at a revival of old good canon of literary classicism. Remember? The unity of time and place of the events narrated of. And yes, you should keep the same protagonists.
Now, time – one night, place – one-person tent, protagonist – the storyteller. The simpler, the more viable, you know…
The Rascally Romance:
The vagabond cherub
Epigraph:
Well – it’s of course,
Although what else,
But if not quite,
then – at once,
And – aha!…
Vladimir Sherudilo
~ ~ ~ The Birch Bark Doodles
…Varanda…
…a random handful of sounds… …like any other name…
…until it takes on some special meaning…
I am Varanda!
The river drives its meaning incessantly, repeats with a discordant roar of parted currents, seething between, and somewhere even over, enormous boulders: Fall, idiots! Give way!
It rams at full speed into the stupidity of their askew foreheads, or maybe it's the backs of their heads. Hard to tell. In any case, it's wasting its time: you can't drive it home to them even through their crowns.
Wow! Just look at that, how furious the stream is there! Splashes, spits wisps of foam into the faces of their stony indifference, and—darts away…
Yet it stays here and now. Inescapably. Chained to this pair is the prisoner Varanda, who drives its unstoppable depths in the breakout from nowhere to nowhere.
Through the roaring rumble, the occasional dull thud at the restless bottom of riverbed – there's an underwater tom-tom, out of time, a rubble against a rock…
And how long has it been going on like this, Doc?…
Check the "eternity plus" box—sure thing, for certain…
"Races and powers were born, and vanished without a trace…"—the sage Abu-Lala tried to explain it to the slow-witted camels of his caravan, while this river, as earlier—before all powers and races, when camels could still be trained to scribble lecture notes—had already been flowing in this very spot through centuries, epochs, eras, from its source at the beginning of all time…
The habits of mountain rivers are steadfast, unchanging, unlike their names. You can bet your mare and cart, even your Sunday best jeans, that this here hyper in its rocky shores had a very different nickname among Stone Age trappers, because everything flows, everything changes, even a rapper scales…
But consider the countless number of passport-less drifters, wandering—in groups and singly—along the geotectonics of its banks!
Think about it, and you'll realize that by asking, "Who is more fickle—the eternal Varanda River or a gang of idle vagrants?" you'd cut off your chance of being accepted in polite society; such questions have long since become above their heads…
And here I am—the next vagabond in an endless series—neither the first nor the last; I've popped up on the banks of its eternal stream.
…well, you're a real master of blabbering, brother, about absolutely nothing… hey! While you're at it, maybe you could, to boost love of science in camels, spill the beans about this "I" that just mentioned, huh?
A small splash, rather dehydrated, and currently immobilized… I'm lying here, crucified across that good old hole propagated by Jimmy Joyce, into which the future uncontrollably pours, only to turn the past—cooling off like a filter in the pipeline from the ignorant kid with the unblown nose to the grumpy old fart. They are its pair of endpoints, and somewhere between them, the connecting, filtering point, is "I".
…and me! and me too!… how could you have forgotten?… I'm also somewhere here, on our shared journey from boy to old man… well, yes, I'm also hanging out on the shore right now, together with you and JJ-hole, trekking towards our great common goal…
"O, water! We are of one blood!…"
…oh my!… and what was that? – you’ve just spouted off?… been wanting to air out the junk from a too smart peddlar’s knapsack?… like, so literate in educational topics, all of you?… so I'll tell you for the record – in the current global climate, only a completely lazy panda couldn't handle some kind of hooey, to deliver it with an English accent… so no, we don't care, and stop dropping quotations of murky origin… who’d even care about them at this time of day?…
Right, in our get-together on the bank, time is the laziest cat, it, like, even dozed off next to my one-person tent. This twilight about the tent will have to sweat quite a bit before its density reaches a more or less nighttime level.
…your forecast, brother, is spot-on, extrasensially… so, you’ve got to spend the crawling palefaces, help them to turn black… utilize them to something more useful, huh?… at least write that letter, you promised your daughter… be good as your word, you know… and especially since it's still hard to fall asleep this early… just watch your mouth, pardner… no skidding on those damned quotes, okay?
. .. .
Hello, Liliana,
(… sounds more endearing than "Varanda," huh?…
…shut up and get to work…)
It looks like I've finally started the letter I promised you when we met in Kyiv…
Why? To scribble out a heap of belated excuses, justifying reasons, alibis that will confirm my crystal-clear innocence? What's the point? Proving is useless, and it's too late to change a thing…
However, once you've given your word, hold on and puff yourself up like a brutal macho…
No matter how much your polite distancing trampled me, no matter how much your official tone lashed out: "Yes, of course, Sergei Nikolaevich…"—"No, not quite, Sergei Nikolaevich…"
No matter… Damn it! They did undone me, these "vich-vich-vich" holding me at bay!
But I wouldn’t bat an eye at spanking, like a manly man, who knew how to put on a deadpan while bluffing at preference… once upon a time… a long time ago.
It's hard to say "Dad" to a stranger washed up on a breaker from the Internet Digital Ocean. It's much harder when he doesn't even come close to looking like the dashing photo in your Mom's album… Some strange guy, with a drooping gray beard…
Nothing in common with the dad you imagined, the one you so desperately missed as a child! You should have had that dad, not this old man. Some parent, damn it! So, you endured our farewell embrace on the platform—for a woman in her late twenties, such gestures are no problem, but—that's all…
The ice didn't crack, the armor of alloyed alienness didn't give way even a micron, the gardens didn't bloom to the melodious trills of starlings, thrushes, goldfinches, tits, buntings, and siskins, and other birds I know nothing of… The featheed chorus didn't ring out, and the Happy End chord of jubilant fanfares was also cut by the sound engineer…
The man, who remained a stranger to you, removed his hands from your shoulders, and I promised to write a letter.
So we parted, a pair of strangers, who remained strangers to each other no less than to the rest of the Kyiv Long-Distance Train Station…
. .. .
However, of the two of us, I was luckier, just out of my long-standing tradition… And also simply because there was much more of you in my life than there was of me in yours…
For example, I am able instantly, without the slightest preparation, recall how you kicked me in the nose with your heel while twirling around in your mother's belly…
I can spread my arms at the exactly same stretch as that time, embracing that sterile white cocoon, the one I hauled trudging home from the maternity hospital, and you within, sleeping the whole way. So peacefully silent…
And I have a video recording, not on a disk, but somewhere there, in my mind, which always brings a smile to my face, I don't know how, where from, or why… You're in a New Year's circle dance. Everyone's holding hands, marching so diligently, so earnestly…
You're the most beautiful of all the peers… Your sleek ash-blond hair falls just short of your shoulders, your black silk vest is quilted in diamond pattern, your red knit tights, and your black felt boots, so tiny…
Oops! I always shudder at this point: one felt boot stumbled… no, you held your ground, and fell back into the rhythm of the general kindergarten line…
And I also remember the silence of deserted Sundays. Not a soul on the playground, but that was another kindergarten, the one closer… so strangely empty on weekends.