Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 2)
We came there for the swing made of yellow-painted pipes… Upon reaching a certain height, it would begin to scream a piercing note—iron on iron—that pierced the silence stretched out over a layer of yellow leaves, fragilely rustling underfoot. Bitter, like the moans of seagulls, the note tore at my heart…
Because Dad only came to see you for 2 days a week…
On weekdays, your life went on without Dad; I was far away, slaving like a real Dad Carlo, at various construction sites managed by SMP-615 in the neighboring region. Although it makes no difference: a neighboring region, another planet, the other world… If not by your side, then Dad isn't there at all—unreachable does not count—he's too far away to earn an apartment for a young family, so we could start our own little home…
Which, however, didn't happen. I didn't catch up. I didn't have time for gathering enough distance to dodge, to get ahead.
So it caught up with me—a road roller of whispers, rustling from the pitch darkness. It crashed, crunching through me at that weekend night, in the narrow, hallway-like bedroom your grandparents had carved out for our fledgling family in their three-room apartment…
The bone crusher rolled on slowly, mangling me from the side where my young wife lay, rustling into the darkness, on the marital bed, from under the older generation…
She lay very close, side to side, but already cut off irrevocably a couple of days before the weekend, when "one of her acquaintances" invited my beloved for a ride in his Volga GAZ-24. He drove her far away, out of town… All the way to Hare Pines, on the Moscow Highway, where he pulled off and parked between the tree trunks…
He leaned over to her and unclasped the glove compartment door above her knees, took out a bottle of champagne… soft music flowed from the dashboard radio… assisted by its shimmer, he removed the foil from the cork…
She sipped just a little, just a half sip, and said sadly, "Take me home, please." And, obeying, he started the engine…
My wife's whispered account of her faithful chastity faded away.
The measured, mournful strikes of the bell tolling for me floated in my ears, and I lay flattened on top of the second-hand bed, pinned by the rubble of walls that dumped upon me their weight in a hushed avalanche. However, someone had survived the disaster, snoring quietly from a crib in the far corner of the cramped bedroom…
The air's density had extensively changed; it had turned somehow viscous. Every breath tasted of stale lard. An irresistible grip squeezed my heart, pressing it ever tighter…
To keep from exploding under the weight, it became flint…
And only the darkness, the pitch-black darkness, took pity on me, hiding that icy tear that suddenly rolled out of its own accord and crawled unbearably slowly from the corner of my eye, down my temple, to lodge in the roots of my hair… the last tear of my life…
Later, the path it had carved was deepened by the furrows of wrinkles across my temple, but no more tears came, not in either eye, ever, in any direction. Well, except for those that are squeezed out by the winds, but those don’t count…
(… oh-oh-oh! what's wrong with you, like, gonna start sobbing?… Are you whining again over the ashes of your shattered hopes?… Grab the weakling by the scruff of the neck and smash him on the anvil of his own heart!… what a fast pump!… it managed to turn to stone in a sec… good timing!…
…be a man, buddy… seek solace in simple truths… simplicity is the key to reliability, remember… and the truth about your rosy squeals (no offense, you brought it on yourself) is that even if you work hard at that construction site, even if you get knocked out by sunstroke every other day, and on their remainder, for contrast, get frostbites on your skin – whatever else you can do, you'll never be able to avert that next time when she doesn't say "let's not", and starts to fit herself into the interior details of the Volga GAZ-24…
…or here's another truth for you—incontestable because of its simplicity: no matter how much you cling to memories of past joys, you can't have them back, but if you touch, however slightly, an old sore, the pain—the one you've overcome long ago, buried, and forgotten—it suddenly flares up again… just watch how it shakes you! Even here, thousands of miles from the ruined bedroom, after a million passes of the "I" baton from one "I" to the next…
…listen to what I'm telling you, my dear "I"… you should fight fire with fire more often… did the simple truth bother you?… well, then hit it with the elementary wedge of a broad approach, got it?… you just take and replace "I" with "We"…
…who are we, anyway?… a powdered-and-shaven, or disheveled-and-bristly (depending on the current fashion trend) troop of monkeys… here, among us, each and every vertebrate is subject to the laws common to the entire pack… Claiming ignorance of the code is useless; it won't click for an excuse from being prosecuted to the full extent of the article that defines the offense, you know… You don't enjoy the sentence? Go submit an a-peel! And then pee your ass off serving your sentence until you learn how to spell that word in court…
…I'm a clear-cut comforter, huh?.. Now you just carefully spin your sentimental snot onto your fist and wait—maybe the aching in your balls will dissipate…
…shut up, man! Such raps are not for delicate female ears… hmm… looks like I'll have to start all over again…)
. .. .
Hello, daughter
Our face-to-face meeting didn't have enough momentum to convince you of the unnecessary formal "You," but I have no desire to return the favor; it just doesn't work out that way. I've become too used to saying "you" when I talk to you.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I used to pronounce it out loud, then (and for quite a stretch) I communicated with you in my head.
It's not hard to feign a cold snob, but not with you; I can't bring myself to say "you" here. Please forgive me for this liberty, or habit, or I don't know what…
Well, whatever…
However, let's get down to business…
The day before yesterday, well past noon, carrying out the plan I detailed to you in my last email, I visited the location of the abandoned village of Skhtorashen, to visit the oldest inhabitant of Mountainous Karabakh—the Platanus, a member of the Platanovaceae family.
They say the akhsakal is already over 2,000 years old. True, no one can say exactly when this happened, and the vet apparently doesn't remember where the birth certificate was misplaced.
It was August heat, the climb, though not over rocks but along a well-traveled dirt road, was quite steep, and long before the giant dendro was discovered, my gaze switched to the mode of willful leaps – forward and upward: when, o, when will the spring appear?… It was promised me by everyone who visited this place.
The drinking water sources here are constructed similarly: a stone wall (as tall as a man) is laid across the slope, protecting a trough made of gray hewn stone slabs. The width of the container is about half a meter (a horse, and even a buffalo, can easily dip their muzzle inside when drinking), and the length is up to 5-6 meters, assuming that a thirsty creature will come with company rather than alone.
The water in the trough is knee-deep. At the right end of the retainer wall, at a right angle to it, another short one is erected, no wider than the trough.
A piece of iron pipe protrudes from that wall, issuing a cool stream gurgle falling into a stone bowl embedded beneath the pipe, in case you arrive without a cup.
Having filled the bowl, the water overflows into a trough for livestock and other wildlife, although no wild animals appear during the day. And from the trough, the excess spills over the far edge, at the very end, and flows downhill in a stream that chooses its own course of turns…
However, the spring next to the long-lived giant flowed, contrary to the usual pattern, in the opposite direction—from left to right!…
Furthermore (if you've stumbled upon a surprise—keep jaws a-hanging for more!), the water from the spring of non-traditional orientation didn't quench my thirst, which had been accumulating throughout the climb from the pavilion at the turnoff to the district center of Karmir-Shuka, spurring me on with fantasies (even auditory hallucinations) of a clear, cool, babbling stream…
And here it is, real, but instead of killing my thirst with voracious gulps, I only had to lick my dry lips with an equally dry tongue. Because under the densely green, despite its 2,000-year-old age, canopy of the colosses, I was intercepted by a matagh…
(… a pair of champion expressions in the Armenian language, and also two of the most stunning in their beauty and depth of meaning, are:
1. tsavyd tanim,
2. matagh anim.
Number one says: "I will carry your pain." So simple. Two words. An unfathomable profoundness.
And second on the list is the pledge to make a sacrifice—to perform a matagh.
As a rule, a matagh signifies a happy deliverance.
For example, if a close relative was seriously ill but survived, or, say, a car plunged into a chasm, but, strangely enough, the driver’s alive, then it's time to perform a matagh.