Варга Василий Васильевич : другие произведения.

Пляжные романы ( на англ.яззыке

Самиздат: [Регистрация] [Найти] [Рейтинги] [Обсуждения] [Новинки] [Обзоры] [Помощь|Техвопросы]
Ссылки:
Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
 Ваша оценка:

  
  
  VASILY VARGA
  
  Beach novels
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  MOSCOW 2019
  
  
  УДК 82-3
  ББК 84
  В18
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  В18
  
  
  VASILY VARGA
  Beach novels / Varga V. V. - М.: Varga V. V. , 2019. - 176 p.:[2] pic.
  Vassily Varga graduated from Dnepropetrovsk State University in 1964. He taught aesthetics. For twenty years, he worked as a director of vocational school No. 55 in Moscow. Honored teacher of Russia. He engaged in literary activity in his mature years. He has been published in Germany and Canada. But most of the works published in Moscow. These are the novels "Red Plague", "Wasp"s nest", "The morals of new Russians", "Obscurant chords", "Ukraine leaps", "Orange distemper", "Pedagogical metamorphosis", "Soldier of the Soviet Army", "Miss swindler".
  The "Beach novels" holds a special place among other works. The eternal dispute that someone is guiding us, no matter what our will and our desires are, that everybody"s destiny is predetermined goes through the pages of the book.
  
  УДК 82-3
  ББК 84
  
  
  љ VARGA V. V., 2019
  
  
  
  
  
  1
  
  Sonya"s mother, together with the younger sister Nadia left for the country house on Friday after working hours by train from Kursky station. There were lots of people, and the season when every Muscovite got a car, was yet to come, so no one gave the stink eye to those who got to their Moscow suburb dacha by relay.
  "By all means, I will have a car, Nadia thought, leaning against a busy bench where Valentina Ivanovna, her mother, sat. - I will marry only someone who already has his own car. Even Moskvich - the most pathetic car." This time, the older sister Sonya stayed in Moscow to arrive in the first half on Saturday, when there are already fewer passengers and it"s easier to travel with bags. Sonya got a things-to-do list and it was quite massive, especially since Sonya was the strongest among the three, taller and more well-built, though moderately plump. Sonya woke up at ten in the morning, visited to the bathroom, washed her face with cool water and did not use a towel to moisturize her face, but returned to the bedroom to tidy herself up. Then there was the mirror, makeup, light breakfast and a TV show. She had to go to the shops in the morning, but she knew that there were tons of people in the morning and decided to postpone shopping until later. The decision was unconscious: she just wanted to see how this episode would end with two sisters in love with the same gentleman, unable to agree with each other. At noon, armed with two capacious bags, Sonya left the house and walked along the familiar street like a queen along the path of her kingdom. Willowy, tall, well-built physique, with a chary but charming smile on her face, many young people thought of her as if she was too high and completely unapproachable. It turned out somehow that her virtues did herself a disservice. That"s why she, poor thing, has always suffered from loneliness. Already twenty-four, and she is all alone, already twenty-four, and she is still innocent.
  
  By the merest accident, I came out of my office to get some fresh air and headed along Chongarsky Boulevard towards the Varshavskaya metro station. Just before the intersection, I saw a slim girl with two full bags, rushing to bypass the intersection under yellow light, but somehow she was confused, hesitated, and the tram was already some thirty steps away. I flew into the intersection, grabbed both bags in one hand, and squeezed her hand tightly with the other, shouting:
  "Run! After me!"
  She ran, with her right shoe remaining at the crossroads. The tram passed, but did not damage it. I put the bags against a tree on the side of the road, brought the shoe from the intersection, and again grabbed the stranger girl, now by the elbow, to comfort her and give her the chance to put on the lost shoe.
  "What"s wrong, can"t you see well?" I asked her. "I forgot my glasses at home," she said guiltily. "What is your name?"
  
  "Sonya. I am endlessly thankful. You saved my life", she said, looking tenderly at me.
  "Thanks do not fill a purse. You can"t get off like that", I said mischievously.
  "What else should I do to thank you?" "Aleksandr Pavlovich", I introduced myself. "You should have lunch with me. There"s the restaurant Crimea nearby. I"m inviting you. We can go on my car, it"s near. And we can hide your bags in there. What do you think?"
  "Some other time. I"m in a hurry. I have to take these bags to the country house... with a train. It"s forty kilometers away from here. I got people waiting for me. And these goddamn bags are heavy." "That"s okay, we"ll grab a bite and I"ll drive you. Forty kilometers is nothing."
  "Ok then", Sonya said and made a move to take full, weighty bags.
  "Sonya, let me do this. I can"t let a girl walk with heavy bags next to me, light-handed. It"s unnatural. Or better stay here, I"ll start the engine, and then stop here."
  Having said these words, I was already running to my foreign-made car and soon we together with Sonya were going up to the second floor of the Crimea restaurant. Waitresses immediately ran up and started asking what to serve, interrupting each other.
  "A little bit of everything. Don"t forget the champagne and cognac."
  We sat down with Sonya at the window with a tight curtain in the shade, a kind of paradise for two, a place where we could talk in confidence. "She"s made for pleasure," I thought, looking at her strong, wiry hands and dense, sloping shoulders. "I"ve got to win over her, she"s a pretty mare, the bones will crunch if she presses me. I"ll offer her to go deep into the forest. As soon as it happens, I"ll start to please her. If she hasn"t had anyone for a long time, she won"t resist. There is a drop of sweat on her wide white forehead. She"s excited."
  Both of us were well dressed and the atmosphere favored a trusting conversation and overcoming the barrier after which people get closer to each other, but I noticed that Sonya was concerned about something: she clearly wanted to ask me, but hesitated, and then she said, "Are you married?"
  The champagne was already open, the cognac had been spilled over the glasses, the chaser was arousing appetite and I answered without hesitation:
  "Yes."
  Sonya turned pale, then grey, a noticeable grimace distorted her pretty face. She got up, well rather jumped, and, without asking where her bags were, jumped out into the street. Stunned, I followed the fugitive without thinking of getting behind the wheel. I had to step up, as she didn"t seem to be going, but rather running towards the subway. I caught up with her, grabbed her hand, and sat her down on the bench.
  "Sonya, what happened? I didn"t seem to hurt you with anything. I told you the truth. I could have fooled you. And then, a married man is not a criminal. Things happen in life. I"m not asking you if you"re married or not, it"s not that important to me. What matter is that I like you. And how things are gonna go on, none of us know. And what if... in two years we get married? There"s no seal on my forehead that I am married. Well, I married by stupidity, I was young, and then it turned out that it was a serious mistake, which can still be corrected. "I don"t mess with married men. Let me go home. I know what you want from me."
  Sonya tried to get up, but I held her back.
  "Sit down for a while, I"ll let you go, okay then. One can"t win love by force. And what I want from you, everyone knows it. Well, I don"t need your shoes or the bags that are left in the car. If I didn"t need what all men need from you, I wouldn"t be chasing you like a wolf chases a chamois. Poor is a girl who isn"t being chased by anyone."
  Sonya changed in her face for a little bit. My words convinced her of many things. Moreover, they seemed to hit her mind. Nevertheless, she proudly said:
  "Exactly! Goodbye." "And the bags?"
  "Bring it in, I"m standing here."
  A few minutes passed, and I was already next to Sonya.
  "Sit down!"
  "I will get there myself."
  "I said, sit down. Or I"ll force you and take to the other side. And there I"ll undress you, kiss and make you so sweet that you don"t want to go home. Understand?"
  "Exactly! That is what you want."
  "Okay, I was kidding. Sit down and tell me where to go."
  "Straight ahead, then left." She sat down next to me, stared right at me and then laughed. "Sonya, I"m not such a freak to force you to do something. Remember what I told you."
  "Girls are always afraid or pretending to be afraid, but they want it to last."
  "And men pretend that nothing happens, but continue to strive for what they want."
  "The same awaits me." "I don"t know yet."
  "At least, tell me to prepare myself." "And what are you capable of?"
  "A painful blow in the most delicate place."
  "So, you want to make me disabled? Is it payback for lifting you for free?"
  "And you stay away from me."
  "It"s not me who"s trying to get you. That"s the bully who"s so sick he"s about to vomit. He"s looking for a place to find shelter. The best place you have is the one you hide so much."
  "I didn"t think you were so slutty."
  "Okay, Sonya, never mind. You better tell me..." "Here we are. Mom, it"s a taxi. I don"t know how much he will ask for. Ah, my mother"s name is Valentina Ivanovna, and my sister is Nadia."
  "No, I won"t come," I said. "First, you pay, and then..."
  "And how much do we owe you?" Valentina Ivanovna asked.
  "Give me Sonya. And I don"t need anything else." Sonya twisted a three-finger combination, a nonentity sign, and thrust it under my nose, but so that her mother wouldn"t see it.
  "Where did you get such a handsome guy?" Nadia asked her sister, but so that no one would hear.
  "Take him, I don"t need him. He"s already tried to get under my skirt."
  "You"re a fool. That"s a good thing. Introduce me to him."
  "And maybe this?" Now the nonentity sign was under the sister"s nose.
  I unloaded the bags and went to look at the estate. With the unaided eye, one could see that the dacha had not been repaired for a long time. Most importantly, it lacked a strong man. In many places, the slate split in two apparently under the weight of the winter snow, the crossbars were not in place, and the woodshed barely kept in place.
  "Do you have a hammer, nails? Valentina Ivanovna, where are you?"
  "Here I am, sweet pea. Feasting my eyes on you. I wish I had such a son-in-law. Cause I just heard what a hammer is."
  "Mom, he"s all rusty," Nadia said, taking it off the floor, where it was lying still, trampled with a slightly rotten handle. "I know how to knock with a hammer a little bit. After the third time I will definitely hit the nail."
  "The finger," Sonya giggled. "Shut up, lanky girl."
  "You know what? You three go take a walk," said Valentina Ivanovna, "I"ll make dinner. There are also ponds here, and a kindergarten, neglected though. Go back in two or even three hours. Okay? That"s good."
  I noticed that the three of them all somehow cheered up and there were many reasons for that. Until now, they, the three women, had come to their modest dacha as a women"s group, and had behaved modestly: no one knocked with an axe or a hammer, while the neighbors around them were rattling all day long, even on holidays. In general, any holiday is an opportunity to work in their country house. And now there was a car in the yard, and everyone came to life - not walking, but jumping, chirping like magpies, like something happened that happens rarely, if not for the first time. Well, break a leg!
  I took Sonya by the hand, but Nadia was already there on the left side.
  "Me too, sister, no offence, I have to enjoy the smell of a man. Hee-hee."
  "Let"s make it three-way. Though you"re both young, and I... get white and gray," I said, not reacting to how Nadia pinched me.
  "It"s okay, we"ll shake it up, won"t we, Sonya?" "Shot up, magpie. When I was 21, I was a different, more focused, more concentrated, indisposed to talk rubbish," Sonya said to her sister to annoy her as much as possible and make her shut up. "It"s okay," I said. "Your sister"s a big joker, and if you pull her ponytail, she"ll run away immediately, or even kick your ass, won"t you, Nadia?"
  "Maybe I will, maybe I won"t, who knows," Nadia said and broke free to spin around a small lake with opaque water.
  As we were going deep into the oak forest, Nadia disappeared, giving us a chance to be alone with Sonya. However, Sonya became silent, a bit with drawn and always tended to walk alone pretending she was searching for mushrooms. I tolerated her antics for a long time, but when she confessed that there were no mushrooms in the woods, I firmly pressed her to me with my whole body. She didn"t fight back, but silently bowed her head on my shoulder and said only the words: "I"ll eat you". Then I realized that Sonya was mine. I smelled her body like a bull before mating with a cow to get aroused.
  "What are you doing? You"re gonna stab me. You know, I"m still virgin."
  "We have to end this," I said, and I bit into her lips. "Let"s do it right now."
  "What? You"re such a gentleman! You met me today, disgraced me today, and tomorrow you"re gone."
  "Anything can happen. You"re right. Come on, because your mother is waiting."
  
  
  2
  When we got back, Nadia was already home. She seemed to have lost interest in us. She dragged and sorted colorful balls, small pieces of cloth, embroidered colorful images and did not raise her head as I walked by. She showed a loss of interest in me and Sonya, even in her mother.
  "Hey, you clumsy girls, get off your asses and help your mother set the table."
  "I can replace Nadia," I said, rolling up my sleeves. "I"ll bring plates, pans, and napkins." "No, you are the only man here, and there"s so plenty of womenfolk. How can we let you do that? How? Hey, do you hear what I said?" Valentina Ivanovna said, raising her voice.
  I went to the car, opened the trunk, and took out three bottles of champagne and a bottle of cognac. "I should have put it in the fridge, but it"s broken," Valentina Ivanovna lamented.
  "The wire has no contact. Let me see. Give me screwdriver and tongs."
  "Nadia, look for it," the mother ordered. "It"s you who is in charge of our workshop."
  Nadia got up reluctantly, and then found something like a screwdriver and tongs.
  "Maybe you can try these."
  One end of the wire came off, and there was no current. In addition, the part of the fridge where the wire was attached got rusted and required cleaning. I had to use a kitchen knife. Yet the fridge buzzed, lit up, and the ladies greeted it with cheers. We sat down to dinner at six in the evening. The dinner began with toasts. These toasts came from me as the only man. Then Valentina Ivanovna continued with the toasts. There was some kind of frustration and sorrow about their lonely life in these toasts. Her husband died thirteen years ago, leaving a decent legacy to their two daughters. A three-bedroom apartment almost in the center of Moscow on the second floor, a dacha and a decent land lot, and two kilograms of gold coins of the tsar"s minting. Gold, however, is forbidden, one can get into prison, but after all, once the ban will be lit, she hopes. The girls are modest, hardworking. Sonya has graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, while Nadia still studies. God give them happiness... in a family.
  It was the best, smartest toast and I couldn"t help but have a drink to the bottom: cognac with champagne for me, and clear champagne for women.
  My future mother-in-law was waiting for a return toast, but I haven"t had a toast like that yet, and I murmured something, and, as a token of my defeat, I drank another glass, and the girls supported me. All in all, by eight o"clock, we all got drunk that much, so that there could be no question of my departure, and Sonya did not know how to hold the wheel.
  "It"s okay. We will place Aleksandr Pavlovich in the master bedroom with the girls. The big bed will be taken by Sonya and Nadia, and the guest will take a separate one by the window. I will go up to the second floor. There is excessive ventilation though, but it"s summer, isn"t it?"
  "Whatever!" I waved my hand. "We don"t mind", Nadia said.
  I faintly remember much what happened next. I remember waking up at about three in the morning, when the walls were already getting white, there were birds" voices somewhere far away out side, and I had to go outside to make water. Like a thief, I opened the door with the key sticking out of my keyhole and went outside. The air seemed cold, but extremely fresh, so I woke up completely.
  "Where are Sonya and Nadia? Am I alone or something?"
  Back in the room as quietly and carefully stepping, I approached the bed where Sonya was peacefully snoring, lying on her side. Having taken off my shirt, in my underwears, where Mr. Weenie was already raising the devil, I lifted the blanket and slipped down to Sonya"s side. She tried to turn still in her sleep, but I grabbed her shoulders and leaned against her, her hot body with all my height. She opened her eyes, as she felt me leaning against her belly below her belly button, and froze: a hot stream slashed down her back and stuck down below, at the very place I wanted to go, in the very place I was aiming for.
  She turned abruptly on her back and said in a patter:
  "Do it, do it now! There is no way out, anyway, it"s got to happen someday."
  "Good girl," I said, kissing her on her burning cheeks. "But you have to get rid of your clothes." "Oh, yes, right. I"ll do it myself. And you do it yourself."
  When I found the black hairy triangle, I was deliriously happy. This treasure belonged to me and I could do with it whatever I wanted. But first, I have to check, what"s there in depth. I remember stroking that triangle with my palm, and then I don"t remember anything. This little cave, which was always closed to the shutter, boiled my whole body pretty fast, and I lay blissfully next to Sonya, with my hands stretched out.
  She lifted herself up, leaned over my face and drunk eyes, and asked me with a triumphant smile: "Well, look at him! It died so fast. I wish I could see it."
  "Look," I agreed.
  She raised the blanket.
  "Oops, how small it is. Will it stay that way? Can it be revived?"
  "You can."
  "How can I do that?"
  "You need to put your hand around it and squeeze, then let it go, then squeeze again."
  "Hum, the manipulation is quite simple. Here it is, it comes to life. This is what we need. All four subsequent sessions were successful. We only got up at 12 o"clock to get something to eat. Valentina Ivanovna got it all right, she did not ask any questions, but looked at me differently, as a real mother-in-law at her weakly son-in-law. Nadia also lightened up. Striking the right the moment, she approached Sonya and quietly asked:
  "How was it?"
  "Like this!" Sonya answered by raising a thumb upwards.
  "Share him with me for one night."
  Sonya scratched her a little bit blinded eyes, already poured with blood and, not giving the opportunity to object, she minted clearly:
  "Remember, that small prick that only men have cannot be shared by any blind, lame, stupid, woman with a friend, neighbor, sister, or even mother. Understand? that"s it!"
  "Huh, yeah, I"m just prying you on. You don"t understand jokes. I"d never do the way you think, even if I liked him, bear in mind."
  * * *
  
  I knew my mother-in-law was expecting from me and I anticipated her demand.
  "I tell you what, Valentina Ivanovna, you need something here to be fixed, or rather do some repairs. I don"t have enough time myself, but I can send my workers, five people and they will do everything in three or four days. However, they need to be fed. Well, somewhere to stand a bottle, something to smoke, it is called "oil the hand", so that the work went well. Will you take on such a commitment? Or is it a problem for you?"
  "Alright then, Aleksandr Pavlovich! As for the pay... I am not as strong with that regard as you think I am."
  "You shouldn"t worry about that. They receive their salaries at the plant and will receive them, no matter where they work, it"s not that important." "Well, this is acceptable."
  On Sunday, closer to sunset, I was going to leave and wondered if Sonya would come with me to Moscow or stay at the country house. I left it for Sonya to decide. Sonya hesitated, to go or stay in the country house. After two lyrical nights she was exhausted, her eyelids were closing all the time, and in the end, she expressed a desire to stay. I didn"t insist on travelling together, and Sonya couldn"t guess the reason. We had a 20-year difference in age. It wasn"t that little and it wasn"t that much. But I, a slightly grey-haired lover, was a very experienced and demanding lover, and Sonya, that young mouse, did not suit me. She gave herself as if she were doing some tedious job, and not a single muscle on her face trembled during the intimacy. Not to mention any kind of prelude to pleasure - it was out of the question.
  "Sonya, you give yourself as if you were sawing a log," I told her once when I was fed up with her behavior. "Don"t you feel anything when I"m on top of the bliss? I feel like I"m just moving my finger over your knee."
  "I"m giving all of me to you, what more do you want?" she asked, frowning her face, already gloomy enough.
  
  3
  I went home thinking on the way home that millions of people live in everyday dullness: they guzzle vodka, they swear, mate to make their offspring, scolding sex, because there is a reason to scold not only husbands, but also wives who are prone to love affairs. I"ll say! When mothers leave not only their husbands, but also three children and go with some macho to live in a dorm, in one small room with a shared kitchen, even with an outside toilet. Why? That"s because the night is sweet, like honey. And no one can stand it. And the thing that dimwitted people like to scold and vilify so much, something really means.
  "No, Sonya"s future husband will definitely have a bit on the side. What could I do to enlighten her, at least a little? No, I will not succeed. Her sister Nadia could, but who knows how much she is enlightened in the field of juicy life. It"s a pity that we have none teaches it anywhere. Marxism has filled all the gaps in science and the lives of illiterate people."
  On Monday afternoon, Sonya appeared in my waiting room with a lot of makeup on her face. Long legs, like sticks were sticking out from under a short skirt, and a smile was past her ears. It was the first time she appeared in our institution, so she did not have any conversations with the secretaries, waiting for a call.
  Finally, I pressed the button. She walked in with a majestic gait and without waiting for an invitation, sat down in the visitor"s chair.
  "Well, I"m here." "I can see that."
  "Kiss here," she said, pointing at her chin with her finger.
  "This is not the place to kiss."
  "Whatever," she cut it off. "Actually, I came to ask for a job. Take me somewhere so you don"t have to support me. I"m a whimsical bed-warmer."
  I got scared. I was kind of ashamed. But it seemed like it was true. Not so old bastard with his my own car, the director of a small factory, but still a factory, rather than a bathhouse, and a young woman, who hadn"t yet had time to spend her energy with different men, and who would now lie under Aleksandr Pavlovich at first call, quite a woman who would have another life from now on. She will give her body and receive all the benefits of life.
  I immediately find the right words to say.
  "You know, bed-warmer, I"ve been offered to set up a professional development department, and I"m going to propose you as the deputy head of the department. Can you cope with it? You can"t refer to me, you can"t talk too much and you can"t hint at any relations. God forbid."
  "The offer is not bad, but I"d like to do something like to show up, hang around, and then make up my face, clean up and wait for you in a very short skirt without panties. Can we do like this?"
  "No."
  "Then I gotta go. Ciao!"
  "Don"t be a fickle, sit down! Of course, if you wait, if we think about it, then in three months, maybe four, something will be available, and then I will invite you, fawn."
  "Oh, you"re my overmature yeanling, if I could have foreseen that you would be so intransigent.
  
  Whether you are greedy or not, I will know very soon. Bye... Though, I"m waiting for you today after three, mind you. But my home is as bare as the palm of your hand. Mom says: you are independent now, and if something happens, you will take care of me and Nadia. This goat looks like a generous stud, he brought three bottles of champagne and even cognac, everybody was totally drunk, and suddenly you lost your underwear, as soon as we started to snore with Nadia."
  "I went out and gave them a chance to dirty themselves," said the sister. "So, as you can see, there are plenty of witnesses. Tee-hee."
  I stood up, kissed her on the cheek, but she turned around and dug into my lips. The front door squeaked. It was the chairman of the local committee breaking through. I pushed her away, quickly sat in the chair, and said too quickly:
  "Come in, Fyodor Moiseyevich."
  The visit of the chairman of the local committee was trifling, just a small talk, but cunning Fyodor liked to notice something, to learn something, under a mask of a friendly affection to the director, that then there was something for him to reflect on. But this time he overdid it.
  "I must say, Aleksandr Pavlovich, that these pancakes don"t do us any good. Of course, you are young and handsome, and any of our ladies would be glad to conquer your heart, and then, immediately drag you into bed, but you hold on. Well done! This is good. However, you should develop the same tactic with respect to any visitor who has nothing to do with our team. Imagine that it wasn"t me who came to the room, but someone else. I come in, and see the director kissing deeply with a young lady. What a shame!"
  "Fyodor Moiseyevich, after all you"re a man, not a gossip girl, and you can come in at any time without asking the secretary for permission according to your status. If you want, I will change that status. Next, there is a secular way of behaving. The lady came in, I have to reach out to her, and when she says goodbye, I have to kiss her on the cheek. I did my part, but suddenly she, a slut, as a token of her special affection, dug into my lips. I cannot rule out that in a certain place, under certain circumstances, she could have done something more. So what of it? Where is the moral decay that contradicts the communist morals?"
  "It"s true, but you"re a family man and you have a young wife... beautiful and friendly..."
  "Fyodor Moiseyevich, do you want to get into my family like threesome: is Fyodor with us?"
  "Oh, don"t say that, Aleksandr Pavlovich, dear! I only care about you, about your authority. You have a very high, uhm, authority, and I am with you, God knows."
  "In that case, do not go where you are not asked to. That"s it, I wish you to achieve higher results in socialist competition," I said a killer phrase, reaching out to Fyodor Moiseyevich.
  * * *
  At half-past three, loaded with bags, I was already at Sonya"s, in her huge three-room apartment with a small kitchen, equipped with gas heating. There were no sofas or good chairs in the three rooms, many places had no light bulbs on, and the linoleum on the floor was scratched in many places. One cupboard was empty and the other was sticking out, with a door resting on the floor. I wanted to say it was no good, but I recalled that there were only women living here, fell silent gritting my teeth.
  Sonya immediately threw on her robe, covering all her sexy charms, grabbed a knife and started peeling potatoes. As for the potatoes, she was a real craftswoman, and as for other, more refined products and their preparation, she sailed like a sailor with hands and feet tied.
  I myself had to get involved, and soon the proletarian dinner was ready, and Sonya could take off her robe.
  Remembering our last dinner together, when we got drunk like pigs, I only filled up the bottom with alcohol and Sonya didn"t mind. That was a plus for her. At seven in the evening, I was going to go home.
  "Wait, I"ll show you how rich I am."
  In a moment she ran to the smallest room, where was a secret closet, took out two old canvas bags weighing three or four kilograms each and threw them on a small shaky table in our love room.
  "Here, you can pour it out and enjoy."
  I poured out the contents of two bags on the table and gasped from the blow of unprecedented beauty of not only faded ten ruble coins of the tsar"s coinage, but also jewelry items of the inhabitants of the anti-people regime, according to the ideologists of Leninist-Judean communism.
  These items used to decorate someone else"s fingers, hands, hairstyles and their shine annoyed poor Russians before the appearance of Ilyich the executioner.
  "How do you keep it all in the house? After all, you can be caught, arrested and sent to Lenin"s places for ten years to be reeducated. There are several million Russian roubles here. Wow! And your apartment is... totally naked. It requires a major overhaul and a complete replacement of furniture, so why do you, clumsy women, run your household so badly, huh?"
  "Well, what should we do?"
  "Sell part of the gold and start tidying up the apartment."
  "Buy it, we"ll give it to you at lower price. I will talk to my mother and sister. We will give you at 80 and you will sell at 90 rubles for one coin. There are 600 coins. You benefit and we benefit, because now you are mine!" she said with pride and dignity. "Now I can tell my sarcastic sister Nadia that I am wanted, that I have a loved one, and she has no one, because she is a bugbear."
  "Sonya, you"re a real treasure. I am so happy that we met. You were just born for me. Just a little late. Twenty years is too much of a difference, and in twenty years I..."
  "Don"t hang with other women, quit smoking, don"t drink and you"ll be still a man at the age of sixty. After all, sex is not everything. You can"t build a family on sex. Minutes ago you were mine, but if that hadn"t happened, I would have loved you anyway. So don"t think about it at all."
  Sonya was surprisingly cooperative, generous and unusually kind.
  I always seemed hungry and insatiable and after a while she began to admire the reward for her gifts.
  We"ve been together for a year and we"ve been hiding together for a year. We didn"t even think that sexual games were given to us not only for the sake of games, but also for the sake of propagation, and perhaps this is the main task, which should be performed by healthy people with honor. And if there is a failure in this regard, it means that a person"s health has been affected, the one that can lead to the collapse of the family. Sonya did not think about it at all, but once realized that something had happened inside her body. Without saying a word to me, she went to a doctor and was immediately admitted to the hospital.
  Nothing terrible happened, just a miscarriage. Sonya"s mother figured it was better to keep quiet about it, but insidious Nadia once whispered in my ear that her older sister could not have children, because her body throws away the fetus. And no matter how hard I tried, there would be no heirs. I didn"t pay much attention to the news, but it stuck in my memory and after a while it came to me like a devil before my eyes. What"s next? The time will come, I will be no longer needed in this world and my old age will be brightened up by a little dog and a stick with which I can move around. It"s scary when a man looks for salvation in his death and it turns out that death doesn"t even need you. And no one needs you. No one, no one at all, and there"s no one to hope for. Only for Jesus Christ, whose portrait hangs in my room, in spite of Lenin"s prohibition, who himself intended to become a god. But Jesus is silent and will keep silent even when you cannot get out of bed by yourself.
  Sonya, what happened to you, maybe you were dropped when you were little. You are poor as mistress. You go on a mating, like to a plate of soup, and after eating, you wipe your lips and turn away. All sorts of doubts, mixed with discontent, distracted me and then let me go, but I did everything so that Sonya wouldn"t guess about anything. Still, I had no firm decision, because I, the rascal, was still torn between my family and Sonya. In my family, each of us had affairs as much as we wanted and it was considered a Western model of modern family, extremely fashionable and terribly comfortable.
  The off-peak season at sea was approaching, and I, disguised as an intellectual, preferred this very season: not too hot, but still too warm at sea, and the sea itself is an emotional warmth. I told Sonya about it, and the next day she hit on me: take Nadia with you. She had never been to the sea before.
  "Can"t she go by herself? Nothing could be simpler: take a plane ticket and sail for an hour and a half in the air like a swan, and there you are surrounded by a sea of gentlemen. Take a walk with anyone you like. No, I don"t want to take her with me. I don"t need such a tail."
  The next day, Sonya stuck with this question again: take Nadia with you. I shouldn"t have shared the news with Sonya. She didn"t mind me going without her and I wouldn"t know how to behave there, but you can take your little sister anywhere you want. She was still a child, had never been to the sea before, had never seen, had not heard the sound of waves, but only watched it on TV.
  "Let her go alone."
  "She"s just a child, you don"t get it. She needs a guide, a protector. You will take her with you to the beach, to the dance, to other events. Find her an apartment near your boarding house, take her, please, and our mother also asks you. Didn"t I deserve such gratitude from you?"
  "Sonya, dear, if you and mom are both asking, what else should I do. Let her prepare. The plane is the day after tomorrow. Departure from Vnukovo, eight in the morning. Shush!"
  
  
  4
  Ah, this beach season, where all the boys and the girls are still single! Even those who have lots of small children in Moscow. Where you can passionately fall in love, passionately give yourself, and one never know that her husband or his wife come back completely drunk, and some with the soul turned inside out, so that the house where they live seems to be a hell. Such cases are rare, but no one is insured that the wife goes to the sea in the swimming season and leaves home forever.
  As soon as I went to the sea once, and plunged not only into his warm waves, but also into the sea of naked human bodies, soaked in longing for another body, and I no longer missed a single swimming season. Until the sun"s rays became harmful, and the women"s sharpened figures, still pleasing to the eyes, did not cause excessive excitement, harmful to health and caused increased blood pressure.
  I realized pretty quickly that everybody on the beach was single. There are unusually many of them. Having bored to death, the wife breaks out once a year from her hated home and goes to the sea, spreading her wings, for a week or two, if not a month, and after stepping on the sandy shore she becomes completely transformed. Wrinkles on the face are smoothed, and a smile appears as at seventeen years old on every occasion and for no reason. And of course, she is single, lonely and waiting for a friend who would not only entertain her, but also spoke tender words, because tender words and attention that she was deprived of at home, give a new feeling, unexperienced until now. And with the emergence of this feeling, passion involuntarily arises. And passion is romance, it"s a flight to transcendental distances, which she never felt, even during the honeymoon.
  As a representative of the stronger sex, I had the advantage of choosing a beach girlfriend and always strolling along the beach, mowing with one eye over naked bodies of Aphrodites, not knowing which was better to squat next to ask what time it was. If a stranger willingly answers and barely smiles, you can ask: what is your name, if not just sit next to her on the warm sand, to say what a nice weather and warm water today, and then politely invite her to swim in the sea together. The acquaintance is made.
  After sunset, I already hold some Valya or Luda by the hand and ask her where she came from, and she smartly replies:
  "From Moscow."
  I do not specify which district, what street, near what subway she lives, knowing very well that it
  will confuse her, because actually she is not from Moscow, but rather from Tula, Ryazan, Tver, or even Siberia.
  It took a few years to realize that a beach romance must be one, and not two or three during the season. Any beach girlfriend is first of all a woman, and any woman, if she appreciates herself, will never give herself to the first night. This can take a week. But if she has crossed the threshold of hesitation, she is entirely yours and your expectations and patience are fully paid off.
  
  And then, once, on September 19, I flew a TU-154 from Vnukovo airport to Adler... accompanied by unwanted companion Nadia. We got seats in the rear of the plane, where proletarians like Nadia and I usually fly. I took a seat at the window so as not to lose contact with Mother Earth. But the contact was still lost when the plane gained altitude, and then, when the mountains began, about an hour and a half later, we got so close to the ground that I saw the tops of the trees and waited every second for us to fall into some gorge and no one would take us out. It was especially scary in the air pits when the plane didn"t fall into the pit, but it was shaken up like a steaming aluminum frying pan. Nadia clung to me, as to her father or brother, and even stroked me on the head of hair, which in a treacherous manner began to turn gray. Her silence and stroking were some kind of mysterious, but I was not interested in this at all, and I did not react to her childish pranks.
  Adler greeted us with rain. They say it has been raining for three days already.
  I went to my boarding house quickly, and then I went to find a place to live for Nadia. She was a backpacker. We have found a place. I left Nadia, and went to see the sights of the future resting place and was immediately disappointed: the airfield was nearby, and planes were buzzing around the clock, also there were no space for walks. So I could only lie on a beach all day and only if the weather is good. I thought, "I"ll escape to Novy Afon", and I rushed to the fourth floor, where I just settled. Frustrated, I turned on a Soviet-made tape recorder the size of a box and weight of twelve kilograms. A divine melody sounded, recorded in moribund countries, raising somewhere high up to heaven.
  I was finally disappointed in my rest already at night: a Siberian was settled in our three-seater room, he snored in such a way that the lampshade over the suspended light bulb trembled, and I could not fall asleep all night. Not the least bit.
  As soon as I had breakfast and went out to the yard in front of the boarding house, someone pulled my sleeve. I turned around and saw... Nadia.
  "Did you have breakfast?" "I drank some tea."
  "You came early. Can"t sleep?"
  "I don"t sleep well in the new place," Nadia said, smiling tenderly so as not to lose me.
  "Nadia, let"s do this way. I will take you to the sea, we will choose a place on the beach, and then I will leave. I have a lot to do here."
  "You"ve already found someone..."
  "What are you talking about? We"ve just arrived. By the way, if you sunbathe alone, boyfriends will start sticking to you, and if I"m around, I"ll only bother you. Think carefully and if... if you evaluate the situation correctly, if you choose the right way, like any girl, then... you will give up my company, at least in the afternoon on the beach. And in the evening... we"ll see. If a boyfriend is there, I... won"t come."
  "I don"t need a boyfriend," she said unexpectedly, and it shocked me, "Especially a beach one. I want you to be my boyfriend. My name isn"t Nadia now, it"s Sonya, okay? I am Sonya Zolotova." "Sweetheart, no, it"s not okay. If Sonya was standing next to me, I would have found a room for two. You confuse something, you capricious child. Wait, and I will spank your ass. On your naked ass. You got it?"
  "You scared the cat with a bacon."
  With some anger, I took her by the hand which was so thin, but so hot and dragged her to the beach. She ran after me like a little kid, screaming and bouncing like a fawn. On the beach, where I was staying, she put a sack on her tummy and lay down. Her eyes sparkled like a small, mischievous cat, spoilt to the brim.
  "Don"t go anywhere," I ordered her and left.
  
  5
  
  I walked along the barely filled beach, first to the right and then to the left, mowing with an experienced eye through the naked bodies of Aphrodites lying on their backs and dreaming of modern gentlemen, who can not only entertain in a prestigious restaurant, but also give a breathtaking massage in a separate room. But, it was like I hadn"t noticed anyone and was pretty damn upset. How come? September, the off-peak season, the best representatives of the Soviet society should be here demonstrating their bodies, wide American smiles, blush under the eyes of men, seem inexperienced and certainly single, and here... everyone lies and warms up in the sun like sleepy flies. Hum, I will have to spend time with this capricious child Nadia, who does not take her eyes off me. And no one knows what she needs from me. She must be watching my every move to report back to her sister and mother."
  "Why long face?" she asked me when I got back and sat down next to her, but my eyes were still looking for something or someone.
  "Nothing, different issues," I lied, as if nothing had happened. "We agreed to meet with a local big name, and he went to Armenia on a business trip. Nadia, dinner is coming soon. I"m already hungry. But I don"t know what to do with you. You have to go to the market, to the shops, to cook something, or you will lose weight, and then your mommy will accuse me of carelessness, will say: he did not look after the child well. And that"s why we have to get out, run errands. After lunch - sleep, and then... It"s very hot on the beach, it"s harmful to health. I don"t recommend you to fry here either. Therefore, sleep after lunch, rest properly. I may go for a walk in the countryside. I love long walks, and it"s bad for you."
  "Okay," Nadia agreed, and I felt better right away. "I"m going to go grab a bite, then I"m going to do my hair, and in the evening, after dinner, we"ll go to the dance. Good? Don"t you dare to take to your heels. I"m here without you, like without hands.
  I will sit alone in the room and cry. And I will really lose weight."
  "If I don"t stay long, if my shoes don"t have gaping holes, if I"m in a good mood..."
  "If this, if that... We"ve just arrived, and you deadly sick of me. Okay, I"ll stay alone tonight, there"s nothing to do about it. I shouldn"t have come here with you..."
  I wanted to say: "Well done, Nadia, and high time!", but I didn"t say anything.
  In the evening, I went to the dances to unwind. Surely, without Nadia. A certain Nina, a candidate of chemical sciences, a teacher at Moscow State University, stuck to me there. She invited me to a ladies" dance. And then an unwelcome acquaintance took place.
  "I"m here with my aunt," she told me, "we noticed you as soon as you arrived in the dining room and then on the beach. My aunt totally loves you, she told me right away "Here"s your date. Catch him and stick in your belt."
  "And you believed her?" I asked being delighted that I was going to be stuck in somebody"s belt.
  "I think so. Although I"ve been married, but then, two years ago, I divorced with tears in my eyes, but these were tears of joy, and since then I have never kissed a man, and you know, this does not contribute to good health, spiritual flight. On the contrary, a woman is aging faster and becoming nervous... I really don"t know how this affects men, but it affects women extremely negative, do you believe in this theory?"
  "Okay, Nina. After the dance, we can go for a walk on the beach. There is no one there at this time. Do you agree?"
  "Sure, I agree. This will be a confirmation of the scientific theory."
  Such a direct way to improve a woman"s health by licking her lips and something else surprised me a little bit, and as soon as the dance was over, I left Nina, especially as I caught the gaze of a beautiful she-wolf, who not only devoured me with her eyes, but she was also flashing. Between dances, she came up to me and said she saw me on TV. "You"re totally handsome there. Are you a variety actor?"
  "Kind of. I"m ready to play the role of a lover and take you closer to the sea, to fall on your knees and make you believe that the moon is the sun, that it"s very hot now and you need to take off your clothes, and since you haven"t taken your swimsuit, just get naked so that I can admire you."
  "Huh, I"m gonna undress myself and I undress you, honey. I"m brave. I filed for divorce myself and got my freedom this month. And I liked you when you was on TV. I then thought, if I catch you, I put you to bed. So, who are you?"
  "An ordinary official. I really spoke on TV. I have a small pull there. Besides, they believe that I am photogenic."
  "Perfectly! Come and get me tomorrow morning, let"s go sunbathe together," she said, looking majestically over my head.
  "And what"s your name?"
  "Tamara. Princess Tamara, that"s how my many boyfriends call me here. I"m really bored to death with them, but what the heck: they stick like flies to... honey."
  "In Russia they say "on dung", but let it be honey. What number is my turn?"
  "Hum, the first, of course. I"m bored to death with everybody," she said, tilting her pretty head on my shoulder and giving me a hot kiss, rewarding me in the neck during the dance.
  "Wow," I thought. "Where does this success come from? It can"t be that."
  But after the dance, I still had to take Nina for an evening promenade, because she reminded me that I made a promise. We were on a deserted beach. However, I held myself together. I didn"t want her to be treated so she could sleep well after being with a man. I didn"t even try to steal a kiss from her mouth, demonstrating a purely knightly attitude towards her as a woman. It never occurred to me that this act of mine would further ignite the passion of a 28-year-old vacationer who was about to really lose her sleep after our meeting.
  The next morning, I was already standing at Princess Tamara"s door, knocking timidly on the door leaf. She opened it and invited me to her room. She was wearing only silk panties and a mini-bikini bra. I wasn"t surprised anymore, but I didn"t feel any passion either. The gilded goods were too open and available, and this often leads to all sorts of thoughts and causes a suspicious symphony, even among such ladies" man, as I considered myself.
  "I"d rather stay out there," I said, "and you get dressed and go to the beach. Just put on a better dress, just in case of wind or rain. You can catch a cold."
  "Whatever," she said indifferently, opening the door and changing her face.
  Tamara dressed up pretty fast and, without looking at me, like I was a foreign object, went out into the hallway.
  "Come!" She commanded and headed for the stairs.
  Finally, we went to the beach, where her numerous boyfriends were already waiting for her. They danced, smoked furiously, and spat like real savages. One of them, younger than me, big, broad in the shoulders, with a moron"s face, began to speak to her as the master to a guilty servant: "How long can I wait for you? And why aren"t you alone? Who is this creep? I"m gonna broke his cheekbones right now. How dare you stick to the Princess?"
  "Why do you care? Are you my husband? I come when I want, with whomever I want. You don"t like it? Get out of here, up hill and down dale, there are a lot of chicks on the beach. Let"s get out of here," she said, grabbing my hand.
  We moved away quite a distance from her boyfriends and settled in an almost deserted place. I was waiting for her machos to come and smash my head, but somehow nobody was following us. My hands, fulfilling their purpose, slid along the curves of her beautiful shoulders, waist, and even the hidden burny spot, so desired by these morons, and yet so accessible to me now that I began to think of ways to minimize, or rather bring it all to nothing. No woman can lie still, so that no muscles on her face would tremble if a man"s hand touches her body, that spot where a spark always hides, capable of igniting a fire, which may flare up in any moment. However, not a single muscle trembled on the Princess Tamara"s face. I was shocked. That"s why I didn"t dare to go further. After all, if I"d gone further, and she"d still be indifferent to everything without blinking an eye, it would"ve been a shock to me. She"s a dead log, not a woman.
  She began telling me about herself, confessed that she was married, had a son of seven, and she was a former swimmer. Proud, capricious, and even naughty, she was already making remarks on me about all sorts of trifling things and without reason, and I snapped as much as I could, and it just pissed her off.
  "I"m not used to objecting. Don"t say anything, shut up. Shut your mouth and don"t talk back to me, I won"t tolerate it."
  "Well, let"s do it in French," I said, and fell silent for the rest of the time, which lasted incredibly long and incredibly painful.
  Thank God, the sun was leaning towards sunset, as if forgiving earthly sins to everyone, and this gave me an excuse to forgive all the whims of my temporary beach companion to retreat to that side of the bridge that connected us with a pure heart.
  In the evening, after dinner, Nina the Candidate of Sciences came to my room and raised a little row. She went nuts on me on every little thing, asking me where my morality was, how could I lie on the beach with someone else, while she sits alone and suffers? How can I be so spoiled? The fact that all men do not shine in fidelity, and are famous for debauchery, has long been known, since Adam was a boy, but it"s just not her, it"s against her nature presented to her by her father and mother.
  I was taken aback by the feeling of guilt in front of Nina, grabbed her by the hand and dragged her to the aunt who lived upstairs. At a trial. Not realizing that the judge was Nina"s mother. And I will be found guilty under all ten articles.
  "Son, you don"t know how Nina lives. She has a hard life. She is divorced but her husband still lives with her in a small room - he sleeps on the sofa, and she sleeps on a cot. Nina, have a walk!", she ordered her daughter. "Where were we? I said, yeah, on the cot, God damn this cot. Such a clever, talented girl, candidate of all sciences, almost a professor of chemical sciences, sleeps on a cot, toiling in loneliness. And he, an impotent, won"t even turn his head to her. Imagine how insulting it is for a poor woman being as sensitive as Nina. May God send her a little bit of happiness in sex. And not for one night. Of course, she liked you at first sight. She has regarded your joint walk to the sea as your affection to her. She had already said that she wanted me to vacate this room for the time of our meetings, because you may want to go to bed, but you, son, like all men, turned out to be rather featherbrained and after this walk to the sea, did not approach her anymore. Moreover, you spent the whole day lying on the beach with some Tamara. As soon as she saw you, she got sick. She even got fever, the heart was beating so fast, the poor little heart almost jumped, and this is at that age, I"d say, a dangerous age. And you lie on sand with some beach Tamara. Of course, she loves you if she is so jealous."
  "Tatyana Ivanovna, I have a family back there in Moscow: a wife and four children," I drew it strong and lied so truthfully that Tatyana Ivanovna only frowned. "Besides, I"m an alcoholic, I won"t survive a day without a bottle. I need a bottle and a woman...different every day. I like being with her, even though she complains that I am neither fish nor fowl. Besides, it"s just another beach flirting, doesn"t Nina understand that? I already have my fifth wife. I"m a real piece of work, tell her about it and then she, seeing me, will run in the other direction. Besides, I"m not only a famous drunk, but also a lazybones, I can keep a job for more than a month, I have already been fired seven times for truancy."
  "I can"t believe you"re an alcoholic."
  "I swear. Do you want me to empty the bottle in front of you now, but I"ll start singing songs then. And my fifth wife... she can come here..."
  "You don"t know women, dear," said Tatiana Ivanovna. "Nina has a strong character, she is a respected person, she always gets what she wants. What are your wives to her? The wife is not a wall, she can go. And if she comes here, Nina will escort her back to where she came from."
  "She"s hot, I can tell". "I"m gonna help Nina."
  "You"re gotta be kidding, right?" "All jokes stem from truth."
  "I hope that Nina is a strong person, let her forget me. I must confess that I"m not serious with her, and I never will. Forgive me for my honesty and let me leave you."
  "Too bad, young man."
  
  6
  The first Sunday of October was cloudy and cool by southern standards. After breakfast, I did not dare to go to the beach, and went up to my room, where it was now so cozy and so good, to listen to music. The door to the balcony was open. I turned at full blast and went to the balcony to breathe fresh air. There was a girl standing on the balcony above and suddenly she called out to me." "Please, play Uriah Heep, there"s one song I like very much."
  I glanced at her and said jokingly:
  "If you tell me your name, I"ll play it." "Galya," she answered simply.
  "Galya, come down to room 211 and we"ll listen it together," I suggested. But Galya only giggled back and disappeared. I hardly remembered her face, but there was something so incomprehensible, fascinating and attracting that I wanted to see her again. I went back to the room, played exactly what she had asked for, turned it at full blast and went back to the balcony with my head up. But Galya wasn"t there. Perhaps she hid behind the window curtain on purpose, like a fluffy squirrel in a tree crown when chased by boys. But a squirrel always hides so that she can see for herself and control the situation. And if anything, she rushes even higher.
  I was disappointed, but decided that I"d see her at all costs on the beach. I already wanted to rush in search of the young beauty, to come one floor above, as Princess Tamara broke into my room and dragged me along with my tape recorder to the seventh floor. She took my hand like I was her old lover and said, "Let"s go". There were many men and women. We all drank vodka and wine, danced, and then Tamara dragged me to the balcony in the dark and said that she wanted me right now. She wanted to get me as a new lover for the record, so that she could brag later: she got laid fifteen lumps and that"s it... neither here nor there.
  "Take it off... and I"ll undress myself," she said, as if it was about a pass of frying pan with potatoes. "They can come here, I want you too," I said, so as not to offend her. "Better another time. I will come to your room in the morning... after breakfast. And if you want, after dinner: everybody is on a walk, and you and me here screwing our brains out."
  "Fuck you, weiner. What"s your problem? Let me bite it off and throw it off the seventh floor."
  "Are you crazy? Why throw it, what am I gonna use to crawl over your hot body tomorrow?"
  "I don"t need you to use it, I need a massage." "Use your finger, in the silence of the night. They are already coming here."
  "Bye, then. Come tomorrow at my place, eight o"clock in the morning."
  I sighed and thought for the first time, that sexual slavery is a terrible thing. You don"t want it, but you"re forced. No, at eight in the morning I"ll be on the beach.
  I tried to lie as convincingly as possible: the face that flashed today from the balcony on the floor above kept me so tight that I refused a magnificent woman, the Princess.
  "Screw you, weiner," said the Princess, clenching her fists with long, painted fingernails on her thin toes.
  "All the handsome men are useless, because they have frayed too much."
  "Yes, Princess, there is some truth in your words. Sometimes I want to, but I can"t, so now, apparently the same shit happens. Don"t take it amiss. It"s a short circuit in the male system."
  * * *
  I spent two whole days looking for a magical stranger who called me off the balcony, and my search was not in vain. I found Galya on the beach with my two friends, Olya and Sveta. Olya - a tall, lush-breasted girl, nineteen years old - was lying bellybutton up and boasting of another lover, who had been touching her all night long, and now she her eyes were closing from after the sleepless night. I joined them with Sveta"s permission. She told me her name and introduced me to the others. Olya opened one eye, looked at me, and smiled sparingly.
  "Oh, I haven"t slept all night, now my eyes are sticking together, I wanna sleep, I"m exhausted". "Who kept you awake?" I asked.
  "Someone," she said mysteriously.
  I got closer to Galya, stealing a glance at her delicate figure. She is shorter than Princess Tamara, somewhat more densely folded, she has a narrower waist and wider hips, and her whole body is like pink dough. It is glowing and bewitching. The body is mute music, and only the heart and soul can hear this music. We hear the voice with our ears, and we perceive the body music with our eyes and hear it with our souls. My eyes were always looking at Galya, she noticed it and got a little confused. Olya leaned over her ear and whispered:
  "This one doesn"t belong to himself anymore." When Galya lay down on her tummy again, I sat down next to her and took a moment to kiss her fingers. She shuddered all over. Her muscles danced along her flat tummy and slender legs. I was in seventh heaven. I realized that my decision not to have beach romances with anyone during the entire vacation had gone away like a dreamy vision. Morality, a sense of loyalty to Sonya, who stayed in Moscow, has gone somewhere, and I myself turned into iron sawdust that sticks to the magnet by mistake. And this magnet was a little-known girl named Galya.
  On the one hand, things were going well, but on the other, it was complicated by the fact that Nadia, a Sonya"s sister, who came from Moscow and rented an apartment on the outskirts of Adler, was sitting on the bedding near us. Nadia was all alone. For some reason, the men didn"t stick to her. She suffered a lot from it, though she pretended it was okay. Now she"s fixed her eyes on some magazine, but occasionally looked at me out of the tail of her eye. When she noticed any of my movements, she flashed and seemed to plunge even deeper into reading. Galya noticed that.
  "Who is this girl?" Galya asked. "Is this another friend of yours? Why are you treating her so badly?" "This is the daughter of my acquaintances. We have nothing but friendly relations. Parents asked me to look after her. She doesn"t know what love is yet."
  "Why is she so nervous, pretending to read and looking at us all the time?"
  "Galya, dear, I"m in your biofield and I don"t want to see anyone but you, and to know nobody but you. If you get up and leave now, I"ll follow you like a dog after the master," I said, gently kissing her in the palm of her hand. "Don"t chase me away, don"t look for a reason to get rid of me. I think I"m crazy about your beauty."
  "If so, I"m leaving, and you can follow me if you"re so excited about the squirrel that"s lying in front of you," Galya said as she got up.
  I jumped in hot haste, and without looking at Nadia, I walked past her like she wasn"t there at all. Galya, without looking back, stepped forward, I was catching up with her. I grabbed her fingers and took them to my hot lips. She looked at me with gratitude and gave me a charming smile. We walked along the deserted shore for a long time and stopped behind a big eucalyptus tree by a big, protruding rock.
  "Well, here we are," she said, rushing her beautiful blue eyes into the faraway sea, shining under the soft rays of the autumn sun.
  She was so beautiful, from the heels to the top of her hair, covering her sloping shoulders; and everything in her was beautiful: her youth, her velvet skin, her figure and her lips, made for endless kisses.
  "Oh God, you"re so beautiful," I cried sincerely. "I"m ready to give half my life for one moment with you."
  "Thank you," she exclaimed, giving me a hot breath.
  I can"t remember what I was doing: I kissed her eyes, hands, neck, shoulders, and she whispered in bliss:
  "More, more! Your words sound like music in my heart. Do you want me to take everything off my chest and stand before you and you see me completely naked? Just don"t touch me: I"m still a virgin, and I"ve never been in men"s hands. Give your word that you will treat me courageously and won"t touch me!"
  "I"ll try," I said, looking into her eyes, "but I won"t be able to help myself. I think base thoughts and I"m ready to rush at you like a beast for prey. But if I still can"t help myself, chase me away, even beat me with a stick on the ridge, because it"s sometimes better than any words."
  She took off a light print dress and remained in silk miniature panties, barely covering the magical bump hiding so much mysterious and unusual. Two tight little ballrooms were sticking out below the collarbone and asking for a kiss. She lay on her back with her head on her hands and looked up into the sky.
  "What a beauty," I said again, and I stuck to the ballrooms, kissing them one at a time.
  "Do you want me to take my panties off and stand in front of you in my birthday suit? See if you like it that way," she suggested for the second time. "No!" I cried out. "You can"t do that!"
  "Weirdo," she said, raising her knees to her belly and quickly took the last one off with her fingers. I blinked my eyes and didn"t know what to do next.
  "A kiss and you can use it," she said, pushing my head toward the magic triangle. "Open your lips and kiss the clit in there."
  "How?" I was surprised.
  "This way, with your tongue, and when I start squealing from pleasure and desire, you will take out your dummy and put it in a fairy cave. We both will cry out with bliss."
  Exploring Galya"s luxurious body, I instantly fell down and immediately took a sitting position: what I was being asked to do was out of my mind. I had never thought about it before, and not only that, no one had even hinted at such contact. Though, I heard that women, by no means all, confused manhood with sausage, take in their mouths and make swallowing movements. But this is the first time I"ve heard of men working with their tongue." "Galya, I love you madly and I know that what your body is extraordinary... Maybe I"ve already lost my head for it, but to stick my tongue in there...I"m sorry, I might vomit."
  "You don"t have to talk anymore. You lied when you said you loved me."
  She immediately jumped up and got dressed. All this happened in the blink of an eye.
  "It"s time to go back, the girls are waiting for me." "Wait, where are you going? Have you tried this? First with the tongue, and then... as it should have been, it was an extraordinary buzz."
  "Have you put that man thing in your mouth?" "Sure I have! What comes out of this sausage when it hardens like a stone, is very good for the health of women. That"s it! Come on, the session is over for today."
  
  
  7
  For some time, our relationship with Galya remained unsettled because I could not understand the need to invent some new form of sex, which is not used even by animals. I analyzed my cognition of the world in which I lived and compared it with the Galya"s cognition of this world, but could not make ends meet. I was more interested in the problem, how such a beautiful and young girl, being twenty years younger than me, had reached such perfection. Does she have sex since the age of fourteen? Or the young people of today are all that? But I"m an old lover of women, I"ve been chasing only young girls, and strange as it may seem, I was successful, but nobody even hinted at such a form of sex. Where did Galya grow up, in what family, in what society did men make her do instead of kissing in a place where only a cock should be put? I even wanted to seek advice from Nina, a Candidate of Chemical Sciences, but I stopped seeing them on the beach and at breakfast in the dining room of the boarding house.
  Meanwhile, as I was analyzing the current situation, struggling to find a way out and found no way out, a very active young man took the initiative and sagged me and a group of Galya"s friends on a Sunday to go to Olesya restaurant, which was ten kilometers from Adler on a way to Sochi.
  I immediately agreed, knowing that Galya would want it, and rejoicing at the opportunity, decided to please Nadia, knowing that she was suffering not only because she had been betrayed in such a shameless way, but also because she had become lonely, because now I, such a rascal, was always in the Galya"s company. Moreover, I found a boyfriend for Nadia and strictly ordered him to be extremely kind and attentive: she"s a good girl, and if her heart would break - I allowed him to comfort her with all kinds and ways that only the gentleman has.
  Thus, there were seven or eight of us - Galya, Olya, Sveta, Nadia, Sasha, Grigory, Dima, and me.
  At the entrance to the restaurant there was a long line and a sign telling us that there were no place. I was about to offer to come back with nothing, but Grigory, Olya"s boyfriend, got inside the restaurant and found that seven or eight seats were in reserve and could be taken.
  In the restaurant, we drank, danced, pressed our dear and beloved girls to our hearts. Galya, warming up with wine, and perhaps with the feeling natural to her age, without shame, as if we were alone, got into my lips and stuck to me with all her body and the place where the legs grew from, which made me feel a little uncomfortable. I could see and feel Nadia"s filthy looks, who seemed to say, "What are you doing, you slutty old man? Don"t you have enough of my beautiful sister, who is twenty years younger than you? What a lustful nature you have!"
  But these words, as if coming from space or born in the imagination, and the consciousness of guilt, drowned out a living magic voice, coming from the charming and a little slutty mouth of the one who pressed against me and like bells from afar, whispered in my ear:
  "I want you, my dear boy, my beloved, my sweet seducer. In Moscow... I just swallow you...from head to toe. You will become the sexiest man, you"ll see. Do you want to caress your Galya? I"m all yours. All that I have belongs to you. And if you want my lips today, the ones below my belly button, to caress your flesh, so be it. I"ve already made up my mind. As soon as you go inside, you"ll stay there until morning. I want to be filled with you, and if after all this I start to grow in size, I"d count it my good fortune, because I think I love you madly. You"re the most handsome man I"ve ever met. And what a noble one! You"re just a knight. And this knight is mine. I"m just happy, do you believe me?"
  "If you"re giving yourself to me and you"re not afraid of any consequences, how can I not believe you? I"m just happy. Your words is music ringing in my ears."
  She occasionally put her hand down and stroked me in a dangerous place, and I was afraid she"d start unzipping the pants, but she was bravely holding on.
  As soon as we got out of the restaurant, and it was around one in the morning, quite late, when there was no longer any transport, and we had to walk at least ten kilometers, Galya unzipped my pants. We walked in front, tightly pressed against each other. Galya was a little drunk, and so she was completely relaxed. She behaved as if we were alone on the Earth: she crumpled my sleeping object until it came to life, and then she did not let him go until the boarding house itself."
  "I like the way my boy kicks in my hand," she said, sticking to my lips. "I know he"s asking for my lips, not my upper lips, but the lips of my vagina where it"s hotter and softer. Well, be patient, my darling, you"ll get them tonight. You will dance in them until you"re burned with bliss, and then I"ll leave you there to rest until you come alive again and start to massage my depths until you lose consciousness."
  "Galya, come on, please, or I"m gonna rape you right here on the road."
  "Well, do it, why are you hesitating? I"ll only be glad. Let this wench... What"s her name?... Nadia?... faint when she sees us. I"m not ashamed of anything or anyone. I love, love, love, love, and let everyone know about it."
  My head was free of alcoholic fumes, and my heart was trembling with the magic words of a lovely creature, but I still held on as I could and didn"t give in to weakness.
  
  When we approached the boarding house, Galya said:
  "I don"t wanna go home, let"s go to the sea, let our fusion be lit up and blessed by the stars."
  I was ready to take a step towards the beach, as suddenly Nadia appeared before us.
  "I have to go to the public call office now, to call Sonya. What should I say to her?"
  "Nadia, please don"t do this," I said, breaking out of Galya"s arms and rushing to Nadia, as if to keep her from falling into the abyss.
  Nadia wasn"t confused, she grabbed my hand and dragged me along.
  "Have you missed the woman so much that you rushed into the arms of this lustful bitch? Let me replace her for you. I"ll give you more than she could. I went to geisha school in Moscow, I can hold up to two pounds with my vagina. You"ll be stunned by me. Besides, I"m twenty-two years younger than you. I could be your daughter. Let"s go."
  "Nadia, what are you doing? What about Sonya, your sister? This is impossible. It is sinful, immoral, shameful."
  "It"s better if you fuck with my sister than with some strange bitch. As for Sonya... She"s been messing with you for a year, and I didn"t have anybody at the time. Nobody, you hear me? Am I so ugly? Though, you know why Sonya suddenly came into contact with you out of nowhere? I was the one who talked her into it. I said to her, "You"re stupid, you"re twenty-five soon, and you"re still a virgin. So, you"re not wanted. A little more time and no one will even look at you. Our mother without her husband and without a man for fifteen years, that"s why she"s often sick... a lot of women"s conditions are haunting her. And what should she do? You can"t go to Tverskaya in this age, it is useless."
  "Nadia, where is the guy who went to the restaurant with you?"
  "He"s gone. He"s too noble, and we only know each other for one night. Besides, I don"t like him." "Do you like me?"
  "Unfortunately, yes. I"ve had my eye on you for a long time, and I"ve been thinking about how to get you away from my sister... At least for a while." "But you see what a womanizer I am. Sometimes I am ashamed of myself. Throw me away like a ghost, and tell your sister to do the same," I said, and made a move to get rid of her hand, which held me firmly by the sleeve.
  "I"m afraid to be alone. Walk me home. And there...we"ll figure it out."
  
  8
  I saw Nadia off, kissed her on the cheek, and she covered the place with her palm and kept it as if something was hiding there and could run away, and I, having noticed it, was trying to distance myself and then ran away to the boarding house. The night was anxious, sleepless: when I closed my eyes, Nadia was smiling and crying nest to me. Is there something so secret hiding in this kid that it"s so disturbing? She does not know exactly what it is and if I dare to reveal the secret, what will happen next? They will eat me, as sure as death, I"m a dead man.
  Nadia"s mother will go to the district party committee, crying and telling what I did to her youngest daughter. I broke into their lives like a savage and turned everything upside down. What should I do with Nadia, how to distract her from what she had in mind? Or to do anything at all. Go to sin, make her happy and wave to her, saying that there"s Sonya, the older sister, and there"s nothing I could do. And if I sin with her, she won"t be able to give me away to my sister and mother, she"ll be afraid. In this case, my relationship with Sonya will not change, and conscience, if you put it deeper, will not be able to torment me. And Nadia... she"ll forgive all my sins and take part of those sins upon herself. Besides, Nadia is not a virgin. Girls do not behave like that. It seems that she has fire between her legs burning day and night and there is no one to put out the fire. On the other hand, it is very dangerous, Nadia can quarrel with her sister and suddenly, without thinking, she will say: I slept with your Aleksandr Pavlovich. What then? And another thing. And if she gets pregnant? Doggone little girl drove me into a corner. How zealous and, most of all, crafty she is - she won"t give up on what she took. Well! If she wants it that way... Ah, it serves me right, I shouldn"t agree to go here together with her."
   
  
  I was lying there listening, if anyone scratched the door. Sometimes it seemed as someone scratched. I jumped naked, opened the door, but in vain. And thank God. I scolded her in my mind and stroked her, but all that mattered was her palm, covering the place where she kissed on her cheek. No, there was something so unexpected, so unpredictable... In the morning I washed myself in cold water, went down to the first floor of the dining room, and then went to the beach to look for Nadia. But Nadia was not there. Why, what happened? Some bad feelings were in my gut. All sorts of options were so many, I was going through them until I finally got confused and decided on the last and unsuccessful option - to go to her apartment. I wasn"t walking, I was almost running, wiping my wet forehead occasionally. The house where she rented the room
  
  was on the outskirts in the shade of the garden. I saw it from afar. It hasn"t gone, but seemed empty to me. Oh, my God, where is she, where has she gone? How am I gonna get back to Moscow without her? I"ll be prosecuted by the investigating authorities. They"d say, that I"ve raped a child, and then drowned her, or strangled somewhere in the woods. Yesterday, when we parted, she had wet eyes. I refused on her, and this is a terrible insult to the woman. Men are accustomed to being rejected first and winning afterwards. And it"s not the case for women. They long refuse a man wishing to caress them, as if pushing back the happy moment when they dare to give up and will probably remember this moment for a long time, but if you, for some reason, dared to say no at that moment, it would be a terrible insult for any woman. For them, rejection is like poison. "Okay, Nadia, just show up, I"ll kiss you long, you"ll be the happiest woman on earth, and then what happens? Live for today like there"s no tomorrow. You won"t tell your mother what you"ve done. And your sister, too. You can"t be enemies all your life."
  I could barely breathe when I went up the stairs. I knocked on the glass frame of the hallway, but no one answered, and the front door remained locked. "Na-a-adia! Open up, please, I"m here, I"ve been up all night thinking about you."
  Nadia appeared in the hallway like a ghost, with a big smile on her face. The door opened smoothly. I walked in and froze in amazement: Nadia looked at me as if I was a miracle, and then she unbuttoned the only button on her robe, slid its edges apart and stuck to me with her naked body and began to cover my face with kisses.
  "You"re here, though... I knew you"d come... my savior. For if you hadn"t come, I had already prepared a rope... Let"s go."
  I humbly walked into the room, wanted to sit down on a chair, but she said imperatively: "Wait!" and she grabbed my trouser strap. A second later, I was left without anything. And my shirt was already off my shoulders. Both my shirt and her robe were trampling our feet on the bed of love. She had long, gorgeous hair down to her waist and she let it down, and it tickled my chest and belly. Another beauty lay before me. Nadia could not be compared to Galya. Stretched arms, scattered hair, clasped legs, frightened look - everything seemed innocent and magnificent.
  "You"re a fool," I said, slightly kissing her on her thin, cold lips, "and you don"t know what you"re sacrificing. I don"t deserve you at all, I..."
  "You do, you"re the real Alain Delon. No wonder why women step up to you. I"ll get... you don"t even know what. Well, I have it in my hands. Let me kiss him."
  I"m not going to describe the details of further actions, but what Nadia was doing was insanely great and the sex with her was such that I immediately lost the desire to look for someone else, to get acquainted with anyone else.
  "I didn"t know you were such a pretty girl," I said, stroking her cheeks.
  Soon Nadia seemed to lose her orientation and became so relaxed that her body parts remained scattered in different directions, and it was only after I wiped her wet forehead and burning lips with a towel that she opened her eyes, turned abruptly towards me and kissed me in the eyes.
  "What beautiful eyes you have! One could give everything for them. God, it feels so good! That"s why we women go to all for the sake of such a moment, flight or failure, and I don"t know what... else."
  I too was on top of something unusual. And the Nadia"s bliss was passed on to me. Nadia was not like the others I knew before her. Sonya was far from her little sister in terms of sex.
  "You"re so sweet, baby," I said, stroking on a flat belly and small, tight breasts. "What"s gonna happen? What we gonna do?"
  "We gonna love each other and enjoy each other," she said, pulling out a towel to wipe herself and me. "I"ll give birth to a boy for you, I want to get pregnant by you."
  "What about Sonya?"
  "Sonya will not give birth to you, she"s barren. Her doctor told her about it. And Mom knows." "How am I gonna look her in the eye?"
  "You won"t. You look into my eyes. Look, it comes to life. What a beauty. How many times can he?" "I don"t know."
  "When God created us, he allowed us to get the most out of each other. I compare it to music. Music can take us to an unknown space and enjoying each other is the same. What I just got, I could never have been with another man. It can"t be compared to anything, it can"t be passed on, described, or even repeated. But not everybody can get it, just as they can get the most out of musical sounds. I"ve always been afraid of street woman-chasers who can ruin everything, abuse and then laugh like a horse. You are a womanizer, but you are an educated man, you understand me and... I hope you"ll love me."
  "From a child, you"ll soon become a beauty, too beautiful for words, one can only be proud of you." Nadia got out of bed, made coffee, brought me a cognac mixed with champagne and an appetizer on a large tray.
  "Today I"m taking care of you. If anything is wrong, tell me, don"t be shy."
  We were sitting at the table together, looking at each other like old friends who hadn"t seen each other for a long time.
  Nadia let me go only in the evening and not for long. I gave her my word that I would show up in my room, tell my comrade that I"d go to all-night duty at the seaside and would only come back in the morning.
  
  9
  Happy and pleased with everything that had happened, Nadia was lying on the bed under a white sheet and thinking about the past and the future. She had so many unresolved problems until today that her head burst and her heart began to ache when they suddenly came to mind and it was hard to throw them away like locusts. At twenty-three, she didn"t suffer so much from loneliness, from the fact that she didn"t seem to anyone, nobody, neither blind nor lame, did not propose her, but the fact that the three of them were doomed to extinction and no one would remain after them. Mother is getting old, and sister Sonya is barren, the only hope is her, the youngest one. She will probably bury her mother, and her sister, and who will bury her when the time comes? Can a childless woman be happy? She can"t, and there shouldn"t be such a woman. Those who are young leading a debauched lifestyle, who have another man every night, until the time is ripe, prefer loneliness, but when they are over thirty five, loneliness becomes a burden. For some time you can live with memories, and then come inconvenience, and the inconvenience is followed by melancholy. And no one can get rid of melancholy, it cannot be killed, if only by alcohol or drugs. But what kind of woman is one, who is lying drunk in a ditch and homeless dogs piss on her? Nadia suffered from the fact that the dacha was relatively far away, and every Friday or Saturday she had to carry heavy bags of groceries, do men"s work: periodically repair something, fix the roof, change damaged locks, saw firewood, clean up garbage. Without men"s hands, as without hands. And what happened today is the proof that someone needs her, she is wanted as the woman God created for a man, to be with him and lean on his firm hand. And if she happens to bear a new life inside of her, she will be happy, she will become the goddess of a small creature that will come out, and after a while will call her mother.
  "I"m a mother, I"m a mother!" she repeated, standing in front of the mirror and looking at her weak body. "I had to get better, I had to become as soft and seductive as my sister Sonya. That"s why Aleksandr Pavlovich stuck to her, cause she was poured, smooth, and fluffy. But as soon as baby starts to grow, I will start to get better, I will eat a lot and... I"ll do my duties conscientiously and with passion. He shouldn"t reach out to other women. And as for Sonya, the time will come and I will fall down on my knees in front of her and say "Forbid your lustful sister, see, the child was born and you became an aunt, otherwise... nothing would have happened. It"s not my fault you can"t have a child. If my husband sinned with you in such a way that I didn"t know, well, so be it. But you... you"re so beautiful, you"ll find yourself a lover, and I"ll just be happy."
  She took a few sips of champagne, she wanted to dance and sing, but it was already quite late, after midnight. Aleksandr Pavlovich had still not yet returned, but it did not bother her. She felt that he drank almost to the bottom, put his head to the pillow, and fell asleep like a log to restore strength. "Sleep, my darling. After me, you"ll always fall asleep and have beautiful dreams. I"ll lie down too, and tomorrow I"ll get up at daybreak and start packing things."
  
  At about twelve the next day I woke up because someone stroked my face, kissing my sleepy eyes. I opened my eyes and saw Nadia sitting on the bed, stroking my face with her palm. In the corner, there was a suitcase and her cloak on top.
  "Where are you going? What does that mean?" I asked her, putting my feet on the floor. "Nadia, what happened? Well, come on, if you"re here, I"ll rape you then."
  She giggled, wrapped me around my neck, dug into my lips and started to get weaker. At that time, she seemed so sweet to me, so devoted, ready to do anything for me, but I couldn"t put it in words. I was eager to see her body as a hungry animal to the prey section and my thoughts were there, in a sinful spot, they drowned out my emotions, fogged my brain. I was already pulling down the thing that was covering that magical spot, as there was a knock on the door.
  In no time, Nadia closed the edges of her robe in and sat next to me.
  The building-service supervisor came in pretending to see nothing and asked:
  "Why are you sleeping so long? The cooks are complaining about you. Your breakfast on the table is intact."
  "I"m taking Aleksandr Pavlovich away from you... ahead of time. They are waiting for us in Novy Afon."
  "And who are you, actually?"
  "Wife... future wife," Nadia said. "Men need control at this age. I want him to settle next to me. Go, darling, take the documents, pay, return bed sheets. And you"re your breakfast. You have an hour to pack your things."
  "Okay," I said, as if nothing had happened. I was even glad to hear those words. I didn"t think that I should have visited the beach, seen Galya, and... said goodbye to her, but I didn"t think about it. This little pimple overshadowed Galya, as if she had isolated me from the rest of the beach world, and I was grateful to her for it.
  "It"s a pity," said the commandant, "that you"re not ours, or we"d have celebrated the wedding. Well, be happy!"
  Nadia gladly kissed her on the cheek.
  
  10
  Novy Afon met us with wonderful windless weather, calm and gentle sea and abundance of tangerines. They seemed to grow here on every bush. There were not many people on the beach and my favorite place by three eucalyptuses was free. I was always worried about the same question: where does the waste water go, because there are more than three thousand people in Novy Afon. We will not list the types of waste, but they are there, they are plenty of them and they go somewhere. More precisely, they are dumped into the sea. A local Abkhazian went to the sea to fish after sunset last year and when I walked along the sea, he asked me for a smoke. That"s when I asked him that question.
  "Where you think it is going?"
  "Well, maybe all these waters are pumped over the Iberian Mountain," I naively replied. "I don"t know".
  "You know nothing. Wherever hey pump this urine, shit, waste after washing dishes, it will still return to the sea. It"s better to send them there right away. Immediately, without any pumping." But no matter how I tried to smell it, lying by the bumpy wave, I couldn"t smell it. I didn"t know why this was happening.
  Nadia and I settled down by the three eucalyptus trees, admiring the expanse of the sea, and I immediately start preparing to go.
  "You sit here, get warm in the sun, and I"ll go to Boris Akopovich, to get a room. We have to sleep somewhere, right?"
  "Is it cool here at night?" Nadia asked. "It"s freezing," I laughed.
  Boris Akopovich, an old friend of mine, worked at the camp as a chief accountant. He was considered to be the second person at the camp, and, despite the fact that he had worked in this position all his life, one could not guess the specific type, manner of behavior, inherent only in one profession - the profession of accountant, a pen pusher. He gladly met me and immediately issued an order to one of the three-bed rooms on the third floor.
  "Come and have lunch with your passion, I"ll be waiting."
  I knew the house of Boris Akopovich, his wife, I knew that his children were wandering around somewhere, but I never saw them. It was not always comfortable for Armenians living among Abkhazians, and all Boris Akopovich did was complain about them.
  Novy Afon is an ancient village. Our far-distant ancestors lived there, but, unfortunately, left no traces after themselves, and Novy Afon had different names. Somehow the Greeks liked it very much. They, more precisely Greek monks, founded the Novy Afon Monastery, the most beautiful architectural construction in the Caucasus, ruined by the Communists. In this magnificent, shining white monastery, crowned with domes, first the Bolsheviks set up warehouses, and then organized a brothel in the form of a hostel for scumbag tourists.
  Abkhazians, Georgians, Russians, Armenians and several Greeks live here.
  Nadia and I took a tour of the monastery. In the numerous halls on the marble slabs there were bunk beds, buckets for urine. Here, tourists - usually drunk dorkers - pissed past a bucket or even into a corner, fucking, swearing and cursing. Lenin"s proletarians, who completely forgot what conscience, honor, morals are, as the most nasty two-legged individuals on Earth, covered up an ancient shrine - Novy Afon - the pride of ancient civilization.
  We came up and saw three drunk men blatantly pissing on the wall at the base of the temple.
  
  "How is your rest?" I asked a man who was hiding a bottle of vodka in his pants pocket.
  "How? They shit right next to the beds. The stench is terrible. My girlfriend sent me for a bottle, otherwise, she says, she won"t let me. I can"t stand this stench."
  "Don"t you think it"s a sin not only to ease oneself, but also to fuck here, because this is God"s temple," I said, looking at it as a savage.
  "Ah, I see where you"re going. I don"t care, I paid for the trip, I was put here, though this temple should have been blown up a long time ago. It"s bad here, uncomfortable. And I don"t care about whose this temple. There are mansions a little higher. They are fenced with an iron fence and barbed wire. Stalin himself rested there. Perhaps he didn"t let priests singing come from here. And he did the right thing. When a person rests, there should be silence."
  We walked through the halls filled with tourists and came back. We saw nothing: everything was ruined, and there was only Marxism seen in this sodom. One could admire the Novy Afon
  
  Monastery from the opposite mountain and from the sea. The beauty of nature was crowned with a genius of human wisdom, painstaking work, a gift of great Greek masters and donations of the Russian Tsar Alexander III. The building itself, with its magnificent domes, is located on a hill, as if carved into the mountain"s descent. Obviously here it was necessary to remove millions tons of clay and stones of rocks to construct a building and a site. No one could tell who did it when the monastery was being built, and who built the monastery.
  Every year, when I rested in Novy Afon, I climbed the Iverian Mountain and admired the sea from the top. There was a well on top of the mountain, where the water never dried out. This time Nadia also asked for a tour. She got there hard, perhaps regretting her decision, but tried to keep up.
  We decided not to go to the dining room to have dinner. We picked up sausages, tangerine, and orange on the way and decided to have dinner in the room. In general, the meal here was not very good, but I remembered that man shall not live by bread alone and told Nadia about it.
  "I don"t care much about food," she said, not touching the sausage, contenting herself with tangerine.
  "You"ll get weaker."
  "And I won"t think about it." "I won"t let you sleep."
  "That"s right. Life is so short, you have to enjoy something."
  "You sweet tooth." "You are another."
  "Nadia, let"s go, I"ll put you to bed," I said, taking her the hand hanging like a whip.
  "Already!?" "Yes, already." "Then let"s go."
  I took her by the hand, and brought her to the bed.
  "Undress me," she said, looking over my head in anguish.
  I took off her shirt, then bra, touched her small protruding nipples, then put her on the bed.
  "Lie back, my lovely child," I said as I stroked her body.
  She must have felt so good, so calm in her soul that she closed her eyes, and after a while, there was an even deep breath, a sign that she was falling asleep.
  "Sleep, a noble child," I said, and lay down on the other bed.
  
  11
  After two weeks of stay, which flew like a dreamy vision, it was time to get ready for Moscow.
  More than ever before, my vacation in the Crimea and then in the Caucasus brought me self-complacency mixed with pride that I have achieved so much without spending any effort. Happiness itself had come into my hands. It filled me with strength, spiritual and bodily, gave me back my youth and, being alone with myself, I was repeating the same phrase, "I still have it in me!"
  And I stopped noticing the gray hair that began to break through at the temples. As for Nadia, it wasn"t she who was caring for me, but it was me who was caring for her. I did everything I could to make it easy and comfortable for her to believe in the future and let her know that no woman in the world could match her. I felt like she was blossoming before my eyes.
  "You don"t regret taking me with you?" asked Nadia quite often.
  "I bought a valuable treasure and will never leave it. The only thing..."
  "The only thing what?" "What about your sister?"
  "I"ll try to calm her down. I"ll show her my tummy. Or I"ll say, "Take him for a while."
  "The three of us will live together?"
  "Well, not all the time, right? I can"t fulfill my duties for a while."
  "Nadia, stop even thinking about it. I"ve never been and will never be in such a situation, that"s not how I was brought up."
  "We"ll wait and see."
  "Will you tell your mother when we arrive?" "I got to. I will call them. Maybe tonight."
  The plane from Adler went to Moscow at six in the evening. As soon as we passed the mountains of the Caucasus, we found ourselves in the night mist. The flight lasted less than two hours. My heart was shrinking, like that of a guilty schoolboy. I was waiting for the scandal right at the airport, like I am standing and just mumbling, and my mother-in-law was watering me from all the buckets filled with dirty water, while Sonya aren"t looking at anyone and is just wiping her tears. Nevertheless, everything went according to plan. The plane landed, we began to descend the ladder, and I was already on the last step trying to sneak away, but Nadia held my hand tightly and demanded that I calm down.
  As the eldest, though trembling like an aspen leaf, I still felt more guilty than Nadia, a girl in essence, a mush for brains. The further we walked, the more Nadia snuggled to me, as if she wanted to hide herself from all the troubles that lay ahead. I budge her in this, being afraid to get her out of balance, or rather out of the situation in which she was now.
  "How are you doing?" asked Nadia. "My throat is dry."
  "Hang on, soon the stewardess will carry the syrup. What is it, your hand is shaking? Are you worried?"
  "I don"t know," I said, squeezing her fingers. "What a child you are... naughty, though." "You shark."
  "And you"re a rooster... that trod a young chicken," she said and kissed me in the hand.
  "Nadia, what"ll we two do? Should I never come to you again?" I asked her, squeezing her little hand in mine when the plane had not yet taken off. "I don"t know yet. Everything will be decided in the coming days. I have to... talk to them. And you... it"s really not your fault. Or they will eat you alive. I know my mother and sister. The conversation will be tough, and the result will be unpredictable. Besides, I"m late."
  "Late for what? I don"t quite understand."
  "Late for illness, which indicates that my stomach will grow. You will become a father. Hence all my conversations with my mother and sister. I will do it myself. You wait. Don"t call, don"t come, sit like a mouse in a hole. I"ll call you myself."
  I kissed her on the lips. This was proof that I have a positive attitude towards the message.
  
  Nadia didn"t have any luggage, and I had a main luggage with 15-kilogram recorder that was checked in luggage when I boarded the plane back in Adler. A happy thought crossed my mind, and I told Nadia:
  "I tell you what. You"ll be the first to go to the place, where we"re supposed to be met by your mother and Sonya, and I"ll go at the tail and get into the luggage compartment. Try to take them home and tell them he"s not worth waiting for, so let"s go, my dears."
  "Okay, I"ll try," Nadia almost giggled with some kind of rattling voice.
  As a thief, I safely passed the waiting area where Sonya and her mother could stand to meet those who had returned from the south and headed for the luggage compartment. There was a belt running with stuff, and owners grabbed what belonged to them. As soon as I grabbed my package and turned towards the exit, three women appeared in front of me - Sonya, Nadia and their mother. I lowered my head, pretending I didn"t see anyone, but Sonya came forward and blocked my way. "Sonya, I"m sorry, but I think I"ve got food poisoning... I feel really bad. I wish I ran to the bus stop, or maybe got to a taxi."
  "We can call you an ambulance," Sonya said, grabbing my hand and ripping out my suitcase. She smiled joyfully and was surprised I didn"t give her a kiss.
  "Leave him alone," Nadia intervened.
  "Why? He"s our man," said the mother. "Let him come to us. Let"s go, Aleksandr Pavlovich. Don"t listen to this bobby-socker, little pimple."
  "He"s not yours anymore," Nadia said.
  "How is it? What does it mean?" Sonya asked. "What you heard. He is not yours anymore. And forget about him."
  "Aleksandr Pavlovich, please explain, I don"t understand anything," demanded Valentina Ivanovna, my future mother-in-law.
  "I just... Nadia noticed me once... once, I think, after dinner, when I was walking with another girl and holding her by her pinkie. I asked her not to tell you and especially Sonya about it. She promised and didn"t keep her word. That" s what this is really about."
  Nadia giggled and shake her fist at me.
  "I"ll take care of it myself," Sonya said, and she came even closer to me and hook her arm through mine.
  "I said, don"t touch him!" Nadia said loudly. "Nadia, what"s going on?" asked the mother. "Nothing, I"ll tell you later. You, Aleksandr Pavlovich, get out. And quick! Our women"s team will figure it out in four walls. Come on, women, let"s go!"
  I went to the bus stop. I wasn"t walking, but running as if I had jumped out of a burning house. It seemed like I was being chased. They would catch me and tear me apart into three parts. No, better in half. One half for every sister, and the mother gets nothing. Poor women, and I am in a state of distress.
  That night I slept badly, I was looking for a way out and couldn"t find it. I should go to them and confess everything, bow my head and say: "It"s my fault. Beat me."
  During the day, I couldn"t get through to Nadia on the phone. Either the number was busy, or the phone was immediately thrown on the lever and even rude incomprehensible words flew instead of tender "Hello!". So three days passed.
  On Saturday, at ten o"clock in the morning, there was a call on the direct line. I picked up the phone. It was Nadia. She couldn"t talk. I seemed to see her crying, but I couldn"t hear her voice. I heard some fragments of the phrases drowned out by the sobbing, but I couldn"t understand what she was saying.
  "Nadia, sweetheart, calm down and tell me what happened."
  "Sonya...Sonya is gone. Sonya died, she passed away. She poisoned herself. She gassed in the kitchen tonight. They couldn"t save her. It"s... it"s all my fault. I hate you, you hear me? I hate you." Then she stopped, but I didn"t hang up. I held the phone in my trembling hands. "Come right away. Mom is sick. Sonya is gone. My mother is in a state of insanity, I don"t know what to do. It is just the two of us. We, nasty people, you and I. We"ve done troubles, now we"re going to clean up the mess... two of us."
  "What about...?"
  "Are you afraid? Don"t be. I hate you and I love you, but I hate myself too. More than anyone else." I jumped out on the street, caught a taxi and went to Paveletskaya metro station. My hands and feet were shaking. There was nobody in the apartment, even police officers, they were there yesterday. The kitchen was sealed, Sonya"s body was taken away for examination, and there was a real mess in the apartment. It was difficult to find out where and why things were supposed to be. Even the front door was not opened for me, it was not locked. I got into Valentina Ivanovna"s room, but immediately jumped out as I just couldn"t see her. Nadia sat in her room and wiped her face with a towel. She realized I had come, but she didn"t raise her head. I approached her, hugged her without saying a word.
  I rushed into Sonya"s room, and stood in front of her portrait.
  "Goodbye, innocent child," I said, crying like a little schoolboy.
  There was a note on the table. It contained the phone number of the morgue to call to get a corpse after everything was ready for burial.
  I shuddered from the cold breeze and noticed that the windows in all the rooms were half-open, there was windy, but still smelled of gas from somewhere. Valentina Ivanovna was lying practically motionless, and Nadia was sitting half-dressed on her bed. I grabbed Nadia in my arms, held her close to warm her up, and asked her if there was a kettle in the house. It was necessary to brew tea and something to cook for a snack. I knew well that neither of them touched food. For how many days? I didn"t dare to ask.
  I quickly fed Nadia with a spoon, like a little baby, then I put her sitting and offered tea. I was still afraid to go to my mother-in-law.
  Nadia came to her senses after a few sips of tea and told me what had happened to Sonya. On the night from Friday to Saturday, when everybody went to bed, Sonya went into the kitchen, closed the door tightly behind her, covered all the windows and the front door from the inside, and then opened all four gas burners of the stove, sat down at a table, put her face on her palm and fell asleep... forever.
  "Did you tell her everything?"
  "Yes, she almost guessed it all and started asking, tell me, and tell me. Well, I told her how it was and said that I was expecting a child from you. And I also said "You won"t be able to give birth anyway, due to infertility. I was a fool. I should have lied." "You must have lied about the child."
  "No, I didn"t. We"ll have a baby."
  My reaction was a cold kiss on the forehead, which now, more than ever, was weak and indifferent.
  "We have to save Mom. You... go upstairs, buy her at least some tea. I covered her with a beach towel. It"s very cold here. Who opened the windows?"
  "It was me, who else," Nadia said.
  "Let"s go over the food supply revision, and I"ll go shopping."
  "Yes, honey. Until we"re revive, take on these heavy responsibilities. And most importantly, don"t go anywhere. I am afraid to be alone."
  "But where will I sleep?"
  "What do you mean where?" In Sonya"s room. "No way!"
  "Okay then. Sleep here in my bed and I"ll go to her room."
  
  12
  Sonya"s body was burned in the crematorium and a small cinerary urn was given three weeks later and placed in a columbarium with a small photograph. It was a tiny bag of ashes from a young Sonya who once blossomed and did such a terrible thing without thinking about what would happen to her mother and sister. It seemed that she was avenging heaven for being deprived of happiness at a young age. She must have hated me. I scolded myself for meeting her at the crossroads and savingher, perhaps from death, or at best from the fate of a cripple. Never before had I had to do such things and if it wasn"t for Nadia, a completely defenseless, almost an orphan, who now depended on me as a five-year-old child on her mother, I wouldn"t have done these dreaded things for any money. In the meantime, I had the frost on my skin, and my guilt was depressing my soul, restricting my movements. I pounded with wooden legs, with my head pinned down waiting for punishment for the death of an innocent creature devoted to me, which I so meanly unmanly betrayed.
  "Sonya, I"m so sorry, I didn"t mean to betray you. Somehow, it was like I was walking, then slipping, and falling into a pit. And there were only rats and snakes in that pit. I mixed up with them and became a snake. Really, I didn"t deserve you... How could you do that, why did you punish me like that?"
  All these days I was walking around like a chicken with its head cut off and the more I learned about cremation, the more I was horrified. It turns out that the crematorium burned an incredible number of dead bodies and a handful of ash, which was given out for placement in the columbarium, may not be ash from the burned Sonya"s body. Therefore, it wasn"t her that we buried her, but rather only God knows whom. If according to Christian tradition, since ancient times, the body of dead people was buried in the ground, one could come to the grave, bring flowers, here you visited someone else"s ashes placed in a tiny box. Thousands of people die every day in big cities and the authorities do not allow the body to be buried in the ground. To do this, we need to look for a cemetery away from the city. That"s why people in the city are like flies. They cannot be worth anything, because thousands, hundreds of thousands of people like them, say, like, could you move a little? After long, tedious, hurtful walks around all kinds of morgues and offices, I got all the documents and was able to get the body of the one who had been giving herself not so long ago, bringing joy, and take her to the crematorium. It was difficult to accept, it was impossible to get used to, it was necessary to obey the reality, biting my lip and through gritted teeth, to do what was required in such cases.
  Already the three of us have arrived at the crematorium to say goodbye to Sonya. Valentina Ivanovna entered into a conversation with me without looking at me, and that under the influence of her younger daughter. Some time later, we were called to another room, and Sonya was lowered and transported to the crematorium.
  "Come for a handful of ashes in three weeks," a girl said. "And now you"re free to go."
  "We could have buried Sonya according to the Christian custom, without sending her to the oven," I said almost in Nadia"s ear, because the mother was walking near.
  "It was the mother"s decision. We don"t have and there can be no other way out. The funeral costs a lot of money."
  "But you"ve got kilograms of gold, Nadia! I can"t understand it. Your mother is sick, and judging by her condition, we"ll soon have to bury her, she barely walks. If something happens to us, who will get the gold? Who, Nadia? Wait for me, stay here,"
  I said and headed to a wine shop, knowing that only alcohol can save me.
  I bought a few bottles of champagne, cognac, vodka and expensive sausages. Nadia filled the bag with good snacks.
  
  When we got home, I settled down in the kitchen, in the same kitchen where Sonya killed herself, took out her big photograph and put it in front of me, and then opened a bottle of cognac and champagne.
  "To you, an innocent creature, may you rest in peace. Though, what am I talking about, we could even commit you to the earth."
  After drinking a large glass of cognac mixed with champagne, I kissed her on the forehead in the photo.
  "I betrayed you like a last scoundrel and I don"t ask for forgiveness, because there"s no excuse for me. May your soul rest in peace."
  Nadia came in and knelt down next to me, put her hands together and said in tears:
  "Forgive me, dear sister. It"s my fault for your premature demise. If the same fate befalls me, then I deserve that."
  She went upstairs and went to her room, and I stayed in the kitchen to shed drunken tears.
  On the ninth and fortieth days, we were preparing a commemoration and tried, as best we could, to comfort Valentina Ivanovna, Nadia"s mother.
  She was lying in her room staring at the same spot. Death of her daughter Sonya adversely affected her health. I felt terribly guilty in front of her and was afraid to face her. But she suddenly told Nadia to bring me to her. I gathered all my courage and sat by her bedside. Valentina Ivanovna stared at me with a somewhat hateful indifferent look, and then quietly started talking.
  "You treated Sonya bad, but at least take care of that little pimple Nadia. We have a lot of gold under the floor where I"m lying now. Nadia will get the three-room apartment. Sell part of the tsar"s coins and make a good renovation. If she gives birth to a lively healthy child, I hope you will have a strong family. Sonya was unlucky, God gave her life, but he didn"t give her happiness. I don"t know why. If you can, don"t burn me when I die. I want to lie in the ground. I came out of the ground and I want to return to the ground. Grass and field flowers will grow on my grave, bees will buzz, and I will listen to this earthly song."
  I leaned over and kissed her hand.
  "Forgive me!.. For everything... I"m so sorry. We, the living, make lots of unforgivable mistakes, and then the burden of these mistakes is on our souls for the rest of our lives. I"ve loved Sonya. I don"t know how it happened that my heart was in the bosom of your youngest daughter. It seems to me that she is also quite guilty. A man is a wolf, and a wife is a chamois. We are chasing the chamois, she"s running away from us for a long time and hides, but she"s hiding somehow so that we suddenly find her very close, we"re taking her in our arms and taking her away, because that"s what she wants. She"s screaming, kicking, but at the same time she is delighted to be caught. Then, suddenly, she opens her lips. And not only the upper ones, but also those sinful ones, after which unpredictable events can happen. That"s how it happened with Nadia. I promise you that I won"t betray her, she is still a child, and I will cherish and protect her. Do you believe me?"
  She closed her eyes and did not answer, but I still felt that my words had convinced her of something and calmed her soul, because the circumstances were such that no one could comfort her. Everything in this house, even the mouse scrubbing in the corner, was against her. And few days left before her death were telling us, like, "Get ready, what are you waiting for? The grim reaper stands at the door, and no locks can protect from her."
  I went back to Nadia"s room. She was crying, lying on her back. I sat next to her, turned her around, and hold her firmly against my heart. Now she was my crying daughter, and there was no trace of lustful urge.
  "It was me, it was all me. God won"t forgive me. You... How do you feel about what I did? Kill me if I don"t deserve to live. Just don"t leave me alone. I don"t want to be alone. I can"t be alone. Why live then? You can"t live alone. My mother was having a hard time losing her husband. But she had a husband, it was our father, and she became a mother. And me? I also want to become a mother. Like everybody!"
  She spoke pathetically and looked at me as if I was now responsible for her morale, for whether or not she should live.
  "Calm down, baby. Sonya chose this way herself, nobody forced her. Nobody urged her to do this. So, what if someone cheated on her! What"s the big deal?" I felt like I was lying, I knew it was all my fault, I was an old bastard, I seduced a girl... one, then the other. "I also had a lot of sin on me, I"m older than you, and before I was messing with you, I had to spank your ass and say, "Pull yourself together." Such things don"t bring any good. And I was seduced... by a young lamb, I"m an old wolf. What now? Now I"ve already fallen in love with you. Now it"s out of the question that I"m gonna leave you. Don"t even think about it, it hurts for me. Or I"ll spank your ass now."
  Nadia calmed down and fell asleep. In the morning she ate well and drank coffee. And even rushed around my neck, opening her lips.
  "Nadia, I"ll spank your ass... naked ass. You can"t play around. Your mother is lying there, not reacting to anything anymore. Be patient. Or I will think..."
  "What you"ll think, what? That I"m a slut? Yes, I am. But only with you. I don"t want you to look at anyone but me."
  "Don"t worry, it"ll never happen."
  
  13
  Realizing that soon there will be only the two of us, Nadia became even more attached to me, working day and night, as she wanted to seem unusual not only in bed, but also in everyday life. She began to care of herself, she changed clothes, got literature on cooking, began to write magazines, ordered a dress, did her hair in a hairdresser"s and, despite the recent loss of her sister and hopeless condition of her mother, met me with a joyful smile on a young face, called to the table and boasted of her evergrowing belly.
  "We have six kilograms of gold. Is that a lot or a little? Is your bride rich enough? Did you look for that one? Do you want me to bring you a bag and show you the tsar coins and jewelry?"
  "How much do you weigh, Nadia?" "Fifty-five kilograms."
  "It means that we have not six, but sixty-one kilograms of gold."
  "He-he, I like that. You"re not kidding, are you?" "All jokes stem from truth."
  "Well, if that"s the case, then I can accept it." "Come, look at your mother, looks like she calls you. You, hum... pay less attention to me and your hair, I like you in any way, and pay more attention to your mother. It"s your duty, okay, Nadia, my golden girl? You are so beautiful and noble, stay like that in my eyes, and as for the outfits, it is not so important at this stage."
  "Scold me, scold. I"ve switched to you, I want to replace all the women, but I see that you"re more noble than I thought. I"m going to my mother"s room right now, and you have some tea with a sandwich, and go to work."
  That"s exactly what I did.
  I always got lost in the metro. There were so many people, so many faces, so many destinies, and here nobody but Nadia and her mother, except for the family I didn"t know six months ago, where I was so suddenly immersed, and became a part of it. There was simply no more room for someone else in my world.
  At the intersection on Chongarsky Boulevard, a strange woman tried to draw my attention with the fact that my briefcase was not fastened and the papers were about to fall out. I said, "Thank you very much, Nadia, you see everything as always."
  "I"m not Nadia, you"re mistaken."
  "Oh, yes. But you understand, I"m in a hurry to Nadia, she is waiting for me."
  "I noticed that at work, I began to confuse names among the employees, and when it happened for the third time, I went back to my office, in front of a big mirror and started asking myself who it was - me or someone else."
  "Oh, my God! What"s wrong with me? I got to get a grip. I"m at work, but if I"m at work, there"s no home, no friends, no acquaintances, shoo! ... mixers."
  * * *
  Valentina Ivanovna didn"t get out of bed. She was heavy and the place where she lay seemed comfortable to her, created especially for her. Like any human being, she thought of death, but was not afraid to die at all. She got back that feeling of connection with God, and God had prepared another life for all mortals, the life in heaven. It was as if she left the earthly god of laziness, a bloody, cruel Jew who enslaved Russia, but now she returned to the real God and remembered how her grandmother baptized her at the age of five. "Yes, God is wise, eternal, he forgives everybody and I"m already forgiven, so I can die in peace."
  It"s was the fourth day she hasn"t eaten like she used to, but she didn"t suffered from it. She accidentally put her hand on her shoulder and realized that she had a fever and reached for a cup of tea. But the mug was empty. She called her daughter Nadia in a weak voice. She responded and immediately ran in and brought unsweetened tea. After taking a few sips, she asked:
  "How do you feel with him?"
  "Mom, it"s okay, I could even say fine. We are on the verge of extinction. I don"t know which of our relatives was so sinful before God. If I don"t have a child, our poor family will end. Maybe you can tell me where the father has got so much gold. Maybe this gold belonged to those who were brutally murdered by the Red Commissars, because our dad served in the state security police, didn"t he? If it is so, we have no right to keep it, we have to bury it deep in the forest and forget about it. What do you think, my dear mommy, who gave birth to me in sin? Mom, say something so that I don"t suffer." Nadia took her mother"s hand to stroke her, but her hand was cold, her hand couldn"t bend. Mom"s eyes were closed, Mom didn"t breathe, Mom died. Nadia had no one to call to wash her mother"s body, as it was the Christian custom, and she called me. Having done everything we had to do, we buried her in the Solnechnogorsk district three months after Sonya"s death. She had uterine cancer, and it proceeded so quickly and aggressively that the doctors only shrug their shoulders. Their opinions were divided. Some said that the disease was neglected, while others, based on the daughter"s testimony that the mother had been ill recently, proved that cancer was such a disease that the devil couldn"t figure it out yet. They referred to different forms of cancer, to the possibility of resistance of the body, and even hinted at the fact that...
  Nadia agreed with the hint. It is better to cut off the head at once than to first gouge out the eyes and carry out other actions incompatible with life, if this cancer is still incurable. Less days, less agony. There was a solemn silence at the tiny cemetery in Solnechnogorsk, here it was quiet at night and during the day and if not for the rotten wooden crosses, which showed that the cemetery was going to oblivion, one could sit here and talk to God. The grave was on the sunny side of the village
  
  cemetery, with a wooden cross and a large wreath of flowers. Father Michael sang psalms alone, but these psalms meant so much to me and to Nadia. We"ve just temporarily abandoned the world, the cruel and unpredictable, and joined the world of eternity, where there"s nothing to be found in real life.
  We ordered a tombstone engraved with gold letters and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, believing that we had fulfilled our duty as decent people. There are things to be observed, they should not be broken. Once you break it, you will pay later. Everyone has a conscience, if only it is a normal person. Only the Communists, the villains, who were real freaks, were dying like flies and on their graves, there was a five-pointed star with a wooden stick, and a portrait of their main freak who shot well.
  Nadia and I came to our senses and decided to look at our treasures, our gold, as Gobsek did with his millions. I had nothing to do with this treasure, and it didn"t make me happy: it was the mood of awakening understanding of the world"s frailty.
  And Nadia was happy, she wanted spread her joy on me.
  In addition to gold coins of the tsar"s coinage, which were over five hundred costing ten rubles each, in bags, already a little moldy and rotting, there was a lot of jewelry. These were rings, thimbles, pendants, chains and all kinds of gold jewelry. All this wealth weighed six kilograms.
  All kinds of trinkets, sometimes adorned with diamonds, all showed that they had gotten to the owner by robbery, or, under Soviet standards, by expropriation.
  "Where did your father serve?" I asked Nadia. "He served in the NKVD. He made it to the captain, and at the end of 1945 he was arrested and shot. Later he was rehabilitated. Therefore, we escaped persecution."
  "Did you ever wonder where these golden trinkets came from? Who was the owner or proprietors of this wealth before it fell into your father"s hands..." "I have no way of knowing that. Although I suspect that he got it as a result of the robbery and murder of the owners. My mother said father never told her."
  "Hum, it could have been the result of an expropriation," I said as gently as possible so as not to offend Nadia. "The Lenin guardsmen not only arrested innocent citizens at night, but also searched them. Such a treasure as gold bars and jewelry that they pulled from their fingers, from the necks of the victims to be shot - such jewelry could have settled in the pockets of thugs."
  "Do you think my father was a thug?" Nadia asked, and her eyes immediately turned red.
  "I don"t know who he was. I know that nobody could give him these jewelry and coins. No one gave anything to the Chekists. Never. The Chekists took the coins themselves. Dozens of tons of gold were expropriated and presented to the same bandits in Western countries for the world revolution, which, fortunately, failed. Churches, monasteries and, of course, wealthy people were robbed. Anyway. All this, thank God, is in the past. You had nothing to do with it. You were a small child, innocent and charming. Your father may not have been directly involved in the execution, but the executors could brought him all these. It wasn"t his fault, it was the system. Vladimir Ilyich the Chief is to blame, not your father. I don"t think he was involved at all. And if I had thought, I wouldn"t have told you. Calm down, sweetheart. Consider that you have not heard it. What do you think you"re gonna do with this wealth?"
  "I can"t do anything, I can only keep it safe. If you sell at least one coin, you can be arrested. My mother told us with Sonya about it. We need to hide all this. Gold, as well as foreign currency is forbidden. And you...don"t talk to your friends. Or they will put you behind bars. Me first, and they will confiscate the gold... in favor of the state. We can take it to the country house and bury there... in the woods."
  "Valuable dead capital," I said and took everything to the storeroom, putting a few bricks on the bag.
  
  Tired as dogs of daytime running, we lay down very early in the big room on a wide family bed, and I immediately dropped into sleep, but at about two in the morning, I woke up, opened my eyes, and looked on the ceiling. The ceiling was in the dark, but my eyes gradually cut through the darkness, and I saw there either a horsefly, or a butterfly periodically flapping its wings. A chill ran down my back. What could it be? A ghost? Devilry? Sure, it was devilry. I lowered my legs to the cold floor, walked down a long corridor to the kitchen, pulled out a box of matches, came back and lit it up. The ceiling was clean, white, without a scratch and without any marks.
  I decided to go back to the kitchen, where something suddenly got tangled up, cluttered as if a slide of plates fell off the top shelf of a wooden closet. "Nadia!" I exclaimed, but Nadia couldn"t hear. She was fast asleep.
  I could hardly get to the switch in the hallway, pressed it with my trembling hand and saw some broken plates on the kitchen floor. I didn"t go into the kitchen to pick up the broken dishes. When I returned to the bedroom, trembling all over, climbed under the blanket, pressed against Nadia"s back, hid with my head like a mouse under the blanket. However, the peace of mind that would make me sleepy did not come back. I was just lying with Nadia on my back, and then I turned my back. After a while the same picture appeared before my eyes. I was about to wake Nadia up, but she woke up all of a sudden, moaning, screaming in pain, and then sat up.
  "Nadia, what"s wrong? Are you not well?" "Kidneys," she said. "A seizure. Turn on the lights, go into my former room, pull out the top drawer of the nightstand and bring it to me. And grab some water in the glass. Hurry up, or you will have to call an ambulance."
  I ran like hell and scratched my toes against the threshold of the room, where there were many nails, not nailed to the end, not bent to the end, and after a number of years the wood worn out and bent nails remained sticking out.
  Nadia swallowed a pill, washed it down with water, gave me a kiss, curled up and fell asleep. I slept too. And in the morning, before I got up, I woke up because I felt like I was being stroked on my belly and crushing my protruding banana.
  "Nadia, what are you doing? You can"t do that, just quit fooling around. I"ve already had enough, look at your tummy."
  "The doctor told me not only it"s okay, but I need it... up to the sixth month, and you"ll have to be patient after. So, don"t refuse me, you lazybones." I left Nadia lying in bed, gloriously happy, with her eyes glowing, looking at the ceiling and scattered shock head on pillows and under her back on a white sheet. The picture was so beautiful, if only I could take the camera and shot. After having had a snack, I went back to the bedroom, kissed her both nipples and said:
  "What a beautiful painting, just divine. You"re just adorable, you hear me? I didn"t know that you would become so beautiful. It turns out that my banana does you good."
  "Oh yes! I keep thinking about kissing him, I like it so much, but I don"t know how you feel about it. You"ll say "you"re a slutty bitch"".
  "I can"t say anything, maybe once and for all, although I"m convinced that the lips below your belly button are so excellent that he dies of happiness in there and then comes to life again."
  "For what purpose?"
  "To die again. These are the only organs of a man and a woman over which there are fights, quarrels and even murders. And it"s only because one or the other sex is looking for something better, and then it becomes a habit, a drug and people are no longer in control of their actions. So let"s assume that our virtues are better than anybody else"s."
  "Am I better than the beach girl Galya?"
  "I had nothing with Galya. We kissed, made confessions and demands of something unusual that I was not ready for. You filled out a little and it suits you. I may have to follow you, but I don"t know how to get pregnant. Look, make me a baby."
  "He"s already there, here he is. A month or two and he"ll start kicking. Well, honey, you better go, or you"ll be late. You know, I can grab the belt again."
  This is the first time I went to work as a young, happy husband. Except...Sonya...Why did she die? Didn"t she know that everyone who stayed would suffer? A person has no right to leave like that.
  
  14
  When I got back from work, sometimes with bags full of groceries, Nadia slept tight. She seemed to be sleeping all day. I came to this conclusion as I sometimes called home during the day, but nobody picked up the phone. At first it was alarming, and then I got used to it. "I didn"t sleep well", Nadia steered clear.
  "Sleep at night, why you"ve been asking for love all night long. Settle down. I also bite my nose at work."
  Nadia didn"t answer right away, she thought hard about something, then gave me a philosophical smile and said:
  "You know, I"m getting mine. For twenty-two years, I"ve been fasting, and now I want to make up for it. Are you tired of me? You are such a rooster, God forbid! I noticed it when we were at sea. You barely got out of Sonya"s gentle arms when you lost your mind. I think now... if I go to the hospital before delivery, you"ll run to the other chick, won"t you? You"re all the same."
  "Well, don"t talk nonsense, please! What should I do, cut off my banana now?"
  "No, not at all. It"s not yours, it"s mine. I conquered it and I wanna keep it, that"s all."
  "Nadia, everything is fine, I"m all yours, all I have is yours. Just why do you have new medicines every day? Does this stimulate our sex? You...are in a condition where you need peace and no stress. And sex is a load on the body."
  In return, my Nadia turned away and cried. I didn"t know what to do, how to comfort her. But the thought came naturally. I turned her on her back, started unbuttoning her robe, admiring her poured breast, her proportional figure, and kissing her body. Soon she appeared in front of me in her birthday suit and awarded me with a charming smile.
  
  Everything I was supposed to do I did slowly and smoothly, and I was telling her how wonderful she was and how good I felt about her, kissing her eyes and digging into her pink, open, kissing lips. "More! More! Don"t go away, my beloved companion! I bought you at the cost of the loss of my loved ones, and you brought me so much happiness!"
  "Lie down," I said, feeling our bodies were covered with sweat, and immediately jumped into the bathroom to take a slightly cool shower.
  I wiped her forehead, cheeks, neck, and body with a damp towel, and then covered her with a warm blanket. She fell asleep immediately, and then, after a while, began to moan and cry for help. I came running. What happened?
  It was hepatic colic.
  "There, in the closet, a box wrapped in a towel," she said, trying to suppress a grimace distorting her face. "And water. Hurry up! What are you waiting for?"
  I got this box, she took a few pills, it seemed to me more than she should and she calmed down a little.
  "Leave me alone, I don"t want you to see me suffer. Please don"t mind, I don"t take no for an answer."
  From now on, Nadia"s health had been affected by pregnancy. She was having a hard time with it. Her liver and kidney seizures began to happen more often, she stopped getting weight, only her tummy grew bigger, while her other body was losing weight, and our marriage bed stopped to interest her. I wanted to make renovations in the apartment so much that I periodically began to talk about it, but Nadia only frowned and waved, like it wasn"t the right time.
  "You need to register here, and for that we need to legalize our relationship, that is, get married. And the child needs a father. Among other things, life is treacherous, unreliable: none of us knows what will happen tomorrow, what trick fate will give us. So let"s do something and do it as quickly as possible. Maybe I"ll die following my sister. It"s my payback for what I did. Besides, you have no rights to this apartment. Hurry up, my knight."
  "Maybe we should, but we have to go to the registry office together, and you"re bedridden. How will I get you there? And then we wait for three months and sign in a solemn atmosphere in the registry office."
  "You go, and then we"ll figure it out. Well, go, what are you standing there blubbing your eyes?" "I collected the documents and headed to the registry office in the hope that I could convince the administrator. She, a very fat lady, met me well, but when she realized that my pockets were empty, objected strongly on all the points."
  "You know, it"s suspicious that she is 23 years younger than you, and she don"t want to come here with you. What if you stole her passport and want to marry her for profit, then register, and then demand your share in the apartment and other possessions. Does she have a summer house?"
  "Yes, she does," I blurted out by stupidity. "Well, you see. No, no, absolutely not. I don"t want to be fired. Let"s do it today, if you can. Is she pregnant?"
  "Yes, she"s suffering."
  
  "Take her to the maternity hospital immediately. You know... For what it"s worth, she can die."
  The words "she can die" made me jump up. I even forgot my hat.
  As soon as I jumped out of the registry office, I raised my hand to stop the taxi. However, a simple car stopped by. The driver opened the front door and asked rudely:
  "Where, for fuck"s sake..." "Paveletskaya."
  "Two hundred."
  "Are you nuts? It"s only two kilometers." "Then walk."
  "I give you a hundred." "Sit down, you bareass."
  I prepared a hundred bill in advance and as soon as he stopped his clunker, threw it on his seat and jumped out of the car. Then I just ran and ran to the second floor, where I got stuck. With a trembling hand, I pushed the key into the wrong side of the keyhole and pressed the bell. But nobody opened for me. That"s it, Nadia must have died. Oh, my God!
  I finally turned the key, and the door opened. Without undressing, I rushed into the bedroom and saw Nadia lying on her back. Her face was pale, eyes closed, just like a dead woman. "Nadia!" I shouted with all my might.
  She woke up. A barely noticeable smile slipped over her pale face.
  "I just took a nap," she said. "Why are you dressed?"
  "I was running away. I was afraid to be late." "Late where? Am I that bad? Go, take off your clothes and come back to me. I"ve got news."
  "It"s going to be okay, sweetheart, don"t worry. We"ve been through enough already. What else could it be? Calm down, then let"s go apply for a marriage certificate. Do you want to get married?" "I"ve dreamed about it since I was a schoolgirl. And the first time I saw you, I thought, this is who I want to marry. It was a mistake that you met Sonya, not me. I don"t get it, why Sonya..." "Sweetie, don"t, they don"t judge dead people. Sonya"s deed puts a heavy burden on my conscience. She punished me like no one else."
  "May her you rest in peace."
  "Unfortunately, she is not buried in the ground." "Don"t torment me with my sister," she said, crying, "I have my own problems."
  "I"m sorry," I said, kissing her on both cheeks. She sat down in a chair, massaging the area below the ribs at her right with her left hand and biting her lower lip. I understood, her liver was aching. "You have to take some tests."
  "The tests are bad, I know," she said. "I guess I"ll have to go to the hospital. What you gonna do without me? Besides...we need to find out from the register office, could the workers of this service come to our house and register our marriage at home? This can"t wait. Or do you doubt?"
  "Not at all. Tomorrow I"ll know how to oil the wheels. I"ve just came from there. I"ll convince them. I"ll bribe them. I will take witnesses from my work. Everything will be fine."
  "I need to hold on a week. I want you to stay here when I go to the hospital."
  "It"s a little scary for me to live alone in the apartment. If anything, I"ll lock the door and go back to my place. Okay then. But these are all premature talking. Are you feeling better?"
  "No, sweetie, call..." "Who?"
  "An ambulance."
  In no time, I rushed to the phone and called at 03. The ambulance arrived in three minutes. After a preliminary examination, the doctors said: "Take her to the fourth hospital for bed rest." "When will she be discharged?" I asked the doctor.
  "Nobody can say that."
  I accompanied Nadia to the hospital, and came back late, upset, broken, not knowing what to do. I realized that fate was taking me into clutches, from which I could hardly escape. I slept in a big stranger"s apartment alone. Everything was okay, but in the morning, when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was in someone else"s house and that all, even small bedbugs hiding under the wallpaper, mice at the corners, were against me. A big portrait hung in the Sonya"s room. I stopped in front of it and said "Sorry" in silence. She kept looking at me with her stern eyes and barely noticeable smile, as if she were saying, "You stupid fool. You"ve found what you were looking for. You"ll never be happy. Evil for evil, blood for blood, life for life."
  I ran away from Sonya"s room and didn"t go in there anymore, trying to go to work as fast as I could. The next day I rushed to the fourth hospital to the fourth floor where Nadia was, bringing her tangerines, oranges, grapefruits. She went out into the corridor, said she was given many shots and that she was feeling not very good. "How are you? You run away, I guess?"
  "Not yet. Although it"s freaking annoying to be there alone," I said, kissing her on the cheek.
  "The doctors say I"m staying here for long. I don"t know, but maybe one of them needs a gift. Bring a coin, it costs one hundred and fifty, maybe even two hundred rubles, which is a good amount. I"ll say it was my grandmother who left it for me."
  "I"ll find one hundred and fifty rubles, it"s not a big deal! Or... we"ll get into trouble."
  "Okay, so be it."
  I went to work and just walked into the office when the call came through the direct line. There were few calls to this number, except that the head of the district KGB, Major Landyshev, who did not need to be given a number, as he knew everything himself, and very close people knew it also. This appliance was always silent. When the bell rang, I just bounced off the mirror, where I was sleeking my curls, and grabbed the phone. "Sweetie, come now!" Nadia said in a voice not her own and hung up. I immediately threw my coat on.
  "I"ll be back in two hours," I told the secretary, and came out into the hallway like a shot.
  A taxi took me to the hospital front door in thirty minutes.
  "Nadia, what happened, darling? Are you feeling unwell?"
  "Sit next to me. You know, it turns out that it is necessary to make a contract with the administration for my support here, for treatment, for staying and stuff, and it"ll cost twenty thousand, otherwise... I will be poisoned here. They will give me medicines from which I will fall asleep... forever. Bury me next to my mother."
  "I..."
  "Don"t say anything. I know you don"t have that kind of money. Go get those trinkets, sell them at the market... there are buyers there, I already did it when it was hard time for us, and get me out of here in more or less decent state. Moreover, the same amount wants my attending physician, Boris Yefimovich. He will monitor the development of the fetus, give birth, and even make a C-section, if necessary... in short, my life and the life of our child will have to be redeemed, no matter how funny and nasty it is."
  "I"ll settle this. I"ll pay with coins, I"ll say that I don"t have much money, but my grandmother left the coins as an inheritance. They will take it. Gold coins are not money. They"ve filled their pockets and chests with money, but nobody has offered them coins yet. You just don"t worry." "Here comes Boris Yefimovich, you should try."
  
  Accompanied by two nurses, wide opening the door of the hospital ward, where there were three more ladies besides Nadia, a man at his thirty with a saggy back and a pot belly, with moustaches and a little floating eyes came in.
  "Bella Borisovna! How is it going?"
  "What"s going, honey?" a lady of thirty-five asked with an ironic smile on her face.
  "How is you health?" Boris Yefimovich chickened out a little. "Is it moving? The most important thing is for the fetus is to move inside. Or I will prescribe an extra shot."
  "Prescribe yourself a prescription, and stop torturing me. When the fetus moves, I am drawn to vomit. You should have felt this way. I"ll tell the chief doctor Bella Abramovna, let her preach you properly, little niece... Maybe you bought your diploma, and not earned it through honest labor." "Bella Borisovna, don"t tell nonsense! I"m gonna complain to my aunt. And as for the stimulation... well, let"s cancel it. Katya, have you heard? Cancel stimulation for Bella Borisovna."
  "Yes, yes, I"m crossing it out. Right from this hour," said nurse Ekaterina Ivanovna.
  I was sitting there, listening, and I felt like I was falling down somewhere. The only way out of this quagmire could have been to get up and fill Boris Yefimovich"s face. But Nadia noticed the jaw muscles on my face and began to pinch my elbow. "Pull yourself together," she whispered. "Do as I tell you."
  At that time, Boris Yefimovich Kryuchkodrob came to Nadia.
  "So? Still the same, no change?" he asked his duty question. "I already told you, we need expensive foreign medicines. Only this can save you. Who is it? Is it your friend?"
  "Yes, this is my partner. I have already talked to him about it, and we don"t mind."
  "Well, well, well. Show me the money, as they say. And let"s start working," said Boris Yefimovich, ignoring any decency." Twenty here, twenty there, I will directly deal with this extremely difficult case. Saving a child"s life is... not peeling potatoes. Or are you not ready yet? Then we"ll wait for three days."
  "I can"t stand another three days," Nadia said loudly and cried.
  
  
  15
  In Boris Yefimovich"s private office, where there was already a queue, I was pleased that I didn"t have to stand in that queue and sat down on the proposed squeaky chair in front of the doctor, and before I could open my mouth, Boris Yefimovich got down to business.
  "So, what are your proposals?"
  "Boris Yefimovich, I don"t have such a money..." "Then what are we talking about? Time is money."
  "Listen, don"t rush. I don"t have such a sum in cash, but my late grandmother left me gold coins of the tsar"s coinage, costing ten rubles each. If we agree, I"ll bring them tomorrow evening. And I hope to reach an agreement with Bella Abramovna in the same way. I hope you will help.
  But everything is confidential, so as no one could get into jail."
  "Interesting. I must confess that I have not yet received such an offer. I need to study, to define. If you can get twenty thousand gold rubles, then the deal can take place right now."
  "Come on?! Even twenty coins is too much, although I could agree to that amount."
  "Well, I expect you to call me tomorrow at twelve. I"ll look into it. You see, your wife"s medication is very expensive, it"s from England, because that"s England, I hope you know it as well as I do. One courier stands for something. However, one courier can fulfill up to twenty orders. I will connect all this, summarize and then tell you if we will succeed or fail in our deal. See you tomorrow. Tomorrow, don"t forget."
  "Will you talk to Bella Abramovna?" "I"ll try."
  "So, see you tomorrow."
  "Hum, you a stupid con man," I thought, as I walked out the gates of the forth hospital. "But he"s very dangerous. And he became the chief physician, because he"s a con man. With these people you have to keep your eyes open."
  I packed forty tenruble coins in two bags and the next day in the evening took them to the hospital, to Boris Efimovich, the attending physician and to Bella Abramovna, the chief physician of the hospital.
  Bella Abramovna, an unusually fat lady with a cigarette in her mouth, took a bundle right in the hallway in the presence of her nephew and did not even invite me to her office to talk. She didn"t hide the bag, didn"t counted the coins, just put it with her fat fingers and took it to her office.
  "You, Yefimovich, take care of it. If anything, if you have to do a C-section, call for Volodya Ivanov to help, he is a good surgeon, and he can do it along and across. If the mother is under question, the child will live," she said and fled behind the door.
  "What are you saying, Bella Agramovna?" If there is anything else you need, tell Yefimovich, and he tells me, and I"ll go back to the source, I"ll shake all the bags and if I find it, I"ll add another coin to you and him."
  "I"m not Agramovna, but Abramovna, and you should find not one coin in your source, but at least five coins, then the C-section will be only across, as in Gusinsky"s case. Abramovich has it along and across, and Gusinsky has it only across. And Yefimovich and I consulted and decided to do it along and across, based on circumstances. So go to the source. I can see from your face that in this source, if you dig through it, you can find... something else. So rush, or I"ll change my mind."
  "Oh, please don"t, please. Life is such a thing, one can strip down to his underwear to save it. Besides... I have to tell you that Nadia"s mother is a full-blooded Jew."
  "Really? How can you prove it?"
  "It"s very difficult. According to all the documents, she is Russian, her husband family ended with "-stein", but he changed it to end with "-ov" and her last name change to end with "-ov" also."
  "Oh, I see. So, Nadia is ours by half. I"ll make you half price discount. Bring one coin, Yfimovich and I will share it."
  I blinked my eyes and unclenched my fists. That"s all I could do. At that time, I had good connections, including in the Moscow City Party Committee, but I couldn"t do anything about it, to be more precise, I couldn"t get justice, I could only worsen the situation, or rather hurt it. My connections were on another level, and besides, a stir began in the city committee. Every employee thought what to grab as soon as the collapse would break up, but he could only grab a portrait of Lenin or Gorbachev, or, say, call Glavmosstroi and ask for ten brick trucks, three board trucks for the construction of a summer house. But the builders have already reacted poorly to such requests. If I had known Dementiyeva as well as Fedulov or Antonina Matveyevna, I could have asked her to help me. One call to the Moscow City Health Department, and all the doctors of the Fourth Maternity Hospital would be on duty at Nadia"s hospital bed in turn. But now... I had to shake my tail, bite my lips, or rather my tongue.
  After registration in the Fourth Maternity Hospital costing forty thousand, Nadia stayed in the same place, in the same ward, on the same iron bed, but now nurses came more often, measured her temperature, gave some injections, and Boris Yefimovich Kryuchkodrob not only got kinder, but also warmer. He came in almost every day, checked the pulse, prescribed tests and every time he assured: everything would be a tip-top. Nadia"s nutrition had improved, and it was very important, too. She felt better and told me of it enthusiastically. She so wanted to go home with the baby in her arms, to get married immediately, and the child could be registered under my last name even without a marriage certificate.
  "Don"t bring me meals, I get everything here on an equal footing with everyone. At first, as soon as got here, I was fed like a mongrel, practically with waste. It was so hurting that I cried quietly and if it wasn"t for Sonya Abramovna, who is lying by the window, if she hadn"t taught me, I would have already died. You and I are so stupid, we don"t know the simple truth - money talks. Now there is not much time left. I will be a happy mother, and you will be a happy father." "I"m very glad. Forget them, those coins. This is a small part of what you own."
  "Of what we own," Nadia added. "All mine is yours, all yours is mine. It is the only way to have a strong, friendly family. You better tell me where you sleep, at our house or somewhere else?"
  "I rarely sleep in your apartment. It"s scary to be alone. There is no sister, no mother, no you. As soon as you come back, this question of where to spend the night will be in the past, believe me." "There"s a month left, even a little less. We"ll wait, there"s nothing we can do. You don"t have to come to me every day now. It"s hard for you."
  "I"ll handle it myself."
  * * *
  As always, time ran fast, and delivery according to the calendar was to come in four days. It would have ended well if only Boris Yefimovich had not been so selfserving and greedy. If the woman was admitted with a seven-month gestation, he secretly prescribed stimulating injections, the fetus came out and remained alive. And those like Nadia, who had missed this term, had to wait for delivery for almost two months. The place was occupied, and the queue pushed. Moreover, Boris took twenty thousand in advance.
  He had to develop the tactics of squeezing out the birthing mothers at least a week before the natural birth... by stimulating the labor. And now, weekend was ahead. He had a chic car, a luxurious dacha, so Boris Yefimovich didn"t want to guard sick Nadia. It was not fair for him.
  "Double portion of stimulants!" He ordered a nurse.
  "Isn"t that a lot?" "Do as you are told."
  The nurse put a shot and left. Nadia immediately started vomiting, her temperature raised, and the water started to burst. There was no one in the room for a long time: three future mothers were walking along the corridors.
  Surgeon Volodya Ivanov happened to be on the fourth floor, although he was working on the third. Walking along the corridor, he heard screams for help in the sixth ward, where Nadia was.
  He immediately pulled the door and saw the throe.
  "I can"t give birth by myself," she said, "and the time has not yet come. It"s all after the injections, please save me!"
  "I know these injections. It"s this freak, I"m gonna give him a hard time. Be patient, dear. Hold on for ten minutes, gain courage. We will transfer you to the operating room..."
  He immediately jumped out of the room and ran down the stairs. He had just seen Yefimovich spanking down the stairs and obviously heading towards the car that was standing in the courtyard of the hospital.
  Exactly. Yefimovich was already in the courtyard with a heavy bag.
  "Where are you going, you bastard? You"ve got a patient dying there, and you"re taking to your heels. You gave her the shots, didn"t you?"
  "Why do you care?" "What was it!?"
  Volodya turned around and punched Yefimovich in the cheekbones. Yefimovich covered with his legs. Ivanov took him by the collar, lifted and punched again. Yefimovich spat out two teeth. "What do you want from me?"
  "Go up to the operating room. Now! Maybe you can save the baby and the woman in labor. Every minute counts."
  "Oh... Why didn"t you say so?" said Yefimovich, wiping his bloody lips with a white napkin he used to take from his nurse each time, and throwing it away, though the cloths were to be washed and reused.
  Nadia was immediately transferred to the operating room. Preparations for the fateful step for two living beings, Nadia and her child, who was still a fetus, began. The nurses worked like clockwork, and two surgeons, Volodya Ivanov and Boris Yefimovich, who had provoked premature delivery, obediently gave their hands and heads when the nurses put hoods and robes on.
  The operation lasted four hours.
  I was sitting in the hallway, and I couldn"t find my place. The nurses went back and forth and answered the same thing, "Nothing is clear yet".
  I knew that Nadia did not feel pain and that if she did not survive this difficult procedure, she would fall asleep quietly and commend her soul to God. At three o"clock in the morning, the surgeon Ivanov was the first to come out. His face was troubled, gloomy, stray, and confused.
  "Are you Aleksandr Pavlovich?" I got up from my seat.
  "We did everything we could, but unfortunately... Kidneys and liver."
  "She"s died?!" I yelled like mad and grabbed him by the coat lapels. "I will shoot you all! Where is this lousy Jew? They took forty thousand from me and killed...my wife and child."
  "My name is Ivanov, when you come to your senses, we need to meet, I will tell you everything." "Murderers! Bribetakers! I won"t leave it like this!"
  We were surrounded by nurses, Yefimovich also jumped out. My hands were twisted and I was put on a bankette.
  "Give him a shot of seductive."
  I woke up in the evening in a room where I was the only one. Soon the nurse came, asked me how I felt, took my hand, and took me to the basement where Nadia"s body was lying.
  "Be brave, you"re a man after all. We"ve got a lot of things going on here, dear."
  Nadia was covered with a white sheet to the chin. Nadia"s face was thin, pale, her eyes closed, her cheekbones slightly curled up - evidence of the incredible death agony that can be experienced by each person who departs to another world.
  "Today she will get into the freezer and stay there for three days. During this time you have to prepare everything for burial. Do you understand? Are there any questions?"
  Instead of answering, I shook my head.
  
  
  16
  This time it turned out that troubles associated with the funeral were much less than the last time we buried our mother-in-law Valentina Ivanovna. I already knew where and to whom to contact on any matter. And in this wild time for me, in this pit, where I did not even dream of getting out, I had time to think, to evaluate the events that happened to me through my exclusive fault. What if... what if I hadn"t come out of my office for some fresh air and taken a walk towards the tramline on Chongarsky Boulevard? After all, it all began with this walk, it was here that the ball of my tragic events began to unwind, where I was the main character and killed three innocent women who could live for many years and be happy. This is fate. But whose, my or theirs, were they destined to die in such a way, was I destined to survive, or was I destined to be punished for my too loose behavior in society, among which I became more or less independent?
  Yes, if not today then tomorrow, I will find my end in any street, when I will go to the green light of traffic lights, and not with a fatal outcome, but rather with the head injury, broken leg or both, or both hands or arms and legs at the same time. Life of a cripple is a painful life. It is the atonement of the sins of distant and close relatives. Life seems to purify a person before it finds peace in mother earth. I"ve lived a bad life, did bad things. Why, risking my own life, I took off on the tram tracks to save an unknown woman and grabbed her by the hand, when I could just put my eyes down and see nothing. She would have saved herself and not met the man who contributed to her death. Oh, yes, it is better to lock yourself in the closet and rarely come out of there.
  My insaneness led me to the Moskvoretskiy market, already at dusk, brightly lit by electric light. At the racks in the form of tables of the correct circle, there were several people from four and above and poured vodka into paper cups.
  "Hey, you, join us, we just lack one goon. Come on!"
  I waved my hand and approached the rack. "Well, guys, let"s drink to him, he"s lifeless or something. What happened to you, honey? Your wife must have kicked him out of the house." After the magic liquid had spilled over my veins with a hot, invigorating jet, I wiped my snot with my sleeve, lifted my head high and answered the question, as this answer was waiting for the whole drunk team, whose members were already knee-deep in the sea.
  "My wife didn"t kick me, she"s dead and now in the morgue and with my unborn child."
  "Then let"s drink to their memories. You don"t set the table, we"ll do it ourselves, we have recently had a pay," said one of the company"s heroes.
  "It"s okay. I had a pay today, literally. Hey, man, bring a bottle for everyone," I said, wiping the tears that came down in a hail. "Life is like dew. Here today, and gone tomorrow."
  I was lifting my glass with my wooden hand and my legs were getting stiff, and there was some unknown force inside me, which was raging and pushing salty tears out of the salty, inflamed eyes.
  "Guys, he"s wasted," said Sasha, the leader of this tiny group. "He needs to be taken home. Gena, call your driver. Do you remember where you live, lad?"
  "Yes, Krasnogvardeyskaya 5," I said, not quite thinking about what"s going on and what they want me to do.
  "Come with me," said Timur, the driver.
  "Let"s go! I"ll go anywhere now," he said and started singing "Through the valleys and the hills". I pulled out a hundred rubles near the house number five and shoved it to the driver.
  "Put it away. If my boss finds out, he"ll rip my head off. He ordered me to take you home, which means to take you to the end of the world ... for free. My boss does things in a big way. Come on, bury your wife."
  I went up to the second floor, took the key. There was a light bulb in the kitchen. I wiped off scraps from the table. There was a portrait of Nadia on the nightstand, framed in wood. A tall, beautiful forehead turned towards me, and the eyes, expressive, big, looked at me and as if asked what you had done, you clunkhead? Her whole head was in a shock of luxurious wavy hair. I stared at the photograph and then roared like a bull.
  "No! This can"t be true! This should not be! She"s alive, Nadia, you"re alive, aren"t you? They put you in intensive care and want me to buy you out. Well, I"m going to take another hundred coins and throw them to this Yefimovich and say, "Take it, eat it, but give my Nadia back to me, you didn"t kill her, though, you just moved her in another ward."
  To support these encouraging thoughts, I rushed into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of vodka that had already been opened a month ago, I don"t remember on what occasion. Two glasses dropped me on the floor. I knocked my head against the parquet floor, smeared empty tears with my sleeve, and I was going to take a taxi and go to Nadia"s Fourth Maternity Hospital. But to do that, I had to get up and go dressed outside and take a taxi. But my body turned into lead, I couldn"t lift it up and fell asleep in tears.
  In the morning, the same problem came to my mind, now a real problem, which began to hurt my heart, and I realized that I had to pull myself together and bury the body of a young wife, officially unmarried. It was my duty.
  I was bur ying Nadia alone, in the same Solnechnogorsk district, next to her mother. The tiny brass band attracted the attention of the locals. I didn"t see that coming. Old people and old ladies, all those who after some time should be buried here, began to flock, clinging to Father, like bees to cherries during blossoming.
  I wanted only father, deacon, undertakers to be there, and I wanted the funeral to be uninhabited, so that the sacrament of transition from temporary to eternal life would be observed. It"s a good thing that people have such faith, because it"s scary to go nowhere. Going nowhere gives rise to a lot of questions. And the main question is why to live, why to suffer, whether it is necessary to make a profit, to accumulate, whether wealth gives happiness to a person and in general, what is happiness, if everything is temporary, if you don"t know your timing, if everything can come to an end at any moment, and everything you have accumulated can become a bone of contention between neighbors, who for decades only nodded their heads to you in the stairwell, or in the elevator, because they did not want to know you. And now they"ve shown a special interest in you, not even in you, but in your body.
  I planned to set the table immediately after the funeral, next to the hill, to commemorate Nadia, who had gone away untimely with her young angelic face. For this purpose, based on (approximately) the number of ten people, I bought groceries, alcoholic beverages, and now there are so many people. And everybody cross themselves, singing. What am I gonna do?
  I was still thinking, though my eyes were wet, and I felt a shiver in my whole body.
  Before that, I rarely attended funerals, I didn"t like funeral procedures. And now I"m a part of it. I was standing next to Nadia and looking into Nadia"s pale face, and it seemed to me that a grimace of reproach was frozen on it, and that was addressed to me. Of course! It was my fault that her sister Sonya passed away, followed by her mother, and then herself. No matter how you see it, in this terrible cycle, I was the first violin, because if it wasn"t for me, the three of them would now, as usual, go to the country house, grow tomatoes and chirp at sunset.
  I wasn"t wiping my tears anymore, I knelt down and touched her face with my lips, and said, "Forgive me, innocent child. May you rest in peace, because I too will soon... no matter how many years would pass, they will pass very quickly, maybe we will meet in other worlds and get to know each other. But our mortal bodies will lie next to each other. This may be a naive hope, but any hope is better than no hope at all.
  I knew that I saw her face for the last few minutes and I could never see her again. It"s not fair to die at the age of twenty-three, it"s unnatural, it"s immoral. When they closed the coffin and started putting the coffin into a pit on ropes, I threw clay three times and crossed myself three times.
  "Take me away from here, or I"ll be dragged out," I began to grind nonsense. "Vanya," I told the undertaker, "here"s the money for your work, and take 500 rubles, run to the store, buy vodka for everyone and something for the children. You know how to turn the wheel, here"s my Volga, get into it, start the engine."
  "Five hundred is too much. Three hundred is okay," Ivan said, and from somewhere he pulled out a bag, shaking it out on the way.
  "I"ll be right back," he said.
  "Let me be the manager here," said Father Mikhail.
  "Oh, yes, here"s a thousand for you, no, two thousand. You sang so well, served good."
  "Have you paid for the orchestra?" "Yes, in the morning."
  * * *
  When I got back from the funeral, a crowd of neighbors from the second floor and a few from the third floor gathered at the door of the apartment, where three women lived until recently. Someone knocked on the iron front door, some one took the papers out of their pockets and shaken them in front of their comrade and others to prove their point. Happy, greedy neighbors were loudly finding out who would now get the apartment of the dead. It was as if in my gut they felt that I had no rights, since I had not played a wedding there, had not married any of Valentina Ivanovna"s daughters. After all, the people who were registered here, in this apartment, at number 8, just volunteered to go to other worlds, and this three-room apartment on the second floor near the subway station Paveletskaya, cannot remain without owners.
  One woman had a hammer and a chisel in her hands, and the other had a piece of paper. She was periodically revealing this paper, showing the signature of Valentina Ivanovna, Nadia"s mother, who allegedly took from her a large sum of money for her alleged funeral. The amount was quite big - about five hundred thousand. And the signature of Valentina Ivanovna, and the date, and this valuable paper was folded into four. Who can object the deal? No court would! And the new tenant is just a slacker, he is not even registered in Moscow. He is a hobo. She herself saw him with her hand stretched out by the subway. He"s the one who ruined the girl"s life to take over the apartment. Here he comes, let"s hand it over to the police!
  Another contender, a bald man of low stature, showed more solid paper, allegedly certified by a notary. He also took out his passport, showing that he was registered in the apartment.
  "It"s good for you to trump your passport if you work at the passport office yourself," said Dusya, a woman who worked as a stairwell cleaner. "I know well the guy, who"s coming. He"s cool. Nadia loved him, even worshipped him. Maybe he has been registered in this apartment. Look how calm and self-confident he is."
  "She"s right! Go on speaking the truth!" said someone else"s voice.
  "We always kinda used to drink with Valentina Ivanovna, and then we discussed the apartment, you know what I"m saying. She has three rooms, and I have one very small room, not enough room to swing a cat in. And she says, "You know, Dusya, let"s do it this way. When I die, you take one room for yourself, I"ve got two girls left, one room for each is enough.""
  "What"s going on here?" I asked loudly, squeezing myself to the door and trying to get the keys out of my pants pocket.
  "You? Who are you? You"re just a boyfriend and nobody else. You"ve ruined one girl, sent another one to heaven, and all this, dear people, for the sake of taking possession of the three-room apartment. Get him! Hand him to the police!"
  "I"ll turn you all in to the police myself. Only the court can decide who gets this apartment. I don"t claim it yet, because I don"t need it. The evil spirit settled in this apartment, which is why the people died. And you all go to the prosecutor"s office, to the police, to the court along with your false receipts. Just make sure someone is not jailed for forgery."
  "Forgery?" said Dusya. "Uh, no, I gotta go. My Petka has already clocked up for forgery." "And the one, who moves here in an unfair way, will have the same fate as my Nadia. Perhaps I even come to the funeral."
  "Funeral? Wow! And it really smells like an evil spirit is in here, it"s necessary to air everything out."
  Soon the landing cleared, and I opened the front door freely, and locked myself in. It was out of the question to spend the night here. But you can"t leave millions here, you have to take them away and bury them somewhere in the woods, and five years later, you can go back to them. By this time I"ll become an alcoholic, and I will whip vodka as water from a mineral spring.
  I took out an old soldier"s duffel bag, loaded it with two solid weighty bags of gold, turned off the light in all the rooms, looked carefully at the gas stove and went out to the stairwell. The car was standing in the yard, and Gena was also sad and did not ask any questions.
  "You must be hungry," I said. "You might say so."
  "Stop near any place where you can have a snack, here"s your money."
  "Turn left here. Maybe together?" "I"ll stay in the car," I said.
  
  17
  The next day, early in the morning, I stayed in my one-room apartment, wandered around the room, the kitchen, figuring out what to do with the dangerous capital and decided that it was too dangerous to keep it at home, and even more so at work. The heavy bags filled with gold coins and jewelry, seemed to glow, call, shout that they did not belong to me and demanded reliable burial. God forbid to boast at work that you have a coin, which you got from your great-grandmother! Immediately all the staff, and then the investigating authorities will know, immediately come with a search warrant, immediately put the handcuffs on and take away where few people come back. Fear of this wealth that fell from the sky can only be understood by those who lived in the era of the greatest sons of mankind, three mangy idiots Marx-Enegels-Lenin and one bloody Georgian, Dzhugashvili-Stalin. Evil short man Lenin, when he robbed temples, monasteries and churches, disposed of bags with looted gold, and did not forget about himself, and the Soviet slave could not have a single coin. Not a single quarter. For one coin it was possible to be imprisoned in one of the Lenin"s places for long term. It is true as the fact that after the night comes the day and that winter is replaced by summer.
  I"d rather bury it in the ground, but somewhere in the woods, until the time is ripe. I was glad that such an idea occurred to me.
  
  Coming down from the second floor, I started the engine of the then prestigious Volga car, went to Varshavskoye Shosse, made a turn to Koltsevaya, and stopped in front of Bittsevskiye Prudy, so familiar and dear to my heart. The cars practically did not meet either way. Yasenevo was just beginning to build up, and it was easy and comfortable to get from Varshavskoye Shosse to Koltsevaya.
  Having left the car on the side of Koltsevaya, with a backpack on my shoulders, and a shovel with a short handle, I went down, going into the forest on the barely visible, slightly trampled path, until the forest became rare, and the paths thoroughly trampled, with small glades, where you can find a place to rest.
  I didn"t care that people came and went through these lapses, which at certain times of the day were warmed up by the sun. Who would be interested in a man with a backpack behind his shoulders and a bayonet shovel in his hands? It was as if nobody paid attention to me either, even slightest.
  
  I walked quite far along the trail of forest walkers, looking for a suitable place to dig a hole twenty centimeters deep and hide the treasure, but so that no one could see it except for the birds. Nothing will happen to gold, even if the bags rot and the metal remains in the wet ground. The hole had to be dug so that one day, if such a time comes, that no one will plant a gold coin, it was possible to find this treasure and become fabulously rich. Because why not? Every man has a right to happiness. Living all your life in poverty, by the end of your life the fate may kindly smile at you. Even if you have a few years left to live, it will be happy years. "That"s how one should live!" I will scream when I get this treasure out of my mother"s earth, out of a hidden place, the contours of which I will remember day and night. I even could mark the spot.
  Finally, after a long wander, I found a place between the three birch trees that form a triangle and the crowns that seemed to bend over each other. Yes, I will remember this place for sure. I"d even peel off the bark on one birch and carve the magic word "Nadia".
  I deepened quickly, then got up, looked around: there was no one. I buried the treasure, rammed the ground, and covered it with last year"s leaves. I sighed freely and felt happy. I did a great job. Such a treasure would have kept me awake if it had been kept at my house, I could have been seduced by just one coin and they would have come to me and searched, found, taken away and put behind bars. And now that"s it, I am free. Long live the eternally alive doctrine of Marxism-Judaism!
  So peculiar and... sadly, my beach romances ended. I didn"t go to the sea anymore, I didn"t fall in love with anyone, and then I fell in love with loneliness. There were unmarried, divorced ladies and even girls in my teams, and I could conquer any of them, but I was afraid but each of the separately as a fire. I knew that I loved, appreciated and respected everyone, and even worshipped them all, and all of them answered me in kind, but if I"d separate someone, if I"d try to create a separate islet, a house, a cozy place to take a shower in the bathroom with washed diapers hanging over my head, it wouldn"t work.
  Then, when old age will come, and it will come very quickly and that"s good, as Nadia didn"t live to old age, when you will unwittingly begin to think about who will bury you, then... then it will be possible to find this treasure buried at three birches behind Koltsevaya road.
  In the meantime, I go to Solnechnogorsk twice a month to the grave of Nadia and her mother. I drink a cup or two, say the Lord"s Prayer, put flowers, wipe my eyes with my sleeve and walk back. I would have visited Sonya, but Sonya is not buried in the ground like all Christians, she is in columbarium.
  I haven"t lost my bayonet shovel with a short handle yet and I"m thinking of digging a hole next to Nadia"s grave. When I feel very bad, I"ll go to this Solnechnogorsk... No, first I"ll go to the three birch trees, I will get bags of gold and jewelry, and then... they will dig a hole near the grave of Nadia and her mother. And they will bury me with honors. I don"t want my corpse burned after my death.
  
  My lonely life wasn"t so bad as I wasn"t alone. I had a working team I was in charge of, and I didn"t notice how my time had gone and the finish began to appear. My finish line, just like the finish of the rest of us.
  Uh, I have to take out my shovel, return the treasure, cause time has changed so much since then. Now only bandits can take everything away from you without being squeamish about your life.
  With the same backpack, with the same bayonet tourist shovel with a short handle, I went to the Bitsevsky Park, went deep into the woods, easily found the three birch trees, so familiar to me, and in silence, in the cries of birds, began digging wet ground in search of the treasure buried by me about twenty years ago.
  It was already sunset, the birch trees and other shrubs were casting such shadows that it was difficult to distinguish one dug out place from another, and my clothes were so wet that it needed wringing, but I didn"t notice it and dug the ground further with some furious agility. Surprisingly, no forest walkers showed up on this path, and I was free to work without having rest.
  Finally, I fell down, spread my arms and legs apart, and felt the moisture of the earth, which cooled down my weary burning body so nobly. I might have fallen asleep and maybe never woke up, but the flying crow grunted so loudly that I woke up and realized I had to get out.
  And the treasure trove of gold... It either fell deep into the ground or someone was lucky enough to dig it up.
  Forget it! If it"s not meant to be, then it"s not meant to be. Life can"t be extended with a treasure trove, and fate can"t be bribed to make it kind and tender.
  2019 (February) Moscow
  
  
  
  
  
  Varga Vasilij Vasil"evich
  
  Beach novels
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Interpreter: Piterskij Artem
  Editor: Shilova Е. А.
  Designer: Osipov N. N.
  
  The Beach Romances speech is made using the first-per- son narrative of Aleksandr Pavlovich. The first days of his stay at sea showed that he is a pickup artist, a master of beach novels, but this time everything went so that he stuck to the same skirt, returned with the girl to Moscow, married her and soon lost her forever. Now he talks about the amazing, some may say tragic, fate of three women.
  
  
  
  About the author.
  
  Vassily Varga graduated from Dneprope- trovsk State University in 1964. He taught aesthetics. For twenty years, he worked as a director of vocational school No. 55 in Moscow. Honored teacher of Rus- sia. He engaged in literary activity in his mature years. He has been published in Germany and Canada. But most of the works published in Moscow. These are the novels "Red Plague", "Wasp"s nest", "The morals of new Russians", "Obscu- rant chords", "Ukraine leaps", "Orange distemper", "Pedagogical metamorpho- sis", "Soldier of the Soviet Army", "Miss swindler".
  
  The "Beach novels" holds a special place among other works. The eternal dispute that someone is guiding us, no matter what our will and our desires are, that everybody"s destiny is predetermined goes through the pages of the book.
  
  Sonya and Nadya don't remember their father, and their mother Valentina Ivanovna has been without her husband for 20 years. Only she, Valentina Ivanovna, knew that her hus- band worked for the NKVD, dragged home six pounds of gold coins with the image of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II, strictly instructing his wife not to tell their daughters about it, so that they would not let it go at school. The gold of the tsar's coinage, as well as the foreign currency, was forbidden for the use of So- viet people, and one may be sent for ten years to prison or to Lenin's places in far Siberia.
  They dismantled the floor in the secret room and buried the treasure deep in the ground.
  But one day, her husband, Nikolai Ivanovich, disap- peared. He vanished without a trace. To her daughters' ques- tions about where Daddy was, the mother answered that Daddy was on a long business trip, but he would definitely come back.
  When the girls became adults, when Sonya turned 24, it became clear that she would not have children. The mother said about this to Nadya, her youngest daughter.
  Nadya burst into tears and only said:
  - Our family is dying. Who will bury me when you both die at different times. But I..., I will definitely have a baby. Even if my child's father is a gypsy.
  What happened next, the readers will find themselves in this story, if they read it to the end.
  * * *
 Ваша оценка:

Связаться с программистом сайта.

Новые книги авторов СИ, вышедшие из печати:
О.Болдырева "Крадуш. Чужие души" М.Николаев "Вторжение на Землю"

Как попасть в этoт список

Кожевенное мастерство | Сайт "Художники" | Доска об'явлений "Книги"