She had cut off her lovely frivolous curls and now sported a boyish half-box, and overly bright make-up looked like the war paint of an Indian about to scalp his enemies. Mostly relatives were sitting at the table, but this did not make it easier for her. Curiosity brought them all here to look at someone who was unlucky in love.
Only her grandfather, who did not have a soul in her, fussed around her, protecting his pet. And looking at the old trembling hands, which awkwardly tried to put a piece of better cake on her plate, she finally burst into tears. For the first time in six months. Love still won.
Meeting
Once, on Sretensky Boulevard, I met God himself. It was a nondescript bearded old man of a rather shabby appearance. Sitting on a bench with his eyes shut and his toothless mouth wide open.
He was overshadowed by a rose bush growing right out of his bald head. And bees flew in and out of his mouth, swarming around the multi-colored rosebuds on the old mans spiked tiara. Amber gold of honey oozed from his eyes, and next to him, on a bench, lay a string bag with a bottle of cahors, a bible, and a loaf of bread.
I never thought HE looked so ridiculous was the first thing that came to my mind. I decided to see this MIRACLE of nature better and went closer to it. And unceremoniously stared at him, not at all worried that HE would notice me: his eyes were flooded.
Imagine my surprise when the old man unclenched his left fist, and in it was an eye that looked at me so that it immediately became clear that HE sees me.
Thats what it means self-existing and good, the only thing that came to my mind. I also wondered if Chukovsky snorted cocaine when he wrote his Moidodyr. There was an irresistible desire to grab the old man, the very Lord God, by the beard. In order to put into practice a well-known proverb in narrow circles.
But then the pigeons spoiled everything. And not one and white, as the iconography promises us, but a whole flock. Grey. They say about such: Born to spoil can only fly.
God, with his right hand, plucked a hefty piece of bread from the loaf and began to crumble it and throw the crumbs right in front of him. And then I felt these winged creatures mocking me. Organized seraglio rushed to feed.
A cloud of birds covered the old man, and when a gust of wind swept them in different directions, an empty bench appeared before my eyes. All in bird droppings. And a lonely bottle of wine, untouched by pigeons.
Lucky, so lucky, however, I thought, trying on a homeless drink. And then, as if hearing my thoughts, an old woman of the most domestic appearance hurriedly crossed the boulevard. And she expropriated the drink of the Old and New Testaments for her own benefit.
I had no choice but to go home empty-handed, surprised at what I saw:
I wanted to grab God by the beard, but in fact he grabbed the devil by the shameful hair. However.
That also happens.
Choice
The house was cold and hot. There was deafening silence in the street. The table was bursting with empty abundance. It was so bright you couldnt see anything. I wanted to go and sit. My heart is joyful and bitter: so bitter that you laugh; so happy that immediately into the loop. Life flowed and stood. Nothing happened and everything changed. Sincerity or lies, what to choose? You dont understand, but you have to. Is there a choice?
Nail
Its strange, but it feels like a rusty nail is hammered into the head of each of our people at birth. Right in the hospital: so that he lives and then does not think about anything, as long as the nail in the brain rusts. At the same time, exceptions occur, one might say misunderstandings, which lead to the appearance of any undesirable intelligentsia among our people. Take, for example, a doctor-villain and, through an oversight or just out of some whim, he will drive in a baby instead of an ordinary galvanized nail, as if wishing him to brighten up his miserable life. And only then, poor fellow, he lives and suffers for the rest of his life. And, which is characteristic, the intellectuals from this everything goes into a rage and against the people. And all because this nail is galvanized: it glows, an infection, like a real antenna, receiving suggestive signals from abroad, and makes you doubt the correctness of the existence and structure of our state all the time. Instead of being like everyone else, with ordinary rusty nails in my head, Im bullshitting and listening to the Chanson radio. Enjoy life.
Hero of our time
Her name is Zosia. A remarkable name in our unremarkable time. God deprived her of beauty and endowed her with a frantic temperament. She doesnt walk, she dances. He does not speak, but recites. Not silent, but pauses before bringing down an avalanche of words.
Her irrepressible thirst for life is manifested in the fact that she constantly organizes poetry evenings, at which the same blissful obscenities like her jump over each others heads, and Zosia sings songs of the most obscene content to them, accompanying herself on a fairly out of tune toy piano, which always carries with it on a string.
She proudly calls these outrages mysteries, arguing that our whole life is one continuous mystery. Mystery Buff. From the outside, it looks like a real coven of all city wickedness, but she calls her evenings art. This is how she lives. Zosia is the queen of burlesque. Unknown hero of our time.
Gogol decided to listen
Here, in one restaurant, they decided to introduce the people to culture. And they began to broadcast Gogols stories. Through speakers. In the toilet! You come in, you understand, just to relieve yourself, and they read Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka in such a soulful voice. To the accompaniment of running water. Somehow, after the innovation, two friends, with a difference of several minutes, visited such a corner of spiritual corruption due to small needs: the first closed himself in a booth, and the second, who later came in and did not suspect that he was not alone, attached himself to the urinal. He looks at the ceiling, murmurs so cheerfully and listens to how immortal prose is read to him. And then the door suddenly opens behind him and the first one, the one in the booth, loudly and reproachfully throws at the back of the second: What, did you decide to listen to Gogol? The poor fellow who peed had a heart attack from fright. They were taken away in an ambulance. They didnt bail. At his grave, a friend who joked so unsuccessfully ordered an epitaph from Gogol: You need to be honest with words. And in the toilet, after this incident, Gogol was replaced with a mazurka. To stay away from sin.
Head
From childhood, there was a rumor that he had a bright head. Parents of the soul doted on him, they showed him to everyone as a miracle of nature. The father and mother were Jews, and they simply revered their son. First Saturdays, then kashrut, and everything ended with a synagogue, Tanakh, Torah and immersion in the Talmud. In his 20s, he acquired a reputation as a tzaddik and emigrated to Israel, where he took up the study of Kabbalah.
For the next thirty years of his life, he ruined the Sephiroth tree and the study of 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, earned a lot of money, a family and hemorrhoids, and ended his life with a lamppost. On the eve of his dizzying finale, he celebrated the Jewish New Year in a close family circle and served fish heads on the festive table, which amazed everyone except him with their repulsive appearance.
He did not attach any importance to this, pondering the mystery of deciphering the name of God, and the next morning he smashed his head to smithereens, crashing his bicycle into a lamppost. Evil tongues gossiped that damn fish heads were to blame, but no name, even if it is the name of the Lord God himself, is worth losing your head for it.