Dementia
Wife to husband. Today you need to deliver a note from me to Vera. Come to her room 205 at 11 oclock, she is just having a break between couples, she is waiting for you. And who is Vera? I know her? You introduced us. Have you forgotten? What are you doing! Do you know what my memory is! I know. Holed like a colander. You suffer from dementia. And what is it? senile dementia. Or dont you remember? Well, how, how, I remember very well. Dementia! What a word! But I dont have it. Exactly. Otherwise, I would have remembered it.
An hour later, husband and Vera. Excuse me, but who are you? I am Vera, your wifes friend. Dont you remember? How, how, I remember very well. I have business for you. I have to give you something. Thats just what? I dont remember, he feverishly pats his pockets, Thats a memory, everyone would like this. Remembered! Well, exactly! How, how. I have to give you dementia, but in which pocket I put it, Ill never know.
A day in the life
White tablecloth. Flawless white porcelain. White wine. Cheese with white mold. White grapes. White cool shade. White sand at the edge of the sea. White lambs of the waves. White clouds in the sky whitened from the heat. Another day in the life of a white man.
Rustic hospitality
The apples were on the table. Yellow and red. The table stood in the middle of a hut, naked as a baby, like a throne in a temple. Surrounded by the aroma of ripe fruit, in a thick and impenetrable veil of shadow, and outside the flames of a summer day raged. Bumblebees and bees hummed in the garden. Daggers of white-hot beams burst dangerously through the closed shutters, smoking with rage in the cold, creaking twilight of the old house. A loaf of rye bread darkened among the apples, and a long-necked jar of milk, covered with a towel, proudly rose. Real gifts of the transubstantiation of a fertile summer, offered to us by the very providence of rural hospitality.
Rooster
Chickens are usually despised, considered the most brainless creatures in the world. If they want to offend someone, then they directly compare it with a chicken. Or with a rooster. What is even more offensive for men. But there is always an exception to every rule. Its about a rooster who cheated his death. Neighbor Galya, nicknamed summer resident, in the village only had chickens for the summer: in the spring she bought chickens, and in the fall she slaughtered them for meat; she kept only laying hens, and closer to the middle of summer, when they began to lay, she bought them a rooster. All summer with their eggs, and back to Moscow already with their meat. And so every year, until one day there was an embarrassment: a rooster, watching how his chickens were killed right in front of him, one after another, got scared; realized that his death from the butchers knife was waiting for him and fled, flying into the neighbors yard. As Galya did not look for him, she could not find him. She spat in her hearts and drove off to her Moscow, closing the season. A rooster a couple of days later showed up in a neighbors chicken coop, where it safely overwintered and even came to the yard. It would seem that life is a success: trample chickens and know yourself crow. An, no. In the spring, the summer resident Galya returned. And not alone, but with a fresh brood of chickens, which soon grew up and turned into neat young chickens. The cock, looking at them, went completely crazy: he abandoned his chickens and kept rushing to Galyas yard to trample on her chickens. When she bought them a rooster, he pulled it up, not tolerating a competitor. In the end, he moved back to her. He exhausted everyone, but he achieved his goal he again became Galinas rooster. Despite the fact that at the end of the summer season, death awaits him. But what is love without mortal risk. Even the roosters.
Village
Since we are talking about a rooster, its just right to find a couple of words for a pig. The saleswoman Lyubka somehow broke off happiness. The truth is not happiness, but a pig, but what a pig! Other villagers will live their whole lives, but they will never learn to behave like people. And this pig did not need to learn. Clean and without words understands everything. Clever is just awful. Well, real person. She found it by accident: a car knocked down a piglet near her yard, and she picked it up and carried it to the barn, not hoping that it would survive. And take the piglet and get well, then independently got out and showed up to her straight into the hut. Just like any cat. He even had the most suitable color for this black. Its wonderful, and thats all. Well, what kind of pig is it? The pig is big, pink and dirty, like the neighbors boar Borka. And this one is small, thin and black. Real pet. For the soul. Although she also had something to hide, a tail, a piglet and hooves. Just like a real pig. Neighbors, seeing such happiness of Lyubkina, involuntarily became envious, and decided to spoil it for her. They came to her without an invitation and announced that it was not a pig at all, but a mini-pig: the animal is so terribly expensive and overseas, and it probably has an owner. Lyubka is an honest person, she does not need someone elses good for nothing. She wrote an ad and posted it on the door of the general store where she works. So, they say, and so, a piglet, black, mini-pig was found, the owner is wanted. A day later, an unfamiliar pockmarked woman with a bag comes to her store and announces: My, they say, piglet. Well, Lyubka gives it to her and asks: What do you need, such a slut, this overseas miracle Yudo in the household? And she answered: Yes, I bought it on occasion from my hands. For meat. Ive been fattening for the third month, and he, the parasite, doesnt grow a damn thing. And, which is characteristic, he behaves in a completely un-swinish way: he runs away from the barn and everything rushes into the house like a madman; he walks only along the paths and is terribly curious, like a small child he cares about everything. I dont know how the further fate of this very mini-pig turned out, they made lard or jelly out of it, but Lyubka is still in shock. You have to be such a dense person to take a rare pet for an ordinary pig. One word village.
Tree
It was an old pear, fairly worn by time. She grew up in the backyard and under her shadow grew more than one generation of the inhabitants of the grandfathers house. The best place in the whole wide world. In the spring, when the pear blossomed, we played in its shade, and in the summer we sat on the branches all day long and ate the still green fruits, and these were the most delicious pears in my life. When autumn came, it was always mourning for the best days of the year: the pear dropped its leaves, and we were forcibly separated from it and sent to school. Only on New Years Eve did we meet again and rejoiced at the opportunity that had happened to spend the entire winter holidays together again. Only now the branches served as a place for hanging homemade bird feeders for bullfinches and tits, and around the trunk they made a snowman and played snowballs and drove each other on sleds. And so from year to year, until one day we grew up and stopped noticing the old pear: our world tree, huge as the sky, strewn with the fruits of goodness, around which our entire childhood passed and which raised us and let us out into the world. And I am grateful to fate that such a tree happened in my life, a real tree of the knowledge of goodness.
Dilemma
Just now, a friend broke his arm. Well, not exactly a hand, but a finger. On the foot. But it still hurts. I met him in a cast and with a black eye. Im keenly interested in what happened. And he in response, they say, slipped and fell. I sympathize with him and assume that this happened due to obvious negligence on the part of city utilities in the face of idle janitors. It would be necessary to sue them, if only for the sake of compensation for moral damage. He sadly agrees with me, but clarifies that he was not quite sober at the time when he actually fell. Why, hes not sober, but he was downright drunk in zyuzyu. About what in the emergency room they made a corresponding entry in his medical record. There, you know, he got excited with the doctor, who, because of his intoxication, refused to treat him, and cleaned his clyster mug for him. Well, so as not to forget the Hippocratic Oath and know that the victims also have some pride and rights to free medicine. In the same place, he broke his finger on his leg while kicking the doctor. And he knocked out his eye. Now this victim of gravity does not know whether to write a complaint against the Aesculapius, or to thank him for the help in eliminating the consequences of the fracture, when he plastered his finger. A real moral dilemma.