Читать книгу Manchester Diary - Ариель Давидович Абарбанель - Страница 7

Everything is painfully familiar, everything is dusty, mothballed, as if you are in some kind of antique junk shop on the outskirts of a big city: dusty houses with crumbling plaster, dusty streets with asphalt in wide deep cracks, dusty trees through which dust glimpses a dull summer for a short summer emerald frosted leaves. Leninsky district, now Admiralty, and in antiquity in general a Finnish village, province. Levy moves toward the house along Riga, then deviates from the course, wanting to deviate from the noise of passing cars, from the hustle and bustle, looking for silence, turning onto one of the Krasnoarmeysky streets. Legs are floating on the asphalt, and eyes are on the walls, roofs of old houses. Everything is familiar, nostalgic, sad. The symphony is in stone, a requiem of human life, like a flower that managed to break through the thickness of the asphalt, but never managed to bloom, blossom, turned gray and finally withered.

On his left hand, towards Levi's house, his eyes meet familiar windows. There is dim light in the windows. The windows are large, but unwashed, the curtains behind the glasses are burnt out, wrinkled. Whose windows are these?

Memories of stormy fun festivities pop up in my head. Misha Burov! Yes, Misha Burov lived there with his wife Irina. They seemed to have

daughter, but both of them or from the previous relationship of Irina herself, is unknown. Irina is Jewish by birth, business, thrifty and patient. She has thick hair, a typical Jewish nose according to others, sensual puffy lips. A pretty, charming woman. It seems that, as in most such marriages, what Misha had, he should have been grateful to his wife. She was a real smart girl.

1981 year. Snowy Peter. Snow knee-deep and chest. At that time, when only Zhiguli or an old Moskvich stood in the yard for twenty Soviet families, Misha had a minibus from Japan, brilliant, with a right-hand drive. Misha, how a child was happy with his typewriter.

“Let's go to the restaurant,” he suggested to Levy.

Misha managed to spend almost every evening in restaurants, despite the fact that the cost of one lunch there was equal to the cost of the average monthly salary. It was forbidden by law to have connections with foreign citizens outside the state, but those who dared to deal with them, bought and sold, made good profits, could afford a daily lunch in a restaurant and a brilliant bus of non-domestic production.

The restaurant, where they went the whole campaign, was not far from the city. His huge hall was almost completely filled with idle people. It was unbearably noisy and stuffy. It was remembered that gypsies performed on stage all evening. They sang, danced. The visitors drank, ate and drank again. Misha raised his hand with a protruding elbow and the little finger laid aside, and poured, stack after stack, a clear liquid into his fireproof innards.

– Too late. Maybe let's go back home?

Misha did not argue, and at about two or three in the morning they, fortunately, left this country restaurant.

Misha is not tall, with a dark bushy beard, constantly jokes and talks a lot. Cute joker. He speaks with his mouth and all ten fingers. He justifies his name very well because he really looks like a brown bear.

The patience of Misha’s wife is angelic. She not only endured endless drinking of the missus, but also his weakness for the female sex, of which, of course, she could not know. Misha, using his charm, speaks with a woman he likes on the street, showers her with compliments, promises all sorts of benefits. Unspoiled by men's attention and gallantry, Russian women draw various fantasies for themselves about the possible development of “serious relations”, they believe Misha, peck at his promises and go on a visit. These “guests” occur at his home, if, of course, the spouse is absent, but more often in a cheap hotel where you can rent a room without presenting documents and just for an “hour”. The first impromptu date takes place with a simple snack and a drink. Apparently, due to the frequent change of partners and constant alcoholization, Misha

cannot be satisfied, like an ordinary man, and forces a woman to pervert. A woman hesitates, does not want, a little resistance, she is hurt and she screams. Misha insists. Levy involuntarily witnessed such scenes when he went to Misha, as to his neighbor and on some minor commercial matters. Misha either had no embarrassment or lost him with impunity over time. Not wanting to continue to be a spectator of these inappropriate scenes, Levy said: “Misha, I need to go” and simply slammed the door behind him.

Once, a certain friend of Levi with a funny nickname Raccoon, a hefty good-natured bastard and the same guy as Misha, answered his question if he had heard anything about our mutual acquaintance:

– You know. Now Misha has a little freaked out. Before that, in general, I went on a gurney, and Ira fed him from a spoon.

– What happened to him?!

“Yes, you know Misha,” the acquaintance calmly continued his story, “he picked up some heifers, sat with them in a cafe, they drank there and poured a glass of clafelin into him. Praise Gd that he woke up altogether. True with a broken head and empty pockets. And the money at that time, according to rumors, was considerable. Until now, Irina leads him by the handle as a grandfather, and he – "I remember there, I don’t remember there."

Levy walks past this old gray smoked house with crumbling plaster, due to the dull glass that breaks through the dim light and, as if he hears the cry of seduced, invited guests and girls and women:

Misha, don’t! Painfully! I do not want! Please don’t!