Pogodin time says it's time for the green parrot. Radium Pogodin

Radiy Petrovich Pogodin
Green parrot

Pogodin Radiy Petrovich
Green parrot

Radiy Petrovich POGODIN
GREEN PARROT
Story
I began to become aware of the world and myself in it with smells.
The earliest and purest was the smell of frost.
The trees on the Nevka embankment have not yet shed their leaves. I stood in brown stockings, in large, seemingly empty shoes, in a coat made from my grandmother’s.
The smell that sealed my nostrils came from above - it was the smell of heaven and heavenly fruits, similar to watermelon.
Probably, until the moment when the smell of frost pushed me to imagine heavenly fruits, I reigned in a certain shell, in a translucent sphere, where smells, sounds, and touches are inseparable, and the shell is perfect, like an egg. From the smell of frost, it crumbled, powdered into dust, and the earth, the sky, and the water separated from each other. I felt the smell of the pavement stones, on which I was clinging to the toes of my shoes, the smell of tree trunks and cast-iron gratings...
The city on the other side of the river was moving away and changing its shape. He called me. And it still calls. I have been seeing him for many years in a recurring dream. Its wide staircases of granite and sandstone become shorter, its fountains lower and weaker. It is increasingly overgrown with sculpture. He is beautiful. But its walls are blank, its streets are deserted...
The next most important and time-sensitive scent in my memory is the smell of fried lamprey.
I go down the stairs from the first floor. Slowly - one foot at a time. The sun covered the exit to the street with glass melting from the heat. You can’t pass through it, you can only run through it with your eyes closed, and then you’ll burn...
But the solar shield cracked. I even remembered the sound: it was as if a heavily inflated orange balloon had burst. A huge and cheerful guy appeared at the door.
The broken sun spread at his feet. He stands in a sunny puddle in a white shirt, belted with a narrow patent leather belt, in a canvas apron, and sandals on his bare feet. On his head is a baking sheet with fried lampreys.
I already knew the darkness of smells: herbal and soapy, alluring and frightening, but the guy brings in such a smell that you can get confused and cry. The smell of dinner with a goose in Dr. Zelinsky’s apartment, where they took me, cleanly dressed, to open my mouth and say: “Ah-ah,” was quieter.
I see myself squeezed between the railing posts. I see my fingers, my knees, my shorn head - everything is pale, I was probably sick. I see my eyes turned to the button on the guy’s chest.
The guy crouches in front of me, his face is smooth, his teeth are straight. He smiles, pulls my earlobe and whistles and winks, reaches his hand up, takes a lamprey from the baking sheet and gives it to me. And I, convulsively happy, squeeze the lamprey in my hands. She's not scary to me. I don't consider it to be like a snake. I haven't seen any snakes yet. I touch her fried body with my tongue and suddenly realize that a boy who eats candy roosters, gingerbread horses and butter birds cannot handle or comprehend the smell and taste of lamprey. And the guy lightly pinches my nose with two fingers and through this gesture becomes my friend: I know that he sympathizes with me and hopes for me.
I take the lamprey to its mother. And she, afraid of snakes, disdainful even of the form of a snake, throws the lamprey into the trash can and scolds me for something - but this is already commonplace. The miracle has happened, and she cannot destroy it. The guy with the lampreys is my friend, and I go into the corner to talk to him about how gudgeon and stickleback are also fish, but lampreys won’t hang out with them, and they won’t hang out with crucian carp, because lampreys are from the depths...
The third smell is the smell of gun oil!
He does not tie my feelings to war, there are other signs for war, he returns me to the smell of frost, to the smell of fried lamprey, to a timid understanding of love, loneliness and immortality...
The organ grinder was tall and stooped, with a red, sausage-curled scarf slung over his shoulder. The organ grinder has a crimson velvet top with bomb tassels... And the parrot on the organ grinder's shoulder is green. He cleans his wide beak on the gray tangled hair of his owner and shouts: “My angel... Champagne here!” He walks with a turn on his master’s shoulder and when the organ grinder sings “Separation,” he bows.
The organ grinder stood outside our house, turned the organ grinder and sang, turning his face to the upper floors, that the prophetic parrot bird from the Madagascar Islands predicted all fate in advance for a nickel.
Those who wanted to know “fate in advance” did not crowd around the organ grinder, did not press on the prophetic Madagascar bird - they jumped out of the front door one at a time, mostly young, carefree nannies, threw dimes into the open jar from under the monpensier - so that it would jingle, and lowered their eyes, as if before the priest . The parrot strictly ensured that it jingled: if it didn’t jingle, then he wouldn’t jump off the organ grinder’s shoulder, or pull out the fortune teller folded into a bag of aspirin from a cardboard box.
The parrot lowered the bag onto the crimson velvet, pushed it with its beak towards the girl and hurried away.
The girls read the predictions, moving their lips, or out loud in their mouths. Some asked the kids in the crowd to read and blushed. When they left the organ grinder, they most often smiled. Only one woman in a black scarf, having read the prediction, spat and threw it to the ground. Some little girl made a little prediction.
The organ grinder sang “Separation” in a high, cracked voice. The parrot bowed and shouted: “Champagne here!” The kids, including me, stared at him and begged: “Tell me - stupid ass.”
The organ grinder closed the monpensier jar with a lid, put it in his pocket, put the organ grinder behind his back and walked away, limping.
The kids set off in a crowd - kids always follow the organ grinder. They explained to each other the structure of the barrel organ and methods of training parrots, among which the most animals are cockatoos. “Even the International can do cockatoos. Consider them oppressed too.”
I was running behind everyone.
I remember crossing the bridge with bated breath.
In a small crowd with hot pies, beer and throwing knives for surprise, the organ grinder stopped and started his music.
The crowd of kids broke up. Who ran where: some to the knives, some to the force-hammer, where for the sake of swing it is advisable to take off the jacket and give it to the suitor, some to look for a booth where they show a bearded giant woman. For a fee, they said, she sits on two stools, and they are in wood chips.
And I wanted the parrot to notice me. And not with one eye, either the right or the left, but with two at once, then I would understand him. His eyes consisted of multi-colored circles - it seemed to me that they were rotating in different directions. The green feathers glittered. The parrot shook them, and I hoped that, luckily for me, at least one feather would fall out, because chickens do.
There were few people who wanted to know their fate; they probably found out about it in other ways. Adults, this was completely incomprehensible to me, tried, some even with indignation and abuse, to get the parrot to say: “You fool ass.” Others asked: “Can you swear?”
And we went to another place.
There were a lot of bright posters on the street - I understood them as decoration. It seemed to me that there was always a holiday on the street, that bows were always woven into the horses’ manes. Everywhere they sold from stalls: cutlets, mashed potatoes with cucumbers, ice cream, sweets and cookies.
Trams thundered at the switches. A car sometimes passed by.
Hunger began to overcome me. But I relentlessly followed the organ grinder. The parrot fussed about on his shoulder. Suddenly, looking at me, he screamed like a bird. The organ grinder stopped and turned to me slowly and as if with a creak.
- Why are you following me, boy? - he asked. - Do you like music?
I pointed to the parrot.
- Do you like this bird?
I nodded. The organ grinder took the parrot off his shoulder and placed it on his finger. And, sitting on his finger, the parrot clearly said: “Dur-cancer.”
“That’s it,” said the organ grinder. - Go home. Your mother is probably looking for you.
I immediately remembered my mother and ran. But I wasn’t running home, I was running from resentment.
He ran until he ran into the legs of a policeman.
- Whose are you? - he asked, holding my shoulder.
“Mom,” I said.
- It's clear. And where do you live?
“In a big gray house,” I said.
- How to get to your house?
And then it suddenly dawned on me why the parrot called me a fool, and it hit me like water: I was lost! Mom often told me: “Don’t go over the bridge.” And she shook the belt so that I realized, that means.
“I’m lost,” said the policeman. - It's clear.
And I made noise through my nose.
He gave me his hand, and I clung to it like a life raft. He was faded blue - a policeman - everything on him was faded blue, except for his boots. He smelled of shoe polish and shag.
- Why are you mom’s and not dad’s? - he asked me after a pause.
“Dad left,” I said, not suspecting, due to my simple-minded inattention to my parents or perhaps because of parental secrecy, that my father had left forever, that from now on he would only be in my profile, and then in my profile I would become write: “I have no information about my father.”
The police station smelled of perfume. A woman with rose-colored lips and two long rows of beads brought a handkerchief to her face, sighed, and then in the police, in my opinion, there was nothing to breathe. I didn’t like perfume, their smell told me about abrasions and bruises: my mother did not use brilliant green or iodine, she moistened my sores with cologne or tied agave to them.
The fragrant woman was crying. And behind the barrier sat a man with a mustache, looked at her with hostility and said as if he were striking matches:
- Stop it, Vodovozova.
And I realized that he is the commander over everyone.
“Foundling,” the commander said about me. And to my policeman’s silent question he answered: “They haven’t reported it yet.”
My policeman lit a cigarette, started talking about something with other policemen and kept holding my hand, sometimes shaking it - making it clear that he remembered and thought about me.
A bloodied guy was brought into the department. Vodovozova burst into tears, literally flooding the police with the smell of her perfume.
“Plotnikov, take the boy away,” the commander ordered.
My policeman, aka Plotnikov, without answering anything, opened the door, covered with oilcloth, and dragged me into a rather large, square room, with a window barred from the inside. I had to live in this room until the morning.
To the right of the door in the corner stood a chest of old red varnish. Stepping back from the wall, almost in the middle of the room, stood a round black stove. Between the chest and the stove there was a rack of rifles. Above her is a full-length portrait of Lenin. There was a table covered with red paper by the window. There were newspapers and magazines on it.
Plotnikov sat me on the chest.
- Sit down, I’ll be right there.
He went out and soon returned with a black sheepskin coat. He took me off the chest, laid out my sheepskin coat and sat me down again. The sheepskin coat gave off a rustic smell. I remembered my grandmother and the sheep. For some reason, the sheep in the entire village were called Borki. And with some unknown instinct I also realized that not only I had arrived from the village, but Plotnikov himself too.
He again asked me to sit and left. Now he was gone longer. He returned with a bowl of hot buckwheat porridge with melted butter and a piece of bread.
“Eat our dinner,” he said. - Our food is good.
I ate until the spoon fell out of my hand and I fell asleep.
When I woke up for the first time, policemen were sitting at the table, quietly, so as not to wake me, playing dominoes. I stared at them. And they stared at me with curiosity.
- Do you want to go to the yard? - one of them, very young, finally asked. I nodded.
On the way to the restroom, I asked a question: was my mother there?
The policeman said that the neighboring police station received a statement from a citizen about the disappearance of her son. There will be identification in the morning.
- What if she makes a mistake? - I asked. - What if she's a stranger?
- How can she go wrong if she sees you? Mother is not wrong. Mine, for example, will immediately say: “Seryoga” - and behind the ear. And he won’t see that I’m in the police.
We returned and I fell asleep again.
When I woke up for the second time, only Plotnikov was in the room. He sat on a stool near the chest and held my hand in his huge hands. He lightly straightened my fingers, examined them and seemed to stroke them. And moisture trembled on his lower eyelid. “Is he crying or what? Maybe he has a son or a daughter like me in the village. And he misses them.”
- Uncle Plotnikov, what are you doing? - I asked quietly. - Don't worry.
He still held my hand, stood up and, sighing, went to the window.
“Sleep,” he said. - It's still night.
He was without boots and without a belt. His belt with a revolver lay on the table, his boots stood by the stove.
“Maybe he wants to sleep, and I took his place,” I moved towards the wall.
“Uncle Plotnikov,” I said, “lie down.” We'll fit...
He smiled and pressed his forehead against the iron bars blocking the window.
“We can’t sleep, it’s not supposed to be work... And this,” he kicked his foot funny, “I took off my boots to give my feet rest.” They are wounded, their legs. They get tired... - He looked into the dark night outside the window, and his flat, bony back was somehow unprotected.
That's when I heard the smell. I had smelled it before, but I couldn’t apply it to anything - the smell came from the rifles standing in the rack. I touched one, smelled my hand. The hand became oily, it smelled either of a burning candle or of wet iron.
A young policeman, Seryoga, poked his head through the door and said in a whisper:
- Plotnikov, on alert... - He entered the room and took a rifle from the rack. Then with one hand he moved me onto the table and opened the chest. As I understand now, there were cartridges in pouches in the chest. The policemen quickly entered the room one after another, without fussing or talking, took rifles and cartridges and left. As they left, each of them stroked my close-cropped head, and the smell of gun oil seemed to enter into me, merging with my own smell. Plotnikov put on his boots and checked the revolver. He transferred me back to the chest. And he also stroked his head.
“Don’t go first,” I said after him.
He looked at me longer than his alarming position allowed, pushing the folds of his tunic from his stomach to his back, and I realized that he would do.
I was waiting for him...
Without the rifles, the stand looked superfluous in this room, which immediately looked like a village hall. But it was precisely the similarity with the village council or zhakt, where my mother sometimes washed the floors, that calmed me down, I put my fist under my cheek and fell asleep.
When I woke up, the rifles were in the rack. There was a pile of pouches on the table. And along the red cloth that replaced the tablecloth, a green parrot walked sullenly, even fiercely. He tore strips from newspapers and magazines and threw them on the floor. And he said something. And he sighed as people sigh. Hearing my movement, he fluttered up and sat down on one of the rifles.
“Bring me some champagne,” he said.
Then the parrot cried for a long time. And I'm sure he really cried. Then he shouted in Plotnikov’s voice: “Hands!” - and crackled, stomped, began to wail...
The rifles smelled as if stone had been hit with stone.
I felt scared. I hid in a corner and covered my head with a sheepskin coat. Everything inside me was numb with a feeling of misfortune. The parrot did not scream - it creaked, like an unlocked gate creaking in the wind.

Pogodin Radiy Petrovich

Green parrot

Radiy Petrovich POGODIN

GREEN PARROT

I began to become aware of the world and myself in it with smells.

The earliest and purest was the smell of frost.

The trees on the Nevka embankment have not yet shed their leaves. I stood in brown stockings, in large, seemingly empty shoes, in a coat made from my grandmother’s.

The smell that sealed my nostrils came from above - it was the smell of heaven and heavenly fruits, similar to watermelon.

Probably, until the moment when the smell of frost pushed me to imagine heavenly fruits, I reigned in a certain shell, in a translucent sphere, where smells, sounds, and touches are inseparable, and the shell is perfect, like an egg. From the smell of frost, it crumbled, powdered into dust, and the earth, the sky, and the water separated from each other. I felt the smell of the pavement stones, on which I was clinging to the toes of my shoes, the smell of tree trunks and cast-iron gratings...

The city on the other side of the river was moving away and changing its shape. He called me. And it still calls. I have been seeing him for many years in a recurring dream. Its wide staircases of granite and sandstone become shorter, its fountains lower and weaker. It is increasingly overgrown with sculpture. He is beautiful. But its walls are blank, its streets are deserted...

The next most important and time-sensitive scent in my memory is the smell of fried lamprey.

I go down the stairs from the first floor. Slowly - one foot at a time. The sun covered the exit to the street with glass melting from the heat. You can’t get through it, you can only run through it with your eyes closed, and then you’ll burn...

But the solar shield cracked. I even remembered the sound: it was as if a heavily inflated orange balloon had burst. A huge and cheerful guy appeared at the door.

The broken sun spread at his feet. He stands in a sunny puddle in a white shirt, belted with a narrow patent leather belt, in a canvas apron, and sandals on his bare feet. On his head is a baking sheet with fried lampreys.

I already knew the darkness of smells: herbal and soapy, alluring and frightening, but the guy brings in such a smell that you can get confused and cry. The smell of dinner with a goose in Dr. Zelinsky’s apartment, where they took me, cleanly dressed, to open my mouth and say: “Ah-ah,” was quieter.

I see myself squeezed between the railing posts. I see my fingers, my knees, my shorn head - everything is pale, I was probably sick. I see my eyes turned to the button on the guy’s chest.

The guy crouches in front of me, his face is smooth, his teeth are straight. He smiles, pulls my earlobe and whistles and winks, reaches his hand up, takes a lamprey from the baking sheet and gives it to me. And I, convulsively happy, squeeze the lamprey in my hands. She's not scary to me. I don't consider it to be like a snake. I haven't seen any snakes yet. I touch her fried body with my tongue and suddenly realize that a boy who eats candy roosters, gingerbread horses and butter birds cannot handle or comprehend the smell and taste of lamprey. And the guy lightly pinches my nose with two fingers and through this gesture becomes my friend: I know that he sympathizes with me and hopes for me.

I take the lamprey to its mother. And she, afraid of snakes, disdainful even of the form of a snake, throws the lamprey into the trash can and scolds me for something - but this is already commonplace. The miracle has happened, and she cannot destroy it. The guy with the lampreys is my friend, and I go into the corner to talk to him about how gudgeon and stickleback are also fish, but lampreys won’t hang out with them, and they won’t hang out with crucian carp, because lampreys are from the depths...

The third smell is the smell of gun oil!

He does not tie my feelings to war, there are other signs for war, he returns me to the smell of frost, to the smell of fried lamprey, to a timid understanding of love, loneliness and immortality...

The organ grinder was tall and stooped, with a red, sausage-curled scarf slung over his shoulder. The organ grinder has a crimson velvet top with bomb tassels... And the parrot on the organ grinder's shoulder is green. He cleans his wide beak on the gray tangled hair of his owner and shouts: “My angel... Champagne here!” He walks with a turn on his master’s shoulder and when the organ grinder sings “Separation,” he bows.

The organ grinder stood outside our house, turned the organ grinder and sang, turning his face to the upper floors, that the prophetic parrot bird from the Madagascar Islands predicted all fate in advance for a nickel.

Those who wanted to know “fate in advance” did not crowd around the organ grinder, did not press on the prophetic Madagascar bird - they jumped out of the front door one at a time, mostly young, carefree nannies, threw dimes into the open jar from under the monpensier - so that it would jingle, and lowered their eyes, as if before the priest . The parrot strictly ensured that it jingled: if it didn’t jingle, then he wouldn’t jump off the organ grinder’s shoulder, or pull out the fortune teller folded into a bag of aspirin from a cardboard box.

The parrot lowered the bag onto the crimson velvet, pushed it with its beak towards the girl and hurried away.

The girls read the predictions, moving their lips, or out loud in their mouths. Some asked the kids in the crowd to read and blushed. When they left the organ grinder, they most often smiled. Only one woman in a black scarf, having read the prediction, spat and threw it to the ground. Some little girl made a little prediction.

The organ grinder sang “Separation” in a high, cracked voice. The parrot bowed and shouted: “Champagne here!” The kids, including me, stared at him and begged: “Tell me - stupid ass.”

The organ grinder closed the monpensier jar with a lid, put it in his pocket, put the organ grinder behind his back and walked away, limping.

The kids set off in a crowd - kids always follow the organ grinder. They explained to each other the structure of the barrel organ and methods of training parrots, among which the most animals are cockatoos. “Even the International can do cockatoos. Consider them oppressed too.”

Pogodin Radiy Petrovich

Time says it's time

Radiy Petrovich POGODIN

TIME SAYS: IT'S TIME

At six in the morning the alarm clock shudders, clicks slightly, as if a drummer is testing his sticks, and begins to beat out a beat. Other alarm clocks wake up behind the walls.

Alarm clocks are calling, they are in a hurry.

People throw off blankets, stretch, and rush to the kitchen to the water tap.

Adults get up at six o'clock. This is their time. The guys can sleep as much as they want. Summer has come.

There are three guys in the apartment: Borka, nicknamed Brys, Volodka Glukhov and Zhenka Krupitsyn.

Borka jumped up immediately. He always climbed with adults. Waving a towel, he ran into the kitchen, but the weaver Marya Ilyinichna was already in charge there. Her kettle was happily blowing steam up to the ceiling. Another neighbor, milling machine operator Krupitsyn, was standing near the sink, brushing his teeth. Krupitsyn glanced sideways at Borka and shrugged.

“I immediately got up with the alarm clock,” Borka admitted sadly. - I wanted to do it first.

Marya Ilyinichna smiled good-naturedly:

If you work with us, then you will be the first to get up. Time will settle in your soul.

Borka settled down at the sink. He loved the energetic rhythm of the morning and the cold water when he woke up. But he was always driven:

Let me go...

Let me rinse your face...

Borka snapped:

Should I be unwashed? I need it too...

Streams of soap flowed down his back. He tried to grab a handful of water and always lied:

Oh, it stings my eyes!

It's very nice to huddle around the sink. It’s as if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere, as if you don’t have time either. Only one neighbor, Krupitsyna, Borka gave up the sink unquestioningly.

“I don’t understand,” she grumbled, holding the hem of her colorful robe. - Why is he spinning around here, pushing under your feet! Some kind of stupid... Well, okay, wash, wash. I'll wait. I have nowhere to rush. You need it faster.

But it became very fun when Gleb jumped into the kitchen. He was the last one to get up among the adults. He would slam the alarm clock with a pillow and insistently lie there until Marya Ilyinichna or one of the other neighbors pulled the sheet off him.

Gleb was muscular, as if woven from tight ropes. He smeared Borka with soap foam, tickled him under the arms, laughed, snorted and puffed like a walrus. Then he stretched the tight rubber bands of the expander and rattled the two-pound weight.

Almost all the residents had breakfast in the kitchen. Gleb offered Borka pieces of sausage and said with his mouth full:

Eat, Brys. It's better to oversleep than to undereat.

Krupitsyn was the first to leave the apartment. He worked at a research institute in the experimental workshop. I went to work with a briefcase. It contained a loaf of bread and a bottle of kefir. Following him were Borka's father, the driver, and Marya Ilyinichna's husband, a builder.

At seven o'clock there were no adults left in the apartment. A heavy silence took over the apartment, and it seemed to Borka that he was late for something. Sighing, he began to clean up.

The room smells slightly of gasoline. On the wall are photographs of all my father's cars. On the sideboard, next to the tea set, lies an intricate steel piece - a pattern. Borka’s mother made it with her own hands when she was still studying at the FZO school. The mother takes care of the pattern, cleans it with sandpaper and would rather part with the set than with it.

While cleaning the room, Borka rattled chairs to drive the silence into a corner.

But she didn't give up. Only a clock could fight the silence. They ticked in all the rooms, as if signaling that working people lived here, that they had gone about their business and would return in due time.

Summer holidays drove Borka's peers out of the city. The yards are empty, and there is no one to play with. Borkin's father will soon drive the cars into the Kazakh steppe. Borka will go with him. For now it's boring.

Borka looked around, jostled under the feet of passers-by and, without blinking, crossed the busiest intersections.

On Ogorodnikov Avenue, which leads to the port, Borka met his neighbor Zhenka Krupitsyn. Zhenya walked like an ostrich, adapting to the gait of a lanky guy in a snow-white shirt.

The lanky man walked with his cloak over his shoulder, his hands in his pockets. He didn’t look at anyone, as if he was the most important person on the street.

Zhenya ate the guy with his eyes and swallowed his saliva out of excitement. Noticing Borka, he winked - that’s what a friend I have. Zhenya tried to squint at passers-by, as if they were far, far away or even somewhere below him. Borka ran next to him and kept wondering: what is going on with Zhenya? Or maybe Zhenya is a friend and truly an important bird.

Borka fell behind and tried to walk in the manner of a lanky guy. He put his hands in his pockets and walked, straining his calves, as if he were climbing steps. To be convincing, he stuck out his lower lip and brought his eyebrows together above the bridge of his nose. Passers-by began to turn around, and some two girls giggled at him instantly. Borka got angry, kicked the tabby cat that dared to jump out of the front door, and with dignity accepted the menacing gaze of the fat janitor.

The janitor shook her sausage finger at Borka, sat down on a cargo scooter and rode it into the gateway. The red, crackling scooter was hauling not only the janitor’s hundredweight, but also a platform of sand to boot.

The girls, all they could do was laugh, snorted into their fists and rushed across the road.

Citizens, pay attention to these cheerful schoolgirls. They break traffic rules.

The girls darted back onto the sidewalk. They only now noticed a policeman with a radio speaker on his chest. But... the policeman raised his hand. Cars stopped to the right and left. In the middle of the street, along the white center line, an ambulance was flying towards the intersection.

“Make way!.. Way!” the sirens shouted. “We need to outrun trouble!”

At the end of the street, the ambulance slowed down and smoothly drove into the gateway of a tall building covered in scaffolding.

Borka forgot about the girls, about the cat, about the janitor on a scooter, about the policeman with a radio speaker. Borka was already running towards the shiny limousine, towards the concentrated people in white coats. He wanted to help in some way. And when they carried the patient past him, he held the stretcher by the edge. The patient had sparse hair and sunken, pewter eyes from fear. Borka recognized him.

This is Glukhov! - he shouted. - Volodka's father!

The engine, which had not cooled down, roared again. The car drifted to the center line.

They said that Volodka’s father had golden hands. They said that someday they would build a museum where the main exhibit would be the hands of a worker, cast from the eternal metal, platinum.

Volodka’s mother died, and her father began to drown out his melancholy with vodka. At first he drank timidly. He turned the portrait of his wife to face the wall and only then took out a half-liter. He drank the first glass in a hurry, standing, as if he was afraid that it would be taken away. He smelled the bread and started crying.

“Alone,” he muttered, smearing his tears. - Alone. You betrayed me, abandoned me. - The father looked reproachfully at the portrait of his wife. - How did you live...

Volodka was little then - a first grader. He hid in the corner between the ottoman and the stove, waiting for his mother. I was waiting for her to come into the room now, and it would all be over, and everything would be as it should be. Her father, perhaps, was also waiting for her, but did not talk about it. Adults are ashamed of such things.

Glukhov fell asleep at the table. Volodka set the alarm clock so that his father wouldn’t oversleep for work, and sat down to do his homework.

In the first grade, Volodka learned to wear torn stockings with the heel upside down and trim the frayed edges of his trousers with scissors.

At first, no one in the apartment had any idea what was happening to Volodka’s father. He drank quietly, alone. He worked as a welder at the Admiralty Plant and, sitting over a glass, sometimes began to argue with someone:

Why are you looking after me? I need your care. I am working? Working. Well, jump back!.. Don’t get into your soul...

Sometimes he called Volodka to him and, turning away, said:

I wish you and I could get married, son. Do you want a new mom?