Chapter 1. The metro.
That's good if it's good in the soul. Always we wait for something more great ignoring such moments, then we remember them, regarding them as a decoration of our life story.
The same thing is with Albert, discouraging the countrymen with his not Russian first name, he walked through life with his sweeping jumping gait, now too, after getting off from a morning electric train, he went along the accustomed route, which in Moscow started with descending into the metro. It doesn't matter that during twenty minutes the sky will disappear, the sky which is so clear, so vernal, so hopeful. Is he glad? What a doubt may be? Now he is going to sell the newspapers along the route according to his choice, it's good there are eleven directions from Moscow, where the electric trains go from the nine main train stations, the passengers will buy his newspapers including "Moskovsky Komsomolets" and "AIDS-info".
Still, it does not matter that he will be not in need of the knowledges he had got at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. Selling only the newspapers he is able to support himself and his young wife Nadya whom he had married in three years ago. She was young, beautiful and slender, also she was able to understand that he has chosen a right strategy in the life in the same peak of the perestroika, at the same top of the changes in the 1990 year. He was a rabid anti-abortionist, however, it was no matter this about. He was close with her, adapting to her monthlies to avoid the pregnancy. Also, as all the young people, often they quarrelled with each other, but they had never gone too far with it. They made up quickly the reconciliation finished often by the stormy love exercises.
They hadn't own car. He hadn't own holiday house. However, Albert remembered often, last year paying to driver some generous recompense, they tore in the taxi past awful bread lines, in which the people stood from six o'clock in the morning to buy some foodstuff, but they tore to the Kursky Railway Station and almost missed the train Moscow-Simferopol. And their route finished in Yalta, which is both customary and exotic, and it seems the mountains had stood like a great wall specially to defend this paradisiacal place against the cold and other miseries of the loser country Russia.
And all the failures as if bypassed Albert. As soon as he started to guess about the satanic essence of the soviet state, it had broken up. Yeltsin had come to power and a need to be a dissident was annulled. But one of the human properties, he needs always something more.
His wife had three beautiful friends: Lena was a redhead and freckled, Valya (Valentina) was with large and expressive eyes, Sveta (Svetlana) had eastern countenance. How he wanted to enjoy in love with all four of them! To hold close to himself shy Lena, to pinch Valya's taut buttocks, and she would sparkle because of this with her eyes and rush to him, or to taking Sveta's pigtail and winding it around his hand to take possession of her, bringing her on her knees and making her bend down obediently. And Nadya would participate in all of this actively, all of them would be at peace among themselves and all four of them would drink tea together with him without any jealousy and quarrel.
However, he understood that it would be no good to demand so much from a goldfish of the destiny. It would be no good being so greedy to offend God Whom he has begun to pay attention more recently. He must thank Him, because he himself was alive, healthy and full of the forces. All the changes, which took place recently, they were in his favor, as if magically. Now no one would name him as a parasite, a scalper or an idler. he has become needed by society, which was hungered for information, and his work was paid generously.
Thinking so, he was descending to the most well-known and used by local and by visitants station of the metro. But being bored because of the everyday trips in the veneered with marble dirty corridor something unusual forced him to stop and has changed all his future.
Among the regular traders and beggar who were intermittently kicked out by the cops there was standing a wooden box with an inscription, which was inappropriate at all at the contemporary, spontaneous market in spite of all its barbarism: "Put in from 1 to 100 dollars and be happy!" Such a thing could not be without attracting attention of Albert who was inquisitive and wondered because of everything. Also, he was lucky he has arrived here ten minutes earlier, than usual and had a possibility to observe what was taking place during these ten minutes, but vainly...
Two cops walked past. A lot of people walked. No one paid attention to the box, as if it was not existed. On of the passer-byes whom it would be appropriate a nickname "New Russian", he put in a 100 dollars banknote. A small number of people put in banknotes with George Washington without any doubt and continued walking. One picture with Abraham Lincoln was inserted into this box too. The most surprising thing was a fact that nobody paid attention at the unusualness of the proposition.
-Excuse me, please, - he addressed to an aged woman, which any communication was possible with, how his intuition prompted him. Doesn't it seem you, that this inscription on the wooden box is very strange?
He wasn't mistaken. Aged and honest in appearance, the woman agreed willingly to solve his problem. A long while she looked at the place, where was this strange box, also a long while she looked at Albert and finally pronounced:
-Young man. How many days ago had you drunk?
-I'm teetotaler.
-However, excuse me. If you were in a terrible drinking bout four days ago, I could all explain you without difficulty. Here is no box. You yourself may make a conclusion. I'm a nurse in a mental hospital. My word of honor, I see no box, saying this, she hurried down to the trains.
"Well, - thought Albert. - Now I'm going to filch away your junk in a brazen and what will you do, it is interesting to see?"
Albert came to the box and made an attempt to take it in his hand. Suddenly all has drifted in his field of vision. The last thing he remembered, it was a good, but penetrating look from an old man's who stood on the other side.
Albert has come to himself because of a restrained, but not very gentle touch from the official stick.
-Why have you laid down here? This is not a village! Where you drink, there go to bed. What the fuck have you arrived in Moscow?
-I'm not from a village, I'm from Mytishchi town. Secondly, why not to check this old man's identity, - answered Albert, pointing at the strange old man who stood near the no less unusual box.
It was seen throughout, this old man looking like a wanderer, wearing a navy blue robe and keeping a walking stick in his hand, he had the most direct relation to the box and now he was looking also at Albert with his penetrating look. Here Albert has felt the guilt, because as if he had snitched on this man who he far not looked like a bad character. So he added:
-It' possible, actually here is no a old man, merely I'm feeling bad and it was a hallucination.
-In such a case I'll quickly make you sober, - the more aggressive mate said through his teeth threatening with the official stick.
-Wait, Ivan, - the second mate interrupted him, - and turning to a whisper, continued:
-Don't you see, the man is ill, it would better send him to a psychiatrist. Hey, dude! - he made a hand gesture to stop his mate and turned to Albert. - Here is a phone number. To say frankly, I don't like this devilment too, which happens here. If you see, hear or recognize something, I'll be very grateful if you report me it about.
-You are seeking a miracle, however, it is in front of you. Don't you see a wooden box and a glad old man near it?
-But, dear friend, here is only the marble wall, but I need a fact.
-Is that no old man and no a wooden box with the inscription: "Put in from 1 to 100 dollars and be happy!"?
The sergeant major of militia stooped and said to Albert right in the ear:
-Do you think, if such a miracle stands here, we would miss to benefit from it? Really, you need the treatment. If you are younger, I would think you are pretending to be mad not to go to the army. Though, here is the postal address. Write in detail, what took place here and send it please to this post-office box. Write about the old man and the box with a lot of dollars, write, don't be shy. And about yourself, what do you do?
-I sell the newspapers.
-And now you are going by metro to the station "Street of the 1905", isn't right?
-Of course.
-As the saying goes: "you can talk until you're blue in the face". Besides, be good, call us if there is something strange in our station.
-Surely, - answered Albert, mentally being indignant because of the situation.
That's good if it's good in the soul. Always we wait for something more great ignoring such moments, then we remember them, regarding them as a decoration of our life story.
The same thing is with Albert, discouraging the countrymen with his not Russian first name, he walked through life with his sweeping jumping gait, now too, after getting off from a morning electric train, he went along the accustomed route, which in Moscow started with descending into the metro. It doesn't matter that during twenty minutes the sky will disappear, the sky which is so clear, so vernal, so hopeful. Is he glad? What a doubt may be? Now he is going to sell the newspapers along the route according to his choice, it's good there are eleven directions from Moscow, where the electric trains go from the nine main train stations, the passengers will buy his newspapers including "Moskovsky Komsomolets" and "AIDS-info".
Still, it does not matter that he will be not in need of the knowledges he had got at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. Selling only the newspapers he is able to support himself and his young wife Nadya whom he had married in three years ago. She was young, beautiful and slender, also she was able to understand that he has chosen a right strategy in the life in the same peak of the perestroika, at the same top of the changes in the 1990 year. He was a rabid anti-abortionist, however, it was no matter this about. He was close with her, adapting to her monthlies to avoid the pregnancy. Also, as all the young people, often they quarrelled with each other, but they had never gone too far with it. They made up quickly the reconciliation finished often by the stormy love exercises.
They hadn't own car. He hadn't own holiday house. However, Albert remembered often, last year paying to driver some generous recompense, they tore in the taxi past awful bread lines, in which the people stood from six o'clock in the morning to buy some foodstuff, but they tore to the Kursky Railway Station and almost missed the train Moscow-Simferopol. And their route finished in Yalta, which is both customary and exotic, and it seems the mountains had stood like a great wall specially to defend this paradisiacal place against the cold and other miseries of the loser country Russia.
And all the failures as if bypassed Albert. As soon as he started to guess about the satanic essence of the soviet state, it had broken up. Yeltsin had come to power and a need to be a dissident was annulled. But one of the human properties, he needs always something more.
His wife had three beautiful friends: Lena was a redhead and freckled, Valya (Valentina) was with large and expressive eyes, Sveta (Svetlana) had eastern countenance. How he wanted to enjoy in love with all four of them! To hold close to himself shy Lena, to pinch Valya's taut buttocks, and she would sparkle because of this with her eyes and rush to him, or to taking Sveta's pigtail and winding it around his hand to take possession of her, bringing her on her knees and making her bend down obediently. And Nadya would participate in all of this actively, all of them would be at peace among themselves and all four of them would drink tea together with him without any jealousy and quarrel.
However, he understood that it would be no good to demand so much from a goldfish of the destiny. It would be no good being so greedy to offend God Whom he has begun to pay attention more recently. He must thank Him, because he himself was alive, healthy and full of the forces. All the changes, which took place recently, they were in his favor, as if magically. Now no one would name him as a parasite, a scalper or an idler. he has become needed by society, which was hungered for information, and his work was paid generously.
Thinking so, he was descending to the most well-known and used by local and by visitants station of the metro. But being bored because of the everyday trips in the veneered with marble dirty corridor something unusual forced him to stop and has changed all his future.
Among the regular traders and beggar who were intermittently kicked out by the cops there was standing a wooden box with an inscription, which was inappropriate at all at the contemporary, spontaneous market in spite of all its barbarism: "Put in from 1 to 100 dollars and be happy!" Such a thing could not be without attracting attention of Albert who was inquisitive and wondered because of everything. Also, he was lucky he has arrived here ten minutes earlier, than usual and had a possibility to observe what was taking place during these ten minutes, but vainly...
Two cops walked past. A lot of people walked. No one paid attention to the box, as if it was not existed. On of the passer-byes whom it would be appropriate a nickname "New Russian", he put in a 100 dollars banknote. A small number of people put in banknotes with George Washington without any doubt and continued walking. One picture with Abraham Lincoln was inserted into this box too. The most surprising thing was a fact that nobody paid attention at the unusualness of the proposition.
-Excuse me, please, - he addressed to an aged woman, which any communication was possible with, how his intuition prompted him. Doesn't it seem you, that this inscription on the wooden box is very strange?
He wasn't mistaken. Aged and honest in appearance, the woman agreed willingly to solve his problem. A long while she looked at the place, where was this strange box, also a long while she looked at Albert and finally pronounced:
-Young man. How many days ago had you drunk?
-I'm teetotaler.
-However, excuse me. If you were in a terrible drinking bout four days ago, I could all explain you without difficulty. Here is no box. You yourself may make a conclusion. I'm a nurse in a mental hospital. My word of honor, I see no box, saying this, she hurried down to the trains.
"Well, - thought Albert. - Now I'm going to filch away your junk in a brazen and what will you do, it is interesting to see?"
Albert came to the box and made an attempt to take it in his hand. Suddenly all has drifted in his field of vision. The last thing he remembered, it was a good, but penetrating look from an old man's who stood on the other side.
Albert has come to himself because of a restrained, but not very gentle touch from the official stick.
-Why have you laid down here? This is not a village! Where you drink, there go to bed. What the fuck have you arrived in Moscow?
-I'm not from a village, I'm from Mytishchi town. Secondly, why not to check this old man's identity, - answered Albert, pointing at the strange old man who stood near the no less unusual box.
It was seen throughout, this old man looking like a wanderer, wearing a navy blue robe and keeping a walking stick in his hand, he had the most direct relation to the box and now he was looking also at Albert with his penetrating look. Here Albert has felt the guilt, because as if he had snitched on this man who he far not looked like a bad character. So he added:
-It' possible, actually here is no a old man, merely I'm feeling bad and it was a hallucination.
-In such a case I'll quickly make you sober, - the more aggressive mate said through his teeth threatening with the official stick.
-Wait, Ivan, - the second mate interrupted him, - and turning to a whisper, continued:
-Don't you see, the man is ill, it would better send him to a psychiatrist. Hey, dude! - he made a hand gesture to stop his mate and turned to Albert. - Here is a phone number. To say frankly, I don't like this devilment too, which happens here. If you see, hear or recognize something, I'll be very grateful if you report me it about.
-You are seeking a miracle, however, it is in front of you. Don't you see a wooden box and a glad old man near it?
-But, dear friend, here is only the marble wall, but I need a fact.
-Is that no old man and no a wooden box with the inscription: "Put in from 1 to 100 dollars and be happy!"?
The sergeant major of militia stooped and said to Albert right in the ear:
-Do you think, if such a miracle stands here, we would miss to benefit from it? Really, you need the treatment. If you are younger, I would think you are pretending to be mad not to go to the army. Though, here is the postal address. Write in detail, what took place here and send it please to this post-office box. Write about the old man and the box with a lot of dollars, write, don't be shy. And about yourself, what do you do?
-I sell the newspapers.
-And now you are going by metro to the station "Street of the 1905", isn't right?
-Of course.
-As the saying goes: "you can talk until you're blue in the face". Besides, be good, call us if there is something strange in our station.
-Surely, - answered Albert, mentally being indignant because of the situation.
"At long last I got rid of this representative of the Bolsheviks vermins" - leaving, he thought. Then he tried to remember, what newspapers and how many of them is he going to buy today, at what price will he sell them. It was not difficult to recollect all this, and this day his profit was not less, but ten percent more, than daily average one. It was not ashamed to return at home to the beautiful wife. What about morning fainting in the underground, at first he wanted to forget it and not to remember anymore. It seemed, the morning occasion could not disturb the happy everydayness of the young childless family.
Next chapter: http://la-flagellation.blogspot.ru/2017/10/the-teleportation-part-1-chapter-2.html
The original Russian text of the chapters from 1 to 3: http://www.proza.ru/2010/01/07/233
Next chapter: http://la-flagellation.blogspot.ru/2017/10/the-teleportation-part-1-chapter-2.html
The original Russian text of the chapters from 1 to 3: http://www.proza.ru/2010/01/07/233
