Prologue
“...No, you know, I didn’t immediately realize that she was not herself. Such a nice old lady... Or rather, not old, that it’s me! The years, of course, were visible: the face was wrinkled and all that. But her figure is in a light raincoat, cinched at the waist like a youth, and that gray hedgehog on the back of a teenage boy’s head... And her eyes: old people don’t have eyes like that. There is something turtle-like in the eyes of old people: slow blinking, dull corneas. And she had sharp black eyes, and they held you at gunpoint so demandingly and mockingly... I imagined Miss Marple like that as a child.
In short, she came in and said hello...
And she said hello, you know, in such a way that it was clear: she didn’t just come in to gawk and didn’t waste words. Well, Gena and I, as usual, can we help with anything, madam?
And she suddenly said to us in Russian: “You really can, boys. “I’m looking,” he says, “for a gift for my granddaughter.” She turned eighteen and entered the university, the department of archeology. He will deal with the Roman army and its war chariots. So, in honor of this event, I intend to give my Vladka an inexpensive, elegant piece of jewelry.”
Yes, I remember exactly: she said “Vladka”. You see, while we were choosing and sorting out pendants, earrings and bracelets together - and we liked the old lady so much, we wanted her to be satisfied - we had time to chat a lot. Or rather, the conversation turned in such a way that it was Gena and I telling her how we decided to open a business in Prague and about all the difficulties and problems with local laws.
Yes, it’s strange: now I understand how cleverly she conducted the conversation; Gena and I were like nightingales (a very, very warm-hearted lady), but about her, except for this granddaughter on a Roman chariot... no, I don’t remember anything else.
Well, in the end I chose a bracelet - a beautiful design, unusual: the garnets are small, but beautifully shaped, curved drops are woven into a whimsical double chain. A special, touching bracelet for a thin girl’s wrist. I advised! And we tried to pack it stylishly. We have VIP bags: cherry velvet with gold embossing on the neck, a pink wreath, and gilded laces. We keep them for especially expensive purchases. This one was not the most expensive, but Gena winked at me - do it...
Yes, I paid in cash. This was also surprising: usually such exquisite old ladies have exquisite gold cards. But we, in essence, do not care how the client pays. We are also not the first year in business, we understand something about people. A sense of smell is developed – what is and what is not worth asking a person.
In short, she said goodbye, and we were left with the feeling of a pleasant meeting and a successful day. There are such people with a light hand: they will come in, buy cheap earrings for fifty euros, and after that, the moneybags will knock them down! So it is here: an hour and a half passed, and we managed to sell three euros worth of goods to an elderly Japanese couple, and after them three young German women bought a ring each - identical, can you imagine that?
The German girls just came out, the door opens, and...
No, first her silver hedgehog swam behind the display case.
We have a window, which is also a showcase – half the battle is luck.
We rented this room because of him. It’s not a cheap space, we could have saved it by half, but because of the window, as soon as I saw it, I said: Gena, this is where we start. You can see for yourself: a huge window in the Art Nouveau style, an arch, stained glass windows in frequent bindings... Please note: the main color is scarlet, crimson, what kind of product do we have? We have garnet, a noble stone, warm, responsive to light. And I, when I saw this stained glass window and imagined the shelves under it - how our garnets would sparkle in rhyme with it, illuminated by light bulbs... What is the main thing in jewelry? A feast for the eyes. And I turned out to be right: people definitely stop in front of our window! If they don’t stop, they’ll slow down, saying they should come in. And they often stop by on the way back. And if a person has already come in, and if this person is a woman...
So what am I talking about: we have a counter with a cash register, you see, turned out so that the display case in the window and those who pass outside the window are visible as on the stage. Well, here it is: it means her silver hedgehog swam by, and before I had time to think that the old lady was returning to her hotel, the door opened and she entered. No, I couldn’t confuse it in any way, what, can you really confuse something like that? It was the delusion of a recurring dream.
She greeted us as if she was seeing us for the first time, and from the doorway: “My granddaughter is eighteen years old, and she has also entered the university...” - in short, all this canoe with archeology, the Roman army and the Roman chariot ... gives out as if nothing had happened .
We were speechless, to be honest. If there were even a hint of madness in her, then no: black eyes look friendly, lips in a half-smile... An absolutely normal, calm face. Well, Gena was the first to wake up, we must give him his due. Gena’s mother is a psychiatrist with extensive experience.
“Madam,” says Gena, “it seems to me that you should look into your purse, and a lot will become clear to you. It seems to me that you have already bought a gift for your granddaughter and it is in such an elegant cherry bag.”
“Is that so? – she answers in surprise. “Are you, young man, an illusionist?”
And he puts a handbag on the display window... damn, I have this one in front of my eyes vintage handbag: black, silk, with a clasp in the shape of a lion's face. And there is no bag in it, even if you crack it!
Well, what thoughts could we have? Yes, none. We've gone completely crazy. And literally a second later it thundered and blazed!
…Sorry? No, then this started happening - both on the street and around... And to the hotel - that’s where the car with this Iranian tourist exploded, huh? - the police and ambulance came in droves to hell. No, we didn’t even notice where our client went. She probably got scared and ran away... What? Oh yes! Gena gave me a hint, and thanks to him, I completely forgot, but it might come in handy for you. At the very beginning of our acquaintance, the old lady advised us to get a canary to revive the business. As you said? Yes, I was surprised myself: what does a canary have to do with a jewelry store? This is not some kind of caravanserai. And she says: “In the East, in many shops they hang a cage with a canary. And to make her sing more cheerfully, they remove her eyes with the tip of a hot wire.”
Wow - a remark from a sophisticated lady? I even closed my eyes: I imagined the suffering of the poor bird! And our “Miss Marple” laughed so easily..."
The young man who presented this strange story to the elderly gentleman who entered their store about ten minutes ago, stood by the windows and suddenly unfolded a very serious official ID, which was impossible to ignore, fell silent for a minute, shrugged his shoulders and looked out the window. There, the flounces of tiled skirts on the Prague roofs glittered like a carmine cascade in the rain, a side-squat house stared out onto the street with two blue attic windows, and above it stretched the powerful crown of an old chestnut tree, blooming in many creamy pyramids, so that it seemed as if the whole tree was strewn with ice cream from the nearest cart.
Further on stretched the park on Kampa - and the proximity of the river, the whistles of steamboats, the smell of grass growing between the paving stones, as well as friendly dogs of various sizes, let off their leashes by their owners, imparted to the entire area that lazy, truly Prague charm...
...which the old lady valued so much: this detached calm, and the spring rain, and the blooming chestnuts on the Vltava.
Fear was not part of her emotional range.
When at the door of the hotel (which she had been watching for the last ten minutes from the window of such a conveniently located jewelry store) an inconspicuous Renault jerked and puffed fire, the old lady simply slipped out, turned into the nearest alley, leaving behind her a numb square, and at a walking pace, past the police cars and ambulances that were screaming towards the hotel through a dense traffic jam on the road, walked five blocks and entered the lobby of a more than modest three-star hotel, where a room had already been reserved in the name of Ariadna Arnoldovna von (!) Schneller.
In the shabby lobby of this boarding house rather than a hotel, guests nevertheless tried to introduce cultural life Prague: on the wall near the elevator hung a glossy concert poster: a certain Leon Etinger, contratenor(white-toothed smile, cherry butterfly), performed today with Philharmonic Orchestra several numbers from the opera La clemenza di Scipione by Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782). Place: St. Nicholas Cathedral in Mala Strana. The concert starts at 20.00.
Having filled out the card in detail, and with special care writing down the middle name that no one here needed, the old lady received from the receptionist a good-quality key with a copper keychain on a chain and went up to the third floor.
Her room at number 312 was located very conveniently - just opposite the elevator. But, finding herself in front of the door to her room, for some reason Ariadna Arnoldovna did not unlock it, but, turning left and reaching room 303 (where a certain Demetros Papakonstantinou, a smiling businessman from Cyprus, had been living for two days), took out a completely different key and, Having easily turned it in the lock, she entered and closed the door with a chain. Throwing off her cloak, she retired to the bathroom, where every object seemed to be very familiar to her, and, first of all, wet terry towel hot water, ran it forcefully across right side face, removing the flabby bag under the eye and a whole scattering of small and large wrinkles. The large oval mirror above the washbasin revealed a mad harlequin with the mournful half of an old woman's mask.
Then, prying a transparent adhesive strip above her forehead with her fingernail, the old lady pulled the gray scalp off her completely bare skull - a remarkable shape, by the way - and at once transformed into an Egyptian priest from an amateur production by students of the Odessa gymnasium.
The left side of the wrinkled face slid down, like the right, under the pressure of hot water, as a result of which it was discovered that Ariadna Arnoldovna von (!) Schneller would do well to shave.
“It’s not bad... this hedgehog, and the crazy old woman. Good joke, the young lady would have liked it. And fagots are funny. There’s still a lot of time until eight, but let’s sing…” I thought...
...thought, studying himself in the mirror, a young man of the most indeterminate age - due to his slight build -: nineteen? twenty seven? thirty five? Young men as flexible as an eel usually performed female roles in medieval traveling troupes. Perhaps that is why he was often invited to sing female parts in opera productions; he was extremely natural in them. At all, music critics reviews certainly noted his plasticity and artistry - rather rare qualities among opera singers.
And he thought in an unimaginable mixture of languages, but mentally pronounced the words “hokhma”, “hedgehog” and “Mistress” in Russian.
In this language he spoke with his eccentric, brainless and very beloved mother. It was her name that was Vladka.
However, this is a whole story...
Trapper
1
...And the family didn’t call him anything else. And because for many years he supplied animals to the Tashkent and Alma-Ata zoos, and because this nickname suited his whole wiry, hunting appearance.
On his chest there was a trace of a camel's hoof imprinted with baked gingerbread, his whole back was striped by the claws of a snow leopard, and the number of times he was bitten by snakes was almost countless... But he remained a powerful and healthy man even at seventy, when unexpectedly for his family suddenly he decided to die, for which he left home the way animals go to die - alone.
Eight-year-old Ilyusha remembered this scene, and subsequently, cleared by memory of the confusion of exclamations and confusion of gestures, it acquired the laconicism of a quickly completed picture: The trapper simply changed his slippers for shoes and went to the door. The grandmother rushed after him, leaned her back against the door and shouted: “Over my corpse!” He pushed it aside and left silently.
And one more thing: when he died (he starved himself to death), his grandmother told everyone how light his head was after death, adding: “This is because he himself wanted to die - and he died and did not suffer.”
Ilyusha was afraid of this detail all his life.
* * *
Actually, his name was Nikolai Konstantinovich Kablukov, and he was born in 1896 in Kharkov. Grandmother’s brothers and sisters (almost ten people, and Nikolai was the eldest, and she, Zinaida, was the youngest, so they were separated by about nineteen years, but mentally and by fate he remained with her all his life nearest) – all were born in different cities. It’s hard to understand, and now you can’t ask anyone, what insatiable wind drove their dad across Russian Empire? But it drove me, both in the tail and in the mane. And if we’re talking about the tail and the mane: only after the collapse of the Soviet state did my grandmother dare to reveal a piece of the “terrible” family secret: my great-grandfather, it turns out, had his own stud farm, and it was in Kharkov. “How the horses came to him! - she said. “They just raised their heads and walked.”
At these words, each time she raised her head and - tall, stately even in old age, took a wide step, smoothly moving her hand; in this movement of hers there seemed to be a bit of horse grace.
– Now it’s clear where Trapper’s passion for hippodromes comes from! – Ilya once exclaimed to this. But the grandmother looked with her famous “Ivano-threatening” gaze, and he shut up, so as not to upset the old woman: there she was, the keeper of family honor.
It is quite possible that his great-grandfather’s cart jolted through the cities and villages, racing with the inexorable rush of vagabond blood: his most distant known ancestor was a gypsy with the triple surname Prokhorov-Maryin-Seregin - apparently, double was not enough for him. And Kablukov... God knows where it came from, this surname is no wonder (it’s also disgraced because one of the two Alma-Ata psychiatric hospitals, the one on the street of the same name, gave this surname a common noun laugh: “Are you from Kablukov?” ).
Perhaps the same ancestor hewed and hewed to the guitar so that the heels of his heels flew off?
In the family, in any case, there were scraps of little-known and simply indecent songs, and everyone, young and old, hummed them, with a characteristic strain, without going too deeply into the meaning:
Gypsy to Gypsy says:
“I’ve had it for a long time...
Eh, yay - there’s a bottle on the table!
Let's have a drink, honey!
There was something more decent, although on the same table theme:
Sta-a-kan-chi-ki gra-ane-ny-iya
Fell off the table...
The Trapper himself liked to sing this under his breath when he cleaned the canary cages:
Fell and crashed -
My life was shattered...
Canaries were his passion.
Cages were piled from floor to ceiling at the four corners of the dining room.
A friend of his worked at the zoo, he was an amazing master. Each cell is a small openwork house, and each one is different: one is like a carved box, the other is exactly a Chinese pagoda, the third is a cathedral with twisted turrets. And inside there is all the furniture, a careful, painstaking management for the singing residents: a “bathing room” - a goal, like a football goal, with a bottom made of plexiglass, and a drinking bowl - a complex thing, into which water came from a reservoir; it had to be changed every morning.
But the main thing is the feeder: a wooden box into which millet and millet were poured. The food was stored in a chintz bag, tied at the neck with silver braid from New Year's gift from Ilyusha’s early childhood. Green bag, with orange flowers, and the scoop is tied to it, too - baby babble... ...nonsense, why do I remember this?
And I clearly, very clearly remember the browed, nosed face of the Trapper, shaded by the thin bars of the birdcage. Deep-set black eyes with an expression of demanding admiration and in each - the yellow light of a galloping canary.
And a skull cap! He wore them all his life: tetrahedral Chust “duppies” - solid boxes with kalampir peppers quilted with white thread, Samarkand “piltaduzi”, Bukhara gold-embroidered ones... A variety of skullcaps, lovingly embroidered by a woman’s hand. There were always a lot of women hovering around him.
He spoke fluent Uzbek and Kazakh; if you started cooking pilaf, you couldn’t breathe from the child, and the carrots stuck to the ceiling, but it turned out delicious.
He drank tea only from a samovar and at least seven enamel mugs per evening - he did not recognize cups. If you've been to good mood, joked a lot, laughed thunderously and loudly, with funny sobs and a canary fistula on high notes; He was always spouting off some unknown jokes: “The village of Yushta! This is the wilderness!” - and at every opportunity, like a magician, he extracted from memory a suitable fragment of a poem, inventively changing the rhyme along the way, if suddenly the word was forgotten or did not make sense.
Ilyusha climbed the Trapper like a tree.
Much later, having learned something more about him, Ilya recalled individual gestures, glances and words, belatedly endowing his personality with not trampled, smoldering and in later years passions.
In general, there was a time when he thought a lot about the Trapper, unearthing some memories confused by his simple-minded childhood memory. For example, how he wove baskets for canary nests from kebab sticks.
Together they collected the sticks in the grass near the neighboring kebab shop, then washed them for a long time under the pump in the yard, scraping off the hardened wax of old fat. After which the giant fingers of the Trapper began an intricate dance, weaving deep baskets.
– Are nests really like a box? - Ilyusha asked, carefully watching his dexterous thumb, which effortlessly bent the aluminum spear and easily threaded it under the already woven frame.
“Otherwise the testicles will fall out,” the Trapper explained seriously; He always explained in detail what he was doing, how and why.
Pieces of camel wool were wound onto the finished frame (“so that the boys wouldn’t freeze”) - and if there was no wool, yellow, lumpy batting was picked out from an old, wartime quilted jacket. Well, strips of colored fabric were knitted on top of everything - here the grandmother, with a generous hand, took out scraps from her treasured tailor's bundle. And the nests came out festive - calico, satin, silk - very colorful. And then, said the Trapper, the birds care. And the birds “created comfort”: they lined their nests with feathers, pieces of paper, looked for balls of grandmother’s “gypsy” hair, combed out in the morning and accidentally rolled under a chair...
“The poetry of family life...” sighed the Trapper with emotion.
The testicles turned out very cute, bluish-pockmarked; they could be examined only if the female got out of the nest, but it was forbidden to touch them. But the chicks hatched scary, similar to Kashchei the Immortal: bluish, bald, with huge beaks and watery bulging eyes. Soon they were covered with fluff, but they remained scary for a long time: newborn dragons. Sometimes they fell out of the nests: “This inexperienced female, you see, drops them herself,” - and sometimes one of them died, and Ilyusha, noticing the stiff corpse on the floor of the cage, turned away and closed his eyes so as not to see the whitish film on his rolling eyes.
But he was allowed to feed the grown chicks. The trapper kneaded the egg yolk, mixed it with a drop of water, picked up the pulp with a match and with a precise movement pushed it straight into the chick's gaping beak. For some reason, all the chicks strove to bathe in the drinking bowls, and the Trapper explained to Ilyusha how they should be taught, where to drink from, and where to swim. He loved to rock in his palms; showed how to take it so that, God forbid, you don’t hurt the bird.
But all these nursery worries paled before the magical morning moment, when the Trapper - already awake, cheerful, early trumpet (he blew his nose into a large checkered handkerchief so that the grandmother covered her ears and always exclaimed the same thing: “The trumpet of Jericho!” - for which she immediately received in response: “Valaam’s donkey!”) - he released all the canaries from their cages to fly. And the air became jungle: dense, iridescent, yellow-green, fan-shaped... and a little dangerous; and the Trapper stood in the middle of the room - tall, like the Colossus of Rhodes (it’s grandma again) - and in a gentle, coarsening bass with a sudden fistula squeak, he talked with the birds: he clicked his tongue, clicked, did such things with his lips that Ilyusha laughed like crazy.
And there was another morning number: The trapper funny fed the birds from his mouth: he filled his mouth with water, began to “walk and gurgle” in order to attract them. And they flew to his lips and drank, throwing their heads back like infants. So in the spring, birds flock to a mighty tree with a birdhouse nailed high. And he himself, with his head thrown back, looked like a giant chick of some pterodactyl.
Grandma didn’t like this, she got angry and repeated that birds are carriers of dangerous diseases. And he just laughed.
All the birds were singing.
Ilyusha distinguished them by their voices, loved to watch how the canary’s neck trembled during especially loud trills. Sometimes the Trapper allowed me to put my finger on the singing throat - to listen to the pulsating placer with my finger. And he taught them to sing himself. He had two methods: his own loud singing of Russian romances (the birds picked up the melody and sang along) - and records with the voices of birds. There were four records: slate-black, with a dagger-like light running in a circle, with pink and yellow cores, where in small letters it was indicated which birds were singing: tits, warblers, blackbirds.
– What does a noble singer’s valuable song consist of? - asked the Trapper. He paused for a moment, then carefully placed the record on the turntable and carefully let the needle spin in its enchanted circle. From the distant silence of the blue hills, bird voices were born and floated in ringing streams, chattering over pebbles, striking out, calling out, and scattering silvery sounds in the air.
Ilyusha knew all the songs of the Russian canary; already knew how to distinguish “light oatmeal” from “mountain”, “rising” - when, starting to sing in a low register, gradually, as if rising up a mountain, the singer pulls the song upward, into transcendental trills with a fading sweetness of sound (and you are afraid that he will not cut off Li) and holds the reverent “i-i-i-i” for a long time, translating it either to “yu-yu-yu-yu”, then to “oo-oo-oo-oo”, and after a short sigh he exhales full and round sound (“Knorru let it go!” – the Trapper remarked in a whisper) – and ends with low, gently questioning whistles.
© D. Rubina, 2014
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“...No, you know, I didn’t immediately realize that she was not herself. Such a nice old lady... Or rather, not old, that it’s me! The years, of course, were visible: the face was wrinkled and all that. But her figure is in a light raincoat, cinched at the waist like a youth, and that gray hedgehog on the back of a teenage boy’s head... And her eyes: old people don’t have eyes like that. There is something turtle-like in the eyes of old people: slow blinking, dull corneas. And she had sharp black eyes, and they held you at gunpoint so demandingly and mockingly... I imagined Miss Marple like that as a child.
In short, she came in and said hello...
And she said hello, you know, in such a way that it was clear: she didn’t just come in to gawk and didn’t waste words. Well, Gena and I, as usual, can we help with anything, madam?
And she suddenly said to us in Russian: “You really can, boys. “I’m looking,” he says, “for a gift for my granddaughter.” She turned eighteen and entered the university, the department of archeology. He will deal with the Roman army and its war chariots. So, in honor of this event, I intend to give my Vladka an inexpensive, elegant piece of jewelry.”
Yes, I remember exactly: she said “Vladka”. You see, while we were choosing and sorting out pendants, earrings and bracelets together - and we liked the old lady so much, we wanted her to be satisfied - we had time to chat a lot. Or rather, the conversation turned in such a way that it was Gena and I telling her how we decided to open a business in Prague and about all the difficulties and problems with local laws.
Yes, it’s strange: now I understand how cleverly she conducted the conversation; Gena and I were like nightingales (a very, very warm-hearted lady), but about her, except for this granddaughter on a Roman chariot... no, I don’t remember anything else.
Well, in the end I chose a bracelet - a beautiful design, unusual: the garnets are small, but beautifully shaped, curved drops are woven into a whimsical double chain. A special, touching bracelet for a thin girl’s wrist. I advised! And we tried to pack it stylishly. We have VIP bags: cherry velvet with gold embossing on the neck, a pink wreath, and gilded laces. We keep them for especially expensive purchases. This one was not the most expensive, but Gena winked at me - do it...
Yes, I paid in cash. This was also surprising: usually such exquisite old ladies have exquisite gold cards. But we, in essence, do not care how the client pays. We are also not the first year in business, we understand something about people. A sense of smell is developed – what is and what is not worth asking a person.
In short, she said goodbye, and we were left with the feeling of a pleasant meeting and a successful day. There are such people with a light hand: they will come in, buy cheap earrings for fifty euros, and after that, the moneybags will knock them down! So it is here: an hour and a half passed, and we managed to sell three euros worth of goods to an elderly Japanese couple, and after them three young German women bought a ring each - identical, can you imagine that?
The German girls just came out, the door opens, and...
No, first her silver hedgehog swam behind the display case.
We have a window, which is also a showcase – half the battle is luck. We rented this room because of him. It’s not a cheap space, we could have saved it by half, but because of the window, as soon as I saw it, I said: Gena, this is where we start. You can see for yourself: a huge window in the Art Nouveau style, an arch, stained glass windows in frequent bindings... Please note: the main color is scarlet, crimson, what kind of product do we have? We have garnet, a noble stone, warm, responsive to light. And I, when I saw this stained glass window and imagined the shelves under it - how our garnets would sparkle in rhyme with it, illuminated by light bulbs... What is the main thing in jewelry? A feast for the eyes. And I turned out to be right: people definitely stop in front of our window! If they don’t stop, they’ll slow down, saying they should come in. And they often stop by on the way back. And if a person has already come in, and if this person is a woman...
So what am I talking about: we have a counter with a cash register, you see, turned out so that the display case in the window and those who pass outside the window are visible as on the stage. Well, here it is: it means her silver hedgehog swam by, and before I had time to think that the old lady was returning to her hotel, the door opened and she entered. No, I couldn’t confuse it in any way, what, can you really confuse something like that? It was the delusion of a recurring dream.
She greeted us as if she was seeing us for the first time, and from the doorway: “My granddaughter is eighteen years old, and she has also entered the university...” - in short, all this canoe with archeology, the Roman army and the Roman chariot ... gives out as if nothing had happened .
We were speechless, to be honest. If there were even a hint of madness in her, then no: black eyes look friendly, lips in a half-smile... An absolutely normal, calm face. Well, Gena was the first to wake up, we must give him his due. Gena’s mother is a psychiatrist with extensive experience.
“Madam,” says Gena, “it seems to me that you should look into your purse, and a lot will become clear to you. It seems to me that you have already bought a gift for your granddaughter and it is in such an elegant cherry bag.”
“Is that so? – she answers in surprise. “Are you, young man, an illusionist?”
And he puts a handbag on the display window... damn, I have this one in front of my eyes vintage handbag: black, silk, with a clasp in the shape of a lion's face. And there is no bag in it, even if you crack it!
Well, what thoughts could we have? Yes, none. We've gone completely crazy. And literally a second later it thundered and blazed!
…Sorry? No, then this started happening - both on the street and around... And to the hotel - that’s where the car with this Iranian tourist exploded, huh? - the police and ambulance came in droves to hell. No, we didn’t even notice where our client went. She probably got scared and ran away... What? Oh yes! Gena gave me a hint, and thanks to him, I completely forgot, but it might come in handy for you. At the very beginning of our acquaintance, the old lady advised us to get a canary to revive the business. As you said? Yes, I was surprised myself: what does a canary have to do with a jewelry store? This is not some kind of caravanserai. And she says: “In the East, in many shops they hang a cage with a canary. And to make her sing more cheerfully, they remove her eyes with the tip of a hot wire.”
Wow - a remark from a sophisticated lady? I even closed my eyes: I imagined the suffering of the poor bird! And our “Miss Marple” laughed so easily..."
The young man, who was telling this strange story to an elderly gentleman who had entered their store about ten minutes ago, stood near the windows and suddenly unfolded a very serious official ID, which was impossible to ignore, fell silent for a minute, shrugged his shoulders and looked out the window. There, the flounces of tiled skirts on the Prague roofs glittered like a carmine cascade in the rain, a side-squat house stared out onto the street with two blue attic windows, and above it stretched the powerful crown of an old chestnut tree, blooming in many creamy pyramids, so that it seemed as if the whole tree was strewn with ice cream from the nearest cart.
Further on stretched the park on Kampa - and the proximity of the river, the whistles of steamboats, the smell of grass growing between the paving stones, as well as friendly dogs of various sizes, let off their leashes by their owners, imparted to the entire area that lazy, truly Prague charm...
...which the old lady valued so much: this detached calm, and the spring rain, and the blooming chestnuts on the Vltava.
For several years, readers have been waiting for the release of Dina Rubina’s new novel “Russian Canary”. It has become the largest in volume and consists of three books: “Zheltukhin”, “Voice” and “ Prodigal son».
It is impossible not to notice that from novel to novel Dina Rubina’s talent is revealed more and more widely. Her prose is always distinguished by the magnificent, rich Russian language; appreciated by readers and close attention to little things, details. A true artist of words, she knows how in more detail- to a tangible smell, to an audible sound - to describe sunsets and sunrises, wild landscapes and city streets. How many of them do we follow the characters in this novel? Odessa and Alma-Ata, Vienna and Paris, Jerusalem and London, Thailand and beautiful Portofino... Rubina is able to immerse readers headlong into another, distant life. And just as deeply - for a whole century! – with nostalgic warmth, the author immerses us in the history of two families, the connection between which is now almost illusory: the legend of the canary Zheltukhin the first and a rare ancient coin in the form of an earring from a strange deaf girl on the beach of the small Thai island of Jum. It is there that the meeting of Leon, who was born in Odessa, and Aya from Alma-Ata takes place. The story of how they were brought to such a distance takes almost two volumes, filled to the brim with events and people.
In the first two books, the story does not unfold in chronological order. The author either dwells on the present, then rolls the story back far back or gives a hint of the future. Pays attention to the Alma-Ata Zverolov Kablukov and Ilya, Aya’s father, and then switches to the Etingers in Odessa. The life of both families is full of legends, secrets, tragedies and omissions. Ilya, who lived all his life with a strict, domineering grandmother and suffered over his missing mother, had no idea who his father was. Leon's great-grandmother, Stesha, gave birth to her only daughter, either from Big Etinger or from his son. And Leon himself, already an adult, experienced a real shock when he finally learned from his unlucky mother about his father’s nationality. The reader cannot help but pay attention to the fact that, apart from Big Etinger, none of the main characters created their own family. Eska, the Young Lady, bright in her youth, has faded into a barren flower; Stesha, having fulfilled the duty of extending the Etinger family, did not even think about getting married; Leon's mother, crazy Vladka, seems completely incapable of family life. And in Almaty too - the lonely Trapper Kablukov, his lonely sister, Igor, who was widowed on the day his daughter was born...
And yet, both families survived, did not fall apart, family legends, relics, and internal blood ties were preserved in them. Survived despite the revolution, war, collapse Soviet Union. Against the backdrop of changing historical and geographical scenery, heroes are born, live and die, until, by the will of Fate and the author, Leon meets Aya. And, probably, Thailand was not chosen as their meeting place by chance. It’s not for nothing that there is a mention of cohesion by “Siamese depth”...
Towards the end of the second volume, the author admits:
“This is a strange novel, where He and She meet each other almost at the end; where the plot strives to slip away and spread into five sleeves; where intrigue stumbles over absurdity and all sorts of accidents; where before every meeting is piled up high mountain life, which the author pushes, like Sisyphus, every now and then stumbling, holding the weight, again pushing with his shoulder and dragging this absurd cart up, up, to the epilogue ... "
Heroes are found external resemblance(although, it would seem, where from?) and internal kinship - mystical and inexplicable. Successful artist, the owner of a charming countertenor - and a deaf girl, a tramp and a photographer by vocation. Among those around the “last Etinger,” she is the only one unable to appreciate the level of his talent, his Voice. The world of sounds is inaccessible to Aya; she reads lips. And Leon lives by Music. Aya is a “free bird”, capable of taking off at any moment, not accustomed to an ordered life, not experiencing a craving for comfort, living by the principle “when there is day, there will be food,” even if it is meager. Leon, in his first incarnation, is an esthete, a connoisseur and lover of life’s comforts and antiques, an artist whose tours are scheduled for a year in advance, and in the second, he is a highly experienced, ruthless and deeply undercover agent of the Israeli secret services. But both of them are “street children”, from their youth they have been struggling with the world alone, internally closed, protecting their secrets. Both are fugitives. Aya is an accidental witness and, by the will of fate, a distant relative of the “merchants of death”, whom Leon’s masters from the secret services have been hunting for a long time. Leon dreamed of focusing on his singing career, forgetting about extremists - God knows, he devoted many precious years to fighting them. But what about Aya, his “deaf aunt”, his thin woman with upstart breasts, his Virgin Mary Annunziata with “Fayum” eyes and swallow eyebrows, his angel, his obsession and devilish temptation, his piercing love, his pain? Eternal pain, because it is not in his power to give her his main wealth - his Voice. Who will protect her and save her from the constant fear of persecution? And, as the puzzles of this story have turned out so bizarrely, it turns out that they have a common enemy, and along the way, Leon decides to fulfill another duty without the help of the “office” - to prevent the delivery of radioactive filling for a “dirty bomb” to Arab extremists. He knows that this operation will be the last in his life: his redemption, his compensation, and after that - freedom, love and Music.
Of course, “Russian Canary” is primarily a novel about love, but not only. The works of Dina Rubina are not fiction in the narrow sense of the term when they mean love story, detective, mystery or adventure, that is, reading for fun. Although the plot can be as twisted as a detective story, and the reader will find the answer to the story only at the end; and events on the verge of mysticism are present; and love – sometimes painful, painful – the characters experience. And yet the main feature of Rubina’s novels is different.
In Dina Rubina's prose, you feel a genuine interest in a person, an individual - anyone, be it the main character or a side character who plays his irreplaceable role, like the colorful dressmaker Polina Ernestovna, the creator of the Lady's eternal "Viennese wardrobe", the remains of which Leon reverently preserves and even uses on occasion; or the Almaty Kenar breeder Morkovny; or the inhabitants of a densely populated Odessa communal apartment, an apartment that once belonged entirely to the Etingers; or Buttons Liu - a tiny Ethiopian, a Parisian antique dealer, a former pirate, a former Marxist, a former Russian philologist.
And the main characters are always people obsessed and gifted from above with remarkable talent. They are so absorbed in the passion for what they love that it seems that the writer is gripped by the same passion. She knows him so well, describes in such detail and lovingly the nuances and professional secrets. From novel to novel we observe a special, “Rubin trick” - the “mastering” of another profession. It seems to us that the author happened to be a sculptor, an artist, and a puppeteer, that she herself invented fantastic tricks with a motorcycle under the circus dome, pulled off grandiose scams with painting fakes, or was even a member of a gang of Tashkent thieves. Some writers focus on the emotional experiences of their heroes, others give them breathtaking adventures, leaving the work behind the scenes. In Rubina, along with the above, the characters are necessarily absorbed in their profession or hobby, and this makes the story even more believable - after all, it’s not just “sighs on the bench” that make up human life! And the reader unwittingly becomes infected with the writer’s sincere interest in someone else’s business, work, and the creativity of the heroes.
In the novel "Russian Canary" several characters devoted their lives to music. Without making a discount, Dina Rubina, who herself has a conservatory education, throws readers special terms, thereby raising you to your level, introducing you into the profession. At the same time, literally “sounding” from the pages of the book, the piano of the Young Lady, the voice and clarinet of Big Etinger, the amazing countertenor of Leon Etinger are now and then overlapped with canary trills. Ah, these “faceted glasses”, the crowning number of Canary Zheltukhin and all his descendants! Canary breeder is another profession “mastered” by the author in this novel. But there is another one - an employee of the Israeli special services. And this last one gives the work a seriousness of a completely different level - not artistic, not professional, but political. Or, moving to the language of musical terms - not a chamber sound, but a symphonic, pathetic sound. Reading the third volume, we understand that it was for this reason that the writer led us with her heroes.
The conflict in the Middle East has lasted for decades. Al Qaeda, ISIS and other extremist groups intend to bring the world to its knees. However, in our time, weapons not only kill hundreds and thousands of people. A bomb with a nuclear filling may well end up in the hands of rabid fanatics - and this is already a danger to the entire earthly civilization.
Who among us is not concerned about the acts of extremism that now and then agitate the world? Who doesn't care about the apocalyptic threat, last war? But there are people in the world who have made it their life’s goal to fight terrorists and arms dealers. What kind of people are these, how do they work, what do they have to sacrifice in the name - by and large - of saving humanity?
You will learn about this by reading the multi-layered and polyphonic novel “Russian Canary”, filled with sounds, feelings, love, disappointments, pain, despair and triumph.
Today I will write about Dina Rubina, about my beloved Dina Rubina, or rather, about her last novel"Russian Canary", published in 2014. The novel "Russian Canary" is great. It took me a long time to get ready to read it, because the work is large-scale: three full volumes. I wanted to start reading, and nothing would tear me away from this merging with the book. I took it with me on vacation and was terribly worried when I started to feel low eBook that I won’t be able to read to the end. I turned down the font as much as possible, but finished reading it.
I don’t see any point in writing about each book of this trilogy separately, since they are a single whole.
Book 1 – “Russian Canary. Zheltukhin."
Book 3 – “Russian Canary. Prodigal son".
This trilogy is a family saga about the lives of two families, completely different in everything, living far from each other, but whose destinies in some years slightly touch each other, and in the end are surprisingly intertwined.
The first volume is the history of these families. The life of several generations spanning the entire twentieth century floats before us, catching even past centuries with its wing: their ups and downs, joys and tragedies. We get acquainted with many destinies, many characters, good and bad, but as always with Rubina, they are original, brightly drawn, interesting. Oh, how I love it! The first volume reminded me very much in its style of Rubina’s book “On the Sunny Side of the Street”: just as warm, colorful and multi-faceted.
The first family is Kazakh, quiet, reserved, living in the suburbs of Almaty, in which the passion for breeding canaries arose and was passed on from generation to generation. In that canary tribe there was amazing singer named Zheltukhin. A virtuoso singer who performed such mind-blowing roulades and whistled the most human songs. Moreover, the singer is hereditary: all the Zheltukhins were famous for their talent.
And there was also an Odessa Jewish family named Etinger, which included such an explosive mixture of characters, passions, stories, talents! Only once did the lines of these two families come into contact: fate brought into this family one of the representatives of the Zheltukhtny family.
Why so much attention to canaries? Yes, because it is the home song of the Zheltukhin family that will become fateful for the main characters.
And there is very little about the main characters in the first part of “Russian Canary”. The stories of two families with their secrets, passions, seething, seething - this is only fertile ground for the appearance of the main characters, who are discussed in the next two volumes. The entire first volume is a kind of epilogue.
And the main characters are the last of the Etinger family, Leon, and the last representative of the Kazakh family, the deaf girl Aya. Young, creative. She is a gifted photographer. He - most talented musician, owner of a unique voice, for which he received the name “Kenar Rusi” (“Russian Canary”). Yes, yes, the canary again. I won’t tire of repeating that Dina Rubina loves to write about talented people, she simply savors these talents! She likes people who are passionate in everything: in life, love, profession. And it gives me great pleasure to read about such people.
These two are meeting where do you think? In Thailand. Well, where else can they meet? And the next two books of the trilogy are already about them.
Two latest volumes The Russian Canary trilogy is already stepping beyond the boundaries of the usual family saga. Here Rubina is completely different. It draws us into the adventure genre and is more reminiscent in style of The White Dove of Cordoba.
It would seem, what kind of adventures can a musician and a photographer have? Perhaps yes. If only vocals were Leon's only occupation in life, and Aya would not have the gift of getting into stories thanks to her unbridled, freedom-loving character and feeling of being a person of the world.
If the first book of the trilogy is more everyday, then the second book “Russian Canary. Voice" and the third book "Russian Canary. The Prodigal Son" are written in the spirit of a good adventure novel. There is more exciting fiction here.
But in all three books, what I love Rubina for is the liveliness of images and characters (and you’re always surprised at how skillfully she interweaves them together). Full of secondary images, but so alive and real!
And also the humanity of relationships, respect for family ties, the beauty of descriptions of nature and geographical places.
Photo Life on White © lifeonwhite.com
Trapper
Late 20th century. Outskirts of Almaty, Aportov Gardens of the Plant Growing Research Institute, where Ilya’s grandmother worked. Here, in a small house, a boy Ilya lives with his grandmother and her brother. He often remembers his great-uncle Nikolai Kablukov, who was called the Trapper for his passion for animals and birds. Grandfather's life is shrouded in many secrets, he is lonely, overwhelmed by wanderlust, but his main love is canaries. Grandfather lovingly teaches canaries to sing, the prima of his bird choir is Maestro Zheltukhin, a yellow-finned canary with a wonderful voice. Thanks to his grandfather, his grandson became fascinated with canaries for the rest of his life.
The trapper leaves home to die alone. After the death of his grandfather, the grandson finds a carefully kept old coin and a photo of a beautiful girl with a canary.
The boy Ilya grows up as a lonely, withdrawn orphan. His mother, like Kablukov, is stricken with the disease of vagrancy. He is raised by his despotic grandmother, hiding the secret of his birth from her grandson. Growing up, Ilya works as a journalist in a newspaper. At the Medeo skating rink, he meets the beautiful musician Gulya, and the young couple get married.
Etinger House
Odessa, early 20th century. IN big apartment The Etinger family lives: father Gavrila (Herzl) is a famous clarinetist and tenor, his wife Dora and children Yasha and Esther (Esya), the servant Stesha is the same age as her daughter. The family is rich and musical, the children study music and even give concerts. In the summer, at the dacha, father and son sing a duet, delighting the audience. Suddenly, teenager Yasha becomes infected with revolutionary ideas and quits music. After an unsuccessful parental attempt to stop this passion, he runs away from home, taking a family heirloom - a platinum coin from his soldier grandfather.
Left with her inconsolable parents, Eska improves her performing skills as a pianist, and her parents take her to Austria for further training. She sews a “Viennese” wardrobe, which subsequently lasts her entire life. In Vienna, before the audition, Esya plays the piano wonderfully in a cafe, causing general delight.
After an attack and treatment in an Austrian clinic, Dora dies, the money was spent on her operation. Etinger and his daughter return to Odessa. Now the family is poor, Esther gets a job as a dancer in a cinema.
The revolution begins and Civil War. The Red Army commander Yasha returns to the city, his friend Nikolai Kablukov visits the Etinger family with greetings and instructions from his son. As a password, he presents a rare antique platinum coin stolen from Yasha's father. A bird lover takes care of Eska and gives her a canary Zheltukhin. A girl in love gives him a photo of herself with a canary.
With the help of Stesha, who has fallen in love with him, Kablukov steals three rare books from the family library and disappears. He explains to the girls that he is not created for a settled family life.
Yakov, having become a ruthless Bolshevik punisher, does not visit his family, but his name protects the helpless family in the ensuing bandit and revolutionary disorder. The Etingers are compacted, the apartment becomes communal with many tenants.
Yasha becomes an illegal Soviet intelligence officer and lives abroad until 1940, skillfully avoiding repression. He leaves rare books stolen from the family in Jerusalem, where he works under the guise of an antique dealer.
Having injured her hand, Gavrila Etinger no longer plays the clarinet. He sings first in the cinema before a show, and later, having fallen ill with a mental disorder, on aimless walks around the city. They call him “City Tenor” and pity him. He is strongly attached to Zheltukhin and carries him with him everywhere. The faithful Stesha, as lonely as Esya, is looking after him.
Just before the war, Yakov secretly returns to the country. Expecting arrest in an era of repression and party purges, he comes to see his family. The hero spends the night with Stesha, who is in love with him, and sings, as in childhood, together with his crazy father, an aria from the opera “Prodigal Son”. On leaving the house he is arrested by the NKVD.
Before the war, Esther traveled around the country for several years as an accompanist for the famous Spanish dancer Leonora Robledo. She is friends with her, and is even in love with her husband, an ethnographer professor. Before being sent to the front, the professor committed suicide after a family scandal. Esther and Leonora performed at the front throughout the war as part of artistic brigades. Leonora dies during the bombing, Esya returns home to Odessa.
In the first days of the occupation of the city of Gavrila, Etinger, along with Zheltukhin, was shot on the street, like many Jews, by Romanian soldiers. Stesha stabs the house manager responsible for his death. She saves the last family jewels for Esi, who has returned from the front. The heroine tells the “young lady,” as she always called Esya, about her brother’s visit, her father’s death, and about her love affair with both of them. The fruit of this relationship is Stesha’s daughter Irusya, a girl with different eyes.
Aya
In Alma-Ata, Ilya marries Gula and meets her family. He is fascinated by the story of her relatives. Her grandfather Muhan knew German well, thanks to his teacher Friedrich, a German communist emigrant. Before the war, he got married and had a daughter. He fought, was a prisoner of war, in a concentration camp, but thanks to his knowledge of the German language he was able to escape and reached Berlin with his troops. After the war, his second daughter, Guli’s mother, was born. He was soon arrested by the NKVD and served fifteen years in Soviet camps. His wife, Baba Marya, visited him with her youngest daughter.
He returned completely ill, and his wife nursed him. The grandfather became embittered and beat her and his daughters. Much later, my grandfather received a letter from the GDR, from which the family learned that his son Friedrich was growing up there, named after his beloved teacher, from the German Gertrude - the fruit of a front-line connection. Grandfather sometimes wrote to them. Feeling the approach of death, Mukhan left home and disappeared. Guli's mother died young due to heart disease.
While Gulya is expecting a child, many signs point to future misfortune - she gives birth to a daughter and dies of a heart attack. The girl Aya is born deaf. Her father and grandmother make a lot of effort to raise her as a full-fledged person, not disabled: she reads lips, feels sounds tactilely, and not everyone knows about her illness. The girl has a freedom-loving soul and strange bouts of long sleep, probably due to the conflict between her deafness and the polyphonic world.
Her father sings to her, deaf, lullabies; she does not hear them, but she feels them. With the help of canary Zheltukhin, a representative of the Zheltukhin dynasty, Aya learns the song “Faceted Glasses.” Twenty years later she will hear this song sung by a stranger who struck her imagination with his exotic appearance. She will meet this man twice in different corners planets before meeting him.
As a teenager, Aya became interested in photography and has been making money from it ever since. She is attracted to the wandering free life without prohibitions and restrictions, which is a reason for conflicts with the grandmother.
Aya is finishing school when Friedrich, a German relative and the son of her great-grandfather, appears. A wealthy carpet merchant takes a liking to Aya and invites her to live and study in England, where he lives with his family. After much doubt, Ilya lets go of Aya, realizing that he will not keep her near him. His grandmother dies and he is left alone with the canaries.
Leon
Irusya, Stesha's daughter, grows up as a hypochondriac. Having married a classmate, she leaves for the North, where their daughter, red-haired Vlada, is born. At the age of six, the girl is brought to her grandmother Stesha in Odessa and left forever.
Vlada is hyperactive real child Etingers. Growing up in the company of two grandmothers, Stesha and Esther, the girl is nothing like them, but resembles Yasha in her adventurous character and violent temperament. No one and nothing can curb her wild ardor. Since childhood, she has been distinguished by a wild and rich imagination. The neighbor boy Valerka, a kind-hearted man and an animal lover, is in love with her.
Turned into beautiful girl, Vlada joins the city’s bohemian crowd as a model. Surrounded by admirers, fluttering easily through life, she does not become attached to anyone, preferring easy friendship serious relationship. Valerka, who is in love, realizing that the girl will never love him, gives up his studies and becomes a thief; soon he begins to wander around prisons.
Having accidentally met an Arab student, Walid, who fell in love with her, Vlada enters into an easy relationship with him. The guy leaves for his homeland and never returns to Odessa, and Vladka is expecting a child. Both of the girl’s grandmothers come up with the idea that the child’s father died in Afghanistan, where a contingent of Soviet troops is stationed.
Vlada gives birth to an unusual boy, named Leon in honor of Eska’s front-line friend Leonor. Small, graceful, silent, on his own, endowed with many talents, the child has a wonderful voice, which later turned into a countertenor - the highest male voice. The boy has a sharp mind and artistic talent, he is attached to the three women around him, but is truly, internally close to Esther. She is decrepit and suffers from senile dementia. Leon studies music, sings in the school choir and in the local opera house, teachers admire his wonderful voice.
Having found no use for herself in perestroika Ukraine, Vlada decides to emigrate to Israel, and the family leaves for Jerusalem. Stesha dies there, Leon fervently mourns his grandmother. The family lives in poverty on social benefits.