I barged into the apartment, as in garden of Gethsemane, and with the courage of the condemned, hobbled upon the kitchen – Calvary.

«I’m leaving!» I turned a cast-iron tongue, and how the bale fell ass-down on a stool.

«Did the girl not like something?» asked woman cautiously, putting down a rag.

How I wanted to hug her waist and with my palms draw a line of her hips! I buried my chin on my chest.

«Сonversely…»

The hostess relieved continued rinsing the dishes.

«Have you quarreled?»

«Yes.»

«Sadly. Touching girl. I hope that everything is not so scary, and you…»

«I told her that I love you!»

Kurushina put the last washed saucer in the dryer. She wrung out the rag and wiped her hands, dragging out an already huge pause by all these manipulations. Then she moved the stool and sat next to me. She adjusted my short forelock to one side and leaned her elbows on her clasped knees, looking into my eyes.

«Thank you, my sweet boy…»

«I love you not the way you think!» suddenly almost shouted me in drunken desperation. «I love you, as a man loves a woman! Scoff! Talk sense! It won’t help! – I jumped up – the stool crashed to the floor. I wanted to kick you out of your apartment, like an old rag by which no longer wipes up shoes! Do you understand? You let a scumbag into your house who holds nothing sacred except his vile desires. Well, what, what I found in you that I have not seen in other women!»

I spoke evilly about the hatred of the early days, about the mockeries with which I had insulted her habits, clothes, appearance, and, finally, of my admiration for her.

«Why did this happen to me?» – I groaned. «Well, if I had not seen women! So no! I’m drunk! Tomorrow I will be bitter, but not ashamed, for this evening. How can I be ashamed of the most precious thing I have? I love you, even if I drunk, even if I dead!»

I sat down on the floor and covered my head with my hands.

Kurushina smoked cigarette after cigarette, the muscles of her face sagging, the corners of her lips Curling down like a horseshoe. She seemed to immediately grow old, hunched over, and her nose with a small hump turned red ugly, her eyes faded, and only the clean, cold stones of gold threads in her ears quivered every time the woman flicked the ash.

«I’m glad you told me everything…»

«I don’t think so!»

«You probably think me an old fool, with the reflexes of a childless… Sorry, my sweet boy, I’ve already begun to express in elaborate words as you! I won’t lie, I didn’t know what you just told me. I like you. And this is not a fable about a rooster and a cuckoo. I do not presume to analyze your merits. Although you might be curious to hear it. You know something about my past. I haven «t always lived here…» she thought for a moment, as if remembering. «You’ve backed yourself into a corner. You are blinded by the brilliance of my former life. You are blinded by the desire to touch her. Wait! I’m just an ordinary aging woman. I live, as many do, in the present day, and perhaps a little in vain memories. Let’s say I liked you, as you put it, as a man. But this is not enough. Didn’t you meet just good people? Maybe I’ll feel awkward later, but frankness for frankness. If you think that in a woman under fifty, for you – an old woman, dies interest in a multi-faceted life, you are mistaken. I don’t get many the guests now. And your appearance is an event for me. Young, handsome! But my youth has passed. Humble ourselves! Don’t put us in a hopeless position. This is not worthy of people able to find a compromise. And thank you for your recognition! It’s nice to feel a little younger than what you are!» Kurushina smiled conciliatingly.

«Chewed up like for baby. Like – don’t like!» I said through my teeth, and asked stubbornly. «So you like me after all?»

«Surely!» there was no irony or coquetry in her tone, her face was tightened to the smallest features again, and her piercing eyes flashed.

«What to do now?» I asked in a deathly voice.

«Go sleep! Tomorrow I go to people who agreed to help us. Their girl has returned the other day.»

I nodded resignedly and sat for a while with my hands dangling from my lap, staring blankly at the floor.

Laying down to sleep, I knew this was only the beginning! And fell asleep with joy and fear.

12

We tried not to notice the memorable evening loitering between us. But you might as well walk barefoot through spring puddles, suggesting that there are warm, impenetrable boots on your feet.

I sent a dry «notice» to my mother about my health and lied that I had been hired as a handyman. There were a few small bills and coppers left in my leather «bumblebee».

Two days later, Elena Nikolaevna woke me up in the morning and showed a gift to my bride. I lazily drew back from under the covers in the morning coolness of September and, yawning, bent close: Kurushina sat at the table. A golden snake with tiny diamond eyes coiled in a double spiral on the white tablecloth. The magnificent jewelry work was striking in the fineness of the finish of the smallest fused scales and resemblance to some small arboreal original.

«Not sorry to give?»

I picked up the bracelet to get a better look at it.

Kurushina folded her hands into a fist and rested her chin on her shoulder, glancing sideways at the snake. Then she sighed decisively, as if saying goodbye to the bracelet, and straightened.

«Go today, meet them.»

Grayish-blue clouds-lambs had frolic racing with the cold wind. Future relatives lived near the Paveletsky railway station, in a yellow five-story building with a fractional number and shabby courtyards. I was given the name of an old bathhouse as a reference point. To go to strangers with a recommendation of the groom from a woman to whom I had confessed my love a few days ago – is not this the stupidest grimace of circumstances!

If, climbing the stairs, I doubted whether to give the benefactors the jewelry of a loved one, then outside the apartment, after the visit, I confidently showed a weighty thumb to the fish-peephole of the door.

The bride’s daddy, thin, sharp-faced and leggy as a grasshopper, with a slicked-back hair comb after a shower, in training trousers and leather Slippers on his bare feet, was sprawled in a chair, absently kept saying» uh-huh» to his wife, and was picking soundly by his tongue between his teeth. Maman, a perfectly ordinary wife of «grasshopper», in a long robe, in front of the TV turned on, was flipping through the magazine «Moscow». Phlegmatic, moon-faced daughter with black curly hair and red eyelids with big kind eyes, as if serving a sentence. When I entered, the women stared at me as if I were a ferocious rhinoceros in a menagerie, with respect and fear. It seems that the family of «pygmies» was rarely visited by giants over one hundred and sixty centimeters tall.

I sat on the couch under cross-examination of future relatives: who are my parents, circle of hobbies, do I suffer from indigestion…

After the first answers, they became wary.

«If Elena Nikolaevna’s recommendations are enough for you, what is your price for the service?» I cut short the daddy’s curiosity.

He shifted in his chair, his wife glared at him, and daughter stared at me.

«I am not going to appear at your place again. All expenses are my matter. The main thing is that you do not change your mind. Otherwise, it will be a pity for the lost time!»

Crimson spots covered dad’s face. He seemed to be turning boulders of thought in his head. But I didn’t let him pin me down with them.

«Elena Nikolaevna needs your … „I paused, barely perceptible,“ … friendly help. There is nothing shameful in reward. Isn’t that right?»

Dad frowned. Eh, you have no merchant grasp, grasshopper! There is no luxurious, self-righteous daring in you! Didn’t trained to bargain!

Of course, if I were older, I wouldn’t risk teasing people who were already scared. But I could not tolerate their condescension to Elena Nikolaevna!

In the hallway, dad coughed into the fist and named the amount. Two thousand rubles, at the then rates for registration of one and a half thousand.

«What have you told them?» Attacked me Elena Nikolaevna, as soon as I crossed the threshold of her apartment. «Alexey Vladimirovich (didn’t even try to remember!) just called me. He’s shocked! Says you’ll gobble me up in half an hour. He told me not to contact you. He said, «you’ll survive…»

«Isn’t it?»

Kurushina left abruptly, but returned a minute later with a lit cigarette. Her eyes swelled with tears.

«You put me in an awkward…» She sniffled.

«I haven’t placed you anywhere!»

I gave her the conversation in detail.

«Let them chat! Fatherless and a yard boy me! Quite good for nothing! And your friends are trash!»

Kurushina heaved a sigh. She sat down next to me on the sofa, wrapped oneself up in a shawl. Then she snuggling cosily to my shoulder.

«Thank you, my sweet boy! This is the first time I encountering this. Heavy!» And after that. «You’ll be lost because of your character! You don’t like people!»

I was ready to sit with her forever under the drowsy ticking of the clock. I wanted to kiss her hands, hair, lips. But the fear of breaking the solemnity of the moment, frightening away the happiness, restrained me.

13

Even now I can’t say why, besides my youth, Lena liked me. To impress the imagination of an experienced, intelligent woman was unthinkable to me, a half-illiterate guy. She easily distinguished tiny spots on my conscience. My presumptuous judgments about life, about people were stained by two opposite colors. I read a lot and haphazardly. My hasty conclusions amused her. For example, I despised Turgenev’s Rudin. The non-resistance of the intolerant Tolstoy was considered a farce. Dostoevsky, in my opinion, treated his mind damaged by the shooting down by writing gloomy novels. I found modern national literature biased and boring. And imported literature I called the fantasies of the well-fed. But I didn’t know her well. Fresh spots of childhood: Hemingway, Remark, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, London and others – they appeared in our country as they were translated, therefore, in personal libraries, everyone had about the same set of books – gave a vague idea of their literature. In my opinion, the captain’s daughter Pushkin, could have married Deerslayer Cooper, and they would have whiled away one hundred years of solitude together in Kafka’s gloomy castle. I made Elena Nikolaevna laugh to tears with my tasteless puns. Concepts of musical culture swirled in my mind like the purple smoke of heavy rock. In painting I liked three the bears on a candy wrapper…

Spiritual poverty is a bridge to moral poverty. For me, military service divided people into shepherds and a herd: the stronger the whip, the more obedient the wards. I despised poverty: I despised people fed on spiritual food and without a penny, or vice versa. The circle of my acquaintances had neither one nor the other. Of course, I was sorry for mom and I remembered my childhood friends…

It is unlikely that Elena Nikolaevna was attracted by the spiritual mediocrity of the pink rebel. Kurushina met people more worthy than the provincial Mowgli. Met in the past! But people get attached to Pets! And I was a good pupil, quickly studied, was attentive to her, and could well squeeze out sad memories in her heart. Finally, I made all my mistakes, wanting to please.

If a woman is older than a man by two or three years, this is alarming. Six or ten years is suspicious. The difference of twenty or more years is forgivable, may be Piaf, and then only with a vulgar discount on her husband’s cunning calculation. Or forgivable for Julia Roberts, who is just a literary character. Imagine the love of a fifty-year-old woman and a twenty-year-old boy as a harmony of spiritual intimacy and sex? – drivel. But in some African tribes, unequal marriage with a woman’s age priority is a cultural tradition that is exotic to European thinking. If, I imagine, you put different-sex, healthy peers in a closed space during their sexual heyday, nine cases out of ten will end predictably, even with the most puritanical imagination. And the story of king Oedipus has its own zest, if you exclude the edifying pathos and do not go too deep into the tradition of Euphrates magicians to marry their mothers.

Elena Nikolaevna and I were being carried towards the fatal whirlpool, and the Golden oar was lying on the bottom of the boat. The possible gossip of friends and neighbors differed in essence, like reflections of one object in crooked mirrors and frightened Kurushin. And yet my love was gradually undermining her discretion.

A real man does not struggle with love for a woman, he just does not remind you of love if the woman does not want it.

Bathing evening. Kurushina’s light short steps rustled from the bathroom into the room.

Before bedtime, I absentmindedly drove languid thoughts between the lines of the same paragraph of the book. Outside the window, the autumn rain was sad.

The splash of shower water, the tapping of shampoo and gel jars on the glass stand. My imagination envied the soap suds and the elastic jets of liquid that caressed her body. It seemed that I knew her by heart, to the touch of an unforgettable drunken evening.