I walked over to the boy, who was walking like past, but at the same time seems to собиравшемуся go to one of the entrances of the house.
-Hi! "I said, holding out his hand, and painfully, trying to remember when and where we meet him and who he was.
-Great! he said without much enthusiasm, seeing me before, but to pretend that it happened just now. — How?
-Why, — " I replied, thinking that we can communicate.
And then I looked right into his fathomless eyes, and with blinding clarity appeared to me that night in the restaurant where I had seen them once.
-Hey, you never know where Veronica? I inquired immediately, as if only yesterday with him sitting in a doorway and clattered seeds.
-Veronica?! — He said. I don't know exactly, but somewhere in the cruise.
-In what other cruise? — I was surprised.
Internationally, together with the Hippopotamus. He dragged her with him.
A time?
"Ah, to be back soon, probably.... But in General, I don't know...
-And where are you going? I inquired.
"Oh, walk on by.
-By what?
-Passing all.... And actually, I'm home now. And where are you going?
"I don't know.... Like Veronica here to see. And now...
Now I knew his name: Gladyshev. Exactly, it's the way I presented that day Veronica: Gladyshev. He writes poems and even wrote to me then some memory. Where they been all this time? And now even offended. Strange type. That's the only name I don't remember his.
-Well, go home with me, — and suddenly suggested Gladyshev, as if he knew that I had nowhere to go.
-What did you like going down, walked, and everything to offer for me to go to your house, quite by chance I met? — Just in case I inquired.
No, it's good, of course, that I have seen you, but you know.... I presently feel that I just need someone to... well, someone's presence. I still someone would invite.... Go?
He asked this question so that I do not understand why there was embarrassing.
-Well, let's go, " I agreed. Go in this town now I had no one else.
Gladyshev went a little ahead of me, and I couldn't catch up with him, not knowing where, strictly speaking, we should go. We wandered around the quarters for twenty minutes, having gone quite far from home Veronica. Gladyshev all the time, went silently, intently and thoughtfully hunched over as if nobody around him and was not. At times he looked too much like crazy maniac, concentrating their consciousness on the only obsession, that she could not flee to any side in his booze-head, not waiting the goal of the path. Then I had somehow done terribly, but I still doomed kept going after him.
Finally, when I thought no more to pay attention to where I actually am, we were in the flat at the Gladysheva. Anyway, he opened the door with his key.
Inviting me to sit down on the sofa in the big room, Gladyshev went to the kitchen. However, I did not take advantage of his offer, and began to study the abode of his family. However, nothing special I wasn't found, but the luxury furniture, rich library and some other signs I made some conclusions about his parents. Anyway, people they were supposed to be quite educated and friends to become wealthy on the background of General poverty of our people. However, because I could be wrong...
Gladyshev called me to the kitchen, where he made the tea,
Drinking a hot Cup with small SIPS, I casually put to dispel feeling uncomfortable inside yourself like I'm only here and then came to налопаться pie with jam and tea:
-And I like your poem still has...
-What are the lyrics? — Astonishment raised one eyebrow over his bottomless eyes Gladyshev.
-Well, the ones that you are to me in the restaurant gave...
-Well, — he waved his indifferent hand as if we were talking about most of these issues. — Forget them.
-What? 't understand I almost burned tea.
-Throw — say... and it is better to burn. So it will be right. Oh! He suddenly held up his forefinger, as if he found permission painful issue.
-That:? — Not I understood.
"No, I was just about her. But in General, I do not write more poems after that: they lack descriptiveness. Human language, even English, is very bulky and unwieldy tool of communication. He has a lot compared with the image and can serve only as a comment to the main bearer of the idea of art as an image. And because now I do not write poems, but I have painted pictures.
-The pictures?! — I almost dropped the Cup from the hands.
-Yes, the picture, but what? Go shew...
We walked through a large room and were in a small room. There is absolutely no furniture. On the floor in a mess lay scattered sheets of paper and холщевое cloth pieces. On them there was something намалевано. On the walls were also decorated with the most incredible way sheets of paper and canvas, apparently with the fact that Gladyshev called paintings. In the midst of all this there were several easels, ready for work, rolled tubes and jars of paint palette, dry inks.
-This is all I drawed — eyed master of his room picky, assessing look.
-But what exactly? — My opinion is not found anything particularly noteworthy. Everywhere was a strange stuff. I even wished that bad, maybe really can't understand modern art and painting.
-Now, now, " said Gladyshev and began to look for something on the floor, raking feet canvases and sheets of paper with his bizarre creations.
In his hands one after another came several tubes and pot-bellied одеколонных guns. He blamed it all on a stool, then dug up somewhere a big bottle of clear liquid, and, squeezing in sprays the paint tubes, diluted by it, stirring old toothbrush.
-Now, now, repeated Gladyshev, as if coaxing me to wait a little.
Jerky movement he pulled her easel so that he almost fell from his tripod, and then, grabbing that one, another sprinklers, began to bawl of them canvas, making multi-colored spots like blobs. Soon all the canvas was filled with them. Then Gladyshev stopped suddenly, his hand to his face, he stepped back a little and looked at a few minutes so the resulting. Then his hand came a thick black felt pen, and he started to paint on top of all this лепни.
In the room was unbearable smell of whether ether, or even some fly shit.
-Listen, open at least a window or something: breathe, — I asked him.
He looked at me, not exactly knowing where it's here I came, and then he stepped to the window and opened it wide open.
The room burst into a fresh air that soon supplanted of smell, which caused me dizzy.
Gladyshev returned to canvas and took a palette and preventing paint, continued the work of the brush. Twenty minutes later he walked away from his work, understand that I was not.
-Here, look! He said to me. "Do you see? This is called "Flight inspired by a cockroach in time neighbor wife and her lover".
Gladyshev violently tossed the brush in the corner where stood a pile of old painted-up similarly, paper and canvas. "Nonsense, " I thought. — Similarly, the guy went nuts!" To my mind began to come longtime conversation in a restaurant.
-And why did you do it?
-What is It? Asked me Gladyshev.
-Why do you paint?
-And don't you like it?
I don't know. It is unclear somehow. I think this "picture" can be пришпандерить any inscription, and it will fit.
-So what?
As what?! Is this correct?
-Oh, you, anything you do not understand in painting. It's not that you can пришпандерить, and I named the picture at the moment of its creation, as I wanted to call her.
"Well, just crazy!" — I confirmed his guess, and of experiencing the presence of the quiet madness capable suddenly, one energetic explosion degenerate into a riot, I felt bad.
Not managed to slip in my mind this thought, as Gladyshev was moved, collecting the middle of the room, a huge pile of their scattered to all corners of the works.
"Listen, how poetry? I asked, to ask something. Some apprehension nightmare затеребило my soul, and all the animal instincts that I existed, began to insist that I ran away. And as quickly as possible.
To hell with poetry! To the devil! — Gladyshev again seemed obsessed as when we walked down the street. Obviously he fumed. — I as Nero, I like Nero. First break, and then describe the process of destruction, testify to his...
-What you gonna do?! Even more scared I.
-A person is not capable of real poetry. He only плюгавое semblance of a real poet. Only the element can write poetry! May she writes them! And I'll write a portrait of her.
-What are you going to do?! — Louder I yelled, turning to Гладышеву, furiously сгребающему in a bunch of my paintings. But he had not heard me, and continued to do so.
Suddenly he recoiled from the formed pile and threw it on top easel with newly created picture, went to another, and began to pour it out of the guns. Then immediately bubbles flew there, in a pile. There pleased and a bottle with the solvent.
Gladyshev took up the palette, long sought a brush, and, having found it, came up to me, pulled it out of his shirt pocket for a cigarette, put it in the teeth.
-Here, take this! — He handed me a free hand box of matches.
-What?! 't understand I feel that my face is written fright, and he likes to watch.
-Give me a light! "He cried, pointing to I lit a match.
I struck a match on the box, and held it to the cigarette in his mouth. But he didn't he her, and took a match from my fingers, crossed the room to the pile and put lying on top of all свеженарисованной picture.
She immediately broke out, even impregnated with solvent. Glancing at me, Gladyshev laughed wildly:
"I'll write a portrait of a true poet, and you'll be my grateful audience!
I had no time to recover, as the flames about with the agility and vitality of the entire heap.
-What are you doing, moron? — I exclaimed, but Gladyshev quietly, almost walked slowly to the easel and took up his brush.
-Idiot, what are you, crazy?! I rushed to him.
The room was already filled with the acrid smoke from which запершило throat. Now the flame is separate us from saving the door. I tried to grab Gladysheva and move to the window, but he just mad, violently me and went back to the easel. After a few seconds my confusion smoke hid him from me, and from captured me utter terror I could not understand, what do I do.
However, probably a certain amount of preparation and discipline in the moment of danger, grafted in a military school, forced me to collect my thoughts, and take measures to their salvation, already without any distractions. I ran through the smoke on the memory to the window, he felt the doorway and leaned out. But my eyes blew suffocating, caustic, corrosive to the mucous membranes smoke. He couldn't see anything, so I figured that jump down more or less successfully will fail. Get off too. One thing, at first glance, the craziest, but in fact the only right and salutary: pushing out through the flames. And it had already crackling and roaring through the smoke came already to linoleum and floor boards.
The blanket on top of the shirt, I threw myself into the smoke towards the heat, already without seeing the road, but then came across Gladysheva and together with him and his easel fell on the floor...
Chapter 4.
By the evening of my arrival in the village knew almost all of the adult population, mostly old people, grandmother. And then they approached the возившейся in the garden "Пантелеихе" and asked who I was. For the reason, apparently, that she was about me didn't know his aunt answered them all in monosyllables, and these plain talk came to me through the open a small window near which after a small lunch force it put me to rest from the road, leaving some not trunking, not the chest thick cotton mattress, Mat on his sheets, and throw a blanket.
Despite the fact that I strutted and did not want to go to sleep, sleep soon overcame me, and I woke up in the evening, about six o'clock, from what Pelageya pushed me to the side:
"Well, get up, honey, get up!
I got up with makeshift beds.
"There, that's when people curious about you. Who? From where? I say something really can't. In the evening the guests to me, all you suggest. Meet people?
-I don't know, I reached out. — And as you have opened?
Means — then invite all... you Have a bottle of something?
-There is one, I scratched his head, trying to remember the contents of his suitcase.
-Well, one, of course, you can't. Okay, I still brew legs.
I went out onto the porch. The sun was beginning to set, and, apparently, all lit them неродная, unfamiliar terrain, горбатенькая village seemed to me piercingly stranger, and wanted suddenly from here straight to escape. But where.... Where to run? At home I am a long time, nobody was waiting for. The distant city, where I studied for the last four years, also became a stranger to me. There was only a thin thread that bound me to him: Veronica.
"Veronica!" I whispered to myself, and bitter something aching heart suddenly started in my chest and spilling on her molten wax. From this I suddenly wanted to weep. But in the throat stood dry mud, and there were no tears.
I felt a painful and unnecessary desire. I wanted suddenly to return to the past, such a familiar and cozy from this, from this embarrassing present. It suddenly broke from me dry, muffled groan and became suck in themselves, to take possession of me.
I don't know how I get rid of this obsession. I even tried contrary одолевающей me sweets remember everything that was connected with her in my life. But for some reason her name as white on a dark background, it became even brighter and more attractive, suddenly became still closer to me, like a part of me. Cruel and cold melancholy pulled hard on me. And it was the only way to kill it. It guarantees if not full recovery from my love Blues, then at least a temporary oblivion. We had to get someone to fall in love. But what?..
Here in the head, I thought about Alena. She was not bad-looking, and with some effort on my part I could force myself to burn with passion for her. Another thing is that it was still just a child. So it seemed to me at a meeting...
By the evening Pelageya Panteleevna started стряпней. Nimbly, right in front of me she quickly cooked dinner on the whole crowd. I helped her a little. Melted the oven, pulled out from the glacier meat.
To ten in the evening when began to approach the first guests, a simple peasant food was already on the table, which gathered from several paintings that were in the barn.
Grandma went down to the cellar, and in five minutes she shouted to me from there:
-Here, take this! — Feeding on the ladder large bottle with the, muddy moonshine.
