Elena Khaetskaya
Mysterious stories that happened to ordinary people
City's legends
Anna and her music
Music ends where its power over people ends. The most worn-out hit song - even dilapidated to the touch, so that even the patches do not hold on - still still possesses this mysterious ability: to conduct human movements, control feelings and sculpt on that narrow piece of land where it is heard, its own ingenuous ballet. It was only starting with the incoherent “metal” that street music lost this ability and thus ceased to be considered music. Even behind rap with its inarticulate Negro recitative, absolutely alien to the heart, Anna Viktorovna recognized the right to be considered music. Even rap forced her to change her gait - no matter how much her heart resisted it. Although, of course, this cannot be compared with waltzes performed by regimental orchestras.
Anna Viktorovna loved hits. Any kind, even vulgar and sweet ones. Even - oh horror! - “thieves” with their soul-stirring melody and heartfelt, amazingly stupid calls to pity thieves and murderers, because they also have an old mother. Anna Viktorovna hid her addiction, sometimes even from herself, but primarily from her daughter. From his smart daughter, who was divorced and wore contact lenses made eight years ago in an expensive German clinic after an accidental flush of money. The hot flashes did not recur again, the clinic closed long ago, the lenses were outdated, but the daughter stubbornly continued to wear them - like a kind of rose-colored glasses, as a guarantee of the return of happiness. The colored glass of joy that lurked in the simple hit choruses absolutely did not suit the smart daughter, since she graduated from the Polytechnic Institute. The daughter worked hard and gloomily at an unloved, poorly paid job, which she saw as stability. The daughter loved to talk about her future retirement. There are no breaks in her work history in her work record. She will have a good pension.
Anna Viktorovna's daughter was unsuccessful. It’s not even that she was childless and divorced. Although, of course, the inscription “DIVISED”, invisibly but clearly written on her preoccupied forehead with small wrinkles, was also not decorative.
If they started broadcasting some kind of “Lavender” or “Lambada” on the radio, the daughter immediately burst into the kitchen with a distorted face and bulging eyes, watery from the lenses. She screamed: “Mom, turn off this nasty thing immediately! How can you?" – and she was digging into the three-program receiver. One day she broke it.
That's why Anna Viktorovna went to the park to listen to hits.
Alexandrovsky Park was the most beer-filled place on the Petrograd side. And the safest. All the outrages happened in some other places, but here people only rested.
In the small space of the park there is a huge number of attractions, each of which has its own regulars, aborigines and guardian angels; Some people belong to the park, others do not. It is impossible to eradicate those whom the park has recognized as flesh of its own flesh: they are not subject to either the spasms of Prohibition or “anti-terrorist” actions, during which their favorite hot spots are periodically destroyed. And strangers pass here without leaving a trace.
On those days when the St. Petersburg football team Zenit plays at the nearby stadium, Alexandrovsky Park becomes the Pale of Settlement. The Zenit fans in the park are undoubtedly strangers: they are tolerated like a plague of locusts. They prevent regulars from drinking decently.
According to the rules, any sale of alcohol within a radius of a kilometer or even two from the stadium on match days is stopped. The first beer stalls open to fans are located in the park. While the match lasts, the sellers have a continuous live broadcast. Pot-bellied trucks drive up, the loaders, sparkling with their half-naked torsos, stack stacks of boxes, brown bottles destined for slaughter protrude from the cells, like Negro slaves from the holds.
Then the first wave of excited people approaches - in giant inflatable blue and white top hats, with deafening horns, with blue club banners. The tsunami meets the shore.
Screams and whistles are woven into the music of the park, making it thicker, tearing its fabric - but not being able to destroy it.
Anna Viktorovna was returning home through the park from the market. An ordinary lady with string bags. Fifty years old, size fifty. A slightly faded dress, blue with a small flower, withered hands tightly holding heavy bags, head slightly lowered, as if for a battering ram. Disgusting reddish fur instead of hair: the daughter insists that Anna Viktorovna wear makeup. “You are not yet an old woman to go gray.” The same daughter buys her cheap paint. The dye ate away the once thick hair, making it thin and dead. “It’s strange,” thought Anna Viktorovna, looking around from under her brows and sweating profusely in the middle of a summer day, “when I was young, it seemed incomprehensible to me: why all the grandmothers, having reached fifty, spread this disgusting red chemical disgrace on their heads. I was perplexed: why? Isn't natural gray hair better? And here I am myself - at least paste a portrait into a book of types: flabby arms, a non-staining sundress - from the eighties, sandals crushed by the heels - and this hair ... "
She walked through the park also because there were no mirrored windows here.
But the main attraction was, of course, the music.
First came the cafes. In one, an elderly singer with a pleasant baritone performed for a long time in front of empty tables on a small stage. Sometimes he would lose his temper a little, but it never hurt the ears. Anna Viktorovna stopped to listen for at least five minutes. And I was always perplexed: to whom does he address with such a sincere intonation, to whom does he make memorized inviting gestures, as if luring invisible women to him?
Anna Viktorovna regretted that she didn’t smoke or drink beer: perhaps she would have done both, but her daughter with her bestial sense of smell would certainly have smelled it and would have greeted her with a scandal: “It wasn’t enough for me to have a drunkard husband, but now my own mother!" By the way, the husband, from whom her daughter was divorced, in Anna Viktorovna’s opinion, was not a drunkard at all. He honestly served as a straw man for sticking arrows and spears, and five years later he asked for mercy - and was thrown out of the door.
If Anna Viktorovna smoked, she could pretend that she stopped not to listen to music, but to smoke. It seemed to her that without a cigarette in her hand, her secret was becoming too obvious to those around her and that one of them might tell her daughter about it. And then... “Mom! How can a woman who read “War and Peace” listen to the song “A drop in the sea, a drop in the sea, and there are ships on the sea...”?!!”
Yes, God knows how it turns out. Anna Viktorovna read “War and Peace” and listened to “A Drop in the Sea”... One day she said to her daughter: “Maybe I am a whole person?” The daughter was stunned, opened her eyes, swallowed air for a few seconds, and then hopelessly waved her hand and left the room. She was offended.
The singer on the stage fell silent. The bartender lazily emerged from the bar, a black apron wrapped three times around his skinny hips. The singer took a small glass with a yellowish drop of cognac on the bottom, drank it carefully, and licked his lips. The bartender sat down at an empty table and poured himself a drink. The music started again. It was not live music, but karaoke, but the singer's voice was flawlessly alive.
The miracle began, as always, unexpectedly: Anna Viktorovna began to discern the shadows of women behind the empty tables. They were young women in eighties-style dresses with stupid batwing sleeves and dropped bodices that skimmed their waists. But they were incredibly young, and their eyes, tinted, according to the advice of the new magazine Burda-moden for Russia, shimmered green and purple. And the men looked at them with joyful surprise.
When the singer moved his hand smoothly, the women turned their heads and slowly smiled. They kept thinking about how amazing their eyes were.
Elena Khaetskaya
Mysterious stories that happened to ordinary people
City's legends
Anna and her music
Music ends where its power over people ends. The most worn-out hit song - even dilapidated to the touch, so that even the patches do not hold on - still still possesses this mysterious ability: to conduct human movements, control feelings and sculpt on that narrow piece of land where it is heard, its own ingenuous ballet. It was only starting with the incoherent “metal” that street music lost this ability and thus ceased to be considered music. Even behind rap with its inarticulate Negro recitative, absolutely alien to the heart, Anna Viktorovna recognized the right to be considered music. Even rap forced her to change her gait - no matter how much her heart resisted it. Although, of course, this cannot be compared with waltzes performed by regimental orchestras.
Anna Viktorovna loved hits. Any kind, even vulgar and sweet ones. Even - oh horror! - “thieves” with their soul-stirring melody and heartfelt, amazingly stupid calls to pity thieves and murderers, because they also have an old mother. Anna Viktorovna hid her addiction, sometimes even from herself, but primarily from her daughter. From his smart daughter, who was divorced and wore contact lenses made eight years ago in an expensive German clinic after an accidental flush of money. The hot flashes did not recur again, the clinic closed long ago, the lenses were outdated, but the daughter stubbornly continued to wear them - like a kind of rose-colored glasses, as a guarantee of the return of happiness. The colored glass of joy that lurked in the simple hit choruses absolutely did not suit the smart daughter, since she graduated from the Polytechnic Institute. The daughter worked hard and gloomily at an unloved, poorly paid job, which she saw as stability. The daughter loved to talk about her future retirement. There are no breaks in her work history in her work record. She will have a good pension.
Anna Viktorovna's daughter was unsuccessful. It’s not even that she was childless and divorced. Although, of course, the inscription “DIVISED”, invisibly but clearly written on her preoccupied forehead with small wrinkles, was also not decorative.
If they started broadcasting some kind of “Lavender” or “Lambada” on the radio, the daughter immediately burst into the kitchen with a distorted face and bulging eyes, watery from the lenses. She screamed: “Mom, turn off this nasty thing immediately! How can you?" – and she was digging into the three-program receiver. One day she broke it.
That's why Anna Viktorovna went to the park to listen to hits.
Alexandrovsky Park was the most beer-filled place on the Petrograd side. And the safest. All the outrages happened in some other places, but here people only rested.
In the small space of the park there is a huge number of attractions, each of which has its own regulars, aborigines and guardian angels; Some people belong to the park, others do not. It is impossible to eradicate those whom the park has recognized as flesh of its own flesh: they are not subject to either the spasms of Prohibition or “anti-terrorist” actions, during which their favorite hot spots are periodically destroyed. And strangers pass here without leaving a trace.
On those days when the St. Petersburg football team Zenit plays at the nearby stadium, Alexandrovsky Park becomes the Pale of Settlement. The Zenit fans in the park are undoubtedly strangers: they are tolerated like a plague of locusts. They prevent regulars from drinking decently.
According to the rules, any sale of alcohol within a radius of a kilometer or even two from the stadium on match days is stopped. The first beer stalls open to fans are located in the park. While the match lasts, the sellers have a continuous live broadcast. Pot-bellied trucks drive up, the loaders, sparkling with their half-naked torsos, stack stacks of boxes, brown bottles destined for slaughter protrude from the cells, like Negro slaves from the holds.
Then the first wave of excited people approaches - in giant inflatable blue and white top hats, with deafening horns, with blue club banners. The tsunami meets the shore.
Screams and whistles are woven into the music of the park, making it thicker, tearing its fabric - but not being able to destroy it.
Anna Viktorovna was returning home through the park from the market. An ordinary lady with string bags. Fifty years old, size fifty. A slightly faded dress, blue with a small flower, withered hands tightly holding heavy bags, head slightly lowered, as if for a battering ram. Disgusting reddish fur instead of hair: the daughter insists that Anna Viktorovna wear makeup. “You are not yet an old woman to go gray.” The same daughter buys her cheap paint. The dye ate away the once thick hair, making it thin and dead. “It’s strange,” thought Anna Viktorovna, looking around from under her brows and sweating profusely in the middle of a summer day, “when I was young, it seemed incomprehensible to me: why all the grandmothers, having reached fifty, spread this disgusting red chemical disgrace on their heads. I was perplexed: why? Isn't natural gray hair better? And here I am myself - at least paste a portrait into a book of types: flabby arms, a non-staining sundress - from the eighties, sandals crushed by the heels - and this hair ... "
She walked through the park also because there were no mirrored windows here.
But the main attraction was, of course, the music.
First came the cafes. In one, an elderly singer with a pleasant baritone performed for a long time in front of empty tables on a small stage. Sometimes he would lose his temper a little, but it never hurt the ears. Anna Viktorovna stopped to listen for at least five minutes. And I was always perplexed: to whom does he address with such a sincere intonation, to whom does he make memorized inviting gestures, as if luring invisible women to him?
Anna Viktorovna regretted that she didn’t smoke or drink beer: perhaps she would have done both, but her daughter with her bestial sense of smell would certainly have smelled it and would have greeted her with a scandal: “It wasn’t enough for me to have a drunkard husband, but now my own mother!" By the way, the husband, from whom her daughter was divorced, in Anna Viktorovna’s opinion, was not a drunkard at all. He honestly served as a straw man for sticking arrows and spears, and five years later he asked for mercy - and was thrown out of the door.
If Anna Viktorovna smoked, she could pretend that she stopped not to listen to music, but to smoke. It seemed to her that without a cigarette in her hand, her secret was becoming too obvious to those around her and that one of them might tell her daughter about it. And then... “Mom! How can a woman who read “War and Peace” listen to the song “A drop in the sea, a drop in the sea, and there are ships on the sea...”?!!”
Yes, God knows how it turns out. Anna Viktorovna read “War and Peace” and listened to “A Drop in the Sea”... One day she said to her daughter: “Maybe I am a whole person?” The daughter was stunned, opened her eyes, swallowed air for a few seconds, and then hopelessly waved her hand and left the room. She was offended.
The singer on the stage fell silent. The bartender lazily emerged from the bar, a black apron wrapped three times around his skinny hips. The singer took a small glass with a yellowish drop of cognac on the bottom, drank it carefully, and licked his lips. The bartender sat down at an empty table and poured himself a drink. The music started again. It was not live music, but karaoke, but the singer's voice was flawlessly alive.
The miracle began, as always, unexpectedly: Anna Viktorovna began to discern the shadows of women behind the empty tables. They were young women in eighties-style dresses with stupid batwing sleeves and dropped bodices that skimmed their waists. But they were incredibly young, and their eyes, tinted, according to the advice of the new magazine Burda-moden for Russia, shimmered green and purple. And the men looked at them with joyful surprise.
When the singer moved his hand smoothly, the women turned their heads and slowly smiled. They kept thinking about how amazing their eyes were.
Anna Viktorovna did not blink as long as she could, but then her eyelids moved, and the vision immediately disappeared. But she found out for whom the singer was trying on the empty stage. This was important.
The next cafe specialized in cheerful thieves' songs. The deplorable fate of the thieves seemed the only possible one here. If you didn't listen to the words, the melody was perfect: it was haunting and shaped the woman's gait long after the music had finished and disappeared behind the trees. Anna Viktorovna considered loving these hits to be the most shameful thing. But she couldn’t help herself - she loved them too...
Next, it was necessary to quickly get past the lively young people who were toying with a guitar and a small drum: these believed that the inhabitants of the park must certainly pay them simply for their mere appearance in the park. For this purpose, there was a wiry girl with a hat who rushed at people passing by shouting: “Support the musicians!”
15 mysterious and creepy stories mysteries, otherworldly, mysteries, horrors that happened to ordinary people
Poltergeist phenomenon
In 1977, the American Enfield family was visited by a poltergeist. And not some mysterious spirit that mysteriously disappears before strangers appear. No, this spirit was not afraid of any observers who left the Enfield house dumbfounded, not knowing how to explain mysterious phenomena what was going on there. Someone was constantly dropping furniture in the house, mysterious and eerie sounds were heard in the house, and someone was throwing people into the air like dolls. The girl who was most tormented by the spirit levitated above the bed; There have also been cases of teleportation within the house. Subsequently, this story formed the basis of the horror film "The Conjuring 2", although few people know that it is based on a completely real events. But no one could explain these events.
Spontaneous explosion of the human body
Over the past decades, there have been several known cases of spontaneous explosions of human bodies, which neither investigators nor scientists can explain. One of them occurred in the 70s of the last century. As American newspapers wrote, “Mary Hardy Reaser was sitting in a chair in her home in Florida when her body spontaneously and unexpectedly exploded. On the charred springs sticking out of the chair, only a few bones, a skull and a leg were found, with a slipper still on it. The fire did not spread to the surrounding area and went out spontaneously.” This could be considered an ordinary newspaper duck if reports of the incident were not preserved, in addition to the press, in the archives of rescue services. As in another case that happened a decade later: in the 1980s, firefighter Georg Motts also died in his apartment. His body was almost completely burned, although no source of fire was found. “All that was left of him was a leg, a skull and the remains of ribs,” the official report reads. And in this case, the fire mysteriously died down as spontaneously as it appeared.
Mysterious letter
In the summer of 1999, Missouri State Police found the body of Ricky McCormick in a field. 72 hours earlier, his family reported him missing. The police immediately noticed something strange: the body was in that stage of decomposition that occurs months after death, and not a few days later. Nobody could explain this phenomenon. Then the oddities only multiplied. In 2011, the FBI reported that a note written in a strange code was found in McCormick's pocket. This seemed especially strange since McCormick did not go to school and did not even know how to sign. To this day, this phenomenon has not been explained.
A woman who finds herself in two places at once
This frightening and mysterious story began with the fact that ordinary spouses went to a romantic dinner. After dinner, they went home. When the husband opened the door, he saw his wife sitting at the computer. But at that time his wife was standing next to him! Looking back at her, he thought that he had imagined it. But when in the evening he shared this, as he thought, funny incident with his wife, she, instantly taking on a frightened look, admitted that, upon entering the house, she saw the same thing, without telling him about it only because she also took it for a deception vision. The couple who spoke about this strange phenomenon admitted that they still don’t know what to think about it.
Body in the tank
In 2013, the body of a woman was discovered in a huge cistern on the roof of an American hotel. As the arriving police found out, it was the body of Eliza Lam, one of the hotel guests. But what neither the police nor the administration could understand was how the body could end up in the tank. With the help of video surveillance cameras installed in the hotel, the administration managed to track almost Eliza’s entire evening. But this only confused the situation.
The film showed Eliza quickly jumping into the elevator and hiding behind the door with a frightened look, as if someone was following her. But the pursuer was nowhere to be seen! Meanwhile, Eliza carefully peered into the corridor, as if expecting someone to appear from there, but there was no one there. The mysterious stalker-murderer was never discovered - and was he even there? Eliza Lay's death remains a mystery.
Creepy driver and unconscious passenger
This story was told by the driver of the car emergency care. Ambulance drivers are seasoned enough people not to be scared by trifles. But this incident, as the narrator admits, scared him to the core. One day, while driving past a parking lot, he noticed a Mercedes car parked with its hazard lights flashing. The ambulance driver approached the car to ask if help was needed. As he approached, he saw the prone body of a man in the back seat. He appeared to be dead or unconscious. The driver was clearly alive, but he sat motionless. looking straight ahead with an unblinking gaze. The narrator knocked on the window, but neither the driver nor the passenger responded to the knock. Frightened, he began to call the police. The police asked him to give his information, and he went to his car to get the documents. At that moment, a truck was passing between her and the mysterious Mercedes. When the truck drove away, the ambulance driver saw that the strange passenger car was no longer there. He doesn’t know what it was, but this memory still sends shivers down his spine.
Sleep for two
Does it often happen that two people see the same dream, each from their own point of view? This is exactly what happened to one couple who shared this story online. The guy dreamed that he cheated on his girlfriend - and then, looking out the window, he saw her standing on the street with her face distorted with grief and horror. Having woken up, he threw the strange dream out of his head and did not remember it for several days - until his friend told him that on the same night she herself dreamed that she caught him cheating. In her dream, she stood on the street and looked out the window, behind which he was making love to another. Freud would probably say that the theme of betrayal hovers invisibly in this couple. What do you say?
Taos Rumble
Unlike many other mystical stories, the veracity of this one can be confirmed not by one or two people, but by several thousand - almost all residents of the small town of Taos in New Mexico. One day, almost two decades ago, all the residents of the city simultaneously began to hear some strange sound, similar to the rumbling of a bass engine. This hum was heard everywhere and did not stop for a minute. However, all attempts to detect its source - by ear or using equipment - failed. The noise didn't get louder, but it didn't stop either. A few months later, many city residents began to suffer from insomnia and headaches. Despite all attempts to curb it, the “Taos rumble” has not gone away and can still be heard in the city to this day.
Lost hour
It’s no secret that sometimes it happens that an hour or two seems to a person to have simply fallen out of life. But, unlike many who suffer from this problem, the hero of this story was completely sober. He was driving home with friends when he received a call from his parents, wondering when he would be home. He promised to arrive in 25 minutes and, after hanging up, turned the corner. And here he suddenly saw how the street around him had changed. Already hung in the sky full moon, it was dark and quiet outside. Looking at his watch, he saw that a whole hour had passed! But he only managed to say two words into the telephone receiver! It is not difficult to guess that both the driver and his passengers were frightened by this turn of events. They still hoped that there was something wrong with the clock - but when the company arrived home, the parents of the guy driving the car scolded him for being an hour late. What it was, the participants in the story do not know, but they would not want to repeat such an experience for anything in the world!
A man with two lives
For those who believe in existence parallel realities this story could be powerful evidence. Her hero worked at the fish market. Day after day, he got up in the morning, went to the port, picked up the fish and took it to sell. After a day of work, he returned home, had dinner and went to bed. In short, a difficult and lonely working life. One evening he Once again I went to bed early, preparing to rest before a busy day at work - and woke up on the weekend! But not only that: he woke up in a different house, a married man, in a completely different house and with a different job! It all seemed familiar to him - the horror was that the life of a fish market trader was just as close and real! The narrator claims that at some point he stopped racking his brains over this so as not to go crazy. What kind of window into another reality opened to him, and which reality was true - or maybe more true? - He does not know.
Toy
The girl told a story about her father online. They had an orange toy monkey in the house, and he liked to tease his children, calling it "his favorite child." It was a traditional family joke - and just as traditionally, the children threatened to steal his monkey. And one day they finally did it! After painting the toy, they threw it into a trash can on the street. They giggled quietly as their father ransacked the house for the toy. He soon stopped searching, realizing that it was the work of children. Several years have passed. The girl turned 17. One day, while walking home, she saw something familiar at the doorstep. She leaned over - it was the same monkey, completely painted with markers. How did a toy come back that should have rotted in a landfill long ago? This question haunts the girl, but remains unanswered.
The Case of Teleportation
This story was told by a man who was frightened by an unexpected meeting on the subway. While he was waiting for the train, a girl approached him and asked for money. According to her, she was going to buy roses with them to take to her brother in the hospital. The man was almost sure that she was just a drug addict, but he nevertheless gave her money. Entering the carriage, through the closed doors, he saw how the girl who remained on the platform approached someone else, also obviously asking for money. After 15 minutes, he got off at his station and boarded the bus. And then he saw a woman enter the salon with roses in her hands. It was a stranger from the subway! The man was in shock: having remained at the station behind him, she simply physically could not have time to get there earlier!
His only version was: the stranger can teleport. Maybe this really is so?..
Cold heart
This story has been preserved in the annals of the US medical services as an example of a true, genuine miracle. Jean Gilliard's car was involved in an accident during a particularly snowy and cold winter. The culprit fled the scene, Jean’s car wouldn’t start, and it was bitterly cold outside. Reasoning that going at random was better than meekly freezing, 20-year-old Jean decided to try to get to the house of a friend who lived a couple of kilometers away. But she overestimated herself. Soon her strength left her, she fell into a snowdrift and froze. For 6 hours she remained in the snow in the bitter cold. Miraculously, the search team noticed her. When Jean was taken to the hospital, she showed no signs of life, and her body was as hard as ice. Her eyelids were frozen and her skin was so tough that doctors could not pierce it with a needle. Her body temperature was not determined, her pulse was not palpable, and there was no breathing. However, the doctors decided to try to warm the patient up. To everyone's amazement, it was a success. A few days later she was able to walk independently, and a month later she was discharged from the hospital. Hypothermia did not produce any long-term effects. Doctors still consider this case unique.
Mysterious footprints
This legend is almost a hundred years old, but even today it sounds frightening. In 1922, a family living on a small farm near Munich hired a maid. But soon she hastily left the house, declaring that it was occupied by ghosts. A few days later, the owner, Andreas Gruber, discovered mysterious tracks: they led from the forest to the farm, but there were no return tracks. Soon, one of the family members heard footsteps in the attic. After looking around the attic, the family found newspapers they had never bought. Soon a new maid was hired for the house. The very next day, she and the whole family were brutally killed with a pickaxe. Such a massacre had never happened in those parts, so the authorities paid the closest attention to the investigation. However, the culprits were never found. The mystery joins other criminal mysteries that have never been solved.
Current page: 1 (book has 19 pages total) [available reading passage: 13 pages]
Elena Khaetskaya
Mysterious stories that happened to ordinary people
City's legends
Anna and her music
Music ends where its power over people ends. The most worn-out hit song - even dilapidated to the touch, so that even the patches do not hold on - still still possesses this mysterious ability: to conduct human movements, control feelings and sculpt on that narrow piece of land where it is heard, its own ingenuous ballet. It was only starting with the incoherent “metal” that street music lost this ability and thus ceased to be considered music. Even behind rap with its inarticulate Negro recitative, absolutely alien to the heart, Anna Viktorovna recognized the right to be considered music. Even rap forced her to change her gait - no matter how much her heart resisted it. Although, of course, this cannot be compared with waltzes performed by regimental orchestras.
Anna Viktorovna loved hits. Any kind, even vulgar and sweet ones. Even - oh horror! - “thieves” with their soul-stirring melody and heartfelt, amazingly stupid calls to pity thieves and murderers, because they also have an old mother. Anna Viktorovna hid her addiction, sometimes even from herself, but primarily from her daughter. From his smart daughter, who was divorced and wore contact lenses made eight years ago in an expensive German clinic after an accidental flush of money. The hot flashes did not recur again, the clinic closed long ago, the lenses were outdated, but the daughter stubbornly continued to wear them - like a kind of rose-colored glasses, as a guarantee of the return of happiness. The colored glass of joy that lurked in the simple hit choruses absolutely did not suit the smart daughter, since she graduated from the Polytechnic Institute. The daughter worked hard and gloomily at an unloved, poorly paid job, which she saw as stability. The daughter loved to talk about her future retirement. There are no breaks in her work history in her work record. She will have a good pension.
Anna Viktorovna's daughter was unsuccessful. It’s not even that she was childless and divorced. Although, of course, the inscription “DIVISED”, invisibly but clearly written on her preoccupied forehead with small wrinkles, was also not decorative.
If they started broadcasting some kind of “Lavender” or “Lambada” on the radio, the daughter immediately burst into the kitchen with a distorted face and bulging eyes, watery from the lenses. She screamed: “Mom, turn off this nasty thing immediately! How can you?" – and she was digging into the three-program receiver. One day she broke it.
That's why Anna Viktorovna went to the park to listen to hits.
Alexandrovsky Park was the most beer-filled place on the Petrograd side. And the safest. All the outrages happened in some other places, but here people only rested.
In the small space of the park there is a huge number of attractions, each of which has its own regulars, aborigines and guardian angels; Some people belong to the park, others do not. It is impossible to eradicate those whom the park has recognized as flesh of its own flesh: they are not subject to either the spasms of Prohibition or “anti-terrorist” actions, during which their favorite hot spots are periodically destroyed. And strangers pass here without leaving a trace.
On those days when the St. Petersburg football team Zenit plays at the nearby stadium, Alexandrovsky Park becomes the Pale of Settlement. The Zenit fans in the park are undoubtedly strangers: they are tolerated like a plague of locusts. They prevent regulars from drinking decently.
According to the rules, any sale of alcohol within a radius of a kilometer or even two from the stadium on match days is stopped. The first beer stalls open to fans are located in the park. While the match lasts, the sellers have a continuous live broadcast. Pot-bellied trucks drive up, the loaders, sparkling with their half-naked torsos, stack stacks of boxes, brown bottles destined for slaughter protrude from the cells, like Negro slaves from the holds.
Then the first wave of excited people approaches - in giant inflatable blue and white top hats, with deafening horns, with blue club banners. The tsunami meets the shore.
Screams and whistles are woven into the music of the park, making it thicker, tearing its fabric - but not being able to destroy it.
Anna Viktorovna was returning home through the park from the market. An ordinary lady with string bags. Fifty years old, size fifty. A slightly faded dress, blue with a small flower, withered hands tightly holding heavy bags, head slightly lowered, as if for a battering ram. Disgusting reddish fur instead of hair: the daughter insists that Anna Viktorovna wear makeup. “You are not yet an old woman to go gray.” The same daughter buys her cheap paint. The dye ate away the once thick hair, making it thin and dead. “It’s strange,” thought Anna Viktorovna, looking around from under her brows and sweating profusely in the middle of a summer day, “when I was young, it seemed incomprehensible to me: why all the grandmothers, having reached fifty, spread this disgusting red chemical disgrace on their heads. I was perplexed: why? Isn't natural gray hair better? And here I am myself - at least paste a portrait into a book of types: flabby arms, a non-staining sundress - from the eighties, sandals crushed by the heels - and this hair ... "
She walked through the park also because there were no mirrored windows here.
But the main attraction was, of course, the music.
First came the cafes. In one, an elderly singer with a pleasant baritone performed for a long time in front of empty tables on a small stage. Sometimes he would lose his temper a little, but it never hurt the ears. Anna Viktorovna stopped to listen for at least five minutes. And I was always perplexed: to whom does he address with such a sincere intonation, to whom does he make memorized inviting gestures, as if luring invisible women to him?
Anna Viktorovna regretted that she didn’t smoke or drink beer: perhaps she would have done both, but her daughter with her bestial sense of smell would certainly have smelled it and would have greeted her with a scandal: “It wasn’t enough for me to have a drunkard husband, but now my own mother!" By the way, the husband, from whom her daughter was divorced, in Anna Viktorovna’s opinion, was not a drunkard at all. He honestly served as a straw man for sticking arrows and spears, and five years later he asked for mercy - and was thrown out of the door.
If Anna Viktorovna smoked, she could pretend that she stopped not to listen to music, but to smoke. It seemed to her that without a cigarette in her hand, her secret was becoming too obvious to those around her and that one of them might tell her daughter about it. And then... “Mom! How can a woman who read “War and Peace” listen to the song “A drop in the sea, a drop in the sea, and there are ships on the sea...”?!!”
Yes, God knows how it turns out. Anna Viktorovna read “War and Peace” and listened to “A Drop in the Sea”... One day she said to her daughter: “Maybe I am a whole person?” The daughter was stunned, opened her eyes, swallowed air for a few seconds, and then hopelessly waved her hand and left the room. She was offended.
The singer on the stage fell silent. The bartender lazily emerged from the bar, a black apron wrapped three times around his skinny hips. The singer took a small glass with a yellowish drop of cognac on the bottom, drank it carefully, and licked his lips. The bartender sat down at an empty table and poured himself a drink. The music started again. It was not live music, but karaoke, but the singer's voice was flawlessly alive.
The miracle began, as always, unexpectedly: Anna Viktorovna began to discern the shadows of women behind the empty tables. They were young women in eighties-style dresses with stupid batwing sleeves and dropped bodices that skimmed their waists. But they were incredibly young, and their eyes, tinted, according to the advice of the new magazine Burda-moden for Russia, shimmered green and purple. And the men looked at them with joyful surprise.
When the singer moved his hand smoothly, the women turned their heads and slowly smiled. They kept thinking about how amazing their eyes were.
Anna Viktorovna did not blink as long as she could, but then her eyelids moved, and the vision immediately disappeared. But she found out for whom the singer was trying on the empty stage. This was important.
The next cafe specialized in cheerful thieves' songs. The deplorable fate of the thieves seemed the only possible one here. If you didn't listen to the words, the melody was perfect: it was haunting and shaped the woman's gait long after the music had finished and disappeared behind the trees. Anna Viktorovna considered loving these hits to be the most shameful thing. But she couldn’t help herself - she loved them too...
Next, it was necessary to quickly get past the lively young people who were toying with a guitar and a small drum: these believed that the inhabitants of the park must certainly pay them simply for their mere appearance in the park. For this purpose, there was a wiry girl with a hat who rushed at people passing by shouting: “Support the musicians!”
Anna Viktorovna did not consider these guys to be musicians. And not even because they played poorly. They were strangers here, that's all.
Anna Viktorovna walked past them like a stern, unyielding tank. She knew that she had an unpleasant face: small eyes, a thin mouth compressed into a thread, saggy pale cheeks. A flabby potato, boiled in its jacket and forgotten on the table. The twisted girl shied away from her. Anna Viktorovna did not even have the strength to envy her youth.
She was in a hurry to go home. She’s already been late in the park, and her daughter will be unhappy.
Two music stalls, located on either side of the subway station, exuded music: one - some exquisite novelty, the other - the strained bass of "Sixteen Tons", the song of American miners, much exploited, but, like the blacks, resilient. It’s even strange why they always put on these “Sixteen Tons”. And it’s also strange that they never get boring.
Music knew its boundaries and never crossed them. Just a minute ago, Anna Viktorovna was in the airspace of exquisite new products - and now, literally a step later, she is plunging into the heavy embrace of “Sixteen Tons”.
However, today something happened. “Sixteen Tons” were silent. The kiosk has disappeared. There were no ordinary border traders, desperate, like the Indians, bartering blankets and “fire water” from the whites for wampum; dark-skinned, treacherous Saracen women selling poisonous pink blouses and pajamas with prickly lace for a hundred rubles at the gate: “One hundred rubles, girls , One hundred rubles!" - shouted the Saracen women, sending dazzling smiles in all directions and not looking anyone in the eyes with indifferent eyes.
Anna Viktorovna loved to look at these blouses, always different - and always equally colorful. And she imagined that this was a colonial product, smelling of the sweat of black women, caked tea and the iodine spirit of the wooden hold. The place chosen by the Saracens was where both music collided and flowed, one into the left ear, the other into the right ear; but, shouting above everything in the world, the dark-skinned, well-fed, beautiful border traders kept repeating shrilly: “Only a hundred rubles, girls! Only one hundred rubles!”
“Where are they?” - Anna Viktorovna thought, looking around. She felt a little cheated. Of course, she never bought, but the traders were not offended by her: it seemed that with some deep instinct they guessed that this faded lady with string bags was on their side, and this was much more important than any purchases.
People crowded a little further away, where the now disappeared stall stood. It’s as if the fighters for the rights of American miners had their say, achieved their goal - and now they moved to where the trade union struggle was in full swing, and someone completely new appeared in their place.
Anna Viktorovna took another ten steps, and finally heard the new music of this place.
The accordion was playing. Hit after hit: what was loved in the sixties, and what was loved in the seventies, and also absolutely classic melodies of the thirties. He played continuously, pouring one melody into another, and the music mixed like paints in a jar of water, forming a pinkish, lilac, brownish, or green tint. The man sitting with an accordion on a small folding chair was completely invisible. Anna Viktorovna tried to see him, but she couldn’t: the instrument almost completely hid the musician from prying eyes. All that was visible were slightly wrinkled fingers, confidently running over the keys, and a tuft of yellowish-gray hair swaying over the bellows. His bony knees, set wide apart and clad in featureless trousers, looked unapproachable.
Suddenly Anna Viktorovna realized that the musician was not important. What was important was something else that was happening within the circle of spectators. She grabbed her string bags more comfortably and pushed her way into the first row.
They danced on a tiny spot. More precisely, one couple was dancing - a very strange one: a young man, flexible as a bullfighter, with pomaded black hair, a pasted smile under a painted mustache, motionless, wide-open eyes, leading a slightly embarrassed middle-aged woman into tango. The most ordinary woman, in a shapeless blouse over a shapeless skirt. In trampled sandals. She danced not very skillfully and grimaced: she would bite her lip, then suddenly stretch her mouth in a grin. The young man circled her, pressed her to him, pushed her away and caught her by the ends of his fingers, and she dangled in his hands like a giant balloon filled with air.
The accordionist stopped playing. The woman said to the young man:
- Ugh! Thank you.
And she put a fifty-ruble note in the open bag. Then, exuding a surprisingly youthful, spicy smell, she disappeared into the crowd.
The young man ran his hands over his face, shook himself - as if getting rid of the memory of his former partner - and looked up above the crowd.
- Only fifty rubles! - he said. – Any dance of your choice. Fifty rubles.
The accordionist emerged from behind his instrument for a moment, picked up a bottle of sparkling water that was standing nearby on the ground, took a sip, and dived behind his cover again.
– International class dancer! – the young man said in a tired voice. - Only fifty rubles. As per your choice.
The accordionist played something weightless. The dancer made several movements on the spot - it was as if the earth was not holding him, pushing him away, forcing him to spin.
Anna Viktorovna watched, feeling a burning emptiness growing inside her. This void needed to be filled, otherwise it would simply corrode the nature, and Anna Viktorovna already knew that she would do this. She still hesitated, but the string bags were already on the ground, leaning against a tree.
The dancer danced before her eyes like a whip. She looked at her legs in impeccable trousers with a crease, at her oversized patent leather shoes, at her fitted jacket. The white shirt smelled of starch. This smell mixed with the smell of a very thin cologne. Very old. This is what Anna Viktorovna’s father used.
She laid out a hundred - all that was left from her pension, her old age's nest egg, which she always hid from her daughter, not wanting to depend on her entirely - and extended her hands to the dancer.
For a moment she saw her fingers, thick, with broken nails, but then everything was hidden by the elegant, strong palm of the young man. The music has started. He didn't ask which dance she chose. He chose the foxtrot himself.
And Anna Viktorovna, led by the young man’s imperious hands, shook in a cheerful foxtrot, painfully guessing what she looked like from the outside: a shuddering square butt covered in chintz, and sides like jelly... But there was no turning back, they hugged her and pushed her back, and then pulled towards themselves, and they took steps and turns, as the music told them. Anna Viktorovna did not dare to raise her head and look into the face of her partner. She was scared, and she herself didn’t understand why. The smell of her father's cologne tormented her. She wanted the dance to end, to stop, to be replaced by something else. But the test went on and on. Suddenly the young man stopped her abruptly: like a machine that has run out of power and needs to throw another coin into the slot. But, since Anna Viktorovna paid for two dances, the young man, after a pause, during which he did not let go of his partner, began again.
Now it was a Boston waltz. Anna Viktorovna swayed and spun, drawn by persistent hands, and now she involuntarily had to look into her partner’s face, because otherwise she would begin to feel dizzy and she was afraid of falling.
He seemed plastic to her, like a Ken doll. He wasn't handsome. Tired, shabby Ken, a veteran of many parties with the participation of Barbie and other adored blondes with dirty hair, in fantastic outfits made from scraps of lace, old ribbons and handkerchiefs. While dancing, he slightly closed his eyes. Anna Viktorovna looked unblinkingly at his large, bulging eyelids, on which bluish veins suddenly began to tremble.
Suddenly he spoke - his lips remained almost motionless:
- Watch the rhythm. Don't get lost.
And he pulled her strongly towards himself, and then turned her around, and she really almost fell, this turn seemed so sharp to her.
The music stopped - as suddenly as if the accordionist had died. The young man unclenched his fingers, and Anna Viktorovna was left completely alone. She ran her palm over her sweaty forehead in confusion and stepped to the side. Her legs didn't obey her. They seemed to be stiff and trying to buckle at the first opportunity. Anna Viktorovna forgot about the bags left near the tree on the ground. More precisely, a vague image of “something” that for some reason she should remember flashed in her mind, but was immediately erased.
She grabbed the trunk with her hand and ran her fingers into the hollows of the bark. People were chatting and moving around, but no one paid any attention to Anna Viktorovna, and she gradually calmed down: apparently, there was nothing strange in her behavior. Just think, the elderly woman felt dizzy! This happens all the time. If you stand for a long time and gasp for air, someone with a mobile phone will come up and offer to call an ambulance. Our people are still good.
Fortunately, no one has approached yet. Anna Viktorovna sighed deeply, with all her chest, and her lungs filled. She caught the smell of mint grass and suddenly realized that for many years she had not distinguished smells - at least with such sharpness. Of course, she could understand that something was burning in the kitchen, or smell the stench of the exhaust pipe, but that was all. And now the surroundings were filled with myriad shades of a wide variety of smells. Anna Viktorovna met the eyes of a dog wandering boredly near the yawning sausage saleswoman, and the dog alerted her sensitive ears: she realized that the woman, like herself, was immersed in the world of smell. Each sausage had its own, unique aroma, and this did not stop the dog from catching the air trails of people passing by and even finding out what exactly was in their pocket. And the woman understands some of this too.
Anna Viktorovna finally decided to move away from her tree and moved further along the alley. She stopped again near the playground. Little monkeys were jumping, screaming, on a giant inflatable trampoline with the inscription “Sochi-83”. Their tiny sandals stood next to each other on the rug, their mothers, having separated from their offspring for fifteen minutes, calmly smoked, holding a cigarette with a detached look.
Anna Viktorovna thought about the city of Sochi - what it was like in 1983. At that time, it seems, there was no political correctness yet, but there was friendship among peoples. And we could go on vacation to Sochi. I wonder how far this trampoline has traveled? And Anna Viktorovna imagined a giant inflatable Viking, whose head in a horned helmet was swinging at the top. Like him, regretfully leaving the palm trees and warm Coast, flees from the war - hiding in the lockers of some passing trains, writhing and curling up into a roll, climbing onto the upper shelves of the carriage, as he is shoved into storage rooms, subjected to searches... In the end, Alexander Park is not the worst refuge for someone who fled the war. Children climb on the Viking, hitting him with their fists and rubber batons, the Viking stupidly, as befits an inflatable toy, smiles and sways strongly from side to side, but Anna Viktorovna sees something quite meaningful in his smile.
- You didn’t drop it?
Anna Viktorovna turned around.
- Are you telling me?
She had not seen such nice young people for a long time. A guy of about twenty-five, no older, with slightly disheveled dark hair, looked at her with a hidden smile. In his hand he held a cambric handkerchief - a woman's.
– Isn’t this yours?
He had bony shoulders, but it was immediately obvious that they were strong. In general, of course, the most ordinary guy. The only strange thing is the way he looks at her. With warm, real male interest.
– What’s your name? – he asked unexpectedly.
“Anna Viktorovna,” she answered, also unexpectedly for herself, since a moment ago she was going to smile sourly in response and move on.
- How important! - he said. - And I’m Denis. You know, my mother has a clipping from an old “Literature” - there is a poem about winter named Anna. I read it every time I sit down at her table. She has it under plexiglass. Scratched plexiglass, dragged from the “box” in the seventies... And imagine - it’s still there!
“I can imagine,” said Anna Viktorovna. She somehow immediately saw an apartment with this large table, cluttered with furniture, books, floppy disks, two or three generations of computers and some half-wild cat that lives in the jungle - on the tops of cabinets and sideboards.
“Maybe there is such a summer,” said Anna Viktorovna. She just said that, thinking about something completely different.
But he perked up.
- Do you think? – he asked again. – Do you seriously think that such a summer is possible? Named Denis?
She shrugged.
- Goodbye, Denis. It was nice talking.
There was a look of desperation in his gaze.
- Are you leaving?
- What should I do?
She was more and more surprised. The young man no longer seemed pleasant to her. The last time anyone talked to Anna Viktorovna on the street - just like that, about nothing - was about thirty years ago, and she took it as a curiosity: at the age of twenty-three, she already considered herself too respectable for street acquaintances. And here you go! At fifty-odd - it started! I remembered a pervert or two from among those lovingly shown in the program “Duty Unit: St. Petersburg.” Anna Viktorovna coldly pursed her lips.
- What is this? – She shuddered. -Are you crazy?
It was a cambric handkerchief on which a mobile phone number had been scrawled with a blue ballpoint pen.
“Just take it,” he said. - Call if you want. Call in winter. I believe in such meetings.
She wanted to throw away the handkerchief indignantly, but it crawled into her pocket of its own accord. Anna Viktorovna had long forgotten that her sundress had a pocket, because she never used it - the fabric was stretched too tightly on her stomach. But the pocket was there and seemed to be waiting for its finest hour.
Anna Viktorovna pulled her hand back. Denis took a step back, and she realized that he had no intention of holding her back.
She almost ran.
Only on the stairs did Anna Viktorovna realize that she had forgotten her shopping bags with groceries somewhere. “I’ll catch my breath, and then I’ll go pick it up,” she thought. - Or I’ll ask my daughter. Let him help. She must have already returned from work.”
The daughter was indeed at home. Hearing a familiar voice - “it’s me,” she opened the door and took a step back into the dim hallway.
– What do you need? – she asked. Anna Viktorovna realized with surprise that her daughter was frightened by something. My daughter often watched the program “Duty Unit: St. Petersburg.” She said she had the right to “know.”
– How – “what is needed”? – Anna Viktorovna laughed, trying to enter the apartment.
But her daughter rushed towards her, holding a bottle of acid in her hand. The bottle was prepared in advance - in case of an invasion of the apartment by terrorists.
-Where are you going, huh? Where are you going? – she screamed thinly and twisted her mouth.
- Let me go! – Anna Viktorovna tried to push her away, but she shied away and took a threatening pose.
- I’ll hurt you! Don't come near!
Anna Viktorovna froze. The daughter must have gone crazy. On the women's side. That happens. If only she had taken a lover, or something, but no, Madame Walking Virtue is in an eternal search for Eternal Love. According to the approved scheme, Eternal Love should look like this: He will love her as she is, that is, with a runny nose, a chewed face and the habit of constantly complaining in a loud, whiny voice. Behind this mask, He must immediately discern the Subtly Sensing Soul - and behave accordingly. And in vain Anna Viktorovna insisted that this does not happen.
“How can He immediately guess that you are kind, caring and sweet if you hide this circumstance so successfully?” – asked Anna Viktorovna.
"And here!" - answered the daughter. Of course, there was nothing to object to...
And now - it's ready. I went crazy.
It’s better to leave, Anna Viktorovna thought. It will splash at an uneven hour. They'll put her in a mental institution, but I'll have to walk around for the rest of my days with a stain on my face... if it doesn't get into my eyes.
Still, she tried again.
“Daughter,” Anna Viktorovna said insinuatingly.
- What kind of daughter am I to you! – the daughter screamed louder than before. - They walk around here, begging! Last year they sold honey! Yours, I suppose? The young woman also climbed in: “Daughter, daughter”... - and then all the honey turned to sugar! I know you!
There was a mirror in the hallway. Large, muddy, from very old times. God knows what beauties it once reflected, what dashing gentlemen twirled their mustaches before it, but now it was dusty and peeling. On top, on a shabby but still carved dark frame, hung old beads. If there was a lot of footsteps in the hallway, the mirror would sway slightly and the beads would tap on the glass.
And now, when the daughter was heavily swaying from foot to foot, the beads came to life again, and Anna Viktorovna involuntarily looked in their direction.
And I saw...
In the depths of the dust-covered mirror stood a young girl. Very young - about eighteen years old. She must not have been particularly beautiful, but the blurred image filled her with mysteries. The girl's dark thick hair was dusty and already greasy. Anna Viktorovna touched her temple and felt with her fingers the long-forgotten touch of a living hair. And the girl in the mirror did the same.
Anna Viktorovna wrapped her fingers around her waist. The strong young body responded to the touch, readily arched, and moved its hip.
Unexpectedly, Anna Viktorovna burst out laughing. She laughed and laughed, tears flowed down her cheeks, and in the end she even began to hiccup from laughing.
The owner of the apartment with a bottle of acid froze in an awkward pose, clearly not knowing what to do. But Anna Viktorovna knew.
- Sorry, girl. Darling, forgive me, for God’s sake,” she said, wiping her face with a handkerchief taken from her pocket. - Can I call for you?
“Get out of here,” the daughter said hesitantly and moved slightly.
“I’ll be quick,” and Anna Viktorovna, with an impudent, quick gesture, grabbed the old black phone from the dressing table.
The daughter, still with the bottle, stood next to her, vigilantly watching the stranger’s every action. Anna Viktorovna laid out her handkerchief and dialed the number.
They didn’t answer right away, but when they did, you could hear the hum of cars passing by and muffled voices.
- Denis? – asked Anna Viktorovna. -Are you still in the park?
- Who is calling? “He answered calmly, even a little dissatisfied, and Anna Viktorovna suddenly became frightened: what does she know, after all, about this Denis!
- It is you?
“Well...” said Anna Viktorovna (the girl in the mirror smiled slyly and rolled her eyes towards the ceiling). - In general, yes. Winter has already arrived. Without warning. Wait for me, okay? I soon.
She hung up, jumped out of the apartment and ran down the stairs.