Concert for Gretchen

Concert for Gretchen 

1

I have devoted my whole life to music, writing, naively believing that it was necessary for someone other than myself. And now, in retrospect, I remind myself of an illusion-ridden douche, destined to wander toward a misguided goal. Of course, there were times when I managed to climb a hill or a hill from a run, and then, from the top of my success, I looked proudly at the backs of the herd grazing below. But much more often I saw in front of me other people's tails and trunks, blocking the road to fame and recognition. A goal that seemed perfectly clear and achievable at ten years old had faded by fifty, and now, at sixty, I am convinced of its illusoryness. I realized that the desire to conquer the world attracts the vain, but the opportunity is given only to geniuses. The rest are for the background, for comparison. And then, from a height of less than ten years, peering into the basement window, behind which the silhouette of Greta could be guessed, I was not going to be one of many – I knew that I would become famous and knew how to do it.

Every day I came home from school, I took the same route. I could walk through it with my eyes closed. The street leading from the school was planted with chestnuts, and in the autumn the sidewalk covered an uneven carpet of split spiny shells mixed with perfectly polished brown fruits, which I for some reason gambled to collect, scattered in my pockets, and when I came home, I could not find any use for them, and threw into the trash. Before turning the corner, I always slowed down near the massive boiler building that housed the printing house.

At any time of the year, the windows were open, and together with the continuous noise of the printing presses, the smell of paint mixed with the sour smell of sweat came from there. I already knew the workers’ faces and could distinguish their bruised voices. Then I walked past the kindergarten, with its retinue of cast-iron bars fence, and then along the alley, built up with two-storey mansions of the same blue color. During the summer, the intense blueness burned out, then the rain washed away the remnants of paint, and in the autumn the walls resembled the sloping diapers of my younger brother Bones. Before the November holidays, the walls were repainted, then they turned blue all winter, shaded by curved bluish icicles hanging from the roofs.

On that September day, walking down the alley, I heard music. It was a very beautiful melody, Tchaikovsky's "Sentimental Waltz" arranged for flute. But then, of course, I did not know the name, and it did not matter. I just went to the sound, looking around and looking through every window. Until I saw the same thing, with fluttering calico curtains, and behind them - a girl sitting on a chair with a flute held to her lips. The window was half-basement. Squatting down, I looked down. The girl played, pressing her fingers on metal circles of valves. Sometimes she was confused, and sighing patiently repeated the same phrase. And I listened and couldn't move, like a trained cobra, until a female voice called out, "Greta, have lunch."

I thought about this girl all night, and everything about her seemed extraordinary. Her slightly creaky, unearthly name from scary German fairy tales excited the imagination, and, falling asleep to the inextricable melody of the waltz, I already knew that I would go back to Greta's house.

I would come every day, sit on the tarmac behind the shutter and listen to music, watching from the corner of my eye what was happening in the darkness of the apartment. Greta's family seemed strange to me. The father is heavy, always unshaven, with a thick black hair and bushy eyebrows - very loud and occupying almost the entire space of a small kitchen. I recognized him as a printer who packed sheets of fresh newspapers. The mother is round, like, in a red apron, eternally wizarding over the stove or washing dishes. Greta looked fifteen years old. She resembled her mother in facial features, but was taller and thinner, even though her breasts seemed disproportionately wide. But I loved it, like everything in it: straight to the shoulders, dark hair, pale face, almond-shaped eyes, and fingers that so deftly found the right button on a matte shiny instrument.

It started raining in October and the window was kept closed. I still came to the house, but the music could only be heard with my ear pressed against the cold glass. And it sounded particularly desperate - as if someone was trying to douse themselves, shout, make themselves known. Perhaps all this was prompted by my childish imagination, fueled by read books and an innate impressionability. And in fact, there was nothing romantic in this situation - the sounds of the play being learned coming through the closed window ... But one piece of music I needed was to see Greta. From overheard conversations, I learned that she was studying at a music school, and one day I went there. I saw her sitting on a bench with a book in her hand. She was wearing a gray coat with a white knitted scarf worn under her collar. All the way around, I was worried about the pretext I was going to school to find Greta. And then fate played along with me, but I was not ready for her gift and therefore confused. By inertia, I took a few more steps and stopped near Greta. She lifted her eyes from the book with the portraits of the composers on the cover and looked at me with bewilderment. Never before or since have I seen a woman lift her eyelids like this, first slowly, and then as if opening them towards you.

- Boy, are you lost? she asked and yawned, covering her mouth with her palm.

Later, I diagnosed my condition as Buratino syndrome, which, being alone with Malvina, felt his worthlessness. I didn't say anything, splashed on the bench next to Greta, then fell off and ran away. At home, undressed, I saw that my jacket was absolutely wet with sweat. It turned out that you can sweat not so much from running as from shame.

Over dinner, I told my parents that I would become a musician, not just a musician, but a composer. My parents were educated but far from music. My mother worked in the library, my father taught mathematics at school. Naturally, they did not give any importance to my statement. But on that day, unbold desires and dreams took on clear outlines. I decided to go to music school, then to the conservatory, to learn how to compose music that Greta would one day play.

2

I don't remember who thought of sending me to music school. I think it was my mom's idea. There was no money on the piano, they bought a flute. Dad at first joked - a shepherd's tool - but over time his mother managed to convince him that there could be no better profession for a woman.

- A false note is not judged, she said, a piece of bread will always earn itself and communicate with cultured people. Not that... - At this place, my mother always fell silent, but others could easily finish her thought - ... not that I, in the dining room or at home by the stove.

Did I enjoy learning music and playing the flute in particular? I guess. At any rate, I had the pleasure of feeling different, special, capable of what most children had not been given. I frankly enjoyed entertaining guests, or noticing passers-by slowing down when they heard me play. I even remember a funny boy hiding behind a shutter. His face was impossible to see because of the stupid cap with a long visor, but always stuck knee-naked legs in blue sneakers. I then dreamed that instead of him there would be an adult guy or a man like actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who would look into our basement and take me away from there forever. But nothing has changed. Music classes develop a habit, and you no longer understand whether you love what you do or do it out of inertia. Somehow unnoticed to myself, I entered the conservatory and spent most of the day there. Firstly, a lot of time was taken up by classes and rehearsals. And secondly, walking in the park adjacent to the conservatory was much more enjoyable than sitting in a semi-dark, smell-soaked kitchen apartment. The park in tiers descended to the lake, the edges of which in summer were covered with thickets of reeds, and in winter - a light crust of ice. I loved the upper tier, with green wooden benches and round, white, diamond-shaped holes, gazebos, from which it was very convenient to see everything and everyone. I knew who skipped lectures, who met with whom, I watched the personal lives of fellow students, without having my own. And what is surprising - I was not beautiful: slightly yellowish skin of the face, very dark, almost black, without the slightest hint of curls, hair - a very banal appearance, over which they often joked, finding Asian features in it.

And I liked my concertmaster, Sergey Alexandrovich. Everyone called him Seryozha, although he was already married, and he and his wife were expecting a second child. Seryozha was stately, wide-shouldered and curly. In addition, he played well and felt a soloist as few teachers. I was lucky to get to him, and I was lucky in that regard. State exams were approaching. We rehearsed late in the evening, remaining in an empty classroom of an empty building, and it was there, without departing from the piano, having stopped rehearsing for fifteen minutes, that I lost my innocence.

- Well, said Sergey, buttoning his pants, now you will definitely feel how to play this passage. Because you clearly lacked passion. But I felt you were an emotional girl, and I wasn't wrong. Let's play it again.

from the beginning.

We studied for another half hour before the cleaner kicked us out. I walked past the printing house, with its incessant crash even at night. In my head sounded perfected passage. The blue-painted walls of the house at this late hour seemed gray, to the color of my sperm-spitting mood. I wanted to dive faster into the entrance to hide in my basement, which for the first time seemed a refuge, not a dungeon.

In the morning we found out that Seryozha had a son. A week later, I came to the exam. Seryozha looked sleepless and dented, but it did not affect his game, and the rehearsal went perfectly.

- And that lilac dress suits you. And the belt emphasizes a thin waist, a lush chest. The real Gretchen, he said, and smiled with his open, affectionate smile. If you play as passionately as you did then, he winked, you get an A.

We went on stage. Sergey nodded encouragingly, I stepped in and realized from the first note that I was playing notes, but not music. I mean, of course, it was Mozart's automatized sonata, but I couldn't get the soul out of it because my own was in turmoil. It wasn't me, it was my fingers. It was only the false note that sounded in transparent Mozartian harmony that brought me back to reality. The dissonance was so sharp and piercing that I shuddered. And I thought the whole room shook with me. I saw how, painfully stretching his lips, Seryozha curled, how my professor raised his eyebrows, I heard a whisper. But Seryozha continued to play, and I followed him, thinking to myself that with the last note of this sonata, my unstarted solo musical career would end. I knew I would never get rid of the fear of the stage.

3

Of course, the realization of the arrogance with which I decided to become a composer came much later. I had never been to an opera or a philharmonic before I met Greta, and I didn’t even understand what the profession of a musician required. But fortunately, I dreamed that I had an absolute hearing and a great musical memory. Learning by jumping through classes was fun and easy. I never got an A at an academic concert because I didn’t want to be a pianist. I didn't care about the hands or the technique. The goal was not impeccable possession of the instrument, and therefore, speaking to the public, I did not worry about any technical errors and errors. I taught myself and others that music was not in the hands of the composer, but in the head, and that his task was to give the performers work and the listeners pleasure. For myself, I wanted recognition and a secure existence - with Greta, of course.

I saw her occasionally when I went to conservatory concerts. She played in an orchestra: a black skirt, a white blouse. I never approached her or talked to her, knowing that it was too early to declare myself, because even though my orchestral plays had already been performed on the radio, I had not yet created anything worthy of Greta and her flute.

The year I entered the conservatory, Greta graduated. I sat on the side of the window, in the hall, where my music played more than once, and imagined that Greta was not playing for the examination committee, but for me. She looked amazing in lilac with a black lacquer belt, a dress and boat shoes. So fragile at the waist, lush in the chest, feminine, festive. The concertmaster, a young, too shouldery for his profession, looked inappropriately athletic next to her. Greta looked absolutely calm, and was like a porcelain doll: a matte, motionless face, a flat bang over almond-shaped, slightly slanted eyes. She held the flute to her lips, played, and I realized that it was not calmness, but indifference. Listening to Mozart's music, I found myself almost justifying Salieri. Would I, having attained fame, be able to endure a genius beside me? Would you be able day by day to suppress the envy of the spoiler of fate, who so easily, gracefully, without strain, creates perfect harmony simply because G-d kissed him and not me? I was completely relaxed, immersed in the mathematically verified perfection of this music, but suddenly shuddered at the squeaky, false note. Greta held the flute at her mouth, as if in an interrupted kiss, the confused fingers froze over the valves. But the accompanist continued to play his part, and Greta, waking up, followed him. Now in her play, there was the same desperation I heard eight years ago, frozen by the basement window.

- So you have to be able to screw up, whispered the girl sitting next to you. - Now she will not see a red diploma or Moscow graduate school.

- It’s my fault, her friend replied, I found time to spin novels. And with whom - with Sergey, with this married womanizer. Dumb, what can you say?

4

- Stupid! cried my mother, shaking the last drops of valerian from the bubble. - Who the hell is this kid? She fucked up her life and didn't feel sorry for us.

- He should have his face full, his father repeated, but he is reluctant to go to prison. Well, maybe they'll give you an apartment now, but it'll be all good for the baby.

But he was wrong. My parents were left to live in an old house, and my daughter and I were given a one-room apartment in a new neighborhood. By that time I had already managed to get a job - I played in the orchestra of the opera house. Mom came, sat with Natasha, helped with cooking, washing. She did not know that all this time I continued to meet with Seryozha, while perfectly understanding that in terms of family relations, I have nothing to count on. That's not the kind of husband I wanted. Basically, I even liked my life. When I got home from rehearsals in the morning, I would always go out to the balcony and watch from top to bottom the children playing in the sandbox, the crowns of newly planted trees. I didn't understand how I could live so many years looking at the endless flickering of knees and soles, breathing the street dust and basement dampness. The only thing I lacked was money. In fact, my salary wasn't much different than my student scholarship. Sergey helped, but since I did not apply for alimony, this assistance was irregular and insignificant. Basically, he brought either clothes from which his children grew, or food. One day, while rocking Natasha in a stroller given by a neighbor, I realized that love should be left behind and cynically focused on finding a husband.

I never had a high opinion of musicians: the privates – most of them drank too much, the talented – were busy with their careers, and those close to genius lived in a confused, detached from reality world.

The first two were present in our orchestra from these three categories, but among them the most adapted to family life have already been disassembled. I didn’t have time for flirting and nothing-leading novels – after rehearsals or concerts, I ran home to my daughter.

That evening, I was stopped by Arthur Simkin, the composer whose one-act opera we played in the second section. I've never spoken to him before, only seen him in rehearsals. From the outside, he looked peculiar: he wore too narrowed trousers, shirts of bright colors and a wig that always moved slightly sideways. The musicians laughed when Arthur, emotionally waving his arms, joined in the process of conducting his works, and this reddish wig slightly shifted, exposing the edge of a dazzling, vapor-covered bald spot.

- Did you like my opera? he asked.

I was surprised, “Are you interviewing all the orchestras at the exit?”

- No, he said seriously, only you. - Actually, I wanted to walk you out. I didn't know how to start a conversation.

- How long have you been planning on starting it?

- You have no idea, Greta, how I've wanted to do that for a long time.

Of course, he surprised me then. And not so much by knowing my name, but by the intonation that we musicians are particularly sensitive to. There was something dogish and dreary in his voice - an echo of loneliness in half with the hope of being petted. He walked beside me like a dog, half a step behind.

It turned out that as a child we lived literally on the neighboring streets: we walked along the same ever-blue houses, looked through the printing windows, picked up chestnuts. However, it turned out that Arthur was younger than me, although because of the bulky, thick glasses, he looked older than his years. He said without ceasing - he told some jokes, stories about his friends and foes, complained about envious people, sprinkled jokes - I even doubted whether I wanted to like, or to such an extent needs an interlocutor.

For some reason, I was always considered modest, even shy, and I did not try to convince anyone of this. So I was comfortable - less climbing into the soul. I didn’t like to bare her, twist her, and I hated it when others did it with their souls. Plurality is the reverse of stupidity and failure, when instead of actions – endless phrases, repeated jokes or boring complaints. My mother had a childhood friend who often visited us. As a child, I asked myself how such a small woman fits so many grievances and experiences, how in just half an hour she manages to spill so much emotion on my parents? Together with the aroma of the Polish perfume “It can be...” after her departure, the smell of annoyance and discontent settled in our apartment, which had to be weathered for a long time. After these visits, my mother felt tired and sleepy, and my father - irritated, unlike her friend, as if she had acquired a second breath and a fresh complexion. These memories forever shielded me from the desire to have close friends with their obsessive sincerity. Women's friendship, in principle, I did not inspire trust, men's also believed with difficulty, But with Arthur it was convenient - he needed only a listener, not an interlocutor.. It was enough to give replicas - to be surprised, to admire - so that he, involved in his own experiences, continued the monologue he took for a conversation.

Usually, he talked about himself and perceived himself as a person, as a part of the world, which in this life has a purpose. He saw his purpose in music, in its creation and in harmony with the beauty and structure of the world. It seemed to me that he suffers from megalomania, both about the degree of giftedness and in the evaluation of his compositions. I also had doubts about world harmony. I didn’t understand how it was possible to talk so much about music, delving into the details, interesting only to the author. You have to listen and feel music. So are poems. And not to disassemble in sequences, cadences and tonal transitions. I didn't want to offend Arthur, so I never answered his question about whether I liked his music. In fact, it was no worse or better than the one composed by local composers. Maybe more sentimental, melancholy, and at the same time pathetic, like the gilded buttons on his fancy jacket. He was like this in life - he could freeze with delight, seeing a beautiful sunset or a purple autumn leaf, and immediately tell a vulgar joke.

- Look," he said with aspiration, "these streaks on the leaf, almost dry like the veins of an old, dying man. They're already frozen. How do you translate that into music? Think about why you need this list at all, because everything has to be meaningful. Is that how to understand and understand? I even wrote the words for romance about it.

On the autumn leaf - veins

Eight months of life marked.

From April - with the last ice caps

Until the November winds are changeable.

I'm picking foliage with my palms,

On which fate is written.

From a sleepy morning in October

To the door, I don't know.

Arthur, I wondered, how great! Did you just make that up? Extraordinary?

- No, yesterday at the union meeting at the conservatory. I sketched a melody. I'm thinking of doing a tenor or baritone treatment? Do you even know what the difference is?

Without waiting for an answer, he burst into laughter and blurted out, Bariton is a fool, but an octave below!

He was annoyed by my confusion about such jokes. He took him for arrogance, and we just didn't match. But instead of moving the conversation to another topic, he obsessively tried to cheer me up.

- Do you know the distance between a woman's breasts when you use music? How? You're a musician! It's an octave! Ce-Ce.

And he giggled, lustfully, like a thirteen-year-old. And I wanted to be rude and hit him with something heavy. Several times I tried to end our relationship and left. Then he was looking for me from my parents, and my mother always reconciled us, not because she liked Arthur, but because she considered me a hopeless fool with a forever damaged reputation. Arthur, in turn, explained my “twilight” character as a consequence of a basement childhood, as well as a yellowish complexion or the habit of frowning in the sun.

- You are a snail princess, comfortable in a shell, alone, Arthur told me, sitting in my mother’s kitchen that autumn evening. - You don't want to get out of it, and the two of you are cramped, which is why you're looking for a reason to offend.

He pulled borscht from a spoon and rolled his eyes. - Bliss!

- Greta, come here, my father’s faint, rattling voice was heard from the room. Then he turned to his right hand and turned to his right hand. He was lying on an old, greasy upholstery, bed chair. Nearby on the nightstand was a jar of soaked prunes and a cup of underdrinked tea.

- Get away from him. He is nothing but thinking of himself. There is nothing to do in the house or to provide for you. Talker. Please think while you're young.

- Dad, I think he loves me. I can do it. They just love everything differently. Seryozha loved me, didn't he? Wait, I'll be right back, there's some noise.

I went back to the kitchen. Arthur, red with anger, was already in the hallway.

- You are petty people, philistines, philistines! he shouted, without getting his foot in the shoe. Of course, you couldn’t have grown up in a house where the material is more important than the spiritual.

- What happened? I asked, trying to hold him by the sleeve of his cloak.

- Ask your mother, Arthur snapped and slammed the door.

5

From childhood, my brother and I were taught to finish the job: to finish the book, even if it is boring and poorly written, to solve the problem of oncoming traffic until the answer comes to pass, to finish everything that was put in the plate. Until the middle of my life, I believed that it was the only way to live, that it was constant violence against oneself that could lead to the achievement of the goal. I've doubted that for years. But it was too late - the best years were behind us, and what could bring pleasure in his youth no longer made sense. What was spent so much time and effort was not so important and necessary. Like marrying Greta. If I married for love, it was for cold. Yes, I knew even then that my boyish adoration had been broken by some frustration with Greta’s false note and then the arrival of a child, but I married by inertia. I couldn't stop or change my target halfway.

Every time I looked at Natasha, I saw her resemblance to Seryozha: the same blond curly hair, always rosy, sweaty cheeks. Just like her father, she was good-natured, smiled at everyone, and even laughed, as if he were choking. I first saw her as a student. I walked to class across the park and Greta sat on a bench and shook her face at the June sun. Next to the grass stood a little white-haired girl – half-naked, in a T-shirt – and wrote. Transparent trickles flowed down her plump, curved legs, and she smiled helplessly. For some reason I remembered a dove that fell on my balcony, which for several months had been nursed unsuccessfully. I force-fed him, bandaged his wing, and he died, and on returning from some late concert, I found him already stiff. I still can't explain the connection between a dead bird and a wet baby, but it was at that moment that I forgave Greta an affair she naturally didn't know she had.

“Mama, you have a baby peed,” I told her.

- I know. Thank you. she replied.

The sun's rays dyed her hair red.

I often envied Greta's equanimity, her ability to hide emotions. Sometimes I deliberately tried to hurt her, to hurt her, to piss her off, but she only trembled slowly with her marble eyelids and stared at me – calmly and perplexed, as then, as a child. - Boy, are you lost?

Yes, I was looking for myself, trying to understand whether I have a talent that allows me to be noticed, recognizable, famous, and came to the disappointing conclusion that serious music is necessary for some people, and talent is not a guarantee of success, especially for women. Many years later, having already divorced Greta, I was again and again convinced of the female commercialism, the inability to accept a creative person as he is.

My mother-in-law, at first, was happy with the marriage of her daughter, but in her heart she did not approve of the age difference that was unfavorable for Greta. Nevertheless, she genuinely tried to show her affection, awarding me a few ambiguous compliments.

- Nothing, nothing, she said, carefully pouring borscht into my plate, look how fast you go bald. You look older than your age. And the glasses aren't getting younger. Of course, constantly picking notes - here and go blind for a short time. Nothing, glasses, they give solidity. But the Gretochka looks young, the breed is such.

I choked on borscht, and she continued, The more successful the husband, the younger the wife.

- Mom, what do you mean? - Greta didn't understand her eyes.

- Oh, yeah. The more a husband earns, the less wrinkles his wife has, because he does not count every penny. What you need - buy yourself, and the child, and in the house. A good husband, he thinks about it first.

- Are you throwing stones at me?

- Well, why stones? We're family. Who will tell the truth if it's not me? Why don't you write songs? I hear they pay more than symphonies and operas. I love serious music myself - Gretochka taught. Could you have made something easier to earn? Look, pop composer..., forgot the name, well, he wrote this song, April-drop wrote, it is on the radio all day long – what a luxury car drives, and you washed all your clothes on buses. Is that fair?

Delicious food disposes to peacefulness, a feeling of satiety makes a person lazy, he does not want to quarrel, find out relationships. I ate borscht, ate homemade bread, and endured. Later, I called it a day of tolerance.

It didn’t work out in the morning, when the Union of Composers refused me a ticket to the House of Creativity. The secretary, a sweet, lonely woman with whom I have had more than a close relationship since bachelor days, told me that the ticket was given to musicologist Wexman, this smug goose. The same day I met him before the meeting. He walked, as always, raking his feet inside, raising his head, framed by a half-event of gray, senile down. Frozen on one leg and left the other like a heron in a swamp, he looked around the hall. When his gaze hit me, I went up to him and asked him: “And are you not ashamed, Semyon Yakovlevich, to take someone else’s?” Why do you need a house of creativity if you do not create anything yourself? You can write books and articles at home in the kitchen. ?

- Are you telling me what you're doing? Yes, it was done in the last symphony - especially in the second part, remember where you have an oboe, like a March cat meows. And if you remove this original orchestral work, you find a strong resemblance to the theme of a very famous composer – let’s not mention his name – you already understand me. However, if you insist, I can mark it in the article that I am going to write in the House of Creativity.

He walked into the room, deliberately hitting me with his bloated briefcase, and I throughout the meeting caught the mocking glances of colleagues and suffered, physically feeling bile wandering somewhere under my heart.

At the meeting, the upstart Trukhin was praised, although everyone knew that anyone makes tools for him, even students. But Trukhin is the nephew of the Minister of Culture, and everyone knows that. Not a word was said about the fact that my cycle of romances received the approval of Khrennikov himself. Until the evening, I was in close contact with the secretary Tanecka, the only person who sympathizes with me, and then I went to see my mother-in-law - Greta had been living with her for several days, explaining this by the need to care for her sick father.

I was not hungry - Tatiana roasted cheesecakes - but to refuse mother-in-law borscht would be stupid. She cooked incredibly tasty - it's a pity that Greta did not inherit her talent, although she loved to eat. And so I sat at the table and listened to the usual set of mother-in-law complaints - expensive medicines, doctors do not promise anything good, the apartment needs repairs, new furniture does not interfere with buying - this is falling apart, Natashenka needs a fur coat, and Greta is obsessed.

Mother-in-law was waiting for a reaction, and I was silently eating hot borscht of rotten cherry.

- How many authors did you get for your symphony? - I bet it's pennies. And the pop artists you despise so much get paid for every restaurant performance. There's a co-op, there's a manto on his wife.

- And the fact that my symphony, which I worked on for a year, is dedicated to my wife, your daughter, means something to you? - I threw a spoon on the table, and she, bouncing off, fell to the floor, along the trajectory splashing a hand-embroidered tablecloth.

- What? Did you give your wife a symphony?! she screamed, and her round face with neat round ears behind her cheeks became like a double cherry dumpling. - Fuck your symphony! You should've given her earrings. Diamonds! Or at least pearls.

- You're an ignorant woman. A philistine! Beethoven, Tchaikovsky also dedicated their works to women, and it was more expensive for them than gold tsatsok. Who would remember their names without the music?

- You are not Tchaikovsky, she shouted in my face. You're Simkin! Do you feel the difference?

When Greta ran out of the room, I was already in the hallway. She tried to keep me, but I was not going to trade my talent for philistine values. You cannot reach your goal by looking at your feet. And Greta and her family became an obstacle, a ballast. And I left.

6

Arthur left slamming the door, and no one ran after him. Standing in the kitchen, I watched him shave around puddles. His face was not visible from the basement window; the gait of a short-sighted man was half-bent legs, hunched shoulders. That's how I remember him.

Many years later, when I became Sergey’s wife and moved to Moscow, I saw Arthur at the Moscow Autumn Festival. His symphony was performed, and then he went on stage — a very different walk — and stood there for a long, long time than the situation required. I thought that in moments of happiness, a person changes incredibly. And Arthur, with a bouquet in his hands, bathing in applause and public recognition, shaking hands with the conductor, was a man who dreamed of his future. As if reading my thoughts, Seryozha said: You could not get along, because for you music is only a profession, and for him everything. If you wanted to understand it, you would accept it with all the oddities and flaws.». But there was another reason.: When Seryozha looked at me, I felt welcome, and I wanted to undress. In Arthur’s eyes there was dog adoration and lust, from which he wanted to protect himself by buttoning all the buttons.

On our first and only joint vacation we went to Kislovodsk. July was rainy and cold. I felt uncomfortable, cold and bored, but Arthur enjoyed everything and especially nature. One day, on the way to the spring, he snatched someone's heeled chamomile, put it under my nose and said, It's incredible how these simple petals love life. The brightest beauty is invisible. People trample it, and then complain about the grayness and monotony of the world. He was exalted by every little thing, such as lying in the same narzan bath at number five in which Fyodor Chaliapin was soaked in 1915, but he was just as easily discouraged by someone’s unkind word or look. And this vulnerability, combined with cynicism and an unhealthy craving for the female body, irritated and repulsed me. There in the sanatorium, waiting for the procedure, we saw a girl of eleven years sitting opposite. She had a nice, open face. A light cotton dress, barely covering her knees, tightly wrapped her unformed figure.

And all of it was unusually tender and sunny, which attracted attention. I admired her and thought about Natasha. And then the girl suddenly became confused, blushed and moved her knees. I looked at Arthur sitting next to me and caught his lustful look. It was then that I decided that sooner or later we would have to break up.

But Arthur didn't know it, so he hated my mother because she was the reason for the divorce. And she regretted that kitchen scandal, especially when Seryozha's wife left and he moved in with me. If for Arthur, his mother cooked his favorite borscht and cutlets in Kiev, then when Seryozha appeared, she went to her house and defiantly turned on the TV, muttering: “I wonder where he was when the child needed him?” And now he is happy, he has come to everything ready and brought with him his crippled life. After some time, Seryozh managed to find a job in Moscow, and we all, having made a complicated apartment exchange, moved. Dad was no longer alive, Natasha studied in Novosibirsk, and my mother had to settle with us. She retired, but did not want to stay at home and got a job in the hospital canteen on Shabolovka. I was teaching at a music school nearby and would pick up my mom on the way home because she was already having trouble walking.

- You know, Greta," she said, "it turns out that the mentally ill are much more friendly and polite than the normal. You have to get used to them, of course.

And I realized that we consider them abnormal, and therefore we talk condescendingly, they say, you are a fool, what to take from you. And they also take us for crazy, so they smile back. They look at themselves because they are not interested.

Recently, my mother told how she was approached by an elderly, very short-sighted person and asked to tell the cook not to add vinegar to borscht.

- You do not know how to cook here, he said reproachfully. - Here I knew a woman, my ex-mother-in-law, her borscht I still dream at night, and I wake up salivating.

He giggled and his mother recognized him as Arthur.

7

For all my antipathy for Wexman, I couldn't help but acknowledge his erudition and sense of humor. Once, when he met me at the conservatory – we were both sitting on the examination board – he said: Here you, young man, are all striving to make a career, giving free rein to ambition, elbowing competitors. You. already Senior lecturer. Do you want to become a professor and then an academic? Let’s say you make this dream a reality. And then what? Do you know what an honored academic dreams of? He was young and unknown, but his stomach worked regularly. That is the base truth of life.

Every time I go to the hospital, I remember what he said. The nurse asked if I had taken a laxative before the procedure. And she herself, without even hearing the answer, already pokes the needle into the vein and again does not fall, and again sticks it in cold blood, not at all embarrassed by the pain caused to me. But this is not some provincial, but a capital hospital, a sanatorium department of the clinic of neuroses. I love droppers, I look forward to the moment when the clear liquid begins to move in a transparent cable, with each drop displacing anxiety and fear. I don't know what I'm being injected with, but I sleep all night, and I'm in a nice half nap during the day. I am so happy and calm that there is a desire to stay in this state always, without returning to the daily bustle of out-of-hospital life.

The last thirty years have been a stay in a one-room apartment near the airport station. After moving to Moscow and five years of wandering through dormitories and rented apartments, she seemed to me a welcome refuge. So probably rejoiced Columbus, who saw a strip of land after many months of wandering. True, on closer examination, this land turned out not to be India, but a bunch of islands without a hint of priceless spices, but at first the joy of gaining was overshadowed by the disappointment at the discrepancy of the achievement and the effort expended on it.

Without waiting for the elevator, I, in one breath, ran up to my floor, opened the door and revelled in silence, disturbed only by the hum of a half-empty refrigerator and the cooing of pigeons over the balcony. I didn’t do much renovation work: first, because I spent a lot of time outside the house, and second, because I was saving money for a rainy day. And then the market crashed and all the savings turned into nothing. Greta's mother, this mercantile woman, was right twice: firstly, symphonic music brought almost no income, and secondly, I really grew old quickly. The disease did not go away, but became chronic. Cataracts were added to the kidney stones, then angina pectoris began, leading to a heart attack. But the most unexpected and unpleasant was the frequent state of anxiety, which provoked and intensified the symptoms of all my sores. During the hypnosis session, Professor Sinyavsky revealed the true cause of the nervous failure, which I have never been able to get rid of.

That December morning, I was walking around the sanatorium, where I was recovering from a heart attack. I do not like cold weather, but the nature of the suburbs is extremely good in winter. Tall pine trees, spruce branches spread in the snow, all this combination of strict whiteness, gloomy trees and transparency of the air always set me on a philosophical way, and some wild bird or lump stuck in a snowdrift could lead to a state of delight and affection.

After the Tstalovsk air, saturated with vapors of porridge and General Pitovsky tea, the breath was unusually good on the street. I walked down the alley to the forest. Suddenly, into a silence broken only by the creak of my footsteps, a dog growl burst in. I turned my head and saw a shaggy dog, viciously gnawing something at a bench nearby. She was shaking her head, and something was hanging out of her mouth and rolling. And some torn, ungrind pieces fell on the snow and stained it, leaving bloody divorces. I screamed, grabbed the first stick I saw and threw it into the dog's back. The dog ran away, either frightened or satiated, and I stood frozen in the nast and did not dare to come closer.

From the pine slipped a squirrel and, throwing a gray tail, ran to the brown, with the remains of wool, a bunch. Then she began to rush, froze for a minute, and frantically began to collect pieces of mush with her front legs. She pulled them aside and buried them under a hanging bush. The squirrel continued to run back and forth for no more than ten minutes, but it seemed to me that there would be no end. I was sick. I leaned against the back of a snowy bench and stood still until I felt the beating of my stopped heart again.

Before lunch, I sat in the room rewriting the string quartet from drafts. Black notes ran on paper like dog tracks in the snow. Unbeknownst to myself, I replaced the chords with dissonances until the harmony of the reprise changed beyond recognition. From fatigue, my eyes watered and my head hurt. I lay down, but felt that I could not be alone and went to the dining room.

We had lunch. I pushed a dried fruit compote to myself and for some reason began stirring it with a spoon. She knocked on the edge of the glass, compote spilled on a white tablecloth.

- What are you shitting about? Can you be more careful? the waitress said. And the creative intelligentsia is called.

I did not answer - the yard, lowering its head, ran the same shaggy dog.

- And indeed," said my table-mate, a lush lady, whose folded neck was embraced by a massive, dog-like, silver chain, with reproach, "just sat down to eat, and already dirty, unpleasant.

I looked into her plate, where lay gnawed membranes of chicken roast, and felt unbearable nausea, as in the morning when I looked at a torn squirrel. My operated heart was running out of air. The last thing I remembered was the indignantly frightened face of a plump lady and a silver chain hanging on my forehead, in large rings.

According to Professor Sinyavsky, it was this very prosaic episode in the life of animals that influenced my impressionable nature in such an undesirable way. I left the sanatorium in the evening of the same ill-fated day, but since then, panic, anxiety awaits me with the constancy of a hated but faithful woman with whom only death can separate.

I try to go to the hospital at every opportunity. I feel better there. Do not think about household problems: cooking, cleaning, moving around the city. The apartment in which I spent so many pleasant, fruitful years became hated because of the new neighbors-greats that fill this world. From above there is a constant dull knock – on long rainy evenings I begin to think that coffins are being slaughtered there. And below settled a family of alcoholics, from the cries of which it is impossible to sleep. Of course, there are plenty of idiots here in the hospital, but we don't have crazy people in our unit. Here, mostly, or people with a fragile psyche, or weak-minded. But the latter are almost not released from the chambers. Although one broke into my room yesterday. I found him rummaging through the nightstand and was afraid that he would spill jelly on the keyboard of my concert left on top. But he only asked where Neglinnaya Street was. I pointed to the door and he politely thanked me and walked out. There's an old man still wandering around -- he looks like he's ninety -- he's constantly asking what time it is. I don't think it matters at that age unless someone on top tells him the exact date of his departure, and now he's checking his remaining time. His calmness and detachment are amazing. He seemed to have completed the earthly affairs and accepted the inevitable. And this once again confirms my guess - it is easier for a simple, uncreative person to live a life in which, perhaps, there were no ups, but there were no torments, falls and eternal dissatisfaction with himself. Accordingly, it is easier to part with such a life, because there is no sense of unclaimed talent, it is not tormented by the awareness of the wrong path. And in order not to think about it, I continue to compose, although for five years my new works are not bought, the old ones are not performed. And I know that I write better than I did when I was young, because musical thought comes from pain and suffering, which I now have more than enough. And beauty.

Last night I went out into the yard - the nurse asked me to take out a bucket of garbage. I went down the cement steps, pushed the door and froze – the sunset was burning all over the sky above the city. The roofs of the dull, gray buildings glowed with an orange flame, and the clouds floating in this glow glowed from the inside and constantly changed shapes. And I figured out how to instrument the final part of the concert. I heard the calling theme of the flute, the sighs of the cello and the ascetic rustle of the drums.

A woman was sitting on the bench, apparently waiting for someone. Something about her posture, her head tilt, was like Greta, but my nearsightedness and cataracts prevented me from seeing her face. She raised her head and, looking at the setting sun, squinted. From the door, limping and heavily rearranging swollen legs, an old lady came out – sometimes she worked at our handout. The woman rose to meet her, took her arm, and leaning on each other, they slowly went to the trolley bus stop.

Emptying the trash can, I went up to the room. Under the mattress, hidden from unexpected guests, lay the keyboard of the concerto for flute and orchestra. Dedicated to Gretchen. - I wrote on the title page.

Tomorrow I will be discharged – the attending physician believes that I will be able to do without inpatient treatment.

- “Your medicine is music,” he said.

And I didn't argue with him, because even myself, I'm afraid to admit that music has betrayed me. Without forgiveness, I never learned to live without her.

Zoya Master