White dove of cordova part 2 read. The White Dove of Cordoba read online

© D. Rubina, 2015

© Publishing House E, 2016

* * *

Part one

Chapter first

1

Before leaving, he nevertheless decided to call his aunt. In general, he was always the first to reconcile. The main thing here was not to fawn, not to lisp, but to hold on, as if there were no quarrels - so, nonsense, a slight quarrel.

- Well, - he asked, - what do you bring - castanuelas?1
Castanuelas - castanets ( Spanish).

- Then the fan, huh, Zhuka? - he said, smiling into the phone and imagining her patrician hook-nosed face in a halo of blue haze. “We’ll stick a fly on your cheek, and you’ll go out onto the balcony of your almshouse to fan yourself like some kind of fly, vigorous root.

"I don't want anything from you!" she said obstinately.

- Wow, how. He himself was meek as a dove. - Well, okay ... Then I'll bring you a Spanish broom.

- What is Spanish? she muttered. And got caught.

- And what else does your sister fly there? he exclaimed, jubilant, as in childhood when you fool a dupe and jump around yelling: “Oh-ma-well-do you do-ra-ka on che-you-re koo-la-ka!”

She hung up, but it was no longer a quarrel, but like this, a thunderstorm in early May, and it was possible to leave with a light heart, especially since the day before the quarrel he went to the market and filled his aunt's refrigerator to capacity.

* * *

All that remained was round off one more thing plot which he built and developed (vignettes of details, arabesques of details) - for three years now.

And tomorrow, finally, at dawn, against the backdrop of turquoise scenery, from sea foam ( medical resort, note, foam), will be born new Venus with his personal signature: the last wave of the conductor, the pathetic chord in the finale of the symphony.

Slowly, he packed his favorite soft olive-skin suitcase, small but responsive, like a soldier’s knapsack: you can tamp it down to failure, by the most as Uncle Sam said, I can not, - look, but the second shoe still got in.

When preparing for a trip, he always thought carefully about his outfit. He hesitated over the shirts, replaced the cream ones with blue ones, pulled out a dark blue silk one from the bunch of ties in the closet ... Yes: and cufflinks, but of course. Those that Irina gave. And those others that Margo gave are a must: she is quick-witted.

Here you go. Now expert dressed appropriately for all five days Spanish project.

For some reason, the word "expert", uttered to himself, made him laugh so much that he laughed, even fell face down on the couch, next to the open suitcase, and for two minutes he laughed loudly, with pleasure - he always laughed most contagiously when he was alone.

Continuing to laugh, he rolled over to the edge of the couch, leaned over, pulled out the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and, rummaging through the wrinkled shorts and socks, pulled out a pistol.

It was a comfortable, simple Colt glock design, with an automatic hammer lock, with a slight smooth rollback.

In addition, with the help of a hairpin or a nail, it could be disassembled in one minute.

Let's hope, buddy, that tomorrow you will sleep through the entire important meeting in your suitcase..

Late in the evening he left Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

I didn’t like to drive down these loops in the dark, but recently the road was widened, partly lit up, and the camel humps of the hills that used to squeeze you from both sides, pushing you into the desert funnel, seemed to be reluctantly parted ...

But beyond the crossroads, where after the gas station the road turns and runs along the sea, the lighting is over, and the salt-swollen disastrous darkness - the one that only happens by the sea, this the sea, - it fell again, hitting in the face with the sudden headlights of oncoming cars. On the right, the black rocks of Qumran were gloomily piled up, on the left, a black, with a sudden glimpse of the salt surface, behind which the Jordanian coast was tearing with distant lights, was guessed ...

Forty minutes later, a festive constellation of lights soared up and scattered out of the darkness below: Ein Bokek, with its hotels, clinics, restaurants and shops, is the shelter of a wealthy tourist, including a poor Chukhonian. And further along the shore, at some distance from the resort village, the gigantic Nirvana Hotel, in the five hundred and thirteenth room of which, most likely, Irina had already slept, spread its white, brightly lit decks lonely and majestically in the night.

Of all his women, she was the only one who, like him, give her free rein, would fit in with cocks and get up with them. Which turned out to be inconvenient: he did not like to share his dawn hours with anyone, he kept a reserve of springy morning strength when a huge day was ahead, and his eyes were sharp and fresh, and his fingertips were sensitive, like a pianist’s, and his head was excellent, and everything succeeds in the smoking haze over the first cup of coffee.

For the sake of these precious dawn hours, he often left Irina late at night.

Having entered the parking lot of the hotel, I parked, took out a suitcase from the trunk and, slowly, prolonging the last moments of loneliness, headed for the huge carousel blades of the main entrance.

- Are you sleeping? he barked jokingly at the Ethiopian guard. - I brought the bomb.

He started up, glared with the whites of his eyes and incredulously stretched the white harmonica of a smile in the dark:

- Yes, la-a-bottom ...

They knew each other by sight. In this hotel, crowded and stupid, like a city standing aside from a resort village, he liked to arrange business meetings, the last, final ones: the very final chord of the symphony, to which interested person you still have to saw along a not weak road, between rocky teeth hanging over the sea, tightened with braces and a gigantic dentist's mesh.

And rightly so: as Uncle Syoma said - don't drown, don't burst. (However, the uncle himself stomp I wouldn't be able to with my orthopedic boot.)

Here it is, number five hundred and thirteen. Silent brief intercourse of the keyhole with an electronic key obtained from the dazed attendant: you see, I don’t want to wake my wife, the poor woman suffers from migraines and goes to bed early ...

He never had any wife.

She did not suffer from any migraines.

And he was going to wake her up immediately.

Irina slept as usual - blankets wrapped in a cocoon, like white cheese in a Druze pita.

It will always pack, bury itself, and even tuck it under its sides - at least hire archaeologists.

Throwing his suitcase and jacket on the floor, he pulled off his sweater as he went, kicked off his sneakers, toe-to-toe, and collapsed next to her on the bed, still in jeans, the lock stuck on a bumpy break in the zipper, and his T-shirt.

Irina woke up, and they fidgeted at the same time, trying to free themselves from the blanket, from their clothes, mooing into each other's faces:

- ... you promised, shameless, promised ...

- ... and I will keep my promise, you man in a case!

- ... well, what are you, like a wild one, pounced! wait...wait a minute...

– …I’m already standing, don’t you hear it?

“…fu, impudent…well, give me at least…”

- ... who doesn’t give you ... here you are, and here ... and here ... and ... oh-oh-oh-oh ...

…AT open door on the balcony, the lemon moon, in solidarity with him in rhythm, either soared over the railing with its pop-eyed shameless “bravo!” then reducing the scope of takeoff and fall. But then she froze at a dizzying height, balancing, as if for the last time surveying the heavenly district ... and suddenly she broke and rushed, accelerating and accelerating her pace, almost suffocating in this race, until she groaned, thrashed, shuddered liberatedly, and - not subsided, hanging in exhaustion somewhere in the backyards of heaven ...

... Then Irina splashed in the shower, now and then switching the hot jet to the cold (now she will come to bed - wet, like a drowned man, and let's warm her until she turns blue), - and he tried to follow the microscopic movements of the pale puffy luminary in the window, his recent partner in svalny sin.

Finally he got up and went out onto the balcony.

The gigantic hotel fell into a numb sleep on the edge of a shimmering salt lake. Below, surrounded by palm trees, the polished lid of a piano lay a pool in which a brittle yellow moon was jumping. Three dozen meters from the pool stretched the beach with arthropod pyramids of plastic sunbeds and chairs collected for the night.

The cold shimmer of salt in the distance communicated to the motionless night an icy silence, something New Year's - like the expectation of miracles and gifts.

Well, it won't be about gifts.

- Are you crazy: naked - on the balcony? - I heard a cheerful voice behind me. - Do you have elementary shame? People around...

Sometimes it would not be like to turn it off, but slightly reduce the sound.

He closed the balcony door, drew the curtain, and turned on the table lamp.

“You have recovered…” he said thoughtfully, falling on the bed and looking at Irina in an open terry robe. - I like it. Do you look like Dina Verney now?

– What-o-o?! What is this woman?

- Maillol's model. Take off that idiotic robe, uh... and turn your back. Yes: the same proportions. With a thin back, a strong expressive line of the hips. And the shoulder now so smoothly rises into the neck ... Ay-yay, what a nature! It is a pity that I did not take a pencil in my hands for a hundred years.

She grunted, flopped into the deep armchair next to the bed, and reached for her pack of cigarettes.

- Well, come on, go ahead ... Tell me something else about me.

- Oh please! You see, when a woman puts on a little weight, her breasts become softer, more generous… smiling. And skin color changes. A delicate layer of subcutaneous fat gives the body a more noble, pearlescent shade. There is such ... mmm ... transparency of glazes, you understand?

He was no longer averse to taking a nap before dawn for at least an hour and a half. But Irina lit a cigarette and was cheerful and assertive. That look again will require a sacred sacrifice. The main thing is not to start sorting out the relationship.

“And besides, you know…” he continued, yawning and turning on his side, “that measured swaying of the hips, the view from behind and from above, it drives you crazy, if even with your palms…”

- Cordovin, you bastard! She leaned over and tossed an empty cigarette pack at him. - You're just a wicked siren, Cordovin! Some kind of vulgar seducer Casanova!

“Nope,” he muttered, falling into an uncontrollable sleep. “I’m just… in love…”

All this was absolutely true. He loved women. He really loved women - their quick mind, earthly intelligence, tenacious eye for detail; never tired of repeating that if a woman is smart, then she is more dangerous than a smart man: after all, ordinary insight then also acquires emotional, truly animal sensitivity, catches - on top, by thrust- something that no logic can overcome.

He was friends with them, preferred to do business with them, considered them more reliable comrades and, in general, better people. He often assessed himself: "I am a very feminine person." He always knew how to warm and always found something to admire in each.

* * *

He woke up, as usual, at five thirty. For many years now, some zealous and inexorable angel had been setting up a wake-up call somewhere in the upper barracks, and minute by minute - no matter what dream he had, no matter what fatigue he had fallen two hours ago - at five-thirty he doomedly opened his eyes ... and , cursing, trudged into the shower.

But before that, today he again showed a tin.

It seems like he rises, with an effort tossing his torso - in these in dreams everything always happens with an irresistible series of heavy movements, - sits up on the bed, hardly opens his eyes ... And sees: on the hotel coffee table - costs. Oh you honest mother! - worth the same crumpled tin… No, he says to himself (everything follows the long-rehearsed scenario of a damned dream), “not a tin, you kind of cattle, but a Saturday silver goblet, an old family thing, although – yes, slightly crushed on the side; but that's because he fell off the truck. And Zhuk, an orphan (war, winter, evacuation), was not afraid, she climbed under the wheel herself, got it! And you, bastard, bastard and scoundrel ... went and handed over to antique buying, without batting a shameless eye. And, most importantly, now I would have read a long time ago - what was embossed there in a circle. In those years, I couldn’t, I didn’t understand outlandish squiggles, but now I could easily read it, because it must have been Hebrew?

Well, Zhu-u-ka, he groaned, as always (the scenario moves, the dream rolls downhill, or rather, painfully rolls up the mountain), - I’ve forgiven a hundred times ... I realized ... I was looking for! Why are we quarreling again, by God: here he is - standing! It stands - dark, massive, not cleaned for a long time - so that the boat is indistinguishable - on its silver skirt ...

And he pulls a pood hand, with an effort, like water, overcoming the thickness of sleep. He stretches out his hand, pulls ... finally grabs a heavy goblet, twirls it in his fingers, raises it to his eyes. And a three-masted galleon floats along three light waves, and angular letters - and now so understandable - curl around a silver skirt: "The train to Munich leaves the second platform at 22.30."

And then he just woke up. Looks like he woke up. God, how long... I'm sorry, Zhuk!

He stood for a long time under the burning lashes of water, then abruptly switched to cold water and for a minute, groaning with pleasure, rubbed himself with a hard washcloth, which he carried everywhere with him.

Then he shaved, slowly, whistling softly so as not to wake up the boa constrictor there, on the bed, ahead of time ... A nice plump boa constrictor, whose elastic rings, pulsating so sweetly, squeeze ... hmm. Still, you shouldn't let her get fat any further.

Diligently shaving off his protruding chin (in daily shaving this is the main flour - a steep, like a hard apple, chin with a hard-to-reach recess under the lower lip), he carefully examined himself in the spacious bathroom mirror.

And you're a little dry, boy... Uncle Syoma would say: crept up. In his youth, he was rather stout. Often they even took him for a boxer. Now thinned, according to the image. The nose somehow ... ossified, or something ... An aristocrat, sir, your mother.

Only a hedgehog of thick black hair (a family-resistant pigment, he casually answered compliments) and the same resin eyebrows, straight and almost fused over deep-set gray eyes, were the same. And then there are those vertical lines at the corners of his mouth, which always gave his face an expression of childish friendliness, an eternal readiness to stretch his lips in a smile: I love you my big good world… Yes, this is our trump card. Maybe this is your only trump card, huh, boy?

When he tiptoed out of the bathroom to get a shirt and a suit out of the suitcase, it turned out that Irina woke up too - damn it, how inappropriate her lark nature! - and lies in his cocoon, shaggy, in a disgusting mood and full of combat readiness.

“You run cowardly,” she said, watching him carefully and mockingly as he dressed.

"Yeah," he smiled broadly at her. - I'm terribly afraid! In general, I am very afraid of you and servilely curry favor. Look at these cufflinks. Do you recognize? I love them, I demonstrate to everyone: "a gift from a beloved woman."

- Beloved woman. Yes, you have a hundred of them in each city.

- One hundred?! Why so many, oh my god! “Who needs it, and who can stand it,” said my uncle Syoma from Vinnitsa ...

- What a bastard you are, Cordovin! We decided that now we will always travel together.

Here she is in vain. Vile communal articulation - "we" ... Lifetime mooing, soap making love soap… Not a good symptom. Is it really necessary to transform her from a lover into a friend? It's a pity, it's good with her, with Irina. In fact, with her over these three years has developed ideal life, without any vile "we" ... "us" ... Helps us, baby, to build and live it is our lonely sensitivity, wolfish flair, the fluttering of the wings of the nose in anticipation of the track taken. What kind of "we" is there?

“Don’t make me take off my pants again, master-ah-ah-ka,” he said stupidly and plaintively, “it’s getting cold in the-a-day!” Look, I'm already in the harness.

And yet he went to the bed, lay down - right in the suit - next to her, sleepy, unhappy, felt and ruthlessly pulled her bare hand out of the blanket bundle, began to kiss, rising from her fingers to her shoulder: in detail, to the point, by a centimeter, sentencing something playfully doctoral.

His rule was: no diminutives. All only full, sonorous beautiful names. Woman's name sacred, to reduce it is blasphemy, akin to blasphemy.

And she softened, laughed at the tickling, pressed her bare shoulder to her ear.

- You smell delicious: jasmine ... green tea ... What kind of cologne is this?

- Lexitan. In "duty-free" foisted, in Boston. There the saleswoman was so diligent, she worked conscientiously. “Old company, old company ... bottles self made". Bought to get away. He sat up in bed and glanced at his watch. - Listen, my joy, seriously: do not be upset. Well, what's the fun of hanging around at a university conference with the dreary title "El Greco: un hombre que no se traiciono a si mismo"?

- What does it mean?

- Who cares? It means "El Greco: the man who did not betray himself." Pointless topic, another pointless conference. Toledo, in general, is a gloomy city, and even in rainy April ... By God, it's better to sunbathe here. You still need to throw some dough on these baths of ... well, seaweed? "Madame is on vacation, madam has the right."

It was one of their favorite phrases, of which a lot had accumulated over the course of three years: a remark from the seller of an expensive store in Sorrento, where Irina was trying not to let “dreadful money go into her purse”.

She laughed and said:

- Okay, get out. When is your plane?

He looked openly and anxiously at his watch now.

– Oh-oh… run-run! And then do not have time.

He jumped up, grabbed a jacket, a suitcase, turned around in the doorway - to smack the air in the direction of the bed. But Irina is already tightly packed again, only the disheveled top of her head sticks out of the blanket. You are my poor, abandoned…

He quietly closed the door behind him.

Having descended the stairs to one floor, he stopped, listened to the silence of the still sleeping hotel: somewhere below, by the pool, the cleaners were talking loudly and serenely, heavily dragging rings of rubber hoses through the wet concrete. Leaning back against the door, he opened the zipper of the suitcase and pulled out two things: a knitted blue glove on right hand- strange, with slits for fingertips - and his so far sinless automatic Glock.

However, why so immediately ... strain. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket, pulled on his glove, wiggling his fingers like a pianist before the first bravura passage, then took out his cell phone and dialed a number.

- Vladimir Igorevich Didn't wake up?

In response, a grateful wave rolled:

- Zakhar Mironovich, dear! Hello! It's great that they didn't let you down. And I'm six on my feet and I can't find a place for myself. So when is it convenient for you? I'm in number four hundred and two.

“Well, great,” he said. - I'll be in in a minute.

And the pistol dived again into the toothy slit of the suitcase zipper: such excited respectful gratitude as sounded in the voice of the client is difficult to imitate. And he had the sharpest, bestial hearing and an eye for shades and intonation.

And it was true: Vladimir Igorevich, polished to a shine, his belly quivering, was waiting for him in the open door of the apartment. I wonder what cherished paths he makes his way with a daily razor among all his warts? And why won't he grow a beard - or in the unspoken code of these new cruses a beard, as concealment, is a sign of a secret intent?

- Not over the threshold! exclaimed the fat man, stepping back and holding his hand ready with his spatula.

According to some roundabout information, the newly minted collector owns some factories in Chelyabinsk. Or mines? And not in Chelyabinsk, but in Chukotka? God knows, it doesn't matter. Bless the Archangel Gabriel to all who invest in a piece of canvas smeared with casein glue and covered with oil paints.

Indeed, he waited and was agitated: in the open door of the bedroom one could see a neatly made bed like a soldier.

The picture, a canvas stretched on a stretcher, was waiting in the wings, turned to face the back of the sofa.

How touching these amateur collectors are. They all tremble before that first moment when the x-ray eyes of the expert pierce the picture. It also happens that they throw a white sheet on a sofa or chair, where they put a picture, in order to protect precious eyesight connoisseur from annoying color surroundings. Color antiseptics of the operating room or children's play Close your eyes tight, you'll open them when I say!

In that case, dear Vladimir Igorevich, you will now hear a short lecture about the insignificance and ephemeral nature of this very connoisseurship.

He lowered the suitcase to the floor, tossing his jacket over it.

- Is it okay that I hold out my left hand? he asked, awkwardly shaking (he should have twisted and stretched his hand from behind his back) the collector's plump paw and smiling one of his most open smiles. “Many years of arthritis, I beg your pardon. From pain, it happens, I scream like a woman.

- Yes you! - the fat man was upset. – Have you tried Golden Mustache? My wife is very commendable.

- What I haven’t tried, let’s not talk about it. Did you just arrive yesterday?

- Of course! As soon as you said that you were leaving today and that this was the only opportunity to catch you, I immediately ordered a number and, like that tenor in the opera, “a little light is at your feet!”

Where did he hear such an opera, I wonder. Maybe in your Chelyabinsk? No, dear, God forbid you lie at my feet ...

There was a bottle of Courvosier and two glasses of cognac on the coffee table, but it was clear that the poor fellow was already exhausted: he did not offer to sit down or drink. This is passion, I understand ...

"Well, let's get started," said Cordovin. “I don’t really have much time.

“Only one word,” Vladimir Igorevich said, rubbing his palms nervously, as if screwing one into the other. - This is necessary ... You, Zakhar Mironovich, have to deal with a variety of people - now even an outright redneck knows what to invest in. And I can imagine your disgust for such forced acquaintances as ours. Don't mind, I know! But, you see, Zakhar Mironovich… my collecting age is really infancy – before it was not possible to collect art, where does an ordinary Soviet engineer-inventor get money from? But I am a lover of painting with experience, from my youth. I remember you rushing to Moscow, on a business trip for three days, a suitcase to a hotel - and you yourself trot to Pushkinsky, to the Tretyakov Gallery ... It's embarrassing to admit, I myself play a little with paints ... Well, I read a lot of things. I also found your book "The Fates of Russian Art Abroad" on the Internet and read it. I would be happy to invite you to my place.

Dedicated to Bora

“There is not a single person on earth who can say who he is. No one knows why he came to this world, what his actions, his feelings and thoughts mean, and what is his true name, his everlasting Name in the list of Light ... "
Leon Blois
Soul of Napoleon

Part one

Chapter first

Before leaving, he nevertheless decided to call his aunt. In general, he was always the first to go to reconciliation. The main thing here was not to fawn, not to lisp, but to hold on, as if there were no quarrels - so, nonsense, a slight quarrel.
- Well, - he asked - what do you bring - castanuelas?
- Go to hell! she said. But there was some satisfaction in the voice, that - he called, he called after all, he didn’t rush off there with his wings crackling.
- Then the fan, huh, Beetle? he said, smiling into the phone and imagining her hawk-nosed patrician face in a halo of blue haze. - We will stick a fly on your cheek, and you will go out onto the balcony of your almshouse to fan yourself like some kind of maha, vigorous root.
- I don't want anything from you! she said obstinately.
- Vaughn how. He himself was meek as a dove. - Well, okay ... Then I'll bring you a Spanish broom.
- What is Spanish? she muttered. And got caught.
- And what else does your sister fly there? he exclaimed, jubilant, as in childhood, when you fool a dupe and jump around with a cry: “Oh-ma-well, are you a fool-ka on che-you-re ku-la-ka!”.
She hung up, but it was no longer a quarrel, but like this, a thunderstorm in early May, and it was possible to leave with a light heart, especially since the day before the quarrel he went to the market and filled his aunt's refrigerator to capacity.

It only remained to round off one more case, the plot of which he built and developed (vignettes of details, arabesques of details) - for three years now.
And tomorrow, finally, in the morning dawn, against the backdrop of turquoise scenery, from the foam of the sea (medical-resort foam, we note, foam), a new Venus will be born with his personal signature: the last wave of the conductor, the pathetic chord in the finale of the symphony.
Slowly, he packed his favorite soft suitcase made of olive skin, small, but torquey, like a soldier’s knapsack: you will tamp it down to failure, just, as Uncle Syo-ma said, I can’t - look, but the second shoe still fit.
When preparing for a trip, he always thought carefully about his outfit. He hesitated over the shirts, replaced the cream ones with blue ones, pulled out a dark blue silk one from a bunch of ties in the closet ... Yes: and cufflinks, but of course. Those that Irina gave. And those others that Margo gave are a must: she is quick-witted.
Here you go. Now the expert is adequately dressed for all five days of the Spanish project.
For some reason, the word "expert", uttered to himself, made him laugh so much that he burst out laughing, even fell face down on the couch, next to the open suitcase, and for two minutes laughed loudly, with pleasure - he always laughed most contagiously when alone with yourself.
Continuing to laugh, he rolled over to the edge of the ottoman, leaned over, pulled out the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and, rummaging among the wrinkled shorts and socks, pulled out a pistol.
It was a comfortable, simple design "glock" of the Colt system, with an automatic blocking of the striker, with a slight smooth rollback. In addition, with the help of a hairpin or a nail, it could be disassembled in one minute.

Let's hope, my friend, that tomorrow you will sleep through the whole important meeting in your suitcase.

Late in the evening he left Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.
I didn’t like to drive down these loops in the dark, but recently the road was widened, partly illuminated, and the camel humps of the hills that used to squeeze you from both sides, pushing you into the desert funnel, seemed to reluctantly part ...
But beyond the crossroads, where after the gas station the road turns and runs along the sea, the lighting ended, and the disastrous darkness swollen with salt - the kind that only happens by the sea, by this sea - piled up again, hitting in the face with sudden headlights of oncoming machines.

Dina Rubina

white dove Cordoba

Dedicated to Bora

“There is not a single person on earth who can say who he is. No one knows why he came to this world, what his actions, his feelings and thoughts mean, and what is his true name, his everlasting Name in the list of Light ... "

Leon BlueSoul of Napoleon

Part one

Chapter first

Before leaving, he nevertheless decided to call his aunt. In general, he was always the first to reconcile. The main thing here was not to fawn, not to lisp, but to hold on, as if there were no quarrels - so, nonsense, a slight quarrel.

- Well, - he asked, - what do you bring - castanuelas?

- Then the fan, huh, Zhuk? - he said, smiling into the phone and imagining her patrician hook-nosed face in a halo of blue haze. “We’ll stick a fly on your cheek, and you’ll go out onto the balcony of your almshouse to fan yourself like some kind of fly, vigorous root.

"I don't want anything from you!" she said obstinately.

- Bona how. He himself was meek as a dove. - Well, okay ... Then I'll bring you a Spanish broom.

- What is Spanish? she muttered. And got caught.

- And what else does your sister fly there? he exclaimed, jubilant, as in childhood, when you fool a dupe and jump around yelling: “Oh-ma-well-are you a fool-ka on th-you-re ku-la-ka!”.

She hung up, but it was no longer a quarrel, but like this, a thunderstorm in early May, and it was possible to leave with a light heart, especially since the day before the quarrel he went to the market and filled his aunt's refrigerator to capacity.

* * *

All that remained was round off one more thing plot which he built and developed (vignettes of details, arabesques of details) - for three years now.

And tomorrow, finally, at dawn, against the backdrop of turquoise scenery, from sea foam (medical resort, note, foam), will be born new Venus with his personal signature: the last wave of the conductor, the pathetic chord in the finale of the symphony.

Slowly, he packed his favorite soft olive-skin suitcase, small but responsive, like a soldier’s knapsack: you can tamp it down to failure, by the most As Uncle Sam used to say, I can not, - lo and behold, the second shoe still fit in.

When preparing for a trip, he always thought carefully about his outfit. He hesitated over the shirts, replaced the cream ones with blue ones, pulled out a dark blue silk one from the bunch of ties in the closet ... Yes: and cufflinks, but of course. Those that Irina gave. And those others that Margo gave are a must: she is quick-witted.

Here you go. Now expert dressed appropriately for all five days Spanish project.

For some reason, the word "expert", uttered to himself, made him laugh so much that he laughed, even fell face down on the couch, next to the open suitcase, and for two minutes he laughed loudly, with pleasure - he always laughed most contagiously when he was alone.

Continuing to laugh, he rolled over to the edge of the couch, leaned over, pulled out the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and, rummaging through the wrinkled shorts and socks, pulled out a pistol.

It was a comfortable, simple Colt glock design, with an automatic hammer lock, with a slight smooth rollback. In addition, with the help of a hairpin or a nail, it could be disassembled in one minute.

Let's hope, my friend, that tomorrow you will sleep through the whole important meeting in your suitcase.

Late in the evening he left Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

I didn’t like to drive down these loops in the dark, but recently the road was widened, partly lit up, and the camel humps of the hills that used to squeeze you from both sides, pushing you into the desert funnel, seemed to be reluctantly parted ...

But beyond the crossroads, where after the gas station the road turns and runs along the sea, the lighting is over, and the salt-swollen disastrous darkness - the one that only happens by the sea, this the sea, - it fell again, hitting in the face with the sudden headlights of oncoming cars. On the right, the black rocks of Qumran were gloomily piled up, on the left, a black, with a sudden glimpse of the salt surface, behind which the Jordanian coast was tearing with distant lights, was guessed ...

Forty minutes later, a festive constellation of lights soared up and scattered from the darkness below: Ein Bokek, with its hotels, clinics, restaurants and shops, is the shelter of a wealthy tourist, including a poor Chukhonian. And further along the coast, at some distance from the resort village, lonely and majestically spread its white, brightly lit decks in the night, the giant Nirvana Hotel - in the five hundred and thirteenth room of which Irina, most likely, was already asleep.

Of all his women, she was the only one who, like him, give her free rein, would fit in with cocks and get up with them. Which turned out to be inconvenient: he did not like to share his dawn hours with anyone, he kept a reserve of springy morning strength when a huge day was ahead, and his eyes were sharp and fresh, and his fingertips were sensitive, like a pianist’s, and his head was excellent, and everything succeeds in the smoking haze over the first cup of coffee.

For the sake of these precious dawn hours, he often left Irina late at night.

Having entered the parking lot of the hotel, I parked, took out a suitcase from the trunk and, slowly, prolonging the last moments of loneliness, headed for the huge carousel blades of the main entrance.

- Are you sleeping? - jokingly barked at the Ethiopian guard - And I brought the bomb.

He started up, glared with the whites of his eyes and incredulously stretched the white harmonica of a smile in the dark:

- Yes, la-a-bottom ...

They knew each other by sight. In this hotel, crowded and stupid, like a city standing aside from a resort village, he liked to arrange business meetings, the last, final ones: the very final chord of the symphony, to which interested person you still have to saw along a not weak road, between rocky teeth hanging over the sea, tightened with braces and a gigantic dentist's mesh.

And rightly so: as Uncle Syoma said - you don't sink, you don't burst.(However, the uncle himself stomp I wouldn't be able to with my orthopedic boot.)

Here it is, number five hundred and thirteen. Silent brief intercourse of the keyhole with an electronic key obtained from the dazed attendant: you see, I don’t want to wake my wife, the poor woman suffers from migraines and goes to bed early ...

He never had any wife.

She did not suffer from any migraines.

And he was going to wake her up immediately.

Irina slept as usual - blankets wrapped in a cocoon, like white cheese in a Druze pita.

© D. Rubina, 2015

© Publishing House E, 2016

* * *

Part one

Chapter first

1

Before leaving, he nevertheless decided to call his aunt. In general, he was always the first to reconcile. The main thing here was not to fawn, not to lisp, but to hold on, as if there were no quarrels - so, nonsense, a slight quarrel.

- Well, - he asked, - what do you bring - castanuelas?

- Then the fan, huh, Zhuk? - he said, smiling into the phone and imagining her patrician hook-nosed face in a halo of blue haze. “We’ll stick a fly on your cheek, and you’ll go out onto the balcony of your almshouse to fan yourself like some kind of fly, vigorous root.

"I don't want anything from you!" she said obstinately.

- Wow, how. He himself was meek as a dove. - Well, okay ... Then I'll bring you a Spanish broom.

- What is Spanish? she muttered. And got caught.

- And what else does your sister fly there? he exclaimed, jubilant, as in childhood when you fool a dupe and jump around yelling: “Oh-ma-well-do you do-ra-ka on che-you-re koo-la-ka!”

She hung up, but it was no longer a quarrel, but like this, a thunderstorm in early May, and it was possible to leave with a light heart, especially since the day before the quarrel he went to the market and filled his aunt's refrigerator to capacity.

* * *

All that remained was round off one more thing plot which he built and developed (vignettes of details, arabesques of details) - for three years now.

And tomorrow, finally, at dawn, against the backdrop of turquoise scenery, from sea foam ( medical resort, note, foam), will be born new Venus with his personal signature: the last wave of the conductor, the pathetic chord in the finale of the symphony.

Slowly, he packed his favorite soft olive-skin suitcase, small but responsive, like a soldier’s knapsack: you can tamp it down to failure, by the most as Uncle Sam said, I can not, - look, but the second shoe still got in.

When preparing for a trip, he always thought carefully about his outfit. He hesitated over the shirts, replaced the cream ones with blue ones, pulled out a dark blue silk one from the bunch of ties in the closet ... Yes: and cufflinks, but of course. Those that Irina gave. And those others that Margo gave are a must: she is quick-witted.

Here you go. Now expert dressed appropriately for all five days Spanish project.

For some reason, the word "expert", uttered to himself, made him laugh so much that he laughed, even fell face down on the couch, next to the open suitcase, and for two minutes he laughed loudly, with pleasure - he always laughed most contagiously when he was alone.

Continuing to laugh, he rolled over to the edge of the couch, leaned over, pulled out the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and, rummaging through the wrinkled shorts and socks, pulled out a pistol.

It was a comfortable, simple Colt glock design, with an automatic hammer lock, with a slight smooth rollback. In addition, with the help of a hairpin or a nail, it could be disassembled in one minute.

Let's hope, buddy, that tomorrow you will sleep through the entire important meeting in your suitcase..

Late in the evening he left Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

I didn’t like to drive down these loops in the dark, but recently the road was widened, partly lit up, and the camel humps of the hills that used to squeeze you from both sides, pushing you into the desert funnel, seemed to be reluctantly parted ...

But beyond the crossroads, where after the gas station the road turns and runs along the sea, the lighting is over, and the salt-swollen disastrous darkness - the one that only happens by the sea, this the sea, - it fell again, hitting in the face with the sudden headlights of oncoming cars. On the right, the black rocks of Qumran were gloomily piled up, on the left, a black, with a sudden glimpse of the salt surface, behind which the Jordanian coast was tearing with distant lights, was guessed ...

Forty minutes later, a festive constellation of lights soared up and scattered out of the darkness below: Ein Bokek, with its hotels, clinics, restaurants and shops, is the shelter of a wealthy tourist, including a poor Chukhonian. And further along the shore, at some distance from the resort village, the gigantic Nirvana Hotel, in the five hundred and thirteenth room of which, most likely, Irina had already slept, spread its white, brightly lit decks lonely and majestically in the night.

Of all his women, she was the only one who, like him, give her free rein, would fit in with cocks and get up with them. Which turned out to be inconvenient: he did not like to share his dawn hours with anyone, he kept a reserve of springy morning strength when a huge day was ahead, and his eyes were sharp and fresh, and his fingertips were sensitive, like a pianist’s, and his head was excellent, and everything succeeds in the smoking haze over the first cup of coffee.

For the sake of these precious dawn hours, he often left Irina late at night.

Having entered the parking lot of the hotel, I parked, took out a suitcase from the trunk and, slowly, prolonging the last moments of loneliness, headed for the huge carousel blades of the main entrance.

- Are you sleeping? he barked jokingly at the Ethiopian guard. - I brought the bomb.

He started up, glared with the whites of his eyes and incredulously stretched the white harmonica of a smile in the dark:

- Yes, la-a-bottom ...

They knew each other by sight. In this hotel, crowded and stupid, like a city standing aside from a resort village, he liked to arrange business meetings, the last, final ones: the very final chord of the symphony, to which interested person you still have to saw along a not weak road, between rocky teeth hanging over the sea, tightened with braces and a gigantic dentist's mesh.

And rightly so: as Uncle Syoma said - don't drown, don't burst. (However, the uncle himself stomp I wouldn't be able to with my orthopedic boot.)

Here it is, number five hundred and thirteen. Silent brief intercourse of the keyhole with an electronic key obtained from the dazed attendant: you see, I don’t want to wake my wife, the poor woman suffers from migraines and goes to bed early ...

He never had any wife.

She did not suffer from any migraines.

And he was going to wake her up immediately.

Irina slept as usual - blankets wrapped in a cocoon, like white cheese in a Druze pita.

It will always pack, bury itself, and even tuck it under its sides - at least hire archaeologists.

Throwing his suitcase and jacket on the floor, he pulled off his sweater as he went, kicked off his sneakers, toe-to-toe, and collapsed next to her on the bed, still in jeans, the lock stuck on a bumpy break in the zipper, and his T-shirt.

Irina woke up, and they fidgeted at the same time, trying to free themselves from the blanket, from their clothes, mooing into each other's faces:

- ... you promised, shameless, promised ...

- ... and I will keep my promise, you man in a case!

- ... well, what are you, like a wild one, pounced! wait...wait a minute...

– …I’m already standing, don’t you hear it?

“…fu, impudent…well, give me at least…”

- ... who doesn’t give you ... here you are, and here ... and here ... and ... oh-oh-oh-oh ...

... In the open door of the balcony, in solidarity with him in rhythm, the lemon moon either soared over the railing with its pop-eyed shameless "bravo!" - then increasing, then reducing the scope of take-off and fall. But then she froze at a dizzying height, balancing, as if for the last time surveying the heavenly district ... and suddenly she broke and rushed, accelerating and accelerating her pace, almost suffocating in this race, until she groaned, thrashed, shuddered liberatedly, and - not subsided, hanging in exhaustion somewhere in the backyards of heaven ...

... Then Irina splashed in the shower, now and then switching the hot jet to the cold (now she will come to bed - wet, like a drowned man, and let's warm her until she turns blue), - and he tried to follow the microscopic movements of the pale puffy luminary in the window, his recent partner in svalny sin.

Finally he got up and went out onto the balcony.

The gigantic hotel fell into a numb sleep on the edge of a shimmering salt lake. Below, surrounded by palm trees, the polished lid of a piano lay a pool in which a brittle yellow moon was jumping. Three dozen meters from the pool stretched the beach with arthropod pyramids of plastic sunbeds and chairs collected for the night.

The cold shimmer of salt in the distance communicated to the motionless night an icy silence, something New Year's - like the expectation of miracles and gifts.

Well, it won't be about gifts.

- Are you crazy: naked - on the balcony? - I heard a cheerful voice behind me. - Do you have elementary shame? People around...

Sometimes it would not be like to turn it off, but slightly reduce the sound.

He closed the balcony door, drew the curtain, and turned on the table lamp.

“You have recovered…” he said thoughtfully, falling on the bed and looking at Irina in an open terry robe. - I like it. You look like Dina Verney now.

– What-o-o?! What is this woman?

- Maillol's model. Take off that idiotic robe, uh... and turn your back. Yes: the same proportions. With a thin back, a strong expressive line of the hips. And the shoulder now so smoothly rises into the neck ... Ay-yay, what a nature! It is a pity that I did not take a pencil in my hands for a hundred years.

She grunted, flopped into the deep armchair next to the bed, and reached for her pack of cigarettes.

- Well, come on, go ahead ... Tell me something else about me.

- Oh please! You see, when a woman puts on a little weight, her breasts become softer, more generous… smiling. And skin color changes. A delicate layer of subcutaneous fat gives the body a more noble, pearlescent shade. There is such ... mmm ... transparency of glazes, you understand?

He was no longer averse to taking a nap before dawn for at least an hour and a half. But Irina lit a cigarette and was cheerful and assertive. That look again will require a sacred sacrifice. The main thing is not to start sorting out the relationship.

“And besides, you know…” he continued, yawning and turning on his side, “that measured swaying of the hips, the view from behind and from above, it drives you crazy, if even with your palms…”

- Cordovin, you bastard! She leaned over and tossed an empty cigarette pack at him. - You're just a wicked siren, Cordovin! Some kind of vulgar seducer Casanova!

“Nope,” he muttered, falling into an uncontrollable sleep. “I’m just… in love…”

All this was absolutely true. He loved women. He really loved women - their quick mind, earthly intelligence, tenacious eye for detail; never tired of repeating that if a woman is smart, then she is more dangerous than a smart man: after all, ordinary insight then also acquires emotional, truly animal sensitivity, catches - on top, by thrust- something that no logic can overcome.

He was friends with them, preferred to do business with them, considered them more reliable comrades and, in general, better people. He often assessed himself: "I am a very feminine person." He always knew how to warm and always found something to admire in each.

* * *

He woke up, as usual, at five thirty. For many years now, some zealous and inexorable angel had been setting up a wake-up call somewhere in the upper barracks, and minute by minute - no matter what dream he had, no matter what fatigue he had fallen two hours ago - at five-thirty he doomedly opened his eyes ... and , cursing, trudged into the shower.

But before that, today he again showed a tin.

It seems like he rises, with an effort tossing his torso - in these in dreams everything always happens with an irresistible series of heavy movements, - sits up on the bed, hardly opens his eyes ... And sees: on the hotel coffee table - costs. Oh you honest mother! - worth the same crumpled tin… No, he says to himself (everything follows the long-rehearsed scenario of a damned dream), “not a tin, you kind of cattle, but a Saturday silver goblet, an old family thing, although – yes, slightly crushed on the side; but that's because he fell off the truck. And Zhuk, an orphan (war, winter, evacuation), was not afraid, she climbed under the wheel herself, got it! And you, bastard, bastard and scoundrel ... went and handed over to antique buying, without batting a shameless eye. And, most importantly, now I would have read a long time ago - what was embossed there in a circle. In those years, I couldn’t, I didn’t understand outlandish squiggles, but now I could easily read it, because it must have been Hebrew?

Well, Zhu-u-ka, he groaned, as always (the scenario moves, the dream rolls downhill, or rather, painfully rolls up the mountain), - I’ve forgiven a hundred times ... I realized ... I was looking for! Why are we quarreling again, by God: here he is - standing! It stands - dark, massive, not cleaned for a long time - so that the boat is indistinguishable - on its silver skirt ...

And he pulls a pood hand, with an effort, like water, overcoming the thickness of sleep. He stretches out his hand, pulls ... finally grabs a heavy goblet, twirls it in his fingers, raises it to his eyes. And a three-masted galleon floats along three light waves, and angular letters - and now so understandable - curl around a silver skirt: "The train to Munich leaves the second platform at 22.30."

And then he just woke up. Looks like he woke up. God, how long... I'm sorry, Zhuk!

He stood for a long time under the burning lashes of water, then abruptly switched to cold water and for a minute, groaning with pleasure, rubbed himself with a hard washcloth, which he carried everywhere with him.

Then he shaved, slowly, whistling softly so as not to wake up the boa constrictor there, on the bed, ahead of time ... A nice plump boa constrictor, whose elastic rings, pulsating so sweetly, squeeze ... hmm. Still, you shouldn't let her get fat any further.

Diligently shaving off his protruding chin (in daily shaving this is the main torment - a chin as hard as a hard apple with a hard-to-reach notch under the lower lip), he carefully examined himself in the spacious bathroom mirror.

And you're a little dry, boy... Uncle Syoma would say: crept up. In his youth, he was rather stout. Often they even took him for a boxer. Now thinned, according to the image. The nose somehow ... ossified, or something ... An aristocrat, sir, your mother.

Only the crew cut of thick black hair (a family stable pigment, he casually answered compliments) and the same resin eyebrows, straight and almost fused over deep-set gray eyes, were the same. And then there are those vertical lines at the corners of his mouth, which always gave his face an expression of childish friendliness, an eternal readiness to stretch his lips in a smile: I love you my big good world… Yes, this is our trump card. Maybe this is your only trump card, huh, boy?

When he tiptoed out of the bathroom to get a shirt and a suit out of the suitcase, it turned out that Irina woke up too - damn it, how inappropriate her lark nature! - and lies in his cocoon, shaggy, in a disgusting mood and full of combat readiness.

“You run cowardly,” she said, watching him carefully and mockingly as he dressed.

"Yeah," he smiled broadly at her. - I'm terribly afraid! In general, I am very afraid of you and servilely curry favor. Look at these cufflinks. Do you recognize? I love them, I demonstrate to everyone: "a gift from a beloved woman."

- Beloved woman. Yes, you have a hundred of them in each city.

- One hundred?! Why so many, oh my god! “Who needs it, and who can stand it,” said my uncle Syoma from Vinnitsa ...

- What a bastard you are, Cordovin! We decided that now we will always travel together.

Here she is in vain. Vile communal articulation - "we" ... Lifetime mooing, soap making love soap… Not a good symptom. Is it really necessary to transform her from a lover into a friend? It's a pity, it's good with her, with Irina. In fact, during these three years, an ideal life has developed with her, without any vile “we” ... “us” ... Helps us, baby, to build and live it is our lonely sensitivity, wolfish flair, the fluttering of the wings of the nose in anticipation of the track taken. What kind of "we" is there?

“Don’t make me take off my pants again, master-ah-ah-ka,” he said stupidly and plaintively, “it’s getting cold in the-a-day!” Look, I'm already in the harness.

And yet he went to the bed, lay down - right in the suit - next to her, sleepy, unhappy, felt and ruthlessly pulled her bare hand out of the blanket bundle, began to kiss, rising from her fingers to her shoulder: in detail, to the point, by a centimeter, sentencing something playfully doctoral.

His rule was: no diminutives. All only full, sonorous beautiful names. The female name is sacred, to cut it is blasphemy, akin to blasphemy.

And she softened, laughed at the tickling, pressed her bare shoulder to her ear.

- You smell delicious: jasmine ... green tea ... What kind of cologne is this?

- Lexitan. In "duty-free" foisted, in Boston. There the saleswoman was so diligent, she worked conscientiously. "An old firm, an old firm ... handmade bottles." Bought to get away. He sat up in bed and glanced at his watch. - Listen, my joy, seriously: do not be upset. Well, what's the fun of hanging around at a university conference with the dreary title "El Greco: un hombre que no se traiciono a si mismo"?

- What does it mean?

- Who cares? It means "El Greco: the man who did not betray himself." Pointless topic, another pointless conference. Toledo, in general, is a gloomy city, and even in rainy April ... By God, it's better to sunbathe here. You still need to throw some dough on these baths of ... well, seaweed? "Madame is on vacation, madam has the right."

It was one of their favorite phrases, of which a lot had accumulated over the course of three years: a remark from the seller of an expensive store in Sorrento, where Irina was trying not to let “dreadful money go into her purse”.

She laughed and said:

- Okay, get out. When is your plane?

He looked openly and anxiously at his watch now.

– Oh-oh… run-run! And then do not have time.

He jumped up, grabbed a jacket, a suitcase, turned around in the doorway - to smack the air in the direction of the bed. But Irina is already tightly packed again, only the disheveled top of her head sticks out of the blanket. You are my poor, abandoned…

He quietly closed the door behind him.

Having descended the stairs to one floor, he stopped, listened to the silence of the still sleeping hotel: somewhere below, by the pool, the cleaners were talking loudly and serenely, heavily dragging rings of rubber hoses through the wet concrete. Leaning back against the door, he opened the zipper of the suitcase and pulled out two things: a knitted blue glove on his right hand—strange, with slits for the pads of his fingers—and his so far sinless automatic Glock.

However, why so immediately ... strain. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket, pulled on his glove, wiggling his fingers like a pianist before the first bravura passage, then took out his cell phone and dialed a number.

- Vladimir Igorevich Didn't wake up?

In response, a grateful wave rolled:

- Zakhar Mironovich, dear! Hello! It's great that they didn't let you down. And I'm six on my feet and I can't find a place for myself. So when is it convenient for you? I'm in number four hundred and two.

“Well, great,” he said. - I'll be in in a minute.

And the pistol dived again into the toothy slit of the suitcase zipper: such excited respectful gratitude as sounded in the voice of the client is difficult to imitate. And he had the sharpest, bestial hearing and an eye for shades and intonation.

And it was true: Vladimir Igorevich, polished to a shine, his belly quivering, was waiting for him in the open door of the apartment. I wonder what cherished paths he makes his way with a daily razor among all his warts? And why won't he grow a beard - or in the unspoken code of these new cruses a beard, as concealment, is a sign of a secret intent?

- Not over the threshold! exclaimed the fat man, stepping back and holding his hand ready with his spatula.

According to some roundabout information, the newly minted collector owns some factories in Chelyabinsk. Or mines? And not in Chelyabinsk, but in Chukotka? God knows, it doesn't matter. Bless the Archangel Gabriel to all who invest in a piece of canvas smeared with casein glue and covered with oil paints.

Indeed, he waited and was agitated: in the open door of the bedroom one could see a neatly made bed like a soldier.

The picture, a canvas stretched on a stretcher, was waiting in the wings, turned to face the back of the sofa.

How touching these amateur collectors are. They all tremble before that first moment when the x-ray eyes of the expert pierce the picture. It also happens that they throw a white sheet on a sofa or chair, where they put a picture, in order to protect precious eyesight connoisseur from annoying color surroundings. Color antiseptics of the operating room or children's play Close your eyes tight, you'll open them when I say!

In that case, dear Vladimir Igorevich, you will now hear a short lecture about the insignificance and ephemeral nature of this very connoisseurship.

He lowered the suitcase to the floor, tossing his jacket over it.

- Is it okay that I hold out my left hand? he asked, awkwardly shaking (he should have twisted and stretched his hand from behind his back) the collector's plump paw and smiling one of his most open smiles. “Many years of arthritis, I beg your pardon. From pain, it happens, I scream like a woman.

- Yes you! - the fat man was upset. – Have you tried Golden Mustache? My wife is very commendable.

- What I haven’t tried, let’s not talk about it. Did you just arrive yesterday?

- Of course! As soon as you said that you were leaving today and that this was the only opportunity to catch you, I immediately ordered a number and, like that tenor in the opera, “a little light is at your feet!”

Where did he hear such an opera, I wonder. Maybe in your Chelyabinsk? No, dear, God forbid you lie at my feet ...

There was a bottle of Courvosier and two glasses of cognac on the coffee table, but it was clear that the poor fellow was already exhausted: he did not offer to sit down or drink. This is passion, I understand ...

"Well, let's get started," said Cordovin. “I don’t really have much time.

“Only one word,” Vladimir Igorevich said, rubbing his palms nervously, as if screwing one into the other. - This is necessary ... You, Zakhar Mironovich, have to deal with a variety of people - now even an outright redneck knows what to invest in. And I can imagine your disgust for such forced acquaintances as ours. Don't mind, I know! But, you see, Zakhar Mironovich… my collecting age is really infancy – before it was not possible to collect art, where does an ordinary Soviet engineer-inventor get money from? But I am a lover of painting with experience, from my youth. I remember you rushing to Moscow, on a business trip for three days, a suitcase to a hotel - and you yourself trot to Pushkinsky, to the Tretyakov Gallery ... It's embarrassing to admit, I myself play a little with paints ... Well, I read a lot of things. I also found your book "The Fates of Russian Art Abroad" on the Internet and read it. I would be happy to invite you to my place.

- To Chelyabinsk? the expert asked curiously. He watched with close pleasure how sincerely the client tried to dissociate himself from cattle.

“Why go to Chelyabinsk,” Vladimir Igorevich chuckled. - I prefer to keep my collection here - in my Caesarea. And if today ... if Kordovin himself gives a positive conclusion about authorship ... In a word, if you now say your “yes”, this will be my third Falk. And the most excellent!

He jumped up to the sofa - with his heaviness, the fat man was not without a certain lumpy grace - and turned the picture around. And he stood nearby, as if on guard: tense, with a reddened bald head, transferring an inquisitively pleading look from the canvas to the expert. Did he forget to take his blood pressure pill today - that is the question.

Sinking into an armchair, Kordovin slowly took out his glasses from the breast pocket of his jacket, silently put them on and began to look at the canvas - from a distance.

The picture was a landscape. In the foreground is a bush, behind it one can see a gray country fence and a small section of the path along which a woman, vague at dusk, walks. In the background - the red roof of the house and a bunch of trees ...

- From the "Khotkovskaya" series? Cordovin finally spoke.

- Exactly! - Vladimir Igorevich was delighted. - That's what a specialist means! It's called: Cloudy Day. Khotkovo. And the old woman-owner remembers this name. Imagine: I forgot the name of the author, but, she says, she remembered the title all the years, like poems!

- This happens. He sighed. - And what about provenance?

“In my opinion, everything is impeccable,” the collector replied, revealing a pleasant familiarity with the terminology subject. - There is a written confirmation of the hostess. The old woman is the widow of an Israeli lawyer middle class and his second wife. She remembers the picture on the wall all twenty-five years of marriage, says that her husband took it out of Moscow in 1956.

- Bought? Presented? Details?

– Unfortunately, nothing. The poor thing has a blooming Alzheimer's. He waved his hand. - And for me, it’s even better: at least everything looks family-natural. And what is valuable - at a decent distance from the Russian market, with its dense fakes.

This is right. As for the Russian market, you are right on target, dear. And the old widows - why are they especially valuable? Poor eyesight and a blooming Alzheimer's: they don't remember a damn thing, except for the events of this morning.

(Instantly before my eyes there arose that last meeting, which stretched out all the veins, when the old woman, smoothing the palm received from him a piece of green, finally deigned to write a paper: “Here, I forgot the name again ... Look, Zakharik, maybe it’s written on the back?” And he turned the canvas over and clearly dictated, diligently peering at the non-existent inscription: "Cloudy day point Khotkovo".)

- Would you like a picture? - Vladimir Igorevich eagerly rushed with his whole body - to grab, pass, support, spread and illuminate ... He wanted to circle around the picture and caress it with his hands and eyes - a completely natural, akin to falling in love, state for a true collector, which extends to a respected expert. Incidentally, history subject knows also cases of grateful kissing of hands.

“Wait a minute,” Kordovin took off his glasses and neatly folded the temples of an expensive fashionable frame - like the hands of a dead man. He hesitated... - First of all, I would like to find out this: do you, Vladimir Igorevich, need my real opinion or my signature under the conclusion?

The fat man gasped and flushed. Well… Emotional person and, it seems, a sincere lover of art, not some redneck, for nothing that he stole the plant ... or the mine after all?

- Zakhar Mironovich! Who wants to have in his collection falshak froze!

"Don't tell me," he laughed. “About eight years ago, I had to be an expert on the buyer's side. Two paintings, I remember, were offered: Mashkov and, by the way, Falk. So, a poor blind man with mature cataracts in both eyes would have determined that these two pictures were made with one hand. And no coffee breaks. The case seems to be clear. However, the "collector" tore the bit and frantically demanded a bargain. I was in an idiotic situation. Of course, in such cases, the comparison of radiographs is ideal - after all, fakers imitate, as a rule, only the visible part, the texture of the final strokes, their little hands do not reach the meaningful construction of the picture. But an x-ray implies the presence of an apparatus and a radiologist.

- So what? – Vladimir Igorevich asked with that expression on his face with which they watch the final chase in a movie thriller.

- I just silently got into the car and left - because I will never sign a conclusion for a fake. But two years later, these two twin cowboys were put up at the same respected auction, with the opinion of a more accommodating expert from Art Mode, and sold well. Very foolish. Five times more expensive, I remember ... Yes. And in the house of the captain of the legendary "Exodus" - the same, the same - I saw a huge Malevich: two by three meters, which never existed in nature. And he was extremely fond of the glorious captain. In spite of frank reviews many experts. “You see… Vladimir Igorevich,” he continued thoughtfully. - Let's face the truth. AT last years the hunt for truly valuable works of art is becoming more merciless. The power of an expert acquires some disproportionate, unjustified proportions. And although this is my profession, will you allow me to be frank with you? - It is disgusting for me now to look like a magician and a sorcerer in your eyes. I am not a wizard.

- Lord, yes I am! he threw up his hands. I understand and fully acknowledge that...

“…Now let’s take a closer look at her.”

Vladimir Igorevich rushed over and cautiously handed the picture to the expert with outstretched arms.

He silently turned it around, began to examine the stretcher and the canvas from the back ... For several minutes, the silence was broken only by the excited sniffing of a fat man, bowed in a tense half-bow, and from below, children's cries flared up, accompanied by slaps on the water, and a woman's voice sang viscously: “And I I say, you will get in the ass ... "

“You know, of course,” Kordovin finally said, “that a comprehensive examination is considered a serious one; that is, in addition to the art history conclusion, a number of technological studies are needed: x-ray photography, chemical analysis ... You can also fool around with a microscope, scribble something about pigments, binders ... Such conclusions are obtained in some reputable expert organization.

- Zakhar Mironovich! the collector pleaded. – God be with them, with organizations. I only need your opinion. You yourself, what do you think?

- No, wait. Of course, I'm in a hurry, but I value my reputation more than my time. And now I want to be extremely frank with you. You look at me as at the Lord God, Vladimir Igorevich, but, alas, I do not allocate places in paradise. The horror is that anyway no one can take full responsibility for the conclusions of the examination. You have, of course, read about loud scandal in the art of the twentieth century, when the most experienced expert, art historian Dr. Abraham Bredius, mistook Van Meegeren's forgery for the work of Vermeer? And what about the recent scandal with a painting allegedly by Shishkin, but in fact by the Dutchman Marius Kukukk, who was missed by the Tretyakov Gallery? And a certain Russian "collector" for many thousand emerald ducats bought "golimous bullshit" - by the way, this art history term was enriched by one of the dealers, who has a ten-year criminal record behind him. He decided to change the racket to selling antiques, as this business has more profit and respect.

The most tragicomic thing in our business is that sometimes the artist himself is not able to distinguish his work from a fake. When Claude Latour, the famous Parisian forger, was exposed and brought before the court, Utrillo himself found himself in an absurd position: he could not definitely answer whether the picture was made by him or forged. And Vlaminck boasted that he once painted a picture in the style of Cezanne and he recognized his authorship in it ...

“But…then how?” the collector sighed helplessly. Where is the guarantee...

- Yes, there can be no guarantee, my dear! Cordovin exclaimed angrily. - What kind of guarantee is there: museums of the world and private collections are crammed with fakes by a third, for all their chemical analyzes, x-rays, infrared and ultraviolet rays! Do you think the master fakers are dumber than us experts? Among them there are genuine virtuosos, high-class professionals... And they are well versed in the methods of examination, taking into account all the technological criteria of authenticity - even the psychology of the experts themselves!

Current page: 1 (total book has 31 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 8 pages]

Dina Rubina
White dove of Cordoba

Dedicated to Bora

“There is not a single person on earth who can say who he is. No one knows why he came to this world, what his actions, his feelings and thoughts mean, and what is his true name, his everlasting Name in the list of Light ... "

Leon Blois

Soul of Napoleon

Part one

Chapter first

1

Before leaving, he nevertheless decided to call his aunt. In general, he was always the first to reconcile. The main thing here was not to fawn, not to lisp, but to hold on, as if there were no quarrels - so, nonsense, a slight quarrel.

- Well, - he asked, - what do you bring - castanuelas?1
Castanuelas (Spanish) - castanets.

- Then the fan, huh, Zhuk? - he said, smiling into the phone and imagining her patrician hook-nosed face in a halo of blue haze. “We’ll stick a fly on your cheek, and you’ll go out onto the balcony of your almshouse to fan yourself like some kind of fly, vigorous root.

"I don't want anything from you!" she said obstinately.

- Bona how. He himself was meek as a dove. - Well, okay ... Then I'll bring you a Spanish broom.

- What is Spanish? she muttered. And got caught.

- And what else does your sister fly there? he exclaimed, jubilant, as in childhood, when you fool a dupe and jump around yelling: “Oh-ma-well-are you a fool-ka on th-you-re ku-la-ka!”.

She hung up, but it was no longer a quarrel, but like this, a thunderstorm in early May, and it was possible to leave with a light heart, especially since the day before the quarrel he went to the market and filled his aunt's refrigerator to capacity.

* * *

All that remained was round off one more thing plot which he built and developed (vignettes of details, arabesques of details) - for three years now.

And tomorrow, finally, at dawn, against the backdrop of turquoise scenery, from sea foam (medical resort, note, foam), will be born new Venus with his personal signature: the last wave of the conductor, the pathetic chord in the finale of the symphony.

Slowly, he packed his favorite soft olive-skin suitcase, small but responsive, like a soldier’s knapsack: you can tamp it down to failure, by the most As Uncle Sam used to say, I can not, - lo and behold, the second shoe still fit in.

When preparing for a trip, he always thought carefully about his outfit. He hesitated over the shirts, replaced the cream ones with blue ones, pulled out a dark blue silk one from the bunch of ties in the closet ... Yes: and cufflinks, but of course. Those that Irina gave. And those others that Margo gave are a must: she is quick-witted.

Here you go. Now expert dressed appropriately for all five days Spanish project.

For some reason, the word "expert", uttered to himself, made him laugh so much that he laughed, even fell face down on the couch, next to the open suitcase, and for two minutes he laughed loudly, with pleasure - he always laughed most contagiously when he was alone.

Continuing to laugh, he rolled over to the edge of the couch, leaned over, pulled out the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, and, rummaging through the wrinkled shorts and socks, pulled out a pistol.

It was a comfortable, simple Colt glock design, with an automatic hammer lock, with a slight smooth rollback. In addition, with the help of a hairpin or a nail, it could be disassembled in one minute.

Let's hope, my friend, that tomorrow you will sleep through the whole important meeting in your suitcase.

Late in the evening he left Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

I didn’t like to drive down these loops in the dark, but recently the road was widened, partly lit up, and the camel humps of the hills that used to squeeze you from both sides, pushing you into the desert funnel, seemed to be reluctantly parted ...

But beyond the crossroads, where after the gas station the road turns and runs along the sea, the lighting is over, and the salt-swollen disastrous darkness - the one that only happens by the sea, this the sea, - it fell again, hitting in the face with the sudden headlights of oncoming cars. On the right, the black rocks of Qumran were gloomily piled up, on the left, a black, with a sudden glimpse of the salt surface, behind which the Jordanian coast was tearing with distant lights, was guessed ...

Forty minutes later, a festive constellation of lights soared up and scattered from the darkness below: Ein Bokek, with its hotels, clinics, restaurants and shops, is the shelter of a wealthy tourist, including a poor Chukhonian. And further along the coast, at some distance from the resort village, lonely and majestically spread its white, brightly lit decks in the night, the giant Nirvana Hotel - in the five hundred and thirteenth room of which Irina, most likely, was already asleep.

Of all his women, she was the only one who, like him, give her free rein, would fit in with cocks and get up with them. Which turned out to be inconvenient: he did not like to share his dawn hours with anyone, he kept a reserve of springy morning strength when a huge day was ahead, and his eyes were sharp and fresh, and his fingertips were sensitive, like a pianist’s, and his head was excellent, and everything succeeds in the smoking haze over the first cup of coffee.

For the sake of these precious dawn hours, he often left Irina late at night.

Having entered the parking lot of the hotel, I parked, took out a suitcase from the trunk and, slowly, prolonging the last moments of loneliness, headed for the huge carousel blades of the main entrance.

- Are you sleeping? - jokingly barked at the Ethiopian guard - And I brought the bomb.

He started up, glared with the whites of his eyes and incredulously stretched the white harmonica of a smile in the dark:

- Yes, la-a-bottom ...

They knew each other by sight. In this hotel, crowded and stupid, like a city standing aside from a resort village, he liked to arrange business meetings, the last, final ones: the very final chord of the symphony, to which interested person you still have to saw along a not weak road, between rocky teeth hanging over the sea, tightened with braces and a gigantic dentist's mesh.

And rightly so: as Uncle Syoma said - you don't sink, you don't burst.(However, the uncle himself stomp I wouldn't be able to with my orthopedic boot.)

Here it is, number five hundred and thirteen. Silent brief intercourse of the keyhole with an electronic key obtained from the dazed attendant: you see, I don’t want to wake my wife, the poor woman suffers from migraines and goes to bed early ...

He never had any wife.

She did not suffer from any migraines.

And he was going to wake her up immediately.

Irina slept as usual - blankets wrapped in a cocoon, like white cheese in a Druze pita.

It will always pack, bury itself, and even tuck it under its sides - at least hire archaeologists.

Throwing his suitcase and jacket on the floor, he pulled off his sweater as he went, knocked off his sneakers, toe-to-toe, and collapsed next to her on the bed, still in jeans - the lock was stuck on a bumpy break in the zipper - and a T-shirt.

Irina woke up, and they fidgeted at the same time, trying to free themselves from the blanket, from their clothes, mooing into each other's faces:

- ... you promised, shameless, promised ...

- ... and I will keep my promise, you man in a case!

- ... well, what are you, like a wild one, pounced! wait...wait a minute...

– …I’m already standing, don’t you hear it?

“…fu, impudent…well, give me at least…”

- ... who doesn’t give you ... here you are, and here ... and here ... and ... w-o-o-o-o ...

... In the open door of the balcony, in solidarity with him in rhythm, the lemon moon either soared over the railing with its pop-eyed shameless "bravo!" - then increasing, then reducing the scope of take-off and fall. But then she froze at a dizzying height, balancing, as if for the last time surveying the heavenly district ... and suddenly she broke and rushed, accelerating and accelerating her pace, almost suffocating in this race, until she groaned, thrashed, shuddered liberatedly, and - not subsided, hanging in exhaustion somewhere in the backyards of heaven ...

... Then Irina splashed in the shower, now and then switching the hot stream to the cold one (now she will come to bed - wet, like a drowned man, and go ahead, warm her until she turns blue), - and he tried to follow the microscopic movements of the pale puffy luminary in the window , his recent partner in svalny sin.

Finally, he got up and went out onto the balcony.

The gigantic hotel fell into a numb sleep on the edge of a shimmering salt lake. Below, surrounded by palm trees, the polished lid of a piano lay a pool in which a brittle yellow moon was jumping. Three dozen meters from the pool stretched the beach with arthropod pyramids of plastic sunbeds and chairs collected for the night.

The cold shimmer of salt in the distance communicated to the motionless night an icy silence, something New Year's - like the expectation of miracles and gifts.

Well, it won't be about gifts.

- Are you crazy: naked - on the balcony? - I heard a cheerful voice behind me. - Do you have elementary shame? People around...

Sometimes it would not be like to turn it off, but slightly reduce the sound.

He closed the balcony door, drew the curtain, and turned on the table lamp.

“You have recovered…” he said thoughtfully, falling on the bed and looking at Irina in an open terry robe. - I like it. You look like Dina Verney now.

– What-o-o?! What is this woman?

- Maillol's model. Take off that idiotic robe, uh... and turn your back. Yes: the same proportions. With a thin back, a strong expressive line of the hips. And the shoulder now so smoothly rises into the neck ... Ay-yay, what a nature! It is a pity that I did not take a pencil in my hands for a hundred years.

She grunted, flopped into the deep armchair next to the bed, and reached for her pack of cigarettes.

- Well, come on, go ahead ... Tell me something else about me.

- Oh please! You see, when a woman puts on a little weight, her breasts become softer, more generous… smiling. And skin color changes. A delicate layer of subcutaneous fat gives the body a more noble, pearlescent shade. There is such ... mmm ... transparency of glazes, you understand?

He was no longer averse to taking a nap before dawn for at least an hour and a half. But Irina lit a cigarette and was cheerful and assertive. Look, he will again demand a sacred sacrifice. The main thing is not to start sorting out the relationship.

“And besides, you know…” he continued, yawning and turning to one side, “this measured swaying of the hips, the view from behind and from above, it drives you crazy, if even with your palms…

- Cordovin, you bastard! She leaned over and tossed an empty cigarette pack at him. - You're just a wicked siren, Cordovin! Some kind of vulgar seducer Casanova!

“Nope,” he muttered, falling into an uncontrollable sleep. “I’m just… in love…”

All this was absolutely true. He loved women. He really loved women - their quick mind, earthly intelligence, tenacious eye for details; never tired of repeating that if a woman is smart, then she is more dangerous than a smart man: after all, ordinary insight then also acquires emotional, truly animal sensitivity, catches - on top, by traction - something that no logic can overcome. He was friends with them, preferred to do business with them, considered them more reliable comrades and, in general, better people. He often assessed himself: "I am a very feminine person." He always knew how to warm, and always found something to admire in each.

* * *

He woke up, as usual, at five thirty. For many years now, some zealous and inexorable angel had been setting up a wake-up call somewhere in the upper barracks, and minute by minute - no matter what dream he had, no matter what fatigue he had fallen two hours ago - at five-thirty he doomedly opened his eyes ... and , cursing, trudged into the shower.

But before that, today he again showed the tin.

It seems like he rises, with an effort tossing his torso - in these in dreams everything always happens with an irresistible series of heavy movements, - sits up on the bed, hardly opens his eyes ... And sees: on the hotel coffee table - costs. Oh you honest mother! - worth the same crumpled tin... No, he says to himself (everything follows the long-rehearsed scenario of a damned dream), “not a tin can, you sort of brute, but a Saturday silver goblet, an old family thing, although - yes, slightly crushed on the side; but that's because he fell off the truck. And Zhuk, an orphan (war, winter, evacuation), was not afraid, she climbed under the wheel herself, got it! And you, bastard, bastard and scoundrel ... went and handed over to antique buying, without batting a shameless eye. And, most importantly, now I would have read a long time ago - what was embossed there in a circle.

In those years, I couldn’t, I didn’t understand outlandish squiggles, but now I could easily read it, because it must have been Hebrew?

Well, Zhu-u-ka, he groaned, as always (the scenario moves, the dream rolls downhill, or rather, painfully rolls up the mountain), - I’ve forgiven a hundred times ... I realized ... I was looking for! Why are we quarreling again, by God: here he is - standing! It stands - dark, massive, not cleaned for a long time - so that the boat is indistinguishable - on its silver skirt ...

And he pulls a pood hand, with an effort, like water, overcoming the thickness of sleep. He stretches out his hand, pulls ... finally grabs a heavy goblet, twirls it in his fingers, raises it to his eyes. And a three-masted galleon floats along three light waves, and angular letters - and now so understandable - curl around a silver skirt: "The train to Munich leaves the second platform at 22.30."

And then he just woke up. Looks like he woke up. God, how long... I'm sorry, Zhuk!

He stood for a long time under the burning lashes of water, then abruptly switched to cold water and for a minute, groaning with pleasure, rubbed himself with a hard washcloth, which he carried everywhere with him.

Then he shaved, slowly, whistling softly so as not to wake up the boa constrictor there, on the bed, ahead of time ... A nice plump boa constrictor, whose elastic rings, pulsating so sweetly, squeeze ... hmm. Still, you shouldn't let her get fat any further.

Diligently shaving off his protruding chin (in daily shaving this is the main torment - a steep, like a hard apple, chin with a hard-to-reach recess under the lower lip), he carefully examined himself in the spacious bathroom mirror.

And you're a little dry, boy... Uncle Syoma would say: crept up. In his youth, he was rather a strong man. Often they even took him for a boxer. Now drowned, according to the image. The nose somehow ... ossified, or something ... An aristocrat, sir, your mother.

Only the crew cut of thick black hair (a family stable pigment, he casually answered compliments), and the same resin eyebrows, straight and almost fused over deep-set gray eyes, were the same. And then there are those vertical lines at the corners of his mouth, which always gave his face an expression of childish friendliness, an eternal readiness to stretch his lips in a smile: I I love you, my huge kind world ... Yes, this is our trump card. Maybe this is your only trump card, huh, boy?

When he tiptoed out of the bathroom to get a shirt and a suit out of the suitcase, it turned out that Irina woke up too - damn it, how inappropriate her lark nature! - and lies in his cocoon, shaggy, in a disgusting mood and full of combat readiness.

“You run cowardly,” she said, watching him carefully and mockingly as he dressed.

"Yeah," he smiled broadly at her. - I'm terribly afraid! In general, I am very afraid of you and servilely curry favor. Look at these cufflinks. Do you recognize? I love them, I demonstrate to everyone: "a gift from a beloved woman."

- Beloved woman. Yes, you have a hundred of them in each city.

- One hundred?! Why so many, oh my god! “Who needs it, and who can stand it,” said my uncle Syoma from Vinnitsa ...

- What a bastard you are, Cordovin! We decided that now we will always travel together.

Here she is in vain. Vile communal articulation - "we" ... Lifelong mooing, soap-making of love's soapy soap ... Bad symptom. Is it really necessary to transform her from a lover into a friend? It's a pity, it's good with her, with Irina. In fact, during these three years, an ideal life has developed with her, without any vile “we” ... “us” ... Helps us, baby, to build and live it is our lonely sensitivity, wolfish flair, the fluttering of the wings of the nose in anticipation of the track taken. What kind of "we" is there?

“Don’t make me take off my pants again, master-ah-ah-ka,” he said stupidly and plaintively, “it’s getting cold in the-a-day!” Look, I'm already in the harness.

And yet he went to the bed, lay down - right in the suit - next to her, sleepy, unhappy, felt and ruthlessly pulled her bare hand out of the blanket bundle, began to kiss, rising from her fingers to her shoulder: in detail, to the point, by a centimeter, sentencing something playfully doctoral.

His rule was: no diminutives. All only full, sonorous beautiful names. The female name is sacred, to cut it is blasphemy, akin to blasphemy.

And she softened, laughed at the tickling, pressed her bare shoulder to her ear.

- You smell delicious: jasmine ... green tea ... What kind of cologne is this?

- Lexitan. In "duty-free" foisted, in Boston. There the saleswoman was so diligent, she worked conscientiously. "An old firm, an old firm ... handmade bottles." Bought to get away. He sat up in bed and glanced at his watch. - Listen, my joy, seriously: do not be upset. Well, what a pleasure it is to hang around at a university conference with the dreary title "El Greco: un nombre que no se traiciono a si mismo"?

- What does it mean?

- Who cares? It means "El Greco: the man who did not betray himself." Pointless topic, another pointless conference. Toledo, in general, is a gloomy city, and even in rainy April ... By God, it's better to sunbathe here. You still need to throw some dough on these baths of ... well, seaweed? "Madame is on vacation, madam has the right."

It was one of their favorite phrases, of which a lot had accumulated over the course of three years: a remark from the seller of an expensive store in Sorrento, where Irina was trying not to let “dreadful money go into her purse”.

She laughed and said:

- Okay, get out. When is your plane?

He looked openly and anxiously at his watch now.

– Oh-oh… run-run! And then do not have time.

He jumped up, grabbed a jacket, a suitcase, turned around in the doorway - to smack the air in the direction of the bed. But Irina is already tightly packed again, only the disheveled top of her head sticks out of the blanket. You are my poor, abandoned ...

He quietly closed the door behind him.

Having descended the stairs to one floor, he stopped, listened to the silence of the still sleeping hotel: somewhere below, by the pool, the cleaners were talking loudly and serenely, heavily dragging rings of rubber hoses through the wet concrete. Leaning back against the door, he opened the zipper of the suitcase and pulled out two things: a knitted blue glove on his right hand—strange, with slits for the pads of his fingers—and his so far sinless automatic Glock.

However, why so immediately ... strain. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket, pulled on his glove, wiggling his fingers like a pianist before the first bravura passage, then took out his cell phone and dialed a number.

- Vladimir Igorevich Didn't wake up?

In response, a grateful wave rolled:

- Zakhar Mironovich, dear! Hello! It's great that they didn't let you down. And I'm six on my feet and I can't find a place for myself. So when is it convenient for you? I'm in number four hundred and two.

“Well, great,” he said. - I'll be in in a minute.

And the pistol dived again into the toothy slit of the suitcase zipper: such excited respectful gratitude as sounded in the voice of the client is difficult to imitate. And he had the sharpest, bestial hearing and an eye for shades and intonation.

And it was true: Vladimir Igorevich, polished to a shine, his belly quivering, was waiting for him in the open door of the apartment. I wonder what cherished paths he makes his way with a daily razor among all his warts? And why won't he grow a beard - or in the unspoken code of these new cruses a beard, as concealment, is a sign of a secret intent?

- Not over the threshold! exclaimed the fat man, stepping back and holding his hand ready with his spatula.

According to some roundabout information, the newly minted collector owns some factories in Chelyabinsk. Or mines? And not in Chelyabinsk, but in Chukotka? God knows, it doesn't matter. Bless the Archangel Gabriel to all who invest in a piece of canvas smeared with casein glue and covered with oil paints.

Indeed, he waited and was agitated: in the open door of the bedroom one could see a neatly made bed like a soldier.

The picture, a canvas stretched on a stretcher, was waiting in the wings, turned to face the back of the sofa.

How touching these amateur collectors are. They all tremble before that first moment when the x-ray eyes of the expert pierce the picture. It also happens that they throw a white sheet on a sofa or chair, where they put a picture, in order to protect precious eyesight connoisseur from annoying color surroundings. Color antiseptics of the operating room or children's play Close your eyes tight, you'll open them when I say!

In that case, dear Vladimir Igorevich, you will now hear a short lecture about the insignificance and ephemeral nature of this very connoisseurship.

He lowered the suitcase to the floor, tossing his jacket over it.

- Is it okay that I hold out my left hand? he asked, awkwardly shaking (he should have twisted and stretched his hand from behind his back) the collector's plump paw and smiling one of his most open smiles. “Many years of arthritis, I beg your pardon. From pain, it happens, I scream like a woman.

- Yes you! - the fat man was upset. – Have you tried Golden Mustache? My wife is very commendable.

- What I haven’t tried, let’s not talk about it. Did you just arrive yesterday?

- Of course! As soon as you said that you were leaving today, and that this was the only opportunity to catch you, I immediately ordered a number, and like that tenor in the opera - “a little light is at your feet!”.

Where did he hear such an opera, I wonder. Maybe in your Chelyabinsk? No, dear, God forbid you lie at my feet ...

There was a bottle of Courvosier and two glasses of cognac on the coffee table, but it was clear that the poor fellow was already exhausted: he did not offer to sit down or drink. This is passion, I understand ...

"Well, let's get started," said Cordovin. “I don’t really have much time.

“Only one word,” Vladimir Igorevich said, rubbing his palms nervously, as if screwing one into the other. - This is necessary ... You, Zakhar Mironovich, have to deal with a variety of people - now even an outright redneck knows what to invest in. And I can imagine your disgust for such forced acquaintances as ours. Don't mind, I know! But, you see, Zakhar Mironovich… my collecting age is, indeed, infancy – before it was not possible to collect art, where does an ordinary Soviet engineer-inventor get money from? But I am a lover of painting with experience, from my youth. I remember you rushing to Moscow, on a business trip for three days, a suitcase to a hotel - and you yourself trot to Pushkinsky, to the Tretyakov Gallery ... It's embarrassing to admit, I myself play a little with paints ... Well, I read a lot of things. I also found your book "The Fates of Russian Art Abroad" on the Internet and read it. I would be happy to invite you to my place.

- To Chelyabinsk? the expert asked curiously. He watched with close pleasure how sincerely the client tried to dissociate himself from redneck.

“Why go to Chelyabinsk,” Vladimir Igorevich chuckled. - I prefer to keep my collection here - in my Caesarea. And if today ... if Kordovin himself gives a positive conclusion about authorship ... In a word, if you now say your “yes”, this will be my third Falk. And the most excellent!

He jumped up to the sofa - with his heaviness, the fat man was not without a certain lumpy grace - and turned the picture around. And he stood nearby, as if on guard: tense, with a reddened bald head, transferring an inquisitively pleading look from the canvas to the expert. Did he forget to take his blood pressure pill today - that is the question.

Sinking into an armchair, Kordovin slowly took out his glasses from the breast pocket of his jacket, silently put them on and began to look at the canvas - from a distance.

The picture was a landscape. In the foreground is a bush, behind it one can see a gray country fence and a small section of the path along which a woman, vague at dusk, walks. In the background - the red roof of the house and a bunch of trees ...

- From the "Khotkovskaya" series? Cordovin finally spoke.

- Exactly! - Vladimir Igorevich was delighted. - That's what a specialist means! It's called: Cloudy Day. Khotkovo. And the old woman-owner remembers this name. Imagine: I forgot the name of the author, but, she says, she remembered the title all the years, like poems!

- This happens. He sighed. - And what about provenance?

“In my opinion, everything is impeccable,” the collector replied, revealing a pleasant familiarity with the terminology subject. - There is a written confirmation of the hostess. The old woman is the widow of a middle-class Israeli lawyer, and his second wife. She remembers the picture on the wall all twenty-five years of marriage, says that her husband took it out of Moscow in 1956.

- Bought? Presented? Details?

– Unfortunately, nothing. The poor thing has a blooming Alzheimer's. He waved his hand. - And for me, it’s even better: at least everything looks family-natural. And what is valuable - at a decent distance from the Russian market, with its thick-dog falypaks.

This is right. As for the Russian market, you are right on target, dear. And the old widows - why are they especially valuable? Poor eyesight and a blooming Alzheimer's: they don't remember a damn thing, except for the events of this morning.

(Instantly before my eyes there arose that last meeting, which stretched out all the veins, when the old woman, smoothing the palm received from him piece of green finally deigned to write a paper: “Here, I forgot the name again ... Look, Zakharik, maybe it’s written on the back?”. And he turned the canvas over and clearly dictated, diligently peering at the non-existent inscription: "Cloudy day point Khotkovo".)

- Would you like a picture? - Vladimir Igorevich eagerly rushed with his whole body - to grab, pass, support, spread and illuminate ... He wanted to circle around the picture and caress it with his hands and eyes - a completely natural, akin to falling in love, state for a true collector, which extends to a respected expert. Incidentally, history subject knows also cases of grateful kissing of hands.

“Wait a minute,” Kordovin took off his glasses and neatly folded the temples of an expensive fashionable frame - like the hands of a dead man. Hesitated…

- First of all, I would like to find out something: do you, Vladimir Igorevich, need my real opinion or my signature on the conclusion?

The fat man gasped and flushed. Well... An emotional person and, it seems, a sincere lover of art, not some redneck, for nothing that he stole a factory... or a mine after all?

- Zakhar Mironovich! Who wants to have in his collection the fake was frozen!

"Don't tell me," he laughed. “About eight years ago, I had to be an expert on the buyer's side. Two paintings, I remember, were offered: Mashkov and, by the way, Falk. So, a poor blind man with mature cataracts in both eyes would have determined that these two pictures were made with one hand. And no coffee breaks. The case seems to be clear. However, the "collector" tore the bit and frantically demanded a bargain. I was in an idiotic situation. Of course, in such cases, the comparison of radiographs is ideal - after all, fakes imitate, as a rule, only the visible part, the texture of the final strokes, their little hands do not reach the meaningful construction of the picture. But an x-ray implies the presence of an apparatus and a radiologist.

- So what? – Vladimir Igorevich asked with that expression on his face with which they watch the final chase in a movie thriller.

- I just silently got into the car and left - because I will never sign a conclusion for a fake. But two years later, these two twin cowboys were put up at the same respected auction, with the opinion of a more accommodating expert from Art Mode, and sold well. Very foolish. Five times more expensive, I remember ... Yes. And in the house of the captain of the legendary "Exodus" - the same, the same - I saw a huge Malevich: two by three meters, which never existed in nature. And he was extremely fond of the glorious captain. Despite the frank reviews of many experts.

“You see… Vladimir Igorevich,” he continued thoughtfully. - Let's face the truth. In recent years, the hunt for truly valuable works of art has become more merciless. The power of an expert acquires some disproportionate, unjustified proportions. And although this is my profession, will you allow me to be frank with you? - It is disgusting for me now to look like a magician and a sorcerer in your eyes. I am not a wizard.

- Lord, yes I am! he threw up his hands. I understand and fully acknowledge that...

“…Now let’s take a closer look at her.”

Vladimir Igorevich rushed over and cautiously handed the picture to the expert with outstretched arms.

He silently turned it around, began to examine the stretcher and the canvas from the back ... For several minutes, the silence was broken only by the excited sniffing of a fat man, bowed in a tense half-bow, and from below, children's cries flared up, accompanied by slaps on the water, and a woman's voice sang viscously: “And I I say, you will get in the ass ... "

“You know, of course,” Kordovin finally said, “that a comprehensive examination is considered a serious one; that is, in addition to the art history conclusion, a number of technological studies are needed: x-ray photography, chemical analysis ... You can also fool around with a microscope, scribble something about pigments, binders ... Such conclusions are obtained in some reputable expert organization.

- Zakhar Mironovich! the collector pleaded. – God be with them, with organizations. I only need your opinion. You yourself, what do you think?

- No, wait. Of course, I'm in a hurry, but I value my reputation more than my time. And now I want to be extremely frank with you. You look at me as at the Lord God, Vladimir Igorevich, but, alas, I do not allocate places in paradise. The horror is that anyway no one can take full responsibility for the conclusions of the examination. Surely you have read about the biggest scandal in the art of the twentieth century, when the most experienced expert, the art historian Dr. Abraham Bredius, mistook Van Meegeren's forgery for the work of Vermeer? And what about the recent scandal with the painting, allegedly by Shishkin, but in fact by the Dutchman Marius Kukukk, who was missed by the Tretyakov Gallery? And a certain Russian "collector" for many thousand emerald ducats bought "golimous bullshit" - by the way, this art history term was enriched by one of the dealers, who has a ten-year criminal record behind him. He decided to change the racket to selling antiques, as this business has more profit and respect.

The most tragicomic thing in our business is that sometimes the artist himself is not able to distinguish his work from a fake. When Claude Latour, the famous Parisian forger, was exposed and brought before the court, Utrillo himself found himself in an absurd position: he could not definitely answer whether the picture was made by him or forged. And Vlaminck boasted that once he painted a picture in the style of Cezanne, and he recognized his authorship in it ...

“But…then how?” the collector sighed helplessly. Where is the guarantee...

- Yes, there can be no guarantee, my dear! Cordovin exclaimed angrily. - What a guarantee there is: the museums of the world and private collections are filled with fakes by a third, with all their chemical analyzes, x-rays, infrared and ultraviolet rays! Do you think the master fakers are dumber than us experts? Among them there are genuine virtuosos, high-class professionals... And they are well versed in the methods of examination, taking into account all the technological criteria of authenticity - even the psychology of the experts themselves!