As I sang "Marcelase", or Swiss horse
Fracture regarding Europe to Russia took place in my eyes. It deserves conversation.
That is, of course, I was not witnessing the fracture itself. I just found his first manifestations that allowed us to talk about the tendency. At the end of 1991, the batter between the courses, I was sent to Fribur – the Swiss city, which some incorrectly called Freiburg, but it is located in the French part of the country, so it should be pronounced "Freibu U-Ur", With swallowing "G". There was a student congress on the topic "Unity of Europe".
Groups then were formed on a funny principle: the Student Council, which existed at the Committee of Youth Organizations, was acutely suffering from lack of money. As a result, on all kinds of Congresses dedicated to the future of Europe or the Protection of Amazonian tribes, the speaker was sent (he drove for free), curator-translator (he performed organizational and supervisory functions) Plus five to six new ours, which for such trips were paid less than An ordinary tour, and there really did not really. So I went to Switzerland, a well-known student council for my ability to spend a long time and having to speak to universal topics, two student activists and a couple of new ours, with whom KMO was something like Barter: a businessman from Lviv and a wife of some Partygenios, who now traded cars.
I did not give me any money, and I did not have dollars. In the types of souvenirs who still might have some success, I took pieces of ten anniversary rubles with me, several T-shirts with Soviet symbolism purchased on Arbat, and a bag of black superstars for treating curious. In general, the money was only among the new ours, the rest did not change the franc and promised that there would be good to feed. People did not have to come – Lee’s joke, Switzerland! Mother ordered an umbrella – instead of the one I sowed shortly before the trip. I promised that I would spin.
I have the most foggy, limited in the main Leninist article 1915, I seem to be the most foggy "About the United States of Europe" and a set of liberal clichés. The rest, in my opinion, did not read the Lenin article. Businessman from Lviv, heavy man of forty years, after a hundred grams started talking about babes, was going to tie contacts with some Swiss company. We were all great to be expanded by the attitude towards our foreigners who arrived in Russia in the wave of interest in restructuring. It seemed to us that all the arms would be open and all flags, to whom we were, will start in our honor greetingly tremble at the airport. At the airport, no one met, and about an hour we were keen on the waiting room, singing a famous song from the movie "Tramp" – "Nowhere else is waiting for me, but the tramp ya".
Swiss mowed us on us, I wanted to eat and drink, new ours shouted their money. Unexpectedly translator, Student INAZ, painted a brilliant thought: he noticed that the Swiss five-franc in size and weight is identical to the metal our ruble. He made an experiment (also brought rubles, dog) and immediately converted the our ruble by one to twenty. He threw five coins on one franc. I think, so successful experience of conversion in our history was not. We rapidly changed two rubles and received the amount, quite sufficient for quenching thirst. The group urgently crossed his pockets and found a total of twenty-five rubles, which were declared an inviolable stock.
After long calls to the embassy, we finally got to the culture department or as it is called this unit, so in the evening there were rafik with a perplexer driver and lucky in Friburg on a smooth hilly road along the Lake Geneva. Swiss landscape pleased with absolute peace and underlined neutrality. I remembered Stirlitz, sending Kat to his homeland and after the work of the righteous eating eating source in the station buffet. Sour cream was only whipped. "And our hungry there", – Schtirlitz thought, no longer making differences between her in Russia and their in Germany. "If it were not for Stalingrad, – thought Stirlitz, – that would be your neutrality with a whipped sour cream". I remembered this replica by heart.
Fribur – a very small university city whose university is known for the remarkable library on the history of Catholicism. There are no other priorities there – only Catholicism, why the hostel, where we were alternate, was decorated in the traditions of the Catholic Monastery. It was a monastery in former times. Now here in one wing there were glady serious students, and in the other – beautiful serious students, to flirt with whom it was in principle useless. In French, I knew the only phrase: "Wu le Wu Koshek Mua" (and of course, "Same manger pa. " – But this is acknowledged in this). If anyone knows, "Wu le Wu Koshek Mua" means "Do you want to sleep with me?" – and with such a luggage to attract benevolent attention of the European Catholic, you understand, it is very difficult. Share in the monastery hostel did not want us. How the most convincing was sent to search for the organizers of the Congress. Time was already about eight in the evening, and I could not catch someone in the workplace, "nevertheless, Nüh immediately brought me to the recaller’s office. He wrote something, released the secretary. Oak Cabinet was fueled by tapestries with images of medieval hunting.
Without thinking that I got on the rector itself, I was quite strongly shorted into the room and in English reported that we were ours, we came to Congress and we want to spend the night somewhere, not to mention to dine. The rector’s face expressed at the first moment the same gamut of feelings, which must be on the face of Forrestol in front of a famous leap from the window with a cry "ours are coming. ". Pick up from theological works, he smiled timidly and began to call somewhere; I still considered tapestries. When he calls, apparently, before the hostel, he shifted something in French, after which she nodded it and said that everything would be now.
I returned to my who have already managed to curse all the united Europe, and we went to the monastery dorm, where we were fed by cooled and pretty butter. It was felt that in the University of Frirovsky, they care mainly about the soul. Sleeping us on personal cells. In each hung crucifix.
Nutro, directly on the day of the beginning of the congress, we were reported that all participants are transported in one place – a certain country board located in five kilometers from the city. There are already guests already moved – mainly from Eastern Europe, because Western European groups could afford accommodation in hotels. Smell discrimination, but I never had special illusions about the integration of ours to Europe. However, what awaited us could not assume.
– We are going to the hotel? – asked the wife of a new our, diligently hijacked all the time while we were lucky.
The answer she was a huge sculpture at the entrance to the place where we were delivered. The sculpture consisted of a rather high and thick stone pillar, on the sides of which lay two balls, also fair in diameter.
– So you, not a hotel, – I said through my teeth.
We were settled in the bomb shelter, which is prudent Swiss, despite all the neutrality, opened at the beginning of the sixties. Everything was very modern – shower cabins, tiled floors and, most importantly, Nara with soldier’s blankets. Nara shared on the sections in which we were placed in three. Boys put separately. You could put on a sleeping place, only wriggling a worm. The ceiling is unbearable Davil. All together left the impression of true European comfort. To all, the water in the soul was a little warm, the speech bath did not come at all (which bath after a nuclear apocalypse! there on earth radioactive ruins, and you will relax in the bath here?!). When a new our, new our and promotion activists led to a sleeping room, located, by the way, at the safe depth of meters fifteen, they temporarily lost the gift of speech.
– I’ll call the consulate! – Found finally a new our. – I will demand! insist! Let me be immediately returned to Russia!
A little more, and she would require Russia to declare Switzerland war, and then certainly the neutral neutrality, along with whipped sour cream, but it came up to calm down decently speaking in our Polka:
– We are Eastern Europe, she said, observing the emphasis on the penultimate syllable. – They see us like pigs. We traveled to Holland on the same Congress, and there all Poles and Eastern Germans settled in the stable!
So I first began to notice that the ours may still be interested in Europe, but already exclusively as exhibits. If the supplementary Soviet man inspired respect and the fear of both unpredictable, the brown picoanthrop, if at the end of the eighties he inspired only respect for Peteicantrop with a chance to turn into a person, then at the beginning of the nineties, he had already begun to be perceived as Peteitront, finally turned into a pig or even in a guinea pig with rudimentary claws. It was still possible to invite him to congresses, so that with it and with his participation to discuss whether it is possible to integrate it into Europe or should be isolated in the cell; But it is impossible to consider as a partner, guest or person.
Feeding was organized in a student dining room, where they drove after the meetings. Fed down the lower category as the poorest student. For lunches, three types of tickets were issued: Eastern Europe received, as I remember, red. On these tours, a dinner of three dishes was given, without sweet (on a sweet, tells me the exhausted memory, there was a vanilla pudding, but he was given to a shiny coupon). Three dishes were: vegetable puree A la trade union pension "Miner", horse and bottle unbearably tart red wine unknown me brands.
I am unpretentious about the night and by virtue of the profession spent a lot where, right up to the destroyed pioneer camp in Nagorno-Karabakh; and often changed beds due to temperament; And because I did not depress me with a bomb shelter, which at first glance we renamed homelessly and since then otherwise they were not called (however, the new our was constantly broke down on Bombay.). But in the sense of food, I am whitewashing extremely and horseback never defiled until. Feeling at least the Tatar-Mongolian occupant, I began to pussily pick a brown long piece of fibrous meat, covered with potato mashed potatoes, which I love even less semolina from childhood. Konified was really some kind of taste: sour, dwelling, tough, like a need, and edible smoothly so to seem delicacy after a nuclear apocalypse. The rest could even pay extra and take a bottle of lemonade instead of vile wine, but Lemonade cost Frank, and I am a ross.
On the very first day we began to convert rubles, because it was determined to sit at the meetings of the Congress. Students went out and talked about problems that could not be interested in a our man at the beginning of the nineties. It was about the protection of animals, overcoming racial and religious differences in the conditions of united Germany, about the training fee for students from Eastern European countries – all this was stated by monotonously, in a huge, high and strict hall, and also cold so much that on the street It seemed warm. New our from the first day began to wear around the fribur in search of at least one company, from which contact could be tied, but in the end only for a charitable organization, which provided the help of old men and disabled. They pushed him a bunch of stickers, and he already decided that in front of him a very rich organization (whether the joke – twenty stickers gave you to live well), but the Foundation turned out to be extremely meager. He dragged me and the translator to arrange the negotiations to him, quickly understood his mistake and hurried to wash off, for nothing that we were also promised to reduce the nursing home and there may, maybe they fed. However, I do not think that the elderly fed better than the third category students.
After a while I got great about the problem of money. I wanted almost all the time, parallel tormented heartburn, yes, I promised my mother umbrella. Leisure your leisure from the meetings, I spent in the aimless hatches on the autumn fribur. Hooked several times high in the mountains, where everything looked like a revived picture to Andersenovskaya "Ice virgin"; Went past small, covered tiled houses with touching lanterns at the entrance. I was in mismatch. It all seemed to me that now the gnome came out of the house, pulls the handle, will lead to looking at roses (for me it seemed that there was no rose inside there). Instead of a gnomic from the house, a healthy man in suspenders came out once and asked what the hell am I doing here. I understood not so much by his vocabulary, how many facial expressions (he spoke on Swiss French, like everything in this part of the country – His and our French translator did not always understand). So idyllic walks in the mountains among houses, roses and small lakes had to roll quite soon.
The only place where I was not challenged, there was a music store, in which you could wear headphones and how much love to listen to such a favorite French chanson. Chanson was abundant because France from Switzerland in good weather is visible to the naked eye. The first thing I gained a cassette – mainly Bransance or Brel, – then she walked into the booth and began to listen in a row. Brel was my first love in the sense of the French song, and when he started – already on the last album, already with one light – begging "Ne Me Quittez Pas" – Well, here everything sailed before my eyes and I remembered all the romantic circumstances in which I once listened to this song. The current my circumstances were even more romantic: in the most literal sense without a penny in his pocket, in an absolutely alien country, a strange type, night in a bomb shelter and in FIG, I do not need anyone. I have mature social protest. When he left to the desired degree, Brel just started "Waltz for three accounts", And when this rapid work brought me to the Genuine Qatarsis, I started to overtake the famous "Amsterdam port". This song is not amenable to an adequate poetic translation due to the brevity of French words and multiformity of the ours; In short, there about how the French-speaking buddy translated to me, how sailors cry in the Amsterdam port, then drink, then shut, then they cry again and again we are shoved, after which they drink again and the same. This simple, in essence, Fabul lay out from Belt with such strands and despair, with such a measure, I would say, hopeless and tragic cosmopolitanism – here, sitting on someone else and all the people in the port of Kabak, among the same as he, Skaltsev, drinks, crying, bluings, smoke marijuana, the world around him clouds do not understand what, he hates everyone, because all of him is strangers, and at the same time he loves everyone, because everyone around the same tramps without a kind and tribe screaming. In short, Wu Me Compène.
An hour or two similar meditations, all in tears, I went out to the gray November Swiss day and brave where the eyes look at openwork bridges (there were several famous perplexes in the town), on the humpback streets, on a stall, past the wooden and stone crucifixes, past the church and past the flower shops that for some reason it came across countless. Then I first understood, to what extent there is nothing to do a person who has no money. Then the lights began to burn everywhere, the matte sky resulted, and everything became very sad. At seven in the evening there were lunch, and the bus took us into a bomb shelter, from where the part of the Poles managed to move to the student hostel, and we were waving on everything.
On the fourth day, I could not stand and changed half of my ruble cash in transmissive automata. For a long time, I bought the cheapest umbrella for a long time, I still bought the cheapest umbrella and wandered with an endless longing to a plenary session, at which Eastern Europeans had to develop their attitude to the unification of Europe. Europeans gathered nehlyto, we quickly formulated their attitude towards the collapse of totalitarianism ("It was better, but worse") drank our vodka, which I brought, and went to the general meeting to report my position. Rapporteur put me as the most tolerant to our vodka. I got to the tribune, thanked the gathered for the invitation and said that we all we go to God, and therefore we don’t need to consider us separately and so on, I thank again for your attention. Most of all, it resembled the behavior of the Vereshchagin’s kid before the confusion of his crowd in "War and the world": "Graph! Count, one God over us!". When words "Also we are Europeans", Said by me on a brave English, the hall slammed, the rest listened to inadequate politeness. My social supervision was incomprehensible here. Poles, Romanians and Eastern Germans made up my reliable clause, but they did not notice with their own state when I finished talking.
The next day – Congress is already approaching the finish line – we decided to arrange a tour either on a chocolate factory, or on a beer factory "Cardinal", optionally. We sent the girls to the chocolate factory, and, naturally, went to the beer factory, preventing the most irrevocated expectations. Nevertheless, before the tasting, we showed a long film about Swiss brewing, then spent on the factory, where it smeared terribly appetizing, and only then led to a small span, where very good and strongly drinking old woman poured all how much the soul asked. Beer varieties were five, and I tried everything. The few French kept a little light and left for their affairs, the only western German looked at us in extreme amazement, and we, that is, the Poles, Czechs and part of the eastern Germans, decided to recoup for all. Plastic cuvettes with a salted cookie were changed three times on our tables, at least ten times the old woman filled our mugs (not forgetting about her), and after three hours I came out from the beer plant "Cardinal" Absoligious. We walked in an embrace with the Poles who offered to sing "Marcelase". Why did this song come to mind – to explain, I think it is not necessary, besides, the French-speaking Swiss would not understand anything else, but to offer the poles "International" I am worse. In short, they tightened "Marcelase", and the quality of the Swiss beer was such that I sang it along with all from beginning to end, although neither before, none after did not know from there any lines except "Allons, Anfan De La Patri". By the way, Lenin over this song often mocked and sang witty "Allons, Anfan de la Four". Maybe gossip.
On the last day of the Congress, we were reported that we only have the return tickets for the thirties of November, and all twenty-ninth traveling: there was no empty day, there was no money, and all the hope was for a farewell student fair, on which each group represented her souvenirs. It was promised even comic trade. I aimed to exchange the remnants of my metal rubles (more expensive than five francs, I would still have anyone else bought them), but I discovered all the exchangers at the university in prison. Apparently, the Swiss swallowed from there our our rubles and everyone understood. Now no student can change his five-fingerty, but it was nowhere to go to our. Conversion ended in default. The remaining three rubles I granted a beautiful girl Nesthe Chifareretti, a millionaire daughter from the Italian part of Switzerland. "How lovely", – She said, but nothing in return did not give.
Retreat. I remember how in Japan, when we were taken there to get acquainted with the Muna sect, was the procedure of britney. Baddha with munists We refused flatness: Shake Hands, make friends – it’s still there and here, but a buried sister with whom – dismiss. The brooding procedure was good only in that on the basis of her all exchanged gifts. We were warned that there is a long, glasses – the son of the Japanese millionaire. The son of a millionaire in his hands was a pretty decent bag of colored paper. I rushed to him with a friend and handed a painted spoon, stored just for such a case.
He thanked, left and offered to brag. I refused and laid another icon so that it means, I realized: it’s time to change.
He nodded and thanked. Friend put a miniature bottle of vodka stolen in the plane. The son of the Japanese millionaire broke the wider ears and took a bottle, but the bag did not release.
– Right now, – I said in English and stringly brought a small silver king gun from his baggage. Well, I thought, I’ll take a king of the gun, he would take it, she would knock him! Mentally we already divided the bag. Japanese took the king of the gun, bowed, walked the standard "Arigato" and left, carrying out his brother’s document in the hope of bringing someone more convocation.
– Packing! – We shouted to him after, without claiming. – Package, bitch.
In the word "bitch" He was heard something Japanese, he looked back, once again bowed and disappeared from sight.
Here and Nadia Chifareretti too.
In the evening, at the fair of student goods, I pushed my T-shirts in exchange for similar T-shirts with Polish and German symbolism, after which I understood that I stay without a penny. Time remained little. I took out a bag of black superstars, posted a sickle and hammer from them, next to the remaining bottle of vodka, and it was all called "our Still Life". Some kind of Swiss chuvich immense sizes, curled by a small demon, I bought this our still life for fifteen francs, and I got myself the next day.
When closing the Congress, the rector, whom I unacceptably disturbed among his tapestries, made a speech.
– I will not argue about the unity of Europe for a long time, – he said, smiling away. – I will tell only one episode. Recently, when I worked in my office, a young man entered me and on bad English said that he was from Russia and what he could have to spend the night. And I realized that Europe became one.
– Thrink you are sorting! – I stuck on the whole row. – Who has bad English?! My English is bad?! Me at the university all foreigners showed, rubbish whispeling! It’s you bad English! – But now, after time, I understand that in the main old man was right. The unity of Europe in practice looks exactly the way he described.
Is it necessary to say that on a farewell banquet while trying to take a free bottle of lemonade I was immediately feeding, because free lemonade relied only to those who threw off in advance.
On the last day, when all of our remnants were approached, money was spent, and in the dining room no longer fed, the translator painted ingenious thought. He decided that you need to contact the press and give an interview.
– What kind of rod? – I asked Kier. – To whom we need?
– Neither Figa, you are a guest from free Russia! – The translator said firmly and scored the number of the main Fryurian newspaper. An hour later, in our homelessness, he arrived as a melanoda, but the tightened Swiss with a camera and expressed his readiness to talk to us about what was happening in Russia.
– In Russia, Tovo takes place, freedom, – said a new our from Lviv, but he was not enough for greater. For half an hour, we fled the nightingians about how beautiful was our life with the collapse of totalitarianism, and the correspondent tried in vain a trick, what does all this have to do with the Freirbian news, which he had to be delivered to the room. Finally, he understood why he was called, and invited us all drinks on a mug of beer to the nearest zucchini.
Professional solidarity did not allow me to order a lot, so I ate only fried chicken and a couple of ham portions; The rest were less modest, and the unfortunate under the conversations about our freedom had to be pretty. We managed to tell him all your life.
– Nothing, the translator consoled me, – he will receive a fee!
For goodbye, the correspondent asked if we need money. He had a request. Of course, we refused, – he fed us well.
On the way back from Fribur to Geneva, we persuaded the chauffeur to make a hook, for the time there was time. We asked us to get us in Montreux, where Nabokov was buried, and long stood at his gray-blue stone. The last two francs we spent on the pot with flowers, which was set at the grave (putting bouquets in Switzerland not accepted). No eternal beauties described by Vic. Yerofeyev, I did not observe around the cemetery. Gray rain sowed, the lake was not visible, the mountains – too. The weather was the most St. Petersburg.
I remembered how Nabokov gave lessons, and how he had no money to get out of Nice, and how he dined with friends, and how he hated the Germans and the French, and how first these Germans and French looked at him as a nobleman in exile, And then the whole our emigration has become a messenger creeping, which only litters their beautiful cities – and the kings in the exile went to taxi drivers and waiters. Europa twenties introduced me: Fockey squeal, cigar smoke, naked women’s shoulders, the feeling of rapidly impending death and common madness, a handful of ours at a table – lagged, vulnerable, discussing the plans for Europe’s unification against the Bolshevik IGA.
In 1993, the second coup happened in Russia, and she ceased to be interesting to Europe; Rather, this interest has passed into another quality. No associations have no longer spoken, and student congresses of this type, according to my information, did not suit. In 1994, I went to Europe again – already as a hopeless and irrevocable third-world citizen.
