Читать книгу: «Deja vu. Love», страница 4

Chapter 4

GREEN

Endless dozens, hundreds, thousands of cars, similar to each other, like dirty brown bumblebees, muttering morning prayer confidently and heavily under their breath, skipped at a frantic speed over a wide and deliberately fanciful bridge that loomed starlessly in two corners from the maternity hospital. Divided, sawn like a birthday cake, into several equal parts, the flip-up architectural structure, rather, resembled the fortress defensive towers of the Middle Ages, connected by a continuous, irreconcilable, impassable wall. Menacingly buzzing metal ropes, mercilessly piercing right through the bridge from the beginning of the ascending cross-over structure to its foggy-dense end, completed the gloomy picture of the mega-caterpillar monster. Thick stranded black threads twisted by powerful snails seemed huge sharp spikes, needles of a bristled hedgehog or an angry porcupine, ready to do anything to repulse the attack.

Under its heavy, heavy armor, in a bluish haze, a calm river flowed, humbly carrying its waters of time to an unbounded blue ocean: here, in a bustling city, the river drowsily spilled over the great expanse, endowing the inhabitants of the beloved town with its priceless beauty. The weather did not favor. A shy little ball rode gloomily across the sky back and forth behind gloomy heavy clouds and was in no hurry to appear at all, and a nondescript, incomplete sketch pressed, seeming half-dead, onto the city with its heavy pessimistic load. Somewhere nearby, every minute above the high-rise office buildings, a military helicopter grunted alarmingly and risky: it either completely disappeared into the thick draconian ultramarine sky, then it suddenly popped up in an unexpected place, and, hanging for a couple of seconds, as if scanning a picture of what was happening, drowned again in the unconditional splendor of moist clouds. Amina distinctly saw how far away, on the outskirts of the city, a stockade of factory pipes was bursting incessantly bursting with unpleasantly dark thick puffs of smoke.

“Where is our world heading for? Where it goes… it’s a real kata stanza… what is the ecology and ephemeral care for our mother nature? These are the most naive environmental issues for a long time do not bother anyone! Well, it seems to me that they don’t bother… naive… did they come up with beautiful terms sparkling in the summer sun, take at least the recent one… They called last year the pathos ‘Year of Ecology’, but what did he give us? He gave us an empty ‘shhhh’. A couple of voiced problems were also voiced by business… But real vital questions remained unanswered. We build – we work – we produce – we throw away… and all this – for what? Is there an answer? If dividends shine fantastically in some small matter, then, despite the unresolved environmental issue, the proposed project will be agreed, in any case, sooner or later, but it will be agreed anyway, and only so… The hypersensitive marker engraved with the name ‘Profit’ clearly highlights the main line ‘Total’ and that’s it. It’s all in the hat: the state is supposedly happy that the number of jobs is growing from the launch of the new project, and there will be new tax deductions to the state treasury, new employees are happy get a job with stable earnings, and the boss with a team of investors are happy from dripping into the account in countries free of taxes, percentages of invested capital! Profit is all! And more absolutely nothing is needed. And we will deal with ecology… then… maybe we will deal… if we have time…”

Deadly, overwhelming technical emissions mercilessly rose endlessly winding paths to the gray, tired of the heaviness of breath, the sky, firmly connecting and attracting to each other two worlds, two universes: the heavenly world and the earthly world. Poisonous technogenic umbilical cord tightly bound and did not let go, giving rise to genuine fear. The harsh, merciless wind hysterically, incredibly straining his muscles, squalled with all his might, eagerly trying to take the poisoned clubs away from the hard-working city. And among this lead industrial world, on an open platform, on the roof of a neighboring high-rise, surrealist-artist-ant. Neither inclement weather nor the dirty darkness covering the city did not bother him. Cleverly hiding behind a double brick ledge, under a strange, improvised small canopy, it seemed that the ant completely did not pay attention to the strong wind and drizzling rain, he, as if in an illusory oblivion, hurriedly drove his brush on the canvas fixed on a ventilation ledge, enjoying the process of drawing, the creator was dissolved in his work, leaving for posterity a dog-sympathetic gray landscape on the canvas. What for? For what?

On a small windowsill, near which Amina stood, there were blooming violets. Here is the true beauty.

The noise of the restless, buzzing metropolis barely came through the dense double-pane window. In some slipping moment, Amina quite realistically thought that on the site of high-rise buildings she sees a terrible apocalyptic picture: rare dilapidated houses, stinky, fetid, dilapidated shed shacks, laminated-shingled plywood pieces and wooden bricks, shabby tent wigwams, cardboard resemblances of houses built from faded advertising posters, amateur rolling dugouts.

Around the bright bonfires that restlessly play between themselves here and there amid the surviving houses and abandoned cars, wilted ants doze off on tattered boxes, shamelessly wrapped in torn clothes, which are strange to call clothes, everywhere to the dark blue the sticky streams of smoke of the abandoned country conflagration stretch to the black sky, and the mercantile-harsh, completely lifeless sun, akin to a fiery indefatigable bird with an amber-agate reigning plumage, calmly flies itself from place to place, but a life-giving, saving light that from her, from the solar star, alas, does not come. The depressed Amina sighed heavily and slammed her eyes, trying to turn off the pessimistic and gloomy picture in the mourning imagination.

Time flowed sluggishly through the sad irregular oval of the window, round, tired of expectations, Amina comfortably housed herself in a cloudy, wide, freely fit two medium-fed ants – almost a double, double-breasted armchair made of pleasantly soft skin of young dandelion rams, from which – there was an amazing aroma of a blooming lotus from a distant delta of the southern river, saturated with the inherent notes of working days of hymenoptera. The ant twitched slightly, as it happens in the first milliseconds of slipping into the slippery transcendental parallelism of sleep, but Amina did not sleep, and did not even doze, she looked into the distance, through a ghostly transparent, huge double-glazed window. Her lucid, velvety kind eyes sparkled unusually brightly – either from the joy overwhelming her, or from endless fatigue. Go, take them, these ant women, why do their eyes shine?

Every minute someone passed by her in a humbling manner: either jaunty, restless young medical sisters, now pregnant ants dazed by thoughts, immersed in the som-nambulistic world of the future, then restless doctors, sometimes laborers, business-like and important, like peacekeeping guards, and it happened, and small, still very small pearl ants ran through, noisily sorting out some of their intricate mischief.

“Where did they come from here?” – Amina was perplexed and smiled idly. – “Shouldn’t a special building have to be assigned to such a trifle For some reason, I always thought that baby-ants are placed separately? It is strange how such small ones were released into the general adult corps? And when will the weather improve and the world will become colored?”

Suddenly, a completely relaxed ant heard a couple of ghostly sonorous clicks, and an unfamiliar voice right behind me whispered faintly: “So, we work, we work, we work, friends, we start the process, we start shooting! Motor-motor-motor!” In dismay she looked around nervously, desperately got up from a friendly chair and confidently took several steps towards the elevator, but suddenly changed her mind and immediately returned to her former place. An accidentally flustered uneasiness melted in an instant, leaving no trace.

Here, in the city maternity hospital in just two days of stay, she felt so comfortable and calm for the first time in the last two months that she would love to stay here for a couple more months, she still has nowhere to hurry. Nowhere and no one to go to…

– Sorry, sorry, can I help you with something? – the nurse on duty kindly turned to Amina.

But Amina “lost consciousness” and did not hear anything at all, the medic touched her paw to the pregnant woman and repeated the question.

– No, no, everything is in order. No, thanks, everything is in order, – Amin hurried to answer. – I have everything… I will ask if something suddenly… Thank you!

“Caring paws! Caring, caring, caring! That’s why I didn’t have enough all the time. Here they take care of me and my future baby…”

Outside the window, through the hazy hopeless cap of clouds that covered the city, and indeed the whole world, the burning, living rays of the sun erupted, as if a mysterious surgeon had carefully made an incision with a mysteriously bright scalpel, and in an instant the gray and earthy houses and streets came to life, breathing, turning the gloomy area beyond the area into colorful and truly vibrant habitats. The gray-dirty industrial monster in an instant unrecognizably transformed into a polyphonic-colored town.

“How little, it turns out, is necessary for true happiness – for someone a tiny drop of warmth and care, for another – a few rays of the sun? Life-giving sun. Although, maybe it’s the same thing?”

– Admire our beauty? – with a proud smile, the approaching roommate of Amina, the ant Piyo, nodded at the marble-blue snake. “But today she’s hardly impressive!” Today it is cloudy, and not at all… She is very beautiful here! You just need another time…

– Yeah, I look at everything. To the city, to the river! I like everything very much, – Amina answered with a little confusion in her voice, and she was surprised at her shaky uncertainty.

– Yeah, our Miisa* is perhaps one of the most picturesque rivers in the whole continent. And for me – she is the most beautiful and is. The most-most-most! In the summer, especially on hot days, Miisa is generally irresistible! You look at her in the summer! What places will you be from?

– Have I seen few rivers? More precisely, this river – the first one I met, – Amin said a little embarrassed. And then blurted out joyfully: – But I really liked her! True, really liked it. We also have a river in the city, but somehow we couldn’t get to it. Do not believe it, I have never seen her. All work and work, but endless vanity, but there is no time for the beautiful… there is no time to think about the beautiful. It seems that work eats up all my life… And from the city I am from San-Prittu*.

– Well, about work – that’s what you are saying! So many folded. We have to plow from morning to night without a break and a weekend.

– Yes… Work is our everything… without it – nowhere…

– There certainly isn’t anything beautiful. All for the common cause…

– Yes, yes, everything is so!

– And sometimes it seems better not to stop and not think what we are for and why we all work… the main thing is the process itself…

– You are directly speaking in my words. Well, talk about work! – Amina said in surprise.

– So this, I think, not only you and I… but about the river… if you talk about the river, then in general, any river calms and gives an inexplicable force of life, – Piyo became sad for a second, thought for a moment, and began to think aloud. – I don’t know how to explain it, but the course of the river… It fascinates and captivates with its calmness, with such good calmness, it draws you in, attracts you to you. Chess-word, it fascinates and calmly so, calmly… you look at the current like that, you stand and look, and you think… you think… uh, now you would immerse yourself in warm water and completely relax! – dreamed Piyo immediately closed her eyes, and a slight smile froze on her face.

– Ahhh, and the truth, probably the truth, is so cool! Amin caught her thought, delighted in a completely childish way.

– Yes, this is not the right word, not the right word! It is cosmically great! Fine! Phenomenally! Be sure to swim sometime. Take your time and drive to the river… In the summer you need… – happy Piyo shone with emotion and added. – Highly recommend!

They stood still for several minutes in complete silence, enjoying the panorama of the city, which eagerly absorbed solar energy, and the picturesque river, until they were called into the dining room for a mid-afternoon snack.

Two loud gulls flew one by one outside the window, they made a small bend over the radiant smooth surface and disappeared without a trace behind a spiny bridge.

WHITE

Thin, cold trickles of the soul fell on the narrow shoulders* of the ant. Hissing water gaily ran through the hardened body from head to toe and disappeared into a small black hole in the floor. Warm rainbow light played overflows and invigorated Rhonda. The bathroom, for the convenience of using two ants at once, was divided into two parts by a low matte partition, which, like a mirror sheet, reflected the contents of one compartment in the other: snow-white washbasins for washing and pseudo-angular corner cubicles for taking a shower repeated to the utmost insanity glossy taps with cross-shaped “lamb”, numerous shelves for any important bathroom trifles, hooked plastic hangers, reminiscent of the teeth of a mythical dragon, transparent, cunning, in the shape of an unusual the marine animal, ladle, merry plastic stand for the toothbrush (with only one hole), showing a one-eyed pirate crazy

There was a soft knock on the pale blue plastic door, which was most likely used for the border between the bathroom and the corridor rather than for locking by random guests, then a beeped light a couple of times, and, finally, Ski’s cocked voice sounded.

– Rond, in a minute your time is running out! Hurry up!

– Now, now I’m going out! – skillfully repulsed a blow Rond.

– Come on, come on!

The red ant cocked his head: an electronic clock, neatly placed between the tiles, suggested that his legitimate five minutes for the soul had expired.

“Ehh, that’s a swim in the real sea!” Or you can in the warm and clean ocean… Sail away far, far from the coast, stretch out and lie down, relax on the calm, barely swaying waves, feel the whole expanse and depth of water, fully enjoy the expanses of the water element. Sail away so far where there is no one, so that the silence is quiet, gentle, light, whispering waves and the even, smooth surface of the ocean!”

He calmly turned the pretzel of the valve a couple of revolutions, and the brisk stream of water, gradually decreasing, completely disappeared, ant briskly shook the last drops from his head, extended his upper right foot to a striped towel and felt a gentle touch of light material.

“The most important thing is to thoroughly wipe the antennae so that you always have it dry and shiny!” Remember, a dry mustache will someday save your life!” – unexpectedly Rond showed another memorable photograph from a deep, deep childhood, – the words of the kindergarten nanny.

Drying himself with a pleasant towel, he threw open the bathroom door, and the mint breeze of the room air conditioner swept through the redder body. A disheveled ant pulled on his underpants in an instant and quickly ran out of the bathroom compartment. A few minutes were left before the general release. For some reason, Rond crouched for a second and abruptly jumped, fatally waving his right foot with all his strength in the air, depicting a volleyball player who soars above the volleyball net and punches the opponent’s block with an elastic ball.

“So as not to forget about the most important thing! As always – at the last moment!”

Rond paced broadly on the threshold of the room, Ski and Ave were already in their places – each in his own bed.

– We’re ready, – said Ave.

– Yeah, – Rond said in the affirmative.

– Yes, we are ready! – confirmed Ski.

– Well! I hear, hear! – Rond raised his voice.

The on-duty ant put his right red-haired paw to the electronic clock and lowered the registration token: the clock indicated the time with a bright green light – “Twenty-three, fifteen.”

“Everything went perfectly, another working week was tattered… another one, like hundreds of other weeks… how wonderful, how good that tomorrow, almost today is a day off! Finally, you can take a little breath after the marathon of a difficult work week and switch from all this perishable fuss, running around, husk, confetti…”

Rond, full of thoughts about the upcoming day by the usual movement, set the gentle Sunday alarm code on his watch, and, having pressed the automatic shutdown of the lampshade, flopped into his own, so welcoming bed.

“In a real calm sea-ocean, you would have a swim!” – with a new tidal, shaggy-foamy wave, his “hardly-selling” dreams of endless expanses of water returned.

An endless stream of pink fantasies annoyingly swirled in a fascinating icy whirlpool and did not let go into free swimming, boiling with boiling foam, and reverently charming, and lulling. Rond, who fell asleep, suddenly remembered his old friend Kint, who selflessly kept watch on a fishing trawler: “He surely admires all the beauties of the vast ocean, and, maybe, sometimes dissolves in it, swims, bathes… Work is work, but you can enjoy moments that are favorably given to us by fate.”

The muffled soft orange light of the lampshade, gradually fading away, finally fell asleep soundly in a gray-haired nightly note. Outside the twilight window, noisy rain still lashed uneasily. The murderous elements played the devilish tragedy in the theater more and more actively. The changeable gusty wind either flew with furious fury on the incalculable trophic drops falling from the sky, then silently faded away, as if a fearless jaguar, waiting in ambush for a young antelope, then again pounced with even more frantic force, and this desperate game continued without end and edge. Terrible thunderclouds pushed anxiously across the gloomy sky from one corner to another, and back again, as if finding no way out of a confined space. And yet, the only way out of the shaky shameless clouds was to completely pour out all their sadness accumulated over the day, two-week-month over the sleeping city, and only then calmly sail home…

Ski and Rond were already snoring soundlessly – apparently, they had revealed some secrets of enchanting night tales. Ave, lying on his right side, unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep and peered at the old Alt chair with curved carved legs, his eyes moved a little to the left of the furniture antiquary, and before his eyes appeared a picture of a lighted-black square window: external light fell on a huge rectangle from above, creating an illusion of infinite space.

If you look into the gloomy depth of the night, without being distracted by the same forty-story hulk, you can see so thin and fragile lines of sad loneliness! But, alas, the ghostly tears of nature, sullenly flowing down the transparent surface of glass, returned to the real world. A world of endless laws and regulations, where every working ant was a tiny detail of the universal mega-mechanical apparatus.

Suddenly, Ave caught himself with the careless thought that observing the rain chilly at night, at the very moment when everyone and everyone had already left the real world and were soundly sleeping, brought in his tiny heart an unclear confusion, and now for a whole month or not, more than a month, he lives somehow differently. Not so, that absolutely something radically changed in his life, but he began to inexplicably be excited and fascinated by the flickering night world, attracting to his mystery, like a magnetic plate. It seemed to him sincerely that every particle of his tiny organism deliberately tries to increase to infinite sizes, then to decrease to a point mark, and that his whole body is continuously breathing, and already lives some kind of indefinite, unnatural for a “vicious circle of working ant”, your life. Sometimes strange minutes came, and maybe seconds, when his “right” consciousness turned off, and he uncontrollably drowned in an infinite, mysterious Universe. A whistling wind gripped him gently and firmly and carried it into distant unknown expanses. After such alarming fleeting attacks, it seemed to Ave that he was losing control of himself, could not do anything and say where he was. His mystical soaring did not cause much concern, and he decided that since the state of these same “unreal flights” didn’t harm anyone around him, then everything was in perfect order, everything was on schedule, unchanged… For himself, he he couldn’t exactly determine whether it was good or bad, he simply felt an irresistible desire to get up and go to the window, to be a little closer to the priceless transparent pearls pouring from the infinitely hazy sky. It happened that sometimes, nevertheless, some inexplicable fear pulled out all his muscles, suddenly paralyzed his limp body, gripped him tightly by all legs, like a Procrustean bed, and did not let him out of his arms.