Stories from "Ings and Oughts" by Alla Gorbunova

Video: Alla Gorbunova reads “Oy Oy Oy” in the original Russian.

Oy Oy Oy

There’s a man lying down in a grave somewhere
With the same tattoos as me.
Coil

In the bathroom of the Krasnoyarsk airport, pop starlet Amanda, passing through on her tour, glanced accidentally at the cleaning schedule and froze: the cleaning woman’s signature corresponded precisely to her own, Amanda’s, signature. Every crook, every curl—it was all identical, as though Amanda herself had signed there. Amanda couldn’t understand how such a thing was possible, and that very same day she hired a private investigator to find out every detail about this cleaning woman. The following morning, the investigator told Amanda that the cleaner’s name was Lyudmila Pashkevich; she was forty-four years old, uneducated, lived in workers’ housing in the Sovetsky neighborhood of Krasnoyarsk, and there was nothing special about her. Plus, on top of all that, she had a harelip. Amanda the starlet just about calmed down, but then the investigator produced copies of all of the cleaning woman’s official documents, including a job application she had written out by hand, and to her horror Amanda saw that Lyudmilla Pashkevich’s handwriting was precisely the same as her own. All of which made Amanda somewhat uneasy. Like a thorn in her heel, this cleaning woman tormented her. After all, she had been doing just fine, recording songs, visiting her cosmetologist and tanning salon, dating her boyfriend, and knowing no woe—and now there was Pashkevich.

Amanda tried to put the woman out of her mind—No, no, I have nothing in common with her, what’s a signature, what’s someone’s handwriting. Just a coincidence. It happens—she told herself. Her concert went well, though she did not perform her newest song. No one in the world had heard it yet; Amanda had written it only recently and intended to return to Moscow and record it in the studio. It went like this: “I love you and you love me / we’re together finally / you’re my joy / oy oy oy.” Amanda was going to dedicate the song to her boyfriend.

Waiting for her return flight after the concert, Amanda decided to go into the airport bathroom. You don’t scare me, Pashkevich, she thought, though at the idea of the bathroom her heart began to beat strangely. I know everything about you, you’re a poor lonely woman with no education and a harelip. The bathroom was sunk into a glimmering twilight, and when Amanda entered, all the noise of the airport faded. In the bathroom, a woman with a harelip was washing the floor, stooped over as she dragged a rag across the tiles, and she was singing “oy oy oy!” to the tune of Amanda’s song. “What’s that you’re singing?” Amanda mumbled. “Oy oy oy!” sang the woman, almost viciously, then looked up at Amanda with cloudy gray eyes: “It’s a song, see”—and went on scrubbing the floor.

Amanda flew to Moscow. Life lost its colors for her: recording, performing, trips, clubs, boyfriend, cosmetologist, tanning salon, shopping, whatever else she had loved—all of it turned out to be a trick, a lie, because somewhere in eastern Siberia there lived a woman with a harelip and Amanda’s handwriting, her signature, her song. Amanda’s entire life was ruined, poisoned, revealed to be a hoax, someone’s cruel joke. One day, Amanda threw herself out of a window, nobody knew why. At her funeral there was a woman with a harelip no one recognized. She stood there for a while, then went away.

* * *

Act of Nature

N was walking down the street one day when, at the intersection of Leninsky Boulevard and Zina Portnova Street, he saw something strange in the sky. At first he thought it was a plane preparing to land; Pulkovo Airport was nearby. But then he looked more carefully, and it wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky, pretty high up there, really small, but you could see that it was a car. N spat on the street and decided it was a plane anyway.

Next evening, N was walking down the street again, got to the intersection of Leninsky and Zina Portnova, and again saw something strange in the sky. He saw—you guessed it—a car. As was his custom, N spat and decided it was a plane anyway. He walked a little farther on Leninsky, toward the Semya supermarket. But then he heard a peculiar sound, turned around, and saw a car falling from the sky to the ground. And crashing. All the other cars on the street began honking; the drivers jumped out, pointing up at the sky. Shitshow, thought N, and kept going.

He stopped by the Semya supermarket, came out with a little sack, and slowly headed back. But now the intersection was full of cops, ambulances, rescue vehicles. Traffic had completely stopped, people were running down the sidewalks in a panic, watching the sky. Meanwhile in the sky, cars were appearing one after the other, emerging from the sky’s dark void to the southwest, tracing an arc, and plummeting. Some of them crashed, turning into piles of metal, others for some reason landed very neatly, as though on airbags, and drove off. But they couldn’t drive very far, because the cops and rescue services stopped them.

N went up to a cop on the sidewalk and asked him what was going on. “What we have here,” the cop said, “are cars falling from the sky, creating a public disturbance.” “But why,” said N, “aren’t they all crashing?” “Cause not yet established,” said the cop. Meanwhile, two other cops bring over a young man who had been in a car that just made a smooth landing from sky to pavement. “This,” they report, “is so-and-so, twenty-nine years old, his Volkswagen just landed, this is the license plate.” “What were you doing in the sky, for what purpose did you land here?” asks the senior cop. “I was just coming back from Tallinn,” said the young man, “I spent the weekend there, so I’m driving down the highway, it’s dark all around, then I look and see that all the other cars have disappeared somewhere and I’m driving in the sky, so I drove like that for a little while, and then I started going lower and lower, and then I landed here. And this is a real dumpster fire, and you should let me get home to my mom.” All the other survivors said about the same thing. That evening, more than fifty cars fell out of the sky, and eleven of them made it.

N went home, feeling a little off on account of all this, but that was okay: he boiled up some dumplings, drank a little vodka, 200 grams, calmed down, and went online to see what people were saying about it all. On various internet forums, people were arguing: some were writing things about UFOs, some about devils, others about a special new technology for making flying cars. Other people were saying it was a false flag operation planned by special forces. At which point, N registered for a forum and wrote: it was an act of nature.

* * *

ἐκπύρωσις

Strings and strands of hair catch fire, eyes and eyelashes catch fire, it happened this morning, this afternoon, tonight. The fabric of the sky has turned from crimson to crocus—not fabric but Flemish lace, linen yarn stitched up into the air by golden-haired Godelieve in the old city of Bruges. There’s a movie about two killers in that town, eternally medieval, with its stone towers and spires, wooden bridges, chiming clock, town hall, museums, and breweries. And all of this is burning.

It’s different here. Petersburg autumn, sunset kindled over the Admiralty Shipyard, or the early dawn of two celestial bodies at once—the moon and the sun. They’re both in the sky at this hour: the moon pours out its pale green, pre-dusk. Over the fields around Pulkovo Airport planes descend slowly, blinking their lights, and a young man and woman have driven into those fields, turned off-road, parked, taken a blow-up bed and bottle of wine out of the trunk. Meanwhile the sun is already rising, spilling forth the dawn, and the world stands bemused by these two luminaries, as though they aren’t supposed to be there together, as though they’re a divorced couple.

The dissolving dawn dissolves distance, scatters its rays like a spawning fish, and the world steams in them, weightless. The city in the distance steams, the planes in the sky are steaming, the buildings of the observatory in the tall grass, and maybe some butterflies that haven’t yet frozen. More than anything else, I love that smell—smoke carried on the wind, coal smoke, in which you recognize a mixture of every other smell: the scraped knees of childhood, pain and desire, patchouli and oak moss, wormwood and citrus, sand and asphalt, automobile resin, benzine, cut grass and coffee, wine and vanilla. An aching, unrelenting, irretrievable smell, the smell of everything—the smell of the world ending in the fire.

. . . As in disaster films, they’ll step out of their cars, they’ll leave them behind in the traffic jams on major and minor avenues; maybe, following film logic, they’ll begin to dance. They’ll dance embraced by tongues of flame, they’ll spin like dervishes and lash the air with whips of fire. I’ve been told about a woman from Kyiv who was never interested in doing anything, not since she was a child—not reading, not playing with toys, not thinking, not speaking, not spending time with other people—only spinning like a top around her own axis, like a Sufi. So she spun and spun, and then she learned to spin with torches, and she left Kyiv and went to Goa and now she spins there. Kyiv burns, and Goa also burns. Millions of fiery dervishes with burning torches spin around their own axes.

Children run out of the schoolhouse onto the terrace, this is cooler than summer vacation, little whirls of electricity dance by their sides. Each gesture leaves a fiery trace in the air. How slow to ignite are time, space, motion, and matter. Teenagers climb up to the roofs to watch the glow of the world. Old man Indyukov, sick with tuberculosis, lisping and mean, goes out on his balcony too, to spit at the world one last time. The gob comes out precise, crimson with a black center-wormhole—tobacco and blood—like a poppy flower.

The planes above Pulkovo are on fire, the moon burns, and so does the nearby Gulf of Finland, as though oil had been spilled into it, virgin soil burns, the president burns in the Kremlin. Food—that’s fire, baby, water—that’s fire, baby—a Black man with dreads on the Nevsky Prospect sings and drums. Earth is fire. Air is fire. On Liteyny Prospect costumed Indian princesses with bare bellies sing and dance, and Sufis in the desert of Palace Square recite poems about the exultation of the atoms. Cell membranes turn to blistering plasma, cytoplasm turns to flame. LCD displays melt in the running heat.

On fire are conjunction, disjunction, implication, the sacrifice of meaning in poetry, the incitements of language, the body, and music. All mirrors break, all images are holy. The waterfalls of worlds are born and burn in the chaotic fluctuations of the foam of the universe. From now on there will be no more strong and weak, master and slave, beauty and beast, division of being in reason, word and thing, form and content, thought and sign, holy hierarchy, enlightened monarchy, liberal democracy, or whatever else. Only the waterfalls of the burning worlds, the cleansing flame, ekpyrosis.

Video: Alla Gorbunova reads “Oy Oy Oy” in the original Russian.

Oy Oy Oy

There’s a man lying down in a grave somewhere
With the same tattoos as me.
Coil

In the bathroom of the Krasnoyarsk airport, pop starlet Amanda, passing through on her tour, glanced accidentally at the cleaning schedule and froze: the cleaning woman’s signature corresponded precisely to her own, Amanda’s, signature. Every crook, every curl—it was all identical, as though Amanda herself had signed there. Amanda couldn’t understand how such a thing was possible, and that very same day she hired a private investigator to find out every detail about this cleaning woman. The following morning, the investigator told Amanda that the cleaner’s name was Lyudmila Pashkevich; she was forty-four years old, uneducated, lived in workers’ housing in the Sovetsky neighborhood of Krasnoyarsk, and there was nothing special about her. Plus, on top of all that, she had a harelip. Amanda the starlet just about calmed down, but then the investigator produced copies of all of the cleaning woman’s official documents, including a job application she had written out by hand, and to her horror Amanda saw that Lyudmilla Pashkevich’s handwriting was precisely the same as her own. All of which made Amanda somewhat uneasy. Like a thorn in her heel, this cleaning woman tormented her. After all, she had been doing just fine, recording songs, visiting her cosmetologist and tanning salon, dating her boyfriend, and knowing no woe—and now there was Pashkevich.

Amanda tried to put the woman out of her mind—No, no, I have nothing in common with her, what’s a signature, what’s someone’s handwriting. Just a coincidence. It happens—she told herself. Her concert went well, though she did not perform her newest song. No one in the world had heard it yet; Amanda had written it only recently and intended to return to Moscow and record it in the studio. It went like this: “I love you and you love me / we’re together finally / you’re my joy / oy oy oy.” Amanda was going to dedicate the song to her boyfriend.

Waiting for her return flight after the concert, Amanda decided to go into the airport bathroom. You don’t scare me, Pashkevich, she thought, though at the idea of the bathroom her heart began to beat strangely. I know everything about you, you’re a poor lonely woman with no education and a harelip. The bathroom was sunk into a glimmering twilight, and when Amanda entered, all the noise of the airport faded. In the bathroom, a woman with a harelip was washing the floor, stooped over as she dragged a rag across the tiles, and she was singing “oy oy oy!” to the tune of Amanda’s song. “What’s that you’re singing?” Amanda mumbled. “Oy oy oy!” sang the woman, almost viciously, then looked up at Amanda with cloudy gray eyes: “It’s a song, see”—and went on scrubbing the floor.

Amanda flew to Moscow. Life lost its colors for her: recording, performing, trips, clubs, boyfriend, cosmetologist, tanning salon, shopping, whatever else she had loved—all of it turned out to be a trick, a lie, because somewhere in eastern Siberia there lived a woman with a harelip and Amanda’s handwriting, her signature, her song. Amanda’s entire life was ruined, poisoned, revealed to be a hoax, someone’s cruel joke. One day, Amanda threw herself out of a window, nobody knew why. At her funeral there was a woman with a harelip no one recognized. She stood there for a while, then went away.

* * *

Act of Nature

N was walking down the street one day when, at the intersection of Leninsky Boulevard and Zina Portnova Street, he saw something strange in the sky. At first he thought it was a plane preparing to land; Pulkovo Airport was nearby. But then he looked more carefully, and it wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky, pretty high up there, really small, but you could see that it was a car. N spat on the street and decided it was a plane anyway.

Next evening, N was walking down the street again, got to the intersection of Leninsky and Zina Portnova, and again saw something strange in the sky. He saw—you guessed it—a car. As was his custom, N spat and decided it was a plane anyway. He walked a little farther on Leninsky, toward the Semya supermarket. But then he heard a peculiar sound, turned around, and saw a car falling from the sky to the ground. And crashing. All the other cars on the street began honking; the drivers jumped out, pointing up at the sky. Shitshow, thought N, and kept going.

He stopped by the Semya supermarket, came out with a little sack, and slowly headed back. But now the intersection was full of cops, ambulances, rescue vehicles. Traffic had completely stopped, people were running down the sidewalks in a panic, watching the sky. Meanwhile in the sky, cars were appearing one after the other, emerging from the sky’s dark void to the southwest, tracing an arc, and plummeting. Some of them crashed, turning into piles of metal, others for some reason landed very neatly, as though on airbags, and drove off. But they couldn’t drive very far, because the cops and rescue services stopped them.

N went up to a cop on the sidewalk and asked him what was going on. “What we have here,” the cop said, “are cars falling from the sky, creating a public disturbance.” “But why,” said N, “aren’t they all crashing?” “Cause not yet established,” said the cop. Meanwhile, two other cops bring over a young man who had been in a car that just made a smooth landing from sky to pavement. “This,” they report, “is so-and-so, twenty-nine years old, his Volkswagen just landed, this is the license plate.” “What were you doing in the sky, for what purpose did you land here?” asks the senior cop. “I was just coming back from Tallinn,” said the young man, “I spent the weekend there, so I’m driving down the highway, it’s dark all around, then I look and see that all the other cars have disappeared somewhere and I’m driving in the sky, so I drove like that for a little while, and then I started going lower and lower, and then I landed here. And this is a real dumpster fire, and you should let me get home to my mom.” All the other survivors said about the same thing. That evening, more than fifty cars fell out of the sky, and eleven of them made it.

N went home, feeling a little off on account of all this, but that was okay: he boiled up some dumplings, drank a little vodka, 200 grams, calmed down, and went online to see what people were saying about it all. On various internet forums, people were arguing: some were writing things about UFOs, some about devils, others about a special new technology for making flying cars. Other people were saying it was a false flag operation planned by special forces. At which point, N registered for a forum and wrote: it was an act of nature.

* * *

ἐκπύρωσις

Strings and strands of hair catch fire, eyes and eyelashes catch fire, it happened this morning, this afternoon, tonight. The fabric of the sky has turned from crimson to crocus—not fabric but Flemish lace, linen yarn stitched up into the air by golden-haired Godelieve in the old city of Bruges. There’s a movie about two killers in that town, eternally medieval, with its stone towers and spires, wooden bridges, chiming clock, town hall, museums, and breweries. And all of this is burning.

It’s different here. Petersburg autumn, sunset kindled over the Admiralty Shipyard, or the early dawn of two celestial bodies at once—the moon and the sun. They’re both in the sky at this hour: the moon pours out its pale green, pre-dusk. Over the fields around Pulkovo Airport planes descend slowly, blinking their lights, and a young man and woman have driven into those fields, turned off-road, parked, taken a blow-up bed and bottle of wine out of the trunk. Meanwhile the sun is already rising, spilling forth the dawn, and the world stands bemused by these two luminaries, as though they aren’t supposed to be there together, as though they’re a divorced couple.

The dissolving dawn dissolves distance, scatters its rays like a spawning fish, and the world steams in them, weightless. The city in the distance steams, the planes in the sky are steaming, the buildings of the observatory in the tall grass, and maybe some butterflies that haven’t yet frozen. More than anything else, I love that smell—smoke carried on the wind, coal smoke, in which you recognize a mixture of every other smell: the scraped knees of childhood, pain and desire, patchouli and oak moss, wormwood and citrus, sand and asphalt, automobile resin, benzine, cut grass and coffee, wine and vanilla. An aching, unrelenting, irretrievable smell, the smell of everything—the smell of the world ending in the fire.

. . . As in disaster films, they’ll step out of their cars, they’ll leave them behind in the traffic jams on major and minor avenues; maybe, following film logic, they’ll begin to dance. They’ll dance embraced by tongues of flame, they’ll spin like dervishes and lash the air with whips of fire. I’ve been told about a woman from Kyiv who was never interested in doing anything, not since she was a child—not reading, not playing with toys, not thinking, not speaking, not spending time with other people—only spinning like a top around her own axis, like a Sufi. So she spun and spun, and then she learned to spin with torches, and she left Kyiv and went to Goa and now she spins there. Kyiv burns, and Goa also burns. Millions of fiery dervishes with burning torches spin around their own axes.

Children run out of the schoolhouse onto the terrace, this is cooler than summer vacation, little whirls of electricity dance by their sides. Each gesture leaves a fiery trace in the air. How slow to ignite are time, space, motion, and matter. Teenagers climb up to the roofs to watch the glow of the world. Old man Indyukov, sick with tuberculosis, lisping and mean, goes out on his balcony too, to spit at the world one last time. The gob comes out precise, crimson with a black center-wormhole—tobacco and blood—like a poppy flower.

The planes above Pulkovo are on fire, the moon burns, and so does the nearby Gulf of Finland, as though oil had been spilled into it, virgin soil burns, the president burns in the Kremlin. Food—that’s fire, baby, water—that’s fire, baby—a Black man with dreads on the Nevsky Prospect sings and drums. Earth is fire. Air is fire. On Liteyny Prospect costumed Indian princesses with bare bellies sing and dance, and Sufis in the desert of Palace Square recite poems about the exultation of the atoms. Cell membranes turn to blistering plasma, cytoplasm turns to flame. LCD displays melt in the running heat.

On fire are conjunction, disjunction, implication, the sacrifice of meaning in poetry, the incitements of language, the body, and music. All mirrors break, all images are holy. The waterfalls of worlds are born and burn in the chaotic fluctuations of the foam of the universe. From now on there will be no more strong and weak, master and slave, beauty and beast, division of being in reason, word and thing, form and content, thought and sign, holy hierarchy, enlightened monarchy, liberal democracy, or whatever else. Only the waterfalls of the burning worlds, the cleansing flame, ekpyrosis.

Ё-Ё-Ё, ПРИРОДНОЕ ЯВЛЕНИЕ, ἐκπύρωσις

Ё-Ё-Ё

There’s a man lying down in a grave somewhere
With the same tattoos as me.
Coil.

В туалете красноярского аэропорта попсовая певичка Аманда, приехавшая на гастроли, нечаянно бросила взгляд на график уборки туалета и обомлела: подпись уборщицы в точности соответствовала ее, Аманды, подписи. Каждая закорючка, каждый завиток — все было идентично, будто расписывалась сама Аманда. Как такое возможно, Аманда понять не могла и наняла в тот же день частного детектива, чтобы он выяснил все подробности про личность уборщицы. На следующее утро детектив сообщил Аманде, что уборщицу зовут Людмила Пашкевич, что ей сорок четыре года, образования нет, проживает одна в гостинке в Советском районе города Красноярска и ничего примечательного из себя не являет, и еще у нее заячья губа. Певица Аманда уже совсем было успокоилась, но тут детектив предъявил Аманде копии всех документов уборщицы и заодно какого-то заявления на работу, которое она писала от руки, и к ужасу своему Аманда увидела, что почерк Людмилы Пашкевич в точности совпадает с ее почерком. И от всего этого стало Аманде как-то не себе. Как гвоздь в пятке, мучила ее эта уборщица Пашкевич. Ведь жила же себе Аманда счастливо, записывала песни, ходила к косметологу и в солярий, встречалась со своим бойфрендом и горя не знала — а тут Пашкевич. Попыталась Аманда выбросить ее из головы: нет, нет у меня с ней ничего общего, подумаешь — подпись, подумаешь — почерк. Случайное совпадение. Так бывает, — говорила себе Аманда. Концерт ее прошел хорошо, хотя новую свою песню она на нем еще не исполнила: ее пока не слышал ни один человек на свете, Аманда сочинила ее совсем недавно и намеревалась вернуться в Москву и записать ее в студии. Песня была такая: «Люблю тебя, а ты меня, / будем вместе дадада, / щастье мое / ё-ё-ё!». Аманда думала посвятить эту песню своему бойфренду. После концерта в ожидании обратного рейса Аманда решила зайти в туалет. Ты мне не страшна, Пашкевич, думала она, хотя сердце при мысли о туалете начинало как-то странно биться, я все про тебя знаю, ты бедная одинокая женщина, без образования и с заячьей губой. Туалет был погружен в мерцающий полумрак, и, когда Аманда вошла в него, все звуки аэропорта смолкли. В туалете мыла пол, нагнувшись, женщина с заячьей губой, и напевала при этом, водя тряпкой по кафелю, «ё-ё-ё!» на мотив Аманды. «Что это вы поете?» — пролепетала Аманда. «ё-ё-ё!» — пела женщина как-то почти злобно, потом подняла на Аманду мутные серые глаза: «Песня такая», — и продолжила тереть пол. Аманда улетела в Москву. Жизнь потеряла для нее краски: запись песен, концерты, путешествия, клубы, бойфренд, косметолог и солярий, шопинг и что еще она там любила — все это оказалось мороком, обманом, потому что там, в Восточной Сибири, жила женщина с заячьей губой с ее почерком, ее подписью, ее песней. Теперь вся жизнь Аманды была испорчена, отравлена, оказалась подделкой, чьей-то злой шуткой. Вскоре Аманда выкинулась из окошка, никто не знал почему. На ее похоронах видели никому не известную женщину с заячьей губой, она постояла и ушла.

* * *

ПРИРОДНОЕ ЯВЛЕНИЕ

Шёл N по улице, дошёл до перекрёстка Ленинского проспекта и улицы Зины Портновой и увидел в небе что-то странное. Вначале ему показалось, будто самолёт заходит на посадку. Пулково ведь недалеко. Но смотрит внимательней: а это не самолёт, а автомобиль по небу летит, высоко довольно, маленький совсем, но видно, что автомобиль. N сплюнул и решил, что всё равно самолёт.

На следующий день вечером N опять вышел на улицу, дошёл до перекрёстка Ленинского и Зины Портновой, и опять увидел в небе что-то странное. Автомобиль, представьте себе, он увидел. N по своему обыкновению сплюнул и решил, что всё равно самолёт. Прошёл немного вперёд по Ленинскому, в сторону магазина «Семья». Тут слышит звук какой-то странный, оборачивается и видит, как автомобиль с неба на асфальт падает. И разбивается. А другие машины на проспекте гудят, водители на улицу выбегают, пальцами на небо показывают. П*****, подумал N и пошёл дальше.

Зашёл в магазин «Семья», вышел оттуда с кулёчком, медленно направился обратно. А на перекрёстке уже полиция, скорая, МЧС. Машины все стоят, люди на тротуарах бегают в панике, смотрят на небо. А на небе один за другим появляются автомобили, вылетают из чёрной пустоты неба на юго-западе, прочерчивают дугу и падают вниз. Некоторые при этом разбиваются и превращаются в груду металла, а некоторые почему-то аккуратненько, как на воздушных подушках, приземляются и дальше едут. Но уехать далеко не могут, тут же их полиция останавливает и МЧС.

N подошёл к одному менту на тротуаре и спрашивает: в чём дело? Да вот, говорит, машины с неба падают, общественный порядок нарушают. А почему, спрашивает N, они не все разбиваются? Пока не установлено, отвечает мент. В это время двое других ментов к этому менту подвели молодого человека, он был в машине, которая только что плавно приземлилась с неба на асфальт. Это, доложили, такой-то, двадцать девять лет, фольксваген его только что приземлился, номера такие-то. И как на небе оказались, с какой целью с неба приземлились? – спрашивает его главный мент. Я, отвечает парень, просто ехал из Таллина, я там выходные провёл, еду себе по трассе, темнота вокруг, потом смотрю, а другие машины как будто исчезли куда-то, а я по небу еду, так ехал какое-то время, потом начал опускаться ниже, ниже, а потом и на асфальт приземлился. А тут, говорит, уже свалка такая, и вообще отпустите меня домой к маме. Все остальные выжившие отвечали примерно то же самое. В тот вечер с неба упало больше пятидесяти машин, не разбились из них одиннадцать.

N вернулся домой, было ему как-то от всего этого нехорошо, но ничего: сварил пельмени, выпил двести грамм, успокоился, залез в интернет посмотреть, что про это пишут. В интернете люди на форумах спорили, одни писали что-то про НЛО, другие про бесов, третьи про какие-то особые технологии, позволяющие делать летающие автомобили, четвёртые – что это всё был искусно спланированный спектакль спецслужб. Тогда N зарегистрировался на форуме и написал: это было какое-то природное явление.

* * *

ἐκπύρωσις

Загораются волосы и нити, глаза и ресницы загораются, это утро, сегодняшнее утро, сегодняшний день, сегодняшний вечер. Ткань неба от алого до алоэ – не ткань, а фламандское кружево: стежками своими проброшенное в воздух, сплетённое из льняной кудели златовласой Гудлейв в старинном городе Брюгге. Есть фильм про двух киллеров и этот город – навечно средневековый, в точёных башенках и шпилях, деревянных мостиках, с курантами, ратушей, музеями и пивоварнями. И всё это – горит.

У нас – иначе. Петербургская осень, растопленный закат над Адмиралтейскими верфями, или ранний рассвет сразу двух светил: Луны и Солнца. Оба они в этот час на небе: Луна разливает бледно-зелёное, предсумеречное всё ещё – над полями у Пулково, медленно садятся самолёты, мигая огнями, и юноша с девушкой приехали на машине в эти поля, свернули с дороги, встали, достали из багажника надувную кровать и бутылку вина, – а Солнце уже тоже восходит, разливает зарю, и мир в растерянности перед двумя светилами, как будто не положено им быть вместе, как разведённым супругам.

Рассвет растворяется и даль растворяет, разметывает лучи, как нерестящаяся рыба икру, и мир парит в них, невесомый. Парит город вдали, парят самолёты в небе, и здания обсерватории в высоких травах, и, может быть, ещё какие-то бабочки, не успевшие замёрзнуть. Больше всего я люблю этот запах – влекомый ветром дым, гарь, в которой узнаёшь смешение всех прочих запахов: детских разбитых коленок, травмы и страсти, пачули и дубового мха, полыни и цитрусов, песка и асфальта, автомобильной резины, бензина, скошенных трав и кофе, вина и ванили. Щемящий, беспощадный, невозвратный запах, в котором есть всё, – запах мира, погибающего в огне.

…Как в фильмах-катастрофах все они выйдут из своих машин, все они бросят их в пробках на больших и малых проспектах, может быть, продолжая кинематографическую логику, они начнут танцевать. Они будут танцевать, объятые огненными языками, они будут кружиться, как дервиши, и хлестать воздух плетьми огня. Мне рассказывали про одну девушку из города Киева, с детства она ничего не любила делать: ни читать, ни играть в игрушки, ни думать, ни говорить, ни общаться с другими людьми, а любила только вращаться юлой вокруг своей оси, как суфий. Так вращалась она и вращалась, а потом научилась вращаться с файерами, она уехала из Киева в Гоа и теперь вращается там. Киев горит и Гоа тоже горит. Миллионы огненных дервишей с файерами вращаются вокруг своей оси.

Школьники выбегают на крыльцо из школы, это круче, чем долгие летние каникулы, маленькие электрические вихри танцуют с ними рядом. След огня от каждого жеста руки висит в воздухе. Как медленно воспламеняется время, пространство, движение и вещество. Молодёжь забирается на крыши любоваться заревом мира. Туберкулёзник дед Индюков, шамкающий и злобный, тоже вышел на балкон, – последний раз в этот мир плюнуть. Плевок получился смачный, алый с чёрной сердцевинкой-червоточинкой, как цветок мака, – от табака и крови.

Самолёты над Пулково горят, горит Луна, горит недалёкая Маркизова лужа, будто в неё пролили нефть, горит целина, горит президент в Кремле. Еда – это огонь, детка, вода – это огонь, детка, – поёт чернокожий с дредами на Невском и бьёт в свои африканские барабаны. Земля – это огонь. Воздух – это огонь. Поют и танцуют на Литейном нарядные индийские принцессы с голыми пупами, и суфии в пустыне Дворцовой площади слагают стихи о ликовании атомов. Плазмалеммы клеток превращаются в раскалённую плазму, и цитоплазма становится пламенем. Струистым жаром плавятся жидкокристаллические мониторы.

Сгорает конъюнкция, дизъюнкция, импликация, всесожжение смысла в поэзии, воспламенение языка, тела и музыки. Все зеркала разбиваются, все образа святятся. Водопады миров рождаются и сгорают в хаотических флуктуациях в пене Вселенной. Отныне не будет сильных и слабых, раба и господина, красавицы и чудовища, диарезиса бытия в рассудке, слова и вещи, формы и содержания, мысли и знака, божественной иерархии, просвещённой монархии, либеральной демократии и чего там ещё. Только водопады сгорающих миров, чистое пламя, экпиросис.