Manchester Diary - стр. 15

– Who's there? – an unfamiliar voice outside the door. Levy introduced himself.

The door opened, and the one who opened the door immediately disappeared into the rooms. Levy came in. A lot of fashionably dressed up guys are important to talk, talk. Among them, Valera, who is even more plump, has a striped shirt, ruddy with a short soft beard on her face.

– Oh, Levy! Hello! How are you?

– Gd bless! All is well. How about you?

“Fine too, buddy.” You sit down here if you want, and I have to talk about business with the guys.

Valera stepped aside and spoke, spoke, spoke. And Levy was sitting. But he did not sit for long, because he realized that no one would drive him, but he would not entertain either, since no one needed him here and, rightly, was not interested.

– Thanks for the hospitality. Well, I'll go, ”Levy went to the door.

– Ah, well, be healthy, – the answer sounded half-indifferent, – come in somehow else.

“Come in” sounded like a formal invitation and Levy really did. Not immediately, not next week, maybe in six months, or maybe in a year. The door was not opened as fast as the last time, everyone was asking who and where. When they let inside, they personally took us to the living room, where several people were sitting, and among them the dull Valera. Blush disappeared from the cheeks, a deep sadness and hopelessness fell on his face.

“Ah, it's you, Levy.” Hey.

– Hi, Valera. How are you?

– You know, bad.

Valera did not hide or hide anything, but in a completely simple-minded, fallen tone, he said:

– One evening they rang the front door. Two masked men entered, armed with pistols, ordered everyone to lie on the floor and after that they took money from the table and, without saying goodbye, left. Serious guys. It's good that everyone survived, ”he added despondently.

“How much money did they take from you, Valera?” I asked, so as not to be silent and ask at least something.

– More than a hundred thousand rubles. This money is not mine. This is the money of those people who came to visit me and left them in storage. The trouble is that these people, knowing about this misfortune of mine, nevertheless demand them from me and demand very harshly.

One hundred thousand! What an incredibly colossal amount, Levy was horrified to himself. One hundred thousand, when the average salary in the country is only one hundred rubles a month! And all these people, why did they leave their money with Valera? So that later one of them could make a “tip”, bring his friends and then rob him, then to demand everything back. These are such business relations and such business partners, don’t bring Gd.

Drizzles a cold rain. Levy recalls how he also walked along this sidewalk and also drizzled with a cold rain, but he specially opened his jacket so that everyone would see him for the first time tied a red tie. Cold and proud. The ends of the tie tremble with joy, playing with the wind. Here is the one-story building of the Louis Pasteur Hospital. Seven-year-old Levy was saved here when purulent appendicitis was discovered in him. Then he really didn’t want to be put to sleep, put up a fight on the operating table and shouted everything – “fascists, fascists”.

Here is the “Baronovsky” house, opposite which stood two beer stalls and a long line of men who blew foam from the mugs, diluted beer with vodka, and then cursed, urinated, fought, wallowed. These Larkovs have long been gone, but the smell of a mixture of beer and urine seems to have settled here forever.