Manchester Diary - стр. 4

He stood, whispering his unpretentious requests with his lips – pleas for a safe trip, for blessing, for a good departure and return. He whispered, said “Amen,” and went to his retirement, on his own, this night, cabin 10218, whose iron lock was opened with a paper key.

On the upper left bunk was a sign: “Use the stairs”.

Levy hoped for his height and “sportiness”, climbed, but could not beat the climb the first time, jumped back to the floor, and then, the second time, still having overcome, rolled onto his back and sighed in relief:

– Well, the day has run out.

In another situation, it would not be easy to fall asleep in such a solid iron box, sloppy painted in a hospital-white color, like a real archaic safe, but the tiredness of the day, impressions, family twists and turns, moved so powerfully forever that he almost immediately plunged into a deep a sea dream, similar to the last view from the porthole – the black, impenetrable mess of the sea and sky, ominously toothless and silent, and fell asleep. Till tomorrow.

– Seryozha Kunder called you.

– Yes mom. For a long time nothing was heard about him. What did he want?

– He said that he was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, where he was under examination and treatment. There he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was given the second group of disability.

Now he won’t have to work, as he had once dreamed of as a child, Levy thought sadly.

“What did he want, mom?”

– Nothing. Just wondered where you are and how you are doing.

– We must go to him.

– Is it necessary?

Mom always protected Levy from unfavorable, as it seemed to her, acquaintances. Absolutely right. But she still failed to save everyone. Of the entire class of that ill-fated school number two hundred sixty-eight, Serezha was probably the best candidate for a friend, but only against the background of the students of this school. He did not want to study and do any kind of work. In a three-room apartment, his grandmother, mother and brother lived with him. My brother toiled for a long time in search of work, but then he nevertheless got a job as a collector on the Railway. He married, gave birth to a girl and died, at an early age for this common stomach disease. Sergei was left alone with his mother and grandmother. He brought rare records from the black market, put them on his gramophone, and at full volume with an open window he listened for days on end to the “space music” of various foreign artists. Levy occasionally came to him, called to walk around the city:

– Come, Seryoga, why sit at home? Look, the weather is so wonderful in the courtyard!

At first Sergey was going to take a walk, put on his sneakers, but at the last moment he changed his mind:

– You know, come on another time? Now I listen to music a little better.

They had not seen each other for a very long time, and now, now this is a bleak message. Levy came to his mother from abroad, where he had been for many years. Not much joyful happened during this time in St. Petersburg, in “their” area – mostly disappointing and sad things. And not only in the Kunder’s family.

Nevertheless, you need to visit a guy without saying aloud so as not to upset your mother, Levy thought.