LITMIR.BIZ

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and not missing a chance to introspect, he vaguely sensed that his love was not real, i.e., born independently, but viral – emerged from a feeling of competition. It is very complicated for love to grow. It is like creating a new influenza virus from nothing, when all around everyone is healthy. Yet, it is possible to catch the love of others after a sneeze.

      But while love was in many respects viral, he was unlucky for real. Moreover, he was doubly unlucky because together with a girl who loved not him, he could lose a friend. “If Ul only knew…” thought Athanasius gloomily. “And what would he do if he knew? Would he throw Yara in a bag into the sea for the sake of our friendship?”

      Yara, not yet thrown into the sea, displayed enormous activity. She dragged poor Athanasius through tonnes of stores and found a lid after all that would fit the diameter of the lens. After forcing Athanasius to be glad of it to the max, the happy couple pulled him into a cafe, where he drank coffee and from melancholy chewed the rim of the paper cup.

      Then they proposed to Athanasius to stroll along the boulevards, and he agreed, although the pleasure for a walk in winter along the boulevards is two percent from average. With his toe Athanasius kicked a cap from a plastic bottle and, his eyes following the jumping red point with a white belly, he berated himself. Where did he go wrong? Perhaps he and Ul paced their friendship too fast? When you reach white heat too soon, then it is difficult to maintain it. However, never sell a friendship short. It does not forgive. For two hours, Athanasius trailed along beside them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind.

      “So I told her parents, ‘She’s absolutely undeveloped, although a beauty! Nearly twenty, and still spends the evenings gluing her brain to garbage on TV!’ Her papa, the secret service colonel, said to me, ‘First you get married, and then re-educate!’ he said, waving his hands.”

      “Let’s go to her right now! We’ll dash off somewhere as a foursome!” Ul cheerful proposed. Athanasius became silent for a second. “Easily!” He took out his phone, but the next moment with regret took it away from his ear. “Ah, forgot! Can’t today! She has classes,” he said. “She always has classes. Either the Institute, or the University, or some academies,” remarked Ul. “What do you want! Well, maybe, although these will be the last. Then we’ll meet,” Athanasius expressed hope.

      Here he was being sly, because he knew that his girl’s classes would continue forever. Or at least until the girl herself appeared in nature. For the time being, there existed only a name (Victoria), a last name (prudently not revealed), an apartment on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, important parents, and a photograph of a stunning beauty. Victoria came to his head somehow accidentally, surfaced from parts cut from non-existence, and now the entire HDive knew that somewhere in the city Athanasius has a girl, who was ready to walk to Siberia for his sake and was only waiting for the moment when the well-known firm would release its new line of winter footwear. At times Athanasius felt that he was beginning to be inconsistent in the details, and, suddenly remembering, started to reason out the circumstances of the break-up with Victoria. A tragic death? Fatal treason? Departure to Honduras of the intelligence officer papa with the cryptographer daughter and sniper wife?

      Meanwhile the happy beloved of the cryptographer from Honduras was strolling pensively behind his friend’s girl and trying to convince himself that he did not like her legs. And generally he was glad that she was almost always in camouflage pants, which automatically transform every girl into a combat comrade.

      All through the fall, during any free hour, Ul and Yara wandered along the Moscow River and, looking at the water taxis with pop music thundering, called them music boxes. Somehow, Ul shot apple cores at them. As the third core in succession struck against the side, the water taxi discharged dark and smelly diesel exhaust at the same time. “Yay! I beaned it!” Ul began to shout, and for a long time they ran after it until, tired, they fell onto the grass.

      It was cold. Wet leaves stuck to their backs. “Dragons” escaped from their mouths on forceful exhalations. They lay on the lawn and imagined the sea of those quiet off-season Crimean towns, where at eight in the evening life stops, already inconvenient to phone, and only timid bicycle thieves dart along the narrow stone courtyards, reeking of the long-standing presence of cats.

      This imaginary sea was better than the real one, because it was born of their love. In their Moscow sea rusty teeth of old moorings jutted out of the foamy water. Waves ran along the jagged steps of the embankment. At night, the searchlight burnt on the old customs quarantine pier. Well-fed seagulls, like chickens, were sauntering along the parapet. Insolent sparrows somersaulted in the surf, where small flies swarmed above the rotting algae and a dolphin tail cut by a screw stuck out.

      Then Yara became Yara. In all documents and registers, it goes without saying, it remained “Yaroslava” as before. “Yara” was like the mark of Ul’s property. Economizing the sounds of his own speech, Ul eternally shortened everything, beginning with himself. It would seem that the name “Oleg” was too long. Why not make himself Ul?

      Ul hardly talked about love. When it is there, it is not necessary to speak of it. Perhaps he blurted out something in the style of: “tell this to our grandson!” But then he adored life-asserting stories. Well, for example, one fellow went into the drugstore for a thermometer. On the way back two guys attacked him. He began to struggle and during the fight it turned out that the thermometer was shoved into the mouth of one guy and was broken there. “Precisely with all the mercury! Get it?” Yara did. “But how did it get shoved into his mouth?” “Anything can happen in a fight. Maybe, there weren’t any teeth. Maybe, even somehow… And there’re much dumber incidents!” Ul said, and Yara believed that so it was.

      The dumber the incident, the closer to the truth. On the contrary, the more romantic, the further from the truth. Not without reason the experienced librarians most often placed books about princes on white horses in the division: “developing literature about animals.”

      Occasionally they went to Yara’s sister, who had a son a bit over two. The sister would instantly flutter off somewhere and Yara would serve her duty as an aunt. “Once upon a time there lived a mousey-scouty and a froggy-crocy!” she said solemnly. The diathetic chubby little boy did not care for fairy tales. He immediately lost focus and began to throw a potato. “Come, let’s listen! To whom is the most beautiful girl in the world telling a story about mousey-scouty and froggy-crocy?” Ul said in a dismal voice. The child froze. The mouth began to pull down dangerously. “And hoppy-bunny!” Yara continued to coo. “And money-bunny!” Ul made a correction. “In short, this entire brotherhood lived in a certain kingdom – a certain state, namely at the Savelovskaya subway station, not far from the computer market, and fed on talking cockroaches with no musical ear.”

      So flowed the days of this exquisite fall. At times, a silly mood came over the formerly serious, almost stern Yara. “Will you do everything for me? And will you let me touch your eye with my hand?” she asked slyly. Ul was happy and was secretly afraid of his own happiness, understanding that he was absurd in happiness like an enamoured pit bull.

* * *

      In that walk before the snowfall, everything was wildly hilarious to Yara and Ul. Goofy people were strolling along comical streets and with an intense look doing amusing things: shopping, answering the phone, looking fearfully at the sky, and pulling up their collars. Nearby a freezing woman with a handcart was stomping and selling snakes for cleaning clogged drains. Established couples politely hissed at each other or squabbled in tired voices.

      And here suddenly snow came pouring down and everything was hidden somewhere. The square, the subway, the “chickn meat” in pita, and the woman with the handcart. Only car horns, short lost rays of headlights, and the two of them. And at that minute, when the whole world was only made of snow, Ul kissed Yara. After the kiss, he rubbed his own nose against hers. Yara liked this. They stood and rubbed noses like horses. And snow tried to get between their noses.

      “Well, I’m going!” Athanasius’ voice reached them through the snowy shroud. “Where to?” Athanasius wanted to say that he was leaving altogether, but instead growled, “To buy water!” and went away to the kiosk. Ul heard an annoyed exclamation: either someone bumped into him or he against someone.

      “He’s strange today! Something’s eating him.

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