LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

falls out of BUSHY-TAIL’s apron. ORANGINA picks it up.)

      ORANGINA (Photographing first the book and then BUSHY-TAIL): What are you reading?

      BUSHY-TAIL: A biology textbook. I want to be a doctor

      SNOWFLAKE (Gagging): Are you kidding?

      BUSHY-TAIL: Why?

      MANIAC: You’re too beautiful

      BLIZZARD: Order something for yourself

      BUSHY-TAIL: Another time

      MANIAC: I’ll take care of this

      BLIZZARD: Tell me, Bushy-Tail, what do you love more than anything on earth?

      BUSHY-TAIL: Macaroni and cheese

      BLIZZARD: Is that bizarre? I do too

      BUSHY-TAIL: And boiled onions

      BLIZZARD: You’re joking

      BUSHY-TAIL: No, it’s true

      BLIZZARD: I thought I was the only person on earth who loved boiled onions

      (BUSHY-TAIL leaves, clears something from the table, brings back another order, is always efficient and on time with everything. She seems to be everywhere at once. People are walking all around. BLIZZARD is seen on the TV screen.)

      SNOWSTORM: Do you have the sensation that the world revolves around you?

      BLIZZARD: Non-stop almost

      ORANGINA: And that everything around us is a lie?

      BLIZZARD: I have the feeling people confuse the truth for what it’s not

      SNOWFLAKE: She really is a pretty girl

      ORANGINA: She has such delicate wrists, slender ankles and such an androgynous figure

      BUSHY-TAIL (Appears): What kind of figure?

      LENOCHKA: Two huge eyes

      BUSHY-TAIL: I’ve never considered myself pretty. Not for five minutes

      ORANGINA: You could be a trend-setter

      SNOWFLAKE: God wanted to make her a handsome boy

      SNOWSTORM: But changed his mind at the last minute

      MANIAC: Come on, Bushy-Tail, have a drink with us

      BUSHY-TAIL (Speaks and disappears): I don’t drink or smoke

      LENOCHKA (To SNOWFLAKE): Did you quit smoking?

      SNOWFLAKE: I never smoked to begin with

      ORANGINA: You don’t know how lucky you are

      SNOWFLAKE: I have lots of other flaws

      BLIZZARD (To BUSHY-TAIL): Where do people like you come from?

      BUSHY-TAIL (Appearing): The Far North

      LENOCHKA: Just what I thought for some reason

      BUSHY-TAIL: Where are you from?

      MANIAC: The eternal question – whence have we come?

      SNOWFLAKE: It’s because she’s so natural, sincere and photogenic

      ORANGINA: How old are you, Bushy-Tail?

      BUSHY-TAIL: Me? I’m seventeen. What about you?

      ORANGINA: Me? I think I’m twenty-five. I don’t remember

      SNOWFLAKE (Hands BUSHY-TAIL a business card): Call me this evening

      BLIZZARD: Don’t be afraid

      ORANGINA: BCH

      BUSHY-TAIL: What’s that?

      BLIZZARD: Don’t you watch television?

      BUSHY-TAIL: No

      SNOWFLAKE: “Love Knows no Fear”

      BLIZZARD: Definitely give it a watch

      (Outside. VOLODYA walks along the street looking in shop windows, shivering from the cold. He stops in a store, shakes the snow off his shoulders, looks over the men’s clothing then moves on to look at the women’s clothing. Looks at the hats, tries on one, another, a third, standing before the mirror, gazing at himself from all possible angles. Takes off the hat, puts it back in its place and walks back out onto the street.

      In the café it’s warm. Someone is even dancing; someone has walked away, another has returned. Someone is still eating, someone is drinking. SNOWFLAKE reads a book, SNOWSTORM drinks whiskey on ice, smokes and people watches.)

      SNOWSTORM: I was totally phased out by helplessness, uselessness, moneylessness – I left my wife. I went to another city to live with a friend. I wasn’t doing anything at the time, just playing some music, writing some poetry, and I remember how everything just came crashing down on me. I was writing these really gruesome, depressing poems with suicidal overtones. They came under the title of “Me Searching for Glory.” They were about this guy lying in a bathtub who slits his wrists and realizes that the only thing tying him to the real world is his girlfriend who he really loves and empathizes with. These poems were colored by the dramatic experiences of a friend of mine – he’d split up with his girlfriend, too. She was a ballerina. And the last line went like this:

      She’ll return to me, of course,

      Some other Monday morn.

      But today the end is my goal.

      A knife is my compass,

      My heart is my atlas.

      And then it all ends with a lot of howling. The only things I had to my name were a towel, three books, forty rubles and 200 records. Two hundred records was the sum of my life. That’s the exalted state I lived in at the time. I was a genuine maniac. A maniac of despair.

      MANIAC (Peering over SNOWFLAKE’s shoulder): What are you reading?

      SNOWFLAKE: I’m rereading Nabokov.

      MANIAC: You break my heart. That’s my favorite writer.

      LENOCHKA: So what do you do when you’re not working?

      MANIAC: I swim. That’s why I have big shoulders

      ORANGINA: That’s beautiful (Takes MANIAC’s photo.)

      BLIZZARD: I like track and field, myself

      LENOCHKA: You run fast?

      BLIZZARD: I wanted to run to the sun when I was a kid

      MANIAC: What is that food you’re eating?

      BLIZZARD: Bread, mushrooms and cheese

      MANIAC: I’ve got greens of some sort

      LENOCHKA: Vitamins

      MANIAC: I wonder who the first guy to eat greens was

      LENOCHKA: Our neighbors used to complain to my mother that I sniffed the grass

      SNOWFLAKE: You get in trouble?

      LENOCHKA: She says, what do you sniff grass for?

      MANIAC: Really

      SNOWSTORM: My mom still has no idea that I smoke and use psychotropics

      BLIZZARD: Is that already a beer you’re drinking?

      SNOWSTORM: Beer and coffee

      LENOCHKA: Ooh, yuck

      MANIAC: What are your blinies with?

      SNOWFLAKE: Kiwi and strawberries

      LENOCHKA: Mine are with chocolate

      ORANGINA: Mine are with honey and lemon juice

      SNOWSTORM: Don’t non-conformists live well?

      MANIAC: But we die young

      (VOLODYA

Скачать книгу