A Flower Ungodly. Anton PrusЧитать онлайн книгу.
the plane from Angola, let me get a bidon* for my fellow soldiers!» The queue timidly asked, well, how is it? He grunted, finishing his glass, and answered, «it’s hard, but we’re advancing!» Then he took the bidon and fled. I returned home determined to go to Sveta and propose like the physicist ’from Angola.» Alcohol was still gurgling inside me, along with poetry, and a military march sounded in my ears. Sveta immediately opened the door, and her mother offered me something to eat. There was soup on the table.
Sveta and I sat in the kitchen, and everything was so prosaic: lukewarm soup, her mother in a ratty bathrobe, and an unsmiling Sveta. Sveta sharply asked her mother to leave the kitchen, and her voice did not sound like magical singing about the sleeping Svetlana… I got up, turned to the window, and proposed to Sveta with a memorized text, standing with my back to her since it was too scary to face her. The proposal sounded very unconvincing, something like we are no longer schoolchildren and should get married. Not a word about love, not a word about poetry, not a word about our delightful future. Like back then, in the elevator, I became more wooden than Pinocchio. Several minutes passed between words, so I was unsure if Sveta could even piece my speech together. «I don’t know,» she replied. No, I did not expect such an answer. I was waiting for a quiet Yes, or a joyful Yes. After all, I held her hand, and we saw the northern lights! At worst – Yes, but next year?! The skies collapsed, and I saw clearly that there was nothing between us, and there would never be anything between us; we didn’t even talk except for that one time with the sleeping bag. I silently gathered my things and stood at the door for a while. Sveta was also silent. I left, and on the way home on the tram, I wrote:
I will leave and let the snow conceal
Every step I took along the way.
I will go and let the rain reveal
Empty space where I was sure to stay.
I will leave forever, as in death,
Turn my back on her, who never was.
Let my heart feel winter’s frigid breath,
Close my ears to tired and useless words.
I’ll descend from daylight into night,
Draw a line under my broken soul.
Disappear forever out of sight,
Burn to ashes like a piece of coal.
* A Soviet bidon is a kind of keg or churn used for carrying liquids.
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