Confession of a former student

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

What can happen to unlucky provincial applicants who do not want to return home or work at ZIL? Not at all what you thought …

God forbid, when my own mother is the head. RONO. Especially in a small town, where underwear dries on a park fence, and it is indecent to go to a reception in a housing office without a homemade ham. The teachers were obsequious, and I thought I was so smart. And who knew that my gold medal is as far from a natural Moscow medal as the ninety-second ruble is from a full dollar?

… "Asya," the mother shouted long distance, "if you get at least one grade at the exams, our whole family will be disgraced!" I had already received a deuce, and all I had to do was mumble "Five or five for an essay" - and ask to send money for vitamins to support mental activity. The mother said that she would hand over blackcurrant jam with the guide, there are more vitamins there than in the pharmacy. In short, going home was like strangling your parents with your own hands. And I wished them health and longevity. And in the yard were they, those same "dashing 90s" …

"gentlement" Vitya

The same unsuccessful applicant as I, but a Muscovite, introduced me to Vitya. Vitya was a rich man, he sold Chinese trousers and Turkish belts in Luzh, already in September he began to wear a mink hat (someone told him that it improves hair growth) and sobbed when they began to read Yesenin. He believed that Beria killed Yesenin because of jealousy of Isadora Duncan. Probably, Vitya fell passionately in love with me because I knew by heart exactly half of the "Ballad of Twenty-six", which is about the Baku commissars. When he offered me shelter in his two-room apartment, I was strategically indignant.

Vitya knelt down, although this was not necessary, he barely reached my ear anyway, and vowed to behave "like a gentleman." No one still believes, but for a whole year he kept this oath.

I learned how to cook soup from a bag and wash floors - that was my rent. Vitya presented red slippers, a T-shirt with a horse and a collection of "One Hundred Best Writings", in which it was written that Andrei Bolkonsky realized the purpose of life through an old oak tree. For days I wandered around the capital in a short skirt, met the indigenous people and cried at fate. For Viti it was called "sitting in the library, preparing for exams." I even fell in love for a short while with a student of the Meat and Dairy Institute, an indifferent basketball player, for Viti he was called "a sick friend who needs night care." When asked what she was sick with, I slashed: "hemophilia", which delighted Vitya to tears. “Like Tsarevich Alexei,” he said with respect.

Once he gave fruit and a postcard with a wish for recovery for a sick friend. The basketball player found that the fruit could be fresher.

How I became the salt of the earth

This is how I lived the autumn and winter. Mother sent small translations to the indicated address "Gazgoldernaya Street, dormitory of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, house … and apartment …" She wrote that the whole city is proud of me as if I were Valentina Tereshkova. Excellent students are put at my desk as a reward, and my photograph (with bows) hangs on the "Salt of the Enskoy Land" stand. I was choked with tears of shame, tormented by moral torment, and in those minutes I took up my textbooks. The textbooks contained a lot of interesting and informative things.

After parting with the meat and dairy basketball player (for the whole of our novel, he said at most forty words, and then about Yeltsin), I entered the preparatory courses. Vitya behaved exceptionally noble. He knew that all my physical and mental strength is spent on preparing for exams, and took his word that in case of successful admission, we go to the registry office on the same day, to apply. I was homesick. But what will you not go for because of the love of enlightenment?

This terrible power of love

I wrote the essay in five or four. Still not five: the topic was according to Yesenin.

English was three days away. “Read it,” Vitya suddenly suggested at supper and pulled me a textbook. I proudly read the first exercise. Vitya turned pale. "What is name?" “Name,” I replied scornfully. - What did you learn in the communal technical school?"

Vitya choked on a chicken. He cleared his throat, grabbed a newspaper with advertisements and rushed to the phone. "Three days! He yelled. - Introductory! Capable! From scratch! Any money! " Early in the morning we were already running on the subway.

The tutor looked like she was ninety years old, but she held her back like a ballerina. Dragged on "Belomor": "What is your name, children?" “May name Asya,” I began cheerfully. “What?” She gasped.

She immediately refused. She said there are no miracles, hopeless. Vitya insisted. “We need at least a year of daily intensive here! - the tutor was excited. "They speak better in kindergarten!" Vitya appealed to her professional pride. And I already saw how my portrait was removed from the stand amid the sobbing of my mother. School in grief … Funeral march …

"How much do you charge for one hour?" She named. “I pay you exactly ten times more. But you work all three days, without interruption …”She waved her hands. Vitya opened his purse and laid the money on the table. By the thickness of the green pack, I realized that my beauty is a terrible power. "If Asya gives in, you get the same amount." “He won't give up!” The old woman said bravely. She was in a semi-faint state. Me too. Ten minutes later we were already sitting at the table and I was humming: "My name is from …"

Ty hey, hot potato

For three days and three nights, drop by drop, by centimeter, by sound, she hammered English into me. Two hours - five minutes for tea, another two hours - five minutes for a sandwich. This insane venture had to end with her stroke or heart attack, my schizophrenia, fire, flood, Kashchenko or Sklif, putsch, earthquake, explosion of the Kremlin, aliens … Anything. Five hours of sleep on the kitchen couch, a shower, and then again - a terrible whirlwind of modal, palatal, auxiliary, articles, perfects - “speak as if you were rolling a really hot potato in your mouth! T-hey, hot potato! How she didn’t nail me - I don’t know … I would make nails out of these old women.

… At nine in the evening she let me go. Has baptized. Looking in the mirror, I realized that we were both halved. “If you get a C, then I have not lived my life in vain,” said the great old woman.

Prosfirka for dinner

There was a small church next to her house. I knocked on the locked gate. The red-faced watchman looked me over with interest. Well, of course: crumpled shorts, rubber slippers, a short T-shirt with a skull, on the head - a hayloft after a hurricane … “Holy Father,” I howled plaintively, “I should put a candle for someone. Exam in the morning "…" What a fool, - said the watchman affectionately. “Well, come in”… He opened the gates, led me to the altar and showed me how to be baptized. The candle, he said, must be put to George the Victorious. I lit it myself, I set it myself. “Saint George,” I whispered. - My precious angel. Beloved God. Send me an English four. I want to be educated, to benefit people … Saint George, I suffered so much "… The watchman stood nearby, chewed his lips and muttered:" Maybe he will … the Lord welcomes the holy fools "…

After praying, I asked the watchman for holy water. In the absence of another container, he brought a decanter. “Boiled?” I asked. The watchman shuddered, but controlled himself. I went behind the altar and brought me a neat round prosphyrka. Dropped Cahors into a glass. Made him swallow the wafer. “You will bring the decanter,” he strictly reminded, “church property. But if you don't bring it, the Lord will punish”…

When I got home, they turned off the water for the night. So the decanter came in handy. We drank tea in holy water, ate a bun and went to bed in silence.

Four, it is possible with a minus

On the exam, I remembered everything I knew and what I never knew. Phrases formed easily and freely. The text for translation seemed to be written in the native language. The examiners did not have time to finish the question, and I was already answering it. “How good! Did you study in a special school? " I nodded gravely. “That's just the pronunciation… Probably not, not excellent. Or will we put it "excellent"? " Lord (Holy Father-Watchman, Right God, Saint George and all the rest!), If only they did not change their minds! “Don't be great,” I yelled, “give me a four, I beg you, you can do it with a minus!” - the examiners recoiled in fright - "I'll put my life on pronunciation, just put it on!" - "Yes, please, we do not mind" …

I flew out of the audience, almost bumping my forehead into the window. They congratulated me, tugged at my sleeve, asked about something … Someone took me in their arms and carried me along the corridor. When I woke up, I realized that it was Vitya, who did not know how he got into the building, and today I have to marry him.

Disassembly like a gentleman

"You are scum," said Vitya, "you are an exceptional scum." We sat at McDonald's and he couldn't hit me out of respect for the interiors. "Are you going to trade my apartment for a smelly bed in a filthy DAS?" I nodded. I promised to pay him all the money spent on me. I promised to prepare him for the University … "I behaved like a gentleman," Vitya repeated gloomily and knocked on the table with a formidable tattooed finger. A month later, he brought the waitress Raya from the city of Adler and married her.

Retribution is inevitable

So many years have passed. I defended my diploma perfectly. I was invited to graduate school. I refused: two children, a husband, building a house … And why was there so much agony if I am now a banal new Russian housewife?

I recently crashed a new Honda and was very puzzled. What is it for me? After going over all my unseemly actions in my memory, I found there only two that deserve a heavy punishment: the decanter, which was never returned to the church watchman, and Vitya, cruelly deceived by the shameless me.

They say that Vitya became either Solntsevsky or Tambov, therefore he lives in Tel Aviv. Or maybe in Melbourne, no one knows for sure. But recently my mother said by phone that some "vandalist" sneaked into his native school at night, tore my clean childish face from the "Salt of the Enskoy" stand, crumpled and defiled it with obscene, disgusting inscriptions. He did the same with the walls in the school lobby. My fellow countrymen are outraged and demand the intervention of the General Prosecutor's Office. So, everything is all right with Vitya, I was delighted. It remains only to find the decanter.