Аннотация: A short story by Russian pistolaly Sergey Voronin "Such Strange Meetings" about God, love and friendship
Sergey Voronin
Such strange meetings
Khabarovsk,2025
ББК 67.99(2)11
В 88
Sergey Voronin. Such Strange Meetings: Novella. - Khabarovsk: SAMIZDAT, 2025. 46 p.
The novella by the Altai writer Sergei Voronin, widely known in Russia and abroad for his autobiographical novel "Son of Ra", is dedicated to the description of a very difficult life situation that happened to the author of this story in the city of Khabarovsk in November 2024. Based on real events and facts. For ethical reasons, some names and surnames of literary characters have been changed.
(C) S.E. Voronin 2025.
Such strange meetings
Dear reader! Truly, the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 have become for me a time of deep philosophical rethinking of many, very difficult moments in life, of which, frankly speaking, there have been quite a few over my 60 years. And it all began with the fact that on November 1, 2024, I broke my leg. I must say, I broke it badly, having lost consciousness right on board an Aeroflot flight to the glorious city of Khabarovsk. And it happened like this. On October 31, 2024, as usual, I went to my annual session at the Khabarovsk Border Institute of the FSB of Russia, to which I gave 18 years of my priceless life, working in the Department of Criminal Law Disciplines as a freelance professor. At the beginning of the journey, nothing foreshadowed any troubles for me, but an incomprehensible feeling of anxiety, no, no, with a soft but persistent vice sometimes pressed my pretty worn-out heart during almost the entire five-hour journey from Barnaul to the Novosibirsk airport "Tolmachevo". At that time, I did not attach any special significance to this rather unpleasant feeling, but in vain, my perceptive reader - atrial fibrillation had already prepared for me an unexpected, simply stunning quest at the height of a bird's flight.
About 4 hours into the flight, I felt slightly unwell and asked the guy in the next seat to let me through to the toilet. However, finding myself in the aisle, to my chagrin, I discovered a gigantic queue for the toilet. "Well, I really need you all here, at the wrong time!" I thought angrily, and this was my last thought at that moment - suddenly a black hole and I found myself in a dark empty room without windows or doors. In the wall opposite me there was a gaping black hole, from which an endless corridor stretched off into the distance, at the end of which a cold, dim light loomed. Suddenly everything disappeared, and I found myself in the auditorium of the Bolshoi Academic Theater in Moscow - I recognized it by the old, familiar from childhood, crystal chandeliers from the Tsarist era. Only instead of the Bolshoi Theater actors, the frightened faces of stewardesses and confused passengers were leaning over me. Ammonia and other competent manipulations of diligent girls finally brought me back to the real world. And the reality was this: I was standing in the aisle of the airplane cabin, when my heart suddenly stopped. My right leg was fatally trapped between the legs of the chair. I fell in the aisle and with all my weight broke both ankles of my right foot, tore the ligaments between them and, in addition, suffered a fracture of the right shin. In general, as my attending physician, surgeon Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Boglai, later told me, I broke everything that was possible in that damned plane.
"Passengers, is there a doctor among you? I need your help!" - shouted one very stately and pretty stewardess, resembling Marilyn Monroe. "Yes!" - answered a young guy of about 30 from the front seat. It turned out that he was a doctor - a traumatologist, who was returning from the North-Eastern Military District to the Far East and, by the will of Fate, was at the right time and in the right place - first of all for me. "You have seriously broken your leg. You will need an operation!" - said the doctor, examining my right foot. It was a sad sight. In addition to the fracture, I also received a serious subluxation, so that my long-suffering foot resembled the twisted leg of a disabled grasshopper. "We need to fix his leg!" the guy said to the stewardesses. - I need some boxes! The girls brought him an empty juice box, and the doctor began to make an improvised splint with scissors. It was really nice to watch him work, so I got almost real aesthetic pleasure from his professional, precisely verified actions. Soon the splint was ready.
"You know, Sergey, the pilots are asking you: are we going to make an emergency landing in Chita or are we going to fly on?" "What are you saying, what are you saying, no landing in Chita. We are flying to Khabarovsk. The pain is quite bearable, so don't worry!" I protested loudly, surprised that the pain in my leg seemed to have really subsided. It felt like I was really anesthetized. "I would recommend that you give me a painkiller, Sergey. You could go into shock!" said the military doctor. "If I give you an injection, then do it now, before we go in for the landing," the stewardess supported him. There was a passenger standing nearby, a young Tajik, apparently an athlete, who looked at me with obvious sympathy and empathy. "Agree to the injection," the Tajik told me. "I'm an athlete, I also recently broke my arm and I know very well what shock is!" "No, I don't want it, thank you, the pain is quite bearable!" - I flatly refused this dangerous medicine, wanting at all costs to keep a sober head and sanity in this difficult life situation. As it turned out, I would still need them in Khabarovsk upon the arrival of the plane. "You really are holding up well, Sergey, with such a serious injury!" - the military doctor sincerely praised me, and his words at that moment were like balm for my aching heart, especially coming from a seasoned front-line soldier. About an hour into the flight, the plane began preparing to land. By this time, the efficient flight attendants had cleared a whole row of seats for me, so I felt quite comfortable with my leg in a splint. The pain had subsided slightly, and I had given myself over completely to the hands of the Almighty. Nothing else depended on me in this situation.
Reflecting on the vicissitudes of Fate at that moment, I involuntarily touched upon the question of the participation of the Absolute Mind in the life of every person. My first experience of communication with God happened in Khabarovsk in January 2007. At that time, I had already been living with my parents for 2 years, as I transferred from Krasnoyarsk for further service in the Far Eastern Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. My parents' house then and now was located on Blucher Street literally 100 meters from the Amur River. Only now it is the most glamorous place in Khabarovsk, as right opposite our house is a very popular shopping and entertainment complex "Brosko Mall" with a water park, where today all the "golden" Khabarovsk youth hang out and relax to the fullest. On the evening of January 17, 2007, my father and I went to the frozen river to hold an impromptu photo shoot on the Amur ice. "Seryozha, stand on the river in such a way that the Transfiguration Cathedral rises above you like a crown over a fur hat," said my father, choosing an exposition on the ice like a seasoned photographer. I listened to the master and as a result we got this amazing photo, as they say, with a surprise from Father Amur.
The Transfiguration Cathedral is the main Orthodox church in Khabarovsk, erected on the steep bank of the Amur in 2001-2004 by decision of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II. This is such a grandiose structure that it can be seen even from the opposite Chinese bank, and even more so from our Blucher Street. Having carefully examined the resulting photo, my father and I were simply stunned at that moment. The Transfiguration Cathedral towering over my mink hat unexpectedly turned into a green mosque with the characteristic illumination of an Islamic temple building at night. To the right behind me stood a man in a strange headdress, above which the outline of an eagle, or perhaps a crow, was clearly visible. The man stared at the camera, as if posing for us on purpose, fully aware that he was being seen. I remember that at that moment my father and I experienced an almost mystical horror and hurried to hide this very strange photograph away from prying eyes. Thus, for the first time in my life, Divine Islam loomed on the horizon of my life and sounded out loud. Well, and then everything went off and on!
!
In May 2009, already in Krasnoyarsk, for some reason I suddenly wanted to take a photo of a cloud that was picturesquely floating above our ten-story building on Mate Zalki Street. The muzzle of an animal was quite clearly visible in the cloud - most likely a wolf. But the most interesting thing was discovered when I enlarged this photo. Under the animal, Arabic script and the word "Allah" were clearly visible. I remember being overcome by a strange excitement: pleasant, as if I had touched with both hands the soft fur of some outlandish, absolutely unearthly charming little animal.
Allah (Arabic: [alh], literally - "God") is an Arabic word meaning the one and only God the Creator, and the Lord of the Day of Judgement. In Islam, there is one God, the Creator of the world, who sent his final messenger (rasul) Muhammad to people. In other Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity), it is used by Arabs and Arabic speakers in prayers and for worship in Arabic (their native language) to address God. In Arabia before Islam, Allah was the Supreme Deity and Creator of All That Exists. The short form of the Islamic creed (shahadah) states: "There is no other deity but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah!"
And finally, the most unexpected event of an esoteric nature happened to me on March 21, 2011, again in Krasnoyarsk. I remember this day well, because it was Navruz - Navruz, also Novruz (from the Pahlavi "ng rz" - "new day"), Nooruz and Nauryz - a holiday of the arrival of spring and the New Year according to the astronomical solar calendar of the Iranian peoples. Once upon a time, a long time ago, this was the main religious holiday of the Zoroastrians of ancient Iran.
In the morning, as usual, I was sitting at home and doing some household chores, when suddenly a thought appeared and clearly formed in my head: go to the TV and turn on the Orthodox channel "Spas". I did not resist this strange call: I quickly went to the TV and turned it on. The Spas channel broadcast a live Sunday service from the Trinity Cathedral in Yekaterinburg.
The camera operator lazily and without much enthusiasm wandered along the walls of the Orthodox church to the monotonous voice of the priest. It was obvious that the operator was completely fed up with this sacred rite, and he would like with all his heart to quickly finish this boring event and drink 100 treasured Sunday grams in the circle of cheerful drinking buddies-operators. Suddenly the camera froze on one of the images, located directly on the dome of the church. I even managed to go for the camera and take, and not at all in a hurry, that famous picture. I looked closely at this image and was stunned - it was clearly my face. On my head, as is customary since some time, again put on this notorious Muslim turban. The head itself in the turban was surrounded on all sides by Turkish pillows - apparently to soften in the future numerous blows of the merciless Aunt Fate. But the most interesting thing in this photograph, of course, dear reader, were the two inscriptions: "Serya" and "DJ". The fact is that, while still a student at the Altai State University, in 1983 I worked part-time as a DJ at a student disco in the local university club. And my nickname, that is, my creative pseudonym, at that time was "Serya - DJ". All this you can now see in the photograph presented above. And therefore I make a reasonable conclusion - our Creator, of course, has an extraordinary, truly sparkling sense of humor! And who, I ask, do these unfortunate servants of the Russian Orthodox Church serve in the city of Yekaterinburg? In May 2012, I went to Yekaterinburg to defend the candidate's dissertation of my adjunct Igor Grudinin. Between sessions of the dissertation council, I, of course, visited the Holy Trinity Cathedral, but no matter how hard I tried to find this strange image of a cheerful "DJ" on the walls and dome of the temple, I couldn't. It's just some kind of obsession! Did the boy even exist? And if it weren't for this photo from 2011, as irrefutable material evidence from my "dark" past, I probably would have thought that I really had gone crazy!
And that's not all, dear reader. On February 22, 2022, on the eve of the SVO, I, as usual, turned on the TV in Khabarovsk, where I was on another business trip to the Khabarovsk Border Institute of the FSB of Russia. On Channel 4 "REN TV", just happened to be showing a very interesting program about the Krasnoyarsk pillars. Soon, looking at the rocks familiar from my student youth, I myself was literally dumbfounded by the freeze frame: again on one of the pillars with the exotic name "Grandfather", I saw the face of this Grandfather - the most powerful Grandfather in our entire vast Universe.
n all my deep theological reflections, I didn't even notice how our plane made a soft landing in my beloved Khabarovsk, which had become my home over the years.
My evacuation from the aircraft by diligent flight attendants was played out like clockwork - they evacuated my mortal body just perfectly - as they say, "without noise and dust" in full compliance with job descriptions. We waited until the last passenger finally left the plane, after which smiling women appeared in the cabin of the plane - employees of the airport medical unit with a wheelchair. I never thought, never guessed that life on one leg drags such a long and serious train of daily household problems. But I was only at the very beginning of my "heroic" path as a disabled person. And the most interesting, therefore, was waiting for me ahead.
I felt quite uncomfortable because I, a man, was being pushed in a wheelchair by an elderly woman who, moreover, was clearly not in excellent health. Elena (that was the name of this woman, a nurse) turned out to be an unusually cheerful giggle. Arriving at the airport medical unit, she started joking and cracking jokes, playing out the situation of my unfortunate fall on the plane. "You, Sergey, everything went according to the classic pattern: slipped, fell, lost consciousness, woke up - plaster!" - she said, bursting into laughter ringing like a morning bell. I only smiled at her in response - indeed, the situation was tragicomic with a predominance of elements of cheerful absurdity. "You have to manage to break your leg practically on level ground - on a plane!" - Elena could not calm down, charging me with her cheerful optimism. After examining my splint from a cardboard box, she sincerely praised the military doctor. "It's immediately obvious that this was done by a doctor with extensive professional experience. Whatever you say, war is the best, albeit very cruel, Teacher for doctors of all specialties. As they say, if you can't, he'll teach you; if you don't want to, he'll force you!"
We arrived in Khabarovsk at about 7 a.m. local time. It was only 5 a.m. in Barnaul, but I still decided to call my wife and tell her about the sad incident on the plane. My wife didn't pick up the phone for a long time, then, half asleep, she couldn't understand the meaning of my words for some time. Finally, it got through to her and there was a heavy pause on the line - she couldn't cope with the shock that had gripped her, almost turning into panic. I calmed Natasha down as best I could, promising to call her from the hospital as soon as my future fate became clear. The situation, in fact, looked extremely bad - I ended up with a broken leg in a strange city without family or friends. And now I won't even be able to get into my own apartment in Khabarovsk for a long time, no matter what! I decided to make the second call to my immediate superior of the department, a rare bureaucrat Dmitry Kiselev. "It's a good thing I refused the painkiller on the plane!" I thought, hearing Kiselev's eternally dissatisfied voice on the phone. "What does this mean? How could this happen? Were you drinking on the plane? And what about your classroom workload? Now, because of you, Sergei Eduardovich, the department will simply fail to fulfill the curriculum!" Kiselev, seriously angry, unleashed a cascade of rhetorical questions and reproaches on me. "Naturally, I didn't drink alcohol, Dmitry Alexandrovich, since I had long since given up this dubious pleasure due to diabetes. And I can work off the workload after the hospital. Judging by everything, I'm stuck in Khabarovsk for real and for a long time!" I retorted in as calm a tone as I could. "Okay, I'll report your situation to the general right now. And we'll think together about what to do with you next!" Kiselev said gloomily and hung up. Soon an ambulance team arrived at the airport medical unit. "Where are we taking him?" the paramedic asked a tall middle-aged man, apparently the doctor of the team. She was a rather pretty woman of Balzac's age, clearly accustomed to the constant attention of men and happily receiving all the earthly bonuses that flowed from such pleasant attention. "We're taking him to the regional clinical hospital #2", where else! - the dissatisfied doctor answered gloomily. They loaded me onto a stretcher (God, how inconvenient and uncomfortable it is to live on one leg!) and put me in a Gazelle. I had to travel for about an hour on the hard springs of the ambulance. That was something, friends! On every little bump the car was thrown up quite strongly, which immediately responded with an unbearable sharp pain in my unfortunate leg. But I bravely endured this road torture to the end, right up to the regional hospital, and during the entire journey, to the surprise of the medical team, I did not utter a single groan.
We arrived at the regional clinical hospital No. 2 at about 10 am. Regional hospital No. 2 made a shocking impression on me. Already at the first glance at the emergency room of this regional hospital, it was clear that the doctors here were on the front lines. The flow of wounded people here did not stop either day or night. I was wheeled into the emergency room on a gurney, where from all sides I was besieged by the suffering of people injured in accidents, domestic fights, and skating rinks. A girl, a biker of about 20 years old, who crashed her motorcycle quite badly, but, fortunately for her, remained alive, was especially etched in my memory. She was accompanied by her grief-stricken father, who helped the girl get up on the gurney and take off her dirty, bloody clothes. Underneath she was wearing very beautiful lacy underwear, which clearly clashed with the bloody body and dirty outerwear of the biker girl.
In the corridor, opposite the emergency room, sat an unkempt, badly rumpled man of over 40 years old, in a blood-stained military pea coat with sergeant's stripes, who was swearing dirty and furiously, clearly being seriously drunk. It turned out that he was an Ossetian mobilized for the SVO, who, returning to Khabarovsk for rehabilitation after being wounded, drank at the station and, as usual, got into serious trouble: a group of brutal teenagers beat up and robbed this unfortunate SVO veteran blind. "Vasilievich, what are we going to do with him?" asked an elderly woman in a white coat of the doctor on duty. "We're not going to do anything," the man answered. "He's not our client. Let's take him to the military hospital and let them deal with him there!"
Finally, it was my turn. "Well, what happened to you, young man?" the elderly female doctor, whom I already knew, addressed me with slight irony. I briefly outlined my difficult situation. "Yes, the situation, frankly speaking, is not good at all. Especially since you found yourself alone in a strange city with a broken leg," the woman sympathized with me sincerely. "Now we will do an X-ray of your leg and an electrocardiogram!" A portable X-ray machine was brought to me on a gurney. After taking several X-rays, the doctor connected me to ECG sensors. "Well, what can I tell you, Sergei Eduardovich? You clearly have atrial fibrillation. At altitude, your blood, a long-term diabetic, changed its composition and your heart stopped for a split second. That's why you lost consciousness. Airplanes are not for you anymore, avoid all airplanes a kilometer away. I can tell you that!" - the doctor's words now sounded like a real death sentence to me, a seasoned traveler.
"I am a retired police colonel, a pensioner of the Ministry of Internal Affairs," I told the doctor when she finished fiddling with the ECG machine. "Why didn't you tell me right away?" she was surprised. "Then you don't belong here. I'm afraid you won't like our contingent of homeless people and ex-convicts. I'll call your Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital right now and they'll come for you." And she went to call the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital to find a place for my mortal body. Soon the doctor returned. "Well, that's it, we've decided on you. They'll come for you soon. And the thing is - like must lie with like. With our contingent, you'll very quickly be left without panties here!" the cheerful woman laughed, apparently imagining this, indeed, a very funny sight. She is, of course, right: the god-forsaken thugs of the city of Khabarovsk have finally had a unique chance to deal with the former cop in full.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital is located on Pavlovich Street, literally two steps away from the regional clinical hospital, so my journey there took only about 5 minutes. The ambulance drove up the ramp of the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital, and two elderly female nurses quite deftly transferred me from the stretcher to a wheelchair. They wheeled me into the emergency room and then hastily retreated, citing being extremely busy. I was very surprised by such an indifferent attitude to their professional duties, apparently caused by general fatigue from a rather difficult life and the usual professional deformation of medical workers. I had to wait about an hour until a doctor from the emergency room of the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital finally approached me.
"Well, Sergei Eduardovich, should we open a sick leave?" she asked, having familiarized herself with my hapless case in detail. "Of course, we will," I said. "After all, I was flying to work at the Khabarovsk Border Institute of the FSB." "Flew and didn't make it!" the woman smiled, bending over the green form, which would later cause me serious problems associated with my imminent dismissal from the Russian FSB system.
"Sergey Evgenievich, where should we put Voronin?" the woman turned to a tall man of over 40, apparently the doctor on duty. "We'll put him in ward 13. There are three senior officers there. Two beds are free," the doctor answered, as I later learned, the attending surgeon of our trauma department.
They brought me in a wheelchair to ward 13. The occupants of this ward, three senior officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, began to examine the new resident with great interest. One of the patients, over 50 years old, a rather heavy man with a bandaged left knee, Alexey had a very sonorous and almost divine surname - Voskresensky. "Well, let's get acquainted," said Alexey and extended his hand to me. I shook his large palm and introduced myself. "Oh, so I remember you, Sergei Eduardovich. You were our teacher of criminology in the correspondence department at the Far Eastern Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2006!" exclaimed Alexey, who had been the deputy head of the logistics department in Khabarovsk for many years.
"However, the world is small!" I smiled, unspeakably happy that at least someone in this almost alien city turned out to be familiar. The second guy, aged 35-37, was also called Alexey. He turned out to be a personnel officer, which fully explained his subsequent genuine interest in my difficult work biography and frequent changes of jobs in different cities of our vast mother Russia. And finally, the third 30-year-old man in our ward was called Alexander. He headed the technical communications department at the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs for Khabarovsk Krai. The company in our ward was unusually successful. All the guys, as one, were tuned in to the same wave of all-conquering optimism and merciless self-irony, so necessary in these difficult life circumstances. Personnel officer Alexey Goncharov (Lesha Malenkiy) even created a chat for the 13th ward on WhatsApp, where patients could exchange meager hospital news every day. Naturally, at first I was met in the ward with some caution: this is understandable - people were really afraid that my unexpected appearance here would upset the fragile balance of almost ideal human relationships that had developed in these difficult hospital conditions. But, fortunately, everything worked out, and I was unanimously accepted into the community of "the suffering and the grieving." Later, I was repeatedly convinced in the hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that this unity of patients' souls here was, in its own way, the only and unrepeatable. The appearance of other patients in the ward would soon destroy forever the soulful atmosphere of the established friendly team of like-minded people.
My situation was aggravated by the fact that I got to the hospital straight from the plane. Therefore, I had no spare underwear, no slippers, no toiletries that were so necessary here. Thanks to Lesha Bolshoy: he heartily presented me with oversized shorts from his modest wardrobe, which his daughter brought him from Thailand. As for everything else, there was nothing to do: I called my student Alena Azarova at the Khabarovsk Border Institute. She rushed to me after work, in terrible shock from the news that had arrived, I gave her the keys to my Khabarovsk apartment and, soon, everything I needed was delivered to the hospital.
I was brought to the hospital on Thursday morning. Wednesday and Thursday are traditionally operating days at the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital. Therefore, all the doctors were busy in the operating room; Monday, November 4, was naturally a holiday, and until November 5, I was absolutely of no use to anyone.
On Tuesday, November 5, I was called to the doctor Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Boglai - a pretty woman of 35, very similar to my favorite blogger MotoTanya, who tragically died on July 22, 2024 in Turkey. Imagine my surprise when I learned from the nurses that Elizaveta is also a dashing and absolutely reckless biker.
"Sergey Eduardovich, let's get acquainted. I am your attending physician. We will be treated together, and your situation, frankly speaking, is really shitty. You broke everything you could on the plane. Fracture of both ankles of the right leg with displacement of fragments, with rupture of the interosseous tibiofibular and distal ligaments, with subluxation of the right foot outward. The situation is further aggravated by your diabetes, which can lead to the most dire consequences after the operation. Therefore, prepare yourself for a long fight for your leg and take the treatment as seriously as possible! "As you understand, reader, I did not need much persuasion and agitation in this situation, because my right leg and my whole future life were at stake.
"Now we are going to perform an extremely unpleasant procedure on you. We will reset your joint, and then make a new permanent splint. How do you tolerate anesthesia? " - asked Elizaveta. "Well, it seems not bad, considering that I have never had it done to me before," I smiled, mentally preparing myself for the extremely unpleasant procedure announced by the surgeon. Without putting things off for too long, we went into the procedure room. Elizaveta Aleksandrovna called a doctor - an anesthesiologist. An elderly man with a perpetually dissatisfied face came, very casually gave me an injection into a vein, and soon I fell back to where I had just recently returned from on that ill-fated flight "Novosibirsk - Khabarovsk".
I woke up in a ward with my leg bandaged and in a new splint. Lesha Voskresensky greeted me warmly and congratulated me on my baptism of fire. "Well, Eduardovich, you surprised everyone," laughed Alexey. "When you, half asleep, were being taken from the procedure room by Alena and Oksana, you laughed and promised to write them an erotic novel about all the doctors and nurses of the Khabarovsk Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital." It turned out that on the eve of the operation, the guys had launched a very successful PR campaign in our hospital: supposedly, you were alive and didn't even suspect that a real writer, the author of the world bestseller "The Erotic Adventures of Policeman Anton Fedyakin," had come to see you.
Lying now in a hospital bed after anesthesia, I thought again about the role of God in the life of an ordinary person. "Everyone knows that God gave man free will. But the boundaries of this will are blurred, unclear. Therefore, it is completely unclear where the will of man begins and ends, and where Divine predestination begins. In classical science, this is called philosophical determinism. Let's take my situation, for example. The first language in which God begins to communicate with man is the language of prime numbers. I flew on a business trip to Khabarovsk for my 18th session. I worked for 18 years at the Khabarovsk Border Institute of the FSB of Russia. I also got a seat on the plane "18 E". In 2024, I published my autobiographical novel "Son of Ra" in Canada. As you know, God Ra has the code 18 (the letter R is the 18th in the Russian alphabet). Upon arrival in Khabarovsk, I was taken to the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital located at 1B Pavlovich Street. My Polish grandmother, Helena Vikentyevna Sokolova, nee Pavlovich, was an Honored Surgeon of the RSFSR. "1B" visually looks almost the same as the number 18. And finally, the surgeon Liza has the same, rather rare name, as my youngest daughter of about the same age," I thought, increasingly coming to the conclusion about the undoubted intervention of the Almighty in this whole difficult situation. "And the surname Voskresensky, I think, did not appear here by chance!" I continued to ponder the eternal sacred, looking at the massive figure of Big Lesha, who at that moment was generously distributing sweet Turkish tangerines to all the patients of the 13th ward - another tasty treat given to him today from home.
The main operation to repair my leg was scheduled for Thursday. Repair is the word that most accurately describes the nature of the actions that the surgeons will perform on my unfortunate leg. On Wednesday evening, nurse Oksana Gennadyevna (a young, attractive woman in her 30s, due to some personal complexes and ambitions, always demanded that patients call her only by her first name and patronymic) invited me to the procedure room for a cleansing enema. It is mandatory to do it with spinal anesthesia, which Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Boglai decided to use in my case. Otherwise, an extremely unpleasant incident for all participants could happen during the operation. I tossed and turned all night before the operation (all sorts of bad thoughts were creeping into my head), but I could not fall asleep until the morning.
And in the morning they came for me. Nurse Alena helped me move from the bed to the gurney, and we went to the operating room. "Sergey Eduardovich, God bless you! "Don't worry: Elizaveta Aleksandrovna is a true surgeon from God, so you are very lucky that you got to her!" - Lesha Malenky advised me, and I really felt much better from his words. They were already waiting for us in the operating room. There was doctor Elizaveta Aleksandrovna, three operating room nurses and an elderly anesthesiologist Dmitry Aleksandrovich. There was not a single familiar nurse among them. I learned later that operating room nurses are the highest caste in the mid-level medical staff. Therefore, they can only be seen in the operating room and nowhere else. I was seated on the operating table, and Elizaveta, like a caring mother, placed my head on her chest. Dmitry Aleksandrovich began to administer spinal anesthesia. After the third injection, I felt myself losing consciousness. "That's it, I'm floating!" - I only managed to say and immediately passed out. A very real idyllic picture appeared in my head: I am sitting at the dacha near the pond, and my feet are splashing in the gentle warm water. Complete nirvana and bliss, gentlemen! I woke up already on the operating table - the operation was in full swing. Being in a sober mind, I had a unique opportunity to watch the entire operation online. The sounds made by the doctors were similar to the work of a carpenter-machine operator. Since after school UPK in Kazakhstan I was a carpenter of the 2nd category, I could roughly guess the nature of the actions performed on my leg. "Here is a drill," I thought, hearing the characteristic sound of the drill. - And this looks like a rasp or a carpenter's file! " Elizaveta accompanied each of her most successful surgical passages with a strong word, and to cheer up the thoroughly tired nurses, she exclaimed from time to time: "Well, Nadya, you are just fire! How perfectly the bracket fit! Just super!" The whole operation lasted about 3 hours, and, of course, everyone was pretty tired. Finally, the surgeon put in the last stitches and I was taken to the ward. Lesha Voskresensky met me in the ward. "Well, Sergey Eduardovich, you are a real cyborg. After the operation, we were all completely useless for a whole day, but you were a cucumber, a good boy! Do you not feel any pain at all?" he was surprised, seeing how quickly I moved from the gurney to the bed.
I was lying on a hospital bed and thinking about the vicissitudes of my difficult fate as an invalid. The charming nurse Alena, whom I, with the keen gaze of a seasoned ladies' man, of course, immediately singled out among all the nurses in the hospital, came to me to put in another IV. During the procedure, I accidentally touched her hand. "Citizen Fedyakin, immediately stop your dirty sexual harassment. Otherwise, I will hold you accountable under the article for seduction on duty!" Alena laughed, at that moment unexpectedly reminding me of a distant image from my student youth. "Oh, I didn't mean to, Alena, it happened completely by accident!" I babbled in a deliberately frightened voice, pleasantly surprised that the girl was already familiar with my literary masterpiece. Both her face and manner of speaking, our beautiful Alyonushka was like two peas in a pod, like the girl of my youthful dreams named Olga.
This happened in the distant 1985. During the summer holidays, I traditionally worked almost every summer as a mountain tourism instructor at the Altai tourist center in the glorious city of Biysk, a tourist Mecca of those, still Soviet times. Once, returning from another hike, I saw a very nice girl there, similar to the Australian singer Kylie Minogue, whose fan I am to this day, walking in proud solitude in a shady alley of old poplars. Something unconscious, very powerful pushed me towards her, forcing me to approach this girl. The girl's name was Olga and she was originally from Novosibirsk, where in 1984 she successfully graduated from the Institute of National Economy and was assigned to the personnel department of the Barnaul sewing factory "Avangard". Tomorrow her trip was ending, and she was leaving for Barnaul. We walked with Olya the whole evening and chatted cheerfully and freely. Olya was an extremely pleasant conversationalist and I liked her right away. But the devil made me take her home address, which she thrust into my hand the next morning as I boarded the bus to Barnaul.
Arriving in Barnaul in August 1985, the first thing I did was run to Olga. She greeted me more than coolly, explaining it as follows: she was about to have a painful breakup with a young man with whom she had been in a close relationship for two years. With my help, that is, the man for whom she had suddenly developed such strong and tender feelings, she hoped that this breakup would pass more or less calmly. After these words, dear reader, I should have turned around right there and gone like a frisky Barnaul runner - after all, it was obvious, completely clear, that I was being drawn into a very bad story, turning myself into a victim of an incomprehensible woman's affair. "You see, Volodya is a good person, there is a lot in him, something unsaid," she explained the reason for the upcoming breakup. "But I waited too long for the right words from him, waited for him to finally make up his mind!" It was not difficult to guess what words Olga was waiting for from the unfortunate Volodya - a proposal of marriage. But the guy, apparently, was held back from this step, but what? This is what I was soon to find out on my own skin. With great difficulty, Olga and I finally managed to get rid of this obsessive suitor, who, to my surprise, turned out to be a fairly well-read and educated young man, while being a highly qualified turner at the Barnaul boiler plant. At our last meeting, Volodya clearly wanted to warn me about something, but the natural gentleman, nevertheless, got the better of him, and he delicately kept silent in this very difficult situation. And in vain! I would definitely listen to his words. Now I know it for sure, reader!
Well, and for us, friends, from that moment on, Olenka and I began a real honeymoon. I still remember the charming pictures of the Altai Indian summer. On the picturesque Ob beaches, filled with warmth and subdued matte light, like in the paintings of famous Flemish masters, we spent almost all our free time with her. Then the cold weather came, and we moved to her cozy nest on Yurin Street. There we could not get enough of each other for a long time, living as if it were our last time. But at some point, a fly in the ointment got into this barrel of honey. And what a fly, a very big one!
One day, all the workers of the Barnaul sewing factory "Avan-gard" were sent to harvest at a neighboring state farm. Olya and her HR department went with the whole team. She returned two weeks later. It was as if she had been replaced. She became absent-minded, practically did not react to my jokes and was slightly irritated. I began to suspect something and asked her directly, in my usual manner: "Olenka, have you found someone?" She was embarrassed, thought for a bit and said: "Yes, Seryozha, I met a man. He is an agronomist, 27 years old. He invites me to live with him!" These words made me feel sick. "Well, Olya, it happens. Life is life. So what have you decided?" I asked. "I haven't decided anything yet. It all happened so quickly that I still can't come to my senses!" I kept silent, firmly deciding that I would fight for my woman to the end. To achieve this cherished goal, I turned on my intellect to the fullest. Knowing that my girlfriend is an artistic nature, I decided to surprise her. And my loyal friends at the Faculty of Law should help me in this matter: Kolya Makeev, Oleg Korobkov and Yura Korchak. The essence of the plan was as follows: Oleg and Yura had already seen Olga at the Altai tourist center, since they worked together with me as mountain tourism instructors. But this acquaintance was superficial, momentary and, it is unlikely, was etched in their memory. In addition, I had been carefully hiding our relationship from my friends for two months, so Olenka's appearance on their horizon would be a complete surprise. Having familiarized herself with my plan, Olya was indescribably delighted. "Well done, Seryozha! What an idea! I can imagine their faces when all this is revealed. And so that they definitely wouldn't recognize me, I'll put on some heavy makeup. I assure you that a woman can change herself beyond recognition!" the girl exclaimed joyfully, bursting into cheerful laughter. Our plan was as follows: Olya and her friend would come to the Central restaurant in advance, having previously booked a table. Then my friends and I would also row to the same restaurant. Well, and then - complete improvisation.
On the appointed day, I suggested that my friends celebrate the end of their 5th year of university and the beginning of their internship in the police at the Central restaurant. As expected, they didn't have to be persuaded for long, since this restaurant had long since become our favorite place for cheerful student parties. We arrived at the restaurant at about 7 pm. I glanced around the restaurant, saw Olga and her plump friend. Everything was going according to plan. We placed an order and began to wait for the musicians, who had already arrived and were setting up the equipment. And the music started: of course, the then fashionable group "Voskresenie" with its immortal hit "Veterok". Then "My Friend the Artist and Poet" started playing, and the gentlemen rushed to invite the ladies for a slow dance.
Kolya Makeev, as usual, did not stay away from this fascinating process and soon, to my amazement, he was already holding my Olenka by the waist, twirling her in a slow dance. After the dance, the happy Makesha returned to our table with a ready-made hunting trophy. "Friends, I would like to introduce you to two wonderful girls - Olya and Galya. They kindly agreed to while away the evening with us at the restaurant!" - Kolya solemnly announced, feeling like the winner of the program "Field of Miracles" at the very least and "How to Become a Millionaire" at the most. I looked at the blushing Olya: "Yes, under such a thick layer of makeup, perhaps I would not be able to recognize her; "especially in the dim light of the restaurant!" However, I clearly underestimated my friends Oleg and Yura. Oleg was the first to wake up from his lethargic sleep. He called me into the restroom and whispered mysteriously: "Seryoga, don't you think that one girl looks a lot like Olga from the camp site?" "Oh, come on, Olezha. Not even close!" I said in as indifferent a tone as possible. Oleg just shrugged his shoulders and, swaying from the wine he had drunk, went into the hall. It was Yura Korchak's turn. "Listen, Sergey, that is Olga, I think. Well, the one from Biysk?" he asked, squinting slyly, clearly suspecting something was wrong. I calmed him down as best I could. But I couldn't ignore Olya's anxiety.
The thing is that Kolya got pretty drunk on cognac and started openly pestering my girlfriend. "Just a little more and your friend will be crawling into my pants!" Olya complained to me indignantly, and I realized that the moment had finally come to put an end to this theater of the absurd. "Friends, the time has come for a session of exposure," I said solemnly. "I want to introduce you to my Olenka!" "Well, you're such a goat!" Kolya said disappointedly, for whom the fun erotic adventure that had begun so excitingly had been ruined today. "And I knew it was Olga!" Korchak exclaimed. "Well, Voronin, you're something else. You almost laid your girlfriend under Makei!" And the moment of general joy had arrived. We discussed this fun adventure for a long time, and then the whole crowd went to my bachelor bungalow on Potok, where we continued the party. Thus ended this wonderful evening of friendship, mischief and unprecedented acting. Thus ended, perhaps, the happiest period in my student life. The very next day, Olya came to spend the night with me for the last time. We simply slept next to each other on the sofa, since she was clearly not in the mood. And in the morning the girl said sadly: "Seryozha, I think I'll disappear for a few days. It has to be that way. But don't lose me!" I realized that right now, at this very moment, she was saying goodbye to me once and for all. Olga never came to see me again. However, one day I did see her, walking along Leninsky Prospekt on a cold November morning. I saw my Olya in the company of a tall, handsome brunette, apparently the same agronomist from the ill-fated state farm. They walked arm in arm, talking enthusiastically about something, and did not even notice me at a distance of only ten steps.
"That's it, we have finished the IV for today," - our charming nurse Alena once again returned me to the harsh hospital reality from the magical world of dreams and sad memories. Why sad, you ask, reader? Because when you are 60 years old, everything connected with our childhood and youth invariably causes a slight sadness. This is a pleasant sadness, dear reader, but always associated with a nostalgic feeling of a life almost lived.
But the sad story with Olenka from the city of Novosibirsk did not end there. In October 1986, the autumn draft into the Soviet Army began. I received a summons, the military registration and enlistment office came and went through the draft board. They even shaved my head, took my passport, and then something went wrong at the military registration and enlistment office. I was supposed to be drafted into the army on October 26, but in fact I was drafted only on November 11, 1986. All this time I was aimlessly wandering around Barnaul without money, documents and the desire to do anything with the remaining time of my free civilian life. One day my feet led me to the hostel on Yurina Street, where my Olenka lived.
Suddenly I really wanted to say goodbye to her before leaving for the army. And then something strange happened. I mixed up the hostel building. The thing is that on Yurina Street there are 4 factory nine-story hostels under numbers 186, 188, 190 and 192. Olga lived in the third hostel under number 190. And why the hell I then wandered into the fourth outer hostel under number 192, I still do not understand. I went up to the 3rd floor and knocked on the familiar door number 25. Unexpectedly for me, a tall, beautiful brunette opened the door and began to look at the unfamiliar bald rogue with great interest. "Who do you want?" she asked. "I need Olga," I said. "I am Olga!" the girl was surprised. "And where is that other Olga?" - now it was time for me to be surprised. "Well, actually, I live here with my son Maxim, and all my life!" the girl said, already slightly irritated, opening the door for me and as if inviting me into her room. - Maybe you should come inside after all, and we'll figure out which Olga you need!" Without thinking twice, I entered the dorm room.
Olga's dorm room had been thoroughly remodeled by some folk craftsmen to make it a fairly decent small-family home. In fact, the entire section of the dorm had suddenly miraculously turned into an ordinary two-room apartment with amenities in the form of a combined bathroom and a small kitchen. The modest furnishings and rather shabby furniture indicated that a single mother clearly lived there. "So, which Olga were you looking for?" the girl asked playfully, unexpectedly switching to the informal "you". "Olga Istomina, a safety engineer from the Avangard sewing factory," I answered, very embarrassed under her intent and, as it seemed to me then, hungry wolfish gaze. "I don't know her. You must have mixed up the dorm. They are like twin brothers to us!" Olga laughed. I decided to take the bull by the horns. "I wanted to tell her that I'm leaving for the army soon, and at the same time say goodbye!" I said, showing with my whole appearance that I was going to leave, and as quickly as possible, from this awkward situation. "First, let's get acquainted," the girl smiled. "And you know, Sergey, you came to see me today at a very opportune time. I happen to have a day off at our musical theater. So we can send you off to the army, even with special pomp. And no worse than your Olga, I think!" This idea seemed very tempting to me at that moment. In any case, it was much more interesting than aimlessly wandering the streets of cold autumn Barnaul without money and documents. For this occasion, Olga took out a bottle of Armenian cognac from her secret reserves, which, apparently, she carefully kept for a special occasion. And, in the opinion of the young woman, such an occasion had now arrived! Over a bottle of good cognac and a pleasant conversation, our day flew by completely unnoticed. The evening came.
"Seryozha, I think that for a wonderful and logical conclusion to our wonderful evening, you should stay the night with me!" - Olya playfully and very excitingly whispered, and I, as you understand, dear reader, did not object to her for long and did not resist. It turned out that Olya was not only a talented choreographer at the Altai Theater of Musical Comedy, but also an unusually talented woman in lovemaking. In general, in my short male life I have never met such passionate, such temperamental women. She was a real vamp woman, about whom people say: "A woman - just fire!" "Well, now in the army you will definitely have something to remember on guard duty!" - the girl laughed after another wave of love frenzy. I have already lost count of how many of these waves have passed through the night. "That's for sure!" I thought, smiling back at this generous, absolutely selfless girl who, despite all social propriety and convention, today simply went and made a complete stranger to her, a Soviet soldier, happy.
When my long-awaited Grandpa Dembel finally arrived on June 1, 1988, I already knew exactly where I would go in Barnaul the next morning, June 2. My legs seemed to carry me to Yurin Street to that very cherished hostel. To our mutual joy, the meeting turned out to be as passionate and as tender as if I had left home only yesterday and had already returned today. Then it seemed very surprising and strange to me, reader - after all, I had not written Olga a single miserable soldier's letter during the entire army.
And we began a real "honeymoon" of an eternally hungry dembel. We made love almost all night long - furiously, like insatiable lovers - erotomaniacs. For all this lustful time, Olya sent her 5-year-old son Maxim to her mother in advance. We woke up around 10 am, made love, had breakfast and made love again, doing such incredible somersaults on the bed that even such a seasoned lady Kama Sutra only turned away bashfully and blushed. Then, with a small picnic bag, we, infinitely pleased with ourselves, went for a walk in the arboretum - a special pride of Barnaul residents, located in the mountainous part of the city.
he Barnaul Arboretum is a real man-made miracle created by Altai botanists under the guidance of the outstanding Soviet scientist and breeder, Academician Mikhail Afanasyevich Lisavenko back in 1953. For many years, the academician selected frost-resistant tree varieties, which he first planted in the Altai Mountains, and then brought and adapted to the harsh Siberian conditions in the Barnaul Arboretum. Today, our Arboretum has already collected a unique collection of 1,200 varieties of trees, hybrids and shrubs. And to this day, the Arboretum named after Academician Lisavenko is the most favorite place for all citizens and guests of Barnaul to relax. The Arboretum is especially beautiful in the fall, when the riot of colors of fading nature simply stuns and makes your head spin with its unreal, fantastic beauty. It was here, dear reader, that Olenka and I began to frequent on the wings of our love.
For a picnic, we chose the most picturesque spot, located amidst blue spruce and thickets of evergreen western thuja on the high bank of the Ob. The view from this cliff was simply stunning! Deep below, the majestic Ob carried its muddy waters very leisurely and unhurriedly. On the right bank of the river, right opposite the river port building, some fishermen on a spree had arranged an impromptu picnic near some shabby tents. The river carried their drunken voices even up here. They sang heart-rendingly about the strange feat of Stenka Razin, who in a drunken stupor took and drowned his beloved princess in the Volga for the amusement of these Don Cossack robbers, and also: "so that there would be no discord among free people." I could not understand this crazy action of Stepan Razin not in my youth, and certainly not now. Only now, at 60 years old, have I come to the final and irrevocable conclusion that in this particular case we are talking about a severe form of psychiatry - the so-called psychopathy of the excitable circle. And in vain did our great opera singer Fyodor Shalyapin admire this inadequate action of Stepan in his memoirs, calling an ordinary psychopathic concert of a completely sick person "Russian courage".
Suddenly a small thundercloud appeared on the horizon, but it did not alarm us much then. It was hot July, and the prospect of being doused with rain did not frighten us at all. And in vain, reader! What poured from somewhere above was so cold and unpleasant that we ran away, not making out the road in the forest completely saturated with moisture. In general, we ran to the tram already completely wet, so that in the car the rainwater began to flow off us in cold streams, forming under us, to the great indignation of the completely angry conductor, two neat puddles on the dirty floor. Arriving home, we immediately rushed to the shower: hugging, we stood for a long time under the streams of warm water, feeling an incomparable bliss in our whole body. Then for a long time we could not warm up under a thick camel blanket, after which, finally, we fell asleep - by no means the righteous sleep of well-fed and very satisfied with themselves lovers.
Two months of our sultry romance flew by completely unnoticed. Cold rainy August arrived, and with it an unexpected dramatic denouement for all participants of our not entirely simple romantic relationship. In the morning, as usual, we arranged a meeting with Olga over the phone. The day was like any other, and nothing foreshadowed any trouble. However, approaching the familiar door of the hostel, this time I felt an incomprehensible anxiety. And my premonition did not deceive me, dear reader.
I pushed the door with my foot - it turned out to be unlocked. A joyless and extremely unattractive picture awaited me behind the door. Complete bedlam reigned everywhere in the apartment. In the middle of this everyday chaos, at a table littered with scraps and a half-drunk bottle of vodka, sat a heavyset man of over 40 years old, who, judging by his tattoos and characteristic chifir complexion, was familiar with the Soviet penitentiary system firsthand. Olga was nowhere to be seen. "Sergey?" the man asked. - Well, come in. Let's get acquainted. Anatoly!" And he extended to me a palm as wide as a sapper's shovel. "Where's Olga?" I asked, pretending not to notice his hand. "Don't worry, Seryozha. She's in the bathroom. We had a little argument here. The thing is, I'm an old friend of Olya's. She was a witness at my wedding. I was recently released from the UB-4/1 penal colony. Do you know one?" Anatoly asked. "I know, it's on Potok. A general regime colony called Shinka," I answered irritably, already fed up with everything that was happening here.
. "Oh, I see you're in the know, man! Come on, come to the table, let's drink to our acquaintance!" Tolik exclaimed, inviting me to sit down with him at the table. I silently headed for the bathroom. Olga's sobs were coming from there. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to understand what happened here. An old friend of Olga's family, Tolik, was sent to prison for some crime. After serving his sentence, he was apparently left without a wife. Wandering aimlessly, like I once did around Barnaul, he finally wandered into Olga's dorm. Olga, as usual, was sincerely happy to see her old friend, invited him to the table and said that she wanted to introduce Tolik to me. They drank, at some point the man got really excited and could not control himself. He threw the girl onto the bed and, despite her heavy period, raped her. It's strange, but at that moment I even felt some relief in my soul. Lately our relationship had begun to weigh me down, and now, as they say, the perfect excuse had finally appeared to end all this vulgarity. While we were talking with Anatoly, Olga slipped out of the bathroom and lay down on the bed. She continued to cry bitterly, turning away to the wall. I sat down on the bed next to her. "What happened, Olya?" I asked. "Seryozha, he did everything he wanted to me!" the girl began to sob with renewed vigor, once again experiencing the insult inflicted on her. "I understand. If you want, we can put him in jail - seriously and for a long time!" "No, I don't want that. He was a very good friend of our family until recently. Then a misfortune happened in his family - his wife, my best friend, went on a spree with her lover. Of course, he beat her slightly (slightly, because he loved her very much), for which she immediately wrote a statement against him for torture. In the end, he was sent to prison for a year! Yes, dear reader, it was a trivial story of domestic violence, Soviet style. At that time, it was the most common article 113 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, "Torture", which provided for a punishment of up to 1 year of imprisonment. And Soviet women, future feminists, actively used this article, thus getting rid of their husbands who had become quite hateful to them. "Look here, Seryozha, undress and lie down with me!" - Olya said through her tears, almost in a commanding tone. I decided that I had nothing more to do here. And I left. I left without saying goodbye, quietly closing the door behind me and taking my army photo from the sideboard, which I had recently signed as a keepsake for Olga. As they say, the Moor has done his job, the Moor can go!
"Sick Voronin, you have a visitor!" - a nasty voice - the glass cutter of nurse Lyudmila again brought me back to the harsh reality of the Khabarovsk hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I stood up on crutches and sadly wandered to the first floor, already guessing who had come to see me. That's right, reader - it was my boss Dmitry Kiselev. Seeing me on crutches, he feigned false joy on his face and cheerfully said: "Sergey Eduardovich, you now look very much like the main character from the film "How Vitka Chesnok took Lyokha Shtyr to the nursing home." And he laughed like a horse, the whole lobby of the hospital. "I brought you gifts from our department: fruits, nuts, honey and pomegranate juice. But the main thing, unfortunately, is not this: I brought you unpleasant news. Yesterday, General Fedorov decided not to renew your contract on November 22, 2024. Therefore, you now need to write a letter of resignation dated November 21, Sergey Eduardovich! "
This news from the cheerful border guards unpleasantly surprised me - I was extremely surprised by their undisguised treachery after my 18 years of conscientious work in the field of departmental science and education. These goats from the border institute did not even wait for my discharge from the hospital for the sake of decency, but showed up with a resignation letter on the second day after the operation. I silently wrote a resignation letter, took the gifts and, having said goodbye to Kiselev rather dryly, hobbled back to my ward.
This event then prompted me to yet another philosophical reflection on the nature of power and my difficult relationships with its individual representatives.
Recently, while sorting through our family archives, I was very happy to discover my long-lost soldier's notebook from 1987. I started leafing through it and came across a curious diary entry: "Being here in the army, I constantly catch myself thinking that all this is not happening to me. I see myself as if from above and with the cold curiosity of an expert - a psychoanalyst, I observe my recently acquired soldier reflexes. Where did this refined intellectual go - a university student and an irreplaceable pianist of the people's theater named after Commissar Maigret? Now, unfortunately, we are seeing only another soldier's cattle. Not a trace remains of the cheerful, mischievous student Seryozha! " And then came the murderous characteristics and rather offensive nicknames - "nicknames", which I gave to almost all my military leaders in the Biysk artillery division - in the style of the great prankster Yegor Dmitrich Glumov from the brilliant play by Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky "Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man":
1. "Castrato" - the commander of our division, Major Bukhteyev.
2. "Faggot" - the chief of staff, Major Skorobogatov.
3. "Bruise" - the commander of the fire platoon, Captain Naplekov.
4. "Fat" - the deputy commander of the division, Major Shirokov.
5. "Freak Bakla" - the head of the logistics service, Major Cherkasov.
All these "nicknames" or "rattles" eloquently spoke of the fact that at that moment I felt absolutely no piety towards my immediate superiors in the army. Only now, lying in a hospital bed, I finally realized that, in general, I never liked the authorities and always treated their representatives with poorly concealed contempt.
The first to feel my nihilistic attitude towards the authorities was General Vladimir Mikhailovich Solovyov. He came to us at the Barnaul Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia as the head at the end of 1998, and my happy life as the head of the criminal procedure department ended there. Solovyov hated me with a fierce hatred from the very first sight, after his first visit to our department. At first it was a latent hatred at some kind of bestial level - absolutely unmotivated and therefore not amenable to any rational explanation. And soon an excellent reason was found for an already open hatred towards me. And it was like this. In December 1997, I began working hard on my doctoral dissertation in criminology. However, the daily routine of the department was eating me up and preventing me from concentrating on scientific research. Therefore, one day I firmly decided for myself that it was time to tie up with the department's management. A worthy replacement was needed. My choice then fell on my deputy, police lieutenant colonel Ivan Ivanovich Massold. His German pedantry and peasant tenacity had already helped to bring the department, which had been virtually dying, to a leading position in the institute. And then a lucky chance presented itself. General Solovyov expressed a desire to meet the staff of the criminal procedure department. During the meeting, I openly admitted to him my desire to vacate the post of head of the department in connection with scientific work and proposed Massold's candidacy. Undoubted joy flashed across Solovyov's face from such unexpected news, but he immediately tried to hide it from us. "Well, Sergei Eduardovich, I approve. Science is certainly a special priority for us. So calmly work on your doctoral dissertation. And we will consider the candidacy of Ivan Ivanovich Massold together with the head of the personnel department. We will inform you of our decision!" And that was what we decided on. The life of the department went on as usual and nothing foreshadowed any upheavals. But one day it did happen!
Once, at the end of January, I came to classes on a Saturday, as usual. When I opened the door to Massold's and my office, the wind almost blew me away. It turned out that the window in my office was completely broken, and both panes were missing from the frame. Large flakes of snow were blown into the office through the huge hole, like in some surreal film, slowly swirling in the air and falling on Massold's desk. The owner of the desk himself was not in the office - he was still at classes. And soon the hero of the occasion himself appeared. "Listen, Eduardovich, my fool has put on such a concert here based on requests. She came to sort things out with Svetka Simonova. She didn't find anyone, and in anger she threw a mug of tea at me. I only managed to dodge (she was aiming for my head, the bitch!), the mug flew through the glass into the street. Thank God, no one was under the window at that moment. She would have killed me, the creature, for sure!" Ivan said excitedly, choleric waving his arms. Well, now everything was clear to the court.
The fact is that in October 1998, Massold started a passionate affair with a charming, petite brunette, Svetlana Simonova, who was a fourth-year student at the correspondence department. At first, it all developed as a small affair between a teacher and a student, but then, unexpectedly for all participants in the action, an ordinary role-playing game developed into serious feelings and a relationship. Massold's wife, sensing something was wrong in time, decided to nip this disgrace in the bud, followed her husband and came to the institute for a tough showdown. Not finding the insidious homewrecker, out of frustration, as is usual in such cases, she slammed her mug on the glass and was gone. It seemed that the incident was over. But no, dear reader, we were deeply mistaken. We did not know then and could not know that the most interesting was yet to come!
Monday morning, a new spectacular show with the participation of Massold's faithful awaited us. Early in the morning, the woman, along with her two children and a canister of gasoline, came to the main building of the institute and settled down opposite General Solovyov's office. The institute's chief negotiator, Lieutenant Colonel Ulitin, the head of the educational department, who had come to us from the penal system, was sent to her. Alla Massold presented her demands: let her husband return the money in the amount of 200 thousand euros, which she and Ivan had saved together for the children's education. Otherwise, immediately, right there, she would commit an act of self-immolation. Soloviev urgently sent for Massold to the department, but he, as luck would have it, had run away somewhere. In the end, the woman was somehow calmed down. But Pandora's box had already been fatally opened and, to the amazement of the public, numerous skeletons of Ivan Ivanovich Massold poured out of it.
An internal investigation was conducted, which left all those conducting the investigation in shock. It turned out that our Vanya had long been the real underground millionaire Koreiko. Ulitin, who visited Massold's apartment on Solovyov's orders, returned from there completely depressed. Entering Solovyov's office with a report, he could only wearily sit down on a chair and quietly say: "Vladimir Mikhailovich, I have never seen such wealth anywhere in my entire life! This is a real Ali Baba cave!"
The enterprising Ivan Ivanovich Massold had set up a wide usury network throughout Barnaul. He gave loans to individuals at exorbitant interest rates, and took luxury items, household appliances, gold and precious stones as collateral from them. The money that Ivan took from his wife in revenge for the scandal he caused at the institute, he, of course, soon returned to his faithful wife, and, as usual, they made up that same day. Massold almost immediately quit the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and soon this whole friendly family emigrated to Germany, where they live to this day. With the money they earned in Russia, the Massolds bought two cool pizzerias in Germany (in my opinion, they are still thriving), the children received higher education in Japan, and Massold's son Johann even married a charming Japanese woman, who recently gave birth to a girl. A solid happy ending, reader, but not for me!
After this tragicomic event, General Solovyov declared a real terror against me. "Voronin, you set me up. Massold was your candidate!" the general shouted almost hysterically. "You warmed up a thief and a swindler in the department!" "I see you want me to quit? No problem, easy! Right now!" I answered the crazy bureaucrat in as calm a tone as possible. "You'll go broke, along with your family. I'll make sure no one ever hires you. Your family will die of hunger!" this moron wouldn't calm down. I got tired of listening to his nonsense, turned around and walked quickly out of the office. I was shaking for a long time on the street, but soon I pulled myself together, calmed down a bit and went home, deliberately choosing the longest route through our wonderful winter park. Surprisingly, I will repeat this pirouette with a spectacular exit from Solovyov's office exactly 3 years later. I will repeat it so that I never return here again - to this completely insane dictator and madman. In December 1999, a wonderful person appeared at the Barnaul Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, who drastically changed my life. Colonel Ravil Mikhailovich Abyzov arrived from Ufa to continue his service as deputy head of the institute for scientific work. My late father always treated the Tatars with great respect. This began in the 1950s, when my father studied law at Kazan State University. "The Tatars are the smartest people, Seryozha. The second titular nation of Russia. Always stick close to the Tatars, and they will never let you down. A very grateful people!"
This beautiful Tatar story happened to Ravil Mikhailovich Abyzov. Having seen my scientific potential and learning that my doctoral dissertation was already 2/3 written, he, in defiance of General Solovyov, achieved that I was granted a creative leave at our institute. This state-paid leave for 6 months is specially granted to scientists to complete work on a doctoral dissertation. And one of the happiest periods in my life began. I was not cursed, not forgotten, I was doing what I loved, and the state paid me good money for it for six months. I went on vacation in January 2000, and already in June 2001 I defended my doctoral dissertation in the city of Yekaterinburg at the Ural Law Academy. Surprisingly, the entire period of work on the 500-page tome took me only 2 years, not counting the preparatory period of collecting empirical material from December 1997. For comparison: work on the candidate's dissertation lasted exactly 5 years.
You should have seen Solovyov's dismayed face when I returned from Yekaterinburg as a winner. He had nowhere to go and, reluctantly, at a general institute assembly he nevertheless awarded me the extraordinary rank of lieutenant colonel of the internal service (as was required by law). Well, then, reader, another round of my confrontation with the general began - we again had a fight to the death. Vladimir Mikhailovich really went berserk. Each academic council turned into a real auto-da-f". Every time he raised me up at the extended council of the BYuI MVD RF and asked the same rhetorical question: "And what did Professor Voronin do for the institute's science? And where is your doctorate diploma, may I ask?" He was hitting me in my most sensitive spot. Indeed, more than a year had already passed, and there was still no news about my diploma from the Higher Attestation Commission of Russia. I started to get noticeably nervous, Solovyov saw it and chose the most effective tactic of constant harsh trolling of this loser - the failed doctor of law. I reassured myself that as soon as I received my diploma, I would send this senile man in general's stripes to hell. And that hour had struck! In December 2002, Professor Aleksey Dmitrievich Proshlyakov, who came to us from Yekaterinburg for the annual scientific and practical conference, finally brought my long-awaited diploma of Doctor of Law. And literally the next day, the head of the Siberian Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Krasnoyarsk, General Vladimir Ilyich Gorobtsov, called me on the landline. "Sergey Eduardovich, good afternoon! I know that you recently received your doctorate. How do you view the prospect of moving to Krasnoyarsk with your entire family? I guarantee a four-room apartment for your own use within a month!" "Thank you, Vladimir Ilyich! A very tempting offer. But I have a counter-condition. My wife is currently working as an assistant prosecutor in Barnaul. She needs an equivalent position in Krasnoyarsk," I stated my condition for transfer to a new place of service. "No problem! The regional prosecutor Sasha Grin is my friend and classmate at the Ural Law Academy. We'll do it!" Gorobtsov said, and we agreed on my secret visit to Krasnoyarsk for the upcoming New Year holidays.
I very successfully went to Krasnoyarsk in early January 2003, met with the management of the Siberian Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, and, satisfied with the trip, returned back to Barnaul. The next day I wrote a report on the transfer and registered it with the secretariat of the institute. What started then, reader! Solovyov was furious. "I'll rot him, that devil Voronin! He ate our bread for free for six months. "I promoted him to lieutenant colonel ahead of schedule, and he just went and ditched us, ditched us right on the eve of a comprehensive inspection of the ministry!" Solovyov yelled like a madman, hysterically throwing office supplies around his desk in his office. He tore up my report and ordered the secretariat not to accept any statements from me. There was nothing to be done - I had to call Gorobtsov immediately. "I expected this, Seryozha! There is only one option left - write a letter of resignation. If you come here, I will reinstate you. I have good relations with the Department of Personnel Provision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia!" And so they did. I wrote a letter of resignation from the internal affairs agencies, and Solovyov immediately called me to him. His nerves gave out, and he was the first to drop out of the race. "Voronin, I will sign a transfer for you, just so I never see you again. Your language is filthy, and you yourself are a filthy person. Get out of my institute!" "Go to hell yourself, woodpecker!" - I said loudly, walked out of the office and slammed the door so hard that the plaster fell. His secretary Lyuba shuddered in surprise and said, "I'll tell you something now," and ran to her friends in the next office. That was the end of the story of my "legendary" confrontation with the head of the Barnaul Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Major General of Police Vladimir Mikhailovich Solovyov.
Now in the Khabarovsk hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and looking back on the years I have lived, I can say with confidence that the only authority in my life has always been and remains our Father - the Creator of All That Exists, the Lord of the Worlds and the Almighty. For me, God is not some abstraction or a kind grandfather with the face of Moses. For me, God is the Ocean of Energy, from which our entire world and our bodies are woven. There is even a reference to this Ocean in the Koran. "Allah is as great as the ocean!" - the Koran asserts, and you can't argue with it, reader.
Even human souls are material, as they consist of the same energy plasma and are sent to the upper tier in the Ocean after our physical death. At one time, I had the chance to get acquainted with the unique work of the Greek philosopher Hermes Trismegistus. Here is how Trismegistus (translated from Greek as "Thrice Great") describes the work of this cosmic "incubator" in his treatise "Hermetic Corpus" almost 2 thousand years ago. Once, Hermes dreamed of a meeting and conversation with God Osiris:
- How does a person's journey through the visible and invisible world take place? - Hermes asked God Osiris.
- Do you see, - the voice of Osiris was heard, - the luminous seeding that falls from the Milky Way into the seventh sphere of the constellation Orion? These are the embryos of human souls. They live like light clouds in the kingdom of Saturn, happy, carefree, but unaware of their happiness. But, descending from sphere to sphere, they are clothed in ever heavier shells. In each incarnation, they acquire a new bodily sense, corresponding to the inhabited environment (apparently, we are talking here about the compaction of matter under the influence of "intelligent" gravity and torsion fields, about the process of the appearance of solid matter in the Universe). Their vital energy increases; but as they penetrate into increasingly dense bodies, they lose the memory of their heavenly origin. Thus the fall of souls emerging from the divine ether occurs. More and more chained in matter, more and more intoxicated with life, they fall like a fiery rain.
- Can souls die? - asked Hermes.
- Yes, - answered the voice of Osiris, - many perish, descending into matter. If the soul in its unbridled love for matter loses the memory of its origin, the divine spark hidden in it, capable of turning into a shining star, returns back to the ethereal space, and "the soul dissipates in the vortices of the gross elements." Just think about it, dear reader: this was written almost 2 thousand years ago!
In other words, the souls of dead people do not disappear anywhere after death, but are in the Ocean of Energy, waiting for a suitable physical body on Earth. So the Hindus were absolutely right about the reincarnation of souls and everything else that is in Hinduism.
The Spiritual and Physical Universes, equally woven from the Energy of the Ocean, neighbor on Earth and in Heaven. Creators - musicians, artists, scientists - are the true creators of the Spiritual, Divine Universe on Earth. With their divinely inspired work they multiply the bright Energy of the Cosmos, the Energy of Creation. And the spiritual multidimensional Universe, what V.I. Vernadsky called the noosphere, in turn, transforms the Physical Universe, our limited four-dimensional material world. This connection is two-way, and cause and effect in this dialectical process are constantly changing places.
For example, a person's mental health determines his physical health, and vice versa. A healthy mind in a healthy body. Men sana in corpore sana!
Thus, the meaning of a person's life is at his "working" place, in accessible ways and day after day, without thinking about earthly glory, within the framework of his natural capabilities to cognize, spiritually enrich and transform the World with the help of Knowledge, Beauty and Harmony, thereby increasing the space of the Spiritual Universe - the Divine World. The phrase that people create History sounds too proud and pompous. This is not so. God is the one and only Creator of History. People are just actors in His theater, where there is only one Chief Director and playwright. Actors can be brilliant, simply talented or absolutely talentless, but the overall dramaturgy of the work will not change from this. And this is wonderful. World practice shows what happens when the course of History is given over to human passions. God is the Great improviser, He never repeats himself. Therefore, even the second Coming of Christ, repeatedly announced by God, will happen according to a completely different, most unexpected scenario. Amen!
