Let's just talk. Let's talk about things that are optional and therefore pleasant. Let's talk about the funny properties of human nature, embodied in our acquaintances. There is no greater pleasure than to talk about some of the strange habits of our acquaintances. After all, we talk about this, as if listening to our own healthy normality, and at the same time we mean that we could afford such deviations, but we don’t want to, we don’t need it. Or maybe we still want to?

One of the amusing properties of human nature is that each person seeks to play out his own image, imposed on him by the people around him. Another squeaks, but plays out.

If, say, those around you wanted to see you as an executive mule, no matter how much you resist, nothing will work. By your resistance, on the contrary, you will gain a foothold in this rank. Instead of a mere executive mule, you will turn into a stubborn or even embittered mule.

True, in some cases a person manages to impose his desired image on others. Most often, people succeed a lot, but systematically drinking.

What, they say, a good person would be if he didn’t drink. They say so about one of my acquaintances: they say, a talented engineer of human souls, ruins his talent with wine. Try to say out loud that, firstly, he is not an engineer, but a technician of human souls, and secondly, who saw his talent? You won't tell, because it turns out ignoble. A man drinks anyway, and you still complicate his life with all sorts of slander. If you can't help the drinker, at least don't bother him.

But still, a person plays out the image that is imposed on him by the people around him. Here is an example.

Once, when I was in school, the whole class of us worked on a seaside wasteland, trying to turn it into a place for cultural recreation. Oddly enough, they actually did.

We planted the vacant lot with eucalyptus seedlings, using the advanced nesting method for that time. True, when there were few seedlings left, and there was still enough free space in the wasteland, we began to plant one seedling in a hole, thus giving the opportunity to the new, progressive method and the old one to prove themselves in free competition.

A few years later, a beautiful eucalyptus grove grew in the wasteland, and it was no longer possible to distinguish between nesting and single plantings. Then they said that single seedlings in the immediate vicinity of nesting ones, envying them with Good Envy, pull themselves up and grow without lagging behind.

Anyway, now coming to native city, sometimes in the heat I rest under our now huge trees and feel like an Excited Patriarch. In general, eucalyptus grows very quickly, and anyone who wants to feel like an Excited Patriarch can plant a eucalyptus tree and wait for its tall crown, tinkling like Christmas decorations.

But it's not that. The fact is that on that old day, when we were cultivating a wasteland, one of the guys drew the attention of the others to how I hold the stretcher on which we dragged the earth. The military instructor who was looking after us also noticed how I was holding the stretcher. Everyone paid attention to how I hold the stretcher. It was necessary to find a reason for fun, and the reason was found. It turned out that I was holding a stretcher like a notorious bummer.

This was the first crystal that fell out of the solution, and then a businesslike process of crystallization was already going on, which I myself now helped in order to finally crystallize in the given direction.

Now everything worked for the image. If I was sitting on a math test, not disturbing anyone, calmly waiting for my friend to solve the problem, then everyone attributed this to my laziness, and not stupidity. Naturally, I did not try to dissuade anyone in this. When I wrote in written Russian directly from my head, without using textbooks and cheat sheets, this all the more served as proof of my incorrigible laziness.

To stay in character, I stopped acting as a duty officer. They got used to it so much that when one of the students forgot to perform the duties of a duty officer, the teachers, to the approving noise of the class, forced me to erase from the blackboard or drag physical devices into the class. However, there were no instruments then, but something had to be dragged.

The development of the image led to the fact that I was forced to stop doing homework. At the same time, in order to maintain the acuteness of the situation, I had to study well enough.

For this reason, every day, as soon as the explanation of the material on humanitarian subjects began, I lay down on my desk and pretended to doze off. If the teachers resented my posture, I said that I was sick, but I didn’t want to miss classes so as not to fall behind. Lying on the desk, I listened attentively to the teacher's voice, not being distracted by the usual pranks, and tried to remember everything he said. After explaining the new material, if there was time, I volunteered to answer on account of the future lesson.

This pleased the teachers, because it flattered their pedagogical vanity. It turned out that they convey their subject so well and intelligibly that students, even without using textbooks, learn everything.

The teacher gave me a good grade in the magazine, the bell rang, and everyone was happy. And no one, except me, knew that the knowledge that had just been recorded was falling out of my head, like a barbell falling out of the hands of a weightlifter after the referee’s call: “Weight is taken!”

To be completely accurate, it must be said that sometimes, when I pretended to be dozing, I lay on the desk, I actually fell into a drowsiness, although the voice of the teacher continued to be heard. Much later, I learned that this, or almost this, method is used to learn languages. I think it will not seem too immodest if I now say that the discovery of it belongs to me. I do not speak about cases of complete falling asleep, because they were rare.

After some time, rumors about the Notorious Lazybones reached the director of the school, and for some reason he decided that it was I who stole the telescope, which disappeared from the geographical office six months ago. I don't know why he decided that. Perhaps the very idea of ​​at least a visual reduction in distance, he decided, could most seduce the lazy person. I can't find any other explanation. Fortunately, the spyglass was found, but they continued to look at me, for some reason expecting that I was going to throw out some kind of trick. It soon became clear that I was not going to throw out any tricks, that, on the contrary, I was a very obedient and conscientious lazy person. Moreover, being a lazy person, I studied quite decently.

Then they decided to apply to me the method of mass education, which was fashionable in those years. Its essence was that all the teachers suddenly fell on one negligent student and, taking advantage of his confusion, brought his academic performance to exemplary brilliance.

The idea of ​​the method was that after that, other negligent students, envying him with Good Envy, would themselves pull themselves up to his level, like single plantings of eucalyptus trees. The effect was achieved by the surprise of a massive attack. Otherwise, the student could slip away or mess up the method itself.

As a rule, the experience was successful. No sooner had the small heap formed by the massive attack dissipated than the transformed student stood among the best, brazenly smiling the embarrassed smile of the dishonored.

In this case, the teachers, envious of each other, perhaps not too Good Envy, jealously watched in the magazine how he improved his academic performance, and, of course, everyone tried so that the academic performance curve in the segment of his subject did not violate the winning steepness. Either they piled on me too closely, or they forgot my own decent level, but when they began to sum up the experience of working on me, it turned out that I had been brought up to the level of a candidate for medalists.

You’ll pull on a silver one, - one day the class teacher announced, anxiously looking into my eyes.

Iskander Fazil Abdulovich Russia, 03/06/1929 Born March 6, 1929 in Sukhumi in the family of a craftsman. graduated high school received a library degree. In the 1950s, Iskander came to Moscow, entered the Literary Institute, from which he graduated in 1954. Already in his student years, he began to publish (first publications in 1952). Writes poems. Works as a journalist in Kursk, then in Bryansk. In 1959 he was an editor in the Abkhaz department of the State Publishing House. The first poetry collections - Mountain Paths (1957), Kindness of the Earth (1959), Green Rain (1960) and others - receive good reviews from critics and recognition from readers. Since 1962, his stories began to publish the magazine Youth and Nedelya. In 1966, from these stories, the author collects the first book Forbidden Fruit. However, the publication in the New World of the Constellation of Kozlotur (1966) brings him truly wide fame. Short stories and novels were warmly received: On a Summer Day (1969), Tree of Childhood (1970). Of particular interest in his work was the cycle of short stories by Sandro from Chegem (1973). In 1979 for the Metropolis, Iskander gave the satire Little Giant of Great Sex. Peru Iskander owns children's stories - The Day of Chica (1971) and Defense of Chica (1983), which formed the basis of the book of stories Chica's Childhood (1993). In 1982, the magazine Yunost published the writer's work - Rabbits and boas, which had an extraordinary success. In 1987 he published a book of poems, The Way; in 1990 - the story Parking of a man; in 1991 - the book of journalism Poets and Tsars; in 1993 - Poems and novel Man and his surroundings. In 1995, the story Sofichka was published in the Znamya magazine. F.

...On the back of the kitchen hung wicker baskets in which chickens were rushing. How they guessed to rush into these baskets remained a mystery to me. I stood on tiptoe and groped for the egg. Feeling like a Baghdad thief and a successful pearl diver at the same time, I sucked out the prey, immediately knocking it against the wall. Somewhere nearby, chickens clucked doomedly. Life seemed meaningful and beautiful. Healthy air, healthy food - and I was filled with juice, like a pumpkin in a well-manured garden.

I found two books in the house: Mine Reed's The Headless Horseman and William Shakespeare's Tragedies and Comedies. The first book shocked me. The names of the heroes sounded like sweet music: Maurice the Mustanger, Louise Poindexter, Captain Cassius Calhoun, El Coyote, and finally, in all the splendor of the Spanish splendor of Isidore Covarubi de Los Llanos.

"Ask your pardon, captain," said Maurice the mustanger, and put the pistol to his temple.

Oh God! He's headless!

It's a mirage! exclaimed the captain.

I read the book from beginning to end, from end to beginning and twice diagonally ...

Since childhood, roosters did not like me. I don't remember how it started, but if a belligerent rooster was planted somewhere in the neighborhood, it was not without bloodshed.

That summer I lived with my relatives in one of the mountain villages of Abkhazia. The whole family - a mother, two adult daughters, two adult sons - went to work in the morning: some for weeding corn, some for breaking tobacco. I was alone. My duties were light and pleasant. I had to feed the kids (a good bundle of walnut branches rustling with leaves), bring fresh water from the spring by noon, and generally look after the house. There was nothing special to look after, but it was necessary to shout from time to time so that the hawks felt the closeness of a person and did not attack the master's chickens. For this, I was allowed, as a representative of a frail city tribe, to drink a couple of fresh eggs from a hen, which I did conscientiously and willingly.

On the back of the kitchen hung wicker baskets in which chickens were rushing. How they guessed to rush into these baskets remained a mystery to me. I stood on tiptoe and groped for the egg. Feeling like a Baghdad thief and a successful pearl diver at the same time, I sucked out the prey, immediately knocking it against the wall. Somewhere nearby, chickens clucked doomedly. Life seemed meaningful and beautiful. Healthy air, healthy food - and I was filled with juice, like a pumpkin in a well-manured garden.

I found two books in the house: Mine Reed's The Headless Horseman and William Shakespeare's Tragedies and Comedies. The first book shocked me. The names of the heroes sounded like sweet music: Maurice the Mustanger, Louise Poindexter, Captain Cassius Calhoun, El Coyote, and finally, in all the splendor of the Spanish splendor of Isidore Covarubi de Los Llanos.

“- Beg your pardon, captain,” said Maurice the mustanger, and put the gun to his temple.

Oh God! He's headless!

It's a mirage! exclaimed the captain.

I read the book from beginning to end, from end to beginning and twice diagonally.

Shakespeare's tragedies seemed to me vague and meaningless. But the comedies fully justified the author's writing. I realized that jesters do not exist at royal courts, but royal courts at jesters.

The house in which we lived stood on a hill, was blown around the clock by the winds, was dry and strong, like a real highlander.

Under the eaves of a small terrace, clods of swallow nests were molded. The swallows swiftly and accurately flew into the terrace, slowing down, fluttering at the nest, where, with their beaks wide open, almost falling out, greedy noisy chicks were reaching for them. Their gluttony could only compete with the indefatigability of their parents. Sometimes, having given food to the chick, the swallow, slightly tilted back, sat for several moments at the edge of the nest. The motionless lancet body, and only the head gently turns in all directions. A moment - and she, breaking, falls, then, smoothly and accurately twisting, emerges from under the terrace.

Chickens grazed peacefully in the yard, sparrows and chickens chirped. But the demons of rebellion were not asleep. Despite my warning cries, a hawk appeared almost daily. Now diving, then at a low level flight, he picked up a chicken, gained height with weighted powerful flapping of wings and slowly moved away towards the forest. It was a breathtaking sight, I sometimes purposely let him go and only then shouted to clear my conscience. The pose of a chicken carried away by a hawk expressed horror and stupid resignation. If I made a noise in time, the hawk missed or dropped its prey in mid-flight. In such cases, we found a chicken somewhere in the bushes, shell-shocked with fear, with glazed eyes.

Not a tenant, - used to say one of my brothers, cheerfully cut off his head and sent him to the kitchen.

The leader of the chicken kingdom was a huge red rooster. Smug, pompous and treacherous, like an oriental despot. A few days after my appearance, it became clear that he hated me and was only looking for an excuse for an open confrontation. Maybe he noticed that I was eating eggs, and this offended his male pride. Or was he infuriated by my negligence during the attack of hawks? I think both had an effect on him, and most importantly, in his opinion, a man appeared who was trying to share power over chickens with him. Like any despot, he could not tolerate this.

I realized that the dual power could not last long, and, preparing for the upcoming battle, I began to get accustomed to it.

The rooster could not be denied personal courage. During hawk raids, when hens and chickens, clucking and screaming, flew in all directions in multi-colored spray, he alone remained in the yard and, bubbling angrily, tried to restore order in his timid harem. He even took several decisive steps towards the flying bird; but, since the walker cannot catch up with the flyer, this gave the impression of empty bravado.

Usually he grazed in the yard or in the garden, surrounded by two or three favorites, but without losing sight of the rest of the chickens. Sometimes, stretching out his neck, he looked into the sky: is there any danger?

Here the shadow of a soaring bird glided across the yard or the crowing of a crow was heard, he belligerently raises his head, looks around and gives a sign to be vigilant. Chickens listen in fright, sometimes running, looking for a sheltered place. Most often it was a false alarm, but keeping the cohabitants in a state nervous tension, he suppressed their will and achieved complete submission.

Raking the ground with sinewy paws, he sometimes found some kind of delicacy and with loud cries called the chickens to the feast.

While a hen ran up to peck at his find, he managed to go around it several times, pompously dragging his wing and as if choking with delight. This idea usually ended in violence. The chicken shook herself in confusion, trying to recover herself and comprehend what had happened, and he looked around victoriously and satiety.

If the wrong chicken ran up that he liked this time, he blocked his find or drove away the chicken, continuing to call his new lover with rumbling sounds. Most often it was a neat white hen, thin as a chicken. She carefully approached him, stretched her neck and, deftly pecking out the find, took to her heels, without showing any signs of gratitude.

Moving his heavy paws, he shamefully ran after her, and even feeling the shamefulness of his position, he continued to run, trying to maintain respectability as he went. He usually failed to catch up with her, and in the end he stopped, breathing heavily, looked askance in my direction and pretended that nothing had happened, and the run had independent significance.

By the way, often calls to feast turned out to be a complete swindle. There was nothing to peck, and the chickens knew about it, but they were let down by eternal female curiosity.

Every day he became more and more impudent. If I crossed the yard, he would run after me for a while to test my courage. Feeling that the frost covers my back, I still stopped and waited for what would happen next. He also stopped and waited. But the storm was about to break, and it did.

One day, when I was dining in the kitchen, he came in and stood at the door. I threw him a few pieces of hominy, but, apparently, in vain. He pecked at the sop and with all his appearance made it clear that reconciliation was out of the question.

There was nothing to do. I waved my firebrand at him, but he only jumped up, stretched out his neck like a gander, and stared with hateful eyes. Then I threw a firebrand at him. She fell down next to him. He jumped even higher and lunged at me, spewing rooster curses. A burning, red ball of hatred flew at me. I managed to hide behind a stool. Hitting her, he collapsed beside me like a defeated dragon. As he stood up, his wings beat against the earthen floor, knocking out jets of dust, and blew my legs with the chill of the battle wind.

I managed to change position and retreated towards the door, hiding behind a stool, like a Roman shield.

When I crossed the yard, he rushed at me several times. Each time he took off, he tried, as it seemed to me, to peck out my eye. I successfully covered myself with a stool, and he, hitting it, flopped to the ground. My scratched hands bled, and the heavy stool became more and more difficult to hold. But she was my only defense.

Another attack - and the rooster took off with a powerful flap of wings, but did not hit my shield, but unexpectedly sat on it.

I dropped the stool, reached the terrace with a few jumps, and further into the room, slamming the door behind me.

My chest hummed like a telegraph pole, blood poured down my arms. I stood and listened: I was sure that the damned rooster was crouching behind the door. So it was. After a while, he moved away from the door and began to walk around the terrace, imperiously clicking with iron claws. He called me to fight, but I preferred to sit out in the fortress. Finally he got tired of waiting, and he jumped on the railing and crowed triumphantly.

My brothers, having learned about my battle with the rooster, began to arrange daily tournaments. None of us achieved a decisive advantage, we both walked in abrasions and bruises.

On my adversary's scallop, meaty as a slice of tomato, it was not difficult to notice several marks from a stick; his magnificent, gushing tail was rather shrunken, all the more arrogantly looked his self-confidence.

He developed a nasty habit of crowing in the mornings, perched on the railing of the terrace right under the window where I slept.

Now he felt on the terrace as in occupied territory.

The fighting took place in a variety of places: in the yard, in the garden, in the garden. If I climbed a tree for figs or apples, he stood under it and patiently waited for me.

To bring down his arrogance, I indulged in various tricks. So I started feeding the chickens. When I called them, he became furious, but the chickens treacherously left him. Persuasions did not help. Here, as elsewhere, abstract propaganda was easily put to shame by the reality of profit. The handfuls of corn I tossed out the window overcame the ancestral affections and family traditions of the valiant eggmen. In the end, the pasha himself appeared. He angrily rebuked them, and they, pretending to be ashamed of their weakness, continued to peck at the corn.

Once, when my aunt and her sons were working in the garden, we had a fight with him. By this time I was already an experienced and cold-blooded fighter. I took out a spreading stick and, acting with it like a trident, after several unsuccessful attempts, pinned the rooster to the ground. His powerful body beat furiously, and his shudders electricity, were passed to me on a stick.

The madness of the brave inspired me. Without releasing the stick from my hands and without weakening its pressure, I bent down and, seizing the moment, jumped on him, like a goalkeeper on a ball. I squeezed his throat with all my might. He made a powerful springy jerk and with a blow of a wing in the face stunned me in one ear. Fear has multiplied my courage. I squeezed his throat even tighter. Stringy and thick, it trembled and twitched in my palm, and it felt like I was holding a snake. I wrapped my other hand around its paws, clawed claws moving, trying to find the body and crash into it.

But the deed was done. I straightened up, and the rooster, uttering strangled cries, hung in my arms.

All this time the brothers and their aunt were laughing, looking at us from behind the fence. Well, so much the better! Powerful waves of joy washed over me. However, after a minute I felt a little embarrassed. The vanquished did not reconcile at all, he was all bubbling with vindictive fury. Let go - pounce, but it is impossible to keep it indefinitely.

Throw it into the garden, - advised the aunt. I walked up to the fence and hurled it with my petrified hands.

Curse! He, of course, did not fly over the fence, but sat on it, spreading his heavy wings. In a moment he lunged at me. It was too much. I took to my heels, and from my chest escaped the ancient cry of salvation from the fleeing children:

You have to be either very stupid or very brave to turn your back on the enemy. I did not do it out of courage, for which I paid the price.

While I was running, he caught up with me several times, finally I stumbled and fell. He jumped on me, he rolled over me, hoarsely wheezing from bloody pleasure. He probably would have hollowed out my spine if my brother, who had run up, had not thrown him into the bushes with a blow of a hoe. We decided that he had been killed, but towards evening he came out of the bushes, hushed and saddened.

Washing my wounds, my aunt said:

Apparently, the two of you can't get along. Tomorrow we'll fry it.

The next day my brother and I started catching it. The poor fellow felt bad. He fled from us with the speed of an ostrich. He flew over the garden, hid in the bushes, and finally hid in the basement, where we caught him. He had a haunted look, a sad reproach in his eyes. It seemed that he wanted to tell me: “Yes, we were at enmity with you. It was an honest man's war, but I did not expect betrayal from you. I felt somehow uncomfortable, and I turned away. A few minutes later, his brother cut off his head. The body of the rooster jumped and beat, and the wings, convulsively fluttering, arched, as if they wanted to cover the throat, from where the blood whipped and gushed. Life has become safe and… boring.

However, the dinner was a success, and the spicy walnut sauce diluted the sharpness of my unexpected sadness.

Now I understand that it was a wonderful fighting cock, but he was born at the wrong time. The era of cockfights has long passed, and fighting with people is a lost cause.

Iskander, Fazil Abdulovich(b. 1929), Russian writer. Born March 6, 1929 in Sukhumi. His father, an Iranian by origin, was expelled from the USSR in 1938, the boy grew up with relatives on the maternal (Abkhazian) side. Entered the Moscow Library Institute, in 1951 transferred to the Literary Institute. A.M. Gorky (graduated in 1954). He was a literary employee of the newspapers "Bryansk Komsomolets" (1954-1955) and "Kurskaya Pravda" (1955-1956). He began to publish in 1952. From 1956 until the early 1990s he lived in Sukhumi, worked at the Abkhaz State Publishing House, regularly published poems in the journal Literary Abkhazia; published poetry books Mountain Peaks (1957), Goodness of the Earth (1959), Green Rain (1960), Children of the Black Sea Region (1961), Youth of the Sea (1964). Since the late 1950s, he has also been published in the journals Yunost, Nedelya and New world” along with V.P. Aksenov, O.G. fair rules(collections The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules, Forbidden Fruit, both 1966, etc.), in which he proved himself a master of colorful satirical sketches and ethnographic everyday life.

Instant and loud fame brought Iskander the story Constellation of Kozlotur (1966) - a story full of humor and grotesque about a typical phenomenon of the Soviet era, the next "initiative". The Abkhazian village is ordered to urgently start crossing a goat with a tour in order to breed some unusually productive breed. "The beginning is good, but not for our collective farm" - this formula of a cautious and firm rejection of an ignorant and ruinous "experiment" has become winged. Iskander's characteristic fusion of bright, with a precise sense of the national character, literary ethnography, a rich palette of laughter (from mild humor to merciless sarcasm), "chamber" lyricism and socio-political denunciation, the two-dimensionality of "Aesopian" language and the richness of living colloquial speech Iskander's numerous works-memoirs, written on behalf of (or by introducing this image) Sandro, a folk hero, an old man and a young man at the same time, are also distinguished. The central one is the novel Sandro from Chegem (1973–1988, complete edition 1989), consisting of separate fragments published since 1966 (the story of the same name, Uncle Sandro and the shepherd Kunta, Chegem gossip, Shepherd Makhaz, etc.), in which main character claims to be a role akin to the images of Til Ulenspiegel or Khoja Nasreddin - a rogue and a sage, an exponent of the national character and the people's "front", and where the history of the country and in it - the Abkhaz people is transmitted through the prism of his mockingly revealing perception (the head of the Pira Belshasar is especially noteworthy here , where, along with fictional characters, there are grotesque parodic images of Stalin, Kalinin, Beria, etc.). The problem of the catastrophic discrepancy between the patriarchal world of the national "outskirts" and the Soviet "metropolis" with its political and economic dictate is also highlighted in "children's", imbued, like all of Iskander's work, with autobiographical and memoir motifs, stories and stories about Chika (including Chick Defense, 1983), in the stories Beginning, Trout Fishing in the Upper Kodor, which even caused some critics to accuse of nationalism, On a Summer Day, Letter, Meeting on the Train, Poor Demagogue (all 1969), etc., up to nostalgic-sounding stories Gloomy youth light (1990), novel Man and his environs (1992-1993), story Sofichka (1995).

Metaphorical nakedness, in the spirit and style of the world dystopia of the 20th century. (E.I. Zamyatin, O. Huxley, J. Orwell), Iskander’s philosophical and political story-tale Rabbits and Boas (1982, USA; 1987, M.) stands out, in which the state, led by the dictator Great Python and consisting, with on the one hand, from snake-eaters, and on the other, from silently, with the blessing of their King, rabbits going to them for food and dumb working natives, branded with caustic satire in all their layers, who agreed to such an unnatural and cannibalistic "social contract" . A peculiar form of protest (freedom of suicide in response to death under duress) is offered by the writer in the story Shirokoloby.

The seriousness of a specific psychological analysis in the context of the moral atmosphere of the whole society marked Iskander's story The Sea Scorpion (1977), as well as the story The Little Giant of Big Sex (1979, filmed). The criminalization and actual dehumanization of the society of "victorious socialism" is revealed by the writer in socio-psychological and moral descriptive stories, marked by the sharpness of the detective story, Barmen Adgur and Chegemskaya Karmen (both 1986; the film adaptation of the latter - the film Thieves in Law, 1989), and crisis consciousness and the loss of illusions of the post-Soviet society - in the stories of Pshad (1993), Thinking about Russia and an American (1997).

Iskander has been awarded a number of prestigious domestic and foreign literary prizes.