I will not give praise to a fearfully lurking virtue, which shows itself in no way and shows no signs of life, a virtue that never makes forays to meet face to face with the enemy, and which shamefully flees the competition when the laurel wreath is won in the heat and dust .
John Milton
Anyone who cares about a cause must be able to fight for it, otherwise there is no need for him to take on any business at all.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Chapter first
The train goes west
The international express set off slowly, as befits trains of this highest category, and both foreign diplomats immediately, each in his own direction, pulled aside the silk briskets on the mirror window of the dining car. Ustimenko squinted and looked even more closely at these athletic little, wiry, arrogant people - in black evening suits, glasses, cigars, with rings on their fingers. They did not notice him, they looked greedily at the silent, boundless space and peace there, in the steppes, above which the full moon floated in the black autumn sky. What did they hope to see when they crossed the border? Fires? War? German tanks?
In the kitchen, behind Volodina, the cooks were beating meat with choppers, there was a delicious smell of fried onions, and the barmaid carried steamy bottles of Russian “Zhigulevsky” beer on a tray. It was dinner time, at the next table a pot-bellied American journalist was peeling an orange with his thick fingers, his military “forecasts” were respectfully listened to by bespectacled diplomats with slicked hair, looking like twins.
- Bastard! - Volodya said.
- What he says? – Tod-Jin asked.
- Bastard! – Ustimenko repeated. - Fascist!
The diplomats nodded their heads and smiled. The famous American columnist and journalist joked. “This joke is already flying over the radiotelephone to my newspaper,” he explained to his interlocutors and threw a slice of orange into his mouth with a click. His mouth was huge, like a frog’s, from ear to ear. And all three of them had a lot of fun, but they became even more fun over the cognac.
- We must have peace of mind! - said Tod-Jin, looking at Ustimenka with compassion. – We need to pull ourselves together, yes.
Finally, the waiter came up and recommended Volodya and Tod-Zhin “monastery-style sturgeon” or “lamb chops.” Ustimenko leafed through the menu, the waiter, beaming with his hair in his hair, waited - the stern Tod-Jin with his motionless face seemed to the waiter to be an important and rich oriental foreigner.
“A bottle of beer and beef stroganoff,” said Volodya.
“Go to hell, Tod-Jin,” Ustimenko got angry. - I have a lot of money.
Tod-Jin repeated dryly:
- Porridge and tea.
The waiter raised his eyebrows, made a sad face and left. The American observer poured cognac into Narzan, rinsed his mouth with this mixture and filled his pipe with black tobacco. Another gentleman approached the three of them - as if he had climbed out not from the next carriage, but from the collected works of Charles Dickens - lop-eared, blind, with a duck nose and a chicken tail mouth. It was to him - this checkered-striped one - that the journalist said that phrase that even made Volodya go cold.
- No need! - Tod-Jin asked and squeezed Volodin’s wrist with his cold hand. - This doesn’t help, yes, yes...
But Volodya did not hear Tod-Jin, or rather, he heard, but he had no time for prudence. And, standing up at his table - tall, lithe, in an old black sweater - he barked at the whole carriage, glaring at the journalist with wild eyes, barked in his terrifying, chilling, amateurishly studied English:
- Hey you, columnist! Yes, you, exactly you, I’m telling you...
A look of bewilderment flashed across the journalist’s flat, fat face, the diplomats instantly became politely arrogant, and the Dickensian gentleman backed away a little.
– You enjoy the hospitality of my country! - Volodya shouted. – A country of which I have the high honor of being a citizen. And I do not allow you to make such disgusting, and so cynical, and so vile jokes about the great battle that our people are waging! Otherwise I will throw you out of this carriage to hell...
This is approximately how Volodya imagined what he said. In fact, he said a phrase that was much more meaningless, but nevertheless, the observer understood Volodya perfectly, this was evident from the way his jaw dropped for a moment and small, fish-like teeth were exposed in a frog’s mouth. But he was found immediately - he was not so small that he could not find a way out of any situation.
- Bravo! – he exclaimed and even pretended to applaud. – Bravo, my enthusiastic friend! I'm glad I awakened your feelings with my little provocation. We haven’t even driven a hundred kilometers from the border, and I’ve already received grateful material... “Your old Pete was almost thrown out of the express train at full speed just for a little joke about the fighting capacity of the Russian people” - that’s how my telegram will begin; Is that okay with you, my hot-tempered friend?
What could he, poor fellow, answer?
Should I put on a dry face and start eating beef stroganoff?
That’s what Volodya did. But the observer did not lag behind him: having moved to his table, he wanted to know who Ustimenko was, what he was doing, where he was going, why he was returning to Russia. And, writing it down, he said:
- Oh great. A missionary doctor returns to fight under the banner...
- Listen! - Ustimenko exclaimed. - Missionaries are priests, and I...
“You can’t fool old Pete,” the journalist said, puffing on his pipe. “Old Pete knows his reader.” Show me your muscles, could you really throw me out of the carriage?
I had to show it. Then old Pete showed his and wanted to drink cognac with Volodya and his “friend - the eastern Byron”. Tod-Jin finished the porridge, poured the liquid tea into himself and left, and Volodya, feeling the mocking glances of the diplomats and the Dickensian tabby, suffered for a long time with old Pete, cursing himself in every possible way for the stupid scene.
- What was there? – Tod-Jin asked sternly when Volodya returned to their compartment. And after listening, he lit a cigarette and said sadly: “They are always more cunning than us, so, yes, doctor.” I was still little - like this...
He showed with his palm what he was like.
“Like this one, and they were like this old Pete, like that, yeah, they gave me candy.” No, they didn't beat us, they gave us candy. And my mother, she beat me, yes, because she could not live from her fatigue and illness. And I thought: I'll go to this old Pete, and he'll always give me candy. And Pete also gave the adults candy - alcohol. And we brought him animal skins and gold, so, yes, and then death came... Old Pete is very, very cunning...
Volodya sighed:
- It turned out really stupid. And now he will also write that I am either a priest or a monk...
Jumping onto the top bunk, he stripped down to his underpants, lay down in the crisp, cool, starched sheets and turned on the radio. The Sovinformburo report was soon to be transmitted. Volodya lay motionless with his hands behind his head, waiting. Tod-Jin stood looking out the window at the endless steppe under the glow of the moon. Finally, Moscow spoke: on this day, according to the announcer, Kyiv fell. Volodya turned to the wall and pulled the blanket over the sheet. For some reason he imagined the face of the one who called himself old Pete, and he even closed his eyes in disgust.
“Nothing,” Tod-Jin said dully, “the USSR will win.” It will still be very bad, but then it will be great. After night comes morning. I heard the radio - Adolf Hitler will surround Moscow so that not a single Russian leaves the city. And then he will flood Moscow with water, everything is decided for him, so, yes, he wants that where Moscow used to be, it will become a sea and forever there will be no capital of the country of communism. I heard and I thought: I studied in Moscow, I must be where they want to see the sea. With a gun I hit the eye of a kite, this is necessary in war. I hit the sable's eye too. In the Central Committee I said the same as you, Comrade Doctor, now. I said, they are the day, if they are not there, eternal night will come. For our people, absolutely, yes. And I’m going to Moscow again, this is the second time I’m going. I’m not afraid of anything at all, there’s no frost, and I can do anything in war...
Yuri German
My dear man
I will not give praise to a fearfully lurking virtue, which shows itself in no way and shows no signs of life, a virtue that never makes forays to meet face to face with the enemy, and which shamefully flees the competition when the laurel wreath is won in the heat and dust .
John Milton
Anyone who cares about a cause must be able to fight for it, otherwise there is no need for him to take on any business at all.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Chapter first
THE TRAIN IS GOING WEST
The international express set off slowly, as befits trains of this highest category, and both foreign diplomats immediately, each in his own direction, pulled aside the silk briskets on the mirror window of the dining car. Ustimenko squinted and looked even more closely at these athletic little, wiry, arrogant people - in black evening suits, glasses, cigars, with rings on their fingers. They did not notice him, they looked greedily at the silent, boundless space and peace there, in the steppes, above which the full moon floated in the black autumn sky. What did they hope to see when they crossed the border? Fires? War? German tanks?
In the kitchen, behind Volodina, the cooks were beating meat with choppers, there was a delicious smell of fried onions, and the barmaid carried steamy bottles of Russian “Zhigulevsky” beer on a tray. It was dinner time, at the next table a pot-bellied American journalist was peeling an orange with his thick fingers, his military “forecasts” were respectfully listened to by bespectacled diplomats with slicked hair, looking like twins.
Bastard! - Volodya said.
What he says? - asked Tod-Jin.
Bastard! - Ustimenko repeated. - Fascist!
The diplomats nodded their heads and smiled. The famous American columnist and journalist joked. “This joke is already flying over the radiotelephone to my newspaper,” he explained to his interlocutors and threw an orange slice into his mouth with a click. His mouth was huge, like a frog's, from ear to ear. And all three of them had a lot of fun, but they became even more fun over the cognac.
We must have peace of mind! - said Tod-Jin, looking at Ustimenka with compassion. - We need to pull ourselves together, yes.
Finally, the waiter came up and recommended Volodya and Tod-Zhin “monastery-style sturgeon” or “lamb chops.” Ustimenko leafed through the menu, the waiter, beaming with his hair in his hair, waited - the stern Tod-Jin with his motionless face seemed to the waiter to be an important and rich oriental foreigner.
A bottle of beer and beef stroganoff,” said Volodya.
“Go to hell, Tod-Jin,” Ustimenko got angry. - I have a lot of money.
Tod-Jin repeated dryly:
Porridge and tea.
The waiter raised his eyebrows, made a sad face and left. The American observer poured cognac into Narzan, rinsed his mouth with this mixture and filled his pipe with black tobacco. Another gentleman approached the three of them - as if he had climbed out not from the next carriage, but from the collected works of Charles Dickens, with a lop-eared, weak-sighted man with a duck nose and a chicken tail mouth. It was to him - this checkered-striped one - that the journalist said that phrase that even made Volodya go cold.
No need! - Tod-Jin asked and squeezed Volodin’s wrist with his cold hand. - It doesn’t help, yes, yes...
But Volodya did not hear Tod-Jin, or rather, he heard, but he had no time for prudence. And, standing up at his table - tall, lithe, in an old black sweater - he barked at the whole carriage, glaring at the journalist with wild eyes, barked in his terrifying, chilling, amateurishly studied English:
Hey you, columnist! Yes, you, exactly you, I’m telling you...
A look of bewilderment flashed across the journalist’s flat, fat face, the diplomats instantly became politely arrogant, and the Dickensian gentleman backed away a little.
You enjoy the hospitality of my country! - Volodya shouted. A country of which I have the high honor of being a citizen. And I do not allow you to make such disgusting, and so cynical, and so vile jokes about the great battle that our people are waging! Otherwise I will throw you out of this carriage to hell...
This is approximately how Volodya imagined what he said. In fact, he said a phrase that was much more meaningless, but nevertheless, the observer understood Volodya perfectly, this was evident from the way his jaw dropped for a moment and small, fish-like teeth were exposed in a frog’s mouth. But he was found immediately - he was not so small that he could not find a way out of any situation.
Bravo! - he exclaimed and even pretended to applaud. Bravo, my enthusiastic friend! I'm glad I awakened your feelings with my little provocation. We haven’t even driven a hundred kilometers from the border, and I’ve already received grateful material... “Your old Pete was almost thrown out of the express train at full speed just for a little joke about the fighting capacity of the Russian people” - that’s how my telegram will begin; Is that okay with you, my hot-tempered friend?
What could he, poor fellow, answer?
Should I put on a dry face and start eating beef stroganoff?
That’s what Volodya did. But the observer did not lag behind him: having moved to his table, he wanted to know who Ustimenko was, what he was doing, where he was going, why he was returning to Russia. And, writing it down, he said:
Oh great. A missionary doctor returns to fight under the banner...
Listen! - Ustimenko exclaimed. - Missionaries are priests, and I...
You can’t fool old Pete,” the journalist said, puffing on his pipe. Old Pete knows his reader. Show me your muscles, could you really throw me out of the carriage?
I had to show it. Then old Pete showed his and wanted to drink cognac with Volodya and his “friend - the eastern Byron”. Tod-Jin finished the porridge, poured liquid tea into himself and left, and Volodya, feeling the mocking glances of the diplomats and the Dickensian tabby, suffered for a long time with old Pete, cursing himself in every possible way for the stupid scene.
What was there? - Tod-Jin asked sternly when Volodya returned to their compartment. And after listening, he lit a cigarette and said sadly:
They are always more cunning than us, yes, doctor. I was still little - like this...
He showed with his palm what he was like:
Like this, and they were like this old Pete, like, yeah, they gave me candy. No, they didn't beat us, they gave us candy. And my mother, she beat me, yes, because she could not live from her fatigue and illness. And I thought - I'll go to this old Pete, and he'll always give me candy. And Pete also gave the adults candy - alcohol. And we brought him animal skins and gold, so, yes, and then death came... Old Pete is very, very cunning...
Yuri German
My dear man
I will not give praise to a fearfully lurking virtue, which shows itself in no way and shows no signs of life, a virtue that never makes forays to meet face to face with the enemy, and which shamefully flees the competition when the laurel wreath is won in the heat and dust .
John Milton
Anyone who cares about a cause must be able to fight for it, otherwise there is no need for him to take on any business at all.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Chapter first
THE TRAIN IS GOING WEST
The international express set off slowly, as befits trains of this highest category, and both foreign diplomats immediately, each in his own direction, pulled aside the silk briskets on the mirror window of the dining car. Ustimenko squinted and looked even more closely at these athletic little, wiry, arrogant people - in black evening suits, glasses, cigars, with rings on their fingers. They did not notice him, they looked greedily at the silent, boundless space and peace there, in the steppes, above which the full moon floated in the black autumn sky. What did they hope to see when they crossed the border? Fires? War? German tanks?
In the kitchen, behind Volodina, the cooks were beating meat with choppers, there was a delicious smell of fried onions, and the barmaid carried steamy bottles of Russian “Zhigulevsky” beer on a tray. It was dinner time, at the next table a pot-bellied American journalist was peeling an orange with his thick fingers, his military “forecasts” were respectfully listened to by bespectacled diplomats with slicked hair, looking like twins.
Bastard! - Volodya said.
What he says? - asked Tod-Jin.
Bastard! - Ustimenko repeated. - Fascist!
The diplomats nodded their heads and smiled. The famous American columnist and journalist joked. “This joke is already flying over the radiotelephone to my newspaper,” he explained to his interlocutors and threw an orange slice into his mouth with a click. His mouth was huge, like a frog's, from ear to ear. And all three of them had a lot of fun, but they became even more fun over the cognac.
We must have peace of mind! - said Tod-Jin, looking at Ustimenka with compassion. - We need to pull ourselves together, yes.
Finally, the waiter came up and recommended Volodya and Tod-Zhin “monastery-style sturgeon” or “lamb chops.” Ustimenko leafed through the menu, the waiter, beaming with his hair in his hair, waited - the stern Tod-Jin with his motionless face seemed to the waiter to be an important and rich oriental foreigner.
A bottle of beer and beef stroganoff,” said Volodya.
“Go to hell, Tod-Jin,” Ustimenko got angry. - I have a lot of money.
Tod-Jin repeated dryly:
Porridge and tea.
The waiter raised his eyebrows, made a sad face and left. The American observer poured cognac into Narzan, rinsed his mouth with this mixture and filled his pipe with black tobacco. Another gentleman approached the three of them - as if he had climbed out not from the next carriage, but from the collected works of Charles Dickens, with a lop-eared, weak-sighted man with a duck nose and a chicken tail mouth. It was to him - this checkered-striped one - that the journalist said that phrase that even made Volodya go cold.
No need! - Tod-Jin asked and squeezed Volodin’s wrist with his cold hand. - It doesn’t help, yes, yes...
But Volodya did not hear Tod-Jin, or rather, he heard, but he had no time for prudence. And, standing up at his table - tall, lithe, in an old black sweater - he barked at the whole carriage, glaring at the journalist with wild eyes, barked in his terrifying, chilling, amateurishly studied English:
Hey you, columnist! Yes, you, exactly you, I’m telling you...
A look of bewilderment flashed across the journalist’s flat, fat face, the diplomats instantly became politely arrogant, and the Dickensian gentleman backed away a little.
You enjoy the hospitality of my country! - Volodya shouted. A country of which I have the high honor of being a citizen. And I do not allow you to make such disgusting, and so cynical, and so vile jokes about the great battle that our people are waging! Otherwise I will throw you out of this carriage to hell...
This is approximately how Volodya imagined what he said. In fact, he said a phrase that was much more meaningless, but nevertheless, the observer understood Volodya perfectly, this was evident from the way his jaw dropped for a moment and small, fish-like teeth were exposed in a frog’s mouth. But he was found immediately - he was not so small that he could not find a way out of any situation.
Yuri German
My dear man
I will not give praise to a fearfully lurking virtue, which shows itself in no way and shows no signs of life, a virtue that never makes forays to meet face to face with the enemy, and which shamefully flees the competition when the laurel wreath is won in the heat and dust .
John Milton
Anyone who cares about a cause must be able to fight for it, otherwise there is no need for him to take on any business at all.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Chapter first
THE TRAIN IS GOING WEST
The international express set off slowly, as befits trains of this highest category, and both foreign diplomats immediately, each in his own direction, pulled aside the silk briskets on the mirror window of the dining car. Ustimenko squinted and looked even more closely at these athletic little, wiry, arrogant people - in black evening suits, glasses, cigars, with rings on their fingers. They did not notice him, they looked greedily at the silent, boundless space and peace there, in the steppes, above which the full moon floated in the black autumn sky. What did they hope to see when they crossed the border? Fires? War? German tanks?
In the kitchen, behind Volodina, the cooks were beating meat with choppers, there was a delicious smell of fried onions, and the barmaid carried steamy bottles of Russian “Zhigulevsky” beer on a tray. It was dinner time, at the next table a pot-bellied American journalist was peeling an orange with his thick fingers, his military “forecasts” were respectfully listened to by bespectacled diplomats with slicked hair, looking like twins.
Bastard! - Volodya said.
What he says? - asked Tod-Jin.
Bastard! - Ustimenko repeated. - Fascist!
The diplomats nodded their heads and smiled. The famous American columnist and journalist joked. “This joke is already flying over the radiotelephone to my newspaper,” he explained to his interlocutors and threw an orange slice into his mouth with a click. His mouth was huge, like a frog's, from ear to ear. And all three of them had a lot of fun, but they became even more fun over the cognac.
We must have peace of mind! - said Tod-Jin, looking at Ustimenka with compassion. - We need to pull ourselves together, yes.
Finally, the waiter came up and recommended Volodya and Tod-Zhin “monastery-style sturgeon” or “lamb chops.” Ustimenko leafed through the menu, the waiter, beaming with his hair in his hair, waited - the stern Tod-Jin with his motionless face seemed to the waiter to be an important and rich oriental foreigner.
A bottle of beer and beef stroganoff,” said Volodya.
“Go to hell, Tod-Jin,” Ustimenko got angry. - I have a lot of money.
Tod-Jin repeated dryly:
Porridge and tea.
The waiter raised his eyebrows, made a sad face and left. The American observer poured cognac into Narzan, rinsed his mouth with this mixture and filled his pipe with black tobacco. Another gentleman approached the three of them - as if he had climbed out not from the next carriage, but from the collected works of Charles Dickens, with a lop-eared, weak-sighted man with a duck nose and a chicken tail mouth. It was to him - this checkered-striped one - that the journalist said that phrase that even made Volodya go cold.
No need! - Tod-Jin asked and squeezed Volodin’s wrist with his cold hand. - It doesn’t help, yes, yes...
But Volodya did not hear Tod-Jin, or rather, he heard, but he had no time for prudence. And, standing up at his table - tall, lithe, in an old black sweater - he barked at the whole carriage, glaring at the journalist with wild eyes, barked in his terrifying, chilling, amateurishly studied English:
Hey you, columnist! Yes, you, exactly you, I’m telling you...
A look of bewilderment flashed across the journalist’s flat, fat face, the diplomats instantly became politely arrogant, and the Dickensian gentleman backed away a little.
You enjoy the hospitality of my country! - Volodya shouted. A country of which I have the high honor of being a citizen. And I do not allow you to make such disgusting, and so cynical, and so vile jokes about the great battle that our people are waging! Otherwise I will throw you out of this carriage to hell...
This is approximately how Volodya imagined what he said. In fact, he said a phrase that was much more meaningless, but nevertheless, the observer understood Volodya perfectly, this was evident from the way his jaw dropped for a moment and small, fish-like teeth were exposed in a frog’s mouth. But he was found immediately - he was not so small that he could not find a way out of any situation.
Bravo! - he exclaimed and even pretended to applaud. Bravo, my enthusiastic friend! I'm glad I awakened your feelings with my little provocation. We haven’t even driven a hundred kilometers from the border, and I’ve already received grateful material... “Your old Pete was almost thrown out of the express train at full speed just for a little joke about the fighting capacity of the Russian people” - that’s how my telegram will begin; Is that okay with you, my hot-tempered friend?
What could he, poor fellow, answer?
Should I put on a dry face and start eating beef stroganoff?
That’s what Volodya did. But the observer did not lag behind him: having moved to his table, he wanted to know who Ustimenko was, what he was doing, where he was going, why he was returning to Russia. And, writing it down, he said:
Oh great. A missionary doctor returns to fight under the banner...
Listen! - Ustimenko exclaimed. - Missionaries are priests, and I...
You can’t fool old Pete,” the journalist said, puffing on his pipe. Old Pete knows his reader. Show me your muscles, could you really throw me out of the carriage?
I had to show it. Then old Pete showed his and wanted to drink cognac with Volodya and his “friend - the eastern Byron”. Tod-Jin finished the porridge, poured liquid tea into himself and left, and Volodya, feeling the mocking glances of the diplomats and the Dickensian tabby, suffered for a long time with old Pete, cursing himself in every possible way for the stupid scene.
What was there? - Tod-Jin asked sternly when Volodya returned to their compartment. And after listening, he lit a cigarette and said sadly:
They are always more cunning than us, yes, doctor. I was still little - like this...
He showed with his palm what he was like:
Like this, and they were like this old Pete, like, yeah, they gave me candy. No, they didn't beat us, they gave us candy. And my mother, she beat me, yes, because she could not live from her fatigue and illness. And I thought - I'll go to this old Pete, and he'll always give me candy. And Pete also gave the adults candy - alcohol. And we brought him animal skins and gold, so, yes, and then death came... Old Pete is very, very cunning...
Volodya sighed:
It turned out pretty stupid. And now he will also write that I am either a priest or a monk...
Jumping onto the top bunk, he stripped down to his underpants, lay down in the crisp, cool, starched sheets and turned on the radio. The Sovinformburo report was soon to be transmitted. Volodya lay motionless with his hands behind his head, waiting. Tod-Jin stood looking out the window - at the endless steppe under the radiance of the moon. Finally, Moscow spoke: on this day, according to the announcer, Kyiv fell. Volodya turned to the wall and pulled the blanket over the sheet. For some reason he imagined the face of the one who called himself old Pete, and he even closed his eyes in disgust.
“Nothing,” Tod-Jin said dully, “the USSR will win.” It will still be very bad, but then it will be great. After night comes morning. I heard the radio - Adolf Hitler will surround Moscow so that not a single Russian leaves the city. And then he will flood Moscow with water, everything is decided for him, so, yes, he wants that where Moscow used to be, it will become a sea and forever there will be no capital of the country of communism. I heard and I thought: I studied in Moscow, I must be where they want to see the sea. With a gun I hit the eye of a kite, this is necessary in war. I hit the sable's eye too. In the Central Committee I said the same as you, Comrade Doctor, now. I said, they are the day, if they are not there, eternal night will come. For our people, absolutely - yes. And I’m going to Moscow again, this is the second time I’m going. I’m not afraid of anything at all, there’s no frost, and I can do anything in war...
After a pause, he asked:
You can't refuse me, right?
They won’t refuse you, Tod-Jin,” Volodya answered quietly.
Then Ustimenko closed his eyes.
And suddenly I saw that the caravan had started moving. And grandfather Abatai ran next to Volodya’s horse. The Orient Express thundered at its junctions, sometimes the locomotive howled long and powerfully, and around Volodya the horses kicked up dust, and more and more people crowded around. For some reason, Varya rode on the side, on a small maned horse, patting his withers with her wide palm, the dusty wind of Khara ruffled her tangled, soft hair, and the girl Tush was crying, reaching out with her thin hands to Volodya. And acquaintances and semi-acquaintances walked near Ustimenka and handed him sour cheese, which he loved.
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