The bull and the butterfly. Alla Krasnova

But then everything worked out fine, so Lena hoped that it would work out just like that time, and the art would not suffer. Lenochka believed that she should fulfill her mission as an assistant director. She knew that no one could work as hard as she did. «If necessary,» Lenochka said to herself mentally,«I’ll crawl to this phone.» And after a minute, Lena got down on her knees in front of the couch, and then got down on all fours to crawl towards it. Because at the moment, she associated the phone with salvation. The salvation of her art, which was threatenedby the child sitting in her womb.

      16

      Eva loves to break the geometry of her room, because it’s easier for her to think in a mess. Sometimes, in order to think properly, Eve needs everything turned upside down. Therefore, the chair is on its side, the table is also turned on its side, the curtains are torn from the window, and on the floor there is always something lying around either a broken vase or a jar of jam. Today Eve smashed a three-liter jar of jam on the floor. Eve isn’t sure if looking at all of this will give her any new thoughts. But most often the thought comes. So Eva lies on the couch, snapping seeds and contemplating what she’s turned her room into.

      Eva looks at the broken jam jar, waiting for images from it. She tells herself not to strain herself, because the images should come naturally. But Eve’s tense all the same. She thinks carefully about what this jar of currant jam on the floor looks like. But the associations that come to her mind do not please Eva, because jam looks like baked blood. Currant jam is Eva’s favorite jam. As a child, my mother often cooked it in incredible quantities, and no one ate it. Earlier in their childhood, they had a lot of black and red currants. And they collected it every summer. Most of the jam cooked in the summer for the winter was not eaten, but remained on the shelves. But that didn’t bother Eva’s mother, and she made just as much currant jam the following summer. As a result, it turned out to be so much that you could swim in it, if it were not so thick, of course.

      As a child, it wasn’t that Eva didn’t like currant jam, but rather that it was a stranger to her. Even in her food at that time, everything rare, mysterious and mysterious attracted her. As for the currant jam, it was too much for her to appreciate. But then, three and a half decades later, everything changed, and Eva fell in love with currant jam, because through it she could touch her childhood, her mother and father, who were already impossible to return. Eva didn’t have to eat jam, but she needed a three-liter jar of jam in her apartment, not even in the most conspicuous place. The main thing is that Eva knows that it exists, and then it becomes warmer in her soul. Eve knew that if she broke this jar, she would buy another one tomorrow and put it on the shelf. But she did not regret that it had to be broken, because art requires sacrifice.

      Eva had started thinking about her parents more often lately, but she wasn’t happy about it, because she had to think about the play. She was afraid of stirring up a hornet’s nest with her thoughts. And that’s mostly what’s always happened. Eva thought of her father more often than her mother. Because her mother was too much of an earth woman, and Eve didn’t understand her very well. Eve’s father was a religious fanatic, which is why Eve was called by the biblical name – Eve, which meant life. But for all his religious beliefs, Eva’s father was a very tolerant person. And it didn’t bother him that when he prayed at dinner, little Eve found it funny and made faces at him. He was not angry; his heart was given to God, just as Eve’s heart was now given to the theater. Apparently, without an altar, there was no life for them, and they were ready to defend this altar, throwing themselves into the embrasure of misunderstanding on the part of others who wanted to destroy what was sacred to them. Perhaps Eva had inherited it, she needed to serve something. Therefore, the family as such did not exist for her. My father spent most of his time in prayer, was very withdrawn, and worked hard on the land. Eva had once asked him if he had ever wanted to be such a pious man all his life, and his father had said that he hadn’t always been like that. He said that for a while he loved life in all its forms, until he became disillusioned with it. And after that, he decided to live the idea of service. Then the words of her father seemed incomprehensible to Eva, and only after years she understood their true meaning, she became like him, only she prayed for the theater and the theater. Her religion was theater.