She-bear. Alexandr Keldyushov

with the tearful death notices. And the great-grandfather died not from old age but from the bullets of the Nazis. Those, whom they fanatically imitated these days, killed him.

      If the ancestors were able to see all this, they would turn over in their graves, being ashamed of the crazy things of their careless children.

      ‘Everything was better before than now’. These were only excuses. When before? During the war? During the hunger? During the devastation? There were always difficulties. Only in the past, there was no such epidemic moral decline. False idols were not worshiped. One could understand a simple truth: if you were with us you were a friend, if you were against us you were an enemy.

      Young people perished in the vague era of changes. They could not be brought back to life, and making their children orphans, they unwittingly pushed them to the edge of the abyss too. Raving about some imaginary freedom, they mixed the sacred meaning of the expression with permissiveness and promiscuity. The generation of the seventies, who failed to adapt to the new realities, gone nowhere, crashing into the wall of the nineties. The youth of Klyuevka, who ‘escaped from the swamp of stagnation’, as the USSR was called by the democrats, suddenly discovered that they did not get out but only sunk deeper into hopelessness. It turned out that the surrounding swamp had no end and no edge, and the bloomy bank was only inspired by the phantom, masking the bottomless quagmire. The eyes faded on sad faces. The ability to enjoy life dissipated, leaving a faint trail of children’s dreams. And a black deep longing took its place. There was no work. The timber industry enterprise, once thundering throughout the Soviet Union, was closed and looted. The workers were fired and aimlessly roamed around the streets. Only sellers of denatured alcohol thrived. After a year of life in the fast lane, young healthy men and women turned into swollen weak-willed ‘pests’ with the only purpose to find funds for the next bottle. They took the last thing from the house that had at least some value, including tools and window frames. They did not think how they would spend the winter, how they would dig up a vegetable garden. But ‘hunt’ was worse than captivity. They resigned to many things: poverty, hunger, and, most importantly, daily alcohol consumption.

      Having lost themselves, people lost the meaning of life.

      Painful and bitter. It was painful to remember the past, and it was bitter to live in the present. The dull present had no place for anything good, for joy, for hope, and all the dreams were buried alive.

      The old man looked at the neighbour’s houses with sad eyes and sighed heavily. Once blooming, now the street was a pitiful sight. The paths, leading to the gates, now were overgrown with grass and weeds. The vivid images of their location popped up out of memory. They were wide and narrow, lined with Baikal pebbles or boards. But every visible path sort of implied that it was still there, that somebody was still walking on it, leaving an immutable track every day. Here the owner returned in a joyful state of mind, humming something. He was not walking but flying, not touching the ground. Having forgotten about the current affairs, he was mentally in another dimension. At some holiday. The neighbour invited to the birthday party, and the man got out of the wardrobe the former wedding suit and the lacquered shoes, which he was wearing for all occasions. The prints of black shoes were rare, one could count them on the fingers during the year. But they left a bright clear trace. This was the trace of happiness and joy. Rapidly dissolving seconds of the fleeting happiness in the solid grey mass of ordinariness. Unique, memorable event. It was a pity that it would not last forever. The next day, he would feel sad and would go slowly, rapt in contemplation. Life went on, it did not stop in one place. Everything was on schedule. On weekdays: he was rushing to work early in the morning, and in the evening he was almost running back home to have time to go into the forest to pick mushrooms or berries before dark. On weekends: having put on the waders, he was going fishing, or out with friends to Baikal to have a drink. Sometimes, he was combining these things. In rainy autumn weather, he was kneading mud with kersey boots, in winter – with valenki. Each footwear was marked with the stigma of the weather. And the cleaned carpet – with a broom or a shovel. There were women’s, children’s, and men’s prints. Familiar and strange. If there were a lot of them, it meant that the family was large and hospitable. If there was one type of prints, it meant that the owner was a loner and preferred solitude. But he/she was not always sitting indoors, rarely leaving his/her lair.

      Who needed now these disembodied ghosts of people lost in time? Was there anyone interested in their life philosophy, the way of life, the role in society, political correctness? What would they teach others? And did they leave an indelible mark in history that would be an example for the next generations? Or did they come and leave traces by simply bringing dirt and dust, making a thorough general cleaning necessary? After this cleaning, there would be no mention of their existence. There would be only a pit dug in haste, the farewell words spoken in a hurry, and a nameless grave. No fence. No monument. In a year, the ground would collapse, the wooden cross would fall down, grass would grow on the ploughed ground, and nothing would remind of the human burial.

      – Vanity of vanities, – the old man shook off the ashes and took a deep puff again. – Everybody is rushing somewhere, making enthusiastically grandiose plans for the future. But when one looks back, it turns out that there is nowhere to rush. Regardless the efforts to reach the horizon, they still did not come any closer. All our ‘achieved’ goals – only the visibility of success, nothing more than the usual rat race.

      Having leaned on the fence exhaustingly, he wearily covered his watery eyes and turned back to his memories. So many years passed, and he clearly remembered the events of the past years in details, like it was yesterday. He remembered sitting on the bench and using the new TV set with Semyon and Varya. He remembered celebrating the wedding of the neighbour’s son, and a year later – of his daughter. And now, the family house, after their death, was put up for sale by their children. But time was running, and the new owners were not coming. The announcement on the plywood burned out, the paint cracked, the phone number could not be disassembled, only from the close distance. But it was still hanging lonely on the wall, hopefully watching the rare passers-by go, often weeping out of despair and loneliness together with the rain. It was consumed by resentment at the people, who grew up in this house, but did not pay a visit for several years.

      – The time is merciless, – the old man uttered aloud and opened his eyes, – both to people and the houses. No matter how many times you were fixing the house, it would not become new. And the same thing happens to people. Despite attempts to fix their health and beauty, they do not become any younger. And nobody needs this lopsided peasant house, without windows and doors, with cracks, thick as a finger, between the logs, and with a slate roof reminiscent of a large sieve. It will not save from the rain and will not shield from the wind. The tottering barn, which is standing next, with black, due to the mold, boards, would be useful only for the firewood. The lopsided fence, reminiscent of a gap-toothed mouth of a toothless old man, was still retaining the faded and cracked colours of the old paint in some places. And it turns out that only a plot has a price, and the rest is just a free addition. And they write in the advertisement ‘house for sale’, which will be cheaper to be demolished than to be repaired. And around… Visible peace, resembling the atmosphere of the cemetery. Tranquillity of the soul, in which vanity receded into the background. In reality – lifeless desolation. The real burial ground of civilization. Withered grass up to the waist. Lopsided benches. And the road asphalt, creeping away into the distance like an atrophied snake, mangled up with potholes and pits, survived after the massive bombing as if by chance. Having escaped from the hustle and bustle of the city, one could not enjoy peace and solitude. The apocalyptic view of the village was only adding more depression and despondency.

      The gate abruptly hit the fence, caught unexpectedly by a gust of the wind, twisted, and sank heavily, resting its lower corner on the ground. The old man sighed heavily and shook his head helplessly. He would have fixed it, ‘God damn it’. Thank God, he was still able to hold a hammer and would not hit past the nail. But it was not about his hands. He needed construction material. He needed to get new hinges and, most importantly, to replace the columns, which eventually had turned into dust. But buying the necessary things was an acute problem. He did not have enough available funds. Living on a pension, he could not afford himself much. He had to choose: ‘to leave things as they were’ but to eat well, or to buy lumber but to stay hungry. At his age, the choice was