Manchester Diary. Ариель Давидович Абарбанель

at least some frozen Chinese or Indians, regretfully slam the trunk lid and point further towards the ship.

      To get into his womb, you need to drive along an incredibly steep hill-climb, this womb continues to absorb and absorb the moving stream of cars, like sacrificial animals for a predatory gluttonous dragon. The name of the dragon liner is “Pryde of Rotterdam”.

      Levy with a car in the womb of this dragon, in a cargo hold. He closes the car and steps to the counter, where he is handed the “key” from the cabin.

      Standing on the right deck, Ari opened the door with a paper key card. I went inside. Two lower places are already occupied by more agile fellow passengers. Well, upstairs have a good place too. Settled. The co-passengers are completely taciturn – one German named Thomas Schuler, studying, for some reason, in England, and the other – it is not known who and where from – did not utter a word for this whole sea trip.

      The hair of the head of the “other” and the tail of his beard were painted white, his face was decorated with earrings and piercings, he slept all the time while Levy was awake, and only informed him of the stink coming from him, declaring his love for alcohol and tobacco. Leaving this small colorful team, Levy left the cabin and went down to the lower deck into a spacious hall. Slot machines in rows, like soldiers in a parade, lined up on both sides of this hall. There were still others covered with covers, preparing to fire and defeat anyone who dared to approach them, guns, tables, roulettes. Steamboat-casino – rightly concluded Levy and went on, looking at and studying the insides and sights of the “Rotterdam Pride”. The farther he moved, the less he was surrounded by anything worthy of attention: numerous tables, bent under the weight of different-sized bottles, half-drunken imposing faces, reclining on burgundy plush sofas. At the end of the hall there were ship shops, clogged with a kind of weapon of mass destruction and objects of fleeting vicious pleasures: tobacco and alcohol products, piles of magazines with naked white-toothed beauties on their covers.

      “Vanity and chasing after the wind,” Levy thought, “with the wind in his head and in his wallet.”

      He went to the huge oval porthole window. A bottomless darkness silently looked at him in response. Waves not visible and not heard, not visible

      and you cannot hear the stars and the moon. This is usually the night of the North Sea. Levy stood still a moment before this empty silent giant eye socket.

      He stood, whispering his unpretentious requests with his lips – pleas for a safe trip, for blessing, for a good departure and return. He whispered, said “Amen,” and went to his retirement, on his own, this night, cabin 10218, whose iron lock was opened with a paper key.

      On the upper left bunk was a sign: “Use the stairs”.

      Levy hoped for his height and “sportiness”, climbed, but could not beat the climb the first time, jumped back to the floor, and then, the second time, still having overcome, rolled onto his back and sighed in relief:

      – Well, the day has run out.

      In another situation, it would not be easy to fall asleep in such a solid iron box, sloppy painted in a hospital-white color, like a real archaic safe, but the tiredness of the day, impressions, family twists and turns, moved so powerfully forever that he almost immediately plunged into a deep a sea dream, similar to the last view from the porthole – the black, impenetrable mess of the sea and sky, ominously toothless and silent, and fell asleep. Till tomorrow.

      Seryozha Kunder

      – Seryozha Kunder called you.

      – Yes mom. For a long time nothing was heard about him. What did he want?

      – He said that he was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, where he was under examination and treatment. There he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was given the second group of disability.

      Now he won’t have to work, as he had once dreamed of as a child, Levy thought sadly.

      “What did he want, mom?”

      – Nothing. Just wondered where you are and how you are doing.

      – We must go to him.

      – Is it necessary?

      Mom always protected Levy from unfavorable, as it seemed to her, acquaintances. Absolutely right. But she still failed to save everyone. Of the entire class of that ill-fated school number two hundred sixty-eight, Serezha was probably the best candidate for a friend, but only against the background of the students of this school. He did not want to study and do any kind of work. In a three-room apartment, his grandmother, mother and brother lived with him. My brother toiled for a long time in search of work, but then he nevertheless got a job as a collector on the Railway. He married, gave birth to a girl and died, at an early age for this common stomach disease. Sergei was left alone with his mother and grandmother. He brought rare records from the black market, put them on his gramophone, and at full volume with an open window he listened for days on end to the “space music” of various foreign artists. Levy occasionally came to him, called to walk around the city:

      – Come, Seryoga, why sit at home? Look, the weather is so wonderful in the courtyard!

      At first Sergey was going to take a walk, put on his sneakers, but at the last moment he changed his mind:

      – You know, come on another time? Now I listen to music a little better.

      They had not seen each other for a very long time, and now, now this is a bleak message. Levy came to his mother from abroad, where he had been for many years. Not much joyful happened during this time in St. Petersburg, in “their” area – mostly disappointing and sad things. And not only in the Kunder’s family.

      Nevertheless, you need to visit a guy without saying aloud so as not to upset your mother, Levy thought.

      The top floor of the deaf Petersburg front door of a gray well-house. The bell at the red-painted door:

      – Who's there?

      – Hello!

      Further beyond the door you hear animation and a smoky voice unmistakably names the exact Levi’s data, up to the home address and phone. Then the door swings open and Seryozha, easily recognizable, invites Levi inside with his tongue twister:

      – How glad I am! How glad i am! Come in, come in! Do you want to smoke a cigarette or listen to music, for example, “Electric Light Orchestra” or “Prompter's Box”?

      On the table in the middle of the room rises a mountain of packs of cheap cigarettes – Baltic, Prima. The room is covered with smoke. Seryozha has almost no teeth left, he smokes a cigarette one after another. Hair covered with smoked yellow gray hair, earthy skin color, puffy face.

      Leo doesn’t understand anything in such music, and answers:

      – No, thank you.

      – Do you want to take a plate for memory?

      Levy nods his head.

      “Can I do something for you?” Here I have some tidy, still solid things, can they come in handy?

      Sergei willingly picks up the bag. Thanks indifferently. In the room to the noise of the conversation of old friends enter the aged mother of Sergei. She still remembers and immediately recognizes Levy.

      “Would you like to buy us some vegetables?”

      Levy does not refuse, and with a carefully given out list and hunt, she goes first to the pharmacy and then to the food store. When he returns with purchases, Seryozha's mother asks him to repeat this procurement trip again. Levy does not refuse again and soon returns again loaded with packets. On the third attempt of an older but more energetic mother of a friend to send Levy to the next shopping trip, Levy addresses both of them:

      – My dear! I am very glad that we saw each other, that I could at least help you a little. I apologize, urgent business is waiting for me and people to whom I can also be, maybe, a little useful.

      The tacit consent, painted with slight disappointment, spreads over the hallway – the visit is over.

      Seryozha,