VG Popov
Life was a success.
It is a tragic fare, a grotesque tale consisting of dozens of oral novels. The author himself tells it this way: “Three friends, who have met at the institute, are living, gradually they are divorced, and two of them will find out that the third has collapsed under the ice near Leningrad, in January, and friends come to remember him and remember their whole life. comes out from under the ice alive, healthy and with fish under his arm: it turns out that the water from under the ice was downloaded and he calmly sat on the dry bottom all night. “The author wanted to say that it is not necessary to die.”
The author also wanted to say that life is given to man once and it is foolish not to love her, his only one. It’s even more stupid to spend it on such small, boring things as struggle, envy: you need only what brings pleasure. There is nothing that could not be done in an hour. It is possible to localize misfortune,
and not to consider that because of it all your life collapsed. You can not run into the bars of the grate, but quietly pass between the bars. Such aphorisms are expressed by the author, so do his heroes.
Fragmentary, with free movements in time and “burned bridges” between the chapters (also the author’s definition), the story begins as pure fantasy, fun, exciting, undisguised. Heroes – Lech, Tzynia and the narrator, Popov’s favorite trio – are sharp and pun, are friends and fall in love, somehow study in architectural (although they work exclusively by inspiration), and the missing money (which is always lacking) is received from the elephant in the zoo – he simply stretches out a trunk to them by a hundred if necessary. Unfortunately, one of the author’s friends – Lech is the true smith of his misfortune: always in principle chooses the most difficult path in life. Before him, everywhere, ants used to go to town from their native village. Then a column of ants, bent with a question mark, leaves Lehi, who is ashamed of them: the first time he saw it so clearly,
the author is amazed, how his happiness goes from a man! With the departure of ants, grotesques end: the merry hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen himself up with a hangover frog, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the protagonist is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. The first time so clearly seen, the author is amazed, as from the person its happiness leaves! With the departure of ants, grotesques end: the merry hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen himself up with a hangover frog, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the protagonist is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. The first time so clearly seen, the author is amazed, as from the person its happiness leaves! With the departure of ants, grotesques end: the merry hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen himself up with a hangover frog, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the protagonist is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. as from a man his happiness goes away! With the departure of ants, grotesques end: the merry hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen himself up with a hangover frog, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the protagonist is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. as from a man his happiness goes away! With the departure of ants, grotesques end: the merry hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen himself up with a hangover frog, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the protagonist is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. cheerful hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen up with a frog with a hangover, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the main character is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. cheerful hedgehog no longer offers the protagonist to freshen up with a frog with a hangover, the elephant does not give money, cheerful hamsters do not introduce beautiful girls… The history of the marriage of the main character is connected with the hamster. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness. While Lech is engrossed in the struggle, and Tzynia is a career (as a result of which the first becomes angry, and the second becomes obsequious), the hero-narrator tries to preserve the young frivolity. On the street, he sees a hamster running swiftly away from the landlady. This mistress and becomes the wife of the priest’s protagonist – after a fascinating, funny and unusual novel, when for meetings a room of a legless invalid is used, terribly proud of his participation in someone else’s happiness.
Youth, however, passes, and “Life is good” turns into a completely realistic narrative. The hero, most anxious not to offend anyone, to make anyone uncomfortable with his anguish or discontent, does not at all receive from the people around him the reward for his lightness and ease. Everyone is facing their own problems. Life with his wife’s parents is not a holiday, work is more routine, and the favorite aphorism “Hata is rich, the wife is elastic” is less and less true. Finally, the hero becomes ill: it is a relapse of a long-standing stomach disease, which was once, in his youth, managed to be cured with a magical ease. Now there is nothing magical: all are ill – wife, daughter, doggie; for the hero, it does smell of death; a young doctor who once did surgery for him, now you can get only for a big bribe… True, and then everything is resolved in an almost miraculous way: the doctor, despite all the employment and vindication, according to old memory, operates the hero and so saves. But his life fades before our eyes: everyday life, fatigue, boredom, the absence of cheerful and sympathetic comrades turn the only and such a success story into a dull and dreary survival.
The whole second part of the story is a longing for ease and fun, for the “philosophy of happiness”, which permeates early Popov’s prose and his main book. An enthusiastic surprise before the world, a love for things and premises, the purpose of which is mysterious and incomprehensible, all of this disappears. Even a spider in the apartment of a hero who knows how to write, plunging into ink – and he writes a sad phrase: “If only my wife bought a coat, a scoundrel!” And the hero, all the while plunging deeper into the so-called Real Life, in which there is a feat, but no place for joy, is increasingly thinking to himself: “Ah, zh-zen!” In addition, friends put it at every step, always leaving on his hump and at his expense.
A certain return of illusions, friendliness, and hope is observed only in the completely cathartic final of the story, when three friends, aged and having difficulty finding topics for conversation, meet at the dacha with the main character (the same dacha that Lekh once burned during his wedding) . The house has since rebuilt, and friendship, as it turns out, has not gone anywhere. After long and unsuccessful attempts to melt the stove, friends are darkly going to bed, but here the stove flares up by itself, without any effort from our summer residents. And among this idyll, remembering youth and feeling a tide of mutual affection, Lech, Tzynia and the author watch how the pink waves run down the ceiling.
