Soviet ravioli

No, I do not mean the first night ravioli beginning of perestroika - like for taxi drivers - a separate conversation about them. No, I'm talking about ordinary ravioli seventies, of which our country was boundless when - how many? Dumpling in Russia - more than the dumplings. How do you translate the word foreigner? Damplin house? Do not make me laugh. Dumpling - the absolute model of the world, for its aesthetics, odor, rudeness, unintentional kindness, the complex structure of relations between the human and the divine. The entire Soviet empire - one large ravioli.

© Andrei Makarevich





Remember the door? She is faced with some State-owned plastic - wood and inserted into the middle of plexiglass (glass broken for a long time), and it's muddy and pokaryabannoe and misted the inside, and red paint on it crammed - "Opening hours from 8.00 to 20.00." And someone tried out "20.00" to make the word "s .." - did not happen. And across the handle is wound and goes into the horrible rag that the door is not so deafening clap when you walk, and you walk in from the cold and into the steam and smell. I am not going to describe it - the young do not understand, and the rest know what I mean. In general, the smell of dumplings - mostly. Left - the dispensing counter, which stretch along the curves of aluminum rails - slide trays. Mountain trays (which, incidentally, is not called trays, and reprimands. Feel - not lordly "bring" and democratic "spread." I wonder what year came up with?), And so, the mountain spacing stands on the table with blue plastic surface , and pass the same plastic, brown, bitten with the edges, and they are filled with tacky cafe au lait (coffee about it - on! That's where the roots of the transition of the word "coffee" from the masculine to the middle. Maybe, "shit" is also when- it was masculine?), and then is another terrible rag, the same as on the door handle - the reprimands from this coffee wipe, and, of course, no one does, because the touch of gray wet twisted rag above human forces, and spacing are proudly putting his hands forward so as not to drip on the coat.



Behind the counter - two fat aunts in the once white coats and aprons. They look like sisters - the voices, movements, remains intricate pergidrolnyh hair on their heads, sadness in his eyes. This is a special deep sadness, and you realize that neither your parish or wall dumplings, nor sleet and cold outside, or even eternal Soviet power are not the cause of this sadness - the cause immeasurably deeper. Have you ever seen how this aunt smiled at least once?



One of them breaks periodically hands red-gray cardboard boxes, dumps the contents into a huge tank, there turn their ladle. From tank belching steam spreads throughout the room, deposited on the dark windows. Second indifference lays on the counter plate with dumplings. Dumplings with vinegar and mustard - 32 kopecks. Dumplings with sour cream and butter - 36 kopecks. Sour cream or butter aunt throws you into the plate itself, and vinegar and mustard are on the tables: vinegar bedraggled dumplings hands and therefore opaque round decanter, and mustard is not - it's over, and the jar is empty and only smeared with dried-up brown and sticks out her half a wooden stick from a popsicle, which someone mustard and ate the whole, and go on the tables fumble - was not left any where. "I'm sorry, you have the mustard, you can?" Tables are small, round and strong, to have standing on the leg have special hooks for briefcases and avosek, and then the leg becomes a tripod and rests on the floor, and no matter how much slips back folded pieces of paper, the table is still swinging.



Dumpling, if you will - a small seat of passive resistance to the Soviet regime, albeit unconscious. We got inside his own life and his relationship and no slogans and propaganda, and we come here to do the man's case, and either you are with us, or do not bother me, go. For who comes in just to eat ravioli? Thus the need for glasses, and when her aunt in a good mood - to some extent, of course, not to smile - she seems to not notice how you hapnul counter with a couple of glasses and poured them in this very coffee. And if your aunt in the normal condition - there slack scandal and would have to take a drink of his coffee and choking, because pour nowhere, and then vodka in this glass is cloudy and warm. A tank with coffee (this is called "Titan") is at the end of the counter, in front of the cash register, where the forks and brown bread. Coffee is a very hot and incredibly sweet and sticky liquid - condensed milk spared. Glassware, cut and conventional thin, alternating, but we must take faceted, because thin instantly warms up coffee and it will be very difficult to bring to the table. Plugs are piled in a heap of crumpled aluminum trough slightly. They, too, aluminum, slightly zhirnovat to the touch and they are severely lacking teeth and preserved bent bizarre way - recently a special decree of the Soviet regime was abolished tab on beverage cap, now it's called "peakless cap" and remove it without the help of foreign sharps impossible. They say some wise guy estimated savings from beskozyrok - as a thousand tons of metal will be saved if you do not do the tongues. I think, on aluminum, the country lost a hundred times more.



But the price is still a pair of teeth cap pierced naturally under the table, blindfold and two of your friends overshadow thee from vigilant aunts, and you risked to cut your fingers, tear off the hated metal from the neck, and there is still brown cardboard circle, and under it already quite plenochka thin cellophane, and - all. And, of course, pour just for three, but you can drink in two stages - the first sip releases a sense of danger, and, strangely, not unreasonably. Man drunk and sober exist in parallel, although close, but different realities, and what may happen to one, will never happen to another. And vice versa.



And now - you become good, and the world was filled with kindness, and the day is lived in vain like not, and things are not so hopeless and dumplings just good - all in fact depends on the angle of view, right? And you close your dear friends, and went to great conversation, and someone had lit a cigarette on the sly "Prima", blowing smoke into the sleeve. How many dumplings, scattered across the immense space of the country, warm in this moment our souls?



That includes, cautiously looking around, three military men in uniforms - apparently visitors, students of any academy or traveling, try to open a table "fire extinguisher" with red port, bustling, the bottle slips out of the hands loudly broken, muddy crimson liquid disperses on the tiled floor covered with a uniform slush in an established woven smell of new paint. Little man in a gray cap, without turning scornfully says, "And these people we entrusted to defend the homeland!»

And they come and come and drink and eat dumplings and talking quietly about something expensive, and again briefly escape and come staggering into the darkness and storm, forgetting briefcases and shopping bags on hooks under the table.



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