"Kaminsky, Stuart M. - Rostinov - A Fine Red Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaminsky Stuart M)

"Yes, Comrade," Korostyava said with a relieved smile as he turned with great zeal to order the reluctant crowd back. The crowd argued, Korostyava insisted, and as far as Rostnikov could tell, the policeman did an adequate job. From the comer of his eye, Rostnikov saw two more uniformed officers making their way down the sidewalk. The crowd seemed to have grown to more than a hundred as Rostnikov took another step toward Gogol.

"I am Inspector Rostnikov," Rostnikov called up to the man.

"Gospodin, Comrade," the man called down with a smile. Then the smile turned to a frown. "I don't care who you are. I am here to talk to Gogol, to cheer him up, to ask his advice."

"Then," said Rostnikov, "you have chosen the wrong Gogol. The one you are on is the smiling Gogol, the standing Gogol. He was put here in 1952 after the war to replace the seated, sad Gogol. The Gogol you want is down there." Rostnikov pointed over his shoulder down Suvorov Boulevard. "Just on the other side of the underpass," he continued, "in the courtyard on the left, number 7a Suvorov Boulevard, right in front of the house where Gogol lived in Moscow, where he wrote. You can't see him from the street. Why don't you come down and we'll go talk to him, cheer him up?"

The man leaned forward, almost falling. From the crowd behind him Rostnikov heard a woman gasp in fear, anticipation of tragedy.

"You hear that, Nikolai?" the man whispered loudly into the statue's ear. "This fire hydrant of a policeman who knows so much thinks I should abandon you."

The man leaned dangerously forward to examine the face of the statue and then sat back again.

"Gogol is amused," he announced.

"I was a young policeman when this statue went up," Rostnikov explained. "I helped to keep traffic back then as the young men behind me are doing now. It was even raining that morning."

"History repeats itself," the man said, shaking his head wisely.

"As Marx said," Rostnikov continued. "Where I now stand and you sit once stood the walls of the White City. This is where the Arbat Gate stood and where in 1812 Napoleon's army entered the city, set up their cannons, and destroyed the Troitskaya Gate of the Kremlin."

"The 1812 Overture?" asked the man, letting go with one hand to clean his face of rain.

Rostnikov wasn't sure, but he nodded.

"You know history," the man on the statue said.

"Some," agreed Rostnikov conversationally.

"Can I ask you something, policeman who knows history?" the man said in a loud whisper no more than fifty or sixty people in the crowd behind Rostnikov could hear. Rostnikov nodded for the man to ask. Again he had the feeling that he had seen this man, even that the man looked appropriate clinging to the statue.

"What's a man to do? He works. His whole life he works until he can fly. And then he discovers that he can fly over the city, over the country, over the ocean. Would you like to fly over an ocean, Comrade Rostov?"

"Rostnikov," Rostnikov corrected. "Yes, I would like to fly," he said, thinking of his own failed attempts to get out of the country with his wife, Sarah. "But I have a bad leg and I am too old to fly. You need a special passport, special papers, to fly."

"No, you don't," the man said, leaning dangerously forward. He held the pointing finger of his right hand up to his lips to indicate that he was about to tell a secret. His lone, clutching hand almost failed him, but he balanced expertly and didn't fall. A smattering of applause from the crowd drew a small smile and a nod of the head from the man on the statue.

"I could tell you how to fly if you had property, money, not Soviet money, but money from the dirty"the man spat into the wind and rain at the thought"countries."

"I would like to have you tell me," said Rostnikov. "But look," he turned and pointed at the crowd, at the traffic, "you are stopping people from going to work. I'm standing here soaking. I have only two suits and can't afford to lose one to the weather. I'm not such a young man and I have a leg"

"What do you take me for, a fool? May your father choke on half-cooked jelly if you take me for a fool," the man said, and then, loudly to the crowd, "He takes me for a fool."

"Don't take him for a fool," a young male voice called out, followed by a ripple of laughter.

"You're not a fool," Rostnikov said gently. "You are a little drunk, a little confused, a little unhappy, a"

"Of course I am!" cried the man. "I'm a Russian. But the important question is, Do you like me?"