ROADSIDE PICNIC
Neither Brothers, nor Strugatsky
The road was winding in a rare coppice. Vovan really liked to ride his old ”Satellite” bicycle preserved since his student years here in the country, where his parents had their small wooden house.
He spent his very first salary that he got at construction site to buy this bicycle. It was really cool, it was a three-speed bicycle, manual brakes and wheels for any kind of weather. He really liked his bicycle. He used to ride it everywhere! To all city parks, and far away to suburbs, and even to other towns.
Even now, when he had two cars, cell phone, nice bag and things like that, he enjoyed himself riding his bicycle on forest roads that smoothly moved from the sand into the grass, from the grass into puddles, from puddles right unto the hill, from the hill into the smooth sand descent, and then into the tough closed turn, behind which there was the sudden blue sky with little clouds, far away forest, ponds near Sinyavino — with human crowds here and there digging sand, gravel, clay.
The bicycle was either hardly creaking under the harsh pressure from Vovan’s strong feet that constantly pushed the pedals on the way up, or quietly and sorrowfully ringing with some old details that had no crucial importance for the movement, on the way down, when Vovan sometimes even let the handlebar go and balanced his body with pleasure.
After the rough and hard uphill it is so nice to go down the hill, standing on the pedals, holding the lower parts of the sports handlebar and jumping a bit on the small stones on forest roads and paths made by someone for something in the middle of the high, lush and beautiful colored forest grass.
That’s how Vovan got on the highway to the lake, where “new” Russians liked to have a rest. Vovan could not understand this — what was so interesting here? If you have an SUV with a special boat trailer and a boat or a water motorcycle, if you have money to have all this, then why the heck do you need to come to this miserable place such as Sinyavino bogs to get deep into this kind of a forest and then put on the water all these expensive fancy foreign things — on the water of some narrow lake that is merely 2 km in length?
No, that’s not for Vovan. When he himself gets such opportunities, he’ll go to the Finnish sea to feel the taste of true water space and enjoy the waves that are as nice and calm as the nature around the Finnish coast itself. No, he has not been dreaming of the Black sea — there were such black and strong tides, God forbid to meet them alone when it’s windy and the weather is bad.
Two cars were moving in his direction — “Chevrolet Blazer” with the trailer and “Yamaha” on it and “Mercedes-Benz 220”. The SUV was driven by the fat guy and there was the young girl sitting next to him in the very fancy black modern clothes. “Mercedes-Benz” was driven by a thin young guy.
This little cavalcade passed him rapidly and disappeared around the corner, and then appeared again behind the forest in front of the lake water. It was clear they came to have fun as normal people.
Vovan pushed the pedals harder to move away from this very cultural rest place to quite not cultural forest, in which, according to the unwritten Russian rules, all the inhabitants of local villages leave their trash of any kind. Open trash in Russian forests is something usual. This trash is there for decades — it stinks and rots, the homeless people and wild dogs and cats take it…
Vovan thought of Mayakovsky’s[1] “Bedbug”. This enthusiast of communism and socialism considered that if the main character of his poem gets frozen and then gets to 1979, then by that moment bedbugs and human bugs that suck the blood from good hard workers and Russian nature for their own benefits of doing nothing and just drinking will exist only in the form of museum exhibits.
Now it’s 2000, but both bedbugs and human bugs got even stronger; it actually looks like that most of them have been gaining power for years. This is how Vovan passed the stinky trash in the forest that was incompatible with normal life.
Obviously, the nation must have no self-respect to be able to live with its own stinky trash; well, what do you want if people get to their cottage houses and the first thing they do is drinking. And all weekend long they drink, they hardly have time to do something in the garden or in the house, and of course they have no time to properly get rid of trash — so, I beg your pardon, but I’ll leave it right here. If someone does not like this, well, let them do something with my trash themselves…
…After this bicycle race Vovan was easily pedaling along the lake again and here is what he saw. Completely wasted trinity of two guys and a chick wanted to leave this wonderful place. Vovan realizes that they are those “hotshots” he saw on his way entering the trash place of gardeners open to all winds.
With his own eyes Vovan sees that for some reason the chick gets in the SUV and reverses it into the water, though the trailer with the jet ski is somewhere else. Obviously, she has totally lost her mind already and did not remember what to do. Guys are cursing, then the younger one suddenly gets in his “Mercedes” and drives it around the coast like crazy.
Of course, finally he accidentally loses control of his vehicle, and crushes an SUV. Screw the car! The problem is that there was that fat man right in front of it showing his chick where to go. He was hammered too and most likely forgot about that trailer thing as well. Or maybe they just wanted to get the jet ski to the coast and then put it on the trailer — who knows? How can one understand drunken Russians?
As a result, Vovan hears the fat man screaming on the top of his lungs after he got in between the two cars. Then “Chevrolet Blazer” rolls into the water. Vovan knew that it was very deep right there. Just half a meter off the shore and the depth is about 3–4 meters. So, the car with the chick immediately sinks right in front of them. But obviously the girl had time to open the door and then got on the roof, swam to the coast and started passionately beating the thin guy who got out of the “Mercedes”.
Trying to protect himself from her, he at the same time calls somewhere holding the cell phone in his right hand and using his left hand to hold off the chick. This all happens along with the worst curses and hysteria, accusations and condemnations, and other unpleasant words and actions. It was obvious that in the heat of the fight and desire to call somewhere these two completely forgot about the fat one. He stood up holding himself but immediately fell down again because of pain, though he still got the knife from somewhere that was sparkling on the strange red sun.
Next moment he stood up again and fell down on the two trying to stab the guy. Then the guy jumped off in shock and was yelling holding his belly:
- (curses)… Tolyan, I’m gonna call the bros.
- (curses). Call Ruslan, call Ruslan! I don’t trust others.
- No, call Buraga, you f… cut me.
- I should have cut you to death. Ruslan will decide…
- (curses)… Call Ruslan, — the woman said.
- Only Ruslan, or I’ll kill you…
- I call Buraga and Ruslan. Shut up, Tolyan.
Our racer realized that his assistance was not needed here; in fact no one needed it. They were cursing like crazy and smelling with the alcohol, and none of these cursing and wounded (intellectually first of all) people even thought to call police or ambulance, or to ask locals, or Vovan himself for help because they saw him; their trust was in the judgment of their bros — as primitive and immoral as themselves.
This is total lack of faith — neither in authorities, nor in medicine, neither in reason, nor in morals, neither in culture, nor in goodness of people — lack of faith in anything except for their own narrow world of gangsta morons!
[1] Vladimir Mayakovsky is the famous socialist poet of the 1st half of the XXth century. Committed suicide in St. Petersburg — author’s note.
This is how 90 percent of Russia’s population lives! What purposes did God create such a country for?
