English / 06.09.2019 / 1128

Brasileiro. Chapter VI

Nikolay Mokhov, author from the Dark Side of Business

Part I. Vaeroy
Chapter IV. Agnete and the Merman

The music system consumed discs and started slowly spinning the new day.
Brasileiro observed the Danish woman’s bright flat. He arrived in Denmark on a ship from Vaeroy. In Europe, nothing worked on the weekend, so they couldn’t deliver the cargo. All there was to do was to have fun.

At the karaoke, they were chanting rock hits into a microphone. That’s where he met a young woman. It happened on its own. They met each other’s eyes at the bar. A smile. He couldn’t make out her name through all that noise. So, he just took her by the hand. Her fingers were long.

The sailors’ conversations, the yelling of the singing people and the rumble of the music became distant. It felt as if the Danish woman and him suddenly entered a separate, invisible sphere. And that sphere carried them to her flat. A few years of an unsatisfied desire. He was rushing, taking his clothes off slightly quicker than usual, getting mixed up in his jeans and just as awkwardly, going in. It all ended rapidly.

All Russian bears are alcoholics. And in Russia, we’re all one big family… A bear that drinks — brings misery to the family

— On the Hojelands bridge, Agnete could see:
How a Merman just fully emerged from the sea, — the Danish girl sang an old ballade...

From the heading

The Student

I’m watching time grinding big businesses to dust. Some of them I know quite well. Just yesterday, their owners used to think they were rich. Today they find out: a couple more months of quarantine and only dust will remain of all their treasures. And not golden dust — gray dust. Tomorrow, those who used to be held up as an example to all will be forgotten. New heroes will appear. Looking at these stories, I remember the words of my Teacher:

Queen of the spoken word...

Tanya’s mother beat her weekly. She tried to restrain herself, and not hit her child every day, but it didn't always work out. It was all thanks to her daughter being so different with her fantastical stupidity and incredible self-confidence.

“You realize that you can't even work as a janitor? Today, even they have a higher education... And you can't even string three words together," shouted the fat math teacher.

The Teacher's Label

A fat writer Dima Bykov in poor health with his head held high has distinguished himself. He has decided to rank in descending order the passed away colleagues. Some of them has been ranked first, others take second and even third places. Sergei Dovlatov has been taken down a peg next to his classmates. The teacher Bykov gave him a satisfactory grade. He even didn’t hide that he wanted to give him a poor grade.

Dima Bykov has unleashed a war on social media by his ranking. Somebody noticed that the teacher is not good even at his own domain. Someone replied that he have been aware of Dovlatov’s bad marks... I was astonished by the desire to make value judgements about literature and even the literary characters. This approach reeks of the judgments of school teachers. It's not the most pleasant aroma...

In the times of Father

My father played a mean joke on me. Our discussions, though rare, always left me in a state of slight to heavy confusion. For example, when I was five years old, he told me: “A man could never imagine two things: infinity and eternity”. My mind, young and inquisitive as it was, decided to test that statement. I sat down in my room and tried to imagine the supposedly unimaginable entities. This led to intense drooling.