English / 06.09.2019 / 1975

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 roads of childhood

— I remember myself from the age of three...

— But I have memories since I was two.

Friends were arguing about who had the earliest memories. And I realized that I don’t remember myself in childhood... Not that I don’t remember anything at all. I don’t remember winter. I only remember summer and the moment when that summer of my childhood ended.

Don’t You Worry, Dear, You’re Tripping

There are hallucinations that we join in on. And there are those that we walk past. And there are people who hallucinate, but don’t want to share their world — we call them schizophrenics. Schizophrenics are outsiders in our hallucinogenic world. We’re not going to talk about them today. We’re going to talk about the leaders of the hallucinogenic world.

Escaping Fate?

My grandfather Semyon escaped dekulakization, a wave of Soviet repressions in the 1930s. He grew up in a big family. His father died fighting in the First World War, and his grandfather (my great-grandfather) had a fairly decent, by rural standards, household. He had a sturdy house, some horses… In the Soviet thirties, this was a death sentence.

Rule of Thumb

For many years, we on the Dark Side have been repeating the same advice to our female readers: if you want to woo a man, just give him the scarcest commodity of the modern world – a compliment. The ladies nod in response. They tense their facial muscles and hiss something approving through their teeth, but they can never keep it up. Invariably they end up flinging mud and criticism at their beloved, and with passion at that. And then these fair ladies stroll through their respective cities and see a striking picture...