“You have to line up for a temporary uniform,” one of the security officials said through a loudspeaker. I was at the very beginning; frère measured me, unzipped several sports bags and threw me a shirt and pants.
I hurried along the line to the table on which heavy, well-worn army boots were piled. They stank of the previous owners, and they caused me some shudder.
“Mother of God, are you going to put this shit on us?” - a voice came from behind with a familiar nasal American reprimand. I did not need to turn around to understand that it was my foul-minded cellmate. He held his uniform under the arm of one hand, and painfully pressed the other to his side.
A smile faded from frère's face. He picked up the stinkiest, most battered pair of boots from the table and handed it to him.
“Put these on, buddy.” Right now.
His voice sounded quiet and menacing, and because of the accent of words it was almost impossible to make out.
- I'm not going to "get the hell out of you", you fucking frog poop! Wear them yourself if you want! - Judging by the appearance, Felvern was about twenty years old, he was perhaps a year older than Sissy - a bull's neck, powerful muscular arms and literally tangible waves of violent energy, which I always associate with steroid athletes. The guy threw the uniform over to the ground, grabbed one shoe and whistled it into frère's face.
Frère, with his chemically enhanced reflexes, quickly snatched a boot from the air and threw it back to Felon. The boot was imprinted directly on the forehead.
The guy's head jerked back sharply - I even shuddered with sympathy - and he sack fell to the roof. I backed away, hoping to merge again with the crowd, but yesterday the sergeant, along with frère, who threw the shoe, blocked my path.
“Get him out of here, monsieur Rosen,” the sergeant said.
“But he must not be moved!” - I immediately objected. - He may have a spinal injury. I ask you to!
The sergeant's smile did not disappear, but became harsh, even somewhat cruel.
- Monsieur Rosen, you are a rookie. Recruits do not dispute orders.
Frère cracked his knuckles.
I took Skernoslov under the sweaty armpits and swept gravel, trying to support his head and swallowing to suppress the gagging, as his sweat flooded my fingers. If this goes on, my sanitary napkins will run out very quickly.
I wiped my hands on his shirt and squatted beside him. Trastafara, shrinking from the cold, reluctantly took off their clothes, folding them into large shopping bags with exonovskimi [28] logos. The women-frères worked with the girls - still not a trace of Sissy - but the men with the guys, everything was decorously noble. A frère came up to us, threw two bags on the ground and said: "Undress." I began to protest, but I caught the eye of a sergeant who was standing near one of the cars.
I meekly pulled off my clothes and threw them in my bag, then I put my uniform there and fastened the zipper.
“And this, too,” said frère, kicking Fel words in the side.
He jerked and gasped. His mouth opened. I began to mechanically rip off his smelly neoprene and elastic spandex underwear for muscle development. By this time, the microbes did not bother me anymore.
Frère watched me without ceasing to grin. I stared at my feet, wondering how I had come to the point of playing the role of a nanny with this spoiled headless moron.
Four frères in power shells soared onto the roof from the street, holding a raised ambulance van around the corners. They put it on the roof, opened the doors, and from there poured out an outfit of dressed in white doctors. One of them, who indifferently felt my scrotum for an inguinal hernia, and then pricked me with several syringes far from sterility, would do well to wash, and his white coat would also be nice to wash. When he bent down to inspect Foul-Nosed, his pocket bulged out and I saw a collection of miniature bottles of red Johnny Walker. He hit me on the shoulder with a mutant stapler who burned like hell knows what.
“And what's wrong with that?” He asked me, opening his mouth for the first time.
“Maybe a concussion, maybe a spine.” Moreover, it seems that his shoulder is dislocated.
The medic hid for a minute in the bowels of the minibus, then appeared again in the lead apron, dragging a bulky box behind him. Realizing with fear that this was a portable X-ray machine, I pushed through the crowd to get behind it.
“So ... There is no concussion, the spine is fine,” the medic announced after he peered long into the eyepiece of the apparatus. “Good,” he added to himself, making a note in an electronic notebook.
The doctors removed from the roof in the same way as they arrived here, and frères with military speed and clarity retired to the mounting baskets.
I perfectly understood what should follow, but nonetheless an unsolicited curse came from my lips. Frères in their baskets turned huge blowers in our direction and covered us with a cloud of caustic disinfectant, from which our sinuses immediately burst into flames. Trastafara, both men and women, yelled and rushed to the barbed wire, then turned and ran back to the center of the roof. A frères laughter was heard above my head. I remained standing where I stood, allowing myself to soak in this muck, once, then the second and third. I was just about to see if the Fel words still lay on his side when he groaned again, sat down and cursed dirty again.
Staggering, the guy nevertheless got to his feet, collided with me, moved over and swayed again when the last stream of liquid doused him. The disinfectant quickly evaporated, the skin after it remained tightened and covered with pimples.
Fel words slowly, like an ancient lizard, moved his head from side to side. His eyes focused on me, and he grabbed my shoulder.
- What the hell did you do to me, you fag? His hand tightened tightly, squeezing my collarbone.
“Cool off,” I said soothingly. - We are in the same boat. We were mobilized.
- Where is my clothes?
- Here in this bag. We all had to undress while we were sprayed. Listen, could you let go of my shoulder?
He obeyed.
“Bro, maybe they mobilized you.” As for me, I dump! - He unzipped the bag and began to pull on his civilian clothes.
“Listen, man, you won’t win anything.” Better keep quiet - let everything settle by itself. You will only achieve the fact that they will shoot you.
But Skvernoslov, ignoring me, moved towards the door from which we went out onto the roof. He had to kick her three times before she cracked and gave in. I looked up at the frères in the baskets - they calmly watched what was happening.
A small sinewy frère was waiting outside the landed door. Grinning broadly, he went out to meet Skvernoslov. He plunged him into the solar plexus, and frère smiled softly, but the smile did not leave his face.
Profanity took him in captivity and tore the little man from the ground. Frère suffered a beating, as it seemed to me, for a rather long time - he only dodged to avoid blows aimed at the groin and face. All the rooftop trastafars fell silent, looking at them and shrinking from the cold.
In the end, frère decided that he had enough. With ease tearing the grip, he jumped to the ground and immediately hit Skernoslov in both ears at the same time. He staggered, and short-frère showered him with a hail of hard, insidiously short punches in the ribs. I heard a crack.
Fel words began to fall to the ground, but frère caught it, lifted it above his head and planted it heavily, like a pile driver, into gravel. There the guy remained lying motionless. His head was twisted at an angle that did not allow him to assume that he could ever rise.
Frères got down from their towers; one of them threw Foulnail on his shoulder, like a bag of potatoes, and carried down the stairs. The little man who killed him stepped back into the doorway and pretended to break the door behind him.
“Get dressed,” the silovik with a loudspeaker said.
They drove us down the stairs without a word. The crowd moved with absolute humility, and I understood the logic of the actions of the Liberians. Frightened,
with blood sugar falling to zero, tormented by thirst, we showed absolutely no resistance.
In the room on the third floor, the cabins and tables were all arranged in one corner to free up the largest space. On a cleared place there were several long tables on which boilers with some kind of brew were installed industrial-sized. It came from a ferry, but it smelled fresh and completely uninspiring. My mouth filled with saliva.
“Build one in a column,” the sergeant yesterday commanded, waiting for us at one of the boilers in the apron over his uniform and with a scoop in his hand.
He carefully examined each of the trastafar, who in turn approached him with large bowls in his hands, applying them a carefully measured amount of boiled vegetables and lumpy mashed potatoes and pouring all this with brown oily gravy. Each of us was also given a stale French roll and a cup of orange juice.
We sat on the floor and eagerly began to eat, putting the bowls on our knees. Here, in a general turmoil, the frères relaxed and allowed the men and women to mingle again.
Beloved ones found each other and for a long time merged in an embrace, and then ate in silence. I ate alone, leaning my back against the wall and watching the others.
After everyone received their servings, the sergeant began to pace between groups of people, bending constantly to say something or joke. He clapped people on the shoulders, handed out cigarettes, and was generally very sweet and gracious.
Finally he came to me.
- Hello, monsieur Rosen.
- Hello, sergeant.
He crouched beside me.
- How do you like the food?
“Oh, very good,” I answered without irony. - Want some bread?
“No, thank you.”
I tore off a piece from the loaf and began to pick up gravy for them.
“It is unfortunate that this happened to your friend there, on the roof.”
I protested. Profanity was not my friend at all, and I knew that in situations like this, it was necessary to make clear delineations regarding one's affections.
“That's how it is,” he looked thoughtfully at the trastafar. “However, you understand why this was supposed to happen?”
“I suppose so.”
- why?
“Well, after they took care of him, everyone else saw that there was no point in resisting.”
- Mm, yes, perhaps this too. But there is another, namely: in war there is no room for disobedience.
At war. Ha!
The sergeant read my mind.
- Yes, monsieur Rosen, in war! We still fight for every street in the northern suburbs. They say that Americans demand that the UN send a “peacekeeping” mission here - they call it Operation Havana. I'm afraid your government is looking very askance at the fact that we are nationalizing their stores and offices.
“This is not my government, sergeant ...”
- Abalen. Francois Abalene. I have to apologize - I forgot that you are Canadian. Where did you say you live?
“I have an apartment in Ryu Texas.”
- Yes Yes. Far from the battle zone. You and other êtrangers [29] behave as if our struggle is nothing more than an uninteresting television show. This situation cannot last forever. You have set up your tents on the side of a steaming volcano, and now the lava has reached you too.
- What are you trying to say?
“I want to say that our army needs auxiliary personnel - cooks, assistant mechanics, clerks, janitors, office workers.” Every honest Parisian already gives us everything he can sacrifice for the Cause. Now the time has come for you, all this time enjoying the splendor of Paris in comfort and completely free, to pay for your stay.
“Sergeant, I do not want to offend you, but in my desk drawer is a bundle of receipts for rent.” I regularly pay the grocer. I pay for my stay.
The sergeant lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
- Some bills cannot be paid in cash. If you are fighting for group freedom, the group must pay for it.
- Freedom?
- Ah, yes. - He glanced towards the trastafar, who were sitting leaning against each other and looking at the floor, completely depressed. - When it comes to freedom, it may be necessary to cut back on the personal freedoms of several individuals. But in the end, this is not slave labor: each of you will be paid for your work with full-fledged Communard francs at the current rate. It will not hurt these spoiled children if they work a little honestly.
I decided that if I ever had the opportunity, I would kill Sergeant Francois Abalene. But for now, I have suppressed my anger.
“My cousin, a young girl named Sissy - she was also taken that night.” She arrived just a few days and asked me to take her to this club ... Her mother must be losing her mind with anxiety.
The sergeant pulled an electronic notebook out of his jacket pocket, opened it with a click, and scribbled something in style.
- What is her last name?
- Black. SISSI BLEK.
He read it again on the notebook and frowned at the display. Then struck another.
“I'm sorry, monsieur Rosen, but there are no entries for a girl named Sissy Black.” Could she be called by another name?
I thought about it. I had not seen Sissy for ten years until she wrote me an e-mail that she was going to Paris. She always seemed to me an open, vulnerable girl, although I was forced to change my mind about her for the better after she digested this long trip on the bus without a word. Nevertheless, I could not imagine that she had enough ingenuity and so, right away, to invent a different name for herself.
- No I do not think so. And what does that mean?
- Perhaps a mistake in the records. You see, we are all overloaded here ... that is why, strictly speaking, you are here. I'll talk to Sergeant Dumont, she led the recruitment of women. I'm sure your cousin is fine.
Our “training” began the next morning. It was like a school physical education lesson with teachers armed to the teeth - running, squats, jumping in place, even climbing a rope. Least of all they cared to get us in good shape; the main idea here was to finally dull the last sense of independence, which still could remain with us. I tried to think more about Sissy - about where she could go and what could happen to her. Over the course of several days, my assumptions grew darker and darker; in the end, I had already begun to imagine that it was used as a sex toy for senior members of the Commune.I had no reason to think so - in their determination to prevent sex from interfering in politics, the Communards could argue with the Victorians or Maoists - but I have exhausted everything, even remotely acceptable options. And then one evening, I suddenly realized that from the moment I woke up I had never thought of her at all. Fatigue finally drained my brain, and all I could think of now was the next rest break.
After we were completely pacified, we began to be hired in groups of ten to fifteen people - to sort out the rubble and restore the facades of the shops. On one particularly successful day, I happened to spend ten hours in the depths of the newly rebuilt Territory of the Commune, laying epoxy paving.
We worked in a dead end; the only exit blocked frère in a power shell, which stood so motionless that I even doubted whether he was sleeping. I worked alone, as it became my habit - I had no desire to make friends in misfortune from among these sissy sisters, with whom I was called.
I had never been so deep in a restored zone. It was terrible - a barbaric mixture of “nuovo” and “deco” [30], the author of which had no idea about either one or the other. The communards turned narrow storefronts into screens with shots from films of the 1930s, painted on top of laser printing with bizarre curls in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec. From the skilfully hidden speakers came muffled "hot" jazz, accompanied by a convincing hissing of victroles, the clink of glasses and a cheerful Gallic laughter.
We arrived at the place, as soon as it dawned, and after a very short time my knees began to pester me. A few Parisians began to appear along the line of houses: the baker set up his canopy, placing baskets with bagu
ettes on the window [31]; several femmes de ménage [32] in sexy skirts, carefully made-up cosmetics, and reflective glasses proceeded along the sidewalk; a gang of carefree guys, passing by, showered us, poor reptile recruits, with their cigarette butts and proudly moved on.
I still managed to somehow hold on until the organ-grinder appeared. His monkey is the one who put the last point. Or maybe a cylinder with Edith Piaf, which he inserted into his barrel organ? To be fair, we'll say that it was the kind of monkey dancing to Edith Piaf - at first I laughed, then laughed out loud, and finally just howled with laughter. It was a real hysteria: I literally fell on my back and began to ride on the very paving that I just laid out.
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