Lotsia (translated from the Dutch loodsen — вести корабль) — предназначенное для мореплавателей описание морей, океанов и их прибрежной полосы. (Ниже вместо лоции помещено скорее искусительное приглашение в море).

Mayeutics (from the Greek – obstetrics) was created by Socrates as the art of extracting the knowledge hidden in each person with the help of leading questions. (Instead of Mayeutics, something like an instruction for conception and not from oneself is placed below).

Gratia gratis donate – Grace is given freely. (St. Augustine)

If you are moving in the direction in which your fear is growing, you are on the right path (Milorad Pavic)

Dmitry Margolin calls his big new triptych "Night Swimming". I forgot to ask where exactly this name came from. Well, Osiris, of course, underground swimming on the Nile, but why "Night swimming"? Anyway, I remembered it right away, I don't know why. There is something in these words, as they say, "figurative". But it's not just a possible metaphor – most likely a metaphor of creative life in general, but also in the very sound of an exciting phrase.

So, "Navigation at Night" was decided by A.V. Korolev and I, and let this gem-like sound be our first contribution to Dmitry's exhibition and the first gift to the audience besides, of course, the exhibition itself. "Night swimming, night swimming," I repeated in every way in ecstasy and with the hope that these mysterious words would overshadow me, what should I write about in the introductory text to the exhibition.

For a long time it did not occur to me what exactly these words were saying to me, and I was looking for the answer in Dmitry's painting, but also in his whole phenomenon, along with life, path and environment, including my coming to his studio. After all, I "swim", not knowing where and why, and "swim", in other words, говорю и пишу без понятия, без всякой твердости.

At first I thought that the "night voyage" would be a metaphor for the artist's life in our time, in this nocturnal world for painting, where the name of this ship "Painting" has been forgotten, and he is not expected in any port. A.V. wrote about this well on his pages in this catalog. Then it occurred to me that "night swimming" is navigation in an oceanic world on a scale that has lost boundaries and landmarks, has become too big and at the same time too accessible. In a world of more or less equivalent myths and equivalent, relative genres, in a world of mixing languages and endless possibilities, and endless calm. But soon I appreciated the very wandering and restlessness of the painter, that is, I saw in him the process, life, maybe even the happiness of a night swim. Swimming, after all, is not standing still, not lying on your side. We will not be chained by the rusty tail, but we will swim!

As usual, I looked into the Internet, and there!.. divers, drivers, ocean liners flooded with light at night, egregors of darkness and aquariums, divers, yachts and even a new clean energy that allowed consciousness to continue night swimming in boundless musical rhythms. There, designers create a set of bed linen for those who really want to learn to swim – a set of duvet covers and pillowcases decorated with a print in the form of pool paths, there are red tigers in blue night water and Egyptian ships of the dead by two thousand pixels – and suddenly Pavich. The same Milorad, the failed Nobel laureate, the outstanding postmodernist author of the short story "Long Night Voyage". Then I became alert.

*  *  *

I did not "sail" to Dmitry Margolin's workshop by myself, Alexander Korolev took me there in tow and it is unlikely that I would have found my way to it myself. However, the artist's painting was already familiar to me to some extent from the exhibition in the gallery "Master Class" on Mayakovsky (2013). Even then I felt that there was talent behind these paintings, maybe even a very great talent. Since in recent years I have somehow been interested in the nature of the artist in a new way, that is, it is nature, and not the function, role and place of the artist in art and society, I responded to the invitation to get to know each other better and supported the idea of an exhibition at the Academy.

Dmitry draws and writes quickly, accurately and convincingly. He works constantly, sincerely, out of love for writing, for the process of painting and drawing.

His paintings capture with their figurativeness, the sense of large-scale figures, the depth of color, vivid details, natural and enthusiastic writing.

It seems that it costs him nothing to portray anything. However, Dmitry's cheerful attitude as a person, the brightness of his skill, contrasts strikingly with the figurative structure of his works. Before us are heavy realistic canvases on psychological subjects in a domestic environment. The familiar texture: the usual unbearable life, the stale air of our apartments, the insoluble contradictions of our relationships, the longing for freedom, for fresh air. An intelligent person looks like a vakhlak, a woman like a lakhudra: "an old lakhudra with patches in all directions stuck out at the door, almost a soul mate, damn you" (Galina Shcherbakova, 2001). But there is also something big, strong and real in these paintings - this is faith, impulses and insights. I don't know about the sacred, there is too much earth and meat in these paintings, but they make me want to get rid of the stuffiness, to throw off the burden.

Dmitry went through the classic path of a St. Petersburg artist, painted since childhood, studied at the Academy school and at the Academy itself with famous teachers, mastered everything, got all A's. Despite all this revenue, he managed, as it seems to me, not to be tortured by training; there are not many bruises from docent hugs on the body of his art; painting is devoid of epigony. She is young and strong, but so far she is still tied hand and foot in many ways. In details it is freer, the whole is rather constrained. I don't mean the form, the rhythm. I mean the spirit, which is still in thrall to talent.

Different pictures – different possibilities. Here are a few earlier ones in the spirit of the old masters, mostly of the 17th century, they almost closely approach the originals, but still others - ours, the present ones. Here are a few recent paintings, all give reason for comparison, lead to a variety of samples, which it is difficult to name. There are many portraits, all of them are accurate, plastic in poses, soulful, beautiful in writing. The artist himself does not really appreciate them and even believes that everyone writes like that. And what about the portrait, he is drawn to the idea of a picture by imagination and, as far as I understand, conceived not for a plot, but born directly from within the pictorial and pictorial world.

So far, Dmitry's paintings mostly reveal the near world – parents, apartment, the outskirts of the city. A distant world is an old masters, a museum. However, for a student, AH is also the near world, the world of art. But our life, meaty and explosive, with a heavy baggage of traditions and a tangle of roots, is still stronger than the Hermitage. This is reflected in the slow pace of paintings, in the tightness of compositions, in the corpus of writing. The paintings are quite dark, the figures are large, heavy backs and sides; the color is red and blue, red and green, everything is oily. Of the old masters, Dmitry, apparently, especially tends to the seventeenth century, to the Baroque. He did not pass by the Spaniards, maybe by Jordans and, of course, Rembrandt.

Dmitry works as a teacher at the Children's art school at the Academy of Arts. I was there, on the third floor, at the age of 15, when the school was still located in the Academy building, I wanted to enroll, but it was too late. Gray watercolors, drawings on the walls are remembered forever. Later I heard about the school from Tatiana Larina (we studied at LSU together), as well as a lot and with passion from Alexander Korolev. The Academy is a strange world for me, but that's why it's especially intriguing. So, since childhood. For the first time I visited the building of the art school at the Kirov Recreation Center now. Quite an interesting building of the late 60s, so it seemed to me. Guys are running around the corridors, girls are sitting on benches-girls with phones, whispering. Dmitry showed an exhibition of school drawings. He praised the youngest, fifth-sixth grade, admired their spontaneity. At school, he is his own, you can say, he lives all his life, as he once entered the fifth grade, and he has remained, now here is the teacher himself. Once, he told me, he even started a fire, but nothing was forgiven. So much your own!

The artist's studio is a large ugly room at the very top. A lot of paintings, no signs of everyday life. In the center is a noble thing – an etching machine. A pair of casts, a still–life production, is for students. A drummer hoots from behind the wall, some kind of howl is heard. "These are children doing music. – Actually, it bothers. I don't need music for art. Painting should be in silence." The rumble is growing. "No hearing, no voice, but they sing about love so truly that it is enviable. Especially girls, they generally understand earlier and more. The boys are all squeezed, either dreaming on the sly, or busy with nonsense… But I'm not really a kind teacher, I'm strict," he said with a kind, disarming smile.

In his adolescence and youth, Dima was engaged in fencing, had abilities and was a wonderful teacher. From him I understood: there is something noble in the world.

The artist is married, lives far outside the city, near Gatchina, travels to St. Petersburg in his modest car. The wife is from Lutherans, Orthodox himself. Dmitry's father – we see him in the paintings – was baptized as an adult, he is a devout Christian. This is him in the picture kneeling and crossing himself. "My father pressed at first with music, it didn't work out. Then he also pressed on religion. Religion is already home for me, but not only, much more. I go to church, I found one where I like the priest."

"There has always been a living god for me." (I heard and remember these words, asking myself: and for me?)

Outside the window, V.O., the day is gray, and the brown-eyed young man in front of me is cheerful, lively. Does not lose heart – Draws. Two at the big window, one with sheets of paper for sketches, the other with a notebook. "Don't pose!" "I want to draw from my head. It's easy from nature, I grasp it right away, it looks like." Maybe you can do whatever you want," I say, "an arbitrary image, don't look like it. "If it turns out well, it's beautiful, then it doesn't matter if it looks like it or not." It's about a portrait etching of me that he's working on.

Dmitry asks me: does an artist need education, communication? I think it won't hurt, although that's not the main thing. We need a circle, a medium. But most of all, I think it is necessary that, in a broad sense, society respects the artist and looks forward to his appearance, fully trusting him. To do this, he himself must believe himself, his inner voice. I say that in general, of course, it would be better for art to sit in some niche, in one or the other. Cautiously I suggest: maybe a church? "Oh, come on, everything turned to the Middle Ages there, one icon painting is permissible, only a tradition that is increasingly understood in the most formal way."

As an artist, Dmitry wants communication, he wants demand. He doesn't know where to get people, for whom his talent is.

I told Dmitry about the Institute-Museum of Realistic Art in Moscow, about the exhibition of the late Korzhev. He asked what artists he knew, if he was familiar with Hrdlicki's paintings and drawings, with G. Richter and Kefir, if he had heard of the Leipzig School and who Neo Rauch was. No, I haven't. I suggest we meet in the library, I want to show Dmitry something, he is clearly an open-minded person, not a dogmatist, he is not afraid of "abstractionists", he will understand everything in his own way. I think myself, and maybe all this is for nothing, for nothing? Let him go his own way. And then the devil will pull, he will begin to imitate the actual outwardly, well, why? Yes, academic formal structures have shrunk, but which structures have not shrunk, are there any structures, methods, cliches that are not dead at all. So let him stay inside his hereditary structures and free himself inside them, let him take others – everything is determined not by this, not by the material, not by the form, only by the spirit.

He reads ancient dramas. "It's strange that no one passes it." He is interested in whether they take place at the university. I answer: everyone passes it at the university, but mostly... by. Interested in antiquities. Among the artists we talked about Giotto (I like his gestures), Van Dyck and Goya, and the battles of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Goya is more interesting to him than Van Dyck. This is, of course, in Russian and in the spirit of the outgoing twentieth century. But who admires Van Dyck except the aesthetes of the artistic leaven... "I don't like a narrow, thematically-class artist." I understood these words as a rush to freedom. Theme-plot – shackles; taste is always a class ceremonial. The ideal is a super–plot, free unfolding of the form, not detached from the image.

Talent is awakened, even developed by all the circumstances of life, family and school, the totality of inclinations and influences. It is given as an opportunity to create in mature convincing forms, but within culture and whether to create or only to be a material for culture?

What am I interested in here, in Dmitry's workshop? – The fate of a person is interesting, in general, people of our days, gifted with ancient, eternal abilities to draw and write. What should a person who can, wants, and knows how to draw do today? The figurativeness (iconicity) of our days celebrates its orgies in other spheres, by other means. And what does "can" mean? Dmitry laughs at this word himself. To be able from nature, from the head, to be able, I would say, to have an imagination working in the process of drawing itself, writing itself.

It is often proved that talents in general are radically historical and that the gift of drawing with a pen and a bistro, painting with watercolors has forever remained in the past. But this is refuted at least by the fact that, say, not only Rosalba Carriera, Quentin de Latour and Liotard shone in pastels, but also Degas. However, it's still one great tradition. Is it still historical? Yes... no…

It often seems to me that talent is always the talent of mastering what is already ready, that is, the talent to learn, adopt, imitate and vary, the talent to apply. On the other hand, it is a kind of general dynamic, rhythmic talent, at the highest level in contact with grace and charm, the talent to be convincing on any basis.

Now is the era of talents, although it is not customary to talk about talent. Talent is the ability to get involved in this game and make it even more exciting. The communist Evald Ilyenkov wrote in the seventies: "Talent is not a deviation from the norm, but, on the contrary, the highest phase of personality development, and in this sense the norm." He meant a talent for life and self-development in culture and society, he also meant a talent for participating in a revolutionary social process. This process was then thematized and described almost as a genre. Today, one could say that this "leftist project" continues in the form of a subversive understanding of talent. It should be aimed at reconstructing everything that has developed, every eternal theme and form.

But even in the mentioned form, talent is still dependent and manifests itself situationally. The problem, strictly speaking, is not in himself, it is in the fact that they once called a genius, without which one can do only in a culture where, in essence, new things are not needed (no matter how grandiloquently they talk about it!), where they are satisfied with the rather ingenious combinatorics of the given. Kant wrote for all time that "genius is the talent of inventing something that cannot be taught or learned." This is not a talent to please, to be convincing, diverse, this is a talent for seeing a new truth, and therefore for a historical deed. And the new in this case cannot be "well-forgotten old".

If "in artistic creativity, as in art in general, there is an aspect of immediacy and naturalness, then the subject cannot generate this side in himself, but must find it in himself as directly given." Such is the talent in Hegel's philosophy.

"The productive activity of fantasy, with the help of which the artist develops within himself as his innermost creation a real image for the content that is reasonable in himself and for himself – this activity is called genius." Talent, as well as taste and culture, can interfere with all this, just as water, being a medium for a swimmer, prevents him from soaring above the surface of the sea, like a dream and the subconscious, embracing and penetrating us from all sides, prevents awakening and does not allow a free semantic image to rise. Talent, in a certain sense, is like a mirror in which only he himself is reflected, and all talents are tied to their reflection, they are more or less autoerotic. A harbinger of the approach of genius can be the indifference of talent to itself. 

But how is talent defined? It is easier to ask this question, to ask it with mockery or with hope, than to answer it. It is easy to say that talent is not definable, but it will be an empty phrase, since in practice talents are determined, they are seen, they are believed in even when the talents do not justify their hopes. First of all, talent is determined, then it is defended, even later it is mourned. The question of argumentation is not the most important thing at all.

Talent is defined as something that needs to be done with, as a kind of unity of gift and burden. Every gift is burdensome. Let us recall the New Testament parable about three slaves, to whom the master gave a heavy coin called "talent". One buried his talent in the ground, the second exchanged it, and the third multiplied it. It is interesting to read two articles on this topic. The first one is especially scholarly and is devoted to burdens: E.G. Rabinovich, Measured Burden.- In the collection: Noosphere and artistic creativity. Moscow: Nauka, 1991, pp. 139-153: http://ec-dejavu.net/t-2/Talent.html. The second, although simpler, more popular, but sounds relevant especially today, when even without socialist liberation from capitalist alienation, education and culture systems promise everyone talent: E.V.Ilyenkov Personality Formation: towards the results of a scientific experiment. – In zh.: Kommunist, 2 (1977), pp. 68-79: http://caute.ru/ilyenkov/texts/genpers.html.

Dmitry and I talked about how different the situation is in different arts. After all, he comes from a family of musicians and teachers. In music, in general, in the performing arts, including acting, talents are still in demand and glorified today. There are enough incarnation and reincarnation abilities here to feel at ease. There is something similar in design and architecture. Almost all representatives of these artistic professions are gifted people. They vary, introduce nuances, and that's enough. They are called boring, literate, sound talents, well, thank God. Fine art and poetry are another matter, and serious literature in general. Those who can write are even laughed at as epigones and writers, and those who draw and paint are all under suspicion as senseless artisans. Fine art and literature cannot be just performance, they are superfluous as simple and only talented. New, spiritual content should be revealed in them with the greatest clarity. So, in the creative arts, in a broad sense in the poetic arts, talent and even more so genius is tied to the history of these types of arts. What should we do if these types of art themselves, inseparable from history, from society, have disappeared as a coherent whole? If they are culturally and sociologically removed?

What I want to say with all this cannot be offensive to a young artist who painted his first thirty canvases. A rise is needed, an awakening from talent. The highest concentration of abilities cannot but lead to an explosion, to freedom. But how to get pregnant with an explosive substance, how to break the obsession of talent, the power of the mirror?

*  *  *

When I heard the words "night swimming", something in me started... the sound of these or similar words seemed familiar to me, but I could not remember it.

Night swimming, these words were random and random, as well as in an arbitrary and volitional way, I made them capitalized. And now Pavich's "Long Night Voyage" suddenly floats out, like charming music on a libretto about the artist Dmitry, or, on the contrary, as a program of inexpressible life music of human encounters. After reading the story, I immediately realized that I could no longer refuse not to bring it completely in the form of an appendix to my pages about DM. His colors, his Baroque, his talent, his somewhat tired skill – all this will say more about the problem I have in mind than all my stories and calculations.

There are such strange coincidences, touches. In science, they are called contingent. It is an accident and an opportunity as opposed to necessity. In Scholasticism, contingency is understood as the non-necessity of existence inherent in the very essence of the finite. In psychology, contingency is identical to arbitrariness, in sociology, for example, in my beloved N. Luman, there is no mutual determination of participants in social interaction. In statistics – conjugacy, association of qualitative features. In the general vocabulary: contact, rapprochement, conjugacy, probability and possibility. T.V. Litvin writes competently about this new general intellectual concept (Interiority, sensuality, contingent – why are these concepts fundamentally untranslatable? – In the online magazine of RSUH Article 7, 2012: http://articult.rsuh.ru/article.htmlid). So, the correspondence between the phenomenon of creativity of the talented artist Dmitry Margolin, his exhibition and Pavich's story, which appeared to me in the process of working on this text, is a vivid example of the contingency that permeates every concreteness and finiteness of history.

I don't even know if I've read Pavich's story before or not. I forgot that. It turns out that even such a wonderful story can be forgotten. That I came across it now completely by accident, although at the same time it had an ultimate reason – the use of a computer and the Internet. Typing the words "night swimming" in the search engine, I immediately received Pavich's text. It is no coincidence that I read this text in the context of interest in the problem of talent. It is not accidental, but it is not necessary that I decided to take the text as a canvas to describe my feelings from the meeting with Dmitry Margolin. Pavic turns out to be quite adequate to my plan here. If the "point of view" (intellectual perspective) is the most important thing, then in principle almost any text can serve as a framework for discovering the meaning generated primarily by the point of view itself.

However, after all, there is nothing simple and only random in the space of communication. I came to the studio, saw the paintings, said something to the artist and heard his words. I need to write about him, about his paintings. A pretty task, especially for someone who clearly sees that these paintings are not only not the end (result, fruit), but also not the beginning, but above all a link in a chain that goes to two ends of communicative infinity. You can't just write: oh, what good paintings, buy them, millionaires, or write about them, girls, term papers, call everyone to the exhibition, chanting a new name: Margolin, Margolin! What's the use of that. The artist does not need applause, although they are pleasant, I hope he needs an environment that experiences similar conditions and cannot help but be burdened by his talent and training, which does not bring complete satisfaction.

An exhibition as a fact and an action is already a sufficient manifestation of evaluation and a sufficient reason for communication, in particular, of such a property: well, why did you take part in this? Why this navigation? Wouldn't it have been better to lie on your side? The question of why always blocks any life process, any sense formation. I took part, yes, almost exclusively according to the laws of double contingent communication, within the framework of communication, both with my co-curator and with the artist, and most importantly – with myself. And everything here is not solid, historical, biographical, optional and infinitely problematic. I haven't been able to look at art for a long time, I don't want to look through a black velvet frame, in isolation, I also can't look directly, without distraction, from a monolithic point of view. It's not me who most often goes to art, it catches up with me, draws me into my fate, into my own inner doubts, in general, into my business. And no matter how inconsistent it sounds after what has just been said about the absence of a "monolithic point of view", about "floating" criteria and needs, the question that worries me is the question of genius, yes, about him, in the sense of his absence and how to acquire it!

Is a more independent, more relaxed painting possible than what Dmitry is doing today? Is it possible for him? How can we help him by formulating our high request? It is unlikely that painting is in actual demand in society. The audience and the buyers are all waiting for design (stylishness) and signs (signals).

But is it painting? I mean by it almost dreamlike art, something like a movie, but more concentrated. Is it dense, both in material expression and in the persistence of images that do not erase themselves in motion. Painting, to be like this, cannot but be precious in one sense or another. She creates treasures of imagination and sensuality.

Theoretically, it should appear again, albeit in a tight framework, appear in spite of the omnipotence of erasable, virtual, ephemeral images-signs. It seems to me that a new, old luxury should soon appear against the background of the pseudo-affordable "luxury" of consumerism. It will not be a consumable luxury, not necessarily expensive at all, but protecting itself from the encroachments of everyone and everyone – just like Velucha from Pavich's story, who, giving herself to everyone, did not give herself to anyone except her god. What is needed to create such treasures? Everything and nothing. We need courage (Dmitry has it), we need a way and we need a meeting. Because in order to give birth, it is necessary to conceive, in order to conceive, you will have to surrender, in order to surrender, you must find someone: you need a vision, you need a meeting. But not with himself, not with his talent, not with past experience, even if it is the experience of generations. "I've been a writer for more than two hundred years," the crafty Pavich said cleverly, and go check whether it's true or false. Whether it is possible to be a painter in this way, I doubt. Something here is connected with the continuous nature of languages and the whole world of words that began and do not end to this day. Of course, you can accept the fate and the status of Richard Strauss chosen for yourself (I listen to him out of the corner of my ear while working on the text – another contingency), who wrote before his death: "Maybe I'm not a first-rate composer, but I'm definitely a first-class second-rate composer!" and Pavich could proudly repeat this about himself, referring to the culture of Slavic Baroque and Baroque as such, in which there were no breakthroughs and "geniuses" were not needed.

Awakening (not into death, but into freedom of expression) is given to a few. Basically, we are destined to stay in oblivion and dependence on the "guests" who come out to us, whom we receive with all the talent liberated in us by one or another little god. The Big God remains in the realm of near inaccessibility.

In Pavic's story, which you, the reader and the viewer, will read or reread tonight, Pavle the Silken–haired is, of course, a god who received his power, his smile from the supreme God. Like the Sun and Thunder, he takes possession of Velucha. "The girl was left distraught with horror, from the awakened passion and fear, and from the blow she was blind and deaf for life," but a great Talent of sensual love was revealed in her. He was a terrible burden, required regular practice, replaced the whole world with it. She saw only what her talent as a lover revealed to her. "And the long night voyage of the blind Veluchi began… She did not see or hear anything that happened to her and around her, and continued to be the most desirable." Velucha did not understand where she was and what was wrong with her, "she was in great demand in six languages and three dialects," and she listened to a secret voice barely coming from the forest, played a pipe, the sound of which was almost inaudible, and waited for a child from every Wind. Meanwhile, the sun–like God, the Silken–haired Pavle, "perished... and a Turk rides with stirrups made of his golden hair." God is dead, but talent lives by itself: "It was clear to everyone for a long time that she was crazy about her eternal craft, men whispered that she would have a drop of sweet girlish sweat for each of them, and the girls knew that she had never demanded a penny from the owner of the ship for her love labors..."

It couldn't go on like this indefinitely. Bellucci did not have a child… Anxiety crept into her soul, she turned gray, dried up, and finally, imagining that God no longer comes to her because he fell in love with another, she drowned herself. All this time it seemed to her that "not six languages and three dialects", but the sun God himself caresses her ten times a day… But she didn't have a child. There is only one Glory left, and even a whistle that is so difficult to remember.

Pavic is often presented as a postmodernist writer with a baroque background. He is, they write, "a master of verbal effects, the details in his works are self-valuable, sophisticated technique sometimes overshadows the content. His prose is characterized by ornateness, "weaving of words", contrast, excessive metaphor and heavy enumerations, which are distinguished as distinctive features of the Baroque style." (see the work of A.V. Musienko on the website: zar-literature.ucoz.ru ).

Is Pavich's story good or brilliant? There are different opinions about this. I needed it to tell me about the difficult road of talent, nothing more. I wish Dmitry to be happier than Veluchi after meeting his Genius and pass "through six languages and three dialects" unharmed. Well, let the audience be instructed by a wise Serbian writer:

"The most important faith is in the one who looks, listens and reads, not in the one who draws, sings or writes."

Addendum. Long night swim (Milorad Pavic)

– Never shoot if your gun is not heard in at least three states!

With these words, Pavel Silken-haired went out on the high road, handsome as an icon, and up to his ears in blood, like a boot. In Primorye, where the sun is valued no more than a cow cake, he rampaged in three states — Venetian, Turkish and Austrian, stealing cattle and seizing caravans with spices. One Saturday, a merchant put a gun in his mouth and fired, but the gun misfired, and the Silken-haired man only singed his tongue with gunpowder smoke. Since then, he has lost the ability to distinguish between tastes, and it has become indifferent to him whether he is holding a woman's breast in his mouth or beans with cucumbers. Since then, he cleaned and fried the fish without killing it, so that, impaled on a saber, it fluttered over the fire still alive, and he always walked with his penis sticking out, because he swore to return it to his pants only when he returned the saber to the scabbard.

On St. George's Day, he ate cheese and bread and began to wait for what thoughts this cheese and bread would turn into in him, because a man can create a thought only from cheese and bread. That day in the mountains he met Velucha, a shepherdess who lived without a father, with her mother and sisters, and had never seen a man's eggs, except from a ram, and even then in fried form, and she met a man only on ducats. When a silky-haired Pavle appeared from the forest in front of her, with a pigtail and mustache woven together, it seemed to the girl that the Sun itself was smiling at her. A huge and unfamiliar soul stood before her, crucified on the sides of the world, like a stretched skin, and empty as night, but in fact, cities and forests, rivers and sea bays, women and children, bridges and ships lay in it, as in the night, and at the bottom, quite at the bottom, the tiny and beautiful body of this soul, which rolled her up like a huge stone. Only a smile that lit up like a light revealed for a moment that there was no emptiness behind this night and that through the body one could enter into the soul. And the man caught this smile somewhere in another world, where you can profit only by a smile, and brought it here, to the Dalmatian Zagorye, brought it to her, Veluche, like some precious fruit that you have to try or die…

Velucha looked into the smile on the face of the Silky-haired Pavel, and it was the last thing she saw in her life. She asked him his name, and that was the last thing she heard in her life. He hit her with the butt of his rifle and immediately, on this very spot, took possession of her, half-dead, just as he ate a fish half-dead. Then, in the morning of the same day, he sold it to one of the ships that carries women accessible to everyone from port to port, and left for the very smile that glows in the darkness, and Veluch never saw again. The girl was left distraught with horror, from the awakened passion and fear, and from the blow – blind and deaf for life.

And the long night voyage of the blind Veluchi began. Each visitor, going on board, bought a copper ring and a little book printed in Venice in a gold cover with a detailed description of the girls who lived on the ship and all the ways they knew how to please the guest who came to the cabin. The norm was a dozen men a day for one girl, and they sailed like this from spring to spring, from port to port, surprised that the whole world knows their names and their virtues. Evening visitors left rings on the ship, putting them on the fingers of their chosen ones, the same ones had to return a ring from each finger to the captain in the morning, each for ten new, tomorrow's guests. And the guests took the books with them and then gave them to friends. So the circle was closed, but not with the help of rings, which always remained on board, but with the help of these little books.

Men love with sight, and women with hearing, nevertheless, the deaf Velucha loved better than others. Those who came to the ship increasingly demanded her, secretly cut off a lock of her hair and sent letters to relatives so that they could recognize her when they themselves were on board. A woman is not soap, she will not wear out, – they talked about her, laughing, and the rumor about Veluche spread faster than the ship was moving, and no one could describe in words the impressions of a meeting with her, and everything was expressed by a movement of the hand and a whistle. Copper rings were sometimes put on her toes, because sometimes there was no room left on her hands. And she did not see or hear anything that happened to her and around her, and continued to be the most desirable.

– In the daytime her mind works faster than her heart, but at night it's vice-versa, — other girls whispered. Getting and removing the rings, blind Velucha walked on a women's boat all the Adriatic and Ionian Sea from Acona to Venice, from Bari to Dracha, from Dubrovnik to Corfu, and only after a long time once said: - It's a wonderful village in which we live, all the cellars are underground, and there are almost no streets in the sun, that must be why everything is swinging so much…

Only then did it become clear that she didn't know where she was. And they explained to her, putting her hand in the sea water, that she lives on a ship. Velucha still did not express concern, only sometimes she dreamed that her ears, separated from her head like two butterflies, were flying to land to bring her someone's voice or someone's name. But when she woke up, her ears, completely empty, were in place. Sometimes, when she was completely deaf, she played her shepherd's pipe, but the pipe had not made a melody or even a squeak for a long time, although Velucha could not know that. She hardly spoke, as if she was afraid that with words the blood would flow out of her. However, there was one single exception. She claimed that the winds that constantly rocked their ship could make her a baby. The other girls knew that such as Velucha really had a lover waiting in every wind and that therefore she could really conceive a child from any wind, and they listened with horror as she prayed for what they were all so afraid of. She sat on the deck and prayed to the winds. The winds were her church. She called them by name, conjuring them to give her a child.

She entreat Wester, or a Mountain Wind, on which they write what they want to forget; and a Storm, in which they sell honor on the left to preserve it on the right; and an Easterner, into which it is a great sin for a man to urinate; and a Cold One, which on Fridays does not turn the wings of windmills, confuses roads and turns paths back to their beginning; and the Yugo, the married wind, which can tie a tower with a knot; and the Whirlwind, which helps to escape and which God asks for and receives it from God; and the Midnight Wind, from which the tongue is swallowed and milk is curdled; and Polezhak, who, in order to calm down, is looking for a candle on St. Paul's day and from which you can get rid of in the fast, and the Pinwheel, which separates the hand and the spoon, counts the hairs on the dog and the stars in the sky; and the Kopilyak which rushes faster than a horse, which can be killed with a stone and which blows on the elbow; and Norther from which they throw wheels and butts into the fire; and the Yellow wind, which brings the evil eye, and they catch it with a mirror to send the spell back; and Chukh, the child of the winds, who can free the hunchback from the hump in a dream and hang him on a maple branch; and Modrik, who blows every other day and can drown in a ladle of wine; and Toplik, who leads troops and cavalry, plows with an anchor, and reaps with a saber; and blind Angelia, who brings ice to bed and snow to a bowl; and Snegozhor, from whom hats are thrown into the fire; and Ustoka, who it transports the shameful parts of the body to the underworld and by the smell that you can determine the day of the week…

So, praying to the winds to give her a child, Velucha went through more terrible bad weather than those that the winds ever brought. In six languages and three dialects, soldiers used her in great demand, under a hail of blows from opposing grammars, a woman's ship sailed through the war between Venice and Austria, caught the edge of the uprisings in the Turkish Empire, which split off Tripoli, Tunis and Algeria from Constantinople, it was driven by the same currents that attracted the ships that participated in the Kandyan war, it passed through the Venetian fleet when it participated in the siege of Klis and the Makarskaya Kraina, and it was the only one that never lowered the flag. In Herceg Novi Velucha earned her first disease, a disease that destroyed what she did not have – hearing, in Sicily the second – an eye disease, fatal to those who see. Except for her, deaf Veluchi, everyone in Zadar heard the news that the Silky-haired Pavle had died and that a Turk was riding with stirrups made of his silky hair. In Sibenik, one of the guests demanded that she dance, and she, hugging him by the neck, danced the best of all, although she did not hear a sound. It was clear to everyone for a long time that she was crazy about her eternal skill, men whispered that she would have a drop of sweet girlish sweat for each of them, and the girls knew that she had never ask for a penny from the ship's owner for her love efforts…

But it was all in vain, she didn't have a child. And then one day, in Corinth, the girls saw something that blind Velucha could not see – she turned gray.

"Soon her breasts will droop," they said with malice. There were many new, young ones among them, and Veluchi's fame faded. Fewer and fewer people came to her cabin on the ship. Copper rings appeared less and less on her hands. One day her bed remained empty all night, and the girls found her in tears. They stroked her with olive twigs on her head, not understanding why she was crying, and were amazed to hear the words that people tell about to this day: – My Pavel Silkheaded for all these many years has never deceived me, he came to caress me ten times a night, lying down next to me. Now he doesn't come anymore. The most beautiful, the only man in the world doesn't love me anymore. The silky-haired Pavle found himself another... she said and drown herself into the sea…

That's the name of the place here, because of its glory, which you can't describe. Anyone who swims here drops the oars, waves his hand and whistles. And since this is so, then I throw the oars at this place, wave my hand and try to remember that whistle from the XVII century.

 

(2002. Reproduced from the book: Milorad Pavich, The Glove turned out: Stories. – S.Petersburg: ABC Classics, 2002)