Book: The Last Love in Constantinople - Milorad Pavic. Milorad Pavic, The Last Love in Constantinople. Fortune-telling. (excerpt) Last love in constantinople read

One of the greatest prose writers of the twentieth century. Serbian writer Milorad Pavic (1929-2009) is the author of novels, numerous collections of stories, and literary works. The world-wide fame for Pavich was brought by the "novel-lexicon" "The Khazar Dictionary" - one of the most unusual works of world literature of our time. "Last Love in Constantinople: A Divination Manual" is a tarot novel, where the author traces the fate of two Serbian families, the peculiar Balkan Montagues and Capulets of the Napoleonic times. Building mystical and tragic arcana, M. Pavic draws the reader into the process of fortune-telling, inviting him to lay out the cards and chapters of the novel in front of him and predict his own fate.

A series:Classic ABC

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company liters.

Seven first keys

FIRST KEY

“Would you like me to breastfeed you, mon lieutenant? - asked the young Opuich a girl standing in front of a large tent on the outskirts of Ulm.

The lieutenant's attention was attracted by a bird that flew over the tent in a strong wind, remaining in one place, as if it was tied. From the tent came a man's voice singing "Memories is the sweat of the soul," and Opuich paid and entered.

Inside on the table stood the Magician, girded with a snake holding its tail in its mouth, and sang. There were red roses in his hair. Finishing the song, as if aiming, he directed his high-pitched voice through one of the fangs in his mouth directly at the bird, frozen in the air above the tent, and knocked it down with a sound like an arrow. Then he offered his services to visitors. He could eat the name of any of those present for just a quarter of a Napoleon, and for a little more money, not only the name, but also the surname.

- The one who agrees will never again be called the same as before coming here! If you have the keys to the house, and the house itself was destroyed by the war, I can restore it in the smallest detail, simply by throwing the keys into a copper cauldron, because each key responds with a sound that describes in the ear with absolute accuracy the shape and dimensions of the room that he locks.

At the end, the Magician invited those present to think at one desire, so that he would try to facilitate their fulfillment, and mademoiselle Marie, at the exit of each of the gentlemen present, would gladly treat milk from her own breast as a token of gratitude for visiting this place. When it was the turn to make a wish for Opuich, the Magician, despite the fact that those present did not say their wishes aloud, became noticeably worried, got off the table and jumped out of the tent.

"Any day contains at least something reasonable, and any flower - at least a little honey," thought Opuich and, catching up with the Magician, grabbed him by the collar, and then, sitting on a barrel that stood there, sat him on his knee.

- Stick out your tongue! - he ordered him, which was immediately executed. - It is raining?

The magician nodded, although there was no rain.

- You're lying! Do you think that you can play with me, as with that bird that flies, staying in one place, over your tent? Do you know who I am?

“You know, that's why I wanted to run away. You are the son of Captain Harlampius Opuich of Trieste.

- Well, let's get down to business then. Can you really help your wishes come true?

- In the case of you, I can't. But I know where this is possible. And I'll tell you a secret. In Constantinople, in one church there is a column to which a copper shield is attached. There is a hole in the center of the shield. Anyone who thinks about his desire, sticking his thumb into this hole and describing a circle with his palm so that the palm does not separate from the copper surface of the shield for a moment, and the thumb does not leave the hole, will be heard. But just look, be careful, my lord. When God wants to punish someone, he gives him both the fulfillment of desire and misfortune at the same time. Perhaps he does this only with his favorites, we do not know this, but in any case we do not care, we are small people. Therefore, my lord, beware. And don't forget the song "Memories is the sweat of the soul."

“I don’t believe a single word of yours,” the lieutenant answered him, “but I’ll still ask you a question. Can you help me find my father? I have not seen him since the stone lost weight and the wind gained weight. I only know that he was retreating towards Leipzig, but I have no idea where he is now.

“I’m not your assistant here, I can only say that a company of crooks and charlatans comes to this very tent on Thursdays, they show performances here for the gullible. And they have one thing about the deaths of your father Captain Harlampy Opuich.

- About what deaths? He's alive!

- I know, mister lieutenant, that I am alive. But this is the name of the performance: "The Three Deaths of Captain Opuich."

“I don’t believe a single word of yours,” repeated the lieutenant and went to bed.

However, on Thursday, he took up inquiries. It turned out that in fact, in the tent of the Magician, they gave an idea of \u200b\u200bthe three deaths of Harlampy Opuich, his father. Entering the tent, young Opuich grabbed the first of the mummers who came across and asked how they dared to portray the death of a living person, to which he calmly replied:

- You know, for this performance we were personally paid by Captain Kharlampy Opuich himself, who, sir, loves artists very much and provides patronage and assistance to us and the theater. Now he is somewhere on the Elbe.

Knowing, of course, that his Trieste Opuichs had long been theatrical patrons, Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich had no choice but to sit down and watch the play. The artists who were in the tent, seeing him, simply petrified. They recognized him. He asked them not to hesitate to start.

First, a man with a strange beard and in a French uniform appeared in front of the audience. He played Captain Opuich. Four women and a girl were standing around him. One of the women turned to him:

- To make it immediately clear what the matter is, keep in mind that I am not at all the spirit of your maternal great-grandfather and not himself in the guise of a vampire. He died, and nothing remained of him, neither spirit nor body. But insofar as death does not die, I stand here. I am his death. And next to me is the death of your great-great-grandmother. That's all that's left of her. If everything is clear with this, let's move on. Thus, your ancestors had only one death. Not so with you. You will have three deaths, here they are. This old woman who stands here, and the beauty next to her, and the girl - these are your three deaths. Take a good look at them ...

- And this is all that remains of me?

- Yes. It's all. But this is not so little. However, keep in mind, captain, you will not notice your deaths, you will ride under them as if under a triumphal arch, and continue on your way as if nothing had happened.

- And what happens after my third death, after I become a vampire for the third time?

- It will seem to you and to others that you are still living, as if nothing has happened, and it will be so until the last love comes to you, until that woman from whom you could have gazes at you children. Then you will immediately disappear before the eyes of the whole world, because the third soul cannot have children, just as the one who becomes a vampire for the third time cannot have offspring ...

Then in the tent came complete darkness and the roar of a bear was heard. When the scene lit up again, it turned out that there was a man in a French uniform (who portrayed Captain Opuich) fighting a huge bear for life and death. The man stabbed the beast with a knife, and he, in his dying convulsion, poured urine on him and strangled him. Both fell to the ground ... The spectators applauded, the actors shared a spoonful of kutia among all those sitting in the hall for the repose of the soul of the murdered, and someone suggested that this was the first death of Captain Harlampy Opuich. The second was next.

The beauty from the first act appeared in front of the audience and said:

“You people don't know how to measure your days. You measure only their length and say that a day lasts twenty-four hours. And your days sometimes have a depth, and more than a length, and this depth can reach a month or even a year of the length of days. Therefore, you cannot look at your life. Not to mention death ...

At these words, Captain Opuich rode into the tent on horseback. In one hand he held a telescope, and in the other - a whip, which he used to scatter the audience in front of him. A man with a gun, dressed in an Austrian uniform, appeared after him. The captain turned and raised the pipe to his eye. The Austrian officer raised his gun and, firing through the pipe, killed him. The captain fell to the ground, the horse, freed from the bridle, galloped off into the night ... This was the second death of Captain Opuich. And again they distributed kutya for the peace of his soul.

Then the girl from the first act entered the stage and bowed:

- Don't go! My dead are ill tonight; put your finger in my ear, so that in my sleep I know that you are here. Listen! The heart in the darkness beats out the sum of someone's years that are being fulfilled in us ...

This foreshadowed the captain's third and youngest death. It was night on the stage (the same as outside the tent walls). Two people with lanterns and sabers walked towards each other. It was obvious that this was a duel. One of them portrayed Captain Opuich (in a French uniform), and the other - an Austrian officer. The one that was portraying Opuich suddenly stopped, stuck his saber into the ground, hung a lantern on it, and himself, stepping aside and intending to attack an opponent from behind, began to sneak up on him in the dark, watching him hesitantly stand with a lantern in his hand a few steps away from him and does not understand what his enemy is planning and why he stopped. At that moment, without expecting it at all, Kharlampy Opuich in the darkness ran straight into the bayonet of the Austrian, far from his saber and lantern, which he also cleverly left stuck in the middle of the road. And this was the third death of Captain Harlampy Opuich.

“I don’t understand anything,” thought young Opuich, leaving the tent.

At that moment, he heard a voice behind him:

- So much the better that you don't understand!

Looking around, the lieutenant saw the Magician with roses in his hair and asked him:

- Where is the truth? Is my father alive or not?

- Each person has not one past, but two, - answered the Magician, - one is called "Slowdown", this past grows with a person from his very birth and leads to death. The second past is called "Hod", and it brings a person back to his birth. They have different durations. Depending on which one is longer, the person gets sick or does not get sick from his own death. The second means that a person builds his past on the other side of the grave, and it continues to grow after his death. The truth is somewhere between the first and the second past ... But why the lieutenant not to look for Papess? The Magician asked suddenly and left.

SECOND KEY

Papess

- Why should I look into someone else's piece of time just to see what this time is made of? I am not interested in what gentlemen wear in their watches and what time it is for ladies under a corset.

It is said that she decided to build a small house on the corner of one street. As soon as the excavation was completed, the builders demanded that she bring her cards, told them to mix and cross them well, and then put one card face down under each of the seventy-eight foundation stones of her house. And they did not open them to see which one was.

In this house, one evening Papessa had a dream, one that lasts twice as long as the night during which they dream ... She was lying in her bed with metal balls on each of the four supports. A man and a beautiful young woman approached her, tied her braid around her neck, and tied the braid to the legs of the bed at the head of the bed. Then the bed was raised a little, just enough to make the braid stretch. And they said to her:

- Now we will transfer your house to heaven. We only need one good night for that. We work quickly, we have a lot of energy. If you don’t resist and shout, we will not touch you. And if you scream, you will see your home in the sky right there. We won't even make you leave your bed.

She began to scream, so they raised the headboard even higher. And they continued to carry everything out of the house and put them on the cart. She continued to scream, and then they simply reared her bed with her, and she remained in the bed, suspended by her braid until the morning.

She woke up in her bed, but in the middle of a wasteland. During that night, while she was sleeping soundly, the thieves did indeed steal her house and took out every last stone and tile. No window frame or doorknob was later found. The only thing that the thieves did not touch was a four-poster bed on four supports, but it stood almost upright, with its head resting against the wall of a neighboring house, so that its mistress lay in it half-strangled by her scythe and looked into the ground at her feet.

After that, Papess did not want to build a new house, but settled in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, on the site of the foundation of the stolen house, white and red roses, cypresses, sunflowers, ears of wheat, lilies and palms grew, and in the middle of the garden the tree of life stretched upwards, and next to it the tree of knowledge, and everywhere branches and flowers of plants were woven into wreaths and formed arches.

Since then, Papessa says that her house is in heaven, keeps a four-poster bed in the garden and, sitting in it, examines her maps.

Here Lieutenant Opuich found her. He passed, as he was told, between two stones, black and white, and entered the garden.

- Is that you Papessa? He asked an old woman who was busy with something.

“I am the Moon Maiden,” she replied.

The lieutenant asked him to tell fortunes. Fortune telling about him and his father. The old woman told him to come in the evening. When Opuich arrived, she spread the cards on the bed and, turning over the first card, began to read the following on it:

“Your father belongs to the order of people who are closely related to each other. In monasteries, these are called hostels - these are monks who live in the community, they eat together, go to prayers, live together. And here, in the world where we live, these are people who, above all, hold power in their hands, wage wars. Your father has power, he has a saber in his hand, and under his boots is one won war. In addition, he himself and everyone like him are excellent doctors, herbalists, singers, builders, winegrowers, musicians and writers.

As for you, ”Papessa continued, still looking at the same map,“ you cannot enter their circle, the circle of people like your father. It is difficult for the son of the winner! The world will never belong to him. So it is with you. Your father and his brotherhood will dress you and their other children in romper shoes until they die. So you will grow old in the cradle. You constantly dream of your parental home, you love not male icons more, but female ones, and your place in the brotherhood of those loners who live, each taking care of himself, and about clothes, and about the hearth. Alone you eat and sleep.

“Wait a minute,” Sophronius interrupted her, “you read one thing to my father using the same card, and another to me! How so?

- Very simple. One drinks wine, and it is good for him, and for another, this wine is bad. What do you want?

- Go on.

The Moon Maiden opened a new map and read the following from it:

- Your father and his companions support each other, as members of one large holy family, even in different states they preserve their holy spirit of brotherhood, to which everything obeys. Your father has no property, because everything he has is in common. His church is their church, for they themselves constitute the church. Your father loves the day more than the night, and prefers male icons to female ones. As long as the state you serve becomes more powerful and richer, all this will belong to your father. Him and the members of his brotherhood. And you, my handsome man, will fall in love with wide fields and will never become a warrior, on the contrary, you will learn the languages \u200b\u200bof your father's enemies. And you will learn to enjoy the conversation, and therefore you will learn to be silent. Maybe you will be silent for years. And one more thing. Does your right boot sometimes shake you?

- I thought so. For many years you will hide and carry under your heart something huge, some kind of dream, some secret or desire, so great that under its weight you have already begun to limp on your right leg. You will have to wander a lot in pursuit of this desire, this hunger that resembles pain, you will wander the roads in pursuit of your pain, which is driving your hunger around the world. You will fight it for years. Secretly and alone. Because people like you can't stand each other. You will not have friends ... And therefore you will not know who you are.

“I know perfectly well who I am and what I am,” the lieutenant interrupted her again. - I am one of those to whom people spit on their hands when he works, and on a plate when he eats. I am one of those who swallow swords and gloom, leap out of the fire into the fire, and my left leg does not want good with my right. Wheat grows in one pocket, grass in the other, I carry my soul in my nose, and everyone teaches me to sneeze. With my father, only sometimes a cloud runs into the sun, and for me it rains down into a bowl, then snow falls into my bed. I am one of those who scratch with a fork and plant knives in the ground and grow teeth, because my spoons do not grow while I eat ... I don't need your short story.

- And what do you want, my falcon?

“What you said is a man’s story. I have already heard it in monasteries. What about women's history? Maybe you can tell me where is the place of a woman in yours, or in the monastery, or in any other story? Have you forgotten about women? Or are all these stories just for men? I want to know who my mother is, who are my sisters, who are my future daughters.

- I won't tell you that. These questions will be answered by someone else, or rather, the third shoe.

- What is this third shoe?

“This is a woman of both sexes.

- How so? - the lieutenant was amazed.

- Men only have one gender. Women have two. And beware of the third shoe!

At that moment, young Opuich again felt that little hunger under his heart, which is silent in his soul, like pain. He felt that the garden, like a church, smelled of incense, and he began to read and understand the meaning of smells as he understood the meaning of words. And the smells led him on his way, through the plants, into the ground. Lily opened up to him as a pure thought, unaffected by desire, as eternal life, as milk of a woman's breast, nourishing in a dream, like a donkey's penis, as a garment inaccessible to a man, but a veil accessible to youth. The white rose smelled of Thrace, Eve before the Fall, then Mohammed, the human soul and the blood of Venus, free from base lust, and when this blood stained it red, the rose smelled of passion, Eve after the fall, the curse of the devil and God's blessing, and in this the moment the rose with five leaves whipped him with the life force belonging to the god of war. The cypress rustled like the holy tree of the goddess of love, the presence of paradise and the Holy Mountain, fire, the scepter of Zeus and the arrow of Cupid, a fragrant flame with roots of silver, gold and fat, was felt. The wheat smelled like the body of Christ, Mother Earth, the fruit of a pomegranate and the underground, and its echo gave off salt and wine. The palm tree bore the victory over death and the power of movement, the sunflowers looked not at the sun, but at him, and the tree of knowledge behind the old woman's back offered him, like five human senses, all five of its fruits, and on the tree of life, behind him, instead of twelve appeared leaves exactly the same number of tongues of flame, which immediately turned out to be connected by something in common with the constellations in the sky and with the very pain inside it.

Then he saw that Papessa again began to open cards on her bed: first the Magician fell, then the Priest, and then the Two Wands, Ace of Denarii, Ace of Cups and Temperance.

“Enough for a lily,” she said. And she continued to lay out new cards. The Jester fell on the bed for a white rose, the Magician, Priest and Queen of Denarii for the red one, and for the rose with five leaves she opened Death. For the palm tree, the card of the Papess herself fell, for the cypress and ears of wheat, the Empress opened, the sunflowers got the Queen of Wands and the Sun cards, and the Lovers and the Chariot cards fell out to the tree of love and the tree of knowledge.

“So the plants spoke the language of the cards that were in the foundations of your stolen house? - asked the lieutenant.

- No. For a thousand years, cards speak the language of plants, in which the fate of mankind is recorded. And the third shoe is the one that does not trample plants.

Coming out of the garden at dawn, Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich felt as if he were standing at the edge of an abyss. A hoarse crow flew over him and brushed the wind with two black wings. He felt that his loneliness had suddenly doubled. And then it began to grow, grew a little and stopped for a moment, and then again returned to the amount sufficient for two. There was someone else in his loneliness, just as lonely. And he thought that for a lonely person this is real happiness.

THIRD KEY

EMPRESS

On Easter 1813, Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich was sent on a secret military assignment to the main headquarters of his army. The road passed through Trieste, and Sophronius finally, after many years, again saw the reddish earth, red cows with shiny balls on their horns, breathed in the bitter sea breeze and spent the night in his parents' house, not having time to see his mother that evening.

In a huge sleepy house he was greeted by a beauty with a gem in her tooth, raven hair generously sprinkled with silver dust, and an artificial mole between her breasts.

“This one will always be seventeen years old,” thought Sophrony, and she said that her name was Petra Alaup, that she was something like an aunt and that from Mrs. Paraskeva, his mother, she had received an assignment to take care of his lodging. After that, the beauty led him into a room where an icon, a mirror and a picture in an oval frame hung on the wall. Opuich noticed with amazement that the painting showed nothing but a velvet curtain. Petra turned the mirror to the wall so that it would not attract moths, without saying a word helped young Opuich to undress and put him to bed as she would with a small child. Seeing his eleventh finger in the position in which he always was, she remarked:

- Ms. Paraskeva says that you cannot go to church tomorrow in this form.

Then she sat down under the lamp and picked up the knitting needles.

- Are you hungry? She asked, trying to hide her laughter in her knitting.

Opuich also laughed and said:

- I have the name of the fish. I also need fish, and I'll be full. But not everyone gets fish.

- You look at him! - answered Petra. - Now he needs everything, and he is ready to give everything, just to get what he wants, but if he gives, he will immediately fall asleep on you and even drool into your mouth from some of his filthy dream, where he is given something that in reality would never have been given. And you won't suddenly get out from under it. Here's a ball, hold it until you fall asleep. Just don't break the thread. If you tear, the one I knit is gone.

- What do you knit?

- I gathered my hair and knit a bachelor.

- Well, of course not for you, I didn't take your measurements.

At that moment, Petra interrupted her work and raised her beautifully sculpted hand to her chest.

“Oh-oh-oh, it's hard for me,” she whispered.

- What happened to you?

- I have a guest.

- What guest?

- It's some kind of small pain under the heart that cries like weak hunger. Or rather, a weak hunger that seeks pain.

- Rather, you will think that the guest has visited you before, and pain and hunger at the bottom of the soul after the guest usually appear on their own, if I were not the one who wears a white beard under a black one. I know which cup of wine is not topped up.

- Oh, it's hard for me! In which?

- In full, you know.

“You don’t know anything. Your mind works only for your ears. Do you know how many there were, those who spent the night under that hair?

- I do not know.

“Hmm, I don’t know either. But I know that I was born with this hunger.

Having said this, Petra went to the window and pulled out a bunch of hedgehog grass from the flower pot, took it in her mouth, tied it in a knot with her tongue and showed the knot to Sophrony:

- The case is ready. Doesn't hurt anymore ... And you? I would say that you have not tried female bread yet. What? The third eye won't open? Well, well, don't be afraid. Even a stopped clock sometimes shows the time correctly ... Let me teach you how to pray with four hands, if you guess something.

- Guess the name of my left breast!

- I do not know.

- And the right one?

- I know! - And Lieutenant Opuich whispered something into the darkness.

- I guessed it! - burst out laughing Peter, tore off the guitar from the wall and handed it to him.

- I don’t know how to play.

“I’m not asking you. Throw a silver coin at it and enter.

Sophronius then decided to play the last card. He, too, put a hand on his chest and groaned.

- What happened to you? Has the guest come to you too? A little pain under your heart that cries like weak hunger?

- No, not that.

- What then?

- I have no silver coin.

“Curmudgeon,” said Petra, turned the mirror into the room, and the icon with its face to the wall, and went to bed with Sophronius. On each breast she had something like a small pear. “If you don’t have a silver coin, your mother will,” she said in an inaudible whisper, lips to lips ...

- Oh-oh-oh, my golden ones, be wise and do not believe every wind!

With these words, on Wednesday, the day of Saint Martin the Confessor, someone woke up the young lieutenant Opuich in the back of his house in Trieste.

- Oh-oh-oh, my golden ones, - said a voice, so deep, as if it were coming from her female womb, - let your candlestick be the only one out of a thousand! A wolf can slaughter a sheep in a herd. Oh-oh-oh, my golden ones. Do not go to the side where tears are shedding, do not go to the black ravine, do not go from the shore of happiness and harmony to the shore, where the forest and the wind, where everything that weighs and stands costs the price of a cap without a head. And beware on the other side! No matter how my son, a robber, has got over to you, from whose eyes the darkness peeps out, and kisses from behind his teeth. He will overtake you and where no plague can reach ... Oh-oh-oh, my golden ...

A large woman with gray strands of hair was bending over the bed, which was much shorter than black hair, since gray hair grows more slowly. Pupils covered with mountain ash looked at him, like snake eggs. Before raising his eyelids, Sophronius felt the smell of acacia that always accompanied her, and by this smell he recognized his mother. With her, four or five women in rustling crinoline dresses and a bald young man with a black mustache were bent over the bed.

- Get up, lazy person, it's time to go to church! - the mother said affectionately, turning the icon face into the room. - What does the chicken bite? Wheat. And what does the clock feed? With a tick, my dear. Listen, they peck and tick the same thing: now! now! now!

And Mrs. Paraskeva pulled the blanket off her son, and the women screamed when they saw him naked and in full readiness.

- It's not enough to kill this Peter! How can you go to church like this? - Mrs. Paraskeva exploded and, crossing her arms, grabbed her ears.

The church of Saint Spyridon was full. It was striking that its foundation was sinking from one side, so the lower edge of the icons hanging on the southern wall was slightly separated from its surface. The plot of land on which the church was built lay above groundwater. During the service, someone stepped on Sophronius's spur, he turned around and saw Petra, dressed in black. She flashed a smile with a jewel at the bottom.

“Look,” Petra said, drawing his attention to those around him, “the one that stands near the icon of Saint Alimpius, the one that wrapped the braid around his neck, this is your sister Sarah. She wears a ring under her tongue to cheat hunger, and in the evening instead of gloves she puts on socks on her hands, because she has no one to warm her. The one next to your mother who can girdle with an eyelash is your daughter-in-law Anitsa. She can pour a glass of wine between her breasts and drink, and not a drop will spill. And next to her is your other daughter-in-law, Martitsa, and to get something from her is as easy as it is easy to make her cry. If you dream about her, turn the pillow over to the other side and she will also see you in her dream. And the bald one is her husband and your brother Luca. Now he holds a stone in his hand so as not to fall asleep during the service. If he falls asleep, the stone will fall and wake him up. And your mother says that he also holds the stone in bed when he falls over with Martitsa ...

- And now a little drunken bread, - said Mrs. Paraskeva Opuich, sitting down at the table set for twelve people, - and then we will dip our eyes into the soup. And this is what I tell them, heretics, about You, Lord, who keeps our happiness on the threshold. Whose cart is carrying me, I praise the horse! Have mercy, O Lord, our master and my lord Harlampy, cleanse both his and our hands, O Lord, before Thy bread and Thy blood, for Thy hands are eternally pure and You do not take verbs in them. I will keep myself, Lord, keep you and me, and everything that belongs to our Harlampy. Amen.

After everyone was seated, Mrs. Paraskeva took a piece of bread and tucked it into her belt.

- Look, son, at your sisters and brothers, at their wives, your daughters-in-law - they have June for six months a year, and December hardly looks into their house. And all this was given to them by our father, Kharlampy. Just look, Martha: fried pies with fragrant herbs; look, Marco, the sugared piglet and the cabbage fermented on Saint Luke's day; take, Sarah, dumplings, and you, Luka, I know, most of all love sardines cooked in wine, take, my children, and doves with both two and three wings ... Admire this beauty and eat. Everything spreads with sweetness in the mouth, warms, tingles the tongue, crunches on the teeth, lets out juice, crackles behind the ears, bursts the throat. And when you swallow it, it comes back again, flickers in the nose. And after it slips into the stomach, a trace leaves: memories, sweet memories that kiss you like an icon ... And you, Anitsa, plug a clove of garlic behind your ear, from evil spirits, she walks very close to you, and from my fool, Sophronia, who gets drunk with someone else's thirst and eats up with someone else's hunger. Do you know, Sophronius, which is the tastiest?

“I don’t know, mother.

- Father's house. You gnaw properly on jambs and door handles, windows and sills, and spit out one key.

“I don’t need my father’s house, mother.

- Check this out! All his life he rolls like cheese in butter, from childhood he was accustomed to this, and then suddenly his home is not his own! Come on, I know better what you need. You need a wife! And here, in this wallet, is a bracelet for her.

And Sophronius's brother, Marko, quickly handed him a silk bag, in which he found a gold bracelet with an inscription beginning with the words "I am a talisman ...".

- Thank you, mother. But I'm not going to get married.

- And then what will you order me to do? To ache with your youth while you recover from it? You don't need a house, you don't need a wife. But I need your wife, and your sisters need a house. Jovana remains a dowry if our house does not go to her as a dowry. I hold you like an ace in my sleeve and marry, no matter what tears it costs me! In the church you saw Petra, this one will not go for either a man's or a woman's cross, but she has as many vineyards as ships, she can even weigh fire. Marry her. She will salt your hearth and tame your fork. Then we will give half of our house to Jovana as a dowry, and she can choose her fiancé. If you disagree, she has no choice. Will go for the old and rich. Now you choose.

- Or point your finger at random, - Sophronia's daughter-in-law Marta intervened, to which Anitsa laughed and added, pointing to the table:

- And this capon was baked on female or male wood?

“I don’t want, mother, to be married off like a capon.

- Do you know how I got out? One night I bit my tongue in a dream. And the next night again, even the wound on the tongue remained. I ask myself: what is it I say at night if I bite my own tongue? I went over in my memory all the words I knew, and - found! I found that single word that lay in this wound on the tongue, like a saber in a sheath Trieste! - I shouted and with the first postal carriage flew right here, right into the arms of Harlampy Opuich. I remember it so well, as if everything happened yesterday. We were introduced at a ball in the same house, and I wanted to dance with him. I started looking for him, the ladies told me that he was busy. "What do you mean busy?" - I asked, and they laughed, took me to a small window in the door and told me to look. I looked in and saw: Harlampy was locked in a room with a live bear, and when he mortally wounded the beast with a knife, he poured urine from head to toe in pain from head to toe. He and I laughed a lot and loved each other very much, and in the same year 1789, in the most severe winter cold, I gave birth to you, Sophronius. So this is done ... Yes, you eat, my falcon, eat and do not worry about anything. The better you eat, the better you hear. And what are you going to do, don't tell me, tell that to your sister Jovana. As for me, I'm already making wedding cakes. You knead them, and they respond under your fingers, like a drum in your father's shelf. Inside them, two yolks each tremble like two boobs, and if you bite, they breathe! .. Well, be healthy!

That evening Sophronius entered his room alone and, without turning on the light, stretched out on the bed. On the wall, next to the icon and the mirror, hung the same oval picture in a gold frame, which depicted a velvet curtain, but now he noticed there also a beautiful female half-length portrait, painted so skillfully that the woman seemed alive. Her blond hair gleamed with gold dust, and her chest was bare, as it should be in the latest fashion, and only covered with a transparent scarf. The nipples, painted with the same lipstick as the lips, showed through. All this looked so alive that Sophronius came closer and incredulously extended his hand to the beautifully depicted chest. And then he got on his fingers from the gloom that reigned in the room.

- Well, don't touch! - said the portrait. - I am your sister Jovana, and this is not a painting, but a window to my room. And to you, mister brother, thank you both for what you gave me and for what you did not give. I keep in my soul a servant of the earthly - my body. And it listens to me. Look how submissive ...

And Jovana leaned her elbows on the frame of her window and wept.

- And when, mister brother, you get angry with me and throw me for years, like stones, descend from above, from the Empyrean, into the heavenly draft, where the birds rush, the Virgin will cry with me. And, filling two glass vessels with milk and lighting a fire in chandeliers, with a black violet under her clothes, she will slowly go towards her fiance, towards fate. And everything will serve her obediently: glass vessels, chandeliers, and a flower, but she also has an earthly servant - her body. This is how Grace and Truth will meet each other. And I cannot resort to either her or you.

Then Jovana sobbed even louder in the window. Sophronius went up to her and began to console her, and she touched his hair and said:

- How overgrown you are. Come here, I'll cut you.

And she helped him get through the window. Sophronius sat down in the middle of the room, his sister gave him an earthen pot, which he put on his knees, took a knife from the shelf, sharpened it on a fork, went up to his brother, clamped the knife in his teeth and began to comb his hair with a fork. After combing it, she put a pot on his head and began to shear like a sheep everything that hung from under the edge of the pot. Then a drop fell on his hand.

- What is it - rain?

- Yes, rain.

- No, not rain, you are crying. Do you really love that other?

- I see, brother, you cannot give birth to a soul with a body. It seems that our souls come from different earthly parents, not like our legs. Our souls do not originate from Kharlampy and Paraskeva, their sources are different, and each of them rolls through life after its own wave and seeks who would hear it, because brother and sister do not hear each other and our souls are not related to each other, like our hands. Where did your soul come from? In a dream, a flower was created, and a thorn sprouted. And the one I am waiting for, in a quiet voice, but dear to the truth.

- Surely his head is like a stupa and a grain of reason, - Sophrony got angry and threw the pot off his head. - Who is he?

- A brother to my soul and a husband to my body. His name is Pana Tenetsky, he is from Zemun. I don't know him very well yet. I only know that he exists, and I can’t fall asleep, remembering his beauty ... Tonight he will come here to look at me. Don't turn around, calm down, otherwise I can cut you.

And Jovana put the pot on her brother's head again and continued her haircut.

- He will enter through your room. Won't you betray us? She asked.

"I won't give it up," Sophrony answered and decided to fall asleep as soon as he went to bed. However, to his dismay, at about midnight, a man in the uniform of an Austrian army officer walked across the room, and immediately after that he heard a whisper coming from a golden-framed window. A woman's voice, the voice of Sister Sophronius, whispered:

- You scared me. A person can fall asleep even when crying ...

- Why did you cry?

- The one whom I was looked after is old, and I am young, how can I marry him? If my father were here, he would have protected me from my mother. He loves me. And you? Give advice on what to do.

- I'm not giving it.

- Why? Asked a pleading female voice in the darkness.

- Because there is no advice here. Everyone must eat his own way like an earthworm.

- So there is no help.

- Who spoke about help? The help I can offer you exists. It works quickly and reliably, but I'm not sure you will like it.

- Why not?

- Because this help is of such a kind that after it nothing can be fixed.

- What do you have in mind?

- I don't mean anything. My help is not to have something in mind, but to do something.

At that moment, Sophronius heard the heavy officer's belt, clinking with a buckle, fall to the floor.

- So do something, for the sake of all the saints, before it's too late! Help me! A woman's voice was whispering now.

- I don't dare.

- Why?

- You will scream.

- Shout? Why should I scream? If those lips were mute, and your love would be deaf.

“You know what they say: take my blood and my body, and I will become a sacrifice for you and will redeem you. But you have to believe me. And you don't believe it will hurt.

- Why will it hurt?

- Because of my help. Anyway, for the first time ... Is it possible to unfasten the buttons on your shirt with your tongue?

- Why unbutton them with your tongue?

- Because while they are buttoned, I cannot help you ...

At that moment Sofroniy Opuich began to dress quietly; pulling on his boots, he heard the last words of his sister; it was a whisper that did not for one moment turn into a cry:

- Help! Rapist! Oh, my lord, don't do this to me, please! Help! How heavy you are, get down, I can't breathe, that you crushed me so ... It pricks, don't touch here, it tickles ... how hairy you are, what are you doing? I'll choke on your saliva, remove your lips, my mouth full of leaks ... Take a bite, let me go! Pressing ... Help, they are killing! .. So this is blood and body? .. Oh, my lord, don't do this to me. Oh my lord, please ...

Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich quietly, like a thief, crept through his own house. In the hall where the front door was located, a candle was burning, a small rug of bread stuck in the navel, and Easter eggs lay on a silver tray. He took one egg, decorated with patterns, as large as if it had been carried by a rooster, quickly saddled his horse, and galloped straight to Petra's house in the full dress of the French cavalry. He woke her up, gave her an egg and said that he had stopped by to say goodbye, and then asked:

- Tell me, what connects us, Opuichi, with the Tenetsky from Zemun?

- Don't you know? It started during the last war, back in the last century. In the same year 1797, when the Venetian state fell. Then your father and Pakhomiy Tenetsky met, the father of that very Pana Tenetsky, who was now crushing your sister under him.

- And what kind of relationship is this?

End of introductory snippet.

* * *

The given introductory fragment of the book Last Love in Constantinople (Milorad Pavic, 1994) provided by our book partner -

Milorad PAVICH

LAST LOVE IN KONSTANTINOPOL

(Divination Manual)

Translated from Serbian by L. SAVELJEVA

Major Arcana (Major Arcana, or Big Mystery) - this is the name of a deck of 22 cards for fortune telling. Each card is designated with a number from 0 to 21, and all of them, together with the other, for the most part (Minor Arcana) of 56 cards make up the Tarot (Tarok, Tarocchi). The origin of the Tarot is associated with the priests (hierophants), who in Greece led the Eleusinian mysteries. There is also an opinion that the Tarot goes back to the tradition of the cult of Hermes. Such cards are often used for divination by the Gypsies, who are believed to have carried this secret "language" from Chaldea and Egypt to Israel and Greece, from where it spread along the entire Mediterranean coast.

As far as can be judged, Tarot has been known in Central Europe, France and Italy for almost seven centuries and has now become one of the most popular card games. The oldest surviving tarot cards date back to 1390 and 1445 (Minhiati deck from the Corer Museum in Venice).

Major Arcana is usually divided into three groups of seven cards. During fortune-telling, the meaning of each individual card and combinations of cards is usually interpreted by the fortuneteller, who already knows their established values \u200b\u200b(keys), but he may also have his own set of keys, that is, values \u200b\u200bthat he keeps secret. The meaning of the Tarot card changes depending on whether it is usually laid down or upside down - in the second case, its meaning is opposite to the main one. Nowadays, the Tarot cards and the keys to them are given great attention in numerous manuals and reference books about the cards, and there are often large discrepancies between them. The roots of the Tarot go back to the depths of the symbolic language common to human consciousness.

The symbolism and keys of the Tarot are associated with Ancient Greece, with Kabbalah, with astrology, with the doctrine of numbers, etc. The Tarot achieves mystical power and esoteric wisdom through its twenty-first initiation (mysterious transformation) the Jester, a card that symbolically is simultaneously the zero, central and last card of the Great Secret of the Tarot.

From one encyclopedia

Keys of the Big Secret for Ladies of Both Sexes

A special key. Jester

In addition to his native language, he spoke Greek, French, Italian and Turkish, was born in Trieste, in the family of wealthy Serbian merchants and patrons of art Opuic, who owned ships on the Adriatic, and on the banks of the Danube fields of wheat and vineyards, from childhood he served in the military unit of his father, a cavalry officer of the French army Harlampy Opuich, knew that both in attack and in love, exhalation is more important than inhalation, wore a luxurious cavalry uniform, even in the most severe cold he slept in the snow under a cart so as not to disturb his Russian greyhound, who was inside with a whole brood of puppies, in the midst of the battle he could burst into tears because of the spoiled yellow cavalry boots, once voluntarily left service in the infantry detachment so as not to part with his cavalry uniform, passionately loved good horses, whose tails he braided braids, ordered silver dishes in Vienna, adored balls, masquerades, fireworks and felt like a fish in water in salons and drawing rooms among music and women.

His father said about him that he was uncontrollable, like a hurricane, and constantly walked along the edge of the abyss, but he alternately looked like his mother, then his grandfather, then his unborn son or granddaughter.

He was a very prominent man, above average height, white-faced, with a hollow in his chin, like a navel, and hair long, thick and black as coal. His eyebrows were skillfully curled, as is usually done with a mustache, and his mustache was braided like two lashes. On the endless roads of war, stretching across Bavaria, Silesia and Italy, he aroused the admiration of women for his figure, manner in the saddle and long, always well-combed hair, when, tired of long marches and hardships of military life, he dried them, sitting near the fire in what - some roadside tavern. Sometimes his admirers jokingly dressed him in women's clothes, stuck a white rose in his hair, shook out the last penny out of him at dances, yielded to him, sick and tired, their beds and with tears in their eyes said goodbye to the cavalrymen when they left their winter quarters. And he said that all his memories are placed in a backpack.

With a strange, feminine smile on his face, through which he had a beard, young Opuich rode with his father, still a teenager, and later himself, as an officer of the French cavalry, throughout that part of Europe, which stretched from Trieste and Venice to the Danube and from there to Wagram and Leipzig, and grew up in French bivouacs, marking each new decade with a new war. Mrs Paraskeva Opuich, his mother, sent him in vain "cakes with sad walnuts." Young Sophronius became the father of his devil before the child. With one eye he was on his maternal grandmother, who was primarily Greek, and the other on his father, who was ultimately a Serb, so the young Opuich from Trieste saw the world with sidelong eyes. He whispered:

- God is the One who is, and I am the one who does not exist.

From childhood he carried a well-hidden big secret in himself. It was as if he felt that something with him as a being belonging to the human race was not quite right. And naturally there was his desire to change. He wanted this secretly and strongly, a little ashamed of such a desire as some kind of indecent visit. All this was like a slight hunger, which, like pain, curls under the heart, or a slight pain that awakens in the soul, like hunger. He, perhaps, did not remember exactly when this latent yearning for change began, which took the form of a small, disembodied force.

It was as if he was lying, connecting the tips of the middle and thumb, and at the moment when sleep fell on him, he dropped his hand from the bed and the fingers separated. And then he started, as if letting go of something from his hands. In fact, he let go of himself.

There was a desire. Terrible, unforgiving, so heavy that under his load he began to limp on his right leg ... Or, as it sometimes seemed to him, it happened another time, long ago, when he found someone's soul in a plate full of stewed cabbage and ate it.

Be that as it may, but a mysterious and strong movement arose in him. It is difficult to say what it was - perhaps some dizzying ambitions associated with his own and fatherly military vocation, some incomprehensible yearning for a new, true enemy and reasonable allies, a desire to change places in relations with his father, perhaps not the thrust to the south gave rest, where he, the imperial cavalryman, was attracted by the lost Balkan kingdoms that once stretched here as far as the Peloponnese, and the blood of his grandmother, a Greek woman, whose family created its enormous wealth on trade between Europe and Asia, spoke in him. Or perhaps it was some kind of third happiness and desire, of those muddy and strong, which make a person's face constantly change. It then looks the way it will be in old age, then the way it was in those days when its owner still listened to the opinions of others. Because a person's face breathes, it constantly breathes in and out time.

Following the "Khazar Dictionary" I felt an acute desire to taste another Pavich's work. Will the author be able not to drop the bar and leave all the signature touches in their proper places (and, what the hell is not joking, can improve the picture)? The issue is controversial.

Positive impressions are based on the following things: 1. As in the Khazar dictionary - an incredibly figurative, vivid language; 2. Multi-layered, intertwined plot. The part, which was not in the Khazar dictionary, was special; 3. Riddle and intrigue; 4. General feeling of "fortune-telling" as something transcendental; 5. Excessive metaphor; 6. The feeling of a persistent dream into which the author immerses the reader; 7. Incest, erect penises, nymphomaniac women, self-healing virginity, sabers as a metaphor for the penis, bed as a metaphor for vagina, sleep as a metaphor for sex, sex as a metaphor for death, death as a metaphor for sex and sleep - everything we love. If the positive qualities are known and, in general, expected, then the trouble came from where they did not expect: 1. The author's promise that the novel can be read from any end. Alas, this is not the case. This novel is linear, and it is so linear that it becomes impossible to read it from any end. In fact, even a move with the "explanation of the cards" as the pivot of the novel, where the properties of the card will be shown in the correct and inverted form, will not be able to provide the promised "nonlinearity". As a result, Pavic's signature trick did not seem to work; 2. The multi-layered and intertwined plot is provided by the abundance of characters. By the middle of not such a large text, it begins to ripple in the eyes, and it becomes quite difficult to remember who is who. And if the male characters still exist for the author, then the female ones resemble some clones from the branch of the dream factory. In the Khazar dictionary, all this could be explained by the structure of the book, and it was always possible to find out what it was about - here, alas, this possibility is not possible; 3. The riddle and intrigue, alas, did not become a powerful culmination, as in the same Khazar dictionary. Moreover, there was a feeling that the book was cut short in mid-sentence. Is it coincidental, no, but the author introduces a gypsy into the narrative, who breaks off the fortune-telling and runs away. This episode appears to have been subtle self-criticism; 4. This fortune-telling rides seem curious, but by the middle you realize that the author himself is pretty tired of them. It is no coincidence that the volume of the book is defiantly small, although it would seem that one could catch up with the text. But no. Something snapped at the author; 5. All this dreamlike-Freudian component also had to find a way out. Stories about the children of the winners, crushed by their fathers, the cast-iron backs of the winners who blocked the sky above their children, and generations of losers - all this had to result in something. A battle between the children of the losers and the winning fathers? The murder of their fathers by the children of the victors (and here it would be nice to Oedipus, with his complexes, the author was just going to lead there, I confess, I expected that the son of the protagonist would kill him). But no, somehow all this was cut in not the best variation. I am not very happy with the point of "getting out of sleep". Well, in general - I find fault. High-quality text, there is something to puzzle over (there is, of course, nothing to think about seriously). Of course, the author did not do without political actualization (Serbs who, for each other's money, barely frogs (I heard this anecdote, but there were poop, otherwise the plot is identical). Everything we love in Pavic. Yes, this is not a masterpiece, like Khazarsky dictionary - but the book, no doubt, deserves respect and reading. Minor flaws will take away the star, but I liked it. Py.Sy. It's bad that the topic of the devil is not really revealed. There was hope, and ... again into milk. And the chapter about the devil gorgeous - in general, Pavich's theme of the devil is simply incredibly interesting.It is a pity that the author does not want to devote much time to it.

Date of publication: 18.11.2016. Date of publication:.

Recently I discovered that there are people who do not know who Milorad Pavic is. One of my favorite writers, he is so obvious to me that I never even sent it to the mailing list.
Now I am correcting the omission. The choice of the best here is conditional: scooping up a handful from the sea, you get water anywhere. Somewhere dirtier, somewhere cleaner, somewhere warmer, but everywhere there is water. Everything Pavich writes could be put into one book - his work is united into a whole not by stories, but by the manner of expressing himself and the habit of easily neglecting the permitted boundaries of meaning. Pretty quickly you realize that you need to read not the letters, but the gaps between them, follow not the plot, but the words, magically placed on the wrong side and photographed in a strange angle. It makes no sense to choose the best Pavich's book - it can be read from any end to any direction, and the traveler will get his own, if he is one of those who understand this language at all. It is a delight for the imagination, surprisingly bypassing the judicious mind. There is no need to calculate anything and cling to reality like death. Everything is fluid and made of ourselves. If Pavich had less war and no reasoning at all aimed at giving books the appearance of logic and plot, he would be me (or I - them).
I am sending you the very first text that once fell into my hands in the form of a printout tied with a pink ribbon and received from a person whom I did not really trust. The very first lines blew the world down, and then, as a drug addict, I wanted only one thing: more and more. Most of the readers began their acquaintance with Pavich with the "Khazar Dictionary", and he is considered the author's best book - according to the principle of imprint. For me, the highest book-eating happiness impressed The Last Love in Constantinople. Read and know that those who have read this for a long time envy you.

And here is the site of Pavich himself, where there is even a Russian version and the author's email.
http://www.khazars.com/ru/

“I was the most unreadable writer in my country until 1984, when I suddenly became the most widely read one day. I wrote the first novel as a dictionary, the second as a crossword puzzle, the third as a klepsydra, and the fourth as a tarot card reading aid. The fifth was an astrological reference book for the uninitiated. I tried to interfere with my romances as little as possible. I think that the novel, like cancer, lives off and feeds on its metastases, ”it says.

However, I never wrote him a letter, although, it was, I really wanted to. Well, let this number be instead of a message ...

By the way, I found an excellent crushing review of Pavich, describing the other side of the truth. Oh, how sweet it is to feel like a Stavropol student of the Russian State Humanitarian University, strangled by Pavich's plebeian pseudo-culture and listening to miserable rock songs with a guitar!

No, it does not leave a feeling of inferiority of the writer Milorad Pavic. "A box for writing utensils" is his new story. The plot is predefined and schematic, even diagrams are attached; the author opens the drawers one by one and fishes out objects: a ship's log, postcards, a lock of hair, a clay pipe ...

Pavic walks among the flat mannequins. He is not able to revive them and tries to dress up and perfume them brightly. Hence, the story has an external entourage: recipes for food, endless smells of perfume, if you lick the box, it tastes like sea water, its last owner was devoid of smell, and so on to a bad infinity ... But this only emphasizes the superficiality of the description, the unique disembodiment of the characters.

The text is artistically banal. The hair is as black as a raven's wing. The earrings are like tears. It's hard to find a living word. Images, humor - everything is attracted, everything is utterly artificial. Pavich's "eroticism", like a cockroach, is hasty, fearful, repulsive - worse than stupid porn ...

Almost the entire story is filled with sticky reasoning. Judging by the publisher's annotation, "the reader will have to ... break through to understanding ... the deep meaning." Alas, metaphysics resembles school for the handicapped. The thinnest areas requiring delicate handling are roughly dissected. Stamped mysticism is ubiquitous. You marvel at the courage with which such vulgarity is written. After Pavic, any mysticism will cause allergies.

The details of the Bosnian conflict are clearly out of place. Perhaps it is absurd - "ideologically" to bring the writer to the surface, but still ... What are Pavich's thoughts? Humanist? Existentialist? Pacifist? A misanthrope like Celine? Serbian patriot? Any ideas? Only profound nonsense, jokes and maxims ... "Passion for life" - explains the critic Draginya Ramadanski. As a result, Pavic is perceived as Absolute Nothing. Trying to please the conjuncture, he is about to dissolve in the air ...

Pavic is original. Part of the text is presented in the form of an e-mail, part is dictated onto the tape of the answering machine. On one of the sheets of paper, lost in the box, an address from the Internet is inscribed, promising a continuation ... A bad joke. And this is the "advanced literature" of the twenty-first century? What a fragile provinciality! It's time to publish the postmodernist magazine "Technics for Old Men!" The painful accent on modern advances (computer, Internet, answering machine) is not a fresh trend, a breakthrough, or innovative recklessness. It is the fear of losing touch with reality, breathing mustiness. Ridiculous focus on new features of the environment. A small chuckle: "And I'm with you, with the young!" It is a pity, unworthy, inadequate.

A guy who grew up in computer rays, absorbed them with his mother's milk, uses the world of machines indifferently and coolly, perceives the achievements of technology naturally, as an environment. He sits at his computer, yawns, rummages on the Internet, and Pavich walks around on stilts and makes eyes ...

In order to justify his literary province, Pavic claims to be non-standard in composition. They declare: because of him, literature can be divided into two directions into traditional and computer. It turns out that Pavich's texts are somehow especially adapted to the computer space and turn into hypertext. Explaining, the critic Yasmina Mikhailovich compares Pavich's works with a video game, "The space is seemingly unlimited, so the illusion of infinity is created." Is this the first time? And finally, Kafka? The critic continues: "Moving from level to level, back and forth, left and right, riddles are solved and information is collected ..." Well, take Faulkner at least (a pointer was attached to one of the American editions of "Noise and Fury" to help you navigate the plot levels) ... What is this Pavic revolution, eh? ..

Let us note in conclusion: he found a Russian audience. He fit into the socio-cultural process. The plebeian pseudo-culture strangles some of the youth, especially girls, some students of the Russian State Humanitarian University who came from Vladivostok and Stavropol. The girls swim touchingly among the tasteless post-Komsomol coordinates. And Milorad Pavic imposes jewelry on them. They will listen to miserable rock songs accompanied by a guitar about the “meaning of life” and creep over the writer's maxims ...

And the bum from the station, original and reasonable, will look worthy of them?

Keys of the Big Secret: For Ladies of Both Sexes

A special key. Jester

In addition to his native language, he spoke Greek, French, Italian and Turkish, was born in Trieste, in the family of wealthy Serbian merchants and patrons of art Opuic, who owned ships on the Adriatic, and on the banks of the Danube fields of wheat and vineyards, from childhood he served in the military unit of his father, a cavalry officer of the French army Harlampy Opuich, knew that both in attack and in love, exhalation is more important than inhalation, wore a luxurious cavalry uniform, even in the most severe cold he slept in the snow under a cart so as not to disturb his Russian greyhound, who was inside with a whole brood of puppies, in the midst of the battle he could burst into tears because of the spoiled yellow cavalry boots, once voluntarily left service in the infantry detachment so as not to part with his cavalry uniform, passionately loved good horses, whose tails he braided braids, ordered silver dishes in Vienna, adored balls, masquerades, fireworks and felt like a fish in water in salons and drawing rooms among music and women.
His father said about him that he was uncontrollable, like a hurricane, and constantly walked along the edge of the abyss, but he alternately looked like his mother, then his grandfather, then his unborn son or granddaughter. He was a very prominent man, above average height, white-faced, with a dimple in his chin, like a navel, and hair long, thick and black as coal. He curled his eyebrows skillfully, as is usually done with a mustache, and his mustache was braided like two lashes. On the endless roads of war, stretching across Bavaria, Silesia and Italy, he aroused the admiration of women for his figure, manner in the saddle and long, always well-combed hair, when, tired of long marches and hardships of military life, he dried them, sitting near the fire in what - some roadside tavern. Sometimes his admirers jokingly dressed him in women's clothes, stuck a white rose in his hair, shook out the last penny out of him at dances, yielded to him, sick and tired, their beds and with tears in their eyes said goodbye to the cavalrymen when they left their winter quarters. And he said that all his memories are placed in a backpack.
With a strange, female, smile on his face, through which his beard grew, young Opuich rode with his father, still a teenager, and later himself, as an officer of the French cavalry, throughout that part of Europe that stretched from Trieste and Venice to the Danube and from there to Wagram and Leipzig, and grew up in French bivouacs, marking each new decade with a new war. Mrs Paraskeva Opuich, his mother, sent him in vain "cakes with sad walnuts." Young Sophronius became the father of his devil before the child. With one eye he was on his maternal grandmother, who was primarily Greek, and the other on his father, who was ultimately a Serb, so the young Opuich from Trieste saw the world with sidelong eyes. He whispered:
- God is the One who is, and I am the one who does not exist.
From childhood he carried a well-hidden big secret in himself. It was as if he felt that something with him as a being belonging to the human race was not quite right. And naturally there was his desire to change. He wanted this secretly and strongly, a little ashamed of such a desire as some kind of indecent visit. All this was like a slight hunger, which, like pain, curls under the heart, or a slight pain that awakens in the soul, like hunger. He, perhaps, did not remember exactly when this latent yearning for change began, which took the form of a small, disembodied force. It was as if he was lying, connecting the tips of the middle and thumb, and at the moment when sleep fell on him, he dropped his hand from the bed and the fingers separated. And then he started, as if letting go of something from his hands. In fact, he let go of himself. Then a desire arose. Terrible, unforgiving, so heavy that under his load he began to limp on his right leg ... Or, as it sometimes seemed to him, it happened another time, long ago, when he found someone's soul in a plate full of stewed cabbage and ate it ...
Be that as it may, but a mysterious and strong movement arose in him. It is difficult to say what it was - perhaps some dizzying ambitions associated with his own and fatherly military vocation, some incomprehensible yearning for a new, true enemy and reasonable allies, a desire to change places in relations with his father, perhaps not the thrust to the south gave rest, where he, the imperial cavalryman, was attracted by the lost Balkan kingdoms that once stretched here as far as the Peloponnese, and the blood of his grandmother, a Greek woman, whose family created its enormous wealth on trade between Europe and Asia, spoke in him. Or perhaps it was some kind of third happiness and desire, of those muddy and strong, which make a person's face constantly change. It then looks the way it will be in old age, then the way it was in those days when its owner still listened to the opinions of others. Because a person's face breathes, it constantly breathes in and out time.
Since then, he constantly and worked hard to change something in a significant way in his life so that the dream that tormented him became a reality, but all this had to be done as secretly as possible, so his actions often remained incomprehensible to those around him.
Now young Opuich, hiding from everyone, wore a stone under his tongue as a secret, or, more precisely, a secret as a stone, and his body underwent one change that was difficult to hide and which gradually became known to everyone as a legend. At first the women noticed it, but they said nothing; then, already out loud, officers in his regiment began to joke about this topic, after which they started talking about him throughout the theater of military operations.
- He's just like a woman. He can always! The officers who served with him said laughing. Young Opuich from that decisive day walked the world with a secret in himself and with a man's spear always ready for battle under his stomach. It was then that his eleventh finger straightened and began to count the stars. And it always remained that way. This did not bother him, he rode horseback still merrily, but he never told anyone about his secret, which could be the cause of everything.
“He’s playing the fool,” said the officers from his regiment, and continued their march north-west, in the direction of the unknown. He entered the dirt-covered soldier's road at the request of his father, but he himself, Captain Harlampy Opuich, almost never met. Sometimes he recalled how his father at night in their huge house in Trieste in the midst of the darkness lifted his head from the pillow and listened for an endlessly long time.
- What is he listening to? The boy asked himself in surprise. - To home? War? Time? Sea? French? Your past? Or is he listening to the fear that comes from the future? After all, the future is a stable from which fear appears to us.
And then the mother forced his father to put his head on the pillow so that he would not fall asleep in this position, with his neck stretched out and ears alert. Opuich Sr. aroused fear in both his subordinates and those who commanded him, and he loved his son more than his mother. And he took care of him through vast distances constantly moving battlefields throughout his life. The son had not seen him for a long time and did not even know what his father looked like and whether he would be able to recognize him when he met. Not to mention the mother in Trieste. It is no coincidence that she said about her son:
- This of two bloods is mixed - Serbian and Greek. He wants to turn insomnia into a rainbow, and sleep into a shop where they sell.
In fact, Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich looked like his greyhounds. He heard and saw from around the corner. He had long been a soldier, he saw both the victory at Ulm when he was just fourteen years old, and the defeat in Prussia at the age of twenty-two, but at heart he was still a jerk. He could still see his father around one corner and hear his mother behind another. And he longed to meet them. He didn't know who he was.

Seven first keys

The first key. Magician

“Would you like me to breastfeed you, mon lieutenant? - asked the young Opuich a girl standing in front of a large tent on the outskirts of Ulm.
The lieutenant's attention was attracted by a bird that flew over the tent in a strong wind, remaining in one place, as if it was tied. From the tent came a male voice singing "Memories is the sweat of the soul," and Opuich paid and entered.
Inside on the table stood the Magician, girded with a snake holding its tail in its mouth, and sang. There were red roses in his hair. Finishing the song, as if aiming, he directed his high-pitched voice through one of the fangs in his mouth directly at the bird, frozen in the air above the tent, and shot it down with his voice like an arrow. Then he offered his services to visitors. He could eat the name of any of those present in just a quarter of a Napoleon, and for a little more money, not only the name, but also the surname.
- The one who agrees will never again be called the same as before coming here! If you have the keys to the house, and the house itself has been destroyed by the war, I can restore it in the smallest detail, simply by throwing the keys into a copper cauldron, because each key responds with a sound, describing in the ear with absolute accuracy the shape and dimensions of the room that he locks.
At the end, the Magician invited those present to think at one request, so that he would try to facilitate their fulfillment, and mademoiselle Marie, at the exit of each of the gentlemen present, would gladly treat milk from her own breast as a token of gratitude for visiting this place. When it was the turn to make a wish for Opuich, the Magician, despite the fact that those present did not say their wishes aloud, became noticeably worried, got off the table and jumped out of the tent.
"Any day contains at least something reasonable, and any flower - at least a little honey," thought Opuich and, catching up with the Magician, grabbed him by the collar, and then, sitting on a barrel that stood there, sat him on his knee.
- Stick out your tongue! - he ordered him, which was immediately executed. - It is raining?
The magician nodded, although there was no rain.
- You're lying! Do you think that you can play with me, as with that bird that flies, staying in one place, over your tent? Do you know who I am?
“You know, that's why I wanted to run away. You are the son of Captain Harlampius Opuich of Trieste.
- Well, let's get down to business then. Can you really help your wishes come true?
- In the case of you, I can't. But I know where this is possible. And I'll tell you a secret. In Constantinople, in one church there is a column to which a copper shield is attached. There is a hole in the center of the shield. Anyone who thinks about his desire, sticking his thumb into this hole and describing a circle with his palm so that the palm does not separate from the copper surface of the shield for a moment, and the thumb does not leave the hole, will be heard. But just look, be careful, my lord. When God wants to punish someone, he gives him both the fulfillment of desire and misfortune at the same time. Perhaps he does this only with his favorites, we do not know this, but in any case we do not care, we are small people. Therefore, my lord, beware. And don't forget the song "Memories is the sweat of the soul."
“I don’t believe a single word of yours,” the lieutenant answered him, “but I’ll still ask you a question. Can you help me find my father? I have not seen him since the stone lost weight and the wind gained weight. I only know that he was retreating towards Leipzig, but where he is now, I have no idea.
“I’m not your assistant here, I can only say that a company of crooks and charlatans comes to this very tent on Thursdays, they show performances here for the gullible. And they have one thing about the deaths of your father Captain Harlampy Opuich.
- About what deaths? He's alive! - I know, mister lieutenant, that I am alive. But this is the name of the performance: "The Three Deaths of Captain Opuich." “I don’t believe a single word of yours,” repeated the lieutenant and went to bed.

However, on Thursday, he took up inquiries. It turned out that in fact, in the tent of the Magician, they gave an idea of \u200b\u200bthe three deaths of Harlampy Opuich, his father. Entering the tent, young Opuich grabbed the first of the mummers who came across and asked how they dared to portray the death of a living person, to which he calmly replied:
- You know, for this performance we were personally paid by Captain Kharlampy Opuich himself, who, my sir, loves artists very much and provides patronage and assistance to us and the theater. Now he is somewhere on the Elbe.
Knowing, of course, that his Trieste Opuichi had long been theatrical patrons, Lieutenant Sofroniy Opuich had no choice but to sit down and watch the play. The artists who were in the tent, seeing him, simply petrified. They recognized him. He asked them not to hesitate to start.
First, a man with a strange beard and in a French uniform appeared in front of the audience. He played Captain Opuich. Four women and a girl were standing around him. One of the women turned to him:
“To make it immediately clear what the matter is, keep in mind that I am not at all the spirit of your maternal great-grandfather and not himself in the guise of a vampire. He died, and nothing remained of him, neither spirit nor body. But insofar as death does not die, here I am. I am his death. And next to me is the death of your great-great-grandmother. That's all that's left of her. If everything is clear with this, let's move on. Thus, your ancestors had only one death. Not so with you. You will have three deaths, here they are. This old woman who stands here, and the beauty next to her, and the girl are your three deaths. Take a good look at them ...
- And this is all that remains of me?
- Yes. It's all. But this is not so little. However, keep in mind, captain, you will not notice your deaths, you will ride under them as if under a triumphal arch, and continue on your way as if nothing had happened.
- And what will happen after my third death, after I become a vampire for the third time?
- Both you and others will feel for some time that you are still living, as if nothing happened, and it will be so until the last love comes to you, until the woman from whom you could look at you to have children. Then you will immediately disappear before the eyes of the whole world, because a third soul cannot have children, just as one who becomes a vampire for the third time cannot have offspring ...
Then in the tent there was complete darkness and the roar of a bear was heard. When the scene lit up again, it turned out that there was a man in a French uniform (who portrayed Captain Opuich) fighting a huge bear for life and death. The man stabbed the beast with a knife, and he, in his dying convulsion, poured urine on him and strangled him. Both fell to the ground ... The spectators applauded, the actors shared a spoonful of kutya among everyone sitting in the hall for the repose of the soul of the murdered, and someone suggested that this was the first death of Captain Harlampy Opuich. The second was next.
The beauty from the first act appeared in front of the audience and said:
“You people don't know how to measure your days. You measure only their length and say that a day lasts 24 hours. And your days sometimes have a depth, moreover, greater than their length, and this depth can reach a month or even a year in length of days. Therefore, you cannot look at your life. Not to mention death ... At these words, Captain Opuich rode into the tent on horseback. In one hand, he held a telescope, and in the other, a whip, which he used to scatter the audience in front of him. A man with a gun, dressed in an Austrian uniform, appeared after him. The captain turned and raised the pipe to his eye. The Austrian officer raised his gun and, firing through the pipe, killed him. The captain fell to the ground, the horse, freed from the bridle, galloped into the night ... This was the second death of Captain Opuich. And again they distributed kutya for the peace of his soul.
Then the girl from the first act entered the stage and bowed.
- Don't go! My dead are ill tonight; put your finger in my ear, so that in my sleep I know that you are here. Listen! The heart in the darkness beats out the sum of someone's years that are being fulfilled in us ...
This foreshadowed the captain's third and youngest death. It was night on the stage (the same as outside the tent walls). Two people with lanterns and sabers walked towards each other. It was obvious that this was a duel. One of them portrayed Captain Opuich (in a French uniform), and the other - an Austrian officer. The one that was portraying Opuich suddenly stopped, stuck his saber into the ground, hung a lantern on it, and himself, stepping aside and intending to attack the opponent from behind, began to sneak up on him in the dark, watching him hesitantly stand with a lantern in his hand a few steps away from him and does not understand what his enemy is planning and why he stopped. At that moment, without expecting it at all, Kharlampy Opuich in the darkness ran into the Austrian's bayonet, far from his saber and lantern, which he also cleverly left stuck in the middle of the road. And this was the third death of Captain Harlampy Opuich. “I don’t understand anything,” thought young Opuich, leaving the tent.
At that moment, behind him, he heard a voice:
- So much the better that you don't understand!
Looking around, the lieutenant saw the Magician with roses in his hair and asked him:
- Where is the truth? Is my father alive or not?
- Each person has not one past, but two, - answered the Magician, - one is called "Slowdown", this past grows with a person from his very birth and leads to death. The second past is called "Hod", and it brings a person back to his birth. They have different durations. Depending on which one is longer, the person gets sick or does not get sick from his own death. The second means that a person builds his past on the other side of the grave, and it continues to grow after his death. The truth is somewhere between the first and the second past ... But why should the lieutenant not look for Papess? The Magician asked suddenly and left.

Milorad Pavic

Last love in Constantinople

Milorad Pavi

The last after killing at Tsarigrad: Handyman for gataњe. Roman tarot

The protection of intellectual property and rights of the publishing group "Amphora" is carried out by the law firm "Uskov and Partners"

© Paviħ M., 1994

© Savelieva L., translated into Russian, 1997

© Design. CJSC TID "Amphora", 2010

* * *

Major Arcana (Major Arcana, or Big Mystery) - this is the name of a deck of 22 cards for fortune telling. Each card is designated with a number from 0 to 21, and all of them together with the other, larger part (Minor Arcana - minor arcana, or Minor Mystery) of 56 cards make up the tarot (Tarok, Tarocchi). The origin of the tarot is associated with the priests (hierophants) and with the Eleusinian mysteries in Greece. There is also an opinion that tarot goes back to the tradition of the cult of Hermes. Such cards are often used for fortune telling by the Gypsies, who are believed to have brought this secret language from Chaldea and Egypt to Israel and Greece, from where it spread along the entire Mediterranean coast. As far as can be judged, tarot has been known in Central Europe, France and Italy for almost seven centuries, and today it has become one of the most popular card games. The oldest surviving tarot cards date back to 1390 and 1445 (Minhiati deck from the Correr Museum in Venice).

Major Arcana is usually divided into three groups of seven cards. During fortune-telling, the meaning of each individual card and combinations of cards is usually interpreted by the fortuneteller, who knows their established values \u200b\u200b(keys), but he may also have his own set of keys, that is, values \u200b\u200bthat he keeps secret. The meaning of the tarot card changes depending on whether it is usually laid down or upside down - in the second case, its meaning is opposite to the main one. Nowadays, tarot cards and keys to them are given great attention in numerous pen manuals and reference books about cards, and often there are large discrepancies between them. The roots of tarot go back to the depths of the symbolic language common to human consciousness. The symbolism and keys of the tarot are associated with Ancient Greece, with Kabbalah, with astrology, numerology, etc. The mystical power and esoteric wisdom of the tarot are achieved through their twenty-first initiation (mysterious transformation) - the Jester, a card that is symbolically at the same time zero, central and the last card of the Great Secret of the tarot.

From one encyclopedia

Keys of the Big Secret for Ladies of Both Sexes

Special key

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In addition to his native language, he spoke Greek, French, Italian and Turkish, was born in Trieste, in the family of wealthy Serbian merchants and patrons of art Opuic, who owned ships on the Adriatic and wheat fields on the banks of the Danube. and vineyards, from childhood he served in the military unit of his father, a cavalry officer of the French army Harlampy Opuich, knew that both in attack and in love, exhalation is more important than inhalation, wore a luxurious cavalry uniform, even in the most severe cold he slept in the snow under a wagon so that not to disturb his Russian greyhound, who was inside with a whole brood of puppies, in the midst of a battle he could burst into tears because of the spoiled yellow cavalry boots, once voluntarily left service in an infantry regiment so as not to part with his cavalry uniform, passionately loved good horses, whose tails he braided in braids, ordered silver dishes in Vienna, adored balls, masquerades, fireworks and felt like a fish in water in salons and living rooms among music and women.

His father said about him that he was uncontrollable, like a hurricane, and constantly walked along the edge of the abyss, but he alternately looked like his mother, then his grandfather, then the unborn son or granddaughter. He was a very prominent man, above average height, white-faced, with a hollow in his chin, like a navel, and hair long, thick and black as coal. His eyebrows were skillfully curled, as is usually done with a mustache, and his mustache was braided in two lashes. On the endless roads of war, stretching across Bavaria, Silesia and Italy, he aroused the admiration of women for his figure, manner in the saddle and long, always well-combed hair, when, tired of long marches and hardships of military life, he dried them, sitting near the fire in what - some roadside tavern. Sometimes his admirers jokingly dressed him in women's clothes, stuck a white rose in his hair, shook out the last penny out of him at dances, yielded to him, sick and tired, their beds and with tears in their eyes said goodbye to the cavalrymen when they left their winter quarters. And he said that all his memories fit in a backpack.

With a strange, feminine smile on his face, through which he had a beard, young Opuich rode with his father, still a teenager, and later himself, as an officer of the French cavalry, throughout that part of Europe, which stretched from Trieste and Venice to the Danube and from there to Wagram and Leipzig, and grew up in French bivouacs, marking each new decade with a new war. Mrs Paraskeva Opuich, his mother, sent him in vain "cakes with sad walnuts." Young Sophronius became the father of his devil before the child. With one eye he was on his maternal grandmother, who was primarily Greek, and the other on his father, who was ultimately a Serb, so the young Opuich from Trieste saw the world with sidelong eyes. He whispered: "God is the one that is, and I am the one that is not."

From childhood he carried a well-hidden big secret in himself. It was as if he felt that something with him as a being belonging to the human race was not quite right. And naturally there was his desire to change. He wanted this secretly and strongly, a little ashamed of such a desire, as something indecent. All this was like a slight hunger, which, like pain, curls up under the heart, or a slight pain that awakens in the soul like hunger. He, perhaps, did not remember exactly when this latent yearning for change began, which took the form of a small, disembodied force. It was as if he was lying, connecting the tips of the middle and thumb, and at the moment when sleep fell on him, he dropped his hand from the bed and the fingers separated. And then he started, as if letting go of something from his hands. In fact, he let go of himself. Then a desire arose. Terrible, unforgiving, so heavy that under his load he began to limp on his right leg ... Or, as it sometimes seemed to him, it happened another time, long ago, when he found someone's soul in a plate full of stewed cabbage and ate it ...

Be that as it may, but a mysterious and strong movement arose in him. It is difficult to say what it was - perhaps some dizzying ambitions associated with his own and father's military vocation, some incomprehensible yearning for a new, true enemy and reasonable allies, a desire to change places in relations with his father; perhaps, the thrust to the south haunted him, where he, the imperial cavalryman, was attracted by the lost Balkan kingdoms that once stretched here as far as the Peloponnese, and the blood of his grandmother, a Greek woman, whose family created its enormous wealth on trade between Europe, spoke in him and Asia. Or perhaps it was some kind of third happiness and desire, of those muddy and strong, which make a person's face constantly change. It then looks the way it will be in old age, then the way it was in those days when its owner still listened to the opinions of others. Because a person's face breathes, it breathes in and out time.

Since then, he constantly and worked hard to change something in a significant way in his life so that the dream that tormented him became a reality, but all this had to be done as secretly as possible, so his actions often remained incomprehensible to those around him.

Now young Opuich, hiding from everyone, wore a stone under his tongue as a secret, or, more precisely, a secret as a stone, and his body underwent one change that was difficult to hide and which gradually became known to everyone as a legend. At first the women noticed it, but they said nothing; then, already out loud, officers in his regiment began to joke about this topic, after which they started talking about him throughout the theater of military operations. “He's just like a woman. He can always! " - the officers who served with him laughed.

Young Opuich, from that very decisive day, walked the world with a secret in himself and with a man's spear always ready for battle under his stomach. It was then that his eleventh finger straightened and began to count the stars. And it always remained that way. This did not bother him, he rode horseback still merrily, but he never told anyone about his secret, which could be the cause of everything.