Veronica: Dedicated to all of us and the beautiful Veronica Castro

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Mexican television series "Wild Rose" has become one of the symbols of the early 90s of the last century for all citizens of the disappeared state called the USSR. Then, in a period of timelessness, against the backdrop of political and economic cataclysms, every evening people clung to TV screens to follow the difficult fate of the young beauty Rosa. This heartfelt essay tells about that time, about all of us and, of course, about the beautiful Veronica Castro.

Lovelace Khachatur once again smeared his sparse, already very gray hair on his balding head. My hair was also smeared back and for the hundredth time I was asked to repeat the greeting phrase in Spanish entrusted to me.

Since childhood, possessing a heightened sense of tact, it seemed ridiculous to Khachatur and my hair greased, and these baroque greetings, and these ugly painted women, and these Bohemian crystal buckets with stuck brooms of carnations.

Why Khachatur was a womanizer I don't remember. And what was put into this concept in a provincial Armenian city in the early 90s is also difficult to imagine. Mature, strong, but no longer athletic, imposing, in the understanding of that time, with sensual lips, reminiscent of either Anthony Queen or Lev Leshchenko, Khachatur was the head of the cultural department of the House of Pioneers. The "second person" in it. The "first person" was the prostitute Jeanne, the director of the House of Pioneers. She dyed her hair yellow, lined her lips with red lipstick and was not married, which automatically made her a prostitute, even without taking into account her playful name, as well as a secret, and widely known throughout the city, connection with the ladies' man Khachatur.

Everyone always called the prostitute Zhanna that way, and according to childish logic I thought that it was something like a party name or a prefix. And God knows, still seeing prostitutes on Montera Street or Desenganyo in Madrid, I involuntarily remember Jeanne. Such is the associative array. And the word ladies' man, according to the same principle, is forever associated with the irretrievably fading, as the relevance of the House of Pioneers, Khachatur.

This was the very beginning of the 90s. The Soviet Union no longer existed, but the buildings, structures and connections, teams, discipline, the most common habit of dressing in the morning and going to work remained. Like a chicken with a severed head, social and cultural life, the system of education, leisure and science were still moving, feeling that they would soon fall breathless. All employees of the House of Culture and the Palace of Pioneers, a cinema and a theater, three museums and a helicopter plant have not received their salaries for about a year. The old authorities no longer existed, the new ones did not exist yet. In addition, against the backdrop of war and devastation, the fact that some salaries were paid to doctors and police officers was already a feat. It was a real timelessness, moments of vacuum after a powerful explosion, when deaf and shell-shocked, people do not feel or see, desperately trying to live.

And now this whole system, working by inertia, strained its last forces, gathered all reserves and will, the womanizer Khachatur put on the newest of his old shirts, the workers put on the best GDR dresses, the prostitute Zhanna decorated the hall with flowers at her own expense to meet her.

I sat in Café de Bellas Artes after three meaningless and productive work meetings, the last of which even contained lunch, but everything I ate while talking about cooperation, consolidation and payment through friendly funds seemed to not go into my stomach, causing at the same time the feeling unpleasant satiety and a keen desire to eat thoughtfully. Untie the hated tie and threw it on the back of the chair opposite, I drank hot chocolate, because the fifth coffee of the day was a bad idea, washed down with lemon water. Pompous and inconsiderate waiter. Typical of this place, more like a museum. For a year of generous tips and sticks, he got used to being attentive to me, and now, haughtily serving tourists, he alternately glanced at me, waiting for my senseless and tired gaze to break away from the ceiling with paintings and call him. One day, after a five-euro tip at the beginning rather than the end of the service, he ingratiatingly asked who I was and where I was from. Then both of these questions confused me with the ambiguity with which I would have to answer them, and the laconic answers would be untrue. However, because of this little episode, I remember this particular waiter, Luis. He was one of many, like him, middle-aged men from Latin America, with a small but persistent self-importance, who had worked in this famous, beautiful and bad cafe for many years.

(The service in it was either dismissively unobtrusive or ingratiating. Irritated from the first, I "matured" to the second, which I hated. But at least I got drinks on time and at the temperature that they should be.)

“You should go to Poland tomorrow, not Thursday. For how long should I take a ticket? By the secretary of the Association Laura. It would have been necessary to answer something, suddenly the tickets would run out, but even the thought of having to touch the phone caused excruciating feelings of apathy and nausea. Most likely from the many cups of bad coffee and wasted food. Well, it is not necessary. No need to answer, I thought. Moreover, tickets for the damned flight from Madrid to Warsaw never run out. How do the notorious Polish plumbers return home? On foot? Lord, what chauvinism! I was sick. From myself, from the pointless work and the tremendous success with which I coped with it. I don't want to go to Poland. Can I write it like that?

We lay after sex and looked at the ceiling. I've always done this. But this time she did the same. This time she was as brooding and devastated as me. It was just a different person this time. But now, in the first seconds after, it seemed that you were not lying with her and not with someone in particular, but with all the women who were in your life. With all real and fictional partners. But you lie alone, alone with this ridiculous desire, not to be alone.

“You’ll go, huh?” “…” “If you want, you can stay, I… mine will only come on Monday.” “What day is it?” “Friday. - And in which one … "Damn, I don't even remember which area it is …" On the other hand, that's why I had sex. Forgetting. A short but complete oblivion. Where are you. What day is today. Who is lying next to. Yes, and God is with her! The main thing is who you are. Forgetting was about the main thing - you did not remember yourself. All these painful and hateful memories, which have become mere facts of biography, all names, names of streets, cities and countries, descriptions of problems and diagnoses, corrosive reminders of the necessity and impossibility of happiness. Schedules, schedules, epicrisis. You didn't remember any of this. You didn't remember the feeling of guilt and … you just didn't think. A minute, two, three. If you're lucky, five. And how valuable it was that she did not say anything at these moments. Nothing. At all. And today she's done well. For a long time she looked at me and at the ceiling, which I watched so closely. - What is in what? - … - In what area are we? She was quick-witted. Sensitive. She chuckled dully. - Do you at least remember my name?

She was late. They said she was detained at the airport. Then in Yerevan. Then somewhere else. Just think, a state visit. The President met with her. The president of a country where there is still no national currency and cigarettes can be bought for rubles, dollars, marks and even barter. Catholicos. Incredibly simple. Although then, it all seemed quite natural. Lovelace Khachatur walked in front of us for the hundredth time, rechecking either the greeting phrases, memorized already to automatism, or the evenness of the styling of our hair, or the correctness of movements during the transfer of roses, all the uncut thorns on which we managed to study.

Oh, I forgot to say, there were six of us first graders. All are either excellent students, or someone's relatives and always with the most cute and "European" faces, in order to prove to our guest at the level of physiognomy that she is in Europe.

We were honorary givers of roses, who, after the welcoming speech of Lovelace Khachatur, had to approach the object of admiration and give a rose each, while pronouncing all sorts of different vulgarities in Spanish during the Carlist wars.

In addition to Khachatur, all the workers, or rather the workers, of the Pioneers' house, stood in a row at the wall, resembling a queue to the accounting department for a salary, or the expectation of a mass was rubbed out. All in turn ran away to the toilet and also, running, returned, fearing to miss the beginning. Returning, they noted with satisfaction that nothing had happened in the past minutes and took their place in the row. The anticipation was depressing and terrible, like all the outfits and makeup. But then I did not understand it. We were children and all we knew was that something incredible was going to happen. We will see Her, alive. Moreover, we will give Her a rose and we will be able to say in her language that she is as beautiful as this rose. Or how glad we are to see her on the land of our blessed homeland and so on. But the main thing is that she will hear us. We do not have her, as usual, on TV every evening, but she has us. Feedback. It is as if God would begin to speak to you during prayer or morning coffee. Exciting and scary.

“Are these words in Mexican?” “No, in Spanish. - Why not Mexican. - No Mexican. - But Mexico, that is? - It's like Ukraine. They speak Russian there, my father served there. - Mexico next to Spain? - Yes. - And when the Catholicos received it, did they light incense?

She sat down at two tables to my left. Just behind the marble sculpture of a nude woman in the center of the cafe. Nobody recognized her. I figured it out from Louis' reaction. More precisely, by its absence. Although, being Hispanic, I could. I should. But no. How so? He did not even raise an eyebrow, continuing to indifferently accept an order from two Anglo-Saxons in ridiculous caps. And I recognized her immediately. They gave out the eyes. Everything else has changed beyond recognition: age, hair color, facial contours. At the table sat an adult woman, a pensioner to be ruthless, with dark hair, dyed, ennobled by cosmetologists, but tired skin, lips almost imperceptibly filled with something, a cheerful, albeit tired look, confident, sharp movements. But the eyes. I recognized them immediately. It didn't take even five minutes to make sure. To remember that only time, in the life before last, when I saw her. And also remember that time, 10 years ago, when I suddenly remembered about her lying in bed. Everything coincided. And for a moment the universe winked at me squinting from the sun and the fullness of being appeared. I looked at my watch to record this moment, the moment before the closure of the circle. 14 hours 39 minutes.

We didn't understand how it happened. When you wait for something for a very long time, it is so easy to miss it. It was slowly beginning to get dark, but she was still not there, although according to the schedule (we will believe that he was), she was supposed to arrive at three in the afternoon, but she was not there, and even the ladies' man Khachatur was nervous. Waiting is exhausting. Electricity was not turned on. And it was?

I don't remember much. Of course, I did not see the car that stopped in front of the pioneers' house. Only the contours of the crowd were visible, moving in our direction in an uneven line, and how helplessly and abruptly the doors swung open, admitting a huge stream of people. A couple of moments and the empty hall was simply filled with the bodies of people pressed close to each other. In my memories, everything was imprinted as interference on the TV screen or the moment of falling from a height. Flash and that's it. And in this fall, inside this flash, I saw several men in suits, tightly clasped with their hands to each other, as during a kochari dance; saw their swollen veins on their necks, their crimson faces and in the center of this protective magic circle from their hands - hers. She looked around in surprise and fear, but even through the fright she could see pride from the worship of the crowd. The chain of bodyguards moved close to us - children with roses, squeezed by the crowd against the wall and standing on the parapet that runs along it, so as to be higher and not be crushed. And here she is a few steps away from me, and I, standing on the parapet, of the same height as her. With a learned movement, I handed her a rose through the clasped hands of the bodyguards, and she, also mechanically, took it away. A hoop of people in suits is moving away from us, towards the torn mouth of the front door.

Lovelas Khachatur drank from the throat of the Jermuk bottle. It seems that this "Jermuk" was then produced in every city in dozens of yard industries by simply mixing water and soda. On the floor were overturned chairs and broken flowers. The workers of the House of Pioneers moved somnambulously around the hall, picking up torn pieces of cloth and paper from the floor. Others walked up and down with frayed brooms and scoops that didn't go so well with their makeup. Someone walked by with a coffee cup with a broken handle and a worn pattern that smelled strongly of valerian. The prostitute Jeanne became ill. The old guard walked around the doors that had fallen off their hinges and shook his head. - Shame, shame, - Khachatur said, looking at us, but obviously talking to himself, - nowhere, nowhere else is there such a thing … a nightmare … I haven't read poems … this is … we were preparing a number … songs … poems … flowers …

Everything is gone, he wanted to say. I went up to him to say that I could, I … I gave the rose. I have completed my mission. At least part of it. I thought then that maybe it would cheer him up, make him happy, and maybe one hundredth of what happened will make our evening out of what was planned … I thought that then our business would seem to him not so, not so … miserable and disastrous and insignificant. But in a treacherous way, it was at this moment that the prostitute Zhanna appeared with wet, after applying wet towels, her forehead, led by two employees by the hands. Khachatur went to her and, leaning on his shoulder, they headed for the exit. Since childhood, I had a heightened sense of tact and did not interrupt their sorrowful union. I saw him put her in the back seat of his, as yet fashionable, burgundy Muscovite, even a woman with blond hair should not sit in the front seat, got behind the wheel and drove off. Did Khachatur understand that this was the end? That it was not just a failure, that the House of Pioneers, the burgundy Muscovites, its fame as a womanizer, the entire system of relations and the whole life that gave rise to all this, perished? And now the agony?

Do not know. I just remember a Muscovite with two people inside, rapidly disappearing from sight and that at home that evening we ate fried potatoes with pickles and saw it on TV. And then, I forgot this day for a lifetime.

I called Louis and after four minutes, I noticed, there was a glass on her table and Louis obsequiously poured champagne, nodding her in my direction. I will write off the expenses for meeting with partners, the accounting part of my brain said to the sound of the opening cash register. I was not worried, but I was shy, and the seconds of thinking about paying the bill came in handy. Take it easy. Consider that she is an official.

I got up and walked over to her. He greeted and introduced himself. I asked to accept a modest gift from … from. - My family really appreciated your work senor, - I did not lie. I really didn't want to lie. - Very nice, please have a seat. I sat down, not deeply, on the edge of a chair, showing with all my posture that I was not going to abuse her time. - I'm very pleased. Are you Spanish? How many times a month do I tell this? 50? 100? Studies. Oh, really? Job. Really, yes. What are you? Curious! A family. Grandmother, aunt, wife, children. Interesting! Then discuss the food, the quality of the fruit, the weather, modernized opera performances, depending on the reaction of the interlocutor, either scold or praise. West Sahara? Maybe Iraq? Ah tsunami. Exactly! Creative plans? Nod politely. A couple of photos on the phone. Bow down. But no … I'm not here for that. Senora. - I must remind you of something, senora … You see, I came to you to … 25 years ago … There, on the ruins of the Soviet Union. Do you remember your tour? We tried, but for us … You understand, for us …

We suddenly found ourselves in a space plunged into wars and devastation by the collapse of a huge empire, poor and unfortunate countries that remained under the rubble of an entire era of titanic labor and great hopes. A country falling into a tectonic rift of time and in a couple of moments fell from the end of the twentieth century to the Middle Ages and … how long does it take to climb back? It was us. And we children were not very lucky to be born there and then (although we convince ourselves that we were very lucky and it made us stronger, but these are just excuses). And you! You were so, so … appreciated … no, loved, idolized as an image of something unknown, new, … some kind of beginning. And we are like poor peasants, dressing their festive rags so that the king passing in the carriage will notice them … and he may not even open the curtain to take a look … You, you will not understand, and probably should not. I just want to say that then, 25 years ago, I had to give that very rose (you remember it, don't you?) Say that you are as beautiful as this rose. Haha! Now, I know Spanish and I do not want to amuse you with phrases worthy of the characters of "Celestine", I will just say that you are very … very beautiful. And your extraordinary eyes are just as beautiful as then, looking at me in the midst of that crowd.

And tell me, did they burn incense at the Catholicos' reception? No? … And we thought about it … And you know Khachatur. He died. Yes. Then, he was going to read you poems in Spanish. It was his farewell match. He could not cope with it and after ten - fifteen years he died. From grief. I found out about this myself by chance last year. I never told him that I was able to give the rose. And the prostitute Jeanne also died. Can you imagine? Almost everyone died. And the House of Pioneers turned into ruins. You know, he was so beautiful then for the last time …

But since childhood, I had a heightened sense of tact. She was not fond of opera. I talked about coffee, I have a good preparation for all occasions. It just takes about five minutes. A few more minor suggestions for simplifying Spanish Castilian, generalities about the weather and wishes for a pleasant evening. I left. On my way out, I put a tip in Louis's hand and for the first time since we met I asked him something that had nothing to do with his job. “Do you know her?” “No senor. “You're Mexican.” “I grew up in Barcelona. “Bitch Barsa bitch,” I quoted the chant of the Real Madrid fans. - And who is she? “She is… a great Mexican actress. - What is her name?

- I remember who you are, don't talk nonsense. - Oh well. I sat up in bed and leaned back against the wall. - You are Veronica. Almost like Veronica Castro. - Who is this, the daughter of Fidel Castro? She asked ironically. A smart girl. - No, she's, she's an actress, Mexican … I don't know why I remembered her. - Mexican? … I saw "Bitch Love", she did not play there? “No, she… there was one story… a long, long time ago, but it doesn't matter… I never remembered it. It's strange that now came to mind. Tell me how to go to the metro, okay?