A true friend.
He was born in Sevastopol in 1966, but Vasia
came to Dnipropetrovsk in 1981 with his mother, father and brother. A not very
tall and skinny boy started studying in the same class
as me. We became university students after finishing school. Vasia and I had almost
the same height, weight, and mass. But not everything in the world is measured
in numbers. We felt an elusive unity of our souls from the first days of
communication and therefore became friends quickly. Our common interests were chess,
cycling, watching movies and reading books.Vasya could play the accordion, and did
not swear. He did not smoke or drink alcohol in his youth.
We told each other about new books sometimes.
For example, when Vasya read the story written by Venedikt Erofeev
"Moscow-Petushki", it excited him very much. This is a sad story
about the last few hours of a drunkard's life. Maybe this book was sent by
Heaven as a warning for us? But do we always listen to the voices of Heaven?
Time passed.
Vasya and I graduated from university in
1988 and it seemed that our paths might diverge. I left to teach mathematics at
a rural school near Kyiv. My friend stayed in Dnepropetrovsk. In 1991 the
Soviet Union collapsed. Many destinies were broken along with the country.
Times were hard and life forced Vasya to go into business. He didn't want to work as a
teacher. Several years have passed, but it seemed like one day.
Once upon an evening, I heard a knock on my door. Vasya
was standing on the threshold. He had come to Kyiv on business and decided to
stay with me for a few days. My friend was going to leave soon, but... a chance
meeting with a woman (if you still believe in chance) changed his plans. Her
name was Tatiana. She was the mother of three children. A few weeks later, they
got married. Does time run fast, or does time go slowly?
We began to live in a village called Byshev. There was an incredibly
beautiful lake in the center of the village. Simple people and hopes for a
bright future walked along the wide streets of Byshev at that time. But two
years later, I was appointed headmaster of a school in another settlement, and
I left Byshev. Vasya became a villager, but it was not his life. He learned to
dig potatoes and earn money, but it is difficult to play a flute melody on the double bass.
Wine, vodka, or cognac can make the
black-and-white world colorful for a while. But if you drink alcohol every day,
the colorful world can become black.
I don’t know how Vasya fell down the stairs
and hit his head on a summer's day. Ambulance, hospital, surgeon, operation,
and then disability. My friend stopped walking. He couldn't control his legs.
Vasya was bedridden.
Sometimes he was taken for walks in a
wheelchair. On a hot summer day, August 6, Tatyana took him out into the yard.
Vasya's birthday was on August 7.
Tatyana slowly rolled the wheelchair along
the bright green rustling grass and heard her husband say something
quietly.
- What? - she asked.
- I’m saying that it would be funny, - Vasya
answered, - if my gravestone reads: ‘born on August 7, died on August 7.’
Please, Tanya, do a black marble slab for me and let a monument to the lost
ships that stands in Sevastopol Bay be engraved on it.
Confused by what she heard, Vasya’s wife
stopped, froze, and didn’t know what to say. But then she asked, “Vasya, are
you crazy?” My friend just shrugged.
He liked to joke about himself, but Vasya
didn't like mean jokes about anyone. Once, after he had an injury, a charity
organization presented him with an old wheelchair. There was an inscription on
the back of the wheelchair: "Last way." Nobody knows what those words
mean; it may have been the name of the charity organization. Vasya told all his
friends about it and laughed loudly.
He died on the morning of August 7th.
Vasya loved life. I think about him often and
remember a story he told me in our school years. My friend liked to dive
headfirst into the water in the river, in the pool, and at sea. When he was 12, his classmate in Sevastopol jumped off a cliff into the sea headfirst
on a wild beach. The boys jumped into the water from that cliff many times.
But that day, the boy broke his head on a
stone that the underwater current brought at night and died. Since then, Vasya
understood that you can jump into the water headfirst only if you can see the
bottom.
When did evil vodka appear in his life? Who
can know?
My friend played the button accordion well
because he graduated from a music school. When we were first-year students at
the university, we celebrated someone's birthday with the whole group in the
dormitory. Vasya played a lot, and the students applauded him. Suddenly, one of
them suggested,
- I'll put a glass of vodka on the accordion.
Can you drink it without stopping playing?
Vasya did it.
People often think that they are stronger
than alcoholic drinks. This is not true. Vodka can defeat a person and ruin his
life. It can even kill him later.
It is hard not to get lost in the forest of
life. The path that leads to a sunny clearing is very similar to the path that
leads to dark, dense thickets. Kind people often find themselves on an evil path.
What is kindness? Vasya had many interesting
books at home, and in our childhood, it was difficult to find interesting books
in bookstores. For example, novels by Alexander Dumas or Jules Verne, or even
Soviet books from the "War Adventures" series. My friend allowed us
to read his books. He always shared the candies that his mother gave him for
school, but he never shared secrets with other people.
A true friend is a reliable friend. Why did
the passions for chess, books, mathematics, cycling, swimming, tennis, and
music dissolve in the cognac-vodka deception? I can't answer this question.
Yurii Tokar, 2024, Ukraine
