I stood rooted to the spot in astonishment. An amazing beauty looked at the bustling crowd from a poster, and smiled mysteriously. It was that very woman for whom the world exists – the wondrous world of human progress that created hair dye, fake teeth, mascara and glittering lipstick. A woman like this seems as if she always should be lying on a tiger skin looking at irises and oleanders and listening to the sound of the tide mixed with psalms sung in her honor.
The writing on the poster, however, announced something different. “Antonina Babosyuk, Vice President of the jewelry holding Altyn and General Director of the Altyn-Zoloto supermarket network.” This wonderful blonde whose posters filled St. Petersburg turned out to be more than just a consumer, she’s an outstanding producer in the world of happiness and beauty. As she worked tirelessly, Antonina Babosyuk, a member of the United Russia party, has not only become a Vice President and a General Director, she was awarded with an unbelievable number of medals and degrees, including the Pride of Russia order and Catherine the Great order, the latter in three degrees. Just imagine, all three degrees! That’s nothing, just to name all the awards and degrees that Antonina Babosyuk has would take about half of this issue…
And then I started to worry. It may so happen that the great Antonina Babosyuk will one day visit our city, so to speak, in person. And I want to ask you, how are we going to greet Antonina Babosyuk and her medals? Are we capable of finding a cultural program that would suit her? Does St. Petersburg have anything that’s not on the same scale – we can’t even start dreaming about it yet – but at least worthy of a condescending look of the Altyn-Zoloto ruler?
Yes! I can guarantee quite a decent cultural program for Antonina Babosyuk. You just have to listen to my advice – it’s not invented out of thin air, it were literally achieved through much suffering caused by encounters with life.
OK, there goes, entertainment for Antonina Babosyuk – three-day program.
Day one. Visit to the Konstantin Tachkin Ballet Theater.
Posters informing the theater-goers about the existence of Konstantin Tachkin’s ballet are hanging just where Antonina Babosyuk does – in the metro. It’s a private theater with classical repertoire. It spends its creative life touring abroad, and never fails to bring a heap of enthusiastic reviews from South Africa and New Zealand – from the places where the biggest experts on Russian ballet live, as we all know. But you can also catch them in St. Petersburg. There is, however, one strange thing about the Konstantin Tachkin Theater – not a single announcement, not a single interview ever mentions whose choreography is used on stage. Has this mysterious theater somehow managed to privatize all the classic choreography during these stormy times – from Petipa to Vinogradov and Grigorovich? And now, having saved quite a fortune on ballet-masters and successfully attached itself to the gold-bearing word-combination “Russian classic ballet,” they are proud of not getting a single ruble from the state or the sponsors, earning everything themselves instead. It looks as if the Konstantin Tachkin ballet would be a great gift for Antonina Babosyuk.
Day two. Visit to the Ivan Slavinsky private art gallery.
Ivan Slavinsky’s gallery is situated at the beginning of the 6th line on Vasiliyevsky Island. It consists several small rooms that introduce the public to the paintings of the owner of the gallery. Some renegades’ screams that Ivan Slavinsky is a dullard and an amateur can be dismissed as impossible to prove and quite idle. Lack of talent is not a legal obstacle to making art. Any person can paint and show their paintings in public. Besides, Ivan Slavinsky possesses a great quality that makes him somewhat akin to Antonina Babosyuk – he’s an extremely active fellow. This activity is constantly spilling over outside the gallery – and there’s the carriage-way of the 6th line outside the gallery. The tireless author of his own paintings has recently built a marquee, and the street was closed for two whole days (July 6 & 7) while shouts of revelry and celebratory chanting was heard from inside the marquee.
Some angry residents who refer to Ivan Slavinsky as the bane of the 6th line were outraged that the whims of an owner of a private gallery turn out to be above the law, and that an amateur’s dances have taken over the carriage-way which, as we all know, private persons are not permitted to block. But when attempts to find out what was happening from the traffic police and cops on duty (who watched the proceedings, perhaps because of lack of more important things to do) were made, the relevant authorities pointed up at the sky. Which was where, I assume, the permission to use the carriage-way as a subsidiary of Ivan the Art Hero’s gallery came from.
His love of art knows no boundaries. I recommend Ivan Slavinsky’s art to Antonina Babosyuk with confidence.
Day three. Listening to the music by Vasily Shishkin.
The name of Vasily Shishkin also came to me from the depths of the metro, this breeding ground of popular education. “For Those Who Understand!” – the poster assures me. This hitherto unknown composer (to me, anyway) has, however, recorded numerous albums. I personally was intrigued by the record called “The Dark Side of the Soul.” I can just feel the abysses that are based on personal experience. Well, you have to agree that nowadays a composer can hardly manage to get enough cash together to pay for the ads on the metro using just the bright sides of his soul? I suspect that Antonina Babosyuk could get interested in the restless soul of Vasily Shishkin.
But most likely my efforts are in vain.
It is most likely that Konstantin Tachkin, Ivan Slavinsky, Vasily Shishkin and Antonina Babosyuk have absolutely no need for my mediation. They know each other perfectly well – they’re on the same expedition, members of the same team cheerfully and amicably fulfilling a set task and staunchly serving the common cause.
Maybe they are the makers of a new world? And in this world qualities that once were considered as a vice – say, pathological smugness, vulgar immodesty and stupid self-admiration – will turn into virtues?
“Who knows, dear Watson, who knows…” – as Sherlock Holmes used to say!