July the third
I was at my mum’s dacha. Saw Chinese noodles and Chinese beans in a tin on a shelf. Spasms have started. I explained to her that in China human life is not a priority value. She asked – is it here? I gave up. I didn’t know what to say. But then I thought of something: yes, human life’s worth a penny here too. But the Chinese resigned themselves to that and we never will! At night I buried the noodles and the beans in the garden. I’m sure nothing will ever grow there.
August the tenth
The treason at home is overpowering me. Today she brought sliced Lithuanian cheese. My own wife! Plastic! And poison wrapped in plastic. No matter how many times I told her that any processing of the source material is premeditated murder. Hard cheese – how can it be hard if the milk is liquid? It’s ‘cause there are two rectal cancers’ worth of hardeners and thickeners in it. Lithuania! Has anything worthwhile ever come from Lithuania>? The wife’s crying, says there’s Nekrosius. Well alright. Because Nekrosius twenty years ago in Uncle Vanya was showing the actors’ eyes through a magnifying glass, I have to destroy my health? She tells me, so what are we going to eat? You don’t drink any milk, don’t eat any butter. I say, I wonder if you’d ever read the labels on them all? You think that’s milk, that’s butter? That’s chemical weapons of mass destruction! Last time I drank milk was forty years ago near Pskov, when I would go to Auntie Masha with a milk-can and I personally saw the cow. It would turn sour the next day if you didn’t boil it.
September the second
I permitted her to buy a chicken. I gave her a warning: only a Russian one, the thinnest, with purple specks, and the purple color should be like in Vrubel’s paintings, not what the contemporary artists use. But I won’t be eating that myself – let her try it if she’s so brave. I know what they feed them. I mean, I don’t know but I have my suspicions…
She ate and praised it. She says that we’ve good chicken farms. Poor, silly woman! The country’s ruled by the Golden Calf but she believes in good chicken farms.
September the thirtieth
I went to buy rice myself. She’d probably bring some wacky rubbish where the grains are the size of a nut and the packaging is covered in slogans for fools, e.g. “risotto.” Let the Italian loafers eat that risotto and praise their main thief-in-law Berlusconi, but I know for certain that the rice has to be domestic, grown in Kuban, in a dusty bag, small, darkened grains, with stones. I know the people of Kuban, they live without any chemicals, the most they can do is add a piece of clay to the bag for extra weight.
Couldn’t buy the rice immediately, had to go to three different shops because one shop assistant talked in a polite voice and another one smiled. Never! Never buy anything from a shop assistant who smiles or talks in a polite voice. He’s either drunk out of his mind, which is actually OK, or is cheating you. That’s why he’s smiling, why else would he?
October the eighth
Every week there are mass food poisonings somewhere. How trusting are the people! How defenseless! Understand – YOU CAN’T EAT ANYTHING outside your home! And at home you have to be checking and controlling. Nuts – only with nutshells. Bread – black, the cheapest kind, no more than three pieces a week. The cereals, as I always say, have to be exclusively domestic, from a dusty bag with clay and rubbish. The veggies – domestic, small, crooked, filthy, unsightly. Carrots no longer than 6 inches, only unwashed. Beetroot – no more than 3 inches. In diameter. Everything bright, shiny, large, aggressive goes straight to the rubbish heap, and only there. And do make sure that the shop assistant serves you with hatred. That means he’s not stealing and the goods are decent. I have to break through to the television, I could still save people’s lives. Golly gee, golly gosh! What are we eating! What are we eating!
October the twenty-third and a half
I’ve found a few candy wrappers in the trash – my wife’s secretly eating the candies. “Belochka.” By the Krupskaya factory. Say hello to the wide open road towards diabetes and sclerosis! She says she’s sick of my dried mushrooms. Why should she like her food? Why does it have to be tasty? It’s all debauchery, debauchery, debauchery. They all want a holiday every day, they all want to be entertained until they drop. There can’t be a holiday every day, every day there’s got to be everyday, a man has to work, he must be bored and sick, it must be tough and bitter. Of course if you’re stuffed you want to have some candies, but try fasting for some three days, and a piece of bread will be sweeter than honey. All the tasty things are going straight to the rubbish heap, and only there. I haven’t been talking to my wife for several days.
November the somethingth probably the seventh
We made peace. Drank some of my lemon vodka. I’m making it myself, there’s no other way. Imagine me drinking the shop-bought stuff! Understand, I tell her, darling, understand – there’s no sausage! No fish! No meat! There’s sliced, portioned, packaged, laid out poison, sickness and death. She started to argue with me, mentioned God. What an empty head she has! This is God’s plan.
“What sort of God’s plan is this?”
“The most obvious one. You do remember from the books of wisdom that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, that the others will be saved, right, do you? Well, how do you think they’ll be saved? Very easily. Through the food. He who ate black bread, impoverished cereals, small, filthy veggies will go through the eye of the needle. And he who’s been stuffing their gut with shop and restaurant food never will.”
She’s moaning:
“At least some pasta!”
Alright. It would of course have been better to halt all this eating food nonsense altogether, but, so be it, I’ll bring you some pasta from the Novgorod region. I saw it myself – thick, grey in color, packed in 1 ½ kilo bags. God is merciful, and maybe we will survive.