Diary. June 29

I am sitting in the Pulkovo waiting room, on a plastic chair, with a suitcase and a Halloween cape on my lap, and writing this. There is a crowd around, the smell of coffee from a kiosk, the loudspeaker wheezes about a delayed flight to Moscow. My plane is in a couple of hours, and I still can't believe that I am flying abroad. This story began two weeks ago, and everything started from that morning of June 16, when I had a fight with my grandmother and met Igor. I go over those days in my head as my pen scratches on the paper.

On June 16th, I woke up with a buzzing head - the night before, I had stayed up late with a bottle of Baltika. It was stuffy in the Khrushchev-era building, the wallpaper in the corner by the window was peeling off, it smelled damp, as if St. Petersburg had decided to remind people that it was located on a swamp. The Rubin TV was wheezing news about Chechnya, but I turned it off - I didn't want that crap in the morning. Grandma Anna Ivanovna was rattling pots in the kitchen, apparently cooking borscht. I dragged myself to wash up, and she immediately pounced: "Dmitry, have you been drinking again? When will you come to your senses? You're thirty-one, and you live like an alcoholic from Ligovka!" I snapped: "Don't interfere, I'll sort it out myself." She responded: "He'll sort it out! Look at yourself, a beer belly like Uncle Kolya from the third floor!" I couldn't take it anymore, slammed the door and ran out into the street. Damn, I knew she was right, but I didn't have the strength to listen. It was disgusting to look in the mirror - flabby, with bags under my eyes, and yet at LETI girls used to run after me.

The street on Vasilievsky Island is the usual St. Petersburg bustle. A GAZelle minibus rumbled past, splashing my old sneakers with a puddle. At a stall on the corner, a woman with purple hair was selling "Java" and cabbage pies, it smelled of rancid butter. I walked past, my hands in the pockets of my Halloween cloak - yes, the same one, from 1999. It was already worn out, but in it I felt like I was not quite me, but someone else, bolder. On a bench by the entrance, three old ladies in colorful scarves were yelling at each other: "What are you talking about, Klavdiya, potatoes for three rubles - that's robbery!" I grinned - this is all of St. Petersburg, even old women argue here, like at a rally. I passed a playground where a couple of boys were kicking a ball around and their mother in sweatpants was yelling: "Sanya, come home, I'll pull your ears now!" The air smelled of asphalt after the rain, the dampness of the Neva and the smoke from the cigarettes that two workers were smoking by the trash can.

And then - bam! - I hear: "Dmitry! Is that you?" I turn around, and there's Igor, my classmate from LETI, standing there, grinning like a cat that's eaten too much sour cream. In a denim jacket, with a bag from Produkty, and a pack of Java in his hands. I froze. How long has it been since we've seen each other? Five years? Six? He's like: "You're something, in that raincoat of yours, like from a spy movie! Let's go to my place, let's chat!" Honestly, I almost hugged him right there. Finally, someone who enjoys seeing me, flabby and beer-bellied! Are there really still people who remember me not as a loser, but as that guy at LETI who soldered circuits until the morning?

We trudged to his apartment, two blocks away, in the same Khrushchev-era building as mine, only with graffiti reading "Zenit is the champion" on the entrance. The stairs smelled of cat urine and freshly brewed compote; the neighbor from the first floor had left a saucepan by the door again. Igor chattered like in the old days, as if those years when I was drowning in a bottle and dreams about Afghanistan had never happened.

Everything in his one-room apartment is like it was in the 90s: a sofa with a sagging spring, a Gorizont TV with an antenna wrapped in foil, and a mountain of Tekhnika-Molodezhi magazines on the nightstand. In the kitchen, there's a windowsill littered with cigarette butts, a whistling kettle, and a couple of bottles of Baltika-Troika in the Biryusa refrigerator. Igor got out a beer and clinked the bottle with me: "To LETI, Dmitry!" I took a sip, the foam was cold and bitter, like my thoughts, but with Igor, everything seemed to come to life. He began: "Remember how you and I used to stick cheat sheets under our desks during Petrovich's electrodynamics exam?" I laughed - yes, Petrovich, the associate professor with the perpetually wrinkled shirt, was catching us, but we still got Bs. "And how you distilled moonshine in Sanka's dorm, and then half the floor sang 'Kalinka' until the morning?" Igor laughed, slapping his knee. I nodded, and my chest ached - I was alive then, not like now, with a soldering iron and a hangover.

Then Igor quieted down, poured himself another beer, and said: "Listen, Dmitry, here's the thing. Our teacher called me the other day, you know, Kovalev, and he was lecturing us about antennas. He was gray-haired, with a beard like Leo Tolstoy's." I remembered Kovalev, strict but fair, always droning on about waveguides, and Igor and I were arguing in the back rows about who was cooler, "Terminator" or "RoboCop." Igor continued: "So, he says: 'Igor, do we have any guys who know English?' I'm like: 'What's the point?' And he says: 'A request came from the States, from those well-fed, pot-bellied Yankees. They're looking for someone at LETI who knows electronics and can string two words together in English.'" I froze, the bottle in my hand shaking. "Igor, are you serious? What's the point of all this?" I ask, and my head is already spinning. He shrugged: "I don't know, Dmitry, but Kovalev said that some institute in America needs our man. Maybe for some project, maybe for a conference. But I immediately thought of you - you were cramming English at LETI, while Sanek and I were sitting in a pub."

I almost choked on my beer. I know English, yes - I learned it in Afghanistan, when I was hanging out with American instructors, and at LETI I translated articles for my term papers. But me, Sukhov, to the States? This is not just a trip - it is a chance to escape this everyday life, from the Khrushchev-era buildings, the kiosks, the whining of my grandmother and dreams about the sands! My heart started pounding, like when I jumped out from under fire in 1986. Igor looked at me and smiled: "So, Dmitry, are you going to go to the Yankees? Or should I tell Kovalev that you never let go of your soldering iron?" I just exhaled: "Igor, you... that... let me think." And in my head I was already thinking - oh yeah, a chance, damn it, a chance!