That would sound bitingly blunt, in perestroyka style, in the spirit of a new times, i.e. new trends, non-trithroughl words; and the old editor-in-chief of “The Star” Martysheva, with a heavy heart would approve it for publishing, and then would suffer, waiting for destructive phone call in the night, and then herself would call to the printing house in the morning, would torment the proofreaders all the next day… But Klyuvkin, as usual, would be wrong. After Chernobyl Blinchuk couldn't be freaked by anything to the extent of making a reckless decision twice a day.
– Glyzin, don't you shoot!
The highway (if counted on the left bank of the Volga) Volzhsky-Astrakhan (about two and a half rows in width, the asphalt is from medium-poor to almost-good, indistinct roadsides with deep ditches, a good Soviet road of of the Union significance) runs almost parallel to the Volga's arm, Akhtuba, and dissects in half the secret city of Kapustin (postal address “Leninsk-1” until recently) and the adjacent ancient village Kapustino. If you go from Volzhsky, there will be the actual city, marked Volgogradskiy check point (in fifty-seventy meters from the highway through a faded, well-shot wasteland) on your left. Further the highway gnaws into the private sector, once or twice, the 85th kilometer, and you are on wide Russian operational space, and ahead you have freedom, the Caspian, Persia, massacre without restrictions, pearls, and carts and canoes full of mysterious princesses. There are are two fences between the checkpoint and the outer street of Kapustin (Enthuziastov): the first is right at the checkpoint, barbed wire on a concrete pillars, however, quickly coming to naught, – and the barrier of concrete slabs right aside Enthuziastov stretches along five-story buildings and Komsomoltsev park to the north-east corner of the city. A year ago, during evacuation (panic escaping) of people away the sparkling, burning, exploding in the night Kapustin, this barrier was destroyed in many places. It has been rammed by buses, by boards and by personal “zhiguli” cars as well. And even one brave armored vehicle broke and brought down a rather long piece of this fence behind the hospital, and drowned in asphalt at the nearest intersection right after that. At the Volgogradsky check point, the distance between the outer fence of the wire and the concrete fence is minimal, two dozen meters, here was the main flow of the refugees, and there is only one concrete section left in the working condition, that means standing upright, – the constituent part of the Stand perimeter. Right out of it, just in a few steps from “shishiga”, the Father appeared in front of them. Appeared, arose as a character of a magic TV-show of David Copperfield, an American Kio, broadcast before and after midnight by Channel One of the central television. As if the Father was sitting there since night, waiting for the moment, most effective for “Abracadabra” and “voila”. It was impossible to believe that he, such as he was, could sneak in some other way up to Blinchuk group, even if it was stricken with diarrhea, stomach colic, and diplopia. Moreover, Nabis, who had trodden the Dog's Curve of the “neutral” in every way, knew for certain: near the Stand there is not a single, even the most wasteful, even wiped, air mirror. It's impossible to hide here. Hocus-pocus.