Deja vu. Love

– Oooh, Diti, good morning, Diti! Very glad to see you, Diti! You are well done, you are a real miracle!

– G-g-good, g-g-good, Ave! And I’m g-g-glad to see you! – the old man smiled good-naturedly. A couple of years ago, he began to stutter a little, getting stuck on some words, – it seems that age affected.

– How is your health? Everything is fine? How does it work? What is your mood for Sunday?

– Yes, thanks, h-h-health, as always, in p-p-perfect order! All excellent, of c-c-course! The weather, it s-s-seems to me, is g-g-getting b-b-better, and this is the m-m-most imp-p-portant thing for a p-p-positive attitude, isn’t it?!

– Is it, is it! The weather is good, that is customizable! The weather is weather, but do we always need to work so that it rains there or some other rubbish? – Ave looked back at the doors of the elevator car.

– Are you g-g-going to the fontanel?

– Exactly! And how did you guess? That’s right in the very, very “bullseye” hit! Surprisingly – I was able to guess! – Ave countered with a smile, he wanted to say about the accident in the elevator, but did not know if it was worth it: – Here… we have some problem in the elevator…

– Mmm, and what? S-s-something happened?

– Yes, I’m stuck for a few minutes now, and the lights went out…

– Here you g-g-go! So, what is next? You p-p-pressed the call b-b-button d-dispatcher? I p-p-pressed the b-buttons, any b-buttons?

– No, I didn’t have time… somehow everything quickly happened, and itself decided…

– Ave, you g-g-got scared, so what?

– Well, how scared? Not much, just all unexpectedly happened – that scared, but then the elevator went anyway.

– Well, now I will c-c-call the rep-p-pairman, he will d-d-definitely look! The main thing is that there is n-n-nothing s-s-serious.

– Well, thanks, I’ll run on.

– Well, always, p-p-please, it’s our job to k-k-keep track of order and s-s-safety! Have a n-n-nice day!

– Thanks! And to you, Diti, have an easy day and good luck! Let everything be in the highest class!

The hardly glass massive entrance doors behind Ave with a dull whistle connected with each other, when he felt the whole breath of spring with the whole body, for the first time the frosted March sun molded bright and welcoming pies in the spring, and gave everyone around, and immediately in the inter-air space the lightest ghosts of fragrances fluttered blooming handsome trees, when you still don’t quite feel the dreamy breath, but you already know that they are definitely somewhere near. After a prolonged thunderstorm night rain, huge islands of puddles were illusory everywhere, and the crowned sun, which had awakened much earlier than working ants and had already risen very high, merrily had fun, accepting ephemeral water baths, inviting everyone with their all-pervading rays to join in active participation in his unpretentious round dance, teasing and enticing on Sunday’s walk.

GREEN

Amina threw back a strand of dark curly hair with a flick of her foot. With her thin fingertips, she tapped nervously on an obscure melody. The bright light filling the whole room gave Amina an incomprehensible joy, so pleasant, gentle, affectionate.

“And then I’ll go… I’ll go…”, – but somehow I didn’t get any further, the stubborn thought stopped, and I didn’t want to develop and look for such a simple, seemingly simple answer.

Where she goes – absolutely no clarity! What awaits her in the coming days – a continuous, whitish, impenetrable fog, as they say, is a “foggy fog” that fell so wrong at the time, however, does it happen that it falls on time. It just happens, and then we already think: “Ye-e-es, this story fell upon us at the wrong ti-i-ime!”

Yes and where in general Amina will be able to go when she has in her hands a difficult, completely unresolved question. Here, even at the right time, at least as planned – there are enough difficulties with the head… Perhaps this is the most important, basic question of her life… now the most important thing is that the birth should go as it should, and then it will be solved by itself, then the answer will be found.

“The main thing is what? The main thing, as always, is to arrange everything in a strict order! I’ll see my little one, and then I’ll deal with the question of how and where I’ll live… I’m not lost, all my legs are healthy, I have strength – I’ll solve any question!”

Amina calmly got up, went up to the large, exactly two ants high, oval mirror and admired her reflection. Like most pregnant ants, she was charmingly attractive. The roundness gave her a special charm and charm. The abdomen, or rather its upper part, was smoothly protruding, unusually towering, such a captivating petiol (the connecting part between the abdomen and chest), just recently, it seemed yesterday, so feminine and so fabulously soft, it was now elegantly fitted, like a huge pimpled basketball. It seemed that the whole lively little body of the ant had spread at the seams at once, it was stretched out, and it was completely unrecognizable: the eyes (those that had complex eyes* of the ants) desperately spread from the gentle trotters into two blue shapeless ponds, whose gentle wild shores were torn off by torn pink clay; the neatly burgundy tendrils stuck out somehow not at all in a strict, not in an optimistic mood, one might even say, giving the image of hymenoptera an insignificant, but still sloppy sloppiness; antennal fossa*, a reliable refuge for the antennae, from where they sprouted, turned red and significantly swollen, and therefore the scapus* did not keep so even; mandibles*, on the contrary, have dried up and, at first glance, seemed almost half as much as usual. But, despite all the miraculous transformations, Amina felt unusually good and comfortable in the new body.

Sometimes the ant seemed illusory that she hears, and even feels, within herself vague, dull sounds, and then also soft pink, soft scrapes, and did not quite understand: this should be so in her position or all this is unnatural. The zealous doctors, who zealously surrounded the pregnant ants on all sides, sweetly explained, telling one thing or the other, and each time adding new lengthy arguments, and every time she quickly calmed down, hoping only for a good outcome.

In the polished surface of the mirror, the reflection of an ant in a white coat was rapidly approaching.

“Let’s go to the ward, in any case, you’d better lie down,” the doctor advised with a cold hoarse voice in his voice.

– Of cours-s-se, of cours-s-se, already coming, already coming. S-s-so I decided to take a little walk, but s-s-somehow, you know, s-s-she is sadly s-s-sitting in one place. It’s a little boring… – recently, Amina’s childish long-drawn-out “s-s-s-s” has somehow become funny, and she kindly squinted every time she caught herself thinking that “s-s-s-s” amuses others.

– Why did you run away? – a smile appeared on the ant’s face, and he carefully grabbed Amina under the elbow and led her into a long corridor.

– Yes, it’s boring, I’m s-s-saying… Well, really… I would take a little walk… – the prayer of the pregnant woman gradually sank among the plain light blue walls.

– Are you alright? Nothing is required, but tell me, will we do everything? If something is wrong – you can always safely say to the sisters, they will help you!

Chapter 9

WHITE

The road to the fontanel, no longer, no less than three quarters of an hour, today clearly reduced due to high spring mood.

“Our old Diti, a fairy-tale old man, nevertheless survived his released term. He’s so old! How old is he, interesting to know? When we settled here with Rond, there were rumors that he had conscientiously worked more than fifty dollars! More than fifty! The same… yes, this figure does not even fit into the head… so it was back then, almost back in the past life. And how much is he now? To think – horror is simple! And they don’t eliminate him, although who wants to fire a working hardworking worker? Eliminate only for objective reasons and lazy ants! You have to go too low to get fired. And this one is a real pro in his field, and, it seems, in his favorite field. He thoroughly knows everything that is necessary and what is not necessary, and he has learned all the ants very well – he must have found his own personal secrets to each tenant, and a significant plus to everything is that he is not at all lazy! He is not lazy, just – well done! I wonder if lazy individuals are in nature, in general, in principle, is this possible? Yes, a total of sixty years or more he worked? How much is it? And he doesn’t want to leave… and where, and why should he leave, if there is work here and he feels that we need, we need society, and somewhere there, somewhere outside our house – he will become, and that’s for sure, ‘Waste slag’ thrown by everyone and left to survive…”

The path to the life-giving fontanel, which served for many centuries as a true “dear life” for the hymenoptera of the city of Kekhidupan*, ran through the entire endless, long Sixty-second street, along a glossy, dry, lifeless wall of monotonous flat, inexpressive multi-storey monsters, occasionally interspersing, variegated motley glass cubes of supermarkets.

The only notable building on the above Sixty-second was the Congress Hall, which amicably combines together with a couple of dozen private minor television studios and press centers, and one state mega-TV channel. Frankly, honestly, the Congress Hall with its ambitious architectural forms was the only building that fully (from an artistic and aesthetic point of view) compensated the entire adjacent gray area of the same type. As if frozen in an unknown architectural ecstasy, in the geometrically regular form of the mystical octahedron, an amazingly beautiful high-rise building could rightly be considered a real work of modern architectural art. And the lower fatal-strange inverted pyramid, as if squeezed from all four sides, and the upper one – are amazingly regular in shape, both were undividedly decorated with multi-colored glass windows, pierced with a mysterious rainbow, more precisely from the ground floor, from the ground, asphalt pavement, to the sharp-pointed peak of twenty eighth, – all the millionth ghostly colors of the rainbow rocker flowed polyphonically from one to another. The sun’s rays of cheerful reflection from the surface of almost ideally mirrored triangles and rhombuses from afar attracted everyone’s attention, captivating the eyes of the townspeople and surprising tourists, sometimes turning into the carapace of a terrible huge ancient amphibian, which in every way murmured with patchwork and scaly modulations in every way.

The sixty-second street, spontaneously breaking off, quite easily turned into a sad wide tunnel, which you had to walk along for another ten minutes to find yourself on Hundred and Forty Street, and from there to the Third Quarter, where the fontanel was located, just a stone’s throw away.

Jumping around his native Sixty-second, Ave with a touch of genuine sadness said to himself that on this clear colorful Sunday there were an unusual number of ants in the streets of a cloudless city: everyone ran in a never-ending string, hurried, rode, was late, stumbled, stopped, colliding, exchanging glances, again continued the way.

A brand new clean bus of an unusually delicate peach color with a wide white stripe and the inscription “SP-Express Special Lines” silently braked quite a bit before reaching the intersection, at the stop of the routes, and two ants smartly jumped out of it, and a two-story liner, releasing a few pops another batch of deadly earthen smoke, as if a caterpillar had curved and turned onto Fifty-sixth Street. In a hurry, Ave almost ran past an ant that got off the bus, but something unusual happened. The jumped-up goose abruptly handed Ave the red paw, blocking, like a barrier, the road to an ant on duty, hastening for business affairs.

– Stop, stop, sto-o-op! On this side of Sixty-second str-r-reet it is strictly for-r-rbidden to walk with empty canister-r-rs!!! Have you not hear-r-rd of the last amendment in Ar-r-rticle 129th?! This is a r-r-real disor-r-rder! Disturbance of or-r-rder! How do you, so easily, ignor-r-e the laws! This is ver-r-ry bad!

Stunned for a minute, Ave looked up at a passerby and, completely unaware of anything, opened his mouth wide to at least something intelligible to answer such an extravegant statement, but, as luck would have it, nothing came to mind. His mandibles began to twitch nervously one after another.

“What terrible rubbish is this? What nonsense! What is going on, green duck? Who is that? Who invented something? What nonsense?!” – Immediately flashed in the head of Ave.

Doing nothing, the opposite ant stood waiting expectantly and stared unpleasantly at Ave, who stopped. But here the ant on duty hooked up familiar lines – either eyes, or scapus, or…, caught it with the very tip of the claw, the slight movement of the clypeus that is above the mandibles, the half-look, he thought that something was wrong here. The awakened memory lifted him by the shoulders for a hundredth of a second and lifted it up well, returning him to the distant past, and he remembered this bird’s eye section, this cheerful gaze, but could not tell for sure where he had met this ant before.

– You… You… Are you confusing something? Is it really… where did you get this from?.. – with an incomprehensible intonation, – either asking or answering, the taken aback Ave squeezed out the words from the crumbs. – Amendments… no amendments have been accepted for half a year already, isn’t that so? Are you kidding me?..

– Old man, Ave, you didn’t recognize me?! I bet twenty units that you did not recognize me! I am A-a-aft! Remember, we plowed together at the radio plant for three years? Well, well, did you forget? Remembered? Come on, come on, remember! Aft! I’m right here, I recognized you right away!

– Ghhh! – just jumped out of Ave in surprise.

– Aft! Remember me? Well, come on already, remember! – the angry ant began to show texture in front and in profile, a little grimacing, and all this was accompanied by his infectious laugh.

– No, of course, I remember, of course, I remember!

– Well!

– I remember… and I look – some familiar ant is standing, but who – I just can’t understand right away?

– Class! Now I’ve found out right away – wonderful!

– And I look… Well, at least you beat me – I can’t do it! Well, you scared me, damn it! Really scared with his cans, hell! What kind of jokes do you have?

– Naturally, you can’t understand, although only seven years have passed! Like seven?

– Seven already?..

– Well, yes, seven are! But what years have passed! What years! Have I changed? And not only I have changed! – blurted out Aft. And only here old friends pounced on each other and hugged tightly. – Forgive me, I didn’t want to scare you, not from evil I… I just wanted to make a joke…

– Yeah, you have changed! Not seven, probably, but six years have passed… – Ave began, but Aft interrupted him.

– Yes, a lot has changed since then, a lot. They then quietly eliminated us and everything started to spin… spun…

– After the then dismissal, rumors circulated that…

– Why, there were” rumors,” – Ave Aft cut off again sharply, emphasizing” what’s there.” – Rumors always go, they are rumors! Aft laughed out loud, then coughed half-vividly and continued again. – About the strike, then? I know that they talked dimly about the rally and something like that… interpreted… well… how can I tell you… eliminated, and that’s all…

– Yes, ah… “eliminated, that’s all”…

– Well yes! Life itself, you know, is not easy… Life is a very difficult puzzle, sometimes there are continuous riddles after riddles!

– So it was all, really was? – Ave asked very hesitantly, pronouncing each word slowly in syllables, and while he spoke he carefully looked around. – Is it true that it was?

– Well, you give, old man! No, of course! – Aft nervously moved his mustache and continued. “They composed everything then!” It was easier to make up than to tell the truth and explain everything…

– For some reason, I thought so… I felt that all this was untrue…

– Of course! There was no strike, and it could not be! So, in fact, there wasn’t any removal… for the sake of appearances, they did everything, although it could have been done differently, according to the normal, without any left-right affairs… everything is done, as always, through one place… I don’t know… I don’t understand why they are so with us…

– In general, it’s strange… why – no one understands at all!

– Well, that was, it was, and now – life goes on! You, I see, as always, you are not lazy, you run away on business matters, are you going to the fontanel? Aft asked, nodding at the cans. “Let’s go, go for a walk, I’ll take a little walk with you at least to the tunnel.”

– Of course, let’s go, we’ll chat a bit though. So many have not seen you… tell me about life!

– Exactly! I’m listening to you about life!

– When we’ll meet again… Come on, let’s go! I haven’t seen each other for six years… this is necessary! Tell me, how are you, what’s going on in your life.

– Yes, as always, according to the template project, we have a house, a job, a house again… Nothing new and interesting… What can happen to a simple working ant in life?

– Mmm, well, a lot of things can be done if you want to!

– Here I’ll think a little! Good idea!

– Do you work now?.. Where do you work? It is necessary to work, it is impossible to be lazy in any way, “only labor helps us to move in life and develop fully”! You remember how we were taught. Come on, let’s go!

It happens in life like this: you accidentally meet an old comrade and, it seems, have not seen each other for a long time, and, like, they are terribly bored of communicating with each other, and, of course, are glad to have an unexpected meeting, but here are a couple of words they said, exchanged superficial, lightweight information about themselves – “what, where, yes, how, yes, what plans”, and all, you can put a “checkmark” in a marker and indifferently say with almost imperceptible bitterness: “ate to the dump”, fed up with fluent communication, and there is no particular desire to continue to listen to his detailed stories about not egkoy fate, and shell, to share their life’s scrapes, too, somehow not really hunting. Moreover, very often it happens, in almost nine out of ten cases. But there are exceptions, however. I came across an ancient acquaintance, it seems I didn’t say that I’ve been a bosom friend, but they began to share their experiences over all the years that they had not seen, and there was no strength to stop, I didn’t want to leave at all, at least kill me. What does it all depend on? Either from a momentary mood, or from an internal magnet to a given individual, or from something else… and, after all, I’m ready to stand and talk endlessly with him about all kinds of nonsense, although you perfectly understand that there isn’t much time for empty talk but you can’t tear yourself away from him or her in any way, even though you crack…

Chapter 10

WHITE

Two ants, walking amicably in one paw, headed along the street, their unpretentious conversation became more and more lively, and when they crossed the wide avenue – Fifty-sixth, cheerful and cheerful Aft suddenly changed his face and looked around sharply, as if checking that no one was following them, and making sure that there was no ghostly surveillance, with great pleasure that he had a worthy listener, he continued his colorful story.

– After all, then all two hundred ants sent us to Streerets*? – And back came back less than forty.

– How so?

– Yes, like that! I tell you: forty out of two hundred! Can you imagine? Feel the difference: two hundred and forty! Two-o-o hundred and fo-o-orty, two hundred and forty! – Aft singled out both numbers, allowing you to feel the whole salt of the difference between how much was and how much was left.

– It’s… it’s just… it’s a fantastic difference…

– Yes, the wrong word… anyway… well, all the same, these figures are not felt in our simple words… So, what I’ll say: for those endlessly long five years spent, well, that is, in the sense of tattered, worked out in this, unnecessary, in this, abandoned to all distant, distant devils, Streets, we were all given a decent monthly allowance. This feed… so what? Do you hear Monthly allowance! We plowed to death there, worked and worked!.. Someone… Someone died there, someone was taken to a hospital in the capital, but already irrevocably, and we continued to plow. Whoever was taken away didn’t return… We did the allowance, but who needs it? That is the question…

– Mmm, to whom? Probably someone needs it? Aah, no? – The phrase fell out of Ave in a clot of misunderstanding.

– Who needs their allowance now? To whom? No, well, oh… on the other hand, do you think I could drive these… these… international buses for a regular salary? And… I would hardly have been able to… and in general, I’ve come here on business… – Aft said and suddenly felt a nauseating, lumpy lump roll up to his dry throat, he choked, but was still able to squeeze a few words out of himself. – Now I say, wait a minute!..

– Can you help?

Suddenly, the face of Aft turned red, he shook his head negatively, the small, shabby mustache trembled convulsively, and he, with an unsightly bent almost in half, choked in a strong prolonged cough. The ant felt an unpleasant burning pain, felt like a fiery-prickly wave ran through the body, suddenly gray-colored, with a flash-like build-up: from the heart to the very tips of the paws, and mercilessly knocked out the very brain.

– Bjzhzhus-bzhzhzhus! Well, there’s some kind of horror, bjzhzhus, today with me, well, what’s going on! Horror, he is! – as if nothing had happened, continued the interrupted monologue Aft. – No, no, now they pay well at my work, I am not complaining. The manual – of course, it’s all great! That’s just health… health is not that… and not return health, for any money and rewards. Yes, and on such bus liners I do not travel often. It just happened so today… Today, at the Eighteen Seas Artificial Television Studio, veterans of the Streets accident were being collected… health could not be restored – at least someone would say… they were collecting us… – suddenly a new wave of terrifying attack came over Aft, he again painfully shortened, curled up in half, like a crumpled piece of paper, and grunted hoarsely for a long time, coughed.

– Aft, listen, well, maybe something to help you? Run for water? To run off? To help? What to do – say it! – to the embarrassed Ave it was scary to look at the bending Aft, and even more so, to remain indifferent in the trouble of the old comrade.

– Yes, no, no, everything is fine, everything is fine… wait, now… – the ant shook his head strongly, completely denying help, from somewhere in his pocket he quickly scratched a mouse-colored handkerchief, and a piece of fabric disappeared into the depths of the mandibles.

A black oval metal medallion with six or seven embossed numbers and letters crawled out from behind the collar of the shirt, as if a awakened sacred scarab beetle crawled out of hot sand in a dry desert, at the moment when the ant was bent in a painful cough. Ave noticed an unusual distinctive sign unusual for working individuals, and only wanted to ask Aft about him, as he decided to tell himself ahead of all the questions.

– I’m now considered a labor veteran… can you imagine, dear Ave, where am I and where is a labor veteran? Two categories – completely incompatible…

– Well, you give! – only breathed out Ave.

– I’m still so young, my whole life is ahead… And already – a real veteran! Aft anxiously took the dark roundish into a small paw, twisted it nervously, looked philosophically at the inscriptions and showed it to his comrade. – You see, it was handed to us. Do we need this? Yeah, it’s necessary, especially… Some have already been handed over posthumously. Yes, and we are also almost posthumously… There is no health at all, no, and almost no one is alive, but we, what you say, but we are veterans… That’s it! I don’t know what to tell you even this… It’s hard to realize some things, it’s very hard and still I can’t reconcile… Hand-handed, and rejoice, guys – veterans… But how do we continue to live – it is not clear…