If it’s summer and early morning, and you suddenly woke up and don’t know how to spend your day off, then I’ll tell you. Go to the Vernissage in Izmailovo. But this, of course, despite the fact that you live in Moscow. There is such a city on the map of our homeland ...
... How do you get out of the Partizanskaya metro station (it used to be called the Izmailovsky Park station and it was famous for having a direct route to the ominous Cherkizon, which in the 90s of the last century was the most gigantic European market), to your right is really Izmailovsky Park. This place is wonderful because the park is very arbitrary. The forest is real, almost untouched, with roads and paths striated and foul. But in it even magpies chatter, hedgehogs and foxes rustle through the leaves. Locals claim that sometimes even moose are seen here.
If you turn left after leaving the subway and bypass the boxes of the Izmailovsky hotel complex, with its Alpha, Betami and Gamma, you will inevitably come to the Izmailovsky Kremlin.
Just do not be afraid of this magnificent name!
Once, indeed, Alexei Mikhailovich Silent ... This is the historical nickname of one of our kings. In fact, he was Romanov, the father of the greatest Russian emperor Peter I and, concurrently, a lover of unpretentious amusements, such as hunting, falcon battles and blessed church services ... So, Alexei Mikhailovich, in fact, built an unpretentious fortress with towers, passages and churches. But she has not been around for a long time. The place turned out to be a trading one, charmed, rather, glorified by the already mentioned Cherkizon, when the "overseas merchant" fed from him for several years and fed many, turning into a fabulously rich, and then completely disappeared person, whose birthday the mayor of ours once called, in the heat of servility, "the greatest holiday for Muscovites" ...
Already in the present century, the “Izmailovsky Kremlin” was “revived” by building a popular town at the end of the alley, where merchants gather every Saturday and Sunday and sell ... Ah! What they don’t sell here !!.
Paintings and dolls, wood and stone carvings, furs and woven tablecloths, Orenburg downy shawls and watches. However, the “feast of the spirit" is, of course, a flea market where you can roam for hours and days !!!
As soon as you go up several steps, because the flea rows are located somewhat on the hill, you will immediately understand where you came from, because the special smell of antiquity and junk will tell you this ...
This is where you come up with your own business. Let’s say, decide that you are looking for an old carved cigarette box with a matchstick in addition to it. And ask, ask the merchants where you can find it. A fat, burly guy with a full beard will be happy to start a conversation with you:
- ABOUT! One from Karelian birch? Light? Polished? Kone-ee-echno, there are such here !! But I do not smoke !!!
And he will turn away, and then he will forget about you, because one of the buyers became interested in his kerosene lamp without glass, polished to a shine.
And there, at the next table, you see a microscopic old woman whose face and neck are covered in antique finest leather. She’s wondering what she’s selling ... Well-worn high-heeled shoes with a glass and a female plush jacket. I remember those! My grandmother wore a similar one, fastening on huge shiny buttons. I can’t pass by, I ask:
- Tell me ...
She heaves me enchanting beauty, forget-me-not eyes. For just one wave of eyelashes of such eyes, gentlemen in the 19th century threw themselves into the fray without hesitation. And asks:
“Yes, young man ...”
I am 61 years old. I don’t look young, and therefore her appeal sounds as ridiculous as a wish with a light steam somewhere in Antarctica. And she continues:
“... I'm listening to you ...”
“Tell me,” I pull the time, trying to get plenty to drink in the velvet and silk of her voice, “but do you have ... a voile jacket?”
“No, unfortunately,” she replies. “The marquise was a rarity even in the days of my youth.” And now ... It is unlikely that you will find him here ...
“Sorry,” I answer and leave. And smiling, for some reason. And it’s good for me that I saw such a person.
Behind the next counter, two colorful uncles are talking hotly about something. I understand that for them, trade is only an excuse to come here and take your soul:
“You understand, Anatoly!” After all, she really does not love my son ...
- Stop it, Nikolai! Why love him?!. After all, you have a real juir and a scoundrel !!!
“Well, you know! .. Although, yes, of course, denying it would be as stupid as catching crucian carp in Izmailovsky Pond today ...”
And then a man trades figures of the Leningrad Porcelain Factory. Here, an Uzbek girl crouching down, and a boy with earflaps with skis, and something else. But the most powerful sculpture is the seller himself. His gaze is accommodated at minus infinity. In his hands he holds a thermos, from which liquid coffee flows into the lid-cup. He says nothing, but his eyes are what you think: what will he do when he fills a glass with a drink to the brim? Is it just that he will prosaically drink? And he sighs, just as all the mourners in the world would have sighed, and he says to himself:
- Yeah ... Margarita ...
And I understand that it was in this state that the poet’s soul was when he wrote:
"Tearing the bushes on myself like a snare,
Margaritan clenched lips with lilac,
Hotter than Ophthalmic Margaritin Protein,
He fought, snapped, reigned and shone a nightingale.
He came from the smell of herbs. He is like mercury
A crazy rain hung between the bird cherry trees.
He fooled the bark. Gasping for mouth
He approached. Remained hanging on a scythe. ”
I go further. And, still not seeing, I foresee the owner of a low chest voice. ABOUT! There she is!! Exactly what it should be !!! From wide natural eyebrows she designed herself whimsically curved, like waves on the canvases of Aivazovsky, dashes. Moreover, she angrily bent them at the same time, confessing to a neighbor - a faded ash blonde, wrapping herself in a shawl in such heat:
- I gave him the best years, Lorochka! Luch-shi-e !!.
“So he sacrificed himself for you, Zoe ...”
- What? What did he sacrifice for me ?! His Moscow registration?!. He just trampled on me all his life, Lorochka! Just stamped !!.
Faded Lorochka responds quite unexpectedly and not at all in the context of her appearance:
“You are just a fool, Zoyinka ... A fantastic fool ...”
After this answer, people should hate each other until the end of their days and bequeath this hatred to their children. An, no. Zoinka lowers the flame of speech by two octaves at once, hugs her friend by the shoulders and, faithfully looking into her eyes, asks:
- Do you find, Lorochka? ..
... At the very end of the row, almost over a steep slope, which even a small fence does not insure against careless citizens from falling, a man of about fifty with hot eyes sits on a folding fishing stool. In front of him, right on the ground, on a newspaper, are microscopic pictures surrounded by simple frames. They are made on birch bark. These are some painfully recognizable Russian landscapes, in each of which the roughness and cracks of the tree bark are surprisingly precisely inscribed. With warmth, he looks with delight at the people around, and when I come up, it’s as if he is continuing the conversation that he and I seemed to just interrupt:
- And look, what wonderful people we have! ..
At the same time, he does not smile, only his eyes shine. Beaming with a warm human light. I do not immediately answer my question about the price of my marvelous product, as if reluctantly floating out of the world of delight:
- BUT? How much? .. Yes, take that one that you liked ... I will do ... I will do a lot more ...
Thanks for your attention!