I Didn't Go Anywhere

By M Tmin

Twenty-five-year-old Mark Beglov, a lonely and introverted, gifted but not confident photographer from St. Petersburg, finds himself at a rally in support of Navalny in 21th of January, where the story began. He will find a lot of friends, and he will lose all of them. He will find a love, and he will lose it. He will stand for his beloved country and he will be disappointed by it. How long does it take to understand that world it's not just black and white? How much time somebody needs to realize that a government is not equal a country? How long will it take you to accepr yourself if you are different and you doesn't exist in the country where you were born? How long will it take you to admit that you are against all the stupidity and injustice that kills people like you? And what are you going to do?

Mark's trying to get the answers, to acept himself. to be happy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M Tmin
• Release date: May 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224850778

Book preview

Table of Contents

I Didn't Go Anywhere

January. Dodo

April. Thirteen years ago

April. Elsa and Leopard

May. Leopard and Elsa

July. Monica

October, November and a little more. Ole

February. Graham Greene

March. Shiraz

August. Xavier

A week and a half later

September. Mother

I wanted to say that this story began at the same time that a war began, war, which cannot be called a war. I wanted to say that this story began when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, or when the first bombs were dropped, or when the first innocent child died because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought maybe it would be correct to write that this story began when Putin went crazy and launched an unstoppable propaganda machine that convinced people that Ukrainians were pro-fascist pigs, worthy of being crucified, deprived of their home, shelter, country, language, loved ones, deserving deaths whose actions deserved to be blown up by mines, jump up in the middle of the night and run to bomb shelters, clutching pets, children, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters to their chests. Or did it all start when the Russians believed it, bought into the trick, into the mediocre lies about biological laboratories, about corrupt Nazis, about warheads, about what if Russia does not launch a preemptive strike (should I show you where the attack was being prepared from?), Americans will fly in in blue or rainbow helicopters and destroy all Russians. Or on the day when millions of young people, full of life, desires and aspirations, were faced with the most unbearable choice: kill or die. leave or die. betray or die. be alive or die.

This story began much earlier. This story has no end. There can be no end, because it is about everyone, it is about everything, it is about a person and about humanity. This story began as soon as our world arose, and it will last until our world ceases to exist.

This is a story about brave hearts, about love and about people who were not afraid to move on, even when their bodies were paralyzed by suffocating horror, even when their lives turned into an endless battle for survival, for the right to be themselves, to choose themselves, to choose love. They boldly walked along the muddy or rocky bottom to dive, plunging their chests into the blue pool, in which there was nothing but frightening and intoxicating novelty.

This is a story about love and fear. About the fear of loving and the fear of never knowing love. This is a story about plunging into darkness, about a leap into the abyss.

I didn't choose to die because I wasn't alive. I didn't choose to leave because I wasn't there. I didn't choose to fight because I wasn't ready to fight. I didn’t go anywhere and saw everything.

I have scars on my arms. Cuts of varying depth and significance. They settled on my skin a long time ago, at a time when the whole world seemed much darker than it really was. Now that the world is darker than it ever seemed, my scars serve as a reminder that everything always could be worse. Sometimes I look at them, peering into my past, mentally turning to the person I was then. I’m not talking about forgiveness or acceptance, I just thank him for his perseverance, I thank him for the fact that despite all the hardships, all the unbearability of life, he found the strength to remain himself, and found the strength to tell this story. Moreover, he found the strength to live this story.

Have you ever thought about why it is so easy to enter waist-deep cold water, but so difficult to move on?

The heart is afraid to freeze and orders us to stop. Chest tightens with fear at the thought of plunging into the burning unknown. It takes all the courage, all the determination to move your feet, taking step after step towards the frightening, unfriendly, harsh blue.

To love means to move forward slowly, not paying attention to the cold and not being afraid of what lies ahead.

Therefore, if I have to learn to love, I will dive smoothly and gradually. My heart will harden, become steadfast and strong, and will be ready for the second when my whole body plunges under water.

January. Dodo

On January 19, the Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigative film Palace for Putin. The story of the biggest bribe, which became the most viewed video in all YouTube segments - 12,814,296 views in one day.

Protests in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny began in January 2021 after he was detained by Russian law enforcement agencies. On January 23, protests took place in 198 cities of Russia. The most massive action took place in Moscow. The second wave of protests swept Russia and abroad on January 31st. 121 cities in Russia and 65 abroad.

In total, about 11 thousand people were detained during the winter protests. Russian authorities announced 17.6 thousand detainees, including Yulia Navalnaya.

Riot police began dispersing and making arrests even before the start of the protest. Internet and mobile communications were cut off in some Russian cities.

Dodo and I met at a protest rally in support of Navalny in January 2021. In the dense crowd, smelling of vodka and the recently ended New Year, there was a hubbub similar to the roar of a hungry lion. People with placards rushed and cried, called someone, chanted Putin is a thief, like fans at a stadium. The soldiers and riot police chanted something of their own, but no one listened to them. Their voices were indistinguishable in the general mass of discontent. You could have thrown the cannonballs, but they wouldn’t have penetrated - the rage became so thick.

After a film about Putin’s palace in Gelendzhik was released online, popular discontent overflowed. The investigation into Navalny's poisoning became the starting point. When a gang of criminals calmly orders the murder of Putin's main political opponent, confesses everything, and arrests a man guilty of nothing more than trying to oppose the government, it's time to rise up.

The crowd passes the Zinger building, chanting Putin is a thief and Freedom for Navalny. This is the main motive. Agenda. Navalny in the courthouse. Not yet fully recovered, but returning home to show that he is not afraid. He has nothing to hide. He is honest with himself and with people. And those who ordered his murder must answer for it. He must have been prepared for the fact that his plane would be ordered to land at another airport, and instead of people who admired his stamina and courage, instead of friends and relatives, he would be met by a convoy to take him to a pre-trial detention center. He must have seen more than anyone else, and knew that he would not be allowed to take a step in peace in his homeland. Perhaps for the rest of his life. I believe he has come to terms with the fact that he will no longer be a free man.

Selflessness and recklessness. An example of fearlessness in a country where everything is shrouded in fear.

Everyone undesirable will be torn to pieces is the message sent to the Russians along with the blue underpants. Here's what they say: We are proud of the work we do. We are pleased with ourselves. We will make Navalny look like a scoundrel, drag him through courts and prisons, throw him alone to rot in a punishment cell, humiliate him, and prohibit him from meeting with lawyers and relatives. We will turn it into an example designed to intimidate already intimidated people – so that it will be discouraging. We do not disdain any means to achieve our goal - absolute blind submission.

And we say: no, we say: Russia will be free.

Crowds march along the main streets and squares of the largest cities in Russia and Europe, throughout all the small towns. Protests flare up wherever we, people who love Russia and believe in its bright future, are. There is not a single Russian embassy near which there is not at least one person standing with a sign Putin is a thief or Russia will be free.

We are at the epicenter. We were exposed to attack. We hope to show through peaceful protest how many disagree here are; intimidate the government.

As it turns out a little later, it is impossible to intimidate someone who is not afraid of anything except the loss of power. And power is guaranteed to him.

To my right, an old woman in a down scarf is mincing, and if it weren’t for her eyes, covered with a veil of hatred, I would have decided that we picked her up by accident, twirled her like a feather, and dragged her along, as the tyrant country, the monster country, dragged her all her old woman’s long life. No. This is not an accident. She belongs among her own people. She's tired of being silent. Maybe she didn’t want to sell apples at Dostoevskaya’s anymore, maybe she was tired of offering bouquets of lilies of the valley that no one needed at Mayakovskaya’s. The old woman’s nose is flat, the grooves on her cheeks are the mouths of rivers, her lips are colorless and murmuring; a darned scarf, a frayed sheepskin coat, moth-eaten, a dirty shirt underneath, and a paper icon in shaking hands. Russia, Russia, your strength is coming for you.

Behind the old woman is a man slightly older than me. On his shoulders proudly sits his daughter, three or four years old, a charming creature, with all her fingers clinging to a cardboard on which is written Russia will be free! The girl holds the cardboard like a treasure, not even realizing that she holds in her hands the future, which was taken away from her, from us, long ago, which is being taken away right now, while we march through the city center, driven forward by an unknown force. The future that was taken away from each of us. When the screams and car noises get too loud or harsh, the girl's plump lips widen and her father squeezes her mustard tights-clad legs tightly.

The little girl looks around, looks at me with a grimace, then leans over to her father and asks why I don’t have any nice sign. I shyly hide my hands in my pockets. I turn around fearfully. I look at the exhausted faces of the orphaned and disadvantaged – I look for support in them. Hands clenched into fists. Nails dig into palms. I can swear that in every glance I meet I read the same thing: Am I not alone? I'm not alone!.

It gets easier. I'm not the only one. We're all here. We all go, dumbfounded, scared. Which of us is earnest and true? Maybe everyone, maybe no one. The main thing is that we are going. They are coming. Everyone is coming. I'm coming. I'm not the only one. Not alone.

People step on my toes every few seconds. I squint my eyes in pain, although I want to howl. Instead, following some inexplicable impulse, I sing: this will definitely pass. Quiet at first, but then it gets louder and louder, and after a couple of moments I feel like a rock star. A discordant chorus of wheezing, sunken voices echoes me. Separately, they all sound terrible, but when the song flows through the snowy Nevsky to the chorus, tears well up in my eyes, because I have never, never before in my life, heard anything more beautiful.

The old woman smiles at me with a toothless smile, the girl, proudly sitting on her father’s shoulders, laughs loudly, and a fireball grows inside me. Is it unfair that people who long for one thing – a quiet life – are forced to take to the streets, to risk the little things that they managed to get through hard work, that they are all forced to fight for the right... to have rights? To be heard? Say something loudly, not in the silence of the kitchen behind closed curtains, in a whisper, because the walls have ears? They are forced to fight to be recognized as people. This is a futile, unequal and merciless struggle. And it will have consequences. Unfortunately, not what the protesters are counting on. No. Despite the massive scale and severity, despite the quantitative superiority and fearlessness burning in the hearts, everything is marked by hopelessness and uselessness. Vain sacrifices for a great goal that will not lead to anything great. There will be dismissals, fines, arrests, trials, reprimands, expulsions, hints, offers to leave of your own free will. But this battle will not bring the change we want. There can be no bloodless revolution in a country with the bloodiest history.

I myself take virtually no risks. No one will evict me from anywhere, expel me or fire me. I could be sent to prison, I could be fined if I am careless or get into trouble. I didn't plan to get into trouble. I just wanted to go along with the people, along with those who created the fate of Russia, together with those who were Russia, suffered for it and because of it, were afraid, hated, were ready to kill or die.

Someone breaks a window, either accidentally or on purpose. The sound of breaking glass brings me out of my daze. The young man on my left is shouting something inaudibly. The crowd speeds up. There is noise and screams everywhere. I forgot which direction we are moving – towards or away from Dvortsovaya. Neither the old woman nor the father and daughter are next to me anymore. Several school-aged boys, who will certainly get a blast at home from their parents, who are watching the events on TV, loom behind me. Next to them is a girl with a rainbow on her cheek, wearing a light lilac coat. Her thin fingers, wrapped in bulky rings, are clutching a piece of cardboard, on the back of which is the price of tomatoes. One hundred and seventy rubles per kilogram. I can't make out the inscription on the front side. The girl is crying.

– Everything is fine? – I shout, leaning towards her. She looks at me in fear and shakes her head. – Can I help you?

– I'll be fired! – she shouts over the crowd. – I can't lose my job. I have two children. One doesn’t even go to the kindergarten yet. I'll be fired. I'll be fired.

She freezes, and after a moment I can no longer see the lilac coat. The scenery changes, the characters change. A veteran, dressed in a ceremonial suit, jingling with medals and orders, walks by quite cheerfully. Tears are also rolling down his cheeks. A lump the size of Vosstaniya Square gets stuck in my throat. This is impossible to chew and swallow. I rush forward to ask what brought him here, but I stop myself because it’s obvious. What brings us all here?

A fancy-dressed madam with bright pink lips looks around, silently opening her mouth – just like a stupid fish that has been washed ashore by a random wave. Somebody shove her and call her a cow. Mouth open. Eyes lined with tasteless blue shadows throw thunder and lightning.

– We will put you all in prison! Shoot! Freaks! Police! Police!

She is gagged by two girls my age. They are much smaller than her, but in their every gesture there is confidence and strength, the kind that in critical situations allows a person to lift a train carriage that has crushed a child. The short-haired girl leads the way, the blonde drags the woman to the sidewalk, fenced off by police. They release the fancy-dressed woman and push back the metal partitions. Three or four big men rush at the girls with batons. The crowd sweeps them away like snow – the swings and sandboxes in the courtyards of our childhood.

I keep walking. People take off their hats and unbutton their down jackets – we have warmed the city with the heat of our bodies. We are capable of anything. We have the power to defeat frost, January, cruelty, hunger, poverty, the freaks who are at the head of the country that we love with all our hearts. A country that we hate with all our hearts.

A squeal rises to the surface from the thicket about a hundred meters from where I am. Then - from the opposite end of the street. After a couple of moments, the entire Nevsky is roaring and groaning. Not immediately realizing what was happening, I look around in confusion, the stream picks me up and drags me in an unknown direction. The legs hardly touch the ground, the mass is so densely packed. Children cry and call for their mothers. Mothers desperately cling to their children, trying not to lose them, pressing them to their chests, hoping not to suffocate them, twisting joints and breaking fragile wrists, dragging them along, helping to break through the stuck together bodies of angry men and women running away from the police and riot police.

I hear howl of a mother who let go of the hand of her ten or eleven years old son, who was washed away by the wave and carried either forward or backward. This is the pain of all mothers, spilling out from one torn throat, from one broken chest. I push in vain with my elbows and knees. All I want is to close my ears and eyes, lie down on the ground and humbly accept death from thousands of shoes, sneakers and boots running away from the inevitable retribution. Instead, I make another attempt to rush to the side, but I find myself powerless. When I manage to look ahead, two faces appear opposite me – pale and freckled with chestnut eyes, laughing and sparkling. He approaches me and says: we are rushing against the crowd. The second face is cloudy, wrinkled and dusty, with pursed lips and the same piercing chestnut eyes, covered with a veil. It approaches me and says: this is my son; pauses to catch his breath, and then adds: my son, or my god.

Brodsky, I think. Good sign. I allow Dodo to grab me by the elbow, and the three of us, like a fragile icebreaker, rush against the current. I'm tempted to laugh and take out my camera. Our movement is so beautiful and unnatural that the thought grows inside me and begins to pulsate furiously: to capture. capture.

In the end, if I want to be an honest artist, I have to bite into such moments, I have to soar above them, pulling the trigger. To change the world through art, I have to change myself and let my art breathe. I notice a pole and shout to Dodo that I need to climb it. The rumble is so furious that it becomes clear that Dodo does not hear a word, but he picks up the vibrations in the air and stops his mother. A split second later we find ourselves at the pillar, I climb up and carefully take out my old point-and-shoot camera, which from time immemorial was kept on the top shelf in my parents’ room – among my father’s other things, Mom never dared to throw them away. I take off the cracked leather case and expose the lens, as I imagine lovers expose their bodies before their first timid intercourse. The finger grows into the shutter button. I look around the Russian Sea spread out below me. Girls kiss in front of police officers. A riot policeman raises his telescopic baton over a woman of about fifty. Young guys throw burning bottles at men in uniform. Soldiers drink vodka.

Time stops when I see doctors pushing aside onlookers who have formed a tight ring around the trampled body. I myself become a film charged into the eye of the universe. I am the lens that caught the most piercing story. I am a photograph that forever captures the terrible.

Flowers mixed with the dirty snow: daisies, pale yellow roses, a few dahlias and an armful of carnations. A pink cap with a distinct footprint of a man's shoe. Drops of blood. The mitten with an elastic band was torn out along with the elastic band and froze in a farewell wave. On the girl’s eyelashes there are petals of bright blue irises. There is a deep cut on the cheek. A trickle of blood flows from the mouth, and there is a steaming puddle under the lifeless body. Girl’s right palm and tiny fingers turned to mush. There's a bone sticking out of her leg. I take some pictures that I don't want to take. I don't want to see. I don't want to remember.

A woman in a fur coat roars and tears out her hair. When the doctors manage to get to the baby, the woman attacks them with her fists. The largest of the orderlies surrounds her with his body, as if wrapping her in gift paper, and sternly asks in a quiet voice, which somehow incredibly drowns out all the hubbub, or maybe I’m just reading lips:

– Are you a mother?

The woman shakes her head, continuing to roar.

– Are you a mother? – the orderly repeats his question. – I ask: Are you a mother?!

The woman is trying to escape. The nurse grabs a syringe and injects her. How prosaic, I think. Dodo pulls my sleeve.

– Let’s go, – he shouts. – Let's go, please. No need to shoot anymore.

Dod’s mother is crying, covering her brown eyes with her dark-gloved hands. The men surrounding the girl scatter in different directions, and others immediately flow to their places. The police whistle and stomp. They are pushed to the lingerie store. People went wild. The body of a five or six years old child, mutilated, abandoned in the middle of the main street, awakens a new wave of hatred. A dozen police officers are attacked by a pack of rabid, crazed protesters. They forcefully push them into the display case, breaking the thick glass. Someone is vomiting blood. The alarm goes off.

To my surprise, I manage to capture the exact second when glass splashes hover in the air before spraying the crowd.

Dodo takes me off the pedestal and attaches me to himself, as it seems to me, with a carabiner so that I don’t get lost. I can’t move my hands, which are convulsively clinging to my father’s point-and-shoot camera. I think it needs to be removed, hidden, protected. Something needs to be protected.

Dodo’s mama carefully unhooks my fingers, takes the case and puts the camera in it, putting it in the backpack hanging in front. She's elegant, I notice, even with her stupid school backpack with Hello Kitty emblazoned on it. And she is here, along with her son. If my mother were here now, if only she would take me by the hand and close my tired, crying eyes so that they would never see what they saw, I would be...

We are stopped by a wall of police shields. They are all armed. They are all trained and ruthless. They follow orders, they are forbidden to show mercy and humanity. They know that they will kill if they are told to. They know that everyone who is now on the street is an enemy who must be gotten rid of at any cost. We know they know this. We know that we are their enemies. We know they have advantages that they will take advantage of. I see the girl in the lilac coat again. She looks completely indifferent, and I wonder what she encountered on the way here, how many tragedies and disasters she encountered in an area less than a kilometer long, which made her indifferent to dismissal and fear. She looks at the police as if they were dogs that frightened her so much that she forgot what it’s like – to be afraid. If they attack, she will attack back and fight. Dodo squeezes my hand and his mother's hand, and I understand: they will fight.

I look inside myself and understand: I won’t run away either. I will fight too. With bare hands. For justice and freedom. For change and the future. For our country.

From under a protective helmet, a blond guy with a slightly open mouth looks at me like a village fool who has not found any other meaning in life other than to go to the police, to knock out from people the remnants of will and self-esteem. It's disgustingly. There was never a spark of reason under his light eyebrows, his thoughts were not burdened with anything except discussions about what to eat a sandwich with for breakfast – with cheese or sausage, or with cheese and sausage at the same time. If I asked him if he had seen Impressionist paintings, he would hit me in the stomach with his boot. If I asked him if he had ever read Gogol, or Chekhov, or Tolstoy, or Kipling, or Chukovsky, or Stevenson, or Anderson's fairy tales, he would beat me to death with his club.

Maybe I'm a snob. Maybe I'm a fucking home-grown esthete who thinks himself superior to others, but when an idiot stands opposite me, someone who is supposed to protect me, my compatriots, my country from delinquency, unrest, cruelty, injustice and violence, and instead of all this is preparing to attack peaceful protesters, I'm ready to shout that I'm better. To prove with foam at the mouth that the police must be thinking. And not just thinking, but be sensible, be thinking, reasonable, wise, humane. They must learn not how to plant drugs, take bribes and frame cases, but how to deal with human beings and human life.

An order comes from the radio: suppress. And I feel what it means to be literally depressed. I am a repressed protest that was once a living organism that must release its spirit and cease to exist. I am the consciousness embedded in my flesh. Consciousness leaving me with every blow, with every push, from which my body falls apart. I feel like I'm falling apart. Before I pass out, I see Mama Dodo being pushed into a paddy wagon with her hands behind her back. Dodo himself is nowhere nearby. I'm trying to say his name, but I'm not even sure what his real name is. Is he a Dodo or not a Dodo?

Then I remember my own name and don’t believe my inner voice. At this moment, the old me no longer exists, the spirit separated from the body in order to be forever imprinted on the film, on which a little girl with her eyes closed lies in the middle of Nevsky Prospect, surrounded by caring, but at the same time completely helpless people.

Dodo’s mom left the police officer’s office with a huge bruise on her forehead, and still managed to maintain her majesty and grace.

– You won’t have any problems? – she leaned towards me. – Should I wait for you?

Not knowing what to answer, I swallowed convulsively and nodded. It's unlikely that I'll have any problems. I worked as a freelance correspondent. I photographed everything, sent my shots, sometimes with small accompanying notes. Sometimes they published me, sometimes they paid me, but more often they asked me to send further projects, since these did not seem relevant to the producing editor and relevant to the needs of the target audience. What was not accepted for publication, I hung on the wall. Sometimes I threw darts at them. Sometimes I looked through it, trying to reconstruct my own life from scraps of other people’s spied stories left in my photographs. Occasionally I tried to unravel the fate of those who appeared in my photographs. Mostly I just stared at them silently. I would like to say that in doing so I comprehended the wisdom of the Universe, but that would be posturing and a lie.

– Will you have problems? – I asked. – And Dodo?

– No, no, – she hastened to assure. – No problem.

– You are so sure...

– We’re leaving, – Dodo’s mother answered, smiling nervously. She didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t bother asking. Departure is a sensitive topic, and we were not close enough for me to dare insist on frankness.

– You seem upset... – I said, but she just waved me off. – And Dodo...your son...is he here too?

– No, he's already at home. And it’s funny that you called him Dodo, – she smiled.

– Why? To be honest, it seemed to me that this was how he introduced himself.

– I sometimes call him like that. I wouldn't say that he is delighted with this nickname.

– But it suits him!

Dodo’s mom laughed.

The police officer called me by name twice, but I had already forgotten that I had once been given a simple human name, to which I responded, which I allowed myself to be called, which I associated with myself. It no longer belonged to me, and I no longer belonged to it.

We are sitting in the kitchen. I'm shaking. Mama Dodo pours me strong tea – mug after mug, I barely have time to drink them, not even cool them. Dodo is doing the same thing, but the hot water does not seem to cause him any particular inconvenience. He looks up from his notebook and smiles at me encouragingly. When I try to say something, Dodo’s mom puts her finger to her mouth and says, Later. Just drink. I nod and continue to burn my tongue, palate, lips, inflamed, bleeding soul, torn apart by an endless evening of cruelty and inhumanity.

– What will you do with your photographs? – asks Dodo. By this time I’m finishing my fourth or fifth mug of tea. My head feels like cotton wool, and my tongue is burned and swollen. I try to move it, but I understand that it is useless, I still have no idea what to do with the photographs – develop them and keep them? I'll go crazy looking at them. Send to the editor? They won’t let them through, and I’ll still end up locked with them in the darkness of my room. Post it on some social network, or send it to a thematic group? Don't know. Instead of answering, I shrug my shoulders.

– We have a scanner. If you don't want to develop it yourself, I can scan it.

– I think it turned out very strong, – adds Dodo’s mother.

– It’s just unnecessary. Nobody needs this. – I mumble. – Nobody will take this. There is too much violence around now.

Violence, violence, violence will not go out of fashion, Dodo’s mother sings, and I smile, because it’s nice that grown-up, elegant ladies are familiar with modern music, which I also like.

– People always thirst for blood, even if they deny their bloodthirstiness. It confuses them, but attracts them.

– Where are you going? – I ask, unable to think about the future of the photographs. Maybe I'll just rip the tape and paste the scraps into an old blue notebook that holds pieces of the days I'd like to forget. Dodo and his mom look at each other. She sits down on the edge of the stool and breaks off a tiny piece of macaron for herself. She takes a sip of tea and coughs.

– Mom will go to Crimea. – says Dodo. He strokes her back. Circle clockwise, circle counterclockwise. Circle clockwise, circle counterclockwise. The wall clock is ticking in the bedroom. Behind the wall, someone is listening to Husky and switches to the night movers. Dodo’s mom wipes away a tear and it lands next to the milky pink sugar bowl. – My grandmother is there. Our relatives.

– It's uneasy there now. And it won't be calm. – adds Dodo’s mother. –But all our relatives are there. We need to help them with the housework and repair the house. We will put the apartment up for sale when Dodo tidies up the bathroom.

– I can help with it, – I offer.

– I have a strange schedule now. – says Dodo, looking at me from under his brows. – I'm finishing university. Computer security. At nights, I work at a strip club.

– What? – I ask. – Are you... dancing?

– No, – Dodo’s mother laughs. – He's a sound engineer. Sometimes he helps with performances and organizes events.

– By the way, my good friend assigned me there, he worked as a DJ for some time until he flew to Nepal, I’ll introduce you to each other someday. He has a lot of connections in the field of art, and he is also interested in photography, I think you will find a common language.

I pretend to be intrigued, but, in reality, I'm so exhausted that I really don't care, so I just smile back.

– And I’m also in love. – Dodo switches the topic, although it is clear from him that he would gladly continue to praise his friend.

– To a stripper?

– Of course! – says Dodo’s mom. Her face shines in the faded light of a lamp hidden behind an old lampshade. – She's not a bad girl. She wants to escape, and Dodo dreams of helping her with this. But as long as he spends all his time with her at the club and spends all his salary on indecently large bouquets, there will be no point.

– Mum!

– Sorry, I’m just sharing my subjective assessment of what is happening. Perhaps our guest has his own opinion on this matter.

– I wouldn’t express it even if I had it. – We've only known each other for a couple of hours.

– But we’ve already experienced so much together! – says Dodo.

– Darling, in this family any self-expression is welcome, regardless of the length of our acquaintance. If a person has something to say, it makes us happy, not sad, even if his opinion does not coincide with ours.

– But keep in mind that we can fight, – warns Dodo.

– I’m not the pugnacious type, – I smile, refuse another mug of tea and get ready to get up.

– Would you like to stay the night? – Dodo's mother suggests. – We could have a movie show. I'll make popcorn. Let's watch something from Dolan or Balabanov, and then criticize them all to smithereens.

I decide to stay. And again, and again, and again. We go to every rally together, but they are becoming smaller and smaller. I don't take my camera anymore. I still can’t decide what to do with the January photos.

April. Thirteen years ago

On February 2, Alexei Navalny was sentenced by the Simonovsky Court in Moscow to 3.5 years in prison in the Yves Rocher case.

Doctors call Navalny's health condition critical. Since March 31, he has been on a hunger strike demanding that civilian doctors be allowed to see him. Navalny’s appeal was signed by one and a half thousand doctors.

On April 20, applications for approval of protest actions were sent to the city halls of dozens of cities with a request to approve the event, which is a spontaneous reaction to ongoing events.

I stand at the blackboard in front of my laughing classmates and die of shame. The classroom is stuffy and smells of chalk. Faded pink light falls from the windows onto the walls. A piece of blue sky heralds spring. A bumblebee flies into the open window, the girls begin to scurry around until the ears are blocked. A train rushes somewhere far away. A woman announces something into the loudspeaker in a crackling voice, but the sounds dissipate in the chilly spring air. The mathematician, an unshaven hog with chapped hands, dirty nails and a drunken look, stared at me sullenly. The tip of his nose twitches unpleasantly – up and down. The eyebrows flow down to the bridge of the nose, the corner of the mouth creeps down. The imagination paints a picture: his lips turn into two caterpillars, jump onto the table and climb,