It had not yet begun to get dark, but the townsfolk, excited by rumors about "talking walls", reached for the "forty-five" - the scandalously famous Kursk house number 45 that became overnight. families, from below, frightened off the calmness of some devilry. The crowd patiently waited for a new miracle, as if the Mayak evening news program would go on the air exactly according to the schedule. And now, finally, to the delight of those gathered from somewhere from the front of a typical city building, a loud, hoarse male voice was heard, which amused the audience with a pun of exquisite secular addresses and strong unprintable expressions.
The operatives dressed in civilian clothes, poking around at the eloquent "forty-five" on duty, shuddered and began with redoubled attention to examine the old squat house with six windows and an outbuilding. As before, the "outdoor" did not notice anything suspicious. The tenants who were inside the ill-fated house looked sadly at the law enforcement officers standing next to them, but they only powerlessly spread their arms to the sides and lowered their heads.
Then something completely unheard of happened: a cheeky voice from harmless hooligan antics switched to risky political statements. The responsible senior militia officer took off his cap and, smoothing the hair that stood on his head with his palm, swore in a whisper: “You damned pimped-out six-box would have fallen into hell with your invisible announcer. Now from the fathers of the city you will probably not get away with troubles …"
But on this quiet evening, the "herald of the invisible front" was not content with one seditious slogan and launched new equally seditious words into the stunned masses.
The piquancy of the unprecedented state of emergency was aggravated by the fact that the provocative counter-propaganda action was carried out on a street named after the Cheka. Eyewitnesses, moving away from the shock, whispered that the enemy's voice appeared on the name street of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission is far from accidental: they say that the mission of the elusive mysterious anti-Soviet is quite definite - to cast a shadow on the competent authorities. In 1981, when an incomprehensible turmoil stirred up the glorious ancient Russian city, such liberty, of course, seemed inconceivable insolence.
CLASSIFIED STICK ON THE "INVISIBLE ANNOUNCER"
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It is not surprising that the staff of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kursk Regional Executive Committee began feverishly to compile a dossier on the "invisible announcer". At any moment, the ill-wishers over the head of the department of internal affairs could "knock" in the regional committee that the devil knows what was happening in Kursk, and this was fraught with an unpleasant extraordinary call to the "carpet" for the chief of militia.
A scrupulous study of the materials of the secret folder for the "invisible announcer", which was based on the testimony of the inhabitants of the "forty-five" and their neighbors, made it possible to assume with a sufficient degree of certainty that Kursk was the birthplace of some very special phenomenon. Purely natural or purely man-made. The latter meant, of course, the test by the vain Mr. X - an unknown talented self-taught inventor - or even some subversive underground center of political opponents of the existing state system of a unique technical supernova …
Observations and personal impressions of discouraged local law enforcement officers, who heard with their own ears the unbridled broadcasting of the "talking walls" of house No. 45, also did not allow doubting the reliability of the information received from the category of the obvious and incredible. Now, perhaps, everyone would have been jokingly attributed to a poltergeist, but then no one had ever heard of the tricks of the reels.
So, now let's move on to the statement of facts. On May 28, 1981, the most resolute woman from the "mansions of evil spirits" on the Cheka street - an employee of the military unit Galina Fominichna Brezhneva, born in 1930, wrote an official statement to the head of the Kirovsky regional department of internal affairs of the city of Kursk:
“From May 25 to the present, on the territory of our courtyard, as well as in the house itself, the cries of an unknown person who threatens my whole family, namely me, my daughter and mother, that he will kill us, hang us, and also insult us with swear words … I called the police officers to the scene three times, but I could not find the bully. My assumptions: the bully, acting from the house opposite, is equipped with radio equipment such as a megaphone. I ask your permission to establish surveillance of the windows of this house in order to detect the bully, since there is no strength to live in such an atmosphere.
“THOUGHT - A MAN. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
During the period of the described miracles on VChK Street, three generations lived in one half of the "forty-five" - the venerable grandmother Maria Vasilievna Solyapina, her children - Viktor Fomich, who bore the same surname as their mother, and Galina Fominichna, as well as her daughter Natalya Brezhneva - student of the Polytechnic Institute. In addition, a couple of months ago, tenants - newlyweds: Alla, who had not yet managed to change her maiden name, and Iskhak Myakhyanov, also moved in to them. The other half of the "forty-five" was occupied by a relative of Maria Vasilievna, a pensioner aunt Shura.
So, on the evening of May 25, 1981, Alla was preparing dumplings in the kitchen and called her betrothed to the table. And then, right from the ventilation pipe, a hoarse male voice muttered with displeasure:
- Kazakh, I don't need your dumplings.
Iskhak dumbfounded looked around the kitchen, but there was only Alla, who was shocked by what she heard no less than her husband. After consulting, the couple decided not to publicize the mutual sound hallucination.
The next evening, when the Solyapins and Brezhnevs left for a visit, the young couple remained in the house for the owners. Alla was washing clothes in the yard, next to her was her Kazakh husband. And suddenly, it was not clear from where a loud, mocking male voice was heard, which rudely reprimanded the girl for marrying a foreigner and at the end again called her a "Kazakh." Indignant Ishaq rushed to the bushes in the garden, where some drunken nationalist might have been hiding, but there was no one there. Perplexed, the angry guy began to walk around the yard, and then several stones flew at him, one of which hit him in the back. Looking around, the husband saw that his wife was about to faint from a strange obsession.
As soon as the excitement subsided, the indigenous residents of the "forty-five" returned from the feast and a heartless speaking spirit screamed from the side of the neighboring yard to the whole street:
- Maruska, I will kill!
The men searched everything around, but the intruder was not found anywhere. As if inspired by the failure of the single Russian uncle Viti and the married Kazakh farmer Iskhak, the bass devil rumbled threateningly:
- I will hang the Solyapins by the legs, and I will slaughter Myakhyanov …
Then the crazy bawdy-blackmailer switched to swearing at all, which was completely unbearable to listen to. Unable to bear it, Galina Fominichna courageously rushed into the garden at the sound of a voice, but the speaking spirit, like an echo, instantly moved to the garden and swore there with relish. Crossing herself, the indignant woman scuttled to the border, and the godless troublemaker instantly flew back and scoffed mockingly:
- Don't look for me, people, you won't catch me anyway …
After Galina Fominichna called on "02", a service "UAZ" with hefty policemen rushed to the street named after the Cheka, like a fire, but they were already greeted by the complete silence of the city estate.
On May 27, at about eight o'clock in the morning, an awake brownie unceremoniously woke Viktor Fomich and began to fire from the ceiling of the kitchen how much in vain everything and everyone. A little later, an acquaintance of the Brezhnevs, Lidia Mikhailovna Nasedkina, entered the "forty-five", and a somewhat angry speaking spirit shouted unfriendly from the kitchen: why did you come here - and let go of a few obscenities at her.
In the evening, no longer embarrassed by anything, the voice in the open air gave its best to Galina Fominichnaya, who was feeding the dog in the yard. At the control panel "02" at first they did not take seriously the next phone call from the Cheka street and considered it to be the same type of "false call", but Galina Fominichna herself showed up at the duty station, and the crew of the patrol car inevitably turned to Emergency. And although this time the speaking spirit, for some reason only known to him, did not dare to shake the air with formidable tirades, but the appearance of the Solyapins, Brezhnevs and their lodgers, obviously, made the patrolmen doubt the standard dogma of the sane - “this disgrace cannot be, because THIS can never be. " The authorities, incredulously listening to the considerations, in his opinion, too suspicious of sergeants,nevertheless, with the aim of reinsurance, he sent experienced operatives-"outsiders" to Emergency to reconnoiter the situation …
IS IT EASY TO BE THE FIRST?
The general managed to forestall the clouds gathering over his head: having asked for an emergency reception, the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate acquainted the first secretary of the regional committee with the handwritten documents of the secret folder. Leaning imposingly in an armchair, a member of the CPSU Central Committee pushed aside the official certificate about the "invisible announcer". And, having removed the impenetrable mask from his face, he humanly sympathized with the man with red stripes on gray uniform trousers that, they say, the police had to deal not only with neutralizing the bandits, but also with the search in a dark room for a black cat, which was not there.
However, no trace of the First's complacency remained when, shortly after this confidential conversation between two high-ranking officials of the regional scale - the party leader and the chief policeman - at Chrezvychayka, the "invisible announcer" from mocking the residents of the "forty-five" switched to verbal filth of the local authorities. The rumor about the "man who swears" quickly spread far beyond the Kursk region, and onlookers from other cities flocked to the Cheka street. To the amusement of the residents and visitors, the mischievous brownie awarded the First One with little epithets.
Belatedly realizing his oversight, the nomenklatura comrade launched a vigorous activity - he demanded to immediately cordon off the area with the available police forces and connected local KGB officers who were already in the know. Then he made an order to Moscow for an urgent trip to the province of "direction finders" from a top-secret institution. The capital's specialists tried to justify the brand of their company, but the finest devices installed in all conceivable points on the VChK street did not register any wave anomalies in the "forty-five". The Moscow specialists, having completed fruitless experiments, made their categorical verdict that it was impossible to create equipment operating in the “brownie range” in principle, and left home. Nevertheless, both in the process of "direction finding" and after it in house No. 45,where representatives of law enforcement agencies were constantly on duty, a voice that once even put in a good word for … Pinochet was heard now from the walls, now from the pipes of steam heating, and even from the ceiling.
HOUSE NAMED AFTER MISH
The riddle is always overgrown with misinterpretations and versions. Frankly, some of them were absolutely absurd, but the assumptions of the residents of the "forty-five" were more deserving of attention. As it seemed to them, the timbre of the voice often changed - it looked like the tongue twister of Valery Pletnikov, or it reminded Leshka Sherstov's slow speech. On top of that, they noticed that when these guys from Emergency were not nearby, then the acoustic transmissions-bifurcations began, and as soon as the voice disappeared, both lovers of thrills appeared separately at the "forty-five".
On the morning of May 30, a neighbor, the saleswoman of "Oblkooptorg" Lidia Mikhailovna, dropped in with her friend for half an hour at Galina Fominichna's house. Those who came, as a matter of course, took the abusive monologue that was heard in the "forty-five". The counter worker, after listening to him, began to incline herself to the idea that Sherstov was the “invisible announcer”, and asked the walls:
- Leshenka - is that you ?!
- Don't touch the flea! - screamed the brownie in the voice of Pletnikov and fell silent.
In the evening, Sherstov appeared to Lydia Mikhailovna himself and asked:
- How are things with the Solyapins and Brezhnevs?
“Someone was shouting again,” Lydia Mikhailovna responded reluctantly, and suddenly asked. - You were not teased by Blok in your childhood?
- Flea, so what? - Alexey was suddenly embarrassed and stared inquiringly at the saleswoman.
- Yes, nothing, just the "talking walls" this morning for some reason remembered your nickname, - Lydia Mikhailovna did not obscure.
The speaking spirit, by the way, was sympathetic to Lydia Mikhailovna, and therefore once entered into a short, but somewhat tactless dialogue with her.
- Shameless boor, when will you shut up? - forgetting about the elementary rules of decency, the saleswoman in the "forty-five" asked an empty space in impatience.
As if not taking into account the indelicate address to him, the brownie from the ceiling politely replied:
- I'll shut up forever on Sunday, June 7th.
The brownie also satisfied the curiosity of Zoya, a relative of the Solyapins, who appeared in the talking house almost every day. Zoya somehow thought of switching to a familiar tone in dealing with a sinister with a slight coquetry:
- Maybe you will open up to me, friend, who are you?
As if flattered by the pleasant ladies' manner, somewhat different from the professional manners of the lively saleswoman, the brownie croaked:
- I am Mishka Kutepov from Khutorskaya street.
As it turned out later, such a guy really lived there, but he completely denied his involvement in the hoaxes at Emergency. The meticulous detectives have only to apologize to him.
GOVORUN FROM HUTOR'S TRAVEL
And yet it was not in vain that the detectives became interested in Khutorskaya Street, which was located in a completely different microdistrict. Here, too, there was, presumably, the phenomenon of supernatural forces from May 1979 to March 1981 in a three-apartment private house on Khutorsky proezd. Several rooms, a kitchen and a corridor were at the disposal of the old woman Fima and, one might say, her adopted daughter, a student of the Kursk pharmaceutical school Serebryankina, whose only family was her disabled mother who lived in the Lipetsk region. Through the wall in the house a couple of pensioners Nestruevs lived out their days, and the rest of the living space was occupied by the Kutepov family. On a May evening in 1979, in the spacious personal apartments of an old woman who was cleaning and tidying the apartment, suddenly some knocking and loud meowing were heard, and then a man's voice clearly said:
- Grandma washes the floors.
The old woman dropped the wet rag from her hands and, recovering herself, looked out the window. There was no one on the street nearby, and the same talker a few seconds later began calling the respectable housewife and demanded that she vacate his home as soon as possible. Aunt Fima, overshadowing herself with the sign of the cross, hastily began to say: “Holy, holy …” The old woman was not so afraid to be in the house when her young husband came to the student. True, now the voice switched to the only man in the apartment, but he was not timid and he himself threatened to kill an invisible enemy.
Somehow she did not please the talker, who, as it seemed, sees and hears everything, and the distant relative Anna who came from Belarus to visit Aunt Fima. The guest willingly told the old woman about her life, boasted of the successful marriage of her daughter Irina to the general's son. But the talker decided to impress the whole family: he promised to kill the whole happy trinity for entertainment - mother Anna, her beloved daughter Irka and an elite son-in-law.
“Now, niece, you yourself see how we vegetate here in the boondocks,” sighed Aunt Fima, a former school physics teacher. - There is no living from a parallel world, about which scientists really do not know anything.
Aunt Fima has been planning something recently and finally announced to the "farmers" that she should go to the Sumy region to visit the graves of her mother and husband, and also be sure to pray for the salvation of her soul in one of the Orthodox shrines of the Ukrainian capital. When the pious old woman returned by the Kiev train to the Russian nightingale land with some rather heavy luggage, the talker immediately told the whole house on Khutorsky passage that there, in her native Ukrainian places, God's dandelion went completely crazy in her old age - after attending a service in the church she went straight in a department store on Khreshchatyk and for some unknown reason I bought a tape recorder "Snezhet-203" in the section of radio goods.
For a month, Aunt Fima thoroughly studied the instructions for using the tape recorder and only after that unpacked "Snow". Putting the cassette player on a chair and covering the tape recorder with a towel, the old woman set a microphone next to it on the floor. The talker was not long in coming, and obscenities, thickly flavored with choice curses, fell on the "farmers". Stealthily plugging the cassette cord into an electrical outlet, Aunt Fima carefully pressed the Record button.
- Granny is a sinner, you are trying in vain, - the all-seeing talker immediately grinned. - You won't record anything, and even now the microphone is still not connected to the tape recorder.
Surprisingly, the microphone cord was really not connected to the cassette deck. Despite the unambiguous warning of the talker, later the owner of "Snezheti" managed to record his attacks on the "farmers" on tape. Criminal investigation officers, perhaps, could not even dream of such unthinkable luck: Aunt Fima retained a little civilized "hello" from the parallel world, and the operatives seized the cassette as evidence on June 5, 1981.
CONSEQUENCE LEADED BY EXPERTS
After listening to the phonogram, the Solyapins and Brezhnevs unanimously recognized the "invisible announcer" in the talker from Khutorsky passage. The insistence of the detectives was rewarded with a second stunning discovery: the student Serebryankina and her husband turned out to be the very same tenants from Chrezvychaki, with whom the brownie raged at the end of spring. Alla Serebryankina simple-mindedly explained:
- Iskhak and I moved to the Cheka street on March 24. Before we and Aunt Fima sat down on the path, according to folk custom, a voice announced that he was leaving with us.
The fidget brownie did not keep his word and, having said goodbye in his usual manner to the “descendants of the iron Felix,” ahead of schedule on Friday - June 5, 1981 - went into silent oblivion. However, the investigation already had a reasoned version of the Kursk acoustic marathon. It is not for nothing that the "invisible announcer" knew many details of the personal life of "farmers" and "security officers". If we set aside the assumption of a supernatural basis of the phenomenon, then, as in a classic detective novel, a limited circle of characters remains.
A thorough analysis of the collected information made it possible to reveal a characteristic detail: in all episodes of communication with the "parallel world" without exception, Alla appears in the role of an observer, who, by the way, got the most from her voice. Experts-psychologists only confirmed the intuitive suspicions of the operational-investigative group, concluding that the meaning, logic and emotional coloring of seditious speeches allow attributing their authorship only to a woman. The only thing that was not explained by the working version of the investigation was the origin of the male voice of the “invisible announcer”.
But the detectives proved once again that they do not eat their bread in vain. Irina Yarosh, a fellow student of a Lipetsk pharmaceutical school student, showed that Alla Serebryankina has a specific natural gift - she perfectly copies the voices of teachers and in her presence repeatedly spoke on the phone without visible tension in a male voice.
After listening to the arguments of the police officers, Alla spoke with a light heart about what had preceded the “big turmoil” at the Cheka. Aunt Fima, according to Serebryankina, developed hostile relations with neighbors, and therefore she set out to not only compromise them, but also to convince the regional authorities that it was impossible to live with them under one roof. The neighbors' endurance was tested by knocking on the walls of their apartments and meowing, but this was too primitive. Inadvertently, having learned about the artistic abilities of the future pharmacist, the old woman bought a tape recorder and forced the guest to speak various nasty things at the Nestruevs and Kutepovs into the microphone, naturally, in a man's voice, after which the talker, on behalf of the neighbors, promised Aunt Fima and Alla a hellish life and martyrdom, writing all this down down to the gruesome details. Then the old intriguer invited family acquaintances from Khutorsky passage as "witnesses". The stewards who came at the command of the old lady stopped at the doorstep, and Alla, who was hiding in the apartment at that time, turned on a disguised tape recorder at full volume. Iskhak's arrival almost broke the old woman's sophisticated intrigues against her confined enemies, however, the co-authors of the rally managed to fool the ignorant guy, and he, in a rage, almost left back to his native Kazakhstan forever. The "testimony" of Anna's niece could also be useful to Aunt Fima in the longed-for improvement of living conditions, therefore a kindred surprise was prepared for the dear guest. On the street of the Cheka, a brilliant theater of one actress-director has already begun: at Chrezvychayka Alla switched to live sound, which saved her from being exposed by the capital's "direction finders". As soon as someone in a conversation with Serebryankina mentioned some unusual fact from his biography, the “invisible announcer” soon rushed to publish it. For the whole of Ivanovskaya, that is, Emergency, the tenant of the "forty-five" shouted when she was left unattended for a minute or two. And if she didn’t succeed, then she walked several meters away from the overly curious fellow countrymen and, turning her back to them, uttered the acrimonious remarks of the “invisible speaker”.uttered the acrimonious remarks of the "invisible speaker."uttered the acrimonious remarks of the "invisible speaker."
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
On August 17, 1981, by a decision of the People's Court, Aunt Fima, accused of committing malicious hooliganism, was sent for compulsory treatment to a special type of medical institution, as she was declared insane. Serebryankina entered into a conspiracy with a quarrelsome widow because she could not repay the disinterested old woman with "black ingratitude", who did not take money from poor Allochka for the stay.
I had a detailed conversation with the chairman of the Kirovsky District People's Court of Kursk, Y. Morgun, who, more than ten years ago, had a chance to decide the fate of the accused Serebryankina as a judge. He did not conceal that he still does not quite understand the motives that guided the young tenant of the "forty-five" when resuming the sound messages of the "parallel world".
“She studied at the Kursk Pharmaceutical School from 1978 to 1981. During all three years of study, nothing reprehensible was noted for her. Modest, shy, hardworking. If in the first year she studied mainly for "three", then already in the third year for "4" and "5" - such a faceless description was signed by the class teacher for her ward - graduate Alla Serebryankina. The most talented dreamer who gave her contemporaries a unique fairy tale - the myth of the "talking walls".
… Recently something similar to the Kursk mystery happened in Paraguay. The judge of the city of San Pedro offered the choice of the convicted twenty-three-year-old Arnaldo Espinosa, either of the punishments - six months in prison or a fine of twenty thousand guarani. Hispanic guy preferred a fine to imprisonment. This not talented amateur artist, who worked as a ventriloquist on the street, was brought to trial for a mere trifle by our domestic standards: Espinosa imitated the hoarse bass of the local police inspector Osvaldo del Rojas in his uterine voice, which amused his compatriots. The verdict of the court stated that by such actions the defendant provoked disrespect for the representatives of the law among others …
As in any fairy tale, this semi-legendary Kursk story has a happy ending. A graduate of the pharmaceutical school, Alla Serebryankina, was not sent to the women's "zone" and was not taken to a psychiatric hospital, but, having terminated the criminal prosecution against her out of humane considerations, was given the opportunity to leave home for the Lipetsk region with an unblemished biography.
The Moscow Chekists, who turned out to be right that there were no technical means in Chrezhelyka, later expressed their regret that the ventriloquist had gone into the pharmacy business: "She would have made a great pop actress!"
Author - Alexander Tarasov