I recently had to bury a close friend of mine. Naturally, this is a terrible blow for everyone who knew him, because 44 years is the heyday of strength and life. Until now, it seems to me that I know the clue to this sudden death …
About ten years ago, or maybe more, my girls and I traveled along the Golden Ring. Nikolai had a car inherited from his father, not God knows what, but it drove, and even over decent distances.
This is how we got to Suzdal, walked around the city, bought some souvenirs, and just before leaving, someone advised us to go to the suburb of Suzdal - Kideksha, where an old bell tower that resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa was preserved.
Indeed, the bell tower is really inclined, maybe not like the famous tower, but something like that. Some kind of monastery, or something, there was …
They parked the car behind the monastery, below, almost by the river, and began to climb up. Apparently, there was some kind of reconstruction in the monastery, because we walked past garbage heaps with rotten boards and chipped bricks.
And suddenly Kolya froze. In the midst of this construction rubbish lay … human bones! Brown, as if burnt by time, only bones - there were no skulls. I rushed upstairs with the girls, and Kolya studied the garbage in detail …
And suddenly, completely happy, he takes one of the bones and with an exclamation: "A souvenir from Kideksha!" - is catching up with us. It was probably the tibia of a man who once lived here. No matter how hard we tried to dissuade him, nothing helped. So he took this terrible find to Moscow.
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I know that he even tried to attach it to some museum, and when it didn't work out - who needs such "good"! - he just put the bone on the rack in the apartment and showed it to the guests for any reason, although many simply turned their noses back from this thing.
For some time, Nikolai and I parted ways, I moved to my wife in Riga, and we met four years ago. It was impossible to recognize him - in his forty years he looked like a swollen, barely moving old man. With the same girl who went with us, he parted for a long time, got a bunch of all kinds of illnesses, shortness of breath, suffered a stroke …
It was inconvenient to talk about his sores, they remembered the past, and Nikolai invited me to visit. There was such a stench in the apartment that I quickly retreated. But I managed to notice that the "souvenir" was still in its place.
And then I learned about his death. He just died, alone, and they did not find him right away. When I asked about the bone, his sister replied that there were no bones in the apartment. And nevertheless, something is not right here …
Kirill Goryunov, Riga
