Twilight Watch

Начало книги

The genuine old Moscow house yards disappeared sometime between the two popular bards Vysotsky and Okudzhava.

A strange business. Even after the revolution, when for purposes of the struggle against "the slavery of the kitchen" they actually did away with kitchens in housing, nobody tried to get rid of the yards. Every proud Stalin block displaying its Potemkin facade to the broad avenue beside it had to have a yard-large and green, with tables and benches, with a yard keeper sweeping the asphalt clean every morning. Then the age of five-story sectional housing arrived and the yards shriveled and became bare. The yard keepers who had been so grave and staid changed sex and became yard women who regarded it as their duty to give mischievous little boys a clip around the ear and upbraid residents who came home drunk. But even so, the yards were still hanging on.

Then, as if in response to the increased tempo of life, the houses stretched upward. From nine stories to sixteen or even twenty-four. And as if each building were given the right to a certain volume of space-not an area of ground-the yards withered back to the entrances and the entrances opened their doors straight onto the public streets, while the male and female yard keepers disappeared and were replaced by communal services functionaries.

Читать дальше →