Planet Plyuk At Messed-Up Times

• ULADZIMIR KHALIP
• 29.04.2023, 13:52

Any country can be turned into the famous planet Plyuk.

The Chinese gave Putin the Moon. Not all of it, of course. A pinch of gray dust, one and a half grams. The gift is chic, but ambiguous. It would be better to give something simpler and more modest. Why does he need these interplanetary problems? Je has enough of his own, earthly trouble. If they really wanted to please the guest during his February visit to Beijing, they could even present an ordinary pine cone from Shaolin. In recognition of his incredible success in all martial arts. Cheap and cheerful. And the meaning is deep. And you can brag to your inner circle: see, where they remember and appreciate.

And now what to do with this unearthly dust? You could just throw it away and forget. But everything is not so simple. What if Comrade Xi at the next meeting, if such a thing still happens, will casually ask: what about the dust? There may be a big confusion. Or will you have to lie recklessly that the precious one and a half grams in the best laboratories were subjected to a comprehensive study and they found out ... What?

In a word, it is still a gift. With a hint. And with what! How long have they shouted to the whole world that the country of the victorious proletariat was the first to go into space. Who could argue — the Soviet satellite hung over everyone's heads. And then the first man stepped bravely into space. And now it is necessary to wince and smile, showing unheard-of joy — a wealthy neighbor became generous, gave a box of moon dust.

Bad luck. Clear, persistent and, it seems, forever. Why be surprised? If the qualification allows, any country can be turned into the famous planet Plyuk. Where it is so joyful to live, and where there is always war. Here is a mighty machine flying across the midnight sky — SU-34.

Below is a city. Large, possibly regional. And under the wing, the intersection of Vatutin and Gubin streets is clearly visible. Everything is lit, no blackout. Cars run and bustle. Tranquility. Peace. Your own land, which must be protected from insidious and numerous enemies. And the position of the enemy is still far away. Somewhere out there, ahead, in impenetrable darkness.

And suddenly under the wing, at the crossroads — an instantaneous flash. Four cars were blown away by the explosion. One was even thrown onto the roof of the store. Why would this suddenly happen? And this, as will be noted later in official documents, is an abnormal gathering of ammunition. In other words, two bombs set their own target and fell on the ill-fated intersection. Above the store, on the roof of which someone's car landed happily, now a mangled sign dangles in the wind. You can still make out two words — “White City”. Who is guilty? Yes, no one. All according to the plan, the full-on planet Plyuk.

But it's just lyrics. Plus it's spring, April. And the twentieth day is already behind your back. Whether Annushka spilled the oil is still not really known, but a man with a box of moon dust has already descended into the bunker. And the German writer Günter Grass, Nobel Prize winner, who once experienced such a spring, has long told the world what happens to a country that stupidly and recklessly followed a gray, nondescript little man. And it doesn’t matter if he is carrying a box of treasured dust or a pistol in which there is only one cartridge. Here is the text. Germany, April forty-fifth. The last called up with a marching company are driven to the front. There is no longer a front. And not a single chance to survive. Reading such a fragment is like looking into the future. Perhaps close.

“And then I see the first dead. Young and old, in army uniform. They hang from the still bare roadside trees or from the lindens that grow in the marketplaces. The cardboard on his chest says that the hanged man was “a coward who undermines the combat effectiveness of the armed forces”. My peer, who even wore his hair parted on the left, just like me, is hanging next to an officer of indeterminate rank, whom the court-martial demoted before execution. Heaps of the dead, we are carried past by the deafening rumble of tank tracks. No thoughts, only pictures imprinted.

In the distance I see peasants plowing, pulling furrow after furrow, as if nothing around them affects them. One of them harnessed the cow. Behind the plow are crows.

And again I see crowds of refugees clogging the roads: horse-drawn carts, among them old women and teenagers dragging or pushing overloaded handcarts. Children sit on suitcases and bundles trying to save their dolls. An old man is dragging a cart with two lambs, hoping to survive the war.”

Will they survive? Old men. Teenagers. Children. All those who are stuck in the war — this one and that one. Spring. April. The instigator of this madness has already celebrated his last birthday. Went down to the bunker, never to get out again. But the mechanism of a long-lost war is still working properly.

And two lambs in the cart of an old man from a crowd of refugees have as much chance of surviving as a seventeen-year-old soldier, whom the last tank of the defeated Wehrmacht is still in a hurry to deliver to the line of fire. And the one who, by the verdict of the court-martial, has already received a rope and a sign with the short word “coward” on his chest, could just as well follow there, clinging to the battered armor of a “Panthera”. But he got into a battue. Bad luck. The same mechanism worked.

And the unprepossessing fellow went down to his last bunker too late.

Uladzimir Khalip, specially for Charter97.org