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 автор: ups     добавлено: 18 ноября 2008, 14:28 © free

У них нет чемоданов. Рюкзаки. Они приезжают в Москву. Ради неё готовы на все. Вроде чеховских трех сестер. Они думают, что все забудут. Потом. Отчет об одной ночи в Москве на метро Китай-город с ревером, достойном (или нет) этого подземного перехода. Рядом Плешка — памятник героям Плевны. Записывали — ааа и ups. Хр: 8'58 Hey English speakers! There is an English transcript available as well.

They don’t have suitcases. Only rucksacks. Like Chekhov’s three sisters, they would do anything to get to Moscow. And they would do anything to stay there, certain they can forget everything in the future...

In this story, producer Lena Uporova and her colleague spend a night at an underground passage near the Kitay Gorod metro stop –where male prostitutes gather in Moscow.

PLESHKA – is the Russian word for any meeting place of sexual minorities in Russia. No one knows where the root of the word comes from.

****************************************************************************
ACTUALITY: Sounds from inside a metro station. A public announcement over the monitor: “Dear passengers, in the interest of restricting violations in the use of the Metro … please speak with a police officer…”

Sound: High heels on floor.

MUSIC

Sound: Announcement in the metro “… those with soiled clothes …”
“ … and solicitors …”

LENA (NARRATOR)
The last to appear was Alik. He was not as drunk as the others, and the best dressed of all.

MUSIC

LENA
Expensive yellow boots—such beautiful boots on a gastarbeiter from Dushanbe.

ALIK
You know, people have different ways of making money. I, for example, to speak frankly, make a living this way: this is the PLESHKA — a gay cruising place. A homo approaches, says “I like you,” and I say, “For money?” He says, “Yes, money.” “How much?” “Five thousand [about $150].” “Fine. Let’s go.” Or he’ll say, “For three thousand, yes.” (laughs) And that means I put on rubber… (laughs)

LENA
Uh-huh

ALIK
I give this homo… a skull fuck… (laughter)

MUSIC

LENA
First to arrive was Artur, with Roma and Seriozha. They are horribly drunk; and they want to get drunker still.

Sound: Laughter

ARTUR
Everyone has his story.

ANDREY
And what were you packing away just now?

MALE VOICE
He asked me to carry this rucksack. I gave it to him.

ARTUR
Forgive me please.

MALE VOICE
He asked me for a present, I gave him this leather thing …kind of a present … He’s like … like what...?

ARTUR
Someone already burned through it, fuck …

LENA
And what is this?

ANDREY
What’s this?

MALE VOICES
… no, this here, … a brassiere … it’s his brassiere …

ARTUR
It’s my job.

MUSIC

LENA
They sit on the floor of the underpass at Kitay Gorod [area in the very centre of Moscow]: fashionable, and long unwashed. Artur’s makeup is smeared and his hands are covered in blisters.

What’s with your hands, can you explain for a second? I don’t understand how that happened.

ARTUR
Yesterday I drank rubbing alcohol …

LENA
Why did you do that?

ARTUR
… they didn’t believe me, I poured it and lit it.

MUSIC

LENA
I’ll translate. Artur drank rubbing alcohol. No one believed him. To prove it he poured it on his hands and set them on fire. That was yesterday. Today, it’s a
week and a half that they’ve been together: boys from Murmansk, Novosibirsk, and the Tyumensk region. Roma and Seriozha are taking care of Artur. Artur is the only one among them who’s gay, and all three have just returned from the cruising place – the Pleshka.

MALE VOICE
Do you know what it means to be ‘active’?

LENA
Ha-ha.

MALE VOICE
It happens, sometimes.

LENA
And what’s that like? Strange, or not really? For you.

MALE VOICES
… Honestly?
… Nothing really special …
… When I get out of here I’m gonna forget it, fuck ...
…don’t swear! You’d better not do it! … I, in principle, I know that when I get out of Moscow, get home, to Novosibirsk, I’m gonna take it easy. Before I was pissed off and everything got me down, and now I …
… I have two …

ARTUR
Honey, let’s organize a group … I’ll be the chick on the keyboards …

MALE VOICES
… I have two cars …
… and I’ll give us tattoos, pictures of guitars, to everyone. Seriously! It will be super.

LENA
And where do you sleep in Moscow?

MALE VOICES
Well you know, I’m either at friends’ …
… the costs of the profession ..
… or I got to clubs …
… or on benches …
… or at “Babushka’s”...
… I go to clubs, or to the sauna, or somewhere to relax.

LENA
Artur, how long have you been in Moscow?

ARTUR
Um, now, at the present moment, 3 months, but overall 4 years, already. I leave when I need to take a break.

Sounds from the underpass, echo of voices

ARTUR
I don’t want to be weak – I don't — but 3 months and I’m already broken. You can’t smile continuously. And I see nothing, don’t see any wrong in … in crying.

LENA
Unhappy, he attracts the unhappy.

ACTUALITY: Man speaks: 50 grams! (laughter) Oooo!

SASHA
I lived through two wars.

LENA
Sasha from Ulyanovsk [birthplace of Lenin, ed.], guard in the Kitay Gorod underpass.

SASHA
I’m a maroon beret [signifying that he’s a commando]… Don’t.

MALE VOICES
… No, no, no, I’m going to Taganka. …

SASHA
Don’t DO it!.. I have no one.

MALE VOICE
Look, after 11…?

SASHA
I had a family. I had a son, but now

LENA
Now?

SASHA
I have no family. Today they wrote me a note, simply, “Goodbye, forgive us.”

MUSIC

LENA
A bottle of vodka in his hands. A hopelessly empty bottle. Sinister swill in the hands of boys. Where are their parents?

Sound: footsteps

SASHA
Well, they sit. They don’t make a row, generally. They just sit.

ANDREI
Do you know—

SASHA
By the way—

ANDREI
Who they are, what they are?

SASHA
I know who one of them is.

MALE VOICE
… and snatched the glass

LENA
Who exactly? Artur?

SASHA
I … am not a judge. I am not God. I cannot decide how he should live, I cannot tell him how. He chose this life.

ARTYOM
Are you drunk again, you whore? Huh, alcoholic?

ARTUR
… I’m not drunk.

LENA
Artyom appears like a ghost.

ARTUR
Honey, listen, today my mother’s coming today at 12.

MALE VOICE
Sit down.

ARTYOM
Listen, man, I’d rather talk with you privately.

ARTUR
Okay.

MALE VOICE
Sit down.

ARTYOM
… Hello, excuse me for not greeting you…

LENA
Nothing scares them. Except Artyom, from Irkutsk.

Sound: Doors slamming, footsteps, echoes.

ARTUR
I’m telling the truth, no one fucking needs me, nu-huh, except my mother. On one hand, while I’ve been here for three months, searching for someone, I really wanted …

ARTYOM
Artur!

ARTUR
… just a sec … I was searching for someone, and so …

ARTYOM
Listen, if you say just one more word, right here I will … what young man?

LENA
Not you! What’s with him?

MALE VOICE
He wants to talk with you about your debt.

ARTUR
Tell him that the debt will be paid after 12 today.

MALE VOICE
After 12. Fine.

LENA
And how much do you owe?

ARTUR
1000. Because he snatched my passport, and in order for him to give it back …

LENA
A thousand rubles?

ARTUR
Rubles.

LENA
Very well, Artyom from Irkutsk, here’s 1000 rubles.

ARTYOM
Don’t lose your passport again, and don’t goof up again!

MUSIC, ATMOSPHERIC VOICES

LENA
Artur runs away from him, away from the underpass, to music, noise, bombast, fancy cars, around the corner, past the church. To a club called “Sorry, Babushka”.

MUSIC

LENA
But today with his hands and badly put-on mascara, they don’t let him in. He turns back around, and returns to the underpass, to his friends, including a fourth-year student in the faculty of psychology.

PETER (speaking in English)
Ah, we can describe it. I can say that the influence of Lenin on the world history – it’s, it’s really great. It’s really great, I think. And, ah…

LENA
The sociology student Peter approaches second-to-last, maybe just slightly tipsy. He’s on his way to dance at “Propaganda” [a well-known night club], but has stopped in to hang out here, and for some reason is speaking in English. Then he and the guard Sasha start discussing the idea of revolution. At 2 in the morning, in the Kitay Gorod underpass.

PETER
I mean that—

SASHA
In order to have a revolution, here in Russia,

PETER
it’s, it’s—

SASHA
with German money,

PETER
–that’s a different question— that’s a different question—

SASHA
only so that—

PETER
(sighs, laughs)

SASHA
Germany would win—

PETER
Shh.

SASHA
World War I.

PETER
That’s clear, that’s clear, that’s clear.

SASHA
Do you mean the positive aspects of Lenin?

PETER
Yes, yes, and do you know why—

LENA
Meanwhile, Artur, Roma and Seriozha, now free from scary Artyom, once again ask us for money. They’ve remembered another club, somewhere, where they could pass the night. Artur is clasping to his breast his pink rucksack, with a pink bra and face cream inside. No one interests them any longer. Ahead, the same old game.

ARTUR
Young man, to the nightclub “Base”!

LENA
They get a taxi, and disappear.

MUSIC

LENA
And then, Alik, from Dushanbe, appears. In the dazzling yellow boots, which shine like the moon in the darkness of the underpass.

ALIK
This is civilization. They live more simply here. In my old age I’d like to remember all this.

MUSIC

SOUND: Metro announcement: “Be careful, the doors are closing. Next station: Kitay Gorod.”

 

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