The Outstanding Friend Of The Epoch

There was one crazy old man. His name was Jacob Druskin. He went slightly insane in the besieged Leningrad. It so happened that during the Second World War the Germans surrounded the city of Leningrad from all sides and did not let anyone in or out. And in the city were Russian and they did not let the Germans in.

Leningrad had run out of food and fuel, but the Germans blocked roads and did not allow anything to be brought to the city. So people remained without food and heating. They hunted rats, pigeons, crows, cats and dogs, and grew tomatoes on the windowsill. And in the winter they started making stoves out of large cans from apple jam, three to five liters or more. The pipe was taken out into the window, only an iron plate was put in place of the glass and covered with clay around the pipe, so as not to let the cold air in. If there are no cracks in the house, the warm air stays longer.

People gathered dry twigs in parks, broke benches and carried them home to burn in their tiny stove and boil their own herbal or carrot tea. They broke all the fences and broke the floor in empty apartments, from which the owners managed to leave before the blockade. They cracked antique furniture on the slivers and burned them. The winter was very cold.

And, of course, books were burned, as in the days of the Inquisition.
Jacob Druskin slept, shrinking into a ball, in a coat under all his blankets, and under his bed whole suitcase with paper was kept. He could not burn those papers - they were every single manuscript of his friend. Two of his friends - Kharms and Vvedensky. For such a quantity of paper he could barter a few rats or even a dog and to care not for food for a week or more. There was nothing to eat and if someone was dying of hunger in the street, the dead body might have a leg or an arm stolen from them. That was the blockade.

They say that people who survived the blockade had always retained the habit of keeping large supplies of food, candles and matches at home.
Jacob Druskin has a habit of not parting with the archives of his friends. He goes to his dacha - he carries bread, matches, candles, clothes and a suitcase with manuscripts. Goes back home - it happens that something might be forgotten, but not the manuscripts.

Why did he do that? Of course, normal people don’t do that. Jacob Druskin has gone mad a little. For him, the inventions of his friends were more valuable, than warmth and food.

History smoothes much, as the ocean smoothes the ruins of a sunken city, like the wind smoothes mountains and valleys, filling them with sand. Perhaps the history will erase names of the funny and happy poets Kharms and Vvedensky from human memory. We don’t know. And the name of their modest, insanely loyal friend might remain preserved as a diamond remains, no matter how many waves have polished it.