An oddball in a strange hat

                Dedicated to V. Spitkovsky

   Sun, throwing elaborate shadows with tremor was punched through delicate plane trees foliage. For some reason, nobody strolling along Boulevard was in a hurry, neither old people nor children. It is not yet time for pale faces and nervously scraping hands. It was still burning down, eating up “real socialism” with its decrepit, pitiful, and greedy leaders, it was quiet and calm. It was still boring, and sunny bunnies snatched from the half-darkness of Boulevard’s charming childish and feminine faces, flashed merrily in eyes. Boulevard gently stretched out pending evening coolness, loud laughter, and loving couples.
   Sighing, He wiped with a handkerchief the sweat from his face, bald head, and massive neck.
   - Hotness, - with authority he noted, to nobody, without addressing. But it was not so hot. Already pulled from the sea, slightly blowing his moist neck.
   - Good! - and as in previous years, he carefully lowered his considerable weight to the second bench from the monument.
   - Not so long ago painted, - He noted, customary groping from below paint pimples. He used to peel them off and if the bench was recently painted, for a long time he had to erase the stuck paint, spitting on his fingers.
   This time the taxi waiting around the corner - have to immediately return to the airport. There's nothing to be done - business... Indeed, he had already missed two years, did not appear on the Boulevard during acacias flowering. The first was sick wife, then it happened… The first call. Could be the last. But this year He broke away - even for one day!
   And here, here as if nothing changes. All the same. The same children - still, probably, others. The same girls, and maybe not the ones. The same odd fellow in a strange old hat. How much He remembered himself, so much he remembered this hat and this odd fellow. Maybe it's another crank? Maybe it's the son of that crank who He first met here on Boulevard, forty, more than forty years ago? Indeed l, that would now be under eighty, and this one, after all, no more than forty!
   He rose and for the first time for all these years crossed the Boulevard and sank to a bench next to the odd fellow in the strange hat. Near it, it looked even more strange and awfully old. More accurate, not of old, but old-fashioned. As if she lay for a long time somewhere in the museum under the glass, and then this freak came and took it out. The same old-fashioned was the face under the hat, with a heavy protruding chin and a long, slightly hooked nose. A face was young, but this sight to nowhere making it somehow vaguely old …
   - Say, - He did not know, how to ask. - Say, it indeed your father sat earlier on this place?
   - Father… - pronounced odd fellow's lips.
   - Well yes. Indeed, I have come here for a long time. More than forty years.
   - For a long time… - repeated the lips.
   - I always come, I come to Boulevard during acacias flowering.
   - Acacias… - around the odd fellow some ring hovered as if slightly shivered warm Boulevard air.
   - I have that custom! - He has already shouted. - My, personal custom! Excuse me ... I do not know, but there must be some connection... Otherwise loneliness rolls. You will not understand this - you are always here ...
   - Always … - the ring intensified, sharpened.
   - It rings in my ears, -  He thought. - Probably pressure drops. Yes, and it's time to move.
   Arising, He stretched out his legs and slowly, trying to preserve for a few minutes the blissful calm of the already rather cool Boulevard, he headed for tiring of waiting for a taxi.
   Reaching the corner, He took a deep breath, absorbing the sweet scent of flowering acacias and farewell looked round benches in sun glare, flaking sycamores, and the odd fellow in a strange hat. He turned around the corner and could no longer see how disappeared, dissolved in the stupefying air of Boulevard that Oddball.
   The ringing became loud for a moment - and disappeared entirely.
   The Oddball also knew that you can not break away forever from your native Boulevard, from the flowering acacias ...
   From your native Earth.