Meeting a Countryman in Venice

Перевод рассказа "Встреча с земляком в Венеции"

My wife and I were riding a vaporetto — a water bus — along the canal, past a wall of palaces. We stood there, arms around each other, in the aisle by the rail, taking it all in.

- Look, - I said to her, - another slanted wall. And there’s another one: the first floor leans one way, outward, and the upper floors lean the other way, away from us. How could that even happen? Did they not have plumb lines back then?

- Maybe the foundation sank, and the wall tilted? - she suggested.

- Then there would be cracks running through the masonry, but here — look — the medallions are intact.

And it’s true: walls leaning in opposite directions can be seen in palaces and churches all over Europe. Sure, you expect it in medieval Greece or France, but even the Germans sometimes built that crookedly. In old L;beck, many buildings are lopsided. And they’ve been standing just fine — five hundred years, or even more.

- It’s puzzling, - I said, - At the same time, nearby you had Brunelleschi building the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. That was geometrically perfect.

- They didn’t build any of this, - came a confident voice from behind us, in Russian, - They weren’t capable of it.

We turned around at the sound of that voice. A solidly built man, a bit younger than me, radiated certainty in every gesture.

- They couldn’t build anything like this, - he went on, - They don’t know how to do anything.

- Then who built it, according to you?, - my wife asked challengingly.

I’d heard this kind of worldview before. YouTube is full of it. According to these people, everything in the world was built either by aliens, or by some long-lost advanced civilization, or by Slavs just passing through on their way somewhere.

I even have a school friend who believes this stuff. One time, he congratulated me on the 7,000th anniversary of the Russian army’s victory over the Chinese — a battle that supposedly happened exactly where the border runs today. I told him that couldn’t be, since neither Russians nor Chinese existed back then. He just said everything had already happened — it’s just that the official history has been falsified to keep the truth from our people.

Because, according to him, our world is ruled by an extraterrestrial civilization. Not directly, of course, but through the Jews. The Jews are too clever to get their hands dirty themselves — they outsource the work to local politicians so people think they're being governed by their own kind. The overlords make sure those politicians are greedy and not too bright, so they won’t think of rebelling. They all know who their real bosses are, and what will happen if they step out of line. This pyramid scheme has been running for thousands of years. Both levels of collaborators care only about their own wallets — not one of them gives a damn about the people.

This alien civilization, he claims, feeds on the energy released during human suffering. When politicians start a new war, it means the daily, routine flow of suffering energy isn’t enough anymore — they need more. Maybe there’s an alien holiday coming up, or some kind of festival.

I’m completely indifferent to these kinds of theories, and I won’t argue about them with anyone. I discreetly nudged my wife so she wouldn’t engage further, but the man replied to her patronizingly, as if she were a child:

- Of course no one will tell you. They’re not allowed.

A clever dodge.

My wife asked him:

- Where are you from?

- From Krasnoyarsk. And you?

- We’re from America.

- Ah. So what’s your old man up to again now? - he asked.

- He’s only doing good things, - my wife said hotly, - And yours — look what he started.

- What did he start? - the man asked, feigning surprise.

- A war. Why did he need to do that?

- What war? - the man said casually. - There’s no war. They're just restoring order. This should have been done a long time ago. So, did you also come through Marseille like we did?

We had indeed arrived in Venice from Marseille. Maybe he’d seen us there, I thought.

- We were actually heading to Egypt, - he continued, - but Egypt got shut down. All the flights and tours were canceled. Right now, the Jews are leveling everything in Palestine, going nuts, and we’re the ones paying the price. So we had to come here instead.

- You can understand those Jews, - my wife said. - Did you see what Hamas did? On TV?

- And you believe what your media show you?

- It was Hamas themselves filming it.

- People can say whatever they want. And now, because of all this, we’re stuck here.

- Well, it’s not such a bad place to be stuck, - my wife said, - There’s plenty to see here too.

- Yeah, sure. Today my wife and daughter-in-law dragged me all over Murano. What a bore. Finally managed to escape.

We had spent the day on that same Murano island — that marvelous place of glassblowers. And had lunch there, on the terrace, next to the water. We loved it. But I didn’t say anything, and my wife had already lost interest in the conversation.

At that point, someone called the man — probably his wife and daughter-in-law. He said goodbye to us with a condescending smile:

- You are nice guys. But wow, they really brainwashed you over there!

Sometime later, my wife asked me:

- Are they all like that back there?

- Probably not all. He’s actually more advanced than most — he has a Schengen visa and money to travel with his family. I’m not even sure if my relatives in Russia have foreign passports. They definitely don’t have money for trips like this. So, he’s not like the majority — he’s part of a small group of well-off people. And as for what ‘most’ people are like… we’ll never know. They don’t travel abroad. All we can judge them by are their actions. And those, at least, are visible.

Is he really my countryman? I’ve never been to Krasnoyarsk, never lived in Russia, and he’s unlikely to have lived in Kazakhstan. But until I was forty-six, we did live in the same country - USSR. So, I suppose we are countrymen, in a way. We came from the same cradle, so to speak.


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http://proza.ru/2025/09/20/207