«So I didn’t quite understand that your ancestor built this house?» I asked with interest.
– Both the house and the refuge for the family are secretive from the elites of Hyperborea, who attracted him to the breakdown and construction of gateways and ventilation of the underground city. Which, incidentally, was destroyed by the invaders during the ensuing nuclear war. These two civilizations were completely destroyed by nuclear carpet bombing. Then, after the war, the invaders set about large-scale mining at flying processing plants. The dumps of processed ores are visible in the form of desert sands, they did not even spare the bottom of the world’s oceans, from there the ores were also scooped, turning into sand emissions, which lined with lush vegetation around the world and fertile soils with ruins of city walls melted by nuclear explosions, which archaeologists are now digging in different places. However, we have to go further…
Igor chose the next master key from the bundle that hung on his belt, then removed it and touched the central part of the granite slab with a polished ball of the holder. A spot began to form at the touch point and grow in front of the eyes, creating a strange and unpleasant sound. The sound, similar to the chirping of grasshoppers, increased with the spread of a spot on the stove, which turned from dark in the eyes to gray, spider-like bright…
I did not immediately understand that the chirping of grasshoppers was the sound of my alarm clock set at seven in the morning, which I forgot to turn off last night when I went to bed. The gray and bright spot, seen in a dream on a granite slab, is the early morning light that falls on my eyes from the window, creating a web-like vision from behind my eyelashes.
When I finally woke up, I began to return to reality, wondering at my dream, as it does, dreams come true, and with what imagination and mystery, it’s a pity that the alarm clock did not let me watch, and what’s behind the polished granite slab that closes the entrance to an unknown place? The dream plunged me into thought about the upcoming meeting with Igor, who now acquired a mysterious shade, inspired by my dreams in a dream…
Chapter 3
The University metro station is located on Tara’s Shevchenko Avenue, which starts perpendicularly on the main street of Kiev, Khreshchatyk. From the exit of the subway, I went to Shevchenko Avenue, crossing the street. Chkalov, who was going down to the lane leading to Igor’s house. Along the cobblestone pavement, I reached the Deli. It was necessary to buy something; it wasn’t decided to just go empty-handed to visit a not-so-familiar guy. On the counter in the alcohol department of the Deli there were different drinks, there were whiskeys of different overseas varieties, cognacs and wines. I looked at the drinks for a long time, and decided to stay on the Shabo cognac for five years, about which the workers and employees of our bureau spoke well. Having bought half a liter of this cognac and a stick of dry sausage, he headed to the house where Igor lived.
The house and the courtyard appeared before me as an exact copy of the vision that I saw in a dream. I was even a little puzzled by this. It’s like I’m not going to this three-story mansion for the first time, but as a familiar road and I am already climbing the brick steps to Igor’s apartment. Shaking off the first and wet snow falling at night from the shoe, he pressed the bell. Igor opened the door and let me into the hallway. A small corridor. The space seemed narrow with a high ceiling. The walls were full of a variety of safes. I was surprised to look at old copies of these iron boxes.
– This is from my grandfather still left. He repaired, one might say, dead safes, put them in order, and there was no end to customers, antique lovers. Each wealthy businessman had the honor to brag of his rare safe and give weight to his office, so to speak, the charm of efficiency. Look at these rare specimens, some of them are inlaid not only with enamel, but this one on crooked legs, completely covered with ceramics, the safe of Catherine the Great herself, as a gift to my great-grandfather, for opening the queen’s safe, locked with a broken key. A very expensive thing, but my grandfather did not want to sell it for the fabulous money that was offered to him, he always said that it was their family talisman of their family profession.
– Well, and you, Igor, how will you sell the relic?
– I have not yet figured out our family profession. – the guy answered evasively.
Putting slippers on my feet, I said: «I brought something here to cement our acquaintance.» Take it on the nightstand, please.
Igor came up and picked up cognac.
– Oh, five stars, class. Sausage is excellent. Well, let’s go straight to the kitchen, we’ll get to know each other.
There was already a laid table in the kitchen, on which stood a flat bottle of Armenian Noah brandy of twenty years old, and the loaded brandy Shabo wretchedly looked on the tablecloths next to the elite drink of the people, which is famous for its cognacs. Igor, saw my awkwardness, hastened to say: – This is all from the storehouse of my grandfather, left me a legacy. Mother at funeral tried with her new boyfriend get into the wine cellar. But my grandfather before leaving strictly warned me not to show anyone the treasures of winemaking that our family had been collecting for centuries.
«Do you have a hundred-year-old wine?» And not only. – Igor answered, look at this cognac, Noah was bought by grandfather fifty years ago, on this faded label you can make out that even then, in Yerevan, it was sold from a twenty-year-old batch.
«Wait, now he has an endurance of seventy years?!» I exclaimed.
«Not at all.» If he had been kept in an oak barrel all this time, then that would have been so, and in the glass he remains in the hypostasis in which he was bought, that is, in a twenty-year exposure. – Igor took the bottle and said, «Look, the quality of storage is still checked by the fact that the drink has no precipitation, well, if only a little, and if not at all, and even fifty years of storage, then we have the highest quality. At auction, this brandy can be sold very expensive.
– Well, and for how much?
«Well, a thousand pounds, I guess.»
«You’re a millionaire guy with such wealth, huh?»
– This is not entirely true, we are not England and not Europe.
– Not America and not China. – I picked up.
– Yes, what is there to argue.
With these words, Igor took a table knife and, shaking the sealing wax on a napkin, opened the bottle. Filling cognac glasses, he said:
– This drink needs to be breathed before drinking. This is because the taste is very combined with the filled aromas of the space of the room. Now we can smell this amazing smell of mountains,