On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Chosen)

PPP

They stopped at first in our local tavern for a week or so, so that they can, well, examine our village on "prospects of innovations", as they decided to express themselves unclearly. And to pay off at first they wanted not with copper coins of ours that sound, but with some pieces of green paper with pyramids and eyes painted on them. Greatly were we surprised by such money, and didn't want to accept them at first, but convinced they us naturally that always easy it is to exchange pieces of paper these with ugly faces of people on their reverse side drawn, for almost anything we desire, for the entire world is being bought and sold by them for these pieces. Ooh, didn't we scent their dirty trick at that moment, stupid ones, for in calmness and tranquility of our world, until their arrival which has been remaining, very trustful we managed to become and didn't think anything bad about visitors.

And so at first a week or so passed, and then the second one came, yet lodgers didn't even think of leaving. And were they traveling through the village and inquiring both men and women ours of something, and showing them something, and winking. Tempted them with their devilish dresses and addictions without a doubt – yet didn't we understood it at first, the moment that critical missed and passed by!

And so it turned our finally so that both a tavern and yard our coaching we have been stripped at once! Tooth we are giving to you that it all was the way we do describe here: woke up men ours early in the morning by a cock's shout and decided to walk by dews to breath fresh invigorating air. And voila – see they that our tavern is gone without a trace! And would it still be fine if lost this trace was in some fire – for a brand new one better than the former would we build, with a new milk instead of vodka that was offered there. But no way – instead of a yard our coaching and tavern there was some monster tall made of concrete and glass as if the sun itself eclipsing with a paunch of floors spreading wide!

And on the first floor letters, golden enormous sparkled with all colors and shades, and the only word with three letters there was imprinted and was that word PPP. For long have we been guessing after that of what this word could mean, and as we could remember agreed that Profound Public Place is that, and why did we call it that way – soon you would understand it, as soon as the history of our grieves you manage to read up to the end. And were floors rising up and up in this building, and there was no visible end to them at all, uprising – and knowing people, there often afterwards dwelling, told us that there were exactly nine hundred ninety-nine floors out there, yet the lift there did not go higher than the first hundreds of floors in village of ours, yet it' said that in PPPs similar in big cities was it rising higher than that.

And how building that huge and enormous in one night could grow like a mushroom after some acid rain, we have no idea of – and the owner of a tavern, as we remember, was too shocked greatly and grieved at first of his institution, and often guests our overseas surprising accused in that, as if they possessed such magic powers to construct in a night such vast immodest objects – pigs they are, in a word, and blighters. And as if in the water was our Arseny looking, as if was feeling it all in advance!

Rushed we afterward, as remembered, through the village altogether, seeking those guests unusual, demanding them to answer for that crime of construction, yet no matter how hard we tried to find them in gates, cellars, even sheds, but disappeared they totally without a single trace to catch. Left, probably, by that night from the village of ours as far as possible, by pigs being driven. And let they rot! – decided we, and went to examine the new building. Oh, people kind and smart, better it would be if we didn't do that, for enticed us all this PPP afterward and drugged seriously!

Almost everything was available inside it, oh brothers! Both casino cash-stealing and perfume stupefying, both flowers artificial and dinners gut-filling, and clothes fashionable shameless, and gold with ornaments soul-blinding, and gadgets various peeping and humming and time-consuming, and wines overseas intoxicating, and magazines colorful vulgarizing... And grasped was the spirit of many of us, and in crowds were we breaching into that PPP, and for all day long have been wandering there and circling by floors and lanes these infinite, and back to their families, and children, and husbands, and wives didn't want to return at all.