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      “Let’s hurry up, we’re on a tight schedule,” Dima pulled him towards the rotunda. “We need to see it to think how to proceed, and the gallery, too.”

      Ruslan flinched when something red splashed on his jacket. Was that ketchup or blood? The third statue he’d seen at the construction site had been splattered with blood. This time the marble angel made no secret of the fact that it was alive. It moved easily and plastically. It is probably an actor, smeared with whitewash from head to toe, so that it is not distinguishable from the sculpture. But why are his eyes entirely white, too? Angel put his hand to his lips, calling for silence. Workers passed by, as if they didn’t see him. Someone pushed a wheelbarrow full of bricks at the angel. In an instant, marble palms closed around the trucker’s head and crushed it like a rotten egg. Blood spurted.

      Ruslan wanted to scream, to call the police. Even angels aren’t allowed to get up to mischief on a construction site. And this was probably not an angel, but some liquid powdered joker. Only the builders don’t notice him for some reason. Before Ruslan could open his mouth, the angel, the wheelbarrow with the brick, and the severed head, which the angel was playing with as if it were a red ball, disappeared from view.

      Ruslan looked at his jacket and didn’t see any blood on it. It had definitely splattered on him.

      Pagan gods

      What’s wrong with him? Is he going crazy? He began to see statues of angels everywhere, crushing the heads of workers.

      Dima strode masterfully into the rotunda. Ruslan had nothing to do but follow him. He felt out of place in the new place. This had never happened to him before. Usually he would get to work right away, but here he was suddenly plagued by migraines.

      There was a gallery of sculptures in the rotunda, but not a single angel among them. There were only pagan gods. Some of them Ruslan could name, others he had seen for the first time. The graceful sculptures looked both creepy and beautiful. Although who would have thought that something creepy could be captivatingly beautiful!

      Ruslan wandered around the rotunda, pushing aside the heavy velvet drapes that covered some of the aisles. The rotunda reminded him of a horror museum.

      At the entrance hung a painting of the goddess Marena in a black kokoshnik and holding a skull. Opposite was an eerie landscape with black fields where armies of stunted demons grew with the crops. Two monstrous giants replaced the caryatids. Both of them reminded Ruslan of the Scandinavian Surt, lord of the fire giants and god of the end of the world. The farther one went, the more ominous pictures and figures one encountered. There were sea monsters, women turning into dragons, rakshasas, and ifrites. A complete set for an apocalypse meeting! If all these gods and demons turned out not to be part of a dead culture, but living beings, they would definitely sweep the world away. Ruslan suddenly felt uneasy. For a moment, he imagined all these creepy creatures coming to life and pouncing on defenseless humanity.

      “Who had the idea of assembling such a gruesome collection?” He wondered.

      “Who is it? It is our oligarch, of course.”

      “Or it is one of his secretaries,” Ruslan suggested. “Who among the bigwigs does not do without the advice of their assistants?”

      “And what kind of collection would you advise him to collect? Are they paintings by Modigliani and Picasso?”

      It was a joke, of course, but Ruslan answered seriously:

      “I mean Shishkin, Aivazovsky, Rokotov, Bryullov, Levitsky.”

      “It would cost too much. What if even an oligarch can’t afford it?” His partner always wanted to make jokes. With the help of jokes is easy to get away from the grim reality, but sometimes reality strikes.

      “Even the merchant Tretyakov was able to collect paintings, which he then gave to the people, and the resulting is Tretyakov Gallery.”

      “You can’t expect that here,” Dima grinned. “The exhibits were brought for a private collection.”

      “But what if the rich man has awakened his conscience and wants to open a free museum here?”

      “It’s too far from populated areas. Gasoline alone to get here would be expensive. And there’s no public transportation to get here at all. So how do we get visitors here?”

      “It is on customized buses, like sightseers. Why are you thinking about technical problems? Can’t our customer afford everything?”

      “Let’s say that’s true. But there’s another problem.”

      “What is it?”

      “Take a look! Look around! What do you see? Beauty mixed with horror.”

      “Some like horror and even surrealism, although surrealist art is the world through the eyes of a madman. In surrealist paintings, all the objects are not in their place, so that it gives the impression of absurdity or madness, but some people like it. It’s not without reason that art connoisseurs throng to Salvador Dali’s villa-museum. I’ve been there, by the way, but for some reason I like it better here, I don’t know why.”

      “Is it because of it?” The partner nodded at the central pedestal with an unfamiliar, but so attractive name of the deity.

      “Yes. It is because of her.”

      Ruslan moved forward toward the shimmering statue. Her golden wings fluttered. How like an optical illusion! It was a play of light and shadow. Ruslan reached out his hand to touch the gilded statue and felt only emptiness. There was no statue on the pedestal. But he had just seen it!

      Had he imagined it? Ruslan wiped his eyes. The pedestal was still empty. He could have sworn that a minute ago he had seen a golden silhouette with wings on it.

      He should get more sleep, and then he wouldn’t have obsessions. Anything can appear to an overworked or tipsy person.

      Dima was worried that there were no beer houses in the neighborhood.

      “It would probably take half a day to get to the nearest pub!” He lamented.

      Ruslan didn’t like the name pub. It was too English, as if it were London, not the distant Moscow suburbs. Nevertheless, the name “pub” could be seen on a pub even in the bedroom neighborhood of Moscow, where Ruslan’s family lived. For some reason, it became fashionable to give the most unattractive-looking establishments foreign names. The service did not improve. And the degree of alcohol was equally high everywhere. Ruslan preferred not to drink at all. That way you would be soberer and spend less money. The museum exposition of the rotunda interested him much more than the presence of drinking establishments in the neighborhood.

      “It’s gorgeous here!” He whistled.

      “Imagine how much more chic it will be when the building is completed and filled with all the imported curiosities that are still on their way,” Dima’s voice was filled with undisguised envy. He could be understood. Who wouldn’t dream of living in his own palace!

      “What a pity that all this luxury will rot here like in a crypt.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “Such СКАЧАТЬ