The books The Heart of Parma and The Gold of Rebellion made such a strong impression on me that I immediately wanted to go to Perm. Especially since I have an acquaintance who is a completely mad patriot of Perm itself. That acquaintance is a young up-and-coming politician. Good guy. We talk often, and I help him get over the culture shock of living in Moscow. Like anyone who has come from far away, he had a whole bunch of phobias. For example, he was terrified of the metro and even of getting into an elevator. I explained to him that the fire-breathing dragon flying out of the tunnel wouldn’t hurt him, and that to get out of an elevator it isn’t necessary to pray and offer the elevator god a marten pelt. Anyway, the guy has settled into Moscow and is making political progress. So I talked him into taking a day trip to Perm to go fishing. We set off along the very same Chusovaya River described in The Gold of Rebellion. And here, by the way, is that very young polit-geek:
Our ship was called *Bacchus*, which, however, led to no consequences whatsoever:
After we set off, the weather turned bad, but Nikita Belykh, like a true man from Perm, wasn’t afraid of the cold:
The cold wind and bad weather did not stop him from doing his two favorite things: smoking cigars and thinking about the voters:
These are all the members of our expedition. From left to right: Denya “There’s_fish_here,” me, Lyokha “No_big_deal_I’ll_grill_shashlik_even_in_the_dark,” and Nikita “I’ll_take_nine_percent.”
A photo from the series “Rostov boys Seryoga and Dimon once again can’t get into a nightclub”:
We didn’t have any tackle for fishing directly from the steamboat. But we did have a motorboat. Every so often we’d head off in it, fish with a spinning rod somewhere near the shore, and then catch up with the steamboat. Here’s the patriotic photo we got out of it.
As a fisherman, I’m purely theoretical. We were very lucky that Denis, a mega-hunter and fisherman, was with us. Without him, it would have been hard to figure out all the reels and lures—not to mention the boat motor. Like any seasoned man, Denis loves schooling clueless idiots. And if the idiot is from Moscow, then it has to be done double. The river already had pretty strong waves, and when you go fast in a boat, it gets tossed around hard and slams against the water. But that wasn’t enough for Denis. Every now and then, if I said something like, “Easy there, you’re not hauling firewood,” he’d make a terrifying face and yell, “You haven’t been out here in a storm yet!” and start jerking the wheel around, making the boat nearly capsize. Spray would drench us from head to toe. “Waves higher than the gunwale!!!! Can’t see the shore!!” he’d shout, and keep trying to flip the boat until you said the code phrase, something like: “Yeeees, you people in Perm are hardcore, wow, nothing like us spoiled folks in overfed Moscow.”
There were no fish. By that point, nobody believed we had any chance of catching one. belyh even bet me that we’d catch nothing. I said we’d definitely catch something. Each of us was sure he was right, but betting money wasn’t interesting. So in the end, the wager was this: If Denis and I caught a fish longer than 40 cm (about 16 inches), then a winnable spot in one of the Moscow regional groups on the SPS party list (Union of Right Forces, a Russian political party) would go to whoever I named. And belyh would personally deal with the problem at the party congress. I had three candidates in mind whom I’d like to see on the SPS list: Grigory Grabovoy, Alan Chumak, and Akhmed Zakayev. I think any one of them would have improved the party’s chances of clearing the threshold. And... ta-da!!!!
Two perch and a zander. Caught on a lure. The zander was obviously more than 40 cm long. There was no ruler. Belykh refused to admit defeat and started measuring the fish with a ten-ruble coin. According to him, it came out to two and a half coin-lengths, though he was clearly cheating.
Back in Moscow, he declared that he had converted the ten-ruble system into the metric one, and it turned out the zander was 38.5 cm. Of course I don’t believe it. Just another case of deceiving the voters. So that’s how it was. All in all, it was a great trip. Perm is an excellent city. I’m sending a beam of happiness to everyone who took part in the trip itself and in organizing it. And writer Ivanov deserves some kind of medal for popularizing Perm Krai among the masses. Or maybe he should be appointed deputy governor.
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