On the Wings of Hope : Prose

As far as you can remember, when your business just began … it was terrible time where everyone was ready to deceive and even kill another, trying to cross another’s road. The country just began to move on capitalism wheels, being sold out piece after a piece. At first like the most windy maid morals was thrown out of the house, then chastity was seduced, and love managed to commit suicide by itself. This very wave of chaos and destruction helped you to crawl out of darkness into the new marvelous world of buying and selling. You have traded many things, starting from bubble gum and “Playboy” magazines for teenagers, and ending with firearms for local “authorities” !

You liked the very idea of possibility to buy everything, people being included – after all, the one who is always right is the one who possesses a bigger gun, yes ? And you desired to thank your former mentors – with methods of their own.  Probably, during these instants, when you were observing, how two bands, to one of which you have belong until recently, are shooting each other on spot coldly and methodically, sparing neither the bullets, nor the cars, something has moved somewhere extremely deep inside you, something has changed. During that very moment the idea of charity was born inside you.

Then there were lots of different years. Your natural scent and rigid grasp helped you to survive in that meat grinder, to become a local “authority” and “protector” for other beginners yourself. Certainly, you had to pay tributes to your aching conscience – that’s why you were engaged in a weekly gift for churches. Surely, you didn’t believe in any gods, but so your colleagues on business behaved … and you desired to feel yourself in safety … keep the hope that such life’s “luck” will go on and on. Hope is a truly powerful  force … and what would you not make to make your soul silent, yeah ?

And then the time of troubles came to an end, and the time of bringing the oath to the new leader came, and you gain the possibility to ascend even higher – straight into the imperious circles. For after all even there – especially there ! – money do their dirty work very well. By the time it happened, you have already made yourself almost a lifelong fortune – trading of firearms and drugs have always been a profitable business without doubt. Only a dozen of small gifts to necessary people – and you are familiar with highest echelons of ones who have usurping the power. Whether it was not good luck ?

Soon you have legalized – an inevitable step for criminally acquired capitals in conditions of indicative witch-hunting. And then you remembered of the charity once again – and allocated a small share of former stolen for the construction of a pair of playgrounds in the former schoolyard. It’s so pleasant to remember the childhood at times, huh ? When you were observing such a result of your generosity, you have almost shed a few tears. You were mentioned in newspapers and took participation in a short interview on one of local TV channels – and your business started growing like on yeast. What a heroic feat would one not perform for the sake of his neighbors !

Now from time to time you publicly give to some unknown to you goof from the crowd your new gilded watch – well, not new, certainly, but instead the ones specially being bought and wearied in search of a suitable case, as if reminding these cringing ones that they will not live for long. From time to time you transfer to organized by you charitable organizations and various funds of aiding starving children of Africa some millions of “greens”, so that these commoners could write about your generosity in newspapers, and money would soon be returned into their proper places where they belong. Sometimes you even help to organize repair works of some decayed opera theatre so that it was possible to even wash up the floor there and whitewash ceilings as well – acquaint youth with culture, so to speak. And at times a pair of kids from the shelter of a name of all the humiliated and forgotten ones receive their cents so that they don’t starve to death ahead of time before someone manages to write of your generosity in newspapers. What would you not make for the sake of the distant one, yay ?