How many phone numbers do you remember by heart, some important numbers for you? How many numbers are in your notebook? How much? It doesn’t matter what the difference is! No matter what number you dial, someone will definitely answer you, answer you for sure!
How many phone numbers do you remember by heart, some important numbers for you? How many numbers are in your notebook? How much? It doesn’t matter what the difference is! No matter what number you dial, someone will definitely answer you, answer you for sure! It is impossible to make a mistake — someone will answer. Necessarily. Let it be an answering machine or the operator’s voice, but a voice. Voice! And if someone accidentally dialed your number, they were not mistaken either. I wonder how they can be wrong, because you answered? They called you! Who answered? This is what you answered. They heard your voice.
Do you hear? You listen! Listen, do you hear? There is no silence. In this city it does not exist and cannot exist, and even in the most noisy alley at night — it seems that it was quiet — shout, and an echo will sound. But it was not an echo, it was shouted by other people, they did not even shout in response, but simply because it seemed to them at that moment that it had become too quiet in this city. You didn’t hear echoes, you heard voices. Do you see your shadow, long or short? Now, remember, it wasn’t a shadow. There are no shadows in this city. It was another person who thought you were his shadow. Hurry, hurry, hurry, here you need to hurry! How many times in this city can you tell a fresh joke? How much? Yes, only once, only once, because in a minute you will hear the same joke from someone else, only it will no longer be funny. Not funny at all. And you made it, and that’s why everyone laughed. The whole city laughed, even those whom you do not know laughed. And when you cry in this city, who knows, maybe at that moment you will mourn someone’s grief, the grief of unknown people unknown to you. The city is crying — how can you be left out?
Listen. Listen! Listen… Do you hear?
And in the summer the city begins to undress. Wonderful girls take off almost everything. They remain only in shreds of transparent fabrics, and these shreds flutter in the hot city wind. Do you know who they dress up for? They don’t just undress, no, they do it for you, for you personally. And remember, they all live here. All these wonderful women live here. Do you hear how they breathe? Do you hear how their eyelashes rise and fall? Do you hear how the last clothes fall to the floor somewhere, somewhere out there, on the outskirts? Listen. Listen to how desperately loud the music sounds in this city, it’s there, somewhere, deep underground, in a crowded subway car, someone turned on the player, and your favorite song is playing in his little headphones. Do you understand? Your favourite song. In someone’s ears. Loud. Unbearable.