up and picked up cognac.
– Oh, five stars, class. Sausage is excellent. Well, let’s go straight to the kitchen, we’ll get to know each other.
There was already a laid table in the kitchen, on which stood a flat bottle of Armenian Noah brandy of twenty years old, and the loaded brandy Shabo wretchedly looked on the tablecloths next to the elite drink of the people, which is famous for its cognacs. Igor, saw my awkwardness, hastened to say: – This is all from the storehouse of my grandfather, left me a legacy. Mother at funeral tried with her new boyfriend get into the wine cellar. But my grandfather before leaving strictly warned me not to show anyone the treasures of winemaking that our family had been collecting for centuries.
«Do you have a hundred-year-old wine?» And not only. – Igor answered, look at this cognac, Noah was bought by grandfather fifty years ago, on this faded label you can make out that even then, in Yerevan, it was sold from a twenty-year-old batch.
«Wait, now he has an endurance of seventy years?!» I exclaimed.
«Not at all.» If he had been kept in an oak barrel all this time, then that would have been so, and in the glass he remains in the hypostasis in which he was bought, that is, in a twenty-year exposure. – Igor took the bottle and said, «Look, the quality of storage is still checked by the fact that the drink has no precipitation, well, if only a little, and if not at all, and even fifty years of storage, then we have the highest quality. At auction, this brandy can be sold very expensive.
– Well, and for how much?
«Well, a thousand pounds, I guess.»
«You’re a millionaire guy with such wealth, huh?»
– This is not entirely true, we are not England and not Europe.
– Not America and not China. – I picked up.
– Yes, what is there to argue.
With these words, Igor took a table knife and, shaking the sealing wax on a napkin, opened the bottle. Filling cognac glasses, he said:
– This drink needs to be breathed before drinking. This is because the taste is very combined with the filled aromas of the space of the room. Now we can smell this amazing smell of mountains, and the open spaces where this cognac grape variety is grown.
Listening to him, I began to catch the distant smells of eucalyptus leaves. Freshness of mountain air. And with a subtle breath of a distant bonfire. What is so appetizingly heard from the Armenian mountain expanses. Igor took a glass, stirred a drink with a glass.
– Well, now, you can feel the full sweetness of this drink. – And brought the glass clinking glasses with me, – Come on for friendship.
– For friendship! I repeated.
«You know; I won’t open your cognac.» We will now go down to the wine cellar, and I will put this bottle among Armenian cognacs in place of this cognac. Let stored for a long memory.
We also had a drink and had a bite of stuffed fish, which Igor ordered yesterday from a friend of his grandfather’s cook in an Armenian restaurant. The fish was delivered by a waiter in a passenger car, who refused to charge, citing the fact that the cook strictly ordered no charge. Igor said that the cook he knew was a friend of his grandfather, and that they had once fought together.
– Igor, have you tried to engage in your family business directly?
«How do you imagine that?» he asked in surprise.
«Well, by repairing the safes, opening the locks of the apartments, the owners of which accidentally slam the door and cannot get there.»
– You know that such a business is under special control of law enforcement agencies. Every month, I’ll tire of reporting to the tax office, taking permission to open a safe or apartment, and filling out declarations. And in general, more trouble than earning.
– Well, okay, you can still try, participate in any auction. If only the old safe of Catherine the Great.
«For two and a half million dollars?» – Igor said calmly. My hair moved on my head from such an amount.
«Well, this is an antique relic and belonged to your grandfather.»
«It’s not exactly what you think, Valentine.» Grandfather took this safe from Berlin, from a bombed house where our soldiers entered. Grandfather served in the quartermaster service for the export of stolen works of art from Germany. And this safe was delivered to my grandfather for repair, with subsequent transfer to the authorities after its restoration.
«And why did he get stuck here with you?»
– After the restoration, the grandfather turned to different authorities, even went to the historical museum with a request to hand over the relic. But everyone dismissed and did not even want to listen to him. So he took root with us. Imagine we stick with him at an auction. An heir will appear there and for a fee, a meager compared to its real value, he will take it for himself and he will already sell the safe at a decent price. Tell me do you need it?
– Yes of course. I heard that there are many clandestine antique buyers.
– Listen, Valentine, even so, everything is controlled by criminals. And if I declare the true value of the relics, as soon as they are found, the competent sculpted the papers, and will be taken away without delay, I don’t dare to dare to say about the price of this safe.
– And who knows about the values stored here?
– Sanzhik Sarkisovich, this is a grandfather’s friend, a cook. The rest are no longer alive.
«Have you told anyone about this?»
«No, of course, my grandmother, when she was still alive, reminded me of this almost every day.»
«And what prompted you to tell me about these antique relics?»
«I don’t have a friend like my grandfather had, and for some reason you turned out to be such that I can trust you.»
– I can keep my mouth shut so that you were not mistaken.
Igor filled his glasses again.
– Let’s drink for it.
We had a drink. Suddenly the doorbell rang. Igor ran to the door, looked through the peephole.
Then he returned to the kitchen.
«This is my mother’s boyfriend.» Apparently she chatted to him about the cellar.
Outside the door there was a knock on the door and a drunken grunt.
– Open, puppy. Your mother sent me, said that I brought a bottle from the cellar. This is her legacy.
Igor ran to the door and said, without opening the lock: – I’ll call the police and they will put you for hooliganism. Do you want?!
«No, you dare not.»
– Even
