When my friend Andrei walked into the store, I was calling my friends in China to talk about the recent forest fires in Moscow. Seeing him come in, I nodded at him, gestured to the chair next to him to sit down, and then continued to say into the phone, "...... Do you say that the person who wrote the song "0.5 Miles" once traveled here and saw Moscow surrounded by forest fires, so he wrote 'Let the red burn Moscow, and the memory smears Leningrad'. Such classic lyrics......"

Andrei was a regular customer in my store, and when he saw that I was on the phone, he just nodded at me, didn't speak, put a white cardboard box wrapped in scotch tape a few times on the table, and instead of sitting down, he turned around and ran to the water dispenser, opened the lower cabinet, took out a disposable cup from it and began to drink.

This year's summer in Moscow is exceptionally hot, because it has not rained for nearly two months, and the prolonged heat and drought have triggered forest fires in the suburbs. Buy the fan home, plug it in and you can use it. Air conditioners need professionals to install them, and the staff who install air conditioners in major shopping malls have canceled all their vacations and go to customers' homes every day to install air conditioners. Because there are so many people waiting for the air conditioner to be installed, even if the staff works 17 or 8 hours a day, many customers have their air conditioning installation date scheduled after November.

In such a hostile environment, as a businessman, I still have to brave unbearable heat waves and choking smoke every day to shuttle between my home and the market. It's easy to do at home, but when it's too hot to stand, just take a cold shower. In the market, ironclad must be hotter than at home, and bare-chested is not to be thought of, which is too damaging to the image of the Chinese people. But on such a hot day, even if you wear a T-shirt and shorts, it is unbearable to be hot. The owner of the market was afraid that the transformer station would not be able to withstand too high a load and that the trip would cause a large-scale power outage, so he stipulated that all shops were not allowed to install air conditioners. There are such hard and fast rules in the market, and in order to cool down, I can only consider buying a fan. Because there are too many people buying fans, the businesses that deal in electric fans have already sold out of stock. I had no choice but to take time out of my day after work to go to other malls or markets in the city to see if I could buy them. It's a pity that I ran for several days, but I still found nothing. Andre, who often comes to my store, took the initiative to promise to buy one for me, saying that he is familiar with the land and often drives around, so the chance of buying a fan is definitely higher than mine.

While talking on the phone, I stared at the one-foot-square cardboard box in front of me, thinking to myself, this box contains an electric fan, and the volume is too small! At best, it's a table fan. And there is no pattern on the box yet, which feels like Andre has put his old desk fan in it. But after thinking about it, a table fan is a Taiwan fan, after all, it is also a fan, and it is better than nothing. Besides, everyone else has contributed their own fans, what else can I say?

Maybe it's because I'm patronizing and pondering about the fan, and I start to wander when I talk to my friends on the phone, and I answer the wrong question several times. My friends in China noticed that I was a little absent-minded, so they asked me if I had something to do. I hurriedly followed her words and said, "Yes, yes, yes!" I've got something to do right now, so I'll call you another day. As soon as I heard the other party say goodbye, I hung up the phone without hesitation.

I threw my phone on the table, gently patted the cardboard box on the table, looked at Andre, who was standing in front of the water dispenser, drinking ice water cup after cup, and asked tentatively: "Andrei, is this the fan you bought for me?" Without waiting for him to speak, I said to myself, "It seems too small, it's a plastic fan, right?" ”

Andre flattened the paper cup in his hand and threw it into the trash can, walked over and pulled a chair and sat down across from me, and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, Don." I failed to live up to your expectations, and I didn't buy the fan you asked me to buy. Seeing my calm face, I couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, and then explained: "You also know that the weather this year is too hot, and the recent forest fires in the suburbs have made electric fans, which no one bought in previous years, become a hot seller." At the beginning of last month, when I helped someone buy it, it was sold for more than 300 roubles, and now, less than a month later, the price has risen to more than 3,000 roubles, and it is still priceless. I drove half the city today, and I couldn't find any malls that sell electric fans. ”

I didn't know if he was joking with me, so I pointed to the cardboard box in front of me and asked him curiously, "What's in it, isn't it an electric fan?" ”

"It's not a fan, it's something I bought myself." When he said this, he had a smug expression on his face, and he said to me mysteriously, "Guess what's in it?" ”

I picked up the carton and checked it, it wasn't too heavy; The hands pressed gently inward, and it felt like a round object. I muttered in my heart, could it be the pot that Andre bought for stir-frying? So I tentatively asked, "Is it your new pot?" ”

"Pot?! What pot? He asked, looking at me blankly.

"Isn't this box the pot you bought for stir-frying?" As I spoke, I gently patted the box with my hand.

"Haha A pot for stir-frying? You actually think it's a pot for stir-frying? Hearing me say this, he couldn't help but laugh out loud, and actually laughed out of his eyes.

I said with some displeasure: "It's not a stir-fry pot, so what is it?" Don't sell it, open it and show me. ”

Andrei stopped laughing, tore off the tape and opened the carton. When the carton was opened, the contents were clear at a glance, and what caught my eye was indeed not a stir-fry pot, but an unexpected thing.

I couldn't help but be stunned, thinking that I had seen it wrong, so I hurriedly rubbed my eyes with my hand and blinked vigorously a few times before I looked at the box again. Inside the box was a steel helmet, a German-style steel helmet, a rusty German helmet with a bullet hole on the side.

I watched in amazement as Andrei took the steel helmet out of the box and held it in his hand, completely stunned.

Seeing my expression, Andre said proudly: "I didn't expect the box to contain a steel helmet, right?" ”

"I didn't expect it, I really didn't expect it." I shook my head and asked, puzzled, "What did you buy a German devil's steel helmet for?" ”

Andrei explained as he put the helmet in the box: "Next month there is a war game organized by military fans in Smolensk to recreate the scene of the defense of Smolensk during the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. I was playing on the side of the German army, so of course I had to prepare some German equipment. ”

"Then why don't you buy a new steel helmet, but you want to buy such a tattered one?"

"You don't understand this, if you want to restore history, of course, you still have to choose things from the past. Don't underestimate this steel helmet, when I went to the flea market to buy it today, the stall owner said that the German soldier wearing this steel helmet was killed by his grandfather himself, which is commemorative. I was going to charge 10,000 rubles, but fortunately I could bargain, and after cutting it for a long time, it was 6,000 after the last 6,000. ”

I got up and poured two glasses of water, handed him one, and reminded him, "A broken steel helmet is embarrassed to say that it is a family heirloom, and the stall owner is fooling you, right?" ”

He took the cup and took a sip of water, and did not speak for a long time, as if to consider what I had just said. Seeing him staring at the steel helmet in a daze, I thought to myself that he wouldn't run to the flea market to return the goods later, right?

André was stunned for a long time, took another sip of water, then pointed to the newspaper spread out on the table, and asked me, "Does your newspaper have any news today?" "Although he speaks Chinese well, he doesn't know Chinese characters, just like I don't have any problem speaking Russian, but I can't read Russian newspapers, so we often read newspapers to each other.

I picked up the newspaper and said, "It's not about the forest fires in Moscow, I'll read you a paragraph." He took a sip of water from the glass on the table, and then began to read to him: "Moscow, the capital of Russia, has recently experienced its worst siege since the German army was repelled in 1942 – a siege of fire and smoke. On August 4, the smog enveloped Moscow in such a terrible spectacle that the forested city looked as if it had just been bombed, and in some places visibility was so low that you could only see your own arms. …… Doctors advise people to stay home and not go out, keep doors and windows closed, and it is better to stay home and be boiled by the heat than to go outside and breathe smoke. ……”

He interrupted me when he heard this, saying, "I heard a joke last night, tell it to you. ”

"Say, I'll listen."

"There are couples who want to break up because of a quarrel. The two agreed to walk a hundred steps back to back and then turn back, and if they could see each other, they would get back together; If you can't see each other, you break up. Then the two of them began to move, taking two steps back to back, and neither could help but turn back. As a result, the two broke up. ”

Andre's joke was so cold that I was confused, and I asked puzzled: "Why did the two of them turn back after taking two steps, and then break up?" ”

"Love experts advise couples in love not to play this kind of love game in the fog." After saying that, he laughed again.

As soon as Andre explained this, it dawned on me that the visibility could only reach the level of seeing his own arms clearly, and the two of them took two steps in opposite directions, and it was only when they could see each other that they could see each other, so I couldn't help but laugh a few times.

After laughing, he suddenly asked curiously: "What did you just say to your friends on the phone about burning Moscow and staining Leningrad with blood?" ”

Hearing this, I couldn't laugh or cry, how did he listen to it just now when he sat next to him, and it actually meant that the error would be so far. But he patiently explained to him: "It's not 'burning Moscow, staining Leningrad with blood', it's two lyrics: 'Let red burn Moscow, memory smear Leningrad'." My friend is a corn, so when I talk to her, I talk about the lyrics of the song. ”

"What is corn?" He asked curiously.

"Corn!" I took the opportunity to make up for him in the entertainment general knowledge class: "There is a famous singer in my country named Li Yuchun, she sings very good songs, and there are many fans who like to listen to her songs, and these fans are collectively called corn. ”

"Fans, I know this, but I want to know what 'corn' is, and how to say it in Russian?"

"Oh!" So that's the case, this time I didn't understand it well, so I quickly read the word in Russian: "Goo Goo Luzh!" ”

"What?" Maybe I said it too quickly, and he didn't hear it clearly: "Please say it again." ”

So I slowed down and said again in a loud voice: "Goo Rouge! ”

As soon as the words fell, an old lady's voice came from the door: "Do you want to buy corn?" "I followed the sound and it turned out to be an old lady selling boiled corn on the street, and she probably happened to be pushing a cart past my shop, and she happened to hear me saying the word corn, and she stopped to ask, thinking that I was going to buy it.

Andre and I looked at each other and laughed happily. I laughed twice, and quickly rushed to the door to the old lady with a blank face and asked, "How is the corn sold?" ”

"Fifty roubles a piece."

"It's too expensive, it only sold for 30 rubles a piece last year, and 40 rubles a piece is not for sale?"

"No, fifty roubles each."

"Forget it, it's a hundred rubles, get me two good ones." At the end, he also specially advised: "Sprinkle more salt, less salt is not delicious." ”

As Andre and I were sitting in the shop munching corn, he suddenly asked, "Will you go home when you close?" ”

"Uh-huh, of course!" As I nibbled on the corn, I pointed to the occasional wisp of smoke outside, and said, "You see, there is smoke everywhere outside, and people can't open their eyes, so it's better to go home and stay safe." ”

"Do you want to swim in the Moscow River and get some fresh air?"

Go swimming?! I haven't swam for almost a decade, and sometimes I really want to, but I'm a little reluctant to let me go swimming in the Moskva River in such a harsh environment.

"Forget it, let's not go." I began to find an excuse: "The smoke is so big these days, I guess there will be a thick layer of soot floating on the water." ”

"No, I only swam yesterday and the water is clear." My first reason was lightly overturned by him.

"And," I continued to excuse myself, "I don't have swim trunks, and I can't swim." ”

"You don't have to worry about this, I just bought two new ones today, I can give you one." It seemed that he had come prepared, and he had easily dismissed my second reason.

When I was thinking about how to refuse him tactfully, so that he would not be unable to get off the stage, he leaned into my ear and whispered: "The place where I usually go swimming, there is a naturist camp in the woods opposite, and every day there are many beautiful girls basking in the sun by the river or swimming naked in the water." ”

"Crush swimming naked!" My saliva almost ran down the corn in my hand, and I quickly pulled a piece of paper to wipe it off. This Andre is simply a roundworm in my stomach, and I don't even know what I think, and it would be a bit too hypocritical to shirk it at this time, so I nodded hurriedly and agreed: "Okay, anyway, there is no business today, so I'll close the stall early." The air here is so bad that you need to hurry to the river to get some fresh air. ”

After nibbling on the corn, I asked Andrei to go to the parking lot first, and I went to him after I packed my things.

I closed the door, went to the security guard to sign it, turned on the alarm in the store, and hurried to the parking lot to find Andrei. Andrei's sky-blue Volkswagen was easy to find, and he saw it from afar. I ran over to find that the door was open and there was no one in the car. I was wondering where Andrei had gone, when I heard him calling out to me. After looking around, I realized that it was Andrei who was squatting in the shadow of a medium-sized truck.

I walked over and asked him why he didn't stay in the car and came here to squat and do something. He said with a sad face: "Alas, don't mention it, as soon as I sat in, it felt like a steamer inside, and I almost got heat stroke, so I turned on the air conditioner and ran out, and waited for the car to cool down before going in." ”

Hearing him say this, I crouched in the shadow of the van like him, patiently waiting for the temperature in the car to cool down. After another five or six minutes, he got up and got into the car, and after a lot of effort, he poked his head out of the door of the co-pilot, and said that it was already cool in the car, and asked me to get in the car quickly.

The city is still foggy, and visibility is only twenty or thirty meters, resulting in traffic congestion. I heard Andre say that the swimming place was only a dozen kilometers away from the market, but after more than an hour, our car was still moving slowly and unhurriedly on the road.

After driving for more than half an hour, just when I was anxious, Andrei suddenly said: "Drive two kilometers further, we can find a place to park, and then walk to the river." ”

Hearing him say this, I immediately breathed a sigh of relief, such a hot day, sitting in the car, even if there is air conditioning, there is also a risk of heat stroke, if not, I would rather go down and walk. As I was thinking about it, I suddenly saw a tank on the left side of the road, the most old-fashioned one, driving in the same direction as us, but it was moving very fast, and in a blink of an eye it disappeared from my view. I gave a cold war, then pointed in the direction where the tank disappeared and said to Andrei, "Did you see the tank over there just now?" ”

Andrei looked in the direction of my finger and said disapprehantly, "You mean the tank sculpture over there, but the fog is not very visible today, so you shouldn't be able to see it from this position." ”

"It's not a sculpture," I saw that he didn't understand what I meant, and quickly corrected him: "It's not a sculpture, it's a fast-moving tank, or an old tank, a bit like the T-34." ”

He glanced at me and jokingly said, "You don't think of a truck as a tank because of the low visibility on the road." ”

I can't explain anything more when he says this, maybe I was really dazzled and mistaken just now.

The car drove forward for another two or three hundred meters, and Andre, who was driving, patted me on the shoulder with his hand, then pointed to the left side of the road and said to me, "Are you talking about this sculpture?" ”

I looked in the direction of his finger, and there were tanks on the side of the road, the back half of which was sunk deep into the ground, the front half of the car was raised high, and the long barrel of the gun was pointing straight into the sky. The tank body is painted with green paint, and judging by the newness of the color, it should have been maintained not so long ago.

The car drove forward a little further and stopped, and Andrei turned to me and said, "Here, let's park here and walk to the river." ”

Andrei took a handbag out of the trunk and locked the car. He led me through a dense grove to a swimming area by the river. Standing on the edge of the woods, looking at the crowd of people standing or sitting or lying on the grass, I asked André with some curiosity: "Why is this river lawn and not a beach?" ”

"There's a beach." He gestured to the other side of the river, "The celestial camp on the other side is the beach, and the grass is on the other side. ”

I looked in the direction of his finger, and there was indeed a golden sand beach on the opposite side of the wide Moscow River, but the fog on the river was still a little thick, and I could only vaguely see that the opposite beach was densely packed with people, and as for whether I was wearing a swimsuit, I couldn't see clearly.

I looked around, there were no buildings except for a few small kiosks selling things, and I couldn't help but ask curiously, "Where are we going to change clothes later?" ”

Andrei casually pointed to the side and said, "Just change here, this grove is a natural dressing room." As he spoke, he had already begun to undress with his hands and feet, and urged me to change quickly. I said it was in the woods, but I was a little embarrassed to change my clothes in front of everyone. While he was hesitating, he accidentally caught a glimpse of a few girls nearby who were all taking off themselves as if no one was around, and then changed into a three-point swimsuit, and ran out of the grove with a smile. Seeing that the girl's family is so generous and natural, I am no longer reserved, and I also took off my essence after dividing five by two, and then changed into swimming trunks in a hurry.

After changing into his swimming trunks, Andre did not rush into the water, first put our changed clothes in one bag, and then took out two large bath towels from the other backpack and spread them on the grass, beckoning me to lie down and bask in the sun. I asked him curiously, "Why don't you swim yet?" ”

He said slowly while applying sunscreen: "Don't be in a hurry, look at the river, the water is full of soot, and then go down when the water is clean." ”

When I looked, no, there was a layer of gray soot floating on the surface of the river, and most of the people stayed on the shore, and there were few swimmers in the water. Alas, such dirty water told me to go down, and I didn't go. So I lay on the bath towel and began to close my eyes to recuperate, but I didn't expect to fall asleep unconsciously.

In my sleep, I felt someone gently shaking me, and a familiar voice was shouting, "Don, don, wake up." I opened my eyes in a daze and saw Andrei crouching beside me. I sat up abruptly and asked, "Can I swim now?" ”

Andrei replied: "Yes, the water is already clear, you can go into the water." ”

Because I hadn't swam for many years, I only dared to swim near the riverbank for the first half hour of the first half hour of the water to be safe. Andre knew that I hadn't swam for a long time, and he was afraid that something would happen to me, so he kept swimming around me, ready to make a cameo appearance as my full-time lifeguard if necessary.

As I swam along, he suddenly called to me, "Don, don, look, there are two beautiful girls swimming naked in the middle of the river, let's swim over and say hello to them." With that, he sped toward the center of the river. I cursed: womanizer. They also swam after him towards the center of the river.

Although he swam desperately forward, he was still pulled farther and farther away, which is the difference between those who swim every day and those who have not swam for more than ten years. By the time he swam to the two girls, I had been thrown away by him about twenty meters.

Just as I was struggling to swim towards the three of them, I suddenly heard a commotion on the opposite bank, and the people who had been on the beach and in the woods were shouting like crazy, and threw themselves into the river and swam towards us. I looked at the crowd in amazement, wondering what was going on.

André also stayed there for a moment, bewildered, and then swam quickly towards me with the two girls, and he shouted loudly as he went, because I couldn't hear what he was shouting, so he stayed there in a daze. It wasn't until he was about to swim to me that I heard him shouting, "Don, don, swim back, the woods are on fire, swim back to shore." ”

By this time, wisps of choking smoke had drifted down the wind, startling me, and I quickly turned around and swam back. More and more people overtook me from behind, and swam to the shore as hard as they could, and when I was about to swim to the shore, I turned my head to look back, and suddenly I was startled, the raging fire swept from the direction of the woods, and the trees by the river were relatively wet, and the smoke was even more spicy and choking when it burned, although the fire was still far away, across the beach and nearly 100 meters of the river, the smell of suffocation had come to .......

When I got ashore, I couldn't see Andrei's figure, so I could only run in the direction of the grove with the crowd, trying to get my clothes and leave this dangerous place as soon as possible.

I was only a few steps away from where I would put my backpack, and I slowed down to bend down to pick it up, but someone slammed into me from behind. Under the force of the tremendous impact, I involuntarily flew forward and slammed my head into a tree. While I felt the sharp pain, I fainted in front of my eyes.