The Last Gambit

From the pictures disorderly scattered along the field of “picnic”, scrutinizing them more thoroughly, I was able to set apart two diagonals, on the crossing of which, almost at the exact centre of the picture, the battle scene happened to be, with fighting elephant of either Alexander Macedonian time, or Carthage and Rome; the inscription by its side said – “the place for most important meetings”.

Above “the place for most important meetings” on the left diagonal the silhouette of Pisa Tower stood out distinctly, and above it, slightly to the right, there was a figure of Egyptian zhrets, with the name of ugOMON[26]. Under “the place of the most important meetings” and a bit to the left there was contour of world-known Rome Coliseum on which – from the left side too – fell a pair of palm-trees from the first “picnic”; a bit lower and to the left of Coliseum a plan-scheme of some unknown building, titled as “White house”, was drawn; and below, at the extreme left corner of “picnic”, stood a smiling guy saluting with his left hand and holding the poleaxe for tree cutting on his right shoulder. Above him there was a strange inscription, which I couldn’t translate without dictionary for long: “Isn’t it Muscovite behind us?” Thus, the pictures on the left diagonal of the “picnic” formed something resembling the staircase, with Eros or Cupid (god of love in the mythology of ancient Greeks and Romans) on its upper step. The bowstring of his bow was drawn, and an arrow was aimed right to the zhrets’s head.

The first step of right diagonal-staircase began with calendar report that attracted my attention when I saw the third “picnic” for the first time. To the right of it there was a tower with star on its top (smaller than Spasskaya Tower) and an inscription under it: “Hearing aid of CC”. The next step – two inscriptions: “Breeding ground of Communists” and “Grand Circus Shapiro”; one more step above by the right diagonal – the familiar figure of a military man from the “Defence Picnic”, with mask-respirator. On the next step – two sculpture groups representing wrestlers (they seemed familiar to me), with the inscription “Exchange of points of view”. This way, “The place of most important meetings” became indeed the place of crossing of diagonals-staircases, and above it along the left diagonal there sat an ape with its right hand stretched, and above it, on the background of “Swan Lake” (thus was here called the Gulf of Finland on whose shore St-Petersburg is situated) – face staring wide-eyed (either because of being startled, or for frightening), and text after it: “Bolshevist’s tricks”.

Strange associations awoke in me the pictures of the third “picnic”: I had a feeling, that some of them I had seen before, – and especially sculpture groups on the left bank on the Neva river, the cha

So I was trying to render for myself the “Post Historical Picnic”, for imparting some order to its miscellaneous pictures, but, having re-read all I’ve written, I understood, that I’ve missed some numerous details, may be, very important, which I couldn’t find a place in the mosaic I was trying to construct in my mind.

For example, I couldn’t understand the role of Euripides dressed by the author of “picnic” in Jewish skullcap and called “Eurey-Pid”[27]; the meaning of two fir-trees, old and young, falling to the right, situating in front of two palms falling to the left towards Coliseum; why against the Pisa Tower there was “Yellow House”[28], resembling “Smolny palace”(the headquarters of Trotskyites in 1917) by architecture and location, and why all fish in the “Swan Lake” was dead. And the more I peered into the pictures of three “picnics”, the more I was seized with the feeling of their interrelation, hidden from me still.

For developing this interco

Yes, it was the statue of Aphrodite Callipyga, which means indeed – “beautifully-rumped”. In the lexicon I read about “her marble statue was kept in the National Museum of Naples (the copy of Greek original of III cent. B.C.), it represents the female figure, which, turning elegantly, uncovers her buttocks. It considers to be worshipped in Syracuse especially”. Syracuse?! – But this is from the “Defence Picnic”; it is mentioned in the second stanza of “Song about Marshals”:

And trembles Syracuse,

And quivers The Hague,

And Pisa, and Toulouse,

Santiago and Prague.

Santiago? Santiago! …Well, of course! This very morning Holmes, talking about Trotskyites, mentioned junta in Chile and told that its most important events took place in Santiago. So, this is the first link in the chain of enigmatic pictures, and it seems to be correct. Some articles in the “Lexicon of Antiquity” were illustrated, and I decided to list it through in order to identify some other pictures. The result was beyond my expectations. More then one half of pictures from the third “picnic” could be found in this lexicon. I marked the pages and started scrutinizing them, willing to find associative interco

The left bank of the Neva River turned out to be occupied by very famous sculpture group “Theseus and Minotaur”. In the article it was said, that Minotaur is a monster – bull-man – in ancient Greek mythology. Apparently, his mother, Pacifae, decided to cuckold her husband, Minos, who ordered to imprison the fruit of forbidden love between “shining” courtesan (Pacifae in Latin means “shining”) and “Cnossus ladies’ man” (fire-breathing bull – Pacifae’s lover from Cnossus) to the maze, built especially for him; there Minotaur was killed by Theseus, because he endeavoured a

On the right bank of the Neva River there was a sculpture group by Athenian sculptor Antenor “Tyra