There are such old; permanently closed beer stalls. An experienced eye will grasp traces of past activities around them: pressed layers of cigarette butts, spots of metallic and plastic corks here and there, slivers of green bottle glass. But the grass already pushes through the densely rammed earth, black dust covers the counter of the stall. The windows are broken. The place smells of urine.
In the morning one can often see people coming to this grave of the stall. They come alone, or in twos and threes. They are shabbily, unattractively dressed. Mainly, these are elderly people. ("They were storming Berlin!" the Mitki narrator would say with tears in his eyes. "And someone like David Bowie - no, he'll never come close to such stall!")
"Well, no!" Dmitri Shagin (it is he who is narrating) changes the tune instantly. "This wouldn't have been so bad! The stalls are. . . open still! Only they sell. . . they sell lemonade, not beer!".
"So, they would come like this, stand there for a little while... One of them will take a glass... of lemonade!.. look at it with a sigh (here Mitka would look at the imaginary glass sadly and sheepishly), take a sip, put the glass down... sigh again... come back to his comrades...
"What do they stand there for? To take a smoke?
"No they just stand! They come there and stand..."
"Why the hell do they gather? Do they talk to each other?"
"No! They are silent! Silent! Just one of them will approach the stall, take a glass... look at it sadly..."