Road to the past summary. Children's stories online

1

Snowfall caught them in the middle of the river. Suddenly it became blind, white, eyes closed up - no one knows where to go.
Geese flying somewhere overhead helped out: they screamed, argued in a bustle - you see, and they were confused in this mess. It was then that Vlasik, listening to their receding hubbub, and realized in which direction the south, for where is the bird to fly now, if not to warm lands.
The snowy linden tree calmed down a little when we climbed the steep bank from the ferry. Ahead Sosino peeped out with a hedge in the courtyard, a black chapel loomed in the fields to the left.
Wiping his wet face with his hand, Vlasik began to explain to his taciturn companion how to get to the village and find the brigadier, but he didn’t seem to need it: he blocked the whitewashed road with a gnarled stick, as if he had walked along it all his life.
From the local ones, you can see whose? - thought Vlasik.
However, he had no time to think about it. He was frozen, chilled through - from the cold, from the dampness - and all his thoughts were now focused on getting to Miksha as soon as possible and getting warm in the warmth.
At Miksha's house, despite the fact that it had passed the ninth hour, it was still morning. The hostess, with a thin face, flushed with heat, was bustling about the stove, and the owner, gloomy, swollen, all overgrown with dense stubble, sat at the table and drank tea. He drank alone, under the fire of the sullen glances of his offspring, as strong-headed and busty as their father, huddled in a tight heap on the wide parental bed to the right of the threshold.
Vlasik greeted.
Not a word, not a nod in return. As if they were not homies, not longtime buddies.
But he did not even think of taking offense at Miksha - always like that when he went overboard the day before - and therefore calmly went about his business: he took off his wide belt of a signalman-lineman with a metal chain, took off his wet canvas jacket, which was stuck with a stake, and to the stove, on a bench - warmth hugged his thin, chilled back.
The owner - in complete silence of his family - drank two more glasses of tea, black as swamp water, and only after that he began to move his fearful croaker - his nose had been crushed since childhood:
- What are you smoking?
Vlasik readily took out a crumpled pack of "Sever" from his canvas pants, moved to the table - the quarantine was over. We lit a cigarette.
- News? - Miksha barked again in a short drunken voice.
- What's the news, Nikifor Ivanovich. My news is known. The kids go to school now, they beat up all the isolation wards. So I sunbathe every day on the line. Well, if there were regional affairs ... (Vlasik lived in the regional center.) The expedition came back from suzem here, they said they made a joke. All the streams, all the rivers were locked.
- Nonsense, - Miksha winced.
- No, not nonsense, Nikifor Ivanovich. Now, once again, you can't go to the subsurface for a fish.
- Nonsense, I say, - repeated Miksha. - They will lock our narrower. What kind of fish are there in small rivers? Rubbish is one. They whispered, but the whole question is - why. Isn't it the same fish that is underground? ...
Vlasik's lower jaw fell off, two yellow, smoky fangs peeped through his toothless mouth.
- Balda! As for uranium, I say, a little more explosive shit. And this fish is for diverting the eyes. Understood?
“But this is appropriate, Nikifor Ivanovich,” Vlasik agreed vividly, and his dry, bloodless face beamed at once. - I here with one moved across the river, it didn't hurt, he looked at the water.
- With whom with one?
- Yes, with one, with this expedition. A healthy hog, but he is lame. With a stick.
Miksha raised his black woolly eyebrow in surprise:
- Why would he come here? What did he not see in our hole?
- But I didn’t report on this. - Vlasik looked out the window, looked at Oksya, who was rattling with an iron poker by the stove, slyly narrowed his eyes. - And what, Nikifor Ivanovich, can we figure it out tonight? Let's scratch a little bottom before the recap starts?
- Poaching? - directly put the question Miksha. - Long ago you were pissed off - do you want to be jailed again?
- Yes, Nikifor Ivanovich, if you want fish, you will climb to prison ...
- You can't, - Miksha cut off. - Fishery inspection does not day and night on the river.
- Nothing, nothing. It is possible, if neatly and with a look around. - And then Vlasik set in motion, so to speak, a material incentive (he and Miksha loved all sorts of tricky words) - popping a bottle on the table.
Oksa, of course, did not like this number, but why pay attention to her? What woman claps her hands when a man with a bottle hugs?
After the drunken conversation, the conversation went like clockwork, and they began to develop a plan for the upcoming sortie: how best to do so as not to run into fishery supervision? what time do you leave? where? go down to the rifts, or, conversely, go up to the Red Gap, where the ray is not so noticeable?
However, they did not have time to discuss a half - they are starting a serious business! - how I grew up under the window tall man in a black cloak.
- He! - Vlasik exclaimed vividly and even got up. - The one from the fishing expedition.
For some time the stranger looked at Mikshin's house, then, falling on his sore leg, suddenly moved into the alley.
Vlasik and Miksha looked at each other: did anyone rivet on them? What other business could the fish man be on?
The case, thank God, did not concern them. But, as they say, horseradish radish is not sweeter: a stranger, having given Mikshe a note from the director of the state farm, asked him to take him to Curzia.
- To Curzia? - Vlasik was terribly surprised. - Now? Yes, dear comrade, have you heard, no, what is this Kurzia? Forty versts in the suburbs and in late autumn ... In vain, perhaps, we call it Georgia!
No impression! With iron eyes he clung to Miksha, as if to freeze, hypnotize him, he decided, but what the others squeak - Oksya also gave a voice from the stove - don't give a damn.
Miksha was in no hurry to answer. He sat, glancing at the street, where again, it seemed, the wind was whistling, rolling the skin on his forehead, like waves on a river, and Vlasik no longer doubted: now he would turn this arrogant boss from the gate - and take Miksha and say:
- You can, perhaps, ride.

2

We did not leave early, in the first hour, because we were not going to visit our mother-in-law - to the suzem. I had to change the front wheels of the cart, adjust the yoke to the horse, trim the hooves, but you never know what. And besides, Kudasov kept himself waiting, a business trip, who, like all visitors, dragged himself to look at their celebrity - the old chapel.
A drunken, thoroughly pumped up Vlasik joined in to see them off. How passionate he did not want to part with the two bottles that had flown away from him in a birch bark basket, firmly tied to the back of the cart, and he, jingling with his chain, hobbled at the side, whimpering:
- Hello, comrade Kudasov, by God, hello. We forgot when we went to this Curzia-Georgia. And you decided to look at the evening. Let's just because of the morning ...
Miksha in his heart agreed with his friend. Of course, it would be better now to sit in a warm hut than to rinse in the autumn wind, but since the word has been given - be patient. And he, setting himself up for a long road hassle, spoke up as soon as they drove into the field, - then Vlasik lagged behind them:
- Well, they drew out the fish in the seas and in the oceans - have they taken up the subsoils?
Kudasov did not answer. As expected, he was looking at the chapel they passed by - a sullen, black building like a tall log barn, without a cross, with a torn open roof, with supports on the sides.
- A monument of antiquity, - Miksha announced not without malice. - Under the protection of the state. There is a small board. Not a single stud of iron - the whole tree. Chopped with one ax. In one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven. Under Ivan the Terrible.
“Ivan the Terrible lived a hundred years earlier,” remarked Kudasov.
- Well, to hell with him, with Ivan the Terrible. Not everything is the same. But about the roof I can say for sure. - Miksha laughed. - Ours, Soviet production. One thousand nine hundred and thirty. Then the people were driven from all the villages. They pulled off the cross with a bang so that there was a visual agitation about God. I, too, even though I was a kid, held on a little by the rope.
A thin tearful little voice splashed in the distance - it was Vlasik who must have entered the village with a song - and at once a prolonged roar covered him: they were approaching the forest. A black chapel propped up with slugs, like some kind of antediluvian monster, looked after them from the fields.
- Yes ... - Miksha lit a cigarette. - This chapel has seen something in its lifetime. In the old days here, they say, the believers locked themselves in, they wanted to burn themselves alive - you know what a people they were! - Yes, the tsar's soldiers interfered, the doors were kicked out. And in this very thirtieth year, what was done here ... Two or three ghouls were pulled out in the morning. Of the dispossessed. From the southern regions that were sent to us, to the North. How many of them were in our village! All the summer long they were carried by barges. All the threshing floor, all the sheds were full, and in this chapel ... The bunks stood in four tiers! ..
Sedok turned out to be not one of those with whom you will not get bored. He sat - his eyes on the ground, his hands on the lock (an ulcer, or what, is it sharpening?) And neither ooh, nor a sigh.
For some time Miksha peered into the sparse pine pole on the right - there must be some of his firewood, chopped this spring. Then his attention was attracted by fresh hare loops, scattered on the snow powder along the road, and he exclaimed lively:
- Look, look, the scythe has thought up something! In such bad weather, to walk through the forest.
And again there was silence. Again the strained creak of the cart and the snoring of the horse on the heels.
Behind Letovka - this is a stream two kilometers from the village - spruce began to come across, at first one by one, mixed with a birch, and then thicker, thicker - the sky was crumpled, the road tightly squeezed. Immediately from daylight drove into dusk.
- Well, - said Miksha, listening to the taiga rumble going overhead. - Now this beauty will go as far as Curzia. He lifted the slicker doll, shook his head.
“No, I don’t understand a damn thing how all this was done. Well, they sent people from their lands, some by hook, some by crook - we will not speak. It was a hot time, chips flew right and left. But why drive it into the suzem? Isn't there enough empty land in Russia? But here, in this suburb, even if you burst, you cannot grow bread. In the middle of summer, matinees are thundering. We used to put hay on this Kurzia. In the village, summer is like summer, but here, thirty-five or forty miles away, the water in the pot freezes in the morning. Eh, what can I say! - Miksha waved his hand abruptly - I myself was terribly ideological then.
- And now not ideological? - Kudasov suddenly gave a voice. It turns out he was listening.
- Do not have, do not have a word! Now the people are literate, you can't take fright. Why am I? And to the fact that my uncle's relatives were in charge of everything at that time. Mares. How can I, my nephew, lag behind them? Yes, there were revolutionaries! Flint! Now there are none. In 1919, Uncle Alexander was sent for the language to Sosino, to our village, so. And in Sosin - oh-oh! Only old people and little children. All the whites, without exception, drove off to the roads: men, women, and girls. And so Uncle Alexander thought and thought, and even said to his father - that patient was lying on the bed: "Get up, you will come with me." Mother heard: “What are you, Oleksa, the devil! .. Come to your senses! The old man does not get up for the third day, he will die on the road. " No nails! Since revolution is necessary, I don't know either father or mother. Well, Uncle Methodius, he was an even firmer nut. Uncle Alexander had at least one weakness - in the part of the woman's question, but this one ... I have never seen a smile on Evan's face in my life. "I," he says, "will then smile when we build socialism in full and when we drive the last enemy into the coffin." Understand?

TRIP TO THE PAST

Snowfall caught them in the middle of the river. Suddenly it became blind, white, eyes closed up - no one knows where to go.

Geese flying somewhere overhead came to the rescue: they screamed, argued in a bustle - you see, and they were confused in this mess. It was then that Vlasik, listening to their receding hubbub, and realized in which direction the south, for where is the bird to fly now, if not to warm lands.

The snowy linden tree calmed down a little when we climbed the steep bank from the ferry. Ahead Sosino peeped out with a hedge in the courtyard, a black chapel loomed in the fields to the left.

Wiping his wet face with his hand, Vlasik began to explain to his taciturn companion how to get to the village and find the brigadier, but he didn’t seem to need it: he blocked the whitewashed road with a gnarled stick, as if he had walked along it all his life.

From the local ones, you can see whose? - thought Vlasik.

However, he had no time to think about it. He was cold, chilled through - from the cold, from the dampness - and all his thoughts were now focused on getting to Miksha as soon as possible and getting warm in the warmth.

At Miksha's house, despite the fact that it had passed the ninth hour, it was still morning. The hostess with a thin face, flushed with heat from the heat, fussed around the stove, and the owner, gloomy, swollen, all overgrown with dense stubble, sat at the table and drank tea. He drank alone, under the fire of the sullen glances of his offspring, as strong-headed and busty as their father, huddled in a tight heap on the wide parental bed to the right of the threshold.

Vlasik greeted.

Not a word, not a nod in return. As if they were not homies, not longtime buddies.

But he did not even think of taking offense at Miksha - always like that when he went overboard the day before - and therefore calmly went about his business: he took off his wide belt of a signalman-lineman with a metal chain, took off his wet canvas jacket, which was stuck with a stake - and to the stove, on the bench , - warmth hugged his thin, chilled back.

The owner - in complete silence of his family - drank two more glasses of tea, black as swamp water, and only after that he began to move his fearful croaker - his nose had been crushed since childhood:

What are you smoking?

Vlasik readily took out a crumpled pack of "Sever" from his canvas pants, moved to the table - the quarantine was over.

We lit a cigarette.

What's the news, Nikifor Ivanovich. My news is known. The kids go to school now, they beat up all the isolation wards. So I sunbathe every day on the line. Well, if the regional affairs ... (Vlasik lived in the regional center.) The expedition here from Suzem 1 returned, they said they made a joke. All the streams, all the rivers were locked.

Nonsense, - Miksha winced.

No, not nonsense, Nikifor Ivanovich. Now, once again, you can't go to the subsurface for a fish.

Nonsense, I say, - repeated Miksha. - They will lock our suzam. What kind of fish are there in small rivers? Rubbish is one. They whispered, but the whole question is - why. Is it the same fish that is underground? ..

Vlasik's lower jaw fell off, two yellow, smoky fangs peeped through his toothless mouth.

- Balda! As for uranium, I say, a little more explosive shit. And this fish is for diverting the eyes. Got it?

But this is appropriate, Nikifor Ivanovich, - Vlasik agreed vividly, and his dry, bloodless face beamed at once.

With whom with one?

Yes, with one, with an expedition with this one. A healthy hog, but he is lame. With a stick.

Miksha raised his black woolly eyebrow in surprise:

Why would he be here? What did he not see in our hole?

But I didn’t report on this. ”Vlasik looked out the window, looked at Oksya, who was rattling with an iron poker by the stove, slyly narrowed his eyes.“ And what, Nikifor Ivanovich, can we figure it out tonight? Let's scratch a little bottom before the recap starts?

Poaching? - directly put the question Miksha. - It has been a long time since you were pissed off - do you want to go to prison again?

Why, Nikifor Ivanovich, if you want fish, you will climb to prison ...

It is impossible, - Miksha chopped off. - Fishery inspection doesn’t spend the day and spends the night on the river.

Nothing, nothing. You can, if neatly and with a look around. '' And then Vlasik put into action, so to speak, a material incentive (he and Miksha loved all sorts of tricky words) - popping a bottle on the table.

Oksa, of course, did not like this number, but why pay attention to her? What woman claps her hands when a man with a bottle hugs?

After the drunken conversation, the conversation went like clockwork, and they began to develop a plan for the upcoming sortie: how best to do so as not to run into fish control? what time do you leave? where? go down to the rifts, or, conversely, go up to the Red Gap, where the ray is not so noticeable?

However, they didn’t have time to discuss and half of it, they started a daunting business! - how a tall man in a black cloak grew up under the window.

- He! - Vlasik exclaimed vividly and even got up. - The one from the fishing expedition.

For some time the stranger looked at Mikshin's house, then, falling on his sore leg, suddenly moved into the alley.

Vlasik and Miksha looked at each other: did anyone rivet on them? what other business can the fish man be on?

The case, thank God, did not concern them. But, as they say, horseradish radish is not sweeter: the stranger, having given Mikshe a note from the director of the state farm, asked him to take him to Curzia.

To Curzia? - Vlasik was terribly surprised. - Now? Yes, dear comrade, have you heard, no, what is this same Kurzia? Forty versts in the suburbs and in late autumn ... In vain, perhaps, we call it Georgia!

No impression! With iron eyes he clung to Miksha, as if to freeze, hypnotize him, he decided, but what the others squeak - Oksya also gave a voice from the stove - don't give a damn.

Miksha was in no hurry to answer. He sat, glancing at the street, where again, it seemed, the wind was whistling, rolling the skin on his forehead, like waves on a river, and Vlasik no longer doubted: now he would turn this arrogant boss from the gate - and take Miksha and say:

You can, perhaps, ride.

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With no fall I found them in the middle of the river. Suddenly it became blind, white, eyes closed up - no one knows where to go.
Geese flying somewhere overhead helped out: they screamed, argued in a bustle - you see, and they were confused in this mess. It was then that Vlasik, listening to their receding hubbub, and realized in which direction the south, for where is the bird to fly now, if not to warm lands.
The snowy linden tree calmed down a little when we climbed the steep bank from the ferry. Ahead Sosino peeped out with a hedge in the courtyard, a black chapel loomed in the fields to the left.
Wiping his wet face with his hand, Vlasik began to explain to his taciturn companion how to get to the village and find the brigadier, but he didn’t seem to need it: he blocked the whitewashed road with a gnarled stick, as if he had walked along it all his life.
From the local ones, you can see whose? - thought Vlasik.
However, he had no time to think about it. He was frozen, chilled through - from the cold, from the dampness - and all his thoughts were now focused on getting to Mikshi as soon as possible and getting warm in the warmth.
At Miksha's house, despite the fact that it had passed the ninth hour, it was still morning. The hostess with a thin face, flushed with heat from the heat, fussed around the stove, and the owner, gloomy, swollen, all overgrown with dense stubble, sat at the table and drank tea. He drank alone, under the fire of the sullen glances of his offspring, the same strong-headed and busty as their father, huddled in a tight heap on the wide parental bed to the right of the threshold.
Vlasik greeted.
Not a word, not a nod in return. As if they were not homies, not longtime buddies.
But he did not even think to be offended by Miksha - always like that when he went overboard the day before - and therefore calmly went about his business: he took off his wide belt of a signalman-lineman with a metal chain, took off his wet canvas jacket, which was stuck with a stake, and to the stove, on a bench - warmth hugged his thin, chilled back.
The owner - in complete silence of his family - drank two more glasses of tea, black as swamp water, and only after that he began to move his fearful croaker - his nose had been crushed since childhood:
- What are you smoking?
Vlasik readily took out a crumpled pack of "Sever" from his canvas pants, moved to the table - the quarantine was over. We lit a cigarette.
- News? - Miksha barked again in a short drunken voice.
- What's the news, Nikifor Ivanovich. My news is known. The kids go to school now, they beat up all the isolation wards. So I sunbathe every day on the line. Well, if regional affairs ... (Vlasik lived in the regional center.) The expedition here from Suzem1 returned, they said they made a joke. All the streams, all the rivers were locked.
- Nonsense, - Miksha winced.
- No, not nonsense, Nikifor Ivanovich. Now, once again, you don't go to the subsurface for a fish.
- Nonsense, I say, - repeated Miksha. - They will lock our narrower. What kind of fish are there in small rivers? Rubbish is one. They whispered, but the whole question is - why. Is it the same fish that is underground? ..
Vlasik's lower jaw fell off, two yellow, smoky fangs peeped through his toothless mouth.
1 Northern taiga.
- Balda! As for uranium, I say, a little more explosive shit. And this fish is for diverting the eyes. Understood?
“But this is appropriate, Nikifor Ivanovich,” Vlasik agreed vividly, and his dry, bloodless face beamed at once. - I here with one moved across the river, it didn't hurt, he looked at the water.
- With whom with one?
- Yes, with one, with this expedition. A healthy hog, but he is lame. With a stick.
Miksha raised his black woolly eyebrow in surprise:
- Why would he come here? What did he not see in our hole?
- But I didn’t report on this. - Vlasik looked out the window, looked at Oksya, who was rattling with an iron poker by the stove, slyly narrowed his eyes. - And what, Nikifor Ivanovich, can we figure it out tonight? Let's scratch a little bottom before the recap starts?
- Poaching? - directly put the question Miksha. - Long ago you were pissed off - do you want to be jailed again?
- Yes, Nikifor Ivanovich, if you want fish, you will climb to prison ...
- You can't, - Miksha cut off. - Fishery inspection does not day and night on the river.
- Nothing, nothing. It is possible, if it is neatly and overly. - And then Vlasik set in motion, so to speak, a material incentive (he and Miksha loved all sorts of tricky words) - popping a bottle on the table.
Oksa, of course, did not like this number, but why pay attention to her? What woman claps her hands when a man with a bottle hugs?
After the drunken conversation, the conversation went like clockwork, and they began to develop a plan for the upcoming sortie: how best to do so as not to run into fish control? what time do you leave? where? go down to the rifts, or, conversely, go up to the Red Gap, where the ray is not so noticeable?
However, they did not have time to discuss a half - they are starting a serious business! - how a tall man in a black cloak grew up under the window.
- He! - Vlasik exclaimed vividly and even got up. - The one from the fishing expedition.
For some time the stranger looked at Mikshin's house, then, falling on his sore leg, suddenly moved into the alley.
Vlasik and Miksha looked at each other: did anyone rivet on them? What other business could the fish man be on?
The case, thank God, did not concern them. But, as they say, horseradish radish is not sweeter: the stranger, having given Mikshe a note from the director of the state farm, asked him to take him to Curzia.
- To Curzia? - Vlasik was terribly surprised. - Now? Yes, dear comrade, have you heard, no, what is this Kurziya? Forty versts in the suburbs and in late autumn ... In vain, perhaps, we call it Georgia!
No impression! With iron eyes he clung to Miksha, as if to freeze, hypnotize him, he decided, but what the others squeak - Oksya also gave a voice from the stove - don't give a damn.
Miksha was in no hurry to answer. He sat, glancing at the street, where again, it seemed, the wind was whistling, rolling the skin on his forehead like waves on a river, and Vlasik no longer doubted: now he would turn this arrogant boss from the gate - and take Miksha and say:
- You can, perhaps, ride.
We did not leave early, in the first hour, because we were not going to visit our mother-in-law - to the suzem. I had to change the front wheels of the cart, adjust the yoke to the horse, trim the hooves, but you never know what. And besides, Kudasov kept himself waiting, a business trip, who, like all visitors, dragged himself to look at their celebrity - the old chapel.
A drunken, thoroughly pumped up Vlasik joined in to see them off. How passionate he did not want to part with the two bottles that had flown away from him in a birch bark basket, firmly tied to the back of the cart, and he, jingling with his chain, hobbled at the side, whimpering:
- Hello, comrade Kudasov, by God, hello. We forgot when we went to this Curzia-Georgia. And you decided to look at the evening. Let's just because of the morning ...
Miksha in his heart agreed with his friend. Of course, it would be better now to sit in a warm hut than to rinse in the autumn wind, but since the word has been given - be patient. And he, setting himself up for a long road hassle, spoke up as soon as they drove into the field - then Vlasik left them behind:
- Well, they drew out the fish in the seas and in the oceans - have they taken up the su-zem?
Kudasov did not answer. As expected, he was looking at the chapel they were passing by - a sullen, black building like a tall log barn, without a cross, with a torn open roof, with supports on the sides.
- Monument of antiquity, - Miksha announced not without malice. - Under the protection of the state. There is a small board. Not a single stud of iron - the whole tree. Chopped with one ax. In one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven. Under Ivan the Terrible.
“Ivan the Terrible lived a hundred years earlier,” remarked Kudasov.
- Well, to hell with him, with Ivan the Terrible. Not everything is the same. But about the roof I can say for sure. - Miksha laughed. - Ours, Soviet production. One thousand nine hundred and thirty. Then the people were driven from all the villages. They pulled off the cross with a bang so that there was a visual agitation about God. I, too, even though I was a kid, held on a little by the rope.
A thin tearful little voice splashed in the distance - it was Vlasik who must have entered the village with a song - and at once a prolonged roar covered him: they were approaching the forest. A black chapel propped up with slugs, like some kind of antediluvian monster, looked after them from the fields.
- Yes ... - Miksha lit a cigarette. - This chapel has seen something in its lifetime. In the old days here, they say, the believers locked themselves in, they wanted to burn themselves alive - you know what a people they were! - Yes, the tsar's soldiers interfered, the doors were kicked out. And in this very thirtieth year, what was done here ... Two or three ghouls were pulled out in the morning. Of the dispossessed. From the southern regions that were sent to us, to the North. How many of them were in our village! All the summer long they were carried by barges. All the threshing floor, all the sheds were full, and in this chapel ... The bunks stood in four tiers! ..
Sedok turned out to be not one of those with whom you will not get bored. He sat - his eyes on the ground, his hands on the lock (an ulcer, or what, is it sharpening?) And neither ooh, nor a sigh.
For some time Miksha peered into the sparse pine pole on the right - there must be some of his firewood, chopped this spring. Then his attention was attracted by fresh hare loops, scattered on the snow powder along the road, and he exclaimed lively:
- Look, look, the scythe has thought up something! In such bad weather, to walk through the forest.
And again there was silence. Again the strained creak of the cart and the snoring of the horse on the heels.
Behind Letovka - this is a stream two kilometers from the village - spruce began to come across, at first one by one, mixed with birch, and then thicker, thicker - the sky was crumpled, the road tightly squeezed. Immediately out of broad daylight we drove into dusk.
- Well, - said Miksha, listening to the taiga rumble going overhead. - Now this beauty will go as far as Curzia. He lifted the slicker doll up, shook his head.
“No, I don’t understand a damn thing how all this was done. Well, they sent people from their lands, some by hook, some by crook - we will not speak. It was a hot time, chips flew right and left. But why drive it into the suzem? Isn't there enough empty land in Russia? But here, in this suburb, even if you burst, you cannot grow bread. In the middle of summer, matinees are thundering. We used to put hay on this Kurzia. In the village, summer is like summer, but here, thirty-five or forty miles away, the water in the pot freezes in the morning. Eh, what can I say! - Miksha waved his hand abruptly - I myself was terribly ideological then.
- And now not ideological? - Kudasov suddenly gave a voice. It turns out he was listening.
- Do not have, do not have a word! Now the people are literate, you can't take fright. Why am I? And to the fact that my uncle's relatives were in charge of everything at that time. Mares. How can I, my nephew, lag behind them? Yes, there were revolutionaries! Flint! Now there are none. In 1919, Uncle Alexander was sent for the language to Sosino, to our village, so. And in Sosin-oh-oh! Only old people and little children. All the whites, without exception, drove off to the roads: men, women, and girls. And so Uncle Alexander thought and thought, and even said to his father - that patient was lying on the bed: "Get up, you will come with me." Mati heard: “What are you, Oleksa, the devil! ... Come to your senses! The old man does not get up for the third day, he will die on the road. " No nails! Since revolution is necessary, I don't know either father or mother. Well, Uncle Methodius, he was an even firmer nut. Uncle Alexander had at least one weakness - in the part of the woman's question, but this one ... I have never seen a smile on the Evan's face in my life. "I," he says, "will then smile when we build socialism in full and when we drive the last enemy into the coffin." Understand?
- No! - said Kudasov.
- What - no? Don't you understand that you can live your whole life and never smile?
“I don’t understand when people admire murder! - Kudasov did not say, blurted it out - with rage, with hatred - and abruptly leaned back into the back of the cart.
- Who admires murder? I AM? - Miksha also hammered. It's not the first time they've been rolling like this about his uncles. - And Uncle Alexander was not killed? .. He sent himself to the next world? Now you can hang dogs on your uncles. Dead. Vali everything that was and that was not. They will endure. They won't rise from the grave. And I would like to see how today's smart people would talk to them, to the living. I remember those times, I remember what language they spoke then. In 1930, Uncle Alexander was killed at the same time in Kurzia - he was the commandant there - do you know what happened? From all over the region, from all villages, red partisans came to the funeral. With guns. Ready to kill everyone! And Uncle Methodius - the head of the militia - stood and stood at the coffin, white, as I remember now, only yellow pockmarks on his cheeks, like buckshot, shine, and then he takes a "revolver" from his uncle's dead hands (they say, a Bolshevik is shooting dead), yes and says: "Well, Alexander, for every drop of your sacred blood we will release the enemy's bucket." Do you understand how they talked then?
The front wheel jumped to the root, Kudasov moved out
Who just came up with this suzem? What is punishment to people for?
It seems that he is not one of those whom life caressed and stroked, he grew up on bumps and potholes, but his whole soul was shaken out. Roots, rotten bridges, streams, swamps ..; And the darkness, which, like a blanket, covered them after the station, where they fed the horse!
And he no longer tried to rule. He let go of the reins: take them out, funnel!
Miksha guessed that they had finally left for Curzia by the wind. All the way the wind hummed somewhere above, overhead, and then suddenly it violently whipped in the face, drummed on the cold canvas of the raincoat.
The horse rested, did not want to go into the icy draft, then dragged them into some bush and stood.
Kudasov struck a match, it immediately blew out.
- And you know what, friend, - Miksha realized at last, - we can't get to the village on this crown now. For these thirty years, everything here was covered with a bush. See, even the horse got confused.
I didn't have to think long about what to do. On the other side of the rivulet, which was sharpening the narrow hole not far from the road, there was an eel that had long been inhabited by hunters, and Miksha, having attached his horse to the bushes, in a calm, and taking his belongings with him, led his companion there, to the eel.
Kudasov turned out to be lucky: they crossed the river in the dark without scooping up their boots, and then even better - they landed on a hunting trail. So when we went up to the eel, we didn't even have to hunt for firewood: as soon as they lit up, we saw birch woods under the tree.
Soon, a fire crackled under the gnarled spruces with black, scorched butts.
Miksha went to fetch water, hung up the kettle, chopped spruce branches, laid it around the fire. Now no dampness will penetrate from below. Lie down and turn one side or the other.
They still had one more bottle of vodka in stock - Miksha designed another when they were resting at the station.
Kudasov did not drink this time either. He crunched sluggishly with a crouton, drank a mug of hot tea - and that was all. He did not touch the fishmongers or the shangs, as if he was fulfilling some kind of vow.
“You’ve taken my uncles into circulation, comrade Kudasov…” The drunken Miksha was drawn to a conversation again. - You know, I'll tell you what. Unsilverred. They didn’t make any money, they didn’t profit from anything. They began to bury Uncle Alexander - there are no shirts to change. So in the same tunic in which they killed - here, in this village, they knocked him - and they put him in a coffin.
Miksha looked through the fire at the motionless Kudasov and grunted in embarrassment.
... - And I, too, then, even though I was a jerk, rose to revenge. The knife sharpened. In order, therefore, to settle accounts with his sworn enemy. Do you know how old this sworn enemy was? Twelve years old. As for me, or even less. And this sworn enemy is shaking with the wind from hunger ... Yes, - Miksha shook his head, - these are the times. Small children were heated to hatred. As I remember myself, you only hear all around: kulaks, counter-forces, enemies of the Soviet regime ... And what are they like in nature, to the touch? In our village they began to make a collective farm - shout the guard. Three farms should be gutted according to the plan, but where to get them? Only one clerk was shut down, and even then for the cult - in the chapel, the service was ruled. Well, when these kulaks from Ukraine were brought to us, the guys and I just rose up: here they are, enemies, alive, warm! And such class battles unfolded that now it's scary to remember. There is no way for these little fists from the chapel to enter the village - that goes without saying - and we have locked up the forest too. It used to be that these kulak children would rush into the forest for berries, and we were already right there. The war on them ... They had one boy - wow, wolf cub! All the rest, like grass, fall - well, a hungry man, what kind of warrior is he? This one is not. Ribs come out, but I don't give up. This, the steering wheel, - Miksha pointed to his nose, - he corrected me a little ... With a stone ... Sparks suddenly shot up over the fire in a huge red sheaf - Kudasov threw sushina into the fire with a swing. What does all this mean? The fire decided to make it hotter? Or is the conversation again inappropriate? - How are we going to settle for the night? - Miksha asked a little later. - Maybe we can both crawl under my raincoat for warmth? There was no answer. Miksha woke up from the cold. The fire was barely smoking, white frost, like salt, creeps up to the fire from all sides ... And where is Kudasov? Where has his companion gone? Twice he woke up at night and twice saw Kudasov sitting by the fire. Still. Everything is in the same place. With the collar of the cloak raised up. Thundering with a stiff raincoat, Miksha jumped to his feet and immediately calmed down: Kudasov left on his fishing business, and the proof of this was the ribbed footprints on the frosty grass. It was getting light. The cold morning wind swayed shaggy fir trees overhead, and there, on the other side, a shapeless heap of ruined barracks floated up. All that remains of the local village. He looked for the fields. And I didn’t find it. Bereznyak. Solid birch forest. Throughout the valley of the river. Both to the right and to the left, and between the barracks, and behind the barracks, right up to the very edge of the spruce forest, which was blackened in the distance. And he remembered how the taiga was uprooted here. People, wet, sweaty, suffocate from the heat, from the smoke - with fire, smoke drove away the vile. But how can you drive away this evil spirits? And then they came up with: adults brandishing axes, crushing a cursed spruce forest, and behind the children - a splash, a splash with a birch twig on wet backs ... He remembered all this and now with some superstitious fear looked at this white birch forest, so beautiful from afar, indifferently trampled local fields. Between the birch trees, here and there, tiny little fir-trees were blackened, the same fir-trees with which happy people meet New Year ... But he knew what kind of creature they were! A dozen or so two or three years will pass, and these harmless little Christmas trees will strangle the birch forest, under the floor of which they have grown. And then another thirty years will pass - and there will be a continuous spruce forest. Taiga. Suzem. Komarje with his sobs and an unforgettable beast. And who, by what signs, will guess what happened here, on Kurzia, in the old years? Kudasov did not return. Miksha went to the horse, gave him a drink, gave him the rest of the hay, then lit the fire, hung up the kettle. Kudasov was not there. And suddenly, when he was about to follow in his footsteps, he appeared. I came from an unexpected direction, right from behind, from the forest. All black as a charred stump, and the wind stirred his sparse white hair - for some reason he was holding the cap in his hand. - And you, I see, understand these places, - said Miksha. - On the map? Have you seen a cemetery in the hillside? I wonder what is left of him? They put a lot of people there. I used to live with my uncle - every day someone is dragged. Kudasov drank a cup of hot tea in silence. Then he got up and said briefly: "I will be at the barracks." - And dived under the chorus to the river - only a stone fell into the water. He has seen something in his lifetime. He was in the war, was in the camps, he took Berlin with Zhukov in 1945, but this was not the case in his life. It was not that he wandered along the street of the village and that with his hands, as in a forest, he parted the bushes. We must pay tribute to Uncle Alexander: he built strong barracks. The roofs have collapsed, the frames are rotted out, and the walls are still standing. And in due time, wherever they could go into business. Is it possible to transport buildings along our narrow roads? And so the village remained to rot. Thrown by all and forgotten by all. Near one charred house Miksha paused. The place seemed familiar to him. In any case, the commandant's house, like this one, stood on the same uglysh-ke, not far from the noisy river. Cracking with branches, he slowly walked around the house, went out to the collapsed porch, and then suddenly saw two lopsided posts with an iron crossbar, completely covered with rust. Tears boiled in his eyes. Uncle Alexander used to love to warm up on this bar in the morning, he did it beautifully, and in the afternoon again a gray sitting stallion Zhigan stood at the posts - his uncle did not step on foot. And Miksha remembered him for the rest of his life: riding a stallion, in a dashingly twisted black chapaevka, with a whip in his hand. For thirty-five years he had been planning to visit Kurzia, to see the place where his uncle was killed, and finally he is here, near the very porch where his uncle's life ended. The story revived in my memory, which for years, day after day, is told in the regional museum: “It was a dead autumn night. Alexander Danilovich was returning home. He was tired, tired for the day. In addition, old wounds received in hot battles made themselves felt. civil war... But the day was not lived in vain. One more step has been taken towards a brighter future. Meanwhile, at his heels, hiding behind the black cloak of the autumn night and clutching the cold steel of a dagger, an insidious enemy crept along. The experienced Bolshevik revolutionary has forgotten, forgotten that he is in the aspen's nest, that the class enemy never sleeps ... ”More than anyone else in the world, Miks loved Uncle Alexander. And the next day after his funeral, he got up early in the morning, sharpened a knife on Curzia: to avenge his uncle. Father, father ruined his service then. All morning I was not at home, even in the evening I was drowning in the regional center, and then only Miksha came out onto the porch - he. And after all, nothing, not a single word was said between them, but understood everything, guessed everything. - What are you, what are you, Miksha, planning! Are you in your age to grab a knife ... But you are still a child ... Yes, we need to wash the blood of your uncles - not to wash it. And so he finished it off, finished it off with his lamentations. And he never went to Curzia. Whom is he lucky? What kind of man is behind him? There was no smell of fish here - it was now as clear to him as daylight. I arrived, took a step along the river, looked into the village - and back. And most importantly, what did he answer when he, Miksha, asked about the fish stocks in Kurzia? He just yelled: “What kind of fish is there, to the devil? She has never been in this damned river before! " Or maybe he is one of those, from the former? - suddenly came to his mind. Dangling in the front end of the cart (the same calculation of the root), he squinted his eye backwards. Kudasov was lying on the cart with a log. The collar of the cloak is raised, the visor of the cap is pulled down to the very mouth so that only the lower jaw is visible, strong, bony, with a broken chin in two. The easiest way, of course, would be to ask: so and so, they say, buddy, it's enough for you to direct your disguise. Let's be honest. But something kept him from questioning. And not because he was shy in front of this person. I never bowed before any authorities, but who is this man to him? But here you go. Silence all the way - and it seems to be the way it should be. It seems that he has some special right show your power over you. Behind the monastery hill, about five kilometers from Kurzia, the sun peeped through. He looked out, looked from the shaggy peaks at the cart, hobbled along the narrow road, and turned away. And then, as it whirled, whirled - snow, slush, just the end of the world. The road turned sluggish at once. The little horse rocked like a drunk. I had to constantly get off the cart, spank knee-deep in the mud - and so day-and-night ... It was evening when they arrived at the village. There was a light in Miksha's window - they were waiting. He offered to call in to him - warm up, drink tea. - No. Let's get on the ferry. Well, no, no, it would be suggested. Behind the field gate, they dismounted from the cart, groped their way to the transportable hut. Darkness. Wind. The river below roars. - How much? - Why there, - Miksha waved his hand listlessly. He was sick and tired of this trip, completely exhausted both body and soul, sick of this incomprehensible man who, like a sore tooth, sharpened his imagination all the way, and now he had only one desire - to say goodbye to him as soon as possible. A piece of paper cracked in the darkness. Miksha crumpled it with chilled fingers and put it in his raincoat pocket. Kudasov did not leave. Crazy siverko danced around them - the weather was changing again, - probed to the bone. What is he waiting for? Maybe he thinks they will take him across the river? No, thanks ... "Well, goodbye, Kobylin," Kudasov finally unclenched his teeth. - Goodbye. Still, he remembered my surname. “Z-remember-nil,” Kudasov said slowly through the warehouses, and suddenly with a jerk, as if with pincers, squeezed his hand. Miksha winced in pain, grinned: - Nothing, there is strength. In the darkness, his eyes flashed like an iron gleam. - And you, I thought, were more pretentious, Kobylin. Your memory is a bit thin ... It hit the mix. - Wait, wait ... Is that so? .. - The voice changed him. - It can't be ... Kudasov released his hand ... ... That's all. The whole life is shattered, one child is all around ... The learned young lady in the regional museum is talking in a neat, very neat way. A dead autumn night, a vicious enemy creeping on the heels ... But really? But in fact, a drunken uncle raped a defenseless fifteen-year-old girl who was cleaning the commandant's office, and this girl's brother, a fourteen-year-old boy, killed her uncle ... - And you said, no, where to? - Miksha asked for some reason. - About the murder? - said Kudasov directly. - No, I didn't. - And in the dark he grinned wryly. - I am still waiting for an example to be shown. Those who killed people in hundreds, thousands, millions ... The wind howled and rushed on the river, a heavy wave beat against the shore below, and he still sat and sat near the transportable hut and peered into the darkness of the night, into the black autumn darkness that swallowed Kudasov. Everything, everything collapsed, all life to smithereens ... He had long given up on himself. The drunkard. Lagernik. Literacy grades of five grades - what about today? But there was, there was one consolation in his life - an uncle. The famous uncle, the hero of the civil war, the man who, like a red sun, warmed his soul. And when, ten years ago, with the light hand of Khrushchev, some of them began to throw mud at his uncles, he was ready to gnaw everyone's throat. Now what? In the village, at the upper end, a dog barked heart-rendingly. Then someone sang in a familiar, cock-like voice: Don't fiddle around, black curls ... Is Vlasik still kolobrodit? Miksha got up and walked over to the horse. We must take the poor fellow to the stable. The owner has been taxing himself all evening, tearing himself apart, but what is the fault of the dumb beast? Why should she be numb in the wind? Oksya was waiting for him. There was not a single fire at their end of the village when he left the stables, and as soon as he went around the collective farm warehouse, and here it is, his dear hut - like a welcome star in the wilderness of the night. And then, with all his chilled being, with all his numb skin, he felt the joy of close warmth, the joy of hot tea and, of course, vodka, which the compassionate Oksya probably had in store for him. He turned off the road, walked through the frozen vegetable gardens - closer, more likely to be at home. Rather, he would tumble into a warm hut, pull off his numb raincoat. And suddenly, when he had already gone out to his garden, when the hackneyed light began to play in his revived eyes, his father’s dying words, conveyed to him by an old woman, came to his mind: “Tell Nikifor that his father has no grudge against him. It's not his fault. His uncle made him that way. " Miksha grabbed his heart - he was swayed to the side, and then the icy hedge fell under his arms, and he leaned on her with his whole chest. Catching his breath, he looked longingly at the lighted windows of his house. Close, close warm, close Oksya, but eh ... All his life he despised and was ashamed of his father. He despised him for his softness, for his quietness, he even despised his appearance. Boro-denka, like an old man's, combed, a woolen belt, homespun ... Can you really compare him with your uncles? Those where they step, there is a holiday: red banners, revolutionary songs, speeches that take your breath away. In the thirty-seventh year, his father was imprisoned at Miksha's. He was imprisoned as an accomplice of the international bourgeoisie, and we must tell the truth: he was not very distressed. And when Uncle Methodius spoke to him: it is necessary to show a revolutionary example - to renounce his father - he renounced. And he didn’t just renounce, but with an announcement in the regional newspaper, with the rejection of his father’s surname ... Too late, late in the morning. Now the neighbor will not tell anything: she has been in the cemetery for the second year. He himself dragged her there. And how many years the window in the window lived, how many times you could ask the old woman about her father! Miksha walked to the upper end of the village. To grandma Matryona. Granny Matryona, although she had long been out of her mind, loved to remember the old, and if you still bring her a glass, she will twist about three boxes. Zina is a parasite, a grandmother's tenant, she was walking again - the lights on the whole street. And who did you go out with? With Vlasik. - Ah, Nikifor Ivanovich! Come on, come on to our hut. And here we are with Zinochka - ha ha! - We are strengthening the state budget ... - And Vlasik, laughing, giggling (glad to be found in the company with such a young and painted bitch), began to pour the remains from the bottle into a glass. For him. Miksha suddenly remembered the piece of paper that Kudasov had thrust into him, felt it in his raincoat pocket, and threw it on the table. - Take it and scratch it somewhere. Alive! - What are you, Nikifor Ivanovich ... - Vlasik was taken aback. - You have no right! - screamed drunken Zina, but grabbed the piece of paper instantly. Miksha didn't talk much - not the kind of audience to open the debate - the doors were wide open, the gates wide open: get out, until he took the money back! The grandmother woke up from the cold. No noise, no scream could bring her out of her deep sleep, but she smelled cold air - and she came to life: she lifted her head, shaved off the pillow, and stuck her crazy look into him. - Matryona, you know, no, who am I? - shouted Miksha. - Sometimes, what a servant. - No, local. From Sosin. - Miksha took a glass of vodka from the table, which Vlasik poured him. - Well, drink a little, clear your brains. The grandmother took five gulps and little by little began to think. - Do you remember Ivan Varzumov from the lower end? - I remember. - Was he a good person? - Good. Not good. He wrote all the papers to people. - And he wrote to you? - He wrote. The whites took our horse, the guy, Petruha, went to the red ones. He was a good one. We paid with money. - Who paid? - Power. Ivan Nikiforovich wrote the paper. We paid for the Evan paper. Yes, that's right, that's right, Miksha thought. Grandma says correctly: people went to their father about all sorts of paperwork. He himself now remembers. And, I remember, my uncles strongly betrayed my father for this: they say, you are acting to undermine Soviet power. And the mother did not really approve of the father. - Matryona, do you remember my mother? The wife of Ivan Niki-forovich? - Oh, that's who you mean. About Anyushka Kobylinskaya. Ugly woman. Her blood is, you know, kobylin's. It used to be that Ivan Nikiforovich would not get a word from a sober one: everything is not so, everything is not that way. And on a holiday he drinks - again he asks for forgiveness from Ivan Nikiforovich, crawls at his feet with tears. And this, too, is correctly said by the old woman. Mother drank. And each time she repented to her father, cried, called him a saint, and herself - a witch, a bitch. And then the father could not stand it and also began to cry and ask for forgiveness from the mother. And how the father cried and was killed when his mother died! He, Miksha, saw for the first time in his life that a man had a beard wet with tears. The first and probably the last. - Matryona, - Miksha sniffled, - did my father remember me before his death? - Yes you will be someone? - Son of Ivan Nikiforovich. Miksha. Last year, your barn was sawing for firewood. - No, there is no barn. And there are no sheep. I all lived with sheep, spinning wool. I had a good coat ... Miksha shook the old woman slightly by the bony shoulders. - You're not talking about sheep to me, not about wool. Remember how Ivan Nikiforovich died. Just before the war, when I came from prison. Did he remember his son? - But did his son have? Daughters, forget, Anyushka. - No, not a daughter! - shouted Miksha. - A son! I. Nikifor. Understand? The old woman did not understand. She, apparently, had run out of those few minutes of enlightenment that nature still allowed her for a day, and no matter how much he shouted, no matter how much he explained who he was, he could not get through to her memory. Meanwhile, Vlasik and Zina returned - they drummed at the window and at the gate. And I had to go to open it, I had to let me into the hut. - Nikifor Ivanovich! We live! - Vlasik barely kept his feet, but threw two bottles on the table. Zina put down the bottle too. Probably a quarter dal, Miks thought about Kudasov and slammed the door: was he before drinking? Here and again his legs were carried out to the river, to be transported. I wandered, wandered around the village, thought and thought, to whom else to push, - I did not come up with anything. Petrusha Lysokhin, for example, would be suitable years, but all his life he lived in the city - what does he know about his father? Nastasya Tyuleva is also of little use: she is completely deaf. And Maremyana Maksimovna would be in good order as an old woman, with intelligence, but there is no way to see her because of Uncle Alexander. Almost forty years have passed since the time when her uncle seduced her daughter Tatyana, Tatyana herself became an old woman, and did not forget Maremyan's offense: if you meet her, she burns you with her eyes. The wave on the river did not subside. With a roar, with a crash, she hit the boats near the shore, and they creaked strained in the darkness, tossed and turned like invisible seals. A trip to the past Oh, what is he thinking! The regional center is nearby, there won't be four miles. Father spanked for years, as long as he served in the Ripot Rebsoyuz. Every day - both in the morning and in the evening, and he stands, listening to the river. An hour later Miksha entered the regional center. Much to his surprise, there were still lights here and there, boardwalks crackling under the feet of the riotous youngsters returning from dances. Soon he turned off the main street, in dark alleys he went out to a communal bathhouse - here, two houses, near a well under a canopy, Vasily Semyonovich lived. Vasily Semenovich often caught his eye when he was in the regional center. Cheerful old man, always rubs in crowded places. And he always invites him to visit: “Come in, come to me, Ivanovich. Let's remember the father. After all, you have a father - you have to write books ”. They didn't open it for a long time. He pounded with his fist, pounded with his boots - everything was useless. And only after I thought of throwing a stick into the frame did the old steps shuffle in the hallway. - Who is there to disgrace at night? The police are near us, you can call them how. - Open it, Fedoseevna. - He still remembered the name of the old woman. - Ours. - Yes, someone's own? Some of them walk at their own hour. - My, I say. Nikifor from Sosin. Ivan Varzumov's son. - Someone's son? Ivan Nikiforovich? But why didn’t you say right away, darling? And then in an instant, as in a fairy tale, iron locks fell, and Miksha, thundering with a raincoat, burst into the kitchen. - Come in, come in, Nikifor Ivanovich, - the old woman sang again. - Forever, night and day, our house is open for the son of Ivan Nikiforovich. And I thought, what a drunkard is breaking. Some times have gone - the men of the night cannot live without wine. All are looking for only one wine. - And suddenly she gasped, groaned: - Yes, where are you from, darling? You don't have a face on. All turned white, chilled ... - Okay, about the face. You better wake up your old man. Fedoseevna sadly shook her old head. - No, you won't wake up Vasily Semyonovich. Vasily Semyonovich is fast asleep. A deep sleep ... - What? Dead? - Vasily Semyonovich died, died. Two years old will be buried this week. Miksha sat down heavily on a creaking stool, grabbed his head with both hands: so he talked to the cheerful old man about his father. - Listen, Fedoseevna, do you know why your old man remembered my father all kindly? “I know, as I don’t know. Your father, Ivan Nikiforovich, saved my old man from death. - From death? My father? - Yes, from death. In that one, in civilian. Vasil and I, I don’t know, lived, no, for a week together - just got married. And as I remember now, in the evening we come from the guests, my parents were there, we undress, and suddenly your father: “Vasily Semyonovich, save yourself! They will come for you now. " And Vasily Semyonovich - ha-ha, for a laugh. You know what a scoffing he was: he showed me a fig the day before he died. And the porch is cracking. They are coming. Well, God gave me reason, pushed the tab in the entryway. Vasily - to the povet. Understood what it smells like. And in vet-that, too, was taken into the environment. They shot, zabakhali - I think, and the end of my peasant. Well, it was dark - he left unscathed. And your father, Ivan Nikiforovich, did not leave. Where will you go? Methodius, your uncle, flew into the hut: “Ah, but did you warn him? Well, since you save the counter - stand up against the wall yourself! " And straight the revolver at him. Yes, well here Alexander stood up, also your uncle. “What are you, Methodius says, come to your senses! This is our son-in-law, the husband of our sister. " And that would be a cover for Ivan Nikiforovich. Methodius Ko-epic, although your uncle is dear, and the dog was a man. How many is there in the world? Twenty years, maybe more, and people still cry because of him. What he did - did that year with his thugs - passion. In kazhinnoy village he spoke innocent people, and in our volost ten peasants at once. One is better and stronger. Mine was also sentenced by him, but thanks to Ivan Nikiforovich ... last years does not kick his uncles for executions in the eighteenth year. A trip to the past - Have you heard about the fact that the whites shot at Lenin? In Moscow, at the same plant? Well, duck for Lenin, for the leader of the revolution then avenged. Red terror. So that in the future it was discouraging to the whites. Understand? - Why, Lenin was shot in Moscow, from Moscow and ask. And what are our men to blame? We live a thousand miles from Moscow ... - Here Fedoseevna, out of old habit, switched to a whisper. - Yes, we, Nikifor Ivanovich, did not even hear about Lenin at that time. This is all then - Lenin and Lenin, and then what did we know ... - Hmmm ... - said Miksha. - Look how it is ... - He grabbed his head with both hands, rubbed his forehead. - And your father, then, didn’t fall, he stood right under the "revolver"? And I thought he was a weakling in terms of courage. - Who, Ivan Nikiforovich is a weakling? What are you, what are you, the Lord is with you. In a peasant shipping company he served as a treasurer - you know how much money he had. And one went to the city and from the city. And he had so many nerves, threats, when they began to do this with the exiles! Paramon Usynin, our rich man, herself heard how near the breech shouted: "Well, Vanka, you will still weep with red tears!" Miksha had heard that his father served as a treasurer in some steamship society, but what kind of society it was, why people still remember it, he did not know, and therefore asked the old woman to tell. - Well, dear, - Fedoseevna sighed, - this is for you, who is literate, you need to ask, and what will I tell? We had a steamship operation in the district, the peasants bought two steamers on shares so that they could carry goods from the city, and then Paramokha Usynin would tear at exorbitant prices for everything - both for travel and for goods. And at that time, exiles lived with us, so they began to incite your father to cyber. And he, Ivan Nikiforovich, served with Paramon Usa-nin, he was a confidant. - And the father went against Usynin himself? Miksha's throat tightened with excitement. - Oh, darling! What happened then is beyond retelling. You're kidding, no, they snatched such a piece out of Paramon. I used to tear as much as I want - my steamers, I am the owner. And then take it, but look around: two more steamers are whistling on the river. Ivan Nikiforovich walked in big, big people. It is now that they have forgotten him, and then that you are the first person. Why don't you ask me about your father? Go to Pavlin Fyodorovich. They put this opchest together then. He will put everything right for you ... If anyone was a mystery for Miksha in this world, it was Pavlin Fedorovich Usoltsev, a district teacher. A man at twenty-five threw everything in the city - an apartment, a good place (they said he could go to the professor), - went into their wilderness. Voluntarily. Without any sniff-nick. To teach peasant splenose children, to bring light to people. And for twenty-five years, as they used to say in the old days, he sowed the rational, the good, the eternal, he gave everything to people, sacrificed everything: youth, family (he remained a bachelor), health. And the people? How did people repay him for this? In the thirty-eighth year, Pavlin Fedorovich was arrested, and no one, not a single son of a bitch stood up for the old man ... He, Miksha, remembered for the rest of his life how Pavlin Fedorovich was sent under escort to the city. It was an early June morning. He was returning from somewhere under steam (he drank terribly then, after renouncing his father. By drunkenness, by the way, he ended up in jail - he ran into a regional tribune with a truck), and suddenly, in the morning silence, the iron rang and creaked. He looked - and the arrested were being taken out of the gates of the enkevzde. All in the same manner. All dirty, bearded, gray. But he still recognized Pavlin Fyodorovich. On an escapade. He walked proudly, with his head raised. And also a white-and-white bald head rushed into his eyes ... Pavlin Fyodorovich tapped for seventeen years. Released under the Khrushchev amnesty in 1955. And what would another person have done in his place? Dragged again into this damned wilderness, to these ogloe-eaters who betrayed him? Yes, you will be lost! Even if you die, rot at the root of your life. What - there is no other place for me? Even in the same city where everyone is rushing now? And Pavlin Fyodorovich returned to them again. And not only did he return - he dressed the entire area in greenery. Since the thirties, the district center has been landscaped. Efforts and money are smashed - do not count. And everything is in vain: either these green seedlings will dry up, then the goats will eat them, then someone will pull out of mischief. But Pavlin Fedorovich took up this business, and a green fire went on a spree throughout the district, in all the villages. And people have forgotten the age-old proverb: there is a bush near the house - the house will be empty. No, now without red ashberry and white bird cherry and the house is not in the house. Miksha did not hesitate whether or not to wake the old man. It was about two hours ago, when he still did not have vapors in his head (they remembered his father and Fedoseevna), he would have wondered what to do. And now everything is simple. On the porch, dirt from boots poured and right into the corridor, to the door, where it was written in large size, like in an alphabet book - “P. F. Usoltsev ": Come on, Pavlin Fedorovich, open it, explain how life should be understood, put me, the fool, in place of my brains. The old man must not have slept yet: he quickly, not like an old man, opened the door. - Pavlin Fedorovich, it's me, Kobylin ... - Kobylin? - Well, yes, Nikifor Kobylin ... in the fifth grade you studied ... The old man shook his head. - The mares did not study with me. - Well, here's another, I forgot my autobiography. Yes, I was not Kobylin then, Varzumov was. Ivan Nikiforovich's son. In the paradise-consumer union who worked ... as an accountant ... -So it's you ... you renounced your father? - Let it be for you, Pavlin Fedorovich! Remember something old ... When it was something! Pavlin Fyodorovich calmly and firmly, just as it happened in the classroom, said: - No, Kobylin, not everything that is old is forgotten. - And after that, just as calmly closed the door. Miksha was dumbfounded. He wanted to shout: “Wait a minute, Pavlin Fedorovich! Yes, I didn’t come for myself, for my father… ”And he didn’t shout. I didn't have the heart. How long does he wander around? Where have you been? What is looking for? Darkness, pitch darkness, darkness all around ... Some kind of fence suddenly barred his way. He felt it with his hands - it looks like a sharp picket fence, lifted his face up - what kind of noise overhead? Pines, pines rustle ... Ah, and so this is where he was brought - to the fraternal cemetery, to his uncles at the grave. Well hello, hello, uncles! Miksha didn’t poke around, didn’t wobble anymore in the dark: here, in the cemetery, he was like in his hut. Knew every turn. The columns of demonstrators have long ceased to go to the fraternal cemetery on red holidays, they have long ceased to speak over the graves of incendiary, piercing speeches, they do not sing "Internationale", they do not fire guns, but he walks. He walks from Sosin. With a red flag. In any weather, the ice drifts across the river ... - Well, thank you, dear uncles, - Miksha said into the darkness. - You have arranged life for me ... The icy wind with a howl, with a squeal, like a flock of angry dogs, flew into him, as soon as he stepped on the open highway. He stopped. Maybe go back to the regional center, spend the night with friends? But he suddenly remembered Oksya, imagined how she, all exhausted, was waiting for him at home - and to hell, to the devil, a lodging for the night. Give Sosino! Oh, fool, fool Oksya! She ran to him, a widower, a seventeen-year-old girl. Itself. I can't see how the orphaned children are tormented - but about that I thought about how to live with Kobylin? She saw only light, only joy, that in the first year of their life together, he took her to the city and showed his uncles' corner in the regional museum ... In the meadow, witches celebrated a sabbath. He lost his way, climbed into some muddy lake, lost his hat in the darkness. Hana! Not to get out of this damned night ... Well, no, not for that he turned his whole life inside out to die like a dog in an open meadow. And he, clutching his heart with his hand (it, like a hunted hare, tossed under the canvas of a raincoat), again began to trample the meadow in the darkness. And again some kind of swamp, swamp, again some kind of bumps underfoot. Where? Since when has all this dirty trick started on their plain as a dish? Oksya, Oksya took him to the river. He suddenly smelled her smoke in the night crown. I knew: my husband loves warmth after a hangover. Loves to walk barefoot around the hut. So the stove was flooded at dawn. So the wind brought the smell of his own smoke to him ... It was dawn when Miksha, leaning on a pole, ascended to the Sosinsky shore. The hair on his head was frozen, the icy raincoat rattled like iron ... Close, close already is the house ... You can already see how the lights are shining in the windows. Many lights ... But what is it? Where does the bell ringing come from? He turned his head to the east and saw the black, thunderous chapel, lit by the glow of candles. No, no, pipes! It is the old women who constantly dream of candles at dawn, and I am an atheist. From an early age I don’t believe in God or in devil. But the light in the east did not go out, and from there some familiar, familiar singing could already be heard. Where, where did he hear it? I remembered. The dispossessed, dispossessed sang in the thirtieth year. In the evenings, at sunset, everyone who could move crawled out of the chapel, sat down on the ground and played songs. Soft, alien, filled with hopeless longing and anguish. And the Sosinsky women, listening to these songs, cried bitterly, and his father cried ... And then he hated him to tears, to frenzy. I hated that my father was a man ... I'm coming, I'm coming, father! Never in his life was he at the grave of his father, never in his life shed tears on the churchyard near the chapel, and why? Isn't he his father's son? The bells were ringing ... The song then fell silent, then again tormented with longing and pain ... He went to his father ... A week later in the regional newspaper in the section "Drunkenness - fight!" a note appeared: "WHAT DOES FRIENDSHIP WITH A GREEN SERPENT LEAD TO?" But it is not known now: where there is wine, alcohol, there are moral breakdowns, reckless antics. Well, who, for example, in his right mind and sober memory, will now go off-road in a remote area in order to restore, so to speak, his own order in the fish industry? And N. Kobylin went, and after returning from the trip, he undertook a daring crossing of the river - in the middle of the night, in conditions of ice sludge. It all ended, as expected, very sad. On the night of October 15, N. Kobylin got so drunk that for the night he decided to move to the burial grounds, to the old chapel, where he was found frozen. There is nothing you can do to help N. Kobylin now, but someone else can and should be helped, for, alas, in our area there are still lovers of friendship with the green snake. Duty public organizations- not for a minute let the rowdy and hard-core drunkards out of your field of vision. Drunkenness - fight! "

Refers to writers who have worked in the genre of village prose. This trend was very popular in the second half of the twentieth century. It was easy for him to work writing his works in this direction, it was easy for him to work writing on this topic, since he was born in Arkhangelsk region Abramov. The summary ("A Trip to the Past" is an example) of the stories that came out from under his pen, makes you think about the fate of not only small villages, but all of Russia. Not surprisingly, they have recently entered the compulsory literature curriculum. More mature readers can be advised to familiarize themselves with the trilogy "Pryasliny", which was awarded the State Prize.

Fedor Abramov: "A Trip to the Past"

Many of the writer's works were difficult to censor. The story was written back in 1974, and was published only at the very beginning of perestroika - in 1989. Unfortunately, the author of the publication did not wait. The story was published in the magazine "New World", and later it was published in the posthumous collected works.

This story differs from similar works in that it focuses not on the events that happened to the hero, but on social conflicts and the psychology of people in the war and post-war years.

What, according to the prose writer, negatively affected people

What did Fedor Abramov write about in his works? "A trip to the past", summary which we are considering, tells about how the policy of the party in the pre-war years (about 1920-1930) influenced the life ordinary people... It was a period of dispossession of wealthy peasants, which broke millions of fates. At that time, those who, in the opinion of others, lived better and had more than those around them, exiled to the north of the country. It was possible to get on the lists of dispossessed people for the slightest income.

All this with pain for his people was figuratively described by Abramov. The summary ("A Trip to the Past" in this regard is especially characteristic) of his stories, if you conduct a review of them, highlights the main problems, the emergence of which contributed to the erroneous policy of the party:
... collectivization;
... dispossession;
... the emergence of fanatics, adherents revolutionary movement;
... drunkenness of the village lumpen proletarians.

The true guardians of traditional values were in the minority during the time described by the author, and this can also be called a tragedy.

The main character and his image in the story

The central plot of Abramov (summary, "A Trip to the Past") tied around Miksha Kobylin. It would be strange for modern authors to choose such a hero, but in this work he looks organic. Miksha worked as a rural groom, loved to drink and was sure that his relatives, the leaders of the revolution, were honest, courageous and noble people. All the actions that the hero's uncle did was perceived by him as reference.

At one time Miksha even renounced his father and changed his last name. This was facilitated by his uncles, who set a different example for him than his father. Soviet ideology at that time it was very strong. The main character until the last did not realize from whom he was taking an example. More than once they tried to open his eyes to his closest relatives, but he did not delve into what old Fedoseevna was telling.

What Mikshi's family actually did

What then does F. Abramov tell about? "A trip to the past" (summary) very colorfully and emotionally describes the picture of the events of those times. Miksha Kobylin considered his uncles to be the leaders of the revolution, which was greatly facilitated by the propaganda of the regional museum. In fact, Methodius broke many destinies. Even his death could not atone for the sins committed during his lifetime. For example, according to the stories of a local resident, they carried out mass executions.
But the truth about his uncle Alexander became more difficult for Miksha. The true cause of his death was hidden for a long time. The truth was revealed to the protagonist quite by accident - he went to see the stranger to the abandoned village of Kurzia. His surname was Kudasov, and the family of his fellow traveler Miksha was exiled to the North several years ago. At the age of 15, Kudasova's sister was already working, her job was to clean the commandant's office, where she was raped by Alexander. For this reason, he was killed by fellow traveler Miksha, who at that time was only 14.

Dekulakization scenes are the most complex and vivid in the story

Let's return to the main plot described by Abramov. The summary ("A Trip to the Past" we are considering) can be continued by the fact that it contains quite a lot of vivid and cruel details about the dispossession of kulaks. The author knew about the life of the disenfranchised firsthand, he himself spent his childhood in the Arkhangelsk region, where migrants from the south were often sent. On the streets of the villages, battles broke out more than once between the indigenous inhabitants and the former "kulaks" sent to them.

Miksha himself, despite his young age, tried to participate in the actions carried out by his uncles, on an equal basis with adults. He hated dispossessed people and, despite his young age, helped to dismantle the cross from the chapel. He also took part in fights. In memory of his childhood, Miksha was left with which, as it turned out later, damaged Kudasov. it the main character understood during the conversation.

How the truth affected Miksha

It is also important what conclusions the protagonist made after talking with Kudasov. Difficult choice makes the main character Abramov. "A trip to the past" (the summary shows this only in part) is a story primarily about the truth and what it can do to a person. Of course, it is important to have a correct understanding of the world and the events that took place in it, but in the case of Miksha, the truth became destructive. After he saw Kudasov off, Miksha cannot go home: he is tormented by the truth that he learned about his relatives. For their sake, he renounced himself loved one- father and, as it turned out, in vain.

Tormented by his thoughts and memories, Miksha went to his father's grave and froze there. People told him that his father was a real role model - hardworking and honest. Unfortunately, it was too late to change anything. The truth knocked Miksha down, killed from the inside.

The story is easy to read. Only the book itself, its full content will help to find out all the details, to feel the talent of the writer. "A trip to the past" (Abramov himself emphasized this more than once) tells about the life of an ordinary Russian person with knowledge of the issue, this story is interesting primarily with historical point vision. It describes events without ideological coloring and shielding the actions of representatives Soviet power... That is why the story was highly appreciated during the author's lifetime, but they were in no hurry to publish (at that time, the pressure on publishing houses and the media from the side of the official authorities was quite strong). A Trip to the Past is a very modern piece that can influence people's feelings and force them to rethink their actions. It is worth reading not only in summary.

In late autumn, an expedition arrived in the Siberian village of Sosino, exploring the rivers and reservoirs in the northern taiga - suzem. They were escorted to the village by the local signalman-linesman, the drunkard Vlasik. Turning to the village groom Nikifor Ivanovich, nicknamed Miksha "to heal," Vlasik told him the news. Miksha, however, believed that the expedition was not looking for fish in the meager rivers of the Suzem, but something more valuable - gold or uranium.

Having got drunk, the friends began to plan a poaching outing in the suzem, but at that moment a man from the "fish" expedition, Kudasov, knocked on the hut and asked to take him to Kurzia - a place where dispossessed settlers once lived. Miksha tried to argue that now, in a muddy road, it would not be easy to drive forty miles along the subway, but the "fishmonger" did not want to listen to anything, and the groom agreed.

As a passenger, Kudasov turned out to be taciturn. Passing by the local sight - the old chapel, Miksha remembered how the cross was pulled from it by the whole village, and in the 30s a dispossessed "contra" lived in it. Then the corpses of people who died of hunger were taken out of the chapel every day.

A black chapel, propped by slabs, looked after them from the fields like some kind of antediluvian monster.

Soon we drove into the suzem. A deaf spruce forest surrounded the uneven road. Miksha continued to rant. Northern Siberia is a ruinous place, continuous forests and swamps. It is impossible to grow bread here: it is summer in Sosino, and morning frosts in Suzino.

Now Miksha did not understand why peasants were driven here from all over the country, but then, in the 30s, he was “ideological”. He took an example from his uncles, mother's brothers, “silicon” revolutionaries Aleksandr and Methodius Kobylins. Uncle Alexander was the commandant of Kurzia, and he was killed there. Methodius, the then head of the police, vowed to take revenge, but he never found the murderer.

We left for Curzia, but did not reach the village - the horse got lost in the dense bushes and refused to go further. Miksha turned into a hunting camp. There, by the fire, and spent the night. Miksha remembered how they, the younger generation of Sosin, fought against "class enemies" - they did not let hungry children into the forest for berries. Kudasov said nothing, refused vodka, treats, and sat all night looking into the fire.

4–6

In the morning, Kudasov left, and Miksha went to the still strong barracks where the settlers lived. I also found the house of Uncle Alexander, near which he was killed. Then a local museum guide told the story of the murder of a fiery revolutionary for many years. Miksha, who loved Uncle Alexander more than anything else, wanted to take revenge then, sharpened the knife, but his father kept him, persuaded.

On the way back, Miksha wondered what kind of person was sitting behind him. Obviously not a “fishmonger”. Surely not from the "former" is it? Miksha was in the camps, went through the war all the way to Berlin, and was not afraid of anything in this life, but he did not dare to ask the silent man directly.

Silence all the way - and it seems to be the way it should be. It seems that he has some special right to show his power over you.

Kudasov refused to go to Miksha, asked to take him to the river for the ferry. There he paid for the work and finally recalled who he was.

The learned young lady in the museum talked about the hero, but in fact, a drunken uncle Alexander, a great lover of women, raped a fifteen-year-old girl who was cleaning up his commandant's office. The uncle was killed by the brother of this girl, fourteen-year-old Kudasov.

7–8

Miksha, a drunkard and a prisoner, had one consolation in his life - the memory of his hero-uncle. Now even this is gone. At the house Miksha remembered the words of his dying father, which his old neighbor gave him: “Tell Nikifor that his father has no grudge against him. It's not his fault. His uncle made him that way. "

All his life Miksha despised his soft, quiet father.

Can you compare him with the uncles? Those where they step, there is a holiday: red banners, revolutionary songs, speeches that take your breath away.

When in 1937 he was arrested "as an accomplice of the international bourgeoisie", Miksha publicly disowned his father and took the name of his uncles.

Miksha's heart hurt badly, and he did not go home - he went to ask about his father from those who still remembered him. The old woman's neighbor, who looked after his father when he returned from the camps, had long been able to, and Miksha went to the ancient grandmother Matryona.

Having refreshed herself with vodka, the grandmother remembered that by good man For Ivan Varzumov, the whole village went "about all sorts of paperwork," which his uncles did not approve of very much. She also remembered Matryona about Miksha's mother, a "bad woman" who was very fond of drinking. Miksha remembered how his father was killed when she died. The grandmother did not remember anything else, and she stopped recognizing Miksha himself.

9–13

There was another old woman in the village who remembered Ivan Varzumov, but Miksha did not go to her. Forty years ago, Uncle Alexander seduced her daughter, and she still remembered the insult.

Miksha went to the regional center, where an old friend of his father lived, and learned that the old man had recently died. The widow said that Ivan Varzumov warned her husband about the arrest, and he managed to escape. Uncle Methodius then nearly shot Ivan, but Uncle Alexander stood up. Uncle Methodius in those days shot so many innocent people that he is still remembered with an unkind word.

Another widow said that Ivan Varzumov served as a treasurer in a peasant shipping company, which he organized together with several exiles, without fear of threats from a local rich monopolist, the owner of several steamships. The old woman advised Miksha to go to the ex rural teacher Pavlina Fyodorovich - he already knows all the details.

Once upon a time, the twenty-five-year-old Pavlin Fedorovich changed his city apartment to a hut in a remote Siberian village in order to teach rural children. He never got a family - he gave himself all to school.

In 1938, Pavlin Fyodorovich was arrested, he spent seventeen years in the camps, and after the Khrushchev thaw he returned and started landscaping the area.

And people have forgotten the age-old proverb: there is a bush near the house - the house will be empty.

Miksha remembered how the teachers were escorted into the city. He himself then got drunk too - he flew a truck onto the people's tribune.

Peacock Fedorovich did not let Miksha into the house - he did not want to talk to a man who had renounced his own father.

Returning to Sosino, Miksha thought about his wife. When she was a stupid seventeen-year-old girl, she herself came to him, a widower, - she felt sorry for the orphaned children. She did not see joy with Miksha, but remained faithful and caring.

Near his native hut, Miksha's heart stabbed again. He saw the lights, heard bells ringing and singing - this is how the dispossessed people sang near the ancient chapel.

And the Sosinsky women, listening to these songs, cried bitterly, and his father cried ... And then he hated him to tears, to frenzy. I hated that my father was a man ...

And now Miksha himself went to his father ...

A week later, a note appeared in the regional newspaper that the drunken groom Kobylin from Sosino got lost on his way home and froze to death near the chapel, on old graves.