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Astafiev is a sad detective story of creation. Essay on literature

The main task of literature has always been the task of relating and developing the most pressing problems: in the 19th century there was the problem of finding the ideal of a freedom fighter, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries it was the problem of revolution. In our time, the topic of morality is the most relevant. Reflecting the problems and contradictions of our time, the masters of the word go one step ahead of their contemporaries, illuminating the path to the future. Viktor Astafiev in the novel "The Sad Detective" refers to the theme of morality. He writes about the everyday life of people, which is typical of peacetime. His heroes do not stand out from the gray crowd, but merge with it. Showing ordinary people suffering from the imperfection of the surrounding life, Astafiev raises the question of the Russian soul, the originality of the Russian character. All the writers of our country, one way or another, tried to solve this problem. The content of the novel is peculiar: the main character Soshnin believes that we invented this riddle of the soul ourselves in order to keep silent from others. Features of the Russian character, such as pity, sympathy for others and indifference to ourselves, we develop in ourselves. The writer tries to disturb the souls of the reader with the fate of the characters. Behind the little things described in the novel, the problem posed is hidden: how to help people? The life of heroes causes sympathy and pity. The author went through the war, and he, like no one else, knows these feelings. What is seen in the war can hardly leave anyone indifferent, not cause compassion, heartache. The events described take place in peacetime, but one cannot help but feel the similarity, the connection with the war, for the time shown is no less difficult. Together with V. Astafiev, we think about the fate of people and ask ourselves: how did we get to this point? The title "The Sad Detective" doesn't say much. But if you think about it, you can see that the main character really looks like a sad detective. Responsive and compassionate, he is ready to respond to any misfortune, a cry for help, to sacrifice himself for the benefit of complete strangers. The problems of his life are directly related to the contradictions of society. He cannot but be sad, because he sees what the life of the people around him is like, what their fates are. Soshnin is not just a former policeman, he benefited people not only on duty, but also at the call of the soul, he has a good heart. Astafiev, through the name, gave a description of his main character. The events described in the novel could be happening now. In Russia, ordinary people have always had a hard time. The time, the events of which are described in the book, is not indicated. One can only guess that it was after the war. Astafiev tells about Soshnin's childhood, about how he grew up without parents with Aunt Lina, then with Aunt Granya. The period when Soshnin was a policeman is also described, he caught criminals, risking his life. Soshnin recalls the past years, wants to write a book about the world around him. Unlike the main character, Syrokvasova is far from a positive image. She is a typical figure in modern fiction. She is instructed to choose whose works to print and whose not. Soshnin is just a defenseless author who is under her rule among many others. He is still at the very beginning of his journey, but he understands what an incredibly difficult task he has undertaken, how weak his stories are, how much he will take from him, giving nothing in return, the literary work to which he doomed himself. The reader is attracted by the image of Aunt Grani. Her tolerance, kindness and diligence are admirable. She devoted her life to raising children, although she never had her own. Aunt Granya never lived in abundance, did not have great joys and happiness, but she gave all the best that she had to orphans. At the end, the novel turns into a reasoning, a reflection of the protagonist about the fate of the people around him, about the hopelessness of existence. In its details, the book does not have the character of a tragedy, but in general terms it makes you think about the sad. The writer often sees and feels much more behind the seemingly mundane fact of personal relationships. The fact is that, unlike the others, he analyzes his own feeling deeper and more comprehensively. And then the individual case is raised to the general beginning, prevails over the particular. In a moment eternity is expressed. Uncomplicated at first glance, small in volume, the novel is fraught with a very complex philosophical, social and psychological content. It seems to me that the words of I. Repin are suitable for The Sad Detective: “In the soul of a Russian person there is a trait of special, hidden heroism ... He lies under the bushel of personality, he is invisible. But this is the greatest force of life, it moves mountains .. She merges entirely with her idea, "she is not afraid to die." That is where her greatest strength is: "she is not afraid of death." Astafiev, in my opinion, never loses sight of the moral aspect of human existence. his work caught my attention.
The novel "The Sad Detective" was published in 1985, at a time of turning point in the life of our society. It was written in the style of hard realism and therefore received an outburst of criticism. The reviews were mostly positive. The events of the novel are still relevant today, as works about honor and duty, about good and evil, about honesty and lies are always relevant. The novel describes different moments in the life of the former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who retired at the age of forty-two due to injuries received in the service. I remember the events of different years of his life. The childhood of Leonid Soshnin, like almost all children of the post-war period, was difficult. But, like many children, he did not think about such complex issues of life. After his mother and father died, he stayed with his aunt Lipa, whom he called Lina. He loved her, and when she began to walk, he could not understand how she could leave him when she had given him her whole life. It was the usual childish selfishness. She died shortly after his marriage. He married the girl Lera, whom he saved from molesting hooligans. There was no special love, it’s just that he, as a decent person, could not help but marry a girl after he was accepted in her house as a groom. After his first feat (catching a criminal), he became a hero. After that, he was wounded in the arm. It happened when one day he went to calm down Vanka Fomin, and he pierced his shoulder with a pitchfork. With a heightened sense of responsibility for everything and everyone, with his sense of duty, honesty and struggle for justice, he could only work in the police. Leonid Soshnin always thinks about people, the motives of their actions. Why and why do people commit crimes? He reads many philosophical books to understand this. And he comes to the conclusion that thieves are born, not made. For a completely stupid reason, his wife leaves him; after the accident, he became disabled. After such troubles, he retired and found himself in a completely new and unfamiliar world, where he tries to save himself with a "pen". He did not know how to get his stories and books published, so for five years they lay on the shelf of the editor Syrokvasova, a "gray" woman. Once he was attacked by bandits, but he coped with them. He felt bad and lonely, then he called his wife, and she immediately realized that something had happened to him. She understood that he had always lived some kind of intense life. And at some point he looked at life differently. He realized that life should not always be a struggle. Life is communication with people, caring for loved ones, concessions to each other. After he realized this, his affairs went better: they promised to publish the stories and even gave an advance, his wife returned, and some kind of peace began to appear in his soul. The main theme of the novel is a man who finds himself among the crowd. A person lost among people, entangled in thoughts. The author wanted to show the individuality of a person among the crowd with his thoughts, actions, feelings. His problem is to understand the crowd, to merge with it. It seems to him that in the crowd he does not recognize people whom he knew well before. Among the crowd, they are all the same and kind, and evil, and honest, and deceitful. They all become the same in the crowd. Soshnin is trying to find a way out of this situation with the help of books that he reads, and with the help of books that he himself is trying to write. I liked this work because it touches upon the eternal problems of man and the crowd, man and his thoughts. I liked the way the author describes the hero's relatives and friends. With what kindness and tenderness he treats Aunt Grana and Aunt Lina. The author draws them as kind and hardworking women who love children. As the girl Pasha is described, Soshnin's attitude towards her and his indignation at the fact that she was not loved at the institute. The hero loves them all, and it seems to me that his life becomes much better because of the love of these people for him.
V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private, he knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that, with his wisdom and experience, he belongs to those people whose advice and orders should not only be heeded, but should be tried to be carried out. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him. Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that they often raise are more than one thousand years old. The eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long made a person look for answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless. Astafiev's novel "The Sad Detective" raises the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Hajlovska, about the people living in them, about modern customs. When talking about small towns, an image of a quiet, peaceful place arises in the mind, where life filled with joys flows slowly, without any special emergencies. There is a feeling of peace in the soul. But the one who thinks so is mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, drunk to such an extent that a person turns into an animal, rape a woman who is suitable for them as a mother, and the parents leave the child locked in an apartment for a week. All these pictures, described by Astafiev, horrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes do not pay attention, but collected in a novel, they make you take off your rose-colored glasses and understand: if this did not happen to you, it does not mean that it does not concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What did I do good and good? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad? "You begin to think about the fact that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that the search for answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel "The Sad Detective" Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, telling about his life. The main character is a police officer Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who received several injuries in the line of duty and must retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where in a person so many anger and cruelty. Where does he accumulate? Why, along with this cruelty, does Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled war and labor? Astafiev contrasts the main character, an honest and courageous operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed who quietly serves, moving from one position to another.On especially dangerous trips, he tries to he does not take risks from his life and gives his partners the right to neutralize armed criminals, and it is not very important that the partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fyodor has a service weapon. A vivid image in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, not having her own children, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Orphanage. Often the heroes of the work, which should cause disgust, cause pity. The urn, which has turned from a woman engaged in amateur performances into a drunkard without a home and family, causes sympathy. She yells songs and sticks to passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing happened, and now they simply do not pay attention to her. The city of Veysk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol's The Inspector General, thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the moon. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, changing clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, "wrapped in cigarette smoke, twitched, crawled on a chair and littered with ashes." This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrokvasova. It is this man, whose description causes a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is good. Leonid Soshnin reconciles with his wife, and she returns to him again with her daughter. It’s a little sad because the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, makes them reconcile. It is grief that brings Leonid closer to Leroy. A blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist's family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together. The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read it, because Astafyev describes too terrible pictures. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorless and empty. I liked the work. I took a lot of important things out for myself, I understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not the last work of Astafiev that I will read.

The journalistic beginning is tangible in V. Astafyev's story "The Sad Detective", but the main thing that defines this work is "cruel" realism. The prose of "cruel" realism is merciless in depicting the horrors of everyday life. The story concentrates criminal episodes from the life of the provincial town of Veisk, and in such quantity that it seems implausible that so much negative, so much dirt, blood was concentrated in such a small geographical area. Here are collected monstrous manifestations of the decay and degradation of society. But there is both an artistic and a real justification for this.

V. Astafiev makes reality horrified, he wakes up the hearing accustomed to information not only by the meaning of crimes, but also by their number. Forced facts, destinies, faces mercilessly plunge into reality, terrible in its embitterment, lack of motive for crimes. This cruel realism combines fictional and real episodes into a single canvas, imbued with angry pathos.

Such saturation with criminal events is explained by the profession of the protagonist Leonid Soshnin. Soshnin is a security officer, a policeman who daily encounters a fall of a person. He is also an aspiring writer. Everything that Soshnin sees around becomes material for his notes, with all facets of his soul he is turned to people. But “work in the police eradicated from him pity for criminals, this universal, not fully understood and inexplicable Russian pity, which forever preserves in the living flesh of a Russian person an unquenchable thirst for compassion, striving for good.”

V. Astafiev sharply raises the question of the people. That idealized image of a single people - a truth-lover, a passion-bearer, which was created in the previous decades (1960-80s) by "village prose", does not suit the writer. He shows in the Russian character not only what brings tenderness. Where, then, does the dump truck hijacker come from, who killed several people in a drunken stupor, or Venka Fomin, who threatens to burn the village women in the calf, if they do not give him a hangover? Or that petite guy who was humiliated in front of women by more impudent boyfriends, and in revenge he decided to kill the first person he met. And for a long time, brutally, he killed a beautiful student with a stone at the sixth month of pregnancy, and then at the trial he shouted: “Is it really my fault that such a good woman was caught? ..”

The writer discovers in man "a terrible, self-devouring beast." He speaks the merciless truth about his contemporaries, adding more and more new features to their portrait.

The children buried their father. “At home, as usual, the children and relatives cried for the deceased, drank hard - out of pity, added to the cemetery - damp, cold, bitter. Five empty bottles were later found in the grave. And two full, with mutterings, - now a new, courageous fashion among highly paid hard workers has appeared: with force, not only spending free time richly, but also burying - burning money over the grave, preferably a pack, throwing after the outgoing bottle of wine - maybe the unfortunate person in the next world wants to hangover. The grieving children threw the bottles into the pit, but they forgot to lower the parent into the dugout.

Children forget their parents, parents leave a tiny child in an automatic locker. Others lock the baby at home for a week, bringing him to the point that he caught and ate cockroaches. The episodes are connected to each other by a logical connection. Although V. Astafiev does not make any direct comparisons, it seems that he simply strings one after the other on the hero's memory rod, but in the context of the story, between different episodes, there is a force field of a certain idea: parents - children - parents; offender - the reaction of others; the people are "intelligentsia". And all together adds new touches to the image of the Russian people.

V. Astafiev does not spare black tones in national self-criticism. He turns inside out those qualities that were elevated to the rank of virtues of the Russian character. He is not admired by patience and humility - in them the writer sees the causes of many troubles and crimes, the origins of philistine indifference and indifference. V. Astafiev does not admire the eternal compassion for the criminal, noticed in the Russian people by F. Dostoevsky. material from the site

V. Astafiev, in an effort to understand the Russian character, is very close to Gorky’s Untimely Thoughts, who wrote: “We, Russia, are anarchists by nature, we are a cruel beast, dark and evil slave blood still flows in our veins ... There are no words, which it would be impossible to scold a Russian person - you cry with blood, but you scold ... ”V. Astafiev also speaks of the animal in man with pain and suffering. He cites terrible episodes in the story not in order to humiliate a Russian person, to intimidate, but so that everyone thinks about the reasons for the brutality of people.

"The Sad Detective" is a literary and journalistic story, marked by sharpness of analysis, ruthlessness of assessments. "Detective" by V. Astafiev is devoid of the element of happy ending inherent in this genre, when a lone hero can tame the evil that has broken through, return the world to the norm of its existence. In the story, it is evil and crime that become almost the norm in everyday life, and Soshnin's efforts cannot shake it. Therefore, the story is far from an ordinary detective story, although it includes crime stories. The title can be interpreted both as a sad crime story and as a sad hero whose profession is a detective.

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NOVEL V. P. ASTAFYEV "SAD DETECTIVE"

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life.

Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private, he knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that, with his wisdom and experience, he belongs to those people whose advice and orders should not only be heeded, but should be tried to be carried out. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him. Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that they often raise are more than one thousand years old.

The eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long made a person look for answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. Everyone has a heart, but often we are called heartless. Astafyev's novel "The Sad Detective" raises the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Hajlovska, about the people living in them, about modern customs. When talking about small towns, an image of a quiet, peaceful place arises in the mind, where life filled with joys flows slowly, without any special emergencies. There is a feeling of peace in the soul. But the one who thinks so is mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people, drunk to such an extent that a person turns into an animal, rape a woman who is suitable for them as a mother, and the parents leave the child locked in an apartment for a week. All these pictures, described by Astafiev, horrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, an important artistic feature.

Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes do not pay attention, but collected in a novel, they make you take off your rose-colored glasses and understand: if this did not happen to you, it does not mean that it does not concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: "What did I do good and good? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad?" You begin to think about the fact that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work.

In the novel "The Sad Detective" Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is police officer Leonid Soshnin. He - a forty-year-old man who received several injuries in the line of duty - should retire. Having gone on a well-deserved rest, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does she keep him? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor, an invalid of war and labor? The main character, an honest and courageous operative, Astafiev contrasts the policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives his partners the right to neutralize armed criminals, and it is not very important that the partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon. A vivid image in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, not having her own children, gave all her love to the children who played near her house at the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's House. Often the heroes of the work, which should cause disgust, cause pity. The urn, which has turned from a woman engaged in amateur performances into a drunkard without a home and family, causes sympathy. She yells songs and sticks to passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing happened, and now they simply do not pay attention to her. There are Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky in the city of Veysk. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol's The Inspector General, thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the moon. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, changing clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, "wrapped in cigarette smoke, twitched, crawled on a chair and littered with ashes." This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrokvasova. It is this man, whose description causes a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is good. Leonid Soshnin reconciles with his wife, and she returns to him again with her daughter. It’s a little sad because the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, makes them reconcile. It is grief that brings Leonid closer to Leroy. A blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist's family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.

The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read it, because Astafyev describes too terrible pictures. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorless and empty. I liked the work. I took a lot of important things out for myself, I understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not the last work of Astafiev that I will read.

Bibliography

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site were used. http://sochok.by.ru/

Composition

(I option)

Victor Astafiev in the novel "The Sad Detective" refers to the theme of morality. He writes about the everyday life of people, which is typical of peacetime. His heroes do not stand out from the gray crowd, but merge with it. Showing ordinary people suffering from the imperfection of the surrounding life, Astafiev raises the question of the Russian soul, the originality of the Russian character. All the writers of our country, one way or another, tried to solve this problem. The content of the novel is peculiar: the main character Soshnin believes that we invented this riddle of the soul ourselves in order to keep silent from others. Features of the Russian character, such as pity, sympathy for others and indifference to ourselves, we develop in ourselves. The writer tries to disturb the souls of the reader with the fate of the characters. Behind the little things described in the novel, the problem posed is hidden: how to help people? The life of heroes causes sympathy and pity. The author went through the war, and he, like no one else, knows these feelings. What is seen in the war can hardly leave anyone indifferent, not cause compassion, heartache. The events described take place in peacetime, but one cannot help but feel the similarity, the connection with the war, for the time shown is no less difficult. Together with V. Astafiev, we think about the fate of people and ask ourselves: how did we get to this point?

The name "The Sad Detective" says little. But if you think about it, you can see that the main character really looks like a sad detective. Responsive and compassionate, he is ready to respond to any misfortune, a cry for help, to sacrifice himself for the benefit of complete strangers. The problems of his life are directly related to the contradictions of society. He cannot but be sad, because he sees what the life of the people around him is like, what their fates are. Soshnin is not just a former policeman, he benefited people not only on duty, but also at the call of the soul, he has a good heart. Astafiev, through the name, gave a description of his main character. The events described in the novel could be happening now. In Russia, ordinary people have always had a hard time. The time, the events of which are described in the book, is not indicated. One can only guess that it was after the war.

Astafiev tells about Soshnin's childhood, about how he grew up without parents with Aunt Lina, then with Aunt Granya. The period when Soshnin was a policeman is also described, he caught criminals, risking his life. Soshnin recalls the past years, wants to write a book about the world around him.

Unlike the main character, Syrokvasova is far from a positive image. She is a typical figure in modern fiction. She is instructed to choose whose works to print and whose not. Soshnin is just a defenseless author who is under her rule among many others. He is still at the very beginning of his journey, but he understands what an incredibly difficult task he has undertaken, how weak his stories are, how much he will take from him, giving nothing in return, the literary work to which he doomed himself.

The reader is attracted by the image of Aunt Grani. Her tolerance, kindness and diligence are admirable. She devoted her life to raising children, although she never had her own. Aunt Granya never lived in abundance, did not have great joys and happiness, but she gave all the best that she had to orphans.

At the end, the novel turns into a reasoning, a reflection of the protagonist about the fate of the people around him, about the hopelessness of existence. In its details, the book does not have the character of a tragedy, but in general terms it makes you think about the sad. The writer often sees and feels much more behind the seemingly mundane fact of personal relationships. The fact is that, unlike the others, he analyzes his own feeling deeper and more comprehensively. And then the individual case is raised to the general beginning, prevails over the particular. In a moment eternity is expressed. Uncomplicated at first glance, small in volume, the novel is fraught with a very complex philosophical, social and psychological content.

It seems to me that the words of I. Repin are suitable for The Sad Detective: “In the soul of a Russian person there is a trait of special, hidden heroism ... He lies under the veil of personality, he is invisible. But this is the greatest force of life, it moves mountains ... It merges completely with its idea, "is not afraid to die." That's where her greatest strength is: "she's not afraid of death."

Astafiev, in my opinion, never loses sight of the moral aspect of human existence. This, perhaps, his work attracted my attention.

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Victor Astafiev
Sad detective

Chapter 1

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst possible mood. And although it was far to go, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village, he did not get on the bus - let his wounded leg ache, but walking will calm him down and he will think over everything that he was told in the publishing house, think over and judge how he should continue to live and what to do.

Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, a branch remained from it, the publishing house itself was transferred to a larger city and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured, with a powerful printing base. But this base was exactly the same as in Veisk, a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. The printing house was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched with gratings of narrow windows at the bottom and shapedly curved at the top, also narrow, but already raised up like an exclamation mark. Half of the building of the Weiss printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, had long since sunk into the bowels of the earth, and although fluorescent lamps were clinging to the ceiling in continuous rows, it was still uncomfortable, chilly and something all the time, as if in blocked ears, flashed or worked a delayed-action explosive mechanism buried in the dungeon.

The department of the publishing house huddled in two and a half rooms, creakingly allocated by the regional newspaper. In one of them, shrouded in cigarette smoke, the local cultural luminary Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilyevna twitched, crawled on a chair, grabbed the phone, littered with ashes, moving forward and further local literature. Syrokvasova considered herself the most knowledgeable person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she had no equal in intelligence. She made reports and reports on current literature, shared publishing plans through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed the books of local authors, inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante, from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery in place and out of place. , Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri Olesha, Tregub and Yermilov, however, the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes disturbed, the leaders of the world proletariat also did not bypass attention.

Everything has long been decided with Soshnin's book. The stories from it were published, albeit in thin, but metropolitan magazines, three times they were condescendingly mentioned in review critical articles, he stood “in the back of the head” for five years, got into the plan, established himself in it, it remains to edit and arrange the book.

Having appointed the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrokvasova appeared at the publishing house department at twelve. Puffing Soshnin with tobacco, out of breath, she rushed past him along a dark corridor - someone "took away" the light bulbs - hoarsely threw out "Sorry!" and crunched the key in the faulty lock for a long time, swearing in an undertone.

Finally, the door grunted angrily, and the old, not tightly pretending tile let a gap of gray, dull light into the corridor: for the second week it was raining lightly on the street, washing the snow into mush, turning the streets and alleys into coils. Ice drift began on the river - in December!

Dull and incessantly, his leg ached, his shoulder burned and drilled from a recent wound, fatigue crushed him, he was drawn to sleep - he could not sleep at night, and again he was saved by pen and paper. “This is an incurable disease - graphomania,” Soshnin grinned and seemed to doze off, but then the silence was shaken by a knock on the echoing wall.

- Galya! - with arrogance threw Syrokvasov into space. Call me this genius!

Galya is a typist, an accountant and even a secretary. Soshnin looked around: there was no one else in the corridor, a genius, therefore, he.

- Hey! Where are you here? Opening the door with her foot, Galya stuck her short-cropped head into the corridor. - Go. My name is.

Soshnin shrugged his shoulders, straightened his new satin tie around his neck, smoothed his hair to one side with the palm of his hand. In moments of excitement, he always stroked his hair - his little one was stroked a lot and often by his neighbors and Aunt Lina, so he learned to stroke. "Calmly! Calmly!" Soshnin ordered himself, and with a well-mannered cough he asked:

– May I come to you? - With the trained eye of a former operative, he immediately captured everything in Syrokvasova's office: an old chiseled bookcase in the corner; put on a chiseled wooden pike, hung hunchbacked a wet, red fur coat familiar to everyone in the city. The coat did not have a hanger. Behind the fur coat, on a planed but unpainted shelving, the literary production of the united publishing house is placed. In the foreground were several not badly designed promotional gift books in leatherette bindings.

“Take off your clothes,” Syrokvasova nodded at the old yellow closet made of thick board. - There are no hangers, nails are driven in. Sit down,” she pointed to the chair across from her. And when Soshnin took off his cloak, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna threw the folder in front of her with irritation, pulling it out almost from under the hem.

Soshnin barely recognized the folder with his manuscript. She has gone through a difficult creative path since he handed it over to the publishing house. With the gaze of the former operative, he again noted that they put a kettle on it, and a cat sat on it, someone spilled tea on the folder. If tea? Syrokvasova's wunderkinds - she has three sons from different creative producers - drew a dove of peace, a tank with a star and an airplane on the folder. I remember that he purposely picked up and saved a colorful folder for his first collection of stories, made a white sticker in the middle, carefully drew the title, albeit not very original, with a felt-tip pen: “Life is more precious than everything.” At that time, he had every reason to assert this, and he carried a folder to the publishing house with a feeling of an unexplored renewal in his heart and a thirst to live, create, be useful to people - this happens with all people who have resurrected, got out of "there".

The little white sticker turned gray in five years, someone scratched it with a fingernail, maybe the glue was bad, but the festive mood and lordship in the heart - where is all this? He saw on the table a carelessly kept manuscript with two reviews, written on the go by brisk local drunken thinkers, who moonlighted at Syrokvasova and saw the police, which was reflected in this motley folder, most often in the sobering-up station. Soshnin knew how dearly human negligence costs every life, every society. Something, got it. Firmly. Forever.

“Well, then, life is most precious of all,” Syrokvasova twisted her lips and dragged on a cigarette, wrapped herself in smoke, quickly leafing through reviews, repeating and repeating in thoughtful detachment: “Most of all ... dearest of all ...

I thought so five years ago.

- What did you say? - Syrokvasova raised her head, and Soshnin saw flabby cheeks, sloppily blue eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows sloppily lined with dry paint - small black lumps got stuck in the already callous, half-grown eyelashes and eyebrows. Syrokvasova is dressed in comfortable clothes - a kind of modern woman overalls: a black turtleneck - you don’t need to wash it often, a denim sundress on top - you don’t need to iron it.

“I thought so five years ago, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

“Don’t you think so now?” - The causticity could be seen in the appearance and words of Syrokvasova, rummaging through the manuscript, as if in cabbage waste. Are you disappointed in life?

“Not quite yet.

– That's how! Interesting interesting! Commendable, commendable! Not really, then?

“Yes, she forgot the manuscript! She wins time, so that at least somehow, on the go, get to know her again. Curious how it will get out? Really curious!" Soshnin waited, not answering the editor's last half-question.

I don't think we can have a long conversation. And yes, there is no point in wasting time. Manuscript in plan. I'll correct something here, bring your essay into a divine form, give it to the artist. In the summer, I believe, you will be holding your first printed creation in your hands. Unless, of course, they give me paper, if nothing goes wrong at the printing house, if they don't shorten the plan both te de and te pe. But here's what I'd like to talk to you about in the future. Judging by the press, you continue to work stubbornly;

- Human, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- What did you say? Your right to think so. And frankly, you are still far from human, especially universal, problems! As Goethe said: "Unerreichbar wi der himmel." High and inaccessible, like the sky.

Something Soshnin did not meet in the great German poet of such a statement. Apparently, Syrokvasova, in the vanity of life, confused Goethe with someone or quoted him inaccurately.

- You have not yet learned properly what a plot is, and without it, excuse me, your police stories are chaff, chaff from threshed grain. And the rhythm of prose, its quintessence, so to speak, is sealed with seven seals. There is also a form, eternally renewing, a mobile form...

- What is the form - I know.

- What did you say? Syrokvasova woke up. During an inspired sermon, she closed her eyes, littered the ashes on the glass, under which there were drawings of her brilliant children, a crumpled photograph of a visiting poet who hanged himself drunk in a hotel three years ago and for this reason fell into the fashionable, almost holy ranks of deceased personalities. The ashes littered the hem of the sarafan, on the chair, on the floor, and even the ash-colored sarafan, and the whole of Syrokvasova seemed to be covered with ashes or decay of time.

“I said I know the form. Wore her.

I didn't mean police uniform.

I don't understand your subtlety. Sorry. – Leonid got up, feeling that he was beginning to be overwhelmed by rage. “If you don’t need me anymore, let me take my leave.

- Yes, yes, let me, - Syrokvasova was a little confused and switched to a businesslike tone: - The advance payment will be written out to you in the accounting department. Just sixty percent. But with money we, as always, are bad.

- Thank you. I receive a pension. I have enough.

- Retirement? At forty years old?!

- I'm forty-two, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

What is the age for a man? - Like any eternally irritated female creature, Syrokvasova caught herself, wagged her tail, tried to change the caustic tone to half-joking confidence.

But Soshnin did not accept the change in her tone, bowed, and wandered off into the dim corridor.

"I'll keep the door open so you don't get killed!" - Shouted after Syrokvasova.

Soshnin did not answer her, went out onto the porch, stood under the visor, decorated along the rim with old wooden lace. They are crumbled with bored hands, like rye gingerbread. Raising the collar of his insulated police cloak, Leonid drew his head into his shoulders and stepped under the silent pillowcase, as if into a failed desert. He went into a local bar, where regular customers greeted him with a roar of approval, took a glass of cognac, drank it in one fell swoop and went out, feeling his mouth stale and his chest warm. The burning sensation in his shoulder seemed to be erased by warmth, but he seemed to have gotten used to the pain in his leg, perhaps he had simply come to terms with it.

“Maybe have another drink? No, don’t, he decided, I haven’t done this business for a long time, I’ll still get tipsy ... "

He walked around his native city, from under the visor of his wet cap, as the service had taught him, he habitually noted what was happening around him, what was standing, walking, driving. Black ice slowed down not only movement, but life itself. People sat at home, they preferred to work under a roof, it was raining from above, squelching everywhere, flowing, the water ran not in streams, not in rivers, somehow colorless, solid, flat, disorganized: lying, spinning, overflowing from puddle to puddle, from crack to slot. Everywhere covered was rubbish was exposed: paper, cigarette butts, soggy boxes, cellophane fluttering in the wind. Crows and jackdaws clung to black lindens and gray poplars;

And Soshnin’s thoughts, to match the weather, slowly, thickly, barely moved in his head, did not flow, did not run, but they moved languidly, and in this stirring there was no distant light, no dreams, only anxiety, one concern: how to continue to live?

It was completely clear to him: he served in the police, fought back. Forever! The usual line, knurled, single-track - exterminate evil, fight criminals, provide peace to people - at once, like a railway dead end, near which he grew up and played his childhood "in a railway worker", broke off. The rails are over, the sleepers that connect them are over, there is no direction further, there is no way, then the whole earth, right behind the dead end - go in all directions, or turn around in place, or sit on the last one in the dead end, cracked from time, already and not sticky from impregnation, a weathered sleeper and, immersed in thought, dozed or yelled at the top of their voice: “I will sit at the table and think about how to live alone in the world ...”

How in the world to live alone? It is difficult to live in the world without the usual service, without work, even without state-owned ammunition and a canteen, you even have to worry about clothes and food, somewhere to wash, iron, cook, wash dishes.

But this is not, this is not the main thing, the main thing is how to be and live among the people, which for a long time was divided into the underworld and the impregnable world. Criminal, he is still familiar and one-faced, but this one? What is he like in his variegation, in crowds, vanity and constant movement? Where? For what? What are his intentions? What is the temper? “Brothers! Take me! Let me in!" - Soshnin wanted to shout at first, as if in jest, to play pranks as usual, but the game was over. And it turned out, the life came close, her everyday life, oh, what they are, everyday life, everyday people have.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market to buy apples, but near the gates of the market with skewed plywood letters on the arc: “Welcome”, a drunken woman called Urna squirmed and attached herself to passers-by. For a toothless, black and dirty mouth, she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some kind of isolated creature with a blind, half-mad craving for drunkenness and outrages. She had a family, a husband, children, she sang in the amateur performances of the railway recreation center near Mordasova - she drank everything away, lost everything, became a shameful landmark of the city of Veisk. They no longer took her to the police, even in the reception center of the Internal Affairs Directorate, which is popularly called the “scourge”, and in the old rude times was called a prison for vagrants, they didn’t keep her, they drove her from the sobering-up station, they didn’t take her to the nursing home, because she was old just in appearance. She behaved in public places shamefully, ashamedly, with an insolent and vindictive challenge to everyone. It is impossible and there is nothing to fight with the Urn, although she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, she did not die and did not freeze.

Ah-ah, my wesse-olay laugh
Has always been successful...

hoarsely yelled Urn, and with a drizzle, cold spatiality did not absorb her voice, nature, as it were, separated, repelled its fiend from itself. Soshnin passed the market and the Urn side by side. Everything just flowed, floated, oozed brainy emptiness over the earth, across the sky, and there was no end to the gray light, gray earth, gray melancholy. And suddenly, in the midst of this hopeless, gray planet, there was a revival, a conversation, laughter was heard, a car chuckled in fright at the crossroads.

A piebald horse with a collar around its neck slowly followed along the wide street, only marked out in autumn, more precisely, along Prospekt Mira, along its very middle, along the white dotted lines of the marking, occasionally whipping with a wet, forcibly trimmed tail. The horse knew the rules of the road and clicked with its horseshoes, like a fashionista with imported boots, in the most neutral zone. Both the horse itself and the harness on it were tidied up, well-groomed, the animal did not pay any attention to anyone or anything, slowly stomping about its business.

The people unanimously followed the horse with their eyes, brightened their faces, smiled, poured replicas after the horse: “I set it up from a stingy owner!”, “She herself went to surrender to the sausage”, “Nah, to the sobering-up station - it’s warmer there than in the stable”, “Nothing similar! He is going to report to the wife of Lavri the Cossack about his whereabouts "...

Soshnin also smiled from under his collar, followed the horse with his eyes - it was walking towards the brewery. There is her stable. Its owner, the horse-driver of the brewery Lavrya Kazakov, popularly Lavrya the Cossack, an old guard from the corps of General Belov, holder of three Orders of Glory and many more military orders and medals, delivered lemonade and other non-alcoholic drinks to the “points”, sat down with the peasants on a permanent basis. “point” - in the buffet of the Sazontievskaya bath - to talk about past military campaigns, about modern city orders, about the ferocity of women and spinelessness of men, but his sensible horse, so that the animal would not get wet and tremble under the sky, let it go under its own power to the brewery. All the Veysk militia, and not only them, all the indigenous inhabitants of Veysk knew: where the brewery cart stands, Lavrya the Cossack is talking and resting there. And his horse is learned, independent, understands everything and will not let himself go to waste.

Something has shifted in my soul, and the bad weather is not so oppressive, Soshnin decided, it's time to get used to it - I was born here, in a rotten corner of Russia. How about visiting a publisher? A conversation with Sirokvasova? Yes, joke with her! Well, fool! Well, they'll take it out sometime. Well, the book is really not so hot - the first, naive, helluva lot of imitation, and it has become outdated in five years. The following should be done better in order to publish in addition to Syrokvasova; maybe in Moscow itself ...

Soshnin bought a long loaf in a grocery store, a jar of Bulgarian compote, a bottle of milk, a chicken; But the price is outrageous! However, this is not a subject for annoyance. He cooks vermicelli soup, takes a hot sip, and, you see, after a hearty dinner according to the law of Archimedes, to the monotonous drip from the battery, to the sound of an old wall clock - do not forget to start it, - under the splashing of rain for an hour and a half or two night at the table - to create. Well, to create is not to create, but still to live in some isolated world created by one's imagination.

Soshnin lived in a new railway microdistrict, but in an old two-story wooden house at number seven, which they forgot to demolish, after oblivion they legalized it, they hooked up the house to the main with warm water, to gas, to sewers - built in the thirties according to a simple architectural project, with an internal staircase dividing the house in two, with a sharp hut above the entrance, where there was once a glazed frame, slightly yellow on the outer walls and brown on the roof, the house modestly squinted and dutifully went into the ground between the blank ends of two panel structures. An attraction, a milestone, a memory of childhood and a good shelter for people. Residents of the modern microdistrict oriented visitors and themselves along it, a wooden proletarian building: “As you go past the yellow house ...”

Soshnin loved his native home or felt sorry - do not understand. Probably, he both loved and regretted it, because he grew up in it and didn’t know any other houses, he didn’t live anywhere except for hostels. His father fought in the cavalry and also in Belov's corps, along with Lavrey the Cossack, Lavrya - a private, his father - a platoon commander. From the war, my father did not return, he died during a raid of the cavalry corps behind enemy lines. Mother worked in the technical office of Veisk station in a large, flat, semi-dark room and lived with her sister in this little house, apartment number four, on the second floor. The apartment consisted of two square rooms and a kitchen. Two windows of one room overlooked the railway line, two windows of the other room overlooked the courtyard. An apartment was once given to a young family of railway workers, his mother’s sister, Soshna’s aunt, came from the village to mess around with him, he remembered her and knew more than his mother because during the war all office workers were often dressed up to unload wagons, to snow fight, to harvest crops on collective farms , mother was rarely at home, overstrained herself during the war, at the end of the war she caught a severe cold, fell ill and died.

They were left alone with Aunt Lipa, whom Lenya, having made a mistake at an early age, called Lina, and so Lina she was fixed in his memory. Aunt Lina followed in her sister's footsteps and took her place in the technical office. They lived, like all the honest people of their village, in the neighborhood, a potato plot outside the city, from pay to pay with difficulty. Sometimes, if it happened to celebrate the renewal or take a walk on a holiday, they didn’t reach it. My aunt did not get married and did not try to get out, repeating: "I have Lenya." But she loved to take a wide walk, in a rustic noisy way, with songs, dances, squeals.

Who? What did he do to this pure, poor woman? Time? People? A craze? Perhaps, that and that, and another, and the third. In the same office, at the same station, she moved to a separate table, behind a partition, then she was transferred all the way “up the mountain”, to the commercial department of the Weisky railway department. Aunt Lina began to bring home money, wine, food, became excitedly cheerful, was late home from work, tried to force, to make up. “Oh, Lenka, Lenka! I will be lost - and you will be lost! .. ”Auntie was called by gentlemen. Lyonka used to pick up the phone and, without greeting, rudely asks: “Who do you need?” - Lipu. “We don’t have one!” - "How is it not?" - "Absolutely no!" Auntie scratches the pipe with her paw: “This is for me, for me ...” - “Ah, do you want Aunt Lina? They would have said so! .. Yes, please! You're welcome!" And not immediately, but after rubbing his aunt, he will hand her the phone. She will squeeze it in a handful: “Why are you calling? I told you, then ... Then, then! When, when?..” Both laughter and sin. There is no experience, he will take it and blurt out: "When Lenya leaves for school."

Lenya is already a teenager, already with ambition: “I can leave now! How much, tell me, and it will be done ... "-" Come on, Lenya! - Hiding her eyes, the aunt blushes. “They’re calling from the office, and you’re God knows what…”

He struck her with a grin and incinerated her with a look of contempt, especially when Aunt Lina forgot: she would put aside her worn slippers, twist her leg with her foot, stretch out on her toe - a sort of fifa-tenth-grader in a public machine shows her eyes and “dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee ... ". Well, the boy just needs half revenge, and he will definitely straighten his aunt’s leg with a broom, put her in her place or foolishly sing in a brittle bass: “Calm-and-and-be, the excitement of passion.”

All her life a kind woman lived with him and for him, how could he share her with someone? Modern boy! Egoist!

Near the building of the regional department of internal affairs, for some reason lined with ceramic tiles, imported all the way from the Carpathians, but not more beautiful because of this, which did not become even more gloomy, in the Volga, cherry-colored, leaning against the door, the driver Vanka Strigalev in a leather jacket was dozing and a rabbit hat - also a very interesting person: he could sit in a car for a day, not reading, slowly thinking about something. Soshnin, together with the police officers, Uncle Pasha and his friend, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin, went fishing, and many even felt embarrassed because a young guy with sideburns sits all day in a car and waits for fishermen. “You should at least read, Vanya, magazines, newspapers or a book.” “What about reading them? What's the point of them?" - Vanya will say, yawn sweetly and shudder platonically.

Vaughn and Uncle Pasha. He always sweeps. And scratch. There is no snow, it has washed away, so he sweeps water, drives it out of the gates of Uvedev's courtyard, into the street. Revenge and pecking is not the most important action for Uncle Pasha. He was a completely crazy fisherman and a hockey fan, a janitor went to achieve his goal: a man who does not drink, but drinks, Uncle Pasha went to hockey and fishing, so as not to ruin his pension, not to tear it to pieces, he earned money with a janitor's broom - for "his expenses ”, but he gave his pension into the reliable hands of his wife. Each time, with calculation and reprimand, she gave him “Sunday”: “Here you are, Pasha, a fiver for fishing, this is a triple for you - your cursed cocktail.”

The police department kept a few more horses and a small stable, which was in charge of Uncle Pasha's friend, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin. Together they undermined the native police, reached the hot pipes, to the heating plant laid in the building of the Internal Affairs Directorate, piled horse manure, earth, humus on these pipes, masked them with slate slabs on top - and such worms were bred all year round in the sap, what for bait they were taken for any transport, even bossy. Uncle Pasha and the elder Aristarkh Kapustin did not like to travel with the authorities. They were tired of their bosses and their wives in everyday life, they wanted to be completely free in nature, to relax, to forget about both.

The old people went out into the street at four o'clock, stood at the crossroads, leaning on the ice picks, and soon a car, most often a body truck, covered with a tarpaulin or a plywood box, slowed down and, as it were, licked them off the asphalt - someone's hands picked up the old people, poked them by the back, in the midst of the people. "Ah, Pasha! Ah, Aristasha? Are you still alive? - exclamations were heard, and from that moment on, experienced fishermen, having fallen into their native element, blossomed in body and soul, talking about “their own” and with “their own”.

Uncle Pasha's entire right hand was covered in white scars, and the fishermen, and not only the fishermen, but also the rest of the city's public, treated these uncle Pasha's scars, perhaps even more respectfully than they did his battle wounds.

The mass fisherman is prone to psychosis, he splashes in waves on the reservoir, hammers, twirls, swears, recalls previous fishing trips, curses the progress that killed the fish, regrets that he did not go to another reservoir.

Uncle Pasha is not such a fisherman. He will fall to one place and wait for favors from nature, although the master in fishing is not the last, at the very least, he always brings it to his ear, it happened, and a full hurdy-gurdy-box, a bag and an undershirt, tied around its sleeves, were stuffed with fish by Uncle Pasha - all then the management slurped the soup, especially the grassroots apparatus, Uncle Pasha endowed everyone with fish. Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, the tighter one, dried the fish between the frames in his apartment, then, stuffing his pockets with dried bread, appeared in the sideboard of the Sazontievskaya bath, banged the fish on the table - and there were always hunters to squeeze the salty with their teeth and gave Elder Aristarkh Kapustin free beer to drink.

A tricky tale was told about Uncle Pasha, which, however, he himself, however, chuckled approvingly. As if he crouched to the hole, but every fisherman passing by sticks: “How is the bite?” Uncle Pasha is silent, does not answer. They push him and push him! Uncle Pasha could not stand it, spat out live worms from behind his cheek and cursed: “You will freeze all the bait with you! ..”

One spring, his faithful liaison, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin, was caught by a whim of a search - in the evening a large river flowing into Svetloye Lake gushed, broke, bulged up the ice, pushed the fish towards the middle of the lake with a muddy, stern wave. They said that in the evening, almost in the dark already, he began to take myself- seasoned pike perch, and local fishermen fished hard. But by morning the border of the muddy water had shifted and somewhere, even further away, the fish moved back. And where to? Lake Svetloye is fifteen versts wide and seventy versts long. Uncle Pasha hissed at Aristarkh Kapustin's liaison: “Nishkni! Sit! Here she will be ... "But where is it! The Evil One carried the elder Aristarkh Kapustin like a broom across the lake.

For half a day, Uncle Pasha was angry with Aristarkh Kapustin, pulled the path with fishing rods, there was a strong perch, clung to the fish twice on the go and tore the fishing lines of the pike. Uncle Pasha lowered the lure under the ice, teased the pup and turned it up - do not spoil it! Here she is, the predator of the underwater world, splashing on the spring ice, already the spray is flying, in her mouth are fragments of thin woods with mormyshki, as if with false, shiny teeth, an impudent mouth is decorated. Uncle Pasha does not take out mormyshka, let him remember, fuluganka, how to ruin poor fishermen!

By noon, two youths, two brothers, Anton and Sanka, nine and twelve years old, came out of the open gates of the hushed monastery, albeit with dilapidated but imperishable turrets, which has a modest sign “Boarding School” at the entrance and dragged to the lake. “They ran away from the last lessons,” Uncle Pasha guessed, but did not condemn the boys - they will study for a long time, maybe all their lives, but spring fishing is a festive time, you won’t notice a flash. The youths went through a great drama that day with Uncle Pasha. The guys had just sat down near the fishing rods, as one of them took and left a large fish already in the hole. She went to the youngest, he wept bitterly. “Nothing, nothing, boy,” Uncle Pasha consoled him in a tense whisper, “it will be ours! Will not go anywhere! You're wearing candy and Ishsho city pretzel, with poppy seeds.

Uncle Pasha foresaw everything and calculated: by noon, to the muddy water, where the smelt and other small fish feed on plankton, the river will push even further into the lake, carry the dregs and knock down a large “squirrel” for hunting. Detachments of fishermen, brutally thumping with ice picks, rattling their boots, announcing the surroundings with obscenities, they will drive her, shy and sensitive fish, intolerant of selective obscenities, into the "no man's land", therefore, here, here, together with the youths from the very early morning, without saying - not a single one! - a swear word, her uncle Pasha endures and waits!

And his strategic calculation was fully confirmed, his patience and modesty in expressions were rewarded: three zander weighing a kilo lay on the ice and mournfully stared at the sky with tin pupils. Yes, even the most, of course, the largest two zander came down! But who pleased the non-envious heart of Uncle Pasha was the small fishermen - the youths Anton and Sanka. They also took out two pike perches on their salvaged baubles riveted from a rifle cartridge. The youngest one shouted, laughed, and again and again told about how he had pecked, how he had fallen! .. Uncle Pasha encouraged him touchingly: “Well! Are you crying? In life, it’s always like this: it bites, it doesn’t bite ... "

And then it happened that not only the fishermen, but almost the entire lakeside population, were thrown into confusion, and part of the city of Veisk was shaken by a heroic event.

Consumed by Satan, whether by the fisherman's devil, Uncle Pasha, so as not to knock with a pick, moved to the children's holes drilled with an ice ax. And as soon as he lowered his famous lure, set out under the smelt, as it was pinched with a trial push, then it was blasted, so much so that he is what an experienced fisherman! – barely kept a fishing rod in his hand! Dolbanulo, pressed, led into a block of lake waters.

Sudachin seven kilograms and fifty-seven grams - it was later hung out with apothecary accuracy - stuck in a narrow hole. Uncle Pasha, plopping down on his belly, put his hand into the hole and squeezed the fish under the gills. "Beat!" he commanded the youths, shaking his head at the pick. The older boy jumped, grabbed the pick, swung it and froze: how to "hit" ?! And the hand? And then the hardened front-line soldier, rolling his eyes wildly, barked: “But as in a war!” And the troubled boy, sweating in advance, began to gouge the hole.

Soon the hole was stitched with red threads of blood. “Right! Left! In the intercession! Take over! In the intercession! Do not cut the fishing line ... ”Uncle Pasha commanded. There was a full hole of blood when Uncle Pasha pulled the already sluggish body of a fish out of the water and threw it onto the ice. And then, kicking up his legs, twisted by rheumatism, he danced, yelled Uncle Pasha, but soon came to his senses and, clinking his teeth, opened the hurdy-gurdy, thrust a flask of vodka into the guys, ordered them to rub their numb hand, to neutralize the wounds.

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