Prishvin behind the magic ring summary. Magic ring

‎ In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, life became bad for people, and they began to scatter in different directions. I was also drawn somewhere, and I said to the old woman:

Grandma, bake me a magic bun, let it take me into the dense forests, beyond the blue seas, beyond the oceans.

Grandmother took the wing, scraped it along the box, broomed it along the bottom, scooped up about two handfuls of flour, and made a cheerful bun. He lay there, lay there, and suddenly rolled from the window to the bench, from the bench to the floor, along the floor and to the doors, jumped over the threshold into the entryway, from the entryway to the porch, from the porch to the yard, from the yard through the gate, further, further...

I'm behind the kolobok, wherever it leads.

Rivers, seas, oceans, forests, cities, people flashed by. I came to the old place again. But I still have notes and memories...

The bun rolled, and I followed it. And so…

My cheerful counselor stopped at a large stone on the high bank of the Dvina delta. From here the roads go in different directions. I sat down on a rock and began to think: where should I go? Right, left, straight? On the shore in front of me the last birch tree is crying, further, I know, the White Sea, even further away the Arctic Ocean. Behind me is the blue tundra. This city - a narrow strip of houses between the tundra and the sea - is exactly the fairy-tale stone on which the fate of the traveler is written. Where should I go? You could sit on one of the sailing schooners and experience all the sea life of the northern people. It’s interesting, fascinating, but there’s a forest to the left along the shore of the White Sea. If you walk along the edge of the forests, you can go around the entire sea and get to Lapland, and there are completely primitive forests, a land of wizards and sorcerers. Wanderers also head in the same direction, towards the Solovetsky Islands.

Where should we go: left with the wanderers into the forest or right with the sailors into the ocean?

I take a closer look at the people on the busy Arkhangelsk embankment, admire the tanned, expressive faces of the sailors and immediately notice the humble figures of Solovetsky pilgrims nearby. If I follow them, I think, to the left, I will come not to the North beyond the Arctic Circle, but to my native village in black earth Russia, I will come to its very depths and I know in advance how it will end. I will see a black icon with a red light, which our peasants pray to. There is no face on this mysterious and terrible icon. It seems that as soon as any outline appears on her, the charm will disappear, all the attractive power will disappear. But the face is not shown, and everyone goes there, submissive, to this black heart of Russia. Why does it seem to me that this icon depicts not God the Son, merciful and all-forgiving, but God the Father, mercilessly sending sinners to hellfire? Perhaps this is because the gentle light of a lamp on a black faceless icon is always reflected by a red, restless, ominous flame. This is what it means to go left. But there is a forest there, and perhaps that’s why my magic bun is so drawn there.

Why are northern sailors so different from our plowmen? Is it because the earth divided into small pieces degrades a person so much, while the indivisible sea ennobles the soul and does not crush it into little things? Or maybe because the northern people did not know slavery, that their religion - most of them schismatics - is not the same as ours, they fought a lot for it here, even burned themselves at the stake... To the right or to the left, I can’t decide . I see an old man walking past me. I'll try him.

Hello, grandpa!

The old man stops and is surprised at me, who looks neither like a wanderer, nor a gentleman-official, nor a sailor.

Where are you going?

I go, grandfather, wherever the path lies, wherever the bird flies. I don’t know myself, I’m going wherever my eyes lead me.

The old man laughs and answers in the same tone:

Are you trying to do things or are you getting away with business?

If I come across a job, I’m glad to see it, but, more accurately, I’m tired of it.

Look what you are,” he mutters, sitting down next to him on a stone. - Cases and incidents have tormented everyone, so people are running away...

“Show me,” I say, “grandfather, where ancient Rus' is still preserved, where the backwater grandmothers, the Kashchei the Immortals and the Marya Morevnas, have not disappeared? Where else are glorious mighty heroes sung?

“Go to Durakovo,” the old man replies, “there is no more remote place in our entire province.”

"Nimble grandfather!" - I thought, planning to answer him in a way that would be funny and not offensive. But then, to my amazement, I found on my pocket map, on the Letny (Western) coast of the White Sea, just opposite the Solovetsky Islands, the village of Durakovo.

“Indeed,” I exclaimed, “that’s Durakovo!”

You thought I was joking. We have Durakovo, the most remote and stupid place. The old way looks like the Arkhangelsk province, but the new way doesn’t look like it... Look, our people are so lively.

He pointed his hand down at the lively crowd of sailors.

The people are industrial, strong, lively. And on the Summer Coast they sit in poverty, like seals, because there is no way there: on one side is Unskaya Bay, on the other - Onega.

For some reason I liked Durakovo, I was even offended that the old man called the village stupid. It is called that, of course, because Ivan the Fools live in it. But only a person who doesn’t understand anything will call Ivanushka stupid. So I thought and asked the old man:

Is it possible for me to move from Durakovo by boat by sea to the Holy Islands?

They will transport it,” he answered me, “this is the ancient route of pilgrims to the Solovetsky Monastery.

Until now, I knew only two ways to the Holy Islands: through Arkhangelsk by sea and through Povenets-Suma. I didn’t know about the route on foot along the edge of the sea and by boat across the sea. I thought about forest paths trodden by wanderers, about streams where you can catch fish and immediately boil it in a pot, about hunting for various sea birds and animals unfamiliar to me.

But how do you get there?

Now it’s difficult, there are few pilgrims. But wait, it seems there are fools here, they will tell. If there are any here, I will send them to you. Bon voyage!

A minute later, instead of the old man, a young man came with a gun and a knapsack. He spoke not with his mouth, but with his eyes, they were so clear and simple.

Master, divide our sea! - were his first words.

I was amazed. I was just now thinking about the impossibility of dividing the sea and thus even explained to myself the advantages of northern people. And so…

How can I divide the sea? It was only Nikita Kozhemyaka and Zmey Gorynych who shared it, and even then it didn’t work out for them.

In response, he handed over the paper. The matter was about dividing salmon fish with a neighboring village.

Master,” the village walker continued to beg me, “don’t look at anyone, do the stripping yourself.”

I realized that I was being taken for an important person. Among the northern people, I knew, there is a legend that sometimes people of extraordinary power take on the image of simple wanderers and thus get to know the life of the people. I knew this belief, widespread throughout the North, and I realized that now was the end of my ethnographic studies.

From experience, I knew that as soon as the village authorities suspected a wanderer, all the backwater grandmothers, all the goblins and sorcerers would instantly disappear, either a flattering or an unfriendly expression would appear on the face of the people, you yourself stopped believing in your work and the magic bun stopped. I tried my best to assure Alexey that I was not the boss, that I was coming for fairy tales, and explained to him why I needed this.

Alexey said that he understood, and I believed his open, clear eyes.

Then we rested, had a snack and went. The magic bun rolled and sang its song:

We walked for a long time, short, close, far, and we reached the village of Syuzma. Here we said goodbye to Alexey. He walked ahead of me, but I did not rely on my legs and asked to send a boat for me to Krasnye Gory, a village near the sea on this side of the Unskaya Bay. We parted, I rested for a day and set off for the Red Mountains.

My path lay along the edge of the forests by the sea. This is a place of struggle, suffering. Lonely pines are scary and painful to look at. They are still alive, but disfigured by the wind, they are like butterflies with torn wings. But sometimes the trees grow together into a dense thicket, meet the polar wind, bend towards the ground, groan, but stand and grow slender green spruces and clean, straight birches under their protection. The high shore of the White Sea seems like the bristly ridge of some northern beast. There are a lot of dead, blackened trunks, which your foot knocks on as if it were the lid of a coffin; there are completely empty black places. There are many graves here. But I didn't think about them. When I walked, there was no battle, a truce had been declared, it was spring, the birch trees, bent to the ground, raised their green heads, the pines stretched out and straightened out.

I needed to get my own food, and I allowed myself to get carried away with hunting as a serious matter in life. In the forest, in empty clearings, I came across beautiful curlews, and flocks of turukhtans flew over. But most of all I liked to sneak up on seabirds that were unfamiliar to me. From a distance, from the forest, I noticed calm, sometimes white, sometimes black heads. Then I took off my knapsack, left it somewhere under a noticeable pine tree or stone, and crawled. Sometimes I crawled a mile or two: the air in the North is transparent, I noticed a bird far away and was often deceived by the distance. I rubbed my hands and knees until they bled on the sand, on sharp stones, on thorny twigs, but I didn’t notice anything. Crawling to an unknown distance towards unfamiliar birds is the hunter’s highest pleasure, this is the limit where this innocent, funny fun turns into serious passion. I crawl all alone under the sky and the sun towards the sea, but I don’t notice any of this because I have so much of it in myself; I crawl like an animal, and only hear how painfully and loudly my heart beats: knock, knock. Here on the way some naive green twig is stretching out towards me, probably reaching out with love and affection, but I quietly, carefully take it away, bend it to the ground and want to silently break it: let it not dare to get in my way next time, ... once... She moans loudly. I get terribly scared, I lie down close to the ground, I think: everything is gone, the birds have flown away. Then I carefully look up at the sky... There are no birds, everything is calm, sick pines are being treated by the sun and light, the greenery of the northern birch trees is dazzlingly sparkling, everything is quiet, everything is silent. I crawl further towards the designated stone, prepare my gun, cock the triggers and slowly look out from behind the stone. My head rises against the white stone like a black ant mound; the trunks are not visible in the soft reindeer moss. Sometimes, four or five steps ahead of me, I see large unfamiliar birds. Some sleep on one leg, others swim in the sea, others simply look at the sky with one eye, turning their heads there. Once I sneaked up to an eagle dozing on a stone, once - to a family of swans.

I'm afraid to move, I don't dare point the gun at the sleeping bird. I look at them until some unexpected bitter memory breaks off a twig under my elbow and all the birds scatter in different directions with a terrible noise, splashing, flapping of wings. I don’t regret, I’m not angry with myself for my mistake and I’m glad that I’m here alone, that none of my fellow hunters saw this. But sometimes I kill. While the bird is not yet in my hands, I still enjoy something, but when I pick it up, everything goes away. There are difficult cases when the bird is not finished shooting. Then I sometimes begin to think about my passion for hunting and nature as something very bad, then it seems to me that this feeling is fueled by a simultaneous desire for murder and love, and since it comes from the depths of nature, then nature is for me, like a hunter, only the closest contact between murder and love...

I think this way, but I come across new birds on the road; I get carried away again and forget what I was thinking about a minute earlier.

In one of the black houses, by the sea, under a pine tree with a dry top, lives a backyard grandmother. Her hut is called a post station, and the old woman’s duty is to protect officials. The Onega postal route from this place goes south, and my path goes north, through the Unskaya Bay. Only from here do the most remote places begin. While waiting for the boat, I want to relax with my grandmother, fry a bird and have a snack.

Grandma, I ask, give me a frying pan to fry the bird.

But she kicks my bird away and hisses:

There aren't many of you hanging around here. I won’t give it to you, you’ll burn it.

I remember Alexei’s warning: “Live wherever you want, but don’t sit at the post station, the evil old woman will eat you,” and I repent that I came to her.

Oh, Baba Yaga, your bone leg! - I can’t stand it...

For this she completely drives me away under the pretext that the general is supposed to arrive at any hour and take over the premises. The general is going to the Durakovo Sea to divide.

Before I had time to open my mouth in amazement and annoyance, the old woman, looking out the window, suddenly said:

Yes, you see, they’ve come for the general. They're coming from the sea. Alexey sent it. Go, go, father, where you were going.

And then she looked at me again and exclaimed:

Aren't you the general yourself?

No, no, grandma,” I hasten to answer, “I’m not a general, but only this boat was sent for me.”

In is! That's it! Forgive me, Your Excellency, the old woman. She took you for a politician, nowadays everyone is driven by politics. The strength is incalculable, they carry and carry all summer. Maryushka, quickly pluck the chickens, and I’ll put in the eggs.

I beg my grandmother to believe me. But she doesn’t believe: I’m a real general; I can already see how hard they are starting to pluck the chickens for me.

Then three Pomors and two wives entered - the crew of a Pomor postal boat. The old grandfather is a feedman, everyone calls him “Korshik”, the rest are rowers: both wives with rough, weathered faces, then “A little man with a fingernail - a beard with an elbow” and a young guy, blond, innocent, completely Ivanushka the Fool.

I am a general, but everyone shakes my hand, everyone sits on a bench and eats scrambled eggs and poultry with me. And then the little man, not paying attention to me, sprinkles his jokes on his wife, who looks like a bomb filled with laughter. The guy chats, the bomb bursts and says: “Oh! Stepan won. Stepana's tales are bready and modest. I’ll wrap my beard around my fist and pull it out.”

But how can this be, after all, I’m a general. It's even insulting. Or is this the beginning of that sacred country where the authorities have never set foot, where people live like birds on the seashore.

Come, come, everyone tells me, we have good, welcoming people. We live by the sea. We live on the sidelines, in the summer we catch salmon, and in the winter we hunt for animals. Our people are quiet, humble: there is no anger in them, no resentment in them. The people are like seals. Come.

We sit and chat; Evening and white night near the White Sea are approaching. It begins to seem to me that I have crawled very close to the birds by the sea, stuck out from behind a white stone like a black ant hummock, and no one around me knows that it is not a hummock, but an angry beast.

Stepan begins to tell a long tale about the golden-feathered ruff.

We will leave only at dawn on “hollow water” (during high tide). Every six hours on the White Sea the water rises and then decreases for six hours. “On dry water” (during low tide) our boat cannot pass somewhere.

Every day all the nights get brighter, because I'm going north and because time goes on. I meet each such night with curiosity, and even the special anxiety and insomnia of these nights do not bother me. It’s as if I’m now drinking an unknown narcotic drink, and more and more every day. What will come of this? I'm getting used to sleeping during the day.

A man as tall as a fingernail is babbling his tale. The fairy tale is interesting to me, and it pulls me there, beyond the walls of the hut. Although the sea is on the other side of the hut, I can guess what is going on there by the golden puddle on the road.

Is your sun setting? - I interrupt the fairy tale.

Almost as if it won’t roll up, it will bury itself like a duck in water - and up.

And again the fairy tale gurgles and the puddle glistens. Someone can be heard sleeping. A gray mouse runs by.

Are you sleeping, baptized ones? - the narrator stops.

No, no, no, tell me, mani, old man!

Shall I amuse you with a fairy tale? There is a wonderful fairy tale, there are marvelous wonders, wonderful miracles in it.

Mani, mani, old man!

Everything still murmurs like a fairy tale.

Another dark mouse ran by. The old grandfather snored, Ivanushka hung his head, the wife fell asleep, the other one fell asleep. But the old woman is not sleeping. It was she who stopped the day, who bewitched the night, and that is why this day is like night and this night is like day.

Has everyone fallen asleep, baptized? - the Little Man from the Marigold calls out again.

No, I'm not sleeping, tell me!

A black rider rode by, and a black horse, and a black harness...

The narrator also falls asleep, muttering slightly. You can barely hear it... One backyard granny becomes four, with an evil black witch looking out from every corner.

Zorka, Vecherka, and Polunochka ran by.

A white rider rode by, and a white horse, and a white harness...

The narrator realized:

Arise, baptized ones, the water is rising, arise! God send the wind, you will fall asleep in the boat.

We walk quietly along the sand towards the sea. The village crumbled into black lumps on the sand, seeing us off with pink eyes. It's about to bark.

Sleep, sleep, good ones, we are ours.

Silence!

The wife thought, forgot her ugly face in the boat, flew away along the colored stripes and, beautiful, shone throughout the whole sea and sky. Ivanushka struck with his oar and awakened fiery ripples in the water.

The ripples, the ripples...

And there is a sail, the ship is running!

Everyone laughs at me.

It's not a sail, it's a seagull sleeping on a rock.

We are approaching it. She lazily stretches her wings, yawns and flies far, far into the sea. He flies as if he knows why and where. But where is she going? Is there another stone there? No... There's more depth to the sea. Or maybe, out there, in the unknown purple distance, mass is being celebrated somewhere? This is the first one, we woke her up, she flew away, but they haven’t called yet.

A bright, sharp arrow rang...

It’s as if our southern steppes responded here to the North.

What is this?

The cranes woke up...

And up there?

The loon screams...

Crooks on the sand are calling.

A string of geese, strict, old, in black, stretched out one after another, all to where the white seagull had disappeared like a mysterious dark dot.

The geese are just like the first old people on the way to the village church. Then they fell in countless flocks of eiders, ducks, and seagulls. But it’s strange, everything is there, in one direction, where the common edge of sea and sky is burning. They fly silently, only the wings make noise.

To mass, to mass!

But there is no good news... Strange... Why is this?

When, where was such a beautiful, mysterious and cheerful mass celebrated?

It was cold, but joyful in front of the old, heavy door. The old lady said: it hasn’t opened for a whole year, but now it will open, it will open itself.

God himself will open it.

Silent black people came out of the darkness and stood around us...

Stand on your tiptoes, kids, let's go!

A golden cross flashed above the crowd. The heavy iron door creaked and opened with miraculous force...

A wave of light and sounds washed over me.

Christ is Risen! Truly risen!

The old feeder is baptized in the rising sun.

Sun! Thank you God! The hiking breeze blew. God sends the wind. Set the sail faster, wife!

Birds began to rustle and scream from all sides, countless flocks scattered near the boat itself, talkative, talkative, completely village girls after mass.

Golden, blue, green ripples dance, jump, rejoice. A funny little guy is joking with his wife. And somewhere far off the coast the surf dies dully, the last groan of the unfortunate on Christ's bright Sunday.

Ivashenko, Ivashenko, go out onto the shore - hills, hillocks, pines and stones are calling from the shore.

Shuttle, shuttle, sail far,” Ivanushka smiles absentmindedly and catches the funny fiery quicksands with his oars. The wives began to sing an old Russian song about a white swan, about grass and an ant. The wind picks up the song, flutters it along with the sail, and confuses it with fiery ripples. The boat sways on the waves like a cradle, the thought becomes more and more good-natured, lazier...

I would like some seagull...

You can, you can, wives, heat the samovar!

The samovar is being set up, a tea party is being prepared on a boat, at sea. Charka walked around the circle and stopped at the wives. We broke down a little and drank.

How much does it take to be happy? Now, at these moments, I don’t want anything for myself.

And you, Ivanushka? Do you have Marya Morevna?

The stupid prince doesn't understand.

Well, love, do you love?

He doesn't understand everything. I remember that in the language of the common people, love is not a good word: it expresses the coarsely sensual side, and the secret itself remains a secret without words.

This secret makes the village beauty’s cheeks glow, and the rude, clumsy guys become so quiet and intimate. But it cannot be expressed in words. It will be heard somewhere in the song, but in ordinary life, the word “love” is bad and offensive.

Are you going to get married? Got a bride?

Yes, but Tata doesn’t have everything ready. The hut is not covered. IN help do not converge.

The wives hear us and feel sorry for Ivanushka. Times are bad, there is less and less salmon, and more and more help.

In previous years it was much easier: for Katerina they gave ten, but for Pavel they bought it for three rubles and drank it away.

Dear Marya Morevna?

You can't take it with your bare hand.

You can run away without help,” says Ivanushka, after a pause.

Here, here,” I pick up, “we need to steal Marya Morevna.”

Come and steal, like the nights are bright. One tried to steal from us, but they caught him, but everyone was torn, and the whole shirt around the bride was torn. It will get darker in the fall, maybe I’ll steal it.

That’s what I knew, that’s what I thought about these bright northern nights. They are sinless, incorporeal, they are raised above the earth, they are dreams about the otherworldly world. This hut in the forest did not exist at all, no one told tales, but I just imagined and remembered the flickering light from the white page that flew away from my hands yesterday.

Fatigue! Terrible fatigue! How nice it would be to fall asleep now on our dark, southern, sinful night.

Bye-bye, the sea is shaking.

A dark beauty with stars and a moon in a heavy braid is bowing.

Go to sleep, little peephole, go to sleep, other one!

I shudder. Very close to us, a large silver back appears from the water, much larger than our boat. The monster draws a light arc over the water and disappears again.

What is this? Belukha? - I ask uncertainly.

She, she. Wow! And there!

And there! And there! What ice! The water is drying!

I know that this is a huge northern animal of the dolphin breed, that it is not dangerous. But if it surfaces very close to the boat, will it accidentally catch you with its tail?

Nothing, nothing, my companions reassure me, it doesn’t happen like that.

They all, interrupting each other, tell me how they catch these animals. When silver backs sparkle in the sun like now, everyone in the village rushes to the shore. Each person brings two strong nets and from all these parts a long net, more than three miles, is sewn together. A whole fleet of boats goes out to sea: women, men, old, young - everyone is here. When a beluga whale becomes entangled, it is taken to reveler(harpoon).

Fun stuff! Here they bathe the wives, here they beat the beast, I laugh and laugh! And the wives are no slouch either, they also kill beluga whales and know how to deal with them.

How beautiful it is!.. Big tailed animals, women with lances... A fabulous, fantastic battle at sea...

The wind quickly drives our boat across the sea along the shore, Ivanushka stopped helping with the oars and dozed off at the side. The wives have been lying for a long time, one next to the other at the bottom of the boat near the extinguished samovar. The little man moved from his fingernails to the bow and got stuck there in the black tar.

Only the feedman, a silent northern old man, does not sleep. Near the stern of the boat there is a small canopy from the rain, a “fence”, like the body on our road taratayka. You can climb up there, lie down on the hay and doze off. I settle down there, doze... Sometimes I see a bearded man and sparkles from silver animals, and sometimes nothing - some red lights and sparks in the darkness.

Our unsteady boat does not creak, the wind does not whistle against the mast.

Does it matter where you live? There are people everywhere, a little simpler, a little more complex. But it’s freer here, there’s the sea and these beautiful silver animals. There's one, there's another, there's a boat, another, a whole fleet. Ivanushka and Marya Morevna throw a net into the sea. The great northern silver beast is confused.

Marya Morevna hit her with a carnival, and the White Sea became covered in blood.

Marya Morevna, sea princess,” he prays in a human voice, “why are you ruining me?” Don't prick me, I'll be useful to you.

Marya Morevna began to cry, a hot tear sank into the cold White Sea...

Save me, red maiden, take off your expensive handkerchief and wet me in the blue sea!

The princess took off her silk scarf and soaked it in the blue sea.

He took a handkerchief, pressed it to his wound and went down to the cold bottom. And lay there for thousands of years.

Kupava is crying by the shore.

Do you hear, old man? - two fish whispered.

I hear you, kids, I hear you.

The old one rises, his silver back sparkles in the sun and carries his Marya Morevna across the White Sea to the Holy Islands.

Where was it, when was it, what was it?

Fairy tales, and white nights, and all this wandering life have confused even the cold, rational northern day.

I woke up. The sun is still over the sea, has not yet set. And everything seems to be like a fairy tale.

High bank with diseased northern pines. An overseas village ran down to the sand from the hillside. Higher up is a wooden church, and in front of the huts there are many tall eight-pointed crosses. On one cross I notice a large white bird. Above this house, at the very top of the hill, girls dance in a circle, sing songs, sparkle with golden, shiny clothes. Just like in the pictures, where ancient Rus' is depicted in bright colors, as no one has ever seen and does not believe that it is like that. Like in fairy tales, which I write down here from the words of the people.

It’s a holiday,” says Ivanushka, “the girls go out to the hill and sing songs.

Holiday, holiday - the wives rejoice that the wind carried them home on time.

At the top, girls flash with their white shoulders, golden fur coats and high headbands. And below, black bearded people crawled out of the sea onto the yellow shore, motionless, just like these White Sea seals when they come out of the water to warm themselves on the shore. I guess they are sewing nets to catch dolphins.

We arrived at the wrong time dry water(low tide).

Between us and the sandy shore there is a wide, black, dark strip covered with stones, puddles and algae; There are boats lying on their sides, fish traps exposed. This is the place of low tide, in Arkhangelsk “kuypoga”.

We walk along this kuypoga, drowning knee-deep in water and mud. Many boys, lifting their shirts, are feeling for something in the water with their feet. They are trampling. They sing a song.

What are you doing here, boys? - I ask.

We trample the flounder.

In front of me they take out of the water several fish, almost round, with eyes on their sides... They sing:

“Mule,” I learned, is some other, very small fish, and the children listened to this song here at low tide. And these children themselves, perhaps, rolled here at low tide from the eel, or perhaps the sea forgot them here along with the fish.

The old feeder smiles at my attention to these free children and says:

Whoever is born from what does that.

Somehow we reach the shore; It is now clear that these are not sea animals, but people sitting on the sand with their legs crossed, respectable bearded people tangling and unraveling some strings. Our people join them, and only the wives go to the village - probably, they are going to the village. The little man takes out a ball of yarn, ties the end far around the corner in the alley and begins to twist, twist and slowly retreat.

He twists and turns and takes a step. And from the other end, exactly the same little man retreats to meet him from the other end. Will these funny old men meet their backs someday?

Ivanushka invites me to watch Marya Morevna. We are climbing the hill.

Hello beauties!

Welcome, well done!

Girls in brocade fur coats and high pearl headbands swim back and forth. Ivanushka and I cannot see the village over the hill, but only the sea, and it seems as if the girls came out of the sea.

One in front, white face, sable eyebrows, heavy braid. Just like our southern beauty - a dark night, with stars and a moon.

Is this Marya Morevna?

This... - Ivanushka whispers. - Father lives over there, there’s a big house with a cross.

Koschei the Immortal? - I ask.

“Kashchei is,” Ivanushka laughs. - Kashchei is a rich man. You will spend the night with him and live with him, if he takes a look.

The sun timidly stopped by the sea, afraid to touch the cold water. A long shadow falls from Kashchei’s cross onto the hill.

We're going there.

Hello, you are welcome!

A dry, bony old man with red eyes and a thin beard leads me upstairs to the “clean room.”

Rest, rest. Nothing. Well. The road is long. I'm exhausted.

I'm going to bed. I'm rocking like in a boat. I’ll rock and remember: this is not a boat, this is a Pomor’s house. It stops pumping for a minute and starts again. I fall asleep, then wake up and open my eyes.

Ahead, outside the window, a large eight-pointed cross blesses the sea burning with the midnight dawn. On the shore, people who look like sea animals are still sewing nets, those two funny old men are still twisting the ropes, they still haven’t met, the little devil still hasn’t come out of the sea and asked them riddles. Songs are flying in from the sky.

Bye-bye, the sea is shaking. A girl with a dark braid is dreaming. The stars splashed out. The moon has appeared. The singing tree began to play. The birds sang in different voices. The sinful beauty whispers: sleep, sleep, sleep, peephole, sleep, another.

It’s a dark night, my joy...

These are dreams... A bright northern night. Everything is quiet. They are sleeping. How can they sleep on such a bright, sinless night? They are at rest. The golden fur coat under the black cross sparkled. There was a knock below and then it died down. I fell asleep.

Bye-bye, sister, bye-bye, darling.

The dark beauty whispers to her bright, incomprehensible sister:

Sleep, darling, sleep, darling. What's on your heart? You won't say so? Well, sleep. Sleep, sleep. Go to sleep, little peephole, go to sleep, other one.

She closed her eye and closed the other one.

And I forgot about the third one...

And the bright sister is still watching, silent with her unearthly mortal melancholy.

The sorceress traced an enchanted circle with her dead hand across the entire vault of heaven, across the earth, across the water.

And the earth is sleeping, and the water is sleeping!

The beauty rocks the old bear.

Bye Bye. Creak, creak.

Suddenly the duck quacked and the banks jingled. The geese and swans flew away.

Geese-swans, geese-swans, throw two feathers, take me with you!

The swan geese threw two feathers. Two white ones fell on a black cross.

Ivan Tsarevich crept up, leaned against the cross, and whispered:

Come out, Marya Morevna, the geese and swans have dropped two feathers for us.

The prince and princess are flying over the sea.

The merman grandfather stuck his head out. What is he like... You can see his entire yellow, old body. Why do this... Hide...

Grandfather, grandfather, where is your golden little head, your silver beard? Tell me, can you see us?

Apparently, kids, obviously, fly quickly.

And so it is visible?

Everything is visible. Fly, fly.

The souls of the dead rise like steam from the White Sea. They soar silently, like transparent glass birds. They wash themselves on the windowsills. Dry with clean towels. They sit on princelings, on roofs, on pipes, on nets, on boats, on large tattered pine trees, on animal skins, on tall black eight-pointed crosses.

Bye Bye. Creak-creak.

The magic bun happily knocks and beats in its new place. This song is so fresh and young: “I left my grandfather, I left my grandmother.”

I am in the “clean” room of a wealthy Pomor. In the middle of it hangs from the ceiling a dove carved from wood and painted blue. Reverends Zosima and Savvaty look at me from the corner, a lamp is burning out in front of them. And this cross in front of the windows facing the sea was probably placed by the pious great-grandfather of a Pomor. The storm broke his schooner, and he escaped on a piece of the mast.

In memory of the miracle, a cross as tall as this two-story house was erected here.

On the top floor there is a clean room for guests, and the owners live downstairs. I hear a rhythmic knock from there. As if from a village spinning loom.

And it’s good to escape from everyone like that to some new place full of mysterious dreams! It’s good to touch human life in this way from the ghostly, beautiful side and know that this is a serious matter. It's good to know that this won't end soon. As soon as the bun stops singing its song, I will move on. And there it is even more mysterious. The nights will get brighter every day, and somewhere far from here, beyond the Arctic Circle, in Lapland, real sunny nights will come.

I wash my face. I feel infinitely healthy.

My occupation is ethnography, the study of people's lives. Why not understand it as the study of the human soul in general. All these fairy tales and epics talk about some unknown universal human soul. Not only the Russian people participated in their creation. No, what I have before me is not a national soul, but a universal, elemental soul, such as it came from the hands of the Creator.

Dreams from the very morning. I can fly here wherever I want, I'm completely alone. This loneliness does not constrain me at all, it even frees me. If I want to communicate, people are always at hand. Aren't there people here in the village? The simpler the soul, the easier it is to see in it the beginning of everything. Then, when I go to Lapland, there will probably be no people, only birds and animals will remain. As then? Nothing. I'll choose some smart animal. They say seals are very gentle and smart. And then, when only black rocks and the constant shine of the sun that never leaves the sky will remain? What then? Stones and light... No, I don’t want that... I’m scared now... I need at least some tip of nature, similar to a person. What to do then? Oh yes, it’s very simple: I’ll look there, into the abyss, and go: la-ta-ta... And I’ll sing again:

Nothing... we run down the stairs with my magic bun.

Knock, knock! Is there anyone alive here?

Marya Morevna sits at the table, sorting out the threads and tapping. One.

Hello, Marya Morevna, what is your name?

Is that what they call it?

The princess laughs.

Oh, those cheerful white teeth!

Do you want some tea?

Near me, behind the bench, there is some kind of hole in the wall, you can stick your hand through, it is closed tightly with a wooden sleeve. This is how in the old days alms were given throughout Rus'. Wanderers, walkers and their loved ones came. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. Or maybe it wasn’t as good as it seems?

But this is the hole. Old man...

How does is called? - I ask about some part of the machine.

This put, these are stuffers, bobushki, berdo, homewrecker, pristanitsa, prishvitsa.

I ask about everything in the hut, I need to know everything, and how else can I start a conversation with the beautiful princess. We count everything, write everything down, get to know each other, get closer and fall silent.

The famous Russian stove is burning, huge, awkward. But without it, a Russian fairy tale is impossible. Here is a warm bed from which the old man fell and ended up in a barrel of tar. Here is a huge throat where they threw the evil witch; Here is the oven where the mouse ran out to the red maiden.

Thank you, Masha, for giving me tea, I’ll woo Ivanushka to you for that.

The princess’s cheeks burn brighter than the flame in the stove, angry, she proudly throws out:

The hut is low! There are better ones, but I’m not going.

“Everyone is lying,” I think, “but I’m glad.”

We are one step closer with the princess. It's like she wants to tell me something, but she can't. He fumbles around against the wall for a long time, finally comes up and sits down next to him. She persistently examines my boots, then my jacket, fixes her eyes on my head and says affectionately:

How black you are.

Don’t come, don’t come,” I answer, “I’ll marry you to Ivanushka anyway.”

She doesn't understand me. She just got hooked out of friendship, and I already see a selfish goal. She doesn't understand me and doesn't listen. And why is this? Don't all these things: a pencil in a frame, a notebook, a watch, a photographic camera say more than any other words about an interesting guest? I take her picture and we become close friends.

Let’s go catch salmon,” she offers me quite simply.

On the shore we fiddle with the boat; Ivanushka comes to the rescue from somewhere and also goes with us. I become the third person in the novel. Ivanushka wants to say something to the princess, but she is tactful: she looks sideways at me and answers him contemptuously:

I don’t wet my lips, I don’t want to talk.

Then the conversation about salmon begins, like in a living room about objects of art.

Salmon, you see, Ivanushka tells me, comes from the summer, a person walks around the world, and salmon takes a month. So we put a hiding place, a trap, on her way.

They immediately showed me this hiding place: several nets, sewn so that salmon could enter them, but could not leave. We put the boat near the trap and look into the water, waiting for the fish. It’s good that there’s a romance here, but if you were to sit like that alone and rock in a boat...

Another time you’ll sit for a week,” Ivanushka guesses me, “or two, or a month... nothing.” And when God's hour comes, he will answer for everything.

Further away from us another similar boat is rocking; more and more and more. And so they sit for weeks, months from spring to winter, guarding so that the salmon does not escape from its hiding place. No, I couldn't. But if you listen to the surf or transfer these northern colors onto the canvas: not tones, halftones, but maybe tenths of tones... How rough, how emphasized is our southern nature in comparison with this northern intimate beauty. And how few people understand and appreciate it.

I was daydreaming and probably would have missed the salmon if I were a fisherman. Marya Morevna pushed me quite hard in the side with her fist.

Salmon, salmon,” she whispers quietly.

The pen is drying,” Ivanushka answers.

This means that the fish was caught a long time ago and has now risen to the top, shows feather(fin) from the water.

We lift the net and, instead of expensive salmon, we pull out a completely unnecessary guinea pig.

The bride and groom burst into laughter.

There was a funny joke:

Salmon, salmon, and in pig!

I don’t know how long our pastoral at sea would have lasted, when suddenly a major event happened.

First of all, I noticed that another group of fishermen on the shore approached the group of fishermen, then a third, then the whole village gathered, even the wives and children; In the end, both funny old men threw their balls on the ground and stood at the edge of the crowd. Then there was an incredible noise, screaming and swearing.

I saw from the water how the thin beard of Kashchei the Immortal jumped out of the crowd here and there, as if he was the conductor of this outrageous concert on the shores of the White Sea...

Little by little everything calmed down, ten gray-haired wise elders separated from the crowd and headed towards Kashchei’s house. The rest again sat down in their places on the sand. Kashchei himself approached the shore and shouted to us:

Row here, Ma-asha.

I pick up the guinea pig, Ivanushka sits down, and Marya Morevna rows.

The old people want to talk to you, sir,” Kashchei greeted us.

Something bad, something bad! - the magic bun whispered to me...

We enter the hut. The sages rise from their benches and solemnly greet.

"What's happened? What do you?" - I ask with my eyes.

But they laugh at my pig and say:

Salmon, salmon, and in pig!

They remember how one got a sea hare into his hiding place, another got a seal, and a third pulled out something that didn’t look like anything else.

The lively but artificial conversation continues for so long. Finally everyone falls silent, and only one, closest to me, like a lagging goose, repeats: “Salmon, salmon, and in the pig.”

But what's the matter? What you need? - I can’t stand this painful silence.

The oldest, wisest one answers me:

A man from Durakov passed by...

Alexey,” I say and instantly remember how he made me a general at my grandmother’s... That’s right, and then something like that. Goodbye my fairy tales. - Alexei? - I ask.

Alexey, Alexey,” all ten answer at once. And the wisest one, the gray one, continues:

Alexei said: a member of the State Duma is coming from the Emperor to share the sea in Durakovo. We bow to you, Your Excellency, accept this seed from us...

The old man brings me a huge, pound-sized salmon. I refuse to accept and, lost, apologize by saying that I already have a pig on my hands.

Throw away this rubbish, what do you need it for? This is the fish you caught, it’s up to God to be the first, well, since you are a rare guest with us, God will tolerate it, we won’t bypass him either.

Another old man takes paper out of his bosom and hands it over. I am reading:

“Member of the State Duma for the photographic department.

REQUEST

The population has multiplied, but the sea is as before, do me a favor, there is no life, divide the sea for us..."

What is this, I can’t believe my eyes... And suddenly I remember that somewhere at the station we took ordinary horses and I signed: “From the Geographical Society.” Then - a photographic apparatus... And so I became a member of the Duma in the photographic department. I remember that Alexey told me about some two hostile villages, where there is not enough leadership to end the centuries-old enmity.

And the thought flashes through my mind: why not share the sea with me for these poor people. Since the authorities are not here, isn’t this a finger pointing to the hands of the Almighty, destined for me to fulfill my civic duty here in the desert? Here my poetic aspirations, always opposed to life, merge with the roughest existence; here, in this White Sea village, I am a poet, a scientist, and a citizen.

“Okay,” I say to the elders, “okay, friends, I will divide the sea for you.”

I need an accurate estimate of the village's economic situation. I take a notebook and a pencil and start with agriculture, as the basis of the economic life of the people.

What are you sowing here, old people?

We sow everything, father, so that nothing will be born.

That's how I write it down. Then I ask about the needs and find out that an average family of six souls needs twelve bags of flour. I learn that, in addition to the necessary needs, there are luxuries, that they eat rolls, crack nuts on holidays and really love jelly made from white flour.

Where do you get the money for this?

But, go figure, where to get it from! - all ten answered.

But I still find out: they get money from the sale of animals, navaga, herring and salmon.

I learn that all these fisheries are insignificant and random, except for salmon.

So the salmon feeds you?

She, mother. Do me a favor and share!

Okay, I say, now to the section. How many souls do you have?

Two hundred eighty-three souls!

And with the wives?

No. Women's souls do not count, no matter how many of them.

Then I find out that the seashore belongs to the village in one direction for twenty miles, in the other for eight, that at every verst there is a tonya, I write down the names of the tonyas: Baklon, Volchek, Soldat... I learn the original ways of dividing these tonyas by lot. In total there are forty-four and twelve more bishops, one from the Siysk Monastery, one from Nikolsky, one from Kholmogory.

In exactly the same way I find out the position of the neighboring village of Durakovo. But I positively cannot understand the elders’ claims to the toni of this even poorer village.

Respectable, wise elders,” I finally say. “I won’t share the sea for you without neighbors: send Ivanushka immediately for representatives.”

The elders are silent, stroking their beards.

Why do we need fools?

Why, divide the sea!

“You can’t share it with them,” they all shout together. - Fools don’t offend us. It’s to share them with Zolotitsa, but not us. To share us with the monks. And the fools are okay... those with Zolotitsa. The monks selected the best tonis.

How dare they? - I’m angry. - By what right?

They have ancient rights, father, since the time of Martha the Posadnitsa.

And you respect them... these rights?

The elders itch, stroke their beards - obviously they respect them.

Since monks have such ancient rights, how can I share you with them?

And we, Your Excellency, thought that since you are from the State Duma, why don’t you drive these monks away.

Until these words, I still hope, I still think about finding a bright page with numbers in my notebook and parting the sea and connecting poetry, science and life. But this fatal word is “drive away.” Simple and clear, I am a general here and a member of the State Duma, why not drive away these monks, why do they need salmon, I am the enemy of these long fish on the bishop’s table. Drive away! But I can not. It seems to me as if I entered, like a guinea pig, into a hiding place and, wherever I go, I encounter strong ropes. I’m still mechanically going over the number of souls and catches in my head, but I’m getting more and more confused.

“Salmon, salmon,” the elders think, “and here’s a pig!”

And in the corner Marya Morevna’s white teeth sparkle, and my God, how my magic bun bursts into laughter...

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Collected Works in eight volumes

Volume 1. In the land of unafraid birds. Behind the magic kolobok

V. Prishvina. About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Art and life are not one, but must become one in me, in the unity of my responsibility.

M. Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin lived a long life—he died in his eighty-first year—but he only took up writing at the age of thirty. Why did this happen - he answers this question in his diary: “The first half of my life, until I was thirty, I devoted myself to externally assimilating elements of culture, or, as I now call it, someone else’s mind. The second half, from the moment I took up the pen, I entered into a struggle with someone else’s mind with the goal of turning it into personal property, on the condition of being myself.”

This second birth for Prishvin was the emergence of his authentic self from the environment that created him, from under the countless layers of that inexhaustible for our consciousness that we call life. That is why his writing, once begun, became inseparable from the very being of this man. It is impossible to draw a line between his being and his word - Prishvin has no such line. Moreover, he did not doubt the power of the word, that with complete dedication, anything can be done with the word. What was this “everything” Prishvin had, to which he devoted his life from the age of thirty?

Carefully and impartially studying Prishvin’s work, we will have to say: he lived in order to understand life - his own and all living things - to understand and convey to us his understanding. Prishvin's word was his work and at the same time his whole life without the slightest distraction. From here the image in which Prishvin sees himself becomes close and understandable to us: he sees himself in his old age as a camel, long, hard, and patiently crossing the waterless desert; he relates to his poetry, to his words, like a camel to water: “He pours it into himself and, hunchbacked, slowly goes on a long journey...”

This sounds humble and deep: Before this, all other secondary goals, motivations, passions that are so natural for a person fade and seem to be destroyed by themselves: fame, a claim to teaching, the desire for material wealth, simple everyday pleasures. All this, undoubtedly, remained, perhaps at times to some extent took him captive - Prishvin did not turn into an ascetic, a righteous man in the popular understanding of the word; but at the same time, everything became insignificant, everything faded for him before this all-consuming, completely disinterested need to understand and give - to pour his personal into the general. This was the calling of a true poet, no matter what times and centuries he lived and no matter in what form and style his thought and poetry were expressed. Prishvin never allowed himself a preliminary riddle in his writing; his words are extremely free and at the same time extremely obedient to life: “I write as I live.” Prishvin was going to write a book about this “Art as a Way of Behavior” and leave it to people - the result of his experience.

Death prevented Prishvin from writing a book about creative behavior - about the meaning of art. However, shortly before his death, he said the following words: “What if I never write it?<…>, my stone will certainly be at the heart of this light-revealing book.”

It’s so simple: a person’s life is a movement towards the light, and this is its purpose, and the word opens the way for him. Prishvin calls this path poetry.

The life of Prishvin himself and the image of his word creation can be likened to the movement of a traveler along the road - a man walks, and by itself everything that is around, from earth to sky, is deposited in his consciousness.

“I stand and grow - I am a plant.

I stand and grow and walk - I am an animal.

I stand, and grow, and walk, and think - I am a man.

I stand and feel: the earth is under my feet, the whole earth.

Leaning on the ground, I rise: and above me is the sky—the whole sky is mine.

And Beethoven’s symphony begins, and its theme: the whole sky is mine.”

Observing the continuity and naturalness of Prishvin’s words and life, we could establish some formula (although the formula always inevitably impoverishes the meaning). We could say: Prishvin’s work is the movement of life itself in its self-consciousness. The artist is, as it were, an instrument or organ of life, she herself created him for herself in order to show us her diversity and hidden light and meaning

I allowed myself to say all this about the writer in order to find that right point of view, or to find that supporting stone on which you can stand with a firm foot, and from there you can survey the entire literary path of M. M. Prishvin

Following Prishvin in his works, the reader will be convinced of a characteristic feature of the artist, which we have already noted indirectly above: from the very beginning he enters his own artistic world, given to him by nature, in which he sees and thinks, and never betrays it. Artistically visible images are at the same time mental images - this is what we call intellectual and moral ideas through which Prishvin sees the world. They become his eternal companions, symbols expressing his worldview. They develop, acquire new features, glow with new facets, just as crystals shimmer and glow in nature.

Let us at least name the image of great water - the source of all life on earth. This is the waterfall “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds”, half a century later - the same waterfall in the last novel “Osudareva Road”. This is the spring flood both in the “Osudareva Road” and in the “Ship Thicket”. For Prishvin this image is cosmic, universal. It develops, growing under his pen, according to the laws of a musical symphony; appears not only in major works, but also in poetic miniatures - let us remember his famous “Forest Stream”: “Sooner or later, my stream will come to the ocean.” This was written in the late 30s and will be often repeated in Prishvin’s subsequent works until the end of his days.

It was at the same time a way of life for nature, for the native people, for Russia, and for one’s own destiny. From the beginning of the century, his imagination was struck by the struggle of the water element - the struggle and merging of drops into a single stream. And next to him was the popular unrest in Russia, which he deeply felt: this stormy stream spread through all layers of the population. The life of Mikhail Prishvin was years of enormous social changes - wars and revolutions. From early childhood - a premonition of them.

Like the image of the water element, another image associated with the search for “true truth” will go through his entire life. This image appears for the first time in the diary of 1915. Here's the full entry:

“The true stone lies in the middle of nowhere, as big as a table, and this stone is of no use to anyone, and everyone looks at this stone and does not know how to take it, where to put it: a drunk man walks and bumps into it and swears, a sober man turns away and walks around, everyone I'm tired of the stone, and no one can take it - so this is the truth... Is it possible to tell people the truth? The truth lies behind seven seals, and its watchmen guard it in silence.”

And half a century later, in the last year of his life, Prishvin writes the story “The Thicket of Ships,” all based on the people’s search for some great “true truth.” “Don’t look for happiness alone, look for the truth together,” the old people say to new people in it. The image has absorbed all the richness of what has been lived and changed. It turns out that this image, this symbol lay in the artist’s soul for half a century and is passed on to us as his testament.

Let's call another image - love. He appears in Prishvin's first story. It describes the love of swans: an orphaned swan cannot find a mate - it dies. That is why among the northern people it was considered a sin to shoot swans.

The image of this “unoffended love” runs through all of his work, changing its appearance and interpretation. In the 1920s, in the “Nursing Calendar,” this is a spring cloud, “like an uncrushed swan’s breast.” In the 30s - this is a beautiful female deer in the story “Ginseng”. In the 40s, Prishvin, already an old man, turns to a woman either in a moment of disagreement or internal doubts in her and says: “At the heart of love there is an inoffensive place of complete confidence and fearlessness<…>. And if the worst and last thing happens, my friend becomes indifferent to what I am burning with, then I will take my traveling stick and leave the house, and my shrine will still remain untouched.”

08-05-2003

Just recently in “Swan” it was published article by Azadovsky, containing, among other things, the idea that the intelligentsia in Russia has always taken upon itself the performance of functions not performed by the state. You won’t mind – that’s how it is. When they say that “a poet, they say, in Russia is more than a poet,” it does not mean that he is also studying chemistry little by little, although such cases have happened. This means that, in addition to victims to Apollo, he also performs functions on a voluntary basis, for example, defending justice, which the Prosecutor General still doesn’t have time to do. Or is he figuring out how things are going with the transfer of the White Sea to the Black Sea and whether this will cause any losses to the domestic environment? It also seems that specially trained people should do this under the authority of their native state.

Well, of course, I immediately remembered a book I had once read by a favorite writer with exactly the same story. It seems that reprinting it all is not according to the tasks of “Swan”, and not according to the format. So from this wonderful book “Behind the Magic Kolobok” I only chose what directly relates to the history of the division of the sea of ​​fools by the author, Mikhail Prishvin, in the role of a member of the State Duma in the photographic department. Left out of the picture are the wonderful landscapes of the White Sea region, ethnography and romantic love while fishing. Well, whoever wants to, will find the book and read it himself. He won't regret it.

And now - what I chose on the topic and scanned. So:

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, “Behind the Magic Kolobok”,
1908

The tale begins from the sivka, from the burqa, from the kaurka’s things.

In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, life became bad for people, and they began to scatter in different directions. I was also drawn somewhere, and I said to the old woman:
Grandma, bake me a magic bun, let it take me into the dense forests, beyond the blue seas, beyond the oceans.

Grandmother took the wing, scraped it along the box, broomed it along the bottom, scooped up two handfuls of flour and made a cheerful bun. He lay there, lay there, and suddenly rolled from the window to the bench, from the bench to the floor, along the floor and to the doors, jumped over the threshold into the entryway, from the entryway through the porch, from the porch to the yard, from the yard through the gate - further, further... I'm behind the kolobok, wherever it leads.

Rivers, seas, oceans, forests, cities, people flashed by.

“Show me,” I say, “grandfather, where ancient Rus' is still preserved, where the backwater grandmothers, the Kashchei the Immortals and the Marya Morevnas, have not disappeared? Where else are glorious mighty heroes sung?
“Go to Durakovo,” the old man replies, “there is no more remote place in our entire province.”

“Nimble grandfather!” - I thought, planning to answer him in a way that would come out funny and harmless. But then, to my amazement, I found on my pocket map, on the summer (western) shore of the White Sea, just opposite the Solovetsky Islands, the village of Durakovo.
“Indeed,” I exclaimed, “that’s Durakovo!”
You thought I was joking. We have Durakovo, the most remote and stupid place. The old way looks like the Arkhangelsk province, but the new way doesn’t look like it... Look, our people are so lively.

He pointed his hand down at the lively crowd of sailors.
The people are industrial, strong, lively. And on the summer shore they sit in poverty, like seals, because there is no way there: on one side is Unskaya Bay, on the other - Onega.

For some reason I liked Durakovo, I was even offended that the old man called the village stupid. It is called that, of course, because Ivan the Fools live in it. But only a person who doesn’t understand anything will call Ivanushka stupid. So I thought and asked the old man:
But how do you get there?
Now it’s difficult, there are few pilgrims. But wait, it seems there are fools here, they will tell. If there are any here, I will send them to you. Bon voyage!

A minute later, instead of the old man, a young man came with a gun and a knapsack. He spoke not with his mouth, it seemed to me, but with his eyes - they were so clear and simple.
Master, divide our sea! - were his first words.

I was amazed. I was just now thinking about the impossibility of dividing the sea and thus even explained to myself the advantages of northern people. And so...
How can I divide the sea? It was only Nikita Kozhemyaka and Zmey Gorynych who shared it, and even then it didn’t work out for them.

In response, he handed over the paper. The matter was about dividing salmon fish with a neighboring village.

Master,” the village walker continued to beg me, “don’t look at anyone, do the stripping yourself.”

I realized that I was being taken for an important person. Among the northern people, I knew, there is a legend that sometimes people of extraordinary power take on the image of simple wanderers and thus get to know the life of the people. I knew this belief, widespread throughout the North, and I realized that now was the end of my ethnographic studies.

From experience, I knew that as soon as the village authorities suspected a wanderer, all the backwater grandmothers, all the goblins and sorcerers would instantly disappear, either a flattering or an unfriendly expression would appear on the face of the people, you yourself would stop believing in your work, and the magic bun would stop. I tried my best to assure Alexey that I was not the boss, that I was coming for fairy tales: I explained to him why I needed this.

Alexey said that he understood, and I believed his open, clear eyes.

Then we rested, had a snack and went.

In one of the black houses by the sea, under a pine tree with a dry top, lives a backyard grandmother. Her hut is called a post station, and the old woman’s duty is to protect officials. The Onega postal route from this place goes south, and my path goes north, through the Unskaya Bay. Only from here do the most remote places begin. While waiting for the boat, I want to relax with my grandmother, fry a bird and have a snack.
“Grandma,” I ask, “give me a frying pan to fry the bird.”

But she kicks my bird away and hisses:
- Not enough of you are hanging around here! I won’t give it to you, you’ll burn it.

I remember Alexei’s warning: “Live wherever you want, but don’t sit at the post station - the evil old woman will eat you,” and I repent that I came to her.
- Oh, Baba Yaga, your bone leg! - I can’t stand it.

For this she completely drives me away - under the pretext that the general is due to arrive at any hour and take over the premises. The general is going to Durakovo to share the sea.

Before I had time to open my mouth in amazement and annoyance, the old woman, looking out the window, suddenly said:
- Yes, you see, and we came for the general. They're coming from the sea. Alexey sent it. Go, go, father, where you were going.

And then she looked at me again and gasped:
- Aren’t you a general yourself?!
“No, no, grandma,” I hasten to answer, “I’m not a general, but only this boat was sent for me.”
- In is! That's it! Forgive me, Your Excellency, the old woman! She took you for a politician, nowadays everyone is driven by politics. The strength is incalculable - all summer they carry and carry. Maryushka, quickly pluck the chickens, and I’ll put in the eggs.

I beg my grandmother to believe me. But she doesn’t believe: I’m a real general; I can already see how hard they are starting to pluck the chickens for me.

Ten gray-haired wise elders separated from the crowd and headed to Kashchei’s house. The rest again sat down in their places on the sand. Kashchei himself approached the shore and shouted to us:
- Row here, Ma-asha!

I pick up the guinea pig. Ivanushka sits down, and Marya Morevna rows.
“The old people want to talk to you, sir,” Kashchei greeted us.
- Something bad, something bad! - the magic bun whispered to me.

We enter the hut. The sages rise from their benches and solemnly greet.
- What's happened? What do you? - I ask with my eyes. But they laugh at my pig and say:
- Salmon, salmon, and in pig!

They remember how one got a sea hare into his hiding place, another got a seal, and a third pulled out something that didn’t look like anything.

The lively but artificial conversation continued for a long time. Finally, everyone falls silent, and only one, closest to me, like a lagging goose, repeats: “Salmon, salmon, and another pig.”
- But what's the matter? What you need? - I can’t stand this painful silence.

The oldest, wisest one answers me:
- A man from Durakov came here...
“Alexey,” I say and instantly remember how he made me a general at my grandmother’s. That's right, and there's something like that here. Farewell my fairy tales!
- Alexei? - I ask.
“Alexey, Alexey,” all ten answer at once. And the wisest one, the gray-haired one, continues:
- Alexey said: a member of the State Duma is coming from the Emperor to share the sea in Durakovo. We swear to you, Your Excellency, accept the salmon from us!

The old man brings me a huge, pound-sized salmon. I refuse to accept and, lost, apologize by saying that I already have a pig on my hands.
- Give up this rubbish, what do you need it for? This is the fish we caught for you, God is supposed to be the first, well, since you are a rare guest with us, God will tolerate it, we will not bypass him either.

Another old man takes paper out of his bosom and hands it over. I am reading:

“Member of the State Duma for the photographic department.

REQUEST.

The population has multiplied, and the sea is as before, if you have mercy, there is no life, divide the sea for us...”

What's happened? I can’t believe my eyes... And suddenly I remember that somewhere at the station we took ordinary horses, and I signed: “From the Geographical Society.” Then - a photographic apparatus... And so I became a member of the Duma in the photographic department. I remember that Alexey told me about some two hostile villages, where there is not enough leadership to end the centuries-old enmity.

And the thought flashes through my mind: why not share the sea with these poor people? Since the authorities are not here, is this not the finger of the indicating hand of the Almighty, destined for me to fulfill my civic duty here in the desert? Here my poetic aspirations, always opposed to life, merge with the roughest existence; here, in this White Sea village, I am a poet, a scientist, and a citizen.
“Okay,” I say to the elders, “okay, friends, I’ll divide the sea for you.”

I need an accurate estimate of the village's economic situation. I take a notebook and a pencil and start with agriculture, as the basis of the economic life of the people.
- What are you sowing here, old people?
- We sow everything, father, so that nothing will be born.

That's how I write it down. Then I ask about the needs and find out that an average family of six souls needs twelve bags of flour. I learn that, in addition to the necessary needs, there are luxuries, that they eat rolls, crack nuts on holidays and really love jelly made from white flour.
- Where do you get the money for this?
“But you know where to get it from,” all ten answered.

But I still find out: the money comes from selling naqati, herring and salmon.

I learn that all these fisheries are insignificant and random, except for salmon.
- So the salmon feeds you?
- She, mother. Do me a favor and share!
“Okay,” I say. - Now to the section. How many souls do you have?
- Two hundred eighty-three souls!
- And with the wives?
- No. Women's souls don't count, not even a few of them.

Then I find out that the seashore belongs to the village in one direction for twenty miles, in the other for eight, that on each mile there is a tonya. I write down the names of the tones: Cormorant, Top, Soldier... I learn the unique ways of dividing these tones at the lot. In total there are 44 tones and another 12 bishops, one from the Siysk monastery, one from Nikolsky, one from Kholmogory.

In exactly the same way I find out the position of the neighboring village of Durakovo. But I positively cannot understand the claims of the elders against the toni of this even poorer village.
“Reverend, wise elders,” I finally say. “I won’t share the sea for you without neighbors: send Ivanushka immediately for representatives.”

The elders are silent, stroking their beards.
- Why do we need fools?
- What do you mean why? Share the sea!
- So don’t share with them! - everyone shouts together. - Fools don’t offend us. It’s to share them with Zolotitsa, but not us. To share us with the monks. And the fools are okay... those with Zolotitsa. The monks selected the best tonis.
- How dare they? - I’m angry. - By what right?
- Their rights, father, are ancient, dating back to the time of Martha the Posadnitsa.
- And you respect them... these rights?

The elders itch, stroke their beards, and obviously respect them.
- Since monks have such ancient rights, how can I share you with them?
- And we, Your Excellency, thought that since you are from the State Duma, why don’t you drive away these monks?

Until these words, I still hope, I still think about finding a bright page with numbers in my notebook and parting the sea and connecting poetry, science and: life. But this fatal word: “drive away.” Simple and clear - I am a general here and a member of the State Duma: why not drive away these monks, why do they need salmon? I am the enemy of these long fish on the bishop's table. Drive away! But I can not. It seems to me as if I entered, like a guinea pig, into a hiding place and, wherever I go, I encounter strong ropes. I’m still mechanically going over the number of souls and catches in my head, but I’m getting more and more confused...

Here's the story. What did you think, Prishvin could only write about woodcocks? He could do anything. But from a certain moment I was rightly afraid.

The search and realization of the great truth that is true for all living things, and for oneself - longing for a single and unrealized love and a way to overcome this longing - these themes fill all of Prishvin’s work, acquiring different images and shades of meaning. This meant giving up “our little self” and going out into the big world, awaiting our sympathetic, active participation.

In our preface we will very briefly note the main milestones in the life and work of Prishvin. In the second volume of the Collected Works, the reader will hear from Prishvin himself a story about his childhood and youth in the novel “Kashcheev’s Chain”. Works and diaries will tell about the future.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was born in 1873 on January 23, old style, near the city of Yelets, Oryol province, one might say, in the heart of Russia. From here and from nearby places a whole constellation of our writers emerged in the 19th century: Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, Leskov, Fet, Bunin...

Prishvin was born on the small estate of Khrushchevo in the family of a bankrupt merchant's son, a dreamer and visionary, who uncontrollably indulged in his varied hobbies: thoroughbred trotters, floriculture, hunting, wine, and gambling. Needless to say - “ringing life”, according to Prishvin’s definition, which brought my father to an early grave.

His widow was left with five children and an estate mortgaged on a double mortgage to the bank, of which she became a slave: it was necessary to buy back the estate in order to raise and educate the children. An inexperienced woman became a tireless housewife. If the future writer received a penchant for dreams from his father, then from his mother he received a sense of duty and responsibility in his work. Maria Ivanovna Prishvina was also from an ancient Old Believer family, this also affected her character. It is not without reason that the theme of Old Belief occupies a serious place in the writer’s work.

He spent his childhood near the land, in a peasant environment, and he more than once recalls that the peasants were his first educators “in the field and under the roofs of barns.” And he studied for the first year before entering the Yeletsk classical gymnasium, also in a rural Khrushchev school. "<…>I’ve been hanging around our peasants all my life.” This is not a simple mark of an external fact, but an awareness of a deep connection with the native land and its people.

We must not forget that Mikhail Prishvin grew up during the years of rapid development of revolutionary ideas in Russia. Three years after the writer’s birth, in 1876, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote: “It’s hard for a modern Russian person to live and even somewhat embarrassing. However, very few people are ashamed, and the majority of even the people of the so-called culture simply live without shame.”

Two events during his school years will have an impact on Prishvin’s life: his escape from the first grade to the fabulous land of the golden mountains of Asia - the boy encouraged three more of his classmates to do this brave deed - and the second - his expulsion from the fourth grade for insolence to the geography teacher V.V. Rozanov.

Rozanov, the only one of all the teachers, stood up for the boy after his escape - he understood the romance of the “traveler” (perhaps it was he who first implanted this image of an ideal country in the boy’s soul). And the same Rozanov, alone against everyone, demanded his expulsion.

For the future writer, exclusion was a blow that he experienced in a huge internal struggle: a “loser” who set himself the goal of overcoming this failure. In distant Siberia, he graduates from a real school. This was helped by a rich uncle, a Siberian steamship owner with unlimited connections.

After college, Prishvin entered the Riga Polytechnic; here he is a member of one of the first Marxist circles that were then emerging in Russia. From an early diary: “The happiest, the highest thing was that I became one being with my friends, going to prison, to any kind of torture and sacrifice suddenly became not scary, because it was no longer “I”, but “we” - my close friends, and from them are like rays “the proletarians of all countries.” He is entrusted with the translation and distribution of illegal literature. In particular, he translates Bebel’s book “Woman in the Past, Present and Future.”

“There was no poetry in the book,” Prishvin recalls at the end of his life, “but for me the book sang like a flute about the woman of the future.” It was no coincidence that the young man then singled out for himself this particular book; it was for him about the most cherished thing - about the fabulous Marya Morevna, his childhood dream. Even as a child, he had a presentiment: in love for a woman there is some kind of integrity, the realization of beauty. What an old-fashioned word “chastity” was - and how much content was found in it when tested by life. To reveal its high significance - this task was enough for the artist’s entire subsequent life, and it sounds like one of the main motives of his works.

Prishvin's selfless revolutionary work led him to prison alone, then into exile, and then abroad, where he graduated from the agronomic department of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. In those years, the choice of subjects there was free and there was no sharp distinction between humanities, science and practical courses.

After graduating from university, Prishvin went to Paris, and there, as the greatest test, not a dreamy, but a real love fell upon him for a Russian student girl, Varvara Petrovna Izmalkova. This first love changed his whole soul, his attitude towards life and his understanding of his place in it. The love lasted only two weeks: kisses in the spring Luxembourg Gardens and unclear plans for the future. The girl, with feminine insight, realized that she was “only a reason for his flight,” she wanted the ordinary, stable, earthly, but he still had to fly far and long through all the elements of the world in order to understand himself and this world. They broke up.

“The woman extended her hand to the harp, touched it with her finger, and from the touch of her finger to the string a sound was born. It was the same with me: she touched me and I began to sing.” The woman, without knowing it, gave us a poet, and she herself disappeared into obscurity. Prishvin was stunned and depressed by the rupture. For a long time he was on the verge of mental illness, although this was his secret, carefully hidden from everyone. He returned to his homeland. Now he fell to the ground - to the last refuge, and there he again began to learn to live from nature, like a child. All this happened in the first years of the new 20th century.

Prishvin becomes a rural agronomist. One way or another, he tries to live like all people live. He now observes how birds, animals, and all living things live and love in nature seriously, selflessly. How empty human “free” love can sometimes be. And at the same time, how much a person needs to create his own and invest in the feeling of love in order to raise him to himself.

Prishvin, an aspiring scientist, works under the guidance of D.N. Pryanishnikov, a future famous academician, at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow. His books on agriculture are published, he writes them to earn money - he already has a family that needs to be supported. In those years, while working near Moscow in Klin, Prishvin met with Efrosinya Pavlovna Smogaleva. “This very simple and illiterate, very good woman had her own child, Yasha, and we simply began to live with her...” Our own sons are born; only his mother does not recognize his family, and this is a new difficult test for him.

And there is no consolation for him in work: Prishvin feels that agronomy is not his calling. He is drawn to St. Petersburg, to the center of culture, where thought beats, where philosophers and artists argue about its directions and create these directions themselves. Prishvin would later call it the city of light and his literary homeland: “I fell in love with St. Petersburg for freedom, for the right to creative dreams.”

“Here on Kinoviysky Prospekt, among pigsties and cabbage farms, in a wooden shack, I began this path of my vagabond writer. We have it in our country<…>lovely cities, among them, like every Russian, is Moscow. But Leningrad remains the only beautiful city in our country: I love it not by blood, but because in it only I felt a person in myself.”

PART I

SUNNY NIGHTS

Chapter I

MAGIC BALL

The tale begins from the sivka, from the burqa, from the kaurka’s things.

In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, life became bad for people, and they began to scatter in different directions. I was also drawn somewhere, and I said to the old woman:

Grandma, bake me a magic bun, let it take me into the dense forests, beyond the blue seas, beyond the oceans.

Grandmother took the wing, scraped it along the box, broomed it along the bottom, scooped up about two handfuls of flour, and made a cheerful bun. He lay there, lay there, and suddenly rolled from the window to the bench, from the bench to the floor, along the floor and to the doors, jumped over the threshold into the entryway, from the entryway to the porch, from the porch to the yard, from the yard through the gate, further, further. ..

I'm behind the kolobok, wherever it leads.

Rivers, seas, oceans, forests, cities, people flashed by. I came to the old place again. But I still have notes and memories...

The bun rolled, and I followed it. And so...

My cheerful counselor stopped at a large stone on the high bank of the Dvina delta. From here the roads go in different directions. I sat down on a rock and began to think: where should I go? Right, left, straight? On the shore in front of me the last birch tree is crying, further, I know, the White Sea, even further away the Arctic Ocean. Behind me is the blue tundra. This city - a narrow strip of houses between the tundra and the sea - is exactly the fairy-tale stone on which the fate of the traveler is written. Where should I go? You could sit on one of the sailing schooners and experience all the sea life of the northern people. It’s interesting, fascinating, but there’s a forest to the left along the shore of the White Sea. If you walk along the edge of the forests, you can go around the entire sea and get to Lapland, and there are completely primitive forests, a land of wizards and sorcerers. Wanderers also head in the same direction, towards the Solovetsky Islands.

Where should we go: left with the wanderers into the forest or right with the sailors into the ocean?

I take a closer look at the people on the busy Arkhangelsk embankment, admire the tanned, expressive faces of the sailors and immediately notice the humble figures of Solovetsky pilgrims nearby. If I follow them, I think, to the left, I will come not to the North beyond the Arctic Circle, but to my native village in black earth Russia, I will come to its very depths and I know in advance how it will end. I will see a black icon with a red light, which our peasants pray to. There is no face on this mysterious and terrible icon. It seems that as soon as any outline appears on her, the charm will disappear, all the attractive power will disappear. But the face is not shown, and everyone goes there, submissive, to this black heart of Russia. Why does it seem to me that this icon depicts not God the Son, merciful and all-forgiving, but God the Father, mercilessly sending sinners to hellfire? Perhaps this is because the gentle light of a lamp on a black faceless icon is always reflected by a red, restless, ominous flame. This is what it means to go left. But there is a forest there, and perhaps that’s why my magic bun is so drawn there.

Why are northern sailors so different from our plowmen? Is it because the earth divided into small pieces degrades a person so much, while the indivisible sea ennobles the soul and does not crush it into little things? Or maybe because the northern people did not know slavery, that their religion - most of them schismatics - is not the same as ours, they fought a lot for it here, even burned themselves at the stake... Right or left, I can’t I decide. I see an old man walking past me. I'll try him.

Hello, grandpa!

The old man stops and is surprised at me, who looks neither like a wanderer, nor a gentleman-official, nor a sailor.

Where are you going?

I go, grandfather, wherever the path lies, wherever the bird flies. I don’t know myself, I’m going wherever my eyes lead me. The old man laughs and answers in the same tone:

Are you trying to do things or are you getting away with business?

If I come across a job, I’m glad to see it, but, more accurately, I’m tired of it.

Look what you are,” he mutters, sitting down next to him on a stone. “Deeds and incidents have tormented everyone, so the people are running away...

“Show me,” I say, “grandfather, where ancient Rus' is still preserved, where the backwater grandmothers, the Kashchei the Immortals and the Marya Morevnas, have not disappeared? Where else are glorious mighty heroes sung?

“Go to Durakovo,” the old man replies, “there is no more remote place in our entire province.”

"Nimble grandfather!" - I thought, planning to answer him in a way that would be funny and not offensive. But then, to my amazement, I found on my pocket map, on the Letny (Western) coast of the White Sea, just opposite the Solovetsky Islands, the village of Durakovo.

“Indeed,” I exclaimed, “that’s Durakovo!”

You thought I was joking. We have Durakovo, the most remote and stupid place. The old way looks like the Arkhangelsk province, but the new way doesn’t look like it... Look, our people are so lively.

He pointed his hand down at the lively crowd of sailors.

The people are industrial, strong, lively. And on the Summer Coast they sit in poverty, like seals, because there is no way there: on one side is Unskaya Bay, on the other - Onega.

For some reason I liked Durakovo, I was even offended that the old man called the village stupid. It is called that, of course, because Ivan the Fools live in it. But only a person who doesn’t understand anything will call Ivanushka stupid. So I thought and asked the old man:

Is it possible for me to move from Durakovo by boat by sea to the Holy Islands?

They will transport it,” he answered me, “this is the ancient route of pilgrims to the Solovetsky Monastery.

Until now, I knew only two ways to the Holy Islands: through Arkhangelsk by sea and through Povenets-Suma. I didn’t know about the route on foot along the edge of the sea and by boat across the sea. I thought about forest paths trodden by wanderers, about streams where you can catch fish and immediately boil it in a pot, about hunting for various sea birds and animals unfamiliar to me.

But how do you get there?

Now it’s difficult, there are few pilgrims. But wait, it seems there are fools here, they will tell. If there are any here, I will send them to you. Bon voyage!

A minute later, instead of the old man, a young man came with a gun and a knapsack. He spoke not with his mouth, but with his eyes, they were so clear and simple.

Master, divide our sea! - were his first words.

I was amazed. I was just now thinking about the impossibility of dividing the sea and thus even explained to myself the advantages of northern people. And so...

How can I divide the sea? It was only Nikita Kozhemyaka and Zmey Gorynych who shared it, and even then it didn’t work out for them.

In response, he handed over the paper. The matter was about dividing salmon fish with a neighboring village.

Master,” the village walker continued to beg me, “don’t look at anyone, do the stripping yourself.”

I realized that I was being taken for an important person. Among the northern people, I knew, there is a legend that sometimes people of extraordinary power take on the image of simple wanderers and thus get to know the life of the people. I knew this belief, widespread throughout the North, and I realized that now was the end of my ethnographic studies.

From experience, I knew that as soon as the village authorities suspected a wanderer, all the backwater grandmothers, all the goblins and sorcerers would instantly disappear, either a flattering or an unfriendly expression would appear on the face of the people, you yourself stopped believing in your work and the magic bun stopped. I tried my best to assure Alexey that I was not the boss, that I was coming for fairy tales, and explained to him why I needed this.

Alexey said that he understood, and I believed his open, clear eyes.

Then we rested, had a snack and went. The magic bun rolled and sang its song:

I left my grandfather

I left my grandmother...

Whether we walked long or short, close or far, we reached the village of Syuzma. Here we said goodbye to Alexey. He walked ahead of me, but I did not rely on my legs and asked to send a boat for me to Krasnye Gory, a village near the sea on this side of the Unskaya Bay. We parted, I rested for a day and set off for the Red Mountains.

My path lay along the edge of the forests by the sea. This is a place of struggle, suffering. Lonely pines are scary and painful to look at. They are still alive, but disfigured by the wind, they are like butterflies with torn wings. But sometimes the trees grow together into a dense thicket, meet the polar wind, bend towards the ground, groan, but stand and grow slender green spruces and clean, straight birches under their protection. The high shore of the White Sea seems like the bristly ridge of some northern beast. There are a lot of dead, blackened trunks, which your foot knocks on as if it were the lid of a coffin; there are completely empty black places. There are many graves here. But I didn't think about them. When I walked, there was no battle, a truce had been declared, it was spring, the birch trees, bent to the ground, raised their green heads, the pines stretched out and straightened out.

I needed to get my own food, and I allowed myself to get carried away with hunting as a serious matter in life. In the forest, in empty clearings, I came across beautiful curlews, and flocks of turukhtans flew over. But most of all I liked to sneak up on seabirds that were unfamiliar to me. From a distance, from the forest, I noticed calm, sometimes white, sometimes black heads. Then I took off my knapsack, left it somewhere under a noticeable pine tree or stone, and crawled. Sometimes I crawled a mile or two: the air in the North is transparent, I noticed a bird far away and was often deceived by the distance. I rubbed my hands and knees until they bled on the sand, on sharp stones, on thorny twigs, but I didn’t notice anything. Crawling to an unknown distance towards unfamiliar birds is the hunter’s highest pleasure, this is the limit where this innocent, funny fun turns into serious passion. I crawl all alone under the sky and the sun towards the sea, but I don’t notice any of this because I have so much of it in myself; I crawl like an animal, and only hear how painfully and loudly my heart beats: knock, knock. Here on the way some naive green twig is stretching out towards me, probably reaching out with love and affection, but I quietly, carefully take it away, bend it to the ground and want to silently break it: let it not dare to get in my way next time, ... one... She moans loudly. I get terribly scared, I lie down close to the ground, I think: everything is gone, the birds have flown away. Then I carefully look up at the sky... There are no birds, everything is calm, sick pines are being treated by the sun and light, the greenery of the northern birch trees is dazzlingly sparkling, everything is quiet, everything is silent. I crawl further towards the designated stone, prepare my gun, cock the triggers and slowly look out from behind the stone. My head rises against the white stone like a black ant mound; the trunks are not visible in the soft reindeer moss. Sometimes, four or five steps ahead of me, I see large unfamiliar birds. Some sleep on one leg, others swim in the sea, others simply look at the sky with one eye, turning their heads there. Once I sneaked up to an eagle dozing on a stone, once - to a family of swans.

I'm afraid to move, I don't dare point the gun at the sleeping bird. I look at them until some unexpected bitter memory breaks off a twig under my elbow and all the birds scatter in different directions with a terrible noise, splashing, flapping of wings. I don’t regret, I’m not angry with myself for my mistake and I’m glad that I’m here alone, that none of my fellow hunters saw this. But sometimes I kill. While the bird is not yet in my hands, I still enjoy something, but when I pick it up, everything goes away. There are difficult cases when the bird is not finished shooting. Then I sometimes begin to think about my passion for hunting and nature as something very bad, then it seems to me that this feeling is fueled by a simultaneous desire for murder and love, and since it comes from the depths of nature, then nature is for me, like a hunter, only the closest contact between murder and love...

I think this way, but I come across new birds on the road; I get carried away again and forget what I was thinking about a minute earlier.

RED MOUNTAINS

In one of the black houses, by the sea, under a pine tree with a dry top, lives a backyard grandmother. Her hut is called a post station, and the old woman’s duty is to protect officials. The Onega postal route from this place goes south, and my path goes north, through the Unskaya Bay. Only from here do the most remote places begin. While waiting for the boat, I want to relax with my grandmother, fry a bird and have a snack.

Grandma, I ask, give me a frying pan to fry the bird.

But she kicks my bird away and hisses:

There aren't many of you hanging around here. I won’t give it to you, you’ll burn it.

I remember Alexei’s warning: “Live wherever you want, but don’t sit at the post station, the evil old woman will eat you,” and I repent that I came to her.

Oh, Baba Yaga, your bone leg! - I can’t stand it...

For this she completely drives me away under the pretext that the general is supposed to arrive at any hour and take over the premises. The general is going to the Durakovo Sea to divide.

Before I had time to open my mouth in amazement and annoyance, the old woman, looking out the window, suddenly said:

Yes, you see, they’ve come for the general. They're coming from the sea. Alexey sent it. Go, go, father, where you were going.

And then she looked at me again and exclaimed:

Aren't you the general yourself?

No, no, grandma,” I hasten to answer, “I’m not a general, but only this boat was sent for me.”

In is! That's it! Forgive me, Your Excellency, the old woman. She took you for a politician, nowadays everyone is driven by politics. The strength is incalculable, they carry and carry all summer. Maryushka, quickly pluck the chickens, and I’ll put in the eggs.

I beg my grandmother to believe me. But she doesn’t believe: I’m a real general; I can already see how hard they are starting to pluck the chickens for me.

Then three Pomors and two wives entered - the crew of a Pomor postal boat. The old grandfather is a feedman, everyone calls him “Korshik”, the rest are rowers: both wives with rough, weathered faces, then “A little man with a fingernail - a beard with an elbow” and a young guy, blond, innocent, completely Ivanushka the Fool.

I am a general, but everyone shakes my hand, everyone sits on a bench and eats scrambled eggs and poultry with me. And then the little man, not paying attention to me, sprinkles his jokes on his wife, who looks like a bomb filled with laughter. The guy chats, the bomb bursts and says: “Oh! Stepan defeated. Stepana's tales are bready and modest. I’ll wrap my beard around my fist and pull it out.”

But how can this be, after all, I’m a general. It's even insulting. Or is this the beginning of that sacred country where the authorities have never set foot, where people live like birds on the seashore.

Come, come, everyone tells me, we have good, welcoming people. We live by the sea. We live on the sidelines, in the summer we catch salmon, and in the winter we hunt for animals. Our people are quiet, humble: there is no anger in them, no resentment in them. The people are like seals. Come.

We sit and chat; Evening and white night near the White Sea are approaching. It begins to seem to me that I have crawled very close to the birds by the sea, stuck out from behind a white stone like a black ant hummock, and no one around me knows that it is not a hummock, but an angry beast.

Stepan begins to tell a long tale about the golden-feathered ruff.

SEA

We will leave only at dawn on “hollow water” (during high tide). Every six hours on the White Sea the water rises and then decreases for six hours. “On dry water” (during low tide) our boat cannot pass somewhere.

Every day all the nights get brighter, because I'm going north and because time goes on. I meet each such night with curiosity, and even the special anxiety and insomnia of these nights do not bother me. It’s as if I’m now drinking an unknown narcotic drink, and more and more every day. What will come of this? I'm getting used to sleeping during the day.

A man as tall as a fingernail is babbling his tale. The fairy tale is interesting to me, and it pulls me there, beyond the walls of the hut. Although the sea is on the other side of the hut, I can guess what is going on there by the golden puddle on the road.

Is your sun setting? - I interrupt the fairy tale.

It’s almost as if it won’t roll up, it will bury itself like a duck in water, and up it will go.

And again the fairy tale gurgles and the puddle glistens. Someone can be heard sleeping. A gray mouse runs by.

Are you sleeping, baptized ones? - the narrator stops.

No, no, no, tell me, mani, old man!

Shall I amuse you with a fairy tale? There is a wonderful fairy tale, there are marvelous wonders, wonderful miracles in it.

Mani, mani, old man!

Everything still murmurs like a fairy tale.

Another dark mouse ran by. The old grandfather snored, Ivanushka hung his head, the wife fell asleep, the other one fell asleep. But the old woman is not sleeping. It was she who stopped the day, who bewitched the night, and that is why this day is like night and this night is like day.

Has everyone fallen asleep, baptized? - the Little Man from the Marigold calls out again.

No, I'm not sleeping, tell me!

A black rider rode by, and a black horse, and a black harness...

The narrator also falls asleep, muttering slightly. You can barely hear it... One backyard granny is turned into four, with a black evil witch looking out from every corner.

Zorka, Vecherka, and Polunochka ran by.

A white rider rode by, and a white horse, and a white harness...

The narrator realized:

Arise, baptized ones, the water is rising, arise! God send the wind, you will fall asleep in the boat.

We walk quietly along the sand towards the sea. The village crumbled into black lumps on the sand, seeing us off with pink eyes. It's about to bark.

Sleep, sleep, good ones, we are ours.

Silence!

The wife thought, forgot her ugly face in the boat, flew away along the colored stripes and, beautiful, shone throughout the whole sea and sky. Ivanushka struck with his oar and awakened fiery ripples in the water.

The ripples, the ripples...

And there is a sail, the ship is running!

Everyone laughs at me.

It's not a sail, it's a seagull sleeping on a rock.

We are approaching it. She lazily stretches her wings, yawns and flies far, far into the sea. He flies as if he knows why and where. But where is she going? Is there another stone there? No... There's more depth to the sea. Or maybe, out there, in the unknown purple distance, mass is being celebrated somewhere? This is the first one, we woke her up, she flew away, but they haven’t called yet.

A bright, sharp arrow rang...

It’s as if our southern steppes responded here to the North.

What is this?

The cranes woke up...

And up there?

The loon screams...

Crooks on the sand are calling.

A string of geese, strict, old, in black, stretched out one after another, all to where the white seagull had disappeared like a mysterious dark dot.

The geese are just like the first old people on the way to the village church. Then they fell in countless flocks of eiders, ducks, and seagulls. But it’s strange, everything is there, in one direction, where the common edge of sea and sky is burning. They fly silently, only the wings make noise.

To mass, to mass!

But there is no good news... Strange... Why is this?

When, where was such a beautiful, mysterious and cheerful mass celebrated?

It was cold, but joyful in front of the old, heavy door. The old lady said: it hasn’t opened for a whole year, but now it will open, it will open itself.

God himself will open it.

Silent black people came out of the darkness and stood around us...

Stand on your tiptoes, kids, let's go!

A golden cross flashed above the crowd. The heavy iron door creaked and opened with miraculous force...

A wave of light and sounds washed over me.

Christ is Risen! Truly risen!

The old feeder is baptized in the rising sun.

Sun! Thank you God! The hiking breeze blew. God sends the wind. Set the sail faster, wife!

Birds began to rustle and scream from all sides, countless flocks scattered near the boat itself, talkative, talkative, completely village girls after mass.

Golden, blue, green ripples dance, jump, rejoice. A funny little guy is joking with his wife. And somewhere far off the coast the surf dies dully, the last groan of the unfortunate on Christ's bright Sunday.

Ivashenko, Ivashenko, go out onto the shore - the hills, hillocks, pines and stones are calling from the shore.

Shuttle, shuttle, sail far,” Ivanushka smiles absently and catches the funny fiery quicksands with his oars. The wives began to sing an old Russian song about a white swan, about grass and an ant. The wind picks up the song, flutters it along with the sail, and confuses it with fiery ripples. The boat sways on the waves like a cradle, the thought becomes more and more good-natured, lazier...

I'd like some seagull...

You can, you can, wives, heat the samovar!

The samovar is being set up, a tea party is being prepared on a boat, at sea. Charka walked around the circle and stopped at the wives. We broke down a little and drank.

How much does it take to be happy? Now, at these moments, I don’t want anything for myself.

And you, Ivanushka? Do you have Marya Morevna?

The stupid prince doesn't understand.

Well, love, do you love?

He doesn't understand everything. I remember that in the language of the common people, love is not a good word: it expresses the coarsely sensual side, and the secret itself remains a secret without words.

This secret makes the village beauty’s cheeks glow, and the rude, clumsy guys become so quiet and intimate. But it cannot be expressed in words. It will be heard somewhere in the song, but in ordinary life, the word “love” is bad and offensive.

Are you going to get married? Got a bride?

Yes, but Tata doesn’t have everything ready. The hut is not covered. They don’t agree on help.

The wives hear us and feel sorry for Ivanushka. Times are bad, there is less and less salmon, and more and more help.

In previous years it was much easier: for Katerina they gave ten, but for Pavel they bought it for three rubles and drank it away.

Dear Marya Morevna?

You can't take it with your bare hand.

“You can run away without help,” says Ivanushka, after a pause.

Here, here,” I pick up, “we need to steal Marya Morevna.”

Come and steal, like the nights are bright. One tried to steal from us, but they caught him, but everyone was torn, and the whole shirt around the bride was torn. It will get darker in the fall, maybe I’ll steal it.

That’s what I knew, that’s what I thought about these bright northern nights. They are sinless, incorporeal, they are raised above the earth, they are dreams about the otherworldly world. This hut in the forest did not exist at all, no one told tales, but I just imagined and remembered the flickering light from the white page that flew away from my hands yesterday.

Fatigue! Terrible fatigue! How nice it would be to fall asleep now on our dark, southern, sinful night.

Bye-bye, the sea is shaking.

A dark beauty with stars and a moon in a heavy braid is bowing.

Go to sleep, little peephole, go to sleep, other one!

I shudder. Very close to us, a large silver back appears from the water, much larger than our boat. The monster draws a light arc over the water and disappears again.

What is this? Belukha? - I ask uncertainly.

She, she. Wow! And there!

And there! And there! What ice! The water is drying!

I know that this is a huge northern animal of the dolphin breed, that it is not dangerous. But if it surfaces very close to the boat, will it accidentally catch you with its tail?

Nothing, nothing,” my companions reassure me, “it doesn’t happen like that.”

They all, interrupting each other, tell me how they catch these animals. When silver backs sparkle in the sun like now, everyone in the village rushes to the shore. Each person brings two strong nets and from all these parts a long net, more than three miles, is sewn together. A whole fleet of boats goes out to sea: women, men, old, young - everyone is here. When the beluga whale becomes entangled, it is taken to the cutilo (harpoon).

Fun stuff! Here they bathe the wives, here they beat the beast, I laugh and laugh! And the wives are no slouch either, they also kill beluga whales and know how to deal with them.

How beautiful it is!.. Big tailed animals, women with lances... A fabulous, fantastic battle at sea...

The wind quickly drives our boat across the sea along the shore, Ivanushka stopped helping with the oars and dozed off at the side. The wives have been lying for a long time, one next to the other at the bottom of the boat near the extinguished samovar. The little man moved from his fingernails to the bow and got stuck there in the black tar.

Only the feedman, a silent northern old man, does not sleep. Near the stern of the boat there is a small canopy from the rain, a “fence”, like the body on our road taratayka. You can climb up there, lie down on the hay and doze off. I settle down there, doze... Sometimes I see a bearded man and sparkles from silver animals, and sometimes nothing - some red lights and sparks in the darkness.

Our unsteady boat does not creak, the wind does not whistle against the mast.

Does it matter where you live? There are people everywhere, a little simpler, a little more complex. But it’s freer here, there’s the sea and these beautiful silver animals. There's one, there's another, there's a boat, another, a whole fleet. Ivanushka and Marya Morevna throw a net into the sea. The great northern silver beast is confused.

Marya Morevna hit her with a carnival, and the White Sea became covered in blood.

Marya Morevna, sea princess,” he prays in a human voice, “why are you ruining me?” Don't prick me, I'll be useful to you.

Marya Morevna began to cry, a hot tear sank into the cold White Sea...

Save me, red maiden, take off your expensive handkerchief and wet me in the blue sea!

The princess took off her silk scarf and soaked it in the blue sea.

He took a handkerchief, pressed it to his wound and went down to the cold bottom. And lay there for thousands of years.

Kupava is crying by the shore.

Do you hear, old man? - two fish whispered.

I hear you, kids, I hear you.

The old one rises, his silver back sparkles in the sun and carries his Marya Morevna across the White Sea to the Holy Islands.

Where was it, when was it, what was it?

Fairy tales, and white nights, and all this wandering life have confused even the cold, rational northern day.

I woke up. The sun is still over the sea, has not yet set. And everything seems to be like a fairy tale.

High bank with diseased northern pines. An overseas village fled to the sand to the shore from the hill. Higher up is a wooden church, and in front of the huts there are many tall eight-pointed crosses. On one cross I notice a large white bird. Above this house, at the very top of the hill, girls dance in a circle, sing songs, sparkle with golden, shiny clothes. Just like in the pictures, where ancient Rus' is depicted in bright colors, as no one has ever seen and does not believe that it is like that. Like in fairy tales, which I write down here from the words of the people.

“It’s a holiday,” says Ivanushka, “the girls go out to the hill and sing songs.

Holiday, holiday - the wives rejoice that the wind carried them home on time.

At the top, girls flash with their white shoulders, golden fur coats and high headbands. And below, black bearded people crawled out of the sea onto the yellow shore, motionless, just like these White Sea seals when they come out of the water to warm themselves on the shore. I guess they are sewing nets to catch dolphins.

We arrived at the wrong time, in dry water (low tide).

Between us and the sandy shore there is a wide, black, dark strip covered with stones, puddles and algae; There are boats lying on their sides, fish traps exposed. This is the place of low tide, in Arkhangelsk “kuypoga”.

We walk along this kuypoga, drowning knee-deep in water and mud. Many boys, lifting their shirts, are feeling for something in the water with their feet. They are trampling. They sing a song.

What are you doing here, boys? - I ask.

We trample the flounder.

In front of me they take out of the water several fish, almost round, with eyes on their sides... They sing:

Mulya, Mulya, come, bring the whole herd,
Or two, or three, or as many as four.

“Mule,” I learned, is some other, very small fish, and the children listened to this song here at low tide. And these children themselves, perhaps, rolled here at low tide from the eel, or perhaps the sea forgot them here along with the fish.

The old feeder smiles at my attention to these free children and says:

Whoever is born from what does what.

Somehow we reach the shore; It is now clear that these are not sea animals, but people sitting on the sand with their legs crossed, respectable bearded people tangling and unraveling some strings. Our people join them, and only the wives go to the village - probably, they are going to the village. The little man takes out a ball of yarn, ties the end far around the corner in the alley and begins to twist, twist and slowly retreat.

He twists and turns and takes a step. And from the other end, exactly the same little man retreats to meet him from the other end. Will these funny old men meet their backs someday?

Ivanushka invites me to watch Marya Morevna. We are climbing the hill.

Hello beauties!

Welcome, well done!

Girls in brocade fur coats and high pearl headbands swim back and forth. Ivanushka and I cannot see the village over the hill, but only the sea, and it seems as if the girls came out of the sea.

One in front, white face, sable eyebrows, heavy braid. Just like our southern beauty - a dark night, with stars and a moon.

Is this Marya Morevna?

This... - Ivanushka whispers. - My father lives over there, there’s a big house with a cross.

Koschei the Immortal? - I ask.

“Kashchey is,” Ivanushka laughs. “Kashchey is a rich man.” You will spend the night with him and live with him, if he takes a look.

The sun timidly stopped by the sea, afraid to touch the cold water. A long shadow falls from Kashchei’s cross onto the hill.

We're going there.

Hello, you are welcome!

A dry, bony old man with red eyes and a thin beard leads me upstairs to the “clean room.”

Rest, rest. Nothing. Well. The road is long. I'm exhausted.

I'm going to bed. I'm rocking like in a boat. I’ll rock and remember: this is not a boat, this is a Pomor’s house. It stops pumping for a minute and starts again. I fall asleep, then wake up and open my eyes.

Ahead, outside the window, a large eight-pointed cross blesses the sea burning with the midnight dawn. On the shore, people who look like sea animals are still sewing nets, those two funny old men are still twisting the ropes, they still haven’t met, the little devil still hasn’t come out of the sea and asked them riddles. Songs are flying in from the sky.

Bye-bye, the sea is shaking. A girl with a dark braid is dreaming. The stars splashed out. The moon has appeared. The singing tree began to play. The birds sang in different voices. The sinful beauty whispers: sleep, sleep, sleep, peephole, sleep, another.

It's a dark night, my joy...

These are dreams... A bright northern night. Everything is quiet. They are sleeping. How can they sleep on such a bright, sinless night? They are at rest. The golden fur coat under the black cross sparkled. There was a knock below and then it died down. I fell asleep.

Bye-bye, sister, bye-bye, darling.

The dark beauty whispers to her bright, incomprehensible sister:

Sleep, darling, sleep, darling, What has fallen on your heart? You won't say so? Well, sleep. Sleep, sleep. Go to sleep, little peephole, go to sleep, other one.

She closed her eye and closed the other one.

I forgot about the third one...

And the bright sister is still watching, silent with her unearthly mortal melancholy.

The sorceress traced an enchanted circle with her dead hand across the entire vault of heaven, across the earth, across the water.

And the earth is sleeping, and the water is sleeping!

The beauty rocks the old bear.

Bye Bye. Creak, creak.

Suddenly the duck quacked and the banks jingled. The geese and swans flew away.

Geese-swans, geese-swans, throw two feathers, take me with you!

The swan geese threw two feathers. Two white ones fell on a black cross.

Ivan Tsarevich crept up, leaned against the cross, and whispered:

Come out, Marya Morevna, the geese and swans have dropped two feathers for us.

The prince and princess are flying over the sea.

The merman grandfather stuck his head out. What is he like... You can see his entire yellow, old body. Why do this... Hide...

Grandfather, grandfather, where is your golden little head, your silver beard? Tell me, can you see us?

Apparently, kids, obviously, fly quickly.

And so it is visible?

Everything is visible. Fly, fly.

The souls of the dead rise like steam from the White Sea. They soar silently, like transparent glass birds. They wash themselves on the windowsills. Dry with clean towels. They sit on princelings, on roofs, on pipes, on nets, on boats, on large tattered pine trees, on animal skins, on tall black eight-pointed crosses.

Bye Bye. Creak-creak.

AT MARYA MOREVNA'S

The magic bun happily knocks and beats in its new place. This song is so fresh and young: “I left my grandfather, I left my grandmother.”

I am in the “clean” room of a wealthy Pomor. In the middle of it hangs from the ceiling a dove carved from wood and painted blue. Reverends Zosima and Savvaty look at me from the corner, a lamp is burning out in front of them. And this cross in front of the windows facing the sea was probably placed by the pious great-grandfather of a Pomor. The storm broke his schooner, and he escaped on a piece of the mast.

In memory of the miracle, a cross as tall as this two-story house was erected here.

On the top floor there is a clean room for guests, and the owners live downstairs. I hear a rhythmic knock from there. As if from a village spinning loom.

And it’s good to escape from everyone like that to some new place full of mysterious dreams! It’s good to touch human life in this way from the ghostly, beautiful side and know that this is a serious matter. It's good to know that this won't end soon. As soon as the bun stops singing its song, I will move on. And there it is even more mysterious. The nights will get brighter every day, and somewhere far from here, beyond the Arctic Circle, in Lapland, real sunny nights will come.

I wash my face. I feel infinitely healthy.

My occupation is ethnography, the study of people's lives. Why not understand it as the study of the human soul in general. All these fairy tales and epics talk about some unknown universal human soul. Not only the Russian people participated in their creation. No, what I have before me is not a national soul, but a universal, elemental soul, such as it came from the hands of the Creator.

Dreams from the very morning. I can fly here wherever I want, I'm completely alone. This loneliness does not constrain me at all, it even frees me. If I want to communicate, people are always at hand. Aren't there people here in the village? The simpler the soul, the easier it is to see in it the beginning of everything. Then, when I go to Lapland, there will probably be no people, only birds and animals will remain. As then? Nothing. I'll choose some smart animal. They say seals are very gentle and smart. And then, when only black rocks and the constant shine of the sun that never leaves the sky will remain? What then? Stones and light... No, I don’t want that... I’m scared now... I need at least some tip of nature, similar to a person. What to do then? Oh yes, it’s very simple: I’ll look there, into the abyss, and go: la-ta-ta... And I’ll sing again:

I left my grandfather, I left my grandmother.

Nothing... we run down the stairs with my magic bun.

Knock, knock! Is there anyone alive here?

Marya Morevna sits at the table, sorting out the threads and tapping. One.

Hello, Marya Morevna, what is your name?

Is that what they call it?

The princess laughs.

Oh, those cheerful white teeth!

Do you want some tea?

Near me, behind the bench, there is some kind of hole in the wall, you can stick your hand through, it is closed tightly with a wooden sleeve. This is how in the old days alms were given throughout Rus'. Wanderers, walkers and their loved ones came. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. Or maybe it wasn’t as good as it seems? But this is the hole. Old man...

How does is called? - I ask about some part of the machine.

This put, these are stuffers, bobushki, berdo, homewrecker, pristanitsa, prishvitsa.

I ask about everything in the hut, I need to know everything, and how else can I start a conversation with the beautiful princess. We count everything, write everything down, get to know each other, get closer and fall silent.

The famous Russian stove is burning, huge, awkward. But without it, a Russian fairy tale is impossible. Here is a warm bed from which the old man fell and ended up in a barrel of tar. Here is a huge throat where they threw the evil witch; Here is the oven where the mouse ran out to the red maiden.

Thank you, Masha, for giving me tea, I’ll woo Ivanushka to you for that.

The princess’s cheeks burn brighter than the flame in the stove, angry, she proudly throws out:

The hut is low! There are better ones, but I’m not going.

“Everyone is lying,” I think, “but I’m glad.”

We are one step closer with the princess. It's like she wants to tell me something, but she can't. He fumbles around against the wall for a long time, finally comes up and sits down next to him. She persistently examines my boots, then my jacket, fixes her eyes on my head and says affectionately:

How black you are.

Don’t come, don’t come,” I answer, “I’ll marry you to Ivanushka anyway.”

She doesn't understand me. She just got hooked out of friendship, and I already see a selfish goal. She doesn't understand me and doesn't listen. And why is this? Don't all these things: a pencil in a frame, a notebook, a watch, a photographic camera say more than any other words about an interesting guest? I take her picture and we become close friends.

“Let’s go catch salmon,” she offers me quite simply.

On the shore we fiddle with the boat; Ivanushka comes to the rescue from somewhere and also goes with us. I become the third person in the novel. Ivanushka wants to say something to the princess, but she is tactful: she looks sideways at me and answers him contemptuously:

I don’t wet my lips, I don’t want to talk.

Then the conversation about salmon begins, like in a living room about objects of art.

Salmon, you see,” Ivanushka tells me, “has been coming since the summer, a person walks around the world, and salmon for a month. So we put a hiding place, a trap, on her way.

They immediately showed me this hiding place: several nets, sewn so that salmon could enter them, but could not leave. We put the boat near the trap and look into the water, waiting for the fish. It’s good that there’s a romance here, but if you were to sit like that alone and rock in a boat...

Another time you’ll sit for a week,” Ivanushka guesses me, “or two, or a month... nothing.” And when God's hour comes, he will answer for everything.

Further away from us another similar boat is rocking; more and more and more. And so they sit for weeks, months from spring to winter, guarding so that the salmon does not escape from its hiding place. No, I couldn't. But if you listen to the surf or transfer these northern colors onto the canvas: not tones, halftones, but maybe tenths of tones... How rough, how emphasized is our southern nature in comparison with this northern intimate beauty. And how few people understand and appreciate it.

I was daydreaming and probably would have missed the salmon if I were a fisherman. Marya Morevna pushed me quite hard in the side with her fist.

Salmon, salmon,” she whispers quietly.

The pen is drying,” Ivanushka answers.

This means that the fish was caught a long time ago and has now risen to the top, showing a feather (fin) from the water.

We lift the net and, instead of expensive salmon, we pull out a completely unnecessary guinea pig.

The bride and groom burst into laughter.

There was a funny joke:

Salmon, salmon, and in pig!

I don’t know how long our pastoral at sea would have lasted, when suddenly a major event happened.

First of all, I noticed that another group of fishermen on the shore approached the group of fishermen, then a third, then the whole village gathered, even the wives and children; In the end, both funny old men threw their balls on the ground and stood at the edge of the crowd. Then there was an incredible noise, screaming and swearing.

I saw from the water how the thin beard of Kashchei the Immortal jumped out of the crowd here and there, as if he was the conductor of this outrageous concert on the shores of the White Sea...

Little by little everything calmed down, ten gray-haired wise elders separated from the crowd and headed towards Kashchei’s house. The rest again sat down in their places on the sand. Kashchei himself approached the shore and shouted to us:

Row here, Ma-asha.

I pick up the guinea pig, Ivanushka sits down, and Marya Morevna rows.

The old people want to talk to you, sir,” Kashchei greeted us.

Something bad, something bad! - the magic bun whispered to me...

We enter the hut. The sages rise from their benches and solemnly greet.

"What's happened? What do you?" - I ask with my eyes.

But they laugh at my pig and say:

Salmon, salmon, and in pig!

They remember how one got a sea hare into his hiding place, another got a seal, and a third pulled out something that didn’t look like anything else.

The lively but artificial conversation continues for so long. Finally everyone falls silent, and only one, closest to me, like a lagging goose, repeats: “Salmon, salmon, and in the pig.”

But what's the matter? What you need? - I can’t stand this painful silence.

The oldest, wisest one answers me:

A man from Durakov passed by...

Alexey,” I say and instantly remember how he made me a general at my grandmother’s... That’s right, and then something like that. Farewell to my fairy tales. - Alexey? - I ask.

Alexey, Alexey,” all ten answer at once. And the wisest one, the gray one, continues:

Alexei said: a member of the State Duma is coming from the Emperor to share the sea in Durakovo. We bow to you, Your Excellency, accept this seed from us...

The old man brings me a huge, pound-sized salmon. I refuse to accept and, lost, apologize by saying that I already have a pig on my hands.

Throw away this rubbish, what do you need it for? This is the fish you caught, it’s up to God to be the first, well, since you are a rare guest with us, God will tolerate it, we won’t bypass him either.

Another old man takes paper out of his bosom and hands it over. I am reading:

“Member of the State Duma for the photographic department.

REQUEST

The population has multiplied, but the sea is as before, do me a favor, there is no life, divide the sea for us..."

What is this, I can’t believe my eyes... And suddenly I remember that somewhere at the station we took ordinary horses and I signed: “From the Geographical Society.” Then - a photographic apparatus... And so I became a member of the Duma in the photographic department. I remember that Alexey told me about some two hostile villages, where there is not enough leadership to end the centuries-old enmity.

And the thought flashes through my mind: why not share the sea with me for these poor people. Since the authorities are not here, isn’t this a finger pointing to the hands of the Almighty, destined for me to fulfill my civic duty here in the desert? Here my poetic aspirations, always opposed to life, merge with the roughest existence; here, in this White Sea village, I am a poet, a scientist, and a citizen.

“Okay,” I say to the elders, “okay, friends, I will divide the sea for you.”

I need an accurate estimate of the village's economic situation. I take a notebook and a pencil and start with agriculture, as the basis of the economic life of the people.

What are you sowing here, old people?

We sow everything, father, so that nothing will be born.

That's how I write it down. Then I ask about the needs and find out that an average family of six souls needs twelve bags of flour. I learn that, in addition to the necessary needs, there are luxuries, that they eat rolls, crack nuts on holidays and really love jelly made from white flour.

Where do you get the money for this?

But, go figure, where to get it from! - all ten answered.

But I still find out: they get money from the sale of animals, navaga, herring and salmon.

I learn that all these fisheries are insignificant and random, except for salmon.

So the salmon feeds you?

She, mother. Do me a favor and share!

“Okay,” I say, “now to the section.” How many souls do you have?

Two hundred eighty-three souls!

And with the wives?

No. Women's souls do not count, no matter how many of them.

Then I find out that the seashore belongs to the village in one direction for twenty miles, in the other for eight, that at every verst there is a tonya, I write down the names of the tonyas: Baklon, Volchek, Soldat... I learn the original ways of dividing these tonyas by lot . In total there are forty-four and twelve more bishops, one from the Siysk Monastery, one from Nikolsky, one from Kholmogory.

In exactly the same way I find out the position of the neighboring village of Durakovo. But I positively cannot understand the elders’ claims to the toni of this even poorer village.

Respectable, wise elders,” I finally say. “I won’t share the sea with you without neighbors: send Ivanushka immediately for representatives.”

The elders are silent, stroking their beards.

Why do we need fools?

Why, divide the sea!

“We can’t share with them,” they all shout together. “Fools don’t hurt us.” It’s to share them with Zolotitsa, but not us. To share us with the monks. And the fools are okay... those with Zolotitsa. The monks selected the best tonis.

How dare they? - I’m angry. - By what right?

They have ancient rights, father, since the time of Martha the Posadnitsa.

And do you respect them... these rights?

The elders itch, stroke their beards - obviously they respect them.

Since monks have such ancient rights, how can I share you with them?

And we, Your Excellency, thought that since you are from the State Duma, why don’t you drive these monks away

Until these words, I still hope, I still think about finding a bright page with numbers in my notebook and parting the sea and connecting poetry, science and life. But this fatal word is “drive away.” Simple and clear, I am a general here and a member of the State Duma, why not drive away these monks, why do they need salmon, I am the enemy of these long fish on the bishop’s table. Drive away! But I can not. It seems to me as if I entered, like a guinea pig, into a hiding place and, wherever I go, I encounter strong ropes. I’m still mechanically going over the number of souls and catches in my head, but I’m getting more and more confused.

“Salmon, salmon,” the elders think, “and in the pig!” And in the corner Marya Morevna’s white teeth sparkle, and my God, how my magic bun bursts into laughter...