Life in a remote village: an interesting story and powerful photographs - koyger - LiveJournal. My happy village - a story about a village A house in a village a story
This dacha belonged to my entire family; my grandparents used to live there, and then they moved to the city. As a child, I often went there on vacation in the summer. Still, air, nature, beauty! A year ago, my grandfather gave me the key to his dacha house and said that I could go there to relax and relax. I was happy, because sometimes I want to go somewhere away from a noisy city, especially one like St. Petersburg. A year passed, and because of my studies I had already forgotten about the dacha, but at the beginning of summer I remembered and decided to go there alone to relax. In general, I warned my relatives, packed my things, bought food, threw them into the car and, saying goodbye to the city for two weeks, set off on the road.
It takes about 2.5 hours to get from St. Petersburg to my village. I left the city at approximately 16:00, that is, I reached my destination around 18:30, maybe a little later. The road to the village is still normal, but in the village itself it’s hard to call it expensive. In general, with grief in half, I finally got to my little village one-story paradise. I drove the car into the yard, thank God there is enough space in the yard, and began to unload. But it was not there! I spent about an hour fiddling with an old door lock that just wouldn't budge. I was surprised how I didn’t break the key during this hour, but still - victory! - I got inside! Thus, I ended up in the house itself at 20:00. I unloaded my things and purchased provisions from the car and brought it all into the house. I was terribly hungry after the journey, so I cooked myself scrambled eggs and salad, sat down at the table and began the feast. After finishing my meal, I looked at the clock, which showed 21:00. I unpacked my things, called home and said that I had arrived, and at 10 pm I decided to take a walk through the quiet and very beautiful village. I walked for about 2 hours, managing to meet my two beautiful neighbors (Sveta and Olya), who, as it turned out, were visiting their grandmother Valya. We chatted with them and went home.
This time I got home calmly, because when I left I didn’t lock the front door, believing that in such a village no one would even think of robbing me. When I returned home, it was around midnight, I finished my scrambled eggs, watched TV, sat on VK and at one in the morning decided to indulge in Morpheus...
I woke up at about 2:30 to a knock on the door. Woke up, I thought that I had imagined it, but after a few seconds I heard a more confident knock. I assessed the situation. I am in a God-forsaken village, there are only houses around with 85-year-old grandmothers and their little grandchildren, there are not many men in the village. Three drunks and a salesman Valerka, and, well, an old man, the husband of Valya’s woman (neighbor) Ivan Ivanovich. None of them would obviously knock on my door in the middle of the night. And why? So it's someone not local, but who? After all, there were no lights on in the house and no signs of life, so why knock? And then an even more terrible and simple thought came to me: “But the gate and gate are closed!” So who is this? Conclusion: maniac! Yes, it may be funny, but then I wasn’t laughing!
Meanwhile the knocking intensified. I remembered that there was a peephole at the front door, but for some reason I really didn’t want to look through it... At the mere thought of what I would see there, my imagination painted the most terrible pictures, and my skin was covered with goosebumps... I I wrapped myself in a blanket and tried to sleep. This damn knocking continued for about two more hours, and by the morning, when it was almost dawn, I was finally able to fall asleep.
I woke up the next day to the phone ringing. My grandfather called, I answered. He asked me how I got settled and wondered why I was still sleeping at 12 o’clock. I told about the overnight visitor, and the grandfather, saying: “Strange,” said goodbye and said that he was going to the store with his grandmother and would call again in the evening. I got up, cooked myself breakfast and lunch and decided to forget about the night knock. I thought: “Well, you never know! Indeed, some village drunk was in the wrong house, and I almost laid bricks!” I laughed at myself and watched TV almost all day. In the evening, as promised, my grandfather called, we talked to him and ended the conversation. I had dinner and went for a walk before going to bed.
When I went outside, the first thing I did was look around. Hmm... Nothing suspicious. Strange. In general, I walked until 23 o'clock and returned home. I decided to go to bed and soon fell asleep.
I was woken up at 2:30 by a knock on the door. Deja vu, or what?! This time I decided to look into the eyes of the intruder of my peace (or rather, through the peephole, well, you never know who it is). I stood up and, on tiptoe, like a spy, crept to the door. The knocking continued, but when I looked at the peephole, it disappeared, and I decided to wait. I waited, waited, waited... At 5 am I gave up and went to bed.
The next day everything went according to the established pattern. I ate, surfed the Internet, TV, a walk, dinner, BUT! That night I decided not to sleep, but to wait for the night visitor. I brought a chair, chips, juice and (you won’t believe it) a hoe under the front door... Well, to give this snitch a good whack! And then it's 2:30. There was no knock, I was upset and was about to go to a cozy bed, but suddenly there was a familiar and elegant knock. Knock-Knock! Three times. This is how some well-bred intellectuals usually knock. I stood up abruptly and stuck to the door peephole.
What I saw cannot be described in words! It’s either a person or a zombie, no matter how funny it sounds! Huge, bloodshot eyeballs, half a nose, a toothless mouth, a face (if it can be called a face) of a dark gray color. And this monster is a few centimeters away from me. And then I thought: “No chopper can save you, Zhenya!” Honestly, I don’t know how many bricks I piled up at that moment, but there will definitely be enough to build a brick factory, and there will still be some left over. In short, this creature stood for another twenty minutes, elegantly tapping its long fingers, and then smiling (or rather, contorting its face) disappeared. I stood for another 15 minutes and almost didn’t breathe so that HE wouldn’t hear!.. That night I didn’t sleep, I sat in the kitchen with the lights off and the curtains closed and drank a sedative, thinking about what happened. I couldn't believe the reality of what was happening!
In the morning I still fell asleep, and waking up at 14 o’clock, the first thing I did was call my brother Denis and ask him to come. At 8 o'clock in the evening Denis was with me.
Denis entered the house and said the following:
- Hello, Zhen! Listen, why is your door all torn off? Yoyo!.. What a sight you have! What happened?
I told Denis everything, and he agreed to help me believe that I had no glitches. At 2:30 Denis and I sat quietly at the front door and waited... We waited for him...
And He came! Traditionally, three elegant knocks! Denis looked at the peephole and was stunned. After this, Denis stuttered for two years. The one who came yesterday became even more terrible, he was covered in worms, and his face was distorted so that it hardly looked like a face at all. He didn't leave until five in the morning, and then he started scratching at the door and finally left. At 10 o'clock we came to our senses a little and went outside. And on the door was scrawled: “I’ll still come in!”
That same day, Denis and I packed our things and hit the road to the city! What happened next is simply unimaginable! We received a call two days later saying that our house had burned to the ground. Nothing left. Denis and I almost turned gray...
And then everything came together for me! And the fact that the door did not open for a long time, and the scrawled message on the door. I understand. He wanted to kill the inhabitants of the house, and if we had not left, two days later our two charred corpses would have been found in the house. We told my grandfather everything, he paused and said: “I don’t know who it was, but I know that you guys are very lucky!” Grandfather hugged us tightly. Later I found out that there used to be a sectarian who lived on our site, who burned down his house and then drowned himself. Then my grandparents bought the plot and built their own house. He came to us. Sectarian...
P.S. For many years, I lost my desire for solitude in a village house. Now everything is fine, I live with my wife in my apartment and try not to remember that incident.
edited news Melford - 12-07-2014, 23:15
I've been wanting to burn this waste paper for a long time. Light the stove with it. But there are still a lot of books in the closet, and even more furniture for firewood. And the coal should soon be brought by sleigh. So let it lie there a little longer.
I'll leave it to my grandchildren. Let them honor us when we leave this world. Maybe some of them will be entertained by these lines. Maybe our personal drama will seem funny to them compared to what happened next. Their right.
So, as the poet said: “Professor, take off your bicycle glasses. I’ll tell you about time and about myself.”
Everything that starts well ends badly. But if everything is bad from the very beginning, then it will be a complete star.
I didn’t realize this before everyone else, but I was one of the first. Perhaps in the first thousand of the country's 140 million population - back in the days when only the paranoid people started talking about impending cataclysms. And even those were ridiculed as city madmen.
There was peace and quiet all around, and I already knew that the mythical beast Roasted Rooster was approaching, and nothing would stop his inexorable approach. I could not share this knowledge with anyone close to me. They wouldn't believe me.
I was only wrong about the cause of the Crisis. I believed in the stories of alarmists and prepared for the depletion of energy resources. I thought that without oil, power plants would stop working, cars would stop working, the unified system of international trade would collapse, and then famine and pestilence would come.
The oil hasn't run out. Did not make it. But otherwise I was right.
My world did not collapse on the day when, in the middle of the December frosts, the power and heat were turned off. Much earlier. Still in the middle of sunny July. When, as usual, I returned from work in the evening and in her eyes I realized that she knew everything.
Oh, if only it were possible to turn back time... - this eternal cry of cowards and selfish people.
“If it were possible, I would be smarter,” I thought then. “And I would not let her know about my offense. I would keep it to myself. For her own good. Unless in confession I would say: “I’m a sinner, father.” without going into details."
For some reason I wasn't surprised. More than once I imagined this moment, replayed the situation before my eyes. With breaking dishes, her scratched face, her hysterics, valerian and corvalol.
But not in any of my visions did she react like that. Knowing her character, I expected to see a storm and destruction in the apartment, but I saw only her eyes filled with pain. And it was much worse than screaming. It would be better if she looked at me with a look of pure hatred. It would be better if she said, “Die, you bastard.” It wouldn't be so creepy and disgusting at heart.
“Don’t worry,” my beloved seemed to calmly say, taking me by the hand. - We will live with you. I'm not leaving, so relax. This is all you need. And love... there is no love, you know it yourself.
You can't prepare for this. The ground began to disappear from under our feet. I tried to hug her (Nastya, not the earth), but she pulled away. I guess I'm a masochist, but in moments of anger she always seemed the most attractive to me. Especially in this short robe. Yes, that's how shameless I am.
We've quarreled before. Almost every day. She's not a good girl at all. But usually after such outbursts of anger there was reconciliation, and we were happy.
And now I wanted her to scream. Or she threw a vase from the cabinet at me. I would have dodged it, or caught it. Yes, even if I got it in my stupid head... everything is better.
But she just looked at me. That's for sure, sometimes silence is like screaming.
I wanted to fall on my knees in front of her and press myself to her feet. Maybe I would have done that if I hadn’t thought about how I looked from the outside. And suddenly he was ashamed of his weakness.
“What am I, an emo, or what? Me too, man. Weak. Everyone lives like this... Everyone does this. And nothing, they don’t repent all their lives.”
Much later I will be ashamed of this shame. She wasn't everything, and I knew it. Maybe those who met me before... Maybe a fleeting betrayal would not have hurt them... because they themselves could have done it more than once. But she was different. And offending such a person is like frying a hummingbird as a side dish for potatoes. No matter how she sometimes pretended to be a tigress, I knew well how vulnerable she was.
“I know you’re good,” Nastya suddenly spoke. - Everyone stumbles. It's my fault. I thought that you,” she laughed nervously, “you wouldn’t believe it, you weren’t like everyone else.” That you are the only one in the whole world who understands me. The one I've been looking for all these years. And you... you are a stranger. And all this time that you were with me, you lived a double life. You know, that prince with green eyes, whom I saw and could not forget, died for me. And I will stay with you only for the sake of the child.
How she loved melodrama, damn it. "Luke, I am your father!"
I was silent, digesting what I heard. You should have seen my face.
Why didn’t she tell me anything, even though she’d known for two months? I chose the time. She wanted to give me a surprise, but it turned out that I was the one who did it.
Moral monster...
She wanted that day to be remembered forever. And so it happened.
Those were her last words as a loved one. After that, we talked only about everyday topics, like two neighbors in a communal apartment.
She had no idea how right she was. I really was living a double life. But she had no idea that my second life had nothing in common with the stupid affair that ruined the fate of both of us.
I waited and prepared. I was a member of a secret brotherhood of paranoids.
Optimists still believed in the government and the president (“Everything is fine, beautiful marquise...”), and smart people already understood that the patient was more likely dead than alive.
And while others took out plasma TVs on credit and enjoyed life, these quietly purchased weapons, stocked up on stewed meat, made nooks along future evacuation routes from cities with a population of over a million, and set up settlements in the remote taiga with warehouses of everything necessary for an autonomous life. The most stubborn even dug underground shelters.
The most reasonable and calm ones saw the peak of the crisis as an abrupt rise in prices, unemployment and hyperinflation. We were preparing for this. Others were preparing for global conflict, occupation and civil war. The most advanced cases were carried around with the idea of complete autonomy from a dying civilization. They were preparing to move to the land, voluntarily give up the benefits of civilization and set up a subsistence economy similar to the pre-industrial one. Anastasians, followers of Maigret (not the commissar), crazy ecologists and conspiracy theorists of all countries and peoples. Reading their revelations, I realized that I still had not gotten that far.
I never felt called to farming. And he treated all this paranoid public as nudists. That is, people who are boring all the time because they have too much free time. I thought that I didn’t gnaw out my honors diploma with my teeth in order to pick through the manure.
1I liked the story about the village of Gleb Shulpyakov, I would like to invite all readers of our site to read “Your Own House in the Village.”
The theme is dear and familiar - rustic. Questions about village life remain controversial - and some of our publications confirm this. The articles were published 2-3 years ago - and now fresh comments are appearing that only losers live in the village, or vice versa, only in the village does a person find the meaning of life and truly feel the passage of time.
Someone agrees to life in the wilderness and enjoys the minutes spent close to nature, someone wonders how you can sit half your life in the garden, not seeing or hearing anyone around, except for your neighbor Baba Zina, or the drunkard Lenka, as in Shulpyakov in the story.
Another interesting look at village life. A PDF version of the story “My Happy Village” will be available to subscribers of the magazine.
Happy reading!
MY HAPPY VILLAGE
Modern man does not keep up with time - the scenery changes faster than he gets used to it. Nothing remains either in memory or in thoughts from this time. The past is empty. Even things disappear from everyday life without ever growing old. “Where has everything gone? Why was that? Also the leitmotif of life.
I have chargers in my desk drawer. The wires are tangled in a tangle, it is clear that no one uses adapters. “We should throw it away...” I scratch the back of my head. But for some reason I feel sorry. I give the adapters to my son, he builds gas stations from them. But pity, pity.
Last year I bought a hut in the village.
“In the middle of nowhere, real...” I tell you.
“Well, where is your “outback”? - My friends don't believe me. - Kratovo? Ilyinka?
I point on the map: “Behind Volochok, in Tverskaya...”
Friends nod, but for some reason they are in no hurry to visit.
“Will you be in Moscow at this time?” - there’s a female voice on the other end.
I figure it out in my mind, I think: “No, I’ll be in the village. Let's do it in a week."
“Oh, you have a house in the village!” - the tube crackles.
“It’s so good - home, nature. I would like to…"
“Hut! - I shout. “Izba!”
End of connection.
Last year I bought a hut in the village. There is no mobile phone service in our village, anywhere at all. True, the drunk Lekha (aka Lenka) claims that one of the sticks beats Shlyopa for the hut. I spend half a day crawling along the wall, steaming my boot with a nail. I curse - no, it doesn’t catch.
At first, the palm automatically rummages around in the pocket, but on the second day the phone is forgotten. I remember the phone when it’s time to get in touch. The phone is lying in the wood next to the bed - it probably fell out of my pocket when I was fiddling with the stove. With Robinson's amazement I look at the buttons, the dead screen.
I disappear in the village for weeks, and I still need communication. Report to your people that I am alive and well, I am not starving or freezing. That he was not attacked by predators, did not drown in a swamp or fall into a well, did not injure himself with an ax or pitchfork, did not get burned in a bathhouse and did not fight with Lekha-Lenka.
“The main thing is to wait for the coals to burn out...”
“The false mushroom darkens when cut…”
"Boil the water..."
“An ax in the house at night - just in case...”
“Put a stone on top to keep mice away...”
Naive people.
There is mobile communication on Sergeikovskaya Gorka, but someone else's operator receives it there. Mine goes towards Firovo, but there is a bad road there in the slush - it was destroyed by timber trucks when they were taking out stolen timber. And then a month later I find out that there is a connection in another place. And that all the operators work there.
There are six huts in our village, it’s practically a farm. Two families live all year round, one moves to Volochyok for the winter, and summer residents hang out in two huts (me and another guy, a well-known old-timer). The last one, Shlyopina, is empty.
-Where is the owner? - I look through the broken windows at the mountains of bottles and flaws.
“I hanged myself,” Lekha answers indifferently.
There is also a horse, Dasha, a cow, a calf and two dogs. One dog, Lekhina, looks like a cartoon character, just as black and haggard, with gray bald spots. To myself, I call the dog “Top.” He sits on a leash and jumps out over the fence when you pass by - like a jack-in-the-box. And the second one is called Vetka, she runs around freely.
A dirt road leads through the forest to the village - from the main road, where there is a cemetery. The churchyard, of which there are many in any region, is half abandoned. Crosses stick out crookedly from the nettles, peeling enamel glitters in the bushes. Through the lush, special cemetery richness of greenery, rust turns black. Pieces of brickwork, church fence. The landscape around matches the graveyard. At first, the feeling of scarcity, inconspicuousness, deafness incredibly depresses me. Why did I even come here? But this impression, of course, is imaginary. In order to feel the hidden, self-contained charm of these lands, incomparable with the picturesque slopes somewhere in the Oryol region - or the fields beyond Vladimir - it is necessary for a person to forget about the landscape, not to think about it. I didn’t expect anything from him, I didn’t demand anything. And then the landscape itself will reveal itself to man.
The relief is squat, creeping. The top line is low - this is what a low barn overgrown with grass looks like, or a hut half sunk into the ground. And a feeling of awkwardness arises; disproportion between yourself and what you see; What are you standing against? The forest is impassable and dense, a real windfall. The clouds are so low that you want to duck your head. Landscape lines are dotted and do not converge anywhere. They do not form anything that can be called a picture of nature. It feels like discarded and scattered elements of other landscapes were dumped here. Yes, they left it that way.
In reality it is a dome, a roof. The top of a huge geological cap. The highest point of the Valdai Hills (450 meters above level) lies in the neighboring village, that is, my hut - scary to think - hangs a little higher than the Ostankino Tower. And then you see everything with different eyes. Everything becomes clear and explainable. After all, this is an endless gentle slope - all around you. A slope along which forests and hillocks slide. Hence the view, its character - fragmented, like a landscape in the valley of a mountain pass. The feeling of height comes suddenly. At the point where the relief shoots out like a spring. There are few such places, but they exist. It is impossible to open them on purpose, although I know a couple of villages on the hills with absolutely Himalayan views. You just wander out to the edge of a huge wasteland and - time! - the rollers of the hills rolled from under our feet, the screen of the sky parted. The backdrop moved beyond the horizon, and a huge stage, the size of the backbone of a fairy-tale whale, opened up. And this whale - with copses and villages on the ridge - is visible.
Whale, stage, screen - yes. But. Specific landmarks and notches were required. Serifs on the ground, identification marks. Don't miss a turn, don't go through a fork, don't fall into a pothole. Here ahead are the Roman ruins of the Flax Mill - which means that soon there will be a “problem section of the road”. But the two-tiered church, what’s left of it (the box) is a fork. An abandoned House of Culture, with a general store across the road.
A memorial cross welded from rebar flashes by the road.
“I’ll slap you to death…” Lekha-Lenka comments gloomily. - By car.
I obediently press the signal.
Behind the quarry there is a turn where there is a cemetery. The last segment. I roll into an alley barely visible in the dark and slow down. I look around. There are two or three figures in the cemetery - wandering between the graves, like somnambulists, with their hand to their cheek. I turn off the headlights and quietly return. They talk in low voices, to themselves. Their faces, illuminated by a strange blue light, flicker in the darkness like jellyfish. Shrugging my shoulders, I turn around. I take a final look into the cemetery twilight - no one, it’s quiet. However, a minute later, a rustling sound is heard above, on the road. A man emerges from the bushes on the highway, then another. Third. And they silently disperse.
I automatically reach for the phone (a neurosis familiar to everyone). There is a signal.
The hut is a mechanism that assimilates time. That’s how it seems to me, at least in the first days. The natural aging of a material - the way the crowns settle or a crack stretches intricately - how the boulder on which the porch sits goes into the ground - how the wood becomes a stone where you can no longer drive nails - in all this I see time, its uniform, layer by layer, postponing to the past. There, from where, like the annual rings of a tree, the present and the future are formed.
In addition, Lekha-Lenka, his alcoholic cycles - their amplitude also amazes with some kind of natural constancy and predictability. It is extremely important for me to know this phase in the village, because in Lech the village has electricity, firewood and a horse. This phase is well read with the first snow. If the tracks lead from the hut to the bathhouse, it means the neighbor is “nursing.” If the snow is trampled to the neighbor's hut, Lech is at the start, but for a couple of days he will still knit the bast. If the tracks go into the forest, Lekha doesn’t drink, hangs out in the forest, chopping wood.
Well, if the village is trampled randomly - as, for example, today - Lech is at its peak. During this period, he is not so much dangerous as annoying. To get rid of his company, I always keep a bottle of cheap vodka and a bottle of beer in the trunk. Vodka should be slipped in the evening, when he rolls up to the “master” “on his arrival.” She will "kill" him for the night. And beer - for the morning, since he will definitely come back with a hangover as soon as he sees smoke above the roof (“Who gave Lech something to drink?”). As a rule, he organizes the next evening’s leisure time for himself. That is, he simply disappears from the village.
My village life is insignificant, but boring. There are no serious things to do, but: polish and sweep, plug and dry, lift and support, replace and adjust, heat - and so on and so forth.
Time flies quickly in such matters. Here neighbor Tanya walked past the windows into the forest - and now she is returning with a full basket. The morning fog, porous and transparent, has just disappeared from the field - when a thick evening fog is already creeping in from the other end. But the strange thing is that this unburdensome, quick time, filled with insignificant trifles - time that flies away unnoticed and painlessly - leaves you with a feeling of weight and significance. Not marked by any feats, it does not disappear into the sand, it does not go in vain - like city time. And it goes straight into the past, into its underground. Where it accumulates and matures.
And then the neighbor says to me:
- Listen to Lekha, go to the cemetery!
(During a binge, he switches to the third person.)
- Lech won’t give bad advice.
The old quilted jacket stands like a stake on his back, Lech looks like a hunchback. In his pocket, diluted alcohol, the main village drink, gurgles.
- Why are you suffering?
He kisses it and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
He pokes an extinguished match towards the dirt road.
It’s dark in the forest, but when the dirt road opens onto the alley, you can see the tops of pine trees, painted red by the sunset. This alley is birch-pine, birch-pine - “lordly”, it was planted for walks across the field. That's what the legend says, at least. The field has long been overgrown with a birch grove; all that remains of the estate are four walls and a pond with springs.
And the old trees, crooked and gnarled, stand.
On the way to the cemetery, I like to imagine how nice it would be to continue the alley to our farm. In the village, at first, people are generally a little Manilov, so I have a huge list of urgent plans. For example, I definitely need:
Build a spring;
Make a swimming pool on the river;
Attach a veranda to the hut;
Put up a bathhouse;
Patch a leaking roof (urgently!);
And build a Buddhist stupa on the field.
To patch the roof, you need to find a man who doesn’t drink, because the drinker “has no time” plus “fears” - he won’t climb on the roof, he’ll be afraid to fall (despite the fact that just yesterday this man spent a day lying in a ditch during the night frosts). And now, great luck, after a week of traveling, the non-drinker was found. This is Foka, aka Volodya, a man of about fifty who lives behind the Flax Plant.
- Endova! - this Foka joyfully yells at me, looking around the roof. - Your endowment is leaking, understand?
I roll my eyes, but I don't see anything. “What the hell is that valley?”
Then Foka folds the valley out of the newspaper. He explains to me how they are constructed and that to cover them, the slope of the entire roof must be rebuilt. I follow his large, knobby fingers, real claws - these are the hands of a man who knows how to hold a tool.
When I arrive a week later, Foka and the boy have blocked everything off. We're settling. Putting thousand-dollar bills into his wallet, Foka says that he is getting ready to get married. And that makes me a little nervous.
- Young, from the city. - He looks at the floor. - I asked him to buy music for the car...
I wish him good luck.
In the fall I plant a pine tree behind the house. Endova and pine - this is where my Manilovism ends. I won’t do anything else, that’s it. This is how the great inertia of village life affects a person. A force accumulated over centuries that resists any undertaking if this undertaking is not directly related to the essential, that is, to warmth and food.
However, a bathhouse is simply necessary. You can’t run up to your neighbor, it’s awkward - and installing a new log house is incredibly expensive. Another option is to take the old one. There is one such abandoned one in the neighboring village. And here we are - me and Lekha - going.
The bathhouse looks very scary. Covered in soot petals (it was heated black), crooked, with the roof slid to one side. But Lech is calm. If you change a couple of crowns, he says, and install a new stove, it will be fine.
- Whose bathhouse? - I ask just in case.
- Shlyopina.
- I got drunk in the bathhouse.
The cemetery is dark, birch trees rustle overhead.
Stretching out my hand with my pipe, I walk along the fence like a sapper.
Nothing, zero. Empty again.
I take a step between the grassy mounds, round one grave, then another.
There is a crackling and rustling sound in the tube. The signal between the abandoned churchyard and the capital is about to improve. "Hello!" - finally heard at the other end. "Hello!"
Through the heels, resting on the heated couch, heat spreads throughout the body. The flies have woken up and are buzzing - which means the hut is heated as it should be, there will be enough until the morning.
I am reading “Philosophy of the Common Cause” by Nikolai Fedorov.
“...all people are called to recognize themselves as sons, grandsons, descendants of their ancestors. And such knowledge is history, which does not know people unworthy of memory...”
“...truly world sorrow is contrition for the lack of love for our fathers and for the excess of love for ourselves; This is grief about the fall of the world, about the removal of a son from his father, an effect from a cause...”
“...unity without fusion, difference without discord is the exact definition of “consciousness” and “life” ...”
“...if religion is the cult of ancestors, or the collective prayer of all living for all the dead, then at present there is no religion, for there are no longer cemeteries near churches, and the abomination of desolation reigns in the cemeteries themselves...”
“...for cemeteries, as well as for museums, it is not enough to be only a repository, a place of storage...”
“...the desolation of cemeteries is a natural consequence of the decline of kinship and its transformation into citizenship... who should take care of the monuments, who should return the hearts of sons to fathers? Who should restore the meaning of monuments?”
“...to save cemeteries, a radical revolution is needed, the center of gravity of society needs to be transferred to the cemetery...”
The speech in the book is dense, unbroken - the thought is scattered throughout each capsule, it is almost impossible to pull out a quote. And even outside of speech, the phrase looks ridiculous, absurd (what does it mean to “transfer life to a cemetery”? How do you imagine that?). Meanwhile, the speech in “Philosophy” leaves no doubt about the absolute, undeniable truth. It is precisely this conviction of Fedorov that he is right that is fascinating. Not speculative, logical - but internal, personal. It's like it's a matter of his life and death, literally.
But why does this question haunt me too?
“Why,” I ask myself, “when they began to republish Russian philosophy, Nikolai Fedorov passed me by? Why didn't I notice him?
I remember the end of the eighties, a real book boom. Crowds at the stalls, queues in stores. “Who was I reading then?”
It was Berdyaev - of course. On newsprint, soft covers. Thousands of copies, which were still not enough. I read it like a revelation, in one gulp.
“So this is the country I live in!” I was choking with excitement.
“That’s her plan!”
In book exchange departments (there were some at second-hand bookstores), Berdyaev could be exchanged for Agatha Christie or Chase. I remember this feeling very well - the transformation of water into wine, nothing into gold. Or buy a stray copy at the newsstand on Pushkinskaya, where “Moscow News” is (revelation at the kiosk, normal).
Why Berdyaev? Why first him, and then others (Rozanov, Losev, Florensky, Shpet)? I explain this quite simply - by the fact that the young man needed a justification for the country, its meaning. It seemed to the young man that the connection with that country would be restored immediately after the collapse of the Evil Empire. That I would have a great past - after all, what I taught in “History of the USSR-CPSU” I could not call the past. Then it seemed to me that with the fall of the USSR, the program to implement the country’s super-plan, which Berdyaev spoke about, would start automatically. It can’t help but turn on - after they lived here. What kind of wood was broken?
And here is Fedorov, a museum in cemeteries. Sons, fathers. Trinity. Crop failures. Too phantasmagorical - and at the same time very ordinary, everyday. Compared to Berdyaev’s sorcery about the destinies of the Motherland, about super-ideas. About the mission.
But a quarter of a century passes, and the circle - who would have thought! - closes. The country is plunging into a familiar and therefore not very scary sleep. Into a gray party hibernation, occasionally interrupted by terrorist attacks and show trials. Olympics and anniversaries. Fires and man-made disasters. Through the hastily, lightly ink text of the “new, free Russia” scribbled in the 90s, the old dogmas hammered into them in Komsomol youth emerge more and more clearly in people of the older generation. They get brighter and dimmer, yes. But they are there, they haven’t gone away. Preserved - there, on the hardest of the disks of our consciousness. And you realize with horror that these people never acquired anything else - for all the time allotted. They didn’t change, they remained with their recent past. They preferred it to the future.
Berdyaev, Rozanov, and Florensky have long been forgotten. There are no illusions that history can go in the direction they showed. That Russian Europeanism is possible not only in individual minds, not only on paper. The prophet turned out to be not Dostoevsky, but Chaadaev. The mission is impossible - there is neither an object nor a subject of this mission. The old material is irretrievably destroyed, and the new one is modified. What is the mission here? After everything that has happened over the past ten years, there is little doubt left.
“Sorry, philosopher fathers, we didn’t justify it.”
And then one day on the way to the village I stop in Torzhok. I gather some groceries and at the same time pop into the bookstore to buy some reading (the village is bringing back the pleasure of reading). And then in a bookstore I accidentally came across a volume by Fedorov. And I come to the village, open the book.
My God, how simple and correct everything is. How exactly - it’s worth changing “cemetery” to “past” (“...to save the past we need a radical revolution, we need to transfer the center of gravity of society to the past...").
"Where is my past?" - I ask myself.
“Who will inherit this abandoned churchyard and ruined church?”
“Flax mill and House of Culture?”
“Rotten huts?”
“Who is the heir to the time when all this stood untouched?”
“And who - when was it destroyed?”
“Which past should we take as a basis, as a model? For a starting point?
The tangle of questions seems insoluble. So this is where this passion comes from - to reset the past! Until recently, I was ready to explain this phenomenon by general Russian drunkenness (according to the principle “it’s better not to remember yesterday”). But, I'm afraid, there are things here that are stronger than Russian drunkenness.
And one more question: if this is not our cemetery, then where is our cemetery?
I slowly walk back along the alley to the village.
The trees in the sky are streaked with stars, behind the forest the quarry knocks, emphasizing the silence, which in these places is deafening.
Man lives in the past, I tell myself. And literally, in everyday life - the past as accumulated experience. A person simply has nothing but his own experience - that is, the past. And this experience, this past is a model of the future, because every step you take in time is motivated by this experience. But societies and countries live in exactly the same way. Cost civilization. By declaring a relationship to the past, you show a calculated future. What you undertake to comply with next. What to stick to.
There are countries where monuments of one era are demolished to erect monuments to another - former Soviet Central Asia. And I understand where this country is heading. In European countries, every brick is numbered, you cannot move the past - and here, too, everything is clear. But what can we expect from a country whose past is in such a state? Dilapidated or half-restored, not completely destroyed or half-abandoned, flickering - it leaves an excellent opportunity: not to be responsible for today and tomorrow. Such a past can be crushed under oneself, interpreted in a way that is convenient - depending on the situation. And what? Very convenient, know-how of our time. Fedorov never dreamed of it.
Consciousness lives on memory - well, that includes. By making an effort to find and restore the past. This is one of the highest forms of his activity, a way of existence. A method of self-reproduction. Especially if we consider this activity without emotional stress. But I also cannot refuse this burden - the emotions associated with the past. I don't want, I don't want! This is one of the forms of my mental life, and the most life-giving. The kind that only keeps me here, on the surface. In life.
You can reset the past, deprive memory of material, and consciousness - forms of life. It is possible to displace the experience of any loss, including the main loss - the past (or fathers, as Fedorov would say), with a positive stimulus, as long as this stimulus reaches the consumer uninterruptedly, as is the case in consumer societies. And then there will be no need for any cemeteries, no past. But is a person, with common sense, ready to agree to this?
Fedorov said: a common memory of the past makes people “united”, but not “merged”, “different”, but not “different”. By the way, modern civilizations stand on this brilliantly simple idea. But the philosopher could not foresee the scale and scope. The genetic catastrophe of the Soviet years and the post-Soviet mixing of peoples. The Great Migration, which reset the past of the Hellenes and Jews and mixed them up. What does a Moscow janitor from Turkmenistan consider his past? Moscow clerk from Penza? Where does a Moscow artist from Baku or a Moscow poet from Tashkent have their cemetery?
- What? - he wheezes from the other end of the village. - Lekha, you can, a friend has come to Lekha!
Hobbling towards me, he scoops up invisible puddles with his left boot. A bottle sticks out of his pocket. Having climbed onto my hill, he squats down. Swaying, he lights a cigarette. We silently watch as the evening fog creeps onto the field - in long felt braids. A horse wanders in the fog, but from here only its head and rump are visible. The tops of the trees against the pink sky gradually merge into a black line written in a Gothic font. The spectacle is incredibly picturesque, a reference, straight out of the screen - and at the same time natural, with mosquitoes and smells, Lekha's wheezing and the distant knock of a quarry. And from all this, incompatible and at the same time visual - and from the excess of oxygen, of course - my head is spinning.
- Why are you alone? What without a friend? - I involuntarily adopt his intonations.
- He watches porn. - Lekha squints at the forest. - I put it on video.
He looks at me and pushes me:
- Go and see what you...
I’ve never been to Lekha’s hut and that’s why I’m going, of course. I’m prepared for the worst, but no, the hut is heated and clean. There is no alcoholic ruin, only a trace of general poverty, thinness, and “worn-out” life lies on all objects. Lekha’s mother is busy behind the stove in the kitchen. I only recently learned that Lekha lives with her old mother - she was completely invisible in the village. Yes, and I also recognize Lekhino’s past from slips of the tongue and fragments. He worked at a factory in Volochok until it closed; when he drank everything he had in the city, he moved to his mother for permanent residence (“while the mother is alive”) - where he lives. This is the most common option in the village: you can drink without working, as long as you have your mother’s pension (a bottle of alcohol costs fifty dollars, snacks grow in the garden, firewood is free in the forest - what else?). If a mother drinks with her son, their chances of survival are equal, that is, equally minimal. If he doesn’t drink, the son dies earlier.
Indeed, unambiguous screams and moans are heard from the room to the left. I pull back the curtain and enter. There is no one - only an empty chair stands in front of the TV, where parts of the bodies are shaking. I lower the curtain and quietly go outside.
- Liked? - Lekha is sitting in the same position, but knee-deep in the fog.
- You have a good friend.
“Reliable,” he agrees.
- The name of?
In the morning, getting out of bed, you put your feet into the cold, burning air - the first frost. But in the evening I filled the bed with firewood, and now they, light and dry, are burning from the first match. The stove is heating up, you don’t have to get up, just lie down some more until it warms up. But we have to get up, because today we are going to pick up Lyuska. So we, summer residents, decided to settle Lyuska in the village, since this time everyone except Lekha will move to the city for the winter, and leaving a horse on Lekha (and indeed leaving Lekha in general) is dangerous. And Lyuska is a reliable, skillful woman. Non-drinker. She doesn’t live very well in her village, because she doesn’t want to perform the functions of a lonely woman - lending money for vodka or pouring it herself. So we offer her to spend the winter with us, where there is no one, it’s quiet.
“Except maybe Lech...” I say.
“We have a tongue with cattle...” Lyuska nods seriously.
I look questioningly at my neighbor. When Lyuska dives into the underground, he says that in a past life she was a cowgirl, that is, she worked with a whip and shouting. And that drunks are afraid of her.
“There won’t be any problems, boys,” a shaggy head pokes out from the underground.
And the “boys” transport her cat and a transistor, a dozen flower pots and pans, felt boots and skis. And Lyuska rides behind on her antique bicycle.
- Lucy, dishes. - I open the doors and show you. - Use it.
- I have my own, boy, what are you talking about?
In the entryway, jars of pickles are lined up on a bench. Lyuska hangs colorful curtains on the windows and the stove, and the hut immediately becomes cozy. Table lamp, lampshade. Flowers on the windows.
- Come on! - swings at the window.
Lekha jumps back and, muttering angrily, leaves.
Looking at how cleverly and neatly, delicately Lyuska has settled down - with what ease she takes on such a burden, to spend the winter in someone else's hut, to shepherd someone else's village - how awkward it is for her because we still doubt the correctness of what we are doing - it suddenly dawns on me It occurred to us that this might be a righteous man. The one without whom the village cannot stand. Only this one, borrowed. Leased.
On the last day before leaving, my old-timer neighbor decides to take me for a ride around the surrounding villages. The end point is Fedorov Dvor. It’s about twenty kilometers from us, but it will take about two hours on the roads torn up by “tonars.” “If we pass at all...”
The road is two holes filled with water, where grass and the tops of fir trees are reflected. The neighbor is fingering the levers in the car like a rosary. And the jeep climbs slowly but surely. We stand in the middle of a huge forest clearing. On the hill lies a strip of forest. There are several pine groves in the grass, as if the forest around was cut down and these pines were forgotten. Gradually the eye discerns mounds about five or six meters high hidden in the pine trees. There are five of them in total, of the correct shape - an isosceles triangle in section. In some places the mounds have been undermined.
- We tried in vain. - The neighbor lights a cigarette. - In the ninth century they burned it, not buried it.
I look at the gray low sky, and how the dry grass sways in waves. To a squat, gloomy forest sticking out from behind a hillock. I don’t really believe that such a landscape - this nondescript, uncomfortable, cold land - could have such a past. However, it is there, and from this thought - and from the consciousness that my hut, my piece of land, is now nearby - my soul becomes joyful and scary.
Hillocks give way to gullies, hills run down into real gorges. I can’t believe my eyes - at the bottom of one such gorge, an absolutely mountainous, shallow and icy river flows between wet boulders. There are plenty of them in Altai and the Caucasus - but here? Upstream, a woman is rinsing her laundry in the bushes. The neighbor hums, she raises her head and smiles. We're moving on. The village of Fedorov Dvor climbed to the top of a bald hill. The slope rolls up to us theatrically suddenly, like a stage set on wheels. On the third attempt, in a spiral, we finally rise.
I get out of the car, look around, and slowly sit down on the wet grass. Behind the gorge there are hills one after another. Red, yellow, green (maple, birch, spruce - autumn!) - they lie, as in Roerich’s paintings, as far as the eye can see. To the horizon. Plum clouds crawl low over the hills. In the gaps between them the sun hits, causing the hills to flare up alternately, as happens when you test the light on a stage in a theater. But, of course, there is no point in competing with the Lighting Engineer, who set the lighting in this performance.
I catch myself feeling that for the first time in many years I see beauty, which for me - how can I say it? - not unreasonable. Because this beauty is part of reality, living not only in the present time - like all the beauties of the world that I have seen before. It was this reality that I acquired along with the hut - for next to nothing, as befits the most amazing things in life. It was in this reality that things were combined that were unable to fit into my mind a year ago. And now this absurd, unreasonable, wild combination - pagan mounds and villages doomed to extinction, Himalayan expanses and abandoned cemeteries with mobile communications on the graves, these alcoholic twilights where entire villages wander - and people like Foka and Lyuska, thanks to whom these villages have not yet completely faded, died out - it was this combination that awakened in me what I could call a feeling of the past. Helped me find and turn it on. Activate. Perhaps this feeling is illusory - I don’t know! But even if this is so (and this is most likely the case), I want not to lose this illusion for as long as possible. Save it, stretch it - because I have never had another illusion, so deep and selfless. After all, it is better to consider yourself adopted by a half-forgotten village - to consider an abandoned cemetery as yours - than to live without a past or with the past that those on the hill will invent for you. Because this past, brought down from above, will certainly not be in my favor.
By the way, this process is going faster than it seems.
Spring actively awakened all nature in the village of Krasilino to the beginning of a new life. Even grandfather Matvey began to crawl out of the house where he had been sitting all winter. He sometimes resembled a bear that sleeps all winter and only leaves its rookery in the spring. Grandfather Mikola was setting up frames for beehives, and grandmother Ulyana was sowing seedlings in the greenhouse.
Spring began just as it had done in all previous years.
On one of these spring days, Antonina Ivanovna received a call from her son. He had lived in the city for a long time and only occasionally came to visit his mother.
Mommy, hello! How are you there? I'm going to visit you! At the same time, I’ll bring my bride and introduce her!
Oh, how good, son. When will you arrive? When to prepare?
Mommy, just don’t prepare anything special. We will come this weekend, with an overnight stay. You don’t need to prepare much; we’ll bring everything you need with us. Bye. See you soon.
See you later, son.
Of course, Antonina Ivanovna could not greet her dear guests with empty hands and an empty table, and already on Thursday she began to prepare for their arrival. At first she spent a long time thinking about the menu for the festive table, and on Friday she began to implement her grandiose plans. I made salads, baked homemade bread, baked various vegetables. The table turned out rich and tasty.
And then the long-awaited moment came when Maksimka ran into the doorway and, lifting Mammy in his arms, spun her around the hut. He spun her around, laughing and rejoicing!
Maximka! “Put me on the floor,” my mother wailed, smiling and laughing. And she herself had a bright red blush on her cheeks from the unspeakable pleasure of meeting her son.
And when she found herself on the floor, after long hugs and kisses with her son, her gaze fell on the girl who entered after Maxim.
The girl was very beautiful - but her beauty seemed cold. She was dressed, as Baba Ulyana would say, “fashionably”: she was wearing a short blue skirt and an almost transparent blouse, covered with a slightly unbuttoned blouse. And this look was complemented by bright blue high-heeled shoes.
Antonina Ivanovna froze in surprise when she saw her son’s chosen one in front of her. She looked at her with all her eyes, trying to determine what was so interesting about her that Maxim had found.
Mommy! Meet me, this is my Natasha! Welcome my bride into your home.
Hello, Mom! – Natasha said, smiling. And her gaze carefully examined the entire situation in the old house. Yes, he looked around so much that Antonina Ivanovna felt uncomfortable with the simplicity in which she lived.
“She’s probably used to better conditions,” Antonina thought to herself and decided to do everything possible to make her son’s chosen one as comfortable as possible in her home.
Hello, Natasha! Did you immediately decide to call me Mom?! I just didn't expect it. Come on in. Wash your hands and sit down at the table.
Mommy, I told you that we will bring everything with us. “Now we’ll unpack the bags and set the table,” Maxim shouted from behind the washbasin.
Why not? I've already prepared so much. Now even potatoes will do!
Mom, we brought everything with us,” Natasha began to say, “You brought food like we brought and have never eaten.” There is nowhere to buy it here in the village. So we decided to please you and brought it with us. “Sushi” is called a dish of Japanese cuisine. This is specially prepared rice wrapped in fish and seaweed. It is very tasty to eat together with soy sauce.
How can that be! I prepared salads and baked vegetables. And my son and I never ate fish. She's alive. How can you kill it and eat it?
Mom, you haven’t even tried it, and you’re already saying that you can’t eat it,” Natalya pouted.
Girls, don't quarrel. We will put on the table dishes from both Japanese cuisine and our village Russian cuisine. We will have an international table! – Maxim tried to smooth out the tension, “Yes, mom, now I’ve started eating both fish and meat.” Nothing seems to taste like that. Natasha and I often go to restaurants. There they can cook it so well that you won’t even understand that it’s meat.
So why eat it if you don’t understand what you’re eating?
Well, that's how everyone eats. I don’t understand why you and I never ate it.
So we didn’t feed on them, because animals are our friends. How can you be friends with them if you eat them?
You know, in the city I have no time to be friends with animals. Most of my time is spent at work. To earn a lot, you need to work a lot. And I try to devote all the remaining time to Natasha.
Son, why do you need a lot of money? It turns out that you earn it in order to spend it on restaurants where they feed you fish and meat that you don’t understand. You spend on the apartment you rent. And then you’ll start spending money on doctors, because meat is absolutely not digestible by the human body. What about nature and animals? How can you not have time to communicate with them? Maybe you'll move back to the village. Here the air is cleaner, and our river is wonderful with fresh water. But you can find work here too. Just recently Pashka and his sister Yulenka returned from the city. They went there to work. And here they opened a farm with cows. Now they are recruiting workers there. If only you could see what conditions are created there for cows! There is so much light, such cleanliness, and the cows give such delicious milk! Lovely to see. And he promises to pay very good money.
Mom, why do we need to return to the village? Life in the city is interesting, but what are we going to do here? Milk cows and go to local dances? – Natasha entered the conversation.
You know, Natasha. And I agree with my mother. Why do we need to live in a city apartment? It’s easier to breathe in nature, outside the city! Maybe it’s true that you and I will think about moving to a village where we can live happily and raise children? But entertainment is all temporary. And in the village you can organize such entertainment for yourself that you yourself will like it!
Darling, let's talk about this later. After all, we came to your Mom. Let's take the time to talk to her! Find out how she lives! Mom, tell me how you live?
Then the conversation moved on to topics that were unimportant to everyone. Everyone sat down at the table and began to eat different dishes. Antonina Ivanovna could not even think about putting even a piece of these overseas delicacies into her mouth. And I kept thinking: “How can you live like this? After all, there is no meaning in life if you live in a stone box of an apartment and all you do is look for new entertainment. What did he still find in this Natasha? Yes, obviously this is not the kind of bride I wanted for my Maksimka. What to do? How can I make my son understand that he has found the wrong bride for himself? After all, she is already trying to remake him, what will happen next.”
Ulyanushka! I have some news! My son has arrived. Yes, he brought his bride into the house to meet him.
You, Antonina, are talking sadly about your daughter-in-law. Or didn’t you like it?
You know, this is probably not the kind of daughter-in-law I dreamed of for Maksimka. Our village one would be more suitable for him. To be closer to nature, and with Natasha he even started eating fish and meat. And I have no idea what to do with it now.
Antonina! Why are you sitting and wailing? I don't recognize you at all. You yourself say that you didn’t dream of such a bride for your son. And you yourself know that dreams are not built because of the opposite. Just take it and dream about a girl who would suit Maxim. Write your dream on a piece of paper, and don’t forget to take into account what good they will do in the world together, how they will live, what kind of grandchildren they will give you. And don’t forget to add about relationships with nature. It is important. Look, your dream will come true. After all, our Creator always supports everything reasonable and thoughtful. As they say, it doesn’t matter to him what dreams he fulfills, as long as the person clearly knows what he wants. Maxim will come to his senses and meet his true Love!
And really, why am I! I’ll go home and, while Maximka and his new bride are walking, I’ll write a dream about him with my real Beloved.
And Antonina Ivanovna went to her hut to formalize her dream. And she came up with a whole poem.
There are so many words and so many poems,
In this big and beautiful world,
To describe your feelings
On paper with a playful pattern.
But sometimes I missed them too
Tell me how much you and dad love you!
Will you make the Creator's dream come true,
He dreamed about you with his beloved.
You will live happily on your native Earth
Together with affectionate, gentle and kind.
Let your beloved meet you
And you will go through life with her smoothly.
Children will make you happy
Making all your dreams come true.
Life will be full of miracles and beauty,
To the joy of the entire Universe!
Antonina Ivanovna, satisfied, folded the notebook and put it in the sideboard. She seemed to have hope that, as she wished, it would happen. And that her Maksimka will be happy and loved. And he will find himself a girl so that he can live in happiness with her and raise beautiful children.
Meanwhile, Maxim and Natalya returned from their walk. And he began to tell how on the way they met Yulia, whom they had not seen since childhood and with whom they grew up together before everyone’s eyes.
She has changed so much! You just won't know at all. She became so prettier and blossomed. The guy with whom she will build a life will be lucky!
And what did you see in this village simpleton?! – Natalya chuckled, “And I don’t understand why she and her brother returned to the village.” After all, what awaits her here? All their lives, cows have to twist their tails and carry manure out of the barn. It would be better to stay in the city. There are prospects, careers, and suitors. And here? What is waiting for her here?
So here she has a real life! Here she is in nature. You should see how she talks to the cows! They themselves run to her for milking! She will caress them, and talk to them, and hug them with a kind word. The cows are drawn to her. And how much milk they give her! All the village women are surprised. Yulenka knows some secret! – Antonina Ivanovna happily praised Yulia, to whom she had recently become attached as if she were her own daughter.
“If Maxim had chosen Yulenka as his bride, happiness would have settled in his house forever! They would have doted on each other! And they would have love for the rest of their lives forever!” - Antonina Ivanovna thought to herself.
The weekend flew by unnoticed amid conversations and household chores, and Maxim and Natasha returned to the city. And they promised to come much more often.
Life in Krasilino for Antonina Ivanovna returned to its previous course. But she increasingly began to think about Yulenka as a wonderful Beloved for her son. Moreover, Yulia also began to show interest in Maxim. The other day I came to visit for tea, brought with me a baked pie and slowly began to ask how Maxim was living, what was new in his life. Such interest sincerely pleased Antonina Ivanovna, but she knew for sure that she shouldn’t ask unnecessary questions. After all, she wrote a strong dream, and if Maxim is truly Yulenka’s Beloved, everything will be fine with them and they will be happy together. Antonina Ivanovna always believed in her dream unconditionally. I knew that you just had to really want it and put strong feelings into your dream - and everything would definitely come true. So she dreamed of Maxim and Yulia as a happy couple and more and more often imagined them together.
A little time passed, and Maxim came to Mamula again. For some reason, he arrived alone, without Natasha, and stubbornly refused to talk about this topic.
“Something obviously didn’t work out for them,” Antonina Ivanovna thought, but did not pursue the topic. She was glad to arrive and, as usual, fussed about setting the table.
Mommy, how is Yulenka doing? I haven't seen her for a long time. I'd like to see you. We had such a great conversation last time, she told me so much! Do you know where she might be today?
How could you not know? In the barn, where else! She and her cows are cooing at this time. Now is just time for lunch milking! She's probably working with them now. Go and at the same time, maybe you can help with the housework. They have a lot of cows, but there are no workers yet. Pasha and Yulia mostly work together. I don’t know what they would do if their cows weren’t so smart. After all, they only come into the barn so that Yulia and Pasha can milk them. And if you go to the toilet, they don’t do anything in the barn. They go out onto the street. And on the street - the fertilizer is immediately ready and there is no need to clean the shed. I don’t know how Yulia came to an agreement with them, the whole village is surprised at such miracles!
Mommy, you tell some truly fantastic stories! Then I’ll run to the farm, I want to see these miracles myself. There, you see, maybe my help will really be useful.
And Maxim ran out of the house, and Antonina Ivanovna only joyfully smiled after him.
Maxim returned home only in the evening. Smiling contentedly, he picked Mommy up in his arms and spun her around the hut.
Mommy, do you happen to know why I’m so happy! The soul just sings! And by the way, I agreed with Pasha that starting next month I will work with him and Yulia on the farm. I’m moving back to my native village. Are you glad?
Of course I'm glad, son. But this is so unexpected. You haven't told me anything about your plans before.
You know, I never thought that I would come back. And today I met with Pavel and Yulia, saw how great everything was set up for them, and it was as if I had returned back to a children’s fairy tale. They really are like in a fantasy world. All the animals seem to be trained, but in reality this is not the case. They just somehow know how to communicate with them in such a way that all animals simply understand human speech, or more, probably, they understand not the words, but the love with which the guys treat them. And they are looking for people to work who will love animals. You know, when I approached the cows, they were very wary, and Yulia immediately asked if I ate meat. It turns out that any animal can sense whether I have ever eaten meat from fish or other animals. And if they feel this, then they are very wary of the person. In this case, they do not know what to expect from a person - what if he turns them into meat too. But Yulia and Pasha never ate meat, and therefore all the animals know that they can be trusted. And that they are simply truly loved. But you were right when you didn’t feed me meat as a child! Thank you, Mommy!
Misha Petrov decided to comprehend the sweetness of the Jesus Prayer. So, he thinks, I’ll lock myself somewhere far away, so that there are no friends, no telephone, no email. Day and night, prayer, rare sleep, a meager meal, so, water, crackers, and reading holy books.
I hesitated for a long time because of the mobile phone, whether to take it, it’s still in the wilderness, you never know what will happen, but then I realized that roaming does not happen in the wilderness. And I left my cell phone at home.
The session had just ended, this year’s practice could be completed in September, and Misha decided to run to a house in the village, bought a year ago on a bet during a dialectological expedition from a grandmother - for four thousand rubles combined. Misha and his three comrades then won ten bottles of beer from the girls. It was the house of my grandmother’s late sister, and my grandmother was glad to see these thousands, she promised to look after the house, and all that.
Misha told his parents and three other co-owner friends that he was going to visit their estate; of course, not a word about prayer - and the friends were very happy, but no one wanted to go with Misha - everyone had other plans.
Misha drove for two and a half days and finally arrived in Osanovo. That was the name of this village with a house. He knocks on the door of the saleswoman; her name was a little literary, Agafya Tikhonovna, but still she was a real Siberian grandmother. In general, like Valentin Rasputin.
“Hello, Agafya Tikhonovna,” Misha says to her. - What about our little hut on chicken legs? Didn’t it burn down?
What you! - Agafya Tikhonovna got angry. - It's worth it.
And they went to the other end of the village to visit the house. The house really stood, only it seemed a little smaller to Misha this year, and poorer, but still the same. The grandmother opened the door, he entered the house - and there was a smell of some kind of herbs, and they hung in bunches in the hallway for who knows how many years.
It's a bit dark, of course, but that's okay. The grandmother left, Misha threw down his backpack, looked around, found buckets and some rags, went to the well for water, and washed the windows. It immediately became brighter. Then Misha hung up the icons - what to pray in front of? He put the sacred books in a pile next to him and hung his rosary on his hand. He just feels like it’s time to have a snack. Well, what is prayer without a meal?
I got food brought from Moscow, canned food, sugar, salt, and cucumbers, but no bread!
I went to the local store. This is what capitalism means: last year this store was not here, but now here it is - brick, neat, and in general everything is there. And Coca-Cola and Snickers. I bought myself both. But also bread. And then Agafya Tikhonovna comes to the store - she’s looking for him, you come to me, I’ll give you some potatoes, last year’s, big as a fist. And so it turned out. And Agafya Tikhonovna added three eggs to his potatoes - from her own chickens. Then Marya Egorovna, a neighbor, came to Tikhonovna and also called him to her. Misha went, Egorovna treated him to a jar of milk from her cow and invited him to come again.
Misha laid out all his wealth on an unpainted wooden table, bread, potatoes, poured fresh milk into an iron mug, and fried scrambled eggs with abnormally yellow yolks. A grass spirit spreads across the hut, oddly enough, not a single fly. He sits and thinks: “Lord, how good! So I have icons hanging here, and books are laid out, what else do I need? Now I’ll eat and start praying. And I don’t even set foot outside, all this is useless—distraction.”
But after lunch, Misha took out a sleeping bag, laid it out right on the floor and fell asleep like a log. He wakes up, and his conscience torments him - you keep sleeping and eating, but what about the Jesus Prayer, why did you come here? But the rosary got caught somewhere, it got in the way on his hand, and Misha was embarrassed to go out with it, he took it off before going to the store, but he didn’t remember where it went. I searched, I searched, I found. We ended up in the hallway, on a carnation, I forgot how I hung it. Finally, he quietly stood in front of the icons, lit the lamp, everything was as it should be. Suddenly it got dark outside, it began to rain, and - wow! - the ceiling, just above the holy corner, began to darken - water was passing through, the roof was leaking.
As soon as the rain stopped, Misha hurried to the roof, one rung on the stairs broke off, he could barely climb up, and everything there really rotted... In general, there was enough to do, and Misha, despite being a boy from an intelligent family, took on everything, did everything willingly, and he helped the grandmothers a lot, and ran his own farm, he felt like a master, a simple man in his native land, Lev Nikolaevich in the late period.
Well, what about prayer? But everything was fine anyway. Misha returned tanned and even a little fatter. Agafya Tikhonovna and Marya Egorovna fattened him up properly.
