Vaska Denisov pig thief analysis. Objectives: Educational: show unusual life experience B

For an evening trip I had to borrow a pea coat from a friend. Vaska’s pea coat was too dirty and torn, it was impossible to walk two steps around the village in it - any freestyle would have snatched it right away.

People like Vaska are driven around the village only with an escort, in ranks. Neither the military nor the civilian free people like to see people like Vaska walking along the streets of the village alone. They do not arouse suspicion only when they are carrying firewood: a small log or, as they say here, a “stick of firewood” on their shoulder.

Such a stick was buried in the snow not far from the garage - the sixth telegraph pole from the turn, in a ditch. This was done yesterday after work.

Now a familiar driver held the car, and Denisov leaned over the side and slid to the ground. He immediately found the place where he buried the log - the bluish snow here was a little darker, it was flattened, this was visible in the beginning twilight. Vaska jumped into the ditch and kicked the snow away with his feet. A log appeared, gray, steep-sided, like a large frozen fish. Vaska pulled the log onto the road, stood it upright, knocked to knock the snow off the log, and bent over, putting his shoulder up and lifting the log with his hands. The log swayed and fell on his shoulder. Vaska walked into the village, changing his shoulder from time to time. He was weak and exhausted, so he quickly warmed up, but the warmth did not last long - no matter how noticeable the weight of the log was, Vaska did not warm up. Dusk thickened with whiteout, the village turned on all the yellow electric lights. Vaska grinned, pleased with his calculation: in the white fog he could easily reach his goal unnoticed. Here is a broken huge larch, a silver stump covered in frost, which means - to the next house.

Vaska threw the log at the porch, brushed the snow off his felt boots with his mittens and knocked on the door. The door opened slightly and Vaska let in. An elderly, bare-haired woman in an unbuttoned sheepskin coat looked questioningly and fearfully at Vaska.

“I brought you some firewood,” said Vaska, with difficulty pushing the frozen skin of his face into the folds of a smile. - I would like Ivan Petrovich.

But Ivan Petrovich himself was already leaving, lifting the curtain with his hand.

“That’s good,” he said. - Where are they?

“In the yard,” said Vaska.

- So you wait, we’ll have a drink, now I’ll get dressed. Ivan Petrovich searched for mittens for a long time. They went out onto the porch and, without a sawhorse, pressing the log with their feet, lifting it, sawed it. The saw was unsharpened and had a bad blade.

“You’ll come in later,” said Ivan Petrovich. - You will guide me. And now here’s the cleaver... And then you’ll fold it, but not in the corridor, but drag it straight into the apartment.

Vaska’s head was spinning from hunger, but he chopped all the wood and dragged it into the apartment.

“Well, that’s it,” said the woman, crawling out from under the curtain. - All.

But Vaska did not leave and hovered near the door. Ivan Petrovich appeared again.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t have any bread right now, they took all the soup to the piglets, too, I have nothing to give you now.” Will you come this week...

Vaska was silent and did not leave.

Ivan Petrovich rummaged in his wallet.

- Here's three rubles for you. Only for you for such firewood, and for tobacco - you understand! – tobacco is expensive these days.

Vaska hid the crumpled piece of paper in his bosom and went out. For three rubles he wouldn’t buy even a pinch of shag.

He was still standing on the porch. He was sick from hunger. The piglets ate Vaska's bread and soup. Vaska took out a green piece of paper and tore it into pieces. Pieces of paper, caught by the wind, rolled for a long time along the polished, shiny crust. And when the last scraps disappeared into the white fog, Vaska left the porch. Swaying slightly from weakness, he walked, but not home, but into the depths of the village, he kept walking and walking - to one-story, two-story, three-story wooden palaces...

He walked onto the first porch and pulled the door handle. The door creaked and moved away heavily. Vaska entered a dark corridor, dimly lit by a dim electric light bulb. He walked past the apartment doors. At the end of the corridor there was a closet, and Vaska, leaning on the door, opened it and stepped over the threshold. In the closet there were bags of onions, maybe salt. Vaska tore one of the bags - cereal. In annoyance, he got excited again, leaned his shoulder and rolled the bag to the side - under the bags lay frozen pork carcasses. Vaska screamed with anger - he didn’t have enough strength to tear off even a piece of the carcass. But further on, frozen piglets lay under the bags, and Vaska could no longer see anything. He tore off the frozen pig and, holding it in his hands like a doll, like a child, walked towards the exit. But people were already leaving the rooms, white steam filled the corridor. Someone shouted: “Stop!” – and threw himself at Vaska’s feet. Vaska jumped, holding the piglet tightly in his hands, and ran out into the street. The inhabitants of the house rushed after him. Someone shot after him, someone roared like an animal, but Vaska rushed on, seeing nothing. And a few minutes later he saw that his legs themselves were carrying him to the only government house that he knew in the village - to the department of vitamin business trips, on one of which Vaska worked as a collector of dwarf wood.

The chase was close. Vaska ran up onto the porch, pushed the attendant away and rushed down the corridor. The crowd of pursuers thundered from behind. Vaska rushed into the office of the head of cultural work and jumped out through another door - into the red corner. There was nowhere to run further. Vaska just now saw that he had lost his hat. The frozen pig was still in his hands. Vaska put the pig on the floor, rolled up the massive benches and blocked the door with them. He dragged the pulpit-tribune there too. Someone shook the door and there was silence.

Then Vaska sat down on the floor, took a piglet in both hands, a raw, frozen piglet, and gnawed and gnawed...

When a detachment of riflemen was called, and the doors were open, and the barricade was dismantled, Vaska managed to eat half of the pig...

Seraphim

The letter lay on the black, smoky table like a piece of ice. The doors of the iron barrel stove were open, the coal glowed like lingonberry jam in a can, and the piece of ice was supposed to melt, thin out, and disappear. But the piece of ice did not melt, and Seraphim was frightened, realizing that the piece of ice was a letter, and a letter to him, Seraphim. Seraphim was afraid of letters, especially free ones, with official stamps. He grew up in a village where a telegram still received or sent, “returned”, speaks of a tragic event: a funeral, death, serious illness...

The letter lay face down, address side, on the Seraphim table; unwinding his scarf and unbuttoning his sheepskin coat, stiffened by the frost, Seraphim looked at the envelope without taking his eyes off.

So he left twelve thousand miles, beyond the high mountains, beyond the blue seas, wanting to forget everything and forgive everything, but the past does not want to leave him alone. A letter came from beyond the mountains, a letter from that not yet forgotten world. The letter was transported by train, by plane, by ship, by car, by reindeer to the village where Seraphim hid.

And here is the letter here, in a small chemical laboratory where Seraphim works as a laboratory assistant.

The log walls, ceiling, and cabinets of the laboratory have turned black not from time, but from the round-the-clock firing of the stoves, and the inside of the house seems like some kind of ancient hut. The square windows of the laboratory are similar to the mica windows of Peter the Great's times. At the mine, glass is protected and the window frames are made into fine bars so that every piece of glass can be used, and, if necessary, a broken bottle. A yellow electric lamp under a hood hung from a wooden beam like a suicide. Its light dimmed and then brightened - instead of engines, tractors worked at the power plant.

Seraphim undressed and sat down by the stove, still not touching the envelope. He was alone in the laboratory.

A year ago, when what they called a “family spat” happened, he did not want to give in. He left for the Far North not because he was a romantic or a man of duty. The long ruble didn’t interest him either. But Seraphim believed, in accordance with the judgments of thousands of philosophers and a dozen familiar ordinary people, that separation takes away love, that miles and years will cope with any grief.

A year passed, and in Seraphim’s heart everything remained the same, and he secretly marveled at the strength of his feelings. Was it because he didn't talk to women anymore? They simply weren't there. There were wives of high-ranking bosses - a social class unusually far from Seraphim's laboratory assistant. Every well-fed lady considered herself a beauty, and such ladies lived in villages where there was more entertainment and the connoisseurs of their charms were richer. Moreover, there were many military men in the villages: the lady was not in danger of sudden gang rape by drivers or thugs-prisoners - this happened every now and then on the road or in small areas.

Therefore, geological prospectors and camp commanders kept their wives in large villages, places where manicurists created entire fortunes for themselves.

But there was another side to the matter - “bodily melancholy” turned out to be not such a terrible thing as Seraphim thought in his youth. I just needed to think less about it.

Prisoners worked at the mine, and many times in the summer Seraphim looked from the porch at the gray rows of prisoners crawling into the main adit and crawling out of it after their shifts.

Two prison engineers worked in the laboratory; they were brought in and out by a convoy, and Seraphim was afraid to talk to them. They asked only business things - the result of an analysis or test - he answered them, averting his eyes to the side. Seraphim was scared about this back in Moscow when he was hired in the Far North, they said that there were dangerous state criminals there, and Seraphim was afraid to bring even a piece of sugar or white bread to his workmates. He was, however, being watched by the head of the laboratory, Presnyakov, a Komsomol member, confused by his own unusually high salary and high position immediately after graduating from the institute. He considered his main responsibility to be political control over his employees (and perhaps that was all that was required of him), both prisoners and civilians.

Seraphim was older than his manager, but obediently carried out everything that he ordered in the sense of the notorious vigilance and prudence.

For a year, he did not exchange even a dozen words on extraneous topics with the imprisoned engineers.

Seraphim did not say anything at all to the orderly and night watchman.

Every six months, the salary of a northern contract worker increased by ten percent. After receiving the second bonus, Seraphim begged for a trip to a neighboring village, just a hundred kilometers away, to buy something, go to a movie, have lunch in a real canteen, “look at women,” and shave at a hairdresser.

Seraphim climbed into the back of the truck, raised his collar, wrapped himself tightly, and the car sped off.

An hour and a half later the car stopped at some house. Seraphim got down and squinted from the harsh spring light.

Two men with rifles stood in front of Seraphim.

- Documentation!

Seraphim reached into his jacket pocket and felt cold - he had forgotten his passport at home. And, as luck would have it, no piece of paper identifying him. Nothing but an analysis of the air from the mine. Seraphim was ordered to go to the hut.

The car drove away.

The unshaven, short-haired Seraphim did not inspire confidence in his boss.

-Where did you run from?

- Out of nowhere...

A sudden crack knocked Seraphim off his feet.

- Answer as expected!

- Yes, I will complain! - Seraphim yelled.

- Oh, are you going to complain? Hey Semyon!

Semyon took aim and, with a gymnastic gesture, habitually and deftly kicked Seraphim in the solar plexus.

Seraphim gasped and lost consciousness.

He vaguely remembered how he was dragged somewhere right along the road, he lost his hat. The lock rang, the door creaked, and the soldiers threw Seraphim into some smelly but warm barn.

A few hours later, Seraphim caught his breath and realized that he was in an isolation ward, where all the fugitives and fines - prisoners of the village - were collected.

- Do you have any tobacco? – someone asked from the darkness.

- No. “I’m a non-smoker,” Seraphim said guiltily.

- What a fool. Does he have anything?

- There is nothing. After these cormorants, what will be left?

Seraphim, with the greatest effort, realized that they were talking about him, and “cormorants”, obviously, are the name given to the guards for their greed and omnivorousness.

“I had money,” said Seraphim.

– That’s exactly “were.”

Seraphim was delighted and fell silent. He took two thousand rubles with him on the trip, and, thank God, this money was confiscated and kept by the convoy. Everything will soon become clear, and Seraphim will be released and his money will be returned to him. Seraphim cheered up.

“I’ll have to give the guards a hundred,” he thought, “for storage.” However, what should you give for? Because they beat him?

In a cramped hut without any windows, where the only air access was through the front door and ice-covered cracks in the walls, about twenty people were lying right on the ground.

Seraphim was hungry, and he asked his neighbor when there would be dinner.

- Are you really free, or what? Eat tomorrow. After all, we are in a government position: a mug of water and rations - three hundred for a day. And seven kilograms of firewood.

Seraphim was not called anywhere, and he lived here for five whole days. The first day he screamed and knocked on the door, but after the guard on duty, with a contrivance, grabbed him in the forehead with a rifle butt, he stopped complaining. Instead of the lost hat, Seraphim was given some kind of lump of material, which he hardly put on his head.

On the sixth day, he was called into the office, where the same boss who received him was sitting at the table, and the head of the laboratory was standing against the wall, extremely dissatisfied with both Seraphim’s absenteeism and the loss of time traveling to get the laboratory assistant’s identification card.

Presnyakov gasped slightly when he saw Seraphim: there was a blue bruise under his right eye, and on his head was a torn, dirty cloth cap without strings. Seraphim was in a tight, tattered padded jacket without buttons, overgrown with a beard, dirty - he had to leave his fur coat in the punishment cell - with red, inflamed eyes. He made a strong impression.

“Well,” said Presnyakov, “this is the same one.” Can we go? – And the head of the laboratory dragged Seraphim to the exit.

- And m-money? - Seraphim mumbled, resisting and pushing Presnyakov away.

- Two thousand rubles. I took it with me.

“You see,” the boss laughed and pushed Presnyakov in the side. - I told you so. Drunk, without a hat...

Seraphim stepped through the threshold and was silent all the way home.

After this incident, Seraphim began to think about suicide. He even asked the imprisoned engineer why he, the prisoner, did not commit suicide.

The engineer was amazed - Seraphim had not spoken two words to him in a year. He paused, trying to understand Seraphim.

- How are you? How do you live? – Seraphim whispered hotly.

- Yes, the life of a prisoner is a continuous chain of humiliations from the minute he opens his eyes and ears until the beginning of beneficial sleep. Yes, all this is true, but you get used to everything. And then there are better days and worse days, days of hopelessness are replaced by days of hope. A person lives not because he believes in something, hopes for something. The instinct of life protects him, as it protects any animal. And any tree and any stone could repeat the same thing. Beware when you have to fight for life within yourself, when your nerves are tense and inflamed, beware of exposing your heart, your mind from some unexpected side. When concentrating your remaining strength against something, beware of being hit from behind. There may not be enough strength for a new, unusual struggle. Any suicide is the obligatory result of double influence, of at least two reasons. Did you understand me?

Seraphim understood.

Now he was sitting in a smoky laboratory and for some reason recalled his trip with a feeling of shame and with a feeling of heavy responsibility that fell on him forever. He didn't want to live.

The letter was still lying on the black laboratory table, and it was scary to pick it up.

Seraphim imagined his lines, his wife’s handwriting, handwriting slanted to the left: this handwriting revealed her age - in the twenties, schools didn’t teach how to write slanted to the right, anyone wrote as they wanted.

Seraphim imagined the lines of the letter as if he had read it without tearing the envelope. The letter could begin:

“My dear”, or “Dear Sima”, or “Seraphim”. He was afraid of the latter.

What if he takes it and, without reading it, tears the envelope into small pieces and throws them into the ruby fire of the stove? The whole obsession will end, and it will be easier for him to breathe again - at least until the next letter. But he’s not such a coward, after all! He is not a coward at all, he is an engineer who is a coward, and he will prove it to him. He will prove it to everyone.

And Seraphim took the letter and turned it with the address facing up. His guess was correct - the letter was from Moscow, from his wife. He furiously tore the envelope and, going to the light bulb, read the letter while standing. His wife wrote to him about divorce.

Seraphim threw the letter into the oven, and it flared up with a white flame with a blue rim and disappeared.

Seraphim began to act confidently and slowly. He took the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the closet in Presnyakov’s room. He poured a pinch of gray powder from a glass jar into a beaker, scooped a mug of water from a bucket, added it to the beaker, stirred and drank.

A burning sensation in the throat, a slight urge to vomit - that’s all.

He sat, looking at his watch, not remembering anything, for a full thirty minutes. No effect other than a sore throat. Then Seraphim hurried. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out his pocketknife. Then Seraphim tore a vein in his left arm: dark blood flowed onto the floor. Seraphim felt a joyful feeling of weakness. But the blood flowed less and less, more and more quietly.

Seraphim realized that there would be no bleeding, that he would remain alive, that the self-defense of his own body was stronger than the desire to die. Now he remembered what needed to be done. He somehow put on a short fur coat in one sleeve - without a short fur coat it was too cold outside - and without a hat, raising his collar, he ran to the river, which flowed a hundred paces from the laboratory. It was a mountain river with deep narrow gullies, steaming like boiling water in the dark frosty air.

Seraphim remembered how last year the first snow fell in late autumn and the river was covered with thin ice. And the duck, lagging behind the flight, exhausted in the fight against the snow, sank onto the young ice. Seraphim remembered how a man, some kind of prisoner, ran out onto the ice and, with his arms outstretched comically, tried to catch a duck. The duck ran across the ice to a ravine and dived under the ice, popping up in the next hole. The man ran, cursing the bird; he was no less exhausted than the duck and continued to run after her from gulch to gulch. Twice he fell through on the ice and, swearing dirty, took a long time to crawl onto the ice floe.

There were many people standing around, but not one helped either the duck or the hunter. This was his prey, his find, and for help he had to pay, share... The exhausted man crawled on the ice, cursing everything in the world. It ended with the duck diving and not coming up - it probably drowned from fatigue.

Seraphim remembered how he then tried to imagine the death of a duck, how it hit its head on the ice in the water and how it saw the blue sky through the ice. Now Seraphim was running to this very place of the river.

He jumped straight into the icy, steaming water, breaking off the snow-covered edge of the blue ice. The water was waist-deep, but the current was strong, and Seraphim was knocked off his feet. He threw down his sheepskin coat and joined his hands, forcing himself to dive under the ice.

But people were already shouting and running all around, dragging boards and adjusting them across the gulley. Someone managed to grab Seraphim by the hair.

They carried him straight to the hospital. They stripped him, warmed him up, and tried to pour warm sweet tea down his throat. Seraphim was silent and shook his head.

The hospital doctor approached him, holding a syringe with a glucose solution, but saw a torn vein and looked up at Seraphim.

Seraphim smiled. Glucose was injected into the right arm. The seasoned old doctor unclenched Seraphim’s teeth with a spatula, looked at his throat and called a surgeon.

The operation was done immediately, but too late. The walls of the stomach and esophagus were eaten away by acid - Seraphim’s initial calculation was completely correct.

Day off

Two sky-colored squirrels, black-faced and black-tailed, gazed enthusiastically at what was happening behind the silver larches. I approached the tree on whose branches they were sitting, almost close, and only then did the squirrels notice me. Squirrel claws rustled along the bark of the tree, the blue bodies of the animals darted upward and fell silent somewhere high, high. Crumbs of bark stopped falling onto the snow. I saw what the squirrels were looking at.

A man was praying in a forest clearing. His cloth hat with earflaps lay in a lump at his feet, and frost had already whitened his cropped head. There was an amazing expression on his face - the same one that happens on the faces of people remembering their childhood or something equally dear. The man crossed himself sweepingly and quickly: with the three folded fingers of his right hand, he seemed to be pulling his own head down. I didn’t recognize him right away - there was so much new in his facial features. It was prisoner Zamyatin, a priest from the same barracks as me.

Still not seeing me, he spoke quietly and solemnly, with lips numb from the cold, the familiar words I had remembered from childhood. These were Slavic formulas for the liturgical service - Zamyatin served mass in the silver forest.

He slowly crossed himself, straightened up and saw me. Solemnity and tenderness disappeared from his face, and the usual folds on the bridge of his nose brought his eyebrows closer together. Zamyatin did not like ridicule. He picked up his hat, shook it and put it on.

“You served the liturgy,” I began.

“No, no,” Zamyatin said, smiling at my ignorance. - How can I serve mass? I have neither gifts nor stole. This is a government towel.

And he straightened the dirty waffle rag that hung around his neck and really resembled an epitrachelion. The frost covered the towel with snow crystal, the crystal sparkled iridescently in the sun, like embroidered church fabric.

“Besides, I’m ashamed—I don’t know where east is.” The sun now rises for two hours and sets behind the same mountain from behind which it came out. Where is the east?

– Is it so important – the east?

- Of course not. Do not leave. I tell you that I do not serve and cannot serve. I'm just repeating, I remember the Sunday service. And I don't know if today is Sunday?

“Thursday,” I said. “The warden spoke this morning.

- You see, it’s Thursday. No, no, I don't serve. It's just easier for me this way. And I want to eat less,” Zamyatin smiled.

I know that every person here had their own most recent, the most important thing is what helped us live, cling to life, which was so persistently and stubbornly taken away from us. If for Zamyatin this last was the liturgy of John Chrysostom, then my last saving grace was poetry - other people’s favorite poems, which were miraculously remembered where everything else was long forgotten, thrown out, expelled from memory. The only thing that had not yet been suppressed by fatigue, frost, hunger and endless humiliation.

Sunset. The swift darkness of the early winter evening had already filled the space between the trees.

I wandered into the barracks where we lived - a low, oblong hut with small windows, like a tiny stable. Grabbing the heavy, icy door with both hands, I heard a rustling in the neighboring hut. There was a “tool room” - a storage room where tools were stored: saws, shovels, axes, crowbars, miners’ picks.

On weekends the instrumental was locked, but now there was no lock. I stepped through the threshold of the instrumental, and the heavy door almost slammed me. There were so many cracks in the pantry that my eyes quickly got used to the twilight.

Two thieves were tickling a large shepherd puppy about four months old. The puppy lay on its back, squealing and waving all four paws. The older thug was holding the puppy by the collar. My arrival did not bother the thugs - we were from the same brigade.

- Hey, you, who is on the street?

“There’s no one,” I answered.

“Well, come on,” said the older thug.

“Wait, let me play a little more,” answered the young man. - Look how it’s beating. “He felt the puppy’s warm side near the heart and tickled the puppy.

The puppy squealed trustingly and licked the human hand.

- Oh, you lick... So you won’t lick. Senya…

Semyon, holding the puppy by the collar with his left hand, pulled out an ax from behind his back with his right hand and with a quick short swing brought it down on the dog’s head. The puppy rushed, blood splashed onto the icy floor of the instrumental.

- Hold him tight! - Semyon shouted, raising the ax a second time.

“Why keep him, he’s not a rooster,” said the young man.

“Take off the skin while it’s warm,” Semyon taught. - And bury it in the snow.

In the evening, the smell of meat soup did not allow anyone to sleep in the barracks until everything was eaten by the thugs. But we had too few thieves in the barracks to eat a whole puppy. There was still some meat left in the pot.

Semyon beckoned me with his finger.

- Take it.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“Well, then...” Semyon looked around the bunk. “Then we’ll give you your ass.” Hey, dad, take some lamb from us. Just wash the pot...

Zamyatin appeared from the darkness into the yellow light of a gasoline smokehouse, took the pot and disappeared. Five minutes later he returned with a washed pot.

- Already? – Semyon asked with interest. – You swallow quickly... Like a seagull. This, dad, is not lamb, but dog. The dog came to see you here - it's called Nord.

Zamyatin looked at Semyon silently. Then he turned and left. I followed him out. Zamyatin stood outside the doors in the snow. He was vomiting. His face seemed leaden in the moonlight. Sticky, sticky saliva hung from his blue lips. Zamyatin wiped himself with his sleeve and looked at me angrily.

“These are bastards,” I said.

“Yes, of course,” said Zamyatin. - But the meat was tasty. No worse than lamb.

Domino

The orderlies took me away from the decimal scales. Their powerful cold hands did not let me fall to the floor.

- How many? - the doctor shouted, dipping his pen into the sippy inkwell with a thud.

- Forty eight.

I was placed on a stretcher. My height is one hundred and eighty centimeters, my normal weight is eighty kilograms. The weight of the bones is forty-two percent of the total weight - thirty-two kilograms. On this icy evening I had sixteen kilograms left, exactly a pound of everything: skin, meat, entrails and brain. I could not have calculated all this then, but I vaguely understood that all this was being done by the doctor, looking at me from under his brows.

The doctor unlocked the desk lock, pulled out a drawer, carefully took out a thermometer, then leaned over me and carefully placed the thermometer in my left armpit. Immediately, one of the orderlies pressed my left hand to his chest, and the second orderly grabbed my right wrist with both hands. These memorized, practiced movements became clear to me later - in the entire hospital there was one thermometer for a hundred beds. The glass changed its value, its scale - it was cherished like a jewel. Only seriously ill and newly admitted patients were allowed to measure their temperature with this instrument.

The temperature of those recovering was recorded by pulse, and only in cases of doubt was the desk drawer unlocked.

The clock ticked for ten minutes, the doctor carefully took out the thermometer, and the orderlies' hands unclenched.

“Thirty-four and three,” said the doctor. -Can you answer?

I showed with my eyes “I can.” I saved my strength. The words were pronounced slowly and difficultly - it was like translating from a foreign language. I forgot everything. I'm out of the habit of remembering. The recording of the medical history ended, and the orderlies easily lifted the stretcher on which I was lying on my back.

“To the sixth,” said the doctor. - Closer to the stove.

They laid me on a trestle bed by the stove. The mattresses were stuffed with dwarf branches, the needles had fallen off and dried out, the bare branches hunched over menacingly under the dirty striped fabric. Hay dust fell from the tightly stuffed dirty pillow. A sparse, worn cloth blanket with sewn gray letters “legs” sheltered me from the whole world. The string-like muscles of his arms and legs ached, his frostbitten fingers itched. But the fatigue was stronger than the pain. I curled up into a ball, wrapped my arms around my legs, my dirty shins covered with coarse-grained, crocodile-like skin, rested my chin on my chin and fell asleep.

I woke up many hours later. My breakfasts, lunches, and dinners were on the floor next to the bed. I reached out, grabbed the nearest tin bowl and began to eat everything, from time to time taking tiny bites from the ration of bread lying right there. The patients from the neighboring trestle beds watched as I swallowed food. They didn’t ask me who I was or where I was from: my crocodile skin spoke for itself. They would not even look at me, but - I knew this from myself - one cannot take one’s eyes off the spectacle of a person eating.

I swallowed the food provided. Warmth, a delicious heaviness in the stomach and sleep again - short-lived, because the orderly came for me. I threw the only “usual” robe of the ward over my shoulders, dirty, burnt with cigarette butts, heavy from the absorbed sweat of many hundreds of people, put my feet into huge slippers and, slowly moving my feet so that the shoes would not fall off, I followed the orderly into the treatment room.

The same young doctor stood at the window and looked out at the street through the rusty glass, shaggy from the accumulated ice. A rag hung from the corner of the window sill, water dripped from it, drop by drop, into a tin dinner bowl. The iron stove hummed. I stopped, holding onto the orderly with both hands.

“Let’s continue,” said the doctor.

“It’s cold,” I answered quietly. The food I just ate no longer warmed me.

- Sit down by the stove. Where did you work outside?

I parted my lips, moved my jaws - it should have turned out to be a smile. The doctor understood this and smiled back.

“My name is Andrei Mikhailovich,” he said. – There is no need for you to undergo treatment.

I felt a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Yes,” the doctor repeated in a loud voice. – You have no need to be treated. You need to be fed and washed. You need to lie down, lie down and eat. True, our mattresses are not feather beds. Well, never mind – toss and turn a lot, and there won’t be bedsores. Lie down for two months. And there is spring.

The doctor chuckled. I felt joy, of course: of course! Two whole months! But I was unable to express my joy. I held the stool with my hands and was silent. The doctor wrote something down in the medical history.

I returned to the room, slept and ate. A week later I was already walking with unsteady legs around the ward, along the corridor, and through other wards. I looked for people chewing, swallowing, I looked into their mouths, because the more I rested, the more and more acutely I wanted to eat.

In the hospital, as in the camp, they did not provide spoons at all. We learned to do without a fork and knife back in the pre-trial prison. We have long been trained to eat food “over the side”, without a spoon - neither soup nor porridge was ever so thick that a spoon was needed. A finger, a crust of bread and a tongue scraped the bottom of a pot or bowl of any depth.

I walked around and looked for people chewing. It was an urgent, imperative need, and Andrei Mikhailovich was familiar with this feeling.

At night the orderly woke me up. The room was noisy with the usual nightly hospital noise: wheezing, snoring, moaning, delirious conversation, coughing - everything mixed into a kind of sound symphony, if a symphony can be composed of such sounds. But take me with my eyes closed to such a place - I will recognize the camp hospital.

There is a lamp on the windowsill - a tin saucer with some kind of oil - but not fish oil! – and a smoky wick twisted from cotton wool. It was probably not very late yet, our night began with lights out, at nine o’clock in the evening, and we fell asleep somehow right away, our feet would get a little warm.

“The name was Andrei Mikhailovich,” said the orderly. “There’s Kozlik, he’ll see you out.”

The patient, called Kozlik, stood in front of me.

I went to the tin washstand, washed my face and, returning to the room, wiped my face and hands on the pillowcase. There was only one huge towel made from an old striped mattress for a room of thirty people and was given out only in the mornings. Andrei Mikhailovich lived at the hospital in one of the outer small wards - postoperative patients were placed in such wards. I knocked on the door and entered.

There were books on the table, pushed to the side, books that I had not held in my hands for so many years. The books were alien, unfriendly, unnecessary. Next to the books stood a teapot, two tin mugs and a full bowl of some kind of porridge...

– Would you like to play dominoes? - said Andrei Mikhailovich, looking at me friendly. – If you have time.

I hate dominoes. This game is the stupidest, the most pointless, the most boring. Even lotto is more interesting, not to mention cards - any card game. It would be better if I played chess, or at least checkers, I glanced sideways at the closet to see if I could see a chessboard there, but there was no board. But I can’t offend Andrei Mikhailovich with a refusal. I must entertain him, I must repay him with kindness. I have never played dominoes in my life, but I am convinced that great wisdom is not needed to master this art.

And then - on the table there were two mugs of tea and a bowl of porridge. And it was warm.

“Let’s have some tea,” said Andrei Mikhailovich. - Here's sugar. Do not be shy. Eat this porridge and talk about whatever you want. However, these two things cannot be done at the same time.

I ate porridge, bread, and drank three mugs of tea with sugar. I haven't seen Sugar for several years. I warmed up, and Andrei Mikhailovich mixed the dominoes.

I knew that the owner of the double six was starting the game - Andrei Mikhailovich put it in. Then the players take turns placing dice that match the points. There was no other science here, and I boldly entered the game, constantly sweating and hiccupping from satiety.

We played on Andrei Mikhailovich’s bed, and I looked with pleasure at the dazzling white pillowcase on the feather pillow. It was a physical pleasure to look at a clean pillow and see another person kneading it with their hand.

“Our game,” I said, “is devoid of its most important charm - domino players must knock on the table with all their might, exposing the dominoes.” – I wasn’t joking at all. It was this aspect of the matter that seemed to me the most important in dominoes.

“Let’s move to the table,” Andrei Mikhailovich said kindly.

– Well, what are you talking about, I’m just remembering all the versatility of this game.

The game was played slowly - we told each other our lives. Andrei Mikhailovich, a doctor, did not work in the mine faces on general work and saw the mine only in reflection - in the human waste, remnants, garbage that the mine threw into the hospital and the morgue. I, too, was a human mine slag.

“Well, you’ve won,” said Andrei Mikhailovich. – Congratulations, and here is the prize. – He took out a plastic cigarette case from the nightstand. – Haven’t smoked for a long time?

I tore off a piece of newspaper and rolled up a cigarette. You can't think of anything better than newsprint paper for shag. Traces of printing ink not only do not spoil the shag bouquet, but highlight it in the best possible way. I lit a strip of paper from the glowing coals in the stove and lit a cigarette, greedily inhaling the sickening sweet smoke.

We were in poverty with tobacco, and we should have quit smoking a long time ago - the conditions were the most suitable, but I never quit smoking. It was scary to think that I could, of my own free will, lose this one great prison pleasure.

“Good night,” said Andrei Mikhailovich, smiling. “I’m already getting ready to go to bed.” But I really wanted to play the game. Thank you.

I walked out of his room into a dark corridor - someone was standing against the wall in my path. I recognized the silhouette of the Goat.

- What you? Why are you here?

- I am going to smoke. I would like to smoke. Did not give?

I felt ashamed of my greed, ashamed that I didn’t think about Kozlik or anyone else in the ward to bring them a cigarette butt, a crust of bread, a handful of porridge.

And Kozlik waited for several hours in the dark corridor.

Several more years passed, the war ended, the Vlasovites replaced us at the gold mine, and I ended up in a small zone, in the transit barracks of the Western Directorate. Huge barracks with multi-story bunks accommodated five hundred to six hundred people. From here they were sent to the mines of the west.

"Shock therapy"

Lesson on “Kolyma Tales” by V. Shalamov

Decor: portrait of V.T. Shalamova; an exhibition of books, newspaper publications, reviews of the writer.

Lesson objectives: arouse interest in the personality and work of V.T. Shalamov, who became a symbol of openness, will and Russian directness; show the “unusual life material” taken as the basis of the “Kolyma Stories”, and captivate students by reading the text of the stories, leading students to comprehend the tragic fate of a person in a totalitarian state.

Epigraph:
Where there is violence, there is grief and bloodshed.

V. Grossman

And I saw hell on earth

Sasha Cherny.
The camp is a negative experience, a negative school, corruption for everyone - for commanders and prisoners, guards and spectators, passers-by and readers of fiction.

"Kolyma stories"».

“Kolyma Tales” is the fate of martyrs who did not exist, did not survive and did not become heroes.

V.T. Shalamov

Teacher's word.

The song sounds......

“Damn you, Kolyma,

What is called the Black Planet,

You will inevitably go crazy

There is no turning back from there"
In this cry there is also the voice of the writer V. Shalamov. It is about this planet, the people, by the will of fate, who inhabit it that we are talking about in “Kolyma Stories.”

Varlam Shalamov entered our society and literary consciousness unnoticed, but firmly. Long published as a poet, he gained fame with his Kolyma Tales, written between 1954-1973.

But these stories began to be published here only in recent years. The theme of “arrests, prisons and camps” is not new, but Shalamov presented it in his own way.

“Kolyma stories” - there are many of them. Each of them has its own name, but they are all united in “Kolyma”, and this is not only a general name indicating the place of action, but also “a passionate narrative about the destruction of man”, about “the corruption of the mind and heart, when the vast majority understands the day Every day it becomes easier and easier; it turns out to be living without meat, without sugar, without clothes, without shoes, and also without honor, without conscience, without love, without debt.” It turns out to the majority, but is this discovery accepted by everyone as the norm?

We know about the time of repression, the policy of hopeless lies, mockery and mockery of people from the stories: “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” by A. Pristavkin, “Black Stones” by A. Zhigulin.

But Shalamov’s stories show another side of this policy: in the camps there was a whole system of extermination, physical and moral destruction of a person convicted under Article 58.

For millions of people, the state machine “turned around the destinies of the best that ever happened.”

“Kolyma Stories” is a report from its time, from that time when the current generation of grandfathers and fathers serenely sang textbook words and official music “I don’t know another country like this, where people breathe so freely.” And only a very few survivors could say how they really breathed behind the barbed wire of the Kolyma camps.

2. Brief retelling of “Kolyma Tales” by V.T. Shalamov. Student performances.
Story "At Night" introduces us to an environment of human lawlessness, hunger and cold. Glebov and Bagretsov (two prisoners) are going to work. After a tiring day of work, having collected crumbs of bread after dinner, they climb the rock and dismantle the stone blockage. There is a dead man under the stones, and he is wearing almost new underpants and a shirt. “With sunken, shiny eyes,” with which there was nothing to talk about, and there was nothing to think about, because “consciousness” was no longer human consciousness.

The meaning of the story lies in the last phrase: “Tomorrow they will sell their linen, exchange it for bread, maybe even get some tobacco...”

So they will live another day. Feelings and morality are suppressed by cold and hunger, but the night brings hope.
In the story "Two Meetings" Brigadier Kotur disappears. He did not have time to get out of the wheelbarrow when the boss approached. Here we read how 1938. The authorities decided to send the convoys on foot from Magadan to the mines of the North. From a column of 500 people five hundred kilometers away, 30-40 remained alive.

“The rest settled on the way - frostbitten, hungry, shot dead...”

The story "Procurator of Judea" begins with the words: “December 5, 1947 To Nachaevo Bay

The steamer "Kim" entered with a human cargo..." "three thousand prisoners."

On the way, the prisoners rebelled and the authorities decided to fill all the holds with water. All this was done at 40 degrees below zero. Front-line surgeon Kubantsev is shocked by the sight of corpses, surviving people, terrible wounds that Kubantsev had never known in his life and had never dreamed of.
“Of course, there were no gas chambers in Kolyma. Here they preferred to freeze it out - the result was the most comforting,” we read in the story "Lessons of Love"
3. The teacher's word. How did V. Shalamov work on these stories?
The truth of life became the aesthetic credo of V. Shalamov. Every single one of his stories meets this high criterion. It is difficult for us to imagine what enormous emotional stress his stories cost the writer.

This is how he describes his creative process: “Every story, every phrase of it is pre-read in an empty room - I always talk to myself when I write. I scream, I threaten, I cry. And I can’t stop the tears. Only then, finishing a story or part of a story, do I wipe away my tears.”

His work can be called an “encyclopedia of Kolyma life.” You can find everything in them. Description of the land, history, population, capital of the Kolyma region; you will learn everything about the bosses, about production standards, about the method of making prison bunks; about why prisoners eat the gruel first and take the bread with them; about how they go crazy from hunger and how they cut off their fingers. You can learn a lot from this “encyclopedia” that you could not imagine.

In a letter to Pasternak, Shalamov lists real incidents from Kolyma life that became the plot of the stories:

“A fugitive who was caught in the taiga and shot by “operatives.” They cut off both his hands so as not to carry the corpse several miles away, otherwise the fingers would have to be printed. And the fugitive got up and trudged to our hut in the morning. Then he was finally shot.”

“The sweater is wool, homemade, often lies on the bench and moves - there are so many lice in it.”

“There is a line, in a row people are linked with their elbows, there are tin numbers on their backs (instead of the ace of diamonds), a convoy, dogs in large numbers, every 10 minutes - Get down! They lay for a long time in the snow, without raising their heads, waiting for the command.”

“Someone was seen with a piece of paper in their hands, probably given by the investigator for denunciations. Sixteen hour work day. They sleep leaning on a shovel - you can’t sit down or lie down, they’ll shoot you right away.”

“Those who cannot go to work are tied to drags, and a horse drags them along the road for 2-3 kilometers.”

“The gate is at the opening of the adit. A log with which the gate is turned and seven exhausted ragamuffins walk in a circle instead of a horse. And there is a guard at the fire. Why not Egypt?

“There is nothing lower in the world than the intention to forget these crimes. Forgive me for writing you all these sad things, I would like you to get some kind of correct impression of what is significant and significant, which is a huge almost 20-year period - five-year plans, large construction projects, the exact name of “daring” and “ achievements." After all, not a single construction project of any kind took place without prisoners, whose life was a powerless chain of humiliation. Time has successfully made man forget that he is a man..."
4. We think and reflect on the stories we read.

What is the tragedy of “Kolyma Tales”?

(It’s scary. People and death. These words constantly go side by side. There are guards there, ready to kill, frost, ready to kill, hunger, ready to kill)

Before us are stories about Kolyma goners clinging to life by all means.

Discussion of the stories “Day off” and “Vaska Denisov, the pig thief.”

Story "Day off"

Teacher's word.

Man and nature are one. Man is a child of nature. But a person deprived of normal conditions begins to perceive it as something alien, hostile. A person cannot dissolve in nature or accept it into himself, feel his unity with it - this also requires spiritual strength, an intact soul is needed.

What is unique about our story?

(Sample student answer: a description of the squirrels “of heavenly color, black-faced, black-tailed, which “looked enthusiastically at what was going on behind the silver larches,” describes the beauty of the squirrels, their free, independent existence)

What was hidden behind the silver larches?

(Sample student answer:priest Zamyatin praying in the forest)

Find in the text how he does this?

(Sample student answer: “Crossing himself with a flourish and quietly pronouncing the words of the liturgical service with lips numb from the cold, he serves mass in a forest clearing - alone and solemnly.

Warmth emanates from this lonely man, fervently whispering words of prayer.”

“There was an amazing expression on his face - the same one that happens on the faces of people remembering their childhood or something equally dear”)

And then there is a completely contrasting scene. Which? Read it.

(Sample student answer: “Blatari” shepherd dogs killing a puppy and making soup from it)

What thoughts does this scene make you think of?

(Students' sample answer: We seem to feel the pain of nature itself, within which the disintegration of the human takes place, as well as the struggle of man for himself.)

What saves a person in this inhuman life?

(Students' sample answer: Shalamov: “I know that every person here had the very last, the most important thing - something that helped them live, cling to life, which was so persistently and persistently taken away from us.”

This “very last” could be different - the desire to return to relatives, to family, love for children, faith in God.)

In the story “Vaska Denisov, the pig thief” hungry Vaska sneaks into the village to earn a bowl of soup or a piece of bread, but it’s too late - the owner poured the soup for the pigs. Having climbed into someone's closet, Vaska finds a slaughtered and frozen pig. Having escaped from pursuit, the hero of the story locked himself in the red corner. “When a detachment of riflemen was called, and the doors were open, and the barricade was dismantled, Vaska managed to eat half of the pig.”

Why is Vaska sneaking into the village?
Why were Vaska’s efforts in vain?
When was the rifle squad called in?
“He walked swaying from weakness, but not home...”, where?

Corruption is one of the main words in Shalamov’s verdict on the camp.
Discussion of the story “The Snake Charmer”.

Teacher's word.

Many of Shalamov’s stories talk about the power of “thieves” in the camp over “enemies of the people.” The state entrusted the “friends” of the people with the “re-education” of those who ended up in Kolyma under Article 58.

Let us mentally imagine Platonov’s habitat and his day before appearing in the dark barracks, while we will try to rely as much as possible on the words of the writer;

Permafrost. Here even the trees “can barely hold on to the uncomfortable ground, and the storm gently uproots them and knocks them to the ground”;

Platonov is a pit worker. But after work, work awaits him again:

What kind of work awaits him?

“We still need to collect the instrument, take it to the storeroom, hand it in, line up, and go through two of the ten daily roll calls. We still have to go through roll call, line up and go five kilometers into the forest for firewood.”

Why do you think the author gives such a detailed list of actions?

Such a detailed listing of the string of actions that await exhausted people after hard labor creates the impression of an endless day, some kind of hopelessness - will there be rest for a tired body?

But it's a long way from rest. There is still a five-kilometer journey back, but with a heavy log, because they don’t provide cars, and the horses can’t cope: “a horse is much weaker than a person, a horse cannot stand a month of winter life here in a cold room and with long hours of work - hard work in the cold "

Platonov reflects on the nature of human endurance: trees and animals die, “but man lives.” Why?

Yes, because “he clings to life more tightly than they do. And he is tougher than any animal.

And here Platonov and I are together in the barracks. Finally, it seems he can rest. “Shoulders ached, knees ached, muscles trembled,” but “a push in the back woke up Platonov”...he was “pushed into the light”

Fedechka is a thief, the “thug” is the master of the situation, a person’s life is in his power. “Do you think about living?” he asks Platonov. He asks “quietly”, explains “affectionately”, but behind this is the behavior of a predatory animal. Because the quiet, insinuating words are followed by a “strong blow right in the face,” which knocks Platonov off his feet.

Fedechka calls Platonov Ivan Ivanovich, for him everyone is like Platonov - Ivan Ivanovich, he somehow depersonalizes, denames people, for him he is a creature. When Platonov, who has not yet lost his human dignity, answers that he is not Ivan Ivanovich, Fedechka mutters: “You can’t answer that way. Ivan Ivanovich, was this how you were taught to answer at the institute? " He points Platonov to his place and warns: “Go, creature... Go and lie down by the bucket. Your place will be there. If you scream, we’ll strangle you.”

Platonov experiences moral humiliation and mockery.

The scary thing is that Fedechka is bored. The "lesson" he teaches Platonov is a short diversion. “It’s boring, brothers,” said Fedya, yawning, “at least someone would scratch his heels, or something...” And so they obsequiously take off his dirty torn socks, and, smiling obsequiously, scratch his heels. Fedechka doesn’t like the way the young crow does this. Here, he recalls, there was an engineer at the Kosoy mine, he was scratching. And this memory suggests that wherever Fedya is, he always feels like a master, a ruler. And so they bring up Platonov again, and then again, because Fedechka can’t sleep, she’s bored again: “If only someone would press the novel.”

It’s amazing how many of the thieves are lackeys who are willing to humiliate and humiliate for Fedechka’s sake, and if the owner demands it, even kill. The mine was made up of nothing but thieves. The fate of the only literate of them, Platonov, is terrible. He was fed and clothed for reciting Dumas, Conan Doyle, and Wallace. This is also humiliation for the sake of the bowl of “soup” that Fedya bestows on him; He doesn't eat slop.

Does the author condemn Platonov for this? Why?

At first glance, yes. “It seemed to me like the final humiliation, the end. I never told a novel for soup. But I know what it is. I heard novelists"

But when Platonov asks: “Is this a condemnation?” - the narrator answers: “Not at all... - A hungry man can be forgiven a lot, a lot.”

Shalamov will repeat twice that he loves Platonov. For what? Do we also perceive the story written for him as a sign of love, as a final bow to a comrade who, having survived the terrible “Dzhankhara”, still died, like many others died, waved his pick, swayed and fell face down on his knees
Shalamov uses the title invented by Platonov for his story: “The Snake Charmer.” Why did the writer like it, do you think?

After all, spellcasters, by the power of their influence, are able to hypnotize and force people to submit to their will. Did Andrei Fedorovich Platonov, “a film scriptwriter in his first life,” succeed in the role of a snake charmer?
Discussion of the story “Funeral Word”

Teacher's word.

“Everyone died”... - this is how the story “Funeral Word” begins.

In every story you read on your own, there is death. The “Gulag Archipelago” appears as a terrible, insatiable monster.

In the story “Two Meetings” we read how in 1938, the authorities decided to send convoys on foot from Magadan to the mines of the North. From a column of 500 people, five hundred kilometers away, 30-40 remained alive. “The rest settled on the way - frostbitten, hungry, shot”...

And here is the “Funeral Word”. "Everybody died"

Who, why, how?

“Nikolai Kazimirovich Barbe, a comrade who helped me pull a large stone out of a narrow pit, a foreman, was shot for failure to comply with the site plan”...

“Ioska Ryutin died. He worked in tandem with me. But the hard workers didn’t want to work with me. And Ioska worked”...

“Ivan Yakovlevich Fedyanin died. He was a philosopher. Volokolamsk peasant, organizer of the first collective farm in Russia. For organizing the first collective farm, he received a five-year prison sentence."

“Fritz David has died. It was a Dutch communist, a worker of the Comintern, accused of espionage. Fritz David went crazy and was taken somewhere.”

And more death, and more, and more...

But we are struck by the final scene of this story, which gives a better idea of the prisoners and their characters.

On a winter Christmas evening, several prisoners are warming themselves near a red-hot iron stove. And they talk about what they will do, what they will do when they return home. The former director of the Ural trust, Pyotr Ivanovich Timofeev, became emotional:

“- I would return home, to my wife, to Agnia Mikhailovna. I would buy a loaf of rye bread! I would cook porridge from magar - a bucket! Soup, dumplings - also a bucket! And I would eat it all. For the first time in my life I would eat my fill of this goodness, and force Agnia Mikhailovna to eat the leftovers.

And you? - Glebov’s hand touched our orderly’s knee.

The first thing I would do would be to go to the district party committee. There, I remember, there were a lot of cigarette butts on the floor...

Don't joke...

I'm not kidding.

Suddenly I saw that there was only one person left to answer. And this man was Volodya Dobrovoltsev. He raised his head without waiting for the question. The light of glowing coals from the open stove door fell into his eyes; his eyes were alive and deep.

5. Let's summarize our lesson.

Who is to blame for the tragedy of thousands of people?
Why does Shalamov’s prose have such a strong impact on our souls and hearts?

The writer lived to tell the truth, no matter how terrible it was.

He showed what people deprived of human living conditions can turn into: how the system kills some, and turns others into moral monsters, criminals and murderers.

A person should not know, should not even hear about it. No person becomes better or stronger after camp. Everything suffered in the hell of Soviet Auschwitz was reflected in “Kolyma Tales”. The experience of Kolyma includes death, humiliation, hunger, resurrection, execution, transformation into animals, revaluation of values, the collapse of habitual ideas about the world, about man, about his capabilities.

Shalamov didn’t have to invent anything.

The author of “Kolyma Tales” wanted to achieve maximum persuasiveness in his prose. For him, first of all, it was important to “resurrect feelings” - the feeling that a person experienced in the inhuman conditions of the camp. “The feeling must return”, defeating the control of time, the change in assessments, only under this condition is it possible to resurrect life.

6. Homework: How do you think the writer felt after passing through Kolyma?

Orpheus descending into the underworld; or
Pluto rising from hell.

(Search information: who is Orpheus? Who is Pluto?)

Vocabulary for the lesson.

1. Fiction – literary prose

3. Blatari – criminal elements.

4. Article 58 – “enemy of the people.”

5. Liturgy - Christian worship

6. Epitrachelion - part of the priest’s vestment, a cover embroidered with patterns, worn around the neck and worn under the robe.

Literature.

Russian language and literature. 1991. No. 8.
Light. 1989 No. 22
Shklovsky E.A. Varlam Shalamov. - M.: Knowledge, 1991.
Top secret. Makeev S. The interview that never happened. No. 6, 2007.

One of Shalamov's most brutal and terrible stories. There are no empty arguments here. There are not even metaphors like V. Bulgakov’s: “...and the horses fall... Is it their fault! And the fat tailor is raking forgotten gingerbread cookies in his briefcase!...” - the writer-film camera records everything. Without notes. Everything is clear and very clear. Let's re-read it.

Vaska Denisov, pig thief

For an evening trip I had to borrow a pea coat from a friend. Vaska’s peacoat was too dirty and torn, it was impossible to walk two steps around the village in it - any freestyle would have immediately snatched it.

Such a stick was buried in the snow not far from the garage - the sixth telegraph pole from the turn, in a ditch. This was done yesterday after work.

Now a familiar driver held the car, and Denisov leaned over the side and slid to the ground. He immediately found the place where he buried the log - the bluish snow here was a little darker, it was crushed, this was visible in the beginning twilight. Vaska jumped into the ditch and kicked the snow away with his feet. A log appeared, gray, steep-sided, like a large frozen fish. Vaska pulled the log onto the road, stood it upright, knocked to knock the snow off the log, and bent over, putting his shoulder up and lifting the log with his hands. The log swayed and fell on his shoulder. Vaska walked into the village, changing his shoulder from time to time. He was weak and exhausted, so he quickly warmed up, but the warmth did not last long - no matter how noticeable the weight of the log was, Vaska did not warm up. Dusk thickened with whiteout, the village turned on all the yellow electric lights. Vaska grinned, pleased with his calculation: in the white fog he could easily reach his goal unnoticed. Here is a broken huge larch, a silver stump covered in frost, which means to the next house.

I brought you some firewood,” said Vaska, with difficulty pushing the frozen skin of his face into the folds of a smile. - I would like Ivan Petrovich.

But Ivan Petrovich himself was already leaving, lifting the curtain with his hand.

This is good,” he said. - Where are they?

“In the yard,” said Vaska.

So you wait, we’ll have a drink, now I’ll get dressed. Ivan Petrovich searched for mittens for a long time. They went out onto the porch and, without a sawhorse, pressing the log with their feet, lifting it, sawed it. The saw was unsharpened and had a bad blade.

“You’ll come in later,” said Ivan Petrovich. - You will direct. And now here’s the cleaver... And then you’ll fold it, but not in the corridor, but drag it straight into the apartment.

Vaska’s head was spinning from hunger, but he chopped all the wood and dragged it into the apartment.

Well, that’s it,” said the woman, crawling out from under the curtain. - All.

But Vaska did not leave and hovered near the door. Ivan Petrovich appeared again.

Listen,” he said, “I don’t have any bread right now, they took all the soup to the piglets, too, I have nothing to give you now.” Come by this week...

Vaska was silent and did not leave.

Ivan Petrovich rummaged in his wallet.

Here's three rubles for you. Only for you for such firewood, and for tobacco - you understand! - tobacco is expensive these days.

Vaska hid the crumpled piece of paper in his bosom and went out. For three rubles he wouldn’t buy even a pinch of shag.

He was still standing on the porch. He was sick from hunger. The piglets ate Vaska's bread and soup. Vaska took out a green piece of paper and tore it into pieces. Pieces of paper, caught by the wind, rolled for a long time along the polished, shiny crust. And when the last scraps disappeared into the white fog, Vaska left the porch. Swaying slightly from weakness, he walked, but not home, but into the depths of the village, he walked and walked - to one-story, two-story, three-story wooden palaces...

He walked onto the first porch and pulled the door handle. The door creaked and moved away heavily. Vaska entered a dark corridor, dimly lit by a dim electric light bulb. He walked past the apartment doors. At the end of the corridor there was a closet, and Vaska, leaning on the door, opened it and stepped over the threshold. In the closet there were bags of onions, maybe salt. Vaska tore one of the bags - cereal. In annoyance, he got excited again, leaned his shoulder and rolled the bag to the side - under the bags lay frozen pork carcasses. Vaska screamed with anger - he didn’t have enough strength to tear off even a piece of the carcass. But further on, frozen piglets lay under the bags, and Vaska could no longer see anything. He tore off the frozen pig and, holding it in his hands like a doll, like a child, walked towards the exit. But people were already leaving the rooms, white steam filled the corridor. Someone shouted: “Stop!” - and threw himself at Vaska’s feet. Vaska jumped, holding the piglet tightly in his hands, and ran out into the street. The inhabitants of the house rushed after him. Someone shot after him, someone roared like an animal, but Vaska rushed on, seeing nothing. And a few minutes later he saw that his legs themselves were carrying him to the only government house that he knew in the village - to the department of vitamin business trips, on one of which Vaska worked as a collector of dwarf wood.

Then Vaska sat down on the floor, took a piglet in both hands, a raw, frozen piglet, and gnawed and gnawed...

When a detachment of riflemen was called, and the doors were open, and the barricade was dismantled, Vaska managed to eat half of the pig...

Shalamov V.T. Collected works in four volumes. T.1. - M.: Fiction, Vagrius, 1998. - P. 107 - 109

Such a stick was buried in the snow not far from the garage - the sixth telegraph pole from the turn, in a ditch. This was done yesterday after work.

“I brought you some firewood,” said Vaska, with difficulty pushing the frozen skin of his face into the folds of a smile. - I would like Ivan Petrovich.

But Ivan Petrovich himself was already leaving, lifting the curtain with his hand.

“That’s good,” he said. - Where are they?

“In the yard,” said Vaska.

“You’ll come in later,” said Ivan Petrovich. - You will guide me. And now here’s the cleaver... And then you’ll fold it, but not in the corridor, but drag it straight into the apartment.

Vaska’s head was spinning from hunger, but he chopped all the wood and dragged it into the apartment.

“Well, that’s it,” said the woman, crawling out from under the curtain. - All.

But Vaska did not leave and hovered near the door. Ivan Petrovich appeared again.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t have any bread right now, they took all the soup to the piglets, too, I have nothing to give you now.” Will you come this week...

Vaska was silent and did not leave.

Ivan Petrovich rummaged in his wallet.

- Here's three rubles for you. Only for you for such firewood, and for tobacco - you understand! – tobacco is expensive these days.

Vaska hid the crumpled piece of paper in his bosom and went out. For three rubles he wouldn’t buy even a pinch of shag.

Then Vaska sat down on the floor, took a piglet in both hands, a raw, frozen piglet, and gnawed and gnawed...

When a detachment of riflemen was called, and the doors were open, and the barricade was dismantled, Vaska managed to eat half of the pig...

“Well,” he says, “you don’t want to go to the mine.”

- And to the state farm? Damn you, I would go to a warm state farm myself.

- And on the road? Knit brooms. Knit brooms, think about it.

“I know,” I say, “today I knit brooms, and tomorrow I pick up a wheelbarrow.”

- What do you want?

- In hospital! I am sick.

The contractor writes something in a notebook and leaves. Three days later, a paramedic comes to the small area and calls me, puts on a thermometer, examines the boil ulcers on my back, and rubs in some ointment.

Vaska Denisov, pig thief

Such a stick was buried in the snow not far from the garage - the sixth telegraph pole from the turn, in a ditch. This was done yesterday after work.

“I brought you some firewood,” said Vaska, with difficulty pushing the frozen skin of his face into the folds of a smile. - I would like Ivan Petrovich.

But Ivan Petrovich himself was already leaving, lifting the curtain with his hand.

“That’s good,” he said. - Where are they?

“In the yard,” said Vaska.

“You’ll come in later,” said Ivan Petrovich. - You will guide me. And now here’s the cleaver... And then you’ll fold it, but not in the corridor, but drag it straight into the apartment.

Vaska’s head was spinning from hunger, but he chopped all the wood and dragged it into the apartment.

“Well, that’s it,” said the woman, crawling out from under the curtain. - All.

But Vaska did not leave and hovered near the door. Ivan Petrovich appeared again.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t have any bread right now, they took all the soup to the piglets, too, I have nothing to give you now.” Will you come this week...

Vaska was silent and did not leave.

Ivan Petrovich rummaged in his wallet.

- Here's three rubles for you. Only for you for such firewood, and for tobacco - you understand! – tobacco is expensive these days.

Vaska hid the crumpled piece of paper in his bosom and went out. For three rubles he wouldn’t buy even a pinch of shag.