Sad detective story of writing. "Tsar Fish" and "Sad Detective": analysis of Astafiev's works

The journalistic beginning is palpable in V. Astafiev’s story “The Sad Detective,” but the main thing that defines this work is “cruel” realism. The prose of “cruel” realism is merciless in depicting the horrors of everyday life. The story concentrates criminal episodes from the life of the provincial town of Veysk, and in such quantity that it seems implausible that so much negativity, so much dirt, and blood could be concentrated in such a small geographical space. Here are collected monstrous manifestations of the collapse and degradation of society. But there is both an artistic and real justification for this.

V. Astafiev makes us horrified by reality, he awakens ears accustomed to information not only with the meaning of crimes, but also with their number. The pumped-up facts, destinies, and faces mercilessly plunge one into a reality that is terrible in its bitterness and lack of motive for crimes. This brutal realism combines fictional and real episodes into a single canvas, imbued with angry pathos.

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

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

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

The children buried their father. “At home, as usual, the children and relatives cried for the deceased, drank heavily - out of pity, at the cemetery they added - damp, cold, bitter. Five empty bottles were later found in the grave. And two complete ones, with a muttering voice, are now a new, cheerful fashion among highly paid hard workers: with force, richly not only spend your free time, but also bury it - burn money over the grave, preferably a pack, throw after the departing bottle of wine - maybe the poor thing will want a hangover in the next world. The grieving children threw bottles into the hole, but they forgot to lower their parents into the land.”

Children forget their parents, parents leave a tiny child in an automatic storage room. Others lock the baby at home for a week, leading him to catch and eat cockroaches. The episodes are interconnected by a logical connection. Although V. As-tafiev does not make any direct comparisons, it seems that he simply strings one after another onto the core of the hero’s memory, but in the context of the story, between different episodes there is a force field of a certain idea: parents - children - parents; criminal - the reaction of others; people - “intelligentsia”. And all together adds new touches to the image of the Russian people.

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

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

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

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Leonid Soshnin brought his manuscript to a small provincial publishing house.

“Local cultural luminary Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova,” editor and critic, inappropriately flaunting her erudition and chain-smoking—an unpleasant type of ostentatious intellectual.

The manuscript stood in queue for publication for five years. It seems they gave the go-ahead. However, Syrovasova considers herself an indisputable authority and makes sarcastic jokes about the manuscript. And he makes fun of the author himself: a policeman - and in the same place, become a writer!

Yes, Soshnin served in the police. I honestly wanted to fight - and I fought! - against evil, was wounded, which is why at forty-two he was already retired.

Soshnin lives in an old wooden house, which, however, has heating and sewerage. From childhood he was left an orphan and lived with his aunt Lina.

All her life the kind woman lived with him and for him, and then suddenly decided to improve her personal life - and the teenager was angry with her.

Yes, my aunt has gone on a rampage! She also stole. Its “commercial department” was sued and imprisoned at once. Aunt Lina was poisoned. The woman was rescued and after the trial was sent to a correctional labor colony. She felt that she was going downhill and enrolled her nephew in an air traffic police school. The timid, shy aunt returned and quickly went to her grave.

Even before her death, the hero worked as a local police officer, got married, and had a daughter, Svetochka.

Aunt Granya's husband, who worked in the firehouse, died. Trouble, as we know, does not travel alone.

A poorly secured croaker flew out of the maneuvering platform and hit Aunt Granya on the head. The kids were crying and trying to pull the bloodied woman off the rails.

Granya could no longer work, bought herself a small house and acquired livestock: “the dog Varka, cut off on the tracks, a crow with a broken wing - Marfa, a rooster with a broken eye - Under, a tailless cat - Ulka.”

Only the cow was useful - the kind aunt shared her milk with everyone who needed it, especially during the war years.

She was a holy woman - she ended up in a railway hospital, and as soon as she felt better, she immediately began to do laundry, clean up after the sick, and take out bedpans.

And then one day four guys, mad with alcohol, raped her. Soshnin was on duty that day and quickly found the villains. The judge slapped them with eight years of maximum security.

After the trial, Aunt Granya was ashamed to go out into the street.

Leonid found her in the hospital guardhouse. Aunt Granya lamented: “Young lives have been ruined! Why were they sent to prison?

Trying to solve the mystery of the Russian soul, Soshnin turned to pen and paper: “Why are Russian people eternally compassionate towards prisoners and often indifferent to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled person of war and labor?

We are ready to give the last piece to a convict, a bone crusher and a bloodletter, to take away from the police a malicious hooligan who has just raged, whose arms have been twisted, and to hate his co-tenant because he forgets to turn off the light in the toilet, to reach in the battle for the light such a degree of hostility that they can do not give water to the sick..."

Policeman Soshnin faces the horrors of life. So he arrested a twenty-two-year-old scoundrel who had killed three people “out of drunkenness.”

- Why did you kill people, little snake? - they asked him at the police station.

- But they didn’t like the hari! — he smiled carelessly in response.

But there is too much evil around. Returning home after an unpleasant conversation with Syrokvasova, the former policeman encounters three drunkards on the stairs who begin to bully and humiliate him. One threatens with a knife.

After futile attempts at reconciliation, Soshnin scatters the scum, using the skills acquired over the years of work in the police. A bad wave rises in him, he can barely stop himself.

However, one hero had his head split on a radiator, which he immediately reported to the police by phone.

Initially, Soshnin’s encounter with stupid, arrogant evil does not cause embitterment, but bewilderment: “Where does this come from in them? Where? After all, all three seem to be from our village. From working families. All three went to kindergarten and sang: “The river begins with a blue stream, but friendship begins with a smile...”

Leonid is sick of it. He reflects on the fact that a force that fights against evil cannot be called good either - “because a good force is only creative, creating.”

But is there a place for creative power where, commemorating the deceased in the cemetery, “grieving children threw bottles into the hole, but forgot to lower their parents into the land.”

One day, a scoundrel who arrived from the Far North in a drunken spirit stole a dump truck and began circling around the city: he hit several people at a bus stop, smashed a children's playground to pieces, crushed to death a young mother and child at a crossing, and knocked down two old women walking.

“Like hawthorn butterflies, the decrepit old women flew into the air and folded their light wings on the sidewalk.”

Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. Not in the city - people are all around.

“We drove the dump truck out of town, all the time shouting into a megaphone: “Citizens, danger!

Citizens! A criminal is driving! Citizens..."

The criminal taxied to a country cemetery - and there were four funeral processions! A lot of people - and all potential victims.

Soshnin was driving a police motorcycle. On his orders, his subordinate Fedya Lebeda killed the criminal with two shots. He didn’t immediately raise his hand; first he shot at the wheels.

It’s amazing: on the criminal’s jacket there was a badge “For saving people in a fire.” He saved - and now he kills.

Soshnin was seriously injured in the chase (he fell along with the motorcycle); the surgeon wanted to amputate his leg, but still managed to save it.

Leonid was interrogated for a long time by the judicial purist Pesterev: really couldn’t do without blood?

Returning from the hospital on crutches to an empty apartment, Soshnin began to study German in depth and read philosophers. Aunt Granya looked after him.

Madame Pestereva, the daughter of a rich and thieving director of an enterprise, a teacher at the Faculty of Philology, runs a “fashionable salon”: guests, music, intelligent conversations, reproductions of paintings by Salvador Dali - everything is feigned, unreal.

The “learned lady” turned student Pasha Silakova, a large, blooming village girl, into a housekeeper, whom her mother pushed into the city to study. Pasha would like to work in the field, become a mother of many children, but she is trying to delve into science, which is alien to her. So she pays for decent grades by cleaning the apartment and going to the market, and also bringing food from the village to everyone who can help her in some way.

Soshnin persuaded Pasha to transfer to an agricultural vocational school, where Pasha studied well and became an outstanding athlete in the entire region. Then “she worked as a machine operator along with men, got married, gave birth to three sons in a row and was going to give birth to four more, but not those who are taken out of the womb by Caesarean section and jump around: “Oh, allergies! Ah, dystrophy! Ah, early chondrosis..."

From Pasha, the hero’s thoughts turn to his wife Lera - it was she who persuaded him to take up the fate of Silakova.

Now Lenya and Lera live separately - they quarreled over something stupid, Lera took her daughter and moved.

Memories again. How did fate bring them together?

A young district police officer in a city with the telling name Khailovsk managed to arrest a dangerous bandit. And everyone in the city whispered: “The same one!”

And then Leonid met on the way the arrogant, proud fashionista Lerka, a student at the pharmaceutical college, nicknamed Primadonna. Soshnin fought her off from the hooligans, feelings arose between them... Lera’s mother pronounced the verdict: “It’s time to get married!”

The mother-in-law was a quarrelsome and domineering person - one of those who only knows how to command. The father-in-law is a golden man, hard-working, skilled: He immediately mistook his son-in-law for his son. Together they “cut” the cocky lady for a while.

A daughter, Svetochka, was born, but strife arose over her upbringing. The economicless Lera dreamed of making a child prodigy out of the girl, Leonid took care of moral and physical health.

“The Soshnins increasingly sold Svetka to Polevka, subject to grandma’s poor inspection and inept care. It’s good that in addition to the grandmother, the child had a grandfather, he didn’t let the child torment the child with crops, he taught his granddaughter not to be afraid of bees, to smoke on them from a jar, to distinguish flowers and herbs, to pick up wood chips, to scrape hay with a rake, to herd a calf, to choose eggs from chicken nests, I took my granddaughter to pick mushrooms, pick berries, weed beds, go to the river with a bucket of water, rake snow in winter, sweep the fence, ride on a sled down the mountain, play with the dog, pet the cat, water the geraniums on the window.”

While visiting his daughter in the village, Leonid accomplished another feat - he fought off the village women from the alcoholic, former prisoner, who was terrorizing them. The drunk, Venka Fomin, wounded Leonid, got scared and dragged him to the first aid station.

And this time Soshnin pulled out. We must pay tribute to his wife Lera - she always looked after him when he was hospitalized, although she joked mercilessly.

Evil, evil, evil falls on Soshnin - and his soul hurts. A sad detective - he knows too many everyday incidents that make you want to howl.

“...Mom and Dad are book lovers, not children, not young people, both over thirty, had three children, fed them poorly, looked after them poorly, and suddenly the fourth appeared. They loved each other very passionately, even three children bothered them, but the fourth was of no use at all. And they began to leave the child alone, and the boy was born tenacious, screaming day and night, then he stopped screaming, only squeaked and pecked. The neighbor in the barracks couldn’t stand it, she decided to feed the child porridge, climbed through the window, but there was no one to feed - the child was being eaten by worms. The child’s parents were not hiding somewhere, not in a dark attic, in the reading room of the regional library named after F. M. Dostoevsky, in the name of that very greatest humanist who proclaimed, and what he proclaimed, shouted with a frantic word to the whole world that he did not accept any revolution , if at least one child suffers...

More. Mom and dad had a fight, mom ran away from dad, dad left home and went on a spree. And he would have walked, choked on wine, damned, but the parents forgot at home a child who was not even three years old. When they broke down the door a week later, they found a child who had even eaten dirt from the cracks of the floor and learned to catch cockroaches - he ate them. They took out the boy in the Orphanage - they defeated dystrophy, rickets, mental retardation, but they still cannot wean the child from grasping movements - he is still catching someone...”

The image of Grandma Tutyshikha runs like a dotted line through the entire story - she lived wildly, stole, was imprisoned, married a lineman, gave birth to a boy, Igor. She was repeatedly beaten by her husband “for her love for the people”—out of jealousy, that is. I drank. However, she was always ready to babysit the neighbors’ kids, from behind her door she was always heard: “Oh, here, here, here, here...” - nursery rhymes, for which she was nicknamed Tutyshikha. She nursed, as best she could, her granddaughter Yulka, who began to “walk” early. Again the same thought: how is good and evil, revelry and humility combined in the Russian soul?

Neighbor Tutyshikha is dying (she drank too much balm, and there was no one to call an ambulance - Yulka went out on a party). Yulka howls - how can she live without her grandmother now? Her father only buys her off with expensive gifts.

“They saw off Grandma Tutyshikha to another world in a rich, almost luxurious and crowded way - my son, Igor Adamovich, did his best for his own mother.”

At the funeral, Soshnin meets his wife Lera and daughter Sveta. There is hope for reconciliation. The wife and daughter return to Leonid’s apartment.

“In a temporary, hasty world, the husband wants to get a ready-made wife, and the wife again wants a good, or better yet, a very good, ideal husband...

“Husband and wife are one Satan”—that’s all the wisdom that Leonid knew about this complex subject.”

Without family, without patience, without hard work on what is called harmony and harmony, without raising children together, it is impossible to preserve goodness in the world.

Soshnin decided to write down his thoughts, added wood to the stove, looked at his sleeping wife and daughter, “placed a blank sheet of paper in a spot of light and froze over it for a long time.”

During his life, Soviet writer Viktor Astafiev created many striking works. Recognized as an outstanding author, he deservedly has several state awards in his creative treasury. “The Sad Detective” is a short story that left a strong impression on readers. In our article we will analyze its brief content. “The Sad Detective” by Astafiev is one of those works in which the writer worries about the fate of his country and its individual citizens.

Live a life - write a book

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev wrote the work in 1987. At that time, he had already received wide recognition from the public, having published his best books - “Until Next Spring” and “The Snow is Melting.” As critics noted, “Detective...” could have turned out differently if it had been written at a different time. The experience of the past years was reflected here, and the author put all his personal experiences into the work.

A brief summary will help us get acquainted with the story. Astafiev’s “Sad Detective” tells about the difficult life of former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at 42 was left alone. All that makes him happy is the empty apartment he is used to and the opportunity to do what he loves. In the evenings, when the lights go out, in the silence of the night, he sits down in front of a piece of paper and begins to write. Probably, the presentation of thoughts on behalf of the “presenter” (Soshnin, as it were, conveys the thoughts of the author) creates for the reader an additional atmosphere of perception, filled with a large number of everyday anxieties.

The essence of the book: about the main thing

Many admitted that it is not the detective story as a genre that distinguishes the story “The Sad Detective” (Astafiev). can directly indicate that there is a deep drama at its core. Sadness became the main character's faithful companion when he separated from his wife and now hardly sees his little daughter. A policeman from the province really wants, but cannot completely eradicate crime. He reflects on why the surrounding reality is full of grief and suffering, while love and happiness are crowded somewhere nearby. Through memories of his own life, Soshnin learns previously incomprehensible things in the hope that this may provide, if not answers, then at least peace of mind.

Fragments of memories

Astafiev loves to explore the human soul, giving this right to the main character in this case. The novel “The Sad Detective” is fragmentary. Lenya Soshnin looks at people close to him in a new way, analyzes individual episodes of the past, and recalls events that he witnessed. Fate brought him into contact with different people, and now, as if letting him down, he wonders about their role in his life. Injustice and partial lawlessness do not give him, as a servant of the law, peace. Why does a helpless person who went through a war die alone, while those who committed a crime but received forgiveness from society feel free? Apparently, such an imbalance will always weigh on Soshnin...

Criminal components of the book

The story “The Sad Detective” consists of descriptions of criminal incidents, some of which are truly terrible. Astafiev (we will look at the analysis of the work below) does not in vain describe scenes of violence, proving something simple that is so difficult to wrap your head around.

Looking at any work in which murders appear, the possible motives for the crime seem clear to us. What could be a better prerequisite than power, money, revenge? Refuting this, Viktor Petrovich opens the eyes of readers to the fact that even murder “for the count” or “just because” is also considered a crime. The author fully shows the killer’s unsettled life, his negative attitude towards society, as well as family disputes, which often end very badly.

In a similar way, the character of the Russian soul is boldly revealed by the realist V.P. Astafiev. “The Sad Detective” clearly shows how well our people love to go for a walk. “Having a blast” is the main motto of any feast, and the boundaries of what is permitted are often violated.

Failures in service, joys in creativity

And although the work is distinguished by a small number of pages, which can, if desired, be mastered in a short period of time, for those who are not familiar with the book, its brief content is interesting. Astafiev’s “Sad Detective” is also a detailed description of the main character’s service. And if in this area he has an unpleasant aftertaste, which often reminds him of himself, then in creative terms Soshnin is more or less doing well. Leonid dreams of the idea of ​​writing his own manuscript. The only salvation for him is to throw out his experiences on paper. The cynical editor makes it clear that the inexperienced amateur still has a lot to learn, but it seems that Soshnin doesn’t care much about this yet...

Good “Sad Detective” (Astafiev)

Without revealing the details of the ending, it should be said that fate will return the hero’s family as a reward. Having met his wife and daughter, he will not be able to let them go, just as they, filled with “resurrecting, life-giving sadness,” will return to his home.

Modern Tricks of Old History

Viktor Astafiev used a distinctive technique when creating the story. “The Sad Detective” includes plot inserts that today would be called flashbacks. In other words, the narrative periodically moves into the past, to individual and most striking episodes of Soshnin’s life that influenced him. For example, echoes of a sad, difficult childhood, when his aunts were involved in his upbringing. One of them was attacked by hooligans, and Soshnin managed to pull himself together so as not to shoot them. Another time, teenagers accosted him in a dirty entrance, provoking him to respond. The hero tries to cool their ardor, and when the young “bug” is seriously wounded, Leonid first calls the police station, confessing to his crime. But, as if wanting to evoke it from them, he evokes it from himself...

Such motifs clearly indicate the key message of the story “The Sad Detective” - the moral problems of the modern world. How does this manifest itself? Observing the chaos that is happening, Soshnin himself unwittingly becomes a participant in it. At the same time, he retains his self-esteem to the last. But will it be possible to change the world? Or is it easier to force others to change their attitude towards the world?

Strengths of the work

Based on the summary, Astafiev’s “Sad Detective” quickly develops the main character’s storyline, not allowing it to stagnate. According to readers, the story is impressive, despite the peculiarities of the language with which Soshnin, as a narrator, presents the material. There is a special charm in this, as if Astafiev gave up the author’s chair to someone who wanted to become a writer. On the pages of the work we see every time with what difficulty Soshnin’s service was given and with what dignity he emerged from various situations that put his life in real danger. At the same time, he loves his profession and does not want to change it, remaining an honest, fair policeman fighting for truth and tranquility.

Role Model

By creating Soshnin, Astafiev showed a worthy example of what not only servants of law and order should be, but also ordinary citizens. For such simplicity and authenticity, the author and his story have earned recognition from readers and critics.

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev left a bright legacy for the modern generation. The main works, in addition to “The Sad Detective,” include: the novel “Cursed and Killed,” the stories “War is Thundering Somewhere,” “Starfall,” “The Pass,” “Overtone” and others. Feature films were made based on some of the author's works.

Chapter first

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst mood. AND
although it was a long walk, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village,
he didn’t get on the bus - his wounded leg may ache, but walking will calm him down and
he will think over everything that was told to him at the publishing house, think it over and judge how
what should he do next?
Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, from
a department remained there, but the publishing house itself was transferred to the city more
large, and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured,
possessing a powerful printing base. But the "base" was exactly the same as
in Veisk - a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. Printing house
was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched
gratings of narrow windows at the bottom and shaped curved windows at the top, also narrow,
but already raised upward like an exclamation mark. Half a building
Wei printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, has long been
fell into the bowels of the earth, and although there were lamps in continuous rows along the ceiling
daylight, it was still uncomfortable, chilly and
something was always ticking, as if in the ears that were blocked, or was working, buried
in the dungeon, a delayed-action explosive mechanism.
The publishing department huddled in two and a half rooms, creaking
highlighted by the regional newspaper. In one of them, shrouded in cigarette smoke,
twitched, squirmed in the chair, grabbed the phone, littered the local
cultural luminary - Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrokvasova, moving forward and
then local literature. Syrovasova considered herself the most knowledgeable
person: if not in the whole country, then in Weisk she has no equal in intelligence
was. She made presentations and reports on current literature, shared plans
publishers through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed books
local authors, inappropriately and inappropriately inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante,
from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery, Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri
Olesha, Tregub and Ermilov, however, and the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes
worried, and did not ignore the leaders of the world proletariat.
Everything has long been decided with Soshnin’s book. Let the stories from it be published
and in thin but metropolitan magazines, three times they were condescendingly mentioned in
review critical articles, he stood in the back of his head for five years, ended up in
The plan was established, all that remained was to edit and design the book.
Having set the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrovasova appeared at
publishing department by twelve. Smelling Soshnin with tobacco,
out of breath, she rushed past him along the dark corridor - light bulbs
someone “stole”, hoarsely said “Sorry!” and crunched the key for a long time
faulty lock, swearing in a low voice.

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former criminal investigation operative, returns home from a local publishing house to an empty apartment, in the worst mood. The manuscript of his first book, “Life is More Precious than Everything,” after five years of waiting, has finally been accepted for production, but this news does not make Soshnin happy. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, who tried to humiliate the author-policeman who dared to call himself a writer with arrogant remarks, stirred up Soshnin’s already gloomy thoughts and experiences. “How to live in the world? Lonely? - he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people with whom his life encountered... Why Russian people Are you ready to feel sorry for the bone crusher and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment?.. Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?..

In order to escape from his gloomy thoughts at least for a minute, Leonid imagines how he will come home, cook himself a bachelor’s dinner, read, sleep a little so that he has enough strength for the whole night - sitting at the table, over a blank sheet of paper. Soshnin especially loves this night time, when he lives in some isolated world created by his imagination.

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother’s sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he used to call Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of the Wei Railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” The aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Lavrya’s father’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina’s death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin learned the first skills of brotherhood and hard work in a kind of kindergarten.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Four guys who were drunk to the point of losing their memory raped Aunt Granya, and if not for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken fellows sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. One day she expressed to Soshnin the terrible thought that by convicting the criminals, they had thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin shouted at the old woman for feeling sorry for non-humans, and they began to avoid each other...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunks accost Soshnin, demanding to say hello and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful remarks, but the main one, a young bully, does not calm down. Fueled by alcohol, the guys attack Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - his wounds and hospital “rest” took their toll - defeats the hooligans. One of them hits his head on the heating radiator when he falls. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers into the apartment. And he immediately calls the police and reports the fight: “One hero’s head was split on a radiator. If so, don’t look for it. The villain is me."

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

He and his partner were chasing a drunk on a motorcycle who had stolen a truck. The truck rushed like a deadly ram through the streets of the town, having already ended more than one life. Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before he died, the truck driver managed to hit the motorcycle of the pursuing policemen. On the operating table, Soshnina’s leg was miraculously saved from amputation. But he remained lame; it took him a long time to learn to walk. During his recovery, the investigator tormented him for a long time and persistently with an investigation: was the use of weapons legal?

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “Such Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who was drunk and returned from prison, put a final end to his career as an operative... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife’s parents in a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that there was a drunk in the neighboring village A man has locked old women in a barn and is threatening to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles to cover their hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin stabbed him with a pitchfork... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement could not be avoided.

At night, Leonid is awakened from sleep by the terrible scream of the neighbor girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulka lives with her grandmother Tutyshikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balsam from the gifts brought by Yulka’s father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Grandma Tutyshikha is already fast asleep.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, straightens her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

“Dawn was already rolling in like a damp snowball through the kitchen window, when, having enjoyed the peace among the quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of long-unknown confidence in his capabilities and strength, without irritation or melancholy in his heart, Soshnin stuck to the table and placed a blank sheet of paper in the spot of light and froze over him for a long time.”

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