It was Sanina's first night in the taiga - and what a night! - as if undertaking to show him one of her mighty limits. The darkness fell - even if you cut it with a knife, you could not see either the sky around the fire or the sides in it, the rain was rustling there like a continuous noise. He then fell silent for a short time, then let it go harder, and then the fire began to hiss, resisting the water, firing up coals with annoyance, and from time to time, for an accent, blowing and angrily howling. But the fire burned well. Before finally packing, Mityai piled two dry scaffolds on the fire, laying them side by side, which should have been enough for a long time. Sanya sat and watched how small tree ants rushed about these forests, how chips burned off and fell, exposing the granular crumb, eaten away by them, like sawdust. When he raised his eyes to the sky, there was still a gigantic darkness, starting immediately from the ground and rising to an unknown infinity. The rain coming through it seemed to be only black. And how pitiful, helpless and toy-like this fire must have seemed from somewhere from there! But to whom, to whom could he introduce himself, who, apart from Sanya sitting next to him, could see him? But is it not for this that darkness, darkness, darkness, so that one can see him from such distant places that are difficult to imagine? And next to Sanya - alert and ready for anything, waiting for something from the sky, whether from the outside with impatience and confidence: no, something must happen ... Such a night is not in vain. Now Mityai is already asleep, Uncle Volodya, who has covered his head with a raincoat-tent, has been snoring for a long time - why only he, Sanya, doesn't want to sleep? But was it not because they fell asleep, was it not because they were put to sleep so that he could be left alone and alone? .. Who inspired him, and he felt this suggestion more and more clearly in himself, as if he did not immediately hear and only after deciphering what was said from the remaining sounds - who inspired him that it was now that something should be revealed to him? Impatience became stronger and stronger - and closer, it means that there was a fulfillment, as if something, invisible and omnipotent, bent down and considered whether it was he. No, he does not consider, Sanya suddenly realized that he was mistaken and could not consider him, but this something catches all his feelings, all the silent secret life and by it determines whether there is in it and whether there is enough of what it is for someone to fulfill.
The rain began to fall silent again, in the billowing air the smell of wild rosemary and cedar resin was felt. Mityai turned over from side to side and muttered something sleepily. And the rain became even quieter, it hung over the fire against a dark background with a floating bead. Sanya froze, getting ready, for some reason anticipating that now ... And suddenly the darkness sighed with a single wide sigh sadly, having achieved something, then sighed again. Twice he breathed on Sanya with the sound of a gigantic, deep, hidden longing, and it seemed to him that he involuntarily recoiled and moved after this eminent, who knows how, he heard a call - he recoiled and immediately followed, as if something had entered him and something from it went out, but went in and out, so that, having changed places, then communicate without hindrance. For a few moments Sanya lost himself, not understanding and afraid to understand what had happened, a pleasant warmth in a continuous soft wave spread over his body, the tension and expectation disappeared newer, and with a feeling of some special fullness and final fulfillment, he got up and went into the hut.
He fell asleep quickly, settling into an empty seat between Mitya and Uncle Volodya, but, falling asleep, he heard the rain start again and dripped from above through the branches and bark. And suddenly he woke up - Uncle Volodya, leaning over him, pushed Mitya aside and whispered in fright:
Mityai! Mityai! Get up! Someone walks.
Who walks ... The bear probably walks, ”Mityai answered displeasedly. - Who else is there to walk ?!
Do you hear? Listen!
Mityai, continuing to grumble angrily, got up and began to light the fire. Sparks rattled in the sides, then the fire hummed evenly. When Mityai returned to his seat, Sanya was already asleep: the words about the bear did not disturb him much - either he did not wake up completely, or Mityai's calm voice acted.
And once again he heard in a dream how Uncle Volodya again pushes Mitya aside, but his words sounded somewhere far away and were hard to hear. And in the same place, far away, but from the other end, Mityai gruffly explained:
Don't be afraid, sleep. It comes and goes. He is also interested to see who it is, so he looks out. He doesn't need us anymore. If you lived here, and to you, most importantly, the bears would have clung to your territory without asking, would you not be interested? And you would wander the same way.
Nothing could wake Sanya anymore.
Mityai stirred him up. The first thing that Sanya saw, opening his eyes, was the sun - not accidentally getting out from behind the clouds in order to seem that it is alive and healthy, but the only one in the whole huge clear sky, inclined from the mountain beyond the river and further, so that it was easier for the sun to roll out into the open. Near the mountain there was still a shadow, faint and beginning to melt, it seemed that a little dampness was flowing from it, but the whole lowland was shining under the sun, and there, explosively, starlike, dying drops of water glittered there on the bushes with bright flashes. And where everything went so soon - and the hopeless, endless darkness in the sky, and rain, and night worries and fears - it was impossible to imagine.
Mityai managed not only to boil the tea, but also to prepare a brew, which they agreed to leave for lunch, before leaving. The fire was burning out, a weak smoke in a thin and thin strand went straight up, where the general thrust was felt. Sanya walked somehow unusually lightly and high, as if he had to expend efforts not to step, but to stay on the ground and not take off. The trees stood with their branches lifted up, and the grass stretched out stretched out in height.
They drank tea and sat still, enjoying the sun and waiting for it to pick up phlegm. Mityai was cheerful and loud and made fun of Uncle Volodya, over his night vigil. Uncle Volodya, as usual, kept silent, but this time with apparent reticence and anger. In the end, Mityai felt this too, and lagged behind him. Sanya, on that bright morning, was delighted - and the way the last large drops of rain fell from the cedar and plopped on the hut and on the ground; and then, how peaceful and sad, causing some incomprehensible sweetness in the chest, the fire died down; and how intoxicating and tart the forest ground smelled after the rain; how more and more the lowlands were bleached where they had to go; and even how unexpectedly and in a bad voice, frightening them, the nutcracker screamed over their heads.
The sun went into effect, the air warmed up - it was time to get down to business. Sanya looked into his bucket, which is still in his backpack under the cedar, - the berry in it has noticeably settled and overcame, and yet more than two cans, he estimated, will not fit into the bucket. You can take your time. But as soon as he began to take, only the first berry flowed through his fingers, poured even more, differing from yesterday's in what happened that night, and absorbing some of its difficult strength, only he plunged back into her living and joyful scattering - hands began to work by themselves, and it was already impossible to hold them. Under the sun, the dove soon brightened and became the color of the sky - as soon as Sanya raised her eyes up for a second, the berry disappeared completely, spreading in the blue of the air, so that she then had to peer, strain his eyes in order to find her again - still bright, large, clearly visible.
He didn’t even notice how he took one can, then another ... The bucket was full, but he just got wild. Having tied the top of the bucket with a clean rag, which he took with him for this need so that the berry would not spill out on the way, he slowly began to go down the path back. Mityai, without straightening his back, jerked jerkily behind the line of sparse birches on the right, Uncle Volodya was not visible, he seemed to prefer to be alone. From an excess of happiness, Sanya sighed sweetly - it was so good, so light and calm both in himself and in this world, of whose endless, fierce grace he did not even suspect, but only had a presentiment that it might be somewhere and for someone ... But so that for him! .. And in himself, it turns out, he did not know much and did not suspect - this, for example, an inhumanly strong and huge feeling, trying to contain all the radiance and all the movement of the world, all its inexplicable beauty and passion, all deceptive the completeness converged in one sight. Sanya was bursting with this feeling, he was ready to jump out of himself and take off, succumbing to him ... he was ready for anything.
Suddenly he felt like drinking, and he, going down to the river, drank, sipping from his palm.
The sun rose high, the day moved wider and became deeper and more spacious. Everything around was somehow especially bright and fresh, as if Sanya had just come here from a completely different, cramped and gray world, or, at least, from winter. The air was buzzing with the sun, with its evenly and purely falling, luminous mighty current; now, after the night, the nila could not get drunk and the earth could get enough of the sun, and so on until the new night, when the sky again demands its share from it. Every sound, every trepidation of a leaf seemed not accidental, meaning more than just a sound or a tremor than their usual existence in the day, just as the day itself could not be just the movement of time. No, it was His Majesty and Excellency a day that happens only once in a year, or even once every few years, in its grandeur, radiance and meaning reaching the last limits. On such a day, somewhere - on earth or in the sky - something special happens, from which some other countdown begins. But where, what, what? No, he was too great and not subject to anything, he was too high and all-glorious, this day, so that he succumbed to at least some mental extraction from himself. It is possible only to feel, guess, listen - and nothing more, and the inexplicability of the feelings caused by it only confirms its enormous inexplicability.
Sanya set to work again for the berry, for a task that was within his power, but, embarrassed and annoyed either by his ineptitude or by his oversight, which prevented him from understanding something important, something that was very close and was ready to help to him, upset and dissatisfied with himself, he fiddled with the last can for a long time. “Something”, “some”, “somewhere”, “sometime” - how all this is wrong and indefinite, how blurred and rubbed in vague ideas and feelings, and is it really the same for everyone? But after all, as never before, he was close to these “something” and “some”, felt the warmth and excitement in himself from their breath and shuddered at their touch, readily opened up and died away from their promising presence. And what was lacking in him to see and understand? What, capable of separating, in order to meet and bring inside, substance-beings, from what depths of what primordial? Or was he just teased, played hide and seek with him, noticing his credulity and curiosity? And who knows: if he was able to guess and accept this mysterious and desired uncertainty, to reveal and call it a word - would it not be about the same as a talking parrot among people?
Seeing that Uncle Volodya was heading towards the hut, Sanya followed him and wanted to pour out of his can into his far from full humpback, but Uncle Volodya unexpectedly rudely and abruptly refused to allow it. Sanya, very surprised, stepped back and put the can on the ground next to the backpack. There was nothing else to do. He sat down on a stone near an extinguished fire and, thinking and looking without attention, plunged back into the warmth and radiance until the end of the day, which stood open above him in all its grace and power, revealed bottomlessness and tenderness, undoubtedly the main day among many, many. ... He sat and with a weak, drowsy, spellbound and abrupt thought thought: “What else do I want? So good! At one time he, such a day, and I ... at the same time and here ... "
And when, on the way back, they climbed with a heavy load to the top of the pass, to that taiga stone "throne", from where the forests floated away in waves; when, standing on the edge of the cliff, looked at goodbye Sanya this, shining under the sun endlessly and without edge and already blue under him, majestic in beauty and tranquility, primitive expanse - from delight and unbearable sweet pain, Sanya's heart pounded loudly and abruptly: let, let anything - he saw it!
Questions and tasks
1. In almost every phrase of the writer, in many words used by him, there is some amazing mystery. If you do not ponder over the word, you will miss a lot, and perhaps you will not understand at all. Here, for example, is the sentence in the first paragraph: “It was Sanin's first night in the taiga - and what
night! - precisely undertaking to show him one of her mighty limits. " What are these "mighty limits"?
2.What is nature compared to in the text? Why are these comparisons necessary for the writer?
4. What did Sanya see and feel in the taiga forest? Based on these observations, draw a conclusion about the character of the boy.
5. Carefully re-read the last phrase. What words convey the feelings of Sanya? Make a synonymous row for each such word.
Find the story "Live and Love" and read it in its entirety yourself.
From foreign literature
All the works that you have read up to this point refer to Russian literature. Now you have to get acquainted with interesting examples of foreign literature.
Carefully read the works included in this section, and you will understand that foreign authors were worried about the same eternal problems and topics as Russian writers. They sang love, friendship, courage, vitality and beauty, opposing them to destructive, evil principles.
And at the same time, each of the national literatures is deeply original and distinctive, since it is closely connected with the legends of its people, the history of its country and the laws of its language.
DANIEL
DEFO
OK. 1660-1731
Daniel Defoe ... The famous creator of the famous Robinson Crusoe, about whose adventures on a desert island every child knows even before he even learns to read ... And yet, the author of Robinson Crusoe - both as a person and as an artist - is one of the most mysterious literary figures of the era. There are still many dark places in his biography. Start at least from the date of his birth, which is not exactly established. A colossal list of his works is being replenished and refined.
Illustration from the first edition of Robinson Crusoe. Smith and Pike engraving. 1819
By the time Defoe created his Robinson, he was already a well-known figure in the literary and political life of London. The writer left behind a life full of vicissitudes and adventures.
The very passion of the hero for travel is a bright sign of the times, when on the world map here and there it was written: "Not yet discovered places." The map appended to the fourth edition of Robinson Crusoe (1719) does not yet show the northwestern borders of North America, the northeastern borders of Asia, and only slightly outlines the northern and western outlines of Australia, then called New Holland. The interest in the stories of sailors was enormous. Travel books were in great demand from readers.
Now "Robinson" has migrated to the category of children's books.
However, "Robinson Crusoe" is not just the story of the upbringing of a dissolute youth who eventually got on the right path. This is a parable about the wanderings of a lost soul who, through turning to God, found the way to salvation.
According to K. Atarova
Robinson Crusoe. Illustrations for an excerpt from the work -
artist J. Granville. XIX century.
To those who do not have it, independence seems so attractive and fascinating thing that he will give anything for it. Sanya was literally struck by this word when he peered into it. I didn’t read it, I didn’t think it over, there wasn’t much to think about, but I looked and saw. "Independence" - to stand on your own feet in life, without props and prompts - that's what it means. Sometimes a trifle is not enough for an important decision; it happened this time too: as soon as Sanya saw what independence was, he seemed to stand in his own place, where he had to become independent, stood up so confidently and comfortably that there could be no doubt whether it was his place, and decided: that's enough. Stop walking on orders, acting on prompts, believing in a fairy tale ... A person is fifteen years old, but for dad and mom everything is a child, and it will never end, unless you state once and for all: yourself. Himself with a mustache. I am me, this belongs to me, in the end it is me to hold the answer for myself in life, and not to you. Of course, he was not going to cross the borders, there was no need for this, but he was going to push the boundaries. And surprisingly, as soon as Sanya made a decision, he was immediately lucky. Even at the beginning of summer, mom and dad were not going anywhere, but when he returned from the sports camp where Sanya spent June, he suddenly found out that they were leaving. They fly to Leningrad, get into the car with their acquaintances, go to the Baltic States, then to Kaliningrad, then to Brest, somewhere else and return only at the end of August to pack Sanya to school. “And you will stay with your grandmother,” my mother said. Daddy sighed. August is a golden month for my grandmother on Lake Baikal: berries, mushrooms, fishing, swimming, and dad, if it were his will, without hesitation, would change places with Sanya. Only Sanya, of course, would refuse to change - and not because he did not want to visit the Baltics and see Brest, he wanted, and especially to Brest, but he preferred to be where there are no dad and mom, who would have managed to shove in Brest him in a trench or a trench and would not be allowed to protrude so that, God forbid, he would not get a bullet fired forty years ago. If the parents have one child, they, apparently, fall into childhood themselves, continuing to play with him, like with a doll, until he pays off his own parental contribution. Sanya was embarrassed for his parents and felt sorry for them when he saw that, speaking in a normal and even language with his comrades, they immediately switched to the language of either immoderate ingratiation, or immoderate severity, doing both as if blindly, not seeing him, but only suspecting that he should be here, speaking not so much for him as for himself, in order to prove something to each other. He learned to relate to their words when they were together: this is not for him, it is they for themselves. However, each of them individually could talk to him seriously. This was especially true of dad, and in him it was especially noticeable how awkward he was in front of his son for their common conversation with mom together, but the next time came, the time came for the next conversation, and again everything was repeated from the beginning. “As small, honestly, as small,” Sanya thought in tune with them, annoyed and realizing that his parents in this respect are no worse or better than others, and that a person in his weaknesses remains a child for life.
On Lake Baikal, where Sanya came to his grandmother, luck continued. Three days passed - and suddenly they brought a telegram to my grandmother: leave immediately, Vera is in the hospital, the children are alone. Aunt Vera, my mother's sister, lived in the city of Nizhneangarsk on northern Baikal, and so, therefore, she fell seriously ill, and her husband is a geologist, he cannot be reached in the taiga. The grandmother waved, got lost: here the boy is in her arms, and there is no one knows what. Sania's parents at that time walked around Leningrad or drove to Tallinn, everything came together better than Sania, and he said: I will stay alone. Aunt Galya, a grandmother's neighbor, helped out, she agreed not only to feed the grandmother's piglets, but also to keep an eye on her grandson, and take him to her hut at night. Grandma left, and Aunt Galya forgot about Sanya. She did remember about the piglets, and that was enough.
Sanya healed like a godfather to the king. He loved to go to the store, cook simple food for himself, do small chores around the house, which he could not do without, even fell in love with weeding the beds in the garden, which he could not stand before, and made one important discovery: in his own life, he moved ahead of everything, what surrounded him and with what he was constantly forced to be near. Nothing seemed to have changed, outwardly everything remained in place and in its usual order ... except for one thing: he received an amazing ability to look back at this world and this order from a distance, could enter it, but could leave it. People only in the eyes of others remain in the general row, each of them individually, in his opinion, comes forward, otherwise life has no meaning. Much for Sanya was still here in the fog, but the feeling that he had stepped forward was distinct and joyful, like the feeling of heights when the distance opens. Most of all, Sanya was struck by the fact that he came to this feeling and this discovery thanks to such a seemingly trifle as the need to tinker with the beds, the most unpleasant job, which came from somewhere in him. It was neither a desire, nor a compulsion, but something else: I got up in the morning, and at the thought of how best to put the upcoming day together, almost before everything else, a reminder of the beds comes to mind, which exactly converges with your own need for movement and action, just as you remember about water only when thirst arises.
Spending the night alone in an old hut, in which something was constantly creaking and sighing, was not fun at first, but Sanya coped with fear in his own way - he read “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” before going to bed. The book was read, re-read, frayed to the last degree, which made the heart sank even more from the terrible stories told in it, which in the new book can be taken for fiction, but not in the old one, in the old one will involuntarily believe, but after them, after these stories in the book, ascended in their beauty and eerie to the very sky, with echoes from the underworld itself, there was no longer any strength and fear for their cornered and wall rustles, and Sanya fell asleep. In his view, the ghosts and evil spirits that were there in the book, for some reason, did not connect with those that could be here, as if not wanting to recognize the present emaciated and dishonored breed for their future, and Sanya, putting the book down, only with pity and with bewilderment he thought about everything that he tried to be afraid of, with pity not for himself, but for them: that's what power they had and what they had sunk to! .. And then he got used to it. I got used to distinguish the distant, like groans, signals of steamers in the sea, the noise of the wind that picks up during the day and hums in the walls at night, the heavy creak of old larch trees in the courtyard and the deaf, mighty hum from Baikal, which calls in the dark and cannot be reached. your loss.
So Sanya lived for a week, slowly proud of himself, of his independence and thrift, and worrying only that his grandmother would not come, from whom there was no news. Grandmother had a tear-off calendar on the wall in the room; Sanya took off the leaves from him and put them on the bedside table next to the fat grandmother's slide in his own separate order, seeing in this some kind of unclear, but significant meaning.
On Friday afternoon, Mityai came. He did not know that Sanya was living alone, but he had seen him the day before in the store, so he hoped to find Sanya's father here. Mityai went to him for help and now, confused and upset, sat on a stool by the front door and watched attentively and unseeingly as Sanya with a needle strung the cut brown birch trees on a double thread. He looked for a long time, wrinkling his face with an effort and worrying that the pieces of mushrooms on the long bent thread would not touch the floor, then asked:
- Are you drying?
- Well done.
The praise did not affect Sanya, no, he knew that she was worth nothing and was not said from the heart, he just felt sorry for Mityai, remembering how he felt sorry for him in such cases and Dad stood up for him before his mother and grandmother when Mityai was like this he came, sat down and waited.
- Uncle Mityai, you probably need three rubles. I can give, I have.
Mityai, peering at Sanya with a reviving gaze, frowned more than ever and replied:
- You don't call the cow your aunt?
- That's it ... why? .. Mityai - a nickname like a bull. Who is the nickname uncle? Call, like everyone else, Mityai, what is there ... I will not choke.
- What is your name? - Sanya did not dare to say "you". But they really knew each other for a long time, and Sanya's "you" slipped in a familiar way even earlier.
- Mityai. That's the name. Whatever - ask my mother, she died a hundred years ago.
And this was familiar to Sanya, and dad talked about it, noticing that when Mitya felt awkward for himself, he was "pulled" in the opposite direction. As, however, and many, which Sanya could judge by himself. “He did not degenerate from a monkey, but from the devil,” the grandmother said sternly when Sanya once tried to explain to her the theory of human origin. - If only from a monkey, he would keep quiet, not dishonor himself. And he, you see, the worse, the nicer. This is from him, from the unclean. "
Sanya took out three rubles in one piece of money from the nightstand where he kept the money and gave it to Mityai. The latter, somehow looking especially sternly at Sanya, took it and instead of gratitude said:
- Your father is a fool. The berry went, and he drove off. Berries nonche - inside and out.
Eh, dad would have heard it, he would have heard ... He and there, in glorious Riga, Kaliningrad and Brest, would have moaned his soul, begging to come back - he loved and waited all year for this berry season, contriving to time his vacation every summer precisely on her, at this time. Even now he guessed at her, and how much he tried, how much he worried and fought, so that not earlier and not later, but he didn't have to. He would have heard this "from and to", which in the language of Mitya means a rare, complete wealth that falls once every five, or even ten years. Mitya will not speak in vain, so something, but this is not the case with him, he, on the contrary, like everyone else locals, afraid of the evil eye, is ready to understate rather than exaggerate. This means that the taiga has disfigured glory. And my grandmother, leaving, sighed: “People say, berries are poured in a sprinkle, but I don’t run up the hill on my own. My berry was crying. "
On the berry, dad and Mitya agreed. For many years they walked together, managing to get something even in lean years. If not lingonberry, then dove; if not currants, then honeysuckle; if not raspberries, then blueberries. Once we went for sea buckthorn in late autumn, but they had to go far, into a strange taiga, they got caught in the snow and returned with nothing. Of their own berries, from their taiga, except for the rare, very empty years, usually there was plenty of it. Grandmother did not have time to cook it and crush it, Sanya did not have time to run to the store for sugar. By winter, the wide, two-row shelves in my grandmother's pantry were completely filled with jars, where on the pieces of paper pasted by Sanin's handwriting it was written in large letters where the sour and where the raspberries were, where the jam and where the jam. Half of these cans were then transported to the city and eaten for guests and everyday life, half remained with the grandmother, but how much does grandmother need alone, and lived until spring and until summer, when, having gathered together again, they piled on the berry with the whole family - just give it!
Mom was from here, from this village, grew up here, and dad is a city dad, but it was he who constantly pulled her here, and if mom went, so reluctantly, without pleasure, so as not to offend grandmother.
And Mom didn't like the friendship between dad and Mitya. Mityai once "sat", in addition, he "drank" - he had, he had a special kind of meta that scare away the dean. He did not hide them, but feeling dislike for himself from Sanya's mother, he loved, when he was "carried away," to tell prison stories in her presence or his drunken adventures, according to which it turned out that in two years in captivity he had killed at least twenty people there, and no later than yesterday he robbed five tourists on the beach near the canteen. Mityai was painfully exaggerating, while pressing on the camp jargon, and my mother, of course, did not believe everything, but she took some things seriously, believing that for this, fables were told to hide the truth, interested in hiding it. As for Mityai's current adventures, my mother could not help knowing that, once convicted of a drunken fight, Mityai has since then been more afraid of any peasant noise than death and tries to step aside as soon as he matures. Dad, defending Mityai, in a dispute with his mother began to get excited, and therefore he could not say much, he repeated only over and over again that even in his most bestial form Mityai remains a man and behaves like a man, not like some teetotalers. Grandmother, who did not like arguments and was also afraid of them, like Mityai fights, sighed conciliatoryly: "He is not a bad man, no, he just got out of the circle." This "got out of the circle" for some reason most of all and aroused in Sana'a interest in Mityai. It means that there are people in the circle and there are people around the circle - and what, cannot or does not want to return to the circle?
Mityai didn’t hide Sanin’s three rubles, he was twirling it in his hands, thinking, obviously, what to promise, what time to set for himself and Sanya to get the money back. And suddenly he complained:
- I, Sanya, already owe three buckets of berries to the people. Tomorrow I have to stomp.
This meant that he borrowed money for berries. That is why he was different, then dad always gave him credit for not begging, like some in the village, who knew one thing: in any way to take, lure, beg - no, Mityai immediately appointed when and how he could repay the debt, and, with rare exceptions, he returned exactly afterwards, and these exceptions consisted in the fact that at the appointed time Mityai, drunk or sober, came and said: today, even if you cut me, I cannot, but I can then.
He twirled a three ruble note in his hands and made some very complicated calculations, but, apparently not calculating anything comforting, he suddenly suggested:
- And if you want - come tomorrow with me instead of father. There is a berry - I ran and watched. You'd be too quick to sit at home.
And when Sanya, surprised and delighted, agreed without hesitation, Mityai looked at him more attentively and sternly, as if only now with his heavy mind that he had not yet grated in the taiga, and nowhere else grated, a home town boy. Sanya noticed his uncertainty.
- What are you, Mityai, do you think I won't make it, or what? I walk normally, don't be afraid.
“If you don’t get there, you’ll stay there,” Mityai grunted angrily and hid the three rubles in his pocket. - Only this ... let's go with the night, take the stock. Most importantly, take your clothes for the night.
Sanya gasped and involuntarily paused when, descending the mountain and turning out from behind the last house, he saw in the morning on the platform where the train was slowing down, a huge crowd of people. In the gray and sluggish morning twilight, when it was neither light nor dark, the crowd really seemed huge - much larger than it lives in the village, and people from three sides all came and went. On the fourth side, on the water, one after the other the engines roared deafeningly, and the boats with crouched and alert, as in races, figures rushed along the coast to the right. Those who were waiting for the train were kept in groups and for some reason were also wary and not very talkative.
In this mostly unfamiliar and unfriendly crowd, Sanya did not immediately find Mityai. He was a completely different person today than yesterday. With slyly and confidently gleaming eyes, with a rogue smile on his wide face that had grown healthier during the night, Mityai sat on the rail and, in Mongolian tucking his short legs in boots under him, lifted up the guilty, gloomy and disheveled person standing in front of him and in some way in front of him from head to toe, a rumpled peasant, telling that something that he did not remember and did not want to remember. Frowning, the man looked with hope towards the station, from where the train was supposed to appear. When Sanya approached and greeted him, he immediately, taking the opportunity, moved away from Mityai, and - behind his backs, behind his backs ...
- Where to?! Mityai shouted cheerfully after him. - Well, Golyanushkin, an empty head, I'll find you in the taiga, you can't hide from me.
Sanya looked around: why an empty head? - but the peasant is already gone. And Sanya looked around because Mityai had a hat on his head, old and made of cloth, faded to such a mournful color that it could not even be named, but somehow surprisingly suitable for Mityai, for everything that was fine and fitted this morning. Everything individually was out of place - a hat, a blue T-shirt under a dark jacket with rolled-up sleeves, wide, like harem pants, and trousers light from frequent washing, tucked into worn, tarnished boots - and all together it seemed exactly what a person should be wearing. who goes into the woods not for a walk. Whether thanks to the face, or the figure, or what else. Sanya already knew that there are such happy people on whom any awkwardness sits so that you would envy, but Mityai had something different, he seemed to have this harmony from some kind of agreement with himself, when a person does not care that put on, if only it is comfortable, and therefore everything put on is forced to look smart and good.
Mityai saw a backpack with a bucket protruding behind Sanya's back and asked:
- Where's the humpback of fathers?
- He's big strong.
- Will not fall out of the big one. In vain you. It is, most importantly, light on the back. Okay, come on, don't yawn.
A train approached, and Mityai, aiming where it was better to stand, took several steps along the way and held Sanya by his backpack by his side. Just opposite them was the open carriage door, Mityai quickly and strongly pushed Sanya into it, jumped himself, and while they were choking on the door, they were already sitting at a table by the window. Satisfied with his first good fortune, Mityai cheerfully looked out the window at the hustle and bustle, twitching and trying to shout something at especially interesting moments, and still held on. And again Sanya was amazed at the change that had happened to him since yesterday, as if Mityai was not with him, but his double, always cheerful and carefree. However, Sanya even earlier began to suspect that every person must have a double somewhere in the world, so that according to the results of two people who are identical in appearance and essentially opposite in their essence, someone united can decide what to do next.
- Well, the horde, well, the horde! - loudly and defiantly-happily shouted Mityai, when the train moved and they were crushed on one and the other benches so that they could not move. - Hold on, taiga!
- Something too much, - looking around, Sanya cautiously remarked, whose fright from the crowd still has not passed. - Are they all for the berry?
- There will be enough berries to take it in a human way. Only this horde. She will not collect as much as trample. Wait a feather trample. - Mityai stretched his neck, looking out for someone. - Nothing, Sanya, we are not fellow travelers, they will soon dump. This is all for everyday life, and we are serious berries. We will go there where no one has stepped foot.
The train went slowly and unevenly, jerking the old creaking carriage, which had served five terms, which you will not find on through lines for a long time. And only here they still serve, surprising the visiting person with a rude, at the present glance, shabby look: heavy wooden shelves; small and half-blind, like in a winter hut, framed windows, narrow passages with protruding corners and left in abundance for memory, carved on walls, windows, doors and shelves, the names and wishes of travelers thirsting for eternity.
Yes, this was not what is usually called a train, but rather a freight train, to which passengers were attached when three, when four cars, and in winter one was enough. Early in the morning, the obsolete prefabricated miracle Yudo left the village and returned late in the evening, pushing coal and gasoline, prefabricated wooden houses and boxes with vodka, metal structures and biscuits, candy-biscuits, huge and beautiful, shining bright foreign cars and domestic marching power plants. All this cargo in the village was reloaded onto ships and then transported along Baikal to the northern construction site.
The famous Trans-Siberian Railway used to pass here. From Irkutsk, it went along the left bank of the Angara and here this bank of Lake Baikal rushed further east. On the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, the Circum-Baikal Railway was even more famous - for the difficulty of laying and operating the track, and most importantly - for its beauty and that special and unusual spirit that only Baikal can give in work and on the road. Now they go to get there, and before they went to see also, and in such a trip (now the word “trip” seems as outdated as, for example, “phaeton”) these places were the most important, the most desirable - the expected and most memorable. The train stopped not for its own sake, but for the sake of passengers on a convenient and beautiful coastal kilometer, and the schedules were drawn up in such a way that it could stand, and people could splash Baikal water in each other's faces, gasp and poke over everything that is around, and go then further with a hidden dream to see and feel it all again. At the Baikal station in the source of the Angara, salted, smoked, dried, fried omul was sold in wooden rows, with a smell, with a lag, there was a lively and uninterrupted life with whistles and beeps, with announcements on the radio and shouts on the platform - and where did all this go? !
“As it was in another life,” said the grandmother, but spoke without sorrow, as if about youth, which was in due order and passed away.
This old life was cut short for the now usual reason: they began to build the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station, and therefore the railway from the bank of the Angara, which was flooded by a new reservoir, had to be moved higher. It was straightened from Irkutsk, leading without zigzags directly to the southernmost point of Lake Baikal - to the station Kultuk, and this part of the road from Kultuk to Lake Baikal thus remained out of work and ran into a dead end. One rail line was removed, the other was left just in case. Entrances and half-stations were empty, people left the villages, which had become their relatives for decades, abandoning their gardens and houses. Only at the stations, which were once rather big and existed not only by road, did life still glimmer; there, however, the old people held out.
But the fact that the second tracks had not been disassembled, now that the BAM thundered, turned out to be useful, and although the train still made one circle in a day, leaving early in the morning and returning late in the evening, it walked back harder and was longer. Yagodnikov was perfectly satisfied with this schedule to get to the right place, load up as much as luck permits, and sometimes to the eyeballs for a long summer day, and drove home the same day. And the place here - there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped, becoming inaccessible for the townspeople, they could still be considered rich. Of course, a city dweller also penetrated here in a related and friendly way, but not like along the new road, where he, like a locust, gnawed everything from wild garlic to pine nuts cleanly. If it were not for the humpbacks, the carriage with these people would have been, perhaps, even spacious. With a humpback, on which clothes and bowlers are loaded, a person takes up twice as much space. But, looking at the berries, Sanya already regretted that he had not taken his father's humpback - made of bent plywood, lightweight and easy to carry, with which you can fall, you can fall into the holes: the berries will remain intact. He would have taken it, yes, trying on yesterday, he found that the straps were too big for him. But the straps could probably be shortened, Mityai would have helped. Sanin's new green backpack with a bulging bucket looked very absurd among this friendly and well-equipped equipment - as if the guy was not going to the taiga, but to the bazaar.
- Station Berezai! Who needs it - get out! - shouted from the nearest door a bursting and unhealthy voice. Mityai, looking out the window, explained:
- Eightieth. Wait it will be easier.
The mileage has remained the same: once there were eighty kilometers from Irkutsk to this place.
The train began to slow down, and the humpbacks began to stir, swayed, then, beating into the compartment sides of the remaining ones, they swam to the exit, where they were drawn, like into a funnel, and with force carried them out into the open, scattering them to the sides, where they finally found owners who were calling out to each other and gathering again in their groups. Almost half of the people came out, and it really became easier in the car. It was evident when the train moved off, as those who left in a long queue, lined up one after another, went into the ravine past the abandoned houses, showing emptiness and cold through the windows.
From here, from the carriage window, this picture struck Sanya. The day was rising overcast, gray, the taiga had not yet warmed itself up from the light, and the people retreating into the dark decay past uninhabited houses, as if past other people's coffins, seemed to be leaving there in search of their own eternal refuge and carrying the results of their lives in these strange vessels. What's the berry ?! Berry so to divert the eyes. And until the decay disappeared from sight, Sanya had a full and vivid feeling that he was looking from the inside at the old burial place, and over the houses, as if over the graves, somewhere, on the other side, there were, as it should be, monuments ...
Dad, once reading a book, uttered out loud from there the phrase: "mortal horror of birth." "How how?" Mom asked. Dad repeated. "What nonsense?" - Mom said in confusion, to which dad did not immediately and thoughtfully said: “Not so stupid, however. There is something here that we are not supposed to know. Here, perhaps, it was said by chance, but behind this accident there is an abyss ”. He put the book aside and in even greater thoughtfulness, in an unnatural, strangely distant voice, continued: “It seems to us that we are living, and we may have been buried long ago, but we do not remember anything. We are bustling around here, whipping ... Like shifters. And we do not understand that we are not there, that it was someone who collected our sins and passions to see who we were. " Mom got scared: “Stop it, don't say your stupid things in front of Sana. He will remember. " Dad looked at Sanya and smiled: “And the truth is stupidity. Live, Sanya, as if you were just born here. "
But my mother was right: Sanya remembered, and my father's phrase from the book sounded now at the bus stop in the voice of the unknown person who first said it.
Time and again tunnels, which the road is famous for, were short and clean, with beautifully finished portals; on the side freed from the second tracks, heaps of hay stood in the tunnels, in the lowered window it was inflicted with bitter dampness, white growths on the walls, wriggling in stripes and similar to vessels in the womb, flickered and grew, self-muffling, the noise of the train, the train creaked and dangled more but it was strange: Sanya liked the dusk of the tunnels, he began to excite in him some special, deep instinct and did not have time - again burst out into the wide and light, heavenly twilight of the day and again briefly pushed the train. Sanya had not been here and looked with all his eyes. Behind the tunnels in dangerous places stretched walls protecting from rockfalls, evenly and neatly, as if laid out yesterday; on one of them was a huge boulder like a tank. It was impossible to imagine how he managed to jump onto the wall and stay on it, as if this was his goal: to stand up like a monument on a pedestal, in view of a gigantic rock in confirmation that the wall here is not in vain.
Staring at the road, Sanya did not notice when an elderly man, much older than Mityai, sat down next to them, a man with a white, not like the local and flabby face, but by pressure, by self-confidence. First he heard Mityai's voice:
- And I was looking at you, I was looking ... I thought I stayed ... Or I slept.
- At the very end I climbed. Barely pushing through, - someone unfamiliar answered, and then Sanya turned to them from the window. A man in a thick flannel shirt extended over his pants was sitting next to Mitya and, preparing for a meal, fished tomatoes out of an open humpback.
- I didn't have time to drink tea in the morning. Boy, what's coming with us? - without looking at Sanya, he asked.
- With us.
- You didn't say.
- So what? When would I say?
- Come on, I'm in the buckle myself. The rain would not be equipped, it smells like rain.
Sanya became wary: he also did not know that he and Mitya were not going alone. With the third in the taiga, of course, it was safer and more fun, but for some reason it was unpleasant that he found out about him only now.
At the 94th kilometer, where a stop was not supposed, but the machinists, their men, were persuaded to slow down again, perhaps yesterday, they rained down with their humpbacks battened down, like the discarded parts of some one disassembled huge creature. So it seemed to Sanya. The machinists, hurrying, twitched the train, and people, standing on the ground on their feet, laughed and shook their fists at the head of the train. Only a few people remained in the carriage, but they were not equipped for the taiga and were on their way to the regional center. Mityai, bypassing the carriage, cheered up and, returning to his seat, said cockily:
- You just, Uncle Volodya, don't croak. It shouldn't rain. Am I right, Sanya?
The three of them got off to 102nd, and Mityai, fooling around, waved his hand: touch, we don't need anyone else here.
- Why, you say, they all stayed there, and we come here? And because, Sanyok, walking is easy there. An hour, well, a little more jump-start - and in place. And then you’ll get there, you have to change your legs three times, like horses, but how much sweat will go away. Cut off? - Mityai, referring to Sana, said this to Uncle Volodya, who was also walking here for the first time, thus warning them about the difficult road.
An innumerable number of times they crossed the river from bank to bank, rising to meet it along the gully, then jumping over the stones, then climbing over the woods that fell across, then ford, and then stepping over in narrow deep throats in which dark water gurgled. The trail on the white, as if dried, stones was lost, there was no more or less a sign, no matter how peered Sanya, but Mityai seemed to see it from above and as if went out to its continuation. They walked either along a steep slope, where more energy was spent so that, abutting, not to slide down, than to move forward, then along such a narrow pressure next to the rock, on which not only two of them could not miss each other, but also one was cramped, so they had to braid your legs to step in a line; then on tall, taller than human growth, grass in swampy lowlands. But then the path, giving you a rest, took you into the forest, became dry and wide, nothing interfered with your step, and it was a pleasure to walk along it.
Taiga stood quiet and gloomy; having already woken up, having entered the day, she seemed to be slumbering limply in anticipation of some change. It was impossible to say about the sky in thick white turbidity, whether it was low or high, it was as if flesh had been taken out of it, and only a bottomless deaf void remained. The sun did not penetrate through it, there was no wind either - the heavy trees that had grown over the summer stood motionless and straight, engulfed in languor, and only above the river, obeying the movement and noise of the water, the leaves on the birches and bushes trembled. From time to time, birds fluttered, once, walking, they scared a brood of hazel grouses from the path, but he also took off and flew away more calmly than usual, so as not to disturb the general silence.
The farther they went, the more the cedar grew and the more often Sanya lifted his head, looking out for cones. There were a lot of them, and they hung - as if they were sitting in dense dark needles, tumbled over to the side in search of support. And after Mityai, who was walking in front, picked up a few disturbed by the nutcracker from the path, Sanya began to jump under almost every tree and also found one cone, half dried out, and two together on a common shoot, torn off by the wind and not at all injured. How could I be patient so as not to boast! Sanya ran to Mityai, who, without taking a step away, nodded:
- There is still a nut. From and to. But the nutcracker, the bastard, has already flown. - And he added disapprovingly: - You don't jump too much. Soon we won't have enough legs, we will crawl on all fours.
This "soon" began after, having rested and ate without tea, they left the river and took to the left of it. Prior to that, the ascent continued all the time, now more gently, now more steeply, it continued now, but they went obliquely to the mountain and walked, deceiving it, at first easily. The cedar and the spruce forest remained below, an aspen forest began with high and already lodged grass, covering the path on both sides so that only feet could feel it. Then the aspen tree thinned out, everything again went mixed - cedars, pines, birches, spruce, and the mountain, which they diligently bypassed, as if outwitting them, turned around and stood in front of them. They climbed.
Mityai was still walking first, and he alone knew what lay ahead for them. The forest thinned more and more, freeing the sky - it seemed that they were about to climb finally to the top, from where a steep descent would begin: that's why the sky opened up. Uncle Volodya was breathing heavily, with a whistling sound. Sanya did not dare to bypass him, they all walked in the same order as they left, but Sanya and Uncle Volodya were now far behind Mityai, whose upturned humpback, covering his head, moved as if on his own, on his own feet and did not know tired.
The steepness really diminished, a breath of freshness breathed in his face ... Sanya walked with his head down, looking at his feet, and almost bumped into Uncle Volodya's humpback. Behind him, turning around, stood Mityai and smiled expectantly.
- What are you? .. Where are you going? - Uncle Volodya asked, looking around in fright.
- Smoke break! - announced Mityai and sat down on the first fallen tree, somehow without pleasure, gloomily pleased with what he could show them. - Further on in bellies.
Sanya could not believe his eyes: they were just walking along a neat, cheerful and cleanly standing forest, alive, as always, at the pass, and suddenly ... From here, where they stopped, and somewhere in front, where it ended, in a huge and unknown how long strip to the right and to the left, everything was demolished by some hellish, monstrous force. The trees, piled on top of each other, lifted high up the nests of roots that had been turned up with the ground, bristled with branches with yellow needles that had not yet flown away, and were scattered with debris, cracked up and down. Sanya could not even imagine such blockages. That which did not upturn with roots - most of all it was spruce and cedars - broke off, leaving ugly high and split stumps standing in a bizarre and seemingly not random order. Only here and there the undergrowth survived, and its green needles and green leaves, already bold and pushing upward, seemed in the midst of this common and overly obvious defeat as an inappropriate game of continuing life.
- What is it? .. What was there? - barely recovering, asked Sanya.
- Tornado, - said Mityai.
- What tornado?
- Such, from Baikal. More non-kul. This is the first time I've seen such devastation myself. Last year, your father and I went for a berry the same way - everything is fine. And in the fall I was a nut ... Maybe, the main thing was that I saw it first. You go and see what exactly you cut on this side. How measured.
Sanya passed and looked: the border between the felling and the living, standing forest was really surprisingly even, albeit with jagged edges, where trees were thrown from the doomed strip.
“That way it could have killed,” Uncle Volodya remarked gloomily, looking down from under his brows the defeated forest army.
Mityai laughed, Sanya heard - not without anger:
- Could it? Yes, it could not help but knock down when you were here at that time. Wouldn't guess Wait.
- I'm sitting at home. It’s you roaming the woods, ”Uncle Volodya did not remain in debt.
- And the newcomers are gushing. It’s the main thing that is guarding them. Because of them, it happens. Look, how many taiga was ruined by one such.
- Because of whom? - Uncle Volodya jumped up. - What are you talking about?!
- Otkul I know, because of whom. I haven't been here.
- Well, don't talk in vain. The owner of the taiga has been found! How is it that you all do not like newcomers - that Nikolai Ivanovich, that Lech, that you ... As if my garden ... I want - let go, if I don't want - I will wrap it up.
Mityai chuckled.
“Don’t equate me with them,” he said conciliatingly after thinking. - I would be as you say, I would not take you with me. And the guy would not have called. You shouldn't have heard about Lech either: you heard the ringing, but did not understand where he was. Lech is a neat man, he loves order. And letting each one go into the taiga is just a ruin, it has been ruined anyway.
- I live next to you - why am I each?
“I’m not about you, Uncle Volodya, not about you,” Mityai seemed to be sincerely and even more conciliatory, but even Sanya felt an uncertainty and emptiness in his voice: Mityai was not saying something.
And through this strip no more than a kilometer wide, they pushed their way for an hour and a half. Before, Mityai had already tried to clean the passage here, he still walked with an ax, often stopping and chopping off branches, throwing them to the side, and it was still difficult to walk. They then crawled under the trunks from below, touching and clumsy with humpbacks, now and then pushing back and clumsily falling, then they climbed up and moved along the trunks, as if along crossed and tangled bridges, moving from trunk to trunk, so that at least a few steps, but forward. We walked in intricate zigzags - where we could go. Uncle Volodya moaned and swore, sweat poured from him in streams. A large green bundle, which turned out to be a raincoat-tent, was pulled from his humpback - it was picked up by Sanya, who was already tortured with his backpack constantly slipping from his shoulders. Recovering himself and seeing his luggage in Sanya's hands, Uncle Volodya only nodded his head helplessly: carry it until you leave, so be it.
But when they finally got out of the blockage and, having walked another fifteen minutes along a clean path, climbed to the top, abruptly hewn from the left and stepping to the right with a stony serpentine, when they unexpectedly hit their eyes with an immense expanse in dark shimmering green that opened from both sides, victoriously arguing in this hour with the whitish emptiness of the sky - they were rewarded for everything, for everything. Among the huge boulders overgrown with lingonberry, it is important and well-born, not having the need to stretch up, stood - did not stand, but soared in the air - mighty and spreading pines, as they should be regal and mighty in view of the many, many unmeasured kilometers of free land. Here was the limit, the throne - further and below, wavyly rising to the smoky horizon and shimmering now with lighter, now with darker spots, as if sliding and abutting, the sovereign worship taiga stood in a wide opening in mysterious attention.
Mityai, taking off his humpback, exclaimed cheerfully and loudly:
- Well, Uncle Volodya, and you said! Why did you tell a lie ?!
Uncle Volodya, heavily, with a grunt, sitting down on a stone, did not respond.
- Wow! - gasped Sanya, who came up last.
- From and to, Sanya, eh ?! - Mityai shouted to him. - Remember - in a dream then you will dream!
Somewhere nearby, a chipmunk whistled angrily asserting its rights to this district. Mityai laughed:
- Yes, let's leave, let's leave, guy. Let's sit and leave. What are you, such a fool, and you don't remember me?
“It cannot be,” Sanya thought more than once, “for a person to enter each new day blindly, not knowing what will happen to him, and living it only by the decision of his own will, every minute choosing what to do and where to go. It doesn't look human. Doesn't the whole life from beginning to end exist in him from the beginning and does not there exist in him a memory that helps him remember what to do? Perhaps some people use this memory, while others do not or go against it, but all life is a memory of the path embedded in a person from birth. Otherwise, what's the point of letting him into the world? So perfect, the perfection of which Sanya began to marvel more and more, more and more resting in this surprise in some kind of close and clear incomprehensibility; so complete in its forms and abilities and so sublime among the rest of the world - and suddenly, like a tumbleweed, onto an open road - where will the wind carry? Can not be! Why then these long and wonderful efforts in him? So much to do inside and leave him without a path? It would be too ridiculous and stupid. "
It seemed to Sanya that he saw this place exactly like that, as you can see the coming day, you just have to strain your memory harder than usual. Only a few details did not match. Rather, he did not force himself to consider them in detail, seeing the main thing and deciding that this was enough. Five minutes later, after they approached the hut, Sanya no longer doubted that he had been here. Of course, he never actually happened, but he seemed to have not turned off the path, like a dotted line lying in front of him, came to where he was supposed to come, and found what he was supposed to find here. But he found and saw in the full picture, and not in naked representations, in all colors and complete, having no similarity anywhere else, life.
It was a glorious place: on a dry hillock among firs and cedars. Under the protection of a huge, densely and widely grown cedar, there was a hut covered with bark and branches and covered with old spruce branches and grass from the ground. Nearby was a blackened fireplace, neatly and economically arranged and lined with stones, with a prepared taganka and smoked birch flyers hanging from it for boilers, and a little further from the river, a high-fallen forest was hewn from above and fitted under a table. And it was clean, it was settled here: no paper, no cans, no flasks - the order established by man was maintained by the taiga. Dry twigs, thrown by the wind, seemed to be prepared for kindling, so as not to look for it for a person, and immediately caught fire. Mityai, giving orders cheerfully and impatiently, drove Sanya to fetch water, and while Uncle Volodya was slicing the bread, while everyone was taking out the food brought too readily and laid it out in a row on a long and narrow platform, while this and that, the tea was ready. They drank it to their hearts' content after a difficult journey and, having drunk, got exhausted, became sleepy from satiety, from the densely and motionless air and the soporific gurgling of water in the river - pulled to rest. Yawning, Mityai allowed:
- Okay, half an hour to lay off - that's it. Only so that not a single leg groaned. We'll have time, we'll break down.
He lay down beside the dying fire, putting a hat under his head and spreading a quilted jacket under him, which had wintered and flew here for more than one year and turned into a kind of quilted jacket, which, apparently, did not lose the ability to warm and soften. Uncle Volodya went to the hut and soon snoozed there, and Sanya was sitting by the woods where they drank tea, on a stone and, relaxing, limply and drowsy, looking and not seeing, listening and not hearing, he opened up to everything, to everything that was around : for a wide swampy lowland behind the river, completely overgrown with blueberries and marked with gnarled birches; for the low sky, which gradually begins to flow with some kind of muddy flesh; for muffled and wavering sounds, echoing like a false echo, from the depths of a world filled with silence. And all this poured in, entered in, brought in inadvertently and inadvertently into the guy who had forgotten himself in a sweet languor, all this was looking for in him a unifying, long-lasting, in a different, non-human measure of participation and the right disposition - all this bewitched and mortified him to the point that he wanted to freeze here like an idol and not move anywhere.
It was stuffy; sweat streamed down the cheek of Mitya, who was lying motionless on his side with his eyes closed, and a large gray fly drank him, now running away, then again falling with a velvet articulated head against the dripping moisture and preventing it from rolling down behind his neck. This fly eventually woke Mityai, he sat down, shook himself, wiped sweat with the sleeve of his jacket, and looked around.
“Stop spending the night, men,” he said quietly, yawning and peering more attentively into the sky. - You still begged for rain, Uncle Volodya, begged. We must catch up to him.
And a minute later, he again gave orders cheerfully and energetically:
- Come on, come on, Sanya, move. So that, most importantly, half a bucket today you knocked. Wow, look, Uncle Volodya is here! .. Hold on, berry! - He saw how Uncle Volodya, tightening his bowler hat on his belt, stood at the ready with a shovel in his hand. - And let’s argue, Uncle Volodya, that I am more than yours without a scoop. Come on? Are you afraid? Why tear it up with a scoop when the berry is like that ?! You will shake her with your hand. And the berry will be clean - even to the market. Only tear off the sheet with a shovel, you will trample her home half with the sheet.
Uncle Volodya, without answering, was the first to move towards the river.
- Have a rest, Sanyok, have a rest, - Mityai repeated excitedly, when they too crossed the river and stood in front of the berry-tree. Uncle Volodya went to the left into the depths of the lowland, water chomped and poured under his feet. Emitting a hacking, urging sound with his lips, Mityai bent over the bushes, and Sanya heard the first berries fall abruptly into his pot, and then, falling and falling, turned into frequent and soft muttering.
Sanya has never seen so many berries. And I did not imagine that there could be so much of it. He used to go for raspberries with his grandmother more than once, last year he went with his dad and Mitya here, on Lake Baikal, to the Shirokaya pad for black currants, that was his first serious exit into the taiga, which ended successfully, but then they took it by the rush, cleaning up the rest after the others, and although they typed well, it did not give much pleasure. Immediately, this time they were the first, no one had touched or crushed the berry before them, but it grew marvelously, in a rare year, according to Mityai, such a harvest is possible. Now Sanya knew what it was - the bushes were bursting with berries: they really burst, lay on the ground from the weight, or stood bent over, supporting each other in an unbearable load.
Sanya parted the bushes and froze from the disturbed dense fruit that opened up. A smoky blue, well-fed and vividly quivering rash blinded, causing surprise, delight, guilt, and something else, for which Sanya did not know the name and that all this sunk into the soul together with a fastening feeling - vague and good-natured. Bending over a bush, dressed now with round or oblong fruits, Sanya began to play with him, which volunteered by itself and he liked. “Do not be offended,” he said, “that I will take you ... I will take you so that you do not disappear in vain, so that you do not fall to the ground and rot, without giving anyone any benefit. And if I don’t take you, if you don’t have time to fall to the ground and rot, anyway a bird will bite you or a beast will wrap you up - so why is it worse if I collect you now? I'll save you, - Sanya did not want to admit that he would cook or crush berries, it seemed barbaric, - and in winter a little girl named Katya, who is often sick ... - And it seemed rude, tactless to call himself - what he would eat berry, and Sanya remembered his cousin, who really got a lot of jam, so Sanya was not completely lying here. -… and a little girl named Katya… she loves the dove very much, loves you, you help this girl a lot. When we get home, you will see her and understand how much she needs you ... do not be offended, please. "
The fingers soon learned to feel the pliability of the berry, its strength and filling, and to touch it now with one light touch, now with a gentle pressure, now with a soft twist, so as not to break off the flesh when the berry did not want to lag behind the sprout; the fingers did their job quickly and surprisingly dexterously, which Sanya did not even suspect of himself, as if this had come to him as a near and desired memory. And, kneading, caressing each berry, pushing them one by one into the palm of his hand and then pouring them into a can, fastened to a belt, dangling on his stomach, repeating in a multitude of the same movements, he did not notice their monotony, if not noticed the time, plunging headlong into this lively and sensual needlework and completely lost in its frequent and dense pattern. And when something - an extraneous sound or a careless movement - brought him into memory, he, with difficulty recognizing, looked around: here he is, it turns out, where, it turns out, he is taking a berry, but it seemed to him ... But what did it seem to him, it was impossible to say.
And how nice it was, without looking into the can, to feel its ever-increasing and increasing weight, and then, lowering the berry, as if inadvertently bumped into its rising warm interior: so fast! And go with a filled can to the hut, stand next to the bucket before pouring it into it, staring at the steam room and living, languidly breathing, each berry separately, light-glossy blue collection. Below, when Sanya poured the dove into a bucket, it was already sweaty and dark and seemed suffocated. From here, from below, you could finally throw a few berries into your mouth, freeze for a moment from the sweetness spreading under your tongue and gently melting flesh and, smacking your lips, slowly return back to the bush, and then for ten, fifteen minutes and completely forget about the can, as if would finish the drug started, all supplementing and supplementing his unspecified measure.
No, there is no berry in the world more tender and sweeter than a dove, and you have to be persistent to bring it from the forest in a vessel.
It started raining, but none of the three of them responded in any way, did not rush into the hut, each hurried his hands even more. Mityai and Sanya still kept close to each other, and Uncle Volodya gradually approached them from the depths of the swamp. The rain falling on the bushes made a thick and sonorous noise; it became difficult to take a wet berry, it choked, crumpled, leaves stuck to my hands. It was getting dark quickly, and only then, recollecting himself, Mityai shouted an end. Sanya managed to pour three three-liter cans into the bucket by this time, filling it more than half.
In the dark and in the rain, they chopped and hauled up firewood, preparing it on a damp and restless night. Mityai scolded both himself and Uncle Volodya for playing on the berries and being late, like little ones, but it was felt that he was swearing so, for the sake of order, satisfied himself that they took to the last and managed a lot. They didn't want to chase with the brew in the rain, boiled the tea again and, climbing into the hut, drank it by the light of the fire for a long time and sweetly, as you can enjoy it only in the taiga after a difficult and successful, in spite of everything, day.
It was Sanina's first night in the taiga - and what a night! - as if undertaking to show him one of her mighty limits. The darkness fell - even if you cut it with a knife, you could not see either the sky around the fire or the sides in it, the rain was making a noise there. He then fell silent for a while, then let it go harder, and then the fire began to hiss, resisting the water, firing up coals with annoyance and starting from time to time to make a blowout and angry howl. But the fire burned well, Mityai, before finally laying down, piled two dry woods on the fire, laying them side by side, which should have been enough for a long time. Sanya sat and watched how small tree ants rushed about these forests, how chips burned off and fell, exposing the granular crumb, eaten away by them, like sawdust. When he raised his eyes to the sky, there was still a gigantic darkness, starting immediately from the ground and rising to an unknown infinity. The rain passing through it, it seemed, could only be black, And how pitiful, helpless and toy, this fire must have seemed from somewhere from there! But to whom, to whom could he introduce himself, who, apart from Sanya sitting next to him, could see him? But is it not for this that darkness, darkness, darkness, so that one can see him from such distant places that are difficult to imagine? And next to Sanya - alert and ready for anything, waiting for something from heaven, whether from the outside with impatience and confidence: no, something must happen ... Such a night is not in vain. Now Mityai is already asleep, Uncle Volodya, who has covered his head with a raincoat-tent, has been snoring for a long time - why does he, Sanya, only want to sleep? But was it not because they fell asleep, was it because they were put to sleep so that he could be left alone and alone? .. Who inspired him, and he felt this suggestion more clearly in himself, as if he did not immediately hear and only after deciphering what was said from the remaining sounds - who inspired him that it was now that something should be revealed to him? Impatience became stronger and stronger - and closer, which means that there was a fulfillment, as if something, invisible and omnipotent, bent down and considered whether it was he. No, he does not consider, Sanya suddenly realized that he was mistaken and could not consider him, but this something catches all his feelings, the whole silent secret life emanating from him and determines by it whether there is in him and whether there is enough that is, for some kind of performance.
The rain began to fall silent again, in the billowing air the smell of wild rosemary and cedar resin was felt. Mityai rolled over from side to side and muttered something sleepily. And the rain became even quieter, it hung over the fire against a dark background with a floating bead. Sanya froze, getting ready, for some reason anticipating that right now ... And suddenly the darkness with a single wide sigh sighed sadly, having achieved something, then sighed again. Twice he breathed on Sanya with the sound of a gigantic, deep, hidden longing, and it seemed to him that he involuntarily recoiled and moved in pursuit of this eminent, who knows how, he heard a call - he recoiled and immediately followed, as if something had entered him and something from it went out, but went in and out, so that, having changed places, then communicate without hindrance. For a few moments Sanya lost himself, not understanding and afraid to understand what had happened, a pleasant warmth in a continuous soft wave spread over his body, the tension and expectation disappeared newer, and with a feeling of some special fullness and ultimate fulfillment, he got up and went into the hut.
He fell asleep quickly, settling into an empty seat between Mitya and Uncle Volodya, but, falling asleep, he heard the rain start again and drip from above through the branches and bark. And suddenly he woke up - Uncle Volodya, leaning over him, pushed Mitya aside and whispered in fright:
- Mityai! Mityai! Get up! Someone walks.
“Who walks ... The bear must be walking,” Mityai answered displeasedly. - Who else is there to go ?!
- Do you hear? Listen!
Mityai, still grumbling angrily, got up and started lighting the fire. Sparks rattled in the sides, then the fire hummed evenly. When Mityai returned to his place, Sanya was already asleep: the words about the bear did not alarm him much - either he did not wake up completely, or Mityai's calm voice acted.
And once again he heard in a dream how Uncle Volodya again pushed Mitya aside, but his words sounded somewhere far, far away and were hard to hear. And in the same place, far away, but from the other end, Mityai gruffly explained:
- Don't be afraid, sleep. It looks like and will go away. He is also interested to see who it is, so he looks out. He doesn't need us anymore. If you lived here, and, most importantly, the bears would come to you without asking, on your territory, would you not be interested? And you would wander the same way.
Nothing could wake Sanya anymore.
Mityai stirred him up. The first thing Sanya saw, opening his eyes, was the sun - not accidentally getting out from behind the clouds to seem that it is alive and healthy, but the only one in the whole huge clear sky, inclined from the mountain behind the river and further, so that the sun is easier it was rolled out into the open. Near the mountain there was still a shadow, faint and beginning to melt, it seemed that a little dampness was flowing from it, but the whole lowland was shining under the sun, and explosively, starry drops of water splashed there on the bushes in bright flashes. And where everything went so soon - and the hopeless, endless darkness in the sky, and rain, and night worries and fears - it was impossible to imagine.
Mityai managed not only to boil the tea, but also to prepare a brew, which they agreed to leave for lunch - before leaving. The fire was burning out, a faint smoke in a thin and thin strand went straight up, where the general thrust was felt. Sanya walked somehow unusually lightly and high, as if he had to expend efforts not to step, but to stay on the ground and not take off. The trees stood with their branches lifted up, and the grass stretched out stretched out in height.
They drank tea and sat some more, enjoying the sun and waiting for it to pick up phlegm. Mityai was cheerful and loud, and made fun of Uncle Volodya, over his night vigil. Uncle Volodya, as usual, kept silent, but this time with visible secrecy and anger. In the end, Mityai felt this too, and lagged behind him. Sanya was delighted with everything on that bright morning - and the way the last large drops of rain fell off the cedar and plopped on the hut and on the ground; and then, how peaceful and sad, causing some incomprehensible sweetness in the chest, the fire died down; and how intoxicating and tart the forest ground smelled after the rain; how more and more the lowlands were bleached where they had to go; and even how unexpectedly and in a bad voice, frightening them, the nutcracker screamed over their heads.
The sun went into effect, the air warmed up - it was time to get down to business. Sanya looked into his bucket, which was still in his backpack under the cedar, - the berries in it had noticeably settled and overcame, and yet more than two cans, he estimated, would not fit into the bucket. You can take your time. But as soon as he began to take, only the first berry flowed through his fingers, poured even more, differing from yesterday's in what happened that night, and absorbing some of its difficult strength, only he plunged again into her living and joyful scattering - hands began to work by themselves, and it was already impossible to hold them. Under the sun, the dove soon brightened and became the color of the sky - as soon as Sanya looked up for a second, the berry disappeared completely, spreading in the blue of the air, so that then she had to peer, strain his eyes to find her again - still bright, large, distinctly visible.
He didn’t even notice how he took one can, then another ... The bucket was full, but he just got wild. Having tied the top of the bucket with a clean rag, which he took with him for this need so that the berry would not spill out on the way, he slowly began to go down the path back. Mityai, without straightening his back, jerked jerkily behind the line of sparse birches on the right, Uncle Volodya was not visible, he seemed to prefer to be alone. From an excess of happiness, Sanya sighed sweetly - it was so good, so light and calm both in himself and in this world, of whose endless, fierce grace he did not even suspect, but only had a presentiment that it might be somewhere and for someone ... But so that for him! .. And in himself, it turns out, he did not know and did not suspect a lot - this, for example, an inhumanly strong and enormous feeling, trying to contain all the radiance and all the movement of the world, all its inexplicable beauty and passion, all deceptive the completeness converged in one sight. Sanya was bursting with this feeling, he was ready to jump out of himself and take off, succumbing to him ... he was ready for anything.
Suddenly he felt like drinking, and he, going down to the river, drank, sipping from his palm.
The sun rose high, the day moved wider and became deeper and more spacious. Everything around was somehow especially bright and fresh, as if Sanya had just come here from a completely different, cramped and gray world, or, at least, from winter. The air was buzzing with the sun, with its evenly and purely falling, luminous mighty current; now, after the night, the earth drank and could not get drunk and the sun was satisfied, and so on until the new night, when heaven again demands its share from it. Every sound, every trepidation of a leaf seemed not accidental, meaning more than just a sound or a tremor than their usual existence in the day, just as the day itself could not be just the movement of time. No, it was His Majesty and Excellency a day that happens only once a year, or even once every few years, in its grandeur, radiance and meaning reaching the last limits. On such a day, somewhere - on earth or in the sky - something special happens, from which some other countdown begins. But where, what, what? No, he was too great and not subject to anything, he was too high and all-glorious, this day, so that he succumbed to at least some mental extraction from himself. It is possible only to feel, guess, listen - and nothing more, and the inexplicability of the feelings caused by it only confirms its enormous inexplicability.
Sanya set to work again on the berry, for a task that was within his power, but, embarrassed and annoyed either by his ineptitude, or by his oversight, which prevented him from understanding something important, something that was very close and was ready to help to him, upset and dissatisfied with himself, he fiddled with the last can for a long time. “Something”, “some”, “somewhere”, “sometime” - how all this is wrong and indefinite, how blurred and rubbed in vague ideas and feelings, and is it really the same for everyone? But after all, as never before, he was close to these “something” and “some”, felt the warmth and excitement in himself from their breath and shuddered at their touch, readily opened up and died away from their promising presence. And what was lacking in him to see and understand? What, capable of separating, in order to meet and bring inside, substance-beings, from what depths of what primordiality? Or was he just teased, played hide and seek with him, noticing his credulity and curiosity? And who knows: if he was able to guess and accept this mysterious and desired uncertainty, to reveal and call it a word - would it not be about the same as a talking parrot among people?
Seeing that Uncle Volodya was heading for the hut, Sanya followed him and wanted to pour out of his can into his far from full humpback, but Uncle Volodya unexpectedly rudely and abruptly refused to allow it. Sanya, very surprised, stepped back and put the can on the ground next to his backpack. There was nothing else to do. He sat down on a stone near an extinct fire and, thinking and looking without attention, plunged back into the warmth and radiance until the end of the day, which stood open above him in all its grace and power, revealed bottomlessness and tenderness, undoubtedly the main day among many, many. ... He sat and with a weak, drowsy, spellbound and abrupt thought thought: “What else do I need? So good! At one time he, such a day, and I ... at the same time and here ... "
And when, on the way back, they climbed with a heavy load to the top of the pass, to that taiga stone "throne", from where the forests floated away in waves; when, standing on the edge of the cliff, looked at goodbye Sanya that shining under the sun endlessly and without edge and already blue beneath him, majestic in beauty and peace, primitive expanse - from delight and unbearable sweet pain, Sanya's heart pounded loudly and abruptly: let, let anything - he saw it!
In the late and mild twilight, they went to Lake Baikal, crossed the railroad and, high and round, like an island standing in the forest between the road and the coast, threw off their luggage. The mild twilight is a sure sign that today, due to its sonorous and pure power, will not repeat itself tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, for a long, long time. We know earthly holidays - that was the holiday of the sky, which it, the sky, cannot celebrate only in its open spaces, then there was a generous border between the two boundaries. And now it is over, and now it is over. The light burned out, the sky went out, not giving depth, and it was darkened; foolishly faint, muddy stars jumped out over Lake Baikal and immediately, as if pulled back, disappeared. Sharply and distinctly standing out, the forest was darkening, not yet standing up as a solid wall, showing diversity and depth, in it the riding wind rustled with long and dreary sighs. The distant shores on the other side of Lake Baikal were sharply outlined in dense blue; the water in the sea, dimmed by the dull sky, barely flickered with a trembling and twisted glow, as if penetrating from under the bottom.
It was about forty minutes before the train. Stretched out on the grass at the edge steep coast, they did not move: there was no strength. Legs buzzed, backs buzzed - without fear of making any mistakes, this could be said about all three. They hesitated first on the berry because of Uncle Volodya, who wanted to get the humpback, then hesitated on the road, tempted by the cones, when Mityai found the hidden chisel and showed how it is used in business. So they walked from the taiga with two different harvests - they did not go, but, being late more than possible, they ran the last kilometers almost at a run in order to be in time in the light. In the dark along this path, the devil himself will break his leg, not like them. Sanya's back ached: the bottom heavy edge of the bucket, jumping with every step, he filled himself with a bloody streak, only now he really appreciated the merits of the humpback. Uncle Volodya by the end of the road was completely flushed, and now he breathed with sobs, making attempts to swear and choking on words. Mityai was silent; accustomed and not to such march-throws, he was tired, but not exhausted and lay resting, and not like Sanya and Uncle Volodya - in a layer, seeing and hearing little around him.
Catching his breath, Mityai got up, found a descent to Lake Baikal to the right of the fishing line, stripped to the waist by the water and began to splash noisily, slapping his hands over his body and screaming; Sanya thought that he should wash too, but he did not raise his legs. Mityai, cheered up and cheerful, returned with a pot of water and, untiing the sack with the rest of the food strapped to the humpback, said:
- It would be nice to bungle the seagulls, but we won't have time.
Sanya reached for his backpack, took out bread and crumpled eggs, and somehow pulled a mug out of his pocket. What I wanted was to drink. Now, when they had a little rest and the viscous bitterness had gone from the throat, a deep, demanding thirst made itself felt. He drank the mug in one gulp, he wanted more. Uncle Volodya, too, reached for the bowler hat and began to drink over the edge, his thick and wrinkled throat went like bellows. Mityai waited until Uncle Volodya pulled away, threw out the rest and handed him the bowler hat:
- It's your turn.
“The guy is coming off,” Uncle Volodya croaked, handing the bowler hat to Sanya.
Sanya went downstairs, forced himself to wash, wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and, froze, listened. Everything around secretly lived its own separate, not converging, life: a sluggish, intermittent wind also rustled in the tops of the trees, the water stirred weakly with a licking smack, the scattering of stones on the shore was dazzling, giving off warmth, floating in the air above the water with a sharp round black beetles with a motor sound. The unintelligible and unfriendly voices of Uncle Volodya and Mityai could be heard from above. When Sanya approached, they fell silent. He poured water into the mug again and began to peel the egg. Still not hungry - still thirsty, but in order to get the right to water from someone, he forced himself to swallow the tasteless and warm flesh of an egg.
The backpack slid from the bucket, and it, tied with a rag on top, stood out in the dark with a sharp, irritating whiteness. Sanya was not too lazy and covered the bucket.
- So what are you going to do with this berry? - Uncle Volodya suddenly asked, asked quietly, but somehow significantly, with emphasis.
“I don’t know,” Sanya shrugged. He decided that Uncle Volodya was asking because he was not sure if he, Sanya, would be able to process a berry without adults. “I’ll probably cook half… half interpret.
- Why?
- Who, what fool takes a berry in a galvanized dish? Yes, even to spend the night! Yes, such a berry!
Sanya did not understand anything: what is such a special berry? What does she have to do with it? What is galvanized? Is he joking, Uncle Volodya?
Mityai did not immediately, with a sort of excessive thoughtfulness and slowness, got up, bent over Sanin's backpack and pulled a rag from the bucket. And I saw - the bucket is really galvanized.
“You bastard! ..” he began, turning to Uncle Volodya. - What are you doing this, huh? What are you? .. - He moved to Uncle Volodya, he jumped up. - You saw, you knew, you, most importantly, saw there! And he gave the guy to dial, gave him to take out - well, not a bastard, huh ?! I will! ..
- Just touch! - Uncle Volodya warned, jumping up, and shouted: - Have you seen? Have you seen there? You did not know? What are you doing Vanka? It was in plain sight, it stood open! What are you, little ?!
Mityai was taken aback and stopped.
- Yes, I did! I've seen it! He yelled. - I knew! But I, most importantly, out of my head. I looked and did not see. And you, you bastard, were waiting. I forgot, completely forgot!
- You won't forget anymore. You need to teach. And the guy will remember all his life.
Mityai rushed about, as if looking for something under his feet, he caught sight of a bucket with an open berry - resolutely and beside himself, he grabbed this bucket from his backpack and with a sharp and quick movement threw the berry out of it down the slope. She rustled, rolling, and fell silent.
- Mityai, what are you doing ?! - Sanya, who had been sitting before and still did not understand anything, jumped up. - Why are you, Mityai ?! What for?!
“You can't, Sanya,” Mityai muttered hastily and fearfully, and himself amazed at the determination with which he dealt with the berry. - You can't. She, most importantly, gave juice overnight ... you will poison yourself and others ... in no way in galvanized ... Well, I'm an idiot, well, an idiot. From and to. Walk with such an idiot ...
He sat down and was quiet. Sanya picked up the bucket and put it in his backpack, then carefully, with strange attentiveness, watching himself like a stranger, fastened the backpack with all the fasteners.
“Now, Uncle Volodechka, go and look around,” Mityai said unexpectedly calmly. - Such disgusting in the taiga to carry ... a little village for you ?!
“Sit down,” Uncle Volodya answered just as calmly. - Sat and still sit down.
“And I won't get my hands dirty on you,” Mityai declared confidently and as a matter of decision. - The very first wood will fall on you, the first stone will break off. You'll see. They don't like such tricks ... oh, they don't!
The beat of the train was heard.
... Sanya dreamed of voices that night. Nothing happened, but different voices sounded in him in different ways in the darkness and emptiness. And they all came out of him, were part of his disturbed flesh and thoughts, they all repeated what he might have said in confusion, in anxiety or anger. He also learned what he could say in many, many years. And only one voice uttered this, such dirty and rude words and in such a habitually confident tone, which was not and could never be in it.
He woke up terrified: what is it? who is it? where did it come from?
"THE AGE OF LIVE - THE AGE OF LOVE"
(HUMAN AND NATURE IN V. RASPUTIN'S STORIES "FAREWELL TO THE MOTHER" AND "FIRE")
At the end of the 20th century, humanity faced an acute problem of choice: either naked practicalism, recognizing only material well-being, or an orientation toward spiritual values, the experience of previous generations, and love for all living things on earth. Valentin Rasputin is one of those authors who pose this problem of choice with the utmost frankness and harshness. And this is understood: the way a person goes in his relationship with the outside world, with nature, depends on his immediate future.
Rasputin's story "Farewell to Matera" can be called a warning story. A warning about the reality of the disappearance of humanity as a kind.
Each of us knows that he is mortal, and in most cases we solve the problem of non-existence optimistically: I will die, but my descendants will live. Now, along with this traditional understanding of life and death, a new world outlook is being formed: the idea of \u200b\u200bthe possibility of a cosmic catastrophe. about the death of all human civilization due to nuclear and environmental threats. "Farewell to Materoi" expresses in artistic form precisely this eschatological concept: for the heroes of Rasputin's tale, the end of the world seems to have already come.
It would seem that we are talking about "a little": how to organize and quickly flood the island, which is necessary in connection with the construction of a hydroelectric power station on one of the Siberian rivers. However, for the inhabitants of Matera (mostly old people), resettlement from the flooded village, where their whole life has passed, to a new place is tantamount to death. as if the light had "broken in half." Previously, the village was "at the very least", but still kept "its place" on the pit near the left bank, "meeting and seeing off the years" "And as there seemed to be no end and edge to the running water, there is no village for a century: they went to the churchyard alone , others were born. " The peasant was aware of himself as a link in the eternal moving chain of times, events, human destinies. Now, when Matera has “gone off her usual course,” the unnaturalness of what is happening is clearly seen.
A person should not commit violence against the world around him. since he encroaches only on the souls of trees, animals, birds belonging to him, but above all on himself. If people like the old women Daria, Nastasya, Katerina, who were engaged in everyday creative work: they sowed and harvested bread, raised children, lived on cattle - can be likened to the regal foliage, which the island Matera tilts to the river bottom, then burners (at home, before flooding, you need burn beforehand) - rather weed, tumbleweed, people. -forget about soul and conscience.
For the Rasputin old women, there is nothing accidental in the reality around them. They feel well their cohesion with the natural world. A sense of nature for them is much more than just admiring its beauty. It is not admiration, but love that drives Rasputin's heroines. Therefore, domestic animals, be it a horse, a cow, a cat, are naturally included in the system of family relations and see in a person their patron, protector, owner in the fullest and deepest meaning of this word. Such a loving, and not consumerist attitude to living creatures, constant care for it purifies the human soul itself. bring calmness and confidence into her. Through nature, both Daria in "Farewell to Mother" and the old woman Anna in the story "The Last Term" feel the influx of life-giving forces, understand their involvement in the existence of the Universe. Therefore, their horizons are not limited to peasant life. At first glance, a paradoxical situation arises: the heroines, who lived simply and naturally, in one place, like trees in a forest, know and understand more than educated people who have traveled around the world. In a dispute with her grandson Andrey, who is prone to “changing places,” old woman Daria explains her advantage in the following way: “I have seen little, but I have lived a lot. What I happened to look at, I did-o-olgo looked at him, and not casually, like you. " To this we must add that Daria looks at life not only with her own eyes, but, as it were, with the wise eyes of previous generations, who firmly knew their place in life.
Alienation from the land, insensitivity to centuries of accumulated spiritual values \u200b\u200b- this is the main reason for irreplaceable moral losses, mutual misunderstanding, those troubles that befell humanity with the victory of a soulless civilization.
Driven from their land, forcibly torn from the usual circumstances of life, people who have become "lodgers" lose themselves, live not their own, but someone else's life. “Is it you or not you? And if you are, how did you get here? " - Pavel Pinigin, the son of old woman Daria, sadly reflects on his fate. “We don't live on our own” - this is the leitmotif of the story “Farewell to Matera”. But a character named Petrukha, who, without waiting for the firemen, deliberately ahead of them, burns his own hut with his own hand. The burning hut symbolizes a general fire, self-immolation, self-destruction of Russia. It is no coincidence that the event shown in the work is characterized by an extraordinary generalization: “It burned like that. that the sky was not visible. Far around it was illuminated by this hot, unkind radiance .. "
Destroying nature, we destroy ourselves, our past, present and future. This idea is poignant in the story "Fire", which can be viewed as the plot and logical conclusion of "Farewell to Matera". In "Fire" we already see the consequences of those social and moral metamorphoses that occurred as a result of the destruction of Matera and similar settlements. For twenty years there has been a built-up village that has gathered residents of several flooded villages. But people perceive their life in it as a temporary, transitional, bivvy state. The village was built in a hurry, without relying on children and grandchildren, and although children and grandchildren appeared, not only the sense of clan weakened, but also the sense of oneself. People "so dispersed all by themselves, so turned away and beaten off from a common and harmonious existence" that they, first of all, "themselves ... lacks." Hence, the ease with which the boundaries of good and evil are violated: "It was not supposed, not accepted, it became necessary and accepted, it was impossible - it became possible, it was considered a shame, a mortal sin - it is revered for dexterity and valor" The process of life, comprehension his stay on earth as a form of manifestation of cosmic wisdom, characteristic of Rasputin's old women, has poured here into a “procedure of life”, into an inverted life, which is not the life of man and nature. It took a misfortune, a fire to realize this.
"Live and love" - \u200b\u200bthis is the name of one of Rasputin's stories. Love nature, people, your kind - all these are not only words of the same root, but also spheres of being that are impossible without each other. Restoring a single kindred basis of everything that exists on earth is the primary task of our days Will we accept the warning of the writer who formulated this task in a rigid and unambiguous manner?
Valentin Rasputin
Live and love
To those who do not have it, independence seems so attractive and fascinating thing that he will give anything for it. Sanya was literally struck by this word when he peered into it. I didn’t read it, I didn’t think it over, there wasn’t much to think about, but I looked and saw. "Independence" - to stand on your own feet in life, without props and prompts - that's what it means. Sometimes a trifle is not enough for an important decision; it happened this time too; as soon as Sanya saw what independence was, he seemed to take his own place, which belonged to him, where he had to become independent, stood up so confidently and comfortably that there could be no doubt whether this was his place, and decided: that's it, that's enough. Stop walking on orders, acting on prompts, believing in a fairy tale ... A person is fifteen years old, but for dad and mom everything is a child, and it will never end, unless you state once and for all: yourself. Himself with a mustache. I am me, it belongs to me, in the end, I have to answer for myself in life, and not you. Of course, he was not going to cross the borders, there was no need for this, but he was going to push the boundaries.
And surprisingly, as soon as Sanya made a decision, he was immediately lucky. Even at the beginning of summer, mom and dad were not going anywhere, but when he returned from the sports camp where Sanya spent June, he suddenly found out that they were leaving. They fly to Leningrad, get into the car with their acquaintances, go to the Baltic States, then to Kaliningrad, then to Brest, somewhere else and return only at the end of August to pack Sanya to school. "And you will stay with your grandmother," said my mother. Daddy sighed. August is a golden month for my grandmother on Lake Baikal: berries, mushrooms, fishing, swimming, and dad, if it were his will, without hesitation, would change places with Sanya. Only Sanya, of course, would refuse to change - and not because he did not want to visit the Baltics and see Brest, he wanted, and especially to Brest, but he preferred to be where there are no dad and mom, who would have managed to push in Brest him in a trench or in a trench and would not be allowed to protrude so that, God forbid, he would not get a bullet fired forty years ago. If the parents have one child, they, apparently, fall into childhood themselves, continuing to play with him, like with a doll, until he pays off his own parental contribution. Sanya was embarrassed for his parents and felt sorry for them when he saw that, speaking in a normal and even language with his comrades, they immediately switched to the language of either immoderate ingratiation, or immoderate severity, doing both as if blindly, not seeing him, but only suspecting that he should be here, speaking not so much for him as for himself, in order to prove something to each other. He learned to relate to their words when they were together: this is not for him, it is they for themselves. However, each of them individually could talk to him seriously. This was especially true of dad, and in him it was especially noticeable how awkward he was in front of his son for their common conversation with mom together, but the next time came, the time came for the next conversation, and again everything was repeated from the beginning. “As small, honestly, as small,” Sanya thought in tune with them, annoyed and realizing that his parents in this regard are no worse and no better than others, and that a person in his weaknesses remains a child for life.
On Lake Baikal, where Sanya came to his grandmother, luck continued. Three days passed - and suddenly they brought a telegram to my grandmother: leave immediately, Vera is in the hospital, the children are alone. Aunt Vera, my mother's sister, lived in the city of Nizhneangarsk on Northern Baikal, and so, therefore, she fell seriously ill, and her husband is a geologist, he cannot be reached in the taiga. The grandmother waved, got lost: here the boy is in her arms, and there is no one knows what. Sania's parents at that time walked around Leningrad or drove to Tallinn, everything came together better than Sania, and he said: I will stay alone. Aunt Galya, a grandmother's neighbor, helped out, she agreed not only to feed the grandmother's piglets, but also to keep an eye on her grandson, and take him to her hut at night. Grandmother left, and Aunt Galya forgot about Sanya. She did remember about the piglets, and that was enough.
Sanya healed like a godfather to the king. He loved to go to the store, cook simple food for himself, do small chores around the house, which he could not do without, he even loved to weed the beds in the garden, which he could not stand before, and made one important discovery: in his own life, he moved ahead of everything, what surrounded him and with what he was constantly forced to be near. Nothing seemed to have changed, outwardly everything remained in its place and in its usual order ... except for one thing: he received an amazing ability to look back at this world and this order from a distance, could enter it, but could leave it. People only in the eyes of others remain in the general row, each of them individually, in his opinion, comes forward, otherwise life has no meaning. Much for Sanya was still here in the fog, but the feeling that he had stepped forward was distinct and joyful, like the feeling of heights when the distance opens up. Most of all, Sanya was struck by the fact that he came to this feeling and to this discovery thanks to such a seemingly trifle as the need to tinker with the beds, the most unpleasant job, coming from somewhere in him. It was neither a desire, nor a compulsion, but something else: I got up in the morning, and at the thought of how best to put the upcoming day together, almost before everything else, a reminder of the beds comes to mind, which exactly converges with your own need for movement and action, just as you remember water only when thirst arises.
Spending the night alone in an old hut, in which something was constantly creaking and sighing, was not fun at first, but Sanya coped with fear in his own way - he read “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” before going to bed. The book was read-re-read, frayed to the last degree, which made the heart swoon even more from the terrible stories told in it, which in the new book can be taken for fiction, but not in the old one, in the old one will involuntarily believe, but after them, after these stories in the book, ascended in their beauty and eerie to the very sky, with echoes from the underworld itself, there was no longer any strength and fear for their cornered and wall rustles, and Sanya fell asleep. In his view, the ghosts and evil spirits that were there in the book, for some reason, did not connect with those that could be here, as if not wanting to recognize the present emaciated and dishonored breed for their future; and Sanya, putting the book aside, only thought with pity and bewilderment about everything that he was trying to fear, with pity not for himself, but for them: that's what kind of power they had and what they had sunk to! I got used to distinguish the distant, like groans, signals of steamers in the sea, the noise of the wind that picks up during the day and hums in the walls at night, the heavy creak of old larch trees in the courtyard and the deaf, mighty buzz from Baikal, which calls in the dark and cannot be reached. your loss.
So Sanya lived for a week, slowly proud of himself, of his independence and thriftiness and worrying only about the fact that his grandmother would not come, from whom there was no news. Grandmother had a tear-off calendar on the wall in the room; Sanya took off the leaves from him and put them on the nightstand next to the fat grandmother's slide in his own separate order, seeing in this some kind of unclear but significant meaning.
* * *On Friday afternoon, Mityai came. He did not know that Sanya was living alone, but he had seen him the day before in the store, so he hoped to find Sanya's father here. Mityai went to him for help and now, confused and upset, sat on a stool by the front door and watched attentively and unseeingly as Sanya with a needle strung the cut boletus boletus on a double thread with a needle. He looked for a long time, wrinkling his face with an effort and worrying that the pieces of mushrooms on the long bent string would not touch the floor, then asked:
Well done.
The praise did not affect Sanya, no, he knew that she was worth nothing and was not said from the heart, he just felt sorry for Mityai, remembering how he felt sorry for him in such cases and Dad stood up for him before his mother and grandmother when Mityai was like this he came, sat down and waited.
Uncle Mityai, you probably need three rubles. I can give, I have.
Mityai, peering at Sanya with a reviving gaze, frowned more than ever and replied:
Don't you call the cow your aunt?
That's it ... why? .. Mityai is a nickname like a bull. Who is the nickname uncle? Call, like everyone else, - Mityai, what is there ... I will not choke.
What is your name actually? - Sanya did not dare to say "you". But they really knew each other for a long time, and Sanya's "you" slipped in a familiar way even earlier.
Mityai. That's the name. Whatever - ask my mother, she died a hundred years ago.
Love of love - this is what attracts in the heroes of Rasputin's stories, in which harmony seeks and finds its place, a kind of ineradicable striving for harmony with oneself, with people, with nature. Perhaps this also happens because the energy of kindness emitted by adults is not only perceived, but also developed later by children (however, in the same way as the energy of rejection). In one of Rasputin's best stories, "Live and Love," 15-year-old Sanya is precisely the bearer of such an initial charge that already requires its realization, like the hero himself, striving for self-affirmation. Love the age, for in it, in love, is all the power that holds this light, does not give it an abyss; the whole essence of man is in it - maybe for this he is revealed to the world, in order to ennoble, warm him with his love. Otherwise, why would a person wonderful world - He was not born for himself only one?
Man is unthinkable without nature, not only as an integral part of it, but also as a completely unique substance that is able to unite the mind and that which this mind feeds; to carry out a connection between a small part of the planet and the vast expanses of the Universe. Sanya did not think about it, but some potential forces vaguely wandered around in him and seemed to be preparing, not splashing out ahead of time, for only the hour they knew. And that hour has come. Uncle Mityai, who came to borrow three rubles, invited the teenager to go to the taiga for berries together. It was this seemingly ordinary trip that became the key that opened to Sana in himself, in the world around him, and in people, as much as had not been comprehended a few years before.
A lot of people were driving that day for a berry - some "unfriendly crowd" reigned on the site where the train slowed down (first it was necessary to go railroad, and then on foot, to the cherished swamps and edges). Describing this, according to Mitya's word, horde, Rasputin makes it clear that it is not easy now to live in the taiga - trampled, broken. Especially - near the settlements: more than half of the suffering just at the first stop and jumped out. But Mityai is not like that with everyone, as if he were not a taiga at all. Much is hidden in the character of this strange taciturn person, he can be gloomy, annoyed, pensive - but angry. Even on the train, Mityai was transformed, his voice rang - he was already expecting a meeting. True, both he and Sanya were somewhat alarmed by the appearance of the third, Uncle Volodya (although Mityai knew that the three of them would go): something in him did not fit into that beginning melody, which seemed to be about to to sound.
In this story, like in no other by Rasputin, nature lives independently, independently, freely, and at the same time - anticipating or explaining what is happening with a person. From the very first minutes, Sanya notes that "the taiga was quiet and peaceful; having already woken up, having entered the day, it seemed to be slumbering limp in anticipation of some change." And it was as if flesh was taken out of the sky, and the sun did not appear; something is likely to happen - as with those who see it. And it will happen. Until then ...
While businesslike Mityai, grumbling, unhappy with something uncle Volodya and not believing his eyes Sanya just enter the taiga. Everyone has their own perception, their own view. And it seems, what does it matter to them - the centuries-old trees, silent bushes, quiet grass - to this trinity, who have wandered for two days with an overnight stay on their human affairs? But vegetable world by strong invisible threads it is connected with a person, with his world, and changes in one immediately affect the state of the other. Only at first glance the conversation between Mitya and Uncle Volodya may seem accidental when they came out to the area of \u200b\u200bthe taiga caught in a tornado - the trees, as if cut, lay in bulk. To Uncle Volodya's gloomy remark that he could have killed someone, Mityai replies:
"- And the newcomers are whipping. They are, most importantly, and guards. Because of them, it happens. Look, how many taiga was destroyed because of one such.
Because of whom? - uncle Volodya jumped up. - What are you talking about?!
Otkul I know, because of whom. I haven't been here. "
So this motive appears in the story - sin and punishment; punish the forces of nature, from which they can not hide their deeds. Probably, not everything is clear in the soul of Uncle Volodya, who reacted so sharply to Mityaevo "because of one such thing"; Entering the kingdom of the taiga, all three understand that there are some special laws, rules, and each one behaves accordingly to the extent of his idea of \u200b\u200bthem. In Sanya, these ideas, as happens in adolescence, are not clearly formed; he is in search.
And these searches, like almost all Rasputin's main characters, are primarily philosophical, directed towards such concepts as the meaning of life, human feelings, the relationship between man and nature... “It cannot be,” Sanya thought more than once, “for a person to enter each new day blindly, not knowing what will happen to him, and living it only by the decision of his own will, every minute choosing what to do and where to go. It doesn't look like a person. Doesn't all life exist in him from beginning to end from the beginning, and does not there exist in him a memory that helps him remember what to do? .. Any life is a memory of the path embedded in a person from birth Otherwise, what's the point of letting him into the world? " A man is so finished in his forms and abilities that it is simply hard to believe that he can be ripped off like a tumbleweed. "It cannot be! Why then these long and wonderful efforts in him? So much to do inside and leave him without a path? "
This is Sanino "It can't be!" very important - not yet proven, not substantiated, not supported, it already exists in his mind, as a counterbalance to chaos and discord. For, after all, harmony is primary. The inability to preserve se, laziness or powerlessness - why now wonder what exactly - allowed her to retreat before the chaos, and she did not arise from it. The ancients perceived space as harmony. And now, when this concept has acquired a voluminous meaning, Sanino "It cannot be!", Addressed to a person, is drawn from the same general cosmic harmony. As if in gratitude for the understanding of the super-idea (at least at the level of the question), nature provides Sana with the opportunity, if not yet unity with her, then approaching unity. This is such a mutual trust, which cannot be the case with Uncle Volodya. It is no coincidence that as soon as Sanya "opened up to everything that was around," so did the lowland, overgrown with blueberries, and the sky itself, and the sounds - "all this poured in, entered, was brought in inadvertently and inadvertently into the guy who was forgotten in sweet languor, all this looked in him for a unifying-lasting - in a different, not human measure - participation and the right disposition ... "
Nature pushes him to new thoughts-memories: no, not his memories, but someone else's, stirred up and revived in him - in the fingers, picking smoky blue fruits, caressing every berry, in words that have not been spoken before, in latent delight and feeling guilt at the same time. His appeal to blueberries, both in form and in content, is rooted in ancient culture, in native language... And it is impossible in public, in a crowd, in front of strangers. It is an act of unity that allows one to open up to a loved one. "Do not be offended," he said, "that I will take you ... I will take you so that you do not disappear in vain, so that" you do not fall to the ground and rot, without giving anyone any benefit. And if I don’t take you, if you don’t have time to fall to the ground and rot, anyway a bird will bite you or a beast will wrap you up - so why is it worse if I collect you now? I will save you ... and in winter the little girl Katya, who is often sick ... she loves the dove very much, loves you, you help this girl a lot. When we get home, you will see her and understand how much she needs you ... do not be offended, please. "
Treatment available only to women and children. The best that is in the soul pours out onto the surrounding, as if reviving, humanizing it, raising it to equality. And then nature also recognizes you as equal, helps you and takes revenge on your offenders, warns and shares your sorrows. Never in his life did Sanya see such a dense population, to which Mityai led them. He had never experienced such surprise and delight before - perhaps only in his unconscious childhood, which remembered everything not with his head, but with his body, cells and someday will return this special memory. But that was a long time ago and without his participation. And here it was to him, who came to this meeting, that was revealed to him, something secret was shown. And even the very night itself, too, "as if undertook to show him one of its mighty limits," - such nights are not in vain; the hero is already waiting for something global that can change him at once, his whole being, susceptible to the unknown, ready for a new meeting, a new secret, a revelation. "Impatience grew stronger - and closer, it means that there was a fulfillment, as if something, invisible and omnipotent, bent down and considers whether it is he. No, he does not consider ... he catches all his feelings, all the silent secret life emanating from him. and by it determines whether there is in it and whether there is enough of what is, for some execution".
Here he is - the spiritual grandson of Anna and Daria, who seemed to have conveyed to him the ability to see and hear what was rejected by others and therefore inaccessible to others. It is not fantasy, not the nightly whipping of the teenager's psyche, overworked from daytime impressions, is revealed to us, but that level of moral, direct communication of a person with all earthly structures that are part of cosmic structures, which many, alas, have been lost or underestimated to the point of vulgarity. It is not in vain that Rasputin conveys the culmination of this communication, using the image of breathing - the most necessary for the life of all that exists. In addition to his waves, the hero passes for a moment into other spheres, and they, in turn, fill him: "Twice the sound of a deep, hidden melancholy breathed on Sanya, and it seemed to him that he involuntarily recoiled and moved after this announced, God knows how, the call that had come - staggered back and immediately moved, followed, as if something had entered into him, something came out of him, but came in and out, so that, having changed places, then communicate without hindrance. For a few moments Sanya lost himself, not understanding and afraid understand what had happened; pleasant warmth as a continuous soft wave spread throughout his body, tension and expectation disappeared altogether, and with a feeling of some special fullness and ultimate fulfillment, he got up and went into the hut. " This completed psychological study the highest level, created by a realist prose writer, would be gratefully accepted by a clever science fiction writer, a physiologist, and a psychologist, for a rare human condition is manifested, and not just manifested, but philosophically comprehended, accurately and in detail recorded.
Day of entry into new world; night of cognition of the world by Sanya and Sanya - by the world; the second day, illuminated by the already flashed lightning of knowledge and truth, is an inexorable crescendo of not only sounds, but also colors, an approaching apotheosis, behind which some kind of devastation is already felt.
The first thing that the young man awakened by Mitya saw was the Sun - in the whole vast sky. Gone are night fears, rain, and hopeless darkness. Nature (not only, of course, a forest, a mountain, a river, but Nature - as the unity of all existence on the Planet, as the Foremother) continued to show its diversity, filling the specially prepared, purified soul of a young man specially for this day. Therefore, "Sanya walked somehow unusually lightly and high, as if he had to expend efforts not to step, but to stay on the ground and not take off." He longs to "contain all the radiance and all the movement of the world", and this feeling - not consumption, but precisely acceptance - dominates in him, elevating him above that city Sanya, which he was a month ago. For himself, the young man, the inexplicability of this all-glorious day, explains that everything that happens to him happens in direct contact, bypassing the rational spheres of consciousness; such a day does not lend itself to "mental extraction from oneself. It is possible only to feel, guess, listen ..."