Belov V I
Carpenter's stories
V.I. BELOV
CARPENTER'S STORIES
1
The house has been on the ground for more than a hundred years, and time has completely knocked it down. At night, savoring the gratifying loneliness, I listen to the sheets of humid March wind whipping along the ancient sides of the pine mansion. The neighbor's night owl cat walks mysteriously in the darkness of the attic, and I don't know what he wants there. The house seems to be quietly snoring from heavy cat steps. Occasionally, along the layers, dried flint mats burst, tired connections creak. Blocks of snow slid down from the roof thud heavily. And with each block in the rafters, strained by the multi-ton weight, relief from the snow burden is born. I almost physically feel this relief. Here, just like snow blocks from a dilapidated roof, multi-layered blocks of the past are sliding from the soul... A sleepless cat walks and walks around the attic, its little walkers ticking like a cricket. Memory shuffles my biography like a preference partner deck of cards. It turned out to be some kind of long bullet... Long and tangled. It’s not at all like what’s on the personnel records sheet. Everything is much simpler there... In the thirty-four years I’ve lived, I’ve written my biography thirty times and that’s why I know it by heart. I remember how much I liked writing it the first time. It was nice to think that someone simply needed the paper, where all the stages of your life were described, and would be kept forever in a fireproof safe. I was fourteen years old when I wrote my autobiography for the first time. To enter the technical school, a birth certificate was required. And so I set out to correct the metrics. It was right after the war. I wanted to eat continuously, even while sleeping, but life still seemed good and joyful. It seemed even more amazing and joyful in the future. It was in this mood that I tramped seventy kilometers along the May country road, which was beginning to dry out. I was wearing almost new, leathered boots, canvas trousers, a jacket and a cap riddled with shot. The mother put three straw bulbs and an onion in the knapsack, and in her pocket there were ten rubles in money. I was happy and walked to the regional center all day and all night, dreaming about my joyful future. This joy is like pepper good fish soup, seasoned with a feeling of belligerence: I courageously clutched the folding bag in my pocket. At that time, there were rumors about camp refugees every now and then. Danger loomed around every turn of the country road, and I compared myself to Pavlik Morozov. The unfolded folding bag was wet from the sweat of the palm. However, during the entire journey, not a single refugee came out of the forest, not a single one encroached on my kolob. I arrived in the village at about four in the morning, found the police with a registry office and fell asleep on the porch. At nine o'clock the inscrutable manager appeared with a wart on her fat cheek. Plucking up courage, I turned to her with my request. It was strange that she did not pay the slightest attention to my words. She didn't even look. I stood at the barrier, frozen with respect, anxiety and fear, counting the black hairs on my aunt’s wart. My heart seemed to sink into my heel... Now, many years later, I blush from humiliation, conscious retroactively, I remember how my aunt, again without looking at me, muttered with contempt: “Write your autobiography.” She gave me the papers. And for the first time in my life I wrote an autobiography: “I, Zorin Konstantin Platonovich, was born in the village of N...ha S...go district of the A... region in 1932. Father - Zorin Platon Mikhailovich, born in 1905, mother - Zorina Anna Ivanovna, born in 1907. Before the revolution, my parents were middle peasants who worked. agriculture. After the revolution they joined the collective farm. My father died in the war, my mother was a collective farmer. After finishing four classes, I entered the N seven-year school. Graduated from it in 1946." Then I didn’t know what to write, then all my life events That was it. With terrible anxiety, he handed the papers over the barrier. The manager did not look at the autobiography for a long time. Then, as if by chance, she glanced and handed it back: “Don’t you know how to write an autobiography?” ...I rewrote my autobiography three times, and she scratched her wart and went off somewhere. Lunch has begun. After lunch, she still read the documents and asked sternly: “Do you have an extract from the household book?” My heart sank again: I didn’t have an extract... And so I’m going back, walking seventy kilometers to get this extract from the village council. I covered the road in just over a day and was no longer afraid of refugees. Dear ate pistils and tender green sorrel. Before reaching the house about seven kilometers, I lost my sense of reality, lay down on a large roadside stone and did not remember how long I lay on it, gaining new strength, overcoming some absurd visions. At home I carried manure for a week, then again asked the foreman to go to the regional center. Now the manager looked at me even with anger. I stood at the barrier for an hour and a half until she took the papers. Then she rummaged through them for a long time and slowly and suddenly said that she needed to request the regional archive, since there was no birth record in the regional civil acts. Once again, I walked almost one hundred and fifty kilometers in vain... The third time, already in the fall, after haymaking, I came to the regional center in one day: my leg got stronger, and the food was better - the first potatoes were ripe. The manager seemed to simply hate me. - I can’t give you a certificate! - she shouted, as if to a deaf person. - There are no records on you! No! Is it clear to you? I went out into the corridor, sat down in the corner by the stove and... burst into tears. I sat on the dirty floor by the stove and cried - I cried from my powerlessness, from resentment, from hunger, from fatigue, from loneliness and something else. Now, remembering that year, I am ashamed of those half-childish tears, but they still boil in my throat. The grievances of adolescence are like nicks on birch trees: they fade over time, but never completely heal. I listen to the clock tick and slowly calm down. Still, it’s good that I went home. Tomorrow I’ll repair the bathhouse... I’ll put an ax on the ax handle, and I don’t care that they gave me winter leave.
2
In the morning I walk around the house and listen to the sound of the wind in the huge rafters. The home seems to be complaining of old age and asking for repairs. But I know that renovation would be ruinous for the house: you can’t disturb the old, hardened bones. Everything here has grown together and boiled into one whole; it is better not to touch these related logs, not to test their time-tested loyalty to each other. In such not at all rare cases, it is better to build new home side by side with the old, which is what my ancestors did from time immemorial. And no one ever thought of the ridiculous idea of breaking old house before you start cutting a new one. Once upon a time, the house was the head of a whole family of buildings. There was a large threshing floor with a barn nearby, a large barn, two lean-to haylofts, a potato cellar, a nursery, a bathhouse and a well dug in the cold spring. That well has long been buried, and the rest of the building has long been destroyed. The only relative left at the house is a half-century-old, thoroughly smoky bathhouse. I'm ready to heat this bathhouse almost every other day. I’m at home, in my homeland, and now it seems to me that only here there are such bright rivers, such transparent lakes. Such clear and always different dawns. The forests are so calm and peaceful and thoughtful in winter and summer. And now it’s so strange and joyful to be the owner of an old bathhouse and a young ice-hole on such a clean, snow-covered river... But once upon a time I hated all this with all my soul. I vowed not to return here. The second time I wrote an autobiography was when I entered the FZO school to study as a carpenter. Life and the fat woman from the district registry office made their own adjustments to the plans for the technical school. The same manager, albeit angrily, sent me to a medical commission to establish the dubious fact and time of my birth. At the district clinic, a good-natured doctor with a red nose only asked what year I had the honor of being born. And he wrote out a piece of paper. I didn’t even see the birth certificate: representatives of the labor reserves took it away; And again, a six-month passport was issued without me. Then I rejoiced: I had finally said goodbye to these smoky baths forever. Why do I now feel so good here, in my homeland, in a deserted village? Why do I drown my bathhouse almost every other day?.. It’s strange, everything is so strange and unexpected... However, the bathhouse is so old that at one corner a whole third has sunk into the ground. When I heat it, the smoke comes first not into the wooden chimney, but as if from underground, in the cracks from the rotted bottom row. This bottom row rotted completely, the second row was slightly rotten, but the rest of the frame was impenetrable and strong. Tempered by the heat of the bathhouse, which filled it thousands of times, this log house retains the bitterness of decades. I decided to repair the bathhouse, replace the two lower crowns, change and re-arrange the shelves, and reinstall the heater. In winter, this idea looked ridiculous, but I was happy and therefore reckless. Besides, the bathhouse is not a home. It can be hung out without dismantling the roof and the frame: the carpenter's yeast, once absorbed at the FZO school, has fermented in me. At night, lying under a sheepskin blanket, I imagined how I would do repairs, and it seemed very simple and accessible. But in the morning everything turned out differently. It became clear that we could not cope with the repairs on our own, without the help of at least some old man. On top of that, I didn’t even have a decent axe. After thinking about it, I went to my old neighbor, Olesha Smolin, to ask for help. Outside the Smolinsk house, washed underpants were drying alone on a perch. The path to the open gate was marked, new firewood, turned on its side, could be seen nearby. I walked up the stairs, took hold of the bracket, and in the hut the dog began to blare loudly. She rushed at me quite zealously. The old woman, Olesha’s wife Nastasya, escorted her out the door: “Go, go to the water man!” Look, you bully, she ran into a man. I said hello and asked: “Are you at home by yourself?” - Great, father. Nastasya, apparently, was completely deaf. She fanned the bench with her apron, inviting him to sit down. - The old man, I ask, is he at home or has he gone where? - I asked again. - And where should he, the rotten one, go: he’s drawn himself to the stove. He says he has a runny nose. “You’re wet yourself,” Olesha’s voice was heard, “and you’re not starting up anymore.” After some fuss, the owner got down to the floor and put on his felt boots.
Vasily Belov
Carpenter's stories
The house has been on the ground for more than a hundred years, and time has completely knocked it down. At night, savoring the gratifying loneliness, I listen to the sheets of humid March wind whipping along the ancient sides of the pine mansion. The neighbor's night owl cat walks mysteriously in the darkness of the attic, and I don't know what he wants there.
The house seems to be quietly snoring from heavy cat steps. Occasionally, along the layers, dried flint mats burst, tired connections creak. Blocks of snow slid down from the roof thud heavily. And with each block in the rafters, strained by the multi-ton weight, relief from the snow burden is born.
I almost physically feel this relief. Here, just like snow blocks from a dilapidated roof, multi-layered blocks of the past are sliding from the soul... A sleepless cat walks and walks around the attic, its little walkers ticking like a cricket. Memory shuffles my biography like a preference partner shuffling a deck of cards. It turned out to be some kind of long bullet... Long and tangled. It’s not at all like what’s on the personnel records sheet. Everything is much simpler there...
Over the thirty-four years I’ve lived, I’ve written my biography thirty times and that’s why I know it by heart. I remember how much I liked writing it the first time. It was nice to think that someone simply needed the paper, where all the stages of your life were described, and would be kept forever in a fireproof safe.
I was fourteen years old when I wrote my autobiography for the first time. To enter the technical school, a birth certificate was required. And so I set out to correct the metrics. It was right after the war. I wanted to eat continuously, even while sleeping, but life still seemed good and joyful. It seemed even more amazing and joyful in the future.
It was in this mood that I tramped seventy kilometers along the May country road, which was beginning to dry out. I was wearing almost new, leathered boots, canvas trousers, a jacket and a cap riddled with shot. The mother put three straw bulbs and an onion in the knapsack, and in her pocket there were ten rubles in money.
I was happy and walked to the regional center all day and all night, dreaming about my joyful future. This joy, like pepper in a good soup, was seasoned with a feeling of belligerence: I courageously clutched the folding bag in my pocket. At that time, there were rumors about camp refugees every now and then. Danger loomed around every turn of the country road, and I compared myself to Pavlik Morozov. The unfolded folding bag was wet from the sweat of the palm.
However, during the entire journey, not a single refugee came out of the forest, not a single one encroached on my kolob. I arrived in the village at about four in the morning, found the police with a registry office and fell asleep on the porch.
At nine o'clock the inscrutable manager appeared with a wart on her fat cheek. Plucking up courage, I turned to her with my request. It was strange that she did not pay the slightest attention to my words. She didn't even look. I stood at the barrier, frozen with respect, anxiety and fear, counting the black hairs on my aunt’s wart. It was as if my heart sank...
Now, many years later, I blush from humiliation, realized in hindsight, and I remember how my aunt, again without looking at me, muttered with contempt:
Write an autobiography.
She gave me the papers. And so for the first time in my life I wrote an autobiography:
“I, Zorin Konstantin Platonovich, was born in the village of N ... ha S ... district of the A ... region in 1932. Father - Zorin Platon Mikhailovich, born in 1905, mother - Zorina Anna Ivanovna, born in 1907. Before the revolution, my parents were middle peasants, engaged in agriculture. After the revolution they joined the collective farm. My father died in the war, my mother was a collective farmer. After finishing four classes, I entered the N seven-year school. He graduated from it in 1946.”
I didn’t know what to write next, then all my life events ended there. With terrible anxiety, he handed the papers over the barrier. The manager did not look at the autobiography for a long time. Then, as if by chance, she looked and handed it back: -
Don’t you know how to write an autobiography?...I rewrote the autobiography three times, and she scratched her wart and went off somewhere. Lunch has begun. After lunch, she still read the documents and sternly asked:
Do you have an extract from the household ledger?
My heart sank again: I didn’t have a discharge letter...
And so I go back, walk seventy kilometers to get this extract from the village council. I covered the road in just over a day and was no longer afraid of refugees. Dear ate pistils and tender green sorrel. Before reaching the house about seven kilometers, I lost my sense of reality, lay down on a large roadside stone and did not remember how long I lay on it, gaining new strength, overcoming some absurd visions.
At home I carried manure for a week, then again asked the foreman to go to the regional center.
Now the manager looked at me even with anger. I stood at the barrier for an hour and a half until she took the papers. Then she rummaged through them for a long time and slowly and suddenly said that she needed to request the regional archive, since there was no birth record in the regional civil acts.
I again traveled almost one hundred and fifty kilometers in vain...
The third time, already in the fall, after haymaking, I came to the regional center in one day: my legs were stronger, and the food was better - the first potatoes were ripe.
The manager seemed to simply hate me.
I can't give you a certificate! - she shouted, as if to a deaf person. - There are no records on you! No! Is it clear to you?
I went out into the corridor, sat down in the corner by the stove and... burst into tears. I sat on the dirty floor by the stove and cried - I cried from my powerlessness, from resentment, from hunger, from fatigue, from loneliness and something else.
Now, remembering that year, I am ashamed of those half-childish tears, but they still boil in my throat. The grievances of adolescence are like nicks on birch trees: they fade over time, but never completely heal.
I listen to the clock tick and slowly calm down. Still, it’s good that I went home. Tomorrow I’ll be repairing the bathhouse... I’ll put an ax on the ax handle, and I don’t care that they gave me winter leave.
In the morning I walk around the house and listen to the sound of the wind in the huge rafters. The home seems to be complaining of old age and asking for repairs. But I know that renovation would be ruinous for the house: you can’t disturb the old, hardened bones. Everything here has grown together and boiled into one whole; it is better not to touch these related logs, not to test their time-tested loyalty to each other.
In such not at all rare cases, it is better to build a new house side by side with the old one, which is what my ancestors did from time immemorial. And no one ever thought of the ridiculous idea of tearing down the old house to the ground before starting to cut down a new one.
Once upon a time, the house was the head of a whole family of buildings. There was a large threshing floor with a barn nearby, a large barn, two lean-to haylofts, a potato cellar, a nursery, a bathhouse and a well dug in the cold spring. That well has long been buried, and the rest of the building has long been destroyed. The only relative left at the house is a half-century-old, thoroughly smoky bathhouse.
I'm ready to heat this bathhouse almost every other day. I’m at home, in my homeland, and now it seems to me that only here there are such bright rivers, such transparent lakes. Such clear and always different dawns. The forests are so calm and peaceful and thoughtful in winter and summer. And now it’s so strange and joyful to be the owner of an old bathhouse and a young ice-hole on such a clean, snow-covered river...
And once upon a time I hated all this with all my soul. I vowed not to return here.
The second time I wrote an autobiography was when I entered the FZO school to study as a carpenter. Life and the fat woman from the district registry office made their own adjustments to the plans for the technical school. The same manager, albeit angrily, sent me to a medical commission to establish the dubious fact and time of my birth.
At the district clinic, a good-natured doctor with a red nose only asked what year I had the honor of being born. And he wrote out a piece of paper. I didn’t even see the birth certificate: representatives of the labor reserves took it away.
And again, a six-month passport was issued without me.
Then I rejoiced: I had finally said goodbye to these smoky baths forever. Why do I now feel so good here, in my homeland, in a deserted village? Why do I heat my bathhouse almost every other day?..
It’s strange, everything is so strange and unexpected...
However, the bathhouse is so old that at one corner a whole third has sunk into the ground. When I heat it, the smoke comes first not into the wooden chimney, but as if from underground, in the cracks from the rotted bottom row. This bottom row rotted completely, the second row was slightly rotten, but the rest of the frame was impenetrable and strong. Tempered by the heat of the bathhouse, which filled it thousands of times, this log house retains the bitterness of decades.
I decided to repair the bathhouse, replace the two lower crowns, change and re-arrange the shelves, and reinstall the heater. In winter, this idea looked ridiculous, but I was happy and therefore reckless. Besides, the bathhouse is not a home. It can be hung out without dismantling the roof and the frame: the carpenter's yeast, once absorbed at the FZO school, has fermented in me. At night, lying under a sheepskin blanket, I imagined how I would do repairs, and it seemed very simple and accessible. But in the morning everything turned out differently. It became clear that we could not cope with the repairs on our own, without the help of at least some old man. On top of that, I didn’t even have a decent axe. After thinking about it, I went to my old neighbor, Olesha Smolin, to ask for help.
March 1966. Thirty-four-year-old engineer Konstantin Platonovich Zorin recalls how he, a native of the village, was humiliated by city bureaucrats and how he once hated everything rural. And now he’s pulling back, in native village, so he came here on vacation, for twenty-four days, and he wants to heat the bathhouse every day, but his bathhouse is too old, and Zorin cannot restore it alone, despite the carpentry starter acquired at the FZO school, and therefore applies for help from his old neighbor Olesha Smolin, but he is in no hurry to get down to business, but instead tells Zorin about his childhood.
Olesha was born, like Christ, in a calf barn and just on Christmas day. And the priest made him sin: he didn’t believe that Olesha had no sins, and he painfully tore his ears, so he decided to sin - he stole his father’s tobacco and began to smoke. And he immediately repented. And when Olesha began to sin, life became easier, he stopped lashing at once, but from then on all sorts of confusion began to appear in his life...
The next day, Zorin and Smolin, taking the tools, go to repair the bathhouse. A neighbor passes by them, Aviner Pavlovich Kozonkov, a sinewy old man with lively eyes. Olesha plays a prank on Aviner, saying that his cow is supposedly not pregnant and that he will be left without milk. Kozonkov, not understanding humor, gets angry and threatens Olesha that he will write somewhere about the hay that Smolin cut without permission, and that the hay will be taken away from him. In response, Olesha says that Aviner, with the permission of the village council, mows down the cemetery and robs the dead. Smolin and Kozonkov finally quarrel, but when Aviner leaves, Olesha notices that he and Aviner have had arguments all their lives. It's been like that since childhood. But they cannot live without each other.
And Smolin begins to tell. Olesha and Aviner are the same age. Once the guys made birds out of clay and furcals - who's next. And Aviner (then still Vinya) collected the most clay, planted it on willow twig Yes, straight into Fedulenkov’s window, the glass just splashed. Everyone, of course, run. Fedulenok came out of the hut, and Vinya remained alone in the place and only said: “They ran into the field!” Well, Fedulenok rushed after them, and overtook Olesha. And he would have finished it off if it weren’t for Olyoshin’s father.
At the age of twelve, Vinka and Olesha graduated from parish school, so Vinka on his threshing floor covered all the gates with swear words - his handwriting was like that of a zemstvo chief, and Vinka tried to evade work, even spoiling his father’s plow, just so as not to throw manure into the furrow. And when his father was being flogged for non-payment of taxes, Vinya ran to watch, and even boasted: he saw, they say, how his father was flogged and he was twitching on logs tied... And then Olesha went to St. Petersburg. There the master carpenters beat him hard, but they taught him how to work.
After the clash with Olesha, Aviner does not show up in the bathhouse. Zorin, having heard that Anfeya’s daughter has come to Kozonkov, goes to visit. Aviner gives his six- or seven-year-old grandson vodka, and he, drunk, tells Zorin about how clever he was in his youth - he deceived everyone around him and even pulled money out from under the corners of a newly mortgaged church.
The next morning Olesha does not show up for the bathhouse. Zorin goes to him himself and finds out that Olesha is required to go into the forest to chop rag food (this is the result of Kozonkov’s machinations: after all, he writes a complaint about the work of the store every week). Only after lunch Zorin comes to repair the bathhouse and begins to talk again. This time it’s about how Kozonkov wanted to get married, but his fiancée’s father refused him: on Aviner’s sledges there are rope wrappers, so on the very first hill, you see, the wrapper will burst...
Then Olesha talks about his love. Tanka, Fedulenkova’s daughter, had a thick braid that went below her waist. ears are white. And the eyes are not even eyes, but two whirlpools, sometimes blue, sometimes black. Well, Olesha was timid. And one day on Assumption Day after the holiday, the men got drunk, and the boys slept on the poveti not far from the girls. Vinka then pretended to be drunk, and Olesha began to ask to go under the canopy where Olesha’s cousin and Tanka were going to sleep. Then the cousin slipped into the hut: the samovar, they say, forgot to close it. And she didn’t go back - she was quick-witted. And Olesha, trembling all over with fear, went to Tanka, and she began to persuade him to leave... Olesha foolishly went out into the street. He danced, and when he went to the story in the morning, he heard Vinka snuggling Tanka under his canopy. And how they kiss. And the cousin, laughing at Olesha, said that Tanka told her to find him, but where to find him? It’s as if I haven’t danced in ages.
Olesha finishes his story. A truck passes by, the driver insults Smolin, but Olesha only admires him: well done, it’s immediately obvious that he doesn’t belong here. Zorin, angry both at the driver and at Smolin’s good-naturedness, leaves without saying goodbye.
Kozonkov, having come to Smolin, tells how, from the age of eighteen, he became right hand Tabakov, authorized financial department of the RIK. And the bell itself rushed from the bell tower, and even relieved a small need from there, from the bell tower. And in a group of poor people created to bring out the kulaks clean water and open a class war in the village, Aviner also participated. So now Comrade Tabakov, they say, lives on a personal one, and Kozonkov wonders if he can have a personal one too? Now all the documents have been collected... Zorin looks at the documents, but they are clearly not enough. Aviner complains that he sent a personal application to the district, but they lost it there: there is nothing but trickery and bureaucracy all around. But Kozonkov, consider, has been in leadership positions since 1918 - both as a secretary in the village council and as a foreman, for two years as “head. Matheef worked, and then in the general store he distributed loans throughout the war. And he had a revolver. Once Kozonkov had a quarrel with Fedulenko - he threatened him with a revolver, and then made sure that he was not accepted into the collective farm: two cows, two samovars, a two-inhabited house. And then Fedulenko, as an individual owner, was imposed such a tax... Aviner leaves. Fedulenko's house, where the collective farm office was, looks out with empty, frameless windows. And a ruffled crow sits on the prince and freezes. She doesn't want to do anything.
Zorin's vacation is coming to an end. Olesha works conscientiously and therefore slowly. And he tells Zorin how they were sometimes sent to do labor - to build roads, how they were sent either to logging or rafting, and then they had to sow grain on the collective farm, but it only turned out four weeks later than necessary. Olesha remembers how they came to describe Fedulenko’s property. The house is under auction. The whole family goes into exile. When they said goodbye, Tanka approached Olesha in front of all the people. How could he cry... They took them to Pechora, at first there were two or three letters from them, and then there was no word. Then Vinka Kozonkov attributed kulak agitation to Olesha, and Smolin was severely tormented. And even now Olesha does not dare to tell Zorin everything to the end - he is a “party guy” after all.
The bathhouse is ready. Zorin wants to settle accounts with Olesha, but he doesn’t seem to hear. Then they steam together. Zorin turns on the transistor especially for Olesha, both listen to Schubert’s “The Beautiful Miller’s Wife,” and then Zorin gives the transistor to Olesha.
Before leaving, Olesha and Aviner come to Zorin. After drinking, they begin to argue about collectivization. Olesha says that in the village there were not three layers - kulak, poor peasant and middle peasant - but thirty-three, remembers how Kuzya Perev was enrolled in the kulaks (he didn’t even have a cow, but only swore at Tabakov on a holiday). And according to Aviner, Smolin himself should have been together with Fedulenko - at the root: “You were counter, you are counter.” It comes to a fight. Aviner knocks Olesha's head against the wall. Nastasya, Olesha’s wife, appears and takes him home. Aviner also leaves, saying: “I’m for discipline for my brother... I won’t spare my head... He’ll fly to the side!”
Zorin gets the flu. He falls asleep, then gets up and, staggering, goes to Smolin. And there they sit and talk peacefully... Aviner and Olesha. Smolin says that both of them will go to the same land, and asks Aviner, if Olesha dies earlier, to make his coffin honorable - on spikes. And Kozonkov asks Smolin for the same thing if Olesha survives him. And then both, bowing their gray heads, quietly and harmoniously begin to sing an old, drawn-out song.
Zorin can’t catch up with them - he doesn’t know a word from this song...
“The village is a national theme,” said writer Vasily Belov, one of the most famous representatives literary genre village prose. And timeless, - I would like to add, reading his works, many of which were written more than thirty, or even forty years ago, but even now sound fresh and new. One of them - a story called "Carpenter's Stories" - was first published in 1968, and today is being successfully republished and finding a new reader.
And even if this reader furtively checks with a search engine on the Internet about the words “plow” or “plough,” the deep essence of Belov’s prose remains understandable, and also excites the soul, forcing one to think and ask oneself questions. Without any stretch of the imagination, it can be called both philosophical and deeply psychological, which means it is always relevant.
The hero on whose behalf the story is told, engineer Konstantin Zorin, decides to spend his odd March vacation in his long-abandoned homeland - to visit what he left behind from his father. country house, to repair an old, rickety bathhouse. To help him, he calls the village carpenter, an old neighbor named Olesha Smolin. And twenty-four days fly by in conversations about the past, about life, about native land, about the human soul...
Olesha tells Zorin how as a child, before the Bolsheviks with their atheism, he went to church for confession, and stuck to the old days at the collective farms, but now sometimes he doubts whether there is a God? And then he answers to himself - if He didn’t exist, the thought of what will happen to the soul after death would never have occurred to us?!
And soon another rural old-timer appears on the horizon, also a former carpenter - Avenir Kozonkov. He, like the antipode of Smolin, on the contrary, walked around the village with a revolver to dispossess his own people, and knocked down domes from the church, and now, in his old age, he became a master of complaining to his superiors or writing accusatory articles in the regional newspaper. And these two cannot pass by each other without offending each other, without catching them with an offensive word. Zorin decides to reconcile the old people, to find something that would unite them and make them forget their old hostility.
Vasily Belov writes about what came out of this in a way that is touching, funny, and tragic at the same time. Without chasing an elegant word, he simply and truly, in this simplicity, beautifully leads “Carpenter’s Stories” to a, at first glance, very illogical ending, because of which Soviet criticism once called the story “a comedy of the absurd.” And I was wrong. In the end, harmony triumphs! Engineer Zorin, who once ran away from the village in search of better life, admits to himself that he is ready to heat his forgotten bathhouse at least every day. He is happy to be at home. And the old people, ready to tear out each other’s beards in the morning, in the evening, as if nothing had happened, sit peacefully at the same table and have a wise conversation.
And what, if not harmony, not the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness with others and ourselves, in the depths of our souls, is each of us looking for in this difficult life? Perhaps “Carpenter's Stories” by Vasily Belov will suggest the right direction of search.
March 1966; Thirty-four-year-old engineer Konstantin Platonovich Zorin recalls how he, a native of the village, was humiliated by city bureaucrats and how he once hated everything rural. And now he’s drawn back to his native village, so he came here on vacation, for twenty-four days, and he wants to heat the bathhouse every day, but his bathhouse is too old, and he can restore it alone, despite the carpentry starter acquired at the FZO school , Zorin cannot and therefore turns to his old neighbor Olesha Smolin for help, but he is in no hurry to get down to business, but instead tells Zorin about his childhood.
Olesha was born, like Christ, in a calf barn and just on Christmas day. And the priest made him sin: he didn’t believe that Olesha had no sins, and he painfully tore his ears, so he decided to sin - he stole his father’s tobacco and began to smoke. And he immediately repented. And when Olesha began to sin, life became easier, he stopped lashing at once, but from then on all sorts of confusion began to appear in his life...
The next day, Zorin and Smolin, taking the tools, go to repair the bathhouse. A neighbor passes by them, Aviner Pavlovich Kozonkov, a sinewy old man with lively eyes. Olesha plays a prank on Aviner, saying that his cow is supposedly not pregnant and that he will be left without milk. Kozonkov, not understanding humor, gets angry and threatens Olesha that he will write somewhere about the hay that Smolin cut without permission, and that the hay will be taken away from him. In response, Olesha says that Aviner, with the permission of the village council, mows down the cemetery and robs the dead. Smolin and Kozonkov finally quarrel, but when Aviner leaves, Olesha notices that he and Aviner have had arguments all their lives. It's been like that since childhood. But they cannot live without each other.
And Smolin begins to tell. Olesha and Aviner are the same age. Once the guys made birds out of clay and furcals - who's next. And Aviner (then still Vinya) collected the most clay, planted it on a willow rod and straight into Fedulenkovo’s window, the glass splashed. Everyone, of course, run. Fedulenok came out of the hut, and Vinya remained alone in place and only said: “They ran into the field!” Well, Fedulenok rushed after them, and overtook Olesha. And he would have finished it off if it weren’t for Olyoshin’s father.
At the age of twelve, Vinka and Olesha graduated from parish school, so Vinka on his threshing floor covered all the gates with swear words - his handwriting was like that of a zemstvo chief, and Vinka tried to evade work, even spoiling his father’s plow, just so as not to throw manure into the furrow. And when his father was flogged for non-payment of taxes, Vinya ran to look, and even boasted: he saw, they say, how a guy was flogged and he was twitching on logs tied... And then Olesha went to St. Petersburg. There the master carpenters beat him hard, but they taught him how to work.
After the clash with Olesha, Aviner does not show up in the bathhouse. Zorin, having heard that Anfeya’s daughter has come to Kozonkov, goes to visit. Aviner gives his six- or seven-year-old grandson vodka, and he, drunk, tells Zorin about how clever he was in his youth - he deceived everyone around him and even pulled money out from under the corners of a newly mortgaged church.
The next morning Olesha does not show up for the bathhouse. Zorin goes to him himself and finds out that Olesha is required to go into the forest to chop rag food (this is the result of Kozonkov’s intrigues: after all, he writes a complaint about the work of the store every week). Only after lunch Zorin comes to repair the bathhouse and begins to talk again. This time it’s about how Kozonkov wanted to get married, but his fiancée’s father refused him: on Aviner’s sledges there are rope wrappers, so on the very first hill, you see, the wrapper will burst...
Then Olesha talks about his love. Tanka, Fedulenkova’s daughter, had a thick braid that went below her waist. ears are white. And the eyes are not even eyes, but two whirlpools, sometimes blue, sometimes black. Well, Olesha was timid. And one day on Assumption Day after the holiday, the men got drunk, and the boys slept on the poveti not far from the girls. Vinka then pretended to be drunk, and Olesha began to ask to go under the canopy where Olesha’s cousin and Tanka were going to sleep. Then the cousin slipped into the hut: the samovar, they say, forgot to close it. And she didn’t go back - she was quick-witted. And Olesha, trembling all over with fear, went to Tanka, and she began to persuade him to leave... Olesha foolishly went out into the street. He danced, and when he went to the story in the morning, he heard Vinka snuggling Tanka under his canopy. And how they kiss. And the cousin, laughing at Olesha, said that Tanka told her to find him, but where to find him? It’s as if I haven’t danced in ages.
Olesha finishes his story. A truck passes by, the driver insults Smolin, but Olesha only admires him: well done, it’s immediately obvious that he doesn’t belong here. Zorin, angry both at the driver and at Smolin’s good-naturedness, leaves without saying goodbye.
Kozonkov, having come to Smolin, tells how since the age of eighteen he became the right hand of Tabakov, the authorized financial department of the RIK. And the bell itself rushed from the bell tower, and even relieved a small need from there, from the bell tower. And in the group of poor peasants created to expose the kulaks and open a class war in the village, Aviner also participated. So now Comrade Tabakov, they say, lives on a personal one, and Kozonkov wonders if he can have a personal one too? Now all the documents have been collected... Zorin looks at the documents, but they are clearly not enough. Aviner complains that he sent a personal application to the district, but they lost it there: there is nothing but trickery and bureaucracy all around. But Kozonkov, consider, has been in leadership positions since he was 18 - both as a secretary in the village council and as a foreman, for two years as “head.” Matheef worked, and then in the general store he distributed loans throughout the war. And he had a revolver. Once Kozonkov had a quarrel with Fedulenko - he threatened him with a revolver, and then made sure that he was not accepted into the collective farm: two cows, two samovars, a two-inhabited house. And then Fedulenko, as an individual owner, was imposed such a tax... Aviner leaves. Fedulenko's house, where the collective farm office was, looks out with empty, frameless windows. And a ruffled crow sits on the prince and freezes. She doesn't want to do anything.
Zorin's vacation is coming to an end. Olesha works conscientiously and therefore slowly. And he tells Zorin how they were sometimes sent to do labor - to build roads, how they were sent either to logging or rafting, and then they had to sow grain on the collective farm, but it only turned out four weeks later than necessary. Olesha remembers how they came to describe Fedulenko’s property. The house is under auction. The whole family goes into exile. When they said goodbye, Tanka approached Olesha in front of all the people. How could he cry... They took them to Pechora, at first there were two or three letters from them, and then there was no word. Then Vinka Kozonkov attributed kulak agitation to Olesha, and Smolin was severely tormented. And even now Olesha does not dare to tell Zorin everything to the end - after all, he is a “party guy”.
The bathhouse is ready. Zorin wants to settle accounts with Olesha, but he doesn’t seem to hear. Then they steam together. Zorin turns on the transistor especially for Olesha, both listen to Schubert’s “The Beautiful Miller’s Wife,” and then Zorin gives the transistor to Olesha.
Before leaving, Olesha and Aviner come to Zorin. After drinking, they begin to argue about collectivization. Olesha says that in the village there were not three layers - kulak, poor peasant and middle peasant - but thirty-three, remembers how Kuzya Peryev was registered as a kulak (he didn’t even have a cow, but only swore at Tabakov on a holiday). And according to Aviner, Smolin himself should have joined Fedulenko at the root: “You were counter, and you are counter.” It comes to a fight. Aviner knocks Olesha's head against the wall. Nastasya, Olesha’s wife, appears and takes him home. Aviner also leaves, saying: “I’m for discipline for my brother... I won’t spare my head... He’ll fly to the side!”
Zorin gets the flu. He falls asleep, then gets up and, staggering, goes to Smolin. And there they sit and talk peacefully... Aviner and Olesha. Smolin says that both of them will go to the same land, and asks Aviner, if Olesha dies earlier, to make him a coffin according to honor - on spikes. And Kozonkov asks Smolin for the same thing if Olesha survives him. And then both, bowing their gray heads, quietly and harmoniously begin to sing an old, drawn-out song.
Zorin can’t catch up with them - he doesn’t know a word from this song...