Author Astafiev Viktor Petrovich

Victor Astafiev

LAST BOW

(A story in stories)

BOOK ONE

Far and near fairy tale

In the backyard of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts a long log building with a hemming of boards. It was called "mangazina", which was also adjacent to the delivery - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the "public fund". If a house burns down, if even the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

Away from the import - guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree, in the wind and eternal shade. Above the guardhouse, high on the hillside, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. It spread along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and kuruzhak along the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. That window, which is towards the village, was overwhelmed with wild cherry blossoms, stingers, hops and various foolishness that had bred from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled her so that she looked like a one-eyed shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out of the hops like a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the season and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was small, lame on one leg, and he had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They evoked shy courtesy not only from us children, but also from adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely anyone came to him. Only the most desperate children stealthily peeped into the window of the guardhouse and could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming.

At the fence, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the fence gates, or buried under the high floor behind piles, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; cut into grandmas, into chika. Tes hem was beaten with punks - beats poured with lead. At the blows that resounded under the vaults of fuss, a sparrow-like commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the import, I was attached to work - I twisted the winnowing machine with the children in turn, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin ...

The violin was rarely, very, really rare, played by Vasya the Pole, that mysterious, out of this world person who necessarily comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in memory forever. It seems that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a musty place, under a ridge, and so that the light in it barely flickered, and so that an owl would laugh drunkenly over the chimney at night, and that a key would smoke behind the hut, and that no one - no one knew what was going on in the hut and what the owner was thinking.

I remember that Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked her something. Grandmother sat Vasya to drink tea, brought dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast-iron. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed.

Vasya drank tea not in our way, not in a bite and not from a saucer, he drank directly from a glass, laid out a teaspoon on a saucer and did not drop it on the floor. His glasses flashed menacingly, his cropped head looked small, the size of a trouser. Gray streaked across his black beard. And all of it seems to be salty, and coarse salt dried it up.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea, and no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, bowed ceremoniously and took away in one hand an earthenware pot with a broth from grass, in the other - a bird-cherry stick.

Lord, Lord! Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - You are a hard lot ... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

Was early autumn. The gates of the portage are wide open. A draft was walking in them, stirring shavings in the bins repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain was drawn to the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because of their youth, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In autumn, not like in spring, it is somehow badly played. One by one, the children wandered home, and I stretched out on the heated log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I was waiting for the carts to rattle on the hillside in order to intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and there, you see, they would let the horse take to the watering place.

Behind the Yenisei, behind the Guard Bull, it got dark. In the valley of the river Karaulka, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. She looked like a burdock. Behind the ridges, over the tops of the mountains, stubbornly, not in autumn, a strip of dawn smoldered. But then darkness descended upon her. Dawn pretended like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. It hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves gleamed a little under the mountain, in a depression washed out by a spring. Because of the shadows began to circle the bats, squeak over me, fly into the open gates of imports, catch flies there and nocturnal butterflies, not otherwise.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, squeezed into the corner of the fuss. Along the ridge, above Vasya's hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from the castles, from work, but I did not dare to peel off the rough logs, I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that had come over me. Windows lit up in the village. Smoke from the chimneys stretched towards the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinsky River, someone was looking for a cow and then called her in a gentle voice, then scolded her with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that still shone alone over the Guard River, someone threw a stub of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, bare, orphan, chilly glassy, ​​and everything around was glassy from it. A shadow fell over the whole glade, and a shadow fell from me too, narrow and nosy.

Across the Fokinsky River - at hand - the crosses in the cemetery turned white, something creaked in the delivery - the cold crawled under the shirt, along the back, under the skin, to the heart. I already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly to the very gates and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the weaves of hops and bird cherry, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and nailed me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left a cemetery, in front a ridge with a hut, on the right a terrible place outside the village, where many white bones are lying around and where a long time ago, grandmother said, a man was crushed, behind it is a dark mess, behind it is a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black puffs of smoke.

I'm alone, alone, such a horror all around, and also music - a violin. A very, very lonely violin. And she doesn't threaten at all. Complains. And there's nothing creepy at all. And there is nothing to be afraid of. Fool-fool! Is it possible to be afraid of music? Fool-fool, never listened to one, that's it ...

The music flows quieter, more transparent, I hear, and my heart lets go. And this is not music, but the key flows from under the mountain. Someone clung to the water with their lips, drinks, drinks and cannot get drunk - his mouth and inside are so dry.

For some reason, one sees the Yenisei, quiet at night, on it is a raft with a spark. An unknown person shouts from the raft: “Which village-ah?” - For what? Where is he sailing? And another convoy on the Yenisei is seen, long, creaky. He also goes somewhere. Dogs are running on the side of the convoy. The horses move slowly, drowsily. And you still see a crowd on the banks of the Yenisei, something wet, washed out with mud, village people all over the bank, a grandmother tearing her hair on her head.

This music speaks of sadness, it speaks of my illness, how I was sick with malaria all summer, how scared I was when I stopped hearing and thought that I would forever be deaf, like Alyoshka, my cousin, and how she appeared to me in in a feverish dream, mother put a cold hand with blue nails to her forehead. I screamed and did not hear my scream.

In the hut, a screwed lamp burned all night, my grandmother showed me the corners, she shone with a lamp under the stove, under the bed, they say, there was no one.

I also remember a little girl, white, funny, her hand dries. The guards took her to the city to be treated.

And again the convoy arose.

All he goes somewhere, goes, hiding in the icy hummocks, in the frosty fog. The horses are getting smaller and smaller, and the fog has hidden the last one. Lonely, somehow empty, ice, cold and motionless dark rocks with motionless forests.

But the Yenisei was gone, neither winter nor summer; the living vein of the key behind Vasya's hut began to beat again. The spring began to grow stout, and more than one spring, two, three, a formidable stream is already whipping from the rock, rolling stones, breaking trees, uprooting them, carrying them, twisting them. He is about to sweep away the hut under the mountain, wash away the mess and bring down everything from the mountains. Thunders will strike in the sky, lightning will flash, mysterious fern flowers will flare up from them. From the flowers the forest will light up, the earth will light up, and even the Yenisei will not flood this fire - there is nothing to stop such a terrible storm!

“Yes, what is it?! Where are the people? What are they watching?! Vasya would be tied up!”

But the violin extinguished everything by itself. Again, one person yearns, again something is a pity, again someone is going somewhere, maybe in a convoy, maybe on a raft, maybe on foot goes to distant distances.

The world did not burn, nothing collapsed. Everything is in place. Moon and star in place. The village, already without lights, in place, a cemetery in eternal silence and peace, a guardhouse under a ridge, embraced by burning bird cherry trees and a quiet string of a violin.

Everything is in place. Only my heart, filled with grief and rapture, how it started, how it jumped, beats at the throat, wounded for life by music.

What did the music tell me about? About the convoy? About the dead mother? About a girl whose hand dries? What did she complain about? Whom did you get angry at? Why is it so anxious and bitter to me? Why feel sorry for yourself? And those over there...

Victor Astafiev

LAST BOW

(A story in stories)

BOOK ONE

Far and near fairy tale

In the backyard of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts a long log building with a hemming of boards. It was called "mangazina", which was also adjacent to the delivery - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the "public fund". If a house burns down, if even the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

Away from the import - guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree, in the wind and eternal shade. Above the guardhouse, high on the hillside, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. It spread along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and kuruzhak along the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. That window, which is towards the village, was overwhelmed with wild cherry blossoms, stingers, hops and various foolishness that had bred from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled her so that she looked like a one-eyed shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out of the hops like a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the season and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was small, lame on one leg, and he had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They evoked shy courtesy not only from us children, but also from adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely anyone came to him. Only the most desperate children stealthily peeped into the window of the guardhouse and could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming.

At the fence, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the fence gates, or buried under the high floor behind piles, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; cut into grandmas, into chika. Tes hem was beaten with punks - beats poured with lead. At the blows that resounded under the vaults of fuss, a sparrow-like commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the import, I was attached to work - I twisted the winnowing machine with the children in turn, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin ...

The violin was rarely, very, really rare, played by Vasya the Pole, that mysterious, out of this world person who necessarily comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in memory forever. It seems that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a musty place, under a ridge, and so that the light in it barely flickered, and that an owl would laugh drunkenly over the chimney at night, and that a key would smoke behind the hut. and so that no one, no one, knows what is happening in the hut and what the owner is thinking about.

I remember that Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked something from his nose. Grandmother sat Vasya to drink tea, brought dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast-iron. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed.

Vasya drank tea not in our way, not in a bite and not from a saucer, he drank directly from a glass, laid out a teaspoon on a saucer and did not drop it on the floor. His glasses flashed menacingly, his cropped head looked small, the size of a trouser. Gray streaked across his black beard. And all of it seems to be salty, and coarse salt dried it up.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea, and no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, bowed ceremoniously and took away in one hand an earthenware pot with a broth from grass, in the other - a bird-cherry stick.

Lord, Lord! Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - You are a hard lot ... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The gates are thrown wide open. A draft was walking in them, stirring shavings in the bins repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain was drawn to the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because of their youth, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In autumn, not like in spring, it is somehow badly played. One by one, the children wandered home, and I stretched out on the heated log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I was waiting for the carts to rattle on the hillside in order to intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and there, you see, they would let the horse take to the watering place.

Behind the Yenisei, behind the Guard Bull, it got dark. In the valley of the river Karaulka, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. She looked like a burdock. Behind the ridges, over the tops of the mountains, stubbornly, not in autumn, a strip of dawn smoldered. But then darkness descended upon her. Dawn pretended like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. It hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves gleamed a little under the mountain, in a depression washed out by a spring. From behind the shadow, bats began to circle, squeak above me, fly into the open gates of the import, catch flies there and nocturnal butterflies, nothing else.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, squeezed into the corner of the fuss. Along the ridge, above Vasya's hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from the castles, from work, but I did not dare to peel off the rough logs, I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that had come over me. Windows lit up in the village. Smoke from the chimneys stretched towards the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinsky River, someone was looking for a cow and then called her in a gentle voice, then scolded her with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that still shone alone over the Guard River, someone threw a stub of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, bare, orphan, chilly glassy, ​​and everything around was glassy from it. A shadow fell over the whole glade, and a shadow fell from me too, narrow and nosy.

Across the Fokinsky River - at hand - the crosses in the cemetery turned white, something creaked in the delivery - the cold crept under the shirt, along the back, under the skin. to the heart. I already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly to the very gates and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the weaves of hops and bird cherry, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and nailed me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left a cemetery, in front a ridge with a hut, on the right a terrible place outside the village, where many white bones are lying around and where a long time ago, grandmother said, a man was crushed, behind it is a dark mess, behind it is a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black puffs of smoke.

I'm alone, alone, such a horror all around, and also music - a violin. A very, very lonely violin. And she doesn't threaten at all. Complains. And there's nothing creepy at all. And there is nothing to be afraid of. Fool-fool! Is it possible to be afraid of music? Fool-fool, never listened to one, that's it ...

The music flows quieter, more transparent, I hear, and my heart lets go. And this is not music, but the key flows from under the mountain. Someone clung to the water with their lips, drinks, drinks and cannot get drunk - his mouth and inside are so dry.

For some reason, one sees the Yenisei, quiet at night, on it is a raft with a spark. An unknown person shouts from the raft: “Which village-ah?” - For what? Where is he sailing? And another convoy on the Yenisei is seen, long, creaky. He also goes somewhere. Dogs are running on the side of the convoy. The horses move slowly, drowsily. And you still see a crowd on the banks of the Yenisei, something wet, washed out with mud, village people all over the bank, a grandmother tearing her hair on her head.

This music speaks of sadness, it speaks of my illness, how I was sick with malaria all summer, how scared I was when I stopped hearing and thought that I would forever be deaf, like Alyoshka, my cousin, and how she appeared to me in in a feverish dream, mother put a cold hand with blue nails to her forehead. I screamed and did not hear my scream.

Victor Astafiev

LAST BOW

(A story in stories)

BOOK ONE

Far and near fairy tale

In the backyard of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts a long log building with a hemming of boards. It was called "mangazina", which was also adjacent to the delivery - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the "public fund". If a house burns down, if even the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

Away from the import - guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree, in the wind and eternal shade. Above the guardhouse, high on the hillside, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. It spread along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and kuruzhak along the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. That window, which is towards the village, was overwhelmed with wild cherry blossoms, stingers, hops and various foolishness that had bred from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled her so that she looked like a one-eyed shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out of the hops like a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the season and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was small, lame on one leg, and he had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They evoked shy courtesy not only from us children, but also from adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely anyone came to him. Only the most desperate children stealthily peeped into the window of the guardhouse and could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming.

At the fence, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the fence gates, or buried under the high floor behind piles, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; cut into grandmas, into chika. Tes hem was beaten with punks - beats poured with lead. At the blows that resounded under the vaults of fuss, a sparrow-like commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the import, I was attached to work - I twisted the winnowing machine with the children in turn, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin ...

The violin was rarely, very, really rare, played by Vasya the Pole, that mysterious, out of this world person who necessarily comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in memory forever. It seems that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a musty place, under a ridge, and so that the light in it barely flickered, and so that an owl would laugh drunkenly over the chimney at night, and that a key would smoke behind the hut, and that no one - no one knew what was going on in the hut and what the owner was thinking.

I remember that Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked her something. Grandmother sat Vasya to drink tea, brought dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast-iron. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed.

Vasya drank tea not in our way, not in a bite and not from a saucer, he drank directly from a glass, laid out a teaspoon on a saucer and did not drop it on the floor. His glasses flashed menacingly, his cropped head looked small, the size of a trouser. Gray streaked across his black beard. And all of it seems to be salty, and coarse salt dried it up.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea, and no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, bowed ceremoniously and took away in one hand an earthenware pot with a broth from grass, in the other - a bird-cherry stick.

Lord, Lord! Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - You are a hard lot ... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The gates of the portage are wide open. A draft was walking in them, stirring shavings in the bins repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain was drawn to the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because of their youth, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In autumn, not like in spring, it is somehow badly played. One by one, the children wandered home, and I stretched out on the heated log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I was waiting for the carts to rattle on the hillside in order to intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and there, you see, they would let the horse take to the watering place.

Behind the Yenisei, behind the Guard Bull, it got dark. In the valley of the river Karaulka, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. She looked like a burdock. Behind the ridges, over the tops of the mountains, stubbornly, not in autumn, a strip of dawn smoldered. But then darkness descended upon her. Dawn pretended like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. It hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves gleamed a little under the mountain, in a depression washed out by a spring. From behind the shadow, bats began to circle, squeak above me, fly into the open gates of the import, catch flies there and nocturnal butterflies, nothing else.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, squeezed into the corner of the fuss. Along the ridge, above Vasya's hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from the castles, from work, but I did not dare to peel off the rough logs, I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that had come over me. Windows lit up in the village. Smoke from the chimneys stretched towards the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinsky River, someone was looking for a cow and then called her in a gentle voice, then scolded her with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that still shone alone over the Guard River, someone threw a stub of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, bare, orphan, chilly glassy, ​​and everything around was glassy from it. A shadow fell over the whole glade, and a shadow fell from me too, narrow and nosy.

Across the Fokinsky River - at hand - the crosses in the cemetery turned white, something creaked in the delivery - the cold crawled under the shirt, along the back, under the skin, to the heart. I already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly to the very gates and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the weaves of hops and bird cherry, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and nailed me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left a cemetery, in front a ridge with a hut, on the right a terrible place outside the village, where many white bones are lying around and where a long time ago, grandmother said, a man was crushed, behind it is a dark mess, behind it is a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black puffs of smoke.

In the backyard of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts a long log building with a hemming of boards. It was called "mangazina", which was also adjacent to the delivery - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the "public fund". If a house burns down, if even the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

Away from the import - guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree, in the wind and eternal shade. Above the guardhouse, high on the hillside, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. It spread along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and kuruzhak along the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. That window, which is towards the village, was overwhelmed with wild cherry blossoms, stingers, hops and various foolishness that had bred from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled her so that she looked like a one-eyed shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out of the hops like a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the season and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was small, lame on one leg, and he had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They evoked shy courtesy not only from us children, but also from adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely anyone came to him. Only the most desperate children stealthily peeped into the window of the guardhouse and could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming.

At the fence, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the fence gates, or buried under the high floor behind piles, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; cut into grandmas, into chika. Tes hem was beaten with punks - beats poured with lead. At the blows that resounded under the vaults of fuss, a sparrow-like commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the import, I was attached to work - I twisted the winnowing machine with the children in turn, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin ...

The violin was rarely, very, really rare, played by Vasya the Pole, that mysterious, out of this world person who necessarily comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in memory forever. It seems that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a musty place, under a ridge, and so that the light in it barely flickered, and that an owl would laugh drunkenly over the chimney at night, and that a key would smoke behind the hut. and so that no one, no one, knows what is happening in the hut and what the owner is thinking about.

I remember that Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked something from his nose. Grandmother sat Vasya to drink tea, brought dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast-iron. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed.

Vasya drank tea not in our way, not in a bite and not from a saucer, he drank directly from a glass, laid out a teaspoon on a saucer and did not drop it on the floor. His glasses flashed menacingly, his cropped head looked small, the size of a trouser. Gray streaked across his black beard. And all of it seems to be salty, and coarse salt dried it up.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea, and no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, bowed ceremoniously and took away in one hand an earthenware pot with a broth from grass, in the other - a bird-cherry stick.

Lord, Lord! Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - You are a hard lot ... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The gates are thrown wide open. A draft was walking in them, stirring shavings in the bins repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain was drawn to the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because of their youth, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In autumn, not like in spring, it is somehow badly played. One by one, the children wandered home, and I stretched out on the heated log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I was waiting for the carts to rattle on the hillside in order to intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and there, you see, they would let the horse take to the watering place.

Behind the Yenisei, behind the Guard Bull, it got dark. In the valley of the river Karaulka, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. She looked like a burdock. Behind the ridges, over the tops of the mountains, stubbornly, not in autumn, a strip of dawn smoldered. But then darkness descended upon her. Dawn pretended like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. It hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves gleamed a little under the mountain, in a depression washed out by a spring. From behind the shadow, bats began to circle, squeak above me, fly into the open gates of the import, catch flies there and nocturnal butterflies, nothing else.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, squeezed into the corner of the fuss. Along the ridge, above Vasya's hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from the castles, from work, but I did not dare to peel off the rough logs, I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that had come over me. Windows lit up in the village. Smoke from the chimneys stretched towards the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinsky River, someone was looking for a cow and then called her in a gentle voice, then scolded her with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that still shone alone over the Guard River, someone threw a stub of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, bare, orphan, chilly glassy, ​​and everything around was glassy from it. A shadow fell over the whole glade, and a shadow fell from me too, narrow and nosy.

Across the Fokinsky River - at hand - the crosses in the cemetery turned white, something creaked in the delivery - the cold crept under the shirt, along the back, under the skin. to the heart. I already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly to the very gates and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the weaves of hops and bird cherry, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and nailed me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left a cemetery, in front a ridge with a hut, on the right a terrible place outside the village, where many white bones are lying around and where a long time ago, grandmother said, a man was crushed, behind it is a dark mess, behind it is a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black puffs of smoke.

I'm alone, alone, such a horror all around, and also music - a violin. A very, very lonely violin. And she doesn't threaten at all. Complains. And there's nothing creepy at all. And there is nothing to be afraid of. Fool-fool! Is it possible to be afraid of music? Fool-fool, never listened to one, that's it ...

The music flows quieter, more transparent, I hear, and my heart lets go. And this is not music, but the key flows from under the mountain. Someone clung to the water with their lips, drinks, drinks and cannot get drunk - his mouth and inside are so dry.

For some reason, one sees the Yenisei, quiet at night, on it is a raft with a spark. An unknown person shouts from the raft: “Which village-ah?” - For what? Where is he sailing? And another convoy on the Yenisei is seen, long, creaky. He also goes somewhere. Dogs are running on the side of the convoy. The horses move slowly, drowsily. And you still see a crowd on the banks of the Yenisei, something wet, washed out with mud, village people all over the bank, a grandmother tearing her hair on her head.

This music speaks of sadness, it speaks of my illness, how I was sick with malaria all summer, how scared I was when I stopped hearing and thought that I would forever be deaf, like Alyoshka, my cousin, and how she appeared to me in in a feverish dream, mother put a cold hand with blue nails to her forehead. I screamed and did not hear my scream.

Story in stories

Sing, starling,
Burn, my torch,
Shine, star, over the traveler in the steppe.
Al. Domnin

* BOOK ONE *

Far and near fairy tale

In the backyards of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts
a long log room with a hemming of boards. It was called
"mangazin", which was also adjoined by the delivery, - here the peasants of our
villages brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called "public
fund". If the house burns down. If even the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and,
it means that people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land, in
which you can leave them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not
rogue.
Away from the imports is a guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree,
weather and eternal shadow. Above the guardroom, high on the ridge, larches grew and
pines. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. He spread over
at the foot of the ridge, denoting itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer
sometimes, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and a kuruzhak along crawling from the ridges
shrubs.
There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village.
That window, which is towards the village, was covered with cherry blossoms bred from the key,
sting, hops and various foolishness. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled
her in such a way that she resembled a one-eyed, shaggy head. Sticking out of the hop
an overturned bucket with a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook
rain drops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles depending on
time of year and weather.
Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was small in stature, lame on one leg,
and he had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They
evoked shy courtesy not only among us children, but also among adults.
Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely did anyone come to
him. Only the most desperate children peeped furtively out of the guardhouse window and
they could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming
away.
At the import, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played
hide-and-seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the gates of imports or
they were buried under a high floor behind piles, and they also hid in the barrels; cut
in grandmas, in chick. The hems were beaten with punks - beats poured with lead.
At the blows, resoundingly echoing under the vaults of fuss, inside her flared up
sparrow flurry.
Here, near the import, I was introduced to work - I twisted in turn with
winnowing machine by the children, and here for the first time in my life I heard music -
violin.