The Shepherd and the Shepherdess, Viktor Petrovich Astafiev. Brief summary of the shepherd and the shepherdess Astafiev The shepherd and the shepherdess brief summary of the brief

The Shepherd and the Shepherdess

A woman is walking along the deserted steppe along the railway line, under a sky in which the Ural ridge appears like a heavy cloudy delirium. There are tears in her eyes, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to breathe. At the dwarf kilometer post she stops, moving her lips, repeats the number on the post, leaves the embankment and looks for a grave with a pyramid on the signal mound. The woman kneels in front of the grave and whispers: “How long have I been looking for you!”

Our troops finished off the almost strangled group of German troops, whose command, as at Stalingrad, refused to accept the ultimatum of unconditional surrender. The platoon of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, together with other units, met the breaking through enemy. The night battle with the participation of tanks, artillery and Katyusha rockets was terrible - due to the onslaught of the Germans, maddened by the cold and despair, and due to losses on both sides. Having repulsed the attack, collecting the dead and wounded, Kostyaev’s platoon arrived at the nearest village to rest.

Behind the bathhouse, in the snow, Boris saw an old man and an old woman killed by a volley of artillery barrage. They lay there, covering each other. A local resident, Khvedor Khvomich, said that the dead came to this Ukrainian farm from the Volga region during the famine year. They grazed collective farm cattle. Shepherd and shepherdess. When they were buried, the hands of the shepherd and shepherdess could not be separated. Soldier Lantsov quietly read a prayer over the old men. Khvedor Khvomich was surprised that the Red Army man knew prayers. He himself forgot them, in his youth he was an atheist and he agitated these old men to liquidate the icons. But they didn't listen to him...

The platoon soldiers stopped in a house where the owner was a girl named Lucy. They warmed up and drank moonshine. Everyone was tired, drunk and eating potatoes; only Sergeant Major Mokhnakov was not drunk. Lucy drank with everyone, saying: “Welcome back... We've been waiting for you for so long. So long...”

The soldiers went to bed one by one on the floor. Those who still retained strength continued to drink, eat, and joke, remembering their peaceful life. Boris Kostyaev, going out into the hallway, heard a fuss in the darkness and Lucy’s broken voice: “No need. Comrade foreman...” The lieutenant decisively stopped the foreman’s harassment and took him out into the street. Enmity broke out between these people, who had gone through many battles and hardships together. The lieutenant threatened to shoot the sergeant major if he tried to offend the girl again. Angry, Mokhnakov went to another hut.

Lucy called the lieutenant into the house where all the soldiers were already sleeping. She led Boris to the clean half, gave him her robe so he could change, and prepared a trough of water behind the stove. When Boris washed himself and went to bed, his eyelids became heavy and sleep fell on him.

Even before dawn, the company commander called Lieutenant Kostyaev. Lucy didn’t even have time to wash his uniform, which made her very upset. The platoon received orders to knock out the Nazis from the neighboring village, the last stronghold. After a short battle, the platoon, together with other units, occupied the village. Soon the front commander arrived there with his retinue. Never before had Boris seen up close the commander about whom there were legends. In one of the barns they found a German general who had shot himself. The commander ordered the enemy general to be buried with full military honors.

Boris Kostyaev returned with the soldiers to the very house where they spent the night. The lieutenant again fell into a deep sleep. At night, Lucy, his first woman, came to him. Boris talked about himself, read letters from his mother. He recalled how as a child his mother took him to Moscow and they watched ballet in the theater. A shepherd and a shepherdess danced on stage. “They loved each other, were not ashamed of love and were not afraid for it. In their gullibility they were defenseless.” Then it seemed to Boris that the defenseless were inaccessible to evil...

Lucy listened with bated breath, knowing that such a night would not happen again. On this night of love they forgot about the war - a twenty-year-old lieutenant and a girl who was one war year older than him.

Lyusya found out from somewhere that the platoon would stay on the farm for two more days. But in the morning, the order from the company commander was conveyed: in vehicles to catch up with the main forces that had gone far behind the retreating enemy. Lyusya, struck by the sudden separation, at first remained in the hut, then could not stand it and caught up with the car in which the soldiers were riding. Without being embarrassed by anyone, she kissed Boris and with difficulty pulled herself away from him.

After heavy fighting, Boris Kostyaev asked the political officer for leave. And the political officer had already decided to send the lieutenant to short-term courses so that he could visit his beloved for a day. Boris had already imagined his meeting with Lyusya... But none of this happened. The platoon was not even taken to reorganize: heavy fighting got in the way. In one of them, Mokhnakov died heroically, throwing himself under a German tank with an anti-tank mine in his duffel bag. On the same day, Boris was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel.

There were a lot of people in the medical battalion. Boris waited a long time for bandages and medicine. The doctor, examining Boris’s wound, did not understand why this lieutenant was not recovering. Boris was consumed by melancholy. One night the doctor came to him and said: “I have assigned you to evacuation. Souls cannot be treated in field conditions...”

The ambulance train was taking Boris to the east. At one of the stops, he saw a woman who looked like Lyusya... The car's nurse, Arina, looking closely at the young lieutenant, wondered why he was getting worse and worse every day.

Boris looked out the window, felt sorry for himself and his wounded neighbors, felt sorry for Lucy, who remained in the deserted square of the Ukrainian town, and the old man and woman buried in the garden. He no longer remembered the faces of the shepherd and shepherdess, and it turned out: they looked like his mother, like his father, like all the people he had once known...

One morning Arina came to wash Boris and saw that he had died. He was buried in the steppe, making a pyramid out of a signal post. Arina sadly shook her head: “Such a slight wound, but he died...”

After listening to the ground, the woman said: “Sleep. I’ll go. But I’ll come back to you. No one there can separate us...”

“And he, or what he once was, remained in the silent land, entangled in the roots of herbs and flowers that died down until spring. He was left alone - in the middle of Russia.”

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev learned the Patriotic War first-hand. He passed it as a private, coming to the front as a volunteer. Why wasn’t he even promoted to sergeant at the front? This can be understood even without reading the writer’s biography; just read his story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess.” Analysis of this work reveals the author's deep understanding of the terrible, inhuman essence of war. Commanding, that is, sending subordinates to their death, and being a humanist of the highest standard are incompatible things.

This article is about his story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”. The summary of Astakhov’s work convinces us of the complete harmony of the author’s unique form and the author’s reimagined military history.

Private who went through the war

He experienced all this to the fullest. Viktor Petrovich fought as a driver, signalman, artilleryman... He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and medals “For Courage”. Rank - private. He saw everything that he presented to his readers in the story. Therefore, the style of his presentation is epic; one can feel Tolstoy’s thoroughness and attentiveness to all the details. To see everything, to experience everything, to present to his readers the truthful face of the war... This is the most important task that Astafiev the artist solves in the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess.” The analysis of its first part presents us with the writer’s desire to do the impossible - to write a pastoral of war. This deadly, fiery, burning element.

Astafievskaya Pastoral of War

Why did the author choose the pastoral genre, which, by its definition, idealizes peaceful, simple village life? Astafievskaya pastoral... It represents a special, rethought description of the war, where one cannot overcome the patheticness of human feelings, the beauty of human souls. Viktor Petrovich convinces the reader that love is stronger than war with his work “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”

We begin our analysis of the first part of the story with a touching picture. A gray-haired woman in an outdated coat walks, not hiding her tears, along the railway along the wild steppe with cracked lifeless soil, where only tough wiregrass and Chernobyl wormwood grow. Along the way, she counts the striped kilometer posts...

Having reached what she needed, she turns to the mound and approaches the goal of her journey - the pyramid of the monument, from which the star “lost and fell away.” It becomes clear to us that someone who is very dear to her is buried here. This woman is Lyusya, and she found the grave of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev. She utters piercing words, pressing her face to the grave: “Why are you lying alone in the middle of Russia?” In terms of artistic power, this plot is similar to the rising blinding “black sun” of Sholokhov, which Grigory saw after the death of his beloved.

Analogies of Astafiev’s work with Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don”

Isn’t it true that the epigraph given by Mikhail Alexandrovich to his creation echoes the beginning of Astafiev’s story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”? It speaks poetically about the long-suffering Russian land, about young widows...

Further, as if using a time machine, Astakhov rewinds time and immerses the reader in the atmosphere of a brutal battle. Lieutenant Kostyaev’s platoon held the defense, standing in the way of the distraught surrounded Germans going to break through. They were supported by fire from a battery of SS men (Katyushas). Ahead, regimental guns fired directly at the enemy. Behind is front-line artillery (howitzers). However, the German infantry still broke through to the platoon's trenches.

Astafiev describes real hand-to-hand combat. “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” give the reader the opportunity to almost tangibly touch this hell - with dying screams, obscenities, striking blows from point-blank shots. Next to Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, who was never used to the war, fought as the platoon’s sergeant-major, Nikolai Vasilyevich Mokhnakov. He fought starting from the retreat from the border and was terrible for the enemy: now hiding in a snowdrift, now jumping out of it, smashing with a shovel and pistol shots. The sergeant major was everywhere in the thick of the battle: giving commands, protecting the confused lieutenant. His internal state was somewhat similar to the state of Sholokhov, who was a hero, who was extravagant, who killed his enemies without hesitation. However, the inner essence of the Astafievsky foreman, his soul, was scorched by the war. Let us remember what Sholokhov wrote about a similar state: his hero would not be able to withstand the clear gaze of an innocent child - he would look away.

Connection with the pastoral genre. Tragic scene

An important plot function of the first part will be shown to us by the analysis of the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”. Starting on a high tragic note, the author builds up the emotional intensity right up to the classic pastoral scene ugly transformed by the war - a shepherd and a shepherdess embracing.

However, these characters, so popular in European art of the 16th-17th centuries, young, looking at each other with loving eyes, presented in the idyllic bosom of nature, are transformed by the author in relation to the terrible realities of war.

In Astafiev's work, the shepherd and the shepherdess are an old man and an old woman, busy grazing their flock, killed by a stray enemy shell. Two dead bodies of people holding hands tightly, shielding each other’s body from shelling. They lie behind the bathhouse, near the “potato pit.”

Catharsis of fighters

This scene, seen by the fighters who had barely emerged from the terrible battle, does not leave them indifferent. Let us note that it is the central tragic scene of the entire story, its leitmotif, which is deliberately introduced at the beginning of Astafiev’s work “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess,” suddenly interrupting the dynamics of the narrative.

What is happening in this scene? Suddenly, the fighters who have just killed and are being killed, at the sight of these two corpses, experience catharsis, spiritual insight. They (perhaps all of them, except for Sergeant Major Mokhnakov) no longer identify themselves with the war, but oppose it. The shock they experienced is so deeply depicted by Astafiev that the general numb silence at their funeral by the soldiers of Boris Kostyaev’s platoon is broken only by a prayer, which the lanky private Lantsov spontaneously, from the heart, says. His comrades understand - other words are inappropriate here.

Further, starting from the second chapter, the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” (a brief summary of the work will show this to the reader) becomes tangible. This is the theme of the front-line love between Lucy and Boris. However, according to the author’s plan, it is not independent in plot. This love is considered by Astafiev through the prism of the pastoralism he has already shown, in the tragic scene we described above. In it, like a tuning fork, one senses the high humanistic pathos of contrasting the human soul, human love with the hell of war.

Halt at Lucy's house

The fighters stop at the house where Lyusya lives. The story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” tells us through the mouth of the housewife that it was a miracle that the houses here remained intact. The summary of this work informs that the reader is introduced into the situation of rest and overnight accommodation for soldiers after an inhuman massacre. The time is left behind when, having barely jumped out of the trench, they were all equal before death, when, inflaming themselves with obscenities, they became components of a terrible death machine: killing and being killed, they finally felt themselves in a non-combat situation. The fighters came to their senses, relieving the stress that was binding their souls, pouring it with moonshine distilled from beets. The foreman always managed to get him. The Shepherd and the Shepherdess tells us the truth about the rest after the battle. Analysis of the work in this episode highlights two aspects: a detailed picture of the types of characters and the beginning of the relationship between Boris and Lucy.

In this scene, the writer Astafiev, like a film director, presents his reader with close-ups of the book’s characters, depicting the personality of each with a few strokes with the skill of an experienced artist. These soldiers, brought together by the war into one platoon, are very different.

More about the war and soldiers

Muscovite Lieutenant Kostyaev, who began to fight when the Germans were being driven out of the Kuban and the Caucasus, quickly lost his youthful ardor. “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” tells us about the enduring wisdom of soldiers. The analysis of the chapter “Battle” brings to us, in blood and sweat, the military experience of the author himself: in order to fight and stay alive, you need to understand war, not be a hero in vain, choose a relatively safe place in time and, without sparing the calluses on your hands, dig in. And having jumped out of the trench, you should frantically shoot at the enemy, there is no other way out. Lieutenant Boris, having understood this, completely identifies himself with the soldiers and feels their support.

Among the fighters there are three or four who cannot drink and quickly get drunk. However, you need to drink. So that the psyche is not disturbed by contemplating the faces of death. Only the foreman, the “firefighter godfather” (i.e., potential informer) Pafnutyev and the Altai godfathers Karyshev and Malyshev from the village of Klyuchi drank more than others. There is no doubt that Astafiev himself saw similar types at the front. “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” analyzes how this military collective is organized.

Cain and Abel

After all, there are not only people “from the plow” here. An educated man, a former proofreader, Korney Arkadyevich Lantsov, who subtly senses the antagonism of war and the human soul, also serves in the platoon. When his reasoning after drinking moonshine dangerously touches on the cult of personality, the foreman drives him out into the street to “freshen up.”

After all, in the platoon there is a middle-aged man named Pafnutyev, who flaunts his ability to write denunciations. However, Sergeant Major Mokhnakov, knowing this, psychologically influences the informer in time so that he does not show his dangerous “talent.” Truthful - this image was deliberately introduced into the outline of the story by Astafiev. “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” analyzes the era and characters - characters are present in the work, as in life.

Kuma-Altaians

The Altaians fight like peasants thoroughly. They are both calm and courageous, the strongest support of the platoon commander. Karyshev, in a peasant style, exhaustively sets out the reason why he is fighting. There is not even a whiff of ideology here. He is a peasant, fighting for his native land, which the enemy is trying to take away from him, the grain grower (the main person on earth). Thus, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” tells us that this war became a people’s war. Analysis of the work brings us to Tolstoy’s “club of the people’s war,” which rises and falls on the heads of the aggressors. And this man from the people also had a deep, philosophical thought that two things are sacred on earth: motherhood, which gives birth to life, and arable farming, which nourishes it. And this was said by him in the hell of war!

The lieutenant pulls the foreman back

The Siberian Mokhnakov, who drank the most, under the influence of vodka “awakens courage”; when his colleagues fall asleep, he, wanting sex, pesters the mistress of the house. This attempt is stopped by Lieutenant Boris, who called the foreman “outside” and dispassionately promised to kill him if he tried again. The foreman, realizing that his own soul has become extremely hardened, intuitively senses Boris’s rightness. However, he also understands that his soul, split by the war, will no longer feel high feelings. He goes to sleep in the barn.

Lucy sees all this. She is the central female character in the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”. A brief analysis of this work will reveal its special role in Astafiev’s pastoral. She is the one who is Astafiev’s Mona Lisa. Her complex image is depicted by the author subtly and touchingly. A Russian woman who, by the will of fate, finds herself in a Ukrainian village. Huge black eyes, a thin, oblong, intelligent face, a tight braid, restless hands. Her facial expressions, manner of speaking, wary attention, insight testify to the richness of her soul. This image really adorns Astafiev’s pastoral “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess.” Thanks to him, the content of the story is transformed from the plane of war to the aspect of human relations, human values, because love, unlike war, is eternal.

Love

In the third part, the writer tells us about beautiful love, about high feelings. “Well, why did we meet in the war?” - Lucy asks either her beloved or the Almighty. She had to go through a lot during the occupation. Later she will tell Boris, who is in love with her, about the fascist perverts and the policemen who shamelessly ruled in these parts. From her lips we learn that she received a musical education. Books on jurisprudence, contrasting with the rural hut, indicate a second - legal - education. An unexpected touch - Lyusya, being in emotional excitement, lights up shag like a man. Smoking women were not uncommon then; this also shows us the artistic authenticity and integrity of the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess.” Analysis of the text, however, shows that even the emerging bright love cannot immediately free Lucy’s soul from the pain caused by the war. However, the young woman feels the need to love, perceives herself as wiser than her beloved, “a hundred years older than him,” feels maternal tenderness and pity for “her knight” fighting for the Motherland. A mutual deep and tender feeling flares up between the young people, which they can no longer resist.

Back to the front

“At guns, military!” - the foreman interrupts this idyll, conveying the order of the company commander, Major Filkin. The company, having rested and received new equipment, moved to the front line. Lucy went out onto the winter road to see off her beloved. The author's presentation of this moment again takes on epic features. A woman in love feels in her heart that something irreparable will happen. She, freezing in the cold, continued to stand in prostration after the departure of the military column, whispering: “Come back alive!” And when he returns home, he doesn’t even close the front door and for a long time cannot warm up, feeling some kind of mystical piercing cold.

Completion of the tragedy

Our presentation of the content of the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” ends. The chapter-by-chapter analysis we have completed moves on to its final stage - the chapter “Assumption”. It logically ends Astafiev’s tragic pastoral. The iron millstones of war mercilessly and indiscriminately grind people who oppose it with their human nature. Sergeant Major Mokhnakov expressed a thought that was astonishing in its depth that at the front people live through brotherhood. For some reason, death suddenly gained power over the heroes of Astafiev’s book... Where did it all start? Perhaps from betrayal. A new special captain appeared in the regiment. He liked Pafnutyev, who had the inclinations of Judas. And he, the damned one, denounced the foreman “for looting,” and the lieutenant “for having an affair with a suspicious woman,” and most of all, the free-thinking intellectual Korney Arkadyevich Lantsov. The latter was soon taken away, allegedly to work in a front-line newspaper. However, Pafnutyev himself was the next to suffer. Out of greed, he forgot about vigilance and set his sights on the trophies. Both legs were torn off by a mine explosion. In dying repentance, he told everything to the foreman. However, trouble never strikes alone. When the soldiers from the platoon of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev were blithely returning to their location after delivering the wounded man to the medical battalion, an enemy sniper mortally wounded the Altai man Karyshev. Soon Sergeant Major Mokhnakov fell ill, as Astafiev writes, “with that disease that cannot be cured in the trenches.” He, sparing his comrades, began to live separately, eat separately, and stopped communicating. And in battle, the foreman began to seek death. He planned everything. Deciding to die like a hero, Mokhnakov took her out, like bread, he carried her in his duffel bag. With it, he threw himself under an advancing enemy tank. Soon the main character of the story, Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, was wounded in the shoulder. By that time he was experiencing a severe mental crisis. Events flashed through his mind like a kaleidoscope. He never got used to the war. Meeting Lyusya seemed unreal to him. The death of my comrades was depressing.

Having found himself in the medical battalion with a minor wound, the lieutenant was faced with the indifference of the head nurse and the attending physician. He was treated formally. And there was no talk of the fact that at the same time it was necessary to treat his delicate and tormented soul, wounded by the war. In fact, the injury turned out to be not so harmless, and the mental suffering was more significant than one might have expected. An astute doctor, realizing that the wounded man’s health was deteriorating in this hospital, ordered his transfer to another hospital. However, Boris did not arrive. He died on the road. Moreover, in a hurry, his body was left in one of the cars standing at a dead end. The head of the station, together with the watchman, buried the hero in a hastily dug hole. A drunken watchman exchanged the deceased's underwear for a liter of vodka. Having drunk and become emotional, he cut out a pyramid-monument from the handle of the stretcher and drove it into the ground in the heads of the deceased.

Conclusion

The story ends with the scene with which it began. Gray-haired Lucy, whose bottomless eyes seemed to have faded with age, lived alone after the death of her beloved. Having found his grave, she accomplishes her plan - she promises to come to him soon.

The pastoral is closed, and the analysis of the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” ends. Love, even tragic, conquers war.

The setting sun illuminates the steppe and a woman, dressed in an old-fashioned coat, returning to the stop...

A woman is walking along the deserted steppe along the railway line, under a sky in which the Ural ridge appears as a heavy cloudy delirium. There are tears in her eyes, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to breathe. At the dwarf kilometer post she stops, moving her lips, repeats the number on the post, leaves the embankment and looks for a grave with a pyramid on the signal mound. The woman kneels in front of the grave and whispers: “How long have I been looking for you!”

Our troops finished off the almost strangled group of German troops, whose command, as at Stalingrad, refused to accept the ultimatum of unconditional surrender. The platoon of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, together with other units, met the breaking through enemy. The night battle with the participation of tanks and artillery, “Katyushas” was terrible - due to the onslaught of the Germans maddened by frost and despair, due to losses on both sides. Having repulsed the attack, collecting the dead and wounded, Kostyaev’s platoon arrived at the nearest village to rest.

Behind the bathhouse, in the snow, Boris saw an old man and an old woman killed by a volley of artillery barrage. They lay there, covering each other. A local resident, Khvedor Khvomich, said that the dead came to this Ukrainian farm from the Volga region during the famine year. They grazed collective farm cattle. Shepherd and shepherdess. When they were buried, the hands of the shepherd and shepherdess could not be separated. Soldier Lantsov quietly read a prayer over the old men. Khvedor Khvomich was surprised that the Red Army man knew prayers. He himself forgot them, in his youth he was an atheist and he agitated these old men to liquidate the icons. But they didn't listen to him...

The platoon soldiers stopped in a house where the owner was a girl named Lucy. They warmed up and drank moonshine. Everyone was tired, drunk and eating potatoes; only Sergeant Major Mokhnakov was not drunk. Lucy drank with everyone, saying: “Welcome back... We've been waiting for you for so long. So long..."

The soldiers went to bed one by one on the floor. Those who still retained strength continued to drink, eat, and joke, remembering their peaceful life. Boris Kostyaev, going out into the hallway, heard a fuss in the darkness and Lucy’s broken voice: “No need. Comrade foreman...” The lieutenant decisively stopped the foreman’s harassment and took him out into the street. Enmity broke out between these people, who had gone through many battles and hardships together. The lieutenant threatened to shoot the sergeant major if he tried to offend the girl again. Angry, Mokhnakov went to another hut.

Lucy called the lieutenant into the house where all the soldiers were already sleeping. She led Boris to the clean half, gave him her robe so he could change, and prepared a trough of water behind the stove. When Boris washed himself and went to bed, his eyelids naturally filled with heaviness, and sleep fell on him.

Even before dawn, the company commander called Lieutenant Kostyaev. Lucy didn’t even have time to wash his uniform, which made her very upset. The platoon received orders to knock out the Nazis from the neighboring village, the last stronghold. After a short battle, the platoon, together with other units, occupied the village. Soon the front commander arrived there with his retinue. Never before had Boris seen up close the commander about whom there were legends. In one of the barns they found a German general who had shot himself. The commander ordered the enemy general to be buried with full military honors.

Boris Kostyaev returned with the soldiers to the very house where they spent the night. The lieutenant again fell into a deep sleep. At night, Lucy, his first woman, came to him. Boris talked about himself, read letters from his mother. He recalled how as a child his mother took him to Moscow and they watched ballet in the theater. A shepherd and a shepherdess danced on stage. “They loved each other, were not ashamed of love and were not afraid for it. In their gullibility they were defenseless.” Then it seemed to Boris that the defenseless were inaccessible to evil...

Lucy listened with bated breath, knowing that such a night would not happen again. On this night of love they forgot about the war - a twenty-year-old lieutenant and a girl who was one war year older than him.

Lyusya found out from somewhere that the platoon would stay on the farm for two more days. But in the morning, the order from the company commander was conveyed: in vehicles to catch up with the main forces that had gone far behind the retreating enemy. Lyusya, struck by the sudden separation, at first remained in the hut, then could not stand it and caught up with the car in which the soldiers were riding. Without being embarrassed by anyone, she kissed Boris and with difficulty pulled herself away from him.

After heavy fighting, Boris Kostyaev asked the political officer for leave. And the political officer had already decided to send the lieutenant to short-term courses so that he could visit his beloved for a day. Boris had already imagined his meeting with Lyusya... But none of this happened. The platoon was not even taken to reorganize: heavy fighting got in the way. In one of them, Mokhnakov died heroically, throwing himself under a German tank with an anti-tank mine in his duffel bag. On the same day, Boris was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel.

There were a lot of people in the medical battalion. Boris waited a long time for bandages and medicine. The doctor, examining Boris’s wound, did not understand why this lieutenant was not recovering. Boris was consumed by melancholy. One night the doctor came to him and said: “I have assigned you to evacuation. Souls cannot be healed in camping conditions...”

The ambulance train was taking Boris to the east. At one of the stops, he saw a woman who looked like Lyusya... The car's nurse, Arina, looking closely at the young lieutenant, wondered why he was getting worse and worse every day.

Boris looked out the window, felt sorry for himself and his wounded neighbors, felt sorry for Lucy, who remained in the deserted square of the Ukrainian town, and the old man and woman buried in the garden. He no longer remembered the faces of the shepherd and shepherdess, and it turned out: they looked like his mother, like his father, like all the people he had once known...

One morning Arina came to wash Boris and saw that he had died. He was buried in the steppe, making a pyramid out of a signal post. Arina sadly shook her head: “Such a slight wound, but he died...”

After listening to the ground, the woman said: “Sleep. I'll go. But I'll come back to you. No one can separate us there..."

“And he, or what he once was, remained in the silent land, entangled in the roots of herbs and flowers that died down until spring. There is only one left - in the middle of Russia."

Retold

A woman is walking along the deserted steppe along the railway line, under a sky in which the Ural ridge appears like a heavy cloudy delirium. There are tears in her eyes, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to breathe. At the dwarf kilometer post she stops, moving her lips, repeats the number on the post, leaves the embankment and looks for a grave with a pyramid on the signal mound. The woman kneels in front of the grave and whispers:<Как долго я искала тебя!>

Our troops finished off the almost strangled group of German troops, whose command, as at Stalingrad, refused to accept the ultimatum of unconditional surrender. The platoon of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, together with other units, met the breaking through enemy. Night battle involving tanks and artillery,<катюш>was terrible - due to the onslaught of the Germans maddened by frost and despair, due to losses on both sides. Having repulsed the attack, collecting the dead and wounded, Kostyaev’s platoon arrived at the nearest village to rest.

Behind the bathhouse, in the snow, Boris saw an old man and an old woman killed by a volley of artillery barrage. They lay there, covering each other. A local resident, Khvedor Khvomich, said that the dead came to this Ukrainian farm from the Volga region during the famine year. They grazed collective farm cattle. Shepherd and shepherdess. When they were buried, the hands of the shepherd and shepherdess could not be separated. Soldier Lantsov quietly read a prayer over the old men. Khvedor Khvomich was surprised that the Red Army man knew prayers. He himself forgot them, in his youth he was an atheist and he agitated these old men to liquidate the icons. But they did not listen to him:

The platoon soldiers stopped in a house where the owner was a girl named Lucy. They warmed up and drank moonshine. Everyone was tired, drunk and eating potatoes; only Sergeant Major Mokhnakov was not drunk. Lucy drank with everyone, saying:<С возвращением вас: Мы так вас долго ждали. Так долго:>

The soldiers went to bed one by one on the floor. Those who still retained strength continued to drink, eat, and joke, remembering their peaceful life. Boris Kostyaev, going out into the hallway, heard a fuss in the darkness and Lucy’s broken voice:<Не нужно. Товарищ старшина:>The lieutenant decisively stopped the foreman’s harassment and took him out into the street. Enmity broke out between these people, who had gone through many battles and hardships together. The lieutenant threatened to shoot the sergeant major if he tried to offend the girl again. Angry, Mokhnakov went to another hut.

Lucy called the lieutenant into the house where all the soldiers were already sleeping. She led Boris to the clean half, gave him her robe so he could change, and prepared a trough of water behind the stove. When Boris washed himself and went to bed, his eyelids became heavy and sleep fell on him.

Even before dawn, the company commander called Lieutenant Kostyaev. Lucy didn’t even have time to wash his uniform, which made her very upset. The platoon received orders to knock out the Nazis from the neighboring village, the last stronghold. After a short battle, the platoon, together with other units, occupied the village. Soon the front commander arrived there with his retinue. Never before had Boris seen up close the commander about whom there were legends. In one of the barns they found a German general who had shot himself. The commander ordered the enemy general to be buried with full military honors.

Boris Kostyaev returned with the soldiers to the very house where they spent the night. The lieutenant again fell into a deep sleep. At night, Lucy, his first woman, came to him. Boris talked about himself, read letters from his mother. He recalled how as a child his mother took him to Moscow and they watched ballet in the theater. A shepherd and a shepherdess danced on stage.<Они любили друг друга, не стыдились любви и не боялись за нее. В доверчивости они были беззащитны>. Then it seemed to Boris that the defenseless were inaccessible to evil:

Lucy listened with bated breath, knowing that such a night would not happen again. On this night of love they forgot about the war - a twenty-year-old lieutenant and a girl who was one war year older than him.

Lyusya found out from somewhere that the platoon would stay on the farm for two more days. But in the morning, the order from the company commander was conveyed: in vehicles to catch up with the main forces that had gone far behind the retreating enemy. Lyusya, struck by the sudden separation, at first remained in the hut, then could not stand it and caught up with the car in which the soldiers were riding. Without being embarrassed by anyone, she kissed Boris and with difficulty pulled herself away from him.

After heavy fighting, Boris Kostyaev asked the political officer for leave. And the political officer had already decided to send the lieutenant to short-term courses so that he could visit his beloved for a day. Boris had already imagined his meeting with Lyusya: But none of this happened. The platoon was not even taken to reorganize: heavy fighting got in the way. In one of them, Mokhnakov died heroically, throwing himself under a German tank with an anti-tank mine in his duffel bag. On the same day, Boris was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel.

There were a lot of people in the medical battalion. Boris waited a long time for bandages and medicine. The doctor, examining Boris’s wound, did not understand why this lieutenant was not recovering. Boris was consumed by melancholy. One night the doctor came to him and said:<Я назначил вас на эвакуацию. В походных условиях души не лечат:>

The ambulance train was taking Boris to the east. At one of the stops, he saw a woman who looked like Lyusya: The carriage nurse, Arina, looking closely at the young lieutenant, wondered why he was getting worse and worse every day.

Boris looked out the window, felt sorry for himself and his wounded neighbors, felt sorry for Lucy, who remained in the deserted square of the Ukrainian town, and the old man and woman buried in the garden. He no longer remembered the faces of the shepherd and shepherdess, and it turned out that they looked like their mother, like their father, like all the people he had once known:

One morning Arina came to wash Boris and saw that he had died. He was buried in the steppe, making a pyramid out of a signal post. Arina sadly shook her head:<Такое легкое ранение, а он умер:>

After listening to the ground, the woman said:<Спи. Я пойду. Но я вернусь к тебе. Там уж никто не в силах разлучить нас:>

<А он, или то, что было им когда-то, остался в безмолвной земле, опутанный корнями трав и цветов, утихших до весны. Остался один - посреди России>.

A woman walks along the railway line, with gloomy clouds frowning above her. It’s hard to breathe, my eyes are shedding tears. Having come across a small pillar, and saying something to herself, she finds a number indicating the number of the grave, where she, in fact, is heading. “I’m so tired of looking for you!” - says the woman kneeling near the grave.
The troops of our guys practically destroyed all the fascists who refused to accept the document on unconditional surrender. Lieutenant Kostyaev's platoon stood next to us and took the blow of the fascist troops. The battle that night was terribly terrible - guns and cannons thundered, pools of blood were everywhere, the Germans could no longer stand on their feet from the cold. Our platoons successfully completed the task, repelling the attack, and moved to the nearest village to rest.
Behind the bathhouse lay an old man and an old woman, who were also killed. The old man was lying on the old woman. Local residents said that she came to live here together during the hunger strike in the Volga region. They were shepherds. Shepherd and shepherdess. During the funeral, their hands could not be separated. A short prayer was read over them. Khvedor Khvomich was surprised when he learned that the soldier knew prayers. He himself did not know them, since in his youth he did not love or believe in God at all, calling on everyone to repeat after him.
Lucy is the owner of the house where the soldiers are staying. They were warm thanks to the moonshine. Only Mokhnakov was sober among all the drunk and well-fed soldiers. Lucy also drank, saying: “We have been waiting for you for so long.... We missed you so much...”
The soldiers went to sleep on the floor. Those who still had strength continued to have fun, remembering life when no one could even think about war. Kostyaev, who found himself in the hallway, heard the voice of the mistress of the house, Lucy: “No need. Comrade foreman...” He took the foreman out into the street, thereby stopping the harassment. These two people, who had gone through both fire and water, suddenly decided to quarrel. The lieutenant was already sure that with the next such harassment he would definitely kill the foreman, who had gone into another room.
Lucy called the lieutenant to where the soldiers had already seen their seventh dream. She poured him some water, gave him her robe, and made him wash himself, removing the marks of his wounds. Going to bed, Boris was already falling asleep, his eyelids were terribly heavy.
Before dawn came, Kostyaev was already standing with the company commander. Lyusya managed to wash his uniform, which later made her upset. The new task is to neutralize enemies from the neighboring village, where the only remaining strong point is located. After a small battle, the platoon occupied the village, where the commander of the entire front soon found himself. Boris had never looked at the commander so closely before, and he felt uneasy. In one barn there was a German general who committed suicide and shot himself. The commander's task is to bury the general, observing all honors.
All the soldiers, together with Kostyaev, returned to where they spent the night. The lieutenant fell into a deep sleep again. Lucy came - his only woman. Boris told her about himself, reading letters from his mother. He recalled his childhood, how he and his mother were in Moscow and watched ballet. A shepherd and a shepherdess performed on stage. “She was confident in her feelings and did not hide them. Their gullibility made them defenseless.” Then he thought that the defenseless would not fall for evil.
Lyusya took in Boris’s words, knowing that this would never happen again. This night was an event - they forgot about the war and succumbed to passionate love.
Lyusya heard somewhere that their platoon would be on the farm for about two days. But the commander’s order was this: to catch up with the others who had gone nearby. Lucy, surprised by the parting, remained in the house, but decided later to catch up with the car with the soldiers. Without looking at anyone, she passionately kissed Boris.
After several difficult battles, Kostyaev asked to go on vacation. But the political officer had almost decided to give Boris a rest, sending him to his beloved girl. A meeting with Lyusya flashed before Boris’s eyes. But this was not the case. The platoon has not even been reorganized, since there are battles all around. Mokhnakov dies heroically, throwing himself under a tank with a mine in his hands. On the same day, Boris received a shrapnel in his shoulder.
There were a dime a dozen people at the first aid station. I had to wait a long time for my turn. The doctor, looking at Boris’s wound, was at a loss as to why the lieutenant was not recovering. Boris was sad. At night, a doctor comes in and says: “I signed you up for evacuation. In such conditions you will not be cured."
The medical train took the lieutenant towards the east. At one of the machines there was a woman very similar to Lucy. Arina, a nurse on a young carriage, looked after the lieutenant and was horrified why he was getting worse.
Boris, looking out the window, felt sorry for everything: Lucy, who remained somewhere far away, the shepherd and shepherdess buried in the garden. He didn’t remember their faces, and it seemed to him that they were his mother and father, his brother and sister, and everyone he knew.
Early in the morning, Arina came to Boris, but saw him dead. Having made a pyramid from a signal post, he was buried in the steppe. Arina said the phrase: “A small injury, but death”
Listening to the ground, the woman said: “Rest. I'll go. But I will come to you, and no one will separate us there at all.”
“And all that was left of him lay in damp earth, shrouded in grass, in the middle of our Mother Russia.”

Please note that this is only a brief summary of the literary work “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”. This summary omits many important points and quotes.