Sad detective. V. Astafiev Sad Detective

This story (the author called it a novel) is one of the most socially saturated works of Astafiev. It vividly depicts for us the moral state of an entire era in the life of the Russian provinces, as it was at the end of the Soviet era (there was also a place for a tortured collective farm) - and at the transition to “perestroika”, with its renewed signs of distortion. The epithet "sad" in the title is weak for the main character Soshnin and too weak for the whole depressing environment - in a dense mass of upset, disentangled, twisted life, in many examples of that, picturesque cases and characters.

Already at that time, the "thieves" camp spirit - victoriously invaded the existence of the Soviet "will". Successfully for observations on this hero was chosen - a policeman on a criminal investigation. The chain of crimes, criminal massacre stretches, stretches. City front, internal staircases are defenseless from the presence of thieves, drunkenness and robbery. Entire fights on these stairs, types of hooligans and swine. The young jerk stabbed three innocents - and right there, next to him, he eats ice cream with appetite. Correspondingly, the whole city (no small, with institutions) is kept in debauchery and filth, and the whole city life is in dissoluteness. Having fun "detachments" of youth rape women, even very old ones, who turn up drunk. Drunken hijackers of cars, and even dump trucks knock down and crush people by the dozens. And the youth, "advanced" in manners and fashions, flaunts in an intercepted style along the garbage streets. - But with particular pain, often, and with the greatest attention, Astafyev writes about the ruin of small children, their ugly upbringing, and especially in upset families.

Sometimes (as in his other texts) Astafiev addresses the reader with a direct moral appeal, with a question about the nature of human evil, then with a three-page monologue about the meaning of the family, which ends this story.

Unfortunately, in this story, too, the author allows himself careless liberties in the order of the choice of episodes depicted: in the general structure of the story, you do not perceive integrity, even in its temporal order, there are, as it were, arbitrary jumps and distortions of episodes and characters, fleeting, indistinct, the stories are broken apart. This shortcoming is exacerbated by frequent side digressions, anecdotal (here and fishing jokes, of course) distractions (and just unfunny anecdotes) or ironic phrases, out of tune with the text. This also crushes the feeling of cruel gloom of the whole situation and violates the integrity of the language flow. (Along with vigorous thieves jargon, folk sayings- suddenly abundant quotations from the literature - and useless, littering expressions from writing- like: “does not react to anything”, “remove from labor collective"," lead to conflicts "," big drama survived”, “subtleties of a pedagogical nature”, “waiting for mercy from nature.”) The author’s style is not created, whatever language is picked up.

Soshnin himself is a combat operative who almost lost his leg in one fight, almost died from the rusty pitchfork of a bandit in another and, one against two, unarmedly defeated two large bandits - this is with a mild character and good feelings - he is very clearly visible and new in our literature. But Astafiev added to him in a completely inapplicable way - initiatory writing and reading Nietzsche in German. Not that it was impossible, but it was not born organically: in the pen, they say, Soshnin dispersed because of numerous explanatory notes, and there, you see, he entered the correspondence department of the philological faculty of the pedagogical institute. Yes, his soul longs for the light, but is too overburdened with the abominations of the current life.

But, already truly anecdotal, this involvement of Soshnin in the philology department cost the author dearly. In a passing phrase, Soshnin is mentioned that at the philological faculty he “toiled along with a dozen local Jews, comparing Lermontov’s translations with primary sources” - the most good-natured thing is said! - but a prosperous metropolitan explorer Pushkin era Nathan Eidelman - inventively twisted out of this line and announced to the entire Soviet Union (and then it thundered in the West) that Astafiev had an impact here as a vile nationalist and anti-Semite! But the professor led skillfully: first, of course, out of pain for the offended Georgians, and with the next step - to this terrifying line.

An excerpt from an essay about Viktor Astafiev from the Literary Collection, written by

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst possible mood. And although it was far to go, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village, he did not get on the bus - let his wounded leg ache, but walking will calm him down and he will think over everything that he was told in the publishing house, think over and judge how he should continue to live and what to do.

Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, a branch remained from it, the publishing house itself was transferred to a larger city and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured, with a powerful printing base. But this base was exactly the same as in Veisk, a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. The printing house was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched with gratings of narrow windows at the bottom and shapedly curved at the top, also narrow, but already raised up like an exclamation point. Half of the building of the Weiss printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, had long since sunk into the bowels of the earth, and although fluorescent lamps were clinging to the ceiling in continuous rows, it was still uncomfortable, chilly and something all the time, as if in blocked ears, flashed or worked a delayed-action explosive mechanism buried in the dungeon.

The department of the publishing house huddled in two and a half rooms, creakingly allocated by the regional newspaper. In one of them, shrouded in cigarette smoke, the local cultural luminary Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilyevna twitched, crawled on a chair, grabbed the phone, littered with ashes, moving forward and further local literature. Syrokvasova considered herself the most knowledgeable person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she had no equal in intelligence. She made reports and reports on current literature, shared publishing plans through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed the books of local authors, inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante, from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery in place and out of place. , Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri Olesha, Tregub and Yermilov, however, the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes disturbed, the leaders of the world proletariat also did not bypass attention.

Everything has long been decided with Soshnin's book. The stories from it were published, albeit in thin, but metropolitan magazines, once three of them were condescendingly mentioned in review articles. critical articles, he stood “in the back of the head” for five years, got into the plan, established himself in it, it remains to edit and arrange the book.

Having appointed the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrokvasova appeared at the publishing house department at twelve. Puffing Soshnin with tobacco, out of breath, she rushed past him along a dark corridor - someone "took away" the light bulbs - hoarsely threw out "Sorry!" and crunched the key in the faulty lock for a long time, swearing in an undertone.

Finally, the door grunted angrily, and the old, not tightly pretending tile let a gap of gray, dull light into the corridor: for the second week it was raining lightly on the street, washing the snow into mush, turning the streets and alleys into coils.

Ice drift began on the river - in December!

Dull and incessantly, his leg ached, his shoulder burned and drilled from a recent wound, fatigue crushed him, he was drawn to sleep - he could not sleep at night, and again he was saved by pen and paper. “This is an incurable disease - graphomania,” Soshnin grinned and seemed to doze off, but then the silence was shaken by a knock on the echoing wall.

- Galya! - with arrogance threw Syrokvasov into space. Call me this genius!

Galya is a typist, an accountant and even a secretary. Soshnin looked around: there was no one else in the corridor, a genius, therefore, he.

- Hey! Where are you here? Opening the door with her foot, Galya stuck her short-cropped head into the corridor. - Go. My name is.

Soshnin shrugged his shoulders, straightened his new satin tie around his neck, smoothed his hair to one side with the palm of his hand. In moments of excitement, he always stroked his hair - his little one was stroked a lot and often by his neighbors and Aunt Lina, so he learned to stroke. "Calmly! Calmly!" Soshnin ordered himself, and with a well-mannered cough he asked:

– May I come to you? - With the trained eye of a former operative, he immediately captured everything in Syrokvasova's office: an old chiseled bookcase in the corner; put on a chiseled wooden pike, hung hunchbacked a wet, red fur coat familiar to everyone in the city. The coat did not have a hanger. Behind the fur coat, on a planed but unpainted shelving, the literary production of the united publishing house is placed. On foreground there were several not badly designed promotional gift books in leatherette bindings.

“Take off your clothes,” Syrokvasova nodded at the old yellow closet made of thick board. - There are no hangers, nails are driven in. Sit down,” she pointed to the chair across from her. And when Soshnin took off his cloak, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna threw the folder in front of her with irritation, pulling it out almost from under the hem.

Soshnin barely recognized the folder with his manuscript. She has gone through a difficult creative path since he handed it over to the publishing house. With the gaze of the former operative, he again noted that they put a kettle on it, and a cat sat on it, someone spilled tea on the folder. If tea? Syrokvasova's wunderkinds - she has three sons from different creative producers - drew a dove of peace, a tank with a star and an airplane on the folder. I remember that he purposely picked up and saved a colorful folder for his first collection of stories, made a white sticker in the middle, carefully drew the title, albeit not very original, with a felt-tip pen: “Life is more precious than everything.” At that time, he had every reason to assert this, and he carried a folder to the publishing house with a feeling of an unexplored renewal in his heart and a thirst to live, create, be useful people- this happens with all people who are resurrected, who get out of "there".

The little white sticker turned gray in five years, someone scratched it with a fingernail, maybe the glue was bad, but festive mood and lordship in the heart - where is all this? He saw on the table a carelessly kept manuscript with two reviews, written on the go by brisk local drunken thinkers, who moonlighted at Syrokvasova and saw the police, which was reflected in this motley folder, most often in the sobering-up station. Soshnin knew how dearly human negligence costs every life, every society. Something, got it. Firmly. Forever.

“Well, then, life is most precious of all,” Syrokvasova twisted her lips and dragged on a cigarette, wrapped herself in smoke, quickly leafing through reviews, repeating and repeating in thoughtful detachment: “Most of all ... dearest of all ...

I thought so five years ago.

- What did you say? - Syrokvasova raised her head, and Soshnin saw flabby cheeks, sloppily blue eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows sloppily lined with dry paint - small black lumps got stuck in the already callous, half-grown eyelashes and eyebrows. Syrokvasova is dressed in comfortable clothes - a kind of modern woman overalls: a black turtleneck - you don’t need to wash it often, a denim sundress on top - you don’t need to iron it.

“I thought so five years ago, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

“Don’t you think so now?” - The causticity could be seen in the appearance and words of Syrokvasova, rummaging through the manuscript, as if in cabbage waste. Are you disappointed in life?

“Not quite yet.

– That's how! Very interesting! Commendable, commendable! Not really, then?

“Yes, she forgot the manuscript! She wins time, so that at least somehow, on the go, get to know her again. Curious how it will get out? Really curious!" Soshnin waited, not answering the editor's last half-question.

I don't think we can have a long conversation. And yes, there is no point in wasting time. Manuscript in plan. I'll correct something here, bring your essay into a divine form, give it to the artist. In the summer, I believe, you will be holding your first printed creation in your hands. Unless, of course, they give me paper, if nothing goes wrong at the printing house, if they don't shorten the plan both te de and te pe. But here's what I'd like to talk to you about in the future. Judging by the press, you continue to work stubbornly;

- Human, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- What did you say? Your right to think so. And frankly, you are still far from human, especially universal, problems! As Goethe said: "Unerreichbar wi der himmel." High and inaccessible, like the sky.

Something Soshnin did not meet in the great German poet of such a statement. Apparently, Syrokvasova, in the vanity of life, confused Goethe with someone or quoted him inaccurately.

- You have not yet learned properly what a plot is, and without it, excuse me, your police stories are chaff, chaff from threshed grain. And the rhythm of prose, its quintessence, so to speak, is sealed with seven seals. There is also a form, eternally renewing, a mobile form...

- What is the form - I know.

- What did you say? Syrokvasova woke up. During an inspired sermon, she closed her eyes, littered the ashes on the glass, under which there were drawings of her brilliant children, a crumpled photograph of a visiting poet who hanged himself drunk in a hotel three years ago and for this reason fell into the fashionable, almost holy ranks of deceased personalities. The ashes littered the hem of the sarafan, on the chair, on the floor, and even the ash-colored sarafan, and the whole of Syrokvasova seemed to be covered with ashes or decay of time.

“I said I know the form. Wore her.

I didn't mean police uniform.

I don't understand your subtlety. Sorry. – Leonid got up, feeling that he was beginning to be overwhelmed by rage. “If you don’t need me anymore, let me take my leave.

- Yes, yes, let me, - Syrokvasova was a little confused and switched to a businesslike tone: - The advance payment will be written out to you in the accounting department. Just sixty percent. But with money we, as always, are bad.

- Thank you. I receive a pension. I have enough.

- Retirement? At forty years old?!

- I'm forty-two, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

What is the age for a man? - Like any eternally irritated female creature, Syrokvasova caught herself, wagged her tail, tried to change the caustic tone to half-joking confidence.

But Soshnin did not accept the change in her tone, bowed, and wandered off into the dim corridor.

"I'll keep the door open so you don't get killed!" - Shouted after Syrokvasova.

Soshnin did not answer her, went out onto the porch, stood under the visor, decorated along the rim with old wooden lace. They are crumbled with bored hands, like rye gingerbread. Raising the collar of his insulated police cloak, Leonid drew his head into his shoulders and stepped under the silent pillowcase, as if into a failed desert. He went into a local bar, where regular customers greeted him with a roar of approval, took a glass of cognac, drank it in one fell swoop and went out, feeling his mouth stale and his chest warm. The burning sensation in his shoulder seemed to be erased by warmth, but he seemed to have gotten used to the pain in his leg, perhaps he had simply come to terms with it.

“Maybe have another drink? No, don’t, he decided, I haven’t done this business for a long time, I’ll still get tipsy ... "

He walked along hometown, from under the visor of a wet cap, as the service taught, habitually noted what was being done around, what was standing, walking, driving. Black ice slowed down not only movement, but life itself. People sat at home, they preferred to work under a roof, it was raining from above, squelching everywhere, flowing, the water ran not in streams, not in rivers, somehow colorless, solid, flat, disorganized: lying, spinning, overflowing from puddle to puddle, from crack to slot. Everywhere covered was rubbish was exposed: paper, cigarette butts, soggy boxes, cellophane fluttering in the wind. Crows and jackdaws clung to black lindens and gray poplars;

And Soshnin’s thoughts, to match the weather, slowly, thickly, barely moved in his head, did not flow, did not run, but they moved languidly, and in this stirring there was no distant light, no dreams, only anxiety, one concern: how to continue to live?

It was completely clear to him: he served in the police, fought back. Forever! The usual line, knurled, single-track - exterminate evil, fight criminals, provide peace to people - at once, like a railway dead end, near which he grew up and played his childhood "in a railway worker", broke off. The rails are over, the sleepers that connect them are over, there is no direction further, there is no way, then the whole earth, right behind the dead end - go in all directions, or turn around in place, or sit on the last one in the dead end, cracked from time, already and not sticky from impregnation, a weathered sleeper and, immersed in thought, dozed or yelled at the top of their voice: “I will sit at the table and think about how to live alone in the world ...”

How in the world to live alone? It is difficult to live in the world without the usual service, without work, even without state-owned ammunition and a canteen, you even have to worry about clothes and food, somewhere to wash, iron, cook, wash dishes.

But this is not, this is not the main thing, the main thing is how to be and live among the people who shared long time on the underworld and impregnable world. Criminal, he is still familiar and one-faced, but this one? What is he like in his variegation, in crowds, vanity and constant movement? Where to? What for? What are his intentions? What is the temper? “Brothers! Take me! Let me in!" - Soshnin wanted to shout at first, as if in jest, to play pranks as usual, but the game was over. And it turned out, the life came close, her everyday life, oh, what they are, everyday life, everyday people have.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market to buy apples, but near the gates of the market with skewed plywood letters on the arc: “Welcome”, a drunken woman called Urna squirmed and attached herself to passers-by. For a toothless, black and dirty mouth, she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some kind of isolated creature with a blind, half-mad craving for drunkenness and outrages. She had a family, a husband, children, she sang in the amateur performances of the railway recreation center near Mordasova - she drank everything away, lost everything, became a shameful landmark of the city of Veisk. They no longer took her to the police, even in the reception center of the Internal Affairs Directorate, which is popularly called the “scourge”, and in the old rude times was called a prison for vagrants, they didn’t keep her, they drove her from the sobering-up station, they didn’t take her to the nursing home, because she was old just in appearance. She led herself into in public places shameful, ashamed, with an insolent and vindictive challenge to all. It is impossible and there is nothing to fight with the Urn, although she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, she did not die and did not freeze.

Ah-ah, my wesse-olay laugh
Has always been successful...

hoarsely yelled Urn, and with a drizzle, cold spatiality did not absorb her voice, nature, as it were, separated, repelled its fiend from itself. Soshnin passed the market and the Urn side by side. Everything just flowed, floated, oozed brainy emptiness over the earth, across the sky, and there was no end to the gray light, gray earth, gray melancholy. And suddenly, in the midst of this hopeless, gray planet, there was a revival, a conversation, laughter was heard, a car chuckled in fright at the crossroads.

A piebald horse with a collar around its neck slowly followed along the wide street, only marked out in autumn, more precisely, along Prospekt Mira, along its very middle, along the white dotted lines of the marking, occasionally whipping with a wet, forcibly trimmed tail. The horse knew the rules of the road and clicked with its horseshoes, like a fashionista with imported boots, in the most neutral zone. Both the horse itself and the harness on it were tidied up, well-groomed, the animal did not pay any attention to anyone or anything, slowly stomping about its business.

The people unanimously followed the horse with their eyes, brightened their faces, smiled, poured replicas after the horse: “I set it up from a stingy owner!”, “She herself went to surrender to the sausage”, “Nah, to the sobering-up station - it’s warmer there than in the stable”, “Nothing similar! He is going to report to the wife of Lavri the Cossack about his whereabouts "...

Soshnin also smiled from under his collar, followed the horse with his eyes - it was walking towards the brewery. There is her stable. Its owner, the horse-driver of the brewery Lavrya Kazakov, popularly Lavrya the Cossack, an old guard from the corps of General Belov, holder of three Orders of Glory and many more military orders and medals, delivered lemonade and other non-alcoholic drinks to the “points”, sat down with the peasants on a permanent basis. “point” - in the buffet of the Sazontievskaya bath - to talk about past military campaigns, about modern city orders, about the ferocity of women and spinelessness of men, but his sensible horse, so that the animal would not get wet and tremble under the sky, let it go under its own power to the brewery. All the Veysk militia, and not only them, all the indigenous inhabitants of Veysk knew: where the brewery cart stands, Lavrya the Cossack is talking and resting there. And his horse is learned, independent, understands everything and will not let himself go to waste.

Something has shifted in my soul, and the bad weather is not so oppressive, Soshnin decided, it's time to get used to it - I was born here, in a rotten corner of Russia. How about visiting a publisher? A conversation with Sirokvasova? Yes, joke with her! Well, fool! Well, they'll take it out sometime. Well, the book is really not so hot - the first, naive, helluva lot of imitation, and it has become outdated in five years. The following should be done better in order to publish in addition to Syrokvasova; maybe in Moscow itself ...

Soshnin bought a long loaf in a grocery store, a jar of Bulgarian compote, a bottle of milk, a chicken; But the price is outrageous! However, this is not a subject for annoyance. He will cook vermicelli soup, take a hot sip, and, you see, after a hearty dinner according to the law of Archimedes, under the monotonous drops from the battery, under the sound of old wall clock- do not forget to start, - under the spanking of rain for an hour and a half or two, he reads to his heart's content, then he sleeps and all night at the table - to create. Well, to create is not to create, but still to live in some isolated world created by one's imagination.

Soshnin lived in a new railway microdistrict, but in an old two-story wooden house at number seven, which they forgot to demolish, after oblivion they legalized it, they hooked up the house to the main with warm water, to gas, to sewers - built in the thirties according to a simple architectural project, with an internal staircase dividing the house in two, with a sharp hut above the entrance, where there was once a glazed frame, slightly yellow on the outer walls and brown on the roof, the house modestly squinted and dutifully went into the ground between the blank ends of two panel structures. An attraction, a milestone, a memory of childhood and a good shelter for people. Residents of the modern microdistrict oriented visitors and themselves along it, a wooden proletarian building: “As you go past the yellow house ...”

Soshnin loved his native home or felt sorry - do not understand. Probably, he both loved and regretted it, because he grew up in it and didn’t know any other houses, he didn’t live anywhere except for hostels. His father fought in the cavalry and also in Belov's corps, along with Lavrey the Cossack, Lavrya - a private, his father - a platoon commander. From the war, my father did not return, he died during a raid of the cavalry corps behind enemy lines. Mother worked in the technical office of Veisk station in a large, flat, semi-dark room and lived with her sister in this little house, apartment number four, on the second floor. The apartment consisted of two square rooms and a kitchen. Two windows of one room overlooked the railway line, two windows of the other room overlooked the courtyard. An apartment was once given to a young family of railway workers, his mother’s sister, Soshna’s aunt, came from the village to mess around with him, he remembered her and knew more than his mother because during the war all office workers were often dressed up to unload wagons, to snow fight, to harvest crops on collective farms , mother was rarely at home, overstrained herself during the war, at the end of the war she caught a severe cold, fell ill and died.

They were left alone with Aunt Lipa, whom Lenya, having made a mistake back in early age, called Lina, and so Lina she was fixed in his memory. Aunt Lina followed in her sister's footsteps and took her place in the technical office. They lived, like all the honest people of their village, in the neighborhood, a potato plot outside the city, from pay to pay with difficulty. Sometimes, if it happened to celebrate the renewal or take a walk on a holiday, they didn’t reach it. My aunt did not get married and did not try to get out, repeating: "I have Lenya." But she loved to take a wide walk, in a rustic noisy way, with songs, dances, squeals.

Who? What did he do to this pure, poor woman? Time? People? A craze? Perhaps, that and that, and another, and the third. In the same office, at the same station, she moved to a separate table, behind a partition, then she was transferred all the way “up the mountain”, to the commercial department of the Weisky railway department. Aunt Lina began to bring home money, wine, food, became excitedly cheerful, was late home from work, tried to force, to make up. “Oh, Lenka, Lenka! I will be lost - and you will be lost! .. ”Auntie was called by gentlemen. Lyonka used to pick up the phone and, without greeting, rudely asks: “Who do you need?” - Lipu. “We don’t have one!” - "How is it not?" - "No, that's it!" Auntie scratches the pipe with her paw: “This is for me, for me ...” - “Ah, do you want Aunt Lina? They would have said so! .. Yes, please! You're welcome!" And not immediately, but after rubbing his aunt, he will hand her the phone. She will squeeze it in a handful: “Why are you calling? I told you, then ... Then, then! When, when?..” Both laughter and sin. There is no experience, he will take it and blurt out: "When Lenya leaves for school."

Lenya is already a teenager, already with ambition: “I can leave now! How much, tell me, and it will be done ... "-" Come on, Lenya! - Hiding her eyes, the aunt blushes. “They’re calling from the office, and you’re God knows what…”

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former operative of the criminal investigation department, returns home from the local publishing house, to an empty apartment, in the worst mood . The manuscript of his first book “Life is more precious than everything” after five years of waiting is finally accepted for production, but this news does not please Soshnin. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfi-levna Syro-kva-sova, who tried to humiliate the author-militia-chi-o-ner with lofty remarks, ridiculing -going to be called a writer, dispelled the already gloomy thoughts and experiences of Soshnin. “How in the world to live? Lonely to whom? he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was retired due to disability. After another quarrel his wife Lerka leaves him, taking their little daughter Svetka with her.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much place in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start from the closest people, from episodes witnessed by he was, from the fates of the people with whom his life became ... apartment, a helpless war invalid dies? .. Why does a criminal live so freely and courageously among such a kind-hearted people? ..

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

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father left for the war, from which he did not return, here, by the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother's sister, aunt Lipa, whom he used to call Lina from childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of Veyskaya railway. This department "re-su-dili and re-sa-ssed at the same time." The aunt tried to poison herself, but she was rescued and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost expelled because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly one-half-man of Father Lavrya, a Cossack, looked like Leonid in front of the regional police authorities, and everything worked out.

Aunt Lina was freed by the amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he also brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to babysit Leonid's daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina's death, Soshny passed under the auspices of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a shooter on a shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people's children, and even little Lenya Soshnin comprehended in his own way kindergarten the first skills of brotherhood and labor love.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of the Railway Day. Four guys drunk to the point of loss of memory raped Aunt Granya, and if it weren’t for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken fellows sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. Once she expressed to Soshnin a terrible thought that, by condemning the criminals, they thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin yelled at the old woman for pitying non-humans, and they began to avoid each other ...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunkards pester Soshnin, demanding to be late, and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful replies, but the main one, the young bull, will not calm down. Inflamed with alcohol, the guys are recruited for Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - the wounds, the hospital "rest" affected, - defeats the hooligans. One of them, when falling, hits his head on a heating battery. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers, goes to the apartment. And he immediately calls the police, reports a fight: “He split the head of one hero on the battery. If so, they didn’t look for it. The villain is me."

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

He and his partner pursued a drunken man who stole a truck on a motorcycle. With a deadly ram, the truck raced through the streets of the town, having already cut off more than one life. Soshnin, the patrol leader, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before his death, the truck driver managed to push the motorcycle cycle of the pursuing militia-chi-o-ners. On the operating table, Soshnin was miraculously saved from amputation of her leg. But he remained lame, and learned to walk for a long time. During the convalescence, the investigator tormented him for a long time and stubbornly with a discussion: was it right to use weapons?

Leonid also recalls how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who tried to take off the girl's jeans right behind the Soyuz-Print kiosk. At first, their life with Lerka went on in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his studies in literature. “What a Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shot pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt ...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one "took" in the hotel of the town a stray gastro-ler, a reci-di-vist Demon.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who had drunk himself and returned from places of detention, put an end to his career as an operative ... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife's parents to a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that in a neighboring village a drunken peasant had locked old women in a barn and was threatening to set them on fire if they did not give him ten rubles for a hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on the manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin put a pitchfork into him ... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement failed to pass.

At night, Leonid is awakened from his sleep by the terrible scream of the neighbor's girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulia lives with her grandmother, Tuty-shikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balm from the gifts brought by Yulka's father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Tuty-shikha's grandmother is already in a dead sleep.

At the funeral of grandma Tuta-shikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake, they sit side by side.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffing behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He rises, approaches his daughter, straightens her pillow, presses his cheek against her head and forgets in some sweet grief, in resurrecting, alive -ryaya sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads Dalem's "Proverbs of the Russian People" - the "Husband and Wife" section - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

"The dawn is raw, snowball already rolled in through the kitchen window, when, having enjoyed the peace among a quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of confidence he had not known at home for a long time in his abilities and strengths, without irritation and longing in his heart, Soshnin clung to to the table, placed in a spot of light clear sheet paper and froze over it for a long time.

Disability pension operative Leonid Soshnin comes to the editorial office, where his manuscript was practically approved for publication. Here are just the editor-in-chief Oktyabrina (a beacon of the local literary elite, pouring quotes famous writers) in a conversation with him expresses his contempt for the unprofessionalism of a retired writer. Offended, Leonid returns home with heavy thoughts, he recalls his career, thinking why the Russian people are ready to indulge the bandits out of imaginary mercy.

For example, his aunt, who, unfortunately, was raped, suffers from remorse, because she "sued" those, albeit young, but scum. Or he recalls how he had to shoot a drunk and aggressive truck driver who had already knocked down many innocent people, disobeyed police orders, and Leonid himself almost lost his leg because of him, so after all this nightmare Soshin had to go through an official investigation due to the use of service weapons. So he remembers, reflects, and after difficult communication with his family, in the morning he sits down at a white sheet of paper, he is ready to create.

The story of the "sad detective" consists of the memories of a former operative, current pensioner and future writer - Leonid, which come down to the issue of resisting evil, globally. In particular, these are the issues of crimes and punishments in his county town. Astafiev's work begins with a scene in the editorial office, where the hero was invited after several years of consideration of his manuscript. Chief Editor(embittered single woman) uses her position to speak disparagingly to a grown man. Leonid feels insulted, but even Oktyabrina herself feels that she has crossed the line. It seems that she is trying to smooth over an unpleasant situation, but Soshnin's mood is spoiled.

In a bad mood, he returns to his home. He looks at his uncomfortable area, which would not give anyone optimism. Sad thoughts flooded the hero, memories, too. for the most part sad, disturb him. The worker had to retire early. I went to the village, and they turned to him (as a doctor) for help. At the neighbors, the drunk locked up two old women in the barn and promises to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles to get drunk. So often Soshnin had to deal with drunks and fools ... and this time the drunkard, frightened, stupidly stuck a pitchfork in a fallen operative.

Leonid was barely saved! But with a disability, I had to retire. When Lenya was still at the police school, his aunt Lina was almost arrested. She raised him from childhood, denying herself everything. Here I was lucky - I got a job in the budget department, money immediately appeared, expensive things, scarce products. Yes, she began to steal - for the sake of the pupil. He was initially sent to the police school, because she felt that she herself did not have to wait for anything good. When they came to "pick her up", she was on her knees and sobbed. This whole story became stressful for young Leonid. Then, although he was almost expelled from school, he vowed to fight crime, because bandits, in addition to ordinary crimes, also knock down good people like his aunt, out of the way.

Picture or drawing Sad Detective

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Current page: 1 (total book has 10 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 7 pages]

Victor Astafiev
Sad detective

Chapter 1

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst possible mood. And although it was far to go, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village, he did not get on the bus - let his wounded leg ache, but walking will calm him down and he will think over everything that he was told in the publishing house, think over and judge how he should continue to live and what to do.

Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk, a branch remained from it, the publishing house itself was transferred to a larger city and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultured, with a powerful printing base. But this base was exactly the same as in Veisk, a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. The printing house was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched with gratings of narrow windows at the bottom and shapedly curved at the top, also narrow, but already raised up like an exclamation point. Half of the building of the Weiss printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, had long since sunk into the bowels of the earth, and although fluorescent lamps were clinging to the ceiling in continuous rows, it was still uncomfortable, chilly and something all the time, as if in blocked ears, flashed or worked a delayed-action explosive mechanism buried in the dungeon.

The department of the publishing house huddled in two and a half rooms, creakingly allocated by the regional newspaper. In one of them, shrouded in cigarette smoke, the local cultural luminary Syrokvasova Oktyabrina Perfilyevna twitched, crawled on a chair, grabbed the phone, littered with ashes, moving forward and further local literature. Syrokvasova considered herself the most knowledgeable person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she had no equal in intelligence. She made reports and reports on current literature, shared publishing plans through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed the books of local authors, inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante, from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery in place and out of place. , Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri Olesha, Tregub and Yermilov, however, the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky sometimes disturbed, the leaders of the world proletariat also did not bypass attention.

Everything has long been decided with Soshnin's book. The stories from it were published, albeit in thin, but metropolitan magazines, three times they were condescendingly mentioned in review critical articles, he stood “in the back of the head” for five years, got into the plan, established himself in it, it remains to edit and arrange the book.

Having appointed the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrokvasova appeared at the publishing house department at twelve. Puffing Soshnin with tobacco, out of breath, she rushed past him along a dark corridor - someone "took away" the light bulbs - hoarsely threw out "Sorry!" and crunched the key in the faulty lock for a long time, swearing in an undertone.

Finally, the door grunted angrily, and the old, not tightly pretending tile let a gap of gray, dull light into the corridor: for the second week it was raining lightly on the street, washing the snow into mush, turning the streets and alleys into coils. Ice drift began on the river - in December!

Dull and incessantly, his leg ached, his shoulder burned and drilled from a recent wound, fatigue crushed him, he was drawn to sleep - he could not sleep at night, and again he was saved by pen and paper. “This is an incurable disease - graphomania,” Soshnin grinned and seemed to doze off, but then the silence was shaken by a knock on the echoing wall.

- Galya! - with arrogance threw Syrokvasov into space. Call me this genius!

Galya is a typist, an accountant and even a secretary. Soshnin looked around: there was no one else in the corridor, a genius, therefore, he.

- Hey! Where are you here? Opening the door with her foot, Galya stuck her short-cropped head into the corridor. - Go. My name is.

Soshnin shrugged his shoulders, straightened his new satin tie around his neck, smoothed his hair to one side with the palm of his hand. In moments of excitement, he always stroked his hair - his little one was stroked a lot and often by his neighbors and Aunt Lina, so he learned to stroke. "Calmly! Calmly!" Soshnin ordered himself, and with a well-mannered cough he asked:

– May I come to you? - With the trained eye of a former operative, he immediately captured everything in Syrokvasova's office: an old chiseled bookcase in the corner; put on a chiseled wooden pike, hung hunchbacked a wet, red fur coat familiar to everyone in the city. The coat did not have a hanger. Behind the fur coat, on a planed but unpainted shelving, the literary production of the united publishing house is placed. In the foreground were several not badly designed promotional gift books in leatherette bindings.

“Take off your clothes,” Syrokvasova nodded at the old yellow closet made of thick board. - There are no hangers, nails are driven in. Sit down,” she pointed to the chair across from her. And when Soshnin took off his cloak, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna threw the folder in front of her with irritation, pulling it out almost from under the hem.

Soshnin barely recognized the folder with his manuscript. She has gone through a difficult creative path since he handed it over to the publishing house. With the gaze of the former operative, he again noted that they put a kettle on it, and a cat sat on it, someone spilled tea on the folder. If tea? Syrokvasova's wunderkinds - she has three sons from different creative producers - drew a dove of peace, a tank with a star and an airplane on the folder. I remember that he purposely picked up and saved a colorful folder for his first collection of stories, made a white sticker in the middle, carefully drew the title, albeit not very original, with a felt-tip pen: “Life is more precious than everything.” At that time, he had every reason to assert this, and he carried a folder to the publishing house with a feeling of an unexplored renewal in his heart and a thirst to live, create, be useful to people - this happens with all people who have resurrected, got out of "there".

The little white sticker turned gray in five years, someone scratched it with a fingernail, maybe the glue was bad, but the festive mood and lordship in the heart - where is all this? He saw on the table a carelessly kept manuscript with two reviews, written on the go by brisk local drunken thinkers, who moonlighted at Syrokvasova and saw the police, which was reflected in this motley folder, most often in the sobering-up station. Soshnin knew how dearly human negligence costs every life, every society. Something, got it. Firmly. Forever.

“Well, then, life is most precious of all,” Syrokvasova twisted her lips and dragged on a cigarette, wrapped herself in smoke, quickly leafing through reviews, repeating and repeating in thoughtful detachment: “Most of all ... dearest of all ...

I thought so five years ago.

- What did you say? - Syrokvasova raised her head, and Soshnin saw flabby cheeks, sloppily blue eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows sloppily lined with dry paint - small black lumps got stuck in the already callous, half-grown eyelashes and eyebrows. Syrokvasova is dressed in comfortable clothes - a kind of modern woman overalls: a black turtleneck - you don’t need to wash it often, a denim sundress on top - you don’t need to iron it.

“I thought so five years ago, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

“Don’t you think so now?” - The causticity could be seen in the appearance and words of Syrokvasova, rummaging through the manuscript, as if in cabbage waste. Are you disappointed in life?

“Not quite yet.

– That's how! Very interesting! Commendable, commendable! Not really, then?

“Yes, she forgot the manuscript! She wins time, so that at least somehow, on the go, get to know her again. Curious how it will get out? Really curious!" Soshnin waited, not answering the editor's last half-question.

I don't think we can have a long conversation. And yes, there is no point in wasting time. Manuscript in plan. I'll correct something here, bring your essay into a divine form, give it to the artist. In the summer, I believe, you will be holding your first printed creation in your hands. Unless, of course, they give me paper, if nothing goes wrong at the printing house, if they don't shorten the plan both te de and te pe. But here's what I'd like to talk to you about in the future. Judging by the press, you continue to work stubbornly;

- Human, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

- What did you say? Your right to think so. And frankly, you are still far from human, especially universal, problems! As Goethe said: "Unerreichbar wi der himmel." High and inaccessible, like the sky.

Something Soshnin did not meet in the great German poet of such a statement. Apparently, Syrokvasova, in the vanity of life, confused Goethe with someone or quoted him inaccurately.

- You have not yet learned properly what a plot is, and without it, excuse me, your police stories are chaff, chaff from threshed grain. And the rhythm of prose, its quintessence, so to speak, is sealed with seven seals. There is also a form, eternally renewing, a mobile form...

- What is the form - I know.

- What did you say? Syrokvasova woke up. During an inspired sermon, she closed her eyes, littered the ashes on the glass, under which there were drawings of her brilliant children, a crumpled photograph of a visiting poet who hanged himself drunk in a hotel three years ago and for this reason fell into the fashionable, almost holy ranks of deceased personalities. The ashes littered the hem of the sarafan, on the chair, on the floor, and even the ash-colored sarafan, and the whole of Syrokvasova seemed to be covered with ashes or decay of time.

“I said I know the form. Wore her.

I didn't mean police uniform.

I don't understand your subtlety. Sorry. – Leonid got up, feeling that he was beginning to be overwhelmed by rage. “If you don’t need me anymore, let me take my leave.

- Yes, yes, let me, - Syrokvasova was a little confused and switched to a businesslike tone: - The advance payment will be written out to you in the accounting department. Just sixty percent. But with money we, as always, are bad.

- Thank you. I receive a pension. I have enough.

- Retirement? At forty years old?!

- I'm forty-two, Oktyabrina Perfilievna.

What is the age for a man? - Like any eternally irritated female creature, Syrokvasova caught herself, wagged her tail, tried to change the caustic tone to half-joking confidence.

But Soshnin did not accept the change in her tone, bowed, and wandered off into the dim corridor.

"I'll keep the door open so you don't get killed!" - Shouted after Syrokvasova.

Soshnin did not answer her, went out onto the porch, stood under the visor, decorated along the rim with old wooden lace. They are crumbled with bored hands, like rye gingerbread. Raising the collar of his insulated police cloak, Leonid drew his head into his shoulders and stepped under the silent pillowcase, as if into a failed desert. He went into a local bar, where regular customers greeted him with a roar of approval, took a glass of cognac, drank it in one fell swoop and went out, feeling his mouth stale and his chest warm. The burning sensation in his shoulder seemed to be erased by warmth, but he seemed to have gotten used to the pain in his leg, perhaps he had simply come to terms with it.

“Maybe have another drink? No, don’t, he decided, I haven’t done this business for a long time, I’ll still get tipsy ... "

He walked around his native city, from under the visor of his wet cap, as the service had taught him, he habitually noted what was happening around him, what was standing, walking, driving. Black ice slowed down not only movement, but life itself. People sat at home, they preferred to work under a roof, it was raining from above, squelching everywhere, flowing, the water ran not in streams, not in rivers, somehow colorless, solid, flat, disorganized: lying, spinning, overflowing from puddle to puddle, from crack to slot. Everywhere covered was rubbish was exposed: paper, cigarette butts, soggy boxes, cellophane fluttering in the wind. Crows and jackdaws clung to black lindens and gray poplars;

And Soshnin’s thoughts, to match the weather, slowly, thickly, barely moved in his head, did not flow, did not run, but they moved languidly, and in this stirring there was no distant light, no dreams, only anxiety, one concern: how to continue to live?

It was completely clear to him: he served in the police, fought back. Forever! The usual line, knurled, single-track - exterminate evil, fight criminals, provide peace to people - at once, like a railway dead end, near which he grew up and played his childhood "in a railway worker", broke off. The rails are over, the sleepers that connect them are over, there is no direction further, there is no way, then the whole earth, right behind the dead end - go in all directions, or turn around in place, or sit on the last one in the dead end, cracked from time, already and not sticky from impregnation, a weathered sleeper and, immersed in thought, dozed or yelled at the top of their voice: “I will sit at the table and think about how to live alone in the world ...”

How in the world to live alone? It is difficult to live in the world without the usual service, without work, even without state-owned ammunition and a canteen, you even have to worry about clothes and food, somewhere to wash, iron, cook, wash dishes.

But this is not, this is not the main thing, the main thing is how to be and live among the people, which for a long time was divided into the underworld and the impregnable world. Criminal, he is still familiar and one-faced, but this one? What is he like in his variegation, in crowds, vanity and constant movement? Where to? What for? What are his intentions? What is the temper? “Brothers! Take me! Let me in!" - Soshnin wanted to shout at first, as if in jest, to play pranks as usual, but the game was over. And it turned out, the life came close, her everyday life, oh, what they are, everyday life, everyday people have.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market to buy apples, but near the gates of the market with skewed plywood letters on the arc: “Welcome”, a drunken woman called Urna squirmed and attached herself to passers-by. For a toothless, black and dirty mouth, she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some kind of isolated creature with a blind, half-mad craving for drunkenness and outrages. She had a family, a husband, children, she sang in the amateur performances of the railway recreation center near Mordasova - she drank everything away, lost everything, became a shameful landmark of the city of Veisk. They no longer took her to the police, even in the reception center of the Internal Affairs Directorate, which is popularly called the “scourge”, and in the old rude times was called a prison for vagrants, they didn’t keep her, they drove her from the sobering-up station, they didn’t take her to the nursing home, because she was old just in appearance. She behaved in public places shamefully, ashamedly, with an insolent and vindictive challenge to everyone. It is impossible and there is nothing to fight with the Urn, although she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, she did not die and did not freeze.

Ah-ah, my wesse-olay laugh
Has always been successful...

hoarsely yelled Urn, and with a drizzle, cold spatiality did not absorb her voice, nature, as it were, separated, repelled its fiend from itself. Soshnin passed the market and the Urn side by side. Everything just flowed, floated, oozed brainy emptiness over the earth, across the sky, and there was no end to the gray light, gray earth, gray melancholy. And suddenly, in the midst of this hopeless, gray planet, there was a revival, a conversation, laughter was heard, a car chuckled in fright at the crossroads.

A piebald horse with a collar around its neck slowly followed along the wide street, only marked out in autumn, more precisely, along Prospekt Mira, along its very middle, along the white dotted lines of the marking, occasionally whipping with a wet, forcibly trimmed tail. The horse knew the rules of the road and clicked with its horseshoes, like a fashionista with imported boots, in the most neutral zone. Both the horse itself and the harness on it were tidied up, well-groomed, the animal did not pay any attention to anyone or anything, slowly stomping about its business.

The people unanimously followed the horse with their eyes, brightened their faces, smiled, poured replicas after the horse: “I set it up from a stingy owner!”, “She herself went to surrender to the sausage”, “Nah, to the sobering-up station - it’s warmer there than in the stable”, “Nothing similar! He is going to report to the wife of Lavri the Cossack about his whereabouts "...

Soshnin also smiled from under his collar, followed the horse with his eyes - it was walking towards the brewery. There is her stable. Its owner, the horse-driver of the brewery Lavrya Kazakov, popularly Lavrya the Cossack, an old guard from the corps of General Belov, holder of three Orders of Glory and many more military orders and medals, delivered lemonade and other non-alcoholic drinks to the “points”, sat down with the peasants on a permanent basis. “point” - in the buffet of the Sazontievskaya bath - to talk about past military campaigns, about modern city orders, about the ferocity of women and spinelessness of men, but his sensible horse, so that the animal would not get wet and tremble under the sky, let it go under its own power to the brewery. All the Veysk militia, and not only them, all the indigenous inhabitants of Veysk knew: where the brewery cart stands, Lavrya the Cossack is talking and resting there. And his horse is learned, independent, understands everything and will not let himself go to waste.

Something has shifted in my soul, and the bad weather is not so oppressive, Soshnin decided, it's time to get used to it - I was born here, in a rotten corner of Russia. How about visiting a publisher? A conversation with Sirokvasova? Yes, joke with her! Well, fool! Well, they'll take it out sometime. Well, the book is really not so hot - the first, naive, helluva lot of imitation, and it has become outdated in five years. The following should be done better in order to publish in addition to Syrokvasova; maybe in Moscow itself ...

Soshnin bought a long loaf in a grocery store, a jar of Bulgarian compote, a bottle of milk, a chicken; But the price is outrageous! However, this is not a subject for annoyance. He cooks vermicelli soup, takes a hot sip, and, you see, after a hearty dinner according to the law of Archimedes, to the monotonous drip from the battery, to the sound of an old wall clock - do not forget to start it, - under the splashing of rain for an hour and a half or two night at the table - to create. Well, to create is not to create, but still to live in some isolated world created by one's imagination.

Soshnin lived in a new railway microdistrict, but in an old two-story wooden house at number seven, which they forgot to demolish, after oblivion they legalized it, they hooked up the house to the main with warm water, to gas, to sewers - built in the thirties according to a simple architectural project, with an internal staircase dividing the house in two, with a sharp hut above the entrance, where there was once a glazed frame, slightly yellow on the outer walls and brown on the roof, the house modestly squinted and dutifully went into the ground between the blank ends of two panel structures. An attraction, a milestone, a memory of childhood and a good shelter for people. Residents of the modern microdistrict oriented visitors and themselves along it, a wooden proletarian building: “As you go past the yellow house ...”

Soshnin loved his native home or felt sorry - do not understand. Probably, he both loved and regretted it, because he grew up in it and didn’t know any other houses, he didn’t live anywhere except for hostels. His father fought in the cavalry and also in Belov's corps, along with Lavrey the Cossack, Lavrya - a private, his father - a platoon commander. From the war, my father did not return, he died during a raid of the cavalry corps behind enemy lines. Mother worked in the technical office of Veisk station in a large, flat, semi-dark room and lived with her sister in this little house, apartment number four, on the second floor. The apartment consisted of two square rooms and a kitchen. Two windows of one room overlooked the railway line, two windows of the other room overlooked the courtyard. An apartment was once given to a young family of railway workers, his mother’s sister, Soshna’s aunt, came from the village to mess around with him, he remembered her and knew more than his mother because during the war all office workers were often dressed up to unload wagons, to snow fight, to harvest crops on collective farms , mother was rarely at home, overstrained herself during the war, at the end of the war she caught a severe cold, fell ill and died.

They were left alone with Aunt Lipa, whom Lenya, having made a mistake at an early age, called Lina, and so Lina she was fixed in his memory. Aunt Lina followed in her sister's footsteps and took her place in the technical office. They lived, like all the honest people of their village, in the neighborhood, a potato plot outside the city, from pay to pay with difficulty. Sometimes, if it happened to celebrate the renewal or take a walk on a holiday, they didn’t reach it. My aunt did not get married and did not try to get out, repeating: "I have Lenya." But she loved to take a wide walk, in a rustic noisy way, with songs, dances, squeals.

Who? What did he do to this pure, poor woman? Time? People? A craze? Perhaps, that and that, and another, and the third. In the same office, at the same station, she moved to a separate table, behind a partition, then she was transferred all the way “up the mountain”, to the commercial department of the Weisky railway department. Aunt Lina began to bring home money, wine, food, became excitedly cheerful, was late home from work, tried to force, to make up. “Oh, Lenka, Lenka! I will be lost - and you will be lost! .. ”Auntie was called by gentlemen. Lyonka used to pick up the phone and, without greeting, rudely asks: “Who do you need?” - Lipu. “We don’t have one!” - "How is it not?" - "No, that's it!" Auntie scratches the pipe with her paw: “This is for me, for me ...” - “Ah, do you want Aunt Lina? They would have said so! .. Yes, please! You're welcome!" And not immediately, but after rubbing his aunt, he will hand her the phone. She will squeeze it in a handful: “Why are you calling? I told you, then ... Then, then! When, when?..” Both laughter and sin. There is no experience, he will take it and blurt out: "When Lenya leaves for school."

Lenya is already a teenager, already with ambition: “I can leave now! How much, tell me, and it will be done ... "-" Come on, Lenya! - Hiding her eyes, the aunt blushes. “They’re calling from the office, and you’re God knows what…”

He struck her with a grin and incinerated her with a look of contempt, especially when Aunt Lina forgot: she would put aside her worn slippers, twist her leg with her foot, stretch out on her toe - a sort of fifa-tenth-grader in a public machine shows her eyes and “dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee ... ". Well, the boy just needs half revenge, and he will definitely straighten his aunt’s leg with a broom, put her in her place or foolishly sing in a brittle bass: “Calm-and-and-be, the excitement of passion.”

All life kind woman lived with him and for him, how could he share it with someone? Modern boy! Egoist!

Near the building of the regional department of internal affairs, for some reason lined with ceramic tiles, imported all the way from the Carpathians, but not more beautiful because of this, which did not become even more gloomy, in the Volga, cherry-colored, leaning against the door, the driver Vanka Strigalev in a leather jacket was dozing and a rabbit hat - also very interesting person: he could sit in the car for a day, not reading, slowly thinking about something. Soshnin, together with the police officers, Uncle Pasha and his friend, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin, went fishing, and many even felt embarrassed because a young guy with sideburns sits all day in a car and waits for fishermen. “You should at least read, Vanya, magazines, newspapers or a book.” “What about reading them? What's the point of them?" - Vanya will say, yawn sweetly and shudder platonically.

Vaughn and Uncle Pasha. He always sweeps. And scratch. There is no snow, it has washed away, so he sweeps water, drives it out of the gates of Uvedev's courtyard, into the street. Revenge and pecking is not the most important action for Uncle Pasha. He was a completely crazy fisherman and a hockey fan, a janitor went to achieve his goal: a man who does not drink, but drinks, Uncle Pasha went to hockey and fishing, so as not to ruin his pension, not to tear it to pieces, he earned money with a janitor's broom - for "his expenses ”, but he gave his pension into the reliable hands of his wife. Each time, with calculation and reprimand, she gave him “Sunday”: “Here you are, Pasha, a fiver for fishing, this is a triple for you - your cursed cocktail.”

The police department kept a few more horses and a small stable, which was in charge of Uncle Pasha's friend, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin. Together they undermined the native police, reached the hot pipes, to the heating plant laid in the building of the Internal Affairs Directorate, piled horse manure, earth, humus on these pipes, masked them with slate slabs on top - and such worms were bred all year round in the sap, what for bait they were taken for any transport, even bossy. Uncle Pasha and the elder Aristarkh Kapustin did not like to travel with the authorities. They got tired of bosses and wives in Everyday life, wanted to be completely free in nature, to relax, to forget from both.

The old people went out into the street at four o'clock, stood at the crossroads, leaning on the ice picks, and soon a car, most often a body truck, covered with a tarpaulin or a plywood box, slowed down and, as it were, licked them off the asphalt - someone's hands picked up the old people, poked them by the back, in the midst of the people. "Ah, Pasha! Ah, Aristasha? Are you still alive? - exclamations were heard, and from that moment on, experienced fishermen, having fallen into their native element, blossomed in body and soul, talking about “their own” and with “their own”.

Uncle Pasha's entire right hand was covered in white scars, and the fishermen, and not only the fishermen, but also the rest of the city's public, treated these uncle Pasha's scars, perhaps even more respectfully than they did his battle wounds.

The mass fisherman is prone to psychosis, he splashes in waves on the reservoir, hammers, twirls, swears, recalls previous fishing trips, curses the progress that killed the fish, regrets that he did not go to another reservoir.

Uncle Pasha is not such a fisherman. He will fall to one place and wait for favors from nature, although the master in fishing is not the last, at the very least, he always brings it to his ear, it happened, and a full hurdy-gurdy-box, a bag and an undershirt, tied around its sleeves, were stuffed with fish by Uncle Pasha - all then the management slurped the soup, especially the grassroots apparatus, Uncle Pasha endowed everyone with fish. Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, the tighter one, dried the fish between the frames in his apartment, then, stuffing his pockets with dried bread, appeared in the sideboard of the Sazontievskaya bath, banged the fish on the table - and there were always hunters to squeeze the salty with their teeth and gave Elder Aristarkh Kapustin free beer to drink.

A tricky tale was told about Uncle Pasha, which, however, he himself, however, chuckled approvingly. As if he crouched to the hole, but every fisherman passing by sticks: “How is the bite?” Uncle Pasha is silent, does not answer. They push him and push him! Uncle Pasha could not stand it, spat out live worms from behind his cheek and cursed: “You will freeze all the bait with you! ..”

One spring, his faithful liaison, the elder Aristarkh Kapustin, was caught by a whim of a search - in the evening a large river flowing into Svetloye Lake gushed, broke, bulged up the ice, pushed the fish towards the middle of the lake with a muddy, stern wave. They said that in the evening, almost in the dark already, he began to take myself- seasoned pike perch, and local fishermen fished hard. But by morning the border of the muddy water had shifted and somewhere, even further away, the fish moved back. And where to? Lake Svetloye is fifteen versts wide and seventy versts long. Uncle Pasha hissed at Aristarkh Kapustin's liaison: “Nishkni! Sit! Here she will be ... "But where is it! The Evil One carried the elder Aristarkh Kapustin like a broom across the lake.

For half a day, Uncle Pasha was angry with Aristarkh Kapustin, pulled the path with fishing rods, there was a strong perch, clung to the fish twice on the go and tore the fishing lines of the pike. Uncle Pasha lowered the lure under the ice, teased the pup and turned it up - do not spoil it! Here she is, the predator of the underwater world, splashing on spring ice, even splashes are flying, in her mouth are fragments of thin woods with mormyshkas, as if false, shiny teeth are decorated with an impudent mouth. Uncle Pasha does not take out mormyshka, let him remember, fuluganka, how to ruin poor fishermen!

By noon, two youths, two brothers, Anton and Sanka, nine and twelve years old, came out of the open gates of the hushed monastery, albeit with dilapidated but imperishable turrets, which has a modest sign “Boarding School” at the entrance and dragged to the lake. “They ran away from the last lessons,” Uncle Pasha guessed, but did not condemn the boys - they will study for a long time, maybe all their lives, but spring fishing is a festive time, you won’t notice a flash. The youths went through a great drama that day with Uncle Pasha. The guys had just sat down near the fishing rods, as one of them took and left a large fish already in the hole. She went to the youngest, he wept bitterly. “Nothing, nothing, boy,” Uncle Pasha consoled him in a tense whisper, “it will be ours! Will not go anywhere! You're wearing candy and Ishsho city pretzel, with poppy seeds.

Uncle Pasha foresaw everything and calculated: by noon to muddy water, where the smelt and other small fish feed on plankton, the river will push even further into the lake, carry the dregs and bring a large “squirrel” to hunt. Detachments of fishermen, brutally thumping with ice picks, rattling with boots, announcing the surroundings with obscenities, her shy and sensitive fish, who cannot stand the choice of obscenities, will be driven away to the "no man's land", therefore, here, here, together with the youths from the very early morning without saying - not a single one! - a swear word, her uncle Pasha endures and waits!

And his strategic calculation was fully confirmed, his patience and modesty in expressions were rewarded: three zander weighing a kilo lay on the ice and mournfully stared at the sky with tin pupils. Yes, even the most, of course, the largest two zander came down! But who pleased the non-envious heart of Uncle Pasha was the small fishermen - the youths Anton and Sanka. They also took out two pike perches on their salvaged baubles riveted from a rifle cartridge. The youngest one shouted, laughed, and again and again told about how he had pecked, how he had fallen! .. Uncle Pasha encouraged him touchingly: “Well! Are you crying? In life, it’s always like this: it bites, it doesn’t bite ... "

And then it happened that not only the fishermen, but almost the entire lakeside population, were thrown into confusion, and part of the city of Veisk was shaken by a heroic event.

Consumed by Satan, whether by the fisherman's devil, Uncle Pasha, so as not to knock with a pick, moved to the children's holes drilled with an ice ax. And as soon as he lowered his famous lure, set out under the smelt, as it was pinched with a trial push, then it was blasted, so much so that he is what an experienced fisherman! – barely kept a fishing rod in his hand! Dolbanulo, pressed, led into a block of lake waters.

Sudachin seven kilograms and fifty-seven grams - it was later hung out with apothecary accuracy - stuck in a narrow hole. Uncle Pasha, plopping down on his belly, put his hand into the hole and squeezed the fish under the gills. "Beat!" he commanded the youths, shaking his head at the pick. The older boy jumped, grabbed the pick, swung it and froze: how to "hit" ?! And the hand? And then the hardened front-line soldier, rolling his eyes wildly, barked: “But as in a war!” And the troubled boy, sweating in advance, began to gouge the hole.

Soon the hole was stitched with red threads of blood. “Right! Left! In the intercession! Take over! In the intercession! Do not cut the fishing line ... ”Uncle Pasha commanded. There was a full hole of blood when Uncle Pasha pulled the already sluggish body of a fish out of the water and threw it onto the ice. And then, kicking up his legs, twisted by rheumatism, he danced, yelled Uncle Pasha, but soon came to his senses and, clinking his teeth, opened the hurdy-gurdy, thrust a flask of vodka into the guys, ordered them to rub their numb hand, to neutralize the wounds.