Kr retelling of the photo in which I am not. A photo in which I am not

The photo that is described in the story. Collection of Wanda Shved

In the dead of winter, our school was excited by an incredible event: a photographer from the city was coming to visit us. He will take photographs “not of the village people, but of us, the students of the Ovsyansky school.” The question arose: where should such an important person be accommodated? The young teachers of our school occupied half of the dilapidated house, and they had a constantly screaming baby. “It was inappropriate for teachers to keep such a person as a photographer.” Finally, the photographer was assigned to the foreman of the rafting office, the most cultured and respected person in the village.

For the rest of the day, the students decided “who would sit where, who would wear what, and what the routine would be.” It looked like Levontievsky Sanka and I would be seated in the very last, back row, since we “did not surprise the world with our diligence and behavior.” It didn’t even work out to fight - the guys just drove us away. Then we started skiing from the highest cliff, and I scooped up full rolls of snow.

At night my legs began to ache desperately. I caught a cold, and an attack of illness began, which grandmother Katerina called “rematism” and claimed that I inherited it from my late mother. My grandmother treated me all night, and I fell asleep only in the morning. In the morning Sanka came for me, but I couldn’t go and take pictures, “my thin legs gave way, as if they weren’t mine.” Then Sanka said that he wouldn’t go either, but he’d have time to take a photo and then life would be long. My grandmother supported us, promising to take me to the very to the best photographer in the city. But this didn’t suit me, because our school wouldn’t be in the photo.

I didn't go to school for more than a week. A few days later, the teacher came to us and brought us the finished photograph. Grandmother, like the rest of the residents of our village, treated teachers with great respect. They were equally polite to everyone, even to exiles, and were always ready to help. Our teacher was able to calm even Levontius, “the villain of villains.” The villagers helped them as best they could: someone would look after the child, someone would leave a pot of milk in the hut, someone would bring a cartload of firewood. At village weddings, teachers were the most honored guests.

They started working in a “house with carbon stoves.” There weren't even desks at school, not to mention books and notebooks. The house in which the school is located was built by my great-grandfather. I was born there and vaguely remember both my great-grandfather and the home environment. Soon after my birth, my parents moved into a winter hut with a leaking roof, and after some time my great-grandfather was dispossessed.

Those who were dispossessed were then driven straight out onto the street, but their relatives did not let them die. “Unnoticed” homeless families were distributed into other people's homes. The lower end of our village was full of empty houses left over from dispossessed and deported families. They were occupied by people thrown out of their homes on the eve of winter. Families did not settle down in these temporary shelters - they sat in knots and waited for a second eviction. The remaining kulak houses were occupied by “new residents” - rural parasites. Over the course of a year, they reduced the existing house to the state of a shack and moved to a new one.

People were evicted from their homes without complaint. Only once did the deaf and dumb Kirila stand up for my great-grandfather. “Knowing only gloomy slavish obedience, not ready for resistance, the commissioner did not even have time to remember the holster. Kirila crushed his head with a rusty cleaver. Kirila was handed over to the authorities, and his great-grandfather and his family were sent to Igarka, where he died in the first winter.

In my native hut, at first there was a collective farm board, then the “new residents” lived. What was left of them was given to the school. The teachers organized a collection of recyclable materials, and with the proceeds they bought textbooks, notebooks, paints and pencils, and the village men made us desks and benches for free. In the spring, when we ran out of notebooks, the teachers took us into the forest and told us “about trees, about flowers, about herbs, about rivers and about the sky.”

Many years have passed, but I still remember the faces of my teachers. I forgot their last name, but the main thing remained - the word “teacher”. That photograph has also been preserved. I look at her with a smile, but never mock her. “Village photography is a unique chronicle of our people, their history on the wall, and it’s not funny because the photo was taken against the backdrop of the ancestral, ruined nest.”

“In the dead of winter, in quiet, sleepy times, our school was excited by an unheard of important event.”

A photographer arrived from the city on a cart!
He came to photograph the students!

Where should I put him for the night? The teacher's family has a small child who is sick and screams all the time.

In the second half of the house where the teacher lives, there was an office. There the phone was ringing all the time and people were shouting loudly into the receiver.

In the “visiting house” the coachmen will get drunk and “infest lice.”

The photographer was assigned for the night to the foreman of the floating office, Ilya Ivanovich Chekhov. There he can be treated to intelligent conversation, city vodka, and a book from the closet.

The schoolchildren were preparing for the shoot, discussing what to wear and how to comb their hair. It was decided that the excellent students would be in the first rows, and the hooligans and poor students would be in the last.

The narrator and his friend Sanka could not boast of either exemplary behavior or grades. Therefore, out of grief that they would find themselves in the last row, where no one would see them, the boys sledded down the hill. We returned home wet and hot.

The narrator suffered from rheumatism and his legs hurt at night. So much so that he howled - at first quietly, like a puppy, then in a full voice.

The grandmother rubbed his feet with ammonia, spanked him, and wrapped him in a down shawl:

- Sleep, little bird, the Lord is with you and the angels are at your head.

But rubbing didn't help. The boy struggled and screamed.

The grandmother told the grandfather to light the bathhouse and took the boy there - he could no longer walk on his own.

Sanka, out of solidarity, also said that he would not take photographs. Moreover, he was ashamed, because it was he who lured his friend to ride.

The teacher comes to inquire about the boy's health and brings him a photograph of the class. “Respect for our teacher and teacher is universal, silent. Teachers are respected for their politeness, for the fact that they greet everyone in a row, without distinguishing either the poor or the rich, or the exiles, or self-propelled guns. They also respect the fact that at any time of the day or night you can come to the teacher and ask him to write the required paper...”

So they thank the teachers: either they will “forget” a pot of sour cream in the teacher’s entryway, or they will bring firewood and unload it at the house.

The events described took place during the time of dispossession.

“The dispossessed and subkulak members were thrown out in the dead of autumn, therefore, at the most opportune time for death. And if times then were similar to today, all families would immediately try it on. But kinship and fraternity were a great force then, distant relatives, close ones, neighbors, godfathers and matchmakers, fearing threats and slander, nevertheless picked up children, first of all infants, then from bathhouses, flocks, barns and attics they collected mothers, pregnant women, old people, sick people, after them and everyone else were sent home.”

The evicted women went to their cellars at night to buy potatoes, pickles, and supplies. They prayed to God to save some and punish others. “But in those years, God was busy with something else, more important, and turned away from the Russian village.”

Liquidation activists ruined the strong economy of the kulaks. “Katka Boltukhina rushed around the village, exchanging stolen things for drinks, not afraid of anyone, not embarrassed by anything. It happened that she immediately offered what she had taken away to the hostess herself. My grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, lost all the money she had saved up for a rainy day, “bought back” more than one thing from the Boltukhins and returned it to the described families.”

They are evicted a second time, from those huts where they have settled. Baba Platoshikha clings to the joint, tearing her nails to blood. They throw her onto the porch and hit her in the face with a boot. Then her relative, the mute Kirill, who was hiding in the forest, jumped up and smashed the head of the commissioner with a rusty cleaver.

The village lived poorly, but the teacher turned out to be very active: he sent schoolchildren to collect waste: old samovars, rags, bones. I took all this to the city and brought notebooks and transfers. “We tried sweet cockerels on sticks, the women got hold of needles, threads, and buttons.

The teacher again and again went to the city in a village soviet nag, procured and brought textbooks, one textbook for five. Then there was even relief - one textbook for two. Village families are large, therefore, a textbook appeared in every house. The tables and benches were made by village peasants and they didn’t charge for them; they made do with magarych, which, as I now guess, the teacher gave them on his salary.”

This is how the school rose.

In warm weather, the teacher goes with his students for walks in the forest and field and tells them a lot, and the children share with him their knowledge about the local nature. One day the company saw a poisonous snake and the teacher, fearing for the children, killed it with a stick.

Now no one remembers the name of the teacher in the village, but the main thing is that the word remains - Teacher.

Many people think village photos are funny, but they are not.

“Village photography is a unique chronicle of our people, their history on the wall, and it’s not funny because the photo was taken against the backdrop of the ancestral, ruined nest.”

The book “The Last Bow” by the Soviet writer Viktor Astafiev is a story within stories, which has a folk character, consisting of compassion, conscience, duty and beauty. There are many characters involved in the story, but the main ones are the grandmother and her grandson. An orphan boy, Vitya, lives with his grandmother Katerina Petrovna, who has become a generalized image of all Russian grandmothers, the embodiment of love, kindness, care, morality and warmth. And at the same time she was strict and sometimes even a stern woman. Sometimes she could make fun of her grandson, but nevertheless she loved him very much and cared for him endlessly.

Values instilled in childhood

True friendship is the most precious and very rare reward for a person, Astafiev believed. “The Photograph That I’m Not in” is a story in which the writer wanted to show how the hero relates to his friends. This was important for the author. After all, friendship is sometimes stronger than family ties.

The story “The Photograph I’m Not in” is presented as a separate part in the story “The Last Bow”. In it, the author depicted all the exciting moments of his childhood.
To analyze the story, you need to read summary.

"Photo where I'm not in": plot

The story tells that one day a photographer came specially to take pictures of school students. The children immediately began to think about how and where to stand. They decided that the diligent good students should sit in the front, those who study satisfactorily should sit in the middle, and the bad ones should be placed in the back.

Vitka and his Sanka, in theory, should have stood in the back, since they were not distinguished by diligent study, much less behavior. To prove to everyone that they were completely abnormal people, the boys went skiing in the snow from a cliff that no normal person would ever attempt. As a result, they rolled around in the snow and went home. Retribution for such ardor was not long in coming, and in the evening Vitka’s legs ached.

His grandmother independently diagnosed him with “rematism.” The boy could not get to his feet, howled and groaned in pain. Katerina Petrovna was very angry with her grandson and wailed: “I told you, don’t get cold!” However, she immediately went for medicine.

Although the grandmother grumbles at her grandson and mimics him, she treats him with great tenderness and strong affection. Having given him a slap on the wrist, she begins to rub her grandson’s feet with ammonia for a long time. Katerina Petrovna deeply sympathizes with him, since he is an orphan: his mother, by a fatal accident, drowned in a river, and his father has already formed another family in the city.

Friendship

This is how the summary began. “The Photograph in Which I’m Not in”, as a literary work, tells the story that because of his illness, the boy Vitya still misses one of the most important events - taking photographs with the class. He regrets this very much, meanwhile the grandmother consoles her grandson and says that as soon as he recovers, they themselves will go to the city to see the “best” photographer Volkov, and he will take any photographs, even for a portrait, even for a “patchport”, even on an airplane, on a horse, or on anything.

And right here to the very important point the plot fits. The summary (“Photo in which I’m not in”) describes that Vitka’s friend Sanka comes to pick up his friend in the morning and sees that he cannot stand on his feet, and then he immediately decides not to go and be photographed either. Sanka acts like a true friend who does not want to upset Vitka even more and therefore also misses this event. Even though Sanka was getting ready and put on a new padded jacket, he begins to reassure Vitka that this is not the last time a photographer comes to them, and next time they will be in the frame.

“Photo that I’m not in”: review and analysis

Although the friendship of village boys is considered here at all children's level, but this episode will affect the development of the hero’s personality. In the future, he will be very important: not only his grandmother’s upbringing and care influenced his attitude towards the world around him, but also respectable relationships with friends.

The work “Photograph in which I am not present” reveals the image of true Russian grandmothers, how they lived in their villages, ran their households, decorated and insulated their windows with moss, because it “sucks in dampness,” they set up coal so that the glass would not freeze, and Rowan trees were hung from intoxication. The window was used to judge which housewife lived in the house.

Teacher

Vitya did not go to school for more than a week. One day a teacher came to them and brought a photograph. Katerina Petrovna met him with great cordiality and hospitality, had a pleasant conversation, treated him to tea and put on the table treats that could only be found in the village: “lingonberry”, “lampaseyki” (lollipops in a tin jar), city gingerbread cookies and dried cakes.

The teacher in their village was the most respected person, because he taught children to read and write, and also helped local residents write the necessary letters and documents. For such kindness, people helped him with firewood, milk, and look after his child, and grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna spoke to his baby’s belly button.

Conclusion

Here, perhaps, we can end the summary. “The Photograph That I’m Not in” is a short story that helps the reader understand the images of the main characters as best as possible, see their moral souls, priorities and life values.

In addition, we understand how important photography is for these people, because it constitutes a kind of chronicle and wall history of the Russian people. And no matter how funny, sometimes ridiculous and pompous these old photographs are, you still don’t want to laugh at them, you just want to smile, because you understand that many of those posing died in the war defending their land.

Astafiev writes that the house in which his school was located and against which the photograph was taken was built by his great-grandfather, who was dispossessed by the Bolsheviks. Families of those dispossessed at that time were driven straight out onto the street, but their relatives did not let them die, and they settled in other people’s houses.

This is what Astafiev tried to write about in his work. “The photograph in which I am not” is a small episode from the life of the writer and all the simple, but truly great people.

V. P. Astafiev

A photo where I'm not in it
(Abridged)

In the dead of winter, during quiet, sleepy times, our school was excited by an unheard of important event.

A photographer arrived from the city on a cart!

And he didn’t come just like that, he came for business - he came to take photographs.

And take pictures not of old men and women, not of village people eager to be immortalized, but of us. students of the Ovsyansky school.

The photographer arrived before noon, and school was interrupted for the occasion. The teacher and teacher - husband and wife - began to think about where to place the photographer for the night.

They themselves lived in one half of a decrepit house, left over from the evictees, 1 and they had a little howler boy. My grandmother, secretly from my parents, at the tearful request of Aunt Avdotya, who was a housekeeper for our teachers, spoke to the baby’s navel three times, but he still screamed all night long and, as knowledgeable people claimed, his navel roared like an onion.

1 They themselves lived in one half of a decrepit house left over from the evictions... - In the late 20s - early 30s. In the fight against the so-called kulaks, the authorities forced peasants from their native places to move (exiled) to other territories.

In the second half of the house there was an office for the rafting section, where there was a pot-bellied telephone, and during the day it was impossible to shout through it, and at night it rang so loudly that the pipe on the roof crumbled, and it was possible to talk on the phone. The bosses and all the people, drunk or just wandering into the office, shouted and expressed themselves into the telephone receiver.

It was inappropriate for teachers to keep such a person as a photographer. They decided to place him in a visiting house, but Aunt Avdotya intervened. She called the teacher back to the hut and with an intensity, albeit an embarrassment, began to convince him:

They can't do it there. The hut will be full of coachmen. They'll start drinking onions, cabbage and potatoes and start behaving uncivilly at night. - Aunt Avdotya considered all these arguments unconvincing and added: - They will let lice in...

What to do?

I'm chichas! I'll be there in a jiffy! - Aunt Avdotya threw on her shawl and rolled out into the street. The photographer was assigned for the night to the foreman of the floating office. In our village lived a literate, businesslike, respected man, Ilya Ivanovich Chekhov. He came from exiles. The exiles were either his grandfather or his father. He himself married our village girl a long time ago, was everyone’s godfather, friend and adviser regarding contracts for rafting, logging and lime burning. For the photographer, of course, in Chekhov's house - the most appropriate place. There they will engage him in intelligent conversation, and treat him with city vodka, if necessary, and take him out of the closet to read a book.

The teacher sighed with relief. The students sighed. The village sighed - everyone was worried. Everyone wanted to please the photographer, so that he would appreciate the concern for him and would photograph the guys as expected, photograph well.

Throughout the long winter evening, schoolchildren trudged around the village, wondering who would sit where, who would wear what, and what the routine would be. The solution to the issue of routine was not in favor of Sanka and me. Diligent students will sit in front, average ones in the middle, bad students in the back - that’s how it was decided. Neither that winter, nor all the subsequent ones, Sanka and I surprised the world with our diligence and behavior; it was difficult for us to count on the middle. Should we be in the back, where you can’t tell who’s filmed? Are you or aren't you? We got into a fight to prove in battle that we were lost people... But the guys drove us out of their company, they didn’t even bother to fight with us. Then Sanka and I went to the ridge and began to ride off such a cliff that no reasonable person would ever ride off. Whooping wildly, swearing, we rushed not just like that, but to destruction, we smashed the heads of the sleds on the stones, blew out our knees, fell out, scooped up full wire rods of snow.

It was already dark when Grandma found Sanka and me on the ridge and whipped both of us with a rod.

At night the payback for the desperate revelry came - my legs began to hurt. They always whined from “rematism,” as my grandmother called the disease that I allegedly inherited from my late mother. But as soon as my feet got cold and I scooped snow into the wire rod, the discomfort in yoga immediately turned into unbearable pain.

I endured for a long time so as not to howl, for a very long time. He scattered his clothes, pressed his legs, evenly turned out at the joints, against the hot bricks of the Russian stove, then rubbed his crunchy joints with his palms, dry as a torch, and stuck his legs into the warm sleeve of his sheepskin coat - nothing helped.

And I howled. At first quietly, like a puppy, then in a full voice.

I knew it! I knew it! - Grandma woke up and grumbled. - If I didn’t say to you, it would sting your soul and liver, “Don’t get cold, don’t get cold!” - she raised her voice. - So he’s smarter than everyone else! Will he listen to grandma? He kind words does it stop? Bend over now! Bent over, at the very least! Better shut up! Shut up! - Grandma got out of bed, sat down, grabbing her lower back. Her own pain has a calming effect on her. - And they will kill me...

Russian stove. The story is framed by photographing household items and interiors of a Russian peasant hut. Photographer A.V. Opolovnikov. 1960-1970s

She lit a lamp, took it with her to the kut, and there she began to clink with dishes, bottles, jars, and flasks - looking for a suitable medicine. Startled by her voice and distracted by expectations, I fell into a tired slumber.

Where are you, Tutoka?

“Here-here,” I responded as pitifully as possible and stopped moving.

Here! - Grandmother mimicked me and, fumbling for me in the dark, first of all slapped me. Then she rubbed my feet with ammonia for a long time. She rubbed the alcohol thoroughly, until it was dry, and kept making noise: “Didn’t I tell you?” Didn't I warn you ahead of time? - And she rubbed it with one hand, and with the other she gave it to me and gave it to me: - He was tormented! He was twisted with a hook! He turned blue, as if he was sitting on ice and not on foam...

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t snap back, I didn’t contradict my grandmother - she’s treating me.

The doctor's wife was exhausted, fell silent, plugged the long faceted bottle, leaned it against the chimney, wrapped my legs in an old down shawl, as if she were clinging to a warm blanket, and also threw a sheepskin coat on top and wiped the tears from my face with a palm effervescent from alcohol.

Sleep, little bird, the Lord is with you and the angels are at your head.

At the same time, the grandmother rubbed her lower back and her arms and legs with stinking alcohol, sank down on the creaky wooden bed, muttered a prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos, who protects sleep, peace and prosperity in the house. Halfway through the prayer, she paused, listened as I fell asleep, and somewhere through my cluttered ears I heard:

And why are you attached to the child? His shoes are repaired, human glance...

I didn't sleep that night. Neither grandmother’s prayer, nor ammonia, nor the usual shawl, especially affectionate and healing because it was my mother’s, brought relief. I fought and screamed throughout the house. Grandmother no longer beat me, but, having tried all her medicines, began to cry and attacked my grandfather:

Stove-heater in the bathhouse

You're going to sleep, you old oder!.. And then at least get lost!

I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. What should I do?

Flood the bathhouse!

Middle of the night?

Middle of the night. What a gentleman! Baby boy! - Grandma covered herself with her hands. - Yes, what kind of misfortune is this, and why is it that they break the little orphan like a thin thali-and-inka... Are you going to groan for a long time, fathead? What are you doing? Are you missing yesterday? There are your mittens. There's your hat!..

In the morning, my grandmother took me to the bathhouse - I could no longer go on my own. My grandmother rubbed my feet for a long time with a steamed birch broom, warmed them over the steam from hot stones, hovered all over me through the rag, dipping the broom in bread kvass, and finally rubbed them again with ammonia. At home they gave me a spoonful of nasty vodka, infused with vodka, to warm up my insides, and cobbled lingonberries. After all this, they gave me milk boiled with poppy heads. I was no longer able to sit or stand, I was knocked off my feet, and I slept until noon.

He can’t, he can’t... I interpret them in Russian! - said the grandmother. “I prepared him a shirt and dried his coat, fixed everything up, for better or worse, I fixed it all up.” And he fell ill...

Baushka Katerina, the car and the apparatus were set up. The teacher sent me. Baushka Katerina!.. - Sanka insisted.

He can’t, I say... Wait a minute, it was you, Zhigan, who lured him to the ridge! - it dawned on the grandmother - I lured him, and now?..

Baushka Katerina...

I rolled off the stove with the intention of showing my grandmother that I could do anything, that there were no barriers for me, but my thin legs gave way, as if they weren’t mine. I plopped down on the floor near the bench. Grandma and Sanka are right there.

I'll go anyway! - I shouted at my grandmother. - Give me a shirt! Come on pants! I'll go anyway!

Where are you going? “From the stove to the floor,” the grandmother shook her head and quietly made a signal with her hand for Sanka to get out.

Sanka, wait! Don't go away! - I screamed and tried to walk. My grandmother supported me and timidly, pitifully persuaded me:

Well, where are you going? Where?

I'll go! Give me a shirt! Give me your hat!..

My appearance plunged Sanka into dejection. He crumpled, crumpled, trampled, trampled, and threw off the new brown padded jacket that Uncle Levontius had given him on the occasion of taking photographs.

OK! - Sanka said decisively. - OK! - he repeated even more decisively. - If so, I won’t go either! All! - And under the approving gaze of grandmother Katerina Petrovna, he proceeded to the middle one. - This is not our last day in the world! - Sanka stated gravely. And it seemed to me: not so much me as Sanka convinced himself. - We’re still filming! Nishta-a-ak! We'll go to the city and ride a horse, maybe we'll take pictures in an Akhtomobile. Really, grandma Katerina? - Sanka threw out a fishing rod

True, Sanka, true. I myself, I can’t leave this place, I myself will take you to the city, and to Volkov, to Volkov. Do you know Volkov?

Sanka Volkova did not know. And I didn't know either.

The best photographer in the city! He’ll take pictures of anything, whether it’s for a portrait, or to a post office, or on a horse, or on an airplane, or whatever!

What about school? Will he film the school?

School? School? He has a car, well, it’s not a transport device. “Screwed to the floor,” the grandmother said sadly.

Here! And you...

What am I doing? What am I doing? But Volkov will immediately put it into the frame.

Get into frame! Why do I need your frame?! I want it without a frame!

No frame! Want? Duck on! On the! Fuck off! If you fall off your stilts, don’t come home! “My grandmother threw my clothes into me: a shirt, a coat, a shirt, mittens, wire rods - she left everything. - Go, go! Grandma wants bad things for you! Baushka is your enemy! She, like an asp, curls around him like a vine, and he, you saw, what thanks to grandma!..

Then I crawled back onto the stove and roared from bitter impotence. Where could I go if my legs can't walk?

I didn't go to school for more than a week. My grandmother treated me and spoiled me, gave me jam, lingonberries, and made boiled sushi, which I loved very much. All day long I sat on a bench, looked at the street, where I had no intention of going yet, out of idleness I began to spit on the windows, and my grandmother frightened me that my teeth would hurt. But nothing happened to my teeth, but my legs, no matter what, they all hurt, they all hurt.

A rustic window, sealed for the winter, is a kind of work of art. By looking at the window, without even entering the house, you can determine what kind of mistress lives here, what kind of character she has and what the daily routine is like in the hut.

Grandma installed the frames in winter with care and discreet beauty. In the upper room, I put cotton wool between the frames with a roller and threw three or four rosettes of rowan berries with leaves on top of the white one - and that’s it. No frills. In the middle and in the kuti, the grandmother placed moss mixed with lingonberries between the frames. A few birch coals on the moss, a heap of rowan between the coals - and already without leaves.

Grandmother explained this quirk this way:

Moss absorbs dampness. Coal prevents glass from freezing, and rowan prevents frost. There's a stove here and it's a blast.

My grandmother sometimes made fun of me, inventing various things, but many years later, from the writer Alexander Yashin, I read about the same thing: mountain ash is the first remedy for carbon intoxication. Folk signs do not know boundaries and distances.

I studied Grandma’s windows and neighboring windows literally and thoroughly, but in the words of the chairman of the village council Mitrokha.

There is nothing to learn from Uncle Levontius. There is nothing between the frames, and the glass in the frames is not all intact - where the plywood is nailed, where it is stuffed with rags, in one of the doors a pillow has stuck out like a red belly.

In Aunt Avdotya’s house, at an angle, everything is piled between the frames: cotton wool, moss, rowan berries, and viburnum, but the main decoration there is flowers. They, these paper flowers, blue, red, white, have served their time on icons, on corners, and are now a decoration between frames. And Aunt Avdotya also has a one-legged doll, a noseless piggy bank dog, hanging trinkets without handles behind the frames, and a horse standing without a tail or mane, with its nostrils picked out. All these city gifts were brought to the children by Avdotya’s husband, Terenty, who she doesn’t even know where he is now. Terenty may not appear for two or even three years. Then, like peddlers, they will shake him out of a bag, dressed up, drunk, with gifts and gifts. Then life will be noisy in Aunt Avdotya’s house. Aunt Avdotya herself, all tattered by life, thin, stormy, running, she has everything in abundance - frivolity, kindness, and womanly grumpiness.

What a melancholy!

I tore off a leaf from a mint flower, crushed it in my hands - the leaf stinks, like ammonia. Grandmother brews mint flower leaves into tea and drinks it with boiled milk. There is still scarlet on the window, and there are two ficus trees in the room. Grandmother watches over the ficus trees better than her eyes, but still, last winter there were such frosts that the leaves of the ficus trees darkened, became slimy, like soap, and fell off. However, they did not die at all - the ficus root is tenacious, and new arrows hatched from the trunk. Ficus trees have come to life. I love looking at flowers coming to life. Almost all the pots with flowers - geraniums, catkins, prickly roses, bulbs - are underground. The pots are either completely empty, or gray stumps stick out of them.

But as soon as the tit strikes the first icicle on the viburnum tree under the window and a thin ringing is heard on the street, the grandmother will take out the old cast iron with a hole in the bottom from the underground and place it on the warm window in the kuti.

In three or four days, pale green sharp shoots will emerge from the dark, uninhabited earth - and they will go, they will go hastily upward, accumulating dark greenery in themselves as they go, unfolding into long leaves, and one day a round stick will appear in the axil of these leaves, and it will move nimbly a green stick as tall as it is, outstripping the leaves that gave birth to it, will swell like a pinch at the end and suddenly freeze before performing a miracle.

I have always been on guard for that moment, that moment of the unfolding mystery-flourishing, and I have never been able to keep watch. At night or at dawn, hidden from human eyes, the onion bloomed.

You used to get up in the morning, still sleepy, run into the wind, and grandma’s voice would stop you:

Look, what a tenacious creature we have!

On the window, in an old cast iron pot, near the frozen glass above the black earth, a bright-lipped flower with a white shimmering core hung and smiled and seemed to say with an infantile joyful mouth: “Well, here I am!” Did you wait?

A cautious hand reached out to the red gramophone to touch the flower, to believe in the not-so-distant spring, and it was scary to frighten away the harbinger of warmth, sun, and green earth that had fluttered towards us in the middle of winter.

After the bulb lit up on the window, the day arrived more noticeably, the thickly frozen windows melted, the grandmother took out the rest of the flowers from the underground, and they also emerged from the darkness, reached for the light, for the warmth, sprinkled the windows and our house with flowers. Meanwhile, the bulb, having shown the way to spring and flowering, folded up the gramophones, shrank, dropped dry petals onto the window and was left with only the flexiblely falling, chrome-shined straps of stems, forgotten by everyone, condescendingly and patiently waiting for spring to awaken again with flowers and please people hopes for the coming summer.

Sharik began to pour out in the yard.

Grandma stopped fixing things and listened. There was a knock on the door. And since in villages there is no habit of knocking and asking if you can come in, the grandmother got alarmed and ran into the hut.

What kind of leshak is that bursting there?.. You are welcome! Welcome! - Grandmother sang in a completely different, churchly voice. I realized: an important guest had come to visit us, he quickly hid on the stove and from above saw a school teacher who was sweeping wire rod with a broom and taking aim at where to hang his hat. The grandmother accepted the hat and coat, rushed the guest’s clothes into the upper room, because she believed that it was indecent to hang around in the teacher’s clothes, and invited the teacher to come through.

I hid on the stove. The teacher went into the middle room, said hello again and inquired about me.

“He’s getting better, getting better,” my grandmother answered for me and, of course, couldn’t resist teasing me: “I’m already healthy for food, but I’m still too weak for work.”

The teacher smiled and looked for me with his eyes. Grandma demanded that I get off the stove.

Fearfully and reluctantly, I came down from the stove and sat down on the stove. The teacher sat near the window on a chair brought by my grandmother from the upper room, and looked at me friendly.

The teacher’s face, although inconspicuous, I have not forgotten to this day. It was pale in comparison with the rustic, wind-heated, roughly hewn faces. Hairstyle for “politics” - hair combed back. As it was, there was nothing else special, except perhaps slightly sad and therefore unusually kind eyes, and ears sticking out, like Sanka Levontievsky’s. He was about twenty-five years old, but he seemed to me an elderly and very respectable man.

“I brought you a photo,” the teacher said and looked for the briefcase.

The grandmother clasped her hands and rushed into the hole - the briefcase remained there.

And here it is, a photograph, on the table.

I look. Grandma is watching. The teacher is watching. The guys and girls in the photo are like seeds in a sunflower! And faces the size of sunflower seeds, but you can recognize everyone. I run my eyes over the photograph: here is Vaska Yushkov, here is Vitka Kasyanov, here is Kolka the Little Russian, here is Vanka Sidorov, here is Ninka Shakhmatovskaya, her brother Sanya...

In the midst of the children, in the very middle, there is a teacher and a teacher. He is wearing a hat and coat, she is wearing a shawl. The teacher and the teacher are smiling barely noticeably at something. The guys said something funny. What do they need? Their legs don't hurt.

Sanka didn’t get into the photo because of me. And what are you up to? Either he mocks me, harms me, but now he feels it. So you can't see it in the photo. And I can't be seen. Over and over again I run from face to face. No, I can't see it. And where will I come from there, if I was lying on the stove and dying over me “at the very least.”

Nothing, nothing! - the teacher reassured me. - The photographer may still come.

What am I telling him? I’m interpreting the same thing... I turned away, blinking at the Russian stove, sticking out its thick whitened butt into the middle, my lips trembling. What should I interpret? Why interpret? I'm not in this photo. And it won't!

Red corner in the hut

The grandmother was setting up the samovar and keeping the teacher busy with conversations.

How's the boy? Has the gnawing not stopped?

Thank you, Ekaterina Petrovna. My son is better. The last nights he sleeps more peacefully.

And thank God. And thank God. These little kids, when they grow up, oh, how much you will suffer with your name! Look how many of them I have, there were little ones, but nothing, they grew up. And yours will grow...

The samovar began to sing a long, thin song in the kuti. The conversation was about this and that. Grandma didn’t ask about my progress at school. The teacher didn’t talk about them either; he asked about his grandfather.

Sam-from? He himself went to the city with firewood. He’ll sell it and we’ll get some money. What are your prosperity? We live on a vegetable garden, a cow and firewood.

Do you know, Ekaterina Petrovna, what happened?

Which lady?

Yesterday morning I found a cart of dry firewood at my doorstep. And I can’t find out who dumped them.

Why find out? There is nothing to find out. Heat it - and that's it.

Yes, it's somehow inconvenient.

What's inconvenient? No firewood? No. Wait for Reverend Mitrokha to give his orders? And they will bring the village soviet people - raw materials, raw materials, and that’s also not much joy.

Grandmother, of course, knows who dumped firewood on the teacher. And the whole village knows this. One teacher does not know and will never know.

Respect for our teacher and teacher is universal, silent. Teachers are respected for their politeness, for the fact that they greet everyone in a row, without distinguishing between the poor and the rich, exiles and self-propelled guns. They also respect the fact that at any time of the day or night you can come to the teacher and ask him to write the required paper. Complain about anyone: the village council, the robber husband, the mother-in-law. Uncle Levontiy is the villain of the villains, when he’s drunk, he’ll break all the dishes, he’ll carry a lantern for Vasyon, and he’ll chase the kids away. And when the teacher talked to him, Uncle Levontius corrected himself. It is not known what the teacher was talking to him about, only Uncle Levontius joyfully explained to everyone he met and passed by:

Well, did you remove the nonsense purely by hand? And everything is polite, polite. You, he says, you... Yes, if you treat me like a human being, am I a fool, or what? Yes, I will break anyone’s head if such a person is offended!

Quietly, sideways, the village women will seep into the teacher’s hut and forget there a glass of milk, or sour cream, cottage cheese, lingonberry tuesok. The child will be looked after, treated if necessary, and the teacher will be harmlessly scolded for her ineptitude in dealing with the child. When the teacher was giving birth, the women did not allow her to carry water. Once a teacher came to school wearing wire rods hemmed over the edge. The women stole the wire rod and took it to the shoemaker Zherebtsov. They set the scale so that Zherebtsov wouldn’t take a penny from the teacher, my God, and so that by the morning, for school, everything would be ready. Shoemaker Zherebtsov is a drinking man, unreliable. His wife, Toma, hid the scale and did not give it back until the wire rods were hemmed.

The teachers were the ringleaders in the village club. They taught games and dances, staged funny plays and did not hesitate to represent priests and bourgeois in them; At weddings they were guests of honor, but they puked themselves and taught the uncooperative people at the party not to force them to drink.

And in which school did our teachers start working?

In a village house with carbon stoves. There were no desks, no benches, no textbooks, notebooks, or pencils. One ABC book for the entire first grade and one red pencil. The kids brought stools and benches from home, sat in a circle, listened to the teacher, then he gave us a neatly sharpened red pencil, and we sat down on the windowsill and took turns writing with sticks. They learned to count using matches and sticks, cut from a torch with their own hands.<...>

The teacher once went to the city and returned with three carts. On one of them there were scales, on the other two there were boxes with all kinds of goods. In the schoolyard, a temporary stall “Recycling” was built from blocks. The schoolchildren turned the village upside down. Attics, sheds, barns were cleared of treasures accumulated over centuries - old samovars, plows, bones, rags.

Pencils, notebooks, paints like buttons glued to cardboard, and transfers appeared at school. We tried sweet cockerels on sticks, the women got hold of needles, threads, and buttons.

The teacher again and again went to the city in a village soviet nag, solicited and brought textbooks, one textbook for five. Then there was even relief - one textbook for two. Village families are large, therefore, a textbook appeared in every house.

The tables and benches were made by village peasants and they didn’t take the stove for them; they made do with magarych, which, as I now guess, the teacher gave them on his salary.

The teacher persuaded a photographer to come to us, and he photographed the children and the school. Isn't this joy! Is this a failure?

The teacher drank tea with his grandmother. And for the first time in my life, I sat at the same table with the teacher and tried with all my might not to get wet or spill tea from the saucer. Grandmother covered the table with a festive tablecloth and set out... And jam, and lingonberries, and dried bread, and lampases, and city gingerbread cookies, and milk in an elegant creamer. I am very glad and satisfied that the teacher drinks tea with us, talks to grandma without any ceremony, and we have everything, and there is no need to be ashamed in front of such a rare guest for the treat.

The teacher drank two glasses of tea. The grandmother begged for another drink, apologizing, according to village habit, for the poor treat, but the teacher thanked her, said that he was very pleased with everything, and wished the grandmother good health.

When the teacher left home, I still couldn’t resist and was curious about the photographer. “Will he come again soon?”

Ah, the headquarters lifted you up and slapped you! - the grandmother used the most polite curse in the presence of the teacher.

“I think soon,” the teacher answered. - Get well and come to school, otherwise you will fall behind. - He bowed to the house, to his grandmother, she trotted after him, accompanying him to the gate with instructions to bow to his wife, as if she were not two suburbs from us, but in God knows what distant lands.

The gate lock rattled. I hurried to the window. A teacher with an old briefcase walked past our front garden, turned around and waved his hand at me, saying, come to school quickly, and smiled as only he knew how to smile, seemingly sad and at the same time affectionate and welcoming. I followed him with my gaze to the end of our alley and looked at the street for a long time, and for some reason my soul felt painful, I wanted to cry.

Grandmother, gasping, cleared the rich food from the table and never ceased to be surprised:

And I didn’t eat anything. And I drank two glasses of tea. What a cultured man! That's what diplomas do! - And she exhorted me: - Study, Vitka, well! Maybe you'll become a teacher or a foreman...

Grandma didn’t make any noise that day at anyone, even with me and Sharik she spoke in a peaceful voice, but she boasted, but she boasted! She bragged to everyone who came to see us that we had a teacher, drank tea, talked to her about various things. And he talked like that, he talked like that! She showed me a school photo, lamented that I didn’t get it, and promised to frame it, which she would buy from the Chinese at the market.

She actually bought a frame and hung the photograph on the wall, but she didn’t take me to the city, because I was often sick that winter and missed a lot of classes.

By spring, the notebooks, exchanged for salvage materials, were full of content, the colors were stained, the pencils were worn out, and the teacher began to take us through the forest and tell us about trees, flowers, herbs, rivers and the sky.

How much he knew! And that the rings of a tree are the years of its life, and that pine sulfur is used for rosin, and that pine needles are used to treat nerves, and that plywood is made from birch; from coniferous trees - that’s what he said - not from forests, but from rocks! - they make paper so that forests retain moisture in the soil, and therefore the life of rivers.

But we also knew the forest, albeit in our own way, in a village way, but we knew something that the teacher did not know, and he listened to us attentively, praised us, even thanked us. We taught him to dig and eat the roots of locusts, chew larch sulfur, distinguish birds and animals by their voices, and, if he gets lost in the forest, how to get out of there, especially how to escape from a forest fire, how to get out of the terrible taiga fire.

One day we went to Bald Mountain to buy flowers and seedlings for the school yard. We climbed to the middle of the mountain, sat down on the stones to rest and look at the Yenisei from above, when suddenly one of the guys shouted:

Oh, snake, snake!..

And everyone saw the snake. She wrapped herself around a bunch of cream snowdrops and, opening her toothy mouth, hissed angrily.

Before anyone even had time to think anything, the teacher pushed us away, grabbed a stick and began hammering on the snake and the snowdrops. Fragments of sticks and petals of lumbago flew upward. The snake was boiling, tossing itself on its tail.

Don't hit over your shoulder! Don't hit over your shoulder! - the guys shouted, but the teacher didn’t hear anything. He beat and beat the snake until it stopped moving. Then he pressed the end of the stick against the head of the snake in the stones and turned around. His hands were shaking. His nostrils and eyes widened, he was all white, his “politics” crumbled, and his hair hung like wings on his protruding ears.

We found it in the rocks, shook it off and gave him the cap.

Let's get out of here, guys.

We fell down the mountain, the teacher followed us and kept looking around, ready to defend us again if the snake came to life and chased.

Under the mountain, the teacher wandered into the Malaya Sliznevka river, drank water from his palms, splashed it on his face, wiped himself with a handkerchief and asked:

Why did they shout so as not to hit the viper over the shoulder?

You can throw a snake over yourself. Oma, the infection, will wrap itself around the stick!.. - the guys explained to the teacher.

Have you even seen snakes before? - someone thought to ask the teacher.

No,” the teacher smiled guiltily. - Where I grew up, there were no reptiles. There are no such mountains there, and no taiga.

Here you go! We had to defend the teacher, but what about us?!

Years have passed, many, oh many of them have passed. And this is how I remember the village teacher with a slightly guilty smile, polite, shy, but always ready to rush forward and defend his students, help them in trouble, make people’s lives easier and better. While already working on this book, I learned that our teachers’ names were Evgeniy Nikolaevich and Evgeniya Nikolaevna. My fellow countrymen assure me that they resembled each other not only in their first and patronymic names, but also in their faces. “Purely brother and sister!..” Here, I think, grateful human memory worked, bringing dear people closer and closer, but no one in Ovsyanka can remember the names of the teacher and the teacher. You can forget the teacher’s last name, it’s important that the word “teacher” remains! And every person who dreams of becoming a teacher, let him live to receive such honor as our teachers, in order to dissolve in the memory of the people with whom and for whom they lived, in order to become a part of it and forever remain in the hearts of even such careless and naughty people like me and Sanka.

School photography is still alive. It turned yellow and broke off at the corners. But I recognize all the guys on it. Many of them died in the war. The whole world knows the famous name - Siberian.

How the women scurried around the village, hastily collecting fur coats and padded jackets from neighbors and relatives, the children were still rather poorly dressed, very poorly dressed. But how firmly they hold the material nailed to two sticks. On the material is written in scrawl: “Ovsyanskaya beginning. 1st level school." Against the backdrop of a village house with white shutters are children: some with a dumbfounded face, some laughing, some pursing their lips, some opening their mouths, some sitting down, some standing, some lying in the snow.

I look, sometimes I smile, remembering, but I can’t laugh, much less mock, at village photographs, no matter how ridiculous they may be at times. Let a pompous soldier or a whiter be photographed at a flirtatious bedside table, in belts, in polished boots - most of them and (packed on the walls of Russian huts, because soldiers were the only ones who could previously be “starred” on a card; let my aunts and uncles show off in in a plywood car, one aunt in a hat like a crow's nest, an uncle in a leather helmet, sitting on [the manhole; let the Cossack, or rather my brother Kesha, sticking his head out of the hole in the fabric, pretend to be a Cossack with gazyrs and a dagger; let people with accordions, balalaikas, guitars, with watches hanging out from under their sleeves, and other items demonstrating the wealth in the house, stare from the photographs.

I still don't laugh.

Village photography is a unique chronicle of our people, its wall history. It’s also not funny because the photo was taken against the backdrop of the family’s destroyed nest.