Brothers and sisters - Abramov Fedor Alexandrovich
Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov
Brothers and sisters
I remember that I almost screamed with joy when, on a hillock, among tall weeping birches, an old hay hut appeared, quietly dozing in the slanting rays of the evening sun.
Behind us was a whole day of wasted wandering through the dense thickets of Sinelga. The hay line on the Upper Sinelga (and I climbed into the very wilderness, to the rapids with spring water, where grayling clog in the heat) has not been set for several years. The grass—broad-leaved corn-like wheatgrass and white-foamed, tart-smelling meadowsweet—hid my head, and, as in childhood, I guessed the river side by the coolness and by the animal trails laid to the watering hole. To get to the river itself it was necessary to break through a thicket of alder and gray willow. The river bed was crossed by shaggy spruce trees, the rapids were overgrown with burdock, and where there were wide reaches, now only small windows of water could be seen, covered with dull duckweed.
At the sight of the hut, I forgot about fatigue and the day’s sorrows. Everything here was familiar to me and dear to tears: the rickety hut itself with its mossy, smoke-filled walls, in which I could, with my eyes closed, find every crack and ledge, and these thoughtful, creaking birch trees with stripped birch bark below, and this black fire pit , looking at me from the grass with a primitive eye...
And the table, the table! - the donkey dug his paws even deeper into the ground, but his thick spruce blocks, hewn with an ax, are still flint-strong. On the sides there are benches with hollowed-out troughs for feeding dogs; in the troughs there is green water that has survived the last rain.
How many times, as a teenager, did I sit at this table, burning myself with simple peasant stew after a day of suffering! My father was sitting behind him, my mother was resting, having not survived the losses of the last war...
Red, gnarled, with crevices, the table blocks are completely cut up and chopped up. This is how it has been since ancient times: a rare teenager and man, coming to the haymaking, did not leave a reminder of himself here. And there were so many signs! Crosses and crosses, ruffy fir trees and triangles, squares, circles... Once upon a time, every owner used these family signs to mark his firewood and logs in the forest, leaving them in the form of notches, laying out his hunting path. Then the letter arrived, the signs changed letters, and among them a five-pointed star began to flash more and more often...
Having crouched at the table, I looked at these old patterns for a long time, blew out the grass seeds that had accumulated in the slots of signs and letters... But this is a whole chronicle of Pekashin! The northern peasant rarely knows his ancestry beyond his grandfather. And maybe this table is the most complete document about the people who passed through the Pekashin land.
Around me, mosquitoes sang an ancient, endless song, and the seeds of overripe grasses quietly and resignedly fell off. And slowly, as I read more and more into this wooden book, my distant fellow countrymen began to come to life before me.
Here are two old, half-crumpled crosses set in a wreath of leaves. There must have been a guy or a man who once lived in Pekashin who didn’t even know his letters, but come on, the artist’s soul showed. And who left these three blackened crosshairs, cut surprisingly deep? Below is a small oblong cross, drawn much later, but also already blackened with time. Wasn't the man who wore the family banner of three crosses the first strongman in the area, about whom fables were passed down from generation to generation? And who knows, maybe some Pekashin boy, many, many years later, listening with his mouth open to the enthusiastic stories of the men about the extraordinary strength of his fellow countryman, regretfully put a cross against his banner.
All captivated by deciphering the inscriptions, I began to look for people I knew. And I found it.
L T M
The letters were carved a long time ago, maybe even when Trofim was a beardless teenager. But it’s surprising: Trofim’s character was clearly visible in them. Wide, squat, they stood not just anywhere, but on the middle block of the tabletop. It seemed that Trokha himself, who always liked to serve goods face-first, was stomping in the middle of the table, his feet turned out like a bear. Next to Trofim’s initials, straight lines are written in a sweeping and firm manner.
S S A
Here it was impossible not to recognize the broad nature of Stepan Andreyanovich. And Sofron Ignatievich, as in life, identified himself with strong but unsightly letters in the corner of the table.
My heart especially warmed when I unexpectedly came across a rather fresh inscription, carved with a knife in a visible place:
Fedor Abramov - Brothers and Sisters
Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov
Brothers and sisters
I remember that I almost screamed with joy when, on a hillock, among tall weeping birches, an old hay hut appeared, quietly dozing in the slanting rays of the evening sun.
Behind us was a whole day of wasted wandering through the dense thickets of Sinelga. The hay line on the Upper Sinelga (and I climbed into the very wilderness, to the rapids with spring water, where grayling clog in the heat) has not been set for several years. The grass—broad-leaved corn-like wheatgrass and white-foamed, tart-smelling meadowsweet—hid my head, and, as in childhood, I guessed the river side by the coolness and by the animal trails laid to the watering hole. To get to the river itself it was necessary to break through a thicket of alder and gray willow. The river bed was crossed by shaggy spruce trees, the rapids were overgrown with burdock, and where there were wide reaches, now only small windows of water could be seen, covered with dull duckweed.
At the sight of the hut, I forgot about fatigue and the day’s sorrows. Everything here was familiar to me and dear to tears: the rickety hut itself with its mossy, smoke-filled walls, in which I could, with my eyes closed, find every crack and ledge, and these thoughtful, creaking birch trees with stripped birch bark below, and this black fire pit , looking at me from the grass with a primitive eye...
And the table, the table! - the donkey dug his paws even deeper into the ground, but his thick spruce blocks, hewn with an ax, are still flint-strong. On the sides there are benches with hollowed-out troughs for feeding dogs; in the troughs there is green water that has survived the last rain.
How many times, as a teenager, did I sit at this table, burning myself with simple peasant stew after a day of suffering! My father was sitting behind him, my mother was resting, having not survived the losses of the last war...
Red, gnarled, with crevices, the table blocks are completely cut up and chopped up. This is how it has been since ancient times: a rare teenager and man, coming to the haymaking, did not leave a reminder of himself here. And there were so many signs! Crosses and crosses, ruffy fir trees and triangles, squares, circles... Once upon a time, every owner used these family signs to mark his firewood and logs in the forest, leaving them in the form of notches, laying out his hunting path. Then the letter arrived, the signs changed letters, and among them a five-pointed star began to flash more and more often...
Having crouched at the table, I looked at these old patterns for a long time, blew out the grass seeds that had accumulated in the slots of signs and letters... But this is a whole chronicle of Pekashin! The northern peasant rarely knows his ancestry beyond his grandfather. And maybe this table is the most complete document about the people who passed through the Pekashin land.
Around me, mosquitoes sang an ancient, endless song, and the seeds of overripe grasses quietly and resignedly fell off. And slowly, as I read more and more into this wooden book, my distant fellow countrymen began to come to life before me.
Here are two old, half-crumpled crosses set in a wreath of leaves. There must have been a guy or a man who once lived in Pekashin who didn’t even know his letters, but come on, the artist’s soul showed. And who left these three blackened crosshairs, cut surprisingly deep? Below is a small oblong cross, drawn much later, but also already blackened with time. Wasn't the man who wore the family banner of three crosses the first strongman in the area, about whom fables were passed down from generation to generation? And who knows, maybe some Pekashin boy, many, many years later, listening with his mouth open to the enthusiastic stories of the men about the extraordinary strength of his fellow countryman, regretfully put a cross against his banner.
All captivated by deciphering the inscriptions, I began to look for people I knew. And I found it.
L T M
The letters were carved a long time ago, maybe even when Trofim was a beardless teenager. But it’s surprising: Trofim’s character was clearly visible in them. Wide, squat, they stood not just anywhere, but on the middle block of the tabletop. It seemed that Trokha himself, who always liked to serve goods face-first, was stomping in the middle of the table, his feet turned out like a bear. Next to Trofim’s initials, straight lines are written in a sweeping and firm manner.
S S A
Here it was impossible not to recognize the broad nature of Stepan Andreyanovich. And Sofron Ignatievich, as in life, identified himself with strong but unsightly letters in the corner of the table.
My heart especially warmed when I unexpectedly came across a rather fresh inscription, carved with a knife in a visible place:
M. Pryaslin 1942
The inscription was written confidently and loudly in a boyish manner. Here, they say, a new owner has come to Sinelga, who can not put some sticks and crosses or pathetic letters, but knows how to sign according to all the rules.
1942 Unforgettable suffering. She passed before my eyes. But where are the main sufferers, who washed the local hayfields with sweat and tears? I didn’t find a single woman’s inscription on the table. And I wanted to open at least one page in this wooden chronicle of Pekashin...
CHAPTER FIRST
In winter, covered with snow and surrounded on all sides by forest, Pinega villages are not much different from each other. But in the spring, when the snow subsides like thunderous streams, each village looks different. One, like a bird’s nest, is clinging to a steep mountain, or a crevice in local terms; the other climbed out onto the steepest bank of the Pinega - you could even throw a line out of the window; the third, surrounded by waves of grass, listens all summer to the free music of meadow grasshoppers.
Pekashino is recognized by its larch - a huge green tree, rising regal on the sloping slope of the mountain. Who knows if the wind brought a flying seed here or if it survived from the times when the mighty forest still rustled here and the smoky huts of the Old Believers smoked? In any case, in the thicket, in the backyards, you can still come across stumps. Semi-decayed, worn away by ants, they could tell a lot about the past of the village...
Entire generations of Pekashins, never parting with an ax in winter or summer, cut down and burned forests, made clearings, and established meager, sandy and rocky arable lands. And although these arable lands have long been considered developed, they are still called navins. There are a great many such navins, separated by copses and streams, in Pekashin. And each of them retains its original name. Either by the name of the owner - Oskina Navina, then by the surname of a whole family, or a local stove, which once worked together - Inyakhinskie Navins, then in memory of the former ruler of these places - Bear's shaky. But most often behind these names there arises the bitterness and resentment of a hard worker who was deceived in his hopes. Kalinkina wasteland, Olenkina burnt area, Evdokhin kameshnik, Ekimov bald spot, Abramkino tract... There are so many names!
They fed from the forest, they warmed themselves from the forest, but the forest was also their first enemy. All his life, the northern man cut his way to the sun, to the light, and the forest kept pressing on him: it suppressed fields and hayfields, fell with disastrous fires, frightened him with animals and all sorts of evil spirits. That is why, apparently, in the Pinega village the greenery under the window rarely curls. In Pekashin the belief is still alive: there is a bush near the house and the house is empty.
Log houses, separated by a wide street, crowd closely together. Only narrow alleys and vegetable gardens with onions and a small patch of potatoes - and not every house - separate one building from another. Some years the fire carried away half the village; but all the same, new houses, as if seeking support from each other, again huddled together as before.
Spring, by all indications, was fast and friendly. By mid-April, the road in Pinega, lined with spruce poles, had turned black, and the banks had turned blue. In the dark distances of the black forest, pink groves of birches peeped through.
The roofs were dripping. From the settled snowdrifts, houses grew in one week - large, cumbersome in the north, with wet, darkened log walls. During the day, when it warmed up, streams boiled in the hillside and the bitter scent of thawed bushes spread excitingly across the village...
The collective farm board had been waiting for the chairman for an hour. People managed to talk about the latest reports from the Sovinformburo, and about letters from fellow countrymen from the front, and complained that there was still no help from the allies, and the chairman was not there.
Finally, a horse's trampling sound was heard in the street.
“Our Eruslan is coming,” someone said with a sigh. There was noise and clatter on the stairs, the squealing of the floorboards in the corridor - and he didn’t enter the office, but a stocky man in a kubanka, dashingly twisted to the very back of his head, in a khaki-colored quilt, tightly tied with military belts. Slashing the whip across his boot, as if clearing the way for himself, he swiftly, swaying, walked to the chairman's table and quickly glanced at the collective farmers with his feverishly shining eyes.
- Are you tired of waiting? It’s okay, get used to it – it’s war time. It's clear? Where are foremen number three and four?
- They, Kharitosha, left just now...
Brothers and sisters. Two winters and three summers
Vladimir Shevchuk
Airplane or the sky beckons
Let all those who fly and students take off.
There are those who can fly and those who cannot. We, those who can, are called airplanes (we called ourselves that, “we fly ourselves”), the rest, those who don’t fly, are called differently, I don’t even know what, I wasn’t interested. The only purpose of non-flying ones (as you should have guessed, I come from airplanes, i.e. flying) is to feed us and take care of our well-being, for which we sometimes lift them into the air. We are superior. Damn, I'm really talking. I wanted to tell you how I learned to fly, but moved on to glorifying those who fly. So, memories. —————— — TeTe, why don’t you fly? Lord, how many people have asked me this question. And now my own mind began to terrorize me. - I'm studying! I'm studying! I'm studying! — the words were spoken out loud, and the rest of the planes turned around at my exclamation and shook their heads sadly. - Everything is fine TeTe. Calm down. — eSeH21 thought that I had another nightmare. “I’m fine,” waving the flaps, I ran along the runway. The night air was soothing, flowing around me from all sides. The stars beckoned, and the moon created a double on the asphalt chasing me. What a beautiful night. How I love the night. Peace and quiet. You can’t hear the roar of turbines or the whistle of tearing space. I run away to the edge of the runway, and then I rush around like crazy, running over to the neighboring ones and scaring away the unwary flightless ones. They either cursed me or encouraged me, and I moved on. I just left, but didn't take off. I was afraid to take off, although everyone thought that this is all I do at night, and not just rush around the runways like a madman. I was simply afraid, but for the sake of reason I came up with more convincing (or less humiliating reasons). I told everyone, including myself, that if I fly during the day, I will be uncontrollably drawn towards the sun, and unable to stop, I am drawn into it and melt, and therefore I fly at night. And no one knew that my nozzles were still sealed. No, they certainly weren’t solid, otherwise how could I release jets of hot air, but they weren’t hollow either. A flight was needed so that the jets and fire could destroy the adhesions. Usually, during the night, I spent so much fuel that in the morning, the flightless tankers were whispering and arguing about how far I was flying. And I laughed quietly or cried, depending on my mood and the weather. 02/26/99 // 23:03:04 —- The day crept up unnoticed. Just now, the east only brightened a little, and now a piece of the sun has already appeared. TeTe drove into the hangar and dozed off, indulging in dreams about future flights. —— — Te.., tell me how to make a loop — I opened the side window. HeeH stood next to me and waited with bated breath for detailed instructions. “Damn, I, who had never flown, instructed everyone in the art of flying. I told you how to overcome fear, accelerate, take off, and blow out nozzles. I told everything, and therefore everyone considered me the ace of aces, although they had never seen me fly. They thought that I was hiding some special flight secrets, but no one had yet managed to catch up with me at night. They were jealous of me. Fools. Damn, what fools they are, and yet there is no one to ask for advice. The station computers from which I learned to extract data could not help me. It all came down to the words (Help yourself). Okay, at least I can help someone.” And I started the instructions, in a loop. HeeH, having listened to my last word, rolled out of the hangar, he began warming up in the middle of the briefing. I closed my eyes, and everyone watched with bated breath, his dead loop, it was crooked, but many did not know how to make such a thing. And so they congratulated each other in a whisper on the new secret they had received from me. —- Night was falling on the field. TeTe started the engines and rolled out of the hangar. And again the night wind, and again reflections, blown out of the still dormant consciousness, are carried through space. Some planes climbed out of the hangars to follow him with their gaze. TeTe passed by faster than many could fly. He passed the end of the lane, entered the highway, and rushed along it. —- No one can stop my crazy trip. It’s night, everyone is sleeping, both flying and non-flying. Almost all. Suddenly, a tanker (one of the non-flying ones) drove onto the highway in front of me. Idiot. The fire rushed through the nozzle, melting the partitions. The flaps rose to a vertical position, and I suddenly took off from the ground. The melted tanker was still dying in the middle of the highway, but I was already far, high up. —————— I am a flyer and I fly. I fly faster and more beautiful than everyone else, and they dream with bated breath of watching my flights. But I appear among them only occasionally. For me, in the world there are only: the air rushing with wings, the wind playing with clouds, and the sun, moon and stars that illuminate my path. No one will stop my flight as long as I believe that I can fly. And I believe. That's why I fly.
