About the product
Astafiev’s story “The Photograph I’m Not in” was written in 1968. The work describes a chapter in the author’s life when, due to illness, he was unable to take a photo with the whole class, and his best friend supported him.
To better prepare for a literature lesson, we recommend reading online a summary of “The Photograph in which I am not.” Retelling the book will also be useful when working on a reader's diary.
The material was prepared jointly with a teacher of the highest category, Kuchmina Nadezhda Vladimirovna.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 27 years.
Summary
One winter, a modest village school was “excited by an unheard of important event”: a photographer would come from the city to take a group photo of the entire class. The guys immediately began to discuss who would stand in the picture. At the general meeting, it was decided to put excellent students in the first rows, and place poor students and hooligans in the last row. Among the latter were best friends - Vitya and Sanka. Out of anger and frustration, they got into a fight, and then went to the shaft, and “began to ride off such a cliff, from which no reasonable person has ever rolled.” The friends returned home covered in snow, with wet felt boots.
At night, Vitya faced retribution for his rash act: his legs hurt badly. The boy suffered from rheumatism, which he inherited from his late mother. Waking up from Vitka’s groans, grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna at first scolded him for his stupidity, and then began to treat him: rubbing his feet with ammonia, wrapping him in a down shawl. But nothing helped - from severe tearing pain, Vitya “beat and screamed throughout the house.”
Grandmother woke up grandfather and sent him to heat the bathhouse. She properly steamed her sick grandson, rubbed and wrapped his feet again, and gave him “a spoonful of nasty vodka infused with wrestler to warm up his insides.” Vitya slept soundly until noon. I woke up to my grandmother arguing with Sanka, who had been sent to fetch Vitya to take a group photo of the class.
Vitya tried to get to his feet, but fell as if knocked down. Seeing his friend in such a deplorable state, Sanya made a courageous decision - to stay with Vitya and not go to be photographed. He promised that immediately after recovery they would go to the city together and take the best picture.
Vitya stayed at home for another whole week. His grandmother treated him and spoiled him in every possible way. Out of boredom, the boy sat on the bench all day long and looked out the window. A village window sealed up for the winter is “a kind of work of art” by which one can determine the character of the housewife, her taste and the family’s income. So, at my grandmother’s, the frames were inserted “with efficiency and discreet beauty”: between them lay only moss from dampness, coal from frosting of glass, and rowan to prevent fumes.
A few days later, an important guest “came to the house” - school teacher Evgeniy Nikolaevich, who brought with him a photograph in which Vitya and Sanya were not. The boy began to examine the faces of his classmates. He was very sad that he was not among them that day.
The teacher and his wife, also a teacher, were very loved and respected in the village. Local residents tried their best to help them unnoticed: they left firewood, milk, sour cream, and lingonberries under the door. The teachers did a lot of good: they equipped the school, brought textbooks, notebooks, and pencils. The village club taught young people dances and games, and staged entertaining theatrical performances.
The author saved a school photo. “It turned yellow and broke off at the corners,” but you could still recognize the guys’ faces. Many of them did not return from the war.
Read online “The Photograph I’m Not in”
Viktor Petrovich Astafiev
A photo where I'm not in it
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 on business - he came to take photographs.
And to photograph not old men and women, not village people eager to be immortalized, but 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, 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.
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 telephone. 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. The hut will be full of coachmen. They will start drinking onions, cabbage and potatoes and will begin to behave uncivilly at night. - Aunt Avdotya considered all these arguments unconvincing and added: - They will let in lice...
- 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 a photographer, of course, Chekhov’s house is the most suitable 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 care he took and would take pictures of the guys as they should, and take good pictures.
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 ones 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 not 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 started skating from such a cliff that no reasonable person had ever skated from. Whooping wildly, cursing, we rushed for a reason, we rushed to destruction, 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 retribution for the desperate revelry came; my legs began to ache. 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 soreness in my feet immediately turned into unbearable pain.
I endured for a long time not to howl, for a very long time. He threw out his clothes, pressed his legs, evenly turned at the joints, to the hot bricks of the Russian stove, then rubbed the crispy joints with his palms, dry as a torch, put his legs in 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 tell you, it would sting your soul and liver, I wouldn’t say: “Don’t get cold, don’t get cold!” - she raised her voice. - So he’s smarter than everyone else! Will he listen to his grandmother? Will he stink of kind words? He’s bent now! He’s bent, for the worse! 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...
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. — I responded as pitifully as possible and stopped moving.
- Here! - Grandma mimicked me and, fumbling for me in the dark, first of all slapped me on the wrist. 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?” And she rubbed it with one hand, and with the other she gave it to me and gave it to me: - What tortured him! How did he twist him with a hook? He turned blue, as if he was sitting on ice and not on a stove...
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 faceted long 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 her 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 stagnant ears I heard:
- And why are you attached to the baby? His shoes are repaired, human eyes...
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. My grandmother no longer beat me, but after trying all her medicines, she began to cry and attacked my grandfather:
- You're going to sleep, you old oder! . And then at least get lost!
- Yes, 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! Little baby! - Grandma covered herself with her hands: - Why is there such a misfortune, but why is she breaking the little orphan like a thin thali-and-inka... Are you going to groan for a long time, fathead? 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 borax to warm my insides, and pickled 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.
I woke up from voices. Sanka bickered or argued with his grandmother in the kuti.
- He can’t, he can’t... I’m interpreting them in Russian! - said the grandmother. “I prepared a shirt for him, and dried his coat, and fixed everything up, for better or worse. And he fell ill...
- Grandma Katerina, the car and the apparatus have been set up. The teacher sent me. Grandma 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 enticed you, what about now? .
- Grandma 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! Give me your 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 a hat! .
My appearance plunged Sanka into dejection. ...
