Viktor astafiev lyudochka read online. Astafiev Viktor Petrovich
You fell like a stone.
I died under it.
Vl. Sokolov
A story told in passing, heard in passing, fifteen years ago.
I never saw her, that girl. And I don't see it anymore. I don't even know her name, but for some reason it popped into my head - her name was Lyudochka. "What's in a name? It will die like a sad noise…” And why do I remember this? So many events have happened in fifteen years, so many people were born and so many people died a natural death, so many died at the hands of villains, drank alcohol, got poisoned, burned down, got lost, drowned ...
Why does this story, quietly and apart from everything else, live in me and burn my heart? Maybe the whole point is in its depressing routine, in its disarming simplicity?
Lyudochka was born in a small, dying village called Vychugan. Her mother was a collective farmer, her father was a collective farmer. Father, from early oppressive work and long-standing, inveterate drunkenness, was frail, frail, fussy and dull. The mother was afraid that her child would not be born a fool, tried to conceive him in a rare break from her husband's drunkenness, but still the girl was bruised by her father's unhealthy flesh and was born weak, sickly and whiny.
She grew up like sluggish, roadside grass, played little, seldom sang and smiled, at school she did not go out of threes, but she was silently diligent and did not sink to solid twos.
Lyudochka's father disappeared from life long ago and imperceptibly. Mother and daughter lived freer, better and more cheerful without him. Muzhiks used to visit my mother, sometimes they drank, sang at the table, stayed overnight, and one tractor driver from the neighboring timber industry, having plowed the garden, had a strong dinner, lingered all spring, grew into the economy, began to debug, strengthen and multiply it. He traveled seven miles to work on a motorcycle, at first he carried a gun with him and often threw crumpled, feather-dropping birds out of his backpack on the floor, sometimes he took out a hare by its yellow paws and, having stretched it on nails, deftly skinned it. For a long time afterwards, a skin with a white rim and red, star-shaped spots scattered on it hung over the stove, so long that it began to break, and then the wool was sheared from the skins, spun together with linen thread, knitted shaggy shalyushki.
The guest did not treat Lyudochka in any way, neither good nor bad, did not scold her, did not offend her, did not reproach her piece, but she was still afraid of him. He lived, she lived in the same house - and nothing more. When Lyudochka finished ten grades at school and became a girl, her mother told her to go to the city - to get settled, since she had nothing to do in the village, she and herself - her mother stubbornly did not call the guest the owner and father - were getting ready to move to the timber industry. At first, the mother promised to help Ludochka with money, potatoes and whatever God would send - in old age, you see, she will help them.
Lyudochka arrived in the city by train and spent the first night at the station. In the morning she went to the railway station hairdresser and, after sitting in line for a long time, brought herself into an urban look for even longer: she did a perm and a manicure. She also wanted to dye her hair, but the old hairdresser, herself dyed like a copper samovar, advised against: they say, your hair is “me-a-ah-kankia, fluffy, little head, like a dandelion - from chemistry, the hair will break, it will begin to crumble.” Lyudochka agreed with relief - she didn't want to put on make-up as much as she wanted to be in a hairdresser's, in this warm, cologne-scented room.
Quiet, seemingly rustic, but agile in a peasant way, she offered to sweep the hair on the floor, diluted soap for someone, handed a napkin to someone, and in the evening found out all the local rules, guarded at the exit to the hairdresser's aunt called Gavrilovna, who advised her to paint, and asked to be her student.
The old woman looked attentively at Lyudochka, then studied her unburdening documents, asked a little, then went with her to the city communal economy, where she registered Lyudochka for a job as a hairdresser's apprentice.
Gavrilovna took the student to live with her, setting simple conditions: help around the house, do not walk for more than eleven, do not take guys into the house, do not drink wine, do not smoke tobacco, obey the mistress in everything and honor her as your own mother. Instead of renting an apartment, let them bring a car of firewood from the timber industry.
As long as you become a student - live, but when you become a master, go to the hostel. God will give, and you will arrange life. - And, after a heavy pause, Gavrilovna added: - If you get knocked up, I'll drive you out of your place. I didn’t have children, I don’t like squeakers, besides, like all old masters, I toil with my feet. In the weather, I howl at night.
It should be noted that Gavrilovna made an exception to the rule. For some time now, she has been reluctant to let lodgers in general, and refused girls altogether.
Lived with her, long ago, under Khrushchev, two students from a financial college. In trousers, painted, smoking. As for smoking and everything else, Gavrilovna gave strict instructions without being blunt. The girls twisted their lips, but resigned themselves to the demands of everyday life: they smoked on the street, they came home on time, they didn’t play their music loudly, but they didn’t grind or wash the floor, they didn’t clean the dishes after themselves, they didn’t clean the restroom. It would be nothing. But they constantly brought up Gavrilovna, they referred to the examples of outstanding people, they said that she did not live correctly.
And that would be nothing. But the girls did not really distinguish between their own and someone else's, then they would eat pies from a plate, then they would scoop out sugar from a sugar bowl, then they would wash out soap, they were in no hurry to pay the rent until you reminded ten times. And it could be tolerated. But they began to manage in the garden, not in the sense of weeding and watering, - they began to pluck what was ripe, without asking to use the gifts of nature. Once they ate the first three cucumbers from a steep dunghill with salt. Those cucumbers, the first, Gavrilovna, as always, grazed, groomed, kneeling in front of the ridge, on which she dragged manure in a backpack from the horse yard in winter, putting a check for him to the old robber, the lame Slyusarenko, talking to them, with cucumbers: “Well, grow, grow, gain courage, kids! Then we’ll take you in an okro-o-o-oshka-y, in an ok-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o way - and for them some water, lukewarm, under the sun in a barrel heated.
Why did you eat cucumbers? - Gavrilovna started to the girls.
What's wrong with that? Ate and ate. It's a pity, isn't it? We will buy you something at the market!
I don't need to-oh-oh what! This is what you need in-oh-oh what! .. For comfort. And I took care of cucumbers ...
For myself? You are selfish!
Who-who?
Selfish!
Well, would you...! - offended by an unfamiliar word, Gavrilovna made her last conclusion and swept the girls from the apartment.
Since then, she allowed only boys, most often students, to live in the house, and quickly brought them into God's appearance, taught them how to manage the house, wash floors, cook, and wash. She even taught two of the smartest guys from the Polytechnic Institute how to cook and how to operate a Russian stove. Gavrilovna let Lyudochka in because she guessed in her village relatives, not yet spoiled by the city, and she became weary of loneliness, she would fall down - there was no one to give water, and that she gave a strict warning without leaving the cash register, how could it be otherwise? Just dismiss them, today's youth, give them a weak spot, they will immediately seize them and ride you wherever they want.
Lyudochka was an obedient girl, but her studies were slow, the barber business, which seemed so simple, was given to her with difficulty, and when the appointed period of training had passed, she could not pass on the master. At the hairdresser's, she earned extra money as a cleaner and remained in the state, continued her practice - she cut the heads of pre-conscripts with a machine, cut schoolchildren with electric scissors, leaving a ponytail over her forehead on her bare head. She learned to do shaped haircuts “at home”, she cut the scary fashionistas from the village of Vepeverze, where Gavrilovna’s house stood, to look like schismatics. She did hair on the heads of fidgety disco girls, like foreign hit stars, without taking any payment for it.
Victor Astafiev
You fell like a stone.
I died under it.
Vl. Sokolov
A story told in passing, heard in passing, fifteen years ago.
I never saw her, that girl. And I don't see it anymore. I don't even know her name, but for some reason it popped into my head - her name was Lyudochka. "What's in a name? It will die like a sad noise…” And why do I remember this? So many events have happened in fifteen years, so many people were born and so many people died a natural death, so many died at the hands of villains, drank alcohol, got poisoned, burned down, got lost, drowned ...
Why does this story, quietly and apart from everything else, live in me and burn my heart? Maybe the whole point is in its depressing routine, in its disarming simplicity?
Lyudochka was born in a small, dying village called Vychugan. Her mother was a collective farmer, her father was a collective farmer. Father, from early oppressive work and long-standing, inveterate drunkenness, was frail, frail, fussy and dull. The mother was afraid that her child would not be born a fool, tried to conceive him in a rare break from her husband's drunkenness, but still the girl was bruised by her father's unhealthy flesh and was born weak, sickly and whiny.
She grew up like sluggish, roadside grass, played little, seldom sang and smiled, at school she did not go out of threes, but she was silently diligent and did not sink to solid twos.
Lyudochka's father disappeared from life long ago and imperceptibly. Mother and daughter lived freer, better and more cheerful without him. Muzhiks used to visit my mother, sometimes they drank, sang at the table, stayed overnight, and one tractor driver from the neighboring timber industry, having plowed the garden, had a strong dinner, lingered all spring, grew into the economy, began to debug, strengthen and multiply it. He traveled seven miles to work on a motorcycle, at first he carried a gun with him and often threw crumpled, feather-dropping birds out of his backpack on the floor, sometimes he took out a hare by its yellow paws and, having stretched it on nails, deftly skinned it. For a long time afterwards, a skin with a white rim and red, star-shaped spots scattered on it hung over the stove, so long that it began to break, and then the wool was sheared from the skins, spun together with linen thread, knitted shaggy shalyushki.
The guest did not treat Lyudochka in any way, neither good nor bad, did not scold her, did not offend her, did not reproach her piece, but she was still afraid of him. He lived, she lived in the same house - and nothing more. When Lyudochka finished ten grades at school and became a girl, her mother told her to go to the city - to get settled, since she had nothing to do in the village, she and herself - her mother stubbornly did not call the guest the owner and father - were getting ready to move to the timber industry. At first, the mother promised to help Ludochka with money, potatoes and whatever God would send - in old age, you see, she will help them.
Lyudochka arrived in the city by train and spent the first night at the station. In the morning she went to the railway station hairdresser and, after sitting in line for a long time, brought herself into an urban look for even longer: she did a perm and a manicure. She also wanted to dye her hair, but the old hairdresser, herself dyed like a copper samovar, advised against: they say, your hair is “me-a-ah-kankia, fluffy, little head, like a dandelion - from chemistry, the hair will break, it will begin to crumble.” Lyudochka agreed with relief - she didn't want to put on make-up as much as she wanted to be in a hairdresser's, in this warm, cologne-scented room.
Quiet, seemingly rustic, but agile in a peasant way, she offered to sweep the hair on the floor, diluted soap for someone, handed a napkin to someone, and in the evening found out all the local rules, guarded at the exit to the hairdresser's aunt called Gavrilovna, who advised her to paint, and asked to be her student.
The old woman looked attentively at Lyudochka, then studied her unburdening documents, asked a little, then went with her to the city communal economy, where she registered Lyudochka for a job as a hairdresser's apprentice.
Gavrilovna took the student to live with her, setting simple conditions: help around the house, do not walk for more than eleven, do not take guys into the house, do not drink wine, do not smoke tobacco, obey the mistress in everything and honor her as your own mother. Instead of renting an apartment, let them bring a car of firewood from the timber industry.
As long as you become a student - live, but when you become a master, go to the hostel. God will give, and you will arrange life. - And, after a heavy pause, Gavrilovna added: - If you get knocked up, I'll drive you out of your place. I didn’t have children, I don’t like squeakers, besides, like all old masters, I toil with my feet. In the weather, I howl at night.
It should be noted that Gavrilovna made an exception to the rule. For some time now, she has been reluctant to let lodgers in general, and refused girls altogether.
Lived with her, long ago, under Khrushchev, two students from a financial college. In trousers, painted, smoking. As for smoking and everything else, Gavrilovna gave strict instructions without being blunt. The girls twisted their lips, but resigned themselves to the demands of everyday life: they smoked on the street, they came home on time, they didn’t play their music loudly, but they didn’t grind or wash the floor, they didn’t clean the dishes after themselves, they didn’t clean the restroom. It would be nothing. But they constantly brought up Gavrilovna, they referred to the examples of outstanding people, they said that she did not live correctly.
And that would be nothing. But the girls did not really distinguish between their own and someone else's, then they would eat pies from a plate, then they would scoop out sugar from a sugar bowl, then they would wash out soap, they were in no hurry to pay the rent until you reminded ten times. And it could be tolerated. But they began to manage in the garden, not in the sense of weeding and watering, - they began to pluck what was ripe, without asking to use the gifts of nature. Once they ate the first three cucumbers from a steep dunghill with salt. Those cucumbers, the first, Gavrilovna, as always, grazed, groomed, kneeling in front of the ridge, on which she dragged manure in a backpack from the horse yard in winter, putting a check for him to the old robber, the lame Slyusarenko, talking to them, with cucumbers: “Well, grow, grow, gain courage, kids! Then we’ll take you in an okro-o-o-oshka-y, in an ok-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o way - and for them some water, lukewarm, under the sun in a barrel heated.
Why did you eat cucumbers? - Gavrilovna started to the girls.
What's wrong with that? Ate and ate. It's a pity, isn't it? We will buy you something at the market!
I don't need to-oh-oh what! This is what you need in-oh-oh what! .. For comfort. And I took care of cucumbers ...
For myself? You are selfish!
Who-who?
Selfish!
Well, would you...! - offended by an unfamiliar word, Gavrilovna made her last conclusion and swept the girls from the apartment.
An analysis of Astafiev's "Lyudochka" is given in this article. It will help to understand and better understand this story, written in 1987.
An analysis of Astafiev's "Lyudochka" will be useful to those who have to deal with this work as part of a university course, as well as to all thoughtful and inquisitive readers.
The story begins with the author's confession that he himself heard this story many years ago, but cannot forget it. The main character was born in the village of Vychugan. Her parents were collective farmers. The father eventually fell asleep. Lyudochka grew sluggish, often sick. When their father disappeared from their lives, they began to live freer and more vigorously. Soon the mother had a boyfriend who stayed with them to live.
Moving to the city
After school, her mother sent Lyudochka to the city to arrange her life. She spent her first night at the station. The next morning I went to the hairdresser - I got a perm, a manicure and persuaded the hairdresser to take her as a student.
Gavrilovna not only helped to draw up the documents, but also took me to live with her. Establishing strict rules in your home. Lyudochka lived obediently, but she did not go to school. When the allotted time passed, she could not pass the exam for the master. At the hairdresser, she worked as a cleaner, remained in this position, from time to time she cut the recruits and schoolchildren under the typewriter.
All household chores in Gavrilovna's house fell on her. The woman often had pain in her legs.
Road to work
Every time Lyudochka went to work by tram, and then she walked through the fading park of Vepeverze (carriage and locomotive depot). The park was dirty, most of the trees were dead, the park looked depressing.
But still, there were benches here, schoolchildren were running around, local punks were found. The punks were led by Artemka, nicknamed Soap. From time to time he came to Lyudochka to get a haircut, but she could not manage to cope with his whirlwinds. Artemka was impudent, as soon as the girl took up the scissors, he began to paw her. Once she even hit him on the head with a typewriter. I had to fill it with iodine, but the boyfriend became more careful. In addition, he ordered no one to touch her. Now she could walk through the park without fear.
Once Lyudochka went with him to the central park to dance. All around behaved defiantly and aggressively. The main character hid in a corner, trying to look out for her Artyom. Some kind of bastard began to stick to her. She had to fight back and run home.
At home, the girl helped Gavrilovna in everything. She made soap, ironed and washed, kept the house clean.
strekach
Another character of this story returns from the colony - the criminal Strekach. More like a narrow-eyed beetle. He began to engage in robbery while still at school. I have carried a knife with me since the seventh grade. Soon he cut someone and got registered with the police.
After an attempted rape, he received his first term. But even after that he did not calm down, he stole in the dachas. Since then, most of his life spent in the colonies. Local punks considered him an authority and their teacher.
One evening he languished without work until he accidentally noticed Lyudochka. Artyom tried to put in a good word for her, but Strekach did not listen to him. Courage came upon him. He grabbed the girl and began to sit on his knees. As a result, he threw me on a bench and raped me. All the punks were watching closely.
So that he would not be the only culprit, he forced the others to outrage Lyudochka. Seeing the torn body of the girl, Artyom at first wanted to cover her with a cloak, but she ran away from him, as if distraught. On the porch of Gavrilovna's house she fell, losing consciousness. She came to herself already on the old sofa, where she was dragged by a compassionate hostess. She did her best to comfort her little one.
Homecoming
Humiliated and trampled, Lyudochka decided to return home. By that time, only two houses remained in the whole village. In one of them lives her mother and stepfather. All other houses are boarded up.
Soon their only neighbor, grandmother Vychuganikha, died. She was the last of the village founders.
When Ludochka returned to the village, her mother immediately realized that grief had happened to her. But she took it calmly, they say, everyone needs to go through this. At the same time, she shared her joy - she is expecting a baby, already in her fourth month. Together with their boyfriend, they plan to sell the house and move to the village. It is clear that no one is going to live here, they want to sell the house for building materials.
Her stepfather turned out to be stern and gloomy, but a kind man. She learned that he spent his childhood in camps and exile, so now he sincerely rejoiced at various little things. She spontaneously wanted to see him, and then quickly packed up and returned to the city.
Death of Lyudochka
Gavrilovna warned her that Artyom was at the police station, and Strekach told her to tell the little girl to keep quiet. Otherwise, she will die, and the old woman will have a burnt hut. Therefore, the main character decides to move to a hostel. But there were no places there, and she temporarily stayed with her mistress. She began to teach her not to return in the dark through the park, but she did not listen. One day the guys caught her again, they scared her with the Strakach, pushing her to the same bench.
Realizing what they wanted, she took a razor out of her pocket, intending to cut off Strekacha's dignity. She learned about such a terrible revenge from a woman in a hairdresser. She behaved cheekily, regretting that among them there is no such an enviable gentleman as Strekach. The girl asked to go home to change, they let her go, warning her not to think of joking.
In her room, she put on an old dress. She returned to the park, in which she had noticed an old poplar for a long time. She threw a rope over a branch, tied a loop. After that, she put it on her neck, in her soul said goodbye to her family and friends, asked for forgiveness from God. Like all reclusive people, she was actually quite determined.
The guys who stayed in the park soon discovered her body.
Farewell to the main character
Lyudochka was buried in the city cemetery. Mother and Gavrilovna sobbed. Stepfather, after drinking a glass of vodka, went to the park, where he met the whole company.
He tore the cross off Strekach's neck and threw it into the bushes. Strekach took out a knife, but his stepfather only grinned and abruptly grabbed his hand. Dragged into the bushes and thrown into a ditch. The remaining punks fled, greatly frightened of his strength and courage.
Returning to Gavrilovna, he again drank vodka and went to the timber industry. Then they boarded the train and drove off. Lyudochka's mother asked to keep her unborn child, realizing that she had not saved her first daughter. In the end, she laid her head on the man’s shoulder, approached him so that he would hug her and warm her. In him, she felt the true male power.
Final piece
Meanwhile, in the local police, no one was able to get Artemka-Soap to confess to a terrible crime, or to testify against those who committed it. After issuing a stern warning, they let him go. Frightened by what he saw in the pre-trial detention center, he decided to give up his former life. First of all, he entered the communication school. He began to master the profession of an electrician, climb high-voltage poles and pull wires. Then he even got married, and four months later he was already cradling a child.
A small note appeared in the local newspaper on the state of morality in the city. She left at the end of the block, on the fourth page. But the story of Lyudochka and Strekach did not get into it. The fact is that the head of the local department of internal affairs was only two years away from retirement. Therefore, he did not want to spoil the statistics with an unpleasant incident in order to maintain a positive percentage of detection and prevention of crimes.
Both Lyudochka and Strekach, who did not leave any notes, witnesses or valuables after their death, were included in the register among other suicides who killed themselves for no known reason. So the authorities managed to hush up this story.
The main idea of the work
Literary analysis based on the story of V. Astafiev must begin with the main idea that the author laid down. In the center of the story are simple and defenseless people. This is a story about hopelessness and injustice, about indifference so shocking to many. The analysis of "Lyudochka" by Astafiev is based on the fact that the key idea is the existence of the so-called "bad truth".
The heroine is trying to escape from her provincial routine, to find happiness in the big city. But she still does not know that the metropolis is capable of destroying a person. The essence of the analysis of Astafiev's story "Lyudochka" lies in the fact that her idealized world is faced with a cruel reality. This led to tragic consequences.
The author pays great attention to the indifference of the surrounding people. In the analysis of "Lyudochka" by Viktor Astafiev, this should be given special attention. When everyone in the village is familiar and someone's grief concerns the majority, then in the city someone's misfortune simply goes unnoticed.
Theme of the story
In the analysis of "Lyudochka" by V.P. Astafiev, it should be noted that the author sees the main trouble in the very structure of life in a big city. He clearly demonstrates her squalor and selfishness. Urban, in the view of Astafiev, cynical and evil. A striking example is the hostess who rents an apartment to the main character.
Critics in reviews of V.P. Astafyev's story "Lyudochka" noted that the main theme is the pernicious influence of the city on a person, leading to the decomposition of his soul, when material needs come first.
The topic of rural poverty is also sharply raised, which forces local residents to seek a better life. An analysis of the work "Lyudochka" by Astafiev is impossible without an assessment of the economic situation surrounding the heroes. Collective farms are almost completely ruined, men drink, women grow rude every day. The authorities deliberately turn a blind eye to these problems. At the same time, against the backdrop of poverty, cheerful slogans are everywhere, promising a happy and well-fed life.
Problems of the story
When analyzing the problems of Astafiev's "Lyudochka", the modern reader will have many questions. First of all, the critical criminal situation in the city, where even the police bypass the ill-fated park. The youth is left to chance, the place of teachers of life is taken by yesterday's prisoners. The central problem of the story "Lyudochka" by Astafiev, the analysis of the work confirms this, is the criminalization and marginalization of young people.
This leads to another problem. Often people are forced to remain alone with crime. As a result, the society starts to become embittered. Therefore, the stepfather of the main character is forced to punish the rapist on his own, not hoping for fair justice.
In the analysis of Astafiev's "Lyudochka" it can also be noted that the author's country's withering is accompanied by an ecological crisis. The issues of saving the environment are becoming key. Human souls rot in a rundown park. Astafiev is sure that in a city with such an ecology, a person cannot be healthy either physically or morally.
One of the main troubles of the heroine is indifference. In the analysis of "Lyudochka" Astafiev, this is always noted. She does not receive support from loved ones, no one understands her grief. An acquaintance is not spared by either relatives or acquaintances. In addition, the work raises not only social, but also philosophical issues. Most of all, the writer is outraged not by the fact of rape, but by the reaction of those around him.
You fell like a stone.
I died under it.
Vl. Sokolov
Fifteen years ago, the author heard this story, and he does not know why, it lives in him and burns his heart. “Maybe it’s all about her depressing routine, her disarming simplicity?” It seems to the author that the heroine's name was Lyudochka. She was born in the small endangered village of Vychugan. Parents are collective farmers. The father drank himself from oppressive work, was fussy and dull. The mother was afraid for the unborn child, so she tried to conceive in a rare break from her husband's booze. But the girl, "bruised by the unhealthy flesh of her father, was born weak, sickly and whiny." She grew sluggish, like roadside grass, rarely laughed and sang, at school she did not go out of threes, although she was silently diligent. The father disappeared from the life of the family long ago and imperceptibly. Mother and daughter lived freer, better, more cheerful without him. From time to time, peasants appeared in their house, “one tractor driver from the neighboring timber industry, having plowed the garden, had a strong dinner, lingered all spring, grew into the economy, began to debug, strengthen and multiply it. He went to work on a motorcycle for seven miles, took a gun with him and often brought either a dead bird or a hare. “The guest did not treat Liu-daughter in any way: neither good nor bad.” He didn't seem to notice her. And she was afraid of him.
When Lyudochka finished school, her mother sent her to the city to improve her life, while she herself was going to move to the timber industry. “At first, the mother promised to help Ludochka with money, potatoes and whatever God would send - in old age, you see, she will help them.”
Lyudochka arrived in the city by train and spent the first night at the station. In the morning I came to the railway station hairdresser to get a perm, a manicure, I also wanted to dye my hair, but the old hairdresser advised against it: the girl already has weak hair. Quiet, but rustic dexterous, Lyudochka offered to sweep the hairdresser, diluted soap for someone, gave someone a napkin and by the evening found out all the local rules, ambushed an elderly hairdresser who advised her not to put on makeup, and asked to be her student.
Gavrilovna carefully examined Lyudochka and her documents, went with her to the city communal economy, where she registered the girl for a job as a hairdresser's apprentice, and took her to live with simple conditions: help around the house, do not go out for more than eleven, do not take guys into the house, do not drink wine, do not smoke tobacco, obey the mistress in everything and honor her as her own mother. Instead of renting an apartment, let them bring a car of firewood from the timber industry. “As a student you will be - live, but when you become a master, go to the hostel, God willing, and you will arrange life ... If you get knocked up, I will drive you out of your place. I didn’t have children, I don’t like squeakers ... ”She warned the tenant that she was tossing her feet in the rain and“ howling ”at night. In general, Gavrilovna made an exception for Lyudochka: for some time now she had not taken tenants, and even less so girls. Once, back in Khrushchev’s times, two students of a financial college lived with her: painted, in trousers ... they didn’t grind the floor, they didn’t wash the dishes, they didn’t distinguish between their own and others - they ate the master’s pies, sugar that grew in the garden. At the remark of Gavrilovna, the girls called her "selfish", and she, not understanding the unknown word, cursed them after their mother and kicked them out. And from that time on, she only let guys into the house, quickly accustomed them to the household. She even taught two, especially intelligent ones, how to cook and how to operate a Russian oven.
Gavrilovna let Liudochka go because she recognized in her her village relatives, not yet spoiled by the city, and she began to be weary of loneliness in her old age. “If you fall down, there is no one to give water to.”
Lyudochka was an obedient girl, but her teaching was slow, the barber business, which seemed so simple, was given with difficulty, and when the appointed period of training had passed, she could not pass it to the master. In the hairdressing salon, Lyudochka also worked as a cleaner and remained on the staff, continuing her practice - she cut conscripts, schoolchildren under the typewriter, while she learned to do shaped haircuts “at home”, cutting the terrible fashionistas from the village of Vepeverze, where Gavrilovna’s house stood, to look like schismatics. She did hair on the heads of fidgety disco girls, like foreign hit stars, without taking any payment for it.
Gavrilovna sold all household chores, all household chores to Lyudochka. The old woman's legs were hurting more and more, and Lyudochka's eyes stung as she rubbed the ointment into the mangled legs of the hostess, who was finishing the last year until retirement. The smell from the ointment was so fierce, Gavrilovna's cries were so heartbreaking that the cockroaches fled to the neighbors, the flies died to the last. Gavrilovna complained about her work, which made her an invalid, and then consoled Lyudochka that she would not be left without a piece of bread, having learned to be a master.
For help with housework and care in old age, Gavrilovna promised Lyudochka to make a permanent residence permit, register a house for her, if the girl would continue to behave modestly, look after the hut, yard, bend her back in the garden and look after her, the old woman, when she was completely debilitated.
From work, Lyudochka rode a tram, and then walked through the dying Vepeverze park, humanly - a car-locomotive depot park, planted in the 30s and ruined in the 50s. Someone decided to lay a pipe through the park. They dug a ditch, laid a pipe, but forgot to bury it. A black pipe with bends lay in the steamed clay, hissing, soaring, seething with a hot burdock. Over time, the pipe became clogged, and a hot river flowed overhead, circling rainbow-colored rings of fuel oil and various debris. The trees dried up, the foliage flew around. Only poplars, gnarled, with broken bark, with horned branches at the top, leaned their paws of roots on the earth's firmament, grew, littered the fluff and in autumn dropped leaves showered with tree scabies around.
A footbridge with a railing was thrown over the ditch, which was broken every year and renewed again in the spring. When steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locomotives, the pipe was completely clogged, and a hot mess of mud and fuel oil still flowed through the ditch. The shores were overgrown with all kinds of bad forests, in some places there were stunted birches, mountain ash and lindens. Fir trees also made their way, but they did not go beyond infancy - they were cut down for the New Year by the quick-witted inhabitants of the village, and the pines were plucked by goats and all lascivious cattle. The park looked like “after the bombing or the invasion of the fearless enemy cavalry”. There was a constant stench all around, puppies, kittens, dead piglets and everything that burdened the inhabitants of the village were thrown into the ditch.
But people cannot exist without nature, so there were reinforced concrete benches in the park - the wooden ones were instantly broken. Children ran in the park, there were punks who had fun playing cards, drinking, fighting, “sometimes to death”. “They also had girls here ...” Artyomka-soap, with a foamy white head, led the riffraff. No matter how much Lyudochka tried to subdue the rags on Artyomka's violent head, nothing worked out for her. His “curls, from a distance resembling soap suds, turned out to be sticky horns from the station cafeteria - they boiled them, threw them in a lump into an empty plate, so they stuck together, unbearably and lay. Yes, and not for the sake of a hairstyle, a guy came to Lyudochka. As soon as her hands became busy with scissors and a comb, Artemka began to grab her in different places. Lyudochka at first dodged Artyomka's grasping hands, and when it didn't help, she hit him on the head with a typewriter and hit him until he bled, so they had to pour iodine on the head of the “gentleman”. Artyomka hooted and whistled for air. Since then, “he stopped his hooligan harassment”, moreover, he ordered the punks not to touch Lyudochka.
Now Lyudochka was not afraid of anyone or anything, she walked from the tram to her house through the park at any hour and at any time of the year, responding to the greeting of the punks with her “own smile”. Once the ataman-soap “moored” Lyudochka to the central city park to dance in a paddock that looked like an animal.
“In the menagerie, people behaved like animals... The herd raged, raged, creating bodily shame and delirium out of dances... Music, helping the herd in demoniac and savagery, beat in convulsions, crackled, hummed, rumbled with drums, moaned, howled.”
Lyudochka was frightened by what was happening, huddled in a corner, looking for Artyomka with her eyes to intercede, but “the soap was lathered in this bubbling gray foam.” Lyudochka was snatched into a circle by a dude, began to be impudent, she barely fought off her gentleman and ran home. Gavrilovna admonished the “stayer” that if Lyudochka “passes on the master, decides on a profession, she will find a suitable working guy for her without any dancing - more than one punk lives in the world ...”. Gavrilovna assured me that dancing was nothing but disgrace. Lyudochka agreed with her in everything, believed that she was very lucky with a mentor who had rich life experience.
The girl cooked, washed, scrubbed, whitewashed, dyed, washed, ironed, and it was not a burden for her to keep the house completely clean. But if she gets married, she can do everything, she can be an independent mistress in everything, and her husband will love and appreciate her for this. Lyudochka often lacked sleep, felt weak, but that's okay, it can be overcome.
That sometimes a famous person called Strekach returned from places not at all remote to everyone in the district. In appearance, he also resembled a black narrow-eyed beetle, however, under his nose, instead of tentacles-whiskers, Strekach had some kind of dirty blotch, with a smile resembling a grin, spoiled teeth were exposed, as if made from cement crumbs. Vicious since childhood, he was still at school engaged in robbery - he took away “silver pieces, gingerbread”, chewing gum from the kids, he especially liked it in a “shiny wrapper”. In the seventh grade, Strekach was already carrying a knife, but he didn’t have to take anything from anyone - “the small population of the village brought him tribute, like a khan, everything he ordered and wanted.” Soon, Strekach cut someone with a knife, he was registered with the police, and after an attempt to rape the postwoman, he received the first term - three years with a suspended sentence. But Strekach did not calm down. He smashed the neighboring dachas, threatened the owners with a fire, so the owners of the dachas began to leave drinks, snacks with a wish: “Dear guest! Drink, eat, rest - just, for God's sake, don't set fire to anything!" Strekach lived almost the whole winter, but then they took him, he sat down for three years. Since then, he found himself “in labor camps, from time to time arriving in his native village, as if on a well-deserved vacation. The local punks then followed Strekach like a tug, gaining mind-reason”, considering him a thief in law, but he did not disdain, in a small way he pinched his team, playing either cards or a thimble. “Anxious life then, and without that, always in anxiety for the residing population of the village of Veperveze. That summer evening, Strekach was sitting on a bench, drinking expensive cognac and toiling about. The punks promised: "Don't freak out. Here the masses will fall down from the dance, we will hire chicks for you. As much as you want ..."
Victor Astafiev
You fell like a stone.
I died under it.
Vl. Sokolov
A story told in passing, heard in passing, fifteen years ago.
I never saw her, that girl. And I don't see it anymore. I don't even know her name, but for some reason it popped into my head - her name was Lyudochka. "What's in a name? It will die like a sad noise…” And why do I remember this? So many events have happened in fifteen years, so many people were born and so many people died a natural death, so many died at the hands of villains, drank alcohol, got poisoned, burned down, got lost, drowned ...
Why does this story, quietly and apart from everything else, live in me and burn my heart? Maybe the whole point is in its depressing routine, in its disarming simplicity?
Lyudochka was born in a small, dying village called Vychugan. Her mother was a collective farmer, her father was a collective farmer. Father, from early oppressive work and long-standing, inveterate drunkenness, was frail, frail, fussy and dull. The mother was afraid that her child would not be born a fool, tried to conceive him in a rare break from her husband's drunkenness, but still the girl was bruised by her father's unhealthy flesh and was born weak, sickly and whiny.
She grew up like sluggish, roadside grass, played little, seldom sang and smiled, at school she did not go out of threes, but she was silently diligent and did not sink to solid twos.
Lyudochka's father disappeared from life long ago and imperceptibly. Mother and daughter lived freer, better and more cheerful without him. Muzhiks used to visit my mother, sometimes they drank, sang at the table, stayed overnight, and one tractor driver from the neighboring timber industry, having plowed the garden, had a strong dinner, lingered all spring, grew into the economy, began to debug, strengthen and multiply it. He traveled seven miles to work on a motorcycle, at first he carried a gun with him and often threw crumpled, feather-dropping birds out of his backpack on the floor, sometimes he took out a hare by its yellow paws and, having stretched it on nails, deftly skinned it. For a long time afterwards, a skin with a white rim and red, star-shaped spots scattered on it hung over the stove, so long that it began to break, and then the wool was sheared from the skins, spun together with linen thread, knitted shaggy shalyushki.
The guest did not treat Lyudochka in any way, neither good nor bad, did not scold her, did not offend her, did not reproach her piece, but she was still afraid of him. He lived, she lived in the same house - and nothing more. When Lyudochka finished ten grades at school and became a girl, her mother told her to go to the city - to get settled, since she had nothing to do in the village, she and herself - her mother stubbornly did not call the guest the owner and father - were getting ready to move to the timber industry. At first, the mother promised to help Ludochka with money, potatoes and whatever God would send - in old age, you see, she will help them.
Lyudochka arrived in the city by train and spent the first night at the station. In the morning she went to the railway station hairdresser and, after sitting in line for a long time, brought herself into an urban look for even longer: she did a perm and a manicure. She also wanted to dye her hair, but the old hairdresser, herself dyed like a copper samovar, advised against: they say, your hair is “me-a-ah-kankia, fluffy, little head, like a dandelion - from chemistry, the hair will break, it will begin to crumble.” Lyudochka agreed with relief - she didn't want to put on make-up as much as she wanted to be in a hairdresser's, in this warm, cologne-scented room.
Quiet, seemingly rustic, but agile in a peasant way, she offered to sweep the hair on the floor, diluted soap for someone, handed a napkin to someone, and in the evening found out all the local rules, guarded at the exit to the hairdresser's aunt called Gavrilovna, who advised her to paint, and asked to be her student.
The old woman looked attentively at Lyudochka, then studied her unburdening documents, asked a little, then went with her to the city communal economy, where she registered Lyudochka for a job as a hairdresser's apprentice.
Gavrilovna took the student to live with her, setting simple conditions: help around the house, do not walk for more than eleven, do not take guys into the house, do not drink wine, do not smoke tobacco, obey the mistress in everything and honor her as your own mother. Instead of renting an apartment, let them bring a car of firewood from the timber industry.
As long as you become a student - live, but when you become a master, go to the hostel. God will give, and you will arrange life. - And, after a heavy pause, Gavrilovna added: - If you get knocked up, I'll drive you out of your place. I didn’t have children, I don’t like squeakers, besides, like all old masters, I toil with my feet. In the weather, I howl at night.
It should be noted that Gavrilovna made an exception to the rule. For some time now, she has been reluctant to let lodgers in general, and refused girls altogether.
Lived with her, long ago, under Khrushchev, two students from a financial college. In trousers, painted, smoking. As for smoking and everything else, Gavrilovna gave strict instructions without being blunt. The girls twisted their lips, but resigned themselves to the demands of everyday life: they smoked on the street, they came home on time, they didn’t play their music loudly, but they didn’t grind or wash the floor, they didn’t clean the dishes after themselves, they didn’t clean the restroom. It would be nothing. But they constantly brought up Gavrilovna, they referred to the examples of outstanding people, they said that she did not live correctly.
And that would be nothing. But the girls did not really distinguish between their own and someone else's, then they would eat pies from a plate, then they would scoop out sugar from a sugar bowl, then they would wash out soap, they were in no hurry to pay the rent until you reminded ten times. And it could be tolerated. But they began to manage in the garden, not in the sense of weeding and watering, - they began to pluck what was ripe, without asking to use the gifts of nature. Once they ate the first three cucumbers from a steep dunghill with salt. Those cucumbers, the first, Gavrilovna, as always, grazed, groomed, kneeling in front of the ridge, on which she dragged manure in a backpack from the horse yard in winter, putting a check for him to the old robber, the lame Slyusarenko, talking to them, with cucumbers: “Well, grow, grow, gain courage, kids! Then we’ll take you in an okro-o-o-oshka-y, in an ok-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o way - and for them some water, lukewarm, under the sun in a barrel heated.
Why did you eat cucumbers? - Gavrilovna started to the girls.
What's wrong with that? Ate and ate. It's a pity, isn't it? We will buy you something at the market!
I don't need to-oh-oh what! This is what you need in-oh-oh what! .. For comfort. And I took care of cucumbers ...
For myself? You are selfish!
Who-who?
Selfish!
Well, would you...! - offended by an unfamiliar word, Gavrilovna made her last conclusion and swept the girls from the apartment.
Since then, she allowed only boys, most often students, to live in the house, and quickly brought them into God's appearance, taught them how to manage the house, wash floors, cook, and wash. She even taught two of the smartest guys from the Polytechnic Institute how to cook and how to operate a Russian stove. Gavrilovna let Lyudochka in because she guessed in her village relatives, not yet spoiled by the city, and she became weary of loneliness, she would fall down - there was no one to give water, and that she gave a strict warning without leaving the cash register, how could it be otherwise? Just dismiss them, today's youth, give them a weak spot, they will immediately seize them and ride you wherever they want.
Lyudochka was an obedient girl, but her studies were slow, the barber business, which seemed so simple, was given to her with difficulty, and when the appointed period of training had passed, she could not pass on the master. At the hairdresser's, she earned extra money as a cleaner and remained in the state, continued her practice - she cut the heads of pre-conscripts with a machine, cut schoolchildren with electric scissors, leaving a ponytail over her forehead on her bare head. She learned to do shaped haircuts “at home”, she cut the scary fashionistas from the village of Vepeverze, where Gavrilovna’s house stood, to look like schismatics. She did hair on the heads of fidgety disco girls, like foreign hit stars, without taking any payment for it.
Gavrilovna, sensing a weakness in the character of the lodger, sold all household chores, all household chores to the girl. The old woman's legs hurt more and more, the veins on the calves protruded, lumpy, black. Lyudochka's eyes stung as she rubbed the ointment into the mangled legs of the hostess, who was working the last year until retirement. Mazi te Gavrilovna called "bonbeng", also "mamzin". The smell from them was so fierce, the cries of Gavrilovna were so heartbreaking that the cockroaches fled to the neighbors, the flies died to the last.
In fact, she, our worker, and, in fact, she, a beauty of a human, how rich! - having calmed down, Gavrilovna expressed herself in the darkness. - Look, rejoice, although you are stupid, but you will become some kind of master ... What drove you out of the village?
Lyudochka endured everything: the ridicule of her girlfriends, who had already become masters, and the homelessness of the city, and her loneliness, and Gavrilovna's good manners, who, however, did not hold evil, did not drive her out of the apartment, although her stepfather did not bring the promised firewood machine. Moreover, for patience, diligence, for help around the house, for use in sickness, Gavrilovna promised to give Ludochka a permanent residence permit, register a house for her, if she continues to behave in the same modest way, look after the hut, yard, bend her back in the garden and keep an eye on her, the old woman, when she becomes completely paralyzed.
