“Carpentry stories” Belov in summary


March 1966; Thirty-four-year-old engineer Konstantin Platonovich Zorin remembers how he, a native of the village, was humiliated by city bureaucrats and how he once hated everything rural. And now he is pulling back into his native village, so he came here on leave for twenty-four days, and he wants to heat the sauna every day, but his bath is too old, and to restore it alone, despite the carpentry leaven purchased at the FZO school, Zorin can not and therefore appeals for help to his neighbor, the old man Olesha Smolin, but only he does not hurry to get down to business, but instead tells Zorin about his childhood.

Olesha was born, like Christ, into a calf hut and just on Christmas Day. And the priest made him sin: he did not believe that Olesha had no sins, and painfully tore at his ears, so he decided to sin-he stole his father’s tobacco and started smoking. And then he repented. And as Olesha began to sin, it became easier to live, to stop at once stopped, but only went

into his life since then every mess…

The next day, Zorin and Smolin, taking the tools, are going to repair the bath. A neighbor passes by them, Aviner Pavlovich Kozonkov, a sinewy old man with lively eyes. Olesha plays Aviner, saying that the cow is allegedly unleavened and that he will remain without milk. Kozonkov, who does not understand humor, is angry and threatens Olesha, that he will write where it should go about the hay that Smolin has plucked without permission, and that the hay will be taken away from him. In response, Olesha says that Aviner, with the permission of the village council, mows in the cemetery – robbing the dead. Smolin and Kozonkov finally quarrel, but when Aviner leaves, Olesha notices: they’ve had arguments with Aviner all their lives. Since childhood. A friend can not live without a friend.

And Smolin begins to tell. Olesha and Aviner are of the same age. Somehow the boys made birds of clay and furcali – who’s next. And Aviner collected more clays, planted it on the willow twig and straight into Fedulenko’s window, and the glass splashed.

All, of course, run. Fedulenok – out of the house, and Vinya was alone in place and only said: “They ran in the field!” Well, Fedulenok rushed after them, and Olesha overtook him. Yes, and would have killed if it had not been for Oleshin’s father.

At the age of twelve Vinka and Olesha finished the parish school, so Vinka wrote down all the gates with the matyugami on his threshing floor – he had the handwriting as in the zemstvo superior, and tried to wrestle from Vinck’s work, even his father’s plow spoiled, if only the manure was not thrown into the furrow. And when his father was flogged for failing to pay taxes, Vinya ran to look, and even boasted: I saw, they say, like a ten-ruble, and he tied on logs tied… And then Olesha went to St. Petersburg. There the carpenters beat him hard, but they taught him how to work.

After a skirmish with Olesha Aviner in the bath does not show. Zorin, hearing that Anfei’s daughter came to Kozonkov, is going to visit. Aviner sings his six – or seven-year-old grandson with vodka, and himself, drunk, tells Zorin how he was a spoonful when he was young – he deceived everyone around and even pulled money out of the corners of the church he had just laid.

The next morning Olesha is not at the bath. Zorin goes to him and finds out that Olesha is required to go into the forest – to chop the ragged food. Only after dinner Zorin comes to repair the bath and begins to tell again. This time about the way Kozonkov wanted to marry, but the father did not want him to marry: on the Avinerovyh sledgeholes, rope wraps, so on the first grush, you see, the wrapping will burst…

Then Olesha tells about his love. Tanya, Fedulenko’s daughter, the braid was thick, below the waist. ears are white. And his eyes – not even his eyes, but two pools, then blue, then black. Well, Olesha was timid. And somehow in the Uspeniev day after the holiday, the men got drunk, and the boys slept on their sights near the girls. Vinka then pretended to be drunk, and Olesha began to ask for the canopy where Oleshin’s cousin and Tanya were going to sleep. Then the first cousin slipped into the hut: the samovar, they say, forgot to close it. And she did not go back – she was smart. And Olesha, all trembling with fear, went to Tanya, and she began to persuade him to leave… Olesha foolishly and went out into the street. I danced, and when already in the morning I went to the shed, I heard Vinka under the canopy of his Tanya. And how to kiss. A cousin, having mocked Olesha, said that Tanya had told him to find him, but only where to find? As if the age did not dance.

Olesha ends his story. A truck passes by, the driver insults Smolin, but Olesha only admires him: well done, you can see at once – not from the outside. Zorin, angry with both the driver and Smolin’s impudence, leaves without saying goodbye.

Kozonkov, coming to Smolin, tells how from the eighteenth year he became the right-hand man of Tabakov, the authorized financial department of the RIC. And he was pulling the bell off from the bell tower, and even from there he took a little need, from the bell tower. And in the small group of the poor, created to bring the kulaks to clean water and open a class war in the village, Aviner also participated. So now Comrade Tabakov, they say, lives on personal, and Kozonkov is wondering if he, too, can not be personal? So the documents are all collected… Zorin looks at the documents, but they are clearly not enough. Aviner complains that he sent, say, an application for personal in the district, but lost there: all around, there was one trickery and bureaucracy. And after all, Kozonkov, count, from the eighteenth year on supervising works – and the secretary in the village council, and the brigadier, two years “head matef worked, and then in selp” throughout the war loans were distributed. And he had a revolver. Once Kozonkov quarreled with Fedulenko – the revolver threatened, and then he did not want to be accepted into the collective farm: two cows, two samovars, a house for two. And then Fedulenko, as an individual, was taxed with such a tax… Aviner leaves. The house of Fedulenka, where the kolkhoz office was, looks empty, without frames, windows. And the pranced crow sits on the prince and is cold. She does not want to do anything.

Zorin’s vacation is coming to an end. Olesha works on conscience and therefore slowly. And he tells Zorin how they used to guide them, to work hard, to build roads, as they drove them to logging, then to rafting, and then they had to sow bread on the collective farm, but only four weeks later. Olesha remembers how they came to describe the property of Fedulenko. House – with a hammer. The whole family – in the link. When they said goodbye, Tanya to Olesha with all the people approached. Yes, how to cry… They were taken to Pechora, there were from them at first two or three letters, and then – no rumor or spirit. Olesha then Vinka Kozonkov kulak agitation attributed, and tormented Smolin strongly. And now Olesha does not dare to tell Zorin everything to the end – he’s after all “parteyny.”

The bathhouse is ready. Zorin wants to settle with Olesha, but he does not seem to hear. Then they steam up together. Zorin specifically for Olesha includes a transistor, both listen to “Fine miller” Schubert, and then Zorin gives a transistor Olesha.

Before leaving for Zorin, Olesha and Aviner come. After drinking, they begin to argue about collectivization. Olesha says that in the village there were not three layers – a fist, a poor man and a middle peasant, – but thirty-three, recalls how Kuzya Pereva recorded fists. And according to Aviner, Smolin himself should have followed Fedulenko – at the root: “You were a contra, there is a contra.” Comes to a fight. Aviner knocks on the wall with Oleshina’s head. Nastasya, Olesha’s wife, appears and takes him home. Aviner also leaves, saying: “I’m for discipline to my own brother… I will not regret my head… Will fly to the side!”

Zorin has the flu. He falls asleep, then gets up and, staggering, goes to Smolin. And there they sit and talk peacefully… Aviner and Olesha. Smolin says that they will both go to the same land, and asks for Aviner, if Olesha dies earlier, make him a tomb honorable – on the thorns. And Kozonkov asks Smolin about the same, if Olesha survives him. And then both of them, bowing their heads, quietly, harmoniously sing the ancient long song.

Zorin can not pull them up – he does not know a word of this song…


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“Carpentry stories” Belov in summary