The hero of the story, on whose behalf the narrative is conducted, a young poet who worked after the institute in the editorial office of a Central Russian youth newspaper, was fired for manifestations of excessive criticality and independence. Not too saddened by this and having spent the farewell night with friends, he went to Moscow to move from there to the south, to his homeland, to the blessed Abkhazian city of Muhus. In Moscow, he managed to print a poem in a central newspaper, and it went home as a business card of the hero, hoping to get a job in the republican newspaper Red Subtropics. “Yes, yes, we have already read,” the editor of the newspaper Avtandil Avtandilovich said at the meeting. The editor is accustomed to catching the trends from the center. “By the way,” he continued, “do you think you should go home?” So the hero became an employee of the agricultural department of the newspaper. As well as dreamed. In those reformist years,
reforms were particularly active in agriculture, and the hero wanted to understand them. He got on time – the company was just on the “goatting” of the republic’s agriculture. And its chief propagandist was Platon Samsonovich, the head of the agricultural department of the newspaper, a quiet and peaceful man in his life, but in those weeks and months he was feverishly excited, with a gloomy glint in his eyes. About two years ago he published a note about a breeder who crossed a mountain tour with a domestic goat. As a result, the first gantry appeared. Suddenly, a responsible person from the center, resting by the sea, paid attention to the note. An interesting undertaking, by the way, was the historical words that were dropped by him after reading the notes. These words became the title of a half-strip essay in a newspaper devoted to the goat, which, perhaps, is destined to occupy a worthy place in the national economy. After all, as it was said in the article, it is twice as heavy as a normal goat, it is distinguished by high wooliness and high jumping, which facilitates its grazing on mountain
slopes. So it began. The collective farms were urged to support the undertaking by deed. In the newspaper there were rubrics regularly covering the problems of gambling. The campaign was gaining momentum. Finally, our hero is connected to work – the newspaper sends him to the village of Orekhovy Klyuch, where an anonymous signal came from the persecution that the unfortunate animal is subjected to by the new collective farm administration. On the way to the village from the window of the bus the hero looks at the mountains in which his childhood passed. He suddenly feels sad for those times, when the goats were still goats, and not goats, and the warmth of human relations, their intelligence was firmly held by the very way of village life. The reception given to him in the collective farm administration slightly embarrassed the hero. Without stopping from the phone, the collective farm chairman ordered the employee in Abkhazian: “Find out from this lazy fellow what he needs.” In order not to put the chairman in an uncomfortable position, the hero was forced to hide his knowledge of the Abkhaz. As a result, he became acquainted with two versions of the relationship of collective farmers with a goat. The version in Russian looked quite good: they picked up the initiative, created the conditions, developed their own feeding ration, and in general this, of course, is an interesting undertaking, but not for our climate. But the fact that the hero saw himself and that he heard in Abkhazian, looked different. Kozlotur, to which goats have been launched, resolutely refused his main business at the moment – reproduction of his own kind, – he rushed wildly at the unfortunate goats and horned them over the corral. “Hate it!” – enthusiastically exclaimed the chairman in Russian. And in Abkhazian way he ordered: “Enough! Or else this bastard will perekalechit our goats.” The driver of the same chairman, also in Abkhazian, added: “So I ate it at the funeral of the one who thought it up!” The only person who favorably treated the goat was Vakhtang Bochua, a friend of the hero, a harmless rogue and rhetorician, as well as a certified archaeologist who was visiting collective farms with lectures about the goat. “Personally, I’m attracted to his wooliness,” Vakhtang said confidentially, “I have to cut the gaiters, which I do.” The hero was in a difficult situation – he tried to write an article that would contain the truth and at the same time fit for his newspaper. “You wrote an article harmful to us,” said Avtandil Avtandilovich, getting acquainted with what happened to our hero. “It contains a revision of our line.” I translate you to the department of culture. ” Thus ended the hero’s participation in the reform of agriculture. Platon Samsonovich continued to develop and deepen his ideas, he decided to cross the goat with the Tajik woolen goat. And then a news broke about an article in the central newspaper, where ridiculous innovations in agriculture were ridiculed, including gambling. The editor assembled the editorial staff in his office. It was assumed that it would be a question of recognizing the editorial office of its erroneous line, but as the text of the installation article delivered to the editor of the editorial text was delivered, the editor’s voice crept and filled with almost prosecutor’s pathos, and it seemed that it was he, Avtandil Avtandilovich, who first noticed and boldly revealed the vicious line of the newspaper. Platon Samsonovich was severely reprimanded and demoted. However, when it became known that after the incident, Platon Samsonovich slightly ill, the editor arranged him for treatment in one of the best sanatoria. And the newspaper began an equally vigorous and inspired struggle against the consequences of the gambling. that after the incident Platon Samsonovich slightly numb, the editor arranged him for treatment in one of the best sanatoria. And the newspaper began an equally vigorous and inspired struggle against the consequences of the gambling. that after the incident Platon Samsonovich slightly numb, the editor arranged him for treatment in one of the best sanatoria. And the newspaper began an equally vigorous and inspired struggle against the consequences of the gambling.
… At the agricultural meeting held in Mukhus in those days, the hero again met the chairman from the Walnut Key. “Are you glad?” asked the hero of the chairman. “It’s a very good undertaking,” the chairman began cautiously, “I’m afraid of one thing, since the goat was canceled, so something new will happen.” “You are afraid in vain,” the hero reassured him. However, it was only partly true. Recovering and gaining strength after treatment in the sanatorium Platon Samsonovich shared with the hero his new discovery – he discovered in the mountains some absolutely incredible cave with the most original coloring of stalactites and stalagmites, and if you build a cable car there, tourists from all over the world will be brought down by thousands in this an underground palace, in this fairy tale of Scheherazade. Platon Samsonovich did not sober the reasonable remark of the hero that there are thousands of such caves in the mountains. “
