Summary of “Compromise”
The protagonist of the story is a journalist who was left without work. At the moment, he watches the newspaper clippings he collected over the last ten years. These ten years were years of pretense and lies, and now, looking through the yellowed sheets, he read texts that can be called compromises, but in reality he saw for each of them real fates, conversations and events. We were in the seventies. In those years, the journalist lived in Tallinn.
The hero lists the countries that took part in the scientific conference, but when he finished, he begins to listen to accusations of political shortsightedness from his editor. As it turns out, the first to be listed are the countries of victorious socialism, and only then – the rest. Having received two rubles for the information, the author was angry that he was counting on three.
By itself, the background of the newspaper “Wind Rivals”, which tells of the Tallinn Hippodrome, was a bit pathos and, undoubtedly,
For the newspaper “Evening Tallinn” in the “Estonian Dictionary”, our hero composes entertaining children’s poems, in which the little animal in Estonian responds to a greeting, spoken in Russian.
Our hero goes to the hospital, he needs to make a report about the birth of a four hundred thousand newborn in Tallinn. Having reached the place, he calls the editor and on the phone reports the situation: an infant was born, whose mother is Estonian, and the father is from Ethiopia, but this variant is rejected. The next kid who saw this world was the son of a Jew, and again the editor rejects the option. Finally, the Estonian and the Russian party member
In one of the Estonian newspapers, a telegram was published, the author of which was a milkmaid, and she was intended for Brezhnev. The content was unsophisticated – the milkmaid reported on high results in milk yield and on her admission to the party. A response telegram from Leonid Ilyich was published nearby. Our hero recalls that to write this telegram, his and Zhkanokov’s photocorera were sent to one of the district party committees. The first secretary himself accepted journalists and two pretty girls were put to them, who were ready at any moment to fulfill any of their wishes. The rivers of alcohol were in addition to the general picture. Undoubtedly, the seconded reporters did not refuse and took advantage of the situation. They saw the milkmaid herself in passing, and the telegram was written during a break in the cultural program.
The next article, which came to the attention of our hero was called “The most difficult distance,” was written about the sportswoman and the Komsomol member, who later became a member of the party – the scientist Tiina Karu. The heroine of the article asked our hero that he would help her somehow to be liberated in a sexual way. However, the hero refuses, then she is interested in friends and when the candidate was picked up, Tiina becomes a happy and capable student. For this, she gave the hero a bottle of whiskey, with which he composed the article on morals.
The next article was called “They prevent us from living” was about the one who got into the medical sobering-up station of Bushe, who was an employee of the republican press. He himself was a talented person, however he liked to drink and did not tolerate compromises with his superiors, but he was popular with elderly and beautiful women. Once he interviewed the captain of a West German ship, which, as it later turned out, turns out to be a former traitor and a runaway Estonian. Arriving KGB officers suggest to Bush to testify that the captain is a pervert. However, Bush refuses and the colonel tells him that he was better than they expected, but after Bush is fired. After that he does not get a job, but lives next to his mistresses. They are settled by our hero. At one of the parties in the office, they invited Bush, too, because he was considered a freelance correspondent. In the evening, when everyone got drunk, he makes a scandal, and kicks a tray of coffee, which was carried by the wife of the editor-in-chief. He told our hero later that he could not do otherwise, after he heard so many lies from everyone.
Flipping through the notes, the hero suddenly meets an article titled “Tallinn says goodbye to Hubert Ilves.” When he began reading this obituary about the deceased director of the television studio, the hero remembers only the hypocrisy of those who attended the funeral of this hypocritical careerist. All the black humor is that because of the confusion in the morgue, an ordinary person was buried in a privileged cemetery. However, the ceremony was brought to the finals, and at night they just wanted to change the coffins.
The next note on which the look stops is “Memory is a formidable weapon!”. It was a report from a gathering of former prisoners of the fascist death camps. At the meeting, our hero was seconded along with Zhbankov – known to us photocor. When the veterans talked at the banquet after a few glasses, it turns out that not everyone was sitting in Dachau. There were many small and such native names: Kazakhstan, Mordovia. However, disassembly begins on a national basis, as well, clarifying who is who. The situation is discharged when drunk Zhbankov tried to put a basket of flowers on the window sill, to which our hero notices that this is a rather chic bouquet. Zhbankov then said that it was not a bouquet, but a wreath.
On this word the author decided to say goodbye to journalism and said to himself: “Enough!”
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