Summary “To you greetings from the woman Lera” Vasilyeva
The author (narration is conducted on his behalf) gets to know the woman Lera in the summer of 1963. The old woman lives in an abandoned village with Anisya Polikarpovna – Anisha. Both women went through the Gulag before settling down together.
Anisya is prone to short drinking bouts. She treats new people with suspicion. If a person does not like it, she expels him. A few years after the acquaintance, the narrator introduces the women to the head of the regional department of culture Vladislav Vasilievich, who takes patronage over the old ladies.
In the two-story house of the woman Lera come the most diverse guests, only with the pioneers she meets outside the walls of the house. For Anisya, children are a taboo subject. She gave birth to six children in the camps, they were taken away several months after the birth, and she was sent to work in common.
Baba Lera – Kaleria Vikentevna Vologodova – was born in 1900 in the family of a royal dignitary.
Lera was the secretary of the twenty-three-year-old husband-commander. His division was famous for its iron discipline. Did not recognize it only commander of the cavalry brigade Egor Ivanovich. His relationship with the divisional commander did not go well until he rescued Alexei from the Petlyura circle.
Soon the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Defense Council (Chuso) arrived in the division of Alexei. While he was in combat units, he arrested and shot Chuso. Returning, Alex demanded to release everyone. He was supported by Yegor Ivanovich with his brigade, and Chuso had to obey. Having achieved the supreme power, chuso sentenced the forty-year-old commander Alexei to be shot without appeal.
Eighteen years, Lera spent in the camps, not knowing anything about the children. Belief in the party helped Lera not break. For the staunch spirit of Kaleria Wikentevna was honored even by “inveterate Blatnyachki,”
In 1956, Lera “came out of the underworld with an unshakable faith and indomitable spirit,” returned to Moscow and began to look for children. The search was unsuccessful. Only Anisya found Lera and took her to her home, to the Arkhangelsk region, where Kaleria Vikentevna Vologodova, a hereditary Russian intellectual, became a woman Lera.
Anisya Polikarpovna Demov was put in prison at 15, and released in 1958, allowed to live in his native land. Her native village of Demovo, once a rich, deserted. The chairman of the kolkhoz offered Anisye to guard the empty huts.
Many of the guys looked at her, but she chose the Komsomol member Mitya Peshneva. Once they returned home after the meeting of the cell. At first Mitya was gloomy, then he started talking about love and dragged Anisya into the forest. And the next day he brought her family an order for dekulakization and exile. Mitya knew about the order the day before.
On the spot of her house Anisya found the ashes. Old woman Makarovna – the only inhabitant of the village – told Anisie about Mitenka. He opened a village club in the Demovs’ house, married a skinny “city teacher”. The club was burnt, and Mitya and his wife were taken to the Gulag.
Deciding to repent, Makarovna told about the famine when for a loaf of bread and ten liters of kerosene were handed over to runaway convicts. And she handed over her brother Anisya, when he reached his native places. Anisya told her to leave, and she settled herself in the house of her relatives. A week later, the chairman brought food, clothing, kerosene and a tiny peasant Fedotych. He began to repair the old house, and so it remained with Anisya, who dreamed of home and family. When Fedotych drank all the money Anisya, she nearly drowned the old man, the woman Lera persuaded her “death penalty expulsion”.
Baba Lera tells how she lost her way in the swamp and spent the whole night remembering her first meetings with Alexei. He was the best friend of her older brother, Cyril Junker. In the nineteenth year, Alexei’s division captured a group of white officers, among whom was her brother Cyril. The prisoners were shot. Lera did not blame her husband for the death of her brother – Alexei could not betray the idea.
This night, the woman Lera realized: faith can not be replaced by teaching, instead of religion, this generation needs faith in its homeland. She began to communicate with the pioneers, seeking to enthrall them with a new faith, but the eyes of the listeners remained cold. Anisya only visited Lera’s first meeting with the pioneers to support her.
The girlfriend was related to the hobby of Lera’s woman negatively. Anisya had her god, to whom she “complained, as the highest authority, to take measures and to stop the disgrace.” In August 1966, Anisha met a man at the mill with a thin, overgrown face and empty eyes, the Sinner. In his youth he was in the artel, digging the Kremlin’s graves for the sake of jewelry. In one of the graves there was a lead coffin with a young queen. After touching the air, the beauty disintegrated. Since then the Sinner has dreamed of a dead queen, and there is no rest for him. Anisya pitied her and called to live in the village of Demovo.
Once a thief climbed into a boarded up church. A young, educated man wanted to steal old icons. At the request of the woman, Lera’s boyfriend was released, and she took the icons herself.
The sinner, Vasily Trokhimenkov, settled with old women, helped with housework and fished. He was “extremely sullen and uncommunicative.” Watching him, Kaleria suddenly realized that he was also studying her.
Soon Vladislav Vasilievich (department head of culture, took patronage of a woman) brought Lera a few dozen icons. Gradually she unfolded the “whole museum”.
At the end of September, the Sinner had an epileptic seizure. Anisya undertook to nurse him. The sinner appreciated the kindness of Anisya and gradually began to thaw.
He told her that he grew up a homeless child, all relatives died of hunger in the Volga region. After the artel, the gravediggers “went into the teaching, at the factory,” got married. When he returned from the war, his wife died, he began to drink, his son went to prison, and his daughter went to work. After that, the queen began to imagine him in the coffin.
The Sinner also told the same story to Leroy, adding that he had at one time escorted the dekulakized. From Vladislav Baba Lera learned that the Sinner was born far from the Volga region. She began to look closely at the tenant.
Anisya and Trokhimenkov fell in love with each other. In the beginning of winter with the Sinner again there was an attack. Anisya hurried to the neighboring village, but the paramedic was not caught. To shorten the way back, she decided to cross the frozen stream. The ice was thin, and Anisya waist-deep in the water. Eight kilometers to the house, he ran with a severe infarction.
Trokhimenkov recovered from the bed of Anisya. Before her death, she managed to reach Lerina’s room, and died there. After the funeral Sinner confessed to the woman Lera that he served as the head of the camp, where she was sitting. The name changed, so that the woman Lera did not recognize him. After Stalin’s death, he was kicked out of the “bodies”, his father’s children began to hesitate, his wife died. He drank for a long time, and then decided to go through the suffering that other people were subjected to. I picked up the article for five years and went to the stage. When I got out of prison, I found a daughter-alcoholic, a granddaughter-a monster, with them did not stay – became a tramp.
After confessing, the Sinner went into a blizzard. Three months of the winter, the woman Lera lived alone, much older, but she remained unbending. In these lonely months, she recalled her mother, who suffered in a crush on the Khodynka field during the coronation of Nicholas II. She remained half-mad. The fact that his father was shot and his mother arrested, Lera found out when her husband was awarded the third Order of the Red Banner. Taking advantage of his authority, Alexei got a pass to the Solovetsky camp.
The date with the mother was the only one. After Lera came letters. Only when she was in the camp did she realize that her mother was shot in Solovki cellars right after that date, and letters were written before him.
In the summer, the woman Lera received guests and met with the pioneers. Vladislav has already found out for her the old woman-companion for the winter. On September 9, 1974, late at night, the author is awakened by a phone call, and Vladislav informs that the thief who was behind the icons killed the woman Leroux.
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