The work is a sad detective story. Review of the novel by V.P.

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Victor Astafiev
Sad detective

Chapter 1

Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst mood. And although it was a long walk, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village, he did not get on the bus - even though his wounded leg was aching, but walking would calm him down and he would think about everything that was told to him at the publishing house, he would think about and decide how he should continue to live. and what to do.

Actually, there was no publishing house as such in the city of Veisk; a branch of it remained; the publishing house itself was transferred to a larger city and, as the liquidators probably thought, more cultural, with a powerful printing base. But this base was exactly the same as in Veisk - a decrepit legacy of old Russian cities. The printing house was located in a pre-revolutionary building made of strong brown brick, stitched with bars of narrow windows at the bottom and shaped curved windows at the top, also narrow, but already raised upward like an exclamation mark. Half of the building of the Wei printing house, where there were typesetting shops and printing machines, had long since sunk into the bowels of the earth, and although fluorescent lamps were stuck on the ceiling in continuous rows, it was still uncomfortable in the typesetting and printing shops, it was chilly and somehow all the time, as if in the blocked ears, there was a squeaking sound, or a delayed-action explosive mechanism buried in the dungeon was working.

The publishing department huddled in two and a half rooms, creakingly allocated by the regional newspaper. In one of them, enveloped in cigarette smoke, a local cultural luminary, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, twitched, squirmed on a chair, grabbed the phone, and littered with ashes, moving local literature forward and further. Syrokvasova considered herself the most knowledgeable person: if not in the whole country, then in Veisk she had no equal in intelligence. She made presentations and reports on current literature, shared plans for the publishing house through the newspaper, sometimes in newspapers, and reviewed books by local authors, inappropriately and inappropriately inserting quotes from Virgil and Dante, from Savonarola, Spinoza, Rabelais, Hegel and Exupery , Kant and Ehrenburg, Yuri Olesha, Tregub and Ermilov, however, she sometimes disturbed the ashes of Einstein and Lunacharsky, and did not ignore the leaders of the world proletariat.

Everything has long been decided with Soshnin’s book. Stories from it were published, albeit in thin, but metropolitan magazines, three times they were condescendingly mentioned in reviews critical articles, he stood “in the back of my head” for five years, got into the plan, established himself in it, all that remained was to edit and design the book.

Having set the time for a business meeting at exactly ten, Syrovasova arrived at the publishing house at twelve. Smelling Soshnin with tobacco, out of breath, she rushed past him along the dark corridor - someone had “stole” the light bulbs, and hoarsely said, “Sorry!” and crunched the key in the faulty lock for a long time, swearing in a low voice.

Finally, the door creaked angrily, and the old, tightly closed tile let a crack of gray, dull light into the corridor: it had been light rain outside for the second week, washing away the snow into mush, turning the streets and alleys into coils. Ice drift began on the river - in December!

His leg ached dully and continuously, his shoulder burned and dulled from a recent wound, fatigue pressed him, he was drawn to sleep - he couldn’t sleep at night, and again he saved himself with pen and paper. “This incurable disease is graphomania,” Soshnin grinned and seemed to doze off, but then the silence was shaken by a knock on the echoing wall.

- Galya! – Syrokvasova threw arrogantly into space. - Call this genius to me!

Galya is a typist, accountant and also a secretary. Soshnin looked around: there was no one else in the corridor, so he was the genius.

- Hey! Where are you here? – Opening the door with her foot, Galya stuck her short-cropped head out into the corridor. - Go. Name:

Soshnin shrugged his shoulders, straightened the new satin tie around his neck, and smoothed his hair to one side with his palm. In moments of excitement, he always stroked his hair - as a little boy, his neighbors and Aunt Lina stroked him a lot, so he learned to stroke himself. "Calmly! Calmly!" - Soshnin ordered himself and, coughing politely, asked:

- Can I come to you? “With the trained eye of a former operative, he immediately took in everything in Syrokvasova’s office: an antique chiseled bookcase in the corner; put on a turned wooden peak, a wet red fur coat, familiar to everyone in the city, hung humpbacked. The fur coat did not have a hanger. Behind the fur coat, on a planed but unpainted shelf, are the literary products of the united publishing house. In the foreground were several very well designed advertising and gift books in leather bindings.

“Take off your clothes,” Sirokvasova nodded at the old yellow wardrobe made of thick plank. - There are no hangers there, nails are driven in. “Sit down,” she pointed to the chair opposite her. And when Soshnin took off his cloak, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna irritably threw the folder in front of her, taking it out almost from under the hem.

Soshnin barely recognized the folder with his manuscript. Difficult creative path it has passed since he submitted it to the publishing house. With the gaze of the former operative, he noted that a kettle had been placed on it, and a cat was sitting on it; someone had spilled tea on the folder. If it's tea? Sirokvasova's prodigies - she has three sons from different creative producers - drew a dove of peace, a tank with a star and an airplane on the folder. I remember that he deliberately selected and saved the colorful daddy for his first collection of stories, made a little white sticker in the middle, and carefully wrote out the title, although not very original, with a felt-tip pen: “Life is more precious than anything else.” At that time he had every reason to assert this, and he carried the folder to the publishing house with a feeling of yet unknown renewal in his heart and a thirst to live, create, be useful people- this happens with all people who have been resurrected, who have climbed out of “from there.”

The little white sticker turned gray in five years, someone picked at it with a fingernail, maybe the glue was bad, but the festive mood and lightness in the heart - where is all this? He saw on the table a carelessly stored manuscript with two reviews, written on the fly by the lively local drunken thinkers who worked part-time for Syrovasova and saw the police, which was reflected in this colorful folder, most often in the sobering-up station. Soshnin knew how dearly human negligence costs every life, every society. Well, I got it. Firmly. Forever.

“Well, that means life is the most precious thing,” Syrokvasova pursed her lips and took a drag from her cigarette, became enveloped in smoke, quickly flipping through the reviews, repeating and repeating in thoughtful detachment: “More expensive than all... more expensive than all...

“I thought so five years ago.”

– What did you say? “Syrokvasova raised her head, and Soshnin saw flabby cheeks, sloppily blue eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows sloppily lined with dry paint - small black lumps stuck in the already callous, half-lost eyelashes and eyebrows. Syrokvasova is dressed in comfortable clothes - a kind of modern woman's overalls: a black turtleneck - does not need to be washed often, a denim sundress on top - does not need to be ironed.

– I thought so five years ago, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

– Don’t you think so now? “Sarcasm was evident in the appearance and words of Syrokvasova, rummaging through the manuscript as if through cabbage waste. – Are you disappointed in life?

- Not quite yet.

- That's how it is! Interesting, interesting! Commendable, commendable! Not really, then?..

“But she forgot the manuscript! She is gaining time to at least somehow, on the go, get to know her again. Curious how she will get out? Very interesting!” Soshnin waited without answering the editor’s last half-question.

“I don’t think we can have a long conversation.” And there’s no point in wasting time. Manuscript in plan. I’ll correct something here, bring your work into perfect shape, and give it to the artist. This summer, I imagine you'll be holding your first printed creation in your hands. If, of course, they give you the paper, if nothing happens at the printing house, if they don’t cut down on the plan, both te de and te pe. But this is what I would like to talk to you about for the future. Judging by the press, you continue to work stubbornly, you publish, although infrequently, but topically, and your topic is relevant - mi-lyceum!

– Human, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

– What did you say? It's your right to think so. And to be honest, you are still so far away from human, especially universal, problems! As Goethe said: “Unerreichbar wi der Himmel.” High and inaccessible, like the sky.

Somehow Soshnin did not come across such a statement from the great German poet. Apparently, in the vanity of life, Syrovasova confused Goethe with someone else or quoted him inaccurately.

“You haven’t yet really learned what a plot is, and without it, excuse me, your police stories are chaff, chaff from threshed grain.” And the rhythm of prose, its, so to speak, quintessence is sealed under seven seals. There is also a form, an ever-renewing, mobile form...

– I know what form is.

– What did you say? – Syrokvasova woke up. During an inspired sermon, she closed her eyes, scattered ashes onto the glass, under which were the drawings of her brilliant children, a crumpled photograph of a visiting poet who hanged himself while drunk in a hotel three years ago and for this reason ended up in the fashionable, almost holy ranks of deceased personalities. Ashes littered the hem of the sundress, the chair, the floor, and even the ashen-colored sundress, and the whole of Syrovasova seemed to be covered with ashes or the decay of time.

“I said I know the form.” Wore it.

– I didn’t mean the police uniform.

– I didn’t understand your subtlety. Sorry. – Leonid stood up, feeling that rage was beginning to overwhelm him. - If you no longer need me, I will allow myself to take my leave.

“Yes, yes, if you please,” Syrokvasova was a little confused and switched to a businesslike tone: “They will write out an advance for you in the accounting department.” Sixty percent right away. But money is, as always, bad for us.

- Thank you. I receive a pension. I have enough.

- Pension? At forty years old?!

– I’m forty-two, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna.

– What age is this for a man? “Like any eternally irritated female creature, Syrokvasova caught herself, wagged her tail, and tried to change her caustic tone to half-joking confidence.

But Soshnin did not accept the change in her tone, bowed, and wandered into the darkened corridor.

“I’ll hold the door open so you don’t get killed!” – Syrokvasova shouted after her.

Soshnin did not answer her, but went out onto the porch and stood under the canopy, decorated along the rim with ancient wooden lace. They are crumbled by bored hands, like rye gingerbread. Raising the collar of his insulated police raincoat, Leonid pulled his head into his shoulders and stepped under the silent pillowcase, as if into a sinkhole desert. He walked into a local bar, where regular customers greeted him with an approving roar, took a glass of cognac, drank it in one fell swoop and walked out, feeling his mouth go stale and his chest warm. The burning sensation in his shoulder seemed to be erased by the warmth, but he seemed to have gotten used to the pain in his leg, perhaps he had simply come to terms with it.

“Should I have another drink? No, don’t,” he decided, “I haven’t done this for a long time, I’ll still get drunk...”

He walked through his hometown, from under the visor of his wet cap, as his service had taught him, he habitually noted what was happening around him, what stood, walked, and drove. Black ice slowed down not only movement, but also life itself. People sat at home, they preferred to work under the roof, it was pouring from above, it was squelching everywhere, it was flowing, the water did not run in streams or rivers, but somehow colorless, solid, flat, unorganized: it lay, swirled, overflowed from puddle to puddle, from crack to gap. Covered trash was revealed everywhere: paper, cigarette butts, soggy boxes, cellophane flapping in the wind. Crows and jackdaws clung to black linden trees and gray poplars, they moved, another bird was dropped by the wind, and it immediately blindly and heavily clung to a branch, sleepily, with an senile grumbling, rested on it and, as if choking on a bone, cackled and fell silent.

And Soshnin’s thoughts, matching the weather, slowly, thickly barely moved in his head, did not flow, did not run, but rather sluggishly moved, and in this movement there was no distant light, no dreams, only anxiety, only concern: how to continue to live?

It was absolutely clear to him: he had served in the police and fought for himself. Forever! The usual line, well-worn, single-track - exterminate evil, fight criminals, provide peace for people - suddenly, like a railway dead end, near which he grew up and spent his childhood “as a railway worker”, broke off. The rails are over, the sleepers that connect them are gone, there is no direction beyond that, there is no path, then all the land is right behind the dead end - go in all directions, or turn around in place, or sit on the last one in the dead end, cracked with time, already and a weathered sleeper, not sticky from impregnation, and, immersed in thought, they dozed or shouted at the top of their voices: “I’ll sit at the table and think about how a lonely person can live in the world...”

How can a lonely person live in the world? It is difficult to live in the world without the usual service, without work, even without government-issued ammunition and a canteen; you even have to worry about clothes and food, somewhere to wash, iron, cook, wash dishes.

But this is not the main thing, the main thing is how to be and live among a people who have been divided for a long time into a criminal world and a non-criminal world. Criminal, he is still familiar and one-sided, but this one? What is it like in its diversity, in its crowd, bustle and constant movement? Where? For what? What are his intentions? What is your temper? “Brothers! Take me! Let me in!” – Soshnin wanted to shout at first, as if in jest, to make a habitual joke, but then the game ended. And it was revealed, the everyday life came close, its everyday life, oh, what everyday life they are, everyday life for people.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market to buy apples, but near the market gate with lopsided plywood letters on an arc: “Welcome,” a drunken woman nicknamed Urna was squirming and getting attached to passers-by. For her toothless, black and dirty mouth she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some kind of isolated creature with a blind, half-insane craving for drunkenness and disgrace. She had a family, a husband, children, she sang in an amateur performance at a railway recreation center near Mordasova - she drank everything away, lost everything, and became a shameful landmark in the city of Veisk. They didn’t take her to the police anymore, even in the reception center of the Internal Affairs Directorate, which was popularly called the “scourge”, and in the old rough times was called a prison for tramps, they didn’t keep her, they drove her out of the sobering-up center, they didn’t take her to a nursing home, because she was old only in appearance. She behaved in public places shamefully, ashamedly, with an insolent and vindictive defiance towards everyone. It is impossible and there is nothing to fight with the Urn; even though she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, she did not die or freeze.

A-ah, my vesse-olai laughter
Always a success... -

Urn screamed hoarsely, and the drizzle, the frozen spatiality did not absorb her voice, nature seemed to separate and push away its fiend. Soshnin walked past the market and the Urn. Everything just flowed, floated, oozed with brainy emptiness across the earth, across the sky, and there was no end to the gray light, the gray earth, the gray melancholy. And suddenly, in the middle of this hopeless, gray planet, there was a revival, talking and laughter were heard, a car cackled in fear at the intersection.

Along the wide street, which was only marked in the fall, or rather, along Mira Avenue, right in the middle of it, along the white dotted lines of the markings, a piebald horse with a collar on its neck slowly followed, occasionally whipping its wet, forcefully trimmed tail. The horse knew the rules of movement and clicked its horseshoes, like a fashionista with imported boots, across the very no man's land. Both the horse itself and the harness on it were tidy and well-groomed, the animal did not pay any attention to anyone or anything, leisurely stomping about its business.

The people unanimously followed the horse with their eyes, their faces brightened, they smiled, and they poured out the following remarks after the horse: “I fixed it up from the stingy owner!”, “I went to give myself up for sausage,” “Nope, to the sobering-up station - it’s warmer there than in the stable,” “Nothing.” similar! He’s going to report to Lavri the Cossack’s wife about his whereabouts”...

Soshnin also smiled from under his collar and followed the horse with his eyes - it was walking towards the brewery. That's where her stables are. Its owner, the horse carrier of the brewery Lavrya Kazakov, popularly known as Lavrya the Cossack, an old guard from the corps of General Belov, a holder of three Orders of Glory and many more military orders and medals, delivered citro and other non-alcoholic drinks to the “points”, sat down with the peasants on a permanent basis “point” - in the buffet of the Sazontyevskaya bathhouse - to talk about past military campaigns, about modern urban orders, about the ferocity of women and the spinelessness of men, and let his reasonable horse, so that the animal would not get wet and not tremble under the sky, go under its own power to the brewery. The entire Veysk police, and not only it, all the indigenous inhabitants of Veysk knew: where the brewery cart stood, there Lavrya the Cossack talked and rested. And his horse is learned, independent, understands everything and won’t let itself go to waste.

Now something has shifted in my soul, and the bad weather is not so oppressive, Soshnin decided, it’s time to get used to it - he was born here, in a rotten corner of Russia. What about a visit to the publishing house? Conversation with Syrokvasova? To hell with her! Well, you fool! Well, they'll remove it someday. The book is really not so hot - it’s the first, naive, very much tormented by imitation, and it’s outdated in five years. The next one needs to be done better in order to publish it in addition to Syrovasova; maybe even in Moscow itself...

Soshnin bought a loaf of bread, a jar of Bulgarian compote, a bottle of milk, and a chicken at the grocery store; if this mournfully closed, blue-naked creature, with many paws seemingly sticking out of its neck, can be called a chicken. But the price is downright outrageous! However, this is not a matter of annoyance. He cooks noodle soup, takes a sip of hot food and, lo and behold, after a hearty lunch, according to Archimedes’ principle, to the monotonous drip from the battery, to the knocking of the old wall clock - don’t forget to start it - under the plash of rain, he reads to his heart’s content for an hour and a half or two, then he falls asleep for the rest of his life. night at the table - to create. Well, not to create, but still to live in some kind of separate world created by one’s imagination.

Soshnin lived in a new railway microdistrict, but in an old two-story wooden house at number seven, which they forgot to demolish, after oblivion they legalized it, hooked up the house to the main line with warm water, to gas, to sewer pipes - built in the thirties according to a simple architectural design, with an internal staircase dividing the house in two, with a sharp hut above the entrance where there was once a glazed frame, slightly yellow on the outer walls and brown on the roof, the house modestly closed its eyes and dutifully sunk into the ground between the blind ends of two panel structures. A landmark, a milestone, a childhood memory and a kind shelter for people. Residents of a modern microdistrict orientated visiting people and themselves along it, a wooden proletarian building: “As you walk past the yellow house...”

Soshnin loved his native home or regretted it - it’s impossible to understand. He probably both loved and regretted it, because he grew up in it and didn’t know any other houses, didn’t live anywhere except dormitories. His father fought in the cavalry and also in Belov’s corps, together with Lavrey the Cossack, Lavrya was a private, his father was a platoon commander. My father did not return from the war; he died during a cavalry corps raid behind enemy lines. My mother worked in the technical office of the Weisk station in a large, flat, dimly lit room and lived with her sister in this house, apartment number four, on the second floor. The apartment consisted of two square rooms and a kitchen. Two windows of one room overlooked the railway line, two windows of the other room overlooked the courtyard. The apartment was once given to a young family of railway workers, his mother’s sister, Soshnina’s aunt, came from the village to work with him, he remembered her and knew her better than his mother because during the war all office workers were often assigned to unload wagons, for snow fighting, for harvesting on collective farms , my mother was rarely at home, she was overstrained during the war, at the end of the war she caught a bad cold, fell ill and died.

They were left alone with Aunt Lipa, whom Lenya, having made a mistake at an early age, called Lina, and that’s how Lina stuck in his memory. Aunt Lina followed in her sister’s footsteps and took her place in the technical office. They lived, like all the honest people of their village, in a neighboring potato plot outside the city, and barely made it from pay to pay. Sometimes, if it happened to celebrate a renewal or take a walk on a holiday, they didn’t make it. The aunt did not get married and did not try to get married, repeating: “I have Lenya.” But she loved to take a wide, noisy, village-style walk, with songs, dancing, and screaming.

Who? What did he do to this pure, poor woman? Time? People? A fad? Perhaps it’s both, and the other, and the third. In the same office, at the same station, she moved to a separate desk, behind a partition, then she was transferred all the way up the mountain, to the commercial department of the Wei branch of the road. Aunt Lina started bringing home money, wine, food, became excited and cheerful, was late home from work, tried to force it, put on makeup. “Oh, Lenka, Lenka! If I disappear, you will disappear too!..” The gentlemen called my aunt. Lenka used to pick up the phone and, without saying hello, rudely ask: “Who do you want?” - “Linden tree.” - “We don’t have one like that!” - “How is it not?” - “No, that’s all!” Aunt scratches the pipe with her paw: “This is for me, for me...” - “Oh, Aunt Lina for you? That's what they would say!.. Yes, please! You're welcome!" And not immediately, but after rubbing his aunt, he hands her the phone. She will squeeze her into a handful: “Why are you calling? I told you, then... Then, later! When, when?..” And laughter and sin. He has no experience, but he just blurts out: “When Lenya goes to school.”

Lenya is already a teenager, with ambition: “I can leave now! For how long, tell me, and it’ll be done...” - “Screw you, Lenya! - Hiding her eyes, the aunt blushes. “They’re calling from the office, and God knows what…”

He would smile at her and incinerate her with a contemptuous look, especially when Aunt Lina forgot herself: she would put aside her worn-out slipper, intertwine her foot with her foot, stretch out on her toes - a sort of tenth-grader FIFA girl at the public vending machine shows her eyes and “di-di-di, di-di-di... " The boy just needs half the revenge, and he will definitely straighten his aunt’s leg with a broom, put it back in its place, or stupidly sing in a brittle bass: “Calm down, the excitement of passion.”

All her life a kind woman lived with him and for him, how could he share her with someone? A modern boy! Selfish!

Near the building of the regional department of internal affairs, lined for some reason with ceramic tiles, imported all the way from the Carpathians, but this did not make it any more beautiful, even as if even darker, in the cherry-colored Volga, leaning on the door, the driver Vanka Strigalev was dozing in a leather jacket. and the rabbit hat - also very interesting person: he could sit in the car for a day, without reading, slowly thinking about something. Soshnin had the opportunity to go fishing together with employees of the Internal Affairs Directorate, Uncle Pasha and his friend, elder Aristarkh Kapustin, and many even felt a sense of awkwardness because a young guy with sideburns sat in a car all day long and waited for fishermen. “You should at least read, Vanya, magazines, newspapers or a book.” - “Why read them? What good are they?” - Vanya will say, yawn sweetly and shudder platonically.

There's Uncle Pasha. He always sweeps. And it scrapes. There is no snow, it has washed away, so he sweeps the water, drives it out of the gates of the Uvedev yard, into the street. Revenge and hammering are not the most important actions for Uncle Pasha. He was a completely crazy fisherman and a hockey fan, he became a janitor to achieve his goal: a man who doesn’t drink, but drinks, Uncle Pasha went to hockey and fishing, so as not to ruin his pension, not to tear it into pieces, he earned extra money with a janitor’s broom - for “his own expenses.” “, he gave his pension into the reliable hands of his wife. Each time, with calculation and reprimand, she gave him “Sunday”: “This is for you, Pasha, five for fishing, this is for you three for your damned hockey.”

The Department of Internal Affairs kept several more horses and a small stable, which was in charge of Pasha’s uncle’s friend, Elder Aristarkh Kapustin. Together they dug up the native police, reached the hot pipes, the heating plant built into the building of the Internal Affairs Directorate, piled horse mud, earth, humus on these pipes, disguised them on top with slabs of slate - and such worms were bred all year round in the tunnel that they were taken for bait any transport, even the boss's. Uncle Pasha and Elder Aristarkh Kapustin did not like to travel with their superiors. They were tired of their bosses and their wives in everyday life, they wanted to be completely free in nature, to relax, to forget from both.

The old people went out into the street at four o'clock, stood at the intersection, leaning on the ice picks, and soon a car, most often a body, covered with a tarpaulin or a plywood box, slowed down and seemed to lick them off the asphalt - someone's hands grabbed the old people, shoved them behind them. backs, in the thick of the people. “Ah-ah, Pasha! Uh-huh, Aristasha? Are you still alive? - exclamations were heard, and from that moment on, the experienced fishermen, having found themselves in their native element, blossomed in body and soul, talking about “theirs” and with “theirs.”

Uncle Pasha’s entire right hand was covered in white scars, and the fishermen, and not only the fishermen, but also the rest of the city’s public, treated these Uncle Pasha scars, perhaps even more respectfully than his battle wounds.

The mass fisherman is susceptible to psychosis, he splashes in waves across the pond, hammers, twirls, swears, remembers previous fishing trips, curses the progress that destroyed the fish, regrets that he did not go to another reservoir.

Uncle Pasha is not that kind of fisherman. He will fall to one place and wait for favors from nature, although he is not the last master in fishing, at the very least, he always brings it to the fish, it happened that Uncle Pasha would stuff a full barrel organ-box, a bag and an undershirt, tying it at the sleeves, with fish - all the management then was slurping fish soup, especially the lower apparatus, Uncle Pasha gave everyone fish. Elder Aristarkh Kapustin, the tighter one, dried fish between the frames in his apartment, then, having filled his pockets with dried food, he came to the buffet of the Sazontyevskaya bathhouse, knocked the fish on the table - and there were always hunters who would squeeze the salty thing with their teeth and gave Elder Aristarkh Kapustin free beer.

They told tricky tales about Uncle Pasha, at which he himself, however, chuckled approvingly. It’s as if he fell to the hole, but every fisherman passing by pesters: “How’s the bite?” Uncle Pasha is silent and does not answer. They bother him and bother him! Uncle Pasha couldn’t stand it, he spat out live worms from behind his cheek and cursed: “You’ll freeze all the bait with you!”

His faithful liaison, Elder Aristarchus Kapustin, was caught by the whim of the search one spring - in the evening a large river flowing into Svetloe Lake poured in, broke and hummocked the ice, and with a muddy, feeding wave pushed the fish towards the middle of the lake. They said that in the evening, almost in the dark, he began to take myself- a seasoned pike perch, and the local fishermen were seriously hooked. But by morning the boundary of the muddy water shifted and the fish retreated somewhere, even further. Where? Lake Svetloe is fifteen miles wide and seventy miles long. Uncle Pasha hissed at the signalman Aristarkh Kapustin: “Stop it!” Sit! Here she will be...” But where there! The evil one carried Elder Aristarchus Kapustin like a broom across the lake.

Uncle Pasha was angry with Aristarkh Kapustin for half a day, he tugged at the little fish with his fishing rods, a strong perch happened, twice while moving he clung to the fish and tore the lines of the pike. Uncle Pasha lowered the spoon under the ice, teased the little pike and turned it up - don’t spoil it! Here she is, the predator underwater world, splashing on the spring ice, the splashes are flying, in its mouth there are scraps of thin fishing lines with jigs, like false, shiny teeth adorning its impudent mouth. Uncle Pasha doesn’t take out his jig, let him remember, you fool, how to ruin poor fishermen!

By noon, two youths, two brothers, Anton and Sanka, nine and twelve years old, came out of the open gates of a quiet monastery, although with dilapidated, but imperishable turrets, which at the entrance had a modest sign “Boarding School” and dragged themselves to the lake. “They ran away from their last lessons,” Uncle Pasha guessed, but did not condemn the boys - they will study for a long time, maybe all their lives, but spring fishing is a festive time, you won’t notice it when it flashes by. The youths experienced a great drama that day together with Uncle Pasha. The guys had just sat down next to the fishing rods when a large fish took hold of one of them and landed in the hole. I went to see the youngest and he cried bitterly. “Nothing, nothing, guy,” Uncle Pasha consoled him in a tense whisper, “it will be ours!” Not going anywhere! You’re wearing candy and a city pretzel with poppy seeds.”

Uncle Pasha had a presentiment of everything and calculated: by noon, towards the muddy water, where smelt and other small fish feed on plankton, the river would push even further into the lake, carry the turbidity and bring in a large “hunter” to hunt. Detachments of fishermen, brutally thumping with ice picks, slamming with their boots, shouting obscenities at the surrounding area, will drive her, a timid and sensitive fish that cannot tolerate choice swearing, into the “no man's land”, therefore, here, where, together with the youths, from the very early morning, without telling - not a single one! - a swear word, Uncle Pasha endures and waits for her!

And his strategic calculation was completely confirmed, his patience and modesty in expressions were rewarded: three pike perch weighing a kilo lay on the ice and mournfully gazed at the sky with tin pupils. And the biggest ones, of course, were two pike-perch! But who pleased Uncle Pasha’s unenvious heart were the small fishermen - the youths Anton and Sanka. They also got two pike perch on their scrap lures riveted from a rifle cartridge. The little one screamed, laughed, talked again and again about how he took the bait, how he hit it! Are you crying? It’s always like this in life: sometimes it bites, sometimes it doesn’t bite...”

Here something happened that not only the fishermen, but almost the entire lakeside population was thrown into confusion, and part of the city of Veisk was shaken by a heroic event.

Consumed by Satan, or the fishing devil, Uncle Pasha, in order not to knock with the pick, moved to the childish holes drilled with an ice ax. And he had just lowered his famous, spoiled lure under the smelt, when it was pinched with a tentative push, then gouged, so much so that he - what an experienced fisherman! – I could barely hold the fishing rod in my hand! It hit me, pressed me, and led me into a block of lake waters.

Sudachina for seven kilograms and fifty-seven grams - this was later hung with apothecary precision - was stuck in a narrow hole. Uncle Pasha, plopping down on his belly, stuck his hand into the hole and squeezed the fish under the gills. "Hit!" – he commanded the youths, shaking his head at the pick. The older boy jumped, grabbed the ice pick, swung it and froze: how to “hit”?! What about the hand? And then the seasoned front-line soldier, wildly rolling his eyes, barked: “It’s like in war!” And the poor boy, having sweated in advance, began to gouge the hole.

Soon the hole was stitched with red strings of blood. “To the right! Left! To the spade! Take it to the spade! To the spade! Don’t cut the line...” - Uncle Pasha commanded. There was a full hole of blood when Uncle Pasha took the already limp body of the fish out of the water and threw it onto the ice. And then, kicking up his legs crippled by rheumatism, Uncle Pasha danced and shouted, but soon he came to his senses and, clenching his teeth, opened the barrel organ, thrust a flask of vodka into the guys’ hands, and ordered them to rub their numb hand and neutralize the wounds.

“Astafiev laid out such bleeding features, pieces, laid them out with such mercilessness that the involuntary reaction is to turn away, forget, not know. You can't, you need a shock. You can't wake up without it"

Mikhail Dudin.

Literature always reacts vividly to changes in society. In the seventies, V. Shukshin, when we were embarrassed by such words as decency, conscience, kindness, said: “Morality is truth.” It took another ten years for such books as “White Clothes” by Dudintsev, “The Sad Detective” by Astafiev, and “Fire” by Rasputin to appear.

Writers tell the bitter truth to millions of people. How to live further? Which people to go with? With people like Soshnin, or against? Now a person is determined by his will and desire to be openly with those who go into the open, fight, get into trouble, but remain human.

“Date of creation of “The Sad Detective”: 1983 - 1985. This novel is different from all others. The publishers who knew about him were in a hurry. “Let's go straight ahead,” they said. And so it happened, the novel was published quickly - in three weeks. And yet, it was in vain that I gave away the novel so quickly. I should have stuck with this book for another year. Cool down. But the circumstances of life and life itself demanded that I quickly submit this work to the readers.

The detective turned out to be tough and dense. In some places I acted directly, informationally, hoping for a well-prepared reader. Why does he need information that the sun was rising, the sunset was shining, the birds were singing, the leaves were moving? All this is so well written in our literature. And the spirit of the thing did not require this.

Reviews are different. Some readers, their minority, are furious and irritated. Others write: “What, did you find the book scary? But these are flowers. Now I’ll tell you about the berries.” Judging by the reviews, the novel hit the top ten.”

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Petrenko V.M. Russian teacher

Language and Literature MBOU Secondary School No. 1

Azovskaya station, Seversky district

LESSON ON A NOVEL

V. P. Astafieva “Sad Detective”

Design: portrait of V.P. Astafieva; two statements about the novel:

“In the novel, all life is dirt, everything is painted with black paints”

From a reader's letter

Mikhail Dudin.

Students are given questions for the lesson in advance:

Who is L. Soshnin - a fighter for truth or an eternal loser?
Evil has many faces. Show with an example.
How is the theme of childhood and motherhood revealed in the novel? With what characters

Is she tied up?

Is Soshnin an optimist? Are you lonely?
Whose assessment of the novel is closer to you – a reader’s letter or M. Dudin’s statement?

Why?

First student:

Second student:

What is the truth? Astafiev said: “Truth is the most natural state of a person, you cannot shout it out, moan it, or cry it out, although in any cry, in any moan, song, cry, it groans, cries, laughs, dies and is born, and even when you habitually lie yourself or others - this is also true, and the most terrible murderer, thief, stupid boss, cunning and treacherous commander - all this is true, sometimes inconvenient, disgusting. And when the great priest cried out with a groan: “There is no truth on earth. But there is no truth and it is higher,” he did not pretend, he spoke about the highest justice, about the truth that people comprehend in agony and, in an attempt to reach its heights, fall down, die, break their personal destinies, but, like climbers, climb and climbing up a steep cliff. Comprehension of truth is the highest goal of human life."

First student (quotes from an old interview with V. Astafiev):

“Did my last things seem angry and bilious to you? No, I've never been evil. Even at the worst time of my life. But I can’t be kind anymore. I'm tired of writing about flowers, I'm tired of singing about birds. It was so sung that there was no corncrake, no lark, no quail. Everyone was poisoned. The crows and magpies remained."

Second student:

Teacher (introduction)):

“Leonid Soshnin returned home in the worst mood. And although it was a long walk, almost to the outskirts of the city, to the railway village, he did not get on the bus - even if his wounded leg ached, but walking would calm him down and he would think about everything and decide - what he was told at the publishing house, he would think about and decide how Should he move on with his life and what should he do?

Question: So who is L. Soshnin - a fighter for truth or an eternal loser? (You could say it’s both. After all, his wife left him, he was shot twice.

But he's a fighter. Even after his first visit to the publishing house, after a conversation with Madame Syrovasova, he leaves with faith: “To hell with her! Well, you fool! Well, they’ll remove it someday!”

Question: The book explores the theme of evil. But evil has many faces. There is the obvious and there is the hidden. This applies to the so-called cautious people. Show examples. (Soshnin's mother-in-law, F. Lebeda, his wife Tamarka, Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky).

First student:

Back in 1974. When the book “The Tsar is a Fish” was published, Astafiev expressed his attitude towards children. Here it is: “Children. But one day they will be left alone, with themselves. And with this most beautiful and formidable world, neither I nor anyone else will be able to warm and protect them. We often say: children are happiness, children are joy, children are light. But children are also our torment. Our eternal worry. Children are our judgment on the world, our mirror in which conscience, intelligence, honesty - everything is visible. Children can shut us down, but we never do. And one more thing: no matter what they are - big, smart, strong - they always need our protection. And what do you think: soon to die, who will accept them? Who will understand? Forgive? Oh, if only it were possible to leave children with a calm heart, in a calm world.”

Question: Which characters are related to the theme of childhood? (Aunt Granya, Aunt Liina, Tutyshikha, Yulka’s mother.)

“The mother was often sick, she could not give birth, and with the help of childbirth she hoped to get healthier and became so healthy that she began to go to resorts every year with her husband and without her husband, and one day she did not return.” (Student's speech.)

First student:

“Nature has given us the instinct to attract people. Family. And at the end of the novel, Astafiev emphasizes this idea: HUSBAND and WIFE.

“It is from parents that people with their own lives and characters are passed on to each other, and in a family they will have to go together to the grave. The soul rests only when the character rests, and where, if not at home, can the whole person, who breaks himself in various services and jobs, rest?

And Soshnin quietly gets up, goes to the table - in front of him is a sheet of blank paper.”

Question: Is Soshnin an optimist? Are you lonely? (From the first pages of the book to the final pages of the novel, we see that Soshnin is an optimist and that his friends are with him - Lavrya - a Cossack, Uncle Pasha and his wife Lerka, who inherited from her father the trait of reliability - not to abandon a person in difficult times).

Leonid Soshnin’s soul is heavy. But we must live, despite the “painful” days.

“Achilles’ Heart” by Leonid Soshnin... Very vulnerable, sick, sometimes desperate, but fighting.)

So what is happening to us?

“He understood that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he would have to comprehend an inaccessible thing, not yet fully understood and explained by anyone, the so-called Russian character, the Russian soul. And first of all, you will have to prove it to yourself and find out on white paper, and everything is visible on it, to expose yourself to your skin, to your secret unsightly places.

Maybe he will eventually explain, at least to himself, why Russian people are eternally compassionate towards prisoners and are often indifferent to themselves, their neighbor - a disabled person from work or war? We are ready to give the last piece to a convict and bloodletter, to take away a malicious hooligan from the police and to hate our co-tenant for forgetting to turn off the light in the toilet. A criminal lives freely, cheerfully, comfortably among such compassionate people, and he has lived like this in Russia for a long time.”

This is how Soshnin is constantly tormented by heavy thoughts. When did we allow evil to break through? Where does this come from in us?

V.P. Astafiev is a writer whose works reflect the life of people of the 20th century. Astafiev is a person who knows and is close to all the problems of our sometimes difficult life. Viktor Petrovich went through the war as a private and knows all the hardships of post-war life. I think that with his wisdom and experience he is one of those people whose advice and orders you should not only listen to, but try to follow. But Astafiev does not act as a prophet, he simply writes about what is close to him and what worries him.
Although the works of Viktor Petrovich belong to modern Russian literature, the problems that are often raised in them are more than one thousand years old. Eternal questions of good and evil, punishment and justice have long forced people to seek answers to them. But this turned out to be a very difficult matter, because the answers lie in the person himself, and good and evil, honesty and dishonor are intertwined in us. Having a soul, we are often indifferent. We all have a heart, but we are often called heartless.
Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective” raises the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people. The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khailovsk, about the people living in them, about modern morals. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place appears in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special incidents. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But those who think so are mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream. Young people who get drunk to the point where a person turns
They transform into an animal, rape a woman old enough to be their mother, and the parents leave the child locked in the apartment for a week. All these pictures described by Astafiev terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes don’t pay attention, but collected in the novel, they force us to take off our rose-colored glasses and understand: if it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern you. The novel makes you think about your actions, look back and see what you have done over the years. After reading, you ask yourself the question: “What good and good have I done? Did I notice when the person next to me felt bad? You begin to think that indifference is as evil as cruelty. I think that finding answers to these questions is the purpose of the work. In the novel “The Sad Detective” Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is police operative Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who was injured several times in the line of duty and should retire. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does he keep it? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for the prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbor - a disabled person of war and labor? Astafiev contrasts the main character, an honest and brave operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that his partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon. A striking image in the novel is Aunt Granya - a woman who, without children of her own, gave all her love to the children who played near her house on the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home.
Often the heroes of a work, who should cause disgust, cause pity. Urna, who has transformed from a self-employed woman into a drunkard without a home or family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and pesters passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply don’t pay attention to her.
The city of Veisk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the sun. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, exchanging clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, “enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, squirmed in his chair and littered with ashes.”
This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova. It is this man, whose description brings a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print. But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is also good.
Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she returns to him again along with her daughter. It’s a little sad that the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, forces them to make peace. It is grief that brings Leonid and Lera closer together. The blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist’s family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.
The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read because it is too scary pictures describes Astafiev. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty.
I liked the piece. I learned a lot of important things and understood a lot. I met a new writer and I know for sure that this is not last piece Astafiev, which I will read.

The novel “The Sad Detective” was published in 1985, during a turning point in the life of our society. It was written in the style of harsh realism and therefore caused a surge of criticism. The reviews were mostly positive. The events of the novel are relevant today, just as works about honor and duty, good and evil, honesty and lies are always relevant.
The novel describes different moments in the life of former policeman Leonid Soshnin, who at forty-two was retired due to injuries received in the service.
I remember the events of different years of his life.
Leonid Soshnin's childhood, like almost all children of the post-war period, was difficult. But, like many children, he did not think about such complex issues of life. After his mother and father died, he stayed to live with his aunt Lipa, whom he called Lina. He loved her, and when she began to walk, he could not understand how she could leave him when she had given him her whole life. It was ordinary childish selfishness. She died shortly after his marriage. He married a girl, Lera, whom he saved from pestering hooligans. There was no special love, he just, as a decent person, could not help but marry the girl after he was received in her house as a groom.
After his first feat (capturing a criminal), he became a hero. After this he was wounded in the arm. This happened when one day he went to calm down Vanka Fomin, and he pierced his shoulder with a pitchfork.
With a heightened sense of responsibility for everything and everyone, with his sense of duty, honesty and fight for justice, he could only work in the police.
Leonid Soshnin always thinks about people and the motives of their actions. Why and why do people commit crimes? He reads a lot of philosophical books to understand this. And he comes to the conclusion that thieves are born, not made.
For a completely stupid reason, his wife leaves him; after the accident he became disabled. After such troubles, he retired and found himself in a completely new and unfamiliar world, where he was trying to save himself with a “pen”. He did not know how to get his stories and books published, so they lay on the shelf for five years with the editor Syrokvasova, a “gray” woman.
One day he was attacked by bandits, but he overcame them. He felt bad and lonely, then he called his wife, and she immediately realized that something had happened to him. She understood that he always lived some kind of stressful life.
And at some point he looked at life differently. He realized that life doesn't always have to be a struggle. Life is communication with people, caring for loved ones, making concessions to each other. After he realized this, his affairs went better: they promised to publish his stories and even gave him an advance, his wife returned, and some kind of peace began to appear in his soul.
Main topic novel - a man who finds himself among the crowd. A man lost among people, confused in his thoughts. The author wanted to show the individuality of a person among the crowd with his thoughts, actions, feelings. His problem is to understand the crowd, to blend in with it. It seems to him that in the crowd he does not recognize people whom he knew well before. Among the crowd, they are all the same, good and evil, honest and deceitful. They all become the same in the crowd. Soshnin is trying to find a way out of this situation with the help of the books that he reads, and with the help of the books that he himself tries to write.
I liked this work because it touches on the eternal problems of man and the crowd, man and his thoughts. I liked how the author describes the hero’s relatives and friends. With what kindness and tenderness he treats Aunt Grana and Aunt Lina. The author portrays them as kind and hardworking women who love children. How the girl Pasha is described, Soshnin’s attitude towards her and his indignation that she was not loved at the institute. The hero loves them all, and it seems to me that his life becomes much better because of these people’s love for him.

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev

"The Sad Detective"

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former criminal investigation operative, returns home from a local publishing house to an empty apartment, in the worst mood. The manuscript of his first book, “Life is More Precious than Everything,” after five years of waiting, has finally been accepted for production, but this news does not make Soshnin happy. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, who tried to humiliate the author-policeman who dared to call himself a writer with arrogant remarks, stirred up Soshnin’s already gloomy thoughts and experiences. “How to live in the world? Lonely? - he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people with whom his life encountered... Why are Russian people ready to regret bonebreaker and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment?.. Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?..

In order to escape from his gloomy thoughts at least for a minute, Leonid imagines how he will come home, cook himself a bachelor’s dinner, read, sleep a little so that he has enough strength for the whole night - sitting at the table, over a blank sheet of paper. Soshnin especially loves this night time, when he lives in some isolated world created by his imagination.

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother’s sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he used to call Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of Veyskaya railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” The aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Father Lavrya’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina’s death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin comprehended in a peculiar way kindergarten the first skills of brotherhood and hard work.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Four guys who were drunk to the point of losing their memory raped Aunt Granya, and if it weren’t for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken guys sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. One day she expressed to Soshnin the terrible thought that by convicting the criminals, they had thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin shouted at the old woman for feeling sorry for non-humans, and they began to avoid each other...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunks accost Soshnin, demanding to say hello and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful remarks, but the main one, a young bully, does not calm down. Fueled by alcohol, the guys attack Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - his wounds and hospital "rest" took their toll - defeats the hooligans. One of them hits his head on the heating radiator when he falls. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers into the apartment. And he immediately calls the police and reports the fight: “One hero’s head was split on a radiator. If so, don’t look for it. The villain is me."

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

He and his partner were chasing a drunk on a motorcycle who had stolen a truck. The truck rushed like a deadly ram through the streets of the town, having already ended more than one life. Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before he died, the truck driver managed to hit the motorcycle of the pursuing policemen. On the operating table, Soshnina’s leg was miraculously saved from amputation. But he remained lame; it took him a long time to learn to walk. During his recovery, the investigator tormented him for a long time and persistently with an investigation: was the use of weapons legal?

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “Such Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who was drunk and returned from prison, put a final end to his career as an operative... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife’s parents in a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that a drunk man had locked him up in a neighboring village in the barn of old women and threatens to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles for a hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin stuck a pitchfork into him... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement could not be avoided.

At night, Leonid is awakened from sleep by the terrible scream of the neighbor girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulka lives with her grandmother Tutyshikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balsam from the gifts brought by Yulka’s father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Grandma Tutyshikha is already fast asleep.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, straightens her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

“Dawn was already rolling in like a damp snowball through the kitchen window, when, having enjoyed the peace among the quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of long-unknown confidence in his capabilities and strength, without irritation or melancholy in his heart, Soshnin stuck to the table and placed a blank sheet of paper in the spot of light and froze over him for a long time.”

Leonid Soshnin walked home with his head down, immersed in his joyless black thoughts. He recalled his past and tried to understand why, at forty-two, he was left with nothing, and how he deserved such a sad fate. Soshnin felt like an old, useless thing that had served its purpose. Everything is in the past - both work in the criminal investigation department and a happy family life with his beloved wife and daughter. No one took the former operative’s attempts at self-expression seriously; editor Syrovasova accepted his book “Life Is More Expensive” for production, but showered the author with humiliating ridicule. According to others, the policeman and the writer could not get along in one person; it simply went beyond the scope of their perception of reality.

Soshnin could not answer his own questions. He absolutely did not understand why in the lives of most people suffering and grief rule the show, while love and happiness do not play their roles for long and leave the stage forever.

Leonid liked to sit at night over a blank sheet of paper, mentally creating his own imaginary world. He philosophized and created in an old house on the outskirts of Weisk. His childhood passed there, his mother died of a serious illness, his father went to war... Soshnin only had his aunt Lina left, who was unjustly convicted and sent to a colony. She tried to commit suicide and took poison, but they pumped her out - they could not avoid imprisonment. Because of this incident, Soshnin almost flew out of the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, but Lavrya’s father’s fellow Cossack soldier saved the situation by putting in a good word for him with the regional police authorities. Aunt Granya, who raised other people's children all her life, took care of the orphan.

Lenya was already working as a district police officer in the Khailovsky district when Lina was released under an amnesty.

Many sad events flashed before the former operative's mind's eye. Evil fate did not spare even the good old aunt Granya - she was raped by drunken revelers, and Soshnin almost carried out lynching on the guilty guys. Despite everything, Leonid always tried to resolve conflicts peacefully, he wanted justice to prevail, but life did not spare him and presented him with unpleasant surprises. The criminals rushed at him in the gateways, tried to crush him along with the motorcycle in a truck, the operative fought back, but again and again received serious injuries, and “rested” in a hospital bed.

It seemed that fortune finally smiled on Soshnin when he saved his future wife Lera from rapists. They had a wedding, the young people lived in perfect harmony and their daughter Svetlana was born, but joy did not reign in their home for long. The wife could not understand her husband’s passion for literature and jokingly called him “Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol.” Gradually, mutual reproaches became more and more poisonous family life and one day Lera took her daughter and left.

Leonid’s police career ended with a sad episode: former prisoner Venka Fomin pierced the operative with a pitchfork and forced him to look death straight in the face. Soshnin miraculously survived, but he could not avoid disability and had to retire.

At his neighbor’s funeral, Lenya met his wife and sat next to her at the wake. Lerka and her daughter stayed overnight in the old apartment, and Soshnin did not sleep a wink, bent over a blank sheet of paper, enjoying the peace of his peacefully sleeping family.

“Cruel” realism by V. Astafiev (based on the story “Sad Detective”)

The work is a sad detective story. Review of the novel by V.P.

Victor Astafiev Sad detective

Chapter 1

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"The Sad Detective"

Victor Astafiev
Sad detective