Three bags of weedy wheat. Heavy domestic drama shows events during the last war autumn
A heavy domestic drama shows events during the last military autumn. A line of people with crippled souls passes in front of the viewer: security officers, thieves, murderers, women dreaming of a bright and calm life. The theme of eternal struggle and suffering is revealed in the writer’s late story “Three Bags of Weedy Wheat.”
- How do you feel?
-I will live.
The desperate struggle for life became life itself during the war years. Vladimir Tendryakov's story is piercing and sharp, like sharp frosty air. And it also creeps in. To the core. The sadness and tragedy of the work was brilliantly conveyed in the performance by director Vyacheslav Dolgachev.
It’s hard to put into words with what trepidation and excitement the audience watched the performance. Not a single rustle or whisper - the full hall of the drama theater was captivated by what was happening on stage.
An ordinary wartime story of a brigade of grain collectors for the front: on assignment, people must take the last supplies from an already starving village. Zhenya Tulupov, a soldier sent to collect supplies due to injury, is faced with a choice: duty or human justice? The world of physical and moral trials, which is painful to look at, reveals through individual heroes the tragedy of the entire country. That is why this production resonated with every viewer.
Separately, it is worth noting the atmosphere created on stage. Mobile decorations transported them either to the thick of events of rural activists or to the house of the chairman of the regional brigade of commissioners. Carefully selected musical compositions, including excerpts from Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Schwartz and others, enhance the bitter experience.
"...Poverty, poverty makes people scoundrels, cunning, crafty, thieves, treacherous, outcasts, liars, perjurers... and wealth - arrogant, proud, ignorant, traitors, reasoning about what they do not know, deceivers, braggarts, callous, offenders ... They serve things".
The performance is the key premiere of the season: the struggle for a piece of bread exists to this day, both among rich and poor, only for each this piece is filled with its own meaning.
One night, unexpected guests came to the telephone operators of an intermediate station lost in the steppe - a twitchy, loud-mouthed foreman and two soldiers. They dragged the lieutenant wounded in the stomach.
The foreman shouted on the phone for a long time, explaining to his superiors how they “hung lanterns over their car” and fired from the air...
The wounded man was placed on a bunk. The sergeant-major said that they would soon come for him, he chattered some more, gave a bunch of advice and disappeared along with his soldiers.
Telephone operator Kukolev, who was off duty and driven from his bunk, went to get some sleep from the dugout into the trench. Zhenya Tulupov was left alone with the wounded man.
The suppressed light of the smokehouse was barely breathing, but even with its meager light one could see the sweaty inflammation of his forehead and his black lips, boiling like a scabby wound. The lieutenant, almost the same age as Zhenya - about twenty years old at most - lay unconscious. If it weren’t for the sweaty, inflamed blush, you might think he’s dead. But the narrow hands that he held on his stomach lived on their own. They lay so weightless and tense on the wound that it seemed like they were about to get burned and pull away.
P-pi-i-it... - quietly, through the dense scum of undiluted lips.
Zhenya shuddered, helpfully twitched for the flask, but immediately remembered: among the many pieces of advice that the foreman poured out in front of him, the strictest, the most persistent, repeated several times in a row, was: “Don’t let me drink. Not a bit! He will die."
Pi-i-it...
Putting down the telephone receiver for a minute, Zhenya gutted the individual package, tore off a piece of bandage, wet it, and carefully applied it to his baked lips. The lips trembled, a wave seemed to pass over the inflamed face, the eyelids moved, the head opened, motionless, directed upward, filled with stagnant moisture. They opened only for a second, the eyelids fell again.
The lieutenant never regained consciousness; Continuing to carefully cover the wound with his palms, he stirred and groaned:
Pi-i-it... Pi-i-i-it...
Zhenya wiped the wounded man’s sweaty face with a wet bandage. He fell silent and went limp.
Lena? Are you?.. - an unexpectedly calm, without hoarseness, without pain voice. - Are you here, Lena?.. - And with renewed vigor, with happy fervor: - I knew, knew that I would see you!.. Give me water, Lena... Or ask mom... I told you that the war will remove the dirt from earth! Dirt and bad people! Lena! Lena! There will be cities of the Sun!.. White, white!.. Towers! Domes! Gold! Gold in the sun hurts the eyes!.. Lena! Lena! City of the Sun! .. The walls are covered in paintings... Lena, are these your paintings? Everyone looks at them, everyone is happy... Children, many children, everyone laughs... The war has passed, the war has cleansed... Lena, Lena! What a terrible war it was! I didn’t write to you about this, now I’m telling you, now we can talk... Golden balls over our city... And your paintings... Red paintings on the walls... I knew, I knew that they would build it in our lifetime... We will see... You didn’t believe it, no one did believed!.. White, white city - it hurts the eyes!.. It’s burning!.. City of the Sun!.. Fire! Fire! Black smoke!.. Go-o-scream! It’s hot!.. Pi-i-it...
A red worm of light quivered on the flattened casing of an anti-tank rifle, shaggy darkness hung low, a wounded man was thrashing about on an earthen bunk beneath him, his inflamed face seemed bronze in the dim light. And a tearing boyish voice beat against the dull clay walls:
Lena! Lena! We are being bombed!.. Our city!.. Paintings are burning! Red paintings!.. Smoke! Duh! I can’t breathe!... Lena! City of the Sun! ..
Lena is a beautiful name. Bride? Sister? And what kind of city is this?.. Zhenya Tulupov, pressing the telephone receiver to his ear, looked dejectedly at the wounded man rushing about on his bunk, listening to his moans about the strange white city. And the red worm of the smokehouse, moving on the edge of the flattened cartridge, and the muffled cooing in the telephone receiver: “Mignonette”! "Mignonette"! I am “Buttercup”!.. And above, above the run-up, in the overturned night steppe, there is a distant machine-gun squabble.
And - the delirium of a dying man.
They picked him up three hours later. Two old orderlies, sleeping as they walked, in unraveled caps, dragged a canvas stretcher into a narrow passage, sniffling and pushing, they transferred the restless wounded man from the bunk, grunting, and carried him out to the dusty truck, which was impatiently knocking with its worn-out engine.
And over the tired-gray, unshaven steppe, a ghostly faded dawn was already seeping through, not yet completely washed away from the heavy blue of the night, not yet touched by the sun’s goldenness.
Zhenya accompanied the stretcher. He asked hopefully:
Guys, if they hit you in the stomach, will they survive?..
The guys - the old men in the rear - did not answer, they climbed into the back. The night was ending, they were in a hurry.
A forgotten tablet was left on the bunk. Zhenya opened it: some kind of brochure about the actions of a chemical platoon in a combat situation, several sheets of blank notepaper and a thin book, yellow with age. The lieutenant kept letters from his Lena somewhere else.
The thin, yellowed book was called “City of the Sun.” So this is where it comes from...
A week later, Zhenya gave the leather tablet to the platoon commander, and kept the book for himself, reading it and re-reading it during night shifts.
Beyond Volchansk, during a night crossing over the small river Pelegovka, the company behind which Zhenya was holding communications was covered by direct fire. Forty-eight people remained lying on the flat marshy bank. Zhenya Tulupov had his leg broken by a shrapnel, but he still crawled out... along with his field bag, which contained a book from an unfamiliar lieutenant.
I kept it in the hospital and brought it home - “City of the Sun” by Tommaso Campanella.
The village of Nizhnyaya Echma had never seen enemy planes overhead and did not know what blackout was. The fields pockmarked by shells were somewhere many hundreds of kilometers away - there was silence here, a deaf, inaccessible rear. And yet the war, even from afar, destroyed the village: pop A fences were given, and there was no one to lift them, they fell apart - is that it? - boardwalks, shops stood with boarded up windows, and those that were still open opened only two hours a day, when they brought bread from the bakery to sell it on ration cards and close again.
At one time, Nizhny Chechmen fairs brought together people from near Vyatka and Vologda, but only old people remember this. However, even later, right up to the war, envious sayings still circulated: “On Echma, don’t plow, don’t harrow, just drop a grain,” “The Echmea has been threshed - for three years ahead.”
It is now a sticky morning with a strained sluggish dawn, blackened log houses, black branches of bare trees, black dirt of crooked streets, the stagnation of lead puddles - monotony, dullness, abandonment. Late morning in late autumn.
But this is the autumn of 1944! In the center of the village on the square there is a pillar with an aluminum loudspeaker bell:
From the Soviet Information Bureau!..
These words are stronger than any oath. The war has been dragging on for four years, but now it’s soon, soon... There is nothing more desirable than waking up in the morning and hearing that peace has come - happiness, the same for everyone!
Above the village of Nizhnyaya Echma there is a gray sky of prolonged autumn, lead puddles, monochrome. But let it be autumn, let it be leaden - soon, soon!..
Right next to the square is a two-story building of the district executive committee. Today, several semi-trucks, burdened with mud, were lined up next to him, and also horses, short, shaggy, harnessed to broken carts. Chauffeurs, cart drivers, and service people are milling about on the porch.
The corridors of the district executive committee are also crowded - shag smoke hangs, office doors slam, voices hum restrainedly.
Yesterday a team of commissioners arrived in the area. Not one, not two, but a whole brigade with regional mandates, but from another region - from Poldnevsky, more remote than Nizhneechmensky. Thirteen people, a damn dozen, in old coats, in shorts, in trampled boots, in canvas raincoats - their brother, the district manager, and come on - the authorities, each called to command on behalf of the region.
Moscow New Drama Theater
Vladimir Tendryakov
THREE BAGS OF WEED WHEAT
Drama (16+)
Stage director -Vyacheslav DOLGACHEV
Production artist -Margarita DEMYANOVA
Stage version -Evgeny VIKHREV And Vyacheslav DOLGACHEV
Duration of the performance: 2 hours 30 minutes.
The theme of a desperate struggle for lifeVladimir Tendryakov mentioned in his earlier story"Bread for the Dog" - an autobiographical sketch that pierces to the point of trembling.
And it is no coincidence: the first shock in the life of ten-year-old Volodya Tendryakov, who observed the dispossessed peasants dying of hunger, was the picture when a woman dressed in a worn coat accidentally broke a can of milk and, kneeling down, scooped it with a wooden spoon from a hoof hole on the road and saw. The motifs of “Bread for the Dog” were further developed in the late Tendryakov’s story “Three Bags of Weedy Wheat.” Stage versionEvgenia Vikhreva And Vyacheslav Dolgacheva excites the imagination and touches to the depths of the soul.
Have you ever been in a world where a plate of hot jacket potatoes and a slice of black bread with a lump of sugar is a real luxury? And the terrible echoes of the war are heard deep in the rear by those who have never been to the front, and by those who returned from it with a crippled soul... Disabled people, Chekist plenipotentiaries, uncomplaining women yearning for simple happiness, a “turned over” murderer who killed his neighbors with an ax for blasphemy against an icon... A world in which people in a state of frenzy do not hope to survive until spring...
Something of Bulgakov’s Pilatovian hopelessness is visible in one of the main characters, Kisterev, who “put all his affection” into dogs.“The holy apostles now work as chairmen of collective farms” , - this is the gospel truth that confronts Campanella’s utopian “City of the Sun,” the only book read by another hero, Zhenya Tulupov.“... Poverty, misery makes people scoundrels, cunning, crafty, thieves, treacherous, outcasts, liars, perjurers... and wealth - arrogant, proud, ignorant, traitors, reasoning about what they do not know, deceivers, boasters, callous, offenders... They serve things.” . And three bags of weedy, worthless wheat - a touchstone for testing the deepest feelings - friendship, love, humanity... “To take away the last half and half of the rubbish - will you forgive yourself?” - the chairman asks a non-evangelical question to the security officer authorized to collect wheat... And in the darkness, impenetrable to the moon, behind the nickel-plated bumps of the bed, the bodies of random lovers are barely visible, looking for a piece of warmth and simple human happiness... at least for one night.
Yuri Nagibin recalled his colleague in the writing workshop:“Tendryakov lived a pure literary life. He managed not to stain himself with a single dubious action. He was a real Russian writer, and not a hard worker, not a careerist, not a climber, not a opportunist. This is a serious loss for our meager literature.”
Premiere "Three bags of weedy wheat" will become one of the most relevant in the 2016-2017 theater season: after all, the hidden struggle for a piece of bread continues to this day in the real world...
CHARACTERS AND PERFORMERS:
Zhenya Tulupov , Commissioner for the seizure of bread - Ivan EFREMOV, Evgeniy RUBIN
Kisterev , Chairman of the Kislovsky Village Council - Mikhail KALINICHEV
Chalkin , Chairman of the regional brigade of commissioners - Alexander KURSKY, Alexey MIKHAILOV
Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov
Three bags of weed wheat
One night, unexpected guests came to the telephone operators of an intermediate station lost in the steppe - a twitchy, loud-mouthed foreman and two soldiers. They dragged the lieutenant wounded in the stomach.
The foreman shouted on the phone for a long time, explaining to his superiors how they “hung lanterns over their car” and fired from the air...
The wounded man was placed on a bunk. The sergeant-major said that they would soon come for him, he chattered some more, gave a bunch of advice and disappeared along with his soldiers.
Telephone operator Kukolev, who was off duty and driven from his bunk, went to get some sleep from the dugout into the trench. Zhenya Tulupov was left alone with the wounded man.
The suppressed light of the smokehouse was barely breathing, but even with its meager light one could see the sweaty inflammation of his forehead and his black lips, boiling like a scabby wound. The lieutenant, almost the same age as Zhenya - about twenty years old at most - lay unconscious. If it weren’t for the sweaty, inflamed blush, you might think he’s dead. But the narrow hands that he held on his stomach lived on their own. They lay so weightless and tense on the wound that it seemed like they were about to get burned and pull away.
P-pi-i-it... - quietly, through the dense scum of undiluted lips.
Zhenya shuddered, helpfully twitched for the flask, but immediately remembered: among the many pieces of advice that the foreman poured out in front of him, the strictest, the most persistent, repeated several times in a row, was: “Don’t let me drink. Not a bit! He will die."
Pi-i-it...
Putting down the telephone receiver for a minute, Zhenya gutted the individual package, tore off a piece of bandage, wet it, and carefully applied it to his baked lips. The lips trembled, a wave seemed to pass over the inflamed face, the eyelids moved, the head opened, motionless, directed upward, filled with stagnant moisture. They opened only for a second, the eyelids fell again.
The lieutenant never regained consciousness; Continuing to carefully cover the wound with his palms, he stirred and groaned:
Pi-i-it... Pi-i-i-it...
Zhenya wiped the wounded man’s sweaty face with a wet bandage. He fell silent and went limp.
Lena? Are you?.. - an unexpectedly calm, without hoarseness, without pain voice. - Are you here, Lena?.. - And with renewed vigor, with happy fervor: - I knew, knew that I would see you!.. Give me water, Lena... Or ask mom... I told you that the war will remove the dirt from earth! Dirt and bad people! Lena! Lena! There will be cities of the Sun!.. White, white!.. Towers! Domes! Gold! Gold in the sun hurts the eyes!.. Lena! Lena! City of the Sun! .. The walls are covered in paintings... Lena, are these your paintings? Everyone looks at them, everyone is happy... Children, many children, everyone laughs... The war has passed, the war has cleansed... Lena, Lena! What a terrible war it was! I didn’t write to you about this, now I’m telling you, now we can talk... Golden balls over our city... And your paintings... Red paintings on the walls... I knew, I knew that they would build it in our lifetime... We will see... You didn’t believe it, no one did believed!.. White, white city - it hurts the eyes!.. It’s burning!.. City of the Sun!.. Fire! Fire! Black smoke!.. Go-o-scream! It’s hot!.. Pi-i-it...
A red worm of light quivered on the flattened casing of an anti-tank rifle, shaggy darkness hung low, a wounded man was thrashing about on an earthen bunk beneath him, his inflamed face seemed bronze in the dim light. And a tearing boyish voice beat against the dull clay walls:
Lena! Lena! We are being bombed!.. Our city!.. Paintings are burning! Red paintings!.. Smoke! Duh! I can’t breathe!... Lena! City of the Sun! ..
Lena is a beautiful name. Bride? Sister? And what kind of city is this?.. Zhenya Tulupov, pressing the telephone receiver to his ear, looked dejectedly at the wounded man rushing about on his bunk, listening to his moans about the strange white city. And the red worm of the smokehouse, moving on the edge of the flattened cartridge, and the muffled cooing in the telephone receiver: “Mignonette”! "Mignonette"! I am “Buttercup”!.. And above, above the run-up, in the overturned night steppe, there is a distant machine-gun squabble.
And - the delirium of a dying man.
They picked him up three hours later. Two old orderlies, sleeping as they walked, in unraveled caps, dragged a canvas stretcher into a narrow passage, sniffling and pushing, they transferred the restless wounded man from the bunk, grunting, and carried him out to the dusty truck, which was impatiently knocking with its worn-out engine.
And over the tired-gray, unshaven steppe, a ghostly faded dawn was already seeping through, not yet completely washed away from the heavy blue of the night, not yet touched by the sun’s goldenness.
Zhenya accompanied the stretcher. He asked hopefully:
Guys, if they hit you in the stomach, will they survive?..
The guys - the old men in the rear - did not answer, they climbed into the back. The night was ending, they were in a hurry.
A forgotten tablet was left on the bunk. Zhenya opened it: some kind of brochure about the actions of a chemical platoon in a combat situation, several sheets of blank notepaper and a thin book, yellow with age. The lieutenant kept letters from his Lena somewhere else.
The thin, yellowed book was called “City of the Sun.” So this is where it comes from...
A week later, Zhenya gave the leather tablet to the platoon commander, and kept the book for himself, reading it and re-reading it during night shifts.
Beyond Volchansk, during a night crossing over the small river Pelegovka, the company behind which Zhenya was holding communications was covered by direct fire. Forty-eight people remained lying on the flat marshy bank. Zhenya Tulupov had his leg broken by a shrapnel, but he still crawled out... along with his field bag, which contained a book from an unfamiliar lieutenant.
I kept it in the hospital and brought it home - “City of the Sun” by Tommaso Campanella.
The village of Nizhnyaya Echma had never seen enemy planes overhead and did not know what blackout was. The fields pockmarked by shells were somewhere many hundreds of kilometers away - there was silence here, a deaf, inaccessible rear. And yet the war, even from afar, destroyed the village: pop A fences were given, and there was no one to lift them, they fell apart - is that it? - boardwalks, shops stood with boarded up windows, and those that were still open opened only two hours a day, when they brought bread from the bakery to sell it on ration cards and close again.
At one time, Nizhny Chechmen fairs brought together people from near Vyatka and Vologda, but only old people remember this. However, even later, right up to the war, envious sayings still circulated: “On Echma, don’t plow, don’t harrow, just drop a grain,” “The Echmea has been threshed - for three years ahead.”
It is now a sticky morning with a strained sluggish dawn, blackened log houses, black branches of bare trees, black dirt of crooked streets, the stagnation of lead puddles - monotony, dullness, abandonment. Late morning in late autumn.
Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov
Three bags of weed wheat
One night, unexpected guests came to the telephone operators of an intermediate station lost in the steppe - a twitchy, loud-mouthed foreman and two soldiers. They dragged the lieutenant wounded in the stomach.
The foreman shouted on the phone for a long time, explaining to his superiors how they “hung lanterns over their car” and fired from the air...
The wounded man was placed on a bunk. The sergeant-major said that they would soon come for him, he chattered some more, gave a bunch of advice and disappeared along with his soldiers.
Telephone operator Kukolev, who was off duty and driven from his bunk, went to get some sleep from the dugout into the trench. Zhenya Tulupov was left alone with the wounded man.
The suppressed light of the smokehouse was barely breathing, but even with its meager light one could see the sweaty inflammation of his forehead and his black lips, boiling like a scabby wound. The lieutenant, almost the same age as Zhenya - about twenty years old at most - lay unconscious. If it weren’t for the sweaty, inflamed blush, you might think he’s dead. But the narrow hands that he held on his stomach lived on their own. They lay so weightless and tense on the wound that it seemed like they were about to get burned and pull away.
P-pi-i-it... - quietly, through the dense scum of undiluted lips.
Zhenya shuddered, helpfully twitched for the flask, but immediately remembered: among the many pieces of advice that the foreman poured out in front of him, the strictest, the most persistent, repeated several times in a row, was: “Don’t let me drink. Not a bit! He will die."
Pi-i-it...
Putting down the telephone receiver for a minute, Zhenya gutted the individual package, tore off a piece of bandage, wet it, and carefully applied it to his baked lips. The lips trembled, a wave seemed to pass over the inflamed face, the eyelids moved, the head opened, motionless, directed upward, filled with stagnant moisture. They opened only for a second, the eyelids fell again.
The lieutenant never regained consciousness; Continuing to carefully cover the wound with his palms, he stirred and groaned:
Pi-i-it... Pi-i-i-it...
Zhenya wiped the wounded man’s sweaty face with a wet bandage. He fell silent and went limp.
Lena? Are you?.. - an unexpectedly calm, without hoarseness, without pain voice. - Are you here, Lena?.. - And with renewed vigor, with happy fervor: - I knew, knew that I would see you!.. Give me water, Lena... Or ask mom... I told you that the war will remove the dirt from earth! Dirt and bad people! Lena! Lena! There will be cities of the Sun!.. White, white!.. Towers! Domes! Gold! Gold in the sun hurts the eyes!.. Lena! Lena! City of the Sun! .. The walls are covered in paintings... Lena, are these your paintings? Everyone looks at them, everyone is happy... Children, many children, everyone laughs... The war has passed, the war has cleansed... Lena, Lena! What a terrible war it was! I didn’t write to you about this, now I’m telling you, now we can talk... Golden balls over our city... And your paintings... Red paintings on the walls... I knew, I knew that they would build it in our lifetime... We will see... You didn’t believe it, no one did believed!.. White, white city - it hurts the eyes!.. It’s burning!.. City of the Sun!.. Fire! Fire! Black smoke!.. Go-o-scream! It’s hot!.. Pi-i-it...
A red worm of light quivered on the flattened casing of an anti-tank rifle, shaggy darkness hung low, a wounded man was thrashing about on an earthen bunk beneath him, his inflamed face seemed bronze in the dim light. And a tearing boyish voice beat against the dull clay walls:
Lena! Lena! We are being bombed!.. Our city!.. Paintings are burning! Red paintings!.. Smoke! Duh! I can’t breathe!... Lena! City of the Sun! ..
Lena is a beautiful name. Bride? Sister? And what kind of city is this?.. Zhenya Tulupov, pressing the telephone receiver to his ear, looked dejectedly at the wounded man rushing about on his bunk, listening to his moans about the strange white city. And the red worm of the smokehouse, moving on the edge of the flattened cartridge, and the muffled cooing in the telephone receiver: “Mignonette”! "Mignonette"! I am “Buttercup”!.. And above, above the run-up, in the overturned night steppe, there is a distant machine-gun squabble.
And - the delirium of a dying man.
They picked him up three hours later. Two old orderlies, sleeping as they walked, in unraveled caps, dragged a canvas stretcher into a narrow passage, sniffling and pushing, they transferred the restless wounded man from the bunk, grunting, and carried him out to the dusty truck, which was impatiently knocking with its worn-out engine.
And over the tired-gray, unshaven steppe, a ghostly faded dawn was already seeping through, not yet completely washed away from the heavy blue of the night, not yet touched by the sun’s goldenness.
Zhenya accompanied the stretcher. He asked hopefully:
Guys, if they hit you in the stomach, will they survive?..
The guys - the old men in the rear - did not answer, they climbed into the back. The night was ending, they were in a hurry.
A forgotten tablet was left on the bunk. Zhenya opened it: some kind of brochure about the actions of a chemical platoon in a combat situation, several sheets of blank notepaper and a thin book, yellow with age. The lieutenant kept letters from his Lena somewhere else.
The thin, yellowed book was called “City of the Sun.” So this is where it comes from...
A week later, Zhenya gave the leather tablet to the platoon commander, and kept the book for himself, reading it and re-reading it during night shifts.
Beyond Volchansk, during a night crossing over the small river Pelegovka, the company behind which Zhenya was holding communications was covered by direct fire. Forty-eight people remained lying on the flat marshy bank. Zhenya Tulupov had his leg broken by a shrapnel, but he still crawled out... along with his field bag, which contained a book from an unfamiliar lieutenant.
I kept it in the hospital and brought it home - “City of the Sun” by Tommaso Campanella.
The village of Nizhnyaya Echma had never seen enemy planes overhead and did not know what blackout was. The fields pockmarked by shells were somewhere many hundreds of kilometers away - there was silence here, a deaf, inaccessible rear. And yet the war, even from afar, destroyed the village: pop A fences were given, and there was no one to lift them, they fell apart - is that it? - boardwalks, shops stood with boarded up windows, and those that were still open opened only two hours a day, when they brought bread from the bakery to sell it on ration cards and close again.
At one time, Nizhny Chechmen fairs brought together people from near Vyatka and Vologda, but only old people remember this. However, even later, right up to the war, envious sayings still circulated: “On Echma, don’t plow, don’t harrow, just drop a grain,” “The Echmea has been threshed - for three years ahead.”
It is now a sticky morning with a strained sluggish dawn, blackened log houses, black branches of bare trees, black dirt of crooked streets, the stagnation of lead puddles - monotony, dullness, abandonment. Late morning in late autumn.
But this is the autumn of 1944! In the center of the village on the square there is a pillar with an aluminum loudspeaker bell:
From the Soviet Information Bureau!..
These words are stronger than any oath. The war has been dragging on for four years, but now it’s soon, soon... There is nothing more desirable than waking up in the morning and hearing that peace has come - happiness, the same for everyone!
Above the village of Nizhnyaya Echma there is a gray sky of prolonged autumn, lead puddles, monochrome. But
