About the competition
With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus', the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, with the participation of the ANO “Center for Spiritual and Educational Programs named after St. Philaret of Moscow,” is holding the sixth season of the International Children’s and Youth Literary Competition named after Ivan Shmelev “The Summer of the Lord.”
Literary creative works are accepted for the competition. The value of such essays is that they help realize the creative potential of the authors and reflect the life philosophy of the younger generation. And the process of writing and presentation itself develops creative abilities, independent thinking, spelling skills, and fosters reader interest and a reading culture. To take part in the competition, schoolchildren will definitely turn to the Book, which means they will become familiar with the powerful repository of the spiritual tradition of Russian culture.
The thematic areas of the competition involve familiarity with historical materials, ancient Russian texts, classical and modern literary works that reflect the system of Orthodox values. The main task of teachers, mentors and parents is to help children make the right choice. Indeed, for the younger generation, these books will become not only a source of new knowledge, but also faithful companions in moral quests, a reliable support during the period of spiritual formation and throughout the path of life.
Understanding what you read, presenting your own thoughts and feelings in the form of literary creative work will contribute to the formation in children and adolescents of a system of Orthodox spiritual and moral values based on the principles of love, sacrifice, courage, selfless labor and faithful service for the good of the Fatherland. The transformative light of memory, love and the healing warmth of the family hearth are the main components of success in our competition.
The competition is held in two stages in three age groups: 6-7th, 8-9th, 10-12th grades. At the first (correspondence) stage, from September 1 to December 1, 2021, creative works are accepted. The volume of work must be no less than 5,000 and no more than 20,000 characters.
The competition commission evaluates creative works and decides on the participants who will be invited to participate in the finals.
To participate in the Competition, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the “Thematic Plan” and independently prepare creative work in accordance with the proposed thematic areas. Requirements for the design of works are set out in detail in the “Regulations on the Competition”. In order to submit an essay, you must go to the “Application for Participation” page, fill out the competition participant form and attach the corresponding file.
Participants from each age group who have scored the most points are invited to the second (in-person) stage during the spring school holidays in Moscow. The finalists write a final paper on the proposed topic, based on the results of which the winners of the competition will be named.
The competition has international status, students of grades 6-12 of general education and Orthodox schools, gymnasiums and colleges in Russia, CIS countries and abroad are invited to participate in it, as well as students of Sunday schools and additional education institutions no older than 18 years
.
Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill
Word from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' at the award ceremony for the winners of the third season of the “Summer of the Lord” competition
I cordially greet all of you, especially the laureates of the “Summer of the Lord” literary competition, and congratulate you on your well-deserved victory.
Winning a competition is certainly a significant achievement in a person’s life, and not only because his work has received recognition, which is important for a creative person. The value of victory, first of all, is that it can inspire, inspire further hard work, give strength and courage to conquer new heights and reveal your talent.
The Lord gives us abilities, but how to use them depends on us. We know the Gospel parable of how one man, having called his servants, gave one five talents, another two, and a third one, to each according to his strength. And the lord highly appreciated and rewarded those who multiplied their talents, and punished the one who buried his only talent in the ground (Matthew 25:14-30). Reading the works of the competition winners, I sincerely rejoiced and thanked God for the fact that He has endowed you, my dears, with such talents, the ability to feel subtly and think deeply - so deeply that this depth of thought is difficult to correlate with your age. This indicates that in our time even very young people are able to think deeply and penetrate into the essence of things.
And at your age, you need to first set yourself goals related to training, education, upbringing, and achieve the corresponding goals.
I would also like to say about the need for comprehensive personal development. I attach great importance to aesthetic education, without which a person, even a talented one, loses a lot. Because the aesthetic sense is like vision: it helps you see and feel what is impossible to feel in any other way. The aesthetic sense develops when we contemplate works of painting and sculpture, when we listen to music. Moreover, in this case, not only a sense of beauty is formed, but also a certain part of our worldview, because contact with beauty elevates the human soul, helps to rise above everyday life. A person’s ability to see, feel, and understand beauty is the key to all-round success.
God grant that you, the current generation, will be able to retain the ability not to answer “yes” to all temptations and temptations; so that you learn to apply the Divine law as an absolute criterion of truth to everything that surrounds you and poses some ideological challenge. Why am I telling you all this? In your works submitted to the competition, I saw a lot of useful, deep, ideologically significant things, which is why I allowed myself to talk with you about such serious adult topics. May the Lord help you in your labors!
Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsk Clement
Address by Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk, Chairman of the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, to the participants of the International Children and Youth Literary Competition “Summer of the Lord”
Remember, dear friends, how in early childhood your mother or grandmother read you your favorite fairy tales from your favorite colorful book. Perhaps at that time you yourself could not understand the mysterious letters, could not read the text on your own, but the wonderful pictures from the book were forever etched in your memory, and for sure you will someday read these fairy tales to your little children.
A book is not just a carrier of information. The book helps shape the culture of the people, the culture of education and the moral foundations of society. Being a visible evidence of the work of writers, publishers, and famous figures in book education, the book helps us preserve the memory of our ancestors.
I appeal to you to love books and reading. Love for books will help you in your studies, in improving your skills when mastering a profession, it will help you become educated and cultured people, it will help you truly love your Fatherland and our great Russian culture. A book can always be a wonderful gift for both your peers and the adults around you.
For all the kids who truly love books, Russian literature and history, we are holding our literary competition “The Summer of the Lord.”
Chronology[edit]
2019[edit]
Program for the festival “Summer of the Lord” and “Honey and Berry Fair” August 10, 2019
- 8.30 — Divine service in the Smolensk Church (Hours, Divine Liturgy, Procession of the Cross);
- 8.30 — arrival and registration of festival participants;
- 10.00 – start of operation of the “Honey and Berry Fair” shopping arcades and “fast” food kiosks;
- 10.00 — start of the “master class” clubs for children: fine arts, crafts of straw toys, scientific and educational experiments “Tricks of Science”, sponsor: https://sciencetricks.ru/ LLC “Experimental Science”;
- 10.00 - start of children's pony rides (with an instructor);
- 10.00 - start of visiting the farm containing reindeer and American royal (miniature) horses (800 m from the Smolensk Church), by appointment;
- 10.00 – start of the visit to the farm (pets, tasting of natural products, 1.5 km from the Smolensk Church), by appointment;
- 10.00 – start of registration for a visit (excursion) to the first scientific biological station in Russia - the natural reserve “Lake Glubokoe” (4.5 km from the Smolensk Church), the excursion starts at 14:00;
- 11.00 – 11.30 tea break for organizers and jury.
- 11.30 – opening of the competition and performance of choirs according to the regulations established by the Organizing Committee.
- 13.30 – 13.45 pause for the jury and registration of diplomas
- 13.45 — awarding of Festival participants;
- 14.00 – 16.00. Continued participation in the Honey and Berry Fair events
- 14.00 – visit (excursion) to the first scientific biological station in Russia, the natural reserve “Lake Glubokoe” (4.5 km).
About this book and its author
Until recently, when there was no television and “tired toys” went to bed on their own, parents read books to their children at night - fairy tales, poems, stories. Then, with the advent of radio, part of this concern was taken on by the actors, whose faces told about “The Malachite Box” and Bazhov’s Mistress of the Copper Mountain, about Ershov’s Little Humpbacked Horse or about the wonderful adventures of Ashik-Kerib, composed by Lermontov.
In books “for little ones,” good always triumphed over evil, bad was beaten by good, the poor good man punished the greedy grabber or even the king himself, who was portrayed as stupid and evil.
Growing up, you and I, however, began to learn that in life not everything is as simple as in fairy tales and legends. Injustice is a frequent guest on earth: the rich offend the poor, the strong - the weak, and not only then remain unpunished, but also laugh at the deceived. And there are many who consider this natural. How so? Why are people not afraid and not ashamed of offending and deceiving each other? And why is there so much injustice on earth, when beauty is destroyed, desecrated, when loved ones die, when kindness and love often do not meet understanding?
Because the world is imperfect.
How should people act in such a world, how to behave, what to do, how to treat each other, how to become – not at someone else’s expense – a little happier? Writers thought about this when creating their books, at different times and in different countries. And the best of these writers came to the same conclusion that there are higher powers - both within ourselves and outside of us - that are only capable of helping us live with dignity, overcome adversity and trials, do good to our neighbors, rejoice in good things and reject the bad. They wrote books in which the “teaching power” appeared unobtrusively, imperceptibly, with deep faith in the correctness of what was the meaning of life for them. And there really aren’t many such works.
“The Summer of the Lord” by Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev is one of these amazing books.
This is a book about a seven-year-old boy, his joys and sorrows, written far from Moscow, where he lived. The brutal events of the 1917 revolution and the Civil War sent the author, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, like hundreds of thousands of his compatriots, into exile abroad. From 1922 to 1950, the year of his death, the writer spent in France and there he created his best works - “Sun of the Dead”, “Pilgrim”, “Summer of the Lord”.
Shmelev had previously written specifically “for children,” “for youth.” His stories contained a lot of goodness, light, and humor. But, looking at his native Russia “from afar,” through the tears of his experience (one might say that before his eyes in Crimea in 1920, among many thousands of white officers, his only son was shot), he began to look for support in a foreign land in such values that - as he became more and more convinced - were eternal.
He acquired these values in his childhood.
Reading our native literature from preschool years has convinced us, it seems, that childhood can be told poetically, colorfully, sunny, spiritually only when it was spent in a village or on an estate, in the Russian open air, among its magical transformations.
Aksakov’s “Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson”, and “Childhood” by Leo Tolstoy, and “The Life of Arsenyev” by Bunin, and “Childhood of Nikita” by Alexei Tolstoy - they all convince of this. A city dweller, a Muscovite, a native inhabitant of Zamoskvorechye - Kadashevskaya Sloboda, Shmelev refutes this tradition.
No, it was not abscesses on the body of the Earth that our cities and their mother, Moscow, arose and were established. Of course, there was a lot of ugly and downright inhumane things in its depths. And these contrasts of old Moscow, seen through the eyes of an old waiter, were deeply and soulfully reflected in Shmelev’s 1911 story “The Man from the Restaurant.” But there was something else, absorbed by Shmelev the child. In the middle of a huge city, “opposite the Kremlin,” surrounded by artisans and workers like the sophisticated panelist Gorkin, merchants and clergy, the child saw a life filled with true poetry, deep religiosity, patriotic animation, kindness and unspeakable spiritual generosity.
Here, without a doubt, are the origins of Shmelev’s creativity, here is the fundamental basis of his artistic impressions.
Imagine a map of old Moscow.
The Moscow River gives the city a special identity. It approaches from the west and in Moscow itself makes two meanders, changing the mountainous side to the lowlands in three places. With the turn of the current from the Sparrow Hills to the north, the high bank of the right side, lowering at the Crimean Ford (now the Crimean Bridge), gradually passes to the left side, opening on the right, opposite the Kremlin, the wide meadow lowland of Zamoskvorechye
.
Here, in Kadashevskaya Sloboda (once inhabited by Kadashs, that is, coopers), on September 21 (October 3, new style), 1873, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was born.
A Muscovite, coming from a commercial and industrial environment, he knew this city perfectly and loved it - tenderly, devotedly, passionately. It was the earliest impressions of childhood that forever sown in his soul the March drops, and Palm Week, and “standing” in the church, and the journey through old Moscow: “The road flows, we drive as if through thick botvinya. The sun is bright, the grooves are murmuring, the boards are being laid. The janitors, in jackets, hit the ice with crowbars. They throw snow off the roofs. Shining carts with ice crawl. Quiet Yakimanka turns white like snow... The whole Kremlin is golden-pink, above the snowy Moscow River... What is beating inside me like this, filling my eyes with fog? It's mine, I know. And walls, and towers, and cathedrals... I hear all sorts of names, all sorts of cities in Russia. People are spinning under me, my head is spinning from the roar. And below there is a quiet white river, tiny horses, sleds, green ice, black men like dolls. And beyond the river, above the dark gardens, there is a thin sunny fog, in it there are bell towers-shadows, with crosses in sparks - my dear Zamoskvorechye" (“The Summer of the Lord”).
Moscow lived for Shmelev a living and original life, which to this day reminds of itself in the names of streets and alleys, squares and playgrounds, driveways, embankments, dead ends, which hid large and small fields, clearings, open fields, sand, mud and clay under the asphalt , mosses, wilds, or derbies, swamps, that is, swampy places, and the swamps themselves, hummocks, meadows, enemies - ravines, valleys - ditches, graves, as well as pine forests and a great many gardens and ponds. And Moscow remained closest to Shmelev in that triangle, which is formed by the bend of the Moscow River with a drainage canal and is bounded from the south by the Krymsky Val and Valovaya Street - Zamoskvorechye, where the merchants, petty bourgeoisie and many factory workers lived. The most poetic books are “Pilgrim” (1931) and “The Summer of the Lord” (1933–1948) - about Moscow, about Zamoskvorechye.
The niece of the writer Yu. A. Kutyrin said that Shmelev was of average height, thin, thin, with large gray eyes that dominated the entire face, prone to a gentle smile, but more often serious and sad. His face was furrowed with deep folds and depressions - from contemplation and compassion. The face of past centuries, perhaps. The face of an Old Believer, a sufferer.
However, this is how it was: Shmelev’s grandfather, a state peasant from the village of Guslitsy, Bogorodsky district, Moscow province, was an Old Believer. One of the ancestors was an ardent scribbler, a fighter for the faith: even under Princess Sophia, he entered into “spinners,” that is, in a dispute about faith.
The writer’s great-grandfather lived in Moscow already in 1812 and, as befits a kadash, traded in crockery and wood chips. His grandfather continued his business and took out contracts to build houses. Shmelev recalled about the cool and fair character of his grandfather, Ivan Sergeevich:
“During the construction of the Kolomna Palace (near Moscow), he lost almost all his capital “out of stubbornness” - he refused to give a bribe. He tried “for the sake of honor” and said that they should send him a bag of crosses for the construction, and not demand bribes. He paid for this: major alterations were required. The grandfather abandoned the contract, losing the collateral value of the work. A sad memory of this in our house was the “royal parquet” from the old Kolomna Palace, bought at auction and demolished.
- The kings have walked! - the grandfather used to say, gloomily looking at the cracked patterned floors. – This parquet cost me forty thousand! Dear parquet!
After my grandfather, my father found only three thousand in the chest. The old stone house and these three thousand were all that remained from the half-century work of my grandfather and father. There were debts."
A special place in Shmelev’s childhood impressions and in Shmelev’s grateful memory is occupied by his father, Sergei Ivanovich, to whom the writer devotes the most heartfelt poetic lines. This, obviously, was a family trait: he himself would be a mother
only son Sergei. Shmelev mentions his own mother in autobiographical books occasionally and as if reluctantly. Only in reflection, from other sources, do we learn about the drama associated with it, about childhood suffering that left an unhealed wound in the soul. Thus, the wife of the writer Bunin, Vera Nikolaevna, notes in her diary: “Shmelev told how he was flogged, the broom turned into small pieces. He can’t write about his mother, but he can’t write about his father endlessly.”
This is why in Shmelev’s autobiography and in later “memoir” books there is so much about his father.
“Father did not complete the course at the bourgeois school. From the age of fifteen I helped my grandfather with contracting work. He bought timber, drove rafts and barges with timber and wood chips. After the death of his father, he was engaged in contracts: he built bridges, houses, took contracts for the illumination of the capital on days of celebrations, kept porto-washes on the river, baths, boats, baths (the Shmelevs owned the Crimean baths, famous before the revolution), introduced ice mountains for the first time in Moscow, erected booths on Devichye Pole and near Novinsk. He was busy with business. He was only seen at home on holidays. His last job was to build stands for the public at the opening of the monument to Pushkin. The father was sick and was not at the celebration. I remember we had a pile of tickets for these celebrations stacked on the window - for relatives. But none of the relatives must have gone: these tickets lay on the window for a long time, and I built houses out of them...
I stayed after him for about seven years.”
The family was distinguished by its patriarchy, adherence to the old way of life and devout religiosity (“At home I didn’t see books except the Gospel,” Shmelev recalled). Patriarchal, religious, like the owners, and the servants were devoted to them. They were pushed around and called to the master’s table on the days of celebrations “for botvinya with white fish.” They told little Vanya stories about monks and holy people, accompanied him on a trip to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra - the famous monastery founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh ("Pilgrim"); they laid the moral foundations of his character. Shmelev will devote lyrical pages of childhood memories to one of them, the old panelist Gorkin.
A different spirit reigned, however, in the Shmelevs’ Zamoskvoretsky courtyard, where construction workers flocked from all over Russia. “The early years,” the writer recalled, “gave me many impressions. I received them “in the yard”.
We will meet this colorful, diverse crowd, representing, it seems, the whole of Russia, on the pages of many of his books, but above all in the “final” works, including in “The Summer of the Lord.”
“In our house,” said Shmelev, “people of every caliber and every social status appeared. There was a constant crowd in the yard. Carpenters, masons, and painters worked, constructing and painting shields for illumination. They came to receive payment and there was a lot of noise among the people. Cups, bowls, cubes were filled. The monograms were colorful. The barns were filled with many wonderful stage decorations. Artists from the Khitrov market bravely painted huge panels and created a wonderful world of monsters and colorful battles. Here were seas with swimming whales and crocodiles, and ships, and strange flowers, and people with brutal faces, winged snakes, Arabs, skeletons - everything that the heads of people in supports, with gray noses, all these “masters and Archimedes” could give. , as their father called them. These “Archimedes and masters” sang funny songs and did not reach into their pockets for a word. There were a lot of words in our yard - all kinds. This was the first book I read - a book of living, lively and colorful words.
Here, in the courtyard, I saw people. I got used to it here and was not afraid of swearing, wild screams, shaggy heads, or strong arms. These shaggy heads looked at me very lovingly. With a good-natured wink, their calloused hands gave me planes, a saw, a hatchet, and hammers and taught me how to “finish” on the boards, amid the resinous smell of shavings, I ate sour bread, heavily salted, onions and black flatbreads brought from the village . Here, on summer evenings, after work, I listened to stories about the village, fairy tales and waited for jokes. The hefty arms of the draymen dragged me to the stables to the horses, sat me on the corroded backs of the horses, and stroked me affectionately on the head. Here I first felt the melancholy of the Russian soul in the song sung by the red-haired house painter. “And eh and the topics-nay forest... yes eh and the topics-na-y...” I loved to sneak into the dining group, timidly take a spoon, which had just been licked clean and wiped with a large gnarled finger with a bluish-yellow nail, and swallow the scalding cabbage soup , strongly flavored with pepper.
I saw a lot in our yard, both funny and sad. I saw how they lose fingers, how blood flows from under torn calluses and nails, how they rub their ears with dead drunks, how they fight on the walls, how they hit the enemy with well-aimed and sharp words, how they write letters to the village and how they are read. Here I felt love and respect for this people who could do anything. He did what people like me and my relatives could not do. These shaggy ones performed many wonderful things before my eyes. They hung under the roof, walked along the eaves, went down into the well, cut out figures from boards, forged horses that kicked, painted miracles with paints, sang songs and told exciting tales...
There were many artisans in the yard - sheep makers, shoemakers, furriers, tailors. They gave me many words, many inimitable feelings and experiences. For me, our yard was the first school of life - the most important and wise. There were thousands of impulses for thought here. And everything that warmly beats in my soul, that makes me feel sorry and indignant, think and feel, I received from hundreds of ordinary people with calloused hands and eyes that were kind to me, a child.”
From the bins of memory came Shmelev’s childhood impressions, which made up “The Summer of the Lord,” an absolutely amazing book of poetry, spiritual light, and precious scatterings of words.
Of course, the world of “The Summer of the Lord” is the world of Gorkin, the sheep-man Fedya and the pious Domna Panferovna, the old coachman Antipushka and the clerk Vasil Vasilich, the “shabby gentleman” Entaltsev and the soldier Makhorov “on a wooden leg”, the sausage maker Korovkin, the fishmonger Gornostaev, the poultry farmer Solodovkin and “ Crookshanks” - the rich godfather Kashin - this world at the same time did not exist and was, transformed in the word. And Shmelev’s epic, poetic power only intensifies from this.
The author of several studies dedicated to Shmelev, philosopher I. A. Ilyin wrote about the “Summer of the Lord”:
“Shmelev never borrows the outline for his plot from the external order of events. He doesn't need it. The plot of his works unfolds independently from the substantive content itself. But in the book “The Summer of the Lord. Holidays”, he builds his plot as if on an external empirical sequence of times, but in essence follows the calendar year of Russian Orthodoxy.
The annual rotation, this rhythm of life so familiar to us and so significant in our lives, has in Russia its own internal, at once climatic, everyday and religious-ritual connection. And for the first time in Russian literature this complex organism is depicted, in which the movement of the material sun and the movement of the spiritual religious sun
grow together and intertwine into a single course of life.
Two suns walk across the Russian sky: the planetary sun,
which gave us a stormy spring, a hot summer, a farewell beautiful autumn and a strictly menacing, but beautiful and gracious white winter, - and another sun, the
spiritual Orthodox one,
which gave us in the spring - a holiday of bright, cleansing Christ's Resurrection, in summer and autumn - holidays of life and natural blessings, in winter, in the cold - the promised Christmas and spiritually invigorating Baptism. And so Shmelev shows us and the rest of the world how this series of bisolar rotations affected Russian folk life and how the Russian soul, building Russia for centuries, filled these periods of the Year of the Lord with its work and its prayer. This is where the title “Summer of the Lord” comes from, denoting not so much an artistic subject as the structure and rhythm of figurative change borrowed from the two Suns of God.”
“The Summer of the Lord” is a book for family reading. It is best read in the good old traditions - in the evenings, out loud, for the benefit not only of children, but also of the parents themselves, chapter by chapter. This is food for the mind and heart of a child, a teenager, a young man, and an adult. For it is never too late to think about what Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev forces us to think about: the purpose of a little person entering this world.
Oleg Mikhailov
I. Holidays
I dedicate it to Natalia Nikolaevna and Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin.
Author
Two feelings are wonderfully close to us -
The heart finds food in them -
Love for the native ashes,
Love for fathers' coffins.
A. Pushkin
Lent
Online reading of the book Summer of the Lord, Great Lent
Clean Monday
I wake up from the harsh light in the room: some kind of bare light, cold, boring. Yes, today is Lent. The pink curtains with hunters and ducks had already been taken down when I was sleeping, and that’s why the room was so bare and boring. Today is Clean Monday and everything in our house is being cleaned. Gray weather, thaw. It's dripping outside the window - it's like crying. Our old carpenter, “panelman” Gorkin, said yesterday that Maslenitsa will go away and cry. So she started crying - drip... drip... drip... Here she is! I look at the torn paper flowers, at the gilded “Maslenitsa” gingerbread - a toy brought from the baths yesterday: there are no bears, no slides - the joy is gone. And something joyful is stirring in the heart: everything is new now, different. Now “the soul will begin,” Gorkin said yesterday, “the soul must be prepared.” Fast, fast, prepare for the Bright Day.
- Call the oblique one to me! – I hear my father scream, angry.
Father did not leave on business: today is a special day, strict, - the father rarely shouts. Something important has happened. But he forgave him for drunkenness, forgave him all his sins: yesterday was the day of forgiveness. And Vasil-Vasilich forgave us all, and said so in the dining room on his knees - “I forgive everyone!” Why is the father screaming?
The door opens and Gorkin enters with a shining copper basin. Oh, smoke Maslenitsa! There is a hot brick and mint in a basin, and vinegar is poured over them. My old nanny Domnushka follows Gorkin and waters him, hissing in the basin, and sour steam rises - sacred. I can hear it now, from afar. Sacred... – that’s what Gorkin calls it. He walks around the corners and quietly shakes his pelvis. And the home-worker sways.
“Get up, darling, don’t be gentle...” he tells me affectionately, sticking his basin under the canopy. - Where do you have her here, Maslenitsa fat woman... we will drive her out. Lent came and I’ll bite off the wolf’s tail. We’ll go with you to the Lenten market, the Vasilievsky singers will sing - “my soul, my soul” - you’ll listen to it.
An unforgettable, sacred smell. This smells like Lent. And Gorkin is very special - it’s also like he’s sacred. Even before daylight he went to the bathhouse, took a steam bath, put on everything clean - today is clean Monday! - only the old Cossack boy: today they will put on all the most shabby, so “according to the law it is necessary.” It’s a sin to laugh, and you have to oil your head like Gorkin. Now he eats without butter, and, according to the law, his head is needed “for prayer.” The radiance comes from him, from his gray beard, completely silver, from his combed head. I know he is a saint. There are such people-pleasers. And the face is pink, like a cherub, from purity. I know that he dried himself black crackers with salt, and throughout Lent he would drink tea with them - “for sugar.”
- Why is daddy so angry... with Vasil-Vasilich?
“Ah, sins...” Gorkin says with a sigh. – It’s also hard to break, now everything is strict, Post. Well, they get angry. And you hold on, think about your soul. Such a time is as if the last days have come... according to the law! Read: “Lord, Master of my life.” This will be fun.
And I begin to read to myself the recently learned Lenten prayer.
The rooms are quiet and deserted, smelling of a sacred smell. In the hallway, in front of the reddish icon of the Crucifixion, very old, from the late great-grandmother, who followed the old faith, they lit a Lenten, bare glass, lamp, and now it will burn unquenchably until Easter. When my father lights it - on Saturdays he lights all the lamps himself - he always hums pleasantly and sadly: “We worship Your Cross, Master,” and I sing after him, wonderful:
And holy... Your Resurrection
Sla-a-vim!
Joyful things beat in my soul to the point of tears and shine from these words. And I see, behind the string of days of Lent, Holy Sunday, in the lights. Joyful prayer! She shines with a gentle countenance in these sad days of Lent.
It begins to seem to me that now the old life is ending and I need to prepare for the life that will be... where? Somewhere in heaven. The soul must be cleansed of all sins, and therefore everything around is different. And something special is near us, invisible and terrible. Gorkin told me that now it’s “like the soul parting with the body.” They are on guard to catch the soul, and the soul trembles and cries - “woe is me, accursed me!” This is how it is now read in the Ifimons.
“That’s why they feel that the end is coming for them, that Christ will rise again!” That’s why Lent was given, so that I could stick to church more and wait for the Bright Day. And don’t even think about it, you know. Don't think about earthly things! And everyone will start calling: remember... remember!.. - he leaves so nicely.
The windows in the house are open, and you can hear the bell crying and calling - I remember... this is a pitiful bell, crying for a sinful soul. It's called Lenten gospel. The curtains have been removed from the windows, and things will be fine now until Easter. In the living room, gray covers are put on the furniture, the lamps are tied into cocoons, and even the only painting - “The Beauty at the Feast” - is covered with a sheet. The Eminence advised this. He shook his head sadly and whispered: “a sinful and seductive picture!” But my father really likes it - so chic! Also covered is a printed picture, which my father calls for some reason “Prianishnikovskaya”, of an old sexton dancing, and an old woman beating him with a broom. The Reverend liked this very much, he even laughed. Everyone at home is very strict, wearing shabby dresses with patches, and I was ordered to wear a jacket with torn elbows. The carpets have been removed, you can now roll deftly on the parquet floors, but it’s scary, Lent: if you roll, you’ll break your leg. There’s not a crumb anywhere from “Maslenitsa”, not even a breath left. Even the jellied sturgeon was given to the kitchen yesterday. The most common plates remained in the buffet, with brown spots and chips - Lenten ones. In the hallway there are bowls with yellow pickled cucumbers, with dill umbrellas stuck into them, and with chopped sour cabbage, thickly sprinkled with anise - such a delight. I grab it in pinches and it crunches! And I promise myself not to fast throughout Lent. Why eat something that destroys the soul, if everything is already delicious? They will cook compote, make potato cutlets with prunes and sear, peas, poppy seed bread with beautiful curls of sugar poppy seeds, pink bagels, “crosses” on Krestopoklonnaya... frozen cranberries with sugar, jellied nuts, candied almonds, soaked peas, bagels and cod cakes, jug raisins, rowan pastille, lean sugar - lemon, raspberry, with oranges inside, halva... And fried buckwheat porridge with onions, wash down with kvass! And Lenten pies with milk mushrooms, and buckwheat pancakes with onions on Saturdays... and kutia with marmalade on the first Saturday, some kind of “kolivo”! And almond milk with white jelly, and cranberry jelly with vanilla, and... the great kulebyaka for the Annunciation, with elm, with sturgeon! And kalya, extraordinary kalya, with pieces of blue caviar, with pickled cucumbers... and pickled apples on Sundays, and melted, sweet-sweet “Ryazan”... and “sinners”, with hemp oil, with a crispy crust, with a warm emptiness inside!. Is it really possible that the place where everyone leaves this life will be so lean! And why is everyone so boring? After all, everything is different, and there is much, so much joy. Today they will deliver the first ice and start filling the cellars - the whole yard will be filled up. Let's go to the "Lenten market", where there is a groan, a great mushroom market, where I have never been... I start to jump for joy, but they stop me:
– Post, don’t you dare! Wait, you'll break your leg.
I'm getting scared. I look at the Crucifixion. The Son of God is suffering! But how did God... how did He allow it?..
I feel a great mystery in this - God.
In the office, the father screams, bangs his fist and stomps. On such and such a day! This is him on Vasil-Vasilich. I just forgave you yesterday. I am afraid to enter the office, he will certainly kick me out, “in the heat of the moment,” and I hide behind the door. Through the crack I see Vasil-Vasilich’s broad back, his red neck and the back of his head. The folds on the neck play like an accordion, the back staggers, and the huge fists are thrown back, as if they are driving away someone - an evil spirit? He must still be “drunk” even now.
- Drunk face! - the father shouts, banging his fist on the table on which piles of money are bouncing with a clink. - And you’re drunk now?! On such and such a great day! I sin with you, with the devils, forgive me, Lord! The audience was almost killed at the skating rink?! Where was the idiot clerk? I lost the bag of proceeds... for three hundred rubles! Thank you, old cab driver, he still remembers God, he brought him... forgot at his feet?! Out to the village, crew!..
“Not in one eye, come on... I went to the bathhouse and took a steam bath... it’s a clean Monday, sir... everyone has been in the bathhouse since five o’clock, as it should be...” Vasil-Vasilich reports, bending down and keeps pushing everyone away - behind. - Calculate... everything is in full... my master's property... does not sink in fire, does not burn in water... purely and completely...
– Almost mutilated the audience! Drunk, driving downhill? A note to me from the policeman from Presnya... What does this smell like? Report what happened.
- For a thousand revenue, sir, count it. The tickets will prove everything is intact. And so it was. True, I made a mistake through the police officer... for the sake of the master's antires. By nightfall the drunks piled in - roll! Let's roll up the butter! Well, they rolled the dilijan, they shouted - it’s worse! Eight of us sat down, but Anton Kudryavy couldn’t skate, he was tired from lunch, he kept skating... well, after drinking a little...
-Are you sober?
- Like a piece of glass, I just took the policeman for a ride on a sled, he was fresh... And they took me prisoner! And so, sir. Butchers came at me from Taganka... they came to the mountains with pancakes and bags... They liked me very much...
– I liked your drunk face! Well, lie...
“They took me by force to the dilijan, Antoshka drove us... But they hold me across, they don’t allow me to give orders. Fly them from the mountains... God forbid... I see we are going to disappear... I shout - Antosha, cut with your heels, hold me back! He began to hold back with his heels, cut... and fell off the handle, under the dilizhan, and the dilizhan turned over three times all the way, in this place... it burned me like a fist, sir... And there, fools, without my eyes... another dilizhan was released with drunks. Parsley Deaf led... well, too small for the send-off Maslenoy was not at all firm... It hit us, eight people! There was contrition, but God saved us, they hit us in the bottom, pierced us, but the people were only scattered... And there the third one was being driven away, Vaska took up his own business, but halfway up the mountain he knocked everyone down, one of them got his leg caught, a fallen boot, thank you, saved him from breaking. Otherwise, we would all have been beaten... we were lying on the ice, on the move... Well, the quarterly clerk began to frighten us, write a report, but the quarterly clerk forbade him, there was no murder! Well, I took the clerk to the restaurant, and the newspaperman here threatened to print your name... and I ordered him to give him some hodgepodge... and they drank, sir! For the master's antiresu, sir. And the policeman ordered the mountains to be closed at nine o’clock, according to the law, for Lent, so that it would be quiet and noble... all the fun, so that there would be silence.
- How are Antoshka and Glukhim lying?
- We were already steaming in the bathhouse, safe. Ivan Ivanovich Fershal looked and ordered some grated horseradish under the back of the head. They're already asking for cabbage. I was scared, both of us were lying unconscious yesterday from... a concussion, sir! And I settled everything, went home, yes... I hurt my head on the Dilijan, my memory was gone... I forgot one bag of change, sir... but after all, your family has known your cab for forty years!
“Go…” the father says in a fallen voice. - I’m upset for such a day... Govey is here with you!.. Wait... There are no outfits today, you’ll order to take the snow from the barns... twenty carts of ice should be driven from the Moscow River after lunch, according to a special outfit, you’ll give three kopecks each. Fraudsters! Yesterday I asked for forgiveness, but didn’t say a word about the scandal! Get out of sight.
Vasil-Vasilich sees me, looks sleepily and points with his hands, as if he wants to say: “Well, no way!” I feel sorry for him and ashamed of my father: on such and such a great day, it’s a sin!
I stand there for a long time and don’t dare – should I go in? I creak the door. Father, in a gray robe, boring - I see his frowning eyebrows - is counting money. He counts quickly and puts them in columns. The entire table is in silver and copper. And mullioned windows. Abacuses are tapped, coppers are clinked, and silver rings loudly.
- What do you need? - he asks sternly. - Don't interfere. Take a prayer book and read it. Ah, scammers... You have no business selling elephants, learn your prayers!
He was so upset by everything that he didn’t even pinch his cheek.
In the workshop, Pyotr Glukhoy and Anton Kudryavy are lying on the wood shavings, right next to the stove. Their heads are covered with sauerkraut leaves - “from the frenzy.” The carpenters, who had gone to the bathhouse, are resting and mending their sheepskin coats and army jackets. Gorkin is reading the Gospel at the window, shouting to the whole workshop like a sexton. Reads by warehouse. They listen in silence and do not smoke: it is prohibited for the entire Lent, from Gorkin; can go to the yard. The cook, trying not to make noise and listen, crushes the murtsovka-prison in huge cups. It smells strongly of radish and cabbage. Half-pound piles of steaming bread lie in a mountain. There are buckets of kvass and cucumbers. The black clock is knocking boringly. Gorkin reads and cries:
– ..and you... saints... angels are with Him.
Anton’s rough head rises, looks at me with dull eyes, looks at the bucket of cucumbers on the bench, listens to the melodious reading of the holy words... - and in a quiet, pleading, plaintive voice he says to the cook:
- Oh, some kvass... some cucumber...
And Gorkin, shaking his finger, reads sternly:
- “Depart from Me... into eternal fire... prepared for the devil and his angels!..”
And the clock, in silence, chi-chi-chi...
I sit quietly and listen.
After a sad dinner, in general silence, my father is still upset - I sadly walk in the yard and pick up the snow. We’ll go to the mushroom market only tomorrow, but it’s too early to go to Efimon. Vasil-Vasilich also walks sadly, upset. He picks up the snow and waits. They say he didn’t even sit down to dinner. He chops firewood, knocks down icicles with a broom... Otherwise he stands there and breaks his nails. I feel very sorry for him. He sees me, takes a spatula, looks at it for something and gives it back - not a word.
- Why did you scold me? - he tells me sadly, looking at the rooftops. - They say, take the calculation... in thirty years! I still served with Ivan Ivanovich, with my grandfather... since I was a boy... We bought other houses, opened taverns with your money, but here I am... settlement! Well, I’ll say goodbye, I’ll go to the village, I won’t serve anyone. Well, may God forgive them...
These words make my throat catch. For what?! and on such and such a day! It was ordered to forgive everyone, and yesterday everyone was forgiven, including Vasil-Vasilich.
- Vasil-Vasilich! - I hear my father’s cry and see my father, in a jacket and hat, quickly walking towards the barn where we are talking. - So how is it that according to ticket books the proceeds amount to a thousand, but the money is three hundred rubles more? What kind of miracles?..
“What we have are all yours, but there are no miracles here,” Vasil-Vasilich says aside, and sternly. - I want your money... I still have a cross around my neck!
- Don’t be angry, scarecrow... You know me. You never know if a person is in trouble.
- And so yesterday they were rushing to the mountains, Maslenaya... and perky, they don’t want to wait... they threw money at the ticket office, but they don’t want a ticket... we’re not thieves, they say! Well, they collected where. I shook out all the bags. Our guys are reliable... well, they drank five, maybe... that's all. And I... I have your goodness... Here I have, here is your all!.. - Vasil-Vasilich is already shouting and immediately turns out his jacket pockets.
From one pocket a bitten piece of black bread flies out into the snow, and from another a stub of pickled cucumber. Vasil-Vasilich himself probably did not expect this. He bends down, sheepishly picks it up and begins shoveling the snow. I look at my father. His face somehow lit up, his eyes sparkled. He quickly goes to Vasil-Vasilich, takes him by the shoulders and shakes him hard, very hard. And Vasil-Vasilich, having released the shovel, stands with his back and is silent. And so it ended. They didn't say a word. The father quickly leaves. And Vasil-Vasilich, blinking, shouts, as always, dashingly:
- There’s no point in messing around! Hey, guys... take the shovels, remove the snow... they'll dump the ice - there's nowhere to put it!
The carpenters, rested after lunch, come out. Gorkin came out, Anton and Glukhim came out, and rubbed themselves with snow. And the clever work began. And Vasil-Vasilich watched and slowly, very pleased with something, chewed the cucumber and bread.
– Are you fasting, Vasya? – Gorkin says, chuckling. - Well, show yourself, use a spatula... let’s shake out the pancakes.
I watch how the snow flies up and how it is carried in baskets to the garden. Shovels crunch, growls are heard, and there is a smell of spicy radish and cabbage. They begin to sadly preach the gospel - remember... remember... - to the Ephimons.
“Let’s go to church, the Vasilievskys are singing today,” Gorkin tells me.
He leaves to get dressed. I'm going too. And I hear my father cheerfully calling from the hallway window:
- Vasil-Vasilich... come in for a minute, brother.
When we leave the yard to the sound of the bell, Gorkin says to me excitedly, his voice trembles:
- Do just that, take your father’s example... never offend people. And especially when you need to take care of your soul... ovens. He gave Vasil-Vasilich a quarter ticket for shitting... I also got a quarter ticket, for no reason... the foreman got five rubles, and the robots got fifty kopecks for snow. This is how you treat people. Our guys are good, they appreciate...
Twilight sky, melting sticky snow, calling for good news... How long ago it was! Warm, like a spring breeze... - I can still hear it in my heart.
