"Zone"

A story from 1979 that my grandfather put into words in 2004.
The forest indifferently chews the prison: the paths along which the guards wandered are hidden in the grass; the doors rot in the undergrowth; Only the mailboxes shine persistently, creating the illusion of a conversation on equal terms - with free people.
Dense and scary text; an old-fashioned exercise in politicizing the image of a ruin - if you have not encountered this before, see the experience of Georg Simmel .

All stories are in the collection “Against All Odds”

Selected ones - in the collection on Sigma

Lying once again in a hospital bed with an injury, I just got into a conversation with my roommate and was stunned to discover that he was born in Aleksandrovsk, worked in Cheboksary and knows perfectly well what happened in these parts in the late thirties.

The first settlers appeared here during the period of the great dispossession of kulaks; they were brought in with whole families, shaken out into an open field and... forgotten!

At first they died immensely, then they settled down, got livestock allowed by law , plowed up the arable land and lived happily ever after, to the envy of the local starving people, who, in a drunken stupor, gaped at the strange animals called camels, which perfectly took root in this harsh region, meekly transporting cargo and happily spitting in the drunken faces of the aborigines.

They remembered the aliens only in 1942, when the war required a new portion of cannon fodder. By this time, the first political camp in these parts was already living its dark life in Evgenov Yurts.

Immediately after the war, convoys of prisoners sadly walked through the snow from fascist captivity straight to ours - through the Cheboksary swamp, first to Matkul, then to Yarki and finally to distant Ah-Konga.

Outposts appeared all over Chernaya, in the spring there was a flood of per-mol alloy along the river, and then special teams cleared the banks of stuck logs, collected balan, tied them into rafts and drove them to the lower reaches. Specific life was boiling and dying, the forests were thinning, but there was plenty of game.

In those days, no one had even heard of the tick, dust had not yet been sprinkled on the forests, forestry was not called poaching, the living creatures prospered and multiplied with impunity, and the local hunter-hunt supplied all the camp authorities with meat and fish, putting the caught pike in woodpiles in the winter. And then the planned management of hunting and forestry began... The father of all nations rested safely in God, an amnesty was declared, and, leaving everything to the mercy of fate, the guards moved to new jobs, and the zones, utility rooms and outposts began to fall into disrepair, periodically being raided by local vandals.

When my friends appeared in these places, there was only one hut left at the hunting post, an empty clearing in Matkul, several huts in Yarki and a cluster of surviving buildings in Ah-Kong, it was just that it was necessary to cut along the river for as much as 250 kilometers, and one day I had to swing an oar to get there for five whole days.

Back in 1975, the three of us sailed to Yarki: Stas, Yura Kiskachi and your humble servant with one goal - to set up a base for Stas right on the border with our northern neighbor. We chose a surviving old workshop for this purpose, fenced off a decent corner with a strong wall, rebuilt the roof and built the Russian Teplushka-2 stove according to all the rules. Everything turned out great, and we, peaceful and satisfied, devoted the remaining days to hunting, and Stas moved down to Lake Kulymakh for 3-4 kg crucian carp, on the barter of which he provided himself with provisions for the entire season. And in Yarki itself, or rather, nearby, there was a famous pit, from which they used to take clay for bricks, and now wood grouse who came from all over the area dug pebbles. They flew there while it was still dark, and they had to go into hiding as early as three in the morning.

So today I settled down in complete darkness in the area of ​​the yashchi, next to a rickety guard tower, on a spread sleeping bag, sucking on a rye cracker and frantically staring with sleepy eyes into the pitch darkness. The capercaillie is a watchful bird, and, silently flying up from the side of the swamps, it first settles somewhere on top, studying the situation for a long time, so that at the first sign of danger it rushes back, and if everything is clear, it quietly floats to the floor.

When the firstborn appeared, I overslept, heard the rumble of the wings of a giant anointing itself on the top of a pine tree, and only after that I saw him about forty-five meters from me. A huge black silhouette swayed against the background of the barely brightening sky, and I instantly unloaded my Sauer at it. The two-zero charge landed perfectly, and with my feet I felt the fall of the magnificent trophy. Having caught another handsome one that morning, I with difficulty dragged them to the hut. I have never seen such a specimen in all my years of hunting! Already at home, after cutting, his weight dropped by 7.2 kilograms. Subsequently, I often regretted that I did not make a stuffed animal out of him, he was too beautiful in his autumn beauty!

A couple of years later, I was wandering around these places alone, without a dog, and one day, a few kilometers from the coast, I came across an old, narrow-gauge, completely overgrown embankment, already without rails and sleepers, which led me to a zone that had emerged out of nowhere completely unexpectedly.