In the province by the sea

An unexpected (and in general - long -awaited) stream of our latest story. The exotic seems to be for the young, sensitive to the intentions of today's literature, the writer, the choice of material: the line of the 70-80s. And an absolutely logical approach to it is the image of the Brezhnev era, not in the traditions of socio -psychological households with a defiant or, on the contrary, nostalgic for the departed Soviet paradise, and in the tradition of strict existential prose. In an artistic study of certain universal concepts that are not dependent on the opposition "Soviet - anti -Soviet", even if there is this opposition, as a plot -forming one.

... the sign of the separation from the "center", the sign of the legitimization of the private life of the Soviet citizen Uskin does not make life "in the province by the sea", but - life by the border river. But the semantic filling of the image of the outskirts of the deaf town, with everyday life, highlighted from the inside of another (in all respects) by the borderly world, is partly comparable to the famous lines - geography and history of Brodsky - we were perceived once as a language of allusions. The river in the story of Usskin is the land of the Soviet world. The bridge, border pillars with barbed wire, a lone figure of the toptoon on the embankment, and very close to the hero, on the other side, is a materialized idea of ​​freedom. What was a abroad for a Soviet man, today you can’t explain. Nothing like that Turkey or France where my fellow citizens go today and have fun. Paris or Istanbul were not the names of cities for us, but - the news from another world, against which our Soviet attitude was perceived by an almost clinical form of socio -psychological infantility.

We can say that the material of the story was the Mayata of the Soviet man, yearning for another life, whose lights shine from the other side of the river. More precisely, the yearning in itself - to another. Here, say, the hero becomes the owner of a smuggled vinyl disk, and although he still does not have a player, he is happy - in the end, the matter is not in music, it is enough to study the texts and photographs on the envelope of the record, that is, a sufficiently material confirmation of the reality of that world.

And the same material of the story should be considered the very literary form - the author works with the blank "Youth Tale" of the sixties "about physicists." The story from the first person. Молодой герой (Николай, Николенька), закончив институт, получает распределение в режимный пограничный городок и начинает свою трудовую деятельность в оборонном НИИ, описываются старшие товарищи и коллеги по науке, атмосфера жизни приграничного городка на излете брежневской эпохи, тогдашние "молодежные компании" со своим жаргоном и стилем жизни и т.д., ну и, разумеется, опыт первой, молодой и gusty love.

By tracking the point of the point for a well -known plot, you can feel how different the narration of Usskin from the then canon, even if we take not the Gladilinsky Victor Podgursky as such, but Makanin with a “direct line”. "There, the lights behind the river" writes today's writer and writes from today. Despite the fact that ultimately Usovskin works out the canonical scheme eagerly and seriously, the artistic development of this canon includes, nevertheless, the author’s reflection on the myth of the 60s reflected in this canon. So it was already - without comparing the scale, I remind you how the first seven chapters of Don Quixote are sharply different from the subsequent narrative, when, having smeared the stereotypes of the knightly novel about the walls, the writer, nevertheless, continues the story in the tradition of this genre. Only now the world, which seemed to be in the literature in those old stories and novels, appears in an unexpected form. There is no question of any romantic burning of a young scientist (“ I go to a thunderstorm ”) and at all - institutional everyday life is represented as a routine serving of labor service. At first, the hero, as it were, is even fond of, but he feels too quickly how strange he is with his burning against the backdrop of a sleepy and generally unnecessary “scientific activity”. The boredom and immobility of institutional life continues with the same immobility and behind the walls of the institute. The most high -profile event in the life of the town inevitably becomes the capture of a special forces that had taken possession of the armed deserter in the building of the armed deserter, who had taken possession with the institute - almost all the employees of the institute who joyfully left jobs to stroke for their lives became the audience of the assault. And even what certainly should have shaken the hero - the first invitation to the company of local institutions - turns into a dull household for him. They gathered, drank, scored a jamb, then the girls began to dance, dropping clothes, etc. - Until the hangover in the morning in the room of a half -familiar friend with a gray November sky in the window. But here it really takes place for the hero - in the shabby kitchener of a friend, he discovers an old sea binoculars. The binoculars take with them a walk along an empty gloomy embankment, and the hero, turning to the river, brings binoculars to the eyes-the space destroyed by optics lets the hero into the fiberd world, he sees some of their houses, a bus, a customs officer, who for some reason standing thoughtfully on that embankment, the sloping roofs of their wagons , he tries to imagine how people are sitting in these cars, that They do what they feel, what they think about, etc. This is a really strong experience - to make sure of the reality of another world again.

Here, in the stream of this groomed, bloodless life, which is frozen for the hero and the main thing happens with him, which, in fact, forms the plot of the story - in appearance, it seems like not motivated maturation and mature of the soul. The birth of a personality. This is, I repeat that the world around the hero is almost motionless. It can truly excite it very little. Well, for example, snow. Always different, always unfamiliar and absolutely alive in every form. Snow as a news from there is peripheral, as it were, a motive, worked out in a story almost from Chekhov (" lady with a dog ") piercing.

Or a woman's phenomenon. The hero, of course, is in love. To the friend of his friend Julia. For the time being, nothing prevents him from transpringing in it and experiencing the crushing power of femininity. It does not occur to him that, according to her human qualities, a girl who embodies for him the image of this eternal life -life energy can be immeasurably smaller and poorer than what is representing from. The more crushing in the finale the bummer experienced by the hero.

The plot with the love of the hero intersects in the story with a specific variation of the plot of freedom. Really freedom, the proximity of another world, exciting the hero, so to speak, Platonically, is also revealed to him by the semi -underground life of the town. Smuggling. This is a sweet word, associated with the same, for example, by considering the envelope of the vinyl plate, suddenly arises in a completely different context - the arrest of a friend, a search in his room, on which a hero is present, an interrogation in OBHSSS. The romantic, becoming domestic, leads the hero in an unexpected direction for him - during the search, he sees a pile of sneakers, jeans, audio cassette, cigarettes, etc., which in this case appear before him with a product. He sees a pack of money - this is how - four thousand rubles. The money that is unthinkable in that life, the equivalent of a three -year salary (and life) of a whole family, special dignity, special independence of a person from a socialist society. And to this specific materialization of freedom, capital , the hero cannot do not feel involuntary respect.

A natural continuation of this plot is his first conversation with Julia after the arrest of his friend, from which he, having cold from surprise, heard the following:

"... how is it ... after all, Valery Arnoldovich ... After all, they shared with him too .. bitch ... Bitches are insatiable ... Jackal ... Eggs would tear them all ..."

But the hero has not yet fully understood that they showed him what he was faced with.

Another tough but necessary lesson was needed: having accepted the invitation to go out of town for secluded bathing and by inspiring the hero to explain (so to speak, active) in love, Julia cuts down the hero in the most radical way - she tries to drown him:

"... You went crazy, or something? ... I could drown" - "... it would be good if you drowned because you are good now, Kolya, and Valera ... because of your testimony ... in the zone ... I understand now? ... Judas."

For the hero, he finally falls into place - he will know not only with his mind, but also, so to speak, with an interpretation, what freedom is. He learns that the shades in this word are the abyss. That freedom can be beautiful as terrible as terrible. And most importantly: freedom is only necessary for an adult, who has been promoted with the infantile dreams of the world. For an infantile person, freedom is the scourge of God.

... It is easy for me to imagine how the readers will be disappointed, who, out of habit, made during the reading process to include in empathy with the hero of his "weekday of a young scientist", his young languor and love trepidation, etc. But no - the "abnormal news of the worlds in the head of the", revealed in the sparkling novelty "youth letter" "latest" youth prose "is absent here. This is really a different prose, courageous, adult - without teenager piquancy and melodramatic youth tension.

There is also no historical and social journalism, attempts to write "the last truth about the past." The problems of the story existential. Before us is a chronicle of youth and the ripening of the hero. The maturation is quite meaningless (this is when the meaning is behind the scenes). The maturation is not contrary to, but as if due to the contradictory combination of an almost physically tangible suffocation from the lack of life and it is not clear where the propagating sense of its fullness is from. And the proposed version of the hero’s initiation, as if growing from a specific socio-psychological situation of the Soviet 70-80s, is actually universal.