Sergey Kostyrko. In the province by the sea

In the province by the sea


Sergey Kostyrko

Publication date: March 10, 2004

An unexpected (and, in general, long-awaited) story in the flow of our latest literature. The choice of material seemed exotic for a young writer, sensitive to the intentions of today’s literature: the turn of the 70s and 80s. And an absolutely logical approach to it is to depict the Brezhnev era not in the tradition of socio-psychological everyday life writing with an accusatory or, on the contrary, nostalgic lining for the bygone Soviet paradise, but in the tradition of tough existential prose. In the artistic study of certain universal concepts that do not depend on the opposition “Soviet - anti-Soviet”, even in the presence of this opposition as a plot-forming one.

...Usyskin makes it a sign of separation from the “center”, a sign of legitimization of the private life of a Soviet citizen, not from life “in the province by the sea,” but from life by the border river. But the semantic content of the image of a remote outlying town, with everyday life illuminated from within by the proximity of another (in all respects) foreign world, is partly comparable to the famous lines - Brodsky’s geography and history are not going anywhere - we once also perceived them as a language allusions. The river in Usyskin's story is the edge of the Soviet world. A bridge, border posts with barbed wire, a lonely figure of a trampler on the embankment, and very close to the hero, on the other side, a materialized idea of ​​freedom. What foreign countries were like for Soviet people cannot be explained today. Nothing like Turkey or France, where my fellow citizens go today to relax and have fun. Paris or Istanbul were not the names of cities for us, but news from another world, against the background of which our Soviet worldview was perceived as an almost clinical form of socio-psychological infantilism.

We can say that the material of the story was the toil of the Soviet man, yearning for another life, the lights of which shine on the hero from the other side of the river. More precisely - yearning for oneself - another. Let’s say, the hero becomes the owner of a contraband vinyl disc, and although he does not yet have a player, he is happy - in the end, it’s not about the music, studying the texts and photographs on the record’s sleeve is enough, that is, there is enough material confirmation of the reality of that world .

And the same material of the story should be considered its literary form itself - the author works with a blank of a “youth story” of the sixties “about physicists”. First person narration. The young hero (Nikolai, Nikolenka), having graduated from college, receives assignment to a secure border town and begins his career in a defense research institute; senior comrades and colleagues in science are described, the atmosphere of life in a border town at the end of the Brezhnev era, the then “youth companies” with their jargon and lifestyle, etc., and, of course, the experience of first, young and impetuous love.

By tracking the supporting points for the well-known plot, one can feel how different Usyskin’s narrative is from the then canon, even if as such we take not Gladil’s “Viktor Podgursky”, but Makanin with “Straight Line”. “There, the lights beyond the river,” writes today’s writer and writes from today. Despite the fact that ultimately Usyskin works out the canonical scheme earnestly and seriously, the artistic development of this canon nevertheless includes the author’s reflection on the myth of the 60s reflected in this canon. This has already happened - without comparing the scale, let me remind you how sharply the first seven chapters of Don Quixote differ from the subsequent narrative, when, having smeared the stereotypes of a chivalric romance against the walls, the writer, nevertheless, continues the narrative in the tradition of this particular genre. Only now the world, seemingly lived in by literature in those old stories and novels, appears in an unexpected form. Not about any romantic burning of a young scientist (“ I’m going into a thunderstorm” ") there is no mention of it - the everyday life of the institute is presented as a routine labor service. At first, the hero even seems to get carried away, but too quickly he feels how strange he is with his burning against the backdrop of sleepy and, in general, useless "scientific activity" The boredom and immobility of institute life continues with the same immobility outside the walls of the institute. The loudest event in the life of the town inevitably becomes the capture by special forces of an armed deserter hiding in a building adjacent to the institute - almost all of the institute’s employees became spectators of the assault, joyfully leaving their jobs to to look at life. And even what should certainly have shaken up the hero - the first invitation to the company of local college youth - turns out to be dull everyday life for him. They got together, drank, hit a joint, then the girls began to dance, throwing off their clothes, etc. etc. - right up to a hungover awakening in the morning in the room of a semi-familiar friend with the gray November sky in the window. But this is where a real event happens for the hero - in his friend’s shabby kitchen he discovers an old naval binocular. They take binoculars with them for a walk along an empty gloomy embankment, and the hero, turning to the river, brings the binoculars to his eyes - the space destroyed by optics lets the hero into the foreign world, he sees some of their houses, a bus, a customs officer, standing thoughtfully for some reason on that embankment, the sloping roofs of their carriages , he tries to imagine how people sit in these carriages, what they do, what they feel, what they think about, etc. It is a truly powerful experience to once again become convinced of the reality of another world.

It is in the flow of this drained, bloodless life for the hero that the main thing happens to him that, in fact, forms the plot of the story - nothing outwardly, it seems like an unmotivated maturation and maturation of the soul. Birth of personality. This despite, I repeat, the world around the hero is almost motionless. Very little can truly excite him. Well, for example, snow. Always different, always unfamiliar in every guise and absolutely alive. Snow as news from there is a peripheral motif, as it were, worked out in the story with almost Chekhovian (“ The Lady with the Dog ”) poignancy.

Or the appearance of a woman. The hero, naturally, is in love. To his friend's friend Yulia. For the time being, nothing prevents him from seeing clearly in her and experiencing the crushing power of femininity. It does not occur to him that, in terms of her human qualities, the girl who embodies for him the image of this eternal life-creating energy may turn out to be immeasurably smaller and poorer than what she represents. The bummer experienced by the hero in the finale is all the more crushing.

The plot with the hero's love intersects in the story with a specific variation of the plot of freedom. In reality, freedom, the proximity of another world, which excites the hero, so to speak, platonically, is also revealed to him by the semi-underground life of the town. Smuggling. This sweet word, initially associated for the hero with the same thing, for example, looking at the sleeve of a vinyl record, suddenly appears in a completely different context - the arrest of a friend, a search in his room, at which the hero is present as a witness, interrogation at the OBKhSS. The romantic, becoming everyday, leads the hero in a direction unexpected for him - during a search, he sees in front of him a pile of sneakers, jeans, audio cassettes, cigarettes, etc., packed in cellophane, which in this case appear to him as goods. He sees stacks of money - like that all at once - four thousand rubles. Money, unthinkable in that life, the equivalent of three years’ salary (and life) of an entire family, special dignity, special independence of a person from a socialist society. And to this specific materialization of freedom, capital , the hero cannot help but feel involuntary respect.

A natural continuation of this plot is his first conversation with Yulia after the arrest of his friend, from whom he, chilled with surprise, heard the following:

"...How can this be... after all, Valery Arnoldovich... after all, they shared with him too... bitch... insatiable bitches... jackals... they should all tear off their balls..."

But the hero has not yet fully understood what he is being shown, what he is faced with.

Another tough but necessary lesson was needed: having accepted the invitation to go out of town for a secluded swim and thereby inspiring the hero to declare (so to speak, actively) his love, Julia sobers up the hero in the most radical way - she tries to drown him:

“...Are you crazy, or what?... I could drown” - “... It would be good if you drowned <...> because you feel good now, Kolya, and Valera is mine. .. because of your testimony... in the zone... do you understand now?... Judas"

.

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

...It’s easy for me to imagine how disappointed the readers will be, who, out of habit, in the process of reading, were prepared to empathize with the hero of his “everyday life of a young scientist,” his youthful languor and awe of love, etc. But no - the “chilling news of the worlds at the head”, revealed in the “youth writing” sparkling with novelty of the newest “youth prose”, is absent here. This is truly a different prose, courageous, adult - without teenage piquancy and melodramatic youth tensions.

There is also no historical and social journalism here, no attempts to write “the last truth about the past.” The story's problematics are existential. Before us is a chronicle of the hero’s youth and maturation. Maturation is completely meaningless (this is when the meaning is behind the scenes). Maturation not in spite of, but as if thanks to the contradictory combination of an almost physically tangible suffocation from the absence of life and an inexplicably supportive feeling of its fullness. And the proposed version of the hero’s initiation, as if growing out of the specific socio-psychological situation of the Soviet 70-80s, is in fact universal.