Zakhar Prilepin. Parasite of Soviet power

Fragment from the novel "Abode"

Fragment from the novel "Abode"

The other day, the AST publishing house (Elena Shubina editors) is published by a new novel of the writer, who promises to become a real event in literature. Today, "New" publishes the chapter from him with the author of the author.

At the verification of the company Kucherova, he cursed so stupidly, tedious and abruptly that Artem felt a slight nausea.

The outfit fell on the Balanes; Artem was not surprised - everything went to this.

“Balans are so Balan, we’ll see what it is there ...”-Artem encouraged himself, pleased that Krapin did not measure him again with a wood,-instead of that the platoon knocked out of some thieves, who did not hurry to go to work in the climates: there were no other pants.

- To turn the forest? - Smuror asked Artem Afanasyev. - And me too.

In addition to them, the same outfit fell to Moses Solomonovich, Lazhechnikov, Sivtsev, Chinese, beaten by Krapin thieves, two of the same suit and some unimportant, low-level little man, about whom Artem only remembered that he was constantly muttering, sort of persuading himself.

They stood in the yard, waited for the tenfold. In the morning, you can’t always understand where it is better to be: in the company everyone is yelling and swearing, and on the street these indefatigable seagulls, who had funny overnight. At Artem, once, barely drove to Solovki, as well as in the morning the seagull grabbed the bread stored for later. Those who notice this thieves laughed - it was insulting. Artem almost seriously swore before leaving for the mainland to tear the wing from one seagull - so that he would not die right away and so that he understood, the creature, as it happens when it hurts.

In general, the seagulls were worth fear-they could really attack and peck, say, in the eye so that the eyes were gone. Artem hid the bread in the company, and not in his pants, but in linen - there was also a convenient pocket. He was not going to treat anyone with this bread, but did not disdain himself.

- Why don't you daytime? -Still asked Afanasyev. - Just seemed to have interceded. Not the most difficult position. Poems could be composed - there is time.

Artem looked at Afanasyev and realized that he didn’t really want to joke on this topic.

“This is being decided in ISO,” Afanasyev answered reluctantly. - With Galya, he did not get away with the characters.

Vasily Petrovich, standing nearby, somehow looked at Afanasyev strangely and turned away.

“And Kucheva asked Chechens,” added Afanasyev a minute later. “They are all neighbors there in the mountains.”

Artem nodded and, since Afanasyev was out of sorts, went to Vasily Petrovich, who again received a non -cilled outfit in the berry and expected his brigade.

“Just do not express my condolences, Vasily Petrovich,” Artem asked for a few steps, smiling at all his cheeks.

“Smile, smile,” said Vasily Petrovich sadly, and grabbing Artem by the elbow with a slight movement, he turned him aside a little; Artem, youngly grinning, obeyed.

“You, I look, are friendly with Afanasyev,” Vasily Petrovich said clearly and quietly. - I want to tell you that strictly informers are assigned to the position of day, so ...

“He was just removed from his post,” Artem answered a little louder than it should, and Vasily Petrovich immediately turned Artem even further, towards the column of priests who went to his guard work, with his very confident and unnatural fingers behind the elbow.

The priests went in a hurry, who, on the contrary, tried sedately, but the Stroke confused everyone. They circled over them, sometimes sharply decreasing, the seagulls ... And these beards, and these cassocks, and these seagulls, sometimes sprinkling with white litter of the clothes of priests, all suddenly stopped in the eyes of Artem, and he realized that he would remember what he saw for a lifetime - although nothing hit him, insulted, did not touch. I just felt that I would remember.

“The sixth company is not something,” someone said loudly and mockingly. - The sixth company is angelic! - One, two, and in heaven. What are they suffering? Neither in word, nor deed, nor thought. Carefully, in your name, Lord.

“Look,” said Vasily Petrovich very calmly. - This is Evgeny Zernov, Bishop of the Amur and Blagoveshchensky. This is Procopius, Archbishop of Kherson ... Juvenal, Archbishop of Kursk ... Pachomius, Archbishop of Chernigov ... Grigory, Bishop of Pechersky ... Ambrose, Bishop of Podolsky and Bratslavsky ... Cyprian, Bishop of Semipalatinsky ... Sofroniy, Bishop Yakutsk, - he changed one cold to another obscenity ... here Vladychka, Father John ...

Vasily Petrovich in greeting slightly bowed his head, limping and therefore in a hurry, more than other Lord John waved his hand-something very childish, or old-based adult was in this gesture. As if the child said: “I do not despair,” and the ancient man echoed: “And you do not despair” - and all in one wave.

“How do you know him so well?” - asked Artem.

- Why well? - answered Vasily Petrovich. “They just delivered us here together, in one hold.” Everyone was angry and suppressed - and he smiled, joked. He was not even touched even thieves. Near him, it is somehow acutely felt that we are all children. And this, Artem, is so warm, such a necessary feeling. You probably don't understand yet ...

Artem looked around and asked:

- But there, in the square, he spoke about the Soviet government - what do you think, right?

Vasily Petrovich shrugged his shoulders and quickly removed his hands behind his back.

- Everything is true. True, for example, the fact that you may be a informer - he saw you for the first time in his life.

Artem laughed sadly, noting for himself that Vasily Petrovich had not yet seen such strict, and translated the topic:

- Then they told me that Eichmanis remembers almost the whole camp by names ...

“It may well be,” Vasily Petrovich answered thoughtfully.

- And you ... all these priests ... when you remember, why?

“Eichmanis to guard them, and I live with them,” Vasily Petrovich said impassively, looking right in front of him. - I will remember these faces and, if I return, I will partify at home like icons.

Artem did not answer, but thought in a little one: “And the more holy than me? I also eat soup with a dried wobble or with holy heads of salted fish and instead of meat - a decay of horses; But they will guard, and I’ll go now to carry logs. ”

Vasily Petrovich shook his head and, in order to slightly reduce the pathetics, spoke in a completely different tone, in a more confidential one, at once becoming the person who was so liked by Artem:

- I thought here ... From here, from Solovkov, holiness left at the time of Alexei Mikhailovich - you know, Artem, probably this story, when in 1666 the monastery rebelled against Nikonova reform? And ten years later, the siege took him, and rebeling monks and workers - they threw all stones so that the sabers would not be dirty and not to translate the gunpowder. As this happened, there was no more monastic exploits or saints on Solovki. For more than two hundred years, the monastery swayed in the waves - considerable time. As if preparing for something. And now, do not believe it, Artem, it seems to me that the times of new asceticism have come. It is from here that the Russian church will begin a new revival ... You probably were still a child, do not remember what for the heavy air the Bolsheviks were coming.

"How are we in the hut?" - Artem wanted to ask, but did not, of course.

“The intellectual hated the priest,” Vasily Petrovich listed. - The Russian man hated the priest. Russian poet - and he hated the priest! I am ashamed to admit - but I, Artem, hated the priest ... And you won’t understand right away, for what! For the fact that the Russian pop drank soundly? So what was he doing? After all, they hate it not because of someone else's cupboard, but because of your void is much more often ... you were not on the second domestic, but I was also testing: when the soldiers were offered to confess before the battle-nine out of ten were refused. I saw this myself and then already - surprised myself! - I realized: we will lose the war, but the revolution cannot be escaped - the people were left without faith. Only this could all end! .. End - and immediately begin. Here.

“In the thirteenth company,” Artem suddenly remembered and did not remain silent, “Parasha stood in the altar.” Remember? There was one priest in my party - so he never went there. At night it climbed and went outside, into the overall toilet. While going - his place was occupied on the bunks. In the morning we get up-he sits sleeping somewhere in the corner, almost frozen.

- And what do you think? - asked Vasily Petrovich.

Artyom clearly wanted to annoy her comrade - it was a firm and low -explanatory feeling.

“I think, fool,” answered Artem.

Vasily Petrovich trembled his jaw - as if Artem pushed the patient in front of his eyes; He turned away.

He was already waiting for the assembled party with baskets; The tenant of Artem also appeared, immediately yelled, as if he was splashed with boiling water on his stomach.

“Yes, I am going,” said Artem, rather than a tenant, “otherwise you could get into the teeth.”

The tenfold was the same camp, sitting for three for five murders, and Moscow. His surname was Sorokin. He seemed to exude a hidden human abomination - it seems that she came out of him with later: whatever the stink in the hut - Artem, barely approaching Sorokin, felt his spirit. Under the armpits of Sorokin, there were always dark, already with salt hardened circles, his wet hands trembled finely, the bristles on his face were also moist and the appearance was as if it were not hair, but the dirt, like the one that remains on the hay of the hay-staring, dusty-grass rash.

Sorokin, as they said, was a fan of thinking about the shopkeepers thoughtfully - although, it is worth saying that he did not beat the Kaer. It was not customary to touch them on the secretive of the camp administration at all, so that those who wanted to say to be played out on the households.

They went to work with a forest, caught up with the part of Vasily Petrovich, he, looking around, met his eyes with Artem - and immediately turned away, painfully, like from sharp colic, wrinkling.

Artem wanted to regret himself that he refused to go through the berries, but he drove these thoughts. He did not think about the fact that for some reason put Vasily Petrovich. His character was not malicious, but this line - suddenly poke into the open - he knew behind him. And he was not sad about that.

“Perhaps I don’t like it when they open what hurts ...” thought Artem, smiling slightly.

“... He tells about faith,” thought more, “and Moses Solomonovich himself removed from his brigade ... No would regret it ...”

Sorokin shouted all the way and swearing at not understanding who and for what reason, as if in the morning he caught Bacillo from Kucheva. Even the convoy mowed at him.

Artem suddenly imagined how he takes a large bitches, more than Dryn Sorokin, and abruptly, with a delay, he beats the foreman on the back of the head. It would be happiness.

And immediately such silence came ...

Let's go to collect berries, they would sang a song, they divorced a bonfire ...

And then even Moses Solomonovich does not sing.

Artem looked at each other with Afanasyev - he seemed to dream of the same.

They went to the channel with the forest, which, as said lazhechnikov, connects Danilovo Lake with Perth Opera. Logging from logging, called the Balanas, was fused across the channel. Artem looked at them from the shore with the gaze that he probably would look at a certain abundant river predatory bastard, which was to be pulled by the gills to the shore.

“There are two golden days - yesterday and tomorrow,” said a small, meters of a half -man, standing near Artem. - Yesterday it has passed, the Lord took care of that. Tomorrow I entrust him, he will take care of him. And one day remains - today. When I make my work prayer.

- This? - asked Artem, nodding at the floating Balans.

The peasant looked at Artem, at the Balans and did not answer.

“Balanes need to be delivered to a sawmill,” the tenant announced the task for all those gathered. - General lesson for the day: one hundred Balans ... what are we looking at?

- Uh, and there are bugrs there, ropes? - asked the thieves, who in the morning already got from Krapin.

- The rope will be when you are hanged! - the tenant yelled.

“Well, the crimson then,” he didn’t let him in the thieves and, of course, waited for his own: Sorokin ran upon him, still shocking Dryn from afar, “he defended the thieves and even dismissed the emaciated dirty hands, received his arms, sides, and on the head. He only cried out: “The boss! Boss! What are you doing? "

On the thieves' cheek, the skin knocked down, the hand was also very bloody. “Undress, a bullet into the water! Dryn in your throat so that your head does not stagger! " - the tenfold yelled. He threw off his tattered ports - under the ports he was naked, the ten himself pulled the broken behind the shirt to the water - the shirt torn in two.

So that they did not do the same with them, the rest hastily began to undress themselves.

- Where, …! - the tenant yelled, finally backward from the thieves, who quickly ran into the water to the waist and stood there, wiping blood. - Sepaled, ... like in the corps de ballet! The youngest - in the water, the rest accept the balans on the shore! Stupid assholes, your mother for the front!

“He knows about the corps de ballet, look,” thought Artem, taking off his pants.

“Bitch, cold,” said one of the thieves, going into the water.

“And it is simpler in water ...” thought Artem, “... work better than on the shore. Because it is one thing - to push the Balans to the shore by water, and the other thing is to drag them on a dish. ”

But Artem did not guess, of course.

Balans had to go to the shore, then grab them - raw, slippery and terribly heavy - at one end, while the other was picked up by Moses Solomonovich with a small peasant, and crawl out on land.

If four men could cope with Balan, then he was the smallest size.

While the young tree was in the course of a young tree, in a volume and a length of not more than five meters - more often and smaller. But in the water there were such giants that it would not be a shame to carry a whole platoon.

The shore was also stony - to step on it, barely holding the balan, seemed to be flour.

Sivtsev got a Chinese in a couple. For some reason, the Chinese Sivtsev called the "hare." “Come on, Zaichatin, asleep deeper ...” he repeated not without pleasure. "Nepapish what ..."

A small peasant with Moses Solomonovich could not work out in any way. The first balan that Artyom and Afanasyev crossed, they still somehow, cursing and Semyon, helped to get away from the water, and the man dropped the next balan, the ksiva yelled at him-he immediately, somehow childishly, wept.

- I worked in the office! He sobbed. - With papers! And I am forced to tear the insides for a month! I have no strength in me already!

The holy fool, Artem thought irritably.

- The boss, yes ... he is not needed! - Ksiva shouted and immediately, hastily raiding his hands, went deep into it when the tenfold headed for him. On the back of the Xiva there were acne, they walked in a row, like white -headed insects, along the shoulder blade, through the spine and down to the ass.

Having wiped his arms, having broken his legs, they dragged a dozen balans on the shore with grief in half.

"... And the tenfold said that the lesson is a hundred!" - it was stunned, but still able to amuse himself in thoughts, Artem thought.

From the shore of Balana, it was necessary to drag to the sawmill.

While lifting, sitting down and tearing his back, the first balan on his shoulders, Artem managed to hate him as a living creature - frantically, piercingly.

“What are you, bitch, heavy, slippery, if only you have been chopped off the whole face with an ax, reproach ...”

In a hurry, Artem made the first entry without a shirt. Halfway, he torn his bare shoulder on a tree.

The road turned out to be short, on bumps and bushes. Artem tirelessly fanned from a mosquito. Afanasyev, for nothing that the poet, turned out to be resilient as a camel: "Good to dance, topic!" He asked, breathing heavily in his nose.

Balan's nose was carried by Sivtsev and the Chinese, Artem was inseparably looking at the Chinese in a black nape.

The saw squealed at the sawmill - not seeing the path, Artem understood by the sound that they were close, even closer, even ... So, it seems, they came. On the Three-Famous-commanded Afanasyev-they threw off Balan-such gratitude in the whole body flashed for a moment. Here are just a mosquito ...

The unfriendly, nasty work, the man left the room, looked at the arrivals and, without greeting, disappeared in the doorway.

Artem ran back almost running - to his shirt.

- Where did you drive? Did you miss work? - shouted after Afanasyev.

Wet lingerie hung disgustingly. Artem felt his stabbed, clenched and bristling scrotum. Suddenly he remembered that he had forgotten the bread in his pocket, put his hand - it was, his fingers climbed into a damp and ugly crumb. He looked over on a bump, fell, involuntarily throwing his hand forward - just the one that squeezed the bread.

There was a little left on his fingers: Artem was lying on the grass, with his stomach, feeling cold or or water water ... He licked his hands in bread porridge.

“Oh, hid,” Afanasyev's voice came behind. - Do you wait for the deer in an ambush? Or do you hunt frogs?

Artem got up, felt: he was about to cry. He turned his head so that Afanasyev would not see.

It was the last bread, ahead for another two days remained on millet and cod.

... He coped with himself, clenched his teeth, wiped his eyes, forced himself to turn around and smiled at Afanasyev. It turned out - grinned.

Sivtsev was in no hurry back and moved for some reason on squatting. “Gathering berries,” Artem guessed.

He did not want berries. Two balans dragged - ninety -eight remained.

The next lane became hotter, although the day was scorching.

He drew attention to Sivtsev - he was as if in the Surrovitsa: at first Artem thought that the man broke the temple to smithereens. It turned out - berries: he smeared a face from mosquitoes, a rustic cunning.

Returning, Artem also tried to find some Shikshi. The first time it didn’t work out - the ten of Sorokin was bored on the shore and went to meet the late workers: he again disappeared like a trial.

For the second time, Artem landed on a berry scattering - the devil knows what kind of berry, but he was uncreated. Втирал с таким остервенением, словно узнал, что смерть подошла к самому сердцу, а тут попалась живая ягода, может уберечь.

...Хоть на глаза и лоб перестали садиться.

Мелкого мужичка, которого никто не знал, как зовут, материли теперь все подряд, кроме Моисея Соломоновича. Мужичок поминутно останавливался передохнуть, едва вставал — тут же норовил спотыкнуться и завалить балан, охал и вскрикивал.

Когда солнце зашло за полудень, мужичок отказался работать.

Подошел, хромая на все ноги, к десятнику и сказал:

— Убей, я не могу.

— И убью, — ответил десятник и начал убивать: сшиб с ног, потоптал мужичку лицо, несколько раз вогнал сапог в бок, крича при этом: — Будешь работать, филон?

Работающие остановились — все отдых. Кто-то даже закурил. Один китаец отвернулся, присел и глаза закрыл, как исчез.

- I can't! Не убей! — слабым голосом вскрикивал мужичок. — Не могу! Не убей меня!

Артем тоже тупо смотрел на это. «То — «убей!», то — «не убей!» — мельком заметил про себя.

Если бы мужичка убили бы сейчас же, он бы, наверное, ничего не почувствовал.

«...Какое все-таки странное выражение: «Не убей меня!» — снова заметил Артем. — Никогда такого не слышал...»

Когда кто-то крикнул: «Хорош, слушай!» — Артем какую-то долю мгновения даже не понимал, что это крикнул он сам. По щеке Артема пошла трещина — ягодный сок присох, а рот раскрылся и щека будто пополам надорвалась.

Десятник, нисколько не задумываясь, развернулся и уже в развороте забросил дрын в Артема, как в чистое поле.

Артем едва успел пригнуться, а то ровно в лоб бы угодило.

— Принеси, шакал, — скомандовал ему десятник.

В глаза десятнику Артем не смотрел, на других лагерников тоже. Скосился на двоих конвойных — они наблюдали за всем происходящим с единственным и очень простым чувством: им хотелось, чтоб кто-нибудь дал им причину озлиться. Один даже привстал и все перетаптывался — так не терпелось.

Артем сходил за дрыном — тот лежал неподалеку на камнях. Не поднимая глаз, отдал его десятнику.

За всю эту тошную минуту к нему не пришло ни одной мысли, он только повторял: «А мальчишкам-дуракам толстой палкой по бокам».

Выхватив дрын, десятник замахнулся на Артема — но тот с несвойственной ему поспешностью и незнакомой какой-то, гадкой суетливостью увернулся и, ссутулившись, побежал к воде — работа, работа заждалась.

Даже рубаху не снял — так и влез в ней сразу по самую глотку.

Остальные тоже полезли за Артемом.

— Мне не по силам, гражданин десятник, — по слогам умолял мужичок на берегу десятника, — не-по-си-лам. Сердце в горле торчит! Умру ведь!

Когда Артем с Афанасьевым подгоняли очередной балан к берегу, выяснилось, что десятник взамен работы придумал мужичку другое занятие.

Встав на пенек, мужичок начал выкрикивать:

— Я филон! Я филон! Я паразит советской власти!

Ксива заржал, другие блатные тоже захехекали.

— Я филон! Я филон! Я паразит советской власти! — повторял мужичок как заведенный.

— Две тысячи раз, я считаю, — сказал десятник Сорокин, довольный собой.

Конвойные, парни ражие, тоже заливались.

Скопив на берегу десять баланов, снова отправились к лесопильному заводу. Левая рука была вся ободрана о кусты — когда танцевали по дороге на кочках, цеплялись за что попало. Теперь поменялись сторонами с Афанасьевым, и Артем цеплялся правой.

За спиной все раздавалось:

— Я филон! Я филон! Я паразит советской власти!