Letters from the dead village

With this publication, we begin a series of essays about the Russian village, more precisely, about what remains of it. The author of Samizdat, the Moscow financier and a forest tower restorer in Astashovo travels along the depopulated Kostroma villages and studies traces of a once blooming life. Abandoned huts, overgrown yards and letters to nowhere - about the hardships of life and with prayers for help.

Cycle " Letters from the Dead Village "

In our Kostroma region of abandoned villages - five or six thousand. In some villages it reaches fifty abandoned houses. There is no trace of many, but even those that are still worth it, so much that you will not be upset about everyone.

A journalist came to us in the tower who dreamed of making a report of abandoned villages. I was very worried about this: "Show?" - "Don't worry!" It was in winter. We sat on a snowmobile and rushed through former state farm fields. After a kilometer, they turned into the first village, then in the second ... In each they entered the houses and studied traces of the disappeared life. The journalist photographed, dug in the garbage, in postcards from the children who had gone to the city and left the old people. In the fifth village - we did not pass even ten miles - he asked: "Is there a drink?" I pulled the moonshine. “Discriminate,” the journalist said ... We haven’t gone anywhere else.

City sees in abandonment. Locals treat them pragmatic. Only the owners will leave or die, as the house begins to pull out. The icons disappear first - they have the most sustainable demand. They even rob the dead, who relies in the grave. Then they drag the useful ones that they put their eyes on the residents: chainsaws, televisions, gas cylinders. In price and something that can no longer buy: a hollow drainage gutter instead of a banal tin; a cart wheel - interesting chandeliers are made of them; Discharged pitchfork - a gift to a little: let it shimmer. The collectors of the antiques are rowing out to be cleaned: spinning wheels, chests, slides, rubel - everything that can be pushed at a flea market will fit. Black diggers will come, shove the garden and cut the corners in search of embedded coins. Finally, Petrovich will look with his tractor. This Petrovich is not that a junk or a scrap -manner, but he couldn’t name him a farmer, and he was no hunter, and his wife ran away from him. He gathered when he had just heard that the house was empty, but there was a lack of time, and then he was floundered with the backstage. Petrovich captures his elder-it is necessary to get the wise man to the boy. They pour a large cart, reap platbands, drain buffets, cabinets and floor. That's it, not at home - now it is a pile of logs. Sooner or later, she will be in a spring fellow.

The pureberry bushes are tied so that the branches take the desired shape. In the process of growth, the branches are village, and the form is preserved. The blanks of crawled pitchfork are done thus 4-5 years before they can be used.

To get into an untouched house, a rare combination of circumstances is needed.

Once I was brought into the village, which died out due to surprisingly high-quality dirt. Normal clay, it is also the asphalt of the brand, as the locals joke - plasticine or porridge in consistency. Here clay was even better than pottery. After rains, it became impossible to drive through it. She is licked like glue on the leaves of predatory plants. Walking along the street, flooded with mud from the palisade to the palisade, I became a fly, immobilized kilograms that were attached to the boots.

Then I went into the first hut. Not to shuffle, but just rest from dirt. The door was poured outside, as if someone had lived in the house, but the garden was overgrown, and the locks had already been removed. In the hallway lay a homespun rug. It smelled of cleanliness here. I pulled off the stained boots and put on rag slippers standing against the wall. As if I came to visit tea ... A lone old woman lived in the house. I saw a cheap Soviet headset, a porcelain teapot with a broken nose, and candy boxes. Family photos, ridiculous toys from which grandchildren who came to the summer grew up. Everywhere snow-white lace ... It seemed that the mistress jumped out to talk with the neighbors. The stove smelled a little burnt pies.

I sat on a chair and extended my legs.

“Baba Klava,” I said aloud, deciding to call the mistress of Klava for some reason, although she could be Tanya or Valentina. - Do not apologize for the spoiled pies. Tell me better, who dragged your TV? Where did the staging from the box of “bird's milk”? How long have you died, Baba Klava? "

Not that I wanted to get an answer - sometimes it’s better to ask questions. But I got it. I saw her, Baba Klava. She was a spruce branch lying on a neatly covered bed. Judging by her freshness, more than forty has passed from death.

It also happens that the huts stand untouched for years. To do this, it is necessary that one after another, first distant villages, then the nearby - and so on until the village council, but was left alone, at the hell on the horns, where they live stubbornly, no matter what. Such a village is called Sakhalin or Kamchatka. Grandma and grandfather live there. They have everything in the old fashioned way: a cow, an apiary and a garden, and for bread and a pension they are ten miles one way, and all with a swamp. When a son comes to haymaking in the summer, the old people have happiness.

Houses on Sakhalin are serious-larch in half-click. They built so that the crowns did not rot and did not have to sort out the log cabins. In them, even in abandoned, is an old peasant life. Rough furniture, climbing, boxes. The bitter smell of flour turned into the dust. A chest with pencil notes inside the cover: “The 7th mane was looking for a bull. The 12th was replaying. " Kerosene lamps and a “rural life” plowed to the wall with a message about the flight of Gagarin. Blind old woman glasses and the magazine “Sprink”, opened on the heading “Hope and Mozambique Pain”.

Sences with hay and gnawed by the sun by logs. The goat shines.

Sakhalin will end soon.

One of the two will get sick, and the son will take the other to him. Or he (she) will remain alone. Then the end will come in winter, in snowfalls, so no one will know for a long time, and if they suspect, they won’t get it, and when they finally get, they will not be able to help, except that Petrovich will be bought up to take out the corpse and clog the goat and cow if they themselves do not melt by then. Petrovich will take icons for expenses, and they will pay the stagnant for the funeral. On Sakhalin, everything will remain as it was, except that he will begin to overgrow.

Because even Petrovich, who at one or two on this of your Sakhalin at the collective farms fucked, far get there.

Village letters - a separate genre. They constantly plant potatoes in them and hung cabbage. Sugar is constantly growing up, and the neighbor of Matryona Nikandrovna emanates with a migraine. They rot, falling out and counting the remaining teeth in the mouth. Recipes for jam and marinades are adjacent to condolences and congratulations.

For a thousand letters, only one speaks for itself. Here is such a letter found on one Sakhalin - and how many of them, these Sakhalin? It was invested in a clean, not signed envelope and left on the windowsill next to the exit to the canopy, as if it was forgotten to capture it on the road by mail.

“The dear Lennychka is bowed and the birth of congratulations! I send a second letter and there is no answer to you or do not reach you, because I write the streams of Minh, one hope of my grandfather’s grandfather was taken to the hospital from the nyago on my throat, but I wrote it. From the acne became Walka then a bump with a fist. The doctor said that I need to go to the hospital my grandfather is upset. Iago was taken away, one Avdeikh died last year. The post of races per week and no one Kolenka writes in Siberia lives Koekak, Savsem Tyovo alone, only Pyazimki Pyatrovich and the fish brought the muffy, he was in the face of Isho to call. But about Pyatrovich, I have been awarded, you were not unugmate or you have no time.

Novavovo, now, while the river was erased, they showed by taking our grandfather, I was very accelerated - I very much - now there is no one now. From grandfather without news, hoping for the best. Manka is very humble in her Mojing Demons of the Bright of the Cow, I am not smalab, although it is very difficult with her.

The third day I woke up from the roar - the Russian fell apart and I remained Lenya with a bourgeois in the cold.

I went to the village of ten miles and found a pedigree there and a pedestic, then it was thin and I did not say to listen to Minya, I did not say that it was expensive - two thousand. And the pension of Minh has fifth rubles. I went to the village council for a method there, they said it can be such a method only to write on a yago occasion in the region and attach a certificate. I went to the city by bus, but I didn’t give me certificates, my grandfather and I were not written in Isbe. I went to the end of the one and on the half of the village and accelerated. I cried and I understood any kind of you don’t write - because you are in Moscow Lönechka and Tiba’s business, but all the same you are alone, Minh Nadezhda, the Nadezhda Slebes of the loads and I ask the Christy with our grandfather money on the stove. Survage Savzem Nizya.

We all look and do not miss. You really refuse or at least answer! "

This is all, two sheets of notebook paper. On the back of the postscript:

"To Moscow, in the field of miracles, Yakubovich Leonid Arkadich."

I took three certificates from this hut.

A fragment of brick from a broken furnace. A pot with two notes: “She went for water, looking for on a river” and “I went out of cranberries in the forest” . A leaflet of the tear -off calendar, who reported that March is popularly called a prototal. There was a postscript on it: "There were 22 days before Pasque."