On Dalnyak

Who can a good angel work in the Russian wilderness, where for almost six years how have they abolished public transport? You guessed correctly: taxi driver

Now not to remember what has disappeared earlier in our area - train or regular buses. It seems that at first a beautiful white bus, which was once allocated by the regional power to the district, was rumored to drive through the streets of the village, for rumors, because he voted correctly for United Russia. Then the antediluvian “grooves” and “Laziki” disappeared from the district center in the villages: the entire fleet was sold on the debt of the closed municipal transport enterprise.

When at the end of 2013 in our village the Turks (stress on the second syllable) was canceled by electric trains, it suddenly turned out that 15 kilometers to some lust, and even more than 60 kilometers on the railway to Balashov (and along the vehicles looping through the fields, and all 100!) Turned into almost insurmountable distances, if you do not have a car.

And here is not just a wilderness - a real, dense wilderness, and only by a misunderstanding Saratov: to Penza 230 kilometers, to Tambov - 260, and to the regional Saratov - all 280.

That is, you can go to a hitchhiking or even “blah blah-car” for especially advanced, but finding a fellow traveler on such routes is a great success. Just go at least like my great -great -great -grandmother with my great -grandmother - another girl - “to the city on the yoke”, a foot, with overnight stays along the path of Rodney, or even just for good people ...

In such circumstances, public transport in our area was replaced by a private taxi. Now citizens go on a taxi in the bakery, and on the market, and to the only surviving night train, and to the doctor in the neighboring city, where not all hospitals were optimized yet.

Norik and old women

- Hello, hello. Yes. Norik. No, I can’t go to Balashov. Wait, I'll send someone to you. Hello, Arthur, are you at home? Take the order - Sovetskaya, 77, to Magnit.

To catch Norik as taxis in his native village is a whole thing. He is either in Saratov, then in Penza, then in Tambov, or even in Moscow.

Norik in business for ten years. At first he “bombed”, now he is an individual entrepreneur, he, like most local taxi drivers, is officially. Norik arrived from Karabakh with his family in the early nineties, managed to fight and hate the war, from which they fled with whole villages. So they moved. Children were born and raised in Russia, in Russian speak without an accent, Armenian, however, also own freely. At home everyone speaks their native language, watch Armenian television channels thanks to a satellite plate. Yes, and relatives are full, friends throughout Russia - where fate just did not scatter. Lusine's daughter married Suzdal, as an Armenian. The son of Voskan helps his father: he works at the railway station 70 kilometers from the house, the shift for two days, for the next two comes to his parents, is also taxing. If one of the two goes “to Dalnyak”, the other remains in the village, so as not to lose close challenges. The household also always lacks hands-hens still, piglets, two cows. Today, Voskan has a shift, so Norik transmits local orders to a comrade.

“Dalnyak” - an intercity trip - more important, earnings are more, especially when you need to wait a passenger for several hours before returning. An hour of waiting is paid as two local trips. And in parallel, you can do your own affairs in the city - buy spare parts and medicines cheaper, bring to relatives of home Brynza, fulfill the instructions of friends and acquaintances: who again spare parts and medicines, and to whom at least a fish box or a box of chocolates on the wholesale is to pick up - small shops are also not easy ...

Illustration: Tanya Safonova for TD

Here the grandmother hobbies along the sidelines - with a wand and a pot -bellied bag from a supermarket. I got stuck, but how to convey to the house?

- Granny, where are you?

The grandmother looks cautiously:

- Yes, you say, dear, son?

-And I told you something about the money? Sit down, lifting.

Norik always throws old women. From this hundred he will not impoverish and get rich, right? Yes, and pensioners on internal routes regular customers: they call a taxi, add up the three-day for a trip and go to the center for purchases, goes no more than earlier on the bus. “On Dalnyak” also often picks someone up-there are a lot of people who want to, the passengers are cheaper than the decoration. Some taxi drivers only work - they gain four people on the same intercity route through social networks and by phone, almost regular flights are obtained.

Hell in Malinovka

The driver of Sergei, who used to drive the bus to Saratov and back, did not receive a salary for six months. Now rides the same road on his Grant. He learned the path to the regional center over the years of work - to every pit and every pothole. And the passengers are satisfied. More expensive than the bus, but more comfortable and, most importantly, faster - do not shake on a rusty collapse for almost six hours.

Roads in the region - a separate song. Closer to Saratov is still nothing, but here - a pit on the pit. It is especially difficult for autumn and early spring. Autumn is the time of Kamazov with trailers loaded to the limit with grain, seeds, sugar beets, corn. Everyone is like a small train. They knock out miserable patching patching patching at one time. The following turn several pits into one huge, width into both stripes. In winter, it becomes easier: the snow is stuffed into failures, the cars roll it, it seems like another dimple repair, natural. The term is until February-Marot, when he begins to melt, and then welcome to hell. True, there are places on the highway, where hell is all year round. For example, the surroundings of the village with the delicate name of the Malinovka. Regardless of precipitation and season, passing, the driver rejoices every time if the suspension is intact and the defense has not fallen off. Malinovka - on the border of two districts, in fact no one, money for fixing the road, neither those nor others have.

Cars on such roads do not live for a long time. Taxi drivers change them about once every two years. They sell the old one for cheap, money is most often not enough to fully repay the previous loan, they take a new one to a new car. But otherwise it is impossible - the means of transporting passengers must comply with safety requirements. Otherwise, either they will be fined, or in general the license will be taken away. “Taxi drivers are fatigue,” evil languages ​​are bossed. - No matter how you look - again a new wheelbarrow ... ”Mostly inexpensive“ grants ”buy and right from the manufacturer - to Togliatti nearby. Especially for those who rewind several hundred kilometers is a common thing.

Fox and grapes

Meanwhile, Melik drove. By the local spring, residents of the surrounding towns go for drinking water. It is believed that it is also mineral. But the main reason is the water in city water pipelines is not water, but the entire Mendeleev table in liquid form.

The places are picturesque and quite wild. The lateral vision catches a reddish dog-he cowards slowly along plantings, drags something like a rag.

“Look, look,” Norik revives. - The fox pulled the chicken!

He himself lives near the forest, the foxes go to visit and to him for chickens. They also love melons. And grapes. I know about grapes from my friend. A few years ago, she moved to a country house, started a vineyard, and then began to complain about the fox. Previously, it seemed to me that the fox and grapes of Grandfather Krylov were so, for a red word. It turns out that no, literature is very rarely lying, even in the little things ...

Illustration: Tanya Safonova for TD

Kotorvas sailed behind the glass - a village connected in the memory of the natives not with cats, but with milk. About fifteen years ago, one farmer rose here - at first he built a farm, then - a milk factory, began to sell milk and sour cream, produce yogurts and a “snowball” in bright packages with bullfinches. District from all over the district reached for the dairy complex. Many for the sake of such a thing even threw to drink. But the capitalist fairy tale did not last long. The owner of the complex either went bankrupt, or regional authorities or competitors from agricultural holding helped. Today, at the site of the farm and workshops, there are only ruins. Visitors, especially the elderly, shields their heads sympathetically: this is how Soviet good lives their age. And this is not Soviet good, but a post -Soviet one. Uninhabited space quickly eats any traces of human activity ...

Go to the hell

I still can’t get used to all this, because she was not driving and before the great abolition of electric trains, she calmly led her life for two houses, feeling about like a resident of Orekhov-Borisov or Himok, working somewhere on New Arbat. Sometimes I even forgot that I live in one city, and I work in another. Everything merged, completely European, into one inhabited landscape outside the window of the car.

This illusion was destroyed by the year 2014, which became the year of the rupture of many ties, and at the same time the year of the crash of the transport system of distant small cities, villages and settlements. It was then that the distances began to be felt physically, and the feeling of provinciality became so acute. And dangerous. When one Saratov train remained of eight suburban trains in our site, and that after the cries of indignant citizens it turned out that she was going through the nearest station at half past three in the night. It was at this time that you can come to us from Balashov or leave us in Saratov. We add to this a few meters of an exhausted platform, and then if you are very lucky and the doors open not at a meter height from the land sprinkled with crushed stone. Given the parking time for two minutes, the task implies three answer options. The first, the most obvious: leave here to hell. The second and third: you do not want or can’t leave - buy a car or drive a taxi.

Find a non -package sanka

This time Rastenovka slipped out safely. The city is less than half of the way.

- Hello! No, I haven't seen it. I know, of course. Tan, why are you crying?

The wife of Yegorych calls, a local small businessman, one of those who take fish, then chocolate. Tatyana and Yegorych son, a non -pound sank, at thirty, got drunk in the trash, jumped into the car and rushed to Samoilovka to find out a relationship with his ex -wife. Go to Samoilovka through Balashov. I left approximately at the same time with us. “Norik,” Tatyana sobs so that she is heard without any speakerphone. “Do you know his car, have not seen an accident anywhere?” After all, or he will kill himself, or, God forbid, someone else ... "

We did not come across an accident along the way. Sankin "Renault Logan" - too ... The city meets with stops painted with paint from the spray with arshin letters: "Navalny". And nearby are the usual pacifs and pentagrams. At the entrances to the markets and shopping centers of the Patrol of the "Rosgvard", they check the presence of masks and gloves. The other day, in the boarding house for the elderly and disabled people, several dozen sick old people became infected with Covid. The scandal, as always, was the reason for taking measures. Rumors crawled that the city was about to close. Not closed. But the people were frightened by fines. For citizens, five thousand for violation of the anti -epidemic regime - a lot of money. Even lonely drivers driving personal cars are in masks. Just in case.

I go out at my entrance. Now I run into the city now. Online lessons can be given without getting anywhere. But once a month, you still need to visit friends, check the city apartment, make the necessary purchases. For everything about all about four hours. Norik is leaving about his business. When we are already going home, he reports:

- Yegorych threw money on a card, and I would have gone to Samoilovka. Sanka was there. The wife says, he added on the road - no at all - and dumped him back.

The elusive Sanka was not noticed by the Depeesniki - neither at the entrance nor at the exit from the city. Drunk luck kept him. Or not luck, but death-either someone’s or his own-carried, like a high-precision shell to the goal.

Thank God, the shell flew by. We found Sanka 30 kilometers from the house, in the neighboring district center. "Logan" stood stuck to the roadside kiosk. Long legs in jeans stuck out of the open driver's door. Nearby, local children calmly played. On a drunken uncle sleeping in the car, they did not pay attention - the usual picture.

Illustration: Tanya Safonova for TD

Tatyana continued to sob in the tube: at first with joy - the son was found, then from powerlessness - Yegorich also accepted in his hearts, could not come. "God with her, with the car, can you take Sasha with you?"

- Tan, and you did not forget that I have a passenger? Okay, let's come up with something ...

Norik apologizes in front of me and goes to the kiosk. He almost does not know the local taxi drivers, the saleswoman prompted well: here he lives alone, right after two houses. If not on the flight, we were lucky.

A dark -haired guy comes out onto the porch.

“You, brother, like ours, non -Russian,” Norik smiles. - By accident, not Armenians?

“No, Azer,” the guy responds with a call.

Norik continues to smile.

- Come on, brother, there is work, a person needs to help. You will drive away the car, parents will pay it, and our guys will take you back for free.

So we go the rest of the path: we are ahead, “Renault” is behind us.

"Non Russian" in the wilderness

I don’t know to the end whether it is difficult to be “non -Russian” in the Russian outback. Alien here is not particularly complained. When, after the collapse of the Union, a wave of Russian migrants from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan poured here, they met them inhospitably: our jobs and our jobs came here! At the same time, empty lands are still full of circles. And the groan "Work is not!" It is worth it, as before, but try to find among the local builder or a laborer.

And visitors - teachers, doctors, engineers - built, and repaired plumbing, and the gardens were digging if they did not find work in their specialty. Norik began in Russia workers in "agricultural engineering", then worked as a master on road construction. He did not have time to get education - at first the army, still Soviet, then a war, and then it was necessary to survive in a new place. In such a situation, it does not matter who you are Russian, Chechen, Azerbaijani, Armenian.

The main thing is that do your job well. But, of course, “non -Russian” is doubly alien. At first, the neighbor lifted drunkenly, and the cops molested, especially unfamiliar. I dealt with a neighbor like a man, for the police, to its huge disappointment, always all the documents with me and in perfect order. There were also different ones.

Somehow, already as a dashing, Norik got into an accident. A jerk that hit his car and broke a break, was one of the local "sons" with the purchased rights. The traffic cops sided with Norik: the case was absolutely understandable. But the guy had been writing all sorts of rubbish for a long time in “Odnoklassniki” about “blacks” who captured everything here, urged fellow countrymen to figure it out. Then he was tired, shut up. But actually, in our small village at the sports school, the famous Sambo section, even there, the European champion was brought up. She is led by Norik's nephew, the general pride of all the local Armenians. Children from the families of migrants in this section are the majority. Although what kind of migrants have already arrived for a long time, they took root, became friends. In general, everything is like everyone else.

True, in the contacts of my phone tagged “taxi” there were only Armenian names. This does not mean at all that the small local diaspora captured the market. There used to be a lot of Russian names on the list. Then, somehow, gradually the phone numbers began to be deleted-who did not come to the call, who often ended up outside the network, and who answered not in a very sober voice. In the end, there were those who have never failed.

“We are all people,” Norik argues. - But you need to understand: I drank - how can I behind the wheel?!

This is not moralizing, but purely professional: relaxed - and lost his job. And there is practically no other work with a decent payment here, except for Moscow to work, so now the coronavirus, everyone goes back, and this is not a thing-to throw a house and a family ... By the way, Sanka also tried to take a taxation, his guys immediately looked at all taxi drivers obliquely. They know him - Egorich bought him twice. Now they say: "Do not be offended, Yegorych, we will catch once again - it will remain without rights." Yes, and sooner, until he was killed. Tatyana is sorry.

I do not ask about what then not to hand Sanka to the police with the car. Clear business-not like a man, is not like a love.

On the way, we still pass the sleeping Sanka to his mother’s hands, we send back with Norik Ando's brother-the Azerbaijani driver. In the meantime, we are unloading at my house, Norik is already getting a new order - tomorrow take a woman with a small child to the hospital. In Saratov.