Astafiev last bow content. Viktor Astafiev - The Last Bow (a story in stories)

Last bow

I made my way to our house. I wanted to be the first to meet my grandmother, and that's why I didn't go down the street. The old, bare poles in our and neighboring gardens crumbled, where stakes should have been, sticking out props, twigs, and plank fragments. The vegetable gardens themselves were squeezed by insolent, freely overgrown boundaries. Our garden, especially from the ridges, was so crushed with folly that I noticed the beds in it only when, having fastened last year's burdocks on the riding breeches, I made my way to the bathhouse, from which the roof had fallen, the bathhouse itself no longer smelled of smoke, the door looked like a leaf carbon paper, lay aside, the current grass pierced between the boards. A small paddock of potatoes and beds, with a densely occupied vegetable garden, weeded from the house, the earth was bare black there. And these, as if lost, but still freshly darkening beds, rotten sleigh in the yard, pounded by shoes, a low pile of firewood under the kitchen window testified that people lived in the house.

Suddenly, for some reason, I became terrified, some unknown force pinned me to the spot, squeezed my throat, and, having overcome myself with difficulty, I moved into the hut, but I also moved timidly, on tiptoe.

The door is open. A lost bumblebee buzzed in the vestibule, and there was a smell of rotten wood. There was almost no paint left on the door and on the porch. Only shreds of it shone in the rubble of the floorboards and on the jambs of the door, and although I walked cautiously, as if I had run over the excess and now was afraid to disturb the cool peace in the old house, the cracked floorboards still stirred and moaned under my boots. And the farther I went, the more muffled, darker it became in front, the floor sagging, decrepit, eaten by mice in the corners, and more and more palpably there was a smell of the pretense of wood, the moldiness of the underground.

Grandmother was sitting on a bench near the dim-sighted kitchen window, winding thread into a ball.

I froze at the door.

The storm has passed over the earth! Millions of human destinies were mixed up and mixed up, new states disappeared and appeared, fascism, which threatened the human race with death, died, and here, as a wall-mounted cabinet made of boards hung and a speckled cotton curtain hung on it, it still hangs; as the cast-iron pots and the blue mug stood on the stove, so they stand; just as forks, spoons, a knife stuck out behind a wall plate, so they stick out, only there are few forks and spoons, a knife with a broken toe, and there was no smell in kuti of a kvass, cow swill, boiled potatoes, but everything was as it was, even grandmother on her usual place, with the usual business in hand.

Why are you standing, father, at the threshold? Come on, come on! I'll cross you, dear. I was shot in the leg ... I will be frightened or delighted - and it will shoot ...

And my grandmother spoke in a familiar, familiar, ordinary voice, as if I, in fact, went out into the woods or ran away to my grandfather's abode and then returned, a little too late.

I thought you didn't recognize me.

How can I not know? What are you, God is with you!

I straightened my tunic, wanted to stretch out and bark what I had thought up beforehand: “I wish you good health, comrade general!”

What a general!

Grandmother made an attempt to get up, but she staggered, and she grabbed the table with her hands. The ball rolled off her knees, and the cat did not jump out from under the bench onto the ball. There was no cat, that's why it was eaten in the corners.

I am old, father, I am completely old... Legs... I picked up the ball and began to wind the thread, slowly approaching my grandmother, not taking my eyes off her.

How small grandmother's hands have become! Their skin is yellow and shiny, like onion skins. Every bone is visible through the worked skin. And bruises. Layers of bruises, like caked leaves from late autumn. The body, the powerful grandmother's body, could no longer cope with its work, it lacked the strength to drown out and dissolve the bruises, even the lungs, with blood. Grandma's cheeks sunk deep. All of our cheeks will fall like holes in old age like this. We are all grandma, high cheekbones, all with steeply protruding bones.

What are you looking at? Has it become good? Grandmother tried to smile with worn, sunken lips.

I threw the ball and grabbed my grandmother in the pregnant.

I stayed alive, baby, alive! ..

I prayed, I prayed for you, - grandmother hastily whispered and poked me in the chest like a bird. She kissed where the heart was, and kept repeating: - She prayed, she prayed ...

That's why I survived.

Did you receive a parcel, did you receive a parcel?

Time has lost its definitions for the grandmother. Its boundaries were erased, and what happened a long time ago, it seemed to her, was quite recently; much of today was forgotten, covered with a fog of fading memory.

In the forty-second year, in the winter, I was trained in a reserve regiment, just before being sent to the front. They fed us very badly, they didn’t give us tobacco at all. I shot and smoked from those soldiers who received parcels from home, and the time came when I had to pay off my comrades.

After much hesitation, I asked in a letter to send me some tobacco.

Crushed by need, Augusta sent a bag of samosad to the reserve regiment. In the bag were also a handful of finely chopped crackers and a glass of pine nuts. This gift - crackers and nuts - was sewn into a bag by my grandmother with her own hands.

Let me take a look at you.

I obediently froze in front of my grandmother. On her decrepit cheek, the dent from the Red Star remained and did not leave - a grandmother became up to my chest. She stroked me, felt me, memory stood in her eyes like a thick slumber, and my grandmother looked somewhere through me and beyond.

How big you have become, big-oh! .. If only the mother of the deceased looked and admired ... - At this point, grandmother, as always, trembled in her voice and looked at me with questioning timidity - are you angry? I didn’t like before when she started talking about this. I sensitively caught - I'm not angry, and I also caught and understood, you see, the boyish ruffiness has disappeared and now my attitude to goodness is completely different. She wept, not infrequently, but in solid senile weak tears, regretting something and rejoicing in something.

What a life it was! God forbid! .. And God does not clean me up. I'm confused under my feet. You can't go into someone else's grave, after all. I will die soon, father, I will die.

I wanted to protest, to challenge my grandmother, and I was about to move, but she somehow wisely and inoffensively stroked my head - and there was no need to speak empty, comforting words.

I'm tired, father. All tired. Eighty-sixth year ... She did the work - another artel is just right. Everything was waiting for you. Waiting strengthens. Now it's time. Now I will die soon. You, father, come to bury me ... Close my little eyes ...

Grandmother became weak and could no longer speak, she only kissed my hands, wetted them with tears, and I did not take her hands away.

I also wept silently and enlightenedly.

Soon the grandmother died.

They sent me a telegram to the Urals with a summons to the funeral. But I was not released from production. The head of the personnel department of the car depot where I worked, after reading the telegram, said:

Not allowed. Mother or father is another matter, but grandparents and godfathers ...

How could he know that my grandmother was my father and mother - everything that is dear to me in this world! I should have sent that boss to the right place, quit my job, sold my last pants and boots, and rushed to my grandmother's funeral, but I didn't.

I did not yet realize then the enormity of the loss that befell me. If this happened now, I would crawl from the Urals to Siberia in order to close my grandmother's eyes, to give her last bow.

And lives in the heart of wine. Oppressive, quiet, eternal. Guilty before my grandmother, I try to resurrect her in memory, to find out from people the details of her life. But what interesting details can there be in the life of an old, lonely peasant woman?

I found out when my grandmother became debilitated and could not carry water from the Yenisei, she washed potatoes with dew. She gets up before the light, pours a bucket of potatoes on the wet grass and rolls them with a rake, as if she tried to wash the bottom with dew, like a resident of a dry desert, she saved rain water in an old tub, in a trough and in basins ...

Suddenly, very, very recently, quite by accident, I find out that not only did my grandmother go to Minusinsk and Krasnoyarsk, but she also got to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra for prayer, for some reason calling Holy place Carpathians.

Aunt Apraksinya Ilyinichna has died. In the hot season, she lay in her grandmother's house, half of which she occupied after her funeral. The deceased began to plow, it would be necessary to smoke incense in the hut, but where can you get it now, incense? Today, words are incense everywhere and everywhere, so thickly that sometimes the white light cannot be seen, the true truth cannot be discerned in the haze of words.

An, there was also incense! Aunt Dunya Fedoranikha, a thrifty old woman, lit a censer on a coal scoop, added fir branches to the incense. The oily fumes are smoking, swirling around the hut, it smells of antiquity, it smells of foreignness, it repels all bad smells - you want to sniff a long-forgotten, unearthly smell.

Where did you take it? - I ask Fedoranikha.

And your grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, the kingdom of heaven to her, when she went to pray in the Carpathians, gave us all incense and goodies. Since then, I’ve been on the shore, there’s just a little left - for my death left ...

Mother dear! And I didn’t know such a detail in my grandmother’s life, probably, back in the old years she got to Ukraine, blessed, returned from there, but she was afraid to talk about it in troubled times, that if I blabbed about my grandmother’s prayer, they would trample me from school, Kolcha Jr. will be discharged from the collective farm ...

I want, I still want to know and hear more and more about my grandmother, but the door to the silent kingdom slammed behind her, and there were almost no old people left in the village. I’m trying to tell people about my grandmother so that they can find her in their grandparents, in loved ones and loved ones, and my grandmother’s life would be endless and eternal, as human kindness itself is eternal - yes, this work is from the evil one. I have no such words that could convey all my love for my grandmother, would justify me before her.

I know my grandmother would forgive me. She always forgave me everything. But she is not. And never will.

And no one to forgive ...

"Last bow" Astafiev

“The Last Bow” is a landmark work in the work of V.P. Astafiev. It combines two main themes for the writer: rural and military. In the center of the autobiographical story is the fate of a boy left without a mother early, who is raised by his grandmother.

Decency, reverent attitude to bread, neat- to money - all this, with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with hard work, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to garden work, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.

In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they look and look at everything, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old woman helps the family survive and have a piece of bread. sewing machine, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village.

The most penetrating and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature. The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which a plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of the central images of the story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread across the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”

In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, red strawberry lights lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently").

In selfless admiration of the beauties of his native nature, the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how pagan and Christian traditions are deeply rooted in the life of a simple Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers.

Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions the teacher manages to teach.

Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. A with empty handed he met men reluctantly. With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over the knitted festive tablecloths, and the clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's dead mother (the last memento).

V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of villagers in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, the folk craftsman Kesha, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although the further fate of the geese was still sad (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys still passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor.

Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev. In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth.

V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

Astafiev devoted many of his works to the theme of the village, as well as to the theme of war, and The Last Bow is one of them. It is written in the form of a long story, composed of separate stories, of a biographical nature, where Viktor Petrovich Astafyev described his childhood and life. These memories are not built in a sequential chain, they are captured in separate episodes. However, it is difficult to call this book a collection of short stories, since everything there is united by one theme.

Viktor Astafiev dedicates "The Last Bow" to the Motherland in his own understanding. This is his village and native land with wild nature, harsh climate, powerful Yenisei, beautiful mountains and dense taiga. And he describes all this in a very original and touching way, in fact, this is what the book is about. Astafiev created "The Last Bow" as an epoch-making work that addresses the problems ordinary people more than one generation in very difficult critical periods.

Plot

The protagonist Vitya Potylitsyn is an orphan boy raised by his grandmother. His father drank a lot and walked, eventually left his family and left for the city. And Viti's mother drowned in the Yenisei. The life of a boy, in principle, did not differ from the life of other village children. He helped the elders with the housework, went for mushrooms and berries, went fishing, well, he had fun, like all his peers. So you can start summary. Astafiev's “last bow”, I must say, embodied in Katerina Petrovna a collective image of Russian grandmothers, in whom everything is primordially native, hereditary, forever given. The author does not embellish anything in it, he makes her a little formidable, grouchy, with a constant desire to know everything first and dispose of everything at his own discretion. In a word, "general in a skirt." She loves everyone, takes care of everyone, wants to be useful to everyone.

She constantly worries and suffers for her children, then for her grandchildren, because of this, anger and tears alternately break out. But if the grandmother begins to talk about life, it turns out that there were no adversities for her at all. The children were always happy. Even when they were sick, she skillfully treated them with various decoctions and roots. And none of them died, well, isn't that happiness? Once, on arable land, she dislocated her arm and immediately set it back, but she could have remained a kosoruchka, but she didn’t, and this is also a joy.

This is the common feature of Russian grandmothers. And lives in this image something fertile for life, native, lullaby and life-giving.

Twist in fate

Then it becomes not as fun as the short summary describes the village life of the protagonist at the beginning. Astafiev's "last bow" continues with the fact that Vitka suddenly has an unkind streak in life. Since there was no school in the village, he was sent to the city to his father and stepmother. And here Astafiev Viktor Petrovich recalls his torment, exile, hunger, orphanhood and homelessness.

How could Vitka Potylitsyn then realize something or blame someone for his misfortunes? He lived as best he could, escaping death, and even at some moments managed to be happy. The author here pities not only himself, but all the then young generation, which was forced to survive in suffering.

Vitka later realized that he got out of all this only thanks to the saving prayers of his grandmother, who at a distance felt his pain and loneliness with all her heart. She also softened his soul, teaching patience, forgiveness and the ability to see even a small grain of goodness in the black haze and be grateful for it.

School of survival

In the post-revolutionary period, Siberian villages were dispossessed. Ruin was all around. Thousands of families turned out to be homeless, many were driven to hard labor. Having moved to his father and stepmother, who lived on casual income and drank a lot, Vitka immediately realizes that no one needs him. Soon he experiences conflicts at school, the betrayal of his father and the oblivion of relatives. This is the summary. Astafiev’s “Last Bow” goes on to say that after the village and the grandmother’s house, where, perhaps, there was no prosperity, but comfort and love always reigned, the boy finds himself in a world of loneliness and heartlessness. He becomes rude, and his actions become cruel, but nevertheless, his grandmother's upbringing and love for books will later bear fruit.

And while he waits Orphanage, and this is just a nutshell describing the summary. Astafyev's "Last Bow" illustrates in great detail all the hardships of the life of a poor teenager, including his studies at a factory course school, going to war and, finally, returning.

Return

After the war, Victor immediately went to the village to his grandmother. He really wanted to meet her, because she became for him the only and most dear person in the whole world. He walked through the vegetable gardens, catching burdocks, his heart clenched strongly in his chest with excitement. Victor made his way to the bathhouse, on which the roof had already collapsed, everything had long been without the master's attention, and then he saw a small pile of firewood under the kitchen window. This indicated that someone was living in the house.

Before entering the hut, he suddenly stopped. Victor's throat went dry. Gathering his courage, the guy quietly, timidly, literally on tiptoe, went into his hut and saw how his grandmother, just like in the old days, was sitting on a bench near the window and winding threads into a ball.

Minutes of oblivion

The protagonist thought to himself that during this time a whole storm flew over the whole world, millions of human destinies got mixed up, there was a mortal struggle against hated fascism, new states were formed, and here everything is as always, as if time had stopped. The same mottled calico curtain, a neat wooden wall cabinet, cast-iron stoves, etc. Only it no longer smelled of the usual cow swill, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut.

Grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna, seeing her long-awaited grandson, was very happy and asked him to come closer to hug and cross him. Her voice remained the same kind and gentle, as if the grandson did not return from the war, but from fishing or from the forest, where he could linger with his grandfather.

Long-awaited meeting

A soldier returning from the war thought that perhaps his grandmother might not recognize him, but that was not the case. Seeing him, the old woman wanted to get up abruptly, but her weakened legs did not allow her to do this, and she began to hold her hands to the table.

Grandma is very old. However, she was very glad to see her beloved grandson. And I was glad that, finally, I waited. She looked at him for a long time and could not believe her eyes. And then she let slip that she prayed for him day and night, and in order to meet her beloved granddaughter, she lived. Only now, having waited for him, grandmother could die in peace. She was already 86 years old, so she asked her grandson to come to her funeral.

Oppressive melancholy

That's all the summary. Astafiev's "last bow" ends with Viktor leaving to work in the Urals. The hero received a telegram about the death of his grandmother, but he was not released from work, referring to the charter of the enterprise. At that time, they were only allowed to go to the funeral of their father or mother. The management did not want to know that his grandmother replaced both of his parents. Viktor Petrovich never went to the funeral, which he later regretted very much all his life. He thought that if this happened now, he would simply run away or crawl from the Urals to Siberia just to close her eyes. So all the time this guilt lived in him, quiet, oppressive, eternal. However, he understood that his grandmother forgave him, because she loved her grandson very much.

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Viktor Petrovich Astafiev

Last bow

Astafiev Viktor Petrovich

Last bow

Victor Astafiev

Last bow

Story in stories

Sing, starling,

Burn, my torch,

Shine, star, over the traveler in the steppe.

Al. Domnin

Book one

Far and near fairy tale

Zorka's song

Trees grow for everyone

Geese in the polynya

The smell of hay

Horse with pink mane

Monk in new pants

Guardian angel

Boy in a white shirt

Autumn sadness and joy

Photo without me

Grandma's holiday

book two

Burn, burn bright

Stryapuhina joy

The night is dark dark

The legend of the glass pot

Pied

Uncle Philip - ship's mechanic

Chipmunk on the cross

carp death

No shelter

Book Three

Premonition of ice drift

Zaberega

Somewhere there is a war

Love potion

soy candy

Feast after the Victory

Last bow

hammered head

Evening thoughts

Comments

* BOOK ONE *

Far and near fairy tale

In the backyard of our village, among a grassy clearing, stood on stilts a long log building with a hemming of boards. It was called "mangazina", which also adjoined the delivery - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called "public fund". If the house burns down. even if the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

Away from the imports is a guardhouse. She snuggled under the scree, in the wind and eternal shade. Above the guardhouse, high on the hillside, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key smoked from the stones in a blue haze. It spread along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with dense sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - a quiet park from under the snow and kuruzhak along the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. That window, which is towards the village, was overwhelmed with wild cherry blossoms, stingers, hops and various foolishness that had bred from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hop swaddled her so that she looked like a one-eyed shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out of the hops like a pipe, the door opened immediately to the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the season and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardroom. He was small, lame on one leg, and he had glasses. Only person in a village that had glasses. They evoked shy courtesy not only from us children, but also from adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did no harm to anyone, but rarely anyone came to him. Only the most desperate children stealthily peered into the guardroom window and could not see anyone, but they were still frightened of something and ran away screaming.

At the yard, the children pushed around from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their belly under the log entrance to the gate of the yard, or buried under the high floor behind piles, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; cut into grandmas, into chika. The hems were beaten with punks - beats poured with lead. At the blows that resounded under the vaults of fuss, a sparrow-like commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the import, I was introduced to work - I twisted the winnowing machine with the children in turn and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin ...

The violin was rarely, very, really rare, played by Vasya the Pole, that mysterious, out of this world person who necessarily comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in memory forever. Such a mysterious person seemed to be supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a musty place, under a ridge, and so that the light in it barely flickered, and so that an owl would laugh drunkenly over the chimney at night, and so that a key smoked behind the hut. and so that no one, no one, knows what is happening in the hut and what the owner is thinking about.

I remember that Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked something from his nose. Grandmother sat Vasya to drink tea, brought dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast-iron. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed.

Vasya drank tea not in our way, not in a bite and not from a saucer, he drank directly from a glass, laid out a teaspoon on a saucer and did not drop it on the floor. His glasses flashed menacingly, his cropped head looked small, the size of a trouser. Gray streaked across his black beard. And all of it seems to be salty, and coarse salt dried it up.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea, and, no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, bowed ceremoniously and took away in one hand an earthenware pot with herbal tea, in the other - a bird-cherry stick.

Lord, Lord! Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - You are a heavy lot ... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The gates are thrown wide open. A draft was walking in them, stirring shavings in the bins repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain was drawn to the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because of their youth, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In autumn, not like in spring, it is somehow badly played. One by one, the children wandered home, and I stretched out on the heated log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I was waiting for the carts to rattle on the hillside in order to intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and there, you see, they would let the horse take to the watering place.

Behind the Yenisei, behind the Guard Bull, it got dark. In the valley of the river Karaulka, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. She looked like a burdock. Behind the ridges, over the tops of the mountains, stubbornly, not in autumn, a strip of dawn smoldered. But then darkness descended upon her. Dawn pretended like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. It hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves gleamed a little under the mountain, in a depression washed out by a spring. Because of the shadows began to circle the bats, squeak over me, fly into the open gates of imports, catch flies there and nocturnal butterflies, not otherwise.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, squeezed into the corner of the fuss. On the slope, above Vasya's hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from the castles, from work, but I did not dare to peel off the rough logs, I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that had come over me. Windows lit up in the village. Smoke from the chimneys stretched towards the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinsky River, someone was looking for a cow and then called her in a gentle voice, then scolded her with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that still shone alone over the Guard River, someone threw a stub of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, bare, orphan, chilly glassy, ​​and everything around was glassy from it. A shadow fell over the whole glade, and a shadow fell from me too, narrow and nosy.

Across the Fokinsky River - at hand - the crosses in the cemetery turned white, something creaked in the delivery - the cold crept under the shirt, along the back, under the skin. to the heart. I already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly to the very gates and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the weaves of hops and bird cherry, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and nailed me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left a cemetery, in front a ridge with a hut, on the right a terrible place outside the village, where many white bones are lying around and where a long time ago, grandmother said, a man was crushed, behind it is a dark mess, behind it is a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black puffs of smoke.

I'm alone, alone, such a horror all around, and also music - a violin. A very, very lonely violin. And she doesn't threaten at all. Complains. And there's nothing creepy at all. And there is nothing to be afraid of. Fool-fool! Is it possible to be afraid of music? Fool-fool, never listened to one, that's it ...

The music flows quieter, more transparent, I hear, and my heart lets go. And this is not music, but the key flows from under the mountain. Someone leaned his lips to the water, drinks, drinks and cannot get drunk - his mouth and inside are so dry.

For some reason, one sees the Yenisei, quiet at night, on it is a raft with a spark. An unknown person shouts from the raft: "Which village-ah?" -- Why? Where is he sailing? And another convoy on the Yenisei is seen, long, creaky. He also goes somewhere. Dogs are running on the side of the convoy. The horses move slowly, drowsily. And you still see a crowd on the banks of the Yenisei, something wet, washed out with mud, village people all over the bank, a grandmother tearing her hair on her head.

This music speaks of sadness, it speaks of my illness, how I was sick with malaria all summer, how scared I was when I stopped hearing and thought that I would forever be deaf, like Alyoshka, my cousin, and how she appeared to me in in a feverish dream, mother put a cold hand with blue nails to her forehead. I screamed and did not hear my scream.

In the hut, a screwed lamp burned all night, my grandmother showed me the corners, she shone with a lamp under the stove, under the bed, they say, there was nobody.

I still remember the sweat of a little girl, white, laughing, her hand dries. The guards took her to the city to be treated.

And again the convoy arose.

All he goes somewhere, goes, hiding in the icy hummocks, in the frosty fog. The horses are getting smaller and smaller, and the fog has hidden the last one. Lonely, somehow empty, ice, cold and motionless dark rocks with motionless forests.

But the Yenisei was gone, neither winter nor summer; the living vein of the key behind Vasya's hut began to beat again. The spring began to grow stout, and more than one spring, two, three, a formidable stream is already whipping from the rock, rolling stones, breaking trees, uprooting them, carrying them, twisting them. He is about to sweep away the hut under the mountain, wash away the mess and bring down everything from the mountains. Thunders will strike in the sky, lightning flashes, mysterious fern flowers will flare up from them. From the flowers the forest will light up, the earth will light up, and this fire will not be flooded even by the Yenisei - there is nothing to stop such a terrible storm!

"But what is it?! Where are the people? What are they looking at?! Vasya would have been tied up!"

But the violin extinguished everything by itself. Again, one person yearns, again something is a pity, again someone is going somewhere, maybe in a convoy, maybe on a raft, maybe on foot goes to distant distances.

The world did not burn, nothing collapsed. Everything is in place. Moon and star in place. The village, already without lights, in place, a cemetery in eternal silence and peace, a guardhouse under a ridge, embraced by burning bird cherry trees and a quiet string of a violin.

Everything is in place. Only my heart, filled with grief and rapture, how it started, how it jumped, beats at the throat, wounded for life by music.

What did the music tell me about? About the convoy? About the dead mother? About a girl whose hand dries? What did she complain about? Whom did you get angry at? Why is it so anxious and bitter to me? Why feel sorry for yourself? And those out there are sorry for those who sleep soundly in the cemetery. Among them, under a hillock, lies my mother, next to her are two sisters whom I have not even seen: they lived before me, lived a little, - and my mother went to them, left me alone in this world, where an elegant mourning woman beats high at the window someone's heart.

The music ended unexpectedly, as if someone had put an imperious hand on the violinist's shoulder: "Well, that's enough!" In mid-sentence, the violin fell silent, fell silent, not crying out, but exhaling pain. But already, besides it, of its own accord, some other violin soared higher, higher, and with a fading pain, a moan squeezed between the teeth, broke off in the sky ...

For a long time I sat in the little corner of the fuss, licking off the large tears that rolled down on my lips. I didn't have the strength to get up and leave. I wanted to die here, in a dark corner, near the rough logs, to die abandoned and forgotten by everyone. The violin was not heard, the light in Vasya's hut was not on. "Is Vasya really dead?" I thought, and cautiously made my way to the guardhouse. My feet kicked in the cold and viscous black soil, soaked with a spring. Tenacious, always cold hop leaves touched my face, cones rustled dryly over my head, smelling of spring water. I lifted the intertwined hop strings hanging over the window and peered through the window. Slightly flickering, a burned-out iron stove was heated in the hut. With a flickering light, she marked a table against the wall, a trestle bed in the corner. Vasya was reclining on the couch, covering his eyes with his left hand. His spectacles lay with their paws up on the table, flashing on and off. A violin rested on Vasya's chest, a long stick-bow was clamped in his right hand.

I quietly opened the door, stepped into the guardhouse. After Vasya drank tea with us, especially after the music, it was not so scary to come here.

I sat down on the threshold, staring fixedly at the hand holding the smooth wand.

Play, uncle, more.

Whatever you want, uncle.

Vasya sat down on the trestle bed, turned the wooden pins of the violin, touched the strings with his bow.

Throw wood in the stove.

I fulfilled his request. Vasya waited, did not move. There was a click in the stove once, twice, its burnt sides were marked with red roots and blades of grass, a reflection of the fire swayed, fell on Vasya. He tossed his violin to his shoulder and began to play.

It took a long time before I got to know the music. It was the same as the one I had heard at the haul, and at the same time quite different. Softer, kinder, anxiety and pain were only guessed in her, the violin no longer moaned, her soul no longer oozed blood, the fire did not rage around and the stones did not collapse.

The fire in the stove fluttered and fluttered, but maybe there, behind the hut, on the ridge, a fern lit up. They say that if you find a fern flower, you will become invisible, you can take all the wealth from the rich and give it to the poor, steal Vasilisa the Beautiful from Koshchei the Immortal and return it to Ivanushka, you can even sneak into the cemetery and revive your own mother.

The firewood of the cut dead wood - pines - flared up, the elbow of the pipe heated up to purple, there was a smell of red-hot wood, boiled resin on the ceiling. The hut was filled with heat and heavy red light. The fire danced, the overheated stove clicked merrily, firing large sparks as it went.

The shadow of the musician, broken at the waist, darted around the hut, stretched out along the wall, became transparent, like a reflection in the water, then the shadow moved away into a corner, disappeared in it, and then a living musician, a living Vasya the Pole, was indicated there. His shirt was unbuttoned, his feet were bare, his eyes were dark-rimmed. Vasya lay with his cheek on the violin, and it seemed to me that it was calmer, more comfortable for him, and he heard things in the violin that I would never hear.

When the stove went down, I was glad that I could not see Vasya's face, the pale collarbone that protruded from under his shirt, and his right leg, short, short, as if bitten by tongs, eyes, densely, painfully squeezed into the black pits of the eye sockets. Vasya's eyes must have been afraid of even such a small light as splashed out of the stove.

In the semi-darkness, I tried to look only at the shuddering, darting or smoothly sliding bow, at the flexible, rhythmically swaying shadow along with the violin. And then Vasya again began to appear to me as something like a magician from a distant fairy tale, and not a lonely cripple, to whom no one cares. I stared so hard, listened so hard that I shuddered when Vasya spoke.

This music was written by a man who was deprived of the most precious thing. - Vasya thought aloud, not ceasing to play. - If a person has no mother, no father, but there is a homeland, he is not yet an orphan. For some time Vasya thought to himself. I was waiting. - Everything passes: love, regret for it, the bitterness of loss, even the pain from wounds passes, but the longing for the motherland never, never passes and does not go out ...

The violin again touched the same strings that had become heated during the previous playing and had not yet cooled down. Vasin's hand trembled again in pain, but immediately resigned, his fingers, gathered into a fist, unclenched.

This music was written by my fellow countryman Oginsky in a tavern - that's what we call a visiting house, - continued Vasya. - I wrote on the border, saying goodbye to my homeland. He sent her his last greetings. The composer is long gone. But his pain, his longing, his love for his native land, which no one could take away, is still alive.

Vasya fell silent, the violin spoke, the violin sang, the violin faded away. Her voice became quieter. quieter, it stretched out in the darkness like a thin, light cobweb. The web trembled, swayed, and almost soundlessly broke off.

I removed my hand from my throat and exhaled that breath that I held with my chest, with my hand, because I was afraid to break off the bright cobweb. But still, she broke off. The stove went out. Layering, coals fell asleep in it. Vasya is not visible. The violin is not heard.

Silence. Darkness. Sadness.

It's already late, - said Vasya from the darkness. -- Go home. Grandma will be worried.

I got up from the threshold and, if I had not grabbed the wooden bracket, I would have fallen. My legs were all covered in needles and as if they weren't mine at all.

Thank you, uncle, I whispered.

Vasya stirred in the corner and laughed embarrassedly or asked "For what?".

I don't know why...

And jumped out of the hut. With moved tears, I thanked Vasya, this world of the night, the sleeping village, the forest sleeping behind it. I was not even afraid to walk past the cemetery. Nothing is scary now. At that moment there was no evil around me. The world was kind and lonely - nothing, nothing bad could fit in it.

Trusting in the kindness shed by a faint heavenly light over the whole village and all over the earth, I went to the cemetery and stood at my mother's grave.

Mom, it's me. I forgot you and I don't dream about you anymore.

Dropping to the ground, I put my ear to the mound. The mother did not answer. Everything was quiet on the ground and in the ground. A small mountain ash, planted by my grandmother and me, dropped sharp-feathered wings on my mother's bump. At the neighboring graves, birch trees were loosened with threads with a yellow leaf to the very ground. There was no longer a leaf on the tops of the birches, and the bare twigs slashed the stub of the moon, which now hung over the very cemetery. Everything was quiet. Dew appeared on the grass. There was complete silence. Then, from the ridges, a chilly chill perceptibly pulled. Thicker flowed from the birch leaves. Dew glassed on the grass. My legs froze from brittle dew, one leaf rolled under my shirt, I felt chilly, and I wandered from the cemetery into the dark streets of the village between the sleeping houses to the Yenisei.

For some reason I didn't want to go home.

I don't know how long I sat on the steep ravine above the Yenisei. He made noise at the borrowing place, on stone steers. Water, knocked down from a smooth course by gobies, knitted into knots, waded heavily near the banks and in circles, rolled back to the rod in funnels. Our restless river. Some forces are always disturbing her, she is in an eternal struggle with herself and with the rocks that squeezed her from both sides.

But this restlessness of hers, this ancient riot of hers did not excite, but calmed me. Because, probably, it was autumn, the moon was overhead, the grass was rocky with dew, and the nettles along the banks, not at all like dope, rather like some kind of wonderful plants; and also because, probably, Vasya's music about indestructible love for the motherland sounded in me. And the Yenisei, not sleeping even at night, a steep-browed bull on the other side, a sawing of spruce tops over a distant pass, a silent village behind my back, a grasshopper, with its last strength working in defiance of autumn in nettles, it seems that it is the only one in the whole world, grass, as it were cast in metal—this was my homeland, close and disturbing.

In the dead of night I returned home. My grandmother must have guessed from my face that something had happened in my soul, and did not scold me.

Where are you for so long? she only asked. - Dinner is on the table, eat and lie down.

Baba, I heard the violin.

Ah, - answered the grandmother, - Vasya the Pole is someone else's, father, playing, incomprehensible. From his music, the women cry, and the men get drunk and run amok...

Who is he?

Vasya? Yes who? yawned the grandmother. -- Person. You would sleep. It's too early for me to get up to the cow. - But she knew that I would not leave anyway: -Come to me, climb under the covers.

I hugged my grandmother.

What a cold one! And wet feet! They will hurt again. Grandmother tucked the blanket under me and stroked my head. - Vasya is a man without a clan-tribe. His father and mother were from a distant country - Poland. People there don't speak our way, they don't pray like we do. Their king is called the king. The Russian tsar seized the Polish land, they didn’t share something with the king ... Are you sleeping?

I would sleep. I have to get up with the roosters. - Grandmother, in order to get rid of me as soon as possible, told me on the run that in this distant land people rebelled against the Russian Tsar, and they were exiled to us, to Siberia. Vasya's parents were also brought here. Vasya was born on a cart, under an escort's sheepskin coat. And his name is not Vasya at all, but Stasya - Stanislav in their language. This is ours, the village ones, they changed it. -- Do you sleep? Grandma asked again.

Ah, to you! Well, Vasya's parents died. They tormented themselves, tormented themselves on the wrong side and died. First mother, then father. Have you seen such a big black cross and a grave with flowers? Their grave. Vasya takes care of her, takes care of her more than he takes care of himself. And he himself had grown old, when they did not notice. Oh Lord, forgive us, and we are not young! And so Vasya lived near the store, in watchmen. They didn't go to war. His wet baby's leg was chilled on the cart... And so he lives... to die soon... And so do we...

Grandmother spoke more quietly, more indistinctly, and went to bed with a sigh. I didn't disturb her. I lay there, thinking, trying to comprehend human life, but none of this venture worked out for me.

A few years after that memorable night, the mangazin ceased to be used, because an elevator was built in the city, and the need for mangazin disappeared. Vasya was out of work. Yes, and by that time he was completely blind and could no longer be a watchman. For some time he still collected alms in the village, but then he couldn’t even walk, then my grandmother and other old women began to carry food to Vasya’s hut.

One day my grandmother came in worried, put out the sewing machine and began to sew a satin shirt, trousers without a hole, a pillowcase with strings and a sheet without a seam in the middle - that's how they sew for the dead.

Her door was open. Near the hut crowded people. People entered it without hats and came out sighing, with meek, saddened faces.

Vasya was carried out in a small, as if boyish, coffin. The face of the deceased was covered with a cloth. There were no flowers in the domino, people did not carry wreaths. Several old women dragged behind the coffin, no one was crying. Everything was done in businesslike silence. The dark-faced old woman, the former warden of the church, was reciting prayers as she walked and squinting with a cold stare at the abandoned mangazin with its fallen gates and torn from the roof with boards and shaking her head condemningly.

I went to the guardroom. The iron stove from the middle was removed. There was a cold hole in the ceiling, and drops fell into it over the hanging roots of grass and hops. There are shavings scattered on the floor. An old simple bed was rolled up at the head of the bunks. A watch mallet lay under the bunks. broom, axe, shovel. On the window, behind the tabletop, I could see an earthenware bowl, a wooden mug with a broken handle, a spoon, a comb, and for some reason I didn’t immediately notice a glass of water. It contains a branch of bird cherry with swollen and already bursting buds. Glasses looked at me with empty glasses from the tabletop.

"Where's the violin?" I remembered looking at my glasses. And then he saw her. The violin hung over the head of the bunk. I put my spectacles in my pocket, removed the violin from the wall and rushed to catch up with the funeral procession.

The peasants with the domina and the old women, wandering in a group after her, crossed the logs of the Fokinsky River, tipsy from the spring flood, climbed to the cemetery along the slope, covered with a green fog of awakened grass.

I pulled my grandmother by the sleeve and showed her the violin, the bow. Grandmother frowned severely and turned away from me. Then she took a step wider and whispered with the dark-faced old woman:

Expenses ... expensive ... the village council does not hurt ...

I already knew how to think a little and guessed that the old woman wanted to sell the violin in order to reimburse the funeral expenses, clung to my grandmother's sleeve and, when we fell behind, asked gloomily:

Whose violin?

Vasina, father, Vasina,” my grandmother turned her eyes away from me and stared at the back of the dark-faced old woman. - To the domino ... Sam! .. - my grandmother leaned towards me and quickly whispered, adding a step.

Before the people were about to cover Vasya with the lid, I squeezed forward and, without saying a word, put the violin and the bow on his chest, threw on the violin several living flowers of the mother-stepmother, which I had plucked from the bridge.

No one dared to say anything to me, only the old praying woman pierced me with a sharp look and immediately, raising her eyes to the sky, crossed herself: "Have mercy, Lord, on the soul of the deceased Stanislav and his parents, forgive their sins, free and involuntary ..."

I watched as the coffin was nailed down—is it strong? The first one threw a handful of earth into Vasya's grave, as if his closest relative, and after people sorted out their shovels, towels and scattered along the paths of the cemetery to wet the graves of their relatives with accumulated tears, he sat for a long time near Vasya's grave, kneading lumps of earth with his fingers, something then waited. And he knew that there was nothing to wait for, but still there was no strength and desire to get up and leave.

In one summer, Vasya's empty guardhouse collapsed. The ceiling collapsed, flattened, pressed the hut into the midst of stingers, hops and Chernobyl. For a long time rotten logs stuck out of the weeds, but even they gradually became covered with dope; the thread of the key pierced a new channel for itself and flowed over the place where the hut stood. But the spring soon began to wither, and in the dry summer of 1933 it completely withered. And immediately the bird cherry trees began to wilt, the hops degenerated, and the mixed herb foolishness subsided.

The man left, and life in this place stopped. But the village lived, the children grew up to replace those who left the earth. While Vasya the Pole was alive, the fellow villagers treated him differently: some did not notice him as an extra person, others even teased him, frightened the children with him, others felt sorry for the wretched man. But then Vasya the Pole died, and the village began to lack something. An incomprehensible guilt overcame people, and there was no such house, such a family in the village, where he would not be commemorated kind word on parental day and other quiet holidays, and it turned out that in an inconspicuous life there was Vasya the Pole, like a righteous man and helping people with humility, respectfulness to be better, kinder to each other.

- a writer who often resorted to the theme of war and the Motherland in his works, these themes can also be traced in Astafyev's book "The Last Bow".

Astafiev Last bow summary

To begin with, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with Astafyev’s work “The Last Bow” in its brief content in order to get to know the essence and be able to write without problems.

So, in the work "The Last Bow" by Viktor Astafiev in question about a boy who had to live with his grandmother, since his father left his family and left, and his mother drowned herself in the Yenisei River. Grandmother and was engaged in raising her grandson. The child's life was like that of all the guys from the village. He helped with the housework, in his free time he frolicked, fished, went for mushrooms, berries.

His life was interesting until it was time to go to school. Due to the fact that there was no school in the village, he goes to his father in the city and here his life does not change in better side. Here he had to save himself from death, hunger, in other words, not to live, but to survive. And only with the help of patience, forgiveness, the ability to see even in the bad a grain of goodness, which his grandmother taught, the boy managed to survive. But, once in the city, he found himself in the midst of loneliness. He realized that no one needed him, that he had fallen into a world of heartlessness. The boy runs wild, becomes rude, but his grandmother's upbringing takes over. He managed in urban survival conditions, starving and in pain, to save his soul. Then he ends up in an orphanage.

Astafiev's stories tell us about the boy's youth, about his studies at school, then participation in the war and his return. And first of all, the hero of the work goes to his grandmother, where everything was as before, and even the grandmother was sitting at the table, as usual, winding the threads into a ball.

Then the hero leaves to work in the Urals, where he received news of the death of his grandmother, but he could not get to the funeral, as the authorities did not let him in, although the grandmother asked him to come when they met. Victor could not forgive himself for this, and if it were possible to return time, he would have abandoned everything and rushed to where he felt very good in his time. He did not forgive himself, but he is sure that the grandmother forgave and did not hold a grudge, because she loved her grandson very much.

Astafiev Last bow analysis

Working on Astafiev's work "The Last Bow" and making his analysis, I will say that here the author depicts the life of the village, that native land, where the author was born and grew up, and grew up in a harsh climate, among wildlife, beautiful rivers, among the mountains and dense taiga. All this was depicted in Astafiev's work "The Last Bow". Also in the work, the author touches on the theme of war.

"The Last Bow" is a biographical work that consists of separate stories that are connected by one theme. In the work, the author writes about his life, shares his memories, where each story describes a separate case from his life. So Astafiev shared with us memories of his homeland - Siberian village who was hardworking and not spoiled. Showed us how beautiful the nature that surrounded him. Astafiev portrayed the pressing problems of people who lived in difficult periods of life.

Astafiev Heroes' last bow

The main character of the work "The Last Bow" is Vitya - a boy who became an orphan. Various trials fell to his lot, but he withstood everything, and this is thanks to his grandmother, who taught love, kindness, taught to find good even where it does not exist. The boy's childhood passed in the village, after which Victor goes to the city to his father, where he sees his betrayal, where he experiences all the hardships of the life of a poor teenager, including going to war, ending it, and returning to his small homeland.

The grandmother in Astafyev's work "The Last Bow" is also a heroine who played a significant role in the boy's life. This is the "general in a skirt." She could be grumbling, formidable, she was kind. She loved everyone, looked after everyone, always wanted to be useful to everyone. She appears before us not only as the boy's educator, but also as a doctor, as a healer. Wherein main character is the prototype of the writer's grandmother, and main character, this is the prototype of Astafiev himself.