Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky
© Paustovsky K. G., heirs, 1936–1966
© Polyakov D.V., illustrations, 2015
© Series design, compilation, notes. OJSC Publishing House "Children's Literature", 2015
* * *Briefly about yourself
Since childhood, I wanted to see and experience everything that a person can see and experience. This, of course, did not happen. On the contrary, it seems to me that life was uneventful and passed too quickly.
But it only seems that way until you start to remember. One memory pulls out another, then a third, a fourth. A continuous chain of memories arises, and it turns out that life was more varied than you thought.
Before I briefly tell you my biography, I want to dwell on one of my aspirations. It appeared in mature age and every year it becomes stronger. It boils down to bringing my current state of mind, as far as possible, closer to that freshness of thoughts and feelings that was characteristic of the days of my youth.
I am not trying to regain my youth - this, of course, is impossible - but I still try to check with my youth every day of my present life.
For me, youth exists as a judge of my current thoughts and deeds.
With age, they say, comes experience. It consists, obviously, in not allowing everything valuable that has accumulated over the past time to fade and dry up.
I was born in 1892 in Moscow, on Granatny Lane, in the family of a railway statistician. To this day, Garnet Lane is overshadowed, to use a somewhat old-fashioned language, by the same hundred-year-old linden trees that I remember as a child.
My father, despite his profession that required a sober view of things, was an incorrigible dreamer. He could not bear any burdens or worries. Therefore, among his relatives he gained a reputation as a frivolous and spineless man, a reputation as a dreamer who, in the words of my grandmother, “had no right to marry and have children.”
Obviously, because of these properties, my father did not live in one place for a long time.
After Moscow, he served in Pskov, in Vilna and, finally, more or less firmly settled in Kyiv, on the South-Western Railway.
My father came from Zaporozhye Cossacks, who moved after the defeat of the Sich to the banks of the Ros River, near Bila Tserkva.
My grandfather, a former Nikolaev soldier, and my Turkish grandmother lived there. Grandfather was a meek, blue-eyed old man. He sang ancient thoughts and Cossack songs in a cracked tenor and told us many incredible, and sometimes touching stories“from life itself.”
My mother, the daughter of an employee at a sugar factory, was a domineering and unkind woman. All her life she held “strong views”, which boiled down mainly to the tasks of raising children.
Her unkindness was feigned. The mother was convinced that only with strict and harsh treatment of children could they be raised into “something worthwhile.”
Our family was large and diverse, inclined towards the arts. The family sang a lot, played the piano, and reverently loved the theater. I still go to the theater as if it were a holiday.
I studied in Kyiv, at a classical gymnasium. Our release was lucky: we had good teachers so-called humanities– Russian literature, history and psychology.
Almost all the other teachers were either bureaucrats or maniacs. Even their nicknames testify to this: “Nebuchadnezzar”, “Shponka”, “Butter Crush”, “Pecheneg”. But we knew and loved literature and, of course, spent more time reading books than preparing lessons.
Several young men studied with me, who later became famous people in art. Studied were Mikhail Bulgakov (author of Days of the Turbins), playwright Boris Romashov, director Bersenev, composer Lyatoshinsky, actor Kuza and singer Vertinsky.
The best time - sometimes unbridled dreams, hobbies and sleepless nights– it was the Kiev spring, the dazzling and tender spring of Ukraine. She was drowning in dewy lilacs, in the slightly sticky first greenery of Kyiv gardens, in the smell of poplars and the pink candles of old chestnuts.
In springs like these, it was impossible not to fall in love with schoolgirls with heavy braids and write poetry. And I wrote them without any restraint, two or three poems a day.
These were very elegant and, of course, bad poems. But they taught me to love the Russian word and the melody of the Russian language.
ABOUT political life countries we knew something. The revolution of 1905 took place before our eyes, there were strikes, student unrest, rallies, demonstrations, the uprising of the sapper battalion in Kyiv, Potemkin, Lieutenant Schmidt, the murder of Stolypin at the Kiev Opera House.
In our family, which at that time was considered progressive and liberal, they talked a lot about the people, but by them they meant mainly peasants. They rarely talked about workers, about the proletariat. At that time, when I heard the word “proletariat,” I imagined huge and smoky factories - Putilovsky, Obukhovsky and Izhora - as if the entire Russian working class was assembled only in St. Petersburg and precisely at these factories.
When I was in the sixth grade, our family broke up, and from then on I had to earn my own living and education.
I was quite interrupted hard work, so-called tutoring.
In the last grade of the gymnasium, I wrote my first story and published it in the Kiev literary magazine"Lights". This was, as far as I remember, in 1911.
From then on, the decision to become a writer took such a strong hold on me that I began to subordinate my life to this single goal.
In 1912 I graduated from high school, spent two years at Kiev University and worked winter and summer as the same tutor, or rather, as a home teacher.
By that time, I had already traveled quite a bit around the country (my father had free train tickets).
I was in Poland (Warsaw, Vilna and Bialystok), in the Crimea, in the Caucasus, in the Bryansk forests, in Odessa, in Polesie and Moscow. After my father’s death, my mother moved there and lived there with my brother, a student at Shanyavsky University. I was left alone in Kyiv.
In 1914 I transferred to Moscow University and moved to Moscow.
The first one has begun World War. I'm like youngest son According to the laws of that time, the family was not accepted into the army.
There was a war going on, and it was impossible to sit through boring university lectures. I languished in a dull Moscow apartment and was eager to go outside, into the thick of that life that I only felt nearby, near me, but still knew so little about.
At that time I became addicted to Moscow taverns. There, for five kopecks you could order “a couple of teas” and sit all day in the hubbub of people, the clinking of cups and the clanking roar of the “machine” - the orchestra. For some reason, almost all the “machines” in the taverns played the same thing: “It was noisy, the Moscow fire was burning...” or “Oh, why was this night so good!..”.
Taverns were public gatherings. Who did I meet there! Cab drivers, holy fools, peasants from the Moscow region, workers from Presnya and Simonova Sloboda, Tolstoyans, milkmaids, gypsies, seamstresses, artisans, students, prostitutes and bearded soldiers - “militia”. And I heard a lot of talk, greedily memorizing every well-aimed word.
Then I had already decided to give up writing my vague stories for a while and “go into life” in order to “know everything, feel everything and understand everything.” Without this life experience, the path to writing was tightly closed - I understood this well.
I took the first opportunity to escape from my meager household and became a counselor on the Moscow tram. But I didn’t last long as a counselor: I was soon demoted to conductor because I crashed a car with milk from the then famous Blandov dairy company.
In the late autumn of 1914, several rear ambulance trains began to be formed in Moscow. I left the tram and became an orderly on one of these trains.
We took the wounded in Moscow and transported them to deep rear cities. Then I first knew and with all my heart and forever loved middle lane Russia with its low and, as it seemed to me then, lonely but sweet skies, with the milky smoke of villages, lazy bell ringing, drifting snow and creaking sledges, small forests and manure-laden cities: Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Arzamas, Tambov, Simbirsk and Samara.
All the orderlies on the train were students, and the sisters were students. We lived together and worked hard.
While working on the ambulance train, I heard many wonderful stories and conversations from the wounded on all sorts of occasions.
Simply recording all this would fill several volumes. But I didn’t have time to write it down. Therefore, with slight envy, I later read Sofia Fedorchenko’s excellent book “The People at War” - a verbatim recording of soldiers’ conversations.
This book thundered throughout Russia. It was strong both in its truthfulness and in the fact that in it one could already hear (in the words of the soldiers) the still distant but clear thunder of the approaching revolution.
A fascinating poem filled with bright and warm colors about boundless and complete love for one’s native and beloved place. This poem was one of the most beloved and expensive works of the great literary artist Konstantin Paustovsky.
The writer conveys to readers that this amazing and unique region attracts him not for any beauty or wealth, but exclusively for its transparent and fresh air, which envelops the Meshchera swamps, for the simple and open people, for all the colors and smells of Russian nature. The author even compares these places with the paintings of the famous Russian artist Levitan, in which each work is filled with something familiar, light and unobtrusive.
Paustovsky vividly reveals the deep beauty of flowering meadows, the smells of pine forests and mown grass, the amazing sounds of the wind, thunderstorms reminiscent of an entire orchestra. In general, Paustovsky pays a lot of attention in his work to the sounds of nature, namely: the distant sound of the bells of a grazing cow, the hysterical howl of a wolf, the knocking of a woodpecker on a tree, singing forest birds, the sound of awakening accompanied by the singing of Meshchera roosters, which especially sank into the author’s heart.
The author puts into his work an immense and selfless love for the homeland, native and beloved places, their beauty and simply the earth. Paustovsky highlights the point that under any circumstances, or in the event of war, he will not hesitate to go to defend the places dear to his heart and soul, and thereby gives a vivid lesson of complete dedication not only to the Meshchera side, but to the homeland as a whole.
Read the summary Meshcherskaya side Paustovsky
Paustovsky also vividly describes all the simplicity and good nature of the local residents of the Meshcherskaya side. He describes their life and everyday life in colors and details. The story tells that in the Meshchera side there live old people who love to have long conversations, ferrymen, basket makers, and watchmen. Paustovsky also describes frequent meetings with his grandfather Stepan, who acquired the nickname “Beard on Poles” because of his very thin body. Paustovsky with trepidation highlights in the story the overnight stay with Stepan, and their conversations about life, the tsarist regime, forests and other topics. Grandfather Stepan emphasizes how many opportunities appeared for village women who were severely deprived of any rights under the regime of the Tsar and his power.
He also especially emphasizes that the Ryazan region is very filled with different talented people. And, here in absolutely every house you can find paintings painted by either grandfathers or fathers; the region is also very rich in icon painters. He recalls his meetings with the aunt of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, from whom he constantly bought milk.
Paustovsky also describes his life in a tent, in the forest. The author is surprised that, despite the fact that he sleeps quite little, he is completely filled with cheerfulness and good mood. Next, he talks about his life in a bathhouse converted into a residential building. However, the author spends his nights more often fresh air in an old dilapidated gazebo located in the garden near the house. I especially like to spend the night in it in the fall and feel when cool gusts of breeze sway the candle on the table, and a flying butterfly lands on an open book. He also describes his morning, which he starts with a cup of tea, and then goes fishing.
The author describes the Meshchera forests very majestically, comparing them with cathedrals. In Meshchera, there are also lakes with various shades of colors, most of them are black, but there are also purple, yellow, blue and pewter in color. Paustovsky also compares the Meshchersky meadows to the sea, among which the old bed of the Prorva River flows. It is described that this river has tall, human-sized grass growing along its steep banks. Every autumn Paustovsky stops along the banks of this river, spending the night in a tent insulated with hay. Throughout the story, all the selfless love for this region and these places can be clearly and characteristically traced.
Paustovsky also emphasizes that his love is not based on the presence of any natural resource and wealth, but simply because of the quiet and calm beauty, filled with sincerity and comfort.
About the story
The work is a prose poem that tells the story of native land writer.
This region is very dear to the heart, even though it does not have any untold riches. But its nature is indescribably beautiful: clean air, endless meadows and fields, quiet pine forests, rivers and lakes, as well as haystacks that smell so nice of fresh grass. The author says that all this nature is incredibly simple, but this is where its eternal true beauty lies.
The nature depicted in the “Meshcherskaya Side” is, as it were, the personification of all Russian nature. Paustovsky repeatedly recalls spending nights in a haystack in October, when it was cold and rainy outside, but in the haystack it was incredibly warm and cozy.
The sounds of living nature itself are described no less interestingly. For example, the way pine trees make noise when the wind disturbs them with its gusts. Or how quiet it is sometimes in the forest, that you can hear even the most muffled sounds that are heard somewhere very far away. The author says that the soul of a Russian person is incredibly pleased by the simplest sounds, such as the singing and cries of birds, the knocking of a woodpecker, as well as the sounds of an accordion, which can so often be heard in the evening.
And how delightful the lakes are in calm weather, when nothing disturbs their smooth water surface. The swamps of the Meshchera region, which are surrounded by aspens and alders, and also covered with countless mosses, sank especially deeply into the writer’s soul. These places are always very fresh and “smell” of their native land.
And, of course, if you turn your gaze to the sky, it will enchant any person. During the day it can be a bright blue color, without a single cloud. And at night the vault of heaven will amaze with the abundance of stars.
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky Meshcherskaya side
© Paustovsky K. G., heirs, 1936–1966
© Polyakov D.V., illustrations, 2015
© Series design, compilation, notes. OJSC Publishing House "Children's Literature", 2015
Briefly about yourself
Since childhood, I wanted to see and experience everything that a person can see and experience. This, of course, did not happen. On the contrary, it seems to me that life was uneventful and passed too quickly.
But it only seems that way until you start to remember. One memory pulls out another, then a third, a fourth. A continuous chain of memories arises, and it turns out that life was more varied than you thought.
Before I briefly tell you my biography, I want to dwell on one of my aspirations. It appeared in adulthood and becomes stronger every year. It boils down to bringing my current state of mind, as far as possible, closer to that freshness of thoughts and feelings that was characteristic of the days of my youth.
I am not trying to regain my youth - this, of course, is impossible - but I still try to check with my youth every day of my present life.
For me, youth exists as a judge of my current thoughts and deeds.
With age, they say, comes experience. It consists, obviously, in not allowing everything valuable that has accumulated over the past time to fade and dry up.
I was born in 1892 in Moscow, on Granatny Lane, in the family of a railway statistician. To this day, Garnet Lane is overshadowed, to use a somewhat old-fashioned language, by the same hundred-year-old linden trees that I remember as a child.
My father, despite his profession that required a sober view of things, was an incorrigible dreamer. He could not bear any burdens or worries. Therefore, among his relatives he gained a reputation as a frivolous and spineless man, a reputation as a dreamer who, in the words of my grandmother, “had no right to marry and have children.”
Obviously, because of these properties, my father did not live in one place for a long time.
After Moscow, he served in Pskov, in Vilna and, finally, more or less firmly settled in Kyiv, on the South-Western Railway.
My father came from Zaporozhye Cossacks, who moved after the defeat of the Sich to the banks of the Ros River, near Bila Tserkva.
My grandfather, a former Nikolaev soldier, and my Turkish grandmother lived there. Grandfather was a meek, blue-eyed old man. He sang ancient thoughts and Cossack songs in a cracked tenor and told us many incredible and sometimes touching stories “from the very past of life.”
My mother, the daughter of an employee at a sugar factory, was a domineering and unkind woman. All her life she held “strong views”, which boiled down mainly to the tasks of raising children.
Her unkindness was feigned. The mother was convinced that only with strict and harsh treatment of children could they be raised into “something worthwhile.”
Our family was large and diverse, inclined towards the arts. The family sang a lot, played the piano, and reverently loved the theater. I still go to the theater as if it were a holiday.
I studied in Kyiv, at a classical gymnasium. Our graduating class was lucky: we had good teachers in the so-called humanities - Russian literature, history and psychology.
Almost all the other teachers were either bureaucrats or maniacs. Even their nicknames testify to this: “Nebuchadnezzar”, “Shponka”, “Butter Crush”, “Pecheneg”. But we knew and loved literature and, of course, spent more time reading books than preparing lessons.
Several young men studied with me, who later became famous people in art. Studied were Mikhail Bulgakov (author of Days of the Turbins), playwright Boris Romashov, director Bersenev, composer Lyatoshinsky, actor Kuza and singer Vertinsky.
The best time - sometimes unbridled dreams, hobbies and sleepless nights - was the Kiev spring, the dazzling and tender spring of Ukraine. She was drowning in dewy lilacs, in the slightly sticky first greenery of Kyiv gardens, in the smell of poplars and the pink candles of old chestnuts.
In springs like these, it was impossible not to fall in love with schoolgirls with heavy braids and write poetry. And I wrote them without any restraint, two or three poems a day.
These were very elegant and, of course, bad poems. But they taught me to love the Russian word and the melody of the Russian language.
We knew something about the political life of the country. The revolution of 1905 took place before our eyes, there were strikes, student unrest, rallies, demonstrations, the uprising of the sapper battalion in Kyiv, Potemkin, Lieutenant Schmidt, the murder of Stolypin at the Kiev Opera House.
In our family, which at that time was considered progressive and liberal, they talked a lot about the people, but by them they meant mainly peasants. They rarely talked about workers, about the proletariat. At that time, when I heard the word “proletariat,” I imagined huge and smoky factories - Putilovsky, Obukhovsky and Izhora - as if the entire Russian working class was assembled only in St. Petersburg and precisely at these factories.
When I was in the sixth grade, our family broke up, and from then on I had to earn my own living and education.
I made my living through rather hard work, the so-called tutoring.
In the last grade of the gymnasium, I wrote my first story and published it in the Kiev literary magazine “Lights”. This was, as far as I remember, in 1911.
From then on, the decision to become a writer took such a strong hold on me that I began to subordinate my life to this single goal.
In 1912 I graduated from high school, spent two years at Kiev University and worked winter and summer as the same tutor, or rather, as a home teacher.
By that time, I had already traveled quite a bit around the country (my father had free train tickets).
I was in Poland (Warsaw, Vilna and Bialystok), in the Crimea, in the Caucasus, in the Bryansk forests, in Odessa, in Polesie and Moscow. After my father’s death, my mother moved there and lived there with my brother, a student at Shanyavsky University. I was left alone in Kyiv.
In 1914 I transferred to Moscow University and moved to Moscow.
The First World War began. As the youngest son in the family, according to the laws of that time, I was not accepted into the army.
There was a war going on, and it was impossible to sit through boring university lectures. I languished in a dull Moscow apartment and was eager to go outside, into the thick of that life that I only felt nearby, near me, but still knew so little about.
At that time I became addicted to Moscow taverns. There, for five kopecks you could order “a couple of teas” and sit all day in the hubbub of people, the clinking of cups and the clanking roar of the “machine” - the orchestra. For some reason, almost all the “machines” in the taverns played the same thing: “It was noisy, the Moscow fire was burning...” or “Oh, why was this night so good!..”.
Taverns were public gatherings. Who did I meet there! Cab drivers, holy fools, peasants from the Moscow region, workers from Presnya and Simonova Sloboda, Tolstoyans, milkmaids, gypsies, seamstresses, artisans, students, prostitutes and bearded soldiers - “militia”. And I heard a lot of talk, greedily memorizing every well-aimed word.
Then I had already decided to give up writing my vague stories for a while and “go into life” in order to “know everything, feel everything and understand everything.” Without this life experience, the path to writing was tightly closed - I understood this well.
I took the first opportunity to escape from my meager household and became a counselor on the Moscow tram. But I didn’t last long as a counselor: I was soon demoted to conductor because I crashed a car with milk from the then famous Blandov dairy company.
Paustovsky Konstantin
Meshcherskaya side
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky
MESHCHERSKAYA SIDE
ORDINARY EARTH
There are no special beauties and wealth, except forests, meadows and clear air. But still this region has great attractive power. He is very modest - just like Levitan's paintings. But in it, as in these paintings, lies all the charm and all the diversity of Russian nature, imperceptible at first glance.
What can you see in the Meshchera region? Flowering or mown meadows, pine forests, floodplains and forest lakes overgrown with black brush, haystacks smelling of dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps you warm all winter.
I have had to spend the night in haystacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered with frost, like salt. I dug a deep hole in the hay, climbed into it and slept all night in a haystack, as if in a locked room. And over the meadows there was cold rain and the wind came at oblique blows.
In the Meshchera region you can see pine forests, where it is so solemn and quiet that the bell of a lost cow can be heard far away, almost a kilometer away. But such silence exists in the forests only on windless days. In the wind, the forests rustle with a great ocean roar and the tops of the pine trees bend after the passing clouds.
In the Meshchera region you can see forest lakes with dark water, vast swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely foresters' huts charred from old age, sand, juniper, heather, schools of cranes and stars familiar to us at all latitudes.
What can you hear in the Meshchera region, except for the hum? pine forests? The cries of quails and hawks, the whistle of orioles, the fussy knocking of woodpeckers, the howl of wolves, the rustling of rain in the red needles, the evening cry of an accordion in the village, and at night - the multi-voiced crowing of roosters and the clapper of the village watchman.
But you can see and hear so little only in the first days. Then every day this region becomes richer, more diverse, dearer to the heart. And finally, the time comes when each dead river seems like its own, very familiar, when amazing stories can be told about it.
I broke the custom of geographers. Almost all geographical books begin with the same phrase: “This region lies between such and such degrees of eastern longitude and northern latitude and borders in the south with such and such a region, and in the north with such and such a region." I will not name the latitudes and longitudes of the Meshchera region. Suffice it to say that it lies between Vladimir and Ryazan, not far from Moscow, and is one of the few surviving forest islands, a remnant of the "great belt" coniferous forests". It once stretched from Polesie to the Urals. It included forests: Chernigov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshchersky, Mordovian and Kerzhensky. Ancient Rus' hid out in these forests from the Tatar raids.
FIRST MEETING
For the first time I came to the Meshchera region from the north, from Vladimir.
Behind Gus-Khrustalny, at the quiet Tuma station, I changed to a narrow-gauge train. This was a train from Stephenson's time. The locomotive, similar to a samovar, whistled in a child's falsetto. The locomotive had an offensive nickname: “gelding.” He really looked like an old gelding. At the corners he groaned and stopped. Passengers got out to smoke. The silence of the forest stood around the gasping gelding. The smell of wild cloves, warmed by the sun, filled the carriages.
Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the carriage. Occasionally, along the way, bags, baskets, and carpenter's saws began to fly out from the platform onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out to get the things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, but experienced ones, twisting goat legs and spitting, explained that this was the most convenient way get off the train closer to your village.
The narrow-gauge railway in the Meshchera forests is the slowest Railway in the Union.
The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell of fresh felling and wild forest flowers.
At the Pilevo station, a shaggy grandfather climbed into the carriage. He crossed himself to the corner where the round cast-iron stove was rattling, sighed and complained into space:
As soon as they grab me by the beard, go to town and tie up your bast shoes. But there is no consideration that maybe this matter isn’t worth a penny to them. They send me to the museum, where the Soviet government collects cards, price lists, and so on. They send you a statement.
Why are you lying?
Look - there!
The grandfather pulled out the crumpled piece of paper, blew the terry off it and showed it to the neighbor woman.
Manka, read it,” the woman said to the girl, who was rubbing her nose against the window.
Manka pulled her dress over her scratched knees, tucked her legs up and began to read in a hoarse voice:
- “It turns out that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, huge in stature, striped, only three; it is unknown where they flew from - we should take them alive for the museum, and therefore send catchers.”
“This,” the grandfather said sadly, “is why they break the bones of old people now.” And all Leshka is a Komsomol member, Ulcer is a passion! Ugh!
Grandfather spat. Baba wiped her round mouth with the end of her handkerchief and sighed. The locomotive whistled in fear, the forests hummed both to the right and to the left, raging like lakes. Was in charge West wind. The train struggled through its damp streams and was hopelessly late, panting at empty stops.
This is our existence,” the grandfather repeated. “They drove me to the museum last summer, and today is the year again!”
What did you find in the summer? - asked the woman.
Something?
Torchak. Well, the bone is ancient. She was lying in the swamp. Looks like a deer. Horns - from this carriage. Straight passion. They dug it for a whole month. The people were completely exhausted.
Why did he give in? - asked the woman.
The kids will be taught using it.
The following was reported about this find in “Research and Materials of the Regional Museum”:
“The skeleton went deep into the bog, not providing support for the diggers. We had to undress and go down into the bog, which was extremely difficult due to the icy temperature of the spring water. The huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to complete maceration (soaking ) bones. The bones were broken right in the hands, but as they dried, the hardness of the bones was restored."
The skeleton of a gigantic fossil Irish deer with an antlers span of two and a half meters was found.
My acquaintance with Meshchera began with this meeting with the shaggy grandfather. Then I heard many stories about mammoth teeth, and about treasures, and about mushrooms the size of human head. But I remember this first story on the train especially sharply.
ANTIQUE MAP
With great difficulty I got a map of the Meshchera region. There was a note on it: “The map was compiled from old surveys made before 1870.” I had to fix this map myself. The river beds have changed. Where there were swamps on the map, in some places a young pine forest was already rustling; In place of other lakes there were swamps.
Ordinary land
There are no special beauties and riches in the Meshchora region, except for forests, meadows and clear air. But still this region has great attractive power. He is very modest - just like Levitan’s paintings. But in it, as in these paintings, lies all the charm and all the diversity of Russian nature, imperceptible at first glance.
What can you see in the Meshchora region? Flowering or mown meadows, pine forests, floodplains and forest lakes overgrown with black brush, haystacks smelling of dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps you warm all winter.
I have had to spend the night in haystacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered with frost, like salt. I dug a deep hole in the hay, climbed into it and slept all night in a haystack, as if in a locked room. And over the meadows there was cold rain and the wind came at oblique blows.
In the Meshchora region you can see pine forests, where it is so solemn and quiet that the bell of a lost cow can be heard far away.
almost a kilometer away. But such silence exists in the forests only on windless days. In the wind, the forests rustle with a great ocean roar and the tops of the pine trees bend after the passing clouds.
In the Meshchora region you can see forest lakes with dark water, vast swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely foresters' huts charred from old age, sand, juniper, heather, schools of cranes and stars familiar to us at all latitudes.
What can you hear in the Meshchora region except the hum of pine forests? The cries of quails and hawks, the whistle of orioles, the fussy knocking of woodpeckers, the howl of wolves, the rustle of rain in the red needles, the evening cry of an accordion in the village, and at night - the multi-voiced crowing of roosters and the clapper of the village watchman.
But you can see and hear so little only in the first days. Then every day this region becomes richer, more diverse, dearer to the heart. And finally, the time comes when each willow tree above the dead river seems like its own, very familiar, when amazing stories can be told about it.
I broke the custom of geographers. Almost all geographical books begin with the same phrase: “This region lies between such and such degrees of eastern longitude and northern latitude and is bordered in the south by such and such a region, and in the north by such and such.” I will not name the latitudes and longitudes of the Meshchora region. Suffice it to say that it lies between Vladimir and Ryazan, not far from Moscow, and is one of the few surviving forest islands, a remnant of the “great belt of coniferous forests.” It once stretched from Polesie to the Urals. It included forests: Chernigov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshchora, Mordovian and Kerzhensky. Ancient Rus' hid out in these forests from Tatar raids.
First meeting
For the first time I came to the Meshchora region from the north, from Vladimir.
Behind Gus-Khrustalny, at the quiet Tuma station, I changed to a narrow-gauge train. This was a train from Stephenson's time. The locomotive, similar to a samovar, whistled in a child's falsetto. The locomotive had an offensive nickname: “gelding.” He really looked like an old gelding. At the corners he groaned and stopped. Passengers got out to smoke. Forest silence stood around the gasping gelding. The smell of wild cloves, warmed by the sun, filled the carriages.
Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the carriage. Occasionally, along the way, bags, baskets, and carpenter's saws began to fly out from the platform onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out to get the things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, but experienced ones, twisting their “goat legs” and spitting, explained that this was the most convenient way to get off the train closer to their village.
The narrow-gauge railway in the Mentor Forests is the slowest railway in the Union.
The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell of fresh felling and wild forest flowers.
At the Pilevo station, a shaggy grandfather climbed into the carriage. He crossed himself to the corner where the round cast-iron stove was rattling, sighed and complained into space’
“As soon as they grab me by the beard, go to town and tie up your bast shoes.” But there is no consideration that maybe this matter isn’t worth a penny to them. They send me to the museum, where soviet government collects cards, price lists, all that stuff. They send you a statement.
- Why are you lying?
- Look, there!
The grandfather pulled out the crumpled piece of paper, blew the terry off it and showed it to the neighbor woman.
“Manka, read it,” the woman said to the girl, who was rubbing her nose against the window. Manka pulled her dress over her scratched knees, tucked her legs up and began to read in a hoarse voice:
– “It turns out that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, huge striped ones, only three; It’s unknown where they came from, we should take them alive for the museum, so send catchers.”
“This,” said the grandfather sadly, “is why they break the bones of old people now.” And all Leshka is a Komsomol member. Ulcer is a passion! Ugh!
Grandfather spat. Baba wiped her round mouth with the end of her handkerchief and sighed. The locomotive whistled in fear, the forests hummed both to the right and to the left, raging like a lake. The west wind was in charge. The train struggled through its damp streams and was hopelessly late, panting at empty stops.
“This is our existence,” the grandfather repeated. “They drove me to the museum last summer, today is the year again!”
– What did you find this summer? - asked the woman.
- Junkie!
- Something?
- Torchak. Well, the bone is ancient. She was lying in the swamp. Looks like a deer. Horns - from this carriage. Straight passion. They dug it for a whole month. The people were completely exhausted.
– Why did he give in? - asked the woman.
- The guys will be taught it.
The following was reported about this find in “Research and Materials of the Regional Museum”:
“The skeleton went deep into the quagmire, not providing support for the diggers. I had to undress and go down into the quagmire, which was extremely difficult due to the icy temperature of the spring water. The huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to complete maceration (soaking) of the bones. The bones were broken right in the hands, but as they dried, the hardness of the bones was restored.”
The skeleton of a gigantic fossil Irish deer with an antlers span of two and a half meters was found.
My acquaintance with Meshchora began with this meeting with the shaggy grandfather. Then I heard many stories about mammoth teeth, and about treasures, and about mushrooms the size of a human head. But I remember this first story on the train especially sharply.
Vintage map
With great difficulty I got a map of the Meshchora region. There was a note on it: “The map was compiled from old surveys made before 1870.” I had to fix this map myself. The river beds have changed. Where there were swamps on the map, in some places a young pine forest was already rustling; In place of other lakes there were swamps.
But still, using this map was safer than asking local residents. For a long time, it has been the custom in Rus' that no one makes so many mistakes when explaining the way, how local, especially if he is a talkative person.
“You, dear man,” shouts a local resident, “don’t listen to others!” They will tell you things that will make you unhappy with life. Just listen to me, I know these places inside and out. Go to the outskirts, you will see a five-walled hut on your left hand, take from that hut to right hand along the trail through the sands, you will reach Prorva and go, dear, the edge of Prorva, go, don’t hesitate, all the way to the burnt willow. From there you take a little bit towards the forest, past Muzga, and after Muzga go steeply to the hill, and beyond the hill there is a well-known road - through the mshary to the lake.
- How many kilometers?
- Who knows? Maybe ten, maybe even twenty. There are countless kilometers here, my dear.
I tried to follow these tips, but there were always either several burnt willows, or there was no noticeable hill, and I, giving up on the stories of the natives, relied only on own feeling directions. It almost never deceived me.
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