Aleksey Ivanov. Train Chusovskaya – Tagil
Part 1. On a train through childhood

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”... I traveled on this train only in the summer.

The line of carriages and the locomotive were angular and massive; it smelled of hot metal and, for some reason, tar. Every day this train departed from the old Chusovsky station, which now no longer exists, and the conductors stood at the open doors, holding out yellow flags.

The railway turned decisively from the Chusovaya River into a ravine between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train pounded steadily through the dense valleys. The motionless summer sun was burning above, and around in the blue and haze the Urals swayed: now some taiga factory will put up a thick red brick chimney over the forest, now a gray rock above the valley will sparkle with mica, now in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin, a quiet lake will sparkle . The entire world around us outside the window could suddenly fall down - it was the carriage rushing along a bridge that was short, like a sigh, over a flat river, riddled with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto high embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky, and around it, in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, a horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something strangely flashed.

The semaphore switched the scale, and after grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down at modest sidings with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of forgotten trains were stuck to the red rails. Here, the windows of wooden stations were decorated with platbands and signs “Do not walk on the tracks! 10" rusted, and dogs slept under them in the dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of the drainage ditches, and stray raspberries grew behind the cracked plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station, like a local hawk that had long lost the greatness of a predator and was now stealing chickens in front gardens, snatching sparrows from the gable slate roof of a sawmill.

Going over the details in my memory, I no longer know and don’t even understand which magical country this train is traveling through - through the Urals or through my childhood.

Valid options

1 Train “Chusovskaya – Tagil”

2 Acceptable: Chusovskaya - Tagil... I traveled by this train only in the summer; “Chusovskaya – Tagil”, I traveled on this train only in the summer; Chusovskaya – Tagil, I traveled by this train only in the summer; "Chusovskaya - Tagil". I only traveled on this train in the summer; Chusovskaya - Tagil. I only traveled on this train in the summer; Chusovskaya - Tagil. I traveled on this train only in the summer...; Not recommended: “Chusovskaya – Tagil” - I traveled on this train only in the summer.

3 A line of carriages and a locomotive, angular and massive, it smelled...; A line of carriages and a locomotive, angular and massive; he smelled...

4 Every day this train departed from the old Chusovsky station, which no longer exists; and stood in the open doors of the conductor, holding out yellow flags

6 ...and around, in the blue and haze, the Urals swayed...; and around us the Urals swayed in the blue and haze; then some taiga factory will put up a thick red brick chimney over the forest...

7 More than once the train was carried out onto high embankments - and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky...

8 ...and around, in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, the horizon unfolded...; and around - in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool - the horizon unfolded...

9 Here the windows of the wooden stations were decorated with platbands; signs “Do not walk on the tracks!” rusty...

10 ... the “Do not walk on the paths” signs have rusted...

11 ...and under them, in the dandelions, the dogs slept; ...and under them – in the dandelions – the dogs were sleeping.

12 two pitched And two pitched.

13 ...I no longer know and don’t even understand: through what magical country is this train traveling - through the Urals or through my childhood?; ...I no longer know and don’t even understand which magical country this train is traveling through: the Urals or my childhood.

Part 2. Train and people

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”... Solar train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days were longer, the land was larger, and the bread was not imported. I liked my fellow travelers; I was fascinated by the mystery of their lives, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a neat old lady unfolding a newspaper in which onion feathers, pies with cabbage filling and hard-boiled eggs are neatly folded. Here is an unshaven father rocking a little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that careful movement with which this clumsy and awkward man covers the girl with the hem of his shabby jacket... Here are the disheveled demobilized men drinking vodka: as if, crazy with happiness, they are discordant they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then they cry from the inability to express the suffering they do not understand, they hug again and sing songs. And only many years later I realized how hard the soul becomes when you live away from home for a long time.

Once at some station I saw how all the conductors went to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly floated slowly along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the funny driver who didn’t blow the whistle, the crowd rushed after him, and from the doors of the last carriage the train manager shamelessly whistled with two fingers, like a fan at a stadium. Of course, the joke was rude, but no one was offended, and then everyone laughed together.

Here, confused parents pulled up on motorcycles with strollers to escort their children to the train, kissed and had bitter fun, played accordions and sometimes danced. Here the conductors told the passengers to calculate for themselves how much the ticket cost and bring it to them “without change,” and the passengers honestly rummaged through their wallets and purses, looking for small change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door to the outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one would scold you.

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”, the train of my childhood... 11

Valid options

1 Train “Chusovskaya – Tagil”

2 “Chusovskaya – Tagil”, solar train. Chusovskaya - Tagil... solar train. Chusovskaya – Tagil, solar train...

3 unimportable.

4 ...this guy - clumsy and awkward - is covering...

5 ...the hollow of your shabby jacket.

6 A semicolon is possible.

7 ...seemingly crazy with happiness...

8 Once, at some station, I saw...

9 Optional quotation marks. It is acceptable: bring it to them without change...

10 You could go out into the vestibule, open the door to the outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world - and no one would scold you.

11 “Chusovskaya - Tagil”... The train of my childhood...; "Chusovskaya - Tagil". The train of my childhood... etc.

We bring to your attention a detailed analysis of the text in terms of spelling and punctuation. The text is analyzed literally character by sign, and the corresponding rule is given for each dubious place.

Aleksey Ivanov. Train Chusovskaya – Tagil
Part 3. When the train returns

My mother and father worked as engineers, the Black Sea was too expensive for them, so on summer holidays they teamed up with friends and went on the Chusovskaya-Tagil train in cheerful groups on family hikes along the rivers of the Urals. In those years, the very order of life seemed to be specially adapted for friendship: all the parents worked together, and all the children studied together. Perhaps this is called harmony.

Our dashing and powerful dads threw backpacks with cotton sleeping bags and canvas tents, heavy as if made of sheet iron, onto the luggage racks, and our naive mothers, fearing that the children might find out about the plans of the adults, asked in a whisper: “Have we taken them for the evening?” ? My father, the strongest and cheerful one, without being embarrassed at all and not even smiling, answered: “Of course! A loaf of white and a loaf of red.”

And we, the children, rode towards wonderful adventures - where there were merciless sunshine, inaccessible rocks and fiery sunrises, and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on the hard carriage shelves, and these dreams were the most amazing thing! - always came true. A hospitable and friendly world opened up before us, life stretched into the distance, into blinding infinity, the future seemed wonderful, and we were rolling there in a creaky, shabby carriage. In the railway schedule our train was listed as a commuter train, but we knew that it was an ultra-long-distance train.

And now the future has become the present - not beautiful, but as it apparently should be. I live in it and am getting to know better and better the homeland through which my train travels, and it is getting closer to me, but, alas, I remember my childhood less and less, and it is getting further and further away from me - this is very, very sad. However, my present will also soon become the past, 13 and then the same train will take me not to the future, but to the past - along the same road, but in the opposite direction of time.

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”, the sunny train of my childhood. 15

Valid options

1 Train “Chusovskaya – Tagil”

3 ...canvas tents - heavy, as if made of sheet iron...

4 Of course.

5 And we, children, rode towards wonderful adventures, to where the merciless sun is...; And we, the kids, rode towards wonderful adventures: to where the sun is merciless...

6 ...and these dreams - the most amazing thing - always came true; ...and these dreams (the most amazing thing!) always came true; ...and these dreams (the most amazing thing) always came true.

7 ...to where there are merciless suns, inaccessible rocks and fiery sunrises; and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on the hard carriage shelves; and these dreams are the most amazing thing! - always came true.

8 ...life went into the distance - into blinding infinity, the future seemed beautiful...

9 ...and we rolled there in a creaky, shabby carriage.

10 ...we knew that he was an ultra-long-distance traveler.

11 And now the future has become the present, not beautiful, but like this...

14 ...the same train will take me no longer to the future, but to the past, on the same road, but in the opposite direction of time.

15 “Chusovskaya – Tagil”, the sunny train of my childhood...; “Chusovskaya – Tagil”... The solar train of my childhood...; “Chusovskaya – Tagil”, the sunny train of my childhood.

We bring to your attention a detailed analysis of the text in terms of spelling and punctuation. The text is analyzed literally character by sign, and the corresponding rule is given for each dubious place.

https://www.site/2014-04-12/pisatel_aleksey_ivanov_rasskazal_ob_urale_na_totalnom_diktante_prochitav_tekst_poezd_chusovaya_tagil

Writer Alexey Ivanov spoke about the Urals at the “Total Dictation”, reading the text “Train “Chusovaya - Tagil””

Writer Alexey Ivanov today, April 12, in the Novosibirsk Academgorodok read the text of the “total dictation” - his sketch “Train “Chusovaya - Tagil””. As part of the campaign, dictation is written on a voluntary basis by people all over the world - in 352 cities.

Judging by the photos on her Facebook, the auditorium was filled to capacity. After the bell rang, signaling the end of the “lesson,” Ivanov calmly declared: “The bell is ringing for the teacher,” Yulia wrote. The dictation took about 30 minutes.

Novosibirsk is the main dictation venue (the tradition of holding an annual dictation for Russian-speaking people around the world originated from this city). In other cities, action participants gathered in classrooms are first shown a video recording in which Alexey Ivanov simply reads (does not dictate) the text, and the dictation is performed by a local speaker. In Moscow, for example, the text was read by actor Konstantin Khabensky, linguist Maxim Krongauz and showman Andrei Bocharov, and in London by radio host Seva Novgorodtsev.

Before reading the dictation, Ivanov stopped at the museum of railway technology in Novosibirsk, Yulia Zaitseva said on FB: “A good setting for the text with the title “Train “Chusovaya - Tagil”.”

“People really like the lyrics. I’ve already read two parts, I’m getting impressions from different cities..

The dictation is read in three time zones (at 9, 12 and 15 o'clock Moscow time). These are three different texts united by one topic. Since the first two fragments had already been read, they were published on the “Total Dictation” website:

Part 1. On a train through childhood

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”... I traveled by this train only in the summer.

The line of carriages and the locomotive were angular and massive; it smelled of hot metal and, for some reason, tar. Every day this train departed from the old Chusovsky station, which no longer exists, and the conductors stood at the open doors, holding out yellow flags.

The railway turned decisively from the Chusovaya River into a ravine between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train pounded steadily through the dense valleys. The motionless summer sun was burning above, and around in the blue and haze the Urals swayed: now some taiga factory will put a thick red brick chimney over the forest, now a gray rock above the valley will sparkle with mica, now in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin, a quiet lake will sparkle . The entire world around us outside the window could suddenly fall down - it was the carriage rushing along a bridge that was short, like a sigh, over a flat river, riddled with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto high embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky, and around it, in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, a horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something strangely flashed.

The semaphore switched the scale, and after grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down at modest sidings with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of forgotten trains were stuck to the red rails. Here, the windows of wooden stations were decorated with platbands and signs “Do not walk on the tracks!” rusted, and dogs slept under them in the dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of the drainage ditches, and stray raspberries grew behind the cracked plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station, like a local hawk that had long lost the greatness of a predator and was now stealing chickens in front gardens, snatching sparrows from the gable slate roof of a sawmill.

Going over the details in my memory, I no longer know and don’t even understand which magical country this train is traveling through - through the Urals or through my childhood.

Part 2. Train and people

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”... Solar train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days were longer, the land was larger, and the bread was not imported. I liked my fellow travelers; I was fascinated by the mystery of their lives, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a neat old lady unfolding a newspaper in which onion feathers, pies with cabbage filling and hard-boiled eggs are neatly folded. Here is an unshaven father rocking a little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that careful movement with which this clumsy and awkward man covers the girl with the hem of his shabby jacket... Here are the disheveled demobilized men drinking vodka: as if, crazy with happiness, they are discordant they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then they cry from the inability to express the suffering they do not understand, they hug again and sing songs. And only many years later I realized how hard the soul becomes when you live away from home for a long time.

Once at some station I saw how all the conductors went to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly floated slowly along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the funny driver who didn’t blow the whistle, the crowd rushed after him, and from the doors of the last carriage the train manager shamelessly whistled with two fingers, like a fan at a stadium. Of course, the joke was rude, but no one was offended, and then everyone laughed together.

Here, confused parents pulled up on motorcycles with strollers to escort their children to the train, kissed and had bitter fun, played accordions and sometimes danced. Here the conductors told the passengers to calculate for themselves how much the ticket cost and bring it to them “without change,” and the passengers honestly rummaged through their wallets and purses, looking for small change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door to the outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one would scold you.

“Chusovskaya – Tagil”, the train of my childhood...

On this topic:

Ural writer Alexey Ivanov did not like the film based on his novel “Tobol” A series will be made based on Alexey Ivanov’s novel about vampire pioneers Writer Alexey Ivanov - about the USSR, the “dashing 90s”, the “terrible zeros” and the “new stagnation” “Chusovskaya” - Tagil”... I traveled by this train only in the summer.

A line of carriages and a locomotive - angular and massive, it smelled of hot metal and for some reason tar. Every day this train departed from the old Chusovsky station, which no longer exists, and the conductors stood at the open doors, holding out yellow flags.

The railway turned decisively from the Chusovaya River into a ravine between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train pounded steadily through the dense valleys. The motionless summer sun was burning above, and around in the blue and haze the Urals swayed: now some taiga factory will put a thick red brick chimney over the forest, now a gray rock above the valley will sparkle with mica, now in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin, a quiet lake will sparkle . The entire world around us outside the window could suddenly fall down - it was the carriage rushing along a bridge that was short, like a sigh, over a flat river riddled with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto high embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky, and around it, in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, a horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something strangely flashed.

The semaphore switched the scale, and after grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down at modest sidings with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of forgotten trains were stuck to the red rails. Here, the windows of wooden stations were decorated with platbands and signs “Do not walk on the tracks!” rusted, and dogs slept under them in the dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of the drainage ditches, and stray raspberries grew behind the cracked plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station, like a local hawk that had long lost the greatness of a predator and was now stealing chickens in front gardens, snatching sparrows from the gable slate roof of a sawmill.

Going over the details in my memory, I no longer know and don’t even understand which magical country this train is traveling through - through the Urals or through my childhood.

Tell your friends:

Part 2. Train and people

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”... Sunny train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days were longer, the land was larger, and the bread was not imported. I liked my fellow travelers; I was fascinated by the mystery of their lives, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a neat old lady unfolding a newspaper in which onion feathers, pies with cabbage filling and hard-boiled eggs are neatly folded. Here is an unshaven father rocking a little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that careful movement with which this clumsy and awkward man covers the girl with the hem of his shabby jacket... Here are the disheveled demobilized men drinking vodka: as if, crazy with happiness, they are discordant they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then they cry from the inability to express the suffering they do not understand, they hug again and sing songs. And only many years later I realized how hard the soul becomes when you live away from home for a long time.

Once at some station I saw how all the conductors went to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly floated slowly along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the funny driver who didn’t blow the whistle, the crowd rushed after him, and from the doors of the last carriage the train manager shamelessly whistled with two fingers, like a fan at a stadium. Of course, the joke was rude, but no one was offended, and then everyone laughed together.

Here, confused parents pulled up on motorcycles with strollers to escort their children to the train, kissed and had bitter fun, played accordions and sometimes danced. Here the conductors told the passengers to calculate for themselves how much the ticket cost and bring it to them “without change,” and the passengers honestly rummaged through their wallets and purses, looking for small change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door to the outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one would scold you.

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”, the train of my childhood...

Tell your friends:

Part 3. When the train returns

My mother and father worked as engineers, the Black Sea was too expensive for them, so on summer holidays they teamed up with friends and went on the Chusovskaya-Tagil train in cheerful groups on family hikes along the rivers of the Urals. In those years, the very order of life seemed to be specially adapted for friendship: all the parents worked together, and all the children studied together. Perhaps this is called harmony.

Our dashing and powerful fathers threw backpacks with cotton sleeping bags and canvas tents, heavy as if made of sheet iron, onto the luggage racks, and our naive mothers, fearing that the children would find out about the plans of the adults, asked in a whisper: “Have we taken them for the evening?” ? My father, the strongest and cheerful one, without being embarrassed at all and not even smiling, answered: “Of course! A loaf of white and a loaf of red.”

And we, the children, rode towards wonderful adventures - where there were merciless sunshine, inaccessible rocks and fiery sunrises, and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on the hard carriage shelves, and these dreams were the most amazing thing! - always came true. A hospitable and friendly world opened up before us, life stretched into the distance, into blinding infinity, the future seemed wonderful, and we were rolling there in a creaky, shabby carriage. In the railway schedule our train was listed as a commuter train, but we knew that it was an ultra-long-distance train.

And now the future has become the present - not beautiful, but as it apparently should be. I live in it and am getting to know the homeland through which my train travels better and better, and it is getting closer to me, but, alas, I remember my childhood less and less, and it is getting further and further away from me - this is very, very sad. However, my present will also soon become the past, and then the same train will take me not to the future, but to the past - along the same road, but in the opposite direction of time.

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”, the sunny train of my childhood.

Part 1. On a train through childhood

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”... I traveled by this train only in the summer.

A line of carriages and a locomotive - angular and massive, it smelled of hot metal and for some reason tar. Every day this train departed from the old Chusovsky station, which no longer exists, and the conductors stood at the open doors, holding out yellow flags.

The railway decisively turned from the Chusovaya River into a ravine between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train pounded fractionally through the dense ravines. The motionless summer sun burned above, and the Urals swayed around in the blue and haze: then some taiga factory will put a thick pipe of red brick, then the blue rock above the valley will sparkle with mica, then in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin, a quiet lake will sparkle. The entire world around us outside the window could suddenly fall down - it was the carriage rushing along a bridge that was short, like a sigh, over a flat river riddled with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto high embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky, and around it, in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, a horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something strangely flashed.

The semaphore switched the scale, and after grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down at modest sidings with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of forgotten trains were stuck to the red rails. Here, the windows of wooden stations were decorated with platbands of signs “Do not walk on the tracks!” rusted, and dogs slept under them in the dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of the drainage ditches, and stray raspberries grew behind the cracked plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station, like a local hawk that had long lost the greatness of a predator and was now stealing chickens in front gardens, snatching sparrows from the gable slate roof of a sawmill.

Going over the details in my memory, I no longer know and don’t even understand which magical country this train is traveling through - through the Urals or through my childhood.

Part 2. Train and people

"Chusovskaya - Tagil"... Sunny train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days were longer, the land was larger, and the bread was not imported. I liked my fellow travelers; I was fascinated by the mystery of their lives, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a neat old lady unfolding a newspaper in which onion feathers, pies with cabbage filling and hard-boiled eggs are neatly folded. Here is an unshaven father rocking a little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that careful movement with which this clumsy and awkward man covers the girl with the hem of his shabby jacket... Here are the disheveled demobilized men drinking vodka: as if, crazy with happiness, they are discordant they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then they cry from the inability to express the suffering they do not understand, they hug again and sing songs. And only many years later I realized how hard the soul becomes when you live away from home for a long time.

Once at some station I saw how all the conductors went to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly floated slowly along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the funny driver who didn’t blow the whistle, the crowd rushed after him, and from the doors of the last carriage the train manager shamelessly whistled with two fingers, like a fan at a stadium. Of course, the joke was rude, but no one was offended, and then everyone laughed together.

Here, confused parents pulled up on motorcycles with strollers to escort their children to the train, kissed and had bitter fun, played accordions and sometimes danced. Here the conductors told the passengers to calculate for themselves how much the ticket cost and bring it to them “without change,” and the passengers honestly rummaged through their wallets and purses, looking for small change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door to the outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one would scold you.

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”, the train of my childhood...

Part 3. When the train returns

My mother and father worked as engineers, the Black Sea was too expensive for them, so on summer holidays they teamed up with friends and went on the Chusovskaya-Tagil train in cheerful groups on family hikes along the rivers of the Urals. In those years, the very order of life seemed to be specially adapted for friendship: all the parents worked together, and all the children studied together. Perhaps this is called harmony.

Our dashing and powerful fathers threw backpacks with cotton sleeping bags and canvas tents, heavy as if made of sheet iron, onto the luggage racks, and our naive mothers, fearing that the children would find out about the plans of the adults, asked in a whisper: “Have we taken them for the evening?” ? My father, the strongest and cheerful one, without being embarrassed at all and not even smiling, answered: “Of course! A loaf of white and a loaf of red.”

And we, the children, rode towards wonderful adventures - where there were merciless sunshine, inaccessible rocks and fiery sunrises, and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on the hard carriage shelves, and these dreams were the most amazing thing! - always came true. A hospitable and friendly world opened up before us, life stretched into the distance, into blinding infinity, the future seemed wonderful, and we were rolling there in a creaky, shabby carriage. In the railway schedule our train was listed as a commuter train, but we knew that it was an ultra-long-distance train.

And now the future has become the present - not beautiful, but as it apparently should be. I live in it and am getting to know the homeland through which my train travels better and better, and it is getting closer to me, but, alas, I remember my childhood less and less, and it is getting further and further away from me - this is very, very sad. However, my present will also soon become the past, and then the same train will take me not to the future, but to the past - along the same road, but in the opposite direction of time.

“Chusovskaya - Tagil”, the sunny train of my childhood.

Dear comrades! Our restaurant is at your service! What? You'll interrupt later! Cold and hot snacks! Large selection of wines…

Having started up, Vasily Pankov immediately goes to the dining car, swinging on the transition platforms, not closing the doors behind him, pushing passengers. In a restaurant, he drinks cognac again, gets even more drunk, meets someone from another carriage, goes there with him, invites him to his village, interrupts everyone, tries to tell something, wants to seem smarter, more educated than he really is. in fact, but the drunken stupid grayness just rushes out of him.

About two hours later he returns to his carriage, sits down with the chess players, gives them advice, interferes with them, and then plays himself. Having tired and infuriated his partner, he begins to walk around the carriage.

Well, who will we play with? - he suggests loudly. - One hundred and fifty grams! I give you a head start: a rook... Well? Who wants?

Nobody wants to play with him.

Nobody wants to? You are all weaklings against me! Hey, curly! - he addresses the completely bald fat man. - Let’s play, curly-haired one, I’ll give you two rooks, huh?

He turns to the window and pretends not to hear. His neck is filled with blood.

Gray-haired, huh? - Vasily does not calm down. - Two hundred and fifty, huh? Don't you want it? Offended, gray haired one, huh? Sorry... Sorry! I am a Russian man...

Some girl who likes Vasily cannot stand it and sprays. Encouraged, Vasily, feeling that everyone is paying attention to him, begins to break even more, he is having fun, it seems to him that he is terribly witty. He makes puns, speaks in sayings, sayings - road, worn-out and vulgar.

Finally he gets tired, falls silent and soon falls asleep on his shelf. He sleeps with his arm dangling, his mouth open, drooling on the pillow and snoring loudly.

Meanwhile, the train keeps rushing and rushing north; the day goes by quickly. The sky outside the window darkens, the fields darken, the forests become gloomy, the dawn turns pale and goes out.

Soon the lights are turned on in the carriage, tea begins to be served, and the second night on the road quietly begins.

It's good to travel on the train at night.

The carriage shudders and sways at the joints of the rails, the frosted light bulbs under the ceiling glow dimly. Someone will say an incomprehensible word in a dream, someone will climb down from the shelf, sit by the window, light a cigarette, and think. Everything is muffled at this hour, everything is quiet, only a long rumble and the clatter of wheels below.

And outside the windows there is a dark, moonless night. Occasionally, a faint light will flash in the lineman's booth, a remote stop with an incomprehensible name will float past, like a vision, with a single lantern on the platform and birches in the front garden, and again an impenetrable darkness approaches the windows, and it is not clear whether there is a forest outside the window, or a field. .

An oncoming train will rush past with a piercing whistle, the curtains will rush and flutter under the pressure of the wind, the illuminated windows will rush past in a dense stream, the red lamp on the rear carriage will flash with a spark. And it’s strange then to think that in the oncoming train that buzzed a minute ago, there are also people traveling, going to where you, perhaps, just left yesterday, also sitting in the carriages, talking quietly, dreaming about something, or sleeping - and they dream special dreams - or they look out the windows, and each has their own destiny behind them, each has their own life ahead. Who are all these people? Where do they go, what do they sleep about, what do they think so deeply about, what do they talk about and what do they laugh about?

It's good to travel on a train at night!..

It’s good to think that dark villages, lakes, haystacks, remote gatehouses and rivers float past, which you can guess only by the roar of the bridges.

A trembling red dot of a fire will appear somewhere in the immeasurable black distance, stay in almost one place for a long time, then go out, obscured by a hillside or forest. Or a car will emerge from somewhere, run next to the train, a light spot from the headlights jumps in front of it, but the car little by little lags behind, and now it’s dark again...

How much land is left behind you, how many villages and stations have rushed past while you are sleeping or thinking! And in these villages, at these stations, there live people whom you have never seen and will never see, about whose life and death you will not know anything, just as they will not know about you.

How your heart will ache at the thought that you will never have to see the great, incomprehensible multitude of destinies, grief, happiness, love, and everything that we generally call life!

The wheels are knocking, you are driving towards something new, unknown, and what happened yesterday is all behind you, everything has been lived! How much one thinks about all this to the steady sound of the wheels, to the roar of rapid movement!..

Vasily Pankov wakes up at one in the morning. For a minute he stupidly thinks about where he is going and why, then he remembers everything and perks up a little. His head hurts, but it’s late, everything is closed, and there’s nowhere to recover his hangover. Nevertheless, he becomes more cheerful every minute: his station is coming soon! Having lit a cigarette, he goes out onto the landing, opens the outer door and firmly grabs the railing.