Yuri Shcheglov - “Overstocked Barrels” by Vasily Aksenov. A comment

Vasily Aksenov’s story “Overstocked Barrels” was published in the March 1968 issue of Yunost. Now the country is different - we are different. A quarter of a century is enough time to absorb any thing.

According to the parabolas of time, the cosmos of our memory sometimes returns to us something from the forgotten. Aksenov's "Bochkotara" today will have to find a place among newly read books - Zamyatin's "We", Bulgakov's "" and "Diaboliad", Plato's "The Juvenile Sea" and "Chevengur".

“Overstocked Barrel” is pushed to the margins of Aksenov’s creative biography, resting modestly in the shadow of the famous “Colleagues”, “Star Ticket”, “Love of Electricity”, “”, “”, “”.

Time refutes the role prepared for this “story of exaggerations and dreams.” Aksenov’s strange story today is the predecessor of F. Iskander’s prose, Ven. Erofeev, S. Dovlatov, Vl. Voinovich, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Bulat Okudzhava. This list is almost at random. Over the course of a quarter of a century, a whole direction has emerged - ironic prose.

Eighty years later, irony has come back into fashion. However, not from pretense. From the desire to save face. (c) L. Kroychik

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The barrels became overstocked, a yellow flower blossomed, they filled up, got stuck and moved on.

From newspapers.

In the evening, in the front garden, there is a cluster of bees, buzzing, business flights from dahlia to sunflower, from tobacco to mignonette, inspection of indoor gillyflowers and wallflowers in open windows; labors, labors in the hot air of the regional center.

Invasion of arrogant foreigners, fat dung flies, fed up with the garbage heap.

Brittle as a tango, flight at the end of life - a dark-winged butterfly - an admiral, almost Baron Wrangel.

On the street, behind the front garden, the dust from the truck that passed half an hour ago is still settling.

The owner, a hereditary worker of retirement age, sitting quietly and comfortably on a bench with a cigarette in his yellow, tightly gripped fingers, tells his friend, almost a double, about his son’s art:

– I completely atrophied my father’s attitude towards him. We, the Teleskopovs, you know, Pyotr Ilyich, in the mechanical department, in the laboratory workshops, are servants of the industry. In four generations, Pyotr Ilyich, as you know. We return here, to the idiocy of rural life, for a well-deserved rest, only when the salt in our knees reduces our qualifications, like you, Pyotr Ilyich. And he, Vladimir, my eldest, after the army lived as a gypsy for almost a full seven years, he returned to St. Petersburg in a completely negative state, naked drunk, indignant eyes. I got him a job in the workshop. Telescope talent, telescope hands, our telescope head, linen and light. The eye has become completely artistic. My heart, Pyotr Ilyich, sang when Vladimir and I were returning from the factory together, but oh... he screwed everything up again... And I don’t understand who. He came to his father for pension bread, shame and disgrace... the call of the earth, he says, the homeland of his ancestors...

- Where does he work, how crazy is he? - asks Pyotr Ilyich.

– The day before yesterday I became a driver at the general store, shame and disgrace. So from that day on, Simka has been sitting in a nook, no clothes, not drying out...

– Have you heard what’s going on in China? - Pyotr Ilyich switches the conversation. - The Red Guards are committing violence.

At this time, Vladimir Teleskopov is actually sitting in the nook of barmaid Sima, a strong-willed widow. He sits on a dangerously creaky soap box, although he could have chosen a more secure seat. Together with his new friend, Black Sea sailor Gleb Shustikov, he treats himself to tangerine tincture. Their shadows and the shadows of the cups with the tangerine light inside are clearly visible on the pink plastic curtain. The profile of Shustikov Gleb is minted, portrait-like, it is immediately clear that the man will be a commander, while the profile of Vladimir is shaggy, snub-nosed, and unreliable. He sways, leans towards the glass, moves away from it.

Sima counts the proceeds at the counter and hears the crooked revelations of her chosen one behind her.

-...And he calls me, the bastard director, to his plant, and I tell him, I’m drunk, and he tells me, I’ll take you to our first-aid post, there they’ll bring you back to normal, and what qualifications do I have? I won’t tell you this, Gleb...

“Volodka, stop pouring the zenki,” says Sima. - Tomorrow you will take me to the station.

She pulls back the curtain and looks, smiling, at the guys, stretching her big, sweet body.

“I’ve accumulated a lot of barrels, boys,” she says languidly, meaningfully, vaguely, “it’s accumulated, it’s overstocked, it’s blooming like a yellow flower... as they write in the newspapers...

“Well, Serafima Ignatievna, be in good health,” says Gleb Shustikov, standing up springily and straightening his uniform. – Tomorrow I’m leaving for my duty station. Yes, Volodya will give me a lift to the station.

“So, you’re leaving, Gleb Ivanovich,” says Sima, making unnecessary movements around the nook, sending smiling glances to the sailor from behind his lush shoulders. - Ay-ay, woe to the girls with your departure.

“Great exaggeration, Serafima Ignatievna,” Gleb Shustikov smiles.

There is a subtle understanding between them, and there could be something more, but it’s not Sima’s fault that even before the brilliant sailor arrived on leave, she fell in love with the troublemaker Teleskopov. This is the game of nature, fate, the mystery of life.

Teleskopov Vladimir, the culprit of this discrepancy, does not notice any implications, melancholy deep in his thoughts, in a jar of vendace.

He sees off the sailor, stands for a long time on the porch, looking at the endless darkening fields, at the stripes of steamy fog, at the well cranes, at the narrow crescent hanging in the green sky like a lonely seahorse.

“Hey, Seryozhka Yesenin, Seryozhka Yesenin,” he says to the month, “do you see me, Volodya Teleskopova?”

And the foreman of the second article, Gleb Shustikov, is moving with strong steps towards the club. He knows that the machine operators started something against him on the last evening, and he walks, clear, happy, towards danger.

It gets darker, darker, the dust settles, the insects have calmed down, the animals are stomping around in slumber, in dreams of tomorrow's fresh grass, and people are stomping around dancing, near the stoves, under the windows of their own and other people's houses, whispering something to each other, some words: scoundrel, beloved, drunkard, damned, my dear...

It got dark and then it began to dawn.

The refined intellectual Vadim Afanasyevich Drozhzhinin was also planning to return to his place of service, that is, to Moscow, to one of the external cultural institutions, of which he was a consultant.

On a summer morning, in a gray traveling suit made of light tweed, he sat on the veranda of the forestry and waited for the car that was supposed to take him to the Koryazhsk station. His village relatives, who had come to say goodbye, were sitting around a large table. They looked at him with quiet reverence. No one dared to sip the tea, Varenets, or taste the potato pancakes, only dad the forester Drozhzhinin noisily ate the daily daily cabbage soup and mom, for the sake of etiquette, accompanied him, barely unclenching her stern lips.

“Still, they have a strange habit of eating from the same plate,” thought Vadim Afanasyevich, although he had been familiar with this habit for a long time, one might say, from birth.

He looked around the forest, idyllically trembling in the morning light, the currant bushes that approached the veranda, the leaves, all in drops of dew, the timid and quiet relatives: father’s stick beard came into view, of course, and mother’s comb in her thin hair - and smiled warmly. He was sorry to leave this idyll and silence, but, of course, this pity was small compared to the charm of the measured, rich life of a refined single intellectual in Moscow.

After all, all that he had achieved—that Fitzgerald & Son ready-to-wear suit, and those Hunt boots, and that brush of a mustache under his nose, and complete, absolutely impeccable integrity, impeccable manners, all that wonderful Englishness—he I achieved it myself.

Oh, where have the infinitely distant times gone, when Vadim Afanasyevich appeared in Moscow in a corduroy suit and with a wooden suitcase!

Vadim Afanasyevich was not going to grab any stars from the sky, but he was proud - and deservedly so - of his specialty, his knowledge in one narrow field.

Let's reveal the cards: he was the only specialist of his kind on the small Latin American country of Haligalia.

No one in the world was as keenly interested in Khaligalia as Vadim Afanasyevich, and another Frenchman, a vicar from the Swiss canton of Helvetia. However, the vicar, of course, was more interested in issues of a religious and philosophical nature, while Vadim Afanasyevich’s range of interests covered all aspects of the life of Khaligalia. He knew all the dialects of this country, and there were twenty-eight of them, all the folklore, all the history, the whole economy, all the streets and nooks and crannies of the capital of this country, the city of Polis and three other cities, all the shops and shops on these streets, the names of their owners and their members families, nicknames and temperament of pets, although I have never been to this country. The junta that ruled in Khaligalia did not give Vadim Afanasyevich an entry visa, but ordinary Khaligalia residents all knew and loved him, he was in correspondence with at least half of them, gave advice on family life, and resolved all sorts of contradictions.

Yuri Konstantinovich Shcheglov

“Overstocked Barrels” by Vasily Aksenov. A comment

Scientific application. Vol. CXXI

Preparation of the text by V.A. Shcheglova

The cover design uses a drawing by G. Basyrov. 1980.

© Heirs, 2013

© Design. LLC "New Literary Review", 2013

Introductory Note

« Aksenov wrote a strange story.”

With such a phrase-paragraph, somewhat in the manner of V.B. Shklovsky, the accompanying note began (Sidorov 1968: 63–64) for the publication « Overstocked barrels" (hereinafter - ZB) in the yellow March notebook of the magazine « Youth" for 1968. The critic’s phrase (E.Yu. Sidorov) aptly anticipated the likely reader’s reaction. The new work was called « a story with exaggerations and dreams” and hit the head with the very title itself, and immediately after it with the outlandish, supposedly taken « from newspapers" with an epigraph. Reading Aksenov was, as always, easy and fun; his humor unfolded with no less charm and brilliance than before; the characters appeared as if they were alive and amazed with their Soviet typicality; I was pleased by the obvious, although not immediately perceptible, atmosphere of anti-officiality, « sedition”, for which the Soviet reader of those years was so greedy and sensitive. What came slower was « the end-to-end idea" of a thing, its integrity, the meaning of symbolism and eccentric hyperbole, in general the degree of justification of all these fantasies, dreams, doubles, mirror reflections, excursions into the abstruse of the ancient type « holes bul schyl”, etc. Aksenov’s previous prose could only gradually prepare for something of this kind; ZB was the first, still censored and therefore relatively discreet milestone of his « new style,” which soon broke with that flow « youth literature”, within which Aksenov’s first stories matured, and with all the compromise culture, built at best on half-truths « developed socialism."

It is true that today’s reader will inevitably come across a number of stumbling blocks in the story. But overall the majority « oddities" have long been cleared up; the style and composition of ST seem quite moderate today, « reader friendly." The semantic orientation of ZB is also quite transparent, moreover, it is attractive and close to the majority of modern readers who are not poisoned by snobbery and unbelief by loudly trumpeting themselves « post"-literature. Aksenov of 1968, like 2007, is one of those masters who have remained faithful to fundamental humanistic values ​​and are not shy about expressing this. For all the absurdity, for all, to put it mildly, the ugliness of the world depicted by the writer, we will not find in him any concessions to moral relativism and nihilism, this brand names postmodern; in his distribution of likes and dislikes, Aksenov stands on the same side as L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov, whose vacancies in Russian literature as defenders of humanity and spiritual culture are constant and cannot be abolished. The author of ZB is connected by a number of particularly deep parallels with Chekhov as a poet of vaguely beautiful utopian insights in the context of a fading, sclerotic, but still cruel world that has not forgotten how to kill and cripple; some of his philosophically programmatic things, for example « Heron”, demonstratively - starting with the title (cf. « The Seagull") - are saturated with Chekhov's intertexts. In the atmosphere of late Soviet cynicism and lack of faith « stagnation", barbaric « the initial accumulation" of the post-Soviet years, and finally, the militant amoralism of modern US anticulture, to which Aksenov responds with magnificent satirical sharpness in his prose of the last twenty years - the writer never allowed the romantic-idealistic stream of his creativity, coming from the early 1960s, to die out and created works that appealed to human decency and conscience and taught contempt for « confidantes of depravity."

This humanistic foundation, connecting Aksenov with the classics, remained unshaken with him, although in external stylistic terms his writing was to a certain extent « postmodernized,” signs of which are felt, for example, in the fall of linguistic taboos or in what can be called « poetics of the disgusting” (elements of which, however, were already present in I.E. Babel). But, we repeat, the guidelines « traditional” humanity are placed in Aksenov’s poetic world quite unambiguously. As for the oddities, as the general culture of our society increased, many of them dissipated by themselves, and to split the remaining ones « tough nuts”, a commentary apparatus, such as those whose experience is offered here, can help.

In fact, if you look closely, the ST is written in a language that is quite familiar and accessible to the general reader. Like some other classic works of Soviet satire (for example, the novels of I. Ilf and E. Petrov or the fairy tales-parables of K. Chukovsky, whose allegorical nature was always felt by adult intelligent readers), it consists almost entirely of recognizable motifs, archetypes and plot blocks. By correlating the plot of ZB with what we read earlier, we begin to comprehend the theme and internal logic of the story. In its most condensed form, the following happens.

1) In a certain type of narrative, a company of one kind or another gathers (musketeers, dispossessed exiles, world travelers, explorers, experimenters, controversial philosophers, treasure hunters, etc.). Having united on the basis of some common goal, they set off on a journey around the world and meet on their way different people, watching various places and morals, get into adventures. It is typical for the formation of a group that until the moment of the meeting, its future participants are unfamiliar with each other and are disconnected: everyone is solving some kind of personal problem or going somewhere on their own business (the most common case is after finishing some life cycle or a series of works, is about to retire, go on vacation, etc.). Let us recall, for example, sailor Gleb Shustikov from ZB, who, before meeting with Irina and before leaving for his duty station, intends to visit his friend, « but now, you understand, there’s no time for a friend.” IN « "Children of Captain Grant" geographer Paganel becomes a participant in the search for the missing captain absent-mindedly - boarding a yacht « Duncan" instead of the ship on which he was going to conduct his own research. A new goal - or even just a game of chance, a whim of fate - powerfully forces everyone to cancel their personal plans and become part of the team, « collective hero" with a single goal. In the process of searching, life teaches the company of characters certain lessons and groups them around new values ​​and ideals.

Vasily Aksenov

Overstocked barrels

(a story with exaggerations and dreams)

The barrels are overstocked, a yellow flower blooms,

she stocked up, took a nap and moved away.

From newspapers

In the evening, in the front garden, there is a cluster of bees, buzzing, business flights from dahlia to sunflower, from tobacco to mignonette, inspection of indoor gillyflowers and wallflowers in open windows; labors, labors in the hot air of the regional center.

Invasion of arrogant foreigners, fat dung flies, fed up with the garbage heap.

Brittle as a tango, flight at the end of life - a dark-winged butterfly - an admiral, almost Baron Wrangel.

On the street, behind the front garden, the dust from the truck that passed half an hour ago is still settling.

The owner, a hereditary worker of retirement age, sitting quietly and comfortably on a bench with a cigarette in his yellow, tightly clenched fingers, tells his friend, almost a double, about his son’s art:

I completely atrophied my father's attitude towards him. We, the Teleskopovs, you know, Pyotr Ilyich, in the mechanical department, in the laboratory workshops, are servants of the industry. In four generations, Pyotr Ilyich, as you know. We return here, to the idiocy of rural life, for a well-deserved rest, only when the salt in our knees reduces our qualifications, like you, Pyotr Ilyich. And he, Vladimir, my eldest, after the army lived as a gypsy in an unknown place for almost a full seven years, returned to St. Petersburg in a completely negative form: naked drunk, indignant eyes. I got him a job in the workshop. Telescope talent, telescope hands, our telescope head, linen and light. The eye has become completely artistic. My heart, Pyotr Ilyich, sang when Vladimir and I were returning from the factory together, and oh... he screwed everything up again... And I don’t understand who. I came to my father for pension bread, shame and disgrace... the call of the earth, he says, the homeland of our ancestors...

Where does he work, how crazy is he? - asks Pyotr Ilyich.

On the third day in the general store I became a driver, shame and disgrace. So from that day on, Simka has been sitting in a nook, no clothes, not drying out...

Have you heard what is happening in China? - Pyotr Ilyich switches the conversation. - The Red Guards are fouling.

At this time, Vladimir Teleskopov is actually sitting in the nook of barmaid Sima, a strong-willed widow. He sits on a dangerously creaky soap box, although he could have chosen a more secure seat. Together with his new friend, Black Sea sailor Gleb Shustikov, he treats himself to tangerine tincture. Their shadows and the shadows of the cups with the tangerine light inside are clearly visible on the pink plastic curtain. The profile of Shustikov Gleb is minted, portrait-like, it is immediately clear that the man will be a commander, while the profile of Vladimir is shaggy, snub-nosed, and unreliable. He sways, leans towards the glass, moves away from it.

Sima counts the proceeds at the counter and hears the crooked revelations of her chosen one behind her.

- ... and he calls me, the bastard director, to his plant, and I tell him, I’m drunk, and he tells me, I’ll take you to our first-aid post, there they’ll bring you back to normal, and what qualifications do I have? I won’t tell you, Gleb...

Volodka, stop pouring the zenki,” says Sima. - Tomorrow you will take the container to the station.

She pulls back the curtain and looks, smiling, at the guys, stretching her big, sweet body.

“I’ve accumulated a lot of barrels, boys,” she says languidly, meaningfully, vaguely, “it’s accumulated, it’s overstocked, it’s blooming like a yellow flower... as they write in the newspapers...

Well, Serafima Ignatievna, be in good health,” says Gleb Shustikov, standing up springily and straightening his uniform. - Tomorrow I’m leaving for my duty station. Yes, Volodya will give me a lift to the station.

So, you’re leaving, Gleb Ivanovich,” says Sima, making unnecessary movements around the nook, sending smiling glances to the sailor from behind his lush shoulders. - Ay-ay, woe to the girls with your departure.

A strong exaggeration, Serafima Ignatievna,” Gleb Shustikov smiles.

There is a subtle understanding between them, and there could probably be something more, but it’s not Sima’s fault that even before the brilliant sailor arrived on leave, she fell in love with the troublemaker Teleskopov. This is the game of nature, fate, the mystery of life.

Teleskopov Vladimir, the culprit of this discrepancy, does not notice any implications, melancholy deep in his thoughts, in a jar of vendace.

He sees off the sailor, stands for a long time on the porch, looking at the endless darkening fields, at the stripes of steamy fog, at the well cranes, at the narrow crescent hanging in the green sky like a lonely seahorse.

Eh, Seryozhka Yesenin, Seryozhka Yesenin, - he says to the month, - do you see me, Volodya Teleskopov?

And the foreman of the second article, Gleb Shustikov, is moving with strong steps towards the club. He knows that the machine operators started something against him on the last evening, and he walks, clear, happy, towards danger.

It gets darker, darker, the dust settles, the insects have calmed down, the animals are stomping around in slumber, in dreams of tomorrow's fresh grass, and people are stomping around dancing, near the stoves, under the windows of their own and other people's houses, whispering something to each other, some words: scoundrel, beloved, drunkard, damned, my dear...

It got dark and then it began to dawn.

The refined intellectual Vadim Afanasyevich Drozhzhinin was also planning to return to his place of service, that is, to Moscow, to one of the external cultural institutions, of which he was a consultant.

On a summer morning, in a gray traveling suit made of light tweed, he sat on the veranda of the forestry and waited for the car that was supposed to take him to the Koryazhsk station. His village relatives, who had come to say goodbye, were sitting around a large table. They looked at him with quiet reverence. No one dared to sip the tea, Varenets, or taste the potato pancakes, only dad, the forester Drozhzhinin, noisily ate the daily cabbage soup, and mom, for the sake of etiquette, accompanied him, barely unclenching her stern lips.

“Still, they have a strange habit of eating from the same plate,” thought Vadim Afanasyevich, although he had been familiar with this habit for a long time, one might say, from birth.

He looked around at the forest, idyllically trembling in the morning light, the currant bushes close to the veranda, the leaves, all covered in drops of dew, the timid and quiet relatives: father’s stick beard came into view, of course, and mother’s comb in her thin hair - and smiled warmly. He was sorry to leave this idyll and silence, but, of course, this pity was small compared to the charm of the measured, rich life of a refined single intellectual in Moscow.

In the end of all that he achieved - and this Fitzgerald and Son ready-to-wear suit, and Hunt boots, and a brush of a mustache under his nose, and complete, absolutely impeccable integrity, impeccable manners, all this wonderful Englishness - he achieved it himself.

Oh, where have the infinitely distant times gone, when Vadim Afanasyevich appeared in Moscow in a corduroy suit and with a wooden suitcase!

Vadim Afanasyevich was not going to grab any stars from the sky, but he was proud - and deservedly so - of his specialty, his knowledge in one narrow field.

Let's reveal the cards: he was the only specialist of his kind on the small Latin American country of Haligalia.

No one in the world was as keenly interested in Khaligalia as Vadim Afanasyevich, and another Frenchman - a vicar from the Swiss canton of Helvetia. However, the vicar, of course, was more interested in issues of a religious and philosophical nature, while Vadim Afanasyevich’s range of interests covered all aspects of the life of Khaligalia. He knew all the dialects of this country, and there were twenty-eight of them, all the folklore, all the history, the whole economy, all the streets and nooks and crannies of the capital of this country, the city of Polis and three other cities, all the shops and shops on these streets, the names of their owners and their members families, nicknames and temperament of pets, although I have never been to this country. The junta that ruled in Khaligalia did not give Vadim Afanasyevich an entry visa, but ordinary Khaligalia residents all knew and loved him, he was in correspondence with at least half of them, gave advice on family life, and resolved all sorts of contradictions.

It all started with ordinary diligence. It’s just that Vadim Afanasyevich wanted to become a good specialist in Khaligalia, and he became one, he became the best specialist, the only one in the world.

Over the years, diligence turned into passion. Few people guessed, and practically no one guessed, that a lean man in a strict gray (brown) three-piece suit, who eats coffee and apple pie every day at the National Cafe, was overwhelmed by a passionate love for a stuffy, sultry, almost unknown country.

In fact, Vadim Afanasyevich lived a double life, and the second, Khaligali, life was the main one for him. Every minute of his working and personal time, he thought about the aspirations of the Khaligali people, about how to marry the bicycle workshop worker Luis with the daughter of restaurateur Kublicki Rosita, he suffered from the slightest increase prices in this country, from corruption and unemployment, I thought about the behind-the-scenes game of the juntas, about the eternal struggle of the people with the Argentine cattle dealer Syracusers, who flooded the small defenseless Khaligalia with his canned meat, pates, steaks, tenderloins, and julienned game.