Meshcherskaya side of Paustovsky. New comment

Paustovsky Konstantin

Meshcherskaya side

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky

MESHHERSKAYA SIDE

ORDINARY EARTH

In the Meshchersky region there are no special beauties and riches, except for forests, meadows and transparent air. Nevertheless, this region has a great attractive force. 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 be seen in the Meshchersky region? Flowering or sloping meadows, pine forests, floodplain and forest lakes overgrown with black mounds, haystacks smelling of dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps warm all winter.

I had to spend the night in stacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered with hoarfrost, 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 walked over the meadows cold rain and the wind blew in oblique blows.

In the Meshchersky Territory, you can see pine forests, where it is so solemn and quiet that the "chatterbox" bell of a lost cow can be heard far away, almost a kilometer away. But such silence stands in the forests only on windless days. In the wind, the forests rustle with the great oceanic rumble and the tops of the pines bend after the passing clouds.

In the Meshchersky region you can see forest lakes with dark water, vast swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely huts of foresters, charred from old age, sands, juniper, heather, shoals of cranes and stars familiar to us from all latitudes.

What can be heard in the Meshchersky region, except for the hum of pine forests? The cries of quails and hawks, the whistle of orioles, the fussy clatter of woodpeckers, the howl of wolves, the rustle of rain in the red needles, the evening crying of the harmonica in the village, and at night - the discordant singing of roosters and the mallet of the village watchman.

But so little can be seen and heard only in the first days. Then every day this region becomes richer, more diverse, dearer to the heart. And, finally, there comes a time when each river seems to be its own, very familiar, when you can tell amazing stories 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 east longitude and northern latitude and borders in the south with such and such an area, and in the north with such and such. "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 of the surviving forest islands, the remnant of the "great belt of coniferous forests". It once stretched from Polissya to the Urals. It included forests: Chernigov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshchersky, Mordovian and Kerzhensky. In these forests, ancient Russia sat out from the Tatar raids.

FIRST MEETING

For the first time I came to the Meshchersky region from the north, from Vladimir.

Behind Gus-Khrustalny, at the quiet Tuma station, I changed to a narrow-gauge train. It was a Stephenson train. The locomotive, resembling a samovar, whistled like a child's falsetto. The locomotive had an offensive nickname: "gelding". He really looked like an old gelding. At the curves, he groaned and stopped. Passengers went out to smoke. Forest silence stood around the panting "gelding". The smell of wild cloves, heated by the sun, filled the carriages.

Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the car. Occasionally, on the way, sacks, baskets, carpenter's saws began to fly out from the platform onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out for things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, while experienced passengers, 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 Meshchersky forests is the most leisurely Railway in the Union.

The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell of fresh felling and wild forest flowers.

At Pilevo station, a shaggy grandfather climbed into the car. He crossed himself in a corner where a round cast-iron stove rattled, sighed and complained into space:

Just a little, now they take me by the beard - go to the city, tie up your bast shoes. And that is not in the consideration that, perhaps, their business is not worth a penny. They send me to the museum, where the Soviet government collects cards, price lists, and everything else. Send with an application.

What are you doing wrong?

You look - here!

Grandfather pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, blew off the terrycloth from it and showed it to the neighbor woman.

Manka, read it, - said the woman to the girl, rubbing her nose against the window.

Manka put on her dress on her scratched knees, drew up her legs, and began to read in a hoarse voice:

- "It happens that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, of enormous growth, striped, only three; it is not known where they flew from - they should be taken alive for the museum, and therefore send catchers."

Here, - said the grandfather woefully, - for what business they now break the bones of old people. And all Leshka is a Komsomol member, An ulcer is a passion! Ugh!

Grandpa spat. Baba wiped her round mouth with the end of her handkerchief and sighed. The locomotive whistled in fright, the forests hummed to the right and to the left, raging like lakes. hosted West wind. The train with difficulty broke through its damp streams and was hopelessly late, panting on empty half stations.

Here it is our existence, - repeated the grandfather. - Summer year they drove me to the museum, today again!

What did you find in the summer year? - asked the woman.

Something?

Torchak. Well, the bone is ancient. She lay in the swamp. Like a deer. Horns - from this car. Straight passion. They dug it for a whole month. In the end, the people were exhausted.

Who did he give up on? - asked the woman.

The guys will be taught on it.

The following was reported about this find in the "Research and Materials of the Regional Museum":

"The skeleton went deep into the bog, not giving support for the diggers. I had to undress and go down into the bog, which was extremely difficult due to ice temperature spring water. Huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to the complete maceration (soaking) of the bones. The bones broke right in the hands, but as they dried, the hardness of the bones was restored.

Routes of Konstantin Paustovsky

Thinking about where to go May holidays, I, by some intuition, took a volume of Paustovsky from the shelf. After reading just a few pages, I took out mile maps from the drawer of my desk, and by the end of the story, the route of the future trip had already actually taken shape. The story was called “The Meshcherskaya side”, and it captivated my imagination so much that I immediately wanted to pack my things, jump behind the wheel and go to those amazing places that the great Russian writer spoke about. Go to see for yourself all these incredible forests, meadows, lakes, swamps and their inhabitants.

Along the border of Mshar

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 of coniferous forests." It once stretched from Polissya to the Urals.
K. Paustovsky

Less than two hundred kilometers from the capital to the east - and here it is, the mysterious Meshchera. Nashkaravan dissolves into her endless forests. By the way, when I invited my friends to join this small expedition, some agreed with pleasure, others, on the contrary, began to dissuade: they say, in the spring in Meshchera you can only drown. But when else, if not at this time, can one see the great Oka flood and entire glades of forest primroses, hear the muttering of current black grouse and the morning discord of birds? In addition, at the beginning of May, the traditional season of peat fires and mosquitoes, which Meshchera is also famous for, has not yet come here.

Like Paustovsky, who first came to this region from the north, through Gus-Khrustalny and the “quiet Tuma station,” we also began our journey from the northwest. Asphalt roads of local importance, lying to the right of the Vladimirsky tract, reached Cherust, crossed the railway and went into the forest, towards the abandoned village of Krasnaya Gora, as it turned out. On the right, we still have “eight pine forest lakes”, which have a strange property: the smaller the lake, the deeper it is. Paustovsky went out to them on foot, there were no roads there. After the war, their banks were cut with reclamation ditches and peat began to be mined, and the developed areas were given over to summer cottages. As a result of land reclamation, the landscape has changed, there are more small lakes, and because of the spring flood, the area has completely turned into one continuous swamp. We drove south along the border of mshars - swamps, which are overgrown lakes. It was decided to leave the crossing of the Mshara for the drier season, and now go to the canals dug by the reclamation expedition of General Zhilinsky in the second half of the 19th century in order to make his way along them to the Nikolo-Radovitsky Monastery.

Here is my Venice

Even under Alexander II, General Zhilinsky decided to drain the Meshchera swamps and create large lands near Moscow for colonization. An expedition was sent to Meshchera. She worked for twenty years, but no one wanted to settle on this land - it turned out to be very scarce.
K. Paustovsky

Once in Meshchera, the first thing we saw was the usual "six hundred squares", and on them - summer residents in characteristic garden poses. But as soon as we delved into the network of abandoned and active peat extraction, the world around us completely changed. There was water all around, and only narrow elevated strips (old dumps along the banks of the canals) made it possible to move at least somehow, although they also went under water every now and then. The fact that these places are visited by people was only occasionally reminded by boats tied to the shore. Alas, these were not dugout "from one piece of wood" canoes, described by Paustovsky, but quite modern plank punts.

It is strange that during the time of Paustovsky, the canals dug by the expedition of Joseph Ippolitovich Zhilinsky "deafened and overgrown with swamp grasses." Now they looked clean, deep, and almost navigable. It is of course - May, the time big water, but probably since then they have been cleaned and updated more than once in connection with peat extraction, which began here in 1949.

The main thing is not to get stuck on the gati

For a long time it has become so customary in Russia that no one will confuse so much when he explains the way, as local especially if he is a talkative person.
K. Paustovsky

Now I know how they appear creepy stories about those who perished without a trace in the swamps. After asking the inhabitants of the village of Radovitsky Mokh about the way to the monastery, we patiently listened to a lengthy explanation, ending with the phrase: “Only you can’t get through there now - the canals have spilled over and everything is flooded.” “Well, okay,” we answered, “we won’t pass through the swamps, so we’ll return.” Did not return. Two days later we got out from the opposite side of the peat bogs ...

By the way, long time we could not figure out whether peat mining was operating or had long been abandoned. There is not a soul in the swamps, only animals and birds in huge numbers. And rare "fragments of the empire" in the form of abandoned equipment, rusty metal structures and the skeletons of incomprehensible structures. At some point, we came to a branch of a narrow gauge railway. The rails were shiny and in perfect order. But there was no movement on it either. Having made our way forward for a few more kilometers, we came to a very strange point. First, two wooden towers appeared above the forest, then barracks and a house appeared, over which a red flag fluttered. Trying to understand where we got in our wanderings in space and time, we drove closer. However, instead of fences, barbed wire and dull people in gray robes, a rather large playground, filled with peat mining equipment. All this wealth was guarded by a red dog of an unknown breed and a friendly watchman named Volodya. On the flag was an image of a shield with George the Victorious, and the towers are needed to monitor the fire situation. In addition, it turned out that the peat season opens at the end of May, and the road to the monastery from here is almost straight. “The main thing is that you don’t get stuck on the gati. It is renewed every year, but it still fails, ”the watchman Volodya admonished us with these words, and we drove off ...

Feeling great
The narrow-gauge railway in the Meshchersky forests is the slowest railway in the Union.
K. Paustovsky

With the gate, everything turned out to be surprisingly normal, and soon, leaving the forest, we saw monastery buildings at the far end of the field, and when we saw them, we were forced to ... turn around and look for another way. From edge to edge of the field, blocking our way, stretched a wide ditch about two meters deep, filled to the brim with somewhere rushing water. The search for a way out began again. It turned out that the high water washed away many bridges between the channels, and we ended up almost on the island. Wandering along the canals, we never ceased to be surprised by the construction battalions of General Zhilinsky. The endless labyrinth we found ourselves inside was dug for two decades - with shovels, without any equipment!

After a long search, we got to " big land» along the narrow-gauge railway. Uneven rails, pits and an embankment that goes from under the hood to the horizon. The car moves at the speed of a pedestrian, but still shakes the soul. A minute seems like an eternity, and another ten kilometers to go. Two hours... In some places you can move off the embankment, but there is a risk... to fail. The fact is that peat fires burned voids underground.

Nikolo-Radovitsky Monastery met us with ruins, a working well with holy water and a preserved sense of grandeur. The remains of its brick buildings belong to XVIII century, but the monastery itself is three hundred years older. It began with the skete of the Greek monk Pachomius, who chose a place on an island in a nearby lake, where, according to legend, there was a pagan temple. Here, at the beginning of the 16th century, the miraculous image of St. Nicholas was revealed, by the way, the patron saint of all travelers. The image was very revered by the parishioners, but was persecuted by the authorities because it was ... a wooden sculpture. Several times it was confiscated under the pretext of combating idolatry, but, not daring to destroy it, they returned it. In 1935, after the closure and partial destruction of the monastery, the image was saved, and now it lives in the church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa near Shatura.

Four troopers and a dog

Between the forests and the Oka, water meadows stretch in a wide belt. At dusk, the meadows look like the sea. As in the sea, the sun sets in the grass, and signal lights on the banks of the Oka burn like beacons.
K. Paustovsky

Having left the Oka coast in Beloomut and looked around, I suddenly understood the meaning of the phrase "water meadows". There was no river, no coast, no meadows - there was a real sea. Even asphalt roads went under water. But they sank at different depths, and if in one place even the Zhiguli famously cut through the water, then in another, the men on the “loaf” unloaded the boat from the trailer, started the engine right “on the asphalt” and sailed away ... Several ferries transporting cars across the Oka and pedestrians in the vicinity of Beloomut, did not work - because of the flood, they could not approach the shore in a convenient place. Seeing such a thing, we abandoned the idea of driving along the Oka to look at the meadow lakes described by Paustovsky, and laid a route to the north. Pine forests stand on the sands, so you can always get through them.

Relying equally on intuition and the map, we drove to the village of Seltsy, and from there, past the military training grounds marked on the map as pioneer camps, we moved to Shekhmino. Suddenly, a little away from the road, in the middle of the forest, we saw a low, but very long concrete monument dedicated to the memory of Polish soldiers who died in the fight against fascism, with the date 1943. Strange ... There were definitely no battles here. Already on my return, I found out that the history of the formation of the Polish division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko is hidden behind the monument. It was formed from Poles captured in 1939 (during the annexation of Western Ukraine and Belarus). The main part of the prisoners after some time was handed over to the British, and the rest were kept near Ryazan. Soon a food riot broke out in the camp near Seltsy, which was immediately suppressed by the NKVD units. More than a thousand Polish soldiers and officers were shot. On May 14, 1943, a division was formed from the Poles who remained in other camps and sent to the Belorussian Front. And then the film "Four Tankers and a Dog" appeared ...

black lake

With great difficulty I took out 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. River courses have changed. Where there were swamps, in some places a young pine forest was already rustling; swamps appeared in place of other lakes.
K. Paustovsky

We headed north again. On the map, the whole area was riddled with blue veined streams, lines of swamps, and patches of lakes. Having entered the village of Belskoye, we noticed a black bell tower aside, above the forest. She stood on the edge, resembling a wooden Leaning Tower of Pisa. The foundation of the church was nearby. Looking at the rickety structure, I assumed that the bell tower was ready to collapse from the slightest wind. But inside the tree looked fresh and strong.

No matter how much we wanted to get to the described Paustovsky lakes with colorful water, it was still not the season. We looked only at Lake Urzhenskoe (according to its south coast paved an asphalt road), in which "the water is purple." But alas, either something has changed in the structure of its peat bottom, or there was an inappropriate evening light, or I expected more ... In general, if I had not read the violet tint of the water, I would hardly have paid attention to it. It is visible if you know about it, otherwise the water here, like in most other lakes, is just black.

You can write a lot more about the Meshchersky region. It can be written that this region is very rich in forests and peat, hay and potatoes, milk and berries. But I don't write about it. Should we really love our land only because it is rich, that it gives abundant harvests and that its natural forces can be used for our well-being.
K. Paustovsky

text: Evgeny KONSTANTINOV
photo: Evgeny KONSTANTINOV
Irina QUEEN

Very briefly The narrator enjoys nature and beauty native land and shares interesting cases from his travels around Meshchera.

ordinary earth

“There are no special beauties and riches in the Meshchersky region, except for forests, meadows and clear air.” In winter and autumn, mowed meadows are dotted with haystacks, which are warm even on frosty and rainy nights. In the pine forests it is solemn and quiet on calm days, and in the wind they "noise with a great ocean rumble."

This region "lies between Vladimir and Ryazan, not far from Moscow, and is one of the few surviving forest islands ... of the great belt of coniferous forests", where "ancient Russia sat out from the Tatar raids."

First meeting

The narrator first comes to the Meshchersky region from Vladimir, on a leisurely narrow-gauge steam locomotive. At one of the stations, a shaggy grandfather climbs into the car and tells how last year the “ulcer” Lyoshka, a Komsomol member, sent him to the city “to the museum” with the message that “unfamiliar birds, of enormous growth, striped, only three” live in the local lake , and these birds must be taken alive to the museum. Now the grandfather is also returning from the museum - they found an “ancient bone” with huge horns in a swamp. The narrator confirms that the skeleton of a prehistoric deer was indeed found in the Meshchera swamps. This story about unusual finds is remembered by the narrator "especially sharply".

vintage map

The narrator travels around the Meshchersky region with an old map drawn before 1870. The map is largely inaccurate, and the author has to correct it. However, using it is much more reliable than asking the locals for directions. The natives always explain the way "with frantic enthusiasm", but the signs they describe are almost impossible to find. Somehow, the narrator himself had a chance to explain the way to the poet Simonov, and he caught himself doing it with exactly the same passion.

A few words about signs

“Finding signs or creating them yourself is a very exciting experience.” Those that predict the weather are considered real, for example, the smoke of a fire or evening dew. There are signs and more difficult. If the sky seems high, and the horizon is approaching, the weather will be clear, and the fish that stops pecking seem to indicate a close and prolonged bad weather.

Return to the map

“Exploring an unfamiliar land always starts with a map,” and traveling through it is very exciting. To the south of the Oka River, the fertile and inhabited Ryazan lands stretch, and to the north, beyond the Oka meadows, pine forests and peat bogs of the Meshchersky region begin. In the west of the map, there is a chain of eight pine forest lakes with a strange property: the smaller the area of the lake, the deeper it is.

Mshara

To the east of the lakes "there are huge Meshchersky swamps -" mshara "", dotted with sandy "islands" on which moose spend the night.

Once, the narrator and his friends were walking by mshars to Pogany Lake, famous for its huge toadstool mushrooms. Local women were afraid to go to him. Travelers with difficulty reached the island, where they decided to rest. Gaidar went to look for Poganoe Lake alone. With difficulty finding his way back, he said that he climbed a tree and saw the Filthy Lake from afar. It seemed so terrible that Gaidar did not go any further.

Friends came to the lake a year later. Its shores turned out to be like a mat woven from grass, floating on the surface. black water. At each step, high fountains of water rose from under the feet, which frightened the local women. The fishing in that lake was good. Returning unharmed, friends earned a reputation among the women as "inveterate people."

Forest rivers and canals

In addition to swamps, the map of Meshchersky Paradise shows forests with mysterious “white spots” in the depths, the Solotcha and Pra rivers, as well as many canals. On the banks of the Solotcha, the water in which is red, there is a lonely inn. The banks of Pri are also sparsely populated. A cotton factory operates in its upper reaches, which is why the bottom of the river is covered with a thick layer of compacted black wool.

Canals in the Meshchersky region were dug under Alexander II by General Zhilinsky, who wanted to drain the swamps. The drained lands turned out to be poor, sandy. The canals have stalled and become a refuge for waterfowl and water rats. The wealth of the Meshchersky region is "not in the ground, but in forests, in peat and in flood meadows."

Forests

Pine "Meshchersky forests are majestic, like cathedrals." In addition to hogs, there are in Meshchera and spruce forests mixed with occasional patches of broad-leaved groves and oak forests. There is nothing better than to walk through such a forest to the reserved lake, spend the night by the fire and meet the majestic dawn.

The narrator lives in a tent by the lake for several days. Once on the Black Lake, a rubber boat in which he was fishing with a friend was attacked by a huge pike with a razor-sharp fin. Frightened that the pike will damage the boat, they turn to the shore and see a she-wolf with cubs, whose refuge turned out to be near the fishing camp, under a pile of dry brushwood. The she-wolf ran away, but the camp had to be moved.

In Meshchera, all lakes have different color water. Most of all black, but there are also purple, and yellowish, and tin-colored, and bluish.

meadows

The water meadows between the forests and the Oka look like the sea. Among the meadows stretches the old channel of the Oka, called Prorva. “This is a dead, deep and motionless river with steep banks” and deep pools, surrounded by human-sized grasses. The narrator lives on Prorva every autumn for many days. After spending the night in a hay-lined tent, he fishes all morning.

A small digression from the topic

The village of Solotcha was inhabited by a "great tribe of fishermen". Solotchane successfully fished on an ordinary rope. Once a “tall old man with long silver teeth” came to the village from Moscow. He tried to fish with an English spinning rod, but the old man had no luck. But once he caught on Prorva huge pike. Pulling the fish ashore, the old man bent over it in admiration. Suddenly, the pike “tried on ... and hit the old man on the cheek with its tail with all its might,” and then jumped up and went into the water. On the same day, the unlucky fisherman left for Moscow.

More about meadows

In the meadows of Meshchera there are a lot of lakes with strange "talking" names. "At the bottom of Hotz lie black bog oaks." There used to be beavers in Bobrovsky. The gulley is the deepest lake with exceptionally capricious fish. Lake Bull stretches for many kilometers, and in the Ditch "there are amazing golden lines." The oxbow lake is surrounded by sand dunes, and flocks of cranes gather on the banks of the deep Muzga. Hundreds of ducks nest in Selyanskoye Lake. The narrator named Lake Langobard in honor of the watchman - "Langobard" (an ancient Germanic tribe, in the lane - "long-bearded").

Old men

“In the meadows - in dugouts and huts - talkative old people live”, guards of collective farm gardens, ferrymen and basket workers. Most often, he met with a thin, thin-legged Stepan, nicknamed "The Beard on the Poles." Once the narrator spent the night in his hut. Stepan spoke for a long time about how difficult it was for the village women "under the tsar", and how many opportunities they have now, under Soviet rule. As an example, he remembered his fellow villager Manka Malavina, who now sings in the Moscow theater.

Home of talent

Solotcha is a rich village. For the first year, the narrator lived with "a meek old woman, an old maid and a rural dressmaker Marya Mikhailovna." In her clean hut hung a painting by an unknown Italian artist, who left his work in payment for the room to the father of Marya Mikhailovna. He studied icon painting in Solotch.

In Solotcha, almost every hut is decorated with paintings of children, grandchildren, nephews. Famous artists grew up in many houses. In the house next to Marya Mikhailovna lives an old woman - the daughter of Academician Pozhalostin, one of the best Russian engravers. The next year, the narrator “rented an old bathhouse in the garden from them” and saw the beautiful engravings for himself. The poet Yesenin was also born not far from Solotchi - the narrator happened to buy milk from his own aunt.

Lives near Solotcha and Kuzma Zotov, who was a poor man before the revolution. Now in Zotov's hut there are radio, books, newspapers, and his sons have become people.

My house

The storyteller's house - a small bathhouse - stands in a dense garden. It is fenced with a palisade, in which village cats get stuck, running to the smell of freshly caught fish. The narrator rarely spends the night in the house. For overnight stays, he usually serves an old gazebo in the depths of the garden. It is especially nice there on autumn nights, when the cool wind sways the candle flame, and moth sits down on the open page of the book. On a foggy morning, the narrator wakes up and goes fishing. "Ahead - a deserted September day" and "lost in ... a world of fragrant foliage, herbs, autumn wilt."

Unselfishness

You can write about the riches of the Meshchera region, but the narrator loves his native places not for the abundance of peat or wood, but for their quiet and uncomplicated beauty. And if he has to defend his native country, then in the depths of his heart he will know that he is protecting “and this piece of land that taught me to see and understand the beautiful ... this forest pensive land, love for which will not be forgotten, just as first love is never forgotten ".

ordinary earth

There are no special beauties and riches in the Meshchora region, except for forests, meadows and clear air. Nevertheless, this region has a great attractive force. 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 be seen in the Meshchora region? Flowering or sloping meadows, pine forests, floodplain and forest lakes overgrown with black mounds, haystacks smelling of dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps warm all winter.

I had to spend the night in stacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered with hoarfrost, 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 a cold rain and the wind swooped in oblique blows.

In the Meshchora Territory, you can see pine forests, where it is so solemn and quiet that the “chatterbox” bell of a lost cow can be heard far away.

almost a kilometer. But such silence stands in the forests only on windless days. In the wind, the forests rustle with the great oceanic rumble and the tops of the pines bend after the passing clouds.

In the Meshchora Territory one can see forest lakes with dark water, vast swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely huts of foresters, charred from old age, sands, juniper, heather, shoals of cranes and stars familiar to us from all latitudes.

What can be heard in the Meshchora region, except for the hum of pine forests? The cries of quails and hawks, the whistle of orioles, the fussy clatter of woodpeckers, the howl of wolves, the rustle of rain in the red needles, the evening cry of the harmonica in the village, and at night - the discordant singing of roosters and the beater of the village watchman.

But so little can be seen and heard only in the first days. Then every day this region becomes richer, more diverse, dearer to the heart. And, finally, there comes a time when each willow above the dead river seems to be 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 an area, and in the north with 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 Polissya to the Urals. It included forests: Chernigov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshchorsky, Mordovian and Kerzhensky. In these forests, ancient Russia sat out from the Tatar raids.

First meeting

For the first time I came to the Meshchora region from the north, from Vladimir.

Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the car. Occasionally, on the way, sacks, baskets, carpenter's saws began to fly out from the platform onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out for things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, and experienced passengers, twisting the "goat's legs" and spitting, explained that this was the most convenient way to disembark from 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 Pilevo station, a shaggy grandfather climbed into the car. He crossed himself in a corner where a round cast-iron stove rattled, sighed and complained into space.

- Just a little, now they take me by the beard - go to the city, tie up your bast shoes. And that is not in the consideration that, perhaps, their business is not worth a penny. They send me to the museum, where Soviet government collects cards, price lists, all that stuff. Send with an application.

- What are you doing wrong?

- You look - here!

Grandfather pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, blew off the terrycloth from it and showed it to the neighbor woman.

“Manka, read it,” the woman said to the girl, rubbing her nose against the window. Manka put on her dress on her scratched knees, drew up her legs, and began to read in a hoarse voice:

- “It is believed that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, of huge striped growth, only three; it is not known where they flew from - they should be taken alive for the museum, and therefore send catchers.

- Here, - said the grandfather sadly, - for what business now the bones of old people are broken. And all Leshka is a Komsomol member. An ulcer is a passion! Ugh!

Grandpa spat. Baba wiped her round mouth with the end of her handkerchief and sighed. The locomotive whistled in fright, the forests hummed to the right and to the left, raging like a lake. The west wind was in charge. The train with difficulty broke through its damp streams and was hopelessly late, panting on empty half stations.

- Here it is our existence, - grandfather repeated - Summer year they drove me to the museum, today again!

- What did you find in the summer year? the grandmother asked.

- Torchak!

- Something?

- Torchak. Well, the bone is ancient. She lay in the swamp. Like a deer. Horns - from this car. Straight passion. They dug it for a whole month. In the end, the people were exhausted.

Who did he give up on? the grandmother asked.

- The guys will be taught on it.

The following was reported about this find in the "Research and Materials of the Regional Museum":

“The skeleton went deep into the bog, not giving support for the diggers. I had to undress and go down into the bog, which was extremely difficult due to the icy temperature of the spring water. Huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to the complete maceration (soaking) of the bones. The bones broke right in the hands, but as they dried, the hardness of the bones was restored.

A skeleton of a gigantic fossil Irish deer was found with a span of two and a half meters of antlers.

From this meeting with the shaggy grandfather, my acquaintance with Meshchora began. Then I heard many stories about mammoth teeth, and about treasures, and about mushrooms the size of a human head. But this first story on the train stuck in my memory especially vividly.

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. River courses have changed. Where there were swamps on the map, in some places a young pine forest was already rustling; swamps appeared in place of other lakes.

But still, using this map was more reliable than asking local residents. For a long time, it has been so customary in Russia that no one will confuse so much when explaining the way as a local resident, especially if he is a talkative person.

“You, dear man,” shouts a local resident, “do not listen to others!” They will tell you such things that you will not be happy with your life. You listen to me alone, I know these places through and through. Go to the outskirts, you will see a five-wall hut on your left hand, take it from that hut to right hand along the stitch through the sands, you will reach the Prorva and go, dear, the edge of the Prorva, go, do not hesitate, right up to the burnt willow. From it you take a little to 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 itself.

- And how many kilometers?

- Who knows? Maybe ten, maybe all twenty. There are kilometers, dear, unmeasured.

I tried to follow this advice, but there were always a few burnt willows, or there was no noticeable mound, and I, waving my hand at the stories of the natives, relied only on own feeling directions. It almost never fooled me.

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky

Meshcherskaya side

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 not rich in events and passed too quickly.

But it only seems that way until you start to remember. One memory draws another, then a third, a fourth. There is a continuous chain of memories, and then it turns out that life was more diverse than you thought.

Before I give a brief biography, I want to dwell on one of my aspirations. It appeared in adulthood and every year it becomes stronger. It boils down to bringing my present state of mind as close as possible 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 is, of course, impossible - but still I try to test my youth every day of my present life.

Youth exists for me as a judge of my current thoughts and deeds.

With age, they say, comes experience. It obviously consists in not letting everything valuable that has accumulated over the past time fade and dry out.

I was born in 1892 in Moscow, in Granatny Lane, in the family of a railway statistician. Until now, Garnet Lane is overshadowed, in a somewhat old-fashioned language, by the same century-old lindens that I remember as a child.

My father, despite a profession that required a sober view of things, was an incorrigible dreamer. He did not endure any hardships and worries. Therefore, among his relatives, the glory of a frivolous and spineless person was established, a reputation as a dreamer who, in the words of my grandmother, "had no right to marry and have children."

Obviously, because of these qualities, the father did not get along 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 Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, who moved after the defeat of the Sich on the banks of the Ros River, near the White Church.

My grandfather lived there - a former Nikolaev soldier and grandmother - a Turkish woman. Grandfather was a meek, blue-eyed old man. He sang old dumkas and Cossack songs in a cracked tenor and told us many incredible, and sometimes touching stories"out of life itself."

My mother, the daughter of an employee at a sugar factory, was a domineering and unkind woman. All her life she held "firm 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 can “something worthwhile” be grown out of them.

Our family was large and diverse, prone to art. The family sang a lot, played the piano, reverently loved the theater. Until now, I go to the theater as a holiday.

I studied in Kyiv, in a classical gymnasium. Our graduation was lucky: we had good teachers the so-called humanities - Russian literature, history and psychology.

Almost all other teachers were either officials or maniacs. This is evidenced even by their nicknames: "Nebuchadnezzar", "Shponka", "Butter", "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. Mikhail Bulgakov (author of Days of the Turbins), playwright Boris Romashov, director Bersenev, composer Lyatoshinsky, actor Kuza and singer Vertinsky studied.

The best time - sometimes unbridled dreams, hobbies and sleepless nights- was the Kyiv spring, the dazzling and tender spring of Ukraine. She was drowning in dewy lilacs, in the slightly sticky first greenery of Kievan gardens, in the smell of poplars and the pink candles of old chestnut trees.

In such springs, it was impossible not to fall in love with high school girls with heavy braids and not write poetry. And I wrote them without restraint, two or three poems a day.

It was very elegant and, of course, bad poetry. But they taught me to love the Russian word and the melodiousness of the Russian language.

O political life countries we knew something. The revolution of 1905 took place before our eyes, there were strikes, student unrest, rallies, demonstrations, an uprising of a sapper battalion in Kyiv, Potemkin, Lieutenant Schmidt, the murder of Stolypin in the Kiev Opera House.

In our family, which at that time was considered progressive and liberal, they talked a lot about the people, but they meant by it mainly the peasants. The workers, the proletariat, were rarely talked about. At that time, at the word "proletariat" I imagined huge and smoky factories - Putilovsky, Obukhovsky and Izhora - as if the entire Russian working class was gathered 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 teaching.

I survived by rather hard work, the so-called tutoring.

In the last class of the gymnasium, I wrote my first story and published it in the Kiev literary magazine Ogni. It was, as far as I remember, in 1911.

Since then, the decision to become a writer has taken possession of me so strongly that I began to subordinate my life to this one goal.

In 1912 I graduated from the gymnasium, spent two years at Kiev University and worked both winter and summer as the same tutor, or rather, as a home teacher.

By that time I had already traveled quite a lot around the country (my father had free train tickets).

I have been to Poland (Warsaw, Vilna and Bialystok), the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Bryansk forests, Odessa, Polissya and Moscow. After the death of my father, my mother moved there and lived there with my brother, a student at Shanyavsky University. In Kyiv, I was left alone.

In 1914 I transferred to Moscow University and moved to Moscow.

The First World War. me like younger son in the family, according to the laws of that time, they were not taken 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 rushed out, into the thick of that life, which I only felt near, near me, but still knew so little.

At that time I became addicted to Moscow taverns. There, for five kopecks, you could order a “couple of tea” and sit all day in the human hubbub, the clinking of cups and the rattling roar of the “machine” - the orchestra. For some reason, almost all the “cars” in the taverns played the same thing: “The Moscow fire was noisy, the fire was burning ...” or “Oh, why was this night so good! ..”.

Taverns were folk gatherings. Whom I did not meet there! Cab drivers, holy fools, peasants from the Moscow region, workers from Presnya and from Simonova Sloboda, Tolstoyans, milkmaids, gypsies, seamstresses, artisans, students, prostitutes and bearded soldiers - “militia”. And what kind of dialects I have not heard enough, eagerly remembering every well-aimed word.

Then I had already matured the decision to leave for a while the writing of my vague stories 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 leader on a Moscow tram. But I did not last long as a counselor: soon I was demoted to a conductor for crashing a car with milk of Blandov's famous dairy company at that time.