The collection of short stories is easy to read, but for me it is a little superficial. Before she had time to get into the story, it ended. In fact, all stories with a simple plot are about good defeating evil. Everything is on an Orthodox theme. Sometimes it’s a very sweet story, sometimes it’s a parable. I’m probably not ready for such a reading, that’s why the neutral rating: it didn’t touch me.
And now, for myself, briefly about the stories (please do not read for those who have not yet read the book).
Sealed angel. The story is about how their main shrine was taken away from the Old Believers, and they tried to return it back - to replace it with a fake. It’s unclear how grown men can worship an icon like that. Of course, it’s good that she binds them all so tightly, but apparently I don’t understand this yet.
Unbaptized priest. The story is about how one day it turned out that the priest was taken to be baptized as a child, but because of a snowstorm they did not take him there, but they said that he had been baptized. And then, before her death, the grandmother told everything. But the priest was left in place, since everyone loved him. Good wins!
Non-lethal Golovan. Perhaps my favorite story. About high love between a man and a woman + many extraneous plots. Moreover, you learn about love only on the last pages. But the aftertaste is pleasant.
Christ visiting a man. This is also a good story. About how one guy had everything great in life, family, household, but only he had hatred for his uncle. And then one day he was told that Christ would come to visit him, and he began to wait for him. He was so confident that he invited guests to a feast. And in the form of Christ, that same guy came, asking for shelter, since things had gone very badly for him. A story about forgiveness. Good story.
Beast. It was scary to read. When I read about poisoned stations in our country, it was creepy. But it turns out that in Rus' it was common practice to abuse wild animals. It was like a show. In the story, they killed the offending bear, which began to show signs of its beast. He had lived on the estate for five years, and had become very friendly with his breadwinner. And then he did something wrong (well, he tore off a goose’s wing, for example). And so, he needs to be tortured and put on a show. And it is also necessary for this breadwinner to participate in this. Such a cruel landowner. Everything ended well, the bear was saved, and the breadwinner became the best friend of the landowner, who stopped being cruel.
Selected grain. The story is that one person was fooled by another, and he, instead of dealing with the deceiver, decided to arrange things so that the English company would suffer a loss, and the Russian people would profit. Well, I think that this is not a very right decision, there is some kind of nationalism in it.
Pearl necklace. More like a fairy tale or parable. About the fact that the man was very greedy and did not give dowry to his daughters. And when the youngest came out, he gave her a fake necklace. The morning after the wedding, he told his son-in-law about this, which he was not offended by, since he loved her anyway, and asked not to tell this to his wife so that she would not be upset and would be on good terms with her father. The man was delighted with this turn of events and made them a real inheritance. And they shared it with the rest of the sisters.
Man on the clock. The story is about a man hesitating between official duty and saving a person's life. In the end, he chose the second, for which he had to be severely punished. But the chain of superiors diverted him from severe punishment: for some reason it was not in everyone’s interest for the case to unfold. As a result, the offender got off with a punishment that he never expected, and everyone was happy.
Lion of Elder Gerasim. I didn't understand this story at all. More precisely, I didn’t accept it. That wealth destroys a person. Then the man decided to make everyone happy and distributed wealth to all the poor, but they did not become happy (there was not enough for everyone), and then he forever renounced property and went into the desert, and there he became friends with a lion. Then people tried to give him some things, but he completely refused. Like, property is evil.
Figure. Again about the choice between duty and the dictates of the heart. The employee chose the latter and was removed from service. But he was glad that he chose the second, and did not regret it at all.
Unchangeable ruble. An instructive story about helping others and not being proud of it. and as soon as you start to be proud, then everything goes down the drain.
In general, in conclusion, I will say that I would recommend some stories for children to read for the purpose of their upbringing. For example, “Unchangeable ruble”, “Pearl necklace”.
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Novels and stories
MR. PROKHARCHIN THE TREE AND THE WEDDING OF THE SLEEPERS A NOVEL IN NINE LETTERS THE HEART OF THE DESERT A WEAK HEART An Honest Thief
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
WEAK HEART
Under the same roof, in the same apartment, on the same fourth floor, lived two young colleagues, Arkady Ivanovich Nefedevich and Vasya Shumkov... The author, of course, feels the need to explain to the reader why one hero is called by his full name, and the other by a diminutive name, at least, for example , just so that this way of expression is not considered indecent and somewhat familiar. But for this it would be necessary to first explain and describe the rank, and years, and rank, and position, and, finally, even the characters of the characters; and since there are many such writers who begin this way, the author of the proposed story, solely in order not to be like them (that is, as some will say, perhaps, due to his unlimited pride), decides to start directly with action. Having finished this preface, he begins.
In the evening, on New Year's Eve, at about six o'clock, Shumkov returned home. Arkady Ivanovich, who was lying on the bed, woke up and looked half-eyed at his friend. He saw that he was wearing his finest pair of clothes and his cleanest shirtfront. This, of course, amazed him. “Where would Vasya go like this? And he didn’t have dinner at home!” Shumkov, meanwhile, lit a candle, and Arkady Ivanovich immediately guessed that his friend was going to wake him up by accident. Indeed, Vasya coughed twice, walked around the room twice, and finally, completely accidentally, let go of his pipe, which he had begun filling in the corner near the stove. Arkady Ivanovich laughed to himself.
Vasya, you're full of cunning! - he said.
Arkasha, are you awake?
Really, I probably can’t say; It seems to me that I am not sleeping.
Ah, Arkasha! hello, darling! Well, brother! Well, brother!.. You don’t know what I’ll tell you!
I definitely don’t know; come here.
Vasya, as if he had been waiting for this, immediately approached, not expecting, however, any treachery from Arkady Ivanovich. He somehow deftly grabbed him by the arms, turned him, tucked him under him and began, as they say, to “strangle” the victim, which seemed to bring incredible pleasure to the cheerful Arkady Ivanovich.
Gotcha! - he shouted, - gotcha!
Arkasha, Arkasha, what are you doing? Let me go, for God's sake, let me go, I'll dirty my tailcoat!..
There is no need; why do you need a tailcoat? Why are you so gullible that you give in to yourself? Tell me, where did you go, where did you have lunch?
Arkasha, for God's sake, let him go!
Where did you have lunch?
Yes, this is what I want to talk about.
So tell me.
Yes, let me in first.
So no, I won’t let you in until you tell me!
Arkasha, Arkasha! But do you understand that it’s impossible, absolutely impossible! - shouted the weak Vasya, struggling from the strong clutches of his enemy, - after all, there are such matters!..
What materials?..
Yes, the kind that if you start talking about in such a situation, you lose your dignity; no way; It will turn out funny - but here the matter is not funny at all, but important.
And well, on to the important stuff! I just made it up! You tell me so that I want to laugh, that’s how you tell it; but I don’t want anything important; otherwise what kind of friend will you be? So tell me, what kind of friend will you be? A?
Arkasha, by God, you can’t!
And I don't want to hear...
Well, Arkasha! - Vasya began, lying across the bed and trying with all his might to attach as much importance to his words as possible. - Arkasha! I guess I'll say; only...
Well!..
Well, I'm engaged to get married!
Arkady Ivanovich, without saying another idle word, silently took Vasya in his arms, like a child, despite the fact that Vasya was not quite short, but rather long, only thin, and deftly began to carry him from corner to corner around the room, showing the appearance which lulls him to sleep.
“But I’ll swaddle you, groom,” he said. But, seeing that Vasya was lying in his arms, not moving and not saying another word, he immediately changed his mind and realized that the jokes had apparently gone far; he placed him in the middle of the room and kissed him on the cheek in the most sincere, friendly manner.
Vasya, aren't you angry?
Arkasha, listen...
Well, for the New Year.
Yes, I’m okay; Why are you so crazy, such a rake? How many times have I told you: Arkasha, by God, it’s not spicy, not spicy at all!
Well, aren't you angry?
Yes, I'm okay; who am I angry with when? Yes, you upset me, do you understand!
How upset were you? how?
I came to you as a friend, with a full heart, to pour out my soul to you, to tell you my happiness...
But what kind of happiness? Why aren't you talking?...
Well, yes, I'm getting married! - Vasya answered with annoyance, because he was really a little furious.
You! you're getting married! Is that true? - Arkasha shouted with good obscenities. No, no... but what is this? and he says so, and the tears flow!.. Vasya, you are my Vasyuk, my son, that’s enough! Really, really? - And Arkady Ivanovich rushed to him again with hugs.
Well, do you understand what happened now? - said Vasya. - You are kind, you are a friend, I know that. I’m coming to you with such joy, with spiritual delight, and suddenly I had to reveal all the joy of my heart, all this delight, floundering across the bed, losing my dignity... You understand, Arkasha,” Vasya continued, half laughing, “after all, it was in in a comic form: well, in some way I did not belong to myself at that moment. I couldn’t humiliate this matter... If only you had asked me: what’s your name? I swear, he would have killed me sooner, and I would not have answered you.
Yes, Vasya, why were you silent! Yes, if you had told me everything earlier, I wouldn’t have started playing pranks,” Arkady Ivanovich shouted in true despair.
Dear friend! On this page you will find a selection of small or rather even very small stories with deep spiritual meaning. Some stories are only 4-5 lines, some a little more. Every story, no matter how short, reveals a larger story. Some stories are light and humorous, others are instructive and suggest deep philosophical thoughts, but all of them are very, very sincere.
The short story genre is notable for the fact that in a few words a big story is created, which invites you to stretch your brains and smile, or pushes the imagination into a flight of thoughts and understandings. After reading just this one page, you may get the impression that you have mastered several books.
This collection contains many stories about love and the theme of death, so close to it, the meaning of life and the spiritual experience of every moment. People often try to avoid the topic of death, but in several short stories on this page it is shown from such an original side that it makes it possible to understand it in a completely new way, and therefore begin to live differently.
Happy reading and interesting emotional experiences!
“Recipe for female happiness” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
Masha Skvortsova dressed up, put on makeup, sighed, made up her mind - and came to visit Petya Siluyanov. And he treated her to tea and amazing cakes. But Vika Telepenina didn’t dress up, didn’t put on makeup, didn’t sigh - and simply came to Dima Seleznev. And he treated her to vodka with amazing sausage. So there are countless recipes for women’s happiness.
"In Search of Truth" - Robert Tompkins
Finally, in this remote, secluded village, his search ended. Truth sat in a dilapidated hut by the fire.
He had never seen an older, uglier woman.
- Are you - Really?
The old, wizened hag nodded solemnly.
- Tell me, what should I tell the world? What message to convey?
The old woman spat into the fire and answered:
- Tell them that I am young and beautiful!
"Silver Bullet" - Brad D. Hopkins
Sales have fallen for six straight quarters. The ammunition factory suffered catastrophic losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Chief Executive Scott Phillips had no idea what was going on, but shareholders were sure to blame him.
He opened the desk drawer, took out a revolver, put the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Misfire.
“Okay, let’s take care of the product quality control department.”
"Once Upon a Time There Was Love"
And one day the Great Flood came. And Noah said:
“Only every creature - in pairs! And for singles - ficus!!!"
Love began to look for a mate - Pride, Wealth,
Glory, Joy, but they already had companions.
And then Separation came to her and said:
"I love you".
Love quickly jumped into the Ark with her.
But Separation actually fell in love with Love and did not
I wanted to part with her even on earth.
And now Separation always follows Love...
“Sublime Sadness” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
Love sometimes brings sublime sadness. At dusk, when the thirst for love was completely unbearable, student Krylov came to the house of his beloved, student Katya Moshkina from a parallel group, and climbed up the drainpipe to her balcony to make a confession. On the way, he diligently repeated the words that he would say to her, and got so carried away that he forgot to stop in time. So I stood sad all night on the roof of the nine-story building until the firefighters removed it.
“Mother” – Vladislav Panfilov
The mother was unhappy. She buried her husband and son, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She remembered them small and thick-cheeked, and gray-haired, and hunched over. The mother felt like a lonely birch tree among a forest scorched by time. The mother begged to grant her death: any, the most painful one. Because she is tired of living! But I had to live on... And the only joy for the mother were the grandchildren of her grandchildren, just as big-eyed and chubby-cheeked. And she nursed them and told them all her life, and the lives of her children and her grandchildren... But one day giant blinding pillars grew around her mother, and she saw how her great-great-grandchildren were burned alive, and she herself screamed from the pain of melting skin and pulled to the sky withered yellow hands and cursed him for her fate. But the sky responded with a new whistle of cutting air and new flashes of fiery death. And in convulsions, the Earth began to stir, and millions of souls fluttered into space. And the planet tensed up in nuclear apoplexy and exploded into pieces...
The little pink fairy, swinging on an amber branch, chirped for the umpteenth time to her friends about how many years ago, flying to the other end of the universe, she noticed a bluish-green small planet sparkling in the rays of space. “Oh, she’s so wonderful! Oh! She is so beautiful! - the fairy cooed. “I've been flying over the emerald fields all day! Azure lakes! Silvery rivers! I felt so good that I decided to do some good deed!” And I saw a boy sitting alone on the shore of a tired pond, and I flew up to him and whispered: “I want to fulfill your deepest wish! Tell me it!” And the boy looked up at me with beautiful dark eyes: “It’s my mother’s birthday today. I want her, no matter what, to live forever!” “Oh, what a noble desire! Oh, how sincere it is! Oh, how sublime it is!” - the little fairies sang. “Oh, how happy is this woman who has such a noble son!”
“Lucky” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
He looked at her, admired her, trembled when he met: she sparkled against the background of his mundane everyday life, was sublimely beautiful, cold and inaccessible. Suddenly, having given her plenty of his attention, he felt that she too, as if melting under his scorching gaze, began to reach out to him. And so, without expecting it, he came into contact with her... He came to his senses when the nurse was changing the bandage on his head.
“You are lucky,” she said affectionately, “rarely anyone survives from such icicles.”
"Wings"
“I don’t love you,” these words pierced the heart, turning out the insides with sharp edges, turning them into minced meat.
“I don’t love you,” simple six syllables, only twelve letters that kill us, shooting merciless sounds from our lips.
“I don’t love you,” there is nothing worse when a loved one says them. The one for whom you live, for whom you do everything, for whom you can even die.
“I don’t love you,” my eyes darken. First, peripheral vision turns off: a dark veil envelops everything around, leaving a small space. Then flickering, iridescent gray dots cover the remaining area. It's completely dark. You only feel your tears, a terrible pain in your chest, squeezing your lungs like a press. You feel squeezed and try to take up as little space as possible in this world, to hide from these hurtful words.
“I don’t love you,” your wings, which covered you and your loved one in difficult times, begin to crumble with already yellowed feathers, like November trees under a gust of autumn wind. A piercing cold passes through the body, freezing the soul. Only two processes, covered with light fluff, already stick out from the back, but even this withers away from the words, crumbling into silver dust.
“I don’t love you,” the letters dig into the remains of the wings like a screeching saw, tearing them out of the back, tearing the flesh to the shoulder blades. Blood flows down the back, washing away the feathers. Small fountains gush out from the arteries and it seems that new wings have grown - bloody wings, light, airy and spraying.
“I don’t love you,” there are no more wings. The blood stopped flowing, drying into a black crust on the back. What used to be called wings are now only barely noticeable tubercles, somewhere at the level of the shoulder blades. There is no more pain and the words remain just words. A set of sounds that no longer cause suffering, that don’t even leave traces.
The wounds have healed. Time cures…
Time heals even the worst wounds. Everything passes, even the long winter. Spring will come anyway, melting the ice in the soul. You hug your loved one, the dearest person, and clasp him with snow-white wings. Wings always grow back.
- I love you…
“Ordinary scrambled eggs” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
“Go, leave everyone. It’s better to be alone: I’ll freeze, I’ll be unsociable, like a bump in a swamp, like a snowdrift. And when I lie down in the coffin, don’t you dare come to me to sob to your heart’s content for your own good, bending over the fallen body left by the muse, and the pen, and the shabby, oil-stained paper...” Having written this, the sentimentalist writer Sherstobitov re-read what he had written thirty times, he added “cramped” in front of the coffin and was so imbued with the resulting tragedy that he could not stand it and shed a tear for himself. And then his wife Varenka called him to dinner, and he was pleasantly satisfied with vinaigrette and scrambled eggs with sausage. Meanwhile, his tears had dried up, and he, returning to the text, first crossed out “cramped”, and then instead of “laying down in a coffin” he wrote “laying down on Parnassus”, because of which all subsequent harmony went to waste. “Well, to hell with harmony, I’d better go and stroke Varenka’s knee...” Thus, an ordinary scrambled egg was preserved for the grateful descendants of the sentimentalist writer Sherstobitov.
"Destiny" - Jay Rip
There was only one way out, for our lives were intertwined in too tangled a knot of anger and bliss to solve everything any other way. Let's trust the lot: heads - and we will get married, tails - and we will part forever.
The coin was tossed. She tinkled, spun and stopped. Eagle.
We stared at her in bewilderment.
Then, with one voice, we said, “Maybe one more time?”
“Chest” – Daniil Kharms
A man with a thin neck climbed into the chest, closed the lid behind him and began to choke.
“Here,” the man with a thin neck said, gasping, “I’m suffocating in the chest, because I have a thin neck.” The lid of the chest is closed and does not allow air to reach me. I will be suffocating, but I still won’t open the lid of the chest. Little by little I will die. I will see the struggle of life and death. The fight will take place unnaturally, with equal chances, because death naturally wins, and life, doomed to death, only fights in vain with the enemy, until the last minute, without losing vain hope. In this same struggle that will happen now, life will know the way to win: for this, life must force my hands to open the lid of the chest. Let's see: who wins? Only it smells awfully like mothballs. If life wins, I’ll cover the things in the chest with shag... Here it begins: I can’t breathe anymore. I'm dead, that's clear! There is no salvation for me anymore! And there is nothing sublime in my head. I'm suffocating!...
Oh! What is it? Now something has happened, but I can't figure out what it is. I saw something or heard something...
Oh! Did something happen again? My God! I can't breathe. I think I'm dying...
What else is this? Why am I singing? I think my neck hurts... But where is the chest? Why do I see everything that is in my room? There's no way I'm lying on the floor! Where's the chest?
The thin-necked man rose from the floor and looked around. The chest was nowhere to be found. On the chairs and bed were things taken from the chest, but the chest was nowhere to be found.
The man with the thin neck said:
“This means that life has defeated death in a way unknown to me.”
"Wretched" - Dan Andrews
They say evil has no face. Indeed, no feelings were reflected on his face. There was not a glimmer of sympathy on him, but the pain was simply unbearable. Can't he see the horror in my eyes and the panic on my face? He calmly, one might say, carried out his dirty work professionally, and at the end he politely said: “Rinse your mouth, please.”
"Dirty laundry"
One married couple moved to live in a new apartment. In the morning, as soon as she woke up, the wife looked out the window and saw a neighbor who was hanging out washed clothes to dry.
“Look at her dirty laundry,” she told her husband. But he was reading the newspaper and did not pay any attention to it.
“She probably has bad soap, or she doesn’t know how to do laundry at all. We should teach her."
And so, every time the neighbor hung out the laundry, the wife was surprised at how dirty it was.
One fine morning, looking out the window, she cried out: “Oh! Today the laundry is clean! She must have learned how to do laundry!”
“No,” said the husband, “I just got up early today and washed the window.”
“I couldn’t wait” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
It was an unprecedented wonderful moment. Disdaining unearthly forces and his own path, he froze to look at her for the future. At first she took a very long time to take off her dress and fiddle with the zipper; then she let her hair down and combed it, filling it with air and silky color; then she pulled at the stockings, trying not to get them caught with her nails; then she hesitated with the pink lingerie, so ethereal that even her delicate fingers seemed rough. Finally she undressed all - but the month was already looking out the other window.
"Wealth"
One day a rich man gave a poor man a basket full of trash. The poor man smiled at him and left with the basket. I emptied it, cleaned it, and then filled it with beautiful flowers. He returned to the rich man and returned the basket to him.
The rich man was surprised and asked: “Why are you giving me this basket filled with beautiful flowers if I gave you garbage?”
And the poor man replied: “Everyone gives to the other what he has in his heart.”
“Don’t let good things go to waste” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
“How much do you charge?” - “Six hundred rubles per hour.” - “And in two hours?” - “A thousand.” He came to her, she smelled sweetly of perfume and skill, he was worried, she touched his fingers, his fingers were disobedient, crooked and absurd, but he clenched his will into a fist. Returning home, he immediately sat down at the piano and began to consolidate the scale he had just learned. The instrument, an old Becker, was given to him by his previous tenants. My fingers ached, my ears felt stuffy, my willpower grew stronger. The neighbors were banging on the wall.
“Postcards from the Other World” – Franco Arminio
Here the end of winter and the end of spring are approximately the same. The first roses serve as a signal. I saw one rose when they were taking me in an ambulance. I closed my eyes, thinking about this rose. In front, the driver and nurse were talking about a new restaurant. There you can eat your fill, and the prices are meager.
At some point I decided that I could become an important person. I felt that death was giving me a reprieve. Then I plunged headlong into life, like a child with his hand in a stocking with baptismal gifts. Then my day came. Wake up, my wife told me. Wake up, she kept repeating.
It was a fine sunny day. I didn't want to die on a day like this. I always thought that I would die at night, with dogs barking. But I died at noon when a cooking show started on TV.
They say people most often die at dawn. For years I woke up at four in the morning, stood up and waited for the fateful hour to pass. I opened a book or turned on the TV. Sometimes he went outside. I died at seven in the evening. Nothing special happened. The world has always caused me vague anxiety. And then this anxiety suddenly passed.
I was ninety-nine. My children came to the nursing home just to talk to me about my centenary celebrations. None of this bothered me at all. I didn't hear them, I only felt my fatigue. And he wanted to die so as not to feel her either. This happened in front of my eldest daughter. She gave me a piece of apple and talked about a cake with the number one hundred on it. The one should be as long as a stick, and the zeros should be like bicycle wheels, she said.
My wife is still complaining about the doctors who didn’t treat me. Although I always considered myself incurable. Even when Italy won the World Cup, even when I got married.
By the age of fifty, I had the face of a man who could die any minute. I died at ninety-six, after a long agony.
What I always enjoyed was the nativity scene. Every year he turned out more and more elegant. I displayed it in front of the door of our house. The door was constantly open. I divided the only room with red and white tape, like when repairing roads. I treated those who stopped to admire the nativity scene with beer. I talked in detail about papier-mâché, musk, sheep, wise men, rivers, castles, shepherds and shepherdesses, caves, the Baby, the guiding star, electrical wiring. Electrical wiring was my pride. I died alone on Christmas night, looking at the nativity scene sparkling with all the lights.
Many representatives of the older generation cannot get enough of the fact that it is fashionable to read among today's youth. And not comics and manga, but real, full-fledged literature by Russian, Ukrainian and foreign authors, which allows you to think about serious things and learn about eternal values.
Some people are really happy to devote time to a big novel that can take months to read. Others, on the contrary, cannot bring themselves to start such books, because they know that they will immediately get confused in the multitude of characters and plot lines described.
Therefore, in the modern literary world, novels and short stories are becoming increasingly popular. These genres involve the creation of concise works that can convey only the most important things, without painful descriptions of military operations or architectural masterpieces. This approach appeals to both adults and children, because after spending a little time, the reader manages to plunge into the book world and “participate” in the events described.
As for the themes of novels and short stories, there are no restrictions in this regard. Writers give full rein to their imagination, creating not only very “hot” love stories, but also exciting fantastic plots that captivate representatives of absolutely all age categories.
Publishers often release entire collections of the best novels and short stories, which include works by different authors. Thanks to this combination, a person can briefly get acquainted with the writing style of writers and make his choice. And the stories themselves quite often captivate you completely, allowing you to forget about all your daily worries and problems.
You can get acquainted with the available range of stories and novellas on our portal. The site offers everyone the opportunity to read the work online or download it for free and without registration to their device. To avoid problems with displaying a book on the screen, the portal offers to upload files in formats such as epub, fb2, pdf, rtf, txt.
The existence of the site allows you to pamper yourself at least every day with new novels, short stories, stories, plays and other creations that delight the reader. The range of works is constantly updated with new items, so a visitor to the portal will certainly not think that the site is abandoned and not updated.
Alexey Nikolaevich Varlamov
Novels and stories
Preface
A modern classic of Russian short story
Alexey Varlamov is a Russian writer, modern classicist, literary critic and Doctor of Philology. He was born on June 23, 1963 in Moscow. His father worked as a censor at the Pravda newspaper, and his mother was a teacher of Russian language and literature. The future writer studied at an English special school, then entered the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University, where he now teaches, and in addition, conducts a creative seminar at the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky.
Alexey Varlamov’s debut book, a collection of short stories “House in Ostozhye,” was published in 1990 and immediately attracted the attention of readers and critics. In it, the writer turned to the classic genre of Russian realistic story - on a new plot basis. Alexey Varlamov himself calls himself a writer with a “narrative breath” that fills the stories “Hello, Prince!”, “Birth”, “House in the Village”, however, the genre of the novel occupies an important place in his work. The writer’s first novels were “The Loch,” “The Sunken Ark,” and “The Dome,” which formed a trilogy about Russian life in the 1990s. In 2000, he published a very personal, autobiographical novel “Kupavna”, and in 2003 an action-packed novel “The Eleventh of September” was published.
Currently, Alexey Varlamov is a regular author of the famous series “The Lives of Remarkable People.” He explains the transition from literary prose to biographical prose by the need that emerged in him to “rely on facts” in his work. From the pen of Alexei Varlamov came biographies of Mikhail Prishvin, Alexander Green, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Platonov. He himself does not draw a clear line between biographical and fiction, calling his books a fictional narrative on a documentary basis.
Alexey Varlamov is a member of the Russian Writers Union. His works have been awarded a number of literary prizes. In 2006, he was awarded the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize “for his subtle tracking in artistic prose of the strength and fragility of the human soul, its fate in the modern world; for understanding the paths of Russian literature of the 20th century in the genre of writer’s biographies.”
The stories and tales of Alexei Varlamov, collected in this book, represent the best examples of Russian artistic prose - deep and sincere prose “with tradition”, written in the easy and precise language of Russian realism.
Oksana ShevchenkoHello, prince!
Savvushka received his rare name due to a bizarre plan of fate. His mother lived in Belozersk in her youth and worked as a cook in the school canteen. She was as pretty as she was trusting, many guys wooed her, but she did not get married, and then suddenly left, without saying a word to anyone, to the Arctic. Six months later, her son was born. Having become a little stronger, she again stood at the stove, but now she had to work more than before, and a few years later no one would have recognized the beautiful Tasya in the emaciated woman, trudged heavily towards the house in the dead polar night.
“Leave here, mother,” the doctors said, “the climate here is unsuitable.”
- For the baby? - she was scared.
- No, for you.
She immediately calmed down, because she had given up on herself long ago, and Savvushka, thank God, grew up healthy and did not ask anything about his father, as if he had decided from childhood that he was not supposed to have a father.
Tasya sometimes remembered him, or rather, she didn’t remember, but she dreamed of him on endless nights, when sleep was heavy and unawakened, she dreamed of summer in a city surrounded by earthen ramparts on the shore of a huge lake, she dreamed of churches, cracked close up, but beautiful from afar, and a tall handsome boy asked her affectionately in these dreams:
- Why didn’t you find me?
His words made her feel so calm and happy that she woke up in tears and cried quietly, afraid to wake up her son:
“Tyomushka,” she whispered, “Tyoma.”
But Savvushka, as soon as he heard his mother’s cry, woke up, at first he was scared and cried, and then he got used to it, lay silently and waited for his mother to fall asleep again. God knows what he felt at that moment, but when she later tried to tell Tyoma about this, he did not want to listen to her. So Tasya was left alone with her memories.
And this unknown Tyoma was a Moscow student. He ended up in Belozersk for practice. They were brought there by a stately white-bearded old man named Baryatin, who amazed Tasya on the very first day by the fact that after dinner he approached her and kissed her hand.
The students were settled on the outskirts of the town in a school that was empty in the summer, and all day long they followed their professor from church to church: a dozen girls dressed in loose sundresses according to the metropolitan fashion, and one single boy with long eyelashes, like a young lady’s. The Belozersk youth, blinded by this spectacle and outraged by the fact that all the wealth belonged to one student, stormed the school a few days later. The girls lived on the second floor, and the guys climbed onto the first, and then began to break into the door, behind which a student stood and clutched a shovel with trembling hands.
The door did not budge, it shook, and gentle girlish voices whispered begging:
- Hush, boys, hush. Wake up the Count.
But the tipsy boys went into a frenzy. Robes and loose hair were visible through the keyhole; finally the door collapsed, and the guys rushed through the doorway, like victorious proletarians into the institute for noble maidens. The student was thrown away, and it is unknown how it would have ended if at that very moment the most illustrious Count Baryatin had not appeared at the end of the corridor in a white nightgown covering his knees, with a lopsided wavy beard and a mop in his hands.
- Who are you? – Tasya gasped the next day.
He muttered something unkind, but Tasya noticed him from that time on and every time she tried to give him a better piece. The student was thin, pale and resembled, although a thoroughbred, a very hungry dog. Moreover, he was dressed unusually sloppily.
- Why is it that no one is looking after you?
“There’s no one,” he grinned.
- So there’s no one. There are so many young ladies. She looked with envy at these carefree girls and sighed secretly, because she herself once dreamed of studying at the institute, and the school teacher advised her: go, you need to study. But how will you leave the village? And when they started giving us passports, I forgot everything and was embarrassed to go and disgrace myself. And everything turned out completely different from the fairy tale I loved in childhood - Tasya became an ordinary cook.
