In the dead of winter, our school was excited by an incredible event: a photographer from the city was coming to visit us. He will take photographs “not of the village people, but of us, the students of the Ovsyansky school.” The question arose - where to house such a important person? The young teachers of our school occupied half of the dilapidated house, and they had a constantly screaming baby. “It was inappropriate for teachers to keep such a person as a photographer.” Finally, the photographer was assigned to the foreman of the rafting office, the most cultured and respected person in the village. For the rest of the day, the students decided “who would sit where, who would wear what, and what the routine would be.” It looked like Levontievsky Sanka and I would be seated in the very last, back row, since we “did not surprise the world with our diligence and behavior.” It didn’t even work out to fight - the guys just drove us away. Then we started skiing from the highest cliff, and I scooped up full rolls of snow. At night my legs began to ache desperately. I caught a cold, and an attack of illness began, which grandmother Katerina called “rematism” and claimed that I inherited it from my late mother. My grandmother treated me all night, and I fell asleep only in the morning. In the morning Sanka came for me, but I couldn’t go and take pictures, “my thin legs gave way, as if they weren’t mine.” Then Sanka said that he wouldn’t go either, but he’d have time to take a photo and then life would be long. My grandmother supported us, promising to take me to the very to the best photographer in the city. But this didn’t suit me, because our school wouldn’t be in the photo. I didn't go to school for more than a week. A few days later, the teacher came to us and brought us the finished photograph. Grandmother, like the rest of the residents of our village, treated teachers with great respect. They were equally polite to everyone, even to exiles, and were always ready to help. Our teacher was able to calm even Levontius, “the villain of villains.” The villagers helped them as best they could: someone would look after the child, someone would leave a pot of milk in the hut, someone would bring a cartload of firewood. At village weddings, teachers were the most honored guests. They started working in a “house with carbon stoves.” There weren't even desks at school, not to mention books and notebooks. The house in which the school is located was built by my great-grandfather. I was born there and vaguely remember both my great-grandfather and the home environment. Soon after my birth, my parents moved into a winter hut with a leaking roof, and after some time my great-grandfather was dispossessed. Those who were dispossessed were then driven straight out onto the street, but their relatives did not let them die. “Unnoticed” homeless families were distributed into other people's homes. The lower end of our village was full of empty houses left over from dispossessed and deported families. They were occupied by people thrown out of their homes on the eve of winter. Families did not settle down in these temporary shelters - they sat in knots and waited for a second eviction. The remaining kulak houses were occupied by “new residents” - rural parasites. Over the course of a year, they reduced the existing house to the state of a shack and moved to a new one. People were evicted from their homes without complaint. Only once did the deaf and dumb Kirila stand up for my great-grandfather. “Knowing only gloomy slavish obedience, not ready for resistance, the commissioner did not even have time to remember the holster. Kirila crushed his head with a rusty cleaver. Kirila was handed over to the authorities, and his great-grandfather and his family were sent to Igarka, where he died in the first winter. In my native hut, at first there was a collective farm board, then the “new residents” lived. What was left of them was given to the school. The teachers organized a collection of recyclable materials, and with the proceeds they bought textbooks, notebooks, paints and pencils, and the village men made us desks and benches for free. In the spring, when we ran out of notebooks, the teachers took us into the forest and told us “about trees, about flowers, about herbs, about rivers and about the sky.” Many years have passed, but I still remember the faces of my teachers. I forgot their last name, but the main thing remained - the word “teacher”. That photograph has also been preserved. I look at her with a smile, but never mock her. “Village photography is a unique chronicle of our people, their history on the wall, and it’s not funny because the photo was taken against the backdrop of the ancestral, ruined nest.”

Year of publication of the story: 1982

Astafiev’s work “The Photograph in Which I’m Not in” is included in the collection of short stories of the same name, published in 1982. Through the entire collection, the author, who is still included in the book, carries emotions about childhood in the village, love for the Motherland and nature, deep respect for people and the horrors of war. The entire series of stories is autobiographical.

The story “The Photograph in Which I’m Not in” summary

The retelling of Astafiev’s “Photograph in which I’m not in” should begin with the fact that one winter a photographer comes to the village in which the main character lives. And he wants to capture not nature or the villagers, but the students of the Ovsyansky school. For a long time people thought about where this photographer could spend the night. The teacher wanted to invite him into his house, but there was a child there who was always crying, and the house was quite decrepit. As a result, it was decided to invite the photographer to spend the night with Ilya Ivanovich Chekhov, the foreman of the floating office. Ilya Ivanovich himself was an educated, respected person in the village, who could hold a conversation with a guest and pour him vodka.

Everyone began to prepare for the photographer's arrival. The children were wondering what they would wear, the teachers were racking their brains about how to position the students so that everyone would fit in the frame. We decided to do this: to put in front those who study well and behave diligently, in the middle - students with average academic performance, and put poor students and bullies in the last row. The main character of the story “The Photograph I’m Not in,” Vitya and his friend Sasha knew that because of their behavior they would stand in the last row. After class, the friends decided to go sledding off a cliff.

At night, Vitya’s legs were very sore from “rematism,” as her grandmother said. The boy got this disease from his late mother. The grandmother began to scold her grandson, saying that she had warned him not to get his feet too frostbitten. She began to rub the boy’s feet with ammonia, but the pain did not subside. At night, grandmother woke up grandfather to heat the bathhouse and early in the morning she took Vanya there. She warmed the boy’s feet for a long time, rubbed them with a birch broom, and eventually he fell asleep.

Vanya woke up around noon when Sasha came to visit him. He wanted to take a friend to school to take a photo. But the grandmother answered that her grandson would not go anywhere today. Vanya wanted to resist this decision, but his legs did not listen to him. Then Sasha, as in the book, decided to support his friend and said that he, too, would not go to school. The grandmother reassured them, saying that she would definitely take them to the city to see another photographer.

Vanya has not appeared at school for more than a week. His grandmother spoiled him, fed him jam, and the boy sat on the porch or looked at the windows of neighboring houses. One day there was a knock on the door. The grandmother came out to greet the guest, and Vanya listened to who came to them. The boy's teacher entered the room. He brought a photograph. Vanya immediately began to look at all his classmates. There were many children in the picture, a teacher and a female teacher in the center. The only thing missing was Vanya and Sasha. The boy felt very upset that he was not and would not be in the photograph, but the teacher said that the photographer would definitely come again. The grandmother poured tea for the guest, and they began to tell each other about their lives. The teacher said that he recently discovered a stack of firewood near his house. He doesn't use them because he doesn't know who they are from. Grandmother, of course, knew who put the firewood, but she won’t admit it. The family of teachers is highly respected in the village for their modesty and kindness, for the fact that you can turn to them at any time of the day and they will never refuse help. That’s why people help them in whatever way they can.

Further in Astafiev’s story “The Photograph in which I am not” you can read about how the Ovsyansky school was born. The house, which is now reserved for educational institution, was built by Vanya’s great-grandfather, Yakov Maksimovich. And then the dispossessed people began to be kicked out of their own homes. Entire families of people lost the roof over their heads. Then fellow villagers began to take their children, then pregnant women and old people, to stay for the night. After some time, all the homeless people found a place to stay for the night. Sometimes they sneaked into their old houses to pick up food supplies left for the winter. It often happened that people could not live together and then the dispossessed family again found themselves on the street in search of a new place to sleep.

When the Platonovsky family was being evicted, a mute fellow villager, Kirila, came into their yard. He saw how the commissioner pushed Platoshikha off her porch while she was crying and clutching the doors and jambs. Suddenly Kirila took out a rusty cleaver and hit the commissioner on the head. After this incident, the Platonovskys were evicted to the city, Kiril was handed over to the authorities, and the eviction of the families was accelerated. Vanya’s great-grandfather was then sent to Igarka, and a large classroom was built from his house. Later, with the money raised from the sale of household items from the villagers, the teacher was able to purchase pencils, paints, notebooks and textbooks.

After talking with the grandmother, the teacher went home. Soon a framed photograph of his classmates hung in Vanya’s house, but the boy never went to the city to see another photographer that winter.

Further in Astafiev’s story “The Photograph in Which I’m Not in,” we learn that by spring the school had run out of notebooks, and the teacher went with the children to the forest, telling them everything he knew. On one of these days, a snake attacked them, but the teacher was able to quickly deal with it. Although before that he had never encountered snakes in his life.

Later, as an adult, Ivan learned that his teachers’ names were Evgeniy Nikolaevich and Evgeniya Nikolaevna. Through many years, he carried love and endless gratitude to his teachers.

And the school photograph is still alive many years later. And Ivan could always easily recognize all the children in the picture, although many of them died in the war. But this photograph was a kind of chronicle of the people, their history and memory.

The story “The Photograph That I’m Not in” on the Top Books website

Astafiev’s work “The Photograph in Which I’m Not in” is so popular to read that it allowed him to take a high place in our. And given that the story is included in the school curriculum, we will see it more than once on the pages of our website.

You can read Victor Astafiev’s story “The Photograph in which I’m not in” online.

In the dead of winter, during quiet, sleepy times, our school was excited by an unheard of important event.

A photographer arrived from the city on a cart!

And he didn’t come just like that, he came for business - he came to take photographs.

And to photograph not old men and women, not village people eager to be immortalized, but us, students of the Ovsyansky school.

The photographer arrived before noon, and school was interrupted for the occasion.

The teacher and the teacher - husband and wife - began to think about where to place the photographer for the night.

They themselves lived in one half of a decrepit house left over from the evictees, and they had a little howler boy. My grandmother, secretly from my parents, at the tearful request of Aunt Avdotya, who was a housekeeper for our teachers, spoke to the baby’s navel three times, but he still screamed all night long and, as knowledgeable people claimed, his navel roared like an onion.

In the second half of the house there was an office for the rafting section, where there was a pot-bellied telephone, and during the day it was impossible to shout through it, and at night it rang so loudly that the pipe on the roof crumbled, and it was possible to talk on the telephone. The bosses and all the people, drunk or just wandering into the office, shouted and expressed themselves into the telephone receiver.

It was inappropriate for teachers to keep such a person as a photographer. They decided to place him in a visiting house, but Aunt Avdotya intervened. She called the teacher back to the hut and with an intensity, albeit an embarrassment, began to convince him:

They can't do it there. The hut will be full of coachmen. They will start drinking onions, cabbage and potatoes and will begin to behave uncivilly at night. - Aunt Avdotya considered all these arguments unconvincing and added: - They’ll let lice in...

What to do?

I'm chichas! I'll be there in a jiffy! - Aunt Avdotya threw on her shawl and rolled out into the street.

The photographer was assigned for the night to the foreman of the floating office. In our village lived a literate, businesslike, respected man, Ilya Ivanovich Chekhov. He came from exiles. The exiles were either his grandfather or his father. He himself married our village girl a long time ago, was everyone’s godfather, friend and adviser regarding contracts for rafting, logging and lime burning. For a photographer, of course, Chekhov’s house is the most suitable place. There they will engage him in intelligent conversation, and treat him with city vodka, if necessary, and take him out of the closet to read a book.

The teacher sighed with relief. The students sighed. The village sighed - everyone was worried.

Everyone wanted to please the photographer, so that he would appreciate the care he took and would take pictures of the guys as they should, and take good pictures.

Throughout the long winter evening, schoolchildren trudged around the village, wondering who would sit where, who would wear what, and what the routine would be. The solution to the issue of routine was not in favor of Sanka and me. Diligent students will sit in front, average ones in the middle, bad students in the back - that’s how it was decided. Neither that winter, nor all the subsequent ones, Sanka and I surprised the world with our diligence and behavior; it was difficult for us to count on the middle. Should we be in the back, where you can’t tell who’s filmed? Are you or aren't you? We got into a fight to prove in battle that we were lost people... But the guys drove us out of their company, they didn’t even bother to fight with us. Then Sanka and I went to the ridge and started skating from such a cliff that no reasonable person had ever skated from. Whooping wildly, cursing, we rushed for a reason, we rushed to destruction, smashed the heads of the sleds on the stones, blew out our knees, fell out, scooped up full wire rods of snow.

It was already dark when Grandma found Sanka and me on the ridge and whipped both of us with a rod. At night, the retribution for the desperate revelry came; my legs began to ache. They always whined from “rematism,” as my grandmother called the disease that I allegedly inherited from my late mother. But as soon as my feet got cold and I scooped snow into the wire rod, the pain in my feet immediately turned into unbearable pain.

I endured for a long time not to howl, for a very long time. He threw out his clothes, pressed his legs, evenly turned at the joints, to the hot bricks of the Russian stove, then rubbed the crispy joints with his palms, dry as a torch, put his legs in the warm sleeve of his sheepskin coat, nothing helped.

And I howled. At first quietly, like a puppy, then in a full voice.

I knew it! I knew it! - Grandma woke up and grumbled. - If I didn’t say to you, it would sting your soul and liver, “Don’t get cold, don’t get cold!” - she raised her voice. - So he’s smarter than everyone else! Will he listen to grandma? Will he stink of kind words? Bend over now! Bent over, at the very least! Better shut up! Shut up! - Grandma got out of bed, sat down, grabbing her lower back. Her own pain has a calming effect on her. - And they will kill me...

She lit a lamp, took it with her to the Kut, and there she began to clink with dishes, bottles, jars, and flasks - looking for a suitable medicine. Startled by her voice and distracted by expectations, I fell into a tired slumber.

Where are you, Tutoka?

Here. - I responded as pitifully as possible and stopped moving.

Here! - Grandma mimicked me and, fumbling for me in the dark, first of all slapped me. Then she rubbed my feet with ammonia for a long time. She rubbed the alcohol thoroughly, until it was dry, and kept making noise: “Didn’t I tell you?” Didn't I warn you ahead of time? And she rubbed it with one hand, and with the other she gave it to me and gave it to me: “Oh, he was tormented!” Was he crooked with a hook? He turned blue, as if he was sitting on ice and not on a stove...

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t snap back, I didn’t contradict my grandmother - she’s treating me.

The doctor's wife was exhausted, fell silent, plugged the faceted long bottle, leaned it against the chimney, wrapped my legs in an old down shawl, as if she were clinging to a warm blanket, and also threw a sheepskin coat on top and wiped the tears from my face with her palm effervescent from alcohol.

Sleep, little bird, the Lord is with you and the angels are at your head.

At the same time, the grandmother rubbed her lower back and her arms and legs with stinking alcohol, sank down on the creaky wooden bed, muttered a prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos, who protects sleep, peace and prosperity in the house. Halfway through the prayer she paused, listened as I fell asleep, and somewhere through my stagnant ears I heard:

And why did you become attached to the baby? His shoes are repaired, human eyes...

I didn't sleep that night. Neither grandmother’s prayer, nor ammonia, nor the usual shawl, especially affectionate and healing because it was my mother’s, brought relief. I fought and screamed throughout the house. My grandmother no longer beat me, but after trying all her medicines, she began to cry and attacked my grandfather:

You're going to sleep, you old oder!.. And then at least get lost!

I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. What should I do?

Flood the bathhouse!

Middle of the night?

Middle of the night. What a gentleman! Little baby! - Grandmother covered herself with her hands: - Yes, why is there such a misfortune, but why is she breaking the little orphan like a thin thali-and-inka... Are you going to groan for a long time, fathead? What's wrong? Yesterday ishshesh? There are your mittens. There's your hat!..

In the morning, my grandmother took me to the bathhouse - I could no longer go on my own. My grandmother rubbed my feet for a long time with a steamed birch broom, warmed them over the steam from hot stones, hovered all over me through the rag, dipping the broom in bread kvass, and finally rubbed them again with ammonia. At home they gave me a spoonful of nasty vodka infused with borax to warm my insides, and pickled lingonberries. After all this, they gave me milk boiled with poppy heads. I was no longer able to sit or stand, I was knocked off my feet, and I slept until noon.

He can’t, he can’t... I interpret them in Russian! - said the grandmother. “I prepared a shirt for him, and dried his coat, and fixed everything up, for better or for worse. And he fell ill...

Grandma Katerina, the car and the apparatus were set up. The teacher sent me. Grandma Katerina!.. - Sanka insisted.

He can’t, I say... Wait a minute, it was you, Zhigan, who lured him to the ridge! - it dawned on the grandmother. - I enticed you, what about now?..

Grandma Katerina...

I rolled off the stove with the intention of showing my grandmother that I could do anything, that there were no barriers for me, but my thin legs gave way, as if they weren’t mine. I plopped down on the floor near the bench. Grandma and Sanka are right there.

I'll go anyway! - I shouted at my grandmother. - Give me a shirt! Come on pants! I'll go anyway!

Where are you going? “From the stove to the floor,” the grandmother shook her head and quietly made a signal with her hand for Sanka to get out.

Sanka, wait! Don't go away! - I screamed and tried to walk. My grandmother supported me and timidly, pitifully persuaded me:

Well, where are you going? Where?

I'll go! Give me a shirt! Give me your hat!..

My appearance plunged Sanka into dejection. He crumpled, crumpled, trampled, trampled, and threw off the new brown padded jacket that Uncle Levontius had given him on the occasion of taking photographs.

OK! - Sanka said decisively. - OK! - he repeated even more decisively. - If so, I won’t go either! All! - And under the approving gaze of grandmother Katerina Petrovna, he proceeded to the middle one. - This is not our last day in the world! - Sanka stated gravely. And it seemed to me: not so much me as Sanka convinced himself. - We're still filming! Nishta-a-ak! We'll go to the city and ride a horse, maybe we'll take pictures in an Akhtomobile. Really, Grandma Katerina? - Sanka threw out a fishing rod.

True, Sanka, true. I myself, I can’t leave this place, I myself will take you to the city, and to Volkov, to Volkov. Do you know Volkov?

Sanka Volkova did not know. And I didn't know either.

The best photographer in the city! He’ll take pictures of anything, whether it’s for a portrait, or to a patchport, or on a horse, or on an airplane, or whatever!

What about school? Will he film the school?

School? School? He has a car, well, it’s not a transport device. “Screwed to the floor,” the grandmother said sadly.

Here! And you…

What am I doing? What am I doing? But Volkov will immediately put it into the frame.

Get into frame! Why do I need your frame?! I want it without a frame!

No frame! Want? Duck on! On the! Fuck off! If you fall off your stilts, don’t come home! “My grandmother left me with clothes: a shirt, a coat, a hat, mittens, wire rods - she left everything. - Go, go! Grandma wants bad things for you! Baushka is your enemy! She, like an asp, curls around him like a vine, and he, you saw, what thanks to grandma!..

Then I crawled back onto the stove and roared from bitter powerlessness. Where could I go if my legs can't walk?

I didn't go to school for more than a week. My grandmother treated me and spoiled me, gave me jam, lingonberries, and made boiled sushi, which I loved very much. All day long I sat on a bench, looked at the street, where I had no intention of going yet, from idleness I began to spit on the windows, and my grandmother frightened me that my teeth would hurt. But nothing happened to my teeth, but my legs, no matter what, they all hurt, they all hurt. A rustic window, sealed for the winter, is a kind of work of art. By looking at the window, without even entering the house, you can determine what kind of mistress lives here, what kind of character she has and what the daily routine is like in the hut.

Grandma installed the frames in winter with care and discreet beauty. In the upper room, I placed cotton wool between the frames with a roller and threw three or four rosettes of rowan berries with leaves on top of the white one - and that was all. No frills. In the middle and in the kuti, the grandmother placed moss mixed with lingonberries between the frames. A few birch coals on the moss, a heap of rowan between the coals - and already without leaves.

Grandmother explained this quirk this way:

Moss absorbs dampness. Coal prevents glass from freezing, and rowan prevents frost. There's a stove here and it's a blast.

My grandmother sometimes made fun of me, inventing various things, but many years later, from the writer Alexander Yashin, I read about the same thing: mountain ash is the first remedy for carbon intoxication. Folk signs do not know boundaries and distances.

I literally studied Grandma’s windows and the neighbors’ windows in detail, as the chairman of the village council Mitrokha put it.

There is nothing to learn from Uncle Levontius. There is nothing between the frames, and the glass in the frames is not all intact - where the plywood is nailed, where it is stuffed with rags, in one of the doors a pillow has stuck out like a red belly. In Aunt Avdotya’s house, at an angle, everything is piled between the frames: cotton wool, moss, rowan berries, and viburnum, but the main decoration there is flowers. They, these paper flowers, blue, red, white, have served their time on icons, on corners, and are now a decoration between frames. And Aunt Avdotya also has a one-legged doll, a noseless piggy bank dog, hanging trinkets without handles behind the frames, and a horse standing without a tail or mane, with its nostrils pulled apart. All these city gifts were brought to the children by Avdotya’s husband, Terenty, who she doesn’t even know where he is now. Terenty may not appear for two or even three years. Then, like peddlers, they will shake him out of a bag, dressed up, drunk, with gifts and gifts. Then there will be noisy life in Aunt Avdotya’s house. Aunt Avdotya herself, all tattered by life, thin, stormy, running, she has everything in abundance - frivolity, kindness, and womanly grumpiness.

What a melancholy!

I tore off a leaf from a mint flower, crushed it in my hands - the flower stinks, like ammonia. Grandmother brews mint flower leaves into tea and drinks with boiled milk. There is still scarlet on the window, and there are two ficus trees in the room. Grandma takes better care of the ficuses than her eyes, but still, last winter there were such frosts that the leaves of the ficuses darkened, became slimy, like soap, and fell off. However, they did not die at all - the ficus root is tenacious, and new arrows hatched from the trunk. Ficus trees have come to life. I love looking at flowers coming to life. Almost all the pots with flowers - geraniums, catkins, prickly roses, bulbs - are kept underground. The pots are either completely empty, or gray stumps stick out of them.

But as soon as the tit strikes the first icicle on the viburnum tree under the window and a thin ringing is heard in the street, the grandmother will take out the old cast iron with a hole in the bottom from the underground and place it on the warm window in the kuti.

In three or four days, pale green sharp shoots will pierce from the dark uninhabited earth - and they will go, they will go hastily upward, accumulating dark greenery in themselves as they go, unfolding into long leaves, and one day a round stick appears in the axil of these leaves, it will move nimbly a green stick as tall as it is, outstripping the leaves that gave birth to it, will swell like a pinch at the end and suddenly freeze before performing a miracle.

I have always been on guard for that moment, that moment of the fulfillment of the sacrament - the blossoming, and I have never been able to keep watch. At night or at dawn, hidden from human eyes, the onion bloomed.

You used to get up in the morning, still sleepy, run into the wind, and grandma’s voice would stop you:

Look, what a tenacious creature we have!

On the window, in an old cast iron pot, near the frozen glass above the black earth, a bright-lipped flower with a white shimmering core hung and smiled and seemed to say with a childishly joyful mouth: “Well, here I am!” Did you wait?

A cautious hand reached out to the red gramophone to touch the flower, to believe in the not-too-distant spring, and it was scary to frighten away the harbinger of warmth, sun, and green earth that had fluttered towards us in the middle of winter.

After the bulb lit up on the window, the day arrived more noticeably, the thickly frozen windows melted, the grandmother took out the rest of the flowers from the underground, and they also emerged from the darkness, reached for the light, for the warmth, sprinkled the windows and our house with flowers. Meanwhile, the bulb, having shown the way to spring and flowering, folded up the gramophones, shrank, dropped dry petals onto the window and remained with only flexiblely falling, chrome-shined straps of stems, forgotten by everyone, condescendingly and patiently waiting for spring to awaken again with flowers and please people hopes for the coming summer.

Sharik began to pour out in the yard.

Grandma stopped fixing things and listened. There was a knock on the door. And since in villages there is no habit of knocking and asking if you can come in, the grandmother got alarmed and ran into the hut.

What kind of leshak is that bursting there?.. You are welcome! Welcome! - Grandmother sang in a completely different, churchly voice. I realized: an important guest had come to visit us, he quickly hid on the stove and from above saw a school teacher who was sweeping wire rod with a broom and taking aim at where to hang his hat. The grandmother accepted the hat and coat, rushed the guest’s clothes into the upper room, because she believed that it was indecent to hang around in the teacher’s clothes, and invited the teacher to come through.

I hid on the stove. The teacher walked into the middle, greeted me again and inquired about me.

“He’s getting better, getting better,” my grandmother answered for me and, of course, couldn’t resist teasing me: “I’m already healthy for food, but I’m still too weak for work.” The teacher smiled and looked for me with his eyes. Grandma demanded that I get off the stove.

Fearfully and reluctantly, I came down from the stove and sat down on the stove. The teacher sat near the window on a chair brought by my grandmother from the upper room, and looked at me friendly. The teacher’s face, although inconspicuous, I have not forgotten to this day. It was pale in comparison with the rustic, wind-scorched, roughly hewn faces. Hairstyle for “politics” - hair combed back. As it was, there was nothing else special, except perhaps slightly sad and therefore unusually kind eyes, and ears sticking out, like Sanka Levontievsky’s. He was about twenty-five years old, but he seemed to me an elderly and very respectable man.

“I brought you a photograph,” the teacher said and looked for the briefcase.

The grandmother clasped her hands and rushed into the hole - the briefcase remained there. And here it is, the photograph is on the table.

I look. Grandma is watching. The teacher is watching. The guys and girls in the photo are like seeds in a sunflower! And the faces are the size of sunflower seeds, but you can recognize everyone. I run my eyes over the photograph: here is Vaska Yushkov, here is Vitka Kasyanov, here is Kolka the Little Russian, here is Vanka Sidorov, here is Ninka Shakhmatovskaya, her brother Sanya... In the midst of the children, in the very middle - a teacher and a teacher. He is wearing a hat and coat, she is wearing a shawl. The teacher and the teacher are smiling barely noticeably at something. The guys said something funny. What do they need? Their legs don't hurt.

Sanka didn’t get into the photo because of me. And why did you stop? Either he mocks me, harms me, but now he feels it. So you can't see it in the photo. And I can't be seen. I run from face to face again and again. No, I can't see it. And where will I come from, if I was lying on the stove and dying over me “at the very least.”

Nothing, nothing! - the teacher reassured me. - The photographer may still come.

What am I telling him? That's what I'm interpreting...

I turned away, blinking at the Russian stove, sticking its thick bleached ass into the middle, my lips trembling. What should I interpret? Why interpret? I'm not in this photo. And it won't!

The grandmother was setting up the samovar and keeping the teacher busy with conversations.

How's the boy? Haven't you stopped gnawing?

Thank you, Ekaterina Petrovna. My son is better. The last nights are calmer.

And thank God. And thank God. They little kids, when they grow up, oh, how much you will suffer with your name! Look, I have so many of them, there were little ones, but nothing, they grew up. And yours will grow...

The samovar began to sing a long, thin song in the kuti. The conversation was about this and that. My grandmother didn’t ask about my progress at school. The teacher didn’t talk about them either; he asked about his grandfather.

Sam-from? He himself went to the city with firewood. He’ll sell it and we’ll get some money. What are our incomes? We live on a vegetable garden, a cow and firewood.

Do you know, Ekaterina Petrovna, what happened?

Which lady?

Yesterday morning I found a cart of firewood at my doorstep. Dry, firewood. And I can’t find out who dumped them.

Why find out? There is nothing to find out. Heat it - and that's it.

Yes, it's somehow inconvenient.

What's inconvenient? No firewood? No. Should we wait for Rev. Mitrokha to give his orders? And if the rural Soviets bring raw materials, that’s also not much joy. Grandmother, of course, knows who dumped firewood on the teacher. And the whole village knows this. One teacher does not know and will never know.

Respect for our teacher and teacher is universal, silent. Teachers are respected for their politeness, for the fact that they greet everyone in a row, without distinguishing either the poor or the rich, or the exiles, or self-propelled guns. They also respect the fact that at any time of the day or night you can come to the teacher and ask him to write the required paper. Complain about anyone: the village council, the robber husband, the mother-in-law. Uncle Levontiy is the villain of the villains, when he’s drunk, he’ll break all the dishes, hang a lantern for Vasena, and chase the kids away. And when the teacher talked to him, Uncle Levontius corrected himself. It is not known what the teacher was talking to him about, only Uncle Levontius joyfully explained to everyone he met and passed by:

Well, I cleanly removed the nonsense with my hand! And everything is polite, polite. You, he says, you... Yes, if you treat me like a human being, am I a fool, or what? Yes, I will break anyone’s head if such a person is offended!

Quietly, sideways, the village women will seep into the teacher’s hut and forget there a glass of milk or sour cream, cottage cheese, lingonberry tuesok. The child will be looked after, treated if necessary, and the teacher will be harmlessly scolded for her ineptitude in dealing with the child. When the teacher was giving birth, the women did not allow her to carry water. One day a teacher came to school wearing wire rods hemmed over the edge. The women stole the wire rod and took it to the shoemaker Zherebtsov. They set the scale so that Zherebtsov wouldn’t take a penny from the teacher, my God, and so that by the morning, for school, everything would be ready. Shoemaker Zherebtsov is a drinking man and unreliable. His wife, Toma, hid the scale and did not give it back until the wire rods were hemmed.

The teachers were the ringleaders in the village club. They taught games and dances, staged funny plays and did not hesitate to represent priests and bourgeois in them; At weddings they were guests of honor, but they puked themselves and taught the uncooperative people at the party not to force them to drink.

And in which school did our teachers start working?

In a village house with carbon stoves. There were no desks, no benches, no textbooks, notebooks, or pencils. One ABC book for the entire first grade and one red pencil. The kids brought stools and benches from home, sat in a circle, listened to the teacher, then he gave us a neatly sharpened red pencil, and we sat down on the windowsill and took turns writing with sticks. They learned to count using matches and sticks, cut from a torch with their own hands.

By the way, the house, adapted for a school, was built by my great-grandfather, Yakov Maksimovich, and I began to study in the home of my great-grandfather and grandfather Pavel. I was born, however, not in a house, but in a bathhouse. There was no place in it for this secret business. But from the bathhouse they brought me in a bundle here, to this house. I don’t remember how and what was in it. I remember only echoes of that life: smoke, noise, crowds and hands, hands, lifting and throwing me to the ceiling. The gun is on the wall, as if nailed to the carpet. It inspired respectful fear. A white rag on the face of Grandfather Pavel. A fragment of malachite stone, sparkling at the break, like a spring ice floe. Near the mirror is a porcelain compact, a razor in a box, dad’s bottle of cologne, and mom’s comb. I remember a sled given to me by Grandma Marya’s older brother, who was the same age as my mother, although she was her mother-in-law. Wonderful, steeply curved sled with bends - a complete resemblance to a real horse sleigh. I wasn’t allowed to ride on that sled because I was too young, but I wanted to ride, and one of the adults, most often my great-grandfather or someone freer, would put me in the sled and drag me along the hay floor or around the yard.

My dad moved into a winter hut, covered with splintered, uneven shingles, which caused the roof to leak during heavy rains. I know from my grandmother’s stories and I seem to remember how happy my mother was about separating from her father-in-law’s family and gaining economic independence, albeit in a cramped space, but in “her own corner.” She cleaned the entire winter hut, washed it, whitewashed and whitewashed the stove countless times. Dad threatened to make a partition in the winter hut and create real canopies instead of a canopy, but he never fulfilled his intention.

When grandfather Pavel and his family were evicted from the house - I don’t know, but how they evicted others, or rather, they drove families out onto the street from their own houses - I remember, all old people remember.

The dispossessed and subkulak members were thrown out in the dead of autumn, therefore, at the most opportune time for death. And if times then were similar to today, all families would immediately try it on. But kinship and fraternity were a great force then, distant relatives, close ones, neighbors, godfathers and matchmakers, fearing threats and slander, nevertheless picked up children, first of all infants, then from bathhouses, flocks, barns and attics they collected mothers, pregnant women, old people, sick people, “unnoticed” behind them, and everyone else was sent home.

During the day, the “former” found themselves in the same bathhouses and outbuildings, at night they entered the huts, slept on scattered blankets, on rugs, under fur coats, old blankets and on all sorts of waste ryamnina. They slept side by side, without undressing, always ready to be called and evicted.

A month passed, then another. The dead of winter came, the “liquidators”, rejoicing in the class victory, walked, had fun and seemed to have forgotten about the disadvantaged people. They had to live, wash, give birth, receive treatment, and feed. They clung to the families that warmed them, or cut windows in flocks, insulated and repaired long-abandoned winter huts or temporary huts, cut down for a summer kitchen.

Potatoes, vegetables, salted cabbage, cucumbers, barrels of mushrooms remained in the basements of abandoned farmsteads. They were mercilessly and unpunished by dashing little people, all sorts of punks who did not value other people's goods and labor, leaving the lids of cellars and basements open. The evicted women, who sometimes went to the cellars at night, lamented about the lost goods, prayed to God to save some and punish others. But in those years, God was busy with something else, more important, and turned away from the Russian village. Some of the kulak empty houses - the lower end of the village was almost entirely empty, while the upper end lived more comfortably, but the Verkhovsky activists were “given gifts and made drunk” - there were whispers throughout the village, and I think that the activist-liquidators were simply smarter to stare down those who were closer, so that don’t go far, keep the upper end of the village “in reserve.” In a word, the tenacious element began to occupy their empty huts or the housing of proletarians and activists who moved and abandoned houses, occupied them and quickly brought them into divine form. The outlying Nizovsky huts, covered haphazardly and with whatever they could find, were transformed, came to life, and sparkled with clean windows.

Many houses in our village were built in two halves, and relatives did not always live in the second half; sometimes they were just share allies. For a week, a month, or two, they could still endure the crowds and cramped conditions, but then discord began, most often near the stove, between the women cooks. It happened that the evicted family found themselves on the street again, looking for shelter. However, most families still got along with each other. The women sent the boys to their abandoned houses for hidden belongings, for vegetables in the basement. The housewives themselves sometimes entered the home. The new residents sat at the table, slept on the bed, on the stove that had not been bleached for a long time, managed around the house, and destroyed furniture.

“Hello,” the former owner of the house said, stopping near the threshold, barely audibly. Most often they did not answer her, some out of busyness and rudeness, some out of contempt and class hatred.

At the Boltukhins’, who had already replaced and trashed several houses, they mocked and made fun of them: “Come on in, brag about what you forgot?..” “Well, I should take a frying pan, a chigunka, a stick, a grip - cook...” “What’s wrong? Take it as if it were your own...” - Baba took out the inventory, trying to grab something else besides what was mentioned: rugs, some clothes, a piece of linen or canvas hidden in a place only known to her.

The new residents who settled in the “regular” house, primarily women, ashamed of intruding into someone else’s corner, lowered their eyes and waited for “herself” to leave. The Boltukhins kept an eye on the “counterpart”, on their recent drinking buddies, girlfriends and benefactors - whether the “ex” would take out some gold from somewhere, whether they would steal a valuable item from the burial place: a fur coat, felt boots, a scarf. When a caught intruder is caught, they immediately start shouting: “Oh, are you stealing? Did you want to go to prison?..” - “How can I steal... it’s mine, ours...” - “It was yours, it’s now ours! I’ll drag you to the village council...”

The unfortunates were allowed to go kindly. “Choke!” - they said. Katka Boltukhina rushed around the village, exchanging stolen things for drinks, not afraid of anyone, not embarrassed by anything. It happened that she immediately offered what she had taken away to the hostess herself. My grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, lost all the money she had saved up for a rainy day, “bought back” more than one thing from the Boltukhins and returned it to the described families.

By spring, windows in empty huts were broken, doors torn off, rugs torn, furniture burned. During the winter, part of the village burned out. The youngsters sometimes heated the stoves in the Domninskaya or some other spacious hut and held parties there. Without looking at class divisions, the guys groped the girls in the corners. The kids played and continued to play together. Carpenters, coopers, joiners and shoemakers from the dispossessed people slowly got used to the business, daring to earn a piece of bread. But they worked and lived in their own or other people’s houses, looking around fearfully, not making major repairs, firmly, without fixing things for a long time, they lived as if in an overnight hut. These families faced a second eviction, even more painful, during which the only tragedy in our village occurred during dispossession.

The mute Kiril, when the Platonovskys were thrown out into the street for the first time, was in custody, and they somehow managed to explain to him later that the expulsion from the hut was forced, temporary. However, Kirila was wary and, living as a secretive man on a farm with a hidden horse, not stolen from the yard to the collective farm due to a puffy belly and a lame leg, no, no, he visited the village on horseback.

One of the collective farmers or passing people told Kiril at the detention center that something was wrong with them at home, that the Platonovskys were being evicted again. Kirila rushed to the open gate at the moment when the whole family was already standing obediently in the yard, surrounding the discarded junk. Curious people crowded the alley, watching as alien people with revolvers tried to drag Platoshikha out of the hut. The platoshi woman grabbed the doors, the jambs, and screamed to death. It looks like they’re about to pull her out completely, but as soon as they let her go, she again finds something to cling to with her torn, bleeding nails.

The owner, dark-haired by nature, turned completely black from grief, admonished his wife:

“So be it for you, Paraskovya! What now? Let's go to good people..."

The children, there were many of them in the Platonovskys’ yard, had already loaded the cart, which had been prepared for a long time, put the things that were allowed to be taken, and harnessed themselves to the shafts of the cart. “Let's go, mom. Let’s go…” they begged Platoshikha, wiping themselves with their sleeves.

The liquidators managed to tear Platoshikha away from the joint. They pushed her off the porch, but after lying on the deck with her hem crumpled up, she crawled across the yard again, howling and stretching out her arms to the open door. And again she found herself on the porch. Then the city commissioner with a revolver at his side kicked the woman in the face with the sole of his boot. The platoshi woman toppled over from the porch and groped with her hands along the flooring, looking for something. “Paraskovya! Paraskovya! What you? What are you doing?..” Then a guttural bull cry was heard: “M-m-m-m-m-mauuuu!..” Kirila grabbed a rusty cleaver from a chock and rushed to the commissioner. Knowing only gloomy slavish obedience and not ready for resistance, the commissioner did not even have time to remember the holster. Kirila smashed his head, his brains and blood splashed onto the porch and splashed the wall. The children covered themselves with their hands, the women screamed, and people began to run away in different directions. The second commissioner grabbed through the fence, and witnesses and activists cut hair from the yard. Enraged, Kirila ran around the village with a cleaver, hacked to death a pig that got in his way, attacked a rafting boat and almost killed a sailor, one of our own from the village.

On the boat, Kirila was doused with water from a bucket, tied up and handed over to the authorities.

The death of the commissioner and the outrage of Kirila accelerated the eviction of dispossessed families. The Platonovskys were floated to the city on a boat, and no one ever heard anything about them again.

Great-grandfather was exiled to Igarka and died there in the very first winter, and grandfather Pavel will be discussed further.

The partitions in my native hut were dismantled to create a large common classroom, so I learned almost nothing and, together with the children, I hacked, broke and crushed something in the house.

This house ended up in the photograph where I am not. Home has also been gone for a long time.

After school there was a collective farm board there. When the collective farm collapsed, the Boltukhins lived there, sawing and burning the canopy and terrace. Then the house was empty for a long time, became decrepit, and finally the order came to dismantle the abandoned dwelling, float it to the Gremyachaya River, from where it would be transported to Yemelyanovo and installed. The Ovsyansky men quickly dismantled our house, even faster they floated it where ordered, waited and waited for them to arrive from Yemelyanov, and did not wait. Having quietly come to an agreement with the coastal residents, the rafters sold the house for firewood and slowly drank away the money. Neither in Emelyanovo nor in any other place did anyone remember the house.

The teacher once went to the city and returned with three carts. On one of them there were scales, on the other two there were boxes with all kinds of goods. A temporary stall called “Recycling” was built from blocks in the schoolyard. The schoolchildren turned the village upside down. Attics, sheds, barns were cleared of treasures accumulated over centuries - old samovars, plows, bones, rags.

Pencils, notebooks, paints like buttons glued to cardboard, and transfers appeared at school. We tried sweet cockerels on sticks, the women got hold of needles, threads, and buttons.

The teacher again and again went to the city in a village soviet nag, procured and brought textbooks, one textbook for five. Then there was even relief - one textbook for two. Village families are large, therefore, a textbook appeared in every house. The tables and benches were made by village men and they didn’t charge for them; they made do with magarych, which, as I now guess, the teacher gave them on his salary.

The teacher persuaded a photographer to come to us, and he photographed the children and the school. Isn't this a joy! Isn't this an achievement?

The teacher drank tea with his grandmother. And for the first time in my life, I sat at the same table with the teacher and tried with all my might not to get wet or spill tea from the saucer. Grandmother covered the table with a festive tablecloth and set out... And jam, and lingonberries, and dried bread, and lampaseas, and city gingerbread, and milk in an elegant creamer. I am very glad and satisfied that the teacher drinks tea with us, talks to my grandmother without any ceremony, and we have everything, and there is no need to be ashamed in front of such a rare guest for the treat.

The teacher drank two glasses of tea. The grandmother begged for another drink, apologizing, according to village habit, for the poor treat, but the teacher thanked her, said that he was very pleased with everything, and wished the grandmother good health. When the teacher left home, I still couldn’t resist asking about the photographer: “Will he come again soon?”

Ah, the staff lifted you up and slapped you! - the grandmother used the most polite curse in the presence of the teacher.

“I think soon,” the teacher answered. - Get well and come to school, otherwise you will fall behind. - He bowed to the house, to his grandmother, she trotted after him, accompanying him to the gate with instructions to bow to his wife, as if she were not two suburbs from us, but in God knows what distant lands.

The gate latch rattled. I hurried to the window. A teacher with an old briefcase walked past our front garden, turned around and waved his hand at me, saying, come to school quickly, and smiled as only he knew how to smile, seemingly sad and at the same time affectionate and welcoming. I followed him with my gaze to the end of our alley and looked at the street for a long time, and for some reason my soul felt painful, I wanted to cry.

Grandmother, gasping, cleared the rich food from the table and never ceased to be surprised:

And I didn’t eat anything. And I drank two glasses of tea. What a cultured man! That's what diplomas do! - And she admonished me; - Study, Vitka, well! Maybe you’ll become a teacher or become a foreman...

Grandma didn’t make any noise that day at anyone, even with me and Sharik she spoke in a peaceful voice, but she boasted, but she boasted! She bragged to everyone who came to see us that we had a teacher, drank tea, talked to her about various things. And he talked like that, he talked like that! She showed me a school photo, lamented that I didn’t get it, and promised to frame it, which she would buy from the Chinese at the market.

She actually bought a frame and hung the photograph on the wall, but she didn’t take me to the city, because I was often sick that winter and missed a lot of classes.

By spring, the notebooks, exchanged for salvage materials, were full of content, the colors were stained, the pencils were worn out, and the teacher began to take us through the forest and tell us about trees, flowers, herbs, rivers and the sky.

How much he knew! And that the rings of a tree are the years of its life, and that pine sulfur is used for rosin, and that pine needles are used to treat nerves, and that plywood is made from birch; from coniferous trees - that's what he said - not from forests, but from rocks! - they make paper, so that forests retain moisture in the soil, and therefore the life of rivers.

But we also knew the forest, albeit in our own way, in a village way, but we knew something that the teacher did not know, and he listened to us attentively, praised us, even thanked us. We taught him to dig and eat locust roots, chew larch sulfur, identify birds and animals by their voices, and, if he gets lost in the forest, how to get out of there, especially how to escape from a forest fire, how to get out of the terrible taiga fire.

One day we went to Bald Mountain to buy flowers and seedlings for the school yard. We climbed to the middle of the mountain, sat down on the stones to rest and look at the Yenisei from above, when suddenly one of the guys shouted:

Oh, snake, snake!..

And everyone saw the snake. She wrapped herself around a bunch of cream snowdrops and, opening her toothy jaws, hissed angrily.

Before anyone even had time to think anything, the teacher pushed us away, grabbed a stick and began hammering on the snake and the snowdrops. Fragments of sticks and petals of lumbago flew upward. The snake was boiling, tossing itself on its tail.

Don't hit over your shoulder! Don't hit over your shoulder! - the guys shouted, but the teacher didn’t hear anything. He beat and beat the snake until it stopped moving. Then he pressed the end of the stick against the head of the snake in the stones and turned around. His hands were shaking. His nostrils and eyes widened, he was all white, his “politics” crumbled, and his hair hung like wings on his protruding ears.

We found it in the rocks, shook it off and gave him the cap.

Let's get out of here guys.

We fell down the mountain, the teacher followed us, and kept looking around, ready to defend us again if the snake came to life and chased. Under the mountain, the teacher wandered into the Malaya Sliznevka river, drank water from his palms, splashed it on his face, wiped himself with a handkerchief and asked: “Why did they shout so as not to hit the viper over the shoulder?”

You can throw a snake over yourself. She, the infection, will wrap herself around the stick!.. - the guys explained to the teacher. - Have you even seen snakes before? - someone thought to ask the teacher.

No,” the teacher smiled guiltily. - Where I grew up, there were no reptiles. There are no such mountains there, and no taiga.

Here you go! We had to defend the teacher, but what about us?!

Years have passed, many, oh many of them have passed. And this is how I remember the village teacher - with a slightly guilty smile, polite, shy, but always ready to rush forward and defend his students, help them in trouble, make people’s lives easier and better. While already working on this book, I learned that our teachers’ names were Evgeniy Nikolaevich and Evgeniya Nikolaevna. My fellow countrymen assure me that they resembled each other not only in their first and patronymic names, but also in their faces. “Purely brother and sister!..” Here, I think, grateful human memory worked, bringing dear people closer and closer, but no one in Ovsyanka can remember the names of the teacher and the teacher. But you can forget the teacher’s last name, it is important that the word “teacher” remains! And every person who dreams of becoming a teacher, let him live to receive such honor as our teachers, in order to dissolve in the memory of the people with whom and for whom they lived, in order to become a part of it and forever remain in the hearts of even such careless and disobedient people like me and Sanka.

School photography is still alive. It turned yellow and broke off at the corners. But I recognize all the guys on it. Many of them died in the war. The whole world knows the famous name - Siberian.

How the women scurried around the village, hastily collecting fur coats and padded jackets from neighbors and relatives, the children were still rather poorly dressed, very poorly dressed. But how firmly they hold the material nailed to two sticks. On the material there is a scrawl written: “Ovsyanskaya nach. 1st level school." Against the backdrop of a village house with white shutters are children: some with a dumbfounded face, some laughing, some with pursed lips, some with their mouths open, some sitting, some standing, some lying in the snow.

I look, sometimes I smile, remembering, but I can’t laugh, much less mock, at village photographs, no matter how ridiculous they may be at times. Let a pompous soldier or non-commissioned officer be photographed at a flirtatious bedside table, in belts, in polished boots - most of them are displayed on the walls of Russian huts, because in the past it was only possible to “star” in soldiers; let my aunts and uncles show off in a plywood car, one aunt in a hat like a crow's nest, an uncle in a leather helmet that fell over his eyes; let the Cossack, more precisely, my brother Kesha, sticking his head out of the hole in the material, depict a Cossack with gazyrs and a dagger; let people with accordions, balalaikas, guitars, with watches hanging out from under their sleeves, and other items demonstrating wealth in the house, gawk from the photographs.

I still don't laugh.

Village photography is a unique chronicle of our people, their history on the wall, and it’s not funny because the photo was taken against the backdrop of the ancestral, ruined nest.

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Writers are often inspired by their own biography when creating works of art. An example of autobiographical prose is the story of Viktor Astafiev “The Photograph in which I am not”, summary which the reader will read in this article.

Specifics of Victor Astafiev's story

The peculiarity of “The Photograph That I’m Not in” is, first of all, the specific language of the story. The text is dotted with colloquial words, dialectisms, archaisms and other phrases that are unfamiliar to the reader's ear. The amazing nature of the speech is accompanied by descriptions of the traditions, way of life, and the foundations of the village.

Dear readers! We invite you to get acquainted with Viktor Astafiev

The plot of the work is simple and uncomplicated. But despite the seeming triviality of the plot, the author addressed many relevant topics in the story:

• the process of dispossession and the results of this process for peasants;
• features of life Russian outback in the first years of the twentieth century;
• everyday difficulties of Siberian peasants;
• the complexity and inconsistency of teaching...

The idea of ​​the work is expressed by the writer in the last, final words of the story. Viktor Astafiev writes that a photograph of a village is comparable to a chronicle, the history of the life of a village, which can be hung on the wall.

The story is based on a real incident from the writer’s life. It is worth mentioning that Viktor Astafiev is the prototype of the main character of the story “The Photograph in which I am not”, to summary which we will go over below.

This case is this: one day a photographer from the city came to the village. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the profession of a photographer was a profitable business, and photography was a holiday for which it took a long time to prepare. But at a key moment, the main character fell ill with pain in his knees and did not go to the photographer. Because of this, the story was called “The Photograph in which I am not.”

A brief retelling of the contents of “The Photograph in which I am not in”

The story takes place in winter. Students of a Siberian school learn: a photographer is arriving in the village. The master wanted to capture the schoolchildren, which was perceived as a significant and important event.

Needless to say, the master of photography himself was perceived as a respected and important person. The villagers wondered: where will the photographer live? The school teachers are young and live in a hut that looks more like a barracks. In addition, they have a small child in their house who constantly cries and screams. A photographer should not live in such conditions. Then the residents make a decision: the newcomer will be accommodated in the house of the foreman of an office involved in timber rafting.

Next, the author describes in vivid colors the preparations for photography. Schoolchildren think about who will take what place. The main character finds out that he and his friend were given a seat in the back row, because the guys were no different exemplary behavior and diligent study. The boys were upset, so they went sledding.

While sledding, the main character collected boots full of snow, and at night the boy’s legs hurt. Apparently, he inherited rheumatism from his mother, who died long ago. The young man is treated by his grandmother, but the illness torments the boy until the morning: at dawn the main character was visited by his bosom friend Sanya to inquire about his friend’s health. It became clear that bad feeling does not allow the boy to go take pictures, and Sanya decides to morally support his friend. This meant that he would not pose for a photograph either.

The protagonist’s grandmother encouraged her grandson, promising that she would take the children to the best rural photographer. But the boys did not want this, because in that photograph there would not be a school where the children studied.

The illness forced the boy to lie in bed for a week. The young man did not go to school at that time. Soon the grandmother and grandson were visited by the school director, who brought a photograph. Here the writer proceeds to describe the customs and customs of the village. The situation is similar to that described by the Ukrainian writer Ivan Bagryany. Each village resident tried to treat his neighbor with respect (it didn’t matter whether he was a simple peasant or an exile). The teaching profession also commanded respect.

About the teaching profession

When characterizing a brief retelling of “The Photograph That I’m Not in,” it is impossible not to mention the role the teacher played in that period. The teachers were considered one of the most respected people in the village. Villains and hooligans also obeyed them. Perhaps the reason for this was the difficult conditions in which teachers had to work.

Schools were often poorly heated, and books and good desks were only a dream. The house in which the school was located, writes Viktor Astafiev, was the work of the writer’s great-grandfather (and, accordingly, the main character). Initially, this house belonged to the author’s family, but then the great-grandfather was subjected to dispossession, and the house was taken away. The family moved into a hut whose roof was leaking and the walls were blown by the wind.

Dispossession

This is a scary and cruel process. People who were subject to dispossession were driven out of their homes - onto the streets, their acquired property was taken away, and their households were devastated. Families lost everything and were left without a livelihood.

Some families were expelled, others were moved into other people's houses. The main character remembers how the end of the village was filled with empty houses, where dispossessed peasants once lived. Former “kulaks”, expelled from their own homes, inhabited the empty huts of exiled peasants, but even there they were in no hurry to unpack the remaining pitiful things, expecting that they would be evicted again.

"New Residents"

This is what the author calls the parasites who came, like vultures, to the empty houses of dispossessed and exiled peasants. The “new residents” did not value other people’s property, brought houses to a deplorable state and left to ruin the next empty nest.

In the house where the school was now located, at first the collective farm council “quartered”, then the hut was occupied by “new residents”, and the remains were given over to the school. The teachers tried to improve the educational process. This required textbooks and notebooks. By organizing the collection of recyclable materials, teachers managed to raise funds to buy necessary school supplies.

The men from the village put together tables and benches with their own hands, and school began. In the spring months, notebooks and ink ran out, then teachers took schoolchildren into the forest to observe nature and held impromptu biology lessons.

Abridged retelling of the story and the main characters

The story “The Photograph Where I’m Not in” presents the main character as the person absent from the photograph – Vitya Potylitsyn.

Vitya Potylitsyn

Due to pain in his knees, the boy misses the memorable photograph, becoming very upset. Then the teacher, together with the protagonist’s grandmother, consoles the boy, promising that there will be many more such photographs.
The supporting characters are the school teacher, Vitya Potylitsyn’s grandmother and his best friend, classmate Sanya.

Sanya

Sanya and Vitya were not distinguished by exemplary behavior. The boys loved to play pranks and play pranks. For small tricks, the class decided to sit the fry in the back for a photo. Offended by their colleagues, the young men decide to go sledding.

Sanya persuades Vitya to go for a ride, and therefore feels guilty when his friend’s knees hurt. Arriving in the morning to visit his friend and inquire about the boy’s health, Sanya sees that Vitya is sick and will not get out of bed today. Then the faithful comrade also misses school and, accordingly, photography day. Sanya shows dedication and the ability to sacrifice her interests for the sake of her comrade.

Vitina's grandmother

The boy's mother, as the reader learns from the text of the story, died. The hero was raised by his grandmother. The old woman shows love for her grandson, even if she sometimes shouts at the naughty boy. The woman is kind and caring. When a grandson gets sick, the grandmother spends all her time at the boy's bedside. The grandfather heats a warm bath for his grandson, and the grandmother rubs her grandson with ointments and prepares delicious delicacies.

Also, Vitya’s grandmother buys the belongings of her neighbors with the saved funds in order to return them to the dispossessed peasants.

Teacher

The name of the school teacher is Evgeniy Nikolaevich. The man is selfless about his work, loves his students and cares about his children.

The teacher's opinion is respected by everyone without exception, even by hooligans. The teacher carves out money from his own salary to buy school supplies, order desks and books. He also shows courage when he protects schoolchildren from a snake attack, despite the fact that Evgeniy Nikolaevich himself has never encountered snakes before.

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev

A photo where I'm not in it

In the dead of winter, during quiet, sleepy times, our school was excited by an unheard of important event.

A photographer arrived from the city on a cart!

And he didn’t come just like that, he came for business - he came to take photographs.

And to photograph not old men and women, not village people eager to be immortalized, but us, students of the Ovsyansky school.

The photographer arrived before noon, and school was interrupted for the occasion.

The teacher and the teacher - husband and wife - began to think about where to place the photographer for the night.

They themselves lived in one half of a decrepit house left over from the evictees, and they had a little howler boy. My grandmother, secretly from my parents, at the tearful request of Aunt Avdotya, who was a housekeeper for our teachers, spoke to the baby’s navel three times, but he still screamed all night long and, as knowledgeable people claimed, his navel roared like an onion.

In the second half of the house there was an office for the rafting section, where there was a pot-bellied telephone, and during the day it was impossible to shout through it, and at night it rang so loudly that the pipe on the roof crumbled, and it was possible to talk on the telephone. The bosses and all the people, drunk or just wandering into the office, shouted and expressed themselves into the telephone receiver.

It was inappropriate for teachers to keep such a person as a photographer. They decided to place him in a visiting house, but Aunt Avdotya intervened. She called the teacher back to the hut and with an intensity, albeit an embarrassment, began to convince him:

They can't do it there. The hut will be full of coachmen. They will start drinking onions, cabbage and potatoes and will begin to behave uncivilly at night. - Aunt Avdotya considered all these arguments unconvincing and added: - They’ll let lice in...

What to do?

I'm chichas! I'll be there in a jiffy! - Aunt Avdotya threw on her shawl and rolled out into the street.

The photographer was assigned for the night to the foreman of the floating office. In our village lived a literate, businesslike, respected man, Ilya Ivanovich Chekhov. He came from exiles. The exiles were either his grandfather or his father. He himself married our village girl a long time ago, was everyone’s godfather, friend and adviser regarding contracts for rafting, logging and lime burning. For a photographer, of course, Chekhov’s house is the most suitable place. There they will engage him in intelligent conversation, and treat him with city vodka, if necessary, and take him out of the closet to read a book.

The teacher sighed with relief. The students sighed. The village sighed - everyone was worried.

Everyone wanted to please the photographer, so that he would appreciate the care he took and would take pictures of the guys as they should, and take good pictures.

Throughout the long winter evening, schoolchildren trudged around the village, wondering who would sit where, who would wear what, and what the routine would be. The solution to the issue of routine was not in favor of Sanka and me. Diligent students will sit in front, average ones in the middle, bad students in the back - that’s how it was decided. Neither that winter, nor all the subsequent ones, Sanka and I surprised the world with our diligence and behavior; it was difficult for us to count on the middle. Should we be in the back, where you can’t tell who’s filmed? Are you or aren't you? We got into a fight to prove in battle that we were lost people... But the guys drove us out of their company, they didn’t even bother to fight with us. Then Sanka and I went to the ridge and started skating from such a cliff that no reasonable person had ever skated from. Whooping wildly, cursing, we rushed for a reason, we rushed to destruction, smashed the heads of the sleds on the stones, blew out our knees, fell out, scooped up full wire rods of snow.

It was already dark when Grandma found Sanka and me on the ridge and whipped both of us with a rod. At night, the retribution for the desperate revelry came; my legs began to ache. They always whined from “rematism,” as my grandmother called the disease that I allegedly inherited from my late mother. But as soon as my feet got cold and I scooped snow into the wire rod, the pain in my feet immediately turned into unbearable pain.

I endured for a long time not to howl, for a very long time. He threw out his clothes, pressed his legs, evenly turned at the joints, to the hot bricks of the Russian stove, then rubbed the crispy joints with his palms, dry as a torch, put his legs in the warm sleeve of his sheepskin coat, nothing helped.

And I howled. At first quietly, like a puppy, then in a full voice.

I knew it! I knew it! - Grandma woke up and grumbled. - If I didn’t say to you, it would sting your soul and liver, “Don’t get cold, don’t get cold!” - she raised her voice. - So he’s smarter than everyone else! Will he listen to grandma? Will he stink of kind words? Bend over now! Bent over, at the very least! Better shut up! Shut up! - Grandma got out of bed, sat down, grabbing her lower back. Her own pain has a calming effect on her. - And they will kill me...

She lit a lamp, took it with her to the Kut, and there she began to clink with dishes, bottles, jars, and flasks - looking for a suitable medicine. Startled by her voice and distracted by expectations, I fell into a tired slumber.

Where are you, Tutoka?

Here. - I responded as pitifully as possible and stopped moving.

Here! - Grandma mimicked me and, fumbling for me in the dark, first of all slapped me. Then she rubbed my feet with ammonia for a long time. She rubbed the alcohol thoroughly, until it was dry, and kept making noise: “Didn’t I tell you?” Didn't I warn you ahead of time? And she rubbed it with one hand, and with the other she gave it to me and gave it to me: “Oh, he was tormented!” Was he crooked with a hook? He turned blue, as if he was sitting on ice and not on a stove...

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t snap back, I didn’t contradict my grandmother - she’s treating me.

The doctor's wife was exhausted, fell silent, plugged the faceted long bottle, leaned it against the chimney, wrapped my legs in an old down shawl, as if she were clinging to a warm blanket, and also threw a sheepskin coat on top and wiped the tears from my face with her palm effervescent from alcohol.

Sleep, little bird, the Lord is with you and the angels are at your head.

At the same time, the grandmother rubbed her lower back and her arms and legs with stinking alcohol, sank down on the creaky wooden bed, muttered a prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos, who protects sleep, peace and prosperity in the house. Halfway through the prayer she paused, listened as I fell asleep, and somewhere through my stagnant ears I heard:

And why did you become attached to the baby? His shoes are repaired, human eyes...

I didn't sleep that night. Neither grandmother’s prayer, nor ammonia, nor the usual shawl, especially affectionate and healing because it was my mother’s, brought relief. I fought and screamed throughout the house. My grandmother no longer beat me, but after trying all her medicines, she began to cry and attacked my grandfather:

You're going to sleep, you old oder!.. And then at least get lost!

I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. What should I do?