And falcons Mikitov Salt Earth. Warm Earth (Collection)

I. Sokolov-Mikitov

" Salt of the earth"

It was so long ago that the gray boulders did not remember and forgot himself. The land was black, fruitless, not that now, and on the ground there were such trees, well, such flowers. And there was an eternal day. Razdlya was then all the unclean. She kerisy, she rumped on the will, and did not interfere with her a man to have fun, his dark yad to show. A Lesovik lived in the forest - Dubovik, and his skin, like an oak bark. Water water ordered. Forest girls lived in the forest, and in the water - mermaids. They converged on the shore at the month of the game to play, sang songs.

It was as long as the Lovovka did not steal the leaving. This is how it happened.

Once upon a time the girls, forest forestry and mermaids played, and there was a daughter of Water - Beauty from beauties. She ran into the forest, and there the Lesovik - DAC, DAC. Dropped up, noise - and there is no girl! Mermaids schohoted, and the forest girls were scattered around the bushes, they were afraid of water, they would think about them. And the water at that time was sweetly screamed, the bubbles allowed the water. Woke him, grief told. It was angry with water - I cried it all, and I went here. The lake was splashing, the wave that the mountain goes, and the other congestives the wave.

Water climbs on the shore with a chest to manage. He's a blue dog - the presence, on his head the hat sticks out, woven from algae. Climb, reed leaving, leaves the way.

I did not see the forest such a storm, many trees of life were put.

Argued with a water with a lasty old:

Give your daughter, not the whole forest place!

Hot, Dark Water, do not comply. I am those nabin bitch, water will flow - the end of you!

He sees Water - not to cope with the forest grandfather, asking to ask.

- Give, comrade ancient, daughter, spare me, and cried. He loved swimming water.

Okay, I will give, currently you should Alternate the salt of the earth! Said - as it was not, only seats are shy.

Conversion of water assistants to his old and small, sat in a circle and told, what kind of task a loving launched him:

Get the salt of the earth!

And where it is, who knows him. One bolotanic - a yashka called, sat, sitting like a cry:

And I, uncle, I know, I right now.

And only he saw him, rowed the salt of the earth to get. Waiting for his hour, they are waiting for two - there is no bash, disappeared. Locked water, does not drink, does not eat, and no one does not allow anyone. Blue became water in the lake, and the clouds hang over the lake. Grust water.

There is earth on earth - the versts are not measured, the steps are not merryan - no length, no width, but stands on the ground of the oak, on the oak of the crowds sit. They have the salt of the Earth.

Pryakko fled the Bolotanik Yashka and straight to this very oak. And at all closely, he sees Oak, but not to come to the oak to come - there the earth, the versts are not measured, the steps are not measured - no length, no width. You need to fly to the oak, and Yashka has wings - what wings, and without wings do not fly. Yes, Yashka is not. He looked at the nest hawk, and he fell into the nest, I fell on the belly, and I didn't have to wait long - I flew to the nest of the hawk. Much need a yazzka. I swung a stick - here's your wings. The wings shared, tied a scroll to his back and found his oak.

On the oak, two crow Smirnekhonko sit, do not dry up. I joked a yashka one, the other, I tried to get a clutch, and the hands are busy, to grasp nothing. I tried one in my teeth - yes the bird is big, the eyes flashes. Beggat, a swamp bar was fought - he won't wipe out anything, and the day goes to the end. Soon the term, and you need to run back to the lake. Yashka - fucking breed of tricky, dodging. And I came up with a yashka, how to get out of trouble.

He put one crow, and instead I caught a black bird on the road - the risk and carried to the water.

I ran a yashka to water, knocks. I was delighted with water - two crows brought him a yashka. Kissing climbs and bows a piece in the hoof a piece of amber. It is very pleased and noticeable to him that his yashka inflated.

I planted water wonderful birds in a cage and carried to a loving.

A checkered loving in sorry from the stumps feeded, fastened with thunder. Lito lived a loving. Knocks water to the wooded

Get the salt salt!

Looks water and the eyes do not believe - the daughter ran into the porch and in his feet, and behind her the loving itself.

Batyushka Water, do not be angry, do not puff, there was a headed a lovik with me, I didn't want to live with him.

In the water and the cell from the hands - it can not say anything, I have long wanted to live in peace with a forest - and I cried. He loved watering, - and dried tears with fun with fun, spelled, and before this afternoon they flow under rooted wood, joyful forest streams.

The great joy was in the forest, the mighty pines were having fun, high aspen spoke, and Bereza himself raised his loaf branches this time.

On the joy, it was almost forgotten, I did not forget about birds, but I remembered the daughter - mermaid.

Now all holiday! And released the will of the crow and a black bird risk.

And then the great thing happened to the miracle: the earth was turned. The earth turned half and ceased to give birth as before.

And no one knew where the trouble was from this. One knew - Plut Yashka. Salt then the land in the two corona was, and as one did not become - the earth walked half, the high trees fell, the flowers had fallen and did not become eternal day. For the first time, a dark night went to Earth.

This lonely sad raven flies out to look for her brother, and his sadness dark closes the sun, and then goes on the ground of darkness.

Previously, people did not know the night and were not afraid of anything. There was no fear, there was no crime, and how the night began, evil deeds began under her dark cover.

A lone raven flies, looking for a brother - and does not find. Land where brother lives on the oak, the versts are not measured, the steps are not merryan - neither length, no width. And if, someday will find his brother's raven, again shine over the ground the bright sun, and will come eternal day.

When it is - who knows who will say. This is not to say, but about how the loving on a water daughter married - I can.

Long then having fun forest and water. And it was fun, and this was the joy that the very mountain of the earth appeared to the whole. And now they live a water and loving in great friendship, and even one cannot live without another.

Where water is there and the forest, and where the forest will rise, - there and water dries.

Literature:

1. Precious catholic. Fairy tales: Leningrad, "Lenizdat", 1985, - 384c.

Scenario of the literary evening

dedicated to the writer Ivan Sergeevich

Sokolov-Mikitovu

(Preparatory Group)

Prepared: Selyutin Ya. L.

Purpose:

- Written interest in creativity I.S. Sokolova-Mikitova

-Cobrify the admission of children to the book

- Speed \u200b\u200bthe ability to emotionally perceive the work of Russian literature

- to try the joy of reading, to experience the need for it

Tasks:

- to know the children with the life and creativity of the writer

-Ship the ability to listen and understand literary works, emotionally respond to them

- Mathematical qualities

Preliminary work:

-Notion with a writer's biography

-thenia stories and fairy tales I. S. Sokolova-Mikitova

- examination of illustrations

-Ettage animal riddles

Equipment:

--Treet I.S. Sokolova-Mikitova

-Nags writer

-Cartinki with leaks of wild animals

- Wild animals

-Makes (confusion) with wild animals

- concrete

-Colate medals

Move:

Children enter the hall to the music of animals in the world

(they are cleared around the chairs, divided into two teams, choose the captains of the team)

The first command "Salok"

Motto: So that I don't have to give a little, with the book we should be friends

The second team "Toward"

The motto: where! What for! And why! - I'll solve the secret, I will take the book in my hands and I recognize the answer.

Educator: Many different stories and fairy tales guys in the world, but today we will talk not about all the fairy tales and stories, and the same author I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov. (show portrait)

Let's remember the stories I. S. Sokolova-Mikitov. (Cuckoo, beavers, hedgehogs, Russian forest, Lisers)

And a fairy tale? (Salt of the earth)

And how are the stories from the fairy tale?

(children's responses)

Well done, I think you know very well I. S. Sokolova-Mikitova, and now we will check it. And we have the first contest, for each correct answer, the team gets a token.

1. " Answer the question"
2. What animals build two-storey houses for housing? (Beavers)
3. What story did you know that? (Beavers)
4. What the very first fairy tale was I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov wrote? (Salt of the earth)
5. What are the heroes of this fairy tale you remember? (children's responses)
6. What bird puts his eggs in other people's nests? (cuckoo)
7. What is the name of the story in which it is described? (Corn)
8. What do hezhi eat? (harmful insects, milk, snakes, mice ...)
9. Who wrote the story "Hezhi"? (I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov)

Well done, with the first task. The teams coped perfectly, and now it's time to play.

1. P/ and "Zamri"

Children act according to the game text.

Running on the lawn (Running in scattering)

Bears, Lonony and Bunny

Steel is fun steep (spin on the socks)

Steel animals have fun

Jump, two jumps (jumps on two legs)

Farming soon the friend (I will not stop the team again)

The game can be repeated several times.

Now let's see what kind of smart and earn a token for your team.

1. "Guess whose traces?"

On two tables, pictures of animals and their traces are laid out, children should correctly pick up traces of animals.

From each team, three people choose the traces. It wins the team that fastest and correctly select traces.

The winning team gets a tooth.

Educator: Well done guys coped with the task and get a token. And we have the next competition "Riddles"

1. "Puzzles"
2. There are no burgoots,

He does not need Nora.

Feet saved from enemies

And from hunger bark

1. Kosolapy and big

He sleeps in the Berlogs in the winter.

Loves bumps, loves honey,

Well, who will call?

(Bear)

1. There are on the river loggers

In silver-brown fur coats.

And from trees, branches, clay

Build durable dams

1. Angry Nadrog

Lives in the wilderness of the forest.

Needles a lot,

And the threads are not alone.

1. Redhead bird

The chicken coop came

All car lured

And carried with me

1. This little crumb

Rada even bread crumb

Because to dark

She hides in mink.

1. Herbs touching with hooves

Handsome walks through the forest,

Walks boldly and easy

Rog sprawling wide.

1. Rustling, rustling grass

Cars the whip alive,

So he got up and hugged:

Come on, who really dare.

Educator: All riddles you guess right and got tokens. And now we will see which you are attentive. Each team I will give a confusion card, and you have to see one wild animal on this card and call it, after that transfer the card to a neighbor. First, one team calls animals, then the other. Which team will call more animals, she will win.

1. Competition "Putanitsa"

Children are alternately looking for one wild animal on the confusion cards, called it and transmit a card to a neighbor.

On this, our quiz comes to an end. Both teams coped with all contests perfectly. Capitans Complete tokens. And now I suggest to exchange your tokens on sweet coins.

February 24, 2005, the Smolensk Regional Children's Library was assigned
The name of the wonderful Russian writer, our countryman I.S. Sokolova-Mikitova

Resolution of the Smolensk Regional Duma of 24.02.2005 №56

Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov

1892-1975

"The biggest happiness is to do people good ..."
I.S. Sokolov-Mikitov

There is a writer in the Russian literature, from the books of whom the Spring Cooked, the freshness of the spring meadow, the warmth of the native, warmed the sun. The name of this writer is Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov. We, Smolyanam, especially the expensive name, because we are his countrymen.

Ivan Sergeyevich Sokolov-Mikitov was born on May 30 (N.St.) of 1892 in the forest tract of Occask under Kaluga in the family of Sergey Nikitievich Sokolova, which managing the forest estate of merchants of the Millioners of the Fox. Three years later, the family moved to Smolensk region - the Motherland of the Father, in the village of Kislovo (now the territory of the Ugran district). The untouched nature, the shores of the full-flower, complete charm of the river Ugra, the ancient life and the installation of Smolensk villages, fairy tales, the peasant songs were subsequently reflected in the creativity of I.S. Sokolova-Mikitov.

A special role in the formation of the future writer played father. "The eyes of the Father I saw the magnificent world of Russian nature revealed before me, wonderful paths seemed to the paths, a wide scope of fields, high blue sky with frozen clouds." From Mother - Mary Ivanovna, who originated from a strong wealthy peasant race, who knew the inexhaustible many fairy tales and sayings, and every word of which was to the place, he inherited the love of his native language, to a figurative speech. Vanya Sokolov was the only child in the family and absorbed all the warmth and love of caring parents.

"A sparkling streaming streams of my life emerged from a bright spring of the mother and father's love."

In the literature I.S. Mikitov's falcons came a lot of people who had arrived and survived, mutual life experiences by man. Serene childhood years in the parent house, study in the Kislovsky rural school and the first life test - arrival in 1903 in the Smolensk Aleksandrovsky Real School, from the fifth grade of which in May 1910, Ivan Sokolov was excluded "at low speed and for bad behavior" (by " suspicion of belonging to student revolutionary organizations "). In the same year, moving to St. Petersburg in connection with the receipt of agricultural courses, then to Revel (Tallinn), from where on the ship's shopping fleet, all seats and oceans were elevated.

Events of the I World War (1914) found I.S. Sokolova-Mikitov far from his homeland. Upon returning to Russia, he soon left the volunteer to the front. He served in a sanitary squad, flew at the first Russian heavy bombarder "Ilya Muromets" with a famous pilot, Smolyanin Gleb Alekhnovich.

In February 1918, after universal demobilization on a fleet of Flot, Mikitov returned to parents in Kislovo. Some time was met in the road, traveled to the south of Russia, where it was involuntarily pulled into the events of the Civil War. Later went swimming on the schooner "Dykhtau", participated in the expedition O.Yu. Schmidt on the icebreaker "Georgy Sedov", in the tragic expedition to rescue the icebreaker "Malygin", visited the edge of the narrowers and the epic - frozen, in Siberia, in the mountains of Tien Shan ...

During the Great Patriotic War, Ivan Sergeevich worked as a special arch of the newspaper "Izvestia" in the Perm region, the Middle and Southern Urals. In 1945, he was returning with his family to Leningrad, and in 1952 - justified in a picturesque place on the banks of the Volga - in the Karacharov Kalininsky region in a cozy wooden house, where he came in and in winter, and in the summer of more than 20 years, where the special atmosphere of warmth and creativity reigned, where There have been a lot of guests from different parts of the country - writers, artists, scientists, art historians, journalists, countrymen ...

In the autumn of 1967, Sokolov moved to a permanent residence in Moscow.

Ivan Sergeevich lived with his wife L.I. Mafeheva 52 years old, had three daughters. All of them died untimely: the youngest Lida 3 years (1931), Irina, at the age of 16, died in the Crimea from Tuberculosis (1940), Elena tragically died (drowned) at the age of 25 in 1951, leaving the parents of the two-year-old son Sasha.

The last years of the writer's life was overshadowed by a difficult circumstance - loss of vision, but, despite the blindness, Ivan Sergeevich continued to work, and until recent days it did not fade the need to write and give their work to people.

Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov died on February 20, 1975. He was buried in Gatchina on a family cemetery, where his mother's graves, two daughters and Lydia Ivanovna, who survived her husband exactly one hundred days later.

Traveler on the vocation and Skitalets in circumstances, I.S. Sokolov Mikitov, who had a lot of distant edges, southern and northern seas and lands, carried with them the indelible memory of his native Smolenc region everywhere. It is here that the origins of his first fairy tale "Salt of Earth". It was here that his best works were written: "Childhood", "Even", "Chizhikova Lavra", "Maritime Stories", "On the River Brief" ...

"Read and reread I.S. Sokolova-Mikitova is such a pleasure, how to breathe fresh aroma of summer fields and forests, drinking key water from the spring on a hot noon, as in the winter frosty morning to admire the silver-pink shine. And thank you very much for it. "

Smolensk Regional Children's Library introduces readers to the work of Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov. A recommendatory reference pointer "Keeper of Rodnikov" and a multimedia disk about the life and work of the writer are prepared and published, the regional holidays "I.S. Sokolov-Mikitov - Children, "followers are organized to the House-Museum of the Writer in the village of Poldnevo, the Holy District.

Ivan Sergeyevich Sokolov-Mikitov came into the literature as a storyteller: his first work was the fairy tale of the Earth, written in an eighteenth age. He confessed later that he did not think to become a writer - in a family where he grew up who loved the book, referred to literary work with the greatest reverence, he seemed to be a job of the elected marked grace.

Not believers, the beginning the author postponed an essay into a long box. Appeal to the fabulous genre of the village young man was tried to the fact that he was surrounded by his childhood: the peasant folklore who loved his fairy tale of Father Sergey Nikitich, improvised before bedtime in bed on the topic, like two Boy-brother, Seryozha and Peter, built a fleet and swam on it According to the river in distant countries. In it, it was probably a dream and Sergey Nikitich himself, a scarlet of the forest, which served as the managing forest land of merchants-millionaires, a passionate hunter, his poetic soul, which took the romantic adventure. This poetic warehouse of nature inherited his only son ...

The fairy tale "Salt of Earth" Ivan Sokolov (additive to the name "Mikitov" appeared later) decided, finally, after three years, show the famous writer, the connoisseur of the national word Remizov: "Deep-devaable Alexey Mikhailovich! I dare to make it difficult to see my fairy tale and give my opinion about it. If you deserve, encourage me a young feather. "

The fairy tale was published only in 1916, but acquaintance with Alexei Mikhailovich, who contributed to her publication, was an introduction to the circle of writers who had been involved in Remizov - Vyacheslav Shishkov, Ivanov-Dissent, Zamayatin, Privine ...

These were the years when Ivan Sokolov, expelled from the Smolensky real school for political unreliability and small diligence in the teachings, entered the St. Petersburg senior agricultural courses, but threw them and after a short work in a Revel-portaya newspaper, he went to the sailor in 1913. The resulting stormy XX century generally abounded by steep turns in the fate of the future writer: in the first world war, he served as a front-line Sanitar, in the transport military detachment of the Zemsky Union, flew by a motorist in the world in the world of heavy four-dimensional bombers "Ilya Muromets" design of Igor Sikorsky. In the February revolution, the sixteen thousands of flight squadron elected him by the Chairman of the Council of Soldiers' Deputies and delegated to Petrograd, where he listened to the Tavrichesky Palace "April Abstracts" Lenin.

All this time, Ivan Sokolov continued his literary work, began to cooperate in periodicals. He met A. M. Gorky and A. I. Kuprin, on the recommendation of which, having been on his native Smolensk region, wrote a large essay of "Burning Russia" for the newspaper "Liberty" on letters from the places in the Duma.

In 1918, he had the first books "Zakoponia" and "source-city" - the experience of the short-dealing teacher in the Doroguzhnya Unified Labor School.

The fairy tale of falcons-Mikitov did not, despite the fact that he was subsequently subsequently appealed to this genre, creating his own and retelling Russian folk tales. Friendship with A. M. Remizov continued (Remizov's spouses were located at Sokolovy in Kislov almost all summer of 1918), but Sokolov Mikitov did not take his manners of a letter, distinguished by archaic-fried vocabulary and not easy tongue. He threw to that indigenous flow in the stream of Russian literature, which was created by the work of Pushkin, Aksakov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kuner, Bunin. Especially - Bunin, an acquaintance with whom - this happened in the fall of 1919 in Odessa, - very much, as well as his approving review about his prose, corresponding to him, when Bunin lived in France, and after the death of Ivan Alekseevich in 1953 - with his Widow faith Nikolaevna Muromseva.

Sokolov-Mikitova was close to the realistic basis of the creativity of Russian classics, deep knowledge of people's life, possession of a simple, but bright and figurative language, love for native land and its nature. Describing events, people and nature, he primarily enjoyed personal perception, the impression of "first-eye", his prose was executed by copyright, it is very lyric and pictorial. This method of writing work is most often avoiding monumental types of prose, fictional, "squeezed" at the table of epic and novels, sometimes multiformed and "loose, like a pile of mealky" (according to Ivan Sergeyevich), and elects one of the most difficult genres - a story or story . They were, especially in the first half of the creative life, his favorite views of prose.

A mansion in the early prose of the writer is the publicism of the Civil War, which is pretentiously not peculiar to him by Peru neither of previous, nor later years by sharpness of the chief of the new power of the Bolsheviks. For reasons, it is quite understandable, in the Soviet Union, it has never been published and could not be published. Articles and Pamphlets Sokolov-Mikitov were published only in the emigrant Russian periodicals and in newspapers on the territory controlled by white. All the time of the Soviet power, they lay in the caches of Spetchran and, in a happy accident, did not hit the eyes of employees of punitive organs, otherwise their author would be unlapeted. Ivan Sergeevich himself never remembered them. It can be assumed that after returning in 1922 from the abroad, it was adopted by some kind of silence on this matter, because it was impossible to forget about this.

Sokolov Mikitov had the grounds to write then sharply and angry about what was happening in the village. Living in 1918-1919 in the years in 1918-1919, he was an eyewitness of the strap-party robbery of the peasants by the Bolshevik products, who burned out the last grain from the Menzitskiy bins, not leaving even sowing. After the spring of 1919, Ivan Sergeevich was seduced by the suggestion of the former Slashnik to go with him in a separate shelucher car south for bread on the task of the food delegation of the Northern and Western fronts. The desire to see with their own eyes what is happening in Russia, covered by fire of the Civil War, almost turned around the tragedy: Having been in Makhno, he got to the petlugis and in Denikinsky counterintelligence, miraculously escaped the shooting as a "Bolshevik spy" and got finally to Crimea. In the Russian interdiscipler, then there was a popular perturbation there. Brutally, up to the use of gases, the uprising of the peasants of the Tambov province was suppressed, the peasant "chapannaya" rebellion on the medium Volga was covered with blood. Attempts of farmers to preserve economic independence be charged with a new government immediately and mercilessly.

"... oh, if in your strength it was to give birth to drought or impass the rain! You would have dried polim and the polio was flooded with water, just to keep power. If only to keep power! " - wrote Sokolov Mikitov in his angry pamphlet "You are guilty".

In the captured white Crimea raged hunger. Ivan Sergeevich looked through the pound of the Tatar Tatar bread, I caught the vineyards, I caught in Sevastopol Molha Hamsu, dystrophy from malnutrition. From his hungry death, he was saved by a sailor to the merchant schooner "Dykh-Tau", from where in June 1920 he switched to the ocean steamer "Omsk". Upon arrival in England, the steamer in the winter of 1921 unexpectedly for the team was its owners sold. On behalf of the sailors left without work and without a bed, the steering falcons made a protest, for which he was transferred to the police. After sitting in the police station, Ivan Sergeyevich Winter and the spring of 1921 wandered over the ports of Gully. In May, he managed to move to Germany. Berlin during these years was flooded with Russian. In his streets, Russian speech sounded, Russian newspapers and magazines were published, went out in Russian books, literary evenings and exhibitions were held. Gorky and Alexey Tolstoy, Mererykovsky and Zinaida Hippius, Yesenin, Remizov, Shklovsky, Pilnyak, Satir Sasha Black (Glyckberg) ... Settled here, Sokolov Mikitov, according to him, "first began to write little," first Seriously". In 1921-22, he had books "Body", "where the bird nest does not live," about Athos, the Sea, about Furik, and other things, came out in Paris. He joined the literary life of emigration, rewritten with Bunin and Cook, who lived in France. His books were warmly met criticism.

"The Book of Mikitov pleases," the editor-in-chief of the magazine "New Russian Book" is pleaded about the "body". A. S. Yashchenko, because there is no despondency in his soul. Through a storm, this person passed through blood and horrors, and yet death is never described in his works ... "

"... clarity, the cheerfulness and love of his temperament allow you to hope that it will work out such a rare writer of the positive and joyful parties to life, the representative of Pushkin, the sole of our healthy tradition."

What else would you like to wish the young writer, so successfully started your work? But there was no Russia about which he was to approach, soaring in England, and here, in a relatively prosperous Berlin ...

Despite its accusatory anti-Bolshevik publications, Ivan Sergeevich, to the surprise of his emigrant environment, decided to return to the "Council". He could not live away from their homeland. In August 1922, with a letter of Gorky to K. A. Fedina, who worked in the Petrograd journal "Book and Revolution", he returned to Russia. Acquaintance with Konstantin, Alexandrovich served as the beginning of them close, more than half a century friendship. For a short time in Petrograd, Ivan Sergeevich went to his native Smolensk region. A period of fruitful literary work of the thirty-year-old writer, crowded with the impressions of seen and experienced in the turbulent years of Najeks began.

In 1923, Ivan Sergeevich married the employees of the Moscow Publishing House "Circle" Lydia Ivanovna, in 1924, 1925 and 1928 they had three daughters: Irina, Elena and Lydia.

In the house of Sokolovy in those years everything was more or less safe. The old men were alive by Sergey Nikitich and Maria Ivanovna, skillfully supported the economy, Ivan Sergeevich hunted a lot and wrote so happily and enthusiastically, that - according to his recognition, "he grabbed his back." He entered his filace: in the fall of 1923 one, and in the summer of 1925 - the whole family. After the birth of the falcon senior Arinushka, he became her godfather and, consequently, Kum Ivan Sergeevich and Lydia Ivanovna.

In the summer of 1926, Fedin and Sokolov-Mikitov, accompanied by a friend of Ivan Sergeevich, a fellow villagers, Badeeeva, were more shorter than a boat on the rivers Gordot, Ugration and Oce to Kolomna. This "baby" journey, as Ivan Sergeevich called him, interrupted the creative househood and served as the beginning of many trips around the country. Never, it seems, no longer worked so hard writer, as after returning to Russia. Over the years, he wrote most of the stories about the village, marine stories, a story about forced emigration in England "Chizhikova Lavra", stories about hunting, miniatures "Weretsy" about the life of the Smolensk village of the twenties ... in the 20s Sokolova-Mikitova came out more than ten books, and in 1929 the Federation Publisher released the first assembly of its essays in three volumes. Works of a young writer warmly met criticism and readers. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper Izvestia CEC and the Russian Federation, prominent Soviet and party leader I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov called Ivan Sergeevich "Soviet Turgenev". To publish in 1927, the magazine "New World" of one of the best, poetic stories of the Russian hunting prose "Glushaki" K. A. Fedin responded with an enthusiastic letter: "I read your" Glushakov ", envied you. Here you have in what the strength of the power, except for the bookshelf, editors and the federation of writers. And I need me, I don't need a deadly "rear" - I do not know whether the craft, nature, the monastery of Lee, only not literature. In general, you tell you in our literature, what are you happy outside it. And I envy, I envy well, with joy for you and with love for your rear ... "

After the "children's" travel on the rivers of the Central Russia, Sokolov-Mikitov took in September of the same 1926, a trip to the prion, in October-November - to the Caucasus. In the summer of the next year, he as an intern floated on a ship "Kalinin". In July 1928, on the aircraft of the German company "Junker" flew to Königsberg to continue the journey through the Baltic and around Europe by the sea, which was completed in October of the same year in Odessa.

A year later, as part of the expedition headed by O. Yu. Schmidt, V. Yu. Visa and R. L. Samoovilov, Sokolov Mikitov made swimming in the Barents Sea. And on his return of Sokolov, in July 1929, they moved from the acid to a permanent place of residence in Gatchina.

This 1929 year - the year of the Great Slug of the Foundations of Independent Instruction of the Peasants on his land, accompanied by cruel mass degradation and links of the most devastating and strong peasant families, - very painfully responded at the work of Sokolov-Mikitov. He lost his rustic hero - a man, the host-farmers. The painful nature of the country's collectivization process, which took the tragic nature, did not find a response in the books of the writer. To approve the policy of the state aimed at the destruction of the genuine owner of the Earth, he could not, it contradicted his views, but to criticize it ... It is difficult to build assumptions now why he did not. Perhaps he was convinced of taking his angry pamphlets and articles of the Civil War and decided not to return to the protest; Perhaps he was restrained by a sense of responsibility to a large family, where, after sideline death in 1927, Father Sergey Nikitich, who kept all the economy in his hands, he remained the only breadwinner with not quite reliable literary earnings. Or maybe, it just came to life accumulated over the years of the household a long-standing passion for travel, which, besides, a new source of obtaining writing material. In the thirties and the forties of Sokolov-Mikitov traveled a lot in the country. His travel routes cover the Arctic, Russian North and Siberia, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, the lower house of the Volga and the Caspian, the Caucasus and Belarus, Taimyr, Lapland and the Pre-Ural, Central Russia ... Only on the wintering of birds in the Kzyl-Agach Reserve, he traveled five times. It is unlikely that in Soviet literature you can still find a writer who would be so easy to rise, taking distant and sometimes unsafe traveling. As a special core newspaper "Izvestia", he participated in several polar expeditions to the new land, the land of Franz Joseph and the Northern Earth, where the Four of the Zimovshchikov was planted, headed by George Ushakov, took part in the search for the victim of an accident while trying to reach the North Pole of the Airship "Italy "He led by Umberto Nobile, on an expedition to save the Kalygin icebreaker on the stones. In the extremely difficult conditions of the polar night, the icebreaker was saved, but the port traveler "Ruslan" was killed, people who were not adapted to swimming in the open ocean were killed. To clarify the circumstances of the tragedy of falcons Mikitov, as an impartial witness, was called to Stalin. He expected at the Moscow Hotel "Moscow", where he was placed at the expense of the treasury and asked for a long time not to leave. Finally, followed the phone call. Secretary of the Secretary General Poskrebyshev conducted Ivan Sergeevich to the Cabinet. Stalin rose to meet her hand, said he said that he had read his stories what they liked and presented attending Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich.

The report, apparently, was encountered approvingly. Stalin asked if the requests and questions were missing. Such did not turn out, and the owner of the cabinet for a farewell said that the writer addressed when they appear.

It was in early May 1933. Six years later, misfortune was forced Ivan Sergeevich to take advantage of this proposal: it was necessary to urgently send to the south seriously sick senior daughter of Sokolovy Arinux, whose illness turned out to be launched because of his medical error, and he turned to Stalin by writing. As directed by the leader Arinushka and another sick of the Leningrad boy was allocated a special aircraft. Unfortunately, it did not save her ...

After leaving Smolensk, Ivan Sergeevich continued to hunt a lot under Leningrad, in Novgorod and Tver. The gun usually accompanied him and travel around the country. He was an experienced hunter and a good shooter. During the polar expedition, under the leadership of Schmidt, a white bear approached the icebreaker. In those years, there was no ban on the shooting, but we could only apply weapons on the ship only to resolve the authorities. Schmidt instructed someone to kill the bear. From the side of the icebreaker shouted shots. The bear loomed unhindered in the torus. Sokolov-Mikitov stood with a gun on the deck among the audience. When the bear was at the limit of reach, the name of the writer was named. Ivan Sergeevich thoroughly aimed, fired, and the bear fell on the ice. The crowned on board was coaped ...

Returning from trips with fresh impressions, the writer handled his roads, prepared new books. The subject of his works has changed, hunting stories began to prevail in his work, travel essays. Sokolova-Mikitov can be rightfully called the founder of the artistic travel essay in the Soviet literature. The main topic of its essay books was the description of the country's outcrishes, their development, the work of people in difficult climatic conditions. In September 1935, on his script, the art film "The Way of the Ship" came out on the screens, the song from which to the music of Dunaevsky, which began in words:

The sea is sleeping, the cool blows,
Sleep on the raid ships ...
it was widely popular in pre-war years.

After moving to Gatchina, Sokolova-Mikitov before the war still had ten books. A circulation published in 1941, the collection "On the Transfigured Earth" was almost completely disappeared in the deposited Leningrad, the publication became a bibliographic rarity.

The war found a falcon in Novgorod, where they lived next door to the Bianca family - first in the der. Mikheevo, and then not far from her in der. Morozovo. The path to Blocade Leningrad was cut off. The front approached these places. At the end of the spring of 1942, at the request of the Writers' Union, both writing families were provided by a turbulence car for evacuation in Molotov (now Perm). For about two years, Ivan Sergeyevich worked in the regional forestwash, having a certificate of special school newspaper "Izvestia" in the Molotov region, the Middle and Southern Urals.

With the return in the summer of 1945, life gradually began to improve. In 1946-47, Folokolova-Mikitov had four books. And in 1948, the Leningrad branch of the publishing house "Artistic Literature" published a thorough collection of his prose - "Favorites" ...

Here I have to get somewhat distinguished from the topic, change the stroke of the story and thank His omnipotence the case from which it happens so much depends in life. Undoubtedly, the entire chain of events, very deeply influenced the whole of my future fate, was determined by a happy coating of random circumstances.

After the end of the rural school in the Voronezh region, I went to Leningrad and entered the shipbuilding institute, received a place in a comfortable hostel near the city center, between the Kshesinskaya Palace and Mosque on the Petrograd side. But I got out in a new place hard. The city admired me with beauty, his story and the spirit of the Great, who, seemed, in the robusts of strict avenues, but also suppressed, refused his indifference and European-primarious arrogance, ruthlessly reminding how much you don't need him. I have a rustic drive left, early, with boyish years, hunting, friends-hunters and dogs, the warmth of the home and love of loved ones, the school, where I always studied easily, skipping sometimes when the tempting "printed" powder fell out. And here for the first time I had to darnish to withstand a hard contest and see yourself in the list of accepted. As a nobiline, I lived with memories. They distracted me from classes demanding a serious relationship to them ...

Once after the institute on the way home I went to the bookstore at the corner of Nevsky and Sadovaya. My attention attracted a book in the green "forest" binding of an unfamiliar writer with an unusual double surname. It was just published "Favorites" Sokolowa-Mikitov. He opened the first page and began to read:

"I can't determine, sleep or yawn it: on your mother's knees, I sit at the open window, warm from the high summer sun. Both the mother, and the window, and the heat heated by the Sun, not yet painted windowsill merge into one blue, sonorous, dazzling world ... Mother, window sill with transparent droplets of resin, the blue sky merge into the blissful feeling of warmth, light and pleasure. I draw to the light, bend a rod in my arms, beat soft cams and laugh, laughing "...

Blood rushed to me in his face from excitement, shoved cheeks. I read - and saw my childhood, felt that I was once surrounded. Reading delivered to me physically tangible - I felt it - pleasure. The prisoner in the simplest, it would seem, the usual words of love responded in me with the same exciting feeling. Everything is gone - crowded, who hurt me in the push at the adjustment buyers, their voices, the tram calls on the garden, the city's noise ... the saleswoman who was tired of standing in front of me, touched the sleeve:

- Well, what - will you take?

I read this book little by little, savoring and stretching pleasure, for the night to dream dreams. I wrote to my parents when I read the book and sent it to them with the letter.

These were the post-war years in the life of the so-called Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature by planting forest trapped strips in the country. The experience of growing such landings in the Stone steppe of the Voronezh region gave a significant increase in wheat harvesting on protected fields, regardless of the weather popsicles. This plan concerned not only forest workers and agriculture - he aroused the interest of all the country's environmentals. Could he not affect Ivan Sergeevich? And at the beginning of the fall of 1949, he went, accompanied by the Ukrainian writer Panko in the Stone Steppe. On the way back, they decided to wrap in the horseradish, which were in thirty kilometers, on the famous equestrian plant, the birthplace of famous Orlovsky Rysakov. And it was necessary to happen that my father, a veterinarian, was replaced at this time of the director and should have been like the owner, to receive guests. He was overlooked to herds, who were still grazing in the steppe, in ancient Krenovskaya Bor, on the Forest Batyug River. Look at the steppe bird courtyard, fenced with a solid high fence from the fox. On the bare, knocked out the courtyard among the ducks and chickens went frightened as frigates in full sailing arms, turkey.

- Great, well done! Father shouted to them. And the turkeys burned together in response, shook the lilac "snot" stood up with bloated gobas.

- I noticed, "said Ivan Sergeevich later, - that there runs between the turks, the skinny cockpit is fussing, runs back to them and everything looks out. I will look, look, yes, how to crank in a barbed ass! From the turkey immediately the whole armor, feathers fall, the tail is developing, and he from the rooster Deu! And the cock is the naked Indyukov, it turns out that the hemp phenyov poured the feathers turned out ...

I remembered how at our meetings some of the govarov will take it on the tribune, and it starts to put it: the tail will dissolve, the feathers rafouffyrite - I wish him to let him down with the rest of the rooster!

As usual, guests have dined with us. Parents rushed into the eyes, as resistance to his senior satellite, caught his senior satellite, caught his word. At the sight of the rifles hanging over the sofa (there was no requirement to store them in safes), the conversation went about the hunt, about hunting stories, about literature at all.

"The son sent a recently released your book," said Father. - And the letter where opposes it.

- Is it impossible to curb what he writes there? - Ivan Sergeevich asked.

The letter of him, apparently, touched. Mother told how his eyes moisturized when reading. And on the "Favorites" a gift inscription appeared:

"Boris Grigorievich Chernyshev with gratitude for hospitality, with the hope of a future hunting meeting. I. Sokolov-Mikitov. 3 Oct. 1949 "

Shortly thereafter, in the generalizan mailbox, I discovered a letter in my cell:

"... In Khrenov, I was glad to meet your parents, from whom I learned a lot about you and your great love for hunting and nature. I would like to see you.

I live in the Moscow highway, the house ... square ... (tel ...). I am at home in the morning and in the evening.

Call me (call me Ivan Sergeyevich) and come. We will get acquainted and talk about hunting affairs.

I was shocked! How, how was the writer, whose creativity became a loved ones to me in a horseradish, whose creativity was something else, who helped realize my own attitude to the world surrounding me since childhood?!

For a few days I spent the impression of a letter that found me thanks to some miracle, some good strength. From the house, I haven't received letters yet and I knew nothing about the stay of Sokolova-Mikitov at the equestrian plant. How did he come out there, what fate? I did not dare to call. I do not like to talk on the phone with a person, without seeing his face, and in relation to Ivan Sergeevich, then it seemed impossible to me. In the 49th, I have already studied in the third year, but continued to celebrate, the urban cattyness was comprehended by me with difficulty. Time went and pull it was already inconvenient. Not defeatedness, I went to the Moscow highway without a call, not guessing that it could cause the owner of great inconvenience than an agreement on the phone.

Ivan Sergeevich House did not turn out. He went to walk a dog. I was met by Lydia Ivanovna, a friendly smiling, very "homely" with a direct surgeon in smoothly combed hair - like my mom. Her glad to use me. I sat in the living room, and Lydia Ivanovna asked something about my house, my family ...

Ivan Sergeevich came with the English setter Fomo, the son of the famous champion of the Rinki-Malinka breed, the dog "on a new one" darted to me, pushing her trusty in his knees. Reading "Favorites", I tried to imagine the author of the book: what does he look like? Not very taking care of the rules of decency, I spot my eyes to a loved writer. High, with a large head on widely unfolded shoulders, he first of all impressed the reliable male thoroughness. It enhanced his look at his extraordinary calm attentive eyes, a leisurely bath of a nice low voice, a strong handshake of a large dry, with high mosques, hands. And all this was so well combined with the manner of his letters, with a noble simplicity of the figurative and clear language, deprived of literary physicalism and the desire to hit the reader with some verbal focus, a slapper local definition. Thought: just he could write a person who was now in front of me. I, as it were, rose against the current of the books of books, approached their source and felt their connection with the origin.

- Let's first snack anything, and then let's talk to me, - Ivan Sergeevich suggested. Lydia Ivanovna is very quickly - it can be seen, the thing is familiar, - collected the table. There was a small puzzle counterschik and ancient faceted slope with multicolored pebbles at the bottom. On the steep side of the Council of the semicircles from above and below, paper strips were pasted with inscriptions, and in the middle between them - a big letter "O" with a point inside.

"This rebus is clear," I showed on the counterschik: "in-o-point Sokolovka-Mikitovka", and why then pebbles?

- These pebbles are not simple, "the owner smiled. - A simple tap water is poured into a slope with pebbles. The day will stand - one degree, week - seven. And so up to forty days. Let's try how many days I stood with a landfall in Lydia Ivanovna!

And Lydia Ivanovna, in the meantime, carried from an adjacent bedroom to the sasha sasha:

- Look at how it looks like Ivan Sergeevich! He appears on his forehead as triangles as his grandfather - you see?

I carefully looked at my grandfather and grandson, "Triangle", admitted, did not notice, but wouldingly confirmed the similarity of three-month Sasha with a fifty-alerted Ivan Sergeevich.

After dinner, Ivan Sergeevich spent me in the office - spacious, with a large writing desk, dated books and papers, with densely touching photographs above it, with a highlighted aquarium, where fish were glittered in the greenery of algae. In the corner, an old glazed wardrobe with books, on the closet and on the shelf, several icons, all sorts of colorful things, the scarecrow of the Arctic "parrot" - the tip, along the walls - hanging the lamps of the tradesbania; Above the couch - the picture of the naive-primitive letter of the Nenets brush, it seems, the artist Pankov, on the other wall - the gloomy northern landscape with the covered snow by the Pomeranian crusons, written by another Ivan Sergeevich, the polar artist Pinggin ... All this I, of course, learned later . And then Ivan Sergeevich sat me at the end of the table, he sat down at the table and lit the tube. The familiar smell of the "Captainsky" broke around the room: my father smoked the same tobacco.

We talked - Ivan Sergeevich again asked, and I talked about my childhood, about those places where you had to live, how began to hunt. It was about hunting literature. K. A. Fedin, who already had the experience of several wolf areas, who had already read the experience of several wolf areas, was skeptical of the description of wolves in the novel.

"You are right," Ivan Sergeevich smiled. - Konstantin Alexandrovich hunt almost does not know. I invited him on the summer area when he in the mid-twenties stayed with me in Smolensk. With my second gun, the guest was standing on the room, he was lucky to kill the gained wolfp. We are familiar with him from twenty-second years ...

Here is "Vlip," I was horrified. - Dropped me to criticize the novel ... But how did I know that they were friends. I translated the conversation on the suspension boat engine, which was in the corner behind the cabinet.

- I had to use it when I spent the summer in the village in Novgorod. There was a big lake ... But tell me why he has a swivel blade of the screw?

It was a clear inspection test: the host of the motor could not know why he had such a propeller screw. Yes, and the intonation of the question seemed to me too "innocent."

- We have not passed the drivers yet, but I think that the rotation of the blades can be increased the focus of the screw.

- But power can be increased if you add gas.

- Yes, because the gas also has a limit ...

The answer seems to satisfy Ivan Sergeevich. He, as I was convinced later, I loved sometimes "throw up" the question for guess. Once, he asked for me our common friend, the poet of Vladimir Lifshitsa, how, in his opinion, ducks fly: stretching her neck as a crane or folded her as her arms? Far from nature, a person, not a hunter, very short-sighted, Vladimir Alexandrovich could hardly see how ducks fly, but thinking, he replied that - stretched out, and Ivan Sergeevich, joking him, confirmed it. But it is to the Word.

And then, in my first visit, we returned to the hunt again. I told how I took my first trophy, a small cake on the steppe lake with the wounded cattle, as the crawl of the wise cow cowholes, dragging Malocaliberka, how surprised at the thin legs of the catchokok, when the bulk was flewed, while the latter did not drop it in Water. Ivan Sergeevich listened carefully, semi overlooking the mustache, sucking the tube.

"This is true that the worshipers are swayed," he noticed when I portrayed the culichka calendering my reflection.

I bravely glanced at the clock and was terrified: the time was nearing midnight! We sat in the office for several hours. I never had to speak so frankly and with such a joy heated by the intelligence interest. And what the interlocutor! A wonderful writer, a crazy person, so much who has ever who who survived his extraordinary, amazing life!

I went out hide. It seemed that the world became warmer and open, more suitable for the trusting, cordial relationship.

It happened every time I visited Ivan Sergeevich. After our acquaintance, he wrote a letter to my parents (and then they told me), which reinforced the courage of visits to the cherished house on the Moscow highway. I lived with impressions of such meetings. My early memory of childhood, the joy of staying in the world, where I grew up among people warming me with your warmth, proximity to nature, hunting, love for the native language, - all this, it turns out, was the value of not less than what was said about At the institute and what was taken to be valuable in everyday life. Creativity Ivan Sergeevich and the meeting with him allowed to understand that all this is love for his native land, to Russia, and the awareness of this love makes life fully, because - what I was convinced of all the further lived years - without this natural and affordable Feelings man can not be happy on his land. Meetings with Ivan Sergeyevich revived, strengthened this feeling, helped him deeper to aware of him - I pulled me to him, I felt the best in dealing with him.

In the spring of 1950, I received a postcard from Ivan Sergeyevich: "On Sunday - the 23rd - I'm going to a deep shock. If the military-hunting society will give a ticket to 2 people ("Birch" current is located in this society), it could invite you or Boris Grigorievich with him.

I'm going for 4-5 days. "

The famous "birch" current, familiar to me on the book of Ivan Sergeevich! Go together, divide the hunt with him! Could I dream about it?!

To the hunt, I was always ready, my gun was kept in a hostel in a big suitcase under the bed: then it was not reborn (or just looked through the fingers). With difficulty handling time in a tight schedule of classes, I was sometimes chosen to Karelian shells, on Ladoga, at the "Marquis puddle" near the city. Last fall, I hunted in Novgorod. Returning in notching a narrow leaky after evening secks in a hood under the withdrawal chucks, I heard above my head of the roof of the wings of a heavy bird flew from the top of a high spruce. I threw the gun in the hope that the bird will appear in the disking of the branches above the pros. And when her vague silhouette flashed in the dark sky, I shot at random. After a moment, the bird hulko hit the maritime land. But how to find her at night in the deaf forest, densely sowed by the November meh?

I was lucky. The bird gave the tail. He stuck out of the bush, whipping the frost, like an airplane crashed into the land. Despite the small fraction in the barrels and the distant shot, the rooster was a bit tightly. I did not believe my eyes: after all, it was my first in my life. Early starting to hunt, by that time I had a considerable experience, but I didn't have to shoot down the dermarians: where I was led to live, they were not. I immediately caught fire with a dream to get on a dermal current! And this is the opportunity!

Then, in April, Father came to me. We were cited together to Ivan Sergeevich. That was why he wrote in the postcard "or Boris Grigorievich". Father stopped at acquaintances and leaving just on Sunday. I could not not spend it. Moreover, as it seemed to me, he began to manifest a kind of jealous feeling because of my relationship to Ivan Sergeevich ...

And I, holding a bitter lump in my throat, refused. That current turned out to be the last opportunity to hunt along with Ivan Sergeevich. He went on a hunting less frequently, entering into that age when many real, Svrism passionate hunters, begin to prefer, like S. T. Aksakov, a row wand-meeting, then, as the same S. T. Aksakov, began to lose sight And the case together to get to hunt no longer introduced. I very much regret it and I will regret all my life ...

But on Mustoharin Toku, Ivan Sergeevich was still my warmed. A week later, I went to the familiar Novgorod village with a firm intention to find a shuffer. I had four days. Every night I wandered in the forest, filled with the dawn sounds of the emerging day, among whom was not a passionately welcome deep-hearth song. Maybe I did not recognize it because I never heard? There were noisy with a closer current, but I also experienced this hunt with a boy in birch forests under the mound ... and spent the last night in the forest, slowly wandering in the dawn fog and listening. And suddenly, unexpectedly, she heard strange, alienly sounded in silence metal clips. I froze. Yes, undoubtedly, it was playing a deaf. Then I acted as the heroes of the magnificent story of Sokolowa-Mikitov "Glushaki", village hunters tit, want and Vaska-windy. Just like Tit, I approached the shocking rooster, making two or three cautious songs under the third knee, I also silenced and waited for a token. Moshnik sang on birch. And also stood under the current rooster, as Titus did, he listened to the song, and my heart went on with joy, and just as in the story, the falling deep gaming gaming of the rustle in the newly discontinued birch leaves with a griver ...

Of course, I told Ivan Sergeevich in detail about everything and re-survived the happiness of this beautiful hunt.

After the summer holidays of 1951, I had a practice, I returned to Leningrad later. In the first days of October went to Ivan Sergeevich.

- Do you know what day they have today? - asked me a concierge when I said to whom I go. And without waiting for the answer, said:

Oh my God! How did you drown?! I was shocked. I came again without a call and knew nothing. Strained by such news, poorly perceived unintelligent explanations of the concierge. What a terrible misfortune! How did Ivan Sergeevich and Lydia Ivanovna moved him? The last of the three of their daughters, two they lost earlier ... how cruelly, fate did not eat unfair! And now - Lelia. So called it in the family. Such she was for me, being just four years older. She has already completed the Higher Art School, worked on unusual, from glass and metal, the design of the station "Avtovo" under construction in Leningrad Metro. She was married, her son Sasha shortly before the tragedy, in August, turned two years old. High, beautiful, sports warehouse Lelia is somewhat ironic, seemed to looked at me when I came to Ivan Sergeevich: what could happen between the insane student and her father, famous, a mast writer, who passed a harsh school of life?!

Shocked by terrible news, I left, without climbing the familiar door: To guests were Ivan Sergeevich and Lydia Ivanovna ...

For details for a long time remained not clear. It was known that the neighbors of the scent in the country at the Karelian Isthmus, translator Krivosheev and her son, the Military School cadet, Mai persuaded Leel to walk along the huge lake of Pyhemyarvi (it is "Beauty", it is "Komsomolskaya") on a sailing Finnish boat, re-equipped In Schutbot (unlike the yacht, the shestbot has a retractable keel, a smaller sediment and worse stability). Stormy weather when they went to the open, even more raised. All three died. It is known that May found with a broken head. Krivosheev, who deceased from the rupture of the heart, was discovered in the overwhelmed scratchbote - she remained in it, clinging to the heap. Lelo found without dresses, in shorts and bra. What happened?

For me, after Lydia Ivanovna, Lidia Ivanovna, told about what he knew, and how I myself looked like a scratbote, the circumstances of death became obvious.

The lower transverse Ray - GIC, to which the oblique sail is mounted, when the shock is on board, low goes over the heads of people sitting in the shelstbote, so the steering, sitting on the stern even higher than passengers before maneuver, bends himself and warns others So that they, too, just in case, squeezed their heads. A squalid gust of the wind sail has shifted arbitrarily, Gick Smath hit May-sitting on the steering wheel and knocked him overboard. With a broken head cadet, the rightmost thing, was already dead. Or immediately choked. Lelia rushed to save him. She drove the dress - who were on the lake, the fishermen talked later that they saw from afar, as over a shelstbot, pushed by the wind, something motley-red shown - and rushed after May. The uncontrollable shertbot dragged the wind, the sail put on the water ... In autumn water, they don't swim in the Karelian Isthmus, and the lake, as they said, seventeen kilometers ...

Lelia would stay to live and saved Krivosheev, if he had not left the whitbot and took control of his hands, but after all the man sinks nearby ... She died heroically, trying to save the other. She was a man not a timid. Lydia Ivanovna told how during evacuation in the Molotov region, where Ivan Sergeevich worked in forest guard, Lelia stabbed a familiar Fire Aviation pilot to roll it on the plane. Wanting, perhaps, to beat off an insistent girl's desire to fly or just flushing before her, the pilot began to stick. The parents remaining at the aerodrome were watched by what happened in the air. They expected to see the daughter of the worried, half-dimensional from fear. But when the plane landed, Lelel jumped out of the cockpit excited and happy, with a disheveled hairstyle, and began to ask to ride her more ...

Further accommodation on the shore of the lake, resembling a tragedy, was impossible. At the request of Sokolowa-Mikitov, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR allocated him a plot of land in the Kalinin region at the Moscow Sea next door to the Karacharovo rest house, where the cousin of Ivan Sergeevich Boris Petrovich Rozanov managed. A small house bought in the Volled village transported and collected on the edge of the forest next door to the holiday home. In this "Karacharov Domika", as Ivan Sergeevich nicknamed, he spent over the past twenty-three years, since 1952, not only the summer months, but sometimes he drove and during the cold season: the house was heated.

Little Sasha required female hands, and he remained in the grandfather's family on the care of Lydia Ivanovna. Moreover, the work of his father, a specialist in ships diesel engines, was associated with business trips. Subsequently, Sergey Evgenievich served in the General Directorate of the Sea Register of the USSR, we met at work, but during these years Sasha was already adults.

At the end of the "Ship" I went to the shipbuilding plant in Stalingrad. With Ivan Sergeevich, we exchanged rare letters. The pictures, "pictureness" of his prose prompted me to remember the children's years when I was sometimes expressed by my impressions from the pictures - to some extent it replaced, probably the current TV. Even before exploring Ivan Sergeyevich, I tried to make several pencil illustrations. Time passed before I decided to send them to the author of the book.

In the spring of 1954, I received a letter from Ivan Sergeyevich: "Many thanks for the album and an invitation that, unfortunately, this year I could not use ... Figures are very good for the deep disclosure of the main, poetic in my stories ( This depth and understanding are not distinguished by professionals, who usually entrusted to illustrate books). In the publisher, where my book is printed this year, I insisted that the artist makes the drawing like you: Mother with a child by the window, and outside the window shining, sunny, joyful world of nature, to which the child stretches his hands. The drawing will open my book. "

This bulk (almost 60 printed sheets) The collection "On warm land" Ivan Sergeevich sent, addressing his father and me: "Dear friends and my hard readers - Boris Grigorievich and Vadim Chernyshev for a good memory from the author. 1954, Leningrad. " (By the way, this book, a hotly perceived A. T. Teddovsky, served as the beginning of his very close, heart friendship with her author, despite the fact that Ivan Sergeevich met the poet in the editorial office of Smolensk newspaper significantly earlier, in the twenties).

In the first drawing in the book to the story "Childhood", the artist Samokhvalov portrayed what Ivan Sergeevich wrote about: Mother with a child at the opened window. Like other drawings, he seemed to me dry and soulless, about what I, together with gratitude to Ivan Sergeevich for a gift, did not fail to mention. He agreed with this: "... about the artist's drawings in my book you write very true. They are reasonable, cold, the artist was indifferent to the content of the book, did not know how to note the main thing (as unsuccessful, the illustrations of this artist were cold to the rich edition of Anna Karenina).

I would really like to visit another time in your forest-steppe edges, to meet there in spring. But already the age is not the same and all sorts of trouble and deeds are held. Who knows this spring, b. m. and tear.

On these days I returned from the Congress of Writers from Moscow. Aimedennaya saying is painfully tired. It took oxygen and I "UDRL" from the congress to Karacharovo, as surprised once with boring lessons.

Now I sit in Leningrad, but, apparently, I will soon leave (there is also not enough air here). We live in the old way, growing the grandmother.

For a rifle almost never take. Such a transformation occurs, as I noticed, with many old real hunters. "It's a pity" began to kill, the modern "hunters" -zhodizers are hated, who do not leave anything alive. I go with a wand. And it seems to me - I hear and see even more ... I always remember about your family with great pleasure.

Your I. Sokolov-Mikitov "

And again the attack: "... my drawing album is stored. Despite the technical shortcomings, there are many understanding of my writings in them, which artists-professionals are not. "

Well, finally, Ivan Sergeyevich noted my self-session (I did not receive a single lesson of drawing in my life), otherwise I, I myself, conscious of it, began to suspect an excessive consoletive courtesy, not necessary in trusting relationships. Somehow it became calmer in the soul ...

"I will be very happy if you have the opportunity to visit me in Karachars on the Volga. Nature here is typically Russian, with forests, water and fields. Largely reminds me of his native Smolenc region, where, however, nature is more feminine, there are more pure deciduous forests. And here the forest is preferably mixed, no clean deciduous forests. Many swamps, a lot of spruce and pine, a lot of water. Hunting, however, is rich, although the inlet broods were in the summer of my houses, there would seem to be, and this year ... "

In August 1957, receiving a vacation, I went to Karacharovo. I decided to get water through the channel Moscow-Volga and the Moscow Sea. The Moscow World Festival of Youth has just ended, on the ship were his guests who had been walking to Kalinin. Almost no one slept in a gentle summer night. On board reigned excitement from what was seen at the festival, from fleeting dating and relaxed communication, light road flirts and songs. I did not sleep, happily surviving holiday freedom, and the prefabricating meeting.

Morning we met on the Moscow Sea. I immediately indicated the house of Sokolowa-Mikitov, hesitated to the edge of the forest meters in three hundredth of the hulls of the holiday home "Karacharovo".

To the great regret, Ivan Sergeevich was in departure. Pavel Ivanovich Rumyantsev met me, his long-time friend, opera director, honored artist, was left at whose care. With pride and love for a friend Pavel Ivanovich showed me a manor, and reverently - just as I looked at things in the city office of the writer, on his written table, followed by wonderful stories and stories - I got acquainted with a suburban modest The housing of Ivan Sergeevich, with a young garden, planted by his hands, with the hives, testifying, as it always seemed to me, wise slowness and tidy of the owner.

Between the house and the Volga lay a meadow, who opened a view of the river. Later, it was built on a fashionable house with a solarium, a rosary, sauna, a boat journey and so on. For famous guests. But as long as he was free, Ivan Sergeevich declined Fedin to settle next door, but Konstantin Alexandrovich, who was worried about her earrings, and did not decide on it.

With a welcoming, sociable Paul Ivanovich we spent all day. Nutro, I went to Moscow by train: Konakovo, stood from Karacharov a few kilometers, tied up with a highway Moscow-Leningrad Narzokoleka, whose slopes were covered with shards, the waste of the Konakovsky porcelain plant (now there is a regular rut, direct communication with Moscow.)

While working on a diploma, I, as "put" a diplomany, married. Ivan Sergeevich posted in a letter that I did not introduce him to my wife, handed over to her, "apparently, your faithful friend, which is the most important thing."

But the "main thing" just did not work out. In relation to Ivan Sergeyevich, I felt some confidence that in my life everything should be "right" and I was ashamed for a banal family trouble, in which both are almost always obey; In any case, a man is always responsible for the perfect choice. And for some time I closed, the correspondence was cut off. Making sure that the family future for both of us does not promise anything good, I, without being connected by the party, just quit the factory. Now I was alone, the household conditions did not interest me, and I, since childhood, I dreamed of knowing the world, stated to the "hells on Kulichki" - in Kamchatka.

"The faithful friend", which Ivan Sergeevich wrote to me, when I came from Kamchatka on vacation, in the form of a visitor of the 1962 art exhibition in Manege - the very one that was so temperamentally and figuratively chrushchev. Fate brought us from the sensational picture of Nikonov "Geologists". Our out loud opinions expressed. The visitor turned out to be a geologist and could judge the canvas professionally. These disagreements, by the way, were hardly the only in our general further. But then we, perhaps, have not yet been realized that both are in the provision of His omnipotence of the case sent by - by whom? Providence?

Ten days later, my vacation ended, I flew to Kamchatka and sent a graduate of painting a challenge for checking the passage: Peninsula was then bordernone. She threw Moscow, work at the university and flew to Kamchatka. Alla and turned out to be the "faithful friend", she divided my attachment to Ivan Sergeevich and to the house of Sokolov, like everything else in life, including vacation long hunting trips.

Returning from Kamchatka, I unexpectedly met Ivan Sergeevich in Moscow. In the blue Chinese pixer and brown high hat, he was leisurely walking along Gorky Street, alien human time, and scattered looks around.

- Ivan Sergeevich!

- ABOUT! What fate?

It turned out, he stopped, as usual, in the hotel "Moscow," came out. We returned to the room, drank at a glass at the meeting. He complained that his eyesight goes out, it would hard to work, could not read. At the conclusion of doctors, he irreversibly died the optic nerve ...

With each trip to Leningrad, I visited Ivan Sergeevich. But the business trips were not frequent there, and Ivan Sergeevich himself was less likely in the city - more lived in Karacharov. But now it was possible on any weekend to invite "Karacharsky house", before it was about one hundred thirty kilometers from Moscow.

Karacharovo became the place of pilgrimage of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kalininist writers and journalists. For a long time, it was located next door to Ivan Sergeyevich in the second building of the female recreation, he was replaced by Soloohin, who loved the local places that wrote his "Grigorov Islands" about them, notes about the winter life of the fish. In this small building, which can be called writing, sometimes Ivan Sergeevich, sometimes lived in the winter when his house was drowned in a snowdrift.

Cyrus Asspenskaya, editor from the "Soviet writer" came from St. Petersburg, who prepared from Ivan Sergeyevich, and P. P. Shirmakov, an employee of the handwritten department of the Pushkin House, with whom we later amounted to a collection of memories of Ivan Sergeyevich, quickly disappeared with The counters, despite the circulation unusually large for such a genre.

The frequent Moscow guests were the spouses of Lifshitz, a journalist Schikov, "Novomirts" Lakshin, Sats, Dementiev, led by Twardovsky, who visited Ivan Sergeevich and without escort or with the daughter of Olya. Here the owner of the Karacharovskaya Domika was the first listener of the poem Alexander Trifonovich "Terkin on that light."

But it was not only involved in literature. Silent silent, the intelligent old woman Natalia Vasilyevna Barskaya, "The first bride of Ivan Sergeevich, - as reported in the letter Lydia Ivanovna, is a very good, loving person, we are all happy ..."; Being Mikhail Ivanovich Pogodin, the grandson of the famous historian Mikhail Petrovich Petrovich (in the Smolensk estate of which Gerezdilovo once served the godfather Ivan Sergeevich, the brother of Father Ivan Nikitich), Nadia Alimova lived for weeks (with her Lydia Ivanovna met in the hospital), the Konakovsky district authorities visited "Sanovny" guests from the "Palace of Svidany who grew up next door, as Ivan Sergeevich called him ...

We visited Mikitov several times over the summer - first together with Alla, and then threesome: I have long dreamed of getting a hunting dog again, I picked up on the garden rings the homeless, poked the car husky - dust.

Direct train to Konakova left at five in the morning. We traveled to the Leningrad station who had not yet woken up Moscow, occupied the corner in the car. In the reshetnik, the train turned away from the railway line and walked along the deserted one-stop. The composition of passengers changed: at the stations sat with dairy bids and baskets, with piglets squealing in bags, with wrapped groove groove grocery for sale in the bazaar. In the open window, fresh smells of a forest flowing to the canvas, flowering tolody, damp swamps. Here, in the quiet railway branch, among people "from the Earth", Russia was stronger ... As I approached Konakov, in the premonition of the emergency meeting with Ivan Sergeyevich and Lydia Ivanovna, with a familiar setting of their house, I still had mastered some more Special, artistic state of the Spirit, generating non-refined designs to do something else ...

In the eighth hour we traveled to Karachar. The owners still slept. In the quiet silence of the house there was anxiety: he could be a sleepless night, heart attacks Lydia Ivanovna, reception of medicines ... God forbid, so that it was not so! We left a backpack on the terrace and walked on the Volga, and more often in the forest, to our mushroom and berry places.

We returned to the morning tea with forestry. Lydia Ivanovna's already settled on a small kitchen, I noticed us.

- Ivan Sergeevich, Vanya, see who came to us!

From your room with a fireplace, filling out the doorway, Ivan Sergeevich fell through the high threshold, in his "academic" dark hat, in a long warmly loved coat, stitched by Alla, hugged and lightly patted on the back: - Well done, well done, which came !

I felt his strong handshake, a touch of thick hair beard, and I was in my soul: thank God, our worst assumptions were not confirmed.

Alla removed the graceed from the backpack, helped Lydia Ivanovna to cook breakfast, and we slowly sees in the beveyment Lydia Ivanovna, where her bed was standing behind the stove, and in the corner on a small table, her workplace was carefully covered with a typewriter. In an open window, a unpleasant joyful gamon of birds was raised, a magnificent jasmine and an unknown breed of Apple Tab- "Mikitovka", rising from the disgust thrown out by the window. Apples poured into the grown garden, but the hives were not long ago, Ivan Sergeyevich was not easy to mess around with bees. From somewhere from afar, the sounds of the awakened life of the holiday home came: the voices and screeching of bathing, slap on the ball, and here, for a leisurely breakfast, they had their conversations, she flowed his life, not like what holidaymakers lived.

"Well, let's go to my buckurus Nora, ceiling," Ivan Sergeevich invited and led to his room. The midday sunlight cut his eyes, the window was shaved by a green-yellow spotted curtain, like a rebelled skin of the princess frogs, we were covered by a twilight. Savoring the floors of the Kolata, Ivan Sergeevich was immersed in a wide low "Gagarinsky" chair, the god news as reached by the former owner of Karachar, Prince Gagarin, asked about the metropolitan news.

Everything, perhaps, in the "Barcuch dwelling" resided by no change: the writing table of the Maine Black Oak, who once owned by the Uncle of Ivan Sergeevich Ivan Nikitich, the bronze story-figurine on the fireplace of the fireplace, an old icon above the chair, from which, on family legend The bronze cross embedded in her thieves, in order to avoid what Ivan Sergeevich secured his cloves. The unhurried conversation concerned the publishing affairs, I transferred us to the cute owner by Smolensk region, then under Pskov, where the detachment of heavy bombers "Ilya Muromets" was based on, which were not only able to fly, but also to charge the Sokolov Motorist, then on the hot shores of the Bosphorus or blown by the polar winds of the cliff ice ...

And behind the pledged window marked a high summer sun, a champion was poured, a foliage of the Osin foliage was buried, a non-stroke song returned from the forest stay of holidaymakers was heard.

I persuaded Ivan Sergeevich, who had a bad sleeping at night, lie down and try to fall asleep at least during the day. "But only with a persuasion that you will tell," he agreed badly. - You're so early today we rose ...

But spending our short two-day stay on sleep was sorry. We went to the Volga or engaged in some minor economic deeds. Both of them, and Ivan Sergeevich, and Lydia Ivanovna, were always very grateful for the even a small service, and more than once in a conversation, "how good it was now," when the step of the porch was corrected or the firewood was fixed, or the stinking door shed . And when Adamych's recreation worker brought a couple of buckets from the speaker, Lydia Ivanovna was exorbitantly generously paid with him, hiding it from Ivan Sergeevich, who in male more soberly appreciated trivial help.

Hazard Sasha entered the Moscow Music School named after Gnesins, the Falcon family reunited now only for vacation time. Although loved ones, the apartment was still to live "in people", and Sasha still a teenager had learned to independence, collens and self-discipline, which remained his distinctive feature for life.

The question of moving the older falcons in Moscow arose. Ivan Sergeevich loved Peter, a majority of his books were published here, here he had a long-standing literary tie, friends and acquaintances. He grumbled, comparing himself with an old tree, not suitable for transplanting to a new place, but understood that the move was inevitable, he also missed Sasha - only with him now all hopes, love and care were connected with him. In addition, many old friends of Ivan Sergeevich in St. Petersburg no longer became, and in Moscow, Lydia Ivanovna had relatives, Brother Anatoly Ivanovich and Sister Elizabeth Ivanovna.

We also really wanted to speed up their move to Moscow. We requested the documents necessary for the exchange of living spaces and have gained a bath lane where this service was located, received the addresses there and went to penetration. But all that was proposed was incomparably with a spacious four-bedroom apartment in Leningrad. One of the Moscow apartments was offered in the old house on the foreground next to the zoo. She was interested in Ivan Sergeevich, immediately having received the name "elephant". He was attracted not to the apartment itself, but the ability to observe the zebra from the windows, as walking in the Zebra Pan, but in the morning they wake up under the cries of peacocks and leap crock. But even such an undoubted advantage did not pay down the windiness of the house and the launches of what is called sanitary and household amenities. No, "elephant" was not suitable too ...

The housing issue quickly decided after Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov intervened. Ivan Sergeyevich was granted not so spacious as in Leningrad, but quite acceptable three-bedroom apartment on the avenue of the world. Mikitova at this time were in Karachars, all the troubles for sending things were taken over by Anatoly Ivanovich and Elizabeth Ivanovna. In the fall of 1967, Ivan Sergeevich and Lydia Ivanovna arrived in Moscow from the cottage to the already furnished accommodation.

The house earlier, the staff of the Chinese representative office was posted. Ivan Sergeyevich, who after marriage called his young wife "China", such a coincidence gave rise to jokes over the Lydia Ivanovna, as the "heiress" of the Chinese dwelling. He generally loved the joke, knew how to appreciate the draws. He fell a joke with a feast, exposing a charter with a side ruster and a slop with pebbles. Noticing, as Lidia Ivanovna told that one of his acquaintances was carrying a portfolio for importance, which was only the subject of entourage, Ivan Sergeevich had a brick imperceptibly in him, and the owner of the portfolio, not looking into him, wore him so few days. In the living room, Mikitov hung a big, picturesque, in the oval frame, the portrait of the emperor Paul, Someone donated Ivan Sergeevich. When guests: interested, who is depicted, Ivan Sergeevich completely seriously explained that this is the ancestor Lydia Ivanovna: - Do you notice what amazing similarity?

Not the first time he has hearing, Lydia Ivanovna grumbled: - Well, what are you, Ivan Sergeevich, say again, saying? Do not believe him, he plays you.

Sometimes his jokes were not quite harmless. In one of the visits of Tvardovsky in Karacharovo, they and Ivan Sergeyevich decided to go to the deaf Petrovsky lakes. To the extensive moss swamp - "MCH", as tver they say, - they are brought to the chauffeur of the holiday home, the native of those places. Further before the boat transfer it was necessary to overcome the swamp. As a more experienced traveler and a hunter, Ivan Sergeevich walked ahead. Noticing that his companion was lagging behind, he hid in pines to look at the guest. Alexander Trifonovich approached, worried: where is the accustomed, where? He began to look around, kill him - only waiting time, Ivan Sergeevich came out of the shelter ...

Similarly, he swirl over Fedin when he came in the middle of the twenties in Kislovo. They went to swim at the mill pond, the owner suggested a boyishly to argue who she stays longer under water. Konstantin Alexandrovich emerged - there is no friend. He assumed that Ivan Sergeevich, a former sailor, a good swimmer, will win a dispute, but there is no longer him for a very long time ... She passed another minute, another thing ... it became clear that the trouble would have grown. Konstantin Alexandrovich made tears, with a fallen heart, he rushed into the village for men. And here, from under the pavements, where Ivan Sergeevich was sitting, he was heard "Ku-ku!"

From childhood, he absorbed a good folk humor, he was alien to pop cubs, the dedication of the memorials of the humorists, he did not understand them and did not love them. Once after the publication of a selection of small stories about the colors of the forest, some kind of wrist written or in the "star", or in the "Neva" parody of these stories, beating in it that the flowers bloom at a certain time: "In such an hour And so many minutes of dandelions, then - violets, etc. " (By the way, it was, it seems, the only parody associated with the work of Sokolova-Mikitov).

Ivan Sergeevich was in the extreme, sincere perplexity: - I do not understand why it is done ... This is what should be funny? How do you think? But what is funny here, the colors really have their own schedule, it knows everyone who observed their person ...

He was intolerable to any manifestation of vulgarity, whether in a relationship between people, in a conversation, in the pursuit of a book language or in the content itself, all vulgarity was organically alien to him. It was impossible to imagine any scubinous anecdote in his lips, although they did not even rush them and more than others remembered the anecdotes with animals, where their character was manifested, similar to Russian tales. I remember, for example, such: a bear goes through the forest, he is digging by his strength, everyone is broken in front of him until the hare met. - Away, oblique, from the road! - Himself, Bear, go! - What are you?! I am Toptygin! - And I - Kosygin!

It is not difficult to guess what it was, of course, during the premiership of Alexei Nikolayevich Koshigina.

The foundations of peasant culture from the young age, who inherited from Mother of Fighter to the Word and Love for the Language, and from the Father, a poetic attitude towards nature, which combined two fundamental beginnings of national culture, Ivan Sergeevich was a genuine Aristocrat of the Russian Spirit, distinguished by clarity and speech nobility, The advantage and nobility of the behavior, simplicity and heart attitude towards people. Resistant patient in adversity and tests that have fallen out to his share, Ivan Sergeevich was very restrained in his feelings and experiences. And if he, having survived the death of all his three daughters, admitted that his whole life was a chain of heavy losses, among whom was no less serious one, the most terrible - the loss of Russia can be represented as deeply sat in it pain for the destiny of the country, In which it was even more expensive to him, and first of all - a sown attitude towards Mother-Earth. And this - in those years, when the country was a powerful power ... as if his heart bleeded now, when Russia, which became part of the state fragmented by traitors, humiliated by the winds of the West, a country with robbed indifferent to the fate of the nation with a fierce, extinct, uncontrollably rolled According to the disastrous path of the plant morality, the agony of Russian villages, theft of national natural wealth, predatory logging of forests, creating a truly sensible, which is affordable for the normal life of people of the public device ...

We once talked with Ivan Sergeevich about the existence of an objective truth in the world, representing the only true way of prosperity of the nation, and about the wisdom of state leaders who could realize this truth to create a fair order in the country, the closest such truth in the country . People who understand that the current situation is unnatural and cannot continue for a long time, the changes and the acquisition of truth are waiting out of the latter forces. When will it be, who bothers it?

I did not wait for Ivan Sergeevich celebrations of the Goodness of Truth. Did not live and up to the currently existing, very heavy for a Russian man, far away from her, public order.

He feared that with the move to Moscow he would lose his St. Petersburg friends, and the new it was too late. But I was wrong: in the Moscow apartment on the avenue of the world of Visiters, it was hardly more than in Leningrad. The Publishing Workers quickly wrapped up to him, there was a former "student Masha", Maria Gavrilovna Schemelinin, Irina Pavlovna Rumyantseva, the daughter of the late friend Pavel Ivanovich, the peer and girlfriend of the daughters of Ivan Sergeevich Arinushka and Alyonushki, who once held the summer at the Novgorod Lake Karabahn, called Sister Sergey Yesenin, which he just called Shura, did not forget to visit, when he came to Moscow, St. Petersburg friends, visited friends from the "New World", where he printed from the 20s, came Suliel Mironovich Alasan, who first published Before the revolution, Alexander Bloka, who became an artistic editor of "Detgiz" now became the revolution in his publishing house.

Here Ivan Sergeevich Bishop Saradovsky and Volgograd Pimen, an expert of Russian literature, especially those who were tissue-to-Mikitov, who was the last fakir of Russia Dmitry Ivanovich Longo, with alive dark eyes on a dark eyes, similar to Indian Bramin, came here from the Lapland Reserve Oleg Izmailovich Semenov -The Sheanzhansky, who has been stayed by Ivan Sergeyevich three times in the 30s, here it was possible to meet the Kislov's fellow villagers-Kuma Vasily Glebovich Kotov, a countryman from near to Kislov who disappeared by the villages of the poet of Vladimir Fomichev and even single-slang from the flight squad "Ilya Muromets", which lived Its age somewhere in the suburbs ... Listed all impossible.

Having become acquainted with Ivan Sergeyevich, people were faithful to this acquaintance and stretched to him. Not only the writer grank - they, as a pure spring, attracted the system of his thoughts and his own lifestyle, alien to any falsehood, his extraordinary fate and the extraordinary personality, spiritual location to guests, encouraging them to Revelation - what only could Interested in the owner's interlocutor. His house was always open and accessible. I do not know the case when Ivan Sergeyevich refused to accept the visitor, referring to employment. This sometimes used people casual, unceremoniously aspecting to him. It happened with us with Alla. The conversation became tedious and uninteresting, I boiled down to answers. Alla leaving Lydia Ivanovna - find some business to help her. I have seen the guests from what the owner of the house is alive, from his books that they did not read that they were led only to the curiosity to see the writer who was familiar with Bunin, Cook and Remizov, with Gorky, Yesenin and His Isedor Duncan, With Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Hippius and Sasha Black, whose names have already become a breeze of literary legends. I regret Ivan Sergeevich and jealously to visitors who did not deserve his openness and the last time.

But more often, Mikitov had, of course, friends and long-standing familiar.

Kyivlyanin Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov, his "neutubilenial recognition" in love for Ivan Sergeevich, who celebrated his 70th anniversary in the May 2012 of the New World in 1962, did not miss the case to look, the existence in Moscow, Vladimir Yakovlevich Lakshin came with fresh literary news, came Alexander Triomponovich Tvardovsky, Heat and gently believed to Ivan Sergeevich ("What is a beautiful old old man," told "Trifonch"). The frequent guests were the spouses of Lifshitsy, old familiar, even in Leningrad, who moved to Moscow significantly earlier, after the war. A witty person, a fan of literary mysteries, the poet Vladimir Lifshitz was the "parent" of fictional heroes - "Lyudow" and "Dushetraba" Evgeny Sazonov, a permanent character of the 16th band "Litgazetas", and the imaginary English poet James Clifford, "translations" from which he She covered his sharp dissident poems. He suggested creating a humorous organization "Disci" - the voluntary society of lovers of Ivan Sergeevich, where he turned on, besides himself and his wife Irina, us with Alla, Fakir Longo, Viktor Nekrasov and Konstantin Alexandrovich Fedin - the last with the "probation period during which he must overtake Installation from Ivan Sergeyevich Phone "(Fedin was then the first secretary of the board of the joint venture of the USSR). "Belob belonging to Discuits in the forest", as prescribed by the founder, and the entrance fee in the "society" was "white head". "Vladimir Alexandrovich Lifshitz came up with this cute joke soon after our move to Moscow," Lydia Ivanovna wrote on the "Charter".

Now we have been on the avenue of the world, 118a almost every week. The apartment was quiet: the house stood in the depths of the courtyard away from the highway. In the room Ivan Sergeyevich, located against the front door, stood a twilight from the master window. He saw badly and only lateral vision, could not write anything but short letters. From a subtle cardboard I made Ivan Sergeyevich Transparente with slots, the lines now did not slip, but the letters still treated each other, bitterly was to see such Scriptures ...

But still he continued to work. The Board of the Union of Writers helped him to acquire the Dictaphone "Grundick". Ivan Sergeevich picked up the text, he listened, washing something that did not like, dictated again. Lydia Ivanovna transfers this text to the machine, read it out loud. If Ivan Sergeyevich was heard something unsuccessful, he again ruled for printing completely. It was unusual and scrambled, but the books went out. After moving to Moscow, he was published "Favorites" in the Publishing House "Moskovsky Worker", "at the bright origins", "in the homeland of birds", "Selected works in 2 volumes" in Leningrad, "Year in the Forest" in " Detgiz ", who received the Grand Prix at the International Book Exhibition, and two or three small children's books, were prepared by the Far Coast, published soon after his death in Moscow and the" long-standing meeting "in Leningrad ... Is it not enough for a writer On the eighth dozen years, almost lost, besides, vision?

He was helped by Lydia Ivanovna. She revised old notebooks, chose unpublished, read Ivan Sergeevich, and he, configured, created new "Weretsi" - records of old years and new stories. So from the passages selected by Lydia Ivanovna, one of the best late stories Sokolowa-Mikitov was born - "Date with childhood."

But the main source of materials for work was, of course, the memory of Ivan Sergeevich. She kept many episodes from his amazing, rich events of life, meetings with extraordinary people. In the conversations, Ivan Sergeevich recalled - unexpectedly, perhaps, for himself, - the past and told about it with details that were asked for paper.

"You would have written about this, Ivan Sergeevich," I reminded, listening to him. - This is the ready story!

- Yes, it would be necessary, he vaguely agreed. - Only what I'm already now, cute, writing ... But maybe I'll think ...

Such memories were often its "draft" work, workpiece for future stories. But - not all: his talent was unusually demanding and elected, and a lot of what he spoke about, it was not written only because he did not lie in his soul, and it was not heated by his lyrical feeling and love. This, apparently, is explained by the fact that he has written relatively a little - relatively with the life luggage, which fate saturated with steep turns took place.

"Sin" wrote little, "Ivan Sergeevich confessed somehow. "But I never forced myself to write, did not squeeze, did not sleep and wrote just what I wanted.

Maybe therefore, Ivan Sergeevich remained unfulfilled, Ivan Sergeyevich, like Lion Tolstoy, his excellent story "Childhood" "adolescence" and "adolescence". During the years, a lot was not like in a cloudless childhood: a state-of-home school, strict Vitzmundra of soulless teachers, live a "corner" resident in someone else's house, first conflicts with bosses and gendarmerie, search in the apartment, pre-war, pre-revolutionary alarm voltage in society - All this was not a close lyrical walla of the soul of the writer Sokolova-Mikitov and when creating a "adolescence" and "youth" would require the appeal not only to the "Memory of Selfness" as in the "childhood", but also to the "Event Memory", to revive which, It would be unpleasant to worry about them.

The person is impressionable and observant, with a rare visual memory, he wrote about a friend - about the joy of staying in the world surrounding him among the loved ones, dear people. It was spiritualized by his love and brought him pleasure. And on the slope of the years, in the darkness closed over him, he appeared with a special inner vision called memorable meetings with people, resurrected paintings and phenomena of nature. Deeply sitting in a chair in a blue ermomolka on a large head, in his beloved warm dressing, holding a microphone "Grundick" with a ridiculous eye, he dictated his surprisingly picturesque stories about how the sun was playing, how the stars are played and sprinkling the sky ... So there were "long-standing meetings", the cycles of the stories about trees and colors, about the birds - the "sounds of the earth". Ivan Sergeevich told readers how he was happy to feel "his own in his", as this feeling of kinship with the world and proximity to people fills a person with the joy of existence and asks the inevitable in life of adversity. The simple and wise formula of Sokolowa-Mikitov - "his own in her" - it seems so understandable and obvious, but as it is not easy to comprehend it, because it is based on the love of "his own" and, therefore, it is necessary to know this "its", otherwise - Is it possible to love what you do not know? But would you like to know what you have no love does not lie? Vicious circle. This is probably the greatest difficulty of following its formula ...

All the work of Sokolov-Mikitov, executed by the author's sense, was always addressed to a friend with the hope of establishing some spiritual communication with him. He believed that any writer should bring his readers the joy of awakening love for peace and to people, make readers better. Ivan Sergeevich never believed himself to writers- "professionals." About this, I know, he spoke with Viktor Nekrasov, we are talking about it now, sitting at an oval table, as you will enter the room to the right. In the course of the conversation, I guess that he believes that he believes who, taking anyone interested his theme of his work, methodically develops it, daily issuing "on-mountain" at least two typewritten pages, as Alexey Tolstoy did or, what Yuri Oleshi sought - not to spend "no day without a line." "Professional" would have written, of course, "adolescence", and "Youth", about the misadventures in the wandering on the covered civil war of Russia, creating something similar to "goats in torment", and a lot, many other things ... who are only Did not sit on this "guest" a sofa of the oval table under the ancient sampling on the wall! This, of course, is not a weapon, is a hunting rarity, room decoration. And just as now, a familiar shtof, a plate with sandwiches cooked by Ivanovna, was certainly attended the table. This is not a meal - this is a conversation attribute. From time to time in the inclined Tonfofe, Ivan Sergeevich is called "cozy" little glass, a pleasant bath pronounces the usual "Be sure", the assupping is pretentious, carefully looking for her place on the table. And again flowing a leopard, the most interesting conversation, in which memories emerge - seemingly fabulous times, countries, events, people ... perhaps, then, when Ivan Sergeyevich takes a recorder, they will become completed prose works.

He was a master of oral story, a master of conversation and a very attentive listener. But it was manifested when there were a little interlocutors. In crowded, especially noisy companies Ivan Sergeevich became more. Later I read in his notebook: "Yesterday - at local writers. After the first glass, everyone shouts, like in a rustic wedding, no one listens to anyone ... Self, noise ... "

The lost Russian custom of the sincere conversation is still preserved in some places in the north, where you can hear: "Come on the conversation. Come in the feast, talk ... "

Our conversations often end with reading. From the society of the blind Ivan Sergeevich send "talking books" - boxes with prose records, which he listens to nights in insomnia, alone.

When Ivan Sergeyevich asks for something to read, I already know that it is about Bunin, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Their books, I think, encourage him to our own creativity. After all, most writers have the closest forerunner in the literature, whose works are touched by the soul and give rise to the desire to take care of their own. This is not epigone, but the relationship of the addictions and literary tastes. Especially close to Sokolov-Mikitov Bunin. And we again reread his stories.

Now, after moving, the family is falcons assembled. Sasha's room behind the living room, through two walls there are sounds of the piano. In the pauses of the conversation, Ivan Sergeevich clone his head, listens.

- What is your patience! "Lee approvingly, he says with reproach."

- After all, Sasha began to do, as he came from the Conservatory. And now, right, about eight? More than four hours ...

Ivan Sergeevich wants, it is likely that Sasha also sat here at an oval table, and participated in a conversation.

- As soon as you do not get bored, - he shake his head, clarifies his attitude.

- "And if it is love?" - I remember somewhere heard the phrase.

"After all, you, Ivan Sergeevich, returning at the twenty second of Germany, after some five to six years you have already prepared your first three-volume collected works. Also, probably, I had to sit, fed?

And it seems to me, according to his stories, as he marrying a year after returning, worked in his "office", a small room of the Kochanth house (for some time of the Sokolov lived in the neighboring Turk of Cochani), the loudspeat on the walls of the fir bore, followed by Forest spiders were settled, the casual corners of the silver web, blushing in the light of the kerosene lamp (spiders, the networks of the network, were always pretty Ivan Sergeevich, like "Hunters").

"Yes, you are right," Ivan Sergeevich agrees. - Indeed, wrote a lot and enthusiastically ...

But there was a pretty heart literature, and here - the music, a serious, unfamiliar, is unattended ... Loving his work with the Word, Ivan Sergeyevich, it is likely that the grandson becomes "the second Mikitov", and he has completely different addictions and hobbies. For the whole half harvesters, the gloomy grandfather, high and slim, similar to Hellen, as Gleb Goryshin wrote (I would clarify: at the Olympic), Sasha already knew very well what he wants. I have never seen him idle; Whenever I came to Mikitov, he was either still in the conservatory, or was engaged in himself, I conquered his ability to work and purposefulness. Apparently, just so it was possible to achieve something in music - in big music, if he chose her a business of life. I was convinced of this example Rudolph Kerera. It turned out that with this widely famous pianist, we were in one car along the way to Karelia. I recognized the celebrity - I had to hear it. In the open door of the next coupe, it was seen as long before Petrozavodsk, he extracted a small dumb keyboard from a suitcase and a long played on it, warm fingers and hand brushes. After spending for a pianity for many years, he still could not afford the weakness to refuse, despite the road conditions, from such morning charging.

In those years, I was twice as older than Sasha and knew a lot of life examples of how the god received from God without hard work and aspiration, without the internal discipline of Niclo and went into the sand ...

"So it is," Ivan Sergeevich reluctantly agreed. - Well, let's see ...

Sasha then studied at the famous Cerizer Gennady Christmas, and Lydia Ivanovna, I didn't want anything at all, it seems that the grandson did not go in the footsteps of his grandfather, in a conversation with Alla, who helped her in the kitchen, dreamed like Sasha, high, young and beautiful, in black Thrake and white manishkee will stand with a stick in his hand for the conductor. But hard in the most bold dreams of Lydia Ivanovna could assume that her grandson would be a rector of the Moscow Conservatory, and then he will lead the entire national culture - the fact that everything that happens in the country grow ...

In Lydia Ivanovna constantly lived a subconscious fear of what Arinoshka and Alyonushka took away from her - fear of charms and water. This imposed a painful imprint on her love for Sasha, which she tried to protect him from all vital troubles. To avoid trouble, she did what I could: any dish for Sasha squeezed as much as possible. Ivan Sergeyevich was prepared separately: over the years he completely refused meat, which was not completely contraindicated to the rapidly growing, the husband's grandchild.

Poet Mezhirov, accompanied in the summer of 1974 in Karacharovo Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov, who wanted to see and say goodbye to Ivan Sergeyevich before leaving to France, was shared, as one of the brightest, there must be impressions from this trip (he was at Mikitov for the first time):

- Lydia Ivanovna prepared the grave of the scrambled eggs and laid the oil tool on the pan! Never seen this!

She would probably be ready to do something for Sasha and more - just?

In the summer in Karacharov Sasha, who was accustomed to independence and noticeably relevant to her, often in good weather spent on the "his" island at the opposite desert shore, where he had a tent. After dinner, he sailed on the boat for the night and returned in the morning. His crossroads in the dark through a wide reservoir was very disturbed by Lydia Ivanovna. She walked after Sasha ashore and asked him as soon as he would get to the island, snag from there with a flashlight. We accompanied Lydia Ivanovna, so as not to leave her alone on the dark coast. From the home of the rest, muted muffled music - there were dancing there. Removed, squeezed the burst of cheerful. On the sand raided the wavy from the past tug - Lydia Ivanovna was disturbing, could Sasha managed to cross it? But in the dark, hiding the other coast, blinked to the light, and we were reassured to return to the house where Ivan Sergeevich was waiting for us, the time in the "Gagarinsky" chair. He also worried about Sasha, but did not show the appearance. He never navigate his feelings to loved ones. This was also noted Shurin Ivan Sergeyevich, Anatoly Ivanovich, who visited the newlyweds of Sokolov, soon after their wedding. Nor in relation to the young wife, nor to his mother Maria Ivanovna, with which he was mentally close, Ivan Sergeevich openly did not show any "tenderness", which only spoke about the depth and delicacy of his feelings.

Sasha seemed restrained. In those years, when I relatively often saw him, he was harshly demanding to himself, mercilessly forcing himself to work much and systematically, and I again remembered the ker ...

For me, there was a natural chastity of such restrained, and more precisely, constrained - relations. A similar order also existed in our family - yes, probably in most other Russian families, - where all the "surging", the use of all sorts of "smear", and in fact the derogatory "Zainek", "Laponek", and so on. In addition, as it probably, most often happens, a teenager, early began to hunt, I "produced a man's hard character" (not very successfully, to admit) and the manifestation of any mental "weaknesses" considered incompatible with my aspirations.

But all this, of course, is age, over the years it passes. It is much more important that there was a sense of love for loved ones, to people who find the ways of expression.

And our long-limits with Ivan Sergeevich have always been smooth and restrained, without "exclamation marks." It is invariably, under any circumstances remained himself, to present it with a fussy, confused, was impossible to be knocked out of this state. Even when receiving in 1972 in the Kremlin - where I accompanied him - the Order of the Labor Red Banner (the third, by the way, in the account) in connection with the eightieth of the birth, when the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Holov is especially warm, with Eastern Respect to Sedinam congratulated And I wished the successful work, Ivan Sergeevich, not as an example of another awarded, having crumbling words, just thanked and added at home: - I will try!

As far from him, as alien to him, in his philosophical wise of calm, there were all sorts of career, conjunctural humanities, vain mining! And how attracted it was his tranquility, from which they smalleled and went on their own everyday worries!

Ivan Sergeevich was situated as calm and ospanis at the table on the day of the seventieth anniversary of Lydia Ivanovna on August 29, 1970: she was the same age of the century. It was felt in this peace of mind, the consciousness of his worthy lived life, in which it was not for what to blow herself, and Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin was located on the sides, which seemed for some reason a few cramped, and Boris Alexandrovich Petrov, Surgeon, Director of the Sklifosovsky Institute, Calcovoy and talkative.

- As Karacharovsky Ilya Muromets with the heroes of Dobryna and Alesh Popovich! - noticed someone from the guests. - You can make a desire, Ivan Sergeevich: between two academics are sitting!

- What between two! - Zahlotal Boris Alexandrovich. - I do not know how Konstantin Aleksandrovich, and I really lost the expense, how many academies I academician! - And he began to bend fingers, listed by foreign academies who won it with their member.

The day clone to the sunset, the room was filled with the oblique yellow rays of the soft premium sun, it was ease and fun. The culprit of the celebration, the dilapidated and lively from the attention facing it, was climbed by the table, as always young laughed at jokes. Remembered the past, discussed the present. They remembered how Ivan Sergeevich scared in Kislov Fedin, hiding in the water under the carriage.

- Kostya, all we know about each other, as if each of us lived two lives, my own friend! - Rastrochno said Ivan Sergeevich.

Guests diverged when it was completely dark. I also went out to make a breath of evening. On the side of the asphalt track to the holiday house lay the bevelled oat field. I sat down and got sophisticated on a pile of straw. Dusty starred by the stars, played Augustus magnificent sky. In the rest of the rest, I touched another noisy day. On the Volga silent breathlessly, neutral lights, water-reflected water, a tug. I sat cozy in satisfying straw sick, warmly remembered the conversations at the table, I thought about Ivan Sergeyevich - from Lydia Lydia Ivanovna, where it was already cleaned by the dishes and preparing to sleep, he also moved to his "Barcuchia Nora", resting From guests in the "Gagarin" chair ... Think of his close neighborhood in the house on the edge, gently twisted in the greenery of foliage with a light bulb above the porch, it was dead and pleasant.

In the dark, which hid the opposite coast, I saw that I stretched out for Dal: Sleeping fields and diverged in the nightlife of the forest flooded with electric light of the city, sleepless airfields and train stations, places of lights villages and towns, and - expanses, expanses that go far there, where already A new day began ...

Any bird's eye view I saw what I managed to know the familiar images and faces of the fastened edges: the birch silence of pine horses, funny birch slices, sandy sandy dressed rivers, made by cross-shirts of carriers, the Skitsky rigor of the dark Sleeping firings, dried from the midday heat, in the cloud of smells of the tormented grass waters of the Kalmyk steppe, transparent lakes of Karelia, reflected in the autumn of the shore, touching and naive local letters of the icon in the clean marine, now abandoned northern chapels, Pacific Pacific Space Boots, shaking Kamchatka shores, quiet rural railway stations with white bricks around stiff clubs, with knitting, dyed groove nests, with biased horse-haired horses, dusty, dusty, in the cuttletry cuttlecles, flowing breaths of heated asphalt motorway with airborne airborne air. .

I valued all this, as the biggest my property, the love of my property was not unrealisticly connected with a hot feeling to Ivan Sergeyevich himself, who helped his work, with his life example to realize - to be already sitting in me - a generic involvement in what I loved and make my existence happier.

I did not immediately notice how tears flowed down the cheeks. They did not close their breath, did not pour out the throat - quiet, warm, secluded tears of grateful love from happiness to feel "their own in their".

After the anniversary of Lydia, Ivanovna and I went to Karelia, in Zaughye. It was the place of our permanent, over a number of years, holidays, magnificent time of flattering with the faucets, our husky, the silence of island villages, fishing, mushroom and berry hunting. With the unchanging welcome, our friends took us closest. Ivan Sergeevich was always vividly interested in what we saw what the fright began. He was in those regions in September 1926, twenty years after Svanchina, who returned from there not only a hunter, but also a writer, and for the first time in 1966, after forty years after Ivan Sergeevich. During this time, there has changed a lot: they are detected by the good, on the centuries put the houses-choirs of small villages on the shores of the lakes, life was bored in the boardy barracks of the stationary villages, in a sawmill, but we were still caught by someone untouched decoration of houses and chapels, soon looted by urban Marauders tourists, savages, for which each grade, each sequin or lamp seemed to be an objects of alien life and fell as "souvenirs".

And in May 1972, we celebrated another anniversary: \u200b\u200bthe 80th anniversary of Ivan Sergeevich. Shortly before that, he returned from the hospital, felt no matter, and the celebration passed modestly. At the end of the short festive feast, the jubilee was requested in his chair, offered to go to his room, after a long reflection, to give to such a date, we bought in the art stock store ... a doll in the Smolensk folk attire. In his apron's pockets, I put a congratulatory message:

"I bless that day and that hour in my fate, when I received your letter, introducing me to you almost twenty-five years ago. It is terrible to think about that this could not happen, as scary, how to think that it could not be - the life of life otherwise - meetings with the world around me in childhood. Now it is impossible to assume that the heart would be heard, do not be it ...

Having discovered your creativity for myself, I was happily amazed - for the first time, perhaps in life - the ability of simple words laid down in them to express love and, moreover, wonderfully cause a sense of love in response. For the first time, it opened in all cleanliness a source of genuine art, humane and elevation - love for the depicted ...

Acquaintance with you has become a natural continuation of the charm of your books, as if I had risen on the river to her origin, I pushed the moral example, the power of which I feel more and more.

Bless that day and that hour ...

On the day of your eightieth, I wish you, dear Ivan Sergeevich, a long life of life and everything is the best with that passion, with which it is possible to wish it the closest friend, the only one ... "

When the guests left, Lydia Ivanovna began to describe Ivan Sergeevich received gifts, discovered this letter, read it. Ivan Sergeevich was touched, she was silent, and Lydia Ivanovna called us when we were already preparing for sleep. It is necessary to say how I was too happy and touched ...

Our two-day stays in Karachars on Saturdays and Sundays flew quickly, we always left the hospitable, a dear house with us. Therefore, we decided to spend a part of the holidays of 1973, we were asked for the consent of the owners and immediately received a letter from Lydia Ivanovna: "... Ivan Sergeevich, of course, very, very glad to your arrival, revived and calmed down ... You both understand How little hope for the fact that for us two is possible "future summer" and in general for some kind of future. And so it would be good to spend that little that we have left, with lovers lovers ... "

We are located in the same little extension, where they spent the night in the neighborhood with the summer room of Ivan Sergeyevich, and healed with one family. Alla took over the basic economic care around the house, we abandoned the receiving state dinners in the working dining area of \u200b\u200bthe rest and cooked now, trying to streamline the day so that the Night Sleep of Ivan Sergeyevich, who suffered from insomnia. But, having lost sight, in the day and night, he still often climbed at night, and he could hear behind the wall, as he crossed out, deaf with, somehow the basket was particularly tragically sounded in the night dictated his "Grundika" - he worked.

Waking up early, so as not to disturb Ivan Sergeyevich and, God forbid, not to wake him, if he forgotten the morning sleep, we quietly opened the window of our room, planted dust and got out into the garden. The breakfast was returned with forest gifts - with viburnum branches, rosehip, with mushrooms.

The house is hard, in Starikovski, woke up, was preparing for late breakfast. During the day, someone posted Ivan Sergeevich from the holiday home, Lydia Ivanovna demonstrated our morning prey, they were wondered, because the mushrooms in that autumn was not so thick, and Ivan Sergeevich said: - Well, yes, they already know Where to take ...

In his lips, it was a high praise.

Mobility due to blindness relaxed Ivan Sergeevich. I persuaded him to take a stroll, he reluctantly agreed, left his chair, and we went to the allee, stretching from the house in the forest. I took a chair with me, so that he could be prevailed. Everything in the same brown seated bathrobe and blue hat, he sat on a chair, listened to the sounds of the forest.

- Dyteltor? - he took up the beard. - By the fall forest, and this hard worker is hammering all year round ...

Especially good were leisurely evening tea drinking. Boris Petrovich came, his sister Tamara Petrovna, and sometimes someone from the replacing residents of the neighboring "palace". The protracted meal was interviewed and memories. Outside the window, reflecting the light of the lamp, thick darkness. And so cozy it was at the table in a log spot with Mazana Mazani with a duchine-dutch, which is a wonderful animal artist, Illustrator of Books Sokolova-Mikitov Georgy Nikolsky painted by the beasts of the Russian forest, in the situation of general benevolence and good jokes, which did not want to disperse when it was " Repeater hour "waste to sleep. Together with us at the table on a chair between me and the owner of the house was sitting our wise wad. He laughed at us when Tikonko Dr., "read" the newspaper brought to him, "told" about what he saw in a dream or in a low voice threatened by the neighboring beetle, a black dog from the "House of Dates", when he mentioned his name and asked to "speak out" what he thinks about him. Ivan Sergeevich stroited him on his head, very delicate by nature, universal favorite pyzh gratefully fleece from caress, and the owner spoke, smiling at the mustache: - Eh, wad, would you have been a man, would not give up from a glass!

If there were no guests, often occupied the evenings reading out loud. As usual, it was Bunin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and sometimes - the early stories of Ivan Sergeevich himself, who were pretty forgotten to them, or something from the new.

"Yes, there is still gunpowder in Porokhimnitsa," confirmed Lydia Ivanovna, when I praised one of his last things, "Vertushushka", then I immediately had on the pages of the nearest "New World". - You know that Vanya never studied anywhere, he is a nugget, marked by the grace of God, he is all - by nature ...

Standing September, the worship of Indian summer. We remembered the village, where the land, burdened by the fruits of the autumn generous, gives people a sense of contentment, brings pleasant care for harvesting, when on the gardens, spreading the smell of dry tops and burnt potatoes, bonfires are burning, near which the kids are being pushed, the carts are squeakable under the twilight The severity of the bags, and next to them go, having barely told the trees, the men are pronounced. It's time for reserves for the whole of the long winter ... It happened in our rural house, in the senzi whose heavy round mountain, like car wheels, pumpkins, was filled with potatoes in the shelf, and the battery of cans and bottles grew on the shelf; Also, probably happened in the Kislov estate ...

And in the Karacharovsky hut, too, the domobito smelled with removed Antonovsky apples, mushrooms, marinade. Lydia Ivanovna and Alla enthusiastically hung on a tiny kitchenette, the apple jam cooled in the basin was cooled there, banks were shot and filled. The aromas who spread around the house reached the rooms of Ivan Sergeevich. Osuring your hand, he appeared in the doors of the kitchen, trying to guess what happens in it. It was noticeable - he liked these autumn troubles, which were probably the Smolensk region, where the land lived, and Maria Ivanovna, a good mistress, was engaged in autumn blanks.

It was one of our best vacations. In order to save us from Konakotsky bus and clutch in the Ludna Konakovsky bus, Boris Petrovich volunteered to give his car, "throw up" to Zavidovo to the Kalininsk train. Lydia Ivanovna came out on asphalt. When "Volga" moved, in the rear view mirror, I noticed how she was running, it shyly crossed us into the "long" road. I was thorough in my throat ...

As nothing else, probably, the immobility brings old age. Ivan Sergeyevich annoyed when she walked blindly, bumping into items, gone face in the tree branches, and preferred to sit in a chair. He fell awrying of old people, who canting in the morning "Rynsty of heart attack", all sorts of diets and means of "rejuvenation". Vyacheslav Alekseevich Lebedev visited him by Elderly writer, was horrified when the owner somehow suggested that he had a drink on a glass:

- Ivan Sergeevich, is it possible, at our age?! I have long refused this and generally moved, mainly on oatball, it is very useful. I advise you very much ...

- Well, as you wish, and I will skip to your health. I am not a crow to live three hundred years!

He did not have any serious ailments, except the eye illness. But from the protracted household, the heart of the hunter and traveler, the atrophy of the optic nerve and the blindness caused by the blindness caused muscle atrophy, was gradually surrendered from the protracted majority. He weakened his legs, it became hard to walk.

But still he continued to work. It was impressed by his unlucky congenital creative instinct, such a state was a vital necessity. He repeatedly recalled the lion of Tolstoy, who, dying at Astapovo station, drove his hand in half feud over the blanket, writing out some words ...

Sleeping nights Ivan Sergeevich often listened to the radio. Like visitors who brought the news, it was some kind of communication with the outside world. She was random and insufficient, but I was always struck by the wisdom and accuracy of his judgments about what happened in the world. Since the time of the Civil War, when his sharp anti-Volist articles and pamphlets were printed, Ivan Sergeyevich did not do any public political speeches. However, it did not mean that he was alien to the country's social life. Browsing later that it was not published during Ivan Sergeyevich, I discovered notice from a notebook, surprised how she was not consistent with his early journalism:

"All enemies and worships have one root mistake: to overthrow the Soviet power hated by them they are powerless! It is impossible, as it is impossible to turn or change the course of history. Everyone who "daring" died, including Hitler, who had only an episodic value in history ..

Already the fact that our enemies broke the head one by one, shows how deep the historical root of the path, the end of which no one knows, even those who consider themselves the toppers and the hinders of historical progress. "

For the first time in life, it seems, Ivan Sergeevich was wrong. The Soviet Power ceased to exist. What was not under the enemies externally committed their own. Based on the views on things, Ivan Sergeevich could not imagine the limit to achieve a betrayal, perfect contrary to the will of the people, expressed in a referendum on the further fate of the Soviet Union. How not to remember what Ivan Sergeevich said more than once:

"The greatest of the loss is the loss of Russia ..."

After returning to the fall of 1974 from Karachar, Ivan Sergeevich felt particularly bad. She won the weakness, no, no, yes, the insidious, pulmonary temperature rises. That and the matter had to call a lithfond clinic, call the doctor. In the end, he advised hospitalization. Ivan Sergeyevich was placed in the Klyazemmin Country Hospital. Treaty treatment was aimed at improving well-being, improving sleep and appetite. There they visited their parents who lived nearby. With me, a young female doctor came to the spacious double room, a voyage was commanded: - Well, Ivan Sergeevich, go up! Let's die. So, a step in place: two times ...

Sticking the heart, I watched Ivan Sergeevich, obeying, mechanically crossed once or yet in domestic shoes and, as if waking up, stopped and waved his hand:

- Well, him to hell, this step is in place. Stick up ...

But still, after Klyazma it became, as if, a little better.

Even earlier, a few years before that, Ivan Sergeyevich philosophically thought about the inevitable, independent of the will of the person, with which it could be comparable only to his appearance to light. This notebook books tell about it. But in conversations, he repeatedly concerned such the topic. He loved to remember the poem belonging, it seems, Fedor Sologubu:

I asked a light life from God:
Looking like a hard circle ...
And the Lord said: Rides a little.
You still ask for a friend.

So lived: the road is coincided,
Hardweight sting and thinner thread ...
I asked a light life from God -
Easy death should be asked ...

He was not afraid of the end. And repeatedly spoke about it.

- Do you think I'm afraid? Does not, honey, it's not scary to me. Not death - life is worse. It is she tormented, he does not let go, it satisfies any diseases, all these microbes, bacteria - also from life. And death - a quiet angel - will come, she will cover his wing, and - nothing will happen ...

It is hard to die when you realize that the emptiness remains, there are no traces ... at least some kind of, let him completely small, the squirrel chuck, but I still left something, and from it - it's easier ...

After moving the falcon to Moscow, we have always noted the arrival of the new year together - but according to the old style, on the night from the 13th to the 14th of January: this coincided with the birthday of Alenushka, the late mother of Sasha. And before the calendar New Year, which we met with my parents in Klyazma, we were on December 31 along the way with the roys to the prospect of the world to congratulate all the falcon-coming.

So it was on the eve of the new 1975. In the house, when we drove to them in the evening, we were met by alarming silence. Both of them, and Ivan Sergeevich, and Lydia Ivanovna, slept. We met Sasha. Ivan Sergeevich again had a small temperature - either from the cold, either from the exacerbation of the inflammation of the lungs, and he fell asleep after the half-branch night, fell asleep and Lydia Ivanovna, having trawn into troubles.

I carefully entered the room Ivan Sergeevich. From a tightly laid window in it stood a dense darkness, barely disturbed by the quiet breath.

What will it be, the upcoming 75th? I mentally wished Ivan Sergeyevich well-being and just as carefully covered the door. We drank with Sasha on a glass for happiness in the new year and went to Klyazma.

The new year did not bring improvement. I often called, I climbed after work in the evenings. Ivan Sergeevich weaker. Referring to the absence of appetite, he almost completely refused food. Lydia Ivanovna persuaded him to eat at least something, I dared.

- What for?

I was taken to convince him how it is necessary to restore the forces to deal with the disease and weakness.

- What for?

So it was at the end of the day on February 19. Before me was a doctor from Litfond polyclinic: "I can not say anything comforting."

Ivan Sergeevich was in half fear, the third day did not eat anything. Doctor's questions did not answer.

I leaned toward him, asked: - Loose? With effort, he answered not immediately very quiet, as if the past was lips: - X-U-U-to ...

The hand seemed to me hot. Put a thermometer - 37 °. We decided to call a doctor again.

- Do you want to drink?

And again he dried out a little, repeated the last word:

- X-X-Find ...

He dug out of the heated juice from the rehearse, coughed - even liquid took place badly. Palmed, rested. I drank also no longer.

Leaving, I said goodbye to Ivan Sergeevich, he answered farewell, tried to kiss himself.

Specified words turned out to be the last. Soon after that he fell into oblivion.

The remainder of the day of the 19th and morning on February 20th was full of alarm and phone calls, everything was falling out of the hands of a sense of helplessness and powerlessness to help.

Very patient, shortly before that, returned because of the "features" in the intensive care unit of the Cardiology Institute named after Myasnikov, a special will, who called on the remnants of his forces to care for the weakening Ivan Sergeyevich, Lydia Ivanovna on the day of his death ran away. They disappeared all the concerns, everything collapsed. She could not even go for cremation. Exactly one hundred days later, she died.

Sasha decided to get buried urns with the ashes in Gatchina, where the mother of Ivan Sergeyevich Maria Ivanovna was buried, the daughter of Sokolov, the Liden, who deceased in early childhood, and her older sister, Sashina Mother Alyonushka, Elena Ivanovna.

The organization of the funeral took on Pushkin House: Ivan Sergeevich loved there, they celebrated his seventieth, he asked him to transfer his archive. On June 24, 1975, the Institute allocated a bus for a trip to Gatchina. The silent procession went to the gate of the old cemetery. Sasha carried urn with the ashes of Lydia Ivanovna, the grandmother, who became the last third of his life to replace at least somehow painful love of her mother's hands, and I - urn with the ashes of Ivan Sergeevich, closest to me spiritually, dear person ...

The bright and sunny, blessing quiet day. In the floor of the trees closed at the top of the villages, the birds twitched, somewhere alone the Oriolga. On a wide purely revolved track, solar spots were tremendous, it seemed that the soil was swayed, leaves from under his feet ...

"That's how they joined everything together again," said Sasha, when the sorrowful burial procedure was completed.

After those hard days, thirty years have passed. During this time, a lot has changed. But everything is also for me, as probably for other Russian readers, the island of salvation in the flooded sea of \u200b\u200bcurrent market vulgarity and confusion remains chaste, the life-willed creativity of Ivan Sergeevich Sokolova-Mikitov, performed by love for Russia and people, remains a long friendship with Ivan Sergeevich himself.

"Blessed, who start thinking, defended by a mentor," Yury Oleshi wrote.

Mentors are not prescribed, they do not declare themselves, they choose them, people pull themselves.

Among the writers almost always there are people who criticize even widely recognized writers for some - in their opinion, - miscalculations in the work and "puncture" in creative life.

But I have never met in print, nor in conversation any renovations to Sokolova-Mikitov. He left a bright, impeccable name. By tracking various kinds of circumstances, people may not know his name, which was never deafeningly loud, but those who came in touch with the works of Sokolov-Mikitov, but more than one who was familiar with the author, could not remain indifferent. This is evidenced, in particular, letters of readers, transferred together with the archive in Pushkin House, in which they thank the writer for refining, the healing properties of its prose.

For me, Ivan Sergeevich was a genuine mentor and teacher. God's grace has led me to him when at the coolest, perhaps, by turning my fate, I chose a life path on the boyly stubbornness and began to doubt whether he was responsible for the shower. Proximity to Ivan Sergeevich helped me recognize true values, to gain your attitude and a line of behavior. Under the charm of his work and his personality, all my further life was developed.

February, 2005

Ivan Sergeyevich Sokolov-Mikitov was born in the fall of the Kaluga province in the family of Sergey Nikitich Sokolova - the forest rates of the rich merchants of the sicks. In 1895, the family moved to the Motherland of the Father in the village of Kollovo Doroborovsky district (now - the UGRAN District of the Smolensk Region). When he turned ten years old, his father took him to Smolensk, where he identified in the Smolensk Aleksandrovsky Real School. In School of Sokol-Mikitov, the ideas of the revolution fonders. For participation in the underground revolutionary circles, falcons Mikitov was excluded from the fifth grade of the school. In 1910, Mikitov Sokolov went to St. Petersburg, where agricultural courses began to visit. In the same year, he wrote his first work - the fairy tale "Salt of Earth". Soon Sokolov Mikitov understands that it does not have a tendency to agricultural work, and increasingly begins to get involved in literature. He visits literary circles, meets with many famous writers Alexei Remizov, Alexander Green, Vyacheslav Shishkov, Mikhail Priviten, Alexander Kuprina. Listen to the works of Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov for school age children.



During World War II, Sokolov-Mikitov operates in Molotov special correspondent of Izvestia. In the summer of 1945, returned to Leningrad. Since the summer of 1952, Sokolov Mikitov begins to live in his own house built by him in the village of Karacharovo Konakovsky district. Here he writes most of his works. His prose is expressive and visual primarily in cases where he holds his own experience, it is weaker when the writer transfers heard. Visiting his "Karacharovsky" house was the writers Alexander Tvardovsky, Viktor Nekrasov, Konstantin Fedin, Vladimirsolukhin, many artists, journalists. Sokolov Mikitov died on February 20, 1975 in Moscow. According to the will, urn with his ashes was buried at the new cemetery in Gatchina. In 1983, a monument was established on the burial, the initiator was performed by the Gatchina urban branch of the victim. Next to Ivan Sergeevich are buried and his close - Mother Maria Ivanovna Sokolova (1870-1939) and daughter Elena (1926-1951) and Lydia (1928-1931)