Nina LOBANOVA,
Voronezh

Unshakable rocks of values.

Lesson on the story "Sixty Candles" by V. Tendryakov

At the beginning of the lesson

Teacher. A person lives among people - a truth that does not need proof. But literature considers it its duty to constantly remind of it. Not only to remind, but also to artistically explore modern reality, because often the dramatic interaction of human characters lies behind the truth.

A person in society, a person and his attitude to the world, to people, to himself - these questions are today in the center of attention of literary and artistic thought. In one way or another, these questions are connected with the thoughts of writers about the fundamental spiritual and moral values ​​and processes that take place in society, about what is happening to a person today.

A person is forced to navigate among various opinions, often opposite ones, to accept or not accept them, to take a certain position. Listening to other people's assessments, interpretations of events, facts, a person largely develops his own system of values, his individual attitude to the world, people, to himself - in a word, becomes a personality.

The dramatic, contradictory interaction of a person with someone else's assessment, with someone else's understanding, with someone else's view, with someone else's opinion, individual or collective, is a problem that has long worried literature.

Let us recall at least the heroes of Dostoevsky, many of whom not only react painfully to the constant assessment of their personality, to someone else's opinion about them, but often assert themselves in spite of this opinion. A. Herzen wrote in the “Diaries”: “Two punishments can only stop a person - this is a remorse of conscience and public opinion; without respect for himself, from himself and from his neighbors, a person cannot live, no executions can be compared with the constant consciousness of his vileness and the justice of contempt from others.

Modern literature seeks to know man in all his complexity and inconsistency, in his inner “fluidity”, seeks to understand man. To understand means to enable the whole person to reveal himself, to comprehend not only what he is at this moment, but also what he could be, his spiritual and moral values. To understand means to artistically explore what made a person exactly this way and not otherwise, to catch the vital, social, moral, psychological processes that influenced his formation.

Vl.Tendryakov refers to such writers who study a person, try to understand him. Perhaps that is why many of his works sound extremely topical.

A special place in the work of Tendryakov is occupied by works dedicated to the school, the problems of education and upbringing, the teacher and the student. He is concerned about how the school prepares a young person to meet life, whether it truthfully, deeply, convincingly answers the burning questions that arise in him.

Vl.Tendryakov asks difficult questions to his heroes. But if they cannot always answer them, then we, the readers, are obliged to do so. We must hear the writer's pain for the person and understand what worries him about our future. And Tendryakov always chooses a difficult road to the reader's heart. He never seeks to smooth out sharp corners, remove or muffle the drama of life's collisions. It shows how a young man enters the big world, how he discovers it for himself, how this world enters the soul of a person, determines the structure of his thoughts and feelings, and lays the foundations for the character of a future citizen.

Vl.Tendryakov creates a situation of moral choice for his characters and is most interested in what social factors predetermine this choice. A person is free, but he is in the circle of a certain social field, and it is not at all easy for him to break out of it. He can do as he wants, but at the same time he must not forget the sanctity and inviolability of the basic moral laws.

Conversation on questions

• What "eternal" philosophical questions are posed in Vl.Tendryakov's story "Sixty Candles"?

Good and evil, truth and lies, conscience and shamelessness. "Who am I?" "Why am I?"

• What other works of the writer are dedicated to the school, teachers, students?

The story “The Night After Graduation” is also dedicated to the life of the school and the school of life.

Teacher-student... These two words are enough to name, list all the people living in the world. Each of us either studies, or teaches, or does both.

• Why does the writer often refer to the school?

The general education school is not only the threshold of life, but also its prototype, model. For young people, schools are a laboratory model of society, adult life.

Who is the main character of the story "Sixty Candles"? Who is he? What do we learn about him?

This is Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin, a teacher respected by everyone in the city. Echevin celebrates his anniversary. He is sixty. And now sixty candles solemnly burn on a cake baked in his honor. Echevin lived all his life in the provincial town of Karasino, which is now undergoing a period of rapid renewal. Nikolai Stepanovich is proud of his city. Just as the city is proud of him.

Indeed, Nikolai Stepanovich, as it turns out on the first pages, has many advantages. He is humble, honest and hardworking. Maybe there are not enough stars from the sky, but it is on such people that the world is kept.

• But what, with all its positive qualities, makes us wary?

There are such features in it: pragmatism, the conviction that impeccable morality, a clear unambiguousness of actions dictated by internal maximalism, are by no means always necessary for historical progress. Personally, he cares little. The main thing is the truth of history, historical progress, the fate of millions. There is no selfish love for oneself and loved ones in Echevina. On the contrary, he prides himself on not distinguishing between his own and those of others.

Echevin is a realist: the history of mankind is the way of the cross, blood and sacrifices are inevitable here; If you don't understand the logic of history, you will perish; if you understand, you will survive. At the same time, he is also a romantic: he wants to serve high goals, for which he is ready to burn himself and others at the stake.

• Did Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin love his subject?

Yes, he has always loved history. True, in recent years he has revised his attitude towards historical figures. Didn't the flattery, dexterity, for example, of Ivan Kalita help him put together the Moscow principality under the Tatar yoke? Why judge him? No, history must be accepted as it is, without embellishing anything in it.

• What disturbs the festive jubilee atmosphere of Nikolai Stepanovich?

On the days of the anniversary, an event occurs that unexpectedly abruptly changes the mood of the teacher. He receives an anonymous letter from one of his former students. The letter is offensive and threatening.

What is this - a joke? But if it's a joke, then it's the meanest. Is it true? But if true, then bitter and terrible. A former student came to Karasino to kill Nikolai Stepanovich. For what? The student assures that Nikolai Stepanovich crippled him spiritually, and not only him. The former student wants to help people and prove that he did not live “his miserable” life in vain. He, the “suspicious eatery philosopher”, cannot address people with a cry of warning: beware! No one will believe him, let the trial of the murderer become the trial of the murdered. No, this murder is not a crime. Is it really a crime to destroy “a long-standing hotbed of social infection”?

Echevin does not know the name of the alleged killer for a long time. The reader does not know him either. But whoever he is, he wants to kill in order to destroy the social evil. Kill to justify your life, to see if you can still rise above the circumstances and, most importantly, above yourself.

After receiving a sentencing letter, a letter with a threat of murder, the action in the story develops along two lines: the first is a picture of Echevin’s everyday, meager, albeit decent life, the second is the expectation of a trial and a meeting with his judge.

• Sixty Candles is written in the first person. Why?

This is a kind of internal monologue-meditation of the hero. The world opens here through Echevin's perception, and his assessments do not always coincide with the author's. We can see if the actions and thoughts of the hero coincide, we can see what the self-esteem of the hero is, how other characters evaluate him.

Echevin is not so arrogant as to believe the noisy doxology in the days of the jubilee. But still, he says to himself: “I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t deprive anyone, I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t take bribes, I didn’t corrupt minors, I didn’t starve my elderly mother-in-law. I... am irritable, I break down unnecessarily, I often act unfairly, which I usually regret. Who among us is not without sin? If I am to be judged, to kill me, then only some exceptional righteous will have to live on earth.”

Again and again, Echevin thinks about his life and more and more affirms himself in the thought of the injustice of the author of the letter. What did he, Echevin, do? He taught for forty years, over three thousand students passed through his hands. And did he amass wealth in forty years? Was his life easy, happy? But what could be in it to cross it out?

Echevin recalls the past: “Circles. Day after day, like a horse in a drive: home-school-home, from Sunday to Sunday, with breaks for holidays, which I could hardly endure, I waited impatiently to start the usual: home-school-home. Day after day for forty years... Only now, when we are left alone with my wife, we make ends meet without much effort... Is life easy? Is it happy? No, weekdays.

Obviously, only those who want to kill him know the secret of Echevin's life. Echevin mentally goes over everyone who could write an anonymous letter, and for a long time he cannot get on the right track. With heightened conscience, the teacher remembers the suspects and tries to realize his guilt before them. But there seems to be no guilt. Echevin begins to doubt himself.

The past of the hero passes before us, different people, some stories that are not very pleasant to Nikolai Stepanovich are recalled. Gradually it turns out that Echevin is not such a fair and noble person. And he really has something to think about.

• What is the hero's background? What are the early pages of Echevin's life?

Its early pages are marred by betrayal. Echevin betrayed his teacher. That is why his self-appointed judge seems to be something like the retribution of fate.

Forty-five years ago, Kolka Echevin was in love with Tanya Graube, the daughter of the director of a rural school.

Ivan Semyonovich Graube - a nobleman, a belated populist, brother of a railway magnate - graduated from the Sorbonne, voluntarily climbed into a remote village and taught there for many years, helped the youth, shoed and dressed peasant children, begged for benefits for them. After the revolution, a new head was appointed to the school - a peasant boy Ivan Sukov, a hero of the civil war, a man no less kind than Ivan Semyonovich: "... for himself he never asked for anything, but for others he achieved the impossible."

• Who is Sukov and what role did he play in the fate of Echevin?

Sukov simply hated the “bourgeois underdogs”. For a long time he explained to Kolka Echevin the sinfulness of his falling in love with the daughter of a henchman of capital. In vain Kolka justified himself, tried to explain that Ivan Semyonovich was the first friend of peasant children, that he was dearer to him than his father and mother (Kolka's father, although a proletarian, was an alcoholic and a nonentity).

Sukov was sure he was right. It was against people like Ivan Semyonovich that the people staged a revolution. “If you want to save your girl, tell her to oppose her father. Honestly. Directly, without squats!”

Kolka is torn apart by terrible doubts - until recently he loved Ivan Semyonovich so much. He asks Tanya who is dearer to her - her father or the revolution. Tanya replies: if children begin to abandon their fathers, the world will degenerate.

A fifteen-year-old teenager was faced with the need to choose between the revolution and Graube, between Sukov and Tanya, the daughter of Ivan Semyonovich, his first love. Kolya Echevin made a choice: he publicly betrayed his teacher Ivan Graube so as not to be accused of losing his class sense. As it seemed to him, he was sacrificing “the dearest thing for himself - Tanya!” for the revolution.

Graube committed suicide, having managed to utter the words of warning to Echevin at a school meeting where his “personal case” was examined: “Echevin was my student ... I taught him to distinguish lies from truth and did not teach him. He taught to hate evil, to respect good - he did not teach. I'm a pathetic bankrupt! There are shouts demanding to punish me. Alas, it is already punished without you - it is impossible to be stronger.

Ivan Semyonovich committed suicide after the meeting. How could these words help our hero in life, if even then, having firmly sunk into memory, they had not settled to its very bottom in order to surface 45 years later along with the question:

• Is Ivan Sukov immoral, who initiated his betrayal?
• How does Echevin answer this question?

Nikolai Stepanovich answers vaguely: “No!” - not too much, however, troubling himself with the proceedings in the merits of his answer. It is enough for him that Sukov lived only for others, leaving nothing superfluous for himself - at least to maintain his spirit. He lived without knowing "neither doubt nor reflection."

• And how does Echevin evaluate his own behavior?

Going through his past, Nikolai Stepanovich begins to see morally, but his insight is incomplete and is accompanied by numerous hesitation.

A long-standing betrayal, from Echevin’s point of view, turns out to be the first in a rather long series of life delusions: “I am guilty of creating a simple, like a ditty, logical postulate: you are supported by a rich man, every rich person is an enemy, which means you are an enemy! How could I have known at the age of fifteen what most often leads people to trouble is too simple logic. A revelation that came to him only at the age of sixty in a state of hysterical fear for his life.

• How did he use this logic throughout his life?

It turns out that he used this convenient logic more than once. So it was in the case of Sergei Kropotov, the author of the fatal letter. Wise with experience, a strict but fair teacher inspired his student with the need to ... betray his father. He convinced, guided by the best of intentions, believing that he was saving me from expulsion from school, which means from terrible irreparable trouble, in the future, perhaps from a collapse in life. Didn't save!

From the same Sukov, Nikolai Stepanovich inherited the conviction in the absolute inviolability of the postulate: “One mind is good, but two is better, five is better than two, ten is five, and the whole team is already so smart that it never makes mistakes.”

The mind of a simple-minded guy “from a bastard and chaff village... thrown into the seething thick of the class struggle” was not able to understand that the collective mind is strong not at all due to the quantitative factor.

• What prevented the teacher Echevin from moving away from the primitive template and perceiving life phenomena from his own personal, and not just a mass-accepted point of view?

Nikolai Stepanovich never erred alone - only in a team. Together with him, he came out of error. Being like everyone else became his life ideal. This is what he taught his students, even trying to shove his talent into a familiar and convenient package. Any deviation from the generally accepted was perceived by him as a moral inferiority. This is the root of his personal tragedy.

• Remember the heroes of other works. What helps them to make the right choice, to make a different decision, not to make a mistake? When a person is on the verge of a choice, what do you think he should rely on?

We read the epigraph - the lines of O. Mandelstam:

There are unshakable rocks
Over the boring mistakes of centuries.

• What are these values?

Conscience is really good. (Let us recall Zybin from Y. Dombrovsky's Faculty of Useless Things.)

• What is the personal tragedy of Echevin?

The tragedy of loneliness in one's own family. Nikolai Stepanovich has three daughters, and all of them are strangers.

• Moreover, the younger, beloved, Vera, becomes his enemy. Is it because he betrayed her (alas, not the first one), becoming in the pose of an uncompromising guardian of morality?

At the age of sixteen, daughter Vera had an affair with a physical education teacher. And Nikolai Stepanovich himself insisted that she be expelled from school: “Yes, and how else? Could she sit down at the desk again? The disciples would look at her as an incarnate obscenity, contemptuously and lustfully. I had to somehow show that ... I sharply condemn the behavior of a dissolute daughter ... How I loved her! Spit in the soul!..”

Vera went to work at a car depot, her child died, and the physical education teacher was driven out of the city. Without consulting with anyone, she got married, gave birth a second time. A joyless life in a hut, an alcoholic husband pushed her to the Baptists.

The fate of his daughter is a shame and continuous torment for Nikolai Stepanovich. He is unable to save Vera. It was necessary to save the grandson, to pull him out of the dirt, out of poverty. But to take him away from his mother is to finish off his daughter completely. Nikolai Stepanovich's heart breaks when he watches how his own grandson is maimed.

Nikolai Stepanovich's conversations with his daughter are key to understanding the plot of the story. When Echevin tries to explain to Vera why he then insisted on her expulsion from school, his daughter interrupts him with a story about pagans who cajoled their gods with ritual sacrifices. “You are not kind to anyone, father,” she tells him. “Even to yourself.” Love does not make people unhappy, "but you choke with love." There is no road to reconciliation with Vera, here is the source of Nikolai Stepanovich's eternal pain.

“So what kind of person am I, good or evil?” - he asks his wife and listens to a deadly answer for himself: “All your life you aim to do good, but the devil behind your back confuses, your honey turns with tar. I don't blame you. But your innocence does not make others feel better ... you wished me well, you wished my elder daughters. I wished Vera, don’t wish him Lenka (grandson) - that’s enough! Save one from your kindness!”

Ah, kindness, kindness
Wait a minute to be known as kindness,
True kindness is the one
From which the lie backs away,
The villain is shaking.

So, maybe the unshakable principles, clearly delineated into “our” and “not our” view of things, are to blame for everything?

• So who is the real anonymous author? And what did Nikolai Stepanovich do so wrong? What accuses the former student of his teacher?

Seryozha Kropotov is a former student, a quiet and sweet boy, the only son, always ironed, mended, washed. How many years have passed since then!

The story of Sergei Kropotov has something in common with the story of Tanya Graube. There was a rumor at one time that Sergei's father was a policeman, served with the Germans. Sergei defended his father, did not believe in his betrayal. The guys demanded that Sergei be expelled from school. Nikolai Stepanovich saved the boy. And saved. He successfully completed his studies. And all that was necessary for this was to speak at the meeting, to repent, to condemn the father.

If you don't judge, you will die. Condemn - you will prosper. Sergei did not prosper. Broke down after that. He began to drink, got involved in a criminal history. And after a while, the father was completely acquitted. And he was not a policeman at all, but a partisan.

Sergei accuses Nikolai Stepanovich of preaching saving betrayal, of forgetting his conscience. Echevin is actively defending himself. He acted out of the best of intentions, tried to benefit Kropotov. Is it possible to judge a person because he wanted to help another? Help from Judas? But what is Echevin Judas? Where are the 30 pieces of silver?

“Nikolai Stepanovich,” Sergey solemnly proclaims, “you are not a scoundrel! No! If you were an ordinary scoundrel, I would not have thought to encroach on your life. To hell with you, one scoundrel more, one less - is it so scary. “Really,” Echevin asks, “a sincere, let a delusional person be more terrible than an unprincipled scoundrel?” And he gets the answer: “The deluded one - yes! The erring one is more terrible! An ordinary scoundrel does vile things, for example, slanders, but deep down he understands that he is doing bad things. He's just breaking the rule. And the one who is sincerely convinced that slander under some kind of sauce or something else of this kind is necessary for humanity, this one ... no longer just breaks the rules, but destroys them.”

• Which character do you think is right? Who is scarier? A sincere, even a delusional person or an unscrupulous scoundrel? Which of the heroes emerged victorious from the dispute?

Heroes are right in different ways and wrong in different ways.

If Sergei had taken it upon himself to simply explain to Nikolai Stepanovich his moral deafness, and had he done it skillfully, conclusively, he would have gained the upper hand in the dispute.

But Kropotov yearns for revenge for his life broken by the teacher and for all the people deceived by Echevin. So he takes the position of Kolka Koryakin, the hero of another work by Tendryakov - "Payback" - and the position of Dostoevsky's hero Raskolnikov. And it is also unacceptable for Tendryakov.

• How did Tendryakov manage to show the connection between an act committed by a fifteen-year-old teenager and Echevin's behavior?

“What will become of the world if worldly delusions begin to be punished by death? - asks Echevin. - Does anyone know in advance what is good and what is bad? Who among us has not been mistaken? And who has not painfully freed himself from his delusions in order to accept new ones? Do not dare to be mistaken - death! You can’t imagine a more terrible spiritual dictatorship.”

• But is Kropotov himself so unselfish, this self-appointed avenger for a beguiled humanity, this home-grown judge?

He strives to save himself from mental weakness, from self-disrespect, to free himself from the past with one act. No, it is not given to a victim by calling to be a judge. Kropotov was late.

What will happen to the world if students start killing their teachers? This thought once expressed by Tanya Graube many years later becomes a spiritual support for Echevin. Murder is not a method of social recovery. By promoting the radical destruction of evil, Kropotov seeks to lay responsibility for his sins on another. Before the muzzle of a revolver pointed at him, Nikolai Stepanovich is powerless. But in a dispute with a former student, his arguments were still stronger. Kropotov is forced to leave, giving the teacher the weapon with which he was going to kill him: let him, they say, carry out the execution on himself. He does not pity Echevin, but he pities himself.

There are no winners in this scene. Sergei Kropotov is, to a certain extent, Echevin's double. His "brother in misfortune". Both have shrugged off controversy all their lives. Both are unbearable to themselves. By killing, Kropotov hoped to free himself from his terrible past. And release Echevin from him. And not in vain, having defeated a former student, Echevin believes that he "defeated himself."

The “devil” in this story by Tendryakov is the sick conscience of Nikolai Stepanovich, his deep, inner doubts in himself, in his philosophy, in his life. It is he himself with his unwritten morality - "everything is allowed." Everything is allowed in relation to the neighbor, if this is done not for the sake of one's own prosperity and well-being, but, say, for the glory of abstract historical postulates.

• What do you think, can a teacher make mistakes?

Echevin recognizes one virtue: he has always been honest. Even Kropotov has to agree with this. And this at least to some extent softens his mistakes. The teacher has no right only to the sermon in which he himself does not believe. He has no right to consciously deceive his disciples. But he can be wrong. True, when teachers make mistakes, it is a tragedy. A tragedy for themselves and even more so for their students. Erroneous teachers give birth to erring students, and those, growing up and gaining vitality, carry the baton of mistakes further. And delusions continue to spread around the world in ever-expanding circles.

• Is it possible for a teacher to speak with students on an equal footing?

No. They are too in an unequal position: the children ask - the teacher answers. He is responsible to them for the whole world of adults and is obliged to speak on behalf of this world. One has to answer for the senseless cruelties of Ivan the Terrible, and for the delusions of the Narodnik revolutionaries, and for much, much more. To teach is to lead through life. And here it is not enough to recognize a lie - a word of truth is certainly needed. It is not enough to open people's eyes - one must show the way, give hope.

• Teacher Echevin remains to live. But has he changed or not in these few days?

Yes, he is worried about the class, today's students. Here they are writing an essay about Ivan the Terrible. Its idea was suggested by Nikolai Stepanovich: the struggle of Ivan the Terrible against the well-born nobles was of a progressive nature. Referring to Kostomarov, the modest girl Zoya Zybkova writes about the terrible, unmotivated atrocities of the tsar. And he comes to the conclusion: “Such a person could not wish the best for people. If he crushed the boyars, it was simply out of malice. If there was any progress in his time, then this is not Ivan's merit.

How should Nikolai Stepanovich feel about this work? Zoya thinks "old-fashioned", according to the outdated Kostomarov. But even worse, she thinks “not our way”. It's just dangerous. Dangerous for Zoe. Dangerous for society.

Give Zoya a deuce? But won't you thereby discourage her desire for history, won't you turn her against you? And what should Nikolai Stepanovich do with an excellent student Lena Shirokova? Trying to please the teacher, she, arguing with Zoya, asks a rhetorical question: “What is more important - the murder of some deacon wives or big historical deeds?”

• What about the smart, inquisitive Lyova Bocharov?

In his heart he thinks like Zoya, and wrote an essay similar to Lenino. Why? Yes, Lyova answers, because I don’t give a damn about Tsar Ivan and don’t give a damn about the mark that you put in the journal. Lena Shirokova Nikolai Stepanovich should give a description. Even yesterday it would have been laudatory. And today Echevin hesitates. Didn't he raise her that way? Lena, of course, will not kill any "deacon's wives" or anyone else. But he thoughtlessly agrees: “I am for it! And after all, it was he himself, a teacher of history, who did not teach her humanity and responsiveness, did not develop in her a sense of independence, did not convey to her disgust for the cruelty of history, which manifested itself in previous centuries.

Echevin, of course, has changed. He was a sinner, but he considered himself righteous. Now he - to the end - will feel like a sinner, and this sometimes comes out well. The author, leaving the teacher alive, takes responsibility for the hero.

• Why do you think the main character is a history teacher?

History, in addition to any super-personal interests and goals, is also a living connection of human destinies, spiritual interaction, when a spark of kindness, nobility or courage is transmitted from one life to another, from one generation to another.

Teacher Echevin, wishing well, was sincerely mistaken. There is a danger in this, because the consequences of delusions penetrate into the blood vessels of the future, and the blood carries them throughout the body. “How, however, people depend on each other,” Echevin reflects. “Twenty years ago I had the misfortune to give bad advice. I wanted to save a man with this advice! And here he is in front of me: “I am an alcoholic. The representative of human scum... to kill you!” A living reproach, a formidable accusation!”

And he gave advice not to an adult, but to a teenager, and childhood is that living soil on which the sunrise gives both good and bad, depending on what you sow. Time passes, wisdom and science grow, tastes change, the secret becomes clear, the truth is cleared of lies.

• What should be the word of the teacher?

The word that the teacher brings to the student must be new and alive. It always runs the risk of falling behind reality and time, but sometimes it is ahead of them.

The teacher's word is renewed in accordance with life, but life also obeys a passionate and precise word. Teaching, learning.

• There is another teacher in the work, the "avant-garde" Ledenev. Will Ledenev be successful with schoolchildren? But why? No, why? What is your opinion about it.
• What kind of teacher would you like to see? What qualities of a teacher attract you, cause you respect?
• What does Tendryakov's story make you think about? What is it that attracts her?

Attracts with sharpness, non-standard, complexity of the moral problems put up for discussion. Questions are put forward here that are not designed for a one-word solution, their goal is to stimulate the mind, to make one think.

The story speaks of the great responsibility of the teacher for educating the student in honesty, independence, love for people, intolerance for untruth. And at the same time about no less responsibility of the student for all these spiritual values ​​before the teacher.

Conscience is not a panacea for all evils, but it is a way. The path to mutual understanding, to the truth of relationships. Therefore, the education in children of a culture of feeling, a culture of conscience, as well as the tireless self-education of the teacher himself, is what our social thought puts forward today as a priority task.

Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin celebrates his sixtieth birthday. He worked as a teacher for forty years, and his anniversary became an event for the entire city of Karasin: his portrait was printed in the local newspaper, congratulatory telegrams rained down, and musicians played for him in a local restaurant and solemnly brought in a cake with sixty candles.

A little over a month later, Nikolai Stepanovich, as always, comes home from school, checks his notebooks, then reads the belated congratulatory telegrams. One of them is from the past - from a friend of the long-dead student of the Hero of the Soviet Union Grigory Bukhalov. But the next telegram unexpectedly turns out to be not congratulatory. It's an anonymous threat to kill. Its author, an “alcoholic”, “a suspicious philosopher of eateries”, calls Nikolai Stepanovich “a source of social infection”, from which the author himself has already suffered, and in the name of saving others he is ready to end it, since he has nothing to lose. Echevin at first perceives the telegram as a joke of one of his students, but from the style of writing he concludes that a teenager could not have written it, and then a long search for an anonymous person begins.

Nikolai Stepanovich suddenly realizes how unprotected he is in his apartment. He wants to call the police, but something stops him. The next day he is afraid to go to school and still goes. And all this time he goes over his life, trying to figure out an unknown enemy.

Isn't this Tanya Graube? He heard that she had recently returned to the city. Tanya's father, Ivan Semyonovich Graube, brother of a railway magnate, was Echevin's first teacher. At home, the boy did not know love. His father, a shoemaker, was always drunk, his mother also did not indulge her son with affection. And Ivan Semenovich believed in the boy and made his parents believe in him. In winter, through his efforts, the boy received felt boots and a short fur coat, and when they were fourteen years old, Kolya was carried away by Ivan Semenovich's daughter, Tanya. But then Graube was removed from the post of director, and a man from the people, Ivan Sukov, took his place. It was he who spoke with Kolya about Tanya, the daughter of a millionaire's henchman, an inappropriate couple for the son of a shoemaker. Kolya at first could not understand why she was to blame. Well, let him prove that he is his own, give up his father. With this, he went on a date with Tanya. But she didn't want...

And then there was a meeting where the best student Kolya Echevin spoke out against the teacher. In his final speech, Ivan Semenovich said that he had been punished enough anyway: he had not taught his student to distinguish lies from truth. And the next day, Graube was gone: a suicide note and a key to a cabinet with chemical reagents. The whole village buried Graube ... Could it be Tanya? Nikolai Stepanovich could not believe this.

He also remembers his student Anton Elkin. They say he returned to the city, settled down - his wife, children, himself a high-class turner. All this does not fit the definition of "alcoholic". But this man became an enemy from their first meeting, when he poured glue on the teacher's chair as a fourth-grade student. Then war was declared. Nikolai Stepanovich was picky about Elkin, but fair. Elkin first accepted the challenge, prepared for the lessons, but then gave up. And one day, approaching the school, Nikolai Stepanovich was met by a brick falling from the roof. The investigation did not take long: Yelkin was immediately caught on the roof. Then he was expelled from school ... Could it be him?

The day before, while checking notebooks, Nikolai Stepanovich discovered one work that differed from a pile of identical ones. The theme was Ivan the Terrible, “cruel but fair”, according to the majority ... Even Lev Bocharov, who always threw something out, this time wrote “like everyone else”. But the unremarkable student Zoya Zybkovets cited a quote from Kostomarov about the murder of two deacon wives by Ivan and issued a different verdict: “If there was any progress in his time, then this is not Ivan’s merit.” Nikolai Stepanovich hesitated for a long time what to do with this work. Put two - you will discourage looking somewhere other than a textbook. Do not put it - he will decide that Kostomarov is the truth, he will get used to thinking old-fashioned. He nevertheless put this deuce, and now he decided to commit a “non-pedagogical” act - to bring his doubts to the discussion in the class.

He asks his favorite student Lena Shorokhova - she always knows what the teacher wants to hear. Here and now she chattered smartly about the progressive role of Ivan the Terrible and with a victorious look went to her place. And then Nikolai Stepanovich realizes that, having taught Lena progressive views, he did not bring up indignation at the murder. And this student, whom he always thought of as his luck, turned out to be his puncture.

He was afraid to walk along the streets, but he could not afford to hide, and that is why he did not immediately go home, but turned into a public garden, sat down and thought. There he was found by Anton Elkin. But instead of the expected bullet, Echevin heard from a former student words of gratitude for science, for justice, for the fact that he was against his expulsion from school. These unexpectedly warm words support Nikolai Stepanovich, and he goes home. And there already awaits him a new meeting with the past and his mistakes, his own daughter Vera.

Vera was Echevin's favorite, and until she was sixteen he only rejoiced looking at her. But at sixteen, Vera became pregnant. Morality was strict then. He himself was for the exclusion of his daughter from school. This did not affect his career, although it could. Vera went to work at a car depot, married a driver who drank and beat her. A year ago, Vera became a Baptist. Nikolai Stepanovich could not admit that his grandson would be brought up in such an atmosphere, he wanted to take him away, but hesitated. And so Vera came to talk about her son. Her rigidity outraged her father, and he firmly decided to take his grandson, but suddenly he saw something in her eyes that he understood: she could be the author of the note, and abandoned his intention. The possibility that his own daughter might want him dead horrified him. He felt the need to tell someone about his fears and his pain. But to whom? Friends will begin to groan and regret, but he did not need it. And then he goes to the young literature teacher Ledenev, an opponent of his pedagogical methods. This one would not have taught Lena Shorokhova not to value human life. But Ledenev did not listen: he was waiting for the guest and sent the inappropriate visitor out. But Nikolai Stepanovich needs to talk to someone. He decides to go to his daughter anyway. However, this was not required: his accuser becomes his listener, who catches up after an unsuccessful attempt to escape. "Court" takes place in the cafe "Birch". Nikolai Stepanovich would never have remembered his accuser if he had not introduced himself. It was Sergei Kropotov. During the war, his father was captured, became a policeman, but was associated with the partisans. After the war, he was in the camp, and when he returned, his comrades began to demand that Serezha renounce his father. He refused. Then they began to demand that he be expelled from school. Nikolai Stepanovich wanted to help the boy and, leaving him after school, advised him to oppose his father. At that moment, Sergei's life ended. He could not forgive himself for being wrong, he could not look his father in the eyes ... They left the city, but peace did not come in their family.

Nikolai Stepanovich was given the opportunity to justify himself, but even justifying himself, he was disgusted with himself. And then Sergei did not shoot, but simply gave him a gun, with which he went home.

And yet he could not shoot himself, because living is harder than dying. He must see the sixty-first candle on the birthday cake.

Option 2

Echevin Nikolai Stepanovich is a teacher with forty years of experience. His sixtieth birthday was a grandiose event for the city of Karasin.

A month after the celebration, Echevin, returning from school, receives belated congratulations. Among them, he finds an anonymous telegram threatening to kill him. In it, Echevin is called a “source of social infection”, which must be dealt with in order to save the rest. The teacher, wanting to know the author of the anonymous letter, is looking for him.

Feeling insecure, he becomes afraid. Something stops him from calling the police. He is even afraid to go to school, all the time reflecting on his past life, trying to figure out his enemy.

Echevich begins to suspect Tanya Graube. Her father was his first teacher, treated him very well, to some extent replaced his real father. At the age of fourteen, Tanya became interested in young Nikolai. Once Tanya was terribly offended by Nikolai when he wanted her to give up her father, a millionaire. Nikolai was prompted to do this by the new director of the school, Ivan Surkov, who replaced Tatyana's father. Then his beloved student Nikolai spoke out against the former director. After these unpleasant events, her father passed away. Tatyana had an obvious motive for wishing evil on Echevin.

Suspicions switch to Anton Yelkin, with whom they have been at enmity since the fourth grade. Echevin rightly found fault with Elkin. For this, he took revenge on the offender by dropping a brick on his head from the roof of the school. was found and punished.

Echevin recalled a case when, checking his school essays, he drew attention to one that was very different from the rest. The author of this essay was Zoya Zybkovets. She quoted the writer Kostomarov. In order to rid the student of old-fashioned views, the teacher gave her a deuce essay and decided to discuss it in class. In the course of this discussion, Echevin came to the conclusion that in instilling progressive views in his students, he did not instill in them resentment towards murder.

Overcoming fear, Echevin turned into the park. There he met with Anton Elkin, who, instead of the bullet expected by Echevin, expressed his gratitude to him for science and justice. This encourages the teacher and he goes home.

Kropotov, wanting to take revenge on Echevin, gives him a gun in the hope that he will commit suicide. Sergei Nikolayevich goes home with him, but he could not shoot himself. It is harder for him to live than to die.

Essay on literature on the topic: Summary of Sixty Tendryakov Candles

Other writings:

1. All the cities of Russia are good, each of them has its own charm, its own peculiarity. But most of all I love the city of Ussuriysk, because it is my homeland. I sincerely believe that this is one of the best cities in the world. Ussuriysk is the third Read More ......
2. Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov Tendryakov Vladimir Fedorovich (1923 - 1984), prose writer. Born on December 5 in the village of Makarovskaya, Vologda Region, in the family of a people's judge, who later became a prosecutor. After graduation, he went to the front, was wounded and demobilized. Lived in the Kirov region, taught Read More ......
3. The childhood of Vladimir Tendryakov passed in the bleak era of post-revolutionary Russia and the Stalinist repressions. The horror of childhood memories formed the basis of the story “Bread for the Dog”. Perhaps it was the effect of Childhood Impressions that helped the author to describe so clearly and impartially the events that took place in the small Station settlement, Read More ......
4. 1. What is good and evil? 2. What is the cause of moral degeneration? 3. On the responsibility of a person to society. Fiction teaches us to know the world, to explore reality. The best works of modern writers reveal to us such aspects of life that we have not even tried Read More ......
5. Fro The main character of the work is a twenty-year-old girl Frosya, the daughter of a railway worker. Her husband has gone away for a long time. Frosya is very sad for him, life loses all meaning for her, she even quits railway communication and signaling courses. Frosya's father, Nefed Stepanovich Read More ......
6. A boring story Professor of Medicine Nikolai Stepanovich is a scientist who has reached the heights of his science, enjoying universal honor and gratitude; his name is known to every literate person in Russia. The bearer of this name, that is, he himself, is an old man, terminally ill, to live for him, according to his own Read More ......
7. Two Letters In the life of the protagonist of the story “Two Letters” (Nikolai Ivanovich), everything is going well: he moved from the village to the city, received a diploma (the first from the village), got a good job with a decent salary. At first glance, this person has nothing to Read More ......
8. Duke Stepanovich From the glorious city of Galich, from the rich land of Volyn, a good fellow, Duke Stepanovich, went hunting. But the hunt did not work out - for nothing he shot his expensive arrows. Duke collected all the arrows in a quiver and returned home to Galich, and Read More ......

Summary of Sixty Tendryakov Candles

SIXTY CANDLES

Who among us knows how many people he offended ...

The lights in the hall were put out, and restaurant musicians - a drummer, a violinist, a pianist, known in the city under the common name Three Zhorki - played carcasses. From the open door, shining with an otherworldly light, a lit cake floated into the solemn darkness like a hot bouquet. Nervous golden grains of candle flames, strained red cave light, restless glitter of glass pendants in the air and the Socratic forehead of an elderly waiter…

Sixty candles on a birthday cake. How impressive it looks!

A waiter with the forehead of Socrates placed a fluttering cake in front of me. And again I was surprised at its ardent abundance: sixty candles collected in one place!

Just yesterday, an ordinary man in a gray felt hat and a dark blue long-brimmed coat was walking along Molodist Avenue, old and respectable, but not so old that at the moment of the lunch break the grocery clerk did not dare to slam the window in front of his nose: “There are many of you, but I'm alone!" Yesterday I was a simple teacher, of which there are thousands in our city.

Today, on the front page of our city newspaper, there is my portrait - solidly nosy, with bewildered bushes of eyebrows, with wrinkled puffy cheeks. For sixty years, no one singled me out from among the others, and a week ago it suddenly turned out that I was not a simple teacher, but the oldest, a city dweller, not like everyone else, but one of a kind.

Our city Karasino is young, very young. For many years he experienced his rapid birth and rapid growth, he lived in scaffolding, in thick impassable mud, in the construction chaos of cement slabs, scattered pipes, and a pile of broken bricks. Finally, construction, along with impassable mud, moved to the outskirts, and the city found itself. Perhaps he was not among the handsome men, but, really, he had everything that is inherent in any city: multi-storey buildings with balconies and even loggias, shop windows bulging onto the pavement, wide straight streets with traffic lights, zebra crossings , police traffic controllers in white belts. We have two Palaces of Culture, about a dozen cinemas, a boat station, a respectable restaurant "Kristall" with cutting-edge jazz music by the Shubnikov brothers, colloquially known as Zhorok.

The city of Karasino arose, and this became an obvious fact for other cities in the country and for himself, now he lacked only his traditions and his heroes. Not heroes-builders - crane operators, excavators, installers, masons, but heroes-residents, heroes-citizens.

And so I, an ordinary teacher, one of many, Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin, turned out to be a hero.

I am sixty years old. Gorono sent the appropriate papers to the appropriate institutions: to honor, award, confer a title. And there, upstairs, looking through the papers sent to me, one of the meticulous was surprised:

Excuse me, it says here that he was born in Karasino ...

Yes, he's from here.

And he lived here for sixty years?

But here it is written that he has been working at the school continuously for forty years. What school did he work at? Was there a school in the village of Karasino?

Was, and, imagine, known throughout Russia. Yes, to some extent it still exists.

It turns out that the young city of Karasino - not without a family, not without a tribe, there was a living witness and participant in its history. I am some progenitor of the city, its first citizen.

My portrait in the city newspaper, prominent leaders, the fathers of the city, came to my anniversary in the restaurant "Crystal". Three Zhorki play in honor of me carcasses.

And sixty candles are collected in one place. A year per candle, years stretched throughout life.

Honoring ended, the newspaper with my portrait was forgotten - eyebrows with bushes, a rook's nose. After that, perhaps, I should say with sadness: "My life has flowed along the old channel."

So something it so, on old. I, as usual, got up at seven, slowly washed my face, shaved thoroughly, thoughtfully breakfasted under the submissive, rabbit-like gaze of my sick, plump wife. Then I took off my pajamas and again slowly, thoroughly dressed - a tie under a crisp collar, a waistcoat, a jacket with seams whitened from repeated cleaning, a gray hat, much worn, but retaining its shape, a dark blue coat, old, solid, monumentally heavy.

I live far from school, but I rarely use public transport. In the morning I like to take a leisurely walk, for several years now I have met the same people on the way ... A fat, with a thick stick and a twisted mustache a la Guy de Maupassant, a man in some kind of uniform jacket, a lanky young man with a red beard and not defiant trust with gentle, velvety eyes, a platypus girl strolling a drooling, lean boxer, I meet many about whom it is difficult to say anything, but I remember them and I see by the expression on their faces that they remember me.

When I cross the threshold of my school, I walk along the lobby past the plaster pioneer with my arm up, the clock by the locker room shows seven minutes to nine.

Sixty candles burned out on the anniversary cake. A year per candle.

It's not that I didn't appreciate myself at all before - no! I am necessary, but my usefulness is like that of a support bolt, there are many such bolts.

But then they noticed me - it turns out that I'm not so standard. I allowed myself to be convinced of this. Each person is an individual, not like the others. It would be nice to occasionally remind everyone from the outside: “You are unique! You can't be replaced by anyone!"

Like any of us, I had my detractors (I don't want to call them enemies - too much!). It is naive to think that they all suddenly became my devoted friends. But I used to run into them all the time - hurt myself, hurt them. Now I easily and somehow forgivingly do not notice them ...

The celebrations have ended, the newspaper glorifying me has been forgotten, but the festivity remains. And I thought the elusive feeling of this festiveness would keep me warm for the rest of my days.

A little more than a month has passed. Just a month! I still continued to receive congratulatory letters and telegrams. In some parts of the country, my former students learned that their school teacher turned sixty.

Year of writing:

1980

Reading time:

Description of the work:

Vladimir Tendryakov, who was especially able to highlight the acute problems of society in his works, wrote "Sixty Candles" in 1980. The genre of this work is a short story.

In the center of the plot is the main character Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin, who is sixty years old, and on this day very strange events begin to happen to him ... The plot makes the reader think about a lot. We recommend that you read the summary of the story "Sixty Candles".

Summary of the story
sixty candles

Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin celebrates his sixtieth birthday. He worked as a teacher for forty years, and his anniversary became an event for the entire city of Karasin: his portrait was printed in the local newspaper, congratulatory telegrams rained down, and musicians played for him in a local restaurant and solemnly brought in a cake with sixty candles.

A little over a month later, Nikolai Stepanovich, as always, comes home from school, checks his notebooks, then reads the belated congratulatory telegrams. One of them is from the past - from a friend of the long-dead student of the Hero of the Soviet Union Grigory Bukhalov. But the next telegram unexpectedly turns out to be not congratulatory. It's an anonymous threat to kill. Its author, an “alcoholic”, “a suspicious philosopher of eateries”, calls Nikolai Stepanovich “a source of social infection”, from which the author himself has already suffered, and in the name of saving others, he is ready to end it, since he has nothing to lose. Echevin at first perceives the telegram as a joke of one of his students, but from the style of writing he concludes that a teenager could not have written it, and then a long search for an anonymous person begins.

Nikolai Stepanovich suddenly realizes how unprotected he is in his apartment. He wants to call the police, but something stops him. The next day he is afraid to go to school and still goes. And all this time he goes over his life, trying to figure out an unknown enemy.

Isn't this Tanya Graube? He heard that she had recently returned to the city. Tanya's father, Ivan Semyonovich Graube, brother of a railway magnate, was Echevin's first teacher. At home, the boy did not know love. His father, a shoemaker, was always drunk, his mother also did not indulge her son with affection. And Ivan Semenovich believed in the boy and made his parents believe in him. In winter, through his efforts, the boy received felt boots and a short fur coat, and when they were fourteen years old, Kolya was carried away by Ivan Semenovich's daughter, Tanya. But then Graube was removed from the post of director, and a man from the people, Ivan Sukov, took his place. It was he who spoke with Kolya about Tanya, the daughter of a millionaire's henchman, an inappropriate couple for the son of a shoemaker. Kolya at first could not understand why she was to blame. Well, let him prove that he is his own, give up his father. With this, he went on a date with Tanya. But she didn't want...

And then there was a meeting where the best student Kolya Echevin spoke out against the teacher. In his final speech, Ivan Semenovich said that he had been punished enough anyway: he had not taught his student to distinguish lies from truth. And the next day, Graube was gone: a suicide note and a key to a cabinet with chemical reagents. The whole village buried Graube ... Could it be Tanya? Nikolai Stepanovich could not believe this.

He also remembers his student Anton Elkin. They say he returned to the city, settled down - his wife, children, himself a high-class turner. All this does not fit the definition of "alcoholic". But this man became an enemy from their first meeting, when he poured glue on the teacher's chair as a fourth-grade student. Then war was declared. Nikolai Stepanovich was picky about Elkin, but fair. Elkin first accepted the challenge, prepared for the lessons, but then gave up. And one day, approaching the school, Nikolai Stepanovich was met by a brick falling from the roof. The investigation did not take long: Yelkin was immediately caught on the roof. Then he was expelled from school ... Could it be him?

The day before, while checking notebooks, Nikolai Stepanovich discovered one work that differed from a pile of identical ones. The theme was Ivan the Terrible, "cruel but fair", according to the majority ... Even Lev Bocharov, who always threw something out, this time wrote "like everyone else." But the unremarkable student Zoya Zybkovets cited a quote from Kostomarov about the murder of two deacon wives by Ivan and issued a different verdict: “If there was any progress in his time, then this is not Ivan’s merit.” Nikolai Stepanovich hesitated for a long time what to do with this work. Put two - you will discourage looking somewhere other than a textbook. Do not put it - he will decide that Kostomarov is the truth, he will get used to thinking old-fashioned. He nevertheless put this deuce, and now he decided to commit an “non-pedagogical” act - to bring his doubts to the discussion in the class.

He asks his favorite student Lena Shorokhova - she always knows what the teacher wants to hear. Here and now she chattered smartly about the progressive role of Ivan the Terrible and with a victorious look went to her place. And then Nikolai Stepanovich realizes that, having taught Lena progressive views, he did not bring up indignation at the murder. And this student, whom he always thought of as his luck, turned out to be his puncture.

He was afraid to walk along the streets, but he could not afford to hide, and that is why he did not immediately go home, but turned into a public garden, sat down and thought. There he was found by Anton Elkin. But instead of the expected bullet, Echevin heard from a former student words of gratitude for science, for justice, for the fact that he was against his expulsion from school. These unexpectedly warm words support Nikolai Stepanovich, and he goes home. And there already awaits him a new meeting with the past and his mistakes, his own daughter Vera.

Vera was Echevin's favorite, and until she was sixteen he only rejoiced looking at her. But at sixteen, Vera became pregnant. Morality was strict then. He himself was for the exclusion of his daughter from school. This did not affect his career, although it could. Vera went to work at a car depot, married a driver who drank and beat her. A year ago, Vera became a Baptist. Nikolai Stepanovich could not admit that his grandson would be brought up in such an atmosphere, he wanted to take him away, but hesitated. And so Vera came to talk about her son. Her rigidity outraged her father, and he firmly decided to take his grandson, but suddenly he saw something in her eyes that he understood: she could be the author of the note, and abandoned his intention. The possibility that his own daughter might want him dead horrified him. He felt the need to tell someone about his fears and his pain. But to whom? Friends will begin to groan and regret, but he did not need it. And then he goes to the young literature teacher Ledenev, an opponent of his pedagogical methods. This one would not have taught Lena Shorokhova not to value human life. But Ledenev did not listen: he was waiting for the guest and sent the inappropriate visitor out. But Nikolai Stepanovich needs to talk to someone. He decides to go to his daughter anyway. However, this was not required: his accuser becomes his listener, who catches up after an unsuccessful attempt to escape. "Court" takes place in the cafe "Birch". Nikolai Stepanovich would never have remembered his accuser if he had not introduced himself. It was Sergei Kropotov. During the war, his father was captured, became a policeman, but was associated with the partisans. After the war, he was in the camp, and when he returned, his comrades began to demand that Serezha renounce his father. He refused. Then they began to demand that he be expelled from school. Nikolai Stepanovich wanted to help the boy and, leaving him after school, advised him to oppose his father. At that moment, Sergei's life ended. He could not forgive himself for being wrong, he could not look his father in the eyes ... They left the city, but peace did not come in their family.

Nikolai Stepanovich was given the opportunity to justify himself, but even justifying himself, he was disgusted with himself. And then Sergei did not shoot, but simply gave him a gun, with which he went home.

And yet he could not shoot himself, because living is harder than dying. He must see the sixty-first candle on the birthday cake.

Please note that the summary of the story "Sixty Candles" does not reflect the full picture of events and characterization of the characters. We recommend that you read the full version of the work.

SIXTY CANDLES

Who among us knows how many people he offended ...

The lights in the hall were put out, and restaurant musicians - a drummer, a violinist, a pianist, known in the city under the common name Three Zhorki - played carcasses. From the open door, shining with an otherworldly light, a lit cake floated into the solemn darkness like a hot bouquet. Nervous golden grains of candle flames, strained red cave light, restless glitter of glass pendants in the air and the Socratic forehead of an elderly waiter…

Sixty candles on a birthday cake. How impressive it looks!

A waiter with the forehead of Socrates placed a fluttering cake in front of me. And again I was surprised at its ardent abundance: sixty candles collected in one place!

Just yesterday, an ordinary man in a gray felt hat and a dark blue long-brimmed coat was walking along Molodist Avenue, old and respectable, but not so old that at the moment of the lunch break the grocery clerk did not dare to slam the window in front of his nose: “There are many of you, but I'm alone!" Yesterday I was a simple teacher, of which there are thousands in our city.

Today, on the front page of our city newspaper, there is my portrait - solidly nosy, with bewildered bushes of eyebrows, with wrinkled puffy cheeks. For sixty years, no one singled me out from among the others, and a week ago it suddenly turned out that I was not a simple teacher, but the oldest, a city dweller, not like everyone else, but one of a kind.

Our city Karasino is young, very young. For many years he experienced his rapid birth and rapid growth, he lived in scaffolding, in thick impassable mud, in the construction chaos of cement slabs, scattered pipes, and a pile of broken bricks. Finally, construction, along with impassable mud, moved to the outskirts, and the city found itself. Perhaps he was not among the handsome men, but, really, he had everything that is inherent in any city: multi-storey buildings with balconies and even loggias, shop windows bulging onto pavements, wide straight streets with traffic lights, zebra crossings , police traffic controllers in white belts. We have two Palaces of Culture, about a dozen cinemas, a boat station, a respectable restaurant "Crystal" with cutting-edge jazz music by the Shubnikov brothers, colloquially simply Zhorok.

The city of Karasino arose, and this became an obvious fact for other cities in the country and for himself, now he lacked only his traditions and his heroes. Not heroes-builders - crane operators, excavators, installers, masons, but heroes-residents, heroes-citizens.

And so I, an ordinary teacher, one of many, Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin, turned out to be a hero.

I am sixty years old. Gorono sent the appropriate papers to the appropriate institutions: to honor, award, confer a title. And there, upstairs, looking through the papers sent to me, one of the meticulous was surprised:

Excuse me, it says here that he was born in Karasino ...

Yes, he's from here.

And he lived here for sixty years?

But here it is written that he has been working at the school continuously for forty years. What school did he work at? Was there a school in the village of Karasino?

Was, and, imagine, known throughout Russia. Yes, to some extent it still exists.

It turns out that the young city of Karasino - not without a family, not without a tribe, there was a living witness and participant in its history. I am some progenitor of the city, its first citizen.

My portrait in the city newspaper, prominent leaders, the fathers of the city, came to my anniversary in the restaurant "Crystal". Three Zhorki play in honor of me carcasses.

And sixty candles are collected in one place. A year per candle, years stretched throughout life.

Honoring ended, the newspaper with my portrait was forgotten - eyebrows with bushes, a rook's nose. After that, perhaps, I should say with sadness: "My life has flowed along the old channel."

So something it so, on old. I, as usual, got up at seven, slowly washed my face, shaved thoroughly, thoughtfully breakfasted under the submissive, rabbit-like gaze of my sick, plump wife. Then I took off my pajamas and again slowly, thoroughly dressed - a tie under a crisp collar, a waistcoat, a jacket with seams whitened from repeated cleaning, a gray hat, much worn, but retaining its shape, a dark blue coat, old, solid, monumentally heavy.