– You give Volga!
4
Big stars without blinking look at Earth as if eyes of unknown night birds. The dense darkness, timid and stubborn, rose to the coals of the burned-down fire. Wind will run, the flame uvula will flash, will light faces of fishermen, the edge of the drying network, the black shining belly overturned on the bank of the boat will draw near coals also again. From the coast pulls dampness, tar, fish.
Tired fishermen ate up fish soup, scooping wooden spoons from a kettle.
– Burst напоследях. And then каюк: zagovey on fish! – the gray-haired thick old man Gleb Kalganov broke the silence, is shorter – Kalgan.
On its parties three sons – on the right the senior, at the left younger, same large, bearded big fellows, as well as he, only dark-haired sat.
Gleb is the head of fishing artel. The Caspian Sea and lower reaches of Volga – for it the open book which each line he knows by heart. Knows water, fish habits, vagaries of the weather, the seas and its inhabitants. On one signs known to it is able even to foretell when the puzanok, a beshenka, a vobla where they will direct a way whether the big catch will be goes. In all that his word – the law concerns fish. And as the fishing village only also lives fish, Gleb’s word and in all other – the law. What will tell, so to that and to be. Before war he was not the last owner on crafts, had the capital, a tackle, ware. Revolution destroyed his welfare, but not the authority. He governed artel in the old manner – a spit as wanted.
His words were surprising of fishermen. Kalgan behaves in a queer way!
– On our century of fish enough! – the speckled Horned owl responded.
– A spoon lick yes the tongue lose. The fact that not enough! – Gleb important answered. Having kept silent a little to be convinced that nobody interrupts any more, he continued: – The last times come. God took away reason from people, and put their mad became. The God’s world is wanted to be remade in own way: to dry up the sea, Zavolzhye to turn Volga mother in the steppe. Also there will be we as cancer aground. Truly aground! Both fathers, and our grandfathers lived by the sea, fished. Da Volga’ sea were to us an arable land, and fish – bread. And here – on you! The sea will dry up, Volga will leave, fish will die, also we will die. Where and a vobla and other sea creatures caviar to throw a puzanok will go? There is no place. There is no Volga. Cover! And our huts will stand in naked to a step. And the seabed will begin to be plowed. Where the God’s small fish froliced, there tractors zatarakhtit, will arrange state farm. Village Council at the bottom sea. Beauty!. Our fishing heads were gone! Without Volga, there is no sea to us a zhista!
Gleb became silent, having inclined the head as a bull under blow of a butt.
The speckled Horned owl spitted out loudly, swore:
– Yes you, maybe, drank superfluous, Kalgan, was not overslept? Regain consciousness, cross! What to part nonsense for the night? Whether imaginable this business?. – Also stopped short.
Gleb raised the head and strictly looked at the Horned owl.
– I never spent on drink mind and was not engaged in nonsense… Yesterday the chairman of the Village Council spoke to me. Arrived, speaks, some of Astrakhan, to employ the administration, people. All of them also told that Volga will be closed, will drain the sea. From Astrakhan, speaks, the sea of versts on three hundred will depart. Means, and from us it is a little less. Below Kamyshin, at the Little sister, visitors say, already dig the earth, the stone, sand bring, barracks build. A dam Volga will be intercepted. In a word, upoky, My God, smother deceased your slaves!
Fishermen suddenly rustled as if storm wind on the wood passed.
– How to be a tepericha? – the young scared tenor outvoiced all.
Gleb grinned in gray-haired moustaches – got!
– How to be – he important started talking. – Vreme-na-a! That year, is worse. And all because that God was forgotten. God told: “All good very much”. And they here you are! Then by God it is incorrectly created. Undertook to correct! And former and that unless is bad? In old times as was? – And Gleb already rode out the fad. He spoke about “Golden Age” when fishes caught more than eighty million kilograms in the Caspian Sea and lower reaches of Volga a year, for twelve million rubles, about a beluga weighing one and a half thousand kilograms, about a starred sturgeon in fifty kilograms, about a sterlet in sixteen kilograms.
– And now that? Beluzhka – fifty five kilograms, a sturgeon – ten-twenty, a sevryuzhka at all six kilograms. Fish becomes shallow, fall trade. And now at all limes want them.
After such preparation Gleb wanted to lead the speech further. But here unexpectedly the thin fisherman Kuzma Sysoyev, all prickly as the Caspian bull-calf, a prickly, long ago not shaven beard, prickly eyes and words prickly got into conversation:
– Bolsheviks are guilty, speak? They exhausted fish? And you are not present? And who in forbidden time yes in forbidden places caught fish? You will tell, not you? Who seines blocked the river, up did not pushchat fish to places of spawning? Who on “holes” of a stanovishch of oblavshchik arranged yes wintering there a bream and a sazan and caught a catfish? Not you? You are also the first fish wrecker! Exhausted fish, and itself was inflated. It to you tightened now belts, here and began to whimper: ha-arasho was! To whom it is good, and to whom it is bad. окрест you in servitude had all fishermen! It Otjetsya on our sweat-blood, on you, a svolocha, worked.
Gleb though that, as though and not about it the speech. Lit a tubule, in an extinct fire spat and quietly answered:
– Well, brothers, I became bad to you, the old man drove out of mind, look for the senior more young. And I see that me have nothing to do here more. Tomorrow I will at daybreak take a swag for shoulders yes with the sons and I will start wandering on a path of a kuda of an eye look.
Fishermen were disturbed.
– Bude, Kalgan!
– Without you, as without eyes!
– Do not throw us!
– The dog grinds – wind carries!. – were heard from darkness of a voice of fishermen. But the salted, dense bass of Gleb covered all these voices:
– My word is firm! As told, well. And now to sleep!
Sighing and sighing, fishermen settled. It became absolutely silent. Only splash of the running wave was heard.
– Nikita! – Gleb said in low tones, having pushed sideways the son. – Sh-shsh… Creep, look whether this devil obstinate – Kuzma sleeps!
– Pokhrapyvayet – Nikita reported in a minute.
– Wake the carefully others… Horned owl, perhaps, too not трожь.
And when fishermen woke up, Gleb began to speak to them:
– Here that, children. Our business – tobacco. But only I so think that else it is possible to save the sea and Volga. Let’s not give them in offense! Sh-shsh! Listen! Said in council that this devil’s dam costs millions, and money it is just barely enough released. Here I also think … – Gleb started talking even more quietly: – If will break through this dam, and all plan will break through them to the devil’s grandmother. More money at them will not be enough. You realize? We will go all artel to Kamyshin, we will be employed in navvies, and there… it will be visible. Who agrees, that tomorrow and register!
Again silence. Large stars began to blink very often as if at night birds of an eye stuck together.
The small Volga town of Kamyshin is flooded alien fierce: seasonal workers, workers, employees, technicians, cooperators…
The village the Little sister on the right side of Volga, Solodushino with left and the island Shishkin, lying on the line of a barrage, are unrecognizable. As mushrooms after a rain grew barracks, cooperatives, dining rooms, catering establishments, clubs, hospitals.
The Kamyshin gardeners, damning a barrage, a piping and Mikheyev, transferred the bashtana far to the country.
Cucumbers and the well-known Kamyshin water-melons will grow somehow on the new place of a melon?.
– Ruined! At the roots cut! Ruined! Fish was gone, also our water-melons will be gone! – old men-bashtanniki grumbled.
The Kamyshin station is to the full filled with the arriving freights: wood, by cars, rails. Crept away with snakes on building of a narrow-gage railway. Fervently cuckoos shout, dragging for themselves tails of trolleys with sand, the earth, a stone. Zalyazgali iron jaws excavators. Zachvakali, drags breathed heavily, cranes creak.
Day and night there is a work. Brightly fires of lamps and searchlights disperse a gloom.
It is not slept to old men residents of Kamyshin. Will leave the house and long look at fires reflected in waters of the wide river and it seems to them that they got to other, terrible and unclear world where huge iron monsters creep, move necks more long than a cable column, champ mouths in which the bull and with horns will pass. And people – small, fussy – look after these unknown monsters.
Mikheyev almost does not sleep and eats on a clothes line. It is happy. The dream of his life was fulfilled. To the desert war is declared, he is a commander-in-chief at the front, the fire captain on “the fire of the earth”. He runs day and night bare-headed. Its bald head is red from the sun, wind and nervousness. The pointed nose was even more pointed, eyes flare. It all is heated by inspiration fire.
Runs on the coast, swings hands. After it, hardly keeping up, the lanky young engineer walks.
– Liquid air – here my secret! – Mikheyev shouts, without turning around to the engineer. – The device to Linda which is a little altered by me. Pressure – two hundred twenty atmospheres… We carry out liquid air on pipes and we release directly in water. It freezes water.
And before caissons we will receive a strong ice wall in the hot summer. Under its protection it will be easy for us to work.
It is better, than the temporary crossing points applied on Dneprostroy… What do you lag behind? Rather, rather!.
Work is humming in three changes. One change sends another calls to a competition. Day and night cuckoos have something in common. Cars roar, people rush about.
– As on the fire! – residents of Kamyshin speak.
– The fire also is; the earth burns, it is necessary to extinguish!
Dashingly Gleb Kalgan works with the artel. Sons of young people were outdone by the old man. And will graduate from artel work, at night-midnight take the networks occupied with themselves – and in boats. The river pulls, fish pulls.
And here among the old man bitterness pours out, facilitates heart, to the brim crowded with rage.
– Wait a moment! Will prop up a water dam autumn, here we also will gasp the artel to them on to help. One is bad – work at night, fires burn. Well and we will contrive somehow. To notice for the main thing where is thinner.
– Not there! Not there, devils, devils! Not there, rebyatushka! – Mikheyev’s voice reaches from the island Shishkin.
– See, vostronosy devil! – Gleb grumbles. – To Ugomon on him is not present! Well, take a walk, shout a bit. Let’s calm also you.
– The uncle Gleb – the young fisherman says suddenly. – And I met Kuzma yesterday. About cement works gadded. There, likely, it was attached.
Gleb frowned.
– Prickly it is necessary to be on guard this ruff. Will inform. All business will fail if slightly that will notice. Yes, can, for this purpose and came to building, maybe, overheard then… at night?.
– The uncle Gleb, and why pipes lay?
– Among summer water gas is wanted to be frozen. Frozen there was a wish for pike perches. Well, only unrealizable this business: before people did not reach yet that summer for the winter to overturn.
The message that “Volga will be frozen” quickly flew about building. The Kamyshin old residents were shocked.
– It is visible, not all nonsense that old women stir. In the summer ice to hold down the river – unless not the same miracle how the sea to dry up it and fire to kindle?
– Pomorozit water-melons! Though throw баштан yes leave up hill and down dale…
After all hoped: not to create a miracle to the person!
But these hopes did not come true: froze vostronosy Volga. However, not all, but all it was also not necessary to it. And before caissons water froze, became an ice wall. Not that residents of Kamyshin, and and seasonal workers did not trust the eyes, a hand felt ice. Real, without fake. Cold and strong!
Day after day people win meter from the river behind meter. Lower wooden boxes caissons on a bottom, build concrete cubes bull-calves. Water directs in flights, boiling and worrying. Level of the semi-dammed Volga increases, and the autumn high water from above approaches. Concrete bulls, links of a chain which has to hold down Volga are ready almost everything. It is necessary to finish the last, to block iron boards, and Volga, having met an obstacle, will turn the plentiful waters, will move to the Zavolzhye steppes to extinguish “the fire of the earth”.
But it is necessary to wait an autumn high water, and it this year unknown: the whole summer and fall went pouring rains.
Water arrives every day, muddy, dark, gloomy. Storms, fights about concrete bulls. Dry leaves, herbs, bushes, branches, the whole trees – everything that was taken by the river on the way – stuck around ledges of bulls, litter coast.
But thousands of builders day and night forge chains for the river.
Kuzma Sysoyev works at building together with the wife. It became as though still prickly. Lost weight, acquired a beard. Day works, and does not sleep at night, turns as if he is pricked by dry bones.
– What you do not sleep? – the wife grumbles.
Kuzma in the dark sighs.
– Gleb damned does not give to rest with the artel…
Yesterday there were I to a barrage at night, and it goes about a pipe with air, sniffs up. And change not it. What there it is necessary to it? Uvidal me – was washed away.
– And you what business? – the wife grumbles. – Watch yourself. Here winter is at hand, and you still a fur coat yes did not receive valenoks. Others received long ago.
– Tomorrow it is necessary vostronosy to tell – Kuzma continues, thinking of the.
– And long ago it is time – the wife calms.
Suddenly the beep, faltering, alarm, tears night calm to parts. Alarm…
Kuzma ran out on the street.
That for weather damned! Wind knocks down, the rain whips, the river hoots. Workers run.
Shout, noise not to understand in what business.
– Why alarm? – Kuzma asks.
– Accident. The pipe with liquid air does not work, melted ice, the caisson fills in – someone answers on the run.
Kuzma quickens the pace. The river ate an ice wall and presses a caisson. Here flashed as though the gray-haired head of Gleb and disappeared.
“It… Precisely his hands business” – Kuzma thinks.
The person in an old thick cloth coat without cap runs on the edge of a caisson. Vostronosy. Shouts, swings hands. To a pipe got, potters.
– You leave – shout to it. – Water will fill in.
Where there! Mikheyev sees nothing, does not hear. “If only liquid air went”.
And water is higher and higher, just about will fill in a caisson. Water knocks Mikheyev down, but he creeps again, clings to a pipe…
And suddenly crash, noise; a white cloud, hissing and whistling, fills a caisson. The pipe broke, and liquid air went directly to Mikheyev.
Mikheyev raised hands and… and stiffened, turned into an ice statue.
Storm, roar, noise also howl…
5
Dry Dol’s village as if the ruined ant hill. To look – and you will not understand what happened. At peasants bewilderment is more senior on faces, the youth is cheerful, and women howl, as on the dead man. Nobody stays at home, all run from a hut in a hut.