His wife called him - Crank. Sometimes kindly.

The weirdo had one feature: something constantly happened to him. He did not want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got into some stories - small, however, but annoying.

Here are episodes of one of his trips.

I got a vacation, I decided to go to my brother in the Urals: we had not seen each other for twelve years.

- And where is such a baubles ... on a subspecies of biturya ?! yelled Freak from the pantry.

- How should I know.

“Yeah, that’s where everyone was!” - The weirdo tried to look sternly with round blue-white eyes. - Everything is here, but this one, you see, is not.

- Does it look like a bitur?

- Well. Pike.

I must have fried it by mistake.

The dude was silent for a while.

- So how?

– Delicious? Ha ha ha! “He didn’t know how to joke at all, but he really wanted to. Are the teeth intact? She's a dork!..

... We gathered for a long time - until midnight.

And early in the morning Chudik walked with a suitcase through the village.

- To the Urals! To the Ural! He answered the question where he was going. At the same time, his round, fleshy face, round eyes expressed an extremely careless attitude towards long-distance travels - they did not frighten him.

To the Ural! Gotta scurry around.

But the Urals were still far away.

So far, he has safely reached the district town, where he was to take a ticket and board the train.

There was plenty of time left. The weirdo decided to buy gifts for the nephews for the time being - sweets, gingerbread ... He went to the grocery store, joined the queue. In front of him stood a man in a hat, and in front of the hat - fat woman with painted lips. The woman said softly, quickly, passionately to the hat:

- Imagine how rude, tactless a person must be! He has sclerosis, well, he has had sclerosis for seven years, but no one suggested that he retire. And this week without a year leads the team - and already: “Maybe you, Alexander Semenych, would be better off retiring?” Nah-hal!

The hat agreed:

- Yes, yes ... They are like that now. Think sclerosis. And Sumbatych? And this one, how is it? ..

The weirdo respected the city people. Not all, though: he did not respect hooligans and sellers. I was afraid.

It was his turn. He bought sweets, gingerbread, three chocolate bars. And he stepped aside to put everything in a suitcase. He opened the suitcase on the floor, began to pack it... He looked at the floor, and at the counter, where there was a queue, a fifty-ruble note lay at the feet of people. A sort of green fool, lies to herself, no one sees her. The weirdo even trembled with joy, his eyes lit up. In a hurry, so that someone would not get ahead of him, he began to quickly think about how it would be more cheerful, witty to say this, in line, about a piece of paper.

- Live well, citizens! he said loudly and cheerfully.

They looked back at him.

- We, for example, do not throw such pieces of paper.

This is where everyone got a little excited. This is not a triple, not a five - fifty rubles, you have to work for half a month. But there is no owner of the paper.

“Probably the one with the hat,” guessed Freak. We decided to put the paper in a prominent place on the counter.

“Someone will come running now,” the saleswoman said.

The weirdo left the store in a very pleasant mood. Everyone thought how easy it was for him, how fun it turned out: “We, for example, don’t throw such pieces of paper!” Suddenly he felt as though he were hot: he remembered that exactly such a piece of paper and another twenty-five rubles had been given to him in the savings bank at home. He just exchanged a twenty-five-ruble note, a fifty-ruble note should be in his pocket ... He put it in his pocket - no. There, here, no.

- Mine was a piece of paper! – loudly said Chudik. - Damn, so-and-so! .. My piece of paper.

Under the heart even somehow rang with grief. The first impulse was to go and say: “Citizens, this is my piece of paper. I got two of them at the savings bank: one twenty-five rubles, the other half a hundred. One, twenty-five rubles, now exchanged, and the other - no. But as soon as he imagined how he would stun everyone with this statement of his, as many would think: “Of course, since the owner was not found, he decided to pocket it.” No, do not overpower yourself, do not reach out for this damned piece of paper. They may not give back...

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The story "Crank", according to Shukshin's classification, belongs to the type of "story-fate". A freak is a certain image that aroused the interest of Shukshin the writer. In the plot of the story, in a short episode, a whole life is visible. The reader guesses both the past and the future of the hero.

Issues

In the story, Shukshin raises a favorite problem - the relationship between urban and rural residents. Chudik remarks that "in the village, people are better, more unobtrusive." He cites the example of his fellow villagers who became a Hero Soviet Union and a Knight of Glory of three degrees. The weirdo appreciates his village life, even the air, is not going to change it to the city.

Another important issue in the story is family relationships which can be built on love and trust or on mutual discontent (brother's family). Many stories about eccentrics raise the problem of the relationship of an eccentric with a childish outlook on life, living in the heart, and people who are driven by reasonable pragmatism.

Heroes of the story

The main character of the story is called Freak. So called his wife, often in a negative context. The word "freaks" has become the definition of a typical Shukshin hero. The peculiarity of these heroes is that they are simple, unsophisticated, not adapted to life and inconvenient for loved ones. Something happens to them all the time, and it interferes with the lives of others. They harm unintentionally, wishing others well. Freaks are infantile, they live by the heart.

Such is the Weird. His portrait emphasizes simplicity and good-naturedness, he looks like a baby: a round fleshy face, round blue-white eyes. The author immediately reports that Chudik does not know how to joke, pretends that he is not afraid of a long journey, respects city people. All these character traits are also childish, although the hero is 39 years old.

The teenage desire to impress leads Chudik to “cheerfully and wittyly” tell the queue that there is a 50-ruble note (half a month’s salary) at the counter. The freak seems to have succeeded. But the reader already knows that Chudik does not know how to joke. Even when he discovers that it was he who lost the money, Chudik does not dare to take it back. As a teenager, he is not confident in himself and is afraid that he will be judged and the paper will not be returned.

The weirdo is even afraid of his wife, like a child is afraid of a mother's abuse. Indeed, his wife hit him on the head a couple of times with a slotted spoon.

People notice the Chudik's simplicity and teach him to live, make remarks to him, although he tries to please everyone.

When he picks up a passenger's false teeth on the plane, he scolds Freak for picking it up with dirty hands. The strict telegraph operator refuses to send a telegram to his wife in verse, reminding him that he is “an adult. Not in kindergarten. Daughter-in-law Sofya Ivanovna also makes a remark when Chudik sings loudly (from her point of view, yells): “You are not at the station.” Chudik's best thing is decorating a baby stroller. The weirdo is a master of his craft, he has already painted the stove, "that everyone marveled at."

Shukshin leads the reader to the idea that the wonderful and abnormal is not the Freak at all, but those around him who reject the manifestation of feelings and the feelings themselves, calling them kisses and snot.

There is no anger in Chudik, which is why he takes anger in others so hard: “When he was hated, he was very hurt.” Faced with hatred, Chudik loses the meaning of life, does not fight, but leaves.

Chudik's brother Dmitry and his daughter-in-law Sofya Ivanovna- people from the countryside, but live in the city. Dmitry yearns for his homeland, asks his brother about the house and dreams of coming to visit with his family. Sofya Ivanovna strives to break all old ties and dreams of a career, as she understands it. Sophia considers her husband and his brother losers because they are from the village. Her career is that she works as a barmaid in some department. She also prepares children for a successful city life, according to her father, she torments them on the “pianos” and figure skating. According to Shukshin's plan, she is made by an evil break with her native village, with nature. Although it's hard not to get angry if the stroller (expensive thing) was decorated with children's paints, which are washed off with water at the first rain. So Shukshin does not take sides in the conflict.

Plot and composition

The plot of the story is Chudik's journey to his brother, whom he had not seen for 12 years, to a city in the Urals. The journey is fraught with many dangers, the hero experiences adventures: he loses money and is forced to return back for new ones, the plane lands on a potato field with the risk to the lives of passengers. Fate seems to oppose the Chudik, and not by chance. The whole journey Chudik feels like a nonentity, several times aloud he asks himself the question: “Why am I like this?” This is a question about the meaning of life: why is the hero different from others and how can he live in peace with other people?

The story consists of three parts. In the first, the hero comes up with the idea to visit his brother. The second part is the journey itself (bus - train - plane - brother's house).

The third part is the decision to return home and the return itself. The hero experiences great happiness from the fact that he arrives in a familiar environment, where he feels himself not a weirdo, but useful and useful. the right person who knows how to work: he blocked the roof in the house and built a veranda, works in the village as a projectionist.

The name of the protagonist and his profession arise in the last paragraph of the story, after describing a particularly "village" and "childish" act: Freak came home and ran barefoot, taking off his shoes in the rain.

The plot of the story, if we omit everyday details, corresponds to the folklore plot of the fairy tale "Whatever the husband does, it's good." A man changes property at a loss for himself, leaving with nothing, but his wife is glad that he came home safe and sound. The reader leaves the hero just as he approaches the house. It can be assumed that the wife will meet him like a wife from a fairy tale, but the ending of the story is open. But the wife of brother Dmitry is not like a fairy tale.

Stylistic features

The story has few dialogues compared to Shukshin's other stories. The character of the hero is revealed through his actions and through an internal monologue. The reader sees the world through the eyes of the Chudik, from his point of view evaluates the words and deeds of other people. That is why the reader perceives ironically Chudik's remark that his wife and daughter-in-law "are not evil, but psychos."

Having shifted the point of view towards the perception of the childish or wonderful, Shukshin encourages the reader to ask himself the question whether he himself does not miss anything in life.

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin is known throughout the world not only as an excellent actor, film director and screenwriter, but above all as a talented writer who, in his short works, showed the life of ordinary people. The story "The Freak", according to Wikipedia, was written by him in 1967 and immediately published in the Novy Mir magazine.

In contact with

Genre and style features

Vasily Shukshin in his story "Freak", which you can read online at any time, shows a small episode in the life of your hero, which reflects his whole fate. From this small passage, his whole life becomes clear and understandable: both what the main character had in the past, and what awaits him in the future.

If we compare this story by Vasily Shukshin with the rest of his works presented in print media and online, we can see that there are very few dialogues in it. But on the other hand, in the monologue of the protagonist, which he constantly pronounces inside himself, you can see his idea of ​​the world, find out what he lives with, what emotions overcome him. The artless hero of Shukshin "Freak", the brief content that is in this article appears before the reader in such a way that somewhere he wants to sympathize, and somewhere else he can condemn.

Problems of the story

In the story "The Freak" Vasily Shukshin raises a problem that can be traced in many of his works. Relations between the inhabitants of the city and the village have always been and remain an urgent problem. The protagonist notices that the people in the village are simple, hardworking. They want to change their life for another . Among them are heroes that the village can be proud of..

Another important problem is raised in the story "Freak" - family relationships, which should be built on love, trust and understanding. But unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Heroes of the story

Despite the fact that in Shukshin's story one the protagonist, but there are many secondary persons. This allows you to understand the content of the story. Among all actors the following can be distinguished:

Plot and composition

The plot of the piece - this is the journey of the Freak from his native village to the city where his brother lives. With Dmitry, who misses village life, the main character has not seen each other for 12 years. On the road, something constantly happens to Chudik: either he loses money, or the plane is forced to land on a potato field.

Shukshin's story is divided into three parts:

1. Chudik's thoughts about going to visit his brother.
2. Travel.
3. Homecoming.

The wife of the protagonist called differently. Most often a Freak, but sometimes affectionately. It was known that the main character had one peculiarity: something constantly happened to him, and he suffered greatly from this.

Once, having received a vacation, he decided to go to visit his brother, who lived in the Urals and whom they had not seen for a long time. He took a long time to pack his bags. And in the early morning he was already walking with a suitcase through the village, answering everyone's questions about where he was going.

Arriving in the city and taking a ticket, Chudik decided to go shopping to buy gifts for his daughter-in-law and nephews. When he had already bought gingerbread and a chocolate bar, he walked away and suddenly noticed that 50 rubles were left on the floor near the counter. He spoke to the people in the queue, but the owner of the money was not found. They put the money on the counter in the hope that soon the one who lost it himself would appear for them.

Departing from the store, Chudik suddenly remembered that he also had a banknote of 50 rubles. He put his hand in the pocket where it lay, but there was no money there. He did not dare to return and take the money, thinking that he would be accused of deceit. Then the hero had to return home to withdraw money from the passbook and listen to his wife's speeches about what a nonentity he is.

Already sitting in the train, Knyazev began to gradually calm down. In the car, I decided to tell some intelligent comrade a story about a drunken guy from a neighboring village. But his interlocutor decided that Chudik himself came up with this story. Therefore, the hero fell silent before transferring to the plane. The hero was afraid to fly, and his neighbor was taciturn and read the newspaper all the time.

When they began to land, the pilot “missed” and instead of the landing strip they ended up on a potato field. The neighbor, who had decided not to buckle up when boarding, was now looking for his artificial jaw. Knyazev decided to help him and immediately found her. But instead of gratitude, the bald reader began to scold him for clutching his jaw with dirty hands.

When he decided to send a telegram to his wife, the telegraph operator scolded him and demanded that he rewrite the text, because he is an adult, and the content of his message was like in kindergarten. And the girl did not even want to hear that he always wrote letters to his wife like that.

The daughter-in-law immediately disliked Vasily. She ruined his whole vacation. On the first evening when he and his brother drank, and the Freak decided to sing, she immediately demanded that Vasily stop yelling. But even further, the daughter-in-law did not allow them to sit quietly, remembering their childhood. The brothers went out into the street and began to talk about what wonderful and heroic people came out of the village.

Dmitry complained about his wife, how she tortured him, demanding responsibility. Wanting to forget that she, too, grew up in the countryside, tortured the piano, figure skating and children. In the morning, Vasily looked around the apartment and, wanting to do something pleasant for his daughter-in-law, decided to paint the baby carriage. He spent on art more than an hour but it turned out very nice. Vasily went shopping, buying gifts for his nephews. And when he returned home again, he heard the daughter-in-law swearing at his brother.

Vasily hid in a shed that stood in the yard. Late in the evening, Dmitry also came there, saying that there was no need to paint the carriage. The weirdo, realizing that his daughter-in-law strongly disliked him, decided to go home. Dmitri did not contradict him.

Arriving home, he walked along a familiar street, and at that time it was raining. Suddenly, the man took off his shoes and ran across the wet ground, which was still warm. He, holding shoes and a suitcase, still jumped up and down and sang loudly. The rain gradually stopped and the sun began to peek through.

In one place, Vasily Yegorovich slipped and almost fell. His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was 39 years old. Chudik worked as a village projectionist. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a spy. Therefore, his hobby all these years was dogs and detectives..

His wife called him - "Freak". Sometimes kindly.

The weirdo had one feature: something constantly happened to him. He did not want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got into some stories - small, however, but annoying.

Here are episodes of one of his trips.

I got a vacation, I decided to go to my brother in the Urals: we had not seen each other for twelve years.

- And where is such a baubles ... on a subspecies of biturya ?! yelled Freak from the pantry.

- How should I know.

“Yeah, that’s where everyone was!” - The weirdo tried to look sternly with round blue-white eyes. - Everything is here, but this one, you see, is not.

- Does it look like a bitur?

- Well. Pike.

I must have fried it by mistake. The dude was silent for a while.

- So how?

- Delicious! Ha-ha-ha! ... - He did not know how to joke at all, but he really wanted to. Are the teeth intact? She's a dork!..
... We gathered for a long time - until midnight. And early in the morning Chudik walked with a suitcase through the village.

- To the Urals! To the Ural! - He answered the question: where is he going? At the same time, his round, fleshy face, round eyes expressed an extremely careless attitude towards long-distance travels - they did not frighten him. - To the Urals! Gotta scurry around.

But the Urals were still far away.

So far, he has safely reached the district town, where he had to take a ticket and board the train.

There was plenty of time left. The weirdo decided to buy gifts for the nephews for the time being - sweets, gingerbread ... He went to the grocery store, joined the queue. In front of him stood a man in a hat, and in front of the hat was a plump woman with painted lips. The woman said softly, quickly, passionately to the hat:

- Imagine how rude, tactless a person must be! He has sclerosis, well, he has had sclerosis for seven years, but no one suggested that he retire. And this week without a year leads the team - and already: “Maybe you, Alexander Semenych, would be better off retiring?” Nah-hal!

The hat agreed:

- Yes, yes ... They are like that now. Think! Sclerosis. And Sumbatych? And this one, how is it? ..

The weirdo respected the city people. Not all, though: he did not respect hooligans and sellers. I was afraid.

It was his turn. He bought sweets, gingerbread, three chocolate bars. And he stepped aside to put everything in a suitcase. He opened the suitcase on the floor, began to pack it... He looked at the floor, and at the counter, where there was a queue, a fifty-ruble note lay at the feet of people. A sort of green fool, lies to herself, no one sees her. The weirdo even trembled with joy, his eyes lit up. In a hurry, so that someone would not get ahead of him, he began to quickly think about how it would be more cheerful, witty to say this, in line, about a piece of paper.

- Live well, citizens! he said loudly and cheerfully.

They looked back at him.

- We, for example, do not throw such pieces of paper.

This is where everyone got a little excited. This is not a triple, not a five - fifty rubles, you have to work for half a month. But the owner of the paper - no.

“Probably the one with the hat,” guessed Freak.

We decided to put the paper in a prominent place on the counter.

“Someone will come running now,” the saleswoman said.

The weirdo left the store in a very pleasant mood. Everyone thought how easy it was for him, how fun it turned out: “We, for example, don’t throw such pieces of paper!” All of a sudden, he felt as if he was engulfed in heat: he remembered that he had just exchanged exactly such a piece of paper and another twenty-five rubles, fifty rubles should be in his pocket ... He put it in his pocket - no. Here and there, no.

- Mine was a piece of paper! – loudly said Chudik. - Damn, so-and-so! .. My piece of paper.

Under the heart even somehow rang with grief. The first impulse was to go and say: “Citizens, this is my piece of paper. I got two of them at the savings bank: one twenty-five rubles, the other half a hundred. One has now been exchanged, and the other is not. But as soon as he imagined how he would stun everyone with this statement of his, as many would think: “Of course, since the owner was not found, he decided to pocket it.” No, do not overpower yourself - do not reach out for this damned piece of paper. They may not give back...

“Yes, why am I like this?” Chudik argued bitterly aloud. - What will we do?..

I had to return home.

I went to the store, I wanted to look at the paper at least from a distance, I stood at the entrance ... and did not enter. It will be quite painful. The heart can't take it.

I rode the bus and swore softly - I was gaining courage: I had an explanation with my wife.

Another fifty rubles were withdrawn from the book.

The eccentric, killed by his insignificance, which his wife again explained to him (she even hit him on the head a couple of times with a slotted spoon), was riding a train. But gradually the bitterness passed. Forests, copses, villages flashed outside the window ... They entered and left different people, different stories were told ... The weirdo also told one to some intelligent comrade, when they were standing in the vestibule, smoking.

- We have a fool in the neighboring village too ... He grabbed a firebrand - and after his mother. Drunk. She runs away from him and shouts: “Hands,” she shouts, “don’t burn your hands, son!” And he cares about him ... And he is rushing, a drunken mug. To mother. Imagine how rude, tactless you have to be ...

- Did you come up with it yourself? the intelligent comrade asked sternly, looking at Chudik over his glasses.

- What for? - he did not understand. - Over the river, the village of Ramenskoye ...

The intelligent comrade turned to the window and said no more.

After the train Chudik still had to fly a local plane for an hour and a half. He used to fly once. For a long time. I got on the plane not without shyness. “Is it possible that not a single screw will go bad in it in an hour and a half?” - thought. Then - nothing, bolder. He even tried to talk to a neighbor, but he was reading a newspaper, and he was so interested in what was in the newspaper that he didn’t even want to listen to a living person. What Freak wanted to find out was that he heard that they give you food on airplanes. But they didn't carry anything. He really wanted to eat on the plane - for the sake of curiosity.

“Healed,” he decided.

Started looking down. Mountains of clouds below. For some reason, the weirdo could not say for sure: is it beautiful or not? And all around they said: “Oh, what a beauty!” He only suddenly felt the most stupid desire: to fall into them, into the clouds, as if into cotton wool. He also thought: “Why am I not surprised? After all, under me almost five kilometers. Mentally measured these five kilometers on the ground, put them on the priest to be surprised, and was not surprised.

- Here's a man? .. Thought it up, - he said to a neighbor. He looked at him, said nothing, rustled again with the newspaper.

- Fasten your seat belts! said a pretty young woman. - I'm going to land.

The weirdo obediently buckled his belt. And the neighbor - zero attention. The weirdo gently touched him:

- They tell you to fasten your belt.

“Nothing,” the neighbor said. He put down the newspaper, leaned back in his seat and said, as if remembering something: “Children are the flowers of life, they should be planted with their heads down.”

- Like this? Chudik didn't understand.

The reader laughed out loud and did not speak any more.

They quickly began to decline. Here is the land - at hand, rapidly flies back. And there is no push. As knowledgeable people later explained, the pilot "missed". Finally, a push, and everyone starts tossing around so much that there was a sound of teeth chattering and gnashing. This reader with the newspaper took off from his seat, butted Chudik with his bald head, then kissed the porthole, then found himself on the floor. During all this time, he did not make a single sound. And everyone around was also silent - this amazed the Freak. He was also silent. Become. The first who came to their senses looked out the windows and found that the plane was in a potato field. A gloomy pilot came out of the cockpit and went to the exit. Someone cautiously asked him:

- We that, it seems, sat down in a potato?

- Don't you see it yourself? the pilot said.

The fear subsided, and the more cheerful ones were already trying to be witty.

The bald reader was looking for his artificial jaw. The weirdo unfastened his belt and also began to look.

- This?! he exclaimed happily and handed it to the reader.

Even his bald head turned purple.

- Why do you have to grab your hands! he shouted lispingly.

The dude got lost.

- And what is it? ..

- Where will I boil it? Where?!

The Weird didn't know that either.

- Will you come with me? he suggested. - My brother lives here, we will boil it there ... Are you afraid that I brought germs there? I do not have them.

The reader looked at Chudik in surprise and stopped screaming.

At the airport Chudik wrote a telegram to his wife:

“Landed. A lilac branch fell on my chest, dear Pear, do not forget me. pt. Vasyatka.

Telegraph operator, strict beautiful woman, after reading the telegram, suggested:

- Do it differently. You are an adult, not in kindergarten.

- Why? asked the Weird. “I always write to her like that in my letters. This is my wife! .. You probably thought ...

- You can write anything in letters, but a telegram is a type of communication. This is plain text.

The weirdo wrote:

“Landed. Everything is good. Vasyatka.

The telegraph operator herself corrected two words: “Landed” and “Vasyatka”. It became: “Arrived. Vasiliy".

- "Landed" ... What are you, an astronaut, or what?

“All right,” said the Weird. - Let it be so.

... The Chudik knew: he had a brother Dmitry, three nephews ... Somehow it was not thought that there should still be a daughter-in-law. He never saw her. Namely, she, the daughter-in-law, ruined everything, the whole vacation. For some reason, she immediately disliked the Chudik.

We drank in the evening with my brother, and Chudik sang in a trembling voice:
Poplars-ah, poplars-ah...
Sofya Ivanovna, the daughter-in-law, looked out from another room and asked angrily:

- Can you not yell? You're not at the train station, are you? And she slammed the door.

Brother Dmitry felt embarrassed.

“That’s… where the kids sleep.” Actually, she's good.

They drank more. They began to remember their youth, mother, father ...

- Do you remember? .. - Brother Dmitry happily asked. - But who do you remember? Breast was. They will leave me with you, and I kissed you. Once you even turned blue. I got it for it. Then they didn't stop. And all the same: they just turn away, I'm near you: I kiss you again. God knows what a habit it was. Itself-something else has snot knee-deep, and only ... this ... with kisses ...

“Do you remember,” Chudik also recalled, “how you me…

- Will you stop yelling? Sofya Ivanovna asked again quite angrily, nervously. - Who needs to listen to these different snots and kisses of yours? There, they talked.

"Let's go outside," said Crank.

They went outside and sat on the porch.

– Do you remember?.. – continued Chudik.

But then something happened to brother Dmitry: he began to cry and began to beat his knee with his fist.

“Here it is, my life!” Saw? How much anger in a person!.. How much anger!

The weirdo began to reassure his brother:

- Come on, don't get upset. No need. They are not evil, they are psychos. I have the same.

- Well, what did you dislike? For what? After all, she did not love you ... And for what?

It was only then that Chudik realized that, yes, his daughter-in-law disliked him. And for what really?

- But for the fact that you are not responsible, not a leader. I know her, stupid. Obsessed with their responsible. And who is she! Barmaid in control, bump out of the blue. She looks at it and starts ... She hates me too, because I'm not responsible, from the village.

- In what department?

- In this ... mining ... Do not pronounce now. Why did you have to go out? What did she not know, did she?

Here the Chudik was touched to the quick.

- What's the point, anyway? he asked loudly, not his brother, someone else. - Yes, if you want to know, almost everything famous people left the village. As in a black frame, so, you look - a native of the village. It is necessary to read the newspapers!.. Whatever figure, you understand, so - a native, he went to work early.

- And how much I proved to her: in the village, people are better, not arrogant.

- Do you remember Stepan Vorobyov? You knew him...

- I knew how.

- There is a village there! .. And please: Hero of the Soviet Union. Destroyed nine tanks. He went to the ram. His mother will now be paid a lifetime pension of sixty rubles. And they found out only recently, they thought - missing ...

- And Maksimov Ilya! .. We left together. Please, Cavalier of Glory of three degrees. But don't tell her about Stepan... Don't.

- Okay. And this one!

For a long time the excited brothers were noisy. The weirdo even walked around the porch and waved his arms.

- The village, you see! .. Yes, the air alone is worth something there! In the morning you open the window - how, say, will wash you all. At least drink it - so fresh and smelly, it smells of herbs, different flowers ...

Then they got tired.

Did you cover the roof? the older brother asked softly.

- Covered. The dude sighed softly too. - He set up a veranda - it's fun to look. You go out on the veranda in the evening ... you start fantasizing: if only your mother and father were alive, you would come with the kids - everyone would sit on the veranda, drink tea with raspberries. Raspberries now born an abyss. You, Dmitry, do not quarrel with her, otherwise she will dislike worse. And I'll be kinder somehow, she, you see, will move away.

“But she’s from the village!” Dmitri was astonished quietly and sadly. - But ... She tortured the children, the fool: she tortured one on the piano, she recorded the other in figure skating. The heart bleeds, and do not say, just curse.

- Mmh! .. - the Freak was excited again for some reason. - I don’t understand these newspapers at all: here, they say, one such works in a store - rude. Eh, you! .. And she will come home - the same. That's where the grief is! And I do not understand! - The weirdo also hit his knee with his fist. “I don’t understand why they became evil?

When Chudik woke up in the morning, there was no one in the apartment: Dmitry's brother had gone to work, his daughter-in-law too, the older children were playing in the yard, the little one was taken to the nursery.

The weirdo made the bed, washed himself and began to think what would be so pleasant to do to his daughter-in-law. Then a baby stroller caught my eye. “Hey,” thought Chudik, “let me paint it.” He painted the stove at home so that everyone marveled. I found childish paints, a brush and set to work. In an hour it was all over, the stroller was unrecognizable. On the top of the stroller Chudik let out cranes - a flock of corners, on the bottom - different flowers, grass-ants, a couple of cockerels, chickens ... He examined the stroller from all sides - a feast for the eyes. Not a stroller, but a toy. He imagined how pleasantly surprised the daughter-in-law would be, grinned.

- And you say - the village. Eccentric. He wanted peace with his daughter-in-law. - The child will be like in a basket.

The whole day Chudik walked around the city, staring at the shop windows. I bought a boat for my nephew, such a pretty boat, white, with a light bulb. “I’ll paint him too,” he thought.

At six o'clock Chudik came to his brother. He went up to the porch and heard that brother Dmitry was arguing with his wife. However, the wife cursed, and brother Dmitry only repeated:

“Well, what’s there! .. Come on ... Sonya ... Okay ...

“Tomorrow this fool should not be here!” shouted Sofya Ivanovna. - Let him leave tomorrow.

- Come on! .. Sonya ...

- Not okay! Not okay! Let him not wait - I'll throw his suitcase to hell, and that's it!

The weirdo hurried off the porch ... And then he didn’t know what to do. Again he was in pain. When he was hated, he was very hurt. And scary. It seemed: well, now everything, why live? And I wanted to get away from people who hate him or laugh.

“Yes, why am I like this?” he whispered bitterly, sitting in the shed. - One should guess: she won’t understand, she won’t understand folk art.

He stayed in the shed until dark. And my heart ached. Then brother Dmitry came. He was not surprised - as if he knew that brother Vasily had been sitting in the shed for a long time.

“Here…” he said. - This is ... she made a noise again. A stroller… well, you don’t need to.

“I thought she would take a look. I'll go, brother.

Brother Dmitry sighed... And he didn't say anything.
The Crank came home when it was raining brightly. The weirdo got off the bus, took off his new shoes, ran across the warm, wet ground, a suitcase in one hand, boots in the other. He jumped and sang loudly:
Poplars, poplars...
On one side the sky had already cleared, it was turning blue, and the sun was close somewhere. And the rain was thinning, splashing large drops into the puddles; bubbles bulged and burst in them.

In one place, Crank slipped, almost fell.
... His name was Vasily Yegorych Knyazev. He was thirty-nine years old. He worked as a projectionist in the village. He adored detectives and dogs. As a child, I dreamed of being a spy.

Author Shukshin Vasily Makarovich

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin

His wife called him - Crank. Sometimes kindly.

The weirdo had one feature: something constantly happened to him. He did not want this, he suffered, but every now and then he got into some stories - small, however, but annoying.

Here are episodes of one of his trips.

I got a vacation, I decided to go to my brother in the Urals: we had not seen each other for twelve years.

- And where is such a baubles ... on a subspecies of biturya ?! yelled Freak from the pantry.

- How should I know.

“Yeah, that’s where everyone was!” - The weirdo tried to look sternly with round blue-white eyes. - Everything is here, but this one, you see, is not.

- Does it look like a bitur?

- Well. Pike.

I must have fried it by mistake.

The dude was silent for a while.

- So how?

– Delicious? Ha ha ha! “He didn’t know how to joke at all, but he really wanted to. Are the teeth intact? She's a dork!..

... We gathered for a long time - until midnight.

And early in the morning Chudik walked with a suitcase through the village.

- To the Urals! To the Ural! He answered the question where he was going. At the same time, his round, fleshy face, round eyes expressed an extremely careless attitude towards long-distance travels - they did not frighten him.

To the Ural! Gotta scurry around.

But the Urals were still far away.

So far, he has safely reached the district town, where he was to take a ticket and board the train.

There was plenty of time left. The weirdo decided to buy gifts for the nephews for the time being - sweets, gingerbread ... He went to the grocery store, joined the queue. In front of him stood a man in a hat, and in front of the hat was a plump woman with painted lips. The woman said softly, quickly, passionately to the hat:

- Imagine how rude, tactless a person must be! He has sclerosis, well, he has had sclerosis for seven years, but no one suggested that he retire. And this week without a year leads the team - and already: “Maybe you, Alexander Semenych, would be better off retiring?” Nah-hal!

The hat agreed:

- Yes, yes ... They are like that now. Think sclerosis. And Sumbatych? And this one, how is it? ..

The weirdo respected the city people. Not all, though: he did not respect hooligans and sellers. I was afraid.

It was his turn. He bought sweets, gingerbread, three chocolate bars. And he stepped aside to put everything in a suitcase. He opened the suitcase on the floor, began to pack it... He looked at the floor, and at the counter, where there was a queue, a fifty-ruble note lay at the feet of people. A sort of green fool, lies to herself, no one sees her. The weirdo even trembled with joy, his eyes lit up. In a hurry, so that someone would not get ahead of him, he began to quickly think about how it would be more cheerful, witty to say this, in line, about a piece of paper.

- Live well, citizens! he said loudly and cheerfully.

They looked back at him.

- We, for example, do not throw such pieces of paper.

This is where everyone got a little excited. This is not a triple, not a five - fifty rubles, you have to work for half a month. But there is no owner of the paper.

“Probably the one with the hat,” guessed Freak. We decided to put the paper in a prominent place on the counter.

“Someone will come running now,” the saleswoman said.

The weirdo left the store in a very pleasant mood. Everyone thought how easy it was for him, how fun it turned out: “We, for example, don’t throw such pieces of paper!” Suddenly he felt as though he were hot: he remembered that exactly such a piece of paper and another twenty-five rubles had been given to him in the savings bank at home. He just exchanged a twenty-five-ruble note, a fifty-ruble note should be in his pocket ... He put it in his pocket - no. There, here, no.

- Mine was a piece of paper! – loudly said Chudik. - Damn, so-and-so! .. My piece of paper.

Under the heart even somehow rang with grief. The first impulse was to go and say: “Citizens, this is my piece of paper. I got two of them at the savings bank: one twenty-five rubles, the other half a hundred. One, twenty-five rubles, now exchanged, and the other - no. But as soon as he imagined how he would stun everyone with this statement of his, as many would think: “Of course, since the owner was not found, he decided to pocket it.” No, do not overpower yourself, do not reach out for this damned piece of paper. They may not give back...