Matrenin yard chapter 3 summary. Matryonin yard

In the summer of 1956, the narrator (Ignatich) returns to Russia. His absence from the beginning of the war stretched for ten years. The man has nowhere to hurry, and no one is waiting for him. The narrator makes his way to the Russian outback with forests and fields, where you can find solitude and tranquility. After a long search, he gets a job as a teacher in the village of Talnovo, which is located next to the village with the strange name Peat product.

At the local bazaar, the author meets a woman who finds accommodation for him. Soon the narrator settles with a lonely woman of venerable age, whom everyone calls only by name - Matryona. In addition to the mistress herself, mice, cockroaches and a lame cat live in a dilapidated house.

Every day, Matrena woke up at five in the morning and went to feed the goat. Now she had to cook breakfast for the tenant. Usually it was potatoes from the garden, soup from the same potato (cardboard) or barley porridge.

One day, Matrena learned from her neighbors that a new pension law had come out. He gave the woman a chance to receive a pension that she was not paid. Matrena wanted to resolve this issue at all costs. But in reality, everything was quite complicated: the offices that needed to be visited were located in different directions from Talnovo. The woman had to walk several kilometers every day. Often such trips turned out to be in vain: either the accountant was not in place, or the seal was taken away.

In Torfoprodukt and the surrounding villages, they lived poorly. Since the land in these places was sandy, crops were poor. And the peat bogs around belonged to the trust. Residents had to secretly stock up on fuel for the winter, hiding from the guards.

Fellow villagers often asked Matryona to help out in the garden. She did not refuse anyone and did not even take money. She quit her job and went to help. Even in a foreign land, a woman worked with desire, sincerely rejoiced at a good result.

About once every month and a half it was Matryona's turn to feed the goat herders. Such a dinner cost her dearly, since she had to buy butter, sugar, canned food and other products in the general store. Matryona herself did not allow this even on holidays, but ate only what grew in the garden.

The hostess loved to tell Ignatich a story about the horse Volchka, who once carried a sleigh into the lake. All the peasants were frightened and jumped aside, but Matryona grabbed the horse by the bridle and stopped it. But she also had her fears. Matryona was afraid of the fire and the train.

Finally, in winter, the woman began to receive a pension, and the neighbors began to envy her. Matrena was able to order felt boots, a coat from an old overcoat and set aside two hundred rubles for the funeral. The woman seemed to come to life: it was easier for her to work, and illnesses did not bother her so often. Only one incident overshadowed the mood of Matryona - at Epiphany, someone took her cauldron of holy water from the church. The loss has never been found.

Neighbors often asked the woman about Ignatich. Matryona passed the questions of her fellow villagers to the tenant, but she herself did not elicit anything. The author only told the hostess that he was in prison. He also never climbed into the soul of Matryona and did not ask about the past.

Once Ignatich found the black-haired old man Thaddeus in the house, who came to ask for a teacher for his son Anton. The teenager was famous throughout the school for his bad behavior and backlog in subjects. In the eighth grade, he did not yet know fractions and did not know what triangles were.

After Thaddeus left, Matryona was silent for a long time, and then suddenly began to be frank with the tenant. It turned out that Thaddeus was her husband's brother. In their youth, Matrena and this black-haired old man were in love with each other, they were going to start a family. Their plans were interrupted by the First World War. Thaddeus went to the front and went missing there. Three years later, his mother died, the hut was left without a mistress. Soon, the younger brother of Thaddeus Yefim wooed Matryona. In the summer they played a wedding, and in the winter Thaddeus unexpectedly returned from Hungarian captivity, who had long been considered dead. Upon learning of what had happened, Thaddeus said right at the door: “If it weren’t for my own brother, I would have chopped you both!”

A little later, he married a girl from another village, also called Matrena. He told his fellow villagers that he chose her only because of his favorite name.

Thaddeus's wife often came to the hostess and cried that her husband offended her, even beat her. But she and her ex-fiance Matrena had six children. But the children of Matryona and Yefim died in infancy, no one survived. The woman was sure that these troubles were due to the damage that had been brought on her.

Thaddeus was no longer taken to the Patriotic War, and Yefim did not return from the front. A lonely woman took up the daughter of Thaddeus Kira. Having matured, the girl quickly married a driver and left for another village.

Since Matryona was often ill, she made a will early. From it it followed that the hostess gave the extension to the hut to Kira. The fact is that the pupil needed to legalize her piece of land in a new place. To do this, it was enough to put any building on your "klaptik".

The extension bequeathed by Matrena was very useful, so Thaddeus decided to solve this issue during the life of a woman. He often began to come to Matryona and persuade him to give the upper room now. Matryona did not feel sorry for the annex itself, but she did not want to destroy the roof of the hut.

Thaddeus did get his way. One cold winter day, he came to Matryona with the children to separate the upper room. For two weeks, the dismantled extension lay near the hut, since the blizzard covered all the roads. The sisters came to Matryona and scolded the woman for her stupid kindness. At the same time, Matryona's lame cat left the house somewhere.

Once Ignatich saw Thaddeus in the yard with people who were loading a dismantled upper room onto a tractor sleigh. In the darkness they took her to the village to Kira. Matryona also left with them, but did not return for a long time.

After midnight, the narrator heard conversations in the street. Two people in overcoats entered the house and began to look for signs of a drinking bout. Finding nothing, they left, and the author felt that a misfortune had happened.

His fears were soon confirmed by Matryona's friend Masha. She said in tears that the sleigh got stuck on the rails and fell apart, and at that time a steam locomotive was moving and ran into them. The machinist, the son of Thaddeus and Matryona, died.

The fate of the narrator is similar to the fate of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn himself - he is also a front-line soldier. And also his return from the front was delayed "for ten years." That is, I had to serve time for nothing - like half the country, if not more, was then in the camps.

The hero dreams of working as a teacher in the rural outback - away from civilization. He left the link "in the dusty hot desert" - and now he is irresistibly drawn to the middle lane of his beloved Russia.

In 1956, Ignatich was rehabilitated and in the summer he got off the train at one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow.

At first he wanted to live in the village of Vysokoe Pole, but only there were shortages of bread. Not bad with food in another village - but the hero is disgusted by his terrible Soviet name "Peat product". However, there are not only peat bogs around... The teacher settles in the village of Talnovo, where he teaches mathematics at school. Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva takes him to an apartment (or rather, to a hut). They live in the same room, but the old woman (she is sixty years old) is so quiet and helpful that no conflicts arise, except that the hero, out of camp habit, was worried that the woman had somehow mistakenly put on his padded jacket. Moreover, the loudspeaker irritates Ignatich very much - he cannot stand the noise at all, and especially the jaunty radio.

Matrona's hut is old. Her best part - by the window - is occupied by stools and benches with her favorite ficuses and other plants. This shows the kindness of Matrena, her love for all living things. She is a completely disinterested person - she never “chased the equipment”, she didn’t save up good for herself, she helped strangers. Of all the good things Matryona has, there is only a lame cat, picked up out of pity, and a dirty-white goat with crooked horns. Well, more mice and cockroaches...

Gradually, Matrena tells the tenant about her life. She got married early, because her mother died and she had to somehow arrange her life. She liked one young man - Thaddeus. Yes, he went to the front (it was before the revolution, in the First World War) and disappeared without a trace. She waited for him for three years - "no news, no bones." Received an offer from the younger brother of Thaddeus - Efim. Agreed, got married. And after a short time, Thaddeus returned from the Hungarian captivity. He loved Matryona very much - he almost chopped his brother and ex-bride with an ax from jealousy. But nothing, settled down.

Thaddeus also married over time, and Matrena also took his wife, not otherwise - in memory of his first love. "Second Matryona" gave birth to Thaddeus six children, all are alive. But Matryona, although she gave birth to children, but they “did not stand” with her - they did not live up to three months. The village decided that she was "spoiled." Then Matryona took Thaddeus's daughter Kira to bring up and raised her for a long time - until she got married and moved to a neighboring village to her husband.

The fact that Matryona has no good does not speak of her laziness - she gets up every day at four or five in the morning, there are plenty of things to do. She is always ready to help her neighbor dig potatoes or run at the call of the chairman's wife to help in collective farm affairs. She does not take money from anyone - which is why they consider her stupid.

Matryona did not receive a pension, although she could receive it due to her age and illness. Half her life she worked on the collective farm for "sticks" of workdays. And she got in the way of “peasant work”: even, like a Nekrasov heroine, she stopped a galloping horse, and he almost knocked her into an ice hole!

Matryona's selflessness is so great, and her love for her neighbors is so strong that she decides to give half of her hut and property to her adopted daughter Kira during her lifetime. Thaddeus supports her decision: and loads parts of the house and belongings on a sleigh. Together with his sons, he drags the goods of his former beloved across the railway tracks. Matryona helped them and died, lingering at the sleigh.

Fellow villagers cannot appreciate the nobility of Matryona. There is a cry over the coffin - but, rather, out of duty and out of decency. Soon the division of property begins, in which both the greedy sisters of the deceased and her best friend Masha take part. And Thaddeus, in general, the unwitting culprit of the death of his former beloved, did not even appear at the wake.

And only the teacher, Matrenin, a guest, clearly understands that Matryona is the righteous man without whom "the village does not stand."

“A village does not stand without a righteous man” - this is how the story “Matryona Dvor” was originally supposed to be called

Solzhenitsyn's "Matryona Dvor" is a story about the tragic fate of an open woman, Matryona, who is not like her fellow villagers. First published in Novy Mir in 1963. Reading the summary of “Matryona Dvor” chapter by chapter is especially important for students in grade 9, in which the work is being studied.

The story is told in the first person. The protagonist becomes Matrena's tenant and talks about her amazing fate. The first title of the story, “A village is not worth without a righteous man,” conveyed the idea of ​​a pure, disinterested soul well, but was changed to avoid problems with censorship.

The main characters of the story

Main characters:

• The narrator is a middle-aged man who has served time in prison and wants a quiet, peaceful life in the Russian outback. Settled at Matryona and talks about the fate of the heroine.
• Matrena is a lonely woman in her sixties. She lives alone in her hut, often gets sick.

Other characters:

• Thaddeus is a former lover of Matryona, a tenacious, greedy old man.
• Matryona's sisters are women who seek their own benefit in everything, Matryona is treated as a consumer.

"Matrenin Dvor" very brief content

A. Matrenin dvor summary for the reader's diary:

After the war and the camps, the author-narrator finds himself in the depths of Russia, in a small village called Talnovo, where he gets a job as a teacher and stays with a local resident Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva.

Matryona had a difficult fate: she loved Thaddeus, and married his younger brother Yefim. All of her children died in infancy, so she was disliked in the village and considered "spoiled". She loved her husband's nephews very much and took in the upbringing of the girl Kira, whom she kept until her marriage.

Matrena does not think about herself, all her life she works for someone, she tries to help everyone without demanding any reward or even a kind word for it. Maybe for this in the village she is considered blessed. And the end of the story is tragic: Matryona dies on the railroad tracks, helping the same Thaddeus to drag half of her house, which she bequeathed to Kira. Nobody in the village really grieves about Matryona, relatives think only about the abandoned property.

The story is told in the first person, the author himself introduces himself as a narrator and shows elements of his own destiny in the story. The meeting with Matrena opened his eyes to such simple and, at first glance, ordinary women, on whom the whole world rests.

This is interesting: The story, grasping the soul and squeezing the heart, is set out in a short reader's diary, which every child and adult should periodically read.

A short retelling of Solzhenitsyn's "Marinin Dvor"

A. Solzhenitsyn Matrenin Dvor summary:

In the summer of 1956, at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow, a passenger got off along the railway line to Murom and Kazan. This is a narrator whose fate is reminiscent of the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front he “delayed with the return of ten years”, that is, he spent time in the camp, which is also evidenced by the fact that when the narrator got a job, every letter in his documents "perepal"). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization.

But living in the village with the wonderful name High Field did not work out, because they did not bake bread and did not sell anything edible there. And then he is transferred to a village with a monstrous name for his hearing Peat product. However, it turns out that “not everything is around peat extraction” and there are also villages with the names Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudni, Shevertni, Shestimirovo ...

This reconciles the narrator with his share, for it promises him "condo Russia". In one of the villages called Talnovo, he settles. The mistress of the hut in which the narrator lodges is called Matryona Vasilievna Grigoryeva, or simply Matryona.

The fate of Matryona, about which she does not immediately, not considering it interesting for a "cultured" person, sometimes in the evenings tells the guest, fascinates and at the same time stuns him. He sees a special meaning in her fate, which is not noticed by fellow villagers and relatives of Matryona.

The husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her like village husbands beat their wives. But Matryona herself hardly loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in the First World War and disappeared. Matryona was waiting for him, but in the end, at the insistence of the Thaddeus family, she married her younger brother, Yefim.

And suddenly Thaddeus returned, who was in Hungarian captivity. According to him, he did not kill Matryona and her husband with an ax just because Yefim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride for himself with the same name.

The “second Matryona” gave birth to Thaddeus six children, but the “first Matryona” had all the children from Yefim (also six) died before they even lived for three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “spoiled”, and she herself believed in it. Then she took up the daughter of the "second Matryona" - Kira, raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.

Matryona lived all her life as if not for herself. She constantly works for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing “peasant” work, and never asks for money for it. There is a huge inner strength in Matryona. For example, she is able to stop a rushing horse on the run, which men cannot stop.

Gradually, the narrator realizes that it is precisely on people like Matryona, who give themselves to others without a trace, that the whole village and the whole Russian land still rests. But this discovery hardly pleases him. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to her next?

Hence the absurdly tragic end of the story. Matryona dies helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railroad on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for the death of Matryona and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.

When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of duty than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property.

Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.

The plot of the story "Matryona Dvor" by chapters

One hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow, on the road to Kazan and Murom, train passengers were always surprised by a serious decrease in speed. People rushed to the windows and talked about the possible repair of the tracks. Passing this section, the train picked up its previous speed again. And the reason for the slowdown was known only to the machinists and the author.

Chapter 1

In the summer of 1956, the author was returning from "a burning desert at random just to Russia." His return "was dragged on for ten years," and he had no where, no one to rush to. The narrator wanted to go somewhere in the Russian hinterland with forests and fields.

He dreamed of "teaching" away from the bustle of the city, and he was sent to the town with the poetic name High Field. The author did not like it there, and he asked to be redirected to a place with a terrible name "Peat product". Upon arrival at the village, the narrator understands that it is "easier to come here than to leave later."

In addition to the hostess, mice, cockroaches, and a lame cat picked up out of pity lived in the hut.

Every morning, the hostess woke up at 5 am, afraid to oversleep, because she did not really trust her watch, which was already 27 years old. She fed her "dirty white crooked-horned goat" and prepared a simple breakfast for the guest.

Somehow Matryona learned from rural women that "a new pension law has come out." And Matryona began to seek a pension, but it was very difficult to get it, the different offices to which the woman was sent were located tens of kilometers from each other, and the day had to be spent, because of one signature.

People in the village lived poorly, despite the fact that peat bogs stretched for hundreds of kilometers around Talnovo, the peat from them "belonged to the trust." Rural women had to drag bags of peat for themselves for the winter, hiding from the raids of the guards. The land here was sandy, yielded by the poor.

People in the village often called Matryona to their garden, and she, leaving her business, went to help them. Talnovo women almost lined up to take Matryona to their garden, because she worked for pleasure, rejoicing at a good harvest from others.

Once a month and a half, the hostess had a turn to feed the shepherds. This dinner “driven Matryona into a big expense,” because she had to buy sugar, canned food, and butter. The grandmother herself did not allow herself such a luxury even for the holidays, living only on what the wretched garden gave her.

Matrena once told about the horse Volchka, who got scared and "carried the sleigh into the lake." “The men jumped back, and she grabbed the bridle and stopped.” At the same time, despite the seeming fearlessness, the hostess was afraid of the fire and, to the point of trembling in her knees, the train.

By the winter, Matryona nevertheless counted her pension. Neighbors began to envy her. And my grandmother finally ordered herself new felt boots, a coat from an old overcoat, and hid two hundred rubles for the funeral.

Once, three of her younger sisters came to Matryona at Epiphany evenings. The author was surprised, because he had not seen them before. I thought maybe they were afraid that Matryona would ask them for help, so they didn’t come.

With the receipt of a pension, the grandmother seemed to come to life, and the work was easier for her, and the disease bothered less often. Only one event darkened my grandmother's mood: at Epiphany in the church, someone took her pot of holy water, and she was left without water and without a pot.

Chapter 2

Talnovo women asked Matryona about her lodger. And she passed questions to him. The author told the hostess only that he was in prison. He himself did not ask about the old woman's past, did not think that there was something interesting there. I only knew that she got married and came to this hut as a mistress. She had six children, but they all died. Later she had a pupil Kira. And Matrona's husband did not return from the war.

Somehow, having come home, the narrator saw an old man - Faddey Mironovich. He came to ask for his son - Antoshka Grigoriev. The author recalls that for this insanely lazy and arrogant boy, who was transferred from class to class just so as not to “spoil academic performance statistics,” sometimes for some reason Matryona herself asked. After the petitioner left, the narrator learned from the hostess that it was the brother of her missing husband.

That evening she told him that she was to marry him. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Matrena loved Thaddeus. But he was taken to the war, where he went missing. Three years later, Thaddeus's mother died, the house was left without a mistress, and Thaddeus's younger brother, Efim, came to woo the girl. No longer hoping to see her beloved, Matryona got married in the hot summer and became the mistress of this house, and in the winter Thaddeus returned “from the Hungarian captivity”. Matryona threw herself at his feet, and he said that "if it were not for my brother, I would have chopped you both."

He later took “another Matryona” as his wife, a girl from a neighboring village, whom he chose as his wife only because of her name.

The author recalled how she came to the hostess and often complained that her husband beats and offends her. She bore Thaddeus six children. And Matryona's children were born and died almost immediately. It's the corruption, she thought.

Soon the war began, and Yefim was taken away from where he never returned. Lonely Matryona took little Kira from the "Second Matryona" and raised her for 10 years, until the girl married a driver and left. Since Matryona was very ill, she soon took care of the will, in which she awarded the pupil part of her hut - a wooden annex room.

Kira came to visit and said that in Cherusty (where she lives), in order to get land for young people, it is necessary to build some kind of building. For this purpose, the bequeathed Matryona chamber was very suitable. Thaddeus began to come often and persuade the woman to give her up now, during her lifetime. Matryona did not feel sorry for the upper room, but it was terrible to break the roof of the house. And so, on a cold February day, Thaddeus came with his sons and began to separate the upper room, which he once built with his father.

For two weeks the chamber lay near the house, because the blizzard covered all the roads. But Matryona was not herself, besides, her three sisters came and scolded her for allowing her to give up the upper room. In the same days, “the rickety cat wandered out of the yard and disappeared,” which greatly upset the hostess.

Once, returning from work, the narrator saw how the old man Thaddeus drove a tractor and loaded a dismantled upper room onto two makeshift sledges. After they drank moonshine and in the dark they drove the hut to Cherusti. Matryona went to see them off, but never returned. At one in the morning the author heard voices in the village.

It turned out that the second sleigh, which, out of greed, Thaddeus attached to the first, got stuck on flights, crumbled. At that time, a steam locomotive was moving, it was not visible because of the hillock, because of the tractor engine it was not audible. He ran into a sleigh, one of the drivers, the son of Thaddeus and Matryona, died. Late at night, Matryona's friend Masha came, told about it, grieved, and then told the author that Matryona bequeathed her "bundle" to her, and she wants to take it in memory of her friend.

Chapter 3

The next morning, Matryona was going to be buried. The narrator describes how the sisters came to say goodbye to her, crying “for show” and blaming Thaddeus and his family for her death. Only Kira grieved sincerely for the deceased foster mother, and the “Second Matryona”, the wife of Thaddeus. The old man himself was not at the wake.

When they were transporting the ill-fated upper room, the first sleigh with boards and armor remained standing at the crossing. And, at a time when one of his sons died, his son-in-law was under investigation, and his daughter Kira almost lost her mind with grief, he only worried about how to deliver the sled home, and begged all his friends to help him.

After Matryona's funeral, her hut was "filled up until spring," and the author moved in with "one of her sister-in-laws." The woman often remembered Matryona, but all with condemnation. And in these memories a completely new image of a woman arose, which was so strikingly different from the people around. Matryona lived with an open heart, always helping others, never refusing to help anyone, even though her health was poor.

A. I. Solzhenitsyn ends his work with the words: “We all lived next to her, and did not understand that she was the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, not a village stands. Neither city. Not all our land."

Conclusion

The work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells about the fate of a sincere Russian woman, who "had fewer sins than a rickety cat." The image of the main character is the image of that very righteous man, without whom the village cannot stand. Matryona devotes her whole life to others, there is not a drop of malice or falseness in her. People around take advantage of her kindness, and do not realize how holy and pure this woman's soul is.

This is interesting: Solzhenitsyn wrote the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in 1959. The original author's title of the work is the story "Sch-854" (the serial number of the main character Shukhov in the correctional camp). On our website you can read a summary of the story "". The work brought Solzhenitsyn world fame and, according to researchers, influenced not only literature, but also the history of the USSR.

Video summary Matrenin Dvor Solzhenitsyn

to Central Russia. Thanks to new trends, a recent convict is now not refused to become a school teacher in the Vladimir village of Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). Solzhenitsyn settles in the hut of a local resident, Matryona Vasilievna, a woman of about sixty, who is often ill. Matryona has neither a husband nor children. Her loneliness is brightened up only by the ficuses planted everywhere in the house, and the rickety cat picked up out of pity. (See description of Matrona's house.)

With warm, lyrical sympathy, AI Solzhenitsyn describes the difficult life of Matryona. For many years she did not have a single ruble of earnings. On the collective farm, Matrena works "for the sticks of workdays in the filthy accountant's book." The law that came out after Stalin's death finally gives her the right to seek a pension, but even then not for herself, but for the loss of her husband, who went missing at the front. To do this, you need to collect a bunch of certificates, and then take them to the social security and the village council many times, 10-20 kilometers away. Matrona's hut is full of mice and cockroaches that cannot be bred. From living creatures, she keeps only a goat, and feeds mainly on “kartov” (potatoes) no larger than a chicken egg: her sandy, unfertilized garden does not give her larger. But even with such a need, Matryona remains a bright person, with a radiant smile. A good mood helps her to maintain work - hiking for peat in the forest (with a two-pound bag over her shoulders for three kilometers), mowing hay for a goat, chores around the house. Due to old age and illness, Matryona has already been released from the collective farm, but the formidable wife of the chairman now and then orders her to help at work for free. Matryona easily agrees to help her neighbors in the gardens without money. Having received a pension of 80 rubles from the state, she puts on new felt boots, a coat from a worn railway overcoat - and believes that her life has noticeably improved.

"Matrenin Dvor" - the house of Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova in the village of Miltsevo, Vladimir Region, the scene of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn

Soon Solzhenitsyn also learns the story of Matrena's marriage. In her youth, she was going to marry her neighbor Thaddeus. However, in 1914 he was taken to the German war - and he disappeared without a trace for three years. So without waiting for news from the groom, in the belief that he was dead, Matryona married Thaddeus' brother, Yefim. But a few months later, Thaddeus returned from Hungarian captivity. In his hearts, he threatened to chop Matryona and Yefim with an ax, then he cooled off and took another Matryona, from a neighboring village, for himself. They lived next door to her. Thaddeus was known in Talnovo as an imperious, stingy peasant. He constantly beat his wife, although he had six children from her. Matryona and Yefim also had six, but not one of them lived more than three months. Yefim, having gone to another war in 1941, did not return from it. Matryona, friendly with his wife Thaddeus, begged her youngest daughter, Kira, for ten years raised her as her own, and shortly before Solzhenitsyna appeared in Talnovo, she married her to a locomotive driver in the village of Cherusti. The story of her two fiancés Matryona told Alexander Isaevich herself, being worried at the same time, like a young woman.

Kira and her husband in Cherusty had to get a piece of land, and for this they had to quickly put up some kind of building. Old Thaddeus in the winter suggested moving there the upper room, attached to the mother's house. Matryona was already going to bequeath this room to Kira (and three of her sisters were marking the house). Under the persistent persuasion of the greedy Thaddeus, after two sleepless nights, Matryona agreed during her lifetime, breaking part of the roof of the house, dismantling the upper room and transporting it to Cherusti. Before the eyes of the hostess and Solzhenitsyn, Thaddeus with his sons and sons-in-law came to the matryona yard, clattered with axes, creaked with torn boards and dismantled the upper room into logs. The three sisters of Matryona, having learned how she succumbed to the persuasion of Thaddeus, unanimously called her a fool.

Matrena Vasilievna Zakharova - the prototype of the main character of the story

A tractor was brought in from Cherusti. The logs of the chamber were loaded onto two sledges. The fat-faced tractor driver, in order not to make an extra trip, announced that he would pull two sleds at once - so it turned out to be more profitable for him in terms of money. The disinterested Matryona herself, fussing, helped to load the logs. Already in the dark, the tractor with difficulty pulled a heavy load from the mother's yard. The restless worker did not sit at home here either - she ran away with everyone to help along the way.

She was not destined to return alive ... At the railway crossing, the cable of an overloaded tractor burst. The tractor driver with his son Thaddeus rushed to get along with him, and Matryona was carried along with them. At this time, two coupled locomotives approached the crossing, backwards and without turning on the lights. Unexpectedly flying in, they smashed to death all three who were busy at the cable, mutilated the tractor, fell off the rails themselves. A fast train with a thousand passengers almost got into the wreck, approaching the crossing.

At dawn, everything that was left of Matryona was brought from the crossing on a sled under a dirty bag thrown over. The body had no legs, no half of the torso, no left arm. And the face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead. One woman crossed herself and said:

- The Lord left her the right hand. There will be prayers to God...

The village began to gather for the funeral. Women relatives lamented over the coffin, but self-interest was visible in their words. And it was not hidden that Matrena's sisters and her husband's relatives were preparing for a fight for the legacy of the deceased, for her old house. Only the wife of Thaddeus and the pupil of Cyrus sobbed sincerely. Thaddeus himself, who lost his once beloved woman and son in that catastrophe, clearly thought only of how to save the logs of the upper room scattered during the crash near the railway. Asking for permission to return them, he continually rushed from the coffins to the station and village authorities.

AI Solzhenitsyn in the village of Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). October 1956

On Sunday Matryona and son Thaddeus were buried. The memorials are over. In the coming days, Thaddeus pulled out a barn and a fence from his mother's sisters, which he immediately dismantled with his sons and transported on sleds. Alexander Isaevich moved in with one of Matryona's sister-in-laws, who often and always with contemptuous regret spoke of her cordiality, simplicity, how she was "stupid, helped strangers for free", "didn't chase after the equipment and didn't even keep a pig." For Solzhenitsyn, it was precisely from these disdainful words that a new image of Matryona surfaced, which he did not understand her, even living side by side with her. This stranger to her sisters, ridiculous to her sister-in-law, a non-possessive woman who did not accumulate property for death, buried six children, but did not like her sociable disposition, felt sorry for the rickety cat, and once at night, during a fire, she rushed to save not the hut, but her beloved ficuses - and there is the same righteous man, without which, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.

Summer, 1956 At 184 km from Moscow, in the direction of Murom-Kazan, a passenger gets off. He is the narrator. His life path is similar to the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he participated in the war, spent time in the camp). His dream is to teach somewhere deep in Russia, as far away from the city as possible. The narrator's life in the village of Vysokoye Pole failed, because they did not bake bread and did not sell anything edible there.

He arrives at the station with the unpleasant name Peat product. Later it turns out that there are also villages with other names in the district: Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudni, Shevertni, Shestimirovo.

The narrator puts up with the circumstances, he will see “kondovy Russia. He stops in the village of Talnovo. The mistress of the yard where the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilievna Grigoryeva, or simply Matryona.

Matrena did not immediately tell about her life, thinking that this is not so entertaining information for such a “cultured” person as a guest. He is struck by the story of Matryona. He finds her fate special, which Matryona's neighbors and relatives do not notice. The husband is missing at the initial stage of the war. He loved Matryona, did not dare to beat her, like other husbands of their wives. Matryona did not love him. She was to be married off to her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. But he disappeared during the First World War. Matryona had to marry her younger brother, Yefim.

Unexpectedly for everyone, Thaddeus appears, who has been in Hungarian captivity for a long time. He says that he did not kill Matryona and her husband only for the reason that Yefim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona to such an extent that he took a girl with the same name as his wife. She bore him six children, while Matryona's children were dying from Yefim. The whole village came to the conclusion: Matryona is “spoiled”. She brought it on herself. She decided to take under her guardianship the daughter of the "second Matryona", Kira. She was engaged in her upbringing for ten years, until the moment when Kira got married. She went with her husband to the village of Cherusti.

Matryona was not up to herself all her life. She had to constantly work for someone: for a collective farm, for fellow villagers, while doing what is usually only a man’s hand, and at the same time, she never demanded payment. She was able to stop a galloping horse that men could not.

The image of Matryona is collective: with its help, we notice that it is on such women, who give themselves without a trace, that the Russian land rests. But this discovery does not please him at all. Does Russia rest only on the selflessness of its old women? What will happen to her next?

The end of the story is absurd and tragic. Helping Thaddeus to drag a part of the hut bequeathed to Kira across the railway tracks on a sleigh, Matryona dies. Thaddeus, not waiting for the death of Matryona, takes the inheritance during her lifetime. It turns out that her death was provoked.

At Matrena's funeral, relatives cry "out of decency", thinking only about the speedy division of her property. Fadey does not even appear at the memorial table.

Retelling prepared for you Irina-affa.