Aitmatov and the day of Edigei lasts longer than a century. And the day lasts longer than a century...

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Our article will be devoted to the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century” summary and analysis of which will be the focus. This work became the first creation of a large form for Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov. Although the writer, even before this publication, was widely known not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the West.

About the book and title

The novel was published in the magazine " New world"in 1980. Chingiz Aitmatov chose a line from the poem “The Only Days” by Boris Pasternak as the title. “And the day lasts longer than a century” is the penultimate line of a very joyful poem about love, but it takes on a completely different tone in the novel. The eternal day is not a time illuminated by happiness, but the funeral of a close friend of the protagonist. Thus, the famous line turns from a love line into a deeply philosophical one, and the discussion here is about the eternal loneliness of a person in a huge world.

“And the day lasts longer than a century”: summary

The scene is the Toretam railway station, located not far from where trains constantly pass.

The iron sheet is surrounded on both sides by the great Sary-Ozeki steppe desert. Nearby there is a Boranly-Buranny junction, where Edigei works as a switchman. He spends his nights on shift in a small booth. During one such duty, his wife Ukubala comes to him and tells him about the death of his friend Kazangap.

Thirty years have passed since Edigei was demobilized in the forty-fourth year after a shell shock. Then the doctor promised him that in a year he would recover, but at that moment any physical work was beyond his strength. Then he and his wife decided to try to get a job railway, suddenly there is a place for a janitor or a security guard.

It was then that Kazangap, whom I met by chance, called them to Boranly-Burany. When they first arrived, Edigei had no idea that the rest of his life would pass in this deserted, sparsely populated and waterless place. And all this time Kazangap was nearby, constantly helping. Gradually, their families became friends and became like family.

Home

The events described in the work “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century” leave a heavy and depressing aftertaste. Its summary tells how Edigei, returning home after his shift, reflects on the upcoming funeral best friend. And then the hero feels how the earth shook under his feet. It was at the cosmodrome that a rocket had just risen with its fiery tail.

The takeoff was due to the fact that during the last twelve hours there was no contact American station"Parity", so it was necessary to find out what happened.

Edigei persuades the Kazangap family to bury their friend in the ancient Ana-Beyit cemetery, which dates back to the time of the Mankurts.

Mankury

Chingiz Aitmatov addresses not only the present, but also the past in his work. “And the day lasts longer than a century” is a novel replete with historical inserts. This is how the reader learns about mankurts. Once upon a time, these places were ruled by the Ruanzhuans, who very skillfully deprived their prisoners of memory. They put a shiri - a leather cap - on their heads. Originally the leather was rawhide. In the sun, it gradually dried up and squeezed the unfortunate man’s head. After this procedure, the person lost his memory and was called a mankurt. Such slaves turned out to be obedient and weak-willed.

One day, a woman named Naiman-Ana, whose son was taken into slavery, found her child, but they had already made him a mankurt. He was tending cattle when his mother approached him, begging her to remember, but the memory did not return.

The woman was noticed, but she managed to escape. Then the Ruanzhuans told the slave that this stranger had arrived to “steam off his head” (there was no worse threat for the Mankurts). Before they left, they left behind their arrows and bow.

The mother returns again, wanting to convince her son. But she did not have time to reach him when she received a mortal wound from an arrow in the chest. Naiman-Ana’s white scarf turned into a snow-white bird, which was supposed to tell his son the truth.

Funeral

By morning, preparations for Kazangap's funeral were completed. The body was tightly wrapped in cloth and placed in a cart attached to a tractor. From the description of the burial ritual, we can conclude that Aitmatov paid great attention to the traditions of the steppe peoples (“And the day lasts longer than a century” is a very reliable work).

It's a long way to the cemetery - thirty kilometers. Edigei rode ahead of the procession and showed the way. Memories of the past and work with Kazangap constantly popped up in the main character’s head. The current generation did not appreciate the merits of the elderly (and why did they waste their health?), but Edigei himself did not regret anything.

New planet

Aitmatov does not shun the unknown and turns to the fantastic. “And the day lasts longer than a century” goes back to the theme of space and the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.

An examination of Parity begins, and it turns out that the cosmonauts who were here have disappeared. But there was a record that talks about contacts with the inhabitants of the planet Lesnaya Grud. The aliens invited the astronauts to visit their planet, they agreed, but did not tell anyone about it.

The Parity crew returns, the cosmonauts tell how another civilization, more technologically advanced, lives. There have never been wars on their planet; its inhabitants themselves are extremely friendly. The Lesnogrudians are asking permission to visit Earth and build an interplanetary station on it, which earthlings are not yet able to create on their own.

This proposal was reported to special commission, which should give the answer.

Long history

The narrative of the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century” returns to Edigei’s life. Summary continues to describe the old man's memories. Now an old story told by Kazangap comes to his mind.

It was 1951, a family with two children arrived on the road - both boys. The head of the family was called Abutalip Kuttybaev, he was the same age as Edigei and did not come to these places because of a good life. During the war, Abutalip was captured by the Germans, then, in 1943, he managed to escape, and then he joined the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home, but no one knew about the time the man spent in the camp. Then things started to get worse in Yugoslavia, someone came forward about his past, and Abutalip was forced to resign.

The author strives to show not only the realities of the harsh Soviet reality in his novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century”; problems of a philosophical nature concern him much more. Thus, the question of restlessness, insecurity and loneliness of a person is raised. There is no refuge for a traitor anywhere (it was believed that if you were captured, it meant you surrendered). And then he and his family came to the Boranly-Buranny junction. It was hard for them here: the climate was not the same, there was no economy. Edigei felt sorry for Zaripa most of all. But thanks to the help of locals, the Kuttybaev family settled down. And Abutalip not only worked and took care of the house, but also began writing memoirs in which he recalled life in Yugoslavia.

A year passed, an auditor came to the patrol and began asking about what Abutalip was doing. And after a while, a passenger train stopped at Buranny, which never stops here. Three people got off at the station and arrested Kuttybaev. Two months later it turned out that he was first under investigation, and after some time he died.

The sons waited every day for their father’s return, Zaripa tormented herself. Edigei could not look at this calmly and was also tormented, because the woman was not indifferent to him.

Path

The main action connecting the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century” is the path of the funeral procession to the cemetery. Edigei moves ahead of everyone and remembers his terrible anger when Zaripa left. Then he lost his temper, beat his camel, and quarreled with Kazangap. But his friend remained prudent and gave him wise advice to go and bow to Zaripa and Ukubala for delivering him from troubles.

And now this wise man lies motionless, and they are going to bury him. But suddenly the procession stumbles upon a fence of barbed wire. A soldier stands nearby and explains that only those with a pass can enter. And they are going to demolish the Ana-Beyit cemetery and build a new microdistrict in its place. Edigei tried to persuade him to let him pass, but this did not help. Therefore, Kazangap was buried not far from the cemetery, exactly at the place where Naiman-Ana died.

Ending

The work “And the day lasts longer than a century” is coming to an end. The summary tells about the commission's decision. After several meetings, it was decided not to let the cosmonauts from Parity onto Earth, not to invite aliens, and to protect the near-Earth space from invasion with a hoop of rockets.

Edigei goes from the funeral to his superiors to explain to them that it is impossible to destroy the cemetery where several generations of ancestors were buried. He almost reaches his destination when a rocket takes off into the sky. It is combat and is designed to destroy everything that approaches the Earth. After the first, the second takes off, and after it the third, and so on several dozen missiles, forming a protective hoop around the planet.

Edigey runs away in a cloud of smoke and dust, but the next day he wants to return again.

Aitmatov, “And the day lasts longer than a century”: analysis

The main carrier of all the author’s ideas and plans was main character- Edigei, a man who lived in the desert for almost forty years. But its valuable life experience, which absorbed all the vicissitudes and sorrows brought by the twentieth century, and human sorrows: the Second world war, difficulties in the post-war years, bitter But the hardest thing for him was the test of memory.

Memory and conscience, embodied in Edigei, became the ideological basis of the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century.” Analysis of the text indicates an abundance of metaphorical images in the work that carry philosophical meaning. Thus, the themes of loneliness, responsibility, memory, fear are raised by Aitmatov with his characteristic ease and laconicism.

And this book is instead of my body,
And this word is instead of my soul...

Narekatsi. Book of Sorrow. 10th century

I

Great patience was required in searching for prey along dry gullies and bald ravines. Tracking the dizzying, fussy runs of a small earth-moving creature, now feverishly raking a gopher hole, now waiting for a tiny jerboa, hiding under the edge of an old ravine, to finally jump out onto open place, where he could have been crushed in no time, the mousing, hungry fox was slowly and steadily approaching from a distance the railway, that dark, evenly stretched embankment ridge in the steppe, which both attracted and scared her away at the same time, along which, now in one direction, now in the other, heavily shaking the ground around, the thundering trains rushed by, leaving behind strong irritating odors with smoke and fumes, driven along the ground by the wind.

In the evening, the fox lay down to the side of the telegraph line at the bottom of a ravine, in a thick and high island of dead horse sorrel and, curled up in a red-fawn lump next to the dark red, densely seeded stems, patiently waited for the night, nervously spinning its ears, constantly listening to the thin whistle of the low wind in the harsh rustling dead grasses. Telegraph poles also hummed tediously. The fox, however, was not afraid of them. The pillars always remain in place, they cannot chase.

But the deafening noises of periodically passing trains each time made her shudder tensely and squeeze herself even tighter. From the humming hearth, with her whole fragile body and ribs, she felt this monstrous force of earth-shattering heaviness and the fury of the movement of the trains, and yet, overcoming fear and disgust for alien smells, she did not leave the ravine, waited in the wings, when, with the onset of night, the tracks would become relatively calmer.

She came here extremely rarely, only in exceptionally hungry cases...

In the intervals between trains, there was a sudden silence in the steppe, as if after a landslide, and in that absolute silence the fox caught in the air some indistinct high-altitude sound that alarmed her, hovering over the twilight steppe, barely audible, not belonging to anyone. It was a play of air currents, or it was an imminent change in the weather. The animal instinctively felt this and bitterly froze, frozen in immobility, it wanted to howl loudly, to yelp from a vague premonition of some common misfortune. But hunger drowned out even this warning signal from nature.

Licking the pads of his paws, which had been worn out by running around, the fox just whined quietly.

In those days it was already getting colder in the evenings, it was approaching autumn. At night, the soil quickly cooled, and by dawn the steppe was covered with a whitish coating of short-lived frost, like salt marsh. A lean, cheerless time was approaching for the steppe beast.

The rare game that stayed in these parts in the summer disappeared in all directions - some to warmer climes, some to burrows, some to the sands for the winter. Now each fox earned its own food, scouring the steppe in complete solitude, as if there were no more foxes in the world. The young animals of that year had already grown up and scattered in different directions, and the time of love was still ahead, when foxes would begin to come running from everywhere in the winter for new meetings, when the males would collide in fights with such strength as life has been endowed with since the creation of the world...

As night fell, the fox came out of the ravine. She waited, listening, and trotted towards the railway embankment, silently running to one side or the other of the tracks. Here she looked for scraps thrown out of carriage windows by passengers. For a long time she had to run along the canvas, sniffing all sorts of tantalizing and disgusting-smelling objects, until she came across something more or less suitable. The entire train route was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled newspapers, broken bottles, cigarette butts, mangled tin cans and other useless rubbish. The spirit from the necks of the surviving bottles was especially foul—it reeked of dope. After feeling dizzy a couple of times, the fox already avoided inhaling the alcoholic air. She snorted and jumped immediately to the side.

And what she needed, for which she had been preparing for so long, overcoming her own fear, as luck would have it, was not encountered. And in the hope that it would still be possible to feed on something, the fox tirelessly ran along the railway, now and then darting from one side of the embankment to the other.

But suddenly she froze in her tracks, raising her front paw, as if caught by surprise by something. Dissolving in the stunted light of the high, hazy moon, she stood between the rails like a ghost, without moving. The distant rumble that alarmed her did not disappear. For now he was too far away. Still holding her tail in flight, the fox hesitantly stepped from foot to foot, intending to get out of the way. But instead, she suddenly hurried and began to wander along the slopes, still hoping to stumble upon something that she could profit from. I sensed that it was about to fly into the find, although the iron clang and clatter of hundreds of wheels were inevitably approaching from a distance in an ever-increasing menacing attack. The fox hesitated for just a fraction of a minute, and this was enough for it to rush about and tumble like a crazy moth, when suddenly the low and distant lights of the locomotives paired in a train slashed from the turn, when powerful searchlights, illuminating and blinding the entire area ahead, for a moment they whitened the steppe, mercilessly exposing its deathly dryness. And the train rolled crushingly along the rails. The air smelled of acrid fumes and dust, and the wind blew.

The fox rushed headlong away, looking back every now and then, falling to the ground in fear. And the monster with the running lights rumbled and rushed for a long time, its wheels clattered for a long time. The fox jumped up and started running as fast as she could again...

Then she caught her breath, and she was again drawn there, to the railway, where she could satisfy her hunger. But lights were again visible on the line ahead, again a pair of locomotives were pulling a long loaded train.

Then the fox ran around the steppe, deciding that he would come to the railway in a place where trains did not go...

Trains in these parts ran from east to west and from west to east...

And on the sides of the railway in these parts lay great desert spaces - Sary-Ozeki, the Middle Lands of the Yellow Steppes.

In these parts, any distances were measured in relation to the railway, as from the Greenwich meridian...

And the trains went from east to west and from west to east...

At midnight, someone long and stubbornly made his way to his switchman's hut, first straight along the sleepers, then, with the appearance of an oncoming train ahead, he rolled down the slope and made his way, as if in a blizzard, shielding himself with his hands from the wind and dust carried out by the squall. under a high-speed freight train (then a letter train followed the green street - a special purpose train, which then went to a separate branch, into the closed zone of Sary-Ozek-1, where they have their own, separate track service, went to the cosmodrome, in short, because the train was going all covered with tarpaulins and with military guards on platforms). Edigei immediately guessed that it was his wife who was hurrying to him, that she was in a hurry for a reason and that there was some very serious reason for this. That's how it turned out later. But due to his duty, he had no right to leave his place until the last tail car with the conductor rolled past in the open area. They signaled to each other with lanterns as a sign that everything was fine on the way, and only then Edigei, half-deaf from the continuous noise, turned to his wife who had arrived in time:

- What are you doing?

She looked at him anxiously and moved her lips. Edigei didn’t hear, but he understood – that’s what he thought.

- Let's get out of the wind here. “He took her to the booth.

But before hearing from her lips what he himself had already assumed, at that moment for some reason something completely different struck him. Although he had noticed before that things were heading towards old age, but this time, because of how out of breath she was after a fast walk, how annoyingly wheezing and wheezing in her chest and how at the same time her thin shoulders rose unnaturally high, he felt hurt for her. A strong electric light in a small, completely white-washed railway booth suddenly sharply revealed the never-reversible wrinkles on Ukubala’s bluish-darkened cheeks (and she was, after all, a cast dark woman of an even wheatish hue, and her eyes always shone with a black sheen), and also this pockmarked mouth, once again convincing , that even a woman who has outlived her womanhood should not be toothless (it was necessary to take her to the station a long time ago to insert these same metal teeth, now everyone, both old and young, wears them), and on top of all that, gray, already white-white the strands of hair scattered across the face from under the fallen scarf cut my heart painfully. “Oh, how you have aged for me,” he pitied her in his soul with a nagging feeling of some kind of his own guilt. And that’s why I was even more imbued with the silent gratitude that appeared for everything at once, for everything that had been experienced together over many years, and especially for the fact that she had now come running along the tracks, in the middle of the night, to the farthest point of departure out of respect and out of duty, because she knew how important this was for Edigei, she came running to tell about the death of the unfortunate old man Kazangap, a lonely old man who died in an empty adobe hut, because she understood that only Edigei in the world would take to heart the death of a person abandoned by everyone, although the deceased was never born my husband is neither a brother nor a matchmaker.

“Sit down, catch your breath,” Edigei said when they entered the booth.

“And you sit down,” she told her husband.

They sat down.

- What's happened?

– Kazangap died.

- Yes, I just looked in - how is he doing, I think, maybe, what is needed. I walk in, the light is on, and he is in his place, and only his beard is stuck up somehow, lifted up. I'm approaching. Cossack, I say, Cossack, maybe some hot tea for you, but he’s already. “Her voice stopped, tears welled up on her reddened and thinning eyelids, and, sobbing, Ukubala began to cry quietly. “That’s how it turned out in the end.” What a man he was! And he died - it turned out there was no one to close his eyes,” she lamented, crying. - Who would have thought! And so the man died... - She was going to say - like a dog on the road, but she remained silent, there was no need to clarify, it was already clear.

Listening to his wife, Buranny Edigei - that was his nickname in the area, having served at the Boranly-Buranny junction since those days when he returned from the war - sat gloomily on a bench, placing his hands, heavy as driftwood, on his knees. The visor of his railroad cap, fairly oily and tattered, shaded his eyes. What was he thinking?

– What will we do now? - said the wife.

Edigei raised his head and looked at her with a bitter smile.

- What do we do? What do they do in such cases! We will bury. “He stood up from his seat, like a man who had already made a decision. - That's it, wife, come back quickly. Now listen to me.

– I’m listening.

- Wake up Ospan. Don’t look at the fact that the head of the patrol, it doesn’t matter, everyone is equal before death. Tell him that Kazangap is dead. A man worked in one place for forty-four years. Ospan may not have been born yet when Kazangap started here, and no amount of money could have brought any dog here to Sarozek then. How many trains have passed here in his lifetime - there’s not enough hair on his head... Let him think. Say so. And listen again...

– I’m listening.

- Wake everyone up. Knock on the windows. There are so many of us here - eight houses, you can count them on your fingers... Get everyone on their feet. No one should sleep today when such a person has died. Get everyone on their feet.

- What if they start arguing?

“Our job is to notify everyone, and then let them fight.” Tell me I told you to wake me up. You must have a conscience. Wait!

- What else?

- First, run to the duty officer, today Shaimerden is the dispatcher, tell him what and how, and tell him to think about what to do. Maybe he'll find a replacement for me this time. If anything, let him know. You understand me, say so!

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” Ukubala answered, and then she caught herself, as if suddenly remembering the most important thing, unforgivably forgotten by her: “And his children!” Here you go! The first thing to do is to send them a message, otherwise how? Father died…

At these words, Edigei frowned aloofly and became even more stern. Didn't respond.

“Whatever they are, but children are children,” Ukubala continued in an apologetic tone, knowing that Edigei was unpleasant to listen to.

“Yes, I know,” he waved his hand. - Why am I not thinking at all? That’s just it, how is it possible without them, although if it were up to me, I wouldn’t let them get close!

- Edigey, it’s none of our business. Let them come and bury themselves. There will be more conversations later, there’s no end to it...

- Am I interfering? Let them go.

- Why won’t my son leave the city in time?

- He will be in time if he wants. The day before yesterday, when I was at the station, I sent him a telegram myself, saying that, so and so, your father is dying. What's more! He considers himself smart, he should understand what’s what...

“Well, if so, then all right,” the wife vaguely reconciled herself with Edigei’s arguments and, still thinking about something of her own that was disturbing her, said: “It would be nice if he showed up with his wife, after all, it’s the father-in-law to be buried, and not someone else.” somehow...

– Let them decide for themselves. How can I tell you, these are not small children.

“Yes, that’s how it is, of course,” Ukubala agreed, still doubtful.

And they fell silent.

“Well, don’t stay late, go,” Edigei reminded.

The wife, however, had something else to say:

“And his daughter, the miserable Aizada, is at the station with her husband, a drunkard, and with children, she also needs to be in time for the funeral.”

Edigei involuntarily smiled and patted his wife on the shoulder.

- Well, now you’ll start to worry about everyone... It’s just a stone’s throw from Aizada, in the morning someone will jump up to the station and say. It will arrive, of course. You, wife, understand one thing - both from Aizada and especially from Sabitzhan, even if he is a son, a man, there will be little use. Look, they’ll come, they won’t go anywhere, but they’ll stand there like outside guests, and we’ll do the burying, that’s how it turns out... Go and do as I said.

The wife walked, then stopped hesitantly and walked again. But then Edigei himself called out to her:

“Don’t forget, first of all, to the duty officer, to Shaimerden, let him send someone instead of me, and then I’ll work.” The dead man lies in an empty house, and there is no one nearby, how can you... Just say so...

And the wife went, nodding. Meanwhile, the signal indicator on the remote control buzzed and blinked red - a new train was approaching the Boranly-Buranny junction. At the command of the duty officer, he had to be taken to the reserve line in order to let the oncoming person through, also located at the entrance to the siding, only at the switch at the opposite end. The usual maneuver. While the trains moved along their tracks, Edigei looked back fitfully at Ukubala leaving the edge of the line, as if he had forgotten to tell her something else. To say, of course, it was that you never know what to do before the funeral, you can’t figure out everything at once, but that’s not why he looked around, it’s just that right now he noticed with grief how old his wife had become Lately, and this was very noticeable in the yellow haze of the dim track lighting.

“So old age is already sitting on our shoulders,” he thought. “The old man and the old woman have made it!” And although God did not harm him with his health, he was still strong, but the number of years was accumulating a considerable number - sixty, and with a year, it was already sixty-one. “Look, in two years they might ask for a pension,” Edigei said to himself, not without mockery. But he knew that he would not retire so soon and it would not be so easy to find a person in these parts to take his place - a track lineman and a repair worker; he worked as a switchman from time to time when someone got sick or went on vacation. Is it possible that anyone would be willing to pay extra for the remoteness and lack of water? But hardly. Look for those among today's youth.

To live on the Sarozek roads, you must have the spirit, otherwise you will perish. The steppe is huge, but people are small. The steppe is indifferent, it doesn’t care whether you feel bad or good, accept it as it is, but a person doesn’t care what and how in the world, and he is tormented, languishing, it seems that somewhere else, among other people he would have been lucky, but here he was by a mistake of fate... And that’s why he loses himself in the face of the great inexorable steppe, his spirit is discharged, like that battery from Schimerden’s three-wheeled motorcycle. The owner takes care of it, doesn’t drive it himself and doesn’t give it to others. So the car sits idle, but as it should, it won’t start, the cranking power has dried up. So it is with a person on the Sarozek patrols: if he doesn’t get down to business, if he doesn’t take root in the steppe, if he doesn’t take root, it will be difficult to resist. Others, looking from the carriages in passing, clutch their heads - Lord, how can people live here?! All around is the steppe and camels! And this is how they live, depending on how much patience they have. He’ll last three years, at most four, and that’s it! 1
Tamam- end.

On Boranly-Buranny, only two took root here for life - Kazangap and he, Buranny Edigei. And how many others visited in between! It is difficult to judge oneself, he lived and never gave up, and Kazangap worked here for forty-four years not because he was worse than others. Edigei would not have exchanged Kazangap for ten others... Now he is gone, Kazangap is gone...

The trains missed each other, one went east, the other went west. The Boranly-Buranny siding routes were empty for some time. And immediately everything around was revealed - the stars from the dark sky seemed to glow stronger, more clearly, and the wind blew faster along the slopes, along the sleepers, along the gravel flooring between the faintly ringing, clicking rails.

Edigei did not go into the booth. Thoughtful, he leaned against the pillar. Far ahead, behind the railway, I could see the vague silhouettes of camels grazing in a field. They stood under the moon, frozen in motion, waiting out the night. And among them Edigei distinguished his two-humped, large-headed bunk - the strongest, perhaps, in the Sarozeks and the fastest, nicknamed, like the owner, Buranny Karanar. Edigei was proud of him, an animal of rare strength, although it was not easy to control him, because Karanar remained an atan - in his youth Edigei did not castrate him, and then did not touch him.

Among other things to do tomorrow, Edigei remembered that he needed to drive Karanar home early in the morning and put him under the saddle. Useful for traveling to funerals. And various concerns also came to mind...

And at the crossing, people were still sleeping peacefully. With small station services perched on one edge of the tracks, with houses under identical gables slate roofs, there were six prefabricated panel buildings supplied by the railway department, plus Edigei’s house, built by himself, and the mud hut of the late Kazangap and various outbuildings, outbuildings, reed fences for livestock and other needs, in the center there was a wind turbine and a universal electric pump and on occasion, a manual water pump, which appeared here in last years, - that’s the whole village of Boranly-Buranny.

All as it is with the great railway, with the great Sary-Ozek steppe, a small connecting link in a branched, like blood vessels, system of other sidings, stations, junctions, cities... All as is, as in spirit, open to all the winds in the world, especially in winter, when the Sarozek blizzards sweep, covering houses up to the windows with snowdrifts, and the railway with hills of dense frozen snow... That’s why this steppe junction was called Boranly-Buranny, and there was a double inscription: Boranly - in Kazakh, Buranny - in Russian...

Edigei remembered that before all kinds of snowplows appeared on the tracks - both shooting snow in jets, and moving it to the sides with keel knives, and others - he and Kazangap had to fight with drifts on the tracks, one might say, not for life, but for life. death. And it seems like it was just recently. In '51, '52 - what severe winters there were. Unless it happened at the front, when life was used for a one-time task - for one attack, for one throw of a grenade under a tank... It happened here too. Let no one kill you. But he killed himself. How many drifts were thrown by hand, dragged out with drags and even carried snow up in bags, this is on the seventh kilometer, there the road goes down through a cut-out hillock, and every time it seemed that this was the last fight with the blizzard whirlwind and that for this you could, without a second thought, give up, to hell , this life, just not to hear the roar of steam locomotives in the steppe - give them way!

But those snows melted, those trains rushed by, those years are gone... No one cares about that now. It was - it was not. Today's railway workers arrive here in droves, noisy types - inspection and repair teams, so they not only don't believe, don't understand, can't imagine how it could be: Sarozek drifts - and on the stretch there are several people with shovels! Miracles! And among them, others openly laugh: why was it necessary - to take such torment upon oneself, why was it necessary to ruin oneself, why on earth! We would never do this! Yes, you went to such and such a grandmother, you would get up - and to another place, at worst, to a construction site or somewhere else, where everything is as it should be. You work so much, you pay so much. And if there’s an emergency, gather the people, send them overtime... “They came out to you as fools, old people, you’ll be fools and you’ll die!..”

When such “overestimaters” met, Kazangap did not pay attention to them, as if it did not concern him, he only grinned, as if he knew something more about himself that was inaccessible to them, and Edigei - he could not stand it, exploded, sometimes argued, only spoiled my blood.

But he and Kazangap had conversations with each other about what the visiting types in the inspection and repair special cars were now laughing at, and about many other things in previous years, when these smart guys were probably still running around without pants, and they were still brainstorming then living and being as far as understanding was enough and then constantly, the period was great from those days - from the forty-fifth year, and especially after Kazangap retired, but somehow it turned out unsuccessfully: he went to the city to live with his son and returned three months later. They talked about a lot of things then, how and what it was in the world. The man Kazangap was wise. There is something to remember... And suddenly Edigei realized with complete clarity and a sharp attack of surging bitterness that from now on all that remained was to remember...

Trains in these parts ran from east to west and from west to east:

And on the sides of the railway in these parts lay great desert spaces - Sary-Ozeki, the Middle Lands of the Yellow Steppes. Edigei worked here as a switchman at the Boranly-Buranny junction. At midnight, his wife, Ukubala, sneaked into his booth to report the death of Kazangap.

Thirty years ago, at the end of forty-four, Edigei was demobilized after a shell shock. The doctor said: in a year you will be healthy. But for now he was physically unable to work. And then he and his wife decided to join the railway: maybe there would be a place for a front-line soldier as a security guard or watchman. We met Kazangap by chance, got into conversation, and he invited the young people to Buranny. Of course, the place is difficult - desolation and lack of water, sand all around. But anything is better than toiling without shelter.

When Edigei saw the crossing, his heart sank: on a deserted plane there were several houses, and then on all sides - the steppe: He did not know then that he would spend the rest of his life in this place. Of these, thirty years have been near Kazangap. Kazangap helped them a lot at first, gave them a camel for milking, and gave her a baby camel, which they named Karanar. Their children grew up together. They became like family.

And they will have to bury Kazangap. Edigei was walking home after his shift, thinking about the upcoming funeral, and suddenly he felt that the ground under his feet was shaking. And he saw how far in the steppe, where the Sarozek cosmodrome was located, a rocket rose like a fiery tornado. It was an emergency flight due to an emergency on the joint Soviet-American space station<Паритет>. <Паритет>has not responded to signals from the joint control center - Obtsenupra - for over twelve hours. And then ships urgently took off from Sary-Ozek and Nevada, sent to clarify the situation.

:Edigei insisted that the deceased be buried in the distant family cemetery of Ana-Beyit. The cemetery had its own history. The legend said that the Ruanzhuans, who captured Sary-Ozeki in past centuries, destroyed the memory of the captives with a terrible torture: putting a shiri - a piece of rawhide camel skin - on their heads. Drying under the sun, the shiri squeezed the slave’s head like a steel hoop, and the unfortunate man lost his mind and became a mankurt. Mankurt did not know who he was, where he was from, did not remember his father and mother - in a word, he did not recognize himself as a human being. He did not think about escaping, did the dirtiest, hardest work and, like a dog, recognized only his owner.

One woman named Naiman-Ana found her son turned into a mankurt. He tended his master's livestock. I didn’t recognize her, I didn’t remember my name, my father’s name:<Вспомни, как тебя зовут, - умоляла мать. - Твое имя Жоламан>.

While they were talking, the woman was noticed by the Ruanzhuans. She managed to hide, but they told the shepherd that this woman had come to steam his head (at these words the slave turned pale - for a mankurt there is no worse threat). They left the guy with a bow and arrows.

Naiman-Ana returned to her son with the idea of convincing him to run away. Looking around, I searched:

The arrow hit was fatal. But when the mother began to fall from the camel, her white scarf fell first, turned into a bird and flew away screaming:<Вспомни, чей ты? Твой отец Доненбай!>The place where Naiman-Ana was buried began to be called the Ana-Beyit cemetery - the Mother's Rest:

Early in the morning everything was ready. Kazangap's body, tightly swaddled in a thick felt felt, was placed in a trailed tractor cart. There were thirty kilometers one way, the same amount back, and a burial: Edigei rode ahead on Karanar, showing the way, a tractor with a trailer rolled behind him, and an excavator brought up the rear of the procession.

Various thoughts visited Edigei along the way. I remembered those days when he and Kazangap were in power. They did all the work that was needed while on the road. Now the young people are laughing: the old fools ruined their lives, for what? So it was for a reason.

:During this time, an examination was carried out<Паритета>arriving astronauts. They discovered that the parity astronauts servicing the station had disappeared. Then they found an entry left by the owners in the logbook. Its essence boiled down to the fact that the workers

Those at the station made contact with representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization - the inhabitants of the planet Lesnaya Grud. The Lesnogrudians invited earthlings to visit their planet, and they agreed without informing anyone, including the flight directors, because they were afraid that for political reasons they would be prohibited from visiting.

And now they reported that they were on Lesnogrudka, talked about what they saw (the earthlings were especially shocked that there were no wars in the history of the owners), and most importantly, they conveyed the request of the Lesnogrudians to visit Earth. For this purpose, aliens, representatives of a technically much more advanced civilization than the earthly one, proposed creating an interstellar station. The world did not yet know about all this. Even the governments of the parties, informed about the disappearance of the cosmonauts, had no information about further development events. We were waiting for the commission's decision.

: Meanwhile, Edigei was recalling an old story that Kazangap wisely and honestly judged. In 1951, a family arrived on the move - a husband, wife and two boys. Abutalip Kuttybaev was the same age as Edigei. They did not end up in the Sarozek wilderness because of a good life: Abutalip, having escaped from a German camp, ended up in the forty-third among the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home without losing his rights, but then relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated, and, having learned about his partisan past, he was asked to apply.

information about dismissal due to at will. They asked in one place, in another: Having moved from place to place many times, the Abutalip family found themselves at the Boranly-Buranny junction. It seems that no one was forcibly imprisoned, but it seems that they were stuck in the Sarozeks for the rest of their lives. And this life was beyond their strength: the climate was difficult, the wilderness, the isolation. For some reason, Edigei felt sorry for Zarip most of all. But still, the Kuttybaev family was extremely friendly. Abutalip was a wonderful husband and father, and the children were passionately attached to their parents. They received help in their new place, and gradually they began to settle down. Abutalip now not only worked and took care of the house, not only fussed with the children, his and Edigei’s, but also began to read - he was, after all, educated person. He also began writing memories of Yugoslavia for children. This was known to everyone at the crossing.

By the end of the year, the auditor arrived, as usual. In between, he also asked about Abutalip. And some time after his departure, on January 5, 1953, a passenger train stopped at Buranny, which had no stop here, three people got out of it and arrested Abutalip. In late February it became known that the suspect Kuttybaev had died.

The sons waited for their father's return every day. And Edigei constantly thought about Zaripa with an inner readiness to help her in everything. It was painful to pretend it was nothing

He doesn’t feel anything special for her! One day he nevertheless told her:<Зачем ты так изводишься?.. Ведь с тобой все мы (он хотел сказать - я)>.

Here, with the onset of cold weather, Karanar became enraged again - he began to rut. Edigei had to go to work in the morning, and therefore he released Atan. The next day, news began to arrive: in one place, Karanar killed two male camels and separated four queens from the herd; in another, he drove the owner who was riding off a she-camel. Then from the Ak-Moinak crossing they asked in a letter to take the atan, otherwise they would shoot him. And when Edigei returned home riding Karanar, he learned that Zaripa and the children had left for good. He brutally beat Karanar, had a fight with Kazangap, and then Kazangap advised him to bow at the feet of Ukubala and Zaripa, who saved him from harm and preserved him and his dignity.

This is the kind of person Kazangap was, whom they were now going to bury. We were driving and suddenly came across an unexpected obstacle - a barbed wire fence. The guard soldier told them that he had no right to let them in without a pass. The chief of the guard confirmed the same and added that in general the Ana-Beyit cemetery is subject to liquidation, and in its place there will be a new microdistrict. Persuasion did not lead to anything.

Kandagapa was buried not far from the cemetery, in the place where Naiman-Ana had her great cry.

:The commission that discussed the Lesnaya Breast proposal, meanwhile, decided: not to allow the return of former parity cosmonauts; refuse to establish contacts with the Forest Breast and isolate the near-Earth space from a possible alien invasion with a hoop of rockets.

Edigei ordered the funeral participants to go to the patrol, and he decided to return to the guardhouse and get the big bosses to listen to him. He wanted these people to understand: you cannot destroy the cemetery where your ancestors lie. When there was very little left to the barrier, a bright flash of a menacing flame shot up into the sky nearby. Then the first combat robotic missile took off, designed to destroy any objects that came close to to the globe. After it, the second one rushed up, and another, and another: The rockets went into deep space to create a hoop around the Earth.

The sky fell on his head, opening up in clouds of boiling flame and smoke: Edigei and the camel and dog accompanying him, distraught, ran away. The next day, Buranny Edigei went to the cosmodrome again

“And the day lasts longer than a century”- novel by Chingiz Aitmatov. The prototype of the Buranny stop is the Toretam railway station near the Baikonur cosmodrome, named after the person buried near it (on the outskirts of modern city Baikonur) Sheikh Tore-Baba, a representative of the Tore clan (descendants of the Chingizids).

Edigei worked here as a switchman at the Boranly-Buranny junction. At midnight, his wife, Ukubala, sneaked into his booth to report the death of Kazangap.

Thirty years ago, at the end of 1944, Edigei was demobilized after a shell shock. The doctor said: in a year you will be healthy. But for now he was physically unable to work. And then he and his wife decided to go to work on the railway: maybe there would be a place for a front-line soldier as a security guard or watchman. We met Kazangap by chance, got into conversation, and he invited the young people to Buranny. Of course, the place is difficult - desolation and lack of water, sand all around. But anything is better than toiling without shelter.

When Edigei saw the crossing, his heart sank: there were several houses on the deserted plane, and then on all sides - the steppe... He did not know then that he would spend the rest of his life in this place. Of these, thirty years have been near Kazangap. Kazangap helped them a lot at first, gave them a camel for milking, and gave her a baby camel, which they named Karanar. Their children grew up together. They became like family.

And they will have to bury Kazangap. Edigei was walking home after his shift, thinking about the upcoming funeral, and suddenly felt the ground shaking under his feet. And he saw how far in the steppe, where the Sarozek cosmodrome was located, a rocket rose like a fiery tornado. It was an emergency flight due to an emergency on the joint Soviet-American space station Paritet. "Paritet" did not respond to signals from the joint control center - Obtsenupra - for over twelve hours. And then ships urgently took off from Sary-Ozek and Nevada, sent to clarify the situation.

...Edigei insisted that the deceased be buried in the distant family cemetery of Ana-Beyit. The cemetery had its own history. The legend said that the Ruanzhuans, who captured Sary-Ozeki in past centuries, destroyed the memory of the captives with a terrible torture: putting a shiri - a piece of rawhide camel skin - on their heads. Drying under the sun, the shiri squeezed the slave’s head like a steel hoop, and the unfortunate man lost his mind and became a mankurt. Mankurt did not know who he was, where he was from, did not remember his father and mother - in a word, he did not recognize himself as a human being. He did not think about escaping, did the dirtiest, hardest work and, like a dog, recognized only his owner.

One woman named Naiman-Ana found her son turned into a mankurt. He tended his master's livestock. I didn’t recognize her, I didn’t remember my name, my father’s name... “Remember what your name is,” the mother begged. “Your name is Zholaman.”

Naiman-Ana returned to her son with the idea of convincing him to run away. Looking around, I searched...

The arrow hit was fatal. But when the mother began to fall from the camel, her white scarf fell first, turned into a bird and flew away shouting: “Remember, whose are you? Your father is Donenby! The place where Naiman-Ana was buried began to be called the Ana-Beyit cemetery - the Mother's rest...

Early in the morning everything was ready. Kazangap’s body, tightly swaddled in a thick felt felt, was placed in a trailed tractor cart. There were thirty kilometers one way, the same amount back, and burial... Edigei rode ahead on Karanar, showing the way, a tractor with a trailer rolled behind him, and an excavator brought up the rear of the procession.

...During this time, Paritet was examined by arriving cosmonauts. They discovered that the parity astronauts servicing the station had disappeared. Then they found an entry left by the owners in the logbook. Its essence boiled down to the fact that those working at the station had contact with representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization - the inhabitants of the planet Lesnaya Grud. The Lesnogrudians invited earthlings to visit their planet, and they agreed without informing anyone, including the flight directors, because they were afraid that for political reasons they would be prohibited from visiting.

And now they reported that they were on Lesnogrudka, talked about what they saw (the earthlings were especially shocked that there were no wars in the history of the owners), and most importantly, they conveyed the request of the Lesnogrudians to visit Earth. For this purpose, aliens, representatives of a technically much more advanced civilization than the earthly one, proposed creating an interstellar station. The world did not yet know about all this. Even the governments of the parties, informed about the disappearance of the astronauts, had no information about further developments of events. We were waiting for the commission's decision.

...And meanwhile Edigei was recalling an old story that Kazangap wisely and honestly judged. In 1951, a family arrived on the move - a husband, wife and two boys. Abutalip Kuttybaev was the same age as Edigei. They did not end up in the Sarozek wilderness because of a good life: Abutalip, having escaped from a German camp, ended up in the forty-third among the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home without losing his rights, but then relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated, and, having learned about his partisan past, he was asked to submit his resignation letter of his own free will. They asked in one place, in another... Having moved from place to place many times, Abutalip’s family ended up at the Boranly-Buranny junction. It looks like no one was forcibly imprisoned, but it looks like they were stuck in saroseks for life. And this life was beyond their strength: the climate was difficult, the wilderness, the isolation. For some reason, Edigei felt sorry for Zarip most of all. But still, the Kuttybaev family was extremely friendly. Abutalip was a wonderful husband and father, and the children were passionately attached to their parents. They received help in their new place, and gradually they began to settle down. Abutalip now not only worked and took care of the house, not only fussed with the children, his and Edigei’s, but also began to read - after all, he was an educated man. He also began writing memories of Yugoslavia for children. This was known to everyone at the crossing.

The sons waited for their father's return every day. And Edigei constantly thought about Zaripa with an inner readiness to help her in everything. It was painful to pretend that he didn’t feel anything special for her! One day he nevertheless told her: “Why are you being so tormented?.. After all, we are all with you (he wanted to say - me).”

Kazangap was buried not far from the cemetery, in the place where Naiman-Ana had her great cry.

...The commission that discussed the Lesnaya Breast proposal, meanwhile, decided: not to allow the return of former parity cosmonauts; refuse to establish contacts with the Forest Breast and isolate the near-Earth space from a possible alien invasion with a hoop of rockets.

Edigei ordered the funeral participants to go to the patrol, and he decided to return to the guardhouse and get the big bosses to listen to him. He wanted these people to understand: you cannot destroy the cemetery where your ancestors lie. When there was very little left to the barrier, a bright flash of a menacing flame shot up into the sky nearby. Then the first combat robotic missile took off, designed to destroy any objects that approached the globe. The second one rushed up behind it, and another, and another... The rockets went into deep space to create a hoop around the Earth.

The sky fell on his head, opening up in clouds of boiling flame and smoke... Edigei and the camel and dog accompanying him, distraught, ran away. The next day, Buranny Edigei went to the cosmodrome again.

Chingiz Aitmatov is one of the most famous and popular writers of the Soviet era. Kyrgyz by origin, he paid a lot of attention to the life of his people. Aitmatov received recognition in the Soviet Union. He is the winner of numerous awards, Hero of Socialist Labor. Almost all of the writer’s works were published in two languages: Russian and Kyrgyz.

Steppe and railway

One of Aitmatov’s best novels is “Stormy Station”. For it the writer received the USSR State Prize. "Stormy Stop", a brief summary of which is often retold in various sources, is a novel with a philosophical orientation. The work begins with a description of the scene. This is an endless steppe with sparse vegetation - almost a desert. In the novel she is called Sary-Ozeki. The prototype of this area is the area surrounding the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. There is a railway not far from the huge airfield.

“Burnaya Stop Station”, a brief summary of which we will outline in the article, is easy to read. The same cannot be said about most semantically complex books. At the beginning of the novel, the author contrasts nature (the behavior of the fox) and the soulless civilization associated with the railway. Continuously rushing trains leave noise and debris in the steppe and frighten animals. However, it is civilization that gives local residents material goods. It is no coincidence that the fox, overcoming fear, returns to the railway track to find scraps.

Main characters

After describing the arena of future events, the writer introduces us to the heroes of the novel “Stormy Stop”. The summary of the following pages is related to the image of Edigei. He has been working as a trackman at the Buranny stop for many years. He is 61 years old. He began his work immediately after the war. Edigei lives in a village of eight houses, among which there are adobe huts. His wife Ukubala is as old as he is. Edigey is a man of strong character, because only strong people survive in Sarozek.

In the novel "Stormy Stop", the summary of which you are reading, there is little characters. Edigey is a real hard worker. He always worked only conscientiously. When snowstorms and blizzards swept the railway tracks, he and his friend Kazangap cleared dozens of meters with shovels. Young track workers laughed at such heroism and called the old people fools. At the beginning of the book, Kazangap dies.

Contrast between nature and civilization

The writer Aitmatov added an interesting touch to his novel. “Stormy Stop”, a brief summary of which is related to the unity of man and nature, has a camel in the list of characters. Karanar is a model animal. The writer clearly admires him and describes him knowledgeably. Aitmatov was a livestock specialist by education.

His son Sabitzhan appears at Kazangap's funeral. He is the embodiment of a new century and technological progress - a time when people forgot about God, forgot how to pray and lost their soul. Sabitzhan wants only one thing - to quickly bury his father and leave for the city. He tries to amaze his fellow villagers with his knowledge, but people only experience hostility - this is what Chingiz Aitmatov writes. “Stormy Stop”, a brief summary of which includes another thematic line, follows the plot further.

Future and past

This is a fantastic motif associated with space. The first contact of earthlings with another civilization! Nobody expected such a move from the Soviet writer Aitmatov. Two cosmonauts (Soviet and American) on the Paritet orbital station went into the unknown with the aliens. Such is the fantastic story line in the novel "Stormy Stop". The summary (it is not necessary to break it down into chapters, because the narrative presents a single outline) will tell about the following events.

While Edigei is going to bury his dead friend, his whole life at the Buranny stop passes before his inner gaze. He remembered his first meeting with Kazangap, who persuaded a shell-shocked patient to go to Sarozek. And when the Kuttybaev family arrived at the stop, Edigei felt all the injustice of the Stalin-Beria regime. The head of the Abutalip family is arrested.

Fight for the truth

Edigei does not know what Kuttybaev is accused of. His arrest is connected with memories of the war, which he writes down for his children. Abutalip was captured and after his escape he joined the Yugoslav partisans. Until the end of the war he was abroad. During interrogation from Edigei, they are trying to find out whether Kuttybaev mentioned English names - this is described in the work “Stormy Stop”. The novel, a summary of which every literature connoisseur should know, deeply excites readers.

Abutalip's suicide, Edigei's love for his wife Zaripa - all this passed before the inner gaze of the old Kazakh while he was taking his friend to the cemetery.

The “Khrushchev thaw” began. Edigei went to Alma-Ata to tell the truth about Kuttybaev’s arrest. Abutalip will be rehabilitated. A new life begins in the country.

In the novel, the author retells two ancient oriental legends about the events that took place in the Sarozek steppe. The first legend tells of Genghis Khan, who executed lovers here because they dared to have a child against his orders. The second legend tells of an old poet who fell in love with a young girl. His relatives tied him to a tree to prevent him from being reunited with her. This is how the past, present and future are intertwined in Aitmatov’s novel.

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