And longer than a century lasts the day of the characters. And the day lasts longer than a century

23.09.2019 -

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 search of prey through dry gullies and bald ravines. Tracking down the dizzying, fussy runs of a small earthmoving creature, either feverishly raking a gopher hole, or waiting for a tiny jerboa lurking under the search of an old gully to finally jump out into an open place where it could be crushed in a jiffy, the mouse hungry fox slowly and steadily approached from a distance the railway, that darkening evenly extended embankment ridge in the steppe, which both beckoned and frightened her away at the same time, along which rumbling trains rushed in one direction, then the other, heavily shaking the ground around, leaving behind strong smoke and burning irritating odors blown across the land by the wind.

By evening, the fox lay down on the side of the telegraph line at the bottom of the ravine, in a dense and high island of dead wood. horse sorrel and, curled up in a reddish-yellow lump near the dark red, densely seeded stems, she patiently waited for the night, nervously spinning her ears, constantly listening to the thin whistle of the downward wind in the harshly rustling dead grasses. Telegraph poles hummed too. The fox, however, was not afraid of them. The pillars always stay in place, they can't chase.

But the deafening noises of periodically running trains each time made her shudder intensely and squeeze even tighter into herself. From the buzzing under her whole fragile body, through her ribs, she felt this monstrous force of earth-shattering heaviness and fury of the movement of the trains, and yet, overcoming fear and aversion to alien smells, she did not leave the ravine, waiting in the wings, when with the onset of night on the tracks it would become relatively calmer.

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

In the intervals between trains, there was a sudden silence in the steppe, as after a collapse, 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, belonging to no one. It was a game of air currents, it was for a quick change in the weather. The animal instinctively felt this and bitterly froze, freezing in immobility, he wanted to howl in his voice, to bark from a vague foreboding of some common misfortune. But hunger drowned out even that warning signal of nature.

Licking the paw pads painted in running around, the fox only whimpered softly.

In those days, it was already cold in the evenings, it was towards autumn. At night, the soil quickly cooled down, and by dawn the steppe was covered with a whitish coating of short-lived hoarfrost, like a salt marsh. A meager, bleak time was approaching for the steppe beast.

That rare game that kept in these parts in the summer disappeared in all directions - in all warmer climes who went into burrows, who went into the sands for the winter. Now each fox hunted for its livelihood, prowling in the steppe in complete solitude, as if the fox offspring were completely wiped out in the world. The young of that year had already grown up and fled in different directions, and the time for love was still ahead, when the foxes would begin to run from everywhere in winter for new meetings, when the males would clash in fights with such strength as life is endowed with from the creation of the world ...

With the onset of night, the fox came out of the ravine. She waited, listening, and trotted to the railway embankment, noiselessly running first to one side of the tracks, then to the other. Here she looked for scraps thrown by passengers from the windows of the cars. For a long time she had to run along the canvas, sniffing all sorts of objects, teasing and disgustingly smelling, until she came across something more or less useful. The entire route of the trains was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled newspapers, broken bottles, cigarette butts, mangled cans and other useless garbage. The spirit from the necks of the surviving bottles was especially fetid - it reeked of dope. After two or two dizzy spells, the fox avoided inhaling the alcoholic air. She snorted, bounced immediately to the side.

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

But suddenly she froze on the run, raising her front paw, as if taken by surprise by something. Dissolving in the stunted light of the high hazy moon, she stood between the rails like a ghost, not moving. The distant rumble that alarmed her did not disappear. While he was too far away. Still holding the tail flying away, the fox hesitantly stepped from foot to foot, intending to get out of the way. But instead, she suddenly hurried, began to snoop along the slopes, still hoping to stumble upon something that could be profited from. Chuyala - it was about to fly into the find, although the iron clang and the clatter of hundreds of wheels inevitably approached from afar in an ever-growing menacing attack. The fox lingered for only a fraction of a minute, and this turned out to be enough for her to rush about, tumble like a crazed moth, when suddenly the near and far 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, ruthlessly exposing its dead dryness. And the train rolled crushingly along the rails. The air smelled of acrid burning and dust, the wind hit.

The fox rushed headlong away, looking back every now and then, falling to the ground in fear. And for a long time the monster with the running lights rumbled and rushed past, for a long time the wheels clattered. The fox jumped up and again rushed to run at full speed ...

Then she caught her breath, and she was again drawn towards the railroad, where she could satisfy her hunger. But ahead on the line lights were again visible, again a couple of locomotives were dragging a long loaded train.

Then the fox ran around the steppe, deciding that she would come to the railway in a place where no trains run ...

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 got to him in the switchman's booth, at first straight along the sleepers, then, with the appearance of an oncoming train in front, rolling down the slope, making his way, as in a blizzard, shielding himself with his hands from the wind and dust carried out by a squall from - under a high-speed freight train (then the letter train followed the green street - a train special purpose, which then went to a separate branch, to the closed zone of Sary-Ozek-1, where they have their own, separate travel service, went to the cosmodrome, in short, because the train went all covered with tarpaulins and with military guards on the platforms). Edigey immediately guessed that this wife was in a hurry to him, that she was in a hurry for a reason and that there was some kind of very serious reason. So it later turned out. But on duty, he did not have the right to leave the place until the last tail car with a conductor in the open area rolled past. They signaled to each other with lanterns as a sign that everything was in order on the way, and only then, half-deaf from the continuous noise, Edigey turned to his wife who came to the rescue:

- What are you?

She looked at him anxiously and moved her lips. Yedigei did not hear, but he understood - he thought so.

- Come here from the wind. He took her to the booth.

But before he heard from her lips what he himself had already assumed, at that moment, for some reason, he was struck by something completely different. Although he had noticed before that things were getting old, but this time it was because of how breathless she was after brisk walking how hoarsely there was a wheezing and hissing in her chest, and how at the same time her emaciated shoulders rose unnaturally high, he felt sorry for her. A strong electric light in a small, cleanly whitewashed railway booth suddenly sharply revealed the never-reversible wrinkles on Ukubala's bluish-darkened cheeks (after all, she was a cast dark woman of an even wheaten hue, and her eyes always shone with a black sheen), and also this gapped mouth, once again convincing that even a woman who has outlived her Indian age should in no way be toothless (for a long time it was necessary to take her to the station to insert these same metal teeth, now everyone, both old and young, go with such), and to all that, gray-haired, already white-white locks of hair, scattered over his face from under a fallen handkerchief, painfully cut his heart. “Oh, how old you are with me,” he felt sorry for her in his soul with a nagging feeling of some kind of his own guilt. And because of this, I was even more imbued with silent gratitude that appeared for everything at once, for everything that had been experienced together over many years, and especially for the fact that now I ran along the tracks, in the middle of the night, to the farthest point of the siding out of respect and out of duty, because she knew how important it was for Edigey, she ran to tell about the death of the unfortunate old man Kazangap, a lonely old man who died in an empty adobe mud hut, because she understood that only Edigei alone in the world would take the death of an abandoned person to heart, although the deceased had never been husband neither brother nor matchmaker.

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

“And you sit down,” she said to her husband.

They sat down.

- What happened?

- Kazangap is dead.

- Yes, I just looked in - how is he there, I think, maybe, what is required. I go in, the light is on, and he is in his place, and only his beard is upright somehow, pulled up. I'm coming. Cossack, I say, Cossack, maybe you have hot tea, but he is already. - Her voice stopped, tears welled up on her reddened and thinned eyelids, and, sobbing, Ukubala began to cry softly. “This is how it turned out in the end. What a man he was! And he died - it turned out that there was no one to close his eyes, - she lamented, crying. - Who would have thought! So the man died ... - She was going to say - like a dog on the road, but she said nothing, it was not worth specifying, it was clear without that.

Listening to his wife, Buranny Edigey - that was how he was nicknamed in the district, having served at the Boranly-Buranny junction from those days, when he returned from the war - he sat gloomily on a side bench, putting his hands as heavy as snags on his knees. The visor of a railway cap, rather greasy and tattered, shaded his eyes. What was he thinking?

- What are we going to do now? - said the wife.

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

- What do we do? And what do they do in such cases! We will bury. He rose from his seat, like a man who has already made up his mind. - You're here, wife, come back quickly. Now listen to me.

- I'm listening.

- Wake up Ospan. Do not look that the head of the section, it does not matter, everyone is equal before death. Tell him that Kazangap is dead. For forty-four years a man worked in one place. Ospan, perhaps, had not yet been born when Kazangap started here, and no dog could be dragged here for any money then, to sarozeks. How many trains have passed here in his lifetime - there is not enough hair on his head ... Let him think. Say so. And listen again...

- I'm listening.

- Wake everyone up. Knock on windows. How many of us are here to the people - eight houses, count on the fingers ... Raise everyone to their feet. No one should sleep tonight when such a person has died. Get everyone on their feet.

- And if they start arguing?

- Our business is to notify everyone, and then let them swear. Say I told you to wake up. You need to 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 so, let me know. You understand me, so tell me!

“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 are those on! It is necessary to send them a message as a first duty, otherwise how? Father died…

At these words, Edigey frowned in an aloof way, became even more stern. Didn't respond.

“Whatever it is, but children are children,” Ukubala continued in a justifying tone, knowing that Edigey was unpleasant to listen to this.

“Yes, I know,” he waved his hand. “Well, I don’t understand at all? That's just it, how is it possible without them, although, if it were my will, I would not let them come close!

- Edigei, it's none of our business. Let them come and bury them themselves. There will be conversations later, you won’t end up with a century ...

- Am I interfering? Let them go.

- And how will the son not be in time from the city?

- He will, if he wants to. The day before yesterday, when I was at the station, I myself beat off a telegram to him that, they say, so and so, your father is dying. What more! He considers himself smart, he must understand what's what ...

“Well, if so, then it’s still okay,” the wife vaguely reconciled with Edigei’s arguments and, still thinking about something of her own that disturbed her, she said: “It would be nice to show up with my wife, after all, to bury the father-in-law, and not someone sometime...

- Let them decide for themselves. How can I suggest, not small children.

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

And they fell silent.

“Well, don’t linger, go,” Edigei reminded him.

The wife, however, had more to say:

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

Yedigei smiled involuntarily and patted his wife on the shoulder.

- Well, now you will begin to worry about everyone ... Aizada is just a stone's throw away, in the morning someone will jump to the station and say. Will arrive, of course. You, wife, understand one thing - both from Aizada and even more so from Sabitzhan, even if he is a son, a man, there will be little sense. You'll see, they'll come, they won't go anywhere, but they'll stand there like strangers, and we'll bury it, that's how it turns out... Go and do as I said.

The wife started walking, then stopped hesitantly and started walking again. But then Yedigey himself called out to her:

- Do not forget first of all to the duty officer, to Shaimerden, let someone send in my place, and then I will work. The dead man lies in an empty house, and there is no one around, how can you ... Say so ...

And the wife went, nodding. In the meantime, a signaling device buzzed on the remote control panel, a signaling device blinked red - a new train was approaching the Boranly-Buranny junction. At the command of the duty officer, it was necessary to take him to the spare line in order to let the oncoming one, also located at the entrance to the siding, only at the arrow from the opposite end. Normal maneuver. While the trains were moving along their tracks, Edigey looked back in fits and starts at Ukubala, who was leaving the edge of the line, as if he had forgotten to say something else to her. Of course, there was something to say, you never know what to do before the funeral, you can’t figure everything out right away, but that’s not why he looked around, it’s just that right now he noticed with chagrin how old his wife stooped in recent times, and it was very noticeable in the yellow haze of dim track lighting.

“So, old age is already sitting on his shoulders,” he thought. - So they survived - the old man and the old woman! And although God did not offend him with his health, he was still strong, but a considerable number of years ran up - sixty, and even with a year, sixty-one were already. “Look, in two years they might ask for a pension,” Yedigey said to himself, not without mockery. But he knew that he would not retire so soon and it was not so easy to find a person in these parts in his place - a lineman and a repair worker, he was a switchman from time to time when someone fell ill or went on vacation. Unless someone will covet an additional payment for remoteness and lack of water? But hardly. Go and find such people among today's youth.

To live on the Sarozek sidings, you must have the spirit, otherwise you will perish. The steppe is huge, but the man is small. The steppe is indifferent, it doesn’t care if it’s bad or good for you, 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 be lucky, but here he is by a mistake of fate ... And that is why he loses himself in the face of the great inexorable steppe, his spirit is discharged, like that battery from Shaimerden's three-wheeled motorcycle. The owner takes care of everything, he does not go himself and does not give to others. So the car is standing idle, but as it should - it won’t start, the clockwork has dried up. So it is with a man on the Sarozek sidings: if he doesn’t stick to the cause, if he doesn’t take root in the steppe, if he doesn’t take root, it will be hard to resist. Others, looking out of the cars in passing, grab their heads - Lord, how can people live here ?! Around only the steppe and camels! And this is how they live, who has enough patience. Three years, four at the most, it will last - and there's business 1
Tamam- the end.

On Boranly-Buranny, only two have taken root here for life - Kazangap and he, Buranny Edigey. And how many others have been there meanwhile! It is difficult to judge oneself, he did not give up, and Kazangap worked here for forty-four years, not because he was worse than others. Yedigey would not have exchanged one Kazangap for a dozen others... Now he is gone, there is no Kazangap...

The trains passed each other, one went to the east, the other to the west. The sidings of Boranly-Buranny were empty for some time. And all at once everything was exposed around - the stars from the dark sky lit up like stronger, more distinct, and the wind roared faster along the slopes, along the sleepers, along the gravel flooring between the faintly tinkling, clicking rails.

Yedigey did not go to the booth. Thinking, he leaned against a pole. Far ahead, behind the railroad, he made out the vague silhouettes of camels grazing in the field. They stood under the moon, frozen in immobility, waiting out the night. And among them Edigey distinguished his two-humped, large-headed nar - the strongest, perhaps, in sarozeks and fast-moving, nicknamed, like the owner, Buranny Karanar. Edigei was proud of him, an animal of rare strength, although it was not easy to manage him, because Karanar remained an ataan - in his youth Edigei did not castrate him, and then did not touch him.

Among other things for tomorrow, Edigey remembered for himself that he had to drive Karanar home early in the morning, put him under the saddle. Useful for travel to funerals. And other concerns came to mind ...

And at the junction, people were still sleeping peacefully. With small station services perched on one side of the tracks, with houses under the same gable slate roofs, there were six prefabricated panel buildings supplied by the railway department, and even Edigey’s house, built by him, and the hut of the late Kazangap, and various outdoor stoves, extensions, reed fences for livestock and other needs, in the center of the wind and it is also a universal electric pump and, on occasion, a manual water pump that has appeared here in recent 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, hubs, cities ... Everything is as it is, as if in spirit, open to all winds in the world, especially winter, when the Sarozek blizzards are sweeping, filling houses up to the windows with snowdrifts, and railway hills of dense frozen snow... That's why this steppe junction Boranly-Buranny was called, and the inscription hangs double: Boranly - in Kazakh, Buranny - in Russian ...

Edigei remembered that before all kinds of snowplows appeared on the hauls - both shooting snow with jets, and moving it along the sides with keel knives, and others - he and Kazangap had to fight against drifts on the tracks, one might say, not for life, but for death. And it seems to have happened quite recently. In the fifty-first, fifty-second years - what fierce winters were. Unless at the front it happened like this, when life was used for a one-time thing - for one attack, for one throw of a grenade under a tank ... It happened here too. Don't let anyone kill you. But he killed himself. How many drifts were thrown by hand, dragged out with sleds and even bags carried the snow up, this is at the seventh kilometer, where the road goes down through a cut hillock, and each time it seemed that this was the last fight with a blizzard whirlwind and that for the sake of this you could give it away without hesitation, to hell , this life, if only not to hear how locomotives roar in the steppe - let them go!

But those snows have melted, those trains have rushed by, those years are gone ... Nobody cares now about that. It was - it wasn't. The present-day railway workers come here in short trips, noisy types are control and repair crews, so they don’t just don’t believe, they don’t understand, they can’t imagine how it could be: Sarozek drifts - and on the haul there are several people with shovels! Wonders! And among them, others openly laugh: why was it necessary - to take on such torment, why was it to ruin oneself, for what reason! We would like that - no way! Yes, you went to such and such a grandmother, you would have risen - and to another place, at worst, to a construction site-womb or somewhere else, where everything is as it should be. So much worked - so much to pay. And if it’s all hands on deck, gather the people, drive overtime ... “They went to fool you, old people, you’ll die like fools! ..”

When such "overestimators" 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, inaccessible to them, and Edigey - he could not stand it, exploded, used to argue, only ruined his own blood.

But between themselves, he and Kazangap had conversations about what the visiting types were now laughing at in control and repair special cars, and about many other things also in previous years, when these clever men probably ran without pants, and they were still brainwashing life-life as far as there was enough understanding 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 then, how and what it is in the world. The muzhik Kazangap was wise. There is something to remember... And suddenly Edigey understood with perfect clarity and a sharp attack of surging bitterness that from now on it remains only to remember...

"And the day lasts longer than a century"- Chingiz Aitmatov's first novel. Published in 1980 in the journal Novy Mir. Later it was published under the name "Stormy Station". In 1990, the Znamya magazine published a "story to the novel" "The White Cloud of Genghis Khan", which later became part of the novel.

The prototype of the Buranny station is the Toretam railway station near the Baikonur cosmodrome, named after Sheikh Tore-Baba, a representative of the Tore clan (descendants of Genghisides), who was buried near it (on the outskirts of the modern city of Baikonur).

The title of the novel contains a line from Boris Pasternak's 1959 poem "The Only Days".

Encyclopedic YouTube

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"And the day lasts longer than a century"

Mankurt. Based on the novel by Ch. Aitmatov.Turkmenfilm.1990 - Khurshid Davron's Library

BOOKS LIVE - 5. (Chingiz Aitmatov. "And the day lasts longer than a century").

Subtitles

Plot

The novel begins with a description of a fox following the railroad tracks:

With the onset of night, the fox came out of the ravine. She waited, listening, and trotted to the railway embankment, noiselessly running first to one side of the tracks, then to the other. Here she looked for scraps thrown by passengers from the windows of the cars. For a long time she had to run along the slopes, sniffing all sorts of objects, teasing and disgustingly smelling, until she came across something more or less useful. The entire route of the trains was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled newspapers, broken bottles, cigarette butts, mangled tin cans and other useless garbage. The spirit from the necks of the surviving bottles was especially fetid - it reeked of dope. After two or two dizzy spells, the fox avoided inhaling the alcoholic air. She snorted, bounced immediately to the side.

Further, an elderly woman runs to tell about the death of a man known to the whole village (Kazangap), a friend of the protagonist - Buranny Edigei. A funeral is arranged, but when the family and fellow villagers arrive at the cemetery, they find out that he is not there - a cosmodrome has been built there, the launch from which will forever envelop the Earth with a curtain (Operation "Hoop")

The place where the heroes of the novel live is also important - Sary-Ozeki - a barren desert, so the heroes have nothing to lose:

Edigei deliberately called the boss “you” so that he would understand that Edigei had nothing to fawn and be afraid of, there was nowhere to drive him further than the sarozeks

Tragically, the novel describes the fate of the teacher Abutalip, who, after working days at the half-station, he writes his testament to the children: “not for sale, not for vanity, but as a confession for the soul”, in order to write down what he experienced, rethink it, leave it to his children as instruction and memory. He was later arrested on a false denunciation and committed suicide to avoid persecution of his family, as Buranny Edigey finds out:

Such a bastard, he got out (Abutalip threw himself under the train) - he cursed (Tansykbaev is one of the authors of the slanderous denunciation, Ch. Aitmatov has the personification of the mankurt). - He ruined the whole thing! BUT? Wow! Gone, gone! - and desperately poured himself a glass of vodka

Legends about mankurts

One of the highlights of the novel is the story of the mankurts. For the first time the reader encounters him during the funeral of Kazangap:

The Ana Beyit cemetery had its own history. The legend began with the fact that the Zhuanzhuans, who captured the sarozeks in past centuries, treated the captured warriors extremely cruelly ... A monstrous fate awaited those whom the Zhuanzhuans left as slaves. They destroyed the memory of a slave with a terrible torture - by putting a Shiri on the head of the victim.

The author writes that it is much easier to destroy a person than to remove his memory and mind, “to tear out the roots of what remains with a person until his last breath, remaining his only acquisition, leaving with him and not available to others” . Zhuanzhuang came up with the most barbaric way - to take away the living memory of a Human, which, according to Ch.

The very name of the cemetery is symbolic - "Ana Beyit" - Mother's rest. By chance, merchants and herd drivers met one of the mankurts, among them was his mother, Naiman-Ana, who did not know peace after this meeting, tried to find a shepherd-mankurt. Finding him, each time she asked her son about his father, where he came from, but he was silent.

The words spoken by her in despair have a special meaning (in many ways, the position of the writer also manifested itself here):

You can take away land, you can take away wealth, you can take away life, but who invented who dares to encroach on a person’s memory?! Oh Lord, if you exist, how did you inspire such people? Is there not enough evil on earth without this?

The son did not remember her... after asking the owners, he received an answer that he had no mother... he was given a bow and arrows with which he kills his mother.

The story of the mankurts is essential to the entire novel. These include the Tansykbaev family, who, by their desire to stand out, violated all human norms and morality. In order to find out about the fate of Abutalip, Buranny Edigei travels to Alma-Ata, where, through a Russian scientist, he finds at least some truth - it is humanity that is the main thing in the novel, not kinship and national signs.

Even the end of the novel is connected with this theme - having arrived at the cemetery, the characters see a cordon, where Lieutenant Tansykbaev (son) is in charge. It is no coincidence that a story is cited at the post where a soldier from Vologda serves, who treats people who have arrived at the funeral with due respect, feeling embarrassed. This is important when Tansykbaev-son comes to the post, who addresses himself deliberately impolitely, calls Buranny Edegei and others "strangers" and refuses in principle to speak his native language with them, citing the fact that he is on duty and should speak only in Russian.

Thinking for a long time over the words of the son of the late Kazangap - Sabitzhan, about his idea of radio-controlled people, that education makes a person a Human, more and more Edigei comes to the conclusion that “maybe he was trained so that he turned out to be what he turned out to be. … what if he himself is already controlled by radio?”, he says:

Mankurt you, the real mankurt!

The historical value of the novel

Even before the release of the novel “And the Day Lasts Longer than a Century” (“Snowy Stop”), Ch. Aitmatov was popular both with Soviet readers and abroad. G. Gachev writes:

Well: one common day lasts more than a century and centuries - from Genghis Khan to Genghis the poet. The ongoing battle between the forces of Good and Evil. Pick a side, man! and the work of Chingiz Aitmatov helps us, equips us to choose the Good: it is both a feat, and work - and beauty and happiness.

The author again brings us back to the legend of the “Saryozek execution”, in order, wiping his eyes from the tears of the new time, to see the irreversibility of the truths of being by any evil force, even if it is covered with a halo of invincibility and invincibility.

In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation included the novel "And the day lasts longer than a century" in the list

The narrative of the story begins in the vast, deserted and deserted spaces of Sary-Ozeki. The main character is Edigei, a worker on the Boranla-Buranny route.

One night, during the next shift, his wife unexpectedly ran into the closet, bringing unpleasant news about the death of his best friend Kazangap. Edigey met his friend about thirty years ago, when, after a shell shock, he had to look for work in order to feed himself and his family.

Kazangap, who met him, offered him a place as a switchman, though in a deserted and remote place. Kazangap helped Edigei and his wife to settle down in a new place, gave a camel. Families of friends became very close friends, their children were inseparable.

With a heavy heart, Edigei realized that it was he who would have to bury his best friend. On the way home, he saw that at the nearest cosmodrome, a rocket took off at an incredible speed. It was an urgent flight, since no one had been in touch at the Paritet station for more than twelve hours.

Yedigei decided to bury his friend in the family cemetery thirty kilometers from their home. In the morning they prepared the body of Kazangap and set off on their way to the cemetery. All the way Edigey remembered their youth, how they worked and lived together.

In turn, the cosmonauts who arrived at the station found that there was absolutely no one there. And the entire crew of the station went to an alien planet called Forest Chest. They wanted to make friends with extraterrestrial intelligence and return invitations. The commission of the station decided not to let the disappeared astronauts back and to give a furious rebuff to anyone who tries to approach the Earth.

And at this time, having reached the cemetery, Edigey and the whole procession ran into a barbed wire that blocked the passage. The guard explained to them that the burial was closed and they were going to demolish it and build new houses here. And then, with a heavy heart, I had to bury my friend near the cemetery. This story reveals all valuable human qualities which help people to live in harmony and friendship, in spite of any obstacles.

Picture or drawing And the day lasts longer than a century

History of creation

“And the day lasts longer than a century” is not only a line from Boris Pasternak’s famous poem “The Only Days”, but also the debut novel by the Russian-Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov. The work was first published in 1980 in the Novy Mir magazine. Then it was published under the title "Stormy Station".

In 1990, in addition to the main novel, the story "The White Cloud of Genghis Khan" was published, which later became part of the main work. In the early 2000s, the novel began to be published again under the name "And the day lasts longer than a century." And in 2013 it was included by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation in the list of "100 books for schoolchildren".

Description of the work

In the center of the plot is a small railway siding located in the remote steppe of Central Asia. Local residents lead a calm, measured life here. The only connection to the outside world is a siding, on which rumbling trains rush past from time to time.

The work begins with a description of the move, where the reader meets the main character of the novel, Edigei, who is taking the body of his wise friend Kazangap to the ancient family cemetery in order to fulfill the last will of the deceased and pay tribute to the precepts of his ancestors.

Arriving at the place, the hero discovers that on the site of the cemetery, on the ashes of many generations of the people of Edigey, a missile range was built. Those who conceived and carried out its construction were far from respecting other people's graves, and even more so traditions. Yedigey is not allowed to enter the spaceport surrounded by barbed wire. This is how the narrative of the novel begins, organically intertwined with ancient parables and legends.

main characters

Edigei Buranny - the protagonist novel. All his life he has been working at an abandoned railway station. Being a character who fully connects his life with the surrounding reality, he sees his fate, his destiny as the common good. Therefore, he is fully prepared to take responsibility not only for his actions, but for everything that happens around him. With all his actions and desires, he seeks to maintain harmony in the world and ensure that no one in the world feels bad.

Kazangap is Edigei's friend. The main sage of the whole village, because of which he was known not only by local residents, but also by nearby villages.

Karanar is Edigei's camel, whom he raised and who accompanies him throughout the journey. Together with Edigey, they unite their natural and generic worldview, which is so closely intertwined with the mythology of Central Asia.

Analysis of the work

The novel surprisingly combines the features of magical realism, deep narrative and philosophical reflections that accompany the reader throughout the work.

The plot develops smoothly, so there are four main levels in total. The first one introduces the reader to the main character of the novel, describes the funeral of Kazangap and the surrounding nature.

The second level, just in the style of magical realism, begins to develop in parallel with the first. Here Edigei first gets acquainted with a civilization alien to himself, arrives at the site of an ancient family cemetery, on which the Cosmodrome is now built.

At the third level, the reader gets acquainted with the legends about mankurts, ancient parables and legends. A parallel is drawn between reality and mythology. The transition from tradition to modernity is shown through the construction of a cosmodrome at an ancient family cemetery.

The fourth level tells about the further fate of Edigei and the whole village upon returning to their native lands. The main action here takes place in the post-war years.

So, in just a few stages, during which the reader gets acquainted with the mythology of Central Asia, Aitmatov illustrates the change in the moral mores of society and the decline of the people through the departure and rejection of the traditional values of their culture.

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 the great desert spaces - Sary-Ozeki, the Middle Lands of the Yellow Steppes. Yedigei 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, Yedigei was demobilized after a shell shock. The doctor said: in a year you will be healthy. But while he was physically unable to work. And then he and his wife decided to go to the railroad: maybe there will be a place for a front-line soldier as a guard or watchman. We met Kazangap by chance, started talking, and he invited the young people to Buranny. Of course, the place is difficult - deserted and waterless, sands all around. But anything is better than toiling without shelter.

When Edigey saw the crossing, his heart sank: on a deserted plane there were several houses, and then on all sides - the steppe ... I didn’t know then that he would spend the rest of his life in this place. Of these, thirty years are near Kazangap. Kazangap helped them a lot at first, gave a camel for milking, gave a camel from her, who was 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 that the ground under his feet was trembling. And he saw how far in the steppe, where the Sarozek cosmodrome was located, a rocket rose like a fiery whirlwind. It was an emergency flight in connection with an emergency on the joint Soviet-American space station Paritet. "Parity" did not respond to the signals of the joint control center - Obtsenupra - for more than twelve hours. And then the ships from Sary-Ozek and from Nevada urgently started, sent to clarify the situation.

… Edigei insisted on burying the deceased in the distant family cemetery of Ana-Beyit. The cemetery has its own history. The legend said that the Zhuanzhuans, who captured Sary-Ozeki in past centuries, destroyed the memory of the captives by terrible torture: by putting on a head a wide - a piece of rawhide camel skin. Drying under the sun, the shiri squeezed the slave's head like a steel hoop, and the unfortunate one lost his mind, became a mankurt. Mankurt did not know who he was, where he came from, he did not remember his father and mother, in a word, he did not realize himself as a man. He did not think about running away, did the most dirty, hard work and, like a dog, recognized only the owner.

One woman named Naiman-Ana found her son turned into a mankurt. He tended the owner's livestock. I didn’t recognize her, I didn’t remember my name, the name of my father… “Remember your name,” mother pleaded. — Your name Zholaman.

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

Naiman-Ana returned to her son with the idea of persuading him to flee. Looking around, looking for...

The impact of the arrow was fatal. But when the mother began to fall from the camel, she fell first white handkerchief, turned into a bird and flew away with a cry: “Remember, whose are you? Your father Donenbay! The place where Naiman-Ana was buried became known as the Ana-Beyit cemetery - Mother's Rest ...

Everything was ready early in the morning. The body of Kazangap, tightly swaddled in a dense felt mat, 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.

Various thoughts came to Yedigei along the way. He remembered those days when he and Kazangap were in power. They did all the work that needed to be done. Now the young are laughing: the old fools ruined their lives, for what? So it was for what.

... During this time, the Paritet was examined by the arriving cosmonauts. They found that the parity-cosmonauts who served 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 who worked at the station had contact with representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization - the inhabitants of the planet Forest Breast. The Foresters invited earthlings to visit their planet, and they agreed without informing anyone, including the flight leaders, as they were afraid that for political reasons they would be forbidden to visit.

And now they reported that they were on the Forest Breast, talked about what they saw (the earthlings were especially shocked that there were no wars in the history of the owners), and most importantly -

oh, they transmitted the request of the foresters to visit the Earth. To do this, aliens, representatives of a technically much more advanced civilization than the earth, offered to create 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 development events. Waiting for the committee's decision.

... And Yedigey, meanwhile, recalled one old story, which Kazangap judged wisely and honestly. In 1951, a family came to visit - a husband, wife and two boys. Abutalip Kuttybaev was the same age as Edigei. They did not get into the Sarozek wilderness from a good life: Abutalip, having escaped from the German camp, ended up in the forty-third among the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home without a defeat in his rights, but then relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated, and, having learned about his partisan past, he was asked to apply for a resignation of his own free will. They asked in one place, in another ... Many times moving from place to place, the Abutalip family ended up at the Boranly-Buranny junction. No one seems to have imprisoned them by force, but it seems that they were stuck in sarozeks for the rest of their lives, And this life was beyond their power: the climate is difficult, the wilderness, 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 were helped in the new place, and gradually they began to take root. Abutalip now not only worked and took care of the house, not only took care of the children, his own and Edigey, but began to read - he was an educated person. He also began to write memoirs about Yugoslavia for children. This was known to everyone at the junction.

By the end of the year, the inspector arrived, as usual. In the meantime, he asked about Abutalip. And some time after his departure, on January 5, 1953, a passenger train stopped at Buranny, which did not have a stop here, three people got out of it and arrested Abutalip. In the last days of February, it became known that the suspect Kuttybaev had died.

The sons waited for the return of their father day after day. And Yedigei thought relentlessly about Zaripa with an inner readiness to help her in everything. It was painful to pretend that he did not feel anything special for her! Once he nevertheless told her: “Why are you so harassed? .. After all, we are all with you (he wanted to say - I).”

Here, with the onset of cold weather, Karanar became furious again - he began to rut. Edigei had to go to work in the morning, and therefore he released the ataan. The next day, news began to arrive: in one place, Karanar killed two male camels and beat off four queens from the herd, in another, he drove the master riding a camel from the camel. Then, from the Ak-Moinak junction, they were asked by letter to pick up the ataan, otherwise they would be shot. And when Edigey returned home on Karanar, he found out that Zaripa and the children had left for good. He severely beat Karanar, quarreled with Kazangap, and then Kazangap advised him to bow at the feet of Ukubala and Zaripa, who saved him from trouble, preserved him and their dignity.

This is the kind of person Kazangap was, whom they were now going to bury. We were driving - and suddenly stumbled upon an unexpected obstacle - a barbed wire fence. The guard told them that they had no right to pass without a pass. The head of the guard confirmed the same and added that the Ana-Beyit cemetery should be liquidated in general, and a new microdistrict will be in its place. The persuasion came to nothing.

Kandagap was buried not far from the cemetery, at the place where Naiman-Ana had a great cry.

... The commission, which discussed the proposal of the Forest Breast, in the meantime decided: to prevent the return of the former parity-cosmonauts; refuse to establish contact with the Forest Breast and isolate near-Earth space from a possible alien invasion with a hoop of missiles.

Edigei ordered the participants in the funeral to go to the junction, and he himself decided to return to the guard booth 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 formidable flame shot up into the sky nearby. That took off the first combat rocket-robot, designed to destroy any objects that approached the globe. A 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 was falling on his head, opening up in clubs of boiling flame and smoke… Edigei and the camel and dog accompanying him, frantic, fled away. The next day, Buranny Edigei again went to the cosmodrome.

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