The Chronicles of Book Hunger

Once, already at the end of the USSR, I read a listing of some places of the famous cookbook of 1861 by Mrs. E. I. Molokhovets: “A present for young housewives, or a Means for reducing expenses in the household”. Recipes in the style of: “To clean the most beautiful smoked head of the old boar, cook it like a smoked ham ...” or “If you have guests and you have nothing, send a person to the cellar, let him bring a pound of butter, two pounds of ham, a dozen eggs, a pound of caviar, red or black and make a light dinner according to the following recipe ... ”read hilariously funny. People who did not compel the USSR, probably, no longer understand what I laughed at that time.



The late USSR was an amazing, largely funny and paradoxical society of total deficit. The price imbalance artificially created by the authorities led to the fact that many goods sold at lower prices than the market almost never reached the counter, being distributed among “their own people” and immediately switching to the black market.



But the purpose of this article is not to expose the vices of the USSR. I want to talk about the personal experience of a little boy who lived in a country with an unpredictable history and an uncertain future. The boy who loved reading books more than anything else.



I started reading late - in the first grade of the school. And I am still skeptical of the stories of familiar book readers that they managed to overcome several thick books by the age of five, including the unadapted Robinson. I think that these are more likely leprosy of memory than real memories - and some cases when grown up children enthusiastically telling about how they read the Hobbit at the age of five, published in Russian a year, when they turned ten, convince me of this.



My first book was “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne. Despite the fact that this book was published by the local Perm publishing house, it was impossible to buy it in the store. In the city library of the palace. Lenin was not there either — since books were of high value, some readers simply appropriated them to themselves. The fine for the loss of the book was less than the price of the book on the black market.







And it was on the black market in search of Captain Nemo that my mother went. Book collapses were forbidden, so books were sold from under the floor. Exactly like radio parts in “Ivan Vasilievich Changes the Profession”. Old Jules was worth 10 rubles - not a small sum at that time. But he was worth it.



Painfully, according to the syllables, while reading the first chapters, I was so passionate about the flow of the author’s imagination that I sincerely believed that this was a documentary story about recent events.



My next book was “Little Blue” - “The Mysterious Island” of the same author. I remembered the book not as a distorted recipe for nitroglycerin production, but as a completely fierce, unrealistic feint of the author - at the end of the book surfaced - you won’t guess for anything! CAPTAIN, his mother, NEMO !!! - from the first book I read!







I apologize for the involuntary spoiler. I was so excited and inspired by this turn that I literally ran along the walls. Before that, I did not know that it was so possible - that the heroes from one book could stop by to visit another. Running to my mother, I choked on this epoch-making discovery.



Mom looked up from the easel, ruffled my hair and said: “So you just now learned that this is a trilogy? There is also a third novel, “Children of Captain Grant,” and it is associated with the first two. ”



Having learned about this, I began to sort through the events of the novels, trying to guess what the third story would be about. Of course, I remembered Ayrton, a muddy type saved by the colonists from a neighboring island. But the idea that he was a character in the third novel seemed completely ridiculous to me. Well, as if the Hobbit author, deciding to continue the story, would not send Bilbo on a new journey, but start ... well, I don’t even know what - he will write down in three volumes the story of the ring he found in the dungeon, for example.



The problem was that the "Children of the Captain" was not to get it. There was no book in the library. And it wasn’t on the black market - the Perm Book Publishing House, only wishing for my death, did not start publishing this novel by publishing some kind of “Fifteen-year-old Captain,” which was already shown on television and in which, from fiction, there was only an alcoholic who burned down alive .



Even my repeated visits to the library did not solve the problem - having decided that the person who took the book home would return it sooner or later, I started going to the library almost every day. The curious librarian found the charter of shaking hands in the book fund “Club of Famous Captains” by Clementius Mintz and Vladimir Kreps.



“Honor,” she said, “all the famous captains participate in the book. I suppose there is a captain Grant. Or himself, or his children. "



It was hard to come up with the worst solution.



The fact is that this book - smart, talented, subtle - told the story of the Club of Famous Captains. The mysterious organization, which consists of the heroes of popular adventure books: Captain Nemo, Captain Gulliver, Captain Munchausen (Baron), Captain Hatteras, Captain Tartaren (from Tarascon), Captain Arthur Gray and others, other, other ... There was even this insufferable fifteen year old upstart Dick Sand - since he was also a captain.

In the rustle of a mouse,

In the creak of floorboards

Slowly and decorously

We are leaving the pages ...

Meet the welcome hour

Hidden at twilight ...

We are all captains

Everyone is famous ...

After singing a song, the captains began an investigation of some mysterious incident. With a lot of adventures that led them to pages described in books of interesting places. Or they came across interesting people - who were also described in books.



The problem was that these books were not available. They simply weren't there. Neither for sale nor in the library. Famous captains were known during the book abundance of the 50s and 60s, and by the 80s, all these books were in private libraries or were worn to dust.

Looking ahead, I’ll say that I completed this quest as an adult - the last book mentioned in the Club, Five Hundred Million Begums with the first Doctor Evil in world literature, I managed to find already serving in the army.



But back to our captains. The next meeting with them, alas, was disappointing. Passing by the bookstore "Bukinist", I saw the book "The Extraordinary Adventures of Tartaren from Tarascon." Yeah, I said. I know you. And hurried to the store.







Where, in Aesopian language, met with the Oblomingo bird. Tartaren cost FIFTEEN rubles. That is, the ruble and twenty kopecks given to me for school breakfasts were not enough. The similar price was explained by the fact that the store was second-hand. In fact - a book flea market. A loophole with which bookstore employees could legally and officially speculate with books, saving money for the upcoming privatization.



My grandmother helped me with Tartaren. Despite the fact that the amount of 15 rubles was a quarter of her pension, she found this money by buying me a coveted book. And then a second bummer was waiting for me - there was no book. Tartaren was not a captain. It was a plump boastful boob, who did not, by all accounts, do anything heroic. Mints and Kreps monstrously flattered the puff, inviting him to his book, I was forced to state.



The book went on the shelf, and Tartaren for a long time took an honorable second place among my most unloved book characters. (The first place was occupied by Dick Send, if you forgot).



After a series of inarticulate complaints about Tartaren that I dumped to the librarian, I received an answer - of course, I was to blame for everything myself. I need to read books that fit my age.



“I tried it already,” I whined and whimpered. “These meaningless and poorly written stories are given to us at school.” There is only a description of nature and other utter horror.



“The books from the school curriculum were included in it with intent,” the librarian said, raising her finger up, “in order to prepare you for hardships and hardships in advance.” And you try this one:







And she handed me the book “The Moomin Troll, Ludwig the Fourteenth and Quite Other”, in which there were three tales of Scandinavian writers. This book, read to the holes, survived, because it was not given out to anyone in the library.



Of course, I was fascinated. I took this book again and again in the library, reading and re-reading fairy tales. So far, without a little, has not memorized. The book entertained, taught, scared and asked questions. What is friendship? What is love? Can sentient beings overcome the roles imposed on them by nature and society? And what exactly did the muskrat's false teeth in a wizard's hat turn into?



Taking this opportunity, I hasten to share the answer to the last question - which I managed to find after forty years of tireless searches: III (drum roll)



- Yes, - I was forced to admit, returning the book - children's books can also be interesting.



“Here,” said the librarian, “but you did not believe.”







And she gave me the next book - “The Wizard of the Emerald City” with the incomparable illustrations of Leonid Vladimirsky. Her and the following books, I read excitedly. And re-read it several times, marveling at the author’s fantasies. While reading, I noticed some subtle subtlety - the first book in the series I liked much less than others. She was different - and only as an adult did I find out why. Thus, without knowing it, I read the first fan fiction and received documentary evidence that the fan fiction of a talented author could be better than the original.



And for the first time faced with Soviet censorship. The last book of the series, “The Mystery of the Abandoned Castle”, for some reason inexplicable for little me, was published in the tiny Kazakh newspaper “Friendly Guys”. In separate issues that came out over four years.



That was a setup!



I still managed to read the book - the newspaper was found in the reading room of the city library named after Lenin. Mom went there to make extracts on work and they let me in with her, taking from me a promise not to make noise. But, before I could read the book, the Soviet government lifted the unspoken ban by printing this novel after a decade of oblivion in one of the central publishing houses.



Having got a new book, I reread it ... and was horrified. The text of the novel was completely different. Smooth, simplified, childish. Even the traditionally magnificent illustrations of Vladimirsky did not save the situation.



Now I know that in the USSR of those years there was a complex system of preparing books for printing. By design, this complex system of rules was to protect the Soviet reader from the horrors of capitalist reality. In reality, it served to fool, simplifying and castrating literature.







So, for example, the famous scene from "The Country of the Crimson Clouds" by Arkady and Boris Natanovich, was significantly cut down by censorship:



I quote from the 1959 edition.

- I do not care about everything! .. I do not care about the Golconda! This is mean, comrade Ermakov! I will not leave! To hell! I am left alone ...

Bykov saw Ermakov’s face turn gray. The planetary commander did not move, but friendly notes disappeared in his voice: - Comrade Yurkovsky, stop the tantrum, put yourself in order!

I order you to put on a helmet and get ready for the campaign!

... actually had a sequel in which the characters showed themselves from an unexpected angle:

- So? Yes? So? He shouted. “Let it be!” To hell! I am left alone!

Bykov grabbed his shoulder.

- Where? Without a helmet, Satan! ..

Yurkovsky hit him with a butt in the face, dark drops splashed on the silicone cloth of the suit. Bulls, leaning, tore his weapon from his hands, breaking fingers. Both collapsed to the floor. Yurkovsky resisted frantically. Before Bykov's eyes, grinning teeth gleamed, a suffocating whisper wheezed in his ears:

- Bastard! .. Let it go, bastard! .. Brick face ... Gendarme, you bastard! ..

I will not make assumptions about what the country will end up with, whose people for several generations have convinced that the only struggle is the struggle of the good with the best. You know without me how it all ended.



I can only note that this censorship suddenly came to me when I began to write books - many readers reproach me in letters that the astronauts described in my book cursed and staged an ugly fight in the finale. “In Soviet books,” they write to me, “the astronauts didn’t allow themselves that!”



Allowed, my dears! It’s just that you weren’t informed about this.



But, back in 1982. After I gave the chance to children's books, the reading situation improved a bit. I read The Hobbit, Pinocchio, Dunno and all the tales of Gianni Rodari. The last one, I re-read it to my son not so long ago and I can’t help myself, so as not to quote the fragment - before that it sounds modern and relevant today.





Even the children of Captain Grant hiding from me were caught! My relatives from Moscow, where books were sometimes sometimes sold in stores, were bought and sent to me by mail. Reading them, I was surprised to find not only Ayrton, but also the lanky and awkward Paganel, already familiar to me from the stories of Mintz and Kreps.



“It turns out that to get into the club of captains - IT WOULD NOT NEED TO BE A CAPTAIN!” - I was indignant. It was ridiculous. It broke the whole orderly scheme!



The next blow dealt to me by the universe was stronger and bitter. I found out about the existence of a conspiracy of librarians. Yes, yes - these malicious ladies, having conspired, decided to protect me from "books that are not suitable for me by age" - having hidden from me several surviving volumes from the collection of works of Jules Verne of 1954.



My revenge was terrible for its symmetry.



I begged my mother to contact friends from System. And very soon he became the proud owner of two of the three * rarest Soviet books: “Angelica” by Ann and Serge Golon and “Bull Hour” by Ivan Efremov.







And if the first was, by Hamburg's account, still good, interesting - but still a female novel, which was banned due to the intimate shaving scene of the main character, then the fate of the second is quite indicative. In this novel, the author carefully, with reservations, tried to bring up the crisis of the socialist system.



After that, the novel was declared non-existent - the copies remaining in the libraries ceased to be issued, and in the collected works of 1975 the novel was not remembered even in the afterword.



Therefore, seeing both of these rarities in the child’s hands, the librarians howled into their voices. And then they asked for books to read.



“Well ... I don’t even know ...” I said pointedly, “are you old enough to read these books ...”



After that, an agreement was concluded by both high (and one low) contracting parties. According to which I could even go to the holy of holies of the library - in the vault.



However, the victory won very soon turned into a defeat - life prepared me another trick. Reading one of the popular science articles by Pyotr Vasilievich Makovetsky, I came across a mention of a certain planet Saraksh. The article considered a mathematical model of strong refraction, because of which the surface of the planet seems to be concave to its inhabitants.







But I, as you understand, were not interested in this. And Saraksh himself - from the hints scattered throughout the article, it was obvious that this was an amazingly interesting place. Having tried to find this book, I found out about the existence of the “List of literature not recommended for distribution” - in which all space fiction of two decades turned out to be.



But, I’ll talk about this in the next article.