The tale of the worker Aleksey and his friend Vitaly [In Process]

[In the process of writing - Pending arrival on the scene]

There are moments in the life of each of us when we leave our rationality behind for a moment and indulge in awe-inspiring religious delight, watching majestic ancient religious monuments and great-aged monks and clergymen passing by, listening to the chimes of bell towers echoing around the neighbourhood or hearing the soul-warming chorus of seminarians in one of the refectories.... All this and much more creates in us a certain respect and awe for the centuries-old history of the church, whatever it may be.

— Melnikov A.  R.

[New update on 08.10.24]

Day 1

The day began with the bodies of two friends, Alexei and Vitaly, being washed with hot water. The day promised to be long and tiring. Neither of the two of them knew how this day would end and the next one would begin. They tidied up their quarters and filled their bags with missing items. The waiting was tedious. It was cloudy and grey outside, raining. When they left the chambers, the travellers stopped at an eatery and met a third companion, Cyril, and waited patiently for their teacher. He was very late, and only after an hour they got into his car and set off. The journey took them at least three hours, so that only at night they arrived at the archaeologists' base, having bought groceries beforehand. They were greeted at the base by a group of old men, many of whom had seen a lot of shit. Two of them, native western Ukrainians, were helping a Russian community in a major western Ukrainian city to collect humanitarian aid for Russian soldiers. But then the local authorities started to suspect something and their lives were threatened. They moved to Russia, where they remain today. We often hear from our teacher about his friend, Pasha, who tragically died in February 2022, when the war was just beginning and all the consequences of the rash actions of the people in power drew them to their deaths.

But we have gone too deeply into the intricacies of the connections of all the people gathered here and forgotten about the main characters of the story, Alexei and Vitaly. Their road to the base took about 200 kilometres to the northwest. The road was a varied landscape of different kinds of towns and villages, villages, rivers and bridges.... Plains, hills, forests and mountains, shrouded in darkness, surrounded the travellers all along the way, giving them some uncertainty as to where they were. Their teacher sat behind the wheel listening to a kind of American country music and Indian folk songs. Their friends were sending them warm words of encouragement and waiting for them to go home. As soon as they approached the last stronghold of civilisation and bought the necessary groceries, they moved on along the dark and winding road, reaching the archaeologists' base mentioned earlier. Alexei decided to sleep on the floor, on the mattress on which his sleeping bag lay. The stories about the rat that the archaeologists were trying to catch had stirred a slight fear in Alexei and dreamed in his mind the hope of not meeting it on his way this night and the next.

[New update on 10.08.24]

Day 2

The morning started early, it was 5:20. Everyone was still asleep, and only I, waking up from sleep with uncharacteristic prematurity, took a shower, wary, fearing a rat, the location of which remained unknown until now. Eventually, our teacher, Denis Sergeevich, woke up, he was surprised by my early rise and soon began to cook breakfast, I drank tea. I naively thought that I would stay in a cheerful mood all day, but how wrong I was... The mentor cooked us scrambled eggs according to his own recipe: with spices and sausages, too much salt. My colleague Nikita, who does not like eggs and mushrooms, gave me a portion, for which I am grateful and at the same time outraged, because only a fool would refuse such a breakfastSoon we moved into the bus parked next to the base, we were whined by a dog named Rich, who has been guarding the base from unwanted guests for a long time. We dressed warmly, but as the weather showed, it was not enough: there was a wind and the bitter cold chilled to the bones. We set off and soon, after about half an hour, arrived at the site of the excavation, not far from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, no one was waiting for us and nothing was ready. We spent most of our time marking out the excavation site, setting up a small room made of a metal transport box and cornyly waiting for something.As a result, the basic initial principles were implemented by our senior colleagues, while we were just submitting or transferring something. We were warming up in the car and absolutely nothing was required of us, so I kept nodding off and dozing with my head bent over my own knees. Soon the preparations were completed and at one o'clock in the afternoon we already moved to the base, stopping at the store and picking up products for borscht and shish kebab. Most importantly, we forgot the poison for the rat (The meeting with which Vitaly found himself on the same night). We were sent to find rat poison at a local grocery store. We didn't know where he was in this village and Vitaly caught up with a local old lady and interviewed her. A small annoying dog accompanied the old woman and gifted Vitaly with his vile barking and attempted attack, chasing him to the end of the road, where I was standing with two power engineersWe went to the store, but we didn't really find anything there either. When we returned, we were included in the process of cooking borscht. I was peeling potatoes and one of our colleagues, the bandit sailor Vitya, blasphemed my potato peeling skills, saying that in the army I would have learned to be smart, although they don't clean anything there anymore, there are civilian cooks for that... Then I got used to the knife and cleaned everything. Denis Sergeevich took over all the other procedures related to borscht, and his friend Sasha, nicknamed Beard, took over the preparation of shish kebab, devouring all the onions from the marinade, complementing the taste with two cans of Zhiguli beer and a bottle of vodka, which only improved his mood and culinary skills. Then we spent a long time tinkering with the fire, Denis Sergeevich showed with all his appearance that you don't want to, but you need to make a fire, which Beard helped us with. Some more time passed, borscht and shish kebab were ready and we ate a hearty and fatty meal, and went to bed happy..

[Interlude]

The distance is wide,

The North is dear to me.

Pine forests:

The spears are sharp.

The plains are smooth, 

Breathing grass.

Undulating hills,

"Unseen.

The mists are sleepy, 

Darkly similar.

The winds are prickly,

Unsuitable.

Every place is here,

Loneliness.

Everyone is here, 

There's a shadowy footstool.

For as long as I stay here, 

I won't be here long, 

Sweet north,

I have you in me now.

In this harbour

Without ships

I find salvation

From living passions.

And in this harbour of despondency

# And never fall into despondency

Every man of like mind

A living man

Here all life

Reminiscent

A place where souls

Never know death.

Everything here is dead

And deader than the living,

More alive than the living,

Now living.

Here my life is silent,

I greet the new day with silence.

I awake with bitterness in my heart,

I dream of the past now.

My morning begins without tears,

The ghost of the past is a silhouette.

I gaze long into the distance,

There's definitely something in them.