"We Never Make Mistakes"

 "We Never Make Mistakes:" two short novels by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is what I mean about my April reading slump -- it took me the entire month to read this very short, very readable volume.  I don't think we can call these two stories novels -- at best they're novelettes or longish short stories.  About 70 pages each.  Also, I love love love the cover design, with its stark buzz saw blade.  There are, of course, no buzz saws of any sort in the stories.

"An Incident at Krechetovka Station" centers on Lieutenant Zotov, who runs a small country train station.  It's 1941 and everything is overwhelmed by the recent German invasion.  Trains of troops, goods, refugees, medical supplies...there's not enough fuel to keep them all going, and nowhere near enough food.  Zotov has one competent assistant, Valya, and various other personnel who all seem to be lazy, corrupt, or very elderly.

A 'straggler' arrives in the station, a man who has been cut off from his unit in the confusion and chaos.  This Tveritinov makes a good impression on Zotov, and they become very friendly, but as Zotov hears his story he wonders if Tveritinov has made a slip.  Is he an enemy spy?  A White Russian officer?  Zotov decides that he'd better report the man; people who know better than he does will be able to figure this out.  But he's never able to forget the man, and when he asks about the case, he's simply told "We'll take care of your Tveritinov.  We never make mistakes."


In "Matryona's House," Ignatich, a man who has been been away for ten years (in the gulag) searches for a truly Russian country village to live in; he wants to teach and to enjoy the peaceful countryside.  He lodges with Matryona, an old woman living on her own in a tumbledown house.  It was once a very good house, but no longer; Matryona is not strong enough to make repairs, nor does she have the money.  She has practically no income, but scrapes by with her goat.  Ignatich gradually comes to learn more about Matryona and what her life has been like.  Despite all her hardships, she is a kind and generous person, and often helps her relatives or the kolkhoz even though they do nothing for her.

Matryona's brother-in-law wants to take half the house away to his married daughter's village; they must put up a house in order to get a piece of land.  Matryona is fine with this, but the whole operation is done cheaply and impatiently, and it ends in disaster.  As Ignatich ponders on Matryona's character, he realizes:

She never tried to acquire things for herself....She was misunderstood and abandoned by her husband, having buried six of his children.  Her moral and ethical standards made her a misfit.  She was considered 'odd' by her sisters and her sisters-in-law -- a laughingstock -- because, as they said, she was so stupid as to work for others without pay...We all lived beside her, and never understood that she was that righteous one without whom, according to the proverb, no village can stand.  Nor any city.  Nor our whole land.

Two good and effective stories that will give the reader some thoughts to chew on.


Comments

  1. I find I'm reading all my Russian books right now, with Ukraine in mind, looking for any little hint or suggestion about how things were and how they got to where they are now.

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