A summary of "Island of Love" by Sergei Voronin

"The Island of Love" is a 1985 collection published by Lenizdat; it includes three novellas, short stories, and a play. The book’s most distinctive feature stems from its first, largest work: the author spent many years working on survey teams along the new railway routes, and so the Amgun diary is written with a precision rare for fiction, detailing everyday life, routes, work, and dangers.

Diary of a Junior Technician of the Amur Expedition

The book opens with the diary entries of a junior technician on the Amur expedition. First, the protagonist travels by train through Khabarovsk, then boards the steamship Kirov and travels up the Amur to Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. The journey to the work site itself feels like an ordeal: heat, cold, long marches, dampness, cramped conditions, anticipation, and the feeling that ordinary life has been left far behind.

From Nikolaevsk, the party sets out in a strange flotilla: a cutter, the hulk "Kambala," and boats carrying provisions and equipment. Then begins the arduous journey down the Amur and Amgun rivers. The people freeze in the rain, suffocate in the heat, suffer from mosquitoes and midges, get tangled in the channels, and at night, turn the caravan around almost by touch. The journey is a constant juxtaposition of exhilaration, laughter, and hidden danger.

In the shallows and shoals, the journey becomes a laborious one for barge haulers. People haul boats with ropes over rocks, wade through icy water, climb cliffs, navigate blockages, and rescue a boat from the shallows. Several times, the situation nearly ends in death: the current capsizes swimmers, the boats are swamped by waves, the anchors are ripped off, and the caravan is carried toward a cape or a blockage. This is where characters emerge: Osadchy with his nervous, commanding hustle and bustle, Vanya, the bear-like strength, the cheerful Igor, and the silent workers.

A separate section of the story is the wait for the steamship "Komissar," which is supposed to pick up the people and cargo. The wait drags on for days and weeks. The expedition lives in a small house and huts, puts out taiga fires, fishes, endures endless rain, dries things, and monitors the melting of butter and the spoiling of food. Osadchy is irritated, supplies are disrupted, and the people become increasingly accustomed to enforced idleness and futile hope.

When the "Commissar" finally takes over the caravan, it turns out that even this rescue is incomplete: some of the boats break off along the way, crash, and arrive in Ym crippled. In Kerby, the party finds something resembling a stable camp for the first time. Here, the hero sees his comrades and gets to know Masha, Nina, the geologists, and the Evenk hunters better. But even this respite is short-lived: the Amgun floods, the boats are tarred, reloaded, and the journey up begins anew.

The second half of the diary is devoted to the journey to Temga and the beginning of the actual exploration. At this point, the outward novelty of the journey is gone, and exhaustion sets in. Boats capsize constantly, people salvage bags, tools, and journals, lose food, argue, get sick, and refuse to work. Among the workers are many random and downright dangerous individuals; thefts, fights, and threats occur in the camp. Food spoils, salt runs out, flour goes moldy, and clothing rips.

Yet progress is still being made. Konstantin Vladimirovich Ivanov is pulling the party forward, Mozgalevsky is organizing the boats’ route, the radio operators are trying to maintain contact, and the hunters are catching fish and meat. Masha is acting boldly and at times recklessly: she swims, turns over in a daze, laughs in the most difficult situations, and works alongside the men. The hero gradually falls in love with her, and this feeling becomes one of the few bright spots in the terrifying Amgun life.

The hardest part begins when the party has already reached the Temga region and must work in the fields, and supplies are almost completely disrupted. The workers grumble, some quit, and others have to be sent down. Help arrives from the air: a reconnaissance plane arrives, then, on Marshal Blucher’s orders, food deliveries begin. Airplanes, bats, reindeer, random loot, and the occasional sack of flour and salt keep the expedition on edge, but prevent it from perishing.

In the fall, the route is abandoned, the camp is moved from place to place, winter huts are built, rations are cut, and the journey is made by boat and on foot across ice and snow. Against this backdrop, the hero and Manya marry. Then comes the journey to Mogdy for the elections, the return to the highway, and the end of the picket: the two parties finally unite. The diary ends on January 1, 1938, in the winter hut on the Amgun River, where the hero is already working at the river crossing and living next to Manya. The final author’s note states that the surveys have been completed and the section of the future Baikal-Amur Mainline has begun construction.

"You have everything, Egorov!.." and "Believe too"

The second story centers on the collective farm chairman, Rostislav Yegorov. The plot begins with the death of the blacksmith Stepanych, who had been tamed by the summer resident Boris Mikhailovich, who had made the old man his supposed uncle, received a plot of land, and built an expensive house on it. After Stepanych’s death, the funeral turns into a drinking binge, followed by a production breakdown, and Yegorov is left alone with the breakdown of village discipline: the drunken combine operator Ignashka lies in the field, fish are stolen from nets, hay is stolen, and people trust neither the work nor the management. Yegorov is angry and tormented, remembering the disintegration of his own family, longing for his son, but still clinging to the idea that he has land, people, and work to live for.

"Believe and You" is structured as a correspondence between a young teacher, Katya, and her mother, and then her lover. In 1966, Katya arrives in Kamchatka, first to Klyuchi, then to the regional center by the sea. She is captivated by the region, her work at the school, music, amateur performances, her relationships with her children, and her friendship with Nyura. Gradually, her rapture is complicated by fatigue and sobriety: Katya witnesses the indifference of her colleagues, the roughness of everyday life, the neglect of families. Then she falls in love with sailor Andrei Tarkhov, marries him, and writes letters filled with happiness, anxiety about his voyages, and the conviction that love can change a person. At the same time, she increasingly matures, argues with her mother, defends her choices, painfully searches for the meaning of work and love, but never loses her faith in life.

Stories

After the short stories, the book moves on to short stories. In "There and Back Again," old Stepanida leaves her abusive husband for her son, taking her cow, Volnushka, with her, but turns back when she learns her son will immediately slaughter the animal. In "Correspondence," Arkady Tuchkov and Klavdiya Klychkova, two lonely elderly people, become increasingly attached to each other through letters and increasingly reluctant to meet in person, fearing to destroy the image they have created in words.

In "The Third," Zinaida Ostashkova recalls the three men in her life and realizes that each time she hoped for a lasting love, only to find renewed dependence. "Grey" is the brutal story of a dog who, after his owner leaves, starves, wanders around the village, searching for any kind of protection, and dies near human habitation. In "Baba Yaga," an old woman is frightened by a terrifying woman in the window of a new store and only later recognizes her own reflection.

"Closed Room" revolves around a late-night conversation between a husband and wife about the secret inner chamber of each person. The hero enters his own and sees only flowers and his wife’s face, realizing that her soul is his greatest treasure. In "The Road," the narrator repeatedly emerges only after getting lost onto a mysterious forest path that leads to mushrooms, but eludes every attempt to find it. "At the Watershed" returns to the experience of the taiga: a prospector goes hunting, gets lost, spends the night alone by the fire, and is saved only when the sky clears and the sun gives him direction.

"Monno" tells the story of a village girl, Valya, who steals money, clothes, and other things so easily, as if she can no longer distinguish between her own and others’. "Big Trouble" is about a woman who realizes her husband has gone on vacation with his secretary, and the family they once had is gone. In "Anonymous Letter," Semyon Ovtsov rushes around the village, trying to identify the author of a scurrilous letter about an alleged affair with Maria Kulikova, and in doing so, he only reveals his own vanity and rudeness.

In "In Search of Treasure," the hero delightedly imagines he’s found a heavy box of jewels and is already distributing the wealth, until it turns out there’s no treasure, only his imagination running wild. "A Helping Hand" shifts the action to the literary world: a journalist secretly pushes a novel by his acquaintance, Viktor Polovinkin, into a magazine; it’s published, but soon panned by critics. "Poachers" ends in bloodshed: Nikolka Kudimov, cornered and humiliated by Inspector Fetisov, harpoons him during the pike spawning season.

"An Unfinished Story" is a letter and old diary pages that form a story of love on an expedition and someone else’s family drama, never fully resolved. In "The Island of Love," young Alyosha falls in love with the married Lyudmila Viktorovna, brings her to the island, declares his love, and then dies trying to swim back to the boat. "Epitaph" recalls the drunkard Korshunov: in life, he tormented everyone, and after his death, he left behind not relief, but a strange emptiness.

"The Dreams of Andrei Semenovich Poluektov" depicts an old man who descends deeper into obsessive visions and an imagined love for the controller Zoya Arkadyevna, until he is taken to the hospital. In "The Walls Know," the narrator, after Inna’s departure, convinces himself that the walls of the room will still retain her memory. In "The Song," Nikolai playfully sings about love to Anichka, his wife’s sister, but in a moment of danger, he thinks only of himself, thereby destroying her trust. In "The Double Decision," Klavdiya Savelyeva mentally lives two lives — with the poet Vladimir Semenov and with the engineer Sergei Kruglov — and in both versions, she comes to the same conclusion: her misfortune was not born yesterday and was not accidental.

Apartment No. 49

The play begins at the end: Katya, a young woman, throws herself out of a window, and Ruslan, a young man from the same building, fails to catch her. Then the action flashes back, revealing step by step how she was driven to this death. Her mother, Sofya Dmitrievna, leaves her father, Nikolai Semyonovich, for her young lover, Tolik, and openly tells her daughter that she never loved her husband. The house ceases to be a home, and Katya is left between her humiliated father, her abusive mother, and a new, alien life.

Katya seeks support from outside herself. Vsevolod loves her, but she doesn’t accept him. She falls into the circle of Rakhat-Lukum, Asan, and Zhora — self-assured young men for whom play, posturing, sex, and cynicism are all mixed into one dangerous cocktail. Asan takes her to his dacha, gets her drunk, takes her by force, then draws her back into this circle. Zhora tries to appropriate her as a thing. Katya tries to escape: she goes to her father, seeks purification in the Preacher’s words, tries to avoid Asan, but she is drawn back again and again.

Ruslan sees her suffering more clearly than the adults. He pities her, waits for her at night, stands up for her, fights with Asan, faces criticism from the neighbors and even gets into trouble with the police, but he continues to believe Katya can be saved. The adults, meanwhile, are either preoccupied with themselves, speculating, or watching from the sidelines: his mother thinks about her own happiness, Tolik about profit, the neighbors about discipline and moralizing.

The ending returns the play to the opening scene. After yet another assault and another attempt to take her away, Katya runs up the stairs to her locked apartment, finds no protection, and throws herself down. Neighbors, police, and random witnesses gather in the courtyard, and Ruslan remains the only one who witnessed and understood her fall not as a mundane incident, but as the end of a long period of internal destruction.