County small Anthim Baryba is called the "iron." He has heavy iron jaws, a wide quadrangular mouth and a narrow forehead. And the whole of Baryba from rigid straight lines and corners. And out of all this some kind of terrible way. The county children are afraid of Barybu: the beast, will drive into the ground under a heavy hand. And at the same time, for fun, he chews pebbles over a bun.
The shoemaker's father warns: he will drive her out of the yard, if the son does not pass the final exams at the school. Anfim fails at the first - according to the Law of God and, fearing his father, does not return home.
He settles in the yard of an abandoned house of merchants Balkashins. In the gardens of the Streletskaya Sloboda and in the bazaar, everything that succeeds is stolen. Once, Anfim steals a chicken from the yard of a wealthy widow of a leather manufacturer Chebotariha. It was then that the coachman Urvank hunts him down and drags him to the mistress.
Chebotariha wants to punish Baryba, but, looking at his beastly strong body, he takes him to his bedroom, supposedly to make him repent of his sin. However, Chebotarikha, who has spread like a dough, decides to sin herself - for an orphan.
Now in the house of Chebotarikha Baryba lives alone, on everything ready, And wanders in sweet idleness. Chebotarikha in him from day to day more and more souls. Here Baryba already suggests routines in the Chebotarevsky courtyard: he commands the men, fines the guilty.
In Churilovsky tavern, Anfim meets Timosha the tailor, a small, pointed-headed, sparrow-like, with a smile like a warm lamp. And Timosha becomes his friend.
Once Baryba sees in the kitchen, as a young maid Polka, a barefoot fool, watering an orange tree with soup. It’s been growing a tree for half a year already, it protects it. Anfim with a root pulls out a tree - yes out of the window. The polka roars, and Baryba pushes her foot into the cellar. It was then in his head and turned some kind of millstone. He is behind her, leaning lightly on Polka, she immediately falls. Moving obediently, only whining more often. And in this is Barybe’s special sweetness. “What, old feather-bed, ate, huh?” He says aloud to Chebotarihe and shows a cookie. He leaves the cellar, and Urvanka swarms under the shed.
Baryba sits in a tavern having tea with Timosha. He starts his beloved - about God: He is not there, but all must live in God's way. He also tells how, consuming a sick consumption, he eats with his children from the same bowl in order to find out if this disease will stick to them, whether God’s hand will rise on the unconscious guys.
On Ilyin, Chebotarikh Baryba arranges an interrogation about Polka. Anfim is silent. Then Chebotariha sprinkles with saliva, stamps her feet: “Get out of the house! Underwater Snake! ” Baryba goes first to Timosha, then to the monastery to the monk Eusebius, who has been known to Anthim since childhood.
Father Eusebius and Innocent, as well as Savka the novice treat the guest with wine. Then Eusebius, having borrowed money from Anthim, sets off with him and Savka for a walk further, to Sagittarius.
The next day, Eusebay and Baryba go to Elijah’s church, where Eusebius’s money is kept, and the monk returns the debt to Anthim. Since then, Baryba has been turning around the church and one night after the festive service - to go to the altar for the money of Eusebius: why the hell are they to the monk?
Now Baryba is renting a room in the Streletskaya settlement near Aprosi-Saldatka. Reads anfim popular print books. Walks in the field, there they mow. That would be like Baryba! No, not him to go to men. And he submits a petition to the treasury: perhaps they will take a scribe.
Eusei finds out about the loss of money and realizes that Baryba stole it. The monks decide to give Anfimka the thief tea on the spellbound water - maybe he confesses. Baryba takes a sip from the glass, and I want to say: “I stole”, but he is silent and only smiles at the bestial. And the deacon who was sent to this monastery jumps to Baryba: “No, brother, you won’t get any gap with grass. Strong, cast. "
Dismisses Baryba. On the third day only relieved. Thanks Aprosa, Anfima came out and has since become his shipwreck.
Autumn this year is somehow awkward: the snow falls and melts, and with it the Barybin-Evseev money melts. A refusal comes from the treasury. It was then that Timosha introduced Anfim to the lawyer Semyon Semenovich, nicknamed Morgunov. He conducts with the merchants all their deeds are dark and never talks about God. Baryba begins to walk with him in witnesses: he stipulates whom Morgunov orders.
Everything in the country is blazing, they are beating the alarm, so the minister was slapped. Timosha and Baryba with friends before Easter dinner are sitting in a tavern. The tailor coughs everything in the handkerchief. They go out into the street, and Timosha returns: he dropped the handkerchief in the tavern. Upstairs, noise, shots, rolls head over heels Timosha, after someone arrow and - into the alley. And the other, his accomplice - a black-haired boy, lies on the ground, and the owner of the tavern, old Churilov, kicks him in the side: “They took him away! I’ve run away alone, I’ve run away with a hundred rubles! ” Suddenly, the angry Timosha jumps up: “Why are you, unchrist, do you want to kill a little guy for a hundred rubles?” According to Tymosha, Churilov will not lose a hundred, and they, perhaps, have not eaten for two days. “A manger would have reached our sleepy lake, and we’d have climbed into a whirlpool!” - tells friends Timosha about revolutionary events.
They came from the province, a military court. Churilov during interrogation complains about Tymoshka-daring. Baryba suddenly said to the prosecutor: “There was no shawl. Timosha said: there is a business upstairs. ”
Timosha is being arrested. The police officer Ivan Arefich and Morgunov decide to bribe Baryba to show him in court against a friend. Six quarters and a little place of the officer - after all, not a little!
On the night before the trial, some boredom annoys inside Baryba. To refuse, pal, is somehow wonderful. But life in Timosha is half-finished. Dreaming of exams, pop. Anfim will fail again, the second time. And he was a brainy one, Timosha. "Was it?" Why was it? ..
Baryba confidently appears in court. And in the morning on a fun market day, Timosha and the black-haired boy are executed. Someone's voice says: “Hangers, devils!” And the other: "Tymoshka forgot God .. The old life ended in a posad, they stirred up, yes."
White brand new tunic, epaulettes. There is Baryba, joyful and proud, to his father: let him look now. The aged father growls: “What is needed?” - "I heard? Three days as a result. " - “I heard about you, how. And about the monk Eusebius. And about the tailor, too. ” And suddenly the old man began to tremble, sputtering with saliva: “Look, he’s from a house, a scoundrel! That's it! ”
Crazy, Baryba goes to the Churilovsky tavern. The clerks have fun there. Already having a great load, Baryba moves to the clerks: “Now we can’t laugh c-strictly ...” A huge, quadrangular rocking, crushing, as if not a man, but an old resurrected burial woman, an absurd Russian stone woman, sways.
