In the summer of the invention of the pin five hundred and forty-first, when the month is clear, but you can’t keep track of the numbers, Ilya Petrikeich Dzynzirela writes to Special Investigator Sidor Fomich Elderly about his life. He complains about the Chasseurs, who stole crutches from him and left him without support. Ilya Petrikeich works as a grinder at the D. Zatochnik art factory for the disabled. He lives, like other artisans, in Zavolchye - in the area beyond the Wolf River. Another name for the river is Itil, and, therefore, the area can be called in the same way as the story of Ilya Petrikeich, - Zaitilshchina.
Ilya lives with a boss, to whom he has clung to his penance: he has no legs. But he loves a completely different woman - Orin Neklin. Love for Orin did not bring him happiness. Working at the railway station, Orina walked with the whole “repair boor”. She had been such for a long time - even when a young girl in Anapa had fun with all the Mariupol sailors. And everyone to whom this woman belonged cannot forget her like Ilya Petrikeich. Where is Orina now, he does not know: either she died under the wheels of the train, or she left with their son in an unknown direction. The image of Orina flickers, doubles in his mind (sometimes he calls her Mary) - just like the images of his native Volost and its inhabitants flicker and multiply. But constantly appear among them, turning into each other, the Wolf and the Dog. With such a strange "middle" creature - coinage - Ivan Petrikeich once engages in battle on the ice, on the way across the Volch-river.
In Zavolchye there are villages of Gorodnishche, Bydogoshcha, Vyshelbaushi, Mylomomolovo. After work, the inhabitants of Zavolchye - grinders, salvagers, fishermen, huntsmen - go to the "vomit", nicknamed some visitor "kubare" to drink a "sea lion". They remember the simple truth of life: "Comrades do not walk - why then pull the strap?"
The history of Zavolchye is written not only by Ivan Petrikeich, but also by the Drunken Hunter. Like Dzynzirela, he loves the hour between the wolf and the dog - twilight, when "affection is mixed with longing." But unlike Dzynzirela, which is expressed intricately, Hunter writes his "The Hunting Tales" in classically simple verses. He describes the fate of the inhabitants of the Volcano.
In his annals - the story of "Kaliki from Kalik", a deaf-mute utilizer Nikolai Ugodnikov. Nikolai’s wife got along with the wolf-boy and took Ugodnikov out of the yard. Neither in the shelters, nor in the almshouse, Nicholas was received, only the scrap collection team warmed him. Once the artel went to the tailor for a bunk. The scrappers took the wine and "pumped into rags." Waking up in the morning, they saw a flying Nikolai Ugodnikov. Crutches were raised above his head, like two wings. No one else saw him.
Another hero of the record of the Drunken Hunter is Tatar Aladdin Batrutdinov. Aladdin once skated in a movie through a frozen river and fell into a ravine. He sailed only a year later - "checkmark and dominoes in his pockets, and his mouth wasted by fish." Grandfather Peter and Grandfather Pavel, who caught Aladdin, drank the check, played dominoes and called anyone who should.
Many of those described by the Drunken Hunter lie on Bydogoschensky graveyard. There lies Peter, nicknamed Bagor, whom everyone called Fedor, and he called himself Yegor. To argue, he hanged himself on a stolen bed. The humpback carrier Pavel is lying in the cemetery. He thought that the grave would save him from the hump, and therefore drowned. And Guriy-Okhotnik drank the berdanca and died of grief.
The drunken Hunter loves his fellow countrymen and his Volost. Looking through the window of his house, he sees the same picture that Peter Bruegel saw, and exclaims: “Here it is, my homeland, / Poor poverty for her, / And our life is beautiful / The notorious vanity!”
At the time between the dog and the wolf, it is difficult to distinguish between images of people and human destinies. It seems that Ilya Petrikeich goes into oblivion, but his story continues. However, maybe he does not die. After all, his name is changing: either he is Dzynzyrela, then Zynzyrell ... Yes, he himself does not know where, having scooped up the “fowls of human passions”, he picked up such a gypsy name! Just as differently explains the circumstances in which he became crippled.
“Or are my words hidden to you?” - asks Ilya Petrikeich in the last lines of his “Citizenship”.
