Once a month, old Naum Evstigneevich gets drunk, after which he lies on the stove for three days, gets sick and "swears at God." So now he groans and complains to his tenant, eighth-grader Yurka.
Yurka teaches lessons, and replies to the old man’s complaints: “There was no need to get drunk.” Talking to Naum Evstigneevich makes it a little easier, but Yurka needs to learn lessons. He offers the old man a hangover, but he pity the money.
In the village, the old man is known as a “miser.” His house is a full bowl: a farm, a cellar full of supplies, a good pension, and children help. For children - sons and a daughter - Naum Evstigneevich is offended because they left for the city.
Often descends into the cellar, sits down on the attack and sits thoughtfully for a long time. “The devils are torn. Isn’t there to live here? ”He thinks and crawls out into the white light.
Yurka’s situation is difficult. In his native village, the guy is not a dozen, and he moved to the village to graduate from ten classes and go to medical school. Yurka does not have a father, and his mother struggles with all her might to fulfill the dream of her eldest son and raise three younger boys.
The old man knows about Yurkina poverty, but takes five rubles a month from him and is laid separately. Sometimes at the end of the month, Yurka has nothing to eat, and the old man weighs him a couple pounds of millet.
In the morning, Yurka is going to school and talking with the old man. He is interested in why Yurka is so attracted to the medical profession, because the driver at the state farm receives more than the doctor. Naum Evstigneevich does not approve of the youth’s craving for learning and believes that it was better before.
They confused you with this teaching - that’s why you are wandering around the world ‹...› We lived before without any training - nothing, God had mercy: they didn’t sit without bread.
Then the old man and Yurka begin to argue that it is better - "Iroplane" or cart. The old man is left all day alone, and he needs to talk. Yurku is annoyed by the old man's grumbling, but he is proud that he defends the New - teaching, books, airplanes.
Oddly enough, the old man does not believe in God. He believes that a person should work, but not on a collective farm, but on himself. He himself has not been working on a collective farm for a long time. Once Yurka in his hearts called the old man a fist. Naum Evstigneevich was silent for a long time, and then ordered not to blather: they would come and cut off the extra hundred from the garden.
The old man groans again on the stove and calls Yurka to talk - he asks what he is teaching now. Yurka teaches astronomy. He tells the old man about space and astronauts, but he does not understand why to fly into that space. Yurka lights up, begins to talk about the Moon and Venus, about the planets where intelligent beings can live, with whom people will establish an exchange of knowledge. Alien technologies will develop earth technology, medicine. People will live up to 120 years old and fly to each other on a visit by personal helicopters.
The old man does not agree - living up to 120 years is boring, and aliens can climb to fight. Better a cure for a hangover invented.Yurku infuriates the old man’s denseness, and he returns to the textbooks.
Naum Evstigneevich does not let up, says that the books are “one lie”, and doctors are unable to cure a person. Angry Yurka says that the doctors defeated the plague and tuberculosis, but the old man objects: the grandmother is not a doctor, but whispers - and everything goes.
Then Yurka talks about academician Pavlov.
And you know that when Academician Pavlov died, he called students and began to dictate to him how he was dying.
Pavlov told everything until the last minute, because it was necessary for science.
Naum Evstigneevich this story impresses. Some time later, he asks Yurka to show him a portrait of Pavlov. Yurka reproachfully tells the old man that the academician was vigorous until old age, because he did not get drunk and did not stun his nervous system. Naum Evstigneevich could also overcome his reflex and, having received a pension, not turn off to the store.
The old man grunts down from the stove, goes into the canopy, returns with a solid shmat of fat and gives it to Yurka.
On, you see, ‹...› and then he cried ahead of time with his academics ... while you study them all.
Yurka writes the fat and listens to the lecture of the old man on how to feed pigs.
Then Naum Evstigneevich asks if Academician Pavlov had relatives: “If you don’t have relatives, you would not dictate much. One is bad. ” Yurka decides not to remind about the students, agrees - of course, alone is bad.
