Vanya Solntsev Son of the regiment Country: Ukraine

Biography of Vanya Solntsev

The Son of the Regiment Writer had no idea what kind of life awaited the boy from his book... "OH, WHAT a wonderful, what a delightful life began for Vanya!" - wrote Valentin Kataev at the end of the war, flipping through the frontline notebook with the stories of the little scout and launching the legend of the Son of the Regiment into the post-war Soviet world. The thirteen-year-old "shepherd" who was picked up in the fascist rear and adopted by the scouts stands in front of the stairs of the Suvorov Military School, and an old man in a gray coat with a diamond star reaches out his hand to him. These final lines, inspired by Kataev's plot, were written without his hero. The real Vanya Solntsev turned around and continued living his life. All that remained of that shepherd boy was an old accordion with silent buttons, a hungry cat, and a portrait of Lenin in a cracked frame. A dilapidated shack from 1888 in the outskirts of Odessa, inaccessible to time and light, boarded up to keep out thieves. Strangers, who were his supposed relatives, squabbled over his meager inheritance. The children's book, stolen and squandered by the homeless. Vanya did not stay where Kataev left his hero - he ran back to the front. He experienced Victory and went back to the army, this time as a conscript. The boy that the writer had told the story about never grew up and continued to march from one textbook to another. When the conscript Solntsev boasted about his "lineage" one day, no one believed him and he was sent to a psychiatric ward. He pulled out birth certificates and documents from under the lining of his coat, which he kept close to his heart. They started giving him medication in exchange for autographs. He was discharged and settled in Moscow, got married, and became a street vendor in the city where he once suffered as an orphanage child and from where he, hiding in a freight car in 1941, left towards the front with his friend Volka, baked potatoes, and a primer book in his backpack. Vanya's wife left him, and he traveled half the country, taking odd jobs wherever he could. Somewhere at an intermediate station, he got married again. Got divorced. Loved many, but always remained alone. In his old age, he came to Odessa, his birthplace and the hometown of Kataev, for good. He married again, this time to a seamstress named Klava. He got a cat and settled in a shack, buried his wife and started to reminisce, reminisce, reminisce... The prototype of Kataev's hero lived to be 75. I was 40 days late. He passed away in the cold December. That was the final chapter of this story. "TO BE FRIENDS with brave and generous scouts, to have lunch and drink tea together, to go on reconnaissance missions together, to sweat in the sauna, to shoot from a machine gun..." He loved to gather boys from the outskirts of Odessa around him and boast about his childhood exploits. And the boys would sometimes take medals off the intoxicated Uncle Vanya. The neighbors in the courtyard who took his pension from the mailman to prevent him from squandering it listened day after day as he recounted how he ended up in a German prison camp and never gave up his comrades. And when he managed to drink and, climbing into the tram, which rattled right under the windows, escape to the city and forget the way back, the sympathetic neighbors would call the familiar number of the local police and ask, "Find Vanya Solntsev, the Son of the Regiment!" A shard, one of the four remaining in his head, would misbehave... And a week later, the police would find the elderly man, with his gray hair standing on end, covered in foam, seen near the drama theater, on different tram routes, or by the guns of the 411th battery with a small flask tucked in his pocket. "Our grandpa is not a pound of raisins," the neighbors would say, taking him to the embrasures, using him as a living shield - he paid for communal services without waiting in line. When the courtyard boys, neighbors, dogs, or drinking buddies got tired of hearing the same story, he would take out the accordion, which had traveled with him half the country, sit in the courtyard under the eternal southern sun, and play. "We will win!", "For Stalin, for Lenin!" And he would cry. He could have told his in-laws, distant relatives of his last wife, about how he asked his comrade Sergeant Uncle Kovalyov to fire a shot from the cannon at Germany... Or maybe it wasn't him, but that boy who was still thirteen years old?... But those from Vanya's inheritance were only concerned about his crumbling shack, the compact car promised to the veteran long ago, and the stubborn ghost of some unearthly blessings that "should finally be bestowed upon the Son of the Regiment from the book". The in-laws did not specify which country. "They didn't even give him diapers, let alone a car! - they marvel. - In the end, he regressed into childhood completely, and we had to cut off his gas and electricity so he wouldn't blow himself up". They wanted to place the sick old man in a home for the disabled. But in September, in heavy rain, on Peresyp, the Son of the Regiment was hit by a car. His leg was amputated, and he screamed at the nurses, "I'm a Jewish colonel!", while the in-laws moaned that even in such a difficult moment, they had to pay for everything themselves. He passed away in December. "The old man is gone. And they didn't even give us a discount on the funeral, can you imagine?" The strangers' relatives gave the old man the final honor: they put him in a military jacket from someone else's shoulder, once sewn by his wife Klava, and placed a portrait of Brezhnev between his lifeless hands. "He loved him very much". They didn't put any medals in the coffin: "What if they dig him up". They offered vodka and sausages to the neighborhood drunks: "Remember the Son of the Regiment". On his grave - no Christian cross, no red star... Only his name - Vanya Solntsev. I wander around the shack among the falling walls, on the broken boards, picking up black and white photos from the floor, Vanya's, his women's, other women's, beloved leaders', old books, an old accordion... "Take it if you want, we don't need it anymore." And I let go of everything. Now no one needs it. Because now Vanya Solntsev has become a legend again. He has returned to the children's book, leaving behind medals, a cat, a local police officer, neighbors, and drinking buddies... And the country, which had only one Son of the Regiment, had no idea about this.