March 1966. Thirty-four-year-old engineer Konstantin Platonovich Zorin recalls how he, a native of the village, was humiliated by city bureaucrats and how he had once hated everything rustic. And now he is pulling back to his native village, so he came here on vacation, for twenty-four days, and I want to drown the bath every day, but his bath is too old, and to restore it alone, despite the carpentry sourcing purchased at the FZO school Zorin cannot and therefore turns to the old neighbor Olesha Smolin for help, but he is in no hurry to get down to business, but instead tells Zorin about his childhood.

Olesha was born, like Christ, in a calf’s crib and right on Christmas Day. But the priest made him sin: he did not believe that Olesha had no sins, and he was painfully tearing behind his ears, so he decided to sin - he stole his father’s tobacco and began to smoke. And then he repented. And how Olesha began to sin, it became easier to live, ceased to lash at once, but since then any muddle has gone in his life ...

The next day, Zorin and Smolin, taking tools, go to repair the bath. A neighbor walks past them, Aviner Pavlovich Kozonkov, an old tendon with lively eyes. Olesha plays Aviner, saying that the cow is supposedly unstable and that he will be left without milk. Kozonkov, not understanding the humor, is angry and threatens Olesha that he will write about the hay mowed by Smolin without permission, and that the hay will be taken from him. In response, Olesha says that Aviner, with the permission of the village council, mows at the cemetery - they rob the dead. Smolin and Kozonkov finally quarrel, but when Aviner leaves, Olesha notices: they have had disputes with Aviner all his life. Since childhood, so. And they cannot live without each other.

And Smolin begins to tell. Olesha and Aviner are of the same age. Somehow, the guys made birds of clay and furcated - who is next. And Aviner (then still Vinya) scored the most clay, planted it on a willow rod and straight into the Fedulenko window, the glass splashed. All, of course, run away. Fedulenok was out of the hut, and Vinya was left alone in place and only condemned: “There they ran into the field!” Well, Fedulenok rushed after them, and Olesha overtook. Yes, and would have killed if it had not been for Oleshin's father.

At the age of twelve, Vinka and Olesha graduated from the parish school, so Vinka wrote down all the gates with matyugs on his threshing floor - he had a handwriting like that of a zemstvo commander, but he tried to evade his work, he even spoiled his father’s plow so as not to throw manure into the furrow. And when his father was flogged for non-payment of taxes, Vinya ran to look, and even boasted: he saw, they say, they flogged ten men and he twitched on logs ... And then Olesha went to Peter. There, the master carpenters beat him hard, but they taught him how to work.

After a skirmish with Olesha Aviner in the bath does not appear. Zorin, hearing that the daughter of Anthea came to Kozonkov, goes on a visit. Aviner watered his six- or seven-year-old grandson with vodka, and himself, drunk, tells Zorin how clever he was in his youth - he deceived everyone around him and even pulled money out of the corners of the church that was just laid down.

The next morning, Olesha is not at the bathhouse. Zorin goes to him himself and finds out that they demand that Olesha go to the forest to chop rags (this is the result of Kozonkov’s machinations: he writes a complaint about the store’s work every week). Only after lunch, Zorin comes to repair the bath and begins to talk again. This time, about how Kozonkov wanted to marry, but his father refused the bride, he had rope wrappers on the Avinerovskiy sledge, so on the very first pile, you see, the wrapper will burst ...

Then Olesha talks about his love. Tanya, Fedulenkova’s daughter, had a thick braid, below the waist, white ears. And the eyes - not even the eyes, but two whirlpools, then blue, then black. Well, Olesha was timid. And somehow, on the Assumption day after the holiday, the men got drunk, and the guys slept on a powiat near the girls. Vinka then pretended to be drunk, and Olesha began to ask under the canopy, where Oleshin's cousin and Tanka were going to sleep. Then the cousin darted into the hut: the samovar, they say, forgot to close it. And she didn’t come back - she was quick-witted. And Olesha, trembling with fear, went to Tank, and she began to persuade him to leave ... Olesha was foolishly and went out into the street. He danced, and when already in the morning he went to bed, he heard how Vinka under his canopy was ganking. And how to kiss. And the cousin, laughing at Olesha, said that Tanya ordered him to be found, but where can I find him? As if the century did not dance.

Olesha finishes her story. A truck passes by, the driver insults Smolin, but Olesha only admires him: well done, you can see right away that he is not real. Zorin, angry at both the driver and Smolen's kindness, leaves without saying goodbye.

Kozonkov, having come to Smolin, tells how in the eighteenth year he became the right hand of Tabakov, the authorized official of the RIK financial department. And the bell itself was in a hurry from the bell tower, and even a little need from there he managed, from the bell tower. And in the group of the poor, created to bring fists to clean water and open a class war in the village, Aviner also participated. So now comrade Tabakov, they say, lives on a personal one, and Kozonkov wonders if it is impossible for him to have a personal one too? So the documents are all collected ... Zorin looks at the documents, but they are clearly not enough. Aviner complains that he sent, they say, a personal application to the district, but they lost it there: all around there is one scam and bureaucracy. But Kozonkov, consider, since the eighteenth year in managerial work - and the secretary in the village council, and the foreman, two years "head. the matef worked, and then in the selpe, he distributed loans throughout the war. And he had a gun. Once Kozonkov quarreled with Fedulenko - he threatened with a gun, and then he made sure that they would not be accepted to the collective farm: two cows, two samovars, a two-lived house. And then Fedulenka, as a one-man individual, was taxed with such a tax ... Aviner leaves. Fedulenko’s house, where the collective farm’s office was, looks empty with no frames. And on the prince sits and a frozen raven sits and freezes. She doesn't want to do anything.

Zorin's vacation is drawing to a close. Olesha works on conscience and therefore slowly. And he tells Zorin how they were directed, it happened, to labor-hardiness — to build roads, how they drove either to harvesting, then to rafting, and then still had to sow bread on the collective farm, but it only turned out four weeks later than necessary. Olesha recalls how they came to describe the property of Fedulenko. The house is under the hammer. The whole family is in exile. When they said goodbye, Tanya came to Olesha with all the people. Yes, how to cry ... They took them to Pechora, there were two or three letters from them at first, and then - not to a rumor. Olesha then Vinka Kozonkov attributed kulak agitation, and tortured Smolin strongly. And now, Olesha does not dare to tell Zorin everything to the end - he’s after all “party”.

The bath is ready. Zorin wants to settle accounts with Olesha, but he doesn’t seem to hear. Then they soar together. Zorin specifically for Olesha turns on the transistor, both listen to Schubert’s “The Beautiful Mill”, and then Zorin gives Olesha the transistor.

Before leaving, Olesha and Aviner come to Zorin. After drinking, they begin to argue about collectivization. Olesha says that in the village there were not three layers - a fist, a poor man and a middle peasant - but thirty-three, recalls how Kuzya Peryev was put into fists (he didn’t even have a cow, but only Tabakova swore on holiday). And according to Aviner, Smolin himself should have followed Fedulenko - to the root: “You were a contra, there is a contra”. Comes to a fight. Aviner knocks on the wall with Olesha’s head. Nastasya, the wife of Olesha, appears and takes him home. Aviner also leaves, saying: "I will not regret my discipline for my brother ... I will not regret my head ... Fly away!"

Zorin begins the flu. He falls asleep, then gets up and staggers, goes to Smolin. And there they sit and talk peacefully ... Aviner and Olesha. Smolin says that they will both go to the same land, and asks Aviner, if Olesha dies earlier, to give him a coffin honor in honor - on thorns. And Kozonkov asks Smolin about the same if Olesha survives him. And then both, bowing their heads, quietly, harmoniously singing an old lingering song.

Zorin cannot pull them up - he does not know a word from this song ...