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Пишите A Night on a Farm near Ruza
A Night on a Farm near Ruza
For many, many hours two twenty-year-olds, Ilya and Artyom, and their wise mentor, Father Roman, melted batches of copper, tin and bronze in a cast-iron pot just like this one. Every hour came the promise: any minute now, in twenty minutes, we’ll pour. And they promised it again and again. After all, there’s a saying, and it must be true: “a bell founder is always pouring it on”.
Meanwhile they were baking moulds out of sand and something like asphalt, filling them with wax, hauling them about, firing them, knocking them, smearing them... All around were silicate, gas cylinders, a vacuum cleaner, piles of sand, hinges, sacks of coal and sacks of copper rods.
And suddenly... we were plunged into darkness. The power went out — something had jammed, something had shorted. The furnace stopped breathing. All the metal melted over the previous ten hours — 180 kg — could set, and all the work would be for nothing! Six bells would never see the light of day... Would never ring. Resourceful, optimistic Ilya and the whole film crew calmed a panicking Father Roman and rushed off with flashlights to find the faults and patch the holes in an old extension cord. It took a long time. Let there be light!
And then, at 5 a.m. (we had arrived at 10 p.m.), the whole action unfolded in just twenty minutes — the moulds were poured at last.
Dawn and sunshine. The nightingales had long been singing. Drunk with fatigue, Father Roman and the lads couldn’t work out whether everyone was being called to breakfast or to supper.
Let there be a bell!
A Day on a Farm near Ruza
A week later Ilya, Artyom and another craftsman discovered that...
One bell hadn’t come out, and another would need fixing so that it would ring as it should in tone and sound. As for the rest — after they had been heaved about, turned over, pulled out of the moulds, scraped, chipped clean, scrubbed, ground, polished and hung on a standing belfry — each one was struck with a hammer. No, that wasn’t enough, so they struck them with a sledgehammer. Once, twice, three times. And the bells began to ring, the peal rang out. Afterwards Ilya picked up a guitar and showed how the sound of plucked strings blends with the sound of the bells. Let there be a peal.
Meanwhile they were baking moulds out of sand and something like asphalt, filling them with wax, hauling them about, firing them, knocking them, smearing them... All around were silicate, gas cylinders, a vacuum cleaner, piles of sand, hinges, sacks of coal and sacks of copper rods.
And suddenly... we were plunged into darkness. The power went out — something had jammed, something had shorted. The furnace stopped breathing. All the metal melted over the previous ten hours — 180 kg — could set, and all the work would be for nothing! Six bells would never see the light of day... Would never ring. Resourceful, optimistic Ilya and the whole film crew calmed a panicking Father Roman and rushed off with flashlights to find the faults and patch the holes in an old extension cord. It took a long time. Let there be light!
And then, at 5 a.m. (we had arrived at 10 p.m.), the whole action unfolded in just twenty minutes — the moulds were poured at last.
Dawn and sunshine. The nightingales had long been singing. Drunk with fatigue, Father Roman and the lads couldn’t work out whether everyone was being called to breakfast or to supper.
Let there be a bell!
A Day on a Farm near Ruza
A week later Ilya, Artyom and another craftsman discovered that...
One bell hadn’t come out, and another would need fixing so that it would ring as it should in tone and sound. As for the rest — after they had been heaved about, turned over, pulled out of the moulds, scraped, chipped clean, scrubbed, ground, polished and hung on a standing belfry — each one was struck with a hammer. No, that wasn’t enough, so they struck them with a sledgehammer. Once, twice, three times. And the bells began to ring, the peal rang out. Afterwards Ilya picked up a guitar and showed how the sound of plucked strings blends with the sound of the bells. Let there be a peal.
