- Yes, in such a way. For example, money is allocated for construction. What does it matter to the region, they gave money to the district, and there is no grass to grow. And in Klepiki they divide the money. So we live without construction.

I did not argue. Personally, I liked both Klepiki and Tuma. Of course, it is a pity that people live in Tuma, almost without hope of getting a new comfortable housing. But, to be honest, I did not see any construction boom in Klepiki either. Poverty. Our damned poverty. We divide the crumbs, and those who do not get the crumbs at all, turn all their indignation to those who get something.

"Is there any way out?" - I ask my guide, saying goodbye to him. "Will Tuma ever live better?"

- Of course, there is a way out. We will seek separation from Klepiki, our deputies are already joining this matter. Enough of them sitting on our necks. That's for sure. Sovereignty is sovereignty.

July 16. A dead village.

I thought that such people are found only in books and movies. His bicycle caught up with me when I had already walked for two hours on the road from Tuma to Velikodvorsky. Short stature, red stubble, weathered face. He introduced himself as Fyodor Kuzmich. Rather unceremoniously, he asked, getting off the bike:

"Do you mind if I keep you company?" Try, say "no" - you will offend a person.

"I'm not in a hurry to walk, and you, probably. Hurry up," I made a timid attempt to defend my travel loneliness.

-Take it easy. I have nowhere to hurry. And so we will spend our time usefully.

"For the benefit of whom?"

"For us, for whom else?" He was genuinely surprised. Kuzmich was from the breed of homegrown self-taught philosophers. He had three or four classes in his luggage, a long working life, at the final stage of which he awoke a desire to know everything, to explain everything using his life experience. As a result, quite interesting results were obtained from all this. For almost an hour he told me his theory of the universe. It was a monstrous mixture of Orthodoxy, Buddhism, paganism, materials from the popular brochures of the "Knowledge" series. He listened to the interlocutor with interest, but what he did not like immediately bounced off him. While talking, we reached the village of Kuzmicha. Saying goodbye, he complained about the lack of time:

- There are a lot of books, you need to have time to read. And one more thing..." Kuzmich looked at me attentively, as if assessing the degree of my reliability. - You see, I want to make a perpetual motion machine.

-What? My eyes crept up to my forehead. My strange companion, pleased with the effect produced, threw off the canvas bag from his shoulders, picked up a twig from the ground and began to frantically draw something on the dusty roadside.

"Don't think about it, I calculated everything correctly," and he began to explain to me, drawing some circles, levers, in which I had not the slightest idea. I tried to tell him something about the history of this question, but the feverish glint in his eyes said that it was impossible to change Kuzmich's mind. However, I cut myself short abruptly: is it worth arguing? Man has solved all the questions of existence for himself, now he has decided to turn one of the most established ideas of our world upside down. God help him.