in the world

Chapter 5

Little brother Kolya quietly disappeared like a small morning star.My grandmother, him, and I slept in a small shed, and we used a pile of rags on the firewood as a bed.Next to us, there is a wall made of wool boards with many gaps. Outside the wall is the landlord's chicken coop.Every night, we heard the chickens flapping their wings and clucking to sleep when they were full, and in the morning, the golden rooster woke us up with its loud crowing. "Ah, strangle you!" Grandma woke up and muttered curses.

I couldn't fall asleep, so I looked at the sunlight shining on the bed from the gap in the wood house.Silver dust particles danced in the light, like words in a fairy tale.Mice were clamoring in the woodpile, and red beetles with black spots on their wings were crawling about.

Sometimes, I couldn't stand the smell of chicken shit, so I walked out of the firewood house and climbed to the roof to look at the people who woke up in the room. They seemed to have lost their eyes after sleeping all night, and they were swollen and fat.The boatman Fermanov, the gloomy drunk, poked his shaggy head out of the window, looked at the sun with his small, swollen eyes, and snorted like a wild boar.Grandfather ran to the yard, smoothed his brown-red hair with both hands, and hurried to the bathroom to take a cold shower.The landlady's talkative cook, with a pointed nose and freckles, looked like a cuckoo; and the landlady herself looked like a fat old pigeon.All men conjure images of birds, cattle, and wild animals.

The weather was fine in the morning, but my heart felt a little melancholy, and I really wanted to leave this place and go into the deserted wilderness-I know that people routinely dirty a clean day.

One day, when I was lying on the roof, my grandmother told me to come down. She nodded to her bed and said softly: "Kolya is dead..."

The child's head fell out of the red pillow, and he was lying on the blanket. His skin was pale, and his body was almost naked. The gown was tucked up to his neck, revealing his distended belly and crooked legs full of pus. Underneath, as if to lift up his body.Head tilted slightly to one side. "It doesn't matter if you have a baby," my grandmother said, combing her hair. "How to live, this deformed child!"

The grandfather walked in stepping like a dancer, and carefully poked the closed eyes of the dead child with his fingers.Grandma said angrily, "Why did you touch him with your unwashed hands?"

He muttered: "Look, he came into the world... lived, eaten... turned out to be nothing..." "Wake up," my grandmother stopped him.

He glanced at her blindly, walked out into the yard, and said, "I don't have the money to bury him, so you can figure it out..." "Bah, you poor wretch!"

I walked away and didn't come home until evening.

The next morning when Kolya was buried, I didn’t go to church, and at Mass I sat with the dog and Yaz’s father by the dug-up mother’s grave.He digs the grave and asks for less wages, and he always shows his merits in front of me: "I'm doing this for the sake of my acquaintances, otherwise, at least one ruble..."

I looked into the yellow, foul-smelling grave, and saw damp black boards on the side.With a slight movement of my body, the sand on the edge of the hole poured down into a thin stream, flowing all the way to the bottom of the pit, and wrinkles appeared on both sides of the pit.I moved my body deliberately, trying to make the sand pour down and cover the board. "Don't mess around!" Yazz's father said, smoking a cigarette.

Grandmother brought a small white wood coffin, "rice bag" jumped into the pit, caught the coffin, placed it side by side with the blackboard, and jumped out of the pit again.Then, dig the sand in with your feet and a shovel.His pipe smoked like a censer.Grandfather and grandmother helped him silently.There were no priests or beggars, just the four of us standing among the many crosses.

When the grandmother gave the money to the cemetery, she said reproachfully: "You disturbed Varyusha's coffin after all..." "Then what can be done? That's it, I also encroached on someone else's land. This—— — it doesn't matter!"

Grandma touched her head to the ground, paid homage to the grave, choked up a sob, and left crying.Grandfather covered his eyes with the brim of his hat, grabbed his frayed coat, and walked away. "Put the seeds in the wasteland," he said suddenly, and scurried ahead like a crow in plowed field.

I asked my grandmother, "What's the matter with him?" "Let him go! He has his own mind," she replied.

The weather was very hot, and my grandmother walked very hard, her feet sank into the hot sand, and she often stopped to wipe the sweat from her face with a handkerchief.

I summoned up the courage to ask, "Is that black thing in the grave, my mother's coffin?" "Yes." She said angrily. "It's all about that stupid dog...in less than a year, Varya is rotten. The sand is bad, the water seeps, it would be better if it were clay..." "Is everyone going to rot?" "Everyone .Only saints don't rot..." "You don't rot!"

She stood up, straightened my hat, and seriously discouraged me, saying: "Don't think about it, don't think about it, do you hear me?"

But I thought: "Death, how sad and disgusting it is! Ah, the odious thing!"

I feel bad.

When we got home, my grandfather had already burned the samovar and put the tea set on the table. "Have some tea, it's too hot," he said. "I brew my own tea. Enough for everyone."

He walked up to his grandmother and patted her on the shoulder: "How is it, old lady, huh?"

Grandmother waved her hand: "What is there to say!"

'exactly!God was angry with us, and called us back one by one... If only the whole family lived strong and strong, like the five fingers on the hand..."

It's been a long time since he spoke so kindly.I listened to him, hoping the old man would calm my melancholy, and make me forget about the yellow grave and the damp planks beside it.

But grandmother stopped him sharply:

"Come on, sir! You've been talking like that all your life, and it's going to make it easier for anyone? You've been like rust all your life, rusting everything..."

Grandfather coughed, glanced at her, and fell silent.

In the evening, at the gate, I sadly told Lyudmila what I had seen that morning, but this did not elicit a noticeable reaction from her.

"It's better to be an orphan. If my father and mother die, I will give my sister to my brother, and I will go to a convent by myself and never come out. There is no other way for a person like me. A cripple can't work, and he can't marry. Say no." Will raise crippled children..."

She spoke old-fashioned things like the women in the street.Probably from this night, I lost interest in her, and at the same time, life changed, which gradually alienated me from this girlfriend.

A few days after my brother died, my grandfather said to me:
"Go to bed early tonight, I will wake you up early tomorrow, and we will go to the woods to collect firewood..."

"Then I'll go pick up grass too." Grandma said.

At the edge of the swamp, about three versts from the village, there is a forest of spruce and birch.There are many dead branches and fallen trees in the woods, stretching to the Oka River on one side, and the road to Moscow on the other, and connecting directly across the road.Above this fluffy forest stands a dense pine forest, which is the "Savelov Hill".

These forests are the property of Count Shuvalov's family, but they are not well protected. The small townspeople in the Kunavino District regard it as their own. They pick up dead branches and cut down dead trees. Don't let it go.In autumn, when it was time to prepare firewood for the winter, dozens of people went to the forest with axes in their hands and ropes in their waists.

In this way, the three of us walked on the silver-green dewy field at dawn.To our left, across the Oka River, the maroon flanks of Woodpecker Hill, over white Nizhny Novgorod, the lush orchards on the hills and the golden cupolas of the churches, the lazy Russian The sun is slowly rising.The breeze slowly blows from the calm and turbid Oka River, the golden buttercup is lowered by the dew and shakes slightly, the purple bellflower also hangs its head, and the colorful helichrysum raises its face on the barren grass , the carnation flower called "Little Night Beauty" blooms red star-shaped flowers...

The forest is like an army of black buildings, heading towards us.The spruce spread its wings like a bird, the birch like a maiden, and the sour smell of the moor blew from the fields.The dog walked next to me with its red tongue sticking out. It stopped to sniff the ground from time to time, and shook its fox-like head inexplicably.

My grandfather was wearing my grandmother's short coat and an old hat without a sunshade. He squinted his eyes, smiled inexplicably, and moved his thin legs carefully, as if stealing.The grandmother was wearing a blue jacket, a black skirt, and a white turban on her head. She walked like rolling on the ground, and it was difficult to keep up with her.

The closer he was to the forest, the higher the grandfather's interest; he breathed calmly through his nose, and sighed from time to time; he said intermittently and vaguely at first, and then, as if intoxicated, he spoke cheerfully and beautifully:

"The forest is God's garden, it is not planted by anyone, it is God's wind, God's breath blows it... When I was young, I was a boatman, and I went to Zhiguli... Oh, Lexy, I What you have experienced, you will never see! The big forest on the Oka River stretches from Kasimov to Murom, and the other end crosses the Volga River to the Urals. It is huge and boundless... ..."

Grandma squinted at him, then blinked at me again.He stumbled and staggered when he was stumbled by the little pier on the road, and he was still muttering intermittently.These words took root deeply in my memory.

"We sailed from Saratov to Makary on a galleon carrying oil, the steward was called Kirillo, a Plekh; the captain was a Tatar from Kasimov, it seemed Called Asaf... The boat sailed to Zhiguli, the wind from the upper reaches was blowing head-on, and our strength was exhausted. We anchored and shook. We went ashore to cook and eat. It was May at that time, the Volga River Like the sea. The waves in the river are like tens of thousands of white swans drifting towards the Caspian Sea. The green spring mountains of Zhiguli stretch into the sky. White clouds flow in the sky, and the sun shines on the ground like gold. Resting and admiring the scenery. The river is cold with the north wind, but the shore is warm and fragrant! In the evening, our Kirillo (this is a very powerful man, already old) stood up, took off his hat, Said: 'Hey, boys, I am no longer your chief, nor your servant. Take yourselves to yourselves, I am going to the forest! What happened. No one is responsible to the boss, so what should I do? —— People can’t walk without a head, even though this is the Volga River, they can get lost on the single-lane road. These people are irrational animals, pity them. What? We were all terrified. But he made up his mind, and said, 'I don't want to live like this any more, I'll be your shepherd, and I'll go into the woods!' We'll beat him and tie him up; But the man hesitated and shouted, "Slow down!" The captain of the boat, the Tatar, also shouted, "I'm going too!" The wages, now more than half of the third trip has been rushed - after this trip, you can get a lot of money! Everyone kept yelling until night, and this night, seven people left us, and the remaining ones were sixteen One or fourteen. That's what the forest is doing!"

"Did they become robbers?"

"Maybe I became a robber, maybe I became a hermit. At that time, no one cared about such things..."

Grandmother draws a sign of the cross:
"Holy Mother! People, poor people."

"Everyone has brains, who knows where the devil will drag you..."

We walked into the forest, following the mounds of the moor and the damp paths among the weak fir forests.I think it would be nice to escape into the forest like Kirillo the Pulech and never come out.In the forest, there are no chatterers, no one fights and no one gets drunk; there, grandfather's annoying stinginess, mother's sandy grave, and all depressing pain and grievances can be completely forgotten.When they got to the dry place, the grandmother said:

"I have to eat something, sit down!"

In her bark basket, there are black bread, green onions, cucumbers, salt, and milk dregs wrapped in cloth.Grandfather looked at these things shyly, blinked his eyes, "Oh, good woman, I didn't bring anything to eat..."

"Enough for everyone..."

We sat down against the trunk of the bronzed pine that was used to make the masts, and the air smelled of pitch.A breeze blows from the field, shaking the horsetail grass.My grandmother picked all kinds of weeds with her thick black hands, and told me about the healing properties of hypericum, elixir, plantain, ferns, sticky willow leaves, and a weasel called weasel. The magic of dusty grass.

My grandfather chopped up the fallen trees and asked me to move the chopped ones together, but I followed my grandmother and quietly hid in the dense forest.She walked slowly among the thick trees, like diving, always bending her waist towards the ground covered with needles; while walking, she said to herself:

"It's too early again, and there are not many mushrooms to pick! God, you don't give convenience to the poor. Mushrooms are a delicacy for the poor!"

I took care not to let her find out, and followed her silently. I didn't want to disturb her conversation with God, grass, little frogs...

But she found me.

"Did you escape from your grandfather?"

As she spoke, she bowed to the black ground, covered with grass, as if she was wearing a gorgeous embroidered dress.She said: Once, God was angry with mankind and flooded the earth with a flood, drowning all living things.

"The Holy Mother of Mercy hid the various seeds she picked in a basket and asked the sun to say: Dry the whole earth. For this, all people will praise your grace! The sun dried the earth, and the Holy Mother put The hidden seeds were sown on the ground. God saw that the ground was full of vegetation, animals, and human beings—all living things, and asked who did this against my will? So the Virgin repented to God It turned out that God was very sad to see the bareness on the ground. So he said to her: Ah, you are doing well!"

I love this story very much, but it is very strange, so I solemnly ask:

"Is this true? Wasn't the Virgin born long after the Flood?"

This time, grandma was surprised:
"Who told you that?"

"In school, it's written in the book..."

In this way, she was relieved, and advised me:

"You throw away the words of those books and forget them! The books are full of nonsense."

She laughed quietly and happily.

"It's all made up, you fool! He has God, but he has no mother! So, who made him?"

"I do not know."

"That's good! Learned a 'don't know'!"

"The priest said that the Virgin was born to Yakim and Anna."

"Then her name is Marya Yakimovna?"

Grandmother got angry—she was standing opposite me, looking sternly into my eyes:

"If you think like that again, I'll beat you hard!"

But after a while, she explained to me again:
"The Virgin has existed for a long time, she is earlier than anyone else, the Virgin gave birth to God, and later..."

"And what about Christ—how is he?"

Grandma closed her eyes in embarrassment and remained silent.

"Christ? . . . um, um, um!"

I was very sorry to see that I had triumphed and confused her in the mystery of Shinto.

We walked deeper and deeper in the forest, and came to a place of dense shade, with a few rays of sunlight streaming down.In the warm and comfortable place in the woods, there is a special, dreamlike, dreamlike noise sounding quietly.The crossbill chirped, the chickadee chirped, the cuckoo clucked, the warbler played its flute, the envious goldfinch sang nonstop, and the queer jay-billed chanted broodingly.Small emerald frogs hopped at the feet, a yellow-jawed snake raised its golden head in front of the tree roots, and was watching the frogs, and squirrels squeaked and flitted their fluffy tails among the pine branches.There are so many things to see, and I want to see more and go further.

Among the rows of pine trees a transparent mist, shaped like a giant's figure, appeared, and then disappeared in the green shade.In the depths of the green shade, a piece of silvery blue sky is faintly revealed.The moss, embroidered with bilberry bushes and dried cranberries, spreads out under your feet like a beautiful carpet.The stone berries are like drops of blood, hidden in the green grass.Mushrooms emit a strong aroma that pricks people's nostrils.

"Holy Mother, light of the earth," the grandmother prayed with a sigh.

In the forest, she seems to be the master and relative of everything around her.She walked like a bear, expressing appreciation and gratitude for what she saw.It seemed as if a warm current emanated from her body, filling the forest.I was overjoyed to see the moss she had trodden rise again.

As I walked, I thought: It would be great to be a robber, rob those greedy rich people, and distribute the looted things to the poor—so that everyone can have enough to eat, be happy, no longer hate each other, no longer Bite and bite like a vicious dog.It would be best if I could go to my grandmother's God, Our Lady, and tell her all the truths about the world: how badly people live, how they bury each other in the nasty sand, brutally and embarrassingly.In short, how many unnecessary sorrows there are in the world.If the Holy Mother believes me, let her give me the wisdom to change everything for the better, as well as possible.If only everyone would listen to me, I would find a better life.I am a child, but that does not matter, when Christ was only a year older than I was, there were already many wise people who listened to him...

I was lost in thought, and I fell into a deep pit.Branches scratched my waist and wiped off a small piece of the back of my skull.I sat in the cold mud that was as sticky as turpentine at the bottom of the pit, and I couldn't crawl out by myself. I felt ashamed in my heart, and I was too embarrassed to raise my voice to startle my grandmother.However, I still called her.

She quickly pulled me out, made the cross and said:
"Thank God, it's a good thing the bear cave is empty. It would be a disaster if the owner was home!"

She laughed so hard that she shed tears, she immediately took me to the stream to wash, applied a kind of pain-relieving grass to the wound, tore a piece of cloth from her gown, bandaged me up, and took me to guard the railway station. in the hut. —I have no strength to walk home.

I ask my grandmother almost every day:

"Go to the forest!"

She happily obliges me every time.In this way we passed the whole summer until late autumn, picking herbs, berries, mushrooms, nuts, and the like.My grandmother sold what she picked to make ends meet.

"Food bucket!" my grandfather scolded us sharply, although we didn't eat any of his food.

The forest makes me feel mentally quiet and comfortable. When I am immersed in this feeling, all my worries disappear, all unpleasant things are forgotten, and at the same time, I develop a special alertness. , My hearing and vision are sharper, my memory is stronger, and my impression is deeper.

My grandmother also surprised me even more.I always feel that she is the noblest person among ten thousand people, the smartest and kindest person in the world.She also continued to strengthen my confidence.One evening, we came home from picking white mushrooms, and when we came out of the forest, my grandmother sat down to rest.I went around behind the woods to see if there were any mushrooms.

Suddenly, I heard the voice of my grandmother talking. Looking back, I saw her sitting on the side of the path, quietly pulling the handle of the mushroom, and a gray-haired thin dog stood beside her with its tongue out.

"Go, go away!" said the grandmother. "Go ahead!"

My dog ​​had been poisoned by Valek not long ago, and I was eager to get the new dog, so I ran to the lane.With its neck down and motionless, the dog hunched up strangely, glanced at me with its hungry green eyes, and fled into the forest with its tail between its legs.It was not built like a dog, I whistled, and it fled into the tangled grass in a panic.

"Did you see it?" Grandma asked with a smile. "At the beginning, I also misread it. It was just a dog. When I looked carefully, it had wolf teeth and a wolf-shaped neck! I was shocked, so I said to it: If you are a wolf, you should go away." Let’s drive! Fortunately, it’s summer, honestly, wolf..."

She never gets lost in the forest, and always finds the way home with precision.By the scent of the vegetation, she can know what kind of mushrooms grow in this place, and what kind of shiitake mushrooms are in that place.She also often quizzes me:

"What kind of tree do yellow mushrooms grow on? How to distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous red-headed mushrooms? Also, what kind of mushrooms love ferns?"

She saw the hidden claw marks on the bark, and told me: There is a squirrel nest here.I climbed up the tree and cleared out the nest, and took out the hazelnuts that had been hidden for the winter.Sometimes you can get ten pounds out of a nest...

Once, while I was digging out a squirrel nest, a hunter drove 27 iron pellets into my right side.My grandmother picked out eleven of them for me with a needle, and the rest stayed in my skin for many years, and slowly came out.

Grandma was very happy to see that I could hold back the pain.

"Good boy," she complimented me. "If you can endure, you will be able to master it!"

Every time she came back from selling mushrooms and hazelnuts, she would take a little money and put it on someone's windowsill as a "secret charity", but she herself only wore tattered and patched clothes on the holidays.

"You are more worn than a beggar, you really embarrass me!" said the grandfather angrily.

"What does it matter, I'm not your daughter, nor a bride."

Their quarrels gradually increased.

"I have done no more crimes than others," my grandfather complained. "But I suffered more than anyone else!"

Grandmother said provocatively:
"How many sins anyone has, only the devil knows."

So, she secretly told me:

"The old man is afraid of the devil, and you see how fast he grows old, and it's all because of his fear... Oh, poor man..."

This summer I have been active in the forest, my body has become strong, my temper has become wild, and I have lost interest in the lives of my companions of the same age and Lyudmila. In my opinion, she is just an uninteresting smart people...

One day, my grandfather came back from the city drenched (it was autumn and it was raining), and shaking himself like a sparrow on the porch, he said proudly:

"Hey, you loafer, you have to go to work tomorrow!"

"Where are you going again!" Grandma asked angrily.

"With your sister Matrona, at her son's house..."

"Ah, old man, you have another bad idea!"

"Shut up, fool! Maybe he'll be a draftsman."

Grandmother bowed her head silently.

In the evening I told Lyudmila that I was going to work in the city and that I was going to live there.

"Soon, they're taking me to town, too," she told me musingly. "Dad wants me to have this leg amputated so I can get better."

In one summer, she lost a lot of weight, her face turned blue, only her eyes got bigger.

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"Scared," she said, crying silently.

I had no words to comfort her, and I was afraid of life in the city myself.We worried silently, and sat close together for a long time.

If it was summer, I would have persuaded my grandmother to go out to beg for food, as she did when she was a girl, and take Lyudmila with her—let her sit in the car, and I would pull her...

But this was in autumn, when there was a damp wind blowing on the high roads, the sky was densely overcast with clouds, and the earth was wrinkled, dirty and miserable...

(End of this chapter)