in the world

Chapter 7

I'm in town again.Lived in a two-story white house, which resembled a large coffin used to hold many dead people.The house is new, but it looks a bit like someone with a malignant disease who is swollen, or like a beggar who suddenly got rich and got fat all of a sudden.The side of the house facing the street has eight windows on each floor and four on each floor at the front.Downstairs windows looked out on narrow passages and yards, and upstairs windows looked over the walls into the washerman's hut and the filthy hollow.

Here, there is no such street as I understand.In front of the house there was a large dirty hollow with two narrow earth banks between them.The left end of the depression extends all the way to the prison camp.People in the neighborhood dumped the rubbish in the yard into the depression.Its bottom was filled with dark green, dirty water.At the right end of the depression is the star pool full of sludge, which emits a foul smell.In the middle of the depression, right across from our house.Half of the hollow was filled with rubbish and overgrown with nettles, wild burdock, and honey sorrel, and on the other half was the garden of Father Dolimedont Pokrovski.In the garden there is a gazebo made of thin wood, painted with green paint.If stones were thrown into the pavilion, the veneer would surely crack.

The place is dreary and dirty as hell.Autumn made the muddy hollow filled with rubbish even worse, as if it had been coated with grease and would stick under footsteps.I have never seen such a small place piled up with so much rubbish, especially because I am used to the clean environment of wilderness and forest, so I am very worried about this corner of this small city.

On the opposite side of the hollow is a dilapidated gray wall, and a small brown house is visible in the middle.That is the house where I slept and slept last winter when I was an apprentice in a shoe shop.It made me feel even more sad that it was so close to me.Why do I have to live on this street again?
I know the owner of this house. He and his brothers used to visit my mother often.That brother, with a ridiculously thin voice, kept yelling:

"Papa Andre, Papa Andre."

They were the same as before, the older brother with his hooked nose, long hair, and a kindly air, which was a pleasure to see.Brother Victor still has the horse face, covered with freckles.Their mother (my grandmother's sister) was very bad-tempered and rowdy.The elder brother has married a wife.The daughter-in-law is quite handsome, as white as white bread, and has a pair of big black eyes.

In the first few days, she said it to me twice.

"I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with beads..."

For some reason, I didn't want to believe that she gave things away, or that my mother accepted her gifts.When she told me about the cloak for the second time, I persuaded her:
"Since you have given it away, you don't have to brag about it anymore."

She backed away in shock.

"What, who are you talking to?"

There were many red spots on her face, and her eyeballs bulged, calling out to her man.

The man ran into the kitchen with compasses in his hand and a pencil in his ear.

After listening to my wife's accusation, she said to me:

"You have to say 'you' to her and everyone else. No disrespect!"

Then, impatiently, he said to his wife:

"You don't need to bother me about such a trivial matter!"

"What? Little things? If your relatives..."

"What ghost relatives!" the master yelled and ran away.

I also don't like that my grandmother's relatives are such people.I think the relationship between relatives is really worse than that of outsiders.No matter what the bad things and the laughing stock, they all know each other in more detail than outsiders, and they speak more viciously, and quarrels and fights are commonplace.

I like the master very much.He always pushed his hair back behind his ears in a very nice way.When I saw his appearance, I thought of that "good thing".He often smiled contentedly, with kindly gray eyes, and a few funny lines beside his hawk nose.

"You old hens, stop arguing!" He said to his wife and mother with a kind smile on his face, showing his white and fine teeth.

Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law quarrel every day.I wonder how easily and quickly they quarrel.In the morning, their hair was not combed, their clothes were not neatly dressed, they ran around the house like a fire, and only took a short rest when they sat down for lunch, tea and dinner. , always busy all day long.They ate and drank a lot each time, and they didn't stop until they were drunk and tired.At lunch, they also talked about eating, bickering lazily, and prepared to have a big fight later.No matter what the mother-in-law cooks, the daughter-in-law always says:
"My mother didn't burn like that."

"If you don't burn it like this, it must not be so delicious!"

"No, it's much better than this!"

"Then you can go to your mother's."

"I'm the housewife here!"

"Then what am I?"

At this time, the master interjected:
"Come on, come on, you two old hens! Are you mad?"

Everything in this house is indescribably strange and indescribably ridiculous: from the kitchen to the dining room, one has to go through the only narrow and small toilet in the house, and carry a samovar or food to the dining room , must pass here.Therefore, this toilet has become the object of various funny stories and often ridiculous misunderstandings.It's my job to fill the toilet sink.I slept in the kitchen, near the door to the front porch, opposite the door to the bathroom.My head was hot by the stove, and my feet were chilled by the wind blowing in from the door, so when I slept, I grabbed the rough shoe-polishing rugs together and covered them over my legs.

On the walls of the hall hung two mirrors, several pictures from the Field magazine in gold-rimmed frames; a pair of card-tables, and twelve curved chairs.This is an empty room.A small reception room is filled with all kinds of fine and soft furniture. There are several glass cabinets containing "dowry" silverware and tea sets, and three lamps of different sizes are also decorated here.In the dark bedroom without windows, apart from a rather large bed, there are wardrobes and suitcases, from which the aroma of tobacco leaves and safflower pyrethrum is emitted.These three rooms were always vacant, and the whole family crowded together in the little dining room, getting in the way.At eight o'clock, after drinking morning tea, the host and brothers immediately moved the table, spread out the white paper, put the instrument case, pencil, and inkstone, and sat down face to face to work.The table was rickety and large, filling the room, and the mistress and nurse bumped against the corners as they came out of the nursery.

"Don't you hang around here all the time!" Victor shouted.

The housewife aggrievedly asked her husband:
"Vasya, tell him not to yell at me!"

"You don't have to touch the table," the host said kindly to her.

"I'm pregnant, this place is so narrow..."

"Okay, let's go to work in the lobby."

However, the housewife roared:
"My God - who works in the lobby?"

Matrona Ivanovna's fierce, hearth-burned face peeped out of the door leading to the lavatory, and she said aloud:
"Wafu, look, you're working, she's got four houses and can't give birth to cowboys, she's an aristocratic lady from the Ridge, just a little clever..."

Victor smiled maliciously, and the master yelled:

"Enough!"

But the daughter-in-law hurled insults at her mother-in-law with the most vicious wisecracks,

Then he fell back on the chair and hummed:

"I'm going, I'm going to die!"

"Don't bother me with my work! Damn it!" the master roared, his face turning blue. "It's really turned into a madhouse. I'm doing this for you, and I'm feeding you! Oh, old hen..."

At first, I was horrified by this noise, especially when the housewife took a knife, ran into the toilet, knocked the doors on both sides, and screamed inside.Immediately, the room fell silent. Later, the master put both hands on the door, bent down and said to me:

"Come on, climb up, break the glass above, and take off the door knob"

I jumped on his back in a hurry and broke the glass above the door.When I stooped down, the housewife hit me hard on the head with the handle of a knife—but at last I broke the door knob.While beating, the master dragged his wife into the dining room and snatched the knife.Sitting in the kitchen rubbing my beaten head, I soon realized that my hard work was in vain: the table knife was so blunt that it was difficult to cut bread, and human skin could not be cut no matter what Moreover, you don't have to climb up the owner's back, you can break the glass just by standing on the chair; and picking the door knob, the adult has a long arm, so it is much more convenient.After this incident, I am no longer afraid of the noise of this family.

The two brothers joined the church chorus, and sometimes they hummed softly as they worked.My brother used a baritone voice and began singing:

My beloved girl gave me a ring

I dropped it into the sea...

His brother responded in a tenor voice:
Along with this bad guy,
I also ruined the happiness of life.

From the nursery the housewife whispered:
"Are you crazy? The baby is sleeping..."

Or say:
"Vasya, you are already married, and you don't need to sing girl, girl. What are you doing? The bells are about to ring for evening prayers..."

"Then we'll sing church songs..."

However, the housewife taught me a lesson, "Songs in church cannot be sung casually, let alone in..." She pointed to the small door as if making a speech.

"We must change places, or—what the hell!" said the master.He often said that the table had to be replaced by another one.But this sentence, he has said it for three years.

When I hear the hosts talk about other people, I am reminded of the shoe store, and the same thing is said there.I know very well that the masters also think themselves the best people in the town, and that they alone know the rules of life.They judge all people mercilessly according to these rules that I don't understand.This kind of trial made me have a strong hatred and anger for their rules.Breaking this rule has become a happy pleasure for me.

I have a lot of work, and I am also a maid. Every Wednesday, I scrub the kitchen floor, the samovar and other utensils, and every Saturday, I scrub the floor of the whole house and the stairs on both sides. Washing the dishes, washing the vegetables, going to the market with the housewife, carrying the vegetable basket, following her, and also going shopping in the shops and pharmacies.

My immediate boss is my grandmother's sister, a nagging old woman with a bad temper, who gets up at around six o'clock every morning, washes her face in a hurry, puts on only her underwear, and kneels in front of the holy statue , complaining to God about his life, children and daughter-in-law.

"God!" she choked out, pressing her fingers together on her forehead. "God! I don't ask for anything, I don't want anything, but let me rest! By your strength, let me find peace!"

Her crying woke me up.I looked at her from under the quilt and listened to her fervent prayer with trembling.The faint light of the autumn morning was sent into the kitchen window through the rain-soaked glass.In the cold darkness on the floor, a gray figure was uneasily crossing himself with one hand.Her kerchief had slipped down, revealing gray hair on her small head, down to the nape of her neck and shoulders.The kerchief often slipped off her head, and each time she straightened it with a jerk of her left hand, muttering curses:
"Shh, what a nuisance!"

She slapped her forehead, stomach, and shoulders vigorously, and began to chant again:
"God, please punish my daughter-in-law for me, and pay her back for all the insults I have suffered. And my son, please open his eyes, look at her, look at Victor Rushka! God, you bless Viktor Rushka and give him your favor..."

Victor was also sleeping on a high bunk in the kitchen, woken up by his mother's noise,

Then he shouted in a muffled voice:

"Mom, you've been chattering again so early in the morning, it's terrible!"

"Okay, okay, go to bed!" the old woman said forgivingly.For a minute or two she swayed silently, then suddenly gnashed her teeth and cried out, "Let the guns smash their bones and leave them dead without a place to bury them, God . . . "

Even my maternal grandfather never prayed so viciously.After praying, she woke me up:
"Get up, don't snooze, you didn't come to sleep! Burn the samovar and bring the firewood! Didn't you get the pine light ready last night? Hey!"

I did everything as quickly as possible to keep the old woman from muttering, but it was impossible to satisfy her.She was blowing around the kitchen like a winter blizzard, muttering and yelling for a while.

"Keep your voice down, ghost! I won't allow you to wake up Victor, go to the shop quickly..."

On a normal day, two pounds of wheat bread for morning tea and two kopecks of white bread for the little housewife.When I brought the bread back, they always looked at it suspiciously, weighed it in their palms again, and finally asked:
"Don't you have a head? No? Open your mouth!" Then, he yelled triumphantly.

"You ate Timotou, look, there are still residues between your teeth!"

... I am willing to work, and I love to sweep the filth out of the house, to wash the floors, to wipe the utensils, to clean the vents and doorknobs.A few times, I've heard women talk about me during reconciliations:

"Working very hard."

"I love cleaning again."

"It's just a stubborn temper."

"Well, my God, who brought him up!"

The two of them tried to inculcate in me respect for them, but I treated them as fools, didn't like them, wouldn't listen to them, talk to them, wouldn't budge.The little mistress obviously felt that some words did not work for me, so she said more and more often:

"Remember, we took you from the poor! I gave your mother a silk cloak with beads trimmed!"

Once, I said to her:

"Shall I return the skin to you for this cloak?"

"My God, this child will set fire!" the housewife yelled frantically in astonishment.Kill and set fire! --why?I froze.

The two of them often complained about me to the master, and the master said to me sternly:
"Young man, be careful!"

But one day he casually said to his mother and wife:

"You guys are too disrespectful. You use him like a gelding. If it were any other kid, he would either have run away already, or he would be exhausted from this kind of work..."

This sentence made them cry in anger, and the daughter-in-law stomped one foot and shouted vigorously:

"Why do you say such things in front of the child? You long-haired fool! How can you tell me to control the child after you say that? I'm still pregnant!" His mother said, sobbing:

"Vassily, God forgive you, but take my word for it—you'll spoil the child!"

When they walked away angrily, the master said to me sternly:
"Look, brat, what a fuss I made for you? If I send you back to your grandfather again, you'll have to pick up trash again!"

I couldn't bear it anymore, so I said to him:

"It's better to pick up junk than to stay here! Ask me to be an apprentice, but what have you taught me? You pour dirty water all the time..."

The master and his party grabbed my hair, but it didn't hurt. They looked into my eyes and said in surprise:
"It's not a bad temper, boy, it's not okay, it's not..."

I thought, let me go, but one day later, he took a roll of thick paper, pencils, set squares, and instruments, and ran into the kitchen:

"After wiping the knife, let's take a look at this painting!"

On a piece of paper, there is a front view of a two-story building with many windows and clay decorations.

"Here are your compasses! You measure all the lines, put a dot on each end of the line, then use a ruler to align the two points, draw the line with a pencil, first draw the horizontal line - this is called a horizontal line, and then draw the vertical line - That's called a vertical line. Well, draw and see!" I was very glad to have me do this clean work and start my art, but I just looked at the paper and tools with reverent awe, and didn't know what to do. .

I washed my hands immediately and sat down to study.First draw a horizontal line one by one on the paper, check it - very good, just draw three more lines.Later I drew the vertical line again, but when I saw it, I was surprised. The front of the house was ugly, the windows were tilted to one side, and one of them hung in the air outside the wall, and it merged with the house; The building is the same height, the eaves are drawn to the middle of the roof, and the skylight is opened on the chimney.

I almost didn't cry, looking for a long time at the irredeemable monster.I was trying to figure out how this could happen.But I couldn't figure it out, so I decided to modify it with my imagination.Crows, doves, and sparrows were painted on all the eaves and ridges of the front; and on the ground in front of the windows were bowlegged figures with open umbrellas, but this did not quite conceal their disproportion.I also draw some diagonal lines across the screen.In this way, the finished drawing was sent to the master.

He raised his eyebrows high, scratched his scalp, and asked unhappily:
"what is this?"

"It's raining," I explained to him. "When it rains, all the houses look crooked because the rain is crooked. And the birds, these are birds, are hiding in the eaves, and that's how they look when it rains. And There's this, these are people, running home; a woman fell down; here's a lemon seller..."

"Thank you!" said the master, laughing loudly, leaning on the table, brushing his hair back and forth on the paper.Then he yelled, "Oh my god, you deserve to be fucked in the ass, you little bastard!"

The housewife ran over with her belly like a big wooden barrel, looked at my work, and said to her husband:

"You beat him hard."

But the master said very kindly:
"It doesn't matter, when I first started learning, it wasn't much better than this..." He made a mark with a red pencil on the façade of the crumbling house, and handed me a few more sheets of paper:
"Draw it again until it's finished..."

The second time I repainted it, the painting was better, except that one window was painted on the porch.But the house is empty, I don't like it, so I added some characters inside.At the window sat a lady with a fan and a gentleman smoking a cigarette.One of them did not smoke, stretched out five fingers on his hand, pressed his thumb on his nose, and flapped the other four fingers to tease others.A coachman stood at the gate, and a dog lay on the ground.

"Why did you draw some messy things again?" The master said angrily.

I explained to him that no one is too lonely, but he scolded me:

"Don't draw blindly! If you want to learn - just learn! You're a mischievous..."

He was very happy when I finally made a front view that looked like the original:
"Look, the painting is finally finished. If this continues, it won't be long before I can be my assistant..."

So, he asked me a question:

"Now, you make a floor plan of the house, how the house is arranged, where the doors and windows are, and where the things are. I won't tell you—you can think about it yourself!"

I ran to the kitchen, thinking sullenly, where should I start?

But my research on drawing art stopped here.

The old housewife ran up to me and said viciously:
"You want to draw a picture?"

As she spoke, she grabbed my hair and slammed my face against the table, breaking my nose and lips.She jumped up, tore the drawings to pieces, threw the drawing tools on the table far away, then folded her hands on her hips, and shouted triumphantly:
"Hmph, let me see you draw, teach your skills to outsiders, and drive away the only flesh and blood brother? This is impossible!"

The master came running, and his wife staggered after him.Thus, a big quarrel opened again.The three men yelled, cursed, spat, and wailed loudly.At last, after the women had gone away, the host said to me, that the whole thing was over: "Now, put this aside for a while, and don't learn—you have seen with your own eyes what it has become!"

I pity him, for his wimpy appearance is always confused by the cries of women.

I already knew that the old woman opposed my study and deliberately disturbed me.Before I sit down to draw, I always ask her:
"Any thing else?"

She frowned and replied:
"When something happens, I'll call you, go, go mess around at the table..."

In a short while, I will be asked to go somewhere, or just say: "Have you cleaned up the steps outside the gate? There is dirt in the corners of the house, go and clean it up..."

I ran to see if there was any soil.

"You dare talk back to me?" she yelled at me.

One day she poured kvass over all my pictures, and another time she poured the oil from the lamp before the icon on them.Like a little girl, she is always making troubles and mischief; at the same time, she uses childish and clumsy methods to cover up her tricks.I've never seen anyone so quick, so easily offended, so fond of complaining about everyone and everything.Generally speaking, people like to complain, but she complained with special energy, like singing.

She loved her son almost madly, with a power which I found both amusing and frightening, what I can only call the power of madness.It often happened that after she had said her morning prayers, she would stand on the steps in front of the stove, leaning her elbows on the edge of the bed, and read fervently:
"My dear son, you are God's unexpected favor, my precious fleshy lump, and the light wings of an angel. He is asleep, sleep well, boy, have a happy dream, dream Your bride. Your bride is the most beautiful woman in the world; she is a princess, a merchant's lady, and a rich girl! May your enemy die before he is born, and your best friend live long, Make the girls chase you in a pack like a flock of ducks chases a drake."

I couldn't help laughing when I heard these words.This Victor was clumsy, lazy, almost like a woodpecker, with spots all over his face, big nose, stubborn, stupid.

Sometimes, when his mother's murmurs woke him up, he complained drowsily:

"Go away, mother, why do you keep grunting in my face... It's killing people!" Sometimes, she would honestly walk down the furnace steps and say with a smile:
"Okay, you go to sleep, you go to sleep... You are not big or small!"

But sometimes it would be like this. She bent her legs and bumped against the edge of the stove, as if she had burned her tongue, panting with her mouth open, and said fiercely:
"What? You son of a bitch, how dare you tell my old lady to go away? Oh, you, what a shameful thing I did in the middle of the night, damn it, the devil stuffed you into my soul, why didn't you die before you were born?" Rotten!"

She spoke the most obscene, street drunk talk that no one could hear.

She doesn't sleep much, and even when she sleeps, she is not quiet.Sometimes he would jump up from the stove several times a night, onto the long chair where I slept, and wake me up.

"What happened to you?"

"Be quiet," she whispered, staring at something in the darkness with her eyes, and crossing herself with her fingers. "Lord... Prophet Ilya... the female martyr Varvara... bless me, don't let me die violently..."

With trembling hands, she lit the wax.Her round face, with its snout, was swollen with tension, and her gray eyes, blinking in terror, gazed at something disfigured by the darkness.The kitchen was large, but crowded with cabinets and boxes, it seemed cramped at night.The moonlight silently streamed into the kitchen, the flames of the kerman quivered in front of the holy statue, the kitchen knives stuck in the wall gleamed like icicles, and the black frying pan on the shelf looked like a piece of paper without eyes and nose. s face.

The old woman got off the stove carefully as if she had climbed into the water from the bank, and walked barefoot to the corner of the house.There, above the sink, hangs a handwashing device with ears, much like a severed head.A bucket stood beside it.She gasped and gulped water.Then, from the window, through a thin layer of ice on the glass, look out.

"Forgive me, God, forgive me," she murmured.

Sometimes, I put out the wax, kneel on the ground, and whisper wrongedly:
"Who loves me, God? Who needs me!"

She climbed onto the stove, made a sign of the cross on the chimney door, and felt it with her hand to see if the damper was tight.With black coal on his hands, he cursed desperately.Somehow, she fell asleep in a moment, as if an invisible force had smothered her.Every time I was abused by her, I always thought: Fortunately, my grandfather didn't marry a wife like her—otherwise, I would have to be scolded by her!She would surely suffer from him too.Although she often abused me, her swollen face often showed a sad expression, and her eyes were often filled with tears. At that time, she said quite reasonably:

"Is it easy for you to be me? After giving birth to children and raising them, why am I enjoying being a mother for them? My son married a wife and threw away his mother. You said, that's good." Is it? Huh?"

"Not good," I answered honestly.

"Right? That's what I said..."

Then, without shame, she began to speak of her daughter-in-law:
"I went to take a bath with my daughter-in-law and saw her body. I don't know what he saw in her. Can such a beauty be called a beauty?"

When it comes to relationships between men and women, her mouth is terribly dirty.I hated it at first, but after a while, I stopped hating it and listened with great interest.And I feel that there seems to be a painful truth hidden in these words.

"Woman is a magic, she can deceive even God, you see!" she swore, banging her palm on the table. "It's for Eve's sake that the world is going to hell, just look!"

She talked endlessly about the magic of women.I think she's trying to frighten someone with this kind of talk, especially the line "Eve deceived God" that's stuck in my memory.

In our yard, there are also wing rooms that are about the same size as the main house.There are a total of eight families in the two houses, four of which are officers, and the fifth is the priest of the regiment.The whole courtyard is full of orderlies and orderlies.The washerwoman, the old lady, and the cook often go to them.In every kitchen, ugly dramas of jealousy and jealousy are often performed, and the sound of crying, scolding and fighting is often heard.Those soldiers often fought with their colleagues and the landlord's civil workers. They also beat women, and the yard was full of promiscuous behavior-the young people with full blood could not suppress their animal hunger.This life is boring as hell, it's full of rampant carnal desires, the dirty boasting of the strong.Every time my masters have lunch, evening tea, and supper, they always discuss indecently and obscenely.The old woman knew everything about the yard, and was always talking about it vigorously and gleefully.

The young housewife listened to her in silence, with a smile on her thick lips.Victor laughed.The master frowned and said:
"Mom, stop talking..."

"My God, don't even let me talk!" the old woman grumbled.

Victor encouraged her by saying:
"Tell me, what are you afraid of? They are all our own people anyway..."

The eldest son both disliked and pitied his mother, and avoided being alone with her as much as possible. If they happened to be together, the mother would definitely tell the son what was wrong with the daughter-in-law and demand money from the son.Hastily, he took out a ruble or three, or a few silver coins, and thrust them into her hand.

"Mom, it's useless for you to ask for money. It's not that I don't want it, it's just that it's useless if you take it."

"Where, I want to donate beggars and buy wax for church..."

"Come on, don't call a beggar! You're going to spoil Victor."

"Don't you like your brother? Sin, sin!"

He shook his hands, stood up and walked away.

Victor is always laughing at his mother.He was gluttonous and kept complaining about his hunger.Every Sunday, when the mother burns fried pancakes, she always saves a few in a jar and hides them secretly under the bed where I sleep. When Victor comes back from church, he takes out the jar and mutters:
"Can't you save more, old guy..."

"Eat quickly, don't let others see..."

"You're so stupid, I'm going to tell you how you hid the fritters for me, Wood!"

At one point, I took out the jar and ate two fritters - Victor beat me up.He hates me as much as I hate him.He always teases me by asking me to shine his shoes twice a day.When he was sleeping on the bunk bed at night, he pushed the bed board away and spat on my head through the cracks of the board.

His brother used to say "hen bastard," and Victor, presumably trying to imitate his brother, often spoke some vernacular.But what they said was absurd and boring.

"Mom, turn back! Where's my sock?"

He often sends stupid questions trying to stump me:
"Alyoshka, answer: why is it written as 'blooming' and pronounced as 'lazy'? Why is it said 'bell row' and not 'steel pipe'? Why is it said 'tree' and not 'grave'?"

I don't like what they say, I was brought up by my grandparents' nice language, at first I couldn't understand what they said, "It's terribly funny", "I want to eat till I die", "It's horribly happy "This kind of words are pulled together forcefully.I thought, how can funny things be scary, how can happy things be scary, and all people will eat until the day he dies.I ask them:
"Is it permissible to say so?"

They scolded:

"Look, what a gentleman! You have to pick off your ears..." But I don't think the phrase "take off your ears" is appropriate. The only things that can be picked off are flowers, grass, and walnuts.

They pulled my ears hard, trying to prove that the ears can be taken off, but I refused to accept it, so I said triumphantly:

"The ears are still not taken off!"

All around me there was a lot of cruel mischief and meanness.They are innumerable more than the countless "brothels" and "gay girls" on Kunavino Street.Behind Kunavino's ugly behavior, there is also something that can be felt to indicate that this behavior is inevitable: such as a life of poverty without a second meal, hard labor, and so on.But the people here are well fed and happy.It is incomprehensible to say that they are working, rather than that they are idle.What's more, everything here stimulates people's nerves and makes people feel suffocated.

My life was very bad at first, and when my grandmother came to visit me, I felt even more uncomfortable.She always came in through the back door, stepped into the kitchen, crossed the icon, and then bowed deeply to the girl. This bow was like a heavy weight, and I couldn't breathe.

"Oh, it's you, Akulina," the master received the grandmother nonchalantly and coldly.

I didn't realize that this was my grandmother: her mouth was tightly shut, her expression was restrained, and her face was completely different from usual. She sat down gently on the bench next to the dirty bucket at the door, as if she had done something bad. Same, without making a sound, answering the girl's question in a respectful and soft voice.

This made me sick, and I said angrily:

"Why are you sitting here?"

She blinked caressingly, and said in a lecturing tone:

"Don't talk too much, you are not the master of this place!"

"He's just meddling in his own business, it's no use letting you beat him or scold him," the old woman began to complain.

She often gloats and asks her sister:

"Well, Akulina, are you still living like a beggar?"

"What's the big deal..."

"As long as you're not afraid of losing face, it's fine."

"It is said that Christ used to live by begging..."

"Such things are said by foolish people, by the scumbags, and you take it seriously, you old fool. Christ was not a beggar, he was the Son of God, and it is said that he came into the world to judge with glory The living and the dead... even the dead are judged, remember, my old sister, even if the bones are burned to ashes, he will not escape his judgment... Christ will punish you and Vasily's pride, In the past, when you were rich, I sometimes asked you for help..."

"I did my best to help you back then," said the grandmother calmly. "But you know, God punished us..."

"It's not enough, it's not enough..."

(End of this chapter)