Read online monk in new pants. Victor Astafiev's last bow (a story in stories)

When a cafe was being renovated next to our house, construction waste was dragged and thrown into a corner formed by the walls of two houses. The road to the bus stop led past this corner; all the residents passed by almost every day and loudly scolded the builders. Winter came, snow covered the ground and hid all the debris.

Spring came, and the first thing the snow melted was precisely on the patch between the houses, perhaps because the sun wanted people to notice how they had offended the earth. And people again began to be outraged by this disgrace and continued to walk past the landfill every day.

One day, a grandmother came out of the last entrance with a hoe and a rake. She walked up to the pile construction waste and began to shovel pieces of plaster towards the path and broken brick. During the first day, she cleared a small piece of land. The next day she went out again and started shoveling bricks towards the path again. A week later, a small shaft of construction waste formed near the path. Grandma Tanya (we already found out her name) loosened the ground and planted some seeds in it.

May was warm, and every day, returning from school, we saw Grandma Tanya with a hoe and a rake in the sun between two houses. When it got really hot, we started carrying water in bottles and buckets to water the small seedlings.

In the middle of summer, the land tended by grandmother Tanya was covered with many flowers. I don’t know the names of all the flowers, but there were a lot of them, they were colorful and cheerful. I remembered marigolds and daisies. Grandma weeded the beds, and we watered the flowers in the evenings. And residents walked by and were surprised that one person, with his work, diligence and care, managed to turn a barren landfill into a blooming meadow.

Review of the story by V. P. Astafiev “The Monk in New Pants”

I especially liked the story “The Monk in the New Pants.” It tells about an eight-year-old boy Vita and about life with his grandparents in a Siberian village on the banks of the Yenisei. He sorts through the potatoes in the basement, selecting them for sale. For this, his grandmother promised to buy him some fabric and sew some pants. The boy had never had new pants before. But grandmother fell ill, and he patiently waited for her to recover. The happiest day for Vitya was when his grandmother finally sewed his pants. In a clean shirt, new trousers and boots, he walked through the village to his grandfather's house, and everyone saw that he was wearing new clothes.

Then the author describes Vitya’s path through the taiga to the settlement. The nature of Siberia is shown with amazing love and understanding. The boy notices every flower, every tree. His old dream is coming true: from above, from the height of the ridge, he sees the confluence of the Yenisei and Mana and admires the beauty of his native land.

At the farmstead, grandfather and Sanka Levontev are going to have lunch. After lunch, Sanka, who is jealous that Vitya has new pants, begins to tease him and comes up with an idea to lure him into a puddle. He egged him on, Vitya took the bait and jumped straight into the middle of a muddy puddle, from which he could not pull his legs out. The puddle is very cold. The boy stands there for a very long time, Sanka tries to pull him out, but cannot and runs after his grandfather. Then grandma and Tanka appear on the road, grandpa pulls Vitya out, but his boots get stuck in a deep puddle.

After this, Vitya is sick for several days, and the grandmother treats her grandson various herbs. Vitya recovers and makes peace with Sanka.

Astafiev very vividly and lovingly describes village life before the war, uses many ancient Siberian words, and accurately conveys the feelings and experiences of an eight-year-old boy. I really like the stories of Viktor Petrovich Astafiev.

Astafiev gave the title “Horse with a Pink Mane” to the entire collection, because for him this gingerbread horse is a symbol of childhood and childhood happiness.

Main character Fazil Iskander's story "The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules"

Fazil Iskander's story "The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules" is told on behalf of a boy who is in the fifth grade of a boys' school in Georgia, a southern republic of the Soviet Union. The story takes place during the war. We learn about this from the narrator himself, who teases his desk neighbor named Adolf.

The main character of the story is a nimble, mischievous and crafty boy. He, like many boys, loves to play football, sometimes he cannot cope with the task, he laughs along with everyone at his classmates, whom Kharlampy Diogenovich puts in a funny position.

The hero treats his classmates in a friendly manner, with irony. The narrator is observant and accurately describes the main characteristics of his friends. He notices the constant well-being of Sakharov, who, even laughing, tries to remain an excellent student, notices the modesty and invisibility of Alik Komarov and the gloominess of Shurik Avdeenko. But Kharlampy Diogenovich has no favorites in his class. Anyone can be funny. And then the moment comes when the class laughs at the main character.

The main character failed the math task. Instead of asking his friends for help, he played football before class, convincing himself that the answer in the textbook was wrong. Then he tried to evade responsibility for his actions by tricking and deceiving doctors into giving injections during a math lesson. When he finds himself at the blackboard and cannot find the strength to honestly admit that he has not solved the problem, Kharlampy Diogenovich understands why the doctors came specifically to the mathematics lesson. The teacher does not punish the student with laughter, but his cowardice. He says that the narrator performed the “thirteenth labor of Hercules,” that is, a feat that actually did not happen, which is not a feat at all. Yes, he changed the situation, but he changed it not out of noble intentions, but out of cowardice.

The hero experiences a variety of feelings during the development of events. At first he is indignant at the “wrong” task. Then his conscience calmed down. After talking with Sakharov, he got scared: “I got scared and scolded myself for first agreeing with the football player that the task was wrong, and then disagreeing with the excellent student that it was correct. And now Kharlampy Diogenovich probably noticed my excitement and will be the first to call me.” After calling the duty officer, the hero sighed with relief, grateful to the teacher for the respite. Then he experienced cowardly hope and disappointment when “the sudden hope that illuminated our class with its snow-white robe disappeared.” He became insolent with fear and boldly offered to show where the fifth “A” was, immediately coming up with an excuse. Then he lied to the doctor that their class was going to the museum, and, cunningly, convinced them to return to the fifth "B". He himself cowardly ran forward in order to “eliminate the connection between himself and their arrival.” The hero felt some gloating when the nurse rubbed his back with cotton wool after the injection. After the doctor left, the boy became alarmed when the teacher began to click the beads of his rosary: “I felt that there was some kind of danger in the air.” From the gaze of Kharlampy Diogenovich, “my heart slammed into my back,” the narrator writes about himself. He did not go to the board, but “trudged” towards it. The narrator never wanted to become funny, but the teacher proved that cowardice and lies are actually funny and no tricks can hide these bad qualities.

In conclusion, the narrator says: “From then on, I began to take my homework more seriously and never went to the football players with unsolved problems.”

The author has a philosophical attitude towards his hero: a little detached and ironic. At the end of the story, the author no longer speaks on behalf of a fifth-grader, but on behalf of a person who has already become an adult, and says that Kharlampy Diogenovich’s method taught him a lot: “With laughter, of course, he tempered our crafty children’s souls and taught us to treat our own a person with a sufficient sense of humor."

Programs of general education institutions: literature: 5-11 grades. (Basic level): 10-11 grades. (Profile level) / ed. V. Ya. Korovina. - 8th ed., revised. and additional - M.: Education, 2006.

Programs of general education institutions: literature: 5-11 grades. (Basic level): 10-11 grades. (Profile level) / ed. V. Ya. Korovina - 8th ed., revised. and additional - M.: Education, 2006. - P. 6.

Literature. 6th grade: textbook. for general education institutions. At 2 o'clock / auto-state V. P. Polukhina and others; edited by V. Ya. Korovina. - 13th ed., revised. - M.: Education, 2006.

Eremina O. A. Literature. School club activities: 5th grade. / O. A. Eremina. - M.: Enas, 2007.

Dzhanumov S. A. Dmitriev Ivan Ivanovich // Russian writers: XVIII century: biobibliographic dictionary. - M.: Education, 2002. - P. 43-48.

Literature: 6th grade: textbook-reader for educational institutions. At 2 p.m. Part 1 / [author-comp. V. P. Polukhina and others]; edited by V. Ya. Korovina. - 13th ed., revised. - M.: Education, 2002. - P. 65-66.

Eremina O. A. Literature lessons in 5th grade. - M.: Education, 2007.

Skatov N. N. Nekrasov. - M.: Young Guard, 1994. - P. 46.

Vikhrov V. Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. In 2 volumes - Simferopol: Krymizdat, 1962. - T. 1. - P. 5-31.

Paustovsky K. G. The Life of Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. - M.: Pravda, 1957. - P. 3-17.

Paustovsky K. G. The Life of Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. - M.: Pravda, 1957. - P. 3.

Right there. - P. 6.

Vikhrov V. Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. In 2 volumes - Simferopol: Krymizdat, 1962. - T. 1. - P. 19-20.

Vikhrov V. Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. In 2 volumes - Simferopol: Krymizdat, 1962. - T. 1. - P. 22.

Paustovsky K. G. The Life of Alexander Green // Green A. Favorites. - M: Pravda, 1957. - P. 16.

Turyanskaya B.I. and others. Literature in the 6th grade. Lesson after lesson. - M.: LLC "TID" Russian word- RS", 2002. - 3rd ed. - pp. 161-162.

Literature: 6th grade: textbook for general education institutions. At 2 o'clock - Part 2 / Auto-composition. V. P. Polukhina. - 9th ed. - M.: Education, 2002. - P. 65-66.

Musyakov P. Writers in the Navy during the Great Patriotic War. - M., 1977. - P. 63.

Tikhonov N. Writer and era. - M., 1974. - P. 61.

Orlov S. S. Poems. Favorites. - M.: Fiction, 1988.

Smirnova T.“Let at least the most sacred things remain unchanged in us...” // Russian language and literature for schoolchildren. - 2006. - No. 3. - P. 47-52.

Drunina Yu. Unique finest hour (poems, poems, memories, letters). - M, 2000. Drunina Yu. Lyrics (poems, poems, memories) / Enter. Art. N. Starshinova. Krasnikov G. Insanely scared for Russia // “Planet Yulia Drunina”. - M., 2002.

The story is written from the perspective of the boy Vitya. He was told to sort through the potatoes. Grandmother gave him a “lesson” with two rutabagas, and he sat in the cold, frosty cellar all morning. The only thing stopping the boy from escaping is his dream of new pants with a pocket, which grandmother Katerina promised to sew for the first of May - Vita's eighth birthday.

I clearly see myself in these pants, smart, beautiful. My hand is in my pocket, and I walk around the village and don’t take my hand out. Vitya never had new pants. Until now, his clothes were altered from outdated items. Having moved the rutabaga closer a couple of times, Vitya completes the “lesson” just in time for lunch. The grandmother notices the deception when the boy is already jumping out of the cellar.

My grandmother bought the material for her pants a long time ago. It was kept in the depths of her chest. Vitya, however, doubted that his grandmother would have time to sew the pants: she was always busy. In their village she is like a general, everyone respects Grandma Katerina and runs to her for help. When some man gets drunk and starts going on a rampage, all the family valuables end up in grandma’s chest for safekeeping, and the drunkard’s family takes refuge in her house.

When grandma opens the treasured chest, Vitka is always nearby and strokes the material with dirty fingers. Neither punishment nor treats help - the boy roars and demands his pants.

My hopes did not come true. No pants were sewn for my birthday or the First of May. At the height of the frost, my grandmother fell ill. She is placed in the upper room on a high bed, and from there the grandmother commands numerous assistants. The grandmother is worried - she didn’t sew pants for her grandson - and Vitka tries to distract her with conversations, asking what kind of illness she has. The grandmother says that this disease is caused by hard work, but even in her hard life she finds more joys than sorrows.

Grandmother began sewing pants as soon as she recovered a little. Vitya does not leave her side all day, and is so tired from endless fittings that he falls asleep without dinner. Waking up in the morning, he finds new blue pants, a white shirt and repaired boots by his bed. Grandma lets Vitya go alone to his grandfather to take care of him.

The path to the village is not close, through the taiga. Vitya doesn’t play pranks, he walks sedately so as not to stain his pants or knock off the new toes of his boots. On the way, he stops on a rock that marks the confluence of two mighty rivers - the Mana and the Yenisei - for a long time he admires the taiga expanses and manages to soak his precious pants in the river. While his pants and boots are drying, Vitya is sleeping. The dream does not last long, and now the boy is already in custody.

Neighbor Sanka lives with his grandfather on the farm and learns to plow. He looks at Vitka with envy and calls him “a monk in new pants.” Vitka understands that this is out of envy, but still falls for Sanka’s trick. He chooses a hole with sticky mud left after the river bottling, runs over it very quickly and begins to encourage Vitka to do the same feat. The boy cannot stand Sanka’s bullying, runs into a hole and gets stuck. The cold mud squeezes his arthritic legs. Sanka tries to pull him out, but he doesn’t have enough strength. We must run after grandfather. And then Grandma Katerina appears at the pit. She felt that there was trouble with her grandson and hurried to get him.

Vitya lay on the stove for four days with an attack of arthritis.

Grandmother could not catch Sanka. As I guessed, my grandfather was bringing Sanka out from under the intended retribution. Sanka is forgiven when he accidentally sets fire to his shelter - an old hunting hut near the river. The boots sank into the mud, and the grandmother washed the pants, and they faded and lost their shine. But the whole summer is ahead. “And the joke is on them, with the pants and boots too,” thinks Vitka. - “I’ll make some more money.” I'll make money."

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I clearly see myself in these pants, smart, beautiful. My hand is in my pocket, and I walk around the village and don’t take my hand out.

Vitya never had new pants. Until now, his clothes were altered from outdated items. Having moved the rutabaga closer a couple of times, Vitya completes the “lesson” just in time for lunch. The grandmother notices the deception when the boy is already jumping out of the cellar.

When grandma opens the treasured chest, Vitka is always nearby and strokes the material with dirty fingers. Neither punishment nor treats help - the boy roars and demands his pants.

My hopes did not come true. No pants were sewn for my birthday or the First of May. At the height of the frost, my grandmother fell ill.

She is placed in the upper room on a high bed, and from there the grandmother commands numerous assistants. The grandmother is worried - she didn’t sew pants for her grandson - and Vitka tries to distract her with conversations, asking what kind of illness she has. The grandmother says that this disease is caused by hard work, but even in her hard life she finds more joys than sorrows.

Grandmother began sewing pants as soon as she recovered a little. Vitya doesn’t leave her side all day, and gets so tired from endless fittings that he falls asleep without dinner. Waking up in the morning, he finds new blue pants, a white shirt and repaired boots by his bed. Grandma lets Vitya go alone to his grandfather to take care of him.

Dressed to the nines, with a bundle containing fresh clothes for my grandfather, I left the yard when the sun was already high and everything in the village was living its ordinary, slow-moving life.

Having heard enough sighs of admiration, the boy goes to his grandfather.

The path to the village is not close, through the taiga. Vitya doesn’t play pranks, he walks sedately so as not to stain his pants or knock off the new toes of his boots. On the way, he stops on a rock that marks the confluence of two mighty rivers - the Mana and the Yenisei - admires the taiga expanses for a long time and manages to soak his precious pants in the river. While his pants and boots are drying, Vitya is sleeping. The dream does not last long, and now the boy is already in custody.

Neighbor Sanka lives with his grandfather on the farm and learns to plow. He looks at Vitka with envy and calls him “a monk in new pants.” Vitka understands that this is out of envy, but he still falls for Sanka’s trick. He chooses a hole with sticky mud left after the river bottling, runs over it very quickly and begins to encourage Vitka to do the same feat. The boy cannot stand Sanka’s bullying, runs into a hole and gets stuck. The cold mud squeezes his arthritic legs. Sanka tries to pull him out, but he doesn’t have enough strength. We must run after grandfather. And then Grandma Katerina appears at the pit. She felt that there was trouble with her grandson and hurried to get him.

Vitya lay on the stove for four days with an attack of arthritis.

Grandmother could not catch Sanka. As I guessed, my grandfather was bringing Sanka out from under the intended retribution.

Sanka is forgiven when he accidentally sets fire to his shelter - an old hunting hut near the river. The boots sank into the mud, and the grandmother washed the pants, and they faded and lost their shine. But the whole summer is ahead. “And the joke is on them, with the pants and boots too,” thinks Vitka. - “I’ll make more money.” I'll make money."

Monk in new pants

I was told to sort through the potatoes. Grandmother determined the norm, or harness, as she called the task. This harness is marked by two rutabagas, lying on one and the other side of an oblong bottom, and to those rutabagas is the same as to the other bank of the Yenisei. When I get to rutabaga, only God knows. Maybe I won’t be alive by then!

There is an earthy, sepulchral silence in the basement, there is mold on the walls, there is saccharine kurzhak on the ceiling. I just want to take it on my tongue. From time to time, for no apparent reason, it crumbles from above, gets into the collar, sticks to the body and melts. Not much good either. In the pit itself, where the pits with vegetables and tubs with cabbage, cucumbers and saffron milk caps, the kurzhak hangs on the threads of a cobweb, and when I look up, it seems to me that I am in a fairy tale kingdom, in a distant land, and when I look down, my heart mine is bleeding and a great, great melancholy takes over me.

There are potatoes all around here. And you have to sort through them, potatoes. The rotten one is supposed to be thrown into a wicker box, the large one is supposed to be thrown into bags, the smaller ones are to be thrown into the corner of this huge, like a yard, bottom in which I’m sitting, maybe for a whole month and I’ll die soon, and then everyone will know how to leave a child here alone, yes an orphan at that.

Of course, I’m not a child anymore and I don’t work in vain. The larger potatoes are selected for sale in the city. My grandmother promised to use the proceeds to buy textiles and sew me new pants with a pocket.

I clearly see myself in these pants, smart, beautiful. My hand is in my pocket, and I walk around the village and don’t take my hand out, if I need to put something in - a bat or money - I only put it in my pocket, no value will fall out of my pocket or be lost.

I've never had pants with a pocket, especially new ones. Everyone is changing the old ones for me. A bag will be dyed and altered, a woman’s skirt that has come out of wear, or something else. Once they even used half shawls. They painted it and sewed it, then it faded and the cells became visible. The only ones who laughed at me were the Levontiev guys. What, let them grin!

I'm interested to know what kind of pants they will be, blue or black? And what kind of pocket will they have - external or internal? Outdoor, of course. Grandmother will begin to fuss with the inner one! She doesn't have time for everything. Relatives need to be bypassed. Indicate to everyone. General!

So she rushed off somewhere again, and I sit here and work! At first I was scared in this deep and silent basement. Everything seemed as if someone was hiding in the dark dark corners, and I was afraid to move and afraid to cough. Then he grew bolder, took a small lamp without glass, left by his grandmother, and shone it in the corners. There was nothing there except greenish-white mold that covered the logs in patches, and dirt dug up by mice, and rutabaga, which from a distance seemed to me like severed human heads. I fucked one rutabaga on a sweaty wooden frame with veins of kurzhak in the grooves, and the frame responded uterinely: “Oooh!”

Yeah! - I said. - That's it, brother! It doesn't hurt me!..

I also took small beets and carrots with me and from time to time I threw them into the corner, into the walls and scared away everyone who might be there from evil spirits, from brownies and other shantrap.

The word “shantrapa” is imported in our village, and I don’t know what it means. But I like it. “Shantrapa! Shantrapa! All the bad words, according to the grandmother, were dragged into our village by the Verehtins, and if we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t even be able to swear.

I have already eaten three carrots, rubbed them on the shank of the rod and ate them. Then he put his hands under the wooden mugs, scraped out a handful of cold, elastic cabbage and ate it too. Then he caught a cucumber and ate it too. And he also ate mushrooms from a tub as low as a tub. Now my stomach is rumbling and tossing and turning. These are carrots, cucumbers, cabbage and mushrooms quarreling among themselves. It’s cramped for them in one belly, I eat, I don’t feel grief, if only my stomach would relax. The hole in the mouth is drilled right through, there is nowhere and nothing to hurt. Maybe your legs will cramp? I straightened my leg, it crunches and clicks, but nothing hurts. After all, when it’s not necessary, it hurts so much. Pretend, or what? What about the pants? Who will buy me pants and for what? Pants with a pocket, new and without straps, and even with a strap!

My hands begin to quickly and quickly scatter the potatoes: large ones into a gapingly open bag, small ones into a corner, rotten ones into a box. Fuck-bang! Tarabah!

Twist, turn, turn! - I encourage myself, and since only the priest and the rooster crow without eating, and I have eaten too much, I was drawn to the song.

One girl was tried
She was a child years old...

I screamed with tremors. This song is new, not from here.

By all accounts, the Verehtins also brought her to the village. I remembered only these words from it, and I really liked them. Well, after we had a new daughter-in-law - Nyura, the swashbuckling songbird, I pricked up my ears, like a grandmother - I nastaurized, and memorized the whole city song. Later in the song it is explained why the girl was judged. She fell in love with a man. Mushshin, hoping that he was a good man, but he turned out to be a traitor. Well, the girl endured and endured the betrayal, took a sharp knife from the window “and pierced his white chest.”

How long can you really endure?!

Grandmother, listening to me, raised her apron to her eyes:

Passions, what passions! Where are we going, Vitka?

I explained to my grandmother that a song is a song and we are not going anywhere.

No, boy, we're going to the edge, that's what. Once a woman with a knife attacks a man, that’s all, boy, this is a complete revolution, the last one, therefore, the limit has come. All that remains is to pray for salvation. I myself have a more self-righteous streak, and when will we quarrel, but with an ax, with a knife, against my husband?.. Yes, God save us and have mercy. No, dear comrades, it’s a collapse of the way of life, a violation of God’s prescribed order.

In our village, not only girls are judged. And the girls get it, be healthy! In the summer, grandmother and other old women will go out to the ruins, and so they judge, here they judge: Uncle Levontius, and Aunt Vasenya, and Avdotya’s girl Agashka, who brought her dear mother a gift in her hem!

But I can’t understand why the old women shake their heads, spit and blow their noses? A gift - is it bad? A gift is good! Grandma will bring me a present. Trousers!

Twist, turn, turn!

One girl was tried
She was a child a-a-ami-i-i-i...

The potatoes scatter in different directions and bounce, everything goes as it should, again according to my grandmother’s saying: “He who eats quickly works quickly!” Wow, quickly! One rotten one got into a good potato. Remove her! You can't cheat the buyer. He cheated with strawberries - what good happened? Shame and disgrace! If you come across a rotten potato, he, the buyer, will freak out. If he doesn’t take the potatoes, that means he won’t get any money, goods, or pants. Who am I without pants? Without pants, I'm a shantrap. Go without pants, it’s just like how everyone tries to spank the Levontiev boys on their bare bottoms - that’s his purpose, since it’s naked, you can’t resist, you’ll spank him.

Shan-tra-pa-a, shan-tra-apa-a-a-a...

Opening the door, I look down at the basement steps. There are twenty-eight of them. I already counted it a long time ago. My grandmother taught me to count to one hundred, and I counted everything that could be counted. The upper door to the basement is slightly open, so that I wouldn’t be so afraid here. Still a good person - grandma! General, of course, but since she was born like that, you can’t change it.

Above the door, to which a tunnel white from kurzhak, hung with threads of fringe, leads, I notice an icicle. It was a tiny icicle, about the size of a mouse’s tail, but something immediately touched my heart, it moved like a soft kitten.

Spring is coming. It will be warm. It will be the first of May! Everyone will celebrate, walk, sing songs. And when I turn eight years old, people will pat me on the head, feel sorry for me, and treat me to sweets. And my grandmother will sew me pants for May Day. She will break into a cake, but she will sew it together - that’s the kind of person she is!

Shantrapa-ah, shantrapa-ah!..
Sew pants with a pocket on May Day!..
Then try and catch me!..

Fathers, rutabaga - there they are! I overcame the harness! Once or twice, however, I moved the rutabaga closer to me and thus shortened the distance measured by my grandmother. But, of course, I don’t remember where they used to be, these rutabaga, and I don’t want to remember. For that matter, I can take away the rutabaga altogether, throw them out and go through all the potatoes, and beets, and carrots - I don’t care about it all!

They tried one girl...

Well, how are you doing, miracle on a silver platter?

I shuddered and dropped the potatoes from my hands. Grandma has arrived. The old one has appeared!

Nothing! Be healthy, worker. I can turn over all the vegetables - potatoes, carrots, beets - I can do everything!

You, my dear, are quieter when turning! Ek is blowing you away!

Let it go!

Are you somehow drunk on the rotten spirit?!

Got drunk! - I confirm. - In the trolley... They tried one girl...

My mothers! And he was all done up like a pig! - Grandma squeezed my nose into my apron and rubbed my cheeks. - Here's some soap for you! - And she pushed me in the back: - Go to lunch. Eat cabbage soup with your grandfather, your neck will be white, your head will be curly!..

Is it only lunch?

You probably thought I was here for a week?

I galloped up the stairs. My joints clicked, my legs crunched, and fresh, cold air floated towards me, so sweet after the rotten, stagnant basement spirit.

What a scammer! - heard below, in the basement. - What a rogue! And who did you go to? We don’t seem to have anything like that in our family... - Grandma discovered the moved rutabaga.

I picked up the pace and emerged from the basement on Fresh air, on a clear, bright day and somehow at once clearly noticed that everything in the yard was filled with a premonition of spring. It is in the sky, which has become more spacious, higher, there are doves in streaks, it is also on the sweaty boards of the roof from the edge where the sun is, it is also in the chirping of the sparrows, fighting hand-to-hand in the middle of the yard, and in that still thin haze that arose over the distant passes and began to descend along the slopes to the village, enveloping forests, valleys, and river mouths in blue slumber. Soon, very soon, the mountain rivers will be swollen with greenish-yellow ice, which forms a loose and sweet-looking crust at the ringing mornings, like a sugar crust, and the Easter cakes will soon begin to bake, the red water along the rivers will turn purple and shine, the willows will be covered with a cone, the children will break the willows to parent's day, others will fall into the river, splash, then the ice will corrode on the rivers, it will remain only on the Yenisei, between the wide banks, and, abandoned by everyone, the winter road, sadly dropping the melting milestones, will meekly wait for it to be broken into pieces and carried away. But even before the ice breaks up, snowdrops will appear on the ridges, grass will sprinkle over the warm slopes and the First of May will arrive. We often have ice drift and May Day together, and on May Day...

No, it’s better not to poison your soul and not think about what will happen on May Day!

The material, or manufactory, as the sewing goods are called, was bought by my grandmother when she was traveling to the city along the sleigh route with a merchant. Matter was of blue color, ribbed, rustled and crackled well if you ran your finger over it. It was called Treko. No matter how long I lived in the world, no matter how many pants I wore, I never came across any material with that name. Obviously it was that tights. But this is just my guess, nothing more. There were many things that happened in childhood that later did not occur again and did not happen again, unfortunately.

A piece of textiles lay in the depths of the chest, at the very bottom, lay under some junk of little value thrown onto it, as if accidentally thrown on it - under balls of rags that are prepared for weaving rugs, under worn-out dresses, rags, stockings, boxes of “rags.” A dashing man will get to the chest, look into it, spit in frustration and leave. Why did you break? Were you hoping for some profit? There are no valuables in the house or in the chest!

What a cunning grandmother! And if only she were so cunning. All women are on their own minds. If some suspicious guest appears in the house, or “himself,” that is, the owner, gets so drunk that the pectoral cross is ready to drink away, then in a secret bundle, through secret holes and passages, it is transported to the neighbors, to all sorts of reliable people - a piece of cloth that was stored from the war; sewing machine; silver - two or three spoons and forks, inherited from someone, or exchanged with exiles for bread and milk; "gold" - pectoral cross with a Catholic thread in three colors, probably from the stages, from the Poles, who somehow ended up in our village; a hairpin of noble, perhaps “Pittinburg” origin; lid from a powder compact or snuff box; a dull copper button, which someone tampered with instead of gold, and passes for gold; chrome boots and boots purchased on the “fish”, which means that the owner once went to the northern Putin, using wild “money”, bought goods, it is stored until the holidays and until the children’s weddings, until “going out in public”, but that’s it a desperate moment has come - save yourself who can, and save what you can.

The miner himself, with eyes white from moonshine and a wild face covered in moss, runs around the yard with an ax, trying to chop everything into pieces, grabs a shotgun - therefore, don’t forget, woman, and take away the cartridge belt, bury the hunting supplies in a safe place...

“Good” was carried into “safe hands,” often grandmothers’, and it was not only from Uncle Levontius’s house that women found shelter here. They stomped around in the distance, whispering in the corners: “Look, godfather, don’t profit from our grief...” - “What are you doing, what are you doing? I’ve been through this... The place won’t last... - “Where should I go, not to the Boltukhins, not to Vershkov?”

All evening, even at night, boys wander back and forth, back and forth from someone else's yard. A saddened mother with a black eye and a cut lip, covering her small children with a shawl, presses them to her body in a strange house, on strangers, waiting for positive news.

The boy will appear from reconnaissance - head down: “I didn’t fall asleep. Destroys benches. He got angry because there were no cartridges, they were breaking the Berdan on the stove...” - “And when will he choke? When will the shameless ones fill their balloons? Winter is just around the corner, there’s not a log of firewood, the hay hasn’t been taken out, he’s going to decide to go to the taiga, what to eat with? Berdanka according to the animal and the bird. Seventy-seven rubles for it, and so... My mother told me as much as I could, don’t go into Yushkov’s labor camp, marked by hard labor, don’t go in, you’ll get dirty. Why don't we listen to our parents' words? His eyebrows are like a falcon, his forelock is fiery, his voice can be heard across the river. So they started singing and had fun... - And suddenly, right away, coolly at the “scout”: - You’re growing up to be like your golden daddy! Just something - “don’t touch the ten-piece!” Don't touch it! So we hang around in other people’s corners and don’t let good people sleep. Oh-ho-ho-ho-nyush-ki, yes, you are my unfortunate children, but under your father you are growing up without a father. He drowned five times - he did not drown, he burned in a forest fire - he did not burn out, he wandered in the taiga - he did not get lost... Neither the devils, nor the forest, nor the water, nor the earth will accept him. He would have left, but we would have been better off without him, the villain... We would have grown up as orphans, but at least in peace, hungry, but not cold...”

One of the girls will howl to their mother, you see, and all the kids will sing loudly.

“Let it be for you, it will be. It will calm down someday, not iron, not stone....” - the grandmother calms down the miserable guests.

“Scout” again grabs his hat and searches. Five or ten times a night he runs away until he appears with the good news: “That’s it! He fell in the middle of the hut..."

And the usual, familiar prayer: “Glory to Thee, Lord! Glory to Te... Forgive us, Grandma Katerina, we’re annoying...” - “What’s going on there? What are the shots? Go with God. And tomorrow I’ll give him, the adversary, a bathhouse with a dressing room. I’ll steam it, oh, I’ll steam it, until there are new brooms!..”

And it will steam! A trembling, hair-covered little man will stand in front of her and catch his trousers, which are falling from the flap to the back of his belly, which has grown in during the drinking.

So what should we do, Grandma Katerina? She doesn’t let me go home, die, she says, get lost, you drunkard! You talk to her...

Well, about that. The request, they say, is asking, which means it won’t happen again.

What won't happen again? You speak, speak. Look, he has no words. Yesterday he was so eloquent and brave! On his woman, God-given wife, with an ax and a gun. Warrior! Rebel!..

Well, you fool, what? Drunken fool.

And don’t I ask if I’m drunk?

What's the demand?

Why didn't you hit your head against the wall? Why did he aim the gun at himself and not at himself? Why? Speak!

Oooh, grandma Katerina! Yes, I should have allowed such disgrace to happen once again! Yes, distort me, distort such a bastard!..

Grandmother “walks into the chest” - a triumph of the soul and a holiday. There she opened it for some reason, whispering to herself, looking around, closing the door more tightly, laying out the goods upstairs, my textiles intended for pants, she put it completely separately from all other goods, a piece of old, so old that my grandmother looks at it in the light , tries with his teeth, well, little things, a box, tea jars clinking with something, festive forks and spoons tied in rags, church books and something hidden from the church - the grandmother believes that the church is not forever is closed and will still serve there.

Grandmother's family lives with supplies. Everything is the same good people. And something has been saved for a rainy day; you can calmly look to the future, even if he dies, so there is something to wear and something to remember.

The latch clanged in the yard. Grandma was wary. Based on his steps, she guessed it was a stranger, and once she put all the stuff away, covered it with junk and various obscenities, thought about turning the key, but didn’t. And the grandmother assumed a wretched, almost mournful look - falling on both legs, groaning, she wandered towards the guest or some other person blown by the wind. And that man had no choice but to think: the poor, sick and wretched people living here are poor, for whom the only salvation left is to walk around the world.

Every time grandma opened the chest and a musical ringing was heard, I was right there. I stood at the curb on the threshold of the upper room and looked into the chest. Grandmother was looking for the thing she needed in a huge chest, like a barge, and did not notice me at all. I moved, drummed my fingers on the doorframe - she didn’t notice. I coughed, once at first, but she didn’t notice. I coughed many times, as if my whole chest had caught a cold, but she still didn’t notice. Then I moved closer to the chest and began to twirl the huge iron key. Grandma silently slapped my hand - and still didn’t notice me... Then I began to stroke the blue fabric - Treco - with my fingers. Here the grandmother could not stand it and, looking at the important, handsome generals with beards and mustaches that covered the inside of the chest lid, asked them:

What should I do with this child? - The generals did not answer. I ironed the fabric. Grandmother pushed my hand away under the pretext that it might be unwashed and would stain the track. “It sees, it’s a child,” I’m spinning like a squirrel in a wheel! It knows - I’ll sew pants for my name day, damn them! But no, stain it, it keeps crawling and climbing!.. - Grandmother grabbed me by the ear and took me away from the chest. I pressed my forehead against the wall, and I must have looked so miserable, that after a while the ringing of the lock was heard, more delicately, more musically, and everything in me froze with blissful forebodings. With a small key, grandma opened a Chinese box made of tin, like a house without windows. All sorts of alien trees, birds and rosy-cheeked Chinese women in new blue pants were painted on the house, but not from track, but from some other material, which I also liked, but much less than my manufacture.

I was waiting. And for good reason. The fact is that the Chinese box contains grandmother’s most valuable valuables, including candies, which in the store were called monpensiers, but in our country, more simply, lampasiers or lampaseyki. There is nothing in the world sweeter and more beautiful than lampases! We stuck them on Easter cakes, and on sweet pies, and just like that, these sweet little lamps sucked them, who, of course, had them.

Grandma has everything! And everything is safely hidden. You will find two shisha! Thin, gentle music was heard again. The box is closed. Maybe grandma changed her mind? I began to sniffle louder and thought about whether to let my voice go. But then it was heard:

Well, damned soul of yours! - And into my hand, which had long been lowered expectantly, my grandmother thrust rough lamps. My mouth was full of languid saliva, but I swallowed it and pushed my grandmother’s hand away.

What do you want? Belt?

Pants...

Grandmother sadly patted her thighs and turned not to the generals, but to my back:

Why is he, a bloodsucker, can’t understand words? I interpret to him in Russian - I’ll sew it! Here he comes! Urosit! A? Will you take some candy or lock it up?

Eat it yourself!

Herself? - Grandma is speechless for a while and cannot find words. - Herself? I'll give it to you myself! I'll show you - myself!

Uh-uh...

Porn at me, poop! - the grandmother exploded, but I blocked her with my roar, and she gradually gave in and began to cajole me. - I’ll sew it, I’ll sew it soon! Well, father, don't cry. Here's some candy, let's have some. Sick little lamps. Soon, soon you’ll be walking around in new pants, smart, handsome, handsome...

Speaking unctuously, in a churchly manner, my grandmother finally broke my resistance, thrust lamps into my palm, about five of them - it’s impossible to count! She wiped my nose and cheeks with an apron and sent me out of the room, comforted and satisfied.

My hopes did not come true. No pants were sewn for my birthday or the First of May. At the height of the frost, my grandmother fell ill. She always carried every minor pain on her legs, and if she fell, it was for a long time.

She was moved into the upper room, onto a clean, soft bed, the rugs were removed from the floor, the window was curtained, the lamp near the iconostasis was lit, and the upper room became like in someone else’s house - semi-dark, cool, there was a smell of unctuous oil, a hospital, people walked around the hut on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. During these days of my grandmother’s illness, I discovered how many relatives my grandmother had and how many people, including non-relatives, also came to take pity on her and sympathize with her. And only now, albeit vaguely, did I feel that my grandmother, who had always seemed to me like an ordinary grandmother, was a very respected person in the village, but I did not listen to her, quarreled with her, and a belated feeling of repentance tore through me.

Grandmother breathed loudly, hoarsely, half-sitting in the pillows, and kept asking:

Submissive... did you feed the child?.. There is simple bread... rolls... everything is in the pantry... in the chest.

Old women, daughters, nieces and various other people running the house reassured her, your beloved child is fed, they say, your beloved child has been given water, there is no need to worry about anything and, as proof, they brought me to the bed and showed it to my grandmother. She with difficulty removed her hand from the bed, touched my head and said pitifully:

When grandma dies, what are you going to do? Who should I live with? Who should I sin with? Oh Lord, Lord! - She glanced sideways at the lamp: - Give strength for the sake of the poor orphan. Guska! - she called Aunt Augusta. - You will milk the cow, and then the udder will be warm water... She... is spoiled by me... Otherwise, I won’t tell you...

And again they calmed the grandmother down, demanded that she talk less and not worry, but she still talked all the time, worried, worried, because she didn’t know how to live otherwise.

When the holiday came, my grandmother began to worry about my pants. I myself consoled her, talked to her about the illness, tried not to mention the pants. By this time, grandma had recovered a little, and you could talk to her as much as you wanted.

What kind of illness do you have, grandma? - as if for the first time I was curious, sitting next to her on the bed. Thin, bony, with rags in her split braids, with an old gasket hanging under her white shirt, the grandmother slowly, expecting a long conversation, began to talk about herself:

I have been planted, father, worn out. All planted. From an early age in work, in work everything. I gave money to my aunt and mother and raised my tithes... It’s easy to just say. How about growing?!

But she spoke about the pitiful only at first, as if for starters, then she talked about various incidents from her long life. It turned out from her stories that there were much more joys in her life than hardships. She did not forget about them and knew how to notice them in her simple and difficult life. Children were born - joy. The children were sick, but she saved them with herbs and roots, and not one died - that’s also a joy. New things for yourself or your children are a joy. A good harvest for bread is a joy. Fishing was productive - a joy. Once she stuck out her hand in the arable land, but she straightened it herself, there was just suffering, the grain was being harvested, she was reaping with one hand and did not become a crooked hand - isn’t this joy?

I looked at my grandmother, marveled at the fact that she also had an aunt and a mother, looked at her large, veiny working hands, at her wrinkled face with an echo of her former blush, at her greenish eyes, darkening from the bottom, at those braids of hers. , sticking out, like a girl’s, in different directions - and such a wave of love for my dear and groaningly close person rolled over me that I poked my face into her loose chest and buried my nose in the warm, grandmother-smelling shirt. In this impulse of mine there was gratitude to her for the fact that she remained alive, that we both exist in the world and that everything around us is alive and good.

“You see, I didn’t sew your pants for the holiday,” my grandmother stroked my head and repented. - She gave me hope and didn’t sew...

Will you sew some more, what's the hurry?

Yes, only let God rise...

And she kept her word. As soon as I started walking, I immediately started cutting my pants. She was still weak, she walked from the bed to the table, holding on to the wall, measuring me with a tape with numbers, sitting on a stool. She was shaking and she put her hand to her head:

Oh Lord forgive me, what is wrong with me? Purely out of the blue!

But still she measured it well, drew chalk on the material, laid out the cut piece of the track on me, gave it to me twice so that I wouldn’t twirl too much, which made me feel happier - after all, this is the first sign of grandmother’s return to her former life, her complete recovery .

Grandma spent almost the whole day cutting out pants and started sewing them the next day. Needless to say, I slept poorly that night and woke up before daylight. Groaning and cursing, the grandmother also got up and began to bustle around in the kitchen. She stopped every now and then, as if listening to herself, but from that day on she did not lie down in the upper room, she moved to her camp bed, closer to the kitchen and the Russian stove.

In the afternoon, my grandmother and I picked up from the floor sewing machine and placed it on the table. The machine was old, with flowers worn out on the body. Only individual curls emerged from the flowers, reminiscent of fiery rattlesnakes. The grandmother called the machine “Signer”, assured that it had no price, and each time she told in detail, with pleasure, to the curious that her mother, God rest on her, also exchanged this machine from the exiles on the city pier for a one-year-old heifer, three bags of flour and a pint of melted butter. The exiles never returned that krinka, almost whole. Well, what is the demand from them - exiles are exiles - Varnachye and Black Lapotniks, and even some warlocks were pouring in in droves before the coup.

The Zigner machine chirps. Grandma turns the handle. He spins it carefully, as if gathering courage, thinking about further actions, suddenly he speeds up the wheel and lets go, the handle is barely visible - he’s spinning like that. It seems to me that now the machine will sew all the pants in a flash. But the grandmother will put her hand on the shiny wheel, calm down the machine, tame its whirring, when the machine stops, put the fabric on her chest, look carefully to see if the needle is cutting through the fabric, and whether the seam is crooked.

Grandma talked to me about good things, about pants:

There’s no way a commissar can go without pants,” she reasoned, biting the thread and looking at the light while sewing. - A small commissar with a button and a shoulder strap. Hang up the revolver - and you’ll be a formal commissar Vershkov, and maybe even Shshetinkin himself!..

That day I didn’t leave my grandmother’s side because I had to try on pants. With each pass, the pants gained more and more strength and looked at me in such a way that I could neither speak nor laugh with delight. In response to grandmother’s questions: is there pressure here, is there pressure here, he shook his head and uttered strangledly:

N-no-e!

Just don’t lie, it’ll be too late to correct it later.

It’s true, it’s true,” I confirmed quickly, so that grandma wouldn’t start flogging her pants and put off work.

The grandmother was especially concentrated and attentive when it came to the gap - she was still confused by some kind of wedge. If it, this wedge, is placed incorrectly, the pants will wear out before the deadline, and the “cockerel” will start peeking out into the street. I didn’t want this to happen, and I patiently endured fitting after fitting. Grandmother very carefully felt the “cock” in the area, and I was so ticklish that I squealed. My grandmother gave me a hand on the back of my neck.

So, without lunch, she and I worked until dusk - I begged my grandmother not to be interrupted because of such a trifle as food. When the sun went behind the river and touched the upper ridges, the grandmother hurried - the cows were about to be driven in, and she kept digging, and instantly finished the work. She fitted a flap pocket on her pants, and although I would have preferred an internal pocket, I did not dare object. So the grandmother applied the finishing touches with a machine, pulled out the thread, folded the pants, and stroked it on the stomach with her hand.

Well, thank God. Afterwards I’ll tear the buttons off from something and sew them on.

At this time, botalas began to jingle on the street, and the cows were demanding and well-fed. Grandma threw her pants on the typewriter, took off and rushed off, punishing me as she went so that I wouldn’t try to turn the typewriter, don’t touch anything, don’t harm anything.

I was patient. And by that time I had no strength left. Already the lamps were lit all over the village and people were having dinner, and I was still sitting near the Zigner typewriter, from which my blue trousers were hanging. I sat without lunch, without dinner and wanted to sleep.

I don’t remember how my grandmother dragged me to bed, exhausted and tired, but I will never forget that happy morning on which I woke up with a feeling of festive joy. On the headboard of the bed, neatly folded, hung new blue trousers, on them was a washed white striped shirt; next to the bed, the smell of burnt birch, mended by the shoemaker Zherebtsov, boots, smeared with tar, with yellow, completely new vamps, spread.

Immediately my grandmother came out of nowhere and started dressing me like a little one. I limply obeyed her, and laughed uncontrollably, and talked about something, and asked something, and interrupted myself.

“Well,” said my grandmother, when I appeared before her in all my glory, in all my glory. Her voice trembled, her lips moved to the side, and she took hold of her handkerchief: “Your mother, the deceased, should have seen it...

I looked down gloomily.

Grandmother stopped wailing, hugged me to her and crossed me.

Eat and go to your grandfather to borrow.

Alone, grandma?

Of course, one. You're so big! Man!

Oh, grandma! - Out of completeness of feeling, I hugged her neck and butted her head.

Okay, okay,” my grandmother gently pushed me aside. - Look, Lisa Patrikeevna, if only you were always so affectionate and good...

Dressed to the nines, with a bundle containing fresh clothes for my grandfather, I left the yard when the sun was already high and the whole village was living its ordinary, slow-moving life. First of all, I turned to the neighbors and plunged the Levontiev family into such confusion with my appearance that an unprecedented silence suddenly fell in the sodomy hut, and it became, this house, unlike itself. Aunt Vasenya clasped her hands and dropped her stick. This stick hit one of the little ones on the head. He sang in a healthy bass voice. Aunt Vasenya picked up the victim in her arms, hushed him up, and did not take her eyes off me.

Tanka was next to me, all the guys surrounded me, touched the material, and admired me. Tanka reached into my pocket, found a clean handkerchief there and fell silent in shock. Only her eyes expressed all her feelings, and from them I could guess how beautiful I am now, how she admires me, and to what unattainable heights I have risen.

They squeezed me in, slowed me down, and I was forced to break free and make sure that they didn’t get dirty, crush anything, or eat it under the noise of a shangi - a gift for my grandfather. It's just yawning here.

In a word, I hurried to say goodbye, citing the fact that I was in a hurry, and asked if there was anything I needed to tell Sanka. Sanka Levontievsky on our farm - helped his grandfather in arable matters. During the summer, the Levontiev children were placed among people, and there they fed, grew and worked. Grandfather had been taking Sanka with him for two summers already. My grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, predicted that this convict would drive the old man crazy, there would be no way out of him, there would be a complete collapse in his work, then she wondered how my grandfather and Sanka got along and were happy with each other.

Aunt Vasenya said that there was nothing to convey to Sanka, except for the order to obey grandfather Ilya and not drown in Mana if he decided to swim.

To my chagrin, at this midday hour there were few people on the street; the village people had not yet finished the spring harvest. The men had all gone to Manya - to hunt for deer - their antlers were now at a valuable time, and haymaking was already approaching, and everyone was busy with work. But still, here and there children were playing, women were going to the consumer goods store, and, of course, they were paying attention to me, sometimes quite intently. Here comes Aunt Avdotya, grandmother’s sister-in-law, to meet us. I'm walking and whistling. I walk past and don’t notice Aunt Avdotya. She turned to the side, and I saw her amazement, saw her spread her arms, heard words that were better than any music.

I'm sick of it! Isn’t this Vitka Katerinin?

"Of course it's me! Of course it's me!" - I wanted to convince Aunt Avdotya, but I restrained the impulse and only slowed down my steps. Aunt Avdotya hit herself on the skirt, overtook me in three leaps, began to feel me, stroke me and say all sorts of nice words. The windows in the houses swung open, women and old women looked out, everyone praised me, everyone spoke about my grandmother and about ours, so, they say, a guy grows up without a mother, and his grandmother drives him so that God forbid other parents to take their children, and so that the grandmother I respected, obeyed, and if I grew up, I would not forget her kindness.

Our village is big and long. I was tired, exhausted, while I walked from end to end and took upon myself all the tribute of admiration for me and my outfit, and also for the fact that I was the only one going to my grandfather’s place. I was already covered in sweat when I left the outskirts.

He ran to the river and drank the cold Yenisei water from his palms. From the joy that was seething in me, I threw a stone into the water, then another, I was carried away by this activity, but in time I remembered where I was going, why and in what form! And the path is not close - five miles! I walked, even ran at first, but I had to watch my step so as not to knock my yellow vamps off on the roots. He switched to a measured step, unfussy, peasant, as grandfather always walked.

A large forest began from the loan. The flowering boyars, the drooping pine trees, the birch trees, which had their share of growing next to the village and therefore were broken off into bare leaves over the winter, were left behind. A level aspen tree with full, slightly brownish leaves climbed densely along the slope. A road with washed stones wound upward. Gray large slabs, scratched by horseshoes, were torn out by spring flows. To the left of the road there was a dark ravine, a spruce forest stood densely in it, and in its midst there was the muffled sound of a stream falling asleep until autumn. The hazel grouse whistled in the spruce forest, calling in vain for females. They had already sat on their eggs and did not respond to the rooster gentlemen. An old capercaillie was just fidgeting on the road, clapping and taking off with difficulty. He began to shed, but then crawled out onto the road to peck at pebbles and use warm dust to knock out lice and fleas. The bath is here for him! If he sat quietly in the thicket, the lynx would eat him, the old fool, in the light, and the fox wouldn’t choke.

I lost my breath - the capercaillie was flapping its wings loudly. But there is no great fear, because it is sunny all around, it is light, and everything in the forest is busy with its own business. And I knew this road well - I rode along it many times on horseback and in a cart with my grandfather, grandmother, Kolcha Jr. and various other people.

And yet I saw and heard as if anew, probably because for the first time I was traveling alone to the village through the mountains and taiga. Further up the mountain the forest was thinner and thicker, the larches towered above the entire taiga and seemed to touch the clouds. I remembered how on this long and slow climb Kolcha Jr. always sang the same song, the horse slowed down its steps, carefully placed its hooves so as not to interfere with the man’s singing. And our horse himself - Hawk - at the end of the mountain, burst into song at the top, let out his “i-go-go-o-o-o” through the mountains and passes, but then embarrassedly waved his tail, saying, “I know that I’m not I’m very good with songs, but I couldn’t stand it, everything is very nice here and you are pleasant riders - you don’t whip me, you sing songs.

I also began to sing Kolcha Jr.’s song about a natural plowman, rolled along the valley like a ball, bounced on the stones and scree, my voice funnyly repeating: “Ha-hal!” So, with a song, I overcame the mountain. It became lighter. The sun kept getting higher and higher. The forest was thinning out, and there were more stones on the road, they were larger, and therefore the whole road twisted around the cobblestones. The grass in the forest became thinner, but there were more flowers, and when I went to the outskirts of the forest, the entire edge of the forest was burning, overwhelmed by the heat.

Above, in the mountains, our village fields began. At first they were reddish-black, only here and there potato seedlings glimmered mouse-like on them and plowed stones glistened in the sun. But then everything was filled with the multi-colored wavy greenery of thickening grains, and only the boundaries left by people who did not know how to break the earth separated the fields from each other, and, like the banks of rivers, did not allow them to merge together and become a sea.

The road here is covered with grass - crow's foot, blooming completely uninhibitedly, although people drove and walked along it. The plantain was gathering strength to light its little gray candle, every grass here turned green, stretched, trudged along the furrows of the wheels, along the hoof holes, not choking on the road dust. Along the side of the road, in clearings where stones from the fields, convicts and cut-down bushes were dumped, everything grew haphazardly, large, lushly. The marigolds and carrots were trying to go to the tune, the frying here in the sun was already littering the wind with the fumes of the petals, the columbine bells hung gloomily in anticipation of the summer heat that was disastrous for them. In place of these flowers, locusts rose from the thicket, and the red flower stood in elongated buds covered with fur, like frost, waiting in the wings to hang yellow gramophones along the outskirts of the fields.

Here is Korolev Log. There was a dirty puddle in it. I intended to rush along it so that it would splash in all directions, but I immediately came to my senses, took off my boots, rolled up my pants and carefully crossed the lazy pothole, pacified by sedge, crushed by the hooves of cattle, painted with the paws of birds, the paws of animals.

I flew out of the ravine at a trot and while I was putting on my shoes, I kept looking at the field that opened in front of me, and tried to remember where else I had seen it? A field that goes straight to the horizon, and the middle of the field is lonely big trees. The road dives right into the field, into the grain, quickly drying up in it, and a swallow flies over the road, chirping...

Ahh, I remembered! I saw the same field, only with yellow bread, in a picture in the house school teacher, to which my grandmother took me to enroll in the winter to study. I was staring at that picture, staring at it, and the teacher asked, “Do you like it?” I shook my head, and the teacher said that it was drawn by the famous Russian artist Shishkin, and I thought that he ate a lot of pine cones. But I couldn’t speak because of the miracle - the arable land, the land, looks like ours, here it is, in a frame, but as if alive!

I stopped under the thickest larch and raised my head. It seemed to me that a tree, on which greenish needles hung thickly and sparsely in places, floated across the sky, and a hawk, attached to the top of the tree, among last year’s black, as if burnt, cones, dozed, lulled by this slow and calm floating. On the tree there was a hawk's nest, twisted in a fork between a thick branch and a trunk. Sanka somehow started to destroy the nest, climbed up to it, was about to throw out the wide-mouthed hawks, but then the hawk screamed, began to flap her wings, peck at the villain with her beak, tear with her claws - Sanka could not resist, and let go. If only the ruiner had a karachun, he would have put his shirt on a branch and, okay, the seams of the canvas shirt turned out to be strong. The men took Sanka out of the tree, and, of course, gave him a kick. Sanka's eyes have been red since then; they say his eyes have become bloodshot.

A tree is a whole world! There are holes in its trunk, gouged out by woodpeckers, in each hole someone lives, moves: sometimes some kind of beetle, sometimes a bird, sometimes a lizard, and higher up - and the bats. Nests are hidden in the grass, in the tangle of roots. Mouse and gopher minks go under the tree. The anthill is leaned against the trunk. There is a prickly thorn here, a dead fir-tree, and a round green clearing near the larch. It can be seen from the exposed, scraped off roots that they wanted to flatten the clearing and cover it, but the roots of the tree resisted the plow and did not give up the clearing to be torn to pieces. The larch itself is hollow inside. Someone lit a fire in the sky a long time ago, and the trunk burned out. If the tree weren’t so big, it would have died long ago, but it was still alive, difficult, with dust, but it lived, extracting food from the ground with plowed roots and at the same time still gave shelter to ants, mice, birds, beetles, moths and all other living creatures .

I climbed into the coal interior of the larch and sat down on a mushroom-lip, hard as a stone, protruding from the rotten trunk. There is a trumpet buzzing and creaking in the tree. It seems like it is complaining to me with a wooden, endlessly long cry, going along the roots from the ground. I climbed out of the black hollow and touched the trunk of a tree covered with siliceous bark, sulfur deposits, scars and cuts, healed and unhealed, those that the damaged tree no longer has the strength and juice to heal.

“Oh, soot! What a bungler!” But the smoke has evaporated, and the hollow does not get dirty, just on one elbow and on the trouser leg it is stained black. I spat on my palm, wiped the stain from my pants and slowly walked towards the road.

For a long time a wooden groan sounded within me, audible only in the hollow of a larch tree. Now I know that a tree can also moan and cry in a visceral, inconsolable voice.

It’s not far from the burnt larch to the descent to the mouth of the Mana. I picked up my pace, and now the road began to slope down between two mountains. But I turned off the road and carefully began to make my way to the steep cut of the mountain, which descended with a rocky angle into the Yenisei and a ribbed slope towards Mana. From this steep slope you can see our arable land, our farmstead. I had been planning to look at all this from above for a long time, but it didn’t work out because I was traveling with other people, and they were either rushing to work or home from work. On the mane of Manskaya Mountain the pine forest was low-growing, with paws twisted by the wind. As if the hands of old people, these paws were covered in bumps and fragile joints. The boyarka grew here and was fiercely pungent. And all the bushes were dry, rough and clingy. But here there were even birch groves, clean aspen groves, thin, racing to grow after the fire, which was still reminiscent of black fallen trees and inversions. The stumps and fallen trees were covered with sweet shoots, filling the flowing strawberries; The drupes were white and filled with juice, small-leaved, strong lingonberries crunched under the pines, and chamomile blossomed along the slope - its favorite place here - lilac, yellow, almost purple, in places - white, a whole broom, as if a dollop of sour cream had splashed out in the scree. Grandma doesn’t ignore this chamomile spill, she always picks up a “wink” for the medicine. I plastered the flowers to the very roots, picked so many of them that they could barely fit into my pregnancy, and now I’m walking, and the smell around me, as if in a pharmacy or in the pantry where my grandmother dries herbs, is thick with dust and smells of chamomile. especially the yellow one, and just look at it, you’ll sneeze, as if from your grandfather’s fierce smear.

Above the cliff, where there were no longer trees, only thorn, meadowsweet, acacia, thorns and broods of mountain turnips stained the stones. I stopped and stood until my legs were tired, then I sat down, forgetting that there were snakes here - I was afraid of snakes more than anything in the world. For a while I didn’t breathe at all, I just looked and looked, my heart beating loudly and quickly in my chest.

For the first time I saw from above the merger of two big rivers- Mana and Yenisei. They hurried to meet each other for a long, long time, and having met, they flow separately, pretending that they are not interested in each other. Mana is faster than the Yenisei and lighter, although the Yenisei is also lighter. A whitish seam, like a breakwater spreading ever wider, defines the boundary of two waters. The Yenisei splashes, pushes Mana in the side, flirts and imperceptibly presses her into the corner of the Mansky bull, just like our village boys press the girls against the fence when they are playing around. Mana boils up, splashes out onto the rock, roars, but it’s too late - the bull is vertical and tall, the Yenisei is assertive - you won’t be spoiled with him.

Another river conquered. Having purred satedly under the bull, the Yenisei runs to the sea-ocean, rebellious, indomitable, sweeping away everything in its path. And what does Mana mean to him! He will also pick up not such rivers and rush off with him to the cold, midnight lands, where fate will then take me, and then I will have the opportunity to see my native river, a completely different one, flooded with floodplains, tired from a long journey. In the meantime, I look and look at the rivers, at the mountains, at the forests. The arrow at the junction of Mana and the Yenisei is rocky and steep. The root water has not yet subsided. The line of the scree bank is still submerged. The rocks on the other side stand in the water, where the rock begins, where its reflection is - you can’t tell from here. Stripes under the rocks. It tugs and twists the water with snouts of spiny stones.

But how much space there is above, above the Mana River! On the arrow there is a stone crown, further out the remnants are piled up scatteredly, even further - order begins: the mountains fall upward in waves from the chaos of gorges, noisy rivers, springs. There, above, are the stopped waves of the taiga, slightly lightened on the manes, secretly thick in the depressions. On the most hump-like splash of the taiga, a white cliff sparkles like a lost sail. The distant passes turn mysteriously, unattainably blue, and it’s eerie to even think about. Between them, the Mana River winds, roars and thunders on the rapids - a wet nurse: our arable land is here, reliable fishing is also on this river. There are a lot of animals, game, and fish on Mana. There are many rapids, rossokhs, mountains, rivers with enticing names: Karakush, Nagalka, Bezhat, Milya, Kandynka, Tykhty. Negnet. And how wisely the wild river acted: before the mouth it took a steep fall to the left, towards a rocky arrow, and left a gentle angle of alluvial soil. There are arable lands, huts, shelters on the banks of the Mana, fields here. They abut the mountains with the most distant fragments, boundaries and clearings. Below me, the Manskaya River clearly outlines the boundary of what is permitted and does not allow the mountain to pass through it. Further from the villages, towards the bend of Mana, behind which there is a white cliff, it is already hilly, there is forest, taiga, many large birches grow in the open air. People are crowding this forest, cutting down the summer shoots, leaving only those trees that they cannot cope with. Every year, first on one hill, then on another, our villagers throw out the green patches of peasant arable land, pushing the taiga to the Straw Reach.

Persistent people worked on this land!

I looked for our place. It's not hard to find. She is distant. Each loan is a repetition of the yard, the house that the owner maintains in the village. The house was cut down in the same way, the yard was fenced off in the same way, the same canopy, the same canopy, even the platbands on the house are the same, but everything: the house, the yard, the windows, and the oven inside are smaller in size. And yet in the yard there are no winter flocks, barns and baths, but there is one wide summer paddock, covered with brushwood, with straw over the brushwood.

Behind our shelter, a path snakes along a stone bullock, always wet with mold. A key is drilled out of the goby into the crack; above the key grow a crooked larch without a top and two alders. The roots of the trees were pinched by the goby, and they grow crooked, with a leaf on one side. Smoke fluffs up over our farm. Grandfather and Sanka are cooking something. I immediately wanted to eat. But I just can’t leave, I can’t take my eyes off the two rivers, from these mountains shimmering in the distance, I can’t yet comprehend with my childish mind the immensity of the world.

I shook myself, shrugged my shoulders, screamed louder to scare away the astringent, incomprehensible fear that had fallen on me, I almost rolled head over heels down the mountain, with a crumbling gray flagstone flowing behind me with a landslide clang. Overtaking the stream, the round boulders in front jumped up, which, together with many, fell into the Manskaya River.

A bunch of fragrant daisies floated, a bundle of fragrant daisies floated, playfulness attacked me - I ran along the cold river laughing, caught the bundle, flowers and suddenly stopped.

Boots!

I still stood and watched how the river ran and swirled above my boots, how yellow and red vamps flashed in the water like living fish.

“Blubber! You idiot! Sports boots! Got my pants wet! New pants!

I wandered ashore, took off my shoes, poured the water out of my boots, smoothed my pants with my hands and began to wait for my outfit to dry and regain its festive shine.

The journey from the village was long and tiring. Instantly and completely unnoticed, I fell asleep to the sound of the Manskaya River. He must have slept very little, because when he woke up, his boots were still damp, but his vamps had become yellower and more beautiful - the tar had been washed off them. The sun dried my pants. They wrinkled and lost their momentum. I spat on my palms, smoothed out my pants, put them on, smoothed them out again, put on my shoes, and ran along the road easily and quickly, so that the dust exploded after me.

Grandfather was not in the hut, Sanka was not there either. Something was knocking behind the hut in the yard. I put the bundle and flowers on the table and went into the yard. Grandfather was kneeling under the wooden canopy and chopping tobacco puffs in a trough. An old shirt, patched at the elbows, had been let out of his pants and fluttered on his back. Grandfather's neck is tarred by the sun. The hair, greyish with age, hung down in brown cracks down to the neck. On the porches, the shirt stuck out with large shoulder blades, like a horse’s.

I smoothed my hair to one side with my palm, pulled up the silk belt with tassels on my stomach and immediately called out in a hoarse voice;

Grandfather stopped baling, put the ax aside, turned around, looked at me for a while, kneeling, then stood up, wiped his hands on the hem of his shirt, and pressed me to him. He ran his hand, sticky from leaf tobacco, over my head. He was tall, not slouched yet, and my face reached only to his stomach, to his shirt, so soaked with tobacco that it was difficult to breathe, my nose itched and I wanted to sneeze. But I didn’t move, didn’t sneeze, became quiet, like a kitten under the palm of my hand.

Sanka arrived on horseback, tanned, with his grandfather's hair cut, and wearing mended pants and a shirt, which I guessed from the sweeping stitches - also mended by grandfather. Sanka is Sanka! He had just driven the horse in, he hadn’t even said hello, but he had already taken me aback:

Monk in new pants! “He wanted to add something else, but he held his tongue, he was embarrassed by grandpa.” But he will say something malicious, then he will say it when his grandfather is not there. It’s enviable because Sanka himself hasn’t sewn new pants for a long time, and he’s never even dreamed of boots, and even with new vamps.

It turned out that I was in time for lunch. They ate drachena - crumpled potatoes baked with milk and butter, ate kharyuz and fried sorozhki - Sanka pulled it in the evening, then drank tea brewed with a typical root, with his grandmother's soaked rags.

Did you swim on shangai? - Sanka asked curiously.

Grandfather didn't ask anything.

Swim! - I told Sanka off.

After lunch, I went down to the spring, washed the dishes and brought water at the same time. I put daisies in an old jar with a chipped edge; they were already wilted, but they soon rose up, curled up with thick greenery, and littered the table with yellow dust and petals.

Hey! What a girl! - Sanka began to be sarcastic again. But his grandfather, who was settling down to rest on the stove after dinner, cut him short:

Don't pick on the guy. Since his soul lies with a flower, that means his soul is like that. This means that he has his own meaning in this, his own meaning, which is incomprehensible to us. Here.

The gadfly will subside, let's chase it to graze. The boots and pants are the same.

We went out into the yard and I asked:

Why is grandfather so talkative today?

I don’t know,” Sanka shrugged. - He must have been delighted to see such a dressed-up grandson. - Sanka picked his teeth with his fingernail and, looking at me with red, sarcastic eyes, asked: - What are we going to do, monk in new pants?

If you tease me, I'll leave.

Okay, okay, what a touchy guy! It's just make-believe.

We ran into the field. Sanka showed me where he harrowed, said that grandfather Ilya taught him to plow, and also added that he would quit school as soon as he became more proficient in plowing, started earning money, bought himself not track pants, but cloth ones, and so he would quit.

These words finally convinced me - Sanka was stuck. But I had no idea what would follow next, because he was and remains a simpleton.

Behind a strip of densely growing oats, near the road there was an oblong bog. There was almost no water left in it. Along the edges, the mud, smooth and black, like pitch, was covered with a web of cracks. In the middle, near a palm-sized puddle, a large frog sat in mournful silence and wondered where to go now. In Mana and the Manskaya River the water is fast - it will tip you upside down and carry you away. There is a swamp, but it is far away - you will be lost by the time you jump. The frog suddenly jumped to the side and plopped down at my feet - it was Sanka who rushed across the boghole, so quickly that I didn’t even have time to gasp. He sat down on the other side of the basin and wiped his feet on a burdock.

And you are weak!

Me? Weak-oh? - I started to lose my temper, but then I remembered that I had fallen for Sanka’s bait more than once, and I couldn’t count how many troubles and misfortunes I had through this with all sorts of consequences. “No, brother, I’m not that small for you to fool me like before!”

Just pick the flowers! - Sanka itched.

“Flowers! So what! Is this bad? That’s what my grandfather said…” But then I remembered how in the villages they treat people with contempt for picking flowers and doing all sorts of nonsense. In the village of hunters-hunters there was a lot of fun - an abyss. Old men, women and children manage the arable land. All the men on Mana are firing guns and fishing, also getting pine nuts, and selling their catch in the city. Flowers as gifts for wives are brought from the market, flowers made from shavings, blue, red, white - rustle. Women respectfully place market flowers on corners and attach them to icons. And in order to pick zharkovs, starodubs or sarnoks - this is something that men never do and their children are taught from childhood to tease and despise people like Vasya the Pole, the shoemaker Zherebtsov, the stove maker Makhuntsov and all sorts of other self-propelled guns, greedy for entertainment, but unsuitable for hunting.

And Sanka is there too! He won't bother with flowers. He is already a plowman, a sower, a worker! And I mean, so-so! A moron, then? A weakling? I got so fired up, I got so angry that I rushed across the bog with a brave boom.

In the middle of the pit, where the pensive frog was sitting, I immediately, with distinct clarity, realized that I was again on the oud. I tried to twitch once or twice, but I saw Sanka’s spreading footprints from a puddle to the side - a shiver went through me. Taking in Sanka’s round face with those red eyes, like those of a drunkard, he said:

He said and stopped fighting.

Sanka was raging above me. He ran around the basin, jumped, stood on his hands:

Ahhh, I'm in trouble! A-ha-ha-a, I boasted! A-ha-ha-a, a monk in new pants! Pants ha ha ha! Boots are ho-ho-ho!

I clenched my fists and bit my lips to keep from crying. I knew that Sanka was just waiting for me to fall apart, to whimper, and he would completely tear me to pieces, helpless, trapped. My feet are cold. I was sucked further and further, but I didn’t ask Sanka to pull me out, and I didn’t cry. Sanka continued to mock me, but he soon became bored with this activity and was filled with pleasure.

Say: “Dear, pretty Sanechka, help me for Christ’s sake!” I might drag you out!

Oh no?! Stay here until tomorrow.

I clenched my teeth and looked for a stone or a piece of wood. There was nothing. The frog crawled out of the grass again and looked at me with annoyance, saying that the last refuge had been recaptured by the evil ones.

Get out of my sight! Better go away, you bastard! Go away! - I shouted and began throwing handfuls of dirt at Sanka.

Sanka left. I wiped my hands on my shirt. Above the basin, on the boundary, henbane leaves moved - Sanka hid in them. From the pit I can only see this henbane, the top of this burdock, and I can also see part of the road, the one that rises to Manskaya Mountain. Just recently I walked along this road happy, admired the area and did not know any boghole, did not know any grief. And now I’m stuck in the mud and waiting. What am I waiting for?

Sanka crawled out of the weeds, apparently the wasps drove him out, maybe he didn’t have enough patience. Eating some grass. There must be a bundle. He's always chewing on something - he's a pot-bellied crab-eater!

Are we going to sit like this?

No, I'll fall soon. My legs are already tired.

Sanka stopped chewing the bunch, the carelessness disappeared from his face, he must be beginning to understand where things were heading.

But you, bastard! - he shouted, pulling off his pants. - Just fall!

I try to stay on my feet, but they are so painful below the knees that I can barely feel them. I'm shaking from the cold and shaking from fatigue.

Headless nag! - Sanka climbed into the mud and cursed. - No matter how much I inflated him, he still inflated himself! - Sanka tried to get close to me from one side, but it didn’t work from the other. Viscous. Finally he approached and shouted: “Give me your hand!” Let's! I'll leave! I'll really leave. You'll disappear here along with your new pants!..

I didn't give him my hand. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me, but the stake itself went into the liquid depths of the pit. He abandoned me and rushed to the shore, with difficulty freeing his legs. His traces were immediately covered with black liquid, bubbles appeared in the traces, bursting with a spike and gurgle.

Sanka on the shore. He looked at me in fear, silently, trying to figure something out. I looked past him. My legs were completely weak, the dirt already seemed like a soft bed to me. I wanted to sink into it. But I’m still alive up to the waist and I don’t think much - I’ll go down and could easily choke.

Hey, why are you silent?

I didn’t answer the destroyer Sanka.

Follow grandpa, you bastard! I'll fall in a minute.

Sanka whined, cursed like a drunken man, and rushed to pull me out of the mud. He almost pulled my shirt off, started tugging at my arm so hard that I roared in pain and started jabbing my fist into Sanka’s face, hitting him once or twice. I was not sucked in any further; my feet must have reached solid ground, perhaps even frozen ground. Sanka didn’t have the strength or intelligence to pull me out. He was completely confused and didn’t know what to do or what to do.

Follow grandpa, you bastard!

With his teeth chattering, Sanka pulled his pants right over his dirty legs.

Darling, don't fall! - At first Sanka whispered, then shouted in a voice that was not his own and rushed to the shelter. - Don’t pa-a-da-a-ay, dear... Don’t pa-a-ada-ay!..

His words came out with barks and barks. Sanka roared in fright. “That’s what you need, snake!”

Anger gave me more strength. I raised my head and saw two people descending from Manskaya Mountain. Someone is leading someone by the hand. So they disappeared behind the talniks, in the Manskaya River. They must be drinking or washing their face. This is the kind of river - murmuring and fast. No one can get past her.

Or maybe they sat down to rest? Then it's a lost cause.

But from behind the mound a head appeared in a white scarf, even at first only a white scarf, then the forehead, then the face, then another person became visible - it was a girl. Who's coming? Who? Come quickly! They move their legs exactly like lifeless ones!

I did not take my eyes off the two people walking steadily along the road. I recognized my grandmother by her gait, by her scarf, or by the gesture of her hand pointing the girl straight at me, most likely in the field behind the bog.

Ba-a-bonka! Mi-ilenka!.. Oh, ba-abonka! - I roared and fell into the mud. In front of me were the slopes of this damned pit, washed away by water. Even the henbane is not visible, even the frog jumped somewhere.

Ba-a-aba-a-a! Ba-a-abonka-a-a! I'm drowning! Oh, I'm drowning!

I feel sick, sick! Oh, my heart felt it! How did you, asp, get there? - I heard my grandmother scream above me. - Oh, it’s not in vain that it sucked in the pit of your stomach!.. But who gave you that idea? Oh, hurry up!

And the words that Levontiev’s Tanka said thoughtfully and condemningly came to me:

Uh, didn’t the leshaks push you there?!

A board slapped, then another, I felt someone grab me and, like a rusty nail from a log, slowly pull me, I heard my boots being taken off, I wanted to scream, but didn’t have time. Grandfather pulled me out of my boots, out of the mud. Stretching his legs with difficulty, he backed towards the shore.

Shoes! Boots! - the grandmother pointed into the pit, where the stirred up mud swayed, all covered in bubbles and moldy greenery. Hopelessly waving his hand, the grandfather stood up and began wiping his feet with burdocks. With trembling hands, my grandmother picked handfuls of dirt from my new pants and triumphantly, as if proving to someone, said:

No, no, you can’t fool my heart! As soon as this bloodsucker crossed the threshold, it just ached and ached. And where were you looking, old man? Where have you been? What if the baby died?

Didn't die...

I lay with my nose buried in the grass and cried from self-pity, from resentment. Grandmother began to rub my feet with her palms. Tanka searched my nose with a popsicle and cursed back and forth with her grandmother:

Oh, convict Shanka! I’ll tell my dad what’s wrong,” and shook her finger into the distance: “Tyatka, shur-shur-shur!” - Do you understand what Tanya has? It rustles like a wasp in honey.

I looked where she was threatening and noticed swirling dust in the distance. Sanka was scratching as hard as he could from the village to the river to take refuge in the urems until better times. Now he will truly live as a fugitive forest robber.

I've been lying on the stove for four days. My legs are wrapped in an old blanket. Grandma rubbed them three times a day with anemone infusion, ant oil and something else pungent and smelly, and soldered me with chamomile and St. John's wort. My legs burned and pinched so much that I was ready to howl, but my grandmother assured me that this is how it should be, it means that my legs are cured if they feel the burning and pain, and she talked about how and who she cured at one time and what She received thanks for this.

Grandmother could not catch Sanka. As I guessed, my grandfather was bringing Sanka out from under the intended retribution. He either dressed Sanka up for the night to graze the cattle, or sent him off to the forest with a reserve. Grandmother was forced to vilify grandfather and me, but we are accustomed to this, grandfather just groaned and smoked a cigarette even more, I giggled into the pillow and winked at my grandfather.

My grandmother washed my pants, but my boots remained in the bin. Sorry for the boots. The pants are also not what they were. The material does not shine, the blue has faded, the pants have faded and withered, like flowers plucked from the ground. “Oh, Sanka, Sanka!” - I sighed - I felt sorry for Sanka.

Are they pestering you about rematization again? - Grandma stood up to approach the stove, hearing my groaning.

It's hot here.

The heat does not ache the bones. It was like a fool - three boils on each side. Be patient. Otherwise, you’ll lose your legs - and she’s at the window, Putting her hand on it, looking out. - And where did he send this adversary! Look, good people! She said to herself: neither from a stone is fruit, nor from a rogue is good! He made an alliance with me!.. He himself gives a sign to the robber, they will save him from me.

Here - trouble to trouble - grandfather missed the chicken. This motley hen has been trying to produce chicks for three summers now. But the grandmother believed that there were more suitable chickens for this task, so she bathed the pestle in cold water, whipped her with a broom, forcing her to lay eggs. The Corydalis showed downright soldierly fortitude: somewhere it quietly laid eggs and, not looking at the grandmother’s prohibition, hid itself and hatched its offspring.

In the evening there was light in the window, flickering, crackling - this is behind the key, on the river bank there was a hut made by hunters in the spring. Our corydalis flew out of the hut with a cackle, without touching the ground, flew up to the hut, all disheveled, cackling, twitching its damaged crop and head.

An investigation began, and it turned out that Sanka had taken the tobacco from his grandfather’s trough, was smoking in the hut and set off a spark.

He'll burn the castle without even blinking! - the grandmother was noisy, but the noise was somehow unthreatening; at the end, her heart must have softened because of the chicken, maybe she boiled over with anger inside herself. In a word, she told her grandfather that Sanka should not hide anymore, he should spend the night at home, and she rushed off to the village - she had a lot of things to do there.

She, of course, always has her hands full, but her main concern is that without her, in the village, as without a commander in a war, there is confusion, confusion, confusion, everything has lost its pace, and order and discipline must be directed as quickly as possible.

Whether it was because of the silence, or because my grandmother had established peace with Sanka, I fell asleep and woke up at sunset, all bright and relieved, fell down from the stove and almost screamed. In that same jar with a broken edge, a huge bouquet of scarlet mountain locusts with curved petals was blazing.

Summer! Summer is completely here!

Sanka stood at the lintel, drooling onto the floor into the hole between his teeth. He chewed sulfur, and a lot of saliva accumulated in him.

Bite off the sulfur?

Sanka took a bite of larch sulfur. I also began to chew it with a snap.

A larch from the rafting washed up on the shore, and I picked it up. - Sanka salivated from the stove and all the way to the window. I also circled, but it hit me on the chest.

Do your legs hurt?

Just a little. I'll run tomorrow.

Kharyuz began to take good shots at the pout and the cockroach. Soon he will go to filly.

Take me?

So Katerina Petrovna let you go!

She's not there!

He'll hide!

I'll ask for time off.

Well, if you ask for time off... - Sanka turned to the yard, sniffed the air, then crawled up to my ear:

Will you smoke? Here! I stibrated from my grandfather. - He showed a handful of tobacco, a scrap of paper and a piece of matchbox. - Smoke peacefully! Did you hear how I was crazy yesterday? The chicken flew like a turman! Hilarious! Katerina Petrovna crosses herself: “God save me!” Christ save!” Hilarious!

Oh, Sanka, Sanka! - I completely forgave him everything, I repeated my grandmother’s words. - Don’t blow your daring head off!..

Nishta-aak! - Sanka waved it off with relief and took the splinter out of his heel. A drop of blood rolled out like a lingonberry. Sanka spat on his palm and rubbed his heel.

I looked at the gently red rings of the locusts, at their stamens, like hammers, protruding from the flowers, and listened to the busy swallows fussing and talking among themselves in the attic. One swallow is dissatisfied with something, talks and talks and screams, like Aunt Avdotya at her girls when they come home from a party, or at her husband Terenty when he comes from swimming.

In the yard, grandfather was chatting with an ax and coughing. Behind the palisade of the front garden, a blue patch of the river is visible. I put on my now lived-in, familiar pants, in which you can sit anywhere and on anything.

Where are you going? - Sanka shook his finger. - It is forbidden! Grandma Katerina didn’t order it!

I didn’t answer him, I went up to the table and touched my hand to the red-hot, but not burning, sabers.

Look, grandma will quarrel. Look, he's up! Brave! - Sanka muttered, distracted me, spoke with his teeth. - Then you’ll begin to breathe your last breath...

What a kind grandfather, he picked me up, - I helped Sanka get out of a difficult situation. Little by little he backed out of the hut, pleased with this outcome of the matter. I slowly made my way outside into the sun. My head was spinning, my legs were still shaking and clicking. Grandfather, under the canopy, putting aside the ax with which he was cutting the lithutka, looked at me as only he could look - everything was so clear with his eyes. Sanka was cleaning our Hawk with a scraper, and apparently he was ticklish, and he was trembling with his skin and kicking his leg.

B-b-but-oh, you, dance with me! - Sanka shouted at the gelding. Why shout at the horse, which is no tougher and more patient in the village, which even the grandmother pampers, sometimes with a crust of bread, and says with ridicule that our horse lived with seven priests, for seven years, and he was still seven years old...

Old, old Hawk! So what? And the grandfather is old, but there is no better person in the world. The price is not according to summer, but according to business...

How warm, green, noisy and fun it is around! Swifts circle over the river, falling to meet their shadows on the water. The tiles are chirping, the wasps are buzzing, the logs are racing across the water. Soon it will be possible to swim - the Lydia swimmers will come. Maybe they'll let me swim too. The fever hasn’t returned, just a headache and pain in the joints of my legs. Well, if they don’t allow it, I’ll slowly bathe myself. I’ll go to the river with Sanka and take a swim.

Sanka and I, holding the ravine on both sides, led Hawk to the river. He descended the rocky bullhead, cautiously spreading his front legs like a bench, slowing himself down with worn-out, nail-pierced hooves. He wandered into the water, stopped, touched the reflection in the water with his flabby lips, as if he had kissed the same old piebald horse.

We splashed water on him. The horse twitched the skin on its back and, loudly thumping its hooves on the stones, daringly shaking its bearded head, wandered into the depths, we followed him, groaning, holding his mane and tail, trailing. Hawk wandered onto a pebble toe, stopped up to his belly in the water and surrendered to the will of the current.

We scrubbed our bare back, neck, and chest, covered with calluses from work. The hawk trembled its skin in joyful languor, moved its feet and even tried to play, grabbing us by the collars with its drooping lip.

D-don't spoil me! - we shouted loudly. But the Hawk didn’t listen, and we didn’t expect him to obey, we just yelled at the horse out of habit.

They tried to sit on the horse's back in order to peck the flies swarming on the abrasions of the horse's leather or to grab a blood-sucker horsefly that was attached to the horse's croup.

A grandfather stood on the bullock in his loose shirt, barefoot. The breeze ruffled his hair, moved his beard, and rinsed his unbuttoned shirt on his convex, forked chest. And the grandfather was reminiscent of a Russian hero during a campaign, who took a break - the hero stopped to look around his native land, to breathe in its healing air.

That's good! The hawk is bathing. Grandfather stands on a stone bull, forgotten, summer is in noise, bustle, boring chores rolled up. Every bird, every midge, flea, ant is busy; The berries are about to come, the mushrooms. The cucumbers will soon be full, the potatoes will begin to be dug up, then another garden will be ripe for the table, there the bread will rustle with a ripe ear - the harvest will come. You can live in this world! And joke with him, with his pants and boots too. I'll make some more money. I'll make money.

I was told to sort through the potatoes. Grandmother determined the norm, or the harness, as she called it. This harness is marked by two rutabagas, lying on either side of the oblong bottom, and to these rutabagas is the same as to the other bank of the Yenisei. When I get to rutabaga, only God knows. Maybe I won’t be alive by then!

There is an earthy, sepulchral silence in the basement, there is mold on the walls, there is saccharine kurzhak on the ceiling. I just want to take it on my tongue. From time to time, for no apparent reason, it crumbles from above, gets caught in the collar and melts. Not much good either. In the pit itself, where the bottoms are with vegetables and tubs with cabbage, cucumbers and saffron milk caps, the kurzhak hangs on the threads of a cobweb, and when I look up, it seems to me that I am in a fairy tale kingdom, and when I look down, my heart bleeds and a great, great melancholy takes over me.

There are potatoes and potatoes all around here. And you have to sort through them, potatoes. The rotten ones are supposed to be thrown into a wicker box, the large ones are supposed to be thrown into bags, and the smaller ones are to be thrown into the corner of this huge, like a yard, barn, in which I have been sitting, maybe for the whole day, and my grandmother has forgotten about me, or maybe I’ve been sitting for a whole month and I’ll die soon, and then everyone will know how to leave a child here alone, and an orphan at that.

Of course, I’m no longer a child and I don’t work in vain. The larger potatoes are selected for sale in the city, and my grandmother promised to use the proceeds to buy textiles and sew me new pants with a pocket.

I clearly see myself in these pants, smart, beautiful. My hand is in my pocket, and I walk around the village and don’t take my hand out, and if I need to put something - a bat or money - I only put it in my pocket, and no value will fall out of my pocket or be lost.

I've never had pants with a pocket, especially new ones. They're redoing everything old for me. A bag will be dyed and altered, a woman’s skirt that has come out of wear, or something else. Once they even used half shawls. They painted it and sewed it, but then it faded, and the cells became visible. All the Levontiev guys laughed at me. What, let them grin!

I'm interested to know what kind of pants they will be, blue or black? And what kind of pocket will they have - external or internal? Outdoor, of course. Grandma will begin to tinker with the inside! She has no time for everything. Relatives need to be bypassed. Indicate to everyone. General!

So she rushed off somewhere again, and I sit here and work!

At first I was scared in this deep and silent basement. It always seemed to me as if someone was hiding in the dark dark corners, and I was afraid to move and afraid to cough. And then I took a small lamp without glass, left by my grandmother, and shone it in the corners. There was nothing there except greenish-white mold that covered the logs in patches, and dirt dug up by mice, and rutabaga, which from a distance seemed to me like severed human heads. I shook one rutabaga against a sweaty wooden frame with veins of kurzhak in the grooves, and the frame responded inwardly: “U-u-u-a-ah!”

- Yeah! - I said. - That's it, brother! It doesn't hurt me!..

I also took small beets and carrots with me and from time to time I threw them into the corner, into the walls and scared away everyone who could be there from evil spirits, from brownies and other shantraps.

The word “shantrapa” is an imported word in our village, and I don’t know what it means. But I like it. “Shantrapa! Shantrapa! All the bad words, according to my grandmother, were dragged into our village by the Betekhtins, and if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t even be able to swear.

I've already eaten three carrots; I rubbed them on the shank of the rod and ate them. Then he launched it under wooden mugs? hand, scraped out a handful of cold, elastic cabbage and ate it too. Then he caught a cucumber and ate it too. And he also ate mushrooms from a tub as low as a tub. Now my stomach is rumbling and tossing and turning. These are carrots, cucumbers, cabbage and mushrooms quarreling among themselves. They feel cramped in one belly.

If only my stomach would relax or my legs would hurt. I straighten my legs, hear crunching and clicking in my knees, but nothing hurts.

Should I pretend?

What about the pants? Who will buy me pants and for what? Pants with a pocket, new and without straps and perhaps even with a strap!

My hands begin to quickly and quickly scatter the potatoes: large ones into a yawning open bag; small - in the corner; rotten - in a box. Fuck-bang! Tarabah!

- Twist, turn, turn! - I encourage myself and yell to the whole basement:

One girl was tried

She was a child a-a-mi-i-i...

This song is new, not from here. By all accounts, the Betekhtins also dragged her into the village. I only remembered these words from it, and I really liked them. I know how the girl is judged. In the summer, grandmother and other old women will go out to the rubble in the evening, and so they judge, here they judge: Uncle Levontius, and Aunt Vasenya, and Avdotya’s maiden - the cheerful Agashka!

But I just don’t understand why grandma and all the old women shake their heads, spit and blow their noses?

- Twist, turn, turn!

One girl was tried

She was a child a-a-ami-i-i-i...

The potatoes are scattered in different directions and bouncing around. One rotten one got into a good potato. Remove it! You can't cheat the buyer. He cheated with strawberries - what good happened? Absolute shame and embarrassment. And now if you come across a rotten potato, he, the buyer, will freak out! If you don’t take the potatoes, that means you won’t get any money or goods, which means you won’t get any pants! Who am I without pants? Without pants I'm a shantrap! Go without pants, just like the Levontiev boys, everyone strives to spank his bare bottom, that’s his purpose: since it’s naked, you can’t resist, you’ll spank him.

But I’m not afraid of anything, no shantrapa!

Shantrapa-a-a, shan-tra-pa-a-a-a...

I sing, open the door and look at the steps from the basement. There are twenty-eight of them. I already counted it a long time ago. My grandmother taught me to count to one hundred, and I counted everything that could be counted. The upper door to the basement is slightly open. Grandma opened it a crack so that I wouldn’t feel so scared here. My grandmother is still a good person! General, of course, but since she was born like that, you can’t change it.

Above the door, to which a tunnel white from kurzhak, hung with threads of white fringe, leads, I notice an icicle. A tiny icicle, the size of a mouse’s tail, but something immediately stirred in my heart, like a soft kitten.

Spring is coming. It will be warm. It will be the first of May! Everyone will celebrate, walk, sing songs. And when I turn eight years old, everyone will pat me on the head, feel sorry for me, and treat me to sweets. And my grandmother will definitely sew me pants by May Day.

Shantra-a-a, shantra-pa-a-a!

They'll sew me pants with a pocket on May Day!

Then try and catch me!..

Fathers, rutabaga - here they are! I made the harness! True, once or twice I moved the rutabaga closer to me and thus shortened the distance measured by my grandmother. But, of course, I don’t remember where they used to be, these rutabaga, and I don’t want to remember. For that matter, I can take away the rutabaga altogether, throw them out and go through all the potatoes, and beets, and carrots, and I won’t care!

They tried one girl...

- Well, how are you doing here, worker?

I shuddered and dropped the potatoes from my hands. Grandma has arrived. The old one has appeared!

- Nothing! Be healthy worker! I can over-hair the whole vegetable! Potatoes, carrots, beets – I can do anything!

- You, father, be quieter on turns! Ek is blowing you away!

- Let him take it!

- Are you really drunk on some rotten spirit?

- He's drunk! – I confirm. - In the trolley... They judged the girl alone...

- My mothers! And he was all done up like a piglet! “Granny squeezes my nose into my apron and rubs my cheeks. - Here's some soap for you. - And pushes him in the back: - Go to lunch. Grandfather is waiting.

– Is it really just lunch?

“I suppose it seemed to you that he’s been here for three days?”

I jump up the stairs. I hear my joints clicking and feel how fresh, chilly air floats towards me, so sweet after the rotten, stagnant basement spirit.

I pick up my pace and emerge from the basement into the bright day, into the clean air, and suddenly and clearly notice that everything in the yard is filled with a premonition of spring. It is in the sky, which has become more spacious, higher and there are doves in streaks, it is also on the sweaty boards of the roof from the edge where the sun is, it is also in the chirping of the sparrows, grappling hand-to-hand in the middle of the yard, and in that still thin haze that arose over the distant ridges and began to go down, enveloping forests, valleys and meadows at the mouths of rivers in a faded slumber. And soon, very soon, these rivers will flare up with greenish-yellow ice, the banks will be flooded with red, currants and willows, and then the ice will melt on the rivers, eat the snow on the ridges, there will be grass, snowdrops, the First of May will come, and on the First of May...

No, it’s better not to think about what will happen on May Day!

The material, or manufactory, as we call sewing goods, was bought by my grandmother when she was traveling to the city along the sleigh route with potatoes. The material was blue, ribbed, and rustled and crackled well if you ran your finger over it. It was called Treko. No matter how long I lived in the world, no matter how many pants I wore, I never came across any material with that name. Obviously it was a tights. But this is just my guess, nothing more. There were many things that happened in my childhood that I never encountered again and never repeated, unfortunately.

A piece of textiles lay at the very top of the chest, and every time my grandmother opened this chest and a musical ringing was heard, I was right there. I stood on the threshold of the upper room and looked into the chest. Grandmother was looking for the thing she needed in a chest as huge as a barge and did not notice me at all. I moved, drummed my finger on the doorframe, but she didn’t notice. I coughed once at first - she didn’t notice. I coughed many times, as if my whole chest had caught a cold, but she still didn’t notice. Then I moved closer to the chest and began to twirl the huge iron key. Grandma silently slapped my hand - and still didn’t notice me. Then I started stroking the blue fabric with my fingers - tracko. Here the grandmother could not stand it and, looking at the important, handsome generals with beards and mustaches that covered the inside of the chest lid, asked them:

– What should I do with this child? (The generals did not answer. I was ironing the textiles.) - Grandmother threw my hand away under the pretense that it might be unwashed and stain the track, and continued: - It sees, it’s a child - I’m spinning like a squirrel in a wheel! It knows - I’ll sew pants for my name day, damn them! But no, it just keeps climbing, just climbing!..

With the last words, my grandmother grabbed me by the forelock or ear and took me away from the chest. I pressed my forehead against the wall. And I must have looked so sad that after a while the ringing of the castle was heard, more subtle and musical, and everything in me froze with blissful forebodings.

Grandma used a small key to open a Chinese box made of tin, like a house without windows. On this house there are painted all sorts of alien trees, birds and rosy-cheeked Chinese women in new blue trousers, only not from track, but from some other material, which I also liked, but liked much less than my manufacture.

I'm waiting. And for good reason. The fact is that the Chinese box contains the most valuable grandmother’s valuables, including candies, which in the store are called monpensiers, but in our country, more simply, lampasiers or lampaseyki. There is nothing in the world sweeter and more beautiful than lamps! We stick them on Easter cakes, on sweet pies, and just suck on these sweet little lamps, whoever has them, of course.

Grandma has it! For guests. I hear subtle and gentle music again. The box is closed. Maybe grandma changed her mind?

I begin to sniffle louder and think: should I let my voice in? But then grandmother’s dissatisfied words are heard:

- Well, your damned soul! - And into my hand, which had long since been lowered expectantly, my grandmother thrusts rough stripes.

My mouth is full of languid saliva, but I swallow it and push away my grandmother’s hand:

- Nope...

- What do you want? Belt?

- Pants...

I hear my grandmother sadly slapping her thighs and turning not to the generals, but to my back:

- Why doesn’t he, the bloodsucker, understand words? I interpret to him in Russian - I’ll sew it! Here he comes! And he will grow! A? Will you take some candy or lock it up?

- Eat it yourself!

- Herself?! “Grandma goes numb for a while: apparently she can’t find words.” - Herself?! I'll give it to you - myself! I'll show you - myself!

Now is the turning point. Now we have to give a voice, otherwise it will hit, and I lead from the bottom up:

- Uh-uh...

- Poori from me, from me! - Grandma screams, but I block her with my roar.

She gradually gives in and begins to cajole me:

- Well, I'll sew it, I'll sew it soon!

Sick little lamps. Soon, soon you will be walking around in new pants, smart, handsome, and handsome...

Slandering, my grandmother finally breaks my resistance, sticks lamps into my palm - about five of them, it won’t count! - he wipes my nose and cheeks with his apron and escorts me out of the room, comforted and satisfied.

... My hopes did not come true. For my birthday, for the First of May, no pants were sewn. At the height of the frost, my grandmother fell ill. She always endured every minor pain on her legs, and if she ever fell over, it was for a long time and seriously.

She was moved into the upper room, onto a clean, soft bed, the rugs were removed from the floor, the window was curtained, and in the upper room it became like in someone else's house - semi-dark, cool, it smelled like a hospital, and people walked on tiptoes and talked in whispers. During these days of my grandmother’s illness, I discovered how many relatives my grandmother had and how many people, including non-relatives, also came to take pity on her and sympathize with her. And perhaps only now did I, albeit vaguely, feel that my grandmother, who had always seemed to me like an ordinary grandmother, was a very respected person in the village, but I did not listen to her, quarreled with her, and a belated feeling of repentance was taking over me.

Grandmother breathed loudly and hoarsely, half-sitting in the pillows, and kept asking:

- Pokor... did you feed the child? There are simpletons... rolls... everything is in the pantry... in the chest.

Old women, daughters, nieces and various other people running the house reassured her: your child is fed, they say, your child is watered and there is no need to worry, and, as proof, they brought me to the bed and showed it to my grandmother. She with difficulty removed her hand from the bed, touched my head and said pitifully:

“When grandma dies, what are you going to do?” Who should I live with? Who should I sin with? Oh Lord, Lord!.. Give strength for the sake of the poor orphan... Guska! - she called Aunt Augusta. “If you’re going to milk a cow, the udder will be filled with warm water... She’s... spoiled by me... Otherwise, I won’t tell you...

And again they calmed the grandmother down and demanded that she talk less and not worry. But she still talked all the time, worried and worried, because, apparently, she didn’t know how to live otherwise.

When the holiday came, my grandmother began to worry about my pants. I myself consoled her, talked to her about the illness, but tried not to mention the pants. By this time, grandma had recovered a little and you could talk to her as much as you wanted.

- What kind of illness do you have, grandma? – as if for the first time I was curious, sitting next to her on the bed.

She, thin, bony, with rags in her split braids, with an old gasket hanging under her white shirt, slowly, in anticipation of a long conversation, began to talk about herself:

- I’ve been planted, father, worn out. All planted. From an early age in work, everything is in work. I was the seventh of my aunt and mother and raised my tithes... It’s easy to just say. How about growing?!

But she spoke about the pitiful only at first, as if for starters, and then she talked about various incidents from her long life. It turned out from her stories that there were more joys in her life than hardships. She did not forget about them and knew how to notice them in her simple and difficult life. Children were born - joy. The children were sick, but she saved them with herbs and roots, and not a single one died - that’s also a joy. New things for yourself or your children are a joy. A good harvest for bread is a joy. Fishing was productive - a joy. Once she put her hand out on her arable land, and she straightened it herself. There was just a famine, the bread was being harvested, one hand was stinging and the hand was not crooked - isn’t this joy?

I looked at my grandmother, marveled at the fact that she also had a father and mother, looked at her large, veiny working hands, at her wrinkled face, with an echo of the former blush, at her eyes, greenish like water in an autumn pond, at these braids of hers, sticking out like a girl’s, in different directions - and such a wave of love for my family and such a close person to the point of groaning rolled over me that I poked my face into her loose chest and buried my nose in the warm, grandmother-smelling shirt. In this impulse, my gratitude was to her for the fact that she remained alive.

“You see, I didn’t sew your pants for the holiday,” my grandmother stroked my head and repented. - She gave me hope and didn’t sew it.

– You’ll sew some more, there’s no hurry.

- Yes, just let God get up...

And she kept her word. I just started walking and immediately started cutting my pants. She was still weak, she walked from the bed to the table, holding on to the wall, measuring me with a tape with numbers, sitting on a stool. She was shaking, and she put her hand to her head:

- Oh God forgive me, what is wrong with me? Purely out of the blue!

But she still measured it well, drew chalk on the material, sized it up for me, and gave it to me twice so that it wouldn’t move too much, which made me happy. After all, this is a sure sign of grandmother’s return to real life and her complete recovery!

Grandma spent almost the whole day cutting out the pants, and started sewing them the next day.

Needless to say, how poorly I slept at night. He got up before it was light, and grandma, groaning and swearing, also got up and began to bustle about in the kitchen. She stopped every now and then, as if listening to herself, but from that day on she no longer lay down in the upper room, but moved to her camp bed, closer to the kitchen and the Russian stove.

In the afternoon, my grandmother and I picked up the sewing machine from the floor and placed it on the table. The machine was old, with worn-out flowers on the body. They appeared in separate curls and resembled fiery rattlesnakes. The grandmother called the machine “Zigner” and assured that it had no price, and each time she told in detail, with pleasure, to the curious that her mother, God rest in peace, also exchanged this machine from the exiles on the city pier for a one-year-old heifer, three bags of flour and a pint of melted butter. The exiles never returned this krinka, almost whole. Well, what demand is there from them - exiles, after all!

The Zigner machine chirps. Grandma turns the handle. He turns it carefully, as if gathering courage, thinking about further actions, and suddenly he speeds up the wheel and lets go, and you can’t even see the handle - it’s spinning like that. And it seems to me that now the machine will sew all the pants. But grandma will put her hand on the shiny wheel and calm the machine down, tame it; and when the machine stops, he will bite the thread with his tooth, put the fabric on his chest and carefully look to see if the needle is cutting through the fabric, and whether the seam is crooked.

I didn’t leave my grandmother’s that day because I had to try on pants. With each pass, the pants acquired more and more foundation and I liked them so much that I couldn’t speak or laugh with delight, and when my grandmother asked whether it was pressing here or pinching here, I shook my head and said in a strangled voice:

- N-no-e!

“Just don’t lie to me, later it will be too late to correct,” my grandmother instructed me.

“It’s true,” I confirmed quickly, so that grandma wouldn’t start flogging her pants and put off work.

The grandmother was especially concentrated and attentive when it came to the hole - she was still confused by some kind of wedge. If this wedge is inserted incorrectly, the pants will wear out before their time. I didn’t want this to happen, and I patiently endured fitting after fitting.

So, without lunch, she and I worked until dusk - I begged my grandmother not to be interrupted because of such a trifle as food.

When the sun went behind the cattle and touched the upper ridges, the grandmother hurried - they say, the cows will be brought in, and she is still digging - and instantly finished the work. She fitted a flap pocket on her pants, and although I would have preferred an internal pocket, I did not dare object. So the grandmother applied the finishing touches with a typewriter, once again placed the pants on her chest, pulled out the thread, rolled them up, and smoothed them over her stomach with her hand:

- Well, thank God. Afterwards I’ll tear the buttons off from something and sew them on.

I was patient. And by that time I had no strength left. Already the lamps were lit all over the village and people were having dinner, but I still sat next to the Signer typewriter, from which my blue trousers hung. I sat without lunch, without dinner and wanted to sleep. But grandma still didn’t go and didn’t go.

I don’t remember how my grandmother dragged me to bed, exhausted and exhausted, but I will never forget that happy morning on which I woke up with a feeling of festive joy.

On the headboard of the bed, neatly folded, hung new blue trousers, on them was a washed white striped shirt, and next to the bed spread the smell of burnt birch, my boots repaired by the shoemaker Zherebtsov, smeared with tar, with yellow, brand new vamps.

Immediately, my grandmother came from somewhere, began to dress me like a little child, and I limply obeyed her, and laughed uncontrollably, and talked about something, and asked something, and interrupted myself.

“Well,” said my grandmother, when I appeared before her in all my glory, in all my glory. Her voice trembled, her lips moved to the side, and she took hold of her handkerchief. “Your mother, the deceased, should have seen it...

I looked down gloomily. Grandmother stopped lamenting, hugged me to her and crossed me:

- Eat and go to your grandfather to take care of him.

- Alone, grandma?

- Of course, one. You're so big! Man!

- Oh, grandma! “From the fullness of my feelings, I hugged her neck and butted her head.

“Okay, okay,” my grandmother gently pushed me aside. - Look, Lisa Patrikeevna, if only you were always so affectionate and good...

Dressed to the nines, with a bundle containing fresh clothes for my grandfather, I left the yard when the sun was already high and everything in the village was living its ordinary, slow-moving life. First of all, I turned to the neighbors and plunged the Levontiev family into such confusion with my appearance that an unprecedented silence suddenly fell in the sodomy hut, and it became, this house, not like itself. Aunt Vasenya clasped her hands and dropped her stick. This stick hit one of the little ones on the head. He sang in a healthy bass voice. Aunt Vasenya picked up the victim in her arms, hushed him up, and did not take her eyes off me.

Tanka was next to me, all the guys surrounded me, touched the material and admired, and Tanka reached into her pocket, found a clean handkerchief there and fell silent in shock. Only her eyes expressed all the feelings, and from them I could guess how beautiful I am now, how she admires me, and to what unattainable height I have risen.

They squeezed me in, slowed me down, and I was forced to break free and make sure that they didn’t get dirty, crush me or eat me under the noise of a shangi - a present for my grandfather. All you have to do here is yawn!

In a word, I hurried to say goodbye, citing the fact that I was in a hurry, and asked if there was anything I needed to tell Sanka. Sanka Levontievsky helped his grandfather at our farm. During the summer, the Levontiev children were placed among people, and there they fed, grew and worked. Grandfather took Sanka with him for two summers. My grandmother first predicted that this convict would drive the old man crazy and there would be no way out of him, and then she was surprised how my grandfather and Sanka got along and were happy with each other.

Aunt Vasenya said that there was nothing to convey to Sanka, except for the order to obey grandfather Ilya and not drown in Mana if he decided to swim.

To my chagrin, at this pre-noon hour there were very few people on the street - the village people had not yet finished the spring harvest. The men had all gone to Manu to hunt for deer - their antlers were now at a valuable time, and haymaking was approaching, and everyone was busy with work. But still, here and there, children were playing, women were going to the consumer goods store, and, of course, they were paying attention to me, sometimes quite intently. Here comes Aunt Avdotya, grandma’s sister-in-law, to meet you. I'm going to whistle. I walk past and don’t notice Aunt Avdotya. She turns to the side, and I see amazement, I see how she spreads her arms, and I hear words that are better than any music:

- I feel sick! Isn’t this Vitka Katerinin?

"Of course it's me! Of course it's me!" - I want to convince Aunt Avdotya, but I restrain my impulse and only slow down my steps. Then Aunt Avdotya hits herself on the skirt, overtakes me in three leaps, begins to feel me, stroke me and say all sorts of nice words. The windows in the houses open, the women and old women of the village look out, and everyone praises me and says good things about my grandmother and all of us: here, they say, a guy grows up without a mother, and his grandmother takes him so that God forbid other parents to take their children, and so that I would honor my grandmother for this, obey her, and when I grow up, I would not forget her kindness.

Our village is big and long. I got tired, exhausted, while I walked it from end to end and took upon myself all the tribute of admiration for me and my outfit, and also for the fact that I was the only one going to my grandfather’s house. I was already covered in sweat when I left the outskirts.

He ran to the river and drank the cold Yenisei water from his palms. From the joy that was seething in me, I threw a stone into the water, then another, I was already carried away by this activity, but in time I remembered where I was going, why and in what form. And the path is not close - five miles. I walked, even ran at first, but I had to watch my step so as not to knock my yellow vamps off on the roots. He switched to a measured step, unfussy, peasant, as grandfather always walks.

A large forest began from the loan. The flowering boyars, the drooping pines, the birches, which had their share of growing next to the village and therefore were broken off into bare leaves in the winter, were left behind.

A level aspen tree with full, slightly brownish leaves climbed densely along the slope. A road with washed stones wound upward. Large gray slabs, scratched by horseshoes, were torn out by spring flows. To the left of the road there was a ravine, and in it there was a dark spruce forest, and in its midst there was the dull noise of a stream falling asleep for the summer. The hazel grouse whistled in the spruce forest, calling in vain for females. They had already sat on their eggs and did not respond to the rooster gentlemen. An old capercaillie was just fidgeting on the road, clapping and taking off with difficulty. He had already begun to shed, but he crawled out onto the road to peck at pebbles and use warm dust to knock out lice and fleas from himself. The bath is here for him! He would sit quietly in the thicket, otherwise the lynx would devour him, the old fool, in the light.

I lost my breath - the capercaillie was flapping its wings painfully. But there is no great fear, because it is sunny all around, it is light and everything in the forest is busy with its own business. And I knew this road well. I rode along it many times on horseback and in a cart, with my grandfather and grandmother, and with Kolcha Jr., and with various other people.

And yet I saw and heard everything as if all over again, probably because for the first time I was traveling alone to the village through the mountains and taiga. Further up the mountain the forest was thinner and thicker. The larches towered above the entire taiga and seemed to touch the clouds floating above the mountains.

I remembered how on this long and slow climb Kolcha Jr. always sang the same song, and the horse slowed down its steps and seemed to carefully place its hooves so as not to interfere with the man’s singing. And our horse himself was already there, at the end of the mountain, suddenly bursting into song, sending his “i-go-go-oo-o-o” through all the mountains and passes, but then embarrassedly waved his tail: they say, I know that I’m not very good with songs, but I couldn’t stand it, everything is very nice here and you are pleasant riders - you don’t whip me and you sing songs.

I belt out Kolcha Jr.’s song about a natural plowman and hear my voice rolling like a ball along the ravine and bouncing between the stone screes, funnyly repeating: “Hahal!”

So, with a song, I overcame the mountain. It became lighter. The sun kept getting higher and higher. The forest was thinning out, and there were more stones on the road, and they were larger, and therefore the whole road twisted around the cobblestones. The grass in the forest became thinner, but there were more flowers, and when I went to the outskirts of the forest, the entire edge of the forest was burning, overwhelmed by the heat.

At the top, along the mountains, our village fields began. At first they were reddish-black, and only here and there were potato seedlings lining them mouse-like and plowed stones glistening in the sun. But then everything was filled with the uniformly colored wavy greenery of thickening grains, and only boundaries, wide Siberian boundaries left by people who did not know how to break the earth, separated the fields from each other and, like the banks of rivers, did not allow them to merge together and become a sea.

The road here was covered with grass - goosefoot, blooming completely uninhibitedly, although people drove and walked along it. The plantain gathered strength to light its little gray candle, and all the grass here turned green and rejoiced, not suffocated by road dust. Along the side of the road, in the clearings, where stones from the fields, convicts, and cut-down bushes were dumped, everything grew haphazardly, grew large, and raged furiously. The tufts and carrots were trying to play the tune, and the frying plants here in the sun were already scattering sparks of petals in the wind, and the columbine bells hung gloomily in anticipation of the summer heat that was disastrous for them. In place of these flowers, locusts rose from the boundary thicket, stood in oblong buds, covered with fur, like frost, and were waiting in the wings to hang red, purple and colorful earrings along the outskirts of the fields.

Here is Korolev Log. There was still a dirty puddle in it, and I wanted to rush through it so that it splashed in different directions, but I immediately came to my senses, took off my boots, rolled up my pants and carefully crossed the lazy pothole, pacified by sedge, spotted with the hooves of cattle and the paws of birds.

I flew out of the ravine at a trot and, while I was putting on my shoes, I kept looking at the field that opened in front of me, and tried to remember where else I had seen it. A field that goes straight to the horizon, and in the middle of the field there are lonely large trees. The road dives right into the field, into the grain, quickly dries up in it, and over the road a swallow flies and chirps...

Ahh, I remembered! I saw the same field, only with yellow grains, in the painting of a school teacher, to whom my grandmother took me to enroll for winter studies. I was still really looking at this picture, and the teacher asked: “Do you like it?” I shook my head, and the teacher said that it was drawn by the famous Russian artist Shishkin, and I thought that he must have eaten a lot of cedar cones.

I walked up to one of the thickest larch trees and raised my head. It seemed to me that a tree, with greenish needles hanging thickly and sparsely in places, was floating across the sky, and a falcon, nestled on the top of the tree among last year’s black cones, as if burnt, was dozing, lulled by this slow and calm floating. There was a nest in the tree, built in a fork between a thick branch and a trunk. One day Sanka wanted to destroy this nest, climbed up to it, was about to throw out the wide-eyed hawks, but then the hawk screamed, flew at her, started flapping Sanka with her wings, gouging Sanka with her beak, tearing her with her claws - Sanka couldn’t resist and let go. Sanka would have been a Karachun, but he would have put his shirt on a branch, and okay, the seams of the canvas shirt turned out to be strong and held him. The men took Sanka down, forced him, of course, but that’s why Sanka’s eyes are red now: they say he’s bloodshot. A tree is a whole world! There are holes in its trunk, hollowed out by woodpeckers, and in each hole someone lives and plays tricks - sometimes some kind of beetle, sometimes a bird, sometimes a lizard. Nests are hidden in the grass and in the tangle of roots. Mouse and gopher burrows go under the tree. The anthill is leaned against the trunk. There is a prickly thorn here, there is a dead fir-tree, and there is a round green clearing near the larch. It can be seen from the exposed, scraped roots, how they wanted to reduce the clearing, cover it, but the roots of the tree resisted the plow and did not give up the clearing to be torn to pieces. The larch itself is hollow inside. Someone lit a fire under it a long time ago, and the trunk burned out. If the tree weren’t so big, it would have died long ago, but it still lives, difficultly, with dust, but it lives, extracts food from the ground with its plowed roots and also gives shelter to ants, mice and birds, beetles, moths and all other living creatures.

I climb into the coal interior of the larch, sit down on a rock-hard mushroom-lip protruding from the rotten trunk. There is a deep humming and creaking sound in the tree. It seems like it is complaining to me with a wooden, endlessly long cry, going along the roots from the ground. I crawled out of the black hollow and touched the tree trunk, covered with siliceous bark, sulfur deposits, scars and cuts, healed and unhealed, those that the damaged tree no longer has the strength and juices to heal.

“Oh, soot! What a bungler!” But the smoke has evaporated, and the hollow does not get dirty. It was stained with black just on one elbow and on the trouser leg. I spat on my palm, wiped the stain from my pants and slowly walked towards the road.

For a long time a wooden groan sounded within me, audible only in the hollow of a larch tree. I now know: a tree can also moan and cry in a visceral, inconsolable voice.

From this larch tree it is very close to the descent to the mouth of the Mana. I picked up my pace, and now the road began to slope down between two mountains. But I turned off the road and carefully began to make my way to the steep cut of the mountain, which descended at a rocky angle into the Yenisei and Manu.

From this steep slope you can see our arable land, our farmstead. I had been planning to look at all this from the mountain for a long time, but it didn’t work out because I was traveling with other people and they were either rushing to work or home from work.

Here, on the mane of Manskaya Mountain, the pine forest was low-growing, with paws twisted by the wind. Like the hands of old people, these paws were full of bumps and fragile joints. The boyarka grew here and was fiercely pungent. And all the bushes were dry, rough and clingy. But here there were even birch and aspen forests, clean, thin, racing to grow after the fire, which was still reminiscent of black fallen trees and eversion. Strawberries with green pimples huddled among the stumps and fallen trees, along with the flowing berries, drupes, cut grass and flowers. In one place I came across a thicket of dark green old oak trees, layered them with beremy, and now I walk and hear how they smell like the beauty of the taiga, and also a cave, and also hay, and wormwood seeds, and it smells like fairy tales, those fairy tales that are different to me since grandma says, if she is in a good mood and she has time.

Above the cliff, where there were no longer any trees, but only a thorn growing, red moss and broods of mountain turnips staining the stones, I stopped and stood until my legs were tired, then I sat down, forgetting that there were snakes here, and I was afraid of snakes more than anything in the world. For some time I didn’t breathe at all, didn’t even blink, I just looked and looked, and my heart beat loudly and quickly in my chest.

For the first time I saw from above the confluence of two large rivers - the Mana and the Yenisei. They hurried to meet each other for a long, long time, and having met, they flow separately and pretend that they are not interested in each other. Mana is faster than the Yenisei and lighter, although the Yenisei is also lighter. A whitish seam, like a breakwater, spreading ever wider, defines the border of two waters.

Yenisei splashes, pushes Mana in the side - as if he is flirting, and suddenly presses her into the corner of the Mansky bull. Mana boils, splashes out onto the rock, roars, but it’s too late - the bull is vertical and tall. Yenisei is assertive and strong - you can’t kick him.

Another river conquered. Having purred satedly under the bull, the Yenisei runs to the icy sea-ocean, rebellious, indomitable, sweeping away everything in its path. And what does Mana mean to him? He will also pick up not such rivers and rush off with him to the cold, midnight lands, where fate will then take me, and I will have the opportunity to see my native river, a completely different one, flooded with floodplains, tired from a long journey.

In the meantime, I look and look at the rivers, at the mountains, at the forests. The arrow at the junction of Mana and the Yenisei is rocky and steep. The root water has not yet subsided, and the string of the scree bank is still flooded. The rocks on the other side stand in the water, and where the rock begins and where its reflection is, you can’t tell from here. Stripes under the rocks. It tugs and twists the water with snouts of spiny stones.

But how much space there is above, above the Mana River! On the arrow there is a stone crown, further out there are scattered remains, and even further back order begins. The mountains rise up in waves from the chaos of gorges, noisy rivers and springs. There, above, are the stopped waves of the taiga, slightly lightened on the manes, secretly thick in the depressions. On the most hump-like splash of the taiga, a white cliff sparkles like a lost sail.

The distant passes turn mysteriously, unattainably blue, and it’s creepy to even think about. Between them the Mana River meanders, roars and thunders on the rapids and on the rifts.

Mana! We talk about her incessantly. She is the breadwinner: our arable land is here and there is reliable fishing on this river. There are a lot of animals, game, and fish on Mana! There are many rapids, rossokhs, mountains, rivers with enticing names: Karakush, Nagalka, Bezhat, Milya, Kandynka, Tykhty, Negnet.

And how wisely the wild river Mana acted! Before the mouth it took off and fell steeply to the left, towards a rocky arrow. Here, below me, she left a gentle angle of alluvial soil. In this corner of the arable land. The houses are on the banks of the Mana, and the fields are here. They rest against the mountains behind me and on the right, where I stand, also against the mountains, or rather, against the Manskaya River, which would exactly outline the boundary of what is permitted and does not allow the mountain to pass through it, but also the fields. Further beyond the village, towards the bend of Mana, behind which there is a white cliff, it is already hilly, there is a forest growing there and there are many large birches in the open air. People are crowding this forest, cutting down the summer shoots, leaving only those trees that they cannot cope with. Every year, first on one hill, then on another, our villagers throw out the green sheets of peasant arable land.

Persistent people work on this land!

I look for our place. It's not hard to find. She is distant. Each loan is a repetition of the house, the yard that the owner maintains in the village. The house was cut down in the same way, the yard was fenced off in the same way, the same canopy, the same canopy, even the platbands on the house are the same, but everything - the house, the yard, the windows, and the oven inside - are smaller in size. And there are still no winter flocks, barns and baths in the yard, but there is one wide summer paddock, covered with brushwood, and straw over the brushwood.

Behind our shelter, the path snakes along a rocky bullhead, always wet with mold and covered with moss. A key is drilled out of the goby into the crack, and above the key grows a crooked larch without a top and two alder trees. The roots of the trees were pinched by the goby, and they grow crooked, with a leaf on one side. Smoke fluffs up over our farm. Grandfather and Sanka are cooking something. I immediately wanted to eat.

But I just can’t leave, I can’t take my eyes off the two rivers, from these mountains shimmering in the distance, I can’t yet comprehend with my mind the immensity of the world.

No later than winter my father will return from lands not so remote as they say now, and will take me up this Mana River, to those tempting distances, with new family mine, and I will grab such a dashing meal there, I will take so much murtsovka, this unsweetened food that drives out weakness, that I will never forget either Manu or the time that I lived with my grandparents.

But I don’t know any of this yet, while I am free and joyful, like a sparrow that has wintered safely. And that’s why I suddenly yell to the world, to this land, to the Mana River, to the Yenisei. I don’t understand why I’m yelling. Then I roll down the mountain almost head over heels, and a stream of gray flagstone flows behind me with a landslide clang. Overtaking the stream, round boulders jump up and, together with me, rush into the frightenedly running Manskaya River.

The fragrant old oaks floated, the bundle with the rags floated, but playfulness attacked me - I ran along the cold river laughing, catching the bundle, catching the flowers and suddenly stopped:

- Boots!

I still stand and watch how the river runs and swirls above my boots and how exactly live fish and yellow-red vamps on my boots flash in the water.

“Blubber! You idiot! Got my pants wet! Got my boots wet! New pants!..”

I wandered ashore, took off my shoes, poured the water out of my boots, smoothed out my pants with my hands and began to wait for my clothes, my outfit, to dry.

The journey from the village was long and tiring. Instantly and completely unnoticed, I fell asleep to the sound of the Manskaya River. He must have slept very little, because when he woke up, his boots were still damp, but his vamps had become yellower and more beautiful - the tar had been washed off them. The sun dried my pants. They shriveled and lost their momentum. But I spat on my hands, smoothed out my pants, put them on, smoothed them out some more, put on my shoes and ran along the road easily and quickly, so that the dust exploded after me.

Grandfather was not in the hut, and Sanka was not there either. Something was knocking behind the hut in the yard. I put the bundle and flowers on the table and went into the yard.

Grandfather was kneeling under the wooden canopy and chopping tobacco puffs in a trough. An old shirt, patched at the elbows, had been let out of his pants and fluttered on his back. Grandfather’s neck is tarred by the sun, it’s not exactly a neck, but dried clay in the cracks. Hair, grayish with age, hung down in droops on his brown neck, and on the porches his shirt stuck out with large shoulder blades, like a horse’s.

I smoothed my hair to one side with my palm, pulled up the silk belt with tassels and immediately called out in a hoarse voice:

Grandfather stopped baling, put the ax aside, turned around, looked at me for a while, standing on his knees, and then stood up, wiped his hands on the hem of his shirt, and pressed me to him. He ran his hand, sticky from leaf tobacco, over my head. He was tall, not slouched yet, and my face reached only to his stomach, to his shirt, so soaked with tobacco that it was difficult to breathe, my nose itched and I wanted to sneeze. Like a kitten, my grandfather stroked me, and I did not move.

Sanka arrived on horseback, tanned, with his grandfather’s hair cut, and wearing mended pants and a shirt, which I guessed from the sweeping stitches, also mended by his grandfather.

Sanka is Sanka. He just drove the horse in, didn’t even say “hello”, and already stunned me with malice:

- A monk in new pants!

He wanted to add something else, but he held his tongue, he was ashamed of his grandfather. But he will say. Then he will tell you when grandpa is gone. It’s enviable because Sanka himself hasn’t sewed on new pants in a long time, and he never even dreamed of boots, and even with such vamps.

It turned out that I was in time for lunch. They ate masturbation - crumpled potatoes baked with milk and butter, ate fried kharyuz and sorozhki - Sanka pulled them in the evening. And then we drank tea with grandma’s soaked cookware.

- Did you swim on shangs? – Sanka was curious.

Grandfather didn’t ask anything, and so I told Sanka:

- Swimmed!

After lunch, I went down to the spring, washed the dishes and brought water at the same time. I put old oak trees in an old jar with a broken edge, and they, already wilted, soon rose up and curled up with thick greenery. The yellow flowers of the old oaks, littered with pollen, sparkled with sunlight.

- Hey! What a girl! – Sanka began to be sarcastic again.

But his grandfather, who was settling down to rest on the stove after dinner, cut him short:

- Don't grab the guy! Since his soul lies with a flower, that means his soul is like that. This means that he has his own meaning in this, his own meaning, which is not clear to us. Here.

The grandfather spoke his entire weekly quota of words and turned away, and Sanka immediately fell silent. That's it, brother! This is not for you to argue with Aunt Vasenya or my grandmother. Grandfather said - and that's it!

“The gadfly will subside, let’s go get it.” Boots and pants come later.

We went out into the yard, and I asked Sanka:

- Why is grandfather so talkative today?

I don’t know,” Sanka shrugged. - He must have been delighted to see such a dressed-up grandson. “Sanka picked his teeth with his nail and, looking at me with red, sarcastic eyes, asked: “What are we going to do, monk in new pants?”

- If you tease me, I’ll leave.

- Okay, okay, what a touchy guy! It's just make-believe.

We ran into the field, and Sanka showed me where he harrowed, and said that grandfather Ilya had already taught him to plow, and also added that he would quit school completely and, as he became more proficient in plowing, he would start earning money and buy himself non-track pants, and cloth ones.

These words finally convinced me - Sanka was stuck. But I had no idea what would follow next, because I was a simpleton, and still am a simpleton.

Behind a strip of densely growing oats near the road there was an oblong bog. There was almost no water left in it.

Along the edges, the mud, smooth and black as pitch, was covered with a web of cracks, and in the middle, near a palm-sized puddle, a large frog sat in mournful silence and wondered where to go now. In Mana and in the Manskaya River the water is fast - it will turn you upside down and carry you away. There is a swamp, but it is far away - you will be lost by the time you jump.

The frog suddenly jumped to the side and plopped down at my feet. It was Sanka who rushed across the boghole, so quickly that I didn’t even have time to gasp. He sat down on the other side of the basin and wiped his feet on a burdock.

- And you are weak!

- Should I? Weak-o? - I started to lose my temper, but then I remembered that I had fallen for Sanki more than once, and I can’t count how many troubles and misfortunes I had through this with all sorts of consequences. “No, brother, I’m not that small for you to fool me like before!”

- Just pick the flowers! - Sanka itched.

“Flowers! So what? Is this bad? Grandfather said something like..."

But then I remembered how in the villages they treat with contempt people who pick flowers and do all sorts of nonsense. In the village of hunters-hunters there was a huge abyss. Old men, women and children manage the arable land. And all the men on Mana are firing guns, fishing, and even getting pine nuts - selling their spoils in the city. Flowers from the market are brought as gifts to wives. Flowers made from shavings - blue, red, white - rustle. Women respectfully place market flowers on corners and attach them to icons for the gods. And in order to pick zharkovs, starodubs or saranok - this is something men never do and their children are taught from childhood to call people like Vasya the Pole, shoemaker Zherebtsov, stove maker Makhuntsov and all sorts of other self-propelled and stray people, greedy for entertainment, but unsuitable for hunting, idiots.

Here's Sanka there too! He won't bother with flowers. He is already a plowman, a sower, a worker! And I mean, so-so! A moron, then? A weakling?

I got so fired up, I got so angry that I rushed across the bog with a brave boom. In the middle of the pit, where the pensive frog was sitting, I immediately, with distinct clarity, realized that I was again on the oud. I tried to twitch once, twice, but I saw Sanka’s spreading footprints from the puddle completely to the side - a shiver went through me.

Taking in Sanka’s round face with those red eyes, like those of a drunkard, I said:

He said and stopped fighting.

Sanka was raging above me. He ran around the basin, jumped, stood on his hands:

- Aaah, I'm in trouble! Aha-a-a-a, I boasted! Aha-a-a, a monk in new pants! Pants, ha-ha-ha! Boots, ho-ho-ho!..

I clenched my fists and bit my lips so as not to cry. I knew that Sanka was just waiting for me to fall apart, to whimper, and he would completely tear me to pieces, helpless, trapped.

- Say: “Dear, pretty Sanechka, help me for Christ’s sake!” - I might drag you out! – Sanka suggested.

- Oh no? Stay until tomorrow.

I gritted my teeth and looked for a stone or some kind of lump. There was nothing. The frog crawled out of the grass again and looked at me with annoyance: they say, the last refuge has been recaptured, you wicked ones!

- Get out of my sight! Better go away, you bastard! Go away! Go away! Go away! – I shouted and began throwing handfuls of dirt at Sanka.

Sanka left. I wiped my hands on my shirt. Henbane leaves moved at the boundary above the basin - Sanka hid in them. From the pit I can only see this henbane, the top of this burdock, and I can also see part of the road, the one that rises to Manskaya Mountain. Just recently I walked along this road happy, admired the area, and did not know any boghole, and did not know any grief. And now I’m stuck in the mud and waiting. What am I waiting for?

Sanka crawled out of the weeds: apparently, the wasps drove him out, or maybe he didn’t have enough patience. He's eating some grass. There must be a bundle. He's always chewing on something - he's a pot-bellied crab-eater!

- Shall we sit here?

- No, I'll fall soon. My legs are already tired.

Sanka stopped chewing the bunch, the carelessness disappeared from his face: he must be beginning to understand where things were heading.

- But, you bastard! – he shouts at me and quickly pulls off his pants. - Just fall!

I try to stay on my feet, but they are so painful below the knees that I can barely feel them. I'm shaking from the cold and shaking from fatigue.

- Headless nag! - Sanka climbs into the mud and swears. - How much I fooled him! As soon as he doesn’t inflate, he still inflates!

Sanka tries to get close to me from one side, but doesn’t work from the other. Viscous. Finally he approached and shouted:

- Give me your hand!.. Come on! I'll leave! I'll really leave. You'll disappear here along with your new pants!..

I didn't give him my hand. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me, but he himself, like a stake in soft ground, went deeper into the pit. He abandoned me and rushed to the shore, with difficulty freeing his legs. His traces were quickly covered with black liquid, bubbles appeared in the traces, but immediately burst with a spike and gurgle.

Sanka on the shore. He looks at me, fearfully silent. And I look past him. My legs are completely weak, the dirt seems like a soft bed to me. I want to dive into it. But I’m still alive from the waist up and can barely think—I’ll fall and choke.

- Hey, why are you silent? – Sanka asks in a whisper.

I don’t answer him anything to this.

- Hey, dunduk! Have you lost your tongue?

- Follow grandpa, you bastard! – I squeak through my teeth. - I’m going to fall now.

Sanka howled, cursed like a drunken man, and rushed to pull me out of the mud. He almost pulled my shirt off and began to pull my arm so hard that I roared in pain. I wasn't sucked in any further. My feet must have reached hard, rocky ground, or perhaps frozen ground. Sanka was neither strong nor smart enough to pull me out. He was completely confused and didn’t know what to do or what to do.

- Follow grandpa, you bastard!

Sanka, his teeth chattering, put his pants on right over his dirty feet.

- Darling, don’t fall! - he shouted in a voice that was not his own and rushed to the castle. - Don't ba-da-a-ay, dear... Don't ba-da-a-ay!..

His words came out with a bark, some kind of bark. Apparently Sanka roared in fright. It serves him right! Anger seemed to give me more strength. I raised my head and saw two people descending from Manskaya Mountain. Someone is leading someone by the hand. So they disappeared behind the talniks, into the river. They must be drinking or washing their face. Everyone always washes there when it's hot. This is the kind of river – murmuring and fast. No one can get past it.

Or maybe they sat down to rest? Then it's a lost cause. But from behind the mound a head appears in a white scarf, even at first only a white scarf, and then the forehead, and then the face, and then another person becomes visible - it’s a girl. Who is this coming? Who? Yes, you go quickly!..

I don’t take my eyes off the two people walking exhaustedly along the road. I recognized my grandmother by her gait, by her scarf, or by the gesture of her hand, pointing the girl straight at me, and most likely in the field behind the bog.

- Ba-abonka! Sweetie-ah!.. Oh, grandma-ah! – I roared, fell into the mud and saw nothing else.

In front of me were the slopes of this damned pit, washed away by water. You can’t even see the henbane, even the frog jumped off somewhere.

- Ba-a-a-ba-a-a! Ba-abonka-ah! Oh, I'm drowning!..

- I feel sick, sick! Oh, my heart felt it! How did you, asp, get there? – I heard my grandmother scream above me. - Oh, it’s not in vain that it sucked in the pit of your stomach!.. But who gave you that idea? Oh, hurry up!..

And the words came to me, thoughtfully and condemningly spoken in the voice of Tanka Levontievskaya:

“Aren’t the fishing lines dragging you there?!” A board slapped, then another, and I felt myself being picked up and, like a rusty nail from a log, slowly pulled. I heard my boots being taken off, I wanted to shout to my grandmother about it, but I didn’t have time. Grandfather pulled me out of my boots, out of the mud. Stretching his legs with difficulty, he backed towards the shore.

- Shoes! Boots! - Grandma pointed to the pit, where the stirred up mud was swaying, all covered in bubbles and moldy greenery.

The grandfather waved his hand hopelessly, stood up on the fence and began wiping his feet with burdocks. And my grandmother, with trembling hands, picked up handfuls of dirt from my new pants and triumphantly, as if proving to someone, shouted:

- No, no, you can’t fool my heart! Just like this bloodsucker is over the threshold, and I’m already aching, and I’m aching... And you, old man, where were you looking? Where have you been? What if the child died?!

- He didn’t die...

I lay with my nose buried in the grass and cried from self-pity, from resentment. Grandma began to rub my feet with her palms, and Tanka rummaged around my nose with a spoon, cursing back and forth with grandma:

- Oh, convict Shanka! I’ll tell folder Levontius everything!.. – and shook her finger into the distance.

I looked where she was threatening, and noticed dust swirling near the shelter. Sanka was itching to go to the farm, to the river, to take refuge somewhere until better times.

… I’ve been lying on the stove for four days. My legs are wrapped in an old blanket. Grandmother rubbed them three times a night with anemone infusion, ant oil and something else that was corrosive and smelly. My legs were now burning and pinching so much that I was ready to howl, but my grandmother assured me that this is how it should be - it means that my legs are cured if they feel the burning and pain, and she talked about how and who she cured in her time and what thanks she received for this.

Grandmother could not catch Sanka. As I guessed, the grandfather takes Sanka out from under the retribution planned by the grandmother. He either dressed Sanka up to herd cattle at night, or sent him off to the forest with some kind of reserve. Grandmother was forced to vilify grandfather and me, but we are accustomed to this, and grandfather just groaned and smoked his cigarette even more, and I giggled into the pillow and winked at my grandfather.

My grandmother washed my pants, but my boots remained in the trench. Sorry for the boots. The pants are also not what they were. The material does not shine, the blue has faded, the trousers have faded at once, withered like old oak flowers in a jar. “Oh, Sanka, Sanka!” – I sighed. But for some reason I already felt sorry for Sanka.

– Is rematization bothering you again? - Grandma stood up to approach the stove, hearing my sigh.

- It's hot here.

– The heat does not ache the bones. Be patient. Otherwise you will become debilitated. - And she put her hand to the window, looking out: - And where did he send this adversary? Look, my mother, they are coming to me in alliance! Well, wait, just wait!..

And then the grandfather missed the chicken. This motley hen has been trying to produce chicks for three summers now. But the grandmother believed that there were more suitable chickens for this task, she bathed the pestle in cold water, whipped it with a broom and forced it to lay eggs. The Corydalis showed stubborn independence, quietly laid eggs somewhere and, not looking at the grandmother’s prohibition, hid and hatched the offspring.

Grandma is looking for Sanka, looking for the chicken and can’t find her, and she’s no longer interested in scolding my grandfather and me.

In the evening, a light suddenly appeared in the window, flickered, crackled - it was behind the key, on the river bank, that the hut made by the hunters in the spring burst into flames. Our corydalis fluttered out of the hut with a panicky cackling and, without touching the ground, flew up to the hut, all disheveled and cackling.

An investigation began, and it soon became clear that it was Sanka who took the tobacco from his grandfather’s trough, smoked in the hut and set a spark.

“He’ll burn the place down without even blinking,” the grandmother made noise, but the noise was somehow not very stern, menacing - she must have softened because of the chicken.

Today she told her grandfather that Sanka should not hide anymore, but should spend the night at home. After lunch, the grandmother rushed off to the village. She says she has a lot of things to do there. But she says it like that to divert attention. She, of course, always has enough to do, but the main thing is that she cannot do without people. Without her, in the village, like without a commander in a war, there is confusion and lack of discipline.

Whether because of the silence, or because my grandmother had established peace with Sanka, I fell asleep and woke up at sunset, all bright and relieved. He fell down from the stove and almost screamed. In that same jar with a broken edge, a huge bouquet of scarlet locusts with curved petals was blazing.

Summer! Summer is completely here!

Sanka stood at the lintel, looked at me, and snorted his saliva into the hole between his teeth on the floor. He chewed sulfur, and a lot of saliva accumulated in him.

- Bite off the sulfur?

- Take a bite.

Sanka bit off a piece of brown sulfur. I also began to chew it with a snap.

– Good sulfur! A larch from the rafting washed up on the shore, and I picked it up. – Sanka was drooling from the stove and all the way to the window. I also lunged, but it hit me on the chest.

- Do your legs hurt?

- Nope. Just a little. I'll run tomorrow.

– Kharyuz began to take good shots at the pout and at the cockroach too. Soon he will go to filly.

- Take me?

- So Katerina Petrovna let you go!

- She’s not there!

- He’ll hide!

- I'll ask for time off.

- Well, if you ask for time off, that’s another matter. - Sanka turned back, sniffed the air, then crawled up to my ear: - Are you going to smoke? Here! I stole yours from grandpa. - He shows a handful of tobacco, a scrap of paper and a piece of a matchbox. - Smoking peacefully. Did you hear, no, how I set fire to the hut yesterday? The chicken flew like a turman! Hilarious! Katerina Petrovna crosses herself: “Lord, save! Christ, save!..” Hilarious!

“Oh, Sanka, Sanka,” I repeated my grandmother’s words, completely forgiving him for everything. – Don’t blow your desperate head off!..

- Nishtya-ak! – Sanka waved it off with relief and took the splinter out of his heel. A drop of blood rolled out from the lingonberry. Sanka spat on his palm and rubbed his heel.

I looked at the gently red rings of the locusts, at their stamens, like hammers, protruding from the flowers, and listened to the busy swallows fussing and talking among themselves in the attic. One swallow is dissatisfied with something - he talks and talks and screams, like Aunt Avdotya at her girls when they come home from a party.

In the yard, grandfather is shaking his ax and coughing. Behind the palisade of the front garden, a blue patch of the river is visible. I put on my now lived-in, familiar pants, in which I can sit anywhere and on anything.

- Where are you going? – Sanka sternly shook his finger. - It is forbidden! Grandma Katerina didn’t order it!

I didn’t answer him, but went up to the table and touched my hand to the red-hot, but not burning, sabers.

- Look, grandma will quarrel. Look up! Brave! - Sanka muttered. Sanka distracts me, talking with her teeth. “Then you’ll get sick again...

“What a kind grandfather, he picked me up,” I helped Sanka get out of a difficult situation. Little by little he backed out of the hut, pleased with this outcome of the matter.

I slowly made my way outside into the sun. My head was spinning. My legs were still shaking and clicking. Grandfather, under the canopy, put aside the ax with which he was trimming the lithos. He looked at me, as always, in his own way: softly, affectionately. Sanka was cleaning our Hawk with a scraper, and apparently he was ticklish, and he was trembling with his skin and kicking his leg.

- B-but-oh, you dance with me! – Sanka shouted at the gelding and winked at me patronizingly.

How warm, green, noisy and fun it is around! Swifts circle over the river, falling to meet their shadows on the water. The tiles are chirping, the wasps are buzzing, the logs are racing across the water. Soon it will be possible to swim - the Lydia swimmers will come. Maybe they’ll allow me to swim, the fever hasn’t returned, I’m just a little dizzy and my legs are a little aching. Well, if they don’t allow it, I’ll slowly buy myself a bath. I’ll go to the river with Sanka and take a swim.

Sanka and I took Hawk to the river. He descended the rocky bullhead, cautiously spreading his front legs like a bench and slowing himself down with his worn, nail-pierced hooves. And he wandered into the water himself, stopped, touched the reflection in the water with his flabby lips, as if he had kissed the same old, piebald horse, and shook himself off.

We splashed water on him, scrubbed his bare back and scruff covered with calluses from work. The hawk trembled its skin in joyful languor and moved its feet. Schools of minnows scurried about in the water, gathering for mud.

A grandfather stood on the bull in his loose shirt, barefoot, and the breeze ruffled his hair, moved his beard and rinsed his unbuttoned shirt on his convex, forked chest. And the grandfather was reminiscent of a Russian hero who took a break during the campaign - he stopped to look at his native land and breathe in its healing air. That's good! The hawk is bathing. Grandfather stands on a stone bull, forgotten, summer has rolled up in noise, bustle and boring troubles. Every bird, every midge, flea and ant is busy. The berries are about to come, then the mushrooms, then the potatoes will ripen, the bread, the vegetable garden will trample all over the ridges - you can live in this world! And the joke is on them, with the pants, and with the boots too! I'll make some more money. I'll make money.