Village history. A true story told by my grandfather, a famous prankster in the village! Village stories

Vovka stood on the slimy bridge, held the fishing rod with both hands and, biting his tongue, carefully watched the plastic float.
The float swayed, not daring to either go under the water or lie on its side...
There was no bite, the crucian carp took it poorly and uncertainly, they sucked the bloodworms for a long time and did not want to be spotted. All morning, Vovka caught only two - they were now floating in an aluminum can, stained with dry duckweed.
Behind him, something cracked, as if shooting, someone cursed muffledly, and Vovka turned around - some men were coming out of the protected hemlock thickets, in which the ruins of the old collective farm poultry house were hidden. How many there were, and who they were, Vovka couldn’t tell; he immediately turned away, pressed the rod more firmly into his stomach and stared at the float, drunkenly staggering among the silver reflections.
- Boy, what kind of village is this? - they asked him. The voice was unpleasant, hoarse, smelling of tobacco and fumes.
“Minchakovo,” answered Vovka.
The float sank a little and froze. Vovka held his breath.
-Do you have a policeman living here somewhere?
- No... - Vovka understood that it was impolite to talk to adults with his back turned to them, but he couldn’t distract himself now - the float tilted and slowly moved to the side - which means the crucian carp was large and strong.
-Are there any strong men? We should help, we're stuck there.
“There are no men,” Vovka said quietly. - Only grandparents.
There was a whisper behind him, then something shot again - it must have been a dry branch under a heavy foot - and the peeling float abruptly sank under the water. Vovka pulled the fishing rod, and his heart sank - the light birch rod bent, the stretched fishing line cut through the water, his palms felt the living thrill of the fish caught on the hook. Vovka had a fever - she wouldn’t have lost her temper, she wouldn’t have left!
Forgetting about everything, he pulled the prey towards him, not risking lifting it out of the water - the crucian carp has a thin lip, it will burst - that’s all they saw. He fell to his knees, grabbed the fishing line with his hands, threw the fishing rod back, leaned towards the water - there it was, a thick side, golden scales! He did not immediately, but he hooked the crucian carp by the gills with his fingers, pulled it out of the water, grabbed it under the belly with his left hand, squeezed it so that the crucian carp grunted, and carried it to the shore, marveling at the catch, not believing his luck, gasping with happiness.
What did he care about any men now!

Minchakovo is hidden in the very wilderness of the Alevteevsky district, among swamps and forests. The only road connected the village with the regional center and with the whole world. In the off-season it became so muddy that only a caterpillar tractor could pass over it. But the villagers did not have tractors, and therefore they had to stock up on provisions in advance - a month or two in advance.
It was this road that, apart from the local residents, was of no use to anyone, and the villagers saw the cause of all their main troubles. If there was asphalt here, and there was a bus going to the regional center, would the youth leave? If there were a normal road, and work would be found - there is peat all around, there is an old gravel quarry, there was once a sawmill, a poultry house, a calf barn. Now what?
But on the other hand, there is a road to Brushkovo, but the troubles there are the same. Two and a half residential buildings remain - old people live in two, and summer residents come to one in the summer. In Minchakovo, summer residents also sometimes come, and there are more people - ten households, seven grandmothers, four grandfathers, and even Dima is weak-minded - he is well over forty, but he is still like a child, now catching grasshoppers, now burning dry grass in the clearings, now mocks frogs - not out of malice, but out of curiosity.
So maybe it’s not the roads?..

Vovka returned to dinner. Grandmother Varvara Stepanovna was sitting at the table, laying out cards. Seeing her grandson, she jerked her head - don’t interfere, they say, it’s not up to you now. She saw something bad in the cards, Vovka immediately understood this, did not ask anything, slid into a dark corner where clothes hung, and climbed up the stove along the wide steps of the stairs.
The bricks still retained heat. In the morning, the grandmother baked pancakes on the coals - she threw a bundle of brushwood intercepted with wire into the oven, placed two birch logs next to it, called her grandson to light the fire - she knew that Vovka loved to strike matches and watch how the birch bark curls curled with a bang, how the thin ones burned twigs crumble into ash.
The pancakes took an hour to bake, but the heat lasted for half a day...
Vovka liked the stove. It was like a fortress in the middle of the house: if you climb on it, pull the heavy ladder behind you - now try to reach it! And you can see everything from under the ceiling, and you can look at the kitchen, and into the room, and into the nook where clothes hang, at the closet and at the dusty shelf with icons - what’s going on where...
From whom Vovka was hiding on the stove, he himself did not know. He was just calmer there. Sometimes his grandmother goes somewhere, leaves him alone, and it immediately becomes creepy. The quiet hut becomes as if it were dead, and it is scary to disturb it, like a real dead person. You lie there, listen intently, and you begin to hear different things: the floorboards will creak of their own accord, something will rustle in the stove, it’s as if someone is running across the ceiling, or there will be a clinking sound under the floor. I would turn on the TV at full volume, but grandma doesn’t have a TV. The radio is loud, but you can’t reach it from the stove, and you’re afraid to get down. Sometimes Vovka can’t stand it, he’ll jump off the stove, rush across the room, fly up onto a stool, turn the round handle - and immediately back: his heart seems to have come off and is pounding against his ribs, his soul is in his heels, his scream is clenched between his teeth, the announcer’s voice flies after him...
Feet pounded on the porch, the front door creaked - someone was coming into the house, and grandmother, leaving her cards, went up to meet the guests. Vovka, embarrassed by strangers, closed the curtain, took the book, and turned on his side.
- Is it possible, mistress?! - they shouted from the doorway.
-What are you asking? - Grandmother responded angrily. - Come in...
There were many guests - Vovka felt their presence without looking - but only one person spoke to his grandmother:
- They stopped at Anna's.
- How many are there?
- Five. They ordered everyone to gather immediately and come to the hut.
- Why, they said?
- No. They seem to have one boss there. He is in charge. The rest are sitting on the street, watching... What do you say, Varvara Stepanovna?
- I won’t say anything.
- What do your cards say?
- How long ago did you start listening to my cards?
- Yes, as the need arose, so he became.
“There’s nothing good in cards,” the grandmother said dryly. - Well, that doesn’t say anything yet.
Vovka guessed that they were talking about those people who came out of the hemlock thickets, and immediately lost interest in the conversation. Just think, strangers came to the village for help - their car was stuck. Maybe hunters; maybe some foresters or geologists.
Vovka loved to read, especially in bad weather, when the wind blew through the chimney and the rain rustled on the roof. The only trouble was that my grandmother had few books - all with blue stamps from the long-ruined school library.
“If they tell you to go, let’s go,” the grandmother said loudly. And she added: “But I won’t let Vovka in.”
“That’s right,” a male voice agreed with her, and Vovka only now realized who was speaking – grandfather Semyon, whom grandmother always called Cleaver behind her back for some reason. “I didn’t even tell Dima the fool to take him.” You never know...

When the guests left, the grandmother called her grandson. Vovka pulled back the curtain and looked out:
- Yes, ba?
- You, hero, did you catch anything today?
- Yeah... - Vovka sat down, dangling his legs from the stove, resting the back of his head against the ceiling beam. - Like this! “He slashed himself on the forearm with his palm, as real fishermen did when they caught roach and bleak on the embankment in the city.
- Where is he? What's in the tank? Did this one fit?
Grandma called a tank a forty-liter flask standing under the drain. In good rain, the flask was filled in a matter of minutes, and then the grandmother took water from it for chicken drinkers, which looked like upside-down soldiers' cast iron helmets. Vovka has adapted to throwing his catch into the “tank”. Each time, returning from fishing, he poured crucian carp into an aluminum flask, sprinkled bread crumbs into it and looked for a long time into its dark interior, hoping to discern the mysterious fish life there. At first, grandma cursed and said that it was no good keeping crucian carp in a tank; if you caught it, then immediately put it under the knife and into the frying pan, but one day Vovka, embarrassed, admitted that he felt sorry for the fish, and that’s why he waited until they, dead, began to float up. belly up. The grandmother grumbled, but she understood her grandson - and from then on she waited with him for the fish to weaken; I only took into the frying pan those that were barely alive floating on top - those that the crows and neighbor cats had not yet managed to catch.
“I’ll take it, your crucian carp,” said Varvara Stepanovna. - I need it, Vova.
Vovka did not argue - he felt that the grandmother was seriously alarmed, and that her desire was not an empty whim.
- Don’t go for walks anymore. Stay at home for now.
- OK…
The grandmother nodded, looking intently at her grandson, as if trying to make sure that he really wouldn’t disappear anywhere, and then went outside. She returned with a crucian carp in her hand - and Vovka was again amazed at the unprecedented catch. Throwing the crucian carp onto the kitchen table, for some reason the grandmother removed the buckets of water from the bedside table and began to move it to the side. The bedside table was heavy - made of oak boards covered with plywood. She rested her strong legs on the floor, not wanting to leave her home, and yet she moved little by little, collecting the rag rug with an accordion.
- Let me help! - Vovka suggested, watching the grandmother’s torment from behind the chimney.
- Sit! - she waved her hand. - I’m almost done.
Pushing aside and unfolding the bedside table, the grandmother knelt down and rattled the iron. Vovka from the stove didn’t see what she was doing there, but he knew that there was some kind of chain under the bedside table. Apparently, the grandmother was now fiddling with this chain.
- What's there, ba? - Unable to resist, he shouted.
- Sit on the stove! “She looked out from behind the bedside table, like a soldier peeks out from behind cover. In her hand was an unlocked lock. - And don’t peek!.. - She took a knife with a worn black blade out of the table drawer, took the crucian carp, looked sternly at her grandson, and said angrily: - Shoot! - And Vovka hid behind the pipe, thinking that the grandmother did not want him to see how she would release the intestines of a living fish, slapping its tail.
Having adjusted the mattress and pillow, Vovka lay down on his back and pulled out books from the pile old textbook biology, opened it to a page where the internal structure of a fish was depicted, and began to look with interest at the picture on which an unknown schoolboy had left an ink blot.
Something creaked and knocked in the kitchen. Vovka did not pay attention to the noise. It is said - don’t peek, which means you must obey. Grandmother Varvara Stepanovna is strict, everyone listens to her, even grandfathers come to her to consult...
After looking at the fish and dreaming about future catches, Vovka put down his textbook and picked up a book with poems. The poems were strange, slightly incomprehensible, they fascinated and a little frightened. The pictures were even more frightening - dark, foggy; people looked like monsters, a strong wind ruffled dirty clothes, bare trees, like chopped off chicken paws, scratched their claws at the black clouds, sheer rocks rose into the sky, and the menacing sea raged and tossed - there was a lot of sea in this book.
Vovka became engrossed in reading, lost his sense of time - and then seemed to wake up. It was quiet in the hut, only the walkers on the wall clicked like a pendulum, and in these clicks one could feel a strange musical rhythm.
- Bah? - Vovka called.
Silence...
- Bah! - he felt terrified, as happened more than once when he was left alone with this house. - Bah!..
He looked towards the kitchen. The nightstand now seemed like a hulking beast that had deliberately stood across the kitchen. There seemed to be something threatening in the brought rug.
“Baaa...” Vovka said plaintively and looked at the radio.
He was ashamed of his fear and did not understand it. He wanted to run out into the street - but even greater fear lurked in the dark corridor.
“Bah...” He lowered his foot onto the stairs, and the board-step creaked in a familiar way, slightly reassuring him. He slid lower, feeling his heart speeding up, overtaking the clicking of the pendulum.
- Bah...
Grandma is missing. She disappeared. He didn't hear the doors slamming. She was in the kitchen. And now she's gone. Only the buckets are standing. And a nightstand. And the rug...
- Bah...
He climbed down to the floor, telling himself not to be afraid. On tiptoe, gritting his teeth, holding his breath, he stepped towards the kitchen and craned his neck.
A swollen drop fell from the sink's nipple and hit the iron sink - Vovka shuddered and almost screamed.
- Bah...
My legs were shaking.
He forced himself to come out from behind the stove, involuntarily raised his head, met his gaze with the black face on the icon, and froze in indecision. Then he slowly reached out to the nightstand and carefully touched it with his hand. And he stepped closer - he pulled himself into the kitchen.
- Bah...
He saw a dark hole in the floor.
And a wooden lid covered with iron strips.
And a chain.
And the castle.
He realized where his grandmother had gone, and the tension released him. But my heart did not stop, and my legs still trembled.
- Bah? - He leaned towards the hole in the underground. It was dark below, and cold and earthy rot wafted from there. On the dusty steps hung thick nets with cocoons of unborn spiders and with dry skeletons of dead spiders.
- Bah! - Vovka didn’t know what to do. He could not go down into the underground - he was afraid of the deep darkness, and the heavy smell, and disgusting spiders. It seemed to him that as soon as he stepped off the stairs, the massive lid on its hinges would fall by itself, and the chain would rattle its links, crawling into the brackets, and the lock would jump off the table, clattering its handle like a jaw...
Vovka was afraid to even just lower his head.
And he stood on his knees, quietly moaning:
- Ba... Well, ba...
And when he heard a strange sound - as if a giant crucian carp was being pressed hard on the belly - and when he thought there was movement in the swampy darkness - he jumped out of his seat, flew up onto the stove, picked it up, pulled the ladder behind him and dived headlong under the blanket.

Having got out of hiding, the first thing the grandmother did was look at her grandson. Asked:
- Why is he so pale? Scared?.. You seemed to be calling me, or did I hear it?
- What do you have there, ba?
- Where?
- In the underground.
- A! All sorts of old stuff, check it out. But don't go there! - She shook her finger at Vovka and hurried:
- Our guys are already getting ready, I need it too...
She closed the hole in the underground, pushed in two latches, pulled a rattling chain through the staples, and locked it. She moved the bedside table to a new place - right next to the washbasin. She covered the lid of the hole with a rug, placed a stool on top, and a bucket of water on it. She looked around, dusting off her hands and apron, and went to the door.
- Bah! - Vovka called out to her.
- What?
- Turn on the radio.
“Oh, organ grinder,” the grandmother said with disapproval, but turned on the radio.
When she left, Vovka got off the stove, turned up the volume and ran back to his fortress - to the books, notebooks and pencils, to the chess pieces and chewed plastic soldiers. The concert was broadcast on the radio upon request. First a funny song Alla Pugacheva sang about an incompetent wizard, then the benevolent presenter congratulated the birthday people for a long time and boringly, and after that there was some music - Vovka kept waiting for the singer to join, but he never did. It seems that no one was able to write words for such music - probably it was too complicated.
He tried to compose something himself, wrote out three pages, but nothing came of it either.
Then there was news, but Vovka didn’t listen to it. The announcer's voice spoke about uninteresting things: about elections, about dry summers and forest fires, about the regional Olympics and about escaped prisoners.
Vovka was reading an adult book. It was called “The Headless Horseman”.
And when the weather forecast ended the news and the humorous program began, the grandmother returned to the house. Muttering something angry, she turned off the radio that was rumbling with laughter, sat down by the window and began laying out the cards.

Varvara Stepanovna had no children of her own - God did not give it, although she had two husbands in her life: the first was Grisha, the second was Ivan Sergeevich. She married Grisha, an accordion player and chef, as a girl. I got along with Ivan Sergeevich, a retired agronomist from the regional center, almost an old woman.
Both times family life it didn’t work out: a year after the wedding, Grisha was stabbed to death at the city market, where he was transporting state farm potatoes, and Ivan Sergeevich did not live even two years after registration - he rode a bicycle to the regional center to visit his relatives and was hit by a car.
Varvara Stepanovna saw her stepdaughter only at the funeral. Ivan Sergeevich’s daughter was dressed in black and smart, teary eyes she was thickly lined with mascara, and her dyed red hair stood out from under her black scarf like tongues of flame.
At the wake they sat next to each other, got to know each other and started talking. The stepdaughter's name was Nadya, she had a husband, Leonid, and a son, Vova. They lived in a city three hundred kilometers from Minchakov, they had a three-room apartment, an imported car, money work and a serious illness of a child.
Nadya had several photographs with her, and she showed them to Varvara Stepanovna.
Varvara Stepanovna looked at one of the cards for a particularly long time.
She really liked her blond, smiling grandson.
There was something of Ivan Sergeevich in him. And, oddly enough, from Grisha the accordion player too.

Soon the strangers arrived. Grandmother, apparently, was waiting for them - it was not in vain that she looked out the window and listened to something. And when she saw two men walking widely on the path, she immediately got up, mixed the cards, and shouted to her grandson:
- Get on the floor, hide under your clothes and don’t show your nose until I tell you! Bad people, Vovushka, come to us!..
The wooden flooring between the stove and the wall was filled with empty baskets and littered with old felt boots and rags. Vovka was buried there more than once, frightening his grandmother with his disappearance - but come on, it turns out that she knows his secret hiding place!
The porch groaned under heavy feet.
- Climbed up?
- Yes.
- And keep quiet, Vovushka! Whatever happens here! You're not at home!..
The door slammed. Feet stomped across the room.
- Do you live alone? - asked a voice that smelled of tobacco and fumes.
“One,” agreed the grandmother.
- It seems like it was your grandson who was fishing.
- My.
- Why are you pouring water, that you’re alone?
- He doesn’t live like that. He's visiting.
- Not back yet?
- No.
- Look, grandma! My whole ass is covered in scars, I can hear a whistle from a kilometer away.
- I’m telling you, he’s not there yet.
- Well, no, there’s no trial... Listen, puppeteer, break her box of hipish.
There was a sound of impact, glass clanked, something crunched, fell, and crumbled. Vovka cringed.
- Where is the TV? - asked a hoarse voice.
- I don't have a TV.
- Do you have a bicycle?
- No.
- Puppeteer, run around...
For some time no one said anything, only the floorboards groaned, the soles of boots rattled, cabinet doors creaked, something tipped over and fell. Then, for a couple of seconds, there was such silence that Vova’s ears were blocked.
“Okay,” said a hoarse voice. - Live for now.
Hands clapped on knees, the chair creaked. Vovka, biting his lip, listened to the strangers leaving the house and was afraid to breathe.
The grandmother sobbed and stopped short. She muttered something - either a prayer or a curse.
And it became quiet again - even the walkers didn’t click.
- Get out, Vova... They're gone...
Vovka crawled out from under his clothes, pushed aside his felt boots, got out from behind the baskets, came down from the stove, walked up to his grandmother, and pressed himself against her. She hugged him with one arm and circled him with the other:
- So why? Fiends...
A mangled speaker fell out of the broken grille of the radio point - like a crushed tongue from broken teeth. Overturned cabinet drawers scattered jars, buttons, photographs, letters, postcards, and Vova’s expensive medicines on the floor. The clock shot a spring through the tulle curtain. Clothes lay in a pile under the hanger, the bedding had been thrown off the bed, the mirror, cloudy with age, was askew, three shabby sperm whale suitcases had emptied their contents...
Vovka had no idea that his grandmother had so many things.

At night, Vovka couldn’t sleep. He closed his eyes and saw a float swinging among the glare. It was hot. The light was on in the kitchen, where my grandmother was drinking tea with her neighbors. They whispered monotonously, quietly rattled cups and saucers, rustled the wrappers of stale sweets - the sounds sometimes overwhelmed Vovka, drowned out his consciousness, and he forgot for a while. It began to seem to him that he was sitting next to the guests, sipping scalding tea and also saying something important and incomprehensible. Then suddenly he found himself on the shore of the pond, and pulled another crucian carp out of the water. But the fishing line snapped - and Vovka immediately sat down on the wet slippery bridge, and noticed a swollen leech on his ankle, a thin stream of blood and a splash of brown-green mud. And the float galloped along the shining waves, going further and further. Acute disappointment brought Vovka to his senses. He opened his eyes, tossed and turned, saw a light on the ceiling, heard voices, and could not understand what time it was...
One day he woke up and did not hear voices. The light in the kitchen was still on, but now it was barely noticeable. The silence pressed on her temples, she wanted to hide from it, but she waited both under the blanket and under the pillow. There was also a float on glowing silver ripples.
Vovka tossed and turned on the folded sheet for a long time, listening intently to see if the hidden old men would give away their presence. Then he couldn’t stand it, he stood up and looked into the kitchen.
There really was no one there. And from the open underground, which now looked like a grave, light poured in a wide column.
Just like the picture in the children's Bible.

Early in the morning bright sun looked into the hut and woke up Vovka, tickling his eyelids and nostrils. The grandmother was sleeping on the bed, turning her face to the wall, covering her head patchwork quilt. The room was in order - only the clock and the radio were missing, and a fresh scar on the tulle curtain was white.
Trying not to disturb his grandmother, Vovka climbed down from the stove, quickly got dressed, took out a piece of dried bread from the bread bin, and put it in his bosom. He walked on tiptoe across the room, quietly removed the hook of the lock from its hinge, slid into a dark corridor, rushed through it, opened another door and jumped out onto a spacious bridge flooded with light, from where there were two exits to the street - one straight, the other through the courtyard. Taking a fishing rod from the corner, a duckweed-stained can and a tin for bait, Vovka left the hut.
Yesterday was almost forgotten, just as nightmares are forgotten during the day. The hot sun cheerfully signaled: everything is in order! A light warm wind ruffled my hair approvingly and affectionately. The birds chimed and chimed carefree.
And somewhere in the pond, in the mud, a huge crucian carp was tossing and turning like a pig. You can't catch something like that with a bloodworm. What does he care about? This should be taken for a fat, lively worm, always bright pink and with a brown rim. And on a big hook, not an ordinary swallow...
There used to be a dung heap in the backyard. It had long since rotted and was overgrown with grass, but there were great worms there. Vovka discovered this by accident when, having read about archaeologists and the scientist Champollion, he decided to do excavations around his grandmother’s house, and found out that the richest area from an archaeological point of view was located behind the courtyard. His prey then became shiny clay shards, someone's large bones, a horseshoe in a rusty husk and a green glass pebble very similar to an emerald...
Vovka threw the fishing rod onto the dewy grass, placed the can next to him and took the shovel leaning against the crown of the log house. And then, from around the corner of the yard, someone tall and thin, wearing a wrinkled checkered shirt, faded soldier’s trousers and boots, stepped into the light. His long arms dangled like ropes, and there was brown blood on his thin fingers. Vovka almost screamed and raised his head.
-Are you Aunt Varvara’s grandson? - the man asked, and Vovka recognized him.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly, not knowing how to talk to an adult fool.
“She’s a witch,” said the feeble-minded Dima and squatted down, looking at Vovka with strange eyes. - Everyone knows this... - He smiled, showing the rotten stumps of his teeth, nodded often and shallowly, and puffed out his necks. Then he exhaled sharply - and quickly, as if he was afraid to choke on words, he spoke:
- Yes, a witch, I know, Aunt Varvara is a witch, everyone knows, even in Tormosovo they know, and in Lazartsevo they know, everyone used to go to her, get treatment, but now they don’t go, they’re afraid. And why not be afraid - she had two husbands, and both died, but there were no children, but she has a grandson. The witch, as I say, everyone knows, but she has a witcher in the underground, she fed him husbands, and she will feed you, and she will feed everyone - like she feeds chickens, she gives her blood to drink, she feeds him meat...
Vovka backed away, not daring to turn his back on Dima the Fool, unable to take his eyes off his plague eyes. A light cloud covered the sun, and it instantly became chilly.
- Do not believe? - Dima slowly stood up. - Don’t believe about grandma? And she was chopping chickens at night, I saw the moon was shining, and she hit them in the neck with an ax - once! They flap their wings, they want to run away from her, but their heads are no longer there, and blood splashes, foam comes out of their necks, hisses, and they are already dead, but still alive, she shakes them, there, there, there! - He pulled out chicken heads from his trouser pocket and handed them to Vovka on his dirty palms. And he dropped the shovel, shied to the side, slipped on the wet grass, fell with his hands in chicken droppings, turned over, jumped up, tripped painfully on a cast-iron drinking bowl and, not feeling his feet, forgetting about the fishing rod, about the worms, about the crucian carp, rushed back, into the house, on the stove, under the blanket.

At half past seven, the old alarm clock on the closet rattled and grandma got up. First of all, she went to the window, opened it, looked out into the street, and muttered:
- It's going to rain by lunchtime...
Vovka sat quietly, but the grandmother seemed to sense something was wrong:
-Are you sleeping, baked resident?
- No.
-Are you sick?
- No.
- Didn’t you go outside?
- I'm just a little bit.
Grandmother sighed:
- Oh, poor head. I told you, don’t go for a walk yet... Has anyone seen you?
- Dima.
- Fool? What was he doing?
- Don't know.
- Did he scare you?
- Yes a little bit...
- He said, tea, all sorts of things. Called me a witch?
- I called it.
“You, Vova, don’t listen to him,” the grandmother said sternly. “He’s a fool, what can one take from him...” She again went to the window, slammed it, and lowered the copper latch. - I need to go. At eight o'clock they told us to get ready again. Now, twice a day, they will round us up like cattle and count our heads to see if anyone is missing... You, Vova, sit by the window. I will tell them again that you went into the forest without asking in the morning. I’ll cover the house, but if you see a stranger coming, hide as you did yesterday. Fine?
- Okay, ba...
Left alone, Vovka sat down at the window curtained with yellow tulle. He saw how grandfather Semyon, whom grandmother for some reason called Cleaver, limped past the well, leaning on a stick, how neighbor Baba Lyuba, the only one who had the strength to hold the cow, came out from behind the lilac bushes onto the path, how she stood under the gnarled she waited for grandmother Varvara Stepanovna, and then they headed together to the hut of grandmother Anna Sergeevna, which was located in another village near a dilapidated school, with its head overgrown with nettles. There were already people standing there, but Vovka couldn’t tell who they were - strangers or local old men. Forgetting about his fear of the empty house, he watched the people gathering, and felt a new fear - rational and concrete - being born in his chest - fear for his grandmother, for the local old people, for himself and for his parents.
Everything was very similar to one film about the war, where big-faced fascists with voices that smelled of tobacco and fumes drove obedient people into a heap, and then locked them in a barn and, covering them with straw, burned them.

The grandmother returned not alone, but with three strange men, unshaven, gloomy, scary. One of them held the grandmother by the elbow, the other two walked far ahead - the first had a thin crowbar on his shoulder, the second had an ax tucked into a soldier’s belt. They knocked down the lock and burst into the hut - Vovka heard the sound of strong soles rattling on the bridge like hooves, and crawled under a torn sweatshirt, piled dusty bags on top, fenced himself off with baskets and felt boots, and pressed his back against the log wall.
A few seconds later, strangers were already in charge of the house: they moved and overturned furniture, tore off clothes hanging on nails, and rummaged through the closet. Then one climbed onto the stove - and baskets and rags flew down from the floors. Vovka tightly grabbed the padded jacket that covered him and quietly drew his legs together. A stranger was breathing nearby, breathing hysterically and terribly, like an animal - he felt cramped and uncomfortable under the ceiling, he was standing on all fours, he was afraid to climb onto the flimsy floors, and therefore he stretched far forward, to the sides, raking out the junk that had accumulated here for many decades.
And then the breath stopped, and an evil voice solemnly announced:
- Here he is, son of a bitch!
A cold, rough palm grabbed Vovka tightly by the ankle, and an irresistible force pulled him out of cover.
Vovka squealed.
They dragged him out like a naughty puppy, threw him into the middle of the room, turned him over with their feet, and pressed him to the floor.
And then two men beat the grandmother - busily and lazily, as if they were kneading dough. The grandmother covered her face with her hands, was silent and for some reason did not fall for a long time.

At noon it became dark, as if it were late evening. A blue-black cloud crawled from the north, driving the wind with dusty breakers in front of it, announcing its approach from afar with a thick roar. The first drops fell heavily, like acorns, carried the wind and dust, and stained the roofs. Lightning flashed, went into the ground somewhere near the old ford, and the thunder tested the strength of the window frames. And suddenly it poured so loudly that the stoves began to hum...
The first to appear was Grandfather Osip, wrapped in a military cape. He undressed on the bridge, walked into the house, looked around the mess, sat down next to his grandmother lying on the bed, took her hand, and shook his head.
“I’m fine, Osip Petrovich, don’t worry,” she said, smiling slightly at him.
Vovka was right there, next to his grandmother, he huddled in a corner and mindlessly twirled nickel-plated balls on the lattice headboard of the bed.
“Now the rest will gather,” said Osip Petrovich and went to the kitchen to get stools.
Five minutes later, grandfather Semyon and grandmother Lyuba appeared, a little later grandmother Elizaveta Andreevna came, and soon the bearded Mikhail Efimovich knocked on the window.
“It seems that’s it,” said Osip Petrovich when the old men sat down near the bed. “I didn’t call other grandmothers, but Lyoshka already knows everything.”
- Maybe it’s better for the grandson to go to the stove for now? - Grandfather Semyon asked quietly.
“Let him sit,” said the grandmother. And after a pause, she added: “But be careful here.”
“That’s understandable,” Mikhail Efimovich shook his wet beard.
“Begin, Osip Petrovich,” the grandmother ordered. - There’s no point in dragging your feet. What did you learn there?
Grandfather Osip nodded, wiped his mouth, and cleared his throat, as if before a big speech. And said:
- I managed to talk to Anna. They are waiting for the car. They have a hunting rifle and a machine gun.
“Tomorrow is Thursday,” said grandfather Semyon. - The auto shop should arrive.
- That's what I'm talking about. The shop will arrive, and these will be right there. They will not contact the driver; he will be immediately discarded. And they will take one of us with them. Or maybe everyone - the van is big.
“They’ll take you hostage,” Mikhail Efimovich nodded.
“Or maybe he won’t come tomorrow,” said grandfather Semyon. - What if Kolka started drinking?
- What's the difference? - Grandma Lyuba waved her hand at her grandfather. - Not tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Not a car shop, but Vovka’s mother and father will return from the city. Or your grandson will show up for the weekend.
“And the saleswoman Masha is a prominent girl, young,” Elizaveta Andreevna sighed. - Oh, bad luck...
“Don’t call trouble,” Varvara Stepanovna tsked at her. - God willing, we’ll make it.
- Is everything ready for you, Varvara?
- It's ready, Michal Efimych. She picked it up.
- Can we cope?
- Yes, somehow, he’s not at full strength yet... What’s left to do?
“There’s nothing to do,” the grandfather agreed, sighing.
“They don’t open the shutters,” Osip Petrovich continued. “They have nowhere to get out except the doors and gates.” Anna said that one of them always doesn’t sleep at night, he watches over the others. They don’t let her go anywhere alone, apparently they are afraid that we will start a fire if she runs away. But there is an iron box on her stove, Andrei Ivanovich was still alive, he covered it up. She will hide in that box and wrap the door with wire from the inside; there are suitable staples there. She had already greased the hinges and brought the wire. He says he’ll wait until he’s there... The shutters are strong, Andrei Ivanovich, let him have the land, he was a thrifty man, but we’ll still prop them up with slings just in case. We'll open the door with a knife; there's a hook there that lifts through the crack easily if you know how. And as soon as we launch it, we’ll immediately lock it outside...
“Oh, we’ve started a terrible thing,” Elizaveta Andreevna sighed. - Maybe, nevertheless, otherwise, how should it be?
“It’s terrible...” admitted Osip Petrovich. - But these are not people, Lisa. They are worse than animals... - Osip Petrovich glanced at the quiet Vovka, looked away, lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper. - Anna said they had half a bag of meat with them. They said “heifer” and told her to cook. And how she looked... It wasn’t veal there, no... Not veal at all... And she couldn’t... Then they did it themselves... They fried and ate... Do you understand, Lizaveta? They cut it, fried it. And they ate...

Lulled by the voices of the old men and the sound of the rain, Vovka himself did not notice how he dozed off. And I woke up from a frightening feeling of loneliness. And indeed, there was no one nearby, only empty chairs and stools surrounded the rumpled bed.
It had brightened a little outside, and the rain was no longer pounding on the windows so hard. The floor was almost dry, but the mess had not gone away, and that is why it seemed that the old people did not leave the house themselves, but were carried away to some unknown place by the storm that swept through the hut...
The hole in the underground turned out to be open - and Vovka, having discovered this, was not at all surprised. He did not approach him, inopportunely remembering the words of Dima the Fool about the witcher sitting in his grandmother’s underground, to whom she fed her husbands, and to whom she would feed the entire village. Vovka walked around the black square of the hole, pressing himself against the stove, and - could not resist - craned his neck and looked into it.
But he didn’t see anything special, he only imagined sounds - a guttural grumbling, as if thunder was moving underground, and a metallic clanging...
The gray day dragged on slowly.
The grandmother crawled out of the underground, closed it, disguised it with a rug and a stool, and lay on the bed for a while, staring at the ceiling. Having rested, she called her grandson, and the two of them began to slowly restore order.
The rain had let up and was drizzling dejectedly. The grandmother who looked out into the street called him morgoth. She reproached that the road might become muddy, and then the truck would only arrive at next week. But the bread is gone, only crackers are left, and the sugar is the last, and the brew is about to run out...
She spoke distantly, thinking about something completely different, but as if she wanted to calm both herself and her grandson with her grumbling.
After a late lunch they played cards. Grandmother tried to joke, and Vovka tried to smile. Several times he wanted to ask who was locked in the dark underground. But he didn’t dare.
And when the alarm clock rang overhead, Vovka shuddered so much that he dropped the cards from his hands. They were scattered across the blanket, pictures side up, the grandmother looked at them carefully, shook her head and told her grandson to get ready.
Vovka got dressed and thought that, probably, those people from the movies, whom the Nazis later burned in the barn, dressed just as obediently and quietly.

The meeting ended quickly, but not at all as the old people thought...
The same people who beat Vovka’s grandmother came out of Anna Sergeevna’s blind house. One - wider, with a gun hanging across his chest - went down to the old men lined up. The other one - taller, with a short machine gun under his arm - remained on the porch. They both had prickly eyes, heavy chins and slanting thin mouths. But Vovka did not look at their faces. He looked at the weapon.
It was raining and it was quite chilly. The old men stood dejectedly, looking at the ground, not moving. Even Dima the Fool, swollen from the beatings and with a grimace, stood at attention, at attention, only puffing out his cheeks...
A man with a gun walked along the line, spat out a chewed plane tree, turned to his comrade, nodded:
- All.
“Chain the rodent,” said the one standing on the porch. And the man with the gun took Vovka by the shoulder, pulled her out of line, and grabbed her by the collar.
Grandmother Varvara clasped her hands. Grandfather Semyon leaned forward.
- Stop! - the gun barrel jerked up. - Quiet! Nothing will happen to him. He'll have a chat with us, just to gain his wits...
Vovka was pushed onto the porch, pushed into the doorway, and dragged along a dark corridor.
- And now to the huts! - a hoarse voice cracked on the street. - That's it, I said! Briefly speaking!..

They didn't touch him; They pushed me into a corner where Grandma Anna was sitting with her hands folded in her lap - and they left her alone, they didn’t even say anything.
The room was heavily smoky - the dim light bulb seemed to be drowning in fog. The icons in the red corner lay face down - as if they were bowing. Dirty dishes were piled on a round table covered with a tablecloth. A kerosene stove was smoking on the windowsill, and a viscous dark brew was bubbling in a smoky saucepan.
“Everything is fine, Vova,” Grandma Anna said quietly. - Don’t be afraid of anything, just don’t go anywhere, and if you need something, ask permission...
The strangers were minding their own business. One was sleeping on a bench near the stove. The other two, sitting on the bed, were playing cards - just as Vovka had recently played with his grandmother. The man with the gun, sitting down on the floor, began sharpening a fin-knife with a whetstone - and the dry, ominous shuffling made Vova dizzy and sent shivers down his back.
“I'm afraid,” he whispered.
“Nothing, nothing,” Grandma Anna smoothed his hair. - Everything will be fine, Vova. Everything will be fine...

Late in the evening all the strangers gathered around the table. Grandmother Anna brought them a pot of boiled potatoes, a dish of lightly salted cucumbers and a heel of eggs.
“Not much,” muttered one of the uninvited guests.
“So we’ve already eaten everything,” she said calmly.
By this time Vovka had already climbed onto the stove. He felt nauseous and had a severe headache, but he held on strong, and was only afraid that the disease, which he had begun to forget about in the village, would now return and kill him.
Anna Sergeevna's stove was much wider than her grandmother's. A significant part, however, was occupied by a stupid iron box, but the remaining space would have been more than enough for three adult men. But the ceiling was too low - Vovka couldn’t even sit down properly. If there’s a noise at night, you’ll jump up, jerk, and you’ll definitely hurt your forehead. Or the back of my head.
Vovka turned over on his side, pulled his knees to his stomach, and whined quietly.
Below, strangers were slurping, sipping something, talking about something, whispering, hissing like snakes. Vovka now imagined them as snakes - large, thick, coiled in rings - just like the kind of snake the horseman poked with a spear in one of his grandmother’s icons.
-Are you still awake, Vova? - asked Anna Sergeevna, standing on the step of the stairs.
- No.
- Come here... Listen carefully... - She spoke barely audibly, right in her ear. She stopped short, turned around, looked around. And she continued: “You and I will climb into that box over there tonight.” Quietly - so that no one hears us. Can you?.. Okay... It will be noisy here, but don't be scared. No one will touch us in the box. It won’t be enough... And then it’ll all be over. Everything will end well... And quickly... The main thing is to get into the box... But don’t touch it yet... Nod if you understand... Well, that’s okay...
Grandma Anna went down to the floor and disappeared from sight. She appeared in the room, collected some dishes, took them away, rattled and knocked in the kitchen. When she returned, she said loudly:
- I'm going to bed.
They nodded to her.
“Well, good night then,” she said, turning around.
And Vovka noticed that she was smiling coldly.

That night Vovka did not sleep at all.
Grandma Anna tossed and turned nearby, pretending to be asleep. In the room, strangers snored loudly in different ways. The dim light of the night lamp barely illuminated the clock dial. If you looked closely, you could see the minute hand moving - black on dark gray. Vovka watched her and thought about fishing, about grandmother Varvara Stepanovna and about her parents. He also thought about how he would climb into the iron box.
One of the bandits was sitting on a creaky chair in the middle of the room, facing the door. On his lap lay a machine gun. The bandit did not sleep, he fidgeted in the seat and from time to time struck a match, lighting a cigarette. At two o'clock in the morning he woke up one of his comrades, gave him the machine gun and, groaning with pleasure, stretched out on the floor. A minute later he was already snoring, and Vovka was trying to make out what his replacement was muttering...
The time was dark and viscous, like a brew on a kerosene stove.
At the beginning of four, Grandma Anna opened her eyes.
“Sit, wait,” she whispered to Vovka and, groaning, crawled out of the stove like a worm.
In the room, she said something to the man with the machine gun, and he stood up. Together they walked out the door and disappeared for almost ten minutes - Vovka was already beginning to worry and wondered if it was time for him to climb into the box. But the door opened again - a spot of light, similar to an eye, jumped into the room onto the wall. It went out. Two dark figures, one after the other, crossed the threshold and stood up, quietly talking about something. It seems that Grandma Anna wanted to leave the door open to ventilate the room at least a little. She persuaded me - she opened it wide and placed a round tub. And, having taken a sip of water in the kitchen, she again climbed onto the stove.
“I opened the vent in the toilet,” she quietly informed Vovka, laying down next to him and propping her head with her fist. - As we agreed with Osip - a sign to him. Now let's wait half an hour and climb... Don't sleep...
The less time remained before the appointed time, the stronger Vovka’s heart beat. It was completely unbearable to lie down and just wait. Vovka did not know what was about to happen in this house. I guessed it. But I didn’t know for sure. And this ignorance choked him.
“It’s time,” Grandma Anna whispered, turned over on her other side, moved, crowding Vovka, and carefully pulled the iron door with a mesh of small holes towards herself.
Anna Sergeevna climbed up awkwardly, slowly; the hole was small, a little larger than the cutout in the duvet cover, and she crawled into it in parts: first she stuck her head in, then one shoulder, the other, her torso, butt, legs... There wasn’t much room left for Vova.
Somewhere, perhaps on the street, there was a distinct knock and clang.
The man with the machine gun raised his head and sniffed the air noisily.
“Hurry up, Vova,” Grandma Anna hurried.
The sound was repeated - louder, closer; Iron rattled, wood creaked, and there was a smell of draft.
And Vovka, realizing that the last seconds were running out, climbed feet first into the strong, cramped box.
- Don’t forget to close the door...
In the darkness of the corridor, something seemed to fall and roll, making a roar. The bandit jumped up and pointed the machine gun at the door. The snoring stopped and the bed creaked. A sleepy voice asked displeasedly:
- What kind of nerd?
- Someone's there!
- Turn on the light.
- The bug is right at the door. Afraid.
- Be afraid of me, vakhlak! What do you need a trellis for?
Something dully poked into the windows. And as if bare feet padded across the floorboards. We stopped.
- I see... - a whistling whisper.
- Sleepers, fool!
Flash, shot. And the blow is juicy, as if a watermelon had been dropped; wheeze, squeal, guttural growl. Immediately - a long burst of machine gun fire, swearing and screaming, reflections of the muzzle flame, swift shadows on the ceiling.
- Wire, Vova! Wire! Wrap it up quickly!
A wet slap, a crunch, a crack, a wild scream. Powerful blows, roar, swearing, roar, screams. Moaning, grinding, wheezing...
And slurping, snuffling, squelching - like a huge crucian carp sucking mud.
- Quiet, Vova... - right in your ear. - Quiet... If only I didn’t hear... Quiet...

They lay in an iron coffin for an infinitely long time and listened to terrible sounds. My legs and arms were paralyzed, my iron ribs cut painfully into my living ribs, the heavy smell made my head spin, and my stomach tightened in a lump.
Then the nails being pulled out creaked, the axes clattered - and the gray morning light poured into the hut.
- He’s here, I see! Hurry before the light stuns him!
- Don't worry, Semyon! Now he's not going anywhere. I ate like a leech.
The voices died out, but after a few seconds a crowd burst into the house:
- Lyoshka! Give me the net here! Varvara, where are you going? Close by, stay level! With a grip on the neck, yeah! Lizaveta, your mother! Hold his leg, how much I have to explain to you! And a mirror, a mirror! To the light of it! Women, shine a mirror! Move your shield! Like this!
- He won’t leave, my dear! Got heavy!
- I’m telling you, the light stunned him!
- Yes, he is always so sleepy during the day.
- Enough for you! Better give us the loops!
- Lord! How he got away with them!
- Vovka! Anna! Are you alive there?
Rattling on iron.
- Alive!
- Well, thank God. Get out of your tank...

They led Vovka across the room, covering his eyes with their palms. He felt slippery and crunchy under his feet, and knew what it was.
Grandmother Varvara Stepanovna met her grandson on the street, rushed to him, sat down, hugged him tightly:
- How are you, Vovushka?
He pulled away and looked into her face for a long time, seeing her eyes darken and fill with fear. He answered when the fear became so much that it became unbearable to look at him:
- They didn't touch me.
- I was so scared! I didn't know what to do. We already thought, but this is how it all turned out... - She began to cry - it was the fear that left her eyes in tears. - Forgive me, Vovushka... I'm sorry... So it happened...
“Bah,” Vovka said seriously. - Who was it?
- Bandits, Vova... Very bad people...
- No, I'm talking about this... - He extended his hand. - Well, the one who lives underground...
“This is a ghoul, Vova...” the grandmother said, turning around. - Our ghoul...
The ghoul was led by seven people, tied to long strong poles. He was smeared with blood from head to toe, the skin hung on him in fatty folds, short legs with large feet tore shreds of turf out of the ground, his bald, knobby head trembled, and even from his back one could see his huge jaws moving non-stop. The ghoul was tossed from side to side, swaying like a float on water. And seven people wandered around with him.
- Don’t look at him, Vovushka. Otherwise it will be a dream.
- He’s not scary, bah... I was scared there, but now I’m not.
- Well, that’s good... That’s okay...
They stepped aside and sat on the stump of a long-cut willow tree, turning their faces to the hazy sun and deeply inhaling the fresh air.
“Or maybe not a ghoul,” said the grandmother. - We called him that, and his dog knows who he is... Only you, Vova, don’t tell anyone about him, okay?
“Okay,” Vovka promised easily. - Where did you get it from, ba?
- So he always lived with us. As long as I can remember... Or rather, I haven’t lived. You can’t kill him, that means he doesn’t live... - Grandmother sighed. - It’s useful, you just need to know how to approach it, and it takes a habit. We even plowed on it during the war. And when the Nazis showed up here, three of them one day... Just like today... There are no more rats and mice from him. And the cockroaches are transferred. And all illnesses go away, whoever is with him. That’s why I persuaded your mother for so long... So that she would come to me... That’s why we are known as healers and sorcerers. And we live a long time, we don’t get sick... The ghoul’s power heals. But she doesn’t protect him from trouble... - The grandmother looked at her serious grandson, ruffled his hair, remembered both of her husbands, the driver Grisha, and the agronomist Ivan Sergeevich, and tears welled up in her eyes. “It doesn’t protect you, Vovushka, and it doesn’t bring you happiness...” Her voice trembled, and she coughed, and then she blew her nose into her sleeve for a long time and wiped away her tears, and kept looking high into the sky, and hoped that someone was looking at her now too. looks from there, attentive, understanding and all-forgiving.
And why not: since there are ghouls on earth, it means there must be angels somewhere...
Why not...

story two: Black male Zhuk

Fyodor Ivanovich wove his own coffin.
He loved to tell this to new people, of whom there were few in Olenin, and had childish fun when he saw their distrust.
- Himself, with these hands! - He showed calloused palms. - Made from willow vine, soaked, sanded - everything as it should be. Exactly as my father taught me. Like a grandfather. We, the Fomichevs, have been weaving vines from time immemorial. Everything we have is made from vines. Absolutely everything!..
Fyodor Ivanovich's household was the most ordinary: a log hut, covered with wavy, already mossy slate on top of old shingles; a rickety yard with a hayloft and three flocks; a whitewashed cracked stove, a creaky sofa with uncomfortably protruding springs, an oak table covered with oilcloth, a black and white Horizon TV hung with a dusty napkin, a mirror covered in flies, and a set of worn glass glasses.
- Is that all right? - the strangers did not believe.
- All! - Fyodor Ivanovich nodded furiously. - Even the monuments on the graves are made of wicker. And now I’m weaving a coffin. For myself. It's time...
If a doubting interlocutor asked to show him this very coffin, Fyodor Ivanovich slyly squinted, showed his rare yellow teeth and invited the guest into the house. In the middle of a spacious room littered with baskets, bundles of willow twigs and piles of skins, the owner stood up in a theatrical pose, spread his arms and said:
- Here!
While the guest looked around, trying to look at least something vaguely reminiscent of a coffin, Fyodor Ivanovich explained with pleasure:
- We, the Fomichevs, have earned our living by weaving from time immemorial. In the old days, they made so many baskets during the winter that they couldn’t carry them away with three carts. And they wove chests - whole chests, and boxes, and trays, and vases. And it’s impossible to count how many doubles were handed over to the collective farm! Everything that is here was purchased with proceeds from weaving. That's what they've always lived for. The whole family, all the ancestors. I, it was a sin, left the family business when I was young, but life again put everything in its place. Every cricket knows its nest. - Fyodor Ivanovich nodded his head, agreeing with the old folk wisdom, and smiled kindly, rubbing his large, knobby palms.
His pension was small - barely enough for food. Therefore, weaving baskets, baskets, boxes, caskets, as well as toy little shoes and flimsy straw hats was a tangible financial help for him. Fyodor Ivanovich was not involved in selling his products - he handed over everything wholesale to Volodka Toporov from neighboring Moseytsev, and he delivered the goods to the markets: on Friday he traded in the regional center, went to the city for the weekend, and on Wednesday he went to the neighboring region, to the museum-monastery, where on this very day foreign excursions were brought in huge aquarium buses.
- How much are you selling my work to foreigners, Volodka?
- I'm not the one selling. Wife.
- So, tea, do you know the price?
- I know. But I won’t tell you, Uncle Fyodor. Otherwise you will lose sleep.
- Well, after all, I don’t sleep anyway.
- So, you’ll also stop eating...
Sometimes Fyodor Ivanovich, tired of monotonous work, put the vine aside for several days and with all his soul made an unsightly stuffed animal out of straw and rags. He dressed it up in canvas, made eyes out of beans, a nose out of an acorn or hazelnut, and pulled it over his head. straw hat, glued a sheaf of wheat or oats into the wet hands, and shod his short legs in birch bark shoes. Volodka called these stuffed animals “brownies,” said that they sold well and asked Uncle Fyodor to make more of them. But he refused - it was a painfully dreary and expensive task. The baskets were woven much easier and faster.
Most Fyodor Ivanovich put the money he earned into an old clay pot in which his wife once stored sour cream.
“I earn money for my own funeral,” Fyodor Ivanovich cheerfully confessed to the guest, without, however, showing the treasured moneybox. - So it turns out that I am weaving my own coffin. From the vine. With these hands...

The black dog appeared to Fyodor Ivanovich in the fall, at a time when the quiet Indian summer had just given way to gloomy October rains.
“I picked it up in the forest,” Fyodor Ivanovich told a neighbor who came to visit. - Near the road, where the turn to Timofeevskoye was. They tied him to a tree with a chain - it looks like he wouldn’t come running back... Look, he tore his whole neck when he tore himself from the chain... Oh, what kind of people are these!..
The dog was bad. He was lying near the stove on an old sweatshirt; his skinny, ragged sides walked heavily, cloudy eyes they were watering, and viscous saliva flowed from its mouth, like mucus.
- How mad are you? - the neighbor glanced warily at the dog.
- Not really! - Fyodor Ivanovich waved it off. - They are afraid of wild waters. But this one is not. He drinks to his soul.
- How healthy.
- Big, yes. Thoroughbred, probably.
- Where do you want it, Fedor?
- So you can’t leave him in the forest...
The dog was sick for a long time. Fyodor Ivanovich nursed him until the snow, fed him with human medicine, fed him milk, fed him with porridge and pasta - he never cooked for himself like he did for this dog.
- He’ll get better, he’ll look after my farm.
- What do you have to guard?
“At least there’s a TV,” Fyodor Ivanovich laughed, and he himself thought about the pot of money. - Yes, and it won’t be so boring with an animal... Look, look at him. We talk, and he moves his ears - listens. He understands what is about him. Oh yeah bug!
And so the new nickname became attached to the dog.

Fyodor Ivanovich and the foundling dog became close friends. They walked everywhere together, as if tied together - whether for water, for firewood, or to visit someone. But not everyone allowed the big dog into the house. Grandma Tamara, who lived opposite, didn’t like the dog at all and grumbled when we met:
- What a devil has settled nearby!
The beetle, sensing her displeasure, tucked its tail between its legs and hid behind its owner.
“Don’t offend the animal, Tamara,” Fyodor Ivanovich was angry.
- Better make sure your animal doesn’t offend us...
However, not much time passed, and grandmother Tamara became kinder to the dog. This happened after Zhuk caught a fox in the owner’s yard that was strangling the chickens in the entire village.
- What a devil! - the neighbor now spoke sternly, having met Fyodor Ivanovich with his faithful four-legged companion, and reached into her pocket for lemon caramel. The dog didn’t like candy, but he accepted grandmother Tamara’s sweet offerings - and crunched, drooling on the snow, and looked at the stern old woman with cautious gratitude.
In January, Zhuk caught a robber ferret.
In early February, he destroyed a weasel's nest.
And the number of rats he has strangled is uncountable!
Guests often came to Fyodor Ivanovich with only one request:
- You should let your Beetle into our yard for the night. And now there are so many rats - fear of God...
In quiet moonlit nights, bitterly frosty, a howl was heard in the distant forest. The Beetle sleeping near the stove, hearing the echoes of the chilling wolf songs, raised its heavy head, pricked up its ears, bared its fangs and grumbled quietly. The fur on the back of his neck stood on end. Fyodor Ivanovich woke up, raised himself on his elbow and clicked the lever of the night light.
- Why are you making noise? - he quietly asked the dog. And he himself listened to the distant howl and shook his head.
The reddish light of the night lamp reminded him of the glow of a burning splinter, and it seemed to Fyodor that he was transported to his childhood, to a time when wolves, hungry during the winter, came close to the village, and every house had a gun, and men tried not to travel alone, always they gathered in a large convoy for the city, armed themselves, took torches with them...
“...bay-bayushki-bay, don’t lie on the edge...”
He imagined his mother’s voice and the creaking of a cradle suspended on a hook from the ceiling beam. And he became afraid.
There have been no wolves here for forty years.
But we must come back.
“...a little gray top will come and bite you on the side...”
“Sleep,” Fyodor said hoarsely. - There's no way they'll get here.
And I thought: oh, they’ll get there! just give it time...
There are a dozen residential yards, but there are no guns in any of them...
In the morning, Fyodor Ivanovich took a long time to get dressed, tying a heavy, sharp cleaver in a felt sheath to his belt; Having smoothed his hair, he pulled a shabby, long-out-of-shape cap over his head, put wide skis on his felt boots and, propping the door with a stick, went into the woods to get material. The Black Beetle galloped nearby, grabbing the sparkling snow with its hot pink mouth. Fyodor Ivanovich looked at him and thought that it’s good to keep a dog - and it’s more fun with it, more joyful, and peace of mind.

Winter ended only in April - and seemingly overnight. In the evening there was still a chalk blizzard, and in the morning, lo and behold, the heavy snow had subsided, the log walls of the huts were darkened with moisture, and a fine gray drizzle covered the distant forest.
Fyodor Ivanovich woke up sick - the bad weather was aching his bones. He fumbled for a long time, not wanting to get out from under the cotton blanket, but the cold slowly creeping into bed forced him to get up. He threw a sweatshirt over his shoulders, put his feet in crushed felt boots, yawned deliciously - and froze.
Between the stove and the sofa, where the Beetle often stored his loot, lay something dark, similar to the broken body of a child.
Fyodor Ivanovich gasped.
The black male Zhuk raised his head and waved his tail welcomingly.
- What have you done? - Fyodor Ivanovich groaned. And he stopped short, catching himself.
Where would a child come from here, in a remote village, even at this time? Especially for such a small one. And the house was locked. Unless the Beetle, who had recently learned to open doors with his paw, could come out into the yard. In the yard - but not on the street.
Or?..
-Where did you get this from?
The dog, sensing something was wrong from his master’s voice, sank to the floor.
- Who is this?..
No, not a child. But, it seems, it’s not a beast.
For a long time Fyodor Ivanovich looked closely at the creature strangled by the dog, not daring to touch it with either his hand or a knife. Then he got dressed and ran out of the hut. He returned five minutes later, dragging his gloomy neighbor with him.
- Look, see for yourself, Semyonich.
They approached the small body from both sides. Hovered over him.
“Like some kind of monkey,” the neighbor said uncertainly.
- Where do we get a monkey from! - Fyodor Ivanovich was indignant.
The neighbor shrugged. He asked, cautiously:
- Is it really dead?
- Don't know...
That morning the whole village visited Fyodor Ivanovich’s house. The beetle, unable to withstand the noisy attention, ran outside and hid under the porch. Grandma Tamara came last, wrapped in black. She just glanced at the lying corpse and immediately declared:
- This is Brownie.
- What? - Fyodor Ivanovich was surprised.
- Togo! - his neighbor mimicked him. - Brownie. Home owner. Have you ever heard of it?
Fyodor Ivanovich, of course, heard about brownies. But he also had the opportunity to listen to the speeches of visiting lecturers about the dangers of various prejudices.
- So! - he said briefly, not knowing what to answer Tamara. And he spread his hands.
“Master,” the grandmother nodded. - I’m telling you exactly. In Minchakovo, I heard that there was one fool who kept fiddling around with chicken giblets, and even carried the geek out under his arm? Looked like this one, yours. - Tamara pointed to a small furry body. - Your dog strangled him, it’s not for nothing that he has circles under his eyes.
- And what now? - Fyodor Ivanovich was completely at a loss.
- Nothing... Live for yourself. Maybe it’s just the housework that won’t work out now. The owner, after all, is there to look after the house.
Tamara left, and Fyodor Ivanovich, wandering around the hut a little, rolled a cigarette out of a newspaper and went out into the street to breathe in the damp spring air.
As he walked down the porch, a step broke under his foot with a crunch.

After that day, life stopped going well for Fyodor Ivanovich. Everything went wrong. Cold melt water filled the underground - although all the years before it barely filled the specially dug hole in the far corner. Either due to flooding, or for some other reason, the hut was noticeably askew - its northern corner was raised, and a noticeable gap formed between the back wall and the roof of the yard. The hayloft poles broke under the weight of the wet straw. The woodpile that had stood all winter fell apart. The glass in the front window broke and fell out. The stove cracked. The porch, which had recently seemed solid, now wobbled and creaked violently.
Fyodor Ivanovich had no time for weaving. He scooped up the rising water from the underground, pulled out cabbage and seed potatoes to dry, seemingly covered up a widening crack in the side of the stove, tapped, forged a porch, patched the roof. And he thought with bitterness that, apparently, he would have to climb into the pot in which his wife had once stored sour cream.
In addition to major troubles, there were small troubles: the washbasin would start to leak, a plate would roll off the shelf, a light bulb would explode, and the plastic tab of the old switch would fall off. The moulted chickens began to peck eggs, and they began to lay eggs not in nesting baskets, as they should be, but in places where they could not be reached without a ladder.
- Yes, what is it! - Fyodor Ivanovich complained worriedly to his neighbors, and if they were not nearby, then to the black dog. - Some kind of attack!
“This is because the owner is not in the house,” grandmother Tamara told him.
- I'm the owner! - Fyodor Ivanovich was angry.
“Well, be the boss,” the neighbor grinned sarcastically.
Fyodor Ivanovich endured such an awkward life for two months, but after an oak shelf in the closet fell from its eternal place, spattering the many years of collected materials across the floor in sharp crumbs. glass jars, - could not resist. He swore and went to Tamara for advice.
The neighbor greeted him gloomily, but sat him down at the table and poured him some tea. She listened to Fyodor’s complaints for a long time, remained silent, dipped a dry bagel into a cup, and sucked it with her toothless mouth.
- I don’t know what to do now. If anyone else had told it, they wouldn’t have believed it. And here... You yourself... Maybe you can recommend something, Tamara?
- Maybe I’ll advise you.
- Well?
- Take another owner to your place, Fyodor.
- Where can I get it, another one? And how to transport it?
- I won’t tell you exactly how. My mother knew, but I don’t remember the right words. But I think we can get by with simple words. And if you do this...

On the shore of a pond overgrown with reeds, stuck in the ground almost up to the windows, stood a lopsided hut with a collapsed roof near the chimney. Ten years ago this house was still inhabited; the quiet, God-fearing Masha Zakharova lived here. For years no one counted her, but everyone knew that she served as a girl in the house of Gleb Maximilianovich Krzhizhanovsky. The old woman remembered little from that time, but she loved to tell how the wife of a politician affectionately called her prominent husband “Glibasenka.”
After perestroika happened, Masha Zakharova began to become very ill. And one day she fell ill and never got up. Relatives arrived and took her out of the village and placed her in some kind of almshouse. Where is Masha now, is she alive? No one in Olenin knew about this.
The house stood faithfully, as if it was waiting for the owner to return.
It was to him that Fyodor Ivanovich headed after his conversation with Tamara. IN right hand he was holding a broom-holik, in his left - a piece white bread, soaked in goat's milk.
Castle on front door did not have. A rusty chain was threaded through a bracket driven into the door frame and through the door handle. The double iron knot did not immediately yield to the efforts of Fyodor Ivanovich. It took even longer to move the door that had sunk into the ground.
Fyodor Ivanovich squeezed sideways into the narrow gap, staining his clothes on the rotten, sour wood. The tiny hallway greeted him with the heavy smell of something uninhabited. Daylight barely filtered through the dusty, cobweb-covered strip of glass. There was a dirty kerosene stove on a narrow table, and an overturned cast-iron frying pan lay nearby.
Fyodor Ivanovich sighed heavily, feeling a bitter lump rising in his throat.
He remembered the hostess well. Sometimes I used to boil a kettle on this kerosene stove. I ate scrambled eggs from this frying pan. And I listened to the leisurely stories of lonely Masha Zakharova, a quiet old woman who, in her awkward life, had seen such sights that not every man could bear.
The door leading into the house opened unexpectedly easily - it didn’t even creak. Fyodor Ivanovich bent down, carefully stepped over the high threshold and immediately stood up, not daring to go further. He was afraid of leaving something in the room, although he mentally understood that there would be nothing terrible about it. The housewife has long been indifferent to who walks around her house, she will neither grumble nor swear, and then no one will bend over to wash away dirty footprints from the floor...
This is what confused Fyodor Ivanovich. The fact that his boot prints would remain here for many years, if not decades, strangely frightened him. And the whole situation was unpleasant for him: in this house he felt like a boy who found himself in a cemetery in the evening.
It was quiet, dead and gloomy.
The knocked down rug lay exactly as it had ten years ago. On the oilcloth-covered table rested a mug: once there was tea left in it, then it became moldy, dried out, and turned into brown dust.
A cloudy mirror in a heavy frame looked at the door.
A knotted handkerchief hung on the back of the chair.
On the fly-strewn window sill there were glasses with thick glasses and temples wrapped in electrical tape.
A huge chest of drawers, the dream of every housewife, stored letters and photographs that no one needed in its wooden womb.
The risen walkers lowered the cone weight all the way to the floor.
Tapestry with three heroes...
A half-torn calendar...
Gloomy icons behind a black lamp...
Fyodor Ivanovich sighed again, sniffed and took a small step forward. Squatting down, he put a broom in front of him, thrust the soggy bread into the bars, closed his eyes and plaintively, frightened by his own voice, began to sing:
- Father, hostess, come with me. Climb onto the broom, taste the treats, I’ll take you to live with me...
He didn’t know how long it would take to persuade the brownie, and therefore he repeated the plot invented by grandmother Tamara ten times. Then he waited a few minutes, listening intently to the dull silence of the empty house, and opened his eyes.
Nothing changed.
Golik lay as before.
Is it just...
Fyodor Ivanovich shook his head.
No... It can't be...
He carefully picked up the broom with both hands, pressed it to his chest like a child and, backing away, left the room.
It seemed to him that the golik had become noticeably heavier.
And he tried to convince himself that he was just imagining it.
Like the bread crumbs near his feet.
As does the trail of barely noticeable marks running from the stove to the rug.
“It was my imagination,” Fyodor Ivanovich muttered to himself, running out into the street. He was short of breath, his eyes were wide and he was out of breath.
“It was my imagination,” he later convinced Tamara and neighbor Gennady.
“It was my imagination,” he said to the Beetle and with a trembling palm he stroked the dog’s hard scruff.

Since May, Zhuk has been on a leash. Fyodor Ivanovich built him a kennel behind the porch, filled it with straw, and attached a tin can for water to the side; I stretched steel wire along the wall all the way to the fence. The metal ring with the attached leash slid along it easily, and the dog had plenty of room to more freedom than other guard dogs. But Zhuk did not understand and did not appreciate this. For the first few days, he fiercely struggled with his leash - the leash and collar must have reminded him of the terrible time he spent in the forest. Then the dog calmed down somewhat. But Fyodor Ivanovich felt that Zhuk began to treat him with some bewildered resentment.
Fyodor Ivanovich felt guilty, and therefore next to the kennel he built a bench from two logs and a board. He now spent a significant part of his time here. He sat, wearing felt boots lined with rubber, smoked a chewed cigar, was engaged in basket work and slowly talked with the dog:
- Volodka will arrive in two days, but we have nothing. It would be necessary to make at least five more baskets - consider it an extra ten rubles, or even fifteen... Are you sulking, tea, still? Don't sulk. A dog should not live in the house. This is not your apartment, you understand. What did you keep at home before? So, you were sick. And it was winter, remember. And now - grace. And the weather is good, and you look so strong and shiny... Should I pamper you, or what? Look, he waved his tail. You understand everything! - Fyodor Ivanovich winked at his mute four-legged interlocutor and shook his finger at him. - Okay, okay, I’ll order Volodka, let him bring this... what’s his name?.. Pedi Gris next time. That's where the name came from, damn it!..
Sometimes Fyodor Ivanovich took Zhuk with him into the forest. He led the dog on a leash through the village, untying it only outside the outskirts. The neighbors were now afraid of the dog, grumbled, and advised Fyodor to get rid of him.
- God forbid, he brings something even worse. It won't be possible without the police. You'll sit down!
“There is no such article that says you can marry a brownie,” Fyodor was angry. And he himself marveled at the wonderful conversation. Is it ever seen to quarrel with your neighbors because of some fabulous evil spirits!
Once free, the Beetle seemed to have gone crazy. He rushed through the fields barking enthusiastically, rolled in the grass, chased birds, and moused excitedly. Fyodor Ivanovich looked at the dog’s pranks with a wide smile, set his shaggy companion on the bushes, and laughed loudly at his bewilderment.
Life got better - whether the new brownie brought on a broom was the reason for this, or whether the streak of bad luck just ended by itself is unclear. Nevertheless, the renovated house no longer collapsed, the dishes did not break, the glass did not burst, and work was done quickly and smoothly.
- Do you think I’m weaving baskets here? - Fyodor Ivanovich addressed the male dog. - No, brother. This is me making my own coffin. My wife, Anna Vasilievna, do you know where she is? A hundred kilometers from here. In the city. It’s not good that she’s there and I’m here, but what can you do? I’ll die, and if I have enough money, I’ll lie down next to her. Here we have it, everything is simple: you died, they put you in a coffin made of five boards, buried you, and put up a cross. But there, no, there, every person needs money. For a place, for a monument, for work... I want to lie down like a god. Our churchyard is covered in epics and nettles, no one cares about it. In twenty years, there won’t be any trace left of him. But there, in the city, it’s not like that. There are special people assigned to the cemetery, they look after the graves, clean the paths...
The dog, having listened, yawned. He curled up, snapped his teeth in the fur, and pulled his drooping ear with his hind paw.
Fyodor Ivanovich fell silent, smiled sadly and put aside his next product.

The beetle got loose from its leash at night. And, stupefied by freedom, he disappeared for three days.
Fyodor Ivanovich could not find a place for himself. In the light he wandered through the nearby forests, whistling the dog, returned home at dusk, did not sleep at night, barely dozed off, coming to his senses at the slightest noise.
“And it’s for the best that it happened this way,” grandmother Tamara reassured him. - Now the tea won’t come back. The wolves, I bet they're gone.
Fyodor Ivanovich tsked at her angrily.
- Don't croak! He runs up and comes back,” he said. And I didn’t believe myself.
But on the morning of the fourth day, Fyodor Ivanovich was awakened by a familiar quiet whining. Suddenly waking up, he raised himself on his elbow and looked towards the stove.
- Oh, damn it! - he burst out. - He's back! He's here!
The beetle, as if nothing had happened, lay in its usual place. Hearing his owner's voice, the dog barked cheerfully and tapped his dirty tail on the floor.
- How did you get into the house? From the yard, perhaps? Hungry, I guess. I ran around and walked around. Wasn’t it in Kovorchino that he ran to some bitch? Eh, it's a young thing. At your age, I myself went ten miles to dances...
Fyodor Ivanovich, coughing strained and muttering something about his troubled youth, lowered his feet to the floor, felt his worn felt boots with his bare feet, sat for a while, pinching his sparse beard.
And only then did I notice that behind a sheaf of willow twigs between the stove and the sofa there were three creepy carcasses lying in a row.

We need to get rid of the dog - that’s what the whole village decided. The time limit for this was two days.
- Where am I going to put it? - Fyodor Ivanovich plaintively asked the envoys who had appeared.
“Give it to Volodka Toporov,” Grandma Tamara ordered.
- He won't take it.
- Let him take you somewhere far away and tie him up by the road. Maybe someone will pick...
Fyodor Ivanovich felt sorry for the dog. It's a pity to the point of tears, to the point of a sore throat. But he understood that it was not worth going against the neighbors. And I myself saw that it is impossible to keep such a dog in the village. Look, Grandma Komarikha had burning paper blown out of the flood in the morning, right onto the birch bark and dry logs. Fortunately, the buckets were full of water, they did not allow the fire to spread, only the floor in front of the stove burned out. And Ivan Orlov’s moonshine still exploded right around lunchtime. It worked flawlessly for fifteen years - and then it suddenly burst, so much so that an iron shard stuck into the ceiling.
So now it’s clear who the black dog visited and whose house he left without an owner.
What can I say - today Fyodor himself suddenly had a shelf with dishes collapsed.
Three houses - three carcasses. Everything fits together.
“And if you can’t, let me talk to Volodka,” Tamara said a little softer.
- No need. I myself...
Fyodor Ivanovich thought for a long time about what to do with the Zhuk. I didn’t want to leave him in the forest to certain death. Poison - even more so. If you just take him somewhere far away and let him out... But how will he find his way back?
“If you were a cat,” Fyodor Ivanovich reprimanded the subdued Zhuk, “I would take you to the farm.” There's milk and mice. I would have lived somehow.
The dog humbly looked at the owner, moved his tubercles over his intelligent eyes, and quietly smiled with his toothy mouth.
Or maybe, after all, leave it? - Fyodor Ivanovich thought confusedly. - Hide it until everything calms down. Then say that he returned...
No you can not.
Murder will out.
Well, how can someone throw in a poisoned piece? Ilyukha Samoilov can. Desperate.
Or who will set the traps?
There will be no way for a dog to live here.
We need to do something with him...

Volodka Toporov arrived on Monday and drove the battered Niva right up to the porch.
- You’re not waiting, are you? - he shouted from the cockpit, honking abruptly.
“I’m waiting,” Fyodor Ivanovich shouted back, looking out of the window. - How...
They both went outside and shook hands. There wasn't much work - they quickly dragged all the baskets from the house and loaded them into the trailer. Volodka placed stupid flower vases, painted with ink, in the back seat. Placed boxes and chests in the trunk.
Fyodor Ivanovich helped him, but he still couldn’t decide whether it was worth starting a conversation about the fate of Zhuk, tied up in the house.
- You, Uncle Fyodor, are not happy today. - Volodka took out his wallet. - What happened?
“Yes, so,” Fyodor Ivanovich shrugged.
- What? Speak. Maybe I can help.
- A! - Fyodor Ivanovich waved his hand. - The washbasin broke today. And the porch over there began to rot again. What a disaster.
- Of course. It's an old house.
“Old, not old...” Fyodor Ivanovich sighed and looked back at the windows of Tamarina’s hut. And, having made up his mind, he began to chatter:
- You, Volodka, would take the dog from me, or something. I don't need him, he's a burden. And you would have been in business. The house would be guarded.
- No, it won’t work. My wife is afraid of dogs. And I don't like them either.
- But in vain, in vain. Good male, smart.
- Don’t even try to persuade me, Uncle Fyodor. Uselessly.
- Well, maybe you can give it to someone you know?
- Who needs it? Judge for yourself - if a person needs a dog, he would rather take a puppy. And here - such a healthy devil.
- At least where would he go, eh?
“To the knacker’s farm, perhaps,” Volodka chuckled. And he got scared when he saw how Fyodor Ivanovich’s face twisted. - What are you doing? I was joking, I was joking. Do you really want to get rid of him?
- Don't want. Necessary.
- How can we understand this?
“It’s better not to ask,” Fyodor Ivanovich said bitterly. - You should have taken him somewhere far away, perhaps.
- What did he do? - Volodka asked quietly.
Fyodor Ivanovich just waved his hand.
- Take me away, I ask you by Christ God. Tie it somewhere near the road in plain sight. Maybe someone who regrets it will pick it up.
- Well... okay... He won't bite me?
“No, he’s affectionate,” Fyodor Ivanovich said barely audibly and suddenly, turning away sharply, jerked his shoulder.
- What are you doing, Uncle Fyodor?
- Take the fuck away! - the old man growled.
- Okay... Okay... But you... This... Just don’t cry...
Fyodor Ivanovich twitched, gurgled in his throat, slowly sank to the ground and, leaning back against the dirty wheel of the Niva, clasped his head in his hands.
“Here, take this money,” the confused Volodka said hesitantly, hastily taking out a brand new hundred from his wallet and trying to hand it to the old man.
“No...” Fyodor Ivanovich croaked. - Don’t... You... Buy him... This... What’s his name... Pedi Gris... Pamper him... Finally...

Fyodor Ivanovich was tormented for two days; he didn’t know what to do with himself. And late in the evening of the second day I couldn’t resist - I tied two baked potatoes left over from the last dinner, a tomato, a hastily boiled egg and a stale crust of rye bread into a scarf. He dressed thoroughly, put on tarpaulin boots with flannel footcloths, grabbed matches, a cleaver in a felt sheath - and left the house.
First of all I went to Tamara.
- Where are you going for the night? - she was surprised.
- Do whatever you want with me, but I won’t let Zhuk hurt you! - Fyodor Ivanovich said desperately and stamped his heel.
Grandma Tamara was silent for a long time, looking at the late guest who stood on the threshold. She shook her head. Finally, she spoke quietly and, seemingly, with understanding:
- So you went after him?
“I’ll go look,” Fyodor Ivanovich nodded. - I came to warn you, otherwise you’ll miss it - and I’m not there... Throw grains from the barrel to the chickens once a day.
- OK. Kinu... And where are you going?
- On the way to.
- Far?
- I do not know yet.
“Well, okay...” Tamara rose heavily from the stool, pulled out a desk drawer, and in one sweeping movement, grabbed the letters and postcards laid out on the tabletop into it. Said:
- Wait a minute.
And she went behind the curtain into a small room, from where an old alarm clock was clicking loudly - for the whole house - with a worn mechanism, trying to keep up with the rapid moments. The hostess returned about five minutes later and handed Fyodor a bright, orange and blue backpack.
- Here, take it. Grandson left. There I gave you a bottle of milk and a dozen pancakes. Eat on the way.
“Thank you,” Fyodor Ivanovich thanked.
- Or maybe you can wait until the morning? It's not a good idea to leave at night.
- I can not. It's easier that way.
- Well look. He has his own head on his shoulders.
“That’s it,” said Fyodor Ivanovich. He threw his backpack behind his back, turned on his heels, opened the door, crossed the threshold - and stopped. Slowly turning his head, he glanced sharply at Tamara and repeated meaningfully:
- That's it.

Under open air it was not scary to go. The moon shone brightly, the stars scattered throughout the high darkness twinkled; it was quiet and sleepy. But when the forest began, black and hidden, Fyodor Ivanovich felt uneasy. He took out a cleaver - but this did not make him any calmer. He thought that a flashlight would be useful right now. And then he decided that a yellow spot jumping on the ground would be of no use.
In the darkness that surrounded the road, someone lived. There they tossed and turned and sighed. They groaned and groaned. They creaked and crackled. The closed trees tried to catch the annoyingly bright backpack and pull it off the man’s shoulders. Vague figures moved out of the darkness and stood like motionless ghosts a step away from the side of the road. Silent winged shadows glided right across the stars. Sometimes the gray moon looked down, and then the forest changed in a monstrous way: ugly shadows streaked the road, every pothole was filled with thick darkness, birch trunks began to shine creamy, and the dense wall of closed trees split, revealing the previously invisible, heavy and gloomy...
Fyodor Ivanovich walked for a long time, unconsciously holding his breath and struggling with overwhelming fears. He held the hot handle of the knife tightly. He forced himself to walk widely and measuredly, drove away frightening thoughts, convinced him not to believe in deceptive ghosts, knew that the figures standing along the road were ordinary snags and shabby bushes, that the quiet shadows gliding against the background of the stars were owls and bats.
But then he saw something that felt like a bell clanged in his head - and split into hundreds of heavy, sharp pieces, and his contracted heart immediately broke off and fell into his stomach, fluttering there, jumping, beating.
Along the forest road, along the swaying shadows, rhythmically jumping, a creepy four-legged creature with a disproportionately large shapeless head ran towards.
Fyodor Ivanovich gasped, put the cleaver in front of him and began to slowly sag, feeling a strange emptiness in his head.

He dreamed that he was lying on an uncomfortable sofa at home; his hand hung down to the cold floor, and the black dog Beetle licked his fingers with his rough hot tongue.
Fyodor Ivanovich smacked his lips and woke up.
He was lying on the ground. Something hard was pressing against my right side. Stars peeked through the woven openwork crowns.
He was in the forest. On the road, not on the couch.
But the hot tongue still licked his hand.
- Bug?
The dog barked in a familiar way, and Fyodor Ivanovich turned over.
- Bug!
The dog jumped up, jumped in one direction, then in the other, fell to the ground, spinning its tail. He decided that the owner was playing a game with him.
- Oh, you damn thing! You, the infection, almost sent me to the next world! I even... Ah... How... - Fyodor Ivanovich choked and choked into his fist. Clearing his throat and catching his breath, he wiped his palm on his pants, picked up the cleaver, and put it in its sheath. He sat down, shaking his head, saying in confusion:
- Oh, such an infection... How, huh?.. How...
The dog, seeing that the game was not working out, calmed down and came closer. He poked his head into the owner’s knees, as if begging forgiveness for something.
- Well, what?.. Eh, you healthy dog... - Fyodor Ivanovich sniffed, grabbed Zhuk by the neck, felt for a piece of rope, felt blood under his hands. - It couldn’t have been like that... It’s not human... Eh! - He pressed himself close to the male dog, stroked his spine, scratched his side. - Let me cut off your noose... Wait... Right now... Just stay calm!..
Then they sat for a long time on the empty road. If there were pancakes and bread soaked in milk, they chewed potatoes and told each other about what happened to them - each in their own way, in their own language.
They were surrounded by a living black thicket. In it, someone was tossing and turning and sighing, groaning and groaning. Vague figures emerged from the darkness and stood a few steps from the side of the road, winged quiet shadows glided across the smoldering stars - but nothing frightened Fyodor Ivanovich now.
And when they gathered and moved to Return trip, then Fyodor Ivanovich understood why the dog seemed so scary to him when they met.
From God knows how far away, the Beetle was dragging its next prey into its mouth.
And, apparently, he had no intention of leaving her.

“So this is a kikimora,” Tamara said, only glancing towards the carcass lying on the floor.
- Yah! - Fyodor Ivanovich didn’t believe it.
- Who else could it be? Judge for yourself: green hair, a muzzle the size of a fist, membranes like a goose. How to drink - kikimora!..
The beetle lay in its usual place near the stove. He smiled as only dogs can smile, and tapped his dirty tail on the floorboards.
- And what kind of dog do you have? - Tamara muttered, looking sternly at the collapsed male.
The beetle stuck out its pink tongue at her and yawned protractedly.
It was getting light outside. Roosters were calling from the courtyards. Buckets clanked at the well, receiving cold water; The well chain rattled dully, and the ungreased gate squealed abruptly.
Fyodor Ivanovich covered the strangled kikimora with a potato sack and announced:
- Do what you want with me, but I’ll leave Zhuk. I’ll keep an eye on you, patch up the fence, I won’t let one through the gate, but I won’t kick you out either.
“I already understood that,” said grandmother Tamara. - But how will you survive without a master? He himself complained that it was hard.
- Are you talking about the brownie, or what? So I came up with everything. There are so many abandoned huts around, both here, and in Nikulkino, and in Shiryaevo. I’ll take a broom, as you taught me, and bring myself a new house-elder. And if I don’t keep track of the Beetle again, I’ll drag another one over to me. There are many empty huts, enough for my lifetime.
- Isn’t it a pity?
- Whom? Brownies? Maybe it's a pity. But just judge for yourself, they will die in any case. How long will these houses last? Before our eyes they rot, wither, and fall apart.
“Maybe you’re right,” Tamara said quietly. “My heart bleeds when I look at huts like these.” And it’s scary to think what it’s like for the owner there alone...
“Their age is ending, Tamara,” said Fyodor Ivanovich. - Yes, ours too. You know, I’m not weaving baskets here. This is me making my own coffin...
The kettle boiled and he sat down at the table. Fyodor Ivanovich took out gingerbread cookies and vanilla crackers. Grandma Tamara took out a bag of caramel in sticky paper wrappers from her pocket.
During the tea party they hardly spoke. They had a good time already.
The radio, awakened by the owner's hand, muttered about a new government program. Chickens were busy outside the window. Behind the fence, aspen logs burst with a crash from the blows of the cleaver - the desperate Ilyukha Samoilov was chopping wood for the bathhouse.
“But I keep wondering if Volodka bought him a Pedi Gris,” Fyodor Ivanovich muttered thoughtfully.
Tamara didn’t understand what he was talking about, but she didn’t ask again. She sipped the hot tea, sucked on the gingerbread, and said pleadingly:
- Maybe you can give me the Beetle tomorrow?
Fyodor Ivanovich looked at the guest in bewilderment. And she, shrugging her shoulders embarrassedly, explained:
- It became scary to go to the bathhouse. Last time I washed myself, I started drawing water from the cauldron - and suddenly it was as if someone hugged me from behind. She screamed, swore, turned around - empty... I would have been calmer with the Beetle.
- Take it, of course.
- Well, thank you...
After Tamara left, Fyodor Ivanovich sat at the table for a long time. He sipped cold tea from an iron mug, languidly gnawed on crackers, and was thinking intensely about something. About forty minutes later he slapped his knees and stood up sharply, exhaling:
- Need to work!
He brought from the kitchen a sharp finca, carved from a car spring by a prison chemist he knew. He took out a piece of tarpaulin from the floor and spread it on the floor. He rolled out a block of wood cut with a cleaver from the corner into the middle of the room and stuck a knife into it. He poured water into the basin.
And, after a little hesitation, he pulled the dust bag off the dead kikimora.

Indian summer is over. A cold, bone-chilling wind was blowing from the side of the lake, and therefore Zina Toporova moved from her usual place closer to the monastery walls. On plywood tables with duralumin legs, she laid out all her goods in the usual order: tiny baskets, neat wicker boxes, little shoes knitted in pairs, birch bark tueskas, willow flower pots, trays, vases.
- They're coming! - announced Irka Samoilova, selling clay figured whistles and porcelain bells. She blew into her cold palms, looked at her watch and added:
- They're late today.
Zina turned around.
Along the cobblestone street, past old two-story mansions, peeling and unsightly, past bare lindens and poplars, past grimy cast-iron fences and gray theater stands, a huge glass bus rolled majestically, looking like an aquarium shining from the inside.
“There should be two more flights,” said the all-knowing Olga Masterkova, who sells icons, Khokhloma-painted spoons and thick pencils with an image of a monastery belfry on the side. - The season is ending, girls. We'll be sucking paws soon...
The bus turned around in the square in front of the monastery gates. The doors hissed and slid aside. Enthusiastic, smartly dressed people poured out of the hole. They started screaming and clicking cameras, scaring the crows. They saw souvenirs laid out for sale and rushed towards them.
Zina Toporova patted her frozen cheeks, straightened her scarf and smiled broadly at the approaching clients.
- Good day! - she said loudly. - Ay em believe glad si yu.
The foreigners hummed in admiration.
“You’re lucky, Zinka,” said Irka Samoilova enviously. - She would teach me their language, perhaps.
“I studied at the university for five years,” Zina responded over the crowd. And she smiled even wider, rushing to demonstrate to the foreign guests as much product as possible, readily responding to every question, every gesture, every glance.
In fifteen minutes she sold six boxes, ten pairs of bast shoes, two vases, a flowerpot and a basket with a lid. Then the wave of buyers subsided; the inhabitants of the wheeled aquarium scattered around the square - they were waiting for the guide to allow them to enter the forged gates. Only one elderly man could not tear himself away from Zina’s tray. His attention was drawn to three figures standing in the most visible place.
“Please, take it,” Zina allowed. And he immediately took one of the figures, twirled it, squeezed it, and even smelled it with enthusiastic surprise. He asked what it was made of, what it was called, and how much it cost.
Zina could not answer the first question. She didn’t really know where her husband got the goods from.
And as for the name...
“It’s a Russian brownie,” Zina said confidently. - Do-mo-howl. Exclusive. Special fo u. Fotin dollars.
The foreigner kneaded the brownie stuffed with sawdust, not understanding how such a miracle could be cut with virtually no seams, stroked the thick wool with his fingers, said the international “okay” and reached into his pocket for his wallet.

story three: Ivan Ivanovich

There was a storm at night, and the old rotten linden tree, unable to withstand the onslaught of the elements, broke in half and collapsed, covering the rickety frame of the well.
Other trees also suffered - the stumpy willows growing around the pond scattered tattered branches across the shallow rotten water, wild apple trees lost their unripe apples, and a pine tree growing on a hillock lost a huge paw and became pitiful, like a disabled animal.
But here's a linden tree!..
Baba Masha sighed.
This linden tree was planted by her older brother Fyodor on the day he left for the front.
“I was here with my grandfather alone,” he said quietly, taking his little sister aside. - He advised me everything. That means I put my hair and an old shirt in the roots of this linden tree. I did everything as my grandfather ordered. Now if anything happens to me, the tree will show you.”
Schoolgirl Masha did not believe in such nonsense, she called them superstitions, but she soon had to change her mind. On the ninth of July, during a thunderstorm, a strange, thin lightning, like a rope, struck the tree and left a scorched mark on the trunk. And two months later, Fyodor returned home, crumpled, his face blackened. Limping, he approached the linden tree, touched the mutilated trunk with his hand, and said quietly: “But grandfather didn’t lie.”
And only Masha understood what he meant.
The tree never recovered from that storm. It seemed to be growing upward, but black internal rot was slowly eating it up. Throughout the war and for another twenty years after, Fyodor presided over the collective farm, firmly supported the state economy, never remembered his ailments, never complained, only looked at the linden tree, and in public, laughing, pitied it out loud.
He died somehow quietly, unnoticed, alone in his blind hut. And on the day of the funeral, in the month of August, the linden tree suddenly dropped all its leaves and wrapped itself in a thick gray web that came from nowhere.
After a few years, she finally recovered, her crown turned green, and even the black scar healed a little. Maybe because Masha began to bury her hair under her roots, or maybe for some other reason.
Was it really Ivan Ivanovich who helped the dying tree?..
Shaking her head, Baba Masha walked around the well covered with linden trees.
What should we do now? Should I go to the key to fetch water? Far. And it hasn’t been cleaned for many years now. Inhaled, tea, mud...
Having picked up the buckets left on the path, Baba Masha headed to the neighbor’s house.

Utekhovo has never been a big village. In the best days - before the fire - there were twelve courtyards here. Children ran six kilometers away to study in Lazartsevo: in addition to the school, there was a village store, a club with a library and billiards, and a public bathhouse.
But here we go! The time has come - the villages have become equal: in Utekhov there are two residential houses left, and in Lazartsevo. And it was as if they had moved away from each other, not six kilometers separated them, but sixty. The straight road was overgrown, the ford across the river was filled with mud, the forest had returned to its former meadows and arable fields. Children used to run for an hour each way. And now the old people have to trudge almost all day.
So now no one goes from Utekhov to Lazartsevo. There is no need: the store closed long ago, the bathhouse burned down, the club was dismantled for firewood. And if you want, you can convey the news through Lyoshka Ivantsev, when he rolls up from the regional center in his Niva, bringing bread, tea, and sugar for sale - and at the same time checks whether the lonely old women have died, whether those surrounded by forest are still alive villages.

The neighbor looked out as soon as Baba Masha lightly tapped her finger on the window glass.
- Did you see what happened at night?
- Why not! I was afraid that the roof would blow off.
- My linden tree was filled up. Straight to the well. Don't come near now.
- Wait a minute, I’ll...
The window sash slammed and the latch creaked.
Baba Masha turned away and leaned sideways against the log wall. Squinting, she looked from under her hand at the mutilated pine tree and sadly shook her head.
She was uneasy.
Well, it’s no accident that the linden tree broke! Maybe this is a sign?
Oh, there was no need to dig up her hair at the roots!..
The neighbor came out, wrapped in a gray shawl, leaning on a juniper stick:
- Let's go, let's see what kind of trouble happened there. And I didn’t leave the house today. I just let Kurei out of the yard. I'm not feeling well. I even flooded the stove - it’s chilling.
“Well, tea, it’s not twenty years,” Baba Masha answered absently.
We didn’t have to go far - the well was nearby, behind the woodshed, behind the rotten frame of the combine, behind the overgrown lilac tree.
“Here,” said Baba Masha, spreading her arms wide. - We can’t handle this on our own, Lyubasha.
“Yes,” said the neighbor, slowly walking around the well and the linden tree that had fallen on it. - Or maybe we can pull it away with a tractor?
- Then the log house will completely fall apart. We need to at least chop off all the branches, but we won’t even get there... This is not a woman’s job, Lyuba. Ivan Ivanovich must be called.
“Oh, I don’t know...” Baba Lyuba shrugged her shoulder. “I don’t want to bother him unnecessarily.”
- You've done it again! What kind of waste is this?! And so they didn’t touch him for the whole summer! There are so many things to do: manure needs to be raked out, hay needs to be felled, at least some firewood needs to be stored. Enough, tea, I've had enough of it over the summer. Autumn is just around the corner, the potatoes will need to be hauled underground. Or were you planning to do everything yourself?
“Maybe myself,” Baba Lyuba said quietly. - You, Marya Petrovna, don’t swear. It’s not just me... I’m... I’m afraid Ivan Ivanovich won’t come to us anymore.
- How is this?
- And like this... Last time in the spring, do you remember, we called him? He was already unhappy then. Angry.
- For what?
- How we greet him, how we thank him. He's tired of pies and tired of pancakes. He's bored with us, that's what. Let's call him, he will come, look that nothing has changed, turn around - that's all we saw.
“How can this be?” Baba Masha was confused. - How will we survive without a man? Do you know exactly what you're saying?
- And you ask him yourself.
-Are you laughing? Or have you forgotten that I can’t understand his mooing?
- I say: he will leave, if he has not already left. I haven't seen him for a long time. I mean, since May...

Baba Lyuba met Ivan Ivanovich a long time ago - either under Stalin, or already under Khrushchev. She then mowed the forest clearings and prepared hay for the goat. This matter seemed to be resolved, but the young Lyuba, like the other peasants, was hiding just in case. The surrounding meadows were entirely collective farm meadows, that is, state meadows, even those where the grass had never been mowed. If you even try to cut off the edges of Lithuanian strips there, you won’t be in trouble. Therefore, the villagers played it safe: in the morning - after dark - they walked with scythes into inconvenient forest plots, in the evenings - at dusk - they carried dry hay.
Lyuba was doubly hidden. Various rumors went around about her, they said that she was a herbalist, a healer, either by God's gift or by a damn curse - and she was afraid that these conversations would reach strangers.
And she really had a gift: she guessed the healing power in herbs, felt by instinct what ailments needed to be treated with what. I only went to my grandfather for science - the same one who once advised my neighbor Fyodor to plant a linden tree near his house before leaving for the front.
Lyuba spent a lot of time in the forests, sometimes spending the night in the wilderness, not afraid of anything. Ivan Ivanovich probably noticed her even then. And he came out when she slipped on a hummock and broke her braid and leg. He didn’t come out right away - only in the evening, when Lyuba had already lost her voice and was exhausted. Ivan Ivanovich picked her up from the ground, put her on his shoulder, and carried her to the forest edge, from where the roofs of houses and a branched pine tree growing on a hill were visible...

It was warm in the hut, almost hot. A fire roared in the flood chamber, making the cast-iron door red-hot; cubes of coal glowed red in the open ash pit. The radio hanging above the table droned about something; A large fly was ringing and beating against the window glass.
“We can’t live without a man,” Baba Masha repeated plaintively, smoothing the candy wrapper from the “School” candy with her fingers. - You should have come up with something, huh?
Baba Lyuba used a large knife with a black, worn-out blade to split a splinter for the samovar.
- What can you come up with here?
- I would talk to him. Maybe he himself will say something worthwhile.
- What will he say?! - Baba Lyuba angrily waved the knife aside. - You better think about what we should do with the well. Maybe when Lyoshka Ivantseva arrives, ask her for help?
- There is no hope for Lyoshka, it’s as if you don’t know. And you won’t be able to save enough money. It used to be simple; you could pay for everything with a bottle of moonshine. And now there are no such fools, now give everyone money. You need your own man, a real one, not some kind of scamp.
- There are no more men, Masha. Now we have to live ourselves. As everybody.
- You got it right! Okay, if you don’t want to, I’ll call you myself. It's a simple matter.
- It’s easy to call. How are you going to keep him?
- I'll think of something.
- Well, think of it now.
They fell silent.
A log cracked loudly in the stove; again, buzzing, the silent fly began to beat against the glass; signals of the exact time were squeaked into the radio.
“I’m scared, Lyuba,” Baba Masha said, sighing. - I’ve been putting my hair under Fedorov’s linden tree for many years now. And she - wow! - take it and break it.
- Why are you putting it?
- I don’t know myself... I collect everything I own - hair, nails. And under the tree.
- Why are you collecting?
- Otherwise, you don’t know... In the next world, every dropped hair, every nail will be found and forced to be picked up. It’s okay here, I’ll do it somehow... But I lived in Sverdlovsk for another three years...
- Oh, you fool, Marya Petrovna! And she was also a Komsomol member!
- And I went to church as a Komsomol member!.. Tell me this, Lyubasha, can Ivan Ivanovich come up with something with my linden tree, help somehow?.. Maybe, right? After all, the roots remained, and he would have grown a new tree from them. That would be good. And the memory of Fedor, and I feel calmer...
The neighbors sat for a long time at a table covered with worn oilcloth, drinking tea from darkened saucers, looking into the nickel-plated samovar, listening to regional news on the radio.
“And I need to fix the roof,” Baba Masha recalled.
Emboldened mice rustled behind the wallpaper.
- Yes, and your porch rotted a long time ago.
Rowan branches tapped on the window.
- And the heifer will have to be slaughtered soon.
Magpies that had flown from somewhere in the yard began to chatter - bad news.
- And the manure is so compacted that now I can’t handle it.
“Okay,” Baba Lyuba said with a sigh. - I know how to please Ivan Ivanovich. Yes, I very much doubt whether this is a good deed... Is your tractor running? Get ready - you'll go to the regional center.

Baba Masha’s tractor was left over from her husband. During perestroika, when collective and state farms abandoned by the state began to fall apart, slowly selling off their property, former foreman and honorary pensioner Pyotr Stepanovich decided to take up farming - all sorts of television programs depicted very attractive prospects for this business. Using old connections, he bought for next to nothing a broken twenty-five-horsepower “Vladimirets” tractor, which no one called anything other than a “fart,” as well as a small single-axle trailer, a plow and a cultivator. Pyotr Stepanovich collected the rest of the iron in the fields and at abandoned landfills. There he found a good harrow, spare wheels, a mower in need of repair - and many other useful things.
Pyotr Stepanovich became seriously interested in farming. But he never got rich, but only lost his health. He died from the heart - one morning he got dressed, got ready to go plow potatoes, but felt a sharp pain in his chest, sat down on a bench, leaned forward, his face turning blue - and fell, no longer breathing.
In addition to the tractor, Peter left his wife six calves, two dairy cows and a countless herd of sheep. And two years later, out of all the livestock, Baba Masha had Galya the cow and Polya the sheep, but even they barely had enough strength. If not for the tractor, and not for the help of Ivan Ivanovich, Baba Masha would have kept only chickens.
And Baba Masha handled the tractor quite well. Under Khrushchev, she worked for several years at the local MTS, and later, under Brezhnev, she more than once had to drive a wheeled T40 and the levers of a tracked DT75. Until now, she kept in her dresser drawer a clipping from a local newspaper, where a familiar bespectacled correspondent, now long drunk, called her “our Angelina Pasha.”

There was only a little diesel left in the three-hundred-liter barrel, and Baba Masha, taking money wrapped in a rag from the chest of drawers, counted out a few bills. Gasoline prices were rising rapidly, and diesel fuel now cost a little less than gasoline, but Grandma Masha hoped that she would have enough money for one full refueling. It may even be possible to replenish the “strategic reserve” in the barrel.
The tractor started up immediately, without being capricious - it shot out blue smoke, coughed and then began to rattle smoothly, trembling like a rabbit caught by the ears.
Carefully, in reverse, Baba Masha pulled the tractor out of the yard. She stopped in front of the house, opened the door, waved her hand to her neighbor, and shouted, with her voice over the crackle of the diesel engine:
- Look after the chickens, give them grain for lunch! And in the evening I’ll be back, tea! If I'm late, feed the cattle! The swill is standing by the stove, it’s already ready, only warm water need to be diluted!
- I’ll do everything, not the first time. Ride easy.
- OK...
The tractor moved - its front wheels dived into the overgrown rut of the old road, jumped up, barked strainedly, spewing smoke - and rolled off, slowly accelerating, swinging from side to side, crushing tall grass, breaking branches of nearby bushes.
The path ahead was not short - it was twenty-five kilometers to the regional center, and even more to the place where Baba Masha was heading. Moreover, she was going to visit her relatives in Matveytsevo - and this would be quite a circle.
Baba Masha was in a hurry, in a hurry, driving the tractor over the potholes of the road, not sparing either herself or the car. Hunched over, clutching the steering wheel wrapped in duct tape, she tenaciously looked at the road broken by timber trucks, deafened by the diesel rumble. I thought absentmindedly about life, wondered how much money to save from my pension to buy firewood, and decided whether it wouldn’t be easier to quietly pull a few fallen birches out of the forest with a tractor and cut them up myself.
The most - with the help of Ivan Ivanovich.
Not a stranger, tea. He won't refuse now. He won't leave, he won't give up.
Oh, God forbid!
Baba Masha remembered her brother Fyodor and her husband Peter, and also remembered Ivan Ivanovich, who replaced them...

Lyuba brought him to the village, probably in 1995 - a few years after Peter’s death. On that day, I remember, Paul’s stupid sheep fell into the cesspool of an abandoned house. Getting her out of there turned out to be an impossible task for two elderly women, but, watching how Marya Petrovna was killing herself, listening to how the cattle stuck in the mud screamed in a wild voice, Baba Lyuba could not stand it:
- Okay, I'll bring an assistant. Just you, Masha, stay at home and don’t show your nose at him.
Baba Masha sat in the hut all day, consumed by curiosity. Where did Lyuba find an assistant? In Lazartsevo, or what? It's so far away! And what kind of helper is this that you have to hide from?..
Lyuba came in the evening, knocked on the glass, shouted:
- They pulled out your Polka, grazing by the well under the linden tree. Give me some milk, I need to pay the assistant.
- What is his name? - asked Baba Masha, passing a jar out the window.
“Ivan,” Lyuba answered, hesitating a little. - Ivan Ivanovich.
From then on, it became a custom: as soon as some overwhelming task arose, Baba Masha ran to her neighbor:
- You should have called Ivan Ivanovich, Lyuba. We can't manage without him. And I would thank you in any way I could. Look, I kneaded the dough this morning...
Lyuba did not refuse her; apparently, Ivan Ivanovich really liked the treat; apparently, he himself willingly did peasant affairs. He dug new fence posts, cut down the thorn bushes, uprooted the old apple tree, straightened out the sagging yard, and brought a new boiler into the bathhouse to replace the old one.
And soon Baba Masha had a chance to see the mysterious assistant. She was very surprised then, she was even frightened to the point of hiccups at first, and then she remembered that they always talked about Lyubasha, and she seemed to calm down, and thought that nothing special had happened.
The main thing is that there is a man.
And what kind of person he is all about is the tenth thing.

In Matveytsevo, Baba Masha did not stay for one extra minute. Her brother lived here - the seventh water on jelly. Grandma Masha did not favor him, although she herself could not explain why. They rarely communicated - out of necessity; They met mainly at the funerals of mutual relatives.
- I'm in debt! - Baba Masha shouted to her brother, who was digging in the garden. She didn’t even turn off the tractor, she just opened the door and put her foot down on the dirt-stained step. - Hello!
The tanned tall man slowly straightened up; squinting against the sun, he looked from under his arm at his relative who had arrived, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a broad gesture. Slowly, swaying, he came closer and opened the gate:
- I would like to go into the house, Marya Petrovna.
- No time, Vasily Stepanovich. I'm in a hurry. Will you get back the money you took six months ago?
- I don’t have any money now, Marya Petrovna.
- I should... Maybe you can re-borrow from someone?
- Yes, it seems like there’s no one to re-borrow from... But wouldn’t you take the debt in gold? - Brother Vasily tilted his head and squinted slyly.
Oh, Grandma Masha didn’t like that squinting look.
- Are you kidding, right?
- No, I'm not joking. Popov's gold, old, real.
- Where?
- We know where... I found the treasure.
- Where is this?
- Tell you everything... Do you remember the stone house on the other side of the village?
- Chairman?
- He is. No Furthermore Houses. He fell apart... Only you... - Vasily caught himself and glanced around. - Don't make a fuss about gold. We don't need this.
- Is it really a treasure?
“I’m telling you: the priest’s gold was buried in the chairman’s house.” Will you take it instead of money?
- You bring it, and I’ll take a look.
Vasily nodded and, slowly and waddled, went into the house. He disappeared for a long time - Baba Masha was about to turn off the tractor, sparing the diesel fuel. Vasily returned somewhat quiet, as if he had even shrunk. There was a cobweb hanging on his left shoulder - either his brother was climbing into the attic or into the basement for hidden gold.
“Here, look,” He walked up to the tractor, extended his hand and unclenched his scratched fist. On the palm lay a gold cross with a small green stone in the middle.
“In the city, they’ll probably give crazy money for it,” Vasily said quietly. - The stone is probably an emerald.
“Okay,” said Baba Masha. - I'll take it.

About an hour later the tractor drove onto the asphalt. The road sign suggested that there were three kilometers left to the regional center, but today Baba Masha was not going there, and therefore immediately turned left. The remaining journey took her another twenty minutes.
The roadside eatery “Romashka” was the only eatery on the entire route connecting the regional center with the regional city. That’s why this establishment was very popular, and not only among truck drivers. However, it was the truckers who were most present here. Huge cars with long wagons, like wagons, stood on the side of the road; the rare “Muscovites” and “Zhiguli” looked among them like little boats worn out by hummocks.
First of all, Grandma Masha stopped at a gas station, where she found out that diesel fuel had almost doubled in price. Having spent all the money on diesel fuel, she took the tractor onto the road, stopped it away from other cars, turned it off and got out of the cab.
Nearby, a young guy in an orange, oil-stained vest was intently kicking a truck tire. The appearance of Baba Masha distracted him from this activity; He looked with interest and, perhaps, surprise at the decrepit old woman, quickly glanced towards the tractor, and asked:
- Mother, maybe you need some help?
“I can handle it myself,” she responded quickly.
He chuckled approvingly:
- Well, look.
She looked: at a trio of men gathered at a table under a canopy near the barbecue, at a bored waitress in a gray hospital gown, at a man in a chef's hat and a canvas butcher's apron yawning in the doorway of the summer kitchen, at dogs lightly dozing near the trash cans, at a high cab of a driver dressed in jeans, a woman dozing in a Zhiguli, a bare-legged, bare-haired girl walking among the cars.
Two or three more of the same girls were probably now inside the “Romashka”, greedily chewing something, or simply sitting in the corner, keeping an eye on the drivers coming inside, waiting for one of them to beckon one to follow them.
- Wait, daughter... - Baba Masha caught up with the girl, walked next to her, not knowing where to start the conversation, lost and embarrassed.
- What? - The gum bubble burst on brightly painted lips.
- What is your name?
- Natasha. And what?
- How old are you?
- What do you care, grandma? Will you educate? No need. Better go where you were going.
“That’s how I came to you,” Baba Masha hurried. She fussily took the “School” candy she had prepared for such an occasion out of her pocket and handed it to the girl, feeling terribly awkward. - Here, take it. And listen to me, old one, what I want to say...
The girl looked at the candy doubtfully. I took it. Unfolded it. Popped it in my mouth:
- Well?..
- You’re doing this... With men... for money... Yes?
- Sometimes it’s not for money. Life is like that. And what?
- Look at this... - A golden cross with a green pebble in the middle flashed on a withered, almost black palm. - Gold, real, ancient. And emerald. It was still done before the revolution... In the city, for such a thing, do you know how much they will give?
Interest flashed in the girl's eyes.
- How many?
- Ten thousand! - Baba Masha named the first number that came to mind. And then I was afraid that the girl wouldn’t believe such a fabulous amount. - Ten thousand. If you bargain. Real gold, priestly, old! And another pebble. Ten thousand, I’m sure, no less.
- And what do you want?
“Yes, yes,” Baba Masha nodded, glad that now she could get down to business. - I have a guy I know. A good man, hard-working, kind. You would have pleased him. Tea, you know how. It’s difficult in our village with girls; there are only two grandmothers left. But he’s still strong, man. He can't do without this.
- Ten thousand? - The golden cross shone in the girl’s black eyes.
- Yes. We will feed you properly and take a steam bath in the bathhouse. Maybe you like it with us and decide to stay.
The girl chuckled doubtfully.
- How far is the village?
- Not good. Don't worry, I'll take you. There, my tractor is standing there.
- Ten thousand?
- Ten, ten.
- I have never seen such money.
- You can sell it in the city. It’s possible in the regional center, but then they’ll give you less.
- What's the guy's name?
- He is Ivan Ivanovich. Kind. Industrious.
“Ten thousand,” the girl shook her head. - OK. Just give me the cross right away.
- Certainly. As soon as we enter the village, I’ll give it back immediately.
They nodded at the same time, pleased with each other, and headed towards the tractor standing to the side.

It was cramped for two people in the iron cabin.
The girl was sitting sideways, pressing her cold thigh against Baba Masha’s dry knee, her angular shoulder resting against the dusty glass. Slouched, her long, thin legs drawn up, she now looked like a chilled swamp heron. Throwing her thin arm behind the elderly woman’s back, she tightly grabbed the back of the only chair here and looked at the road with detachment.
What was she thinking?
Baba Masha could not imagine how life should turn out for such a young girl, a clueless little girl, to give up everything she had and go from one hand to another. Well, how could she understand what was going on in this Natasha’s head?
- Where are you from?
- From Kovorchino.
- Where do you live?
- Wherever necessary, there are many acquaintances. I think I'll go to the city. Maybe even to Moscow... But money will be needed there... Do you have anything else like this cross?
- We'll find...
The tractor rolled down the highway embankment and, bouncing, drove into a deep rut of a dirt road.
- How long do we still have to go?
- We'll make it before dark.
The sun was just setting to the west. Shadows of clouds crawled across the meadows and abandoned fields, and a huge blue-black cloud slowly emerged from behind a toothy strip of forest.
“It will rain again,” Baba Masha sighed and, after a pause, unexpectedly began to tell the story of the linden tree planted by brother Fyodor before leaving for the front. The roar of the diesel engine muffled her words; she almost screamed to be heard, and because of this her usual story became like a desperate complaint.
The thunderstorm began when they entered the forest. Lightning flashed very close, thunder roared deafeningly, and harsh streams of rain thundered across the roof. In a matter of seconds, the tractor plunged into dense darkness and seemed to even get stuck in it.
And Baba Masha shouted, straining her already shrunken voice:
- Our places are remote, special! And this forest is not simple. Even a stranger may not be able to pass along the road! Get lost! Here our recently escaped bandits disappeared without a trace!..
The tractor swayed steadily and seemed to float out of time, out of space, moving from one world to another.
Barely guessable black figures were moving around: either bushes and trees that seemed to be alive, or forest monsters frozen by magic. The headlights and flashes of lightning snatched from the darkness dissected by the jets of ugly branches-paws stretching towards the car and trunks-trunks leaning towards it.
Natasha suddenly remembered that this is how the time machine worked in some old science-fiction film that she once saw on TV, plunging into the stirring darkness under the roar of electrical discharges. She felt terrified.
Another flash of lightning momentarily illuminated the blurred road. Natasha squealed: it seemed to her that on the side of the road, leaning against a ghostly white birch tree, there stood a huge monster with a human-like figure and measuredly, like a machine, waving its hand at the tractor.
Grandma Masha, clutching the steering wheel, quickly glanced at the girl and shouted, opening her uneven, toothless mouth wide:
- Do not be afraid! This is Ivan Ivanovich greeting us! - Her wrinkled face, illuminated from below by the dim light of the dashboard, seemed ugly and dead, like a rubber mask.
Natasha closed her eyes, squealed, and quietly crawled down to the cold bottom of the cabin.

The rest was like a dream: incomprehensible turmoil, noise, darkness, someone’s hands, gentle voices:
- What a beauty... Did you give her the candy right away?
- Yes.
- When did it take effect?
- It must have been recently.
- Hold her head, hold her head... Drink, dear, drink...
Something sweet and odorous poured down my throat and flowed onto my chin.
- You swallow, honey... Now get up... And let's go, let's go... Hold on to me... And-and, one leg... And-and, two the other...
She was supported on both sides and helped to walk. She looked like she was drunk - her thoughts were confused, her legs were tangled, everything was swimming, swaying, trembling before her eyes - and it was very funny.
- Smiling, beauty... That's right. Laugh, laugh...
She was brought into a warm and bright place. Divide. They made me sit down.
- Handle, raise your hand... Now give your leg here... That's good. Here you go, smart girl...
They poured on her hot water, she was dipped, scrubbed, soaped. Then they wrapped her in something large and soft, and put something tasty and crumbly in her mouth.
She wanted to sleep.
But other people’s hands tirelessly bothered her, and kind voices kept demanding something from her:
- Chew... Get dressed... Drink... Get up... Lay down...
Then she fell somewhere for a long time and listened, listened, listened to the intoxicating gentle voice:
- Bride... Well, a pure bride...

By morning the storm had subsided.
Throwing a sweatshirt over her husband’s shoulders, Grandma Masha went out to look at the linden tree. She walked around the well and the fallen tree several times, and then noticed two weak sprouts with heart-shaped leaves in the grass at the roots. And my soul immediately warmed.
- That’s how nice it is! Now Ivan Ivanovich will take care of you and won’t let you go to waste...
The gates of the neighbor's yard creaked strainedly - Lyubasha was letting out the chickens. Baba Masha walked towards her and shouted from afar, barely passing the rusty frame of the combine:
- Isn't it time?
- It's time! - the neighbor responded.
The morning turned out clear and clear - like a wine glass. The sun was just about to show its curved burgundy edge from behind the trees, and it was as if a weak manganese solution had spread across the luminous sky, abundantly saturating the loose cotton wool of the clouds. Outside the outskirts, a cuckoo was generously counting the years of someone’s life, in the garden the magpies that had flown from the forest were chattering, and in Baba Masha’s yard a young cockerel was hysterically and ineptly trying out his voice...
They met at the woodshed: Baba Lyuba was leading Natasha by the arm.
- How is she? - Baba Masha asked quietly.
- Fine...
Dressed in a long white shirt, Natasha could barely move her feet. The eyes with huge pupils were covered with a cloudy film.
Baba Masha took the girl by the elbow and pressed her to her.
- Let's go, shall we? - Baba Lyuba asked uncertainly for some reason.
- Let's go to...
They walked slowly along the dewy grass through a quiet village: past the crooked hut of Vaska Likhachev, past the collapsed choir of Pyotr Petrovich Varlomeev, past the still strong house of Fedot Soldatenkov, past a plot overgrown with nettles, where the Nefyodov brothers once had their farm.
We walked to a pine tree standing on a hill.
“I put the dough for pancakes,” Baba Masha said quietly, tightly holding the girl’s relaxed hand. - I’ll bake it just in time for lunch.
- I’m thinking of making mushroom pies for dinner.
- There will be fresh milk and sour cream.
- I made jam two days ago.
- There will be something to put on the table.
- Let's find...
They climbed a hillock and stopped, looking around. The nearby forest breathed fog, shuddered chillily, throwing off the remnants of the night rain and morning dew from the heavy crowns.
“You hold it for now,” said Baba Lyuba and, bending down, picked up a piece of steel pipe from the ground.
Baba Masha nodded and, going behind Natasha, hugged her tightly.
Baba Lyuba stepped forward. She paused a moment, gathering her courage, then swung wide and hit the piece of pipe on a rusty ploughshare hanging on a sharp piece of pine branch.
The clang broke the glass morning.
Baba Masha felt Natasha shudder.
The frightened magpies burst from the fences, squealing.
The cuckoo stopped short and fell silent.
And again Baba Lyuba struck metal on metal, causing the echo to burst into hysterical crying.
Once again.
And further...
“Quiet, girl, quiet,” Baba Masha admonished Natasha, who was twitching. - Everything is fine, and I’ll give you the cross today, and we’ll feed you, and wash you again, and put you to bed...
“Quiet, you, quiet...” She whispered in the girl’s ear to the sound of an abrupt clang. And then she raised her head, glanced towards the forest and shuddered herself - as she always shuddered when she saw Ivan Ivanovich.
I couldn’t get used to it, even though we lived side by side for so many years.
Huge, two meters tall, thickly overgrown with fur, mossy, he walked, widely waving his long powerful arms, and the fog ran from under his clubbed feet, curling in whirlwinds, rising in waves.
Natasha wheezed and groaned, seeing the approaching forest monster. She tried to break free, but, drunk on the potion, she quickly lost her strength and went limp in Baba Masha’s arms. And she kept saying everything quickly, trying not to look at Ivan Ivanovich, who was already close:
- Don't be afraid, child. Don't be afraid. You, my God, have never met such animals. This one is only scary in appearance, but he is so affectionate. Do not believe? Ask Lyuba, our Leshachikha, she knows, she will tell you. He is kind and hard-working. A good man, not some unsavory beast. Be kind to him. You'll be with him somehow... And everything will be fine. Everything is fine. You’ll live here with us until the summer, and then, lo and behold, you’ll stay there yourself. We can’t live without a man, Natasha... There’s no way... Oh, no way...

story four: House on the outskirts

Anna Nikolaevna saw a black man when she was returning home from a distant berry patch late in the evening.
“And I’m looking,” she told everyone the next day, rolling her eyes and wiping her slobbering mouth with the corner of her headscarf. - Stranger. Not ours. And dressed wonderfully. Hello, I tell him. And he turned so strangely, as if he had twisted his neck, and seemed to hiss at me, so inaudibly. I took a closer look - fathers! - and through it you can see the window. The window at the Stepanovs' house is shining through. It was as if something hit me in the head - and I don’t remember anything. Horror! I woke up in a hut. I closed the curtains, climbed onto the stove, I’m lying there, thinking that someone will knock on the window or on the door and I’ll immediately die of fear.
“So it was Father Hermogenes,” Grandfather Artemy said importantly, after listening to his neighbor. - He appeared before. I happened to see him once. Exactly as you say: big, heavy, in a black cassock, and you can see through him.
But Vasily Drannikov didn’t believe his grandmother. He noted judiciously, as befits a person with a higher education:
- In the twilight you can’t imagine anything. You wouldn't make people laugh. I also came up with: a black man.
And his wife, Svetka, smiled and added:
- You are a pure magpie among us, Baba Anya. We will find out everything through you. Either a black car, or a black man. What will happen next?
Anna Nikolaevna was offended at forty. She muttered:
- Laugh, laugh. They also said about the car that it was a dream...
Anna Nikolaevna noticed the black jeep two days ago. Early in the morning, while it was still dark, I went into the forest to pick blueberries, and passing by a stone, long-abandoned house, I saw a flat varnished car roof behind the bushes. I was surprised who it could be, at first I thought that perhaps the city people had stopped by a wild, unattended garden. But it’s not the season: there are almost no raspberries, the blackthorn trees haven’t ripened, the apples haven’t grown at all, and it’s still too early for apples.
So what do they want here?
Anna Nikolaevna crept closer. I marveled at the unprecedented car, inside of which, probably, ten people could comfortably sit. From the adhering mud and from the footprints, I understood why no one heard this iron monster arrive in the village: it arrived from the untrodden side, along old road that walked past the cemetery and got lost in the forest. This was once a shortcut to the neighboring area; Now is it really possible to drive a tank here?
Well, or on this huge thing: those wheels are wider than those of a tractor.
There was a loud noise in the house: as if some piece of iron had been dropped or thrown on purpose, and Anna Nikolaevna shuddered. I remembered how, about five years ago, these same visiting people killed an old woman in neighboring Ivashevo and took all the icons and porcelain service out of the house.
Many people are now in the habit of traveling through abandoned villages: some are removing floors from abandoned huts, others are looking for various old things in attics, others are simply misbehaving: they destroy the remaining furniture, break glass, and destroy stoves. For fun they can set a whole village on fire.
And what does this need? Why did they come quietly, at night, from an abandoned side? Got lost real road didn’t know or are they hiding?
Something flashed through the boarded-up window, and Anna Nikolaevna was completely frightened. Forgetting about the berries, she bent down and turned back. At first she walked quickly, looking around, then she couldn’t stand it and ran. By the time I got to the last residential hut, I cursed everything: myself, old, clumsy, and the uncomfortable boots, and the foot wraps that were inappropriately out of place, and the uneven path. She burst into the village, red, suffocating, barely alive. She alarmed the Stepanovs who were still sleeping: she banged on their window, shouting without understanding what, in a hurry to say everything at once, and therefore getting confused and chattering in vain.
Well, purely forty.
Ivan Stepanov went out onto the porch with a gun. In shorts, a sweatshirt over his bare body - and with a loaded gun in his hands. He asked, looking around caustically from under his gray eyebrows:
- What?
And Anna Nikolaevna suddenly realized how ridiculous and far-fetched her fears were, lostly waved her hand and, feeling her legs giving way, sank onto the bench that had been dug in by the current owner’s father...
Towards evening, the gathered men nevertheless went to see who had arrived in the abandoned house. They decided not to take Stepanov’s gun for now. And when they returned, they reported:
- From the city. Three. One is, as it were, in charge. He says he wants to buy a house.
- Chairman's house? - Grandfather Artemy, who did not go with the men, was surprised. - Stone, on the outskirts?
- His.
Grandfather frowned and shook his head:
- Oh, I hope something doesn’t work out. No one has lived in that house for many years. And for good reason...

Everyone knew the history of this house in Matveytsevo. It was built in the first years of Soviet power, during troubled and incomprehensible times, when visiting strangers destroyed the old way of life and called for a new bright life.
Mishka Karnaukhov, the unlucky son of Pyotr Ivanovich Karnaukhov, returned to the village after three years of unknown absence. He was dressed in a leather jacket and military-style trousers, his sleeve was tied with a red stripe, and on his head he wore a cap, jauntily pushed back to the back of his head. Mishka had a revolver in a homemade linden holster and a whole stack of various papers, letters and decrees, from which it turned out that he, Mikhail Petrovich, was the entire local government and a representative of the party that sent him.
The first thing Mishka organized was a committee of the village poor.
Then he exiled Fyodor Nezantsev to Siberia, who had a business and worked as a laborer as a boy.
And after that he zealously began to fight the priest’s obscurantism, which is why he soon received the firmly stuck nickname “cursed.”
This fight ended with a big explosion and spilled blood.
By special request, a box of explosives was sent from the city. The damned Mishka laid charges right under the foundation. Ringing the alarm bell, the people gathered to watch how the local bow-headed stronghold of obscurantism would collapse, cut down by the explosion. Only - bad luck - priest Hermogenes locked himself and barricaded himself in the church with the priest and the young priest.
It didn’t take long for Mishka to persuade them to come out. Evil as hell, he promised them a direct path to their paradise, and he lit the fuse.
It was as if a flame blazed from the underworld, licked the white walls of the temple, reached the scarlet crown, the gilded cross - and fell. It thundered so loudly that the glass in the nearby huts flew out of the windows.
But the church survived. It was just covered in cracks and split into several pieces.
And then Red Bear ordered the people to take up axes, crowbars and sledgehammers. He ordered the church to be dismantled brick by brick, plank by plank, and ordered the mutilated bodies of the priest’s family to be buried in the forest.
Not everyone obeyed the accursed man, even though he threatened with a revolver. But there were people who helped Mishka. And he had already conceived a new business: from the remains of the church, from ancient bricks, he decided to build himself a house. I chose a place on the outskirts, not far from the cemetery, away from people. He called a team of builders to help, saying that they were building a public club with a reading room.
In a month and a half he built himself a stone mansion with a tin roof and a turret. He moved to a new place from his father’s cramped hut. But life didn’t work out for him here. People saw that Mishka had changed: he became quiet, his face turned pale, and he lost a lot of weight. Every night the windows of the stone house glowed - the darkness frightened the accursed Mishka. And they began to talk about different things in the village: then, it seemed, someone heard screams coming from a house standing on the outskirts, then, as if, someone saw a black figure, similar to Father Hermogenes, sitting on a tin roof near the turret.
A year later, Mishka Karnaukhov moved out of the stone house.
And soon collectivization broke out, and Mishka, who became the chairman of the Leninsky Testament collective farm, ordered a board to be set up in the house he left behind. Almost every day he sat in his office, but he never stayed here until nightfall. People have seen that Mikhail Petrovich is afraid of the dark, and even a loaded revolver does not save him from this fear.
The Lenin Testament lasted for seven years. Mishka Karnaukhov presided for seven years. And then a directive came from the region, and on the basis of several collective farms, in a matter of weeks, a large livestock-breeding state farm “Leninsky Put” was created. The no longer needed board is empty. Mishka, relieved of his post, threatening to return soon, left in a hurry for the area, where he took some new place and received a government-owned apartment.
And the house, built from the bricks of the destroyed church, remained abandoned. Over the years, his bad reputation grew stronger, and more and more creepy stories folded local residents about the stone building standing on the outskirts, not forgetting to remember the accursed Mishka Karnaukhov and the family of Father Hermogenes killed in the explosion.

The newcomers showed up the next day. They walked through the entire village, inspecting the huts and, from time to time, stopping to exchange a few words with the villagers they came across. They spoke sparingly, as if they were saving their words, or were afraid to blurt out something unnecessary. They greeted each other, asked how things were going, and after listening to the usually short answer, with a pretended bored look, they moved on.
Vasily Drannikov invited visiting guests to the house. They looked at each other, silently played with their faces - and agreed.
Vasily set the table in the cool room. Reluctantly, I put out a bottle of “Wheat” vodka, from Soviet stocks, and a jar of moonshine. His wife, Svetlana, brought a snack: pickled cucumbers, fried potatoes in vegetable oil, two cans of sprat in tomato sauce and yellow lard cut into thin slices.
The guests did not eat much: either they were disdainful, or such food was unusual for them. But a bottle of “Pshenichnaya” was quickly persuaded. Then they started making cloudy moonshine infused with juniper root.
And they all had a strange conversation.
Vasily, slyly squinting, unobtrusively tried to explain to the strangers that their idea was stupid and unnecessary. This house is old, bad, located on the outskirts, the cemetery, again, is nearby. And their village, Matveytsevo, although not very far from the regional center, is still a run-down and dying region. There is no future here, another twenty years - and all the huts will be overgrown with nettles and fireweed up to the very windows. Why buy a house in such an unpromising place? Why waste money?
Vasily got flushed from the alcohol, got excited, got drunk: he told the story of the house, remembered about the apparition of a black man, even though he himself didn’t believe in the horror story. He almost started making threats, saying that if you buy this house, you won’t expect anything good...
The guests listened to him attentively. And a strange sparkle appeared in their eyes when the owner named the accursed Mishka’s last name. They looked at each other, grinned, nodded their shaved heads knowingly: we know why you are driving us out of here. And they also began to threaten: if you interfere with us in anything, then bad things will happen to you. And if we find out what you took from that house that you weren’t supposed to take... - better return it, don’t lead to sin. They smiled, threatening, but they twisted some words into their speech that were unfamiliar, uncomfortable, but, oddly enough, understandable: the thieves speak such an assertive language, they will shut up any talker with their fenya.
The guests have left. At parting, their leader, Mikhail, introduced himself, as if by chance, demonstrating a pistol hidden under his untucked shirt.
And Vasily sat for a long time in the cold room, rolling an empty bottle on the tabletop and, frowning, wondering whether the guests themselves had come up with the idea that he had long held in his head, or who had given them the idea.
Vasily sighed bitterly and slammed his palm on the table in frustration.
Stolen! They came uninvited - and at once ruined all the plans!
Otherwise, why would they need a chairman's house?..
Vasily felt as if these city strangers had robbed him in broad daylight in front of all the people, and so cunningly that now no truth or justice could ever be found against them.

Vasily Drannikov was a hard-working, economical and very neat man. In his yard, everything was always laid out on shelves. He placed the stacks on a plumb line and combed them out with a rake so much that they seemed to even begin to shine. And his house was a sight to behold. The trim is new, carved, the doors are always freshly painted, on the chimney there is a tin rooster with its nose showing which way the wind is blowing.
Fellow villagers treated Vasily differently, but no one could say a bad word about him. So what if he's a little strange? Who knows what strange things happen? Look, Izmailov’s grandmother, in her old age, began collecting candy wrappers. She should be saving money for a funeral, but she irons colored pieces of paper and puts them in a chest.
Vasily had a different strangeness: since childhood he dreamed of different things. Because of these dreams, I didn’t even join the army. The doctor said that there was something wrong with his head. Although, it depends on how you look at it. We still need to look for such clear heads.
About fifteen years ago, Vasily made a windmill with an electric generator, installed light in the chicken coop - so his chickens began to lay eggs twice as well as their neighbors.
And ten years ago he built an iron box behind the yard, connected pipes to it, and let them into the house. Now he gets gas from manure and slops, he no longer needs cylinders, and he saves on firewood.
Not everything, of course, was possible for Vasily. Once he decided to build an aircraft so that he could fly by air in any off-road conditions to the regional center. Nothing came of this venture, he just spent a lot of money and almost fell to his death. But, after leaving the hospital, he soon made a snowmobile with a two-meter birch propeller and a tractor launcher instead of an engine. These sleighs roared so loudly that they could be heard several kilometers away - but they drove, and fast! And they didn’t need a road, there would only be snow.
Vasily later sold the off-road car to a friend from the regional center. New ventures required money, but there was no longer any normal work in the village. Vasily worked as hard as he could: he raised livestock for meat, collected scrap metal for delivery, and caught fish for sale using homemade fishing rods. And I kept thinking, as if going to my native village new life take a breath - I wrote down my thoughts in notebooks, drew plans on red sheets of graph paper.
It turned out that he needed to create a resting place in Matveytsev’s place. And for this it was necessary to block the Ukhtoma River with a dam so that a reservoir would be formed near the village. Cheap electricity would come from the dam, and on the banks it would be possible to organize sandy beaches. The resulting reservoir had to be fished: pike and crucian carp would breed on their own, but carp needed to be brought in. You can sell inexpensive licenses to visiting fishermen and rent out small log houses for housing in winter and summer. Organize hikes in the surrounding area: for berries and mushrooms, and just Beautiful places look, there are a lot of them here, and the city dweller is greedy for this matter. And, of course, it would be necessary to build attractions so that the foreign guest would come here, and his own would be doubly interested: restore the bombed church, make a museum, or better yet several, build baths - special, Russian ones, set up a children's park. And, of course, the road needs to be improved. And give advertising.
“There is such a thing as the Internet,” said Vasily. - If only I had a computer with a modem, I could make a website in a week. And this is an advertisement for the whole world!
Vasily went everywhere with his plans: both to the district and to the region. I even wrote letters to Moscow, to ministries. Some people answered: the tourism development department promised its help if investors were found; the diocese reacted positively to the idea of ​​​​reviving the temple, and pledged to send workers if Vasily was able to raise money for a good undertaking; The governor himself sent a letter in which he promised to monitor the progress of construction when it begins.
It seemed to Vasily that he had the power to move a great thing forward. And he felt offended when he suspected that with the purchase of the chairman’s house, city strangers would begin to implement his carefully worked out plan.
That’s why Vasily dissuaded them.
That's why he was afraid.
I wanted to do everything myself - as I always did.

There was a shooting at night.
A black jeep, piercing the darkness with a dozen headlights, roaring and honking, rolled several times through the village from end to end. I stopped near the well, almost turning it over with the winch installed on the bumper. Drunken strangers tumbled out of the car, started bawling, swearing:
- Come out and build!
Not paying attention to the angry dog ​​barking, they walked around the nearest huts, kicked the locked doors with heavy boots, and broke several windows.
- We'll show you! They decided to scare us!
Then shots were heard - as if someone had clapped their hands several times.
The men didn't give a damn. Without turning on the lights, they quietly left their houses, armed themselves with axes and pitchforks, and gathered in the dark in the backyard. A crowd of about twenty people came out to the riotous guests. Ivan Stepanov walked first with a gun in his hands.
Seeing the villagers, the strangers became quiet and retreated to a jeep that looked like a fortress.
- Why are you making noise? - Ivan asked immediately.
- Why don’t you let us sleep? - shaven-headed Mikha snapped at him. - Did you decide to scare us? Or are you making jokes here?
His broad-shouldered comrade, moving forward, glanced at the hunting rifle, spat through his teeth:
- Take away your trellis, father. Otherwise, tomorrow there will be five cars with fighters here.
“Don’t scare me with fighters,” Ivan glared at him, and the man himself is strong and of considerable size. - We are here on our own land, we will find justice for you.
“It will be clear who will find justice for whom,” Mikha grinned.
“You better go get some sleep, guys,” Timofey Galkin said peacefully, hiding a large bread knife behind his back. - Nobody cares about you. Do whatever you want in your house, just don’t bother us here. And we won't bother you.
“That’s the same...” Mikha muttered, looking around at the men with a heavy gaze. - Yes, I thank you for such jokes...
There was no fight. The city guests disappeared into the jeep, and the men, after hanging out on the street for the sake of order, dispersed about twenty minutes later. The rest of the night passed quietly, although no one slept a wink in the village. A black car stood near the well until the morning. Several times strangers got out of it and walked in circles around the village, no longer making any noise. They guessed that many people were watching them now. They looked around, looking around haunted. They were afraid of something. And as it began to get light, they started the car and drove away towards the cemetery, returning to the stone house.
The villagers had a lot to talk about in the morning.
There was something to listen to.
- Told ya! - Grandfather Artemy proudly exclaimed, shaking his stick. - I warned you - nothing would happen! There is no good from the house. And it never was.
Every minute, Anna Nikolaevna, crossing herself, nodded, agreeing with her grandfather, and said in a whisper that she saw from the window how a trio of drunken strangers was followed on the heels of big man in a black cassock.

After lunch, guests poured in to Vasily. They walked into the house without taking off their shoes, stood up, blocking the exit. The owner at that time was resting, lying on a sagging sofa, watching TV through his doze.
The frightened Svetka, groaning, disappeared into the kitchen, hid behind the stove, became quiet, clutching the heavy poker.
“You don’t live well,” said Mikha, leaning against the doorframe, hoarsely.
Vasily stood up hastily. He didn’t get to his feet, he just sat down, turning his face to the guests. He nodded:
- There is no reason for me to get rich.
- Okay, if so... Or maybe you’re hiding wealth? - The guest’s gaze became tenacious and attentive.
Vasily chuckled:
- Well, yes... I’m hiding... Come on, look for it. If you find it, you can share it with me. I'll be glad.
- Don’t joke with us... We thought about it and decided that it was you who came in disguise at night. Who else? Yesterday he scared us, told us ghost stories, and drove us out of the village. Here he comes...
- Mummer? At night?
- Don't be a fool. If you show up again, you’ll definitely get a bullet in the forehead, understand?
- Yes, I didn’t go to you, guys! I'm telling the truth!
- Well, well... Tell me, why don’t you want me to buy a house? Did you steal something from it, are you afraid that it will open?
- No! What can you steal there? Everything was stolen a long time ago, we saw the tea ourselves.
The guests looked at each other.
- Look at me! - Mikha shook his knobby finger. - I’ll have to turn everything upside down here. Give it time!
The strangers were silent for a long time, breathing in the fumes, then they turned around together, as if on command, and left one by one.
The floorboards groaned under their boots. The door slammed. Shadows flashed outside the window; a wide palm lay on the glass, clenched into a fist - and disappeared.
- Why is this being done, Vasya? - the wife asked plaintively, looking into the room.
“It’s all about money, Sveta...” said Vasily, looking blindly at the TV. - The wolves sensed that I was in trouble... Eh, I didn’t have time... I almost didn’t have time...

In the evening of the same day, a black man appeared to the entire village. He came out of the forest, from the side where Father Hermogenes and his family seemed to be buried. Zina Gorshkova was just untying a goat that was grazing near the bushes. She straightened up with the rope in her hands, looked - and began to shake.
The black figure seemed to float above the grass. And through it the white birch trunks dimly shone through.
The widow Tanyusha Smolkina, who lives on the edge of the village, went out to lock up the chickens that had settled on the roosts. She saw a man in a cassock wandering past, realized who it was, squealed - and stopped short, instantly speechless. For three days afterwards I still stuttered.
Alexey Zlobin, an avid fisherman, pulled a wire top out of the pond, took out heels of crucian carp, on the scales of which the evening dawn shone, turned to the bucket standing behind him - and was dumbfounded, his mouth open.
A black, puffy figure silently moved along the mown path. Instead of a face there is a cloudy spot with holes in the eye sockets, thorny grass stems pierce bare feet, and from a white hand, as if fashioned from transparent wax, blood flows in a scarlet stream to the ground - as if a thread is curling.
A ghost walked along the entire village.
He walked slowly, as if he wanted to show himself to everyone.
The Zakharyevs, the Prokopyevs, Izmailov’s grandmother, and the Kondratenkov grandfather saw him. Vasily Drannikov also saw him.
People died of fear and went mute. Some were covered in cold, while others, on the contrary, were covered in fine sweat from the rush of heat. No one dared to disturb the ghost. Only grandfather Artemy, having gathered his courage, barely audibly called out Hermogenes by name. He paused and turned slowly. And he seemed to sob. Grandfather later swore and swore that he saw how the shapeless gray face momentarily acquired human outlines.
It was a terrible face, he said...
The last person to see the black man was Ivan Stepanov.
“It’s hard to scare me,” he said later. - But then my heart seemed to sink into my stomach and froze there. My hair stood on end - and it was as if someone invisible had passed an icy palm over my head...
A black man walked near Stepanov’s house, not noticing the high fence, and disappeared behind the bushes.
It was clear to everyone where he was going.

The news that the stone house collapsed at night was brought by Anna Nikolaevna. In the morning she, as usual, went for berries. She turned slightly off the road, going around the cemetery, climbed the hill, looked - and the chairman’s house was nowhere to be seen. Only the black jeep's lacquered back shines.
The house fell apart, crumbled - as if it had been shaken by an explosion, or even more than one.
But there was no explosion at night. It was a quiet night.
The men ran to the ruins with shovels and crowbars. They dismantled the broken roof, pulled it aside, took hold of the brick rubble, but quickly realized that they could not cope with this work alone.
“You can’t do this without technology,” said Ivan Stepanov, puffing. - It couldn’t be worse. Yes, and you have to wait for the police first.
- What about people? - asked the compassionate Timofey Galkin.
- What about people? Look, this is a natural grave. There are no survivors there. Everyone who was there was immediately crushed... Let's go home, guys. And then, as if something wouldn’t work out...
The men slowly dispersed. Only Vasily Drannikov remained in the ruins. The mysticism that happened did not give him, a man with a higher education, any peace. How can this be? - a strong house stood for eighty years, and then suddenly, in an instant, it crumbled brick by brick. Maybe something really exploded? Gas may have accumulated in the basement? But why didn’t anyone hear anything then?..
Vasily wandered around the remains of the house for a long time, talking to himself, looking for something he didn’t know. He picked out pieces of cement with a crowbar, turned over bricks, and stirred up stone crumbs with his feet. I thought about my plans; embarrassed by his restrained joy, he thanked fate for a second chance. I was deciding where to start to implement my plans: whether to build a dam, or to start restoring the church.
To build the smallest dam, a bunch of different papers need to be signed, a lot of offices need to be visited. With the church, it seems, it’s much easier. The diocese will help, they promised. And the building material is right there, under your feet. Definitely enough for the foundation. At least start construction now.
Eh, I wish I had a little more money...
The toe of his boot bumped into something heavy, which echoed with a dull clanking sound.
Vasily leaned over. He pushed aside a piece of the wall. He threw away the plate of hardened cement.
A bag was sticking out of the rubble. Or something very similar to a bag.
Vasily kicked the find again, checking to see if it was a corpse.
No.
He sat down. I felt the rotten fabric. He pulled it - and the rotten fibers easily separated.
Vasily froze.
Sparkling metal poured out of the gap onto the cement dust, onto the brick crumble: ancient coins, chains, bracelets, rings. Vasily gasped, squeezing the hole with his palms, and felt how many more valuables were hidden in the bag. He turned around and glanced around.
Nobody!
What to do now?
What’s there to think about, you fool?! Did you want money? So here you go! Just now we need to be faster, faster! But with caution! Take out the bag, stuff small change into your pockets, and hide large items nearby.
Oh, not good!
Well, how could it be otherwise? How?..
He grabbed the spilled gold by the handful and shoved it into his deep pocket. With clumsy fingers I picked up two silver coins, a cross with a green stone, and a chain with a pendant.
There will be, there will be a church in Matveytsevo now! It seems to be new. But like old.
Everything is correct now. Everything comes together now.
Everything will be fine now...

A month after these strange events, grandfather Artemy, who returned from the regional center, with undisguised pleasure, told the villagers everything that he had managed to find out through his grandnephew Grishka, who worked in the police.
- This trio was from Yaroslavl. They are brothers, cousins, or something - I don’t know for sure. They were looking for treasure here. They found an old letter with them, everything was written there. Do you know whose letter it is? - Grandfather Artemy squinted slyly. - Bears of the accursed. While working as a commissar, he apparently picked up a fair amount of gold. Well, I hid it at home. Various pieces of gold - from those dispossessed of kulaks, those exiled to hard labor, and from the church. These three were looking for him here. They searched so zealously that the house was brought down.
- Well, yes?
- Yeah... I don’t agree with this either, I told my nephew exactly so. But the police need to write a competent paper. So they decided: they dug for treasure and fell asleep.
- So you found gold?
- Yes, what gold is there! - the grandfather waved him off. - Mishka, I suppose, took him out of here in time immemorial. Now go and find the ends, so much time has passed... And to hell with the gold! Listen to the most important thing: do you know the names of these three from Yaroslavl?
- Well?
- They are Karnaukhovs. All. And this Mikha is actually Mikhail Petrovich. Just like the damned Mishka. Is it clear now where they got the letter about the treasure? That's it! They are relatives, his great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren. So I think, guys, that the house collapsed for a reason. It’s not gas at all, as Vaska says. It was the dead father Hermogenes who took revenge on the accursed Mishka for his family. He didn’t get the killer himself, so he took it out on his relatives. This is how it comes out. This is how it really turns out...

We have been the owners of a small dacha for about 10 years. The dacha is located in the village. And in the village, as it should be, there should be a temple. They are. And for 8 of our 10 years it was a typical sight of a modern village church - a headless bell tower, ruins of a refectory, a collapsed dome vault. And around the ruins, and in some places on them, small birch trees grow. Once, while walking around the temple, we picked up a piece of brick with the thought that maybe the temple would completely collapse, but a small piece would survive. But last year, a leisurely but purposeful restoration of the temple in the village of Rusinovo began.

This year, among other summer residents, our restless family with three young children began to attend services. Very often now they write about how poorly they receive children, how they hardly tolerate them, and how quickly they send children out of the church. They say they make noise, run around, talk, and interfere in every possible way. And here it is Sunday. Having dressed the prettier children, we go to the temple. Somehow they will meet us there...

We went to the service early so as not to be late. But it turned out that they hadn’t read “I Believe...” either. What to do for children? Favorite pastime is blowing on candles. I lowered my eyes to the floor in advance, try to quickly relight the extinguished candles, try not to get angry and try very hard not to look people in the eyes. “Now they’ll kick me out or say something,” I think, blushing and sweating, after each childish loud retort. In general, I don’t really take part in the service, but I’m still worried about where the middle one got in, where the older one went, and how to calm the younger one down.

And then the woman from the candle box turns to us: “Children, come here, look how many toys there are! This is for you, and this is for you,” she says, handing out bears and hares to my children. And all this with a good, sincere smile. “Wow!” - I think. But now, having played with the offered toys and gone through all the others, the children return to their previous activity - blowing out the candles. They put it out - I light it. They extinguish it with excitement - I light it up nervously. Finally, one of the praying women comes up to me: “Leave it alone, we’ll light it again later!” Do not worry!" And also with a smile! I'm in culture shock! And it says elderly woman, the same age as those fierce grannies, whose image often pops up in the Orthodox and other media.

There are not many children in the temple at all. A large family in the village is now a rarity. Grandmothers are touched by little children and watch with interest the grown-up talkative three-year-olds. And in grandmother’s eyes there is joy and warmth. And a little melancholy.

Well, I think they treated us so well the first time, then they will be stricter. We come for the second time. But again, smiles, care, a desire to help and entertain. Someone lifts my son up so he can kiss the icon, someone lets me blow out the candle. “I want to take communion!” – the middle one says in a loud whisper, tired of waiting and hungry. The parishioners turn around and look at each other in surprise and approval. The youngest son completes the pious picture. Approaching the Chalice, he fidgets impatiently in his hands, points his finger at the Chalice and demands: “Yum-yum!” Even the priest smiles.

Still an amazing difference! Soviet women aged 60-70 have approximately the same fates; they have experienced the same joys and sorrows of the Soviet state. But what a difference there is in the perception of life and its specific manifestation - children! May God grant them, these numerous grandmothers, “white handkerchiefs - heavenly flowers,” many years to come!

A short funny tale about an old grandmother is one of the most beloved Russian folk tales among preschool children. You can read the fairy tale about the old grandmother online or download the text in DOC and PDF format.
The fairy tale begins quite funny, and resembles the matryoshka model: From more to less or vice versa. Grandmother, granddaughter, chicken, mouse. The grandmother’s water dishes are large buckets, her granddaughter’s are smaller, the chicken’s is the size of a cucumber, and the mouse’s is the size of a thimble. They collect water in the same way: the grandmother from a well, the granddaughter from a log, the chicken from a puddle, and the mouse from a pig’s hoof. As a result, it becomes clear why the emphasis is placed on their size; it turned out that their fears correspond to their size: The grandmother was afraid of the bear, the granddaughter was afraid of the wolf, the chicken was afraid of the fox, and the mouse was afraid of the cat.
The main moral of the tale lies on the surface, Fear has big eyes. But after analyzing the tale more deeply, you can draw conclusions and stumble upon more deep meaning. For each value, there are corresponding sizes of needs and behavior. For a big ship - a long voyage, A small dog is a puppy until old age. This does not mean the size that can be seen with the naked eye, but the size to which a person has grown in terms of intelligence, worldview, and the stage of personality formation. If a person is shallow in soul, uneducated and has not matured as a person, the thoughts, desires and actions of such a person will also be insignificantly shallow. A person whose personality is in complete harmony in biological, social and psychological terms, thinks differently, the actions and habits of the first psychotype are not characteristic of him.
The fairy tale about an old grandmother and a laughing granddaughter is a clear example of folk proverbs: Fear has big eyes, The devil is not as scary as he is painted, Fear has eyes that are small and can’t even see crumbs, Fear makes the eyes pop out of their heads, For some, thunder is not thunder, but a drum is scary, Fear has nine pairs of eyes.

My grandfather was probably the funniest guy in their area!

I was told this funny story by my grandfather, who lived to be 92 years old and died only from an accident, and not from old age! He and his grandmother lived all their lives in the village, breathed clean air, ate fresh food - everything of their own, Buryonka gave milk, pockmarked hens laid eggs, etc.

Moonshine

Grandfather got some moonshine, drank it, and grandma took it and hid all the moonshine somewhere. Maybe she buried it in the hay, maybe in the garden, in village house there are plenty of places...

Grandfather asks for more, but grandmother does not give in to his pleas. Then the grandfather says: “ Now I’ll go to the barn and hang myself!". Granny hasn’t been married for the first time, she says, go and hang yourself!

Well, my grandfather left, but he was a great prankster! In the barn, he tied the rope to his strong leather belt, threw it over the beam, and put on a sweatshirt over himself. Pretended to be hanged...

He heard the grandmother coming, she decided to check the old man... Well, he stuck out his tongue and looked like he was hanged. The grandmother saw it, started crying, and the neighbor immediately came running to the screams. In general, the granny ran after the chairman of the collective farm, but the neighbor stayed behind...

The grandfather held out for a long time, but when the neighbor looked around and began to collect some kind of tool in the barn in her hem, he could not stand it and screamed:

Don't you dare, you damned one!

The neighbor fainted! Then they wanted to punish my grandfather for petty hooliganism with 15 days, but the chairman of the collective farm himself stood up for him: they say, he’s a hard-working man, he’s really needed on the farm right now!

I would wish my grandparents long life, but it’s too late...

When we were children, we often went to visit our grandmother in the village. Everyone in the village claimed that she was a witch and ran to her for potions and other magical nonsense. But she didn’t deny it and always helped the residents. We, being children, did not attach any importance to this. There were five of us: Me, Timur, Sasha, Masha and Evgenia. It was more interesting for us to listen to grandmother's stories and swim in the river.

There was a small cave not far from the cemetery. Anyone who climbs into it will be cured of any disease, but after 5 minutes consciousness is lost. We really enjoyed our time there. Half an hour later we woke up so rested that it seemed that we had slept not for thirty minutes, but all night without our hind legs.

And I had prophetic dreams in this cave; I don’t remember a single one that didn’t come true. And how Timur broke his leg on a bicycle, and how an oak branch, a second before I take the next step, breaks and falls right in front of me. A lot of things were happening. This cave served as an attraction for us, and grandma asked not to take anyone to it and not to talk about it again. And we didn’t chat, but not because grandmother prohibited us, but because it was Our place.

However, as happens with everyone, we grew up, moved away and lost touch. We did not contact and did not look for each other. Childhood is over, and our friendship goes with it. That's what we thought.

One night I saw my grandmother in a dream. She told me that she died. That her youngest nephew, the deceased, drove her to the grave. The spirit came and did dirty tricks, everyone wanted to find out where her witch records were kept.

I woke up with the strange feeling that I had actually just spoken to her. This feeling was so real that I, without hesitating for a second, got ready to go to the village.

Upon arrival there, I saw my old comrades, already matured, but no less puzzled. We were all standing in front of the dilapidated old house where we spent our childhood. It was awkward for us to start a conversation, however, Timur decided to break the silence:

I understand correctly: grandma came to everyone

- *nod silently*

And what will we do?

Let me let you in - an old voice came from behind. We were scared, but it turned out to be only the elder sister of our deceased grandmother. It was as if she knew we were coming. I was waiting for us to get together again - I have something for you.

She let us into the house and went somewhere deeper into the house while we looked around and indulged in nostalgia. A couple of minutes later she returned, holding a small box in her hands. She opened the box and took out a piece of paper with a message, which she handed over to the person closest to her - Masha. Masha unfolded the piece of paper and read:

“Hello, my grandchildren! I have been waiting for this moment for a long time, but now it has come: I am on the verge of death and the reason for this is my nephew, who inherited our family gift. Being alive, I shared it with each of you. My nephew wants to get everything that I have collected throughout my life and take over all the knowledge and power. Since you are my only heirs, very soon he will come for you, I can feel it. I know. I left each of you a malachite brooch. They will protect you, but be careful! Save the cave, if it is destroyed, an incredible and indomitable force will fall on the world. Keep it. This is my dying order to you."

We were puzzled and decided to go to the cave first, after putting on the brooches left by our grandmother. When we got inside, we didn’t feel the usual warmth and lightness. Everything seemed to have been desecrated by someone. We started to feel sleepy. I was never able to overcome this feeling, although I desperately resisted. In a dream, a man came to me. He whispered to me angrily something that he would get to me, that I had no right to stand in his way and tried to kill me by stabbing me with a knife, but missed the vital organs, I woke up screaming, still feeling this pain from a knife, but safe and sound. My comrades were still sleeping, but I didn’t know what to do. I tried to wake them up, but they didn’t wake up, they weren’t breathing at all. I was sure: he killed them. He reached them. I couldn’t bring people here and I had to help my comrades with at least something, but I couldn’t. I pulled one by one out until everyone was outside and the darkness swallowed me.

I woke up the next day in the hospital, half gray. Next to my bed there were guys, alive and unharmed, but for some reason also gray-haired. I started asking them what happened then. This man came to everyone except Masha and seriously injured them. Masha saw her grandmother, who explained what exactly needed to be done with the cave. After I pulled them out, she began to come to her senses and saw me fall exhausted. She performed the ritual described by my grandmother and took us all to the hospital.