I've lost count of time, when suddenly at a fork in the middle of the field the old man said:
-So, well, now слазь. You go straight, and I'm turning to the left, at the apiary.
"Is it far? I asked, evaluating the severity of their suitcases.
-Yes kilometer somewhere, mozha, smaller. I think I need to you on foot stomp: today hardly anyone before dinner in the wrong direction to go...
We missed each other, and, dragging became unexpectedly heavy and unwieldy suitcase, I промучался even with an hour, until finally appeared through a small field behind the edge of the forest outlying houses of the village.
Nature suddenly became noticeably darker and maybe I only thought that I was alone: the trees in the forest came closer to the lane, he became already and has become almost the footpath, thicket on both sides frowned. Palisade trees погустел even stronger, and among them замерещились in the darkness of the undergrowth in the shadow of the forest creatures.
I don't be fooled by their submissions: village was really small. Would it still is a little bit smaller and it could be called a village or выселкой.
About twenty of wooden log, gray old age homes appeared before my eyes. Some even turned black from time to time, there are on its side and, in General, were dismal, such familiar of the many descriptions of all time picture of Russia.
Before the village flowed a little stream. Across the river arc stood bridge. The road to it was on the mound, on which the parties was swampy meadow, and a river, flowing from East to West, to the right of the bridge has lost its sloping, subtle shore and overflowed in a swampy Creek, wide and never-ending, in some places covered with thickets of reeds, утыканную rare birch сухостоем and yellowed grass.
Passing the bridge, I noticed that the river is not very deep, almost a stream, and sometimes you can see the bottom of rusty-red sand and pebble подернутой grey velvet sludge.
Despite the fact that the time was getting to the late morning on the streets no one was visible. The houses had no plates with the name of the street, nor rooms. Spinning near the last houses of the village, I was going to knock at one of them to meet me suddenly, заскрипев door from the porch jumped low slim girl, deftly крутанувшая in the doorway yoke with empty buckets. One of them has whistled quietly tinkling, right before my eyes.
-Oh, I almost was not зашибла! "The girl said. — And you that to us?
-No, so Yes, to you. I'm looking for, his grandmother, Пелагею Panteleevna.
-Ah, so it's on the other end it is necessary. She lives there, near the ведьмячкой.
-With whom, with whom? — Not I understood.
-With ведьмячкой, " repeated the girl, but the bulge in my wondering face and intimate look, added, " okay, go shew.
We came out from the yard, surrounded in a fence made of poles and went along for Brokeback street, lifting up. I'm sort of already tired and therefore was silent, only occasionally glancing at his companion. She long and intently examining me from head to foot, and then asked:
-With the city?
"Yeah, " replied reluctantly I.
-To us a long time?
-No, week or two.
-Correctly, sadly sighed girl, there's nothing more to do. Boring страшенная. I grow up a little more and also in the city подамся: learn.
I looked at her now with curiosity and tried to guess how old she is. Apparently it was fifteen or sixteen.
Street went downhill, and we came to the well felled and covered from above теремком. Gray logs it in запашках and corners are overgrown with moss. I looked inside, and saw his reflection in the mirror of water meters in three at the bottom.
-You won before the house must pass, showed the girl, putting a bucket to the ground. — Your grandmother and lives.
-And what is the neighbor she had such a strange? Involuntarily I inquired.
-A-a-a — girl waved her hand lazily wincing. — Boredom Yes anguish not only ведьмячкой become possible.
She caught the bucket chain and pushed him down. Drum spun around, and the girl began to slow down his palm across вытертой to a high gloss surface. They heard a roar and a splash.
-Come on, I'll help you, " I suggest, contemplated the hilt, but the girl moved me with an affirmative gesture:
"I can myself.
Character", I thought to myself. Stay and watch how it works, it was uncomfortable and should retire.
-What is your name? I asked the girl.
-Alena, what?
-No, nothing. Thank you Alyona for your help.
-No, — she looked at me, smiled, and again started to work.
I went to an indicated home.
Pelageya, my cousin grandmother, крючилась in the garden house. I never seen her, but guess that this is really it, it was easy. She had long вдовствовала and lived alone. Children that she had moved to cities in other villages.
I went into the yard:
-Hello, Pelageya Panteleevna.
Grandma разогнула his back turned to me:
-Hello, Hello. It's you that s my granddaughters once again announced his? Let's see, I look at you.
She came to me:
-Okay, okay, eagle right, well, let us go into the house.
She dropped to the ground tool and led me to his house.
We ascended a high porch, passed the entrance, and were in a room, all of which reminded me of the life of fabulous Russian izba: the whitewashed huge Russian stove, wooden rough and heavy, it is unknown how old work Desk, chairs stools around it in the middle of the room, the same rough and heavy as he was. The small Windows without window sills fun filled bright curtains in the colors.
House Pelagia Пантелеевны I liked.
I didn't know how she will accept me, the grandmother, and saw me for the first time in life. But soon have eaten rich, rustic red beet soup with home-baked fragrant, amazing bread.
-Tell us, why he had come, that you are the devils brought? — Whether jokingly, whether seriously and angrily asked "Пантелеиха" (now, it seems to me begin to see that so called it the old man on the cart).
I was confused, not knowing what to tell her, but it wasn't long tormented me silent expectation explanations and said:
-Well, okay, since arrived, so live. How much do you need to be as like as many guest. But, alone, with you. 'll be helping me for agriculture: water applied, chop firewood, the cow when the show. Realized granddaughters?
-Right you are!
-Well, that's good...
Chapter 3.
In Moscow I stayed for long, though, expecting that I would serve in the capital: on my prescription paragraph dislocation part was the "Moscow".
Part turned out to be some kind of headquarters, in search that I spent the entire day оббивая thresholds military commandant's offices.
Eventually, I got into the office to some Colonel, who took away my prescription, and it vanished in his drawer.
— , So the Lieutenant Yakovlev? Quietly said the Colonel, looking through my papers. — Bachelor see is good... So-so.
I did not know where the oppression of the Colonel, but the sixth sense told me that the more acquainted with my data this war for a large polished table, the незавиднее becomes my position.
One of the phone on his Desk rang.
-Yes! — Picked up the phone Colonel. Sir, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel! Now, right here I have one candidate! He glanced at me. — Yes, yeah, now I'm coming.
The Colonel rose from the table, put on his hat and threw me:
-Come out, as long as. Now I will go to the report and come back. Wait for me and don't leave anywhere.
I stayed near the door of his Cabinet. Passing through the corridor and down there, going in and colonels and generals, and my hand is tired and the thing to give them honor, though in answer me nobody welcomed, and only occasionally said: "Здрасьти". I soon realized the futility and even stupidity of his "козыряния" and got up just in case face to the wall, as if something there to study.
Finally, after quite a long absence appeared "my Colonel.
"Are you asleep? — Touched whether or pushed slightly me in the shoulder with it. — Come in to the office.
I was again in front of his large polished table. He quickly "зачеркал" on paper, and then called over the intercom, as I understand it, a Secretary.
-So, brother, — addressed, at last, he to me, " now you нашлепают papers, and go.
-Where? Involuntarily I inquired.
-On! — In amazement, raising his eyebrows and shrugged and said the Colonel, " further, my boy. Suddenly сфомильярничал it. — You don't know where to put?
"No, puzzled, I said.
Th-th-th — Colonel raised his head to the top, rolling his eyes — you're my little friend into an organisation that sends e-h-Chen far!
"But I have something in the order listed Moscow! "I exclaimed.
-Haha, boy. Moscow is our штабец. But we зафутболим you where we want.
-Yes, but I — I'm not — I don't want you needed. I even things with them-it did not take much. Thought — in Moscow will serve...
-Well, first of all, my dear comrade Lieutenant, you have no asks, will be ready or not ready to go somewhere, you want to order more or not. You probably don't understand because of the youth of his years that hit my friend in the army. Ar-mi-Yu! Well, if you had the honor to be here, it will perform what you ordered. In the army Foundation of the entire order. Well, what about your things, I think you should be not so much. Moreover, idle we товарисч. That do not have e-mail home. Mom will send.
-I have no mothers! — almost crying I replied.
The Colonel suddenly stopped spoken knocked with his thoughts, but he lost not long:
-Well, there is none. You never know what the world is. Somehow your question will be solved...
"Exactly, that somehow, comrade Colonel! What should I do?! You now зашлете me some холодрыгу, then? Want to make me sick there or oak gave? I warm things not taken, and the form of half the house left: not fit...
The Colonel sat down, and after a long silence, staring at me the big fish eyes навыкат. Then he turned on the selector:
-Masha, Africa is cancelled, — he залистал a large Notepad on your desktop. — Write down this comrade vacation for ten days... So we must, then, and at once the room part arrival write... Station, station, a... Oh, that's found, write...
He said a name, and within a few minutes handed me the documents brought by his Secretary:
Are you selling a ticket for ten days: solve all your baggage questions, things you do here on this site and there you go himself. Tickets and receipts do not lose your Luggage — in the part of it you will pay...
"But, comrade Colonel, I thought that I would serve in Moscow...
The Colonel sent me, personally escorting the elbow:
All that could help — vacation for ten days. Nothing more I can do. Farewell, comrade Lieutenant, and I do not advise you to start the service so as you begin: with any claims. I can't, I don't want to! Look, and you will quickly find the place on a disciplinary cell. Then we don't stand on ceremony, where a soldier, where officer: time, times and a king! And will instead ten days of leave for ten days sunbathing on the bunks.
He shut the door, and I was left alone, left to itself, the abandoned and deserted, in the hallway with running here and there colonels and generals.
Goat! — I was overwhelmed by an attack of fury.
Of course, I lied to Colonel, saying that hadn't taken things, the truth, and he could not grasp why did it. But now I had ten days of freedom before the routine of everyday life and, most importantly, a frightening unknown continue lying fate, which prepared me is clearly not the honey cake. At the same time eerily like to learn more in detail what he was talking about Africa. But I was already too late, and now knew not, happy or upset that it happened. We had to admit to myself that I previously did not believe that I will go to serve in the capital, too fabulously well then started my officer's life...
The taxi driver stared me in Moscow, until finally I was indignant:
"Hey, uncle, don't you think that we are lost?
Following this observation, not five minutes ago, as I came out of the machine at the station. I gave him half of what he dashed off with me, and he never did.
We have not yet reached, as the machine immediately swarmed want to leave I can barely broke through their ring.
The people at the station was many, very many. Just kind of a dam of human tel. In waiting rooms, it was overcrowded. Ballot boxes were littered with piles of garbage, cleaners, apparently, no time to clean floors, and, despite the hot dry weather at the station stood a stinking mud and slush.
I went into the storage room, where he left his very heavy suitcases and then a very long time lugging them in the Luggage compartment, where handed them to send to the station of your future destination. On the sum, which took me for baggage cashier, I realized that it was very far off.
In the evening, struggling, натолкавшись in the queue for the tickets, I'm leaving Moscow, I went to town, where they lost everything, and where already worshipped return again someday. That's called that beckoned me there after so many troubles, suddenly leaning on me there for such a short time? I could not answer, but only with some insane joy hoping that once I get there, and all the lost me back.
These ten suddenly had befallen me, like manna from heaven, the day suddenly turning my head like a good easy champagne, and now it seemed that all should be well. I so wanted this. I was so hoping that the happiness he would jump out of the ambush, where it turns out, has long been waited for me, and on my life will suddenly, like a fairy tale, easy and carefree. I so wanted to believe that now, maybe with this miraculous incident, my destiny will flow completely different course, and old problems and concerns remain somewhere in the past as a bad memories, nothing will darken my happy life. I, too, have the full right to be happy, just as many people around me...
The next morning I was already there, where tore my heart. Nothing has changed here. Yes and that could happen to the city in one month? Although...
Immediately from the station I went to Veronica, not even knowing what to tell her at the meeting. In my soul there is nothing left from her image except for a few fleeting and incoherent intimate experience that has never kept me before next to the woman. Yes, what happened with us.... But after what happened with me during this month in the village, all that we have spent together with Veronica, now seemed to the child's play. All except one. What happened in the Church...
Veronica wasn't home. Nobody opened the door of her apartment. And I wandered under the house, wondering where she could now запропаститься, and secret still hoping that they will certainly meet her. Ended up Veronica I did not wait, but have seen quite a familiar face, though he could not remember where it was I ever see him.
