The content of the novel is two winters and three summers.

Abramov Fedor Alexandrovich

Spindles. Two winters and three summers

PART ONE

CHAPTER FIRST

Pa-ro-move! Pa-ro-move is coming!

People rolled down the Pekashinskaya mountain in strands - wide roadways, narrow, winding paths.

As best they could, they got caught in the flooded lake: some on a boat, some on a child’s raft, and some who were bolder got their hem in their teeth and forded. There was a groan and hubbub of disturbed seagulls in the air; black seagulls, who had not yet had time to rest after a difficult flight, flew in flocks over the heads of stunned people.

This happens every spring - almost the entire village pours out to the first steamer. Because spring on Pinega begins with the arrival of steamships, from the very time when the bare shore near the village suddenly fabulously sprouts with white stacks of bags of flour and cereals, pot-bellied barrels with long-tailed fish and fragrant boxes of tea and sweets.

This year, no one expected gifts from Arkhangelsk - Pinega podzols and sandy loam have been feeding the emaciated city for many years now. There was little hope for the arrival of front-line soldiers. Where should they turn when the war has just ended? But it’s been a long, long time since the Pekashi coast has seen such a crowd of people. Children, girls, women, old men - everyone who could ran out to the river.

The steamer did not appear from behind the cape for a long time. The fire, hastily built from brushwood that had not yet dried out, did not flare up, and people huddled together to keep warm.

Finally, near the other shore, under a red sheer crack, a white nose sparkled icy.

- "Kura", "Kura"! - the guys shouted with mockery, clearly disappointed that instead of the handsome Dvina hero, a small local slow-moving ship, which was built by the Pinega merchants Volodins at the beginning of the century, was wandering towards them.

The steamer moved forward with difficulty, scattering flying sparks thickly along the river. Fast current he was thrown back to the other shore, the foamy wave lifted his nose. And the dirty, lead-colored sides, still military-style painted with black stripes, looked sad and sad.

But “Courier” did not lose its voice during the war. He screamed shrilly and youthfully as he approached the shore. It was as if spring thunder rolled over people's heads. And how was it possible to resist tears! During the war, “Courier” helped, one might say, helped to live, with that same beep. It used to be that on the darkest days, when it would scream, howling and roaring under the village, the surrounding area would immediately brighten up.

Varvara Inyakhina with young women, as soon as the ship touched the shore, grabbed the old captain, the only man on a steamship:

Why aren't you bringing men? Didn't you have an order?

Look, next time you come empty, we'll leave you alone.

Ha ha ha! What should we do with it?

Then someone shouted:

And there, there! Another ship!

This steamer - a raft with hay - was floating from above. It spun steeply, like a splinter, in a bend above the village, and two people, leaning on the row - a long pole with a blade embedded in a cross - desperately rowed towards the Pekashino shore.

But these are, after all, ours,” said Varvara. - Maybe Mishka and Yegorsha.

His, his - Mishka's hat. See how red the fox is.

They are from Ruchev, coming from the forest.

The women became worried. It is possible to land on the Pekashinsky shore during high water only in one place - at the clay slope, where the Courier now stood.

Fuck off, fuck off! Have a conscience.

And the captain, cursing, gave in and gave the command to take off.

A raft with hay passed right next to the turning steamer right next to it.

The Pryaslinsky house is not visible from the river - a barn and a basement * with an overgrown bird cherry tree in front - and Mikhail saw his house when he had already climbed up the mountain with the cart.

* Podklet - a log superstructure above the cellar.

The hut was new, with colorful walls.

They built the hut last fall, just before he left for the forest. They laid it in a hurry, from old materials - there were only enough new logs for the top and bottom, and so it turned out to be a military-style mansion: one corner diverted to the side, the other sat down when the roof had not yet been put on. But in general, the warmth stayed in the walls, and the Pryaslins, having been frozen in the old ruined hut, could not praise themselves enough about the new hut.

Having gazed at the red flag hanging on the corner of the hut, Mikhail did not even notice how the horse reached the windows.

Whoa! - he shouted and rushed to catch up with the cart. But even before he reached the horse, her mother intercepted her.

He's back! And we wait and wait - everyone is tired of waiting. The women told me that Mikhail is with you and the hay - so I’m glad.

Raising her thin, weather-beaten face upward, Anna tried to look into her son’s eyes, but Mikhail’s gaze slid over her head. And she, looking guiltily at the dismantled fence in front of the alley, said:

This week it is. They carried manure.

Couldn't you drive up to the backyard? There you can ride through the gate at least in a troika.

Yes, that's how it happened. They didn't think through it.

You all didn't think it through. If only they had locked the garden themselves, perhaps they would have thought of it. And what's that? - Mikhail shouted, nodding towards the dump behind the porch. - Will your hands disappear and throw them out on the field?

Mikhail softened somewhat when the cart with hay approached the yard. He even stopped for a while, as if listening to what was happening there at Zvezdon, behind the rye sheaves, blackened over the winter, with which the courtyard gates were lined for warmth.

Soon. It's okay - we'll have milk again soon. Two weeks left.

Are you wrong?

Not really. Both herself and Stepan Andreyanovich calculated. So in terms of timing.

Until last fall, the Pryaslins lifted hay and straw onto a log floor, but in the fall, when Mikhail was already in the forest, the carriage collapsed, and from then on they carried the food in their hands.

However, Mikhail now found another way out - he threw away the ridges from the back wall of the yard and positioned the cart so that the hay could be thrown with a pitchfork directly from the cart to the side.

Anna, while he was unraveling the ropes on the cart, reported on family affairs: Lizka and Tatyana were in the calf barn, Petka and Grishka ran off to get cranberries...

That’s it, I see that they are not near the river,” said Mikhail. - All the guys are by the river, but ours aren’t there.

They asked. They tearfully begged: we want to go to the ship. Yes, I say: “What are you doing? Where is your conscience? How will you greet your Misha?” Trouble is, they are waiting for you. Misha is the only one on my mind. The eye is not taken out of the window. Praise them. These are both concerns - Lizka and I don’t know either firewood or water these days. All of them.

Did you crawl into third grade?

They will crawl over. I once met Augusta Mikhailovna here: I have no salvation, she says.

And that robber?

Anna looked away.

Mikhail took a birch bark basket with a clanking teapot from the cart and asked in an unkind voice:

Did you do something again?

I did it. He climbed into the teacher’s oven and scooped the porridge out of the jug. - Anna sighed. - I didn't want to upset you. Well, you can’t hide it.

“Okay, go open the story,” said Mikhail. Moving his eyebrows towards the bridge of his nose, he with a hard look walked around the backyards of the village. With what joy he sailed home today! The war is over. An unprecedented holiday. And then, before I even had time to step beyond the threshold of the hut, the old rope began to twist.

Fedya - he was no longer called Fedushka for a long time - was the punishment of the whole family. Thief, wolfish habits. And it all started with trifles - with a cabbage, a turnip, a handful of grain, which he began to hide from his family. Then it went further: he went into someone else’s mouth.

Last year he stole eight kilograms of barley flour from Stepan Andreyanovich. The entire ration, down to the gram, given out during the harvest. People, understandably, got excited - who? What punishment is there to execute a thief? And at this time, the little red little devil calmly every morning, as if going to work, went to the empty sheep barn in the backyard, sat on a log - he brought it especially for convenience - and put his hand into the bag. So, sitting by the bag on a block of wood, Lizka covered him...

“And who is he such a degenerate?” Mikhail asked himself again, once again.

His mother opened the gate to the Poveti and handed him a pitchfork. The two of them quickly unloaded the cart. Then Anna went down to him with a rake and began to carefully rake up the hay dust.

“Come on,” said Mikhail. - Unenviable hay. Osenschak *.

* Osenschak - hay supplied in the fall.

What are you, I'm all happy. We live without food. People will be jealous.

We found something to envy. Egorsha and I suffered with this hay - damn it. In the fall they collected the devils where. And now they were dragging themselves through the swamps, well, try it. - Mikhail looked around, pursed his lips gloomily: - When necessary, our guys are never there.

Are you talking about the horse? - Anna nodded briskly and warningly. - Don't worry. Go to the hut. I'll take you. - And suddenly, looking towards the wells, she clasped her hands: - But there, it seems, they are gaping? That's how they sat down and didn't see anything.

Behind the first well, on a white pole fence near the swamp, there were indeed two gray figures sticking out, very similar from a distance to garden scarecrows.

Why do you think there are crows? - Anna shouted and waved her hand. - Don’t you see who has arrived?

Come on, come on! - Mikhail shouted, egging on the brothers who trotted along the road. - Well, which one is faster?

Petka and Grishka ran up out of breath, thin, pale, like grass grown underground. Even running did not squeeze out the color on the thin faces, although their eyes, fixed on their older brother, shone with joy.

They were still strikingly similar to each other, so similar that they even ran into the yard, as the family joked, at the same time. At home, of course, they were not confused, but for convenience, the neighboring kids christened them in their own way. About two years ago Grishka planted upper lip, ran into a nail, and since then Mikhail had to hear more than once: “Hey, you half-toothed one!” The teacher Augusta Mikhailovna also distinguished them from each other by their scar.

Well done to me,” said Mikhail and patted both of them on the head encouragingly. - So you jumped to the third?

The twins received the greatest pleasure from their elder brother's praise. They looked at each other shyly and looked at their mother.

What did they bring? Treat your Misha. Petka and Grishka readily held out birch bark boxes - in them, an inch of wet cranberries were glowing mixed with garbage.

Mikhail took a berry from each box, wincing, and glanced at the thin bare legs and the wet bottom of his pants.

Wander no more. Well, to hell with it! Just wait - the war is over, we'll soon be wearing boots. And now to the stables. Fast!

Petka and Grishka - no need to say twice - quickly climbed onto the cart, sat down next to each other in the front, and both took the reins. And the further the cart moved away, the more it seemed that one person was riding.

“Or maybe the fact that they are huddled together like that helped them survive at this time?” thought Mikhail.

He raised his hand to his mouth:

Come back soon! Let's drink tea. With bread! Happy present! - he added loudly.

Entering the hut, Mikhail put on the floor a basket woven from birch bark, to which a smoky teapot and a pot were tied on top, threw a bag of felt boots to the bed, then unfastened the belt with an iron ax and a large hunting knife in a polished leather sheath, removed the old one, whitened by the rains. and snow and a sweatshirt with burns in more than one place, he took off his furry red dog hat with earflaps, came out from under the blankets, and straightened up.

Here he is at home...

He doesn't have to live at home much. From autumn to spring in logging, then rafting, then suffering - you sleep for weeks in distant hayfields - then again the forest. And so on from year to year.

The floor was washed - it's nice when people are waiting for you. The walls in the hut are still bare - there is nothing to cover it with; you can hardly get a newspaper for a smoke. Only under my father’s card, covered with a towel with roosters, hung a bright red poster “Everything for the front, everything for Victory!”

Mikhail walked into the backyard and looked into the girls' room - that's what they called a small nook with one window behind the backyard. His mother dissuaded him when he decided to make a separate corner for his sisters. But he insisted on his own. It’s not good for Lizka to sleep in a common dump with the guys. Girl. We need to look ahead a little.

In the girls' room there was a bunk on pine chocks against the wall. The bed was neatly covered with an old flannelette blanket, and, as expected, there was a pillow at the head. Mikhail smiled: Lizka built all this without him. A month and a half ago, when he last came home from the forest, there was no bed yet.

And he smiled again when, returning to the hut and looking around it again, his eyes came across a new riser near the stove with pencil marks and knife notches. The Pryaslins live!

Anna, who had not taken her eyes off her son all the time, sighed with relief: well, thank God, at least the hut was pleased.

Should I install a samovar or flood a bathhouse? - she asked.

Wait a little. Let me come to my senses.

Mikhail sat down on the counter next to the stove, took off his tarpaulin boots - the boot on the right was worn out again, and put his feet in the warm felt boots with cloth shanks, which his mother handed him from the stove. Now it's quite good.

“It’s cold on the river,” he said, rolling a cigarette.

How cold it is. I've been hauling manure this morning - it chills me to the bone.

Are you not going to plow yet?

Getting ready. They are waiting for you. How many times has Anfisa Petrovna mentioned: where is our guy in charge?

Striking the flint with a hammer, Mikhail knocked out a spark and waved the smoking cloth so that it would flare up better. As he took a drag, he glanced at his mother with a brown, smiling eye:

Well, how did you celebrate your victories? Was it noisy?

Was. There was everything. There was noise, and there were tears, and joy. Who is jumping, who is crying, who is hugging... - Anna sniffled, but, noticing how the nodules were appearing on her son’s weathered brown cheeks, she hastily wiped away the tear with her hand. - The management didn’t have a crowd on the street. They made speeches and walked around the village with flags. Then they started signing for the loan. Without remembering, I signed up for three hundred rubles.

“I waved too,” said Mikhail. - For one and a half thousand.

Here you go. And Lizka, stupid, threw away fifty rubles. She really wouldn't need to. He doesn't earn much. I hung the red tie on the house, and okay...

“Let go,” Mikhail said peacefully. - Such a day...

But money is not just wood chips - it’s not lying around on the street. And then the other day they brought the tax.

Tax? - Mikhail looked at his mother puzzled. Until now, taxes have bypassed them.

It's written out for you.

Mikhail took a drag and blew out smoke noisily:

Don't forget. When will I be eighteen? In two weeks?

That's it. I already told Anfisa Petrovna. “According to the law,” he says. “It will be years before the first payment,” he says.”

Burning his lips, Mikhail finished smoking his cigarette, crushed the stubbed cigarette butt in his palm, and poured the remains of the shag into an iron jar.

Nothing. We'll get out of it somehow. For a permanent shot at a logging station, I’m thinking of applying. In the forest they will now provide more bread and some rations for dependents. Again, manufactory...

Here, on the porch, feet stamped often, often, the door swung open, and Lizka flew into the hut like a whirlwind, and the next second she was already hugging her brother’s neck.

They told me that your owner has arrived, but I’m flying and I don’t see anything. Tanyukha from behind: “Lizka, Lizka, wait!..” Okay, I think you won’t lose your wallet with the money.

Suddenly Lizka frowned, looking at Petka and Grishka, who ran in after her.

Where is the girl? Shameless! The child was abandoned. Come on, follow her!

It was for this management and mastery that Mikhail loved his sister. It’s not his mother who keeps the family together when he’s not at home.

With a barely noticeable smile, he looked at his sister while she, standing on her toes, was hanging her coat under the threshold. Her white, flaxen head was combed smoothly, and a thick, tightly braided braid with a red ribbon fell to the small of her back. In general, the braid is already a girl. But otherwise... Otherwise, nothing at all for someone who is fifteen years old. Like a swamp pine...

And, as if guessing his thoughts, Lizka quickly turned around. Her high-cheekbone face, thickly sprinkled with yellow freckles near her green eyes, turned slightly pink.

What? Like a scary cat, right? - she asked directly. - Okay, not everyone is like Fyodor Kapitonovich’s Rayechka. Someone needs to be the power.

And for this simple-minded frankness he also loved his sister.

Mom, what are you sewing or whipping? - Lizka began to give orders without hesitation. - Shall we heat the samovar or flood the bathhouse?

And a minute later she was already comforting Tatyanka, who was crying and bursting into tears, as the twins, pushing her, were led into the hut.

Mikhail heard her whisper in Tatyanka’s ear:

Come here. Say: “Hello, Misha. Welcome.” Yes, by the neck.

Tatyanka became stubborn, and Lizka instantly became angry:

Well, hairy! I will never take it to a calf barn again. Sit at home.

But let's see what she'll sing now... - Mikhail pulled the basket towards him.

Tatyanka's mouth immediately fell into place, and Petka and Grishka - they simply grew up before our eyes.

Chuckling, Mikhail took a piece of blue chintz with white peas from the basket and handed it to Lizka:

This is for you, sister.

To me? - Lizka blinked her eyes often and often and suddenly burst into tears like a child.

Mikhail turned away and began to rummage through the jar of shag.

“Well, don’t cry, they won’t give you away in marriage,” said the mother, unable to hold back her tears. - What should I say, stupid?

Lizka, holding the chintz tightly to her chest with both hands, dropped onto her knees and burst into tears even more than ever. For the first time in her life, she was given a dress as a gift.

Well, well, calm down, sister,” Mikhail muttered.

What about mine? - Tatyanka stamped her foot demandingly, ready to burst into tears again.

Enough for you too. And the mother, maybe, will find something for herself. Eight meters.

Following this, Mikhail took from the basket new black boots with rubber soles, with small ribbed edging and canvas shanks.

Come on, sister, try it on.

And is this for me? - Lizka babbled barely audibly, and suddenly her eyes, wet, tear-stained, burst with such uncontrollable green joy that everyone around involuntarily began to smile - the twins, and the mother, and even Mikhail himself.

Immediately, without moving from her spot, Lizka sat down on the floor and began to pull off her old, patchy boots from her feet.

“At least you didn’t make a new one,” said the mother and took the chintz from her lap.

The boots are probably too big,” Mikhail warned. - There were no others. They gave three pairs for the entire collective farm.

Okay, I won’t fall out of the big one. God didn’t hurt me with anything, but with his paws.

The hut became noticeably lighter when Lizka, stepping hesitantly and with caution, walked three times from the threshold to the front bench in her new, shining shoes.

The boys were not forgotten either. For them, Mikhail - Yegorsha gave him his commodities coupons - brought a blue biker jacket for his pants. But Petka and Grishka, contrary to his expectations, reacted rather reservedly to this gift. But when he pulled out a loaf from the basket - a whole hefty brick of rye bread - they became seriously excited and did not take their eyes off the table the entire time the samovar was heating up.

Just in time for tea, as soon as we sat down at the table, Fedka appeared.

He already knows when to come. Like an animal smells food...” Lizka started to speak and stopped short, looking at her older brother.

Mikhail, straightening his back, slowly turned his head towards the threshold.

So what do you say? Where were you?

Fedka stood motionless, with his head bowed. He was wearing the same rags as the others, and he was not fed in any special way, but his freckled cheeks were enviably red, and his bare, already cracked feet were forged as if to order, strong, thick, and his toes were curled, the floor clawed.

What do you say, I say? Well? - Mikhail asked again, marking each letter.

Answer! Who do they tell? Where were you? - Lizka couldn’t stand it again.

And then Fedka widened his nose, raised his eyes, cold, icy, and suddenly these pieces of ice flared up: they saw bread.

“So talk to this brute,” Mikhail sighed to himself, “when his belly thinks ahead of his head.” And he didn’t want to spoil the holiday - they don’t have it often. And he, to the great joy of the mother and twins, who painfully, to the point of tears, experienced every discord and quarrel in the family, waved his hand.

The boys gasped when he took the loaf. It had been a long time since such wealth had been seen in their house for so many years.

The brown, well-baked crust began to squeak and creaked under his fingers. And this is what real flour means - not a single crumb fell on the table.

Easily, with true pleasure, he tore the loaf in half - he could have done just that forever - then he cut one of the halves into four equal rations.

Tanya - rations, Petka - rations, Grishka - rations. Fedka...

Mikhail's hand lingered in the air for a second.

The mother, not accustomed to such wastefulness, begged:

At least you do a little bit. They dare as much as they can.

OK. - The ration lay down in front of Fedka with a thud. - Let them remember the victory. Mikhail looked up at his father’s card. - It was the head of the logging station, Kuzma Kuzmich, who tossed me a loaf of bread. Just before leaving. “Here,” he says, “remember your father. We worked together before.”

Mother and Lizka shed tears. Petka and Grishka, rather out of politeness, so as not to upset their older brother, looked at the towel with roosters. But Tatyanka and Fedka, frantically gnawing on their rations, didn’t even blink an eye.

The word "father" meant nothing to them.

After tea, Mikhail sorted out the shaving (he had started scraping his chin with the toe of his braid since last fall), his mother, grabbing some kindling, went to flood the bathhouse, and Lizka ran to the Stavrovs.

The Pryaslins lived as a commune with the Stavrovs for, say, the entire war, almost from the spring of forty-two. They shared a cow, together they prepared hay and firewood, and helped each other out with food. Most of all, of course, the Pryaslins benefited from this commune, but Stepan Andreyanovich did not lose out either. Anna and Lizka washed him and their grandson, kept their hut clean, and the Stavrovs didn’t have to worry about the bathhouse either.

The wind died down in the evening. The tin sun peeked out from the whitish shaggy clouds, and far away, in the Pekashino winter fields, the cranes were screaming. For the first time this spring, Lizka noted to herself.

She walked briskly along the dull road, hard as a stone - not a single blade of grass was yet on the lawns - and in her mind she saw herself in new shoes, in a new blue dress with white polka dots. And in general everything, everything now, it seemed to her, would be different. They will no longer have to choke on prickly moss, pound pine sapwood in a wooden mortar, and in the mornings, suffering from constipation, the guys will no longer shout from the yard: “Ma-a-ma-a, I’m dying...” What a blessing it is that such a brother!

Stepan Andreyanovich was lighting the stove. Red reflections played on his bearded face.

He’s probably going to cook something for Yegorsha, Lizka guessed.

“Ah, the bride has arrived,” Yegorsha said with a smile. He was lying on the stove, his bare legs crossed, a rolled-up cigarette in his teeth.

Liza chuckled:

Bride without a seat, groom without pants.

And here he is in his pants,” Yegorsha laughed.

Stop bashing him,” Stepan Andreyanovich reprimanded him.

Yegorsha stuck out his tongue stupidly, but changed the conversation:

Well, what is Mishka doing?

What is he doing! He can't live without Mishka for an hour. It’s not you who doesn’t lie idle. “I came to say,” Lizka turned to Stepan Andreyanovich, “don’t heat the bathhouse.” We're drowning.

She looked around the hut with a tenacious, womanly eye.

Well, I’ll tidy up at least a little from you.

“Come on, Lizaveta,” said Stepan Andreyanovich. - With your hands yourself.

But Lizka was already moistening the broom under the washstand. Then, having swept the floor, she went into the closet in her own way, took out the old man’s dirty linen, and threw it on the floor:

Do you have anything?

Yegorsha squinted his eyes at the wooden chest standing by the bed.

There's my suitcase. I trust.

A poker rattled in the back of the building.

I could have gotten it myself. It’s too early to show yourself as a master.

Yegorsha reluctantly came down from the stove - barefoot, in a white undershirt, long unwashed, with the collar unbuttoned and the hem hanging down - he yawned, stretching.

You also need to lie down skillfully. - And winked at Lizka. - One woman was lying and lying, her leg was resting. Transferred to disability.

Yegorsha was short, thin and flexible, like a cat. Smala Yegorsha looked very much like a timid, shy girl. It used to be that adults would begin to chirp - their ears would fill with heat, and at any moment, you thought, the fire would spread to their hair - soft, tousled, like a heap of barley straw. But after three years of living in the forest, Yegorsha was formed. There is no shame - he himself became the first obscenity. He has a blue eye in a slit, his head is on one side, and it’s better not to mess with him - he’ll make anyone blush.

Egorsha moved to his grandfather in 1942, after his mother was crushed by a tree while logging. Stepan Andreyanovich started a conversation about changing his last name, but Yegorsha became stubborn. Nevertheless, in Pekashin everyone called him Stavrov, both to his face and behind his back. And then Yegorsha cheated: Sukhanov began to add his grandfather’s surname to his father’s surname.

Don’t joke with me, brother,” he said, pleased with his invention. - As a baron, I have a double surname.

With a light, relaxed gait, Yegorsha walked into the backyard, scooped up water from the tub with a ladle, and drank.

By latest science, they say, a bucket of water replaces one hundred grams.

Miracle pea! Everything was about wine, but he wasn’t standing next to the bottle.

“Yes, yes,” Stepan Andreyanovich supported Lizka.

Egorsha took crumpled linen out of the chest and pointed his blue eye at Lizka with a wink:

Well, better wash it. Someday I'll get * out of the cracker.

* To take her out of a cracker means to invite a girl to dance at a house party or in a club.

I need it to hurt!

Well, well, don't promise. Do they go to the club these days?

Stepan Andreyanovich, pouring water into the cast iron, shook his head:

Our Yegor has one thing on his mind - the club.

And what! The war is over - a legitimate thing. Who's playing now? Rayechka?

“When will she start strumming her balalaika,” Lizka said and suddenly got angry: “Do you think all we have on our minds here is dancing?”

Yegorsha yawned again.

I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about girls.

She heard, she heard something even worse from this evil man - Yegorsha did not go into his pocket for a word. But for some reason this current ridicule seemed so offensive to her that she grabbed the bundle of linen and, without even saying goodbye to Stepan Andreyanovich, slammed the door.

There was a haircut going on at home - a common thing on the day of the elder brother's arrival.

The twins had already parted with their hair and, twisting their unusually light heads, lovingly watched Mikhail’s hand, clanking black sheep scissors over Fedka’s head.

Fedka had a hard time: his ear burned against the light like a fat fluke, and tears flowed down his freckled cheeks. But he held on and didn’t even look at his sister as she entered the hut.

What is Egorsha doing? - asked Mishka.

Liza clasped her hands:

Are you guys in agreement? That one: “What is Mishka doing?” This one: “What is Yegorsha doing?”

She took a broom under the threshold and wrapped the child’s hair in a heap.

Haven't you heard anything?

No. And what?

The Old Believer has arrived.

What Old Believer?

Do we have many Old Believers? Evsey Moshkin. Now he’s standing in the field, near his hut. Today, they say, he arrived. I walked to Larch Forest on the Courier, and from there on foot. I didn’t want to wait for the steamer to take the wood.

Behind this long-winded weaving, Mikhail felt the same anxiety, which creeped up with a chill to his heart. Last fall, when they were in a hurry to build a hut, logs were collected throughout the village and three crowns were taken from the ruins of Yevsey Moshkin. Of course, with the consent of the collective farm board.

Sit! - Mikhail angrily shook the tossing and turning Fedka.

Hastily tearing off the remnants of hair on his red head, he threw on a padded jacket and went out into the street.

In the outskirts, in the field, where Yevsey Moshkin’s hut stood, there was no one anymore.

Mikhail took the cleaver from the porch and went to the woodshed. He always did this when he wanted to think about something. True, in this case there was nothing to think about. Anfisa Petrovna suggested removing the logs from Yevsey’s hut, so let her settle accounts with Yevsey.

Yes, but you can’t shut up women’s mouths, Mikhail thought. They will now begin to sigh and groan. Here, they will say, what kind of people are these days. Yevseyushka went up to his house, and there wasn’t even a hut there - there wasn’t a log there. And what do you say? What do you say to this? Even if you are not to blame for a century, the logs are on your hut. Every passerby can see it.

Mikhail jabbed a cleaver into the gnarled chock from the shoulder, then carefully buttoned up his quilted jacket and went to Marfa Repishnaya, a distant relative of Yevsey.

Marfa Repishnaya Pryaslina had cockroaches frozen every winter since pre-war times, and Mikhail knew her hut well. An old hut. The windows are small, high above the ground, and the ceiling and walls, made of smoothly planed round wood, glow with gold. And the spirit in the hut is delicious, herbal. It’s especially striking when you enter from the outbuilding in cold weather: it’s as if you’re going from winter to summer.

This time the herbal smell was drowned out by resin: Yevsey was chipping a splinter.

A thin pinkish-white belt ran deftly and beautifully from the log. Like alive; slightly crackling and gently arching. And when this belt completely separated from the log, Yevsey did not let it fall to the floor, but quickly picked it up and swung it in the air: come on, tell me, friend, what are you good for (a habit familiar to Mikhail), and threw it separately , away from the kindling, - presumably, for business.

Yevsey himself, to Mikhail’s considerable surprise, turned out to be completely different from what he had imagined him to be as he walked towards Martha. He thought he’d see some goner, a shadow of a man, since he’d swelled so much in the camps, but here – hold your feet: a tar stump. The cheeks are rosy, smooth, like balls, there is not a single withered hair in the red beard, and the head is also copper, cut into a brace, undercut.

Then, however, Mikhail saw: an old man. And my right hand was shaking, and the skin on the back of my neck was cracked, like the bark on an old tree. But all the same, the impression of a tarred, browned stump, from which time and all sorts of everyday adversities flow down like water, remains.

Whose good fellow will this be? - Yevsey asked Marfa.

Martha raised her head from the shirt she was mending, looked at Mikhail with her half-crazy eyes and said nothing. It seemed to Mikhail that she was missing some screws before, and after her husband’s death she became completely weak in the head.

Mikhail identified himself.

Ivan Pryaslin's son! - Yevsey exclaimed. He jumped to his feet, cried, and shook his head. - Lord, Ivan Gavrilovich’s son... Mikhailo Ivanovich - so, perhaps? That's how, that's how time goes, little guys! How long has it been since Ivan Gavrilovich himself was a great guy, and here is such a son. Apparently he was like his father, only he had lighter hair. - Yevsey again nodded, sighed, and sat down on the bench. - Do you remember me? - he asked, and suddenly curious, childishly sly lights flashed in his wet cracks.

Mikhail shook his head negatively.

The lights went out.

Where to remember. But I remember you. It used to be that everyone would run to my guys. So tiny,” Yevsey pointed with his hand.

Mikhail vaguely remembered two orphan boys who had once lived not far from them in the outskirts. The eldest, it seems, was called Ganka, and the youngest - he remembers this well - had the nickname Tyapa. The kids didn’t let poor Tyapa live because he had a big white head and legs that were crooked like grips, and Mikhail also hounded him: “Tyapa, Tyapa, don’t fall!”

But Tyapa did not answer. Tyapa did not seem to notice these offensive cries. And it kept rolling and rolling past itself, like a bun. And, like a bun, he smiled with his bright, gentle smile.

No, neither of whom is alive. Both Gavrilo and Alexey were killed, Yevsey sighed. - And they say your parent stayed there?

Remained.

Oh my God, my God! How many people have been beaten. All the color in the war has faded. Do you have a big family?

Six besides me.

Oh, Mikhailushko, Mikhailushko! Well, you got it. The war has placed a burden on your shoulders...

Mikhail stood up.

I came to tell you about the logs. It was I who took them away from your hut.

Yevsey waved his hand:

What are you, God bless you, Ivanovich. It wasn’t you who started to destroy my building, it wasn’t you who finished it. Sister * Marfa Pavlovna warmed me, and thank God.

* Sister - cousin.

In general, yes,” said Mikhail. - I don’t need someone else’s. I'll chop it up and give it to you.

There are no strangers, Mikhailushko. All people are related. And you and I are still related by blood. Haven't you heard? So-so. Ask old people Old people remember. My father and your father's mother - your grandmother - were second cousins. Your father remembered. Sometimes he would drink and call me uncle. It's okay, I was a bitch bad word I will not say. He was courteous to me...

Lizka, out of breath, entered the hut:

That's where he is! I'm looking all over the village, but he doesn't know that the bathhouse is ripe.

Your sister? - asked Yevsey. - What's your name?

Lizaveta,” Lizka said and looked gloomily, almost hostilely, at Yevsey.

“Yes, yes,” Yevsey answered her with a gentle smile. - Lizaveta Ivanovna, that is. The character seems to be like that of Grandma Matryona Prokopyevna. You will be happy.

Mikhail, with some vague and incomprehensibly anxious feeling, went out into the street.

CHAPTER TWO

Oh, hot dry wind, steamy birch on the back! In Pekashin they loved to take a steam bath. It used to be that on Saturday the knocker stood behind the wells, near the swamp (there is a row of bathhouses): doors cracked, slammed, red-hot men and boys flew out in a white cloud and boom-boom into the snowy sum or into the lake.

And during the war they did not forget the bathhouse; on the darkest days they heated them. How could it be otherwise if this is both your only joy in life and your defense from all illnesses and illnesses?

The Pryaslinskaya bathhouse was not noticeable in itself - what special features did the black bathhouse have? It was noticeable by the bushes - two wild garlic trees and a heel of thin mountain ash growing near the saplings.

In the summer - needless to say - there is a pleasant scent from the cherry blossoms, but if these bushes had not been planted by his father, Mikhail would not have kept them at the bathhouse for a day. A bait for guys - that's what these bushes are. Especially bird cherry. In spring and autumn, every boy climbs on it, and since the boy is near the bathhouse, there is no glass in the window. That's for sure. And a broom always sticks out in the window of the Pryaslina bathhouse.

There probably is. “I can’t fly to the moon with this heat and steam,” Yegorsha answered intricately from the bathhouse.

It was a little dark in the bathhouse because of the broom in the window, and Yegorsha, stretched out on the shelf, resembled a birch log. Mikhail was a man against him. With dark skin - in the mother's family, and with everything else - both in bone and in strength - in the father.

Hunching under the low black ceiling, he touched his finger to the well-heated heater! - and rustled with a birch broom.

Yegorsha stood up on the shelf in panic:

Are you going to ruin Africa again?

Yes, we need to get the blood flowing a little. My right ear is hurting, probably on the river.

Well, here our paths diverge,” said Yegorsha.

Do you know who I saw just now?

Whom? - Yegorsha asked, getting off the shelf.

What the hell is this, pop! An old fool - that's who.

Do you know who I'm talking about?

“I know,” Yegorsha answered calmly.

It turns out that Yegorsha saw Yevsey Moshkin even before him, Mikhail, for on the way home from the river he turned into the administration office to find out how and what was going on here in Pekashin - and came face to face with this so-called priest.

Why with the so-called? - Mikhail objected passionately. - I was still a child, I remember they called him priest.

Out of stupidity.

Why then did they put him in camps for fifteen years if he wasn’t a priest?

Because he's a donkey on two hooves. The village council clearly told him: stop, they say, Evsei, all this music. Don't bother people. We are building a new life, and everything else... And he, stubborn stump, is his own. Well, go to the camps. Why else bother with him, since he doesn’t understand Russian?

Hmm... - Mikhail said incredulously. - How do you know everything? You didn’t live with us at that time.

What do I know? Was he thrown into the camps because of his stupidity? Yes, I already know... - Yegorsha splashed water from the tub in his face and said with conviction: - No, this is not a priest. Vanek Pekashinsky is the same as everyone else. Only the brain is even more askew. No, I was in Arkhangelsk last year - that’s right, priest. He walks down the street, wearing a black sundress down to his toes—it’s called a cassock. At first I thought: woman. No, they say pop...

Mikhail, adapting his long legs to the short shelf, asked.

Mold a little.

The heater roared like a cannon. The dry, hot heat pressed Yegorsha to the floor.

By the way,” he spoke a little later from below, “this religion collected a lot of money for the war.

Throw another ladle! - Mikhail interrupted him. He couldn’t stand it when Yegorsha started talking to him in that teaching tone.

Well, you are a beast! Soon, like my grandfather, you will be wearing mittens.

Come on, come on.

Do I feel sorry for that? Water is not on the cards yet. - Yegorsha scooped it up from the tub and stepped back, bending, to the side. - God bless...

When the heat subsided a little, he began to crawl towards the doors.

Well, screw you! I am not yet a sinner to fry in such heat. Go to water procedures. Are you coming?

I say I have a cold.

Mikhail turned on his side, brushed his back with a broom, then, resting his feet on the hardened ceilings, once again whipped his knees (his knees had been creaking since the autumn of '42, ever since he went into the forest), and finally, completely Exhausted, he let go of the frayed broom.

A woman's squeal and laughter were heard from the street - no less than Yegorsha had run into someone naked - then a little later a splash of water was heard behind the wall near the swamp - Yegorsha dived into the lake.

Mikhail hastily climbed down from the shelf and threw away the heat.

Wow, wow! - Yegorsha burst into the bathhouse with a hectic cry. - Now give us some degrees.

Clicking his teeth, he immediately jumped onto the shelf and began to kick.

Give me a broom?

No, no, to hell with him! I do not like.

Why are you going broke there? - Mikhail asked, settling down to wash on a small block opposite the window.

Yegorsha laughed:

Varvara was scared. I ran out of the entryway, and she was scooping up water. Well, oh, oh! Yes... The goods are stale. I just don’t know which side to approach from.

I don’t know, I say what tactics to use. Women are like horses: each has its own temper.

Fool! How much older is she than you? We suckers against her.

“You don’t know women,” Yegorsha objected calmly. - And they, who are older, love young people. That's for sure.

Tell me what kind of expert!

OK. Have you heard about appetite?

Mikhail smiled: now Yegorsha will tell some obscene story - just in case, he has an anecdote and a parable.

That's how it was. - Yegorsha turns to face him. - Baba was the only one who had an appetite. Well, I ate poorly, you know? Her husband will buy her this and that, all sorts of gingerbread products from the shop - this was before the war - and will set a full table for her. Eat whatever you want, wife. Doesn't eat. Like a thin mare, her face turns up from the hay. Well what are you going to do! So, once in the morning, at about eight o’clock, a husband treats his wife. And again the same thing: again I don’t want to, again I have no appetite. And the man needs to go get firewood; the horse in harness is standing under the window. “Okay, he says, I’ll go, and you, he says, sit and wait. You should have an appetite.” Well, the wife is obedient, as her husband ordered, she did so: she sits at the table, waiting for her appetite to appear. And then, out of nowhere, a soldier is stomping under the window. Such a daring Vanyukha-grab, he makes his way home from the royal service. The wife, well, this same Avdotya, saw: “Hey, he says, your name, he says, is not Appetite?” But the soldier is all the same - no matter what you call him. "Appetite." - “Yes, I’m waiting for you, he says. Come quickly...” Well, in the afternoon the husband returns with firewood. Glad-radekhonek! There is not a crumb on the table, and the wife is cheerful. “What did he say, did you have an appetite?” - “He was, he says. Yes, so good. Go to the hay as soon as possible. He promised to come for the night...” - Mikhail Yegorsha finished with laughter: - You see, when the woman was still struggling with her appetite. Before the war. With a living husband. Do you understand now?

You son of a bitch! - said Mikhail. - And you always have some nonsense on your mind. You better tell me how we will live now.

Bye, I found something to grieve about. Don't worry. Up there, big men read newspapers...

That's not what I'm talking about. How can you not understand! Here, for example, you. If I were you, I would give up studying, honestly.

Enjoy your health. Nowadays no one is forbidden.

Blockhead! How much do I have on my neck? And you have only one grandfather, and even then you’re dragging your feet...

Yegorsha turned on his back and put a broom under his head. Then, after a pause, he announced:

My task for now is to get a hammer and sickle. And then we’ll see what and how.

There’s something I haven’t noticed before that you’re drawn to the forge.

And now it doesn’t work.

So what?

“I need a hammer and sickle like this,” said Yegorsha, stretching, “that has wings.” So that he could hang from them and fly wherever he wanted.

“Oh, that’s what you’re talking about,” Mikhail guessed. - About the passport. Don't know. Pines and spruce even recognize us without a passport.

“The collective farm fishing line is over,” said Yegorsha.

Who's going to let you go?

Something rattled in the hallway, like a bucket handle, then Lizka’s voice:

Is there a fever?

Egorsha quickly stood up on the shelf and shouted:

Lizka! Rub your back!

I'll rub them. The batog is gnarled. Will it do?

When everything died out in the Senets, Mikhail zealously looked at Yegorsha from under his brows and said briefly:

You speak, but you know with whom.

Well, you can’t even joke.

Lizka returned to Senti again:

Because of this tooth, I forgot why I came. Anfisa Petrovna is waiting for you. Urgently, he says, we need Mikhail. So it hurts, don’t blur it. You'll wash yourself on Saturday.

“Well,” said Mikhail and smiled sadly. - I didn’t have time to wash away one dirt - another one is waiting.

Yes,” said Yegorsha, “the collective farm settlement is known: from one clamp to another. No, I’m turning one hundred and eighty now. The ram, you know, sometimes turns his head, but what are we... The King of Nature...

The chairman's arrival at home, especially on the day of his arrival from the forest, did not promise anything good - Mikhail knew this well from the past. Again, some kind of fire business: either trudge along with the women at night to get hay, or - you got hold of some seeds from a neighbor - go urgently to get the seeds...

In a word, help me out, Mikhail. And so he glanced gloomily, almost with hatred, at Anfisa Petrovna, who was sitting on the front bench with Tatyanka on her lap.

The very first words of Anfisa Petrovna stunned him.

Anfisa Petrovna sent him to the city. The fact is that the Lobanovs received a letter from their daughter-in-law (just now, with today’s ship), and she writes that she can help the collective farm with machine oil and ointment - she works in a warehouse.

“I think this opportunity should not be missed,” Anfisa concluded and looked at him with her kind and intelligent eyes.

Mikhail mechanically, without hesitation, nodded his head: of course, it’s impossible. The collective farm desperately needs the oil and ointment. After all, over the years they haven’t lubricated their simple machines with anything! And tar, and lard, and all sorts of brew that smells a mile away.

“Go,” said Anfisa Petrovna. - At the same time you’ll see the city. I lived to be forty years old - I’ve never been there.

Mikhail looked hesitantly at the guys and at his mother - there was a lot of work to do at home. And most importantly - what to go with? You can’t go to Arkhangelsk with potatoes alone. But Anfisa Petrovna had already provided for this too - she prescribed twelve kilos of zhit. The sweatshirt is terrible, it’s a shame to appear in public, as the mother says. Please. And this problem can be helped. There will be a sweatshirt, Anfisa Petrovna assured, and even Grigoriev’s suit can be tried on.

Mikhail made up his mind - there is no time to think, the “Courier” comes from above early in the morning.

Mother, light the stove! Lizka, bring the bag!

He flew into the collective farm warehouse like a hot stallion - he just didn’t neigh: his eyes are burning, his chest is like a blacksmith’s bellows, and such strength - he’ll turn everything around!

From what bag? Speak!

Varvara pointed to the far corner.

Mikhail stomped - the floorboards squealed. The bag - a considerable one - he picked up playfully and carried it to the scales without a break.

Varvara gasped:

Well, what a man you have become!

We are growing! - he joked. - And you became a girl.

Yes, it’s true that she’s a girl. You can get married again. - And she laughed sadly.

Overall, well done grandma! Terenty was killed last year, and who heard her moan? True, the wives wrote this into the line for her: no heart. Or maybe she does this to spite everyone? Shedding tears and crying - everyone can do that. But try to bare your mouth when your heart is bleeding.

Varvara’s mouth is beautiful, white-toothed, filled with laughter - there is no other mouth like it in Pekashin. And, looking at her youthful face, brightened by the evening sun, Mikhail suddenly remembered Yegorsha’s words earlier. He'll come up with an idea, the son of a bitch!

Why are you so amused? - Varvara asked and looked at him from below, from the scales.

Yes so...

I know, I know what's on your mind. Back then, do you remember, you were looking for Dunyarka in the field? - I said to myself: let my niece take Mishka! Wow, let's have a walk at the wedding!

Go to hell!

He pointed at the sheet with a pencil and grabbed his bag of grain.

Varvara, pleased, laughed (it is her first pleasure to make a person blush), and when he was already on the street, she called out. She came up, rummaging in a canvas bag - the bosses, the warehouse manager!

That's what you are to me. Bring city stockings and elastic garters.

Mikhail staggered back.

Well, well, Varvara shoved the money with a laugh, “get used to it.” If you can’t do it yourself, ask Dunyarka or Onisya. There, at the market, they say, all sorts of things.

I had to accept the money - the devil is with her, let her dress up.

When Mikhail was in a hurry, he usually walked around the backyard or down the hill. Because as soon as he appeared on the street, women fell on him from all sides: fix the roof with this one, lift the door with that one - every time with a fight, both she and the guys ended up in the hut, and the third one, and even more urgently, the ceiling “went down” over the table.

And he repaired roofs, raised doors, placed all sorts of supports under rotten ceilings, beat and straightened scythes, and demolished buildings for firewood. Yes, it turns out that this job too - causing destruction in the village - requires some skill. The old people built strong - by the time you tear a log from a frame, seven sweats will come off you. In general, his man's hands were torn in great demand by husbandless women.

And it's the same today. As soon as he rolled out of the warehouse onto the front street and thought whether it would be better to turn back to the backyard, stop: Okulya Zubatka. She stood with an ax at the very corner - wedge the ax handle.

Let's do it next time. I'm going to the city.

Okulya muttered something under her breath - about her conscience, about the fact that she wasn’t asking for nothing.

And then Mikhail understood what Okulya was hinting at. That he owes her. Last year I took a herbal infusion for creaking knees.

Mikhail was shaking with rage. How much work he did to this old squalin - he re-roofed the hut, and plowed the plot for two springs - and then I remembered about some kind of herbal infusion!

Well, the devil be with you - give me an ax here.

That's how it went. Okulya has an ax, Dunya Savkina has a roof - back in the fall, when leaving for the forest, he promised to replace the rotten cramp.

No, no, I can’t now! - He waved his hands from afar. And - by.

And Pyotr Zhitov is not Dunya Savkina - you can’t slip past. Petr Zhitov will put anyone at attention. If not with your throat, then with your prosthesis. His extremely worn-out prosthesis screams.

Bear, is it true that you are going to the city? So, boy, here's an errand. And then Pyotr Zhitov sat him down on the porch and began to explain in detail where and how to find a prosthetic factory in the city. His prosthesis expired a year ago - and why is there no attention to the disabled person? Patriotic War? Did he, Pyotr Zhitov, not deserve an iron leg?

Raechka Klevakina also wanted to lasso him. Raechka ran out of the creamery:

Hey, turn it up! The car broke down!

It’s possible, it’s quite possible that some nut on the separator has ground again - an old separator, born the same year as the collective farm - but Raechka, of course, didn’t call him for the separator.

Last year, women and girls were busy with the reaping, about fifteen of them fell on him at once - where can you cope? And so, in order to somehow get out of the situation (shame - the women bought it!), Mikhail is already in last minute He grabbed Rayechka in his arms and shouted in a stupid voice: “Eh, if you’re going to drown, then drown only with Rayechka!”

And Rayechka probably liked their bathing together - from then on she constantly began to catch his eye, even making friends with Lizka so that she could come to their house.

Personally, Mikhail had nothing against Raechka. The girl is beautiful, hot - in winter, in the most severe frost, in one dress she runs out of the creamery to chop wood. And not greedy - even though she is the daughter of Fyodor Kapitonovich.

But only to him, Mikhail, why the hell did she give in? Will he ever exchange Dunyarka for Rayechka? Even if you put up a thousand Raecheks at once, you still won’t get one Dunyarka.

They saw Dunyarka three times over the years, no more. And then on the fly, in passing. Because Dunyarka came home for vacation in the summer, and in the summer he lived for weeks at a time in distant hayfields or trumpeted again on a rafting trip, far away, tens and hundreds of kilometers away, descending with a hook down the Pinega.

But Mikhail had one thing that connected him with Dunyarka more than any other meeting - a scarf, a small handkerchief, embroidered by Dunyarka’s hands.

Dunyarka shyly slipped this handkerchief to him on the field in 1942, on the eve of his departure to technical school, and since then Mikhail has not parted with it for a single day. And one day he forgot it at home in the pocket of his outer shirt, which he threw in the wash. And so he galloped back home. From the hayfield. Fifteen miles away. For no one should know about their secret with Dunyarka. Not a single person in the world. Neither strangers, nor our own, home ones. And even Yegorsha, even though he is my first friend.

Lizka, a young fellow, did not sit idly by. While he was shopping for grain, she reheated the oven, and the grain was immediately poured onto baking sheets and placed in the oven to dry.

Mikhail lit a torch and went with the twins into the hallway: what is the condition of the mill?

He installed the millstone last year - he was tired of walking around people. He had no experience in this matter, he did everything more by guess, by touch, none of the old people could give any good advice either (Arkhip Inyakhin, an expert in this area, died a year ago), and the mill turned out so-so - always something broke. And there were too many millers, the entire upper end was turning Mikhailov’s millstones, but it is known that each miller has his own hand, his own temper - and that’s why there are breakdowns.

The current breakdown, fortunately, turned out to be minor - an iron hoop fell off the top millstone. Here, perhaps, he himself is to blame. He measured the millstone poorly, and welded the hoop a centimeter and a half too big. And all sorts of wedges and wedges - the support, as you know, is unreliable - as soon as the wood dried out, the hoop would come in, or even fly off the millstone altogether.

Shine better,” said Mikhail, passing the torch to the twins.

He had birch wedges at the ready, and he quickly filled the hoop. There were still two things left to do: take care of the clothes (maybe Anfisa Petrovna’s husband’s suit would actually suit him) and drop by the Lobanovs.

He first ran to the Lobanovs, because it seemed easier to pull out a tooth than to go to the Lobanovs. Who has modern times there is no dead person in the house, but the Lobanovs have three. And everything is fresh. All forty-five. And another son went missing - the one whose wife is in the city.

It was late, the sun had already set, and the Lobanovs were going to bed. On the floor, as if suffering in a hay hut, there was nowhere to put your foot, children and women were piled up, and Mikhail, like a crane, walked between them, making his way to the window where an old man sat with a collar.

I'm going to the city. What will you punish your daughter-in-law?

Trofim either didn’t hear, or the funeral was in his ears, he blinked often before, he also didn’t blink.

“I’m going to the city,” he says, “Mikheevna shouted loudly in his ear. He asks why Onisya will be punished.

Oh, to the city... - Trofim blinked his eyes again. - Tell her not to move. This is my order. Let him not make things up: I want to go home. - The old man was silent, nodded to the floor: - You see for yourself...

Leaving the Lobanovs, Mikhail rolled a cigarette and, striking a spark, according to a long-standing habit, looked west, in the direction where Arkhangelsk was.

The sunset was burning thickly, a dark, blue-cast iron cloud melted in its crimson conflagration. And above the cloud, above its very top, the first star shone with a gentle, unearthly light.

Mikhail made a wish: if the cloud does not crush the star while he is walking home, then happiness awaits him in the city.

Houses were being ground - a stone roar shook the squat hut, the story, the courtyard. The cracks in the gates on the porch were red from the splinter, and the smell of warm, ground grain was delicious, like a mill.

Mikhail looked west. The asterisk was in place. It shimmered like a pure silver drop over the torn edge of the cast-iron cloud.

CHAPTER THREE

For a long time, more than two years, the forge near the swamp was cold. Ever since Nikolasha Semina was taken to war. Only during raids, when it was really pressing, Mishka Pryaslin was in charge of it. But now the forge is wide open from afar, from the front street, the flames are visible. And the blacksmith - you'll fall in love: Ilya Netesov. Like a soldier, he hits with a hammer from the shoulder.

As for the rest - what else has changed?

In Pekashin there was still no bread and not enough seeds, the cattle were still dying from lack of food, and the women still died when they saw the postwoman Ulya on the road: the war was over, but the funeral mourners were still coming.

Due to the cold weather, we started planting late, just at the time when the forest was released from the small rivers. Telegrams and calls flew from the area - everything was as before:

Minina, Minina... Come on people... Minina, Minina... Damn you...

Anfisa snapped, responded to scolding with scolding (she has learned over the years to bark with district officials), and then she stood up for the plow herself and waved her hand at everything - both calls and telegrams. And so it was until he came to Pekashino himself.

He himself is the first secretary of the district committee, Podrezov, who replaced Novozhilov in the fall of forty-two. Novozhilov’s hand was soft; due to ill health, he rarely traveled around the area, but this one - where there was a hitch, there he was. And you won't fool him. Tutoshny. I grew up on wooden porridge. Pinega wandered with a hook in his hands almost from the top to the mouth and knew people well. For this, Podrezov was loved and respected, but also feared. Wow, how we were afraid! If Podrezov hires anyone, chips will fly.

Anfisa ran into the boardroom with a pile of dirt on her feet, covered in dust, black as cholera: there was no time to change clothes when she called.

Podrezov was not alone - with Taborsky, the head of the district rafting office, and Anfisa immediately decided: they’ve come about the rafting.

I was wrong.

Podrezov started talking about sowing.

We’re plowing little by little,” said Anfisa.

Why not a little more? - Here the black chrome leather jacket, known in the area to both old and young, creaked, and Podrezov raised his cold, winter eyes to Anfisa.

We’ll have a little more, Evdokim Polikarpovich, when we wait for the front-line soldiers. Then let's turn around.

Podrezov did not accept her impure, ingratiating smile. His face, large, high cheekbones, as if hewn from red flagstone, remained motionless.

How are your eyes, Minina?

Anfisa, pale, looked at Taborsky (he was still hugging the stove with red, chilled hands): what was he talking about? Which side should I wait to catch up with her?

What about vision, I say? Can you still see a mile away?

Here Anfisa immediately understood where the secretary was going. The thin bank is a mile from Pekashin, and the forest there dried up the other day.

She began to make excuses: it wasn’t the collective farm’s fault, they said. The rafters are to blame. They put up a bond.

You, Anfisa Petrovna, don’t go from a sick head to a healthy one. We know your politics.

Podrezov, without looking at Taborsky, waved his hand: don’t interfere when they don’t ask. And again his question confused Anfisa:

Why don’t I see Moshkin here? - Podrezov picked up the list of collective farmers from the table - a tattered, tattered gray sheet, since each district manager, coming to the collective farm, began his business by studying this list.

Are you talking about Yevsey?

About himself.

And he is not a collective farmer.

Are only collective farmers allowed to roll logs? Or are you saving it for old women? Look, Minina, don’t try to dissolve the Old Believer monastery.

Podrezov tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and wrote it down in pencil: Moshkin E.T.

Who else are you giving?

Then Ilya Netesov and Mikhail Pryaslin entered the office - and the cold ended: Podrezov seemed to have been replaced.

He stood up, handed his hand to one and the other - he extended both of them at once, then he put a large jar of samosad on the table (he didn’t smoke, but he carried tobacco with him), and his eyes were the blue of July. He knows how to take people on their feet. Some we beat, some we crush with affection.

Well, how are you settling in, soldier? - Podrezov turned to Ilya.

Thank you, Comrade Secretary. I'm not offended.

Is the bag in which you brought Victory still intact?

Ilya was embarrassed, touched his thin straw mustache with his hand - a big peasant hand that had already been blackened in the forge - and pulled down the soldier's tunic with medals and orders. In general, Ilya bore little resemblance to the dashing, victorious warrior he is portrayed as on posters. The face is wide, soft, the body is tilted - the war did not straighten it: the ax and the saw (and who crushed the forest more than him in Pekashin?) turned out to be stronger. But what is true is true - Ilya Netesov was the first soldier who returned to the area shortly after the victory. It was even written about in the regional newspaper.

Essentially, your soldier’s bag should be kept in a museum,” Podrezov continued. - Yes, we don’t have that yet. Yes, no. It would be nice to have one. Pinega has some history, and a considerable one... - Podrezov squared his shoulders and sat down at the table again. - So-so. This means that the army has no claims against us. Well, we have a complaint against the army. The chairman is offended by you. - Here Podrezov glanced playfully at Anfisa. - Netesov, he says, does not understand the meaning of the alloy.

No, why...

And you, Pryaslin?

Mikhail grinned: what fool would refuse grain work?

So how does this turn out, Minina, huh? Collective farmers, it turns out, are more conscientious than the chairman. So?

It was an unfair game, tripped up. But Anfisa remained silent. Now she understood why Ilya and Mikhail were called. To teach her a lesson. By the hands of the people, as they said in such cases.

When Ilya and Mikhail left the office, Podrezov said:

Well, that's it, Minina. We played and that's enough. Now, I hope, it’s clear what’s what.

He took a pencil and began tapping on the table - a gesture that was followed by either a new scolding or a final decision.

By evening, drive everyone to the river.

Anfisa turned pale:

What about sitting?

And if the forest dries out, then what? I was demobilized early...

That's it - the conversation is over. Once Podrezov began to rumble with heavy artillery (demobilization, anti-state practice, sabotage, myopia - the meaning of these words was well known to Anfisa) - shut your mouth, don’t object. True, these terrible words will fly at her even if she fails sowing, but now is not the time to prove that she is right. Now she had only one thing left to do - try to extract at least a small benefit from the current circumstances for her collective farmers. And from afar she began to cast a fishing rod:

It's cold to wander in the water. People don't have shoes.

Now you’re talking about this,” Podrezov said. - But there will be no boots. No. We will heat it from the inside. Splavkontor, do you hear?

Taborsky stood up straight.

How many bitches do you have in stock?

I don’t know, Evdokim Polikarpovich... Maybe a liter and a half or two will be enough.

Five,” said Podrezov.

Evdokim Polikarpovich... - Taborsky pleaded.

Five - and not an ounce less. Just be careful not to cheat and add water. I still understand something about this matter. - Podrezov flashed his bright eyes mockingly.

And we need to throw in some bread,” Anfisa continued to gypsy.

Throw five hundred grams on your nose. No, six hundred,” Podrezov corrected himself.

Bread won't work, Evdokim Polikarpovich...

I think I said it clearly. Six hundred grams per person. - Podrezov stood up. - Bungler! People help you out, but you still haggle...

They're coming! - Yegorsha shouted and quickly, as if on skis, rolled down the clay ridge.

They're coming! Podrezov himself is ahead.

The raftsmen - five guys Yegorsha's age - quickly crucified the fire where they were resting, and, grabbing the hooks, ran to the river: Podrezov loves working zeal.

Soon, on the crest of the ridge, where Yegorsha stood on patrol, a well-known, dense figure in a black leather jacket appeared.

“You see what you’ve done with your womanly tight-fistedness,” Podrezov said to Anfisa, pointing to the chicken. “If I had dropped off six people on time, this mess wouldn’t have happened.” So?

Podrezov was right. The entire area near the Thin Bank was completely clogged with forest. This place has always been considered disastrous for rafting. Pinega, like a bow stretched under Pekashin, first hits with its current a red, almost vertical crack on the other side, then, pushing off from it, with redoubled force it falls onto the low Pekashin bank behind the village. Therefore, the kuria is fenced off from the river every time with a long log boom. The raftsmen set up booms this year as well, but the pressure of the timber, released simultaneously from several rivers, turned out to be so great that the boom could not stand it - it cracked, and the logs, like a herd of sheep, poured into the kurya.

Anfisa has gotten used to emergency situations over the years. And not upcoming work scared her. But time? How long will it take them to fight this chicken? It’s good if it’s two or three days, then you can still somehow pull out the sowing. Well, how will you have to stagnate on the shore for a week?

There was no need to wait for people. The bread ration raised the entire village to its feet. Even the teachers came running. Even Pyotr Zhitov limped on his creaking prosthesis. And Anfisa thought: “Oh, if only such a bait existed in the north.” But, of course, she understood: it wasn’t just the soldering that mattered. Podrezov, Podrezov with the people!

She saw the first secretary at work. I saw him in the forest with an axe, and in haymaking, and on rafting - how many times have I encountered him! But the way he knows how to present himself - you look at him anew every time.

Podrezov did not fret. He didn’t shout: “Hey, you crazy people! Come on, quickly!” On the contrary, he gave people a break, to warm up by the fires, which, on his orders, were lit along the entire shore. And these fires alone immediately encouraged people: it’s fun and fun to work when the fire is close at hand.

But Podrezov abandoned his main trump card later, when he suddenly began to take off his leather jacket.

He will do it himself! - they whispered enthusiastically around.

Hooks were immediately extended towards Podrezov from all sides: choose which one you like.

And the choice began.

And again, if we talk seriously, what’s so special about choosing the tool you’ll use to work with? But Podrezov has the whole picture.

He rejected the first gaff, held out by some teenager, or rather, broke it: he leaned his whole body on the pole, and it became brittle.

Podrezov himself refused Mikhail Pryaslin’s boat hook: it was too heavy.

Where can I cope with this! Didn't grow taller.

This was said, of course, specifically to distinguish the guy.

Podrezov chose Yegorsha’s hook for himself (“This one will suit me”), and Yegorsha almost hooted with joy: it’s not every day that you hear such words from the first secretary.

In general, it is difficult to say how it all turned out, but in just twenty to thirty minutes Podrezov got the youngsters so hot that they were ready to go through fire and water for him. Yes, to tell the truth, it was not only the young animals who were captured by Podrezov’s passion. He also captured Anfisa. And most importantly, she also wanted Podrezov to praise her.

Kurya was cleared from the forest towards the end next day- exactly a day earlier than Podrezov had planned - and it was such joy that the women, despite being tired (they hadn’t slept for more than a day), ran home quickly and talkatively.

The air became noticeably warmer and smelled of fermented earth and burnt manure. The Pryaslinsky boys carried the first fish from the river - a bunch of silver dace. But most surprising of all were the first flowers. A lot of them, the golden stars of the mother-and-stepmother, lit up this day on the hills, on the boundaries, on the edges of the fields, and the girls and younger women plucked them as they walked, brought them to their noses, and Grunya Yakovleva, who was waiting for her husband from hour to hour - a front-line soldier, began to collect a bouquet of flowers.

It’s necessary, women,” she said, smiling and as if making excuses. - After all, he liberated all sorts of things in Europe - he got used to flowers.

And you, Minina, why are you lagging behind? - asked Podrezov.

When Podrezov was interested in your household affairs - sure sign that he is pleased with you. And Anfisa should be happy, but she quickly, quickly bent down to hide her sudden pallor, and only then answered dully:

He won't be coming anytime soon...

On Victory Day, Anfisa received two congratulatory telegrams. And both telegrams ended with the words: “See you soon.” The first telegram was from my husband, and the second was from Ivan Dmitrievich. And that's when she realized that she was in a whirlwind...

If she had written to her husband back in the war, saying that she had met a man, that’s enough, you and I are exhausted, she would have nothing to reproach herself with. Everything is fair. She is not the first to break up with her husband, and she will not be the last. But that’s exactly what she didn’t do. I didn't have the courage. I regretted it. I thought like a woman: let him fight calmly. We'll figure it out later.

And now the time is coming - we need to figure it out.

No, it wasn’t meeting her husband that she was afraid of. It’s not for Gregory to reproach her for betrayal. And even if Lukashin had not returned to her, she knew: old life no return. But women, women... What will the women with whom she went through all the torments of the war say to her? Will they understand her?

No, they won't understand. And they’ll say, that’s what a bitch you turned out to be. We tore our hair out, our eyes were all crying because our men did not return. What is your grief? How to get rid of your own man? Yes?

CHAPTER FOUR

Have you been to the Arktika restaurant? Did you drink beer from a thick mug? Was not? In a restaurant? How did you manage to get around? There's a queue there - oh-oh-oh! - per kilometer. We were almost late for the circus - the whole team survived. What? Have you ever been to the circus? And haven’t you seen this same woman on the lions? What are you, you fucking louse! Well, I went, so to speak, to the city, refueled with some culture... Well, football, I think, got into my eyes. Last year, even though I had never seen it in the wild before, I immediately understood what they were eating with. Men, such foreheads, are running around in their underpants, the audience is screaming, clapping their hands: come on, come on! Kuzma Kuzmich, the head of the logging station, was with me - eyes wide. “Yegorsha, he says, how can this be? Here, he says, women work hard all through the war without days off, and here in the middle of the day almost the entire city is chasing a ball.” Do you understand how crazy it is? What what? Haven't you seen football? - Yegorsha even stood up: he was so amazed by Mikhail’s answer. What did you even see there? Why the hell did you go there?

For the ointment! Told you.

For ma-a-zyu... Pekashinsky stump! What, have you been guarding jars of ointment all the time? Wow! First time in the city - but it’s hard to see everything properly. Psycho! By God, crazy. And I didn’t stop by the market. Difficult? After all, he asked: come in and buy a lighter with the girl. He gave me the money and outlined everything as it should be. If the smart one works intermittently, Dunyarka would be connected... - Yegorsha angrily threw two white resinous chips into the fire, followed with his eyes the sparks that flew to the sky.

The night was quiet and bright. No sooner had the sunset played out than the east began to blush. The forest was thick and scattered along Pinega. The lobed logs, like large fish, hammered the newly installed boom with a dull thud. The boom creaked, water sloshed in the rocky throat of the lintel. And on the other side, in the pine forest, the koscha snorted fervently, the hazel grouse whistled, and the easy-going plovers were calling each other loudly and loudly across the river.

“Well,” Yegorsha said in a different tone, “I’ve never heard of a koscha and a grouse flocking in June.” And all because of the cold weather. They didn’t go out on time, so they pressed... And there, there! Shantrapa! - Yegorsha suddenly perked up, pointing to the river. - Hey, how far is it without bread?

The water in the middle of the river, crimson from the dawn, was studded with white flags and wagtails were swimming. Each on a separate log. The long tail is stretched out, the breast is turned along the flow.

Where are they going? To Arkhangelsk? - Yegorsha grinned. - That's how serious they are on the water! And there is no more fidgety bird on earth.

Mikhail followed the wagtails with his eyes to the bend of the river and again stared at the fire.

What are you doing? Are you completely crazy after the city? What kind of fly bit you?

Get off! As much as possible!.. He keeps saying the same thing.

Yegorsha jabbed his stick forcefully into the fire, stood up, took the hook and began to go down to the boom, which they were assigned to guard until the morning.

The wet logs slid under his bare feet and swayed, but he quickly pushed aside the timber that was nailed to the boom. Then he got drunk, stood and stood looking at the river, and suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs:

Ehe-he-he-hey!

A loud echo swept across the night Pinega, jumped out onto the other bank and ran, hooting, along the tops of the pine forest.

Well, the echo began to play like summer,” said Yegorsha, returning to the fire. We have also waited for the red days. Now there will be no living, but raspberries on the rafting. Ask to join our team.

Mikhail sighed. Red reflections gilded his brown, thoughtful eyes.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

It's easy to say...

Wonderful! You should push yourself to Podrezov himself. So and so: I want to go to the front line. Forest front. Komsomol... You never know what you can do.

How about sitting? Who will let me go?

Well, if you are such a dung beetle, suffer for everyone. My job is to advise. Figure it out! Now you know how you need a forest? You need to read the newspapers,” Yegorsha added with mocking edification. - Do you think Anfisa Petrovna let me go right away? Wow! I had to make more than one visit.

Okay, I’ll try,” said Mikhail.

A chilly fog came from the river. Sunrise was approaching.

Yegorsha began to set up a bed near the fire. He laid several chips on the ground, threw old willow branches on them, and threw dried boots at the head of the bed.

“Make sure you don’t catch a cold,” said Mikhail.

Nothing. There is some hardening. - Yegorsha yawned widely. - And Podrezov’s alcohol is oh-ho! I grabbed enough water and was steaming again.

He lay down on the prepared bed, paused, looking at the light, toasty sky, and suddenly raised himself to his elbow.

Listen, how are you thinking about Raechka Klevakina... my neighbor?

In what thought?

How about frying some firewood, I say? - Yegorsha laughed briefly.

Blockhead! You can think of something else.

Then, mind you, Rayechka will follow me. Let's confirm it. Agree? When I see her, I get a fever. Hey!

Gulko fired a coal into the fire. The thin white cigarette holder that Yegorsha had finally acquired from Taborsky smoked in the green grass not far from his face. Egorsha quickly fell asleep. He lay down on his side, yawned and immediately began whistling. Subtle as a ripple.

Mikhail took off his sweatshirt and covered his bare legs.

Yegorsha did not move.

Then Mikhail again sat down in his place by the fire and took birch bark crusts from his chest pocket.

Over the course of three years, the crusts became cracked and glazed, the grit with which they were stitched around the edges turned white and tousled, but the handkerchief did nothing. It just got a little worn and turned gray on the folds.

It seemed to him that Dunyarka blushed and somehow looked at each other with embarrassment and even bewilderment. But the next second she was already standing in front of him and holding out her hand with a smile:

Hello.

The squeeze was quick, fleeting, as if she did it out of necessity. And in general, in this tall, full-breasted girl, dressed in a city style, he hardly recognized the old Dunyarka, thin as a twig. Everything changed for her in a year: her clothes, her hairstyle, and even her height. However, it soon became clear about her height: she was wearing high-heeled shoes.

Dunyarka was pleased with the impression she made on him. He realized this when he met her brown eyes for a moment. And maybe just these Brown eyes, always so self-confident and mocking - perhaps they are the only ones left from the old Dunyarka.

She shook her braids - also a new habit.

Why are you standing? Sit down. Yes, take off, take off your malachai. And I’m thinking: why is it still cold here, girls?

The girls laughed. Of course, it was a joke, but Mikhail didn’t like it.

Well, he was offended. And we always laugh. Laughter is the best vitamin. Right, girls?

The girls nodded eagerly. And it became clear to him: Dunyarka is in command here too. And how can she not give orders if her friends are just assholes compared to her!

Do you want some tea?

Keep in mind: we don’t offer five times. This is not your mother village.

The girlfriends giggled again. And this time he laughed too. After all, why bother with precipitation when everyone is focused on the bucket?

Wiping sweat from his forehead - it was warm in the hostel - he started a general conversation, interesting for everyone, as it seemed to him, about how they would soon become agronomists, go to the village and - oh-oh-oh, what kind of work awaits them: after all, not a single collective farm now has crop rotation; but Dunyarka snorted: “I’m also an agitator-propagandist!” - and the conversation ended.

He thought: Dunyarka’s friends are to blame for everything. It’s for their sake, motherfucker, she’s trying. Damn character! You must always be in charge, no matter what the cost. But it didn't get any easier outside.

They walked along Pavlik Vinogradov Avenue and were silent. People - there is no escape from people. Front, sides, back. The sun is shining in my eyes. And Dunyarka bit her lips - as if there was a fishing rod in her mouth.

He spoke first:

And you have become a real city dweller. Look, everyone is looking at you.

“That’s on you,” Dunyarka said without raising her head.

Why on me?

And here they love it when mummers walk down the street.

Are you talking about my hat? - Mikhail stopped. - Well, do you want me to throw her to her damn grandmother?

Do not be silly. Tell me better, how is your mother, auntie?

Adapting to her clear, elastic step (she walked beautifully, hammered nails, but did not walk - it was not for nothing that all the men were staring at her), he began to talk about his mother, about Varvara, then, to please her, he said:

And you, by the way, are starting to look a lot like your aunt. By God!

His calculation turned out to be unmistakable. A thick blush spread across Dunyarka’s round cheek.

Well, like your aunt,” she said with unexpected shyness. - Our aunt is beautiful. Where should I go?

He immediately perked up and took his hat off his head.

“I guessed it,” Dunyarka smiled.

And he smiled at her. Well, what makes him think that she is ashamed of him? After all, it touched her pride, and everything returned to the old way. And it doesn’t matter that she constantly bullies him. Do not sleep! Such gorgeous girls don't like lop-eared people.

Dunyarka raised her eyebrow mockingly.

Have you been to the circus? - Mikhail asked, finally deciding to take the initiative into his own hands.

You'll ask too! I live in the city, but I’ve never been to the circus.

Let's go to the circus?

There is no circus yet. He's visiting us.

It's a pity. Well then, let's go to a restaurant?

“Let’s go to kindergarten,” Dunyarka said.

To kindergarten? Yes, they stood at the entrance to the birch garden. And this small garden, this sunny birch grace, so unexpectedly replaced by noise and roar big city, dispelled the last remnants of that painful alienation that had made him uncomfortable from the very beginning of their meeting. And Dunyarka became the same, Pekashin. And, sitting down on a white empty bench in the far corner of the garden, she said:

Is it really good here?

Her eyebrow arched in surprise, then she said:

Yes, you and I have grown up. I'm already nineteen. Spinster. - And she laughed.

They are waiting for you,” said Mikhail. “Anfisa Petrovna said at a meeting in winter: “Don’t worry, women,” she said, “soon we will have our own agronomist.”

Dunyarka thoughtfully picked off an old birch leaf stuck to the path with the toe of her shoe. The thin city stocking sparkled in the sun.

Yes, that’s it, he remembered. - Your aunt asked me to buy stockings, and with these... what's their name... with elastic bands. Whatever you want, help me out. I'm in this business, you know...

Dunyarka drew her legs up.

Auntie is making a fool.

And what? Let him dress up. She can put any girl to shame.

Stockings don't grow on birch trees here.

Well, don't consider us beggars. We have something. - Mikhail patted the bulging pocket of his pants, then leaned back on the bench and said, dreamily squinting his eyes: - Eh, it’s a pity that you still have exams, otherwise we would have gone home together.

What do you know? Agronomy! Was it in vain that they taught you?

Dunyarka shook her braids sharply. Birch trees danced like white dots in her black pupils.

Well, let's say... they taught me? I studied on my own. Do you know how I lived? And she was a nanny, and she was a donor, and she washed the floors...

Do you think we had heaven?

“Eccentric,” Dunyarka grinned. - Yes, I don’t think anything. You see... - She bit her lips. - I have a lieutenant friend here... He’s calling for marriage... What do you think? Go?

From the first minute he glanced askance at the small faceted watch on a metal chain that adorned her dark complexion. full hand above the wrist, and still couldn’t understand: where from? where did you get it? And now I finally understand. And he said dully:

The birch bark crusts fell into the fire first, then the handkerchief.

Egorsha, like a true lumberjack, instantly woke up. He stood up and turned his nose.

It smells like something is burning - are we not burning?

No,” said Mikhail, “I burned that rag.”

“Oh, right,” said Yegorsha and lay down again.

Yegorsha? Eh, Yegorsha? - Mikhail called a little later.

Yegorsha did not respond. Yegorsha was sleeping. He had an amazing, downright happy ability to fall asleep immediately.

With the alloy, as Mikhail thought, nothing came of it. Anfisa Petrovna didn’t even want to listen when he mentioned it. No and no.

Why not? - he started to struggle. - You’re probably letting Yegorsha go. How is it better?

Either Yegorsha, or you. We can live without Yegorsha, but without you... I don’t know... That’s right, that’s right, Mikhail... - And then she also said: - Be patient a little. They endured more. We went through the whole war together - let's reach the front-line soldiers.

And he gave up. Someone has to dig into the ground. After all, during the war, deposits and wastelands were plowed up everywhere. And then - we must tell the truth - Anfisa Petrovna helped them out during the war, she really helped them out. Yes, if it weren’t for her, Anfisa Petrovna, they wouldn’t have seen a new hut. It was she who first said: “Mikhail, build a hut.” And for a week she rounded up people - everyone who could even hold an ax in their hands.

That’s how he failed to start the new life that he and Yegorsha had talked so much about this spring.

And he again plowed, sowed, put up fences.

After this work, somehow summer came unnoticed.

Together, as if making up for lost time, young grass began to grow. The bush has blossomed. And already the mosquito began to sharpen its sting on horses and plowmen.

In the mornings he was woken up by cranes. From Povet, where he now slept with his brothers, their call signs could be clearly heard when, at sunrise, they flew from the Pekashi winter fields to the swamps across the river.

After a week of hard work, Mikhail became dry and black as a rook. He burned Dunyarkin’s handkerchief, put an iron hoop on his heart, but where could he go from memory?

Walking behind a creaking, wobbling plow, moving from one field to another, he constantly came across places that reminded him of her. Now it was Popov Stream, where he rescued the tear-stained Dunyarka with the Partizan, then Abramkina’s navina - here Dunyarka bashfully thrust an embroidered handkerchief at him, then the old clover patch by the river, where they sat on poles that showery evening...

How much water has flowed under the bridge since that evening! Nastya Gavrilina is no longer alive - she did not leave the hospital on her own two feet, she was brought home under a canvas. Nikolasha Semiin, his first teacher in blacksmithing, is no longer alive, and the clover, that pink, fragrant field in which for the first time his heart began to beat somehow unfamiliarly and anxiously, that clover is also gone - he himself plowed it under the rye twice... .

Once, returning from distant Navina, where Ilya Netesov had just replaced him at the plow, Mikhail unexpectedly heard a song:

Ducks and two geese are flying,

I can't wait for the one I love...

Who is singing this? - he thought. Varvara? Only she and the girls haven’t forgotten how to sing.

Mikhail rose from the birch forest onto a green hillock and saw Anisya Lobanova. Anisya was harrowing, sitting on a bellied pinto mare. It had not rained for a long time, and a thick line of dust stretched across the field behind the harrow. His first thought was to hide in the bushes, but Anisya had already noticed him and waved her hand.

Anisya and her children lay like a heavy stone on his conscience. That evening, when he parted with Dunyarka in the kindergarten, everything was confused in his head, and could he remember Trofimov’s orders? And the next day it was already too late. The next day, Anisya, as soon as the children got up, announced: “We’re going to the village! To see grandpa!” And there was such a commotion, the children were so happy that he didn’t have the courage to tell the truth. “Well, it’s so good that you came,” said Anisya. “I don’t believe in God, I was a Komsomol member. And then God himself sent you. Where would I end up with them?” So, it was his fault that Anisya and the children set off for Pekashino.

He conveyed her father-in-law's orders already on the ship. “I know, I know everything. Yes, I, too, have lived to the brink. There has been no news from Timofey since the first day of the war. Our apartment was bombed - the children freeze in the summer. I myself saw what kind of kennel we live in. Let them, I think, be in the village at least in the sun They’ll warm up.” And she joked: “You don’t have the sunshine on your cards yet?” “Well, that’s right,” Mikhail supported her. We live, we don’t die.”

But still, he tried not to catch Trofim’s eye, because whatever one may say, it was his fault that three more hungry mouths fell on the old man, and he avoided Anisya as much as possible.

Riding up to him, Anisya, without getting off her horse, took off the checkered scarf from her head, shook off the dust from it. Her hair was dark, heavily streaked with gray, and cut short, like a schoolgirl’s. And she tied the scarf in an unusual way, like a warrior’s knot, at the back of her head. All this came from the Komsomol fashion of the twenties, unknown to him, long forgotten both in the city and in the countryside.

Well, how are we living? - asked Mikhail.

We live well.

Fine? - He looked carefully into Anisya’s face. For the first time in these years he heard a person not complain about life.

At her request, he broke out her rowan chick, then - himself - raised the harrow and cleared the teeth of the shaggy turf.

And did you get along with your grandfather?

We hit it off. Now the guys and I have moved to the story. It's like living at a resort.

Here's a wife! - thought Mikhail. She holds her own and doesn’t make others sad. Somebody knew what Trofim Lobanov’s resort was now.

Listen,” he shouted after her, “you should come to us!” Mother will splash milk!

Anisya did not turn around. A cloud of dust raised by the harrow covered her and her horse. But her checkered scarf, scarlet from the evening sun, was still visible to him from the path for a long time. And he suddenly asked himself: why the hell are you so limp? After all, how life twists people, but nothing happens - they clenched their teeth.

At home, he happily washed himself to the waist and changed into a clean shirt.

Lizka, putting a patch of fresh dace on the table (Petka and Grishka rarely returned from the river empty-handed), remarked:

Well, thank God, you’ve become like a human being too. Otherwise you don’t know which side to approach you from.

Is it true. And Raechka asked me.

Lisa, Lisa, soon?

What does she want there? - asked Mikhail.

Liza winked slyly:

Wait a little. Our guests have arrived.

What nonsense? What other guests?...

For about five minutes the meeting went on in a whisper in the closet, then the whispering died down, and two young ladies in blue dresses with white polka dots came out of the closet.

Mikhail gasped:

Where do you get your new dresses from?

Lizka sewed it. She can do everything. Yes, Lisa?

Lizka turned pink from the praise.

Didn't you really see me sewing in the evenings? I'll sew it for you too. On holiday you will wear a new shirt.

What holiday?

Well, I woke up. Seeding! Varvara the storekeeper and the wives are already teasing the chairman: “Come on, they say, it’s a holiday for us. We earned it for the war. We, they say, want to live like people.”

That's how! The first time I've heard.

And tomorrow the women will drive the cow into the silo, right, Lisa? - posted latest news Tatyanka, for which she was awarded a light slap on the head: don’t whip, they say, if you don’t need it, don’t stick yours in a long nose into every crevice.

“What, he can do it,” Tatyanka pouted.

Yes,” said Mikhail, “you have your work cut out for you.” - And he smiled, marveling at the cunning and ingenuity of the Pekashin women.

But isn’t it the same in other villages? Collective farm cattle cannot be slaughtered - there is a special law for this. But if the same cattle is exposed to an accident, and a report is drawn up, then there are no complaints.

Mikhail finished sucking the head of the last dace and left the table.

Yegorsha didn't come in? Didn’t you leave the terry?

Liza was offended:

At least look at us. Was it in vain that we changed clothes? “Then, biting her lips, she asked: “Well, am I prettier in my new dress?”

And I? - Tatyanka stepped forward.

Or maybe this is how we should live, like Lizka? - thought Mikhail, going out onto the porch. There is a new dress - and rejoice. What to think ahead?

He walked onto the road in front of his house. Will there be a smoker in sight?

There was no one around. Ilya Netesov is on the field, it’s a long way to go to Pyotr Zhitov, and even further to go to Yegorsha... No, he sighed, apparently he’ll have to put off smoking until Yegorsha arrives, but now, while there’s a free minute, we need to take on the fence.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ilya no longer found his sons at home. Small guys - one six, the other five - do they have enough patience to wait for their father when Yegorsha calls people with an accordion in the morning? But Valentina, who has more intelligence, did not leave without her father. And she completed the task: well, she polished her father’s military regalia to a shine.

Marya, when she saw him in all this splendor, gasped:

Well, what a beautiful you are, father! I don't know how to go with you.

It was warm and sunny outside. There was the smell of blossoming bird cherry trees (there are a lot of them in Pekashin, the whole hillside is in white bloom), and the young grass was greening beautifully under the mountain in the meadow.

Before the reign, they walked together, hand in hand: he was in the middle, and Marya and her daughter were nearby. And then, at the board, they had to part ways, because Marya suddenly decided that he should approach the people alone, without them.

“Look, they’re waving,” she noted. - It’s not Valentina and I, they’re waving to the soldier.

And sure enough, at the end of the street, opposite the green Stavrovsk larch, white women’s scarves fluttered like swans and seagulls.

Ilya did not have to go to parades, he did not walk in front of his superiors in formation (in August 1941 they were thrown straight from the train into battle), only once, at his own peril and risk, he bludgeoned the district bridges in a soldier's overcoat. Three weeks ago, when I was driving home from the war. He struck because it was impossible otherwise. They look at you from the windows, they run out of institutions and offices (“Hello to the winner!”), the kids are chasing around, and what are you - a blunder? Open mouth catch flies?

Well, he really tried. He straightened, with all his might, straightened his already middle-aged, broken, broken back, planted his foot in a worn-out tarpaulin boot firmly and no, no, and furtively straightened his mustache, which he had grown in the hospital because he had nothing better to do.

And so, remembering this first and only parade in his life, Ilya not only began to fluff up the dusty hot street or stiffen his face, but still took a deep breath of air and pulled his navel to his spine. And at first everything went as it should. To the accordion, to the marching march, with which the smiling and winking Yegorsha encouraged him (“Come on, soldier, have more fun!”), to the approving and proud glances of his own daughter, with which she supported him from the side. And the silver and bronze on his chest sparkled - this is his report to his fellow countrymen for the war. But suddenly he saw, to the side of the crowd waiting for him, a dry, timid Fedoseevna looking at him from under her dark palm, and that’s all - black night covered the holiday.

In July of the forty-first year, when he went to war with the Pekashin men, this same Fedoseevna begged him tearfully in this same place: “Ilya Maksimovich, you taught me for two years and took care of my Sanya in the forest, so don’t leave him, take care of him.” him there too." And she asked and begged other men for the same thing, and Sanya, her only son, was terribly embarrassed and ashamed of his simple-minded mother, and kept sending her away and sending her home, and in the end he got his way: Fedoseevna went home, shedding tears.

Ilya didn’t save Sanya. In the same forty-first year, near Vyazma, Sanya was torn to shreds by a shell, so there was no point in consigning her to the ground. Where are the others? Where did the school of young, healthy men and boys go who were then escorted off to war from here, from this Stavrov house?

So far, from this school, or from this Pekashin company, as the district military commander then called them, he alone returned to the starting line - without flaws, one hundred percent healthy, except for a small scratch on his chest - and even there, leaning on the fence, standing one-legged, halved Pyotr Zhitov.

In three weeks, Ilya had already managed to take a closer look at the women, but maybe only today, on this warm and sunny day, when they were all dressed up and washed, maybe only today did he really get a good look at them.

They grew older, withered, their poor, toothless mouths dropped, and such a guilty, ingratiating look, as if they were apologizing to him. They apologized for their appearance, for what the war had done to them.

Two girls, it seems Raya Klevakina and Lizka Pryaslina, ran out to him with a large bouquet of fragrant, freshly broken bird cherry. Dry, wooden pops were heard. Egorsha interrupted the game. And he understood: they were waiting for him to speak. This is probably how the holiday was planned.

Dad, dad, tell me! - Valentina whispered demandingly from the side, tightly squeezing her father’s hand with all her might.

And Pyotr Zhitov, savagely piercing him with his gaze from the garden, also made it clear that, they say, it is not the gods who burn the pots...

Varvara Inyakhina helped Ilya out. Varvara shouted from the porch in a young, ringing voice:

To the table, to the table, wives!

And then Yegorsha started playing the marching march again, but not for him, but for the women, who, instantly changing formation, rushed en masse, their whole motley and stuffy horde, into the alley towards Varvara’s voice.

The tables were placed on two halves along the walls, and still there was not enough space for everyone.

Hey master! Where are you? Open another meeting in the corridor.

Don’t shout,” said Yegorsha. - There is no owner. In the morning I drove off into the forest.

And then it suddenly became clear that Trofim Lobanov and his daughters-in-law were not there, and Sofron the Wise and his wife did not appear. Where is Marfa Repishnaya? Where is Anna Pryaslina? They didn’t come, they couldn’t step over the dear dead. So from the very beginning this holiday began, interspersed with bitter tears.

Of course, they drank the first glass for victory, and then everything was drowned in noisy cries and lamentations.

Oh, Maryushka, Maryushka! You waited for yours, but mine won’t come back... And you don’t go to the grave...

Ondreyushka kept writing to me: wife, take care of yourself, wife, take care of yourself... But he didn’t take care of himself...

At least you lived with your Ondrejushka, but I, women, am a bitter soul...

Women! Women! - Varvara ordered. - Eat meat. Eat your fill!

How is it true? Where can I get wire cutters?

But I have... - Ofimya closed her mouth with an unbending finger and showed her yellow, toothless gums to her neighbor.

Nothing! The blacksmith is now his own - he forges new ones...

Ilya listened to these discordant voices and cries, looked at the dispersed wives, and before him, as if in reality, the women’s war in Pekashin was unfolding. One recalled how she was the first to open grain plantations in the swamp (“Everyone ran after me”), another was amazed at how much land she had plowed over the years (“You can’t get around it in a day”), and Paladya, who had many children and was blind, opened up and began to tell how she carried away a sheaf of grain from the collective farm field last year.

They shushed her and waved their hands:

Shut up, stupid! With the chairman. Maybe we still have to.

No, you don't have to! - Paladya squealed furiously. - It won’t happen, it won’t happen again!

Do not promise. One crow boasted - what happened?

What, what, wives? What didn't you like about the chairman? - Anfisa asked.

Got it! You did it, Anfisyushka. That’s why I love you, because in my heart I understood our misfortune.

Anfisa! Anfisa Petrovna! You are our dear! - women shouted from everywhere.

Anfisa was hugged, kissed, and sprinkled with the brine of women's tears. And she herself cried:

Women, women, you are my golden ones...

Have pity on the chairman! - the completely exhausted Mikhail Pryaslin became furious, over whose head the wives were still trying to hug Anfisa. Torment! There is only one chairman.

Misha! Misha! You are my darling! - the sweaty, white-browed Ustinya suddenly clasped her hands and hugged him tightly around the neck. - I will never forget you, my beloved one. Do you remember how you taught me my braid?

And just like he saved me in the forest last winter! Do you remember?

Michael! - Anfisa stood up.

Quiet! Quiet! The Chairman wants to say. The fiery sun hit Anfisa's eyes. There was no coolness in the open windows - the heat poured in from the street. Ilya took a bouquet of dried bird cherry trees from the windowsill and waved them in front of Anfisa’s heated face. White color fell on the table.

Here, you women, you said: Mikhail helped out this one, he helped out the other, the third... But what should I say? Mikhail helped me out every day. Since forty-two he has been helping out. Well, remember: who is our first mower on the collective farm? Who plowed and sowed the most? And who should be sent out into the bitter cold and bad weather for hay and firewood?.. - Anfisa burst into tears and ran her palm over her face. - It used to be that spring is approaching - what do you think I’m most happy about? And I am glad that Mikhail will soon come from the forest. A man will appear on the collective farm...

That’s right, that’s right, Petrovna,” the women sighed. And on the other half, Lizka and her boys roared loudly.

Don’t cry, don’t cry,” they began to persuade them. - They don’t scold him, they praise him.

Anfisa wiped a tear from her eyes.

Yes, women, Mikhail stood through the whole war for the first man. For the first! How can I thank him? Can I at least give him an extra kilogram of life?

Anfisa poured from her half into a glass and handed it to Mikhail:

Come on, have a drink from me. - And low, almost touching the table with her forehead, she bowed to the guy.

And from me! And from me!

The diluted knot began to bubble in the glasses and cups (everyone had saved one hundred grams of alcohol earned from the rafting until the holiday). A woman’s love fell upon Mikhail like an avalanche.

Someone, again overwhelmed by his grief, cried out:

At least Anna still has the kids, but my house is empty...

Stop shedding tears. A song! - Pyotr Zhitov yelled and slammed his fist heavily on the table.

Egorsha! - Varvara soared. - Play! I want to dance!

Varka, Varka, shameless! At least you remembered Terentia...

Varvara, young, smart, in a blue silk dress, tightly, girlishly, tied with a black lacquered strap with a light buckle, jumped out into the middle of the hut and stamped her foot.

I remember! Teresha loved me for my fun.

They say I'm poor

Why bad?

I have four sorrows

Always cheerful.

Well, the officer's widow got divorced.

Yes, no bullshit! - Varvara threw her hands on her hips and looked at everyone with a reckless look. - The officer's widow!

Egorsha arched the pink bellows of the accordion.

Cooking! Cooking! About love! - the women suddenly came to life.

Drolya went to war,

I stayed by the bridge.

The widow has entered her fifth year

Great Lent.

Oho-ho-ho! You're lying, Varka! You're lying!

I'm not lying, women! The song won't let you lie:

For those who don’t know, I declare:

I'm not spoiled

Throughout the German war

Never been kissed.

Varvara, dancing dashingly, grabbed Ilya by the sleeve and dragged him away from the table. Marya grabbed her husband by the neck:

Don't pester! Stick to someone else.

Ugh, I won’t ask you. Our husbands have laid down their heads, and will you rule alone? No, it won't work! We will divide it equally. We will require an order.

Bitter! Bitter-oh-oh!..

You've gone crazy! We found some fun in front of the children... - Marya’s eyes started to swell with blazing blackness. She recoiled from the women pressing on all sides and rested the back of her head against the wall.

Bitter! Bitter!

Ilya, smiling, felt his wife’s hard, calloused hand under the table, looked at the open doors, in which his daughter’s black, proud eyes had recently been shining, and began to rise, it is impossible not to respect the people.

No no! - the women screamed. - Let go Masha! Let her go!

Kiss me, you stubborn fool! Otherwise I'll kiss you.

Come on, come on! Let's at least see how it's done!..

Nothing helped - neither begging nor scolding. Marya would rather let herself be cut into pieces than give in to the women in such a matter. Ilya had a stern, Old Believer wife. Even in 1941, when he was leaving for war, she didn’t kiss him in front of the people.

And the women, having never achieved their goal, finally left them alone and, following the accordion, threw them into the street.

Mikhail, surrounded by his brothers and sisters, stood swaying around the corner of the side hut and moved his disheveled head heavily. He was vomiting.

I'm screwed, shameless bastard! A shirt! He gnawed all over his shirt. Go home.

Se-stra-a!

What sister?

Se-stra-a! - Mikhail stamped his boot, rushed towards the alley where the women were noisily having fun with an accordion, and fell.

Tatyanka began to cry in fear and convulsively wrapped her arms around her sister.

“Leave him, guys,” Lizka said to the twins, who rushed from both sides to help their brother. - He scared my girl, the little leshak, all over her. “She hugged Tatyanka, but immediately shouted at her: “Why are you crying?” They didn't kill me!

Raya Klevakina ran out from around the corner of the hut with a bucket of water. Squinting from the sun, barely restraining herself from laughing at the sight of Mikhail standing on his knees, disheveled, with senselessly wide eyes, she scooped up water with a ladle and splashed it right in his face.

Mikhail roared and jumped to his feet.

Rayechka rushed to the side with a squeal and laugh. The zinc bucket overturned. Mikhail kicked him, staggered, and wandered into the alley.

The Stavrovs' alley is spacious, the cattle do not enter it - it is locked from the street with strong locks - and Stepan Andreyanovich cut the grass twice during the summer. There was a good stack of hay coming out. But this year, it looks like there will be no grass. They knocked out the meadow until it was black. Yellow dandelion heads, crushed by boots and shoes, were burning all over the alley. And Lizka, economically estimating the consequences of the current debauchery, could not restrain herself from tears.

Sister! Who hurt you? Who?

Misha, Misha! - Varvara shouted from the porch. Crazy, drunken fun circled around the porch. Women galloped, waving colorful sundresses, an accordion squealed, Pyotr Zhitov, red from exertion, clapped his good leg.

Varvara ran up to Mikhail and dragged him into the circle.

Bear, Bear! - Pyotr Zhitov yelled. - Give her life, Satan!

The women instantly scattered to the sides. Varvara stood up on her toes, and-eh! work started. Legs are dancing, hands are dancing, Yegorsha is sweating in streams, and she:

Faster, faster, Yegorsha! You'll freeze it!

Mishka, Mishka, don’t let us down! - the women shouted. Mikhail stamped his feet in one place, heavily, diligently, as if he was kneading clay, shook his wet head, glistening in the sun, then suddenly staggered and grabbed the fence.

All. The boy is ready,” Pyotr Zhitov summed up with annoyance.

And Varvara laughed:

Well, who isn’t tired of living yet? Eh, you! And bare your teeth...

Don't ridicule anyone

Me, the top-headed one.

The guys started to love

Twelve years old.

Ilyukha! - Pyotr Zhitov passionately called out to Netesov. - Support the authority of the army. Is it really possible for a woman to take over?

“I have no complaints about this part,” said Ilya.

I have! - said Yegorsha. He stood up from the stool and handed the accordion to Raya. - Rachel, play for me.

The fence near the barn began to crack.

Yegorsha quickly jumped up to Mikhail and pulled him by the sleeve:

Come on, uncle, there’s no point in fighting with the garden. Dedkino is a building.

The crowd laughed.

What? Should you laugh at me? Above me? - Mikhail gritted his teeth furiously and threw Yegorsha aside.

Fyodor Kapitonovich, coming down from the porch, said with disgust:

Well, now there will be a holiday.

Ah, Comrade Klevakin! Our northern Golovaty! - Mikhail bent over in a bow.

Two or three women burst out laughing, but Pyotr Zhitov laughed loudest of all, because he was the one who christened Fyodor Kapitonovich that way.

In 1943, Fyodor Kapitonovich contributed twenty thousand rubles to the defense fund. About him patriotic feat The whole area was noisy. Newspapers called him the northern Golovaty. He was taken to the city, called to every meeting in the region, and only the Pekashin residents chuckled when Fyodor Kapitonovich was held up as an example to them at meetings. That’s right, Fyodor Kapitonovich contributed money to the defense fund, and a lot of money. Where did he get them from? Why don't others have them?

“Go, go,” Fyodor Kapitonovich said to Mikhail, frowning. “You’re still too young, you brat, to talk to people.”

Am I small? Am I a brat? No, you wait! Wait. How to get money for squandering, then don’t you say that I’m a brat!..

Mikhail was surrounded by women.

Misha, Misha,” Varvara began to persuade him. - Is that possible?

She pulled him aside.

Varka, you’re soft... - Mikhail said, hugging her.

Varvara laughed.

Keep quiet, don't tell anyone. They don't talk about it.

And why?

Lizka approached them:

Go home. How much longer will you make people laugh?

Home? - Mikhail stamped his foot. - No. We'll go for a walk. Egorsha, where is Egorsha?

Yegorsha was not in the alley. The women went home.

The collar of Mikhail's new shirt was open from top to bottom. One button hung on a thread. Lizka, sighing and shaking her head, stood up on her toes, tore off this button, and then it seemed to her that another button was missing from her collar.

Stop! - she shouted at her brother, immediately getting all upset.

But Mikhail, picked up by Varvara, had already moved after the women. He sang loudly:

The boy walked along the bank,

I haven't seen my dear one for a long time...

Lizka looked around and saw Petka and Grishka.

Guys, search everything thoroughly. Look behind the hut. He, the leshak, seems to have lost a button.

Then she ran to the upper huts and closed the windows. The twins, squatting down, carefully looked around the place where their brother had recently been trampling. The double voices of Varvara and Mikhail came from behind the house from the street.

“Guys,” Lizka said. - Don't go anywhere. And Stepan Andreyanovich will come, tell him that I will come running soon. I'll clean everything up here. - And she ran to catch up with her brother.

The morning was rising. I felt chilled. Beyond Pinega, over the spruce ridges, the dawn was spreading - red flashes played in the frames.

Varvara, swaying slightly, walked along the deserted street, bare-haired - her scarf had slipped over her shoulders - and looked at the windows with angry, sad eyes.

Lord, how much we waited for this holiday, how much talk there was about it during the war! Just wait, our day will come - the forests will sing with joy, the rivers will flow back... And the holiday has come - the village was almost drowned in tears...

Having reached the house of Marfa Repishnaya, Varvara stood up on her tiptoes and furiously drummed on the window:

Marfa! Marfushka! Welcome guests!

Bare feet shuffled in the hut. Dark angry eyes looked down at her:

Shameless! Yelling in the middle of the night. You're not afraid of God.

Ah, go with your god! I want to dance! - Varvara stamped her foot and kicked up dust on the road.

Nemo, deserted around. The empty windows blaze with a dry, cutting shine. And they carry melancholy, widow's melancholy... Well, let it be! Let him carry it. And she will sing to spite everyone - that’s enough, she cried for the war!

And Varvara, shaking her head abruptly, sang:

I was at the feast and in the conversation,

Oh, I didn’t drink honey and I didn’t drink molasses,

I drank vodka when I was young and blushing.

Oh, I’ll have red vodka and all the liqueur.

I drank, when I was young, from half a bucket...

An accordion barked in Vasilisa's alley, and then Yegorsha jumped out like a rooster. His hair was matted, his face was pale, wrinkled, straw stuck to his shirt - he must have been sleeping somewhere...

Well, I had a blast! So, from half a bucket?

Yes, that's it. What else can you say?

At least you could treat me.

Varvara looked him up and down with a skeptical look.

If only he had been a little stronger, maybe I would have treated him.

Okay, get lost. I'm sick without you.

Varvara clutched the ends of the white scarf and walked home.

Where are you going? - She turned around, hearing footsteps behind her.

Here are the people! - Yegorsha was sincerely indignant. - Today is a holiday, and everything is like a funeral for them.

And that’s right, Yegorsha! Holiday. Come on, pull up your little cock.

And they excited and shook the village. Pale, sleepy faces peered out of the windows. But Varvara felt sad and sad when she approached her house. And even the sunrise, fluttering with a gentle scarlet light on the white curtains in the windows, on her tired, haggard face, even the sunrise did not make her happy.

She sighed heavily and pushed the gate with her foot.

Thank you.

Yegorsha stuck his foot into the porch:

Wait a minute! Thank you, they don’t even play on the radio...

It's cold, I say. Let him warm up... - Yegorsha shivered chilly and said the rest with his eyes.

Oh, you filthy puppy! Your eyes are shameless!

Well, I found a shy one...

The gate slammed sharply. The white petticoat splashed over the porch steps.

Yegorsha's face fell. It's a shame, damn it! Apparently, it was the wrong end of the approach. But it was not in his nature to be depressed for long: today he didn’t burn out, but next time he will burn out.

He turned the accordion, his head to the side, and began to spit strong, forceful choruses.

CHAPTER SIX

Somewhere in the cities, far, far behind the blue ridges of the forests, the radiant Victory was noisily striding - newspapers trumpeted about this day after day. Already the first trains with demobilized soldiers began to rumble across Rus'. And the Pekashins - damn their wilderness! - all that remained was to wait. And they waited. They waited, languidly counting the days: when, when will their loved ones arrive?

The girls and young women, suddenly remembering their youth, spent the entire month of June rustling with their surviving outfits: frying them in the sun, beating them with twigs. Then, just before haymaking, they started working on the huts. They washed with lye and grit, scraped the ceilings and walls, thickly smoked by military splinters.

Lizka Pryaslina also did not want to lag behind the others. And no matter how hard her mother tried to dissuade her (“Who should we meet, stupid?”), she shoveled the dirt out of the house. Not only that. Having enlisted the help of Raya Klevakina, she took up the side hut of the Stavrovs: let them be like people.

Egorsha, returning from rafting in the evening, found a flood at home. He became furious. Who asked this lahudra to breed dampness? He rolled logs all day, wandered in the water - does he have the right to at least eat like a human being?

In response to the scream, Raechka jumped out of the closet - wet, cherry-red, with her skirt tucked high. But, seeing a man at the door, she fearfully darted back.

Liza chuckled mockingly:

Here's another! I found someone to be ashamed of! - And without hesitation, she handed the empty buckets to Yegorsha. - Better help! We don't need Glazunov.

“It’s possible,” Yegorsha suddenly said compliantly. - Since such a drinking party has begun... Give me Berlin!

Yegorsha had been looking sideways at his neighbor Rayechka for a long time. Power girl! Pre-war fatness, you can’t pinch the body - it’s like a head of cabbage is creaking under your finger. And the breasts! God bless... The guns are not guns, the bayonets are not bayonets, but straight through, hitting on the spot. E-eh! - you think: let people have eternal peace, and I wouldn’t have to come out from under such fire for at least a century.

Egorsha picked up various keys and master keys for Raechka.

First I pressed the accordion. At logging sites, this matchmaker worked flawlessly - she found a path to any woman’s heart. But it didn’t work out with Raechka. To play, however, we played, Raechka learned different two-steps and “go and sleep” - Yegorsha pressed everything on the sensitive - but there was no gratitude to the teacher. Unless along the way, adjusting Raechka’s fingers, you occasionally ricochet where you need to.

Yegorsha decided: the situation was inappropriate. You can’t drag Raechka into your hut, people are constantly moving around at the creamery, apparently you need to go out into nature. Leaves, bushes, this and that, containers-bars-rastabars - will melt.

On holiday he did just that. He waited until people scattered from them, paddled out onto the hills in front of his house and let’s call Raechka with an accordion.

And Raechka came and sat down next to her in the young grass.

Egorsha, are you unhappy too?

Oh, not fun, Raechka! If it weren’t for this naturalness all around, it seems that I would have hanged myself from boredom.

And I also love it when everything blooms. I especially love bird cherry. - And then Raechka, as in the movies, sighed languidly and began to thrash with her full legs on the grass near the wild garlic tree, so White color fell down.

And - death happens once! - Yegorsha rushed headlong into the assault.

From that day on, Rayechka stopped talking to him. If you meet him on the street or in a club in the evening, don’t come close. As they say, the pitchfork is over the nose. And today, when he was already thinking about whether to put an end to this whole rigmarole (whatever, but there are enough skirts now), Raechka herself showed up at their house.

Rattling zinc buckets, Yegorsha ran out of the alley, pumped water from Fyodor Kapitonovich's well and ran home easily, as if in the morning. In the alley I ran into Mikhail.

Ah, hard worker! Great. Have you seen how things are set up for me? - He rattled his arms, lowering buckets of water onto the meadow, nodded towards the closet, listening to the song.

Is Raika singing? - asked Mikhail.

Yeah. Let's go, I'm buying it now - dearly!

“Go ahead,” Mikhail answered sluggishly.

Hey, you idiot! Are you still afraid of girls?

Yegorsha grabbed the buckets and ran, splashing water. In the alley, the wet meadow began to glow like a rainbow, and soon there was chaos in the hut: screaming, squealing, laughter.

Egorsha came out of there, swaying, completely wet, as if he had emerged from the water, but happy.

“It took a little bit,” he said, shaking himself off and loudly slapping his wet chest. - Well, yes, I didn’t remain in debt either. He poured a whole bucket on Raechka.

They sat down on a log near the woodshed and lit a cigarette.

When to visit Sinelga? - Yegorsha spoke. He could not stand any kind of silence.

You're still a dude! He said - ask to be in the frame. Well, I have no sense - to hang out with women until white flies.

Yegorsha moved his narrowed eye towards the gate, stopped at the post, then, craning his neck, tsked. The saliva was right on target.

Suddenly, dry heat scorched Mikhail’s cheeks: Varvara appeared in the depths of the alley next to Fyodor Kapitonovich’s house, behind which there was a collective farm warehouse. She walked along a path red from the evening sun, and her blue dress with white stripes along the hem shimmered beautifully, with flashes.

Yegorsha shouted:

Turned up for a conversation!

Varvara looked in their direction, squinting in the sun, and, without saying anything, only her white-toothed mouth flashed in a smile, she moved on.

Why is she so quiet today? - asked Yegorsha. - And every day, like a bride, she changes her outfits? Ah, nice coasters! - He clicked his tongue in admiration, hugging Varvara’s legs with his eyes. He paused and poked Mikhail in the side. - Listen: I want to ask you everything. You didn’t guess then, on the holiday?.. Eh?

Mikhail covered the cigarette butt with a heavy boot.

Really not?

It's nonsense.

Well, to hell with you! Keep it secret. I don't care. It seems like my life is turning a hundred and eighty degrees.

Mikhail did not show the slightest interest in his message.

Are you deaf? I say: they are sending me to tractor driving courses. Understand?

What's good? - Yegorsha threw back his head and looked at his friend from the side: a pure goner! - Maybe you want to eat, huh? I have half a loaf. Received it today.

“You know what,” Yegorsha spoke, suddenly perking up. - Today I saw roaches near Belaya. Such guys turn out like piglets. Let's head out for the morning.

Mikhail shook his head and stood up.

Ugh, mug! Try cooking porridge with this.

Raechka jumped out onto the porch with a dirty bucket - barefoot, all pink in the evening sun. She glanced in their direction and immediately went out.

What the hell? Yegorsha's blue slits suspiciously probed the lanky figure emerging from the alley onto the village road. Have you really sniffed? And it's called a friend! On the sly, behind a friend's back? Well, wait a minute, friend: this is not our last day. Perhaps we will be able to lay the pig down.

The white night looked into the story through the cracks in the roof, through the gates, locked with a pole bolt. And the guys weren’t asleep yet - they were noisily fussing with each other at his feet. And the stone millstones rattled in the village, and finally, just like hell: someone in the middle of the night - either the mother or Lizka - began sweeping away the manure near Zvezdonia. Just in the place in the yard above which his bed was.

Of course, all he had to do was clear his throat a little, and everything would quickly calm down, but it was precisely this trifle that he could not do right now. He couldn’t, because it seemed to him that all this was too noisy and daring fuss younger brothers, and the unprecedented nightly diligence of Lizka and his mother - all this is not without reason, all this is done with one single goal, to keep him at home.

And for a long time, without moving, as if swaddled, he lay on his back and tensely, until his cervical vertebrae hurt, peered into the thickening twilight above his head.

The boys were the first to calm down, then the millstones fell silent, then the music downstairs by the cow stopped, and there was silence in the house.

It's time! We need to act.

He raised his head and suddenly shuddered joyfully, hearing a light rustling above. These are birch brooms, their old, last year's leaves began to tremble and worry in the pre-dawn chill. Lucky sign! For it was the same way then, that morning.

Then, that morning, he woke up - darkness, his head was splitting into pieces, and suddenly this very rustling above his head, more and more audible, as if there, above, many, many invisible birds had flown together and beat their wings together.

But how did he end up with Varvara?

He remembered how yesterday he and the women danced in her hut, he remembered how he suddenly began to feel sick and he, covering his mouth with his hand, rushed out, but thunder struck him if he remembered how he ended up in this povet.

What time is it now? - he asked in a hoarse voice that was not his own and with difficulty turned towards Varvara’s voice.

Ah, I woke up! White spot swayed in the dark corner to the left, then the straw rustled, and Varvara approached him - her eyes sparkled in the darkness. - Well, go to sleep, Mishka! Because of you, the devil, I spent the whole night in the hut.

Who told you to? The story is big, there is a lot of space.

Varvara feigned a sigh:

I spared you. I think you’ll wake up, and next to you there’s a woman with a little baby who’s scared enough. Get up! Gentleman... I slept through the whole holiday. And he also decided to look after our Dunyarka. The girl is not an old woman, she doesn’t like it when people sleep near her.

It was this mockery, as Mikhail thought more than once later, that decided everything. He jumped to his feet - oh, so! am I dreaming? - and walked towards her, spreading his arms wide to the sides.

Varvara, retreating, laughed:

Wake up! He opened his hands, - you don’t have a sheep.

He jumped forward and, like pincers, squeezed her hot, elastic body.

She gasped and burst out:

Fool, I found someone to play with. You have to play with equals.

Then she shouted: “Mishka, Mishka!” she begged, begged: “It will be, it will be for you!” - and he could no longer help himself...

Finally, he pressed her into a corner - eyes to eyes, nose against nose, and when she rushed to the side, he roughly threw her over his knee onto an armful of sharp-smelling grass...

The gate did not creak - he lubricated the rusted hinges ahead of time.

The fog was terrible, such a fog that neither the earth nor the sky was visible, and he ran in this fog barefoot, in only a shirt, with some special scent he guessed the path along the swamp, nimble, capricious, sometimes climbing along the grassy edge at the very the walls of the old threshing floor, then again diving steeply into the wet bushes, into the mess of the rutted road.

At the canopy over the silo opposite the threshing machine, he caught his breath, rinsed his dirty feet in the dewy grass and quickly, quickly, bending down and stealthily looking around, climbed along the boundary to Varvarin’s barn.

Three times this week he approached this barn and three times turned back. Out of shame. Because of fear. Because he couldn’t decide to run across the small potato patch separating the barn from the alley.

He really thought: he wouldn’t have to do this. Varvara herself will guess that he is here, at the barn, waiting for her to open the gates to him - why else would he cross the porch? For anyone to see? But Varvara did not open the gate, and he already began to doubt: did all this really happen? Was this a warm and spiritual story? Was it Varvara, her ridicule of him, and then these incomprehensible angry tears? He walked away from her, leaving her crying on an armful of grass.

Or maybe he dreamed it? Maybe this was one of those joyful and shameful dreams that he had often had in recent years?

This evening he specially went to Yegorsha, who had been fornicating with women for a long time: tell me, advise what to do. And, thank God, everything worked out without Yegorsha’s advice: Varvara herself, unexpectedly appearing on the evening road, explained everything to him with her smile...

He darted through a potato patch, jumped over a hedge with a running start, then there was an alley with a woodshed, with a yard, the log wall of which still breathed the warmth of the day, wooden walkways in shreds of fog, a porch... and here, on the porch, when he took hold of the cold , iron ring, fear attacked him again. Are the gates really locked? Will he really have to knock? At night, right next to the Lobanovs?

Carefully, trying to calm the sudden trembling, he turned the ring towards himself and gently pressed the gate with his wet knee. And suddenly a jubilant joy burned through him to the point of heat, to the ringing of bells in his ears: the gates were not locked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mishka walks and walks to Varvara.

Don't whip what you don't need! And I don't want to listen.

Why should I weave?

Otherwise... Vanya was killed in my twenty-third year, and I wore it, Varukha was already running around in a sundress - she must have been five years old. Come on, calculate how much it is now. There are already thirty, no less.

But at least forty doesn’t matter to me. And the other day I myself saw how Mishka tried to tell her.

What's the story? What are you saying?

By God, girl! I'm not lying. I went out to get some grass in the middle of the night (Little one kept mooing and mooing), but, Lord, who is this, sneaking like a thief from the swamp to Varukha’s house? And then he, Mishka. I approached the house from behind, glancing and glancing at the corner with my eyes. And she was already waiting for him, she opened the doors. All in white...

What passions!.. But he’s in Sinelga. It's a bear. On to the reaping. Not the holy spirit, does not fly through the air.

What's the use of Sivko-Burko?

Is he the one on the horse? Six miles there and six miles back. Lord!.. That’s why that lascivious bitch gets dressed up every day. Like a holiday.

And she has a holiday. What a holiday! Such a guy got bogged down...

Yes, there was something to marvel at! Everyone was still marching in military harness, they were still hungry, they worked their butts off, and even the funeral mourners flew into Pekashino, and then two, like mutinous horses, broke their shafts and rushed headlong...

And behind these gossip, which did not stop all summer, in Pekashin they somehow even paid little attention to new war- with Japan. Those who still had someone to wait for sighed and cried, and the rest did not let Varvara and Mishka leave their lips.

Anna Pryaslina - such a mother's fate - was the last to learn about this misfortune. She was finishing her life with the women in the field beyond the swamp, when suddenly Lukerya, laughing, said:

I saw your sister-in-law today.

So how is it? Baska is my fiancee? - Anna answered in the same playful tone, because she guessed who Lukerya was talking about: Fyodor Kapitonovich’s Raechka. Rayechka is pining for Mishka. She herself noticed this, and the women told her.

Lukerya grinned again and said:

Well, really, your daughter-in-law is not lacking in beauty.

“And I, ladies, don’t judge Varvara at all,” Matryona spoke. - The woman is young, in a place of bread, but where are they, the men?

Anna's vision turned black, and a sharp pain burned her hand.

The women rushed to her and helped her bandage her finger, which had been cut with a sickle.

Anyusha, Anyusha, didn’t you know?

Oh no, she knew, she had known for a long time that something wrong was going on with the guy. From that moment on, I knew when he, drunk and hugging Varvara, went to the upper end of the village. She didn’t sleep a wink the whole night, and her heart was so sad, as if a fire were approaching their house. And there, on Sinelga, where was she looking? Didn’t she wake up at night and listen to his steps? I wish I could stop him then: come to your senses, guy! And she was happy, she thought that Mishka was again somewhere, secretly from people, cutting hay for Zvezdonia...

The women fell silent. The straw crackled dryly under the sickles - each, stripping down to her shirt, drove her strip. And Anna drove. She drove, holding back the scream bursting from her dry throat with all her might.

Lord, she repeated to herself, why else should she be punished like this? How long will life continue to beat her down? Isn’t it enough that the war took Ivan from her?

It's scary to think what she suffered over the years. People fought with the enemy, with the Germans, and said: survive. And she had one enemy who did not give her a moment's respite - need. And she also survived. I saved the guys. And Mishka grew up and his family has someone to lean on. What, what will happen now?

Six pairs of pleading eyes looked at him. Mother, Lizka, Petka and Grishka, Tatyanka, Fedka. Yes, and Fedka. When the wind is against the family, Fedka is not an individual, here he is at one with everyone.

Six pairs of eyes looked at him from the porch and conjured: come back! do not go!

No, it won't be your way! Enough! And, leaving the alley, Mikhail, in full view of them, turned to the upper end of the village. And he also walked through the village without hiding, openly, because there was no longer any point in hiding from people. Because the whole village now knew about the scandal that broke out on their street.

The mother came running from the field, shaking all over, choking, unable to say a word. "Mati, mother, what happened?" - "Ah, rye

Current page: 1 (book has 20 pages total) [available reading passage: 12 pages]

Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov
Two winters and three summers

PART ONE

CHAPTER FIRST

1

- Pa-ro-move! Pa-ro-move is coming!

People rolled down the Pekashinskaya mountain in scythes - wide, roadable slopes, narrow, winding paths.

Some fell through the flooded lake as best they could: some on a boat, some on a child’s raft, and some who were bolder got their hem in their teeth and forded. There was a groan and hubbub of disturbed seagulls in the air; black seagulls, who had not yet had time to rest after a difficult flight, flew in flocks over the heads of stunned people.

This happens every spring - almost the entire village pours out to the first steamer. Because spring on Pinega begins with the arrival of steamships, from the very time when the bare shore near the village suddenly fabulously sprouts with white stacks of bags of flour and cereals, pot-bellied barrels with long-tailed fish and fragrant boxes of tea and sweets.

This year, no one expected gifts from Arkhangelsk - Pinega podzols and sandy loam have been feeding the emaciated city for many years now. There was little hope for the arrival of front-line soldiers. Where should they turn when the war has just ended? But it’s been a long, long time since the Pekashi coast has seen such a crowd of people. Children, girls, women, old men - everyone who could ran out to the river.

The steamer did not appear from behind the cape for a long time. The fire, hastily built from brushwood that had not yet dried out, did not flare up, and people huddled together to keep warm.

Finally, near the other shore, under a red sheer crack, a white nose sparkled icy.

- “Kura”, “Kura”! - the guys shouted with mockery, clearly disappointed that instead of the handsome Dvina hero, a small local slow-moving ship, which was built by the Pinega merchants Volodins at the beginning of the century, was wandering towards them.

The steamer moved forward with difficulty, scattering flying sparks thickly along the river. The fast current threw him towards the other shore, the foamy wave lifted his nose. And the dirty, lead-colored sides, still military-style painted with black stripes, looked sad and sad.

But “Courier” did not lose its voice during the war. He screamed shrilly and youthfully as he approached the shore. It was as if spring thunder rolled over people's heads. And how was it possible to resist tears! During the war, “Courier” helped, one might say, helped to live, with that same beep. It used to be that on the darkest days, when it would scream, how it would roll out its tongues and roars under the village, the surrounding area would immediately brighten up.

Varvara Inyakhina with her young women, as soon as the ship touched the shore, grabbed the old captain, the only man on the ship:

- Why aren’t you bringing men? Didn't you have an order?

- Look, next time you come empty, we’ll leave you alone.

- Ha-ha-ha! What should we do with it?

Then someone shouted:

- And there, there! Another ship!

This steamer - a raft with hay - was floating from above. It spun steeply, like a sliver, in a bend above the village, and two people, leaning on the row - a long pole with a blade embedded in a cross - were desperately rowing towards the Pekashino shore.

“But this is definitely ours,” said Varvara. - Maybe Mishka and Yegorsha.

- His, his - Mishka’s hat. See how red the fox is.

“They’re from Ruchiev, coming from the forest.”

The women became worried. During high water, you can land on the Pekashinsky shore in only one place - at the clay slope, where the Courier now stood.

- Fuck off, fuck off! Have a conscience.

And the captain, cursing, gave in and gave the command to take off.

A raft with hay passed right next to the turning steamer right next to it.

2

The Pryaslinsky house is not visible from the river - a barn and basement 1
Basement - a log superstructure above the cellar.

With an overgrown bird cherry tree in front - and Mikhail saw his house when he had already climbed up the mountain with the cart.

The hut was new, with colorful walls.

They built the hut last fall, just before he left for the forest. They laid it in a hurry, from old materials - there were only enough new logs for the top and bottom, and so it turned out to be a military-style mansion: one corner diverted to the side, the other sat down before the roof had yet been put on. But in general, the warmth stayed in the walls, and the Pryaslins, having been frozen in the old ruined hut, could not praise themselves enough about the new hut.

Having gazed at the red flag hanging on the corner of the hut, Mikhail did not even notice how the horse reached the windows.

- Whoa! - he shouted and rushed to catch up with the cart. But even before he reached the horse, her mother intercepted her.

- He's back! And we wait and wait - everyone is tired of waiting. The women told me that Mikhail is with you and the hay, so I’m so glad.

Raising her thin, weather-beaten face upward, Anna tried to look into her son’s eyes, but Mikhail’s gaze slid over her head. And she, looking guiltily at the dismantled fence in front of the alley, said:

- This week. They carried manure.

- Couldn’t you drive up to the backyard? There you can ride through the gate at least in a troika.

- Yes, that’s how it happened. They didn't think through it.

– You all didn’t think through it. If only they had locked the garden themselves, perhaps they would have thought of it. And what's that? – Mikhail shouted, nodding towards the dump behind the porch. – Will your hands disappear and splash them out on the field?

Mikhail softened somewhat when the cart with hay approached the yard. He even stopped for a while, as if listening to what was happening there at Zvezdon, behind the rye sheaves, blackened over the winter, with which the courtyard gates were lined for warmth.

- Soon. It's okay - we'll have milk again soon. Two weeks left.

-Are you right?

- Not really. Both herself and Stepan Andreyanovich calculated. So in terms of timing.

Until last fall, the Pryaslins lifted hay and straw onto a log floor, but in the fall, when Mikhail was already in the forest, the carriage collapsed, and from then on they carried the food in their hands.

However, Mikhail now found another way out - he threw away the ridges from the back wall of the yard and positioned the cart so that the hay could be thrown with a pitchfork directly from the cart to the side.

Anna, while he was unraveling the ropes on the cart, reported on family affairs: Lizka and Tatyana were in the calf barn, Petka and Grishka ran off to get cranberries...

“Well, I see they aren’t near the river,” said Mikhail. “All the guys are by the river, but our guys aren’t there.”

- They asked. They tearfully begged: we want to go to the ship. Yes, I say: “What are you doing? Where is your conscience? How will you greet your Misha?” Trouble, they are waiting for you. Misha is the only one on my mind. The eye is not taken out of the window. Praise them. These are both concerns - Lizka and I don’t know either firewood or water these days. All of them.

- Did you crawl into third grade?

- They will crawl over. I once met Augusta Mikhailovna here: I have no salvation, she says.

- And that robber?

Anna looked away.

Mikhail took a birch bark basket with a clanking teapot from the cart and asked in an unkind voice:

-Did you do something again?

- I did it. He climbed into the teacher’s oven and scooped the porridge out of the jug. – Anna sighed. – I didn’t want to upset you. Well, you can’t hide it.

“Okay, go open the story,” said Mikhail. Shifting his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, he looked around the outskirts of the village with a heavy gaze. With what joy he sailed home today! The war is over. An unprecedented holiday. And then, before I even had time to step beyond the threshold of the hut, the old rope began to twist.

Fedya - he was no longer called Fedushka for a long time - was the punishment of the whole family. Thief, wolfish habits. And it all started with trifles - with a cabbage, a turnip, a handful of grain, which he began to hide from his family. Then it went further: he went into someone else’s mouth.

Last year he stole eight kilograms of barley flour from Stepan Andreyanovich. The entire ration, down to the gram, given out during the harvest. People, understandably, got excited - who? What punishment is there to execute a thief? Meanwhile, every morning, as if going to work, the red little devil calmly went to the empty sheep barn in the backyard, sat on a block of wood - he had brought it especially for convenience - and put his hand into the bag. So, sitting by the bag on a block of wood, Lizka covered it...

“And who is he such a geek?” – again, once again Mikhail asked himself the question.

His mother opened the gate to the Poveti and handed him a pitchfork. The two of them quickly unloaded the cart. Then Anna went down to him with a rake and began to carefully rake up the hay dust.

“Come on,” said Mikhail. - Unenviable hay. Osenschak. 2
Osenschak – hay supplied in the fall.

- What are you talking about, I’m all happy. We live without food. People will be jealous.

- We found something to envy. Yegorsha and I suffered with this hay - damn it. In the fall they collected the devils where. And now they were dragging themselves through the swamps, well, try it. - Mikhail looked around, pursed his lips gloomily: - When needed, our guys are never there.

-Are you talking about the horse? – Anna nodded briskly and warningly. - Don't worry. Go to the hut. I'll take you. - And suddenly, looking towards the wells, she clasped her hands: - But there, it seems, they are gaping? That's how they sat down and didn't see anything.

Behind the first well, on a white pole fence near the swamp, there were indeed two gray figures sticking out, very similar from a distance to garden scarecrows.

-Why are you counting crows? – Anna shouted and waved her hand. – Don’t you see who’s arrived?

- Come on, come on! - Mikhail shouted, egging on the brothers who trotted along the road. - Well, which one is faster?

Petka and Grishka ran up out of breath, thin, pale, like grass grown underground. Even running did not squeeze out the color on the thin faces, although their eyes, fixed on their older brother, shone with joy.

They were still strikingly similar to each other, so similar that they even ran into the yard, as the family joked, at the same time. At home, of course, they were not confused, but for convenience, the neighboring kids christened them in their own way. About two years ago, Grishka split his upper lip when he ran into a nail, and since then Mikhail has heard more than once: “Hey, you little gap-toothed half!” The teacher Augusta Mikhailovna also distinguished them from each other by their scar.

“Well done,” said Mikhail and patted both of them on the head encouragingly. - So you jumped to the third?

The twins received the greatest pleasure from their elder brother's praise. They looked at each other shyly and looked at their mother.

-What did they bring? Treat your Misha. Petka and Grishka readily held out the birch bark boxes - in them, an inch of wet cranberries were glowing mixed with garbage.

Mikhail took a berry from each box, wincing, and glanced at the thin bare legs and the wet bottom of his pants.

- Don't wander around anymore. Well, to hell with it! Just wait - the war is over, we'll soon be wearing boots. And now to the stables. Fast!

Petka and Grishka - no need to say twice - quickly climbed onto the cart, sat down next to each other in the front, and both took the reins. And the further the cart moved away, the more it seemed that one person was riding.

“Or maybe the fact that they are so close to each other helped them survive during this time?” – thought Mikhail.

He raised his hand to his mouth:

- Come back quickly! Let's drink tea. With bread! Happy present! – he added loudly.

3

Entering the hut, Mikhail put on the floor a basket woven from birch bark, to which a smoky teapot and a pot were tied on top, threw a bag of felt boots to the bed, then unfastened the belt with an iron ax and a large hunting knife in a polished leather sheath, removed the old one, whitened by the rains. and snow and a sweatshirt with burns in more than one place, he took off his furry red dog hat with earflaps, came out from under the blankets, and straightened up.

Here he is at home...

He doesn't have to live at home much. From autumn to spring in logging, then rafting, then suffering - you sleep for weeks in distant hayfields - then again the forest. And so on from year to year.

The floor was washed - it's nice when they wait for you. The walls in the hut are still bare - there is nothing to cover it with; you can hardly get a newspaper for a smoke. Only under my father’s card, covered with a towel with roosters, hung a bright red poster “Everything for the front, everything for Victory!”

Mikhail walked into the backyard and looked into the girls' room - that's what they called a small nook with one window behind the backyard. His mother dissuaded him when he decided to make a separate corner for his sisters. But he insisted on his own. It’s not good for Lizka to sleep in a common dump with the guys. Girl. We need to look ahead a little.

In the girls' room there was a bunk on pine chocks against the wall. The bed was neatly covered with an old flannelette blanket, and, as expected, there was a pillow at the head. Mikhail smiled: Lizka built all this without him. A month and a half ago, when he last came home from the forest, there was no bed yet.

And he smiled again when, returning to the hut and looking around it again, his eyes came across a new riser near the stove with pencil marks and knife notches. The Pryaslins live!

Anna, who had not taken her eyes off her son all the time, sighed with relief: well, thank God, at least the hut was pleased.

– Should I put on a samovar or flood the bathhouse? – she asked.

- Wait a little. Let me come to my senses.

Mikhail sat down on the counter next to the stove, took off his tarpaulin boots - the boot on the right was worn out again, and put his feet in the warm felt boots with cloth shanks, which his mother handed him from the stove. Now it's quite good.

“It’s cold on the river,” he said, rolling a cigarette.

- It’s not cold. I've been hauling manure this morning - it chills me to the bone.

-Aren’t you going to plow yet?

- They are getting ready. They are waiting for you. How many times has Anfisa Petrovna mentioned: where is our guy in charge?

Striking the flint with a hammer, Mikhail knocked out a spark and waved the smoking cloth so that it would flare up better. As he took a drag, he glanced at his mother with a brown, smiling eye:

- Well, how did you celebrate your victories here? Was it noisy?

- Was. There was everything. There was noise, and there were tears, and joy. Who is jumping, who is crying, who is hugging... - Anna sniffled, but, noticing how the nodules were appearing on her son’s weathered brown cheeks, she hastily wiped away the tear with her hand. – The management didn’t have a crowd on the street. They made speeches and walked around the village with flags. Then they started signing for the loan. Without remembering, I signed up for three hundred rubles.

“I waved too,” said Mikhail. - One and a half thousand.

- Here you go. And Lizka, stupid, threw away fifty rubles. She really wouldn't need to. He doesn't earn much. I hung the red tie on the house, and okay...

“Let go,” Mikhail said peacefully. - Such a day...

- But money is not just wood chips - it’s not lying around on the street. And then the other day they brought the tax.

- Tax? – Mikhail looked at his mother puzzled. Until now, taxes have bypassed them.

- It's written out for you.

Mikhail took a drag and blew out smoke noisily:

- We haven’t forgotten. When will I be eighteen? In two weeks?

- That's it. I already told Anfisa Petrovna. “According to the law,” he says. It will be years before the first payment, he says.”

Burning his lips, Mikhail finished smoking his cigarette, crushed the stubbed cigarette butt in his palm, and poured the remains of the shag into an iron jar.

- Nothing. We'll get out of it somehow. For a permanent shot at a logging station, I’m thinking of applying. In the forest they will now provide more bread and some rations for dependents. Again, manufactory...

Here, on the porch, feet stamped often, often, the door swung open, and Lizka flew into the hut like a whirlwind, and the next second she was already hugging her brother’s neck.

“They told me that your owner has arrived, but I’m flying and I don’t see anything.” Tanyukha from behind: “Lizka, Lizka, wait!..” Okay, I think you won’t lose your wallet with the money.

Suddenly Lizka frowned, looking at Petka and Grishka, who ran in after her.

- Where is the girl? Shameless! The child was abandoned. Come on, follow her!

It was for this management and mastery that Mikhail loved his sister. It’s not his mother who keeps the family together when he’s not at home.

With a barely noticeable smile, he looked at his sister while she, standing on her toes, was hanging her coat under the threshold. Her white, flaxen head was combed smoothly, and a thick, tightly braided braid with a red ribbon fell to the small of her back. In general, the braid is already a girl. But otherwise... Otherwise, it’s nothing at all for someone who’s fifteen years old. Like a swamp pine...

And, as if guessing his thoughts, Lizka quickly turned around. Her high-cheekbone face, thickly sprinkled with yellow freckles near her green eyes, turned slightly pink.

- What? Like a scary cat, right? – she asked directly. - Okay, not everyone is like Fyodor Kapitonovich’s Rayechka. Someone needs to be the power.

And for this simple-minded frankness he also loved his sister.

- Mom, what are you eating or whipping? – Lizka began to give orders without hesitation. – Shall we heat the samovar or flood the bathhouse?

And a minute later she was already comforting Tatyanka, who was crying and bursting into tears, as the twins, pushing her, were led into the hut.

Mikhail heard her whisper in Tatyanka’s ear:

- Come here. Say: “Hello, Misha. Welcome." Yes, by the neck.

Tatyanka became stubborn, and Lizka instantly became angry:

- Well, hairy one! I will never take it to a calf barn again. Sit at home.

“But let’s see what she’ll sing now...” Mikhail pulled the basket towards him.

Tatyanka’s mouth immediately fell into place, and Petka and Grishka simply grew up before our eyes.

Chuckling, Mikhail took a piece of blue chintz with white peas from the basket and handed it to Lizka:

- This is for you, sister.

- To me? – Lizka blinked her eyes often and often and suddenly burst into tears like a child.

Mikhail turned away and began to rummage through the jar of shag.

“Well, don’t cry, they don’t give you away in marriage,” said the mother, unable to hold back her tears. - What do I need to say, stupid?

Lizka, holding the chintz tightly to her chest with both hands, dropped onto her knees and burst into tears even more than ever. For the first time in her life, she was given a dress as a gift.

“Well, well, calm down, sister,” Mikhail muttered.

- What about mine? – Tatyanka stamped her foot demandingly, ready to burst into tears again.

- Enough for you too. And the mother, maybe, will find something for herself. Eight meters.

Following this, Mikhail took from the basket new black boots with rubber soles, with small ribbed edging and canvas shanks.

- Come on, sister, try it on.

- And this is for me? - Lizka babbled barely audibly, and suddenly her eyes, wet, tear-stained, burst with such uncontrollable green joy that everyone around involuntarily began to smile - the twins, and the mother, and even Mikhail himself.

Immediately, without moving from her spot, Lizka sat down on the floor and began to pull off her old, patchy boots from her feet.

“At least you didn’t make new ones,” said the mother and took the chintz from her lap.

“The boots are probably too big,” Mikhail warned. – There were no others. They gave three pairs for the entire collective farm.

- Okay, I won’t fall out of the big one. God didn’t hurt me with anything, but with his paws.

The hut became noticeably lighter when Lizka, stepping hesitantly and with caution, walked three times from the threshold to the front bench in her new, shining shoes.

The boys were not forgotten either. For them, Mikhail - Egorsha gave him his commodities coupons - brought a blue biker jacket for his pants. But Petka and Grishka, contrary to his expectations, reacted rather reservedly to this gift. But when he pulled out a loaf from the basket - a whole hefty brick of rye bread - they became seriously excited and did not take their eyes off the table the entire time the samovar was heating up.

Just in time for tea, as soon as we sat down at the table, Fedka appeared.

- He already knows when to come. Like an animal smells food...” Lizka started to speak and stopped short, looking at her older brother.

Mikhail, straightening his back, slowly turned his head towards the threshold.

- So what do you say? Where were you?

Fedka stood motionless, with his head bowed. He was wearing the same rags as the others, and he was not fed in any special way, but his freckled cheeks were enviably red, and his bare, already cracked feet were forged as if to order, strong, thick, and his toes were curled, the floor clawed.

- What do you say, I say? Well? – Mikhail asked again, marking each letter.

- Answer! Who do they tell? Where were you? – Lizka couldn’t stand it again.

And then Fedka widened his nose, raised his eyes, cold, icy, and suddenly these pieces of ice flared up: they saw bread.

“So talk to this brute,” Mikhail sighed to himself, “when his belly thinks ahead of his head.” And he didn’t want to spoil the holiday - they don’t have it often. And he, to the great joy of the mother and twins, who painfully, to the point of tears, experienced every discord and quarrel in the family, waved his hand.

The boys gasped when he took the loaf. It had been a long time since such wealth had been seen in their house for so many years.

The brown, well-baked crust began to squeak and creaked under his fingers. And this is what real flour means - not a single crumb fell on the table.

Easily, with true pleasure, he tore the loaf in half - he could have done this forever - then he cut one of the halves into four equal rations.

Tanya gets rations, Petka gets rations, Grishka gets rations. Fedka...

Mikhail's hand lingered in the air for a second.

The mother, not accustomed to such wastefulness, begged:

- At least you can do it a little. They dare as much as they can.

- OK. – The ration lay down in front of Fedka with a thud. - Let them remember the victory. Mikhail looked up at his father’s card. “It was the head of the logging station, Kuzma Kuzmich, who tossed me a loaf of bread. Just before leaving. “Here,” he says, “remember your father. We worked together before.”

Mother and Lizka shed tears. Petka and Grishka, rather out of politeness, so as not to upset their older brother, looked at the towel with roosters. But Tatyanka and Fedka, frantically gnawing on their rations, didn’t even blink an eye.

The word “father” meant nothing to them.

4

After tea, Mikhail sorted out the shaving (he had started scraping his chin with the toe of his braid since last fall), his mother, grabbing some kindling, went to flood the bathhouse, and Lizka ran to the Stavrovs.

The Pryaslins lived as a commune with the Stavrovs for, say, the entire war, almost from the spring of forty-two. They shared a cow, together they prepared hay and firewood, and helped each other out with food. Most of all, of course, the Pryaslins benefited from this commune, but Stepan Andreyanovich did not lose out either. Anna and Lizka washed him and their grandson, kept their hut clean, and the Stavrovs didn’t have to worry about the bathhouse either.

The wind died down in the evening. The tin sun peeked out from the whitish shaggy clouds, and far away, in the Pekashino winter fields, the cranes were screaming. For the first time this spring, Lizka noted to herself.

She walked briskly along the dull road, hard as a stone - not a single blade of grass was yet on the lawns - and in her mind she saw herself in new shoes, in a new blue dress with white polka dots. And in general everything, everything now, it seemed to her, would be different. They will no longer have to choke on prickly moss, pound pine sapwood in a wooden mortar, and in the morning, suffering from constipation, the guys will no longer shout from the yard: “Ma-a-ma-a, I’m dying...” What a blessing it is that they have such Brother!

Stepan Andreyanovich was lighting the stove. Red reflections played on his bearded face.

He’s probably going to cook something for Yegorsha, Lizka guessed.

“Ah, the bride has arrived,” Yegorsha said with a smile. He was lying on the stove, his bare legs crossed, a rolled-up cigarette in his teeth.

Liza chuckled:

– The bride is without a seat, the groom is without pants.

“And here he is in his pants,” Yegorsha laughed.

“Stop bashing,” Stepan Andreyanovich reprimanded him.

Yegorsha stuck out his tongue stupidly, but changed the conversation:

- Well, what is Mishka doing?

- What is he doing! He can't live without Mishka for an hour. It’s not you who doesn’t lie idle. “I came to say,” Lizka turned to Stepan Andreyanovich, “don’t heat the bathhouse.” We're drowning.

She looked around the hut with a tenacious, womanly eye.

- Well, I’ll tidy up at least a little from you.

“Come on, Lizaveta,” said Stepan Andreyanovich. - With your hands yourself.

But Lizka was already moistening the broom under the washstand. Then, having swept the floor, she went into the closet in her own way, took out the old man’s dirty linen, and threw it on the floor:

- Do you have anything?

Yegorsha squinted his eyes at the wooden chest standing by the bed.

- Here's my suitcase. I trust.

A poker rattled in the back of the building.

- I could have gotten it myself. It’s too early to show yourself as a master.

Yegorsha reluctantly came down from the stove - barefoot, wearing a white undershirt, long unwashed, with the collar unbuttoned and the hem hanging down - he yawned, stretching.

– You also need to lie down skillfully. – And he winked at Lizka. “One woman was lying there, lying down, her leg resting. Transferred to disability.

Yegorsha was short, thin and flexible, like a cat. Smala Yegorsha looked very much like a timid, shy girl. It used to be that adults would begin to chirp - their ears would fill with heat, and at any moment, you thought, the fire would spread to their hair - soft, tousled, like a heap of barley straw. But after three years of living in the forest, Yegorsha was formed. There is no shame - he himself became the first obscenity. He has a blue eye in a slit, his head is on one side, and it’s better not to mess with him - he’ll make anyone blush.

Egorsha moved to his grandfather in 1942, after his mother was crushed by a tree while logging. Stepan Andreyanovich started a conversation about changing his last name, but Yegorsha became stubborn. Nevertheless, in Pekashin everyone called him Stavrov, both to his face and behind his back. And then Yegorsha cheated: Sukhanov began to add his grandfather’s surname to his father’s surname.

“Don’t joke with me, brother,” he said, pleased with his invention. – As a baron, I have a double surname.

With a light, relaxed gait, Yegorsha walked into the backyard, scooped up water from the tub with a ladle, and drank.

– According to the latest science, they say that a bucket of water replaces one hundred grams.

- Miracle pea! Everything was about wine, but he wasn’t standing next to the bottle.

“Yes, yes,” Stepan Andreyanovich supported Lizka.

Egorsha took crumpled linen out of the chest and pointed his blue eye at Lizka with a wink:

- Come on, wash it better. Someday I'll get it out of the cracker. 3
Taking a girl out means inviting a girl to dance at a house party or in a club.

- I need it to hurt!

- Well, well, don’t promise. Do they go to the club these days?

Stepan Andreyanovich, pouring water into the cast iron, shook his head:

– Our Yegor has one thing on his mind – the club.

- And what! The war is over - a legitimate thing. Who's playing now? Rayechka?

“When will she start strumming her balalaika,” Lizka said and suddenly got angry: “Do you think all we have on our minds here is dancing?”

Yegorsha yawned again.

- I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about girls.

She heard, she heard something even worse from this evil man - Yegorsha did not go into his pocket for a word. But for some reason this current ridicule seemed so offensive to her that she grabbed the bundle of linen and, without even saying goodbye to Stepan Andreyanovich, slammed the door.

5

There was a haircut going on at home - a common thing on the day of the elder brother's arrival.

The twins had already parted with their hair and, twisting their unusually light heads, lovingly watched Mikhail’s hand, clanking black sheep scissors over Fedka’s head.

Fedka had a hard time: his ear burned against the light like a fat fluke, and tears flowed down his freckled cheeks. But he held on and didn’t even look at his sister as she entered the hut.

- What is Yegorsha doing? - asked Mishka.

Liza clasped her hands:

- Are you guys in agreement? That one: “What is Mishka doing?” This one: “What is Yegorsha doing?”

She took a broom under the threshold and wrapped the child’s hair in a heap.

-Have you heard anything?

- No. And what?

- The Old Believer has arrived.

- Which Old Believer?

– Do we have many Old Believers? Evsey Moshkin. Now he’s standing in the field, near his hut. Today, they say, he arrived. I walked to Larch Forest on the Courier, and from there on foot. I didn’t want to wait for the steamer to take the wood.

Behind this long-winded weaving, Mikhail felt the same anxiety, which creeped up with a chill to his heart. Last fall, when they were in a hurry to build a hut, logs were collected throughout the village and three crowns were taken from the ruins of Yevsey Moshkin. Of course, with the consent of the collective farm board.

- Sit! – Mikhail angrily shook the tossing and turning Fedka.

Hastily tearing off the remnants of hair on his red head, he threw on a padded jacket and went out into the street.

In the outskirts, in the field, where Yevsey Moshkin’s hut stood, there was no one anymore.

Mikhail took the cleaver from the porch and went to the woodshed. He always did this when he wanted to think about something. True, in this case there was nothing to think about. Anfisa Petrovna suggested removing the logs from Yevsey’s hut, so let her settle accounts with Yevsey.

Yes, but you can’t shut up women’s mouths, Mikhail thought. They will now begin to sigh and groan. Here, they will say, what kind of people are these days. Yevseyushka went up to his house, and there wasn’t even a hut there - there wasn’t a log there. And what do you say? What do you say to this? Even if you are not to blame for a century, the logs are on your hut. Every passerby can see it.

Mikhail jabbed a cleaver into the gnarled chock from the shoulder, then carefully buttoned up his quilted jacket and went to Marfa Repishnaya, a distant relative of Yevsey.

Marfa Repishnaya Pryaslina had cockroaches frozen every winter since pre-war times, and Mikhail knew her hut well. An old hut. The windows are small, high above the ground, and the ceiling and walls, made of smoothly planed round wood, glow golden. And the spirit in the hut is delicious, herbal. It’s especially striking when you enter from the outbuilding in cold weather: it’s as if you’re going from winter to summer.

This time the herbal smell was drowned out by resin: Yevsey was chipping a splinter.

A thin pinkish-white belt ran deftly and beautifully from the log. Like alive; slightly crackling and gently arching. And when this belt completely separated from the log, Yevsey did not let it fall to the floor, but quickly picked it up and swung it in the air: come on, tell me, friend, what are you good for (a habit familiar to Mikhail), and threw it separately , away from the kindling - presumably for business.

Yevsey himself, to Mikhail’s considerable surprise, turned out to be completely different from what he had imagined him to be as he walked towards Martha. He thought he’d see some goner, a shadow of a man, since he’d swelled so much in the camps, but here – hold your feet: a tar stump. The cheeks are rosy, smooth, like balls, there is not a single withered hair in the red beard, and the head is also copper, cut into a brace, undercut.

Then, however, Mikhail saw: an old man. And my right hand was shaking, and the skin on the back of my neck was cracked, like the bark on an old tree. But all the same, the impression of a tarred, browned stump, from which time and all sorts of everyday adversities flow down like water, remains.

– Whose fellow will this be? – Yevsey asked Marfa.

Martha raised her head from the shirt she was mending, looked at Mikhail with her half-crazy eyes and said nothing. It seemed to Mikhail that she was missing some screws before, and after her husband’s death she became completely weak in the head.

Mikhail identified himself.

- Ivan Pryaslin’s son! - Yevsey exclaimed. He jumped to his feet, cried, and shook his head. - Lord, Ivan Gavrilovich’s son... Mikhailo Ivanovich - so, perhaps? That's how, that's how time goes, little guys! How long has it been since Ivan Gavrilovich himself was a great guy, and here is such a son. Apparently he was like his father, only he had lighter hair. - Yevsey again nodded, sighed, and sat down on the bench. - Do you remember me? - he asked, and suddenly curious, childishly sly lights flashed in his wet cracks.

Mikhail shook his head negatively.

The lights went out.

- Where to remember. But I remember you. It used to be that everyone would run to my guys. So tiny,” Yevsey pointed with his hand.

Mikhail vaguely remembered two orphan boys who had once lived not far from them in the outskirts. The eldest, it seems, was called Ganka, and the youngest - he remembers this well - had the nickname Tyapa. The kids didn’t let poor Tyapa live because he had a big white head and legs that were crooked like grips, and Mikhail also hounded him: “Tyapa, Tyapa, don’t fall!”

Current page: 1 (book has 21 pages in total)

Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov

Two winters and three summers

PART ONE

CHAPTER FIRST

1

Pa-ro-move! Pa-ro-move is coming!

People rolled down the Pekashinskaya mountain in scythes - wide, roadable slopes, narrow, winding paths.

Some fell through the flooded lake as best they could: some on a boat, some on a child’s raft, and some who were bolder got their hem in their teeth and forded. There was a groan and hubbub of disturbed seagulls in the air; black seagulls, who had not yet had time to rest after a difficult flight, flew in flocks over the heads of stunned people.

This happens every spring - almost the entire village pours out to the first steamer. Because spring on Pinega begins with the arrival of steamships, from the very time when the bare shore near the village suddenly fabulously sprouts with white stacks of bags of flour and cereals, pot-bellied barrels with long-tailed fish and fragrant boxes of tea and sweets.

This year, no one expected gifts from Arkhangelsk - Pinega podzols and sandy loam have been feeding the emaciated city for many years now. There was little hope for the arrival of front-line soldiers. Where should they turn when the war has just ended? But it’s been a long, long time since the Pekashi coast has seen such a crowd of people. Children, girls, women, old men - everyone who could ran out to the river.

The steamer did not appear from behind the cape for a long time. The fire, hastily built from brushwood that had not yet dried out, did not flare up, and people huddled together to keep warm.

Finally, near the other shore, under a red sheer crack, a white nose sparkled icy.

- “Kura”, “Kura”! - the guys shouted with mockery, clearly disappointed that instead of the handsome Dvina hero, a small local slow-moving ship, which was built by the Pinega merchants Volodins at the beginning of the century, was wandering towards them.

The steamer moved forward with difficulty, scattering flying sparks thickly along the river. The fast current threw him towards the other shore, the foamy wave lifted his nose. And the dirty, lead-colored sides, still military-style painted with black stripes, looked sad and sad.

But “Courier” did not lose its voice during the war. He screamed shrilly and youthfully as he approached the shore. It was as if spring thunder rolled over people's heads. And how was it possible to resist tears! During the war, “Courier” helped, one might say, helped to live, with that same beep. It used to be that on the darkest days, when it would scream, how it would roll out its tongues and roars under the village, the surrounding area would immediately brighten up.

Varvara Inyakhina with her young women, as soon as the ship touched the shore, grabbed the old captain, the only man on the ship:

- Why aren’t you bringing men? Didn't you have an order?

- Look, next time you come empty, we’ll leave you alone.

- Ha-ha-ha! What should we do with it?

Then someone shouted:

- And there, there! Another ship!

This steamer - a raft with hay - was floating from above. It spun steeply, like a sliver, in a bend above the village, and two people, leaning on the row - a long pole with a blade embedded in a cross - were desperately rowing towards the Pekashino shore.

“But this is definitely ours,” said Varvara. - Maybe Mishka and Yegorsha.

- His, his - Mishka’s hat. See how red the fox is.

“They’re from Ruchiev, coming from the forest.”

The women became worried. During high water, you can land on the Pekashinsky shore in only one place - at the clay slope, where the Courier now stood.

- Fuck off, fuck off! Have a conscience.

And the captain, cursing, gave in and gave the command to take off.

A raft with hay passed right next to the turning steamer right next to it.

2

The Pryaslinsky house is not visible from the river - a barn and a basement with an overgrown bird cherry tree in front - and Mikhail saw his house when he had already climbed up the mountain with the cart.

The hut was new, with colorful walls.

They built the hut last fall, just before he left for the forest. They laid it in a hurry, from old materials - there were only enough new logs for the top and bottom, and so it turned out to be a military-style mansion: one corner diverted to the side, the other sat down before the roof had yet been put on. But in general, the warmth stayed in the walls, and the Pryaslins, having been frozen in the old ruined hut, could not praise themselves enough about the new hut.

Having gazed at the red flag hanging on the corner of the hut, Mikhail did not even notice how the horse reached the windows.

- Whoa! - he shouted and rushed to catch up with the cart. But even before he reached the horse, her mother intercepted her.

- He's back! And we wait and wait - everyone is tired of waiting. The women told me that Mikhail is with you and the hay, so I’m so glad.

Raising her thin, weather-beaten face upward, Anna tried to look into her son’s eyes, but Mikhail’s gaze slid over her head. And she, looking guiltily at the dismantled fence in front of the alley, said:

- This week. They carried manure.

- Couldn’t you drive up to the backyard? There you can ride through the gate at least in a troika.

- Yes, that’s how it happened. They didn't think through it.

– You all didn’t think through it. If only they had locked the garden themselves, perhaps they would have thought of it. And what's that? – Mikhail shouted, nodding towards the dump behind the porch. – Will your hands disappear and splash them out on the field?

Mikhail softened somewhat when the cart with hay approached the yard. He even stopped for a while, as if listening to what was happening there at Zvezdon, behind the rye sheaves, blackened over the winter, with which the courtyard gates were lined for warmth.

- Soon. It's okay - we'll have milk again soon. Two weeks left.

-Are you right?

- Not really. Both herself and Stepan Andreyanovich calculated. So in terms of timing.

Until last fall, the Pryaslins lifted hay and straw onto a log floor, but in the fall, when Mikhail was already in the forest, the carriage collapsed, and from then on they carried the food in their hands.

However, Mikhail now found another way out - he threw away the ridges from the back wall of the yard and positioned the cart so that the hay could be thrown with a pitchfork directly from the cart to the side.

Anna, while he was unraveling the ropes on the cart, reported on family affairs: Lizka and Tatyana were in the calf barn, Petka and Grishka ran off to get cranberries...

“Well, I see they aren’t near the river,” said Mikhail. “All the guys are by the river, but our guys aren’t there.”

- They asked. They tearfully begged: we want to go to the ship. Yes, I say: “What are you doing? Where is your conscience? How will you greet your Misha?” Trouble, they are waiting for you. Misha is the only one on my mind. The eye is not taken out of the window. Praise them. These are both concerns - Lizka and I don’t know either firewood or water these days. All of them.

- Did you crawl into third grade?

- They will crawl over. I once met Augusta Mikhailovna here: I have no salvation, she says.

- And that robber?

Anna looked away.

Mikhail took a birch bark basket with a clanking teapot from the cart and asked in an unkind voice:

-Did you do something again?

- I did it. He climbed into the teacher’s oven and scooped the porridge out of the jug. – Anna sighed. – I didn’t want to upset you. Well, you can’t hide it.

“Okay, go open the story,” said Mikhail. Shifting his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, he looked around the outskirts of the village with a heavy gaze. With what joy he sailed home today! The war is over. An unprecedented holiday. And then, before I even had time to step beyond the threshold of the hut, the old rope began to twist.

Fedya - he was no longer called Fedushka for a long time - was the punishment of the whole family. Thief, wolfish habits. And it all started with trifles - with a cabbage, a turnip, a handful of grain, which he began to hide from his family. Then it went further: he went into someone else’s mouth.

Last year he stole eight kilograms of barley flour from Stepan Andreyanovich. The entire ration, down to the gram, given out during the harvest. People, understandably, got excited - who? What punishment is there to execute a thief? Meanwhile, every morning, as if going to work, the red little devil calmly went to the empty sheep barn in the backyard, sat on a block of wood - he had brought it especially for convenience - and put his hand into the bag. So, sitting by the bag on a block of wood, Lizka covered it...

“And who is he such a geek?” – again, once again Mikhail asked himself the question.

His mother opened the gate to the Poveti and handed him a pitchfork. The two of them quickly unloaded the cart. Then Anna went down to him with a rake and began to carefully rake up the hay dust.

“Come on,” said Mikhail. - Unenviable hay. Osenschak.

- What are you talking about, I’m all happy. We live without food. People will be jealous.

- We found something to envy. Yegorsha and I suffered with this hay - damn it. In the fall they collected the devils where. And now they were dragging themselves through the swamps, well, try it. - Mikhail looked around, pursed his lips gloomily: - When needed, our guys are never there.

-Are you talking about the horse? – Anna nodded briskly and warningly. - Don't worry. Go to the hut. I'll take you. - And suddenly, looking towards the wells, she clasped her hands: - But there, it seems, they are gaping? That's how they sat down and didn't see anything.

Behind the first well, on a white pole fence near the swamp, there were indeed two gray figures sticking out, very similar from a distance to garden scarecrows.

-Why are you counting crows? – Anna shouted and waved her hand. – Don’t you see who’s arrived?

- Come on, come on! - Mikhail shouted, egging on the brothers who trotted along the road. - Well, which one is faster?

Petka and Grishka ran up out of breath, thin, pale, like grass grown underground. Even running did not squeeze out the color on the thin faces, although their eyes, fixed on their older brother, shone with joy.

They were still strikingly similar to each other, so similar that they even ran into the yard, as the family joked, at the same time. At home, of course, they were not confused, but for convenience, the neighboring kids christened them in their own way. About two years ago, Grishka split his upper lip when he ran into a nail, and since then Mikhail has heard more than once: “Hey, you little gap-toothed half!” The teacher Augusta Mikhailovna also distinguished them from each other by their scar.

“Well done,” said Mikhail and patted both of them on the head encouragingly. - So you jumped to the third?

The twins received the greatest pleasure from their elder brother's praise. They looked at each other shyly and looked at their mother.

-What did they bring? Treat your Misha. Petka and Grishka readily held out the birch bark boxes - in them, an inch of wet cranberries were glowing mixed with garbage.

Mikhail took a berry from each box, wincing, and glanced at the thin bare legs and the wet bottom of his pants.

- Don't wander around anymore. Well, to hell with it! Just wait - the war is over, we'll soon be wearing boots. And now to the stables. Fast!

Petka and Grishka - no need to say twice - quickly climbed onto the cart, sat down next to each other in the front, and both took the reins. And the further the cart moved away, the more it seemed that one person was riding.

“Or maybe the fact that they are so close to each other helped them survive during this time?” – thought Mikhail.

He raised his hand to his mouth:

- Come back quickly! Let's drink tea. With bread! Happy present! – he added loudly.

3

Entering the hut, Mikhail put on the floor a basket woven from birch bark, to which a smoky teapot and a pot were tied on top, threw a bag of felt boots to the bed, then unfastened the belt with an iron ax and a large hunting knife in a polished leather sheath, removed the old one, whitened by the rains. and snow and a sweatshirt with burns in more than one place, he took off his furry red dog hat with earflaps, came out from under the blankets, and straightened up.

Here he is at home...

He doesn't have to live at home much. From autumn to spring in logging, then rafting, then suffering - you sleep for weeks in distant hayfields - then again the forest. And so on from year to year.

The floor was washed - it's nice when they wait for you. The walls in the hut are still bare - there is nothing to cover it with; you can hardly get a newspaper for a smoke. Only under my father’s card, covered with a towel with roosters, hung a bright red poster “Everything for the front, everything for Victory!”

Mikhail walked into the backyard and looked into the girls' room - that's what they called a small nook with one window behind the backyard. His mother dissuaded him when he decided to make a separate corner for his sisters. But he insisted on his own. It’s not good for Lizka to sleep in a common dump with the guys. Girl. We need to look ahead a little.

In the girls' room there was a bunk on pine chocks against the wall. The bed was neatly covered with an old flannelette blanket, and, as expected, there was a pillow at the head. Mikhail smiled: Lizka built all this without him. A month and a half ago, when he last came home from the forest, there was no bed yet.

And he smiled again when, returning to the hut and looking around it again, his eyes came across a new riser near the stove with pencil marks and knife notches. The Pryaslins live!

Anna, who had not taken her eyes off her son all the time, sighed with relief: well, thank God, at least the hut was pleased.

– Should I put on a samovar or flood the bathhouse? – she asked.

- Wait a little. Let me come to my senses.

Mikhail sat down on the counter next to the stove, took off his tarpaulin boots - the boot on the right was worn out again, and put his feet in the warm felt boots with cloth shanks, which his mother handed him from the stove. Now it's quite good.

“It’s cold on the river,” he said, rolling a cigarette.

- It’s not cold. I've been hauling manure this morning - it chills me to the bone.

-Aren’t you going to plow yet?

- They are getting ready. They are waiting for you. How many times has Anfisa Petrovna mentioned: where is our guy in charge?

Striking the flint with a hammer, Mikhail knocked out a spark and waved the smoking cloth so that it would flare up better. As he took a drag, he glanced at his mother with a brown, smiling eye:

- Well, how did you celebrate your victories here? Was it noisy?

- Was. There was everything. There was noise, and there were tears, and joy. Who is jumping, who is crying, who is hugging... - Anna sniffled, but, noticing how the nodules were appearing on her son’s weathered brown cheeks, she hastily wiped away the tear with her hand. – The management didn’t have a crowd on the street. They made speeches and walked around the village with flags. Then they started signing for the loan. Without remembering, I signed up for three hundred rubles.

“I waved too,” said Mikhail. - One and a half thousand.

- Here you go. And Lizka, stupid, threw away fifty rubles. She really wouldn't need to. He doesn't earn much. I hung the red tie on the house, and okay...

“Let go,” Mikhail said peacefully. - Such a day...

- But money is not just wood chips - it’s not lying around on the street. And then the other day they brought the tax.

- Tax? – Mikhail looked at his mother puzzled. Until now, taxes have bypassed them.

- It's written out for you.

Mikhail took a drag and blew out smoke noisily:

- We haven’t forgotten. When will I be eighteen? In two weeks?

- That's it. I already told Anfisa Petrovna. “According to the law,” he says. It will be years before the first payment, he says.”

Burning his lips, Mikhail finished smoking his cigarette, crushed the stubbed cigarette butt in his palm, and poured the remains of the shag into an iron jar.

- Nothing. We'll get out of it somehow. For a permanent shot at a logging station, I’m thinking of applying. In the forest they will now provide more bread and some rations for dependents. Again, manufactory...

Here, on the porch, feet stamped often, often, the door swung open, and Lizka flew into the hut like a whirlwind, and the next second she was already hugging her brother’s neck.

“They told me that your owner has arrived, but I’m flying and I don’t see anything.” Tanyukha from behind: “Lizka, Lizka, wait!..” Okay, I think you won’t lose your wallet with the money.

Suddenly Lizka frowned, looking at Petka and Grishka, who ran in after her.

- Where is the girl? Shameless! The child was abandoned. Come on, follow her!

It was for this management and mastery that Mikhail loved his sister. It’s not his mother who keeps the family together when he’s not at home.

With a barely noticeable smile, he looked at his sister while she, standing on her toes, was hanging her coat under the threshold. Her white, flaxen head was combed smoothly, and a thick, tightly braided braid with a red ribbon fell to the small of her back. In general, the braid is already a girl. But otherwise... Otherwise, it’s nothing at all for someone who’s fifteen years old. Like a swamp pine...

And, as if guessing his thoughts, Lizka quickly turned around. Her high-cheekbone face, thickly sprinkled with yellow freckles near her green eyes, turned slightly pink.

- What? Like a scary cat, right? – she asked directly. - Okay, not everyone is like Fyodor Kapitonovich’s Rayechka. Someone needs to be the power.

And for this simple-minded frankness he also loved his sister.

- Mom, what are you eating or whipping? – Lizka began to give orders without hesitation. – Shall we heat the samovar or flood the bathhouse?

And a minute later she was already comforting Tatyanka, who was crying and bursting into tears, as the twins, pushing her, were led into the hut.

Mikhail heard her whisper in Tatyanka’s ear:

- Come here. Say: “Hello, Misha. Welcome." Yes, by the neck.

Tatyanka became stubborn, and Lizka instantly became angry:

- Well, hairy one! I will never take it to a calf barn again. Sit at home.

“But let’s see what she’ll sing now...” Mikhail pulled the basket towards him.

Tatyanka’s mouth immediately fell into place, and Petka and Grishka simply grew up before our eyes.

Chuckling, Mikhail took a piece of blue chintz with white peas from the basket and handed it to Lizka:

- This is for you, sister.

- To me? – Lizka blinked her eyes often and often and suddenly burst into tears like a child.

Mikhail turned away and began to rummage through the jar of shag.

“Well, don’t cry, they don’t give you away in marriage,” said the mother, unable to hold back her tears. - What do I need to say, stupid?

Lizka, holding the chintz tightly to her chest with both hands, dropped onto her knees and burst into tears even more than ever. For the first time in her life, she was given a dress as a gift.

“Well, well, calm down, sister,” Mikhail muttered.

- What about mine? – Tatyanka stamped her foot demandingly, ready to burst into tears again.

- Enough for you too. And the mother, maybe, will find something for herself. Eight meters.

Following this, Mikhail took from the basket new black boots with rubber soles, with small ribbed edging and canvas shanks.

- Come on, sister, try it on.

- And this is for me? - Lizka babbled barely audibly, and suddenly her eyes, wet, tear-stained, burst with such uncontrollable green joy that everyone around involuntarily began to smile - the twins, and the mother, and even Mikhail himself.

Immediately, without moving from her spot, Lizka sat down on the floor and began to pull off her old, patchy boots from her feet.

“At least you didn’t make new ones,” said the mother and took the chintz from her lap.

“The boots are probably too big,” Mikhail warned. – There were no others. They gave three pairs for the entire collective farm.

- Okay, I won’t fall out of the big one. God didn’t hurt me with anything, but with his paws.

The hut became noticeably lighter when Lizka, stepping hesitantly and with caution, walked three times from the threshold to the front bench in her new, shining shoes.

The boys were not forgotten either. For them, Mikhail - Egorsha gave him his commodities coupons - brought a blue biker jacket for his pants. But Petka and Grishka, contrary to his expectations, reacted rather reservedly to this gift. But when he pulled out a loaf from the basket - a whole hefty brick of rye bread - they became seriously excited and did not take their eyes off the table the entire time the samovar was heating up.

Just in time for tea, as soon as we sat down at the table, Fedka appeared.

- He already knows when to come. Like an animal smells food...” Lizka started to speak and stopped short, looking at her older brother.

Mikhail, straightening his back, slowly turned his head towards the threshold.

- So what do you say? Where were you?

Fedka stood motionless, with his head bowed. He was wearing the same rags as the others, and he was not fed in any special way, but his freckled cheeks were enviably red, and his bare, already cracked feet were forged as if to order, strong, thick, and his toes were curled, the floor clawed.

- What do you say, I say? Well? – Mikhail asked again, marking each letter.

- Answer! Who do they tell? Where were you? – Lizka couldn’t stand it again.

And then Fedka widened his nose, raised his eyes, cold, icy, and suddenly these pieces of ice flared up: they saw bread.

“So talk to this brute,” Mikhail sighed to himself, “when his belly thinks ahead of his head.” And he didn’t want to spoil the holiday - they don’t have it often. And he, to the great joy of the mother and twins, who painfully, to the point of tears, experienced every discord and quarrel in the family, waved his hand.

The boys gasped when he took the loaf. It had been a long time since such wealth had been seen in their house for so many years.

The brown, well-baked crust began to squeak and creaked under his fingers. And this is what real flour means - not a single crumb fell on the table.

Easily, with true pleasure, he tore the loaf in half - he could have done this forever - then he cut one of the halves into four equal rations.

Tanya gets rations, Petka gets rations, Grishka gets rations. Fedka...

Mikhail's hand lingered in the air for a second.

The mother, not accustomed to such wastefulness, begged:

- At least you can do it a little. They dare as much as they can.

- OK. – The ration lay down in front of Fedka with a thud. - Let them remember the victory. Mikhail looked up at his father’s card. “It was the head of the logging station, Kuzma Kuzmich, who tossed me a loaf of bread. Just before leaving. “Here,” he says, “remember your father. We worked together before.”

Mother and Lizka shed tears. Petka and Grishka, rather out of politeness, so as not to upset their older brother, looked at the towel with roosters. But Tatyanka and Fedka, frantically gnawing on their rations, didn’t even blink an eye.

The word “father” meant nothing to them.

4

After tea, Mikhail sorted out the shaving (he had started scraping his chin with the toe of his braid since last fall), his mother, grabbing some kindling, went to flood the bathhouse, and Lizka ran to the Stavrovs.

The Pryaslins lived as a commune with the Stavrovs for, say, the entire war, almost from the spring of forty-two. They shared a cow, together they prepared hay and firewood, and helped each other out with food. Most of all, of course, the Pryaslins benefited from this commune, but Stepan Andreyanovich did not lose out either. Anna and Lizka washed him and their grandson, kept their hut clean, and the Stavrovs didn’t have to worry about the bathhouse either.

The wind died down in the evening. The tin sun peeked out from the whitish shaggy clouds, and far away, in the Pekashino winter fields, the cranes were screaming. For the first time this spring, Lizka noted to herself.

She walked briskly along the dull road, hard as a stone - not a single blade of grass was yet on the lawns - and in her mind she saw herself in new shoes, in a new blue dress with white polka dots. And in general everything, everything now, it seemed to her, would be different. They will no longer have to choke on prickly moss, pound pine sapwood in a wooden mortar, and in the morning, suffering from constipation, the guys will no longer shout from the yard: “Ma-a-ma-a, I’m dying...” What a blessing it is that they have such Brother!

Stepan Andreyanovich was lighting the stove. Red reflections played on his bearded face.

He’s probably going to cook something for Yegorsha, Lizka guessed.

“Ah, the bride has arrived,” Yegorsha said with a smile. He was lying on the stove, his bare legs crossed, a rolled-up cigarette in his teeth.

Liza chuckled:

– The bride is without a seat, the groom is without pants.

“And here he is in his pants,” Yegorsha laughed.

“Stop bashing,” Stepan Andreyanovich reprimanded him.

Yegorsha stuck out his tongue stupidly, but changed the conversation:

- Well, what is Mishka doing?

- What is he doing! He can't live without Mishka for an hour. It’s not you who doesn’t lie idle. “I came to say,” Lizka turned to Stepan Andreyanovich, “don’t heat the bathhouse.” We're drowning.

She looked around the hut with a tenacious, womanly eye.

- Well, I’ll tidy up at least a little from you.

“Come on, Lizaveta,” said Stepan Andreyanovich. - With your hands yourself.

But Lizka was already moistening the broom under the washstand. Then, having swept the floor, she went into the closet in her own way, took out the old man’s dirty linen, and threw it on the floor:

- Do you have anything?

Yegorsha squinted his eyes at the wooden chest standing by the bed.

- Here's my suitcase. I trust.

A poker rattled in the back of the building.

- I could have gotten it myself. It’s too early to show yourself as a master.

Yegorsha reluctantly came down from the stove - barefoot, wearing a white undershirt, long unwashed, with the collar unbuttoned and the hem hanging down - he yawned, stretching.

– You also need to lie down skillfully. – And he winked at Lizka. “One woman was lying there, lying down, her leg resting. Transferred to disability.

Yegorsha was short, thin and flexible, like a cat. Smala Yegorsha looked very much like a timid, shy girl. It used to be that adults would begin to chirp - their ears would fill with heat, and at any moment, you thought, the fire would spread to their hair - soft, tousled, like a heap of barley straw. But after three years of living in the forest, Yegorsha was formed. There is no shame - he himself became the first obscenity. He has a blue eye in a slit, his head is on one side, and it’s better not to mess with him - he’ll make anyone blush.

Egorsha moved to his grandfather in 1942, after his mother was crushed by a tree while logging. Stepan Andreyanovich started a conversation about changing his last name, but Yegorsha became stubborn. Nevertheless, in Pekashin everyone called him Stavrov, both to his face and behind his back. And then Yegorsha cheated: Sukhanov began to add his grandfather’s surname to his father’s surname.

“Don’t joke with me, brother,” he said, pleased with his invention. – As a baron, I have a double surname.

With a light, relaxed gait, Yegorsha walked into the backyard, scooped up water from the tub with a ladle, and drank.

– According to the latest science, they say that a bucket of water replaces one hundred grams.

- Miracle pea! Everything was about wine, but he wasn’t standing next to the bottle.

“Yes, yes,” Stepan Andreyanovich supported Lizka.

Egorsha took crumpled linen out of the chest and pointed his blue eye at Lizka with a wink:

- Come on, wash it better. Someday I'll get it out of the cracker.

- I need it to hurt!

- Well, well, don’t promise. Do they go to the club these days?

Stepan Andreyanovich, pouring water into the cast iron, shook his head:

– Our Yegor has one thing on his mind – the club.

- And what! The war is over - a legitimate thing. Who's playing now? Rayechka?

“When will she start strumming her balalaika,” Lizka said and suddenly got angry: “Do you think all we have on our minds here is dancing?”

Yegorsha yawned again.

- I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about girls.

She heard, she heard something even worse from this evil man - Yegorsha did not go into his pocket for a word. But for some reason this current ridicule seemed so offensive to her that she grabbed the bundle of linen and, without even saying goodbye to Stepan Andreyanovich, slammed the door.

5

There was a haircut going on at home - a common thing on the day of the elder brother's arrival.

The twins had already parted with their hair and, twisting their unusually light heads, lovingly watched Mikhail’s hand, clanking black sheep scissors over Fedka’s head.

Fedka had a hard time: his ear burned against the light like a fat fluke, and tears flowed down his freckled cheeks. But he held on and didn’t even look at his sister as she entered the hut.

- What is Yegorsha doing? - asked Mishka.

Liza clasped her hands:

- Are you guys in agreement? That one: “What is Mishka doing?” This one: “What is Yegorsha doing?”

She took a broom under the threshold and wrapped the child’s hair in a heap.

-Have you heard anything?

- No. And what?

- The Old Believer has arrived.

- Which Old Believer?

– Do we have many Old Believers? Evsey Moshkin. Now he’s standing in the field, near his hut. Today, they say, he arrived. I walked to Larch Forest on the Courier, and from there on foot. I didn’t want to wait for the steamer to take the wood.

Behind this long-winded weaving, Mikhail felt the same anxiety, which creeped up with a chill to his heart. Last fall, when they were in a hurry to build a hut, logs were collected throughout the village and three crowns were taken from the ruins of Yevsey Moshkin. Of course, with the consent of the collective farm board.

- Sit! – Mikhail angrily shook the tossing and turning Fedka.

Hastily tearing off the remnants of hair on his red head, he threw on a padded jacket and went out into the street.

In the outskirts, in the field, where Yevsey Moshkin’s hut stood, there was no one anymore.

Mikhail took the cleaver from the porch and went to the woodshed. He always did this when he wanted to think about something. True, in this case there was nothing to think about. Anfisa Petrovna suggested removing the logs from Yevsey’s hut, so let her settle accounts with Yevsey.

Yes, but you can’t shut up women’s mouths, Mikhail thought. They will now begin to sigh and groan. Here, they will say, what kind of people are these days. Yevseyushka went up to his house, and there wasn’t even a hut there - there wasn’t a log there. And what do you say? What do you say to this? Even if you are not to blame for a century, the logs are on your hut. Every passerby can see it.

Mikhail jabbed a cleaver into the gnarled chock from the shoulder, then carefully buttoned up his quilted jacket and went to Marfa Repishnaya, a distant relative of Yevsey.

Marfa Repishnaya Pryaslina had cockroaches frozen every winter since pre-war times, and Mikhail knew her hut well. An old hut. The windows are small, high above the ground, and the ceiling and walls, made of smoothly planed round wood, glow golden. And the spirit in the hut is delicious, herbal. It’s especially striking when you enter from the outbuilding in cold weather: it’s as if you’re going from winter to summer.

This time the herbal smell was drowned out by resin: Yevsey was chipping a splinter.

A thin pinkish-white belt ran deftly and beautifully from the log. Like alive; slightly crackling and gently arching. And when this belt completely separated from the log, Yevsey did not let it fall to the floor, but quickly picked it up and swung it in the air: come on, tell me, friend, what are you good for (a habit familiar to Mikhail), and threw it separately , away from the kindling - presumably for business.

Yevsey himself, to Mikhail’s considerable surprise, turned out to be completely different from what he had imagined him to be as he walked towards Martha. He thought he’d see some goner, a shadow of a man, since he’d swelled so much in the camps, but here – hold your feet: a tar stump. The cheeks are rosy, smooth, like balls, there is not a single withered hair in the red beard, and the head is also copper, cut into a brace, undercut.

Then, however, Mikhail saw: an old man. And my right hand was shaking, and the skin on the back of my neck was cracked, like the bark on an old tree. But all the same, the impression of a tarred, browned stump, from which time and all sorts of everyday adversities flow down like water, remains.

– Whose fellow will this be? – Yevsey asked Marfa.

Martha raised her head from the shirt she was mending, looked at Mikhail with her half-crazy eyes and said nothing. It seemed to Mikhail that she was missing some screws before, and after her husband’s death she became completely weak in the head.

Mikhail identified himself.

- Ivan Pryaslin’s son! - Yevsey exclaimed. He jumped to his feet, cried, and shook his head. - Lord, Ivan Gavrilovich’s son... Mikhailo Ivanovich - so, perhaps? That's how, that's how time goes, little guys! How long has it been since Ivan Gavrilovich himself was a great guy, and here is such a son. Apparently he was like his father, only he had lighter hair. - Yevsey again nodded, sighed, and sat down on the bench. - Do you remember me? - he asked, and suddenly curious, childishly sly lights flashed in his wet cracks.

Mikhail shook his head negatively.

The lights went out.

- Where to remember. But I remember you. It used to be that everyone would run to my guys. So tiny,” Yevsey pointed with his hand.

Mikhail vaguely remembered two orphan boys who had once lived not far from them in the outskirts. The eldest, it seems, was called Ganka, and the youngest - he remembers this well - had the nickname Tyapa. The kids didn’t let poor Tyapa live because he had a big white head and legs that were crooked like grips, and Mikhail also hounded him: “Tyapa, Tyapa, don’t fall!”

Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov

Two winters and three summers

PART ONE

CHAPTER FIRST

1

Pa-ro-move! Pa-ro-move is coming!

People rolled down the Pekashinskaya mountain in strands - wide roadways, narrow, winding paths.

As best they could, they got caught in the flooded lake: some on a boat, some on a child’s raft, and some who were bolder got their hem in their teeth and forded. There was a groan and hubbub of disturbed seagulls in the air; black seagulls, who had not yet had time to rest after a difficult flight, flew in flocks over the heads of stunned people.

This happens every spring - almost the entire village pours out to the first steamer. Because spring on Pinega begins with the arrival of steamships, from the very time when the bare shore near the village suddenly fabulously sprouts with white stacks of bags of flour and cereals, pot-bellied barrels with long-tailed fish and fragrant boxes of tea and sweets.

This year, no one expected gifts from Arkhangelsk - Pinega podzols and sandy loam have been feeding the emaciated city for many years now. There was little hope for the arrival of front-line soldiers. Where should they turn when the war has just ended? But it’s been a long, long time since the Pekashi coast has seen such a crowd of people. Children, girls, women, old men - everyone who could ran out to the river.

The steamer did not appear from behind the cape for a long time. The fire, hastily built from brushwood that had not yet dried out, did not flare up, and people huddled together to keep warm.

Finally, near the other shore, under a red sheer crack, a white nose sparkled icy.

- “Kura”, “Kura”! - the guys shouted with mockery, clearly disappointed that instead of the handsome Dvina hero, a small local slow-moving ship, which was built by the Pinega merchants Volodins at the beginning of the century, was wandering towards them.

The steamer moved forward with difficulty, scattering flying sparks thickly along the river. The fast current threw him towards the other shore, the foamy wave lifted his nose. And the dirty, lead-colored sides, still military-style painted with black stripes, looked sad and sad.

But “Courier” did not lose its voice during the war. He screamed shrilly and youthfully as he approached the shore. It was as if spring thunder rolled over people's heads. And how was it possible to resist tears! During the war, “Courier” helped, one might say, helped to live, with that same beep. It used to be that on the darkest days, when it would scream, howling and roaring under the village, the surrounding area would immediately brighten up.

Varvara Inyakhina with her young women, as soon as the ship touched the shore, grabbed the old captain, the only man on the ship:

Why aren't you bringing men? Didn't you have an order?

Look, next time you come empty, we'll leave you alone.

Ha ha ha! What should we do with it?

Then someone shouted:

And there, there! Another ship!

This steamer - a raft with hay - was floating from above. It spun steeply, like a splinter, in a bend above the village, and two people, leaning on the row - a long pole with a blade embedded in a cross - desperately rowed towards the Pekashino shore.

But these are, after all, ours,” said Varvara. - Maybe Mishka and Yegorsha.

His, his - Mishka's hat. See how red the fox is.

They are from Ruchev, coming from the forest.

The women became worried. It is possible to land on the Pekashinsky shore during high water only in one place - at the clay slope, where the Courier now stood.

Fuck off, fuck off! Have a conscience.

And the captain, cursing, gave in and gave the command to take off.

A raft with hay passed right next to the turning steamer right next to it.

2

The Pryaslinsky house is not visible from the river - a barn and a basement with an overgrown bird cherry tree in front - and Mikhail saw his house when he had already climbed up the mountain with the cart.

The hut was new, with colorful walls.

They built the hut last fall, just before he left for the forest. They laid it in a hurry, from old materials - there were only enough new logs for the top and bottom, and so it turned out to be a military-style mansion: one corner diverted to the side, the other sat down when the roof had not yet been put on. But in general, the warmth stayed in the walls, and the Pryaslins, having been frozen in the old ruined hut, could not praise themselves enough about the new hut.

Having gazed at the red flag hanging on the corner of the hut, Mikhail did not even notice how the horse reached the windows.

Whoa! - he shouted and rushed to catch up with the cart. But even before he reached the horse, her mother intercepted her.

Fedor Alexandrovich Abramov

Two winters and three summers

PART ONE

CHAPTER FIRST

Pa-ro-move! Pa-ro-move is coming!

People rolled down the Pekashinskaya mountain in scythes - wide, roadable slopes, narrow, winding paths.

Some fell through the flooded lake as best they could: some on a boat, some on a child’s raft, and some who were bolder got their hem in their teeth and forded. There was a groan and hubbub of disturbed seagulls in the air; black seagulls, who had not yet had time to rest after a difficult flight, flew in flocks over the heads of stunned people.

This happens every spring - almost the entire village pours out to the first steamer. Because spring on Pinega begins with the arrival of steamships, from the very time when the bare shore near the village suddenly fabulously sprouts with white stacks of bags of flour and cereals, pot-bellied barrels with long-tailed fish and fragrant boxes of tea and sweets.

This year, no one expected gifts from Arkhangelsk - Pinega podzols and sandy loam have been feeding the emaciated city for many years now. There was little hope for the arrival of front-line soldiers. Where should they turn when the war has just ended? But it’s been a long, long time since the Pekashi coast has seen such a crowd of people. Children, girls, women, old men - everyone who could ran out to the river.

The steamer did not appear from behind the cape for a long time. The fire, hastily built from brushwood that had not yet dried out, did not flare up, and people huddled together to keep warm.

Finally, near the other shore, under a red sheer crack, a white nose sparkled icy.

- “Kura”, “Kura”! - the guys shouted with mockery, clearly disappointed that instead of the handsome Dvina hero, a small local slow-moving ship, which was built by the Pinega merchants Volodins at the beginning of the century, was wandering towards them.

The steamer moved forward with difficulty, scattering flying sparks thickly along the river. The fast current threw him towards the other shore, the foamy wave lifted his nose. And the dirty, lead-colored sides, still military-style painted with black stripes, looked sad and sad.

But “Courier” did not lose its voice during the war. He screamed shrilly and youthfully as he approached the shore. It was as if spring thunder rolled over people's heads. And how was it possible to resist tears! During the war, “Courier” helped, one might say, helped to live, with that same beep. It used to be that on the darkest days, when it would scream, how it would roll out its tongues and roars under the village, the surrounding area would immediately brighten up.

Varvara Inyakhina with her young women, as soon as the ship touched the shore, grabbed the old captain, the only man on the ship:

- Why aren’t you bringing men? Didn't you have an order?

- Look, next time you come empty, we’ll leave you alone.

- Ha-ha-ha! What should we do with it?

Then someone shouted:

- And there, there! Another ship!

This steamer - a raft with hay - was floating from above. It spun steeply, like a sliver, in a bend above the village, and two people, leaning on the row - a long pole with a blade embedded in a cross - were desperately rowing towards the Pekashino shore.

“But this is definitely ours,” said Varvara. - Maybe Mishka and Yegorsha.

- His, his - Mishka’s hat. See how red the fox is.

“They’re from Ruchiev, coming from the forest.”

The women became worried. During high water, you can land on the Pekashinsky shore in only one place - at the clay slope, where the Courier now stood.

- Fuck off, fuck off! Have a conscience.

And the captain, cursing, gave in and gave the command to take off.

A raft with hay passed right next to the turning steamer right next to it.

The Pryaslinsky house is not visible from the river - a barn and a basement with an overgrown bird cherry tree in front - and Mikhail saw his house when he had already climbed up the mountain with the cart.

The hut was new, with colorful walls.

They built the hut last fall, just before he left for the forest. They laid it in a hurry, from old materials - there were only enough new logs for the top and bottom, and so it turned out to be a military-style mansion: one corner diverted to the side, the other sat down before the roof had yet been put on. But in general, the warmth stayed in the walls, and the Pryaslins, having been frozen in the old ruined hut, could not praise themselves enough about the new hut.

Having gazed at the red flag hanging on the corner of the hut, Mikhail did not even notice how the horse reached the windows.

- Whoa! - he shouted and rushed to catch up with the cart. But even before he reached the horse, her mother intercepted her.

- He's back! And we wait and wait - everyone is tired of waiting. The women told me that Mikhail is with you and the hay, so I’m so glad.

Raising her thin, weather-beaten face upward, Anna tried to look into her son’s eyes, but Mikhail’s gaze slid over her head. And she, looking guiltily at the dismantled fence in front of the alley, said:

- This week. They carried manure.

- Couldn’t you drive up to the backyard? There you can ride through the gate at least in a troika.

- Yes, that’s how it happened. They didn't think through it.

– You all didn’t think through it. If only they had locked the garden themselves, perhaps they would have thought of it. And what's that? – Mikhail shouted, nodding towards the dump behind the porch. – Will your hands disappear and splash them out on the field?

Mikhail softened somewhat when the cart with hay approached the yard. He even stopped for a while, as if listening to what was happening there at Zvezdon, behind the rye sheaves, blackened over the winter, with which the courtyard gates were lined for warmth.

- Soon. It's okay - we'll have milk again soon. Two weeks left.

-Are you right?

- Not really. Both herself and Stepan Andreyanovich calculated. So in terms of timing.

Until last fall, the Pryaslins lifted hay and straw onto a log floor, but in the fall, when Mikhail was already in the forest, the carriage collapsed, and from then on they carried the food in their hands.

However, Mikhail now found another way out - he threw away the ridges from the back wall of the yard and positioned the cart so that the hay could be thrown with a pitchfork directly from the cart to the side.

Anna, while he was unraveling the ropes on the cart, reported on family affairs: Lizka and Tatyana were in the calf barn, Petka and Grishka ran off to get cranberries...

“Well, I see they aren’t near the river,” said Mikhail. “All the guys are by the river, but our guys aren’t there.”

- They asked. They tearfully begged: we want to go to the ship. Yes, I say: “What are you doing? Where is your conscience? How will you greet your Misha?” Trouble, they are waiting for you. Misha is the only one on my mind. The eye is not taken out of the window. Praise them. These are both concerns - Lizka and I don’t know either firewood or water these days. All of them.

- Did you crawl into third grade?

- They will crawl over. I once met Augusta Mikhailovna here: I have no salvation, she says.

- And that robber?

Anna looked away.

Mikhail took a birch bark basket with a clanking teapot from the cart and asked in an unkind voice:

-Did you do something again?

- I did it. He climbed into the teacher’s oven and scooped the porridge out of the jug. – Anna sighed. – I didn’t want to upset you. Well, you can’t hide it.

“Okay, go open the story,” said Mikhail. Shifting his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, he looked around the outskirts of the village with a heavy gaze. With what joy he sailed home today! The war is over. An unprecedented holiday. And then, before I even had time to step beyond the threshold of the hut, the old rope began to twist.

Fedya - he was no longer called Fedushka for a long time - was the punishment of the whole family. Thief, wolfish habits. And it all started with trifles - with a cabbage, a turnip, a handful of grain, which he began to hide from his family. Then it went further: he went into someone else’s mouth.

Last year he stole eight kilograms of barley flour from Stepan Andreyanovich. The entire ration, down to the gram, given out during the harvest. People, understandably, got excited - who? What punishment is there to execute a thief? Meanwhile, every morning, as if going to work, the red little devil calmly went to the empty sheep barn in the backyard, sat on a block of wood - he had brought it especially for convenience - and put his hand into the bag. So, sitting by the bag on a block of wood, Lizka covered it...

"And who is he such a geek?" – again, once again Mikhail asked himself the question.

His mother opened the gate to the Poveti and handed him a pitchfork. The two of them quickly unloaded the cart. Then Anna went down to him with a rake and began to carefully rake up the hay dust.

“Come on,” said Mikhail. - Unenviable hay. Osenschak.

- What are you talking about, I’m all happy. We live without food. People will be jealous.

- We found something to envy. Yegorsha and I suffered with this hay - damn it. In the fall they collected the devils where. And now they were dragging themselves through the swamps, well, try it. - Mikhail looked around, pursed his lips gloomily: - When needed, our guys are never there.

-Are you talking about the horse? – Anna nodded briskly and warningly. - Don't worry. Go to the hut. I'll take you. - And suddenly, looking towards the wells, she clasped her hands: - But there, it seems, they are gaping? That's how they sat down and didn't see anything.