Shackles

It was vaguely remembered how mother took out knots from the house, something was bound behind a tarantass, pillows laid sitting; mother sat down on them, having put Vukol’s number. On a trestle near the coachman Romanev the person in strange clothes, in a blue cap, with a saber at a belt and long moustaches jumped. About a porch not movably and speechless the big crowd stood. There was a father dressed roadside, sat down with mother, and the three rushed on the wide rural street to pasture, for a village fence.

Hushfully the hand bell with the tied-up language tinkled, pogromykhivat jingles; the wide, flat steppe was a circle, smelled of a grass, dust and horse then. Vukol long admired a saber of the moustached person and joyfully looked around roads from where as if the high turning yellow rye bowed. Then all this somehow disappeared from memory and consciousness: Vukol lulled by jingles and measured rocking of a tarantass fell asleep on hands at mother…

Now Vukol was six years old, he lived in the village of Zaymishche on a visit at the grandfather and the grandmother.

The log hut of the grandfather stood directly against a village fence and was similar to him: big, thick, turned from thick beams, with a gray straw roof and gloomy windows. Also the grandfather was same: big, broad-shouldered, thin, but heavy; when went on a log hut – floor boards bent under its bast shoes. It had a long beard, gray-haired, the head bald and a voice – as at a bear. With adult children said a little and loved that understood it from one word. With small it was tender.

The grandmother – small growth, dry, with a thin profile of a dark face. Spoke and laughed quietly, timidly, good-natured.

Lavrusha is the rural little boy with a chestnut-colored thick hair a cap, with a deep frown, the sedate and judicious, real little little man. Almost identical growth and age, the uncle and the nephew very much loved each other, spent the whole day together, and slept in an embrace on полатях at night.

In a forward corner of a log hut there was a bozhnitsa with a set of dark icons and an icon lamp from color glass, the painted picture representing “Hung on a wall as mice of a cat buried”, along timbered walls there were wide and heavy pine benches, a bozhnitsa – a table. A quarter of a log hut the big Russian furnace with white subfenny, with a closet behind it and extensive occupied polatyam which connected to the furnace a thick bar. Big climbed polat directly from the furnace, children could get only on a bar there. About a door – the fad in which basts, a harness and different economic belongings were stored.

In a pier between forward windows hung, наклонясь, the archin mirror of market work decorated paper with flowers zasizhenny flies. Most often Nastya stopped before curve reflection in this mirror.

Nastya was the stately fair-haired girl with the pretty person. She “nevestitsya”, put on in print dresses, carried rings and earrings.

The frost adorned glasses of windows in elaborate blue colors. Winter twilight was condensed. Nastya, having breathed on glass and having had a look in the thawed circle one eye, shouted to children:

– Rolling all right!

The only beggar in the village was knocked on a gate.

Headlong, as the scared kittens, rushed children from an oven on polat, clambering on a bar, hid there in a far corner, buried the heads under pillows and sheepskin coats.

Slowly entered Rolling, having strong slammed the become covered with hoarfrost door.

It was very high growth, is thin and thin, with the little, bird’s head, closely cropped, with a dark wrinkled face almost without vegetation, with a long pointed nose, with the big bag hanging through a shoulder almost to the earth. The thin, thin legs in frozen bast shoes which are wrapped up by rags shivered. On thin shoulders the old soldier’s overcoat was wound.

– To Milostink For goodness sake! – said the Muscleman in low tones and pulled down a ripped cap from the head, being christened on icons.

Nastya went to a closet, brought a big chunk of sitnik.

– Accept For goodness sake!

Rolling crossed, lowered a piece in a bottomless lean bag and told by the sick deaf voice:

– Christ will save!

– Get warm! – compassionately the grandmother told. – To you on an oven to lie, and you go begging!

– I have nobody, all died, and the soldier, it is visible, and death does not take, it peck rolling!

– And if you on service were? long ago, tea? – slightly stammering, Yafim asked.

– Long ago! – the old soldier became straight. – At an anperator Mikolaye the First served, to will, twenty five years, and to Nona here – I go begging. There’s nothing to be done? Destiny! it peck rolling!

– What it is musclemen?

– In old times we musclemen called carrion crows… a proverb at me such: it peck rolling!

– Yes you and that on old a crow are similar!

– Tease with rolling, and also forgot a baptized name itself!

– Years as to you?

– Mnoga! it was from the youth painfully healthy, served in grenadiers… one sticks to one thousand received, and розог and I will not remember as, скрозь the system was driven and in fluent was, all was… well, pymat, in iron shackles chained and – on a mare!.

– On what mare?

– And эфто, a sudarka if on the area of a sekla a whip, so put on a mare – on a scaffold a bench such, on racks put it, hand-legged belts will bind, and the executioner – take care, to an ozhg! – as a whip vdarit, at once blood will scatter!

Rolling with a celebration quickened when shouted by a deaf voice: “take care, to an ozhg!”

– Passions каке́! – having thrown up the hands, Nastya sighed.

– Now that for service? – willingly continued Rolling. – Overindulgence one!. At the noneshny sovereign – neither you a skroz-system, nor you mares, nor fie to you – birches – anything! Strike эфто service, them peck rolling! No, they would serve about ours! Took away me vyyunoshy, held down took away, and it was turned back home by the old man, I tanned, have the live place no skin on a back, hems ache also now at night!. This – service! The marching was – extend a leg, a sock to a sock, unanimously in a frunta you stand – it is live dead, in ammunition – purity, besides articles – “on краул”, for example, it was required to take ease – and the infantry goes – the earth shivered! Э and that баять, the killer whale, is not present such service now! The First used to say the late anperator of Mikolai: kill nine, learn the tenth! Also killed! And I here strong was. Immortal to a regiment called, death was afraid of me! It was turned back home clean, there is no An – neither house nor home, either the family, or cousins-in-laws: god tidied up all! And here I live yes I live, me peck rolling, one word – immortal!.

– And in the war there were you, the grandfather?

– As! всеё transferred the Sevastopol kanpaniya! Had Georgy for bravery! what was!. sheer hell!. as to the people lay down! well, god stored me it is unknown for ча: and sekl me, and скрозь drove a system, and on a mare was, and in the war – though those scratch! Yes a tapericha all is also forgotten!

Children, slightly breathing and having hardly put out the heads from under rags, with horror listened to the terrifying story.

Frightened by rolling in the village of children, said to them that the old soldier carries away them in the bag. Nobody, except it, went with a bag behind a handout; only the priest who several times a year came from Petty-bourgeois Farms on collecting.

Rolling left. Children got down with polaty the in the regular way through a bar on the furnace – and lowered the heads through “zadoroga”.

In a log hut darkened.

The grandmother in a closet long inflated a piece of coal on a perch of the Russian furnace and, at last, lit a splinter, put it in the svetets who was above a wash-tub. The log hut was lit with the incorrect, wandering light.

The grandfather still spun a bast shoe, tapping with a shank of a kochedyk and tastefully ponyukhivy from time to time dark tobacco powder from a birch bark snuffbox, dexterously filling it on a nail of a thumb and involving one nostril a pinch. Continuing work, he quietly sang the lingering song under hum of spindles:

We will pass, brothers, lengthways down the street,

We will sing the song old,

Song old, Volga mother!

As soon as the grandfather started singing – children came to be on a floor at his legs, they began to spin something from scraps of basts too.

In the song it was told about the old man and the old woman interpreting whom from sons to hand over in soldiers:

Whether how to hand over to hand over the eldest son?

Yes the senior has small children!

Whether how to hand over to hand over the son of an average —

Yes at an average the wife is tender…

At last, decided to hand over younger:

Does it have neither wife, nor children,

And he is nepochetchik-son!

In a step to singing spindles buzzed. Through howl of a blizzard somewhere away the hand bell which was fading, again beginning to ring was heard for a long time as if asked to spend the night and did not let anywhere.

The song ceased to be listened, but the grandfather still sang:

Would not let to spend the night you,

Yes well – sit down to have supper:

According to your speeches – from soldiers you go,

And our sonny in nekruta zabrit,

In shackles went to service imperial,

Twenty years passed also five years

Also it is not known – whether it is live whether it is live?

Here he kept silent, knocked kochedyky and to the accompaniment of spindles and a distaff finished:

You, my darling sir-father,

You, my darling mother,

Whether you recognize свово the son smaller?

Women continued to spin, and children with astonishment looked at the grandfather. It was represented to them – as the younger son was turned back to parents, thin and old as Rolling, tears stream down at it the terrible face with a long nose and the ugly, closely cropped head.

On all fours removed to legs of the grandmother and, twisting tin buttons of her blue pestryadinny sundress, unanimously stuck:

– Baushka! Tell the fairy tale!

The grandmother began to tell silent, darling, s by an old-womanish voice, without ceasing to spin and from time to time, on the action course, to sing, representing a goat:

Kozlyatushki, detyatushka!

Open, unlocked,

Your mother came,

Milk brought!

The milk on a vymechka runs,

From a vymechka on kopytechka,

From копытечек – in cheese the earth!

Plaintively and fantastically the song sounded. The grandmother, representing a wolf, spoke and sang by a thick voice; representing a kozlyatok, again changed a timbre.

When the wolf went to shape thinner language to the smith, the grandmother did a special face and spoke on – wolf low and densely:

– The smith, the smith, painfully I is simple, language at me is thick, hold down to me thin language!

The wolf achieved the, deceived and ate a kozlyatok; children with horror, as if in reality, saw an execution which the offended mother revenged it:

– The godmother, the godmother, a hair burns!

– So it is also necessary to you: why mine the kozlyatok ate?

– The godmother, the godmother, a leg burn!

– So it is also necessary to you!.

A story about Ivanushka and Alyonushka was top of art of the storyteller: listening to this fairy tale, children already not for the first time shed tears of the best human feelings.

The grandmother told about the wonderful mare who gave rise zolotogrivy horses and the fad-gorbunka about clever brothers and Ivan the Fool; clever married and deceived the father, and Ivan honestly guarded the fatherly field. For it clever brothers considered him the fool, but left so that to it tumbled down happiness when clever got zolotogrivy horses, and to the fool an ordinary-looking gorbunok. Gorbunok had magic power and bore to the owner faithful service. At the end of the fairy tale when Ivanushka, apparently, inevitably had to die in the boiling copper, the gorbunok came of it to the rescue also here and even rewarded it for his sorrows: having boiled down in a copper, Ivan was the handsome, the clear head and the owner of the biggest kingdom in the world.

Was marvelous fairy tales at the grandmother much: about a firebird, about Zmey Gorynych, about the tsar Saltan, about the sleeping tsarevna, the Golden Cockerel, about a bottom a tolokonny forehead and the worker to his Head.

Absolutely close the hand bell tinkled and calmed down. At gate the Ball began a bark, runners of sledge began to creak, someone knocked on a gate.

Yafim threw шубняк shoulders and left through an outer entrance hall to the yard.

– To whom a tepericha to be? – the grandfather grumbled, getting up from a bench.

In an outer entrance hall creaking, frosty steps were heard, and together with clouds of white frosty air the tall person in the fur coat brought by snow with the big lifted wolf collar tied by a scarf with the become covered with hoarfrost ice-covered beard entered a log hut. Behind it Yafim entered, bearing the big knot brought by snow.

The guest grunted, unbent a collar and began to tear off from moustaches the cold hand ice icicles. Yafim helped it to take off a fur coat, and to the middle of a log hut there was a red curly person in a jacket and fur boots overknee.

The grandfather turned pale.

– Really you, Elizarushka? – the grandmother threw up the hands. – Vospodi!

– I am most! – the guest answered. – Great you live. Did not wait?

– Come, kindly to favor! To wait for Kuda here? Three years passed!

Vukol pricked up the ears.

Elizar solemnly, three times kissed each other with all. Lifted on Vukol’s hands, pricked to him cheeks with a beard, told:

– Masha with Vovka in the city!

The grandmother has a little cry in a voice:

– Darling you are our Elizarushka, a falcon clear, an eagle gray-winged!

The old man grunted, pushed the son-in-law to a table and itself sat down.

In a log hut began to fuss, laid a table. Nastya brought a tin samovar from an outer entrance hall and was engaged in it.

The guest put near himself children. Developed a small parcel: there were painted pictures, several brand new basten books and one big.

– With mail reached – he told – yes nearly went astray, strayed a little bit, here and were late!

– Where you there, in Siberia, lived? – gloomy the grandfather asked.

– In the city of Kolymi… Only a rank that the city, and actually – a hole! Solitude, game, deficiency!. But, by the way, grew roots, we see – and in Siberia good people are.

The grandmother sobbed.

– Everything эфто left because of us, because of our village – the grandfather noticed – because of the earth! The landowner on “conclusion” brought us here and deprived of the earth! you suffered for the earth!

Vukol attentively listened attentively to the father’s conversation with the grandfather, understood badly, but intuition caught that all this has some communication with a half-forgotten trip. Suddenly pulled it to the father, взлез to it on knees.

– Aha! – the father laughed – you will go with me to the city to mother? and?

Vukol stretched to his ear and in a whisper reported in confidence:

– I will go!

Seniors long spoke about life in exile, about for what his parents got there, but a lot of things seemed unclear. Vukol decided to choose a moment when the grandfather is not for inquiries. He listened and kept the eyes glued from the father: for long time this image grew dull in his memory. Now Vukol with curiosity and pride admired still the young, talkative and attractive man. Its exterior which is almost forgotten by Vukol seemed very beautiful. The hair which grew in exile almost to shoulders were cast away back, opening a big clean forehead; the thin nose – with a small hump, eyes – cheerful, derisive, a beard of pure gold, curls locks. Absolutely to the man it is not similar. In all bearing – daring. It was joyful to watch Vukola at him.

– Books what for? – the grandfather grinned. – We are illiterate, not about us pisano!

– In Siberia kind people educated! – Elizar objected. – And these took for children! From there is nothing to do and you will listen!

The grandfather took the big book, carefully developed it on a table and slowly began to overturn sheets hardened fingers. Long with surprise and bewilderment looked at the opened page speckled by ranks of black signs, mysterious for it, on white paper.

– What you look? – quietly the grandmother grinned. – Chitaka!

– Knowledge! – the grandfather told. – About what pisano?.

– Yes you and head over heels hold the book! – the son-in-law noticed.

– To it all one! – Yafim grinned.

– This is Paulson, the book for general reading! There is a story about Englishman Franklin who opened why there is a thunder and a lightning, and many other things about science! Is about Fulton who launched the first steamship!

– See you! – the grandfather told. – Bat, Ilya prophet rattles, on the sky goes!

– Fairy tales! The science everything learned that it to what happens in the nature…

The grandfather shook the head.

– And god? You Nanyukhatsya, it is visible, in only three years! And here to me everything is uniform: I and in церкву Nicoli do not go – far, by the Lower Farms, she! Old women of an efta of a prayer invented!. God willing a dozhdichka, here and thanks to it, to Christians from it more is necessary nothing!.

Elizar shook curls, looked at the father-in-law crafty:

– God? what god? Who saw it?

There came awkward silence. The grandfather frowned.

– Yes you what, Elizar, you joke, perhaps?

The guest laughed.

– Of course, I joke! I like to test people as they think!

– Ooh, you napuzhat us, Elizar Grigorich! – with a silent snicker the grandmother told. – That it, vospod!

– God as reason of the Universe, maybe, also is – Elizar pompously – only not such as it on icons we, icon painters, write told!

He looked at old icons of a bozhnitsa where in the center there was an ugly woman with the baby on hands, above rushed on two white fiery horses harnessed in the flaring chariot, the prophet Ilya with the fluttering white beard.

– Here though to take this icon: from the writing it is known that Maria was the surprising beauty, and icon painters write her so that surely ugly was!. I in books read that in our veins blood consists of the slightest balls which with the naked eye even cannot be distinguished! – Elizar led round all a severe look. – And what, if these stars, both planets, and the sun which is the same star, as well as other stars, an essence only balls which float in veins of very big such giant at whom all our Universe is, maybe, only in one blood ball? What if god such? If our globe – only a blood ball in his veins? Where the end to these stars which we see at the night in the sky? Present edge of the Universe – and behind edge that? Will tell, emptiness? And behind emptiness that? There is no end of the Universe because the incalculable number of the star worlds arise again instead of those to which there came the end. It is infinity and eternity! The nature is and there is god! The Universe has neither end, nor the beginning!

The beard of the grandfather began to move, hiding a smile.

– Кака́ piece? and? – unexpectedly he told, addressing all and nodding on Elizar. – Sly fellow! it will get that mind for reason comes!

Nastya put a samovar on a table, placed tea cups. The grandmother brought snack.

Children were given on a cup of tea, and they drank it, sniffing and bending to a saucer not to spill. In the house of the grandfather tea was had seldom: only in solemn occasions when there were guests or on big holidays. Both boys with pleasure felt the aroma proceeding from tea together with steam and in it there was the main pleasure. The laurels frowningly attentively considered the new person.

– What case with me was! – there began Elizar, removing the emptied cup. – We stopped to spend the night at one man. And they had an old woman the patient, lies on the furnace. I ask what is with it? “Yes, speak, not by the night be told, frenzied as will roll on it – though from a log hut run, the passion to look! fights, beats, foam from a mouth! Here and now not in: it is necessary to remove it from the furnace, on a bed to put! Make favor if you are able, read before image ‘yes god will revive’! Pomogat, знамо, it to us!” I speak: why to read? I it and so to a sym! the old woman is sick, ledashchy. Got to it on the furnace, took her by hands, so you will not believe, such force at the old woman appeared – I can do nothing. And a sileshka at me in hands, you know, is. Beats off! I grasped it by hands, so she canines to me seized a hand, till it bleeds bit! What to do? Gave up. Tell house: this is a demon in it, only a prayer and it is possible to expel him. Well, there were I before icons, began to read. And it to me from the furnace: bya-bya-bya! Angrily it is so teased, eyes as coals! I got off, but continued to read what only under language turned up, even “Down the mother across Volga” read. And it though imitates, but more and more quietly yes is more silent. At last, it was tumbled down and fell asleep. Here its house removed. As dead: the head hung, hands as a lash, hears nothing and does not feel. Laid it. Speak: “Thank God, Christ will save those, helped out!. Now about one half a day will oversleep, and will rise healthy and will remember nothing, you expelled a demon from it!” In my opinion, klikusha it! A sincere disease such, and they trust in a demon!.

– And how not to trust? – all family was surprised with chorus.

– Here to one molodukha of snakes flew! – with conviction Nastya declared. – All saw! As at night all will fall asleep in a log hut, and rassyptsya over поветью, and then now to it on the furnace the husband her dead is: about the husband she grieved. It is known who grieves, to those and is. Yes does not order to tell anybody: threatens! She long hid and strike from the people you will hide? People see: кажню night over their log hut sparks is scattered a dragon. Stuck to it, confessed. Night came, it shivers everything, is afraid of it. Is – gro-oznay! – “You пошто told?”, and well to pinch! in bruises made all body by it. Threatens: prick you will tell people – with a braid I will come! About half a year flew, before tender was, and here terrible became. Istayala it, as a wax candle, in what soul… Also it came – with a braid! Yes in the afternoon! all houses were. Nobody zrit it, and she one sees! Threw the arms round the father a neck: “The father, close! wants to hit me with a braid!” The father embraced her, to close. Here all on a log hut rush about, wave what got that to strike a dragon, and nothing leaves: it invisible and winged, under a ceiling curls, she shouts to the father: “The father, on you he threatened! Wants to stick into a shoulder with a braid!” Here at the old man now the hand hung. The daughter – dead fell! So it took out soul from it and carried away. And the father on a hand, on a thumb, had a tiny black wound and everything hurts, all not to heal. They to healers, they to fortune-tellers – to help nothing, никаке́ slanders! Integral year was ill. Yes, thanks, some passerby prisovetovat – it is visible from such that knew! – fresh blood from black chicken to primachivat with a special prayer and it is better to stick. Well also began to hem a finger gradually. The father of a dream lost at night: all will lay down on the furnace, and to it Dunya, the dead woman, seems, especially in the winter when a blizzard outside…

For a minute all became silent.

Splinter, crackling, flashed, grew dull, dropping the hissing pieces of coal in water.

The samovar a thin voice sang the plaintive song. The gray cat jumped off from the furnace and began to play on a floor a grandmother’s ball. Behind a window wind rustled, from time to time throwing snow dust into frozen windows.

– Shto – the grandfather meditatively muttered, stroking a beard – эфто all know. Not in one our village, and esteem everywhere, on all peasantry, to happen. Itself did not see, more and more women stir… a mozh, “it” dvistitelno… that… to fly at night?