Shackles

The linen tent was built such big and high that men went under a tent without being bent – but after all the tent did not reach the sky.

– It only this way, wait a moment! – surely Pashka told – and then isdelat another. That will already be to the sky!

Women made fire before a tent and began to cook porridge. All mudflows on a koshma in the middle of a tent and a fir-tree crude a honey agaric with bread.

Then ate hot potato, supped millet soup. While had supper, there came dark spring night with the rare large stars which acted in dense black height.

After a dinner all went to bed on a koshma a vpovalka. Vukola with Pashka put nearby, covered with an odorous tanned sheepskin coat.

– Groom with the bride! young people! – men joked.

– Sleep, good luck! – the grandmother told.

But they were whispered for a long time, arguing among themselves. In a tent opening stars from above looked.

– Nebushko is a God’s tent! – his girlfriend whispered Vukola, embracing him for a neck thin hands – and stars – gvozdochka gold, the sky is beaten by them that did not fall – a baushka of a bayal – really, I do not lie, burst eyes! And above god sits: it does a rain, a thunder and to a molonye and if Ilya prophet on a nebushka goes by a fiery tarantass – a baushka of a bayal – that time the thunder rattles and molonye happens! And in the sky there are andela: hands at them of a netuta, only heads and wings, as at birdies – a baushka of a bayal!

Vukol with full confidence listened Pashkina to stories and willingly believed that about a barn to them the brownie met, in the sky there lives god, and the asterisks shining highly seemed svetlenky heads of angels which as if moved in dark height with the bird’s wings.

Woke up from noise and a dialect. In the village often and cheerfully rang a big bell.

All were standing. Women hasty put on, men harnessed a horse in the cart. In the sky stars still glimmered, in a section of a tent dark night looked. It was cold. All left a tent, is disturbing speaking about something and not listening to each other. Having joined hands, children ran out after them.

Over the village all sky was poured by golden-scarlet light. From a distance noise of many human voices reached. The alarm stopped, again flew chaotic blows, merging in continuous copper howl. To brightly lit sky from the earth the dense cloud seeming white as steam floated. In the flaring sky something cracked.

– Ah-ah! – cried Pasha and suddenly began to cry, began to call the grandmother, without releasing Vukol’s hand.

– Baushka, небушко burns!

– Ah you, vospod! – the old woman threw up the hands – that with you to do! Oferova burn! Obliquely from us! To be dragged we go, and you could not be put! The maid with you will remain! The house at Oferov burns, troubles as!

– Why, the baushka, burns?

The guy, vzvazzhivy horse, with irritation grumbled:

– Rich they, devils!

II

Vukol sat on a floor of a timbered log hut at legs of the old woman dressed in a blue sundress with tin buttons. Near it there was his friend and the uncle – Lavrusha. The grandmother spun yarn, twisting the buzzing spindle; beside it the daughter – Nastya, the young girl spun it. On a heavy pine bench at a table the grandfather with a long gray-haired beard spun a bast shoe, and on the horseman the elder brother of Lavrusha – the adult guy Yafim – made a fishing tackle of a cane. The winter decline shone in icy glasses, giving them a reddish shade.

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?