Shackles

– 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!