Shackles. S. Skitalec
a workbench the iron hammer on the short handle and with the face distorted by rage very much hit Elizar with the hammer in a temple. The blow of a drunk hand was incorrect, Elizar otkachnutsya instinctively and resisted standing though on the person its wide stream blood rushed. Drunk, at most own blow, fell, but immediately jumped and with a roar rushed on Elizar covered with blood again.
Then the modeller, being protected, lifted a heavy oak bar of the jointer plane in a hand and, appear, slightly only touched them Andrey’s forehead.
That was unexpectedly burst backwards and заскреб by legs.
Only here the audience ran up.
Elizar, pale as a cloth, with the lowered jointer plane in a hand, was motionless, frightened and amazed. The blood beating from a temple filled in to it a face and a shoulder of a shirt.
Andrey last time bryknut legs in the grounded boots, shuddered all over and calmed down. Terribly blown up bruise covered a half of his forehead over the left eye.
– Killed! – Elizar whispered, dropping the jointer plane. In eyes darkened. Hands and legs weakened. For a minute he fainted, but regained consciousness soon, having felt the wet towel which quickly reddened from blood on the head.
At this time in the doorway Vukol with a food small knot appeared.
The boy stopped, without understanding that he happened and that the red turban on the father’s head means. His face twitched.
Andrey moved.
– Breathes! – the elderly worker, склонясь over him told. – Mozhe, оту́ dobet! waters it is necessary! To cast!
The watchman ran behind water.
To Andrey directly from a bucket poured over the head. He poorly moaned.
All joyfully began to make a racket.
– It is live! not to death! it oklematsya! Means, and from us to the answer will not be! In hospital, and about a fight – mum’s the word! so our way!
Andrey lay unconscious. His breast hard rose. From time to time weak plaintive groans escaped from it. The left side of a forehead and person was blown up, absolutely closing an eye.
– Christened! indeed!
– Well and it – it is good that missed, and that would cut out the hammer the head as a pot with Russian cabbage soup!
– And this – flatwise struck with the jointer plane: if an edge – a cover!
Lifted mutilated and incurred on the carrier.
Elizar spoke to the son:
– Nothing, the sonny, worry… My head – it nothing, will manage… will heal!. now together home we will go!
The elderly worker approached Elizar and told, swinging the head:
– Well, you got off lightly, Elizar! Seem, the guy will survive!
Then stroked a direct goatee with strong streaks of gray and added meditatively:
– Long ago I look at you: good you, the intellectual, correct person, but the goner here in our places! With all the heart I speak: you will serve month – pay off! What people at us – you see. Everyone behind a top, has a knife without Ali’s passports with forgeries, there are which in a jail not once of a sizhivala! Vagrant people, bessemeyny! and the head is not expensive to them and not that others!
* * *
In Zaymishche there was no church: the village belonged to arrival of Petty-bourgeois Farms, and went for seven versts to a mass only for a Trinity there, in the spring when all floor in church was covered with a new-mown fragrant grass, and outside decorated with just cut off branches of birches. Still there went to church on Flora and Monastery or on Ivan Kupava. For a bestial holiday, too in the spring when to the river drove horses, cows, calfs and sheep and all of them humbly stood in water, listening as the priest – in a peaked calotte, hook-nosed, with a long wedge of a beard, similar to the Tatar, coming to Zaymishche three times a year on collecting voluntary donations – served after a mass a prayer in health of canine country friends ashore. Then the whole day guys and maids tried to pour unawares over each other water, ran with buckets from a log hut in a log hut, with laughter pushed stood gaping to the small river, boated on the century oak wood flooded with a high water.
Here everything that the grandmother Anna remembered by a church part: spring, joyful holidays with participation of the nature, the pets, children and youth who were coming to an end by the evening in melodious round dances after which burned down fires, jumped through fire, and in dark spring night till the dawn walked guys with maids, retiring couples: You look – by fall and the village who to whom will transfer matchmakers where wedding feasts are going to feast knew.
Was in these holidays of churchism a little – escaped the remains of cheerful Slavic paganism more. Because also these beautiful forest holidays together with her youth and a spring flood of mighty Volga running between the dense woods to which nobody knew neither the end, nor edge were remembered by it. It was possible to get lost in these Middle Volga woods forever. In them still there lived the laughing loudly wood goblins, and in the forest rivers and lakes the mermaid’s beauties bathed. In spring sunny days the invisible cuckoo cuckooed-cried about the abandoned children, and girls long looked for its blue slezk in backwoods.
Nearly sixteen years married Anyuta to the athlete Matvei, and life passed in hard country work, without coming off mother earth. It was life of patriarchal country way, in a kurny smoky log hut, and still it was fanned by unconscious poetry of agricultural work. The concept about church god was vague – in the form of as if sprinkler of shoots on green country fields. The grandmother trusted in the Kingdom of Heaven, and a serious obstacle for eternal life in heaven only non-compliance with church formalities seemed it, and the main misfortune was – to die, not поговев the Lent, without having received remission of the collected sins and not “причастившись” in church.
Having remembered it after fifty years of absolute indifference to the priest and church, the grandmother on a case of death decided to correct this omission which came from its eternal employment and remoteness of the church building from the village of Zaymishche.
Now it was possible to go to the city, to stay for a while to the daughter and the son-in-law and there to pogovet. The grandmother was not going to die yet, but decided to use an opportunity.
At the same time also other purpose of a travel joined: in the city the grandmother was not since young years, overcame thoughts that life changed, the kurny log hut is replaced new, burning “in a white way” long ago, the splinter was replaced by a lamp, pestryadinny sundresses – print dresses, across Volga steamships went, somewhere the chugunka close goes, and illiterate parents find necessary to send children to school. Also the grandmother solved: time in the city there live the family, close now whether not to send Lavrusha to school? Gramotya Elizar by all means by a scientific part will let the Vukol.
As a result of her such reflections Yafim Chalku in sledge-rozvalni harnessed and carried mother and the brother through winter Volga. Hardly found Kolchina’s house and a svetelka in the yard, asked for the yard and, having left a raspryazhenny horse under a canopy, got on a ladder.
They with surprise were met by Masha and six-year-old Vovka with traces of the begun to live scrofula on a forehead. Elizar did not return from the plant yet, and Vukol incurred to it a lunch.
The meeting was joyful. From congenital country good manners Masha told nothing about the hard work Elizara at the plant, about fragility of its situation. She sincerely rejoiced, having learned that mother came on week to fast, told her, as the church is close, namely – in the semibasement floor of a tower on a market, no distance from Kolchina’s house.