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