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