Translated material
About the cottage
By the way, I was born in 1951 in Moscow, and there I went to school No. 59 in Starokonyunny Lane. I lived well in the city, but happiness came in the summer. After a cold, crown, spring vitamin deficiency and school drill - three months of sun and freedom. Nowhere in the world there are no such long holidays for which the sciences taught to you are forgotten so firmly. But this time gave a feeling of such great happiness, which also could not be found anywhere. For me, those summer months seem completely separate from another life. They sculpt to each other, plused during the years of native joy, not spoiled by autumn slush and winter themes.
In the last days of May, we went to the country for three full months, and for a long time I did not know how to breathe in the city in the summer. At the dacha, the topic came late, but there was no slush at all. Ten years in a row, my mother rented half the house on the 2nd summer cottage street, on the very outskirts of Istra. Total: 30 months, two and a half years of the endless summer, who had ripped off the skin from me: his nose and ears were pounded, knees were strayed, and elbows were ripped off. Local residents, like tropical natives, never wore ear caps and did not put on mittens.
They gathered at the cottage ahead of time and thoroughly, grandmother knitted bales from the sheets, stuffed them with a soft rag. Bags burst from coarse sugar sand for cooking jam; buckwheat requiring busting; gross flour; precious cans of stew in the remnants of army machine oil; rough brown soap, looking at which you were afraid to get dirty. The provincial supply was very inferior to the metropolitan - going on a trip, one should prepare for Autarchy.
What else is a summer resident required? Pile for washing, swimming trough, leaking the washstand, brown night pot with repulsed enamel, banging kerosene. And, of course, the samovar, taken out with his mother’s homeland - the city of Mikhailov, under Ryazan. The samovar burned in the sun with all his dents, he was drowned with dry cones, which I dragged from the forest. My grandmother taught me to drink tea saturated with smoke from a saucer painted with red flowers on weight - putting it on five bent fingers of the right hand. The hand trembled, the saucer hesitated, the liquid was worried, emerged from the shores, spilled onto the oilcloth, hotly dice on bare knees. I put a saucer on the plane, pulled the molten tar with my lips.
What else does a summer resident need there? And at least the feather bed and the shaky Viennese chair. The owners are non -proceeding people, they would be happy to provide us with the right things, but each important life device was in them in a single copy. As, however, with us.
For the export of the belongings, a full -fledged truck was required. After the country things were compacted in the back, the adults themselves climbed there. The driver Uncle Fedya with pleasure and peculiar gallantry planted soft women, but I climbed into a springy dermatin seat next to the driver, stroked captured levers. Then he twisted the handle on the door to the lower stop, the glass hid in a furry gap. They rushed with a tight breeze, refrigerating, cut, a summer head, a speedometer arrow trembled nerd near 60. Roast huts flickered, greening fields fascinated by various cow's skins floated. The sky remained in place and the clouds moved, playing with it an endless party according to the rules known only to him - a party in which the sky did not have a worthy partner. Never again driving a car gave me so much happiness.
And here is the Istra: the area with painted silver -colored lilliputic Ilyich on the absurdly high pedestal - the right hand caught on the lapel, the left - in a deep trouser pocket. And here is the Uritsky Street, a flashed cinema with lines, with films hidden in magical darkness and, finally, the 2nd country street, the branch of which was blurred in a meadow. It was not possible to turn around in the allery, they stopped backwards, the heavy engine growled on the potholes, scaring butterflies, chickens and calling barefoot friends. On the border of the alley with a meadow, we shot half of the plastered yellowish house - a porch heated with the sun, glazed with multi -caliber glasses of the terrace, a kitchenette with a holly kerosene, two rooms. I slept in that window of which went out into the master's flower garden.
The luxurious peonies were pushed heavy heads to the hearty ground, fresh in the night through the open shutters fragrant almost invisible Matiols, and cracked about jasmine. The owner of the house, Aunt Anya, wrapped the weeds quickly, linked robe, exposing the folded meat. Her mother, Maria Trofimovna, was sitting on a bench, her dry old age smelled of a mixture of acid sheepskin and raw land. She confidentially told me how the Virgin Mary was to her every night, and I felt uneasy, although her cheeks, similar to baked apples, were pushed into a sweet smile and did not promise the thin one. She loved to report the dead, wore a black katsaveika, from which her fingers with keratinized nails stuck out with peasant work.
I slept on a creaky bed with a sagging metal net, on which a weighty feather bed, dutifully accepting my bone body, filed. For my warm complaisance, I really liked her. Having hiding with the head with a half -wool blanket of an incomprehensible color and breathing in the gutters, you provided yourself with a slight oxygen starvation, in which tomorrow seemed to be especially bright. Waking up under the sun's ray aimed at the eye, I turned to the rug on the wall and wandered around his confusing patterns for a long time until I found a way out of the maze, who led to the meadow.
According to the nomadic meadow, the shepherd’s early remote morning, terribly clicking on a long whip, drove off a herd of cows, smeared the grass with weighty “cakes”. I ran to one of these cows in the evening with Bidon, on the way back, having sipped a foamed fresh milk over the edge. In the late half -half a hitch in gray apples, from which mysterious steam swirled in the meadow in the meadow. The rest of the time the meadow was ours. The towns loudly scattered through the close universe, the May beetles, stuck in the beetle, stuck in the grass in the grass. From all over, I crashed into the tightly clasped hands of my friends and bounced into raw grass. I could not break these chains.
They drove to football to complete exhaustion. Here I lead the ball jumping on the bumps and already anticipating a cannon blow on the gates of non -stroke poles, here the right knee cup pops up to the side, but the rage is great and, without stopping, at the full previous move, with a light blow of my palm, I put it in place and continue the intricate dribbling until the victorious completion of the attack.
A powerful hum of "sleep!" He seized you from the meadow, immediately applied to the pillow, strangling my heart noise. The feather climbed into the mouth, but did not interfere with sleep. The dream was strong, the night pot was not required.
They played in the meadow and the ass. This action, apparently, requires explanation - I do not know a single person who would hear about him. Probably the game was not widely distributed because of its name.
The Asso is a meadow game, it requires dry weather. The driver stands with the ball in their hands, the rest sit on the grass, resting their hands on the ground behind their backs and half -proclaiming legs. The task of the driver: to postpone any part of your body with the ball - with the exception of the feet and lower legs, with which the abandoned ball fights off. The ass is especially carefully guarded - hitting it was considered much more offensive than in the head. As for the ball, it is advisable to beat him away, so that the widom does not catch him on the fly - otherwise you will have to drive you already. If you decided to move away from the widen, then you need to do it at a frantic pace, pushing the globe with your hands and hands so that the asshole rinses back. It was allowed to tear off the ass from the ground for a while, that is, it was vulgar to drape the rules, but if Voda has time to touch the grass with the fingers of the grass during your flight, then you disappeared again. The game seems to be unpretentious, but emotional. However, then any game was accompanied by such emotions that are inaccessible to adults.
The air over our green meadow rang from lightweight perky screams, but an adult football fun at a nearby stadium, trampled by terrible studded boots, resembled a collision of wordless bulls of blood. The bulls sniffed and oozed with exciting frenzy.
Watching their reckless battle, the conquerors of the world recently hurrying from the tanks protruded the kadks, forgot about the injuries and, with knowledge of the matter, applied life experience to local realities: “But the German will not run after such a ball, the scoundrel, that he will not catch up, the German is neat.” In their words, hopelessness and complete contentment of their national character were heard.
All people were giants.
They smoked cigarettes
And the clouds swirling with armpits.
Undressing to the panties,
They kicked the ball of the earth. At the seams
The boundaries of Europe and Asia were cracking.
They put bricks, spat in the palms.
Nobody dropped corns. Them
proud. Ohala. The foam fell from the lips.
Stalin died. Having hung your ears
They were silent. I grew up under their mother.
They died, but won.
Their evolution was for me for the future.
Stocking patience, swallowed
horror. The frog puffed up the frog.
Truck toy roller
back and forth. Cube tower
On children's sand. He was a giant.
We lived well, but local boys lived even worse, many of them lived in a long dull hut. The boards rotted and moved, exposing the blue calculi of slag. In the interval between football and the “asses” the boys were kicked: “Take out!” And I ran home, lifted the heavy cover of the chest with Moscow supplies, inaudibly grabbed drying drying. Once the left hand did not hold the lid, she banged the phalanges of the right, my grandmother had to console me and put up supplies to the wait for the children. They were always hungry and desperate. They did not know the price of life - neither their own nor yours. Suddenly, for no reason, they decided to arrange a duel on cobblestones. Red Borka threw a weighty stone into me. As soon as he waved, and the stone had not yet managed to separate from his palm, I immediately realized that he was gone. The distance was fair, the logs were semi -confused, and I could simply sit down, but I stood, as if hypnotized, in place, observing the unhurried flight of a stone that seemed terribly long. I guessed the trajectory correctly, the stone really hit me in my blood splashing. Then I realized what it was - fate.
Borka brutally torn his father, but this did not spoil our good relations, I further sailed with him on a raft along the pond, located on the way to the river. You push off the sixth from the bottom, raise the turbidity, disturb the snow -white water lilies, slippery water shimmers through the cold feet ... with a flexible fishing rod and wide nonsense, Borka caught in that pond of native crucian carp. He always wanted to eat.
Immediately after moving to the country, my grandmother went to the bazaar and bought a living chicken there with anxious and empty eyes. Grandmother chose the chicken for a long time, felt her stomachs until she stopped at some kind of impressive individual. "This is a real layout!" She exclaimed, proud of her perspicacity in advance. And, I must admit, all her hens rushed excellently. The chicken wandered around our alley, pecked the pebbles, lay in the dust, and the grandmother fed her millet in exchange for warm eggs, which she left in the grass with victorious quarrels. Then the grandmother was in a hurry with all her legs to her, picked up the egg, broke the stupid part with a spoon, planted and gave me a drink. The squirrel flowed out by itself, the yolk required tipping up - in the same way, adult uncles overturned a glass of vodka. How easy it is to guess, the skill in overturning the eggs came in handy in adulthood. I loved these eggs, warm as Baba Anya herself.
One trouble: at the end of August, we moved off the cottage, the chicken had to be cut. Nobody was taken in our family for an ax. And then they called a neighbor - Uncle Tolya, the owner of the only brick house in the district. What he earned on a living, I do not know, his beveled forehead was like boxing, and his palms were so huge that even adults avoided greeting his hand. Perhaps he worked as a bulldozer, but I simultaneously admit that he was the main Istra lumberjack. His burly wife with an amazingly white jasmine skin served in Sberkass and returned home with puffy bags, as if working in a dining room or store. It seemed to me that in bags and adhesions she was carrying money, but it was a fantasy that developed under the influence of random reading. Probably, it was a wife’s cultural initiative - to put a bookcase with a full series of “adventure library” from 20 volumes - a dream of any boy. Maybe in her immense bags she dragged her? It is unlikely that Uncle Tolya used the "library." As well as the daughters Nadia with Larisa - twins who spent all their time on a swing in the garden. Their chubby legs, under the methodical creak of a swing, lended up the happy air, which in response eagerly bubbled their doll dresses. The owners of the "library" did not grow greedy, and I got the copies of the "heir from Calcutta", "Dagger", "The Last of the Mogican", etc., not read by anyone, etc.
On the forearm of Dadi Toli, some unimaginable diva was pricked, reminiscent of a bluish lady of peak with appetizing naked legs. Uncle Tolya sometimes played football with us, the fins were unfamiliar to him, he rushed exclusively in a straight line, demolished the boys in the path and looked like a furious steam locomotive. Uncle Tolya was not reckoned with our tender age, and if the ball after his terrible power of impact “Por” fell into the goalkeeper who did not have time to dodge, he fell under the widow, like a target in a dash. After Uncle Tolina, the towns with a dry wooden ringing scattered from the world.
Called by his grandmother on an important murderous business, Uncle Tolya readily grabbed the huge brilliant ax, threw the chicken into the deck, ended up with one short and terrible wave. He also deftly chopped firewood. He did everything deftly and without fail. It is possible that the executioner would also come out of it well. The head of the chicken dutifully froze on the deck, scarlet blood whipped, my eyes were covered with tears. Grandmother, however, too.
After her grandmother was especially fond of one chicken, she gave her the name of Klepe - shortened from Cleopatra. Onomastics is powerless before finding out the hidden causes of such an amazing nomination. In any case, a bird with a name was no longer suitable for the broth, and we left it to the owners for the winter with a request not to take their lives. As a reward, grandmother bought them millet to feed them. The hosts held back the word, and the next summer we found in Klyup in good health - she avoided our stupid embrace, but she regularly clutched and rushed.
Alexander Meshcheryakov