Potemkin's grandmother

Dedicated to Ivan Khrenov

In the wilderness, right in the middle of Russia, in a certain departure village, consisting mainly of the main street, a cataclysm burst out. Its scale was purely local, and therefore he did not fall into the news feeds, nor on the pages of a large press, or on the TV. Either through the village, or by him, by rail, large people should have passed: the church hierarch of a tall dignity and the regional chiefs accompanying him. Since our heroine never saw this event, we will not touch him either.

As A. S. Pushkin wrote, "Until then, everything is good, decent ..."

But I must say that the village was old, poor, and even this main street looked rather boring and could inspire melancholy, counterproductive thoughts on the carriageways. The local authorities, who at all times are supposed to be not so much seven spans in the forehead, but a guessing and nimble, caught a hint of a regional Olympus that this circumstance should somehow be corrected. And, pleased that his confusion is in perfect order, rushed to show agility. The whole street (that is, you understand, of course, all the facades of the houses on it) was ordered to be sheathed with siding.

And she lived on this street in this village of an old grandmother. How much lived - this is a passport to watch, but we are not a police (I apologize, not the police), and how to call it is also not important, especially since after what happened, she herself recalls with some difficulty, what her name is. She managed to survive the Great War, and two hunger, and the cult of personality, and voluntarism, and perestroika, and default, and much more, so that all this began to slowly interfere and get confused in her old head. Over the years, however, she had a secret hope that, more than aspirations, she would still give her their days calmly, in her house, also breathing in the incense. Now some kind of modernization has appeared, but the grandmother was not particularly afraid of her: life experience told her that it would pass.

It will pass, but you never know if you are.

Thus terrible sunny morning burst into her yard, without knocking and not shouting, somewhat rags of young men in brand new specialists and silently and busily began to bypass, inspect and even feel the house. On the dog that flew out of the booth, they barked “psho-al!”, And the top, so fearless in his youth, suddenly sat down, grunting with a chain, and thought. The grandmother, not letting go of the door hand, because she weakened in her knees, leaned on the porch and asked with someone else's voice: “What are you, guys ... why are you? ..”

They did not pay attention to her, and one man, gently pushing the grandmother, like a dry twig from the road, stomped into the house. There he examined the facade wall from the inside, knocked on it with a bent finger and yelled out the open window: “Consult the car! It seems - he will withstand the Halup, it will not fall. ”

The grandmother was after him, but with half a way wrapped, deciding to run to the neighbors, to call for help. By this moment, she no longer doubted that these men were the very racketeers that they talked about on TV about so much, and decided that she would not sign anything and would not just give her home, let her be killed better and thrown into a former collective farm pond. However, she did not run anywhere, but felt that, on the contrary, she would now have to lie down and drink something cold. “Do not bother, grandmother, go for a walk in the garden, and without you there is a little bad,” the man said irritably, stumbled upon her. She handed it back and found a bed behind her.

She perceived the further fragments, as through the worried pussy. It seems that some other man came in in a good city suit, for some reason examined the ceiling and asked how to get into the attic. Without waiting for an answer, he carefully looked at the grandmother and went out. They stuck hammers, howled either a drill or a “monkey”, but as if from afar, and further and further ...

She came to her senses already in the district hospital. The doctor, examining her, sternly said: “What are you, mother, huh? The metropolitan father will go past your windows, is it interesting for him to admire your collapse? She is better done, but she take it and a break. ” But for some reason, she felt better from these words, and she admitted quietly and guiltily: "I, I, the doctor." “Well, I was frightened ... Well, nothing, you will rest here from us, you will heal and return home as new.”

And indeed, they healed her, and she feels almost no worse than the previous one, only with memory it became very bad, and her left hand does not always obey, so what years are!

The farm was also not injured, thanks to the neighbors, only the rug -knitted, patchwork, disappeared. Almost new, and for ten years he was not fulfilled. But the author, taking advantage of the primordial right of omniscience within his work, may tell anyone that it is interesting that the roller has not gone anywhere and soon Babkin, the lay roof, will find it in the attic, under the auditory window, along with a pair of bulls from expensive cigarettes. And how and why he got there - it’s not our mind.

So a small, nobody in the world, the cataclysm is not seen, could be said, without sacrifices, at least among the civilian population. And leaving in the evenings to sit on a bench, the grandmother, along with the neighbors, laughs at the station workers who scare them: “Here they will come and put back your entire siding to Eraren Fene. See and will be. " But who needs him now, Bauschy? As if in the state of Siding is not enough. And there will be enough for modernization, and it will still remain.

Valery Zhelyabovsky