《The Little Black Sheep》


 Preface

    "In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences."


    Robert G. Ingersoll


    When my entire family died within two years-my mother, father, and sister-I heard a sympathetic whisper behind me that I would be next.


    The people around me watched me with barely concealed curiosity.


    I could read fear and pity and impatience in their eyes: Well? How much longer do we have to wait?


    When all reasonable, in their opinion, deadlines had passed, I again became the subject of gossip.


    But this time the gossip was accompanied by stares. Why did everyone die and I didn''t?


    Am I a witch? Isn''t it dangerous to communicate with me?


    Some voiced their doubts behind my back, while others said outright that something was wrong with my family.


    They even said that what was wrong was a generic curse.


    Oh, that generic curse!


    It''s easier to blame all the problems and misfortunes on that. It''s not my fault, it''s my great-grandmother who did something wrong a long time ago, and now I''m paying for her sins.


    Of course, there is some truth in these words, and we do have to deal with the consequences of our ancestors'' actions (or inactions) by paying old debts.


    But if by curse we mean hereditary behavior, where from generation to generation members of a family repeat the fate of their predecessors, making the same mistakes without learning from them, then I would agree.


    In my opinion, there is nothing mystical about the "generic curse.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Men in such families drink, go to jail, commit suicide, or die foolishly. Often, all these misfortunes are caused by each other.


    Women simply accept their fate and carry their cross, and when they can no longer bear it, they get divorced or become widows.


    Can we expect a breakthrough from children who have seen no other model of behavior? Yes.


    But we must realize that many of them will unconsciously repeat the path of their parents.


    It is difficult to turn away from the well-trodden path. Mere desire is not enough, you need to seriously dig into yourself, your family history, pull out a lot of garbage, junk and other unpleasant things, and having realized all this, do what no one in the family before you has done - allow yourself to be yourself, to live as you want - in your own way.


    My ancestors never lived their own lives.


    The tyrants did nothing but stick their noses into other people''s business and were always dissatisfied with everyone. The victims were afraid of offending, upsetting, or disappointing anyone. Elders dominated the young, parents dominated their children, and wives dominated their husbands. No one considered the feelings and desires of others.


    It was easier to intimidate, pressure, or even trample on the "free thinker" in order not to shake and collapse the established system once and for all: you should live the way your grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived.


    But it is possible to live differently! But not everyone in his right mind can dare to do so.


    It is like coming out of the "eye" of a hurricane. Inside the hurricane, it is always calm and quiet, but as soon as you leave the imaginary shelter, you encounter a squall.


    It''s scary to be the first to step into the unknown. Who knows what awaits you there, if anything at all. You can''t live the old way, but you don''t know the new ways yet, so you look for guarantees that someone will support you, encourage you, say: "Go ahead, don''t be afraid! You were born under a lucky star!" But there are no guarantees.


    Can magic help you along the way?


    That depends on what you mean by it. Have you ever noticed that when things go well in life, we tend to praise ourselves, and when things go badly, we tend to blame others?


    We believe that it is "spoilage", "the evil eye", that "it is written in our destiny to suffer" - and only some magic ritual can save us. Meanwhile, magic is not outside, it is inside us.


    Freedom of choice, a sincere desire for change, a belief in ourselves - this is what opens doors and leads to the fulfillment of any dream, even the most daring.


    But what about the generic curse? Does it exist? Can it be mitigated or avoided?


    To find out, I had to delve into my past, unravel the complex tangle of family relationships, look at them in a new way. That''s how this book was born.


    To be continued

 Chapter 1

    The Bell


    - I came home from work and heard the bell. Dunya has died," my grandfather told my grandmother in the kitchen.


    I was six years old, and suddenly I had a clear image of my old aunt Dunya''s soul as a cloud flying out of the window and ringing a silver bell - so that the relatives could hear the ringing and immediately guess what had happened.


    Yes, in my childhood I had a rich imagination, but since then I''ve only imagined someone dying that way - with a bell.


    But I had not yet heard those bells myself...


    Suitcase


    Aunt Dunya was a relative of my grandfather - his aunt, his father''s own sister. She was about eighty years old, maybe more. She was very pious - she had never married in her life, wore black dresses to her heels, and lived in the women''s convent at Kamennoe Zadelje in Udmurtia, Russia.


    She had no relatives except my grandfather.


    My grandfather, a staunch atheist and communist, thought that Aunt Dunya was a bit "crazy"; he believed that a normal person would not voluntarily lock herself in a convent cell.


    So when the old woman became ill, it was my grandmother, not my grandfather, who took care of her.


    Aunt Dunya came to die in the town of Glazov, in a tiny room in a communal house.


    Every morning my grandmother took me by the hand and we went to my aunt''s house.


    The furnishings in the room were also monastic, in keeping with the owner.


    In one corner was a chest of drawers with a creaking door without a mirror. By the window was a kitchen table and chairs with straight, high backs upholstered in brown imitation leather. In the far corner was an iron bed on which Aunt Dunya lay dying. From under the bed peeked the edge of a worn suitcase with iron clasps and forged corners.


    We had a suitcase at home, too, a leather one with a zipper, brought by my grandmother.


    - Take care of it! - she would say. - My burial clothes are in it.


    - Are you going to die soon? - I was afraid.


    - Everyone dies, my grandmother would simply reply.


    "No, I''ll never die," I thought, but I didn''t say it out loud.


    The suitcase had been gathering dust in our house for years. I walked around it burning with curiosity: what did "burial clothers" mean?


    Maybe there was a Grim Reaper lurking in there?


    If you open it, he''ll jump up and grab your hand!


    Or is there an egg with a needle inside that hides the death of Koshei the Immortal? But Grandma is not Koshei. She''s an ordinary person, so she must have the most ordinary things.


    What do people take with them to the other world? White shoes? A shroud?


    When I couldn''t resist, I unzipped it and looked inside.


    Inside the suitcase, neatly stacked, were handkerchiefs, a nightgown, baize trousers, a chintz scarf of the kind old women tie on their heads, a few towels, and the usual blue house shoes. Nothing interesting.


    Breath of Life


    The first time I thought about the fact that all people are mortal was when I was five years old.


    It was a quiet winter evening, my mother and I were returning home by bus. I was rubbing the frosted window with my mitten, and suddenly I was alarmed, as if struck by lightning: what would happen if my mother died?


    At night, lying in bed, I tried to imagine my life without my parents.


    Who would take me and my sister to the kindergarten, make tea in the morning, pay the rent, calculate the kilowatts of electricity and write them in the subscription book?


    In spite of my young age, I was very worried about household issues.


    Where to get money? What products to buy in the store? How to fix a leaky faucet, make soup, and preserve cucumbers for the winter? Mom and Dad used to do all these things perfectly well. But what happens when they''re gone?


    I slipped out from under the covers and tiptoed into my parents'' bedroom.


    What if the worst had already happened and they had died in their sleep?


    I listened intently into the darkness, trying to hear their breathing.


    There was a draft from the balcony door across the floor, and my feet were instantly frozen. But I couldn''t leave without making sure my parents were alive. I stood like that for a long time, whimpering and bending one leg and the other under me, but I didn''t dare come any closer. I was afraid.


    Many years later, on a warm May afternoon, I found myself back in that bedroom.


    I stood by the bed and watched my mother''s chest rise faintly under the covers. If she''s breathing, she''s alive. And I walked away, believing everything would be okay. But I was wrong. Soon after I left, the faint breathing stopped forever.


    But right now I don''t know about the future, so I strain my hearing. They seem to be breathing.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Relieved, I run to my room and jump into bed.


    But from that moment on, the fear of losing my family crept into my soul like an infectious disease, wound itself into a serpentine tangle, and lurked there for many, many years.


    Is there life on Mars?


    Once at dinner, my grandfather mentioned that many years ago, American scientists had launched an unmanned rocket called Pioneer into space to find out if there was life on other planets.


    The belated news of the rocket launch excited me terribly.


    I pepper my grandfather with questions: When will Pioneer return to Earth? And if there really are aliens, what are they like? Green, with horns?


    Grandpa waves away:


    - Who cares? We still won''t know.


    - Why not?


    - The rocket will fly in space for a hundred years, maybe two hundred.


    A hundred years - a whole century! Is that a long time or a short time? I''m bending my fingers one by one. Let''s say I live to be a hundred years old. But I don''t think I''ll make it to 200. But what if...


    Oh, I have an idea! Grandma says that dead people don''t disappear anywhere. When they die, they move from their homes to the cemetery. There are whole underground cities in cemeteries. On ordinary days the dead lie quietly and peacefully in their coffins or visit each other, but on memorial days - Radonitsa, Trinity, Ilyin Day - they wait for the living to come and visit them.


    Relatives bring them sweets, apples, pies in baskets. And if the deceased liked to smoke or drink, they take cigarettes and wine - to tip a shot glass on the grave. These are the customs in our country.


    - It''s a sin not to visit your relatives in the cemetery! - my grandmother warned me. - The dead should not feel lonely. Otherwise, they''ll get angry and come to you themselves.


    So I decided that the note about the Pioneer and the Green Men would be brought to me by someone at the cemetery! Even if it''s in the underworld, I''ll find out if there''s life on Mars.


    My head is in the clouds


    I couldn''t imagine for a minute that I was completely dead,


    How is it - I was and then I''m gone? Where am I going? I must be somewhere. If not on the ground, then under the ground. Or even better, in heaven! That''s even more interesting. You can fly, jump from cloud to cloud, do somersaults. Although old people probably don''t want to do somersaults because their bones hurt and their lower backs hurt.


    But what if you could choose the age you want to be? I would choose to be the age I am now. I don''t want to be as old as Aunt Dunya!


    Whenever my grandmother and I visit, I sneak a peek at the old woman''s face: sunken eyes, yellow parchment skin - all wrinkled, a hooked nose poking out from under a black scarf. A real Baba Yaga. I don''t understand why we are visiting her.


    Infidel


    Aunt Dunya''s room is always gloomy. It smells of sour soup, worn rags, and old age. The first thing my grandmother does when she enters the room is to open the curtains and the window.


    Frosty air rushed into the room, the smell of wet snow and stale leaves. Aunt Dunya moved slightly on the bed and asked in a creaky voice:


    - Close it, Luda. It''s cold...


    But my grandmother paid no attention to her pleas. Rolling up her sleeves, she went to the bathroom, fetched a full bucket of water, took a dried rag from the radiator and washed the floor.


    She changed the sheets, boiled some chicken broth on the stove, then lifted Aunt Dunya, covered her with pillows, and began feeding her with a spoon.


    The old woman wrinkled her nose and pressed her bloodless blue lips tightly together. At some point she noticed me, and a fierce anger flashed in her eyes: here she was again!


    When she had the chance, Grandma would put a spoon in the old woman''s mouth, but she would spit out the broth, push the plate away violently, and unleash all her anger on Grandma:


    "You brought me an infidel! - cried Aunt Dusya, shaking her bony fist. - This girl does not belong to our religion. She is a barbarian! Get out of here! Both of you!


    The old woman turned angrily to the wall, and my grandmother sent me to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came back, I climbed onto the windowsill with my feet and pressed my forehead against the cool glass, swallowing tears: why does she treat me like this? What had I done wrong to her? What was wrong if my hair was black and my father''s last name was not Russian?


    Stupid Vovka


    Grandma touches me lightly on the shoulder:


    - Come on, she''s old and sick, she doesn''t know what she''s doing.


    - Yes, it''s not you who''s being insulted! - I snapped at her, jumped from the windowsill and ran out into the hall.


    The neighbor boy, Vovka, was already waiting for me. He was rolling his toy truck on the floor and mumbling:


    - Mom said that if you and your grandma come here again, she''ll tell dad to throw you down the stairs.


    Vovka''s mother, a thin, nervous woman, comes out of the kitchen:


    - I can''t wait for your old woman to die," she hisses, wiping a cup with a towel. - She''s just taking up space. Why bother with her, the room will be ours anyway!


    - She''s going to die, she''s going to die! - Vovka dances next to his mother and shows me his tongue.


    Suddenly I feel unbearably sorry for Aunt Dunya. I imagine what it''s like for her to live alone in a dark room, like a closet with spiders, and even with such harmful neighbors.


    - Fascists! - I scream, grab Vovka''s truck from the floor and smash it against the wall with all my might.


    The truck exploded into small pieces.


    I''m ready to throw my fists at stupid Vovka and his wicked mother, but my grandmother runs out at the noise and hurriedly pushes me into the room.


    I hear Vovka''s booming roar and his mother''s screams coming from the corridor:


    - Crazy! You should pay for this!


    Flowers grow by themselves


    When Aunt Dunya died, the neighbors called my grandfather and dryly told him to come and pick up her things.


    An ordinary phone call - nothing special, but I stubbornly continued to believe in mysterious bells "from the other world". Even then, many years later, when someone close to me died, I always recognized that bell. Alarming, harsh, merciless - not a bell, but a tocsin. It broke my heart and soul. I wanted to hide, to run away, to cover my ears - no, not this!


    Not today! Not now!


    But there was nowhere to run - the phone kept ringing and ringing. So I picked up the phone to hear again what I already knew: "Your mother, father, sister - all dead...".


    ...A simple wooden cross was placed on Aunt Dunya''s grave. She had asked for it before she died. She also asked my grandmother not to plant any flowers, saying that whatever she needed would come to her of its own accord. And it was true - rowan and cherry trees and flowers grew on the grave itself - as neatly as if someone had planted them, tended them, watered them with a watering can.


    And how many wild strawberries there were!


    As time went by, the resentment against Aunt Dunya faded. Or rather, one of my selves understood that it was not worth getting angry with the old woman, but the other one would scratch me with a sharp claw: do you remember?


    The Ring


    One day, when I was about seventeen years old, my grandmother, my sisters and I came to the cemetery. It was Trinity Day. The sun was shining, but the icy wind was blowing through.


    My grandma was cutting last year''s grass with a sickle at Aunt Dunya''s grave. Tanya and Sveta were sitting on a bench, eating mushroom pie and drinking tea from a thermos.


    Suddenly something shone in the grass near the cherry tree. A ring!


    I quickly bent down and put it in my pocket. I stepped aside to take a closer look. It was a ring of pale yellow metal. Someone''s skilful hand had engraved a woman''s profile: a proud chin, thick hair knotted tightly at the back of her head, a hooked nose... Aunt Dunya!


    We had been to Aunt Dunya''s grave more than once, and I could have sworn that the ring had never been there before. Where did it come from? After all, the old woman had no one but us - no relatives, no friends.


    Should I take the ring for myself? Maybe it was a belate gift from Aunt Dunya? Maybe her soul realized that she had been unfair to me and now asked for my forgiveness. But what if it''s not? What if the ring is bewitched and placed here to harm the "infidel"? Maybe Auntie wants to tell me, "What are you doing here? Don''t come to me.


    I remembered that my grandmother always said that we can''t take anything from the cemetery...


    So I carefully lowered the ring into the grass. It''s still there, under the cherry tree.


    And I still don''t know if I did the right thing...


    To be continued

 Chapter 2

    The Ugly Duckling


    Infidel. When I was a child, I didn''t really understand the meaning of this word, but it seemed terribly offensive to me. It was even more offensive to hear a contemptuous "Tatar girl! That''s how the children teased me in the yard.


    When I was six years old, my parents sent me to a pioneer camp for the first time.


    I was the smallest in our group, and the first thing I heard when I got on the bus was:


    - "Oh, we don''t need no niggers here! - The boys in red ties hostilely kicked my suitcase and blocked the aisle: "Negritos ride standing up!"


    After the Pioneer leaders intervened, a seat was found for me, but all the way to camp the boys cursed at me and slapped me on the back.


    Other kids silently averted their eyes and pretended it was none of their business.


    It was 1984. Black-haired and dark-skinned kids like me were a curiosity back then. There were plenty of redheads and blondes, all kinds. Against their background, I was an ugly duckling, an outcast.


    I was excluded from games, chased off the sports fields, shouted at, "Blacks don''t belong here!" I''m not talking about the pokes and cuffs. By the end of the shift, I had almost forgotten my name. Everyone called me only "black" or "negro".


    Alas, on all requests to take me home, my mother persuaded me to "bear with it", and my father advised me to fight back, considering that his daughter able to stand up for herself.


    Unfortunately, I didn''t know how to fight, so I had to endure.


    One day the guys got some black paint. Dipping their palms in the can and trying to smear me on my face, they laughed: "Ugh, from this negro even hands get dirty!"


    It was frustrating to the point of tears. And it is also incomprehensible why the pioneers, singing at the campfire songs about the friendship of nations, in life behave not like comrades, but like pigs.


    Perhaps I was just unlucky, - so I consoled myself - in our squad gathered evil guys, and the color of my hair has nothing to do with it.


    I wish! The taunts followed me for a long time-at school, on the street, everywhere.


    Don''t covet another man''s pie.


    But after that trip to Pioneer Camp, a funny story happened. And I think my camp experience had a lot to do with it. As they say, patience has its limits, and sometimes you have to stomp your foot.


    It was graduation year in our kindergarten.


    We were preparing a matinee for the anniversary of the October Revolution, where the protagonists were two brotherly peoples - Russians and Ukrainians.


    According to the script we learned folk songs, dances and poems. I don''t remember what we sang, but the dance I was supposed to participate in was Ukrainian.


    The adults had sewn national costumes for the girls, made beautiful kokoshniks in the form of wreaths with ribbons, and appointed boys as partners.


    I wanted to dance with Sasha Shklyaev, but I got Vlad Yesunin.


    And something went wrong, we could not get in step, lost the rhythm, could not keep up with the couples who were sprinting ahead of us.


    But it wasn''t just the dancing.


    I was more concerned about something else - I claimed to be the leading role of all Russia.


    At the end of the performance, together with our teacher Valentina Nikolayevna, who personified the Soviet power, we had to go to the guests with bread and salt - "Russia" on the right and "Ukraine" on the left. For this occasion the cooks even baked a cake with jam and a round loaf of bread.


    I got the role of "Russia" easily, because I could memorize big texts, and here was a poem the size of a notebook page.


    But at the dress rehearsal, the commission of the Regional Education Center rejected me, saying that although I have a sundress, my face is not Slavic, so they urgently need to look for a substitute. But there is no substitute!


    According to the commission''s plan, the "Russian" girl should have been a head taller than the "Ukrainian" girl, with a waist-length braid and a European face.


    Natasha Tretyakova more or less fit these parameters. But Natasha did not fit into my sundress, and when she saw the text she had to learn overnight, she cried so hard that everyone rushed to console her, saying, okay, instead of a sundress, a regular dress will do, and let Khabibullina read the poems instead of Natasha...


    No, I said, no way! Either the role is mine, or I refuse to play at all!


    Then the women of the commission carefully asked me if I could learn another - Ukrainian poem until tomorrow morning? I said: Why not? Of course!


    In the end, I came out with the bread to the guests - in Ukrainian costume, with a Russian kokoshnik and absolutely non-Slavic appearance.


    But in general, being a black sheep was not very pleasant.


    One day, my cousin Andrei and I (he is also half-Tatar and also brunette - a raven type) decided to bleach our hair, naively thinking that this way we could be like "everybody".


    We bought hydrogen peroxide tablets at the pharmacy, crushed them into powder, added ammonia, shampoo, stirred well and voila - the miracle mixture was ready.


    My cousin thought that this procedure would give his hair an ashy color, so he immediately put all of his hair under the stinking paste, but I, out of caution, only anointed the temples, which immediately turned red. My cousin''s head looked like an orange. He didn''t look like a blond at all.


    Later Andrei found a way out of the problem - he enrolled in a judo class. But he lived in the big city of Sverdlovsk, and we didn''t have such class in our city yet, we only had school bullying.


    We are all a little bit Tatar


    I remember the agonizing feeling when we studied the Tatar-Mongol yoke in history class. I was ready to fall into Tartarus, get a sore throat, go to the end of the world, just to avoid the hated lesson.


    Only two pupils in our class had Tatar surnames - me and Pasha Kasimov. But in the class book, opposite to the column "Nationality of Pasha''s parents" was written: Russian. And my father is a Tatar. Mingaray. But my dad was called by this name only by his co-workers. For everyone else he was just Misha. Mikhail.


    The national question never bothered my father. He wasn''t ashamed of being a Tatar, although he never didn''t know the Tatar language. He did not go to the mosque, did not respect Muslim customs. He liked women, alcohol and pork.


    Offensive nicknames didn''t stick to him in his childhood. Dad was a hooligan, so if someone tried to hurt him in the yard, he''d get a punch in the nose.


    But my dad''s older brother Grisha grew up as a quiet boy, not a fighter.


    His parents (my grandparents) named their firstborn Galimzyan, and the boys in the yard used to tease Grisha Gal, or worse - girlish name Gala.


    The boy got tired of it, and at the age of sixteen he told his father that he didn''t want to have a stupid name. In fact, he refused to be a Tatar at all.


    There was a terrible scandal at home. My grandfather cursed his apostate son, beat him with a belt and threatened to throw him out of the house.


    It did not help. Grisha went his own way, changed not only his name, but also his surname. He took his mother''s maiden name.


    Oh, how well I understood my uncle! I, too, would have preferred my mother''s modest, unremarkable maiden name - Ivanova. Because every time the teacher started talking about the Tatar-Mongol invasion, my classmates turned their heads in my direction, grinned, and nailed me to a shameful pole: "It''s all because of your relatives!


    Guys, are you serious?


    No, with my mind, of course, I understood that during the Tatar-Mongol yoke, in the time of that super-continental chaos, all sorts of things happened. But me, personally, what do I have to do with it?!


    At such moments I felt like a second-class citizen. And in order to somehow defend myself from attacks, I vengefully imagined how the great-great-great-grandmother of my particularly wicked classmate Ruslan was being seduced by a thin-mouthed, sweet-eyed Tatar man. And now the blood of Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Mamay Khan... flows in the veins of Udmurt Ruslan, who for some reason considers himself a true Russian.


    It certainly flows in mine.


    But over the centuries, it has gotten so mixed up that you never know who has seduced whom.


    Uzbeks, Gypsies, Armenians took me for their own. People assured me that I looked like a Turkmen, even a Georgian. "In Kazan he is a Tatar, in Alma-Ata he is a Kazakh" - that is what they say about a half-breed like me.


    But here''s the problem: when strangers from the East try to talk to me in their native language, I get lost, because, like my father, I don''t understand anything they say, well, maybe only two or three words. Although it seems that my appearance and my surname oblige me to do so.


    The bullet is a mad thing


    One day my Tatar grandmother took my sister and me near Kazan to the remote village of Alaberdino, where there were no Russians at all. Here, Grandma Dusya expected, we would immediately learn the Tatar language. And what happened? My sister and I never learned the language, but the vocabulary of the locals, especially the children, was full of Russian words.


    "Oh, those Khabibullinas! - cried the old people. - Damned girls! Satan will take them!"


    Yes, by the way, about my family name. My great-great-grandfather''s name was Khabibulla, which means "beloved of Allah," which is apparently where the surname came from, because if we believe the family archives, then on my father''s side from time immemorial all were Khabiyevs, including my great-great-grandfather.


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    But Khabibulla had a son, Gaifulla. In 1943, when he was already a solid family man, he was drafted into World War II. He was a little over forty at the time.


    Probably, like any warrior, before being sent to the front, he wanted to gain the support of the Almighty, to cheat fate, to protect himself from an enemy bullet. And in the military recruitining office, when he was asked: "Whose are you?", my great-grandfather replied: Khabibullin''s.


    For a long time the family clung to the myth that my great-grandfather, a gunslinger, had blown himself up on a mine. Probably because the truth seemed unseemly to the chaste Tatar family.


    But what is there to be ashamed of? The bullet hit my great-grandfather in the groin, and he died of blood loss in a military hospital on May 10, 1945. But the bullet, as you know, is a mad thing.


    At home, my great-grandfather had a wife, or rather a widow, a daughter Saniya, and a son, my grandfather Shaykhulla, who was not yet seventeen.


    Formally, my grandfather was also considered a Muslim, but as with my father, I never noticed that he held on to the traditions and customs of his ancestors.


    As for my grandmother''s roots, it was not without the Russian Tsar. According to the legend, four centuries ago, during the conquest of Kazan, Ivan the Terrible''s soldiers caught my unknown ancestors in the crowd and blessed them with the cross. As it were, they put a cross on Islam. Since then, all the Tatars in my grandmother''s family have been baptized - kryashen. Although, according to another version, they never practiced Islam, they were always Orthodox and had Russian names - Andrion, Samoil, Marfa, Ivan, Evdokia.


    To believe or not to believe


    My mother also looks like a Tatar - dark skin, cheekbones, brown eyes. Although, it seems, there were no Tatars in her family. But who knows? Udmurs are forest dwellers, pagans. Unlike the nomads, they sat in the deep, dense forests, brewed kubyshka - Udmurt moonshine, and quietly worked their magic. But it''s not all that simple.


    Take my Udmurt grandmother Luda. On the one hand, my grandmother worshiped pagan deities and spoke easily with the spirits of the dead; on the other hand, she believed in God, went to church, respected all Orthodox holidays, and gradually taught her granddaughter to do the same.


    Can you imagine the contradictions that tore me apart! After all, I was a young pioneer who was not supposed to believe in God or the devil. Only in Lenin! So I believed in a little bit of everything, but just in case, I didn''t show it.


    I have been attracted to mysterious things since early childhood.


    I have no idea where this attraction came from. My sister and I grew up in a very secular, I would even say Soviet, family. Mom and Dad were non-believers, atheists, they had no respect for Tatar or Udmurt traditions, and they spoke only in Russian to each other and to us children. So, deep down, I considered myself (and still consider myself) outside of all nations and religions.


    And if it hadn''t been for my grandmothers - from my father''s and mother''s side, between whom there was an unspoken struggle for the identity of the granddaughter''s nationality - I wouldn''t have bothered with these things at all.


    Us - Them


    It seems that Grandma Luda had a significant advantage in this confrontation, simply because of geography. We lived in the same town and apartment for the first four years of my life. And even after my grandparents moved to a neighboring district, I spent a lot of time at their house, so Grandma Luda''s influence on me was great.


    But Grandma Dusya did not give up her position either - she often came to visit us or took her favorite granddaughter to Nizhny Tagil for the summer. My mother told me that at the age of five I was running around in the train carriage, looking into all the compartments and loudly proclaiming that I was a "Tatar". Who could have taught me that? Only Grandma Dusya!


    At times, the call of blood - Udmurt, Tatar, and God knows what else - literally tore me apart. It''s all mixed up in my head.


    Belief in the afterlife and the power of prayer were intertwined with rituals like knocking on wood and spitting over the left shoulder.


    The spirits of forest and water coexisted peacefully with the Great Martyr Nicholas the Wonderworker and St. Panteleimon the Healer. I constantly felt the presence of some invisible forces near me. It didn''t matter who or what it was - there was enough room for everyone.


    Angels are near


    My grandparents used to take me to the cemetery.


    Once they even lost me in a maze of graves. They were walking home from the wake and didn''t realize until they were halfway there that someone seemed to be missing. They hurried back and there was no sign of their granddaughter anywhere.


    Nobody knows where I was or what I was doing. Luckily, I was found soon and we all went home together.


    Maybe because everything in the cemetery was familiar to me, it never scared me. During the day, of course. At night, I wouldn''t dare go there for anything in the world.


    My grandmother taught me that it was a sin not to take care of graves. She couldn''t walk by an abandoned grave. She would stop and tidy up the monument, leave bread for the birds, or candy. She called it "giving alms to the dead.


    While my grandmother cleaned the grave, I used to walk around the cemetery, looking at the photos of the dead and mentally counting how old they were.


    And imagining exactly how they''d died. I thought it was terribly unfair that it wasn''t written about anywhere. It''s interesting to know who died of what!


    I was especially drawn to the children''s gravestones. Not far from my grandfather''s grave was an iron pyramid with a glass circle. Inside the circle was a blurry black and white photo of a boy. A nameplate. Sasha Volkov. Blond fringe, a happy look.


    What happened to him? Hit by a car? Drowned? How could the angels who were supposed to protect mere mortals have missed a five-year-old boy?


    I had no doubt that everyone had a guardian angel.


    I had one, too. If it hadn''t been for him, I probably wouldn''t be here, because my parents should have had a completely different child.


    Misha the First and Misha the Second


    My mother had a fianc¨¦. His name was Misha.


    Mom was finishing the tenth grade at school, and her beloved was about to return from the army.


    But it so happened that at a dance my mother met and fell in love with a handsome brunet with shoulder-length curls.


    Ironically, the curly-haired guy''s name was also Misha.


    He worked as a driller in the neighboring village of oil workers, and on weekends would come to town with friends to dance. He liked black-eyed Angelina, too.


    After the dance, Misha would accompany her home and feed her "Bear in the North" candy, and soon the legitimate fianc¨¦ was completely out of the beautiful mother''s mind.


    Mom remembered about him only once, when she came home from school, saw on the rack in the hallway soldier''s cap. Her heart twitched: how could she explain to her fianc¨¦ that she had fallen in love with someone else? But she didn''t have to explain anything; the cap belonged to curly-haired Misha, who had already served in the Soviet army.


    My mother later admitted that if she had met that first Misha in the hallway, she might have made a different choice. But here she decided it was fate!


    Their romance developed rapidly, and soon Angelina realized that she was pregnant.


    She rushed to tell her lover the happy news, but he frowned:


    - Why did this happen?


    - Why?! - Angelina asked in bewilderment. - Have you no idea?


    The days passed. The curly-haired driller acted as if nothing special had happened. He joked, "Don''t panic before the time. Maybe it''ll all go away somehow".


    Not a word about marriage and the birth of his child.


    And then the crying mother ran to her sister, Nina, a medical graduate.


    - Nina, what am I going to do? This bastard doesn''t want a child!


    A bitter pill


    Angelina was eighteen - she had just finished school and had no time to look for a job. She didn''t even know if the wedding was going to happen or not.


    And then there was this child...


    Nina silently took out the pills and handed them to her sister:


    - Here! Take one, it will all go away. Next time you''ll think with your head.


    Mama swallowed the bitter pill, and in the morning there was no trace of the baby to be born.


    But soon Angelina was surprised to find herself in an interesting position again.


    This time she pressed her lover resolutely against the wall:


    - Will you marry me, or shall I poison him again?


    - What do you mean? - Misha was afraid.


    - What! - grinned Angelina. - Did you think that last time the baby really disappeared on its own?


    - Come on, - my future father mumbled conciliatorily. - I don''t mind. Let''s get married if you want. I just want the first born to be a boy.


    For some reason, my father was sure that a son would be born.


    But instead I was born.


    The Wedding


    As it turned out, my father had other plans for his life.


    Getting married and having a child were not part of them.


    Dad''s dream was to travel the world. Army, service in Germany, trips to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan - he had time to visit many places, saw a lot and did not want to stop.


    But when on that life-changing evening Misha called his relatives in Tagil to find out how to be and what to do, the family council unanimously decided: you must get married!


    Especially my grandmother insisted on the wedding.


    Knowing the character and tendencies of her youngest son, she was afraid that sooner or later he would end up in prison (he had all the prerequisites - a knife scar on his back - a trace of a drunken brawl, bad company, wine, girls of easy behavior).


    "As soon as he gets married, he''ll be under the care of his wife. And the child, I hope, will bring him to his senses," Grandma Dusya reasoned. And although other relatives did not really believe that the hooligan Misha would settle down, no one objected to his marriage.


    So in July 1977 my parents became husband and wife.


    A man of passion, Dad decided that since he was not destined to travel the world, he would devote himself to raising his children. He read in a book that babies hear and understand everything in their mother''s womb, and began to sit in front of my pregnant mother in the evenings and read fairy tales to me, not yet born.


    My mother thought he was crazy, my father was offended, but he didn''t stop reading me fairy tales.


    Children of the Dungeon


    I had a nightmare in ninth grade.


    It was night. Our yard. I''m sitting by a crooked maple tree where my friends and I used to build "shelters" out of plywood and boards as kids. In front of me are two graves. Judging by the plaques, they are the graves of sisters. The date on one of the plaques was 1976, the other 1979.


    While I was looking at the numbers, habitually calculating the age, small stones from the grave fell to the ground. I shuddered: who is here? A child''s voice answered, "Me.


    - What''s your name?


    - Olya.


    - Are you the big sister or the little sister?


    - Big.


    The girl climbed out of the grave and sat down next to me. She said:


    - It''s good that you wanted to know my name. If you hadn''t said anything, I would have asked how old you were, and you would have died too.


    We were quiet for a while.


    - Would you like to come to our place? - Olya suggested. - Come on, be brave, don''t be afraid!


    I looked down. From the grave, smiling, looked at me the dirty face of another girl in a short T-shirt. The second girl''s name was Alla.


    We went down into the dungeon, where there were many dark halls, corridors and labyrinthine passages. Besides the two sisters, Olya and Alla, there were several other children in the dungeon, aged between ten and fourteen. All of them, as it turned out, were also dead.


    Don''t do it


    Suddenly we were in Gorky Park. We were walking through the sunlit alleys, laughing, riding the merry-go-round. A light breeze blew, the leaves rushed, and music played.


    It was so good that at some point I wanted to throw myself headlong from the "Ferris Wheel", never to be separated from my new friends again.


    Olya touched my sleeve sternly:


    - Don''t do that. You can come to us whenever you want.


    And sadly added:


    - You''re alive and I envy you. As for us, we''ll never get out of here.


    I felt sorry for her and said:


    - It''s sad when children die.


    Olya nodded.


    - Another boy will come to us today...


    We met him in the evening. The little boy was sitting in the corner, rubbing his tears with his fist, looking up and asking to go home.


    - They all cry like that when they come," Olya sighed. - But then they get used to it.


    We approached the newcomer and began to comfort him. The baby calmed down and soon was playing with everyone. It was time for me to leave. The children came out to see me off, waving at me: "Come back!" I promised that I would.


    When I woke up in the morning, I had a strong feeling that I had dreamed about my never-born brothers and sisters. And I knew for sure that it was Olya who should have been born to my mother, not me.


    In the dream, before the meeting at the old maple tree, she had every reason to hate me, to want me dead. After all, I was the one who had taken her place.


    Born under a lucky star


    My mother almost lost her baby during childbirth.


    The midwives pulled me out, barely alive - born two weeks premature and a horrible blue color because the umbilical cord had wrapped around my neck twice.


    The puny, half-suffocated infant did not cry or show any signs of life. The doctors did everything possible and impossible to save me, and afterwards they did not hide their surprise:


    - The girl had been born under a lucky star.


    In fact, I was born with a veil - a thin transparent film, like cellophane.


    Before taking my mother to the ward, the midwife managed to whisper to her that only very happy people were born with such a "veil" and advised her to keep it.


    But my mother did not believe in such "nonsense", or maybe she just did not care.


    So my lucky veil stayed in the maternity hospital.


    In those years we lived in a wooden house on the "airfild" - that''s what people call the southern settlement bordering the city. My grandfather and grandmother moved here from the village of Ivanovo. My grandmother worked as a superintendent in the Society for the Blind, my grandfather got a job in a military factory where, soon after my birth, as a war veteran, he got a two-room apartment in the city''s new building. The six of us moved there after bringing my very ill great-grandmother Matrena from the village.


    To be continued


    My earliest childhood memories are with my great-grandmother Matrena.

 Chapter 3

    The Iron Grip


    Before I begin the story of my great-grandmother Matrena, I should mention that almost all the women in our family had psychic abilities. And the deeper a witch''s ancestral roots went into the past, the more powerful her witchcraft was.


    From generation to generation, my father''s and mother''s families were matriarchal. The head of the family was always a woman. To try to disobey her, to say or do anything against her, would be bad for men.


    It is not surprising that a man in the house was not valued and had no voice. His mother and his wife always decided everything for him.


    And what did the disadvantaged son and husband do in such cases?


    He sat and kept silent. Or, wanting to assert himself, to prove his manhood to himself and others, he died young in an accident-drowned, crushed by a horse, hit by a train. Or he went to all sorts of trouble, finding solace in available women and wine. The most unfortunate committed suicide.


    If some of them managed to change the situation, then such a man himself became a domestic despot and tyrant who listened to no one and held the family in an iron grip. But this rarely happened. The situation in which family members communicated with each other as equals, as partners or friends, never occurred in general.


    Anna''s Revenge


    My mother''s great-great-grandmother was named Anna.


    She was a witch, a woman of strong temperament. She lost her husband early, never married again and lived her life alone, far away from her grown-up children - Petr, Matrena and Fenya.


    In her old age, when it became difficult to keep house, Anna decided to move in with her son. The mother''s decision was no accident. Petr was considered a rich man in the village, he lived with his wife and children, ran a single household, so his mother would hardly be a burden to him.


    But Petr was in no hurry to take his mother to himself.


    Perhaps he feared that the imperious Anna would seize the reins of power and begin to establish her own order in the house, perhaps he was overcome by greed, or perhaps there was some other reason, but it was as if a black cat had run between mother and son.


    Petr sent his mother to his sister Matrena.


    Offended by such a "warm" welcome, Anna threatened her son:


    - When I die, Petr, I''ll make you cry!


    And she warned her daughter-in-law:


    - See that icon in the corner? I''ll scare Petr from there for forty days. Don''t be afraid of me, I won''t hurt you.


    She said this and gave her soul to God.


    Since the day of Anna''s death, Peter could not pass the iconostasis in peace. His heart always ached and he turned pale.


    But he evaded his wife''s questions, saying that it was nothing.


    One night he went to the wooden toilet in the yard and did not return.


    There were rumors that one of the locals had played a joke on Petr - he had propped up the toilet door with a stick. Whether it was true or not, his wife found him breathless in the morning.


    The old women of the village said that it was Anna''s spirit that punished the proud son - luring him out of the house at night and scaring him half to death.


    The bridegroom from the Looking Glass


    My great-grandmother Matrena, Anna''s daughter, was also known as a witch in the village. She could set bones, stop blood, heal with incantations and herbs.


    There were rumors that she could even turn into a pig.


    As far as I know, in our family, the pig or wild boar was considered the vorshud.


    The Udmurt call the vorshud a spirit guardian, which can be anyone - a bear, a wolf, a pike, a moose, a crow, in short, any living creature.


    Like Anna, Matrena was a young widow, left alone with three small children in her arms.


    My grandmother Luda, Matrena''s daughter, had told me a strange story about her mother''s marriage.


    On Christmas Eve, young Matrena decided to make a fortune on her future husband. She locked herself in her room, put in front of her and lit candles.


    - Fianc¨¦, fianc¨¦, show yourself!


    The mirror was covered with fog, but when it cleared, Matrena saw the silhouette of a man in the glass.


    A handsome, curly-haired man she could only dream of.


    The great-grandmother admired him, but suddenly the image in the mirror changed.


    She saw a night, a log house on the outskirts of the village, not a soul around, just two strong young men beating a third man who was lying on the ground with all their might. One hit him in the face with a boot, the other in the head with a club, then they took the victim by the arms and legs and threw his senseless body into the ditch.


    Then the strange vision disappeared.


    Many years later, a guy named Yakov asked my great-grandmother for her hand in marriage. Matrena easily recognized him as her bridegroom from the Looking Glass.


    They got married and had three children.


    And everything seemed to be going well in their life, until one day Yakov, a convinced communist and the chairman of the collective farm, who was then 33 years old, decided to nail the local rich farmers - to seize the surplus bread for the benefit of the Soviet power.


    It was 1927. The peasants held a grudge against the zealous communist. They caught him at night in the collective barn and beat him badly. In the morning they found Yakov in a ditch with a fractured skull. When they brought him into the house half alive, my great-grandmother gasped - she remembered the disfigured stranger from her Christmas vision.


    After this fight, Yakov became insane and did not live long.


    They buried him in a closed coffin - he was so ugly and unrecognizable.


    A handsome boy


    My grandmother Luda kept an old velvet photo album at home. Among the old black and white photos, a portrait of an unknown boy stood out.


    As a child, I was even a little in love with him - I had never seen a more beautiful, spiritualized face in my life. The bangs on a parting, the big laughing eyes, the white-toothed, as they would say today, "Hollywood" smile.


    - Grandma, who''s that? - I asked my grandmother.


    And this is the story she told me.


    The boy in the picture was a distant relative. His name was Kolya.


    This memorable photo was taken in Glazov in the late fifties, shortly before the mysterious and tragic event that happened to Kolya.


    In the summer, twelve-year-old Kolya and his friends went to the meadows behind the Cheptsa River.


    The boys safely crossed the wooden bridge over the river, reached the forest, and started screwing around - whistling, climbing trees, playing hide-and-seek.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Someone offered to play a joke on Kolya (he was the youngest in the company). They lured him into a thicket, left him there alone, and ran away. They hid in the nearby bushes and waited to see if Kolya would soon find his way back. They waited for an hour, then another, but Kolya still did not appear.


    The boys were frightened: what if he was killed by a bear or fell into the swamp?


    The places behind Cheptza are remote, swampy. Suddenly the mist came from the river. The boys called for their friend, but no one answered. So they rushed to the town for help.


    All night long, adults and children searched the forest with torches. They looked under every bush, under every tree, examined suspicious holes and pits. But the boy disappeared.


    They called the police, they searched for the lost boy with dogs, but they did not find him.


    And a week later, Kolya suddenly returned. The fishermen on the bridge said that he came to them dirty, ragged, with feverish eyes. He was crying and mumbling something incomprehensible about the "very tall, almost sky-high, old man" who had caught him in the forest and would not let him go. The boy then lost consciousness and collapsed on the sidewalk.


    Werewolf


    It was not until the third day that Kolya came to his senses.


    Again he mumbled something about the giant old man and begged to be taken home to his mother.


    Kolya''s mother was very worried about her son, who did not recognize anyone and sat for hours, huddled in a corner like a wolf cub. He would stare with glazed eyes and not make a sound.


    Or suddenly he would cover his face with his palms and whimper pitifully:


    - Old man, let me go.


    The boy is crazy! - decided his family.


    Worst of all, Kolya''s appearance began to change rapidly, from handsome to ugly. His face and body began to grow fur, and all his teeth fell out, replaced by yellow fangs. Now he looked like a werewolf.


    He would lie in bed and howl long and hard. Sometimes he would jump down to the floor and run on all fours from corner to corner, knocking on the floorboards with his claws, listening for something, sniffing. In short, something terrible was happening to Kolya.


    Everyone was afraid: how could it be?


    The doctors shrugged helplessly and advised to hide the "werewolf" somewhere, away from human eyes, so as not to start rumors in the town.


    And a neighboring witch whispered to her mother:


    - He has the devil in his head, he''ll die soon.


    But Kolya suffered for a long time and made his parents suffer.


    He died at the age of twenty-five. They say that he lay in his coffin all black, covered with coarse hair, with a frozen animal grin on his face.


    And no one could think that the handsome young man in the portrait and the beast in the coffin were the same person.


    Black Cat


    I was about a year old when my great-grandmother Matrena became paralyzed.


    She lay motionless on the bed - gray, thin, with sunken cheeks, looking like a bird of prey.


    From time to time, my great-grandmother would squint at me her bird''s eye and call out to me in a faint voice:


    - Nat¨¢, come to me, baby.


    I didn''t answer, even when I was near. Pretending to be deaf, I continued to swaddle the doll or roll on the floor machine. Matrena''s face frightened me too much.


    At that time I feared two creatures more than anything else in the world - my great-grandmother and her devilish cat Anfisa, with coal-colored hair and round amber eyes.


    I grew up a nervous child who ate poorly and slept restlessly.


    Putting me to bed at night was a torture for my mother.


    I would kick and throw the blanket on the floor. But as soon as the cat jumped on my chest, I calmed down. So my mother concluded that Anfisa had a beneficial effect on me, like a loving babysitter.


    I don''t know about the cat''s love for me (anyway, Anfisa never scratched or bit me), but that''s not why I was calm.


    When the rumbling black beast used to jump on the bed and stare at me with its huge burning eyes without blinking, I was silent for only one reason - fear.


    Sleep was the only way to get away from that terrible beast.


    Defender


    On Saturday evenings, according to the old village custom, my grandparents would lift my great-grandmother out of bed and carry her to the bathroom to bathe her.


    Because of her illness, the old woman was so thin and weak that any touch caused her unbearable pain and forced her to scream wildly.


    I, who thought that the relatives were hurting my great-grandmother Matrena, always rushed to her defense. I would shout:


    - Don''t hit grandma!


    I remember it well. But the moment of my great-grandmother''s death was completely erased from my memory.


    All I remembered was a narrow red coffin standing on two stools in the foyer and rows of green mailboxes above my head.


    I did not perceive Matrena as dead; it seemed to me that she was simply tired and had laid down to rest. She''ll get some sleep and she''ll get up.


    When, many years later, I got hold of an old photograph taken in the cemetery in July of that distant year, I could not help but think that my great-grandmother was lying in the coffin with her eyes open. Of course, it could not be, the deceased always have their eyes closed, but I am ready to swear: the photo shows my great-grandmother''s gaze, and a very meaningful one, looking up at the sky.


    Heartache


    At the wake, Matrena''s son Vitaly drank too much and went out on the balcony to smoke.


    I followed him. Without letting the cigarette out of his mouth, Vitaly picked me up under my arms and put me on the balcony railing (and we lived on the ninth floor!). He finished smoking, threw away the cigarette butt and went to bed. And I stayed where I was.


    My mother was in the kitchen doing the dishes. Suddenly she felt a strong uneasiness in her chest. Her heart even hurt. Without realizing what she was doing, she rushed to the balcony - just in time! I was almost leaning over the edge. Just a little further and...


    But at the very last moment my mother managed to grab me by the shirt and pull me back. And then she ran to Vitaly, who was snoring - she started slapping his cheeks and hitting him - she had a real nervous fit. And if it hadn''t been for the relatives who came to the old man''s rescue, my mother would certainly have sent him to my great-grandmother''s grave.


    In the future, there were many stories where I could have died but miraculously survived. It was as if some unknown force was trying to end my life, but another force, probably even more powerful, prevented it in every possible way. I think it was the same guardian angel that helped me. He always appeared at my side in moments of danger and gave me his reliable cherubic shoulder.


    At the zoo


    I''m four years old. My father and I are flying to his cousin in Volgograd on vacation, and we get into a terrible thunderstorm. The plane was thrown through the sky like a splinter.


    The stewardesses had no time to change the paper bags for the passengers. Lightning zigzags through the night. One struck directly into the fuselage... Panic in the cabin.


    The pilots decide to make an emergency landing in Kuibyshev.


    As for me, I''m not even aware of the storm overboard, I''m sleeping soundly. And all the talk about how the plane miraculously avoided disaster does not bother me.


    In the Volgograd zoo I manage to get sunstroke.


    The city is stuffy. It''s impossible to sleep at night. From dawn to dusk a ball of fire burns in the sky.


    The sun must have decided to kill the townspeople forever.


    In addition, my father and I, not used to the southern heat, forgot my Panama at home.


    At the zoo, I suddenly realize that I am terribly thirsty, literally dying of thirst.


    While my father runs to the soda machine, I go to the cage with the polar bears. The bears, sweltering from the heat, dive off the edge into the pool. They swim there, splashing loudly and raising a cloud of spray. The pool is clear and cool.


    If only I could be in their place! - I think. From there, everything went dark before my eyes.


    I woke up at home. My father said that when he came back with the water, he found me unconscious by the cage. A crowd had gathered around me.


    People were trying to revive the pale girl, to pump her back to consciousness. In vain! I didn''t react to anything. So they called an ambulance.


    Of course, I don''t remember any of this. It seemed to me that the fainting lasted a minute or two, no more. I was sure that my father and I had gone from the zoo to admire the mountain waterfall, and earlier we had met a crowd of gypsies who were leading a tame bear on a chain. The bear made funny faces and danced to a small concert harmonica.


    I distinctly remember my father and I coming home in the evening and going to bed. In the morning, I was awakened by voices in the next room.


    When I opened my eyes, I saw my father''s worried face above me.


    It turned out that I had been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours. My father thought he was bringing my dead body home, but fortunately I was fine.


    Concussion


    How many times did I break my head falling from the swings in kindergarten and school!


    Once, while sledding down a hill, I crashed into a tree and got a concussion, but I was cured by Grandma Luda - with an ordinary sieve for sifting flour.


    My grandmother held the sieve over my head and shook it gently from side to side. She called it "straightening the head".


    .


    The ambulance doctor was incredibly surprised by this method of treatment, but did not consider it necessary to take me to the hospital - the child did not vomit, was not dizzy, only a purple, black eye testified eloquently to what had happened.


    Then I managed to poison myself with watermelon, and a little later with old cake. My parents put the box of uneaten "Kievsky" cake on top of the kitchen cupboard and forgot about it.


    A week later I found it there. I ate it myself and fed my little sister as well. But I was greedy and gave her a tiny piece and broke off a big piece for myself.


    So I was taken by ambulance to the infectious disease ward alone, without Tanya.


    Cartoon on the wall


    When I was five years old, a terrible sore throat nearly killed me.


    As I fell deliriously into a deep, blazing pit of fire, I heard the doctor say to my father:


    - She''s going to die. She won''t survive at this temperature.


    I didn''t care.


    As I struggled to open my eyes, I saw a screen showing a cartoon in the pitch black. A giant sparrow was dancing on the wall in front of me.


    Next to the sparrow was a strange red-haired man who winked at me.


    He wore glasses and a yellow plaid shirt. Next to the man, I saw a girl about my age. Smiling happily, she held out her hand to the sparrow. The bird jumped on it and the girl''s hand broke in half like a match.


    The man laughed silently. One second - and the picture disappeared.


    Before I saw the cartoon, I had been disgusted at the thought of food, but now I was dying for dumplings - I knew my parents had made them that afternoon.


    Rising on my elbows, I crawled to the far end of the couch and looked out into the hallway. The kitchen light was on. A pot lid rattled impatiently on the stove, and water bubbled inside. The smell of vinegar and onions was appetizing. Mom and Dad were talking quietly at the table. I took a deep breath and shouted loudly:


    - Let me eat at last!


    After that my health improved rapidly.


    To be continued

 Chapter 4

    Dinner is served!


    I was born very small, and everyone tried to fatten me up at every opportunity. But my mother took me away from her breast early - at the age of two - because she thought that such a big girl should not "ask for a tit". Although I was not against it, but very much in favor of it, and no amount of persuasion could make me give up the milk diet.


    But someone had taught my mother to smear soot on her breasts (some women smear it with mustard) and show it to the stubborn baby (or, in the case of mustard, give it a taste).


    My relatives laughingly recalled that when I saw my mother''s black breast, I cried: "Tit is poop!" and never touched it again. But I lost my appetite.


    As for my mother, she didn''t lose any milk. But she suffered from breast pain and didn''t know what to do with the milk.


    She tried milking it into a bottle and giving it to my father, but my father - a man who was not squeamish in general - could not drink it, wrinkled his nose and spat, saying that it was too sweet.


    However, my great-grandmother Matrena drank breast milk with pleasure.


    My favorite meal as a child was bread and butter and tea. Also fried potatoes with milk and mashed potatoes with a cutlet. Nothing else could tempt me.


    In order to feed the "skinny" child, my parents used various tricks. Dad took toys and showed tricks from the bathroom window. While I watched with my mouth open, my mother fed me semolina. She persuaded me to eat a spoonful for mom, for dad, for grandma and grandpa, and so on - we had a lot of relatives.


    I used to rebel. I would sit at the table for two hours, smearing porridge on my plate.


    Everyone complained about me. The teachers at the kindergarten and at school all said with one voice that I didn''t eat well. The adults saw this as some kind of pathology and insisted that the district doctor send me to a sanatorium to "cure" me.


    In the sanatorium we were fed up to six times a day, strictly according to the schedule. Dinner was at five in the evening, but for some reason we began to feel a wolfish appetite afterwards. We dried breadcrumbs under our mattresses and crunched them at night. Rye breadcrumbs with salt - how delicious! As for the suppositories the doctor prescribed for my appetite, I used to flush them down the toilet.


    "Dunka perepech"


    My father''s specialty was called "Dunka perepech".


    Dad would turn on the stove, take raw potatoes, cut them into circles and put them on the hot burner. The raw potatoes would roast and even become charred in no time.


    The fumes in the kitchen were unbreathable. Burning, my father had swept the cooked "dunka" onto a plate, sprinkled it thickly with salt, and thrown another portion on the stove.


    Tanya and I could eat a ton of burnt potatoes!


    But the family favorite was dumplings, which we made ourselves.


    Who wants a surprise dumpling?


    Early in the morning, my parents would go to the market to buy meat. They usually bought pork and beef.


    Then Dad took out an old meat grinder, screwed it to a stool, and turned the minced meat. The red and pink slices disappeared into the iron jaws with a slurping sound. Raw onions crunched appetizingly, followed by stale pieces of rye bread.


    Dad would salt and pepper the mincemeat, stir it with a tablespoon, and then hand it to me to lick. Mm, the taste of raw mincemeat is incomparable!


    Mama forbade me to eat raw meat, but there are no prohibitions for Papa. He would wink at me:


    - Just don''t tell Mom.


    Yes, I would nod. And I would run to my mother:


    - "Mom, I didn''t eat raw minced meat!


    I have these honest eyes. How did she always know that I wasn''t telling the truth?


    We make dumplings like this: my mother rolls out thin dough on the table, stamps circles with a cut glass, and stacks them. And the three of us - Dad, me and my younger sister - scoop minced meat out of the pot with teaspoons. Put it in the middle of the circle, bend the circle in half, pinch the edges - done!


    My dad''s dumplings are the best - the edges are neat and the filling does not stick out. My dumplings are okay too, tolerable. But Tanya''s dumplings have holes in them, they are sloppy. Besides, her spoonful of filling falls on the floor.


    - Get out of here! - Mama gets angry.


    Tanya is just waiting for that. She runs off to watch cartoons. She is happy!


    On the tenth tray, my father and I get bored, and to amuse ourselves, we decide to make dumplings with a surprise: in one circle we roll a lump of dough, in another - two pennies. Who''s going to get their teeth caught? I usually get all the surprises.


    The pot is already boiling on the stove, and the smell of laurel and oregano pepper fills the house. One by one, the dumplings float upside down. Pushing, tumbling, bubbling.


    While Tanya washes dirty dishes as punishment and Mom dilutes vinegar in a saucer, Dad pulls the last trays out onto the balcony - to freeze.


    For the rest of the day, our dumplings are eaten by tits. In the morning, when Dad goes to get a new batch, half of them are gone. Nothing. We''ll make some more.


    Petya was here


    In kindergarten the teacher used to tell us:


    - Leningrad is a heroic city, and the people who survived nine hundred days without bread are heroes. You''re no match for them. You little pigs! Especially you, Khabibullina! Why did you spill the milk again? In Leningrad they would have shot you for that!


    And after such a fiery speech I came home and heard the "happy" news from my mother: we were going to Leningrad. I cried all night. When you''re six years old, you don''t really want to die at the hands of a hero with a machine gun just because you can''t stand milk froths.


    In Leningrad, we stayed with my mother''s cousin, Aunt Olya, and her husband, my brave military uncle, Sasha. No one could understand why I refused to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When asked to eat at least an apple, I would stubbornly shake my head and squint at Uncle Sasha''s pistol sticking out of its holster.


    Didn''t they notice that I really ate like a piglet, with crumbs all over the table?


    On the third day of my forced hunger strike, I could barely stand on my feet, and my relatives dragged me by force to the public canteen. I enter and what do I see!


    Is it really those blockaders from Leningrad? There were stumps and food remains everywhere. The cleaners are throwing leftover chicken porridge with plates into the garbage can, and some boys are kicking a roll of bread under the table. I feel a mountain fall from my shoulders - normal people! And I happily ate two portions of mashed potatoes and a schnitzel.


    What else did I remember about Leningrad? The Neva River. As I looked into the murky, raging waves, I wondered: if I jumped in, how many people from the embankment would come to my rescue?


    As if reading my mind, my mother took my hand in hers.


    I remember the inscription scratched with a nail in the Catherine Palace: "Petya from Glazov was here", and the famous shoe factory "Skorokhod". My mother bought my father a pair of white branded Velcro sneakers, and when I saw them, I almost burst with envy.


    I waited until everyone left the house and tried them on. Why do adults need fairy tale seven-league boots? Children need them more! But sneakers and did not think to carry me to the end of the world at a speed of seven miles per hour, and only quietly squeaking soles.


    So I was disappointed in the factory "Skorokhod". I decided that they were bastards, they''d sold my mother a defective sneaker!


    The Missing Ingredient


    I was five years old. One day I wanted some tea.


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    My parents weren''t home. No problem. I''d seen them do it a hundred times before. You pour water from a kettle into a cup, and from another kettle - a smaller one - you pour the brew and add sugar.


    There was a problem with the sugar.


    I put in three spoonfuls and tasted it - not sweet. I put in two more, it''s not sweet again.


    What''s wrong? My father always puts three spoonfuls in my tea. Maybe the store sold me the wrong sugar. I licked it, the usual sugar. But the tea still isn''t sweet at all.


    Just in case, I added five more spoonfuls - but the tea still wasn''t sweet! I cried.


    I poured the whole sugar bowl into the cup. It''s no use.


    Just then my parents came home from work. They saw their daughter sitting on the floor, crying.


    Next to her is a cup filled to the brim with wet sugar.


    - Daddy," I complained, "my tea is cursed! - There''s so much sugar in it, and it''s not sweet.


    - You silly little girl! - laughed my father. - Who do you think should stir it?


    Oh, that''s it! Why didn''t I guess at once?


    Another time, I decided to bake a cake for my mom''s return from work.


    It''s not that hard! You take flour, sugar, eggs, knead the dough. When it''s ready, you put it in the oven. Mom makes pies every weekend. I can do it too!


    I''ve kneaded the dough. I wait. I wait an hour. I wait another hour. The dough doesn''t rise.


    Maybe I didn''t put in enough eggs? Or flour? I add half a packet. It''s thick. I added water. Now it''s too liquid. I knead it again. There''s dough all over the table and the walls.


    My mother came home from work. She saw the kitchen and gasped.


    - "Mom," I called. - The flour seems to have gone bad. The dough won''t rise!


    - Did you add yeast? - Mom asked.


    Yeast? What kind of yeast? I thought Dad only put yeast in moonshine.


    Moonshiners


    As a kid, I naively believed that moonshine was made from sugar and yeast.


    But it turns out you can make moonshine out of just about anything. Potatoes, rice, fermented jam, wheat grains, beets. Even food waste, as long as it ferments.


    My father made moonshine from tomato paste, syrup, and rotten fruit. My grandmother Dusya made moonshine from caramel - to sell.


    My father also sold moonshine, but unlike my grandmother, he was not averse to consuming the homemade strong drink himself.


    At home we had a large glass bottle of thick fermented mash with berries floating in it, mixed with dead flies. A black rubber glove was tied to the neck of the bottle.


    The glove hung lifelessly when the wort was first poured into the bottle, but as it fermented it swelled more and more until it stood upright with its fat, sausage-like fingers outstretched. It reminded me of a floating Nazi mine.


    We were taught in school that moonshine was bad.


    I was a pioneer, so I threatened to report my father to the police, both as a seller and as the main consumer of the "fire water". When Dad found out about my plans, he became furious:


    - Get out of the house! - he shouted, waving his belt - Pavlik Morozov!


    One night I pierced the black glove with a needle. The "bomb" exploded in such a way that even the wallpaper in the next room was covered with red, stinking scraps of mash. After that, the bottle was put in the closet called "mother-in-law''s room" - far away from me.


    For the first few years, Dad brewed the moonshine on the stove - in a pot covered with an iron plate of water.


    The water in the plate heated up quickly, and it was necessary to constantly refill it with cold water.


    The alcohol fumes stunk so badly that we had to clean the floor every half hour and spray air freshener to keep the neighbors from smelling and get "alarming".


    Once my mother sent me to the neighbor''s house to get some salt. The door was opened by a frightened Aunt Galya with a rag in her hand, and the familiar smell of caramel hit my nostrils so hard that I immediately guessed what was bubbling in the pot on the stove, but I didn''t let on.


    Later, Dad brought out a huge aluminum bucket with a powerful boiling pot inside. The bucket had rubber hoses and a tangle of colored wires.


    My father connected the hoses to the water supply and began making "fire water" from morning until night.


    From time to time he would "test" it by pouring moonshine into a spoon and lighting it.


    One night he made a fool of himself and threw back the lid of the bucket and stuck his head in - to see how the process worked. Dad obviously had a problem with physics. The hot steam threw him into the hallway and burned him so badly it was a miracle he didn''t end up in a hospital bed.


    After this incident, he walked around bandaged like a mummy, telling everyone what had happened:


    - I went in there and it went boom! Bang, and I don''t remember anything!


    When the bandage was removed, the skin on my father''s face was like the skin of a young potato - smooth, soft pink, without a single wrinkle.


    - Well, at least your foolishness is doing you some good! - my mother teased my father.


    But she didn''t want to be "rejuvenated" like that.


    Polina, the extrasens


    Unlike my father, who made moonshine on an industrial scale to supply himself and others, my grandmother Dusya with her small pot could not keep up with the needs of the local drunkards - the hidden drink was often found and drunk by my grandfather.


    Then my grandmother decided to cure my grandfather from drinking.


    At first he was against it, but out of curiosity he agreed.


    So my grandmother invited Polina from the brick factory. Short, overweight, with greasy, uncombed hair and a swollen face, Polina was a drunkard herself.


    No one knew how old she was, maybe forty or sixty. But everyone knew that Polina was a clairvoyant and good at telling fortunes. "Oh, our extrasex is coming!" - The drunkards at the entrance used to joke when they saw Polina. She just snorted contemptuously.


    Polina often visited my grandmother, but I always had my doubts about the strange woman''s psychic abilities. And it hurt her ego.


    - Shall I show you a trick? - she asked me one day, handing me a dirty deck of cards. - Make any card, but do not tell me, just hold it in your hands longer.


    I gave Polina a mocking look. Blue jogging pants, stretched knit sweater, horn-rimmed glasses with thick, thick lenses. A black eye under the left one. That''s an extrasens?


    - Don''t look at me like that, choose a card, - Polina was embarrassed.


    I had chosen a ten of diamonds.


    Polina took the deck, shuffled it and began to put a card face down on the table, quickly running her dirty hand over each one.


    - This one! - Polina pointed solemnly at the card.


    I had turned it over. The ten of diamonds! But how?!


    Polina leaned back proudly in her chair and grinned with her toothless mouth, "I told you, but you didn''t believe me.


    - Wait," I grabbed the deck. - Let''s do it again!


    I ran out into the hallway and had chosen the king of clubs.


    - Give it to me! - Polina waved her hand nonchalantly.


    She shuffled the deck, then moved her palm over it and guessed the card again.


    The clairvoyant with the black eye was definitely beginning to appeal to me. But how does she do it?


    - I don''t really know," Polina said honestly. - I just feel your energy on the card. I have a very strong bio-field.


    - What about mine? - I shifted in my chair. - What kind of biofield do I have?


    Polina gave me a quick, appraising look:


    - Ordinary, like everyone else''s.


    The answer annoyed me. I was sure that my young biofield must be larger than that of the alcoholic Polina.


    Hocus Pocus


    When I was a kid, I wanted a magic wand so I could perform miracles.


    One day, in a toy store, I saw a young magician''s set - a big box with a picture of a boy in a turban. In his hands, the young magician was holding a magic wand... That''s what I''m going to ask Santa for New Year''s Eve!


    In addition to the magic wand, the box contained many other items, such as flying cards, a box with a secret bottom, an invisible coin, and a black bag in which the items mysteriously disappeared.


    All this was accompanied by a booklet with a detailed description of the tricks.


    In a minute, he shuffled the whole deck. He put the black suits in one pile, the red suits in another. The guests were amazed - this time without pretense - and rushed to see if the scarf was tight over the father''s eyes. The most incredulous asked to tie a black cloth over the scarf and repeat the trick. Dad didn''t object and repeated the trick over and over again without any mistakes. So many of Dad''s friends ended up believing in his superpowers.


    They had no idea that I, the little assistant who sat modestly at the table next to Daddy, was the solution to the trick.


    My eyes were not blindfolded, and when a red-suited card came up, all I had to do was stealthily step on my father''s foot under the table.


    When one of the guests suddenly suspected a secret connection between us and asked me to change seats, I innocently complied.


    From that point on, plan "B" was activated. Now, in the case of a red suit, I was supposed to sneeze, hum, cough, call the dog, in a word, give my dad a sign.


    As you can see, the trick would end safely anyway.


    Sometimes my father and I would switch places - I would be blindfolded instead of him. It didn''t affect the results. Our show was a big success.


    So maybe Polina was a cheater, too? But there was no one at my grandmother''s house to help her, and yet she always guessed my cards correctly. A riddle!


    Treatment


    When Polina came to treat my grandfather for drunkenness, he sat at the table with his hands folded in his lap. Quiet, smooth-shaven, in a clean plaid shirt, his gray hair neatly combed back, he watched furtively as she took from her bag some herbs, vials, and a tattered book of incantations.


    - You haven''t been drinking? - Polina asked him sternly.


    Grandpa shook his head.


    - OK. I will read the incantations for two weeks. After that you won''t even think about drinking.


    My grandfather sniffed his nose and looked at my grandmother, but found no sympathy in her face.


    For a week, Polina faithfully performed her passes, whispering abracadabra into a vial of murky liquid. Grandpa sniffed cautiously. He had a vague feeling that after the deadline he would have to take this nasty stuff inside.


    What if his wife and Polina were planning to kill him and put poison in the potion?


    After the sessions, he wandered around the house, thinking about something, standing for a long time at the window, watching the men in the yard excitedly playing dominoes and demanding that the loser pour a "penalty" shot. Then he went to the kitchen, drank water greedily, and listened to himself anxiously.


    It seemed that the lack of desire for alcohol was really beginning to worry my grandfather.


    Three days before the end of the treatment, the inevitable happened. In a bale of dirty laundry, Grandpa found the bottle of vodka that Grandma had hidden and drank it with relief.


    In the evening, sprawled in an armchair and trying to focus his eyes on our dog Belka, Grandpa had shared with her his thoughts on Grandma''s anti-alcohol campaign.


    - Grandma, ugh, bitch, tried to poison me. She was going to marry a young man. A very young man. Fucking hell. Grandma! - Grandpa turned towards the kitchen.


    - What do you want? - Grandma appeared in the doorway, shaking her head sadly with her arms at her sides. - Oh-oh, you are drunk, asshole! Why did I, the old fool, pay Polina money in advance?


    - Grandma! Admit it, you have a fucking boyfriend?! ¨C Grandpa frowned menacingly.


    - I''ll show you a boyfriend! - Grandma Dusya got angry. - I''ll show you such a boyfriend!


    She grabbed a cast-iron frying pan from the stove and hit the grandfather on the head with all her might.


    - Ouch! - she cried, covering her mouth with her hand. - Sasha! - and slowly slid down the wall, using the pan as a shield.


    But Grandpa had no intention of attacking her. Spinning wildly with his eyes, he jumped up and hobbled over to his sofa:


    - What are you doing, Grandma? What are you doing? - he muttered.


    Grandpa threw off his pants and shirt and ducked under the covers. In the morning he got up as if nothing had happened, pretended not to remember anything, but tried to stay away from my grandmother.


    - Should I call Polina? - she asked sullenly.


    - No! - my grandfather shouted, waving a crooked finger in his wife''s face. - Don''t do it! That''s enough!


    To be continued

 Chapter 5

    The Gift


    The image of Matrena''s great-grandmother remains in my memory as frightening, even alien, as if I had realized in my infancy that we had different paths.  Although I think Matrena wanted her great-granddaughter to follow in the "witch''s" footsteps.


    Perhaps she sensed a certain power in me, and before she died, she wanted to increase it by passing on some of her own. They say that witches can''t go to the other world without it.


    I unconsciously resisted such a "gift". My inner voice whispered: don''t go near it, don''t take it, find your own way!


    But since the gift of witchcraft has been passed down to the women in our family for centuries, someone had to take it. And it seems that my great-grandmother gave it to me in a tricky way, through a toy.


    After that, I either had to continue the magical line and start influencing the destinies of the people around me, or turn the energy I received into creativity, which is also magic in a way. I like to think that Matrena hoped I would choose that path.


    The Power of Creativity


    Why am I so sure?


    I have heard that all my great-grandmothers - witches - grew up as creative, sensitive children.


    They sang, drew, wrote poetry, played musical instruments (echoes of these talents still burst in their descendants today). But in the village society, the creative talent of children was not considered a blessing, but rather a pampering, and therefore was not taken seriously. Painting, singing, composing, how much good can come from that?


    A large family required large expenses, which meant a reliable source of income.


    In the villages, people valued the land and physical labor, not art.


    So girls who had been taught from childhood that creativity did not bring much money, that it was all "bullshit," wasted their talents and devoted themselves entirely to household chores. They married, had children, and worked from dawn to dusk on the farm and in the fields.


    But the spark of God, how can you hide it? It smolders in the chest, poisoning the heart and soul. How can one not be angry when the burning within is so great?


    As a result, a woman begins to assert herself, to take revenge on the household for her creative impotence. And if she curses in her heart, wishes someone harm, then trouble is inevitable - this is how she frees herself from negativity.


    And woe to the one who gets into this "dirty" stream. At best he will have a headache, at worst he will become seriously ill or even die. Especially if he is not in the best shape, sick, weakened, upset or depressed about something.


    Only a strong, healthy, self-confident person is invulnerable to any curse. But do we know many such flawless people?


    Witches cry too


    Before my great-grandmother Matrena became a "witch," she earned her living as a laundress, washing other people''s clothes. Grandmother Luda worked as an agronomist on the collective farm, although both mother and daughter were good at drawing and, I think, dreamt of a very different destiny.


    A similar story happened to my parents and my younger sister.


    My mother had a beautiful voice, she was attracted to the stage, to the theater. At school, teachers praised mom''s abilities to literature, painting, foreign languages.


    Father in his youth was a good painter. He wrote poetry. Sang guitar. Played in an amateur theater group. He was also a promising athlete.


    Neither my mother nor my father had the urgent need to survive like their ancestors, but they both gave in to parental pressure ("Live like we lived!") and gave up their dreams. They went to work in a factory doing boring mechanical work.


    My sister is a different story. Her whole life, starting from birth, seems to me to be a chain of continuous failures. It all began before Tanya was born. But I''ll talk about that later. For now I''ll return to the self-expression of personality.


    I see it this way: those who have betrayed themselves and their destiny, who have chosen the feather in their hand over the bird in the air, their trapped energy begins to "sour". Resentment, envy, and anger arise, which over the years can turn into some kind of addiction or disease.


    I think it is no coincidence that great-grandmother Matrena and grandmother Luda were paralyzed at the end of their lives.


    Health as a gift


    The gift I received unexpectedly from my great-grandmother did not manifest itself for a long time, or maybe I just took it for granted.


    Not only did I write poems easily and draw well, but as great-grandmother Matrena, I was able to avert other people''s eyes and share my power with people.


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    I first tested it on a young man I was secretly in love with.


    I was 13 years old and he was 18. One day the boys in the courtyard told me that my beloved had kidney problems, and that he was not even accepted for military service because of this illness.


    It seemed terribly unfair. Wow, I thought, he is so young and already so sick, and I decided to share my health with him.


    I wouldn''t spare anything for a good man! Besides, I had plenty of health (or so I thought at the time).


    I made my decision responsibly. I even performed a kind of ritual in which I imagined my energy flowing smoothly into the young man''s body and healing him.


    For a day or two after the ritual, I felt a slight discomfort, but it soon passed and I was awake and full of energy again.


    And six months later, my beloved was drafted into the army. The doctors found the young man absolutely healthy and declared him fit for military service. Whether my intervention helped or the disease receded on its own is unknown, but the news of the miraculous healing made me very happy and inspired (I don''t know about the recruit himself, I suppose he didn''t want to serve at all).


    Once again I gave a piece of my health when I was studying in Nizhny Tagil.


    I had a favorite teacher who usually spent most of the school year on sick leave - she had a weak heart.


    As in the case of the young man, I felt that her illness was unfair and decided to help her.


    Again, I arranged for an impromptu energy transfer session. But this time my health deteriorated immediately and severely. For almost two months I was plagued by a severe runny nose. No pills or powders could bring the fever down. It was not the flu, not an acute respiratory infection, but God knows what! I shrank, turned pale, almost green. I felt that this strange illness was somehow related to my giving my energy to the benefit of the suffering, and it was time to stop this charity.


    Indirectly, my suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the teacher had never taken a sick day in all that time, and unlike me, she was in full bloom.


    I realized that I couldn''t take it a third time.


    Blind Spot


    But my experiments didn''t stop there.


    That summer, my friends and I liked to spend time in the spare parts warehouse, where our nineteen-year-old friend Dima worked as a part-time guard during the holidays.


    After lunch, the warehouse was empty and closed. Dima was bored sitting alone on duty, and he often called his friends to keep him company: to drink tea, to chat, to watch TV. We would sneak into the warehouse through a hole in the fence and run excitedly around the huge area, past the iron hangars. We gawked at the machinery, the seeders, planters, tractors, climbed into the cabs of combines, pressed buttons, turned the wheel.


    Someone suggested playing hide-and-seek.


    It fell to Dima to be a leader of the game.


    We played with excitement, just like when we were kids. Everyone wanted to stay out of the leader''s sight as long as possible. But Dima had a sixth sense about who was hiding where, and he methodically caught the players.


    It seems that two or three of us were still uncaught when I decided to change the hiding place. I waited for Dima to enter the brick gatehouse, climb the stairs to the second floor, where he could take a wide-eyed look at the courtyard from above.


    I jumped around the corner and ran!


    Only Dima came to the balcony faster than I expected.


    I froze in the middle of the courtyard. The game was over for me. Of course he saw me! He couldn''t help noticing me.


    His behavior seemed strange. He searched the yard with his eyes, gradually narrowing his field of vision to where I was standing.


    I was standing right in front of him, like in the palm of his hand!


    His eyes were fixed on me. I waved my hand as if to say: I give up! But his eyes passed over me indifferently and continued to scan the courtyard.


    I couldn''t believe my luck. Without taking my eyes off Dima, I moved slowly, sideways, toward the iron cistern. Dima still did not react to me, as if I were invisible. While he was going down the stairs, I managed to get ahead of him and "unlock" the other players who had been watching us with bated breath all this time.


    Then we had a long, passionate discussion with Dima about why he had not caught me.


    Dima took offense and seemed genuinely confused as to what he was being accused of.


    It seemed that he really hadn''t seen me.


    Test for lice


    I have been able to "avert" other people''s eyes before.


    I remember that in the sanatorium named after Yuri Gagarin a case of pediculosis was detected - a common thing in schools and pioneer camps of those years. The doctors raised the alarm.


    And although no one in our class had lice, on bath day all the girls had to be disinfected. After showering, we had to rinse our hair with a weak solution of vinegar.


    I didn''t want to use vinegar for two reasons - first, I didn''t have lice, and second, the acetic acid gave my black hair a green tint.


    Some of the girls were about to refuse the humiliating procedure as well, but there was a nurse sitting at the exit of the shower room. She was counting towels and sniffing our heads like a dog. There was no way to sneak past her - she would turn you back.


    It was just the two of us left in the shower room, me and another girl. Ira splashed a ladle of vinegar on herself and walked forward, and I followed her, not even looking in the direction of the smelly tub. What I hoped for was unclear, but I believed that something would happen.


    The nurse quickly examined Ira and was about to turn her attention to me, but then it turned out that Ira had mixed up the foot and bath towels, throwing them in the wrong pile.


    While the nurse reprimanded her and checked and counted all the towels, I took advantage of the hiccup and slipped into the locker room unnoticed.


    Some of the girls tried to snitch on me to the nurse, but I think my stern look spoke louder than words, and the sneaks decided not to mess with me.


    On the train


    There was another case when my husband and I were returning to Moscow from Crimea by train.


    At night, Ukrainian border guards entered our carriage and began to check the documents of passengers. There were three border guards, and they checked thoroughly and meticulously, waking those who were asleep, carefully comparing photos with the original. In the next compartment, a top shelf was empty, but the crumpled bedclothes indicated that the owner was somewhere nearby.


    The men in uniform did not rest until they found the "deserter" in the toilet.


    And then I remembered what happened in the warehouse and in the shower. Why don''t I pretend to be invisible again? - I thought mischievously. Would it work this time or not?


    I had nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of, so I didn''t care about the result.


    Andrei motioned for me to get my passport ready. But I didn''t even bother to get it out. I lay down on the top shelf and pretended I didn''t exist.


    The border guard came in and checked the documents of my husband and his neighbor. He took the passenger''s passport from the bottom shelf, ran his eyes over it, and turned to me. He looked at me for half a second, maybe less, and then, without a word, he walked out and continued on his way.


    I cheered. I did it! Yay!


    To be continued

 Chapter 6

    Injury


    As a child, I dreamed of having a little sister or brother to play hide-and-seek, touch-and-run, and squash with. Unfortunately, my pleas to buy a "baby" at the store didn''t help.


    Mom didn''t want any more kids. So I would probably continue to languish in loneliness, but my father had an accident at the factory. Due to someone''s negligence, hydrochloric acid splashed into my father''s face and blinded him in one eye.


    Coincidence or not, many years later I found an old black and white photo in Grandma Dusya''s photo album, when my father was one and a half years old. The picture was cut in half, and the cut line was right on the baby''s left eye.


    Dad was worried that the damaged eye could not be saved and that he would never be able to see again. But the doctors assured him that there was hope for him to regain his sight.


    Eye clinics, tests, complicated surgeries - it took a year.


    There was no miracle, his sight was not restored.


    My mother was crying, my father was angry. At 27, it''s hard to accept a sudden disability.


    Because of my age, I didn''t understand what had happened. What''s the problem? On the outside, Dad hadn''t changed a bit. He wore a cleverly chosen glass insert, and unless you looked closely, you could not tell that he had only one eye.


    Of course, many people knew about my father''s injury - rumors spread quickly in small towns - but I don''t remember anyone mocking or insulting him. Even my classmates, who never missed an opportunity to talk unflatteringly about other kids'' parents, kept quiet.


    An outcast


    In the yard next to ours lived a boy, Denis, my age.


    For some reason, the guys didn''t like him, considered him an outcast, bullied him, called him insulting names, and sometimes even beat him. This boy''s father also had only one eye.


    One day my classmate Lena shouted something insulting at Denis.


    He picked up a handful of stones from the ground and threw them at her.


    - You! - Lena got angry. - I''ll get you!


    She ran after him, but the boy was already running home.


    - I see London, I see France. I see your underpants! - Lena shouted after him. - You are nut! And your father is one-eyed! Cyclops!


    Even though the words were not meant for me, I felt like I was being electrocuted. How could Lena not be ashamed of saying that? What if someone had said that about my father? I grabbed her arm:


    - Shut up! Have you forgotten that my father is also...?


    The classmate was embarrassed, but quickly got out of the awkward situation:


    - Your dad is different, at least he''s handsome.


    My father was indeed a handsome man, he was used to being liked by women, to being the center of attention. But he was so ashamed of his supposed ugliness, so afraid that my mother would leave him, that he almost forced her to have a second child, believing that only then would his wife not leave him.


    That''s how Tanya came into our family.


    Three Sixes


    - Oh, what a little thing, how can I play with her? - I said disappointedly, looking at the pink bundle in the maternity hospital. And immediately lost all interest in the newborn.


    My sister was born on the sixth day of the sixth month, at four o''clock in the morning.


    - It''s a good thing she wasn''t born at six o''clock, - said Grandma Luda. - Three sixes are the sign of the Antichrist.


    - It''s the birthday of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin! - laughed mother. - She has the same curls as him.


    My mother wanted to name the newborn Marina after her best friend, but I insisted: Tanya!


    Contrary to my grandmother''s predictions, Tanya turned out to be an unusually quiet baby.


    With me, my mother recalled, she couldn''t sleep a wink: the diaper was wet, I cried, when I was weaned from the breast, I cried at the top of my lungs. And Tanya just sleeps in her crib. Hungry - she is silent, tummy aches - not a sound, pissed, pooped, all in silence. No fuss at all. Not a child, but gold. It would be great if every baby was like that!


    Bathroom Accident


    I am three and a half years old and Tanya is three months old. Mom is giving us a bath in the tub.


    She just stepped out for a minute to check on the porridge on the stove, and I stayed to take care of my little sister. But as soon as the door slammed shut behind my mother, Tanya slipped on a flat spot and went under the water with her head.


    The image is still fresh in my mind: water gushing from the faucet, little Tanya clinging desperately to the shower hose, and me looking down at her with curiosity and fear: will she get out or not?


    Tanya struggled silently and kept her frightened eyes on me. Her look was so pleading, so desperate - why are you looking at me, hurry up and help me!


    But it didn''t occur to me to reach out to my sister or call my mother for help. If I had heard Tanya''s scream, it might have jolted me out of my stupor, but instead I just stood there, mesmerized, watching my sister sink to the bottom.


    I was afraid to even touch her, what if it too late and she is already drown?


    And it was only when Tanya began to choke in the water that something clicked inside me: she is alive! She can still be saved! And I called my mom.


    Oh, and I got a kick out of it! My frightened mother thought I had wanted to drown Tanya on purpose, out of jealousy. But I was more puzzled by another question - why didn''t my sister make a sound in the moment of danger? She didn''t scream, she didn''t cry. Not even a squeak.


    Maybe she''s a mute?


    Our Tanya cries loudly


    Suddenly everything changed.


    One night, our quiet Tanya woke everyone up with a loud cry. We turned on the light - the child had a fever. We took her temperature - forty.


    Dad ran to wake up our neighbor, the invalid Zhenya, he was the only one on the floor who had a house phone. The ambulance came. "Teething," the doctor shrugged. - If the temperature does not drop by morning, call the district pediatrician.


    The ambulance left. But Dad didn''t wait until morning.


    Somewhere on Tolstoy Street there was a doctor he knew by the name of Markov. Despite the late hour, my father decided to go to him and bring him to us. I went with my father. What an adventure!


    It''s dark and raining outside, and the wind is howling. My father and I walked at a brisk pace through the yards and alleys, drowning in the mud and jumping over huge puddles.


    When we found the right entrance and the right apartment, we rang the doorbell. The lock clicked.


    A big man stood at the door in shorts and a T-shirt, squinting in the bright light.


    - I beg you, hurry! My daughter is dying! - The father breathed out.


    Without further questions, Dr. Markov quickly gets dressed and runs out into the rain.


    - You were right not to wait until morning," he said later. - Another half hour would have been too late. Your daughter has bilateral pneumonia.


    The Hospital


    The fight for Tanya''s life continued for several months.


    I saw my sister a few times through the glass of the hospital room - a small, puny body tangled in a web of IVs, needles and catheters.


    Mom remembered that there was no room left for the injections on my sister''s buttocks. The shots were so painful that Tanya''s arms and legs cramped up.


    But the serious illness did not go away. Tanya needed a blood transfusion. Her blood was rare type 1, so my mother became her donor.


    Then there was rehabilitation in the hospital in Izhevsk. The rules there were prison-like - no visits, no toys, no transfers. The doctors would not even let my mother visit Tanya.


    Little Savage


    When my sister came home six months later, she was a different child. She didn''t recognize her family and acted like a hunted animal in the forest. She started stealing food, taking it from the table, stuffing candy in her pockets, and hiding bread under her pillow. In the morning, before kindergarten, my father would ask at breakfast:


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    - Who wants cheesecake?


    - I do! - Tanya whimpers.


    She thinks Daddy is offering her


    her favorite chicken tail.


    As for the dumplings, Tanya never liked them and demanded the cutlets. My mom and I used to take out the dumpling stuffing, put the dough to one side and the stuffing on a plate, and assure her that these were cutlets, just small, for children. Tanya believed us and ate them with gusto.


    My younger sister''s good appetite saved me from being punished with a belt more than once.


    My mother was annoyed that I wouldn''t finish my sausages and soup. So I began to sneak the rest of the food into Tanya''s plate and slip away from the table with a clear conscience.


    Soon after leaving the hospital, Tanya went from being skinny to a fat girl with dimples on her cheeks.


    - A real angel! - Grandma Luda admired her.


    But she was in vain.


    All against one


    By the age of three, as if to compensate for her quiet childhood, Tanya had become a real tomboy. She could not be left alone for a second without supervision.


    If you turned your back, she would split her forehead, tape her eyes shut with chewing gum, or swallow large amounts of ascorbic acid. One day she cut off her bangs completely. Then she cut off her toenails with a huge pair of tailor''s scissors. I wonder how she didn''t lose any fingers.


    For New Year''s, my mother''s sister Nina sent us a package of rare chocolates. We put the chocolates in crisp, elegant wrappers in the cupboard next to crystal glasses - as a decoration - and warned Tanya: we would eat them on New Year''s Eve.


    The holiday came. At midnight, we looked in the cupboard, unwrapped the foil, and there was no chocolate! Sly Tanya ate them in secret, carefully taped up the empty wrappers, and put them back in their place so that no one would suspect her pranks.


    At the age of four, this little savage escaped from my parents'' hands and almost got under the wheels of a car. When she was five, she climbed onto the roof of a children''s club and started throwing stones at passersby with her younger cousin Sasha.


    It''s a good thing someone climbed up on the roof and kicked mischievous kids in the ass, or innocent people could have been hurt by their antics.


    Tanya was called a terrible child who didn''t know how to behave - she stole, lied, got into trouble, always broke, ruined, lost everything.


    Grandma Dusya usually refused to take my sister to Tagil for the summer. Other relatives, when they found out that we were going to visit them, said bluntly: "Only without Tanya!


    They shied away from her like the plague, expecting some kind of mischief at any moment.


    And Tanya, sensing their fear, would immediately arrange that mischief for them.


    Even in those rare moments when my sister was not up to pranks and was trying to make a pleasant impression, she still managed to mess up - tearing a new dress, accidentally getting caught on a nail, or breaking my mother''s favorite vase by accidentally touching the edge of the table.


    And everyone, including me, thought Tanya did it on purpose - out of spite.


    One day I decided to complain about my obnoxious sister in a Pioneer magazine. I wrote three pages about how mean and rude Tanya was. I also mentioned how she secretly ate a three-quart jar of raspberry jam and a kilo of candy from Mom.


    I reread what I had written and... tore up the letter. She is my sister! I felt sorry for her.


    Tanya''s life had been hard enough. After spending six months within the walls of the state hospital, in total isolation, at that tender age when communication with family, especially the mother, is vital for a child, Tanya had become so wild that she could not make up for lost time. She lacked parental affection, care, love and warmth. And she was ready to get it at any cost.


    Resentment


    The birth of the second child did not improve family relations. On the contrary, with small children in two rooms, it became cramped. The parents quarreled. My grandmother relentlessly scolded my mother for not divorcing my father and giving birth to a child of a "cripple". Grandmother Luda could not forgive her daugher.


    The mother was as if between two fires, and unable to resist her parents and husband, began to tear down evil on the children. If you do something wrong, she immediately bursts into tears and screams.


    Father, trying to assert himself and relieve the tension, began to cheat on my mother and drink with redoubled zeal. Because of this, he and my mother were constantly scandalized, shouting at each other, and sometimes my father would raise his hand to her. My grandmother did not interfere, but she never missed an opportunity to gloat over my mother, saying: "I warned you!" Needless to say, how depressing these quarrels were for everyone.


    So that two families could finally live separately, my father joined the waiting list for a new apartment.


    The factory gave him an apartment, but only a one-room one.


    After much persuasion, pleading, and tears from my mother, my grandfather relented and agreed to an exchange. He and my grandmother moved into a one-room apartment on Pehtin Street, and we stayed in a two-room apartment on Karl Marx Street.


    But my grandfather could not accept the new accommodation. He didn''t like everything about it: the house, the neighborhood, the layout, especially the windows facing west instead of east, as he liked.


    West, the sunset, meant death to him, slow fading. Grandpa didn''t live in his new apartment for long.


    Unloved


    Mom and Dad continued to fight.


    People usually say about such couples, "It''s bad together, it''s bad apart.


    Many times my mother wanted to leave my father, but she was afraid of being alone with two children. She secretly hated the unwanted child and tried to blame the younger daughter for her failed life, saying that if it were not for her, everything would be different.


    Adding fuel to the fire was the father who, in moments of jealousy, had said that Tanya was not his child. Though only a blind man would miss their blood relation - Tanya was an exact copy of Daddy. Perhaps after such accusations, the mother finally realized that she had made a fatal mistake in not listening to her mother''s advice.


    But what''s done is done.


    It seems to me that most of the suffering was not so much on Mom''s part as on Tanya''s. Isn''t that why she got sick? Children feel everything.


    My sister''s illness became a serious test for my parents, forcing them to unite for a while, to forget their quarrels. But I hoped in vain that Tanya''s recovery would bring peace to the family, that Mom and Dad would finally get along.


    As soon as the threat of death passed, as soon as everything returned to normal, things got worse.


    If before the sweet little girl had not caused the adults much trouble, had not distracted them from the endless drama and clarification of their relationships, now she began to demand more attention for herself - by whims, epathetic behavior, tantrums, which inflamed the already tense atmosphere in the family.


    The Devil''s Seal


    For as long as I can remember, my parents have always insinuated that I was a good girl and Tanya was a bad one, attracting misfortune like a magnet.


    She had a bad teacher in kindergarten and elementary school. And in general, Grandma Luda was probably right - it was all to blame for the unfortunate "three sixes".


    My parents wouldn''t even allow the thought that there might be something wrong with them.


    Mom and Dad considered our family, if not exemplary, at least no worse than other families. Everyone is fed and clothed, what more do you need? As for cursing and scandals-that''s nothing! The falling out of lovers is the renewal of love.  But those scandals sometimes made me want to run away from home.


    I used to convince myself and Tanya that we were adopted children, that our real father was the famous singer Valery Leontiev, and our mother was the sweet, kind singer Valentina Tolkunova. Would a birth mother really shout at her children? (I really took all my mother''s outbursts personally).


    Once I was really close to running away to an orphanage with my sister. I thought we would be better off there.


    We are so different


    However, the fact that my parents constantly compared my sister and me, and that the comparison was not in Tanya''s favor, usually played to my advantage.


    I liked feeling special.


    It didn''t mean that I was in any way better than my sister. It''s just that I could disguise myself well, hide bad deeds and thoughts from others, "cover my tracks.


    Tanya was the more naive and ingenuous child. She followed me everywhere like a tail. I''ll start collecting postcards and Tanya will do the same. OK, I start collecting calendars and leave the postcards to my sister, but suddenly it turns out that she''s bored with them and wants to collect calendars too. It''s like that with everything.


    I used to tease Tanya, call her a copycat, hide my things from her. But you can''t hide anything from Tanya, she''ll find it and spoil it out of spite.


    Being friends with my sister didn''t work.


    I was only willing to put up with Tanya if she obeyed me. It was nice to babysit her, tutor her, entertain her, play house (the mother in that house was, of course, me), but as soon as the younger sister broke my rules, took something without asking, or showed willfulness, I immediately fell out of favor with her.


    Could sisters be so different? - everyone wondered.


    We were very different indeed, but at the same time we almost always liked the same books, and for me that is an important indicator of spiritual intimacy.


    When we were children, our parents measured our height by making notches in the doorjamb, and I remember my sister dreaming of catching up with me and then overtaking me in height. I grew slowly and Tanya grew quickly, and by the time we were twelve or fifteen, people around us could not tell which of us was the older and which was the younger, and some people thought we were twins.


    At every opportunity, my sister and I would argue, call each other names, and sometimes fight.


    Tanya''s temper was fierce. One day she threw an iron cup at me so hard that I would have had a broken nose or a gash on my forehead if I had not ducked in time. There was a deep dent in the door where the blow landed.


    Make friends, make friends, never, never break friends!


    My parents used to punish us for fighting.


    But they never found out who started the fight and what it was about.


    "It''s both of your fault!" - was my mother''s favorite phrase. So she''d slap both of us and that would be the end of the conversation.


    - For what?! - Tanya and I yelled in unison.


    - For everything! - Mom would say, walking on our butts with a belt, slipper, robe belt, jump rope, dog leash, kettle wire, twisted towel or washing machine hose - Mom''s ingenuity knew no bounds.


    When it was later discovered that an innocent person had been punished, Mom rarely admitted her mistake. She would say, "Prevention never hurts!


    The belt made me completely insensitive to physical pain, but it sharpened the sensitivity of my soul. I was a real "extrasens" here.


    Have you ever noticed how animals and babies look at people''s faces? They literally read them, tear off their masks. As a child, I could tell by my mother''s footsteps and the way the key turned in the keyhole whether she was in a good or bad mood when she came home from work.


    And if she was in a bad mood, it was better not to be seen by her.


    Tanya and I hated the belt and tried to hide it as far away as we could, at the same time taking all the slippers out of sight. Then my mother would just put us in different corners or lock us up - Tanya in the bathroom, me in the toilet. And turn off the lights.


    There was a window in the wall below the ceiling. After a little whimpering in the dark, my sister and I would begin to establish communication - knocking and talking. Or after we climbed up - Tanya on the radiator and me on the tiled wall, resting my legs and arms on it - we would stick to the window and make faces at each other.


    So imperceptibly peace always came.


    It''s not me


    The spring. Daddy, Tanya and I are walking in the yard. I''m playing ball, and three-year-old Tanya takes it from me. I don''t give it back, Tanya cries.


    Mom comes out, takes the ball and gives it to my sister, shaming me: she''s a little girl!


    I hold a grudge - against Tanya, against my mom, but most of all against my dad, who laughingly takes the camera and starts taking pictures of me, frowning and sobbing.


    But soon I had the chance to get back at my sister. The thing is that I always wanted to try smoking, because my father smoked his Belomor cigarettes very appetizingly. When I left home alone, I went out on the balcony, took out the pack of cigarettes, struck a match...


    And then a threatening voice came from above:


    - What the hell is this? Throw it away! I''ll tell your parents everything!


    I recoiled from the railing in horror and threw away the unlit cigarette.


    That same evening, the upstairs neighbor made good on his threat. But he mistook me for my younger sister, so it was Tanya who was punished, not me. I stood aside while she was whipped with the belt.


    I felt sorry for my sister, but to confess my sin, to tell my parents the truth, was to bring down their wrath upon me. So I cowardly kept silent and mentally vowed never to smoke myself. "There''s nothing wrong with the parents punishing Tanya," I thought in my defense. - How often was I beaten instead of Tanya! At least take this unfortunate ball. Now we''re even.


    Over the years, the relationship between my sister and me has improved. We became closer, trusted each other more, and even vowed never to separate. But I didn''t keep my promise; I moved to another city. And twelve-year-old Tanya was left alone again.


    Her letters to me were full of despair, but I did not notice, did not want to notice.


    I didn''t care about my sister, I started a new life with my own metamorphoses and searches. Meanwhile, Tanya got into bad company and started smoking...


    To be continued

 Chapter 7

    Leave me alone!


    - She''s out of control! I can''t deal with her! Maybe she''ll at least listen to you," Mom complained over the long-distance phone.


    - And this one too! - she means my father. - He''s completely crazy with jealousy. When he is sober - a man like a man, but when he drinks - a beast. He fights, destroys everything. But why am I telling you this? You''ve seen it all yourself.


    I sympathize with Mom: yes, it''s hard for you with them. Tanya is no angel, and Dad, to be honest, is no gift either, especially when he''s drunk. But what can I do?


    - Talk to him, eh? - Mom asks.


    My father gets on the phone and says in a deliberately cheerful voice that everything is fine at home and there is nothing to worry about. Don''t listen to your mother. You know she just wants to complain.


    - I know, of course. But try not to drink, Dad, okay? - I mumble more to clear my conscience, because these wishes of mine for my father - an empty sound.


    - All right, all right, I won''t, - my father replies in shorthand. - Do you want to talk to Tanya?


    Tanya picks up the phone and for a long time pours out her soul in a half-whisper - that everything is bad at home, that our mother yells at her all the time, makes her study and do housework - cleaning, laundry - and that our father only knows that he''s cheating on mom, that yesterday he didn''t even spend the night at home. And all these things.


    - You''re lucky you''re not at home! - Tanya sighs enviously. - I''m going crazy here with them. I''m sick of this fighting, if only they would divorce sooner.


    - Yes, I understand you, - I agree. - But don''t get upset, just wait.


    - Uh-huh," Tanya replies dejectedly. - Come back soon! At least I''ll have someone to talk to.


    "God, I''m so sick of all of you! - I think to myself and hang up. - Fuck you all, leave me alone!"


    Parents and kids


    Of course, things were not always so bad in our family. There were joyful, even happy days when Mom and Dad got along peacefully.


    How I loved them in those moments! But family happiness seemed too fragile, too fleeting, like the calm before the storm - everything seems fine and you want to believe that it will always be so, but suddenly the apparent well-being collapses before your eyes like a house of cards - once and nothing remains. And you feel the fear and anxiety again.


    Maybe I have the wrong parents? - I thought sometimes. Maybe they lived and raised my sister and me the wrong way? And now I realize: they lived and raised the best way they could.


    They just didn''t know how to do it differently. They didn''t have a worthy example and obviously didn''t want to understand what was wrong with them. So should I blame them?


    Willingly or unwillingly, parents pass on to their children what they have, both their best and their worst qualities, and how the children dispose of this "inheritance" is up to them, the children.


    - Who do you take after? - Tanya and I have heard this phrase used more than once by different people.


    And it was unclear whether they meant to praise us or, on the contrary, to scold us.


    - Stubborn, like Father! - Mom would snort when she was angry with my sister and me.


    But as soon as there was a reason for parental pride, my mother would smile:


    - We have good girls, they take after me!


    In moments of anger, Dad would yell that we were as stupid as our mother. But if we took Dad''s side on an issue, his opinion of us changed completely.


    - Well done! - He would be happy.


    So you have to wonder who Tanya and I took after.


    Wolves


    My mother was born in the village of Ivanovo.


    When my grandmother became pregnant with her youngest daughter, she was already old by village standards - 33 years old. But her husband, my grandfather, really wanted a son, so she decided to keep the pregnancy.


    But God sent them another girl - Angelina.


    Mama grew up as a weak and sickly child. She often caught colds, spent long periods in the hospital - sometimes with angina, sometimes with rheumatism. Once she even missed the school year.


    She was five months old when my grandfather came to the city hospital in a horse-drawn sleigh to take her and my grandmother home.


    It was winter, minus thirty degrees Celsius. It got dark early, and it was a long way to Ivanovo. Besides, my grandfather came to the hospital drunk, because he had already celebrated his daughter''s recovery somewhere with his friends.


    My grandmother wrapped my mother in a warm blanket, pressed her to her chest, and sat in the sleigh, wrapped in a large sheepskin coat.  They set off. Twilight, the creaking of the runners, the lulling rocking of the baby in her arms - my grandmother did not notice how she dozed off and fell out of the sleigh somewhere between the town and the village. Grandfather discovered the loss only at home. And only when Matrena, my great-grandmother, came out with a lantern and, seeing the empty sleigh, asked:


    - Slava, where are Luda and Angelina? Did they stay at the hospital?


    All the alcohol was gone from Grandpa''s head in a second. He turned his horse around and ran back at full speed.


    At the same time, Grandmother, exhausted and buried waist-deep in snow, was walking along the sledding trail with a tiny child in her arms.


    Green lights flashed behind her. Many. Many of them. They were getting closer.


    There was a terrible howling. Wolves! Screaming? It''s no use. It''s a long way to the village, no one will hear. Grandmother was about to say goodbye to her life, but luckily a late hunter on skis passed by. Noticing the lonely figure, he stopped, took the squeaking bundle from my grandmother and went forward. Grandmother followed her rescuer. And here came grandfather on a horse-drawn sleigh.


    The green lights disappeared into the darkness.


    The smartest girl


    In their youth, my grandfather and grandmother studied at the same agricultural college.


    A handsome young man with black eyebrows and multicolored eyes - one brown, the other blue - was considered the first handsome man in the class. Many girls wanted to be friends with him, but my grandfather seemed to notice no one but Luda.


    Luda was a little older than Slava and not very pretty. She was thin, dark-haired and had freckles on her nose. History is silent about what attracted the young man, who was spoiled by the attention of girls, to her, but evil tongues said that Luda had bewitched Slava.


    But my grandmother assured me that it had nothing to do with women''s charms, and my grandfather chose her because she was the best student and the leader of the group. She may not have been pretty, but she was smart!


    In the third year, 1943, my grandfather was drafted into World War II. My grandmother stayed on the home front.


    Then came the war with the Japanese. Slava served as a border guard in the Far East, where he was recruited by the KGB. He didn''t come home for a long time, but when he did, he got a job in a military factory in Glazov and was well respected by his superiors until he made a mistake.


    The case was as follows: that night he was drunk on his way home from a weekend, and in order to get home quickly, he picked up a hitchhiker.


    The driver refused to take the drunk hitchhiker.


    "What?" - The grandfather pulled his gun from his holster and threatened to shoot him in the head.


    The driver got scared and put the troublemaker in the car, but then he reported him to the KGB, and my grandfather was fired from the factory.


    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    In 1950, after graduating from college, my grandfather went to Ivanovo, where his beloved Luda Derendyaeva worked as an agronomist. He became the head of the collective farm.


    The young married.


    But when there was a vacancy for a saleswoman in the local shop, my grandmother changed her profession. She had a commercial mind along with cunning and resourcefulness. She knew how to run a business so that there was no weak spot anywhere. She bragged:


    - No one can accuse me of anything! I can deceive anyone!


    Pebbles in a bag


    One day, little Angelina walked into her mother''s shop.


    On the counter she saw a bag of her favorite chocolate candy, "Bear in the North. I''ll have one, she thought, it won''t cost mom anything. She ate one, then another, then another.


    Before she knew it, the bag was empty, just the wrappers. She was scared.


    But she was even more afraid to tell her mother. So she ran outside, picked up pebbles from the ground, wrapped them in paper, and put the bag back in the counter.


    Her mother, who didn''t even suspect the switch, sold the candy.


    In the evening, angry customers came to her shop. Why are you selling pebbles instead of candy?


    Angelina was beaten at home with a belt. It''s one thing to cheat the auditors, my grandmother taught her. - It''s another to cheat the customers. You have to be smarter!


    Stash


    When my mother was six years old, she committed another terrible crime - she stole fifty kopecks from the shop till.


    Then she stole a ruble. Then another. And another.


    She did it because she really wanted a brand-new bicycle for her birthday.


    She had admitted that every time she stole the coins, she trembled with fear all day. Not for herself, but for her mother. In the evening, she would ask her carefully:


    - Mom, won''t they put you in jail?


    She was surprised:


    - For what?


    - For shortage in the till.


    My grandmother laughed:


    - Daughter, what shortage? I''ve never had any!


    But according to my mother''s memory, by that time she had already stolen fifteen rubles from the cash register. That was a lot of money back then!


    Of course, she did not steal it all at once, but how could such a sum go unnoticed?


    Anyway, my mother was beyond my grandmother''s suspicions.


    But the stolen wealth didn''t help her. The piggy bank - a rusty coffee can - had been found by my grandfather in his garage. He was delighted: "Oh, someone''s stash!" And he drank all the money with his friends.


    So my mom got a bicycle only in the eighth grade.


    Laika and the auditor


    In Ivanovo in the family of my grandfather and grandmother lived a mongrel named Laika.


    It was a very clever and intelligent dog, which guarded the yard. All day long she would lie under the porch as if she were sleeping - you couldn''t see or hear her.


    In fact, Laika did not sleep, but she saw, heard and remembered everything perfectly.


    When a stranger entered the yard, the dog didn''t move, but she wouldn''t let the stranger go unnoticed - she simply wouldn''t let him out of the gate until the owners came.


    One day an auditor from the district consumer association came to the shop.


    After the inspection, the grandmother invited the guest into the house for a cup of tea.


    The auditor did not even notice the dog lying under the porch.


    But Laika, as it turned out later, noticed him immediately. And when he came downstairs in the evening, she jumped out of her hiding place and clung to the auditor''s pants leg with her teeth. She tore his pants to shreds! The poor guy ran away home in his underwear.


    I think Grandma arranged it on purpose!


    Let''s smoke


    Mom and her friend decided to smoke in secret.


    Angelina had seen her father smoke many times - he took a cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it.


    The girls got a cigarette, hid in the backyard, put the cigarettes in their mouths and lit them. The smoke made their mouths bitter. Tears streamed from their eyes. They stood there spitting and coughing. It turned out they''d lit it with the wrong end!


    From then on, my mother never touched cigarettes again, joking that she''d had more than enough smoke as a child.


    Only once, when I was about six years old, did my father persuade my mother to take a puff of a cigarette.


    I was so scared for her! I had never seen a woman smoke, and here was my mother! What if she got sick and died? I cried: Mom, please don''t smoke!


    And my mother obeyed and threw the cigarette away.


    At the bathhouse


    After living in the city, my grandfather never gave up hope of returning there.


    And his dream came true. He became the head of the collective farm in Shtanigurt and got a wooden house in the suburbs, where he moved with my mother''s older sisters.


    My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother stayed in the village to wait for my grandfather to settle in the new place, organize their daily lives, and then take them there.


    The women worked day and night, and there was no one in the village to look after my mother, a six-year-old tomboy in a skirt.


    One day, Angelina wanted some boiled potatoes.


    She crawled into the cellar, gathered a dozen potatoes in her hem, put them in a pot, and poured water over them. But she didn''t know how to boil them. She thought, "If I start to heat the stove in the house, the neighbors will see me, scold me, and maybe tell my mother.


    So she decided to go to the bathhouse, away from prying eyes.


    She found an iron tripod, put wood under it, hung a pot on it, and built a fire on the wooden floorboards.


    But my mother must have known something, because before she struck a match, she brought a bucket of water from the well to the bathhouse in case of fire.


    Fortunately, she didn''t burn the bathhouse, but she did burn a hole in the wooden floor.


    So the potatoes didn''t boil.


    Black Pepper Tea


    After this incident, Mom got a babysitter, a small, thin old woman from the village.


    The old woman liked to drink tea with ground black pepper. She poured it generously into the cup instead of sugar. It was a quirk of hers.


    Looking at the nanny, Angelina also drank tea with black pepper, so when she moved to the city, she refused to drink unpeppered tea. She found it unpalatable.


    And it should be noted that black pepper was in short supply in the Soviet Union in those years. And if the family could get it easily in the village, where the grandmother was a shopkeeper, there was no way to get it in Glazov.


    It was difficult, but my mother was weaned from her nanny''s habit.


    Red-feathered Ducks


    The suburb where my grandfather and grandmother lived was called southern settlement, or in common parlance, the Airfield. There they planted a vegetable garden with potatoes and had domestic ducks for food.


    One day a neighbor''s brood joined their flock of ducks.


    My mother was ten years old at the time, and with her keen eye, she immediately noticed that there were more ducks in the yard. She yelled at my grandmother to chase the aliens away before the birds got mixed up. But my grandmother gave her a warning look and put her finger to her lips and said, "Quiet, don''t make any noise!


    What''s wrong, Mom thought? Why is Grandma acting so strangely?


    And then she had a hunch. Mom even laughed - how could she not have thought of it before, because the feathers of the neighbor''s ducks are painted red - you can''t mix them up!


    But Grandma Luda, ignoring Mom, ran off the porch and, looking around furtively, began to pluck the marked feathers.


    A few minutes, and now you cannot tell where your own bird is and where a stranger''s is.


    - All right! - Grandma hummed, stood up and shook the dust from her knees. - Now no one can prove that these are not our ducks, but the neighbor''s. And that there are more of them, how should I know, maybe it''s a wild flock.


    Mom is a little ashamed of Grandma, it turns out they are thieves? She''s also afraid that the neighbors will report them to the police. She hopes the ducks will return to their owners by themselves in the evening.


    A devil? A Papuan!


    When the first black-and-white television came into the house, my mother couldn''t understand it: How can singers and actors fit into such a small box? Where do they hide their feet?


    She also believed that the man on the TV could see her as well as she could see him, and when she turned on the TV, she tried to dress up.


    And before going to bed, she would run away to change behind a screen - she was shy.


    When my mother was seventeen, she went on a field trip to Volgograd with her school class. She brought back a souvenir - a Papuan with pearls around its neck - and put it on a bookshelf in her room.


    My grandmother and great-grandmother didn''t like the toy at first sight.


    - You brought a devil into the house! - Great-grandmother Matrena was outraged. - Yuck!


    And as soon as my mother went to school, the relatives burned the Papuan in the oven.


    When my mother found out, she cried all night - how dare they! She was so offended that she didn''t speak to her family for a week. The relatives laughed at her: "Silly girl, why are you crying? You''re a big girl now, right?


    But my mother remembered that resentment all her life and could never forgive them for what they had done to her Papuan.


    But that didn''t stop her from throwing the bag of my children''s toys in the garbage.


    When I discovered this, my mother just shrugged: "What''s the problem? You are not a child to play with dolls anymore, get over it...


    Matrena''s house


    In Ivanovo, my great-grandmother Matrena brewed moonshine in the bathhouse, secretly from everyone.


    Although moonshine was considered the main currency in the village, not everyone dared to make it. At any moment the district police could come to the house and impose a fine.


    Great-grandmother was sure that the neighbors did not suspect her.


    She did not drink at all, but five-year-old Angelina would sneak into the bathhouse to take a sample. She liked the taste and smell of the bitter "mixture.


    "Again Angelina ran to the bathhouse with a spoon, it means that Matrena began to brew moonshine," - laughed at Matrena sharp-eyed villagers.


    And although her granddaughter''s addiction to alcohol worried my great-grandmother very much: "It''s not good," she did not give up moonshining, because it was money, the family income.


    A keen sense of smell


    Unlike my great-grandmother, my grandmother Luda and my grandfather Slava liked to drink.


    But if my grandmother knew how much to drink because she ran the shop and was responsible for the money, my grandfather, who lived under the thumb of two women, did not. And how could he resist when his mother-in-law made moonshine herself!


    Great-grandmother carefully hid the homemade alcoholic beverage - in the attic, behind a chest, in the cellar - for fear that grandfather would find it and use it for his own pleasure.


    But strangely enough, Grandpa always found the bottle, no matter where it was hidden.


    - Does he have a sense of smell like a dog?" grumbled Matrena, hiding the moonshine in a box of potatoes.


    But even in that hidden place, Grandpa found the bottle.


    Great-grandmother couldn''t stand it:


    - Tell me how you do it!


    It turned out that the resourceful son-in-law used to smear valerian on all the corks in the house. Then he would let the cat out to look for it. And the cat always led the owner to the corked bottle.


    The horse ran free


    I seldom saw my grandfather drunk.


    I remembered the stern, somewhat severe expression on his face. Grandpa spoke little, but even without words it was clear how much he loved me and my mother. Mom loved Grandpa too.


    She had a difficult relationship with my grandmother, so Grandpa was her first advocate and protector - a light in her life.


    During holiday celebrations, Grandpa would always sing a song: "When I die, I will be buried as if I never lived," after which he would burst into bitter, drunken tears.


    But when he was in a good mood, he would sing: "Oh, in the meadow, in the wide field, in the familiar herd, a horse was running free!" That song is still one of my favorites.


    And strangely enough, my husband, although he doesn''t drink, also loves that song about the horse...


    To be continued

 Chapter 8

    The Marked


    My mother told me that when she was a child she was kicked by a calf-a hoof kicked her right in the forehead.


    The same thing happened to my father when he was a boy, only it was not a calf that kicked him between the eyes, but a colt. So both my parents are marked.


    Like my mother, my father was born in the country. His father was a miner, and before my father was born, he traveled a lot around the country looking for work with my grandmother and his first-born son, Grisha.


    When Misha was born, the family moved from Kizner to Nizhny Tagil, to the Lebyazhka district, and settled in a communal house on the corner of Vogulskaya and Krasnoarmeyskaya Streets.


    The windows of the house overlooked the ice-cream factory, and my then two-year-old father could stand for hours on the windowsill, imagining how he would grow up to be an ice-cream maker and eat his favorite treat to his heart''s content.


    One day he was daydreaming so much that he lost his footing and fell head first onto the concrete floor.


    He hit the back of his head, his eyes rolled back, and his mouth foamed.


    The grandparents were not home, and the neighbors who came running to the screams decided that the boy was on his last breath and unlikely to live until the ambulance arrived. They took the dying child in their arms, carried him carefully into the room, and laid him on the bed - to wait for the end. But Daddy didn''t die. Someone went to get my grandmother, and she managed to call an ambulance. The doctor determined that the baby had a severe concussion and ordered that the boy be taken to the hospital before he fell into a coma.


    Daredevil


    Dad broke his head again when he was a schoolboy.


    In the yard on Zernovaya Street, where my grandfather and grandmother had moved from a communal apartment, there were big swings with twisted iron bars. My father swung "to the sky", couldn''t hold on and, after several somersaults in the air, hit the ground with the back of his head.


    Again foaming from the mouth, blood, rolled eyes, the ambulance...


    News of Misha''s death spread quickly around the school.


    The school even sent an obituary to the newspaper.


    No wonder that when Misha came to class alive and almost unharmed, with his head bandaged, everyone ran away from him as if he were a ghost.


    Anyway, dad was lucky. His classmate, for example, rolled on the school railing, fell from the third floor, hit his head on the stone steps, and went blind.


    Another classmate, awkwardly jumping from the foot of a freight train, hit his forehead on a railroad embankment and died two days later of a brain hemorrhage.


    But my father never feared danger. He fearlessly jumped into the water from the pond tower, climbed into attics, rode on the roofs of freight cars, he was a daredevil.


    Two brothers


    Dad''s older brother, Grisha, was nothing like him. Misha is small, agile, mischievous, dark-skinned, black-haired like a gypsy. And Grisha - blue-eyed blond and tall, like a pole, very quiet boy. Nevertheless, the neighborhood children often confused the brothers, and when they met them, they would say: Misha-Grisha, what''s your name?


    Naughty Misha didn''t understand how anyone could be as shy as his brother? He was always teasing Grisha, bullying him, trying to take away a plate of borscht at lunch, or stealing a cutlet.


    If Grisha resisted, the brothers would fight. My grandmother had to separate them, and Misha got a spoon on his forehead for his mischief.


    So Misha usually acted cunningly. Knowing that his brother was terribly squeamish, he would lean over and whisper in his ear: "Remember the dead cat!"


    Grisha would jump up from the table, cover his mouth with his hand and hurry to the toilet.


    And Misha, with an innocent flutter of his eyelashes, would push Grisha''s plate to himself and eat his brother''s portion appetizingly. He knew that his brother would not touch the food until the evening.


    Still waters run deep


    When I was a child, I also thought that Uncle Grisha was a klutz.


    He was lanky, and his eyes were always inflamed. He worked at a construction site, and he came to Grandma Dusa''s house for lunch in a red Zhiguli car. I secretly watched him.


    Uncle Grisha would eat in silence, leaning over his plate and looking at the TV screen. Sometimes he would ask me something - about my studies, or how my father and mother were doing. He would listen intently, humming and nodding. Then he would talk to my grandmother in the kitchen about something, borrow some money from her, and leave.


    Lenka, my uncle''s youngest daughter, complained that her father, despite his seeming indifference, was always strict about how and with whom his daughters spent their free time.


    Once, in the seventh grade, Lenka thought her parents were asleep and decided to sneak out of the house at night to meet friends who were waiting for her at the front door. She was almost ready to leave her room when the floorboards creaked treacherously under her feet.


    In a second, her vigilant father was standing under her door, demanding to be let in immediately to make sure his daughter was alone in the room and not with some young rascal.


    He was not such a simpleton, my uncle Grisha!


    The family used to tell a story about my uncle: at school he was good at exact sciences, but he was very bad at Russian, writing with grammatical mistakes.


    And everything would be fine, but at the entrance exam to the construction technical college it was necessary to write an essay with at least a C - for my uncle with his monstrous spelling, a task almost impossible.


    So Grisha went to preparatory courses of the Russian language. For a month he did not miss a single lesson, crammed the rules, scribbled over dictionaries. However, without much success. Essay uncle wrote an "F". But the teachers remembered the diligent young man, and he got the technical college.


    And how can I forget the hard confrontation my uncle had with my grandfather when "quiet boy" Grisha changed his Tatar name and surname in his passport against his parents'' will.


    No, it is not for nothing that they say about people like my uncle: "Still waters run deep".


    Flash of anger


    I remember an incident that struck me as a child.


    My uncle''s family lived in the Red Stone neighborhood. My cousins Lenka and Olga and I were home alone, playing and listening to records. Olga was twice as old as me and Lenka, and for some reason she decided to tease me, took a toy from me and threw it on the cupboard.


    I ran out of the room crying.


    At that moment I heard the lock click, it was my uncle Grisha who had come home from work.


    - What''s wrong? - He asked sternly, undressing in the hall.


    - Olga is teasing me! - I continued to cry, wiping the tears from my cheeks with my fist.


    A shadow came over Uncle Grisha''s calm face. He pushed me aside, rushed into the children''s room, took a belt from his trousers and beat Olga with it.


    She screamed like a wounded pig. Squirming and covering herself with her hands, she begged her father to stop, but that only made him angrier. Uncle Grisha whipped his ten-year-old daughter long and mercilessly, saying through his teeth: Here! Here! Take that!


    I had never seen my uncle like that in my life, and I was not at all glad that I had told him about Olga.


    A child, a girl, my cousin, was being brutally beaten in front of me.


    Maybe she deserved to be punished, but not like that.


    After a moment, when her father had exhausted himself and lowered the belt, Olga rushed into the bathroom, tearful, disheveled, with horrible purple marks on her arms and legs.


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    - Happy? - she hissed, suddenly pushing me towards the door with all her strength.


    I flew back and hit my head on the doorjamb.


    There was no sign of pity for my cousin. I was instantly enraged:


    - Yes, I''m happy! You got what you deserved! - I shouted vindictively.


    Fury girl


    Uncle''s anger scared me that day, but I wasn''t surprised. Sometimes I also wanted to snap at someone, to hit him in the ear, to slap him, to shout at him. But I was a child "on my own mind", withdrawn, secretive - I didn''t want anyone to know what was going on in my soul.


    I tried to maintain a disguise, to obey my elders, to appear nice and docile, but inside this "quiet girl" there were African passions boiling, a raging tropical hurricane.


    I was particularly sensitive to injustice. Let''s say I wasn''t guilty, but I was punished - someone was rude to me, deceived me, played a trick on me, promised me something and broke his word without explanation.


    At such moments, the "obedient girl" would turn to fury.


    Rage washed over me in a hot wave and I couldn''t handle the avalanche of destructive thoughts. I wanted to tear, throw, and trample the person who had hurt me.


    But I could rarely afford to do that for fear of looking like a "bad girl. Sometimes emotions would break out in tears, which people around me took as weakness.


    They didn''t realize that while I was crying, I was thinking of the most horrible ways to get revenge.


    I would mentally execute my culprit, and only after the "execution" would I find peace of mind.


    Just Dusya


    In the passport of my grandmother Dusya there was a dash in the column "patronymic".


    The father of my grandmother was Ivan, he drowned in the river when his daughter was two years old. In the July heat he was cutting hay in the meadow, got hot and decided to refresh himself in the river.


    The villagers discouraged him: "You''ll drown! He waved them off: "There is water up to the knees of a hen. The whole village would laugh at me if I drowned. He dived into the icy water and didn''t come up - a heart attack.


    Marfa, my grandmother''s mother, was pregnant at the time, but fortunately, despite the death of her unborn child''s father, she soon married a good, kind man to whom God had not given children.


    Her stepfather was Egor, a quiet, kind man who never hurt his stepdaughter. So when it came time for Dusya to get a passport, she could not decide whose patronymic to choose.


    While she pondered, the passport officer simply wrote: Evdokia (Dusya''s full name), sparing my grandmother the agonizing choice. By the way, Marfa and Egor named the newborn boy Ivan.


    Alaberdino


    When I was a child, my grandmother Dusya often told me about her family. I remembered that her grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, was called Samoil and was ten years younger than his wife.


    They lived in the village of Malye Erykly in Tatarstan, raised pigs and were considered wealthy people. But I could not understand how a 19-year-old young man could marry a 29-year-old "old woman"? Was it for money? Or was it love?


    I have already written about my grandfather''s father, Gaifulla, who died in the war.


    I know very little about his family, although I once visited my grandfather''s village of Alaberdino.


    I remember being amazed to learn that there was only one television for the whole village. I also remember a decrepit old woman - my great-grandfather''s wife, her name was Askhab.


    She lived apart from the family, in a closet, and spent all day counting rosary beads and some old rags.


    Maybe because of the heat, maybe because my great-grandmother was sick, or just because she was old, her body emitted a strange sweet and foul odor that I found disgusting as a child. When I was asked to hug the old woman, or when she herself tried to sit me on her lap and caress me, I would defiantly hold my nose and pull away.


    The old woman would chuckle good-naturedly, shake her head, and mumble something in Tatar.


    Despite her age, my great-grandmother had almost all her teeth.


    My grandfather''s sister assured me that her mother always grew new teeth to replace the ones she lost. Such an inexplicable anomaly.


    A ram


    In Alaberdino, for the first time in my life, I saw a ram being slaughtered. The doomed animal was seized, tied up, cut across the throat with a knife, and crucified on wooden poles.


    The ram was still alive, but dumb, spinning wildly with crazed eyes.


    The sight shocked me so much that by nightfall my fever had risen to forty degrees.


    Everyone thought I had drunk ice-cold water from the well and had a sore throat, but in my delirium I saw the image of a slaughtered ram bleeding before my eyes. The smell of raw hide and cooked meat made me vomit, and I couldn''t take a bite.


    Are there savages in this godforsaken village who could slaughter me like an innocent sheep? I did not understand their guttural language, and that made me even more afraid.


    When a doctor came to our house, I refused to let her come near me.


    A doctor should wear a white coat and cap, and this one was wearing a plain dress. She''s probably planning to kill me and has a knife hidden in her suitcase.


    - Don''t touch me! - I shouted. - I don''t want you to treat me! Go away! I hate you!


    To defend myself, I even splashed the doctor with water from a glass. I wanted her to know that I would not be taken barehanded.


    No happiness since youth


    Like my great-grandfather Gaifulla, my grandfather Shaykhulla could have died young, but not in war, but in peacetime. He was pulled under a conveyor belt in a coal mine.


    The mechanism severely damaged his right arm, tearing tendons and shattering bones.


    The doctor, fearing gangrene, wanted to amputate the mangled hand, but my grandfather resisted and would not allow it. As a result, amputation was somehow avoided. The hand healed itself.


    Discharged from the hospital, my grandfather made a tattoo on the back of the palm - a semicircle of the sun with rays and the inscription: "No happiness since youth". But why? The hand was saved. It might be scarred and a little crooked, but it had not lost its basic functions.


    Secret


    In the late nineties, a store opened next to our house that sold chewing gum, soda, ice cream, and alcohol. My father often went there to buy a beer.


    There was a young saleswoman behind the counter, and Dad liked to talk to her and sometimes stay in the store for a long time. Mom even began to be jealous of him because of her.


    - Why are you telling me this? - I didn''t understand.


    He looked at me searchingly, as if wondering if I could be trusted, and then he told me his secret. When he was young, he had an affair with a girl named Vera, and apparently she could have a child with him. Dad did the math, and it all seemed to add up.


    - What does that mean? - I still couldn''t figure out what my father was trying to tell me.


    - The last name of the girl in the store is the same as Vera''s! - he exclaimed. - I think she''s my daughter.


    The girl said she had never seen her father, and this literally drove my father crazy.


    He was determined to find out the truth.


    Unfortunately, the store closed soon after and the girl disappeared without a trace.


    The whole story left me with a kind of ambivalent feeling.


    On the one hand, I was happy to have a half-sister, but on the other hand, I was terribly jealous of my father and suffered from doubts: What if she is an impostor? There are many namesakes in the world.


    If my father knew for sure about his daughter...


    But you could expect anything from him. And he wasn''t the only one. According to rumors, my father''s older brother Grisha also had an illegitimate daughter...


    And I have every reason to believe that this is not the first such case in their family.


    Out of wedlock


    One day we received a long-distance phone call at our home.


    Mom answered the phone.


    The old man at the other end introduced himself as Alexander. He said that he had read my article about my relatives in Tagil and decided that it was time to reveal the cards, that there was no point in keeping quiet any longer.


    - What do you mean by that? - Mother was suspicious.


    - I am your husband''s brother! - The stranger stunned her with his confession.


    And told such a story. In the late 40''s, early 50''s of the last century, my grandfather Shaykhulla (Sasha, as he was called in the family) was sent to study at the factory school in the city of Kiselevsk in Siberia, where he was mining coal. He met a woman. She got pregnant by him.


    But since my grandfather was already married to my grandmother (who was also expecting a child from him), marriage was out of the question.


    Maybe my grandfather didn''t know or didn''t want to know about the interesting condition of his beloved. Anyway, they separated and soon my grandfather and grandmother left the mining town.


    The woman gave birth to a son without a husband and named him Alexander in honor of his father.


    Mom was so discouraged by this news that she forgot or did not think to ask the caller for his address or at least his phone number. And Dad''s "brother" himself didn''t insist on anything. He didn''t even say how he got our home phone number.


    - I don''t need anything from you," he said. - I just called to let you know.


    And hung up.


    To be honest, at first I thought the call was a figment of my mother''s unbridled imagination. But there was an unknown long-distance number stored in the phone''s automatic caller ID memory that the phone, for some reason, did not recognize.


    I hoped the stranger would call us back, but he disappeared.


    I tried to look for him on the Internet, but to no avail. I thought about asking my grandmother Dusya if she knew about the other woman and that my grandfather had another son.


    And each time I stopped myself with the thought: What if she knew nothing? And even if she did know, how would she react now to the events of long ago? She is not young anymore.


    And where is the guarantee that this call isn''t someone''s evil prank?


    So I never dared to call my grandmother for an open conversation. Although I would be interested to know the fate of the mysterious Uncle Alexander (if he really exists).


    Night Blindness


    On my mother''s side, my great-grandfather Grigory, father of my grandfather Slava, disappeared in 1943 during the Second World War, and we never heard from him again.


    I saw his wife Augusta only on a photo - a small, thin old woman with bright eyes, wearing a shawl, a mother of many children, whose life was marked by much suffering.


    Grandmother Luda also grew up in a large family. After the tragic death of her father, hard times came for her and her mother and two younger brothers. There was no food in the house.


    To help their mother, the boys plowed and harrowed the field on horseback. Luda wanted to quit school and work as a babysitter or somewhere else to earn money, but her mother forbade it, saying: "You should study!" Due to constant malnutrition, the girl developed night blindness.


    She walked home from school through the woods and fields to the village of Zamyatievo with a bag of schoolbooks. It was a long way, and often she would not reach the village before dark - she would lose her sight. Then she would crawl home on all fours, crying and asking the rare passersby for directions. She was afraid the wolves would catch up with her and tear her blind and defenseless body apart.


    A witch''s curse


    When my grandmother''s younger brother Vasya was a soldier, he was hit by a train in Kustanai while running away from a Chechen bandit who was chasing him with a knife. What kind of bandit he was and why Vasya ran away from him, my grandmother did not tell me. Another of her brothers, Vitaly, worked as a trackman on the railroad and lived with his wife, Shura, in the village of Balezino.


    My grandmother and I often visited them. In the house on Chapaev Street there was a room that we children were strictly forbidden to enter. Through a cloudy window, which connected the outer entrance hall with the room, you could see an empty bed with "lumps", covered with a patchwork quilt. Rumor had it that the bed was cursed.


    It is said that in her old age my great-grandmother Matrena asked to "live out her life" in the house of her son and daughter-in-law, but they took Matrena unkindly, so my grandmother took her in.


    When my offended great-grandmother left Balezino, she put a curse on her bed.


    Years later, Vitaly fell seriously ill and, unable to bear the hellish pain, hanged himself. After his death, Shura became drunk and died soon after.


    The house still stands, and what happened to the cursed bed is unknown.


    To be continued

 Chapter 9

    Kurkuyan


    The Udmurts are pagans.


    In the villages of the Udmurt people there was and still is a custom - when a person begins to be haunted by misfortune, he "talks" all the bad things into a ribbon and ties it to a tree, as if he were giving it all his troubles and illnesses.


    Near every Udmurt village there is a forest gully where the locals throw old combs, washcloths, rags used to wash the sick and the deceased.


    This gally is called Kurkuyan. It is forbidden to pick mushrooms or berries in this place, or you will immediately bring misfortune upon yourself.


    As my Udmurt grandmother Luda assured me, in addition to a ribbon, you can "talk" an illness into anything - a coin, a candy, a child''s toy, or clothes.


    As children, she forbade us to pick up money, dolls, and handkerchiefs from the street, and to take candy from strangers - who knows what kind of crap they might have put in it. A skilled sorcerer can put a spell on food or drink easily.


    That''s why at all Udmurt feasts the hostess should be the first to drink from every unopened bottle and only then offer it to the guests.


    Bewitched poplars


    Everyone in our region knows these poplars.


    They grow in the village of Pudvai, on the border of Udmurtia and the Kirov region.


    Legend has it that any attempt to cut them ends with the death of the culprit.


    - Cursed place! - Vera, the postmistress we met in front of the village store, waves in the direction of the green giants. - Three generations of Zolotarevs lived here - grandfather, father and son. Their house is on the main road.


    - Nikolai, the father, was the head of the family, a very strong sorcerer! He could cast a spell on anyone he did not like. He could also transform himself into animals. I''m not lying! - Vera swears. - I saw him turn into a turkey, a cat and a dog. And when his magic didn''t work, he would shake with rage and beat his wife with his fists. She was not a sorceress herself, so he took his anger out on her.


    Nikolai also planted the nine poplar trees along the road.


    Before doing so, he cast a spell on the trees - that no living soul would dare touch them, or no good would come of it.


    The locals still try to avoid these poplars. They say they have several lives on their consciences. One villager foolishly swung an axe at a poplar and hanged himself a week later.


    Another man was building a house nearby, and the poplars were leaning against the fence, blocking it. He decided to remove them. He cut down two trees and gave his soul to God - the heart attack.


    Another misfortune connected with a sorcerer''s curse happened in Pudvai in the 80s. A villager, Gena Zolotarev, the namesake of the sorcerer, climbed a poplar tree with an axe to cut its branches - he wanted to bring electricity to the house and fell.


    - He didn''t have an axe, - says Gena''s wife Lyudmila, peeling potatoes on the veranda and looking curiously at the uninvited guests. - I don''t know why he climbed up the poplar. But he was a little drunk, that''s for sure. He got to the top and someone called out to him. So Gena looked back and fell to the ground. He broke his spine. When the people gathered, he was dead.


    - All these stories about poplars are nonsense! - disagrees with Lyudmila her neighbor Nikolay Zolotarev (in Pudvai almost all namesakes, natives of Zolotarevo village). - Gena was drunk as a fish, that''s why he fell, and trees have nothing to do with it. Recently I also sawed off a branch of a poplar, and nothing, as you can see, I am alive.


    - If it were up to me, I would cut them all down! - said the sorcerer''s namesake. - Why are they needed here? They only breed dampness. The sun can''t get through them, so our street is like a swamp. I would rather have an apple tree or a cherry tree.


    But no one in the village shares Nikolai''s determination to massacre the poplars. No one wants to tempt fate.


    Years passed.  Sometimes I thought of "Doubting Thomas". What had happened to him? Had he managed to escape the sorcerer''s curse? Or maybe Nikolai was right - people slander poplars for no reason?


    Once, when I came to Pudvai on newspaper business, I inquired at the post office about the fate of this fearless man.


    - Nikolai hanged himself a year and a half ago! - The postmistress shocked me.


    Nobody knows why he did it.


    And how not to believe after that?


    Seven of the nine poplars in Pudvai are left. The mighty giants whisper to each other in the wind, making the Pudvais tremble with fear.


    How old are they - sixty? More? No one can remember. There are hardly any old people left in the village. The Zolotarev sorcerers have long since been buried in a local cemetery. With them went the secret of a dark curse. Vera, the wordy postmistress, told me that after the soreccer''s death, his son sold the family''s nest and moved to the city. There has been no sign of him since. And the wizard''s house itself had changed hands three times.


    The devil''s work


    A few years ago, an old woman named Anna settled there with her son. But when I asked her if she knew that the house had once belonged to sorcerers, she shook her head:


    - No, my dear, how could I? I''m from another village. But believe it or not, as soon as I moved here, I started getting sick. I''ve lived here for three years, and I''m still sick. Last winter, the devil misled me: I was sitting at home and suddenly my mind went blank, I couldn''t understand if it was day or night. I opened my eyes when I was standing in the field. I don''t know how I got there. I''m walking as if in a dream, knee-deep in snow. I see a familiar bus stop. My neighbor''s shopkeeper came running up to me: "Anna, what''s wrong with you? Why are your clothes wet?"


    - But I can''t even tell her anything. I barely made it home, my head and ears were buzzing. I heard men''s voices inside me threatening to kill me: "Get out of here," they ordered, "or we''ll burn down the house, hack you up with an axe, and drag your body into the woods". I don''t remember anything else. People say I ran around the house, struggling with someone invisible, screaming, until my neighbors took me to their house for the night. My son decided I had lost my mind, took me to town and put me in a mental hospital.


    - But I still hear those voices, - Anna sighs. - They drive me away. And where would I go? I''m too old now, and I have no money for another house. I''ll probably die here.


    The locals confirmed that none of the previous tenants had stayed in the wizard''s house for long. They would live for a year or two, pack up, sell the house for nothing, and run away from this cursed place and the poplars.


    Ventriloquist Poshibka


    As it happens, the strongest sorcerers in Udmurtia are considered to be representatives of other nations. Russians are afraid of Udmurts, Udmurts are afraid of Tatars, and Tatars are afraid of Chuvash and Mariy.


    There is a belief that the darker the skin and hair of a witch or sorcerer, the greater her or his witchcraft power. People try to avoid them for fear of the evil eye or something worse.


    Once I visited the village of Sergino, on the border of the Kirov region and Udmurtia.


    In conversation, one of the villagers mentioned the Poshibka - a creature that, for some reason, local sorcerers put mainly in women.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    - When you look at such a woman, she looks like an ordinary one," he said, describing women in the village who had been "spoiled" by the Poshibka. - But suddenly she rolls her eyes and screams curses in a man''s bass, it''s scary! And the main thing is that the words come not from her mouth, but from her stomach. As if someone is sitting there cursing. That is Poshibka there.


    Someone in the village remembered that the Poshibka is usually implanted in the body in the form of a fly or a mosquito, or it can fly into your open mouth.


    But the magician can also put it in your drink in the form of a hair or a blade of grass.


    - Does it live as a fly in the stomach?


    - No. It develops inside! I once saw a Poshibka exorcised from a neighbor''s wife. It was horrible! A black hairy ball with eyes came out of her mouth and started rolling on the floor screaming.


    Poshibka can''t live without a human being, it has to get inside someone. So don''t hesitate, catch it as soon as possible, put it in the oven and burn it. Otherwise it will turn back into a fly and fly away.


    - Sometimes, my interlocutor continued, this evil waits for years for an opportunity. It sits on a gate or in a tree and waits for the victim. Have you ever seen trees with hernia-like growths? That''s what sorcerers do. Some of them do not want to spoil a people, but the demons tell them: "Do it!" So they send the spoil to the tree.


    However, according to the people of Sergino, not all Poshibkas are bad. There are those who behave quite decently and even predict the future. The person in whom the Poshibka lives acts like a ventriloquist. Moreover, a Poshibka always tells the truth, even if it is unflattering. Therefore, with its help it is easy to find a thief and learn about the bad deeds of enemies.


    Portraits with stuffing


    Many years ago, I read in a reputable Russian newspaper about a sect of black magicians who operated throughout the Soviet Union in the 1980s.


    They came to kindergartens and schools disguised as photographers and offered their services. They dressed up boys in sailor suits, girls in frilly dresses with ruffles.


    Many families kept these photos. The clients received them in a thick cardboard frame and hung them on the wall. But under the frame, the newspaper said, lurked a terrible "surprise" - a picture of a dead or crippled person. This is how the sorcerers inflicted their spoils on the living. For what purpose they did this is not clear.


    But one of the villains decided to repent publicly. What a sensation! People panicked and rushed to uncover the portrait frames in search of witchcraft.


    My friend Masha also had such framed portraits at home - they were on her cupboard.


    Out of curiosity, because she didn''t really believe the newspaper, she decided to open them. There was nothing under the picture of her mother. Masha put it aside and picked up the picture of her father. She had just bent the rivets with a knife when a small black and white photo suddenly fell on the table. An ordinary passport photo of a stranger.


    But for some reason, just looking at it sent a chill down Masha''s spine. Her father had died recently, and before that he had been seriously ill for a long time...


    Masha told her neighbor about her discovery. She grabbed her daughter''s portrait and shook it out of the frame. And there''s another picture! A girl with arms and legs coiled up like a spider. The neighbor was horrified because her daughter was in gymnastics...


    From the neighbor Masha ran to her friend Marina. The girls took out their family photo album.


    Under her own portrait Marina found nothing, but under her brother''s portrait there was a picture of a man in a military uniform with his head cut off.


    Marina''s brother had served in Chechnya. By a strange coincidence, that same evening a telegram arrived from Grozny saying that her brother was being treated in a military hospital.


    A frightened friend decided to look for a witch. The witch told them to take the pictures to the intersection of three roads at midnight, burn them, and bury the ashes. And so they did.


    Marina''s brother came home injured but alive. Nothing terrible seemed to have happened to the neighbor''s gymnast either. So I started to forget the story.


    But then my grandfather died in Tagil.


    After the funeral I noticed two color portraits of my grandfather and grandmother on the wall.


    With trembling hands I took the pictures out of their frames. They were empty!


    - What are you looking for? - Lenka, my cousin, was interested.


    After listening to me, she suddenly started to worry:


    - Sasha has such a portrait, too, - she explained. - I''ll go home and have a look.


    Sasha, her fianc¨¦, had recently been drafted into the army.


    Lenka came back white as a sheet. It turned out that under the portrait of her beloved she had found a magazine photo of an unknown conscript.


    The picture had been cut in half, and all that could be seen next to the man was a piece of a bride''s veil.


    My cousin tore up the strange picture and threw it in the toilet. She decided not to tell her beloved. As soon as he came home from the army, the young people began to prepare for the wedding.


    And suddenly the news: Lenka and Sasha had separated.


    Many years later my cousin told me the truth:


    - I don''t know what came over me, but Sasha became unpleasant to me. Everything about him irritated me - the way he looked at me, the way he ate, the way he sat at the table. You wouldn''t believe it, he still disgusts me even now, although he seems to be a kind, good man, but I can''t help it.


    Lenka got married a long time ago, she has a family, two children.


    Whether Sasha met his soul mate is a question, but as far as I know, no one told him about the strange photo under his portrait.


    Who Punishes Whom?


    Many people envy witches and sorcerers, the special power they have to practice black magic and keep others in fear.


    But are the black magicians themselves happy about it? Hardly. Evil, like a boomerang, has a tendency to return, and in multiples - in "percentages".


    And if a black magician can pretend to be a good guy at first, he will find it harder and harder to hide his evil deeds as he grows older. He darkens his face, dries up, shrinks and bends. And how many legends are told about how hard it is for witches and sorcerers to die when they have no one to pass their gift on to!


    A friend of mine named Svetlana once told me about such a case.


    She knew a woman from the Udmurt village of Bolshoi Ludoshur who was known to everyone as a witch. Her husband had died tragically, and her ten-year-old son had drowned in the river.


    Raya lived alone and was often sick. Once she confessed to Svetlana that she had quarreled with her neighbor and in revenge had caught her cat and broken its spine.


    The next day the cat''s owner fell down the stairs and broke her spine as well.


    - I punished her! - gloated the witch.


    Another time, Raya quarreled with Svetlana and started spreading dirty gossip about her. Svetlana''s husband couldn''t stand it and hit the witch on the lips.


    - May your hand wither and drop off! - cried the witch.


    And at that moment, the man''s hand hung lifeless as a whip.


    He tried all kinds of folk remedies and doctors, but no one could help him.


    Meanwhile, the doctors discovered that Raya had an incurable disease.


    - And for some reason I felt so sorry for her," Svetlana recalls.


    She decided to help get her into a good hospital.


    And, coincidence or not, the very next day Svetlana''s husband''s hand "came back to life.


    As for Raya, she could not be saved. She died in terrible agony on the hospital bed.


    A fig in your pocket


    How do you recognize a sorcerer?


    Knowledgeable people say to stick a needle or knife pointing down into the doorjamb. This will prevent the villain from entering or leaving the house until the owners remove the protection.


    A friend of mine did just that. When her neighbor, a strange woman who everyone thought was a witch, came to visit, she stuck a needle in the joint.


    - You won''t believe this," she said, "but after that, the neighbor really couldn''t leave. She''d sit there, fidgeting. She would go to the door, stop at the threshold, and turn back, as if something was in her way. She stayed like that until the evening, when I finally took pity on her and pulled out the needle.


    To protect themselves from the evil eye, Udmurt people never allow strangers to touch them - to stroke their backs and hair, to hug them, kiss them, touch their hands.


    Someone folds a fig of his fingers and hides it in his pocket, wears a pin pinned to his chest in the heart area, and if he notices a suspicious bundle of wool in the house, a thread with knots, another person''s handkerchief, or a black wax candle, he will never touch it with his bare hands. He will sweep the "gift" across the threshold, take it far away to the forest or the ravine, and burn it there.


    If, after communicating with someone, you suddenly get a headache or a bad mood, you should wash your face with cold running water, or better - wash your head.


    You can mentally draw a protective mirror screen or dome around yourself and say: where it came from, there and gone. Then bad thoughts will return to their owner.


    Pig''s jaw


    I do not know for sure if my great-grandmother Matrena was involved in black magic - spoils, charms, and other witchcraft. I think she was not.


    But if her appearance matched my childhood image of fairy tale witches, then Grandma Luda was nothing like a witch at all. A plain, freckled face, mischievous eyes, a mop of small, henna-dyed curls - the appearance is quite ordinary.


    However, she had inherited some paranormal abilities from her mother. For example, she could see and hear the dead. Frankly, for my grandmother, there was no difference between the world of the living and the world of the dead - the usual thing among Udmurt people.


    But I knew my grandmother more as a healer, a witch doctor. She set the bones, read spells, took away people''s spoils.


    She kept many "items of power" in her home.


    My grandmother used them to heal broken bones, colds, skin diseases, and fear.


    A pig''s jaw, a copper bell, red wool threads, a spindle, a bundle of goose feathers, canvas sacks filled with medicinal herbs, a sieve, even a plastic plug in the shape of a bull''s head - everything was used for witchcraft.


    We children were strictly forbidden to touch these things.


    But we touched them anyway, as long as Granny didn''t see us. If they were tools for her work, they were just trinkets for us.


    I often watched through the half-open door as my grandmother burned wax candles, whispered spells, and spat three times over her left shoulder.


    She gave the sick people herbal infusions to drink, and with a pig''s jaw she moved back and forth over their bodies. And the people got well! They came back to thank her.


    They paid with money or with products - sugar, candy, eggs, milk.


    How I envied my grandmother! I also wanted to have secret knowledge, to see and hear more than others, to be exceptional, not like everyone else.


    But I didn''t know how to do it. I always doubted my strength and myself.


    To be continued

 Chapter 10

    More than just words


    I really wanted to know how Grandma Luda''s "magic" worked. What was her secret?


    My grandmother never parted with an old green book, either a prayer book or a collection of spells. Sometimes I, too, would flip through it mindlessly.


    It seemed to me that, as in the fairy tale of the old magician Hottabych, I would say three times: trah-tibidoh-tibidoh, clap my hands, and then a miracle would happen. But no miracle happened.


    I asked my grandmother to teach me her spells, trying to eavesdrop and repeat her word for word, but Grandma Luda just laughed: "Don''t be like a parrot. It won''t work, because it''s not about words.


    But she never explained what it was about.


    She always waved it away: "You don''t need to know. In time you''ll understand. Or maybe you won''t. It''s up to you.


    Before I left for Nizhny Tagil, my grandmother gave me some notebook pages written in her beautiful, ornate handwriting.


    They were prayers - Our Father, Hail Mary, and others.


    "When things get difficult or trouble comes, pray," she said. - But pray sincerely, from your heart. Otherwise, prayer will not help.


    I pushed the pages deeper into my suitcase. There, at the bottom of the suitcase, they remained for all three years of my studies. I don''t remember using them once.


    But I didn''t throw them away. When I returned to Glazov, I hid them in the closet.


    Bless and save us


    Many years have passed since that time. My sister Tanya was about to give birth.


    As soon as she became pregnant, I knew she would have a son.


    As a child, I often dreamed of a little boy who would be my son or nephew. And here I felt it, it was him!


    The ultrasound showed a girl, but I stubbornly insisted on a boy.


    During another examination, the doctor told my sister that she would have a cripple. This doctor supposedly saw on the monitor that the baby had no legs. Or rather, there are legs, but they are very small, underdeveloped. So she told Tanya that it would be better to have an abortion so as not to torture herself and the baby.


    Is it necessary to describe the sister''s condition after such words? She looked awful.


    My mother was hysterical when she heard about the baby without legs. She cried into her pillow the whole night. Mom thought the doctors knew better and that Tanya really should have an abortion.


    But despite her fears and pressure, my sister refused to take the life of her child.


    Tanya was a week away from giving birth, and the doctors were becoming more and more intimidating: her tests were bad, and there was not enough amniotic fluid. And in general, it would probably be necessary to induce labor artificially and have a C-section. There''s no other way.


    That''s when I remembered my grandmother''s prayers. My grandmother was still alive, but she had been bedridden for five years.


    I found the yellowed pages in the closet and rushed to the maternity hospital.


    There was no doubt that this was the time when prayers would come in handy. They would help, they would protect. I believed with all my heart and tried to share my confidence with my sister.


    I remember standing with her at the window in the empty hospital corridor. I passionately urged a pale, confused Tanya with a huge belly to take the pages and read them, to pray every day - until the birth.


    - Everything will be fine, you''ll see. Don''t listen to anyone. Listen only to me! - I said over and over again, like an incantation.


    I wanted everything to be all right, and I knew it would be! No matter what. And my sister believed me. She gave birth on her own, without a C-section.


    It was a boy. Oleg. Healthy, beautiful, with normal legs. It was probably a medical error, but I think the prayers helped - at least to calm down, not to panic. As for the pages, they got lost somewhere in the excitement.


    But I was not particularly upset. They had served their purpose.


    To laugh or to cry


    Many of my grandmother''s treatments seemed strange to me, to say the least.


    I remember when I was ten years old, I had a stye on my eye. Vishnevsky ointment and strong tea lotions did not help. Then my mother took me to my grandmother''s house.


    My grandmother was busy in the kitchen at the stove and came out with a kitchen knife.


    At the sight of this huge knife, I felt a shiver run down my spine - I thought she was going to cut my eye.


    But my grandmother reassured me that I didn''t need any treatment, that it would go away on its own.


    I breathed a sigh of relief.


    Grandma Luda disappeared into the kitchen, but not for long. She sneaked up behind me, turned me around by the shoulders, and quickly spat in my sore eye.


    It was so unexpected that for a few seconds I could only open and close my mouth like a fish. Everything inside me was boiling and churning, but no matter how hard I tried to tell my grandmother everything I thought about her, I couldn''t say a word.


    I wiped the spit from my face in disgust and rushed to the bathroom. I hadn''t spoken to my grandmother all day - I was very angry with her. I don''t know whether it was the help of the "folk remedy" or my mental shock, but by morning the stye was gone.


    Rag Therapy


    My grandmother used to treat cuts with an old, dirty dishcloth.


    Any medical professional would be sick at the sight of this unsanitary situation, but the scratches healed surprisingly quickly after "rag therapy.


    My grandmother also cured fear and stuttering in children. When my cousin was frightened by a neighbor''s sheepdog, he began to stutter badly. His parents traveled to several clinics, took him to the best doctors, all to no avail. Then my grandmother started putting my cousin under the table and smoking him with dog hair. She drank him with liquid oatmeal, whispered and read spells for several days. After these sessions, my cousin began to stutter much less.


    Big Bang


    When we lost something in our house, my grandmother used to tie a bow or a string around the leg of the table and say: Devil, play with it, but give it back.


    Amazingly, the thing was always found right away! Sometimes it turned out that the keys with the glasses were in the most conspicuous place - on a shelf or a bedside table that had already been searched several times. And how do you explain my grandmother''s ability to predict the future?


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    - Are you really a witch? - I asked her once.


    My grandmother laughed and said, "You made that up!"


    But I didn''t. Especially when, in the middle of the night, a sealed bottle of soda exploded by itself in the kitchen of my grandmother''s apartment. It shattered! There was a big commotion: Why did that happen?


    At the risk of injuring ourselves, my cousin Sveta and I crawled under the table and tried to determine the cause of the explosion. My cousin remembered her physics lessons at school - she said that this phenomenon could be explained scientifically and that she had read about it somewhere.


    But my grandmother, after removing the fragments, calmly said


    - Sveta, physics has nothing to do with it. Shura died, she sent a message.


    And sure enough, the next day a telegram arrived from Balezino: Aunt Shura, the wife of my grandmother''s brother, has died.


    Bad Luck


    One day I decided to ask my friends if they believed in omens.


    It turned out that they did, and a lot.


    One of them, a journalist, was afraid of the Lenin monument near the Palace of Culture "Russia". On his way to the newsroom, he passed the stone leader of communism and began to notice: if he passed Lenin on the right, the day would go well, if he passed on the left, trouble would not keep him waiting.


    As for me, I''m afraid of spiders. If I find a spider in the house, I double my vigilance. For me, a spider is a very bad sign - I will quarrel with someone, or I will face trouble at work or in the family. And the bigger and scarier the spider, the more serious the problems will be. To avoid or alleviate them can be one way - to kill the furry creature.


    It sounds silly, but it works.


    Expecting a guest? Take out a knife


    My sister, for example, believed in the luck of knives and forks.


    Tanya loved big crowds and loud parties. Spending the weekend at home, without friends, not going to the disco was like death to her.


    On Fridays, the phone in our apartment would ring nonstop.


    But sometimes there was a sudden lull: in the summer many friends went away, someone might be sick, someone was busy - in short, there was no one to hang out with my sister.


    On such days, Tanya smoked nervously on the balcony and looked at her watch.


    Ten o''clock, eleven o''clock, midnight - the phone was silent. Maybe it''s broken? No, it''s fine. Something wrong with the bell? We checked it, it''s fine too.


    Unwilling to accept her fate, my sister would run into the kitchen, grab knives and forks she found in the cupboard and throw them on the floor (there is such an omen: a knife will fall - a man will come, a fork - a woman). So Tanya used to scatter them all over the kitchen.


    Surprisingly, the omen always worked!


    More than once, I witnessed guests appearing on the doorstep almost a few minutes after the knives were thrown. They just appeared out of nowhere!


    And the most amazing thing was that there were always as many guests as there were scattered knives and forks! I don''t know how my sister did it.


    One time Tanya threw nine knives and forks on the floor at once. Well, tell me, where could such a large group of people come from at midnight in a sleeping small town? But...


    That night our cousin Sveta and her friends were returning from someone''s birthday party. They saw the light in our window and decided to visit us. There were nine of them! They drank beer, listened to loud music and laughed.


    Tanya was happy. The neighbors and I were not.


    Boo!


    As I see it, the root of all superstition is fear of the unknown.


    It''s this fear that makes us put rituals around us like shields.


    Take Friday the 13th. On that day, superstitious people try not to leave the house, and if they see a black cat, they spit over their left shoulder and hurry to the other side of the street, or wait for someone else to cross the invisible "bad luck" line.


    I am not afraid of black cats, but I have often seen them waiting for their victims.


    And not just anyone, but always a certain person!


    After crawling out of the alley, such a cat would sit down somewhere on the corner of the street or take a waiting position in the bushes. She was very calm.


    People passed by, many people, but the cat paid no attention to them. She could sit like that for five minutes, half an hour, an hour. But suddenly her behavior changed. With perked ears, the cat stood up and threw herself at the feet of "her" victim.


    A game of chance, you say? Not at all! The cat''s action was not spontaneous. It waited. It waited long, purposefully, patiently. And it waited.


    And who, as a child, saw a black car and didn''t grab the button on the dress? If you don''t grab it, it''s bad luck. A thread stuck to the dress - a guy is hitting on you. Black thread - brunette, white - blonde. Mom slapped your ass - for good, she gave you the groom by that, younger sister slapped your ass - it''s for bad, "junior in rank" take away your grooms.


    Forgot something at home, came back - look in the mirror. What for? Just do it.


    Gypsy house


    One day a gypsy house caught fire in our yard.


    The girls and I were nearby, collecting pebbles at the "Rovesnik" youth club, where workers were covering the roof with colorful mosaics.


    These beautiful blue pebbles with silver veins had just been brought in, and they were scattered everywhere - on the sidewalks, on the ground, even in the grass.


    After putting the "gems" in our pockets, we ran to look at the fire.


    And then my neighbor Katya said:


    - The pebbles of the one who looked at the gypsy fire are cursed. Whoever brings them home will have a fire!


    The girls got scared and threw the pebbles away. But I took mine home and hid them under my bed. I lay awake all night wondering if Katya was right.


    In the morning I couldn''t stand it any longer and threw the "treasures" off the balcony.


    Later, the treacherous Katya confessed that she had made up the whole story about the pebbles, that there was no gypsy curse. But we believed her!


    It is impossible to hide behind an imaginary shield when doubt bemires the soul and you continue to believe in a curse, a black cat, a woman with an empty bucket. The movie "The Skeleton Key" shows this very well.


    A lucky coin


    When we were kids, Grandma Luda forbade us to pick up money on the street. She said we''d lose more than we''d find. And if the coin turned out to be incanted, it would be a disaster.


    I was an impressionable child, and for a long time I shied away from any change on the sidewalks. But now I actually enjoy finding coins.


    I think it''s all about how you handle it, whether you believe in bad omens or not.


    If you''re looking for money for profit, waiting for newlyweds near registries and churches, setting up ambushes at fountains - that''s one thing. Greed has never served anyone well.


    For me, it''s a game. I don''t go looking for coins on purpose. But when I find them, I spend them or put them in the piggy bank. And when it''s full, I use it to buy sweets.


    Legend has it that the billionaire Rockefeller also picked up coins from the ground.


    He even had a cane with a suction cup on the end so he didn''t have to bend down.


    The richest man in the world used to joke that he wouldn''t be a billionaire if he didn''t pick up loose change on the street.


    And he''s right, people don''t realize how much money is under their feet! The richest "catch" - three dirty and wet hundred roubles was waiting for us right on the forest road.


    Coins are often left on the doorsteps of shops, near bus stops and ticket offices. People are in a hurry, lose change and are too lazy or didn''t have time to pick it up, maybe they think: a penny is not money.


    Surely it has happened to everyone: on the bus or in the shop it suddenly turns out that an even amount is missing only one ruble. So you have to change a hundred, and then you go around rattling the coins in your pocket. But if you had a ruble...


    I have found shiny and rusty rubles on fishing trips, at the movies, in children''s playgrounds, on the side of the road, and even in the middle of busy streets.


    Lots of lost change on beaches.


    Perhaps you have heard the story of the gold coin of the Master of the Livonian Order, Gotthard Kettler? It was believed that there were only two such coins in the world: one was in the Hermitage, the second - in Stockholm, in the hands of a private collector.


    But a Dutchman found a third. And where did he find it? In the sand on the beach!


    At first he wanted to give it to a historical museum for a song, but then he put it up for auction. The poor museum folks didn''t have enough money to buy it. So keep your eyes open, maybe you''ll get lucky.


    Money underfoot


    But as I said, the excitement of chasing money and greed are bad advisors.


    If you succumb to them, start fumbling deliberately with your eyes on the ground, the coins will immediately hide from you. But at every step you will get deceptions - beer caps, cigarette foil, chewing gum smeared on the asphalt, spit...


    But if you relax, the money will literally rain down on you.


    Sometimes, on vacation abroad, we found twenty dollars a week. We spent it on the Internet.


    And once in Egypt, my husband went out at dawn and found a whole pile of dollar bills on the lawn.


    The night before, a big Russian company had a party - with songs and dances in the moonlight. Our compatriots were celebrating their departure for home.


    Andrei collected green bills, counted them - twelve dollars. We gave it to the janitor as a tip.


    At the airport


    Bangkok. We are in a hurry to get to the airport. I get into a taxi and notice some coins on the floor next to the wheel. But I''m too lazy to bend down and pick them up.


    At the airport I go to buy water, I look at the price tag - two baht missing!


    All my Thai money is gone and I don''t want to exchange dollars for a bottle of mineral water. Oh, how I could use those coins now....


    Maybe I''ll try to find some coins at the airport? I walk the halls, nothing. The Thai cleaners wash the floors so clean you can see them like in a mirror.


    I was about to despair when suddenly something glittered under my feet. A baht!


    Where can I get another one? Then I remembered we''d been to Thailand a few years ago. What if there was a random coin in the depths of my wallet? I looked in one pocket, in another, and - would you believe it - along with the old French franc, I found the baht I needed.


    To be continued

 Chapter 11

    Green eyes


    Grandmother Luda and grandfather Slava had three daughters - Sveta, Nina and Angelina, my mother.


    But once my grandmother said that they actually had four children - the firstborn, Ivan, died in infancy.


    - And after him only girls were born. God didn''t give me any more sons," she sighed sadly.


    When the whole family moved from the village to "Airfild", the three sisters planted a birch tree in front of the house, as if these trees personified the three of them.


    The saplings grew and became three large, beautiful trees.


    And then someone cut down one of the birch trees.


    It was my mother''s birch tree, and she was very upset because she thought it was a bad omen, as if she herself had been cut down by an axe.


    Neither my mother nor Aunt Sveta, as far as I know, had supernatural powers. The gift of being a witch and a healer was only passed on to the middle daughter, Nina.


    When she was a child, in the cellar of their old wooden house, she repeatedly noticed a certain being that looked like a little girl with a green eye in her forehead.


    No one but Nina had ever seen this Cyclops girl.


    My aunt was a little afraid to go down to the cellar alone to get potatoes, but the "green-eyed girl" was kind to her, did not hurt her, and never tried to get out of the cellar.


    I think my grandmother suspected her middle daughter''s unusual gift, so she insisted that Nina go to medical school to become a nurse.


    Lump


    I was once confirmed by Aunt Nina''s healing powers myself.


    When I was a child, I went sledding down a hill and crashed into a tree. As it turned out, it was not just a mild concussion. The severe impact dislocated my vertebrae. Years later, the injury developed into an intervertebral hernia that sometimes showed itself. Walking for a long time made my back hurt, but I didn''t realize what was wrong with me.


    My husband noticed the hernia when he gave me a massage and reassured me:


    - I''m going to fix it. I just need to give you a good shake.


    And he shook me. Sparks came out of my eyes and a huge lump began to swell on my back.


    After this "shaking" I had two options: go to the hospital for surgery or find a good bone therapist. So I fell into the hands of my aunt Nina.


    - Oh, my God, - she said thoughtfully, after evaluating the work of her "colleague". - The hard case.


    To be honest, until that moment I had no idea that my aunt could treat with her hands. To me, she was just an ordinary nurse, and I didn''t really rely on her massage. As is often the case, we are more likely to believe people from outside than those who are close to us. Especially when it comes to our family. We think we know them like the back of our hand, so we don''t expect miracles from them.


    But I agreed to accept my aunt''s help.


    Every evening my aunt would lay me on the couch and perform various manipulations on my aching back - crushing, pressing, rubbing with warming ointment, gently tapping her knuckles along my vertebrae, but the unfortunate lump would not even think of shrinking.


    "I''m just wasting my time," I thought wistfully. - What if it gets worse?"


    A week later, out of habit, I felt my back - the lump was gone! My spine was completely healthy! But Aunt Nina continued the massage for three more days to consolidate the results. At the end of the session, she suggested:


    - Let me see something else.


    Nimbly, she wrapped her hands around my head and slowly, like a massage, began to feel with the pads of her fingers, revealing all the "weak" places in my body - what to watch out for and what to pay attention to in the future.


    Mysterious strangers


    Aunt Nina learned the basics of massage at the Glazov Medical School.


    There she learned one simple truth: do not entrust your body to a non-medical person. A masseur who does not know basic anatomy can do more harm than good.


    In her childhood, her father and mother often took little Nina to the forest to gather medicinal herbs. But the girl hardly listened to her parents, herbs did not interest her.


    In high school, Nina spent her summer vacation with a construction team in Moldova.


    There a strange man approached her on the street and said:


    - Sweet girl, did you know that if you dip a marigold in boiling water and put it to your eyes, you can get rid of nearsightedness? Did you know that if your appendix is inflamed, you should drink a decoction of wormwood? I think that since you are going into the business of treating people, my advice will be useful to you.


    My aunt thought the man was crazy and blurted out defiantly:


    - I''m not treating anyone! What makes you think that? I don''t need it!


    And just in case, she prepared to run away from him.


    - Yes, you do! - said the stranger to her.


    Soon Nina got married, gave birth to a daughter and moved with her family to Kazakhstan, to the town of Shevchenko. Her son Sasha was born there. In those years, babies were sent to kindergartens early, and in order to be close to her son, my aunt got a job as a nurse in a kindergarten.


    In 1987, when she was 34 years old, on her way to work she met an old man with a distinctive Kazakh beard, wearing a felt hat like a Kyrgyz and a robe.


    The old man stopped and pointed a questioning finger at Aunt Nina:


    - Do you treat people?


    "Oh, no," Aunt Nina rolled her eyes. - Another madman, unfortunately for me!"


    The old man grinned, "You treat - you treat," and slipped her a piece of paper with his address:


    - Come tomorrow, I''ll be waiting for you.


    The next day, Aunt Nina went to the old man''s house, though she didn''t know why.


    Eighteen middle-aged men and women gathered in an ordinary two-room apartment in a city high-rise.


    Janibek


    The old man introduced himself as Janibek and said he was 81 years old. He had spent seventy of those years in a Tibetan monastery studying Eastern practices. Now he was ready to teach.


    By decision of the monastery''s council of elders, Janibek was sent to Kazakhstan to find disciples and pass on his knowledge. Not for free.


    At that time, education cost a lot of money, in dollars, not rubles.


    - For nine months, the mentor taught us to develop our sensitivity and to turn off our inner dialogue, Aunt Nina said. - He often took us to the desert on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where we had to sit on rocks and meditate for a long time.


    Concentrating, Janibek could, on a windless day, create a great ripple in the sea or calm a small wave in the wind by a mere effort of will. He could sit cross-legged for hours without moving, while we began to fidget and get distracted after five minutes of meditation.


    "Sometimes," Auntie recalled, "the classes were held in his apartment. On those days we would ask the master to play a guessing game with us. Janibek would go into the next room and we would act out different characters.


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    And every time he guessed correctly, even though there was a concrete wall between us. The game was our favorite pastime because, unlike meditation, it required no effort.


    - I understand now that our behavior caused Master a lot of trouble. Many of us thought that studying was nothing, a waste of time and money.


    It was not without reason that Janibek compared his disciples to five-year-old children.


    "At three," he explained, "a child is curious, at seven he is teachable. And five is the age of total carelessness."


    The aunt was sure that none of them had learned anything by the end of their training, but Janibek didn''t see it that way. He did not deny that he had taught his students only the basics, but in his opinion, nine months of practical training was more than enough to give a massage.


    At the end, Master gave each disciple a magic item (Aunt Nina got a small quartz crystal) and said that whoever wanted to continue studying would find him and join the group.


    The fate of the magic crystal


    Aunt Nina wanted to find Janibek, but there was no time for that in the chain of daily affairs and worries. So aunt Nina had given up her studies, thinking that maybe the other students would be more conscientious. But out of eighteen people, not one had found the Master! Not a single "padawan" wanted to follow in the footsteps of his guru.


    At the end of the noughties I asked my aunt if she knew where Janibek was now, if he was alive.


    Yes, she replied, she had heard from her friends that Master was living in India. Although he is well over a hundred years old, he is still active and alert - even restoring Buddhist shrines in Afghanistan with a group of like-minded people.


    The fate of the magic crystal that the master gave to his student Nina is curious.


    For a long time the crystal was kept in my aunt''s apartment, on a glass stand in the living room, until one day her one-and-a-half-year-old grandson Sasha swallowed it.


    The family was terrified and took the boy to an X-ray.


    The x-ray showed that there was a foreign object in the child''s body, but there was no need for surgery - in a day or two the crystal would come out on its own.


    But no matter how much the family monitored the boy, no matter how much they examined the chamber pot, the crystal mysteriously disappeared.


    At least they didn''t find it in the potty, but the repeated X-rays in Sasha''s stomach didn''t find the crystal either.


    Closing the circle


    Among my mother''s sisters, the eldest, Sveta, was considered the strictest and most principled. She was almost like my great-grandmother Matrena, so she would bend anyone to her will.


    As for Nina, as she grew older, she also began to resemble her mother and grandmother more and more.


    My mother recalled that when her sister Nina was young, she dreamed of leaving her father''s house as soon as possible to find her own way, to engage in spiritual practices.


    As far as I know, she did not even want to have children because of this and fervently discouraged my mother from motherhood.


    Many of her dreams came true, but as the years went by, the path she had chosen did not seem as appealing to her as it had once been. The ties of kinship proved to be stronger than she had thought. In addition, a mass exodus of Russians from Kazakhstan began in the mid-1990s. The Kazakhs behaved aggressively toward the Russians, shouting, "Get out, this is our land!"


    My aunt gave up everything, divorced her husband, took the children and returned to her homeland. She had nowhere else to go but to Grandma Luda''s house. But soon after the relatives arrived, my grandmother had a stroke.


    The older my aunt got, the more she seemed to be drawn back to her roots, to the matriarchal way of life. This was especially noticeable after my grandmother''s death and the birth of Aunt Nina''s grandson, the one who swallowed the magic crystal.


    No, my aunt is still fond of esotericism and Eastern practices. She knows how to give massages, read cards and understand herbs, but now the family is the first place for her, where she, as a mother, is the head, the unquestionable authority. The circle is complete.


    Massage is a delicate matter


    Like any masseuse, Aunt Nina had her own secrets.


    For example, she insists that only the massage performed along the lymph vessels can be considered correct.


    - In our body there is a large and a small circle of blood circulation - she explains. - You should always start from the head - and go down to the buttocks. Then the hands and arms are massaged, and then the legs - from the bottom to the top. A complete massage takes at least an hour.


    - Folk wisdom is right - all diseases from nerves - like to repeat my aunt. - People complain about shoulder pain, back pain, stiff neck, so they go to the clinic for a massage, but it doesn''t help. They do not know that up to the age of thirty-three it is possible to do a partial massage, for example, if the elbow is sick - you massage only it, but for older people it is recommended to massage the whole body.


    - At this age the disease is like an electric impulse, - she continues. - You treat the elbow, but the pain goes to the lower back. It lurks there for a while, travels through the body, finds a weak spot and hides there. Then it can return to the same place where it started.


    Aunt Nina taught me to start the massage with light warming strokes. You shouldn''t knead the muscles with the diligence of a dough kneader. The intensity should be increased gradually, from session to session, so that the patient does not wriggle in pain and experiences in the body a pleasant lightness, relaxation, which gradually turns into vitality.


    And let the Oriental medicine has a different point of view, take the same Thais - they literally turn the muscles inside out, twist them like wet underwear, but, according to Aunt Nina, Thai massage is suitable only for those who were born, grew up or live in a hot climate. For northerners, these techniques are inappropriate and even harmful.


    Why is it necessary to follow a ten-day course of massage therapy if it is possible to adjust joints and vertebrae from the first session? (By the way, many chiropractors do it). It''s necessary because if you don''t fix the result, a careless movement is enough and a new dislocation or displacement is guaranteed. That is why it is so important not to miss the first week of massage, especially the sixth, seventh and eighth sessions, when the body is most active in fighting the disease.


    Aunt Nina never massages more than two or three people a day because it takes too much strength and energy. After each visitor, she washes her hands thoroughly and sometimes even takes a shower to wash off the energy of others so as not to transfer it to the next patient.


    Aunt Nina''s patients are mostly people with a sedentary lifestyle - bosses, drivers, programmers, people suffering from osteochondrosis or sciatica.


    By the way, my aunt could not only relieve pain with her hands, but also "straighten" the head after a concussion and treat herbal infusions. But she didn''t massage everyone. She told me:


    - One day a woman came to me for a massage. She looked ordinary, but in her presence I literally had a splitting headache and my hands began to go numb. I couldn''t massage her at all.


    My aunt tried to refuse such energetically toxic people under any pretext so as not to get sick herself.


    A dot on the map


    Over the years, Aunt Nina had learned to feel where and what a person was in pain.


    She would run her hand along the body, and if she felt a cold, it meant something was wrong with the internal organ in that place.


    My aunt didn''t really understand how she did it, but she always guessed cancer patients. She said that even on the hottest afternoons she felt cold around them. The icy chill that comes from a person is a sure sign that he or she is about to go to the next world.


    As for examining the head to detect problems in the body, my aunt never saw mysticism in it.


    She used to explain that our head is like a geographical map. Just as we can look at it to find a lake, river, or forest, she could detect diseases, including hereditary ones, by feeling the surface of the head with her fingers, which act like antennas to pick up nerve impulses coming from the internal organs to the brain.


    She could also "see" diseases by looking into your eyes. In medicine, there is even a concept called iridodiagnostics, where black dots on the iris signal certain ailments and diseases.


    Then Aunt Nina touched an invisible point in the center of the chest. - This is the place where negative energy accumulates. - If you''ve had a fight with someone, if you''re nervous, or if you have a grudge or resentment against someone, it''s all here now.


    It''s easy to find that point. In anxious and nervous people it is very painful.


    To release negativity, massage it clockwise. I''ve tried it, it helps.


    Swing


    It was strange, my grandmother blessed Aunt Nina on the path of healing, but she did not approve of my efforts in this direction - she thought I had a different destiny in life.


    I was offended - why could Grandma Luda heal people and I could not? Why am I worse?


    And yet, by spending a lot of time in my grandmother''s house, I apparently managed to read some things subconsciously, to memorize them on an intuitive level.


    I remember in my grandmother''s yard there was a huge swing that looked like a scale with two bowls on it. Only instead of bowls, there were two rings on each side that you had to grasp tightly with your hands.


    The swing was usually used by two people. One person would grab the rings and jump up so the other person could grab the rings. Then both would hang in the air for a moment.


    But since the weight of each person was different, one would always be lighter, and the heavier partner would have to keep pushing off the ground, otherwise the "skinny" one would be doomed to dangle helplessly from the top. A very dangerous attraction!


    One day, as the swings were rising sharply, I was shaken violently, my fingers came loose by themselves, and I fell. It all happened in a split second. I didn''t even notice that my lip hit my knee. I didn''t feel any pain, but when I got up my mouth was bleeding. My first thought was that I had knocked out my teeth!


    When my friends saw the blood, they all ran away. Only an unknown girl stayed in the yard, she took my hand and led me to the water supply.


    My mouth was salty. I walked like a blind man, head tilted back, stumbling with every step. I felt my teeth with my tongue, they were intact, but the blood just kept coming out.


    The funny thing is that I was most afraid of getting blood on my shirt. If I did, my mom would kill me. I didn''t want my family to know about my fall because I didn''t want to upset them, and I was sure they would give me a hard time. No, it''s better to keep quiet!


    After washing my face, I asked the girl to examine me, find a wound in my mouth and put plantain on it. But the girl couldn''t find any visible damage. The bleeding didn''t stop. So maybe the internal organs were damaged.


    I had to find out what it was. I didn''t want to worry my grandmother - she would see me, make a fuss, and then tell my parents.


    Luckily, my grandmother was asleep when I got home.


    Without turning on the light, I slipped into the kitchen and immediately opened the refrigerator. I took out a jar of honey and locked myself in the bathroom. There, in front of the mirror, I finally managed to see what was wrong. I''d hit the inside of my lower lip with my tooth when I fell and almost bit through it.


    I rinsed my mouth with cold water, scooped honey from a jar with my finger, and smeared it on the wound as if to glue the piece of bite back in place. And the bleeding stopped instantly! I put more honey under my lip and went to bed.


    During the night, the honey dissolved, absorbed where it needed to go, and everything healed perfectly, almost without a trace.


    To be continued

 Chapter 12

    Search for "Ogonyok"


    My father, a passionate reader, could not live without newspapers and magazines.


    But he worked in the morning shift at the factory and I went to school in the afternoon, so it was my duty to buy "Ogonyok" and "Nedelya" in the morning.


    The kiosk opened at nine in the morning, but I had to get up at six to stand in line, preferably at the front of the line. Nowadays newspapers are sold on every corner, but back then you could not get them all by mail. Even buying them was a problem. For example, only five copies of "Nedelya" were brought to the kiosk, and even fewer copies of "Ogonyok". The people at the end of the line got nothing at all, except for "Pravda".


    I was always the first to arrive at the kiosk on Revolution Street.


    Behind me would appear an old woman in a blue coat carrying a cane - the wife of Tatarintsev, a well-known philologist in the city. Another old man, Boris, with a moustache and a hat, followed.


    The three of us knew each other by sight, and when one of us was late, we worried: what was wrong with him? Had something happened? Was he sick?


    It''s good when it''s warm outside, but in winter the hunt for "Ogonyok" became an ordeal. I, an eight-year-old schoolgirl, always came home with frostbitten cheeks and no feeling in my toes after several hours of standing in the wind in thirty-degree frost. In addition, a strange thing began to happen to me, and I began to choke. I would inhale air and couldn''t breathe, as if there was a hole in my lungs.


    Dark Water


    I used to dream at night that I was drowning. I dreamed it in my childhood, and I still do. They''re not pleasant dreams. It''s like I''m in a cave or the hold of a sunken ship and I don''t know where the exit is.


    It''s damp, scary, dark, no air. I''m choking, gasping, desperately trying to get to the surface and I can''t. Suddenly I see a faint light in the distance. I swim towards it.


    The window of the porthole is so narrow and small, I''m afraid I won''t be able to squeeze through, I almost lose consciousness and... I wake up. My heart is pounding. Thank God I''m alive!


    Perhaps I am reliving my birth in these dreams. After all, according to my mother''s words, it was like this - I was born half strangled, with the umbilical cord twisted twice around my neck.


    But was the horror of death so ingrained in a baby''s subconscious that it still haunts me in my nightmares?


    By the way, all my choking attacks stopped as suddenly as they started. Without medication. But they were replaced by blows to the stomach. I still don''t know what triggered them. Every time I was just standing somewhere, waiting for the bus or running cross-country in gym class, when I suddenly got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and realized with horror - this is only the first "bell," the main action is ahead...


    A mild attack of nausea was always followed by a wave-like tingling sensation. My arms and legs would feel like they were being pierced by thousands of needles, my body would go numb, covered in icy sweat, and my eyes would blur in circles. My tongue seemed to swell and my mouth seemed to be filled with raw dough.


    I knew that if I didn''t sit down immediately, anywhere, even on the floor, I would be hit hard in the solar plexus. The air would be blown out of my lungs and I''d lose my senses.


    I didn''t want to faint in public, so at the first sign (it usually took about three minutes from the feeling in the pit of my stomach to the punch) I tried to get away, to hide.


    A choking attack


    One frosty morning, I was standing in line to buy "Ogonyok" when I had another attack.


    There was no way I could hide - I had to buy my father a magazine, so I held on with all my strength.


    But my arms and legs were already stiff, and there were only seconds left before the attack...


    After warning old Boris that I would be back soon, I reached the public garden and curled up on a bench with my arms around my stomach. It seemed to me that if I took my hands off my stomach I would explode - something soft, like cotton balls, was pulsating there; they were insistently bursting out of me, or maybe, on the contrary, they were trying to penetrate me.


    I felt very bad and scared, I tried as hard as I could to shut myself off from the invisible threat, and the pain gradually subsided. I was even able to get up and waddle quietly, without taking my hands off my stomach, to the kiosk.


    On the way I found a paper ruble frozen in a puddle. I broke the ice with the heel of my boot and forged it out. It was wet and dirty, but it was a whole ruble!I


    I finally bought the magazine. I couldn''t disappoint my father.


    But those nausea attacks happened to me many times after that. They were not always accompanied by painful gasping, but the end result was the same - a sudden loss of consciousness.


    Fainting in church


    One day I fainted during the Easter Vigil.


    I don''t usually go to church, but that night I wanted to go to the other side of town for some reason.


    The little wooden church was crowded, it could hardly hold all the parishioners, but I managed to squeeze in close to the lectern. The crowd pushed and shoved behind me. The candles were burning. The smell of wax and incense was suffocating. Half an hour into the vigil, even though the doors of the temple were wide open, the air was running out of oxygen. And I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach...


    That''s when I regretted that I was far from the exit.


    Trying to get out didn''t work. The people were like a wall and they weren''t going anywhere. "Stay still!" - someone behind me shouted angrily. It''s easy to say "stay still" when the light in my eyes is almost gone.


    Somewhere a baby started to cry. And at that moment I heard a rustle behind me, as if someone had fallen. I even felt a slight breeze on my back from the fall. Then I heard a cry of alarm: "The girl has fainted!"


    I thought, "Well, I''m not the only one. At the same time, I had a strange illusion: it was as if I had split in two and was now in two places at once - standing and falling at the same time. And the next moment I realized that the girl who had fainted was me! It was amazing to watch myself from the outside.


    I could not understand how this was possible - the standing "me" could see the one lying on the  ground behind me, as if I had another pair of eyes at the back of my head. But the falling "me", for some reason, saw nothing and no one around me.


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    So which of the two was the real me, and which was just my phantom, my double?


    I came to on the ground, and the first thing I thought was how interesting it was: when I wanted to go out, the people didn''t move, but when I fell, the crowd moved back and a lot of empty space formed around me.


    Someone helped me up and even took me to the door.


    Two guys in police uniforms were waiting for me at the exit. One started shining a flashlight in my face and sniffing suspiciously: "Drunk?" but the other one stopped him: "Fool! Can''t you see a girl is sick, it''s so stuffy in there!"


    This second one was very kind, sat me down on a bench in the yard and brought me some water. "Can you walk home alone?" - he asked when I felt a little better. I nodded, although he offered me a ride.


    Another time I was walking by a sports field and saw a bar. I decided to do a pull-up. I jumped up, grabbed the bar, and then blacked out.


    When I woke up in the morning, I opened my eyes in my bed. Or rather, I thought it was morning and I was in bed. But where is the blanket? Why are there tree leaves and a blue sky above my head instead? I begin to remember: a staircase, a jump, blackness...


    I looked around - I was on the floor, my shoulder was sore, it looked like I''d hit it when I fell. How long had I been like this? According to the clock, only a few minutes. But it felt like an eternity.


    Two of us


    After school I lived and studied in Nizhny Tagil for three years.


    One summer I came home on vacation, and my younger sister told me that the night before, when she was going to bed, she looked at the chair and saw me sitting in it.


    She wasn''t frightened, she was surprised. My sister knew that I would arrive any day, so she thought it was a surprise - I had bought a ticket in advance and rushed to Glazov without telling anyone, opened the door with my own key, slipped quietly into the room and sat down in the chair - as if to say, "What, you weren''t expecting me? But I''m home!"


    In a whisper, so my parents wouldn''t hear, Tanya began to ask me something.


    I didn''t answer, just sat quietly in the chair and then mysteriously disappeared somewhere.


    And now my sister wanted to know if it was really me or if she had dreamed it all.


    What could I say? All I knew was that I really missed home.


    At night, when I lay in bed, I dreamed of coming to Glazov and seeing my family. I imagined our apartment down to the smallest detail, even tried to guess what my parents and sister were doing and where my favorite dog, Lala, was now - sleeping on my parents'' bed or begging for cookies from Tanya in the kitchen?


    Maybe my desire to come home, even for a little while, was so great that I somehow fulfilled it. Or rather, my astral double did.


    But the most incredible thing was that Tanya had seen me!


    It is said that seeing an astral double is bad luck, it means the imminent death of the person the phantom belongs to. But I was not dying at that moment, my health was fine, and nothing terrible happened to me after that.


    However, it is absolutely true that leaving the physical body almost always happens as a result of an accident or some deadly threat hanging over a person.


    Left and never came back


    When my school friend was a child, her father died tragically at work.


    He was crushed by a crane or hit by a truck, I don''t remember.


    It was early in the morning and he died instantly. He probably didn''t even know what had happened. And his double, who lost his body so suddenly, did not notice the transition to the next world either. And in that parallel reality he continued to live, went to the factory, did his work, and from work he hurried home to his wife and children.


    You can say that parallel worlds don''t exist? Keep listening.


    My friend''s mother recalled that a week after the funeral, she was home alone. The children were asleep when she heard the key turn in the keyhole.


    The clock on the bedside table read four in the morning, the time when her husband usually returned from the night shift.


    The woman was in the bedroom, but she heard the uninvited overnight guest take off his shoes in the hallway, put his feet in his slippers, and walk down the hallway to the bathroom. He looked into the nursery on the way. He stood there for a while and then went on.


    The woman was not afraid that a burglar had entered the house. What was eerie was that she recognized those footsteps. They were the footsteps of her husband. Her dead husband!


    She listened breathlessly to the water running in the bathtub, to someone rattling a soap dish and scrubbing his back with a washcloth. But then the sounds stopped. The light switch clicked.


    The woman squeezed her eyes shut.


    The door creaked open. Someone entered the bedroom, kicked off his slippers in the dark, and sat down on the bed. He sat there for a minute, then got under the covers and reached for his wife...


    I don''t know what happened next. It seems that the wife, without opening her eyes, asked her husband to leave so as not to frighten her and the children. After that, the night visitor silently got up and left the room. He never returned to the house.


    A blow from above


    After my parents died, my husband and I decided to renovate their apartment by replacing the floors, knocking down the walls and removing the mezzanine.


    Armed with a crowbar, Andrei enthusiastically got to work. I helped, but at ten o''clock I had to go to the newsroom. We had a staff meeting every Thursday, and I could not miss it. Before I left, Andrei told me that he would be breaking down the doorjambs until noon because he had nothing else to do today.


    And so I was sitting in the newsroom, listening to a speech by the newspaper columnist, and in the meantime I looked out of the window (our house and the newsroom are in the neighborhood), and suddenly I saw Andrei running out of the entrance. He came closer and closer...


    I leaned against the window. There could be no mistake. His jacket, cap, glasses, hurried, a little nervous walk. But if I remember correctly, my husband didn''t want to leave the house. Maybe he decided to go to the store? Well, I''d find out when I got home.


    The meeting was over. By noon I was home.


    Andrei came out of the room to meet me with a huge purple bump on his forehead.


    It turned out that he had miscalculated his strength a bit, and the heavy chipboard ceiling of the mezzanine came crashing down on him from above. The main blow came to his head and was so hard that for the first second my husband thought he had lost consciousness. And then, he said, his head rang like a bell for a long time.


    - If it had hit the back of my head, it would have killed me for sure! - Andrei gently felt the bump, as if reliving what had happened.


    - So you were at the drugstore?


    - What drugstore? - Andrew did not understand. - I was at home all the time. And where would I go like that? - he eloquently looked at his dusty pants and T-shirt.


    My husband still can''t believe I saw his double. He says it was a mistake.


    But I swear it was him! I could see him clearly in every detail.


    I think the astral double slipped out of my husband''s body at the very moment he was covered by a monolithic slab weighing at least a quarter of a hundredweight.


    In any case, whoever he was, he looked exactly like Andrei.


    Leaving the body


    It is a pity that in reality we rarely manage to remember the feeling of leaving our physical body.


    I wouldn''t be surprised if our astral doubles spend most of their time on their own - traveling somewhere, meeting people - familiar and unfamiliar. And these people then assure us that they have seen us in a city or country where we have never been in our lives.


    Often people would stop me on the street and ask, "How was Bali?" or "How was your trip to Vietnam?" Canada, Australia), the countries could have been different.


    What are they talking about? - I didn''t understand. In response, they would indulgently pat me on the shoulder: okay, we know, we know.


    Once someone seemed to have seen me in Kaliningrad, where I was buying real estate. My assurances that I had never been there, and certainly had never bought anything, were met with the same ironic grin: yes, of course...


    And what about this episode: I dreamed that I had bought an apartment in a big old house built by Stalin near the "Russia" House of Culture. A week later, already in reality, I was walking past this house and a stranger came up to me. He stopped and said to me with a smile:


    - Congratulations on your purchase!


    I almost lost the power of speech. What''s going on here? Am I dreaming? Am I living in some parallel reality? Who are all these people and what does it all mean? Maybe I''m going crazy, or have I already gone crazy?


    The Midnighters


    I''ll tell you another story.


    I used to go to bed early and my dad and Tanya would stay up late. They drank tea, watched TV, and since my mother worked the morning shift, Dad and Tanya were only allowed to watch TV in my room, so I was used to falling asleep to the commercials and explosions in the action movies.


    But this time the midnighters lost their conscience and forgot to turn the sound down a bit.


    I don''t remember what happened next because I was asleep.


    But my astral twin, who never sleeps, may have been very annoyed by the noise of the TV.


    Tanya and Dad later told me that they were watching their favorite action movie, "Leon," when, at the moment of a particularly loud gunshot, I suddenly opened my eyes, sat up in bed, and yelled at them menacingly: "Keep it down!" Then I dropped my head on the pillow.


    They were so stunned by my uncharacteristic behavior - the angry expression on my face, and especially the sharp, commanding voice I used to order them to turn the sound down - that they immediately obeyed the order, turned off the TV, and quickly went to bed. I wish I had done it sooner.


    To be continued

 Chapter 13

    I Can''t Wait to Get Married


    I was about ten years old when I noticed my dad collecting beer caps everywhere and putting them in a jug like some kind of precious coin.


    He had a lot of caps when I decided to ask him what he wanted them for.


    - For your wedding," my father replied.


    I didn''t make any connection, but as it turned out, in Dad''s mind, my future wedding looked a little strange, if not exotic. Instead of an austere suit, he was going to wear a gypsy skirt embroidered with beer caps and rattle the hem to ward off evil spirits from me and my fianc¨¦.


    I thought he was joking, but Dad was dead serious. He had seen a similar wedding ritual long ago as a child in the country, and it had stuck with him.


    I didn''t want to upset my father because I knew for sure I wouldn''t have a wedding. I would have a husband, but no ceremony with a white dress, veil, guests and wedding rings.


    And no children, so Dad''s dreams of grandchildren would be in vain.


    How did I know? I just knew, that''s all. Children often know their future, but no one believes them, they think it''s a fantasy. But even at the age of ten, I saw myself as a children''s writer. Children''s - because I loved reading books for children and teenagers. I liked being a child, communicating with children, and I dreamed that when I grew up I would have a daughter and two twin sons. But I never wanted to have a wedding. I liked other people''s ceremonies, but my own? You have to buy a dress, shoes with heels, do your hair, order a restaurant, hire a toastmaster. Wouldn''t it be better to just get married in secret and go on a honeymoon?


    My mother has been telling my sister and me since we were children:


    - Marry rich! Someone with an apartment, a car and a summer house.


    When I started dating a guy, my mother''s first question was always: Does he have a car?


    If he does, he''s a good guy; if he doesn''t, he''s a bad guy. But I fell in love with a man who only had a rich inner world. But in that sense he was a real treasure, so much so that even my strict mother once said to me with envy:


    - How lucky you are, Natasha!


    To tell the truth, I never thought that I would have a husband like Andrei. I was attracted to other guys, similar to my father. And I myself was the kind of person who "could not wait to get married" - with only boys in my head and the eternal question: who is he, my soul mate?


    Mirror, mirror on the wall...


    Eastern wisdom says, "Divination removes doubt. If there is no doubt, there is no need for divination. But who has not wished at least once in his life to know what lies ahead? To catch a glimpse of the world beyond, to read the cards, to fantasize about the patterns on the coffee grounds, to take a book off the shelf and, having made a wish, open the page at random.


    My grandmother Luda used to say that the night of January 14 was the night of the most truthful fortune-telling.


    - On Vasilyevsky nights all evil comes out into the light and roams until the Epiphany.


    After our grandmother''s stories, my sisters and I would gather in the kitchen in the evening and start telling fortunes for bridegrooms.


    But we usually got nothing good out of it - we poured wax on the tablecloth, or ate notes with the names of suitors to get hiccups, or tried to make coffee but instead burned all the coffee beans and smoked the ceiling.


    Once we threw a boot off the balcony for our future fianc¨¦ to pick up. But when we ran out into the yard, neither the fianc¨¦ nor the boot were there. We also went to the intersection of three streets to listen to what passersby were talking about and to learn our future. We spent two hours in the wind, frozen like dogs, but no man appeared!


    - What result did you expect? - laughed my grandmother. - It''s like going to a field. Who walks in the suburbs at night?


    We guessed by randomly dialing phone numbers. You make a wish, and if the person at the other end of the line says "yes" - it will come true, "hello" - no.


    You can imagine what people said when they were woken up at three in the morning...


    The Queen of Spades


    One of the girls suggested summoning the Queen of Spades. She said she appeared at midnight and granted any wish. As soon as we turned off the lights, drew a ladder on the mirror with a marker, and called, "Queen of Spades, come," the doorbell rang.


    We hid in fear. Oksana crawled under the bed.


    It rang for half an hour. Then an unknown visitor started cursing and kicking the door so hard that plaster fell from the ceiling. It turned out that Oksana''s father had left his keys at home.


    The next night, we locked Oksana in the bathroom so she could see her future fianc¨¦ in the mirror.


    According to the belief, the devils were supposed to scare her in there, and we were not supposed to let her out of the bathroom despite her screams and cries. So when there was a scream outside the door, we just laughed: "Be strong!


    When Oksana finally ran out, disheveled, scratched, in tears, a "devil" jumped after her - the cat Vaska, who had been dozing peacefully on the mat under the sink.


    One night I left a glass of water on the headboard of the bed. A fortune-telling book said that if it was full in the morning, it would mean prosperity.


    Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning to find that our dog, Lala, was shamelessly drinking water from the glass.


    In the nineties, my sister and I and our girlfriends decided to organize a s¨¦ance of spiritualism, and to make it not so scary, we invited some boys we knew. We said:


    - Let''s summon the ghost of the poet Pushkin. He was a funny man.


    - What the hell with Pushkin! - Oksana''s brother Sasha picked up a newspaper from the table. - Our neighbor died the other day, a fun-loving man who drank a lot. Let''s summon him!


    The spirit of the newly deceased alcoholic turned out to be a merry man indeed. He dropped things on the floor, rattled empty bottles in the corner, scattered salt, and broke two cups. He seemed to enjoy our motley company so much that he did not want to leave. We barely escorted him out the window. But we didn''t find out anything about our fianc¨¦s.


    Fortune Teller


    One day my close friend Osya persuaded me to go to a real fortune teller.


    At that time I was studying at a culinary school in Nizhny Tagil and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do next.


    - Come on! - Osya encouraged me. - I know a woman who will tell the whole truth about you. She charges very little for her fortune-telling.


    There were many rumors about the fortune teller on Mendeleev Street in the city. Some considered her clairvoyant and idolized her, others were frankly afraid of her, but all agreed on one thing - the fortune teller was never wrong, all her predictions came true with incredible accuracy.


    Even people from neighboring regions came to her for advice.


    But the fortune-teller did not accept everyone. She would look at some people sternly, shake her head, and silently close the door in front of them, not even letting them in.


    For a long time I was reluctant to go to a fortune teller. I was afraid she would turn me away. I was seventeen years old, and she told fortunes only for adults.


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    Besides, my Tagil grandmother was against any kind of fortune-telling, believing that it was a sin to look into the future.


    But curiosity won out, and after receiving another scholarship, I went to see her.


    It was winter. There was a crackling forty degree frost.


    For two hours I wandered through a maze of wooden houses. By the time I found the address I wanted, I was so cold that my stiff fingers could barely reach the doorbell.


    The door was opened by a woman who was not old. She looked like a Moldavian.


    - What do you want? - she asked.


    - A fortune teller.


    - Come in.


    We entered a small, dark room with thick, heavy carpets on the walls and impenetrable curtains on the windows.


    - Wait here, - the woman said, and walked off somewhere.


    I looked around. There was a huge desk in the middle of the room, piled high with icons and holy pictures. The candles crackled softly.


    For some reason, I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of here.


    The fortune teller returned. She was holding a deck of shabby fortune-telling cards.


    - Why have you come? - she asked unfriendly. - Nothing to do? You have no problems, what do you want?


    - I''d like to know the future, - I muttered.


    The fortune teller quickly spread the cards on the table and raised her black, penetrating eyes. And with that half-questioning, half-mocking look, it was as if she had burned through me. Somehow I felt ashamed. She had not read my mind, had she?


    - You''re a stubborn girl, but you study because you''re bored, - the fortune teller said calmly. - You do not need this specialty, you will not work on it. When you get to the institute, you''ll find something you like. And leave that guy you''re going out with. He''s no good for you. Do you understand?


    The fortune teller looked into my eyes again:


    - Do you understand me?


    - What are you talking about? - I protested. - We''re getting married this summer!


    - What wedding, girl? - The woman grinned. - He''s long been married.


    I didn''t believe her. I thought it was bullshit. So I began to listen to her half-heartedly, and almost every word was met with hostility. But the fortune teller went on and on - about my health, about my studies, about my relatives. She said that in four years I would meet my future husband and get married in July. My husband will be four years older - handsome, educated, rich. We will have a boy and a girl. She also warned me that my grandfather would die soon, so the family should prepare.


    Again, I didn''t believe her. Grandpa looked quite healthy, he would not die.


    Finally, the fortune teller offered to ask her three questions.


    I spent two on my parents, and the last question I decided to ask about my little sister.


    - How old is your sister?


    - Fourteen.


    The fortune teller wrinkled her forehead for a long time and looked at the cards.


    - No, she''s still an angel, I can''t see anything, everything is foggy.


    Then she told me the price.


    It was more than I expected, I didn''t have that much money with me.


    - Never mind. You''ll bring it tomorrow. - The woman looked me carefully in the eyes again, as if she wanted to make sure that I would not cheat her, that I would borrow, but that I would pay back my debt.


    I want to say that I really did return the money. But for some reason the fortune teller did not recognize me. She silently listened to who I was and where I came from, took the bill and slammed the door.


    I left her with a heavy heart. My head was throbbing, my legs were shaking. By evening I was completely exhausted.


    - You have to go to church, - my grandmother advised me.


    I''ve been to the church.


    Soon the fortuneteller''s prophecies began to come true. My grandfather died. It turned out that he had been sick for a long time.


    Only my grandmother knew, but she kept quiet because she didn''t want to upset or frighten anyone.


    The man I was dating was actually married.


    I found out by chance - I saw the stamp in his passport. So I had to forget about the wedding and begin to wait for my true love.


    Four years have passed. July is coming.


    And then, as if in mockery, life flips a switch and turns everything upside down. I left the institute while my sister went there. She broke up with her boyfriend and immediately married another man. The interesting thing is that her husband is four years older than her, handsome, educated, with money. One year later they have a son...


    - Why did you leave your boyfriend? - I asked my sister many years later.


    - Because the bastard was married! - Tanya replied.


    The stars say


    I was sure that sooner or later I would find my husband, but there were things I could not believe in, like traveling abroad.


    In the early 90s it seemed like a fantasy. I remember once waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of the popular lambada - tropics, palm trees, ocean - and crying in self-pity because I would never see that overseas paradise. But I wanted to see it so badly!


    1992 was the height of interest in astrology. Offices were opening on every corner, ready to tell you your future.


    In St. Petersburg, where I went on an excursion as a schoolgirl, a certain astrologer put a computer with a printer right in the Moscow train station - he printed out predictions for everyone for a hundred rubles. It was convenient: you got off the train and immediately got a piece of paper: what, where, when would happen to you. I couldn''t miss it, I didn''t spare a hundred rubles and entered my date and time of birth into the computer''s memory.


    And here was happiness - everything was planned, like in a state plan: in three years I''d go abroad, in five years I''d get married, I didn''t have to worry about anything, the stars said so, and they knew better.


    Meanwhile, the years passed, but there were no trips abroad, no wedding in sight, and I forgot to think about it. I remembered it when a crumpled sheet of paper fell out of my old notebook. The one with the astrological prediction. I sat down to read it again and couldn''t believe my eyes. The unnamed astrologer got the dates wrong, but overall he got nine out of ten events right!


    Avoid evil and it will avoid you


    If you''ve ever dealt with representatives of the other world, they won''t let you go. I know that for sure. Imagine that you are a locked room with a bright light inside. And the other dimension is space, dark, mysterious, icy.


    And so you decide to make contact with it. It''s like breaking a lock or breaking the seal of a door.


    You break your integrity and tightness and from now on you can be knocked on the door at any moment or even break in without knocking.


    Of course, you can prop the door up with something from the inside or put a chain on it, but the gap remains. And through it comes a light, warm, alive, inviting. That is what attracts the inhabitants of the other world to you, they fly like moths to that light.


    As a result, some incredible stories always happen to you.


    When I was in the sixth grade, my father bought a book at the bookstore called "White and Black Magic", which contained pentagrams, spells, and descriptions of ancient magical rituals.


    Some of what I read in the book was familiar to me from my conversations with Grandma Luda. Much of it was frightening, even repulsive, but overall the book seemed interesting and I was intrigued.


    Despite the fear, I was tempted to look beyond and, with any luck, make contact with the inhabitants of another reality, to find companions and patrons among them.


    It wasn''t that I wanted to stroke my ego, to prove to myself that I could do it, although I had such thoughts, but I had long since realized that people are not drawn to magic by a good life. When all is not well at home, when no one understands you and there are no close friends, you want to find something that will make you not feel so lonely, some mystery, a shop of miracles that will fill your worthless existence with meaning. I never didn''t think that magical experiences could be harmful, even dangerous.


    A couple of times I tried to organize spiritualist sessions at home to summon spirits.


    The spirits appeared, but with them came such a sticky fear that I stopped these experiments for my own safety. I decided to protect my house as well - I put needles in the doorjambs and in the ceiling, but I''m not sure I did everything right.


    My inner voice warned me not to play with fire, not to do things I don''t know anything about for the sake of self-assertion. Practical magic isn''t my thing.


    So I moved on to chiromancy and astrology.


    I was particularly drawn to hypnosis and mind control techniques.


    I read somewhere that with a willpower you can stop the inner dialog and go into a trance, consciously leave your physical body, travel through time and space, and even see your past lives. That was what I wanted!


    To go into a trance state, I could lie motionless on the couch for hours and try not to think about anything. In my mind, I would imagine my consciousness separating from the physical shell and rising upward.


    But I couldn''t shut off the inner dialog. It was like a radio playing in my head. My thoughts jumped, confused, crawled over each other like ice floes in a flood. No miracles! Life had proven that everything unusual happens to us when we don''t expect it.


    Rainbow Glow


    But one day, a miracle finally happened.


    When I woke up that morning, I opened my eyes and realized that something was wrong with my vision.


    I didn''t recognize the room I was in. No, the room was mine, but all the objects in it seemed blurred, as if surrounded by a halo of rainbow glow.


    Bright multicolored dots swirled in the air, pulsed, formed into intricate patterns, flashed, exploded with countless tiny lights, and flew apart like a kaleidoscope.


    This flickering made me dizzy, and the ground began to give way beneath my feet.


    I experienced a similar state in my childhood when I held a three-sided Plexiglas prism to my eyes. The prism would amazingly magnify and change the outlines of objects in the room as if I were looking at them through a column of water - they would ripple and shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow. The floor came alive and slowly curled into a cocoon, creating the illusion that I was standing on the edge of an abyss and about to fall.


    An unknown force was pulling me down like a magnet. Sometimes I would actually lose my balance and fall, and only then, with my heart pounding, would I remove the prism from my eyes.


    But now, no matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, no matter how hard I tried to focus my gaze, I couldn''t get a clear picture. The world remained dazzling and glowing, like an impressionist painting. But it was alive, constantly changing.


    I panicked. What if I went blind?


    Tears streamed from my eyes, but it didn''t help.


    Should I tell my mother? She''d be upset and drag me to the hospital. No, it''s better to keep quiet, as usual!


    All day long I was not myself, and when I went to bed I prayed to God for only one thing: that everything would be over, that the world would be as it was before, and that I would regain my normal sight.


    When I woke up, I was afraid to open my eyes for a long time in case nothing had changed?


    But when I realized that the "rainbow" had disappeared, I was overcome with sadness. As with the prism in my childhood, I immediately wanted to recreate that magical feeling, to see that wonderful world again.


    Unfortunately, I never saw those rainbow visions again.


    To be continued

 Chapter 14

    Telemystery


    - Turn off the tape recorder! - Grandpa shouts from the next room.


    That means his TV is broken again. And my tape recorder is to blame, of course. I try to tell him that the little "Izh" has nothing to do with it. But it doesn''t help!


    - La-la-la, - my grandfather imitates the tape recorder. - And then the TVs break. Damn it!


    - They broke before, without a tape recorder. There''s a whole pile of them in the corner gathering dust! - I snapped back.


    Behind the curtain in the closet there is a pyramid of old TVs.


    And how many of them lie disassembled in boxes and cupboards. Not an apartment, but a museum of spare parts! But there''s no point in arguing with my grandfather. I turn off the music and go for a walk.


    When I come back, there''s smoke in the house. It smells of soldering iron and hydrochloric acid.


    There was almost nothing left of the "Horizon" TV.


    Grandpa scratches the back of his head:


    - Looks like we''ll have to buy a new one.


    - Have you ruined this TV, too? - Grandma Dusya throws up her hands. - Again?


    But there''s no way out, Grandpa can''t do without the TV. Whether he has to or not, he watches it from evening till morning. He even sleeps with the TV on, and when you turn it off, he wakes up and starts grumbling: "It''s like living in a coffin. "Too quiet.


    Once we are sitting with my grandmother and watching a TV series, and my grandfather, it should be noted, except for soccer and Field of Dreams, does not watch anything else.


    So he starts picking on it: he doesn''t like the color or the sound. He starts pushing all the buttons at once, and it''s over, the picture''s gone.


    What else could we do to improve the situation - we moved the TV from place to place, pounded on it with our fists, all to no avail!


    The main thing is that when Grandpa is not home, the picture is perfect. When he comes home, you can''t see anything. There are streaks, interference, crackling on the screen.


    - Grandpa, - I said, - maybe you have a negative biofield. For example, I can''t wear an electronic watch, it shows the wrong time on my hand, it runs backwards or forwards. And when you are around, the TVs go crazy.


    - No! - He shouts. - It''s the tape recorder''s fault!


    He has found a scapegoat.


    I put the tape recorder¡¯s in the closet. I don''t listen to it for a day, the second day, the third day - the television still doesn''t work, so much so that it turns itself off.


    - Did you get it? - I''m jubilant.


    - Yuck! - Grandpa spits. - Grandma, get me the screwdriver!


    - Ooo, Satan, - scolds Grandma from the kitchen. - It''s useless, stay out of it.


    The TV sets in Grandpa''s house stopped breaking only after his death.


    Lacquered shoes


    Grandpa Sasha died in winter, in the bitter February frost. The gravediggers at the cemetery had to light fires for two nights and dig out the frozen ground inch by inch.


    As soon as we received the telegram, my father and I left for Tagil. On the way, we could not shake off the thought that my grandfather was alive and that we had been summoned only to say goodbye to him.


    - Thank God, you''ve come! - Grandma cried as she opened the door. - He''s waiting for you, my dear, he doesn''t sleep a wink.


    So Dad and I were right!


    Grandpa was lying in the room. In a suit. In a coffin. Not alive. His eyelids were half closed. But as soon as we entered, the dead man''s eyelids spontaneously closed.


    My grandmother looked at us and said: "I told you so".


    My father stood next to the coffin and remained suppresed silent. Then, for some reason, he took out of his jacket pocket a newspaper with my first article in it and began to read it aloud. It was a funny article about how my friends and I used to go caroling on Christmas Eve, not without adventures, of course.


    In my opinion, it didn''t fit in with the oppressive atmosphere of the house, but the relatives and neighbors were amused by our adventures. Suddenly they all moved their chairs, started talking, started discussing my lively syllable. My grandmother even cried and said, "Wow, our name is in the newspaper! I wish Grandpa had lived to see this moment..."


    On the day of the funeral, there were many people. Everyone moved sadly along the narrow coffin covered in green cloth, saying goodbye to the deceased. It was my turn.


    - Touch his shoes, - someone behind me whispered.


    - Why?


    - So he won''t come to you in your dreams.


    - No way! - I snorted and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.


    Why should my grandfather come to me in my dreams? And even if he did, what of it?


    I lived peacefully for a week after the funeral. Then the nightmare began.


    At night my grandfather would appear in my dreams, emaciated and terribly thin. He was begging: "Take me away from here!"


    Day by day he became more insistent and demanding. His black lacquered shoes followed me relentlessly. They were sticking out of the ground from where the dead man''s muffled voice was coming: "I''m cold! Get me out!"


    I tried to bury the shoes again, or at least cover them with earth, but they kept coming out.


    It got to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep. Just the thought of black shoes sent shivers down my spine. And in spring, when I dreamt of my grandfather again - wet, in dirty clothes, I couldn''t stand it, I called my grandmother Dusya in Tagil and said:


    - Do something! Otherwise he won''t leave me alone.


    Somehow the relatives managed to get permission for a reburial.


    The grave was dug up. The coffin was removed. It was completely flooded with meltwater.


    Then grandfather''s ashes were buried in a dry place. That same night, Grandpa Sasha came to me in a dream, cheerful and wearing a new pink shirt, thanked me and repeated over and over that everything was all right for him now.


    The nightmares about the black shoes stopped.


    Come to me...


    I met Max at my cousin''s birthday party.


    The house was full of people, everyone was having fun, dancing and joking.


    I could not have fun with the guests - the younger brother of the birthday girl had too much champagne and I stayed with him all night. I sat next to him, made him lotions and gave him coffee. Already in the hallway, as the guests were leaving, Max smiled sadly at me:


    - I wish someone would sit with me like this when I''m not feeling well.


    That was in the winter. And in the summer, Max was murdered. Some bastards stabbed him with a knife in the doorway of the house. For what, why, who knows?


    A month later I saw Max in a dream. He asked me to visit him.


    - But I don''t know where you''re buried," I said.


    Max said nothing.


    On Elijah''s Day, as usual, we went to the cemetery with relatives. I was walking along the graves and suddenly I slowed down, for some reason I turned into an alley, and after a few steps I saw a marble monument with a sign: Maxim Sumarokov.


    The shock made me freeze, and I clearly heard a familiar soft voice behind me:


    - So you''ve come. Sit with me for a while.


    A year later I tried again to find Max''s grave, but I couldn''t.


    The Black Man


    The legend of the Black Man is centuries old. The poet Sergey Yesenin even wrote a prophetic poem in which a Black Man came to his house and stayed by his bed for a long time.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    It is not difficult to guess who the poet meant. The Black Man is death.


    My Aunt Nina told me that she once woke up at night and saw a dark male silhouette in the doorway. She was frightened and squeezed her eyes shut (she was alone in the apartment).


    With heavy footsteps, someone approached the headboard of her bed and leaned down so low that my aunt''s face was covered with icy breath.


    She remembered:


    - I can''t feel my legs and hands because of the fear. I knew that if I opened my eyes now, I would die.


    After standing there for a while, the stranger left the room. The front door slammed.


    But even then my aunt did not dare to open her eyes. So she lay awake until dawn. In the morning she found out that her neighbor behind the wall had died during the night. A young, healthy man, he just fell asleep and didn''t wake up. His rendezvous with the Black Man had been fatal for him.


    I also had an encounter with the black man.


    I was half asleep, half awake. Just like Aunt Nina, I felt someone''s presence near me. Although it was night and my eyes were closed, I could clearly see the silhouette of a man in the darkness. The man''s face was strangely disfigured, with scabs, as if he had been burned. I had a thought that I could look at him through closed eyelids, but if I looked at him with my eyes open, I''d probably die of disgust.


    As if reading my mind, the visitor demanded that I open my eyes immediately.


    I replied that I couldn''t and asked him to leave me alone. But he bent lower and lower, breathing arctic air into my face. But I knew that as long as my eyes were closed I was protected, the black man could not harm me. And he realized that, too, and went away.


    Night of Ivan Kupala


    During my school years I spent almost every summer in Nizhny Tagil.


    Not far from the city, in the village of Chernoistochinsk, my father''s brother, Uncle Grisha, had a summer house, or dacha. My cousin Lenka and I spent our vacations there.


    We had many friends in the village, and on the night of Ivan Kupala - Midsummer''s Eve - we had a party with the boys - we told funny stories, laughed, joked, and gradually the conversation led to witches, ghosts, and other evil things.


    Twilight had crept over the village. It was time for Lenka and me to walk back to the dacha, past the river and the peat bogs. Scary! Everyone knows that on the night of Ivan Kupala drowned people come out of the water.


    - Guys, - we ask, - please take us home. We''re afraid to go alone.


    But they flatly refused. They themselves were whiter than a sheet from fear. They had told us too many horror stories, and now they shuddered at every sound.


    Finally, Lesha Ryabinin, nicknamed Hybrid, made up his mind and started the motorcycle: "Let''s go!"


    But he was shaking like a sheep''s tail. And he had a reason - the other day Lesha''s buddy Dyukha drowned in the local pond, he fell out of the boat drunk. When they pulled the dead man out of the water, Lenka and I were just passing by and saw it all.


    Before that, men in boats had been circling the dam for two days, searching the bottom with hooks. Soon the Hybrid''s hook hit something soft, the water boiled, and Dyukha flew to the surface like a torpedo. He clung to the side of the boat with a stiff, elbow-bent hand and wouldn''t let go. The Hybrid decided that the dead Dyukha was going to climb into his boat and was so frightened that he jumped ashore in one incredible leap. He didn''t understand how - the shore was about ten feet away.


    But now Lesha volunteered to drive us home.


    The clock strikes midnight. The motorcycle speeds through the deserted streets of the village. It was pitch black: you couldn''t see your hand in front of your face, but Hybrid doesn''t turn on his headlights, he''s too scared.


    Suddenly, a bird in the swamp cried out in an evil voice. It''s horrible!


    Lesha dropped us off at the dacha gate, stepped on the accelerator and drove back, leaving Lenka and me alone. It''s a long way home, but we can''t feel our legs - our knees buckle with fear.


    - We are such fools, - Lenka sobbed. - Why did we remember those dead people?


    - Yeah, - I whimper. - Let''s close our eyes and go.


    We reached the house by feel, climbed the stairs and locked the door behind us. We turned on the lights and drew the curtains. Just as we were catching our breath, we heard someone walking in the attic, from where the floorboards had creaked and plaster had fallen from the stove. What if that someone is now entering the hatch? Our hatch is unlocked! We huddled together, neither alive nor dead.


    - Turn off the light, - Lenka whimpers.


    - No, I''m afraid! - I whimpered back.


    But despite my fear, I rushed to the light switch and ran back quickly. I curled up into a ball under the blanket and tap-danced with my teeth. I felt like someone was going to grab me!


    Soon the creaking and rustling stopped.


    But then a pebble hit the window right above my head, followed by a second and a third. It was as if someone was standing under the window making a sign, as if to say: "Look out the window".


    At that moment, for the first time in my life, I realized what the expression "my hair stood on end" meant. It literally began to move on top of my head. Some animal instinct told me that if I or Lenka looked out of the window now, we would be dead. We''d see something that made people die of heartbreak in horror movies.


    When footsteps sounded outside the window and someone drummed on the glass with his knuckles, the impressionable Lenka couldn''t take it anymore and lost her senses.


    Realizing that I was now alone with my nightmare, I covered my head with a pillow, plugged my ears, and with an incredible effort of will, forced myself to fall asleep.


    I still don''t know who or what came to our house that night.


    Neighbors? But they wouldn''t have kept quiet, they would have said something. Country boys trying to scare us? I don''t think so. The boys themselves were as scared as we were. And they wouldn''t have come that far on foot at night, and as for the motorcycle, we would have heard it anyway - not the crackling of the engine, but at least the boys'' voices and laughter.


    And another thing: when Lenka and I examined the area under the window in the afternoon, we found clear prints of forty-five size bare feet in the sand.


    None of our acquaintances had such feet.


    Shadows of Idnakar


    There is a mysterious place in our city - Soldyr Mountain, where the settlement of Idnakar stood many centuries ago. Archaeologists are still debating to whom this ancient settlement belonged. And most importantly, why it suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth in the thirteenth century.


    What was it? An epidemic? Pestilence? Tatar-Mongol invasion? What kind of drama had happened there?


    A certain extrasenser once declared Idnakar to be a projection of Shambala and even pointed out a spot where a powerful beam of energy supposedly emanates from the ground.


    The grass on this spot is indeed thicker and greener than other vegetation on the mountain. The archaeology students assured me that if you stand on the spot with your bare feet, you will feel a slight tingling sensation coming from the bowels of the earth and that you will be "charged" with energy.


    My bare feet did indeed tingle, as if weak electrical discharges were passing through them, but I cannot judge the nature of this energy.


    In the 50''s-70''s of the last century a spontaneous cemetery appeared in the oldest part of the vanished settlement. In bad weather it was difficult for the inhabitants of Soldyr village to get to the city cemetery, so they used to bury their dead on the mountain.


    In the 80s the cemetery was closed. It was swallowed by weeds. The monuments are rusted, shriveled, in some places buried in the ground, and you can no longer read the dates or names.


    As children, we often stumbled over someone''s half-decayed bones on the Soldyr.


    Despite the cemetery and the status of a nature reserve, Idnakar has always attracted citizens.


    There is no better place for a picnic - a light birch grove, a wonderful view of the city.


    But that was during the day. When the sun went down, the place became a bit spooky.


    Those who had been in the mountain fort at night usually told all sorts of things about it. Some had heard strange sounds and voices, some had seen silhouettes of people in the dark.


    In short, there was something sinister going on at night on Soldyr Mountain.


    September 2001 was dry and warm. The days were beautiful, the sun was warm, but not hot. It was a real Indian summer. It was impossible to stay indoors.


    To celebrate the city''s birthday, the museum staff had built an ancient fortress on the top of the mountain, set up a stone hearth and wooden benches in the birch forest.


    The celebration was over, but the fortress and the hearth remained. That''s where my husband and I went - to light a fire, to walk through the autumn grove, to rustle the fallen leaves.


    We got some firewood, sat down on a wooden bench by the hearthstone and made a fire.


    It was getting dark as we talked, but we didn''t want to go home - we were in no hurry.


    A warm breeze blew, the lights of the city shimmered in the distance, twigs crackled in the fire.


    Behind us, in the twilight, we could vaguely make out the outline of the fortress where, centuries ago, the ancient inhabitants of Idnakar had sat in a circle around the fire, probably talking about something.


    Andrei stood up, took two thick fire sticks from the fire, stepped aside and struck them together. A sheaf of sparks flashed in the darkness of the night. "Come here!" he called.


    I reluctantly moved away from the fire - because at a distance of five feet there was nothing to see, absolute darkness.


    It was uncomfortable to stand in the night and watch the flames burn out - as if you were looking through someone else''s eyes, peering out of the darkness like a thief in ambush, waiting for an opportunity to attack. I shuddered and hurried back to the fire.


    The fire was dying. There wasn''t much wood left, and there was no place to get it at night.


    It was time to return to the city.


    Suddenly there was a rustling in the bushes behind us...


    Even now, as I write these words, I am shaking nervously, and that night I was completely gripped by fear. What was it? A mouse? No, not a mouse. A dog? Not a dog either.


    A branch had broken, then another. Closer, closer. Someone was clearly approaching from the direction of the fortress. Judging by the footsteps, it was a man, and there seemed to be more than one.


    But what are these people doing here at this late hour? They saw the fire in the hearth and decided to come over? They should have at least said something, but they just walked towards us without saying a word. That wasn''t good!


    A few feet from the fire, the footsteps stopped. But the next second, branches were breaking right above my ear. To the left, to the right, behind me - everywhere!


    - Who''s there? - my husband called into the darkness.


    No one answered. The silence was dead.


    At the same time, Andrei and I felt the presence of someone close to us. Maybe this someone was lurking, waiting for the fire to go out? And then what?


    Here we both lost our nerve. As if on cue, we rushed to the smoldering hearth and began to grab and throw into it everything we could find - branches, dry leaves and grass. The flames had flared up, though with difficulty. For how long?


    We had to get out of here right away. But how? Walking away from the fire was a bit scary.


    Andrei suggested to shorten the way and go straight through the cemetery. But the thought of walking towards those who were now hiding in the bushes made me shudder.


    I was on the verge of panic. There was no place to wait for help, no one knew where we were, there was no phone. My nerves were stretched to the limit with fear and monstrous tension. My body rang like a string, ready to burst. Just a little more and... I don''t even know what will happen to us.


    Suddenly something clicked in my head, my thoughts became clear and precise. I realized what would save us! If we left the way we came, we would be safe.


    We stirred up the dying fire, took out two large charred sticks, fanned the flames on their tips, and moved toward the gate. We walked quickly, not looking back, trying not to think about anything.


    It was only when we reached the paved road that we could finally catch our breath.


    But it was still too early to relax. Looking ahead, the feeling that someone was following us did not leave us until we reached the town, which was almost two kilometers away.


    It was late at night. We held our charred sticks in our hands, occasionally fanning the smoldering embers to keep from plunging into total darkness. Rare cars whizzed by without stopping. In the light of their headlights, we tried to make out those who followed us so persistently, but behind us there was only an empty highway with dark poplar trees along the roadside.


    And yet we could swear that there were eyes staring back at us. Many eyes.


    This feeling disappeared only when we crossed the bridge over the river on the border between the forest and the city. Something seemed to prevent our silent pursuers from following us, some invisible line blocking their way.


    They stayed on the other side of the bridge, and we reached the bus stop in the square and collapsed on a bench in exhaustion.


    Later, Andrei confessed that after reading many of Castaneda''s books and hearing the legends of Idnakar, he decided that night to summon the spirits of the old settlement. Stepping back from the fire, he mentally addressed them: "If you are here, let me know!" And the spirits answered the call...


    I do not know if they were ancient Udmurts, the evil dead, or some other creatures. One thing I do know - from now on nothing on earth will force me to go to Soldyr Mountain at sunset.


    To be continued

 Chapter 15

    The Smell of Fir


    One day in the fall, my husband and his friend''s father went to the forest to pick mushrooms.


    After the rain, the forest smelled sweetly of fir needles; Andrei had broken some fir branches for the house.


    - I don''t like fir, - grumbled the friend''s father. - It smells like death. I''m from Perm myself, in the Urals they always scatter fir branches behind the deceased at funerals.


    Andrei didn''t pay much attention to these words. He remembered this episode only when his friend called him and told him that his father had suddenly died of a heart attack shortly after that trip to the forest.


    In fact, in the Urals it is customary to scatter fir branches on the ground when escorting the deceased to his final resting place.


    In this way, the living protect themselves from evil, as if to "cover their tracks" so that the soul of the deceased forgets the way home.


    The fear that the deceased might return and take someone else with him to the other world is deeply rooted in the Urals. Rare funerals are without the superstitious murmur of old women: "One is gone, wait for two more, these things always go in threes".


    According to the old women, a dead person could take anyone with him - a relative or a neighbor - it didn''t matter. To protect themselves and their families, the house was carefully cleaned after the deceased - the garbage was removed, the floor was washed, the stools were turned upside down.


    At the wake, the guests were given handkerchiefs, cooked kolliva - boiled rice with raisins and honey - was served to all who came, but first the soul of the deceased was given a treat. This was to prevent it from frightening the living.


    Frog


    Near our summer house in Tagil there was a stream where water frogs, tadpoles, pond skaters and other water creatures lived.


    One day Lenka and I caught a frog. Actually, I caught it because my cousin does not like toads and thinks that they give her warts on her hands.


    Knowing Lenka''s weakness, I teased my cousin in every possible way, shoving the frog under her nose and swinging it by its leg, trying to push the green prisoner behind Lenka''s collar.


    Lenka squealed and I laughed. Soon the frog died, and the neighbor boy, Vova, offered to give it a lavish funeral.


    We got a tea tin and put the frog''s body in it. We buried the "coffin" by the stream, put a pebble on top and decorated the "grave" with wreaths - spruce branches. Just then we had an argument: does the frog have a soul?


    Lenka, who is the oldest (she''s already in the second grade), says it''s all lies and nonsense - there''s no God, there''s no soul, especially not in a frog!


    I try to convince my cousin that the frog has a soul and will go to heaven like all other creatures.


    Lenka snorts:


    - So you think it''s not on earth anymore?


    - Of course not! The angels have taken it to heaven.


    - Why don''t we go and see? - Vovka suggests.


    I suddenly realize that my friends have misinterpreted my words, but the two of them are already running to dig up the tea tin, open the lid and see that the frog is still there.


    Lenka looks at me triumphantly and sticks out her tongue:


    - You are a liar!


    I don''t know how to prove her right. I meant the soul, not the body! But there''s no turning back. Froggy, darling, I whisper, please disappear, or that stupid Lenka won''t believe me. Somehow it seems to me that the frog will grant my wish, I just have to wait.


    - Maybe there''s a line in the heaven? - I say defiantly.


    An hour later, we dig up the tin again. The frog is there. My cousin says that everything is clear to her and that she doesn''t want to be friends with liars. I get angry, but secretly from my friends, I look into the tin twice more. But it looked like the damn frog wasn''t going anywhere.


    In anger I grabbed the dead body and threw it far into the reeds.


    In the morning, Lenka wakes me up excitedly, her eyes as big as saucers:


    - Nataha, look, it''s not there! The tin is still there, but the frog is gone. Can you believe it?


    I angrily pull away from her and turn away from the wall. Let Lenka think what she likes.


    A mermaid


    My grandmother never missed a funeral in Tagil.


    For her it was a kind of entertainment. She was not afraid of the dead, she felt something between pity and childish curiosity for them.


    One day my grandmother came home and hurried off somewhere.


    - A woman drowned in Vyja, - she told me. - The divers are looking for her. I''ll go and see.


    - I''ll go with you!


    I felt a strange excitement, a mixture of fear and a burning desire to see someone else''s misfortune. How could a grown woman drown in a river where the water was knee-deep to a sparrow?


    - She must have been drunk, my grandmother said, hurrying to get there as fast as she could.


    It was a hot day and the sun was shining brightly. We crossed a rickety wooden bridge over the river and saw two men in black diving suits on a knoll.


    Years ago my father and I fished here for crucian carp, tiny ones the size of a copper nickel, and now divers were pulling the body of an unknown woman out of the water...


    Grandma added her stride.


    I followed her. For some reason, I got chills. I was seven years old and had never seen a dead person up close.


    While the divers were taking off their wetsuits, an old woman had walked along the shore, crying, picking up the things that were strewn there - a woman''s bag, a dress, stomped sandals stained on the fresh grass.


    As for me, I looked at the drowned woman with all my eyes.


    She was not a young woman (by my standards), with a swollen face and wet, shoulder-length blonde hair. She looked like a mermaid, with pale skin and blue, bloodless lips. The only thing missing was a fish tail.


    The "mermaid" was clutching her fists to her chest, helplessly, childishly, the way babies, suddenly frightened of something, try to protect themselves from danger.


    I suddenly felt sorry for her. Just half an hour ago she had been alive, drinking wine, the empty bottle still on the grass, laughing, sunbathing. Then, apparently, she decided to go for a swim, went into the water, and the result was that she was gone. God, how ridiculous!


    My fine and distant future


    That summer in Tagil was a record summer for death.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    On one day there were sixteen funeral processions in our neighborhood alone! The sound of the funeral march didn''t stop until noon. My grandmother and I would hurry from one entrance to another, squeeze through to the coffin, bow our heads in sorrow, and hurry on.


    I remember a woman with an ugly purple ligature mark on her neck. They said she had hanged herself after the death of her husband, leaving two small children orphaned.


    The children stood by their mother''s coffin - a boy and a girl, about five or six years old, confused and silent. I kept my eyes on them. If I had been them, I would have gone mad with grief. To lose my father and mother at once, to be left alone in the whole world, what could be more terrible!


    I also remember the old man, or rather not him, but his waxen hands, huge, swollen and speckled with brown, bound tightly with string.


    I have only been to three weddings in my life, but I have seen hundreds of funerals. And every time I thought about the fragility of existence, about the fact that all people are mortal, it gave me goosebumps.


    I could not understand myself in my feelings, whose fate is bothering me more - the living or the dead? Which is easier - those who are gone or those who are still alive?


    It seemed to me that it was harder for the living anyway...


    At the cemetery I often heard the deceased addressed with the words: "Thank God it''s over", "We''ll all be there", "God takes the best of us".


    Sometimes my sensitive childish ear even picked up a hint of envy in these phrases. It was as if the deceased hadn''t gone to rot in the damp earth, but had gone to a faraway, beautiful land where there was no grief or sorrow, and therefore had acquired a certain halo of sanctity in the eyes of the living. Everyone loved the "heavenly man," shed tears for him, and forgave him his sins and debts.


    So maybe it really is better THERE?


    I imagined the other world neither as heaven nor as hell, but as a place where there was a parallel life, not very different from life on earth. In this unknown world lived my great-grandmother Matrena, my grandfather Slava and my other deceased relatives. But unlike life on Earth, they were all young and happy there.


    Later I found confirmation of my fantasies in Raymond Moody''s books "Life After Life" and "Life After Death". The idea that my soul was immortal and that I would meet my loved ones was comforting, hopeful, but at the same time frightening - it was impossible to return from the abode of the dead and become myself again. So what''s the point of rushing to get there?


    The death of a soldier


    I soon realized that, like my grandmother, I was drawn to funerals.


    When I heard the sound of the funeral march - in the past, a brass band always accompanied the funeral - I would rush to find out who was being buried.


    They usually buried very old men and very old women. At some point I even began to think that there was finally justice in the world and that death was now bypassing the young. That''s what I thought until our neighbor''s son died in the army.


    Immediately after the morgue, the neighbors took the coffin with the young man''s body home so that he could spend his last night at home with his family before being buried.


    In the evening we, the neighbors, were invited to say goodbye to Sergei, the name of the deceased.


    A red coffin stood on two stools in the living room. There were chairs around it. The hosts brought out the food for the guests - patties and pies with meat and potatoes, poured vodka for the adults and fruit jelly for the children.


    The light bulb shone dimly under the ceiling, the mirrors and windows were covered with black cloth, and in this oppressive silence the clock in the next room seemed to tick extra loud. I chewed a patty and glanced furtively at the dead man. He was dressed in a green military uniform, a cap at his feet, and a large color photograph with a mourning ribbon on the headboard of the coffin, beside which a thin church candle was burning.


    According to the military, Sergei, who served in the missile forces, died of radiation exposure. But neither his relatives nor his neighbors believed it. They thought it was not the missiles, but an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where conscripts were sent to clean up radioactive debris. The year was 1986...


    Before my young neighbor was drafted, I had seen him a few times. Tall, broad-shouldered, short-tempered, the only son in the family. His parents were too old to have another child. So why had God taken Sergei away from them?


    I desperately tried to find an answer to this question, to somehow justify the soldier''s death, and finally convinced myself that a twenty-year-old guy could be considered old.


    And if that was the case, then there was nothing wrong or unnatural about his death.


    But little children are a different matter. Children should not die, they have no right to die!


    But here, too, a crushing blow awaited me.


    Accident with a schoolboy


    Before the summer vacation, an accident happened in our school.


    A boy, a second grader, died ridiculously and horribly.


    In those years, teenagers had an extremely dangerous fun - riding on the elevator cab.


    The boys would go to the top floor of a high-rise building, push the door of the shaft with a crowbar, and call for the elevator. When the elevator arrived, they would jump on top of the cab and ride up and down.


    The most desperate would cling to the brick ledges with their hands, and while waiting for the elevator to arrive, they would hang over the abyss to show their bravery. The boy who died was unlucky; he was hit by the counterweight, fell down the shaft, and was crushed by the elevator.


    The boys from our school who visited the scene of his death said it was a horrible sight - a pool of blood, intestines coiled on the damping springs, shreds of hair...


    The boy''s name was Oleg.


    On the day of his funeral, all classes at the school were canceled. Teachers deliberately took the pupils to the funeral ceremony so that they would remember once and for all what such pranks lead to and would not even try to repeat these risky tricks.


    Mustachioed tenth graders carried the child''s coffin down Karl Marx Boulevard.


    With heads bowed and feet shuffling slowly, the younger children followed. Many were crying. It''s hard not to cry when the wrenching sounds of brass trumpets and the pitiful beating of kettledrums pierce your heart and tear your soul apart.


    I couldn''t take my eyes off the dead boy''s face. He seemed asleep, the wind ruffling his blond hair. Only the bruises and the unnatural bulge on his forehead, as if someone had put a triple-edged file under his skin, kept me from forgetting that this dream was eternal.


    But not so long ago, he and I probably ran through the halls of school together, playing catch-up and standing in line for cake in the cafeteria. And now he''s dead.


    An obsession


    As a child, I saw many children''s graves. But when you get older, it seems like all that was a long time ago, and a lot of things in the world should have changed since then. But it turns out that children are still dying. This discovery shook me to my core.


    After the funeral, I returned home more thoughtful and sad than usual. Does it mean that if an eight-year-old boy dies, I, a nine-year-old child, can also die? Would I have to lie in a coffin like him, listening to the wail of the trombone and feeling the wind ruffle my hair?


    I tried to imagine the parents of the dead boy. How do they feel now? What if he had been my brother and the grief had come to our family instead of his?


    Standing in front of the mirror, I would try the situation on myself and then recoil in horror, covering my face with my hands and praying to God for forgiveness for my sinful thoughts.


    It was like an obsession. I moved around the house on tiptoe like a shadow, speaking in a whisper, as if I were afraid of disturbing the dead boy''s sleep, of getting myself into trouble. I felt that he was somewhere near me, watching me, and I could not help thinking of him. Eventually, I became afraid of him. I was afraid of staying at home alone, of walking past the high-rise where the tragedy happened, of entering that entrance, not to mention calling the elevator and getting on it. The very name Oleg filled me with superstitious dread. It seemed that if I said it out loud, something bad would happen to me.


    A Doll


    At the age of thirteen, I experienced another shock, another childhood death.


    A one-and-a-half-year-old girl fell from the window of a nine-story building across the street.


    It all happened in a split second. My friends and I were playing catch in the yard when suddenly something white, like a cat, flashed through the air. A thud against the asphalt, someone''s scream, and - as if on cue - people were running from all sides to the front door.


    Someone picked up the child and carried her to a bench.


    The baby lay there like a rag doll, arms and legs spread helplessly. A thin trickle of blood dripped from the "doll''s" ear. The girl was dead, of course.


    The guys and I stood next to her, stunned, as if we''d grown up in a flash. No one wanted to play catch anymore. The very thought of playing games now seemed sacrilegious and savage.


    When the girl''s body was removed, everyone went home in a depressed mood. Personally, I was most shocked by the fact that many years ago, at the same age, I had almost fallen from the ninth-floor balcony. It was as if I saw myself in that little girl...


    But children''s grief is short-lived, and a week later my friends and I were laughing and running around the yard as if nothing had happened. Nobody even mentioned the dead girl.


    The Basement


    In the sixth grade, after reading many esoteric books, I began to rant about the theory (not confirmed in practice) that a person who does not suspect danger is not in danger. I even wrote an essay on the subject, using the example of wolfsbane to prove that a child who unknowingly eats poisonous berries will not be poisoned. And it would be okay if I ate wolfberries myself and stayed alive, but no. My conclusions were only theoretical. You can get punched in the nose for that. And I did. Literally. It''s like the universe decided to teach me a lesson.


    There was a basement in our house where the guys and I liked to play catch-up and hide-and-seek, and to spice things up we would turn off the lights in there.


    The ceilings in the basement were high enough that we could run without hitting our heads. But in some places there were reinforced concrete beams that you could only run under by ducking.


    You just had to be careful.


    So the lights went out. I''m running after someone in the dark, confident that there''s an open space ahead. And a second later - bang! A hard blow, sparks coming out of my eyes, and a brief loss of consciousness.


    I came to on the floor, my head buzzing, rainbow spots flashing in front of my eyes.


    It turned out that I had hit my forehead on a beam. Even though it shouldn''t have happened according to my theory, I couldn''t see where the beam was, so I should have been able to walk through it, or at least not get hurt.


    But the bump on my forehead was a clear indication that my theory was worthless, so I''d gotten off cheap, I could have blown my skull off.


    To be continued

 Chapter 16

    Daddy''s Scarecrows


    - And the mermaid bit the old man''s heart with her teeth! - Daddy howls in a grave voice and makes scary eyes.


    I''m five years old and I duck under the covers. It''s about to get really scary.


    - The old man shook his head and ran to the river. And the mermaid slipped her fingers under his ribs, pulled them apart, and clung to him with her teeth. The old man roared and fell off the steep bank into the water...


    I had covered my ears with my palms: that''s enough, that''s enough!


    I mentally vow never to hear another scary bedtime story about how the old man caught a mermaid in a hole in the ice, took pity on her, and brought her home.


    But a week goes by, another week, and I want to be "scared" again.


    My hand involuntarily reaches for the shelf of Alexei Tolstoy''s fairy tales.


    - Daddy, read about the mermaid!


    Why do kids like to be scared? They read the Brothers Grimm and Stephen King. They watch horror movies about vampires, and at night they tell each other horror stories about the Black Hand and the Coffin on Wheels.


    I guess that''s how we learn to overcome our fears, to control our emotions, our bodies.


    It''s like riding a roller coaster - you''re shaking and your heart is ready to jump out of your chest, but how great is it to plunge into the abyss from a dizzying steepness. It''s breathtaking!


    But as a child, I was only willing to let my nerves be tickled if I felt completely safe. I would hardly have wanted to be alone with monsters from the movies if there was no one there to protect me. In the pioneer camp, I even refused to sleep by the window. What if the Hoofman looked in the window at night?


    The Hoofman


    In the time of my childhood in the camp "Zvezdochka" there was such a legend: there was a boy who lived in the village of Adam. One day he went to the railway, and the hooligans who had escaped from the pioneer camp pushed him under the train. The engineer did not brake in time and the boy''s legs were cut off.


    To replace his lost legs, the doctors at the village hospital sewed him the first thing they could find - pigs'' hooves. And so the boy became the Hoofman.


    When he was released from the hospital, he immediately sought out his tormentors to take revenge.


    But the camp shift was long over, and the town hooligans had gone home. So Hoofman began to take revenge on all the children.


    Every night he would go tsk-tsk-tsk on his hooves into the pioneer camp and look in the windows. Anyone who saw him would die of a broken heart or go mad.


    Hoofman grew up and became an angry and resentful man. Driven by revenge, he still came to the camp at night and terrorized those who were awake.


    I was so frightened by these stories that when I returned to the city, I was afraid to see him for a long time. I involuntarily looked at the feet of all the men I met, because according to the legend, a Hoofman did not wear shoes.


    I could see that terrible man everywhere.


    The pioneer leaders, of course, did not believe in a Hoofman. They generally believed that children should sleep at night and not scare each other with horror stories.


    But we did it anyway. We used to summon Leopold the Cat, the Swearing Devil, and the Queen of Spades. We poured water into a clear jar, put three hairs in it - red, white and black - and put a lid on the jar. The bravest would climb into the closet, turn the jar upside down, and try to see the cat inside.


    I won''t lie, no matter how hard I looked, I never failed to see Leopold. Nor did I hear the devil, who cursed exquisitely. Although the girls assured me that he was not scary, on the contrary, he was very funny.


    But whenever we tried to call the Queen of Spades, something strange, even sinister, would happen in the bedroom. The lights would flicker on and off, and in the middle of the night we would hear footsteps in the hallway. You look out the door and there''s no one there.


    And once a small pocket mirror with a drawn door and a ladder on it broke out of my hands.


    Of course, all this can be considered a coincidence - girls can see anything when they''re scared.


    Besides, we didn''t mind playing a prank ourselves.


    We could pull a sheet over a sleeping friend and wake him up with a scream: "The ceiling is falling!"


    But one ritual game never leaves my mind. Even today, more than a quarter of a century later, I cannot find a clear explanation for it.


    Pannochka is dead


    In the Yuri Gagarin sanatorium in the Urals we learned from the older girls that there is such a game as "Pannochka". Many children played it at that time.


    We, seven ordinary schoolgirls, locked ourselves in a bedroom so that no one would disturb us.


    Boys - they always spoil everything, giggle at the most inappropriate moment, or get scared and run away, and the main condition of the game "Pannochka" - absolute seriousness.


    With the help of children''s counting, we chose a pannochka and wrapped it in a sheet.


    The pannochka was not thin, we could hardly drag Radka Berezova to the bed.


    The rest was done in complete silence. Although, as usually happens in such cases, we could hardly keep from laughing, for no reason.


    We stood on either side of the bed, and Tanya Khozhainova said in a grave voice:


    - Panochka is dead.


    - Really dead, - we repeated in unison.


    - We won''t bury her.


    - No, we will not bury her. Let the devils bury her!


    Then we put two forefingers under the "deceased" and began to lift her up slowly.


    I remember how I was struck by the incredible ease with which we performed this difficult (considering the size of the "pannochka") rite.


    Fatty Rada weighed less than a feather!


    - Oh, girls! - cried Ira Bukhvalova.


    In the same second Radka became heavier and fell down like a stone.


    - Fool! - Tanya hissed at Ira. - I told you to be quiet!


    Radka staggered angrily in her shroud and said, "Be careful, or you will really kill me".


    We began the ritual again:


    - Pannochka is dead.


    - Really dead.


    At first we lifted and lowered the "pannochka" together, the six of us, but each time one of the girls moved to the side.


    Finally it was just the two of us.


    It seemed unbelievable, but Tanya and I easily lifted Radka above our heads with the tips of two forefingers. Pannochka''s body was absolutely weightless, as if we were holding an empty sheet above us.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I don''t know how to explain this phenomenon. Maybe we fell into a kind of trance without realizing it. I mean, if we were playing the game now, I don''t think we would have succeeded.


    When you are a child, you somehow believe more in miracles, and you treat everything mysterious and incomprehensible with much more reverence.


    At that time, in the camp, none of us doubted that the spirit of Gogol''s Pannochka had really entered Radka''s body.


    Would we have been able to believe it as adults? Hardly.


    And yet this story was in my life, not in a dream, but in reality.


    About Pushkin and the Dead Girl


    As children, when we gathered at someone''s birthday party, we liked to play a variety of games. For example, we''d choose a victim and offer to participate in a spiritual seance. The intrigued victim would, of course, agree.


    He or she would be blindfolded and taken to a dark room. The host would say three times:


    - Spirit of Pushkin, come!


    After the third time, the door to the room would open and Pushkin would enter.


    Not the real Pushkin, of course. His role was played by one of us who was in cahoots with us.


    The leader of the game used to take the palm of the victim and pass it over the hand of "Pushkin", saying:


    - This is his hand.


    Then he would touch his leg:


    - This is his foot.


    Then it was the head''s turn:


    - This is his head.


    - And this is his eye! - With these words, the game leader dipped the victim''s finger sharply into a saucer in which a pea of toothpaste had been squeezed.


    Squeals, screams...


    Sometimes at such parties an uninitiated peer or peer-girl would be privately informed that in the next room was the body of a girl who had been hit by a streetcar. For some reason, no one was embarrassed by the fact that there were no streetcars in our city and never had been. And in general, where would a dead girl come from in someone else''s apartment?


    But the curious classmate never asked such questions, on the contrary, he always expressed his wish to see the deceased.


    Everything in the room was ready for the performance. The tallest of us would lie on the floor, and a jacket or hooded cloak would be pulled over his legs, with the empty sleeves hanging loosely over the sides.


    Sometimes mittens were tucked into the sleeves. A black cloth was thrown over the place in the hood where the face of the "dead girl" was supposed to be.


    A chair was placed on top of the "corpse" so that the back of the chair hid the upper part of the torso from prying eyes.


    To add to the mystery, candles were usually lit and the lights were turned off.


    When the object of the prank entered the room, all he saw was a person lying on the floor with his arms outstretched and a chair in which he was supposed to sit facing the "corpse".


    - This is Masha from the sixth grade, - one of the guests used to tell him.


    And then he would begin a tearful story about Masha''s sad fate.


    The unsuspecting classmate listened with open mouth. He really felt sorry for the strange girl.


    At the very moment when he was completely relaxed, the person hiding under the chair had to raise his legs sharply at right angles. The surprise effect was amazing!


    Imagine sitting quietly and peacefully looking at a breathless body, and suddenly the "dead girl" jumps up right in your face and hugs you with her empty sleeves. This is not for the faint of heart!


    An evil pit


    And how many horror stories circulated around our provincial city at the time of its construction, especially in the new district on the left bank of the river.


    In the spring of 1987, builders dug a huge pit for the future department store on Kalinin Street. It quickly filled with water, and rumors spread throughout the city that a mutant monster lived in its murky depths. It hunted lonely passers-by, grabbing them by the legs and dragging them to the bottom.


    A legend about a boy who drowned was passed from mouth to mouth.


    A schoolboy had actually drowned in the pit once - he was floating on a raft in the spring and it overturned. But the boys at school assured that the raft had nothing to do with it, one of the passers-by had seen the boy grabbed by a water monster and dragged to the bottom. And now the boy comes out of the water every night, wanders along the shore, and cries. Good people feel sorry for him, want to help him, but then they disappear themselves - because the boy needs a new victim. It is not a boy at all, but a monster reincarnated in him.


    The Invisible Man


    In general, Kalinin Street was notorious among young legend-makers.


    They said that an invisible man lived in the technical entrance of house No. 5.


    No one saw him, did not even know what he looked like, and how do you know that? He is invisible.


    But the legend said that whoever crossed the cursed threshold of the entrance would disappear from the face of the earth forever.


    In third grade, my friends and I planned to outwit the Invisible Man and sneak past him unnoticed. We walked fearlessly to the famous entrance, opened the heavy wooden door with a creak...


    Out of the darkness came the dampness of the cellar and the deadly cold.


    All our courage vanished in an instant. No one dared to enter the "nowhere". So we threw a cat in the doorway.


    The cat mewed pitifully and disappeared into the darkness.


    We stood under the windows for a long time, discussing the evil entrance, the Invisible Man, and the fate of the poor stray cat. We decided to come back tomorrow.


    But the next day, workers from the Department of Housing and Utilities came and nailed the door to the entrance shut - because one of the tenants complained that some children were wandering around and disturbing him.


    The Black Hand


    The Black Hand also lived in Kalinin Street.


    It was said to prey exclusively on the fourth floors.


    The Black Hand would appear out of the darkness, grab people by the throat and strangle them.


    But it did not attack everyone, only those who had something to do with the number four: they studied in the fourth class, were born on the fourth day, lived in a house with the number four, or had recently received a grade of D in school. After all, D is the fourth letter in the English alphabet.


    There was no escape from the Black Hand. It could pass through walls and always caught up with its prey.


    I lived in an apartment building with two elevators, and I was very afraid of them.


    I weighed very little, so for the elevator it was like I didn''t exist.


    I''d get in, push the button. The button would pop out of its socket with a resounding click, the doors would slam shut, the lights would go out, but the elevator would never move.


    After standing there for a minute, the elevator would start humming and go wherever it wanted to go, up or down, depending on which floor it was called to.


    That feeling of animal fear as you rush through the dark to nowhere still haunts me in my nightmares. To make friends with the elevators (to me they were living creatures), I made up names for them. I called the freight one Pasha and the passenger one Anton, in honor of two boys I liked at the time.


    Before entering the cabin, I would always say hello and then, holding the button in the socket with my thumb, I would start singing loudly all the songs I knew.


    In spite of my singing, the light in the cabin still went out. And if I usually got to the first floor more or less safely, nothing helped when I wanted to get up. The elevator would not obey me, and instead of taking me to the ninth floor, it would take me to the tenth or, say, the thirteenth.


    That''s why I preferred to take the stairs.


    The staircase was separated from the apartments in the high-rise by a concrete wall - it was a so-called fire escape with a separate emergency exit. The only way to get there was through the common balcony.


    Due to its complete isolation, the staircase served as a toilet for children and drunks.


    Stinking puddles never dried there, neither in winter nor in summer. All the light bulbs were long broken or unscrewed, plunging the emergency exit into darkness in the evenings.


    Where else but here could the Black Hand live?


    I lived in an apartment building with two elevators, and I was very afraid of them.


    I weighed very little, so for the elevator it was like I didn''t exist.


    I''d get in, push the button. The button would pop out of its socket with a resounding click, the doors would slam shut, the lights would go out, but the elevator would never move.


    After standing there for a minute, the elevator would start humming and go wherever it wanted to go, up or down, depending on which floor it was called to.


    That feeling of animal fear as you rush through the dark to nowhere still haunts me in my nightmares. To make friends with the elevators (to me they were living creatures), I made up names for them. I called the freight one Pasha and the passenger one Anton, in honor of two boys I liked at the time.


    Before entering the cabin, I would always say hello and then, holding the button in the socket with my thumb, I would start singing loudly all the songs I knew.


    In spite of my singing, the light in the cabin still went out. And if I usually got to the first floor more or less safely, nothing helped when I wanted to get up. The elevator would not obey me, and instead of taking me to the ninth floor, it would take me to the tenth or, say, the thirteenth.


    That''s why I preferred to take the stairs.


    The staircase was separated from the apartments in the high-rise by a concrete wall - it was a so-called fire escape with a separate emergency exit. The only way to get there was through the common balcony.


    Due to its complete isolation, the staircase served as a toilet for children and drunks.


    Stinking puddles never dried there, neither in winter nor in summer. All the light bulbs were long broken or unscrewed, plunging the emergency exit into darkness in the evenings.


    Where else but here could the Black Hand live?


    I studied on the second shift. Classes ended late. It was useless to ask my parents to pick me up from school. They considered my fear of elevators to be nonsense that had to be fought mercilessly. As a last resort, they told me to wait for the neighbors and go up with them. I often did that, but there were days when there was no one to help me. The only thing left was to go up the stairs.


    But there, on a spit-covered fire escape, you could easily run into a sex maniac, a group of drunken youths, or worse, the Black Hand.


    So before I stepped into the darkness, I listened for a long time to various sounds.


    I climbed by feel, and at the slightest rustle I pressed myself against the wall, afraid that the Black Hand, which of course flew silently, would claw at my throat.


    Every time I reached the necessary floor, I was on the verge of fainting, but at the same time I was filled with elation - the danger was over, I was safe!


    I couldn''t admit to anyone, not even myself, that I was attracted to risk, and I secretly longed to meet the Black Hand, but I had never met it.


    Cat''s Eye


    Cat''s Eye is another creepy story from those years.


    Its background is as follows: there was a girl who lived in Glazov. She was very evil: she tortured hamsters, cut off frogs'' legs, dragged cats by their tails.


    Once she hit a kitten in the eye with a stone. The eye flew out and began to take revenge on people - all of them, indiscriminately.


    During the day it slept in cellars and attics, and at midnight it went hunting, flying through the streets and scaring to death the late passers-by - that was its revenge.


    Anyone who saw it would die for reasons unknown to science.


    The wicked little girl who had once hurt the kitten was also found dead in the attic.


    She was missing an eye and had a striped cat''s tail on her chest.


    To be continued

 Chapter 17

    Alone at home


    Like many kids, I was afraid to be home alone. Especially at night.


    I couldn''t shake the feeling that someone was waiting for me in the dark hallway. And as soon as I left the room, he would grab me.


    Our whole apartment was inhabited by monsters. There was a giant worm in the hallway.


    Once, on my way home from kindergarten, I picked a small wild apple from a tree, and at home I saw a booger in it. Frightened, I threw the wormy apple into the closet where the coats were hanging.


    Since then, the booger has grown in my imagination and turned into a nasty monster.


    If I had to stay home alone, I would turn on the lights in every room, turn on the TV, and wait for my parents to come home.


    Sometimes, on those evenings, someone would ring our doorbell, long and insistent, as if to lure me out.


    I rarely went to the door and never opened it, I was afraid. But sometimes my curiosity would get the better of me and I would tiptoe to the door and peek through the keyhole.


    That was my cunning. If you look through the peephole, the person standing behind the door will immediately see that someone is at home because of the play of light and shadow, and will not leave until the door is not opened. It is much safer to watch from below.


    One day there was a knock at our door. I put down my book and crept quietly to my observation post. I looked through the keyhole and almost screamed with horror.


    There was someone''s eye staring at me!


    I knew there was an invisible man who hunted in the city. He would ring the doorbell, and when it was opened, he would grab his prey and strangle it. So did the Queen of Spades, the Red Hand, and the Black Hand. And then there was the Cat''s Eye. The trick was that the Cat''s Eye could slip through a keyhole if it wasn''t sealed with paper and scare the hell out of you.


    Of course, I thought it had come for me!


    But I was lucky. The thing is that in our house lived a legless neighbor, Uncle Volodya. He was drunk when he fell under a train, and since then he has been moving around on a cart with small wheels. He pushed himself off the ground with a wooden handle that he held in his only surviving hand.


    Uncle Volodya was a friend of my father''s and often visited us at home.


    It was his watchful eye at the level of the keyhole that I mistook for a cat''s.


    Eye of the Dragon


    The dark hallway in our apartment frightened me so much that I was afraid to even go to the kitchen for tea.


    I would sit in my room hungry or, when I finally gathered my courage, run to the kitchen without turning around.


    After drinking tea, a new problem arose - the toilet. It was easier for me to pee on a newspaper like a dog than to go to the toilet, because the dragon lived there.


    Do you wonder where it came from?


    My father was a smoker, and every time he went on vacation, he would stock up on "Belomor". He would buy fifty packs and stack them in a suitcase like in an American movie. Only there, the suitcases were filled to the brim with dollars, and my father filled them with his favorite brand of cigarettes.


    Dad smoked a lot, and always in the toilet - his "private office," as he called it.


    A winter Saturday evening. Inky twilight creeps in through the windows, but Dad doesn''t turn on the toilet light. He sits thoughtfully on the toilet bowl, blowing rings of tobacco smoke from his mouth.


    The door to the "office" is wide open. Blue clouds slowly fill the hallway.


    - How many times do I have to tell you to close that door? - Mom yells from the kitchen. - You''ve smoked all over the house!


    Dad grumbles unhappily, but closes the door. But not for long - until the next smoke break, which starts in five minutes.


    Because of my father''s addiction to smoking, I never noticed the smell of tobacco as a child. It seemed as natural to me as the air. It was "Daddy''s" smell. If there was a cigarette trail behind someone, or if the entrance was smoky, it seemed to me that my father was somewhere nearby.


    In the evenings, when he was in his "office," rustling a crumpled cardboard box and shaking a box of matches, I would sneak into the hallway and stay by the door.


    Here, in front of my eyes, magic always happened.


    A red light flashed brightly in the darkness. It was alive, glowing in the depths of the cave, like a dragon''s eye - peering out, scanning me. Then it would rise sharply, quickly slicing the air diagonally, and begin to spin wildly, drawing intricate geometric shapes - zigzags, figure eights, circles. After that, the flames would scatter into a myriad of tiny stars, then regain their shape and twist into a fiery spiral.


    At some point, the image of a fairy tale dragon appeared before my eyes.


    The dragon was dancing, wriggling its whole body, falling gracefully on its front legs, doing somersaults, waving its scaly tail, sending sparks flying in a whirlwind.


    The dance was mesmerizing and put me in a hypnotic state. It never occurred to me that behind the fire-breathing dragon whose dance I was absorbed in was my father. That it was his hand with a cigarette drawing hieroglyphics in the darkness.


    That''s why I feared the dragon''s cave of fire when my father was away.


    Who wanders there at night?


    But the greatest horror of my childhood lurked under my parents'' bed. There lived a creature that would crawl out from under it at night, giggling and tapping its paws gently on the floorboards.


    Sometimes my sister and I would sleep on that bed, and sometimes at night I would have a vision problem - I could see things that other eyes could not.


    The mattress would suddenly become transparent, like glass, and the creature hiding under the bed would be visible. It had a human body and a lynx face - furry, with gray tasseled ears, like the cat in the Mary Poppins movie - the one in the red jacket singing "You''re Perfect" in the window.


    It also looked like the soft teddy bear I''d gotten for my birthday. It too had a fluffy head and a fully human body dressed in a colorful jumpsuit. Or maybe the creature under the bed just always took the form of my toy.


    I was afraid that one day the "lynx" would attack me, for example by grabbing my leg.


    So in the morning I would jump to the floor, trying to land as far away from the bed as possible, and without looking back I would run to the bathroom to wash my face.


    I would do the same before going to bed, jumping onto the bed in one giant leap.


    During the day, the "lynx man" disappeared. At least I didn''t hear him make any noise.


    One night, when I was brave enough, I looked under the bed and was horrified. There were someone''s angry green eyes.


    We didn''t have pets in those days. The cat Anfisa, which belonged to my great-grandmother, disappeared immediately after the death of her beloved mistress, and the dogs, which my father tried to get twice, did not take root in the house. One was hit by a car, the other choked on a chicken bone.


    My mother came running from the next room because of my screams. I told her about the eyes, but she didn''t believe me. She touched my forehead and put a thermometer under my arm, wondering if I was sick.


    My forehead was cool, my temperature was normal - 36 and 6.


    - Don''t make things up, go to bed! - Mom said sternly and went out, closing the door behind her.


    Soon dad came into the room, turned on the TV and started watching hockey.


    I fell asleep to the clink of skates, the clatter of sticks, and the roar of the crowd.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    ...I woke up to someone pulling on my arm.


    There was a narrow gap between the wall and the bed that a child''s hand could barely fit through. That''s where I was being pulled.


    "Dad must be joking," I thought in my sleep.


    But as soon as I realized it wasn''t my dad, I clung to the pillow and started screaming.


    My arm was pinched and slowly twisted. It felt like it was being ripped off. I jerked violently, broke free, and rolled to the floor.


    The face of a lynx flashed in front of me. It was grinning. Furry paws reached out from the darkness and grabbed me by the shoulders, almost dragging me under the bed.


    Luckily, Daddy was able to grab my legs and pull me back up.


    Actually, he couldn''t see what was going on in there, and he didn''t want to save me.


    Dad was angry that I was interrupting his game with my "silly antics".


    The lynx hissed and disappeared into the darkness.


    I was afraid it would come back for me, but the monster never returned.


    The Hobgoblin


    I was afraid to stay at home alone in our apartment.


    In Tagil, at Grandma Dusya''s, I was not afraid of anything, although my cousins did not want to spend the night at Grandma''s under any pretext, they said that she had a hobgoblin.


    By the way, he was a hooligan.


    It was said that once he lifted the bed on which Uncle Grisha slept off the floor. Another time he lay down on my grandmother''s side and almost hugged her. What an impertinent fellow!


    One night I was sleeping alone in my grandmother''s apartment. I was half asleep when I heard the door to my room open and someone small, like a cat, came in with a springy, soft gait. He jumped on the desk and began to rustle papers.


    Well, I thought, the damn cat is tearing up my notebooks (Grandma and Grandpa used to feed a stray cat, and sometimes it stayed with us until morning).


    I wanted to get up and kick the bandit out, but suddenly I felt uncomfortable.


    I lay there with my eyes closed, afraid to move. What if it wasn''t a cat?


    What if the cousins were right and there really was a hobgoblin living in the house?


    At that moment, the creature on the table became alarmed, jumped to the floor, and headed straight for me. I was so frightened that all I could do was fall asleep. I''d done it before - forced myself to fall asleep by willpower.


    Under normal circumstances my method never worked, but when I panicked (and it happened to me a few times) I was like a worm in a split second, screwed into an imaginary black pipe. As I wound up, I kept saying to myself: I don''t want to see or hear anything, I''m going to sleep, sleep, sleep. And I really did fell asleep immediately.


    The next morning, I wouldn''t have remembered the events of the night had it not been for the mess on the table, where everything was upside down. Crumpled, tattered notebooks were everywhere - on the chair, on the floor. So I wasn''t dreaming.


    I called for the cat, searched the whole house, but he was nowhere to be found. The windows, the doors, everything was closed. No one had gone in or out of the house. Where could he have gone? I never found him.


    An Inner Voice


    Another incredible story happened to me at Grandma Dusya''s house.


    My grandmother loved to pick mushrooms. She would come back from the woods with sacks full of mushrooms to be cooked, fried, steamed, dried and preserved for the winter.


    Once she fried a whole pan of mushrooms, and after lunch she and my grandfather went to the dacha.


    I didn''t have any appetite. After picking at my plate with a fork, for some reason I thought: I''ll be lucky if these mushrooms don''t poison me.


    Then I read a book, watched TV, and a few hours later I suddenly felt sick.


    I had all the symptoms of poisoning-high fever, weakness, nausea, ice-cold sweat. I was so nauseous that I could not stand on my feet, so I crawled on all fours from the bathtub to the toilet. My heart was racing and I could barely feel my pulse on my wrist. I felt like I was going to lose consciousness.


    I used to get food poisoning as a kid, but this was the first time it was this bad.


    Was there a poisonous mushroom in the mix?


    Should I call an ambulance? But Grandma doesn''t have a phone, and the neighbors aren''t home, they''re at the dacha too - it''s the weekend.


    Should I crawl to the window and call for help? It was embarrassing for me. And to be honest, I don''t have the strength anymore. I''ve lost my consciousness.


    I came to from the cold on the floor of the hallway and thought, "This is where they will find me".


    I didn''t want to die. I didn''t care so much about dying as I did about how and where my relatives would bury me. I had no doubt: they wouldn''t bother to take the body to Glazov, they''d just bury me in the Tagil cemetery, that''s all.


    I was there once, and the cemetery made a heavy impression on me - swampy forest, a jumble of graves, rusty coils of barbed wire fencing off squatter plots so that no strangers would bury their own on this land.


    And most of all, the unbearable stench from the sewage treatment plant next to the cemetery.


    No way! I want them to take me back home. Maybe I should leave a note to Grandma Dusya?


    And this is where I started to hear voices in my head. Actually, there was only one voice, my own, but since I was talking to myself, it sounded like two people arguing. The first said, "Forget the note, maybe they''ll guess your dying wish somehow. The other grumbled: "I bet they won''t guess! They''ll throw you in the swamp, and you''ll rot in eternal dampness." "So be it," replied the first, indifferently. "What a fool! - replied the second angrily. - I''m not going to die here!"


    I began to pray desperately. I asked God to let me live because I was only fifteen and had not accomplished anything. I asked for mercy for my parents. What would happen to them? They wouldn''t accept my death. I have no doubt that my death was near. Sometimes I looked at myself as if from the outside. My life was slowly fading away, my thoughts were confused, everything was so distant, unnecessary, fleeting.


    Anyway, I forced myself to crawl to bed. I slipped under the covers and closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was dusk outside the window.


    Usually after food poisoning my body would feel weak and dizzy for a long time, but now there was no such thing. I didn''t feel nauseous, weak, or have a stomach ache. I felt alert and rested. And only the thought of mushrooms made me feel disgusted, a sure sign that they were the cause of my poisoning.


    But my grandparents also ate mushrooms and nothing happened to them. What was wrong with me?


    A Half-Breed


    Many years later, I think I found the answer to the question that had been bothering me.


    I met a woman who was an ethnographer.


    Albina was Udmurt by nationality, but she looked like a typical Indian, a kind of squaw - tall, statuesque, with broad cheekbones and a black braid as thick as an arm.


    She gave lectures on ethnography to students at the Pedagogical Institute, telling them how she could easily find out which genes predominated in a person with the help of an interesting test.


    This test is very simple: Imagine you are in an open field and a pack of wolves is attacking you - what will you do? The second situation: wolves catch up with you in the forest. What would you do?


    When I tried to imagine myself in a field surrounded by a pack of wolves, my first impulse was to lie down on the ground and surrender to the predators. But my inner voice said, "No way! Surrender without a fight? Hell, no!


    If you are going down, go down in a blaze of glory. So grab a stick, a stone, anything on the ground and smash the gray robbers in the face.


    In the forest, I would climb a tree without a second thought. I can''t be afraid of wolves there.


    "You are a half-breed," Albina pronounced her verdict. - You have Udmurt and Tatar blood in your veins. And she explained: Udmurts, whose ancestors lived in the forests, feel unsafe in the open. In the bare steppe, they would rather surrender to the mercy of the enemy than fight him. But the forest is their home, they feel like fish in water, and they can hide there so that no hunting dog can find them.


    Nomads are another matter. They''ll fight anyone, anytime, anywhere. Even in the forest, where they can hide and wait out the storm. It''s not in their nature to hide from danger.


    I think it''s good to be a half-blood, you can try to find a way out of any situation.


    In the case of the mushroom poisoning, my blood voice probably played a big role - it didn''t let me lose heart, forced me to fight to the end and win.


    In a wasteland


    The ability to protect myself has come in handy many times in my life.


    One night I was walking home through a dark wasteland when I heard hurried footsteps behind me. The footsteps came closer. Before I knew it, someone was standing behind me with his arms around my neck.


    It was pure coincidence that saved me, for some reason I thought it was a joke from one of my friends and I started laughing, gently pulling myself out of his arms and saying, "Come on, let me go".


    This behavior of mine confused the attacker a bit. He loosened his grip, then withdrew his hands. I turned around. A guy I didn''t know was standing in front of me. He scared the hell out of me.


    When the stranger saw the fear in my eyes, he grabbed me again, but I yelled at him: "Go away!" He replied something insolent, but I shouted again: "Shut up!" The guy became silent. But he was still following me, trying to save face, begging: "Why are you like this, don''t go away, wait". But I kept walking, and when I could see the streetlights in the distance, he finally fell behind me. To say that I trembled with fear is to say nothing.


    Red-haired villain


    In the spring of 1996, I was doing an industrial training internship at a food processing plant.


    I had just turned eighteen when rumors spread through town that a maniac was in Glazov, stalking and raping women.


    He attacked suddenly, under the cover of night - in doorways, in alleys, in wastlands. He was determined and ruthless. And although he did not kill his victims, the police were unable to catch him for a long time. For some reason, none of the women could remember his face. All they knew about the criminal was that he was a redhead.


    The fact that the rapist was still at large terrified the entire female half of the city. Every night after our shifts, we were taken home in a service bus. The driver waited until each woman was in the doorway before he drove off.


    My father always waited for me at the front door when I came home from work.


    Before I got on the bus, I would call home and my father would come out to meet me.


    The pastry chefs at the food processing plant were jealous of me, teasing me and calling me "Daddy''s daughter. They probably wanted someone to meet them too, but since most of them were unmarried and divorced, there was no one to wait for them at home except children and cats.


    I even refused to take the bus home and started walking alone. I felt like the heroine of a thriller - deserted streets at night, no cars, no people...


    One day I reached Karl Marx Boulevard, just a short walk from our house, and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the figure of a man in the distance.


    The man was crossing the boulevard, but when he saw me, he turned and walked quickly in my direction. As he approached the lamppost, I could see his face. The usual face of a young, pimply man. Except for one "but"... He had red hair!


    And if up to that moment I had been slow, as if waiting for something - maybe I thought it was someone I knew, or a passerby who needed to know what time it was - here it was as if someone pushed me from behind: run!


    And I ran towards the house. The stranger ran after me.


    I was running at full speed, there''s a reason I ran track as a kid.


    As I ran, I had only one thought in my head: if only the elevator was downstairs, if only I was lucky.


    And the chase is getting closer. I hear heavy breathing behind me. "You won''t get away!" he shouts at me. Mommy, how scary! Was I really going to get caught?


    I hurried to the lobby. The elevator was downstairs. I jump in and push the button for the ninth floor.


    The door slams, followed by a boom-boom - shoes clattering on the stairs.


    Now, elevator, hurry, close your doors, please... Come on! Oh, thank God, I did it!


    As I took the elevator to safety, I heard my pursuer slam his fist against the elevator doors and growl like a predator who had lost his prey.


    A few months later, the police caught the redheaded maniac.


    The bad guy was on local TV. He was really the one who chased me that night.


    To be continued

 Chapter 18

    For Mushrooms


    One day my parents, Aunt Nina and her friend went by car to the forest near the pioneer camp "Swallow" to look for mushrooms.


    They scattered in the forest. My aunt went deep into the thicket and then she heard a strange sound, as if someone was coming towards her, beating a stick on a galvanized bucket.


    The sound came closer. Neither my parents nor her friend, the driver, had the buckets with them, and she didn''t really want to meet strangers in the forest. She decided to go back to the car. She went to the edge of the forest and saw that her companions were waiting for her there, sitting unhappily with full baskets of mushrooms:


    - Where have you been? We''ve been waiting for you for over an hour! We''ve been calling and honking, but to no avail. What have you disappeared to?


    - What does an hour mean? - Auntie was surprised. - I was only gone for a minute...


    An Accident on the Railroad


    Such lapses of time and space happened to my aunt more than once.


    One day she was returning home from work. She crossed the railroad under an overpass.


    Freight trains always stay here for a long time, but that evening the path was clear.


    I''m walking, she remembers, and I notice the unusual silence. I don''t hear the horns of locomotives, nor any noise, nor the echo of the station. Usually the dispatchers talk to each other over the loudspeaker, but here - nothing, complete, a kind of dead silence.


    - I thought about it, and suddenly I saw bloody pieces of flesh scattered along the tracks. Blood everywhere, as if a train had just hit a man. As if in a dream, I walked over this mess, and in my mind I was indignant: where are the police, why does no one come here? And in the same second I felt an enormous push.


    The silence broke with a crack, and the aunt was hit by a barrage of sounds: the rumble of wheels, the whistling of the wind, the sharp squealing of brakes, and the shrill blast of a train horn.


    And at the center of this cacophony was someone''s loud scream: "Stupid! Are you fed up with living?!"


    A train whizzed by. Auntie turned to see a man in a sports jacket standing next to her. He was a passer-by who, on his way home from work, heard the sound of the approaching train and saw a woman''s figure leaning over the tracks in the light of the train''s headlights.


    The woman did not respond in any way to the train driver''s signals.


    The woman did not respond in any way to the train driver''s signals.


    As my aunt later admitted, she simply did not hear them because she remained in an incredible silence all the time.


    So the man jumped up to her and managed to push her aside at the last moment.


    - Why were you standing there? - he asked her later.


    - A man was hit by a train, - she said, pointing to her feet. - Look, there''s blood everywhere.


    - Where?!


    Aunt Nina looked at the tracks in confusion, went one way, then the other. When she came back, there was no blood, no severed arms or legs. Nothing at all!


    The man watched her with obvious suspicion. She didn''t look suicidal to him. Nor drunk. Crazy, maybe?


    He offered to call her a cab, but my aunt refused, saying she didn''t live far away.


    - My rescuer went ahead, but he kept looking back to see if I''d pull another stunt. I don''t know what was wrong with me. Probably I had somehow managed to see my future, and the person on the tracks was actually me, or could have been me if a passerby hadn''t come to my rescue.


    Stop a moment!


    I too had often experienced the metamorphosis of time. Sometimes its flow accelerated rapidly, and sometimes it dragged on as if in slow motion. Sometimes it stopped altogether, as if someone had pressed pause, giving me a chance to think about what to do next.


    It was March 2001, and I was rushing to the Ice Sports Palace for a concert by my favorite rock band. It was dripping from the rooftops, dirty snow crunching under my feet.


    Suddenly I heard a suspicious rustle above me.


    I looked up and saw a huge piece of ice moving from the roof of the house. It moved slowly, as if in a dream, and then just as slowly began to fall directly on top of me.


    Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to write that the block was flying down, considering we were only three stories apart, but the block of ice wasn''t - it was hanging in the air as if on invisible strings.


    I could see it turning lazily from side to side, the water ice crystals glistening in the sun and splashing in a rainbow fan.


    The sight was enchanting, but completely inexplicable. Of course, the ice could not fall from the roof for so long, I understood that clearly. I had to do something immediately. So I ducked my head, took a quick step forward, and at that moment, the block of ice whistled just a few millimeters from the back of my head, shuffled across my hood, and shattered with a rumble behind me. I didn''t even have time to be afraid.


    X Day


    We all have a birthday - the day we came into existence, but if everything in the world has a beginning and an inevitable end, it would be logical to assume that we should all have a day when we leave the world, right?


    As long as we are alive, this day invisibly accompanies us. Year after year we pass through it without even realizing it. Or do we sometimes feel it?


    What are we doing on the day and hour of X? How are we - pensive, sad, happy? Maybe sudden tears are echoes of distant (or near) misfortune, a bad premonition. And laughter without reason - a protective reaction to something that has not yet happened to us, but will soon.


    Or is it a day like any other, ordinary, unremarkable?


    A man once said to me:


    - All my life I thought death was something that happened to others, and for me an exception would be made.


    That man is long gone. He''s gone like all the others before him.


    Sometimes I have similar thoughts. I don''t think I''m going to die, I can''t believe it. How will it happen? Where? When?


    Maybe the future has already happened while I am writing these lines and someone reading them will grin. He already knows everything about me - and where, and when, and how....


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    Just as I know about those who are no longer in this world.


    I would compare my stay on earth to checking into a hotel.


    I come to a resort, I rent a hotel room - clean, empty. But I''m not the first guest. I wonder who he is - the one who lived in this room before me? What was he thinking, lying on "my" bed, brushing his teeth in "my" bathroom? Where is he now?


    The people in the neighboring rooms seem to me to be old-timers, wise men. They know everything here, go to the restaurant as if it were their home, walk on the beach, make friends with the waiters and porters. As for me, I''m just a confused new tourist.


    I just have to learn everything here, make new acquaintances. So I walk along the coast, happy, stunned, putting my face in the salty spray, inhaling the spicy smell of the tropics, looking at the unfamiliar stars of the southern hemisphere.


    I feel like I have my whole life ahead of me, even though I know for sure it''s only two weeks.


    So I mentally count the days until my departure and try to live them in such a way that I can enjoy every moment I have left in this paradise.


    In the evening, the tenants leave the room across the hall, and I''m glad I''m not one of them.


    And after one week I already feel like an "old-timer" - I look at the newcomers condescendingly and at the same time with a little envy - yes, they don''t know anything here yet, but unlike me, they have everything ahead of them. They''ll be here when I''m gone.


    The days pass and the guests dwindle. Now there are no "old timers" left in the hotel. I''m the next to leave. And when day X comes, I go to the sea for the last time, swim, bask in the sun, then return to my room, pack my bags and go to the airport.


    "My" room is washed, cleaned, and an hour later it is clean and empty, ready for guests. They will enter it when I am already in the sky.


    I wonder if they think they''re not the first ones here. And not the last...


    A cry in the forest


    One day my husband and I went on an overnight rafting trip on the Cheptsa River.


    We knew the route well, but on the eve of the rafting trip I felt a vague sense of fear. I was afraid to go on our trip!


    I''m packing my backpack, and the thought that this is the last time I''ll do this, and we won''t need any of this stuff.


    The images before my eyes are more horrible than ever. But what could happen to us? Could we have an accident? I don''t think so. The danger will have something to do with the river.


    What if we run into some drunken thugs? I wouldn''t want that. So we should choose a place to spend the night away from the villages. Especially since we have the right beach in mind.


    We wanted to take an axe with us - for possible self-defense, but something told us that if we had a gun, there would be a situation where we would have to use it.


    We didn''t want any bloodshed, so we left the axe at home.


    We arrived at the starting point. We inflated the boat. We loaded our things and set sail.


    I sat on the oars, Andrei fished on the spinning rod. And somehow it happened that we did not count the time on the way, according to our estimates the beach should have appeared soon, but for some reason it was not there. Meanwhile it was getting dark and we were very hungry.


    We decided to dock the boat, get out and cook dinner.


    While we were building the fire, a line of tractors loaded with hay passed us along the shore. The engines were humming incessantly, the collective farmers were rushing to get all the hay out of the fields before the rains came. Suddenly I heard a different sound, something like the rattle of a motorcycle. As if it was about to come out of the forest...


    But as the minutes passed, no one appeared. So I thought it was just my imagination.


    We took the boat further out. The sun was almost behind the horizon and the beach was still nowhere to be seen. It was as if it had vanished into thin air! Suddenly I heard a desperate bird call from the thicket. My hair stood on end - I had never heard such an eerie cry in my life.


    It seemed that a hawk had grabbed a woodland bird and was torturing it, strangling it, devouring it alive.


    Soon the screams stopped. We sailed on in silence, trying to figure out what it meant.


    We still could not see the beach.


    And then a fishing net appeared out of the water. Not a soul around. It looked like someone from the village had set it up for the night and left. That''s probably whose motorcycle I heard on the shore!


    We can''t stand poachers, we always cut the nets. So we brought the boat closer, took out the knife....


    Judging by the floaters on the water, the net was huge, a hundred meters long. It was a good fishing net, and I thought: where did the poor villagers get it?


    It would take at least half an hour to tear it and pull it out. What should we do? Leave it in the river? And even though my inner voice whispered: "Get out of here, it''s none of your business," it was stubbornness that got in the way - how could it not be our business? Why should we encourage poachers? We have always torn the nets and we will continue to do so! "All right," the voice agreed, "I see your point. But let''s not do it this time."


    Maybe we really didn''t have a choice - it was getting dark, and we didn''t know how much longer we had to sail. So I pulled on the oars.


    The beach appeared around the next corner. We gathered firewood and set up the tent in the dark by the light of a headlamp. Just as we were setting up our things, we heard the sound of an engine somewhere nearby, and the black surface of the river was illuminated by the beam of a powerful searchlight.


    A motorboat passed us at a slow speed.


    Inside the boat were three armed men in camouflage. They looked at us unkindly, spitefully, as if they were enemies.


    Their eyes were dead. Not eyes, but shotgun muzzles.


    During the night, we were awakened three more times by the roar of a motorboat as the poachers checked the nets.


    And every time I thought about what would have happened if we had cut that unfortunate net, a chill ran down my spine and my hand involuntarily reached for the oar that lay at the entrance.


    In the morning the local fishermen told us that it was the cops. They have been setting nets on the river for years, they feel like masters here, they are not afraid of anyone. The villagers avoid this trio, they know that there is no scarier beast than a Russian policeman-poacher.


    I think we would hardly have gotten away with a beating and a pierced boat. The places are remote, there''s no cell phone service. No one would have found us. There''d be no trace of us.


    In someone else''s tunnel


    The writer Vladimir Serkin in "The Shaman''s Laughter" has a concept of a tunnel.


    What he means is that we move through certain tunnels all our lives without realizing it. And as long as we''re in our own tunnel, we''re safe.


    But when we enter someone else''s tunnel, which is unusual for us, anything can happen. It''s called being in the wrong place at the wrong time.


    The question is, why did we end up there?


    I remember that warm August day. I didn''t want to go to the river.


    But I thought, what else can I do? What a beautiful day! It''s not good to sit at home in such good weather! So we had to pack our backpacks and go out into nature.


    Surprisingly the fishing was good, we caught two pike. There was another bite under the water intake. A huge pike! But it was gone. Our actions were too hasty, even desperate.


    Suddenly it started to rain. We caught our spinning rod on someone''s old fishing net full of dead fish. It smelled terrible. We pulled it out in disgust and threw it in the bushes.


    The rain stopped. A rainbow shone across the river. There is the city.


    We landed on the shore and pulled out the boat. It''s the same as always. But not really.


    He came out of the bushes unnoticed, like a shadow. He hung around bored, as if he didn''t care about us. I didn''t immediately realize what was wrong with him, but I felt danger in my back. And fear. Sticky, paralyzing fear.


    He must have felt it too. He came closer.


    He had a tattoo of a web on his leg with a spider in it. So he was in jail. In prison jargon, a spider''s web means addiction. That''s right. He was holding a bag of glue. Strong, pungent smell of Moment glue.


    He walked unsteadily, but not like a drunk. And his gaze - piercing, probing, persistent. You can''t look into those eyes, it''s dangerous. But I had the indiscretion to do so.


    Something growled menacingly in the toxicomaniac''s chest, and he stepped back. But he quickly returned. He reached for our live-fish cage with the pike in it: "Give it to me! My husband grabbed the cage and yelled, "Get out!"


    The guy snapped at him. But he didn''t leave. He lurked.


    We put our things down, packed the boat, and started up the hill.


    He followed us. At any moment we expected a blow to the head, but there was an unknown man at the top, and I knew that as long as he was there, the toxicomaniac would not touch us, he would be afraid.


    The best thing to do would have been to take a taxi, get in and go. But our house is right next door, it''s just a stone''s throw away. Why do we need a taxi?


    The toxicomaniac didn''t leave us one step behind. He followed us like he was glued to us. He will never give up.


    My husband took off his backpack, took a decisive step toward him, and punched him hard in the chest with his fist. Slim and skinny, he didn''t even stagger! "Like a sack of potatoes, - Andrei remembered later. - Totally insensitive to pain".


    And when my husband saw the eyes of the toxicomaniac, he admitted that he was really frightened. He realized that only death could stop such a man. Kill him and go to jail?


    - Call the police! - I yelled.


    The guy thought we were bluffing and grinned. But my husband really did it.


    Our stalker''s face immediately changed. He freaked out and backed away. He let out a stiff animal growl again.


    As he ran away, he hissed angrily, "All right, I got you memorized!"


    The police arrived and searched the yard, but they didn''t find the toxicomaniac. Although I had a feeling he was somewhere nearby, maybe even living in a neighboring house. But I also knew we''d never see him again. We have different tunnels.


    And yet the fact that we met him was no coincidence. We recognized ourselves in him - as we were at that moment - weakened, frustrated, angry, greedy.


    And he, like in a mirror, saw himself in us and was also attracted. So he followed us with one desire - to harm us, until he (or we?) were blown out of the unfriendly tunnel.


    To be continued

 Chapter 19

    On the hook


    When I was five years old, I accidentally scattered a box of fishing hooks.


    The hooks were small, black, with sharp barbs. We picked them all up, but apparently some got caught in the thick pile of the carpet, and one hook dug into Daddy''s heel.


    Oh, how Daddy screamed! Almost wept.


    Daddy crying was so unusual that it made me laugh out loud for some reason.


    I thought he was faking it. Could a lousy hook make my daddy cry? It just couldn''t be!


    So I scattered the gear again, this time on purpose, to see if I was wrong about Dad.


    When my father saw this, he got angry, put the hooks under lock and key, and told me to experiment on myself instead of him.


    I hooked myself that very night. It had sunk deep into my foot, like the claw of a bird of prey. It wasn''t easy to pull it out, the sharp barb clinging to the tender flesh and causing me excruciating pain.


    So that''s how it is! So Dad wasn''t faking it, he was really crying.


    Life is pain


    I grew up as a hypersensitive child.


    When my mother wiped me down with a towel after a shower, I would shrink and clench.


    I wanted to take the towel away and wipe myself - softly, gently, not as if a rough brush had been run over your body, trying to peel off your skin and make you all red.


    Bathing, combing my hair - all this my mother did with a kind of wildness - nervous, impetuous, angry. I screamed my head off when she cut my nails almost to the "flesh" or braided my hair so that my head twitched and my eyes bulged as if I was having a seizure.


    And the ear cleaning! I lay with my cheek on my mother''s hard knees, she put the match, wrapped tightly in absorbent cotton, into my ear, and the torture began, which I still remember with a shudder. My eyes and nose watered. With tears streaming down my face, I endured this torture as long as I could, but when the match went deeper and tried to pierce the eardrum, I always broke out of my mother''s clinging embrace and did not allow her to touch me again for months.


    As a result, a wax plug formed in my ear and I was taken to the hospital.


    I was five years old and had no idea what they were going to do to me. I hoped they wouldn''t give me any shots!


    After examining me, the doctor told me to sit on the couch. I looked him in the eye and asked if he was going to give me an injection. The doctor smiled and assured me that he definitely would not. But then a nurse appeared from behind the screen. She was holding a large glass syringe.


    When I saw this, I jumped up from the couch and screamed, so that immediately, as if on command, there was a loud roar outside the door - my screams frightened all the little patients.


    The doctor and the nurse tried to shame me by telling me to be quiet, but to no avail.


    I screamed like mad until it was explained to me that this syringe was not for injections in the buttocks, but for washing the ear. "Look, there''s not even a needle!"


    The absence of a needle did indeed calm me. And the children crying at the door stopped immediately. The nurse rinsed my ear with warm water and let me out of the ENT office with visible relief.


    Needles and Threads


    Daddy pricked himself again. This time with a needle that had fallen out of the needle holder.


    He spun around, hobbled to the sofa, and pulled it out of his heel.


    And again, barely containing my laughter, I watched my "iron" father. I sneaked over to the needle box, took out the biggest, thickest needle, and stuck it in the carpet in the hallway. When Daddy goes into the kitchen for tea, he will surely step on it. I wait in anticipation of the comedy. But Daddy is delayed somewhere.


    When my patience ran out, I began to have fun - running, jumping, spinning around the room, and during this exciting activity I completely forgot about the needle.


    I jumped up on the sofa, from there I jumped out into the hallway as if from a springboard, and only while jumping did I realize that I was going to land right on the tip of the needle.


    I was saved from disaster by the fact that I managed to turn at the last moment and did not put all my weight on the needle, it did not go all the way into me, its end stuck out.


    When I reached the sofa, I carefully pulled it out of my heel.


    There was no blood, no pain - nothing, just frustration with myself - I deserved it!


    And also a great sense of guilt towards my father - the proverb is true: He who digs a pit for others may fall into it himself.


    It was strange, I got more abuse from my mother, but I took revenge on my father, who treated me kinder and gentler and certainly did not deserve such rough treatment.


    I would secretly hurt him, watch him with my glee, and then repent and punish myself. I treated younger boys the same way.


    Once, in the kindergarten, we were offered to take over the sponsorship of the kindergarten group.


    Each of us could choose a child to take care of - to play with him, to dress him before going out for a walk, to read him fairy tales. I chose two-year-old Roma. Besides, I did not take care of him so much as I scolded him when he misbehaved. I deliberately left him alone, told him to sit quietly on the bench, hid and watched what he would do.


    Roma, of course, was bored sitting alone while his friends were making sand puppets, so he would slowly slip off the bench and stomp over to the sandbox.


    I would jump out of my hiding place, give him a good smack on the bottom and say:


    - You naughty boy! What did I tell you? Go back to your place!


    Roma would snort, but he would not dare disobey me and would obediently climb onto the bench.


    I treated my cousin Sasha the same way.


    He was four years younger, and every time he came to visit us in the summer from Shevchenko, I gave him hell. As a punishment, I would strip him naked, drive him to the bathroom and pour cold water from the shower over him.


    Sasha whimpered, but he tolerated it and fulfilled all my whims and orders.


    In fact, I enjoyed torturing myself as well. I remember there was a boy in our school who was the color of an eggplant. He was not a black boy, but his skin, his hands, and his face had an unnatural purple color. It was as if someone had tied a string around him from top to bottom - if you ever foolishly twisted a string around your finger and cut off the blood supply to it, you must have seen your finger instantly turn blue. Sometimes I had wrapped the string around my fingers to the point of pain, trying to feel what he felt.


    The purple boy didn''t study at our school for long. One day he just disappeared. Probably died of torture, I thought with childish naivety. And it was only many years later that I realized that "Black Boy" was not tortured, not tortured in the dungeon, bound from head to toe with ropes and threads.


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    He died of a serious heart defect.


    Tested on myself


    Dad often recalled how, as a schoolboy, he used to strangle himself by pinching his carotid artery with his finger or squeezing his neck with a pioneer scarf until he dropped dead.


    Despite the fact that his friends had a hard time bringing him to his senses when he fainted, Misha liked this dangerous game of being "dead" and then being "resurrected".


    Oh, this childish desire to experience everything! Touch the boiling teapot, hold your breath under water as long as you have enough air, hang upside down until your head is like cast iron and your eyes are bloodshot.


    I liked to tie a scarf around my eyes and try to find out what it was like to be blind - walking around the house, knocking over chairs, bumping into corners, doorjambs, and objects. I also put absorbent cotton in my ears and pretended to be deaf and dumb, communicating with my family through notes and gestures.


    But while my father and sister were sympathetic to my eccentricities, my mother was very upset by them. She was afraid that I would get into real trouble and actually become a cripple.


    Once, with my legs tucked under me, I rolled around the house on a wooden abacus as if in a wheelchair, imitating our neighbor, Uncle Volodya, who had been hit by a locomotive when he was drunk.


    My mother felt sick at the sight of me. She shouted, "If I see you again, I''ll rip your head off!" Then she grabbed the abacus and threw it out the window with such disgust, as if it were contagious.


    But I just wanted to know what it was like to live without legs.


    Elvira''s flight


    Newcomers, a man, a woman and their five-year-old daughter, moved into Grandma Luda''s house. Elvira and I were in the same kindergarten class. She was an ordinary girl: quick-witted, black-haired.


    But when Elvira was six years old, an incredible story happened to her.


    Her parents were out that day. Elvira went out on the balcony, leaned over the railing, and saw that downstairs, near the flower bed, there were big guys swarming.


    - Hey, what are you doing? - asked a curious girl.


    - What do you care? - They stuck their heads up. - If you want to know, jump down! We''ll catch you!


    The boys were obviously joking. They didn''t want to catch anyone. Besides, they didn''t think the girl would jump at all. But Elvira did, even though she lived on the eighth floor!


    The boys were not expecting such a turn, so they ran away and Elvira landed safely on the flower bed. Surprisingly, she didn''t even break any bones.


    She got off lightly - with a ruptured spleen. But since the spleen was not considered a vital organ in those days, the doctors sent Elvira home soon after the operation, taking her word that she would not jump off the balcony again.


    Elvira''s flight became a real sensation in my grandmother''s courtyard.


    People even came from the neighboring streets to see the living legend.


    The heroine herself walked around the yard with her nose proudly upturned, accepting the girls'' offers of friendship with condescension and favor. Everyone wanted to be friends with Elvira.


    Her fame hurt me so much that it literally drove me crazy.


    What did Elvira do to become a star so quickly? Jump off a balcony and survive? What''s the big deal? I could easily do the same jump. I could even jump off a 14-story building if I had to...


    To prove it, I took my girlfriends to the attic of a neighboring high-rise.


    We climbed out onto the roof, crawled carefully to the brick ledge, and peered into the abyss.


    From here, the courtyard looked like a toy. Clouds hovered above us, just a hand''s reach away, and little men the size of ants scurried about below. I looked down at the wall and felt sick to my stomach to the point of dizziness.


    - Is this too much for you? - The girls teased me, holding my hands tightly to either side of my face, wondering if I was really going to jump.


    I nodded silently. I guess the fourteenth floor was indeed too much...


    Op-la!


    But the thought of overtaking Elvira never left me.


    I often imagined that Grandma Luda''s apartment was on fire, there was nowhere to run, and I was on the balcony.


    The awning would stretch out below me, and firemen in helmets would wave at me: "Jump! Hurry up!"


    I climbed up the balcony railing, and under the admiring eyes of the crowd I dove down - right into the middle of the circle of tarpaulins. Op-la! everyone would shout and rush to embrace me.


    To hell with the tarp! I''ll just land in the same flower bed. So what if it''s the eleventh floor, it''s nothing!


    While my grandmother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, I climbed onto the trunk that stood on the balcony and threw my leg over the railing. Holding on to the railing with my hands, I felt a rough ledge on the concrete slab with my foot and looked around. Mamma mia! The earth no longer seemed so friendly and close to me. Directly below me I could see a gray entrance canopy.


    I was suddenly afraid to breathe: it was all true! One clumsy movement and I would fall and break. I''d be lying in a pool of blood with my head split open like a watermelon.


    I visualized this image so clearly that a little shiver ran through my body. My arms and legs became treacherously weak. After gathering my strength, I managed to get back to the balcony and squatted in a daze for a minute, coming to my senses.


    It was a good thing Grandma Luda hadn''t seen me!


    That evening, while we were having tea on the balcony, I asked her carefully:


    - Granny, what would happen if I fell from a great height?


    - You would be shattered, that''s all," my grandmother replied calmly.


    - What about Elvira? - I began, but Grandma Luda interrupted me:


    - Your Elvira is stupid! It''s a good thing she fell on the flower bed, or she''d be feeding worms right now.


    She looked at me strangely. Does my grandmother know everything about me?


    - It is foolish to envy fools! - she repeated. - Today they are lucky, tomorrow not. Always think with your own head. How many people do you know who are as lucky as Elvira?


    I remembered the stranger from the high-rise across the street. She lived on the last - fourteenth floor, and that spring day, while washing the frames, she tripped over a basin of water and fell out of the window. She was dead.


    My father saw it by chance and often remembered it, adding that he had often had a similar dream in which he was going off a steep cliff, but instead of falling, he had flown up like a bird.


    For some reason, even then it seemed to me that one day my father''s dream would come true...


    It''s your own fault


    Before my grandfather Slava died, a black cat appeared in his apartment out of nowhere. Grandpa didn''t pay much attention to it: a cat is just a cat. Maybe it jumped from the neighbor''s balcony or slipped through the open door. Where else could it have come from?


    But when my grandmother saw the cat, she became very alarmed:


    - This is a bad sign! Big trouble ahead.


    And she was right. A month later, Grandpa was gone. Cancer.


    Grandpa had never been sick, but suddenly he began to complain about his stomach. He drank suspensions and powders for ulcers. My grandmother grumbled and thought that my grandfather was sick because he liked to eat fried meat.


    She was angry with him, and when my grandfather was in pain, she would leave the house so as not to hear the moaning, saying, "Let him cry out as much as he wants, nothing can be done, it''s his own fault".


    It was not the custom in our family to feel sorry for each other. Every illness was seen as a simulation, every mistake as a deliberate harm. And it wasn''t just about health. As soon as I or Tanya lost a key to the house, or got a dirty jacket, or got a C in algebra, my mother would lament: "Why is it that everyone else''s kids are good, but mine are a punishment to me?"


    When I was in first grade, my classmate Pasha Petrov threw a stone at my head.


    I wasn''t afraid of a possible hole in my skull, not of blood, but of being taken to the hospital and having my head shaved before being stitched up. The hair is nothing, it will grow back, but I was afraid that my mother would find out what had happened. I knew beforehand that she would say: "It''s your own fault!"


    And it''s true - why did I tease Petrov?


    As soon as my friends realized that I would never show my parents with a broken head, they dragged me home to the bully. Pasha''s mother opened the door.


    - Do you see what your son has done? - shouted the girls from the threshold. - Natasha is bleeding!"


    Pasha''s mother took me by the shoulders and led me to the window. A quick examination of my head showed that fortunately there was no hole in my skull-the stone had only scratched the skin at the back of my head, leaving a small abrasion. Pasha''s mother treated my wound with hydrogen peroxide, anointed it with iodine, and promised to have a serious talk with her son, who had been hiding from us in the kitchen all this time. My parents never found out about the incident.


    Scar


    In winter, my friends and I used to play snowball in the yard.


    In my excitement, I would jump off the stone railing into the snowdrift, get up and run away. It was only after half an hour that I noticed that my leg was somehow hot.


    I took off my mitten and touched my pant leg - something wet and sticky. Blood!


    There was a huge hole in the leggings below my knee.


    Damn, I thought angrily, I''ve torn a new one. I have to sew it up discreetly so my mom doesn''t notice. Otherwise she''ll yell at me - oh, not again!


    I sprinted home and snuck into the bathroom. I thought I''d wash my leggings first and then deal with the wound. But I was in for an unpleasant surprise: the wound on my leg was more serious than I thought. I must have hit some sharp iron when I jumped, and it had cut my leg almost to the bone, with something white like oatmeal showing through the torn edges.


    I felt sick. And scared. I turned on the water so no one would hear my stifled sobs, pulled out the first-aid kit, and poured half a vial of Brilliant Green on the wound.


    My knee burned like fire and blood gushed out. I tried to stop it by pulling the skin, pressing the wound with the palm of my hand, using many bandages and absorbent cotton.


    Finally, after wrapping my leg in a rag, I hurried to bed.


    For a month I secretly practiced self-medication, my leg hurt and healed badly, but I did not allow anyone to know about it.


    The memory of that incident left me with a scar under my knee in the shape of a crooked smile.


    My mother was horrified when she saw it, she yelled that if I hadn''t kept quiet, the surgeon at the hospital would have stitched my leg up nicely, but now I have such an ugly scar for the rest of my life. Besides, I could have gotten blood poisoning, gangrene, they could have even cut off my leg.


    Yes, they could have. But I wasn''t thinking about that, I was thinking about how to avoid punishment for tearing my leggings.


    To be continued

 Chapter 20

    A holiday with tears


    Grandpa Slava died on May 9, Victory Day.


    As a war veteran, he wanted to live to see the holiday, so he died on that day. As everyone in my family said: "He is no longer suffering".


    No less than the holiday, my grandfather waited for the arrival of his middle daughter Nina, but the aunt flew from Shevchenko when her father was already dead - she was only half an hour late!


    I was ten years old. Although I loved my grandfather very much, the news of his death did not make me sad at all. On the contrary, there were so many reasons to be happy.


    First of all, my godfather came to pick us up in a Zaporozhets - he was the only one of our acquaintances who had a car. So my father and I went to my grandmother''s house. Second, my grandma promised to give us a black and white television set "Sadko" as an inheritance from my grandfather, but for some reason my mother did not take it.


    And thirdly, and most importantly, I had a chance to cut off my hated braid!


    My grandfather liked my long hair, but it only got in the way, in my ears, mouth, and eyes.


    In the summer it made my neck sweat, my braid came loose, and I couldn''t braid it myself.


    But my grandpa forbade me to have a boy''s haircut, he used to say: "You can only do it after I die! So now I had every right to go to the barber. Which I did right away.


    A photo for the memory


    Shortly before my grandfather died, my grandmother asked my father to come to the house with a camera to take family pictures.


    Everyone combed their hair, dressed up, and sat solemnly on the sofa.


    Grandpa took the place of honor in the middle. Everyone''s faces were solemn - we understood very well that this was the last time we would all be together in Grandpa''s lifetime.


    Grandmother hoped to send the photos to Tselinograd, to Grandpa''s brother, Uncle Lenya, and to our distant relatives who lived far away from us. Although they had never seen us, and we had never seen them.


    And whether it was a desire to show off in front of my unfamiliar relatives, or maybe just to relieve the tension, I started making faces. Before my father would say, "Watch the birdie," I would stick out my ears, make cross-eyes, and stick out my tongue.


    My father shot two rolls of film, and when he developed and printed the pictures, it turned out that there was nothing to choose from the glossy pile. Looking through the pictures, Grandma shook her head:


    - How can I send such pictures? They would think that Slava''s granddaughter was stupid and had strabismus.


    So she never sent them anything.


    An empty coffin


    Grandpa was gone. While my grandmother and mother were busy in the kitchen, I looked at the mummy he had recently been. A thin, yellow-skinned face with a sharp nose peered out from under the sheet. Where is Grandpa now?


    Does he see me? Can he hear me?


    When my grandfather''s body was taken to the morgue, I told my grandmother my deepest wish.


    It may seem crazy to some, but I really wondered what it would be like to lie in a coffin.


    I thought that an empty coffin would be brought to our house, and when I had the chance, I could lie in it.


    - Are you crazy? - Grandma rolled her eyes. - Don''t even think about it!


    I frowned - why does she mind?


    It''s just for a second. I''m just going to lie down for a while, that''s all.


    Looking at my unhappy face, my grandmother explained that it was bad luck to lie in someone else''s coffin. Besides, you might accidentally scare someone.


    And she told me how, during the war, a truck with a covered body passed through their village.


    At the same time, an elderly Red Army man in a half-fur coat was standing on the side of the road, giving a thumbs-up.


    "How far are you going?" - The driver leaned out of the cab. "Can you take me into town?" a hitchhiker asked him. "Get in!"


    The soldier jumped into the back of the truck and saw an empty coffin. It was winter. The frost was bitterly cold. Chilled, he climbed inside, covered himself with a lid for warmth, and dozed off.


    Meanwhile, the driver had picked up two more hitchhikers, village men in a hurry to get to the market in town. The truck shook violently over a bump in the road. The soldier in the coffin awoke, stirred, threw back the lid, and, seeing the men''s pale faces, winked at them:


    - Are you frozen, men? How about a cigarette?


    The men were so frightened that they threw down their goods and jumped out of the truck at full speed.


    One broke his arm, the other his leg.


    The soldier was later tried and found not guilty because he hadn''t intentionally frightened them.


    Meeting my grandfather


    Funeral, wake, quick arrival and just as quick departure of relatives.


    All the time I spent the nights at Grandma Luda''s house. I was not embarrassed by the recent presence of a dead man in the house, but I was afraid that I might accidentally see him in the mirror.


    I had never liked mirrors. You never knew what you might accidentally see in them.


    But on the ninth day, coming out of the bathroom in the evening, I saw a silhouette in the kitchen. The man was sitting at the table, half turned, smiling at me. It was dark, but I recognized him. It was my deceased grandfather Slava!


    I screamed in fear.


    My grandmother came running in and turned on the kitchen light.


    - What''s wrong?


    The table was empty, but I could have sworn Grandpa had been there a minute ago.


    Grandma patted my head:


    - You silly girl! What are you afraid of? Did he scare you?


    - N-no.


    - Then why did you scream? You could have asked him how he was, if he needed anything.


    And my grandmother remembered how she had met her dead mother Matrena in the same way one night in our apartment on Karl Marx Street.


    - I heard a rustling sound, like a mouse. I went into the kitchen, and your great-grandmother was sitting there, scratching her fork on an empty plate, not looking me in the eye. "What are you doing, Mom?" I asked her. And she replied angrily: "You forgot me, Luda. Why don''t you visit me at the cemetery? On the day of Ilya the Prophet, all the neighbors went home with gifts, and I was the only one who stayed hungry."


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The next day my grandmother baked wattles and went to the cemetery to her mother.


    She spent two hours looking for her grave, but it was as if it had disappeared into the ground.


    To make amends, Grandma went to the cemetery all week. She remembered:


    - I walk and walk around the circle, somewhere here should be the grave, next to the two spruces, under the birch. But no! Then I realized that my mother was confusing me on purpose, that she was angry with me.


    - That night I lit a candle, prayed and asked my mother for forgiveness. And the next day, my feet took me to my mother''s grave.


    Later, I and all my relatives experienced this phenomenon more than once. It is not easy to find Matrena''s grave indeed. There are no landmarks to help. If she wants to see you, you''ll find her, but if she doesn''t want to see you, you go away with nothing, wondering what you''ve done to get into my great-grandmother''s bad graces.


    Greetings from the other side


    As it turned out, my late grandfather''s visit to my grandmother''s house was no coincidence.


    A great beer lover, he came to dream of my mother that same night and asked:


    - When you go to Trinity, don''t forget to bring a bottle of Zhigulevskoe beer.


    In other words, he''d really like to have a beer in the other world.


    Such requests have always given me mixed feelings. How can the souls of the dead taste beer or fish pie? Why ask for food when you no longer need it? Or is life in the afterlife really no different from life on earth?


    Anyway, in our region, it is not customary to go to the cemetery empty-handed. At least take some candy and bring it with you to treat the soul of the deceased.


    After that incident in the kitchen, my grandfather''s spirit never came to me again.


    I mentally asked him about it. I told him, "If you want to see me, come to my dream, but not in real life, because I am a coward.


    And soon one day I have a dream: I come to my grandmother''s house, I ring the doorbell, and my grandfather opens the door, alive, ruddy, a little overweight, as he was before his illness.


    - You?! - I threw myself on my grandfather''s neck with joy. - I missed you so much!


    Just as now I remember the reality of that dream - prickly gray stubble on his cheeks, sharp but so masculine smell of "Chypre" cologne. And my grandfather''s words that he had too little time.


    - They''ve only released me for today.


    - Who was it? - I asked.


    - It doesn''t matter, my grandfather said. - Granddaughter, I''m so happy to see you!


    A man in a hat


    My mother used to recall that after my grandfather''s death, she often met men on the street who looked like her father - in their clothes, walk, and their head posture.


    But my mother saw them only in glimpses or from behind. She tried to call out, to catch up, to look the "double" in the face, but she never succeeded - the "ghost" disappeared without a trace into the crowd or managed to jump into the bus.


    Once my mother and I were sitting at home looking out the window. Suddenly my mother stood up from her chair.


    - Look, there he is again!


    A fat man in a coat and fedora walked down the street. His build, his gait, his height - everything matched, only his face was hidden under the brim of the hat.


    Suddenly, the stranger raised his head and looked directly at us. He smiled, nodded his head slightly, and walked on. I jumped up on the windowsill, threw open the window, and shouted at the top of my lungs: "Grandpa!


    But the man in the hat had already gone around the corner.


    Hot pepper


    Once, when I was already in my thirties, my parents gave me a bush of hot pepper "ogonek" (flame) that they had dug up in the vegetable garden. The plant behaved normally - it blossomed in the spring, bore fruit in the summer, and went into hibernation in the fall - until spring. And suddenly the pepper began to wilt, to turn yellow.


    In May, all the leaves fell off, and when it finally died, my mother was gone.


    In my parents'' apartment there was a twin brother of the pepper "Ogonek". It bloomed, bore fruit and was about to fall asleep, but in November it suddenly woke up and began to bloom vigorously - the whole thing was covered with white flowers. Outside the window a snowstorm was raging, and here on the windowsill it was spring.


    A month after that bloom, my father died. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I was now suspicious of pepper. "Ogonek" was quiet, there were no more strange things about it. But when a year later it did not bear any fruit, and at the end of the summer it suddenly blossomed in rich colors, I was suspicious again. And, as it turned out, not for nothing. My sister Tanya died.


    My first impulse was to get rid of the flower. Immediately! It was all because of it.


    But something told me the pepper had nothing to do with it. Probably, in some unfathomable way, it felt the deaths of my relatives, but it wasn''t the cause.


    After my sister''s death, "Ogonek" disappeared on his own. He went into hibernation, and in the spring he didn''t wake up - he just dried up.


    Pangolin


    When my parents died, the question was what to do with their apartment.


    Neither Tanya nor I wanted to live in it, but I couldn''t sell it. There were too many memories associated with it, both good and bad, but the bad ones were more numerous.


    The first year the apartment was empty, we only went there to water the flowers.


    I couldn''t stay there for long, to hear the familiar smell, to see the ruin and decay. I wanted to get out as soon as possible, but at the same time I was drawn there like a magnet.


    A long time ago, when Mom and Dad were still alive, I dreamed that one morning I would wake up with the first rays of sunshine, open the tulle curtains, and sit on the balcony with a book - to sunbathe. No one will yell at me that the bread is not bought, that the floors are not washed, that I have not done my homework again. And I will not have to think about anyone or anything. Beautiful!


    And what if I fix my parents'' nest? - I thought. - I will throw out the garbage, make repairs, and spend, if not the rest of my life, then at least the summer here...


    The apartment itself wasn''t bad - bright, sunny, overlooking the green boulevard. A very nice apartment. It was not for nothing that Grandpa Slava did not want to leave it.


    All we have to do is repair it and clean it up. So my husband and I went to work.


    We bought paint, wallpaper, glue, hired a handymen, and within a month the apartment was unrecognizable.


    Except that the first night in the new place, we realized: we are not alone here...


    The apartment was unusually quiet during the day, but as night fell, the house came alive. From the sides and above us, someone was running, stomping, jumping, banging on the wall.


    Door locks rattled, the TV blared, something fell with a clatter to the floor-so much so that the chandelier on the ceiling shook. Sometimes the noise didn''t stop until morning.


    We didn''t get enough sleep, we were angry, irritable. We banged the ceiling with a mop for our restless tenants. The noise died down for a while, then came back with a vengeance: as if to say, "Ah, you don''t like it - get some more!"


    Our conscience did not allow us to call the police, they were our neighbors...


    We naively believed that the conflict could still be resolved peacefully, without resorting to threats and physical violence. But no. It was as if the house was chasing us out.


    After another sleepless night, my husband gritted his teeth and rushed upstairs.


    The door was opened by an old man. We nicknamed him the Pangolin - at night it seemed as if a giant brontosaurus was prowling around the house, stomping and dragging its long tail. It clung to various objects with its tail, knocking over chairs, dropping cast-iron weights on the floor...


    The pangolin was drunk. After listening to my husband, he told it to go to hell and slammed the door.


    Crow''s Nest


    Whenever Andrei and I went to the neighbor''s apartment, together or separately, the same thing always happened. The Pangolin would open the door and shout, spitting, that we were crazy, that no one called us here, and if we didn''t like the noise at night, we should leave this house.


    Every time, a little girl with the stamp of Downism on her face would look out from behind the old man.


    Then Crow, Pangolin''s wife, would appear, a scowling old woman with a perpetually disgruntled look on her face. She used to chase her relatives away, and with her hands at her sides, she pressed her lips together and listened in silence as to why the neighbors downstairs had come to see her. Although she knew very well why we had come.


    The old woman got her nickname because of her hoarse bass of four hundred decibels, which she used as a former music teacher to instill a love of knowledge in her granddaughter.


    - One! Two! Three! Four! - The Crow cawed every morning. - What''s next?!


    - Six? - asked the girl shyly (the audibility in the house was wonderful).


    - Fool! - The grandmother attacked the poor girl. - Five! Five! How many times must I tell you, you fool! One! Two! Three! Four! What''s next, huh?!


    And so on ad infinitum.


    When I asked the Crow to be quiet, at least at night, she pressed her lips together and said, "We live the way we want to live, no one can tell us what to do!


    Then he grumbled:


    - What can I do when he, - she nodded in the direction of the Pangolin, - always falls off the couch drunk. Your father was no angel either, remember? He kept us up at night too!


    One spring day, the Pangolin came up to me on the street, grinned and said:


    - If you had taken better care of your father, he wouldn''t have become a parachutist, hehehe. Besides, he owed me, you know?


    I didn''t hear exactly what my father owed the Pangolin. A wave of blind rage washed over me. Crimson spots flashed before my eyes. I screamed with hatred:


    - Does he owe you?! It''s all right, you''ll see him soon. Soon enough!


    - What? - the old man shouted in indignation. - Make sure you don''t die first!


    At that moment, I felt my father''s presence behind me. I thought I could even hear him grinding his teeth. Dad never forgave anyone for such behavior. The neighbor upstairs is dead.


    But we won''t have to live in that house either...


    The Pangolin hanged himself in the summer. He waited until his wife and granddaughter had gone to bed, locked himself in the bathroom, and tied the noose around his neck. They found him half an hour later, when it was all over.


    It''s not good to say this, of course, but Andrei and I cheered up and decided that the house would finally be quiet. Unfortunately, our joy was premature and short-lived.


    To ease the pain of loss, the inconsolable widow''s house was flooded with Pangolin''s heirs - grown children, nephews, grandchildren, sons-in-law. At night, they enthusiastically drilled and hammered nails into the walls, yelled at their children, played rock, and clicked their heels on the floor. It was clear that young people had settled in the "Crow''s nest" for a long time.


    My parents'' apartment had to be sold.


    To be continued

 Chapter 21

    Stars on the wallpaper


    It was the scariest night of my life.


    I''m six years old. I woke up to a noise and some kind of angry mess behind the wall. I pulled back the blanket and listened to the chilling sounds. I think I can guess what it could be, but no, it''s not that, it''s Dad hitting Mom. Hitting her in a wild fit of jealousy.


    I''m scary, I don''t want to go to them. But I''m afraid that if I don''t intervene, Dad will kill Mom.


    There''s a bright light on in my parents'' bedroom. I ran in and stopped in horror at the threshold.


    Mom''s nightgown was torn and her breasts were bloody. Mom calls my name, pulls her arms around me, tried to hold me and hug me, but I pull away, afraid of getting blood on me.


    Then Mom falls to her knees and wraps her arms around my legs and howls like a wounded animal.


    Dad is out of his mind. Eyes white with rage, he pulls Mom away from me and kicks her in the teeth. Mom screams loudly, a grimace of pain and disgust contorting her face.


    She shouts some angry, hurtful things at her father.


    He lashes out at Mom, grabs her by the throat and begins to choke her.


    I scream and beg my mother to shut up, but she doesn''t seem to hear me.


    So I jump on my father from behind, punch him, try to reason with him, pull him away to protect my mother from his fists, but my father growls and pushes me back into the corner like a kitten.


    Mom''s throat is bleeding. At the moment of the next blow, it splashes on the wall, leaving a scattering of bright scarlet stars on the wallpaper - as if it were not blood, but fireworks.


    - Paper! Daughter, hurry up and give me the paper! - Mother asks, choking on her tears.


    I don''t know why she needs paper. I fumbled around in the bedroom and hurried to my room. It''s a good thing my little sister is asleep, she can''t see or hear this nightmare. The paper is nowhere to be found.


    I grab a thick Ozhegov''s dictionary from the shelf and tear out the title page.


    My mother hastily scribbles something on it and slips the note into my hands. The letters danced before my eyes. "I''m leaving my gold earrings to Natasha and my ring to Tanya," I read.


    Dad comes back into the bedroom. I hadn''t even noticed that he was out.


    He smells of vodka and tobacco, but he''s calm. I don''t think he''s going to hit Mom again.


    - Go to bed! - he says through his teeth, not looking at me.


    - Don''t leave Tanya," Mom whispers quickly. - Live well. Give this note to your grandmother.


    - Mom, but what about you? - I ask fearfully. - Daddy won''t touch you anymore. Tomorrow you''ll give it to her yourself.


    - Daughter," Mom''s voice trembles. - Tomorrow I''ll be gone. This blood. I won''t live till morning. Go away. When I am buried and your father is arrested, your grandparents will take you to Tagil. You and Tanya will be fine. Believe me!


    But I don''t believe her, I''m crying. The only one who can help me now is God.


    In desperation I turn to Him, begging for help, making vague vows and oaths.


    It seems to me that if I don''t fall asleep before morning, He will hear me and save my mother.


    I only wish I wouldn''t fall asleep!


    Wrapped in a blanket, I sit on a chair in a half-lazy state. How slowly time passes.


    I want the night to end, but I''m afraid of the morning.


    I''m afraid to see my mother dead.


    In the morning, I tiptoe into her bedroom and sigh with relief: alive!


    - What''s wrong with you? - Mom guiltily hides her tearful eyes.


    She gets up, puts her feet in her slippers, and goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on.


    Dad turns on the TV. They both act as if nothing has happened, as if they were not the ones who rolled around on the carpet last night, grabbing each other''s hair and hitting each other.


    Or was it just a nightmare?


    But what about the crumpled note in my hand?


    - Throw it away! - Mom says angrily when she sees it. - Throw it away right now! I''m telling you!


    I obediently go to the trash can, but at the last moment I change my mind and hide the note in the dictionary. It''s my only witness. No, the spots of dried stars on the wall - they haven''t gone anywhere either.


    I lock myself in the bathroom and cry, silently, bitterly, inconsolably.


    Barbarism


    As a child, I loved it when my parents read me poems and fairy tales.


    There were many favorite stories, but only two poems - Stevens'' ballad "Heather Honey" and Musa Jalil''s "Barbarism" - made my heart tremble and filled it with an unspeakable longing.


    Like now, I see a simple gray book in my mother''s hands.


    I made myself comfortable in the chair and prepared to listen.


    "They put mothers and children together.


    They made them dig a pit and they stood there.


    They stood there, a bunch of savages,


    and laughed with hoarse voices."


    My mother''s voice shakes and I get goose bumps all over my back. It''s as if I can see everything that happened there, in the forty-third - and "the sad sun, washed with tears," and the angry noise of the autumn forest, and the boy clinging to his mother in fear: "Hide me, Mommy, hide me! I can even hear her last words: "Be patient, son, it won''t hurt now..."


    My mother cries, she can no longer read. I''m also sniffling my nose.


    In my mind I see images from war newsreels: a bunch of ragged, dirty children at the edge of the moat, a bravura German march, and the Nazis, laughing at the camera, handing out chocolates to the children. The children stretch out their hands, unwrap the foil.


    And just then, a volley of rifle fire. Crying and screaming children fly into the pit.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    How despicable, how monstrously despicable! I''m so sorry that they were betrayed, that they were deceived, that they didn''t get to taste at least a fraction of the unprecedented pleasure of chocolate before they died...


    The book is put aside. My mother and I cry our eyes out. How lucky that we''re both alive! But the boy in the poem, did he really die? It can''t be! I want to believe that the bullet did not hit him, that he managed to escape, to save himself from the damned evil Krauts.


    I quietly tug at my mother''s sleeve, begging her to read on, vaguely hoping for a miracle.


    Show me Moscow


    - Would you like me to show you Moscow? - my father asks me with a mischievous smile.


    - I want to! I really want to! - I rushed to the window, expecting to see, as if by magic, the capital of our country, where I had never been in my life.


    My father came up behind me, pressed his palms to my ears as if he were checking the ripeness of a watermelon, and lifted me up - higher, higher, to the ceiling.


    - Can you see Moscow?


    I stare into the distance with a sinking heart, and soon it seems to me that the Kremlin is flashing over the roofs of the houses opposite, and ruby stars are shining on the Spasskaya Tower.


    - I see! - I exclaim with joy.


    - That''s great! - Father laughs. - Who else wants to see Moscow?


    - I do! - Tanya whirls under my feet with her ears ready. - I want to go to Moscow!


    Kapitoshka


    Once my dad''s cousin Uncle Gena gave me a plastic crocodile.


    This crocodile is just like a live crocodile, its mouth opens and its paws move back and forth.


    - It is really alive! - Daddy winks at me and, after rolling up a small ball of paper, sticks it in the crocodile''s toothy mouth, says a loud "am!" and pulls the ball out from somewhere under its tail.


    I clap my hands in glee: well done, crocodile!


    But when I try to feed the toy myself, the crocodile refuses to swallow the paper.


    For some reason, it doesn''t listen to anyone but my father.


    But the celluloid frog that bathes with me in the bathtub does not swallow paper, but it can drink water and pour it through the hole between its webbed feet.


    Once someone left a toy on a hot radiator, and in the morning it was just a sticky green puddle. To console me, Dad said that the frog had turned into Kapitoshka - a living drop from my favorite cartoon. And as if to prove Dad''s words, something immediately gurgled and sang and rattled in the water pipe.


    - Do you hear that? - said my father. - Kapitoshka greets you!


    I believed it at once. And every time the pipes hummed, I ran to the bathroom to greet Kapitoshka.


    Seryozha


    Grandmother''s neighbor Rosa''s son, an electrician, died in Tagil from an electric shock.


    Rosa''s six-year-old grandson, Seryozha, was left an orphan. At a family meeting, the relatives decided not to tell him about his father''s death so as not to traumatize the child''s psyche.


    The boy was told that his father had gone on a business trip and would not return home for a long time.


    When we heard this, the guys and I were terribly indignant: how dare adults tell him this lie!


    And all would be well if Seryozha''s father had really gone on a business trip, but his son was waiting for him, and as far as I know, no one had ever returned from the other world.


    Seryozha''s father was buried in secret.


    Mother and grandmother were sure that they had managed to hide their grief from the children''s eyes, but Seryozha somehow guessed that something had happened in the family, otherwise why did everyone have such a crying face, and the smell of valerian did not leave the house? And the mirror in the hall, covered with a black cloth...


    He tried to get an answer from his relatives, but they averted their eyes.


    The silence weighed on him, so Serozha went out into the yard, and there the hard truth fell upon him.


    I remember him covering his ears with his hands and screaming:


    - I don''t believe you! No! My father is alive! He is on a business trip!


    Then Anyuta, the oldest of us, came over and hugged him:


    - Of course your father is alive. He went on a business trip to heaven and will not come back here, but one day you will go there and meet him, believe me.


    Seryozha sobbed and looked at Anyuta with tears and gratitude in his eyes. He had been waiting for these words, it was very important for him to hear them, and I think Anyuta helped him.


    Under the Slide


    Anyuta is twelve years old, she''s a girl with "oddities", a weirdo. That''s what everyone says about her.


    She talks to herself, scares us with the imminent end of the world, sings with a trembling voice about little Mary who poisoned herself because of an unhappy love - sha-lu-la-lu-la-la-la-la.


    She likes it when we call her loudly when we want to go for a walk with her: "Anyuta!"


    - I''m here! - she answers willingly. She runs out into the yard and entertains us with horror stories. Anyuta has a million of them. The scariest one is about a murdered woman buried under a wooden slide in the neighbor''s yard.


    The slide is large and hollow inside. If you push aside a sheet of plywood, you find yourself in a "shelter". During the day, it is gloomy and smells of rotten boards and urine. Glass crunches underfoot and empty bottles roll around. In the evenings, the local youth, or just riff-raff, as my grandmother Dusya calls them, gather in the "shelter" - they swear, drink port wine, play cards for money. It''s a vile place.


    Anyuta says that bandits once raped and stabbed a woman here. They buried her right here, under the slide, so no one would know.


    - You''re lying! - I can''t stand it.


    - I''m not lying, I swear! - whispers Anyuta and quickly crosses herself.


    - We should call the police, - I suggest.


    - Are you crazy?! - Anyuta is frightened. - They are bandits! If they find out, they''ll kill us.


    A doubt gnaws at me. Maybe I should call the boys, get some shovels and dig her out?


    It''s no good lying in a latrine like a dog. We should tell the adults so they can bury her ashes.


    But the boys don''t want to help me - they''re afraid of the bandits'' massacre.


    Then I run to Grandma Dusya and tell her everything.


    - Anyuta is crazy, - my grandmother laughs. - She makes up stories and you believe her.


    So Anyuta is lying and there really is no dead woman? I breathe a sigh of relief.


    But as night falls, the gnawing doubt begins to nibble at my heart again. Maybe I should go under the slide alone? But what if the ghost of the murdered woman wanders there and green lights shine? No, I don''t have the courage. Anyuta didn''t have to tell me that!


    Anyway, I didn''t go anywhere, but I didn''t forget that story either.


    How we beat up Hitler


    It happened in the early eighties.


    The director of the cultural center "October" invited us, children of the kindergarten "Solnyshko", to participate in a theatrical performance about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.


    Girls had to perform the dance of snowflakes on the stage, and boys - rabbits.


    None of us, children, of course, doubted that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was the real one from the books about the war, the one our teachers told us about.


    - She was not killed! She is here! Alive! - we whispered behind the stage, swooning with happiness.


    And suddenly, just a few feet from us, we saw... Hitler.


    He stood there in a black swastika cap, high chrome boots, Nazi uniform, stroking his black bristly mustache. We were stunned.


    Finally, the bravest of us, Seryozha Dzyuin, came to his senses and hissed with hatred:


    - Damn it! He survived too... Well, nothing, now we''ll show him. Beat him, guys!


    And we all rushed at the enemy.


    At first, "Hitler" laughingly dodged our kicks and spits, but when he realized that he could not get rid of us so easily, he ran down the corridor. We whistled and hooted after him. Dzyuin even threw a sneaker at the fugitive.


    In the evening we proudly told our parents how we had beaten the F¨¹hrer himself. But for some reason, instead of praising us, they began to laugh:


    - Poor guy, poor guy!


    By the way, the story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a tragedy in Tagil in the same years.


    In the kindergarten children played a war game. As usual, they were divided into Germans and partisans.


    The "Germans" captured a girl - "Zoya" and began to torture her. Not for fun. Seriously. And then they found a rope somewhere and hanged her. Also for real.


    In the Yuri Gagarin sanatorium, my friends and I, playing the military game "Zarnitsa", were so into the role that we did not treat our "enemies" with ceremony, but tied them to a tree and tortured them. A girl from the "German" group didn''t like the smell of flint, so when we captured her, in order to find out the enemy''s secret plans, we deliberately started to cut a spark from a stone and gave it to her to sniff.


    And the boys in our class almost set fire to a boy in the neighboring fourth grade.


    The first-grade son of Aunt Nina''s friends in Shevchenko shot his one-year-old sister at close range. He loaded a toy gun not with suction cups but with sharp pencils, put the baby against the wall and, imagining her to be a German invader, executed her. To death.


    My poor Arkady


    When I was a kid, I didn''t understand why people act in war movies. They get killed in them! Is it worth five years of studying at a film institute to be blown up by a grenade or run over by a tank? - I thought naively, sitting in front of the TV.


    No, definitely, only crazy people want to be actors!


    Nobody could convince me that everything on the screen was not real.


    My five-year-old brain just refused to believe it. Why make a movie if it wasn''t real? Who would be interested? Who would watch it?


    I remember crying all night after a movie about the Uzbek poet Hamza who was stoned to death by the Basmaches - I felt so sorry for the innocent actor.


    Then I fell in love with a Red Army soldier from a Soviet film whose title I can''t remember.


    Arkady was strong and brave, and when the Nazis took him to the gallows, my heart was ready to break. Tears flowed like a river.


    I couldn''t watch the enemies massacre the hero, so I ran out of the room.


    I thought that if I do not see the execution with my own eyes, the actor will remain alive, and just in case, I spent the whole evening writing a letter to the filmmakers, diligently scribbling on paper. I begged them not to kill poor Arkady.


    Unfortunately, the filmmakers did not heed my pleas. The next morning, as I sat down to watch the replay with a sense of accomplishment, the Nazis hanged Arkady again.


    "I will never go to the actors! - I swore. - I don''t care about fame, life is more valuable!"


    To be continued

 Chapter 22

    A heavy legacy


    Once my husband and I were talking about our parents'' destinies and how much they had in common. Then we started talking about grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And then some interesting details came up.


    On Andrei''s mother''s side, his great-grandfather joined the Bolsheviks in the revolution and went with them to expropriate a large factory owner in Ivanovo.


    The factory owner welcomed the "dear guests" with bread and salt. He served them vodka, having put poison in it beforehand. All were poisoned, except the Bolshevik great-grandfather, who, sensing something was wrong, managed to drink a pitcher of milk and did not die, but only went blind in both eyes.


    My maternal great-grandfather also took part in the expropriation in the year 1927. He was found in the morning in a ditch, badly beaten and with a broken head. He was alive, but went mad and lived only a short time after that.


    On Andrei''s father''s side, his grandfather, an infantryman, was wounded in the leg near Staraya Russa during World War II. Dirt got into the wound and gangrene set in. The 21-year-old surgeon Ilizarov cut off the wounded soldier''s limb first up to the knee and then higher, but the gangrene did not retreat.


    The doctors were sure that the soldier would die soon. And then Andrei''s grandfather has a dream: he and his comrades are swinging on a huge swing with a deep pit underneath. From time to time his buddies slip off the swing and fall into the pit. Grandfather also fell. But at the last moment he managed to hold on to a rock and climbed out. The next morning his fever broke, he had an appetite, and he recovered quickly.


    My paternal grandfather was a miner. While working, he was pulled under the conveyor belt and severely injured his arm - the tendons were torn and the bone shattered.


    The doctor, fearing gangrene, wanted to cut off his mangled hand, but my grandfather would not let him. He was treated with folk medicine for a long time, and in the end amputation was avoided and the arm healed itself.


    To continue the theme of amazing coincidences.


    Andrei''s maternal grandfather was born in Ivanovo, the city of weavers and brides. My maternal grandfather was also from Ivanovo, but only a small village in northern Udmurtia. Curiously, my grandfather''s name was Slava, like my husband''s father, and his grandfather''s name was Mikhail, like my father. Both grandfathers came to Glazov when they started to build a secret military plant there. And both, as it turned out, were recruited by the state security agencies. I can''t say anything about Andrei''s grandfather, I just don''t have enough facts, but my grandfather Slava, as I have already written, served in the Amur region during World War II, was a border guard at an outpost, fought with the Japanese, returned home only in the early fifties, and the KGB (security officers) immediately took him in hand.


    I don''t know if he could have refused to "cooperate" with them. Apparently not. But he did not want to help the Chekists. Once my grandfather got very drunk, stopped a truck and demanded that the driver take him somewhere. The driver refused. Then my grandfather pulled out a naghan and threatened him. After that, the driver reported the incident to the authorities, and my grandfather was chased out by the State Security Agency, and at the same time he was fired from the factory as an "unreliable man".


    I think my grandfather did this on purpose. He went back to his village, married my grandmother, whom he had known before the war, and became the head of the local collective farm.


    In the late 70s, my grandfather moved to Glazov with his family. He got a job again in the factory where Andrei''s grandfather had worked all the time. In those years the town was actively built and developed. And so it happened that in 1977 both our grandfathers got apartments in a new building, only Slava on the ninth floor and Mikhail on the fourth.


    I grew up in that house and I remember Andrei''s grandfather very well, he always wore a military uniform. Of course, at that time I did not know who he was, but many years later, when I looked at my husband''s family photo album, I immediately remembered him. I probably saw Andrei in the yard when I was a child (he often visited his grandfather), but who would have thought that this tall, intelligent boy with glasses would become my husband in the future?


    No passport


    It was the year 1991. My dad and I were sitting in our house at night, playing craps for slots and writing down the numbers that came up in a notebook. Whoever had the highest total won.


    Dad was as lucky as ever, in high spirits, rubbing his hands together in glee.


    But soon a shadow came over his face, he thought about something, and suddenly out of the blue he said that he wanted to become a bum.


    At that time, the word "bum" had just come into common usage and did not mean a beggar, a lowly ragamuffin, but a person "without a fixed abode" - in fact, an eternal wanderer, a citizen of the world, a vagabond, which is what my father had always dreamed of being.


    But I was a little afraid of such a wish, what if tomorrow my father would throw his backpack behind his back and disappear from home - how would my mother, Tanya and I live without him? And I began to dissuade him from this idea in every possible way. Dad waved his hand and said, "Never mind, I was just kidding".


    Years passed. The day my mother died, we couldn''t find her passport for a long time, we searched the whole house, but it was gone. The funeral home told us that if we couldn''t find it, the registry office wouldn''t give us a death certificate. So we started looking again.


    At some point, my sister noticed a rolled up carpet in the corner, stuck her hand in the hole, and to everyone''s surprise, pulled out the missing item.


    Don''t ask me how it got there, I don''t know, it wouldn''t have occurred to me to look for it there, but Tanya had a nose for such things and she helped us a lot that time.


    But when my sister was gone, I had a kind of d¨¦j¨¤ vu. Tanya''s passport was gone, too. "What, again?" - The girl from the funeral home was taken aback. "Where could it have gone?"


    If only I''d known...


    Tanya''s bag was on the table, with her phone, lipstick and keys in it. But no passport!


    My sister''s body had not yet been taken to the morgue, it was here in the room. "Tanya," I begged, "you''ve played hide and seek enough, show me where it is!"


    And then my eyes fell on the door of a secret alcove in the wall. I opened it. Inside, on the shelves, were jars of creams, jewelry, perfume, and among them, a lost document.


    Dad lost his passport right before he died.


    Maybe he put it somewhere and forgot about it, or maybe it was stolen.


    Between you and me, Dad had two passports. Several years ago, he lost this important document and got a new one to replace the lost one. But then he accidentally found an old passport among the books. After Dad died, we could not find either of them, so we had to give Dad''s pension card to the funeral home.


    Whether that helped, or the fact that the registry office was then run by a woman who knew my father well, I got the death certificate.


    But in the column "citizenship" there was a dash, which meant that without a passport my father was not recognized as a citizen of the Russian Federation. In fact, for the state he was a bum.


    I was afraid that because of this dash there might be problems with the registration of the inheritance, but everything went well.


    In a strange way, my father''s longtime dream came true. His wish was to be a bum, and he got it.


    So be careful what you wish for, or make your wishes clearer.


    The magic of numbers


    Almost all of my relatives left this world quite young. Some because of illness, others because of accidents and personal dramas.


    My grandmother Luda died at 74, just a month before her birthday. My mother at 54, my sister at 34. Strange coincidence, isn''t it? All three of them had an age difference of 20 years.


    Another oddity is the similar dates of death.


    Great-grandmother Matrena, grandmother Dusya and mother died in different months, but on the seventh day. Grandpa Slava and dad - on the ninth. Grandma Luda and Tanya were united by the number 31.


    My family usually died in the summer or spring, during or on the eve of big church holidays - Easter, Trinity, Elijah''s Day. I don''t know how to explain it.


    Besides, there was a suicide in every generation on my mother''s side.


    My grandfather Slava''s brother hanged himself, and my grandmother Luda''s brother hanged himself. My grandfather''s nephew Tolik killed himself when he was only twenty. I know that black thoughts crept into my mother''s soul, Tanya had them too, and so did her son and my young niece Lina. Sometimes I also felt the urge to kill myself.


    Something sad, a kind of longing, came into my heart. Life seemed meaningless, people stupid, their actions cruel. I felt superfluous in a world where no one understood me.


    I wanted to get rid of this weight, to end the agony, but I loved myself too much and had never gone further than fantasizing about how to do it. But my sister once cut her wrists for real.


    My mother sent her to accounting school, paid for her tuition, but Tanya failed the final exam. She came home, locked herself in the bathroom and cut her wrists with a razor.


    I don''t think she really wanted to die, she probably just wanted to scare my mother into leaving her alone. The threat worked, and the sister was indeed left alone. The incident was forgotten.


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    Iron Hook


    Many years later, my Aunt Nina told me that Tanya had almost committed suicide at the age of 24. My parents, as usual, hid everything from me (as I once did from them). My sister never talked to me about it either. Maybe she was ashamed, or maybe she didn''t want to remember. The reason for such a rash act, as far as I could tell, was Tanya''s second husband. He left her for another woman, and before that he insisted that Tanya have an abortion. But who knows what really happened that fateful day?


    As soon as Tanya was alone in the house, she tied a rope to the chandelier and put a noose around her neck.


    I know the rest of the story only from Aunt Nina''s words. At the very moment my sister stepped into the void, my aunt was on her way to the dacha, and suddenly a picture flashed before her eyes: a noose with Tanya dead in it.


    Before my aunt realized it, the "mirage" disappeared.


    I think it really was like that, except for one thing. The iron hook to which the chandelier was attached broke, and Tanya collapsed to the floor before the knot in her neck had time to tighten.


    Later I had seen the iron fragment in the ceiling, as well as the bent gardine, but I never learned the reason for the breakdown.


    As for Aunt Nina, she insisted that sooner or later Tanya would finish what she had started.


    I thought so myself, but we were wrong. My sister died in a different way. But I''ll tell you about that later.


    Not a moment of peace


    When I was thirteen years old, I had a dream that my mother was gone.


    The vision was so vivid that I woke up with a pounding heart and tears, and for a long time I could not come to my senses. When I finally realized it was just a dream and my mother was sleeping peacefully in the next room, I vowed to do everything in my power to keep my family alive as long as possible.


    Mom, Dad, Tanya, the dog Lala - I couldn''t imagine life without them.


    It was like an obsession. I was afraid to take my eyes off them for even a moment.


    It seemed that if I did, if I took my mind off them, if I relaxed, something bad would happen to them - a car would hit them, a brick would fall on their heads, or some other misfortune would happen.


    When my mom or dad would be late for work, I wouldn''t be able to rest from worrying, I''d look at the clock, I''d look out the window. And I would get more and more anxious by the minute.


    I looked for the most unbelievable explanations for their tardiness. I wished that if I counted to a hundred and they didn''t come, then something bad must have happened to them.


    Usually, when I counted to ninety, my parents would come back. If they didn''t, I would make up other reasons for their delay - just to get rid of bad thoughts. I told myself that one hundred was not enough, and that I should count to three hundred, and then multiply the result by three, and again by three, and never stop, or...


    I was even afraid to think about what would happen if I didn''t.


    I can''t tell you how exhausting that was for me!


    Connected


    That''s when I decided to connect my family to me.


    I had a hunch that I had the ability to somehow "see" people, to connect with them energetically and influence them mentally.


    I felt this connection as an invisible tentacle, a bundle of filaments like electrical wires that extended from my belly near my navel.


    It sounds strange, but I could use them to feel people from head to toe, the way insects sniff each other with their antennae to determine friend or foe.


    Anyway, I pulled out my "cable" and "connected" my parents, my sister, and my beloved dog to me.


    From now on, I could keep them under my watchful control at all times.


    Even when I was in another city, I knew what was going on with my family, I could feel them with every cell. I wouldn''t say it was a pleasant feeling, but at least I knew they were alive and well (or not).


    I was willing to sacrifice myself and my energy to keep them alive because I got some semblance of peace of mind in return. I did not care what my family thought about it. I couldn''t do it any other way.


    Did my relatives have any idea that they were "connected" to me? I don''t think so.


    But I think my mother felt something like that, otherwise how could I explain that just before she died she asked me to let her go, to let her die in peace.


    At that time, I myself began to doubt whether I was doing the right thing by holding people against their will. Wasn''t I hurting them and myself?


    But it took me a long time to decide to cut the invisible cord.


    I knew my mother was dying, and I was afraid of losing her, but I also didn''t want to torture her by forcing her to live with an insidious disease inside of her.


    A premonition


    My mother died in the spring, in May.


    A week before she died, it was as if someone had grabbed me by the left subcostal region with their teeth and held me there without letting go. I even started to walk a little hunched over.


    I had to write an article for the newspaper that day.


    But before I went home from the newsroom, I decided to stop by my parents'' house. I had already put the key in the lock and grabbed the handle, but suddenly I felt nauseous and sick to my stomach. I felt as if some force was pushing me out and preventing me from entering the house.


    After standing at the door for a while, I turned to leave.


    I didn''t know that my mother was dying that very minute.


    Maybe it was fear, a premonition of trouble. Or maybe my mother didn''t want anyone to see her like this. If I had entered the house, I would have rushed to save her, to call an ambulance, but unfortunately it was useless. Nothing and no one could help her. Probably my mother knew about it and didn''t want to let me in, didn''t want to go to the hospital and didn''t want to prolong the agony. Even my father didn''t immediately notice that she was gone. He thought she''d just fallen asleep. In the morning he decided to take her blood pressure, took her hand, but it was icy, and then the truth was revealed.


    I remember being struck for the umpteenth time by the contrast between life and death.


    A dried-up corpse, bent with a hook (I couldn''t believe that this empty shell was my mother), and a riot of May green outside the window, bright flowers on the windowsill.


    My mother loved flowers, and she and my father were going to take seedlings to the dacha in the near future.


    My dad couldn''t accept that he was going to be alone forever, he just didn''t want to believe it.


    One night I went to his house. There were empty bottles in the corner, my father was sleeping drunk, and on the bed next to him was my mother''s dressing gown, as if she had''t gone anywhere, but was still with him...


    Mom''s Rose


    It is said that a person''s soul travels the earth for forty days after death, somehow letting those close to them know that it is here.


    When my mom was gone, my cousin Olga had a dream that my mom called her and said: "Girls, don''t worry, I''m fine!"


    The night before the funeral, I also had a dream about my mother. In this dream, my family and I were at home waiting for the coffin to be brought from the morgue. Suddenly, the door opened and my mom walked into the room, alive and well, followed by our dog, Lala, who had died many years before.


    Dad, Tanya and I looked at each other - what does this mean? Mom was dead, as far as we knew. But she was talking excitedly about something, as if she hadn''t noticed our confusion. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out what to do, whether to cancel the funeral or not?


    Suddenly, my mother stopped talking, stood up abruptly, said goodbye to everyone, and walked to the exit. The last thing I remember is standing at the window watching her walk slowly away, across our yard, with Lala running ahead of her, wagging her tail happily.


    After the funeral, I took my mother''s tea rose home with me.


    Although my mother loved flowers, they didn''t grow well for her.


    While she was still alive, she bought a rose from a flower shop and planted it in a small baby bucket. That green bucket with a stunted cut bush sat on her windowsill for a long time.


    In a new place, the rose immediately produced two shoots, and soon a bud appeared, followed by another. But for almost a month it was motionless, as if frozen, not blooming.


    My husband and I wondered when the flowers would appear.


    Something told me it would happen on the fortieth day. And whether you believe me or not, on that day, the rose bud that showed no sign of life the night before suddenly bloomed in the morning. It bloomed with a rich color, like a peony - very pink. And three days later the second one bloomed.


    I think it was Mom''s soul saying goodbye to us.


    Or maybe it was a sign.


    That night I had a dream: my mother came to me and said: I''m waiting for Tanya and your dad.


    I tried to convince myself that she meant her forty days, that she just wanted to see my father and my sister, so she asked them to come to her at the cemetery.


    But deep down, I knew that wasn''t what Mom meant. In fact, she was waiting for them on the other side.


    The sun and the moon were shining in the sky


    In winter, Andrei and I decided to go abroad, to the sea.


    We went to a travel agency. Usually at this time of the year there are plenty of tourist vouchers, but now - absolutely nothing suitable. Finally we chose a hotel. The manager asked what date we wanted to start our trip - the seventh or the ninth of December? We decided to fly on the seventh.


    The girl clicked the buttons and looked at the monitor, raising her eyebrows in surprise:


    - I don''t understand, a moment ago there were tickets and now there are none!


    - Well, let''s go to the ninth.


    Click, click, click. No tickets!


    We could only book tickets for the thirteenth of December. Okay, we''ll fly on the thirteenth. But an uneasy feeling crept into my soul - something was wrong.


    Shortly before, something strange happened at our home. Early in the morning, my husband and I were awakened by a loud banging noise. It was as if something heavy, like a cast-iron weight, had fallen from the mezzanine in the hallway to the floor - even the floorboards screamed.


    What could it be?


    We searched the whole apartment - nothing! Grandma Luda used to say in such cases: wait for trouble.


    Late on Monday, December 9, the phone rang and a frightened woman''s voice said that my father had had an accident.


    My first thought was that he had lost his passport. (Dad had complained that he could not find it). No big deal, he can get a new one.


    And then, like a bolt from the blue:


    - Your father had fallen to his death.


    Dad had been a tomboy since childhood, he wasn''t afraid of death at all - he''d gotten out of so many dangerous situations that he''d finally come to believe in his invulnerability.


    He boasted that he would never die.


    He was a lucky man, he had a truly beastly sense. For example, he knew when to play cards. The workers in the factory often played blackjack for money, and if Dad felt that the day was "not his", he would not sit down at the gambling table.


    But if he felt he was going to get lucky, he would, and on those days he never went home without a big win.


    Restless by nature, my father became violent as soon as he got drunk. He couldn''t sit still for a second, he was always looking for adventure. And of course he found it.


    I still don''t know what happened to him that night, what he was doing on the common balcony.


    Did he jump off by himself? Did he slip? Did someone push him?


    Every night in my dreams I''d ask him to tell me what happened. But Dad wouldn''t tell me.


    He just didn''t seem to believe he was dead. He laughed: "You''re kidding me, I''m alive.


    I will never forget how we buried him - a quiet snowy field, wooden crosses - many, many crosses, and an open coffin with carnations glazed with frost.


    And in the blue frosty sky, the sun and the moon were shining at the same time.


    A forgotten camera


    In his youth, my father had a passion for photography. Before going to the cemetery, my husband noticed an old film camera on the coffee table. Thinking that one of the guests who had come to say goodbye to my father had forgotten it, he put the camera in his pocket.


    At the cemetery, it turned out that no one had the camera. And no one had seen it on the coffee table. Where did it come from?


    Maybe it''s Dad''s joke, and he wants to take his favorite thing with him?


    We put the camera in the grave with the coffin.


    And here''s the other thing: If we had taken a trip on December 7 or 9, who would have buried Dad?


    I think the tickets disappeared for a reason.


    It was as if someone unknown, who knew everything in advance, was giving us a sign: "You can''t go, guys, it''s not time yet".


    Who came for the son?


    On the eve of my father''s death, my grandmother Dusya had a dream: the doorbell of her apartment rang. She opened the door and there was an old woman, my grandfather''s deceased aunt from the village.


    She was in a nightgown, barefoot, with disheveled hair, shivering from the cold like an aspen leaf. Grandma was stunned:


    - Who brought you so far away, undressed? Come quickly, warm yourself, I''ll give you some tea.


    But the old woman silently shook her head.


    Grandma Dusya saw that she wanted to say something to her, but she couldn''t because she couldn''t stop her teeth from chattering.


    - Oh, my God! - My grandmother threw up her hands. - At least let me bring you the shawl.


    She went to her room, and when she came back, her aunt was gone.


    When my grandmother woke up in the morning, she didn''t know if it was a dream or reality. She heard the doorbell ring. She looked through the peephole - no one. Who''s there? - she asked. No answer.


    She stepped back, but the doorbell rang again! Insistent, demanding.


    Grandma thought it was the neighborhood kids playing a joke on her. So as soon as the bell rang again, she quickly opened the door. The stairwell was empty. No stomping feet, no laughter - dead silence. She felt uneasy. First the dream, now these doorbells - something had obviously happened. But what was it? And most importantly, with whom?


    In the evening, my grandmother received a phone call telling her that her son had died.


    So that was what the dead aunt in the dream was trying to warn her about!


    To be continued

 Chapter 23

    Fatal Passion


    My father and I parted badly. After my mother died, he drank a lot.


    Dad hadn''t been a teetotaler before, but now it was as if he had gone off the rails.


    On top of that, he met a woman who had a reputation around the house that was, to put it mildly, unflattering - she drank like a fish, scandalized everyone, but at the same time was wildly successful with men.


    And not with some bitter drunkard, no - unbelievably, she managed to gain the trust of quite respectable widowers and bachelors who, after a short time of communicating with her, began to slide downhill - they drank the property, lost their jobs, got into debt.


    And after this woman took the last of their money, they died.


    Not a single man escaped this sad fate after coming in contact with this "black widow".


    Some hanged themselves, some were stabbed in a drunken brawl, others died of delirium tremens.


    When the femme fatale found out that my father had become a widower, she immediately dragged her belongings to him.


    Dad didn''t mind. He was even glad. He fulfilled her every whim, gave her all the money.


    When one of the neighbors tried to talk some sense into him, he zealously defended his girlfriend. He shouted that she was the lady of his heart, that she did not smoke, that she made him soup, and that she was a holy woman in general.


    And the fact that they both drink, so it''s their own business, they don''t drink with other people''s money, they drink with their own money.


    Of course, I didn''t like it very much, but my father didn''t care. He was enchanted with his new partner and even wanted to marry her. I found out about it by accident. The "black widow" didn''t hide the fact that she had her sights set on my father''s apartment. It was clear to everyone but Dad.


    - What are you waiting for? - the neighbors accused me. - He is going to waste everything! Do something before it''s too late.


    The zombies are among us


    What could I have done? Perhaps only those who have struggled with someone else''s alcoholism will understand. Who knows first hand what it means to deal with an alcoholic who doesn''t see himself as such. Especially when it''s someone close to you, a family member.


    How many times I begged my father to stop, to stop drinking, but it was no use!


    It was as if he was possessed by a demon. In a drunken rage, he would go crazy, not let me in the house, scream so much that he even changed his appearance. He was a different, completely different and dangerous person.


    You know, like in thrillers: when people are bitten by zombies, they keep a human form for some time, think and act seemingly sane, and you think that in front of you is your friend, father, mother, but it is not so.


    You are looking at a zombie who can jump on you and kill you at any moment.


    That''s why I never thought about living under the same roof with my father.


    He did not even want to hear about treatment, he was angry: I am perfectly well!


    The doctor at the narcological dispensary threw up his hands: it''s his right. And advised me to put pills in his food. Side effects? Not without them. So you have to be on guard all the time, preferably close by, watching him and calling an ambulance if anything happens.


    You can also wait for the delirium tremens and call the paramedics, but that probably won''t change anything. After the hospital, he may be sober for a month or two, and then he will drink again. So pills are the best option. And full control - documents, money - take everything away! - was the advice of the best drug doctor in town.


    I refused to put pills in my father''s food. But I took his passport, his savings book and his bank card.


    At that time, I had no idea of the extent of the disaster. I naively believed that I could help my father, save him, put him on the right path, even if he did not want to change.


    After all, I wanted my father to stop drinking!


    At first, this arrangement worked for both of us. We went shopping together, I bought groceries, cigarettes, cooked food, left some money for small expenses.


    But as time went on, I began to notice that my father was getting more and more moody. And when my father''s girlfriend interfered in our affairs, everything fell apart.


    Under her pressure, my father demanded his documents and the money back.


    I refused, and all hell broke loose.


    Drunk, he would come to our house in the middle of the night.


    He screamed, cursed, and banged on the door until one day Andrei threw him out.


    After my father was rebuffed, he calmed down for a while, at least the night visits to our house stopped. But he started stalking me outside the newsroom. He would come into the office and scream that it was his money, his passport, and his life, and he did not want me to interfere.


    In the end, I gave him everything just to never see or hear from him again.


    I lived peacefully for a month and a half after that. But then he showed up again, swollen, unshaven, without a penny in his pocket.


    He complained that his mistress had cheated him out of his money and gone off to some unknown place with some unknown man, and now he had no money even to buy bread.


    Dad cursed her and swore to me that he had calmed down, that he had come to his senses. Like a fool, I believed him and continued to lend him money. But every time my father received his pension, his mistress reappeared on the horizon. She repented, they reconciled, had a party, and started all over again. This went on for six months.


    Inhuman Thing


    The tension between my father and I grew. Mutual resentments and recriminations multiplied. But he was right, it really was his life, his choice, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was tired of supporting him. Tired physically and mentally. I felt like he was draining me of all my strength, my energy, my life. I couldn''t go on like this. So I gave up and cut the invisible cord. And soon my father died.


    Fortunately, he didn''t have time to get married, but he ran up a lot of debts.


    For the first few months after his death, I was terribly angry at him, and at the same time I felt infinitely sorry for him. I wanted to look him in the eye and say, "See, Dad, I was right, all she wanted from you was money". I hoped that at least after he died, he would realize that alcohol and that femme fatale had messed with his brain to the point that he lost his human form and almost turned into a demon. Or maybe the demons were actually controlling him. This often happens to people who drink.


    I remember a dream: I was visiting my dad, and he started yelling at me, hissing and spitting.


    He was angry, acting like a man possessed, and even swung a knife at me a few times.


    In this dream I was very afraid of him, I felt like a little defenseless girl. I was standing in front of him, sinking my head into my shoulders, looking at his angry face.


    But suddenly a small detail caught my attention. The teeth! They were perfectly straight and white. Dad never had teeth like that in real life.


    And something clicked in my brain. The fear disappeared. I raised my head and challenged whoever was pretending to be my father to tell him that he wasn''t my father and that I wasn''t afraid of him.


    The inhuman thing from my dream staggered back. It was clearly confused and angry that I''d somehow managed to figure out the deception. It raised its head and howled. And in that wolf''s howl, I heard such longing that I woke up.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    My father never attacked me again in my dreams, he always remained himself, but he still did not believe in his own death.


    Aunt Nina tried to assure me that my father''s soul was not at peace and that he continued to wander around the house as a restless ghost. Once she even saw him on the balcony. But in the year and a half that my husband and I lived in that apartment, I never once felt my father''s presence. I admit that Dad could have killed himself. But then he would have known, right?


    Alive


    One day I had another dream about my father.


    In this dream he was saying something, making plans for the future, that he should do this and that, go there. I replied, "Yes, of course, all this is wonderful, but you are dead".


    A grimace of pain and disbelief contorted his face. He had heard me say that sentence so many times before! But Dad didn''t mind now. He was silent for a long time, as if trying to remember something. Finally, he gathered his courage and asked, "How did this happen?


    I replied that I didn''t know, but people say he fell from the thirteenth floor.


    - Really? - asked the surprised father. - So I really died?


    The realization of his own demise shook him to the core, if not stunned him. It was obvious that Dad didn''t want to believe it and remembered absolutely nothing of what had happened to him on the night of his last "flight. And yet, I think I know what happened.


    Neighbors told me that my father was not himself that night. He had lost his passport and bank card, and he suspected that his mistress had stolen them. She had managed to subordinate him completely to herself and her will during those six months, while at the same time having an affair with a neighbor.


    This neighbor, who lived in a one-room apartment on the thirteenth floor, was a hard-drinking bachelor.


    His drinking buddies called him General, although he was not a general.


    My father was insanely jealous of his beloved and demanded an explanation.


    Rumor has it that he rang the doorbell long and persistently, behind which the lovers were hiding.


    They wouldn''t open the door. Dad got angry, worked himself up, and slowly got mad. And then, apparently, he decided to get to his rival through the common balcony - these two balconies were separated by a small brick partition. But Dad didn''t count on his strength and fell.


    Or maybe they pushed him down - unintentionally or intentionally, I don''t know.


    Either way, the "black widow" saw my father''s death. I admit that she didn''t want to kill him, but she saw everything.


    Why am I so sure?


    Last Call


    On that fateful evening, my husband and I were home alone. I was taking my evening shower.


    As we later learned, my father had been dead for about half an hour - lying at the entrance to the high-rise amid a pile of bags of construction debris. It was late, and the few passersby hurried home, ignoring the blackened figure in the darkness.


    While I was in the shower, I didn''t know any of this. The phone was silent. But as soon as I came out of the bathroom, the phone rang at the same second. It was the same one -  the "bell.


    My father''s body was discovered by the driver of our newspaper office, who had delivered the newspapers to the neighbor''s postmistress. The neighbor called the editor, the editor called someone else, and then the chain went on to our landlady. No one could explain why they didn''t call me right away, even though they all had my home phone number. I think my colleagues were afraid to tell me about my father''s death.


    Next to my father''s body, they found the keys to the apartment and a boot that had fallen off his foot when he hit the asphalt. My father''s cell phone was also there, covered in snow and blood.


    It took about two hours to inspect the scene, write a report, communicate with the police and the interrogator, bring in a forensic expert, followed by a team from the funeral home. And all the time I was holding my dad''s cell phone. It was broken, it didn''t work, and I wanted to throw it away, but for some reason I didn''t.


    I didn''t call my sister either. I didn''t want to wake her up in the middle of the night and upset her. What could she do to help?


    But it was Tanya who had the idea to take the SIM card out of the broken phone in the morning.


    When we made a printout of the calls, it turned out that the only incoming call that day was the femme fatale''s number. She called my father ten times, but judging by the length of the calls, they did not talk for long. Sometimes my father hung up right away.


    Just before my father died, she called him again. The call lasted five seconds.


    And a moment later, at 8:36 p.m., Dad was gone.


    However, the "black widow" apparently did not believe that Dad was dead and decided that he had somehow managed to survive a fall from a great height. So she kept calling his number.


    But since the cell phone was smashed, instead of calls to the phone, there were only late text messages saying that someone had called from that number.


    After the funeral, my sister called the number. She didn''t even have time to say anything before the "black widow" screamed hysterically: "Don''t call here again! Dead people don''t call!"


    And turned off the phone.


    The Black Widow


    The investigation into my father''s death went nowhere. The case was closed. They wrote it off as an accident. Daddy''s lover went to the General, and a year later, when he also went to the other world because of drunkenness, she found a new victim.


    I rarely see her alone, she is always in a hurry to go somewhere with some men.


    How strikingly the appearance of the "black widow" changes when the "donor" is not there. She dries up, looks unkempt, with a face swollen from vodka. But when the "donor" is found, the widow is unrecognizable. She, as they say, blossoms. She immediately gains weight, begins to take care of herself, puts on makeup, washes her hair, dresses decently. But her suitor turns into a wretch before her eyes. Perhaps she really is a black widow? Who knows.


    Mom''s waiting


    I have always envied people who have never lost a family member in their lives, who have never grieved, who have never had to deal with a funeral.


    As for me, I knew from an early age that I would hardly be able to avoid it and that I would definitely outlive my parents.


    But it would be good if their deaths coincided with my absence, so that I could go somewhere and when I came back it would all be over.


    I was afraid to see them in a coffin, I wanted to keep them alive in my memory.


    But I had to bury my whole family. And if I had expected the death of my father and mother, the death of my sister came as a shock to everyone. But there were some signs. Tanya told me that she often saw Mom in her dreams, coming to the window and looking at her sadly for a long time.


    The relationship between Tanya and Mom had never been very good, and my sister was frightened by these dreams.


    She tried to find out what Mom wanted from her, but she would not answer and would go away.


    In the two years that had passed since Mom''s death, Tanya had never been able to bring herself to visit her grave. Suddenly, on the eve of Elijah''s Day, she called me and suggested that we go to the cemetery together. I had no time, so I said it would be better for her to go alone. For some reason, my sister asked if there was an empty space near our parents'' graves.


    I said there might be. "Then it''s for one of us," my sister grinned. - Who do you think it''s for?" And without waiting for an answer, either joking or serious, she said: "Please let this place be for me."


    I listened to her and couldn''t get out of my mind the dream I had long ago when my mother had said: "I''m waiting for Tanya and your father." Dad was already with her. Was it Tanya''s turn?


    Many times I wanted to tell my sister about my dream, to warn her, but I couldn''t tell her directly. As for my hints: "be careful", "anything can happen", Tanya did not listen to them, she even took offense: "Are you waiting for me to die?"


    Later, Tanya''s son told me that she had gotten her papers in order anyway, settled some things that had never been settled before.


    But for some reason, my sister was sure she was going to get hit by a car.


    Coma


    It was the last day of summer. I was at home writing an article for the newspaper when my cell phone rang. It was Tanya''s husband, Sergei:


    - Tanya has died," he said worriedly. - I came home from work and she was lying on the floor. Already cold.


    The blood started pounding in my temples: it can''t be! There must be some mistake! I rushed to her house in a taxi, I could not believe that my sister was gone, I hoped that she was still alive.


    But Sergei was right. The doctor pronounced her dead from liver failure.


    Tanya had fallen into a coma before, but luckily she had always been rescued.


    This time there was no one around to help her, or at least to call an ambulance.


    There was a bag of clothes on the floor near the couch-a pair of jeans, a short t-shirt, shorts-all new, bought a few hours earlier at the mall, where my sister had spent her last hours with her friends. The girls drank beer, had fun, and then decided to go to a nightclub. In the end, they didn''t go, they went home, but as the friends remembered, Tanya felt great and wasn''t going to die. That''s why her sudden death came as a shock to everyone.


    My sister died of the same disease as my mother. Their fates are very similar.


    Judge for yourself: my mother met my father at a dance when she was seventeen, and my sister met the future father of her child at a disco when she was seventeen.


    Even my dad and Tanya''s first husband were born on the same day - September 28th!


    Both Mom and Tanya worked in the same factory, in the same chemical production.


    Mom died a few months before her 55th birthday, and Tanya died just before her 35th birthday. And the most inexplicable thing is that their husbands died the same way, within a year of their wives'' deaths. Tanya''s last husband repeated my father''s fate - he fell from a height. I believe that such coincidences are not coincidental.


    Cat and mouse game


    When my mother died and my father went all out, at first I tried to fight for him. But I soon realized that it was an unequal battle and all my efforts were in vain.


    My father told me - in a feverish delirium he had a vision: he fell into a snow well and tried desperately to get out, but only sank deeper and deeper into the abyss.


    - Do you know what that means? - I asked. - Death is following you.


    - That''s none of your business! - Dad shouted. - What is all that cackling for?


    All my doubts about whether to keep meddling in Dad''s life or to leave before he dragged me down with him vanished when I got the sign.


    In the center of town, along the riverbank, the wind chased a dry leaf down an alley. But upon closer inspection, it turned out to be... a mouse being chased by a cat.


    The mouse acted strangely. Instead of fleeing into the bushes, which were only a short distance away, it scurried along the sidewalk. The predator sat nearby and just watched.


    From time to time, he would make short but precise leaps, catch up with the mouse, pin it to the ground, and, with a slight strangulation, push it under him with his paw.


    The game of cat and mouse clearly amused the cat.


    I felt sorry for the poor rodent. It seemed to me an innocent victim whose fate I should have interfered with. So I rushed to the mouse''s aid. I blocked its path as it ran toward the cat, pushed it aside, drove it into the grass, but to no avail.


    The mouse ran back with manic persistence.


    As I ran back and forth with him, the cat watched us calmly, almost indifferently. He seemed to have no doubt that the mouse would not escape.


    And the silly little mouse seemed eager to get into the cat''s paws. And it succeeded: it rolled right up to the cat. He grabbed it with his teeth and dragged it into the bushes.


    To be continued

 Chapter 24

    Get to the root!


    What happened to my family? What led to such a sad end? - I keep asking myself this question. It is important for me to understand the causes.


    And here I see a dream: I come to my sister''s grave and there is a weed growing - a small yellow flower like a rapeseed. I want to pull it out, but the flower has an unusually strong stem that is rooted deep in the ground. Finally, with great effort, I pulled it out.


    Then I took a shovel and went to my great-grandmother Matrena''s grave, which was also overgrown with weeds. I started digging and then I noticed Grandma Luda standing next to me.


    - Don''t do that, - she said sternly.


    I didn''t listen, but the deeper I dug into the earth, the more I realized that it was useless work-mighty, branching roots that intertwined like a spider''s web, entangling the grave from top to bottom-even sprouting through my great-grandmother''s rotting coffin.


    And when I pulled harder, it crumbled to ash, sending up a thick cloud of dust.


    I coughed and opened my eyes. My grandmother was right: there is no need to dig so deep. It is not for nothing that people say: sow a thought - reap an action, sow an action - reap a habit, sow a habit - reap a character, sow a character - reap a destiny.


    In the grand scheme of things, none of us is unique, we are the amalgamation of many generations, which means that you only have to look at yourself in the mirror to see your whole family up to the seventh generation.


    Triangle


    When I was four years old, my parents gave me to the folk orchestra of the Children''s House of Culture.


    The classes for young musicians were in full swing, and I joined an already established group. I didn''t know how to play, but somehow I thought that the teacher would sit me down at the piano, hand me a pipe or a drum, and I would play so casually and easily that - wow!


    Only it turned out that all the major musical instruments had long since been taken. All that was left were maracas - big wooden rattles, a ratchet, and a musical metal triangle. I was supposed to play them.


    This state of affairs did not suit me. You stand somewhere on the edge of the orchestra, banging your triangle while all the glory goes to the other guys.


    My patience lasted a week, and then I announced that I wasn''t going to go to the orchestra anymore.


    My parents relented - if you don''t want to, that''s your right. But Grandma Luda was so eager to see her granddaughter on stage, even if not with a harmonium but with a piece of iron in her hands, that she started to play a trick. She began to describe how one day our orchestra would go on tour to Moscow - "straight to the Kremlin, to the old man Chernenko - a general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, how he would sit me on his lap and ask me to play "Evening Bell". And then the two of us could be on television all over the country.


    Of course, I really want to be on television, but I don''t know old Chernenko. What the hell do I need him for when I have my own old man - my grandfather. Actually, I have two.


    And no matter what my grandmother says, a triangle is not an accordion or even a drum.


    I left the orchestra.


    Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la


    Before I started school, my mother decided to enroll me in a special music class.


    The audition took place in the club "Rovesnik" ("Peer"), where two stern, perfumed and pomaded ladies sat at the piano. One was writing in a notebook, the other was tapping rhythms on the piano lid with the palm of her hand, and I had to repeat after her.


    My musical ear was fine, but when I learned that I would have to learn solfeggio in addition to the usual school lessons, I refused to go to a special class.


    However, it was not possible to avoid musical education altogether. According to the headmaster''s order, all girls from the elementary school had to join the school choir - it was compulsory.


    I loved children''s songs - "The Blue Coach", "Antoshka", "Let pedestrians run oddly on the street by the puddles", but from the music room, where the choir was practicing, there always came something pitiful and sad, like from the church porch. Such music made me want to hang myself!


    Besides, I did not like to be in the company of composers after class, with their forlorn faces looking at us from the walls. I found the portrait of an old man named Kabalevsky particularly unpleasant. The others in wigs and coats were no better. Boredom!


    Whenever the choir singers began the song by singing do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do-o in their thin voices, I would almost choke on my laughter. What does a seed-o-o mean? Beans or peas? But no one is laughing but me. Okay. I squint my eyes and lift the tip of my nose with my finger, making a pig. I even grunt a little, but try not to let the teacher hear. The girls look at me curiously and giggle into their fists. In a minute, the laughter in the class is unimaginable, the singing is over. The teacher is furious.


    I was thrown out of the choir in disgrace.


    Boycott


    In the Yuri Gagarin sanatorium in the Urals, I asked to join the choir myself.


    Music was taught by a red-haired woman with such convex "minus" glasses that her eyes looked huge behind them, as if they were painted on.


    I don''t remember her name, I think it was Ludmila or Lyubov, and her surname was Sadchikova.


    During the lessons the children and I sang songs to the accordion - about Murlyka the cat and the sheep whose tail fell off. The chorus was especially good: eh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!


    On May 9 our choir had to go to the Distant Dacha, a small village near the sanatorium, for a concert. We spent all the days learning songs: "Victory Day" and "May Waltz". I worked my ass off - I wanted so much that the teacher noticed me, praised me, picked me out of the crowd. I spun around, pushed my friends, sang as hard as I could. I got attention, but not in the way I had dreamed.


    Painfully wrinkled, the teacher puts the accordion aside. She asks:


    - Don''t shout like that. Sing softer. Follow the example of Seryozha and Lena.


    I sniff my nose. Now I''ll sing the loudest on purpose.


    - Get out of here! - the teacher icily orders me after the 100th warning.


    Oh, really? I call her a fool with glasses and run out into the hallway, slamming the door behind me.


    In the evening, the girls demand that I go to the teacher and apologize.


    No way! I can''t do it. Pride gets in the way. And resentment. What should I apologize for, being kicked out of the choir? For not appreciating my hard work? No way! I''m not going anywhere!


    Somewhere in the depths of my soul there is still the hope that the music teacher herself will come to me to find out why I did this. But I don''t think she will. Why should she?


    The teacher did not come, of course. She stopped noticing me at all.


    Unable and incapable of resolving the conflict, I decide to turn it into a joke.


    During the street rehearsals, I sneak up on the choir and, hiding behind the guys'' backs, I meow, howl, and bark like a dog. I act like a complete idiot, and it only makes the situation worse. Everyone hisses at me, gets angry with me, chases me away. But I stubbornly go on fooling around. I feel ashamed and disgusted, but I can''t stop. All I want is to be accepted back into their society. Instead, the choir members boycott me. Needless to say, the choir left for the Distant Dacha without me.


    Stealing from the Museum


    My needlework friends persuaded me to take a class on how to sew stuffed toys.


    But I didn''t stay long. I soon got bored with sewing furry hares and hedgehogs and enrolled in the "Young Leninist" Museum of the City Pioneers'' Club. I organized museum exhibitions, led excursions, told stories about heroic pioneers and the Leningrad blockade. Day after day the same. I was bored to death!


    The only thing that kept me from leaving the museum was the fact that at the end of the school year the best Leninists were rewarded with a trip to the Artek pioneer camp.


    I secretly hoped I would get that trip, but the museum management decided otherwise.


    I realized that I couldn''t stand another year here, even for Artek''s sake, so I left.


    But there was another reason why I left the museum - I stole two exhibits from there.


    They had nothing to do with Lenin or history, but with the memory of an old friend of our museum leader.


    Apparently this friend was some kind of inventor, and with his own hands he made a battery-operated box in which a nightingale sang. If you turn the wheel to the right, the bird sings softly, but if you turn it to the left, it sings louder. A fascinating thing!


    The box was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it was easy for me to take it out from under the glass, put it in my pocket, and take it home. I lied to my parents and told them that the guys from the engineering club had thrown it in the trash and that I had picked it up.


    Of course, the museum noticed the disappearance of the singing box.


    Our leader gathered us together and said that something was missing, but she did not specify what it was and expressed the hope that the missing thing would be in its place soon.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    She looked at all of us intently.


    I was afraid that I would blush and give myself away, so I began frantically rubbing my face and ears with my palms, saying that it was hot here. But before I went home, I stole something else.


    It looked like a radio receiver with a surface of organilite glass divided into small squares. It had two buttons on the sides and a speed control that activated the light.


    The thing is, there was a little light bulb under each square, press one button - the lighting ran forward, press another - it froze. Cool!


    I don''t know why I needed this item, but my dad loved it at first sight. He immediately improved it - he removed the screen and painted squares on it with colored oil paints at equal intervals, thus turning it into a fascinating game.


    Now it was necessary to stop the light not just anywhere, but on red, blue, yellow or green color, and to do it with speed, and the faster, the more fun.


    I did not want to return the stolen goods to the museum, but I was ashamed in front of our leader, so I said goodbye to "Young Leninist".


    My birthday was approaching, I was ten years old, and the girls with whom we went to the museum together came to visit me. My father decided to show them a game with lights and a box with a singing "nightingale". Oh, how I was frightened then, the girls had seen them before and of course they could recognize them.


    I rushed to my room and hid the toys in my school bag and told my father that I hadn''t found them. And in general, from that day on, I felt a kind of coolness towards them, they even began to weigh on me - what''s the use if you can''t share your joy with anyone, but I couldn''t go to the museum and recognize myself as a thief either. I''m not like that. I''m a good girl!


    Ice Cream


    Actually, I''ve stolen before. Once the boys and I decided to go to the grocery store on Pervomayskaya Street and steal a cone. Looking around, I took an ice cream from the refrigerator and discreetly slipped it into my sleeve. But that was half the job. Now I had to get past the checker at the entrance, who watched the customers carefully (it was a self-service store) and could ask me to show my pockets and sleeves if anything was wrong. I made an innocent face, and although my heart was pounding like crazy, I made it safely past the checker.


    But one of the boys who was with us was caught. His crime was then discussed at a school assembly, and the boy, I think, has a file with the police.


    My classmate Ira Usacheva was also stigmatized at that school assembly. Ira was a quiet girl, but somehow she managed to steal a cake from the canteen. She was grabbed by the hand, reported to the school, and threatened with expulsion from the pioneer organization. I, like everyone else, condemned Ira, but not for stealing, but for allowing herself to be caught.


    Everything for the home, everything for the family


    As I recall now, our family''s attitude toward stealing was ambivalent.


    Children were not supposed to steal under any circumstances. If my parents found out that I had taken someone else''s things without asking, I would be punished, just as they always punished my guileless sister Tanya.


    At the same time, the adults completely overlooked the fact that they themselves were constantly violating the eighth biblical commandment, "Thou shalt not steal" - Dad, for example, could steal a newspaper from someone else''s drawer and not return it, or take a roll of thick polyethylene from work that he used to make book covers at home, or steal "nobody''s" peat from the yard for our garden seedlings.


    Grandma Luda, who once dug up a bucket of potatoes in the collective field in front of us children, used to joke that "the collective farming means ours too".


    Another day in a shop, with the skill of a magician, she stole a sash from a dress because I had lost mine.


    And it was not considered a sin because it was done "for the good of our family.


    Guided by this principle, before leaving the Yuri Gagarin sanatorium, I stole bottles of shampoo from two Latvian girls in the parallel class.


    And although there was only a little shampoo in the bottle, I was bursting with pride - at that time there was a shortage of goods in the shops, you couldn''t buy shampoo, and here is some kind of help for my family. The girls reported the loss to the teachers, and they even searched the children''s suitcases, hoping to find the thief, but I hid the stolen bottles so cleverly that they were not found.


    I don''t remember what I said at home about the shampoo, but my parents believed me, or pretended to.


    Slander


    When did I realize that stealing is not good, that a thief does evil, and that innocent people suffer from his evil deeds?


    It happened when I was slandered in Tagil.


    I was studying to be a confectioner, and I and the girls were doing practical training in a canteen. Everyone there stole - from the director to the trainees.


    One day our group ordered branded confectioner''s hats from the tailor. I had a hat, why do I need another one?


    But that day, when the hats were brought in and put in the locker room, me and some other girls went down there for something. And later it turned out that one of the hats was missing, it had been stolen.


    Actually, anyone could have taken it, since there were two other groups of cooks in the locker room besides us, but for some reason, suspicion fell on me as the only one who hadn''t ordered a hat.


    I swear I didn''t take it, and I still can''t stop thinking, who was the thief?


    A similar incident occurred in my third year. I arrived at the college a day late on September 2.


    The day before, our group took a picture together, without me, of course.


    And suddenly one of the photos disappeared from the package. Who had stolen it? And again the shadow of suspicion fell on me - I could feel it in my skin.


    But why would I want a picture where I wasn''t even in it?


    As a souvenir of our group? It seemed logical. But I really hadn''t stolen it, and I felt bad for myself and for the girls who suspected me.


    Cupid


    I have loved to draw since kindergarten. At home we had paints, brushes, sketchbooks, crayons and pencils everywhere.


    I was six years old when the postman mistakenly put a magazine called "Young Artist" in Grandma Luda''s mailbox. It was thick, glossy, with drawings and reproductions of famous paintings on every page - you couldn''t take your eyes off it.


    I was not bad at drawing nature, but I was worse at drawing people and animals.


    But I could copy any drawing exactly - all I had to do was keep my eyes on it and draw blindly on the paper with a pencil.


    When I sat down at the table, I quickly sketched the Cupid from Raphael''s painting.


    - Well, how similar it looks! - Grandma clapped her hands. - Oh, you even drew him a weiner!


    I blushed and mumbled angrily:


    - It''s not me, it''s the artist.


    - You should go to art school! - Grandma''s eyes lit up.


    The praise does me good. Inspired, I copy a few more paintings - a vase of apples and a cat. But for some reason, Grandma is not impressed. She even makes some remarks to me. I get angry - what does she know! I slam the album shut.


    I don''t want to go to art school. Besides, they only accept students over the age of ten. Too bad!


    A horse of contention


    When I am sad, I like to paint landscapes - I imagine myself walking in the forest, living in a tent in the country, sitting on the bank of a river with a fishing rod.


    My favorite subject - a big cottage with a Russian stove burning. The clock on the wall is ticking, a striped cat is washing under the bench, the children are sleeping sweetly in their cribs. And if you look out the window, you can see the orchard full of apples, and a little shaggy dog wagging its tail on the porch.


    It''s a shame that in art class at school we rarely draw what we want to draw. Mostly we draw boring still lifes and geometric figures.


    The school''s art teacher, a masculine woman with a rat tail on the back of her head, acts arrogantly toward us. She casually walks along the desks and laughs condescendingly at our clumsy work. We call her "Rat Larisa".


    One day she gave me an assignment to draw a circus.


    I immediately conjured up the image of a fearless rider. The arena, the spotlights, the burning hoop-it''s nothing, it''s easy to draw. But what about the horse?


    I try to draw a dashing horse from memory, but I can''t.


    Then I resort to my favorite technique and blindly copy a horse from a book.


    In the morning, the teacher carefully examines my drawing and gives her verdict:


    - It''s not your work!


    Oh my gosh! I certainly didn''t expect that.


    I tell her I drew it myself, no one helped me.


    - Don''t lie! - Rat-Larisa angrily objects and gives me a "C" in my sketchbook.


    - It''s my drawing! - I repeat stubbornly.


    The teacher looks at me contemptuously:


    - Really? I know how to do it. You put the book against the window, pressed the sketchbook against the glass, and traced the outline with a pencil. That''s not art, that''s fake!


    - No, it wasn''t like that! - I almost scream.


    I have to prove it to her. So I grab my sketchbook, sit down at my desk and, looking at the drawing, blindly copy it.


    My tormentor looks at me in surprise. Then, with a wry grin, she corrects the "C" to an "A".


    Revenge


    The theme of the next art lesson is Zhostovo painting. These bright roses and lush bouquets folk craftsmen decorate decorative tin trays.


    First I draw the tray itself, put black paint on the paper. I have a cheap watercolor, it does not dry for a long time, I can not make the paint shiny. The teacher urges me to hurry: the bell will ring soon and I haven''t drawn anything yet.


    In a hurry, I put an ornament on a sheet of paper that hadn''t dried. The watercolor is blurred and the result is not a pattern but a kind of smudge. But what happens next is beyond my comprehension.


    The teacher takes my sketchbook and carries it to the sink in front of the whole class.


    She turns on the faucet and rinses off the failed drawing under a powerful jet of water. She throws the wet sketchbook on my desk. The class laughs. I barely hold back my tears. I want to scream that she''s a rat, that I hate her, but instead I quietly tuck the soaked sketchbook into my school bag.


    The bell rings. I run out into the hallway, shaking with silent sobs.


    Cut me, but I say no!


    In the fall, I had the misfortune to go to the hospital.


    In those years I was constantly sick with some unknown diseases - no matter how hard the doctors tried, they couldn''t make an exact diagnosis.


    September 1st was declared a "health day" in our school, which turned into a month where all students had to run cross-country in the morning.


    Classes started at 7:30, and in order to have time to run, we had to get up at half past six. Shivering and sleepy, we sluggishly ran laps down Karl-Marx-Boulevard.


    The guys on duty made sure that each pupil ran at least three laps - a total of about two kilometers. No matter if it was raining or dry.


    I hate running, especially long distances - my "breathing" is weak and my side tingles, and here it is still dark, cold and muddy. My side hurt. Overcoming the pain, I finished the cross-country, but I swore I would not run in the morning - even if you cut me!


    At home, the pain in my right side intensified, I felt like I was being pierced with an awl. I couldn''t huff or puff. My mother told me to go to bed and called an ambulance.


    The doctor who examined me suspected appendicitis, and I was taken to the hospital, to the operating room.


    On the operating table, under the blinding light of medical lamps, a young surgeon felt my abdomen with his fingers and then confirmed that the appendix was inflamed and had to be cut out.


    At these words everything inside me froze - I did not want to go under the knife!


    Fortunately, another more experienced doctor came in and felt my abdomen again and said he did not know what was wrong with me, but it was definitely not appendicitis. Maybe poisoning?


    And I was taken to the children''s infectious disease ward. They kept me overnight, did a lot of tests, and came to the conclusion that it was not poisoning. Then what was it?


    To tell you the truth, while they were taking me back and forth, the pain in my side subsided and I asked to go home. But they wouldn''t let me go.


    "Maybe something is wrong with her kidneys?" - One of the doctors suggested. "Exactly, kidneys! - agreed his colleague. - We should give her a course of intramuscular antibiotics".


    That''s how I ended up in the somatic ward.


    The secret of the locked room


    Our ward is big, for ten people. The oldest girls are fifteen, and at night they scare us with horror stories about the Red Spot, the Graveyard Master, and the Black Sheet. It''s a good thing my bed is not by the window, or I''d never get any sleep.


    At the end of the hospital corridor, directly opposite the toilet, is a locked ward. From time to time, nurses enter, holding IVs and plates of food, and carefully close the glass door behind them.


    Inside, the door is covered with a sheet, and you can''t see into the ward from the street because there are thick curtains on the windows. "What''s in there?" - The girls and I were burning with curiosity.


    Once we managed to see through the keyhole a woman''s pale leg hanging from the bed. After that we were afraid to go to the toilet alone.


    The girls who had been in the hospital for a long time assured me that in the dark ward there was a crazy mother with a freak child, also a raving lunatic. He used to scream loudly, break windows, lunge at people, and even, they said, bite the head doctor.


    After that, the nurses started tying the psycho to his bed and locking the ward.


    It was probably not true. But what kind of drama was really going on behind those closed doors?


    That remained a mystery to me.


    While I was in the hospital, it snowed and the morning school jogging was canceled.


    Although my kidneys turned out to be healthy (I think my fake illness was just that I didn''t want to run in the morning), I was sent to the Yuri Gagarin Sanatorium in the Urals in the spring.


    My district doctor reminded my mother that I often get a sore throat and have a poor appetite, so the sanatorium treatment will benefit me anyway. I didn''t mind.


    Except that I missed enrolling in art school again because of this trip.


    My mother was upset because she wanted to see her daughter at the easel. I was calm because my interest in drawing had waned considerably by then.


    To be continued

 Chapter 25

    She''s Not Interested in Anything


    Every parent hopes that their child will succeed where they failed for any number of reasons. My mother wanted to be an artist. That''s why she was so bitter when she saw the gouache drying in the jars and covered with dust squirrel brushes.


    - Why don''t you paint? - she would ask me.


    - I don''t want to.


    - What do you want to do?


    - I don''t know.


    - Look at her," my mother would complain to my father. - She''s not interested in anything!


    Mom was right and wrong. I was very quick to get excited about an idea, enthusiastic about new things, but just as quick to cool down. The one exception was reading.


    I read nonstop. Don''t touch me when I''m reading a fascinating book.


    - Go buy some bread! - Mom calls from the kitchen.


    I turn the page to get to the end of the chapter because I want to know what happens next.


    - Do I have to tell you twice?


    - Wait a minute, please! - I beg, almost pleading.


    - I told you already! Well, now!


    I''m starting to boil inside, but I hear my father standing up for me:


    - Leave her alone. She''ll finish reading and then she''ll go.


    I am grateful to my father, but my mother is getting angry. She thinks that at the first call I should drop everything and do what the adults tell me to do.


    Finally, after reading half a page, I run to the store, slamming the door loudly. And then my mother and I spend the whole evening "playing silence," sulking at each other.


    The Queen of Sports


    My father was a promising athlete, he was involved in athletics. He had many sports diplomas and awards in his youth. Short and long distance running, long jump, shot put - my father was the first in everything, he took the prize places.


    With his physical data and perfect health, he could easily become a world champion. But he didn''t. He retired from big sports. I thought he had some kind of conflict with his coach - the explosive temperament plus the monstrous ego of my father played a bad joke on him more than once. Dad can not say a word against, otherwise he will bristle like a hedgehog and immediately go into the fight. Make the mess, but how to correct the situation does not know, does not want to retreat. Too proud.


    But it turned out that the coach idolized my father, he was even willing to arrange a coaching job for him, so that my father was not taken into the army. Dad refused, he wanted to serve. And in the army, where he had never drank before, he became addicted to alcohol, and sports became secondary to him.


    My father hoped to pass on his unrealized athletic potential to his son.


    But instead of a boy, I was born. And he began to raise me Spartanly. When I was four, he bought me an aluminum hula hoop.


    But I could not twist the hula hoop by bending gracefully - the hoop would slip and clatter to the floor. Then my dad started setting it upright and holding it with his hand on top. Resting on my dad''s torso, I did somersaults on the hoop, swinging, hanging upside down.


    "Can you do that?" - Dad would lie down and demonstrate a few push-ups. I repeated. "Can you do it on your fists?" "Can you do it with claps?" "Can you do a pistol squat?"


    I can. I did pullovers, push-ups, and chin-ups on the hula hoop that served as my horizontal bar. Working out was easy for me, it was like a fun game.


    In the Track and Field building, where my father took me, everything went well at first.


    I ran fast and jumped high. I liked to win, to feel my superiority. But it became harder and harder to win.


    You could be a great sprinter, but a poor steyer, and the section was full of guys who could run long distances much better than I could. To get to their level, you had to train hard and persistently, but I was too lazy. I wanted to be like Julius Caesar: "Veni, vidi, vici." I could run 30, 60, 100 meters without any preparation, even without warming up - in one breath, to win applause, to get my diploma or prize, but where it was necessary to make extra effort, I - passed.


    Multi-kilometer runs are torture for me. As a rule, I slack off, indulge myself, shorten the laps.


    And soon the diplomas and medals go to other guys.


    I get angry - at my competitors, at my coach, at myself. I start skipping training, and then I give up completely. There''s a scandal at home. My father is disappointed, but I don''t care. Physical education is one thing, professional sports is another. I''ll never be a champion, I''m too undisciplined. Running is not my thing. And what kind of athlete am I? My legs are too short. Maybe I should take up martial arts?


    Bruce Lee


    Everyone in our yard had nicknames - Fly, Eternal, Kasya-Masya, Irka Scabby, Siskin. My name was Bruce Lee. To be honest, at that time I had no idea what it meant and why grown-up boys who strummed their guitars under my window looked at me with such admiration.


    In the 90s everyone was obsessed with martial arts and karate. That''s how I found out where the yard gang''s love for me came from.


    According to the boys, I was a copy of Bruce Lee. They saw their idol in my face, and of course they idolized that image.


    It seemed to them that if I looked like the legendary movie actor, then I also had the ability to "fight" in my blood.


    Yes, I was an athletic girl, and at my father''s suggestion I used to pound the polished armrest of a chair with the edge of my palm every day so that I could hammer nails into the board with my bare hand in front of my astonished friends. But I never really knew how to fight.


    Once at school, I had a confrontation with a guy from a parallel class.


    Bigguy (that was his name) pushed me with his shoulder during  school break and I couldn''t help myself and pushed him back. Bigguy was surprised and made an appointment for me after class because he had decided to teach me a lesson.


    The whole school gathered to watch us fight.


    Of course, I waited for the inevitable embarrassment - my opponent was twice my size and a head taller than me. But it was too late to retreat, and there was nowhere to retreat to - Bigguy stood across from me, grinning and rolling up his shirt sleeves. Unlike me, he didn''t doubt himself one bit.


    He jumped up and threw his right leg forward like in a movie, aiming right at my head. I ducked involuntarily. The foot, not hitting the obstacle, whistled past. Then the unexpected happened. Bigguy slipped and, having lost his balance, fell to the wet asphalt. The boys laughed. They thought it was some clever move on my part, some secret karate technique. Aikido.


    My opponent also did not immediately understand why he suddenly found himself in a puddle. Slowly, without taking his eyes off me, he stood up and shook off his dirty pants. He looked gloomy and did not bode well for me. The end! - I thought. But then one of the boys came over and whispered something to Bigguy. With a snarl of his teeth, Bigguy spat and walked out of the courtyard with a deadly look at me. His suite followed him.


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Later, I found out that the boy had scared the bully with my mythical martial arts skills, saying, "Don''t mess with her, or she''ll beat you up! After all, she is Bruce Lee, a karate fighter....


    So I had to sign up for the self-defense class, just in case, or what the hell - it''s time to finally live up to the movie image.


    I thought that from the very first class we would be taught self-defense techniques, all kinds of grabs, punches and throws, but instead the instructor had us running around the gym and pulling our ligaments on the mats.


    For a month, all we did was pump abs, do push-ups on our fists, and learn how to fall properly. And then they made me a real kimono.


    I twirled in front of the mirror, took a fighting stance with a menacing cry of "ki-ya!" and decided I had had enough. Why train, sweat for hours in the gym, when after the rumors of how I "beat" Bigguy, even the worst bullies in our neighborhood and those who tried to avoid me.


    Two of a kind


    I can''t help myself. I take on one thing or another with passion, but the result of my flailing is always the same - the fire goes out and I give up the tiresome occupation.


    It''s the same with people. I have almost no friends. I do not know how to behave with them, what to talk about, I quickly get bored with them. What is interesting for them rarely resonates in my soul, and what I like is not always understandable to others. In this I am like my parents, especially my dad. Mom says that he and I are two of a kind.


    My father was an eager man, always inventing, trying something new, looking for things. He collected books, records, badges, figurines of bears (his name was Misha - Bear in English). He subscribed to many newspapers and magazines, cut out articles he liked and put them neatly in folders. He copied Vladimir Vysotsky''s poems into a notebook, mended shoes, wove macram¨¦, knitted.


    He built a three-story house in our dacha with his own hands, grew seedlings himself.


    Dad even grew lemon trees at home, which he brought from Tagil, from my grandmother Dusya. He took care of them and watered them. When there were aphids on the leaves, he carefully wiped each leaf with a soapy solution and harvested large, fragrant fruits all year round.


    Another hobby of my father''s was photography. It is said that people like him are masters of their craft.


    And it was true.


    Once my father brought back a broken clock from Tagil. It was a clock that struck hours.


    No watchmaker could fix it, but my father did. It chimed every half hour, day after day, for many years, and stopped on its own the night my father died. After that, the clock never told the right time, it would slow down, or run ahead, or suddenly start chiming randomly in the middle of the night - long, rumbling, sad. I had to get rid of it.


    In moments of enthusiasm, when things went well, Dad was happier than ever.


    But when something went wrong and his expectations were not met, when someone criticized Dad''s work, or when he himself lost interest or confidence in himself, in his abilities - everything went downhill. And he knew only one cure for stress - alcohol.


    Once, in the early nineties, my father brought home a pile of typewritten pages - a copy of Lazarev''s book "Diagnosis of Karma".


    I swallowed it in one sitting. The book amazed and frightened me: how frightening it is to live! I wanted to read something else on this subject. The society of "Rerikhs" was gaining popularity in the city.


    So we went to their meeting with my father and his colleague Tatiana, who, seeing my interest in esotericism, filled my father with relevant clippings from magazines and newspapers.


    There were many people in the hall, mostly intellectuals and youth seekers.


    Cosmic music was playing, the lecturer was talking about Agni Yoga and the laws of karma.


    I was fascinated by the teachings. Unlike my father, who fell asleep on the very first day, I started attending the "Living Ethics" meetings regularly. I memorized the lectures, wrote them down, and then came home and told my father, who listened to me very attentively.


    Tatiana, the same colleague who gave me esoteric readings, whispered in confidence that my father found me an interesting conversationalist. It was as if he had confessed to her that I was the only person in the family with whom he could talk about "such things" and vent his feelings. I was so happy to hear that!


    Honor your father


    Daddy knows how to handle children. He may not have been a very good husband, but I could hardly imagine a better father for me. Daddy devoted all his free time to me: he played games with me, read me fairy tales, and taught me songs and poems. But in return, he demanded the same love and devotion from me. As soon as my father doubted me, suspected that I was acting in concert with my mother, he would sneer contemptuously: "Oh, you! Betrayer Pavlik Morozov!"


    - Dad, read me about Koska the rabbit,'' I ask, holding out a book with my favorite fairy tale.


    - You better honor your father! - Dad answers vaguely.


    - What can I do to honor you? - I laugh. - I have nothing.


    - You would just pick up a dictionary and find out what it means.


    I could read (Dad taught me when I was three and a half), so I take the thick dictionary off the shelf and read: to honor - to respect, to obey elders.


    - Now do you understand? - Dad hums contentedly. - So where''s your book? Give it here.


    Rubik''s Cube


    In times of total shortage in our country, my father somehow managed to get his hands on a Rubik''s Cube, and a nightmare began in our house.


    Dad spent days puzzling over it. He turned it this way and that, puffed and panted, smoked nervously in the toilet, but he could not solve it.


    I, after turning the puzzle in my hands, came to the conclusion that it made no sense at all.


    - It''s impossible to solve a Rubik''s Cube! - I declared, which made my father furious.


    - No, it is possible! - he shouted. - And I''ll prove it! I''ll do it!


    I watched my father''s complicated manipulations over my shoulder, trying to find some logic in his actions. But in my opinion, there wasn''t any, and there couldn''t be any.


    My father would leave the unsolved cube on the table at night so that he could take it to work in the morning and continue. And so, to see if my father really understood what he was doing or was just pretending to be clever, I secretly began peeling off the colored squares every night and gluing them together at random.


    I don''t know how my dad didn''t go crazy. Imagine going to bed with one combination in your mind and waking up with a completely different cube. My dad even lost weight:


    - What the hell is going on?


    After a month I couldn''t take it anymore and told him everything. It was a big scandal!


    But after my heartfelt confession, my father kept a special notebook in which he wrote down all his steps. And later he brought home a bad photocopy of "Science and Life" magazine with clues. I think the day Dad finally solved the intricate puzzle, he was the happiest man in the world. He''d finally done it, he''d beaten the Rubik''s Cube.


    Late Movie


    I''m six years old. My parents are going to see a late movie at the "Liberty" theater.


    I ask to go with them, but they won''t take me - Tanya is small, someone should sit with her. Everything inside me is boiling with resentment: Why me? You gave birth to her, you should take care of her!


    - Shut up! - threatens my mother, touching her lips with lipstick in front of the mirror.


    They put my sister to bed and punished me by putting me in the corner, where I came out as soon as the door slammed behind my parents. There''s a note on the mirror. It says in block letters, written in Dad''s hand, that I should be in bed when the big hand on the clock is at twelve and the little hand is at nine.


    No way! - I think gloatingly.


    I grabbed a pencil and scribbled on the note everything I thought about the father who had so treacherously abandoned his daughter. I wrote that I didn''t give a damn about his orders, that I wouldn''t sleep, and that I wouldn''t stand in the corner. And in general, you''re a fool, Daddy, for going to the movies without me. I''ll never forgive you!


    As a sign of protest, I decide to go outside. What''s the big deal, I''ll walk around the house once and then go back inside. No one will know anyway.


    But it was a bit scary to go out alone at such a late hour. So I woke up my sleepy little sister and dragged her out into the yard.


    Imagine my horror when I came back five minutes later, opened the door with my key, and saw the light on in the hallway. I remembered very well that I had turned it off.


    It turned out that the theater had canceled the movie.


    The horror was not even that my parents had suddenly come home, but that my father was holding a note with my cheeky scribbles on it. I was so screwed! Dad was most offended that I called him a fool. He chased me around the apartment with a belt, shouting that he would not tolerate insults from a little brat like me, who was knee-high to a grasshopper, but there - teach her father!


    As for me, I felt no guilt, and the only thing I regretted was not destroying the evidence right away. I would have torn up the note and that would have been the end of it, I wouldn''t have gotten the belt on my ass.


    I''ll be smarter next time.


    Bad Girl


    I''m not much of a conspirator.


    I wish I could trust my parents more, tell them everything that is going on in my soul, but that only causes trouble.


    I remember one incident: my mother and I were sitting at the window, I''m five years old. A group of boys, about ten or twelve years old, were racing down the street on bicycles. One of them, white-haired with a red cap, I think I recognized, and as if by chance, I said out loud:


    - I bet he is bragging to the boys about how he tricked me and Zhenya Vershinin, lied to us, and lured us to the construction site.


    - What construction site? - My mother is alarmed.


    - What were you doing there?


    - We were taking a walk," I gullibly told her. - And the white-haired guy deceived us, saying that a kitten had fallen into the pit. Zhenya and I ran to save it, and there were other guys who told us to take off our pants.


    - And did you? - Mom raised her eyebrows. - Answer me right now!


    - No, - I waved my hand nonchalantly. - I was scared, but Zhenya pushed them back and we ran away. And the guy in the cap is probably bragging now. Poor liar!


    I''m waiting for my mother to praise me, to tell me what a good job we''ve done fooling a big guys. But instead, my mother drops the chair with a clatter, pulls the belt out of her robe, and starts whipping me with it, saying through clenched teeth:


    - Shit! I''ll show you how to go to the construction site! I''ll show you! Go to bed!


    I break free and hide in fear in the bathroom. I''m sobbing: Why did she do this to me?


    To be continued

 Chapter 26

    What does a rose smell like?


    When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to factory parties.


    Literary lounges, plays, and "What? Where? When?" games. - That''s how the factory took care of the workers'' cultural leisure.


    My father usually got an invitation for two, but my mother was a homebody, so I went instead.


    - What does she understand? - My mother always scolded my father when he took me, a five-year-old girl, to the theater. - It''s late, it''s time for the child to sleep! (in our family it was strict - right after the program "Good night, children" my sister and I had to be in our beds).


    And here we are going somewhere at night with dad.


    The play was boring, so I fell asleep. I was awakened by the actor, a curly-haired, passionate young man, who snatched a paper rose from a vase and rushed into the audience:


    - Girl! - he asked everyone he could reach. - What does this beautiful rose smell like?


    The girls were embarrassed, blushed, and shyly poked their noses into the paper petals.


    - Well, it smells like, uh, fresh morning!


    - Something sweet.


    - Lollipops!


    - Spring!


    The young man smilingly held the flower up to his face, as if to make sure they were right, and moved on to the next row.


    - Man in plaid jacket, do you know what a rose smells like?


    The audience was confused. What answer is he looking for? What is he trying to accomplish? I was nervous, burning with curiosity and impatience. Finally it was my turn.


    - What does this beautiful young creature have to say? - The young man smiled.


    I inhaled loudly, wanting to fully experience the smell of spring, fresh morning and candy.


    And after inhaling, I stared at the actor, perplexed.


    - What? - he recoiled in feigned horror.


    - It smells of nothing! - I blurted out indignantly.


    The audience laughed.


    The young man raised his eyebrows and touched the flower to his lips.


    - Girl, are you sure? I think the rose smells like ... honey.


    - It''s paper! - I jumped out of my chair. - It has no smell! Dad, tell them...


    Dad smelled it and agreed with me.


    - You know, the child is right! - The actor waved his hands theatrically. - This rose really doesn''t smell of anything, because it''s lifeless!


    And the play continued according to the script.


    As for the passionate young man,


    he kept making goo-goo eyes at me, winking at me, and trying to catch my face in the frame with his thumbs and forefingers.


    - Ah, what a lovely child! - he used to exclaim. - I must paint her portrait.


    This young man made me so angry that I decided that all actors are cheats and pranksters. And the audience too! They''re adults! Why can''t they tell a living rose from a dead one? Fools!


    Traitors


    First grade. Tanya was sent to a sanatorium for children with weak lungs. My parents and I were home alone. I don''t remember exactly what happened that night. I was punished. I didn''t write the capital letters "A" and "B" correctly - I put the squiggles in the wrong place.


    So my mother got angry, tore up my notebooks, and made me rewrite the letters all night.


    Or maybe my parents were fighting and I just got caught in the middle.


    While they argue, I put on my school uniform, coat, put my books in my bag, grab my skis (the first class on the schedule is gym) and quietly leave the house. I have only one way to go - to Grandma Luda and Grandpa Slava. Clattering my skis, I climb the stairs to the eleventh floor in the dark (I''m afraid of the elevator). I ring the doorbell.


    My grandparents are surprised by their granddaughter''s late visit, but I lie convincingly that my parents know where I am. And that I was late because I met my friends in the yard, played and did not notice how dark it had become. They believe me, undress me and give me hot tea.


    Steamy from my bath, I lie on my grandmother''s feather bed with a book in my hands.


    Then the phone rings.


    My grandfather, a war veteran, has a phone, but we don''t have one at home.


    Dad calls from a pay phone. I shrank into a ball. I make signs asking my grandfather not to give me away, but of course he tells my father the truth, that I''m here and that I''m fine.


    - He''ll be right there," Grandpa hangs up and looks at me angrily. - You lied to us!


    I sob and confusedly explain that I could not help it, that it was impossible to stay at home. I beg him not to throw me out, to let me stay the night.


    My father came in. He was angry: how dare I leave home without asking!


    There was a small argument between him and my grandfather, from which I learned two things: first, I had to go home, and second, I would be beaten at home.


    From the hallway my relatives went into the kitchen.


    My grandfather and grandmother begged my father not to beat me, but he insisted - I had done something wrong and had to be punished.


    You all traitors! - I think. Without wasting a minute, I get dressed, grab my skis and briefcase, and rush out the door with my hair still wet from the bath. I waddle down the stairs.


    Dad is waiting for me in the courtyard - he heard the door slam and came down in the elevator.


    Without a word, he smokes a cigarette and walks forward, and I obediently follow, dragging my heavy skis behind me. We are both silent. I don''t remember what happened at home.


    Many years later, on the eve of September 1, my seven-year-old nephew Oleg would also run away from home because of family problems. He ran away to his own father''s parents.


    Grandfather and grandmother were so shocked by their grandson''s escape that they later did everything to ensure that the child would never return to this family, in fact, they took him away from his mother.


    They didn''t deprive her of her parental rights, but they did forbid Oleg to see her, even to visit.


    Perhaps the pressure from the grandmother and grandfather really saved Oleg from the bad influence of the street, but it eventually broke Tanya. The loss of her son robbed my sister of something more important - the meaning of life.


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Tanya would die eight years later, on that very day, August 31st.


    Not my poems


    I wrote poems as a child. Naive, silly, inept.


    Like any budding poet, I wanted recognition, but my family did not share my passion and refused to listen to my verses.


    Then I began to secretly record them on a tape recorder.


    - You''re doing that nonsense again!  - Mom was angry. - You''d better go and sweep the dust or do something around the house.


    It''s a shame when your creativity is considered nonsense. When I grow up, I''ll be like Pushkin, then you''ll know! - I thought, imagining myself a world-famous poetess.


    How can I prove to my mother that I am serious about poetry? I have to impress her, write a poem that will please my mother and change her opinion of me. But as luck would have it, the lines come out pale, sluggish. Not like my peers - young talents, two Vikas - Ivchenko and Vetrova, whose names are known throughout the Soviet Union.


    In desperation I decide to cheat. I take the book of a little-known children''s poet and copy line by line into my notebook: "Why do you need legs? To walk on the road. And hands? To put in your pants when you''re bored." After copying the whole page, I pass off these verses as my own.


    My mother looks at me in disbelief, but doesn''t say anything.


    The day after tomorrow, she proves me to be a liar - she pulls out the book I had carefully hidden under a pile of newspapers, opens it to the unhappy page, and shoves it in my face.


    My ears burn. The deception is revealed. But most horrifying of all is the sentence Mom has thrown at me:


    - I now doubt that Puppy was written by you.


    Unable to bear such a heavy accusation, I immediately burst into tears.


    "Puppy" - my only worthwhile poem. Why did she tell me such hurtful words?


    But Mom is relentless. I am a talentless person, and I must immediately get rid of the "dope" from my head, forget poems once and for all, because the use of my "scribbles" is no good anyway.


    The doorbell rang. It''s Grandma Luda. I beg my mother not to embarrass me, not to tell her anything, to keep it between us. But my mother gloated and told my grandmother everything - about the deception, about the "Puppy", about the fact that she no longer trusted me.


    Grandmother goes to the desk, takes a notebook with poems, flips through it and says:


    - Don''t scold her, Angelina, let her write.


    And she winks at me discreetly:


    - You know, I liked your "Puppy". Don''t cry, I believe you.


    Spies


    I am ten years old. My family and I are walking down the main street of Kirov.


    - Letoh vozalg tnaruatser! - I read the sign on the hotel and wink conspiratorially with my sister.


    - Vozalg si a ytic, - seven-year-old Tanya replies.


    - Sey, - I agree.


    From the outside, our dialogue looks like gibberish, nonsense, a series of empty words, but we just say the words backwards. We are playing spies.


    In school, my friends and I had our own language. I came up with a cipher of complicated squiggles, crosses, and circles that replaced the alphabet. I carefully wrote it down on a piece of paper and hid it in a secret place. Now, at the math test, I can send a strategically important message to the excellent Katya: "Let me write it off!"


    Katya turns the mysterious message in her hands, shrugs, and leans over her notebook. It''s clear that she left the decoder at home, or worse - lost it. Those scribbled papers always go somewhere! Of course, a spy should know the secret alphabet by heart, but for the sake of secrecy, it''s easier to make up a new one.


    Secret Alphabet


    During the summer vacation, my neighbor Natasha and I developed a system of conventional signs. I live on the ninth floor, Natasha is one floor up, we don''t have telephones yet, so we knock on the radiator. A knock means: "Go out on the balcony." Two knocks: "Let''s go for a walk", three - "Come over, I have no one at home". If we want to declare our love to a boy we like, we send him a note. If he''s smart, he''ll understand:


    "You want to know who I love?


    Oh, it''s too hard to guess.


    Unless you don''t look at the big letters."


    In the sixth grade I have a new game called "Greetings from Outer Space".


    In the evening I take my place at the light switch and flick it for a few minutes: "on" - "off", "on" - "off". The bulb in the room flashes brightly and then goes out. There was never a time when someone didn''t answer my calling. Sometimes the lights in several windows would flicker on and off at the same time. Of course, such flickering made no sense, but it was nice to know that you were not alone in the universe. I imagined I was being answered by aliens from distant planets.


    The window on the seventh floor of the house across the street responded most often to the beacon. Sometimes a thin figure, or rather its shadow, moved behind the curtain.


    It would be good, I thought, if it were a boy, a romantic and a fantasist like me.


    Without speaking to each other, my  vis-a-vis and I learned to understand each other without words.


    Before going to bed, I would give him a signal that meant "Bye," and my mysterious interlocutor would respond with frequent blinking, "Good night!"


    I calculated his apartment. Using a thick phone book, I found his phone number. Behind the window on the seventh floor lived someone whose last name was Filaniuk.


    And when we finally got a phone at home, I called that number many times - just to hear the voice, to make sure that this "space" friend was not a figment of my imagination. Maybe we even go to the same school. I wonder if he''s older or younger.


    Alas, the stranger from the house across the street remained a mystery to me, as elusive and unreachable as the shadow that used to flash behind the curtain at dusk.


    It was always his mother who answered the phone. She said "hello" sternly, and I didn''t have the courage to ask the boy to come to the phone, or at least to find out his name.


    As for the woman, it probably seemed to her at such moments that there was trouble on the line and blew angrily into the receiver: "Why are you always silent? Hello!" I pressed the lever and looked forward to the evening when the light in the cherished window would come on. On-off, on-off, on-off, on-off - bye!


    A few short flashes in reply: good night - that was all that connected us.


    A close-knit family


    Everyone who knows my mom and dad thinks of us as a close-knit family. They even envy us: we are always together, wherever we go - to the dacha, to visit someone, or to the forest - it is always the four of us.


    Maybe from the outside we really seem to be an ideal family. But it''s not like that, it''s not friendship or love, it''s just that we have no one else but each other.


    We are trapped in our little narrow world and try not to let anyone else in.


    My mother forbids my father to bring his buddies to our house - they can get drunk, smoke, and then she has to clean it up.


    She doesn''t welcome our friends with Tanya either, comparing them to locusts and saying we don''t have enough food for them. Every gingerbread, every candy bar counts - I''m even afraid to pour tea for my guests, because if my mother finds out, she''ll scream: "Make money first, then treat them!


    "Your mother is stingy, oh, stingy!" Grandma Dusya often said.


    Mom had almost no close friends. And with those she did have, the friendship came to nothing because of daddy''s love affairs. He is the kind of man who doesn''t miss a single skirt.


    Sometimes, during holidays or vacations - New Year''s Eve or March 8 - I would be an unwitting witness to Dad''s fleeting adulteries.


    Dad was sure that I did not suspect anything, but I saw and understood everything perfectly.


    And I suffered. I felt sorry for my deceived mother, but I couldn''t tell her, I didn''t want to upset her, we had enough other scandals and quarrels in the house.


    Live as you wish!


    Summer. I''m five years old. My mother is scrubbing the kitchen floor. She is standing on all fours, moving the wet rag back and forth. Suddenly she dropped her head on her hands and began to shake - she was crying. I ran up, fell down beside her, stroked her, tried to hug her, but my mother pushed me roughly away and hissed, hiding her crying eyes:


    - Run quickly, find your father!


    I jumped up and ran into the hall. Where to run? Where could he be?


    In my hurry, I forgot to put on my sandals, so I ran out the door in my socks.


    I run around the yard like a lost dog.


    The neighbors are laughing at me, saying that my father is adulterous again somewhere. My dad is nowhere to be found. I waddle back guiltily. To my surprise, my father is already home. He is sitting in the hallway, untying his shoes.


    - Had enough fun?! - Mom swings a rag at Dad. - You bastard! I''ve had enough of all of you! I swear I''ll poison myself, and then you can live without me as you wish.


    With these words, Mom runs into the kitchen, grabs a bottle of acetic acid from the shelf, and locks herself in the bathroom. Dad runs after her and pulls the doorknob with all his might:


    - Angelina, open up! Open up, I say, or it will get worse for you!


    Mom did not answer. I hear the water running loudly in the bathtub. Dad puts his foot on the doorjamb and breaks the door with a crack. Mom is sitting on the curb by the sink, staring defiantly into Dad''s eyes. Next to her is an unopened bottle of vinegar.


    - You fool! - Father says angrily.


    - I''ll poison myself anyway! - Mama cries defiantly. - And you can live with your lover Lyuska!


    She takes a rag and goes to mop the floor.


    Another time


    I can''t stand my mother''s tears. With childish naivety, I suggest that she find a new "daddy" for us.


    I would agree to live with her and my stepfather, but never with a stepmother!


    At the same time, I made a firm decision that I would stay with my father in the event of a divorce. He doesn''t yell at me, he''s not picky, he lets me go out late and he knows how to keep secrets. It''s easy for me with him, I can even ask my dad for money - he''s generous, he''ll never refuse.


    It''s not like that with my mom. It''s hard to find a common language with her. She can''t stand to be crossed, to have her words questioned. Any attempt by Tanya and I to play pranks on her is met with a harsh rebuke: "Shut up!", "I''m not your friend!".


    My sister and I are a little afraid of her, my mother seems to us to be an unfeeling, heartless bitch. We wish she would sometimes caress us, kiss us, hug us. But Mom is rarely tender with us. Her lips are pressed into a string, her eyebrows are knitted together, and lightning flashes in her eyes.


    I know that Mom is actually kind and vulnerable and loves us in her own way. But for some reason, she tries to hide that love. She is afraid that if she does, we will become a burden by becoming dependent on her for care, "spoil ourselves, do something we will regret later. She can''t let that happen.


    I was already an adult when my strict mother once sadly confessed:


    - I''m sorry I''ve been rude to Tanya and you sometimes. Forgive me, girls.


    It was so unexpected and so unlike my mother that my nose and eyes pinched. I wanted to hug her, to say, "Come on, Mom, what was is gone". But I held myself back. I even pulled away a little. Why all this tenderness? Another time. I have a lot of time ahead of me.


    But I haven''t. A week later, my mother died without a hug or a kiss from me.


    I''m so sorry, Mom.


    To be continued

 Chapter 27

    A Delicate Subject


    As it happened, I learned sensual physical pleasure at a very early age - at the age of four. In kindergarten, my friends Sasha Maximov and Seryozha Dzyuin and I competed in agility - who could climb the Swedish wall, jump over a tire buried in the ground, run to the fence.


    Next to our veranda there was a decorative structure in the shape of a flower - a thin metal tube, on the top of which swung a cup with bent rods - petals - yellow, blue, red, a kind of iron flower.


    We decided to climb it.


    I was the first to go up. I wrapped my legs around the "trunk" and began to climb up as if on a rope, and suddenly, almost at the top of the flower, I accidentally felt a slight tingling sensation between my legs, from which a pleasant sweetness immediately spread through my body.


    I had never experienced anything like that before, not even when I played "doctor" with the children in kindergarten - we would undress naked in a secluded corner, or just pull down our panties and shyly touch each other''s "forbidden" places.


    - Hey, why are you stuck down there? - My friends rushed me.


    But I didn''t care about them. I clung to the "trunk" with unearthly pleasure and froze. And when I rolled down, I didn''t want to do anything - neither to run nor to jump, but only to sleep, although I was never a fan of quiet hours.


    - What''s wrong with you? - The boys asked me. - Are you hurt?


    I waved them off, but they wouldn''t let up. So I had to tell them everything. The boys immediately ran to the "flower" and began to climb it one by one, panting and huffing. They came back happy and flushed. The "flower tickle" became our secret.


    Where do children come from?


    When I was in the first grade, Ira Vershinina told me the secret of the birth of children.


    - If a naked boy lies on a naked girl, they will have a child. But it is necessary that no one sees them! - Ira warned. - Otherwise it won''t work.


    I immediately understood what my friend meant. My parents often kicked me and my sister out of the room or sent us to the yard because they wanted to "lie" together.


    They didn''t have any more children, but that was probably my and Tanya''s fault, because sometimes we would peek through the door even though we couldn''t see anything definite.


    To be honest, I had little idea where babies came from. I thought they were brought by storks, or found in the cabbage, or maybe bought in the store, but I never noticed squeaky bundles there. That meant it was indeed a stork.


    And I ran to my best friend Zhenya to discuss the matter seriously. We''ve been planning to get married for a long time.


    Zhenya agreed. The only thing holding us back was our mothers. They worked the second shift and were home until noon - you couldn''t "lie" naked in front of them, could you?


    For New Year''s Eve, the housing department had built a big wooden slide on the boulevard, covered with plywood. I climbed inside, looked around, and decided it was the right place.


    But Zhenya was suddenly afraid, what if the Black Hand lived there? Besides, it''s freezing outside, maybe we should wait until summer?


    I got angry, called him a fool, and went home, proudly turning up my nose.


    But at home, after I had cooled down, I thought - maybe it''s good that our idea didn''t work out.


    What do I need a baby for? It will cry, squeak, and I have school, lessons, all sorts of other activities.


    And besides, what would my mother say if she found out about the baby? No, stork, fly away!


    Take the hose


    My classmate Katya Borisova explained to me that babies are not brought by a stork. She said that babies are taken out of the mother''s womb. But she didn''t explain how they get there and how exactly they are taken out. I didn''t ask. As for sex education, I was a very naive child, although I "tickled" myself almost every day, but without the "flower" - I used ordinary doors for that purpose.


    I will leave out the details.


    Suffice it to say that my arm muscles were unusually developed from this extracurricular "physical training".


    In the sixth grade I accidentally came across a book with pictures called "To Young Married People" by Khodakov. The pictures were interesting, but no matter how much I read the text, I could not understand what was there, where and how. Katya came to help me again.


    - What''s not clear here? - she was surprised. - You take a hose and put it in there.


    Everything was more or less clear to me with the "hose", the question was - how to put it there?


    I tried to find out with the help of a pocket mirror, but in my opinion this task was technically impossible. The thermometer or a pencil would work, but a hose?! Maybe there''s something wrong with me?


    Lie down on the battlefield


    In the summer, Katya returned from pioneer camp with a new "trick". She held up her index and middle fingers in the letter V and loudly shouted the word "sEx".


    No one in the courtyard knew what the word meant.


    - Village people! - Katya laughed at us. - Did you hear that? "Peach, peach, I''m a carrot, the docking begins"?


    We frowned in silence, really feeling like backward peasants, but Katya, one of the best pupils in our school, went on, cleverly singing new-fangled camp songs: "Lie down on the battlefield, hold on to my tits, and stick your carrot in the cave a bit!"


    And how does this mean girl know everything?! Even though I was friends with boys and didn''t know half the things Katya did. For example, condoms. What is that?


    When I saw the word "condo" in the story "Intergirl" that Katya told me to read, I was ashamed to think that this was it - it sounded similar!


    Of course, when we were kids, my sister and I would find rubbers at home, and we would vaguely guess what they were for, but the adults called these balloons something else.


    I would hardly dare say this word out loud because there was a taboo in our family against "dirty" and bad words. Motherfucker and Goddamn - that''s all Dad could afford to say in front of his daughters, and only if he accidentally hit himself on the finger with a hammer, but otherwise - no way.


    One day at the hospital, the older girls asked me if I knew how to say Pinocchio in German. I didn''t. "Pussydicklaus!" - they solemnly informed me.


    Not that I believed them, but I found the word terribly funny.


    "Ha ha, Pussydicklaus and the Golden Key!" - I laughed. And the mean girls snitched to the head nurse that I was cursing.


    "Well, repeat what you said!" - She demanded.


    She began to shame me and called my parents to teach me a lesson.


    I sniffled my nose and justified that I had never cursed in my life. And no matter how much the nurse pressed on me, no matter how much she questioned me, trying to find out what this "bad" word was, I could not repeat it, and I remained as silent as a fish until the end.


    Girls with pigtails


    When I was a kid, we often went with our parents to visit and celebrate different holidays. There were always lots of people there - mom and dad''s co-workers, friends with their kids.


    The children were given a room, a separate table was set, and we drank tea with cake, played blind man''s buff, and had fun. I and a seven-year-old neighbor boy, Andrew, were the elders in this company, the rest of us were just little ones. I was in charge, of course.


    - Let''s go to the balcony! - I command.


    We went out to the balcony, and down in the street the big pioneer girls were playing hopscotch.


    Andrew and I consulted each other and screamed:


    - Girls with pigtails and skirts and a, pair of boobs!


    Our whole company burst out laughing. We crouched down and looked through the slit to see what the pioneer girls were doing? They turned their heads to see who was teasing them. They waited a while and then started their hopscotch again.


    Andrew and I stuck our heads out and continued to tease the girls. It was fun!


    Five minutes later the bell rang in the hallway. Standing on the threshold, red as a boiled cancer, was a girl in a pioneer scarf, scolding the adults for not watching the kids.


    - You know what bad words they call us?!


    - What kind of words? - asked someone''s mother.


    The girl with the pigtail blushed even more, but she repeated our teasing. The parents didn''t know whether to cry or laugh. As for me I just wondered: How did this pioneer girl find us?


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Red Film


    In the sixth grade, Pasha Kharitonov brought a camera to a school party and started taking pictures of girls. They liked posing for him, until someone said that the camera was loaded with "red film" - there was such a scarecrow in the 90s, allegedly all those who were filmed on this "X-ray" film turned out to be naked in the pictures.


    What started here! Girls, screaming, covering their shameful places, hiding wherever they could. I was the only one who didn''t run away. I didn''t believe in red film. My father was an amateur photographer, and if miracle film really existed, he would have had it. Although...


    One day, while digging through a bag of old negatives, I came across a very curious one - a black and white Svema film, but for 12 frames instead of 36 - a thin rod, cut with scissors.


    I unrolled it, held it up to the light and marveled - the negative was of a group of men on the riverbank, and everything would be fine, but they had no clothes on - not even underwear!


    Of course, I couldn''t see the details, but the fact itself impressed me, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Where else would I have seen a naked man, and not just one, but a dozen, we had not even heard of the Internet.


    Interesting, I thought, I''ll have to print out this film when I have the chance.


    Dad had been taking pictures with a SLR camera since he was sixteen, developing the film and printing the pictures himself. He even won a photo enlarger in a lottery, which served him well for many years. He started teaching me photography when I was in the fourth grade.


    It was a Kiev SLR. But if I could more or less adjust the shutter speed and push the button, I could not insert and remove the cartridges, fiddle with the reagents, fill the tanks with film. My dad did all the dirty work for me.


    But I knew how to print pictures. And I loved it. It was a real mystery, an enchanting process that I prepared myself for well in advance.


    I used the bathroom as a darkroom by covering the windows to the kitchen and toilet with an old coat or jacket. I also always unscrewed a light bulb in the bathroom to prevent family members from accidentally turning on the light. Just in case, my father told me to hide the photo paper envelopes under the towel so they wouldn''t get spoiled by the light, because sometimes I would leave the bathroom to rest or, on the contrary, someone would come to visit me.


    My dog, Lala, was especially fond of visiting me; she would always scratch at the door, then leave a minute or two later, and so on many times during the evening.


    From the ceiling of the darkroom hung a drying film and a red lantern that filled the room with a mysterious ruby light.


    In the bathtub itself there were three stools in a row, one of which was occupied by the very photographic enlarger my father had won, and the others were occupied by tubs - cuvettes, with developer, fixer, and clean water, in which I took turns dipping the developed photographs.


    Then I would let them float in the bathtub, which was also filled to one-third with cold water, and the wet, glossy pictures would circulate like fallen leaves until morning...


    This was done to wash off all the chemicals, otherwise there would be yellow stains. About once an hour, the bathtub had to be partially emptied and refilled with fresh water, so that the printing of photos was always accompanied by a measured gurgling of water from the faucet.


    The mystery itself was this: you placed an album sheet on the enlarger''s platform, flipped a toggle switch, and the faces of your relatives and friends began to flicker in front of you as if on a screen. You select the particular frame, turn off the backlight, place the photo paper over the album sheet, and then flip the switch again. One, two, three. Done! Now grab a 9x12 white rectangle with tweezers and dip it into one cuvette, then another. Isn''t it a miracle when familiar outlines and landscapes appear before your eyes out of nowhere - a moment ago there was a blank sheet of paper and now there is a photograph. You look at it and remember the summer - dacha, fishing, cycling, swimming in the river, badminton, Tagil...


    Time flies in this fascinating activity. The clock reads five in the morning. It''s time to go to bed. During the day, the pictures have to be carefully fished out of the bathtub and dried - for this purpose I had a glosser - an electric appliance with a pair of mirrored metal plates. You put two or three photos on each of them, shirt up, then you put a newspaper on top, press it with a roller, then you remove the soaked newspaper, cover the photos with a tarpaulin, fasten it, and plug the glosser into an outlet. That''s all.


    As for the film with the naked strangers, I kept expecting to print it out. I carried my treasure in my pocket for a year, never showing it to anyone or telling anyone about it - it was my secret. I really wanted to know who and what was on it, but that''s what stopped me - because I knew very well that the film probably belonged to my father - how else could it be in his photo archive at home? They probably went to the country with a group of men, went swimming, sunbathed naked, and then decided to fool around. And am I going to stare at them? Although, maybe my dad wasn''t in these photos at all, maybe he was just taking pictures...


    Anyway, while I was wondering what to do, the film disappeared.


    I remember going to bed and hearing something fall out of my jeans pocket. I was too lazy to turn on the light and look for it, so I thought, "Oh, I''ll find it in the morning".


    But in the morning I didn''t find the film near the coat rack, but I didn''t find it in my pocket either.


    I think my dad picked it up - he was always up early for work.


    I don''t know if he guessed where it came from, but he didn''t ask me anything. I hoped he would return it to the archives, but no - I searched the bag in vain for the lost photographic treasure, the negative was gone.


    The mystery of the young Adams of the ''70s faded into oblivion.


    And you call yourself my friend?


    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the magazine "Eroticon" - with pictures of half-naked beauties - began to arrive at our house by mail. My father subscribed to it.


    There was nothing immoral in it, quite decent pictures of girls - models - they were nothing like the photocopies of pornographic playing cards that my classmates got somewhere and secretly showed each other under the desk.


    I brought the magazine to school to show the boys.


    But "Eroticon" saw my teacher and shouted that I had no shame, no conscience, that I was a moll and had probably been sneaking around in basements with boys for a long time, doing the hell with them. And in general, she was convinced that I would be the first in our 7 "b" class to get pregnant.


    Although there was no truth in the teacher''s words, they hurt me. No one ever accused me of being promiscuous. Maybe only Sasha Utkin.


    I remember that in the fourth grade we decided to go to the beach with him, but Sasha was late and I went to the river with another classmate, Dima Deina.


    Utkin was offended and in the heat of the moment called me a bitch. And he called himself my friend!


    Well, when we made up, it turned out that he had nothing against me and that he did not even understand the meaning of the swear word.


    "Oh, you went to the beach with Dima? - Sasha thought. - Well, it''s all clear with you - you''re a bitch!"


    Be yourself


    Until I was ten years old, I was quite happy with the way I looked. My appearance suited me until 1989, when I went to the Yuri Gagarin sanatorium, where I spent two months.


    Almost all the girls in our class were beautiful. From them I learned that I look different from everyone else. My legs are not very straight, my eyebrows are thicker than they should be, and there is no waist, instead I had abdominal muscles.


    "She looks like a man!" - they said about me.


    Even my breasts were wrong. I had them and the other girls didn''t. And that, too, caused envy and ridicule.


    I was embarrassed to go to the shower, and in the group photo I carefully pulled down my T-shirt with my hands, trying to hide my little girlish bulges to look like a boy.


    Yes, it''s hard to live when you''re surrounded by beauty queens. Willingly or not, you start comparing yourself to them, and if the comparison is not in your favor, all is lost!


    When I was 12-15 years old, I did a lot of things to become "normal" like "everybody else.


    I bleached my freckles with hydrogen peroxide, tied my legs together with a rope at night, thinking it would make them straighter. I also tried to straighten my naturally frizzy hair with a curling iron. I doused myself with water charged by healer Alan Chumak to grow a little.


    Coincidence or not, I grew six inches that summer.


    When no one was looking, I examined my nose in profile; it seemed too upturned, but I wanted it straight. So I kept pressing the tip of my nose with my finger and pulling it toward my chin with a drugstore rubber band. But my nose stubbornly stuck up.


    Taking my clothes off at the beach and wearing an open bathing suit was out of the question.


    I hated my body so much that I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. There was a year when I did not go to the beach at all in the summer, I did not swim, I did not even tan, I hid my figure.


    In the heat I wore pants and a shapeless hoodie. I even seriously thought about committing suicide. Why live? Who would want me so ugly?


    It''s funny to think about now, but it wasn''t funny then. And it would be nothing if no one had really looked at me. But no! The most handsome guys always fell in love with me, who was considered a "female hobgoblin", "monkey" and "tomboy" by the girls. And for some reason, there were always two of them.


    The girls resented me even more, gossiping that I knew some secret and trying to find out by any means. "Why does she have two boys and we have none?" the hotties in our class would sob.


    I wish I knew! I had no idea what attracted the guys to me. Maybe "A little donkey is good because he looks like himself", I think it was sung in a famous Soviet cartoon.


    Siskin and a Zip Gun


    I started dating boys when I was eleven because I looked older than my years and my mother was very worried about me - as if I had not done something stupid.


    She had burned her fingers in her youth and didn''t want her daughter to repeat her mistakes.


    If my mother had had her way, she would have handcuffed me to the radiator, not let me out of the house, not allowed me to make friends with all kinds of "bandits" in the yard.


    But her daughter, as if on purpose, was attracted to the "bad guys" and hooligans. In each of them I could see my father - a great backslapper, a naughty boy, in short, the soul of the company.


    In the evenings, the big guys would gather at our entrance. They would strum their guitars late into the night, and the girls and I would hang around trying to get their attention. I was crazy about a ninth-grader named Siskin. He had straight hair the color of copper, dark brown eyes, and a velvety baritone. When he sang "White Birch, I Love You" on the guitar, my heart was ready to jump out of my chest. I wish he would dedicate that song to me! But I''m nothing to Siskin, just a little girl.


    It would be two years before he noticed me. By then he''d started sniffing glue, and every time we ran into each other, I wondered where that lingering chemical smell came from.


    My mom didn''t like Siskin at first sight. She didn''t want to hear about my "unearthly love," and she cried that men like him needed only one thing from fools like me. I should know what that was.


    I covered my ears and sobbed into my pillow. In my fantasies, the wedding march was already playing, and Siskin and I were rolling a stroller with a chubby baby down the spring boulevard.


    One day Siskin invited me over to his house. His parents and younger brother were home, so I went without fear. We locked ourselves in the other room, talked, kissed.


    Then Siskin picked up his guitar and sang "White Birch," not forgetting to mention that he was dedicating it to me.


    The hands of the clock have long passed midnight, I should have been home three hours ago, but my "knight" would not let me go. To tell the truth, I was in no hurry to leave either.


    - Would you like me to show you something? - Siskin asked in a mysterious tone.


    I fidgeted uneasily on the couch - what if it was what I was thinking?


    Noticing my frightened look, Siskin grinned, got up from the couch and walked to the closet, where he pulled out a perfectly crafted zip gun.


    - A real one? - I blurted out involuntarily. - Do you have ammunition?


    - You bet! - he grinned. - I made this zip gun myself. It shoots without misfiring. I tested it!


    Siskin left me to look at the gun and walked out of the room.


    When he came back, I could smell the faint smell of acetone coming from him.


    Siskin took the zip gun, went to the window, and stood there for a long time, watching the snow fall.


    Suddenly he turned. His eyes narrowed. He slowly pointed the steel muzzle at me, cocked the trigger, and said in a strange, mocking voice:


    - What if I killed you and shot myself? You''d be mine or nobody''s. It''s my decision!


    I was flattered, of course, though I didn''t know if he was joking or serious. Is Siskin really capable of killing me? I don''t think so. But what if it''s true? And I began to swear to him fervently in love, assuring him that I needed no one but him.


    Siskin reluctantly lowered the gun and told me to go home.


    - Right now! Before I change my mind!


    I rushed to the door. "He''s crazy, he''s a toxicomaniac!" - banged around in my head.


    There was a scandal at home. The seventh-grade daughter came home in the middle of the night with a huge hickey on her neck. Mom was hysterical. She screamed and berated me, threatening to take me to the gynecologist at the women''s clinic tomorrow and to report Siskin to the police.


    I sobbed - from the fact that my dreams were crumbling, from resentment and humiliation - nothing had actually happened!


    It is not known how our "romance" would have ended, but in the spring Siskin was drafted into the army.


    To be continued

 Chapter 28

    As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb


    If I had been a little bolder and more reckless, perhaps what my mother feared would have happened to me. But the fear of punishment was so great that even years later the mere thought of an accidental pregnancy frightened me to the point of trembling.


    Once I had the courage to tell my parents that I would never have children. But for some reason my mother was not happy with this news, she decided that I was sick and began to persuade me to seek treatment to have a baby as soon as possible - "before it is too late", "from whomever".


    My mother assured me that everyone in our family had had children and there was nothing to worry about.


    But why "everyone"? Aunt Dunya, the nun, for example, didn''t have any.


    - How will you live without children? What for? - Mom was confused.


    I can understand her. She didn''t feel much affection for Tanya and me, but we gave her life some meaning. Dad saw me and my sister as his projects, into which he poured his love and his soul, and for Mom, motherhood was just a sacred duty, and parenting meant mainly control and discipline.


    Everyone in the family, including us, the dog, and my father, had to obey her unconditionally.


    Sometimes this worked with Dad, but more often it didn''t. The same was true with Lala, my sister, and me.


    But Tanya and I still managed to do a lot of things our own way, secretly, somehow, twisted, tricked.


    As the saying goes, "It is as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb," and sometimes we just put everything on the line.


    What to be?


    My mother believed that she knew best how we, her children, should live and what we should be.


    Under her pressure, Tanya enrolled in an institute she did not like, in a field of robotics that was completely uninteresting to her. And when she got her diploma, Mom arranged for her to work in the factory, in the workshop where she herself had worked all her life after school.


    Tanya did not like this factory, her ego was hurt: why is she so smart, with higher engineering education should work in the team as a simple foreman.


    - What did you want? - resented Mom.


    She accused Tanya of ungratefulness and shouted that she could not find a better job anyway. And indeed, my sister had neither the courage nor the self-confidence to look for a job she liked. Which is not surprising. When a child is indoctrinated from childhood that she is stupid, that no one needs her, and that she will never achieve anything in life because of her "bad" character, it is difficult to convince oneself otherwise.


    At first Tanya snapped: "I''m not like that!" but over the years she came to terms with it, placing all the responsibility for her misguided life on the infamous "three sixes" - the number of the beast.


    Failures in her love life eventually undermined Tanya''s faith in herself, convincing her that she was "the devil from hell" and that all her troubles were caused by a curse from her own mother, who once said that Tanya would never get along with a good man. And since that was so, the sister decided, there was nothing to be done about it, and she gave up on herself - damn it all!


    Don''t be picky!


    In the sixth grade, I, a former excellent pupil, began to study badly, I became bored. But my mother decided that my laziness was to blame and increased parental control, began to personally check my homework and school diary, forced me to memorize paragraphs. And for every bad grade, she hit me with a belt.


    It seemed to her that by beating me she could raise a good person, if not excellent, then at least good. It didn''t work. I gave up my studies completely.


    I wrote off my friends'' homework and tests. I kept two school diaries, one for my mother - with good grades that I drew myself, the other - for the teachers.


    I forged signatures on both.


    The truth was revealed in the ninth grade, when it became clear that with a C in algebra, physics, drawing and geometry I would not be accepted into the tenth grade.


    I didn''t want to stay in the hated school, I dreamed of becoming a journalist, or better - a writer, and leaving Glazov. Preferably somewhere far away. And forever.


    - Do you realize that to do that you have to study, go to an institute? - My mother brought me from the clouds to the earth. - But it''s not for your chicken brain.


    - I don''t want to study at the institute, - I grumbled. - I just want to write, that''s all.


    - You''re really going to drive me to the coffin! - My mother rolled her eyes. - We''ve never had a journalist in our family! Who needs you at the newspaper without money and connections? Be thankful if dad or I manage to get you a job in the factory, even as a cleaner.


    I didn''t want to work in a factory just because it paid well. I had a dream and my mother''s words: "Don''t be picky," "You should think about your pension," and "Dad and I will not feed you until you are old," were unpleasant, but they did not influence my decision.


    I did not want to repeat the experience of my parents, who were also sent to work in factories by their own fathers. I saw how they hated their work, those dirty workshops where they had left their health and youth.


    The beginning of the end


    So I went to my grandmother Dusya''s house in Tagil.


    I was not attracted to the profession of a confectioner, I knew for sure that it was not my thing and I would never work in public catering.


    But my cousin Lenka was studying at the same culinary college and she encouraged me to enroll, which I never regretted.


    For the first time in many years I realized that learning can be interesting.


    My mother was reluctant to let me go. She was afraid that away from her I would go completely off the rails, study badly, fuck - what else could she expect from me! My grandfather and grandmother were illiterate, there would be no one to watch over me and check my studies, and I had no self-discipline.


    I thought so myself, but suddenly I liked studying in a new place.


    We had wonderful mentors and teachers. No one pressured me, no one yelled at me, no one monitored my grades. I could finally breathe easy.


    My mother was puzzled by my excellent academic performance: a daughter learning well without supervision - how is that possible?


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    Moreover, her idea of unlimited power over me was shaken. Was I really capable of living on my own and making my own decisions?


    I think this discovery was the beginning of her untimely end.


    A cure for boredom


    I have written before that when my father was in trouble, he sought solace in the bottle.


    Sober, he was somehow embarrassed to blame his sins on others, to pick fights, to look for culprits. But once he''d had a drink, the scapegoat was quickly found - my mother.


    She was guilty of everything, and my father would vent his anger on her by waving his fists, smashing everything, breaking furniture and appliances that fell under his hot hand. He knew that when he woke up, everything would be cleaned, washed, swept, and a hot dinner would be waiting for him on the table. In short, he could do whatever he wanted and not think about anything.


    It was my mother who was always thinking - where to get money, what to feed the children, how to keep her husband in the family and at the same time protect herself from being beaten. The older my sister and I got, the more my father drank and the harder he beat my mother.


    When he was drunk, he was like a roly-poly doll. He would seem to calm down, go to bed, and in a minute he would be up, looking for something, going somewhere, demanding money, threatening to smash the apartment if my mother dared to refuse him (and he often kept his word!). On such anxious evenings it was painful to look at my mother. She could not sleep and drank Corvalolum by the tablespoonful.


    There was only one way to subdue the rowdy father - to mix sleeping pills into the vodka.


    The "diphenhydramine" operation required special care and thoroughness - that''s why my sister and I also took part in it, distracting my father while my mother shook and dissolved the pills in vodka.


    We knew that if Dad found crumbs in the bottle, it would be bad for everyone.


    At the bottom


    I remember when I was a kid, after a party the guests would go home and there would be a whole row of empty bottles in our kitchen - green, brown, white, with colorful labels. Each of these bottles had a little bit of alcohol left at the bottom.


    Tanya and I would sneak into the kitchen and drink or "taste" them.


    I didn''t like vodka - it was so bitter! Zhigulev beer the same. I hadn''t liked beer since my grandmother Luda tried to cure me of a cold by heating it in a ladle on the stove and making me swallow it like a mixture. The moonshine smelled deliciously of caramel, but as soon as a drop entered my mouth, I spat it out - too bitter!


    The port was more or less sweet. Champagne and sider were the most delicious, but the guests rarely drank them, and soon my interest in alcohol faded.


    The first time I had a glass of champagne was at the holiday table at the age of fourteen. It was New Year''s Eve, and instead of having fun, I spent the whole night suffering from colic.


    I didn''t like the state of intoxication. Usually, when I came home from the disco, I looked at myself in the mirror and did not recognize myself, I saw some mud in my eyes - and this is me? How horrible!


    My friends laughed at the disgust with which I drank vodka - small sips (it was really disgusting!). But this intolerance to alcohol saved my life more than once.


    Smoke


    In times of scarcity, wine and vodka disappeared from store shelves. Cigarettes followed. It was a hard blow for smokers - how could they live without smoking?


    My father used to buy home-grown tobacco leaves from somewhere, dry them on the stove, and make hand-rolled cigarettes from newspapers. I remember how disgusting that tobacco smelled!


    One day, my father decided to quit smoking. He bought an auto-training record and started listening to it in the evenings. One side was devoted to the fight against smoking, the other side to the fight against drinking.


    My sister and I also listened to it with my father. Tanya was seven and I was ten.


    During the session, the hypnotist used a well-rehearsed voice to suggest that vodka was poison.


    "Vodka! Vodka! Tobacco! - He repeated with disgust. - You can already feel the bitterness in your mouth!"


    Relaxing music played in the background, forest birds chirped somewhere, rain poured down.


    "Your eyelids are getting heavy, your legs are getting leaden," I heard through my slumber.


    Unfortunately, I never had the chance to listen to the whole record, I kept falling asleep unnoticed. The hypnotist was a professional and knew his job very well.


    As for my father, he always listened to both sides in good faith, but according to his confession, he wanted to smoke even more after the sessions, and he did not get rid of the bad habit.


    Tanya was not affected by the hypnotherapist''s speeches either - she had started smoking in the sixth grade. It seems that the only listener who benefited from the anti-smoking campaign was me. I''ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. The hypnotherapist must have planted it firmly in my subcortex.


    Mom is sleeping, she''s tired...


    Midlife crisis. Rarely does anyone make it through it without loss, without being broken, without losing heart.


    Your youth is over, your children are grown, family life and work don''t bring you the same joy (if they ever did), you don''t even have a favorite hobby. What is there to live for?


    I didn''t immediately realize how this happened to my mother.


    It all started innocently enough. Well, she had a drink after work - "out of tiredness", who doesn''t? She has the right to do so. Harmful chemical production - besides, doctors say that alcohol in small doses is good for the heart, removes toxins and calms the nerves.


    The daughters are already big girls, they can take care of themselves: they will cook dinner and clean the house, not without reminders of course, but still. And in general, isn''t it easier to just give up, let everything go to hell, and not have any problems?


    But my mother rarely did that - it triggered the instinct of self-preservation. She realized how it could end and kept herself under control. But her strength was already leaving her.


    And once again I failed (or didn''t want to?) to see the impending disaster. On the contrary, Tanya and I were even happy that we could finally do what we wanted - dance in the disco until dawn, change suitors like gloves, go out and drink as much as we wanted. No one would ask where we were, why we were home so late. Who would ask? Mom is sleeping, she''s tired...


    Draw Me a House


    At the end of the 80''s the movie "Friend" starring Sergei Shakurov was shown. The movie immediately became my father''s favorite. He watched it many times as if hypnotized. He even forgot to go to the toilet for a smoke.


    Probably he saw in Kolya something close, some kinship of souls, a similarity of destinies.


    I found the movie incredibly funny, almost a comedy, especially the episode when the dog called Friend threw bottles of vodka down the stairs to prevent his master Kolya from getting drunk. How I laughed! I could not imagine that one day this movie drama would become a nightmarish reality for my family. And I, like that talking Newfoundland dog, would have only one thing left - to watch with longing as my master went downhill.


    Many years later, I suddenly realized why my father loved this movie so much.


    The lyrics of the song "Draw Me a House," to which the protagonist leaves the mental hospital in the final scene, accurately reflect my father''s unruly life, conveying his heartache and metamorphosis. They seem to expose the very seal, hidden from the eyes of strangers, that uninformed people tend to call a "generic curse":


    I would, I would,


    But I''m afraid I can''t,


    I can''t find those halftones.


    Through the woods of the woods


    I gallop, I gallop on my horse,


    And in a cold sweat


    A day later I wake up from my sleep.


    Snowman


    It was 1982, I think - my mom and baby Tanya were in the hospital, and my dad and I went to visit them in the evenings. There were no cell phones then, and we were not allowed inside.


    Dad would roll a snowball and throw it through the window of the room on the second floor. For Mom, it was a conditional signal: we are here. She would come to the window and she and Dad would talk for a long time with facial expressions and gestures. Dad would draw hearts in the air and blow an air kisses to my mom. Mom would smile and do the same in return.


    And since there was no place for me in this parental dialogue, I would wave hello to my mother and hang around somewhere nearby.


    One evening I noticed that Dad and I were not alone in the hospital courtyard.


    A young woman in a ward on the first floor also had visitors-a little boy and his father. The man would knock on the window, and when his wife''s face appeared, he would put the little boy on his shoulders, and the three of them would coo sweetly about something.


    I watched them secretly, envious and terribly angry. Their family happiness seemed so real to me, not fake and contrived like ours. I wanted to be like them!


    One day, before going home, a boy made a snowman for his mother. It was obvious that the mother was pleased with her son''s gift. She smiled lovingly and pressed her palm to her heart in gratitude.


    My reaction was immediate.


    I waited for the father and son to leave, and instead of making another snowman to please my own mom, I trampled their snowman with hatred. I imagined how the woman would look out of the window in the morning and, not finding it in its place, would be upset, perhaps even crying bitterly.


    These thoughts brought a gloating smile to my lips: let her cry! She deserves it!


    I feel sorry for that little girl, who wasn''t really that bad.


    She just didn''t know what she discovered much later: you can only be truly happy if you create something of your own in this life, but never if you steal or break someone else''s.


    Thanks for reading to the end! See you soon!


    Sincerely, @natushka_555