frost adorned glasses of windows in elaborate blue colors. Winter twilight was condensed. Nastya, having breathed on glass and having had a look in the thawed circle one eye, shouted to children:
– Rolling all right!
The only beggar in the village was knocked on a gate.
Headlong, as the scared kittens, rushed children from an oven on polat, clambering on a bar, hid there in a far corner, buried the heads under pillows and sheepskin coats.
Slowly entered Rolling, having strong slammed the become covered with hoarfrost door.
It was very high growth, is thin and thin, with the little, bird’s head, closely cropped, with a dark wrinkled face almost without vegetation, with a long pointed nose, with the big bag hanging through a shoulder almost to the earth. The thin, thin legs in frozen bast shoes which are wrapped up by rags shivered. On thin shoulders the old soldier’s overcoat was wound.
– To Milostink For goodness sake! – said the Muscleman in low tones and pulled down a ripped cap from the head, being christened on icons.
Nastya went to a closet, brought a big chunk of sitnik.
– Accept For goodness sake!
Rolling crossed, lowered a piece in a bottomless lean bag and told by the sick deaf voice:
– Christ will save!
– Get warm! – compassionately the grandmother told. – To you on an oven to lie, and you go begging!
– I have nobody, all died, and the soldier, it is visible, and death does not take, it peck rolling!
– And if you on service were? long ago, tea? – slightly stammering, Yafim asked.
– Long ago! – the old soldier became straight. – At an anperator Mikolaye the First served, to will, twenty five years, and to Nona here – I go begging. There’s nothing to be done? Destiny! it peck rolling!
– What it is musclemen?
– In old times we musclemen called carrion crows… a proverb at me such: it peck rolling!
– Yes you and that on old a crow are similar!
– Tease with rolling, and also forgot a baptized name itself!
– Years as to you?
– Mnoga! it was from the youth painfully healthy, served in grenadiers… one sticks to one thousand received, and розог and I will not remember as, скрозь the system was driven and in fluent was, all was… well, pymat, in iron shackles chained and – on a mare!.
– On what mare?
– And эфто, a sudarka if on the area of a sekla a whip, so put on a mare – on a scaffold a bench such, on racks put it, hand-legged belts will bind, and the executioner – take care, to an ozhg! – as a whip vdarit, at once blood will scatter!
Rolling with a celebration quickened when shouted by a deaf voice: “take care, to an ozhg!”
– Passions каке́! – having thrown up the hands, Nastya sighed.
– Now that for service? – willingly continued Rolling. – Overindulgence one!. At the noneshny sovereign – neither you a skroz-system, nor you mares, nor fie to you – birches – anything! Strike эфто service, them peck rolling! No, they would serve about ours! Took away me vyyunoshy, held down took away, and it was turned back home by the old man, I tanned, have the live place no skin on a back, hems ache also now at night!. This – service! The marching was – extend a leg, a sock to a sock, unanimously in a frunta you stand – it is live dead, in ammunition – purity, besides articles – “on краул”, for example, it was required to take ease – and the infantry goes – the earth shivered! Э and that баять, the killer whale, is not present such service now! The First used to say the late anperator of Mikolai: kill nine, learn the tenth! Also killed! And I here strong was. Immortal to a regiment called, death was afraid of me! It was turned back home clean, there is no An – neither house nor home, either the family, or cousins-in-laws: god tidied up all! And here I live yes I live, me peck rolling, one word – immortal!.
– And in the war there were you, the grandfather?
– As! всеё transferred the Sevastopol kanpaniya! Had Georgy for bravery! what was!. sheer hell!. as to the people lay down! well, god stored me it is unknown for ча: and sekl me, and скрозь drove a system, and on a mare was, and in the war – though those scratch! Yes a tapericha all is also forgotten!
Children, slightly breathing and having hardly put out the heads from under rags, with horror listened to the terrifying story.
Frightened by rolling in the village of children, said to them that the old soldier carries away them in the bag. Nobody, except it, went with a bag behind a handout; only the priest who several times a year came from Petty-bourgeois Farms on collecting.
Rolling left. Children got down with polaty the in the regular way through a bar on the furnace – and lowered the heads through “zadoroga”.
In a log hut darkened.
The grandmother in a closet long inflated a piece of coal on a perch of the Russian furnace and, at last, lit a splinter, put it in the svetets who was above a wash-tub. The log hut was lit with the incorrect, wandering light.
The grandfather still spun a bast shoe, tapping with a shank of a kochedyk and tastefully ponyukhivy from time to time dark tobacco powder from a birch bark snuffbox, dexterously filling it on a nail of a thumb and involving one nostril a pinch. Continuing work, he quietly sang the lingering song under hum of spindles:
We will pass, brothers, lengthways down the street,
We will sing the song old,
Song old, Volga mother!
As soon as the grandfather started singing – children came to be on a floor at his legs, they began to spin something from scraps of basts too.
In the song it was told about the old man and the old woman interpreting whom from sons to hand over in soldiers:
Whether how to hand over to hand over the eldest son?
Yes the senior has small children!
Whether how to hand over to hand over the son of an average —
Yes at an average the wife is tender…
At last, decided to hand over younger:
Does it have neither wife, nor children,
And he is nepochetchik-son!
In a step to singing spindles buzzed. Through howl of a blizzard somewhere away the hand bell which was fading, again beginning to ring was heard for a long time
