The Volga woods seemed dressed in a crimson dye, gold and purple. After cleaning of bread weddings and wedding feasts were conceived.
Every day then the middle of the wide street, having stood in the row, there were a solemn rank discharged maids in fiery bright dresses, large, portly, vociferous, in short plisovy or velvet dushegreyka with assemblies behind and multi-colored buttons over them. There were they on a hen night and sang lingering wedding songs; the ringing chorus was heard on all village on four versts around.
At the end of the village, on the square about a tavern and shops, all late fall and all winter at first the least children, then teenagers, then adult guys gathered every evening and, clapping mittens, shouted:
Give give yes va-ah!
It meant the introduction in an ancient entertainment the Russian fisticuffs.
Children, then guys and when absolutely darkens fought at first there were men and even old men with gray-haired beards.
In long winter evenings above all village till midnight there was a groan from noise of fisticuffs. Since both ends of the village hundreds of fighters in sheepskin short fur coats, in fighting tawing mittens gathered.
The cult of physical force since ancient times dominated in Shackles. The fighters allocated on a fist fun became known and dear, like actors: did not interfere with it even belonging to stranny, landless people.
Fought one end of the village with other end, the dissenters making a half of the village with Orthodox Christians. On each party there were athletes famous for the almost fantastic physical force. Were such that could pull out on the coast the sunk boat with water, lift on a back a cart with hay, break horseshoes, curtail into a tubule between fingers silver pyatialtynny. The victory of this or that party depended on their duel. Leaders met ahead of all, and behind them, coming, moving back, fight was humming: booming blows, howl and shouts were heard far on the village in frosty, snow night. Rules of fight in order to avoid bloodshed were strictly followed: not to beat snouts, not to beat from a wing.
Sometimes one of the parties was much stronger weakness was driven nearly until the end of the village, but fresh forces suddenly were or there was a famous fighter the issue of the combat sharply changed.
On the wide chetyrekhverstny street of the village all winter lasted on the road which is chopped up by measured blows of hoofs like a lying ladder, the Siberian, Ural and Orenburg wagon trains with frozen fish, furs, cotton and any raw materials. These wagon trains were long, with strong packed rozvalnyam, horses strong, heavy went a measured, disputable step.
Sometimes there passed caravans of camels with heavy vyyuka between high humps: through Candala before carrying out the Siberian highway there was an animal-drawn path the main road.
For Maslenitsa all village in ten thousand inhabitants left to ride sledge. There were so many elegant sledge harnessed by exit horses in the harness rattling bells that horses moved a step, all weight from log huts of the same kind to another, in noisy, cheerful narrowness.
All riding had good horses, at many trotters or amblers. The harness rumbled with bells and kolokolets, shone copper metal plates, silver set, decorated with silk brushes.
Having reached until the end of the village, long stood a camp, having got off in the dense mass of sledge, horses, people. Songs, sounds of strings were heard, thrown by humourous catchphrases and jokes on a subject about Maslenitsa: its effigy made of sticks, the painted paper and rags was lifted over crowd as a banner or a banner.
Some storyteller-pribautchik from guys of a daring look by a loud voice for a general fun recited:
Hi, my soul,
Wide Maslenitsa!
Your paper little body,
Lips your sugar,
Speech your honey!
Eh you, Maslenitsa,
Red beauty,
Fair-haired braid!
At this time the effigy of Maslenitsa flaunted over the heads of celebrating.
All crowd sbiratsya closely to those sledge from where usually ringing, young voice of an invisible rayeshnik was carried:
Honest Maslenitsa left
On seventy seven horses
In Moscow city to feast,
From seven mountains to ride,
To be consoled in honey-home brew!
I also there was,
Medical-wine of saws,
On lips flowed, and did not get into a mouth,
Anything happened!
The poem about Maslenitsa became infinite, was supplemented with improvisations; one stopped, another picked up:
During the Maslenitsa left
With women to be played,
I salesman of seven women,
Womans ensign!
After the competitions in jokes, jokes and humourous catchphrases turned back. All continuous mass of festive sledge filled the crowded street, the rumble stood from a sled scratch, clanking of a harness, shouts, songs, laughter. Singing was heard:
Since half of the night sledge began to creak,
Kolokoltsa, bells rang out
Its last day, visited Maslenitsa Shrove Sunday the companies to each other, apologizing in free and involuntary offenses, on ancient custom bowing down zemno and three times kissing. The youth of both sexes used this custom: each guy this day could kiss with the girl in public.
Towards evening the same day took out for the effigy of Maslenitsa sat down and there solemnly burned.
In total in this village broad-shouldered, large figures of men in cloth caftans and undergarments, solid log huts with a high porch, with carved roosters on gate, stone houses of rich men, fat maids, full horses, a strong harness, fisticuffs and festive revelry said about prosperity and satiety of this rough, but strong hammered together semi-rustic, semi-kulak life of trade Volga villages.
The reason of this exclusive wealth of the state peasants of Middle Volga existed from olden days and consisted only in long-term rent of huge spaces of the state earth.
These peasants were as if small landowners-tenants or farmers as to their services there was a boundless number of the agricultural workers flowing in the summer to Middle Volga from land-poor provinces.
Left that peasants of rich villages, owing to historical accident, operated work of alien, poor peasants, having formed the populous kulak villages doing grain business.
The village of Candala was one of such numerous villages. From a distance from Volga this huge settlement with several stone houses and two tserkva was visible: old stocky, and near it new under construction on the reduced scale of the known temple in Moscow.
In Shackles almost each peasant conducted big economy on the rented state earth: the male middling person who was not considered to the rich had up to ten working horses and who is richer on sixteen and twenty. For departure not a rarity the male-kandalintsa had a trotter or an ambler. Units were one-horselovers, and absolutely poor, horseless, was almost not. On the contrary, from among the most enterprising, in time to occupy large sites of the rent earth and repeating it another, the new type of peasants the speculators and businessmen moving the capitals in tens of thousands and living in stone houses on a merchant harmony grew: the layer of the rustic bourgeoisie moved forward. Across Volga there was a gold wave much of the developing capital.
Except prosperous fists, in the village there were real rich men, large industrialists, hlebotorgovets, drovyanik, millers who were living in a merchant way and not considering themselves men, they kept it is inaccessible, looked to the city. Such is there was a merchant Zavyalov who had a steam mill, one thousand tithes of the rent earth, owning Dubrova about the village of Zaymishche and the towing steamship on Volga. He did big grain business, in Dubrov lived arrivals, it is more in summer, as at the dacha. In Shackles had the two-storeyed stone house of urban style, with the extensive yard and services enclosed as the fortress or prison, the put-off height a brick wall.
Except prosperous fists, in the village there were real rich men, large industrialists, hlebotorgovets, drovyanik, millers who were living in a merchant way and not considering themselves men, they kept it is inaccessible, looked to the city. Such is there was a merchant Zavyalov who had a steam mill, one thousand tithes of the rent earth, owning Dubrova about the village of Zaymishche and the towing steamship on Volga. He did big grain business, in Dubrov lived arrivals, it is more in summer, as at the dacha. In Shackles had the two-storeyed stone house of urban style, with the extensive yard and services enclosed as the fortress or prison, the put-off height a brick wall.
Zavyalov and several others, to him similar, more small, ordinary predators, an okhulka on a hand of not putting, climbed the capitals and kulak tenor of life so highly that did not take any part in village life. Almost none of the country population saw them, dealt with them. The rough, ignorant, grown fat men, they put on airs from kupetsky arrogance.
But there were also new natives of men representing yet not defined layer of prosperous people of the village with a bias to education: such is there was a son of the kandalinsky head who passed from split into Orthodoxy Alexey Oferov who after the death of the father, having built the tent house with an iron roof and having put on a city jacket, began to subscribe to the progressive capital newspaper and the thick magazine, did not go to church and read underground brochures, at the same time continuing fatherly business of speculation in the state earth. He was on friendly terms with brothers Listratov from Zaymishcha. The senior from them is Pavel grew rich from land lease, still the father taken, but apprehended all lines of the educated liberal probably from the younger brother Kirill who, having terminated a gymnasium, assumed to enter the university. All of them in a talk among themselves openly played the liberal, wishing moderate revolution or at least to the constitution. Nevertheless Pavel and Alexey united in business firm in the same land speculation, having accepted in a share the miller Amos Chelyak who was pleasant to them, the fist fighter, the inventor and the homebrew philosopher who and was ruined soon from unsuccessful crops.
The complete antithesis to all of them was presented by absolutely conservative person Trophîme Neoulybov, the recent poor serving as the salesman in grain business of the famous then millionaire merchant Shekhobalov on which whim it was the land tenant who grew rich on grain trade. It was the person of patriarchal way, he dealt the in an ancient way, on conscience, on the word of honor, without bills and receipts, helping those from poor people who could still, like it, get on feet, in certain cases absolutely remitted small debts with anybody he had not legal proceedings.
Trophîme was by nature goodhearted and in the real predators on the character it was no good. Small капиталишко, for nothing fallen down to it in hands, as if waited only for a case to disperse on hands or to get into more tenacious paws.
Thus, prosperous kandalinets though belonged to various dissenting rumors and sects or were pious in an orthodox way, at the same time were the richest, avaricious, hard-fisted, resourceful fists.
Orthodox Christians were in soul dissenters, differing from them only in bigger softness, dissoluteness and smaller jealousy of religion.
Their all life, customs, concepts, intellectual interests, beliefs, raskolnichestvo and sectarianism everything rotated about religion, followed from it, was imbued primitive, ceremonial religiousness which was not disturbing their aspiration to a profit at all. Inclination of some of them to education, the secular book and freethinking proceeded from questions religious too. It had the historical roots in the past when to Volga the Old Believers and sectarians driven by the government moved.
After a pagan and Pancake week gluttony and alcoholism on pure Monday from a belltower of old church densely and nourishingly lingering and sad sighs of the wordly bell calling for a prayer rushed; the village like penitential mood: all began to fast and fast, that is daily during one of weeks of a great forty-day post to go to the temple to all Lent services.
In early winter morning when in the dark sky stars still blinked, the people down the street reached for matins, then for a mass, in twilight for vespers.
The old zakoptely church with потускневшею gilding of a low iconostasis, ancient icons of the strict letter, copper banners and Saviour in a dome was filled praying in the tanned short fur coats covered by dark blue cloth, with the hair cut in a curve piece and is plentiful time for all the time of fasting saturated with cow oil.
Devoutly and long, in silence dawning on itself under the charter a sign of the cross, they bit the dust when to an ambon there was an archpriest not in the embroidered brocade cope, and in a simple cassock and a stole low, dense, with a long gray-haired tolstovolosy beard, with large lines of a stern face, with an imperious, commanding look from under gray-haired beetling brows.
In artistic sad tone he humbly pronounced fine words, stretching prone on a carpet against an imperial gate:
Spirit of despondency, lyubonachaliya and hostility not даждь ми! Grant spirit of chastity, humility and Lyubov ми, to your slave!
In dark church long in silence widely flashing hands of the dark people creating unclear to them a sign moved and again all gray мужичья weight bit the dust before icons together with the priest, having never thought to what these humble words approached furious character of the severe archpriest a little.
Svyashchenstvoval it in Shackles more than thirty years, several generations grew under his imperious look, and ever nobody heard from it the tender word. From the first day of the service he enjoined to call himself tyatenky, thinking to be a father of the people. All were afraid of it and obeyed as small children, and the tyatenka had an abrupt temper, the hand is heavy: he considered the village and all volost the ancestral lands, himself unlimited her lord, and rural public affairs the personal record.
Nobody in Shackles remembered and understood other attitude of the priest towards parishioners as imperious intervention in life of society, a family and the personality.
Teaching the Scripture at school, it painfully whipped pupils on cheeks the short, but weighty right hand. In certain cases it beat and adults, and all found it is in the order of things, nobody was surprised to it and in behavior of the priest was indignant with nothing.
Once the only representative of science in Shackles the young local paramedic awarded to be on a visit at the archpriest, something successfully objected to his remark on too long and dense curls of the young man. It was enough that the paramedic appeared in disgrace. As disgrace threatened eventually with serious consequences for the paramedic deprived of vicarial blessing, the last, without having sustained a penance, used forgiven in the afternoon for Maslenitsa and was to the priest for reconciliation. But the spirit of humility, forgiveness and love was not свойствен to a tyatenka. While the lost sheep was spread at the pastors legs, the Holy Father, having seized both hands in unpleasant for him its curling vlasa, long privately carried the victim alone on a room floor, dragged out along the corridor on a porch and dumped during snow.
The archpriest did not believe in God and never spoke in church of sermons. Childless, in gloomy loneliness he lived in a small old popovsky lodge with a front garden together with aged protopopitsy, thin, small, pathetic and intimidated, having cruel hard drinking.