Over the sleeping dark village the first roosters sang. Flew over it terrible fairy tales, sad songs and gloomy beliefs. Till the dawn it was still far.
III
To Yafim usvatat the bride on Petty-bourgeois Farms: there the people lived purely, on city manners, and the bride was from a prosperous family; calculation inclined the grandfather to stop on this choice, though he did not love farm for a frantovstvo and city manners.
At first there went the grandfather with the old woman to shows there. Also the brides parents visited on a visit at Matvei: the serious business petty bourgeois in a long-skirted frock coat, with curly, in streaks of gray hair, with a comely beard, similar to the dealer or a prasol, and stocky, wrinkled, vostry on language, the fierce old woman.
Right there over a cup of tea and an entertainment there was a handshake. Only after that carried on the Farm of Yafima.
Took out full dresses from the storeroom: blue cloth long-skirted caftans, red belts, merlushkovy caps and leather boots with copper horseshoes. The grandmother put on a new blue sundress from brilliant matter with a braid and the same buttons in two ranks: from a breast to a hem. Took out rasshivny a headdress in the form of a half moon, threw from above with a big Turkish shawl. Ded and Yafim in the cloth caftans girded by red belts in the sheepskin coats covered by cloth wide open, with wide collars on shoulders, in suits of that breed which remained in the peasantry since ancient centuries as if turned into boyars. These expensive suits sewed at grandfathers and great-grandfathers, remaining from generation to generation were put on only in the most solemn occasions, only, maybe, several times in life.
New big sledge of own work with a high carved back, there are a lot of years standing in a barn, brought on the yard; harnessed the three in a new festive harness with copper set, with metal plates, jingles and long brushes, with the abrupt, high arch painted in motley flowers, on the ends fettered by copper. This harness was taken out from the storeroom only for ceremonial cases too.
In a root there was Chalka, a shirokogrudy roan gelding with a white long mane; on a pristyazhka Karyukh, tonkonogy, with a little head, well going under a saddle, and dark-bay Mishka. Tails at them at all stuck thick, short plaits, and interwove scarlet tapes into manes.
The grandfather released a gray beard over an open sheepskin coat and villages near the grandmother on a back seat. Yafim in a coach box. The laurels dissolved gate wide open, Yafim pulled reins, and the three ran out on the rural street, abruptly заворотив on the rolled snow road and having left behind a deep sled trace in a snowdrift. In windows of the next log huts curious womans persons flashed. Yafim whistled, distorted reins, and the three, rattling jingles, rushed the middle of the wide street.
Horses were torn from a harness, bells choked under frosty wind, frosty dust was kicked up by a column. The grandmother was closed by a high collar, only warmly looking eyes were seen. Yafim, as always, was silent and serious, from time to time stirred up reins, and the grandfather important grinned, rolling in a semi-archin beard.
They were turned back late at night. Chalka was in soap, the grandfather tipsy. While Yafim unharnessed horses and brought a precious harness in a cold spacious outer entrance hall, the grandfather and the grandmother changed clothes in the usual poor attire. On the grandmother there was an old pestryadinny sundress again, the grandfather put shoes on in onuchas and bast shoes, threw zaplatanny шубняк, put on a ripped shaggy cap and left to the yard with a lamp to give to horses a stern for the night. In a log hut the splinter cracked, Nastya spun, the fair-haired head with curiosity looked at Lavrushin with polaty.
Yafim entered, changed clothes, like the father, old and silently sat down in all to a table.
The grandmother collected to have supper.
Tea, on a visit treated? crafty Nastya asked.
Znamo business! the table in total both a lapshennik, and a moloshn fried eggs, fritters in honey, chicken meat was full Well live!. and we are not hungry каке́ not painfully not beggars are eager for food tea! Everything was under the charter! Brought the bride under a veil. We Bai: not the veil was come to be watched, and the bride! Here took off a veil, the bride bowed to all under the charter, the prince-good fellow in an osobitsa.
Yafim grinned.
Here, as it is necessary, the prince was asked: Whether Liouba princess young? The prince, of course, here bows silently, and matchmakers and matchmakers told: люба́!. And ask the princess: whether люб to it prince young? The bride worshipped here, well, so люб! Well, here all on a ceremony Prichityvala the bride long, Indus drove in a tear of all, I liked it: люта́ I will be, in mother, and from myself тве́ rdinka, though nevelichka growth, and postavnenka! From a face it is white and from eyes it is cheerful!
Yafim again silently grinned, and Nastya told:
Prick люта́ I not life to me will be with it!
Well, maiden thoughts are changeable! You, tea, prosvatay on that the meat eater!
I bothered you, perhaps? Nastya shot up.
Did not bother and to what to be, to that not to pass, you we will pardon not all! The maid it is less the woman more! Women repent, and maids are going to get married!. So s, happened, people of a bayala are old!
The grandfather entered, cheerfully dumped шубняк, rose to become gray log huts under a matitsa and, притопнув bast shoes, unexpectedly started singing:
You, a hmelyushka, are cheerful the head,
The head, wide beard is cheerful!.
As you are absent, hop, more strong,
As you are absent, hop, becoming bright!.
The grandmother burst out laughing with a do-good, konfuzlivy snicker:
And that you, the old man, rasplyasatsya! hop rustles, so the head is silent!
Be silent you, the old woman! what is in the furnace, on a table throw everything! and, притопнув, continued:
Hmelyushka walks across the field,
Still hop vykhvalyat itself!
Me the sovereign, hop, knows,
Both princes, and boyars esteem,
And monks bless me!
See you sorted houses! It is visible, there is no place like home?
Still weddings without hop do not play,
Also fight and reconciled all in hop!
Only there is on me a male gardener:
Deeply me, a hmelina, buries,
Drives in a tychinushka into zealously heart!
The grandfather straightened a beard and, sitting down to a table, laughed:
On guests to walk and to itself not to lock a collar!. Lets take a walk, it is visible, at a wedding, the old woman!.
Well, well, all right! cheered up!.
And, well, to cry about what?. it put, Yafima is married! Yafimka, and?
And you have supper yes lay down to, the father! smiling, the son answered.
To an expense will be as! You do not stint, the old man!.
Ded Pocriakhtel.
Fifty will leave!. Well and at the good fellow not without sweetheart! The guy in a caftan, and the maid in a sundress!
Lavrusha looked, having lowered the head with polaty, and giggled joyfully: never before he saw the father such cheerful.
You that, swindler! you laugh? Get down, sit down to a table! Soon and you we will marry!. Single, perhaps, you still?
You that, swindler! you laugh? Get down, sit down to a table! Soon and you we will marry!. Single, perhaps, you still?
Single! the Laurels giggled, getting down on a bar.
After a dinner the old man was filled up to sleep on полатях, singing more and more quietly, slowing down words:
That are rich men bought
And in a suslitsa the hmelyushka was heated,
On oak barrels spilled!
As here I, hop, cleared up,
On notches I, hop, dispersed:
To Otsmey I to the gardener a nadsmeshka
I will hit it in тын with the head,
And in the dirt a beard!
After several hen nights in the house of the bride the wedding train took place, at last: the church was on Petty-bourgeois Farms.
To Matveis yard the whole train drove it is done a bit of traveling, there arrived the cart with a dowry of the young wife.
Near the athlete Yafim it seemed small. Her face was still covered by a veil. A crowd entered a log hut. There it was already covered long, in all log hut, hundred, made of three tables, with the benches which are moved up to it.
Young people were put in a forward corner, to a bozhnitsa. The others stood, they did not need to sit down yet.
Yafim was in a scarlet worsted shirt and a blue cloth caftan, young in a white dress of city breed. At solemn silence of the numerous guests who filled a log hut, the grandmother approached the daughter-in-law, quietly took off her veil from the head, and all saw the person young: round, white, with bystry clever eyes, with a dense fair-haired braid. The mother-in-law untwined a braid on two, twirled around the head, and on the plot head silk volosnik of pink color. Only after that guests began to take seats at a table.
The wedding, knyazhetsky feast began.
The new person the young bourgeois who was not wearing sundresses similar on city entered the conservative country house of the grandfather Matvei. The laurels in a new shirt grandly sat near the brother.
The log hut rustled from a cheerful dialect.
* * *
The spring sun began to warm the fields which did not dry out from the thawed snow yet, and the rural street turned green from the first gentle muravka.
The grandfather Matveis family amicably prepared for an arable land: adjusted an ancient heavy plow, repaired harrows, ordered the lacking or broken parts to the smith Migun.
Migun was the fussy big-nosed man with often blinking eyes and hasty, fluent speech. He not only did soshnik, ploughshares and axes, but was able to exorcise blood, treated and tore teeth, gave to drink to patients with a nagovorny grass and was considered as the sorcerer. Lived independently from the village, and its smithy stood on pasture, behind a village fence.
All spring in it work was humming, the horn breathed, sparks poured.
When agricultural tools were given to serviceability, the grandfather Matvei with sons left on an arable land. Next-to-skin, few earth behind a village fence was, and it was plowed so out that never gave a good harvest: to fertilize it to nobody and came to mind because of annual repartitions. Coped with it quickly, and still there was time for the distant field: it was the enormous site in the steppe, versts for thirty from the village the state earth.
In the olden days it was removed for forty years by men three families of Listratov and grew rich from it. Removed on ruble six hryvnias for tithe, and now handed over to men of the village on thirty rubles, but also it was favorable to men. About Listratov said that for them the site a gold mine.
Except an arable land, men removed at them in the same place and a mowing. Coped with an arable land, and on cleaning each man employed in the city of reapers and mowers. Worked together with hirelings.
Agriculture across Middle Volga was so conducted once.
Ded Matvei from avarice seldom employed alien workers, worked with a family even at night. With a bast basket through a shoulder, without cap, whispering something, scattered seeds a semicircle. Yafim plowed the plow harnessed by four horses, and little Lavrusha was already able to go behind a harrow. Over an arable land rooks curled, damp rich soil hard stuck to bast shoes hard, tiresome work: the antediluvian plow should be held on hands and on the run to clean off from ploughshares an iron rake the stuck crude earth, legs podvikhivatsya between layers of the vzryty earth, and the breast and a throat overstrained from incessant shout on horses.
From the near field by the evening came back home, but when went to the distant site, lived in the field, in tents, all week and only on Saturday on Sunday came home to dirt, in dust, black as Blacks; therefore every Saturday blackly the baths standing on backs of the village surely burned. On Sunday all village delightfully and long fell down.
The village was above high break under which, maybe, in old centuries Volga proceeded, but then departed on several versts so under break the lugovina was formed, and behind it in a poluversta the rechonka Postepok, small as a stream, densely grown about coast with a sedge and floating water flowers ran.
Through Postepok moved on small, eternally dirty bridge or the corduroy road arranged from the outlined boughs and manure and immediately the dense oak wood rustling with the solemn and mysterious noise began.
In the spring Volga flooded all wood, approaching closely the village, and then it was possible to float by the boat in the wood standing half in water.
On holidays the flooded wood was filled with boats with maids and guys in bright red dresses, songs, sounds of an accordion and laughter.
When water marketed, in the wood there were lakes, and one of them the biggest, oval as the mirror the surrounded wood which shipped in it the green branches was the favourite place of bathing at children, the whole days vanishing in the wood. The lake it was called Print.
After a high water in the wood and on forest glades violent vegetation quickly appeared: the grass grew on a belt, there were a lot of wild onions, stolbunts, a sorrel and fragrant lilies of the valley. Maids and women crowds went to holidays behind onions, a sorrel and flowers, came back home with songs. In the wood without stopping the cuckoo cuckooed, rooks shouted and chirped in every possible way a various birds kingdom.
On the Trinitys eve all were on the near field. The wife Yafima, Anna Ondrevna, with his sister Masha, Vukols mother, since spring staying with the father heated a bath. The log hut was locked on the padlock. From a village fence continually passed coming back from the field, but spring evening, absolutely starless, was so dark dense and damp darkness, the dusty road is so soft and silent that only on an easy pobryakivaniye of a harness it was possible to guess that someone passed from the begun to creak village fence gate, and only slightly the noticeable spot moved on the road.
Here the pobryakivaniye approached a log hut, from darkness the low flat arch and the cart with the horse who was silently afraid on a dense, creeping grass was hardly considerably allocated. Two shadows womens and childrens got out of the cart.
And we здеся! the childrens voice cried from darkness.
The female shadow approached closer and gasped joyfully: on a zavalinka Elizar sat. Vukol and Lavrusha, giggling, were linked and not danced, not fought in darkness.
We sit yes we wait! Elizar told getting up. Anybody there is no house!