huge vegetable garden beyond which there opened an even field followed by the distant windbreak belt hiding the railway. The collective farm did not use that field because of abnormally high subsoil moisture. The folks on Shore lived in a big style indeed…
The house was ruled by Raissa Alexandrovna, Twoic's mother, because her husband, Sehrguey, was, for the most part, engaged in the housework and he didn't have much time for yakking. Of course, when something really put his back up, he could address his wife with a loud appeal to shut up her bunghole. Then Raissa Alexandrovna would pause, bite her lower lip and act a dull and dumb villager, however, all that was a pure theatricality – in 5 minutes the phone on the veranda would ring up asking for Raissa, not Sehrguey.
Apart from the domestic affairs, she ran the local politics, accepting several visitors a day, both on an appointment and without it. Her favorite scenic image was that of a folksy rural woman beset with all kinds of troubles and worries, in a quilted waistcoat and weathered kerchief on her black hair, and only the irony in the look of her black eyes did not fit the disguise. She knew how to artfully tie her kerchief, re-arranging its appearance several times a day. The knot changed its position from the forehead to under the back of her head, or else above the ear—the gypsy style—depending on whom Raissa Alexandrovna was going to let in. For the current visitor (in his jeans, long hair and the beard like that of a hippie from Los Angeles) she unexpectedly got it tied under her chin. Then Twoic told me it was the young priest at their village.
The hippie priest left and, in half-hour, a Zhiguli car pulled up by the gate and a young, extremely loud, woman in awful need of "a gown, eh?!." entered the yard. Raissa Alexandrovna took her to the veranda and was humbly making her brains for at least 40 minutes before sending away with a promise of that "a gown, eh?". She did not sell things at home, to accomplish the transaction the visitor had to visit the trade base if only the negotiations ended positively.
Raissa winked at Twoic and me after the retiring priest's wife, blissful Mother, and crossed her face with a thumb. Holy, holy, holy! But then she decided that we had spent way too much time playing cards on the porch step, and ordered us back to the garden to turn the dirt, or spread the muck, hauling it there in the handcart whose wheels kept sticking deeply into the black soil on the way, or to collect the corn ears…
However, when I and Twoic were erecting another barn of logs, we were out of her jurisdiction – Sehrguey had announced a smoke break that's why we were playing… The food after work was not a havvage but a bounteous rural grub on lavish fat, with dill aroma, mouthwatering whiffs of steam over the plates, and a bunch of crispy green onion studded with fresh water drops, on a dish in the table center.
The chef cook in the khutta was Grandma Oolya who cooked delicious things with just one hand, the other, since long paralyzed, she kept in the pocket on the stomach of her apron. And distilling hooch was also her responsibility because she liked to watch the product dripping into the vessel set beneath the tube…
I liked that kind of life more than sunbathing on the Seim beach sand. I liked the energetic one-legged neighbor Vityouk, the experienced player at the Throw-in Fool. And even more, I liked Ganya, the sister of Raissa Alexandrovna. There was no acting or irony about Ganya, she was calm and attentive, and she understood everything. I was sorry that she had cancer.
Doctors recently removed "the pea" out her belly, and on her coming back home the loving hubby did not give her no peace until she let him see the fresh gash from the surgical knife. I knew that she would not survive because at renovating the stove in her khutta all the firebricks from the old one were quite rotten. Yet, I was told to use the bricks again all the same – there were no others, but I could see that it was not for long…
They buried her in my absence, with heart-rending lamentations at the funeral, Raissa was held from both sides to stop her falling onto the fresh grave of her sister with wild embraces and sobs. When they were taking her from the cemetery, the old villager women yelled at her and other mourners: "So what? Cried Ganya out? Returned?" Twoic was very indignant describing their cruel brutality but, in my opinion, that was primordial psychotherapy and one of the rituals in the continuous comedy of life…
At my next visit, the husband of the deceased was also sitting under the black Mulberry tree in the khutta’s yard. At first, I could not guess where those tiny sounds were coming from. I thought some puppy sneaked into the yard, but it was the widower's whining. Such a burly man, a bus driver, the tears flowed down his cheeks and he did not even try to hide them. If all of them together could not call her back, what's the chance of you doing it single-handed?.
Ganya's son, a guy about 14, was at war with Twoic because he fell in love with Twoic's wife, but then Twoic divorced her, offended the beloved of the youth, sort of. For me, it was complete news that he got married and divorced, but Twoic said, yes, a Jewish girl from the Biology Department.
He also told that his father-in-law, when visiting people, after the first shot of vodka used to grab lard for a snack, sort of to demonstrate that he was not from kosher upholders. Now the ex-father-in-law would raise Twoic's son as he pleased, up to making him a strict Orthodox