Читать книгу Constructor of Worlds. Volume 1 - Ibratjon Xatamovich Aliyev - Страница 3

It was 1965. Twenty years have passed since the Great Patriotic War, and the consequences still remain in the hearts of good people.

The village family just had their first son. He was healthy and very noisy, crying all the time, and his skin was pink like a pig. The mother doted on the child and not an hour passed that she did not take him in her arms and did not rock him. My father just smiled at his wife’s energy and the fire in her eyes.

His father, Alexander Fedorovich, worked as a local policeman, after the war he immediately moved here to the Tver region in order to forget the native places where his dead brothers and mother lived. Mother, Elena Nikolaevna, was born and raised here. She received a secondary education and started working in a local grocery store.

Their house was neither old nor new. A firm man’s hand repaired a leaky roof, dug a vegetable garden and painted a fence with whitewash. An elegant female hand cleaned, cooked, took care of plants in the garden and chickens in the chicken coop.

Their house was a small hut. It was brick, and the roof was wooden, and sometimes rotted. The yard was large and was always being prepared for a vegetable garden, it was surrounded by a wooden fence. There was also an old bathhouse, completely blackened from the inside, and the ceiling is so low that if you climb on the canopy, you need to bend in the back and neck. There were two sheds in front of the bathhouse, chickens lived in one, and Alexander Fedorovich kept tools in the second, so there was a workbench nearby. The stump in the middle of it all stood out even more vividly, firewood was always neatly stacked next to it and sometimes a chicken was slaughtered.

Years passed, their boy grew up. Called Vadim. The boy is already eight years old, and looks like an adult with serious eyes. Alexander Fedorovich always saw in his son an excellent employee and brought him up accordingly. Elena Nikolaevna spoiled the boy and allowed him to do almost anything. Parents quarreled on this topic more than once, but they quickly ended, because the parents loved each other madly, and the hostess of the house was pregnant again.

Vadim wanted a brother to play with and fight with the neighborhood boys. Elena Nikolaevna wanted a daughter, and Alexander Fedorovich also wanted a son.

Vadim liked to play with the boys on the street and always came late and with bruises. Sometimes I went fishing with them or with my father. The boy was strong in health and body and already helped around the house. He carried barrels of water home, dug in the garden and climbed on the roof to fix a leaky roof.

«That’s not how you hold an axe,» my father once said when they were chopping wood together in the yard of the house.

– And how? Vadim asked, looking at the axe.

Alexander Fedorovich wiggled his mustache and roughly turned the axe point down.

– That’s it, – the father replied with a sneer, «chop it up.

Vadim started chopping firewood. At first, it was difficult for the boy to do this. Iron got stuck in the wood, and splinters flew in spite of the face and eyes. Alexander Fedorovich took out another axe and began chopping wood together with his son. An adult man did it much better and faster. After a few minutes, Alexander Fedorovich’s pile of firewood became larger than Vadim’s.

«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. – the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.

Vadim grew up from childhood as a smart boy

My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.

«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. – the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.

My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.

After that, Alexander Fedorovich showed Vadim how to slaughter chickens. To do this, he took out an axe and sharpened it properly. The boy by this time was incomprehensibly holding a chicken in his hands.

– Are we going to chop wood? – he asked then.

– No, something else,» he shook his head and took the bird by the neck.

The chicken let out a hoarse sigh and tried to escape by flapping its wings.

– I’m holding a chicken, and you hit her in the neck with the sharp part of an axe. – said Alexander Fedorovich, opening a view of the chicken’s thin neck.

«She’s going to die,» Vadim said in surprise, clutching a heavy axe to his chest.

– Yes, but it will serve us well, think about it this way, – the father raised his eyebrows, shrugging his shoulders. – Well!

Vadim hesitantly raised the axe and hit the chicken in the neck. Her blood immediately flowed down the stump, but the bird itself had not died yet, but was making death cries.

– Well, who cuts like that! – the man roared and the boy shuddered from this cry and hit much harder.

The chicken died, and its head lay apart from the body and vomited blood.

Then it was a cold autumn day, and Elena Nikolaevna sent her son to the first grade to study. Vadim didn’t like this business, but he received only good grades in Russian. His father flogged him for bad ones, and his mother tried to somehow mitigate the punishment.

Months passed, and Elena Nikolaevna’s stomach swelled even more. She was already sitting only at home, and Alexander Fedorovich worked for two. One day, coming home, he gave Vadim a red, good ball. The boy immediately went to play with friends near the house. Then a dacha of some rich man was being built nearby and trucks very often drove along the roads of the village. They raised whole clouds of smoke that smelled terrible, and their engine roared very loudly in the street.

Vadim was playing with friends right by the road, on a patch of land. There was no grass growing there, only bare earth was here. The boys thought it was a great place to play and started kicking the ball very far away. Alexander Fedorovich then sat on a bench near the house to watch his son from afar, he rejoiced at his victories and was sad from failures. And so the red ball rolled out onto the road, Vadim ran after him, and a truck with bricks was passing on this road. The father immediately exploded from the spot.

– Vadim! Vadim, my mother! My father was shouting, he was angry and panicked. As a man at war, he gathered himself and ran to his child, who did not hear his screams and hoped that he would have time to take the ball from the ground.

The driver clearly did not see where he was going and did not pay attention to the people who were crawling like bugs under his wheels. Alexander Fedorovich pushed Vadim hard in the chest, and the frightened boy looked at his father, who was angry. The car hit him, running over a massive wheel. Blood and open fractures were visible. Vadim’s friends fell silent, and someone even screamed and cried.

Vadim did not cry or scream, he was in shock. The driver of the car got out and cursed loudly, Elena Nikolaevna ran out of the house.

– Sasha! Sasha! – she kept saying, throwing herself under the wheels of the truck. She grabbed the driver by the breasts and started screaming and fell from powerlessness.

She became ill and went into labor. The driver swore again and ran to the doctor immediately. Vadim was still in the same shock, he dropped the ball and fell to his knees next to his mother. She kept repeating her husband’s name as if she had a fever.

Vadim did not remember this day very well, everything was like in a fog. The fate of the driver did not bother him, just like the birth of his sister. He remembers his father’s funeral very well. A wooden coffin, a priest, a cold father’s body and a pale face. Elena Nikolaevna sobbed loudly and buried her nose in her mother’s shoulder. Tears were also streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. Many friends of Alexander Fedorovich came to this funeral, as if the weather was also mourning Vadim’s father, sending heavy raindrops and cold wind on people’s heads. Then they said goodbye to his corpse and sent him on his way. Buried, left lush bouquets and left a cross.

The wake began. The closest people of the deceased gathered for lunch to Elena Nikolaevna, who rushed around the house and managed to set the table for the guests and calm her daughter. On the table with a white tablecloth were pancakes, rice with raisins, porridge and borscht, a plate of bread and tea…

After all this, the mother could not see her son next to her. She blamed him for all her sorrows, even her grandmother could not bring her to reason and soon died of the flu herself. Elena Nikolaevna could no longer feed her children alone on the salary of a saleswoman. There was not enough time for the garden, nor for the children, nor for myself. Vadim and his sister Anya did not go hungry, but their food on the table became noticeably poorer in its variety.

Reluctantly, Elena Nikolaevna gave Vadim to an orphanage. The boy didn’t cry. He was young, but he knew exactly what was going on. He understood that he was seeing his mother and sister for the last time and said goodbye properly, without yawning and shouts of indignation. Vadim understood that without him, Anya would be able to get enough food and warmth from her mother, but he would somehow cope on his own.

It was raining fine that day, and Elena Nikolaevna had no face. She gives her blood, her son to an unfamiliar place. Then orphanages were poorly funded, and it was great luck to live under a good roof and eat soup with bread and meat.

A year passed, and Vadim got used to his situation. He did not stop thinking about his family and often poured those unshed tears into his pillow, he was madly homesick for his father. The orphanage was not poor and not rich, often the boys were driven to work in the fields or to repair holes in the fence and roof. So they gained experience in construction and not only.

The building was brick with an iron roof, these plates were rusty and some had holes. The walls were covered with charcoal, there were not only inscriptions, but also children’s drawings that no one erased. The perimeter was surrounded by a fence, which was painted once a year. There was a garden where children could play and eat the fruits of apple trees.

The situation inside was quite good. Because of the l-shaped shape of the building, a lot of children who lost their parents could be placed there. There was a kitchen, a common dining room, common rooms for sleeping, and the playground was on the street, as our reader remembers. The teachers had their own room, there was a samovar and an old radio.

Vadim continued to go to school, but to another one. The boy dreamed of becoming a fisherman and catching the best fish and selling it. He talked about this to his friends in the common room, and they talked for a long time about which fish is more expensive. The teachers only quietly laughed at him, because now you can’t get normal money in this profession. Sometimes they spoke directly to Vadim, saying that he would be an excellent teacher of the Russian language, because he had good grades in this subject. The boy then did not really understand the difference in professions, despite the mature outlook on life.

Vadim was respected in their orphanage, there were many children who asked him for help with Russian. Of course, he helped them just like that, because he appreciated their friendship, and he didn’t know how to take something in return yet.

In his spare time, Vadim did various things like climbing trees and helping the cook in the kitchen. The cook was an extremely pleasant person to communicate with. He was bearded and spoke with a funny accent, only then the boy at an already mature age will understand that he was talking to a Kazakh man. His name was Davlet, and he was a former cook and sailed in very distant lands. A cook is a position on a ship, this man cooked food for the whole crew, but when necessary, he fought on cables, boarded ships and received his share in robberies on various merchant ships. It seems that such people were called pirates and it was safe to say that Davlet looked like him.

He was scarred and healthy, but gray-haired and smelled of alcohol all the time. He talked a lot about his adventures and instilled in the boy a passion for reading adventure books, headed by a story about sailors, pirates and treasures.

Vadim changed his mind about the profession and decided that he would become a sailor and sail, blown by a cold breeze and feel a salty taste on his lips all the time.

At school, he had problems with the exact sciences, such as mathematics and drawing. With the rest, he more or less coped. And it just so happened that he got into a class where there were children with their parents, and Vadim became a frequent object of ridicule and bullying. The boy was calm and quiet during his school years, but could have rebuffed even three bullies in the classroom. He just didn’t want to have problems with the director, with their parents, and to be ambushed after school by grown-up guys who decided to avenge younger friends or brothers. Therefore, he came with bruises, but with a smile on his face, because the day was still interesting.

Vadim was also good at telling stories when he and his friends went to the forest to burn sticks and fry sausages, which they hid in the pockets of shorts or pants to carry past adults. The boy told stories about pirates and their adventures.

In the summer, when the forest bloomed with its greenery, when the river finally froze and the ice melted, the boys went fishing and swimming. The stream there was not so strong and there were a lot of fish, Vadim caught them more than once with his bare hands or accidentally stepped on the fry while he was getting out of the water.

The boy didn’t need anything and he grew up like an ordinary child, but some emptiness and resentment towards his mother still remained. Vadim did not try to find her or escape from the orphanage, no one adopted him. He saw his future without his mother and sister, but he still loved and missed them, they sometimes dream of him in a dream, in them he imagines a house, father, mother and sister with smiles from ear to ear, and a vegetable garden and fragrant trees with grass and flowers bloom around.

The orphanage was also surrounded by greenery, but not as lush as at home, it was sparse and yellowish, and the trees grew far away in the forest a kilometer away. Firs, oaks, and birches grew there. The boys made swords out of their sticks and played knights or pirates.

Such was Vadim’s childhood and youth. But soon his life will change unexpectedly and irrevocably…