jedan
Children are a strange world - they pretend and dream. On the eve of decorating the Christmas tree and on the eve of Christmas, I kept meeting a little boy who was no more than six or seven years old on the street.
Due to the terrible frost, he was dressed almost as in summer, only his throat was wrapped in an old scarf - so someone was still preparing and sending him. He went "with outstretched hand"; it's a technical term - meaning to beg for alms. That term was invented by the little ones themselves. And there are many like him. They hang around your path and tearfully say some learned words. This one, however, did not whine, but spoke somewhat naively and innocently, looking into my eyes with confidence - which means he was just starting to beg. To my question, he told me that his sister was lying sick and out of work; maybe it's true, but I found out later that there are countless of these little ones: they send them out to beg even in the most terrible cold and, if they don't collect anything, they are sure to be beaten.
When he accumulates a few kopecks, the little boy with bruised and bruised hands returns to some club, where a gang of idlers, from those who "start a strike at the factory on Saturday and don't return to work before Wednesday evening" are drinking. There, in the dungeons of the basement, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, their hungry little children are crying there. Vodka, dirt and debauchery, but the main thing is vodka.
The little boy with the begged kopecks is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more drinks. For fun, they sometimes pour a shot of vodka into his mouth and giggle when he, losing his breath, falls to the floor, almost unconscious,
"He also mercilessly poured disgusting vodka into my mouth...".
When he grows up, they shove him somewhere in a factory as soon as possible, but everything he earns, he is still obliged to bring to the non-workers, and they again eat it. But even before they enter the factory, these children become real criminals. They wander around the city and know in the basements such places that you can pass through and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them slept several nights in a row in a basket with a porter who did not notice him. Of course, they also become petty thieves. Stealing becomes a passion even for eight-year-old children, who are sometimes unaware of their transgressions. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - just for the sake of freedom, and run away from their idlers to roam at will. Sometimes that wild creature does not understand anything, neither where it lives, nor what nationality it is, whether there is a god, whether there is a king; they even say such things about them, that a person does not believe his ears, but, however, these are facts.
DVA
But I am a novelist and it seems to me that I invented a "story" myself. Why do I write "it seems to me", when I know for sure that I made it up, but it seems to me that it happened somewhere and once and that it happened right before Christmas in some huge city and in terrible cold. It seems to me that there lived in the basement a little boy, but still very little, who was six years old or even less. That little one woke up one morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of coat and was shivering. His breath came out like a white vapor, and, sitting in a corner on some crate, out of boredom he deliberately let the vapor out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it come out.
He was very hungry. Several times since dawn he approached the wooden bed, where his sick mother was lying on a mat with some kind of bundle under her head.
How did she get here?
She must have traveled with her little one from another city and fell ill suddenly. The owner of the lodging house was taken to the police two days ago. The tenants left on the eve of the holiday - and the only one who remained was already lying dead drunk day and night - and could not wait for the holiday!
In a long corner of the room, an eighty-year-old old woman who once lived as a nanny, and now she was dying alone, moaning and grumbling to the little one, was sobbing, so that he was already afraid to approach her bed in the corner. He found water to drink somewhere in the corridor, but he didn't find the crust of bread anywhere, and for the tenth time he was approaching to wake up his mother. Finally, it was terrible for him in the dark: it had already been dark for a long time, and the lamp had not been turned on.
He felt his mother's face and was surprised that she was not moving at all and that she was as cold as a wall.
"It's very cold here," he thought, standing a little, and unconsciously forgetting his hand on the deceased's shoulder. Then he blew on his fingers to warm them and, suddenly, groping for his old cap on the bed, then slowly, groping in the dark, he got out of the basement. He would have gone earlier, but he was constantly afraid of a big dog that, up on the stairs, howled all day in front of the next door. But the dog was gone now, and the little boy suddenly went out into the street.
My God, what a city! He had never seen anything like it. There, where he came from, there is a black eclipse at night — one lantern on the whole street. The windows of the low, wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, as soon as it gets dark, no one anywhere - everyone closes up in their houses, and whole packs of dogs just howl, hundreds and thousands of them howl and bark all night.
But that's why it was so warm there, and they gave him to eat, and here - ah, Lord, if only he could eat now! winter, and frost! Icy steam rose from the tired horses, from their panting hot muzzles; horseshoes clink against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing each other like that, and, my God... he was so hungry for even a piece of bread, and his fingers are so cold all of a sudden. A security guard passed by him, but turned away so as not to see the little boy.
Here is another street — oh, how wide it is! I'm sure to get run over here! And how everyone shouts, runs and rushes in carriages, and the light, how much light!
And what is this? Uh, what a big glass, and behind the glass a room, and in the room some wood up to the ceiling. It is a Christmas tree, and on the Christmas tree there are as many candles, as many gold pieces of paper and apples, and all around it are dolls and little horses; children run around the room, nicely dressed, clean, laughing and playing, and eating and drinking something.
There, that little girl started playing with the boy - what a beautiful little girl she is! Here, music can be heard through the window. The little boy looks, is surprised, and even laughs, but now his fingers and toes hurt, and his hands are already completely blue, they can't bend anymore, and it hurts when he moves with them. And suddenly the little one felt that his fingers hurt a lot, he cried and ran on... and, lo, he saw the room again through another glass, and there were trees, and on the tables various cakes: almond, red, yellow, and gray there are four rich ladies, so whoever comes, they give him cakes, and the door opens every hour, many gentlemen enter from the street.
The little boy crept up quickly, opened the door and entered... Oh, how they started shouting at him and waving their hands! A lady quickly approached him and thrust a kopeck into his hand, then opened the door for him - to the street! How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately fell out and rolled clattering down the stairs: he could not bend his bruised fingers and hold the kopeck.
The little boy ran out into the street and walked faster and faster, and he didn't even know where he was going. . . He would have cried again, but he was afraid, and he ran, ran and howled into his hands. He was overcome with sadness, because he suddenly felt so alone, and he felt terrible ... suddenly ... oh, God! What is this again? A crowd of people stands and admires - behind the window glass were three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses, as if they were alive! An old man is sitting, and seems to be playing the violin, two others are also standing there, playing small violins, and they shake their heads to the beat, they look at each other, and their lips move, they speak, they really speak - only because of the glass, nothing he doesn't hear.
* * * At first, the little boy thought that they were alive, and when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls, and he didn't even know they existed! And he wants to cry, but those dolls are so funny to him. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the coat from behind: a big and mean boy was standing next to him, and suddenly he hit him on the head, knocked off his cap, and kicked him under the knee. The little one tumbled to the ground; then the people shouted, he flinched with fear, jumped up and started running, running, and suddenly he ran - he didn't know where - under a gate, into someone else's yard - and crouched behind the piled wood: "They won't find me here, and it's dark" .
He crouched down and huddled, and he couldn't breathe a sigh of relief from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so comfortable: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and he felt so warm, like on a stove! . . . He started and trembled all over: ah, he was asleep here! How good it is to sleep there!
"I'll sit here, then I'll go look at those dolls again," thought the little boy and smiled when he remembered the dolls, "it's really like they're alive!"...And suddenly he remembered that his mom was singing a song over him. "Mom, I'm sleeping, ah, how nice it is to sleep here!".
- Let's come to my place, little one, to decorate the Christmas tree - someone suddenly whispered over him in a low voice.
He thought his mom was saying that too, but no, it wasn't her; who called him he did not see, but someone bent down towards him, embraced him in the darkness, and he held out his hand to him and...and suddenly...oh, what a light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! As if it wasn't even a Christmas tree - he had never seen such a tree before! Where is he now: everything shines, everything shines, and all around him are dolls - but no, they are all boys and girls, just so bright, they all twist around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with him, and he flies by himself, and he sees: his mother is looking at him, and she is laughing at him happily.
- Mom! Mom! Ah, how nice it is here, mom! - the little one calls out to her, and kisses the children again, and wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass.
- Who are you boys? Who are you girls? - he asks them, smiling and kissing them.
- This is Christ's Christmas tree - they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don't have their own Christmas trees down there... And he found out that all these boys and girls were just like him - but some of them were still freezing in their carts, in who left them on the steps in front of the doors of the Petrograd officials; others suffocated at the nursemaids' houses - rented by the orphanage; the third died on the withered breasts of their mothers (during the famine year of Samara), the fourth suffocated from the stench in the third-class carriages - and they are all here now, they are all like angels, they are all with Christ, and He is personally among them them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers...
And the mothers of these children stand there, on the side, and cry, each one knows their boy or girl, and they fly up and kiss them, wipe their tears with their hands and ask them not to cry, because it's so nice for them here...
And in the morning, the gatekeepers found the small corpse of a lost and frozen boy down behind the stacked wood... They also found his mother... She died before him - they met with the Lord in heaven.
And why did I invent a story like this, which does not go into an ordinary diary, and that of a writer? And I promised stories mostly about real events! But that's the point that it always seems to me that all this could really have happened - namely, what happened in the basement and behind the stacked wood; and the one about the Christmas tree — I don't know what to tell you, whether it could have happened or not. But that's why I'm a novelist, to invent.
*Derogatory name for Finns
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