I worked as an accountant in a scientific organization in a small town in the south of Russia. It was winter, it darkened very early. During the tea-drinking at work, the loudest news was discussed: a maniac broke up in the city. It attacks in the dark, in the area adjacent to the park. He beats women, rapes, takes bags and jewelry.
The women were found frozen in unconscious condition.
Among the employees was Svetlana, a complete but very nice woman, she alone raised a little daughter.
And here literally a few days later, Svetlana comes to work, and with laughter and tears tells:
“I go home after work, I rush to pick up my daughter from the kindergarten, and the shortest way through the edge of the park, past the monument and the ‘Eternal Fire’. Suddenly I hit my head and I fell. Strikes one after another, but I’m in a thick coat. I beat, I turn, the man grabbed my hair and beat me in the face. And I thought that my daughter was waiting for me, as she rattled and turned him over! And he sat on him on his horse, and grabbed his legs, and how could he beaten and scratched with both his fists? And I weigh a lot, he can’t break out! And then I hear a wild whisper and screams, it turns out, I was whispering all the time, and he started screaming when I realized that I couldn’t get out. There people fled, unless I was removed from him.”
This is how the maniac was stopped.
And Svetlana was saved by a puffy winter hat, the first blow did not silence her. And the horror of the thought that the daughter will remain an orphan.
The Apricot.
When my parents cut off a piece of land outside the city cemetery, a small tree grew on the site. The Apricot.
Her neighbor put her across the street.
After the war, this land was counted below the city line. None of None.
This is how the man wanted to carry out his limit of self-determination and then legalize it. But it happened differently.
When the country was a little hesitated by the war, these lands there, on top, decided to distribute housing to the frontmen in need. Which, like our large family, lived and worshiped in the semi-dubled dried chambers of the post-war city.
From year to year, the tree accidentally arrived to us grew, became stronger, did not require care. After all, for a long time, we did not have a water supply on the street.
Over time, the tree turned into a beautiful broken apricot.
But the fruits of it until they are fully ripe, although they were fragrant, but the taste was still bitter, and with acid. The bone, like every wild, was bitter too.
Therefore, no matter how much we, children, loved the early fruit, its fruits were almost not eaten green.
Later, already coming from the army, I understood the main merit of this tree.
Her invaluable contribution to the life of our family was in another.
Thro the summer, as if the chicken with its wings protected its chickens, the apricot with its branches with its leaves hid us from the burning southern sun.
We loved the whole family gathering at the table in the shadow of her crown. All summer family holidays were celebrated in the yard. From the smelly radio "Latvia" with a silenced background usually poured music. We, the children, ate, the parents with their friends drank, told about the war various cases.
After the “third table” came the “Kreminne” banks. The older brother played the favourite of the parents "Amur and Danube waves", then something more, and then we stretched the favourite in our family "Run the wanderer from Sakhalin". The tone was given by my mother. She had a beautiful ringing voice. Something in the middle between Ruslanova and Zykina.
For the ringing clean voice and for the place of birth, all neighbors and friends called her Kursk sloth.
With a whispering voice, with all my strength, together with all the orals and me.
And then the apricot began to get sick.
At first, in the heart of one of the previously splintered branches appeared a crust, then a crack appeared in the trunk of the tree itself. It did not last one year.
Year by year, the core of the trunk became thorn, the cracks grew up, the trunk fell.
Eventually, the armor became almost empty. The whole tree was held on the crust and a small layer of wood underneath it. The trunk became a deliberately curved foul tube.
The tree was large, and I was afraid that in a strong wind, part of the tree could break and fall on the veranda of the house. The consequences could be imagined.
Early in the spring, before going on a business trip for a few months from home, I cut off all the branches to remove the sailing. Sometimes there are strong storms.
It was left to spit the trunk with a few very thick branches.
Three months later, when I returned in the summer, the tree, or rather what was left of it, appeared before me as a huge, damaged green wild image.
Hundreds of shoots of green branches rushed up to the sun from a seemingly dead tree.
It is incredible.
But six years later, I had to rip this already hopelessly painful tree.
A tree that for more than 50 years has been an integral part of our already weakened family.
In the autumn, I found a man with a gasoline, and he gradually cut a rotting stem under the root.
In the spring, three small branches broke out of the dead pine.
They could be crushed with their feet or cut off with their hands in order to finally kill the remainder of life in this rotten pine. It’s simple and inconceivable to melt all of your past. to forget.
In fact, there was no such thing. He was eaten by a disease, turning his whole body into wood dust.
Only a small slice of the bark and a piece of living wood were the source from which these three grooves broke.
I had no hope that something could survive from this island of life, let alone to grow up.
“The living is the living, the dead is the dead,” I thought when I looked at the picture of a dead tree with sadness. Not determined to do what I had to do.
And when I had already taken my leg to put an end to my doubts once and for all, the mother of my wife suddenly looked out from the door of the house.
by Volodya! Leave it! She said. Let’s see what happens next.
Let’s go, Elena Vasilievna! I easily agreed with her.
It was like a stone fell from my chest.
So, from three branches, gradually leaving the strongest, setting stretches, we grew a new tree of young apricots.
Like her ancestor, despite her death, her offspring continues to delight the eye with their lush bloom in the early spring and abundance of fruit during the period of maturation. It fills the courtyard with coolness on hot summer days.
* * * *
P.S
The whole story in one picture.
http://vfl.ru/fotos/0d85903627190155.html