He didn’t make poverty, but sold needles.

I was given eight kopecks on the way to school: on the trolleybus there and back. In good weather, I tried to save them and walked.

In the middle of the road, if the weather was good, usually in the spring, at the intersection of Kropotkin Street and Lenin Street, I passed by a disabled man.
He had no hands, his whole face was in scars, in the place of his eyes were holes of empty eyelids.

He was wearing a dark gray, lost telogreek, with holes on his shoulders that he did not need.
The chest on the telogreek was carefully sewn in rows with needles of different lengths and thicknesses. On the left, that is, on the right side of the chest, the beginning of each row confidently indicated the Order of the Red Star with silver and bloody enamel. There were three rows.

Those who wanted to buy a needle probably had to throw money into a canned tank. That is, the money was in the bank, but how it got there, I never saw. I didn’t see if anyone pulled the needle out of the telogreek. I think the one who needed the needles went after them to the store. But the disabled man stood upright, facing the northern sun, all day long.

When I was walking back after school, while the rare Leningrad sunshine was still shining, the disabled man was already standing on the other side of the street. He once again submitted to the rays a pale face with dark deep scars. The needles also shone with hardened tears, led by three orders.

One day, after delaying from class, I saw an elderly woman slowly bending up with a bank in her hand, taking the disabled home. I guessed she was probably helping him cross the street following the spring heat.

Both of my parents were seriously wounded in the war. They were active and did a good job. I could not at the age of ten understand the complexity of social relations, but I felt the peculiarity of a disabled person.

I tried to jump through him as quickly as possible without looking at him. For some reason I was ashamed that I didn’t buy needles, I didn’t throw money in the bank.

Again, in the good spring weather, every year between the boys there was an epidemic of play in the "floor". You had to hit the wall with the edge of your large coin, and if it, jumping back, hit the coin of another player, a win was counted.

We were beaten to this game by high school walkers, and the rules were constantly changing, so we, the younger ones, were usually losing. I lost no more than the saved eight copies. But I have repeatedly seen and heard how my peers were losing money from breakfast, and even money given to them by their mothers on a trip to the store for food.

One day, I heard the praise of one of the players pulling out a basket of coins from a blind disabled man. Some laughed, most were silent. I said nothing, and then I left. I didn’t play in the “Park” anymore.

I was very scared when I put four pennies in the bank for the first time. and escaped. The next time I put eight copies. He left quieter. A few days later I went back to the disabled, put in eight copies and said:
Hi to you!
He answered with a deaf voice, with an unchanged face:
“Hello, boy, thank you,” he added, while silent.
I will recognize you by steps. You are not afraid of me.
On the contrary, I was terrified. He struck something unclear and ran away.
Does the disabled know me? Does he know that I am afraid of him? And you probably know why?

Three weeks before the end of the school year, I went to school along a parallel street. In the summer we went to Dacia. The next fall was rainy and I was going to school on a trolleybus. I did not see a disabled person in the spring.
And I never saw a face with scars again, above a telogreek without sleeves, wrapped with rows of needles for sale. After the orders.

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It is now known that at the end of the 1940s, the most degraded disabled dispersed by the War across the country (footless, handless and the like, embarrassing the eyes of the inhabitants), the Soviet government took out of the big cities. For Leningrad disabled people the place of expulsion was designated the island of Valaam, in the center of Lake Ladoga.

When I was already an adult for the first time got there with an excursion on a heatway, we were met by a few legless people on small square boards, with wheels pulled from below. They tried to sell their own baskets to passengers.

But the guests were mostly running by. They rushed through the forest to see the magnificent Cathedral with an entrance made of black granite and columns made of pink granite, with a dome that at that time still preserved pre-revolutionary goldenness, like yesterday. Rushed to join the art, to eternal beauty, running past the living miserable deformity.
Probably none of them had to hear in childhood from the mouth of a disabled person:
Do not be afraid of me!

1954 to 2014.