She lost her leg in the war. It was a vivid refutation of the sign that the projectilely does not hit the same wreck twice. It was in the wreck, where they and the wounded soldier were waiting for an artillery, they were covered.
But history is not about that.
One day, many years after the war, a postman brought a strange letter to his grandmother. It was strange that there was no address on the envelope. Only the name of the district and the name of the grandmother. But the back of the envelope was written with a chemical pencil, a hard male handwriting.
It was an appeal to the postman. And it started like this: “Dear Postman! Do not throw this letter. I don’t know the address, but I really need to find someone.” And then there were some details, according to which the letter found its address without error. Such were times.
The grandmother read the letter and told her that one of the wounded she pulled out of the battlefield was writing to her, and that she could not remember, because there were so many. And they were all on one face, in blood, dirt, pain, and fear. Better not to remember it at all.
In short, the letter went somewhere over time, and the envelope with the stamp of some ITU was still long rolled in the box of the commodity.
Then the grandmother did not.
And a year later, or maybe a little more, a strong, cheerful man knocked on our chest and cried out.
The owner, and not the respectable resident.
He named Babi’s name.
The father went out, greeted him, and replied that he said yes, lived here, but had moved for a year. He shrugged his hand towards the village guest.
It was as if the man had released the air. He sits on the bench, drops his hands in blue tattoos between his knees, and confusedly asks:
And what should I do now?
It was the same man whose envelope was long rolled in the box. Unlike his grandmother, he remembered everything very well. How she dragged him, the wounded, how they lay in the wreath for several hours waiting for the arthnalet, and how she stopped him all the time so that he didn’t lose consciousness. She spoke, she spoke, she spoke. She told about her life, about the village, about the remaining houses of two daughters, and about the fact that there is a roof in the house, which was just in the summer, when the war began, they were going to repair, so they didn't have time.
And this soldier, whether in a joke or seriously, or in a nonsense or in a word, swore to her that if they escape alive from this cursed wreck, then after the war he must come to her in the village, and repair the roof. Because there is no better master in repair roofs in the world than him.
But life turned in its own way. After the war, the man sat down once, then another, and went and went. But how strange his promise, given once to the nurse, remembered. Finally, he chose the time and came to repair her roof.
Here the man and his father looked at the roof at the same time, which was in perfect order, and the man asked again.
And what should I do now?
His father took him to the cemetery, where they drank, then returned home, and drank again, sitting in the garden under the old apple tree. They sang songs, argued about something, talked, and the man was constantly returning to his question – how could he now be? He made a promise. This thought sat with a nail in his head and did not let go.
Then the father laid him, already quite drunk, on the senoval, and in the morning he woke up, and said:
Let us go!
Where to?! to
Repair the roof. Are you going to repair the roof? Here is go.
He took him to our neighbor, grandmother Nastasia, a lonely old lady, whose husband did not return from the war, and the children they did not have. My grandmother’s roof has been repaired for a long time. Her father sometimes helped her in the neighborhood, but on the roof he had neither time nor strength. The roof is not a fence, a pair of nails will not cost.
The father brought the man to his grandmother Nastasia in the yard, pointed to the roof, and said.
Here is the roof. If you want, do, if you don’t want, go with the goddess. If anything, the tool there, what else needs, you will take everything from me.
And went away. The man remained.
For a month he probably lived with his grandmother Nastasia. He cleaned the roof, cleaned the well, fixed the fence, and already some of the neighbors, looking at the results of his work, came about something to negotiate with him.
But their plans were not meant to come true. Because a month later, a Canary woman came to the house of grandmother Nastasia with a local and a couple of operas from the city, and the local amusedly asked:
Did your grandmother repair the roof?
He acted. The man answered.
And a good guy! Then we went.
They put on the man handcuffs, placed him in a wreath, and took him in a known unknown direction. Probably somewhere he still had unpaid debts, or unfulfilled promises.