Grandfather Ales and grandmother Jan lived in a neighboring yard with my grandmother. Their children lived somewhere very far away and therefore their grandchildren were only seen on two photographs (one colored from the Black Sea 9x12, the other black and white from the New Year's morning 10x15). My grandmother apparently regretted them about this and often sent them with all sorts of nonsense instructions.

“Well, bring her my cabbage, or she will live a hundred years, and the cabbage will not learn how to salt, and tomorrow they will come to them to beat the cabbage, so at least eat what human will be. And that... sit there with her for five minutes at least. Nothing, wait for the wathlaks (so she called my friends) yours, they won’t get anywhere from the village!

I broke my head and rushed into the neighboring courtyard, broke into the cellar that always smelled the fragrance of grandfather Alesya’s seed and cried from the threshold:
Grandma of Jan! I brought you the cabbage!
Then thinking that the eca was unseen in the village: cabbage, he added, for the solidity of the order:
It is delicious!
“Well, it’s clear,” laughed grandmother Ian, “your grandmother has a better taste than mine!

Yan’s grandmother sat me on a brown table at the kitchen window, put some snacks on the table and asked about my life and all sorts of life problems. Grandfather Ales rarely visited the house in the summer during the afternoon, usually crafting something in the yard, or just sitting on the bench waiting for some company. This time he mastered some wonderful wind. Today was a snack with sugar and milk. Having placed before me on the table a bowl of floating bubble blenders (like mines, I thought), leaving behind violet traces in the gradually losing whiteness of milk, she for a second looked in the window at the grandfather, who was jumping around his design and loudly touched on it, soaked the corner of the canvas the tear that came out and whispered with a gentle voice, "Here is the old fool."

And she often asked me to catch her a cock or chicken, or a goose, because it is necessary to hit, and she can't catch it, old already. Grandfather Alyssa never killed anyone. He even drove the mosquitoes away. And when they came to slaughter a pig or to slaughter a bull, he went out of the village and sat there under a bunch of weeping pigs until everything was done and the blood was removed from the yard. I loved sitting there with him. He made a lot and beautifully, and told me a lot of tricks: how to make a whistle from a leaf, what portion of javor can be eaten, how to properly dry the moss.
“But this grass,” he said, “is painfully useful for male power,” and he blinked cleverly.
I looked at his weakening shoulders and dry biceps with doubts and wondered:
Why don’t you eat it? What a thin one.
Grandfather long, to tears laughed and walked his hand:
You are seven years old and you are a fool.

One day I asked grandmother Yara why the grandfather was so strange (he only replied to my question, "I don't kill living organisms"), she only said that he was poor, and to my sincere surprise, and why she lives with him, and doesn't find a normal grandfather, explained:
- I love him so much, he knows what I have, he never ran to other grandmothers! All my life in a row, you don’t see what a fool looks like, he’s special to me, so I suffer with him.
I was even more surprised, with the wisdom of the seven-year-old sage, asking:
How can you go to other grandmothers when you’re married? Can not be?
"Well, God give you," she baptized me and followed me, "you remember one thing, grandchildren, grandmothers - they are all the same and cut off all along the way, - there is no barrel, you will want to change your wife, but when you need suddenly, so you goose strangle better, - the same pleasure, and God will forgive tea, and betrayal never.
What a cut? What a goose? Why press him? What is this pleasure? I asked questions, but the answer was one:
When you grow up, you will understand.

Only then, much later, when I was 14 and my grandfather was buried, I learned why he did not kill anyone: my grandmother told me that during the war they lived in a hutor on the edge of the forest and one day a German patrol on a motorcycle, an officer and two soldiers, came to them. After eating the same man, they pushed Alesia out of the house and tried to rape Jan. Grandfather returned home with a tail and struck the officer. Then he ran a few kilometers after the Germans who were stumbling at him on a motorcycle, forgetting from fear of their weapons, waving with this same tail. Then he returned, calmed his wife, cleaved the floor of blood... and set fire to the hut. Until the end of the war, they were hiding in forests and swamps. After the war, Alessia was jailed for something, and Jana was bragging in the collage alone, pulling on their little son and waiting.

“They are envious of everyone, all their lives,” said my grandmother, “they have always been poor and bitter, and all their lives together, one for another, they hold that your two pigeons. They envy them. Everybody is jealous.

That summer, I remember, my grandmother was sick. We came to visit her, and grandfather Alessia, a rude and mother-in-law, stood on his knees at the bed and kissed her old wrinkles.
and Sophia! - almost begged my grandmother Jan, - drive you out this bad old man, or I have no strength, will not let the wicked and sick peacefully!

I was driven out of the company because “there was nothing to listen to” and we sat with grandfather at the heated wall of their house. Grandfather with trembling fingers twisted another self-turn and cried. I saw an adult man crying for the first time.
“Look, the old cow,” bubbled the grandfather, “is never listening to me, so she will be healed by the first number!

Ever since I’ve been asked what love is, I don’t know what to answer, but I know what love is.