The last detail

My friend lives in a remote suburb of Moscow, in a large cottage.
The cottage is not a novel, but a typical construction of late Soviet times.
Several such cottages at the time, the Soviet farms provided for numerous farmers of rural labor.
The family of a friend is really big, and in the past he is really a striker.
However, this has nothing to do with history.

The house has central heating, that is, it is requested from the domestic boiler.
They understand how. That is incomprehensible. In principle, it is warm, but it happens. And the family is large, the children themselves somehow unnoticedly grew up, and suddenly even grandchildren began to appear in places. Here, there, in one place, in another. These grow, new ones appear.
The owner will come from the sinus hair, they are already smoking, and they have completely fresh diapers. In this regard, the question of additional autonomous heat has gradually arisen and formed. Because a large block cottage plus Russian winter is not the case when you can do a oil radiator.

The owner of the house has an old friend, a good archangel man. He travels a couple of times a year to work in Moscow. With friends, vodka, songs, long night sittings. This friend, a former seafarer, descended to the shore ten years ago and returned to his ancient profession, which suddenly again became much more sought-after by dull cabotage. He is a great descendant. It orders furnaces and fireplaces to please people all over Russia and even abroad. During one of these visits, after a drink of vodka, he told the owner.
It is all, Andrew! be prepared. I will come in the summer and put a fireplace.
This idea is not new and has been discussed many times. And even a suitable place was chosen, in the largest room on the first floor, what is called "in the hall". Before the implementation, however, everything did not come to hand. And then the moment came.

By the summer, the owner slowly stocked the left list of bricks and other necessary materials, in June the master arrived, and the work boiled.
It should be noted that this is a particularity.
The master, as is the case with a classful folk craftsman, suffered from a certain illness. He was drunk. There was a iron rule. As soon as he placed the first mark on the place of the future object, he tied it deadly. During the entire period of work. Until the smoke goes out of the pipe. The same, of course, demanded from the assistants and from the nearest surroundings. To avoid temptation. And it must be said, there has not been a case in his life when he did not finish or interrupt work because of this illness.
The assistant in this case was the owner himself. Thus, the whole family, including even infants and grandmother, were transferred to the most brutal non-alcoholic census. What beer? Even the grandmother’s medicines and drinks on alcohol were secretly taken and buried at night under the distant apples. No one wants to stay with a folded stove and a sick master in their hands.

But all thanks to God went well, and the master's announced last day of work came.
The rubbish was already removed and the floor was washed, in the corner was waiting for its hour a grappling of dry berry grass with a melting, a small naval pipe, the master's sign, and in the kitchen were glued to the peelmen from the pebble that was sprinkled on the eve. And then the master, surrounding the work of his hands with his eyes, stumbled on his forehead and said with indignation:
The fucking! How did I forget?? to
It turned out that one small, but some very important detail was missing for completion, which the master did not specify in the list. The trip to the local store did not produce results. Then the master gathered, and attached on every occasion over the fireplace a sheet with the inscription "WITHOUT ME NOT"
Destroy it!!“I went to the district.

No one has seen him anymore.
When all the deadlines of alarming expectation expired, the search began.
Search results did not come.
In morgae, hospitals and militias, as well as at his home in Arkhangelsk, he did not appear.
The statement in the police did not accept, because the statements are accepted from the closest relatives, and such the master has not been long ago.
So the search was gradually gone.
The beautiful, but unfinished fireplace remained a silent and dusty reminder. In a never-burning fountain, a cat has adapted to cattle, and in the smokehouse in the spring, birds have nested. Posts Tagged ‘Without Me’
Do not disappear!!” She grew yellow, dried and dried, but no one raised her hand. The owner periodically found and brought different people who called themselves specialists. Those stared into the chimney, climbed onto the roof, deep-mindedly cuddled, tossed admirably with their tongues, and in the end traditionally pressed their shoulders. At a level they clearly did not reach the descendant archangel master. In which, to their honor, they were not ashamed to confess. So nobody could answer the question, what is missing in the fireplace, and what to do to breathe life into it. And he remained standing as a strong but meaningless monument to the missing master.

And here one day, almost three years later, in the late evening, just on the eve of the old New Year, when the whole large family was gathering for the festive dinner, the entrance door unexpectedly opened wide and loudly, and out of the hallway along with the clubs of the frosty pair a thunderstorm-like fun bass:
What, to wrap up? How is my fireplace warm? The tube is not.
Have you ever cleaned up, kids?
The whole family, including numerous infants and grandmother, came out into the hallway to see the miracle of the resurrection.
A miracle, in a red moustache and thistle, crushed the snow from the hat to the knee, and looking at the astonished audience, asked a question:
and E! What is wrong, Orthodox?

Confused by his incomprehension, he was silently taken by his elbow and taken to the hall.
And there they placed in front of the incomplete, where on the red brick a blank leaflet with the inscription "WITHOUT ME DO NOT DOWN!!!" The whole family was silently behind. The master looked in front of him for a moment, thinking about what was going on, then turned to the audience, and in his voice there was nothing but a confusion.
“So you,” he asked unusually quietly, “not once.
Was it flooded?? to
Oh, and Dick! Only the owner could pronounce uncertainly.
Hand on the fireplace.
The master turned and thought again. He remembered those events very confusingly. Mistakenly remembered how he found himself first in the trembling car, then at the station, mistakenly remembered how and why he suddenly woke up in Tula, and then at the train station.
and Permi. I remembered confusingly for six months in a psychiatric hospital with the diagnosis of "white fever".
I better remembered how I then bound and burdened myself with work to recover and escape the nightmare of depression. But the first cup of coffee he drank in the district center, he remembered very well. He remembered it as hard as he could not drink it before he had finished his work. After the first, he drank the second, and still was absolutely sure he would come back. But could not.
Relaxed and shrugged his hand. To appear in such a way in a house full of children was useless. The main thing is that the work has been done. And done well. So you could not hurry.

He was not in a hurry.

The master quietly dropped the half-slip right on the floor, rolled the calf's sleeves, thoughtfully placed his palm on the cold brick of the chimney. Then he removed the note and stretched the owner with the reverse side up. And all of a sudden saw on the turn a hard-handed pencil pattern - a cute snowy house and smoke coming from the pipe. And the naive sentimental inscription below the picture, "May the warmth in your home be as good as the memory of you in my heart." and a signature. and date.

Half an hour was enough to climb onto the roof and check the chimney. From the sarai brought and laid in the fireplace a bush of dry berry grasslands. Untouched salads stood on the table. The time moved relentlessly towards midnight. But no one sat at the table, the whole family was waiting right in the room. Finally, the cooker gave the owner a box of light bulbs.
Go to!
“Well,” said the man, picking up the light bulb, “so what a detail?
Which one did you go to the center? Is she no longer needed?
Oh the fucking! Once again, the master stumbled himself. Of course! U is
Do you have a rope?
He walked into the hallway and returned with a bottle of Soviet champagne in his hand. Blowing the bottle throat with a loop, he attached the second end to the fireplace extraction. I made a mattress. And when the curants on television started beating twelve, he shouted, “Well, New Year!” He released the bottle. She described the bow and under a joyful shout with a loud cotton crashed into the cage. The foam divorces were still stealing and settling on the floor, and in the fireplace they were already fun and hot.

A few hours later, when the households walked away and settled, and a long-awaited silence hanged in the house, the owner and the master set up at the fire, smoked, and one asked:
Andrew, how is it? You are a literate man! We are all with you.
They did, they finished! You have never even tried to divorce.
The fire, right? Why is?
The owner stopped the coal in the fireplace, spit on the fire, thought, looked at the friend, smiled, and said:
I waited for you to come back.