The story was told by an adult uncle who knew his father. From the first person.
When I was young, I was in the style of Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
– Lieutenant, was it true that you were a judge in your youth?
Oh the youth! A member here, a member there.
After graduating from college, he met his current wife, Katherine. However, and with her nothing seriously planned somehow - yes, we walked a couple of months. And when she started making all sorts of hints, dragging me on romantic movies and thinking about wedding dresses for half an hour, I decided it was time and honor to know - I stopped calling her, and if we met somewhere in the university (I was two years older than her) treated her as polite and distantly as possible. And here somehow, when we almost stopped communicating, she suddenly invited me to the country, to the elephant. Her father was a hunter, and, it happened, spent a couple of months somewhere in the taiga. The whole house was hanged with horns and bear heads and covered with skins. I tried to lie, but she broke me.
And this weekend, I went to this place. It was near Zagorsk (now Sergey Posad), and in the spring breakdown it took almost half an hour to get there from the station, bypassing the lawns, mowing dirt on the scattered forest road, and even penetrating somewhere through a drill. I came out all sweaty and dirty. It only comforted Katie’s promise that after the weekend her father would throw me on his UAZIK. When she saw me, Katya stumbled, forced her to dress up, threw her pants into the laundry, and in exchange gave me some of her father’s pants.
One hour later, he sat down at the table where the whole family was gathered. They delivered the promised deer, cooked with some taiji herbs, and then a bottle of vodka appeared on the table. Katka's father plays anecdotes, recalls cases from the hunting life - he was able, I must say, to tell them, the kingdom is heavenly to him. Catherine looks at me somehow especially gently, and I predict that even in the evening I will probably be lucky somewhere in her room. In other words, grace.
And suddenly Uncle Cole (father) turns to me, looks at me with a strict look and asks: Ivan, what do you have with Catherine? When will the wedding be?
I wanted to start reassuring about the fact that it is not yet time to think, and in general, while there is no money, I suddenly felt a strange tension in the area of the spleen. I turned back a little and looked carefully under the table. I see - and there Perseus, Uncle Cole's hunting dog, such a huge love, grabbed me in the causal place. Only I move – it cries.
At the same time, Uncle Cole is looking at me so harshly, waiting for an answer. I think it’s a cape to me. Now I will refuse to get married, maybe it will rise, and who knows it, how the dog interprets the noise and strict intonations in the owner’s voice? I will take the whole farm away from the damn mother. To tell this story out loud is also somewhat uncomfortable. And here I sit, thinking about how to be next, and feel together with the fact that the dog’s teeth are becoming more and more dense in the causal place...
I shrugged my head into my shoulders and said, “Yes, Uncle Cole, I’d be happy to get married. When Katya decides, then there will be a wedding.
The future swocker grabbed my hand, the aunt had a big tear, Katya rages from pleasure. And I also feel that Perseus has weakened the grip. Well, there and mushrooms served, and another bottle - to celebrate, so to speak, our engagement.
Three months later I really got married, and so far my wife and I have been together soul to soul, thirty-five years ago. Three children have been born, the grandchildren are gone.
A couple of years after the wedding, I, ashamed and red, told Katka about the case with Perseus. Here is a coincidence that helped us. She smiled and said, “It’s not a coincidence. I said, Percy has been training for two months. I will put peanuts in the bag, lubricate with saliva and teach the dog to catch it by a click - not strongly, so that it can only pop. The hunting dog, understandable, learned it alive. And when you came in dirty clothes, I gave you my father’s trousers, which I had smashed with the same fat before.