Beautiful God
Every morning Sasha heard his grandmother quietly read prayers. Words could not make out, only "Amen," yes, "Lord, have mercy." The grandmother stood in front of the dark icons, over and over again she was baptized and bowed, and God looked at her from above, with the old, shed by insects of the blackboard.
In the morning God was ordinary and calm, and in the evening He changed, became a bit scary and strict. Behind this, the biggest icon, below were still small ones, grandmother's documents lay, as well as front-line letters of his grandfather, whom Sasha did not remember, since he was born after his death. There were hiding there and formidable papers with seals, which the grandmother called the incomprehensible word "taxes".
In the afternoon, Sasha more than once ran up to the “red corner” and looked up at God. Find out whether He is angry at him or not. God usually did not get angry and never cried, although grandma often told him that He was crying over our sins.
What is sin, Sasha already knew. This is when it is embarrassing and would like no one to see. He even told friends about a crying God, but they were convinced that God does not follow little sins, only big ones, and big ones only happen to adults. Sasha agreed, but sometimes he ran up to the icon, checked, and suddenly God began to cry ...
When the cherries and Sasha had ripened, together with his friends, they were sent to the garden every day - “to drive the spacks” so that the birds of the cherry would not peck, the grandmother said: “I will go to the Trinity Sunday, to the church. Buy a new icon. Batiushka promised to bring. We will have a beautiful and elegant God. " Sasha did not know what the “Trinity” was, but he really wanted to see the elegant God.
The grandmother left for church early in the morning, on an auto-locomotive (there was such a railcar, transporting people) and so that no one would have scared the grandson, she would send him to spend the night with Uncle Sasha. At night the boy went with pleasure. The uncle had a son, brother Sashkin, although his cousin, but his family does not happen. They are related and were born in one month of one year.
Uncle allowed to sleep in the attic, in the freshly mown hay. The hay was soft, it smelled like thyme and wormwood. Behind the pipe, fenced off by a net, cooed the pigeons, and the distant stars blinked at the open attic door, to the beating grasshoppers. The boys whispered for a long time about the new beautiful God and also about the fact that in the morning they would get up early and go to the canal, to the stake, to catch the bubyre.
In the morning, bubyri calmly floated in the channel, and then hid under the snags. The fishermen slept both the first and second roosters, but they would have slept even if the pigeons had not made a terrible noise defending themselves from the cat that had come to profit. They decided to go fishing, but first they needed something to eat.
In the kitchen, on the table, under gauze, the children waited for a milk bar and two slices of freshly baked bread. “The sister left,” said her brother proudly, and added in a businesslike manner: “There is no time for a mother.” She goes to the farm after dark. ”
On the way to the canal and the pond, the rate in the local, looked into the garden, a couple of still sour green apples to pick, but in the grandmother's garden on the cucumber found. The outfit was completed by an old tulle curtain with two sticks on the sides, called “nonsense.”
For two hours the brothers dragged their nets over the stones of the ducts and viscous silt, but apart from the old frog and the same age cancer, they caught nothing with one claw. When there was no strength left, and the cucumbers with apples were eaten, Sashka remembered the new icon with a beautiful God. “Run! - shouted Sasha. - Grandmother has arrived a long time ago! Heard how the engine pounded? "
The boys quickly shook out the remains of silt with algae from the “nonsense” and rushed to the grandmother's hut. Brother reach the goal failed. Mother called out. She was just returning from the farm and sent her son to the general store for salt. In those years, mothers still obeyed unquestioningly, so the distressed brother just waved his hand: "You, Sanya, run, and I will come later."
The door to the grandmother's house was already open. “At home!” Sanya was delighted. Sandals fell off the boy's feet and, not looking at his feet, rushed through the corridor and the upper room into the hall, where in the corner, on the table under the icons, a beautiful and gentle God was already standing. He was framed and under glass. In the corners of His glowed colorful, glittering flowers growing on surprisingly marvelous branches. Sasha, in his numbness and delight, stopped in front of the icon, and only after some time heard from behind the grandmother's lament: “Oh, Lord, how is it! How are you not broken something? "
Sasha looked around and ... did not understand. Where he had just run, the half-meter square hole of the open cellar gaped. The head of a grandmother peeped out of it, as she climbed a few steps up the basement stairs and looked with horror at the grandson who had flown over her and who had not crashed.
“Onuchek, Sanya, how did you go through something empty?” - Grandma cried. Sasha stood by a deep two-meter hole, looked into its black emptiness and only kept saying: “I ran to God, ran and did not fail”
Alexander Avdyugin
