Manyunya read online - narine abgaryan. Narine Abgaryan: Manyunya Narine Abgaryan presents

Manyunya

Childhood is the happiest time when you get to know the world, simple things are amazing and you want to plunge into adventure. Boundless fun, bright events and a naive look at what is happening.

On the pages of this book you will meet two cute girls Nara and Manyunya.

Cheerful, uncontrollable, playful children constantly get into funny stories. A kind and fair grandmother forgives them for any tricks, but she always remains on the alert, which prevents simple pranks from turning into a real disaster.

Manyunya writes a fantasy novel

This book continues the adventures of the cheerful and hooligan baby Manyuni and her friend Nara, who also cannot sit still and is drawn to mischief.

Who our Manyunya looks like becomes clear after meeting with numerous relatives, who also do not differ in calm behavior and silence.

What happened to the kids this time? The reader will learn from this book, which will captivate you from the first chapter. A colorful, simple, funny description of childhood captivates. Everyone will be able to recognize themselves in the characters of the book. What is a fairy tale and what is true in this work is up to you.

Manyunya, the anniversary of Ba and other troubles

Worries surround our familiar girlfriends Manyunya and Nara. During the day you need to play enough, have fun, fool around. Well, how without it in the best part of life - childhood? Our Manyunya is a real hurricane!

Everything little girls do becomes a funny story. Restless relatives also do not lag behind, but the grandmother will reconcile everyone and decide everything with this amazing company.

The book is filled with adventurous antics of heroines. Openness and honesty flowing from the pages will allow you to recognize yourself or close relatives in the characters during a carefree childhood.

folk book

About love. Stories and stories

Some time ago, we held a competition within the framework of the “People's Book” project, which was called “About Love ...” and offered to describe the feelings and events of independent authors who sent us their stories.

The book additionally includes love stories by already recognized authors such as Maya Kucherskaya, Narine Abgaryan, Maria Stepanova.

Cool Detective (AST)

chocolate grandfather

The life of the most ordinary Norwegian family from a small Norwegian town turned upside down when grandfather Oscar came to visit them. Neither Martin nor his older sister have ever met their grandfather before, whom everyone calls Chocolate Grandpa, because he cannot live a day without sweets.

Very soon, the city will host an annual sweets fair, but someone wants to disrupt it and make all the cakes and pastries bitter! Will Chocolate Grandpa, along with his grandchildren, be able to thwart the insidious villainous plans?

An exciting detective story awaits you!

Manyunya and others

Moura's happiness

Now you and I know exactly what the names of the happiest girls on earth are - Murami.

The guys have wise grandfathers, caring grandmothers, loving fathers and mothers, mischievous older brothers who just slightly spoil the peaceful atmosphere around. The guys have so many adventures that it is already overflowing.

All these events will wrap you in warmth, fun and a handful of sadness from the pages of the book. After all, life is very diverse.

Narine Abgaryan presents

Nine Days in July (compilation)

The best, ironic, funny prose in the collection is Nine Days in July.

Even from the most difficult situations in life there is a way out that is not always obvious and sometimes surprise will help to find it. Humor and understanding - that's what allows you to live fun.

Have a nice trip to the world of books.

People who are always with me

Live on

War is always horror, pain, suffering, grief and blood. This is the suffering and death of loved ones. Crippled destinies - literally and figuratively. The widespread devastation and destroyed houses, the grief of mothers, the death of children, whose young faces captured the last cry.

The horror that becomes part of the lives of many people who have touched the war. But those who survived hell are fighting for life and the future. People begin to build what is destroyed and destroyed - including their own souls. Embrace a new reality that will never be the same again...

Holiday-Holiday

Stories for Christmas and New Year

This book will tell stories about the various miracles that happen to ordinary people on New Year's Eve.

The best time of the year is considered to be New Year and Christmas. We all sum up the results of the outgoing year, make plans for the future and make wishes. We decorate Christmas trees, buy gifts in anticipation of the New Year holidays.

Everyone is waiting for New Year's miracles that will definitely happen. Someone will find true love, someone will meet a guardian angel in the face of an ordinary person who will lend a hand at a difficult moment. You can become a wish maker yourself and your wishes will come true.

No series

Three apples fell from the sky

A wise story about relatives, about the Little Motherland and those who live high in the mountains. All the inhabitants of these territories hide in themselves the true treasures of the spirit.

There are moments here that at first do not attract attention in the narrative, but you unconsciously put emphasis on them, wondering why? And after some time you will receive an answer from the writer herself ..

This novel has a thread that runs through the whole plot, which tightly binds all the characters and the audience. It was created with a great sense of love for their native places, which are now almost forgotten by young people.

All about Manyun (compilation)

I have always dreamed of being a child.

For example, a girl is 5 years old. Puffy-cheeked, with a blush, with hair burned out under the scorching sun. I loved talking to caterpillars. I asked them all sorts of questions and constantly expected answers. The caterpillars either turned into balls or crawled away from me. Without words.

I so wanted to look at my little self that I once took and wrote a book about this time. About my family and our friends. About the place where I was born. About the people who live there.

come in large numbers

A young but proud beauty arrives to conquer the Russian capital. The dashing 90s are in the yard, and Moscow becomes different for everyone. Someone instantly falls in love with this place and considers it magnificent. The capital does not joyfully welcome someone and gives a lot of problems ...

This is a novel about a small piece of life "come in large numbers."

There is a place for both appropriate irony and fascinating personal stories. Will a visitor be able to become a Muscovite?

People who are always with me

In the first moments, it seems that the novel tells the story of a number of generations of one large family - about its joys, problems, happiness, defeats, ups and downs. But the reality is much deeper than that.

It reflects the history of not just a family, but whole country, all the people who live in it, and each person in particular.

The book will be interesting even to those who do not consider themselves a fan of this genre.

Zulali (compilation)

This is a novel about the bitter and funny world of people who exist without paying attention to time.

People who do not experience fear of flying and are able to see the funny even in the tragic. The world of elders and children, adults and those who lost their faith but did not give up.

The world of people who are forever stuck in that dimension, where sooner or later dreams will certainly come true.

Three apples fell from the sky. People who are always with me. Zulali (compilation)

This book is the first collection of prose by Narine Abgaryan.

Whatever topics Narine Abgaryan touches on in her books - about the simple life of the inhabitants of a small mountain village, about the nightmare of war or about childhood - all her stories tell about the beauty of life.

And that no matter what, one should remain human…

Manyunya

Manyunya is a wonderful story about childhood. Funny, amazing and full of exciting adventures.

If you like to laugh, you will definitely enjoy this book.

And, of course, this is a book for your parents, who have already matured, but in their hearts, one way or another, remain children ...

One Woman, One Man (compilation)

The stories in the collection are similar to the stories that strangers share with each other on trains or long journeys.

Of course, no one discloses the names - there are only designations like “acquaintance”, “friend”, “old friend”, “acquaintance”. Sometimes people add colors and details, as they say, from themselves, leaving main idea story.

The stories in this edition are written in a casual and humorous way. What connects them? All of them are about life - about love, acquaintances, thoughts, people, etc.

Double rainbow (compilation)

This collection will give you the opportunity to get acquainted with good prose.

Different in sound - sincere, tragic, funny, angry, touching ...

The most important thing that unites the stories and novels of "Double Rainbow" is sincerity, one that cannot be faked and invented.

Narine Abgaryan

"Manyunya" is a bright, sun-soaked and smells of the southern bazaar and a stunningly funny story about childhood, about two girl friends Nara and Manyunya, about the formidable and kind Ba - grandmother Manyuni, and about a bunch of their relatives constantly getting into casus situations. This is the same warm, mischievous and full of fun adventures childhood that makes a person happy for life.

The book won the Manuscript of the Year award.

Abgaryan Narine

Mom and dad - with a feeling of endless love and gratitude

Instead of an introduction

How many provincial towns do you know, divided in half by a sonorous, whispering river, on the right bank of which, at the very top of the cliff, the ruins of a medieval fortress rise? An old stone bridge is thrown across the river, strong, but not at all high, and in the flood, the river overflowing its banks seethes with cloudy waters, trying to cover it with its head.

How many provincial towns do you know that rest on the palms of sloping hills? As if the hills stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, stretched their arms forward, closing them into a shallow valley, and in this valley the first low sakli grew. And the smoke from the stone ovens stretched into the sky in a thin lace, and the plowman started up in a low voice roared ... ?

How many provincial towns do you know where you can climb onto the high outer wall of a ruined castle and, dying with fear and clinging with cold fingers to the shoulders of friends, look down to where a white nameless river foams in the depths of the gorge? And then, ignoring the sign with a formidable inscription: “Protected by the state,” to climb the fortress in search of hidden passages and untold riches?

This castle has an amazing and very sad history. In the 10th century it belonged to the Armenian prince Tslik Amram. And the prince went with an army against his king Ashot II Bagratuni, because he seduced his wife. A heavy internecine war began, on long years paralyzed the country, which was already bled dry by the raids of the Arab conquerors. And the unfaithful and beautiful princess, tormented by remorse, hanged herself in the tower of the castle.

For many centuries the fortress stood on a rock impregnable from all sides. But in the XVIII century there was a terrible earthquake, the rock trembled and split into two parts. On one, the remains of the eastern wall and the internal buildings of the castle were preserved, and a swift river ran along the gorge formed below. Old-timers said that an underground tunnel passed from under the fortress to Lake Sevan, through which weapons were brought when the fortress was under siege. Therefore, it withstood all the raids of the nomads and, if that earthquake had not happened, it would still have risen whole and unharmed.

The town, which later grew up around the ruins, was called Bird. Translated from Armenian - fortress.

The people in this town are very, very specific. No one in the world has ever seen more stubborn or even frenzied stubborn people. Because of their stubbornness, the inhabitants of the town deservedly bear the nickname "stubborn donkeys." If you think that this somehow offends them, then you are very mistaken. On the streets you can often hear the following dialogue:

- Well, what are you trying to achieve, I'm a Berd donkey! It's very hard to convince me.

- So what? By the way, I am also a real Berd donkey. And it's still a question of who will yield to whom now!

In summer, Vardavar is celebrated in Armenia - a very joyful and bright holiday, rooted in distant pagan prehistory. On this day, everyone from young to old pour water on each other. From morning until late evening, from any container. The only thing that is required of you is to lather well, open the front door of your apartment and stand in the opening. You can be sure: a crowd of people soaked to the skin is waiting for you outside the threshold, who, with a wild cry and laughter, will pour a ton of water on you. Here's an easy way to clean up. Kidding.

In fact, if strangers poured water on you on the street, you should never be offended - it is believed that water on this day has healing powers.

So. The Apostolic Church tried to somehow systematize the national holidays and, having gone into all serious trouble, approved a strictly fixed day for Vardavar. Absolutely not taking into account the obstinacy of the inhabitants of our town.

And it would be worth it. Because now we have the following situation: all over the Republic of Vardavar they celebrate at the behest of the Church, and in Berd - in the old fashioned way, on the last Sunday of July. And I assure you, if the Catholicos had issued a special decree specifically for the inhabitants of our town, nothing good would have come of it. Let His Holiness not even try, so tell him. You can negotiate with our people only when they want it.

That is, never.

Now, actually, about the main characters of our story.

Once upon a time there were two families in the town of Berd - Abgaryan and Shats.

The Abgaryan family could boast of a wonderful and unbending father Yura, a selfless and beautiful mother Nadia and four daughters of different sizes and ages - Narine, Karine, Gayane and Sona. Then in this happy family the long-awaited son Hayk was born, but it happened a few years after the events described. Therefore, only four girls appear in the story. Father Yura worked as a doctor, mother taught Russian language and literature at school.

The Schatz family boasted Ba.

Of course, in addition to Ba, the Shatz family included two more people: Uncle Misha, the son of Ba, and Manyunya, Dyadimisha's daughter and, accordingly, the granddaughter of Ba. But the family, first of all, could boast of Ba. And only then - by all the other no less beautiful members. Uncle Misha worked as an engineer, Ba worked as a mother, grandmother and housewife.

For a long time, the heroes of our story practically did not communicate, because they did not even suspect the existence of each other. But one day a story happened that brought them together once and for all.

It was 1979. On the nose is the 34th anniversary of the Victory. Another event was planned in the city house of culture with honoring veterans of the war. A responsible mission was entrusted to the choir of the Berd music school - to perform "Buchenwald alarm" by Sobolev and Muradeli.

The choir rehearsed frantically, breaking the voice to a hoarseness. The wonderful choirmaster Sergo Mikhailovich suffered endlessly, pushing the basses, which, with annoying constancy, hung in the introduction for half a measure. Sergo Mikhailovich wringed his hands and lamented that with such a performance of the "Buchenwald alarm" they would disgrace the whole city and, as a punishment, the choir would be disbanded to hell. For some reason, the choristers were upset.

X day has come.

And you know what I'll tell you? Everything would have worked out if it had not been for a long two-stage bench, on which, during a short intermission, the second and third rows of choristers were feverishly hoisted. Everything turned out exemplary - the song flowed smoothly and heartfeltly, the basses came in unexpectedly on time, Sergo Mikhailovich, conducting, rushed around the stage like

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zigzags, as if he was being pursued by an evil wasp. The choristers were uniformly covered with goosebumps from the solemnity of the moment. The hall, initially intrigued by the chaotic movements of the choirmaster, was imbued with a pathetic alarm and fell silent.

Nothing, nothing foreshadowed trouble.

But suddenly. In words. "International columns are talking to us." Horus heard. At myself. Behind the back. Strange crack. The first row of choristers did not dare to turn around, but from the long face of the choirmaster he realized that something terrible was happening behind.

The first row trembled, but did not stoically interrupt the singing, and at the phrase: “Do you hear thunder peals? This is not a thunderstorm, not a hurricane, ”the bench under the second and third rows fell apart with a roar, and the guys fell down.

Then the veterans were surprised how it was they, being people of a rather advanced age, rattling orders and medals, jumped over the high side of the stage with one jump and began to rake a bunch of children.

The choristers were in despair - everyone understood that the performance had failed. It was insulting and sickening, and the children, brushing off their clothes, silently left the stage. One of the girls, thin and tall Narine, clenching her teeth, tried in vain to crawl out from under the plump and for some reason wet Maria, who was lying on her like a quiet mouse.

“Move over,” she hissed.

“I can’t,” Maria sobbed, “I peed myself!”

This is where we take a deep breath and think deeply. For in order for two girls to develop a fierce friendship for the rest of their lives, sometimes you just need one to describe the other.

In such a very original way, Narine and Manyunya became friends. And then their families became friends.

"Manyunya" is a story about a Soviet town remote from any capitals and its inhabitants. About how, despite the monstrous deficit and all sorts of restrictions, people managed to live and enjoy life.

Manyunya is a book for adult children. For those who at thirteen and sixty believe in the good and look to the future with a smile.

"Manyunya" is my declaration of endless love to my relatives, friends and the city where I was lucky to be born and grow up.

Happy reading, my friends.

And yes, who cares: our choir was still not disbanded. We were awarded a diploma for the professional performance of the "Buchenwald Alarm" and were rewarded with a trip to the dairy plant.

It would be better to disband, honestly.

Manyunya introduces me to Ba, or How difficult it is for Rosa Iosifovna to pass face control

As the story progresses, you may get the impression that Ba was a quarrelsome, stubborn and arbitrary person. It's not like that at all. Or not really. Ba was a very loving, kind, sympathetic and devoted person. If Ba is not pissed off, she generally seemed like an angel in the flesh. Another thing is that Ba could get out on any, even the most insignificant, occasion. And in this difficult hour for the universe, the operation "Desert Storm" could seem like childish babble compared to what Ba could arrange! It was easier to sweep into a scoop and throw out the consequences of a tornado behind the barn than to survive the storm of Babyrozin's destructive anger.

I am a happy person, my friends. I have come face to face with this natural disaster several times and still survived. Children are tenacious like cockroaches.

Manya and I were eight years old when we met. By that time, we both studied at a music school, Manya - violin, I - piano. We met for a while general lessons, exchanged phrases on duty, but then there was a memorable performance of the choir, after which our friendship turned into another, if you will allow such an expression, a frenzied plane. We moved to the same desk, left the music school together, since we were on the way home. If Mani had a violin lesson that day, then we took turns carrying the case - it was not at all heavy, but for us, little girls, it was quite bulky.

After two weeks of our close friendship, I invited Manya home to meet my family.

Mana hesitated.

“You see,” she looked down guiltily, “I have a Ba.

- Who? I asked.

- Well, Ba, Baba Rosa.

- And what? - It was not clear to me what Manya was getting at. - I also have grandmothers - Tata and Nastya.

“So you have grandmothers, and I have Ba,” Manya looked at me reproachfully. – You won’t spoil Ba! She does not allow me to walk on strangers.

- What kind of stranger am I to you? I threw up my hands. - We have been friends for ages, already, - I counted in my mind, - eighteen days!

Manka straightened the strap of her school apron, which had slipped off her shoulder, and smoothed the protruding frill with her palm. She kicked the violin case with her knee.

“Come on,” she suggested, “I’ll ask Ba’s permission, and at the next lesson I’ll tell you what she said.”

You can call me on my home phone. Give me a number?

“You see,” Manya looked at me guiltily, “Ba does not allow me to call strangers, so when we OFFICIALLY get to know each other, then I will call you!”

I did not begin to remind Manet again that we already kind of knew each other. So, I thought, this is how it should be. The word of an adult was law for us, and if Ba did not allow Mana to call other people, it means that there was some secret, inaccessible to my understanding, but unquestioning meaning.

At the next solfeggio lesson, Manyunya handed me a fourfold album sheet. I carefully unfolded it.

My friend's "beautiful letter" began with a mysterious inscription:

“Narine, I invite you on Saturday of this 1979 at three o'clock in the afternoon. If you can, take an album of family photos with you."

My name was thickly circled in red felt-tip pen. Below, with colored pencils, Manka drew a small house: thick smoke was pouring from the chimney on the roof; in the lonely window, Ilyich's yellow bulb bristled with rays; a long path, winding in an intricate snake, rested directly on the threshold. For some reason, the sun was peeking out from behind a curly cloud in a green sky. To the right, in the very corner, shone a goggle-eyed moon with a star on its tail. The inscription at the bottom read: “I lost the blue pencil, so the sky is green, but it’s nothing. End".

I shed a tear.

My mother gathered me to visit as on Judgment Day. In the morning, she bathed me with her own hands so that part of the meager muscle mass came off along with the skin. Then she braided my pigtails tightly, so tightly that I could not only blink, but also breathe. My grandmother in such cases said: neither bend, nor straighten, neither breathe, nor fart. This is how I felt about myself, but my unearthly beauty required sacrifice, so I stoically withstood all the procedures. Then I was given a new summer dress to put on, a pale cream one with puffed sleeves and a lace hem.

“If you put a stain on it, I’ll flog you,” my mother warned kindly, “your sisters still have to wear a dress for you.”

She solemnly handed me a package containing our family album and a box of chocolates for Ba. The package was incredibly beautiful - bright blue, with a lone handsome cowboy and the inscription "MARLBORO". Mom had several such packages, and she kept them as the apple of her eye for the most solemn occasions. Who found the shortage of the Soviet era, he remembers how much effort and incredible ingenuity had to be spent to get such polyethylene

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“Don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t forget to say hello and say thank you, behave yourself and don’t jump around the house like a crazy person,” my mother continued to shout out instructions for behavior as I ran down the steps of our entrance. - Take care of the dress! - Her voice caught up with me already at the exit and painfully stabbed in the back.

– Okoooo!

Manya shifted impatiently near the gate of her house. Seeing me from a distance, she ran towards me.

“You look beautiful today,” she breathed.

“I tried for your grandmother,” I muttered. All my fighting fuse instantly disappeared somewhere, I saw double, my knees could not unbend and my hands were treacherously sweating.

Manya noticed my condition.

“Don’t worry, I have a world Ba,” she stroked my shoulder, “you just agree with her in everything and don’t pick your nose.”

“Okay,” I croaked, and to top it all off, I lost my voice.

Manya lived in a large two-story stone house with several balconies. “Why do they need so many loggias?” I thought feverishly as I walked through the yard, but I was ashamed to ask about it. My attention was drawn to a large mulberry tree, spread out in the immediate vicinity of the house. There was a long wooden bench under the tree.

“My dad and I play checkers here in the evenings,” Manyunya explained, “and Ba sits next to me and prompts either me or him. Or worth it! Manka rolled her eyes. I got even more scared.

She pushed open the front door and whispered:

Ba is probably already taking the shortbread out of the oven.

I turned my nose - it smelled of something unbearably tasty. The house, large enough on the outside, turned out to be compact and even small inside. We walked along a long, narrow corridor that ended in a hall. To the left was a wooden staircase leading to the second floor. Opposite stood a large ebony chest of drawers surmounted by two brass menorahs, a carpet with a fine oriental pattern lay on the floor, and the whole wall above the chest of drawers was hung with framed photographs. I came closer to see the faces in the photographs, but Manya pulled my hand - then. She pointed to a door on the right, which I hadn't noticed right away.

- Let's go there!

And then the strength finally left me. I realized that I was not able to take a step.

“I won’t go,” I whispered hotly, “take the package, there are sweets for your grandmother and our family photo album.

- What are you? Mania grabbed my hand. - Are you completely crazy? Come on, we've got ice cream!

- No, - I stepped back to the front door, grabbed the handle, - I don't eat ice cream. And I don’t eat cookies, and in general it’s time for me to go home! Mom has been waiting for me!

- Narka, do you realize what you're doing? - Manka hung on me and tried to tear off the doorknob. - Where are you going, what will I say to Ba?

- I don’t know what you want, then say it, - the preponderance of forces was clearly in my favor, another minute - and I would have escaped from the house.

- What are you up to here? A sudden boom of trumpets from behind pinned us to the floor.

“Ba, she’s completely crazy, she wants to go home,” Manya nevertheless tore me away from the doorknob and pushed me into the corridor, “she’s embarrassed of you, that’s crazy!”

“Come on, both of you march to the kitchen!” - commanded the trumpet voice.

I silently trudged along after Manya, not raising my eyes. Out of the corner of her vision, she furtively snatched out a large foot in a warm slipper and a piece of a dress in a small flower.

I immediately liked the kitchen. It was very spacious, with numerous closets, a low lampshade, and simple chintz curtains at the windows.

I felt scared, like in a doctor's waiting room.

But there was no way out, I had to turn around. Ba stared at me over her large glasses. She had light brown eyes and gray curly hair, which she pulled into a bun at the back of her head. She was quite overweight, but, as it turned out later, quite easy to lift and carried her large body with incredible dignity. She also had a mole on her cheek - round and funny. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was an ordinary grandmother, not a fire-breathing monster!

Manya went up to Ba and hugged her around the waist. She pressed her cheek against her stomach.

- Tell me, Narka - CHARM? she asked.

“You are all lovely, only when you sleep,” Ba snapped and turned to me: “Well, girl, will you greet me or what?”

“Hello,” I squeaked.

“Hello, if you’re not kidding,” Ba snorted, and then laughed shortly.

I almost fainted - Ba laughed as if somewhere in her stomach they were tormenting an unfortunate animal.

- What is your name? she asked.

“Bah, well, I told you,” Manya butted in.

“Shut up, Maria, they are not talking to you,” Ba snapped at her. Manyunya pouted, but said nothing.

“Narine,” I squeaked, and then, mobilizing the remnants of my strength, I added: “It’s very nice to meet you!”

Apparently, the unfortunate animal inside was practically tormented, because the laughter that Ba let out was more like an agonizing wheeze.

How long did you rehearse the speech? she asked me through her apocalyptic laugh.

- For a long time! I confessed guiltily.

- And what is it in your hands?

- The package is a gift to you!

Did you bring me a package as a gift? Ba frowned. - This is what the shortage of people has brought to, that they are already carrying packages as a gift!

“There’s also candy and our family album.” I took a hesitant step and held out the package.

- Thank you, - Ba looked into the bag, - oooo, truffles, these are my favorite sweets!

It's like a stone has been lifted from my soul. I sighed happily and puffed out my chest.

- Why are you so skinny? She eyed me suspiciously from head to toe and made a circular motion with her finger. - Well, turn around!

I turned.

- Mom puts on two pairs of tights for me, because my legs are so thin! She is afraid - people will say that they starve me at home, - I complained.

Ba burst out laughing, so much so that it became clear that the executioner sitting in her stomach took up a new victim. Laughing, she began to study me again. I really wanted to produce on her good impression. I remembered how my mother taught us to keep our backs correctly - she lifted her shoulders to her ears, pulled them back and lowered them - now my posture was perfect.

Apparently, Ba appreciated my efforts. She looked at me for a minute, then chuckled:

- Breast of a sailor, butt of a turkey!

I thought it was a compliment, so I breathed a sigh of relief and looked up boldly.

Meanwhile, Ba took a large pink apron from the locker and handed it to me.

- This is my apron, put it on, it's okay that it's too big for you. You stain your beautiful dress - then mom won’t pat her on the head, right?

I nodded guiltily and put on my apron. Manyunya helped me tie it from behind. I walked around the kitchen, the apron dangling on me like a flag on a ship's mast in a strong wind.

“It will do,” Ba nodded graciously.

Then she seated us at the table, and for the first time in my life I tried her pastries.

Do you know what delicious cookies Ba baked? I have never eaten cookies like this anywhere else in my life. It was fragile and thin, almost transparent. You carefully take a weightless sand petal with two fingers and hold your breath in fear - otherwise you will inadvertently exhale, and it will shatter into dust.

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It was necessary to break off a piece and hold it in your mouth - the biscuit instantly melted, and a tickling warmth enveloped your tongue. And only then, in a small cautious sip, could this sweet happiness be sent straight to your soul.

Ba was sitting opposite, leafing through the album and asking me: who is this, and who is this?

Then, having learned that my mother’s relatives live in Kirovabad, she threw up her hands: “So she is my countrywoman, I’m from Baku!”

She demanded our home phone to call her mother.

- What is her middle name? she asked.

Out of excitement, I forgot the meaning of the word “patronymic”. My eyes darted across my face, and I blushed deeply.

“I don’t know,” she squeaked.

- Do you know your grandfather's name? Ba looked over her glasses at me.

- Aaaaaaaa! - I instantly remembered what the ill-fated word means. - She is Andreevna, Nadezhda Andreevna.

- Miracle in feathers! - Ba chuckled and became important to turn the dial of the phone.

At first, she and her mother spoke Russian. Then Ba, looking sideways at us, switched to French. Manya and I craned our necks and bulged our eyes, but did not understand a single word. In the course of the conversation, Ba's face gradually blossomed, at first she smiled, then burst into her catastrophic laugh - my mother, probably, on the other end of the wire, dropped the phone in surprise.

- Well, goodbye, Nadia, - Ba finished the conversation, - of course, we will come to visit, and you come to us, I will bake my signature apple pie.

She hung up and looked at me with a long, slightly distracted look.

“And you, it turns out, are a good girl, Narine,” she said.

It is still amazing to me how at that moment I managed not to burst from the pride bursting me!!!

Then we ate cookies in the second round. Then we ate ice cream. Then we drank coffee with milk and felt like adults, then Ba smoothed a lock of hair out of my hair with her hand. “Onion woe,” she said, and her palm was large and warm, and Manya kissed me on the cheek, and her lips were sticky, and the tip of her nose was completely cold.

Manyunya, or Baba Rosa's Tumba

“I seem to have got lice,” Manyunya drawled thoughtfully. We were sitting in her room, and I, leaning over the arm of the chair, took checkers from the shelf.

- Where did you get it from? - Just in case, I moved away from Mani to a safe distance.

- I feel a SHIT in my hair, - Manyunya pointedly raised her index finger, - some MYSTERIOUS SHUTTER, you understand?

I, too, immediately mysteriously stirred in my hair. I reached for my head and immediately withdrew my hand.

- What do we do? - Manyunya was discouraged. “If anyone finds out about this, we will disgrace the whole city!”

“Let’s get a full bath of water, dive in with our heads and sit quietly at the bottom until the lice suffocate!” I suggested.

How long will it take for them to suffocate? Mana asked.

“Well, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so.

Manka's eyes sparkled, it was clear that she liked the idea.

“Come on,” she agreed, “only, mind you, don’t say a word to Ba, otherwise she will forbid us to get into the bath.”

- I swear by everything that I have - in the years of my deep youth, I did not know an oath more terrible!

- Yes? Manya hesitated. What will happen to you if you don't keep your word? Will they put you in jail for this and take away everything that you have?

I got lost. I wonder what fate awaits people who break the oath? Imagination painted slimy prison walls covered with worms and a painful but deserved death in torture. We were puzzled for a while. Manka put the checkers back on the shelf.

“Let's not swear,” she said decisively, “let's go like this: whoever blabs to grandmother is an asshole!”

“Come on,” I agreed, relieved. The prospect of being an asshole was much less frightening than a painful death in prison.

We quietly crawled out of my friend's room. Manya lived in a house of a very peculiar layout - to get to the bathroom, you had to go down to the first floor and through the large hall, past the kitchen and living room, go along a long corridor with a creaky wooden floor to the combined bathroom.

Manina's grandmother Rosa cooked in the kitchen. We silently, along the wall, crept past. It smelled of meat, vegetables, and roasted walnuts.

- It's rustling! Mania whispered to me.

- What's rustling? - I did not understand.

- Well, dad told her today: Mom, you rustle in the kitchen there, Pavel will come to us in the evening. You see, how it rustles, - over Manya's forehead, a rebellious bang fluttered like a crooked mohawk, - she promised to rustle more baklava by the evening, do you feel how it smells of nuts?

I sniffed. It smelled so delicious that my mouth immediately filled with saliva. My stomach rumbled loudly, but I strangled the treacherous sound in the bud with an effort of will.

We quietly made our way down the corridor to the bathroom and carefully bolted the door. “Like Nif-Nif and Nuf-Nuf,” Manka giggled. The first thing that caught your eye in the bathroom was an impressive size, on a wide elastic band, knickers, popularly referred to as tumbans. They hung opposite the gas column and looked absolutely awesome.

- Grandmothers? I asked.

“Well, not mine,” Manyunya snorted.

In order to fill the bath with warm water, it was necessary to turn on the gas column. True, there was one snag here - we were strictly forbidden to touch matches. We understood all the criminality of our plan, so we tried to act as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Let me strike a match and bring it to the gas jet, and you unscrew the valve,” I suggested.

“Come on,” Manka agreed and immediately unscrewed the valve.

“I told you, wait until I bring a lit match,” I reproached her.

“You strike faster, instead of clapping your ears,” Manyunya got angry and snatched a matchbox from my hands. - Let me do it myself, otherwise you can’t do anything humanly.

She broke about five matches, until at last she managed to light another and bring it to the column. At the same moment there was a small but rather strong explosion, a long sheaf of fire escaped from the column, ransacked the wall opposite, walked for some time along the ceiling and, not finding anything more worthy of attention, clung to Baba Rosa's pedestals. Apparently, the pantaloons had time to dry well or were made of 100% synthetics, because they smoked instantly.

“Aaaaah,” we yelled, and began banging on the bathroom door.

“Baaaa,” Manyunya shouted, “it’s not us, it exploded by itself!”

- Babaaaa Rosaaaaaa, - I yelled, - your tumbansyyyyy are hot!!!

Ba was already standing on the other side of the door.

“Will you open the door for me, Maria, or call dad?” she yelled, uneasiness barely concealed in her voice.

The magic phrase “call dad” had an instant sobering effect on us, we immediately remembered how the door was unlocked. Ba burst into the bathroom like a hurricane. It was quite smoky, but she immediately got her bearings - she turned on the valve, brushed the half-decayed pedestals into the sink and let the water run.

We tried to hide under the guise.

– Whereaaaaaaaaaa?! Ba shouted and grabbed us by the collar. - Have you messed up and let's run away? Who was told not to touch matches? To whom? She looked from me to Manya and back. This look didn't mean

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nothing good. Manka and I squealed and tried to escape, but where is there! Ba held us as if our collars were nailed to her hands.

“Bah,” Manyunya began to moan, “we wanted to bring out the lice!”

- Wosh?! - Baba Rosa gathered our collars in one hand and rummaged with the other behind her back. - I'll show you how to remove lice! “She hit us with something smelly and wet. - You will now dance with your lice!

I realized that these were the remains of Babyrozin's tumbans. They were heavy from the water and hit our backs quite painfully, so we stooped and squealed. Ba pushed us out into the corridor.

“Stay here and don't move, if you move, it will get worse,” she hissed, and began to clean up the bathroom. - I just washed everything, - she lamented, - and now, on you, she turned away for a moment, and they had already staged a rout! Are you people or what, - she shouted, turning to us, - I still ask you - are you people or what???

Ba's gray hair broke out of the bun and stuck out in different directions, a defiant Mohawk, like Manka's, fluttered over his forehead. She looked at us with darkened eyes and angrily moved her face.

- So I ask you again, are you people or what ?! Without waiting for an answer, she shouted again.

We yelped piteously.

- Baaaa, why are you asking, don't you see that we are girls? – whined Manyunya.

“Girls,” mimicked Baba Rosa, “come on, march here, you need to wash up!”

She dragged us to the sink, ran ice water and splashed it in our faces.

- Aaaaaa, - Manyunya pleaded, - at least turn on the warm water!

- I'll give you warm water! - Baba Rosa diligently lathered our faces in turn with smelly laundry soap. - I'll let you play with matches! - She washed away the foam with a ton of ice water, from which the soul strummed thinly and went into the heels. - I will let you disobey adults! She furiously rubbed our faces to death with a starched waffle towel. I looked in the mirror - from there two disheveled, red-cheeked girls with a martyred expression on their faces were looking at us.

Ba was filled with righteous indignation.

- Where?! Where did you get that you have lice? she started asking us.

“We have a mysterious stirring in our hair,” we gave out our terrible secret in unison, “we decided to take a full bath of warm water and dive headlong into it for an hour so that the lice suffocate!”

Ba's face changed.

“What a nightmare,” she wailed, “that is, the lice would drown, but you wouldn’t?!!!

Manyunya and I looked at each other in shock. That we can suffocate under water, it never occurred to us.

Baba Rosa dragged us to the kitchen.

“Now you are eating stewed vegetables at my place,” she declared categorically, “and you don’t need to twist your mouth. Either you will eat everything, or you will not get up from this table! It's clear? And then, when your hair is dry, I will see what this mysterious stirring is in your empty heads!

She served each a large plate of stewed vegetables and hung over us like a thundercloud.

- What about meat? - Mania squeaked.

“But I feed normal people with meat,” Ba snapped.

We sluggishly chewed the hated vegetables. Vegetables were not swallowed. We grimaced and quietly spat them back onto our plate. Manka defiantly sighed and poked her fork loudly. Ba pretended not to hear anything.

“Ba,” Manya wound a lock of her brown hair around her finger and raised her eyes to the ceiling, “and if we swore, and then didn’t keep our word, what would happen to us then?”

“Your guts would leak out,” Baba Rosa threw angrily over her shoulder. She stood with her back to us and kneaded the dough, her shoulder blades furiously walked under her flowery dress - your intestines would leak out and dangle between your legs all your life!

We quieted down.

"Good thing we're just assholes," I whispered to Manet, relieved.

“Yeah,” she breathed, “if we had guts dangling between our legs all our lives, it would be worse!”

Manyunya, or All is well, beautiful Marquise

- Shave your head. - Baba Rosa looked like a stone idol from Easter Island.

Ba was hard to argue with. Ba was adamant as a granite rock. When it turned out that Manya and I had successfully shoved, she immediately took me to her place so that I would not reward my sisters with lice.

“Don't worry,” she reassured my despondent parents, “I'll get this outrage out in an instant.

- They say that you can use kerosene? Mom asked timidly. - You need to apply it to dry hair and hold it for a while.

Baba Rosa made an imperious gesture with her fingers, as if she had gathered her mother's lips into a pinch:

- Don't worry, Nadia, everything will be fine. at its best!

We spent the night in Manka's room, sleeping side by side on her bed.

- And let my lice come to visit you this night. - Manka gathered her curly brown hair into a ponytail and put it on top of my head. “It will be the fraternization of my lice with yours,” she added happily.

I fell asleep under a pile of her hair, and I dreamed that a crowd of Manka's lice were moving over my head with Noah's large family from Aivazovsky's painting "Noah's Descent from Mount Ararat." At the same time, Noah had the face of Ba, he threatened with a staff and said: “Outrageous, you didn’t let us get over your sisters’ hair!”

The next morning, Ba fed us breakfast and drove us out into the yard.

- You walk a little, I'll wash the dishes and take care of your hair, - she said.

Manya and I trudged around the yard and alternately sighed sadly - we really didn’t want to lose long hair in our almost ten adult years.

“Dad recently bought you a headband with a golden ladybug,” I reminded Manet. Manka kicked out of anger a pebble that lay in the grass, it bounced off and hit a high wooden fence.

- Well, at least some hair will she leave on our heads? Manya asked with hope in her voice.

“I won’t leave anything,” the voice of Ba sounded behind our backs, “it’s unbelievable, look like bald, but then you will grow lush and curly hair, like Uncle Moishe’s, hair.

Manka and I were horrified. We saw Uncle Moishe only in old, erased photographs in Ba's album, he was an incredibly thin, sharp-cheeked young man with a prominent nose and mercilessly pompous hair, curly with a small demon.

“We don’t want to, like Uncle Moishe,” we wailed in unison.

“Okay,” Ba agreed easily, “if you don’t want to, like Uncle Moishe, you will have hair like Janis Joplin.”

- And who is this?

“A drug addict and a brawler,” Ba snapped.

We quieted down.

Ba led us to a long wooden bench under an old mulberry tree. She brushed off the ripe berries that had fallen from the tree and made me an inviting gesture with her hand - sit down. I meekly sat down. Ba stood behind me and began to cut my long hair to the root.

Manyunya spun around and gasped with every falling strand. She picked one up and placed it on her head.

“Bah, if I had such blond hair, what would you say then?” she asked.

“I would say that you are not my granddaughter,” Ba drawled thoughtfully, and then caught herself: “Maria, what kind of nonsense are you talking about, what difference does it make what color your hair is? And remove this strand from your head, are your lice not enough for you?

Manka put her hair to her shoulders.

“What if I was this hairy?” Look, Ba, what kind, and long strands would hang from my shoulders? – Manke

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- If you distract me, then I will cut off half of Narka's ear! Ba threatened.

“No need,” I squeaked.

“And you shut up,” shouted Ba, “both of them were covered!” I can’t understand where you could pick up lice ?!

Manka and I looked at each other furtively. Well, let's say it was very comprehensible to our mind.

In the backyards of the Manino quarter, in an old stone house, she lived the large family Junkman Uncle Slavik. Uncle Slavik was a thin, wiry and extremely unsightly little man. He weighed forty kilos at the most and his appearance resembled a green big-headed grasshopper. When Uncle Slavik looked directly into his interlocutor's eyes, he felt uncomfortable from his rarely blinking wide-set eyes. The interlocutor automatically began to stare in the hope of focusing on Dyadislav's pupils.

Uncle Slavik traveled around the yards of our town twice a week. The creak of the wheels of his cart, loaded with all sorts of rubbish, announced his appearance ahead of time, so that when the junk dealer, accompanied by his three grubby children, drove into the yard, the housewives were already waiting for him below. Uncle Slavik sharpened knives and scissors, bought up all kinds of junk, and if he managed to sell something else, then his happiness knew no bounds. The rest of his rubbish was bought in bulk by a gypsy camp, which periodically pitched its tents on the outskirts of our town.

Manya and I, despite the strict prohibition of our parents, often ran away to the junk dealer's house and fiddled with his children. We imagined ourselves as teachers and drilled the unfortunate kids as best we could. Uncle Slavik's wife did not interfere in our games, on the contrary, she approved.

- All the same, there is no government for children, - she said, - so at least you calm them down.

Since admitting to Ba that we picked up lice from the children of a junk dealer was like death, we were silent in a rag.

When Ba finished with me, Manka squealed thinly:

“Aaaaah, will I really be that scary too?”

- Why is it scary? - Ba grabbed Manka and imperiously nailed him to a wooden bench. - You might think that all your beauty is in your hair, - and she cut off a large curl from the top of Manka's head.

I ran into the house to look at myself in the mirror. The spectacle that opened my eyes plunged me into horror - I was short and unevenly cut, and on the sides of my head with two perky burdock leaves my ears perked up! I burst into bitter tears - never, never in my life have I had such ears!

I trudged into the yard. Manyuni's tear-stained face appeared from behind the mighty back of Baba Rosa. I swallowed loudly - Manka looked incomparable, even more whippy than me: at least both tips of my ears stuck out equidistantly from the skull, in Manka they were at odds - one ear was neatly pressed to the head, and the other belligerently bristled to the side!

- Well, - Ba looked at us with satisfaction, - Gena and Cheburashka are pure crocodile!

Then, to our friendly roar, she deftly whipped soap suds in a bowl and applied it to our heads. Ten minutes later, under the hot summer sun, two forlorn billiard balls shone. Ba led us to the bathroom and washed off the remaining foam.

- In, - Manka drawled, when we looked at ourselves in the mirror, - it’s good that it’s holidays now. And imagine us in this form on stage, as part of a choir?

We rolled with laughter. It would be a spectacle!!!

- Ah ... a ... a ... - Manka did not let up, - imagine that in this form we are performing on the stage some kind of sonata in E minor for violin and piano ???

We slid down the wall from laughter to the floor.

“Oh ... oh ...” was all we could say, because every glance at our smooth-shaven heads made us break out into a new fit of laughter. Tears streamed down our cheeks, and all we did was moan and clutch at our tummies.

We rubbed our eyes and looked up at her. Ba towered over us like the Motherland monument. Only in her hands, instead of a sword, she held some kind of bowl.

- And what's that? we asked.

“This is a mask,” Ba explained importantly, “a special mask to make hair thick and curly.”

What is this mask made of? - We, intrigued, got up from the floor and tried to stick our noses into the bowl, but in vain - Ba raised it higher, and we could not reach it.

- You will know a lot, grow old quickly! - she said, as she cut off.

We silently followed her into the yard.

- Now I will apply the mixture to your heads, and then you have to sit under the sun for about an hour so that it is well absorbed, understand?

“Understood,” we said in unison. In principle, we were already indifferent to what else Ba could do to us.

Looking ahead, I’ll still say that don’t swear until menopause sets in, as Ba used to say. Hearing this expression for the first time, we unanimously decided that the climax is bad weather, and every time Ba said so, we looked out the windows in the hope of seeing a natural cataclysm.

Ba seated us on a bench and quickly began to apply a mask on our bald heads with a shaving brush.

- Don't turn around! she shouted at Manka when she tried to look at me. - Sit still, otherwise you will stain your dress!

Five minutes passed in an agonizing wait.

“Well, now,” Ba finally said with satisfaction, “now you can relax.

We looked at each other and squealed in surprise - our heads were covered with some dark blue thick goo. I tried to touch her, but Ba slapped my arm:

- You can not touch, who was told ?! Exactly one hour! she growled menacingly and went into the house.

It was that rare case when we were afraid to disobey Ba. And, although our heads itched desperately, we both sat motionless. After about twenty minutes, the mask dried up, cracked and began to crumble. We furtively picked up the pieces that had fallen off and rubbed them in our fingers - thick, heterogeneous, with some kind of fibrous patches, they instantly painted our hands blue.

Our research activities were interrupted by the sound of an opening gate. We darted behind a mulberry tree.

Uncle Misha saw us and slowed down. Due to myopia, he first narrowed his eyes, then, not believing his eyes, pulled back the corner of the eyelid with his finger, first one, then both eyes. We got closer. The spectacle that opened up to Uncle's gaze, apparently, was so unexpected that for some time he studied us in a daze. We, seeing the expression on his face, whined thinly again.

“Hello, uncle,” I whispered through tears.

- Your mother's leg, - Uncle Misha finally returned the gift of speech, - children, who is this with you?

- It's Ba! - Manyunya was already roaring in three streams and swallowed whole syllables from resentment. - She is SKA ... what we ... Buuuu will ... Cheaty ... gloomy ... how ... how ... how ... how ...

“Like Jooopli,” I contributed to the universal cry.

- Like whooooo? Uncle Misha's eyes widened. – What such Zhoply?!

- A drug addict and a debaucheeaaaaa Zhoooplii, - it’s already impossible for Manya and me

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was to stop. We immediately felt the full horror of our situation - bald! for the whole summer! don't take a walk! do not run to the bakery for puff pastry! don't swim in the river! and the worst thing is that peers will laugh at you!

Uncle Misha backed away towards the house.

– Maaaaaaaaaam?! he called. - What did you do with them? There was an agreement to treat their hair with kerosene and keep the girls away from the fire for a while!

Ba went out onto the veranda.

- I will listen to you! she muttered. - Then you will thank me again when they grow lush curly hair!

- Why curly! At Manka they were already curly! Uncle Misha leaned over and sniffed at our heads. - And what did you smear them with?

- It's a mask! Fai's recipe, which is Zhmaylik! It is necessary to mix blue powder, lamb pellets in equal proportions and dilute this matter in egg yolks, - Ba began to list.

- Lamb what? - Manka and I jumped up.

“Spools, spools,” Uncle Misha rolled with laughter, “that is, poop!”

Manka and I were speechless.

- Ba! How could you?! we finally roared and rushed to the bathroom to wash off the mask from our heads. The poop was easily and quickly washed off, but our heads now shone with a delicate bluish color.

When we crawled out onto the veranda, Uncle Misha whistled.

- Mom, who asked you? Okay, Manya, what do we say to Narkin's parents?

“But you don’t need to say anything,” Ba snapped, “they smart people and, unlike you, will appreciate my efforts. Better go call Nadia and say that you can already pick up Narka.

- Well, I do not! - Uncle Misha drew us to him and kissed us in turn on the blue-gray tops. - She made this porridge herself, and disentangle it herself!

- You might think! Ba snorted and went into the house. It's hard to call him!

With bated breath, we began to listen intently to Ba's conversation.

– Hello? Hello-oh? Nadia? Hello dear, how are you? We are fine too. You can take Narka... Why can't she come herself? Why can not, very much even can. Only panama is needed ... Pa-na-ma ... Why? So that the head does not burn ... And what about the hair? Hair is something that can be acquired, yesterday there was hair, but today it’s gone, hehe! I will harass them with kerosene! I did everything in the best possible way, applied the mask, according to the recipe of Faya, who is Zhmailik ... I tell her, most importantly, we don’t need any masks, Faya, and she - do it, do it, she made it right, she stood over the soul ... So what, what she’s in Novorossiysk, and I’m here? .. I made her call on the phone! .. Don’t worry, the mask is like a mask, yolk and blue, well, little things ... Little things, I say ... Well, mutton pellets, business something ... What you groan, you might think, I put rat poison ... No, everything was washed away, everything is in order, only the head is cyanotic ... Blue-on-I, I say, like a drowned man ... Why are you immediately scared, she’s alive, alive, it’s from blue she cyanotic, a day or two, and everything will come down ... And the hair will grow back quickly, these are not teeth! .. Yeah ... Yeah ... Well, goodbye, dear, we are waiting!

- Mom! shouted Uncle Misha when Ba hung up. “Are you sure you didn’t hear the sound of a falling body on the other end of the wire?”

Uncle Misha grunted:

“Mom, you better give me something to eat, otherwise I have to return to work in half an hour.” He winked at us cheerfully. - Well, victims of compost, let's go eat, I hope dinner will certainly do without lamb pellets?

Manyunya, or Baba Rosa demonstrates the wonders of humanism

Lunch was fried chicken with rice, a green salad, and a sour, refreshing cherry plum compote.

Manyunya and I were literally devouring the bird, trying in vain to keep a mournful expression on our faces. Ideally, of course, it was necessary to defiantly screw up in front of Ba, so that she would later mourn us for a long time, tugging at our lousy hair in her hands. But there was no force on planet Earth that could make us tear ourselves away from Ba's well-done, crispy, flavorful chicken.

Uncle Misha chuckled, sideways watching us.

“Mom, look at them, they look like two mutant tadpoles!” he couldn't resist.

We pricked up our ears. Ba pushed her plate away from her in annoyance.

- Have you all eaten? And now the march from the table, PEOPLE should arrive at six, pick up Narka, I want to have time to bake an apple pie.

“Do you want to atone for the damage done to Narka with a charlotte?” Uncle Misha laughed. - Yes, for only lamb spools you will have to pay with a bottle of plum brandy!

Manka and I looked at each other anxiously - Uncle Misha was clearly looking for adventure on his own head. Ba gave him a heavy, withering glance from under her brows.

“I’m silent, silent,” Uncle Misha hurried, “that’s it, Felen-Pelen,” he turned to us, “I’m going to work, and you behave as quiet as water below the grass, otherwise you see what devastating consequences your experiments lead to industries!

“Are you going to leave like that or are you going to be carried forward with your feet?” Ba asked kindly.

Yes, I'm almost gone. Uncle Misha kissed her and slipped out of the kitchen.

Ba covered the cheek with her hand, on which Uncle Misha had kissed her, and stood like that for a minute, smiling absently with her lips alone. Manya and I, with some animal instinct, guessed that she should not be distracted now, so we sat at the table without moving and watched her with all our eyes.

Ba woke up, looked at us with a studying look, laughed:

“But you really look like two mutant tadpoles.

We took her laughter as an indemnity and got out from behind the table.

“Ba, what is a mutant?” Manka asked.

“If you grow up, you’ll find out,” Ba answered, “but if you start moaning now, what and how, you won’t get sweets,” she handed us TWO chocolates.

We could not believe our eyes - chocolates from Ba were direct evidence that the universe had finally turned to face us, and not the place it had been in the morning. After all, Ba was categorically opposed to chocolate, she considered it the source of all human ills, from enuresis to Down syndrome. Therefore, when she voluntarily handed us two (!) chocolates, we, without delay, plucked them from her palms and ran out of the kitchen.

“Thank you, Ba,” we shouted in unison.

On the veranda, Manka unwrapped both sweets and stuffed them into her mouth at once.

“It's her because of her guilt towards us,” she muttered, “eat your chocolate faster before Ba changes her mind.”

Now imagine this marvelous picture: under a tall sprawling mulberry tree, two girls with unevenly lop-eared heads, shaved bald and gleaming with bluish skulls, are sitting on a wooden bench. Behind each cheek they have a piece of sweet happiness, they roll their eyes in bliss, smack their lips and in some places criminally salivate ... A pitiful, heartbreaking sight!!!

After the candy was eaten, we went for a walk in the backyard. They walked aimlessly under the fruit trees, stood over the neat beds of cilantro, tore out leaves, chewed in thought.

Suddenly they noticed some stirring under the pear tree. Looked with bated breath. In the grass lay a small chick - miserable, naked, crooked.

- Oh! -

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we were horrified. He must have fallen out of the nest.

We looked up, but saw nothing behind the thick leaves. Manka carefully raised the chick. He squeaked helplessly and floundered in her palms.

We ran into the house to show our find. Ba was fumbling with pie dough in the kitchen, smelling of cinnamon and roasted almonds.

- Ba! we shouted. She turned to our voices and shuddered in surprise.

- You scared me!

– Aha! Manya shouted triumphantly. - Now you admit that because of you we have become terrible as death, it really pricks our eyes, right?

- I'll show you now how the truth can prick your eyes, - Ba got angry, - what is it in your hands?

“Look what we found,” Manyunya thrust a chick under her nose.

Ba looked at our find incredulously.

“You shouldn’t have taken him, he’s almost dead already,” she grumbled.

- Well, Ba! Manyunya was indignant. “He’s not dead, look,” she pointed her finger at the chick, he grimaced with his whole body and twitched his paws. – See? Manka said triumphantly. - We saved him, and now we will feed, water, nurse! Ba, what can we give him?

Ba didn't think for a minute.

“You can dig up the earthworms and chew them up and feed them to this dead thing,” she said caustically.

- Fuuuuuu, Ba! Manka wrinkled her nose funny. It's even disgusting to imagine. If only you could help us...

“Are you suggesting that I chew the worms myself?” - Ba briefly looked up from the test.

- Can you? - Manka jumped impatiently on one leg. The unfortunate chick was shaking in her hand like a limp ball.

“Maria,” Ba looked at Manka over her glasses, “do you understand what you are saying?”

Manka rolled her eyes. Then she puffed out her cheeks.

“And if you give him milk to drink?” I squeaked.

Ba raised her eyebrows in surprise.

- Where is it heard that a bird feeds milk? Have you ever seen a bird's chest?

- I saw it! - I decided to go for broke. - The harpy bird, for example, has a large female breast. I saw it myself. In a book about ancient gods.

Ba sweated her face.

- So go to your familiar harpy bird and ask her to feed this dead man with large female breasts, understand? she snapped.

We looked at each other silently. Manka poked the chick again. He stirred slightly. She placed him on the edge of the table and stroked his bare back.

“Woe is my onion,” she whispered tenderly. “Bah, we can feed him bread crumbs!” - suddenly it dawned on Manka. - And we can drink water from a pipette! You just give us crumbs, Ba! And show me where the pipette that you used to drop this terrible black liquid into my ear, remember? And we, for example, can redeem him. Pour warm water into a bowl, shake it there and put it to bed, covering it with a handkerchief.

Ba groaned. But Manyunya did not hear anything, Manyunya carried.

“And if he suddenly develops a volvulus of the intestines, we will give him an enema with a pipette,” Manka’s cheeks flushed with excitement, “you can help us, Ba? Although you don't need to help, we'll figure it out ourselves.

On the petrified back of Ba, one could guess that the irreparable would happen now, but Manka did not notice this, she was carried away by her thoughts.

“Now, if you still knew how to catch flies,” she drawled dreamily, “or at least midges, huh, Ba?”

Ba with the words: “Yes, what is it!” She quickly turned around and twisted the chick's neck with a slight crunch.

“Now you can bury him with all honors,” she breathed, ignoring our long faces. “I’m even ready to give you an iron jar of Indian tea for this ceremony!” Because I'd rather kill him right now than have you torture him to death with your experiments later!

We, shocked, in deathly silence took the corpse of the chick and went to bury it in the backyard. They dug a small hole under the pear, put the little body there and sprinkled it with earth. They stood for some time dejectedly over the grave.

“It will be necessary to dig him out tomorrow and see if his soul has flown away or is still WARMING IN THE CHEST,” Manka thoughtfully drawled.

- What are you? – I was indignant. - What's warming there, he's dead!

- Well, you heard how Ba told about the goy tricks of Jesus with the resurrection? - Manka plucked a leaf from a branch and wrapped it around her finger. “Maybe it’s the bird Christ?”

We stared thoughtfully at the grave. Then, as if on command, they picked up two wooden twigs, folded them crosswise, wrapped them in herbs so that the cross would not fall apart, and stuck them into a lonely mound.

The author apologizes to his wonderful readers for the blasphemy. The author herself is a Christian, however, enough gouging spill, but oh well. In justification for Ba, the author of the text can say that she had a very difficult relationship with God, dictated by her difficult childhood and youth. Ba belonged to one of the main Abrahamic religions and considered herself entitled to burn the saints of all religions with the same frenzy. Please submit all claims exclusively to the author, because the author will not give offense to Ba.

When my parents arrived in the evening, there was an apple pie smelling amazing on the kitchen table. Ba poured over it, still hot, with melted honey, sprinkled with cinnamon and almond crumbs. She roasted the coffee beans in a large cast-iron skillet to an oily sheen, brought her famous plum brandy from the cellar in a misted dark glass bottle. Manka and I conscientiously ground coffee in a manual coffee grinder.

Ba went out to meet mom and dad on the veranda.

“Sit in the kitchen,” she hissed, bulging her eyes menacingly at us. - Oh, Nadenka, Yurochka (smack-smack), how did you get there? So what, five minutes drive, you never know what can happen to you, a wheel can be punctured, a gas tank can leak, fuel oil can spill, or some other misfortune can happen. There, at our neighbor, Gor, the son almost burned out in the car, they said - a short circuit (sympathetic ahs and oohs). I baked an apple pie (loud enthusiastic muttering of parents), aha, aha, soon Misha will arrive. The girls were behaving wonderfully today, burying a chick (anxious mumbling). Yes, it's okay, they picked him up, they wanted to make an enema with a pipette, the unfortunate man had to turn his neck so that they would not torture him to death (a confused cough). Just don’t be scared, the cyanosis of the heads has not yet passed (anxious coughing), but this is a matter of one or two days, then everything will return to normal (bewildered lowing). Well, that we are standing on the threshold, let's go to the kitchen!

I will not now tell you in detail how powerful the paroxysm of hysterical laughter bent my parents at the sight of our blue skulls. How then dad turned our heads in his hands and, lovingly counting all the characteristic bumps, poured terrible words brachycephaly, dolichocrania and craniology, and this drove us into a final and irreversible stupor.

How mother sobbed on Ba’s shoulder, and Ba consoled her and said that hair is not teeth, well, you understand, Nadia, and mother, with some kind of voluptuous relief, wiped her snot off the hem of Ba’s dress and said: “Aunt Rosa, I understand everything , but the children are still sorry !!!

How dad and Uncle Misha stood on the veranda, with steaming cups of coffee in their hands, smoked cigarette after cigarette and had an endless dialogue on the topic that it's time to quit smoking, Misha, of course, it's time, otherwise how much

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You can, Yura!

The day went well, overall. I fell asleep happy, in my bed, cruelly ridiculed by my sisters, but with a soul-warming thought that somewhere there, five minutes away from us, in a two-story stone house, Manyunya was sleeping and shining into the darkness the same as mine, clean-shaven, bluish color, head.

Manyunya, or How we first looked for panama hats, and then Ba saved her son

We flatly refused to go outside the threshold with an uncovered hairless head, so my mother rushed in search of panamas. Say what you like, our childhood passed in marvelous times, so in the only department store in our town in the headwear department, on a hot June day, you could buy only mohair felted hats of immense sizes and a felt men's hat in the amount of one piece.

“Maybe we’ll just knit scarves for you?” Mom suggested. - A knot under the chin, you will be Alyonushki.

We flatly refused to tie scarves.

“We are not five years old,” they muttered.

Ba threw a call to the neighbors who were leaving for Yerevan, asking them to bring us panama hats. Neighbors called and reported:

- Rosa, in " Children's world»thrown out baby bonnets, there seem to be large sizes, I tried to put them on my knee, they stretch normally, well, you know my knees, Rosa!

– Rosa, in GUM there are stunningly beautiful beach hats with large brim, lilac with white chamomile, but seven rubles for an adult woman!

- Rosa, in the Central Department Store they saw straw hats, something like a sombrero, but they are decorative and for big money!

– Rosa, the Beekeeper store sells helmets with a front metal mesh, I took a closer look – you can bite with pliers and remove this visor. It will turn out a panama hat, however, on the perimeter of the head 58 centimeters. What is the size of the girls' skulls?

“If the girls had heads with a perimeter of 58 centimeters, we would use them like oppression in a tub of sauerkraut,” Ba cursed into the phone. - Don't answer the phone! she complained to her mother the next day. “They got crazy, didn’t they?” Or did the heat affect them that way? I tell them about Foma, and they tell me about Yerema!!!

- Nothing, nothing! Let's do it ourselves, girls? Mom turned to us.

"Ugum," she answered.

Manya and I admired our reflection in the glass door of the kitchen cabinet. And if I could do it calmly, without rising on tiptoe, then the small and plump Manya did not “reach out” to her reflection. She jumped funny and, catching her face in the glass door, instantly built a face.

“Pour me another cup of tea, Nadia, otherwise my throat dries up just looking at them,” muttered Ba.

If Ba drank tea, then only with boiling water and a bite. Mom bought special sugar in the store, which was very different from the brittle-transparent refined sugar - hard, uneven large pieces, it did not dissolve well in tea and left a thick white foam coating on the surface. We pricked it with special tweezers and kept it for Ba.

When Ba came to visit us, the first thing she asked for was tea. Mom took out the sugar bowl and solemnly placed it on the tea table. Ba nodded her head approvingly, accepted a large cup of steaming drink with her regal hand, and, rolling a piece of sugar in her mouth, washed it down with large sips, bubbling loudly somewhere in the goiter.

“I can try crocheting panama hats,” Mom suggested, passing another cup of tea to Ba, “I have suitable thin yarn.” Then we starch them thickly and give the shape we need.

- We do not want crocheted Panama hats! we howled. - Firstly, to wait a long time until you tie them up, it will take forever, and secondly, they will be in a hole, and through these holes everyone will see our bald heads !!!

- And I don’t have so much money to travel around by taxi with Manya! Ba got angry. You see, they are ashamed. You might think, when you go out to wander around the city, people will think that under panama hats you are hiding not two empty drums, but your luxurious curls!

We sniffed offendedly, but the adults no longer paid any attention to us. After a brief discussion, they decided to sew Panama hats for us. They pulled out the sewing machine, rummaged through the linen closet and found two blue pillowcases with yellow polka dots.

“That’s it,” said Mom, delighted.

After two hours of painstaking work, our seamstresses showed the world their innovative look at summer hats in the form of two crooked designs with uneven, too wide brim and stupidly protruding high crown.

Ba put panamas on our heads.

“Quite cowboy hats,” she said with a barely suppressed smile, “now no one will dare to pester you on the street, because you have a very combative look!”

We rushed to admire ourselves. They turned in front of the mirror, stood up this way and that way.

- And what, quite, - Manka pulled the panama on her forehead and, pulling up the brim, brought them under her chin. It turned out something like a cap. She bulged her eyes, pushed her lower jaw forward and mumbled: - Baby, give me a ruble for life!

I rolled with laughter. She pulled up the brim of her panama hat, squinted her eyes to the bridge of her nose and stretched the corners of her mouth with her fingers.

- Yyyyyyyyy! - We turned to each other and mumbled: - Yyyyyy!

A week later, there was a joint trip to the mountains, with an overnight stay in our country house. But Uncle Misha suddenly came down with a high fever, and Ba stayed to look after him.

Dad took Manyunya the day before we left. We watched from the kitchen window as they parked near our entrance. While they ran to the front door, Manka was already ringing the bell with might and main. As soon as I unlocked it, she rolled into the apartment like a mercury ball and instantly filled it with her bird chirping. Dad came in behind her and with difficulty dragged a large trunk into the apartment.

- What is it? Mom was surprised.

“Rose gave us supplies for the road,” dad wiped sweat from his brow.

Mom opened the bag and began to pull out neat bundles one by one. With each new bundle on her face, despair came out more and more clearly.

Ba put on the road for us an onion pie, pies with cabbage, a dozen boiled chicken eggs, a jar of quince jam, a jar of lightly salted cucumbers, a jar of adjika, five kilograms of vegetables and the same amount of fruit, as well as a large enamel pan with meat marinated for barbecue. In the pocket of the bag, mother found a knife, matches, half a pack of fine salt, a roll of precious toilet paper, tetracycline and citramone tablets, iodine, brilliant green, cotton wool and a wide non-sterile gauze bandage in the amount of one piece.

“I forgot to put the ship down,” dad laughed.

- Why did you take it? Mom glared at dad. - We that could not feed Manka?

“Call her and tell her yourself,” dad got angry, “you might think Rosa would accept my refusal!”

- Why call now? Mom got scared. - I should have left my bag outside the door and left quickly!

- Yes, Rosa escorted us to the car, and then she waved her hand after us! On what leg of the journey could I leave the bag? Do you know what Misha whispered to me?

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Take her, they say, with you, otherwise she will kill me with her care! - Dad quickly ate a pie with cabbage and reached for the second. Mom slapped him hard on the arm. “You should have heard what Rosa said goodbye to me!” Dad reached for the onion pie and got a second slap on the arm. - If you can’t bring down his temperature before the evening, you will have to put an enema! Enema! And this is Misha, who last year before the operation did not eat for two days, only so that he would not have his intestines washed!

Mom jumped.

- Yes, Misha would rather drown himself in a well than let him give himself an enema!

Three days later we returned from the dacha and the first thing we did was bring Manya to her home. In the yard, under a sprawling mulberry tree, Uncle Misha was sitting on a wooden bench. On a hot twenty-five-degree summer day, he looked like a soldier of the retreating Napoleonic army - Manina's knitted winter hat with a pompom flaunted on Uncle Misha's head, sweatpants stretched out on his knees were tucked into thick woolen socks, and his chest was tied crosswise with a colorful scarf Ba.

- Daddy! - Manka rushed to hug her father. “Why did you put on my hat, it’s a girl’s hat!”

Uncle Misha pulled off his Panama hat from Manka's head and kissed the top of his head.

“And you have already grown a whole millimeter,” he smiled.

- Well, Randle Patrick McMurphy, did you have your intestines washed out? Dad laughed, holding out his hand to Uncle Misha.

“Hey, Yura, I haven’t beaten you at chess for a long time, now you’re getting impudent,” Uncle Misha snapped uncertainly.

- Why? - Dad sat down next to him and felt Uncle Misha's pulse. - Pulse like a corpse. Where is Rosa?

“Rosa is at the neighbors’ council,” Uncle Misha snorted, “every hour she runs to consult them.

- What kind of neighbors, Shaapuni, whose daughter is a pediatrician?

- No, the Gazarovs, whose son is a veterinarian. Uncle Misha looked at her father with a long, expressive look. - Gazarov Jr. recently carried out measures to prevent subinvolution of the uterus in cows on a farm in the village of Paravakar. Now it looks like it's my turn!

- What? - Dad burst into loud laughter. - What ... you say ... he was there ... spent?

We did not understand a word of what Uncle Misha said, but we also laughed - he looked very funny in Manina's red hat.

- Are you back already? – the joyful voice of Ba was heard behind our backs. We turned around. Ba crawled sideways into the gate, in her hands she carefully carried some kind of large package.

- Mamele, - the despair that appeared on the face of Uncle Misha could easily melt the ice in the heart of the reinforced concrete structure, - what else did this maniac Gazarov give you? Milking machine "Burenka"?

- Oh, oh, oh, you might think! - Ba put the package on the bench and kissed us in turn. - Milking machine, you say too. It's just a sheepskin blanket. It will be necessary to mix goose fat with onion juice and rub it into your chest and neck. Then let it sweat under this blanket. And the illness will take away like a hand.

Uncle Misha stared sullenly at the package. Ba carefully pulled his hat up to his eyebrows and winked at us.

- Do you need a milking machine, son? We'll organize it right now! Every whim for your money!

Manyunya is a sniper, or dedicated to the mothers and fathers of girls

Dad got a double-barreled gun IZH-27, a real one, with which you can go to a wild boar. The author is oak by oak in hunting matters, so knowledgeable people are not forbidden to twist their fingers at their temples, but, as far as the author remembers, they still went to the wild boar from IZH-27. Or some other medium-horned cattle. Seems.

The gun was presented to my father by the grateful third secretary of our district committee for the exceptional beauty of the artificial jaw of pure gold.

Dad honestly tried to dissuade this crazy man from pulling out his healthy teeth and decorating his mouth with iridescent gold, but he stood his ground.

“You understand, doctor,” he explained to his father, “I recently returned from Moscow, I was at the next plenum of the Central Committee, where most of the delegates of the Union republics flaunted with gold teeth!!! And I'm worse, I don't have enough gold???

Apparently, the third secretary of the district committee really had a lot of gold, because dad made gold crowns not only for him, but also for his wife, mother-in-law, mother and uncle. In gratitude for the work done, the high-ranking patient presented dad with IZH-27.

Papa fiddled with his gun like a miserly knight with his trunks. I had long, emotional conversations with him.

“Someday,” he said to his new friend, “I will have a son, and we will go boar hunting together with him!”

But so far, the son did not smell, so the father went hunting with friends. He returned home, oddly enough, safe and sound, tipsy, with a gun at the ready and an empty hunting bag over his shoulder. In his entire hunting career, my father killed one small-sized crow, and that because it croaked ominously over our unfortunate hunters when they tried to have a cultural rest after three hours of fruitless combing of the forest.

“She croaked and croaked, well, I shot at random to frighten her,” my father said later, “and take a crow and fall on our heads!”

When returning from hunting, the first thing dad did was to carefully hide the gun. He went home on tiptoe, hoping that the children would not hear him, but where is there! We immediately ran out to meet him and hung ourselves in clusters around his neck. “Enough, enough,” Dad frowned deliberately. The gun treacherously peeped over his shoulder.

Hunched over conspiratorially, my father backed away towards his bedroom, fumbled for the doorknob, while looking at us menacingly bulging, crawled backwards into the room and carefully locked the door. Dad was happy that no one but him knew where he was hiding the gun.

Heh, dad didn't know his daughters well!

As soon as the door closed behind him, we huddled together and, with bated breath, eavesdropped. Further, the same scale, developed over the years, was heard.

- It was he who put a chair under the mezzanine, - the ranks of devoted listeners were worried.

“Yeah, I stood up on a chair and hit my head on a ledge.

Shur-shur-shur!

“He wraps the gun in newspapers and hides it behind the blankets,” we stated with satisfaction.

Bach! Bach! - slammed the mezzanine doors.

Plop, - jumped off the chair (touching sigh).

By the time dad, in disguise, left the bedroom, our trace had long been cold.

When my parents went somewhere, we often amused ourselves by taking out dad's gun and taking turns reloading it. At the same time, one of the girls always stood on the lookout to report the sudden appearance of her parents.

Opposite our house, across Lenin Street, at a happy distance of three hundred meters (why happy, you will understand in the course of action), window to window with our apartment lived my class teacher and part-time physical education teacher Martyn Sergeyevich. Martin Sergeyevich was a well-known informer throughout the city. People behind his back disparagingly called him the KGB Six. During the working week, the MS monitored teachers and high school students and took notes in a notebook, and then ran to the right place with a detailed report. “There was already a column of dust when he rushed to the OFFICE,” my mother twisted her lips contemptuously, telling her father about another cross-country run by Martin Sergeyich.

I hated him with all my fragile eleven-year-old soul. Martin

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Sergeyich used to stroke the girls on the back during physical education class and whisper various remarks in their ears, such as: “It’s not bad for you, Alikhanyan, to buy a bra, otherwise your chest has grown and shakes when you run” or “You, Shaapuni, you should have loose-fitting shorts, but then these practically fit the buttocks.

Manyunya, although she studied at another school, out of friendly solidarity, hated the physical education teacher no less than I did. When she stayed with us overnight, in the evening she would invariably come up to the window, squint her eyes, and mutter contemptuously through her teeth:

- This goat has lights on in the windows!

When Martyn Sergeyevich's wife hung out the laundry to dry, we vigilantly looked for the MC's underwear and mocked him maliciously.

“Look,” we rolled with laughter, “Martynto, it turns out, wears huge family clothes, they certainly don’t fit his buttocks!!!

climax

Once, on holidays, my mother, father and younger sisters went to visit my father's colleague. I stayed at home, Manyunya and my sister Karinka, that little thing. Karinka could easily go into battle, she could cripple any yard boy with a hissing piece of carbide or bring her to tears with mockery. For Karinka, we experienced a mixed feeling of love, pride and fear.

Staying at home alone was an incredible happiness for us. For a while we amused ourselves by poking around in my mother's jewelry box. Then they tried on all her outfits and shoes, smeared with her cosmetics and perfumed herself with all the perfumes. To heighten the aroma, Manka sprinkled us with Wild Berry air freshener. The amber that we exuded could hoard a fully combat-ready company of infantrymen.

When the furious marafet was induced, we decided to figure out a social event for three. We brewed coffee, brought cigarettes, looked for Indian smoking sticks for a long time, but my mother hid them somewhere. Without hesitation, dry spikelets of reeds in my mother's ikebana were set on fire.

Sat down to drink coffee. From the very first puff we coughed, from the very first sip we almost vomited. Rout did not live up to our expectations. We poured coffee, flushed half-smoked cigarettes down the toilet, ventilated the kitchen.

We went out onto the balcony to show the world our unearthly beauty.

But we didn't get to shine. Opposite, on his balcony, Martin Sergeyevich was sitting reading a newspaper. Our mood immediately deteriorated.

“Let's concentrate all the hatred in our eyes and drill a hole in his head,” Manyunya suggested.

We began to drill Martyn Sergeyevich with a look full of hatred, but the long-awaited hole did not drill in any way. Fizruk stretched, yawned sweetly and scratched his stomach. We sighed in disappointment.

Then Karinka made a new rationalization proposal: let's, she says, let's shoot him from my father's gun!

- And let's, - Manka and I were stirred up and rushed to race for a gun. Pulled out of the mezzanine and dragged to the balcony. Karinka has already taken up a firing position on the floor behind bars. We crawled up to her on our belly and handed over the gun.

- Loaded? Karinka hissed menacingly.

- You're kidding me! we were outraged.

Karinka grabbed the gun under her, took aim for a long time and finally fired.

There was a soft bang, we looked out from behind the balcony bars.

Martin Sergeyevich sat without moving.

- Give me! - Manyunya snatched the gun from Karinka's hands. - I have a sharp eye, I'll knock it down in an instant!

Manka crawled on the floor with her belly for a minute, choosing the only correct firing position. The battle forelock bulged like a mohawk over her forehead. Holding her breath, she took aim for a long time, then for some reason closed her eyes, turned away and fired.

We waited a few seconds and furtively peeked over the railing.

The balcony opposite was empty!!!

“I killed him,” Manyunya bulged, “I killed him!”

We crawled back into the house one by one and closed the balcony door. They clicked the shutter, the gun spat out hot shells. We threw them in the trash can. Then they tore a new issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta to shreds and covered up the cartridge cases.

The fighting fuse did not dry out. The committed murder has rallied us into a formidable triumvirate. For some time we walked around the apartment with a gun at the ready.

I was offended that Manyunya and Karinka were shooting, but I was not.

“It’s not fair, I want to shoot too,” I pouted.

The girls looked at each other. My demand seemed to them just.

Let's find a target for you. Karinka loaded the gun and thrust it into my hands. - Now foundooooooooom.

We circled the apartment for a long time. First they asked the price of a crystal chandelier, then - to my mother's favorite Chinese vase. We figured out in time what my mother would do to us if we smashed a vase or a chandelier, and gave up the idea of ​​shooting at something valuable. In total, our choice fell on the trash can. My sister placed it in the middle of the kitchen, and I closed my eyes as I shot inside.

Then we tucked the bucket under the sink and carefully tucked Dad's gun away.

“Probably, Martyn Sergeyevich’s wife has already cried out all her eyes from grief,” said Manka, when we slammed the mezzanine doors and jumped from the chair to the floor.

- Probably, - we suddenly felt sorry for the long, wiry and ugly wife of Martyn Sergeyich. She taught history in high school and had the nickname Skeletina.

“Let’s call them,” I suggested, “at the same time, when they pick up the phone, we’ll listen to what’s going on there.”

I pulled out the phone book. Finding the number of the fizruk was not difficult. Manka importantly raised the phone to her ear, dialed a number, listened to the beeps, then for some reason she coughed sharply and blushed.

- Hello, hello, can I have Anna? Didn't get there? Excuse me.” She slammed the receiver down on the machine and stared at us in dismay.

- Well? ' my sister and I asked in unison.

- He went to the phone himself! We didn't kill him! It’s good that I didn’t lose my head and asked about Anna!

Our disappointment knew no bounds. The bullets, apparently, did not overcome the distance of three hundred meters and slammed somewhere halfway between our balconies.

In deep despondency, we trudged into the bathroom to wash off our faces. war paint. The rest of the day was spent in silence, uncharacteristically for us, playing first checkers, then - throwing fool.

denouement

When the parents returned from the guests, they found an idyllic picture in the apartment: three girls, sticking out their tongues, cut out dresses and hats for the paper girl Tanya from the Funny Pictures magazine.

Mom patted us on the head, called us smart girls. Then she sniffed, coughed.

“Don’t choke on any rubbish,” she said. We smiled back at her. The evening promised to be beautiful and quiet.

- What is it? - Mom's voice rang out above us like a bolt from the blue. We turned around. She stood on the threshold of the nursery and in amazement studied the smooth little hole in the bottom of the trash can. Mom looked at us with a long prickly look and held out the shell casings. - What is it, I ask you, and where did the spent cartridges come from in the garbage?

We looked at each other guiltily.

“It's not us,” Karinka squeaked.

“Okay, it’s us,” I sighed, “at first we wanted to kill Martyn Sergeyevich, we shot him twice from our balcony, but don’t worry, he’s alive and well, we already called his house, he went to the phone himself. And then I fired another shot at the trash can.

Mom looked from us to the cartridge cases and back for a while. Finally on

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it became clear to her expression that the whole horror of what we had done had reached her. And by the way, he also came to us. We yelped and rushed in all directions.

Mom punished us in a very peculiar way - in the process of our run. She grabbed the fleeing child by the collar or forearm, tore it off the floor, awarded it with a slap and sent it further along the trajectory of its run. If she warmed us painfully enough, then we overcame the rest of the saving road with faces distorted from pain, and if not, the main thing was to convincingly play this distortion on the face so that mom would not have the desire to repeat her trademark slap.

When there was nowhere to run, we tried to sneak past my mother into the corridor. Karinka was the first to rush to the assault, but her mother grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, pulled her up, hit her ass several times painfully and sent her on. Karinka squealed and, without stopping, darted around the corner. A second later, her face wrinkled with pain appeared from around the corner.

While my mother was distracted by my sister, I tried to slip past. By the age of eleven, I managed to swing into such a tower that it was difficult to tear me off the floor by the scruff of the neck. I fled like a centipede mosquito, deftly rearranging it with long thin legs. Therefore, it was quite easy for me to dive under my mother's hand and break through into the saving corridor. But I underestimated the strength of her anger.

Seeing that the victim was leaving unpunished, her mother launched the first thing that came across at her. And under her arm came across a plastic trash can. Released by my mother's well-aimed hand, it drew an oblique boomerang arc and, having overtaken me already around the corner, fit beautifully into my left ear. The world, thanks to the sparks that burst from my eyes, shone with hitherto unseen colors. The ear instantly pulsated and tripled in size. I howled.

But we could not afford to run far, because in captivity my mother left a precious trophy - Manyunya. Therefore, Karinka and I looked around the corner, rubbing our bruised places, and wept bitterly to each other.

Manka had a recalcitrant strand of hair growing over his forehead, which, in order to somehow smooth it and put it in her hair, had to be moistened with plenty of water and pinned with a hairpin. In moments of extreme excitement, this strand fluttered over Manya like a formidable mohawk. And now the fighting forelock has risen above my friend, like a large inflorescence of an umbrella plant. Manka whimpered and looked around at us in a haunted manner.

And then my mother revealed to the world all the deceit of one single flustered woman. She did not touch Manya with a finger. She spoke in a flat, cold voice:

- And with you, Maria, Ba will talk!

It would be better if my mother finely chopped Manya and fed them to the dogs! It would be better if she shot her with her father's gun! Because Ba did not know how to talk, Ba knew how to walk through the body in such a way that then it took two days for the rehabilitation period.

“Tetnad,” Manyunya burst into burning tears, “you don’t need to tell Ba anything, you hit me on the head with a bucket, or better, hit me several times!” Pleaseaaaaaaa!

Do you even understand, girls, how this could end? Do you even understand???

That same evening, dad took the gun to his unmarried colleague, and then they scoured his apartment for a long time in search of a secluded corner.

Late at night Uncle Misha came to visit us, and my mother, with tears in her eyes, told him what we had done. Uncle Misha at first silently listened to his mother, then just as silently went into the children's bedroom, lifted the sleepy Manka out of bed and gave her a mighty slap on the back of the head. Then he laid her back on the bed and tucked the blanket around her.

“And then you know what he said to your parents?” Manka reported to us the next morning. - He told them - it's right that you didn't tell Ba anything. Otherwise, little would have seemed to anyone. Including you. And me.

Manka sighed and smoothed the folds in her skirt with her hand.

- Ba would have beaten us all then, - she said excitedly and touched my itchy ear: - Wow, still hot!

Manyunya and romale, or Ba said "God of God"

The middle of summer is a hot time for housewives. Cherries, apricots, raspberries, blackberries depart. You need to have time to cook jam and make jam. You need to roll a ray of summer sun into the jars.

Ba cooked apricot waiting. All the bees from the surrounding apiaries flocked to Ba's apricot jam, butterflies circled outside the window, a rainbow spread over Ba's house and tied the opposite ends of the horizon with a multi-colored gift ribbon.

Nature regulated the temperature so that it was not very hot, but not too cool, but that it itself was twenty-two degrees, and a light wind swayed the openwork curtains and delicately tapped the shutters of the open windows. For even nature tried to please Ba when she brewed apricot jam.

Because Ba on such days became completely intractable and even aggressive. Of course, in the case of Ba, it is extremely difficult to imagine an even greater degree of intractability, but with great desire Can.

Ba sculpted and created, like Antonio Gaudi at the construction site of the Sagrada Familia - without drawings and sketches. And in no case could she be distracted, because she was constantly improving the recipe, adding the ingredients by eye, a pinch, a slice, a grain ... She went into the garden and returned with another bouquet of herbs: “This time we will add another juniper leaf” She mumbled under her breath thoughtfully. We unquestioningly carried out all her instructions and, in order not to interfere with her, tried to merge as much as possible with the wallpaper in the kitchen.

Manka and I were tasked with browning the hazelnuts in a large frying pan, scraping the vanilla out of the pods, roasting the orange and lemon peels in the oven, extracting the sweet kernels from the apricot pits and peeling them… We also cut out circles the size of the neck of a jar from baking paper. Ba then soaked these circles in cognac and covered the jam with them immediately before spinning.

For any question, we risked getting hit on the forehead with a wooden spatula, with which Ba stirred the jam. Therefore, we whispered, quietly kicked under the table or winked at each other. We went to the toilet in single file, along the wall. If Ba accidentally stumbled upon us as we crawled breathlessly towards the exit, she would emit a dull roar of a thundercloud: “Aaaaa, shlimazly !!!” We did not react to the shlimazels in any way, because the shlimazl was a slightly irritated, but, in principle, quite benevolent statement of the fact of our existence. But if Ba suddenly called us shlemiels, then our soul instantly went to the heels. Because she always accompanied this mysterious shlemiel with a mighty cuff!

Our whole town knew that Ba was absolutely not to be distracted when she was MAKING apricot jam. It seemed that even stupid swallows tried to change the route of their swift flight on such a responsible day for the universe.

And only the gypsies were unaware. However, what to take from them. After all, they appeared with us on short visits, once every few months, and they were not at all obliged to be aware of all the nuances of a small-town scale.

The appearance of the gypsies was preceded by an alarming rumor. "The gypsies are coming,

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the gypsies are coming! - the news swirled, ahead of the camp, crept into each apartment with a gray smoke, flowed from yard to yard and spread through the quarters. Confused silence covered the city like a biting mohair shawl. People firmly believed that the gypsies steal horses and children, and, in the absence of horses, they hid their offspring at home.

Tabor pitched his tents not far from the town, on the banks of the river, and lit high fires at night.

Gypsies showed up in the city on the second day of their arrival. They walked along the street in a colorful, talkative crowd, quarreling loudly and cheerfully about something, strumming guitars. Then they split up into small groups. Women went from house to house and offered to tell fortunes.

I remember once a gypsy woman rang at our door. She smoked a cigarette and constantly laughed loudly with hoarse laughter. And she called her mother "beautiful tell a fortune." Mom smiled weakly and refused.

- Maybe, what kind of clothes do you have at home that you don’t wear? the gypsy asked.

“I’ll take a look now,” Mom hurried and went to get some clothes.

I stood in the doorway and watched the intruder with all my eyes. She followed me with a mocking look, then threw the cigarette butt on the floor, smothered it with a worn toe of her shoes, straightened the handkerchief on her head.

“You know, girl,” she said, “everything in your life will be as you want, only you should really want it.

“I know,” I lied instantly.

The gypsy laughed a hoarse, rolling laugh.

“Well, well,” she said.

The collective-farm market was located a fifteen-minute walk from the house of Ba and at any time of the year pleased the eye with southern abundance. Only Azerbaijanis traded there, and Ba, who had lived in Baku for a long time, was able to negotiate with them. But today, a familiar Azerbaijani woman, Zeynab, let me down, who from year to year brought ripe honey apricots for jam. Zeinab was shamelessly absent, and Ba, not seeing her at her usual counter, was very upset.

Where is Zeinab? she asked the saleswoman from the next counter.

- She came down with a sore throat, - she answered, - she won’t be here today.

- And who should I buy apricots from? Ba got angry. You might think she's dying. Could and with a sore throat to enter the market!

“Take it from Mamed,” the saleswoman suggested and showed with her hand where to go.

“I myself will decide who to take from,” Ba snapped and defiantly went in the opposite direction.

We silently followed her. Each of us had a wicker basket in our hands, where we then had to put the apricots.

Ba went around the counters and meticulously sorted through the fruits.

“Sugar apricots,” quick-eyed merchants assured her, “try it, if you don’t like it, don’t take it.” Are they for jam or jam, sister?

- I will report to you, - Ba cut off small talk at the root, - better tell me, how much are you selling your apricots?

- Why apricot? - the sellers were offended. – Look, what juicy apricots, straight from the branch. We have been on our feet since four in the morning, first we collected them, then they brought them for sale!

“Your biography doesn’t interest me,” Ba snapped, “I’m interested to know why you want to foist this squalor on me, from one look at which my hair moves on end!”

“Two roubles,” the sellers drawled resentfully.

“Here, go and buy a wreath for your grave for two rubles,” Ba imprinted. - Where has it been seen that in July they asked for such crazy money for apricots !!!

Having quarreled with all the sellers, she made a circle and finally reached the counter, which her neighbor Zeinab pointed out to her. We saw a pile of excellent golden-honey, transparent, covered with morning dew apricots. Behind the counter stood a small, hunched-over man in a huge cap. She was so big for him that, if not for the ears, she would have covered her face with a visor. Every minute the peasant smoothed the band of his cap on his forehead and tucked it behind his ears. Seeing Ba, he smiled cordially, two rows of damask teeth peeked out from under his magnificent mustache.

Ba turned to her neighbor Zeinab.

- This slanted morel is your Mamed? she called to her. Manka and I almost fell into the ground with shame.

“Why a short-haired one,” the peasant became agitated, “nothing short-haired, Rosa, you might think you know me the first day!”

“And since the day you sold me sour raspberries, I don’t even know you,” Ba snapped angrily, “how much is your dried apricots?”

- Why dried apricots? Mamed pursed his lips in an offended tone. – Look, what a perfect product!

- You don’t talk to me with your mossy product, - Ba perked up, - I asked you the price!

“I’ll give you eighty for a ruble, Rosa!”

- Ruble, or you and I disperse like ships in the sea, - Ba took out a purse from her bag and shook it in front of Mamed's nose.

- Rosa, - the peasant cried, - what a ruble, what are you talking about, everyone is selling two by two! Ruble seventy, and consider that I gave you a royal gift!

Ba put her purse in her bag.

“Fifty ruble,” Mamed got worried. - Rosa, you cut me without a knife!

“Come on, girls,” Ba said and swam majestically towards the exit.

- Ruble forty! - Mamed ran after us, shouted to someone on the move: - Look after the counter.

Ba floated through the crowd like the Lenin nuclear icebreaker. We minced after her, afraid to fall behind and get lost. Manka clung to the hem of Ba's dress, and with her other hand groped behind her back and caught me by the elbow.

- Ruble twenty, and this is only because I respect you very much, - Mamed's voice drowned in the uproar of the crowd.

Ba suddenly stopped abruptly, we crashed into her back. But she didn't even notice. She turned around, a triumphant smile on her face.

- Ruble ten, and I, so be it, will take seven kilograms of your cherry plum from you!

Upon returning home, work began to boil with terrible force. Ba washed the apricots in running water and sat us down at the table to remove the pits. She dragged a large copper basin from the cellar - an invariable attribute for making all her delicious preserves and jams.

She sat down to pick fruit with us. Particularly ripe apricots were divided into two halves and sent to our mouths - eat, eat, then you will fart all over the yard!

When the copper basin was filled with apricots, the moment of the sacrament came. Ba walked majestically in circles and added either a grain of sugar or a drop of water. We quietly fiddled around the table with vanilla pods. There was solemn, reverent silence in the kitchen.

- Gorgeous! – like a thunder from a clear sky there was a voice behind our backs.

We turned around. A gypsy woman looked into the kitchen window - she shimmered all under the rays of the summer sun: a light scarf, a jacket, a myriad of beads around her neck blinded the eye with gold and a frenzied multicolor of green, red, blue and yellow.

“Beauty,” said the gypsy, turning to Ba, “let me guess!”

The voice of the gypsy made the effect of an exploding bomb in the kitchen. Ba turned to stone with her back, said "God-beloved" and turned sharply to the window. We hunched over at the table. Manka groped for my hand and said with only her lips: “She said “God of God”!”

Manka's fear was easily explained - Ba turned to God in cases of extreme, uncontrollable, dark in its power of rabies. Only twice in our lives did Manka and I receive from Ba this “godly lady”, and the punishment that followed it could be compared in its destructive effect

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only with the consequences of a drought in a small African country. Therefore, when Ba spoke the cherished word, we instinctively hunched over and decreased in size.

But the gypsy remained in serene ignorance. She leaned her elbows on the windowsill and smiled at Ba with a wide, slightly shameless smile.

“I’ll tell you everything, I won’t hide anything,” she drawled in a melodious voice.

“Go away,” we whispered in a strangled voice, but it was already too late.

Ba took a deep breath. This is how the locomotive slows down when it is afraid to miss the platform - loud, frightening pffffff.

“Pfffffff,” breathed Ba, “but how did you, dear, get to my house?

- Through the gate, it was not locked, - the gypsy smiled.

“Get your elbows off my windowsill,” Ba said slowly.

The gypsy was not surprised. She was no stranger to an irritated or wary attitude towards herself, she had seen a lot of things in her life and could plug anyone in her belt. At least from the expression on her face, it was clear that she was not going to give up so easily.

“But I want to and lean on it,” the gypsy said defiantly, “what are you going to do to me?”

“Get away from my window sill,” Ba raised her voice, “and get out of the yard, it wasn’t enough for you to steal something from me!”

It was still not too late to leave in a good way. But the gypsy had no idea who she was dealing with. And so she made a fatal mistake.

“If I want to, I’ll steal,” she said, “God himself ordered us to steal.” Let it be known to you that our ancestor stole the nail with which they wanted to crucify Christ! And in gratitude for this, God allowed us to steal!

Ba rolled her eyes.

- So, thanks to you, this apostate was driven into both feet with one nail? Ba asked.

- Which apostate? the gypsy didn't understand.

Ba groped behind her back and felt for the handle of the cast-iron pan. We squealed thinly - no need! But Ba did not even look in our direction.

“For the last time I tell you, move away from the window,” she said.

“But I won’t leave,” the gypsy pulled herself up on her hands and pretended that she wanted to get over the window sill into the kitchen.

At the same moment, Ba threw a frying pan at her. The frying pan flew across the kitchen and crashed into the gypsy's forehead with a dull thud. She swayed, sobbed, and collapsed into the yard. We listened - dead silence reigned outside the window.

Ba calmly turned to the bowl of apricots. Gently stir the jam with a wooden spatula. Manka and I looked at each other in horror, felt our slippers with our feet, and reached for the door.

– Narine?! - said, without turning around, Ba. “Call your father and tell him Rose killed a man. Let him come.

- Five stitches! Concussion! Mom, do you know what you're doing? - Uncle Misha could not calm down.

It was a bright summer evening, bees from the surrounding apiaries were circling outside the window in a crazy swarm, tempted by the sweet aroma of apricot jam. Ba calmly set the table. She cut cold meat into large slices, put out homemade sheep's cheese, poured boiled potatoes with odorous vegetable oil, salted with coarse salt, generously sprinkled with herbs.

Mom, I'm talking to you! Uncle Misha fumed. “Do you have any idea what it cost Yura and me to hush up this case so that the stitches in the hospital would be put in without further questions?”

Ba took out a bowl of kamatz matsun and placed it on the table with a loud thud.

“She told me that gypsies can steal because their ancestor stole a nail that was supposed to be driven into the second foot of Christ,” she said.

- Mom, well, you never know what she said, do not kill a person for this!

Ba pulled pickled cucumbers from the refrigerator.

“They stole the nail,” she grunted, “they would have let this unfortunate apostate die at least as it should be, so that there is a nail in each foot!”

Uncle Misha was speechless. Manka and I stood on the threshold of the kitchen and, with bated breath, listened to the conversation.

Ba tore apart the crispy matnakash with her hands and put it in a bread box.

- You might think he asked that gypsy ancestor about it! - she said importantly and turned to us: - Madams, will you go to eat or will you have to put on a seam for a change?

Manyunya, or What Big Love Does to Little Girls

Lyrical digression

Mountains... You know, mountains... How can I explain to you what mountains are for me...

Mountains, they do not humiliate you with their greatness and do not turn away from you, here you are, but here are the mountains, and there is no one between you.

Somewhere down there, clouds - people - a rusty car, ege-gay, I am a piece of space, I am God's smile, I am delight, look, people, stars are tangled in my hair, and fish sleep on my palms.

Mountains… I always feel them on my fingertips, especially sharply when I have a temperature.

I remember that Manyunya and I were ten years old, we stood at the top, holding hands, and we were very scared. I took a step to the edge, and Manyunya also took a step, and my heart jumped high to my throat and gurgled - rinsed - fluttered like a caught bird.

– Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, – breathed out Manya, – iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

But I couldn’t say anything, I turned into one long breath, and the height beckoned down, you can imagine this, the height beckons not up, but down, I want to run up and fly, but not to the sun, but to fly to the stones.

And I turned around.

- Pa? – uncertainly asked.

“Just don’t be scared,” said dad, “you just remember, you now carry it with you for the rest of your life.”

And I remember the other day, and again the mountains, we stood on the banks of the purest mountain stream.

“Girls, look here,” my grandmother Tata said.

She picked up from the ground a piece of high-altitude summer snow covered with an ice crust - a babbling stream gained its strength from such melted glaciers - and broke it in half.

And we gasped - all the crumbly insides of the snow were teeming with worms.

– How can this be? we asked.

“You are dust and you will return to dust,” Tata said, “this also applies to us, and to everything that you see around you – snow, stones, the sun.

- And God? we asked cautiously.

“And, of course, God,” answered my wise Tata, “immortality is such unforgivable cowardice… Especially unforgivable to HIM.

And now the story

Mani's fatal meeting with her love happened at our dacha.

Every summer my family went to the mountains, where on the top of a forested hill, in a small holiday village, we had our own house. Such a wooden, well-knitted house with a veranda, two bedrooms and a large kitchen combined with a living room. Speaking modern language, we were the happy owners of a country cottage, however, with a very modest interior. Bunk beds for children, for example, were knocked together by a familiar carpenter, and at the same time he knocked them together in such a way that it was possible to climb to the upper tier only by a ladder, because the ladder turned out to be so crooked that a child who decided to climb it risked falling off and twisting his neck.

The ascetic decoration of the house more than made up for the view outside the window. When in the early summer morning we went out on the threshold, nature, having pushed back the curtain of dense morning fog, showed our eyes its unique beauty, washed with cool dew, intoxicated with the sharp aroma of alpine herbs, rustled with the crowns of centuries-old trees and beckoned into the forest with a distant cry

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lonely cuckoo.

It was an incredible happiness to feel like a part of such beauty.

The air in the mountains was delicious and unbearably transparent, it did not press or tire, it gently enveloped and soothed. It became loud and easy from the carelessness of its existence, yes, it became loud and easy.

We woke up in the early morning from a soft knock on the window. This is our shepherd friend Uncle Suren who brought homemade dairy products.

Uncle Suren was a weather-beaten, grandiose in his build fifty-year-old man - huge, broad-shouldered, powerful, all smelling of smoke from the fire. It seemed that nature blinded him from a single piece of rock, he was beautiful with that rare and stingy beauty, external, but more internal, which is characteristic of the inhabitants of the highlands. He was at least two meters tall, in his youth he was fast and clumsy, but over time he accustomed himself to move slowly and not so sharply, otherwise, people joked, firstly, the cows could not keep up with him, and secondly, they they were afraid of his sweeping stride and did not give milk.

Uncle Suren daily drove past our house a herd of completely Armenian, thick-haired, thin-legged, wide-assed and, if you will allow me such an expression, nosy cows.

“Doctor Nadya,” he called his mother (in his performance, his mother’s name sounded like Natya), “I brought you separated sour cream.

My father is a doctor, my mother is a teacher, but Uncle Suren did not take such nuances into account at all. Among common people the authority of my father and his profession was so high that it extended over the rest of our family and ennobled everyone!

Mom went out onto the porch and took away from Uncle Suren a painted enameled jug in small lilies, unexpectedly flirtatious for his formidable entourage.

“Suren,” my mother said, “maybe you could at least come in today to have a cup of coffee with us?”

- What are you, what are you, - the shepherd was frightened, - the herd is waiting for me!

A herd of cows really patiently shifted at a respectful distance from our house, two huge, terrifying-looking Caucasian shepherd dogs, throwing their long tongues out of their mouths, furiously waving their tails to my mother.

I, hastily dressed, stood on the lookout outside the door. The main thing was not to miss the moment. Uncle Suren brought us food every day: home-made butter - yellow, slightly tinted with drops of salty buttermilk, matsoni, separated sour cream, feta cheese or thick, still warm fresh milk. These products were allegedly brought for sale. But after one or two routine phrases, he handed his painted jug to my mother and strove to retire before we had time to pay him off.

The ritual was touching and worked out over the years to the smallest detail: Uncle Suren knocked on the window, mother opened the door and invited him for coffee, he refused and instantly blushed - mother was miraculously how beautiful in a light sarafan, with luxurious blond hair on her shoulders. At first, she, intrigued by his reaction, decided that our wonderful friend was simply embarrassed to go into the house, and began to bring him a cup of coffee on the porch. Uncle Suren took a tiny cup in his huge hands and held it carefully throughout the short conversation, not daring to drink even a sip. Then he returned the cup to his mother, left his flirtatious milkman with us until the evening - do not drag him with him to the pasture, and hastily began to back away in the direction of his herd. Together with him, his cows and huge shepherds came into motion. If anyone saw how the Armenians come out of the Gregorian churches - backing away, not turning their backs to the images, then he can imagine the beauty of the action unfolding before his mother's eyes.

And at that moment it was my turn to come to the fore - I jumped out from behind the door, clutching money in my hands, and caught up with the huge uncle Suren, cows and two terrifying-looking shepherd dogs. Uncle Suren covered his pockets with huge palms and resisted in every possible way: “My Mariam passed it on for you,” he fought back, “nothing is needed, we are from the bottom of our hearts, you have so many children, this is for the doctor, this is for the girls ...”

If I managed to put money in his pocket and jump back before he stuffed it back down my collar, then I ran away without looking back to the house, jumped over the three steps of the porch in one jump and slammed the door behind me. His heart was beating so loudly that it seemed that his knock echoed through the neighboring hills.

- Managed? Mom asked.

“Aha,” I breathed.

“Well, thank God,” my mother said, “look at what sour cream he brought us!”

The sour cream was delicious—yellow, runny, with a thick froth of whipped cream at the neck of the jug. So, my dear friends, when traders in the markets praise you for their thick, first-fresh sour cream, they are cunning, of course. Fresh separated sour cream is liquid, slightly thicker than 33% cream, and it hardens only on the second or third day of storage in the cold.

I stood at the window and watched the herd of cows go into the distance. The hill was immersed in the morning fog, and there was a feeling as if the cows had picked up the lower edge of the foggy canvas with their high horns and were proudly carrying it above them...

Mom cut meaty tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers into large slices, poured sour cream on top, sprinkled with coarse salt and herbs, we ate a summer salad, wrapped homemade goat cheese in wet pita skins. My friends, to whom, to whom else can I thank you for these divine tastes, smells, memories? Who else did I forget to thank?

I remember how on one such day a big brown bear came out of the forest to us. And, apparently, at that very moment the angel brought his palms together over us, because the bear stood for some time, watched us, petrified with horror, then turned and walked unhurriedly into the forest.

And in the evening Uncle Suren returned, the herd slowly wandered along - tired, with a swollen udder, thickly lowing and trampling at a distance, while the shepherd took his container from us. He would bring us a handful of forest berries, nuts or mushrooms on a large leaf of burdock, which we then baked on a grill. Tell me how? It was necessary to carefully separate the cap of the mushroom from the leg, put a piece of homemade butter in each cap, add a little salt and bake on coals. The mushrooms twitched with the smoky smell of the fire, the oil screeched and soaked into the pulp, mmm, it turned out so delicious!!!

One morning, my mother did not let Manya and me out of the house for a long time, but meticulously looked at everything from head to toe and straightened our dresses. We shifted impatiently - beyond the threshold urgent matters awaited us. Yesterday on a hillside we discovered a large family of poisonous mushrooms, popularly referred to as "wolf's bunch". Mushroom hats were spherical, and if someone touched them, they instantly exploded, spreading an unmerciful stench around. Manya and I crushed all the mushrooms and spat for a long time, sniffing the disgusting stench emanating from them. Today it was necessary to check what happened to the trampled mushrooms, and whether they continue to spread yesterday's murderous stench.

Finally, we escaped from my mother's arms and pulled our lopsided panama hats over our heads. At the sight of panama hats, mother frowned, as if from a toothache.

- Maybe, after all, kerchiefs to tie you? - She suggested, however, without much hope in her voice.

- No! Manka and I shouted. - Which

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kerchiefs, you still tie bibs for us!

“You see, girls,” my mother hesitated, “her sister Asya came to Aunt Sveta with her husband and son. I don't want you to look like a scarecrow in front of them. The rest of the girls are all in full dress, with neat ponytails or pigtails, and you run around in these ugly panama hats, you only scare the people away.

- They themselves sewed them for us, - we were offended, - at first they said that we had a warlike appearance, but now, that means we are two scarecrows, right?

“Well, whatever you want,” Mom sighed, “just behave yourself and don’t make too much noise, otherwise Aunt Asya has a husband from Moscow, and looking at you, he might think that only savages live here.

Why should he think so? we got angry.

- So he is a Muscovite, he grew up in the capital. Go and have them in the city, all the girls go in fishnet dresses and do curtsy, - my mother smiled slyly.

Mana pouted.

"You'd think," she muttered, "they're cursing!" Eka is unseen. Let's go look at this Muscovite, at the same time and show him how we can do curtsy!

And we went to Aunt Sveta's house to look out for the mysterious Muscovite. Tetisvet's house was not far from ours, on the southern slope of the hill.

“Do you even know what a knixen is?” - Manka belligerently sniffed, looked in her pocket for a handkerchief and, not finding it, wiped her snot with the back of her hand.

“I don’t know,” I was terribly offended that, unlike Moscow girls, I didn’t know how to do something.

We walked in silence for some time. The mysterious word "knixen" excited our minds, penetrated into some hidden corners of consciousness and demanded immediate satisfaction - we wanted to do something nasty right here and now. I turned around, looked around - not a soul.

- Muscovites - matches in the ass! yelled vindictively.

“A-ha-ha,” Manya laughed demonically, “a-ha-ha!!!

- It was not necessary to crush the stink mushrooms. We could have thrown them at Aunt Sveta's yard, - we giggled nastily, - and while the Moscow pretzel would have clapped our ears, our trail would have caught a cold long ago.

We went around the hill to the south and approached Tethysvety's house.

- In general, what does he look like, this Muscovite? Mania said thoughtfully.

- Handsome, I guess. Be sure to wear a T-shirt with an Olympic bear on his chest, - I began to blurt out my innermost fantasies, - plays the guitar and eats popsicle ice cream as much as he likes, like old Hottabych!

- Well, - Manka generally liked the image that I drew, - perhaps I would not mind if he also drove trams.

- Tram, - I rolled my eyes, - yeah, that would be great at all !!!

Manka frowned.

“But he’s generally nasty and blows his nose on the tablecloth and has tufts of hair sticking out of his nose,” she said.

And his ears are hairy! I put in my five cents.

Finally we reached Aunt Sveta's house, pushed open the gate and entered the yard. We took a few steps along the paved river pebble path and stood up as if rooted to the spot.

On the veranda of Tethy's house, right behind the blank railing, two long pale legs stuck out against the background of the wooden wall. They stretched endlessly upwards and very predictably crowned with large flat feet. The legs were moderately hairy and belligerently bristling with sharp knees.

- What is it? Manyunya hatched. - What is it called, he entered the house, and unfastened his legs and left on the threshold with his feet up to air?

“Come on, you,” I giggled, “just a torso behind the fence, so we don’t see him, he’s standing on his head!”

- And why is he standing on his head, is it customary for them to meet guests in Moscow? Manyunya scoffed. “Let’s go say hello to this crazy man, shall we?”

At the same moment, the legs disappeared behind the railing. We froze.

“Now it will seem,” Manka whispered. But no one appeared from behind the fence. We listened - no sound. “He died,” Manya whispered, “or maybe he just fell asleep. Let's go, why are we standing here, we must break his knixen!

We cautiously walked along the veranda, climbed the steps and peered at where our legs had been sticking out a minute ago.

- Boo! A tall young man suddenly jumped out to meet us.

We yelped and took to our heels. But young man complete with long legs, they gave out no less long arms, so he quickly grabbed our shoulders.

“Well, I was joking, girls, that you were so scared,” he smiled. - Let's get acquainted, my name is Oleg, and what is your name?

We looked at him fascinated from the bottom up and were silent, as if we had taken water in our mouths. Oleg looked like main character from the movie "Pirates of the 20th century" - the same blue eyes, a wide forehead and a dimple on the chin. He also had an openwork cross hanging around his neck.

– Ahhh, I understand, you must be dumb, right, girls? Oleg squinted slyly.

- And you have amazing headdresses, they suit you very much, - the capital guest cackled.

- These are not hats, - Manya got angry, - this is to cover our bald heads. And, to my horror, she yanked off her panama hat.

- ABOUT! - Our new acquaintance was confused, but quickly found: - So what, you are written beauties without hair.

Manya sniffled, twisted the Panama hat with a tourniquet, then thrust it at me:

“Take it for yourself,” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

I silently took the panama and smoothed it in my hands.

“They also made us a mask of mutton poop and blue hair, and for a while we walked around with blue heads. - Manka seemed to have been possessed by a demon.

The guest from the capital drew a long face. It was necessary to urgently save the situation, until he finally decided that he was facing savages.

– Just two days! I rushed to restore our shattered reputation. “We went around with blue heads for only two days, and then my mother and Ba had to sew panama hats, because there was a shortage all around and you couldn’t get anything in the store! So we now look like two scarecrows.

Manka nudged me painfully in the side with her elbow.

- Stupid! she hissed.

- She's like that! I shoved her back.

Oleg burst into laughter. Stone-faced, we waited out the shameless scoffing of the Moscow guest. He caught his breath, wiped the tears from his eyes with his palms - a wedding ring flashed with a yellow stripe on the ring finger of his right hand.

“Girls, I definitely like you,” he said at last, “and your accent is so funny!”

“And you have a repulsive accent,” Manya went on the offensive. "And you're wearing the ring on the wrong hand!"

- How is it not on that one? - Oleg spread his fingers, and then waved them in front of our noses. – On the contrary, on that one, the Orthodox wear wedding rings on their right hand.

- And we, it turns out, are left-wing, - I decided to show off my erudition.

What do you mean, left-wing? Oleg was surprised.

“Well, in the sense that we wear wedding rings on our left hand,” I reported.

I immediately liked this Oleg, and, to be honest, I tried to please him too. A pang of hatred for this nasty Asya, who got such a wonderful young man, stirred in my soul.

– Is it true that you are from Moscow? I asked.

- True, I was born and raised in Moscow. Then he married Aunt Asya. And then our son Artem was born. He is five and he is a very good boy, I hope you become friends with him.

“I really need it,” Manya snapped.

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dead. I was very ashamed of my girlfriend. Manka from a smiling and polite girl turned into a small evil imp, looked askance, stood with her hands on her hips and belligerently bristled her round belly.

But chastising a friend in front of a stranger would be the last thing, so I, as if nothing had happened, continued the secular conversation:

- Where is your wife?

“He and Sveta and the children went for a walk around the village, and I decided to do yoga for the time being,” Oleg explained. "They'll be back soon so you can meet her."

“Okay, I’m off, I don’t have time to talk to you here,” Manka said through clenched teeth.

She turned her face into a brick, descended the steps into the yard, with her bare hands tore out a stalk of old nettle sticking out from under the stairs, and, waving it around, went to the gate. I dutifully trudged along after her, after pulling off my hat from my head - to disgrace, so together. Pulling out a stalk of a nettle became faint-hearted.

“Girls, you never said your name! Oleg called after us. “And pray tell, why do you need nettles?”

“Zita and Gita,” Manya answered angrily without turning around, “our names are Zita and Gita, and we need nettles for yoga. She let me go ahead and defiantly banged the gate loudly.

We walked along the fence of Tethysvety's house and turned the corner. And only here Manya threw the nettle into the bushes.

“A biting infection,” she said through gritted teeth.

- Does it itch? Maybe moisten your palm with water? I asked.

“I’ll endure until the house,” Manya looked at me for the first time and immediately averted her eyes. The expression on her face was such that I immediately lost all desire to ask her unnecessary questions.

- Let's race! I suggested.

- Run! shouted Manka.

When we broke into the house, my mother was trying to feed my little sister Sonechka with mashed potatoes. Little Sonechka, almost from birth, showed an amazing intelligibility in food. Everything, except for the doctor's sausage and green onion feathers, she categorically excluded from her diet. And now, with relief, she spat out the puree on her bib and reached out with her hands to us.

“Check me for yucca,” she murmured plaintively.

Manka built a goat for her, stroked her head. She chuckled. A large bubble blew out of her nostril. Manya pulled him back noisily.

“Tetnad, I seem to have fallen in love,” she stunned her mother.

- So, - mom pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and made Manka blow her nose, - and who did you fall in love with?

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Notes

Traditional Armenian song of a plowman.

Fermented milk product.

End of introductory segment.

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Narine Yurievna Abgaryan- Russian writer.

She was born on January 14, 1971 in the town of Berd, Tavush region of Armenia. Her father is a doctor and her mother is a teacher. Narine also has three more sisters and a brother. The paternal grandfather is an Armenian, a refugee from Western Armenia, the paternal grandmother is an Armenian, a native of Eastern Armenia, which was part of the Russian Empire and the USSR for more than a century and a half, and now is independent state. Maternal grandfather is an Armenian, a native of Karabakh. Maternal grandmother is Russian, a native of the Arkhangelsk province of Russia. They met their grandfather during the Great Patriotic War, which they went through from beginning to end.

Narine Abgaryan received her secondary education in Berdskaya high school No. 2. She also studied piano music at music school No. 1, the only one in her hometown. She graduated from Yerevan State Linguistic University named after Bryusov. Studied as a teacher of Russian language and literature.

She moved to Moscow in 1994 to receive higher education. She got married and gave birth to a son in 1995. Golden-domed has long been a second home for the writer.

Narine Abgaryan's literary path began with the fact that she started a blog in LiveJournal in 2005, but after a couple of months she stopped writing and resumed writing only in the spring of 2009. Soon she started stories about Manyunya. They became interested in the writer Lara Gall, who introduced Narine to the editor of Astrel-SPb, Irina Kopylova. So, as a result of fruitful cooperation, the books of Narine Abgaryan were born, which became known after the publication of the autobiographical book “Manyunya” (2010). With this book, she became a laureate of the Russian National literary prize"Manuscript of the Year" in the nomination "Language". Longlisted for the 2011 Big Book Awards. In 2011 and 2012, the continuation and conclusion of books about Manyuni's adventures were published.

In 2011, the autobiographical novel "Come in large numbers" was published, which received the Grand Prix of the "Manuscript of the Year" award. In September 2012, a story for children “Semyon Andreevich. Chronicle in scribbles”, and in April 2013 Narine Abgaryan received the “BABY-NOS” award for it, where the story was recognized as the best children's book of the last decade.

In February 2014, the novel "People who are always with me" was released.

In 2014, Abgaryan published a fairy tale "The Giant Who Dreamed of Playing the Violin", written in collaboration with Armen Vatyan, which tells about a giant who fell in love with music. The fairy tale was recognized by the Papmambook portal as the best children's book of 2014.

In December of the same year, the fairy tale “Chocolate Grandpa” written with Valentin Postnikov was published about a glorious grandfather who loves sweets and sleeps on the ceiling.

In March 2015, the novel "Three Apples Fell From the Sky" was published, written in the genre of magical realism. These are stories about the eccentric and touching inhabitants of the small village of Maran, lost high in the mountains. By the quirkiness of the plot canvas and the tragicomic fate of the characters, the text can be compared with the novel by G.G. Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

Mom and dad - with a feeling of endless love and gratitude

INSTEAD OF INTRODUCTION

How many provincial towns do you know, divided in half by a sonorous, whispering river, on the right bank of which, at the very top of the cliff, the ruins of a medieval fortress rise? An old stone bridge is thrown across the river, strong, but not at all high, and in the flood, the river overflowing its banks seethes with cloudy waters, trying to cover it with its head.

How many provincial towns do you know that rest on the palms of sloping hills? As if the hills stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, stretched their arms forward, closing them into a shallow valley, and in this valley the first low sakli grew. And the smoke from the stone ovens stretched into the sky in a thin lace, and the plowman turned on in a low voice roared ... ?

How many provincial towns do you know where you can climb onto the high outer wall of a ruined castle and, dying with fear and clinging with cold fingers to the shoulders of friends, look down to where a white nameless river foams in the depths of the gorge? And then, ignoring the sign with a formidable inscription: “Protected by the state,” to climb the fortress in search of hidden passages and untold riches?

This castle has an amazing and very sad history. In the 10th century it belonged to the Armenian prince Tslik Amram. And the prince went with an army against his king Ashot II Bagratuni, because he seduced his wife. A severe internecine war began, which for many years paralyzed the country, which was already bled dry by the raids of the Arab conquerors. And the unfaithful and beautiful princess, tormented by remorse, hanged herself in the tower of the castle.

For many centuries the fortress stood on a rock impregnable from all sides. But in the XVIII century there was a terrible earthquake, the rock trembled and split into two parts. On one, the remains of the eastern wall and the internal buildings of the castle were preserved, and a swift river ran along the gorge formed below. Old-timers said that an underground tunnel passed from under the fortress to Lake Sevan, through which weapons were brought when the fortress was under siege. Therefore, it withstood all the raids of the nomads and, if that earthquake had not happened, it would still have risen whole and unharmed.

The town, which later grew up around the ruins, was called Bird. Translated from Armenian - fortress.

The people in this town are very, very specific. No one in the world has ever seen more stubborn or even frenzied stubborn people. Because of their stubbornness, the inhabitants of the town deservedly bear the nickname "stubborn donkeys." If you think that this somehow offends them, then you are very mistaken. On the streets you can often hear the following dialogue:

Well, what are you trying to achieve, I'm a Berd donkey! It's very hard to convince me.

So what? By the way, I am also a real Berd donkey. And it's still a question of who will yield to whom now!

In summer, Vardavar is celebrated in Armenia - a very joyful and bright holiday, rooted in distant pagan prehistory. On this day, everyone from young to old pour water on each other. From morning until late evening, from any container. The only thing that is required of you is to lather well, open the front door of your apartment and stand in the opening. You can be sure: a crowd of people soaked to the skin is waiting for you outside the threshold, who, with a wild cry and laughter, will pour a ton of water on you. Here's an easy way to clean up. Kidding.

In fact, if strangers poured water on you on the street, you should never be offended - it is believed that water on this day has healing powers.

So. The Apostolic Church tried to somehow systematize the national holidays and, having gone into all serious trouble, approved a strictly fixed day for Vardavar. Absolutely not taking into account the obstinacy of the inhabitants of our town.

And it would be worth it. Because now we have the following situation: throughout the Republic of Vardavar they celebrate at the behest of the Church, and in Berd - in the old fashioned way, on the last Sunday of July. And I assure you, if the Catholicos had issued a special decree specifically for the inhabitants of our town, nothing good would have come of it. Let His Holiness not even try, so tell him. You can negotiate with our people only when they want it.

That is, never.

Now, actually, about the main characters of our story.

Once upon a time there were two families in the town of Berd - Abgaryan and Shats.

The Abgaryan family could boast of a wonderful and unbending father Yura, a selfless and beautiful mother Nadia and four daughters of different sizes and ages - Narine, Karine, Gayane and Sona. Then the long-awaited son Hayk was born in this happy family, but it happened a few years after the events described. Therefore, only four girls appear in the story. Father Yura worked as a doctor, mother taught Russian language and literature at school.

The Schatz family boasted Ba.

Of course, besides Ba, the Shatz family included two more people: Uncle Misha, the son of Ba, and Manyunya, Dyadimisha's daughter and, accordingly, the granddaughter of Ba. But the family, first of all, could boast of Ba. And only then - by all the other no less beautiful members. Uncle Misha worked as an engineer, Ba - mother, grandmother and housewife.

For a long time, the heroes of our story practically did not communicate, because they did not even suspect the existence of each other. But one day a story happened that brought them together once and for all.

It was 1979. On the nose is the 34th anniversary of the Victory. Another event was planned in the city house of culture with honoring veterans of the war. A responsible mission was entrusted to the choir of the Berd music school - to perform "Buchenwald alarm" by Sobolev and Muradeli.

The choir rehearsed frantically, breaking the voice to a hoarseness. The wonderful choirmaster Sergo Mikhailovich suffered endlessly, pushing the basses, which, with annoying constancy, hung in the introduction for half a measure. Sergo Mikhailovich wringed his hands and lamented that with such a performance of the "Buchenwald alarm" they would disgrace the whole city and, as a punishment, the choir would be disbanded to hell. For some reason, the choristers were upset.

X day has come.

And you know what I'll tell you? Everything would have worked out if it had not been for a long two-stage bench, on which, during a short intermission, the second and third rows of choristers were feverishly hoisted. Everything turned out exemplary - the song flowed smoothly and heartfeltly, the basses came in unexpectedly on time, Sergo Mikhailovich, conducting, rushed around the stage in such zigzags, as if an evil wasp was chasing him. The choristers were uniformly covered with goosebumps from the solemnity of the moment. The hall, initially intrigued by the chaotic movements of the choirmaster, was imbued with a pathetic alarm and fell silent.

Nothing, nothing foreshadowed trouble.

But suddenly. In words. "International columns are talking to us." Horus heard. At myself. Behind the back. Strange crack. The first row of choristers did not dare to turn around, but from the long face of the choirmaster he realized that something terrible was happening behind.

The first row trembled, but did not stoically interrupt the singing, and at the phrase: “Do you hear thunder peals? This is not a thunderstorm, not a hurricane, ”the bench under the second and third rows fell apart with a roar, and the guys fell down.

Then the veterans were surprised how it was they, being people of a rather advanced age, rattling orders and medals, jumped over the high side of the stage with one jump and began to rake a bunch of children.

The choristers were in despair - everyone understood that the performance had failed. It was insulting and sickening, and the children, brushing off their clothes, silently left the stage. One of the girls, thin and tall Narine, clenching her teeth, tried in vain to crawl out from under the plump and for some reason wet Maria, who was lying on her like a quiet mouse.

Move over,” she hissed.

I can’t,” Maria sobbed, “I peed myself!”

This is where we take a deep breath and think deeply. For in order for two girls to develop a fierce friendship for the rest of their lives, sometimes you just need one to describe the other.

In such a very original way, Narine and Manyunya became friends. And then their families became friends.

"Manyunya" is a story about a Soviet town remote from any capitals and its inhabitants. About how, despite the monstrous deficit and all sorts of restrictions, people managed to live and enjoy life.

Manyunya is a book for adult children. For those who at thirteen and sixty believe in the good and look to the future with a smile.

Date of Birth: 14.01.1971

Narine Abagaryan is a Russian writer, author of well-known books about the adventures of the little naughty Manyuni, which both children and adults read with pleasure.

Narine Abgaryan was born on January 14, 1971 in the town of Berd, Tavush region of Armenia. Her father is a doctor and her mother is a teacher. Narine also has three more sisters and a brother. The paternal grandfather is an Armenian, a refugee from Western Armenia, the paternal grandmother is an Armenian, a native of Eastern Armenia, which was part of the Russian Empire for two hundred years. Maternal grandfather is an Armenian, a native of Karabakh. Maternal grandmother is Russian, a native of the Arkhangelsk province of Russia. They met their grandfather during the Great Patriotic War, which they went through from beginning to end.

Narine Abgaryan received her secondary education at Berd secondary school No. 2. She also studied piano music at music school No. 1, the only one in her hometown. She graduated from Yerevan State Linguistic University named after Bryusov. Studied as a teacher of Russian and literature.

She moved to Moscow in 1994 to get a higher education. She got married and gave birth to a son in 1995. Golden-domed has long been a second home for the writer.

The literary path of Narine Abgaryan began with the fact that she started a blog in the famous live magazine. Abgaryan first appeared on her own page in 2005, but after a couple of months she stopped writing and resumed recording only in the spring of 2009. Started stories about Manyunya. They became interested in the writer Lara Gall, who introduced Narine to the editor of Astrel-SPb, Irina Kopylova. So, as a result of fruitful cooperation, three books by Narine Abgaryan were born: “Manyunya”, “Manyunya writes a fantastic novel” and “Come in large numbers”.

Writer's Awards

2011 - Long list" Big Book» 2011.
2013 - BABY-NOS Award (New Russian Literature)
2014 - The best children's book, recognized by the Papmambuk portal - the fairy tale "The Giant Who Dreamed of Playing the Violin"
2015 - became one of two laureates (along with Irina Kraeva) of the Alexander Grin Russian Literary Prize - for an outstanding contribution to the development of Russian literature (expressed in the creation of a particularly significant literary work, or for the results of creativity in general).
2016 - Yasnaya Polyana Award. Nomination "XXI century" for the book "Three apples fell from the sky"