* * *
The spring was already in full swing when, weakened from illness, she broke away, finally, in Luzhino. With the keys in his pocket, with a full car holiday belongings: clothes, dishes, waste rags in Moscow. Trinkets, seeds, fertilizers, benefits of gardening, horticulture and floriculture, file 'backyard farms', presented to Varya.
Remaining after the repair of old apartment door, board, hardboard and plywood trim before cluttering the loggia; now fit on the roof of the trunk.
And has since become her villa Zhiguli working horse: it carried on the furniture, fixtures for the foundation, sacks of lime, cement and slag, from which the whole body itching, which may just drove; until the hot bitumen in milk jars!
But it then, but now she was sitting on a heated sun porch, substituting the person is already a hot rays, and around the singing, whistling, chirping, murmuring, ringing: streams, chickadees, starlings, dripping from the roof, children's voices in the next section...
Cocks echoed. And twenty-five acres of praising God, triumphant world belonged to her, Joanna Sinegina.
And damp, devastated, as after the Tatar invasion, the house had grown and neglected garden, and trampled the neighbor's flower beds and vegetable beds livestock, and broken here and there a fence, and Ignatius' shop with broken windows; all complained, demanded, asking for help to it is now the sole owner.
'Luzhino is mine.' thought Joanna.
It is quite an unusual feeling. And frightened, as to any possibility of passion, turning at the same time and a slave mistress. All longed to obey her, wishing at the same time to enslave.
She recklessly dove into this pool with his head; she unloaded, loaded, washed, scraped, dug, planted.
Cleared the ditch, white trunks, branches cut off, and kept looking at the academic literature or consult running to the neighbors: neighbors avoided Luzhino's community, and Joanna first got acquainted with them, each drawing something useful.
But the more she did, the more left. Cases grew like a snowball.
In the evening use the stove had no strength. Joanna the electric heater, kettle warmed glass of tea, sandwiches and devoured a couple, dressed in ice tumbled down dead uncle's wife's bed, not even changing clothes.
The next morning she was awakened spirit returned Alma, who called for a stroll in the spring Luzhino's forest. Where are there! And tomorrow and tomorrow and next week, and all summer she will work hard in the smoke, clinging to their own, transforming, taking care of his own little one. Denise and Philip came only a couple of times on the most difficult excavation, shaking their heads,
'Well, You have bought, mother, a concentration camp!,
And when, finally, everything seems grew green, blossom, come into ear and home repair and touch up, did not come for the settlement; they lay a gas main!
Those interested can sign up for gas central heating. It made sense when giving winter, that is, insulation, and better yet, a really warm, with facilities to be able to live in the winter.
That is, the house had to be re-rebuild. No, not demolish, of course, but, as suggested intelligent people, built the brick wall, where the close, and where step back for a couple of meters. Then get a bathroom and toilet.
Everything went incredibly well that the gas out of the blue, then the continuous lorries, laden with fine timbers b / y, old bricks, roofing iron, floor boards, planks. In the village nearby, which became the city began to build high-rise neighborhood. Communicated immediately wooden houses, barns, all sold for a song, right delivery. Joanna grabbed everything, the site soon began to resemble the construction site.
All thoughts swirled around plan for the future home; where a door, stairway, wall. And most importantly; where to get the money?
She was so in debt to their ears, the next expected revenues in six months, not before. But summer ended, it was necessary to build quickly within a week exempt masters, and already seem to agree on a reasonable price 25 rubles each per day of moderate drinking and feeding.
There was hope only to Father Tikhon, to which Joanna now regularly went to church on Sundays and holidays, and who agreed to be her confessor. But again, ask the priest was ashamed, and Joanna was silent, until he himself suggested:
'I'll give you the building site. Bring back a little, how to make...'
'Oh, father, when there will be a fee...'
'Again, 'a fee' ... You should not, Joanna, to sell Word. The word of God, should not sell them. Work on the ground; this is your provider. The Earth. The Lord Himself blessed...
Vaughn you are beautiful flowers brought into the temple - yes, go sell that next time...'
'Oh, what are you, sir, I am not be able to!'
'You will manage,' firmly said Father Tikhon, signaling that the conversation is over; I bless.
Joanna bent over his hand. Again, this instant, reassuring grip.
'Hold on, my child, God with us!'
She liked to be in obedience.
Maybe it was partly a game, but ask for the blessing of all, relax and close your eyes to the higher will rely on the tedious, bustling shaky earthly path was surprisingly pleasant. Although, I must say, Father Tikhon will never run counter to its own, as has happened in the spiritual father of the children of Cyprian, who sometimes wept his cool,
Either you listen to, or seek another confessor.'
Recommendation Father Tikhon rather amazed, puzzled.
To sell flowers... When at the studio they know, they will fall into a swoon... Well, let them fall!
The meaning of obedience, as far as she knew, meant that our Creator bestowed freedom is daily, hourly, the choice between good and evil, God's law and the will of its own, which in the opinion of the church, is the will of the devil, the result of the original fall.
And 'Who is not with us is against us'.
We are not free in life circumstances, they are in themselves neither good nor bad, it is impossible to judge the place of action, whether it be jail or a battlefield, that's bad, but a beautiful day at the beach or the front hall of the palace or even a religious procession on Easter is good. It all depends on how you are, people reveal themselves in any given situation.
For each life a believer page is a test that is tempting. Basically, I and my temptation; you could say, paraphrasing philosopher.
But sometimes we cannot determine the will of God, hesitate, especially when be to choose between two evils, as usually happens in the 'lying in evil world'.
Vain and sinful, we often do not see the pointing finger of God, did not hear his voice. And sometimes consciously prefer not to see or hear, acting as easier and more familiar, and is almost always wrong choice.
It is easier to roll downhill than climbing on it. And we do not even know what will happen after a few hours, even minutes, the conversation with Woland, Berlioz at the Patriarch.
And the Lord, as a brilliant chess player, or rather, writer of the Universe, anticipates the whole game, ever, knows it will all end.
He knows the beginning, at the same time giving us the freedom to act in time and manage their own destiny. He wrote for us the role, mission, vision, leading to our salvation in the hereafter.
We play different roles without permission, very often worthless, retreating from the idea. So here the only true path is the voluntary renunciation of his will.
And this is not slavery, no.
'Freedom is a recognized need to submit to the will of the Creator.
God is infinitely good and free. Handing him his free will, I am a small drop, become part of the total available, it is free.
The fallen Angel, in his rebellion against God, saying freedom of disobedience to the Creator, was in slavery in the darkness, evil, chaos and death.
Apparently, the universe, conceived as the union of all against all, will not tolerate any division except for the separation of light from the darkness.
Darkness is not God revenge the world. This is the absence of God in the world, the absence of light, the result of our ill-will.
Pulled the plug from the plug and the lights went out, the world was plunged into darkness, evil, chaos and death, because the only source of eternal life was the light.
Subject to the church, the priest, I have given their will in God's hands. In the case of indifference, and wrong, the priest's retreat from the truth, he is fully responsible for his flock.
In connection with this church falls on the shoulders of immeasurable guilt for every step from the side. The terrible words of God be heard in 'Revelation' of Joanna:
'But because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because you say,' I'm rich, rich, and nothing I have needs ", and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked.'
(Revelation 3:16).
These words refute the opinion of the infallibility of the church, but not about the benefits of obedience. Because if you're sailing on the ship as a common sailor swab decks, clean in the hold of a potato in obedience to you, and for the ship's responsibility at the helm of the Captain.
Still, Joanna thought that obedience rather regard to matters of faith, symbols, church charter, traditions, and worldly affairs. In ten years the time will come when even in church circles is not unanimity of views on various events and will be guided by a compass recorded in the heart of the Act.
Compass of conscience.
By trade Joanna had prepared thoroughly. Take a train station, where the spinning flower with buckets, watch what capacity is more convenient, had got three kilos of cellophane, looked like grandmother drum up customers, as quarreling and running from the police. Found the demand and supply, at which time most buyers, etc.
That's where her handy journalistic and cinematic practice! In suburban faded dress and sandals, a scarf pulled over his forehead, she drove to the station, unloaded and flowers, deploying a folding table, set to work. The car left nearby, dressed for the conspiracy sunglasses.
Not that she should not worry, and not all got away smoothly.
'oss, I know there are not supposed to sell, but desperately need the money, building I, you know?' And she thrust into a bouquet of whom who are foreign souvenir, who crumpled piece of paper in his pocket.
It was worse with the grandmother rivals, there had to work with each individual, up to strong language and promises to share scarce varietal bulbs.
A trade meanwhile moved briskly. Joanna went into the taste, has mastered instantly, as if life was selling flowers at the station.
Maybe it affected maternal genes, but it was a first-class peddler - sassy, sly, on the fly grasping the positive experience of rivals.
And most importantly, enjoy this new game, much like the fishing, although fishing itself Joanna could not stand; it was boring and sorry for the fish.
By the middle of the day, the order of tired of habit, but with a packed bag three and five rubles, Joanna got in the car and chewing cheesecake, counted the receipts.
Wow! Monthly editorial salaries. So much for the poor Old ladies with cornflowers, daisies...
The flower-seller... A month ago she would have thought this joke, but that did you go and it has its own among torgovok, moreover, it is ass. It perfectly matches bouquets, famously, one movement of hands, twists cellophane, is able to accurately identify the buyer to assign the right price, that 'fell off' and that most did not miscalculate.
She knows everyone and everyone knows it. And no one knows who she is. She already speaks their language. And rarely, rarely something goes wrong with the mouth by accident, it will start, forgetting himself, saying 'wrong', but the first look of surprise returns it to the role.
And most importantly the role of her horribly like that it is rarely done in his life with such gusto.
Even liked to escape from the militia (it was not long before perestroika, when trading in the street announced legal).
Father Tikhon duty she returned very quickly. Ran out of their flowers, made friends with the girls from Kiev, and Adler, took them wholesale roses. Were the first time disassembling a monopoly, resellers so-called 'Caucasian', but also those of her started to respect, when she rescued several people from the district police for distancing trade in the wrong place, presenting his secret identity cine.
True, resale, that is speculation, Father Tikhon did not approve of (Well, father, by next summer, God willing, for growing my own flowers'. In addition, Joanna repented, that sometimes slips to customers is not very high-quality flowers, and in general you never know in the commercial reality of sinful temptations!
So, from morning till two trading. Then she came and fed the builders dinner / course, not without glasses / provided guidance, pick up trash, digging in the garden, went over with nails, cement, pipes, sleeves...
'Yes, you have bought, mother, a concentration camp...
Great gas, sewer, flooded basement, laying bricks, the fall time to build a house under the roof.
In the winter ahead for interior and finishing work. Knowledgeable people say that it is the most expensive and troublesome, and Joanna is hoping that the main cost is over!
And the flower season was over...
Father Tikhon came to the rescue again.
And away we go. Floors /(double, of course) ceiling insulation, plastering, welding, heating, tiles, windows, doors, paint, wallpaper...
New unknown games... If I'm able to do it? I thought Joanna. It seemed beyond human capabilities. And she dug with the workers, would put rebar, poured liquid concrete, painted floors, windows, glued, supported, screw up, knocked, gaining little by little the skills of all building trades, which had once written in his youth.
How, by the way, she again helped her journalistic practice, interpersonal skills in dealing with people!
'You are crazy! Yes, you cannot, not right!' they talked to her.
'If I'm really able to?' surprisingly and delightfully she asked herself.
She could not.
She was a helper, a cook, waitress, dishwasher / sometimes the table was setting up to twenty persons /. Workers drank vodka, brawled, and fell from the scaffolding, pestered with the proposition, swearing, moonlight while the neighbors, thieving her building materials, and bungled, where possible.
It passed. Chased one, hire others.
One day, two students of construction thinking long with her, how to put on too high a loggia glass door, which, by all indications, is not subject to shortening (it had some panels, locks, bolts, rounds)...
'maybe, to raise or lower the ceiling of the floor? Joanna suggested.
'Okay, we will think something.'
The guys left, and Joanna in despair, went to his grandfather from the front on a nearby street, by profession a blacksmith in the army - groom, but in general it is rumored, is able to all, but no longer in business due to the illness leg.
Old man with a mind and really rocked by the wind.
'Grandpa, do you when you come, look, advise about the door,' begging Joanna. Talked the same. She was afraid He on the road crumbles.
'Here, Grandpa, it is high. Either cut a floor, or ceiling. It does not fit.
'Well, right now the hole. What instrument do you have?'
'Here in a box.'
'Okay, go on a walk until an hour or two,'
When Joanna returned from the store, the grandfather smoked a cigarette, and the door was in place. Floor and ceiling too.
Joanna rubbed his eyes - the door has not changed, only shortened, as if by magic.
Where, how? No trace.
'Grandpa, how did you do that?'
'And what is here to do?'
We sat and drank a little.
Grandpa, come to me to work. You do not have to do heavy; you're just these kettles managers.
'Why the do I need them to command, they won ponashlepali what! One hell to command pots. Will you help, if anything?
- Grandpa, my dear, of course, I will!
And she kissed him in his gray unshaven cheek.
My grandfather saved it; he really knew how everything.
He came at eight, leaving five. At one o'clock they had dinner; it stack at the end of work; even with a pile of cucumbers.
He charged a little twelve rubles a day, gradually working in good faith and demanded only one thing that it is not hurried.
She never tired of wondering what he started doing wonders for his sich legs. During the winter they are almost alone made the whole home interior design. Joanna not only helped, but also learned to admire how easily he finds a way out, it would seem the most hopeless situations.
Pull out the desired beam of impossibly high stack score of the reach of the nail, put tile on the padded hardboard partition (something sophisticated, rabits be nailed to the solution and). She caught herself on the fact that in love with this old man. He liked her admiration, he slapped her in the case of familiarity on the hip or knee, called 'Yanichka' and the work they sang a duet popular songs: military, folk, ballads.
And my grandfather delighted that Joanna remembered all the words.
We will winn,
To you will I come
On a hot battle horse.
She sang, and the grandfather murmured after her, diffused, thawed.
'I told you, Yanichka, railing on the stairs will engrave. You'll see how, as his sister home. A guy will drop your hat.'
Denis never wore a hat, my grandfather saw him a couple of times, but the sharp distinction between him and Joanna. If she was his friend, he was a stranger, 'hat' and 'gentleman'.
Grandfather cheated 'hats', wringing price fawning false, in my heart despised for their inability to even drive a nail.
But the audacity strangely combined with self-destruction, especially when he heard from his grandfather 'hats' clever talk, which is not understood. Immediately shade and turned from a magician dejected, like a fish on ice, the frail old man with a stale socks for swollen feet, barely fit in the biggest shoe covers.
And maybe, just Joanna guessed he was allegedly in the dull silence is truly a noble patrician hatred of dilettantism, posturing and hypocrisy. My grandfather was convinced that everyone should be in place where his 'Fate has determined', as he put it. That a shoemaker should sew boots and pieman pies bake.
Joanna was, like him, an unbroken horse, boldly to any obstacle in a fanatical thirst to test himself, assert himself or break his neck.
'Wi I'm able?' I thought she climbed into the ceiling and nailed with a huge sheet of hardboard grandfather. Or learned to cut glass, wallpaper or irregular wall...
'Favorite city can sleep at night,' Joanna sang, finding a solution, and my grandfather was happy with her and for her. They were wonderful couple; they would have missed any space on the commission of any 'Soyuz-12' as an example of compatibility.
House gained forms, transformed, very beautiful. Every day brought some new victory, every day is forged result.
She had no idea that this is so cool - with his own hands to build a house, singing the old songs, a simple food for a drink 'early in the morning, and in the evening by reading a specific Father Tikhon evening prayer rule, to fall down dead in the clothes on his uncle Eugene's couch and fall asleep healthy sound sleep workaholic who ran the frankly his daily duty.
Literary work she had done under duress, when the thunder clap, a Moscow apartment and abandoned altogether; it was good, Philip married, and Liza, a treasure find, took the economy into their own hands.
Ideal tidied up, cooked dinner, a fridge is full, all washed, and she also studied and was shot...
'Mom, do not worry, I is not hard,' Lisa was a happy kind of person in his place, and it was his rise from day to day, and Phil went to strut, and the mother in law confessed that his grandson, seems to have found a decent pair.
Now, even Denis has to be at home more often, confessing that for the first time in my life enjoying long sight of the Red Book copy of an ideal woman.
Symbiosis beauty, a good actress and homemakers, plus the secretary of the Komsomol organization.
And coming to Luzhino, he was stunned by the scale of construction.
'Hey, where did you get all this money?'
'God sends,' Joanna said the truth.
About the sale of flowers of course he knew nothing, he would certainly have grabbed his head.
And Joanna in the spring, taking into account market conditions stocked greenhouse film, manure, her grandfather built from the remains from the site a couple of greenhouses and had to be torn between home improvements and land.
He was a great post, she fasted, often went into the temple, lost weight, and child near Moscow April tanned tan. Changed his jacket and boots on a sweater and boots with wool socks because the soil was not dry yet.
A helper, architect, plasterer, trowel woman, painter, gardener, gardener and florist ... 'Flower-seller Annie' as she now called herself. These new games are unusual, gambling and at the same time serious.
Longtime, calming, both these words: house, garden, flowers, earth...
She first created the world not by pen, not a fantasy, not a word, and made of wood, clay, sand, soil, manure, cement and paint...
And it finally materialized in the true home, cozy, comfortable and beautiful. In gently garden that suddenly turned green somehow in one night after a warm rain, flat beds under the film with daffodils and tulips, buds already gaining...
And I had everything else and trade to Easter, the first of May, on the Victory Day and in Krasnaya Gorka...
And back in the train late at night, until sufficient forces had yet to think and jot down a few pages, for the studio audience and demanded continuation of the series ( how they just got tired!).
The so-called 'secular culture' now it all leaves me cold, the mountains were brought forth mice.
'Well, go, tell the essence,' mutter it way through Denis' outline of the next episode of.
The point was one and this is a fiddle-faddle. And most accurately determined by a single sentence of Tolstoy's, full of horror and disgust:
'What do they do!'
The great Earl in his religious and moral quest, repairing the roof of a poor widow, graph-plowman and the shoemaker to her now was the closest, though Father Tikhon believed that he fell as a victim to their own hubris.