Shackles - S. Skitalec

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peace relations and in the future.

      Ten thousand kind parishioners helped the archpriest to save the fair capital in thirty years of priesthood: a tyatenka it was not humiliated before extortion for occasional offices and on collecting – plentiful and rich alms money and products flew also without it in a deep popovsky pocket.

      But the main thing for what kandalinets obediently suffered both requisitions, and the despotic address is his ability to advocate their interests, though not without own benefit, before the higher civil authorities, always hated to kandalinets. The archpriest did not wish to share the valid, actual influence on the kandalinsky people with the highest government, and to kandalinets spodruchny was to deal with the priest who was perfectly knowing their life, than from nothing understanding and therefore the heartless and cruel visiting provincial administration.

      But “inside” the lord in a cassock treated them as little east despot, forcing to tremble before him. It was the feudal lord who was autocratically ruling all territory of the kandalinsky volost, on space and wealth surpassing any medieval European duchy.

      The archpriest as a certain patriarch of the primitive tribe called by “kandalinets” provided to the citizens freedom of worship, non-interference of the far and hated administration to their life – and the kandalinsky oasis in the boundless ocean of old regime lawlessness in own way happily prospered under an absolute power of a tyatenka on infinitely obsolete, patriarchal and vassal beginnings.

      * * *

      Such is there was an external and internal image of the village when Elizar, having returned from exile and not having settled in the city, returned on the old, involuntarily left by it native ashes. Removed the being empty public and church log hut after the sexton who died of alcoholism, arrived the icon painter and a zolotilshchik on the coming to an end construction of new church.

      Carpenters and joiners tesat logs and planed bars about church, having created the whole tier of spill and shavings which were not forbidden to be dragged to the next hostesses and children on a kindling.

      The church finished an iconostasis, finished a dome list, zolotilshchik gilded a carving of columns, doors and icons, carefully taking a peacock feather thin leaves of gold and polishing it on carving curls.

      Every morning in old church called to a mass. The angular lodge with a front garden left the stocky archpriest in a kalimavkion and slowly went on a footpath to church, leaning on a long staff with a silver knob.

      Elizar thought more of children now, than of himself: sons grew up – Vukol reached age school limit.

      In one of windy, frosty and juicy autumn days he led the nine-year-old son in kandalinsky ministerial school.

      The area against churches was decorated by institutions: volost board which in an ancient way still many called the order, and the big wooden stocky schoolhouse with the apartment of the teacher in an attic. About a porch of school on a column under a special roof like a mushroom quite impressive copper bell which rang, as hung on a veche, announcing the beginning of the doctrine.

      Before the occupations about school pupils – the little peasants dressed in short fur coats and undergarments ran and fought. Suddenly frequent cheerful blows in a bell on a column sounded, and school students a crowd directed in classes. From an attic the teacher went down. The door of school slammed, and from there lingering singing of the children’s voices singing a morning prayer deafly rushed.

      When singing came to an end, Elizar with the son were included into school; pupils sat at long not colored pine school desks. Against them the teacher sat at department. Plaster of walls of the extensive room below fell off long ago, finding strips of shingles.

      Pupils sat, without taking off undergarments and short fur coats, and at an entrance of strangers got up, then mudflows again, having turned the heads towards entered, with curiosity considering them. Vukol was close-cut, on him there were gray trousers навыпуск and a jacket with a belt – a suit of city school students, and he very much was surprised, having seen full school of the children with the long hair cut on-raskolnichyi in a curve piece dressed in a country way. Country children ironically examined city. The teacher, the tall solid person with a gold beard, in a stiff collar and a jacket suit, left because of department, gave a hand to Elizar speaking about the son. Vukol was so absorbed by impression of the pupils watching at it with obvious hostility that he did not hear the father’s conversation with the teacher.

      The teacher took the opened book from the forward pupil and Vukolu told, having stroked him on the cut head:

      – You are able to read?

      – I am able.

      – Well, read this aloud yes more loudly!

      Also pointed a finger in the book.

      – To read he reads long ago! – Elizar told – and here about the letter … – and, обратясь to the son, added, friendly lowering a voice: – Not робь!

      Vukol did not quail: at the first view of the title specified by the teacher he saw chitanny to them and slyshanny in the recitation of actors in city theater the poem “Coachman’s Wife” of Nikitin more than once.

      It was the favourite poem of Elizar which and Elizar liked to read in a circle of the family in the evenings.

      Vukol quickly, imitating actors and the father, with full compliance with intonations, taught still by the grandmother storyteller to represent characters, began reading. At school there came the unusual silence. Vukol read with ardent feeling, intending to strike listeners with the art: probably also did not dream rural school students that they are addressed by the person who visited the real stage in the real theater.

      Having reached the place where the fright of the wife who guessed the death of the husband it was represented it is loud, with pathos screamed, raising the voice as the father did it it:

      – And my husband?! – exclaimed

      Coachman wife,

      Also snow are more white

      It became.

      Here unexpectedly burst an amicable laughter of little listeners. The reader reddened to ears, wounded up to the soul depth, but read up up to the end.

      – Well done! – the teacher told and, having turned back to the class shutting itself mouths from laughter strictly told: – I ask not to laugh: he read perfectly: here and it is necessary to read good verses, and I taught you: but you still consider a model of good reading reading our sexton in church! It is advisable to laugh at you, but not to you at it!

      Pupils became silent, but Vukolu seemed that they did not believe the teacher.

      Vukol was accepted in the second class at once though Elizar, leaving, warned the teacher that he taught the son itself – and only to reading, and did not teach the letter. The teacher, smiling, objected:

      – Nothing, we will learn.

      When there occurred change and the teacher left upward, pupils, running out from school on the square, imitated Vukol:

      – And mine му-?

      And again laughed at the beginner: over his short-haired head and a city suit, imitated his gait, manners. Vukolu remembered far times of Tatorki, is inexplicable the hating Vukol.

      It was considered how a ridiculous wonder. Big pupils – too in undergarments and with hair to a curve piece came from the senior class.

      – Shay Kaká of a debt, as at Ali’s goose at an ugly duckling!.

      – And holds the head on one side!

      – Correct for it!

      At new explosions of laughter pokes, clicks in the head, pinches began, and one big speckled guy of years of seventeen

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