Quest. The Drummer's Soul. All the parts. Complete collection

"Come on, men. I'm just healthy by nature, that's all…

Mikhalych was prevented from finishing by a knock from the basement. The stool under Gavrila, which stood on the hatch cover, began to play.

– Not understand. Who are you holding there? "what's the matter?" the drinking companion asked, getting up from his seat.

"I don't understand it myself." I haven't been there for two months.

"Open up, damn you!" "what's wrong?" came a voice from the underground.

Gavrila stepped aside and the landlord opened the hatch.

"Out of the way!" – threatening with a knife, the fighter shouted, rising from the dusty basement. His eyes darted wildly around.

"Who are they?" Who threw me into this pit? Who, I ask?

The owner of the house, taken aback by what was happening, looked at the visitor with a mute question. The companions crowded behind the solid back of the Teddy bear.

"Cool down, man, and be nice to your father, or you won't see him again."… I wanted to see my Creator-take the parcel… a measured voice came from somewhere in the void, and everyone in the kitchen turned to look at it.

Mikhalych's wife rushed to the noise and, clasping the jamb with her hands, froze in a frenzy when she heard the strange statement of a voice from the void.

"Who said that?" nikephoros asked, peering into the void.

But there was no response…

***

–Here is so as something, – ottryakhivaya their fingertips, has he spoken Tikhon, returning in cleanest from layer past in linear calculus thirty years ago, – canvassed communicate, can mind will gain both.

The drummer watched Victoria's flickering heels, grinned at the quivering bushes at the top of the alley, and whispered:

– Greetings to you, Bartholomew from me, another. Don't get bored, we'll see you soon…

***

Nikifor, Gavrila, Mikhalych, his wife, and the boy sat silently at the table in the smoky kitchen. Spilled on the second.

– What, let me ask, do you have a calendar for 1989? Collecting rarities? – paying attention to the tear-off calendar, which I saw only as a child, the fighter asked, removing the knife from his eyes, assessing the peacemaking position of the environment.

The locals looked at the calendar in surprise, then at the guy.

"What year do you think should be on the calendar?" "what is it?" the landlord asked cautiously.

– It's 2019, don't you know? – what is it? " the intruder asked sarcastically, overturning his glass. But when he met the genuinely startled stares, he removed the grin from his face.

"Gavrila, Nikifor-it's time for you to leave us," Mikhalych's wife said rudely. The husband's drinking companions had not heard this tone from the humble hostess before, but they preferred not to find out the details and quickly left the hut.

– That voice…"who didn't seem to be the only one who told you to be polite to your father.".. I don't quite understand it yet, and I don't really believe it, but tell me your name.

– Can I still show my passport? What kind of interrogation are you doing here, mother? We sat, talked and will. I have to go, " the guy said roughly, getting up from the table.

– Not Ivan? the woman asked pleadingly, looking with tearful eyes into the boy's eyes. These words startled Mikhalych, who had hitherto remained calm.

"So what?" – passing to an exit, the fighter answered through teeth. "She's a clairvoyant, too." Now you can easily find information for each person. Come on, clowns.

The guy left the house. The wife sat down next to her husband, looking at each other meekly.

– Well, what's wrong with that? Where did this ghoul come from in our underground? – partially sobered, gave Mikhalych.

His wife only looked at the calendar in confusion. A few minutes later, the door in the house opened and the same guest from the basement entered the kitchen. He asked in an exemplary tone:

"Where am I?"

"I don't quite understand how this is possible, but I recognized you. Come in, Ivan Maksimovich, sit down, " the woman replied, as if in a state of prostration.

"How do you know my middle name?"

"We'll get to know each other.".. Maksim…"your father's coming," the man said, getting up from the table.

***

"Is it really eighty-nine?" – biting off a slice of Soviet sausage, the guy asked.

– Yes, van, for us this is the usual and natural course of time. Tell us about-how you live? my mother asked.

– What do you do for a living? my father added.

– Yes, I am…– considering how to present your, to put it mildly, not quite legal activity, Ivan drawled. But then I got my bearings and changed the subject:

– What kind of activity and life? If you really are my ancestors and I have somehow been transported back thirty years, then you'd better tell me how it happened that I don't know my parents. Do you know what it's been like without my father and mother all these years? What does a child feel when they watch their families on TV and don't know what parental warmth and support is? Why are you so sad? No answer?

Maxim Mikhailovich looked at the floor.

– I will answer, – my wife Olga said quietly, – when you were born, our life changed, it is a natural process, but we were not ready for these changes. The constant screaming, the sleepless nights, the nerves as a consequence of the discord. Maxim did not get enough sleep, went to work in the morning with a cast-iron head and eventually gave an ultimatum: either I or this little screaming creature.

"You memorized everything word for word…,– surprised detached issued a man.

I was afraid your father more than life feared, and there was something to fear, – said Olga, a Bathrobe covering the bruise on forearm, – so tossed you to the gates of the orphanage of the district centre.

"You didn't love me at all?" Ivan asked in a choked voice.

"I did, and I still do." I only sent the child to an orphanage for one reason – it would be safer for you here than where your father could reach you.

– So that means from whom I have this vein of aggression and rage. Well, dad, consider the boomerang back, now don't forget it…

Ivan's face was calm, his tone quiet and insinuating, but there was lightning in his eyes. In an instant, he hurled the knife from his bosom at his father, who was sitting across from him, but the blade clanged as it struck the tree. Ivan realized with dismay that he was sitting on the ground, in the very Park from which he had disappeared. In front of him stood a huge tree trunk, in which the handle of a knife launched at his father often swayed from side to side.

"I saved you from two careless actions today, and I won't protect you again," came the same voice that had sounded in the parents ' hut.