SYMBOL OF ETERNITY

For table- bench elderly man is sitting. He is holding a thick book and read carefully. Through lowered to nose round glasses in the book look brown eyes focused from under bushy gray eyebrows. The old man suddenly looked up from reading, listening. Behind the door, the sound of footsteps. He turned his head and looked at the door. On the threshold appeared the boy:

– Hello Grandfather!

– Ah, it’s you, Valik. Come in, – Said the old man, gentle and kind voice.

– Grandpa, and honey it is time to look at?

– It’s time. It has long been conducted. Oh- ho- ho. Where were you yesterday?

– So I came and so early. Just have been the cases. – Contrite I replied…

– Well, – he smiles slyly, – beekeeper.

He got up heavily and went to the centrifuge:

– Here’s your honey. – And, groaning, he pulled out of the barrel with a heavy frame,

full of amber honey, honeycomb.

– Take a mug and pick up the faster water.

Honey mixed with wax honeycombs, melted in the mouth, and was much more delicious honey that eating just a spoon. I took out of his mouth neat Chewed lumps and throwing them into a bucket where the beekeeper dropped pieces of wax, then to fuse the wax ingot. These bars he swapped the wax screen within a tagged them neat Allen, a future bee masonry. Full of honey, I sipped two to three sips of water from heavy copper mugs and taken again juicy chew honeycomb. And so, savoring ate and ate until the beekeeper did not stop me:

– Show the stomach?

I pulled up his shirt, revealing a swollen like a drum and round belly.

– Wow! – Consciously, carefully, and the feeling of rough skin on the abdomen. – There have already appeared on the skin drops of honey!

– «Maybe I ate too much, and volvulus?» – Thought whit apprehension. And ask cunning beekeeper was hesitant, he asked instead:

– Grandpa, what have you got for this mug?

– What, this?

– Well, this here, though, and small and heavy. – I, twisting in the hands of a copper mug, – The houses and a larges and light.

– So there you have it, and that we have.

The conversation usually ends. But I wanted to talk more. I peered searchingly at the old man’s gray shaggy eyebrows, and continued:

– What are you reading?

– What are you reading? Uh, it’s still too early to know you.

He closed a massive hardcover and pushed aside the thick volume. Then he got up from his chair, carefully considering any line inscribed in pencil on the windowsill. Shadow of a window frame coincided with one of them. As a satisfied grunt, the old man said:

– Well, it’s time, and return home.

It’s a shame; it was in the heart of the old man. And the fact that he is silent, afraid of honey, speaking on his stomach. Yes, apparently, does not like guest’s beekeeper. On the way home I stopped in front of the garden fence. Furtively looked around, and then hastily pulled coats the stomach and examined carefully. Belly glittering beads of sweat, said on its entire surface, and these drops are so similar to a drop of honey that the finger itself involuntarily reached for the sticky balls and collect some beam on the finger. Flavor drops are the most common were salty bitter. Now, if in the act of the boy he noticed his friends. Forever rest run away from him. But their next and the boy continued to study the bulging belly. He even turned to the sun, but all in vain, but small sparkles of sweat drops of honey anywhere debts. So beekeeper deceived him? Again irritation coming right up to the throat treacherous lumpy. I frowned, shirt tucked in his pants. Put on the right shoulder suspenders, pants will not fall. And jumped over the fence…

Summer is hot time for rural laborers working in the field. Summer day passes fast as one minute. For children, running around in kindergartens and schoolchildren, tourists on vacation, summer day suddenly rushes, replacing morning to noon, noon to evening. And it roaring herd, returning from the pastures, in the copper sunset. We hear vociferous appeals to mothers of calling home playing children.

In the evening, at dinner, I asked my mother:

– Mom, who is a beekeeper?

The mother did not quite answer:

– You better ask grandmother?

I frowned again:

– «Well, what, why do not they talk to me in a kind way? Eh, that’s

Vali father all the time with a smile, all the time, all about everything.»

But curiosity got the better. And I went to my grandmother, who was busy at this time, as always, by the stove. Grandma turned to my face, all pitted with deep fine wrinkles, with the ever- trembling chin:

– You jumped off the table? Sit back,. – I sat down again at the table – I’ll get potatoes with meat.

Grandmother, deftly wielding pitchforks furnace, pulled out of the pot with a hot stove.

– Ba- A, a, Grandma?

Ta hear, hear. What do you want?

– And who is a beekeeper? – I did not give up.

– This Is Fedos Kuzmovich, Diaconal!

– Ba- A, a, a grandmother, and that such Diaconal?

– This is the one who in the church hymns. Here come with me there and hallow see.

Chapter Three

My grandmother was my best friend. Always protected always – another word. The mother, busy working the farm, practically engaged me – once. And I grew up without proper maternal affection by itself. Father, I have debts. Who is the father? His appointment in his family knows. But the unconscious feeling drew me to foreign fathers. And visiting his friends, sometimes do not want to leave home, such confidence exuded by his father’s friend. This filial atmosphere surrounded by his father’s children, that I always regret returning home. What can I say, I secretly envied neighbor girl Vale and her brother Volodya Senilovym.

One day, I’ll remember for a lifetime, the father took the children to the store. And I, like a stray dog, had come with the neighbors. There are something just debts. And the gun, firing plugs and balls, and even a scooter. His father bought the children toys to choose from. Volodya got a gun and scooter. Valya, ball and a doll. I, of course, nothing…

It’s the Easter holiday. Grandma wore festive clothes clean; I issued a new white shirt and breeches, just below the knee. On the bridge were his pants buttoned at the knees. And my grandmother went to church. From the basket, which was carrying grandmother proceeded spicy aroma of Easter cakes, cakes with cottage cheese and baked in the bread cakes crosses and colored eggs.

At the iconostasis pop in a long robe to toe standing with his back to the congregation, and bass intoned a prayer book read:

– Father Our, Who art Thou, in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy will be done…

The church choir of pious old ladies, sonorous voices echoed him. In a black suit and highly polished boots, leaning on the narrow platform, he stood facing the chorus Fedos Kuzmovich. His long nose sitting round glasses. Through them he considered the text of the Bible and tenor sang along with the chorus. The church hall crowded mob of parishioners quickly baptized in the pauses of the choir. And the sign of the cross, and the choir and the solemn silence of parishioners filled the church hall space and the feeling of my imagination of a sacrament. And yielding to the universal impulse of piety, I put three big finger of the right hand in a «bundle» as my grandmother taught me, and with a sinking heart – baptized. Offense gesture aroused a feeling of anxious expectation of a miracle. I suddenly thought that this is what is going to happen. The choir sang at that time: