Platform Begovaya. Book I. Chapter 3

           Lyosha again was returning home on the last train. He pulled out a textbook and a notebook and tried to focus on algebra, but his thoughts carried him away from the formulas into the whirl of what he could not understand ... he was thinking about Nazar. From that memory, he flinched, tried again to focus on the formula, and again he remembered Nazar, his eyes, the way he had stood in front of him and the fact that suddenly there was insufficient air, and his heart had begun to beat.

Lyosha turned his gaze to the window. It was dark there, only lights were visible through the wet glass. By night cold autumn rain had increased.

He almost missed his stop again. His thoughts were not here, and for some reason, he felt so good. It was as good as if for the first time in his life he found something that he had been looking for or someone who was so strange to think about, but somehow it eased his mind...

After these competitions, he fell ill. It was a cold rain and after all, he was in the street almost all day long, and in wet clothes also, it made itself felt. The next day, he had a fever, his nose was unpleasantly stuffed, and his throat ached painfully on every sip.

Varvara Petrovna immediately saw his unhealthy state and ominously commanded him to go to bed. A few minutes later she brought a thermometer, which she was shaking for a long time and then gave it to his grandson. Alexey, with a humble look, put it under his arm, and they were silently waiting for ten minutes. And the result was obvious - thirty-eight and three. Grandma sighed, went to call - to call a doctor. Lyosha understood that it was already without options. For the school, he needed a certificate about the illness, so he would have to lie down and wait for the doctor, but the worst thing was that he would not get to the stable in the coming week.

So it happened. He lay at home in warm woolen socks, in which the grandmother put the mustard powder. She regularly rubbed his chest and back with smelly pepper tinctures and gave tea with raspberries. He was sweating from this and felt terrible, but he endured everything humbly, as he really wanted to get better and get to the horses as soon as possible. All this time he was thinking about them: Tokha, on whom he jumped, Vasily, knowing that without him he would definitely drop someone else from himself and other horses, and he also thought about Nazar ... It was strange to him that for the first time in his life, he thought of someone for so long and it turned out to be so nice...

In the middle of the week he was visited by Genka.

The door to his room opened, and Varvara Petrovna loudly announced, "Receive guests! Your friend, Gena ... Well, come on, come on, why have you stopped," she let Gena pass into the room and closed the door behind him.

"What, really sick?" Genka flopped on the bed and looked at him carefully. "Yes, you are sick ... and I thought so, you are dogging it, well, like, you wanted to skip school."

"Take another seat or you will get infected," Alexey sniffed.

Genka quickly sat on a chair next to him and began to rummage in a school bag.

"Take, I’ve brought you here," he held out a few exercise books," rewrite. This is a class teacher told me to bring you exercise books so that you would not fall behind the program."

Lyosha took exercise books and, without losing time, began to write off from them what they had learnt at school without him. He was not even offended by the words of a friend. He knew that though Genka was his friend from childhood he would hardly have come to visit him, and that was understandable. As the class teacher had entrusted, he was here.

While Alexey was writing, Genka began to talk about the events at their school: about a new biology teacher and the fight of high school students; then he fell silent as if he remembered something.

"It seems you went to competitions? And how?"

"Horse limped ... had to withdraw."

"And what, isn’t it possible to jump on the limping horse?"

Lyosha stopped writing and, without raising his eyes, quietly replied, "You can ... but it hurts him..."

"To whom? To horse?" Genka laughed. "Well, just listen! The horse hurts. And if he had not limped, would he have won?"

"Yes."

"You are a goof, Lyokha. And by the way, were the prizes there?" having seen that Lyosha nodded, Genka continued. "I'm telling you, goof. Now you would have dough ... we could go somewhere to hang out. The guys told me, they went to the club ... it was cool there. And there were chicks there ...  they give, in short, if you have money."

Lyosha reddened and continued writing without raising his eyes.

“And you would be given ... only money is necessary.”

"I do not want it like this."

"Well, of course, you like Olya." Genka winked at a friend, "she only doesn’t even look at you. She looks at Kostyan, his parents do business, and now he walks in such belongings. Ready-faded jeans, called Levis, damn..."

Genka choked with saliva from emotions, and then almost an hour, while Lyosha was rewriting the material that had been passed without him, was telling him about Kostya and his ancestors, and Olya, who now was making friends with him, and that no one would give them, that you needed to start making cash, and then everything in life would improve.

"And you are only gadding about to your horses, spend money on them. And why the hell do you need it?" in the conclusion of his passionate speech, Genka uttered, looking at his friend.

"Thank you," Alyosha held out his notebooks.

"The belly is not filled with “Thank you”, Genka, with a businesslike air, put the notebooks in his bag. "Well, adiós."

He shook his hand and left the room.

Although Alexei’s head ached from such a verbal flow, he was glad for Genka, the fact that he came to visit him and in general that he had such a friend. Genka lived in the next doorway, that’s why they became friends. Probably, it was for the first time in childhood, after meeting in the same sandbox, standing in their yard. Genka was now ahead of him in growth, he was thin and lanky, in a short for his height school uniform, with greasy rare hair and a face covered with youthful acne.

After his illness, Alyosha got to the stable only a week later. At first, he had to catch up at the school, to tie up loose ends, and only then his grandmother had mercy and allowed him to go to the horses.

Petrovich was delighted to see him, and then somehow immediately became sullen.

"Come here," he took Alyosha by the elbow and took him aside, “the matter is ... here's money for you ... go and get your hair cut."

Lyosha looked up in surprise at the money in his hand. Petrovich for some reason tried not to look at him.

"Get your hair cut ... then come. Go, go..."

He pushed him to the exit. At first, Aleksey wanted to argue, to say that during this time he had missed Tokha and Vasily, and all the other horses, but he kept silent, feeling something was amiss.

He came out of the stable and, stooping, trudged towards the exit from the hippodrome, to the platform of Begovaya. Already on the way to the platform, he had been caught up by Makha. She lived farther along the same railway line, and therefore sometimes they traveled together.

"Oh, and why are you not in the stable?"

"Petrovich expelled ... said to have my hair cut ... then to come. Here, he even gave money. "Alyosha took crumpled bills out of his jacket pocket, and he didn’t even see how much money there was. All this for him was so strange and unexpected."

"Ah, this is ..." Mashka famously lit a cigarette and spat on the platform, "so, Nazar told you to have your hair cut or not to let you in. Like, you're a faggot if you don't cut it." Mashka laughed loudly.

"Who?" Lyosha heard this word before, but never wondered what it meant.

"Well, you are blissful ... you do not know what a faggot is? These are those whom men like girls have. Got it. Or maybe you are really of these?" Mashka slyly winked. "Come on, don't be upset. I know that you are still a child. But you don’t make Nazar angry ... he raised the devil that evening, I heard everything, and then Sanya told me. By the way, I'm meeting with him now. We are in love."

And then Masha babbled without stopping. All the way to the Workers' Settlement, she told Alyosha about their love and how they would marry, and then for sure she would leave with him to Paris or the Canaries, she had not yet decided where. Alexey nodded at her story, while he was thinking about Nazar and that Nazar had thought about him in such a way. It was strange, because Nazar saw him only a couple of times, and had already called him this bad word, and thought that he was such a guy at all.

Going to the house, Lyosha furtively rubbed out moisture from his eyes, which for some reason accumulated in them, and only at home, hiding in his room, he fell into the pillow with his face and allowed this moisture to flow freely from his eyes. He lay and sobbed, clutching a pillow with his hands. Probably it wasn’t even the words of Nazar about him to hurt him so much, but the very disappointment that he had been thinking about Nazar all this time, and it was so delightfully pleasant, although he did not understand why. But now it didn't matter. He felt the dirt in his soul as if he had been spat there, and he was very hurt. He had never felt such pain inside before, and now something was hurting inside, and his eyes constantly got wet from the tears.

Alyosha knew that he was strong and it didn’t matter that he felt pain; he would survive and would not show anyone how bad he was right now. Having calmed down a bit, he decided that since he was not in the stable, he needed to help his grandmother and started cleaning the house. He began to vacuum the carpets on the floor and on the wall with an old, very noisy vacuum cleaner. Then, pouring water into a bucket and putting a wet rag around the mop, he went to wash the floors in their two-room flat. After such physical labor, Alyosha almost calmed down and even a little distracted from the unpleasant event in his life.

Today, Grandma was cleaning at Isabella’, and most likely she would come late. Therefore, after conducting a revision of the refrigerator, he decided to make a soup from an ice puny chicken that was lonely lying in an empty freezer. For the soup, he took out the bulbs hanging in a stocking over the battery, which he chopped. After searching in the box with vegetables, he found still not faded carrot and a few potatoes. He also cleaned all this and cut it, and, finding pasta in the cupboard, he decided that he would add it later to the boiling broth for satiety. He didn’t know how to cook, but as he had lived with his grandmother since twelve years without his mother’s guardianship, he learned how to prepare basic simple dishes such as soups, main dishes, and various salads. Of course, his grandmother loved him and did not force him to cook, but he, seeing how much she was tired of the constant struggle with poverty and for their survival, for as long as he could remember, always helped her as much as he could.

The soup began to boil, he removed the froth several times and, making sure that it no longer formed during boiling, noted the time. Now he had about an hour until the chicken cooked, and only then it would be necessary to remove it, to bone it off and to cut it into smaller pieces. After that he had to add it back together with the potatoes, carrots, and onions already chopped into the boiling broth. Having worked in the head a simple plan for cooking soup, Alyosha went to his room to do homework. Although it was hard at heart, he forced himself to switch to homework. Today, of course, he would not go to any barber, besides it was too late. Moreover, he wanted to ask his grandmother where to go. He did not even know where there were hairdressers in the area.

Late in the evening, the tired Varvara Petrovna returned, gently kissed his head, seeing the cleanliness in the flat and the cooked dinner. She furtively brushed away the tears from her eyes and, sighing heavily, again remembered her careless daughter, who, in pursuit of an overseas prince, had abandoned such a child. And now neither she nor her son was happy. The fact that Lizka lived unhappily there, Varvara Petrovna knew well, although she showboated, saying that she was happy and that she had everything. But she had no freedom, the Finn was holding her in tight rein. For every penny, he required a report. She was either his wife or the housekeeper, it was impossible to understand. And this was despite the fact that she had already given birth to a daughter from him. But he did not consider her for a human. Varvara Petrovna was sad for the life of her daughter and for the fact that she had left her son, who missed her so much, though he did not show it. But he couldn't fool her. She saw how long Lyoshka was looking at the portrait of his mother on the bedside table and gently wiped it from the dust with a cloth, and then he furtively kissed so that no one could see.

Alyosha saw that his grandmother was tired and upset about something. He said that he would wash the dishes and tidy up in the kitchen by himself; she only kissed him again at the top of the head and, sighing sadly, went to her room. Lyosha decided that the question of a hairdressing salon would ask her the next day.

***

Today, in a strange way, the day went wrong with Alexey. In the morning there was a cold autumn rain again. It was too lazy to go to school, especially on such a gray, dank day. He wanted so much to lie at home in a warm bed and listen to the sound of rain outside the window. But he went to school, wrapping himself in an old thin jacket, which had not kept the heat for a long time.

He was late for his studies, and all this happened because of Genka, who had forgotten his second pair of shoes, and therefore the persons on duty at the entrance did not let him come in. They had to quickly develop a plan for penetration inside. Alyosha, after coming into the school and presenting a bag with the second pair of shoes at the entrance, quickly threw off his jacket in the dressing room and swirled up the stairs to the second floor. There he opened the window in the hallway. Genka was already standing below. He deftly caught the bag with the shoes and went to the entrance of the school. In the locker room they met. The bell had already rung, and two friends rushed to the classroom where the first lesson had already begun.

So, having a strange feeling of something bad in the soul, Lyosha sat out the first three lessons, and at a recess went with Genka to smoke outside the school. Well, only Genka smoked, and he was just always standing next to him.

It was during this smoke break that the guys from the neighboring vocational school came up to them.

When they asked for a cigarette, Alyosha had already known how this would end. So it happened. Genka snapped at their words and immediately was punched in the gut. He rushed to the Genka’s offenders and felt at once several hits poured on him from different sides. He began to beat back. Alexey couldn’t fight too much, but he always stroke back and was never afraid if such a fight happened. Since with his active actions he had drawn all the attention to himself, he saw out of the corner of his eye Genka running towards the school. As Genka told later, he ran for help. Yes, it really was. A couple of minutes later the teachers, who had come running to the shouts of Genka about the fight with the vocational students, separated their tangle of fighting bodies.

Alexey was taken to the medical room, where his cut eyebrow and lip were washed, and all this was smeared with green antiseptic. They also smeared a bruise on the cheekbone and the solar plexus, where everything was blue from the blows, with something.

Only after that he was released.

"Why did you call the teachers?" coming out of the medical room and seeing Genka, he asked.

"What do you mean why? Yes, if I had not called ... they would have made it hot for you. You know, I sort of saved you, but you're not happy yet!"

"This is our squabbles ... it was not necessary to attract elders here. Now, these guys will get spanked for the fact that they’ve got to schoolchildren."

"That's great!" Genka had already amused by this thought. "They, assholes, will know how to come to us."

"It’s wrong ... you understand ... we ourselves had to." Lyosha fell silent, seeing that it was impossible to explain to Genka the fact that he knew for sure that his friend had not acted like a boy ... although he himself didn’t really understand how it was like a boy. But only he knew that it was not necessary to call for the help of adults in their squabbles. From the understanding of this Lyosha saddened.

"Lyokh, where are you going?"

"They let me go home ... because of this," Lyosha pointed to his face and went to the school locker room.

Genka heard the bell and ran in high spirits to the classroom.

***

All the way to the house, Alyosha tried to get rid of the strange premonition of something bad. He tried to justify his inner state of growing anxiety with this fight and with the fact that the grandmother would swear when she saw his face. But for some reason, he understood that it was not a fight. The feeling that something was about to happen did not go away.

Entering his porch, he saw drops of blood on the steps. These droplets of red on the dirty steps of the entrance immediately caught his eye. Inside, anxiety began to grow, like a wave covering him. He tried to calm down, big deal – it was blood, half of the residents of the porch were alcoholics. Probably, one of them had a fight or just fell, breaking his nose. Only these drops of blood led to his door. His heart began to pound and fell like over the cliff into the abyss, when, opening the door, he saw these droplets of blood on the floor in the corridor.

Behind him came the noise of a door being opened and the voice of a neighbor.

"Lyoshenka, you just do not worry ... everything is fine with your grandmother ... The ambulance took her."

Alexey confusedly turned to the words of a neighbor standing behind him in a long robe and hair curlers on her head. She, seeing his pallor, immediately rattled off.

"Doctors said it was a concussion. But it is not severe; she will lie a bit and will be discharged. She was taken to Botkinskaya. It is an hour ago already. I called the ambulance and the police, as I heard it all..."

"What has happened?" Alexey tried to comprehend all words and the action about which the neighbor was speaking, what happened here an hour ago.

"Well, I really do not know myself ... it seems like a bully hit her on the head when she entered the porch, and he followed her and hit her on the head and snatched her bag and ran ... and she screamed, I heard ... and immediately to her ... I see that Varvara Petrovna is standing there, below, and blood is flowing down her cheek and her hair is all in blood. Oh, how scared I was. I immediately ran to call the “Ambulance” and the police, and she had reached the flat herself. Then the police arrived and the ambulance..."

Lyosha waved his hand as if waving away from this noise and useless words and all that had happened and was happening. The neighbor fell silent, sighed and went to her flat.

"Thank you…"

"You, Lyosh, address if anything... we are neighbors..."

The door slammed behind her, and he remained in silence.

Alyosha closed his door to cut off himself finally from this alien world to him, and sat down on the nightstand for shoes, feeling that his legs were not holding him.

"Grandma ..." He whined plaintively, "grandma, why has it happened to you ...," he rubbed tears on his cheeks.

***

Then everything was like in a dream. He just started doing what he had to. He had to visit his grandmother in the hospital. So he was going there by bus, by the metro, again by bus. Everything merged into a single stream of people, noise, fuss, hustle, cold rain, gray Moscow twilight and him, walking through it all to his goal.

In the hospital, they did not want to let him go to his grandmother in the ward, saying that he was not a direct relative to her. Naturally, he did not take the power of attorney from the house, which his mother issued when she left, having appointed his grandmother as a guardian until the age of his majority.

He listened to the refusal of a tired woman in a white robe behind the reception window of the receiving office and wearily continued to stand in front of her, feeling the emptiness inside and that he would not leave from here anywhere until he was let in to his only native person in this world.

Fortunately, this conversation was heard by the doctor, who, seeing his pitiful look, took the responsibility and told to let him go to his grandmother.

The hospital corridors were cool and smelled of staleness and illness. He walked through all this, looking for the ward number with his eyes and finding it, knocking, walked in.

Varvara Petrovna was lying on a bed in the corner to the right of the window. Her eyes were closed, her face was pale, and her whole head was wrapped in bandages on which blood appeared. Lyosha quietly approached her and, squatting down, took her hand and pressed his forehead to it. She woke up, looked for the one who touches her and finally saw her grandson.

"Lyoshenka ... found me. Do not worry ... everything is fine. The doctors said it's okay ... tomorrow they will make an x-ray of the head... so I lie down here, and the age is fifty-eight already ... so they worry, they will hold me here. How are you there alone ... can you cope with it?"

"I will visit you! Every day," Alyosha sat down on the edge of the bed, hearing the voice of his grandmother, he came to life, he felt better.

"You shouldn’t do it every day ... you must learn."

"Not. I will come to you every day ... who has done it... for what?"

"I had a pension ... probably, they knew ... or someone watched, as I took it off from the savings bank. There is such a time... Be careful yourself. Do not go late in the evening. Ok?"

Varvara Petrovna ran her hand through his hair. Lyosha understood that without glasses she didn’t see his split eyebrow and broken lip, and was happy about it.

"Do not worry. Until you get better, I will not go to the horses. I'll come to you after school."

"There, at home, in the chest of drawers, under linen, there is money ... a little ... but enough for you."

Alyosha nodded and looked at the bedside table. There were sheets of paper. He took them, read, it was a list of drugs.

"Is it necessary to buy it for you?" seeing the objections on the face of his grandmother, he did not let her say anything. "Do not worry, I have money. I'll buy ... I'll buy everything tomorrow and bring it. What else should I bring?"

Probably, at another time, Varvara Petrovna would have begun to elicit a reply from her grandson, where his money came from, but now her head ached after the blow and the medicines that she had taken made themselves felt. Her thoughts were confused, and she felt that she was gradually falling asleep. Therefore, she only found the strength to list her grandson what was necessary to bring from her personal belongings and then fell asleep.

Lyosha was sitting for a long time beside her, holding her hand and watching how she was sleeping. He was happy. Grandmother was alive; this was the most important thing in his life.

***

The next day was even stranger in his life than the previous one. Already going to school, he noticed that the passers-by on the street were not like as usual, and everything around was odd. People looked around nervously, talked to each other and walked quickly as if trying to quickly leave the street.

And at school, he first heard this word — the putsch ... it sounded from everyone and constantly. He did not understand what it was. But everyone talked, talked and talked.

The lesson began, and the teacher said that there was an overturn in the country, and it was called a putsch, and that the White House was being fusilladed, and in general,  Moscow was restless because of shooting, and therefore there would be no lessons for that day.

Alexey perceived all from the side, he didn’t really understand the meaning of everything that was happening and didn’t want to delve into it. Since they were sent home, he was extremely happy about it. Now he had time to buy grandmother's medicine before the start of the visiting hours, and he also wanted to boil her a chicken and eggs, and bring all this to her into the hospital.

Quickly dressed, he went to the pharmacy, but it was closed. Not understanding why this was happening, he went to another. Although it was farther, Alexey knew that he had to buy drugs for his grandmother. Well, this pharmacy worked. There, inside, also everyone behaved strangely, whispering about something and looking around. Alex was not up to it. He showed a list of drugs. From the entire list, only two items were available. He was warned that the other drugs he would not find on sale.

Depressed by this information, Lyosha, on his way home, went to the grocery store; its shelves were perfectly clean. It was good that the shop assistant of this store knew Alyosha and his grandmother, and, of course, she was already aware of what had happened. Sadly sighing about what had happened, she said that there were a dozen eggs, though the price for them confused him a little, he pulled out the money and bought them.

Having collected a bag of necessary things for the grandmother at home and putting the products prepared for her there, he left the house and headed for the bus stop.

And here again, something strange began to happen. Passers-by said that the buses didn’t go...

Lyosha was confused, but then he decided to walk to the subway. It was not near, but nevertheless, he reached the subway, where he saw crowds of people with slogans and posters. Having made his way through all this madness inside, he was literally brought into the subway car and pressed against the opposite doors. At the transfer station, he miraculously managed to slip out of the crowded car. Into the next carriage, he was again brought by the crowd, and he stood, pressed from all sides by people, and only heard strange words about the putsch, the overturn, the authorities and the shooting ...

Coming out of the metro to the street, he again learned from passers-by that public transport didn’t go here either, as the protesters blocked the streets. And indeed, in the distance, he saw a procession of people with posters and flags. Several people were strenuously broadcasting all kinds of appeals through the horn. Alexey, trying to bypass this crowd, moved towards the hospital.

He walked through this sea of people with stern faces shouting calls and waving flags. It seemed that he had fallen into the ocean of the people, and it had no bounds. Then there were claps, and the mass of people began to accelerate, taking Alexey along, but not in the direction he needed at all. At first, he resisted this stream, but then, drawn by it, ran with everyone not knowing where and what for. And only pushed by someone from this mass, he, having fallen on the pavement, was finally able to find freedom from such a flow of people. Actually, at once several people literally ran on him, but he was not particularly hurt. He quickly got up. He shook off his mud-stained trousers and a sleeve of his jacket and went into the alley, hiding from this madness.

Only at the very end of the visiting hours, he finally got to the hospital. He managed to pass things and food to his grandmother, but then he was immediately taken out of the ward.

On the street Alexey saw the ambulances approaching the hospital, one by one; and people, bloodied people were being carried out of them. Lyosha felt sick, he quickly went in the direction of exit from the hospital. Hoping that the buses went, he, therefore, immediately went to the already known lanes in the direction of the subway. He did not want to get into such a flood of people once again.

In the subway, the madness continued. There were people with bandaged heads and hands. Their bandages were in fresh blood. Alexey tried not to look at them; he didn’t want to look at anything at all. He just wanted to get home.

This madness lasted several days. School classes were canceled. Everything was closed, the shops had empty shelves. There were crowds on the streets, and when he got to his grandmother in the hospital, he saw people with blood-stained bandages everywhere. They lay in the corridors, sat in the hall, and walked the stairs. Alex was scared, it was very scary. It seemed that in a moment he was transferred from his world to the world of madness, blood, and death.

But life went on ... the saleswoman from the store was selling him from under the floor the products that he bought for his grandmother, while he ate buckwheat himself, which was still at home. Buckwheat on the water had become his usual food. The drugs for his grandmother were sold to him in the hospital, taking all the money he had, but that was not the point. The main thing was that he bought them and really hoped that his grandmother would soon recover. Indeed, Varvara Petrovna was on the mend. Soon she was promised to be discharged, only after this injury she became a little strange ... sometimes she seemed to fall out of reality and looked at one point for a long time. But Alyosha hoped that in time everything would pass, and she would again become the same as before.

This time he was just living, taking all his feelings deep inside himself and only returning home to an empty flat, Alyosha was sitting in the kitchen for a long time, listening to the clock on the wall counting down the time. He did not understand what was happening, why the world so familiar to him suddenly collapsed, and he found himself in a country he did not recognize. And he wanted so much to go back to his childhood, to a quiet life where there was a grandmother, a school and horses...

Then he forced himself to go to bed, knowing that he was alone in the flat, alone in this life and in this world...

Platform Begovaya. Book I. Chapter 2

 

From the competition, they returned on this day in the evening. The driver of their horse carrier first drove two horses to a nearby stable not far from them, and then came for them and took them from Bitsa.

 

Getting stuck in Moscow traffic, they finally reached the hippodrome and unloaded their horses. Lyosha spent a lot of time with Badminton. He hosed his foot in the sink with cold water, then Petrovich gave him a stinking ointment, which he had brought from the vet infirmary, and Alyosha diligently rubbed this ointment into the inflamed joint of the horse. Having been finishing winding a bandage over a quilted leg wrap on Tokha's foot, he heard a noise. Several people entered the stable.

 

Mobsters - Lyoshka immediately recognized them, sitting on his haunches at the foot of a horse and winding the bandage. Although Badminton had only one sick leg, quilted leg wraps were wound on all four legs. That's what he was doing, thinking that these guys were their roof. Once Petrovich said so about the company of strange short-haired boys in leather jackets, sweatpants, and sneakers. They came occasionally to them at the stable. It seemed that their ringleader loved horses and even when he was not very drunk he rode them. Sometimes Alexey caught this company. And now they, loudly talking and swearing, walked along the stable aisle passing by him and Badminton standing in cross ties in the middle of the aisle and entered Petrovich’s room.

 

Lyosha understood why they came here today, they came to have a drink. That is how thick Masha used to say about it, cooking pasta with stew on the stove at the request of Petrovich and warming a teapot for them. Makha herself was always glad to see such guests, she made eyes and obviously flirted with all these sporty-looking guys, but they just laughed and called her Thumbelina. But Masha hoped every time that she would pick up one of the brothers and would have an amorous relationship with him. Alexey had heard all this from her in her sentimental stories, although he vaguely imagined how to flirt with someone and what that meant in general.

When the whole noisy company finally closed the door in Petrovich’s room behind her, Mashka sat down next to Lyosha and, watching his diligent efforts to wind the bandage around Tokha’s leg.

 

"They came to booze up ..." She said. "I’ve seen there a rather tall, with broad shoulders, in a tracksuit ... he is a newcomer, I’ve already learned, his name is Sanya. I liked him, Lyoshka ... and it seems he likes me too." Masha straightened out a washed-up faded blouse, which covered her curvaceous forms. "I’ll flirt with him... And we will leave here ... We will go to Paris. There, they say, life is different ... Well, am I worse than skinny Parisian women? And I have to be happy. Isn't that right, Lyokha?"

 

Alyosha nodded in agreement, vaguely imagining Paris and fat Makha there ... and amorous relationship.  Masha was not embarrassed by his childishly naive view on her reasoning; she sighed languidly again and continued.

 

"Do not think, Lyokha, I was thin, like you, skinny as a worm... and then, after the abortion, which I made from this freak ... and began to drink pills, and now ... But nothing, I’ve decided to stop fressing after the New Year and by the summer I will have lost weight. Why are you laughing? I bet you - I will lose weight."

 

"Well, I am laughing not at this ... I believe that you will lose weight ... I just cannot imagine you like a worm..."

 

"When I was young ... like you. I was quite thin."

 

"Are you old now?" Lyosha even turned away from bandaging the horse's legs and looked at Makha's puffy pimply cheeks.

 

"Of course, the old ... no, rather I'm an adult. I'm already twenty!" Masha snorted, but then her gaze began again thoughtfully-languid. “Although, of course, I don’t really like this Sanya ... I like Nazar  ... but will he look at me like that ..."

 

Mashka again adjusted her blouse, which ugly covered her sides with fat folds and, standing up, went to the storeroom to put a pan of water, knowing that Petrovich would call her and give the command to cook pasta or buckwheat with stew. Judging by the number of packages in the hands of the mobsters, they came here having solidly laid in stocks and apparently wanted to carouse here all night.

 

Putting a saucepan with water on the fire, Masha thought about Nazar. He was for her as a prince from a fairy tale on a white horse. Yes, he was exactly on the horse. After all, he came here to ride horses, and therefore he was the most fantastic prince: handsome, stately, with dark hair whirlwinds at the crown and shaved to zero at the neck, with crazy wolfish eyes, with yellow lights, eyes and a smile from which it was getting scary. But still, Masha dreamed about him. He was for her the unrealizable ideal of the man of her dreams.

 

"Mashka," Petrovich's voice came from the storeroom, "come to take the bags of food ... Make the buckwheat for the boys and cut vegetables, they are hungry. And where is Lyokha?"

 

"Well, he is busy with his ... bandaging his legs,"  taking the bag of products from Sanya’s hands, Masha dazzlingly smiled at him, showing with all her appearance that she was ready for everything.

 

"Tell Lyokha, let him saddle Amethyst ... Mitya. Nazar wants to ride."

 

Petrovich finally gave to Mashka all the packages with food and pushed her out of the caster.

 

"Lyokha!" Carrying food into the nook of their mini-kitchen, Mashka screamed at the whole stable. "Saddle Mitya. Nazar wants to ride."

 

Alex quickly finished messing around with wrapping bandages on Badminton's legs and brought him into a loose box. The boy led Ametist into the aisle of the stable placing him there and fastening him from two sides with ropes, which were fixed to the walls of the passage so that the horse stood in the middle of this passage. He began to clean it quickly. Then he ran for the saddle and bridle into the tack room. Then he climbed into the attic, where the washed numnahs were drying, and, choosing a newer one, which Petrovich allowed taking when he saddled a horse for Nazar, put the numnah on the horseback. Then he put the saddle on top and pulled with the girth, though not in full force. It was necessary to cinch the girth already in the street, but not in a stable. On Amethyst's front legs, he put on the best and the only more or less “unworn” boots allotted to all horses, which were used only at competitions or for such elite clients. The boots were tightly wrapped around the low part of horse front legs, protecting them from strikes and injuries during the gallop.

 

Lyosha, standing next to Amethyst, unfastened the ropes holding him in the middle of the aisle, and threw the reins of the bridle around his neck, then removed the halter from the horse muzzle and put on the bridle. Frankly speaking, Mitya was a little malicious. He began to turn his face, trying to lift it as high as possible, so that Alyosha could not shove a bit into his clenched teeth. But Lyosha wasn’t afraid of such tricks. He knew what to do, so he confidently grabbed the horse nose and, squeezing it a little, pulled down and there with his other hand, raising the snaffle to Amethyst’s lips, made him take the iron in his mouth, and the rest was paperwork. He put the bridle on the horse muzzle and fastened the throat patch.

Alexey, without waiting for Petrovich’s order, led the horse out of the stable and began to walk it along the parade-ground, walking next to it and holding it for reins. Fifteen minutes later, Nazar came out of the stable. By his vacillating steps, it was obvious that they had already had a drink there, in the storeroom, and more than once, but this usually did not prevent Nazar from famously riding a horse.

Nazar focused his eyes and saw that his Amethyst, on which he usually ripped up in a racing circle, was walked by a thin lass with a tail sticking out from under her cap.

 

"Hey, belle!" Nazar waved to Lyokha, "lead the dray-horse here!"

 

Alexey started at the hail, but since he was regularly mistaken for a girl because of a ponytail hair hanging from under the cap, he didn’t even object to this and, in general, with this company of mobsters, as Petrovich told them, it was better to be silent otherwise you would have to pay with your life...

 

Lyosha didn’t understand that, but it was not interesting for him either. His was none of his business, he had to saddle the horse and bring it, and then pick it up after Nazar had ridden enough. He had to take the horse afterward to the stable, straddle, clean, wash the horse's legs from the dirt and put it back in the stall.

That's how Alexey always did when these guys came, and Petrovich told him to saddle some of the horses for Nazar.

 

Nazar waited for a horse to be brought. He saw the lass puffing up tightened the girths on the horse belly and, going around the horse, held the stirrup on the other side so that he, climbing on him, did not pull the saddle over.

 

Nazar patted the horse neck, breathed in the smell of horse sweat and dung, which he had liked so much since childhood, and putting his foot in the stirrup, famously jumped into the saddle. The girl, taking the horse by the stirrup and seeing that he was already in the saddle, let him go and looked up, to make sure that he was holding the reins to unclench her hand, with which she was also holding these reins.

 

"Let go." Nazar drew reins, looking at the eyes looking from under the cap to his eyes and froze, forgetting what he wanted to say...

 

From under this cap, the surprisingly serious sky-blue eyes, which resembled the morning sky, looked at him...

Inside him, something painfully clenched, and his heart sank...

But it was only a second. The cap visor again hid her eyes.  Making sure that the rider was holding reins she began to move away, only the tail of hair, protruding behind from the cap, was swaying in rhythm to her movement.

 

Nazar rubbed his face with his hand, as if trying to get rid of this strange obsession, although it is not an obsession. He did not know himself what it was.

 

“I need to stop drinking so much,” flashed through his mind. He happily fastened upon this idea, which rationally explained everything that seemed strange, but now so explicable that he had felt at that second, seeing these eyes.

 

Nazar squeezed the sides of the horse and, at a frisky trot, immediately jumped on it towards the race circle, knowing that it was impossible to trot on the asphalt, but now he needed to get away from what he still could not explain to himself.

 

The horse felt the rider's mood, and only restraining reins did not allow him to gain speed right off the run, but when they reached the sandy circle, Amethyst felt freedom and such an energetic push of the rider’s legs on his sides that he rushed right off the bat.

 

And Nazar forgot everything as soon as an avalanche of air stormed into his lungs, as soon as space merged into a single stream, and a hum from the sound of hooves sounded in his ears, merging with the sound of his heart.

 

How he loved this freedom, how he loved this flight, this air, this sky above his head and the wings that grew from him as soon as the steed carried him, picking up speed.

 

Soon they returned to the stable. Nazar knew that all these horses he rode were not so young and not so healthy, and therefore a long gallop was difficult for them. He loved horses and protected them. And no matter how much he wanted to ride longer and faster, he understood that he had to take pity on his horse, and then he did him into a trot, and then into a step and with regret that his flight finished so quickly, he returned to the stable.

 

Coming inside and leading the horse by the bridle, he again saw her, the same girl in a cap and with such eyes. She also saw them entering, quickly walked to him, without raising her head, picked up the reins, leading the horse to unsaddle. At first, Nazar wanted to talk but then decided to ask Petrovich about her. Although it was strange, he seemed to have seen her here before. Nazar strained his memory, yes, he saw. All these two years that he had been coming here to ride, and they had been patronizing the hippodrome, he saw her at the stable. Yes, only this cap, always hiding the face, and she always tried to avoid them all herself. Messing around with horses, she was either sitting at their legs, smearing or bandaging something, or removing manure wheelbarrows, or sweeping the stable. Now Nazar recalled all the moments when he had seen her. Therefore, it was not surprising that he did not notice her: she was skinny and the clothes on her were not attractive, she dressed like a boy, training pants always stretched on her knees and this cap. There was only a hair tail behind. And two years ago she was shorter, but now she grew.

 

Thinking about this strange girl with the eyes of the morning sky, Nazar returned to the table in the storeroom. There was booze already in full swing. He was quickly organized a bowl of hot buckwheat with stew and poured a full glass of vodka, which he drank in one gulp.

 

"Petrovich," Nazar turned his gaze to the drunken Petrovich, "let's invite your wards to the table, but somehow it’s not in a human way. As if we are fattening here, and they are sweating their guts out there in the stable, sort of like they are nonhumans or something."

“But whom to invite ... there are more children ... kids."

"So, all the more they need to be fed. Well, lads, move over!"

 

The guys at the table vigorously supported the initiative to feed everyone who was in the stable. Petrovich did not object, he looked out from behind the door and, already a little bit hoarse voice with drunk vodka, he called Masha and the girls, who had not yet gone home, but were busy with the horses, and said that Lyokha should be taken with them.

 

When a noisy company of giggling girls settled at the table and, without complexing, began to put food on their plates, Nazar finally saw her, the same one, in a cap, with a tail. She modestly snuggled up at the very corner of the table and, bowing her head, covering her face with a visor cap, ate buckwheat. Judging by the rate of disappearance of the one from her plate, it was obvious that she was hungry. Nazar felt somehow sad about it. How many times they feasted on here, and only now it occurred to him that not everyone lived as well as they did.

 

"You know, Nazar," Petrovich raised a filled glass, “I wanted to have a drink for my student, for Lyokha — Aleksey, what is his patronymic... Aleksey Ivanovich Krylov.You see, we went to the competitions today. He jumped on my Tokha and would have leaped ... but only Tocha ... Badminton pulled his leg at the last obstacle. And Alyosha has withdrawn from the competition... But the other would not feel sorry for the horse and would have won ... and Lyokha ... he took sorry... But I do know that he will win when he has a horse, not these hired nags, but a good, real, athletic one. He will definitely win..."

 

The mobsters were all noisy at once, impressed with such a story. Some began to congratulate Petrovich that he had raised this not only an athlete but a  lad, while others began to demand Lyokha to drink with him.

 

"One cannot drink with him ... he is still small ... sixteen only to him," drunken Petrovich said stammering.

 

"So, at least can we congratulate such an athlete?" Several guys asked at once.

 

"Why, here he is ... Lyokh, you at least lift your head."

 

Alexey reluctantly raised his head. More than anything, he did not like attention to himself. Now he felt his ears and cheeks were burning, and even his appetite immediately disappeared, although he had eaten that day only late at night at his grandmother's house.

 

Lyosha looked around uptight and stumbled upon Nazar's sight. Today it was the second time when their eyes met. Then the first time when he raised his head, standing down beside Nazar's horse, he saw eyes looking at him, in which yellow sparks flashed, and then something strange made him blush and drop his eyes. Well, then Nazar quickly left, and he, going to the stable and shoveling manure in the stall, tried not to think about what he had felt ... although he could not understand it. And now he again came across these eyes, and again he saw strange yellow lights in them, and again something inside him hooted as if his heart began to beat stronger...

 

Lyosha quickly looked away and nervously squeezed the fork in his hand.

 

"Well, you really embarrassed the guy. He didn’t get used to fame, and he doesn’t need it." Petrovich, in his own way, regarded Alexey’s burning cheeks."You’d better give him food."

 

The guys again all shouted all at once, but gradually conversations from Alexey’s success in equestrian sports turned to the general themes of the stable, and then to the problem of already drunk vodka.

 

"Makha, bring vodka."  Petrovich waved his hand towards Masha, who all this time languidly looked at Sanya and made strange grimaces for him, probably in her understanding, which should attract his attention to her.

 

"I’ll bring it, I have already eaten all.." Alexey  said said, getting up and quickly leaving the storeroom. After this gaze of Nazar, he felt as on pins and needles and was only looking for an excuse to get out of here.

 

Lyosha quickly went up to the refrigerator, an old ZIL, given away by someone for their stable, lonely standing in the aisle and eternally bristling with parts of equestrian ammunition and flyblown all over its once white door with an almost broken huge handle. Opening it, he began to pick off the freezer, which again had frozen because of the large amount of ice on its sides. Naturally, no one's hands had ever reached to defrost this refrigerator, and therefore it was necessary to open this freezer in it literally with a fight every time. Well, a broken hoof hook lay on the fridge, which usually was used to scrape dirt, sand, and earth from the hooves of a horse. Alexey used this hook, deftly hobbled the frozen door, and gently pulled it towards himself, fearing that it would crack from such pressure. The door gave way, in the depths of the freezer there lay bottles with labels from which a white eagle looked at him. Lyosha, taking out one of the bottles, admired this eagle, it was so beautifully painted on it.

 

"Do you want to drink?"

 

Hearing these words behind his back, Alexey startled in surprise and quickly turned around. The bottle covered with frost began to slip out of his hands, feeling it, he rushed after it and ran into other hands...

 

Nazar deftly intercepted the falling bottle and froze, looking at him.

 

For the third time today, Lyosha caught his breath from his gaze into those eyes. And now, when they were so close, and another's hand, which lay on top of his, and Alyosha felt its fever or it was because he was still holding a frozen bottle of vodka, and therefore Nazar’s hot hand burned him in a counterbalance hoar frost on glass with a white eagle.

 

"I’ve been looking at the eagle ... it is beautiful ..." Lyosha felt that having said this on the exhalation of air from the lungs, he could not breathe, but simply stood and did not breathe.

 

"It takes you forever to do the simplest of errands... the guys have already waited." Giving his voice a cold, Nazar spoke evil, still feeling his hot hand under his arm ... or this cold flowed with hoarfrost created such a strange contrast ...

 

"The freezer froze ... that's why it took so long ..." Lyosha whispered on the rest of the air in the lungs.

 

Nazar's cold voice finally kept him off a precarious balance, and now he no longer knew what to do. He only tentatively pulled his hand toward himself, seeing the yellow lights light up in those eyes, like a predator's. Yes, just like that, he had seen those eyes in a zoo at a wolf ... but only that was strange, he was not afraid of those eyes now. He just did not know what to do. Finally, his hand was freed from Nazar’s hand, and Alexey, having gained freedom, stepped back half a step, slamming himself into the refrigerator.

 

Nazar saw the guy slamming his back against the refrigerator, shying away from him, and now he stood still, realizing that he was trapped. He stared at him again. Now he did not doubt that this was a guy. The face was still quite boyish and these eyes, even with the dim light of the bulbs in the stable, they still remained as clear as the sky. A face like a face, even a mustache wasn’t cut through, Nazar recalled that the guy is only sixteen. That’s why the skin was so tender and light, and his cheeks were so flushed with a blush, well, just like that of a fair maiden. He grinned at this comparison and looked at his lips, the usual ... Although not, as if they were circled a little brighter around the contour because of this, they looked expressive, while they were not plump, but some neat ... seductive.

 

Nazar quickly looked away at the shoulders and the general view of this Lyosha standing before him. He was a thin, bony teen goner. He was poorly dressed, everything was well-worn, faded, the neck was thin and there were prominent clavicles in the undershirt collar.

 

"Can I go?…"

 

Nazar flinched from his voice and tore his eyes away from the contemplation of these clavicles.

 

"Get out from here."

 

He abruptly turned away from the guy and quickly returned to the storeroom. Alyosha finally sighed, feeling that he had almost lost consciousness from the lack of air in his lungs, and flinched again, hearing the footsteps echoing along the aisle. Turning his head, he saw Yefim, it was Nazar's friend, so he knew him too. They always came together, but today, obviously, Yefim was somewhere got tired and just now came to the storeroom to join their company.

 

Passing past Lyoshka, who was stark in the open refrigerator, Yefim threw at him only one glance, from which Aleksey covered himself with cold sweat and again forgot to breathe. But Yefim simply passed and, entering the storeroom, closed the door behind him, and immediately cheers came from there.

 

These cries and noise brought Lesha back to life. He finally detached from the refrigerator and closed the freezer first, strongly pressing its door into the protruding ice, and then the refrigerator itself. Yefim always scared him with his menacing look, always unshaven with three-day stubble. He was older than Nazar, but for some reason, Nazar was the main one, although he was twenty-five, and Yefim was only in the role of his assistant. Although it didn't matter for Lyosha, in general, he tried to stay out of sight all this time, but that day was clearly not his day.

 

He walked quickly down the aisle to the exit and turned around to the next wave of noise coming from the storeroom. A strange thought flashed through his head that Yefim could see him and Nazar, facing each other. After all, this refrigerator was perfectly visible from the passage of the stable. For some reason, this thought scared Lyosha. Although he could not understand, why? After all, he just took out the vodka, and Nazar took it away and carried it away ... But somehow he felt like a deceiver, with himself. Although again it was strange ... so what if Nazar had been standing and holding his hand. Well, he did not hold it, but it just happened...

 

But Yefim, if he saw it, what would he think about it? Alyosha again tried to drive away from himself these thoughts, which were so strange and incomprehensible to him. He could not understand at all why he was so disgraced because of all this. It seemed they had been just standing, only talking ... But why it was so difficult, as he wanted to assure himself.

 

In order not to exhaust himself completely with these incomprehensible thoughts into which he was plunging, he took a manure wheelbarrow, manure pitchfork and went to the stall of the Bystryi, having decided that cleaning manure in the loose boxes before evening feeding of horses would do him good.

 

***

For the rest of the evening, Nazar was drinking and listening to the conversations of the guys with half an ear. For some reason, his thoughts were far from everything at the table. Even the arrival of his chum Yefim did not return him to reality. And why had he only gone for this vodka? But he did not know ... But when he saw that Lyosha got up from the table and left, he, after waiting a couple of minutes, went out after him. Then everything went somehow wrong ... wrong ... not in a boy's way. Nazar felt that it was nastily in his soul. But why? Did he scare the boy with his appearance? Well, of course, scared, he almost knocked over the little fridge. Although did he really scare ... These eyes, when the boy looked at him, there was no fear, there was misunderstanding and probably the question what it was... Only he himself could not say what it was ... Bad thoughts arose in his head and made him squirm. Well, he had never felt anything of the kind for any girl ... and here the boy... Nazar felt an abomination and self-loathing, from the fact that he had thought about it and realized. But then he remembered how much he had already drunk. Obviously, it was necessary to finish with a drink. He looked angrily at the practically empty bottle of vodka on the table with the label from which the eagle was looking at him. In his ears, it sounded, “I’ve been looking at the eagle ... it is beautiful ...” and these eyes, so clean, childish and attentively alert.

"Enough!" Nazar slammed his fist on the table. The guys at once all fell silent. Yefim, who was watching him closely all night, continued to scan him with his eyes.

Seeing that he had attracted attention and now he needed to do something about it, Nazar pulled Petrovich across the table, grabbing him by his clothes.

"Why do you keep faggots in your stable?"

From such Nazar’s assault, Petrovich even sobered up.

"Which faggots?" he looked at Nazar, frightened, and hung above the table.

"And who is the one with the tail?"

Nazar let go of his hand, and Petrovich, by inertia, returned to his chair. He quickly went over in his mind all the girls who were wearing tails ... and then he remembered what Nazar had said about the faggot that meant it should be a fag...

"No, I don’t have such," answered Petrovich sincerely, looking frightened at Nazar.

"Do you protect him? Maybe you are also one of these? And here we are sitting at the same table! And you also put this gay to us at the table today, but you know what happens in this..."

Nazar, flushed with his own speech, rushed to Petrovich. Well, Yefim intercepted him in time.

"Quiet! Listen, slow down the momentum." Yefim, as usually, spoke in a deaf, hoarse voice, so that goosebumps ran through the skin. "Petrovich, the boy with a tail at your stable. Who is he?"

"o this is Lyokha ... my athlete," Petrovich even cheered up, realizing who Nazar was talking about, and then fear flashed again in his eyes. "Come on, Nazar, have you really thought ... yes, he is not one of these ... I swear to God!”

Petrovich abruptly stood up and, in the ecstasy of faith, mixed with a drunken rage, broke off the shirt collar on his chest, took out a chain with a cross and pressed his lips to the cross.

"You see, Nazar ... the man swore on the cross. You sit down, do not get excited ... let's talk to him and see."

Nazar abruptly pushed away Yefim’s hands and sat back in his chair, gleaming evilly with his eyes.

"And what is he then like a woman with long hair walking around?" intervened in the conversation one of the brothers and overturned already heated glass of vodka into his mouth.

"Well, I don’t know ... I don’t care ... he works well, he is responsible, he does everything, he mucks out the loose boxes, he exercises horses and he has a talent ... he feels the horse ... he jumps well ... if he had a good horse, we would ..."

It was clear that Petrovich was already falling into a drunken state, when his thoughts were far from a rational story, much less a dialogue.

 

"Petrovich! Hear?!" Yefim grabbed the front of Petrovich’s shirt and shook him. "He must not appear like that anymore here. Since he is not a faggot, let him have his hair cut. Did you understand me?!"

"I understand ... I understand..."

Drunkenly hiccupping, said Petrovich, and reached for a glass of vodka, being already tired of this conversation.

Platform Begovaya. Book I. Chapter 1

 

Moscow. Autumn 1993.

The beginning of autumn pleased with the warmth and nice weather, there was a heartbreaking sense in the air that the summer was over, and the warmth ahead would be replaced by cold days and dank winds. Why do we feel autumn? We feel the completion of one and the beginning of another. It hangs in the air and fills us with a strange sadness about the past summer, the warmth, the sun and the forthcoming wilting of nature. When it first pleases us with all the riot of colors from dazzling gold to fiery red, and then it all turns into withered gray-brown leaves under our feet...

***

The horse slowly walked around the circle of the parade ground. His horsewoman uncertainly kept in the saddle, swaying from side to side, and giving anxious looks at the coach. Raisa Petrovna, a plump short woman of about forty, stood in the center of the parade ground and with an indifferent tired face contemplated the change of riders on horseback one after another. Today it has already been the second hour in a row when she was standing there and seemed to be responsible for the training process of those who had come to her to comprehend the basics of riding. The day was sunny and warm; the beginning of autumn pleased with the lack of rain and such clear weather when you wanted to be outside so much.

“That's why the horse rental is on a streak,” she thought wearily to herself, knowing that as soon as it got colder and started pouring rain, the number of people willing to learn to ride would drop sharply.

Under the unsure horsewoman, there was a horse named Vasily, or rather his name was tricky - Vernissage, but this used to be when he was in sports, and when he was written off from there for hire, the name Vasily for his wisdom and calm temper stuck to him. But he was calm only without a rider, but under the rider, he really showed his wisdom with life. Vasily knew exactly how to help down a novice rider to scare him and discourage any desire to climb on a horse again, and then he calmly went to his stall, chewed hay there instead of riding a person for an hour in a circle.

The wise Vasily did such things only with inexperienced horsemen. He didn’t do anything illegal under those who confidently held him, but on the contrary, he was attentive and sensitive to any commands of the rider. Because, thanks to his great life experience, he knew that a proficient rider could punch for bad behavior. Although, of course, Vasily did not feel blows with a whip on his fat, fatted pope, the rider could make him move actively for an hour, and even perform all sorts of elements. And then Vasily knew that three pounds of tension sweat would come off him until the moment when his legal hour of work was over. Therefore, he immediately, as soon as the person approached him and sat in the saddle, estimated the rider and knew exactly what he would do - fulfill all the requirements of the person, if he was experienced in riding, or try to throw him to the ground. And now Basil knew that the rider on him was very weak. This he felt like he was sitting in the saddle, by the way, he was swinging at his every step. He also felt a person’s fear, and this was the surest sign that a man was afraid of him. Basil, on the second round of the parade, understood everything and developed a plan of action for himself.

Reaching the corner of the parade ground, he portrayed fear, he always did it very well. He stopped abruptly, crouched on his hind legs, backed away, enjoying the moment that the little girl on him frantically grabbed his mane, not knowing what to do. And then abruptly turned around and rushed from the corner of the parade ground, as if there were monsters that were still chasing him. At the same time, he did not just run quickly, but very quickly and with his hind legs, he also fought back from pursuing him like monsters. Vasily actively bucked and accelerated his run, hearing the squeak of a girl who had long since lost stirrups from the horror of what was happening, and the cause was hanging in her hands with useless ropes. It was clear that Vasily had already lost his rider on the second kick. The girl just flew to the side and hit hard on the sand.

For credibility, Basil made five laps on the parade-ground at a rather high speed to assure everyone that he was really being pursued by these invisible to anyone monsters. Moreover, his spectacular rescue was supported by three more horses, who decided, just in case, to run after him, who knows what might happen. Their riders fell on the sand in the course of this race, too. Chaos reigned, and only the sonorous voice of Raisa Petrovna stopped this entire orgy.

Vasily immediately stopped and took the appearance of an innocent lamb, who did not understand at all what had happened and why his rider was not on him, but, sobbing, she went to parents running to her. They had been standing behind the fence all this time and watching with horror.

Raisa Petrovna deftly caught one of the horses running past her; the others surrendered themselves to the girls who came running to the aid of the coach from the stable. The horsemen who fell down decided to return to the saddle, except for the girl sitting on Vasily. The coach had already understood everything and decided not to insist, seeing that the little girl was wiping away tears and was shaking from fright. Obviously, her passion for equestrian sports was over.

"Where is Alexey?" Raisa Petrovna asked one of the girls from the stable who helped the fallen rider back into the saddle.

Without replying, she turned around and screamed at the full power of her lungs.

" Lyokha! Go here! Raisa Petrovna is calling you!"

“Hush, you’ll scare off all the horses,” Raisa Petrovna shushed at her and saw Alexey, who quickly crawled under the fence of the parade ground and had already known why the coach called him.

"Take Vasya and work it out so he does not make a fool anymore. In the evening he still has a rental.

Lyosha nodded knowingly. He went to Vasily who was quietly standing in the corner of the parade ground, right in the same corner where those monsters were supposedly hiding, but now, without a rider from above, the monsters were no longer relevant, and therefore Vasily calmly contemplated the autumn nature in this place. He saw Lyosha going to him, and he understood his fate. Although, he was glad that he had been given up for his upbringing to Alexey. It was better than those girls, who smoked, cursed, and could ride fast if the coach did not see. But Lesha never smoked, did not curse and did not raise his voice to him, and never forced him to go beyond the fact that he was not allowed by his health, which was already shaky after sport.

“Vasya, why are you naughty,” Alyosha said quietly, taking him for reins and taking him off the parade ground, “scared the girl, but she could fall and break herself for something. Why did you do this to her? ”

Vasily just sighed and obediently followed Alexey, realizing that the words were right, but knowing that he could do nothing with himself and would do the same with the next person willing to ride him again. And now, with a view of the obedient donkey, he walked after Lyokha, who, taking him off the parade-ground, quickly jumped into the saddle and directed him to the race circle. Vasily knew that now they, going into this circle, would make a good gallop on it, so to speak, make him “let off steam”. And only then the horse would not play pranks under weak riders.

Lesha felt the views the girls sitting on horses, and that tear-stained girl, because in their eyes he was a hero, after he boldly sat down on such an obstinate horse, in their opinion. He was pleased to feel these views on himself. To see how the girls were gazing admiringly at him and then hid their eyes in embarrassment when he looked at them from the saddle of the quiet Basil. Well, he confusedly cast his eyes down by himself. In general, he always looked at the girls timidly, and as soon as they felt his eyes on him, he immediately turned away, embarrassed and not knowing how to proceed further. At sixteen, he suddenly realized that he began to perceive girls somehow differently. Previously, he did not pay attention to them, and what normal guy would keep company with the girl? Another thing was his friend Genka and their company, as his grandmother said - blockheads. It was interesting to them. And he could not even imagine that someday he would like to have a kind of girl’s attention. Although he had never understood what for. But he was pleased when they admired him so much.

Riding along the asphalt to the race circle and listening to the clatter of the horse's hoofs under him, he distracted himself from the thoughts about the girls and the strange feeling inside himself that arose from these thoughts and turned his attention to Vasily.

"Vasya, maybe something hurts you?" Lesha gently put his hand on his neck. “Tell me, if that is so ... then I will not drive, I will talk to Raisa ... she will put you to rest for a couple of days, you will be relieved of your work.”

Vasily again sighed, realizing that he had nothing to answer, but when he saw the flat space of the racing circle ahead, he wanted to feel the freedom of flight and began nervously dancing on his feet. By this, he gave a hint to his rider that he didn’t hurt anything at all, he just really wanted to run forward, inhaling this fresh autumn air into his lungs.

“Oh, Vasily,” Lyosha felt a horse’s impatience under him, “well, you asked for it yourself ...”

Alexey got up on the stirrups, putting emphasis on the knee, and released rein just enough for the horse to feel what was possible ... and  Vasily, realizing this, pulled from the spot. They flew, and only the sand flew out from under the hooves, and the sun blinded eyes with its glare. And there was the air of intoxicating freedom. They breathed it together, the rider and the horse, and they were happy, flying above the ground, gaining wings...

Then, already walking, Vasily tried to recover his breath after such a jump and listened to what Lyosha said to him. He knew that Alyosha loved to talk with him, and he always listened attentively to him, he was interested in everything that he told. Basil wiggled his ears and occasionally snorted as if saying Lyokha to continue as he was listening to him.

"You know, Vasya, I'm going to the competition tomorrow. I will jump on Tokha. At first, there will be a meter route and then meter twenty. Petrovich gave the go-ahead, and I will go two routes, the main thing is not to screw it up." Alexey thoughtfully stroked his horse's neck.

Vasily sighed, understanding his anxiety. He himself used to jump and not only the meter, but he also jumped a hundred and sixty, that time he was trouble free, and those who sat on him wanted to win, and he brought them medals, and then his legs began to swell and ache ... And then the doctors came to the conclusion that an excessive load on the joints led to irreversible consequences and he was written off for hire. Well, it was good that not for the sausage... he knew the fate of those who couldn’t be in the sport anymore ... He was lucky, and now he is riding beginners on his back and sometimes plays tricks, remembering his past and that he used to be a champion, and they all admired, but now he is just a hired nag, as Petrovich said about him. Probably, only Lyokha with his bright soul treated him so kindly. That's why he loved him, and he never allowed himself to bump under him or to behave badly with him. After all, he knew that Lyoshka came to the stable despite the fact that he needed to run home to do homework, the boy would deal with him. He would unsaddle him, take him to the sink, wash away the dirt from him, then rub his sore feet with various odorous ointments and bandage on soft padded jackets with bandages. And only then he would put him in the stall and would also check if there was hay there, and the boy would treat him with carrots by pulling it out of the fodder.

***

After such an active day, spent first at school, and then at the stable, Lyoshka was dozing on the suburban electric train, which was travelling towards his home station Workers' Settlement. From Begovaya to his house, he had to travel for about twenty minutes. He usually spent this time doing homework, but now he was sleepy. There were few people in the train, only those unfortunate poor fellows who were late, and now, sleepy, were sitting on shabby benches, between which there were litter and bottles. The next noisy company went through their carriage, looking for people to find fault in order to get cigarettes or just have fun with the squabbles, feeling their strength in the pack, since there were eight of them.

Passing the sleeping Alexey, they glanced at him but nevertheless passed by. They often saw this strange boy, always sitting with textbooks, and had already got used to him. And the sight of this puny poorly dressed boy suggested that he had nothing to take away, except for a pair of notebooks, in which he always wrote something, but now he was asleep, and the copybook, so touching and defenselessly opened, lay on his lap.

Aleksey almost overslept his station and at the last moment jumped onto the platform, at that time it was deserted, and only the breeze chased the garbage, which fell out of the overturned trash bin, across the asphalt. His house was near the railway station.

On the street, at this time there were no passersby. In their troubled area, citizens tried to get into their homes earlier and not to leave the house late, in order to avoid various unpleasant situations. But Lesha was thinking about tomorrow's competitions, and therefore did not see anything. He walked along a dark, dimly lit street, thinking of Tokha and the route of the competition, which he would take, overcoming obstacles. And the way he would turn his horse on the next barrier and, having let him down the center, squeeze him with twisters, giving him a hint that it was time to jump ... and Tokha, feeling Alyosha’s legs clutching his sides, would take off the ground and jump over the obstacle...

Alyosha opened the creaky door of his porch, a sharp smell of cat urine and the stuffiness of the room immediately hit his nose. The house was old, a typical four-story building, and it smelled of oldness and cats, but it was the smell of his house, which he remembered from childhood and which became native. So, the house, in which he lived, smelled. Passing almost by touch to his third floor, as the light bulb on all floors was only one, and even that was dim, and the rest were always smashed or the drinking neighbors from the second floor unscrewed them and sold, thus adding to their budget. Finally, when he reached his door, he groped the apartment key in his jacket pocket and was delighted that he had got into the lock on the first try, despite the fact that nothing was visible. Quietly, he turned the key and tried to open the door just as quietly, but it treacherously creaked...

He came home already in the first hour of the night. Grandmother, as always, did not sleep, waiting for his return.

"Lyosha, well, why are you so late?" Varvara Petrovna, sternly glancing at him, went to the kitchen to warm up his borsch and the second course — all these are your horses ... because of them, you are hanging around at this stable.

"Grandma, do not swear. I'm going to the competition tomorrow! Tokha  ... Badminton was given to me. Imagine, I'll jump on it! " Alyosha hastily washed his hands, inhaling the smell of heated borscht with his nostrils. For the whole day, he only ate a scanty school breakfast at school, and at the stable, thick Mashka shared cooked pasta with him, and since he arrived late, the pasta was left literally at the bottom of the pan.

"Be careful with these horses... I worry about you..."

"Don't worry." Lyosha hugged his grandmother, knowing that even though she said all in a stern voice, she was really worried about him. Indeed, after his mother left abroad with her Finn, they were left alone. Alone ...

"Eat slowly and chew!" Varvara Petrovna grumbled, seeing how her grandson attacked to the food. " And when will you have your long disheveled locks of hair cut?"

Varvara Petrovna watched Leshka greedily swallowing hot borsch and putting away hindering straight light-blond hair strands from his face, which he constantly put behind his ears. And now, after he took off his hat, they lay in chaos on his head. After three months of summer, he hadn’t cut them.

"Granny, but I drag them into the tail with a rubber band and hide it under my cap, whom they disturb?"

“It's at your stable, you may go like that, but what about school? Do the teachers say nothing?"

"They say ... " Alexei remembered another reprimand from the class teacher for his, as she put it, indecent look. "It’s more convenient for me; I don’t want to cut it, otherwise every time I have to spend money on a hairdresser..."

Swallowing another spoonful of borscht and feeling it burning, but such an unearthly taste, Lyosha answered, again removing a strand of hair that fell out from behind the ear.

"Yes, your mother completely forgot about us with her Finn ... oh Lizka, dissolute ... she left such a son ... and I only have a pension and a part-time job ... and that is not very moneyed. If only she had sent the money..."

"Grandma, do not swear at her. She said that her husband was strict, he counted every penny. That's why she can't help us." Lyosha knew that there, in a far abroad, his mother lived poorly, and he understood why she could not help them with money ... and it was not necessary. Did not they have enough? So what if all his clothes were small for him long ago, since over the past year he had grown, and he didn’t want to cut his hair, not because of some fashion trends, but simply because it cost money. Yes, and it was more convenient for him to pull them off with a rubber band and put a cap on top, pushing this tail into the cap slot at the back. But on the run the cap, thanks to it, kept like a glove and did not fly from him.

"After all, tomorrow at the competitions you need to look like an athlete,"  Varvara Petrovna set a plate with a chop and potatoes in front of him."You don’t even have a form ..."

"Don't worry about it. Nastya gives me white breeches for starts, Sonya - a jacket, though it is too big, but it isn't anything, I’ve asked Masha for the boots, and the helmet is communal in the stable. Well, I have my own white shirt under a jacket ... a school one...." Alexey timidly glanced at his grandmother, realizing that he had let out that he planned not to put his only white dress shirt on to his school. But his grandmother enthusiastically picked something up in an empty refrigerator, and, probably, did not focus on this. Lyosha quickly continued. "So, I will look like a real athlete ... it's a pity that you will not be able to see how I will jump..."

"I have work tomorrow ... I'm going to Isabella, I need to clean her apartment ... Here people buy an apartment of five rooms, but to clean by themselves they are too lazy. Now she is cool, she calls herself Isabella, and before she was a Zinka from a greengrocer's until she met her thug, this enforcer ... Oh, she began to live wrong ... they have bad money now ... oh bad." Grandmother finally closed the refrigerator which grunted loudly and shook, showing that his age was nearing the end, but he would still hold out for, but  how long... "I will pray for you ... for your bright soul." Varvara Petrovna brushed away a tear and kissed Lyoshka on the top of his head.

He frowned, but continued to eat, realizing how hard everything was in their lives ... This year was very hard for them. Alyosha understood everything, but he could not leave the horses, they were his life, the salt of life. Otherwise, what for them to live... he did not know. And now he knew that he had to study at school that year in order to finish it, and then ... although he did not know what to do next. No, he did. He knew that he had to go to the army, he knew that it was his duty, and he would go there. Only he did not want to be sent to a flashpoint. One of the boys from his yard was sent to serve in Abkhazia, and after three months he was buried ... Lyosha also went to the funeral, and he was surprised to see a strange coffin that was closed. He did not know why ... When he had been at the other funeral of their neighbor drunk Fyodor, he had been lying in a coffin, and everyone had looked at him, and Lyosha had looked, although he had been scared. And now in front of him there was a tightly closed coffin.

Then, for the first time, he probably felt that life ... was not eternal, and it could finish like that ... He immediately thought of his grandmother, how she would be alone without him because the mother would not return from abroad. Because of these thoughts he became even sadder. But still he wanted to get into the army, like all the guys from their yard. Although he understood that he would have to forget about horses because of this. Well, the army lasted only two years, and then he would return from there and start working, and would again come to the stable. Only he would have money that he would earn, and then he would be able to buy a horse and ride it in competitions and even abroad to prove to the whole world that we were strong in equestrian sports and we could crush them, foreigners, by taking medals for ourselves...

"Alyoshenka, wake up. My darling, you fell asleep at the table..."

Lyosha realized that having gone into his thoughts and dreams about the gold of the Olympiad, he fell asleep at the table. He raised his head and looked at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall, which methodically counted the time, quietly clicking inside by its old mechanism to the passing minutes.

There were four hours left to sleep, no more, at five he had already to be on the platform, so as not to miss the train. The horse-drawn carriage for the horses would arrive at six-thirty, and before that time it was necessary to have time to collect things, clean the horses, wind their legs with thick bandages, preparing them for transportation.

Contemplating everything what he had to do, Alexey reached the bed and, quickly undressed, crawled under the covers. The room was cool, the batteries had not turned on yet. Feeling the coldness of the sheets, Alyosha curled up and tucked the blanket closer under himself. He fell into a dream instantly, without even hearing how Varvara Petrovna came into his room to check his grandson. She carefully covered him with a second blanket and, crossing him, quietly left the room.

Lyosha was sleeping and saw in a dream how he was performing on a beautiful big black horse, and it was obviously abroad, there were flags around, stands and spectators who were applauding him. As he was beautifully overcoming the barrier behind the barrier, without knocking down any obstacles on his horse.

Lyoshka was smiling in his sleep, clenching the fists, as if he was holding a rein in them for driving the horse...

***

It was raining in the morning. Alexey always knew that he was unlucky ... even in such a trifle like that. He waited so much for these starts, and it was on this day that the sky was dragged by grey autumn clouds, and it began to drizzle first, and then the slow rain turned into the pouring rain. So far, the starts were not canceled, but the ground on the competitive field had already been loosened. The grass got wet and turned into a slippery mess in many places because of the hoofs of horses. Lyosha saw this, by the way, other horsemen, leaping on their horses, slip on it and dangerously “lie down” in a turn, making sharp turns, going to the next obstacle.

"Lyokha, listen to me carefully" Petrovich turned his gaze from the current jumping horseman to Alexei. "Do not jeopardy! Do you understand? Yes, you can see yourself ... what is there, and you have a shod horse, if only we’ve got spikes, then there would be no problems ... but just where these horseshoes with spikes can we get now... So remember, if you sharply twist your horse, you will lie down with him! I don’t feel a bit sorry for you.... feel sorry for the horse. Understood me?!"

Lyosha swallowed nervously and nodded his head. He understood that the formidable Petrovich was actually more worried about him, but he just didn’t show his mind.

"Do not worry, I will not flaunt."

"What do you mean you won’t?! You are in the rerun of the participants... it’s possible to say that you got victory in your bag... now every second counts ... But still be careful..."

Petrovich turned away from Alexey again, realizing that with these words he betrayed himself, how glad he was that his pupil, his Lyokha, this strange teenager whom he hadn’t paid attention to before, turned out to be so talented. And now, winning the route meter and jumping twenty meters, he, his Lyoshka, would leap in a repeat performance. This meant that the winner would be determined among five riders who got into the rerun, and it was necessary to jump the shortened route in the shortest time and not to knock down a single barrier. Well, how to do it, when the rest of the horses were forged on thorns, but his had ordinary horseshoes, and this rain wasn’t going to calm down...

Petrovich looked again at the boy standing in front of him.

"Go, it’s time... be careful there ..."

"Ok…"

Lyoshka waved and ran to the horse, which was walked by fat Makha while he was talking to the trainer.

It was necessary to saddle Tokha anew. The only white numnah was under the saddle of another horse. Alexey quickly, squishing through the mud and puddles, reached the Fast, low gray Arabian steed that had already jumped off his route, and took the numnah, which was already removed from the Fast and hung inside the horse-carrier to dry out a bit. Although it was useless, it was wet and dank on the street, and the numnah soaked with horse sweat, of course, could not dry so quickly. Lyosha grabbed it and ran to his horse. Everything had to be done quickly, in five minutes he should have gone to the battlefield.

"Do not rush, you have time," calmly said thick Masha, looking at Alexey, who was out of breath, and began to help him to saddle Badminton anew.

The horse, feeling the excitement of the competition, was not standing still. He was spinning, thus showing that he was ready for battle. It only hindered, but Lyosha did not swear at him. He just tried quickly to remove the saddle from the back of the horse and put on his back a non-white numnah, put the saddle on it again and pull it with girths, otherwise, it could fall into a puddle because of another Tokha's dancing.

"Hold still!" Makha angrily shouted at the horse and added a couple of witty remarks, which she had a great many in her vocabulary, hitting naive Lyoshka with the wealth of the Russian language. "I heard this from my guy," seeing the surprise on Alexey’s face, Masha continued,  "only I have broken up with him ... well, after he started calling me in such a way. In short, love has passed. And now I am free again."

Mashka winked at Alexey with one eye, which was covered with mascara running from the rain, and smiled with her crooked teeth. In general, it was fat Makha’s signature style to flirt with everyone, although she didn’t perceive Lyoshka as a male at all for his young age and naivety in everything. But it did not prevent her from constantly teasing him with harmless jokes and vulgar hints.

Lyosha smiled in response. Finally, he tightened his girths and famously jumped into the saddle. Masha immediately released the rein, and Tokha, feeling freedom, rose the front legs up, thereby showing how he wanted to rush into battle.

***

The battlefield, to which Aleksey rode on Badminton, now was a wet grass with deep puddles of water. There were barriers on it, through which he had to jump, without knocking down any, and in a minimum time, less than the other riders, and then he would win.

Lyosha touched the side of the horse, who was already dancing beneath him, feeling the excitement. Although Badminton was also retired from the sport, he was still full of strength and energy, despite his injury, which also made itself felt. His leg, damaged in one of the competitions, was often ill, and therefore the horse was limping. Then he was removed from work, treated and walked. But Badminton did not like it, he loved to jump, and now, seeing the battlefield in front of him with the obstacles placed on it, he nervously pulled his nose with his nostrils and danced under the rider. And if it were not the reins, restraining intense energy, in the hands of Lyosha, he would have already rushed forward. And so he nervously chewed a piece of iron in his mouth, from which white foam was already formed around his mouth, and energetically shifted from one foot to another in anticipation of when his rider would give full scope to the excitement.

The sound of the bell sounded, and Badminton felt the rider's legs squeeze his sides, and the rein restraining his rush forward ... weakened. And he pulled. He only felt how his hand turned his head for Lyosha's reins, directing him to the next barrier, and he rushed at it, and then he felt the pressure of the spurs in his sides, soared upwards, lifting off the ground. That was freedom that he loved. The rider did not brake him, only held him in turns, and then again gave him free rein, and Badminton appreciated it in bold Lyoshka. He loved such riders who were not afraid, didn’t cling to the rein, and didn’t shake with fear. He felt that the one, who controlled him, just like him, was fascinated by the speed and flight over this world...

After another landing, Badminton's foot slipped a little over the wet grass and this reversed his old injury. Already in the next step, he began to fall on his right foreleg. Alexey instantly felt it. He realized that it was painful for the horse ... it was painful to step on the earlier injured leg...

Alexey pulled the reins and stopped Badminton, raising his right hand up...

This meant that the rider was removed from the competition by himself, of his own free will. Then Lyosha quickly jumped off his horse and threw the rein over his neck, released his girths with his free hand so that he could breathe after such tension and, taking the occasion in his hand, led him to the exit from the battlefield. Badminton was walking next to him breathing heavily after such a race and limping heavily on this very painful leg.

Alexey tried not to look into Petrovich’s eyes. He understood that he himself had made this decision to withdraw from the competition, when the last barrier was in front of him and he could have jumped, and then he would have won. He won for sure, because he didn’t knock down a single barrier for the entire rerun, and he surpassed all four riders on time who had started before him. Just the last hurdle, and he would have won these competitions. He would be the first and would receive a medal, a diploma and a cup, and his coach – Petrovich would get a diploma, as the best coach ... but only for all this you had to jump on a horse whose leg hurt...

Alyosha could not do it.

Petrovich himself found him. He saw the guy hiding his eyes from him, squatting at his feet and rubbing mud with a damp sponge from his feet in order to rub Badminton's legs and wrap them in bandages.

"Do not worry, Lyokha." Petrovich began to touch the badminton's injured leg carefully. "You are still the fifth ... Although you could be the first..."

Alexey looked up and faced Petrovich’s gaze, who continued to speak.

"But only if you continued to jump on a lame horse ... I would stop respecting you ..." Lyosha’s eyes began to turn from startled-frightened to surprised and questioning from these words, “and so, high five,” the trainer extended his hand to Alexey . "You're doing fine. You know, all this is not important ... medals, awards.... The main thing is to remain a human."

Petrovich squeezed Lyosha's hand tightly, shaking it, and then again began to palpate the foot of his horse, which had already begun to swell and it was felt that it was getting hot.

"Rub his leg with spirit," Petrovich handed Alexey a little bottle of vodka, which he took out from behind his bosom. There, on the bottom splashed the remnants of a clear liquid. "And as we arrive at the stable, water the leg for about twenty minutes with a hose. Then we’ll see what to do. I'll go to the veterinarians, maybe they have some of the drugs..."

Petrovich, having given the remnants of vodka to Lyosha, walked quickly to the stands, to look at the awarding of the winners of these competitions.