Forgive

Hi all. I rarely lay out my stories here, but for some reason I want to share. This time a story about the living, about love and forgiveness. This is the story of the life of one person, an unlucky who has made many mistakes. The main character and the “hero”-the language does not turn, the language is full of such people around.And yes, there are a lot of letters, but the fiction is fictional, so not everyone will read it to the end, but if you read and find what to say after, I will be very grateful. Some of my previous works:
Stopgame.Ru/Blogs/Topic/34245
Stopgame.Ru/Blogs/Topic/33343
Stopgame.Ru/Blogs/Topic/44609

This is my road. Road long life. I go slowly, nowhere to rush. I was lucky to live long enough so that now you could calmly gather my thoughts and turn out for the last time that it went irrevocably.

I don’t remember the beginning of my path. Yes, and no one remembers. Someone made sure that the first years of our life irrevocably left memory. They say that the mind gives. Well, by the time immediately after birth, this saying is fully derived.

I leave the fog of infant unconsciousness and my childhood finally begins to manifest itself around me. On the side of my first memory: mom stands by the stove, and I, still still crumb, pull her by the skirt. Droot flowing from the warm smell of homemade baking. Today is my birthday and mom is preparing for me a pie. It is called “Bear in the North” because mother draws a white bear’s sugar on it and signs it with my name: “Ruslan”. And instead of a black nose – a dark cherry. I do not remember the taste of the pie, but from the delicate home smell and anticipation of the holiday, the lips involuntarily stretch in a smile. Today is mine, only my day and no one else.

Toys are scattered along my road. The old red teddy bear in paper pants, a reliable steel dump truck, which withstood more than one cruel test. Box with a wooden house assembled. Half of the roof disappeared somewhere, the porch and a pair of some important details the instruction also disappeared, but once I sat down again and tried to collect it. I didn’t succeed. Another toy looks at me sadly from the side of the road – a huge plush white bear tall from a five -year -old child. He does not have one eye, the white wool faded and turned away from the wool, the soft claws on the paws were cut off with scissors, and the foam rubber yellows under the right paw. Now, standing on the road and looking at him, I want to apologize to him. Once I loved him so much, but now I don’t remember what happened to him, and even the road cannot show me this.

The path is illuminated by the warm summer sun. The road crosses the birch grove. Among the beautiful, slender trees I see my mother. She teaches me to collect and is Sergibus: how to disrupt it so as not to eat a bitter root and how to cut the leaves so that only a juicy stem remains. His taste is island, very bright. Green taste.

The road leads me forward, and the summer remains somewhere behind, he is replacing him to a birch grove. Winter comes. Snow shines brightly in the sun and freezes hands in mittens tied to the ends of the gum extended through both sleeves. The cold pinchs the nose and cheeks, climbs under a warm winter jacket and a green sweater with a funny dog ​​painted in front. But not a bit is cold to me, I am too passionate about my sled to be distracted by such nonsense as frost. I drag them to the top of the slides and with the pleased “UA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A. “I rush down. The hat slides down, the scarf is knocked out from under the collar, the snow is stuffed into children’s boots, but I go to the hill again and again and stubbornly drag sledges behind me. Five minutes of fuss and again “ua-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a. “, And only the wind whistles in his ears.

But the grove and winter go into the distance. The sky darkens a little, the sun shines dull, like an electric light bulb. And in this light to the right of me, I see a bath full of foam. I am still sitting in it still a small self, and near her – my father. He rubs me with a tough washcloth and says out of place:

- Bears rode on a bicycle. And behind them the cat is backward. And behind him are mosquitoes in a balloon ..

He smiles, and therefore I smile too, looking at him. He has dark curly hair and mustache. Then it seemed to me that there was no one above and stronger in the whole world.

But after a couple of steps, the sky suddenly breaks with a bright lightning, behind which the thunder comes. And in it I hear voices. Illegible, slurred … Mother cries with a wild wind, the screams of father seem to break the walls. Small, with some kind of toy under my arm, I stand at the door of a loosely closed door and I hear in this terrible battle of the elements the words incomprehensible so far: “Work”, “Money”, “Debts”, “Help” … And the paternal one, like a blow, falls from the sky:

I open the door and see how dad hugs mom. Only hugs somehow wrong. His hands lie on her neck, both of them have white and terrible … Father – from anger. Mom – from fear. In the next outbreak of lightning, they finally see me. Dad lets out mom and leaves. His gaze runs from his mother to me, then he looks at his hands and again at his mother. She cries softly, silently takes my hand and leads to sleep. Mom is sitting over my bed until morning and is silent. Her warm hands stroke my hair.

Twilight occurs on the road, specific episodes dissolve in darkness, I can see only some separate scenes. Drunk father sleeps on the floor. Mother nervously opens a crumpled pack of cigarettes while leading me home from kindergarten. Again a quarrel, the meaning of which I did not understand then and I don’t understand now. A round dance of the drunk faces around and the tired voice of the pope: “I will only drink one hundred and fifty grams and go, okay?”. An unfamiliar man coming to his mother when his father is not at home. Then a sunny day and an amusement park, “Bear in the north”, gifts … Mom and dad are smiling at each other, and it seems to me that now, after this day, everything will be like before. But the whole step along the road – and again twilight, the smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke and screams behind the wall in the night.

My school is on the sidelines. Through the window of the first floor, I see myself – a ten -year -old guy, a third -grader sitting at the last desk alone. The teacher, Praskovya Fedorovna, writes the board in numbers – there is a lesson in mathematics. Instead of writing and solving problems, I, putting my head in my arms, think about how to get home and not meet with Dimon. Dimon is a healthy guy, a high school student who constantly lifts those who are weaker than him. He and two more friends lived in a neighboring house, often a walking school, so I regularly caught their eyes, getting pokes, kicks and falling into mud.

And then a frightened little boy runs ahead of the road ahead-I myself, and behind me-three guys who cause some almost superstitious horror of the weak against the strong. They seem to me by tigers and lions, fanged monsters that will tear me apart if they catch up with. Lights burn with fire, I hardly feel my legs, they themselves carry me. Jump over the ditch, climb over the fence, loop along the streets. Faster, faster, faster! Behind the screams, threats and heavy clatter of lion paws. But today I am lucky – I run home before the animals overtake me. Today – saved. But the animals do not forgive and tomorrow they will recoup in two days.

However, we differ in this way from animals that we have a choice: start fighting and changing something or so until the end of life and run from predators.
The next day I did not run away. It was unbearably scary, to trembling in his hands, to nausea. But when I saw Dimon and his friends, punishing me at the entrance, I did not turn around, but went right on them. It seemed to me that I looked very menacing, but now, from the road, I see a skinny short boy who pulled his head into the shoulders and hunched over.
Dimon stands towards me, grinning with a smile so hated by me. His friends laugh, looking at me. Resentment and anger cloud my gaze, I tightly hold my teeth and fists. And when Dimon takes a step towards me, I rush forward and beat him in the cheekbone. More in surprise than in pain, he retreats, grabbing his face, and I already wave up again, but then a heavy fist of one of his friends is faced with my nose. The whole face pierces terrible pain. The next blow, in the stomach, knocks me down. And then I just have to cover my head with my hands. Fortunately, the backpack on the back protects the back and the kidneys on which they try to pound me with their feet. I turn off the kalachik and wait for it to end. Swearing and curses are heard over me, and then everything ends. They leave, and Dimon rubs his cheekbone for the last time, looking back at me.

At home I drop a backpack, jacket and shirt and weaves to the mirror. Blood flows from the nose, lips are broken, yellowness fingal is poured on the cheekbone, thin sides are also in dark spots. And yet I smile, looking at my reflection: I could! Give a rebuff. Not afraid. And then be what will happen.

A sense of power intoxicates, circles his head. For the first time in my life, I feel not a little frightened boy, but a man. The ability to give a fist in the face of a person that you do not like – this is what the world is being built on, it seems to me then. The whole universe is spinning only around the strong.

That evening, my father, as always a little drunk, patted me on the head:

To which the mother said that she did not need another “man” in the house and she didn’t raise me for that so that they would be stabbed in a gateway at night.

The road, looping and dividing by thousands of fork, takes me to the sea coast. The very where I first met Anya.

She appears suddenly, as if from nowhere. A second ago, I sat alone on the pedestal of the monument to some old poet, listening to the live hiss of the sea behind her back, and suddenly a girl arises next to me. She seems a little younger than me, although I myself am only thirteen years old. It has a closed blue swimsuit, long black wet hair sticks to her body, like algae, and mischievous childish plays in large brown eyes.
As if nothing had happened, she sits next to me and looks, as if studying an unknown animal. I have no idea how to behave, so I just stare silently in the clouds.

- And how many of them? – Suddenly she asks seriously.

- Whom? – I squeeze out with effort after a minute thought. Under the gaze of her brown eye, I want to fall underground from incomprehensible embarrassment.

- Well, how whom? -In her voice not a hint of joke, but funny sparkles still play in her eyes. – Crow. You think them?

I just do not be with an answer and look with surprise in her eyes, but then I catch myself on this and look away again on the clouds. And she suddenly laughs cheerfully and from the heart, as if I had just told a great joke.

- Come, bathe? – She confidently stands in front of me, and I look against her against her will. She smiles brazenly, seeing this from which I will think and really go to sea, but only to drown.

-I … but I don’t want something.

-Come on, let’s go,-she smiles and at some second from this pure smile I want to agree, stops only that I swim badly.

-No, thank you … Today’s frowning, I don’t want to get cold.

She grunts and goes to the sea, and I sit like a fool and curse myself silently on what the light is worth.
In the evening I come home later than usual, preferring to stagger along the streets and along the embankment. I tell myself that there is simply nothing to do in the cottage, but secretly hope to meet her again.

I have no idea.

I go to the cottage at ten in the evening. This is the house of grandparents, father’s parents. I was sent here for a couple of weeks almost every summer. The house is large, two -story, so after the stuffy Koroshki near Moscow, I have almost agarophobia each time with habit. Therefore, when I return there, I prefer to sit in the room, short time after a stupid watching TV.

I can’t sleep that night, although I never had a problem for me.

In the morning she comes to me herself. When I leave the house after breakfast to take a walk to the sea and listen to the noise of the surf, it passes by me. It has a blue dress, long wavy black hair flows over the shoulders and a thin pale neck, dropping below the shoulder blades. Boar on the bare foot. She sings something quietly. When she notices me, her forehead crosses the wrinkle of thoughtfulness, but her face immediately clarifies and illuminates with a smile.

- We take a walk? – She just asks.

We walk until the sunset. Laugh, eat grapes. She even manages to drag me into the sea. She says she loves the valley and I buy her a bouquet.

Even the road cannot fully show that day, only a series of bright images remained from it, a nicer-east-haired feeling in the chest, the taste of its children’s, inexperienced lips, the scarlet light of the setting sun on pale skin. What really happened, and what imagined for me? I don’t know, but I don’t care.

We agreed to meet the next day.

But it never comes, although I am impatiently lurking around the house for almost the whole day. And where she lives, I never had time to find out.

The next time we will see each other only a few years later.

The road leads me away from our first meeting.

A few more years of life. Parents are divorced, the father leaves for another city. We are not in the best relationship with him. We quarrel before his departure: he is trying to explain something to me, somehow apologize for what happened, and I have nothing but anger and contempt and contempt. So unable to explain anything to me, he gets into the car and leaves. I don’t see him off.

At school, my estimates are worse www.casinoways.org and worse. I’m starting to smoke, I often come home drunk. Mother looks with contempt, but I can’t do anything with myself. Yes, I’m not trying, because the strength is circling my head. I contact the “wrong” guys and after not so long I have been driving weaknesses myself, as I once kicked me. A sense of own capabilities intoxicates. No restrictions, even Dimon was taken into the army. It seems that there is everything: friends, girl, native courtyards. But why then, looking from the road, I see not all this, but only foggy silhouettes? Why Sveta, the first, with which I ineptly swarmed in the dark under the blanket, crumbles to dust in my arms? Why Kolka and Andryukha, he is a drone, my named “brothers”, settled with heavy smoke, leaving behind only a dull void? Why are the courtyards where we are kings are now seen dark and empty?

I’m sitting in a drunken fucker in the dark, and shadows scurry around me. Yes, and I myself – shadow.
The road enters the tunnel. Only this is not just a tunnel, but an underground passage. The nostrils annoy the smell of urine, vomiting, cigarettes, unwashed bodies of homeless people who live here. I am drunk, the walls around are swinging and threatening to fall, crush, shift … But I’m not afraid, friends with me. We support each other and laugh strainedly over drunk jokes, but only it seems to us all that we need to drink more. But no one has money, but everything that was stolen from the parents already spent. And then Kolka notices that in the transition to a meeting someone is going. As if jokingly he takes out a butterfly knife and shouts something to the stranger. He does not seem to notice this, only steps a little to the side to get around us. But Kolkin supports the drone as a joke and blocks the passerby road. He is trying to get around again, but I join the stupid game, and I, blocking his path and by chance getting a knife. We surround him like jackals, press it against the wall … And only here I notice that this is a surprisingly healthy man. But before this thought is somehow formed in my drunken brain, a passerby beats the drone with a fist in the face. Something crunches and Andryukha with a squeal clutching the face. Following him Kolka lets a blow under his breath and falls to his knees, breathing heavily and grabbing the air with his mouth. I, not remembering myself from anger and a drunken veil, replacing me with my mind, I rush forward. A passerby lunge, aiming at my temple with my fist, but I somehow miraculously shorten off him and beat in response to my stomach … The stranger widens my eyes and mouth. He no longer tries to beat me, just grab to hold on his feet. I am hesitated and look down at my hand by his stomach. A knife is clamped in it and thick and black are dripping from it. The stranger’s shirt is getting dark, he falls on the cold concrete floor of the transition. Presses hands to the stomach. Blood begins to flow between his fingers.

We fled. Runned and dispersed. For two weeks I avoided meetings and was afraid to go outside. I trembled every time a police car drove outside the window or a doorbell rang out. But no one has come for me.

When we will see each other again with Kolka and Dron, we, without saying a word, decide to never remember this story again.

Of course, I do not enter the university. Moreover, I’m not going to. It seems to me that higher education is just a waste of time. So, not without difficulty graduating from school, I begin to work as a handyman with the same. Of course, booze and gatherings in the yards do not become less frequent. Rather, on the contrary, with new acquaintances there were more reasons to drink, bending.

The road shows me an endless whirl of some faces who change each other at a frantic speed. Alien apartments appear and disappear around me, some bars, eates. One after another they appear from darkness and immediately disappears in it forever in her whose names I do not remember.

Along the way, I move to Moscow – from my grandparents, a odnushka remained there on my mother’s line, which my mother is already giving me, if only to remove the “studied bloodsucker” from the shoulders, as she called me. I was not offended by her and did not feel anything to her at all. After a divorce from her father, she became completely not her own, so I was fenced off from her with some kind of wall without emotions and feelings.

It was a difficult, troubled time. But then it seemed to me that here it is – life. I just didn’t think about what could be somehow otherwise.

For a boy to become a man, he needs a woman. Not in the sense of sex, no. There should just be some kind of landmark, purpose. Some power that will make you straighten your shoulders, think about your place in life and what you really want. Someone, for whom you are ready to quit childishness and knock out nonsense from your head. For me, Anya became such a woman.
The second time the road brings us up when I am twenty years old. We meet absolutely accidentally, we just see each other in the crowd on Moscow streets. Strange, but I instantly recognized her. She gathered black hair in a long tail, she hid her brown eyes behind glasses. She has a blue dress, similar to the way she walked with me seven years ago.

When I go, she also recognizes me, despite the fact that I look older than my years. Probably, this does not happen, so I also do not believe myself when she looks at me with bottomless eyes, smiles and says:

She has what to tell me. How she graduated with honors from school, how she entered the medical and studied now in the third year. As then, seven years ago, she was unexpectedly put in a hospital with appendicitis the day after our meeting. How did she move to live in Moscow from Novosibirsk.

I am silent more or laugh. It was then that I first think about what I am standing. Why did my life turn out that way, and not otherwise. And could everything go differently.
Before you disperse, I buy her bouquet of lily of the valley. And she as if jokingly promises that she will no longer disappear.

She will fulfill her promise.

Of course, we did not agree immediately. So, as happened during our first meeting, only in children can be. A child you see everything easy and simple, including love. She likes me, I like her whether this is not a reason to walk, holding hands?

But over the past years, not only me has changed, but also Anya. However, unlike me, she only became even better. From a cheerful girl, she turned into a beautiful young girl, still sincerely, pronounced and cheerful, but very smart and feminine.

The time that we spent with her, perhaps the best on my road. Three happy years we live together, just like a husband and wife. Here, a bright and delicate sun shines over my road, and the air smells of lilies with the valley. We live well, but we do not need anything. I throw most “friends”, drink, other girls. For her sake, I’m ready to even go to study, because in spite of everything I don’t understand how she managed to contact me. But she does not ask me about it. She does not ask anything at all. She just loves. So, there is nothing for. Usually and selflessly, as they probably can completely few. Without hesitation.

But if such love brings her happiness and joy, inspires her, then she slowly kills me over time. I gnaw myself when she is not there for a long time, wondering if she will find someone better than me. This strange, wild self -doubt without any reason develops into terrible jealousy. As if some demon whispers all sorts of rubbish in my ear. When she lingers along the way to me, anger begins to bubble in her throat. I remember the men who went to my mother when my father was not nearby and I am scared, to dry throat, I want to get drunk.

And I get drunk. Once, another, third. She suffers. Loves. And I can’t even explain to her why I drink. I can’t explain this to myself. Just in the chest the feeling that the soul burns. And you can’t put out it, only dull pain with alcohol.
Some friends appear from the darkness again. I begin to disappear at night. But she does not scandalize or swear. And from this it seems to me that she doesn’t care that she simply does not care, where I am and what is with me. Therefore, I myself first start scandals. Once I bring her to tears, and each tears settles with a heavy load on my heart. I promise that I will change that this will not happen again. And for some month I am holding myself in my hands, but then a failure and again I lie drunk on the floor of the apartment, I am not able to get up, and she looks at me from the door and is silent. I ask her to say something, do not stand in a pillar. Show power. Hide on me, hit, do at least something! At least something!

And she takes a blanket and covers me. So as not to freeze on the cold floor.

- For what? – I ask before drowning in the depths of her eyes. – For what.

Before the answer, she kisses me on the forehead:

- You are a fool. I didn’t understand anything.

But I understood everything … The road makes another turn and leads me to the day when I made, perhaps the most difficult decision in my life. As I said, a person almost always has a choice: to overpower himself and change something by a strong-willed decision or so eternity and stomp in the spot. And okay, if you suffer from this stamping, but nothing in the world should be painful to your beloved people. And I chose the action again. Not for yourself. Just for her.

I take off my job and spend all day in thought, choosing the right words, building possible dialogs and carefully considering each word. I want to tell her that I am afraid for her, because someday I may not control myself-how my father had not controlled with myself. That I cannot give her what she really deserves. That every minute kills me with her, burns from the inside. That I want to leave Moscow to be away from her and memories of her.

But in the evening, when she comes, I should look at her blue dress, at the waves of hair flowing from her shoulders, look into her beautiful eyes, as absolutely all words leave my mind. I only have to press her to her chest for the last time, run a palm on the head, kiss her crown and say quietly:

- I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. For everything.

I think she understands. And forgives. I hope this.

I return to my town in the suburbs to be away from Ani. I find my room quite quickly. Thanks to the old dating, I quickly find my work foreman at a construction site. And time knows a lot about irony: my boss becomes a mature Dimon. Only now he is Dmitry Igorevich, a respected person and a bona fide family man.
I continue to drink, but moderately, I try to spend more time at work in order not to think about anything and not leave time for all dirt.

Because of the next turn of the road, you can see my meeting with my mother. She served greatly over the years that I was not. Get old. Stopped dyeing her hair, and I did not without surprise realized that she was almost completely gray. The skin was carved, the face was covered with a thin network of wrinkles. I seemed to see this woman for the first time. And she seemed to see me for the first time.

We are standing on the landing, it is dressed at home. Both do not know what to say. But here she seems to be caught and offers me tea. We exchange nothing with the meaningless phrases about life, work and weather.

“Do you want to stay,” she timidly offers me after a long pause, rubbing wrinkled hands, “I will cook, I fire potatoes with cutlets. You probably have nothing to have in your closet.

“You know, mothers,” I smile at her, understanding with surprise that at that very minute I forgave her everything: quarrels with my father, screams from behind the wall, a crumpled pack of cigarettes along the way from the kindergarten, a “bloodsucker” and even a stranger in our apartment. – Perhaps I will really stay.

Forgive. Because I love, no matter what. Now I learned to love.

Time on the road accelerates, and years are flying imperceptibly. It’s funny that childhood, which lasts from the strength of a dozen years, seems much longer than the rest of life. You remember a child every day, because any trifle becomes an event. You can list all the more or less interesting things from memory that you saw or heard in childhood. And in adulthood, only some episodes are remembered, the most important. There is simply no room for the little things, life turns to the routine. Days are formed in weeks, weeks – in months, and for months they fly by years. Work, house, rare rest.

My family never appeared. I get to know some women from time to time. Some are pleasant and unobtrusive, others – on the contrary, one had two children left from the past marriage. But with no one we did not come together for a long time, forever something interferes with.

The rest of the life is quite successful, although it is routine. Even the road cannot show me some important events. Everything sweeps by and disappears in the fog of memory.

But time freezes when the letter comes. Father died – he had a heart attack.

I did not have time for the funeral, so I am already coming to the finished grave. With black and white photography on the monument, a good mustachioed man smiles at me. Young and strong. Once there was no one more than him in the whole world.

But we have never communicated with him from his move. From the last quarrel. Ten years have passed, and neither the father nor the son found the strength and time to apologize and make peace at least by phone.

And now it is too late to apologize – the cold stone does not hear words.

But still I apologize, dad. I’m very sorry that everything happened like that. I know that you would like to change everything, do a lot in your life differently, but on the road, unfortunately, you cannot turn back.

The cemetery is hidden around the bend, but from the depths of memory you can hear how a cheerful mustachioed man sings his little son:

- Bears rode on a bicycle. And behind them the cat is backward. And behind him are mosquitoes in a balloon ..

Often they say that for all sins a person will be punished. After death or even before her, or maybe she herself will become a punishment … People are ready for hours to enjoy the bones to the bad bosses, envious people, enemies, competitors and simply strangers who, in their opinion, did something wrong. Allegedly, any evil will definitely return a boomerang and hit the offender himself on the forehead, and even a hundred times stronger. But for some reason, behind this hidden hope for universal justice, they often forget that sometimes, albeit not so often, a person is given a chance to atone for his sins.

I remember the story in the underground crossing in the smallest details, but deliberately took this memory somewhere in the area of ​​bad dreams. Frankly, I was not tormented by nightmares about this, but this does not mean that I never regretted what I did. I just tried not to think about it and even in my thoughts not to return to that night. And when he returned, he reassured himself that we never knew whether we killed that passerby or still just wounded. I sincerely hoped that they only wounded.

And someone seemed to appreciate my efforts high enough to give me a chance to get better in my own eyes.

I’m already thirty -nine years old.

The road leads me to the next construction site, on which I worked in those years. The object is a large shopping center, so the site is huge, the people work many, you need to be everywhere and everywhere keep up. On that day, Dmitry Igorevich came to the object, he had such a glorious habit: to personally control the process, although he himself could just sit in the office, not at all caring about everything else. It’s amazing how time changes people.

And so the control has been passed, we are standing near his car, and he presses my hand:

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Ruslan,” he says, looking around with a satisfied look, “I am surprised how you hold all this shobel in your hands.

- such work, Dmitry Igorevich.

- What am I Dmitry Igorevich to you? You and I grew up in the same yard. For you – just Dima.

- Or maybe “Dimon”? – I smile broadly.

- Well, no, – he laughs. -Come to visit with Arinka somehow, and? With my daughter, Irish, I will introduce you.

- Thank you, Dim. I will definitely go.

- Well, let’s call then. Be!

But here it comes to my mind that it would be nice to celebrate a successful test with guys immediately after work.

- Dim, not throw me to the department store? – I ask, approaching the Audi to the boss already sitting in my brand new. -There is completely nearby, but something is hot on the street.

“Well, if you are not afraid to leave the guys unattended,” he nods towards busy workers, “then the drive, of course.

The car is gently touching. We are discussing some little things, everyday life. Dima asks me why I did not get married, tells about my family … At the intersection, I manage to see the approaching raspberry spot in the window with lateral vision, and then the world explodes.
He falls apart into the fragments, shakes and breaks with a monstrous rattle, crushes and turns inside out, shaking all feelings, knocking out the soul.

The most difficult is to make the first breath. Light, sticking together, like a newborn kitten, refuse to let air into the chest. This causes panic: I can’t breathe. I will suffocate if I will not inhale immediately. And this premonition of death makes some strings strain-air saturated with the smell of burning and dirt enters the chest with wheezing. Further easier, you can even open your eyes. It turns out not immediately – the blood flowing from the forehead interferes.

“Audi” stands across the road, its hood is terribly crushed from the passenger side. Thick black smoke falls from the engine, filling the salon with stuffy black. Nearby there is a raspberry nine flying away from the blow, completely crushed in front.

Dima with a rag doll lies on the steering wheel. The eyes are closed, a thin stream of blood flows from a ajar mouth. The whole face is broken against the steering wheel and cut with glass.

I’m trying to open the door on my side, but I can’t, it completely jammed after a blow. Fortunately, the safety belt is unfastened without problems, but my reaction is slow, all movements are as if under water – it is empty in my head, only a deaf bell rings. The cabin becomes hotter and smaller, the car flares up, the wiring lights up somewhere.

I stretch through Dimka to open the driver’s door, but he leaned on her and interferes with me. With naughty fingers, I put his belt and pull it off the door with a strangle. I make a break, there is very little strength. Each new sigh is cutting the breasts of all new pains. Having gathered, I open the driver’s door and not ceremony, literally pushing Dima out of the car with my feet, I can hardly crawl out behind him myself. I try to crawl away from the car on karachi and drag the bosses that has been lustful from the good life, but it turns out with difficulty. The first flames penetrate the salon, and after that it lights up almost instantly.
Finally, people appear around who dragged me and Dimka away from a burning car. I am gratitude losing my mind.

And after that, already in the hospital, I remembered the case in the transition and wondered: if I once took one life, then if I would count the salvation of another?

And this turn of the road leads me to a new key moment.

I recover for a long time, I have a fracture of three ribs on the right, a concussion, multiple bruises and even, it turns out, there are burns. Dima was “lucky” approximately the same, except that he hit his head stronger, but fewer fractures. The driver who drove into us at the intersection died on the spot. Examination showed that he was drunk. Since then I quit drinking forever.
Two months later, when I almost recovered, I am sent for inspection to Moscow. There are simply no necessary medical equipment in our town.

In the hospital I am sent to an X -ray, and then to the surgeon. And Anya is a surgeon. A blue blouse collar can be seen from under the white coat. Black hair is briefly tonsured and there is no longer in that wave, because of which they flowed along her shoulders. The first wrinkles appeared in the corners of the eyes. The figure has become a little wider. But in the endless depths of brown eyes, you can still drown.

- Hi, – I stand at the entrance to the office, like a thunder amazed, and I do not find words. Again, as in our first meeting.

“Hi,” she answers quietly, and the corners of her lips rise a little in a smile.

She is married. Husband’s name is Sergey. Oleg, their son, eight years old;Irina, daughter, six. Anya and Sergey met two years after our parting, and he quickly made her proposal. She agreed. Happy marriage ..

She tells me this over a cup of fragrant coffee after work with which she managed to escape early for me today as soon as I finished all the procedures. We are sitting in a small cozy cafe, in the yard a warm August evening.

Word for word, and we find ourselves in my hotel room, which I in advance booked for one night so as not to dangle with sick ribs. Anya calls her husband and asks to take the children from the kindergarten, says that she met an old girlfriend from the university and spends it from her. Sergey easily lets it down. I am surprised by his carelessness and seemingly infinite trust. I am ashamed to remember how I behaved with Anya.

We say, say, we say … but the words end, and the night is just beginning.
On my way, this night is the longest and most beautiful, full of newly tanned passion. For all these years, Anya has become even more feminine, beautiful, sensual, experienced … We, naked and tired, lie on the bed. Anya perched on my chest, I get her.

“Ruslan,” she whispers.

- M? – As if lazily, I open one eye.

- Do you want me to leave everything for you?

I want – I think. But I am silent. I know that this is all nonsense, only one night. She will not abandon two children and husband for some old love. I didn’t leave me once.

“Sleep,” I say, stroking her delicate skin.

She falls asleep. And while she is sleeping, I quietly apologize for this meeting. Not at Ani, rather, but her children. I remember how I felt when I saw a stranger leaving my parents’ bedroom. And I thought that I would not allow me to become such a stranger for them.

In the morning we part. Almost silently, both understand everything, but the words will only complicate everything. Farewell, she kisses me on the cheek. And then he goes to the fog of memory forever.

We will never see each other again, although I will move to Moscow again in old age. Maybe we were in the same crowd, but this city has grown too much so that one familiar face among hundreds of thousands of strangers could really be found in it.

My road is coming to an end. It’s funny, she covered so many years, there were so many turns and fork, so many times she famously turned into some swamp, but now, if you turn around, I still see everything until my very early childhood.

But I don’t want to look around. After all, ahead, where the road breaks off, a warm dim light is already waiting for me, and they will ask me behind his veil whether I am easy to go with my heart, whether there was resentment, poison and bitterness left in me.

And I can answer without fear and falsehood: yes. I forgave everyone. And you all forgive me.