I went to the old people in a small room. It was also empty, only a neatly folded cot stood out, and the stool on which Grandfather was sitting.
Standing at the window, Suvorov poured to the brim with vodka in a glass and faceted invited grandfather to the window sill on which to lay the newspaper rump and cut onion in half. Grandfather slowly at once drank the whole glass and sniffed the onion. I declined my grandmother, saying that he already had no teeth.
Suvorov poured vodka and himself, drank it and sniffed it with a crust. A bottle with the remnants of vodka, he swung his long hand with his long hand out the window.
I was amazed by his action: the house I was forbidden even a crumb from the table to throw out the window, and then a whole bottle ... Suvorov lifted me up and put on the windowsill, and I saw 50 meters in the endless green swamp overgrown with reeds and tightened with duckweed. In this swamp Suvorov and threw an empty bottle. Under the window on the ground, I noticed deposits of cigarette butts.
Grandfather and Suvorov lit a cigarette and began to talk in a sedate manner about something of their own, an adult. Their faces and necks turned red. There were no other signs of alcohol drinking. I was bored, I lay down on the cot and fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was already dark outside the window, and before my grandfather and Suvorov there was a full ashtray ashtray. My grandfather smoked "I will accept", and Suvorov "Belomor". Seeing that I woke up, Suvorov said to me:
- "Your grandfather in the winter of the 42nd saved all our howitzer's calculation from hunger." He was a scout, "I did not understand. True, he was a scout. And I, as a mathematician, got into artillery. And he was engaged in ballistic calculation and shooting tables. When at that time we had nothing to eat, Boris Mikhailovich crawled to the Fritz twice. And brought a frozen horse's leg. And another time brought from the Germans chocolate and bread, we warmed it up in a kettle, ate it, and this saved us from hunger.
- "Why did the Germans have food, but you did not have?" I did not understand.
"And they always had, they supplied them well. They had order with this, "my grandfather explained to me.
From further words, I realized that my grandfather and Suvorov came from one locality on the Volga. This once blossoming densely populated land with ancient Russian cities was flooded with water from the artificial Rybinsk Sea.
Both the grandfather and Suvorov very much regret the flooding of their homeland and scold the Soviet state for this crime.
"They drowned the graves of their ancestors, and then everything went in the country with a somersault, and we slept through the war. And they put so many people in prison and they turned them down in prisons. And the memory was betrayed, and people were poisoned with life "- that's what my grandfather used to say.
This conversation became unpleasant to me, because I was the commander of an asterisk and of our October detachment. For the Soviet homeland I felt hurt.