This story surprises me with a striking reflection of the events of the distant post-war years in one well-known family.
A guy, an invalid who was wounded in the thigh in cruel battles on the Kursk Bulge, came from the war. He limped, but the mutilation did not stop him from working as a tractor driver, and with other peasant affairs he was managed no worse than the healthy ones. They gave him a drink, and his name was Ivan, the bride in the neighboring village, the fragile, blue-eyed Marusya. He brought her to his home hut, where the older one, who had stayed in the girls, Sarvar's sister, lived.
Early in the spring, throwing a dunghill in the garden, Ivan came across a terrible in its essence find. It was a well-formed baby corpse. Bringing him into the hut, Marusya turned pale, Varvara gasped. "Whose?" - briefly asked, but, so that both squeezed.
"No, no, not mine," Varvara began to say in a low voice, "you see, I'm alone, I'm at home, except for work I do not go anywhere."
Marousia stood, turning pale before her eyes, but she could not admit it. Ivan vividly remembered the long ailments of the young wife last winter, everything now became clear.
Marusya was not dismissed, not at all, but the boy from his native village, also a front-line soldier, embarrassed her heart. We were about to get married, the beloved left the hungry post-war village in the city, promised to call her, how to arrange, but he did not call. And then the matchmakers on the threshold from Ivan, that she had to do poor things, went, while they call, not counting on anything, as will be, so it will be.
The prohibitions on abortion in those years ruined more than one unfortunate, there is demand, there is a proposal. In cities, criminal services were carried out, at least by people close to medicine. In the village, dark old women undertook this, remotely representing the anatomical structure of the female organs. Sterilization of objects was carried out primitively, on fire. There was also such an old woman in Marusia village, but she managed to just etch Marusya a five-month fruit, taking the valenki for the service. In a young family the scandal was ripe, Marousia denied her premarital sin. Ivan found out where the old woman lived, freed the young from the burden and shook her confession out of her, threatening to tell her where she had to go about her underground activities. But did he need someone else's child? Resentment, pain from deceit, jealousy burned his heart, but the joint life of the newlyweds, however, continued. Varvara was separated and bought at the outskirts of the village of hutka, but when Ivan was to drink, like Marousia, she threw everything and hid herself where she could-neighbors, in a haystack, in the attic. Sons-weatherlets were born, and the fourth girl, Valechka . Rest for Marousi did not come soon, only when the age of Ivan went downhill, and he left the work, affected the wound. Drinking has become a rare thing, the sins of youth have come to the fore.
Sons have grown, but the trouble is, none of them had children. She married Valechka, years go by, and she has no children. Is this a cruel payment for maternal sin? Or did not the mother atone for her guilt with bitter tears? Ivan is long gone, and the old Marusya lives with his youngest son, mourning for unborn grandchildren.