Evgeniy Sanin

Birch tree

A Yuletide STORY

What kind of miracles happen on Christmas night! Seryozha listened,
how his mother read him Christmas stories, and he was amazed. All of them starting
sad, sad, ended so that I even wanted to cry with joy.
There were, however, stories with a different ending. But mother, frowning, let them pass. AND
I did it right. They had enough sad things in their lives.
A dark blue night was falling outside the window. The yard quickly turned black, and only
The birch tree under the bright lantern continued to remain white. Large flakes
like cotton balls on strings with which they once decorated the room with
Christmas tree, snow was falling.
Remembering that happy time, Seryozha narrowed his eyes. Birch immediately
turned into a spruce, and numerous windows of the house burning in honor of Christmas
opposite became luminous garlands. Mom and Dad scurried around the crowded
upholstered furniture and a room hung with carpets. They took it from the buffet
festive dishes and put cheese, sausage, steaming potatoes with
meat...
Seryozha swallowed his hungry saliva and opened his eyes. The spruce became a birch again,
and the room was empty and dull, where there were neither carpets nor armchairs, nor
festive table, no dad... Mom was lying on a worn-out sofa, reading about
how a poor boy once got from a miserable shack to a Christmas ball
to the palace. And dad... He last saw him at the station, surrounded
exactly the same drunken homeless people.
- OK it's all over Now! - Mom said, turning the last page.
“What a pity that this only happens in books!” - sighed to himself
Seryozha asked out loud:
- Why are these stories sacred?
Mom thought and smiled:
- Probably because they are about Christmas. You know now,
that today the fast ends...
- He will be with us tomorrow too! - Seryozha muttered.
- ... and the most fun week comes, which is called Christmastide! -
Mom finished, pretending not to hear him.
“The saddest week...” the boy repeated again in a distorted echo.
Mom raised herself on her elbow with difficulty and warmed herself in front of the woman standing on the table.
icon of a lamp:
- Well, here's the holiday. Merry Christmas, son! I wanted it so much
so that you and I can have real Christmastide, but...
Without finishing, she lay down facing the wall. Her shoulders trembled. Than Seryozha
could you help her? Hug? Say something kind? But then she'll cry
sobbing, as has happened more than once. And he again began to look through the glass at
birch spruce and iridescent windows due to tears in the eyes.
Seryozha knew that his mother hoped to receive generous alms from
church, where many, many people will come for Christmas, and, I remember, even helped
she dreams of how they will spend this money. But mom's heart ached, and the doctor

BIRCH "TREE"Children of war . (Rafairy tale)

In our village one-story school, one of the four rooms, the largest, served as a village club. Holidays were celebrated there, meetings and meetings with candidates for people's deputies were held. In other words, it was Cultural Center sat down. Kalmyks who were exiled to us in the Altai steppes were once settled in this same room. They were brought here from Aleysk for the night. The winter was harsh. The room was not heated. In the morning, the arrivals were placed in more suitable conditions. They said that someone died during the night. Before this, the Germans were sent to us from the Volga region. Nothing special, people are just people. Neat, polite. They speak Russian well. We, rural children, immediately became friends with them. But Kalmyks are a completely different matter. Their faces, clothes, and speech were completely different. Local wits said that Kalmyk women were not at all structured like Russians. For this they received good blows from their wives or girls. There were also educated people among the Kalmyks. One of them was immediately appointed chief accountant of the collective farm. It didn't take him long to familiarize himself with the cases and get to work. War was still raging in the west of the country. Residents gave everything possible and impossible to the front. The village left itself with the bare minimum just to survive. They just cleared the club of visitors, and here - New Year! At another time, for this occasion they would have brought fluffy pines from the ribbon pine forest in the village of Borovskoye. There are only two such unique forests on Earth - a gift from the Ice Age. But you have to travel 60 kilometers to get pine. On what? To whom? There were no more people capable of this, no horses free from work in the village. And the New Year was approaching. And what is a holiday without a Christmas tree? Something had to be done. And they found a way out. A young spreading birch tree of suitable size was placed in the middle of the hall. Instead of toys, pieces of paper were attached to each branch. In an unheated room, at sub-zero temperatures, adults and children jumped, sang and danced! To spite Hitler! Despite all troubles and adversity! But everyone entering the club first looked at the decorated birch tree for a long time, and only then, agreeing in their mind that it was a “Christmas tree,” joined the fun. Father Frost came to the "Christmas tree" - the teacher primary classes. She had “gifts” in a skinny bag. I remember one of the schoolchildren was given a rake. Not natural ones, but a drawing: “So that you don’t forget to comb your hair in the morning.” Someone got an “alarm clock”, also drawn: “So that you are not late for school.” The new collective farm accountant was also at the celebration, along with the chairman, Elena Ivanovna Bezuglova. They gave him a horse in a saddle, also drawn: “So that he doesn’t forget the free steppes!” The hall was full of laughter! What songs did you sing? Yes, the most popular, rollicking ones. And just learned "Katyusha". The Bembeev family of Kalmyks exiled to us celebrated the New Year far in the steppe, in a warm house in a field camp. The father of the family turned out to be an experienced sheep farmer. He was entrusted with caring for a flock of sheep. He had four sons: Batyr, Buvashka, Shurashka and Genashka. His wife's name was Chaluta. She was an extraordinary woman. She was amazingly slim. Her figure was as if carved by a talented sculptor. She was graceful. Everyday troubles did not seem to concern this royal woman at all. And this was at a time when she, a shepherd’s wife and mother of many children, had to do all the housework. The family was close-knit and hard-working. The head of the family soon became the leading livestock breeder in the region. All indicators: lamb production, livestock safety, young stock weight gain and wool clipping were very good. He carried out all the tasks of the state in full. On the labor front, he was as indispensable a fighter as those who fought the enemy. The shepherd sent sheep sheepskin coats, felt boots, hats, and mittens to the soldiers. To receive products from sheep, they need good care . And carry food by hand, and repair the shed. In addition, animals require supervision around the clock. They had to be protected not only from predators, but also from the starving peasants of the surrounding villages. We boys easily became friends with our peers. They quickly began to speak Russian. In the summer we also lived in a field camp. At that time I was tending collective farm sows. Sometimes we caught gophers, removed the skins for delivery to the procurement office, and cooked and ate the meat. They also reached the hamsters' storerooms, taking grain reserves. They threshed in their palms and chewed the seeds of some steppe plants that no one had paid attention to before. We caught minnows in the swamp with a fishing rod. And yet they ate sparingly; they were constantly hungry. The shepherd Bembeev had a worthy rival in the competition - Denis Borodin. My mother’s sister, Aunt Avdotya, was married to him. They lived across the Aley River, in the village of Andreevka. In reports on labor indicators, the names of Borodin and Bembeev stood side by side. Masters of sheep breeding often shared first and second places among themselves. Denis Borodin's eldest son Pavel had already fought with the Nazis. Denis himself was sick, but continued to work. And soon he was gone. There was a “fashion” at that time among men: to die early. Anechka was the youngest in the Borodin family. She had not yet gone to school when the Kalmyks arrived to us. The unfortunate nation would have died out if it weren’t for people like my aunt, like Anechka, like our family with its traditions of sharing and helping everyone. A lonely Kalmyk often came to see the Borodins. His family died. Anya was imbued with sincere love and regret for him, and gave him the name “Remnant.” She greeted him cheerfully, immediately took everything edible she found in the house and fed the guest. The adults encouraged her in this. Each family has its own destiny. One day, when Bembeev’s sheep were out in the pasture, a wolf began to creep up on the flock. The shepherd noticed him and hid behind a hillock. Now the beast is already within gunshot range. The shepherd silently inserted the cartridge into the chamber. But either the shutter of the Berdanka was weakly closed, or it was faulty, but only after the shot it flew out and hit the shepherd in the head. The wound turned out to be fatal. By that time, the eldest son Batyr was already an adult young man. He took in the flock and managed it remarkably well. Coming from college on vacation, I met with Buvashka and Shurashka. I asked them to teach me the Kalmyk language, but they just laughed. And one day they learned some ditty with me, but they didn’t want to translate it into Russian, they just roared with laughter. I decided that they were teaching me something indecent. Mischief makers, in a word. And I still remember the ditty. I was not in my homeland for more than three years in a row while I was serving in the army. Much had changed by then. Anechka turned into beautiful girl. The “remnant” fell ill and died. Genashka, Genka in local language, became a machine operator and married a Russian girl, Polina. Their children were typical Kalmyks. By that time, his brothers were already living in Kalmykia, and Genka also took his family there. However, Polina did not stay there long; she quickly returned home: her husband died in a traffic accident. Not everyone knew about this, like me, and thought: it didn’t take root, the woman who grew up in a Russian village had the wrong mentality. When I met Polina, for some reason I remembered the birch “tree” of the war years. No matter how we dressed it up, no matter how much we strained our imagination, it did not turn into a Christmas tree, it remained a birch tree, the sister of all Russian white birches. Perhaps in Kalmykia they also looked closely at our Polina, they wanted to see in her the features of something native, inherent to the nation. After all, she liked Genka. It was a two-way process: Polina also tried to find herself in a new environment. But our “birch tree” did not take root in unfamiliar soil, it returned to where everything, down to the last blade of grass, is dear and close. And she brought her children, who were born and raised here. These are the thoughts that come to me either on New Year’s Day or after a TV show in which the President of Kalmykia Kirsan Ilyumzhinov participates. All this happened, and there is no getting away from it. And the trees are now spruce. And the toys on them are real. And Kalmyks live in Kalmykia. Now we're even in different countries. For example, I ended up in Ukraine. That is life. Basil KHRAMTSOV .

Instead of an epilogue

M ir to you, dear visitors of the Orthodox island “Family and Faith”!

IN days of Christmastide, we offer you to read a modern Yuletide story written by the famous Russian writer, poet and playwright - monk Barnabas (Sanin).

BIRCH TREE

Monk Barnabas (Sanin)

TO What kind of miracles don’t happen on Christmas night! Seryozha listened to his mother read Christmas stories to him, and was amazed. All of them, starting sadly and sadly, ended in such a way that you even wanted to cry with joy. There were, however, stories with a different ending. But mother, frowning, let them pass. And she did the right thing. They had enough sad things in their lives.

A dark blue night was falling outside the window. The yard quickly turned black, and only the birch tree under a bright lantern continued to remain white. Snow fell in large flakes, like cotton balls on strings with which they once decorated the room with the Christmas tree.

Remembering that happy time, Seryozha narrowed his eyes. The birch immediately turned into a spruce, and the numerous windows of the house opposite that were burning in honor of Christmas became glowing garlands. Mom and Dad scurried around the room, filled with upholstered furniture and hung with carpets. They took out festive dishes from the buffet and put cheese, sausage, steaming potatoes and meat into it...

Seryozha swallowed his hungry saliva and opened his eyes. The spruce tree became a birch tree again, and the room was empty and dull, where there were no carpets with armchairs, no festive table, no dad... Mom lay on a tattered sofa, reading about how a poor boy once got from a miserable shack to a Christmas ball in a palace . And dad... He last saw him at the station, surrounded by exactly the same drunken homeless people.

OK it's all over Now! - Mom said, turning the last page.

“What a pity that this only happens in books!” - Seryozha sighed to himself and asked out loud:

Why are these stories sacred?

Mom thought and smiled:

Probably because they are about Christmas. You know now that Lent ends today...

We will have it tomorrow too! - Seryozha muttered.

- ... and the most fun week comes, which is called Christmastide! - pretending not to hear him, my mother finished.

The saddest week... - the boy repeated again in a distorted echo.

Mom raised herself up on her elbow with difficulty and lit a lamp in front of the icon on the table:

Well, here comes the holiday. Merry Christmas, son! I so wanted you and I to have real Christmastide, but...

Without finishing, she lay down facing the wall. Her shoulders trembled. How could Seryozha help her? Hug? Say something kind? But then she will cry bitterly, as has happened more than once. And he again began to look through the glass at the birch spruce and the windows, iridescent because of the tears in his eyes. He knew that my mother hoped to receive generous alms today at the temple, where many, many people would come for Christmas, and, I remember, he even helped her dream of how they would spend this money. But my mother had a heart problem, and the doctor said that she needed to go to the hospital. “Only medicines,” he warned, writing out a prescription, “must be purchased at your own expense.” And the cheapest of them cost more than my mother earned in a month when she was still working as a janitor. Where can they get that kind of money? Seryozha turned his eyes to the light of the lamp. After dad, having drunk all the most valuable things, disappeared from the house, they gradually handed over furniture and things to the second-hand store. All that was left was what could not be sold even at the flea market: this sofa, always frightening with the sharp teeth of the springs, the scratched-scratched table, the lame chairs... Mom wanted to sell her parents’ icon, but some grandmother said that it was called “All Joy of the Sorrowful,” and if mom prays in front of her, then God and Holy Mother of God they will certainly come to the rescue. No one in the world could help them anymore, and mother listened to the advice. She made a lamp out of a jar and, pouring cheap oil into it, causing it to go out almost immediately, began to pray, and then go to church, where she asked for alms before and after the service.

And, amazingly, they had nothing to sell for a long time, there was nowhere to get money, because my mother had to leave her job due to illness, but food, even the simplest and stale one, was not available in the house. Today, after the first star, they even had a festive dinner - black bread with herring and onions! But tomorrow, getting colder, Seryozha remembered, they will have nothing to eat at all.

And then he realized how he could help his mother! If she herself is not able to go for alms, then he should go! He just had to wait until his mother fell asleep or the lamp went out so that he could leave the house unnoticed. But this time for some reason the light burned and burned. Fortunately, my mother soon began to breathe sleepily, and Seryozha, hastily dressed, silently slipped out the door.

U faces greeted him with multi-colored radiance and multi-voiced bustle. Advertising lights winked howlingly from all sides. Cars raced, their wheels hissing, along the snow-covered asphalt. People, laughing and rejoicing at the holiday, walked - some overtaking him, others towards him... Tens, hundreds, thousands of people, and not one of them cared about the lonely boy, whose sick mother remained at home. Seryozha walked, and it seemed to him that he had already seen and heard all this somewhere, and quite recently. "Oh yes! - he remembered. - In Christmas stories." Only there the soulless passers-by were those who lived a hundred years ago, and the poor boy was himself. And although in the nearest church, and in the other, and in the third, the all-night service had already departed, he could not shake the feeling that something extraordinary could happen to him too.

He no longer walked - he ran through the streets. And only once, passing by a large store, he stopped and for a long time, squashing his nose on the glass window, looked at the shelves overflowing with all sorts of goodies and at the huge teddy bear in the gift department.

Finally, having run around and traveled half the city by tram, he saw a church in which the night service was still going on. Standing on the porch, Seryozha timidly extended his hand and, seeing people approaching, squeezed out something unusual:

Give it to me, for Christ's sake!

He remembered the first ruble that the old man put into his palm for the rest of his life. Then one woman gave him two ten-kopeck coins, and the other gave him a gingerbread. That's all. After that, the lane in front of the temple became extinct. Seryozha realized that, having been late for the start of the service, he must wait until it ended, when people began to leave. He was afraid to go into the temple, where they sang loudly: “Christ is born...” - what if another generous passerby appeared during this time?

My feet began to freeze from standing in one place for a long time. In his haste, he forgot his mittens at home and was now forced to alternately warm one hand and then the other in his pocket. Finally, he squatted down and, without lowering his palms in case someone would pass by, he felt how quickly he was falling into sleep.

...He woke up from a nearby loud conversation. Seryozha opened his eyes and saw a tall handsome man in an open sheepskin coat, with a thick handbag on a strap, the kind rich people wear.

You can congratulate! - he said to someone on his mobile phone. - I just confessed and, as they say, cleansed my heart! I've lifted such a burden from my soul... That's it, now I'm going to rest!

Give it... for Christ's sake! - Frightened that he would leave now, Seryozha with difficulty opened his frozen lips. The man, without stopping talking, took it out of his pocket and casually handed it over - Seryozha couldn’t even believe his eyes, but what kind of miracles happen on Christmas night - a hundred rubles!

Thank you! - he whispered and hesitantly, in a fit of gratitude, began to explain: “My mother is sick... the recipe... there’s nothing to eat tomorrow... it was...

You've had enough. God will provide the rest! - Having understood it in his own way, the man waved it off.

And then something incomprehensible... strange... amazing happened! The man's face suddenly changed. The disgusted expression disappeared and was replaced by a reverent one. With delight and almost horror, looking somewhere above and to the right of the boy’s head, he began to hastily unfasten his handbag, muttering:

Lord, yes I... Lord, if this is for You... I only heard that You stand behind the poor, but for it to be like this... here... with me?.. Hold it, baby!

Seryozha looked at what the man was giving him and was stunned. These were dollars... One, two, five, tenth - and how many more there were! - greenish pieces of paper. He tried to grab them, but his fingers were so stiff in the cold that they could not hold this wealth.

Lord, he's frozen! You're completely frozen! - turning to Seryozha, the strange man exclaimed and ordered: - Well, quickly get into my car, I’ll take you... you home!

The man was not drunk. Seryozha, who knew well from his father what drunk people were like, immediately understood this. He really wanted to look back and see who was helping him so much, but, fearing that the man would suddenly disappear, he obediently followed him.

IN in the car, softening in the warmth, he, at first reluctantly, and then carried away, began to answer in detail questions about how he and his mother lived before and how they live now. When it came to what kind of festive dinner they had, the man sharply braked the car and took Seryozha to that very large store, at the window of which he admired the goods inaccessible to him. They left the store loaded to the limit. The man walked to the car with bags containing cheese, sausage, oranges, candy and even cake, and Seryozha clutched a huge teddy bear to his chest.

He didn’t remember how they got to the house, how they got up to the floor. Everything happened as if in a dream. He came to his senses only when, warned that his mother was sleeping, the man tiptoed into the room, looked around and whispered:

Lord, how come you came here... how come they are here... So, so! I’m taking the recipe with me and tomorrow I’ll take your mother to the hospital. I'll take care of dad too. You will stay with my grandmother for now. And here during this time we will make such repairs that we will not be ashamed to receive the Lord Himself! By the way,” he leaned towards the boy’s ear, “does He visit you often?”

Who? - Seryozha blinked.

Well, Himself... Him! - The man hesitated and looked at the icon, in front of which the lamp continued to burn. - Jesus Christ!

“So it was Him? - Only now did the boy understand everything. “And all this is thanks to Him?!”

Half an hour later, Seryozha, having seen the man off, lay on his rickety cot and listened to his mother, who did not even suspect anything, breathe in her sleep. Outside the window the light blue morning was quickly approaching. The windows in the house opposite had recently gone dark and no longer seemed like garlands. The birch also did not want to be a spruce anymore. But now he was not sad about it. He knew that in next year finally, they will definitely have a real Christmas tree and Christmas time.

The only thing he was afraid of was waking up not in this bed, but on the frozen porch. But then, clutching the teddy bear tighter, he reassured himself: after all, what kind of miracles happen on Christmas night!

Thank you Father Barnabas for this interesting story! My children and I read it with great interest! Faith in God's miracles for children is probably the most important thing for them. God bless you for your work!

Answer

The story is very good, but I always want to read more about what happened next, how the boy’s mother was cured, how dad got a good job and how he returned to the family. For some reason, they always describe more suffering, and leave the happy moments to the reader. I would like to savor how one should live, how an Orthodox family should live correctly. In our life in the 21st century, we have few described examples of how to live harmoniously as a family, how to build a house. .Forgive me for my insolence, but I want to ask you, Monk Barnabas (Sanin), to describe in some story how to build a house building and what place someone has in this family? With respect to you Irina.

Answer

1. Hello Irina!
   The writer’s job is to lead the reader to think about what he has read and present him with a choice from all this. In addition, the reader himself must work together with the author: figure out what is not in the book. It’s not for nothing that there is such an expression as “reading between the lines”! It seems to me that everyone should mentally write down how mom was cured, how dad returned to the family. It's even interesting! And my humble task is to tell you about the most necessary things, to give a first impetus to thoughts about the Main Thing.
   As for your request, forgive me, but it is better to address it to Orthodox writers who have a family. I have about this in some books that are posted on my website, but quite a bit. For example, in the books of the series THE SECRET OF THE RUBY CROSS. Especially in the two-volume MIRACLE OF MIRACLES. This, by the way, is no longer a story, but a different genre, and the events there are described in much more detail.
   Sincerely,
   monk Barnabas (Sanin)

   Answer