– Semyon Alekseevich! I can look though with half an eye how she will abuse it? – Vanyushka asked.
– Jean! You forget about the duties! – strictly Volkov told. They turned to work again.
Chapter 2
“TO FISH – WATER, THE EARTH – TO THE PERSON”
– And Makar Ivanovich quickly went, going to the coast. An ocean floor everything rose. Than closer to the coast, those the soil became more oozy from the alluvial earth and humus. The movement of water was more and stronger felt. The surf adjusted Konobeeva as strong wind. The old man leaned back back and hardly managed to touch legs. If not its huge force, would turn it long ago and cast with waves ashore as the broken ship mast. But Konobeev still fought. However, when it came to a sandy slope where water hardly covered the head, even it, the Neptune Ivanovich, could not resist. The ocean overcame. The surf was helped by the strong wind blowing to the coast. Water masses, elastic as soccerballs, rotating, lifted silt, sand, crabs, shrimps from a bottom, pulled out seaweed and rolled all this together with themselves to the coast and threw out with noise, hissing, a rumble. They, these water spheres, brought down from Konobeev’s legs and together with his network filled with fish threw out on a shallow and with deafening hissing were rolled away back.
Big dog – the Siberian laika of gray wool – with the scared yelping, having put the fluffy tail between the legs, jumped aside from Konobeev, then suddenly, choking with joyful bark, ran up to it and began to lick his wet person, damp glasses of points, a rubber black nose, the beard similar to seaweed, huge hands…
“Ah! Ah!” – the dog hysterical screamed; then, having unexpectedly turned on the place a top, rushed off a whirlwind to the fanza standing under a fir-tree. For bark of a dog a fanza there was an elderly tolstenky short woman, with chubby red hands and a red round face. On her head the clean white scarf with black peas was tied; a blue spacious jacket from the Chinese cloth and a black long skirt waved at each movement. The woman a vperevalka, in a duck way, hobbled to the coast.
Konobeev confusedly rose from wet sand and went to it towards, and the dog with joyful bark ran to the woman, to the old man until they met then the laika began to jump around them.
– Hi, old woman! – Konobeev told, shaking network in which fish trembled. – Here I … … small fishes brought that to you!
But the old woman did not pay to network with fish any attention.
– Remove you though a nasty ugly mug from a face, to look precisely! – she told strictly. – Water. Directly water! Also flows from it, as from utoply. Ha – and – рош! There is nothing to tell. Go, change clothes in dry, perhaps!
– Nothing, I will dry. Now warmly. Yes to me and back soon in water. Work waits.
– Yes you though to tea get drunk. Dampened probably there, in water. Long ago to tea not of saws.
Konobeev it is noisy sighed and took off from himself glasses, a rubber nose and a satchel.
His own nose was the little more beautiful rubber: big, fleshy, friable and in addition overgrown with a gray long hair. Hands with the big, inactive, very widely placed fingers and folded thick skin were surprising. And on palms the old man had real corn pillows. He freely put a hot piece of coal on these palms, without burning.
– However well, we will go, the old woman! With water let fish in the coil. Tomorrow you will weld an ushitsa. The humpback salmon is more, but there is also a herring, ivas…
Konobeev’s wife, Marfa Zakharovna, knew that her old man likes to chayevat. For this purpose she also enticed it with insidiousness of the woman into the Chinese fanza where a vein. When Konobeev crossed a fanza threshold, Marfa Zakharovna, quickly moving on a fanza the duck transfer, prepared tea, put fresh bread on a table and, looking at the husband pouring in a huge mouth in a glass behind a glass began to lecture it for “dissolute life”.
– Well have you ever seen anything like it, where it slykhano, that the person how a humpback salmon, in water of veins? To fishes – water, to birds – air, and to the person – the earth. So from time immemorial god put. You got into the wet place.
– However the person by air flies now better than any bird – Konobeev objected, sipping tea.
Marfa Zakharovna did not pay attention to this remark and continued, more and more increasing tone:
– If you married me, and live with me, but not with humpback salmons and seldyam. What you are a husband after that when herring is lovelier to you, than the wife? Forty years lived together, and here on you! As changed the person. Sdurel on an old age of years. I do not want and do not wish. Either I, or herring. Now to the woman free will. Here I will go to a registry office and I will divorce you.
– However … – there began Konobeev, but choked on tea. The dog began a bark, and because of a door Vanyushka seemed.
– Correctly, Marfa Zakharovna, correctly, mamafa! – Vanyushka shouted, appearing in the doorway in one pants. – Now not an old regime. But only you it is vain, a mamafa, on Makar you serchat Ivanovich. You better would come to live to us…
– What? I! Under water? To herrings? I am not a mermaid, in the name of God, that under water to live. With frogs, with reptiles sea.
– There are no frogs there, Marfa Zakha…
– Yes never!
– And you though looked, Marfa Zakharovna. There very much it is even excellent. In the sea ocean there is felezny mansion caps, and under caps – an izbufka. And in an izbufka and light-, and warmly, and any water – chilly quite. Both the tea, and sugar, and a samovarchik will be.
– You are better trousers a would plot, than to teach old people. Shameless person! And still Komsomol member.
– You are afraid, means?
– I am afraid of nothing. And I do not wish to dampen.
– And here Pun was not afraid. Brisket is more courageous than you. It at us on all hands. Both cooks, and farit, and washes clothes, and washes the floor.
– Washes the floor? Under water?
– Yes that you, really think that at us everything is filled in with water – both floors, and beds, and samovarny pipes? Anything similar! To the land, than in your fanza. Eh, here it is just bad: is not able to cook a dinner of Pun in an our way. As will weld on the Korean kufaniye – only one Ji Zi and bursts with appetite. And if you, Marfa Zakharovna, to us ff made how, you remember, ugoffyal me? I still lick fingers. You to us would cook yes faril and pies fish baked with a fish stuffing and pelmeni…
The praise worked – Marfa Zakharovna was softened, but going down under water, and did not want to hear.
– Come itself here pelmeni are – she answered, having smiled.
– However it is time for us – Konobeev told and began to put on himself a mask and diving vestments.
– My eyes would not look at you! – swinging the head, the old woman told.
– Anything special, however – Konobeev answered and went from Vanyushkaya to the coast towards to the flying waves. Waves roared, foam hissed on sand, splashes flew a rain, and Konobeev safely went forward.
– Hold me! – he shouted Vanyushke when they approached a breakwater. Vanyushka grasped a powerful hand of the old man. The first wave drenched them and nearly brought down from legs.
Having inclined the heads, having nestled to each other, Konobeev and Toporkov were rushed forth. Waves covered them. For a moment the shaggy gray-haired head of Makar Ivanovich seemed