Chapter 10 of the short novel of Holder Volcano "Falling leaves"
Letter from the afterlife
The tractor driver Sultan knew from Khurshida and reading the books that there is light at the feeling, as love, for which lovers are ready to sacrifice their lives if necessary. Looking once in the cinema the Indian film "Sangam", he silently cried, secretly wiping away tears in his holey handkerchief. But for his dog's life he never had to deal head-on with love. He only now began to feel the power of these mad ruthless feelings, which causes only suffering and constitute torture. The tractor driver Sultan lost peace, lost his head and sometimes felt like a soldier who received a concussion in the war, during the shelling and air strikes, where the howling shells. Waking up, he's usually quick to clean and on the go eating his Breakfast in a hurry in a cotton field, where Khurshida collects white gold, in a hurry to see his beloved girl as soon as possible. He can't exist without her. Here they are together again and they think that they are picking not cotton, but the white clouds in the sky.
- We collect white spring clouds in the autumn field! What a paradox! -exclaimed the tractor driver Sultan, placing the collected cotton apron Khurshida. She bent at the waist, with a slim waist, picking cotton and listening to the story of his beloved young man tractor driver Sultan.
Lady Duchess Khurshidabanu Madame de La Marquise La tombala neige a pa seue pasuble manege, you know what I dream? Don't know? Well, you better I'll tell You. I dream to study at Tashkent State University and be in the same group as you. Oh, I would have sat beside you and looked to You before the end of lectures and during the breaks too. Also I would gladly accompanied You to the hostel in the campus and would sit, waiting for you, not leaving even at night, looking at your bright window, the lights went out. I would sit until morning hoping to see at least a glimpse of your profile again at the window, and sigh, exhausted prisionais back to the tree not to fall.Would not go from there until your classmate pours cold water from a bucket on my head through the open window. I gladly accompanied you on the path of campus, when the alleys of the maples and poplars quietly falling yellow and red leaves covering the sidewalks deserted net. We'd be walking through the falling leaves, along the line where the twists and turns with difficulty turning trams ringing their bell. We could prepare the lessons together, sitting in your room, with lighted faces by the light of a table lamp. At some point you would point up at the night window of the room and said happily: "Oh, look, Sultan, the snow is falling!" And we, going to the window, silently staring together into night snowfall, through which barely could see the road covered with snow, the dim silhouettes of houses and red Windows, street lamps, where through snowflakes pouring tired light.
It would be nice, but my father never allowed me to study somewhere away from home, Khurshida said, smiling sadly and silently continuing to pick cotton.
- You better tell me about your past, about your happy youth. I find it very interesting - said Khurshida. The tractor sriver Sultan thought for a moment then began to speak:
- Oh, Madam Duchess Khurshidabanu Madame de La Marquise La tombala neige a pa seue pasuble manege, I experienced grief in his youth, like when I was 12 years old, my father died. He was a pilot and an aircraft crash, when pollinated cotton fields with poisonous pesticides. The plane is a crop duster, which was ruled by my father, hit the line of high voltage power lines and exploded in the eyes of the growers who hand-harvested cotton in the field. My father, of course, ejected at the moment, but unfortunately stuck the catapult.But he still managed to jump from the cockpit and fell in hirman. At that moment my mother was at home. Hearing the roar, we thought that somewhere again Holy war. I even wanted urgently to go to the recruiting office to join the brigade of volunteers and go to the front to become a hero, fighting with the enemy who treacherously and without warning invaded our sacred land. My mother and I went outside and thought that exploded shot down an enemy aircraft "Wolf pack". People are interested in, and the children shout, the people rejoice and rejoice. The crashed pilot was not a fascist, and my poor father, the pilot of a crop duster. So I have lost my only beloved father forever. But I have always believed in the supernatural life of man. I tried to deal with their own spiritualism and to establish a relationship with the dead, especially with his father, but to no avail. Once I had a chat with one hunchbacked and lame gravedigger about whether it is possible to correspond with the dead.
- And why not? Of course, you can. For this man to be the iron will, brave heart, desire and initiative, in the end. The rest is a trick - explained humpbacked and lame and also oblique gravedigger drunk, barely standing on his feet and leaning on a shovel that won't fall down drunk, you dig them a grave. He commanded that I installed over the grave of my father to the mailbox, put the letter in the cache and to wait patiently for a reply on that light. According to the gravedigger, this process requires certain rituals associated with time of day and the appropriate form of clothing. The adept who wrote a letter to the deceased need to be wearing striped pajamas with a torn sleeves, without buttons and go to the cemetery it should night, barefoot, without a hat, preferably a full moon. I fulfilled all the requirements of the gravedigger of the warlock, installing the mailbox on the grave of my father; put the first letter in a white envelope. It turns out that when a person has a strong desire to correspond with his dead father, the fear recedes. This I experienced when I installed mailbox on my father's grave during the full moon to perform a ritual of utmost interest. Then, one night I left the house in striped pajamas, of course, with the torn off sleeves, without buttons or shoes, without headgear. It was late autumn. On high-voltage wires hummed the cold autumn wind. I'm going, so towards the cemetery, the resting place of my father and feel the second letter I have written, which was lying in the pocket of my striped pants. In the sky stars glittered, and over the horizon slowly rising full moon, illuminating the cotton fields with mulberry trees, ghostly blackened away. I quickly walked ecutives in my striped pajamas, with detached sleeves without buttons, barefoot, shivering from the cold wind. In the distance on the field, rhythmically making noise, plowed alone bulldozer "Altai". Distant sounds of a motor in the blue darkness reminded me of spring frogs, which in the warm night chorus of croaking on the edge of rice fields. When I came to the cemetery, the moon was right above me, like a powerful spotlight. Look - over into the mailbox, which I installed on my father's grave, sits a large grey owl with round green eyes and hoots. "hoo-hoo!" I shouted and my voice echoed tombstones, made of pure marble and granite. The owl gently flew away, plaintive hooting and waving their mighty colorful wings. I opened the door of the mailbox and stunned with surprise, because the mailbox wasn't the letter that I wrote to my late father, gluing expensive brands on the white envelope, and another letter in a yellow envelope. I pulled this yellow envelope shaking from excitement. Look - on the envelope, the familiar handwriting and the words. "Address: White light. To: My son the tractor driver Sultan ibn Ultan in hand"
Reading the inscription, I was not myself, and I cried. All burst into tears..
- It's a miracle! Well, father! Decided to write me a response letter from the afterlife? Well, thank you, daddy... - I cried of boiling tears in the tails of his striped pajamas.
I opened the envelope and took the letter from him. The contents of the letter I know by heart, and it is still kept in my memory as top-secret archive materials of an Enigma.
Here are the contents of the letter:
"Heartfelt greetings from the world of the dead!
Hello, son Sultanbai!
Well, how are you? How is your mother? Fellow villagers relatives all alive and healthy? If you ask me, I feel very well. We , well, those neighbors are dead, sometimes at midnight we rise from the graves , sit actives in their shrouds, and when I tell my dead friends all about my ridiculous death, the company together laughing, snapping jaws. I know that in my life I loved the festival of fear. And here we have every day a holiday, and we, the dead, scare each other slowly, with difficulty, move the gravestones, then suddenly, ran from one stone tombs to another, when a shining full moon a silent flock of bats fly over a cemetery. What would you do son, if we have no case but to walk to play hide and seek, in early childhood. There are no health problems. We do not breathe, do not eat, do not go to the toilet, and do not shave. We don't need any clothes, except for the shroud. There is no need for medical drugs. Concepts such as house, car, luxury, business, money, banks, stock exchanges, that's all in the past for us. None of us was working. In our cemetery there is always peace.But, around unemployment. The most important thing is we're all equal. I have one friend who is in the white light, was the most influential rich man, and even ruled the country, took bribes in the large size, the oppressed people, engaged in money laundering, ferrying them to Western European banks through offshore zones, through the giant openings leaky laws of our country. And now he had nothing but his yellowed skeleton and holey rotten shroud. He previously lived with his family in luxurious bright castles in the Swiss Alps and now he's in the grave reigns dark, damp and cold. He has to be in company with disgusting worms, snakes, scorpions and nasty centipedes. Well, such a grave got to him.We're not much upset, that in our cold graves no electricity or gas. Why do the dead of electricity and gas? Son, if you don't chat away your nurse, I can open you a hidden secret. Son, you can congratulate me, because that is where I fell in love with a woman who was buried in a nearby tomb. A pretty young widow. She was even on top of yellowed skulls hanging a bunch of hair. Sometimes we sit long night on the mound of the graves, looking at the full moon and large stars on "the big dipper", sang a quiet song in unison. Solid romance! When my beloved, beauty begins to run, joyfully and loudly laughing with the moon I run after her, fearing to fall into the open the old the grave and not to step in the soft shroud of the deceased. Run once her laughing and again, her one arm fell off. And I, clumsy fool in a hurry stepped on the skeleton of her hand, like a bear crunch! And gentle bone loose of my hand sweetheart broke down. Oh, how she is, that is your poor stepmother, was crying after that... Barely calmed her... She was crying sitting on grave plate under the shining moon is not in pain no, we, thank God, do not feel pain. My beauty cried as the woman who fell from a cupboard her favorite porcelain vase and smashed it to smithereens. We called the surgeon of a trauma, which is buried too far from our graves. So he helped us. After examining the bone, it made the diagnosis "open fracture". Then he took a plate of inside-out old blackened coffin and put it in a cast broken skeleton of the brittle hands of my wife. Dead the surgeon said, well, they say, Madam, that didn't run off on your skull or jaw and stepped on them, this is not careful Mr. dead, that is your lover flatfooted with my bony feet. We're dead chorus laughed, snapping jaws. The surgeon was dead too. We thanked the surgeon for medical assistance, and went on down the trail overgrown with weeds, under the moon on the territory of our own independent cemetery. After two weeks, we got married and invited guests. The wedding came influential guests even from distant cemeteries of our independent country. Deceased presidents, Ministers, bankers, prosecutors, jailers, judges, retired generals, folk singers, policemen, pickpockets, writers, composers, priests, prostitutes scam, customs officials, artists, drivers, miners, farmers, carpenters, plumbers, hunters, shepherds, journalists, drug addicts, taxi drivers, thugs, welders, boxers, category, rope-walkers, shoemakers, combiners, moneylenders, pimps, and many others. Your stepmother was sitting in a brand new shrouds and a place of honor at the table, made of varnished planks of expensive coffins of the former officials. Guests congratulated us with the wedding and wished them success in the eternal life and gave us bouquets of carnations, tulips and roses with long stems that they were taken from gravestones. My beloved was delighted and thanked the guests, happily smelling of fresh roses. Then the guests shouted "Gorko!"(Spicy!) And our shadows that resembled x-ray, merged. Your stepmother long kisses under a bright shining full moon, sitting on a landscaped former tomb of a wealthy dead man, whose grave is covered with weeds and thorn tree. About the honeymoon, about intimacy and passionate about the knocking of bones I won't tell, because it would be not appropriate and not ethical on my part.
Here's a fun carefree life, son. Sincerely, your late father Ultenby".
- Well, how? -Asked the tractor driver Sultan, having finished his story of his late father and their happy afterlife with his stepmother.
- What a horrible but funny and sad story, my God! What a beautiful love and a free life! -Khurshida said smiling.
- Yes - said the tractor driver Sultan, continuing to pick cotton.