Savior

In the winter in the pre-TV era, women went to gatherings in the evenings. A certain hut was chosen, where the neighbors met. How was the place of the collection determined? Is it difficult to explain even now, from the height of my years and life experience? Family as a family, with children, cares, but after all every evening I welcomed my neighbors to the detriment of my business. I would not be able to do this, if only I was alone. Later they began to go to the TV, and then the evening gatherings gradually ceased, the TV in every house replaced live communication.

My mother often took me with her, I was very fond of detailed women's conversations. I remembered childhood, youth, and many interesting, breathtaking, inexplicable stories were heard. A leisurely rustic dialect, with local turns of speech, with the life-story of events, at times, gave pleasure more than the telecast "Visiting a fairy tale." I did not like the TV, I still read and listen with great pleasure, than I look. I remember, we will come to our neighbors, Nastya and Pal Philippi, and there they are already sitting on a long wooden bench, talking, discussing something.

Nina, daughter-in-law, agronomist, usually did not participate in conversations, worked on housework, washed and ironed, and then sat down with knitting and told an unusual story that happened to her in her youth.

Nina was left without a mother early, but with a good father she was able to study for an agronomist. I lived in the city with my aunt while studying, but I went home often, visited my father, my younger brother, and my stepmother, whom I also loved. I went by a suburban train, a leisurely "cuckoo", which came to the station at seven in the evening. But then it was necessary to go five kilometers further by a field road, bypassing, somewhere in the middle of the road, a vast gully-tract, Horned.
It was spring, March. Winter that year was snowy, but a happy spring quickly melted the snow. Nina walked herself along the grassy thawed patches, now and then, over the remnants of the snow crust, it was already getting dark. Somehow it turned out that there were no fellow travelers, but the road was many times hozhena-perehozhena, there was no fear.

And here is the Horned One, half the way passed. It remained to go down the slope, to cross a narrow bridge over the stream, and there the lights of the village would appear. The stream was small, sometimes it was almost dry in the hot summer, but in the spring it was filled with thawed water, it became quite turbulent. On the side was an earthen mound, a dam, and there was a road for transport, and here, cutting the way, walked pedestrians. Nina had a flashlight-a beetle, such a buzzing miracle device coming into action from the work of the hand. From time to time, she lit her way, but the lighting was very weak, the flashlight had served its time. The noise of a stream running along the bottom of the brook could already be heard, when suddenly a cat came up to Ninin's feet with a meow, Nina shone like a cat. Where did she come from, what did she do, so far from the village? The cat was domestic, it is obvious, she rubbed herself tenderly about Nina's feet. Nina stopped: "Kiss-kis," she called, the cat continued to patch on. Nina stroked her, the cat arched her back, swirling around her legs, easily got into her hands and the girl moved with her to the bridge. But then the cat hissed threateningly, clawing at the clothes, Nina hurriedly dropped her to the ground. She does not go away, she rubs at her feet again. Became somehow afraid, but it was necessary to go and the girl again took a step to the stream. The cat continued to mingle, getting tangled underfoot. Mingling frustration with fear, Nina resolutely lit the road with a bug, the bridges were slightly covered with water, she prepared to step on them, but she had not time to step. The stream sharply moved the blackened boards from their seats and swirled them, carrying them into the darkness. Nina jerked away, a minute earlier she would have stepped on unreliable bars and was banged down by water. There was nothing to do, you need to go to the dam. "Kis-kis," Nina called the cat, but she did not respond. The torch buzzed and hummed, and the cat just as suddenly disappeared, as it appeared.

Nina came to the house in complete darkness. The cat, in fact, her savior did not go out of her head. What was it? Accident? What was she to do in a remote, almost still winter field? Where did she finally disappear? Stepmother made her conclusions: "This is your mother saved, her soul, through the cat, kept on the edge of danger."