“Daughter, pour some water for the old man into a bottle, please. Your tap doesn’t work,” said an elderly man in tattered clothes, leaning on the fence and extending a plastic bottle. Olga paused her work and turned toward the fence.
“Yes, the tap hasn’t been working for two years now; something broke or was stolen, and they haven’t fixed it. The authorities have other concerns.”
Olga washed her hands in a bucket near the shed and dried them on her skirt hem.
“Let me fill it for you. We drilled a well this year to make sure we’d have water.”
Olga took the bottle and unscrewed the cap.
“Phew,” she grimaced at the terrible smell from the bottle. “I’ll pour it into a new one for you; I have plenty.”
She left and quickly returned to the fence with water in a clean plastic container.
“Thank you, dear, may God keep your husband healthy. Just as you didn’t begrudge me water, may he be revived.”
Olga looked at the elderly man. His worn face, etched with the lines of time, made her pause for a moment:
“Are you traveling far? Maybe you’re hungry?”
“I go wherever my eyes lead me. I never say no to a plate of food.”
“Well, if you’re not in a hurry, I just made chicken soup,” Olga opened the gate and invited the traveler in.
“There’s a table under the apple tree; sit down, I’ll be right back.”
Olga slipped off her galoshes and walked up the porch into the house.
“Who is this?” her husband asked, leaning in the doorway.
“I don’t know,” Olga shrugged. “Some traveler asked for water, and I offered him some food.”
“Why are you suddenly feeding a stranger?”
“I feed stray dogs and cats, and you don’t notice, but here—”
“And here is an old man, he’ll swipe the last forks, saw what kind of homeless look he has.”
“And he smells the same, but he’s still a person.”
“You’ve completely lost your mind, Olga. Feed him and send him on his way.”
“Don’t worry, go lie down. Does your back hurt?”
“It hurts.”
“Then go lie down and rest.”
The Semyonovs lived in the very center of the large village of Kvashenka. On one side was a forest, on the other, wheat fields. Olga’s husband, Alexander, worked at a livestock complex built five years ago, thirty kilometers from home, and was a truck driver. After their children finished school and stayed in the city, Olga left her job in the school cafeteria because her legs hurt, and she took care of household chores.
Neither young nor old, but their health was failing. Sasha increasingly suffered from back pain—a professional ailment. Olga ran to hospitals with her own issue, even traveled to the city for various scans. That’s how they lived. Hard domestic labor in the countryside is irreplaceable.
Olga brought a plate with bread and boiled eggs in her pocket outside. A simple wooden table, covered with oilcloth, stood in the center of the courtyard, under a sprawling apple tree. Sitting at the table, one could see both the garden and even the street.
The hostess wiped the oilcloth with a rag, laid a wide white towel with two maroon stripes along the edges on the table, and placed a plate with sliced bread on it. She took the eggs out of her pocket and handed them to the old man.
Clean up there, under the apple tree, the chickens will come and sweep it away.”
The old man took two white-shelled eggs into his weathered, dirt-stained hands and pursed his lips. Olga ran into the house and quickly brought out a plate of steaming soup, a spoon, and a salt shaker.
The old man stared at the soup for a long time, inhaling its scent as if he could satisfy his hunger with it alone, and he didn’t touch the food. He was disconcerted by the white towel, the unexpected invitation to the table, and the hot dish. All he had lived on during the last month of his wandering was a piece of bread.
The elderly man began to cry.
“I’ll go, I won’t be in your way, I have things to do in the garden, and you eat,” said the hostess, sensing his confusion.
“No, please sit with me.”
“Then tell me, who are you, where are you from, and why are you wandering?”
The old man took the spoon and said:
“My name is Stepan Ivanovich Chernykh. I’m from Mikhailovka.”
“Wait. But Mikhailovka is an abandoned village. It has been for about five years now,” Olga interrupted.
“That’s right. Two of us remained in the village after the electricity was cut off. Me and Granny Nyura. I buried Nyura last winter. And this summer, I realized that if I were to give up my soul to God, there would be no one to bury me. So I got up and left. I walked through the nearest villages, visited the administrations. Everyone just shrugs their shoulders and turns their noses up.”
“And your children, relatives?”
“I have a brother, but he lives in the north. We don’t really talk.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll find out what our social service can do to help. Eat up.”
Olga stood up and went into the house.
“Sasha, Sasha, this old man has nowhere to go, he’s from Mikhailovka, let him stay with us until Monday.”
“What? Olga, have you lost your mind?”
“I’ll make up a bed in the summer kitchen and let him sleep there, we have enough food for everyone, why not help a person?”
“Oh, woman, you clearly don’t have enough worries and work, now you’ll be fussing over this old man.”
“You know, Sasha, my great-grandmother was left without a husband and sons during the war, living with her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. She grieved so much, was so distraught, until one day a woman with three children knocked on her door. They had fled to Siberia, not from a happy life. And my great-grandmother took them in, housed them in her home. The house was huge, with many rooms. She washed everyone, fed them, and let them stay. I still remember how my mother told me that if someone sincerely asks for help, without ill intent, help them; it’s not a person coming to you, it’s God teaching you. And my great-grandmother’s despair went away right then.”
Sasha waved his hand.
“Here it starts. Do what you want. Rub some ointment on my back again, it’s acting up.”
When Olga came out to the yard, the old man was already sitting in front of an empty plate.
“Seconds?” asked Olga.
“No, thank you. I’m afraid I’ll feel ill.”
“We have a bathhouse today, you stay. The summer kitchen is free, there’s a couch, I’ll make up a bed. All services are closed until Monday. We need to wait.”
“How can I… I can’t stay without paying.”
“Don’t worry about it. Am I short of water or food? Stay.”
The man said nothing and continued sitting on the chair.
The hostess began carrying water to the bathhouse, the elderly man sat down right beside her:
“And why isn’t the host helping, let me carry the buckets, and you pour.”
“Sit, rest. The host is sick, his back is out. It’s such work that he’s constantly suffering from back pain. Today, we agreed to go get another injection again.”
“I can gather some ointment and after the bath, I could massage him, put the vertebrae back in place, if needed.”
“Thank you. I won’t refuse the ointment, but he’ll hardly trust anyone with his back.
Stepan Ivanovich helped Olga carry water, and then she showed him the summer kitchen behind the house, and she and her husband prepared to leave.
“Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be back soon, I’ll lock up everything,” Olga said.
The old man nodded.
“Do you need anything from the store?” he asked.
For a minute or two, the old man rummaged through his wheeled bag, then pulled out a five hundred ruble note and handed it to Olga.
“I need a towel and scissors. If possible, please buy them.”
“I have a towel, I’ll give you one,” Olga replied.
“And why do you need scissors?” Sasha asked.
“Just to trim a bit, I’ve gotten quite shaggy.”
“I’ll trim it. I have clippers,” Olga said and refused the money.
An hour later, the Semyonovs returned. Olga checked the bathhouse and opened the door to let the heat out. Meanwhile, Sasha went into the shed and immediately rushed out.
“The grain crusher is gone.”
“I didn’t touch it, it’s heavy. It was in the shed this morning.”
“It’s all your grandfather’s doing!” Alexander hastened his steps. Olga intercepted him.
“Things were missing even before. Don’t wrong the old man with suspicion.”
Before this incident, indeed, things had started disappearing from the Semyonovs’ yard: various tools, a new axe, a car wash that the son had given his father for his birthday had also vanished. No one knew where to look. The neighbors hadn’t seen anything suspicious. Nobody had been lurking in the gardens. Nothing was missing from others’ properties.
Sasha yanked the door of the summer kitchen and turned everything upside down. The old man watched him from the sofa, frightened.
“Did anyone come in while we were away, did you go to the shed?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. But someone came to your place. Took a bucket and left. A red-haired guy.”
Olga and Sasha exchanged glances and said simultaneously.
“Timofey!”
Olga and Sasha had been gone for an hour or more. The bathhouse had cooled down, and the old man closed the door, pacing back and forth in the yard.
The owners returned and discussed what had happened for a long time. There was no time for the bathhouse. Alexander drove into the yard and started pulling various tools from the trunk.
“And he didn’t admit it, the scoundrel, that he took it. How did he get the keys to our gate? And he calls himself a nephew. Looks can be deceiving.”
“I don’t know, Sasha. If it weren’t for Stepan Ivanovich. Oh, I forgot about him. And the bathhouse…”
Olga wanted to go to the old man, but then Alexander mishandled the grain crusher, lifted it, and howled in pain.
“Don’t touch him, don’t lift it,” the old man shouted at Olga, coming from behind the house and hurrying. “You lie down, I’ll check.”
The old man tended to Sasha for a long time. Then he sent him to rinse off, while he prepared some kind of concoction.
“Apply this, cover it with a plastic bag, then a blanket to warm up the spot where I massaged it.”
“Understood,” Olga nodded. “Here’s the towel, and go wash up, I’ll follow. I’ll find some old clothes of my son’s for you now, not to wear these clean clothes on a clean body.”
After the bath, Olga trimmed the old man’s hair, made his bed with clean linen, and handed him clothes.
“Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be having dinner soon.”
They all sat at the table in the house. Sasha, Olga, and the old man. Cleaned and trimmed.
“It feels like I’ve known you for a hundred years,” Sasha suddenly said.
“Yeah, me too,” Olga nodded.
“That’s how life is sometimes. And here, take this, herbs to brew tea for your blood vessels,” the old man handed Olga a small bag.
The Semyonovs slept very well that night, peacefully. At last, Alexander’s back stopped hurting. Olga calmed down, and her legs didn’t ache anymore.
In the morning, she knocked on the door of the summer kitchen—silence. She opened it. The old man wasn’t there. The sofa was made, everything neatly arranged, and a note in pencil on a sheet of notebook paper lay on top. “Thank you for everything, I’ve gone to my brother’s.”
“Sash, Sashka, the old man has left,” the wife ran into the house.
“How did he leave?”
“Just like that. Here,” she handed him the note.
“Should we catch up?” the wife asked.
“No. He left so that we wouldn’t hinder him. And you were right, Olga. People don’t come to us by chance. It turned out that this old man was sent to us. To show us what kind of relative we have, to open our eyes, and even to help with illnesses.”
Stepan Ivanovich, as he got into the police car, knew they were taking him to a nursing home, a home for those with no relatives or those who had been abandoned.
“Two young policemen took him from the city hospital while on duty. It was from one of them that the old man heard they were heading to the address of the nursing home.
Now, Stepan Ivanovich regretted that he had gone wandering in the summer, even though he had his own home, not a governmental corner. He thought about reaching his brother who lived in the north by foot. To see the motherland in his old age and save on airfare.
The village where the old man lived emptied quickly, within about ten years. Then there was no more electricity. For three years, he lived with his neighbor, old Nyura, from a small house near the forest in Mikhaylovka. Then, one winter, she died, and Stepan Ivanovich gathered his simple belongings and went wherever his eyes led him.
And so he walked. Some gave him bread, others let him stay the night. In the fields, in the forest, he slept under the open sky, lying down on a mat however it turned out. Such a blessing when the sky is cloudless, like a blanket dotted with tiny glowing peas. You lie there, unable to close your eyes, because everything is incredible. A beauty that can only be seen, not conveyed in words. Stepan Ivanovich lived so many years but never noticed this beauty; his eyes were always turned to the ground, from which the mother-nurturer could not be washed away. But now the time had come to look up at the sky. And he looked. And saw everything around, noticed, lay there and knew for sure that all this was his home, every blade of grass, every bush and tree, and every drop of dew.
In the villages, they especially disliked an old man. When he was tired, he tried to settle somewhere in the administration, asked to find his brother, but the officials only shrugged and turned up their noses.
That’s why he gathered his strength and walked on. In one of the villages, he met a good family. They fed him, let him stay the night. But how to live with strangers? They have their own life, their own rules. Stepan Ivanovich feared disturbing them, being out of place. He left. Ran away, so they wouldn’t pity him.
Then a misfortune happened. He stumbled over an iron rod sticking out of the ground and cut his leg so badly that he almost lost consciousness. Some kind person took him to the hospital. And there, on a cot with white linens, the old man seemed to crumble, relaxed, and his body softened, ailments popping out one after the other like from a horn of plenty.
One day visitors came to Stepan Ivanovich.
“Go downstairs, Chernykh, visitors for you,” the nurse commanded.
“And who would come for me? I have neither relatives nor acquaintances here.”
“A man in uniform came, the police, and two others with him.”
Stepan Ivanovich was seriously frightened, but he put on the slippers the nurse had bought for him at his request and slowly started descending to the first floor.
“Is it him?” a man in a police uniform asked, turning to the people standing next to him.
“Yes,” nodded Olya.
“Yes,” confirmed Sasha.
Stepan Ivanovich was confused. Anything could be. The situation was unclear. Standing before him were the same man and woman with whom he had lived in the village of Kvashenka.
“That’s good.”
The man in the police uniform took out documents from his black folder and handed them to the old man:
“Hello, Stepan Ivanovich. Here are your documents, take a look, if everything is okay, sign where the tick is. You can think until next week. Then you will be discharged.”
Stepan Ivanovich took the papers with trembling hands.
“This is a good place,” Olga explained. “There are free treatments, I’ve already arranged. They patched you up here, and there you’ll get additional spa treatments. It’s a wonderful nursing home.”
The old man stared at the Semyonovs without blinking.
“People have done good, clearly from a pure heart.”
“A nursing home, then.”
“Yes, Stepan Ivanovich, you need to gather your strength. They’ll discharge you in a week and then what? Where will you go?”
“Wherever my eyes lead me, as I walked all summer. I’ll go to my brother.”
“I can’t give an answer about your brother yet,” the policeman interrupted, “since there’s no response from all departments yet. Bureaucracy.”
“Bureaucracy,” the old man repeated. “Thank you all, I have dinner now. If that’s all, I must excuse myself.”
“Yes, I’m done,” the man in uniform turned and left.
“Oh, here are our apples, from that very tree,” Olya handed a bag to the old man.
Stepan Ivanovich suddenly remembered the chicken soup Olya had fed him on the day they met.
“Do they feed you well, may I bring something?” Sasha asked.
“They feed well. I have everything.”
“Towel, slippers?”
“I have everything, Olya, thank you, you’ve been very kind to me.”
Stepan Ivanovich quickly turned and walked up the stairs. He was very afraid that tears would disgrace him. Right here, now. He would have to wipe them, explain… he didn’t want to, and walked away again.
And again the hospital days stretched on. Only the fact that he had his insurance card, passport, and a veteran’s ID saved Stepan Ivanovich. They treated him. Fattened him up. He got some sleep.”
“And now they’ve discharged him from the hospital. The police were in a hurry. ‘We need to act quickly for the youth,’ thought Stepan Ivanovich as he got into the car.
The ride was long. They passed a birch grove, a pond with ducks swimming, and by black-and-yellow fields dotted with sunflowers. They entered the territory of the nursing home slowly. The old man even managed to get a good look at the three-story building. An elderly woman in a white coat and tall cap, looking more like a cook in appearance and attire, invited Stepan Ivanovich to come inside. She showed him to a room, completed the necessary paperwork, and brought some linen.
‘Can you manage, or do you need help?’
‘I’ll manage,’ the old man waved off.
The room was small, elongated, designed for two occupants: two beds, two bedside tables, a small table, and two chairs on one side near the entrance, with a wardrobe opposite on the second wall. Everything was from Soviet times but looked sturdy. The second bed was made up, and on the bedside table lay a book, glasses, and a glass of water.
Stepan Ivanovich realized someone else was living here.
At that moment, a man entered the room. He looked younger than Stepan Ivanovich, but their passports showed they were the same age.
‘Oh, a new addition to our ranks. Great. I was about to start talking to a mouse here. Andrei Valerievich,’ he extended his hand to the man.
‘Stepan Ivanovich, welcome. Are there mice here?’ he extended his hand in return.
The man on the opposite bed burst into laughter:
‘A toy one, my grandson gave it to me so I wouldn’t feel sad.’
‘Do you have a family?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m here for a month, for treatment. It’s like a sanatorium on this side, and a nursing home on the other.’
‘So first here, then there. I have no one. I have a brother, but couldn’t find him.’
‘Well, you can live anywhere. The main thing is to keep a fighting spirit, then hardships are easier to endure.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Stepan Ivanovich.
And the days flew by. The roommates became friends. They always found common topics to talk about, enjoying their conversations. They had similar views on politics and life, which is why perhaps they never needed to search for topics to discuss. They were lucky.
As the month drew to a close, Andrei Valerievich went home and Stepan Ivanovich felt sad.
Increasingly, while walking on the grounds of the pension, he would wander onto the territory of the nursing home. And it was like two different worlds. Like a grim reflection was to the right of where the old man lived.
‘Tomorrow is your last day with us, Stepan Ivanovich, gather your things, you need to be ready. After lunch, you’ll be discharged.’
The old man nodded.
In the morning, they served him semolina porridge with a piece of butter. Stepan Ivanovich stirred the spoon in his plate for a long time, not wanting to eat.
The same woman in a white coat and tall cap, resembling a cook, came to the old man after lunch, which he skipped.
‘Okay. Let me help, what do you have to carry? I have a cart.’
The cart, like those taken from supermarkets, stood in the corridor opposite the open door. The woman quickly loaded Stepan Ivanovich’s bag and package onto it and rolled it away. He just managed to keep up. But he didn’t want to rush. It had been good here. Too good, for the last five years.
‘Wait, where are those, they were just here?’ the woman bustled around, surveying the area. ‘Someone will come for you soon, wait,’ she said and left.
Stepan Ivanovich stood with the cart in the middle of a small courtyard, waiting for his fate.
‘Stepan Ivanovich,’ waved Olya, jumping out of the car that had stopped at the gate.
She approached and asked:
‘Well, how are you, did you rest, did you get treatment?’
‘Yes. I’ve been discharged.’
‘Excellent. Then let’s go. Sasha will take your things.’
‘Where to? I’m supposed to stay here, they will come for me,’ he indicated behind the building.
‘Who’s coming? We came for you. First off, I found your brother. Myself. And secondly, we renovated our old house, relaid the stove while you were resting, managed to do it, now you can even winter there if you want. Oh. We didn’t tell you, it’s a surprise,’ she laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.
Sasha stood nearby, hands in his pockets:
‘The house is still strong, I’ll have time to gather some firewood before the cold, already arranged it, and maybe I’ll bring some coal.’
Stepan Ivanovich tried to control the tremble in his legs but couldn’t. Barely managing, he got into the car and all the way home wiped the thin stripes of salt on his cheeks.
‘There,’ the Semenovs pointed out the house. ‘We used to live here. Ours, that one, two houses down, you can even see the roof from here. Now we only use this plot for planting. But we thought, if you stay, live here. We only need the land. Here’s a room and a kitchen.’
‘I don’t need much. Just how can I ever repay you?’
‘What do you mean? A house without an owner quickly falls apart. But you look after it, and we’ll know what needs fixing there. Without you, we would have neglected it or torn it down. Live.’
During the New Year’s holidays, Stepan Ivanovich flew to his brother’s. He stayed with him for a month but returned. He and Sasha went to Mikhailovka in a Gazelle and took what Stepan Ivanovich deemed necessary from his house.
The old man set aside part of his pension in Olga’s name. She found out about the significant amount she owned a month after Stepan Ivanovich Chernykh’s departure.
The old man lived with the Semenovs for almost ten more years.”