Grandmother sent me to the ridge for strawberries, along with the neighboring children. She promised: if I pick up a full tuesk, she will sell my berries along with hers and buy me a “gingerbread horse”. The gingerbread in the form of a horse with a mane, tail and hooves drenched in pink glaze ensured the honor and respect of the boys of the whole village and was their cherished dream.
I went to the ridge with the children of our neighbor Levontius, who worked on logging. About once every fifteen days, “Levontius received money, and then in the next house, where there were only children and nothing more, the feast began with a mountain,” and Levontia’s wife ran around the village and paid her debts. On such days, I made my way to the neighbors by all means. Grandma wouldn’t let her in. “There is nothing to eat around these proletarians,” she said. At Levontius, they gladly accepted me and felt sorry for me as an orphan. The money earned by the neighbor ran out quickly, and Aunt Vasyon again ran around the village, borrowed.
The Leontief family lived poorly. There was no household around their hut, they even washed at their neighbors. Every spring they surrounded the house with a miserable rumble, and every autumn he went to kindling. Levontius, the former sailor, replied to grandmothers that he “loved the settlement”.
With Leontief's “eagles” I went to the ridge, earning a horse with a pink mane.I already scooped up a few glasses of strawberries when the Leontief guys started a fight - the elder noticed that the rest picked berries not in the dishes, but in the mouth. As a result, all production was scattered and eaten, and the guys decided to go down to the Fokinsky river. It was then that they noticed that I still had strawberries. Levontievsky Sanka knocked me out of it “weakly”, after which I, together with the others, went to the river.
The fact that my dishes were empty, I remembered only in the evening. It was a shame and a fear to return home with an empty thuies, "my grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, is not Aunt Vasya, you won’t get rid of her with lies, tears and various excuses." Sanka taught me: push grass into a tue, and scatter a handful of berries on top. This is the "trick" I brought home.
My grandmother praised me for a long time, but I didn’t sprinkle the berries - I decided to take them to the city in tuesk for sale. On the street, I told everything to Sanka, and he demanded that I roll around - like a fee for silence. I didn’t get away with one thing, I dragged it until Sanka was full. I didn’t sleep at night, I was tormented - I deceived my grandmother, and I stole Kalachi. Finally, I decided to get up in the morning and confess everything.
When I woke up, I found that I overslept - my grandmother had already left for the city. I regretted that grandfather’s capture was so far from the village. Grandfather’s good, quiet, and he wouldn’t give me an insult. With nothing to do, I went fishing with Sanka. After some time, I saw a large boat floating out from behind a cape. Grandmother sat in it and threatened me with a fist.
I returned home only in the evening and immediately scrambled into the pantry, where a temporary "bed of rugs and an old saddle" was "made". Curling up, I felt sorry for myself and remembered my mother. Like her grandmother, she went to the city to sell berries.Once an overloaded boat rolled over and mom drowned. “She was pulled under a floating boom,” where she snagged. I remembered how my grandmother was tormented until the river let her mother go.
When I woke up in the morning, I found that my grandfather had returned from the house. He came to me and ordered me to ask my grandmother for forgiveness. Having shamed and exposed the lot, my grandmother sat me down for breakfast, and afterwards she told everyone “what he made her small.”
But my grandmother brought me a horse. Many years have passed since then, "grandfather is not alive, there is no grandmother, and my life is declining, and I still can’t forget my grandmother’s gingerbread - that wondrous horse with a pink mane."
