Describe a disliked thing and reflect a favorite thing

Nine-year-old Fanka Zhukov was sent to be an apprentice to the shoemaker Ariashne three months ago. On Christmas Eve, he didn't lie down to sleep. After the boss, his wife and a few waiters went to church for worship, they took out a small bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty tip from the boss's cabinet, flattened a piece of crumpled white paper, and started writing a letter. .

Before writing the first word, he glanced worriedly at the door and the window, and then squinted at the dim statue. On both sides of the statue were two rows of shelves, filled with shelves. Last. He sighed, knelt in front of the desk, and spread the piece of paper on the desk.

"Dear Grandpa Konstantin Makaryc," he wrote, "I am writing to you. I wish you a Merry Christmas and God bless you. I have no father. No mother, you are the only one left."

Fanka looked at the dark window, and the blurred shadow of the candle was reflected in the glass window; he imagined his grandfather Konstantin Makalich, It seemed like grandpa was right in front of me. ——Grandpa is the night watchman at Zhifaroviev’s house. He is a very interesting, thin old man, 65 years old, always smiling and winking. During the day, he always slept in the big kitchen. In the evening, he put on his large sheepskin coat, banged his clapper, and walked around the villa. The old female dog Kashidanka and the male dog Loach followed him with their heads lowered. Loach is a very obedient and lovable dog. Its body is black and as long as a weasel, so it is called a loach.

Now, Grandpa must be standing at the gate, squinting at the bright red windows of the country church. He must be stamping his feet in high felt boots, his clappers hanging on his belt, he was huddled up with cold, hunched shoulders...

The weather was so nice, sunny, and there was no wind at all. , dry and cold. It was a moonless night, but the whole village - the white roofs, the wisps of smoke coming out of the chimneys, the silver-white trees covered with thick frost, and the snowdrifts - were all visible. The sky was filled with stars blinking happily, and the Milky Way looked very clear, as if someone had polished it with snow for the festival...

Fanka sighed, dipped the tip of his pen, and Then keep writing.

"I was beaten last night because I fell asleep unknowingly while rocking the cradle for their little baby. The boss grabbed my hair and dragged me to the yard. She beat me with a belt. This week, the boss lady asked me to pick up a herring. I picked it up from the tail, and she picked it up and poked me in the face with the fish's mouth, and they sent me away. I went to the hotel to get a drink, and they asked me to steal the boss's cucumbers. The boss just picked up a cucumber and beat me. La, tea, only the boss himself is eating and drinking. They ask me to sleep in the corridor. When their little cub cries, I can't sleep, so I have to rock the cradle. Dear grandpa, have mercy on me. I'm leaving here and going back to our village! I can't bear it anymore! ...I kneel down for you and I will always pray to God to take me away from here, or I will. I'm going to die! ..."

Fanka curled his lips, rubbed his eyes with the back of his dirty hands, and sobbed.

"I will rub tobacco leaves for you," he continued, "I will pray to God for you. If I do something wrong, you can just give me a good beating. If you If I'm afraid I won't be able to find a job, I can ask the housekeeper to let me polish my shoes for God's sake; or I can ask Fijica to let me help herd the sheep. My dear grandpa, I can't bear it anymore. If you can't live anymore, there's only one way to die! ...I wanted to run back to our village, but I don't have any shoes and I'm afraid of the cold. When I grow up, I will take care of you and no one will dare to bully you.

"Speaking of Moscow, it is a big city. The houses are all owned by gentlemen. There are many horses, no sheep, and the dogs are not ferocious at all. On Christmas, children here do not walk around holding star lanterns, and no one is allowed to sing on the choir in the church.

Once, I saw fishing hooks sold together with fishing rods and lines in a shop window. They could catch all kinds of fish and were very expensive. There is one species that can even weigh as much as a pound of giant catfish. I also saw some shops selling various kinds of guns, just like our boss’s guns. I think a gun costs a hundred rubles. There are woodcocks, partridges, hares in the butcher shop..." But where did those things come from? The clerk in the shop refused to say.

"Dear grandpa, I am hanging them on the Christmas tree. When the candy is served, please pick a golden walnut and hide it in my green box. "

Fanka sighed sadly and stared at the window blankly. He remembered that it was always his grandfather who went to the woods to cut down Christmas trees, and his grandfather always took him there. What a happy day! The frozen mountain forest was chirping, and Grandpa was coughing from the cold, and he was coughing too... It was time to cut down the Christmas tree. Grandpa first smoked a pipe, then took snuff for a while, and talked to the frozen Xiao Fan. Kadou laughed for a while... Many small fir trees were covered with thick frost, standing there motionless, waiting to see which one would die. Suddenly a hare jumped out of nowhere and darted across the snowdrift like an arrow. Cry, "Catch it, catch it, catch it!" Hey bobtail ghost! "

Grandpa dragged the cut tree back to his house, and everyone started dressing up the tree.

"Come on, dear grandpa," Fanka continued, writing, "I beg you, for Christ's sake, get me out of here. Have mercy on me, the unfortunate orphan. Everyone here beats me. I was starving, alone, and miserable beyond words. I cry all the time. One day, the boss hit me on the head with a last, and I fainted. I finally woke up. My life is hopeless, even worse than a dog! ...I greet Alyona, greet the one-eyed Egor, and greet the coachman. Don't let anyone else take my harmonium. Your grandson Ivan Zhukov. Dear grandpa, come on! "

Fanka folded the paper full of words into four and put it into an envelope. The envelope was bought for one kopeck the night before. He thought about it and dipped it in Ink, write the address:

"Country grandpa collects"

Then he scratched his head, thought again, and added a few words:

"Kang Si "Tantine Makari"

Satisfied that no one had disturbed him in writing, he put on his hat, and without even a ragged fur coat, and in only his shirt, ran out into the street... One night he asked the butcher's clerk, who told him that the letters should be left in the mail box, and from there they would be distributed in various places on the mail coach, which also had three horses with bells ringing and drunken people riding on it. Postman. Fanka ran to the first mailbox and stuffed his precious letter into it. After an hour, he fell asleep with sweet hope. There was a warm kang, and his grandfather was sitting on the kang, with his legs stretched out, reading his letter... The loach was walking around beside the kang, wagging its tail...

But after all, the dream is You have to wake up. Occasionally, a carriage will pass by on the Christmas street. It is the young ladies from the noble family who go to buy gifts, or go to the aristocratic school for a party. A carriage slowly drives towards the door of the store. , that horse is not like the mayor's carriage. Fanka has seen the mayor's horse. That was the year before last, when the tsar passed by this city. In winter, most people still didn't wear warm clothes, but under the police. Under the coercion, they had to go to the street with bare feet and the bouquets and ribbons they were given to welcome their great tsar in the biting cold wind.

The tsar and the empress wore polar bears hunted from Siberia. The queen wore a velvet robe, and a scarf made of arctic fox fur was wrapped around her neck. The scarves sold in old Kajia's shop were far inferior to this, but he still wiped away the oily and wrinkled scarf. The pleated shirt collar, forced the second button into the first buttonhole - the first button was torn off when he had an argument with Xiaolina's mother - and then he used the money-smelling He wiped his face with his hands. He didn't understand why the Tsar and the Empress came so early, causing him to get up early to greet them without washing his face.

But Lao Ka's family was still very excited, because it was the Tsar after all. He really hoped that the Tsar or the Queen would look at him, just as he hoped that people in the city would come to his store to buy things.

By the way, it’s time to talk about the mayor’s horse. It closely followed the Ford sedan that the Tsar was sitting in. Although Russia has factories, the cars it can build are not as good as those in the United States. Some people say that the Queen The jewelry he wore was bought with the money to build the car - it was a white horse, covered with meat - Fanka didn't know the word "plump", so he could only use this sentence to describe it - it was full of flesh. The hair is white like snow, like the snow in Fanka's hometown. The mane and tail hair were probably just brushed by the groom in the morning. When the wind blows, a familiar fragrance floats from the horse. Oh, that's what the boss lady uses. The smell of shampoo - she often said that shampoo was the best and most expensive, at least in the city. I wonder what she would say when she smelled the smell of horses - on the grassland of Mana Donets The same broad belly is surrounded from top to bottom with silk made in China - which he bought at a high price from a British captain who visited the Old Summer Palace - and this is all to make its horse look more noble. , more status, but he doesn’t need to, because how many people in this city have horses?

The boss who served Fanka happened to have a horse. It was not as fat as the mayor’s horse, not as fragrant as that horse, and not as noble as that horse. But the boss thought his horse was still good, so he Like his character. The skinny horse used its legs like Fanka's grandfather's crutch to pull the boss's car to the entrance of the store.

Fanka woke up. He woke up in time because the boss was back. He saw through the window that the horse's tail - the tail is the most conspicuous part of the horse, as the saying goes, "a thin horse has long hair" - was braided into a beautiful flower braid with a colorful rope sandwiched between it. Of course, this is a description of the braid, but if the braid is a horse's tail, and it is the tail of the boss's horse, then something is wrong. It's just like the hill-like body of little Linna's mother next door wearing tights, the kind worn by ballet dancers. You can imagine what it would look like. But the horse in front of the door is just like that, but judging from the boss's aesthetic sense - he often compares the boss's wife to the Mona Lisa - it is very beautiful. The tail was made by the boss himself in order to go to church on Christmas Eve and took up his usual time to make money. Because he believes that even though his shop is a little small and his horse is a little inferior, he still has to do his best for the sake of face, such as braiding the horse's tail into a flowery braid, so that he can show off in front of the ladies - - But if Fanka, who has not gone to school much, hears the boss's speech delivered by his horse's tail (in fact, in the eyes of those with little education, it is actually a speech full of typos but that can win an award). joke), Fanka would think that was even more disgusting than talking about pig butts.

The boss squirmed his body - he usually didn't squirm like this, but twisted - and walked into the store. Finally Fanka knew why the boss was so abnormal. When the store door was pushed open, a strong smell of Volga hit his face. The boss staggered and almost fell on Fanka, but it seemed that the bedroom was more attractive to him. , a figure fell down with a plop and fell on the bed. At this time, the door opened again, and it was the landlady. The smell of tequila hit her face, and she almost fell on Fanka, but in the end she fell on the bed. Just like that, after a burst of footsteps, the store returned to silence. Fanka calmed down again after being anxious for a while. He should have been busy mopping the floor at this moment, but now he was sitting still. Normally, he would be looking for death.

Now, Fanka thought to himself, it would be fine if he sat, and no one would know, and it didn’t matter whether the floor was wiped or not. He gradually relaxed and remembered the letter to his grandfather again. Just as Fanka was leaning on the table and thinking about his grandfather, a pair of eyes stared at Fanka. The owner of these eyes was not an adult, but he was thinking of a sinful thing with an adult heart.

The boy also came back. He wanted to help the old lady and his wife into the house, but he didn't expect that they were faster than rabbits. He didn't need the boy to help him at all, and he walked towards the bed like an apple falling to the ground. past.

It turned out that the boss had pierced the fork into Fanka's flesh, "It's really contrary, and you dare to quibble..." The boss was a little tired, and he didn't care about Fanka's wound, and said to the waiter: "Put him in In the stable." The man pretended to care about Fanka and said, "Boss, look at Fanka, it's so cold outside, you see..." "Just do whatever I ask you to do. !” The boss was still angry but also very tired, so he went back to the house.

The boss left, and the boy looked back at Fanka, as if he had fainted. Looking at Fanka's bloody legs, the boy showed a smile. I thought: Goodbye Fanka, who told you to be so unlucky? After saying that, he dragged Fanka and left. Not to the back door of the stable, but to the front door, to the street.