I will begin my story with were, that is, with what happened once before my eyes. After three years of service in the army, fate threw me into one of the copper mines in the Middle Urals. He graduated from the eight-month GPSH (Mining and Industrial School) and became a foreman-miner.
On that day, I drilled the bottom with a hand-held hammer drill. I was in a hurry. A girl mine surveyor just dropped by and warned that a bomber was about to appear. And she came here, to the old workings, to take samples from them, to check whether the deposits of copper ore are large here. If so, then they will put a scraper here, shake the bottom of the hole with an explosion and start pumping ore as much as possible.
She left. My companion and fellow countryman, Kolka, followed her to the roadway to smoke. I already knew that this couple is having a serious romance, they are even going to get married. I work, the puncher rumbles. Suddenly I feel the air hose under my hand was shaking. It turns out that it is my assistant who is pulling him, the signal is giving about something amiss. So for safety reasons.
In the light of the miner's lamps I saw the death-white face of a friend. He turned off the machine and jumped to Kolka in several jumps. And he hums something and shows with his hand in the direction of the old development. There, I see, for some reason a whole mountain of fine rubble rises, which has not been recently. From above, new debris-stones are pouring down on it.
It turns out that the girl pushed the ceiling tie with a miner's hammer to take a sample of the ore from there. And she poured from above in a whole stream. In a matter of seconds, right in front of my partner's eyes, she fell asleep. He didn't even have time to run up to her. And how can you make it in time, if a real rockfall is pouring down from above.
We called the rescuers on the phone at the roadway, we are raking off the ore mountain. Nothing works. The rescuers who descended in fifteen or twenty minutes (after all, they had to run from the duty room to the cage, ride down to our five hundred and forty horizon, reach the faces), the mine rescuers also could not do anything right away. By that time, the old mine was almost completely covered with rubble-ore …
They buried Kolkina sweetheart in a couple of days. At the funeral, I heard from her old neighbors that they had long advised her to quit the mine. Or at least not go underground. After all, just a couple of years ago her father, a miner, died there. That supposedly someone's spell lies on their family.
But the sad story did not end there.
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About six months later, my neighbors in the hostel told that Kolka had become somewhat gloomy. In the evenings he constantly breaks away from them. They will go to dances in the evening in a miners' park or a village club together (they take their youth), and he will definitely fall behind on the way, go somewhere. Of course, I noticed it too. I asked him on the sly, they say, he got some new sympathy, or what?..
Is silent, does not say anything. Then one of the guys tracked him down. It turns out that he goes to the local cemetery in the evenings. It was located in the woods, behind the "piece of iron". We were surprised, of course. It's a gloomy place for dating …
I finished it all the same with time with my questions.
“You know,” he muttered embarrassedly, “an interesting girlfriend appears there. She looks a lot like Inna (who fell asleep in the face). From afar. She, that’s what a misfortune, doesn’t let me get close to her. She looks, smiles, but I only step a little, stretch out my hands to her, - jumps aside like a young goat. And beckons somewhere to the old graves closer, where the bush is thick. And if I run after her, it will disappear. Then suddenly from the other side it will seem …
Well, I think, my fellow countryman is simply breaking away from me, does not tell the truth. And he himself tried to find out from the local beauties at the dances what kind of mysterious girl appeared here.
“You’re local, you know everyone here,” I tell them.
The girls joked on the sidelines, and then they tell me:
- Yura, but something was wrong … - And they said that a few years ago there was a disaster in the village. There lived two twin sisters. They look like each other like two drops of water. Sometimes, jokingly, they changed suitors. The guy is walking with Anechka, and Ritochka comes to the meeting in the evening instead of her. They make mercy, dance, even kiss sometimes in full view of everyone. The guy walks an eagle. And Anya will throw him a tantrum the next evening: how dare she go for a walk with another, when she fell ill yesterday and could not come to the dances.
They died overnight. In case of fire at night. They burned down together with the house. Only the all-knowing neighbors talk about something else. They were burned by one overly jealous suitor … Since then, they appear at the cemetery or near their burnt house, looking for suitor for themselves. Local guys know that story, do not succumb to their lure …
“Now another ghost has appeared at the old cemetery,” the girls revealed to me a new secret. - Some of our neighbors have already seen Inna there. The mine surveyor who was destroyed by the scree near your face. Granny Grunya, our local witch, says that she even talked to her the other day. So Innochka complained to her that she was angry with the guy she fell in love with, but who then did not save her, the orphan, did not help out …
Soon Kolka, on my advice, paid off from the mine and went somewhere to Kazakhstan, to the virgin lands. In parting, he told me that it was hard for him to live here, he was constantly dreaming of something. Maybe this story will be forgotten in another country.
Perhaps she was forgotten, erased from his memory. Only here is what happened to her. Fifteen or twenty years later, close relatives of the compatriot told that once in those distant Siberian lands they found him (already married, it is true) at someone's grave. Lies, they say, on the ground and smiles, looking at the sky. Why he died, no one knows. Doctors diagnosed cardiac arrest. He was somewhat agitated.
So the old women tell the truth, not advising young men to wander at night near the burial places of the deceased.
Yuri Konshin