The next day we buried "brother". Everything was quite civil. Only at the end of the ceremony the most pig-like mourner said: "In short, sleep, Tolyan, we, damn it, will never forget."
After work, I did not go into the trailer. I was walking to the exit and at the very gate I noticed a man kneeling in front of the grave. On the monument there is a photograph of a smiling boy with pits on his cheeks, and under the photograph there is an inscription: "Kolya Kiselev, 1978-1989".
The man tried to get up and swayed. Then I managed to help him.
- Are you feeling bad?
The man shuddered, turned around.
- Young man, - he said, - there is a church, a cross at the top, tell me, does God exist?
- Since the church stands, it probably exists … - I said uncertainly.
- If so, why did he take Kolya from me?
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- I dont know. Was he sick with something?
- No, I was sick. I drank hard. His wife, Tatiana, died when she was three years old. It was I who drove her to death. She suddenly began to waste away, get tired. X-rays showed a tumor. They did a biopsy. It turned out that the tumor was malignant, it had already metastases.
- Was it too late to do the operation?
“They asked us for almost five thousand dollars for the operation. I phoned the Ministry of Health, wrote a complaint - in a solid obscenity, it did not work out otherwise. Maybe that's why they reacted. My wife was sent to the Blokhin Center, but the operation was never done. They said late.
- Was Tatiana afraid of death?
- Most of all, she was afraid not of death, but for Kolya. Even when she was dying in oncology on Kashirka, she begged: “Just don’t leave Kolka, take care of him, otherwise you will not have peace from me. I will appear to you in a dream, I will not give you life."
The man stopped. Rubbed with right hand in the area of the heart. Tears sparkled at the corners of his eyes.
- Once I got drunk, Kolya began to put me to bed, I got mad and hit him. He was hysterical … And in the morning … In the morning I woke up, got up … Kolya was hanging on a belt from my trousers. On the door. Already cold.
- Yes … - I gasped.
- I also wanted to hang myself, but I didn't have the courage … I started going to church, confessing, it still doesn't help. Only here, at his grave, something is revealed in me that cannot be explained … All that remains is to cry and believe that there will still be an opportunity to ask for forgiveness from loved ones in the next world. If, of course, he exists …
- And if not?
- Why not, if Tanya keeps her word. She comes to me in a dream, shakes her head. I can't sleep a single night!.. No, no, there must be something else … If there is another world, then it is precisely so that some people, who have not had time to ask for forgiveness from others on earth, could do it there.
