This story is told by Lev Leonidovich Melnikov from the village of Zhdanovo, Volokolamsk district.
“What was the impetus for THIS, when IT began, whether during the day or at night, what were the forms of HIS primary expression - I do not know. Only when I was sitting late in the evening in a large room of my five-walled country house, I heard clear wooden knocks, as if someone was hitting the board with a sharp plank.
The knocks were clearly coming from the kitchen, where there was a large Russian stove. I got up, went into the kitchen, turned on the light, but found nothing suspicious there. Turning off the light, he returned to his old place. After a while, the knocks began to be repeated. Thoughtfully, I remembered that yesterday it seemed that someone was knocking there, and the night before yesterday, only I did not pay attention to it.
And then it dawned on me. Rats! Of course, the rats are taking revenge on me. Recently, I successfully completed a rat hunt that had the habit of climbing into bed with wine while sleeping. When, bending over, for the first time I felt on my bare shoulder, freed from the blanket, a soft, light, warm weight, as once in childhood, a thought flashed in my sleep brain - a kitten, of course, this is a kitten.
However, a moment later, instantly eliminating the remnants of sleep, the waking brain was pierced by the thought: "What the hell, kitten?" I live alone, or rather, together with a half-blind, old, completely lost interest in life, hunting dog - Welsh Terrier Aira, who indifferently sleeps under the bed in the next room. There are no cats and kittens in the hut and cannot be!
I open my eyes and at the same time instinctively make a sharp movement with my body, shaking off an adult rat sitting on it from my shoulder, which, having slammed on the floor, quickly crawls into the gap between the stove and the wall. The same situation was repeated the next morning, after which I arrange a real hunt for her - I fill the whole house with traps with bait.
This story with a rat is unpleasant to remember, I can only say that it nevertheless fell into a trap with its claws, after which it was strangled by my dog. Terriers, both Foxes and Welsh, are primarily rat-catchers, for this business they were created by nature, it is not a sin for them to strangle a rat. But for a long time I ate myself with the thought that, quite possibly, the rat was looking for friendship with me.
That she should have grabbed my sleeping man's neck, for example, the carotid artery, if she wanted to. I didn't grab, didn't even bite, and I paid her back with what!
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On the other hand, I justify myself, what kind of person can sleep peacefully if he knows that a rat will climb on him at night. What's on her mind? Who knows? No one. And now the rats are harassing me with some incomprehensible noises.
- Fedor, - I once asked my neighbor, - can rats knock on wood with a piece of wood?
Fyodor has a colossal life experience, he went through three wars and is perfectly healthy, reasonable, he works part-time, being retired, at a meat processing plant.
“Rats can do anything,” the neighbor replied authoritatively. - We upholstered the sausage shop with stainless steel, welded all connections, no through holes in the shop. And they steal the sausage anyway. We racked our brains how they do it. What turned out to be? First one rat crawls through a hole in the ceiling, where wires and fixtures for lamps pass, then another rat clings to its tail with its teeth and hangs, then a third rat on the tail of a second, and so on all the way down - forming a chain of rats alive from ceiling to floor, along which, like on a gymnastic rope, the supply rat transports the most delicious product from the workshop to its attic shelter. And yours is easier. If he pulls back some splitting off with his paw and lets go - here's a blow to a tree with a tree.
I again furnished the kitchen with traps with delicious bait - cheese, sausage. They made noise all night, but they did not touch any of the baits. The sounds have become more diverse. After a series of ordinary strikes, like a cutting board on a wooden tabletop, there followed a series of folding strikes, like giant wooden dominoes placed on the bottom and starting to collapse. After that, I usually turned on the light - when the light was on, there was no noise at all. So, examining the untouched traps one morning, I suddenly realized with cruel clarity that the rats had nothing to do with it, SHE came and settled in the house - an evil spirit.
I purchased this old house near one of the distant regional centers of the Moscow region in the early 80s, and ten years later, due to a number of circumstances, I left a high-paying job in Moscow and settled in it permanently, without waiting for the onset of retirement age. Opposite my house, windows to windows, a certain Luda lived with her husband. About my age, tall, overweight, with an imperious loud voice, she made a good, from her point of view, career on the railroad, which allowed her to treat her fellow villagers somewhat condescendingly.
Having started her career as a switchman, she grew up to be a foreman of painters and plasterers, while for many years she was a permanent trade union representative of her production department. If someone, after reading these lines, smiled, then, I assure you, in vain. Being by nature a commander and an ardent champion of justice (in her understanding, of course), she spoiled a lot of blood for her immediate superiors.
I would not have mentioned Lyuda in my story if two years before these events she had not brought her mother from the Orenburg homeland and settled in the house, whom, due to her age, it was immoral to leave alone in the Orenburg region. Katerina Pavlovna was the complete opposite of her daughter. In age, like my parents, since 1913, the silent, quiet old woman was practically illiterate and could hardly make any sign in the pension statement when receiving money. She started working in the field at the age of eight and never went anywhere in her life.
Where did she get it and how did she keep her inner nobility, gentleness and extraordinary mind? Most likely, it was given to her by nature. The husband disappeared in the war. Katerina Pavlovna, left with two children, did not marry again, although there were proposals. A feature of her nature was not only giftedness, but also a quiet, at the same time deep sincere faith in God, although she was not familiar with the holy Gospel. Truly blessed are those who have not seen and believed.
All of humanity can be roughly divided into three categories. The first, the most numerous, are people who cannot listen to the interlocutor and never listen to anyone. The second category includes people who are able to listen to the interlocutor, but do not like to do it. Katerina Pavlovna belonged to the third, smallest category of people who know how and who love to listen to their interlocutor, so I often visited them. Her stories were simple, unsophisticated, but valuable in that there was no invention in them.
For example, she told how she alone dug a well in her garden, how she once got lost in meadows familiar from childhood, how her sorceress-neighbor, turning into a cow, once followed her on a dark evening. By the way, she was the first to tell me the story about "stone Zoya", which was later covered in some authoritative magazines. I also had something to share with her. In particular, I told her the well-known gospel story about the Apostle Peter, who walked “on water like dry land” until he doubted and fell into the water.
This story affected her so much that Katerina Pavlovna went behind the partition, apparently to pray, and did not go out that evening again. She understood this story correctly: not to doubt - this is the essence of every faith, its meaning and content. There are many who have doubted, but few true believers.
God's grace extended to her to such an extent that she could heal people by whispering into the water and sprinkling it on the sick, although she never considered herself either a medicine or a healer. She cured, in particular, a village girl from a strong stuttering, whom all doctors, including MONIKI, had already abandoned, and she calmed down crying, restless babies instantly. With a red rag she treated erysipelas of the skin, with fried wheat grain - hemorrhoids. And all only with prayer, with prayer. She did it unselfishly. In general, she avoided engaging in healing activities, since after these sessions she herself was ill. She treated only in extreme cases. In addition, there are people who are able to persuade the dead, they would be glad, but you will not refuse …
It was with these neighbors that I shared my misfortune, of course, not counting on any help.
“That's it,” Luda said, having listened, contrary to usual, without interruption. -And we look every evening at your house - a fireball is hanging over your chimney. At first I thought the moon was so red. I look - no, the moon is aside. I called Kolya, then my mother. Yes, they say, a ball of fire. They decided that you were burning something in your stove - and that was the flame that came out.
Two years ago, main gas was installed in the village, and the heating became gas. The need for stoves has disappeared, I just did not have time to disassemble it yet.
“I didn't heat the stove,” I muttered sadly. Meanwhile, Katerina Pavlovna, sitting in the shadows, stirred in her chair and simply said:
- I am a little familiar with this case. I do not know if it will work out, but I will try to help you. Tomorrow at nine o'clock in the morning I'll come in, prepare hot coals for my arrival, I'll take the rest with me.
She came as promised. Together with her, with a stern mysterious face, Luda entered the house, and Luda, who immediately sat down at the table in the middle of the main room, bowed her head and closed herself, as if separating herself from the rest of the world, with a large shawl, and so motionlessly sat through the entire procedure, which lasted about one and a half hours.
Katerina Pavlovna slowly fumigated with incense, sprinkled door and window openings with holy water, whispered the words of some prayers in every corner of the house. At the end of this action, they silently, without looking back and without speaking to me, hastily left my home.
I waited. The day wore on more slowly than usual, and the evening was unusually long. It all started quite late, around half past one in the morning. There was a soft slap, as if someone very resilient had jumped to the floor, then quite distinctly - the clanging of teeth, which, however, did not last long - about two or three minutes. After that, the familiar sharp wooden blows, including those of the domino principle, lasted within an hour.
And then a new number followed - with a crash, the clang of metal and breaking glass, sounds - as if dishes fell on the kitchen floor. I could not resist, got up, turned on the light. Everything was fine in the kitchen and the dishes were in place. Leaving the light on, with understandable annoyance, I tried to fall asleep, and early in the morning, it was not yet seven, I went to the neighbors with a message about the night spent. The doors of their house were open, there was no need to ring. Katerina Pavlovna was sitting in the twilight of her little room on a stool, half-turned to me, with a detached look, completely lost in some kind of her thoughts.
- Well, how? - Without changing position, she asked quietly.
I understood that with my story I would give her very great grief, because she sincerely wanted to help me, but there was nowhere to go. I told, perhaps with annoyance, everything as it was. It would seem that nothing has changed either in her face or in the position she occupies, but all the same, in my gut, or something, I felt her pain. The painful silence lasted two or three minutes.
For myself, I have already decided that I will keep the electric light constantly on in the kitchen, since these phenomena did not occur in the light. This thought greatly calmed me, because latently I was experiencing strong nervous tension. Suddenly, as if an inner light illuminated the face of my companion. With a smile that rarely visited her, she turned to me:
- So HE did not know. HE came for the last time.
Whom my savior had in mind, I did not specify. However, since that day, silence has reigned in my dwelling at night. For many months, along with uninvited sounds, mice, rats, crickets-spiders disappeared - everything that accompanies life in a village house.
Katerina Pavlovna died three years later, at the age of 86. Her death, if I may say so in general about death, was not difficult. Stroke, in a day she was gone. I paid off with my own hands and dug out a deep, almost two-meter grave in the dense ground of the station cemetery.
