Shortly before his death, her grandfather, Fyodor Sel Ivanovich Makarov, told this story to a resident of Komsomolsk-on-Amur Svetlana Erokhina. For many years he lived in the small village Zaprudye of the Khabarovsk Territory, which has now disappeared from the map of the country. The events that the old man told about happened more than half a century ago.
In the late 1930s, a large and noisy peasant family of the Kogevins lived near the Makarovs' house. The head of the family. Yegor, worked as a cattleman on a collective farm, his wife Raisa was a milkmaid. The six children of the Kogevins gave their parents a lot of trouble - it took a lot of effort to dress, shoe, feed, clean and learn the restless weather.
However, the parents had the most troubles and griefs because of their youngest daughter, six-year-old Vera. For her restless and mischievous character, she was called in the village of Verka the bully. Not a day passed that the girl did not commit some nasty thing: either a haystack would set fire, then it would smash all the eggs laid by the chickens, then the cat would pour kerosene instead of milk.
Yegor Kogevin, who doted on his youngest daughter, looked at her not always harmless pranks condescendingly. But the loud-voiced and unrestrained Raisa regularly gave Vera strong thrashing: either she would bruise with twigs, then she would slap her head. It happened that the mother, as a punishment, locked the naughty daughter underground or left her without supper. Raisa didn’t skimp on “compliments” to the girl, each time saying in her hearts: “so that you fail,” “so that the devils take you,” “so that you feel empty” …
One day in the spring, the Kogevin family was awakened unusually early by the loud barking of a watchdog. Yegor, putting on his sweatshirt, went out into the yard, deciding that uninvited guests had come to them. However, there was no one at the gate. Having driven the dog into the kennel, the man returned to the house. where he was met by little Vera who got out of bed.
The girl in a whisper told her father that a very kind grandmother had just come to her, who called her to live with her and promised to feed her with honey, candy and wheat cheesecakes. When asked where this grandmother had gone. Vera pointed to the door. Raisa, who was present at this conversation, began to shout at her daughter, telling her not to invent any nonsense, but to take better and sweep the floor.
Most of the day flew by with worries, and after lunch it suddenly turned out that Vera had smeared a whole brood of chickens with tar. The angry Raisa once again sent her daughter to the dark underground, giving with her a crust of black bread, and she herself went to the farm …
Parents who returned in the late afternoon immediately suspected that something was wrong - there was an unusual silence in the house. Yegor opened the underground and, to his horror, saw that it was empty. The children called from the yard told their parents that they tried several times to talk to Vera, but she did not make a single sound. They were afraid to look into the underground without parental permission …
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Strange hut
In a matter of minutes, the whole village, headed by the chairman of the village council, went up in search of the mysteriously disappeared girl. Several search groups were created, three of which moved into the taiga, one - downstream of the river and another - to the collective farm fields. Raisa and Yegor ended up in different groups combing the taiga jungle. Fedor Selivanovich Makarov, who turned seventeen that year, also entered one of these groups …
It was already beginning to get dark, and the search did not give any results. The villagers examined the ravines and hollows in the most thorough way and several times, climbed into large hollows of ancient trees and under upturned driftwood, shouted and whistled, but they could not find a loss.
At some point, Raisa Kogevin lagged behind her group, and suddenly, in the distance, she heard a faint children's voice, as if humming some kind of unpretentious song. Raisa rushed to the voice and suddenly found herself in a small clearing, in the center of which stood a low, solid hut, in the windows of which a light flickered. Knocking on the door. Raisa entered the house. An elderly woman in felt boots, a light quilted jacket and a bright satin shawl was bustling around the stove. Seeing the guest, the hostess kindly invited her to the table, placing a bowl of hot cheesecakes and a jar of fresh milk in front of Raisa.
The old woman listened attentively to the woman who had not touched the treat, who told her about her misfortune, and then began to scold Raisa for the bad words with which she now and then rewarded the unreasonable child. After speaking out, the hostess of the hut told Raisa not to tell anyone about their meeting, but returning home, after midnight, take an empty jug, go with it to the barn and there say into an earthenware pot all the bad things that she had previously said to her daughter. Then tie a thick cloth around the neck of the jug and bring it here tomorrow …
While the villagers continued their unsuccessful search for Vera. Raisa returned home and did everything as she was told. The next morning, without saying a word to anyone, she secretly went into the taiga. Most of all, then Raisa was afraid not to find that strange place with a mysterious hut. However, the woman’s legs seemed to lead her to the cherished home, and two hours later she again found herself in a familiar clearing. The old woman met Raisa at the porch of her house. She silently took the jug from the woman, and then said that Vera would return home today. But in less than a year, Raisa will lose one of the people close to her. This will be a payment for her for an unkind and intemperate language.
Wonderful return
Towards noon, Raisa returned from the taiga to the village. From afar, hearing the joyful barking of their dog, the woman rushed to the house with all her might. Opening the gate, she saw Vera squatting next to the yard dog, who was feeding the dog … a cheesecake - exactly the same as the strange mistress of the taiga hut treated Raisa.
The mother's first desire was to give the loss a good thrashing, however, as if an invisible lock at that moment chained her lips, and the woman's hand did not rise in order to properly spank the naughty daughter. Calmed down. Raisa approached Vera with persistent questions, but the girl, who looked quite contented with life, was stubbornly silent.
Only a week later, the younger daughter of the Kogevins began to speak. Her first words were: "I'm sorry, mom!" Then Vera told that on that ill-fated day from the cold and gloomy underground she was taken by a kind grandmother, who brought the girl to her forest hut and treated her to cheesecakes, gingerbread and fresh milk. According to Vera, who was absent from home for a little less than a day, she lived with her kind grandmother for several days, played with beautiful dolls and slept on a soft feather bed …
Since then, the younger daughter of the Kogevins seems to have been replaced. She was no longer mischievous, but on the contrary, in everything she tried to help her mother, who now often set Vera as an example for her older brothers and sisters. Yes, and Raisa herself no longer allowed herself to harsh statements and rash actions. Several months later, she decided to tell Yegor about her taiga adventure, however, hiding from him the words of the old woman about the inevitable loss that would soon befall her.
Yegor, whose father was an avid hunter and knew the taiga like the back of his hand, was very surprised to hear about a hut located in a clearing northeast of the village. He knew from his father that there had once been an old winter quarters in that place, but six years ago it burned down and no one else appeared there.
Gradually, the history in the smallest detail became known to all the villagers. Since then, and until her departure from her native village in 1947, the girl began to be affectionately called Lost. And in the spring of the next year, during a stormy flood, Raisa's husband, who, among other fellow villagers, was saving collective farm goods, drowned. Yegor's body was never found.
Whenever Svetlana Erokhina is going to give her naughty twin children a good break, she recalls an instructive story told by her grandfather Fyodor Selivanovich. It seems to Svetlana that this story is not just an everyday fairy tale or a folk fantasy, because even now one can feel a great life truth and sincerity in it. For it has long been known that it is not scary what enters our mouths, but what emanates from them.
Sergey KOZHUSHKO