I want to tell a story about our local homeless Georgiy. This man turned out to be not just a bum, but a real predictor of local significance. They say that he was a slave in Dagestan for a long time, and during a special operation he was released and brought to the city of Stavropol.
He outlived all the other homeless people hanging around in our area. We all often saw him at a local construction site, he laid bricks in pallets, but more often he stood silently near the store where he was given alms. I was always afraid of this bum, and when I returned from work with the last trolleybus, before leaving, I got ten rubles in advance and silently gave him this ten.
I often noticed that some people talk to him about something and only then give him money. You never know what they are talking about! I was not particularly interested in this. More than once I noticed a 12-year-old schoolboy next to him, who constantly asked a homeless person something. This guy always barely trudged from school, he often had some kind of dull look. Before entering his entrance, he sat for a long time on a bench, staring indifferently at one point, and then somehow doomedly entered the house.
Once I decided to stand near the store and listen to what kind of conversations a schoolboy and a homeless person might have. I didn't hear the beginning of the conversation. The boy with an unhappy look asked the bum: "So will there be a three or not?" - "Uh … yes, you are a cunning boy, you need to read so that there is a triple", - answered the bum. The schoolboy took off his cap and tilted his head slightly.
The homeless man, sniffing the top of his head, was silent for a while and thought about something. “There will be a three,” the homeless man answered after a little reflection. - But you read. What a lazy boy you are, however,”George reprimanded him. "So surely there will be a three?" - did not calm down the schoolboy. “It will, it will be, I'm telling you this, George,” the homeless man answered confidently and with some dignity.
The boy took out of his school bag a bun in a transparent package, which had probably been lying between the textbooks for six long lessons and had flattened badly during this time, handed the bum and walked with a confident step towards his house. I was so surprised by this conversation that I involuntarily began to listen to the conversations when I had to pass by.
The next time I saw a neighbor. It was a young girl of about 20 years old who rented an apartment on our floor. Probably, the conversation with the bum had already come to an end at that moment. I don't know what they were talking about, but in the end he shouted after her:
"Look for the bird!" And what was my surprise when less than two days passed, as my young neighbor carried an empty metal cage to the garbage chute. I also took out the trash and, of course, asked her: "Is the bird dead?" -
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“Yes, canary, I found dead this morning,” the girl replied with a sigh.
The bum never said anything to me personally, and I never asked him about anything. But one day, on my long-awaited weekend at the end of March, I decided to quickly drop into the store for cottage cheese, and then I was going to wander through the forest and take pictures of the spines and snowdrops that appeared in the forest.
When I was giving ten to a homeless person, he unexpectedly grabbed me by the wrist and somehow angrily told me: "Where are you going, stay at home, there are hooligans." The mood has soured. “And the snowdrops have probably not bloomed yet,” I thought. And I decided to stay at home and just sleep.
And in August, when the whole country was worried about the fate of photojournalist Andrei Stenin and we all believed that he was still alive, I went out with a camera and a sign "Andrei Stenin - we are with you" to take pictures with all the kids from our yard for a flash mob.
Again I saw that boy next to the bum and was surprised. School activities are long over. What does this kid want to know again? I decided to stand near the store and listen. Again I did not hear the beginning of the conversation, but something could be made out. The boy stood with a package (apparently, a treat) and asked: "Will they flog or not?" - and looked hopefully into the face of a homeless person.
"You are a sly boy, but what do you think?" - the bum scolded him. “I didn't want to, it happened,” the guy made excuses. The homeless man silently fixed his gaze somewhere over the boy's head. “You will get a slap on the head, but they won’t be flogged,” he said after some thought. "True?" - the boy did not calm down. “It’s me, George, I’m telling you,” the homeless man answered meaningfully and with dignity.
The boy put a bag (probably with food) into the bum's hand and quickly left, glancing suspiciously at me. I gave the bum a ten. A homeless man unexpectedly snatched from my hands a file with the inscription: "Andrey Stenin - we are with you."
While I stood in complete confusion from his trick, he twisted this file in his hands, peered at the text, then his gaze settled on some point only known to him. He pointed to my camera, which was hanging around my neck, and said: “He snapped, snapped too, an iron head, sorry, sorry - everything at once. They knew this would happen. War? Where is the war? He is not with us, there he is."
And he pointed somewhere to heaven. He spoke hurriedly, realizing that I was about to leave. Then I didn't even begin to listen any further, I just wanted to get away from this man as quickly as possible, then it seemed to me that he was talking nonsense. Having photographed it, I grabbed my file with the inscription and quickly left.
And then the whole world learned that Andrei Stenin had died, and only then did I remember the words of the homeless. The "iron head" the bum was talking about meant, as I later realized, the helmet worn by correspondents in hot spots.
Here's a story.
Natalia IVANOVA, Stavropol