Every night before sleeping, those children used to sit and gossip.
They used to sit in a circle around the bonfire and say whatever came on their tongue.
From the dimly lit atmosphere, the aura of Sandhya peered into the room with dreamy eyes. Silent shadow-apsaras flew from every corner and carried strange stories in their wings.
It is true that children used to say whatever came in their mind; But in his mind only the bright flowers of life, tinged with the colors of love and hope, used to bloom. His entire future in his imagination was like a clean and long rest day; There was no period of time between the Big Day and Easter.
Somewhere behind the twinkling curtain of flowers, as if the pulsating light of all life was being absorbed into the shining light.
The words only sounded and they were somewhat awkward to understand. There was no beginning and no end to any story. Not only this, he also did not have any definite form. Sometimes all the four children used to speak together, but still they did not disturb each other's words.
They were all looking at that heavenly beauty of a silent and speechless light, in which every word lit up with its truth and serenity, where every story was clean and alive, and where every fiction had a dazzling end.
All those children were so similar to each other that in that dim aura the youngest Tonshek of four years old, Loizka, the eldest ten years old, could not be distinguished. Everyone's face was thin and pale; The eyes were huge—the eyes whose eyes intrigued—penetrating the mystery.
One day in the evening I do not know from where the cruel hand reached towards that celestial light and it ruthlessly struck all the fanciful imaginations of holidays, tales and tales; There was a letter from the post that father came to work in the summer land of Italy!
Something unknown, new, strange, and beyond his comprehension appeared before him. He was standing there, tall and gigantic, but his face, eyes, nose, ears, hands, feet were nothing. Neither did he come from a street full of public noise, nor from a quiet tumultuous church; He was also not a resident of the Dwabha around the bonfire, nor was he a character in the stories that were told there.
Not only was it pleasing, but it was not particularly painful, for he was dead!—for he had no eyes to tell where he had come from, nor his tongue, with which he could speak by words. can express something. In front of that spirit-like formless soul, the intellect stood still, frustrated and sullen with shame. As if that formless creature were a dark, limitless, and bottomless sea, on the banks of which one stood silent and helpless to cross it!
Tonshek asked in surprise - "But when will he return?"
Loizka rebuked him with an angry look - "If they are useful, then how can they come back?"
Everyone fell silent – as if they were standing on the shore of that dark, boundless ocean, beyond which they could not understand anything.
"I'm going to fight too!" - said seven-year-old Mattishe suddenly - as if he had understood everything correctly. and in fact
Whatever I needed, that was it.
"You're too young a child!" That four-year-old Tonshek whom he had just now. Didn't even know how to wear his underpants, seriously condemned. .
Milka was the thinnest and weakest. In his mother's big shawl. The guddi-mundi was sitting in such a way that it looked like a bundle of walking on the road. Out of that shadow's quivering nest, like a little bird, she said in a soft and soft voice - "What is the fight? Tell me, don't tell the story of the battle." .
Bhaitishe explained - "'Listen, the fight is like this.
Man people one. pierce each other's knives, cut each other with swords - shoot with guns! The more you hit and cut, the better. No one can tell you anything, because that is what has to be done – it has to be done. This is what is called a fight – understood.
But Milka did not listen - she did not understand - "But why do they cut each other's throats - why do they stab - why do they shoot?"
"For your king!" Matishe replied.
And everyone fell silent!
His hazy eyes saw something huge rising up in that broad dim light before him, lit by the glory of glory! All of them were sitting motionless – neither moving, nor moving – even breathing as if they were taking fear and fear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Perhaps in order to lighten the burden of that painful silence, Matische again gathered his thoughts and said with great ease - "'I too am now going to war to fight the enemy!"
"What happens to the enemy? Does he have horns?" - Milka's soft voice suddenly asked.
"And then what else! Otherwise, how can he be an enemy?" - Seriously, rather, only in anger, Tonshek replied emphatically.
And now even Matishche did not know the exact answer to this question,
Still, he paused for some time and said - "'I think. ..it wouldn't happen!”
Loizka said restlessly, “How can he have horns? They are human beings just like us" - then said after some thinking - "They do not have only soul!"
Then a long silence.
Tonshek broke his silence - "But how does a man come in handy in a fight?"
“That means they kill him? - explained Mattische with ease.
"Dad promised to get me a gun!"
"If they're dead, who's going to get you the gun now?" - answered Loisca, turning back.
"And they killed them - with their lives?" "Yes, dearly!"
Mourning and silence cast their eyes into darkness—into the unknown—imaginably beyond the heart and mind.
And at the same time the old grandfather and grandmother were sitting on the bench lying in front of the hut.
In the thick clod of the garden, the last ray of the sun suddenly shone bright.
Sandhya was mute, but a long, stuffy and somewhat suffocating subakan came out of the cowshed into a wordless void... Maybe there the cow was crying for her child!
Not knowing how many days later, the old man and the old lady were sitting very close today, holding each other's hands - but with their heads bowed, they both saw the end of the heavenly aura of that evening with silence and tearless eyes...