in such a way that it seemed, if by her will alone, they would be torn apart. “How scary!” whispered Bagila, falling into her chair. “What’s scary?” “Her glare! She always looks at me like that. What did I do to her?!” “Who knows,” Malika sighed somehow pitifully. “She can’t stand me either. The poor girl does not even understand that she does not have a closer person than me, and who, if not me, should do her good. Whatever!” She frowned, making it clear that one could talk endlessly on this topic, but not now, when it was already dreary. “Tell me, why did you decide to leave me?” “I knew that uncle Sargel would not let go of this,” Bagila laughed. Malika, rounding her eyes, piercingly looked at her. “Oh, how clever you are! You knew he wouldn’t let go?! Do you know how I will beat you for disrespecting Sargel like that?” She, having rolled the newspaper into a tube, began to hit Bagila on the back. “Take that! Take that!” Having finished the “punishment”, Malika hugged Bagila tightly, kissed her cheeks and forehead. Bagila, freeing herself from the embrace, saw glittering tears in Malika’s eyes. Again, Malika cried. From grief or joy? For the past or the present? Or for future…? No one could answer this question, nor could Malika herself. She just got too worried in the last minutes, and suddenly she felt good, empty and cheerful, as if she had just begun to live. A few days later, Karatai received a long, vague letter from Sargel with cryptic allusions. He had never received and never written such long and confusing messages. He immediately opened the letter, but could not read beyond the introduction, and then forgot about it, and the letter lay in his pocket for several days. When Karatai finally read Sargel’s letter, he felt unkind in his heart, although he did not understand the essence of his relative’s reasoning. Sargel hinted at a recent event in his house and asked that Karatai not tell anyone about this, even Bagila’s mother, but, he says, he could not help but write about it, and that it was Karatai’s duty as a father to know about this ordinary incident, and Sargel did not dare to remain silent… “I often think a lot about how our family should always be clean before society, before people, so
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153