The sun touched the tops of trees with its rays, coloring them gently pink. Dew glistened on the grass. Potatoes in the garden blossomed with white flowers. There was a lull in field work. That time, when the harvest absorbed moisture, fertilizer and heat – ripened.
The peasants could make a break. End of July, beginning of August. Then, to gather strength and harvest, stock up for the winter.
The road slowly swam under the unhurried steps of the women. With curious eyes I peered into the surrounding world, so amazing and huge, full of the incessant singing of birds and the chirring of grasshoppers. The screams of scurrying swallows and the blue- blue sky. The day promised to be hot. Behind the coolness of the village the road turned into a field. Then my grandmother took off her slippers and went on barefoot. The women followed suit, saying that they would reach the bazaar and put on shoes. Slowly walked the field road through the space towards the bluish sinuous line of the horizon. The sun had not yet risen to its hot splendor, and it was easy and pleasant to walk, although soft sand underfoot. On Smolianka, on the way to the bazaar, we met a teenage girl Katya. Smolianka, this place has acquired this area from time immemorial, when in the place of the old Lybyd river bed, now covered with lush grass, spacious river flowed along which fishermen's boats swam. On the bank of this river there was a fishing village, and a place where the fishing boats were crooked and were washed down. And this place called Smolianka. Now it was a good place for grazing cows. Here Katia drove out Shpitkovo herd to Smolianka. She ran up to us and cheered with greetings. Just two kilometers from Spitec, Katya kicked out a herd of cows early. Grandmother, having found our Zorka, looked in her direction. Zorka stopped grazing and raised her face, and she began to hum down granny. Evgenia Lavrentyevna commanded her detachment:
"Come on, let's go soon, or else they'll follow us." – Quickly saying goodbye to Katya, we moved on. It was nice to meet a fellow tribe so "far" from home and see us too.
Through the field passed, when the sun was already palpably warming our backs. But the first trees at the roadside sheltered the walkers with a shadow, and it became easier to walk. The grandmothers decided to rest and sat down under the tree on the grass, at the same time and put on their shoes. Buzovaya, with its bazaar, was across the highway. It is enough to pass another two hundred meters. The noise of the trading crowd, the grunting, the mooing and growl of the animals, merged in the remote homonym of the already close bazaar.
In the market aunt Manya from Lychanka bought a pig. And he hovered in the bag with wild yells. With this pig, endlessly screaming in the bag, we walked through the bazaar, attracting everyone's attention. They traded everything here, horses, cows, puppies, kitchen utensils, shoes, clothes, animal feed, seeds and so on …
I could not understand what my grandmother was looking for. But when aunt Manya of Lychanka approached a woman holding a school uniform in her hands, she began to haggle, I understood everything. Grandmother made me wear a tunic. All at once approvingly nodded their heads, and the form became mine for ten rubles. The pig in the bag, then calmed down, then again yelled violently at the whole bazaar. And only when Aunt Manya of Lychanka left with a fellow villager who traded fodder, we got rid of the pig's shrill screech. She went on a cart with her fellow villager. And we came the same way late at night home.
