Vekor Pofzd stopped near the Rostovesky railway station. The usual bustle, noise and shouting arose. It was necessary to pay for the next duty station, departing in two hours. Passengers in a hurry, baggage handlers or porters, offering their services, tore things out of their hands. Two words 0 porters. I don’t know how it was in the center of Rosan, but for us, in the south, in the beginning, when the railways were just being built, it was enough to give the porter a patch. As he walked away, he gave thanks. This is a true story of a simple village peasant in a scroll and boots, slow and slow. Later, a nickel turned out to be not enough: the porter exchanged the scroll and boots for an apron and boots: the “gentlemen” began to give ten kopecks. And now you give two kopecks, and the brave porter remains dissatisfied. Chaadd a hundred words, otherwise he directly states: “What are you giving? This is not enough!” And look how many porters there are at each more or less significant station? In fact, they get along with the “people” who are subordinate to the buoy, they live on handouts from passengers and they don’t live badly. Why are there no or very few porters at the stations abroad? How do passengers get along without them? One must assume that “real gentlemen” do not travel abroad but would love to carry a lot of luggage with them and at the same time would be embarrassed to carry their belongings two steps in public.
CHAPTER P.
From Rostov to Nuban.
I remember the villages of Baturinskaya and Chernomori. Kalmyks. Holiday of the village. Position of Cossack women. Nonresident Death of Kukharenko. What is the history of Chernomor? Left bank of Kuban,
The closest person to our carriage when we boarded it in Rostov turned out to be some fat, unidentified man from the village. He was wearing a long black cloth coat, with a worn jacket visible underneath. On Viola's chest there is a large, dirty silver piece. The face is very puffy, the hands are plump, calloused, and tanned. The eyes of a warbler, running. By chance we started talking. It turned out that he knew well the routes along which we had to travel that night, namely, the northern routes of the Kuban region. In many cities these days he has some kind of trading business. Now he gets ready to thresh the meat. Last year he had 10 threshing machines that worked in the villages on someone else’s grain; now he has prepared 15 of them in Yulia, and two years ago he had only two threshing machines. Each of them pays off in two years and gives net income to the owner.
- And the funeral harvest is here today; I ask.
- Not everywhere. There is a bad one... Yes, that would go anywhere! But lo and behold: men have become smarter these days! - the interlocutor continued, apparently with annoyance; began to start their own public cars. And this means undermining our brother. Here in Donshchin%, but with the left hand, as we Fdem now, recently there was still good earnings with a thresher, but now it’s completely bad: in every
villages have two or three of their threshing machines. This year I’m thinking of sending them away from the railway road to Beisuzhok and Beisut.
At the last words, something struck me, I remembered my life on the bank of Beisut in the Kuban region and therefore asked:
— Have you been to Baturink®?
- How not to be! There was, although a long time ago.
- Please tell me exactly when.
- For the first time. he began, I was there with my late father, when I was about sixteen years old. Nokoinnik was a peddler. Even then, near this very village, the Kalmyks almost got away with us. It was a long time ago.
- In the sixties, right?
— Tav, it must be in the early 1990s. This village was remote, and we didn’t go there afterwards. My parent died long ago, I became the owner, and a dozen years passed, and I went through Baturinka again, when I went to the Berezanka Fair.
- Well what? did Baturinka gain weight after the sixties?
- She has grown up, she has become much more opposite than before.
- Are you thinking of working for BeisuzhE$? Are there just farmsteads there?
- How are the farms? Now there is a whole village there. The church was recently consecrated. I’m thinking of sending two cars there, but I just need to find out first if anyone was there last year? - he continued as if to himself.