When Mikhail told his wife that he had six months to live, Vera couldn’t calm down for a long time. She screamed, cried, and broke dishes. And then she announced that she was filing for divorce.
The bus gave a loud roar and drove off towards the city, leaving behind a large cloud of dust.
Mikhail Fyodorovich watched him as he stood at the deserted bus stop, and clearly understood that now everything was definitely…
…there is no way back.
When the old PAZik “puffing and groaning” disappeared behind the hill, the dust settled, and the sound of the engine finally died down, Mikhail began to look around, trying to remember where his grandmother’s house was.
With difficulty, but still remembered. Despite the fact that I haven’t been here for about thirty years.
“It’s good that he didn’t sell the house…” Mikhail chuckled. “At least there will be some kind of roof over his head.”
His grandmother had bequeathed this house to him shortly before her death, and he had long intended to sell it because he had not planned to live in the village. But for some reason he kept putting off the sale, which greatly irritated Verochka.
– Why do you need this wreck? – the wife was indignant. – Let’s sell it and buy a better car.
He nodded, and then conveniently forgot about his promise. Something stopped him.
Mikhail picked up his bag, threw it over his back, and hobbled along the dirt road.
As he walked, he involuntarily recalled everything that had happened to him recently.
And a lot of things happened.
At first, he accidentally saw his wife in the company of another man, and from the way they hugged each other for a long time, he realized that this was far from their first meeting.
If he were younger, he probably would have made a scandal. Probably even a fight.
But at 55, why do they need it? Especially since there had been no love as such between them for a long time. As well as children.
Michael simply resigned himself to it.
Later, when he was already fed up with constant headaches and fainting spells, which often ended in loss of consciousness, he decided to undergo a full medical examination.
More precisely, it wasn’t even he who decided, but he was forced to do it at work.
“You came too late…” the oncologist spread his arms wide.
“How much time do I have left?” Mikhail asked in a confused voice, holding the test results and MRI in his hands.
— Understand me correctly, it is difficult to make forecasts. Especially in your case. It is like with weather forecasters: they say it will rain, but there is not a cloud in the sky… In practice, people with such a diagnosis live no more than three or four months. Six months at most.
Mikhail sighed heavily. “Why did he even agree to this examination?”
————————————————————-
It is much easier to live in ignorance than to live knowing that you will soon be gone.
The doctor prescribed a bunch of medications, advised him to spend more time outdoors and give up bad habits, after which he hugged Mikhail tightly, patted him on the shoulder and said:
— Be strong! And remember: there is always room for a miracle in life. What if you get lucky…
When Mikhail told his wife that he had a maximum of six months to live, Vera could not calm down for a long time. She screamed, cried, and broke dishes. And then she announced that she was filing for divorce.
“You don’t care anymore, but I don’t want to be a widow!” she explained her decision. “And I don’t want to bury you.”
Michael shrugged.
He understood perfectly well what this desire was connected with, and did not object. “She still has her whole life ahead of her.”
Although, deep down, he, of course, really needed the support of a loved one right now.
And of all his relatives, he only had Vera. His parents had died long ago, he had no children, no brothers or sisters either, because he was the only child in the family.
“Home walls heal…” – Mikhail remembered the words of his grandmother and decided to move to the village.
He divorced his wife, leaving her all the property (they won’t need it in the next world), sold his parents’ apartment for pennies, because there was no time to wait for an interested buyer, and sent most of the money to an orphanage, leaving himself a little for food and medicine.
Now there was nothing holding him back in this world: he could live out his last days in peace. Although no. He still had to find a person who would bury him after his death.
However, there shouldn’t be any problems with this: in exchange for a house with a plot of land, there will be more than enough people willing to buy it.
Mikhail stopped near an old, rickety gate with a rusty sign that read “Zemlyanichnaya St., 12,” pushed it hard and entered his plot.
Once upon a time there was a blooming garden, a well-kept house with beautiful carved frames, but now there is only a sea of weeds, a leaky slate roof overgrown with moss, cracked walls…
“The perfect place for someone like me…” Mikhail smiled for some reason.
Suddenly, his eyes darkened, his head spun, the ground began to slip out from under his feet…
He leaned his hand on an old apple tree, stood for a few minutes, coming to his senses, and headed towards the house.
During the first week, Mikhail Fyodorovich rarely went outside. Only to relieve himself and to the store a few times. The rest of the time, he lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling, where determined spiders, not losing hope of catching at least some prey, were weaving their webs.
Mikhail had no hope, so he simply watched this process indifferently. And he also thought about how worthlessly he had lived his life.
He thought again of his ex-wife, who, as it turned out, had never loved him, and he regretted that he had not had the courage to leave her earlier.
“And now what? Nobody needs me, alone in a half-ruined house, waiting for the old lady with the scythe…”
When Mikhail began to appear in the yard more often, he began to notice a woman with a headscarf and a braid in the neighboring area… “Could this be the ‘old lady’ I’m waiting for?” he grinned.
However, the woman, in addition to the scythe, was also quite skilled with other tools.
She swung an axe when chopping wood, and hit something with a hammer when nailing it down…
In between work, she would hang laundry on a line between the trees, feed the chickens, or talk to someone else in a gentle voice.
Moreover, he didn’t see with whom exactly.
But he heard it. He heard a joyful, ringing bark. At these moments he froze and looked sadly towards the fence.
Mikhail had long dreamed of having his own dog.
But Vera was against it. “That’s all we needed!” she said when he suggested getting a puppy.
Again, he resigned himself. No children, no pets… It was hard to live with. But he lived. “Many people live like this, and am I worse?”
Now he might want to change something, but it’s too late to change anything…
One of those days his head started to hurt terribly, and Mikhail decided to take a walk near the lake.
I walked for a long time, about two hours for sure.
Then suddenly he heard a cuckoo and waved his hand to it in greeting. Once, as a child, he often came here and asked the bird how much time he had left to live, and it silently flew away. “It will probably fly away now too…” Mikhail was sure, but he still asked:
– Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long do I have left to live?
The bird looked at the man strangely, as if to say, “If you know too much, you’ll grow old quickly…”, and then for some reason changed its mind and decided to answer.
“Ku…” she began cheerfully, but suddenly fell silent and, frightened by something, flew away.
“Well, yes…” Mikhail was saddened. “It turns out that this year really will be the last one.”
His head was spinning from excitement, his legs gave way and he leaned against the tree trunk and carefully slid to the ground. Then he lay down on the soft green grass, spreading his arms out to the sides.
I watched the clouds slowly float overhead, the birds fly. Then I closed my eyes… and the world around me instantly plunged into darkness.
Mikhail stood on the shore of the lake and waved to his ex-wife, who was standing on the opposite side and calling him to her. He entered the water and confidently walked to the other bank. The water had already reached his chin, but he kept walking and walking, not intending to stop. After a while, he completely disappeared under the water and only then realized that he was going to the bottom – an unknown force was dragging him down, and he did not even resist it, humbly waiting until he died.
When Mikhail opened his eyes, he saw a puppy diligently licking his cheek.
Mikhail was surprised at first, but then his face broke into a wide smile: “Well, I’ve been dreaming about a puppy my whole life, and at the end of my life he found me himself.”
– Afonya, let’s go! There’s no point in being friends with alcoholics! – he heard a familiar voice.
Mikhail rose in surprise and looked at the woman in a headscarf with a fishing rod in her hand.
– Why am I an alcoholic?
– In our village, only alcoholics lie on the ground during working hours. They have nothing else to do.
– I just lay down.
– Yeah, tell me stories. You hardly leave the house, only to go to the toilet and to the store. Yeah…
Only now, having stood up, Mikhail realized that he was talking to his neighbor.
“That’s why the voice seemed familiar to him.” Before that, the sun had blinded his eyes, and he had seen only a blurry silhouette that looked more like an angel.
The woman and the puppy headed towards the village, and Mikhail watched them go, not understanding why he was so agitated. No, he understood. “He’s not an alcoholic and he won’t let anyone call him that!”
Returning home, Mikhail decided to prove to his neighbor that she was wrong about him.
Armed with a scythe and a rake, he quickly cleared the area of weeds and raked the grass into one large pile.
The neighbor walked back and forth across her plot and pretended not to notice her neighbor at all. But Mikhail saw that she was stealthily casting glances in his direction.
In the evening, a puppy ran onto his property.
Mikhail wanted to drive him away (he didn’t want him to get used to him), but when he realized that it was useless, he resigned himself to his presence. He even played with him a little, receiving such a “charge” of positive emotions that it even became easier to breathe.
– Afonya, where are you? – Mikhail heard his neighbor’s voice.
– I have him! Hello.
— We’ve already seen each other. Afonya, go home. It’s late, and anyway… You shouldn’t be friends with strangers.
– I’m not an alcoholic.
“Don’t you think you’re trying too hard to convince me of that?” the neighbor chuckled. “Such squalid houses are usually only found in those who drink a lot and don’t want to work.”
After waiting for the puppy to climb through the hole in the fence onto her property, she went home without even saying goodbye.
“Look at her, what an important person!” Mikhail was sincerely indignant. Although in some ways he, of course, agreed with her.
The house would need to be put in order.
In the following days, he worked hard “to spite his neighbor,” trying with all his might to prove to her that she was wrong: he replaced the rotten boards on the porch, patched the old roof, sealed the cracks in the walls, and also sanded and painted the carved frames.
I had to spend almost all the money, but at least the house didn’t look so mournful now.
And the area was also noticeably transformed. Mikhail Fedorovich received genuine pleasure from the work done.
And in the evenings Afonya often came running to him, and he played with him for a long time, and then even talked.
– You shouldn’t get used to me, – said Mikhail, holding the puppy in his arms. – You have an owner. And I will be gone soon. Maybe in a month, maybe in two. I don’t know. An insidious and terrible disease has overcome me. But in any case, thank you. For giving me real joy and fulfilling a long-standing dream.
The neighbor stood near the fence and heard this whole conversation. And tears were flowing from her eyes.
The next day she brought her neighbor some apple pies, and they started talking for the first time.
Mikhail didn’t tell anyone about his illness, and she didn’t say that she knew. That’s how they lived. Sometimes she would drop in on Mikhail with pies, sometimes he would help her with the housework. And Afonya barked even louder and more joyfully.
One month passed, then a second, then a third.
The headaches continued to roll in from time to time, but Mikhail paid almost no attention to them. There were more important things to do: chop wood for Galina Petrovna, go fishing with Afonya, take the trash from the yard to the dump.
He had no time to think about his headache. And he had no time to think about death either.
True, when he lost consciousness once again, he still decided to tell Galya about his problem.
But for a long time I didn’t know where to start.
“Galina, here’s the thing…” he began the conversation over a cup of tea. “In general, I didn’t want to tell you that…”
“Well, there’s no need to say anything,” the neighbor smiled, handing him a pie.
– No, you don’t understand… I have to. I don’t have much time left, health-wise. The doctor said…
– Yes, I understand everything, Mishenka. Don’t rush to the next world. We’ll live a little longer…
Mikhail lived with Galina Petrovna in the winter because he was not prepared for the cold at all: he had not repaired the brick stove or prepared any firewood. He thought that the old woman with the scythe would take him away by then.
But she seemed to be in no hurry to get to him.
“It’s strange, half a year has already passed, and I’m still alive…” Mikhail was surprised.
Spring also flew by unnoticed: in chores and worries. Then summer came. Exactly a year had passed, and he was still on his feet and even his pain had subsided a little.
“We’ll live a little longer…” he recalled Galina Petrovna’s words and smiled.
“But really, where am I rushing to? I will live as long as I am allotted…”
– Afonya, shall we go fishing? – Mikhail called his beloved dog.
“Woof-woof,” came a loud bark. Not as loud, but with a bass voice, but still just as joyful.
And next to the gate stood Galina Petrovna and watched her men go. She had already lost one loved one, but she would fight for Mikhail. Until the end.
