The fireman went up to the driver again and talked to him.

- Let's slow down for a second, I'll help you, but don't hesitate! he said.

Indeed, the train stopped, my mother jumped off. Without looking back at the train, she walked with her sacks at the ready along the railroad tracks, calling on all the saints for help. But what has risen here! From all the cars, like ants, soldiers poured down, who jumped down shouting:

-What happened? Why the stop?

But the fireman calmly waved to the soldiers, indicating that they should jump back up.

- Riflemen, riflemen delayed! he shouted. -I am fine!

The train picked up speed and left, and my mother walked, not herself from fear, from fear and trembling before the mercy of God, Who hears our prayers and does not abandon those who hope in Him.

Mother found her father alive, but very weak. He was infinitely happy about the arrival of his daughter, asked her mother to celebrate the Bright Holiday with him, and then return to Moscow. And so it happened. Mother exchanged tobacco and vodka, stocked up on food, and saw her old nun friends. At twelve o'clock at night, when the procession before Matins was still standing at the closed doors of the church, my mother was alone in the church, standing on the soleum, where she had just finished reading the Bible. Suddenly she heard her mother's voice: "Christ is risen!" And her mother was evacuated to Kazan, she was in the hospital there. Returning to Moscow, my mother sent a request to Kazan. She was told that her mother had died on the eve of the Bright Resurrection of Christ, at twelve o'clock at night, when the Paschal Matins began in the church.

My grandfather Veniamin Fedorovich blessed my mother, saying goodbye, with his baptismal cross, ordered her to give the cross to me, his granddaughter, for prayerful memory. I lost this cross when the gold chain frayed, but honest people found it and returned it to me. The grandfather also took care to wrap his daughter in a fur coat for the trip. "You will go from here in the car to the house, so you must not get cold," said my grandfather.

This coat has been serving us for fifty-five years. In it, my father shoveled the snow near the house, in this sheepskin coat I wrapped the children when they slept in a stroller in the cold in infancy. And now, when I am already over seventy, more than once a day I climb under the "grandfather's sheepskin coat", warm myself and wish the Kingdom of Heaven to Dr. Veniamin Fedorovich.

The landlady unexpectedly returned to the apartment of building No. 1, which we occupied. It was an NKVD worker and her son, an armless teenager. They found that their wardrobe and closet were missing many expensive things. They accused us of theft and filed a complaint to search our apartment. Together with the investigator, they rummaged through all the corners and chest in our frozen apartment, but did not find anything. Of course, my parents had a lot of worries, because we had a lot of icons and "forbidden" religious literature. But my mother figured out how to explain all this, and told the truth: "Many of our friends, when they left for evacuation, brought us their belongings for safekeeping, so many things here are not ours."

However, it was no longer possible for us to stay in the passage room of building No. 1: there was a man nearby who breathed anger at us and poured it out hourly. Then we began to drag our belongings again from the third floor to the first floor, to our old inhabited frozen apartment. That's when dad came up with the idea to build a brick stove in one of the rooms. He built a temporary stove and led a chimney out of the window. Together with my father, we enthusiastically extracted fuel, dug holes in the yard, where in the first months of the war we buried all the fences and sheds demolished (to avoid fire). We also brought firewood from warehouses, made the entire father's office, which was not heated, with woodpiles. Our whole family huddled in the kitchen and dining room for the first winter, where the stove was built. Plus fifteen was considered quite warm, and often the temperature dropped to plus five. But they even envied us, because others were completely freezing: it was difficult to get firewood in Moscow.

One day, my father, Seryozha and I were driving a homemade sleigh with firewood through the snow-covered streets. The warehouse was in Lefortovo, behind the cemetery, and we were completely exhausted in the area of the German market. It was still about three kilometers to the house. Constant malnutrition had an effect, there was not enough strength. We began to stop more and more often, dad was suffocating, Seryozha and I were wet with sweat, and the frost was getting stronger. But then we reached a small climb up the hill, and then our sleigh with birch logs crashed into a snowdrift and got stuck. It was still light, but the streets were empty and covered with deep powdery snow. Here, apparently, the father prayed fervently. Suddenly an officer came up to us, took the rope of the sleigh and walked up the hill so quickly that we could hardly keep up with him, and then even fell behind.

-Where to? The military man asked.