- Paradise for this cheerful restless brethren. This day passed quietly and calmly for me. Klepiki turned out to be a very nice town. I got to the hotel across the city and spent almost two hours on it. Only in the city center, one-story houses gave way to two-story ones. At home, they saw young Sergei Yesenin, who had studied at the local school for some time. Yes, it seems to me that not only individual houses, but also Klepiki as a whole have remained the same as eighty years ago. Just as quiet, a little patriarchal. In the same way, probably, the women were gossiping, leaning on the painted fences, the same way the men were discussing the local news, huddled together, smoking cigarettes in a dignified manner. In the evening, you can afford it.

The hotel in Klepiki was located at the very end of the town. I no longer hoped to see her. All the more sweet seemed to me the tea that the attendant treated, and the bed in the modest room softer.

July 15. Patriots live in Tuma.

Apparently, almost a month of walking is beginning to take its toll. It seems that I had a good rest during the night, but my legs are filled with lead. Slowly, with difficulty, I wander in the direction of the working village of Tume. I rest often, since I come across villages every three or four kilometers.

In one of them, he met the Morozov family. Their house is almost the last in Kobylenka. Entering the village, I saw an old woman sitting by the window, as if in a portrait frame. The old woman was very ancient and blind. She turned her face to the sunlight, and her blind eyes, without blinking, looked into the distance. It was the mother of the owner of the house. I do not remember with what words my acquaintance with these simple, but very kind people began. I only remember that we were sitting on a bench under the window, I was treated to milk, the hosts were telling me about their life, and above us, in the window frame, an old woman towered, from time to time uttering the same phrase: "You drink milk, it gives you strength." And near the neighboring house sat a man on a bench, dressed in a sweatshirt despite the heat. He occasionally glanced in our direction. Judging by the remarks of my new acquaintances, they did not like this man very much. And I forgot about him when he disappeared behind the gate of his house.

But when I, having said goodbye to the Morozovs and promised them to look into their house on occasion, went on, someone's voice called out to me from behind the gate of the neighboring house.

"Won't you have a cigarette?" The voice belonged to a person I had seen earlier. I replied that I did not smoke and wanted to go on, but he asked something else, and I realized that the man really wanted to talk. Later, reflecting on the meetings that took place during the day, it became clear to me why the people I met were so eager to communicate. I was a stranger, not quite ordinary for them. But this is not the main thing. They all needed simple human companionship because they were lonely. Their children lived in cities, they visited their homeland rarely, if at all. And there was no one to visit anyone at all. Like the man in the sweatshirt whose name I didn't even have time to ask. He lived completely alone. Apparently, he was sick. I was sweating from the heat on my forehead, and he was chillily wrapped in his sweatshirt. He was happy to tell me about the village I had wandered into. When I learned that it used to be a large village, I asked him about the church. He somehow shuddered, which, however, I did not pay attention to, and muffled thus: "They broke it before the war."

I don't know why, but I began to tell them that in many villages where churches were once broken, I was told about the terrible and tragic fate of those who blasphemously raised their hand against the shrines. They died in the prime of life or died a painful death. The stories were similar, but that didn't make them any less true. There is no need to talk about accident either. Even if many people participated in the sacrilege, God's punishment found everyone. In one Tula village, my grandmother told me how five tipsy peasants in that terrible post-revolutionary time climbed into the church, pulled out the icons and, ignoring the crying and screaming of the priest, began to chop them up. The priest was soon shot, the church was destroyed, and the bricks were used to build a school. But this did not make the life of the villagers happier. And those five, within seven to ten years, left this world. Some were stabbed to death in a fight, some burned down in their own house. One died of natural causes, died of a terrible, incurable disease. Dying, he said: "It turns out that He exists."

My interlocutor looked at me pleadingly.

- And if not of his own free will?

- What is not of my own free will? He paused, then, as if having made up his mind, spoke. His diction was disgusting, he spoke quickly, but I could not help understanding him.

- I also destroyed the church. I was young, I didn't believe in God, but I was forced, why would I do it myself? What time it was, you know. They called me and two men to the board and said, they say, so and so. I refuse, and I... What can I say... Those two are long gone. And I... I get sick a lot, but I creak little by little. Probably, from the fact that not of my own free will, it seems to be a kind of condescension to me. What do you think? And again a kind of pleading look, as if my words would decide something in his fate. He doesn't need to address me, oh, not me. I arrived at Tuma in the evening, barely moving my legs. On the very outskirts of the village, I met a fellow traveler, a local resident. He turned out to be an excellent guide. While we were walking along the long, long street leading to the center, my volunteer guide told me a lot of interesting things. In addition, he turned out to be a passionate patriot of Tuma. However, this is not surprising. Patriotism does not care about size, it does not depend on scale. The closer we came to the center of the village, the more the narrator diverged. They were already turning around at us.

"I don't know what kind of fool joined us to the Klepiki. We had our own district. Didn't you know? And even now Tuma is bigger than the Klepiks. And we have all the industry. And with them, did you see what they had? Unfortunate sewing workshop. And we have a car repair depot, and a garment factory, and a sausage shop, and an MPK. The construction is all with them, they drag everything under themselves.

"What do you mean?"