"Girls!" After all, I don't know him at all. Maybe he is married? Who is he?

"Oh, stupid! Yes, the military are all bachelors! Even if he has a wife somewhere, he will never tell you about it anyway.

"So I can't get acquainted with him. First you need to ask dad if you can meet with him...

"We're adults. We are already eighteen years old, and we do not ask anyone...

I didn't ask my dad either, why bother him unnecessarily? I talked to my brother Kolya (it was his last spring, his unit was in Podolsk, and he often came home). Kolya said this:

"You're a girl. If you go to dances, then our officers will call you "walking girl". So don't go.

— Well, thank you for the advice. I'm not going anywhere, don't worry, brother," I said.

These were my last meetings with my brother Kolya. Once I was sitting in the garden in August. Major Nikolai came up to the fence and said that he was being sent to the front. "Then goodbye," I said without getting up. I never saw him again.

In Grebnev. Acquaintance with Volodya

When I was working hard in the Eggerts' garden, I was noticed by their neighbor, Father Boris V. He knew my father and told him: "Take care of Natasha. I have a son in the army, and when he comes back, we will marry them." Boris's father had an only son, Gleb, and his father was going to inherit his beautiful rich house, a huge plot with a garden, a yard with a cow, geese, chickens - in general, his entire household. Father Boris brought me milk in cans, talked to me, praised his son. He said: "My son is in Alma-Ata, we got him a job there as a teacher at a military school. Bombs will not fall there, German planes will not fly there. Glebushka is wonderful, he answers our letters. His wife wrote to him that she had already looked for a bride for him. And Gleb replied: "The war will end, I will return home, and everything, mommy, will be your way."

However, Gleb became ashamed to sit in the far rear. Disabled war veterans entered the school: shell-shocked, wounded, who did not regret giving their young lives for the salvation of the Motherland. And Gleb had not yet sniffed gunpowder, so he was ashamed to look into their eyes. And so Gleb, of his own free will, asked to join the active troops, submitted an application for this and was soon enlisted in the unit that was sent to liberate Kiev from the Germans. In his last letter, Gleb informed his parents that he was traveling by train in the direction of Kiev. The parents were terrified, but they firmly hoped for God's mercy and prayed. His mother had a dream from which they decided that Gleb wanted his father to take the priestly rank. Father Boris graduated from the seminary before the revolution, and then (during the persecution of the Church) worked as a teacher of mathematics. During the war, when the Soviet government began to allow the opening of churches, Boris Andreevich easily received the rank of priest and parish. I responded to Father Joris's kind words with a smile, and my father thanked me for the honor. But we did not know Gleb at all, and therefore we could only sympathize with single parents.

I did not believe that Gleb would return, because there had been no letters from him for a long time. But the hope of the parents could not but be supported, they lived by it. Noticing that I was going to paint landscapes with a sketchbook, Father Boris once said: "I serve in a magnificent church, which is located not far from here, in the village of Grebnevo. And the nature there is of wondrous beauty, not like in Valentinovka, where there are only clearings and forests. And in Grebnevo there is a huge pond with islands, an old manor estate with towers, an arch, a fence. There, Natasha, you would have something to draw." I promised to come to Father Boris at the parish.

In the spring of 1946, I came to Grebnevo for the first time. I was amazed by the beauty of the area and decided to rent a room for July and August, that is, during the holidays in the Stroganov School. Father Boris pointed me to the hut in which my grandmother lived with her orphan granddaughter. Her father had not yet been demobilized, her mother had died, and there was a twelve-year-old girl and a grandmother who were in great need. They willingly let me into the room, from the windows of which there was a wonderful view of the island and Shishkina Mountain. Dad saw me off, carrying a heavy suitcase with things and food for the summer.