Cruel love and convict passion

From some specimens of the fair sex, he almost had to fight back. Very shy, he even tried to remain unnoticed at lectures, kept from the pulpit for three versts, to which the curator once remarked: "You, Shelekh, take a closer look." Otherwise, some students turn their necks to the end of the semester. Daniel was perplexed: how can girls completely shamelessly impose themselves, and not pretending to have a serious relationship. Maybe, as a youth, the guy just did not understand that "playing a giveaway" is just a good bait. Inessa was particularly eager. A bright oriental beauty, accustomed to be the first always and in everything, seducing the guy, crossed all permitted boundaries. Poured out, wondering why this peasant woman did not pay attention to her. To lift the veil of secrecy was helped by Aleksey, who lived in the same room with Shelekh. He said to Inessa plainly: "Come on, Biktogirova, piss your heels on your heels." At the "master" in the village such "heifer" grows up - you will lick your fingers: he saw the photo himself! Do you want me to love you? The guy sharply pulled Inessa to himself, defiantly kissed, and even a heavy slap in the face did not stop the boor. Curling, he shouted to the fleeing girl: - And you still think about my proposal - what am I worse ?! - and laughed, nervously rubbing his reddened cheekbone.
That evening, Inessa was drunk for the first time in her life. Her eyes glittered feverishly, and her lips whispered in a whisper, repeating the unequivocal prophecy: "All the same, you will be mine! My!"
Frightened classmates left a drunken girlfriend at the door of her apartment, having previously pressed the bell button.

Seeing his insane child, respectable parents - as if on command: "Freeze!" - froze in the doorway. The father came to his senses first, he dragged his daughter into the apartment, not forgetting with a tenacious glance to look at the staircase. In the course of time, Inessa became even more assertive in her desire to win Daniel at any price. Quite "accidentally" she almost always found himself next to him. Concerning and without reason, I approached Shelekh, asked for advice, tried, as if by accident, to lean against his shoulder, touch his hand. I treated him with apples and sweets. The guy refused, and then, resigned, began to take obsessive signs of attention. Over their relationship, the entire course was amused. And, perhaps, Biktogirova's courtship would bear fruit if the "master" was not informed by the ears that Inessa was at the fortune-telling in the city.
- You are fascinating ?! - asked in the forehead at a meeting.
The girl, embarrassed, looked away. And just wanted to say something, as Daniel roared:
- To the spirit that your near me was not, I understood? And then you'll have to eat my silage before the coffin - I'll feed you, snake! - And seeing that the girl burst into tears, put her arms around her shoulders and pressed her to him. "Ying, why do you need all this?" I do not like you! I do not like it - you understand, you dumb turtle? They say right: the hair is long - the mind is short, - Inessa comforted awkwardly, and she pressed herself ever closer to the guy.
That night they were alone. The hard nut cracked in response to the promise that after this the girl will forever leave him alone. Two weeks later, the students dispersed.

This story was gradually erased from the memory of Daniel, lost in a heap of everyday worries. He was happy with his Ivanka. A year after the wedding, thin, like a straw, she gave birth to twin girls, in which Shelekh did not like the soul. Over the years, his love for his wife did not fade, but acquired new shades.
Healthy, smart - a slanting sazhen in the shoulders - the chairman and his slim wife - the headmistress of a rural school - were the talk of the town, but only about the fact that such a man and a woman would have to be cared for. From time immemorial in the village the standard of female beauty was women strong, as they say, blood with milk. Ivanna Shelekh did not correspond to this image in the root. She was a good teacher, a wise woman. Maybe somewhere in France this - there would be no price, but in the eyes of the village gossips, it lost to many kolkhoz youngsters. And some of them, with secret hope and even with caution, were waiting for the president to break off at last: it was all too smooth in his life. The saying "In a healthy body - a healthy mind" sometimes does not correspond to reality: many years of work from dawn to dusk. Shelekh broke his heart. After the chairman discharged from the hospital, he for the first time in twenty years really went on vacation and went to Yalta. Ivanna - the height of exams, so she could not join her husband. The sanatorium is not a rest home, and for many years of married life they have learned to trust each other in everything.
From Sevastopol to Yalta, Daniil Shelekh, as a true steppe inhabitant, of course traveled by sea. He, like a boy, ran from the keel to the stern, rejoicing at the head wind, the spray flying in the face, foaming the trail of the boat.
He went to Livadia from the Yalta port by bus, which, heavily puffing and shaking its sides, in a matter of minutes, as Shelekh thought, carried passengers to the slope of Mount Mogabi.

Daniel got a room in one of the former royal palaces. Even a merciless reconstruction did not erase the former greatness of this building. You get used to good quickly, but nothing tires as endless procedures. And Shelekh began to visit them less and less often. He wandered about the park for hours, like a newborn, blinked his eyes at the variegated variety of colors and colors. He bowed before the creations of human hands, was surprised at the variety of trees and shrubs, trying to memorize at least some of the names, but having learned that there were more than 400 of them, he abandoned this venture. As he was trying to catch up, he tried to proceed, to see everything, to go everywhere. One day, walking along the Livadia Park, he went out to the famous Sunpath, winding in the oak-hornbeam forest, where, thanks to the crowns of age-old trees that close over it, even on very hot days there is a calming coolness. Legs tirelessly carried him forward, gaze clinging to the figures of idle walking, as if in anticipation of the meeting.
The path led him to the Yasnaya Polyana sanatorium, seven kilometers behind him.
"So, I'm getting better," Shelekh thought, and then his gaze stumbled upon someone's familiar face.

- Инесса, - has burst itself. And only now, almost two decades later, he finally remarked: "How good she is!" It seemed that the years had only benefited her. They, like a talented artist, hone their skills, brought new strokes to her appearance, adding to the already most skilful portrait. Inessa hugged a classmate, and from unexpected joy (though somewhere in the subconscious, Daniel knew that he was waiting for this meeting always) lifted her and gently kissed her. For a moment the woman was embarrassed, and then, without releasing his hand, walked along side by side.
Glancing at his happy eyes, she asked: "Master, is it really you?" Is not it a dream? "- and giggled, like a bell, laughed, clinging to him.
Daniel more often came to "Clear Glade". Climbing the steps, he mischievously winked at Leo Tolstoy's bust and waited impatiently in the foyer while Inessa appeared. Forgetting about their age, they, like children, muttered foolish faces to each other, imitating little animals from the living corner. They played hide and seek in a magnolia grove, sat for a long time at artificial ponds, admiring decorative grottoes. Inessa brought the youngest son to the sanatorium for treatment. The twelve-year-old kid did not like the fact that his uncle was taking care of his mother. He did not fully recover after the death of his father and was jealous of his mother, although he did his best not to show his face.

Shelekh forgot about the disease, about work, about the family. So flew time. They are with Inessa - a very beautiful couple, this was repeated all around, they were tirelessly photographed. Inessa blossomed like a girl for marriage, and Shelekh seemed to have lost a good ten years. In a week they learned everything about each other. And although it was very unfortunate to part, Daniel fell on the top shelf in his compartment, for some reason sighed with relief. What happened, having made him insanely happy for a while, was now burdensome, and Shelekh wanted to throw him off like an unnecessary load. Although he was ready to swear that his holiday romance is not just an affair. To understand his feelings, Daniel could not, and did not want to. The brain bored one thought: "Home!"
He has almost forgotten his sanatorium-resort epic, but Ivanna no-no, and inquire how the treatment was going, he would not like to go back to medical treatment and rest. Relations became somehow strained, moreover - the wife avoided intimacy.
When Shelekh got tired of everything and decided to find out the relationship, the husband silently took out a heavy package from the closet and poured out his contents on the table: letters, photographs.
"You're so happy here," she pointed to the first one she found.
"By what right did you read my letters ?!" - Daniel went on the offensive.
"Yours?" - as if mocking, repeated Ivanna. - Look at the envelopes - letters are addressed to me. But you were not mistaken: there is one and you. From my son, from the army, "she said, pausing.

Daniel froze.
"What is there: one to one." She held out the photograph.
Thousands of thoughts immediately flashed through Shelekh's head: "Son. Do we have a son? Why did not she say so? No! Could this meeting have not passed without a trace? "
- He has a different surname, another patronymic, But see how he looks like you, - as if from somewhere far from him he heard it. Ivanka left. Girls already a year as they studied at the institute, that's why they did not have to hug their daughters. Emptiness. She settled everywhere. In the house, in the shower, in the hateful office. Everything was confused: the pain of losing the family and the joy of finding a son. The bitter bitter helped to solve the problems, and Daniel, despite the sick heart, silenced it with liters. Spitting at work, for days on end did not leave the house and drank ... leading himself to insanity.

Once on the threshold of the house appeared Inessa. Looking at her through a drunken haze, Daniel still hoped she would ask for forgiveness, at least try to explain why she had broken his life, but she smiled and said:
-I am glad that you are suffering, that it hurts. It's not her, I should have been with you in this life! I!!! - broke into Inessa's cry. In a drunken intoxication, without realizing what he was doing, Shelekh cut her off with a single knife blow.
- Gadina, snake ... - like a parrot, he told the arriving policemen.
- Gadina! - Poked a finger in the white-white ceiling of the mental hospital room.