🙂 Hello everyone! Thank you for choosing the Thieving Neighbor story on this site!
I remember this long history of the post-war years to the smallest detail. We went to school from our farm three kilometers away to a neighboring village. It was possible to live in a boarding school in that village, but we categorically refused.
Our neighbours
Parents were eternal workers, kept a full yard of cattle, and even an apiary. Therefore, there was always food in our house – honey, milk, and meat. And in the boarding school they fed poorly.
Our neighbors, Aunt Liza and Uncle Mitya, were the complete opposite of my parents. Although they had three children, Aunt Lisa never worked. Uncle Mitya during the season, during sowing and harvesting, worked as a tractor driver, and the rest of the time he stayed at home.
They did not keep any cattle, but they planted a lot of potatoes, which they baked, boiled and fried. And when the bulls were castrated on the farm, Lisa brought in buckets the cut off “delicacies” that they ate. They also tried to treat us children, but we did not try, knowing what it was, and refused.
This story happened on one of the winter days. In the morning we went to school, and dad went to a party meeting in the same village where we studied. Aunt Lisa came to my mother and over tea said that she had cooked up dumplings, but they turned out to be too fat. Mom then thought: where did they get fatty meat? Maybe one of the relatives gave them a treat?
Liza drank tea and hurried home. Mom also began to cook dinner. I went into the vestibule, where there was a box with salted bacon and meat. I opened the drawer and could not believe my eyes: there was no pork leg and most of the bacon. And before the arrival of a neighbor, she was absent from home for two hours.
The doors in our farm were never locked, they just put a latch, making it clear that no one was at home.
I’m not sorry for someone else
Mother in hot pursuit went to a neighbor, and in the hallway she saw the remnants of bacon and ham. Without going into the rooms, I returned home, but a neighbor noticed that my mother was coming. While preparing dinner, my mother saw through the window that Liza, with a shovel and two heavy buckets on a yoke, was heading towards the river.
Mom thought that she went to hide the stolen goods, then she realized that she wanted to get rid of the evidence. Lisa cleared the ice hole with a shovel and sent the first bucket of bacon there. Mom ran to her, begging not to do this – let her keep half for herself, and return the rest, because we have six children.
But the thieving neighbor, threatening with a shovel, shouted that she would kill her if she approached her. So I dumped everything into the hole, carried it under the ice with a shovel. Mother returned home in tears.
We came from school, dad came back. Hearing what had happened, he grabbed an ax and left the house. Mom and I ran after him. Father was twice concussed in the war, and he could not worry. Mother fell into the snow, grabbed him by the legs, began to shout:
– Stop! They’ll jail you, but what am I going to do with a bunch of kids?
Dad tried to free himself, dragging mom through the snow, but she, lying on her stomach, did not let go of his legs. The father came to his senses, lifted the mother from the snow, and they returned home in an embrace.
Over time, the parents forgave the neighbor. But Lisa again took up her own: in the summer she stole a bag of wool from us. A thieving neighbor dragged our wood from a woodpile when she came to watch TV – they did not have their own. These are the idlers who once dispossessed such owners as my parents …
😉 What would you do if you were your parents?