For the defence of Moscow by heroically Azerbaijani sniper Ziba Ganiyeva and all Great Patriotic War participants with dignity…
– Ziba!
– Nadejda Alexandrovna’s scream forced me to wake up and without understanding what happened, I spontaneously answered:
– I’m always ready!
What really happened?
Perhaps, nobody could understand me now at the lesson of Soviet literature. I kept silent and only pull down my hand.
– Ziba, what happened?
The teacher patiently and slowly stepped toward my desk and she stopped opposite me. I wanted to stand up again, but she carefully pulled down her hand on my shoulder and continued:
– Sit down, sit down. Don’t you listen to me?
Actually I heard nothing. She was totally right. I even didn’t think about answering her question. My shoulder was just got creeps all over again. I started breathing faster and faster. As my father said, shoulder was one of the most important parts of the sniper’s body, especially if she was woman. The safe haven for stock weapon, – which is always ready to support. Creeps were still running on me, and my fingers couldn’t stop caressing my hand. Smell of powder enveloped my imagination. Arif, sitting next to me couldn’t take his eyes off me. His gentle gaze returned me from dreams.
– Yes, Nadejda Alexandrovna, – finally I could answer.
– Then repeat, what I just said, – teacher asked, thinking about checking me.
– That war was fair, which was inevitable, – I repeated.
As you have probably guesses I heard nothing from teacher’s story. But decided to tell something than to keep my mouth shut, and then looked at her so surprised. I was just lucky. I knew by heart one of her favorite using expressions. Nadejda Alexsandrovna liked uttering this phrase, staring at class and suddenly asked somebody just in a case, to be sure, that everybody listen to her. In this time I was her intelligence’s “victim”.
Silence has fallen over the class, although that a few minutes ago waves of laughter were sweeping through my strange activities.
While mom was at the kitchen, preparing dinner, I went up quickly to the attic. Carefully touching a little bale of hay, I found my father’s gun. Surprisingly, but my hands weren’t trembling. Ahh… how arrogantly my index finger kept on the trigger!
Suddenly I’d noticed brown spot size of as 20 coins on the gun barrel. I became totally mad how could it happen? How did it could get rusty?! I dusted “my lovely friend” every week, smeared oil and kept it as the apple of my eyes. It was the only thing which had been left since dad’s demise. I even gave him nickname “Fearless”. I came down quickly when my mom called.
– Fearless, I’ll be back and tie off your wound, – I kissed gun barrel with whispering.
I was having dinner without appetite, because all my thoughts were near his “wound”. Is it possible to peel the stain and cover with nail polish?
***
In those years, with which I started my story, almost all classmates fall in love and split up. Probably, many of them interpreted me like child – walking around with my head in the cloud. But it was absolutely uninteresting for me. While we were at graduating class, nine of my classmates almost didn’t attend school. Two of them run away with their lovers. (I couldn’t keep my laughing when I remembered how they had been found and returned to school). They’ve been informed to bear with a little. The others get engaged and after a few months were preparing to wedding. Only four of us: I, Sveta and Gulnaz, who sat side by side at the back of the class and also Nadejda Alexandrovna – didn’t have lovely. I forgot to tell you that our teacher was very beautiful blonde woman with long curly hair. Her beloved died in a war last year – in December 1941 – while occupying the Moscow near the village Pustinka.
***
Past two months we graduated school. Despite being unappealing girl, Sveta immediately got engaged after graduation. Her fiancé was handsome young man. But Gulnaz was still waiting her prince on a white horse.
The days quickly passed by. After final exam our school life will be over. I was preparing very seriously to all my exams, and it made my mother happy. I was the only happiness in her life and she worried about me a lot. Unfortunately, my mother didn’t want to hear anything about what will be after exams. She had big plans, related with my future life…
Her plans didn’t attract me. She wants that “get married, be a teacher, as Nadejda Alexandrovna, and teach the children at village’s school and go on…
But every night I dreamed about absolutely different things. I wanted to go to the front and finish my father’s mission. I didn’t know if it would have end or not. I knew exactly – I didn’t want to fall in love. What can be better than love to the motherland? Protecting and struggling for her – were the real targets for bright future! For every soldier there wasn’t better lover than love to homeland.
