Separation

  Spring. The capricious April rain is going. There are few people on the streets due to the spread of the pandemic. From a low house there was a soft muffled voice drowning in the rain of a woman rocking an empty cradle, biting the edge of a handkerchief, crying in harmony with nature. "Death is inevitable," my mother used to say, hugging the baby's diaper for a long time and enjoying the still fresh smell of the baby. Maybe that's why death took her away, and then it took my father away. "Maybe she this fate for my son as well," she said. The woman laughed, then beat the wall with her fist, then scattered a bunch of baby's clothes everywhere, and then hugged the blue diaper tightly and confessed that her son would not return. 

 The sound of footsteps in the next room prompted the mother to wipe away her tears. The boy, caressing the kitten in his arms, gently poked his head through the door, the woman immediately recognized the boy (this is the son of her husband's sister). 

- Auntie, Mom is calling you. It seemed that even these words of the boy made her feel comforted. 

- Okay, now. 

 Moving to different points of her mind, she thought one by one about which way was right, she listened to her inner voices and screams calling her to run away. Madina now realized that it was useless to shed tears, and her last hope was to leave this house, which could not connect her with any feelings. Gathering her last strength, she prepared her clothes, a dusty diploma at the bottom of the trunk, the money saved and the blue diaper of her deceased baby in order to leave that home. She was sure that she had somewhere to go, not where to stay. But she paused for a moment, wondering if she really had a destination... 

***** 

   His soul does not tolerate mourning. Perhaps that's why his body shivers when he sees women dressed in black and blue on the street. Even on the day of his grandmother's mourning, as a grandson, he could not participate in any way. As a father, he could not even bury his child, he could only suffer from alcoholism. It could not be said that he did not love his wife, but his child died because he did not go beyond the boundaries of his mother's rules. And he became thinner and weaker due to drinking. He had something to say to his father that affected male pride, but he could not say them. 

In the morning, he couldn't even visit his child's grave, which was covered with fresh earth. Although he felt that death would also lead him one day, but he did not visit his child's grave anyway. When his wife and his sister's son visited the baby's grave, he was still tending sheep in the field, justifying himself by this. He did not want to follow the most ancient traditions, to lose his meadow, as if he himself was stuck among millennia and rusted. 

 Azimjan, who grew up in the bosom of the steppe, the quiet harmony of the shepherd's life and pure childhood happiness, still did not understand why his grandmother, uncle and uncle's wife were fighting so much every day, and he had to go with his auntie to visit the grave of his nephew who died of covid. He thought it was always hard for mothers, especially hard for a mother who lost a one-year-old child in her arms. Perhaps that's why he always silently followed his auntie. It was raining heavily that day, and some people, fleeing from the rain on the street, ran to the bus stop, and some to the store that had just opened, thus protecting themselves from the tired breath of spring. Madina, who returned to her child's grave from the cemetery, did not feel the rain, as if the rain comforted her, joining the storms inside her. Less than three months after her child was buried, she went to his grave and prayed for her son. 

Azimjan felt that someday his auntie would be happy again and never cry again. And he could not even imagine that his last memory with his auntie would end this way. When they returned home, the spring rain stopped, and the village streets were enveloped in a pleasant smell of earth. The gentle breeze of the warm morning wind pleased the heart, and flowers shining with the rays of the sun everywhere. But then Azimjan suddenly froze and hurried to call his grandmother: 

- Grandma, the cat.... Grandma!.. 

- What happened again, one does not get along with his wife here, the other does not know how to do something as a bride, and you still find problems with the cat? 

The boy pulled his grandmother by the skirt and carried her to the gate. The mother-in-law's gaze fell on her daughter-in-law, who was moving away from the house and clutching the baby's diaper to herself, while the baby of the lifeless cat mother (as if harmlessly closing her eyes to all the difficulties of the world and to the endless hostility of people towards animals), which hit by a car while trying to pick up her child across the road, lying on the street and looking for a mother's breast. The old woman, who had survived many trials in her life, was sure that her daughter-in-law was leaving the village and she would never return: 

- One morning the child will be picked up, and the mother the next day... Oh, my child, forgive me! - she took the kitten, but her eyes were still glued to the blue diaper of the deceased grandson in the bride's arms.