This case was told to me by old man Georgy, a exiled neighbor in the village of Kolpasheva, where I worked after the war. It happened in the spring of 1931 in the Narym region in the village of Togur. There lived an exiled priest from Ukraine – Father Dimitri. He didn’t have a penny or a crumb of bread. Mother was exiled to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and he himself was taken to the Tomsk region, to Narym. He went and collected alms — an old, overgrown father, in a jacket, without a cassock, in a hat. There was one man — took pity on him: — Grandpa, here’s a fishing rod for you, here’s worms for you, take a boat and go to the river, fish a little — there are plenty of fish here. He got into the boat, and he swings — about to fall. Hungry, exhausted, exhausted. Looks — the bush is not far downstream. He came up to him, wanted to tie a boat and start fishing. Looks, there’s a little net, and it’s full of fish. He raised the net with a paddle, and Chebakov (a fish like this, small) in his ear recruits into the boat. Shaking with weakness and hunger, he cries: “Lord, forgive me, I take someone else’s fish.”
And the owner of the network — the Selpo watchman — at 9 o’clock changed from the post and went to shoot the network. I was in a boat with a gun. I saw an old man pulling a fish out of his net, picked up his gun and wanted to kill him. I wonder how people have the power to kill a man for some fish! There is no such thing in the soul… The guard hoisted a gun, and it doesn’t shoot. Chuck misfires! Chuck misfires! He laid the second bullet — again misfire. He turned the bullet — misfire again. What is it? The gun never went off. New, twentieth-gauge. The gun lifted up — immediately fired.
This grandfather, the priest, looked around. And the master, since he does not take a gun, give it to his mothers: who are you, what are you doing? Grandfather says: “Honey, son, I am exiled from Ukraine, from Pochaev.” I take a fish from you, I’m hungry. — I know I’m a exile! What kind of person are you that doesn’t shoot a gun at you? He said, I was a priest, and now, you see, nobody. The watchman, Ivan, cried out and cried: Father, forgive me! I wanted to shoot you and the gun was smarter than me. The gun didn’t shoot you.
I took off the net with fish, brought my father home, fed him. — Get down, get some rest. For two months he fed him: “Eat and rest.” Rest, eat. Feed him, reinforce him, clothe him. And then he came home and gave him money to go. Upstream he was carrying him on a small boat, the oblasok is called.
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