It's good in the spring, good in the winter, good in the summer, and even better in the fall.
In autumn the heat subsides, in autumn flowers bloom again, in autumn apples and pomegranates, grapes and green figs ripen, watermelons and golden melons ripen.
On this autumn morning, Yarty-gulok - a boy the size of half a camel's ear - sat on his donkey and rode into the field to get grass for the goat. Every day he helped his mother with the housework in at least some way. The path skirted the neighbor's vineyard; and what could be better and richer than a vineyard in the fall? Heavy clusters bent the vines all the way to the ground, and the warm wind carried their spicy and sweet scent all the way to the road.
- Ay, good! - the kid exclaimed and drove up to the vineyard. He had never seen such large berries before! Moreover, the sun was so hot that the boy wanted to rest in the cool shade: the vineyard seemed to him like a dense and impenetrable forest.
He jumped off the donkey and dashed under the green arches. Yarta even began to salivate: how many berries were there!
“I wish I could pick at least one berry!” - thought the kid, but he remembered that this was not his vineyard, and tried not to even look at the juicy grapes.
And then he said to himself: “My neighbor has thousands of thousands of berries in his vineyard. If I eat one, I won’t offend him.”
He ran up to the bush and didn’t even notice how a juicy, transparent, like amber, berry ended up in his hand. Now it was too late to think: you can’t stick the berry back! And Yarty took a bite from it as from a big apple, because the grape was only slightly smaller than his head.
Honey juice flowed over Yarta’s fingers, the skin crunched on his teeth, and his nose did not remain idle: it became sticky from the sweet juice. The neighbor's grapes were very tasty!
And suddenly Yarty heard steps. The footsteps were getting closer. Yarty was scared: it was the owner himself coming! Yarty even heard the scissors ringing in the hands of the winegrower, with which he cut off the heavy bunches one after another. And although the boy knew that his neighbor would not be angry with him, he turned red like a leaf in autumn and hid under a large bunch that had fallen to the ground. Immediately next to him he saw the big hand of his neighbor and heard a voice from above:
- Ay-ay-ay? Tomorrow the whole family must start harvesting grapes, otherwise our harvest will be lost!
With these words, the neighbor picked up the fallen bunch from the ground and put it in his basket, and along with the bunch, the nimble Yarty-Gulok also ended up in the basket. He wanted to jump out, but a second bunch fell on top of him, and then a third, and the baby could no longer get out from under the berries. And the neighbor cut a full basket of grapes and went to his house, cheerfully singing:
Hey grapes, you are a delight to the eye!
Hey grapes, you give us wine!
You turn into a sweet sultana
And you become delicious molasses bekmes,
Because the sun gave you
All your sweetness and strength...
Yarty really liked his neighbor’s song, he couldn’t resist and shouted from the basket at the top of his lungs:
- Aw, thank you!
The neighbor was no longer young in years, but until now he had never heard of a basket that could scream. He jumped up as if bitten by a poisonous snake, dropped the basket to the ground and ran towards his house.
He ran through the vineyard faster than a foal and shouted:
- Wow, trouble! Wow, wow! Our vineyard was attacked by evil spirits - genies!
At this time, the neighbor's wife was milking the goat. She saw her husband running with a disheveled beard, and she was so frightened that she knocked over the milk pan and the milk flowed on the ground. And the neighbor continued to scream as if he had lost his mind.
Then his wife took him by the hand and led him to the house.
“How many times have I told you, master, not to walk around in the sun wearing just a skullcap?” The rays of the sun hit your head, and you stopped distinguishing white from black!
So said the neighbor's wife, laid her husband on the blankets and wrapped a wet towel around his head. But the husband continued to rave and shouted about genies-spirits and about the basket that he abandoned in the vineyard.
Then the hostess covered her head with a large scarf and went to look for the basket.
Now listen to what happened to Yarty-gulok.
When the neighbor threw the basket to the ground, Yarty fell out of it along with the grapes. He jumped to his feet, pulled his pigtails and said:
“Hey, guy, you’re all to blame for your neighbor.” First you ate his grapes without asking, and then you scared the owner half to death. I’ll help the poor man, I’ll take the basket to his yard.
As he said, so he did. He grabbed the edge of the basket and pulled it, but the basket clung to the ground, and Yarty could not cope with it. Then he climbed under the basket, grabbed it from below, lifted it and ran to the neighbor's house. Now the basket no longer clung to the ground, it seemed to fly along the path, and Yarty-gulok liked it so much that he even sang his song:
I am small, but brave - I am stronger than everyone! I'm small, but brave - I'm quicker than everyone else!
But the hostess ran towards Yarty-gulok. Seeing the basket running along the road and even singing songs, the owner screamed as if she had met a giant Deva. She rushed home, not making out the way, tripped over the roots of a tree and fell. She lay there and continued to scream for help.
Yarty wanted to go up to the hostess and calm her down, but his robe got caught on the edge of the basket. He darted under her like a gopher in a trap. Finally he rushed and, leaving half of his robe on the bars of the basket, got out to freedom. He ran straight to the place where the woman was still screaming - through thickets of thorny grass, through piles of dry leaves from last year.
Dry leaves stuck to his robe, drenched in sweet grape juice, dry branches and thorns clung to the leaves, the thorns dragged last year's stems with them, and soon it was no longer Yarty running through the vineyard, but a terrible thorny ball, covered with earth and dust, rolling. Now listen to what happened next. The woman screamed very loudly, and her son heard her scream. At this time, he worked in the depths of the garden and put supports under the branches so that the vines would not bend under the weight of the harvest. Hearing the loud screams of his mother, the young man thought that all the dogs of the village had attacked her, and hurried to help.
He ran, jumping over ditches, over tree roots - and suddenly a strange monster rolled out of the bushes towards him - either a hedgehog or a porcupine!
The monster screamed:
- Hurry! Help quickly! - and disappeared into the bushes as quickly as it appeared.
The guy was so scared that he jumped back, slipped and fell with a flourish into a ditch that had not been cleaned for a long time, filled not with water, but with dirty silt.
Leave him and listen to what the old man and the old woman are doing. An old man and an old woman sat in their tent and counted the money received from the sale of cotton. There was little money, and the bill was short.
The old man took one tenga and put it in the pocket of his robe. He said:
“With this money I will buy a new telpekh for Yarta - a white lamb’s hat.”
The old woman took another coin and hid it under her scarf. She said:
“I’ll buy sweet, sticky halva for my son.” He helped you well in the field and deserved a reward. So said the old woman and laughed with joy. And suddenly an unprecedented monster rolled into the wagon. The monster screamed, and father and mother immediately recognized the voice of Yarta-gulok:
- Ata-jan! Dear father! Run quickly to your neighbors. Misfortune has come to their house: the owner is sick, the hostess is unconscious, and the son-heir is drowning in a dirty ditch! The old man didn't say a word. He put on his robe and, forgetting about his advanced years, like a young horseman, rushed to the neighbor’s house.
Of course, the old woman immediately recognized Yarty-Gulok. She took him in her arms and wailed:
- Wah! A misfortune has come to us, the like of which I have never seen! My son, my little eye, where did you tear your new robe and lose your smart skullcap? Where did you scratch your face, like a ripe apple? Where did you get your little hands, which have no equal in the world, dirty? Tell your mother quickly - what is the reason for so many misfortunes?
Yarty lowered his head, paused and answered reluctantly:
“I think, apa-jan, that the cause of all these troubles is hidden in one grape, taken without permission from someone else’s vineyard!”
And we will say:
“The grapes are sweet, but not the ones that grow on your neighbor’s vine.”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru