I am Boris Kalinnikov's Brother

[peluscious]

Prologue

     Hello? I can see there is someone there. I can sense you through the mists... I know you can only watch.
     Me too. I am Markov. But that does not mean much since the winds of Vorostokov blew my soul from my body days before my eighth birthday.
     Poor Boris, my twin brother. He really wanted to be able to do something, but keeping his own soul inside his body was already a heroic feat of stubornness by itself. Not the last I must say.
     Well, as I said, I died. And i don't know what is supposed to happen to dead people, but I just stayed there. Maybe someone forgot to take me away, or to guide me somewhere. Maybe there is just nowhere to go and nobody to guide or collect souls. Or maybe I inherited half of Boris' intransigence and just did not fade away.
     When i found out what I was and that I could not do much in my present state, I decided to ride along my brother, watching his life.
     And this is the meaningful thing I can say. I am Boris Kalinnikov's brother, and let me entertain you with his tale.

[peluscious]

     I remember when we talked about the future. Boris was never the ambitious kind of guy. It is interesting to see someone that tough and strong-willed so ambitionless. I, on the other hand, was adventurous and liked attention. I loved to sing and tell stories. We lived near Siberski, and I dreamed about travelling to other towns and meet new people.
     Boris grew up to be a very large man, with a very inept tongue. I still ask myself how he managed to marry Tanya when he was 16. He is the kind of guy that is not shy, but should be. Let me give you an example. This is how he asked her hand to her father:
- Hi mister Josef.
- Hello Boris.
- I want Tanya.
- W... What do you mean?
     I wish you could see the look of disbelief in that man's face!
- I want to marry her.
- That is all you have to say?
- Well, yes. What else do you want to know?
     After a second he just said:
- Well, nothing. No.
- Why?
     If you arrived at this point in their conversation, you would say they were talking about food.
- I don't think you are ready, that you deserve it, and that I like you.
- I am 15. I am strong and I work hard. And i am not marrying you, so you don't have to like me.
     I think you get the point. Lucky for him, Tanya arrived and managed to calm her father down. It took a little more than year to make him agree, and I say that was really fast.

[peluscious]

     You could ask if our father should have been the one to ask her hand. But, sadly, he was killed a year before that. Boris was with him in the woods. They were cutting wood and a man came to talk to our father. We didn't hear what they were arguing about, but it had something to do with the boyarski and where they should shove something. In the fight that ensued, the man disarmed our father and chopped his head off. Boris fought him and both almost died due to the injuries. The man managed to run away in the end, and we never saw him again.
     You could also ask if our mother couldn't ask her hand to Josef. But she died about a year  before our father. She fell ill because of the cold, and never recovered.

[peluscious]

Well, enough of sad things!
The interesting thing is that the wedding happened. And it was a quite happy occasion. The vodka was made by our own grandmother, and from what i heard, she was very good at brewing things.
Due to this fact most of the wedding was forgotten by Boris and many other people. But it was very happy anyway.
I had 4 nephews: Kalina, Anatoli, Mikhail and Galina. And since we had enough sad things, I won't tell their tale now.
Boris and Tanya marriage lasted almost 7 years, and they were very good to each other.  And that is also a tale for another day.