Two Brothers

Once there were two brothers. Nothing much would have come of it, except that the older brother very often told the younger one, “Leave me alone.” One day, right before New Year’s, the parents went to the city for gifts, and left the children at home. “Watch over your brother,” their father told the older one. And as always, the older brother quarreled with his younger brother, chased him out into the cold. Then he looked around—yet there was no brother: he had vanished… And the trail led to a frightening and mysterious palace of Grandfather Frost…
Peace in Russian fiction is equated with oblivion, non-being, a social death. Leviy Matvey spoke about the Master: “He didn’t deserve the light. He deserved peace.” And Grandfather Frost valued peace above all else—eternal peace in his icy halls—so that no one could prevent him from freezing birds, little animals, and small children…
A fairytale and yet very life-like story was written by Yevgeny Lvovich Schwartz (1896–1958)—one of the greatest fabulists of the most unsayable century. Of course, he was a bit of a magician himself. Luckily for us, he turned out not just to be a magician, but a kind and wise one. And after traveling into his fairy world, we always come back having understood something we hadn’t understood before—having thought about many things that we always lacked time to think about—and becoming a little more inclined to good deeds than usual.