The frozen cold of the dawn let to rock to sleep for the first sunbeams, that made advances for the openings of the old wood window, already a so much corroded for the implacable time, that callously is going destroying everything to his circuit. Wakened up of their lethargic sleepiness the birds began their chirp, flying swift on the coffee plantation of the old landscape of Paraná, that extended up to where the view it allowed to reach and they were fraternized with dozens of butterflies that came to move the nectar of the flowers and they greeted the Nature with their songs and choreographic evolutions.

Under a thick patchwork, the youth man took a risk a lazy glance to spy the world, that be born again, for one more day of his daily one. Him, however, he didn't venture in moving away the extended cover until the chin, because he feared that the cold of that beautiful morning of June, it could drive away the little heat, that ran him in the veins. He was just lying indolently hearing the sounds that came from outside.

He remembered the trip that had done suddenly coming of São Paulo to the small city of Cianorte, in the old west of Paraná and, he felt a quick unpleasant sensation when remembering of the one that had come do there and a sadness invaded his heart slowly. After all, that morning would not be same to the other ones.

The door of the room opened up and the face appeared a tired amount of a lady of gray-headed hair, with a coke in the high of the head and that she walked slowly in boys' direction, feeling the weight of the relentless years, but that she, obstinately, faked not to feel. -"Did you sleep well, Vânia "? - asked her, looking for a lost smile inside her soul.

-"Yes " grandma ", I slept well. But what cold does in that earth " - he answered accompanying with the glance the grandmother, that opened the enormous wood window, leaving the sun to enter.

- " Here in the South it is always more cold in the winter, but at least we go to have a more little of heat in this morning, but you get up and will take a bath to frighten the laziness. The coffee is almost ready..."

He felt the delicious smell that come from the kitchen, invading him the nostrils and moving with the bowelses sequiosas for tasting that morning marvel, the desjejum (first meal of the day). They are few the pleasures of the life, but to take a coffee, that was picked, evaporated in the sun and ground in the hour, in the old machine of milling, it was an indescribable pleasure, mainly if we ingested accompanied it of a good bread piece done home, in the old mud and glass oven, in the bottom of the back yard. Bread that spared butter, because it had been roasted with a whole form of white cheese, inside of the mass. It was only to slice and to eat. There was an enormous pot of tangerine jelly also done with the picked fruits of the orchard.

While he drank the coffee, in the old mug of aluminum, he took a risk a rapid glance in the old grandmother Maria, that was still new, she had not reached the 50 years, but hard agricultural worker life had already marked her the face and aged her white hair. He tried to search her mind to evaluate the events of the previous day, they had affected the structures of the old Ukrainian, accustomed with her reverses of the life. Her face demonstrated the whole bitterness and sadness of her soul for her companion's of the long days of the life loss and that God had taken him in the silence of the night.

Poor fellow of the Grandpa Mark ! For that, Vania didn't wait. It seems that he was guessing what will happen, therefore as usually he did, every year, come from São Paulo to pass the vacations with the grandparents and to kill the longing of such beautiful and bucolic place. He had arrived one day before happened him. Grandpa Marcos, already debilated for the disease, that him corrode the body and the soul, don't leave the bed and he waited, patiently, the end of his terrestrial existence, but to the knowledge of the grandson's arrival and moved by a supernatural force, he got up and he was to sit down at the terrace of the balcony, close to the garden. There in the solitude of his old rocking chair he was entertained with the song of the birds, waiting for Vânia. - " I only leave of here when he arrives " Said irritated with the concerned relatives' appeals with your physical state, weakened by the insidious disease (prostate cancer). It is was like this, Vânia arrived, they talked during hours and later satisfied of having accomplished his mission, he was picked up to die. And, that deathwatch night had been long. It delayed to pass. In the living room, the body, the widow, the grandson and the children.

Vânia still remembered the histories that the Grandpa Mark liked to count. Be in the intimacy of the kitchen, entertained in sipping that

pleasant coffee and they were passed hours talking. The chat cross the time and returned to a past, not very remote, in the old Russia czarist, in the beginning of the Century XX, where in a small called villa Constantinovca, lived a couple of Russians, very young and very happy for firstborn Ivan's birth. Paulo and Maria could only thank the Creator for such gift. The times, however, they were of a lot of war, provoked by the emperor's strong will in to conquer new lands and to solidify the Russian Empire. Paulo was a gynet soldier of the cavalry, that served to the army czarist - a Cossack, of famous regiment, that set up in mettlesome beautiful white horses, that ran swift for the steppes. They were invincible. Sometimes, many days passed, weeks and until months combatting out and Maria was practically the time all alone one, taking care of the house and of the child. His neighbor, the Grandpa Mark of our history, single and much younger, he lived at the house to the side (neighbor) . He tried to always show usefullness with her and he assisted all the youth lady's requests and then it was born a great friendship, with the respect that the times imposed. Grandpa Mark disliked the military life. He liked his plumber occupation and in the field there were few opportunities to develop his work, for that, he thought about moving for Petrogrado, where he could be better taken advantage of. He thought, he thought, but he didn't move. Something arrested his heart for that village - the beautiful neighbor Maria. He knew how to wait patiently in his square.. His day would arrive... And it arrived, in the beginning of 1904, when Russia declared war to Japan and Paulo broke leaving back his discouraged wife. He left for never again to return. People found his abandoned horse and he disappeared for aways in that cold immensity of old Siberia, where the white of the snow gets lost in the line of the horizon. Maria regretted the loss of the husband a lot, that first it was considered " missing " and after five years of wait, it was given as " legally dead ", making official her widow condition.

Comforted by Mark' successive visits, she gave in to the insistent neighbor's loving pulses, they married and they went to live in Petrogrado, where he finally got work as plumber. During the Revolution of 1917, they immigrated to Brazil, in search of work and improve life conditions. Grandpa Mark, as plumber, didn't have any difficulty for to find work and to sustain his dear Maria and small Ivan, of just four years of age. Grandpa Mark received a good proposal of work of an English company, that began to tame the northwest of Parana. Maria and Ivan, however, they didn't accompany him in this day, because they died, him in São Paulo in 1941 and her in Londrina, in the beginning of 1947. Widower, Grandpa Mark was not alone for a long time, because he met another Maria, young Ukrainian, that he had known in Arapongas, Parana, twenty years newer than him and he married her. Now, she was there beside the husband's coffin, missing already provoked by his unexpected departure. Today, Grandpa Mark rests in the small cemetery of Cianorte, in Parana state.. Vânia came back to São Paulo. When the old and filled with smoke train stood back of the Station of Maringa, it left an enormous cloud of white smoke back fogging an immense longing in the heart. Perhaps, Vania meet Grandpa Mark again, in the other dimension, is not long to happen, but meanwhile it doesn't happen, I leave here registered, for the posterity, a little of his history.

(Story published in 2004 in the Anthology " Human, Human Too much " of the Publisher Arnaldo Giraldo of São Paulo, Pages 81 to 85).

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" GRANDPA MARK "