Sergeyich brings candles to Aisylu

Sergeyich brings candles to Aisylu as a practical gift during a power outage, but the gesture acquires grave consequences when the authorities accuse her son Bekir of stealing church property. Sergeyich’s decision to claim the candles as his own makes an anonymous kindness into a direct act of testimony, placing his credibility against an accusation that could further devastate Aisylu’s family.

The gift during the blackout

The gesture begins with Sergeyich’s reflection on life without electricity. He has grown accustomed to the dark refrigerator and television screen, and takes the bees’ ability to live without power as a measure against which to consider human resilience. His judgment that people are worse than bees softens when he remembers Aisylu and her children: some people, he decides, are as good as bees. That thought prompts him to bring candles to the family, whose power might return the next day or remain off for a week.

Sergeyich gathers a thick bundle of about fifty candles, lowers it into a bag, and sets out for the village in the evening. The darkness makes the familiar route feel threatening. At Albat-Kuybyshevo, windows and street lamps are unlit; the quiet streets seem withdrawn, with no barking dogs or passing cars. He reaches Aisylu’s home by way of the mosque and hears movement inside. Expecting that a knock could lead to an invitation and the obligations of hospitality, he hesitates at the threshold rather than entering.

He leaves the bag at the door, strikes it three times with his fist, and hurries back toward the gate. From the street he hears someone open the door and pick up the crackling plastic bag. The delivery is deliberately brief: Sergeyich gives the household what it needs without requiring a visit, conversation, or immediate repayment. He feels lighter on the return journey, and the climb back to the apiary troubles him less because the good deed has lifted his spirits.

A gift becomes evidence

The candles’ role changes when Sergeyich returns to Aisylu’s street and finds it deserted. The Berkut, who had been present there, are gone, but their absence does not reassure him. He hurries to the grapevine-covered yard and goes straight into the house. Inside, the mirror remains draped, and a stearin candle burns in front of it. Aisylu tells him that Bekir has been arrested.

The detective’s allegation is that Bekir robbed the church and stole candles. Aisylu points to the candle burning by the mirror and explains why the accusation does not fit: the candles were left at her door during the blackout, and Bekir was away in Qarasuvbazar that day. The police account has turned the very object that relieved the family’s darkness into supposed evidence of a theft. Aisylu’s grief is compounded by the arrest and by the threat that a charitable act may be used to implicate her son.

Sergeyich’s testimony

Sergeyich is initially speechless, then becomes tense as the meaning of the accusation settles on him. He tells Aisylu that Bekir did not steal the candles and that he is sure of it: he brought them himself. He also explains that he took them from the church in his own home after it had been bombed. His admission identifies the candles’ actual route to Aisylu’s door and gives her a witness to counter the detective’s claim.

Aisylu’s eyes light up when she realizes that Sergeyich was the person who left the bag. The revelation transforms the gift from an unexplained kindness into a fact with direct bearing on Bekir’s arrest. Sergeyich does not merely reassure her in private; he accepts responsibility for the candles, contradicting the theft allegation and placing his own account before the person whose son has been accused.

Meaning and consequence

The action links two consequences of the war across a humble object. Sergeyich says he took the candles from a church bombed back home; later, those same candles reach a family living through a blackout and become the basis of an accusation against Bekir. The candles cannot restore electricity or undo the bombing, but their movement between households records both displacement and care—and shows how an ordinary object can acquire dangerous significance under suspicion.

The episode also develops the story’s pattern of exchange beyond simple payment. Elsewhere, people offer food, drink, or honey in acts that range from purchase to hospitality; here, Sergeyich leaves roughly fifty candles without asking for anything back. Yet the gift does not remain outside social obligation. Once Bekir is arrested, Sergeyich’s generosity calls for something more consequential than the initial delivery: he must say where the candles came from and who placed them at the door. His kindness becomes testimony, and the quiet act that had made him feel lighter now ties him to Aisylu’s effort to defend her son.