Anatoly Pristavkin
A golden cloud slept
I dedicate this story to all her friends who accepted this street child of literature as their personal and did not let its author fall into despair.
This word arose by itself, as the wind is born in a field. Arose, rustled, swept through the near and far back streets of the orphanage: “Caucasus! Caucasus!" What kind of Caucasus? Where did he come from? Really, no one could really explain.
And what a strange fantasy in the filthy suburbs of Moscow to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there were no textbooks!) The orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible times, when the black-bearded, eccentric mountaineer Hadji Murat fired at the enemies, when the leader of the murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in the besieged fortress, and the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep pit.
There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.
Yes, here's more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmenyshes spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train stuck at the station in Tomilin.
Against the background of broken snow-white mountains, a rider on a wild horse gallops, gallops in a black cloak. No, not jumping, but flying through the air. And under it, in an uneven, angular font, the name: "KAZBEK".
A mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a young handsome man, glanced at the pretty nurse who rushed out to look at the station, and tapped the cardboard lid of cigarettes with a significant fingernail, not noticing that next to him, opening his mouth in amazement and holding his breath, was staring at the precious ring box.
I was looking for a crust of bread, from the wounded, to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!
Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?
It has nothing to do with it.
And it is not clear how this sharp-pointed word, sparkling with a brilliant icy edge, was born where it is impossible for him to be born: among the orphanage everyday life, cold, without wood, always hungry. The whole stressful life of the guys developed around frozen potatoes, potato peelings and, as the top of desire and dreams, crusts of bread in order to exist, to survive only one extra day of war.
The most cherished, and even unrealizable dream of any of them was at least once to penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD SUTTER, so we will highlight it in type, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and unattainable than some kind of KAZBEK!
And they appointed there, as the Lord God would have appointed, say, to heaven! The most elite, the most fortunate, or you can define it like this: the happiest on earth!
Kuzmenyshs were not among them.
And there was no idea that I would come in. This was the lot of the criminals, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in the orphanage, or even in the entire village.
To penetrate the bread slicer, but not like those, the chosen ones, by the owners, but with the mouse, for a second, for a moment, that's what you dreamed of! With an eye, in order to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world, in the form of clumsy loaves piled up on the table.
And - inhale, not with your chest, with your stomach, inhale the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...
And that's all. All!
There was no dream of any little crumbs that could not help but remain after the dumped, after the brittle rubbing with rough sides of the bukhariks. Let them be gathered, let the chosen enjoy themselves! It rightfully belongs to them!
But no matter how you rub against the iron-studded doors of the bread slicer, this could not replace that phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.
It was not at all for them to slip through this door in a legal way. It was from the realm of abstract fantasy, the brothers were realists. Although a specific dream was not alien to them.
And this is what this dream in the winter of 1944 brought Kolka and Sasha to: to penetrate the bread slicer, the bread kingdom by any means ... Anyone.
In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get frozen potatoes, let alone bread crumbs, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. To walk and know, to imagine almost picturesquely, as there, behind the gray walls, behind a dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones are enchanting, with a knife and scales. And shred, and cut, and crumple the doughy damp bread, pouring a handful of warm salty crumbs into his mouth, and saving the fat fragments to the godfather.
Saliva boiled in my mouth. Grabbed the stomach. My head grew dim. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would open it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Then let them go to the punishment cell, wherever they want ... They will punish, beat, kill ... But let them first show, even from the door, as he, bread, heap, mountain, Kazbek rises on a table cut by knives ... How it smells!
Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.
From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not subside. He was getting stronger.
The guys found such a scene very fantastic! Come up with too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run for a bone gnawed from that wing anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud, their bellies tightened even more, and they forever lost faith in writers; if they don't eat chicken, it means that the writers themselves are getting drunk!
Since the main orphanage urk Sych was driven away, many different large and small criminals have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting their half-rags for the winter away from the militia.
One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving the weak crumbs, dreams of crumbs, taking the small trees into the reliable networks of slavery.
For the crust they fell into slavery for a month or two.
The front crust, the one that is browner, blacker, thicker, sweeter, cost two months, on a loaf it would be the top one, but we are talking about soldering, a tiny piece that looks like a transparent leaf flat on the table; the back - paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.
And who did not remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshs, was also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a soldier-relative, he had served for six months for the back crust. He gave everything edible, and ate the buds from the trees, so as not to bend at all.
Kuzmenyshs were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.
If, of course, we could add two Kuzmenyshs into one person, then there would be no equal in age, and, possibly, in strength in the entire Tomilinsk orphanage.
Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin
A golden cloud slept
I dedicate this story to all her friends who took this homeless child of literature as their personal and did not let the author fall into despair
Arose, rustled, swept through the near and far back streets of the orphanage: “Caucasus! Caucasus!" What kind of Caucasus? Where did he come from? Really, no one could really explain.
And what a strange fantasy in the filthy suburbs of Moscow to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there were no textbooks!) The orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant incomprehensible times, when the black-bearded, eccentric mountaineer Hadji Murad fired at the enemies, when the leader of the murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in the besieged fortress, and the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep pit.
There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.
Yes, here's more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmyonyshes spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train stuck at the station in Tomilin.
Against the background of broken snow-white mountains, a rider on a wild horse gallops, gallops in a black cloak. No, not jumping, but flying through the air. And under it, in an uneven, angular font, the name: "KAZBEK".
A mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a young handsome man, glanced at the pretty nurse who rushed out to look at the station, and tapped the cardboard lid of cigarettes with a significant fingernail, not noticing that next to him, opening his mouth in amazement and holding his breath, was staring at the precious ring box.
I was looking for a crust of bread left over from the wounded in order to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!
Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?
It has nothing to do with it.
And it is not clear how this sharp-pointed word, sparkling with a brilliant icy edge, was born where it was impossible for him to be born: among the orphanage everyday life, cold, without a wood, always hungry. The whole stressful life of the guys developed around frozen potatoes, potato peelings and, like the top of desire and dreams, a crust of bread in order to exist, to survive just one extra day of war.
The most cherished, and even unrealizable dream of any of them was at least once to penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD SUTTER, so we will emphasize it in type, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and unattainable than some kind of KAZBEK!
And they were appointed there, as the Lord God would have appointed, say, to paradise! The most elite, the most fortunate, or you can define it like this: the happiest on earth!
Kuzmenyshes were not among them.
And there was no idea that I would come in. This was the lot of the criminals, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in the orphanage, or even in the entire village.
To penetrate the bread slicer, but not like those, chosen ones, - by the owners, but with a mouse, for a second, for a moment - that's what you dreamed of! With an eye in order to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world in the form of clumsy loaves piled up on the table.
And - inhale, not with your chest, with your stomach, inhale the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...
And that's all. All!
There was no dream of any little crumbs that could not help but remain after the dumped, after the brittle rubbing with rough sides of the bukhariks. Let them be gathered, let the chosen enjoy themselves! It rightfully belongs to them!
But, no matter how you rub against the iron-studded doors of the bread slicer, this could not replace the phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.
It was not at all for them to slip through this door in a legal way. It was from the realm of abstract fantasy, the brothers were realists. Although a specific dream was not alien to them.
And this is what this dream in the winter of 1944 brought Kolka and Sasha to: to penetrate the bread slicer, the bread kingdom by any means ... Anyone.
In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get frozen potatoes, let alone bread crumbs, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. To walk and know, to imagine almost picturesquely, as there, behind the gray walls, behind a dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones are enchanting, with a knife and scales. And they shred, and cut, and crumple the doughy damp bread, pouring a handful of warm salty crumbs into the mouth, and saving the fat fragments to the godfather.
Saliva boiled in my mouth. Grabbed the stomach. My head grew dim. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would open it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Then let them go to the punishment cell, wherever they want ... They will punish, beat, kill ... But let them first show, even from the door, as he, bread, heap, mountain, Kazbek rises on a table cut by knives ... How it smells!
Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.
From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not subside. He was getting stronger.
The guys found this scene very fantastic! Come up with too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run for the bone gnawed from that wing anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud, their bellies twisted even more, and they forever lost faith in writers: if they don’t eat chicken, then the writers themselves are getting drunk!
Since the main orphanage urk Sych was driven away, many different large and small criminals have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting their half-rags for the winter away from the militia.
One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving the weak crumbs, dreams of crumbs, taking the small trees into the reliable networks of slavery.
For the crust they fell into slavery for a month or two.
The front crust, the one that is crisp, blacker, thicker, sweeter, was worth two months, on a loaf it would have been the top one, but we are talking about soldering, a tiny piece that looks like a transparent leaf flat on the table; the back - paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.
And who did not remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmyonyshes, was also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a soldier-relative, somehow served for six months for the back crust. He gave everything edible, and ate the buds from the trees so as not to bend at all.
Kuzmenyshi were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.
If, of course, we could add two Kuzmenyshs into one person, then there would be no equal in age, and, possibly, in strength in the entire Tomilinsk orphanage.
But Kuzmenyshi knew their advantage.
It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away in four legs faster. And four eyes are far more keen to see when you need to grab where something is badly lying!
While two eyes are busy with business, the other two watch over both. Yes, they still manage to make sure that they don't bite something from themselves, clothes, a mattress underneath, when you sleep and see your pictures from the life of a bread slicer! They said: why, they say, did he open a bread slicer if they pulled at you!
And the combinations of any of the two Kuzmenyshes are countless! Got caught, say, one of them in the market, being dragged into jail. One of the brothers whines, screams, beats in pity, and the other distracts. You look, until you turned to the second, the first is a sniff, and he is gone. And the second one! Both brothers, like loaches, nimble, slippery, once missed, you can't take them back in your hands.
Eyes will see, hands will grab, feet will carry away ...
But somewhere, in some kind of pot, all this must be cooked in advance ... Without a reliable plan: how, where and what to steal, it is difficult to live!
Two heads of the Kuzmenyshes were cooked in different ways.
Sasha, as a world-contemplative person, calm, quiet, drew ideas from himself. How, how they arose in him, he himself did not know.
Kolka, resourceful, grasping, practical, with lightning speed figured out how to bring these ideas to life. Extract, that is, income. And what is even more accurate: take the guzzle.
If Sashka, for example, said, scratching the blond top of his head, and shouldn't they fly to, say, the moon, there is a lot of oil cake, Kolka would not say right away: "No". At first he would have thought about this little business with the Moon, which airship to fly there, and then he would have asked: “Why? You can steal and get closer ... "
But it happened that Sashka would dreamily look at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would catch Sashka's idea on the air. And then he wonders how to implement it.
Sasha's golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! The brothers saw this in the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers a hundred floors below are creeping at hand. We are the very first, the highest!
And Kuzmyonyshes are the first in another. They were the first to understand how to live through the winter of forty-four and not die.
When the revolution was being made in St. Petersburg, I suppose - except for the post office and telegraph office and the station - they did not forget to take the bread slicer by storm!
Brothers walked past the slicer, not the first time by the way. But that day was painfully unbearable! Although such walks added their torment.
“Oh, how to eat something hunting ... At least gnaw the door! Eat the frozen ground under the threshold! " - so it was said aloud. Sashka said, and suddenly it dawned on him. Why eat it if ... If it ... Yes, yes! That's it! If you need to dig it!
Dig! Well, of course, dig!
He did not say, he just looked at Kolka. And he instantly received the signal, and, turning his head, assessed everything, and scrolled through the options. But again, he did not say anything aloud, only his eyes flashed predatory.
Whoever has experienced it will believe: there is no person in the world who is more inventive and more focused than a hungry person, all the more so if he is an orphanage who grew brains over the war on where and what to get.
Without saying a word (around the crooks they will spread, and then any, the most ingenious Sashka idea), the brothers went straight to the nearest shed, a hundred meters from the orphanage, and twenty meters from the bread slicer. The shed was at the bread slicer just behind the back.
In the shed, the brothers looked around. At the same time we looked into the farthest corner, where behind the useless iron scrap, behind the broken brick, was Vaska Smorchka's stash. In his days, when firewood was stored here, no one knew, only the Kuzmenysh knew: a soldier was hiding here, Uncle Andrei, whose weapon was pulled.
Sashka asked in a whisper:
- Isn't it far?
- And how is it closer? Kolka asked in turn.
Both understood that there was nowhere closer.
Breaking the lock is much easier. Less labor, less time needed. There were only crumbs left. But it was already, they tried to knock the lock off the bread slicer, not only Kuzmenysh came up with such a bright answer! And the management hung a barn lock on the doors! Weighing half a meal!
It can only be disrupted with a grenade. Hang up the front of the tank - not a single enemy shell will break through that tank.
After that unfortunate incident, the window was barred, and such a thick rod was welded on that it could not be taken with a chisel or crowbar - if only by autogenous!
And Kolka was thinking about the autogen, he noticed carbide in one place. But you can't drag it, you can't light it, there are many eyes around.
Only there are no prying eyes underground!
Another option - to completely abandon the bread slicer - did not suit Kuzmyonyshes.
Neither the store, nor the market, nor the more private houses were now suitable for the production of food. Although such options were worn swarm in Sasha's head. The trouble is that Kolka did not see the ways of their real embodiment.
In the shop, the watchman is all night, an angry old man. He does not drink, does not sleep, he has enough day. Not a watchman - a dog in the manger.
In the houses around, which are countless, there are a lot of refugees. And to eat is just the opposite. They themselves look where to snatch something.
Kuzmyonysh had a house in mind, so the elders cleaned it when Sych was.
True, they pulled off for no reason: rags and a sewing machine. For a long time afterwards the shantrap twisted it in turn here, in the shed, until the handle flew off and everything else fell apart in parts.
Not about a typewriter. About the bread slicer. Where there are no scales, no weights, but only bread - he alone made the brothers furiously work in two heads.
And it came out: "In our time, all roads lead to the bread slicer."
Strong, not a bread slicer. It is also known that there are no fortresses, that is, a bread slicer, that a hungry orphanage could not take.
In the dead of winter, when all the punks, desperate to pick up at least something edible at the station or in the market, froze around the stoves, rubbing their butt, back, back of the head against them, absorbing fractions of degrees and seemingly warming up - the lime was wiped off to a brick - The Kuzmenysh began to implement their incredible plan. This incredibility was the secret of success.
From the far stash in the shed, they began stripping, as a seasoned builder would have determined, using crooked scrap and plywood.
Grasping the crowbar (here they are - four hands!), They lifted it up and lowered it with a dull sound onto the frozen ground. The first centimeters were the heaviest. The ground was humming.
On the plywood, they carried it to the opposite corner of the shed until a whole hill formed there. The whole day, so purple that the snow drifted obliquely, covering up his eyes, Kuzmenysh dragged the earth away into the forest. They put them in their pockets, in their bosom, they couldn't carry them in their hands. Until you guessed: to adapt a canvas bag, a school bag.
Now they went to school in turns and dug in turns: one day Kolka hammered and one day Sashka.
The one for whom it was the turn to study, he sat out for two lessons (Kuzmin? What kind of Kuzmin came? Nikolai? And where is the second, where is Alexander?), And then pretended to be his brother. It turned out that both were at least half. Well, no one demanded a full visit from them! Fatly want to live! The main thing is not to be left without lunch in the orphanage!
But there is lunch or dinner, he will not be allowed to eat in turn, jackals immediately eat and leave no trace. At this point they stopped digging and together went to the canteen as if they were on an attack.
No one will ask, no one will be interested: Sasha shamits or Kolka. Here they are one: Kuzmenyshi. If suddenly one, then like a half. But one by one they were rarely seen, but we can say that they did not see them at all!
They walk together, eat together, go to bed together.
And if you beat them, they beat both, starting with the one who gets caught earlier in this awkward moment.
The excavation was in full swing when these strange rumors about the Caucasus began to circulate.
For no reason, but persistently in different ends of the bedroom the same thing was repeated more quietly, sometimes more violently. As if they would remove the orphanage from their home in Tomilin and in a crowd, every one of them, would be transferred to the Caucasus.
The educators will be sent, and the foolish cook, and the mustachioed musician, and the disabled director ... (“A handicapped mental worker!” Was pronounced quietly.)
All will be taken, in a word.
They talked a lot, chewed like last year's potato peel, but no one imagined how it would be possible to drive all this wild horde into some mountains.
Kuzmenysh listened to the chatter in moderation, and believed even less. There was no time. Aspiringly, furiously they pounded their pits.
And what is there to wag, and the fool understands: it is impossible to take away a single orphanage against the will! Not in a cage, like Pugacheva, they will be taken!
The hicks will roll in all directions on the very first stretch, and catch it like water with a sieve!
And if, for example, it was possible to persuade one of them, then no Caucasus would be welcomed by such a meeting. They will wrap them up to the bone, eat them to the bitch, smash their Kazbeks on the stones ... They will turn them into a desert! To the Sahara!
So Kuzmenyshi thought and went to hammer.
One of them was picking the ground with a piece of iron, now it went loose, fell off by itself, and the other, in a rusty bucket, dragged the rock out. By the spring, they rested on the brick foundation of the house, where the bread slicer was located.
Once the Kuzmenysh were sitting at the far end of the excavation.
The dark red, with a bluish tint, the brick of the ancient firing crumbled with difficulty, each piece was given with blood. Bubbles popped up on my hands. And it turned out to be not with the hand with a crowbar to ram from the side.
It was impossible to turn around in the excavation, the earth was falling behind the gate. My eyes were eaten away by a self-made smokehouse in an ink bottle, stolen from the office.
At first they had a real wax candle, also stolen. But the brothers themselves ate it. They could not stand it somehow, the guts turned over from hunger. We looked at each other, at that candle, not enough, but at least something. They cut it in two and chewed it, one inedible rope remained.
Now he was smoking a rag string: a notch was made in the wall of the excavation - Sashka guessed it - and from there it flickered blue, the light was less than soot.
Both Kuzmyonysh were sitting back, sweaty, grimy, knees bent under their chins.
Sashka suddenly asked:
- Well, what about the Caucasus? Are they chatting?
- They are talking, - Kolka answered.
- They will chase, right? - Since Kolka did not answer, Sashka asked again: - Would you like to? Should I go?
- Where to? - asked the brother.
- To the Caucasus!
- And what is there?
“I don’t know… Interesting.
- I wonder where to go! And Kolka angrily poked his fist into the brick. There, a meter or two meters from the fist, no further, was the cherished bread slicer.
On a table, streaked with knives, and smelling of a sour bread spirit, lie bukhariks: many brownies of a grayish-golden color. One is more beautiful than the other. To break off the crust - and that happiness. Suck, swallow. And behind the crust and crumb is a whole wagon, pinch - yes in your mouth.
Never in their life have Kuzmenysh had to hold a whole loaf of bread in their hands! I didn't even have to touch.
But they saw, from afar, of course, how in the crush of the store they ransomed him by cards, how they weighed him on the scales.
Lean, without age, the saleswoman grabbed color cards: workers, employees, dependents, children, and, glancing briefly - she has such an experienced eye-spirit level - at the attachment, at the stamp on the back, where the store number is written, even though she knows her own by name, with scissors I made "chik-chik" in two, three coupons in a box. And in that box she has a thousand, a million of these coupons with numbers 100, 200, 250 grams.
For each coupon, both two and three, there is only a small part of a whole loaf, from which the saleswoman will economically roll off a small piece with a sharp knife. Yes, and it is not for the future to stand next to the bread - it dried out, and not got fat!
But I kiss, the whole loaf untouched by the knife as it is, no matter how the brothers looked in four eyes, no one was able to take it out of the store with them.
Whole is such a wealth that it’s scary to think!
But what kind of paradise will open then if there are not one, and not two, and not three Bukhariks! A real paradise! True! Blessed! And we don't need any Caucasus!
Moreover, this paradise is nearby, vague voices are already heard through the brickwork.
Although blinded by soot, deaf from the ground, from sweat, from tearing, our brothers heard one sound in every sound: "Bread, bread ..."
At such moments, brothers do not dig, I suppose they are not fools. Heading past the iron doors into the barn, they will make an extra loop so that they know that that pound lock is in place: you can see it a mile away!
Only then they climb this damn foundation to destroy.
They were building in ancient times, I suppose they did not even suspect that someone would attach them to the fortress with a strong word.
How the Kuzmenysh gets there, how the whole bread slicer will open to their enchanted eyes in the dim evening light, consider that you are already in paradise.
Then ... The brothers knew for sure what would happen then.
In two heads, I suppose, not in one.
Bukharik - but one - they will eat on the spot. So as not to twist their bellies from such wealth. And two more bukhariks will be taken with them and safely hidden. They can do that. Only three bukhariks, so. The rest, though itchy, cannot be touched. Otherwise, the brutal boys will destroy the house.
And three bukhariks - this is what, according to Kolka's calculations, they still steal from them every day.
Part for the chef's fool: everyone knows that he is a fool and sat in a madhouse. But it eats quite like normal. Another part is stolen by grain cutters and those jackals who are gearing around the grain cutters. And the most important part is taken for the director, for his family and his dogs.
But around the director not only dogs, not only the cattle feed, there are also relatives and hangers-on. And all of them from the orphanage are dragged, dragged, dragged ... Orphanages themselves and dragged. But those who carry have their crumbs from the drag.
The Kuzmenyoshes calculated that they would not raise a noise in the orphanage from the loss of three bukhariks. They will not offend themselves, they will deprive others. That's all.
Someone needs the commissions to be flooded from the Rono (and feed them too! They have a big mouth!), So that they begin to find out why they steal, and why the orphanages are malnourished from what they should, and why the director's animal dogs are as tall as calves.
But Sashka only sighed, looked in the direction where Kolkin's fist was pointing.
- Nah ... - he said thoughtfully. - All one thing is interesting. The mountains are interesting to see. I suppose they stick out above our house? A?
- So what? - Kolka asked again, he really wanted to eat. Not to the mountains here, whatever they may be. It seemed to him that through the ground he heard the smell of fresh bread.
Both were silent.
- Today they taught rhymes, - remembered Sashka, who had to sit at school for two. - Mikhail Lermontov, "The Cliff" is called.
Sashka did not remember everything by heart, even though the poems were short. Not like "The song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the young oprichnik and the daring merchant Kalashnikov" ... Phew! One name is half a kilometer long! Not to mention the verses themselves!
And from "The Cliff" only two lines Sashka remembered:
A golden cloud slept
On the chest of a giant cliff ...
- About the Caucasus, or what? - Kolka asked boredly.
It was summer. The grass in the yard turned green. Nobody saw off the Kuzmenyshes, except for the teacher Anna Mikhailovna, who, I suppose, was not thinking about their departure either, looking somewhere over their heads with cold blue eyes.
It all happened unexpectedly. It was planned to send two older people from the orphanage, but they immediately left off, as they say, dissolved in space, and the Kuzmenysh, on the contrary, said that they wanted to go to the Caucasus.
The documents were rewritten. Nobody asked why they suddenly decided to go, what such need drives our brothers to a distant land. Only pupils from the younger group came to see them. They got up at the door and, pointing at them with a finger, said: “These! - And after a pause: - To the Caucasus! "
The reason for leaving was solid, thank God, no one knew about it.
A week before all these events, a burrow under the bread slicer suddenly collapsed. Failed in the most prominent place. And with him the Kuzmenyshey's hopes for another, better life collapsed.
We left in the evening, everything seemed to be fine, the wall was already finished, it only remained to open the floor.
And in the morning we rushed out of the house: the director and the whole kitchen were assembled, their eyes were staring - what a miracle, the earth settled under the wall of the slicer!
And - you guessed it, my mother. Why, this is a tunnel!
Under their kitchen, under their bread slicer digging!
This was not known in the orphanage.
They began to attract pupils to the director. While they walked through the elders, they could not even think about the younger ones.
Military engineers were summoned for consultation. Was it possible, they asked, that the children would dig this themselves?
They examined the tunnel, from the barn to the bread slicer, and went inside, where it was not collapsed, climbed. Shaking off the yellow sand, they threw up their hands: “It is impossible, without equipment, without special training, it’s impossible to dig such a metro. An experienced soldier will work here for a month, if, say, with a trenching tool and auxiliary means ... And children ... Yes, we would have taken such children with us, if they really knew how to perform such miracles. "
- They are still those miracle workers! - the director said gloomily. - But I will find this wizard-creator!
The brothers stood right there, among the other pupils. Each of them knew what the other was thinking.
Both Kuzmyonysh thought that the ends, if they began to pry, would inevitably lead to them. Weren't they hanging around here all the time, weren't they absent when the others were stuck in the bedroom by the stove?
There are many eyes around! One overlooked the second, and the third saw.
And then, in the tunnel that evening, they left their lamp and, most importantly, Sasha's school bag, in which they dragged the earth into the forest.
A dull handbag, but as it will be found, so will the brothers kaput! You still have to get away. Wouldn't it be better to sail off to the unknown Caucasus ourselves, but calmly? All the more so - and two seats were vacated.
Of course, the Kuzmenyshes did not know that somewhere in the regional organizations at a bright moment this idea arose about unloading the Moscow region orphanages, of which there were hundreds in the spring of 1944. This is not counting the homeless, who lived wherever and how it was necessary.
And here in one fell swoop with the liberation of the prosperous lands of the Caucasus from the enemy, it came out to solve all the issues: to get rid of extra mouths, to deal with crime, and it seems like a good deed for the children.
And for the Caucasus, of course.
The guys were told so: if you want to get drunk, go. Everything is there. And there is bread. And potatoes. And even fruit, the existence of which our jackals do not even suspect.
Sashka then said to his brother: "I want fruit ... These are the ones about which this ... who came, spoke."
To which Kolka replied that a fruit is a potato, he knows for sure. And the fruit is also the director. With his ears, Kolka heard one of the sappers, leaving, said quietly, pointing to the director: "Also a fruit ... He is saving himself from the war for the kids!"
- We'll have enough potatoes! - said Sashka.
And Kolka immediately replied that when the jackals are brought to such a rich land, where everything is, he will immediately become poor. Vaughn read in a book that locusts are much smaller than the size of an orphanage, and when a bunch of rushes, a bare place remains after it. And her belly is not like our brother's, she probably won't eat everything. Give her those incomprehensible fruits. And we will devour the tops, leaves and flowers ...
But Kolka still agreed to go.
They delayed for two months until they were sent.
Anatoly Pristavkin.
A golden cloud slept
I dedicate this story to all her friends who took it as their personal
a homeless child of literature and did not let its author fall into despair.
This word arose by itself, as the wind is born in a field. Arose,
rustled, swept through the near and far corners of the orphanage: "Caucasus!
Caucasus! "What kind of Caucasus? Where did it come from? Really, no one could really
explain.
And what a strange fantasy in the filthy suburbs to talk about
some Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there are no textbooks
was!) the orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather,
existed in some distant incomprehensible times, when he fired at enemies
black-bearded, eccentric mountaineer Hadji Murat, when the leader of the murids, the imam
Shamil defended himself in a besieged fortress, and Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin
languished in a deep pit.
There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.
Yes, here's more cigarettes! One of Kuzmenysh spotted them at the wounded
a lieutenant colonel from an ambulance train stuck at the station in Tomilin.
Against the background of broken snow-white mountains gallops, gallops in a black cloak
rider on a wild horse. No, not jumping, but flying through the air. And under it
in uneven, angular font the name: "KAZBEK".
A mustached lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a young handsome man,
looked at the pretty nurse who rushed out to see the station, and
tapped pointedly with his fingernail on the cardboard lid of cigarettes, not
noticing that nearby, opening his mouth in amazement and holding his breath, he gazed at
a precious little box a little ragged Kolka.
I was looking for a crust of bread, from the wounded, to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!
Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?
It has nothing to do with it.
And it is not clear how this pointed, sparkling brilliant
the icy edge is a word where it is impossible for him to be born: among orphanages
everyday life, cold, without wood, always hungry. All the stressful life of the guys
folded around frozen potatoes, potato peels and, like the top
desires and dreams - crusts of bread to exist, to survive alone
just an extra day of war.
The most cherished and unrealizable dream of any of them was at least once
to penetrate the holy of holies of the orphanage: the BREAD Slicer, - so let's highlight
font, for it stood in front of the eyes of children higher and unattainable than
some kind of KAZBEK there!
And they appointed there, as the Lord God would have appointed, say, to heaven! The most
chosen, the most fortunate, or it can be defined as follows: the happiest on
earth!
Kuzmenyshs were not among them.
And there was no idea that I would come in. This was the lot of blatyagi, those of
them, who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in an orphanage, or even in
the whole village.
Penetrate the bread slicer, but not like those, the chosen ones, by the owners, but
mouse, for a second, for a moment, that's what you dreamed of! With an eye to
in reality to look at all the great wealth of the world, in the form of piled up on
table of gnarled loaves.
And - inhale, not with your chest, inhale intoxicating, intoxicating with your stomach
bread smell ...
And that's all. All!
About no crumbs there that cannot help but remain after
dumped, after the brittle rubbing rough sides of the bukhariks, did not dream.
Let them be gathered, let the chosen enjoy themselves! It rightfully belongs to them!
But no matter how rubbed against the iron-studded doors of the bread slicer, it could not
replace that phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the brothers
Kuzminykh, - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.
It was not at all for them to slip through this door in a legal way. it
was from the realm of abstract fantasy, the brothers were realists. Although
a concrete dream was no stranger to them.
And this is what this dream in the winter of forty-four brought Kolka and
Sasha: to penetrate into the bread slicer, into the kingdom of bread in any way ... Any way.
In these especially dreary months when to get frozen potatoes
it is impossible, let alone bread crumbs, to walk past a house, past iron doors
there was no strength. To walk and know, almost to picture like there, behind the gray
walls, behind a dirty, but also barred window,
with a knife and scales. And they shred, and cut, and crumple the doughy damp bread,
pouring warm salty crumbs into his mouth with a handful, and saving the fat fragments
godfather.
Saliva boiled in my mouth. Grabbed the stomach. My head grew dim. I wanted
howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door to unlock, open,
to finally understand: we want it too! Then let him go to the punishment cell, where
anything ... They will punish, beat, kill ... But let them first show, even from
doors, as he, bread, heap, mountain, Kazbek rises on a shredded
knives on the table ... how it smells!
Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Once bread
lies like a mountain, so the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live
further.
From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger
did not decrease. He was getting stronger.
Once a stupid teacher began to read aloud an excerpt from Tolstoy, and
there, the aging Kutuzov eats chicken during the war, reluctantly eats, almost
not chewing a hard wing with disgust ...
The guys found this scene very fantastic! Come up with
also! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately gnaw for a bone from that
the winglet started running anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud,
more bellies twisted, and they forever lost faith in writers; if they have
they don't eat chicken, which means that the writers themselves are getting drunk!
Since the main orphanage urk Sych was driven out, there are many different
large and small criminals passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting away from
dear militia here for the winter their half rags.
One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving the weak
crumbs, dreams of crumbs, taking small-sized trees into the reliable web of slavery.
For the crust they fell into slavery for a month or two.
The front crust, the one that is crisp, blacker, thicker, sweeter, was worth
two months, on a loaf, it would be the top, but after all we are talking about rations,
a tiny piece that looks like a flat transparent leaf on the table; back
- paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.
And who did not remember that Vaska Morechok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshes, was also years old
eleven, before the arrival of a relative-soldier somehow behind the back crust
served for six months. He gave everything edible, and ate buds from trees,
so as not to bend at all.
Kuzmenyshs were also sold in difficult times. But always sold
together.
If, of course, we could add two Kuzmenyshs into one person, then we would not
would be in the entire Tomilinsky orphanage for them equal in age, and, possibly,
by strength.
But the Kuzmenyshs knew their advantage.
It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away in four legs faster. A
four eyes can see where they are, when it is necessary to grasp where something is bad
lies!
While two eyes are busy with business, the other two watch over both. Yes they have time
also make sure that they do not bite anything, clothes, a mattress underneath,
when you sleep and see your pictures from the life of a bread slicer! They said: what,
they say, he opened the bread slicer, if they pulled at you!
And the combinations of any of the two Kuzmenyshes are countless! Gotcha, say
some of them are in the market, being dragged into jail. One of the brothers whines, screams, at
pity hits and the other distracts. You look, while you turned to the second,
the first is sniffing, and there is none. And the second one! Both brothers are nimble like loaches,
slippery, once missed, you can't take it back in your hands.
Eyes will see, hands will grab, feet will carry away ...
But somewhere, in some kind of pot, all this must be cooked in advance ...
Without a reliable plan: how, where and what to steal, it's hard to live!
The two heads of Kuzmenysh were cooked in different ways.
Sasha, as a world-contemplative, calm, quiet man,
ideas. How, how they arose in him, he himself did not know.
Kolka, resourceful, grippy, practical, with the speed of lightning
figured out how to translate these ideas into reality. Extract, that is, income. What
even more precisely: take the guzzle.
If Sasha, for example, said, scratching the blond top of his head, and not
should they fly to, say, the moon, there is a lot of cake, Kolka would not say right away:
"No". He would first have pondered this business with the Moon, on which airship there
fly off, and then I would ask; "Why? You can steal and closer ..." But,
it happened that Sashka would dreamily look at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would catch
on the air of Sashkin's thought. And then he wonders how to implement it.
Sasha's golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! Brothers have seen this
on the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers a hundred floors below at hand
spread. We are the very first, the highest!
And Kuzmenyshs are the first in another. They were the first to figure out how to get them through the winter.
forty-four and not die.
When the revolution was made in St. Petersburg, I suppose, except for the post and telegraph, yes
station, and they did not forget to take the bread slicer by storm!
Brothers walked past the slicer, not the first time, by the way. But it hurts
it was unbearable that day! Although such walks added their torment.
"Oh, how to eat something hunting ... At least gnaw the door! At least the ground is frozen under
eat on the threshold! "- so it was said aloud. Sashka said, and suddenly it dawned on him.
Why eat it if ... If it is ... Yes, yes! That's it! If you need to dig it!
Dig! Well, of course, dig!
He did not say, he just looked at Kolka. And he instantly accepted
signal, and, turning his head, appreciated everything, and scrolled through the options. But again
he did not say anything aloud, only his eyes flashed with a predatory flare.
Who has tested, he will believe: there is no more inventive and purposeful in the world
person, the hungry a person, the more so if he is an orphanage, who grew up for
war brains on where and what to get.
Without saying a word (around the swindlers, they will hear, spread, and
then any, the most brilliant Sashka's idea), the brothers went straight to
the nearest shed, a hundred meters from the orphanage, and from the bread slicer
meters by twenty. The shed was at the bread slicer just behind the back.
In the shed, the brothers looked around. At the same time we looked into the farthest
the corner where behind the worthless iron scrap, behind the broken brick there was a stash
Vaska Morechka. In his days, when firewood was stored, no one knew, only
Kuzmenysh knew: here was hiding a soldier, Uncle Andrei, who had a weapon
pulled off.
Sashka asked in a whisper; - Isn't it far?
- And how is it closer? - in turn, asked Kolka.
Both understood that there was nowhere closer. Breaking the lock is much easier. Less
labor, less time is needed. Forces remained crumbs. But it was already, they tried
knock the lock off the bread slicer, not only Kuzmenysh came such a bright
the answer to the head! And the management hung a barn lock on the doors! Half a meal
weight!
It can only be disrupted with a grenade. Hang in front of the tank - not one
that tank will not penetrate an enemy shell.
The window after that unfortunate incident was barred and so fat
the rod was welded so that it could not be taken with a chisel or a crowbar - autogenous if
only!
And Kolka was thinking about the autogen, he noticed carbide in one place.
But you can't drag it, you can't light it, there are many eyes around.
Only there are no prying eyes underground! Another option is to completely refuse
from the bread slicer - Kuzmenysh did not suit.
Neither the store, nor the market, nor the more private houses were now suitable for
extraction of edible. Although such options were worn swarm in Sasha's head. Trouble
that Kolka did not see the ways of their real embodiment.
There's a watchman in the shop all night, an angry old man. Doesn't drink, doesn't sleep, he
day is enough. Not a watchman - a dog in the manger.
The houses around, which are countless, are full of refugees. And eat just
vice versa. They themselves look where to snatch something.
The Kuzmenysh had a house in mind, so when Sych was the elder
cleaned.
True, they pulled off for no reason: rags and a sewing machine. Her long afterwards
twisted in turn here, in the barn, the shantrap until the handle flew off and
everything else did not fall apart.
Not about a typewriter. About the bread slicer. Where there are not scales, not weights, but only bread - he
one forced the brothers to work furiously in two heads.
And it came out: "In our time, all roads lead to the bread slicer."
Strong, not a bread slicer. It is also known that there are no such fortresses, then
there is a bread slicer that a hungry orphanage could not take.
In the dead of winter, when all the punks, desperate to pick up at the station
or at the market at least something edible, froze around the stoves, rubbing against them
ass, back, back of the head, absorbing fractions of degrees and seemingly warming up -
the lime was wiped off to the brick, - the Kuzmenyshs began to implement their
an incredible plan, in this incredible was the key to success.
From a distant stash in a shed, they began stripping, as determined
would be an experienced builder, using curved scrap and plywood.
Grasping the crowbar (here they are - four hands!), They raised it and lowered it
with a dull sound on the frozen ground. The first centimeters were the heaviest.
The ground was humming.
On plywood, they carried it to the opposite corner of the barn until there
a whole slide formed.
All day, so purple that the snow drifted obliquely, covering up my eyes,
kuzmenysh dragged the land away into the forest. They put in their pockets, in their bosom, not
carry in your hands. Until you guessed: adapt the canvas bag from the school.
Now they went to school in turns and dug in turns: one day they hollowed
Kolka and one day - Sashka.
The one for whom it was the turn to study sat out two lessons for himself
A. Pristavkin's story about twin orphanages Kuzmenysh, sent during the Great Patriotic War from the Moscow region to the Caucasus. It was written back in 1981, but was only able to see the light of day in the late 80s. A book about the war, about the fate of children broken by the war, is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent.
I dedicate this story to all her friends, who accepted this street child of literature as their personal and did not let the author fall into despair.This word arose by itself, as the wind is born in a field. Arose, rustled, swept through the near and far back streets of the orphanage: “Caucasus! Caucasus!" What kind of Caucasus? Where did he come from? Really, no one could really explain.
And what a strange fantasy in the filthy suburbs of Moscow to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there were no textbooks!) The orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible times, when the black-bearded, eccentric mountaineer Hadji Murat fired at the enemies, when the leader of the murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in the besieged fortress, and the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep pit.
There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.
Yes, here's more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmenyshes spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train stuck at the station in Tomilin.
Against the background of broken snow-white mountains, a rider on a wild horse gallops, gallops in a black cloak. No, not jumping, but flying through the air. And under it, in an uneven, angular font, the name: "KAZBEK".
A mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a young handsome man, glanced at the pretty nurse who rushed out to look at the station, and tapped the cardboard lid of cigarettes with a significant fingernail, not noticing that next to him, opening his mouth in amazement and holding his breath, was staring at the precious ring box.
I was looking for a crust of bread, from the wounded, to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!
Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?
It has nothing to do with it.
And it is not clear how this sharp-pointed word, sparkling with a brilliant icy edge, was born where it is impossible for him to be born: among the orphanage everyday life, cold, without wood, always hungry. The whole stressful life of the guys developed around frozen potatoes, potato peelings and, as the top of desire and dreams, crusts of bread in order to exist, to survive only one extra day of war.
The most cherished, and even unrealizable dream of any of them was at least once to penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD SUTTER, so we will highlight it in type, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and unattainable than some kind of KAZBEK!
And they appointed there, as the Lord God would have appointed, say, to heaven! The most elite, the most fortunate, or you can define it like this: the happiest on earth!
Kuzmenyshs were not among them.
And there was no idea that I would come in. This was the lot of the criminals, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in the orphanage, or even in the entire village.
To penetrate the bread slicer, but not like those, the chosen ones, by the owners, but with the mouse, for a second, for a moment, that's what you dreamed of! With an eye, in order to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world, in the form of clumsy loaves piled up on the table.
And - inhale, not with your chest, with your stomach, inhale the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...
And that's all. All!
There was no dream of any little crumbs that could not help but remain after the dumped, after the brittle rubbing with rough sides of the bukhariks. Let them be gathered, let the chosen enjoy themselves! It rightfully belongs to them!
But no matter how you rub against the iron-studded doors of the bread slicer, this could not replace that phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.
It was not at all for them to slip through this door in a legal way. It was from the realm of abstract fantasy, the brothers were realists. Although a specific dream was not alien to them.
And this is what this dream in the winter of 1944 brought Kolka and Sasha to: to penetrate the bread slicer, the bread kingdom by any means ... Anyone.
In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get frozen potatoes, let alone bread crumbs, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. To walk and know, to imagine almost picturesquely, as there, behind the gray walls, behind a dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones are enchanting, with a knife and scales. And shred, and cut, and crumple the doughy damp bread, pouring a handful of warm salty crumbs into his mouth, and saving the fat fragments to the godfather.
Saliva boiled in my mouth. Grabbed the stomach. My head grew dim. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would open it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Then let them go to the punishment cell, wherever they want ... They will punish, beat, kill ... But let them first show, even from the door, as he, bread, heap, mountain, Kazbek rises on a table cut by knives ... How it smells!
Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.
From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not subside. He was getting stronger.
The guys found such a scene very fantastic! Come up with too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run for a bone gnawed from that wing anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud, their bellies tightened even more, and they forever lost faith in writers; if they don't eat chicken, it means that the writers themselves are getting drunk!
Since the main orphanage urk Sych was driven away, many different large and small criminals have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting their half-rags for the winter away from the militia.
One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving the weak crumbs, dreams of crumbs, taking the small trees into the reliable networks of slavery.
For the crust they fell into slavery for a month or two.
The front crust, the one that is browner, blacker, thicker, sweeter, cost two months, on a loaf it would be the top one, but we are talking about soldering, a tiny piece that looks like a transparent leaf flat on the table; the back - paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.
And who did not remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshs, was also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a soldier-relative, he had served for six months for the back crust. He gave everything edible, and ate the buds from the trees, so as not to bend at all.
Kuzmenyshs were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.
If, of course, we could add two Kuzmenyshs into one person, then there would be no equal in age, and, possibly, in strength in the entire Tomilinsk orphanage.
But the Kuzmenyshs knew their advantage.
It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away in four legs faster. And four eyes are far more keen to see when it is necessary to grasp where something lies badly!
While two eyes are busy with business, the other two watch over both. Yes, they still manage to make sure that they don't bite something from themselves, clothes, a mattress underneath, when you sleep and see your pictures from the life of a bread slicer! They said: why, they say, did he open a bread slicer if they pulled at you!
And the combinations of any of the two Kuzmenyshes are countless! Got caught, say, one of them in the market, being dragged into jail. One of the brothers whines, screams, beats in pity, and the other distracts. You look, until you turned to the second, the first is a sniff, and he is gone. And the second one! Both brothers are nimble, slippery like loaches, once you let them go, you can't take them back in your hands.
Eyes will see, hands will grab, feet will carry away ...
But somewhere, in some kind of pot, all this must be cooked in advance ... Without a reliable plan: how, where and what to steal, it is difficult to live!
The two heads of Kuzmenysh were cooked in different ways.
Sasha, as a world-contemplative, calm, quiet person, drew ideas from himself. How, how they arose in him, he himself did not know.
Kolka, resourceful, grasping, practical, with lightning speed figured out how to bring these ideas to life. Extract, that is, income. And what is even more accurate: take the guzzle.
If Sashka, for example, said, scratching the blond top of his head, and shouldn't they fly to, say, the moon, there is a lot of oil cake, Kolka would not say right away: "No". At first he would have thought about this little business with the Moon, which airship to fly there, and then he would have asked: “Why? You can steal a little closer ... ”But it happened that Sasha would dreamily look at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would catch Sashka's thought on the air. And then he wonders how to implement it.
Sasha's golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! The brothers saw this in the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers a hundred floors below are creeping at hand. We are the very first, the highest!
And Kuzmenyshs are the first in another. They were the first to understand how to live through the winter of forty-four and not die.
When the revolution was being made in St. Petersburg, I suppose, besides the post office and the telegraph, and the station, they did not forget to take the bread slicer by storm!
Brothers walked past the slicer, not the first time, by the way. But that day was painfully unbearable! Although such walks added their torment.
“Oh, how to eat something hunting ... At least gnaw the door! Eat the frozen ground under the threshold! " - so it was said aloud. Sashka said, and suddenly it dawned on him. Why is there it if ... If it is ... Yes, yes! That's it! If you need to dig it!
Dig! Well, of course, dig!
He did not say, he just looked at Kolka. And he instantly received the signal, and, turning his head, assessed everything, and scrolled through the options. But again, he did not say anything aloud, only his eyes flashed predatory.
Whoever has experienced it will believe: there is no person in the world who is more inventive and more focused than a hungry person, all the more so if he is an orphanage who grew brains over the war on where and what to get.
Without saying a word (around the swindlers, they will hear, spread, and then any, the most ingenious Sashka idea), the brothers went straight to the nearest shed, a hundred meters from the orphanage, and twenty meters from the bread slicer. The shed was at the bread slicer just behind the back.
In the shed, the brothers looked around. At the same time we looked into the farthest corner, where behind the useless iron scrap, behind the broken brick, was Vaska Smorchka's stash. In his days, when the firewood was stored, no one knew, only the Kuzmenysh knew: here was a soldier, Uncle Andrei, who was hiding his weapon.
Sashka asked in a whisper:
Isn't it far?
And where is it closer? - in turn, asked Kolka.
Both understood that there was nowhere closer. Breaking the lock is much easier. Less labor, less time needed. Forces remained crumbs. But it was already, they tried to knock the lock off the bread slicer, not only Kuzmenysh had such a bright answer to their heads! And the management hung a barn lock on the doors! Weighing half a meal!
It can only be disrupted with a grenade. Hang up the front of the tank - not a single enemy shell will break through that tank.
After that unfortunate incident, the window was barred and such a thick rod was welded on that it could not be taken with a chisel or crowbar - if only by autogenous!
And Kolka was thinking about the autogen, he noticed carbide in one place. But you can't drag it, you can't light it, there are many eyes around.
Only there are no prying eyes underground! The other option - to completely abandon the bread slicer - did not suit Kuzmenysh in any way.
Neither the store, nor the market, nor the more private houses were now suitable for the production of food. Although such options were worn swarm in Sasha's head. The trouble is that Kolka did not see the ways of their real embodiment.
In the shop, the watchman is all night, an angry old man. He does not drink, does not sleep, he has enough day. Not a watchman - a dog in the manger.
In the houses around, which are countless, there are a lot of refugees. And to eat is just the opposite. They themselves look where to snatch something.
The Kuzmenysh had in mind a house, so the elders cleaned it when Sych was.
True, they pulled off for no reason: rags and a sewing machine. For a long time afterwards the shantrap twisted it in turn here, in the shed, until the handle flew off and everything else fell apart in parts.
It's not about a typewriter. About the bread slicer. Where there are no scales, no weights, but only bread - he alone made the brothers furiously work in two heads.
And it came out: "In our time, all roads lead to the bread slicer."
Strong, not a bread slicer. It is also known that there are no fortresses, that is, a bread slicer, that a hungry orphanage could not take.
In the dead of winter, when all the punks, desperate to pick up at least something edible at the station or in the market, froze around the stoves, rubbing their butt, back, back of the head against them, absorbing fractions of degrees and seemingly warming up - the lime was wiped off to a brick - The Kuzmenyshs set about implementing their incredible plan, and this incredibility was the key to success.
From the far stash in the shed, they began stripping, as a seasoned builder would have determined, using crooked scrap and plywood.
Grasping the crowbar (here they are - four hands!), They raised it and lowered it with a dull sound onto the frozen ground. The first centimeters were the heaviest. The ground was humming.
On plywood, they carried it to the opposite corner of the shed until a whole hill formed there.
The whole day, so purple that the snow drifted obliquely, covering up his eyes, the Kuzmenyshs dragged the earth away into the forest. They put them in their pockets, in their bosom, they couldn't carry them in their hands. Until you guessed: adapt the canvas bag from the school.
Now they went to school in turns and dug in turns: one day Kolka hammered and one day Sashka.
The one to whom it was the turn to study sat out for two lessons (Kuzmin? What kind of Kuzmin came? Nikolai? And where is the second, where is Alexander?), And then pretended to be his brother. It turned out that both were at least half. Well, and no one demanded a full visit from them! Fatly want to live! The main thing is not to be left without lunch in the orphanage!
But lunch there or dinner, here in turn they will not be allowed to eat, the jackals will eat instantly and will not leave a trace. Then they stopped digging, and the two of them went to the canteen as if on an attack.
No one will ask, no one will be interested: Sasha shamits or Kolka. Here they are united: Kuzmenysh. If suddenly one, then like a half. But one by one they were rarely seen, but we can say that they did not see them at all!
They walk together, eat together, go to bed together.
And if you beat them, they beat both, starting with the one who gets caught earlier in this awkward moment.
When you think about how children survived during wartime, it becomes very difficult. And if you also know that these children were orphans and lived in an orphanage, then your heart sank with pain and pity. The story "A golden cloud spent the night" tells about such children, which is the most famous work Anatoly Pristavkin.
The events of the novel take place in 1944, just after the Chechens and Ingush were deported. Twin boys Kolya and Sasha live in an orphanage and know firsthand what it feels like when you have nothing to eat for a long time. They understand that, by and large, no one in this world is needed and left to themselves. But they still believe that it is possible to live, and not just survive, that there is friendship, kindness and devotion. However, all their thoughts are occupied by the idea of \u200b\u200bhow to get yourself food.
In their pair, Sashka is more proactive, and Kolka always supports his ideas. After one unsuccessful operation to get food, the guys decide to go to the Caucasus together with other orphans. It may be easier to get food and make friends there. Indeed, there the guys meet people who treat them well. True, not everything is going well. After all, they initially did not know why they were being taken to the Caucasus, and why these lands are empty ...
The book is capable of evoking a variety of emotions: pity, anger, indignation, a sense of injustice and hopelessness. But still, orphans show that in the world, despite all the cruelty, there is good. And a person of a different nationality can become a friend. It doesn't matter at all whether you are Russian or a Chechen boy. The only pity is that adults do not understand this.
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