Lev Kassil

MAIN TROOP

stories

"AIR!"

It used to be like that. Night. People are sleeping. Quiet around. But the enemy does not sleep. Fascist planes are flying high in the black sky. They want to drop bombs on our houses. But around the city, in the forest and in the field, our defenders hid. Day and night they are on guard. The bird will fly by - and that will be heard. A star will fall - and it will be noticed.

The defenders of the city fell to the auditory tubes. Hear - rumble in the height of the motors. Not our motors. Fascist. And immediately a call to the head of the city's air defense:

The enemy is flying! Be ready!

Now, in all the streets of the city and in all the houses, the radio began to speak loudly:

"Citizens, air raid alert!"

At the same moment the command is given:

And the fighter pilots start the engines of their planes.

And far-sighted searchlights are lit. The enemy wanted to sneak in unnoticed. It didn't work out. He is already waiting. Defenders of the city on the ground.

Give me a beam!

And all over the sky beams of spotlights sang.

Fire on fascist planes!

And hundreds of yellow stars jumped in the sky. It was hit by anti-aircraft artillery. Anti-aircraft guns shoot high up.

“There is the enemy, beat him!” say the projectors. And direct light beams are chasing fascist planes. Here the rays converged - the plane got entangled in them, like a fly in a web. Now everyone can see it. Anti-aircraft gunners took aim.

Fire! Fire! Once again fire! - And the anti-aircraft gun shell hit the enemy in the engine itself.

Black smoke billowed from the plane. And the fascist plane crashed to the ground. He failed to get to the city.

For a long time, searchlight beams go across the sky. And the defenders of the city listen to the sky with their pipes. And anti-aircraft gunners are standing by the guns. But all around is quiet. There is no one left in the sky.

“The threat of air attack has passed. Hang up!"

DIRECT FIRE

Order: do not let the Nazis on the road! Not one gets through. This is an important road. They drive shells for battle on it in cars. Camping kitchens bring lunch to the fighters. And those who are wounded in battle are sent along this road to the hospital.

You can not let the enemy on this road!

The Nazis began to attack. Many of them have gathered. And ours here have only one gun, and there are only four of ours. Four gunners. One brings the shells, the other charges the gun, the third aims. And the commander manages everything: where to shoot, he says, and how to point the gun. The gunners decided: "We will die, and not let the enemy through."

Give up, Russians! shout the Nazis. There are many of us, but only four of you. In two counts, we'll kill everyone!

Gunners answer:

Nothing. There are many of you, but little sense. And we have four of your deaths in each shell. Enough for all of you!

The Nazis got angry and rushed to ours. And our gunners rolled out their light cannon to a convenient place and are waiting for the Nazis to come closer.

We have heavy, huge guns. A telegraph pole will fit into a long muzzle. Such a gun hits thirty kilometers. Only a tractor will take her away. And here we have a light field gun. You can rotate it with four people.

The artillerymen rolled out their light cannon, and the Nazis ran straight at them. They swear, they tell you to surrender.

And well, comrades, - commanded the commander, - direct fire on the advancing fascists - fire!

The gunners pointed the muzzle of the cannon directly at the enemies.

Fire flew out of the muzzle, and a well-aimed projectile killed four fascists at once. No wonder the commander said: in each shell there are four deaths.

But the Nazis keep climbing and climbing. Four artillerymen fight back.

One brings the shells, the other charges, the third aims. The commander controls the battle: he tells where to hit.

One artilleryman fell: a fascist bullet killed him. Another fell, wounded. There were two guns left. A fighter brings shells, charges. The commander himself aims, he fires at the enemy himself.

The Nazis stopped, began to crawl back.

And then our help came. They brought more guns. This is how the artillerymen drove the enemy away from the important road.

River. Bridge across the river.

The Nazis decided to transport their tanks and trucks over this bridge. Our scouts found out about this, and the commander sent two brave sappers to the bridge.

Sappers are skilled people. Pave the road - call the sappers. Build a bridge - send sappers. Blow up the bridge - again sappers are needed.

Sappers climbed under the bridge, laid a mine. Full of explosives. Just throw a spark there - and a terrible force will be born in a mine. From this force, the earth trembles, houses collapse.

The sappers put a mine under the bridge, inserted a wire, and they themselves quietly crawled away and hid behind a hillock. Unwound the wire. One end is under the bridge, in a mine, the other is in the hands of sappers, in an electric machine.

The sappers lie and wait. It's cold for them, but they endure. You can't miss the fascists.

They lie for an hour, then another… Only in the evening the fascists appeared. There are many tanks, trucks, infantry is moving, cannon tractors are being transported ...

Enemies approached the bridge. Here the front tank has already thundered on the boards of the bridge. Behind him - the second, third ...

Let's! - says one sapper to another.

Early, another responds. - Let everyone enter the bridge, then at once.

The front tank had already reached the middle of the bridge.

Come on, you'll miss it! - the impatient sapper hurries.

Wait, the elder replies.

The front tank had already approached the very shore, the entire fascist detachment was on the bridge.

Now is the time, - said the senior sapper and pressed the handle of the machine.

A current ran through the wire, a spark jumped into a mine, and there was such a crash that it was heard ten kilometers away. Thundering flames erupted from under the bridge. Tanks and trucks flew high. Hundreds of shells exploded with a bang, which the Nazis were carrying on trucks. And everything - from the earth to the sky - was covered with thick, black smoke.

And when the wind blew that smoke away, there was no bridge, no tanks, no trucks. There is nothing left of them.

Just right, - said the sappers.

WHO IS ON THE PHONE?

Arina, Arina! I am Magpie! Arina, can you hear me? Arina, answer!

Arina does not answer, she is silent. Yes, and there is no Arina here, and there is no Magpie. This is deliberately how military telephone operators shout so that the enemy does not understand anything if he clings to the wire and eavesdrops. And I'll tell you a secret. Arina is not an aunt, Magpie is not a bird. These are tricky phone names. Two of our detachments went into battle. One called himself Arina, the other - Magpie. Signalers have stretched a telephone wire through the snow, and one detachment is talking to another.

But suddenly Arina was not heard. Arina fell silent. What? And just then the scouts came to the commander of the detachment, which was called Soroka, and they say:

Rather, tell Arina that the Nazis are approaching them from the side. If you don't report now, our comrades will die.

The telephone operator began to shout into the receiver:

Arina, Arina! .. It's me - Magpie! Answer, answer!

Arina does not answer, Arina is silent. Almost crying telephone operator. Blowing into the phone. I have forgotten all the rules. Just screaming:

Petya, Petya, can you hear me? I am Magpie. Vasya I!

The phone is silent.

It can be seen that the wire was cut off, - then the signalman said and asked the commander: - Allow me, comrade commander, I will climb to fix it.

POSITION OF UNCLE Ustin

Uncle Ustin's small hut, which had grown into the ground up to the windows, was the last one from the outskirts. The whole village seemed to have slid downhill; only Uncle Ustin's house was established above the steep, gazing with its dim windows at the wide asphalt expanse of the highway, along which cars drove from Moscow and to Moscow all day long.

More than once I visited the hospitable and talkative Ustin Yegorovich together with pioneers from one camp near Moscow. The old man made wonderful crossbows. The string on his bows was triple, twisted in a special manner. When fired, the bow sang like a guitar, and the arrow, winged with fitted flight feathers of a tit or lark, did not wobble in flight and hit the target exactly. Uncle Ustin's crossbows were famous in all district pioneer camps. And in the house of Ustin Yegorovich there was always plenty of fresh flowers, berries, mushrooms - these were generous gifts from grateful archers.

Uncle Ustin also had his own weapons, just as old-fashioned as the wooden crossbows he made for the boys. It was the old Berdan woman with whom Uncle Ustin went on night duty.

So lived Uncle Ustin, the night guard, and at the pioneer camp shooting ranges, tight bowstrings sang loudly his modest fame, and feathered arrows pierced paper targets. So he lived in his small hut on a steep mountain, read for the third year in a row a book about the indomitable traveler Captain Gatheras by the French writer Jules Verne, forgotten by the pioneers, not knowing its torn beginning and slowly getting to the end. And behind the window, at which he sat in the evening, before his duty, cars ran and ran along the highway.

But this fall, everything changed on the highway. Cheerful sightseers, who used to rush past Uncle Ustin in smart buses on weekends towards the famous field, where the French once felt that they could not defeat the Russians, the noisy and curious sightseers were now replaced by strict people, riding in stern silence with rifles on trucks or watching from the towers of moving tanks. Red Army traffic controllers appeared on the highway. They stood there day and night, in the heat, in bad weather and in the cold. With red and yellow flags, they showed where the tankers should go, where the artillerymen should go, and, having shown the direction, they saluted those traveling to the West.

The war was getting closer and closer. The sun at sunset slowly filled with blood, hanging in an unkind haze. Uncle Ustin saw how shaggy explosions, as they lived, uprooted trees from the groaning earth. The German was rushing with all his might to Moscow. Parts of the Red Army were stationed in the village and fortified here so as not to let the enemy through to the high road leading to Moscow. They tried to explain to Uncle Ustin that he needed to leave the village - there would be a big fight, a cruel deed, and Uncle Razmolov's house was on the edge, and the blow would fall on him.

But the old man was stubborn.

I have a pension from the state for the length of my years, - Uncle Ustin repeated, - as I, when I used to work as a lineman, and now, therefore, in the night guard service. And then on the side of the brick factory. In addition, warehouses are available. I'm not legally obtained if I leave the place. The state kept me in retirement, therefore, now it has its length of service in front of me.

So it was not possible to persuade the stubborn old man. Uncle Ustin returned to his yard, rolled up the sleeves of his faded shirt and took up the shovel.

So, this is where my position will be, ”he said.

Soldiers and village militias helped Uncle Ustin all night to turn his hut into a small fortress. Seeing how anti-tank bottles were being prepared, he rushed to collect the empty dishes himself.

Eh, I didn’t pawn enough due to poor health,” he lamented, “some people have a whole pharmacy of dishes under the bench ... And halves and quarters ...

The battle began at dawn. It shook the ground behind the neighboring forest, covering the cold November sky with smoke and fine dust. Suddenly, German motorcyclists rushing in all their drunken spirit appeared on the highway. They jumped up and down on leather saddles, pressed the signals, yelled at random, and fired in all directions at random at Lazarus, as Uncle Ustin determined from his attic. Seeing steel slingshot-hedgehogs in front of them that closed the highway, the motorcyclists turned sharply to the side and, without dismantling the road, almost without slowing down, rushed along the side of the road, rolling into a ditch and getting out of it on the move. As soon as they caught up with the slope, on which Uncle Ustin's hut stood, heavy logs, round pine logs, rolled from above under the wheels of motorcycles. It was Uncle Ustin who imperceptibly crawled to the very edge of the cliff and pushed down the large trunks of pines that had been stored here since yesterday. Not having time to slow down, motorcyclists at full speed ran into the logs. They flew head over heels through them, and the rear ones, unable to stop, ran into the fallen ones ... Soldiers from the village opened fire from machine guns. The Germans were spreading out like crayfish that had been dumped on the kitchen table from a market purse. Uncle Ustin's hut was also not silent. Among the dry rifle shots, one could hear the thick rattle of his old Berdan gun.

Leaving their wounded and dead in the ditch, the German motorcyclists, having jumped on steeply wrapped cars, rushed back. In less than 15 minutes, a dull and heavy rumbling was heard, and, crawling up the hills, hastily rolling over into hollows, firing on the move, German tanks rushed to the highway.

The battle continued until late in the evening. Five times the Germans tried to break into the highway. But on the right, our tanks jumped out of the forest every time, and on the left, where a slope hung over the highway, the approaches to the road were guarded by anti-tank guns brought here by the unit commander. And dozens of bottles of liquid flame rained down on the tanks that were trying to slip through from the attic of a small dilapidated booth, on the square of which, shot through in three places, a child's red flag continued to flutter. "Long live the First of May" was written in white adhesive paint on the flag. Maybe it was not the right time, but Uncle Ustin did not find another banner.

Uncle Ustin's hut fought back so fiercely, so many damaged tanks, drenched in flames, fell into the nearest ditch that it seemed to the Germans that some very important knot of our defense was hidden here, and they lifted into the air about a dozen heavy bombers.

When Uncle Ustin, stunned and bruised, was pulled out from under the logs and he opened his eyes, still faintly understanding, the bombers were already driven away by our MiGs, the tank attack was repulsed, and the unit commander, standing not far from the collapsed hut, something spoke sternly to two frightened looking guys; although their clothes were still smoking, they both looked trembling.

First Name Last Name? the commander asked sternly.

Karl Schwieber, the first German answered.

Augustine Richard, - answered the second.

And then Uncle Ustin got up from the ground and, staggering, approached the prisoners.

Wow what are you! Von-Baron Augustin! .. And I'm just Ustin, - he said and shook his head, from which blood dripped slowly and viscous. - I didn’t invite you to visit: you, dog, imposed yourself on my ruin ... Well, even though they call you “Avg-Ustin” with a surcharge, it turns out that you didn’t slip past Ustin. Got caught on the same check.

After the dressing, Uncle Ustin, no matter how he resisted, was sent in an ambulance to Moscow. But in the morning the restless old man left the hospital and went to his son's apartment. The son was at work, the daughter-in-law was also not at home. Uncle Ustin decided to wait for the arrival of his own. He glanced at the stairs inquisitively. Sandbags, boxes, hooks, barrels of water were prepared everywhere. On the door opposite, next to a sign with the inscription: "Doctor of Medicine V. N. Korobovsky," a piece of paper was pinned up: "There is no reception, the doctor is at the front."

Well, well, - Uncle Ustin said to himself, sitting down on the steps, - so, let's consolidate our positions. It's not too late to fight everywhere, the house will be stronger than my dugout. In which case, if they get in here, they can do such things here!

Good afternoon, dear Valya! I apologize for writing to you under such a bold appeal. But I don't know your full title by patronymic. Mortar fighter Gvabunia Arseniy Nesterovich is writing to you. My year of birth is 1918. You are strangers to me. But your noble blood flows in my veins, Valya, which you, when you performed in Sverdlovsk, gave from your heart of gold to the soldiers, commanders and political workers of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army if they were injured in battles with fascist evil spirits.

I had a difficult situation from a wound, and as a result of this there was a strong weakness, and danger to life due to a large loss of blood. And they gave me 200 cubes of blood in the hospital, and then, after a period of time, another 200. In total, 400. And it was your blood, Valya, which completely saved me. I became a fast move to get better, for new battles for my homeland. And my health is good now. For which I express to you, dear Valya, my sincere Red Army gratitude.

I was then in the hospital, when I was appointed to be discharged, and asked whose belonging the blood was transfused to me. They told me it was yours. They said that a famous artist, and said your last name - Shavarova. They also said that your personal brother is also fighting on our front. I wanted to go to the theater later, to see the play when you performed, but you have already left. And for this reason, I didn't get to see you in person.

After I had been completely cured, I again returned now in the opposite direction to my native unit, commanded by Major Comrade Vostretsov. And together with my comrades in the mortar unit, we suppress the bloody fascists with our fire and do not allow them to breathe freely and raise their heads above our Soviet land.

I am writing you a letter for the reason that I want - the first number: to express to you the mentioned gratitude, and the second number: to tell you about one case, in other words, a combat episode, which I want to describe to you in the following lines.

By the evening of yesterday, we received the order and were preparing for military operations. Shortly before the appointed time, the soldiers heard the radio from our capital - Moscow. And they said on the radio that the artist Valentina Shavarova, that is, you, would read a poem written by one author. You read with strong expression and very legibly. We all listened so attentively that we did not even think at that hour about the danger or, perhaps, even the complete outcome for life that awaited us in the imminent battle. Maybe it’s not supposed to be like that, but I won’t hide - I revealed to my fellow soldiers that this famous artist, who was just heard from Moscow, lent me her blood without giving back to save her. But not everyone believed. Some thought that I was a little flooded, as if a famous artist gave me blood. But I knew I wasn't lying.

When the transmission from Moscow ended, we soon went into battle, and although the fire was too thick, I still heard your voice in my ears.

The fight was very difficult. Well, it's too long to describe. In general, I myself was left alone at my large-caliber mortar and I decide that the Nazis will not get me alive. Of course, my finger was slightly injured by a shrapnel, but I still fire and do not leave the battle line. This is where they start to get around me. All around me, the fragments are striking and pouring. The crack is terrible, to the point of impossibility. Suddenly, an unfamiliar fighter crawls up to me from the rear and I notice that he does not have a rifle with him. He fought off the other part and, apparently, was too frightened. I began to persuade him, well, I express all sorts of suitable explanatory words to him. Now, they say, we'll drag the mortar together so that the Germans don't get it. But he wanted to drop everything and save himself. All sorts of suitable words came to an end for me, and, I confess, I began to call him a little, I'm sorry, to call him names. “Listen,” I tell him, “you can’t be such a selfish coward, your soul is a sheep, you are the son of a sheep, what is your last name? And all around the shooting is such that it literally stuns. But all the same, I heard his last name: "My, he says, last name: Shavarov." - “Stop, I say, but do you have a sister in Moscow?” He just nodded his head. I wanted to ask him even more, to ask him thoroughly, but then the Germans launched an offensive against us because of the fishing line. And my Shavarov rushed to run sideways somewhere ... And then I felt offended, and scared for him. After all, I always remembered that your brother is fighting on our front. So somehow it immediately hit me: this, I think, is certainly her brother ...

And he, the bad one, is running, you understand, he is running, Valya, and he ran right into the ambush. As if from under the ground, the Germans disguised there jumped to intercept and drag him like a ram. They wanted to take him alive, but I think he will tell such things out of fear that he will damage our entire business in this area of ​​\u200b\u200bdefense. Yes, and the Germans jumped out to the place I had shot well. How, I think, to shy away at them with your large caliber, so the place will remain damp from everyone. But, of course, I am afraid that a big accidental chance will deprive my brother Valya Shavarova of his life ...

Here I must clarify something for you, Valya. I, Valya, am a complete orphan. He was born with us in Gudauty, and grew up in an orphanage in Krasnodar, where he received an education in the volume of an incomplete secondary school. But I have absolutely no family. And when I was drafted into the Red Army and took part in the battles against the Nazis, I often thought that there was no one to even worry about me. My other comrades in the mortar unit received letters from various relatives who cheered for them in the deep rear. And I even had no one to write to. But now I thought that I already have blood relatives. It's you, Valya. Of course, you don’t know me, but now, after reading this letter, you will know, and for myself you will remain like my own for the rest of my life ...

Then I also want to write that you probably heard about the custom of blood feud that we had in Abkhazia. Blood for blood, one family took revenge on another, and if one killed someone in another family, then this family had to cut the one who killed, and his father, and son, and even grandson, if possible. So they were cut with each other for a whole eternity. Wherever you meet a blood lover, you need to take revenge, you need to cut, you can’t forgive. Here we have a stupid law.

Now let's take my position. I owe you, Valya, my blood. If I may say so, then you and I are like bloodlines, but only in a completely different sense. And wherever I meet you, your father, brother, son - all the same, I must help such a person with a good deed, provide full assistance, it will be necessary - to give up my life.

And here the following circumstance turns out: the Germans are in front of me in an open place, on a targeted square, I, on duty as a military service, must hit them with a mortar, but among them is your brother, my bloodline. And we can’t wait any longer for a moment, the Nazis will hide or bypass us. But I can't open fire. Then I see - one of the Germans waved his machine gun at the captured, and he fell to his knees, crawling, clutching at their filthy legs, and even pointing in our direction where the mortars were. I already closed my eyes from shame ... It pushed me with blood in the head, my fists filled up, and my heart dried up. “It can’t be,” I say to myself, “she can’t have such a brother. And if there is one, let it not exist, there should not be such that it does not dishonor your blood ... ”And I opened my eyes for an accurate sight, and I hit the hillock with a large caliber from a mortar ...

And after the end of the military operation, I wanted to go look at that hillock, but everything was not decisive in me, I was afraid to look. After that, the orderlies from the neighboring sanitary battalion came and began to pick them up. And suddenly I hear them say: “Look, it’s Khabarov lying ... There you ran. Well, he was a coward - he got one such for the entire third company.

Then I made up my mind, approached, asked again for the final clarification of the identity, and it turns out that the surname of this Khabarov, in fact, so that you would not be born! impression. And I decided to write about it to you. Maybe you will also have a desire to write me an answer - the address is on the envelope.

And in the event that they suddenly send you a funeral about me, then please do not be surprised why: it is I who have now indicated your address for the message in my document. I don’t have any more addresses, except for yours, you are my blood ... And then, if such a notice comes to you by mail, accept the summons. I have not heard whether the calculation takes a human tear, like blood, into cubic centimeters. Or there is no measure for her ... One cube of tears, after all, drop, then, Valya, for me, but it’s no longer worth it. Enough.

This is where I end, I apologize for the dirty handwriting, because of the combat situation. Once again, sincere thanks to you. You can be calm, Valya, I will fight with the enemies completely, to the last one drop of blood. I remain mortar fighter Arsen Gvabunia. active army.

AT ONE TABLE

M. A. Soldatova, mother of many of her own and other children

The further the enemy moved into the depths of our land, the longer the small table at Alexandra Petrovna Pokosova became. And when I recently stopped by the Pokosovs on my way to one of the Ural factories, the table, extended to its full length, occupied almost the entire room. I got to the evening tea. Alexandra Petrovna herself, straight as always, with short-cropped gray hair, wearing narrow iron spectacles, commanded the tea party. Seething, puffing steam and looking like a steam locomotive ready to set off at any moment, the copper-red samovar, comically lengthening and distorting faces, reflected in its polished roundness all the extraordinarily grown up and unfamiliar to me population of the apartment.

At Alexandra Petrovna's right hand, her lips pressed to a saucer that stood on the table, sat a girl of about three years old. She had large black eyes with long arched eyelashes. The steam rising from the saucer tangled in the black curls of the girl's tightly curly hair. On the left hand of the hostess, puffing out his cheeks with all his strength, he blew, causing a small storm in his saucer, a tender-faced boy of about seven in an embroidered Ukrainian shirt. Next to him, admiring his own image in samovar copper, a neat little boy in a tunic tailored in a military style was making merry antics. His funny grimaces led to a hidden delight in the two little kids who were sitting opposite, quietly squirting into their cups - a girl with two short, fair-haired pigtails sticking out in different directions and a big-bodied, black-eyed strong man, whose brown cheeks were covered with a fluffy patina of southern tan. At the other end of the table were four young women. One of them hurriedly sipped tea, squinting at the wall clock.

Seeing such an unexpected crowd in a usually lonely, deserted apartment, I hesitated at the threshold.

Come in, come in, please, we will be glad! - Alexandra Petrovna spoke affably, continuing to operate with deft hands at her samovar console.

Yes, you obviously have guests ... I'd better then somehow.

What are the guests here? It's all family. And who is not relatives, so all the same, their own. You hit just right. Vakkurat all my peoples in the collection. Take off your board and sit down with us to drive tea. Come on, guys, move a little, make room for the guest.

I undressed and sat down at the table.

Five pairs of baby eyes - black, light blue, gray, brown - stared at me.

But you probably didn’t find out,” Alexandra Petrovna spoke, pushing a golden glass of tea towards me, “daughters have grown up? After all, this is Lena and Evgenia. And those are my daughters-in-law. One thing, to tell the truth, and not my daughter-in-law, but anyway I already got used to considering her like my own.

The young women looked at each other happily. The one who was drinking tea, looking at her watch, got up and took a spoon from her cup.

She is in a hurry to work, - Alexandra Petrovna explained. - She's busy on the night shift. He makes planes, all sorts of motors, - she added in a whisper, leaning towards me. - This is how we live.

When Alexandra Petrovna's son-in-law died in a battle with the Germans, Lieutenant Abram Isaevich, Antonina's daughter, who lived in Minsk before the war, brought a black-eyed curly-haired Fanya to her grandmother in the Urals. They didn't have to move the table yet. Moreover, Antonina soon left for the army as a doctor. Some time passed, and the daughter-in-law with her son Tarasik came to Alexandra Petrovna from Dnepropetrovsk. His father was also in the army. Then arrived, along with one of the evacuated factories near Moscow, daughter Elena and Igor. I had to insert a board into the table. And recently Evgenia, the wife of a Sevastopol sailor, appeared. She brought little Svetlana with her. Evgenia was accompanied by her friend, a Crimean Tatar, with four-year-old Yusup. Yusup's father remained in the Crimean partisan detachment.

They pushed another board into the table ... It became noisy in Alexandra Petrovna's quiet apartment. The daughters, the daughter-in-law and the Crimean woman worked, the tireless grandmother had to mess around with the children. She easily handled the whole crowd, the grandchildren became attached to this tall, straight, never raising her voice woman. All day long they heard in the house: “Baba-Shura, give me paper, I’ll paint” ... “Baba-Shura, I want to sit next to you” ... - and curly-haired Fanya tried to take a place near her grandmother ... “Babe Shure, Yusup called. "Babo-Shura. You can hear what I'm saying,” Tarasik did not give up, defending his place at the table.

Everyone, everyone has enough space, why argue! Yesterday Svetlana was sitting next to me, so today it's Fanichka's turn. And you, Igor, ashamed. Another Muscovite! .. Look how small she is - we have Fanichka.

The children got used to the new place, Igor went to school, Svetlana went to kindergarten. The guys had already stopped jumping up at night when the horn of the neighboring factory was heard. The children's memory, wounded by night anxiety, healed. And even little Fanya no longer screamed from sleep.

Oh, you, my dear peoples, - Alexandra Petrovna used to say, hugging, taking in an armful of children clinging to her, - well, peoples, let's go feed.

And the "peoples" were seated around a large table.

Sometimes a neighboring tenant, Evdokia Alekseevna, dropped by. She pursed her lips, looked at the children disapprovingly and asked:

Oh, your life has become cramped, Alexandra Petrovna. And how is it that you all fit in here? Just Noah's armor... Seven pairs of clean, seven unclean...

Well, what's tight? Well, we're a little shy. You know what time. Everyone has to make room in this, in this, but to make room.

Yes, it’s painful, they’re all variegated with you, ”said Alekseevna, looking askance at the guys. - That one out, little black, from the Caucasians, or what, will he be? Where did this one come from? Jewish, right? Not one of ours too?

Alexandra Petrovna was tired of these unkind questions from her neighbor.

What are you all grimacing and squeezing? she once asked decisively.

Yes, it hurts you have some ... for all styles. For a complete selection of a Georgian, you would also have to have a Kyrgyz woman from Asia. What kind of family is this, all the tribes are confused.

I have a Kirghizen, my nephew, - Alexandra Petrovna answered calmly, - what a glorious one. Recently my sister sent me a card from Frunze. He studies at an artillery school ... But, you know, Alekseevna, you better not go to us, forgive me for an offensive word. Don't be angry. We live here and don't notice the cramped conditions. And as soon as you appear, stuffiness comes from you, by God, honestly. Here on such and such, as you, and Germans were tried on. They thought, harmful, that they would drive people out of their places, different peoples would mix with each other, language would not converge with language, and confusion would set in. But it turned out the other way around, the people came together even more closely. The Germans have no idea that we have long forgotten this stupidity in order to build a nit-pick on people according to suit: these, they say, are our own, and those are strangers ... There are, of course, who cannot take this into account. Only at our table there is no place for them.

In the evening, Alexandra Petrovna, having calmed down her multilingual "peoples", puts them to bed. It becomes quiet in the house. Behind the frozen window, above the city, above the factory chimneys, above the mountains approaching the village, an even, incessant rumble floats. Igor the Muscovite falls asleep under it. He knows that new aircraft engines are roaring on the stands, there, at the factory where his mother works. It also buzzed at night in a factory village near Moscow. And it seems to Svetlana and Yusup that the sea is rustling outside the window. Tarasik, falling asleep under this distant calm rumble, sees a dense cherry orchard raging under a warm wind. Little Fanya sleeps without hearing anything, but in the morning, when everyone will brag about their dreams, she will come up with something.

Well, my peoples have settled down, ”Alexandra Petrovna says quietly and straightens a huge, colorful patchwork, similar to a huge geographical map, blanket, under which, laid across a wide bed, Ukrainian Tarasik, Muscovite Igor, Minsker Fanya, Sevastopol Svetlana and Yusup are breathing evenly.

EVERYTHING WILL RETURN

Man has forgotten everything. Who is he? Where? There was nothing - no name, no past. Twilight, thick and viscous, enveloped his consciousness. Memory distinguished in him only the last few weeks. And everything that was before, was dissolved in incomprehensible darkness.

Those around him could not help him. They themselves did not know anything about the wounded. He was picked up in one of the areas cleared of the Germans. He was found in a frozen basement, severely beaten, tossing about in delirium. One of the fighters, who, like him, endured all the thorough tortures in the German dungeon, said that the unknown did not want to tell the Nazis anything about himself. He was interrogated for twelve hours straight, he was beaten on the head. He fell, they poured cold water on him and interrogated him again. The officers who tortured the stubborn changed, night changed day, but beaten, wounded, half-dying, he still stood his ground: “I don’t know anything ... I don’t remember ...”

There were no documents with him. The Red Army soldiers, thrown by the Germans with him into the same basement, also did not know anything about him. He was taken to the far rear in the Urals, placed in a hospital and decided to get all the information from him later, when he wakes up. On the ninth day he came to his senses. But when they asked him what part he was from, what his last name was, he looked at the sisters and the military doctor in bewilderment, drew his eyebrows together so tensely that the skin in the wrinkle on his forehead turned white, and suddenly said dully, slowly and hopelessly:

I don't know anything... I forgot everything... What is it, comrades... Ah, doctor? How now, where did everything go?.. I forgot everything as it is... How now?

He looked helplessly at the doctor and grabbed his cropped head with both hands.

Well, it jumped out, everything jumped out as it is ... It's spinning around here, - he twisted his finger in front of his forehead, - and as you turn to him, so it floats away ... what happened to me, doctor?

Calm down, calm down, - the young doctor Arkady Lvovich began to persuade him and signaled to the sisters to leave the ward, - everything will pass, remember everything, everything will return, everything will be restored. Just don't worry and don't torture your head in vain. In the meantime, we will call you Comrade Nepomniachtchi, may we?

So they wrote over the bunk: “Nepomniachtchi. Head wound, occipital bone injury. Multiple bruises of the body.

Nepomniachtchi lay silent for whole days. Sometimes some kind of vague memory came to life in a sharp pain that flared up in broken joints. The pain brought him back to something not entirely forgotten. He saw a dimly lit lamp in front of him in the hut, recalled that he was stubbornly and cruelly interrogated about something, but he did not answer, and he was beaten, beaten. But as soon as he tried to concentrate, this scene, dimly lit in his mind by the light of a smoky light bulb, immediately darkened, everything became indistinguishable and shifted somewhere away from consciousness. So imperceptibly disappears, eluding the gaze, a speck that had just floated as if before the eye. Everything that had happened seemed to Nepomniachtchi to have gone to the end of a long, poorly lit corridor. He tried to enter this narrow, cramped corridor, to move into its depths, as far as possible. But the corridor was getting tighter and narrower. He was suffocating in the darkness, and severe headaches were the result of these efforts.

Arkady Lvovich watched Nepomniachtchi closely, urging him not to strain his wounded memory in vain. “Don’t worry, everything will return, we will remember everything with you, just don’t force your brain, let it rest ...” The young doctor was very interested in a rare case of such a severe memory impairment, known in medicine as “amnesia”.

This is a man with a great will, - the doctor said to the head of the hospital. - He's badly injured. I understand how it happened. The Germans interrogated him and tortured him. He didn't want to tell them anything. Do you understand? He tried to forget everything he knew. One of the Red Army soldiers, from those who were at that interrogation, later said that Nepomniachtchi answered the Germans in this way: “I don’t know anything. I don't remember, I don't remember." He locked his memory at that hour. And threw away the key. He was afraid that somehow in delirium, half-conscious, he would say too much. And during the interrogation he forced himself to forget everything that could interest the Germans, everything that he knew. But he was beaten mercilessly on the head and, in fact, his memory was beaten off. She has not returned... But I am sure that she will return. He has a great will. She locked the memory with a key, and she will unlock it.

The young doctor had a long conversation with Nepomniachtchi. He carefully moved the conversation to topics that might remind the patient of something. He talked about wives who wrote to other wounded, talked about children. But Nepomniachtchi remained indifferent. Once Arkady Lvovich even brought the holy calendar and in a row read aloud to Nepomniachtchi all the names: Agathon, Agamemnon, Anempodist, Agei ... But Nepomniachtchi listened to all the saints with the same indifference and did not respond to a single name. Then the young doctor decided to try another method he had invented. He began to read aloud to the wounded geographical stories taken from the children's library. He hoped that a description of a familiar landscape, a mention of his native river, a story about a place known from childhood would awaken something in the patient's faded memory. But that didn't help either. The doctor tried another remedy. Once he came to Nepomniachtchi, who was already getting out of bed, and brought him a military tunic, trousers and boots, taking the convalescent by the hand, the doctor led him along the corridor. Then he suddenly stopped at one of the doors, abruptly opened it and let Nepomniachtchi go ahead. In front of Nepomniachtchi was a tall dressing table. A thin man in a military tunic, in riding breeches and boots of a marching type, short-haired, silently stared at the newcomer and made a movement towards him.

Well, how? the doctor asked. - Don't know?

Nepomniachtchi peered into the mirror.

No, he said curtly. - The person is unfamiliar. New, right?

And he began to look around uneasily, looking for the person who was reflected in the mirror.

Some more time has passed. The last bandages had already been removed long ago, Nepomniachtchi was recovering quickly, but his memory was not restored.

By the new year, gifts, gifts, parcels began to arrive at the hospital. They began to prepare the Christmas tree. Arkady Lvovich purposely involved Nepomniachtchi in the case, hoping that a nice fuss with toys, tinsel, sparkling balls, the fragrant smell of pine needles will give rise to at least some memories of the days that all people remember for a long life. Nepomniachtchi neatly decorated the Christmas tree, obediently doing everything the doctor told him. Without smiling, he hung gleaming toys, colored light bulbs and flags on the resinous branches, and for a long time was angry with one soldier who accidentally scattered colored beads. But he didn't remember anything.

So that the celebratory noise would not disturb the patient in vain, the doctor transferred Nepomniachtchi to a small ward, away from the hall where the Christmas tree was arranged. This chamber was located at the end of the corridor in a spacious wing of the building overlooking a hill overgrown with forest. Below, under the hill, the factory district of the city began. It got warmer before the new year. The snow on the hill became wet and dense. From the large window of the ward where Nepomniachtchi now lay, frosty patterns descended. On New Year's Eve, Arkady Lvovich came to Nepomniachtchi early in the morning. The patient was still asleep. The doctor carefully straightened the blanket, went to the window and opened a large transom. It was half past seven. And a soft breeze of thaw brought from below, from under the hill, a whistle of thick velvet tone. It was buzzing, calling for work, one of the nearest factories. He then buzzed at full power, then seemed to subside a little, obeying the wave of the wind, like an invisible conductor's baton. Echoing him, the neighboring plant responded, and then distant horns blew in the mines. And suddenly Nepomniachtchi sat up in bed and looked anxiously at the doctor.

What hour? he asked as he swung his legs off the bunk. - Has our buzzed? Oh shit, I overslept!

He jumped up, ripped open the hospital gown, ripped through the bed, looking for clothes. He muttered something to himself, angrily swearing that he had touched his tunic and trousers somewhere. Arkady Lvovich flew out of the ward like a whirlwind and immediately returned, carrying the suit in which he dressed Nepomniachtchi on the day of the mirror experiment. Without looking at anyone, Nepomniachtchi dressed hurriedly, listening to the whistle, which was still widely and authoritatively entering the ward, tumble through the open transom. Just as quickly, without looking, he devoured the breakfast brought to him and, straightening his belt as he went, ran along the corridor to the exit. Arkady Lvovich followed him, ran ahead into the dressing room, himself put someone's overcoat on Nepomniachtchi, and they went out into the street.

Nepomniachtchi walked without looking around, without thinking about anything. He didn't seem to notice the doctor. Not a memory yet, but only an old habit led him now along the street, which he suddenly recognized. It was along this street that he walked every morning towards the sound that now took possession of him entirely. Every morning, for many years in a row, he heard this whistle, and even before he woke up, with his eyes closed, he jumped up on the bed and reached for his clothes. And long-term habit, awakened by a familiar beep, was now leading him along the road traveled so many times.

Arkady Lvovich walked first behind Nepomniachtchi. He already knew what was going on. Fluke! The wounded man was brought to his hometown. And now he recognized the whistle of his factory. After making sure that Nepomniachtchi was confidently walking towards the plant, the doctor crossed to the other side of the street, got ahead of Nepomniachtchi and managed to get into the service booth before him.

The elderly timekeeper at the checkpoint was stunned when she saw Nepomniachtchi.

Egor Petrovich! she whispered. - Oh my God! Alive-healthy...

Nepomniachtchi gave her a short nod.

She was well, Comrade Lakhtina. I stayed a little today.

He began to rummage in his pockets, looking for a pass. But the guard on duty came out of the guardhouse, to whom the doctor had already managed to tell everything, and whispered something to the watchman. The forgetful was missed.

And so he came to his workshop and went straight to his machine in the second bay, quickly examined it with a master's eye, looked around, searched with his eyes in the silent crowd of workers, delicately looking at him in the distance, found the adjuster, beckoned him with his finger.

Zdorov, Konstantin Andreevich. Fix the disk on the dividing head for me.

No matter how hard Arkady Lvovich tried to persuade, everyone was interested to look at the famous milling machine operator, who so unexpectedly, so unusually returned to his factory. "Barychev is here!" - swept through the entire shop. Yegor Petrovich Barychev was considered dead, both at home and at the factory. For a long time there was no news about him.

Arkady Lvovich looked at his patient from a distance. Barychev once again critically examined his machine, grunted approvingly, and the doctor heard a sigh of relief from a young guy standing near him, apparently replacing Barychev at the machine. But then the bass of the factory whistle blew over the workshop, Yegor Petrovich Barychev inserted the parts into the mandrel, strengthened, as he always did, two large-diameter cutters at once, started the machine manually, and then gently turned on the feed. An emulsion splashed, metal shavings crawled, curling. “It works in its own way, as before, in the Barychev way,” they whispered respectfully around. Barychev worked. With his free hand, he managed to prepare parts in a spare mandrel. He didn't waste a single minute. He did not make a single unnecessary movement. And soon rows of finished parts lined up at his machine tool. No matter how the doctor asked, but no, no, someone would come to Barychev and admire his work. The memory has already returned to the hands of the master. He looked around, looked at other machines and noticed that the neighbors also had a lot of finished parts.

What is this verse found at all today? - he said in surprise, turning to his friend-adjuster. - Look, Konstantin Andreevich, our young ones are from the early ones.

You are painfully old, - the adjuster joked. - Thirty has not yet knocked, and also spoke to the old man. And as for the products, now we have the whole shop in Barychev's way to work. We give 220 percent. You understand, there is no time to pull here. War.

War? Yegor Petrovich asked quietly and dropped the key on the floor tiles. Arkady Lvovich hastened to this sound. He saw how, at first, Barychev's cheeks turned crimson, and then they turned deathly white.

Kostya, Konstantin Andreevich... Doctor... And how is your wife, my boys?

And the memory of everything burst into him, turning into a living longing for home.

……………………………………

Is it necessary to tell about what happened in the small house where the Barychev family lived, when Arkady Lvovich brought director Yegor Petrovich by car? .. Let everyone imagine this for himself and find in his heart the words that he would have heard if he had hit at that hour to the Barychevs.

In the evening, Barychev sits in front of the mirror in his room and shaves, getting ready for the New Year tree. Nearby, his wife sat down on a bunk with tearful, happy, but still a little disbelieving eyes.

Oh, Yegorushko, she says quietly from time to time.

They snatched off the riotous curls for the young man, - Barychev grins, examining his shorn head in the mirror, - but do you remember what a thick one it was. It used to be raining, but I go without a hat and don’t feel it. Doesn't penetrate. Do you remember?

And I, Shura, remember. I remembered everything ... But the hairstyle is still a pity.

Your hairstyle will grow, your hairstyle will grow, - the doctor who entered the ward says loudly. - Even more magnificent than before you start your hair. What? Have I ever lied to you? Remember! Now you have nothing to pretend as if you don’t remember, former citizen Nepomniachtchi! I told you: the memory will return, everything will be restored. Let's go meet the New Year at the Christmas tree. This is a very important year. Significant year. We'll return everything. We will restore everything. Just forget - we will not forget anything. Let's remember everything to the German. This is the year to celebrate.

From the hall you can already hear the bayan busts.

LEV ABRAMOVICH KASSIL

Life dates: July 10, 1905 - June 22, 1970
Place of Birth : Pokrovskaya Sloboda (city of Engels)
Russian Soviet writer, screenwriter
Notable works: "Konduit and Shvambrania", "Street of the youngest son", "Goalkeeper of the Republic"

Lev Kassil was born on July 10, 1905 in Pokrovskaya Sloboda. After the revolution, the settlement was renamed the city of Engels, this is on the Volga River.
Lev's father, Abram Grigorievich, was a doctor. Mom, Anna Isaakovna, is a musician. Lev Abramovich began to study at the gymnasium before the revolution, and completed his studies under the Soviet regime at the Unified Labor School.
His childhood dreams were quite boyish: he wanted to be a cab driver, then a shipbuilder of airplane-type steamers, a naturalist.
For good public work in the library-reading room, Kassil received a business trip from the regional party committee to a higher educational institution, and in 1923 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the State University in Moscow with a degree in aerodynamic cycle. True, by the third year he actually became a professional writer - a Moscow correspondent for the Pravda Vostoka and Soviet Siberia newspapers, an employee of the Izvestia newspaper and Pioneer magazine.
In the newspaper "Izvestia" Lev Abramovich spoke with essays on the "Chelyuskin" epic of O.Yu. Schmidt, about the flight of the stratospheric balloon "USSR", about the successes of Soviet aviation and much more. At the same time, Kassil's first books for children were published: the popular science essays "Delicious Factory", "Planetarium", "All-Terrain Boat".
In 1929, the first story, The Conduit, was published in Pioneer, and in the same place, in 1931, the second, Shvambrania.
The action in the stories took place during the First World War, the February and October revolutions of 1917. Against the background of this era, Kassil showed with great wit the life of two little boy brothers in the family and outside the home. The narration was conducted in the first person, the children's consciousness of the main characters broke from everyday life and the boring world of adults into the romantic world of the fictitious "Great State of Shvambransky".
Kassil's stories were very popular. It was from this period that the children, meeting Kassil, said: “Hello, we know you. You are this ... Lev Shvambranych Conduit.
Becoming a writer, Kassil did not turn into an armchair person. He led New Year trees in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions, festive reports from Red Square, commented on football matches, traveled around Italy with lectures on Mayakovsky, taught at the Literary Institute, invariably opened the Children's Book Week and almost daily spoke to his readers in schools, libraries, orphanages, sanatoriums, pioneer camps - throughout the country. With such a compact schedule of days, he had a new book published every year or two. Once, a reader of middle school age asked him: “And this, then, about what we were discussing now, did you write everything yourself? Great. Now, when you get home, will you write about something else? Yes?"
Deep knowledge of the interests, hobbies, tastes, customs, language and manners, the entire value system of the youth of his time determined the themes and style of his works. The heroes of Kassil's works are people of "extreme" professions: athletes, pilots, artists, actors.
Written in 1938, the novel The Goalkeeper of the Republic reflected the writer's passion for football.
"The move of the white queen" is dedicated to skiing.
"Gladiator's Bowl" is a story about the life of a circus wrestler and the fate of Russian people who ended up in exile after 1917.
In the story "The Great Confrontation", the main character Sima ran into the director Raschepey, auditioned and got into the world of cinema. Against the backdrop of the filming of the film, Sima grew up, met wonderful people.
He wrote books about Mayakovsky, Tsiolkovsky, Chkalov, Schmidt.
Following Shvambrania, Lev Kassil invented two more countries: Sinegoria (in the book My Dear Boys) and Dzhungakhora (in the book Be Prepared, Your Highness!). Later, the collection "Three countries that are not on the site" was released, in which all these three countries were combined.
On June 21, 1970, Lev Kassil wrote in his diary: “They invite you to go as an honored guest to Leningrad for the IV All-Union Pioneer Gathering. I don't think I can... I don't have the strength. I recorded an appeal to the participants of the rally on the radio.
A few hours later, Kassil died.

Museum of Lev Kassil. - Access mode: http://museumkassil.sgu.ru/kassil/biography

WORKS OF LEV ABRAMOVICH KASSILYA

"Get ready, Your Highness!"
His Highness the last prince of Dzhungakhora, Delikhyar Surambuk, was visiting the Spartak pioneer camp on the Black Sea coast.
“There was a knock on the door, and the senior counselor, Yura, introduced the head of the camp to the prince. Mikhail Borisovich looked at the newcomer once more. The prince was small-eyed, swarthy. The nostrils of a small, slightly flared nose seemed to be stretched tightly in different directions by prominent cheekbones. On the chin was an oblong hollow in the middle, like an apricot. From the wide bridge of the nose slightly obliquely to the temples, very mobile eyebrows rose, with which the prince tried to give his face an expression of arrogance and indifference.
- Well, the prince, washed off the road? the chief asked.
“I’ve washed my face, it’s good,” the prince answered a little into his nose, fastening a button and straightening a medallion with a mother-of-pearl elephant that was visible on his chest under an unbuttoned collar, holding a huge pearl in his trunk.
The prince looked at the head of the camp without curiosity, although his eyebrows twitched at the ends at the neatly trimmed temples. He straightened his hair, which was bristling at the top of his head and hanging in bangs over his forehead. The boss looked at the royal newcomer with his accustomed eye and thought that the boy, in general, though puffed up, was nothing, better than one could have imagined.
What adventures awaited the crown prince, you will read in the book of Kassil, just know that, having ascended the Dzungakhor throne under the name of Delikhyar the Fifth, he brought the following order in the palace: at the morning line, he greeted his courtiers with the exclamation: “Putti hatow!”, On that they should have answered: “The look of the hatou!”

"Great Confrontation"
Once, thirteen-year-old Moscow schoolgirl Sima Krupitsina wrote in her diary that she would have nothing interesting in her life: no adventures, no hobbies, no funny incidents. But how wrong she was!
Fate brought the girl many surprises - first she was invited to star in a film about the Patriotic War of 1812, and then ... what just happened in life! No, it is no coincidence that the famous writer Lev Kassil made her the heroine of his popular and very exciting story.

"Goalkeeper of the Republic"
The novel "The Goalkeeper of the Republic" by Lev Abramovich Kassil is one of the very first in our fiction and the most popular works on a sports theme. Written in 1937, the novel was published both in the USSR and in a number of foreign countries. According to him, the famous film "The Goalkeeper" was staged.
The book not only tells in a fascinating way about the glory and skill of Soviet athletes, but also gives a broad and original picture of the life, searches and thoughts of the younger generation in the first two decades of the October Revolution. Much of what is said in the novel (the connection between work and sport, the life of an experienced youth working commune, questions of friendship, comradeship, collectivism) echoes a number of moments in the life of our youth today.

"My Dear Boys"
And, even if we sometimes have a hard time,
None of us, friends, will be afraid, will not lie.
A comrade will not betray either the Motherland or a friend.
The son will replace the father, and the grandson will replace the grandfather,
The Motherland is calling us to a feat and to work!
Courage is our motto - Labor, Loyalty and Victory!
Forward, comrades! Friends, go ahead!
“There was once such a country, Sinegoria,” Guy began his story. - And there, near the Azure Mountains, there lived hard-working and cheerful people - Sinegorsk people.
Travelers from distant lands came here to admire the Azure Mountains, to taste the wonderful fruits that ripened here in abundance, and to acquire mirrors of incomparable purity, as well as famous swords, sharp and strong, but so thin that it was enough to turn them edgewise, and they were made invisible to the eye.
The fruits, mirrors and swords of Sinegoria were famous all over the world, and who didn’t know that it was here, at the foot of Mount Kviprokvo, that the Three Great Ones live
Masters - the most glorious Master of Mirrors and Crystal, the bright-eyed Amalgam, the most skilled gunsmith Isobar and the famous gardener and fruit grower, the wise Drone Garden Head!
The country of Sinegoria was invented for his pioneers in the summer camp by Arseniy Petrovich Gai. Kapka Butyrev became the gunsmith Isobar, Valera Cherepashkin became the master of mirrors Amalgam, Timka Zhokhov became the gardener Dron.
In the summer of 1942, Arseny Petrovich died in the war, but the boys did not forget that they were glorious Sinogorsk residents, whose motto is: "Courage, Loyalty, Labor - Victory!"
“My Dear Boys” is a famous work by the classic of Russian literature Lev Abramovich Kassil (1905-1970) about the life of teenagers in a small Volga town during the Great Patriotic War. This is a story of difficulties, dangers and adventures - fictional and very real. A story about friendship, courage and perseverance - about the fact that you can overcome any difficulties and win in the most difficult circumstances.

"Konduit and Shvambrania"
At the end of the winter of 1914, the brothers Lelya and Oska, who are serving their sentences in the corner, unexpectedly discover the Great State of Shvambran, located on the mainland of the Big Tooth. Thus begins a new game of "for life", and amazing events take place, and the brothers are captured by a whirlwind of dizzying adventures ...
A tale of the extraordinary adventures of two knights, with a description of the amazing events that took place on the wandering islands, as well as many other things, set out by the former Shvambran admiral Ardelar Case, now living under the name of Leo Kassil, with many secret documents, nautical charts, the state emblem and his own flag.
About this and many other things - the story of Lev Kassil (1905-1970) "Konduit and Shvambrania", the favorite work of several generations of readers.

"Early Sunrise: A Tale of a Young Artist"
Lev Kassil wrote about his story: "Early Sunrise"... This is the name of a long story that I recently finished after two years of work. The story tells about how he lived, grew up, was brought up, studied and worked as a wonderful young artist, a student of the Moscow secondary art school, pioneer Kolya Dmitriev.
I called my story about Kolya Dmitriev "Early Sunrise", because Kolya's whole bright short life, cut short at the very dawn - at the age of fifteen - from a hunting accident, was an unusually early sunrise of a huge talent that had already clearly manifested itself and promised to give so much our art.
The story uses and presents original letters, documents, diaries. The main milestones and decisive dates in the biography of the young artist have been observed. At the same time, while maintaining the freedom of the writer's imagination necessary in any story, I found it possible in a number of moments to partially think out, develop individual events and situations. In addition, we had to change the names of some of the characters, and in some places, for the harmony and integrity of the narrative, we additionally introduce generalizing figures. I found the grounds for these additions, generalizations and conjectures in the very extensive factual material collected with the responsive help of relatives, teachers and friends of Kolya Dmitriev ... "

"Street of the youngest son"
An ordinary boy lives in the city of Kerch - Volodya Dubinin. War .. and the occupation of Kerch by the Nazi invaders Volodya meets in a partisan detachment.
This is a story about the pioneer hero Volodya Dubinin. About boys and girls who lived and grew up next to adults and next to them stood up to protect their native city, performed feats next to them, risked their lives, lost loved ones...
A sign hangs on one of the central streets of the city of Kerch: “Volodya Dubinin Street”, and many residents of this city can still tell who Volodya Dubinin is and what he did during the Great Patriotic War.

"Cheremysh - brother of the hero"
This is a book about schoolchildren, about the time when the younger generation solves problems concerning the choice of an ideal in life, the concept of honor and heroism, loyalty and courage.
The author especially succeeded in the image of the main character of the book, Geshka Cheremysh, a boy from an orphanage who dreams of an older brother. The charm and attractiveness of this teenager are enhanced by his early-formed character, purposefulness, ability to truly be friends, chivalrous attitude towards peers, passion for sports, and even his painful experiences due to the fact that a beautiful dream imperceptibly turned into a shameful lie, in which he himself courageously confessed to the famous pilot. Other images of schoolchildren are also remembered, for example: Anya Baratova, the “purple-cheeked” bumpkin Fedya Plintus. The complex psychology of teenage children is revealed by the author with subtle humor. Of the adult heroes, Klymenty Cheremysh is the most successful, whose prototype was Valery Chkalov. Acute conflict, mysterious and tense situations increase the book's amusement.

"Gladiator's Cup"

This book is about friendship that binds together all the generations of our people, old and small, fathers and children, grandfathers and grandchildren. The book tells about the life of a Russian strongman - a giant, an old circus athlete Artem Nezabudny, who wandered abroad for many years and returned to his homeland, in the steppe village of Sukhoyarka, where he once, before the revolution, worked as a miner. Here he saw a completely new life for him, which was created by his dugouts, found true, caring friends.

LEV ABRAMOVICH KASSIL
1905-1970

Kassil's most famous book consists of two stories, and its full title sounds like a separate work: "Konduit and Shvambrania. The story of the extraordinary adventures of two knights who, in search of justice, discovered the great state of Shvambran on the mainland of the Big Tooth, with a description of the amazing events taking place on wandering islands, as well as many other things, set forth by the former Shvambran admiral Ardelar Case, now living under the name of Leo Kassil, with many secret documents, nautical charts, the state emblem and his own flag. Isn't that the real name for a fascinating chivalric romance?
This book is one of those that must be read, otherwise something will obviously be missing in life. You read it and it’s as if you find yourself on another planet, what is happening in it is so far from the life of modern children, so its characters Lyova and Osya are different. But that's why books about "other human worlds" are valuable, because they allow you to look at your own world in a different way.

A huge role in their lives was played by "Conduit" - a special journal in which the names of gymnasium students who were guilty of something were recorded. The counterweight to it was the home world, in which two brothers from a small provincial town lived - unusual boys. The author calls Oska a "great confusion", because porridge formed in his head from an abundance of knowledge. For example, he confused tomatoes with pyramids, instead of "chroniclers" he said "pistols", and the expression "silver-pawed man" deciphered as "cyclist" and called him "cycling man".
Once Oska met an aunt with a thick beard and asked, without hesitation, why she needed a beard.
“But am I an aunt?” the lady said in an affectionate bass voice. “Yes, I’m a priest.
- Illuminator? Oska said incredulously. - A skirt why? “And he imagined how inconvenient it must be to climb lamps in such a long skirt to light the streets.”
Osya and Lyova quarrel, reconcile, argue, fight like everyone else, but they have a tightly unifying secret: offended by adults for eternal oppression, they "retired" to a country they invented. There they are heroes, travelers, rulers, free citizens. There is happiness, fun and endless feats that elevate them in their own eyes. The world should be arranged like Shvambrania - such an unrealizable dream led Lyova and Osya through life.
They were very friendly, which is rare in modern families, in their common game they were on an equal footing. When Lyova left for Moscow to study at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, he wrote long letters home of almost 30 pages! And the quick-witted brother Osya took them to the local newspaper, where they were published as essays. So, thanks to Osa, the writer Lev Kassil appeared. And also thanks to his acquaintance with Mayakovsky and Briks: it was they who advised him to write the story of his childhood.

Kassil was the leader of Soviet children's literature, he wrote about things important for those times. His books about child heroes of the Soviet era. "The Great Confrontation", "My Dear Boys", "Gladiator's Bowl", "Street of the Youngest Son", and many other novels and stories - about the war, which turned children-fighters from dreamers. Strong characters, courageous deeds, selflessness and nobility are the properties not only of knights, but also of boys and girls from his books.
He wrote about perseverance in difficult trials for children. The documentary story about the tragically deceased young artist Kolya Dmitriev "Early Sunrise" is about this.
Kassil was an avid sports fan. He wrote the book Goalkeeper of the Republic about football players, the skiers became the heroes of the story The White Queen's Move.
Kassil is a romantic writer, he always captivated children with a dream. It was he who invented the Holiday, which has survived to this day, in the midst of the war. This is Children's Book Week, or Book's name day, which is celebrated during spring break. At this time, children's writers travel around the country, meet with readers, answer their questions and introduce them to their new writings. This is a holiday of unity and friendship of writers and children.

Korf, O.B. Children about writers. XX century. From A to Z / O.B. Korf.- M.: Sagittarius, 2006.- S.36-37., ill.

stories

L.A. Kassil

STORY ABOUT THE ABSENT

When in the large hall of the front headquarters the adjutant of the commander, looking at the list of awardees, called the next name, a short man stood up in one of the back rows. The skin on his sharpened cheekbones was yellowish and transparent, which is usually observed in people who have lain in bed for a long time. Leaning on his left leg, he walked to the table.

The commander took a short step towards him, handed him the order, shook hands firmly with the recipient, congratulated him and held out the order box.

The recipient, straightening up, carefully accepted the order and the box in his hands. He thanked him curtly, turned sharply, as if in formation, although his wounded leg prevented him. For a second he stood in indecision, glancing first at the order lying in his palm, then at his comrades in glory gathered here. Then he straightened up again.

May I apply?

Please.

Comrade commander ... And here you are, comrades, - the decorated man spoke in a broken voice, and everyone felt that the man was very excited. - Allow me to say a word. At this moment in my life, when I accepted a great award, I want to tell you about who should be standing here, next to me, who, perhaps, deserved this great award more than me and did not spare his young life for the sake of our military victory.

He stretched out his hand to those sitting in the hall, on the palm of which the golden rim of the order gleamed, and looked around the hall with pleading eyes.

Allow me, comrades, to fulfill my duty to those who are not here with me now.

Speak, said the commander.

Please! - responded in the hall.

And then he told.

You must have heard, comrades, - so he began, - what a situation we have created in the R area. We then had to withdraw, and our unit covered the withdrawal. And then the Germans cut us off from their own. Wherever we go, everywhere we run into fire. The Germans are hitting us with mortars, hollowing out the woods where we took cover with howitzers, and combing the edge of the forest with machine guns. Time has run out, according to the clock, it turns out that ours have already entrenched themselves on a new frontier, we have pulled enough enemy forces on ourselves, it would be time to go home, the time to join was delayed. And we see that it is impossible to break through into any. And there is no way to stay here longer. A German groped us, squeezed us in the forest, felt that there were only a handful of ours left here, and takes us by the throat with his pincers. The conclusion is clear - it is necessary to break through in a roundabout way.

Where is this detour? Where to choose direction? And our commander, Lieutenant Butorin Andrey Petrovich, said: "Without preliminary reconnaissance, nothing will work here. We must search and feel where they have a crack. If we find it, we will slip through." I volunteered right away. "Allow me, I say, should I try, Comrade Lieutenant?"

He looked at me carefully. Here it is no longer in the order of the story, but, so to speak, from the side, I must explain that Andrei and I are from the same village - buddies. How many times have we gone fishing on the Iset! Then both worked together at the copper smelter in Revda. In a word, friends and comrades.

He looked at me carefully, frowning. "Very well," says Comrade Zadokhtin, "set off. Is your mission clear to you?"

He led me to the road, looked around, grabbed my hand. "Well, Kolya, he says, let's say goodbye to you just in case. The case, you know, is fatal. But since you volunteered, I don't dare to refuse you. Help me out, Kolya ...

We won't be here for more than two hours. Losses are too great ... "-

"All right, I say, Andrey, this is not the first time that you and I have fallen into such a turn. Wait for me in an hour. I'll look out for what I need there. Well, if I don't return, bow to our people there, in the Urals ..."

And so I crawled, burying myself behind the trees. I tried in one direction - no, I couldn’t break through: the Germans were covering that area with thick fire. Crawled in the opposite direction. There, on the edge of the woods, there was a ravine, such a gully, quite deeply washed out. And on the other side, near the gully, there is a bush, and behind it is a road, an open field. I went down into the ravine, decided to get close to the bushes and look through them to see what was happening in the field. I began to climb up the clay, suddenly I noticed that two bare heels were sticking out just above my head. I took a closer look, I see: the feet are small, the dirt has dried up on the soles and falls off like plaster, the fingers are also dirty, scratched, and the little finger on the left leg is tied with a blue rag - it’s obvious that it was hurt somewhere ... For a long time I looked at these heels, at the fingers that moved restlessly over my head. And suddenly, I don’t know why, I was drawn to tickle those heels ... I can’t even explain to you. But it washes and

washes away ... I took a prickly blade of grass and lightly scuffed one of my heels with it. Both legs disappeared at once in the bushes, and in the place where the heels stuck out of the branches, a head appeared. So funny, her eyes are frightened, without eyebrows, her hair is shaggy, burnt out, and her nose is covered in freckles.

Are you here? I say.

I, - says, - I'm looking for a cow. Have you seen uncle? It's called Marisha. Itself is white, and on the side is black. One horn sticks down, and the other is not at all ...

Only you, uncle, don't believe it... I'm lying all the time... I'm trying it this way. Uncle, - says, - have you fought off ours?

And who are yours? - I ask.

It is clear who the Red Army is... Only ours went across the river yesterday. And you, uncle, why are you here? The Germans will grab you.

Well, come here, - I say. - Tell me what is happening here in your area.

The head disappeared, the leg reappeared, and a boy of about thirteen years old slid down to me along the clay slope to the bottom of the ravine, as if on a sleigh, heels forward.

And how, - I say, - do you know all this?

How, - he says, - from where? For nothing, or what, have I been watching in the morning?

Why are you watching?

Useful in life, little or nothing ...

I began to question him, and the kid told me about the whole situation. I found out that the ravine goes far through the forest and along its bottom it will be possible to lead our people out of the fire zone.

The boy volunteered to accompany us. As soon as we began to get out of the ravine, into the forest, when suddenly there was a whistling in the air, a howl and such a crack was heard, as if half the trees around were split at once into thousands of dry chips.

This German mine landed right in the ravine and tore the ground around us. It became dark in my eyes. Then I freed my head from under the earth that was pouring on me, looked around: where, I think, is my little comrade? I see that he slowly raises his shaggy head from the ground, begins to pick out the clay from his ears, from his mouth, from his nose with his finger.

This is how it worked! - he says. - We got it, uncle, with you, like rich ... Oh, uncle, - he says, - wait a minute! Yes, you are injured.

I wanted to get up, but I couldn't feel my legs. And I see - blood is swimming from a torn boot. And the boy suddenly listened, climbed up to the bushes, looked out at the road, rolled down again and whispered:

Uncle, he says, the Germans are coming here. Officer ahead. Honestly!

Let's get out of here soon. Oh you, how strong you are ...

I tried to move, but it was as if ten pounds were tied to my legs. Do not get me out of the ravine. Pulls me down, back...

He has turned so pale that he has even more freckles, and his own eyes are shining. "What is he up to?" - I think. I wanted to hold him, grabbed him by the heel, but where is there! Only his legs flashed over my head with splayed grubby fingers - a blue rag on his little finger, as I see now ... I lie and listen. Suddenly I hear: "Stop! .. Stop! Do not go further!"

Heavy boots creaked over my head, I heard the German ask:

What were you doing here?

I, uncle, am looking for a cow, - the voice of my friend reached me, - such a good cow, white herself, and black on the side, one horn sticks down, and the other does not exist at all. It's called Marisha. You did not see?

What is this cow? You, I see, want to talk nonsense to me. Come close here. What are you climbing here for a very long time, I saw you climbing.

Uncle, I'm looking for a cow, - my boy again began to tearfully pull.

And suddenly, along the road, his light bare heels clearly pounded.

Stand! Where dare you? Back! I will shoot! shouted the German.

Heavy forged boots swelled over my head. Then a shot rang out. I understood: my friend deliberately rushed to run away from the ravine in order to distract the Germans from me. I listened, breathless. The shot fired again. And I heard a distant, faint cry. Then it became very quiet ... I fought like a seizure. I gnawed the ground with my teeth so as not to scream, I leaned on my hands with all my chest so as not to let them grab their weapons and not hit the Nazis. But I couldn't find myself. You must complete the task to the end. Ours will die without me. They won't get out.

Leaning on my elbows, clinging to the branches, I crawled ... After that I don’t remember anything. I only remember - when I opened my eyes, I saw Andrei's face very close above me ...

Well, that's how we got out of the forest through that ravine.

He stopped, took a breath, and slowly looked around the room.

Here, comrades, to whom I owe my life, who helped rescue our unit from trouble. It is clear that he should stand here, at this table. But it didn’t work out ... And I have one more request to you ... Let us honor, comrades, the memory of my unknown friend - the nameless hero ... I didn’t even have time to ask what his name was ...

And in the big hall, pilots, tankers, sailors, generals, guardsmen quietly rose - people of glorious battles, heroes of fierce battles, rose to honor the memory of a small, unknown hero, whose name no one knew. The downcast people in the hall stood in silence, and each in his own way saw in front of him a shaggy little boy, freckled and bare-footed, with a blue stained rag on his bare foot ...

NOTES

This is one of the very first works of Soviet literature, depicting the feat of the young hero of the Great Patriotic War, who gave his life to save the lives of other people. This story is written on the basis of a real event, which was mentioned in a letter sent to the Radio Committee. Lev Kassil then worked on the radio and, after reading this letter, immediately wrote a story, which was soon broadcast on the radio and entered the writer's collection of stories "There are such people", published in Moscow by the publishing house "Soviet Writer" in 1943, and also in the collection Ordinary Guys, etc. It was broadcast on the radio more than once.

COMMUNICATION LINE

In memory of Sergeant Novikov

Only a few brief lines of information were printed in the newspapers about this. I will not repeat them to you, because everyone who read this message will remember it forever. We do not know the details, we do not know how the person who accomplished this feat lived. We only know how his life ended. His comrades, in the feverish haste of the battle, had no time to write down all the circumstances of that day. The time will come when the hero will be sung in ballads, the inspired pages will guard the immortality and glory of this deed. But each of us, who read a short, mean message about a man and his feat, wanted right now, not for a minute, not postponing, not waiting for anything, to imagine how it all happened ... Let those who participated in this battle correct me later , maybe I don’t quite accurately imagine the situation or I passed by some details, but I added something from myself, but I’ll tell

about everything as my imagination saw the act of this man, excited by a five-line newspaper article.

I saw a spacious snowy plain, white hills and sparse copses, through which a frosty wind rushed, rustling on brittle stems. I heard the hoarse and hoarse voice of the staff telephone operator, who, fiercely turning the switch knob and pressing buttons, vainly called the unit that occupied a distant line. The enemy surrounded this part. It was necessary to urgently contact her, inform about the beginning of the enemy's bypass movement, transmit an order from the command post to occupy another line, otherwise - death ... It was impossible to get there. In the space that separated the command post from the unit that had gone far ahead, snowdrifts burst like huge white bubbles, and the whole plain frothed, as the churned surface of boiled milk froths and boils.

German mortars hit all over the plain, kicking up snow along with clods of earth. Signalmen laid a cable through this death zone last night. The command post, following the development of the battle, sent instructions and orders through this wire and received response messages about how the operation was going. But now, when it was necessary to immediately change the situation and withdraw the advanced unit to another line, the connection suddenly stopped. In vain, the telephone operator fought over his apparatus, dropping his mouth to the receiver:

Twelfth!.. Twelfth!.. F-fu... - He blew into the phone. - Arina! Arina! .. I am Magpie! .. Answer ... Answer! .. Twelve-eight fraction three! .. Petya! Petya!.. Can you hear me? Give feedback, Petya! .. The twelfth! I am Magpie!.. I am Magpie! Arina, can you hear us? Arina!..

There was no connection.

Break, - said the telephone operator.

And then the man who only yesterday crawled through the entire plain under fire, burying himself behind the snowdrifts, crawling over the hills, burrowing into the snow and dragging the telephone cable behind him, the man whom we later read about in a newspaper article, got up, wrapped his white coat, took rifle, a bag of tools and said very simply:

I went. Break. It's clear. Allow me?

I do not know what his comrades said to him, what words his commander admonished him. Everyone understood what the person who went to the damned zone decided on ...

The wire went through scattered fir trees and sparse bushes. A blizzard rang in the sedge over the frozen swamps. The man was crawling. The Germans must have noticed him soon. Small whirlwinds from machine-gun bursts, smoking, danced in a round dance around. Snow whirlwinds of explosions approached the signalman like shaggy ghosts, and, bending over him, melted into the air.

He was covered in snow dust. Hot fragments of mines squealed disgustingly above the head, moving the damp hair that had come out from under the hood, and, hissing, melted the snow very close by ...

He did not hear the pain, but he must have felt a terrible numbness in his right side and, looking around, saw that a pink trail was trailing behind him in the snow. He didn't look back. Three hundred meters later, he felt the barbed end of the wire among the twisted icy clods of earth. The line was broken here. A nearby mine tore the wire and threw the other end of the cable far to the side. This hollow was shot through with mortars. But it was necessary to find the other end of the broken wire,

crawl to it, splice the open line again.

It rumbled and howled very close. A hundred-pound pain hit the man, crushed him to the ground. The man, spitting, got out from under the lumps that had piled on him, shrugged his shoulders. But the pain did not shake off, she continued to press the person to the ground. The man felt that a suffocating weight was leaning on him. He crawled away a little, and, probably, it seemed to him that where he lay a minute ago, on the blood-soaked snow, everything that was alive in him remained, and he was already moving separately from himself. But like a man possessed, he climbed further up the hillside.

He remembered only one thing - he had to find the end of the wire hanging somewhere in the bushes, he had to get to it, cling to it, pull it up, tie it up. And he found a broken wire. The man fell twice before he could get up. Something again stinged him on the chest, he fell down, but again he got up and grabbed the wire. And then he saw that the Germans were approaching. He could not shoot back: his hands were busy ... He began to pull the wire towards himself, crawling back, but the cable got tangled in the bushes.

Then the signalman began to pull up the other end. It was getting harder and harder for him to breathe. He was in a hurry. His fingers are numb...

And here he lies awkwardly, sideways in the snow, holding the ends of the broken line in his outstretched, ossifying hands. He struggles to bring his hands together, to bring the ends of the wire together. It tenses the muscles to the point of convulsions. Mortal insult torments him. It is bitterer than pain and stronger than fear... Only a few centimeters now separate the ends of the wire. From here to the front line of the defense, where the cut-off comrades are waiting for a message, there is a wire ... And back, to the command post, it stretches. And telephone operators are tearing themselves hoarse... And saving words of help cannot break through these few centimeters of the damned cliff! Is there really not enough life, will there not be time to connect the ends of the wire? A man in anguish gnaws snow with his teeth. He struggles to stand up, leaning on his elbows. Then he clamps one end of the cable between his teeth and in a frenzy of effort, grabbing the other wire with both hands, drags it to his mouth. Now not more than a centimeter is missing. The person no longer sees anything. Sparkling darkness burns out his eyes. He pulls the wire with the last jerk and manages to bite it, before

pain, clenching jaws to a crunch. He feels the familiar sour-salty taste and a slight prickling of the tongue. There is a current! And, having found the rifle with dead, but now free hands, he falls face down in the snow, furiously, gritting his teeth with all the rest of his strength. If only not to unclench ... The Germans, emboldened, run up on him with a cry. But again, he scraped together the remnants of life in himself, sufficient to rise for the last time and release the entire clip into the enemies who were close in. And there, at the command post, a beaming telephone operator shouted into the receiver:

Yes Yes! I hear! Arina? I am Magpie! Petya, dear! Take: number eight through the twelfth.

The man did not return. Dead, he remained in service, on the line. He continued to be a guide for the living. His mouth was forever numb.

But, breaking through with a weak current through his clenched teeth, words rushed from end to end of the battlefield, on which the lives of hundreds of people and the result of the battle depended. Already disconnected from life itself, he was still included in its chain. Death froze his heart, cut off the flow of blood in the icy vessels. But the furious dying will of man triumphed in the living connection of people to whom he remained faithful and dead.

When, at the end of the battle, the advanced unit, having received the necessary instructions, hit the Germans on the flank and left the encirclement, the signalmen, winding up the cable, stumbled upon a man half-carried by the snow. He lay face down, his face buried in the snow. He had a rifle in his hand, and his numb finger froze on the trigger. The cage was empty. And nearby in the snow they found four dead Germans. He was lifted up, and behind him, ripping up the whiteness of the snowdrift, dragged the wire bitten by him. Then they realized how the communication line was restored during the battle ...

The teeth were clenched so tightly, clamping the ends of the cable, that it was necessary to cut the wire at the corners of the stiff mouth. Otherwise, it was impossible to release a person who, even after death, steadfastly carried out the communication service. And everyone around was silent, clenching their teeth from the pain that penetrated the heart, as Russian people know how to be silent in grief, how silent they are, if they fall, exhausted from wounds, into the clutches of "deadheads" - our people, who have no flour, no torture to unclench his clenched teeth, not to pull out a word, a groan, or a bitten wire.

NOTES

The story was written at the beginning of the war and is dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Novikov, whose feat was mentioned in one of the front-line messages of that time.

At the same time, the story was broadcast on the radio and published in the collection of stories by Lev Kassil, published in 1942 in the library of the Ogonyok magazine.

The collection was called "Communication Line".

GREEN Twig

On the Western Front, I had to live for some time in the dugout of quartermaster technician Tarasnikov. He worked in the operational part of the headquarters of the guards brigade. Right there, in the dugout, his office was located.

A three-linear lamp illuminated a low frame. There was a smell of fresh planks, earthy dampness, and sealing wax. Tarasnikov himself, a short, sickly-looking young man with a funny red mustache and a yellow, stoned mouth, greeted me politely, but not very affably.

Settle down right here,” he said to me, pointing to the trestle bed and immediately bending over his papers again. “Now they will put up a tent for you. I hope my office will not embarrass you? Well, I hope you won't interfere too much with us either. Let's agree so. Have a seat for now.

And I began to live in Tarasnikov's underground office.

He was a very restless, unusually meticulous and picky hard worker. For days on end he wrote and sealed packages, sealed them with sealing wax warmed over a lamp, sent out some reports, accepted papers, redrawn maps, tapped with one finger on a rusty typewriter, carefully knocking out each letter. In the evenings, he was tormented by bouts of fever, he swallowed akrikhin, but categorically refused to go to the hospital:

What are you, what are you! Where will I go? Yes, everything will be fine without me! Everything rests on me. I’ll leave for a day - so then you won’t unravel here for a year ...

Late at night, returning from the front line of defense, falling asleep on my trestle bed, I still saw Tarasnikov's tired and pale face at the table, illuminated by the fire of a lamp, delicately lowered for me, and wrapped in a tobacco mist. A hot fumes came from an earthenware stove folded in a corner. Tarasnikov's tired eyes watered, but he continued to write and seal the packages. Then he called a messenger, who was waiting behind a cape, hung at the entrance to our dugout, and I heard the following conversation.

Who is from the fifth battalion? - asked Tarasnikov.

I am from the fifth battalion, - answered the messenger.

Take the package... Here. Take it in hand. So. See, it's written here: "Urgent." Therefore, deliver immediately. Hand over personally to the commander. Clear? There will be no commander - hand over to the commissioner. There will be no commissioner - look for it. Don't pass it on to anyone else. It's clear? Repeat.

Deliver the package urgently, - as in a lesson, the messenger monotonously repeated. - Personally to the commander, if not, to the commissar, if not, to find it.

Correctly. How will you carry the package?

Yes, usually ... Right here, in your pocket.

Show me your pocket.” And Tarasnikov would go up to the tall messenger, stand on tiptoe, put his hand under his cape, into the bosom of his overcoat, and check for holes in his pocket.

Yes, okay. Now consider: the package is secret. Therefore, if you get caught by the enemy, what will you do?

Why, Comrade Quartermaster Technician, why am I going to get caught!

There is no need to get caught, quite right, but I ask you: what will you do if you get caught?

Yeah, I'll never get caught...

And I ask you, if? Now, listen. If anything, there is some danger, so eat the contents without reading. Break the envelope and throw it away. It's clear? Repeat.

In case of danger, tear the envelope and throw it away, and eat what is in between.

Correctly. How long will it take to deliver the package?

Yes, it's about forty minutes and it's only a walk.

More precisely, I ask.

Yes, Comrade Quartermaster Technician, I think I won't get through more than fifty minutes.

Yes, I will deliver in an hour.

So. Note the time. - Tarasnikov clicked a huge conductor's watch. - It's twenty-three fifty now. So, they are obliged to hand over no later than zero fifty minutes. It's clear? You can go.

And this dialogue was repeated with every messenger, with every liaison.

Having finished with all the packages, Tarasnikov packed up. But even in a dream, he continued to teach messengers, took offense at someone, and often at night I was awakened by his loud, dry, abrupt voice:

How are you standing? Where did you come? This is not a hairdressing salon for you, but the office of the headquarters! he spoke clearly in his sleep.

Why did they enter without reporting? Log out and log in again. It's time to learn order. So. Wait. Do you see the person eating? You can wait, your package is not urgent. Give the man something to eat... Sign... Departure time... You can go. You are free...

I shook him, trying to wake him up. He jumped up, looked at me with a little meaningful look, and, again falling on the bed, covering himself with his overcoat, instantly plunged into his staff dreams. And he began to speak quickly again.

All this was not very pleasant. And I was already thinking about how I could move to another dugout. But one evening, when I returned to our hut, thoroughly soaked in the rain, and squatted down in front of the stove to kindle it, Tarasnikov got up from the table and came up to me.

Here, then, it turns out like this, ”he said somewhat guiltily.“ You see, I decided not to heat the stoves for the time being. Let's hold off for five days. And then, you know, the stove gives waste, and this, apparently, is reflected in her growth ... It has a bad effect on her.

I, not understanding anything, looked at Tarasnikov:

Whose height? On the growth of the stove?

What's with the oven? - Tarasnikov was offended. - I, in my opinion, express myself quite clearly. This very child, he, apparently, does not work well ...

She stopped growing at all.

Who stopped growing?

What have you not paid attention to yet? - Staring at me with indignation, shouted Tarasnikov. - And what is this? Don't you see? - And he looked with sudden tenderness at the low log ceiling of our dugout.

I got up, lifted the lamp, and saw that a thick round elm in the ceiling had put forth a green sprout. Pale and tender, with unsteady leaves, he stretched out to the ceiling. In two places it was supported by white ribbons pinned to the ceiling with buttons.

Do you understand? - Tarasnikov spoke. - She grew all the time. Such a glorious twig waved. And then we began to drown often, but she, apparently, did not like it. Here I made notches on a log, and the dates are marked on me. See how quickly it grew at first. Another day I pulled out two centimeters. I give you my honest word! And how we began to smoke here, for three days now I have not observed growth. So she won't be sick for long. Let's hold off. And smoke less. The stalk is delicate, everything affects it. And, you know, I'm interested in: will he get to the exit? BUT? After all, so, the imp, and stretches closer to the air, where the sun is, it smells from under the ground.

And we went to bed in an unheated, damp dugout. The next day, in order to ingratiate myself with Tarasnikov, I myself spoke to him about his twig.

Well, how, - I asked, throwing off my wet raincoat, - is it growing?

Tarasnikov jumped out from behind the table, looked me attentively in the eyes, wanting to check if I was laughing at him, but, seeing that I was talking seriously, he raised the lamp with quiet delight, took it a little aside so as not to smoke his twig, and told me almost in a whisper:

Imagine, almost one and a half centimeters stretched out. I told you, you don't need to burn. This is just an amazing natural phenomenon!

At night, the Germans brought down massive artillery fire on our position. I was woken up by the sound of close explosions, spitting out earth, which, from the shaking, rained profusely on us through the log ceiling. Tarasnikov woke up too and turned on the lamp. Everything was hooting, trembling and shaking around us. Tarasnikov put the light bulb in the middle of the table, leaned back on the bed, with his hands behind his head:

I don't think there is much danger. Won't hurt her? Of course, a concussion, but there are three rolls above us. Is it just a direct hit? And, you see, I tied it up. It was like I felt...

I looked at him with interest.

He lay with his head thrown back on his hands placed behind the back of his head, and looked with tender concern at a weak green sprout that curled under the ceiling. He simply forgot, apparently, that a shell could fall on us, explode in a dugout, bury us alive underground. No, he thought only of a pale green twig stretching under the ceiling of our hut. He was only worried about her.

And often now, when I meet at the front and in the rear demanding, very busy, rather dry at first glance, seemingly unfriendly people, I remember the quartermaster technician Tarasnikov and his green twig.

Let the fire roar overhead, let the dank dampness of the earth penetrate into the very bones, all the same - if only he survived, if only he reached out to the sun, to the desired exit, a timid, shy green sprout.

And it seems to me that each of us has our own cherished green branch. For her sake, we are ready to endure all the ordeals and hardships of the wartime, because we know for sure: there, behind the exit, hung today with a damp raincoat, the sun will certainly meet, warm and give new strength to our branch, which we have grown and saved.

NOTES

Written at the beginning of the war on the basis of the writer's personal front-line impressions. The story is dedicated to S. L. S., that is, Svetlana Leonidovna Sobinova, the writer's wife. It was published in the collection "There are such people", M., 1943, and in other collections of L. Kassil.

EVERYTHING WILL RETURN

Man has forgotten everything. Who is he? Where? There was nothing - no name, no past. Twilight, thick and viscous, enveloped his consciousness. Those around him could not help him. They themselves did not know anything about the wounded. He was picked up in one of the areas cleared of the Germans; he was found in a frozen basement heavily beaten, tossing about in delirium. There were no documents with him.

The wounded Red Army soldiers, thrown by the Germans into the same basement with him, also did not know who he was ... He was sent with a train to the rear, placed there in a hospital. On the fifth day, while still on the road, he came to his senses. But when they asked him what part he was from, what his last name was, he looked at the sisters and the military doctor in bewilderment, drew his eyebrows together so tensely that the skin in the wrinkle on his forehead turned white, and suddenly said dully, slowly and hopelessly:

I don't know anything... I forgot everything. What is it, comrades? Eh, doctor? How now? Where did everything go? I forgot everything as it is ... How now? ..

He looked helplessly at the doctor, grabbed his cropped head with both hands, felt for the bandage, and timidly pulled his hands away.

Well, it jumped out, everything jumped out as it is. It’s spinning around here,” he twirled his finger in front of his forehead, “and as soon as you turn to it, it will float away ... What happened to me, doctor?

Calm down, calm down, - the young doctor Arkady Lvovich began to persuade him and gave a sign to his sister to come out, - everything will pass, remember everything, everything will return. Just don't worry, don't worry. Leave your head alone, let's give a memory vacation. In the meantime, allow me, we will enlist you as Comrade Nepomniachtchi. Can?

So over the bunk they inscribed: "Nepomniachtchi. Head wound, damage to the occipital bone, multiple bruises of the body ..."

The young doctor was very interested in a rare case of such a severe memory loss. He kept a close eye on Nepomniachtchi. As a patient pathfinder, according to the fragmentary words of the patient, according to the stories of the wounded, picked up with him, he gradually got to the origins of the disease.

This is a man with great will, - the doctor said to the head of the hospital. - I understand how it all happened. The Germans interrogated him and tortured him. He didn't want to tell them anything. He tried to forget everything he knew. Characteristically: one of the Red Army soldiers, from those who were at that interrogation, later said that Nepomniachtchi answered the Germans in this way: "I don't know anything. I don't remember ..." The case is drawn to me in this form: he locked his memory in that hour and threw the key away. During the interrogation, he forced himself to forget everything that could interest the Germans, everything that he knew. But he was beaten mercilessly on the head and his memory was actually knocked off. The result is complete amnesia. But I'm sure he'll recover. Great will! She locked the memory with a key, and she will unlock it.

The young doctor had a long conversation with Nepomniachtchi. He carefully moved the conversation to topics that might remind the patient of something. He talked about wives who wrote to other wounded, talked about children. But Nepomniachtchi remained indifferent. Sometimes in memory came to life a sharp pain that flared up in broken joints. The pain brought him back to something not entirely forgotten. He saw a dimly shining light bulb in front of him in the hut, recalled that he had been stubbornly and cruelly interrogated about something, but he did not answer. And he was beaten and beaten... But as soon as he tried to concentrate, this scene, faintly illuminated in his mind by the light of a smoky lamp, became foggy all at once, everything remained indiscernible, shifted somewhere away from consciousness, just as it disappears imperceptibly. hiding from view, a speck that had just floated before my eyes. Everything that had happened seemed to Nepomniachtchi to have gone to the end of a long, poorly lit corridor. He tried to enter this narrow passage, to squeeze as far as possible into its depths, but the tunnel became narrower and stuffier. The wounded man was deaf and suffocated in the darkness. Severe headaches were the result of these efforts.

The doctor tried to read newspapers to Nepomniachtchi, but the wounded man began to toss and turn heavily, and the doctor realized that he was stirring up some of the most painful places in his affected memory. Then the doctor decided to try other, more harmless ways. He brought some holy calendars he had gotten somewhere and read aloud to Nepomniachtchi all the names: Agathon, Agamemnon, Haggai, Anempodist... Nepomniachtchi listened to all the saints with the same indifference and did not respond to a single name. The doctor decided to try another remedy invented by him. Once he came to Nepomniachtchi, who was already getting out of bed, and brought him a military tunic, trousers, and boots. Taking the convalescent by the hand, the doctor led him along the corridor, suddenly stopped at one of the doors and abruptly flung it open. Before Nepomniachtchi flashed a tall dressing table. A thin man in a military tunic and field-style boots, short-haired, stared at the newcomer from the mirror.

Well, how? - asked the doctor. - Don't you know?

No, - Nepomniachtchi said abruptly, peering into the mirror, - an unfamiliar person. New, right? - And he began to look around uneasily, looking for the person who was reflected in the mirror.

By the New Year, parcels with gifts began to arrive at the hospital. They began to prepare the Christmas tree. Arkady Lvovich deliberately involved Nepomniachtchi in the case. The doctor hoped that the sweet fuss with toys, tinsel and sparkling balls, the fragrant smell of pine needles will give rise to a person who has forgotten everything at least some memories of the days that all people remember for a long life and, as long as consciousness lives, sparkle in it like sparkles, hiding in the branches of the Christmas tree. Nepomniachtchi was carefully decorating the Christmas tree. Obediently, without smiling, he hung trinkets on the resinous branches, but none of this reminded him of anything.

Early in the morning Arkady Lvovich came to Nepomniachtchi. The patient was still asleep. The doctor carefully adjusted the blanket on him, went to the window and opened a large transom window. It was half past seven, and a soft breeze of thaw brought from below, from under the hill, a whistle of thick, velvety tone. It called for work one of the nearest factories. He then hummed at full power, then seemed to subside a little, obeying the wave of the wind, as if by the wave of an invisible conductor's hand; echoing him, neighboring factories responded, and then distant horns blew in the mines ...

And suddenly Nepomniachtchi sat up on the bed.

What hour? he asked anxiously, without opening his eyes, but lowering his legs from the bunk. Oh shit, I overslept...

He rubbed his closed eyelids, grunted, shook his head, shaking off sleep, then jumped up and began to ruffle the hospital gown. He blew up the whole bed, looking for clothes. He grumbled that he had touched his tunic and trousers somewhere. Arkady Lvovich flew out of the ward like a whirlwind and immediately returned, carrying the suit in which he dressed Nepomniachtchi on the day of the mirror experiment. Without looking at the doctor, Nepomniachtchi hurriedly dressed, listened to the whistle, which was still widely and authoritatively entering the ward, tumble through the open transom. Adjusting his belt as he went, Nepomniachtchi ran down the corridor to the exit. Arkady Lvovich followed him and managed to throw someone's greatcoat over Nepomniachtchi's shoulders in the locker room. Nepomniachtchi walked down the street without looking around. Not a memory yet, but only an old habit led him now along the street, which he suddenly recognized. For many years in a row, every morning he heard this whistle, jumped out of bed half asleep and reached for his clothes. Arkady Lvovich walked first behind Nepomniachtchi. He already figured out what happened. Happy coincidence! The wounded man, as happened more than once, was brought to his hometown, and now he recognized the whistle of his factory. After making sure that Nepomniachtchi was confidently walking towards the plant, the doctor got ahead of him and ran into the service booth. The elderly timekeeper at the checkpoint was stunned when she saw Nepomniachtchi.

Yegor Petrovich," she whispered, "God, I'm alive and well!...

Nepomniachtchi gave her a short nod.

She was well, Comrade Lakhtina. I stayed a little today.

He began to rummage in his pockets, restlessly looking for a pass. But a watchman came out of the guardhouse and whispered something to the timekeeper. The forgetful was missed.

And so he came to his workshop and went straight to his machine. Quickly, with a master's eye, he examined the machine, looked around, searched with his eyes in the silent crowd of workers, delicately looking at him in the distance, the adjuster, beckoned him with his finger.

Hello, Konstantin Andreevich, fix the disk on the dividing head for me.

No matter how Arkady Lvovich begged, the people were interested to look at the famous milling machine operator, who so unexpectedly, so unusually returned to his factory. "Barychev is here ..." - it swept through all the shops. Yegor Petrovich Barychev was considered dead. For a long time there was no news about him. Arkady Lvovich looked after his patient from afar.

Barychev once again looked critically at his machine, grunted approvingly, and the doctor heard a sigh of relief from a young guy standing near him, apparently replacing Barychev at the machine. But then the bass of the factory whistle blew over the workshop. Yegor Petrovich Barychev inserted a part into the mandrel, strengthened, as he always did, two cutters of large diameter at once, started the machine manually, then gently turned on the feed. The emulsion splashed, metal shavings clogged. "It works in its own way, still, in Barychev's way," they whispered respectfully around. The memory has already returned to the hands of the master.

What is it today at all what verse found? - he said, turning to a friend-adjuster. - Look, you, Konstantin Andreevich, our young ones are from the early ones.

You are painfully old, - the serviceman joked. - Thirty has not yet turned, but he also spoke like a grandfather. And as for the products, now we have the whole shop in Barychev's way to work. We give two hundred and twenty percent. You understand, there is no time to waste. How did you leave for the current ...

Wait, - Yegor Petrovich said quietly and dropped the wrench from his hands.

The metal clattered against the floor tiles. Arkady Lvovich hastened to this sound. He saw how at first they turned purple, and then slowly moved away, Barychev's cheekbones turned white.

Kostya... Konstantin Andreevich, doctor... and how is your wife? My guys? After all, I haven’t seen them since the first day, how I went to the front ...

And the memory burst into him, turning into a living longing for home. The memory hit his heart with a burning joy of returning and an unbearable furious resentment against those who tried to steal from him everything that was obtained by life! Everything returned.

NOTES

The dramatic story described in the story took place in a hospital in the Urals shortly after the start of the war. The writer learned about it from the doctor of this hospital. At the same time, the story was broadcast on the radio and published in L. Kassil's collection "Communication Line", M., 1942.

1. Saints - a list of "holy" people revered by the Christian church, and holidays in their honor in calendar or alphabetical order.

AT THE BLACKBOARD

They said about the teacher Ksenia Andreevna Kartashova that her hands sing. Her movements were soft, unhurried, rounded, and when she explained the lesson in the class, the guys followed every wave of the teacher's hand, and the hand sang, the hand explained everything that remained incomprehensible in the words. Ksenia Andreevna did not have to raise her voice at the students, she did not have to shout. There will be noise in the class, she will raise her light hand, lead it - and the whole class seems to be listening, it immediately becomes quiet.

Wow, she is strict with us! - the guys boasted. - He immediately notices everything ...

Ksenia Andreevna taught in the village for thirty-two years. The rural militiamen saluted her in the street and, saluting, said:

Ksenia Andreevna, how is my Vanka doing in science? You make him stronger there.

Nothing, nothing, he moves a little, - answered the teacher, - a good boy. Lazy just sometimes. Well, that happened to my father too. Isn't it true?

The policeman straightened his belt in embarrassment: once he himself sat at a desk and answered Ksenia Andreevna at the blackboard and also heard to himself that he was a good fellow, but sometimes he was lazy ... And the chairman of the collective farm was once a student of Ksenia Andreevna, and the director machine and tractor station studied with her. Many people have gone through Xenia Andreevna's class in thirty-two years. She was a strict but fair person. Ksenia Andreyevna's hair had long since turned white, but her eyes had not faded and were as blue and clear as in her youth. And anyone who met this even and bright look involuntarily cheered up and began to think that, honestly, he was not such a bad person and it was definitely worth living in the world. Such were the eyes of Ksenia Andreevna!

And her gait was also light and melodious. The girls from the senior classes tried to adopt it. No one has ever seen a teacher in a hurry, in a hurry. And at the same time, any work quickly argued and also seemed to sing in her capable hands. When she wrote the terms of the problem or examples from grammar on the blackboard, the chalk did not knock, did not creak, did not crumble, and it seemed to the children that a white stream was easily and tasty squeezed out of the chalk, like from a tube, writing letters and numbers on the black surface of the board. "Don't rush! Don't jump, think carefully first!" - Ksenia Andreevna said softly, when the student began to stray in a problem or in a sentence, and, diligently writing and erasing what was written with a rag, floated in clouds of chalk smoke.

Ksenia Andreevna was not in a hurry this time either. As soon as the rattle of the engines was heard, the teacher looked sternly at the sky and in a familiar voice told the children that everyone should go to the trench dug in the school yard. The school stood a little away from the village, on a hillock. The windows of the classrooms overlooked the cliff above the river. Ksenia Andreevna lived at the school. There were no jobs. The front passed very close to the village. Fighting raged somewhere nearby. Parts of the Red Army withdrew across the river and fortified there. And the collective farmers gathered a partisan detachment and went into the nearby forest outside the village. Schoolchildren brought them food there, told them where and when the Germans were seen. Kostya Rozhkov - the best swimmer of the school - more than once delivered reports from the commander of the forest partisans to the other side of the Red Army. Shura Kapustina once bandaged the wounds of two partisans who had suffered in battle - this art was taught to her by Ksenia Andreevna. Even Senya Pichugin, a well-known quiet man, somehow spotted a German patrol outside the village and, having reconnoitered where he was going, managed to warn the detachment.

In the evening, the children gathered at the school and told the teacher about everything. So it was this time, when the engines purred very close. Fascist planes have already flown into the village more than once, dropping bombs, scouring the forest in search of partisans. Kostya Rozhkov once even had to lie in a swamp for an hour, hiding his head under wide sheets of water lilies. And very close, cut down by machine-gun bursts of the aircraft, reeds fell into the water ... And the guys were already used to raids.

But now they are wrong. It wasn't the planes that rumbled. The children had not yet managed to hide in the gap, when three dusty Germans ran into the schoolyard, jumping over a low palisade. Car spectacles with folded lenses glittered on their helmets. They were scouts-motorcyclists. They left their cars in the bushes. From three different sides, but all at once, they rushed towards the schoolchildren and aimed their machine guns at them.

Stop! - shouted a thin, long-armed German with a short red mustache, must be the boss. - Pioneer? - he asked.

The guys were silent, involuntarily moving away from the muzzle of the pistol, which the German took turns thrusting into their faces.

But the hard, cold barrels of the other two machine guns pressed painfully from behind on the backs and necks of the schoolchildren.

Schneller, Schneller, bistro! - shouted the fascist.

Ksenia Andreevna stepped forward straight at the German and covered the guys with herself.

What would you like? - asked the teacher and looked sternly into the eyes of the German. Her blue and calm look confused the involuntarily retreating fascist.

Who is vi? Answer this minute ... I can speak Russian with something.

I understand German too,” the teacher answered quietly, “but I have nothing to talk about with you. These are my students, I am a teacher at a local school. You may lower your pistol. What do you want? Why are you scaring the kids?

Don't teach me! hissed the scout.

The other two Germans looked around anxiously. One of them said something to the boss. He got worried, looked towards the village and began to push the teacher and the children towards the school with the muzzle of a pistol.

Well, well, hurry up, - he said, - we are in a hurry ... - He threatened with a pistol. - Two small questions - and everything will be in order.

The guys, along with Ksenia Andreevna, were pushed into the classroom. One of the Nazis remained to guard on the school porch. Another German and the boss drove the guys to their desks.

Now I will give you a small exam, - said the boss. - Sit down!

But the children stood huddled in the aisle and looked, pale, at the teacher.

Sit down, guys, - Ksenia Andreevna said in her quiet and ordinary voice, as if another lesson was beginning.

The boys sat down carefully. They sat in silence, not taking their eyes off the teacher. Out of habit, they sat down in their seats, as they usually did in class: Senya Pichugin and Shura Kapustina in front, and Kostya Rozhkov at the back of everyone, in the last desk. And, finding themselves in their familiar places, the guys gradually calmed down.

Outside the windows of the classroom, on the glass of which protective strips were pasted, the sky was calmly blue, on the windowsill in jars and boxes were flowers grown by the children. On the glass cabinet, as always, hovered a hawk stuffed with sawdust. And the wall of the classroom was decorated with neatly pasted herbariums.

The older German touched one of the glued sheets with his shoulder, and dried daisies, fragile stems and twigs fell on the floor with a slight crunch.

It hurt the guys heart. Everything was wild, everything seemed contrary to the habitually established order within these walls. And the familiar class seemed so dear to the children, the desks, on the covers of which dried ink smudges were cast, like the wing of a bronze beetle.

And when one of the fascists approached the table at which Ksenia Andreevna usually sat and kicked him, the guys felt deeply offended.

The chief demanded that he be given a chair. None of the guys moved.

Well! shouted the fascist.

Quiet Senya Pichugin slid inaudibly from his desk and went to get a chair. He did not return for a long time.

Pichugin, hurry up! the teacher called Senya.

He appeared a minute later, dragging a heavy chair with a seat upholstered in black oilcloth. Without waiting for him to come closer, the German snatched a chair from him, put it in front of him and sat down. Shura Kapustina raised her hand:

Ksenia Andreevna... can I leave the class?

Sit down, Kapustina, sit down.” And, glancing knowingly at the girl, Ksenia Andreevna added in a barely audible voice: “There’s still a sentry there anyway.

Now everyone will listen to me! - said the boss.

And, mangling the words, the fascist began to tell the guys that the red partisans were hiding in the forest, and he knows this very well, and the guys also know this very well. German scouts have seen schoolchildren running back and forth into the forest more than once. And now the guys must tell the chief where the partisans hid. If the guys say where the partisans are now, naturally, everything will be fine. If the guys do not say, - of course, everything will be very bad.

Now I will listen to everyone! - the German finished his speech.

Here the guys understood what they wanted from them. They sat without moving, only had time to look at each other and again froze on their desks.

A tear slowly crept down Shura Kapustina's face. Kostya Rozhkov sat leaning forward, resting his strong elbows on the open lid of the desk. The short fingers of his hands were entwined. Kostya swayed slightly, staring at the desk. From the outside, it seemed that he was trying to disengage his hands, and some kind of force was preventing him from doing this.

The guys sat in silence.

The chief called his assistant and took the map from him.

Order them,” he said in German to Xenia Andreevna, “to show me this place on a map or on a plan. Well, live! Just look at me ... - He spoke again in Russian: - I warn you that I am understandable to the Russian language and that you will tell the children ...

He went to the board, took a piece of chalk and quickly sketched out a plan of the area - a river, a village, a school, a forest ... To make it clearer, he even drew a chimney on the school roof and scratched curls of smoke.

Maybe you will think about it and tell me everything you need yourself? - the chief quietly asked the teacher in German, coming close to her. - The children will not understand, speak German.

I already told you that I have never been there and I don't know where it is.

The fascist, grabbing Xenia Andreyevna by the shoulders with his long arms, roughly shook her:

Ksenia Andreevna freed herself, took a step forward, went up to the desks, leaned both hands on the front and said:

Guys! This man wants us to tell him where our partisans are. I don't know where they are. I have never been there. And you don't know either. Truth?

We don’t know, we don’t know! .. - the guys made a noise. - Who knows where they are! They went into the forest - and that's it.

You are really bad students, - the German tried to joke, - you cannot answer such a simple question. Hey, hey...

He looked around the class with mock gaiety, but did not meet a single smile. The guys were strict and wary. It was quiet in the classroom, only Senya Pichugin was sniffing gloomily in the first desk.

The German approached him:

Well, what's your name?.. You don't know either?

I don't know, Senya answered quietly.

And what is this, you know? - And the German jabbed the muzzle of a pistol into Senya's lowered chin.

I know that, - said Senya. - A submachine gun of the "Walter" system ...

Do you know how much he can kill such bad students?

Don't know. Consider yourself ... - Senya muttered.

Who is! - shouted the German. - You said: count yourself! Very well! I'll count to three myself. And if no one tells me what I asked, I will shoot your stubborn teacher first. And then - anyone who does not say. I started counting! Once!..

He grabbed Xenia Andreevna by the arm and pulled her against the classroom wall. Ksenia Andreevna did not utter a sound, but it seemed to the guys that her soft, melodious hands groaned themselves. And the class buzzed. Another fascist immediately pointed his gun at the guys.

Children, don’t, ”Ksenia Andreevna said quietly and, out of habit, wanted to raise her hand, but the fascist hit her wrist with the barrel of a pistol, and her hand fell helplessly.

Alzo, so none of you know where the partisans are," said the German. "Fine, let's count. "One" I already said, now it will be "two".

The fascist began to raise his pistol, aiming at the teacher's head. Shura Kapustina began to sob in the front desk.

Shura, shut up, whispered Ksenia Andreevna, and her lips hardly moved. “Let everyone be silent,” she said slowly, looking around the class, “whoever is afraid, let him turn away. You don't have to watch guys. Farewell! Learn well. And remember this lesson...

I'll say "three" now! - the fascist interrupted her.

And suddenly Kostya Rozhkov got up at the back and raised his hand:

She really doesn't know!

Who knows?

I know ... - Kostya said loudly and clearly. - I went there myself and I know. She didn't, and she doesn't know.

Well, show me, - said the chief.

Rozhkov, why are you telling lies? - said Xenia Andreevna.

I'm telling the truth, - Kostya said stubbornly and harshly and looked into the teacher's eyes.

Kostya ... - began Ksenia Andreevna.

But Rozhkov interrupted her:

Ksenia Andreevna, I know myself ...

The teacher stood, turning away from him, dropping her white head on her chest. Kostya went to the blackboard, at which he had answered the lesson so many times. He took the chalk. He stood indecisively, fingering the white, crumbling pieces. The fascist approached the blackboard and waited. Kostya raised his hand with the chalk.

Here, look here,” he whispered, “I’ll show you.

The German approached him and leaned over to get a better look at what the boy was showing. And suddenly Kostya hit the black surface of the board with all his might with both hands. This is done when, having written on one side, the board * is about to be turned over to the other. The board turned sharply in its frame, screeched and hit the fascist in the face with a sweeping blow. He flew off to the side, and Kostya, jumping over the frame, instantly disappeared behind the board, as if behind a shield. The fascist, clutching his bloodied face, fired at the board to no avail, putting bullet after bullet into it.

In vain... Behind the chalkboard was a window overlooking a cliff above the river. Kostya, without hesitation, jumped through the open window, threw himself off the cliff into the river and swam to the other side.

The second fascist, pushing Ksenia Andreevna away, ran to the window and began to shoot at the boy with a pistol. The chief shoved him aside, snatched the pistol from him and took aim himself through the window. The guys jumped on the desks. They no longer thought about the danger that threatened them. Only Kostya worried them now. They wanted only one thing now - for Kostya to get to the other side, so that the Germans would miss.

At this time, having heard firing in the village, partisans stalking motorcyclists jumped out of the forest. Seeing them, the German guard on the porch fired into the air, shouted something to his comrades and rushed into the bushes where the motorcycles were hidden. But through the bushes, stitching the leaves, cutting off the branches, a machine-gun burst of the Red Army patrol, which was on the other side, whipped ...

No more than fifteen minutes passed, and the partisans brought three disarmed Germans into the classroom, where the excited children again burst into. The commander of the partisan detachment took a heavy chair, moved it to the table and wanted to sit down, but Senya Pichugin suddenly rushed forward and snatched the chair from him.

Don't, don't! I'll bring you another now

And in an instant he dragged another chair from the corridor, and pushed this one behind the board. The commander of the partisan detachment sat down and called the head of the fascists to the table for interrogation. And the other two, rumpled and hushed, sat side by side on the desks of Senya Pichugin and Shura Kapustina, diligently and timidly placing their feet there.

He almost killed Ksenia Andreevna, - whispered Shura Kapustina to the commander, pointing to the fascist intelligence officer.

Not quite exactly like that, - the German muttered, - that's right, not me at all ...

He, he! shouted the quiet Senya Pichugin. “He still has a mark… I… when I was dragging the chair, accidentally knocked over the ink on the oilcloth.

The commander leaned over the table, looked and grinned: an ink stain darkened on the back of the gray trousers of the fascist ...

Ksenia Andreevna entered the class. She went ashore to find out if Kostya Rozhkov had sailed safely. The Germans, who were sitting at the front desk, looked with surprise at the commander who jumped up.

Get up! - the commander shouted at them. - In our class, it is supposed to get up when the teacher enters. That's not what you, apparently, were taught!

And the two fascists obediently got up.

May I continue our lesson, Ksenia Andreevna? - asked the commander.

Sit, sit, Shirokov.

No, Ksenia Andreevna, take your rightful place, - objected Shirokov, pulling up a chair, - in this room you are our mistress. And I'm here, over there at that desk, I've worked my brains out, and my daughter is here with you ... Sorry, Ksenia Andreevna, that you had to allow these slackers into your class. Well, since it happened so, here you are and ask them properly. Help us: you know their language ...

And Ksenia Andreevna took her place at the table, from which she had learned many good people in thirty-two years. And now, in front of Ksenia Andreevna's desk, next to a blackboard pierced by bullets, a long-armed, red-haired man was squirming, nervously straightening his jacket, mumbling something and hiding his eyes from the blue, stern look of the old teacher.

Stand properly, - said Ksenia Andreevna, - why are you fidgeting? My guys don't keep up. So... And now take the trouble to answer my questions.

And the lanky fascist, timid, stretched out in front of the teacher.

NOTES

Written during the first years of the war. Transmitted by radio. First published in L. Kassil's collection "Friends and Comrades", Sverdlgiz, 1942.

RIMMA LEBEDEV'S MARKS

The girl Rimma Lebedeva came to the city of Sverdlovsk with her mother. She entered the third grade. The aunt, with whom Rimma now lived, came to the school and said to the teacher Anastasia Dmitrievna:

Please don't approach her too harshly. They barely made it out with their mother. The Germans could easily be taken prisoner. Bombs were thrown at their village. All this had a great effect on her. I think she's nervous now. Maybe she can't study properly. You keep that in mind.

Well, - said the teacher, - I will keep it in mind, but we will try so that she can study like everyone else.

The next day, Anastasia Dmitrievna came to class early and told the children this:

Rimma Lebedeva hasn't come yet?.. Here, guys, while she's gone, I want to warn you: this girl may have experienced a lot. They were close to the front with their mother. Their village was bombed by the Germans. You and I must help her come to her senses, to improve her teaching. Especially don't ask her too much. Agreed?

Agreed! - unanimously responded third-graders.

Manya Petlina, the first honors student in her class, sat Rimma on her desk next to her. The boy who had been sitting there earlier gave up his seat to her. The guys gave Rimma their textbooks. Manya gave her a tin box of paints. And the third-graders did not ask Rimma about anything.

But she didn't study well. She did not prepare lessons, although Manya Petlina helped her study and came to Rimma's house to solve the given examples with her. Too caring aunt interfered with the girls.

Enough studying for you,” she said, going up to the table, closing her textbooks and putting away Rimma's notebooks in the closet. “You have completely tortured her, Manya. She is not like you - they were sitting at home here. Don't compare yourself to her.

And these aunt's conversations in the end had an effect on Rimma. She decided that she no longer needed to study, and completely stopped preparing lessons. And when Anastasia Dmitrievna asked why Rimma again did not know the lessons, she said:

That incident had a great effect on me. I can't study properly. I now have nerves.

And when Manya and her friends tried to persuade Rimma to study properly, she again stubbornly repeated:

I almost went to the war itself. Have you been? No. And don't compare.

The guys were silent. Indeed, they were not at war. True, many of their fathers and relatives went into the army. But it was difficult to argue with the girl, who herself was quite close to the front. And Rimma, seeing the embarrassment of the children, now began to add her own words to her aunt's words. She said that it was boring for her to study and that she was not interested, that she would soon leave again for the very front and enter there as a scout, and she did not really need all sorts of dictations and arithmetic.

There was a hospital near the school. The kids used to go there often. They read books aloud to the wounded, one of the third-graders played the balalaika well, and the schoolchildren sang to the wounded in a quiet chorus "The moon is shining" and "There was a birch tree in the field." Girls embroidered pouches for the wounded. In general, the school and the hospital became very good friends. At first, the guys did not take Rimma with them. They were afraid that the sight of the wounded would remind her of something heavy. But Rimma begged to be taken. She even made a tobacco pouch herself. True, he did not come out very folding. And when Rimma gave the pouch to the lieutenant, who was lying in ward E 8, the wounded man for some reason tried it on his healthy left hand and asked:

What's your name? Rimma Lebedeva? - and sang softly: Ay yes Rimma - well done! That's the craftswoman! She sewed a pouch on the wounded - A mitten came out.

But, seeing that Rimma blushed and was upset, he hurriedly caught her by the sleeve with his left, healthy hand and said:

Nothing, nothing, don't be embarrassed, I'm just joking. A wonderful pouch! Thank you. And it's even good that it can pass for a mitten. It will come in handy. Moreover, now I need only one hand.

And the lieutenant nodded sadly at his bandaged right hand.

But you will serve me as a friend, - he asked. - I also have a daughter, she is studying in the second grade. Olya's name is .. She writes letters to me, but I can’t write an answer ... Hand ... Maybe sit down, take a pencil? And I will dictate to you. I will be very grateful.

Of course, Rima agreed. She proudly took a pencil, and the lieutenant slowly dictated a letter to her for his daughter Olya.

Well, let's see what we wrote together here.

He took the sheet Rimma had written with his left hand, read it, frowned, and whistled in anguish:

Phew! .. It turns out ugly. You are making very gross mistakes. What class are you in? In the third it's time to write more clearly. No, that doesn't work. My daughter makes me laugh. "He found, he will say, literate people." Although she is in the second grade, she already knows that when you write the word "daughter", after "h" a soft sign is not required at all.

Rima remained silent, turning away. Manya Petlina ran up to the lieutenant's bunk and whispered in his ear:

Comrade Lieutenant, she is still unable to study normally. She hasn't come to her senses yet. It had a great effect on her. They were almost near the very front with their mother. - And she told the wounded man about everything.

So, - the lieutenant said. - This is not quite the right conversation. They do not brag about misfortune and grief for a long time. Either they endure, or they try to help grief-trouble so that they do not become. I gave my right hand for that, probably, and many of them completely laid down their heads so that the guys with us study properly, as we want them to have a life according to all our rules ... Here's what, Rimma: come - Tomorrow after school for an hour, we'll talk, and I'll dictate another letter to you, - he unexpectedly finished.

And now, every day after school, Rimma came to ward E 8, where the wounded lieutenant lay. And he dictated - slowly, loudly, separately - letters to his friends. The lieutenant had an unusually large number of friends, relatives and acquaintances. They lived in Moscow, Saratov, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, Penza.

- "Dear Mikhail Petrovich!" An exclamation point, up with a club, - the lieutenant dictated. - Now write from a new line. “I want to know”, a comma, “how it’s moving ...” After “t”, there is no need for a soft sign in this case ... “how things are moving at our factory.” Dot.

Then the lieutenant, together with Rimma, sorted out the mistakes, corrected and explained why it was necessary to write this way and not that way. And forced to find on a small map the city where the letter was sent.

Another two months passed, and one evening Rimma Lebedeva came into ward No. 8 and, turning cunningly away, handed the lieutenant a sheet with marks for the second quarter. The lieutenant carefully looked over all the marks.

Wow! This is the order! - he said. - Well done, Rimma Lebedeva: not a single "mediocre". And in Russian and geography, even "excellent". Well, get your diploma! honorary document.

But Rimma brushed aside the sheet extended to her.

Later, the Red Army soldiers found him in a strange hut, not far from the house where the chairman of the village council, Sukhanov, lived. Grisha was unconscious. Blood gushed from a deep wound in his leg.

No one understood how he got to the Germans. After all, at first he went with everyone into the woods behind the pond. What made him return?

This remains incomprehensible.

One Sunday, Lutokhin's guys came to Moscow to visit Grisha.

Four forwards from the Voskhod school team went to visit their captain, with whom Grisha made up the famous five of the attack this summer. The captain himself played in the center. To his left was the nimble Kolya Shvyrev, who liked to drive the ball for a long time with his tenacious legs in the game, for which he was called the Hook-Maker. On the right hand of the captain played the stooped and swaying Yeremka Pasekin, who was teased "Eryomka-pozemka, blow down the field" because he ran, crouching low and dragging his feet. On the left edge, the fast, accurate, quick-witted Kostya Belsky, who earned the nickname "Hawk", acted. On the other side of the attack dangled the lanky and foolish Savka Golopyatov, nicknamed "Balalaika". He always got into an offside position - "offside", and the team, by his grace, received free kicks from the referee.

Together with the boys, Varya Sukhanova, an excessively curious girl who dragged herself to all matches and clapped the loudest when Voskhod won, also tagged along. Last spring, she embroidered with her own hands on the blue T-shirt of the captain the sign of the Voskhod team - a yellow semicircle above the ruler and splayed pink rays in all directions.

The guys contacted the chief doctor in advance, secured a special pass, and they were allowed to visit the wounded captain.

The hospital smelled, as it smells in all hospitals, of something caustic, disturbing, especially doctoral. And I immediately wanted to speak in a whisper... The cleanliness was such that the guys, huddled together, scraped their soles against the rubber rug for a long time and could not dare to step from it onto the sparkling linoleum of the corridor. Then they put on white robes with ribbons. Everyone became similar to each other, and for some reason it was embarrassing to look at each other. "Directly not the bakers, not the pharmacists," - could not resist, quipped Savka.

Well, don’t strum here in vain, - Kostya Yastrebok stopped him in a stern whisper. - I found the same place, Balalaika! ..

They were led into a bright room. There were flowers on the windows and pedestals. But it seemed that the flowers also smell like a pharmacy. The children carefully sat down on the benches, painted with white enamel paint.

Soon the doctor, or perhaps his sister, also all in white, brought Grisha in. The captain was wearing a long hospital gown. And, clattering with his crutches, Grisha still clumsily jumped on one leg, tucking, as it seemed to the guys, the other under his dressing gown. When he saw his friends, he did not smile, only blushed and nodded to them in a very weary way with his short-cropped head.

The guys got up and, going behind each other, bumping their shoulders, began to stretch out their hands to him.

Hello, Grisha, - Kostya said, - we have come to you.

“Lord Byron,” read the captain, “remaining lame from childhood for life, nevertheless enjoyed great success and fame in society. He was a tireless traveler, a fearless rider, a skilled boxer and an outstanding swimmer ...”

The captain read this passage three times in a row, then put the book on the bedside table, turned his face to the wall and began to dream.

NOTES

During the war years, the writer visited hospitals where wounded children lay. The incident described in the story actually happened. The story was first published in 1943 in the collection "There are such people" and in the collection "Ordinary guys".

1. Rusakovskaya hospital - hospital named after I. Rusakov in Moscow; named after a prominent figure in the Bolshevik Party.

2. Lord George Gordon Byron is a famous English poet. Despite the lameness, he was an outstanding athlete.

Lev Kassil

seven stories

POSITION OF UNCLE Ustin

Uncle Ustin's small hut, which had grown into the ground up to the windows, was the last one from the outskirts. The whole village seemed to have slid downhill; only Uncle Ustin's house was established above the steep, gazing with its dim windows at the wide asphalt expanse of the highway, along which cars drove from Moscow and to Moscow all day long.

More than once I visited the hospitable and talkative Ustin Yegorovich together with pioneers from one camp near Moscow. The old man made wonderful crossbows. The string on his bows was triple, twisted in a special manner. When fired, the bow sang like a guitar, and the arrow, winged with fitted flight feathers of a tit or lark, did not wobble in flight and hit the target exactly. Uncle Ustin's crossbows were famous in all district pioneer camps. And in the house of Ustin Yegorovich there was always plenty of fresh flowers, berries, mushrooms - these were generous gifts from grateful archers.

Uncle Ustin also had his own weapons, just as old-fashioned as the wooden crossbows he made for the boys. It was the old Berdan woman with whom Uncle Ustin went on night duty.

So lived Uncle Ustin, the night guard, and at the pioneer camp shooting ranges, tight bowstrings sang loudly his modest fame, and feathered arrows pierced paper targets. So he lived in his small hut on a steep mountain, read for the third year in a row a book about the indomitable traveler Captain Gatheras by the French writer Jules Verne, forgotten by the pioneers, not knowing its torn beginning and slowly getting to the end. And behind the window, at which he sat in the evening, before his duty, cars ran and ran along the highway.

But this fall, everything changed on the highway. Cheerful sightseers, who used to rush past Uncle Ustin in smart buses on weekends towards the famous field, where the French once felt that they could not defeat the Russians, the noisy and curious sightseers were now replaced by strict people, riding in stern silence with rifles on trucks or watching from the towers of moving tanks. Red Army traffic controllers appeared on the highway. They stood there day and night, in the heat, in bad weather and in the cold. With red and yellow flags, they showed where the tankers should go, where the artillerymen should go, and, having shown the direction, they saluted those traveling to the West.

The war was getting closer and closer. The sun at sunset slowly filled with blood, hanging in an unkind haze. Uncle Ustin saw how shaggy explosions, as they lived, uprooted trees from the groaning earth. The German was rushing with all his might to Moscow. Parts of the Red Army were stationed in the village and fortified here so as not to let the enemy through to the high road leading to Moscow. They tried to explain to Uncle Ustin that he needed to leave the village - there would be a big fight, a cruel deed, and Uncle Razmolov's house was on the edge, and the blow would fall on him.

But the old man was stubborn.

I have a pension from the state for the length of my years, - Uncle Ustin repeated, - as I, when I used to work as a lineman, and now, therefore, in the night guard service. And then on the side of the brick factory. In addition, warehouses are available. I'm not legally obtained if I leave the place. The state kept me in retirement, therefore, now it has its length of service in front of me.

So it was not possible to persuade the stubborn old man. Uncle Ustin returned to his yard, rolled up the sleeves of his faded shirt and took up the shovel.

So, this is where my position will be, ”he said.

Soldiers and village militias helped Uncle Ustin all night to turn his hut into a small fortress. Seeing how anti-tank bottles were being prepared, he rushed to collect the empty dishes himself.

Eh, I didn’t pawn enough due to poor health,” he lamented, “some people have a whole pharmacy of dishes under the bench ... And halves and quarters ...

The battle began at dawn. It shook the ground behind the neighboring forest, covering the cold November sky with smoke and fine dust. Suddenly, German motorcyclists rushing in all their drunken spirit appeared on the highway. They jumped up and down on leather saddles, pressed the signals, yelled at random, and fired in all directions at random at Lazarus, as Uncle Ustin determined from his attic. Seeing steel slingshot-hedgehogs in front of them that closed the highway, the motorcyclists turned sharply to the side and, without dismantling the road, almost without slowing down, rushed along the side of the road, rolling into a ditch and getting out of it on the move. As soon as they caught up with the slope, on which Uncle Ustin's hut stood, heavy logs, round pine logs, rolled from above under the wheels of motorcycles. It was Uncle Ustin who imperceptibly crawled to the very edge of the cliff and pushed down the large trunks of pines that had been stored here since yesterday. Not having time to slow down, motorcyclists at full speed ran into the logs. They flew head over heels through them, and the rear ones, unable to stop, ran into the fallen ones ... Soldiers from the village opened fire from machine guns. The Germans were spreading out like crayfish that had been dumped on the kitchen table from a market purse. Uncle Ustin's hut was also not silent. Among the dry rifle shots, one could hear the thick rattle of his old Berdan gun.

Leaving their wounded and dead in the ditch, the German motorcyclists, having jumped on steeply wrapped cars, rushed back. In less than 15 minutes, a dull and heavy rumbling was heard, and, crawling up the hills, hastily rolling over into hollows, firing on the move, German tanks rushed to the highway.

The battle continued until late in the evening. Five times the Germans tried to break into the highway. But on the right, our tanks jumped out of the forest every time, and on the left, where a slope hung over the highway, the approaches to the road were guarded by anti-tank guns brought here by the unit commander. And dozens of bottles of liquid flame rained down on the tanks that were trying to slip through from the attic of a small dilapidated booth, on the square of which, shot through in three places, a child's red flag continued to flutter. "Long live the First of May" was written in white adhesive paint on the flag. Maybe it was not the right time, but Uncle Ustin did not find another banner.

Uncle Ustin's hut fought back so fiercely, so many damaged tanks, drenched in flames, fell into the nearest ditch that it seemed to the Germans that some very important knot of our defense was hidden here, and they lifted into the air about a dozen heavy bombers.

When Uncle Ustin, stunned and bruised, was pulled out from under the logs and he opened his eyes, still faintly understanding, the bombers were already driven away by our MiGs, the tank attack was repulsed, and the unit commander, standing not far from the collapsed hut, something spoke sternly to two frightened looking guys; although their clothes were still smoking, they both looked trembling.

First Name Last Name? the commander asked sternly.

Karl Schwieber, the first German answered.

Augustine Richard, - answered the second.

And then Uncle Ustin got up from the ground and, staggering, approached the prisoners.

Wow what are you! Von-Baron Augustin! .. And I'm just Ustin, - he said and shook his head, from which blood dripped slowly and viscous. - I didn’t invite you to visit: you, dog, imposed yourself on my ruin ... Well, even though they call you “Avg-Ustin” with a surcharge, it turns out that you didn’t slip past Ustin. Got caught on the same check.

After the dressing, Uncle Ustin, no matter how he resisted, was sent in an ambulance to Moscow. But in the morning the restless old man left the hospital and went to his son's apartment. The son was at work, the daughter-in-law was also not at home. Uncle Ustin decided to wait for the arrival of his own. He glanced at the stairs inquisitively. Sandbags, boxes, hooks, barrels of water were prepared everywhere. On the door opposite, next to a sign with the inscription: "Doctor of Medicine V. N. Korobovsky," a piece of paper was pinned up: "There is no reception, the doctor is at the front."

Well, well, - Uncle Ustin said to himself, sitting down on the steps, - so, let's consolidate our positions. It's not too late to fight everywhere, the house will be stronger than my dugout. In which case, if they get in here, they can do such things here!

REVENGE

I spent one of the anxious August nights at the airfield where Major Rybakov's formation of night fighters was guarding the approaches to Moscow from fascist raiders. That night, the pilot of this formation, Lieutenant Kiselev, rammed a Nazi bomber, making its way to Moscow. The fire that devoured the wreckage of the Nazi aircraft allowed us to find the way to the crash site of the dead raider.

He was lying, crashing two meters into the ground with his damaged motors. Fragments of branches lay all around. Leaves smoldered. The pink birch trees retreated as if in horror, illuminated by the ominous flames that still lived in this mess of flattened metal, among the crushed and twisted parts of the bomber. Four corpses, charred and half-burnt, lay under the rubble.