School read online, Arkady Gaidar

Read online “School”

Arkady Gaidar

School

I. School

Chapter first

Our town of Arzamas was quiet, filled with gardens surrounded by shabby fences. In those gardens grew a great variety of “parent cherries,” early-ripening apples, blackthorns and red peonies. The gardens, adjacent to one another, formed continuous green massifs, restlessly ringing with the whistling sounds of tits, goldfinches, bullfinches and robins.

Through the city, past the gardens, stretched quiet, flowering ponds, in which all the decent fish had long since died out and only slippery lumps and a filthy frog were found. The Tesha river flowed under the mountain.

The city looked like a monastery: there were about thirty churches and four monastic monasteries in it. There were many miraculous holy icons in our city. Perhaps there are even more miraculous ones than simple ones. But for some reason few miracles happened in Arzamas itself. Probably because sixty kilometers away there was the famous Sarov Hermitage with the saints, and these saints lured all the miracles to their place.

All we could hear was: now in Sarov a blind man received his sight, now a lame man walked in, now a hunchbacked man straightened up, but near our icons - nothing similar.

One day a rumor spread that Mitka the Gypsy, a tramp and famous drunkard, who annually swam for a bottle of vodka in the Epiphany ice hole, had a vision, and Mitka stopped drinking, repented and took monastic vows at the Spassky Monastery.

People flocked to the monastery. And sure enough, Mitka diligently bowed near the choir, publicly repented of his sins and even confessed that last year he stole and drank a goat from the merchant Bebeshin. The merchant Bebeshin was touched and gave Mitka a ruble so that he could light a candle for the salvation of his soul. Many then shed tears when they saw how a vicious person returned from a disastrous path to the bosom of a righteous life.

This went on for a whole week, but just before he was tonsured, either Mitka had some other vision, in the opposite sense, or some other reason, but he did not show up to church. And a rumor spread among the parishioners that Mitka was lying in a ravine on Novoplotinnaya Street, and next to him lay an empty vodka bottle.

Deacon Paphnutius and church elder merchant Sinyugin were sent to the scene of the incident to admonish. Those sent soon returned and indignantly declared that Mitka was truly insensitive, like slaughtered cattle; that next to him there was already a second empty half-bottle, and when they managed to push him away, he, swearing, declared that he had changed his mind about becoming a monk, because he was supposedly a sinner and unworthy.

Our town was quiet and patriarchal. On holidays, especially Easter, when the bells of all thirty churches began to ring, a roar rose above the city, clearly audible in villages spread over twenty kilometers in circumference.

The Annunciation bell drowned out all the others. The bell of the Spassky Monastery was cracked and therefore roared in a jerky, rattling bass. The thin echoes of the St. Nicholas Monastery rang in high, ringing tones. These three singers were echoed by other bell towers, and even the nondescript church of the small prison, nestled on the edge of the city, joined the general discordant choir.

I loved climbing bell towers. Boys were allowed to do this only on Easter. You circle for a long time along a narrow, dark staircase. Pigeons coo affectionately in stone niches. My head is a little dizzy from the countless turns. From above you can see the entire city with patches of scattered ponds and thickets of gardens. Under the mountain - Tesha, an old mill, Goat Island, a copse, and further - ravines and the blue edge of the city forest.

My father was a soldier of the 12th Siberian Rifle Regiment. That regiment was stationed on the Riga sector of the German front.

I studied in the second grade of a real school. My mother, a paramedic, was always busy, and I grew up on my own. Every week you go to your mother with a sign for signature. The mother will quickly look at the grades, see a bad mark for drawing or penmanship and shake her head with displeasure:

- What is this?

“Mom, it’s not my fault.” Well, what can I do, since I have no talent for drawing? Mom, I drew him a horse, but he says it’s not a horse, but a pig. Then I serve it to him next time and say that it’s a pig, and he gets angry and says that it’s not a pig or a horse, but the devil knows what it is. Mom, I’m not preparing to be an artist at all.

- Well, why for penmanship? Give me your notebook... My God, what a mess! Why do you have a blot on every line, but here a cockroach is crushed between the pages? Ugh, what disgusting!

“It’s a blot, Mom, because it was accidental, but about the cockroach it’s not my fault at all.” After all, what is it, in fact, - you find fault with everything! What, did I plant a cockroach on purpose? He himself, a fool, crawled in and hanged himself, and I’m answering for him! And just think, what a science penmanship is! I’m not training to be a writer at all.

– What are you preparing for? – the mother asks sternly, signing the form. – Are you preparing to be a loafer? Why is the inspector writing again that you climbed onto the roof of the school using the fire escape? What else is this? Are you training to be a chimney sweep?

- No. Neither an artist, nor a writer, nor a chimney sweep... I will be a sailor.

- Why a sailor? - the puzzled mother is surprised.

- Definitely a sailor... Here's another thing... Why don't you understand that this is interesting?

Mother shakes her head:

- Look, what a sneak peek. Don't give me any more bad marks, otherwise I won't even look at the sailor - I'll tear you down.

Oh, how he lies! For her to tear me out? She’s never tore me before. She locked me in the closet once, and then the whole next day she fed me pies and gave me two kopecks for a movie. It would be nice to do this more often!

Chapter two

One day, I quickly drank some tea, somehow collected my books, and ran to school. On the way I met Timka Shtukin, a classmate, a little fidgety man.

Timka Shtukin was a harmless and unresponsive boy. You could hit him on the head without risking getting hit back. He willingly finished the sandwiches left by his comrades, ran to a nearby shop to buy some for the school breakfast and, without feeling any guilt, became frightenedly quiet when the class teacher approached.

Timka had one passion - he loved birds. The entire closet of his father, the caretaker of the cemetery church, was filled with cages with little birds. He bought birds, sold them, traded them, and caught them himself by force or traps in the cemetery. One day, his father gave him a great blow when the merchant Sinyugin, turning to his grandmother’s grave, saw on the stone slab of the monument a scattered bait of hemp seed and an onion - a net with a string stretched from it.

At Sinyugin’s complaint, the watchman tore the boy’s hair, and our teacher of the law, Father Gennady, said disapprovingly during a lesson on the law of God:

– Monuments are erected to remember the dead, and not for any other purposes, and it is not appropriate to place traps and other extraneous devices on monuments - it is sinful and blasphemous.

He immediately cited several cases from the history of mankind when such blasphemy entailed the gravest punishments of heavenly powers.

It must be said that Father Gennady was a great master at examples. It seems to me that if he had found out, for example, that last week I went to the cinema without a letter of resignation, then, having rummaged through my memory, he would probably have found some historical case when the person who committed such a crime suffered a well-deserved divine punishment in this life. .

Timka walked, whistling as a blackbird. Noticing me, he blinked affably and at the same time looked incredulously in my direction, as if trying to determine whether a person was approaching him casually or with some kind of trick.

- Timka! “We’ll be late for class,” I said. - By God, we'll be late. Maybe not yet for class, but definitely for prayer.

- They won’t notice?! – he said scared and at the same time questioningly.

- They will definitely notice. “Well, they’ll leave you without dinner, that’s all,” I deliberately calmly teased, knowing that Timka was so afraid of any reprimands or comments.

Timka shrank and, quickening his pace, spoke sadly:

- What do I have to do with it? Father went to unlock the church. He left me at home for a minute, and he himself - for how long. And all for a prayer service. For Valka Spagina, my mother came to serve.

– How about Valka Spagina? – I opened my mouth. - What you!. . Is he dead?

- Yes, not a prayer for the repose, but for the search.

– What other search? – I asked again with a trembling voice. – What are you talking about, Timka? ...

School

Chapter Seven

Once, already in September, Fedka stayed with me until late in the evening. We learned our lessons together.

We had barely finished and he had packed up his books and notebooks, preparing to run home, when suddenly a torrential rain poured down.

I ran to close the window that looked out onto the garden.

The rushing gusts of wind whistled and lifted whole piles of dried leaves from the ground, and several large drops splashed into my face. I pulled one half of the window with difficulty, leaned out behind the other, when suddenly a decent-sized piece of clay fell onto the windowsill.

“What a wind! - I thought. “That way it can break all the trees.”

Returning to the next room, I said to Fedka:

- The storm is real. Where are you going, fool... It's raining like that! Look what a piece of earth the wind threw out the window.

Fedka looked incredulously:

- Why are you lying? Will such a lump be thrown?

- Well, here we go again! - I was offended. “I’m telling you: as soon as I started to close it, it plopped onto the windowsill.”

I looked at the lump of clay. Did anyone actually quit on purpose? But I immediately changed my mind and said:

- What nonsense! There is no one to throw to. Who will be brought into the garden in this weather? Of course, the wind.

Mother was sitting in the next room sewing. Little sister was sleeping. Fedka stayed with me for another half hour. The sky has cleared. The moon peered into the room through the wet window, and the wind began to subside.

“Well, I’ll run,” said Fedka.

- Go. I won't go lock the door behind you. If you slam it tightly, the lock will lock itself.

Fedka pulled his cap down, put his books in his bosom so they wouldn’t get wet, and left. I heard the loud knock of the door he closed.

I began to take off my shoes, getting ready to go to bed. Looking at the floor, I saw a notebook dropped and forgotten by Fedka. This was the same notebook in which we solved problems.

“This is crazy,” I thought. - Tomorrow we have algebra - the first lesson... That's enough. I’ll have to take her with me.”

Throwing off my clothes, I slid under the blanket, but before I had time to turn over, a quiet, discreet bell rang out in the hallway.

- Who else does this mean? - asked the surprised mother. “Isn’t it a telegram from my father?.. No, the postman is tugging hard on the handle.” Come on, go unlock it.

“Mom, I’ve already undressed.” This, Mom, is probably not the postman, but Fedka, he forgot the notebook I needed, but he must have realized it on the way.

- Here's another idol! - the mother got angry. - Why couldn’t he run in this morning? Where is the notebook?

She took the notebook, put her shoes on her bare feet and left.

I could hear her shoes splashing down the steps. The lock clicked. And immediately a muffled, muffled scream reached me from below. I jumped up. At first I thought that my mother had been attacked by robbers, and, grabbing a candlestick from the table, I wanted to break the window with it and scream at the whole street. But downstairs there was either a laugh or a kiss, an animated, quiet whisper. Then came the shuffling steps of two pairs of feet climbing up.

The door swung open, and I was stuck to the bed, undressed and with a candlestick in my hand.

In the doorway, with eyes full of tears, stood a happy, laughing mother, and next to her, overgrown with stubble, soiled in clay, wet to the skin, the soldier dearest to me - my father.

One jump - and I was already squeezed by his strong, rough paws.

Behind the wall in the bed, my sister stirred, disturbed by the noise. I wanted to rush to her and wake her, but my father held me back and said in a low voice:

- Don’t, Boris... don’t wake her... and don’t make too much noise.

At the same time, he turned to his mother:

“Varyusha, if the girl wakes up, don’t tell her that I’ve arrived.” Let him sleep. Where should I send her for these three days?

The mother replied:

- We will send her early in the morning to Ivanovskoye... She has been asking to see her grandmother for a long time. The sky has cleared, it seems. Boris will take her early in the morning. Yes, Alyosha, don’t speak in a whisper, she’s sleeping very soundly. Sometimes they come for me from the hospital at night, so she’s used to it.

I stood with my mouth open and refused to believe everything I heard.

“How?.. They want to send little, pop-eyed Tanya to her grandmother at first light, so that she never sees her father, who has come for leave? What is this?.. For what?”

- Borya! - my mother told me. - You will lie down in my room, and in the morning, at six o’clock, you will gather Tanya and take him to grandma... Don’t tell anyone there that dad has arrived.

I looked at my father. He hugged me tightly and wanted to say something, but instead he hugged me even tighter and remained silent.

I lay down on my mother’s bed, and my father and mother remained in the dining room and closed the door behind them. For a long time I could not sleep. I tossed and turned from side to side, tried to count to fifty, to one hundred - sleep did not come.

Some kind of chaos formed in my head. As soon as I began to think about everything that had happened, contradictory thoughts immediately collided and absurd assumptions, each more absurd than the other, entered my head. It started to feel a little pressure on your temples, the same way your head feels when you spin on a merry-go-round for a long time.

It was only late at night that I dozed off. I woke up from a slight creak. The father entered the room with a lit candle. I opened my eyes a little. The father was without boots. Quietly, on his toes, he walked up to Tanya’s crib and lowered the candle.

He stood like that for about three minutes, looking at the blond curls and pink face of the sleeping girl. Then he leaned towards her. Two feelings fought within him: the desire to caress his daughter and the fear of waking her up. The second one won. He quickly straightened up, turned around and left.

The door creaked again - the lights in the room went out...

The clock struck seven. I opened my eyes. The bright sun shone through the yellow birch leaves outside the window. I quickly got dressed and looked into the next room. They slept there. Closing the door, I began to wake up my sister.

-Where is mom? she asked, rubbing her eyes and staring at the empty bed.

— Mom was called to the hospital. Mom, when she left, told me to take you to visit your grandmother.

My sister laughed and slyly shook her finger at me:

- Oh, you’re lying, Borka! Just yesterday my grandmother asked me to come to her place, but my mother did not let me in.

“Yesterday I didn’t let you in, but today I changed my mind.” Get dressed quickly... Look how nice the weather is. Grandma will take you to the forest today to collect rowan trees.

Believing that I was not joking, my sister quickly jumped up and, while I was helping her get dressed, chirped:

- So, does mom change her mind? Oh, how I love it when mom changes her mind! Come on, Borka, let's take the cat Lizka with us... Well, if you don't want a cat, then we'll take Zhuchka. He's more fun... He licked my face like yesterday! Only mom got into a fight. She doesn't like to have her face licked. The bug licked her once when she was lying in the garden, and she licked him with a twig.

Little sister jumped out of bed and ran to the door.

- Borka, open the door for me. I have a handkerchief in the corner and also a stroller.

I pulled her away and sat her on the bed.

“You can’t go there, Tanya, someone else’s uncle is sleeping there.” I arrived in the evening. I'll bring you a scarf myself.

- Which uncle? she asked. - As last time?

- Yes, like last time.

- And with a wooden leg?

- No, with iron.

- Oh, Borka! I've never seen one with iron before. Let me look through the crack quietly... I'm on tiptoe.

- I'll look at it for you! Sit still!

Carefully making my way into the room, I took out a handkerchief and returned back.

- And the stroller?

- Well, I came up with another idea: why bother with a stroller? There Uncle Yegor will give you a ride in a real cart.

The path to Ivanovskoye passed along the banks of the Tesha. Little sister ran ahead, stopping every minute, either to pick up a twig, or to look at the geese floundering in the water, or for some other reason. I walked slowly behind. The morning freshness, the yellow-green expanse of autumn fields, the monotonous tinkling of the copper bells of a grazing herd - all this had a calming effect on me.

And now that annoying thought that tormented me so much at night was firmly established in my head, and I no longer tried to get rid of it.

I remembered a lump of clay thrown on the windowsill. Of course, it was not the wind that threw it. How could the wind tear such a piece tangled with roots out of the garden bed? My father said this to get my attention. It was he who hid in the garden during the rain and storm, waiting for Fedka to leave me. He doesn’t want his little sister to see him because she’s little and might spill the beans about his arrival. Soldiers who come on vacation do not hide or hide from anyone...

There was no longer any doubt - my father was a deserter.

On the way back, I unexpectedly ran into a school inspector point-blank.

“Gorikov,” he said sternly, “what is this?.. Why are you not at school during lessons?”

“I’m sick,” I answered mechanically, not realizing the absurdity of my answer.

- Is ill? - the inspector asked. - Why are you talking nonsense! The sick are at home, not wandering around the streets.

“I’m sick,” I repeated stubbornly, “and I have a fever...”

“Every person has a temperature,” he answered angrily. - Don’t invent nonsense and march with me to school...

“Here you go! - I thought, walking after him. - And why did I lie to him that I was sick? Couldn’t I, without giving the real reason for my absence from school, come up with some other, more plausible explanation?” An old man, a school doctor, put his palm to my forehead and, without even taking my temperature, made a diagnosis out loud:

— Ill with an acute attack of laziness. Instead of medication, I recommend a B for behavior and after school for two hours without lunch.

The inspector, with the air of a learned pharmacist, approved this recipe and, calling the watchman Semyon, ordered him to take me to class.

Misfortunes came to me one after another that day.

As soon as I entered, the German Elsa Franciskovna finished asking Toropygin and, dissatisfied with my appearance in the middle of the lesson, said:

- Gorikov! Commen zi har! Conjugate the verb "to have" for me. Their habe,” she began.

“It’s blowing,” Chizhikov told me.

“Er hut,” I remembered myself. “Vir...” Here I faltered again. Well, I really didn’t have time for German verbs today.

“Hastus,” someone from the back desk deliberately told me.

“Hastus,” I repeated mechanically.

- What are you saying? Where is your head? You have to think, and not listen to what the stupid boy tells you. Give me your notebook.

“I forgot my notebook, Elsa Franciskovna, I prepared my homework, but I forgot all the books and notebooks.” I'll bring them to you at break.

- How can you forget all the books and notebooks! — the German woman was indignant. - You haven’t forgotten, but you are deceiving. Stay an hour after class for this.

“Elsa Franciskovna,” I said indignantly, “the inspector left me for two hours already today.” Where else for an hour? Why should I sit until night, or what?

In response, the teacher burst into a long German phrase, from which I barely understood that laziness and lies should be punished, and I well understood that I could not avoid a third hour of imprisonment.

During recess, Fedka came up to me:

- What are you doing without books and why did Semyon bring you to class?

I lied to him about something. I spent the next, last lesson - geography - in some kind of half-asleep. What the teacher said, what they answered him - all this passed by my consciousness, and I woke up only when the bell rang.

The duty officer read a prayer. The guys, slamming their desk lids, flew out the doors one after another. The class is empty. I was left alone. “My God,” I thought sadly, “three more hours... three whole hours, when my father is at home, when everything is so strange...” I went downstairs. There, near the teachers' room, there was a long, narrow bench, all cut up with penknives. Three people were already sitting on it. One first-grader was detained for an hour for throwing a pellet of chewed paper at a friend, another for fighting, a third for trying to spit on the top of the head of a student passing below from the third floor stairs.

I sat down on the bench and thought. The watchman Semyon walked past, rattling his keys.

The guard on duty, who from time to time looked after the prisoners, came out and, yawning lazily, disappeared.

I quietly got up and looked through the staff room door at the clock. What's happened? Only half an hour had passed, but I was sure that I had been sitting for at least an hour.

Suddenly a criminal thought came into my head: “What is this, really? I'm not a thief and I'm not in custody. I have a father at home, whom I haven’t seen for two years and now I have to see in such a strange and mysterious situation, and I, as a prisoner, have to sit here just because the inspector and the German woman thought of it?” I stood up, but immediately hesitated. To leave without permission, being abandoned, was one of our most serious school crimes.

“No, I’ll wait,” I decided and headed towards the bench.

But then a fit of incomprehensible anger took possession of me. “It doesn’t matter,” I thought, “my father ran away from the front…” here I smiled wryly, “but I’m afraid from here.”

I ran to the hanger, somehow threw on my overcoat and, slamming the door heavily, ran out into the street.

My father tried to open my eyes to many things that evening.

- Well, if everyone runs away from the front, then what, then will the Germans conquer us? - still not understanding and not justifying his action, I said.

“Darling, the Germans themselves need peace,” answered the father, “they would agree to peace if it were offered to them.” We need to force the government to sign peace, and if it doesn’t want to, then...

- Then what?

- Then we will try to force it.

“Dad,” I asked after some silence, “but before you ran away from the front, you were brave, you didn’t run away out of fear?”

“I’m not a coward even now,” he smiled. “I’m in even more danger here than at the front.”

He said this calmly, but I involuntarily turned my head to the window and shuddered.

From the opposite direction, a policeman was walking straight towards our house. He walked slowly, waddling. He reached the middle of the street and turned right, heading towards the market square, along the pavement.

“He... isn’t... coming to us,” I said abruptly, almost out of syllables, and began to breathe quickly.

The next evening my father told me:

— Borka, guests may come to you any day now. Hide the toy I sent you away. Hold on tight! You're already such an adult. If you get into trouble at school because of me, ignore everything and don’t be afraid of anything, pay more attention to everything that happens around you, and then you will understand what I told you about.

- Will we see you again, dad?

- See you. I will be here sometimes, but not with you.

- Where is it?

“You’ll find out when you need it, they’ll give it to you.”

It was already completely dark, but at the gate there was a shoemaker sitting on a bench with an accordion, and a whole bunch of girls and boys were buzzing around him.

“I should be about time,” said the father, noticeably worried, “so as not to be late.”

- They, dad, probably won’t leave until late at night, because today is Saturday.

The father frowned.

- Here's another problem. Is it possible, Boris, to crawl through a fence somewhere or through someone else’s garden? Well, think about it... You should know all the holes.

“No,” I answered, “you can’t go through someone else’s garden.” On the left, at the Aglakovs, there is a tall fence with nails, and on the right it would be possible, but there is a dog there, like a wolf, angry... That's what. If you want, then come with me down to the pond, I have a raft there, I will transport you with my backside straight to the ravine. It’s dark now, no one can tell, and the place is desolate.

Under the heavy figure of my father, the raft sank, and water flooded our soles. The father stood motionless. The raft glided silently through the black water. The pole kept getting stuck in the sticky, muddy bottom. I had difficulty pulling him out of the moldy water.

I tried to land on the shore twice, but it was unsuccessful - the bottom of the ravine was low and wet. Then I turned to the right and moored to the outer garden.

This garden was desolate, not guarded by anyone, and its fences were broken.

I accompanied my father to the first hole through which one could get out into the ravine. Here we said goodbye. I stood there for a few more minutes. The crunch of branches under my father's heavy steps became quieter and quieter.

Text of the book "School"

Arkady Gaidar School

© Astrel Publishing House LLC, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

I. School

Chapter first

All we could hear was: now in Sarov a blind man received his sight, now a lame man walked in, now a hunchbacked man straightened up, but near our icons - nothing similar.

My father was a soldier of the 12th Siberian Rifle Regiment. That regiment was stationed on the Riga sector of the German front.

- What is this?

- Well, why for penmanship? Give me your notebook... My God, what a mess! Why do you have a blot on every line, but here a cockroach is crushed between the pages? Ugh, what disgusting!

“It’s a blot, Mom, because it was accidental, but about the cockroach it’s not my fault at all.” After all, what is it, in fact, - you find fault with everything! What, did I plant a cockroach on purpose? He himself, a fool, crawled in and hanged himself, and I am responsible for him! And just think, what a science - penmanship! I’m not training to be a writer at all.

– What are you preparing for? – the mother asks sternly, signing the form. – Are you preparing to be a loafer? Why does the inspector write again that you climbed up the fire escape to the roof of the school? What else is this for? Are you training to be a chimney sweep?

- No. Neither an artist, nor a writer, nor a chimney sweep... I will be a sailor.

- Why a sailor? - the puzzled mother is surprised.

- Definitely a sailor... Here's another thing... Why don't you understand that this is interesting?

Mother shakes her head:

- Look, what a sneak peek. Don't give me any more bad marks, otherwise I won't even look at the sailor - I'll tear you down.

Oh, what a lie! For her to rip me off? I've never jerked before. She locked me in the closet once, and then the whole next day she fed me pies and gave me two kopecks for a movie. It would be nice to do this more often!

Chapter two

One day, I quickly drank some tea, somehow collected my books, and ran to school. On the way I met Timka Shtukin, a classmate, a little fidgety man.

At Sinyugin’s complaint, the watchman tore the boy’s hair, and our teacher of the law, Father Gennady, said disapprovingly during a lesson on the law of God:

– Monuments are erected to remember the dead, and not for any other purposes, and it is not appropriate to place traps and other extraneous devices on monuments - it is sinful and blasphemous.

He immediately cited several cases from the history of mankind when such blasphemy entailed the gravest punishments of heavenly powers.

- Timka! “We’ll be late for class,” I said. - By God, we'll be late. Maybe not yet for class, but definitely for prayer.

- They won’t notice?! – he said scared and at the same time questioningly.

- They will definitely notice. “Well, they’ll leave you without dinner, that’s all,” I deliberately calmly teased, knowing that Timka was so afraid of any reprimands or comments.

Timka shrank and, quickening his pace, spoke sadly:

– How about Valka Spagina? – I opened my mouth. - What are you saying!.. Is he dead?

- Yes, not a prayer for the repose, but for the search.

– What other search? – I asked again with a trembling voice. – What are you talking about, Timka? I’m about to crack you... I, Timka, was not at school yesterday, I had a fever yesterday...

“Ping-ping... tararah... tiu...” Timka whistled with his tit and, glad that I still didn’t know anything, jumped on one leg. - It’s true, you weren’t there yesterday. Wow, brother, what happened yesterday!..

- What happened?

- Here's what. We are sitting yesterday... our first lesson is French. The witch asked verbs starting with “etr”. Le-verb: alle, arrive, entre, reste, tombe... She called Raevsky to the board. As soon as he began to write “reste, tombe”, the door suddenly opened and the inspector entered (Timka closed his eyes), the director... (Timka looked at me meaningfully) and the class teacher. When we sat down, the director said to us: “Gentlemen, we had a misfortune: a student in your class, Spagin, ran away from home. He left a note that he had fled to the German front. I don’t think, gentlemen, that he did this without the knowledge of his comrades. Many of you, of course, knew about this escape in advance, but did not bother to inform me. “I, gentlemen...” and began, and began, and spoke for half an hour.

My breath was taken away. So that's it! Such an incident, such amazing news, and I sat at home as if sick, and I don’t know anything. And no one - neither Yashka Tsukkerstein, nor Fedka Bashmakov - came to me after class to tell me. Also comrades... When Fedka needed traffic jams from the scarecrow, he came to me... And then - come on!.. Then half the school will run to the front, and I, like an idiot, sit there!

I burst into the school like a storm, threw off my overcoat as I ran, and, having successfully dodged the warden, mixed with the crowd of children coming out of the common room, where the prayer was being read.

In the following days, all that was talked about was the heroic escape of Valka Spagin.

The director was wrong in suggesting that many were probably privy to Spagin's escape plan. Well, positively no one knew anything. No one could continue to think that Valka Spagin would run away. He was such a quiet person, he never took part in a single fight, not a single raid on someone else’s orchard to buy apples, his pants always fell off, well, in a word, he was a sloppy bastard, and suddenly - such a thing!

We began to discuss among ourselves, asking each other if anyone had noticed any preparations. It can’t be that a person suddenly, right away, out of the blue, gets it into his head, puts on a cap and goes to the front.

Fedka Bashmakov remembered that he had seen Valka’s map of the railways. Second-year student Dubilov said that he recently met Valka in a store where he was buying a battery for a flashlight. No matter how much they questioned him, they could not remember any actions indicating preparation for escape.

The mood in the class was high. Everyone was running around, freaking out, answering incorrectly in class, and the number of people left without lunch these days doubled as usual. Several more days passed. And suddenly there was news again - first-grader Mitka Tupikov ran away.

The school authorities were seriously alarmed.

“Today there will be a conversation at the lesson of the Law of God,” Fedka told me in confidence. - About escapes. As I was taking the notebooks to the staff room, I heard people talking about it.

Our priest, Father Gennady, was about seventy years old. Because of his beard and eyebrows, his face was not visible at all, he was obese, and in order to turn his head back, he had to turn around his whole body, because his neck was not noticeable at all.

We loved him. During his lessons you could do whatever you wanted: play cards, draw, put the forbidden Nat Pinkerton or Sherlock Holmes on your desk instead of the Old Testament, because Father Gennady was nearsighted.

Father Gennady entered the class, raised his hand, blessing everyone present, and immediately the roar of the duty officer was heard:

- Heavenly King, true comforter of the soul.

Father Gennady was deaf and generally demanded that the prayer be read loudly and clearly, but even it seemed to him that today the duty officer had gone overboard. He waved his hand and said angrily:

- Well, well... What is this? You read so that it is euphonious, otherwise you will roar just like a bull.

Father Gennady started from afar. First he told us the parable of the prodigal son. This son, as I understood then, left his father to wander, but then, apparently, he had a hard time, and he backed down.

Then he told a parable about talents: how one master gave his slaves money, which were called talents, and how some slaves engaged in trade and received profit from this business, while others hid the money and received nothing.

– What do these parables say? – Father Gennady continued. – The first parable speaks of a disobedient son. This son left his father, wandered for a long time and still returned home to his parents’ roof. There is no need to say about your comrades, who are not at all experienced in life’s hardships and secretly left their home - there is no need to say that it will be bad for them on their disastrous path. And once again I convince you: if anyone knows where they are, let him write to them, so that they will not be afraid to return, while there is time, to their parents’ roof. And remember, in the parable, when the prodigal son returned, the father, out of his kindness, did not reproach him, but dressed him in the best clothes and ordered the fat calf to be slaughtered, as if for a holiday. So the parents of these two lost youths will forgive them everything and welcome them with open arms.

I somewhat doubted these words. As for the first-grader Tupikov, I don’t know how his parents would have greeted him, but that the baker Spagin, regarding the return of his son, would not cut up his well-fed little body, but would simply whip his son thoroughly with a belt, that’s for sure.

“And the parable of the talents,” continued Father Gennady, “speaks of the fact that you should not bury your abilities in the ground. You learn all kinds of sciences here. Finish school, everyone will choose a profession according to their abilities, calling and position. One of you will be, say, a respectable businessman, another a doctor, the third an official. Everyone will respect you and think to themselves: “Yes, this worthy man did not bury his talents in the ground, but multiplied them and now, as he deserves, enjoys all the benefits of life.” But what,” - here Father Gennady sadly raised his hands to the sky, “what, I ask you, will come of these and similar fugitives, who, having despised all the opportunities given to them, ran away from home in search of adventures harmful to body and soul? You grow like delicate flowers in the warm greenhouse of a caring gardener, you know neither storms nor worries and bloom calmly, delighting the eyes of teachers and mentors. And they... even if they endure all the hardships, without care they will grow into lush thorns, blown by the winds and sprinkled with roadside dust.

When Father Gennady, majestic and inspired, like a prophet, left the class and slowly floated to the teacher’s room, I sighed, thought and said:

- Fedka!

- Well?

– What do you think about talents?

- No way. And you?

- I?

Here I hesitated a little and added more quietly:

“And I, Fedka, would probably also bury my talents.” Well, a businessman or an official?

“I would too,” Fedka admitted after a little hesitation. – What interest is there in growing like a flower in a greenhouse? Spit on it and it will wither. Thorn, at least he doesn’t care about anything - neither rain nor heat.

“Fedka,” I said, “but how did the priest say then: “And you will answer in the future life.” After all, even in the future, I still don’t want to answer!

Fedka thought about it. It was clear that he himself did not have a particularly clear idea of how to avoid the promised punishment. He shook his head and answered evasively:

- Well, it won’t be soon... And then, maybe, something will come up.

First-grader Tupikov turned out to be a fool. He didn’t even know which way to run to the front: he was caught three days later, sixty kilometers from Arzamas to Nizhny Novgorod.

They say that at home they didn’t know where to put him, they bought him gifts, and his mother, having taken a solemn promise from him not to run away anymore, promised to buy him a Montecristo gun by the summer. But at school they laughed and mocked Tupikov: “There is nothing to say, many of us would agree to run around the city for three days and receive a real gun as a gift for this.”

Quite unexpectedly, Tupikov got it from the geography teacher Malinovsky, whom we called “Kolya the mad one” behind our backs.

Malinovsky calls Tupikov to the board:

- Now, sir!.. Tell me, young man, to what front did you want to escape? In Japanese, or what?

“No,” Tupikov answered, turning purple, “in German.”

- Now, sir! – Malinovsky continued sarcastically. – Let me ask you, why the hell brought you to Nizhny Novgorod? Where is your head and where are my geography lessons? Isn’t it clear as day that you should have headed through Moscow,” he pointed at the map, “through Smolensk and Brest, if you wanted to escape to Germany?” And you went straight in the opposite direction - to the east. How did you get carried away in the opposite direction? You learn from me in order to be able to apply the acquired knowledge in practice, and not keep it in your head, like in a trash can. Sit down. I'll give you two. And be ashamed, young man!

It should be noted that the consequence of this speech was that the first-graders, suddenly realizing the benefits of science, began to study geography with completely unusual zeal and even invented a new game called “fugitive.”

This game consisted in the fact that one named the border city, and the other had to list without hesitation the main points through which the path lies there. If the fugitive made a mistake, he paid a forfeit, and in the absence of a forfeit, he received a slap on the wrist or a click on the nose, depending on the agreement.

Chapter Three

Every week, on Wednesday, in the common hall before the start of classes, a solemn prayer for the granting of victory took place.

After the prayer, everyone turned to the left, where portraits of the king and queen hung.

The choir began to sing the hymn “God Save the Tsar,” and everyone joined in. I sang along at the top of my lungs. My voice was not particularly suited for singing, but I tried so hard that even the warden once remarked to me:

- Gorikov, you should take it easy, otherwise it’s too much.

I was offended. What do you mean - too much?

And if I don’t have the talent for singing, then let others pray for victory, but I should remain silent?

At home, I shared my resentment with my mother.

But my mother somehow reacted coldly to my chagrin and told me:

- Still small. Grow up a little... Well, they fight and fight. What do you care?

- How, mom, what do I care? What if the Germans conquer us? Mom, I also read about their atrocities. Why are the Germans such barbarians that they don’t spare anyone - neither the elderly, nor the children, but why does our king take pity on everyone?

- Sit! – my mother told me displeasedly. - Everyone is good... They were so furious - and the Germans are no worse than people, and ours too.

Mother left, and I was left perplexed: that is, how is it possible that the Germans are no worse than ours? How is it not worse when it is worse? Just recently in the movies they showed how the Germans, sparing no one, burned everything - they destroyed the Reims Cathedral and violated the temples, but ours did not destroy anything and did not violate anything. On the contrary, in the same movie I myself saw how a Russian officer saved a German child from a fire. I went to Fedka. Fedka agreed with me:

- Of course, animals. They sank the Lusitania with civilian passengers, but we sank nothing. Our king and the English king are noble. And the French president too. And their Wilhelm is a boor!

“Fedka,” I asked, “why is the French Tsar called president?”

Fedka thought about it.

“I don’t know,” he answered. – I heard something that their president is not a king at all, but that’s just how it is.

- How is it so simple?

- By God, I don’t know. You know, I read a book by the writer Dumas. An interesting book - nothing but adventures all around. And according to that book, it turns out that the French killed their king, and since then they have not a king, but a president.

- How is it possible for the king to be killed? – I was indignant. “You’re lying, Fedka, or you’ve messed something up.”

- And by God, they killed me. And they killed him, and they killed his wife. They all had a trial and were sentenced to death.

- Well, you’re definitely lying! What kind of judgment can there be against the king? Let's say our judge, Ivan Fedorovich, judges thieves: they broke Plyushchikha's fence - he judged, Mitka the Gypsy stole a box of prosphora from the monks - again he judged. But he will not dare to judge the king, because the king himself is the boss of everyone.

- Well, believe it if you want, or not! – Fedka got angry. – Sashka Goloveshkin will read the book, I’ll give it to you. The trial there was not at all like that of Ivan Fedorovich. All the people gathered there and were tried and executed...” he added irritably, “and I even remembered how they were executed. They don’t hang people, but they have this kind of machine – the guillotine. They will lead her in, and she will cut off heads once and again.

- And the king was beheaded?

- And the king, and the queen, and someone else there. Do you want me to bring you this book? You can read it yourself. Interesting... It's about a monk... He was cunning, fat and seemingly holy, but in reality there was nothing like that. As I read about him, I laughed so hard until I cried, my mother got angry, got out of bed and turned off the lamp. And I waited until she fell asleep, took the icon lamp from the icons and began to read again.

Rumors spread that captured Austrians had been brought to the station. Fedka and I rushed there immediately after school. Our station was located far outside the city. It was necessary to run past the cemetery, through the copses, out onto the highway and cross a long winding ravine.

“What do you think, Fedka,” I asked, “are the prisoners in shackles or not?”

- Don't know. Maybe in shackles. Otherwise they might run away. But you can’t run far in shackles! Look, as the prisoners go to prison, they can barely drag their feet.

- Well, the prisoners are thieves, but the prisoners did not steal anything.

Fedka narrowed his eyes.

- Do you think that only those who stole or killed are in prison? There, brother, they are imprisoned for different things.

- For what other miscellaneous things?

- But for this... Why was the craft teacher imprisoned? Do not you know? Well, keep quiet.

I was always angry why Fedka knew everything more than me. Surely, no matter what you ask him about - just not about lessons - he always knows something. Must be through my father. His father is a postman, and while a postman walks from house to house, you never know what he hears.

The children loved the craft teacher, or, as we called him, Galka. He arrived in the city at the beginning of the war. I rented an apartment on the outskirts. I visited him several times. He himself loved the children, taught them to make cages, boxes, and wedges on his workbench. In the summer, he would gather a whole horde and go with it to the forest or fishing. He himself was black, thin and walked with a little hop, like a bird, for which they nicknamed him Jackdaw. He was arrested completely unexpectedly, for what – we didn’t really know. Some guys said that he was a spy and conveyed all the secrets about the movement of troops to the Germans over the phone. There were also those who claimed that the teacher had previously been a robber and robbed people on the roads, but now the truth came out.

But I didn’t believe it: firstly, from here the telephone wire cannot reach any border; secondly, what military secrets and troop movements can be transmitted from Arzamas? Here there were very few troops at all - a seven-man team at the military presence, officer Balagushin with an orderly, and at the station four bakers from a military food station, whose only name is that they are soldiers, but in fact they are ordinary bakers. In addition, during all this time we only had one movement of troops, when officer Balagushin moved from the Pyryatins’ apartment to the Basyutins’, and there were no other movements.

As for the fact that the teacher was a robber, this was an obvious lie. This was invented by Petka Zolotukhin, who, as everyone knows, is a desperate liar, and if he asks for a loan of three kopecks, he will then swear that he gave it away, or he will return the rod without hooks and then insist that he took it that way. But which teacher is a robber? His face is not the same, and his gait is funny, and he himself is kind, and besides, he is thin and always coughs.

So Fedka and I ran all the way to the ravine.

Here, unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I asked Fedka:

– Fedya... so why, in fact, was the teacher arrested? After all, these are lies about both the spy and the robber?

“Of course, they’re liars,” he answered, slowing down and looking around carefully, as if we were not in a field, but among a crowd. - He, brother, was arrested for politics.

Before I had time to ask Fedka in more detail what kind of policy the teacher was arrested for, when around the corner I heard the heavy clatter of an approaching column.

There were about a hundred prisoners.

They were not chained, and only six guards accompanied them.

The tired, gloomy faces of the Austrians merged into one with their gray greatcoats and crumpled hats. They walked silently, in dense rows, with a measured soldier's step.

“So this is what they are like,” Fedka and I thought as we let the column pass. “Here they are, those same Austrians and Germans, whose atrocities horrify all nations. They frowned and frowned - they don’t like being in captivity. That's it, darlings! When the column passed by, Fedka shook his fist after it:

- They invented gases! Damn German sausage!

We returned home a little depressed. Why - I don’t know. Probably because the tired, gray prisoners did not make the impression on us that we had hoped for. If it weren't for their overcoats, they would look like refugees. The same thin, emaciated faces, the same fatigue and a kind of tired indifference to everything around them.

School - Arkady Gaidar

CHAPTER ONE Our town of Arzamas was quiet, filled with gardens surrounded by shabby fences. In those gardens grew a great variety of “parent cherries,” early-ripening apples, blackthorns and red peonies. The gardens, adjacent to one another, formed vast green areas, restlessly ringing with the whistling sounds of tits, goldfinches, bullfinches and robins.

All that was heard was: now in Sarov a blind man received his sight, now a lame man walked in, now a hunchbacked man straightened up, but near our icons - nothing similar.

People flocked to the monastery. And sure enough, Mitka diligently bowed near the choir, publicly repented of his sins, and even confessed that last year he stole and drank a goat from the merchant Bebeshin. The merchant Bebeshin was touched and gave Mitka a ruble so that he could light a candle for the salvation of his soul. Many then shed tears when they saw how a vicious person returned from a disastrous path to the bosom of a righteous life.

My father was a soldier of the 12th Siberian Rifle Regiment. That regiment was stationed on the Riga sector of the German front.

- What is this?

- Well, why for penmanship? Give me your notebook... My God, what a mess! Why do you have a blot on every line, but here a cockroach is crushed between the pages? Ugh, what disgusting!

“It’s a blot, Mom, because it was accidental, but about the cockroach it’s not my fault at all.” After all, what is it, in fact, - you find fault with everything! What, did I plant a cockroach on purpose? He himself, a fool, crawled in and hanged himself, and I am responsible for him! And just think, what a science - penmanship! I’m not training to be a writer at all.

- What are you preparing for? - the mother asks sternly, signing the form. — Are you preparing to be a loafer? Why does the inspector write again that you climbed up the fire escape to the roof of the school? What else is this for? Are you training to be a chimney sweep?

- No. Neither an artist, nor a writer, nor a chimney sweep... I will be a sailor.

- Why a sailor? - the puzzled mother is surprised.

- Definitely a sailor... Here's another thing... Why don't you understand that this is interesting?

Mother shakes her head:

- Look, what a sneak peek. Don’t give me any more bad marks, otherwise I won’t even look at the sailor and I’ll tear you down.

CHAPTER TWO

One day, I quickly drank some tea, somehow collected my books, and ran to school. On the way I met Timka Shtukin, a classmate, a small, fidgety man.

Timka had one passion - he loved birds. The entire closet of his father, the caretaker of the cemetery church, was filled with cages with little birds. He bought birds, sold them, traded them, and caught them himself by force or traps in the cemetery. One day, his father gave him a great blow when the merchant Sinyugin, turning to the grave of his grandmother, saw on the stone slab of the monument a scattered bait of hemp seed and an onion - a net with a string stretched from it.

At Sinyugin’s complaint, the watchman pulled the boy’s hair, and our teacher of the law, Father Gennady, said disapprovingly during a lesson on the law of God:

— Monuments are erected to remember the dead, and not for any other purposes, and it is not appropriate to place traps and other extraneous devices on monuments - it is sinful and blasphemous.