Konstantin Paustovsky "Hare's Paws"
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you bastard!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
— His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. “Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones?” Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandpa’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. “He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run.” Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, darling,” Anisya mumbled. “Tell your grandfather that if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to see Karl Petrovich.”
Vanya wiped his tears and walked home through the forests, to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. A recent forest fire went north near the lake. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
-What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads.
Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. A fat old man in pince-nez and a short white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped accepting patients for three years now. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like it! - said the pharmacist. — There are some interesting patients in our city. I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
- Poshtovaya street, three! — the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book shut. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched across the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders and reluctantly shaking the ground.
Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. “All my life I’ve been treating children, not hares.”
“A child, a hare, it’s all the same,” muttered the grandfather stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about this, and on the third Day a long young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in a cotton rag and took him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
“The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. With this I remain Larion Malyavin.”
This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on a samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally, in his sleep, loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him.
The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own.
As an old forest dweller, grandfather knew that animals are much more better than man they sense where the fire is coming from and are always saved. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire.
When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
- What have you done wrong?
- And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that left ear the hare's is torn. Then I understood everything.
Konstantin Paustovsky “Cat Thief”
We were in despair. We didn't know how to catch this red cat. He stole from us every night. He hid so cleverly that none of us really saw him. Only a week later it was finally possible to establish that the cat’s ear was torn and a piece of his dirty tail was cut off. It was a cat who had lost all conscience, a cat - a tramp and a bandit. Behind his back they called him Thief.
He stole everything: fish, meat, sour cream and bread. One day he even dug up a tin can of worms in the closet. He didn’t eat them, but the chickens came running to the opened jar and pecked our entire supply of worms. The overfed chickens lay in the sun and moaned. We walked around them and argued, but fishing was still disrupted.
We spent almost a month tracking down the ginger cat. The village boys helped us with this. One day they rushed over and, out of breath, said that at dawn a cat had rushed, crouching, through the gardens and dragged a kukan with perches in its teeth. We rushed to the cellar and discovered that the kukan was missing; on it were ten fat perches caught on Prorva. This was no longer theft, but robbery in broad daylight. We vowed to catch the cat and beat him up for gangster tricks.
The cat was caught that same evening. He stole a piece of liverwurst from the table and climbed up a birch tree with it. We started shaking the birch tree. The cat dropped the sausage and it fell on Reuben's head. The cat looked at us from above with wild eyes and howled menacingly. But there was no salvation, and the cat decided on a desperate act. With a terrifying howl, he fell from the birch tree, fell to the ground, bounced up like a soccer ball, and rushed under the house.
The house was small. He stood in a remote, abandoned garden. Every night we were woken up by a knock wild apples, falling from the branches onto its planked roof. The house was littered with fishing rods, shot, apples and dry leaves. We only spent the night in it. We spent all our days, from dawn to dark, on the banks of countless streams and lakes. There we fished and made fires in the coastal thickets. To get to the shores of the lakes, one had to trample down narrow paths in the fragrant tall grasses. Their corollas swayed above their heads and showered their shoulders with yellow flower dust. We returned in the evening, scratched by rose hips, tired, burned by the sun, with bundles of silvery fish, and each time we were greeted with stories about new tramp antics of the red cat. But finally the cat was caught. He crawled under the house into the only narrow hole. There was no way out.
We blocked the hole with an old fishing net and began to wait. But the cat didn't come out. He howled disgustingly, like an underground spirit, howled continuously and without any fatigue. An hour passed, two, three... It was time to go to bed, but the cat howled and cursed under the house, and it got on our nerves. Then Lyonka, the son of the village shoemaker, was called. Lenka was famous for his fearlessness and agility. He was tasked with getting a cat out from under the house. Lyonka took a silk fishing line, tied a fish caught during the day to it by the tail and threw it through the hole into the underground. The howling stopped. We heard a crunch and a predatory click as the cat grabbed the fish’s head with its teeth. He held on with a death grip. Lyonka was pulled by the fishing line. The cat desperately resisted, but Lyonka was stronger, and, besides, the cat did not want to release the tasty fish. A minute later, the cat’s head with flesh clamped in its teeth appeared in the hole of the manhole. Lenka grabbed the cat by the collar and lifted him above the ground. We took a good look at it for the first time.
The cat closed his eyes and laid back his ears. He tucked his tail under himself just in case. It turned out to be a skinny, despite the constant theft, fiery red stray cat with white markings on his stomach.
Having examined the cat, Reuben thoughtfully asked:
- What should we do with him?
- Rip it out! - I said.
“It won’t help,” said Lyonka. “He’s had this kind of character since childhood.” Try to feed him properly.
The cat waited, closing his eyes. We followed this advice, dragged the cat into the closet and gave him a wonderful dinner: fried pork, perch aspic, cottage cheese and sour cream. The cat ate for more than an hour. He came out of the closet staggering, sat down on the threshold and washed himself, looking at us and at the low stars with green, impudent eyes. After washing, he snorted for a long time and rubbed his head on the floor. This was obviously supposed to signify fun. We were afraid that he would rub the fur on the back of his head. Then the cat rolled over onto his back, caught his tail, chewed it, spat it out, stretched out by the stove and snored peacefully.
From that day on, he settled in with us and stopped stealing. The next morning he even performed a noble and unexpected act. The chickens climbed onto the table in the garden and, pushing each other and quarreling, began to peck from the plates buckwheat porridge. The cat, trembling with indignation, crept up to the chickens and jumped onto the table with a short cry of victory. The chickens took off with a desperate cry. They overturned the jug of milk and rushed, losing their feathers, to run away from the garden.
A long-legged rooster, a fool, nicknamed “Hoarlach,” rushed ahead, hiccupping. The cat rushed after him on three legs, and with the fourth, front paw, hit the rooster on the back. Dust and fluff flew from the rooster. Inside him, with each blow, something thumped and hummed, as if a cat was hitting a rubber ball. After this, the rooster lay in a fit for several minutes, his eyes rolled back, and moaned quietly. He was doused cold water, and he walked away. Since then, chickens have been afraid to steal. Seeing the cat, they hid under the house, squeaking and jostling.
The cat walked around the house and garden like a master and watchman. He rubbed his head against our legs. He demanded gratitude, leaving tufts of red fur on our trousers. We renamed him from Thief to Policeman. Although Reuben claimed that this was not entirely convenient, we were sure that the police would not be offended by us for this.
Hello, friends!
Konstantin Paustovsky (May 19, 1892 - July 14, 1968)
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky was born in 1892 on May 19 in Moscow (a Muscovite by birth and a Kievite by heart) in the family of a railway extra, a retired non-commissioned officer. Father, as Konstantin Paustovsky himself said, was an incorrigible romantic, so he constantly changed jobs. After numerous moves, the Paustovki family settled in Kyiv. Here Konstantin entered the gymnasium. Then he graduated from the Faculty of Natural History of Kyiv University.
His father left the family when Konstantin was in the sixth grade, so he had to earn money by tutoring for his studies at the gymnasium, and for a living too. The writer's youth was overshadowed by his father's departure from the family, his sister's blindness, his mother's poverty, and the death of two brothers in the First World War.
Paustovsky wrote his first literary work in the last grade of the gymnasium. All his first works were full of romance, fantasy and exoticism.
Subsequently, Paustovsky increasingly describes nature, its greatness and beauty. His stories, essays and short stories are a huge educational material that develops observation, inquisitiveness and interest in travel.
Traveling a lot around Russia, he tries many different professions: conductor and tram leader, teacher, reporter, proofreader, orderly in the First World War, TASS war correspondent on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
And, of course, works about nature for children brought great fame to the writer.
Disheveled Sparrow
On the old wall clock, an iron blacksmith the size of a toy soldier raised a hammer. The clock clicked and the blacksmith struck a small copper anvil with a hammer with a drawbar. A hasty ringing sound fell across the room, rolled under the bookcase and died away.
The blacksmith hit the anvil eight times and wanted to hit the ninth, but his hand trembled and hung in the air. So, with his hand raised, he stood for a whole hour, until the time came to strike nine blows on the anvil.
Masha stood at the window and didn’t look back. If you look around, Nanny Petrovna will certainly wake up and urge you to sleep.
Petrovna dozed on the sofa, and mother, as always, went to the theater. She danced in the theater, but never took Masha with her.
The theater was huge, with stone columns. On its roof cast-iron horses reared up. They were held back by a man with a wreath on his head - he must have been strong and brave. He managed to stop the hot horses at the very edge of the roof. Horses' hooves hung over the square. Masha imagined what a commotion would have been if the man had not restrained the cast-iron horses: they would have fallen from the roof into the square and rushed past the policemen with thunder and ringing.
All last days Mom was worried. She was preparing to dance Cinderella for the first time and promised to take Petrovna and Masha to the first performance. Two days before the performance, my mother took out a small bouquet of flowers made of thin glass from a chest. Mashin’s father gave it to his mother. He was a sailor and brought this bouquet from some distant country.
Then Mashin’s father went to war, sank several fascist ships, sank twice, was wounded, but remained alive. And now he is far away again, in a country with strange name"Kamchatka", and will not return soon, only in the spring.
Mom took out a glass bouquet and quietly said a few words to him. It was surprising because my mother had never talked to things before.
“There,” my mother whispered, “that’s what you’ve been waiting for.”
- What are you waiting for? - asked Masha.
“You’re little, you don’t understand anything yet,” my mother answered. “Dad gave me this bouquet and said: “When you dance Cinderella for the first time, be sure to pin it to your dress after the ball in the palace.” Then I will know that you remembered me at this time.”
“But I understand,” Masha said angrily.
- What did you understand?
- All! - Masha answered and blushed: she didn’t like it when people didn’t believe her.
Mom put the glass bouquet on her table and told Masha not to dare touch it even with her little finger, because it was very fragile.
That evening the bouquet lay behind Masha on the table and sparkled. It was so quiet that everything seemed to be sleeping around: the whole house, and the garden outside the windows, and the stone lion that sat below at the gate and became increasingly white from the snow. Only Masha, heating and winter were awake. Masha looked outside the window, the heating quietly squeaked its warm song, and winter kept falling and falling silent snow from the sky. He flew past the lanterns and lay down on the ground. And it was incomprehensible how such a thing could fly from such a black sky. White snow. And it was still unclear why, in the midst of winter and frost, large red flowers bloomed in a basket on my mother’s table. But the most incomprehensible thing was the gray-haired crow. She sat on a branch outside the window and looked, without blinking, at Masha.
The crow was waiting for Petrovna to open the window to ventilate the room at night and take Masha to wash.
As soon as Petrovna and Masha left, the crow flew up to the window, squeezed into the room, grabbed the first thing that caught its eye, and ran away. She was in a hurry, forgot to wipe her paws on the carpet and left wet footprints on the table. Every time Petrovna returned to the room, she threw up her hands and shouted:
- Robber! She snatched something again!
Masha also threw up her hands and, together with Petrovna, began to hastily look for what the crow had taken away this time. Most often, the crow carried sugar, cookies and sausage.
A crow lived in a stall that was boarded up for the winter, where they sold ice cream in the summer. The crow was stingy and grumpy. She stuffed all her wealth into the cracks of the stall with her beak so that the sparrows would not steal them.
Sometimes at night she dreamed that sparrows had crept into the stall and were gouging out pieces of frozen sausage from the cracks, apple peel and a silver candy wrapper. Then the crow croaked angrily in its sleep, and the policeman on the next corner looked around and listened. He had long heard croaking from the stall at night and was surprised. Several times he approached the stall and, blocking the light of the street lamp with his palms, peered inside. But the stall was dark, and only a broken box was visible on the floor.
One day a crow found a small disheveled sparrow named Pashka in a stall.
Life has become difficult for the sparrows. There were not enough oats, because there were almost no horses left in the city. In the old days - Pashkin’s grandfather, an old sparrow nicknamed Chichkin, sometimes recalled them - the sparrow tribe spent all their days jostling around the cab stands, where oats spilled out of horse bags onto the pavement.
And now there are only cars in the city. They don’t feed on oats, they don’t chew them like good-natured horses, but they drink some kind of poisonous water with a pungent odor. The Sparrow tribe has thinned out.
Some sparrows moved to the countryside, closer to the horses, and others to seaside towns, where grain is loaded onto ships, and therefore the sparrow life there is full and cheerful.
“Before,” Chichkin said, “sparrows gathered in flocks of two to three thousand. It happened that they would fly up and rush through the air, so not only people, but even cabbies’ horses would shy away and mutter: “Lord, save and have mercy!” Is there really no justice for these brats?”
And what sparrow fights there were in the markets! Pooh flew in clouds. Now such fights will never be allowed..."
The crow caught Pashka as soon as he ducked into the stall and did not yet have time to pick anything out of the crack. She hit Pashka on the head with her beak. Pashka fell and closed his eyes: he pretended to be dead.
The crow threw him out of the stall and finally cawed - he scolded the entire thieving sparrow tribe.
The policeman looked around and approached the stall. Pashka was lying in the snow: he was dying from a pain in his head and only quietly opened his beak.
- Oh, you homeless child! - said the policeman, took off his mitten, put Pashka in it and hid the mitten with Pashka in his overcoat pocket. - You have a sad life, you sparrow!
Pashka lay in his pocket, blinking his eyes and crying from resentment and hunger. If only I could peck at any crumb! But the policeman had no bread crumbs in his pocket, but only useless crumbs of tobacco lying around.
In the morning, Petrovna and Masha went for a walk in the park. The policeman called Masha over and asked sternly:
- Don’t you, citizen, need a sparrow? For education?
Masha replied that she needed the sparrow, and even very much. Then the red, weather-beaten face of the policeman suddenly gathered wrinkles. He laughed and pulled out a mitten with Pashka:
- Take it! With a mitten. Otherwise he'll get away. Bring me the mitten later. I leave my post no earlier than twelve o'clock.
Masha brought Pashka home, smoothed his feathers with a brush, fed him and released him. Pashka sat down on the saucer, drank tea from it, then sat on the blacksmith’s head, even began to doze off, but the blacksmith eventually got angry, swung his hammer, and wanted to hit Pashka. Pashka flew noisily onto the head of fabulist Krylov. Krylov was bronze, slippery - Pashka could barely stay on it. And the blacksmith, getting angry, began to pound on the anvil - and pounded it eleven times.
Pashka lived in Masha’s room for a whole day and saw in the evening how an old crow flew into the window and stole a smoked fish head from the table. Pashka hid behind a basket with red flowers and sat there quietly.
Since then, Pashka flew to Masha every day, pecked at the crumbs and wondered how to thank Masha. Once he brought her a frozen horned caterpillar - he found it on a tree in the park. But Masha did not eat the caterpillar, and Petrovna, cursing, threw the caterpillar out the window.
Then Pashka, to spite the old crow, began deftly stealing stolen things from the stall and bringing them back to Masha. Either he will bring in a dried marshmallow, or a petrified piece of pie, or a red piece of candy.
The crow must have stolen not only from Masha, but also from other houses, because Pashka sometimes made mistakes and took other people’s things: a comb, playing card- a queen of clubs - and a golden feather from an “eternal” pen.
Pashka would fly into the room with these things, throw them on the floor, make several loops around the room and quickly, like a small fluffy projectile, disappear outside the window.
That evening Petrovna did not wake up for a long time. Masha was curious to see how the crow squeezed through the window. She had never seen this.
Masha climbed onto a chair, opened the window and hid behind the closet. First, large snow flew through the window and melted on the floor, and then suddenly something creaked. A crow climbed into the room, jumped onto my mother’s table, looked in the mirror, fluttered when I saw the same angry crow there, then croaked, stealthily grabbed a glass bouquet and flew out the window. Masha screamed. Petrovna woke up, groaned and cursed. And my mother, when she returned from the theater, cried for so long that Masha cried with her. And Petrovna said that there was no need to kill yourself, maybe there would be a glass bouquet - unless, of course, the stupid crow dropped it in the snow.
Pashka arrived in the morning. He sat down to rest on the fabulist Krylov, heard the story about the stolen bouquet, became ruffled and thought about it.
Then, when my mother went to a rehearsal at the theater, Pashka tagged along with her. He flew from signs to lampposts, from them to trees, until he reached the theater. There he sat for a while on the muzzle of the cast-iron horse, cleaned his beak, wiped away a tear with his paw, chirped and disappeared.
In the evening, mother put a festive white apron on Masha, and Petrovna threw a brown satin shawl over her shoulders, and everyone went to the theater together. And at that very hour, Pashka, by order of Chichkin, gathered all the sparrows that lived nearby, and the whole flock of sparrows attacked the crow stall where the glass bouquet was hidden.
The sparrows, of course, did not immediately decide to attack the stall, but settled on neighboring roofs and teased the crow for two hours. They thought she would get angry and fly out of the stall. Then it will be possible to arrange a fight on the street, where it is not as crowded as in a stall, and where everyone can fall on the crow at once. But the crow was a scientist, knew the sparrow’s tricks and did not leave the stall.
Then the sparrows finally gathered their courage and began to jump into the stall one after another. There was such a squeak, noise and fluttering that a crowd immediately gathered around the stall. A policeman came running. He looked into the stall and recoiled: sparrow fluff was flying all over the stall, and nothing could be made out in this fluff.
- Wow! - said the policeman. - This is hand-to-hand combat according to the regulations!
The policeman began to tear off the boards in order to open the boarded up door to the stall and stop the fight.
At this time, all the strings on the violins and cellos in the theater orchestra trembled quietly. A tall man waved his pale hand, slowly moved it, and under the growing thunder of the music, the heavy velvet curtain swayed, easily floated to the side, and Masha saw a large elegant room, flooded with yellow sun, and rich freak sisters, and an evil stepmother, and her mother - thin and beautiful, in an old gray dress.
- Cinderella! - Masha quietly screamed and could no longer tear herself away from the stage.
There, in a blaze of blue, pink, gold and moonlight, a palace appeared. And my mother, running away from it, lost her glass slipper on the stairs. It was very good that the music all the time did nothing but grieve and rejoice for my mother, as if all these violins, oboes, flutes and trombones were living, kind creatures. They tried their best to help my mother together with the tall conductor. He was so busy helping Cinderella that he never even looked back at the audience.
And this is a great pity, because there were many children in the hall with their cheeks glowing with delight.
Even the old ushers, who never watch performances, but stand in the corridors at the doors with bundles of programs in their hands and large black binoculars - even these old ushers silently entered the hall, closed the doors behind their backs and looked at Masha’s mother. And one even wiped his eyes. And how could he not shed tears if the daughter of his deceased comrade, a conductor just like him, danced so well.
And so, when the performance ended and the music sang so loudly and cheerfully about happiness that people smiled to themselves and only wondered why the happy Cinderella had tears in her eyes - at that very time he burst into the auditorium, rushing and straying along the theater stairs , a small disheveled sparrow. It was immediately obvious that he had jumped out of a brutal fight.
He circled above the stage, blinded by hundreds of lights, and everyone noticed that in his beak there was something unbearably shiny, like a crystal twig.
The hall began to rustle and fell silent. The conductor raised his hand and stopped the orchestra. In the back rows, people began to stand up to see what was happening on stage. The sparrow flew up to Cinderella. She stretched out her hands to him, and the sparrow in flight threw a small crystal bouquet into her palm. Cinderella pinned it to her dress with trembling fingers. The conductor waved his baton and the orchestra thundered. The theater lights trembled with applause. The sparrow flew under the dome of the hall, sat down on the chandelier and began to clean the feathers disheveled in the fight.
Cinderella bowed and laughed, and Masha, if she didn’t know for sure, would never have guessed that this Cinderella was her mother.
And then, in her house, when the lights were turned off and late night entered the room and ordered everyone to sleep, Masha asked her mother in her sleep:
— When you pinned the bouquet, did you think about dad?
“Yes,” my mother answered after a pause.
- Why are you crying?
“Because I’m glad that people like your dad exist in the world.”
- That’s not true! - Masha muttered. - They laugh with joy.
“They laugh from little joy,” my mother answered, “but from big joy they cry.” Now sleep!
Masha fell asleep. Petrovna also fell asleep. Mom went to the window. Pashka was sleeping on a branch outside the window. It was quiet in the world, and the heavy snow that fell and fell from the sky added to the silence. And my mother thought that they were falling on people just like snow. happy dreams and fairy tales.
Present
Every time autumn approached, conversations began that much in nature was not arranged the way we would like. Our winter is long and protracted, summer is much shorter than winter, and autumn passes instantly and leaves the impression of a golden bird flashing outside the window.
The forester’s grandson Vanya Malyavin, a boy of about fifteen, loved to listen to our conversations. He often came to our village from his grandfather’s lodge on Lake Urzhenskoye and brought either a bag of porcini mushrooms or a sieve of lingonberries, or he would just come running to stay with us, listen to conversations and read the magazine “Around the World”.
Thick bound volumes of this magazine lay in the closet along with oars, lanterns and an old beehive. The hive was painted with white glue paint. It fell off the dry wood in large pieces, and the wood under the paint smelled like old wax.
One day Vanya brought a small birch tree that had been dug up by the roots. He covered the roots with damp moss and wrapped them in matting.
“This is for you,” he said and blushed. - Present. Plant it in a wooden tub and place it in a warm room - it will be green all winter.
- Why did you dig it up, weirdo? – Reuben asked.
“You said that you feel sorry for summer,” Vanya answered. “My grandfather gave me the idea.” “Run,” he says, to last year’s burning place, there are birch trees—
two-year-olds grow like grass - there is no way for them. Dig it up and take it to Rum Isaevich (that’s what his grandfather called Reuben.) He’s worried about summer, so he’ll have a summer memory for the cold winter. It's certainly fun to look at green leaf when the snow is pouring out of a bag outside.”
“I not only regret summer, I regret autumn even more,” said Reuben and touched the thin leaves of the birch tree.
We brought a box from the barn, filled it to the top with earth and transplanted a small birch tree into it. The box was placed in the brightest and warmest room by the window, and a day later the drooping branches of the birch rose up, she was all cheerful, and even her leaves were already rustling when a draft wind rushed into the room and slammed the door in anger.
Autumn settled in the garden, but the leaves of our birch remained green and alive. The maples glowed dark purple, the euonymus turned pink, and the wild grapes on the gazebo withered. Even here and there on the birch trees in the garden yellow strands appeared, like the first gray hair of a still young person. But the birch tree in the room seemed to be getting younger. We did not notice any signs of fading in her.
One night the first frost came. He breathed cold air onto the windows in the house, and they fogged up, sprinkled grainy frost on the roofs, and crunched under his feet. Only the stars seemed to rejoice at the first frost and sparkled much brighter than in warm weather. summer nights. That night I woke up from a drawn-out and pleasant sound - a shepherd's horn sang in the darkness. Outside the windows the dawn was barely noticeable blue.
I got dressed and went out into the garden. The sharp air washed my face with cold water - the dream immediately passed. Dawn was breaking. The blue in the east gave way to a crimson haze, similar to the smoke of a fire. This darkness brightened, became more transparent, through it distant and gentle lands of golden and pink clouds were already visible.
There was no wind, but the leaves kept falling and falling in the garden.
Over that one night, the birches turned yellow to the very tops, and the leaves fell from them in frequent and sad rain.
I returned to the rooms: they were warm and sleepy. In the pale light of dawn there was a small birch tree standing in a tub, and I suddenly noticed that almost all of it had turned yellow that night, and several lemon leaves were already lying on the floor.
The warmth of the room did not save the birch. A day later, she flew around all over, as if she did not want to lag behind her adult friends, who were crumbling in cold forests, groves, and spacious clearings damp in autumn.
Vanya Malyavin, Reuben and all of us were upset. We have already gotten used to the idea that on snowy winter days the birch tree will turn green in rooms illuminated by the white sun and the crimson flame of cheerful stoves. Last memory about summer disappeared.
A forester I knew grinned when we told him about our attempt to save the green foliage on a birch tree.
“It’s the law,” he said. - Law of nature. If the trees did not shed their leaves for the winter, they would die from many things - from the weight of the snow, which would grow on the leaves and break the thickest branches, and from the fact that by autumn a lot of salts harmful to the tree would accumulate in the foliage, and, finally, from the fact that the leaves would continue to evaporate moisture in the middle of winter, and the frozen ground would not give it to the roots of the tree, and the tree would inevitably die from winter drought, from thirst.
And grandfather Mitri, nicknamed “Ten Percent,” having learned about this little story with the birch tree, interpreted it in his own way.
“You, my dear,” he said to Reuben, “live with me, then argue.” Otherwise, you keep arguing with me, but it’s clear that you haven’t had enough time to think through it yet. We, the old ones, are more capable of thinking. We have little to worry about - so we figure out what is what on earth and what its explanation is. Take, say, this birch tree. Don’t tell me about the forester, I know in advance everything he will say. Forester men:; cunning, when he lived in Moscow, they say he cooked his food using electric current. Could this be true or not?
“Maybe,” Reuben answered.
- Maybe, maybe! – his grandfather mimicked him. - And you are this one? electricity did you see? How did you see him when he has the appearance of something like air? Listen to the birch tree. Is there friendship between people or not? That's what it is. And people get carried away. They think that friendship is given to them alone, and they boast before every living creature. And friendship, brother, is all around, wherever you look. What can I say, a cow is friends with a cow, and a finch with a finch. Kill a crane, and the crane will wither away, cry, and won’t find a place for herself. And every grass and tree, too, must sometimes have friendship. How can your birch tree not fly around when all its companions in the forests have flown around? With what eyes will she look at them in the spring, what will she say when they have suffered in the winter, and she warmed herself by the stove, warm, well-fed, and clean? You also need to have a conscience.
“Well, grandfather, you screwed it up,” said Reuben. - You won’t get along. Grandfather chuckled.
- Weak? – he asked sarcastically. -Are you giving up? Don't get involved with me, it's a useless matter.
Grandfather left, tapping his stick, very pleased, confident that he had won all of us in this argument and, along with us, the forester.
We planted a birch tree in the garden, under the fence, and collected its yellow leaves and dried them between the pages of “Around the World.”
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Paustovsky's stories
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One day, cavalrymen passed through the village and left a black horse wounded in the leg. Miller Pankrat cured the horse, and he began to help him. But it was difficult for the miller to feed the horse, so the horse sometimes went to village houses, where he was treated to some tops, some bread, and some sweet carrots.
In the village there lived a boy, Filka, nicknamed “Well, you,” because it was his favorite expression. One day the horse came to Filka's house, hoping that the boy would give him something to eat. But Filka came out of the gate and threw the bread into the snow, shouting curses. This offended the horse very much, he reared up and at the same moment a strong snowstorm began. Filka barely found his way to the door of the house.
And at home the grandmother, crying, told him that now they would face starvation, because the river that turned the mill wheel had frozen and now it would be impossible to make flour from grain to bake bread. And there were only 2-3 days of flour left in the entire village. The grandmother also told Filka a story that something similar had already happened in their village about 100 years ago. Then one greedy man spared bread for a disabled soldier and threw him a moldy crust on the ground, although it was difficult for the soldier to bend over - he had a wooden leg.
Filka was scared, but the grandmother said that the miller Pankrat knows how greedy man correct your mistake. At night, Filka ran to the miller Pankrat and told him how he had offended his horse. Pankrat said that her mistake could be corrected and gave Filka 1 hour and 15 minutes to figure out how to save the village from the cold. The magpie who lived with Pankrat overheard everything, then got out of the house and flew south.
Filka came up with the idea of asking all the boys in the village to help him break the ice on the river with crowbars and shovels. And the next morning the whole village came out to fight the elements. They lit fires and broke the ice with crowbars, axes and shovels. By lunchtime a warm southerly wind blew in from the south. And by evening the guys broke through the ice and the river flowed into the mill chute, turning the wheel and millstones. The mill began to grind flour, and the women began to fill bags with it.
In the evening the magpie returned and began to tell everyone that it flew south and asked the south wind to spare people and help them melt the ice. But no one believed her. That evening the women kneaded sweet dough and baked fresh warm bread; throughout the village there was such a smell of bread that all the foxes got out of their holes and thought about how they could get at least a crust of warm bread.
And in the morning, Filka took the warm bread and the other guys and went to the mill to treat the horse and apologize to him for his greed. Pankrat released the horse, but at first he did not eat the bread from Filka’s hands. Then Pankrat talked to the horse and asked him to forgive Filka. The horse listened to his master and ate the entire loaf of warm bread, and then laid his head on Filke's shoulder. Everyone immediately began to rejoice and be happy that the warm bread reconciled Filka and the horse.
Paustovsky's story "Warm Bread" is included in.
Paustovsky's stories
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Summary of the story "Creaky Floorboards":
Story about interesting case from the life of Tchaikovsky: he had an estate in a pine forest. It was an old, withered house in which he loved to compose music. Tchaikovsky had a servant and a housekeeper who lived with him and helped him. One day Vasily came running to Tchaikovsky’s house and said that his landowner had sold the entire forest to a Kharkov merchant, who ordered that the entire forest be used for axes. Vasily tearfully asked Tchaikovsky to help preserve the forest. Pyotr Ilyich immediately went to the governor, but he said that he could not help in this matter, since everything was legal, the forest was the property of the merchant, which means he could do whatever he wanted with it. Then Pyotr Ilyich decided to buy the forest from the merchant Troshchenko, but he set a very high price. Tchaikovsky did not have that kind of money, and the merchant refused to accept a bill secured by his music. Then Pyotr Ilyich decided to leave the estate for Moscow so as not to see this barbarity. In the evening Vasily came to his house, realized that Tchaikovsky could not protect the forest and left, and at that time the merchant Troshchenko approached the house. He and Vasily had a fight and the merchant left.
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Paustovsky's stories
087408522c31eeb1f982bc0eaf81d35f
An interesting story about the laws of nature. One day, when in the forester’s lodge a group of people were regretting that summer was passing, autumn would soon fly by unnoticed and a long winter would set in, a young guy named Vanya, the forester’s grandson, whom his grandfather had advised, brought them a young birch tree of two years old as a gift. He advised me to plant it in a barrel and it would remind others of summer all winter. But the plan failed when one day the leaves of the street birches turned red and began to fall off; the domestic birch did not lag behind its natural counterparts and also turned yellow from head to toe and began to lose leaves. The warmth of home did not save her from the laws of nature, according to which all deciduous trees shed their leaves before winter. This is a necessary necessity for the continuation of the life of the tree. True, my grandfather had his own version about this, he believed that this all happens because of the friendship between the trees, and the birch simply could not stand in the warmth and not lose its leaves all winter because of remorse. How would she then appear in front of her fellow street friends who had endured the hardships and hardships of the cold winter.
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Paustovsky's stories
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A very interesting story about a savior hare. One day, a hare with burnt paws and belly was brought to the village veterinarian, tearfully begging him to be cured, since he allegedly saved the grandfather-hunter from death. But the veterinarian refused to treat him and sent the guy with the hare to Karl Petrovich, the city pediatrician. The next day, the guy and his grandfather took the hare to the city, with difficulty they found the address of Karl Petrovich, who at first also did not want to undertake treatment, but when he learned the story of this hare with a torn ear, he agreed to help and cured him. And the story was this: once the grandfather went out into the forest to hunt, he came across a hare with a torn ear, the grandfather shot at it, but missed. After wandering around the forest for some time, the grandfather felt the smell of burning and increasing noise. The old hunter realized that he was caught in a forest fire and began to run away. Was strong wind and the fire was already overtaking him, the smoke was covering everything around, when suddenly a hare jumped out. Grandfather realized that this was his salvation - hares always sense where the fire is coming from and die only if they are surrounded by fire. For a long time the grandfather ran after the hare, he could barely keep up, and the hare had a torn ear and a burnt stomach and paws. When the hare and grandfather got out of the fire, they fell to the ground from fatigue. So the hare brought out the grandfather and saved his life. The grandfather thanked the hare for this complete cure from burns and sheltered him in his house.
I had to walk all day along overgrown meadow roads. Only to
In the evening I went out to the river, to the watchhouse of the beacon keeper Semyon.
The guardhouse was on the other side. I shouted to Semyon to give me some
boat, and while Semyon untied it, rattled the chain and walked to the shore for the oars
three boys came up. Their hair, eyelashes and panties faded to straw
colors. The boys sat down by the water, above the cliff. Immediately from under the cliff they began
swifts fly out with such a whistle, like shells from a small cannon; in a cliff
Many swift nests were dug. The boys laughed.
- Where are you from? - I asked them.
“From Laskovsky forest,” they answered and said that they were pioneers from
from a neighboring town, we came to the forest to work, and have been sawing wood for three weeks now,
and sometimes they come to the river to swim. Semyon transports them to the other side, to
sand.
“He’s just grumpy,” said the most a little boy. - Everything to him
little, everything is little. Do you know him?
- I know. For a long time.
- He is good?
- Very good.
“But everything is not enough for him,” the thin boy in the cap sadly confirmed.
- You can't please him with anything. Swears.
I wanted to ask the boys what was not enough for Semyon, but
this time he himself drove up on a boat, got out, handed me and the boys a rough
hand and said:
- Good guys, but they understand little. You could say they don't understand anything.
So it turns out that we, the old brooms, are supposed to teach them. That's right I
I say? Get on the boat. Go.
“Well, you see,” said the little boy, climbing into the boat. - I
told you!
Semyon rowed rarely, slowly, as buoy men and
carriers on all our rivers. Such rowing does not interfere with talking, and Semyon,
The old man, talkative, immediately started a conversation.
“Don’t think so,” he told me, “they are not mad at me.” I tell them
I’ve already hammered so much into my head - passion! How to cut a tree - you also need to
know. Let's say which way it will fall. Or how to hide so that the butt
didn't kill. Now you probably know?
“We know, grandfather,” said the boy in the cap. - Thank you.
- Well, that's it! They probably didn’t know how to make a saw, the wood splitters and workers!
“Now we can,” said the smallest boy.
- Well, that's it! Only this science is not tricky. Empty science! This is for
few people. You need to know something else.
- And what? - the third boy, covered in freckles, asked anxiously.
- And the fact that now there is war. You need to know about this.
- We know.
- You don’t know anything. You brought me a newspaper the other day, what’s in it?
written, you can’t really define it.
- What is written in it, Semyon? - I asked.
- I'll tell you now. Do you smoke?
We each rolled a shag cigarette out of crumpled newspaper. Semyon lit a cigarette and
said, looking at the meadows:
- And it says about love for one’s native land. From this love, it must be so
think, a person goes to fight. Am I right?
- Right.
- What is this - love for the homeland? So you ask them, boys. AND
Apparently they don't know anything.
The boys were offended:
- We don’t know!
- And if you know, explain it to me, the old fool. Wait, you're not
jump out, let me finish. For example, you go into battle and think: “I’m going
for your native land." So tell me: what are you going for?
“I’m walking for a free life,” said the little boy.
- That's not enough. You cannot live a free life alone.
“For our cities and factories,” said the freckled boy.
- Few!
“For your school,” said the boy in the cap. - And for your people.
- Few!
“And for your people,” said the little boy. - So that he has
working and happy life.
“What you say is correct,” said Semyon, “but that’s not enough for me.”
The boys looked at each other and frowned.
- We were offended! - said Semyon. - Oh, you reasoners! And, let's say, for
quail don't you want to fight? Protect him from ruin, from death? A?
The boys were silent.
“So I see that you don’t understand everything,” Semyon spoke. - And I should
I'm old, I'll explain it to you. And I have enough things to do: check the buoys,
Hang tags on poles. I also have a delicate matter, a state matter. Because
- this river is also trying to win, it carries steamships, and I’m with it
kind of like a nurturer, like a guardian, so that everything is in good order. Like this
it turns out that all this is correct - freedom, cities, and, say, the rich
factories, and schools, and people. This is not why we love our native land. It's not
for one?
- And for what else? - asked the freckled boy.
- Listen. So you walked here from Laskovsky forest along a beaten road to
Lake Tish, and from there through the meadows to the Island and here to me, to the transportation. Did you go?
- Shel.
- Here you go. Did you look at your feet?
- I looked.
- But apparently I didn’t see anything. But you should look and take note,
Yes, stop more often. Stop, bend over, pick whatever
flower or grass - and move on.
- For what?
- And then, that in every such grass and in every such flower there is a large
The beauty lies. Here, for example, is clover. You call him porridge. You
Pick it up, smell it - it smells like a bee. From this smell an evil man and he
will smile. Or, say, chamomile. After all, it would be a sin to crush her with a boot. What about the lungwort?
Or dream grass. She sleeps at night, bows her head, and feels heavy with dew. Or
bought. Yes, you apparently don’t even know her. The leaf is wide, hard, and under it
flowers like white bells. You're about to touch it and they'll ring. That's it! This
tributary plant. It heals the disease.
- What does inflow mean? - asked the boy in the cap.
- Well, medicinal, or something. Our disease is aching bones. From dampness. From
bought the pain subsides, you sleep better and work becomes easier. Or calamus. I tell them
I sprinkle the floors in the guardhouse. Come to me - my air is Crimean. Yes! Here
go, look, take note. There's a cloud standing over the river. You don't know this; and I
I can hear the rain coming from him. Mushroom rain - controversial, not very noisy.
This kind of rain is more valuable than gold. He makes the river warm, the fish play, he is everything we have
wealth grows. I often, in the late afternoon, sit at the gatehouse, weaving baskets,
Then I’ll look back and forget about all sorts of baskets - after all, what is this! Clouds in
the sky is made of hot gold, the sun has already left us, and there, above the earth,
still radiates warmth, radiates light. And it will go out, and corncrakes will begin to appear in the grasses
creaking, and twitching jerks, and quails whistling, and then look how they will hit
nightingales seem to thunder - through the vines, through the bushes! And the star will rise and stop over
river and stands until the morning - she gazed, beauty, into the clean water. So that,
Guys! You look at all this and think: we have little life allotted to us,
You have to live for two hundred years - and that’s not enough. Our country is so wonderful! For this
lovely, we also have to fight with enemies, keep her safe, protect her, not let her
for desecration. Am I right? Everybody make noise, “Motherland”, “Motherland”, but here
she, the motherland, is behind the haystacks!
The boys were silent and thoughtful. Reflected in the water, it slowly flew by
heron.
“Eh,” said Semyon, “people go to war, but they forgot us old ones!” In vain
forgot, trust me. The old man is a strong, good soldier, he has a blow
very serious. If they had let us old people in, the Germans would have been here too
scratched. “Uh-uh,” the Germans would say, “we can’t fight such old men.”
path! No matter! With such old people you will lose your last ports. This is a brother,
You're kidding!"
The boat hit the bow Sandy shore. Little waders hurriedly
They ran away from her along the water.
“That’s it, guys,” said Semyon. - You'll probably be like your grandfather again
complaining is not enough for him. Some strange grandfather.
The boys laughed.
“No, understandable, completely understandable,” said the little boy. - Thank you
to you, grandfather.
- Is this for transportation or for something else? - Semyon asked and squinted.
- For something else. And for transportation.
- Well, that's it!
The boys ran to the sand spit to swim. Semyon looked after them and
sighed.
“I try to teach them,” he said. - Teach respect for your native land. Without
This man is not a man, but trash!
The story was written in 1943. In relation to our time, we are talking about
of course, about unprotected flowers and herbs. Although flowers are not better at all
tear off. Nowhere will a wild flower look as beautiful as where it is
increased.
I run the risk of interpreting the story too freely, but, again, in
in the context of today, enemies are not only, and probably not so much
external enemies (“NATO members”), how many environmental violators
legislation, persons with a bad attitude towards nature.
BADGER NOSE
a lot that we couldn't fish. The fishing lines lay on the leaves and did not sink.
We had to take an old boat out to the middle of the lake, where they bloomed
water lilies and blue water seemed black as tar.
There we caught colorful perches. They beat and sparkled in the grass, like
fabulous Japanese roosters. We pulled out tin roach and ruffs from
with eyes like two small moons. The pikes splashed at us as small as
needles, teeth.
It was autumn in the sun and fogs. Through the fallen forests were visible
distant clouds and blue thick air. At night in the thickets around us
the low stars moved and trembled.
There was a fire burning in our parking lot. We burned it all day and night,
to drive away the wolves, they howled quietly along the far shores of the lake. Their
disturbed by the smoke of the fire and cheerful human cries.
We were sure that the fire scared the animals, but one evening in the grass near
At the fire, some animal began to snort angrily. He was not visible. He's worried
ran around us, rustled the tall grass, snorted and got angry, but didn’t stick his head out
from the grass even the ears.
The potatoes were fried in a frying pan, a pungent, tasty smell emanated from them, and
the beast obviously came running at this smell.
There was a little boy with us. He was only nine years old, but he was good
endured overnight stays in the forest and the cold of autumn dawns. Much better than us
adults, he noticed and told everything.
He was an inventor, but we adults really loved his inventions. There's no way we
They could, and did not want to, prove to him that he was telling a lie. Every day
he came up with something new: either he heard the fish whispering, or he saw
how the ants made a ferry across a stream of pine bark and cobwebs.
We pretended to believe him.
Everything that surrounded us seemed extraordinary: the late moon,
shining over black lakes, and high clouds like mountains of pink
snow, and even the usual sea noise of tall pines.
The boy was the first to hear the animal's snort and hissed at us so that we
fell silent. We became silent. We tried not to even breathe, although our hand involuntarily
was reaching for the double-barreled shotgun - who knows what kind of animal it could be!
Half an hour later, the animal stuck out of the grass a wet black nose, similar to
pork snout. The nose sniffed the air for a long time and trembled with greed. Then from the grass
a sharp muzzle with black piercing eyes appeared. Finally showed up
striped skin.
A small badger crawled out of the thickets. He pressed his paw and carefully
looked at me. Then he snorted in disgust and took a step towards the potatoes.
It fried and hissed, splashing boiling lard. I wanted to scream
the animal that it would get burned, but I was too late - the badger jumped to the frying pan and
stuck his nose into it...
It smelled like burnt leather. The badger squealed and rushed with a desperate cry
back to the grass. He ran and screamed throughout the forest, broke bushes and spat
resentment and pain.
There was confusion on the lake and in the forest. Without time, the frightened ones screamed
frogs, birds became alarmed, and right at the shore, like a cannon shot,
a pike struck.
In the morning the boy woke me up and told me what he had just seen,
how a badger treats its burnt nose. I didn't believe it.
I sat down by the fire and listened sleepily to the morning voices of the birds. In the distance
White-tailed sandpipers whistled, ducks quacked, cranes croaked on dry
the swamps were mossy, fish were splashing, turtle doves were quietly cooing. I didn't want to
move.
The boy pulled me by the hand. He was offended. He wanted to prove to me that he
I didn't lie. He called me to go see how the badger was being treated.
I reluctantly agreed. We carefully made our way into the thicket, and among the thickets
Heather I saw a rotten pine stump. He smelled of mushrooms and iodine.
A badger stood near a stump, with its back to us. He picked out the stump and stuck it in
the middle of the stump, into wet and cold dust, a burned nose.
He stood motionless and cooled his unfortunate nose, and ran around and
snorted the other little badger. He was worried and pushed our badger
nose to stomach. Our badger growled at him and kicked with his furry hind paws.
Then he sat down and cried. He looked at us with round and wet eyes,
moaned and licked his sore nose with his rough tongue. It was as if he was asking for
help, but we couldn't help him.
A year later, on the shores of the same lake, I met a badger with a scar on
nose He sat by the water and tried to catch the dragonflies rattling like tin with his paw.
I waved my hand at him, but he sneezed angrily in my direction and hid in
lingonberry thickets.
Since then I haven't seen him again.
HARE FEET
brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. Hare
cried and often blinked his eyes red from tears...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. - Soon you will come to me mice
carry it, you fool!
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. -
His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted
following:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions - it will be great for your grandfather
snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, pulled
his nose and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare is quiet
trembling under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she brought
to the veterinarian my only goat. - Why are you, dear ones, crying together?
are you pouring? Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - On a forest fire
He burned his paws and can't run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, kid,” Anisya mumbled. - Tell your grandfather if
The hare is very eager to go out, let him carry him to the city to Karl
Petrovich.
Vanya wiped away his tears and walked home through the forests to Lake Urzhenskoye. He didn't go, but
ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. The recent forest fire has passed
side to the north near the lake itself. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. She
grew in large islands in clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy hair covered with silver soft hair along the way.
leaves, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at
leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
- What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
“You should eat,” Vanya repeated, and his voice trembled. - Maybe drink
Want?
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to hurry
let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning lines floated
white clouds. At noon the clouds were rapidly rushing upward, towards the zenith, and at
before their eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. A hot hurricane was already blowing
two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned
into an amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean onuchi [i] and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece
bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely quiet, only
From time to time he shuddered with his whole body and sighed convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. I flew in it
chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw. From a distance it seemed as if there was smoke over the city
quiet fire.
The market square was very empty and hot; the carriage horses were dozing
near the water booth, and they had straw hats on their heads.
Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
We spent a long time asking passers-by about Karl Petrovich, but no one really said anything.
didn't answer. We went to the pharmacy. Fat old man in pince-nez and short
in a white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh -
specialist in children's diseases - it's been three years since he stopped taking
patients. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like it! - said the pharmacist. -- Interesting patients appeared in
our city. I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at
grandfather Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. Silence
it became painful.
- Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed
some disheveled thick book. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - because of the Oka
a high thunderstorm was coming. Lazy thunder stretched over the horizon, like
the sleepy strongman straightened his shoulders and reluctantly shook the ground. Gray ripples have gone
down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows;
Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large raindrops
fell onto the dusty road, and soon it became like the lunar surface:
each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when in the window
Grandfather's disheveled beard appeared.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately at
Thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.
“A child and a hare are all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - All
one! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. We have him
farrier This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe my life to him,
I should show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich - an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows,
- Worried, I listened to my grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. In the next morning
Grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that
Karl Petrovich treats a hare that was burned in a terrible forest fire and saved
some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about it, and
the third day a tall young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich,
identified himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in cotton rags and took him home. Soon
the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor for a long time
I tried to get my grandfather to sell him a hare. He even sent letters from
stamps for the answer. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote
letter to the professor:
The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. I remain with this
Larion Malyavin.
...This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations,
cold, like grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. Ducks
They shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. After
he set the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and made the stars of fire
the dots turned into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness
he flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. Hare
He slept in the hallway and occasionally in his sleep he loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and
Over tea, my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests stood
dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. Grandfather shot at
him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
Grandfather moved on. But suddenly he became alarmed: from the south, from Lopukhov,
there was a strong smell of smoke. The wind got stronger. The smoke was thickening, it was already wafting like a white veil.
through the forest, surrounded by bushes. It became difficult to breathe.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. Wind
turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to
Grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during
Hurricane fire went at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind
a wide roar and crackling of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time from under his feet
Grandfather the hare jumped out. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only
the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. Like an old forest dweller, grandfather
knew that animals sense where fire is coming from much better than humans, and always
are saved. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait,
honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather
- both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare had
Hind legs and belly are singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar as angrily, as if the samovar
I was to blame for everything - yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty,
nice man.
- What did you do wrong?
- And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take it
flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I leaned over him with
with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.
[i] Onuchi - foot wraps for boots or bast shoes, foot wraps
Grey Gelding
they grazed, and late at night they went to the fenced warm haystacks and slept
near them, standing, snoring and shaking his ears. The horses woke up from
every rustle, the cry of a quail, the whistle of a tugboat pulling
along the Oka barge. The steamboats always hummed in the same place, near the riffle,
where a white signal light was visible. It was at least five before the fire
kilometers, but it seemed that it was burning not far away, behind the neighboring willows.
Every time we passed by the horses herded at night, Reuben
asked me what horses think about at night.
It seemed to me that the horses were not thinking about anything. They were too tired
day. They had no time to think. They chewed grass wet with dew and inhaled,
flaring nostrils, the fresh smells of the night. A subtle smell came from the bank of the Prorva
fading rose hips and willow leaves. From the meadows beyond the Novoselkovsky ford
there was a hint of chamomile and lungwort - its smell was similar to the sweet smell of dust.
From the hollows there was a smell of dill, from the lakes - of deep water, and from the village occasionally
the smell of freshly baked black bread could be heard. Then the horses rose
heads and laughed.
One day we went fishing at two o'clock in the morning. It was gloomy in the meadows
from starlight. In the east the dawn was already breaking, turning blue.
We walked and said that the quietest time of day on earth is always
happens before dawn. Even in big cities at this time it becomes quiet,
like in a field.
There were several willows along the road to the lake. A gray gelding was sleeping under the willows.
When we passed by him, he woke up, waved his skinny tail, thought and
wandered after us.
It's always a little scary when a horse follows you at night and doesn't
not a step behind. No matter how you look around, she still walks, shaking her head and
moving his thin legs. One day in the meadows she pestered me like this
martin. She circled around me, touched me on the shoulder, screamed pitifully and
insistently, as if I had taken the chick away from her, and she asked me to give it back.
She flew after me, keeping pace, for two hours, and in the end I felt uneasy.
to yourself. I couldn't guess what she needed. I told a friend about this
Mitri, and he laughed at me.
- Oh, you eyeless one! - he said. - Did you look or not, why did she
did, this swallow. Apparently not. You also carry glasses in your pocket. Give
smoke, then I'll explain everything to you.
I gave him a smoke, and he revealed to me a simple truth: when a person walks
across an unmown meadow, he scares away hundreds of grasshoppers and beetles, and swallows
there is no need to look for them in the thick grass - she flies near a person, catches them
on the fly and feeds without any care.
But the old gelding did not frighten us, although he walked behind so close that sometimes
pushed me in the back with his muzzle. We knew the old gelding for a long time, and nothing
there was no mystery in the fact that he followed us. He simply felt
it's boring to stand alone all night under a willow tree and listen for a laugh
somewhere is his friend, a bay one-eyed horse.
On the lake, while we were making a fire, an old gelding approached the water for a long time
I smelled it, but didn’t want to drink it. Then he carefully went into the water.
- Where, devil! - we both shouted in one voice, fearing that the gelding
will scare away the fish.
The gelding obediently went ashore, stopped by the fire and looked for a long time,
shaking his head as we boiled tea in a pot, then sighed heavily,
as if he said: “Oh, you don’t understand anything!” We gave him a crust of bread.
He carefully took it with his warm lips and chewed it, moving his jaws from side to side.
side, like a grater, and again stared at the fire - thinking.
“Still,” said Reuben, lighting a cigarette, “he’s probably talking about something.”
thinks.
It seemed to me that if the gelding thought about anything, it was mainly
about human ingratitude and stupidity. What has he heard all his life?
Only unfair shouts: “Where, the devil!”, “Got stuck on the master’s
bread!”, “He wanted oats - just think, what a gentleman!”
look back as they whipped him with the reins on his sweaty side and the sound of one and
In his stories about nature, Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky uses all the richness and power of the Russian language to convey in vivid sensations and colors all the beauty and nobility of Russian nature, evoking touching feelings of love and patriotism for the places of his native land.
In the writer’s short notes, nature passes through all seasons in colors and sounds, sometimes transforming and embellishing in spring and summer, sometimes calming down and falling asleep in autumn and winter. Paustovsky's stories in short miniature forms reveal all the reverent patriotic feelings that native nature produces on the reader, described with boundless love in the words of the author.
Stories about nature
(Collection)
Seasons in short stories
Spring
Dictionary of native nature
The Russian language is very rich in words related to the seasons and natural phenomena, associated with them.
Let's take at least early spring. She, this spring girl still chilled from the last frost, has a lot of good words in her knapsack.
Thaws, snowmelts, and drips from the roofs begin. The snow becomes grainy, spongy, settles and turns black. The fogs eat him up. Gradually the roads are being destroyed, muddy roads and impassability are setting in. On the rivers the first gullies with black water appear in the ice, and on the hillocks there are thawed patches and bald spots. Along the edge of the compacted snow, the coltsfoot is already turning yellow.
Then the first movement occurs on the rivers; water emerges from holes, holes and ice holes.
For some reason, ice drift begins most often on dark nights, after the ravines “grow” and the hollow, melt water, ringing with the last pieces of ice - “shards”, merges from the meadows and fields.
Summer
My Russia
Since this summer, I have become forever and wholeheartedly attached to Central Russia. I don’t know a country that has such enormous lyrical power and such touchingly picturesque - with all its sadness, tranquility and spaciousness - as central Russia. The magnitude of this love is difficult to measure. Everyone knows this for themselves. You love every blade of grass, drooping from the dew or warmed by the sun, every mug of water from the summer well, every tree above the lake, its leaves fluttering in the calm, every rooster crow, every cloud floating across the pale and high sky. And if I sometimes want to live to be one hundred and twenty years old, as grandfather Nechipor predicted, it is only because one life is not enough to fully experience all the charm and all the healing power of our Central Ural nature.
Native places
I love the Meshchersky region because it is beautiful, although all its charm is not revealed immediately, but very slowly, gradually.
At first glance, this is a quiet and simple land under a dim sky. But the more you get to know it, the more, almost to the point of pain in your heart, you begin to love this extraordinary land. And if I have to defend my country, then somewhere in the depths of my heart I will know that I am also defending this piece of land, which taught me to see and understand beauty, no matter how inconspicuous in appearance it may be - this thoughtful forest land, love for who will never be forgotten, just as first love is never forgotten.
Summer thunderstorms
Summer thunderstorms pass over the land and fall below the horizon. Lightning either strikes the ground with a direct blow, or blazes on black clouds.
A rainbow sparkles over the damp distance. Thunder rolls, rumbles, grumbles, rumbles, shakes the earth.
Summer heat
It was hot. We walked through pine forests. The bears screamed. It smelled of pine bark and strawberries. A hawk hung motionless over the tops of the pines. The forest was heated with heat. We rested in dense bowls of aspen and birch trees. There they breathed the smell of grass and roots. In the evening we went to the lake. The stars were shining in the sky. The ducks flew to roost for the night with a heavy whistle.
Lightning... The very sound of this word seems to convey the slow night shine of distant lightning.
Most often, lightning occurs in July, when the grain is ripening. That’s why there is a popular belief that lightning “lights up the bread” - illuminates it at night - and this makes the bread pour faster.
Next to lightning stands in the same poetic row the word dawn - one of the most beautiful words Russian language.
This word is never spoken loudly. It is impossible to even imagine that it could be shouted. Because it is akin to that established silence of the night, when a clear and faint blue shines over the thickets of a village garden. “Unseeing,” as people say about this time of day.
At this dawn hour, the morning star burns low above the earth itself. The air is as pure as spring water.
There is something girlish and chaste in the dawn, in the dawn. At dawn the grass is washed with dew, and the villages smell of warm fresh milk. And the pitiful shepherds sing in the fogs outside the outskirts.
It's getting light quickly. There is silence and darkness in the warm house. But then squares of orange light fall on the log walls, and the logs light up like layered amber. The sun is rising.
The dawn is not only morning, but also evening. We often confuse two concepts - sunset and evening dawn.
The evening dawn begins when the sun has already set beyond the edge of the earth. Then it takes possession of the fading sky, spills a multitude of colors across it - from red gold to turquoise - and slowly passes into the late twilight and night.
Corncrakes scream in the bushes, quails strike, bitterns hum, the first stars are burning, and the dawn smolders for a long time over the distances and fogs.
Flowers
Near the water, innocent blue-eyed forget-me-nots peeked out from the mint thickets in large clumps. And further, behind the hanging loops of blackberries, wild rowan with tight yellow inflorescences bloomed along the slope. Tall red clover mixed with mouse peas and bedstraw, and above all this closely crowded community of flowers rose a gigantic thistle. He stood waist-deep in the grass and looked like a knight in armor with steel spikes on his elbows and knee pads.
The heated air above the flowers “mellowed”, swayed, and from almost every cup the striped abdomen of a bumblebee, bee or wasp protruded. Like white and lemon leaves, butterflies always flew at random.
And even further, hawthorn and rose hips rose like a high wall. Their branches were so intertwined that it seemed as if the fiery rosehip flowers and the white, almond-scented hawthorn flowers had somehow miraculously blossomed on the same bush.
The rosehip stood with its large flowers turned towards the sun, elegant, completely festive, covered with many sharp buds. Its flowering coincided with the most short nights- on our Russian, slightly northern nights, when nightingales thunder in the dew all night long, the greenish dawn does not leave the horizon and in the deepest part of the night it is so light that the mountain peaks of the clouds are clearly visible in the sky.
Autumn
Dictionary of native nature
It is impossible to list the signs of all seasons. Therefore, I skip summer and move on to autumn, to its first days, when “September” already begins.
The earth is withering, but the “Indian summer” is still ahead with its last bright, but already cold, like the shine of mica, radiance of the sun. From the thick blue of the sky, washed with cool air. With a flying web (“the yarn of the Virgin Mary,” as earnest old women still call it in some places) and a fallen, withered leaf covering the empty waters. Birch groves stand like crowds of beautiful girls in shawls embroidered with gold leaf. “A sad time is a charm of the eyes.”
Then - bad weather, heavy rains, the icy northern wind "Siverko" plowing through the leaden waters, cold, coldness, pitch-black nights, icy dew, dark dawns.
So everything goes on until the first frost grabs and binds the earth, the first powder falls and the first path is established. And there is already winter with blizzards, blizzards, drifting snow, snowfall, gray frosts, poles in the fields, the creaking of cuttings on the sledges, a gray, snowy sky...
Often in the fall I closely watched the falling leaves in order to catch that imperceptible split second when the leaf separates from the branch and begins to fall to the ground, but for a long time I was not able to do this. I've read in old books about the sound of falling leaves, but I've never heard that sound. If the leaves rustled, it was only on the ground, under a person’s feet. The rustle of leaves in the air seemed as implausible to me as stories about hearing grass sprouting in the spring.
I was, of course, wrong. Time was needed so that the ear, dulled by the grinding of city streets, could rest and catch the very pure and precise sounds of the autumn land.
One late evening I went out into the garden to the well. I placed a dim kerosene lantern on the log house " bat" and took out water. Leaves were floating in the bucket. They were everywhere. There was no way to get rid of them anywhere. Brown bread from the bakery was brought with wet leaves stuck to it. The wind threw handfuls of leaves on the table, on the bed, on the floor. on books, and it was difficult to groom along the paths of tallow: you had to walk on the leaves, as if through deep snow. We found leaves in the pockets of our raincoats, in our caps, in our hair—everywhere. We slept on them and were thoroughly saturated with their smell.
There are autumn nights, deaf and silent, when there is no wind over the black wooded edge and only the watchman's beater can be heard from the village outskirts.
It was such a night. The lantern illuminated the well, the old maple under the fence and the nasturtium bush tousled by the wind in the yellowed flowerbed.
I looked at the maple and saw how a red leaf carefully and slowly separated from the branch, shuddered, stopped in the air for an instant and began to fall obliquely at my feet, slightly rustling and swaying. For the first time I heard the rustling of a falling leaf - a vague sound, like a child’s whisper.
My house
It’s especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when the slow, sheer rain is making a low noise in the sala.
The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Corner shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, lands on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page. It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.
At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull a bucket of water out of the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right at the outskirts.
It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water and the thickets of centuries-old willows.
Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world of fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.
Winter
Farewell to summer
(Abridged...)
One night I woke up with a strange feeling. It seemed to me that I had gone deaf in my sleep. I lay with my eyes open, listened for a long time and finally realized that I had not gone deaf, but that there was simply an extraordinary silence outside the walls of the house. This kind of silence is called “dead”. The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. You could only hear the cat snoring in its sleep.
I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - everything was snowy and silent outside the glass. A lonely moon stood at a dizzying height in the foggy sky, and a yellowish circle shimmered around it.
When did the first snow fall? I approached the walkers. It was so light that the arrows showed clearly. They showed two o'clock. I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens were bewitched by the cold.
Through the window I saw how big gray bird sat on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed and snow fell from it. The bird slowly rose and flew away, and the snow kept falling like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything became quiet again.
Reuben woke up. He looked outside the window for a long time, sighed and said:
— The first snow suits the earth very well.
The earth was elegant, looking like a shy bride.
And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stems sticking out from under the snow.
Grandfather Mitriy came to visit for tea and congratulated him on his first trip.
“So the earth was washed,” he said, “with snow water from a silver trough.”
- Where did you get these words from, Mitrich? - Reuben asked.
- Is there anything wrong? - the grandfather grinned. “My mother, the deceased, told me that in ancient times, beauties washed themselves with the first snow from a silver jug and therefore their beauty never faded.
It was difficult to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge of the forest. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but “the ache in his bones did not let him go.”
It was solemn, light and quiet in the forests.
The day seemed to be dozing. Lonely snowflakes occasionally fell from the cloudy high sky. We carefully breathed on them, and they turned into pure drops of water, then became cloudy, froze and rolled to the ground like beads.
We wandered through the forests until dusk, going around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on snow-covered rowan trees... Here and there in the clearings birds flew and squeaked pitifully. The sky above was very light, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. Slow snow clouds were coming from there.
The forests became increasingly gloomy, quieter, and finally thick snow began to fall. It melted in the black water of the lake, tickled my face, and powdered the forest with gray smoke. Winter has begun to rule the earth...
