Read online the book “A golden cloud spent the night. Anatoly pristavki spent the night a golden cloud A dramatic turn in the fate of the heroes

Anatoly Pristavkin

A golden cloud spent the night

I dedicate this story to all her friends who took this homeless child of literature as their personal and did not let its author fall into despair.

This word arose by itself, as the wind is born in the field. Arose, rustled, swept through the near and far corners of the orphanage: “Caucasus! Caucasus!" What is the Caucasus? Where did he come from? Really, no one could really explain.

Yes, and what a strange fantasy in the dirty suburbs of Moscow to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there were no textbooks!) It is known to the orphanage that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible times, when the black-bearded, eccentric highlander Hadji Murat fired at the enemies, when the leader of the Murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in a besieged fortress, and Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep pit.

There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.

Yes, here are some more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmenyshs spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train, stuck at the station in Tomilin.

Against the backdrop of broken snow-white mountains, a rider on a wild horse gallops, gallops in a black cloak. No, it does not jump, but flies through the air. And under it in an uneven, angular font is the name: "KAZBEK".

A mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a handsome young man, glanced at the pretty nurse who rushed out to look at the station, and tapped meaningfully with his fingernail on the cardboard cap of cigarettes, not noticing that nearby, opening his mouth in amazement and holding his breath, the little ragged Kolka looked at the precious box.

I was looking for a crust of bread, from the wounded, to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!

Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?

Not at all.

And it is not clear how this pointed word, sparkling with a brilliant icy edge, was born where it is impossible for it to be born: among orphanage everyday life, cold, without firewood, forever hungry. The whole tense life of the guys evolved around frozen potatoes, potato peels and, as the height of desire and dream, a crust of bread in order to exist, in order to survive one extra day of war.

The most cherished, and even unrealizable dream of any of them was at least once to penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD CUTTER, - so let's put it in font, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and more inaccessible than some kind of KAZBEK!

And they were appointed there, as the Lord God would appoint, say, to paradise! The most chosen, the most successful, and can be defined as follows: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmenyshi were not among them.

And it was not in my thoughts that I would have to enter. This was the lot of the nobles, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned in this period in the orphanage, and even in the entire village.

Penetrating into the bread slicer, but not like those chosen ones - by the owners, but with a mouse, for a second, an instant, that's what I dreamed about! A peephole to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world, in the form of clumsy loaves heaped on the table.

And - inhale, not with your chest, inhale with your stomach the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...

And that's all. All!

I didn’t dream of any crumbs there that cannot but remain after dumped bukhari, after brittle rubbing with rough sides. Let them be collected, let the chosen ones enjoy! It rightfully belongs to them!

But no matter how hard you rub against the iron-studded doors of the bread-slicer, this could not replace the phantasmagoric picture that arose in the minds of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.

It was not at all possible for them to slip through the legal way through this door. This was from the realm of abstract fantasy, while the brothers were realists. Although a specific dream was not alien to them.

And this is what this dream brought Kolka and Sasha to in the winter of 1944: to penetrate into the bread slicer, into the kingdom of bread by any means ... Any way.

In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get a frozen potato, let alone a crumb of bread, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. Walking and knowing, almost picturesquely imagining how there, behind gray walls, behind a dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones tell fortunes, with a knife and scales. And they shred, and cut, and crumple the dumpy, damp bread, pouring a handful of warm, salty crumbs into the mouth, and saving the fatty fragments for the godfather.

Saliva boiled in his mouth. Grabbed the stomach. My head was cloudy. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door, so that they unlocked it, opened it, so that they finally understood: we also want to! Let them then go to the punishment cell, anywhere... They will punish, beat, kill... But first, let them show, even from the door, how he, bread, in a pile, a mountain, Kazbek rises on a table slashed with knives... How he smells!

Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.

From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not decrease. He was getting stronger.

The kids thought the scene was fantastic! Thinking up too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run for a bone gnawed from that wing, running anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud, their stomachs twisted even more, and they forever lost faith in writers; if they don’t eat chicken, then the writers themselves are snickering!

Since they drove out the main orphanage urka Sych, many different large and small thugs have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, weaving their half-raspberry here for the winter far from their dear police.

One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving crumbs to the weak, dreams of crumbs, taking small children into reliable networks of slavery.

For a crust they fell into slavery for a month, for two.

The front crust, the one that is fried, blacker, thicker, sweeter, cost two months, on a loaf it would be the top, but we are talking about soldering, a tiny piece that looks like a transparent leaf flat on the table; back - paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.

And who did not remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshs, also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a relative-soldier somehow served for half a year for a back crust. He gave everything edible, and ate kidneys from trees, so as not to die completely.

Kuzmenyshi were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.

If, of course, two Kuzmenysh were added into one person, then there would be no equal in age in the entire Tomilinsky orphanage, and, possibly, in strength.

But the Kuzmenyshi already knew their advantage.

It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away faster in four legs. And four eyes see much more sharply when it is necessary to grasp where something lies badly!

While two eyes are busy, the other two watch over both. Yes, they still have time to make sure that they don’t snatch something from themselves, clothes, a mattress from the bottom, when you sleep and see your pictures from the life of a bread slicer!

Two twin brothers - Sashka and Kolka Kuzmin, nicknamed Kuzmyonyshi - live in an orphanage in Tomilino near Moscow. The director of the orphanage is a thief (bread intended for orphans and the homeless goes to the director's relatives and his dogs; the clothes that he is obliged to supply the children also end up with his relatives and friends). Kuzmenyshi dream of getting into the "bread cutter" (the room where the loaves of bread lie), for several months they dig under it. When a tunnel is accidentally discovered, the guys understand that they will have a bad time, and agree to go to the Caucasus (where they send several children from each orphanage near Moscow). The only association they have with the concept of "Caucasus" is a picture from a pack of "Kazbek" cigarettes, as well as a couple of lines from M. Lermontov's poem "Cliff". But the hungry children are promised fruit (which they have never seen) and plenty of bread, which is the decisive argument in favor of leaving. On the way, the hungry Kuzmyonyshi touchingly take care of each other (Kolka gives his brother a tiny ration of bread, he himself goes to bed hungry), at the stations they run to the market to steal food (they eat out the crumb of a stolen loaf and then ask the vendors to pour sour cream or boiled potatoes into it; having no money, the brothers pour the milk back, and what has been absorbed is scraped out with spoons). Together with the whole horde of homeless children (five hundred children from the orphanage are traveling on the train), the Kuzmenyshi swoop down on young crops (when the train enters the Chernozem region), and then they “torment their stomachs” by overeating fresh vegetables. They get acquainted with the teacher Regina Petrovna, who travels on the same train with her little sons Zhores and Marat (she calls them "muzhiks"), and the new director, the intelligent former supplier Pyotr Anisimovich. At one of the stations, the brothers come across a strange train - the windows are barred, children's hands are reaching out from behind the bars, black-haired and black-eyed children in an incomprehensible language ask Kolka and Sasha for something. An armed soldier pushes them away from the train, calls the strange passengers "Chechmeks". Sasha is very weak (from indigestion), they want to hospitalize him. Kolka turns to Regina Petrovna for help in order not to part with her brother (she arranges for both brothers to go on the same train).

Orphanage residents are unloaded at the Kavkazskiye Vody station. Children bathe in sulfur springs. A close friendship develops between the Kuzmyonyshi and Regina Petrovna: despite the fact that she takes care of the girls, the teacher often invites the brothers to her place, treats them to tea with saccharin, but the Kuzmyonyshi do not abuse her hospitality: they are used to taking care of themselves, and Regina Petrovna is also like all the arrivals, he is starving. The brothers are slowly stealing in the village of Berezovskaya. The village looks strange: the brothers cannot understand for sure whether people live there or not. The harvest is ripe, but the doors are boarded up, only muffled whispers and coughs can be heard at times. In one of the houses, the Kuzmyonyshs discover a guide, Ilya, who tells them that the village is actually the Chechen village of Dey Churt. People have been evicted from it, and the orphans should become its new "population". Ilya treats the guys to moonshine. On his tip, the Kuzmyonyshi begin to drag him “junk” from the warehouse, which Ilya deceives from them and then sells. Ilya himself, nicknamed "The Animal", in his childhood went through a colony, and logging, and wandered, and stole, and was in prison, where he learned that there was a lot of "junk" land in the Caucasus and. houses are given to refugees for "free" along with their belongings. Kuzmenyshi are ashamed to return to the colony. Following the example of some colonists, they decide to leave "even further", but, remembering Regina Petrovna with the "muzhiks", they stay to support her. She realized that the brothers had stolen things from the warehouse, but did not give the Kuzmyonyshi to the director, however, she refused the fat they brought (from Ilya). Regina Petrovna arranges for Kolya and Sasha to earn some money together with high school students at a cannery (where they can “feed themselves”). Having found a Chechen furry hat in the back room, the teacher begins to cut out two winter hats for the children from it.

At night, the Chechens set fire to the building (several people on horseback set off an explosion nearby), in which there is a warehouse and, accordingly, winter things intended for the colonists.

At the cannery, the watchman Aunt Zina takes pity on the Kuzmyonysh and allows them to take fresh fruits and berries, as well as eggplant caviar, jam, and plum jam. She is the only one who knows how to distinguish between brothers; they cannot deceive her with their similarity. Aunt Zina is also a migrant; she is scared to death of the Chechens, who were forcibly taken away from here to Siberia “for treason”, but they could not force everyone to leave.” Those who remained and hid in the mountains are taking revenge on the Russians. Kuzmenyshi stock up jars of jam for the winter according to the old orphanage habit - they go out through the checkpoint in an embrace, so that the jars are squeezed under their clothes, they float the jars out of the factory along the stream in a rubber overshoe. The brothers do not forget about the sons of Regina Petrovna in her absence (after the attack of the Chechens on the warehouse, she "fell ill"), they feed Marat and Zhores with jam from their stocks. However, their plan is revealed by the older colonists and the banks of the Kuzmyonys are stolen. The theft of the elders is discovered, and the colonists are suspended from work at the factory. A search is made on the territory of the colony and a cache is found - five hundred cans of canned food. At this time, the colonists give a concert of amateur performances in front of the settlers. One of the guys shows tricks and takes out a document from the director's briefcase - a search protocol. The colonists rush out of the hall to save supplies, but at that moment a horse's stomp is heard. The Chechens blew up the car driven by the cheerful chauffeur Vera, who was friends with the colonists, and the house where Ilya lived. Kuzmenyshi decide to run away from the colony. Regina Petrovna returns from the hospital, tells her brothers that on the night when the warehouse was on fire, three Chechens shot at her. Ho the boy, the son of one of them, jerked his father's gun at the moment of the shot, and the bullet flew past. The teacher is sent to the subsidiary farm, to get better. She invites the Kuzmyonishes to go with her, dissuades them from running away for the time being, and then promises to leave all together. For the first time Kuzmenyshi think about the reasons for the hatred of Chechens for Russians, they do not believe that all Caucasians, as one, are traitors to the Motherland. The brothers decide that Ilya was killed for the cause - he used someone else's house and good as his own, never even working in the garden. Kuzmenyshi actively help Regina Petrovna in the household, graze cows, collect brushwood and dung, grind flour on millstones. Once, according to old memory, they are trying to make a stash, but Regina Petrovna talks to them about the fact that it is impossible to steal from themselves: after all, they live like one family. The brothers return the products, and no one remembers what happened anymore. Regina Petrovna comes up with a holiday - appoints Kuzmyonysh birthday (October 17), prepares a treat (sweet pie). Demyan, a migrant, takes care of her and persuades her to live together. Regina Petrovna says that she is the widow of a pilot, that she went to work in an orphanage so that it would be easier to raise her own children. Kuzmenyshi are jealous, both want to marry Regina Petrovna, despite their young age (they are probably 11 years old). Regina Petrovna gives gifts to the brothers - shirts, skullcaps, boots, scarves. The next morning, Regina Petrovna asks Demyan to take Kolka and Sasha to the colony. The colony is empty. The windows are broken, the director's briefcase is lying on the ground, the yard is littered with things, as if "in evacuation". Demyan explains that they need to save themselves one by one: this way it will be more difficult for the Chechens prowling around the area to catch them. The boys scatter, hiding in the corn. Kolka, after some time, sneaks into the village and finds his dead brother there. Kolka buries Sasha, feeling at the same time that he is "burying himself." He sees a soldier's patrol and understands from conversations that those. they are going to “kill the Chechens”, and therefore they will avenge Sasha. Kolka takes his brother's body to the railroad, places it in an iron bunker under one of the cars, and says goodbye to Sasha. Sasha dreamed of leaving; Kolka cannot leave Regina Petrovna. Kolya falls ill, loses consciousness. Opening his eyes, he notices that Sasha is giving him water from an iron mug and speaking in an incomprehensible language. In broken Russian, an unfamiliar boy explains to Kolka that his name is Alkhuzur, that he saved Kuzmyonysh from his Chechen relatives, and at the same time from Russian soldiers. Alkhuzur agrees that Kolka calls him Sasha. When the boys are found by Russian soldiers, Kolka insists that his twin brother is with him. The boys set out on a long journey; meeting the Chechens, they are saved thanks to the entreaties of Alkhuzur, in a collision with the Russians, Kolka convinces the soldiers with tears not to be touched, and as a result they end up in an orphanage. Regina Petrovna finds them there. She escaped with the help of Demyan, but did not give up hope of finding the Kuzmyonys. She decides to take the boys and adopt them. Regina Petrovna declares that she remembers the Kuzmin brothers from the colony and Alkhuzur - and there is the same Sashka. However, she is not given permission. Kolka and Alkhuzur are sent to a new settlement. The boys lie on the same shelf, embracing, as once the real Kuzmyonysh set off on their way to the Caucasus from the Kazan station. Regina Petrovna quietly asks Kolka where his real brother is. He replies that Sasha has gone far away.

I dedicate this story to all her friends who took this homeless child of literature as their personal and did not let its author fall into despair.

1

There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.

Yes, here are some more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmenyshs spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train, stuck at the station in Tomilin.

I was looking for a crust of bread, from the wounded, to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!

Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?

Not at all.

And they were appointed there, as the Lord God would appoint, say, to paradise! The most chosen, the most successful, and can be defined as follows: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmenyshi were not among them.

And - inhale, not with your chest, inhale with your stomach the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...

And that's all. All!

And this is what this dream brought Kolka and Sasha to in the winter of 1944: to penetrate into the bread slicer, into the kingdom of bread by any means ... Any way.

Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.

From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not decrease. He was getting stronger.

Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin

A golden cloud spent the night

I dedicate this story to all her friends who took this homeless child of literature as their personal and did not let its author fall into despair.

Arose, rustled, swept through the near and far corners of the orphanage: “Caucasus! Caucasus!" What is the Caucasus? Where did he come from? Really, no one could really explain.

Yes, and what a strange fantasy in the dirty suburbs of Moscow to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from school readings aloud (there were no textbooks!) It is known to the orphanage that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible times, when the black-bearded, eccentric highlander Hadji Murad fired at the enemies, when the leader of the Murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in a besieged fortress, and Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep pit.

There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, he also traveled around the Caucasus.

Yes, here are some more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmyonyshes spotted them at the wounded lieutenant colonel from the ambulance train, stuck at the station in Tomilin.

I was looking for a crust of bread left from the wounded to pick it up, but I saw: "KAZBEK"!

Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?

Not at all.

And it is not clear how this pointed word, sparkling with a brilliant icy edge, was born where it was impossible for it to be born: among orphanage everyday life, cold, without firewood, forever hungry. The whole tense life of the guys evolved around frozen potatoes, potato peels and, as the height of desire and dream, a crust of bread in order to exist, in order to survive just one extra war day.

And they were assigned there, as the Lord God would appoint, say, to paradise! The most chosen, the most successful, and can be defined as follows: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmyonysh were not among them.

Penetrating into the bread slicer, but not like those chosen ones - by the owners, but with a mouse, for a second, in an instant - that's what I dreamed about! With a peephole to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world in the form of clumsy loaves heaped on the table.

And - inhale, not with your chest, inhale with your stomach the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread ...

And that's all. All!

And this is what this dream brought Kolka and Sasha to in the winter of 1944: to penetrate into the bread slicer, into the kingdom of bread by any means ... Any way.

Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since the bread lies like a mountain, it means that the world exists ... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.

From a small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a chip, hunger did not decrease. He was getting stronger.

The kids thought the scene was fantastic! Thinking up too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run for a bone gnawed from that wing, running anywhere! After such a loud reading aloud, their bellies twisted even more, and they forever lost faith in writers: if they don’t eat chicken, then the writers themselves are snickering!

One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving crumbs to the weak, dreams of crumbs, taking small children into reliable networks of slavery.

For a crust they fell into slavery for a month, for two.

The front crust, the one that is fried, blacker, thicker, sweeter, cost two months, on a loaf it would be the top, but we are talking about ration, a tiny piece that looks like a transparent leaf flat on the table; back - paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.

And who didn’t remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmyonysh, also about eleven years old, somehow served half a year for a back crust before the arrival of a relative-soldier. He gave everything edible, and ate kidneys from trees, so as not to die completely.

Kuzmyonyshi were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.

If, of course, two Kuzmenysh were added into one person, then there would be no equal in age in the entire Tomilinsky orphanage, and, possibly, in strength.

But the Kuzmyonyshi already knew their advantage.

It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away faster in four legs. And four eyes see much more sharply when it is necessary to grasp where something lies badly!

And there are countless combinations of any of the two Kuzmyonysh! Caught, say, one of them in the market, dragged into a jail. One of the brothers whines, yells, beats for pity, and the other distracts. You look, while they turned to the second, the first is a sniff, and he is gone. And the second one after! Both brothers are like creepers, nimble, slippery, once you miss it, you can’t take it back in your hands.

Eyes will see, hands will grab, legs will carry away ...

But somewhere, in some kind of pot, all this must be cooked in advance ... Without a reliable plan: how, where and what to steal, it's hard to live!

Two Kuzmyonish heads were cooked differently.

Sasha, as a world-contemplative, calm, quiet person, extracted ideas from himself. How, in what way they arose in him, he himself did not know.

Kolka, resourceful, quick-witted, practical, figured out how to bring these ideas to life with the speed of lightning. Extract, that is, income. And what is even more accurate: take a meal.

If Sasha, for example, said, scratching the top of his blond hair, and whether they should fly, say, to the moon, there is a lot of cake, Kolka would not immediately say: “No.” He would first think about this business with the Moon, on which airship to fly there, and then he would ask: “Why? You can get closer…”

But, it happened, Sasha would dreamily look at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would catch Sashka’s thought on the air. And then he wonders how to implement it.

Sasha has a golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! The brothers saw this in the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers there, a hundred floors below, creep at hand. We are the very first, the highest!

And Kuzmyonyshi are the first in another. They were the first to understand how they could get through the winter of 1944 and not die.

When the revolution was being made in St. Petersburg, I suppose - except for the post office and telegraph and the station - they didn’t forget to take the bread slicer by storm!

The brothers walked past the bread slicer, not the first time by the way. But it was too unbearable that day! Although such walks added their torment.

“Oh, how to eat something hunting ... At least bite the door! At least eat the frozen earth under the threshold! - it was said out loud. Sasha said, and suddenly it dawned on him. Why eat it, if ... If it ... Yes, yes! That's it! If you need to dig!

Dig! Well, of course, dig!

He did not say, he just looked at Kolka. And he instantly received the signal, and, turning his head, assessed everything, and scrolled through the options. But again, he didn't say anything aloud, only his eyes flashed predatory.

Whoever has experienced it will believe: there is no more inventive and focused person in the world than a hungry person, all the more so if he is an orphanage who has grown his brains on where and what to get during the war.

Without uttering a word (they will smash around the stomachs, and then the krants will then go to any, the most ingenious Sasha's idea), the brothers went straight to the nearest shed, a hundred meters from the orphanage, and twenty meters from the bread cutter. The shed was at the bread slicer just behind.

In the shed, the brothers looked around. At the same time, they looked into the farthest corner, where, behind a worthless iron crowbar, behind a broken brick, was Vaska Smorchka's stash. When firewood was stored here, no one knew, only the Kuzmyonyshi knew: a soldier was hiding here, Uncle Andrei, whose weapons were pulled off.

Sasha asked in a whisper:

- Isn't it far?

– Where is closer? – in turn asked Kolka.

Both knew that there was nowhere closer.

Breaking the lock is much easier. Less work, less time needed. Force something remained crumbs. But it was already, they tried to knock down the lock from the bread slicer, not only Kuzmyonyshi came up with such a bright answer in their heads! And the management hung a barn lock on the doors! Half a pound of weight!

You can only rip it off with a grenade. Hang in front of the tank - not a single enemy shell will penetrate that tank.

After that unfortunate incident, the window was barred, and such a thick rod was welded that it could not be taken with a chisel or a crowbar - if only with an autogenous!

And Kolka thought about the autogen, he noticed carbide in one place. But you can’t drag it, you can’t light it, there are a lot of eyes around.

Only underground there are no other people's eyes!

The other option - to completely abandon the bread slicer - did not suit the Kuzmyonyshi in any way.

Neither the shop, nor the market, and even more so private houses, were not suitable now for the extraction of edibles. Although such options were swarming in Sasha's head. The trouble is that Kolka did not see the ways of their real implementation.

There's a watchman in the store all night, an angry old man. He does not drink, does not sleep, he has enough days. Not a watchman - a dog in the manger.

In the houses around, which cannot be counted, there are a lot of refugees. And eating is just the opposite. They themselves look where to snatch something.

The Kuzmyonysh had a house in mind, so the elders cleaned it when Sych was there.

True, they pulled off God knows what: rags and a sewing machine. It was then twisted for a long time in turn here, in the barn, by the chantrap, until the handle flew off and everything else crumbled to pieces.

It's not about the machine. About the baker. Where there are no scales, no weights, but only bread - he alone forced the brothers to work furiously in two heads.

And it turned out: "In our time, all roads lead to a bread slicer."

A fortress, not a bread slicer. So it is well known that there are no such fortresses, that is, a bread slicer, that a hungry orphanage resident could not take.

In the dead of winter, when all the punks, having despaired of picking up at least something to eat at the station or in the market, froze around the stoves, rubbing their ass, back, nape against them, absorbing fractions of degrees and, as it were, warming up - the lime was wiped down to a brick, - Kuzmenyshi started to implement their incredible plan. In this improbability lay the key to success.

From a distant stash in the shed they began stripping, as an experienced builder would have determined, using crooked crowbars and plywood.

Clutching the crowbar (here they are - four hands!), They raised it and lowered it with a dull sound on the frozen ground. The first centimeters were the heaviest. The earth hummed.

On plywood, they carried it to the opposite corner of the shed until a whole hill formed there. The whole day, so blizzard that the snow was blowing obliquely, blinding their eyes, Kuzmyonyshi dragged the earth away into the forest. They put it in their pockets, in their bosoms, they couldn’t carry it in their hands. Until they guessed: a canvas bag, a school bag, to adapt.

Now they went to school in turns and dug in turns: one day they dug Kolka and one day Sasha.

The one who had the turn to study served two lessons for himself (Kuzmin? What kind of Kuzmin came? Nikolai? And where is the second one, where is Alexander?), and then pretended to be his brother. It turned out that both were at least half. Well, no one demanded a full visit from them! Fat want to live! The main thing is that they don’t leave the orphanage without lunch!

But lunch or dinner there, they won’t let you eat it in turn, the jackals immediately grab it and leave no trace. At this point they gave up digging, and the two of them went to the canteen as if they were attacking.

No one will ask, no one will take an interest: Sasha is shamming or Kolya. Here they are one: Kuzmyonyshi. If suddenly one, then it seems to be a half. But one by one they were rarely seen, but we can say that they were not seen at all!

They walk together, eat together, sleep together.

And if they beat, then they beat both, starting with the one who gets caught earlier in this awkward moment.

The excavation was in full swing when these strange rumors about the Caucasus were in full swing.

For no reason, but insistently in different parts of the bedroom, the same thing was repeated more and more quietly. As if they would remove the orphanage from their home in Tomilino and in a crowd, all of them, will be thrown to the Caucasus.

Educators will be sent, and the fool of the cook, and the mustachioed musician, and the director with a disability ... (“Invalid mental worker!” - was pronounced softly.)

Everyone will be taken, in a word.

They talked a lot, chewed like last year's potato husks, but no one imagined how it was possible to steal this whole wild horde into some mountains.

Kuzmenyshi listened to the chatter in moderation, but believed even less. There was once. Strivingly, furiously they hollowed out their shafts.

Yes, and what is there to wag, and the fool understands: against the will of a single orphanage it is impossible to take anywhere! Not in a cage, like Pugacheva, they will be taken!

Hungry people pour in all directions on the very first stage, and catch it like water with a sieve!

And if, for example, one of them could be persuaded, then no Caucasus would be harmed by such a meeting. They will rob them to the skin, they will eat them to bits, they will smash their Kazbeks to pebbles ... They will turn them into a desert! To the Sahara!

So Kuzmyonyshi thought and went to hammer.

One of them picked the ground with a piece of iron, now it went loose, fell off by itself, and the other, in a rusty bucket, dragged the rock out. By spring, they ran into the brick foundation of the house, where the bread slicer was placed.

Once the Kuzmyonyshi were sitting at the far end of the excavation.

Dark red, with a bluish tint, the old-fired brick crumbled with difficulty, each piece was given blood. There were blisters on my hands. Yes, and ramming from the side with a crowbar was not handy.

In the excavation it was impossible to turn around, the earth was pouring out of the gate. A home-made oil lamp in an ink bottle, stolen from the office, ate out the eyes.

At first they had a real candle, wax, also stolen. But the brothers themselves ate it. Somehow they could not stand it, the intestines turned over from hunger. We looked at each other, at that candle, not enough, but at least something. They cut it in two and chewed it, one inedible rope remained.

Now he was smoking a rag string: a notch had been made in the wall of the excavation - Sashka guessed - and from there it shimmered blue, there was less light than soot.

Both Kuzmyonysh sat leaning back, sweaty, grimy, their knees bent under their chins.

Sasha suddenly asked:

- Well, what about the Caucasus? Are they talking?

“They are talking,” answered Kolka.

- They're on the run, right? - Since Kolka did not answer, Sasha asked again: - Wouldn't you like to? To go?

- Where? the brother asked.

- To the Caucasus!

– What is there?

– I don't know… Interesting.

- I'm wondering where to go! And Kolka viciously poked a brick with his fist. There, a meter or two meters from the fist, no further, was the cherished bread slicer.

On the table, slashed with knives, smelling of a sour bread spirit, there are loaves: many loaves of a grayish-golden color. One is better than the other. Break off the crust - and that is happiness. Suck, swallow. And behind the crust and crumb is a whole car, pinch - yes in your mouth.

Never in their lives have the Kuzmyons had to hold a whole loaf of bread in their hands! Didn't even have to touch.

But they saw, from afar, of course, how in the crush of the store they bought it on cards, how they weighed it on the scales.

Lean, without age, the saleswoman grabbed colored cards: workers, employees, dependents, children, and, glancing at a glance - she has such an experienced eye-level - at the attachment, at the stamp on the back, where the store number is entered, although she probably knows all of her attached by name, with scissors she made “chik-chik” two, three coupons in a box. And in that box she has a thousand, a million of these coupons with figures of 100, 200, 250 grams.

For each coupon, and two, and three - only a small part of a whole loaf, from which the saleswoman economically rolls off a small piece with a sharp knife. Yes, and it’s not for the future to stand next to the bread - it dried up, and not got fat!

But the whole loaf, all as it is, untouched by a knife, no matter how the brothers looked into the four eyes, no one managed to carry it out of the store with them.

Whole - such wealth that it's scary to think!

But what kind of paradise will open then if there will be not one, and not two, and not three Bukharikov! Real paradise! True! Blessed! And we do not need any of the Caucasus!

Moreover, this paradise is nearby, obscure voices can already be heard through the brickwork.

Although blind from soot, deaf from the ground, from sweat, from anguish, our brothers heard one thing in every sound: "Bread, bread ..."

At such moments, the brothers do not dig, I suppose they are not fools. Heading past the iron doors to the barn, they will make an extra loop in order to know that that pood lock is in place: you can see it a mile away!

Only then they climb this damn foundation to destroy.

They built it in ancient times, probably they didn’t suspect that someone would use a strong word for their fortress.

As soon as the Kuzmyonyshi get there, as the whole bread slicer opens up to their enchanted eyes in the dim evening light, consider that you are already in paradise and there.

Then... The brothers knew for sure what would happen then.

I suppose it was thought out in two heads, not in one.

Bukharik - but one - they will eat on the spot. So as not to turn the bellies out of such wealth. And they will take two more bukhariks with them and securely hide them. This is what they can do. Only three boogers, that means. The rest, though itchy, can not be touched. Otherwise, the brutal boys will destroy the house.

And three bukhariks is what, according to Kolka's calculations, they still get stolen from them every day.

Part for the fool of the cook: everyone knows that he was a fool and sat in a madhouse. But it eats just like normal. Another part is stolen by bread-cutters and those jackals who gear near the bread-cutters. And the most important part is taken for the director, for his family and his dogs.

But near the director, not only dogs, not only cattle are fed, there are relatives and hangers-on. And all of them are dragged from the orphanage, dragged, dragged ... Orphans themselves and drag. But those who drag have their crumbs from dragging.

Kuzmyonysh accurately calculated that the disappearance of three bukhariks would not raise a fuss around the orphanage. They will not offend themselves, they will deprive others. Only and everything.

Who needs the commissions from the rono to be trampled (and feed them too! They have a big mouth!), so that they begin to find out why they steal, and why the orphanage children are malnourished from their position, and why the director's beast-dogs have grown as tall as calves.

But Sashka only sighed, looked in the direction where Kolka's fist was pointing.

“No…” he said thoughtfully. - Everything is interesting. The mountains are interesting to see. They probably stick out higher than our house? A?

- So what? Kolka asked again, he was very hungry. Not up to the mountains here, whatever they may be. He thought he could smell fresh bread through the ground.

Both were silent.

“Today they taught rhymes,” recalled Sashka, who had to sit out at school for two. - Mikhail Lermontov, "Cliff" is called.

Sasha did not remember everything by heart, even though the verses were short. Not like “The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, a young guardsman and a daring merchant Kalashnikov” ... Phew! One name half a kilometer long! Not to mention the lyrics themselves!

And from "Utes" Sasha remembered only two lines:

A golden cloud spent the night

On the chest of a giant cliff ...

- About the Caucasus, or what? Kolka asked bored.

It was summer. Green grass in the yard. No one saw the Kuzmyonishes off, except for the governess Anna Mikhailovna, who, I suppose, was also not thinking about their departure, looking somewhere over their heads with cold blue eyes.

Everything happened unexpectedly. It was planned to send two older ones from the orphanage, the most blasphemy, but they immediately fell off, as they say, disappeared into space, and the Kuzmyonyshi, on the contrary, said that they wanted to go to the Caucasus.

The documents have been rewritten. No one asked why they suddenly decided to go, what kind of need drives our brothers to a distant land. Only pupils from the younger group came to see them. They stood at the door and, pointing at them with a finger, said: “These! - And after a pause: - To the Caucasus!

The reason for the departure was solid, thank God, no one guessed about it.

A week before all these events, the dig under the bread slicer suddenly collapsed. Crashed in plain sight. And with it, the Kuzmyonysh hopes for another, better life collapsed.

They left in the evening, everything seemed to be fine, they had already finished the wall, it remained to open the floor.

And in the morning they jumped out of the house: the director and the whole kitchen were assembled, staring - what a miracle, the earth settled under the wall of the bread slicer!

And - you guessed it, my mother. Yes, it's a ditch!

Dig under their kitchen, under their bread slicer!

This was not known in the orphanage.

They began to drag pupils to the director. While the elders were walked, they could not even think about the younger ones.

Military sappers were called in for a consultation. Is it possible, they asked, for the children to dig through this themselves?

They examined the tunnel, from the shed to the bread slicer they went inside, where it was not collapsed, they climbed. Shaking off the yellow sand, they spread their hands: “It’s impossible, without equipment, without special training, it’s impossible to dig such a metro. Here, an experienced soldier for a month of work, if, say, with a trench tool and auxiliary means ... And the children ... Yes, we would take such children to ourselves if they really knew how to work such miracles.

- They are still those miracle workers! the director said gloomily. “But I will find this sorcerer-creator!”

The brothers stood right there, among other pupils. Each of them knew what the other was thinking.

Both Kuzmyonysh thought that the ends, if they began to interrogate, would inevitably lead to them. Weren't they hanging around all the time, weren't they absent when the others hung around in the bedroom by the stove?

Lots of eyes around! One overlooked and the second, and the third saw.

And then, in the tunnel that evening, they left their lamp and, most importantly, Sasha's school bag, in which the earth was dragged into the forest.

A dead handbag, but how they find it, so kaput the brothers! You'll still have to run away. Wouldn't it be better to set sail for the unknown Caucasus on our own, and calmly? Especially - and two places were vacated.

Of course, the Kuzmyonyshes did not know that somewhere in the regional organizations in a bright moment this idea arose about unloading the orphanages near Moscow, of which there were hundreds in the region by the spring of 1944. This is not counting the homeless who lived where and how necessary.

And then, in one fell swoop, with the liberation of the prosperous lands of the Caucasus from the enemy, it turned out to solve all the issues: to get rid of extra mouths, to deal with crime, and it seems like a good deed for the kids to do.

And for the Caucasus, of course.

The guys were told so: if you want, they say, get drunk - go. Everything is there. And there is bread. And potatoes. And even fruits, the existence of which our jackals are unaware of.

Sashka then said to his brother: “I want fruit ... These are the ones that this one ... who came, spoke about.”

To which Kolka replied that the fruit is the potato, he knows for sure. And the fruit is the director. With his own ears, Kolka heard how one of the sappers, leaving, said softly, pointing to the director: “It’s also a fruit ... He is saving himself from the war for the kids!”

- Let's eat potatoes! Sasha said.

And Kolka immediately replied that when the jackals were brought to such a rich land, where everything is, he would immediately become poor. Vaughn read in a book that locusts are much smaller than the size of an orphanage, and when they rush in a bunch, a bare spot remains after it. And her stomach is not like our brother’s, she probably won’t eat everything in a row. Give her the most incomprehensible fruits. And we will eat the tops, and the leaves, and the flowers ...

But Kolka nevertheless agreed to go.

It took two months before they sent it.

The most famous work of Anatoly Pristavkin is his autobiographical book entitled "A golden cloud spent the night", published during the period of perestroika (in 1987). Just two years later, the book received a cinematic incarnation of the same name, and in the interim, it was awarded the State Prize.

“A golden cloud spent the night” is a landmark social event that was discussed by readers for a very long time and received good marks from literary critics. The work tells about the problems of homeless childhood, about the post-war years, about the disagreements between Chechens and Russians after the end of World War II. The main plot is built around the fate of two boys who were left orphans during the war years, and who decide to go to the Caucasus in search of a better (read - more or less well-fed) life. They know absolutely nothing about the Caucasus, and even this word itself is something mysterious for them and promises adventures and new opportunities.

However, in addition to the story of two boys, the book "A golden cloud spent the night" touches on global issues, representing a multi-layered complex plot "pie", which can be recommended to be read by both adults and children (in adolescence). Adults will be able to look at the post-war years of the Soviet Union through the eyes of an eyewitness (we remember that the story written by Anatoly Pristavkin is autobiographical), and the young reader will be able to associate himself with the main characters Kolka and Sasha Kuzmin. The children call themselves Kuzmyonysh, and it is through their eyes that 1944 is shown, when the war with the Nazis was coming to an end, but the Soviet Union was going through an incredibly difficult time. The very idea of being a street kid at that time, in that country, is not very good.

Anatoly Pristavkin was able to put into his work one resounding leitmotif, which he invites the reader to firmly assimilate as a specific morality: it is impossible to build the happiness of any people by destroying or humiliating another for this.

For the first time, the book “A golden cloud spent the night” was published in 1987 in a magazine called “Znamya”, and then aroused the interest of the general public, as it was able to draw everyone's attention to the Vainakhs being evicted from their land. It is worth noting that the book "A Golden Cloud Spent the Night" may well become a source of serious and important parting words in life and the necessary foundation for building a holistic, compassionate personality even today, after many decades. We recommend reading this work to increase the level of education and broaden your horizons.

On our literary site, you can download the book by Anatoly Pristavkin “A golden cloud spent the night” for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always follow the release of new products? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern science fiction, literature on psychology and children's editions. In addition, we offer interesting and informative articles for beginner writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting.