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Abstract: The book tells about the deeply tragic fate of two orphanage children evacuated during the Great Patriotic War to the Caucasus...

Anatoly Pristavkin

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

This word arose on its own, just as the wind is born in a field. It appeared, rustled, and 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 it.

And what a strange fantasy in the dirty Moscow region to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from reading aloud at school (there were no textbooks!) The orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible time, 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 the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep hole.

There was also Pechorin, from extra people, also traveled around the Caucasus.

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

Against the backdrop of broken snow-white mountains, a rider in a black cloak gallops and gallops on a wild horse. No, it doesn’t jump, it flies through the air. And under it, in an uneven, angular font, the name: “KAZBEK”.

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

I was looking for a crust of bread from the wounded to pick up, and I saw: “KAZBEK”!

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

Nothing to do with it at all.

And it is not clear how this pointed word, sparkling with a shiny icy edge, was born where it is impossible for it to be born: among the everyday life of an orphanage, cold, without firewood, always hungry. The whole tense life of the boys revolved around frozen potatoes, potato peelings and, as the pinnacle of desire and dream, a crust of bread to survive, to survive just one extra day of war.

The most cherished, and even impossible, dream of any of them was to at least once penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD SLICER - so we highlight it in font, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and more inaccessible than some KAZBEK!

And they were appointed there, just as God would appoint, say, to heaven! The most chosen, the luckiest, or you can define it this way: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmenyshi was not among them.

And I had no idea that I would be able to enter. This was the lot of the thieves, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in the orphanage, and even in the entire village.

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

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

That's all. All!

I didn’t dream about any tiny little things that could not help but remain after the dumplings, after the rough sides of the loaves fragilely rubbed together, were left behind. Let them be gathered, let the chosen ones enjoy! It rightfully belongs to them!

But no matter how you rubbed against the iron-lined doors of the bread slicer, it could not replace the phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.

It was not at all possible for them to get through this door legally.

When you think about how children survived during wartime, it becomes very difficult. And if you also know that these children were orphans and lived in an orphanage, then your heart aches with pain and pity. The story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” tells about such children, which is the most famous work Anatoly Pristavkin.

The events of the novel take place in 1944, just after the Chechens and Ingush were deported. Twin boys Kolya and Sasha live in orphanage and they know firsthand what it’s like when you have nothing to eat for a long time. They understand that, by and large, no one in this world needs them and are left to their own devices. But they still believe that it is possible to live, and not just survive, that there is friendship, kindness and devotion. However, all their thoughts are occupied by the idea of how to get food for themselves.

In their pair, Sashka is more proactive, and Kolka always supports his plans. After one unsuccessful operation to obtain food, the guys decide to go to the Caucasus along with other orphans. Maybe it will be easier to get food and make friends there. And indeed, there the guys meet people who treat them well. True, not everything goes well. After all, they initially did not know why they were being taken to the Caucasus, and why these lands were empty...

The book can evoke a variety of emotions: pity, anger, indignation, a feeling of injustice and hopelessness. But still, orphans show that there is good in the world, despite all the cruelty. And a person of a different nationality can become a friend. After all, it doesn’t matter at all: you are Russian or a Chechen boy. It’s just a pity that adults don’t understand this.

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

1

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

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

I was looking for a crust of bread from the wounded to pick up, and I saw: “KAZBEK”!

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

Nothing to do with it at all.

And they were appointed there, just as God would appoint, say, to heaven! The most chosen, the luckiest, or you can define it this way: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmenyshi was not among them.

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

That's all. All!

It was not at all possible for them to get through this door legally. It was from the realm of abstract fiction, but the brothers were realists. Although the specific dream was not alien to them.

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

In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get frozen potatoes, let alone crumbs of bread, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. To walk and know, almost to imagine how there, behind the gray walls, behind the dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones, with a knife and scales, cast their spells. And they shred, and cut, and knead the droopy, damp bread, pouring the warm, salty crumbs into the mouth by the handful, and saving the fatty fragments for the tiller.

Saliva boiled in my mouth. It hurt my stomach. My head was getting fuzzy. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would unlock it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Let him then go to a punishment cell, anywhere... They will punish, beat, kill... But first let them show, even from the door, how he is, bread, in a pile, a mountain, Kazbek towering on a table torn with knives... How he smells!

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

A small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a sliver, did not reduce hunger. He was getting stronger.

The guys thought this scene was very fantastic! They come up with it too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run anywhere by the bone gnawed from that wing! After such a loud reading aloud, their stomachs turned even more, and they forever lost faith in writers; If they don’t eat chicken, it means the writers themselves are greedy!

Since they drove away the main orphanage boy Sych, many different big and small thieves have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting their half-raspberries here for the winter far from their native police.

The golden cloud spent the night

I dedicate this story to all her friends who accepted this homeless child of literature as their own and did not allow its author to fall into despair.
This word arose on its own, just as the wind is born in a field. It appeared, rustled, and 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 it.
And what a strange fantasy in the dirty Moscow region to talk about some kind of Caucasus, about which only from reading aloud at school (there were no textbooks!) The orphanage shantrap knew that it exists, or rather, existed in some distant, incomprehensible time, 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 the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep hole.
There was also Pechorin, one of the extra people, who also traveled around the Caucasus.
Yes, here are some more cigarettes! One of the Kuzmenyshes spotted them on a wounded lieutenant colonel from an ambulance train stuck at the station in Tomilin.
Against the backdrop of broken snow-white mountains, a rider in a black cloak gallops and gallops on a wild horse. No, it doesn’t jump, it flies through the air. And under it, in an uneven, angular font, the name: “KAZBEK”.
A mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a bandaged head, a handsome young man, glanced at the pretty nurse who had jumped out to look at the station, and tapped his fingernail meaningfully on the cardboard lid of the cigarettes, not noticing that nearby, with his mouth open in amazement and holding his breath, the little ragged little Kolka was looking at the precious box.
I was looking for a crust of bread from the wounded to pick up, and I saw: “KAZBEK”!
Well, what does the Caucasus have to do with it? Rumor about him?
Nothing to do with it at all.
And it is not clear how this pointed word, sparkling with a shiny icy edge, was born where it is impossible for it to be born: among the everyday life of an orphanage, cold, without firewood, always hungry. The whole tense life of the boys revolved around frozen potatoes, potato peelings and, as the pinnacle of desire and dream, a crust of bread to survive, to survive just one extra day of war.
The most cherished, and even impossible, dream of any of them was to at least once penetrate into the holy of holies of the orphanage: into the BREAD SLICER - so we highlight it in font, because it stood before the eyes of the children higher and more inaccessible than some KAZBEK!
And they were appointed there, just as God would appoint, say, to heaven! The most chosen, the luckiest, or you can define it this way: the happiest on earth!
Kuzmenyshi was not among them.
And I had no idea that I would be able to enter. This was the lot of the thieves, those of them who, having escaped from the police, reigned during this period in the orphanage, and even in the entire village.
To penetrate the bread slicer, but not like those chosen ones - the owners, but with a mouse, for a second, for an instant, that's what I dreamed about! With an eye, to look in reality at all the great wealth of the world, in the form of clumsy loaves piled up on the table.
And - inhale, not with your chest, with your stomach, inhale the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread...
That's all. All!
I didn’t dream about any tiny little things that could not help but remain after the dumplings, after the rough sides of the loaves fragilely rubbed together, were left behind. Let them be gathered, let the chosen ones enjoy! It rightfully belongs to them!
But no matter how you rubbed against the iron-lined doors of the bread slicer, it could not replace the phantasmagoric picture that arose in the heads of the Kuzmin brothers - the smell did not penetrate through the iron.
It was not at all possible for them to get through this door legally. It was from the realm of abstract fiction, but the brothers were realists. Although the specific dream was not alien to them.
And this is what this dream brought Kolka and Sashka to in the winter of forty-four: to penetrate the bread slicer, into the kingdom of bread by any means... Any way.
In these especially dreary months, when it was impossible to get frozen potatoes, let alone crumbs of bread, there was no strength to walk past the house, past the iron doors. To walk and know, almost to imagine how there, behind the gray walls, behind the dirty, but also barred window, the chosen ones, with a knife and scales, cast their spells. And they shred, and cut, and knead the droopy, damp bread, pouring the warm, salty crumbs into the mouth by the handful, and saving the fatty fragments for the tiller.
Saliva boiled in my mouth. It hurt my stomach. My head was getting fuzzy. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would unlock it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Let him then go to a punishment cell, anywhere... They will punish, beat, kill... But first let them show, even from the door, how he is, bread, in a pile, a mountain, Kazbek towering on a table torn with knives... How he smells!
Then it will be possible to live again. Then there will be faith. Since there is a mountain of bread, it means the world exists... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.
A small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a sliver, did not reduce hunger. He was getting stronger.
One day, a stupid teacher began to read aloud an excerpt from Tolstoy, and there the aging Kutuzov, during the war, eats chicken, eats it with reluctance, almost chewing the tough wing with disgust...
The guys thought this scene was very fantastic! They come up with it too! The wing didn't work! Yes, they would immediately run anywhere by the bone gnawed from that wing! After such a loud reading aloud, their stomachs turned even more, and they forever lost faith in writers; If they don’t eat chicken, it means the writers themselves are greedy!
Since they drove away the main orphanage boy Sych, many different big and small thieves have passed through Tomilino, through the orphanage, twisting their half-raspberries here for the winter far from their native police.
One thing remained unchanged: the strong devoured everything, leaving crumbs for the weak, dreams of crumbs, taking small things into reliable networks of slavery.
For a crust they fell into slavery for a month or two.
The front crust, the one that is crispier, blacker, thicker, sweeter, cost two months, on a loaf it would be the top one, but we are talking about soldering, a tiny piece that looks flat as a transparent leaf on the table; back
- paler, poorer, thinner - months of slavery.
And who didn’t remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshes, also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a relative-soldier, he once served for the back crust for six months. He gave away everything he could eat, and ate buds from trees so as not to die completely.
Kuzmenysh were also sold in difficult times. But they were always sold together.
If, of course, two Kuzmenysh were combined into one person, then in the entire Tomilinsky orphanage there would be no equal in age, and, perhaps, in strength.
But the Kuzmenyshi already knew their advantage.
It is easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away faster on four feet. And four eyes see much more sharply when you need to grab where something bad lies!
While two eyes are busy, the other two watch over both. Yes, they still have time to make sure that they don’t snatch anything from themselves, clothes, the mattress from underneath when you sleep and see your pictures from the life of a bread slicer! They said: why did you open the bread slicer if they pulled it from you?
And there are countless combinations of any of the two Kuzmenysh! If, say, one of them is caught in the market, they drag him to jail. One of the brothers whines, screams, beats for pity, and the other distracts. You look, while they turned to the second one, the first one sniffed, and he was gone. And the second one follows! Both brothers are like nimble, slippery vines; once you let them go, you can’t pick them up again.
Eyes will see, hands will grab, legs will carry away...
But somewhere, in some pot, all this must be cooked in advance... It’s difficult to survive without a reliable plan: how, where and what to steal!
The two heads of Kuzmenysh were cooked differently.
Sashka, 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, tenacious, practical, figured out with lightning speed how to bring these ideas to life. To extract, that is, income. And what’s even more precise: take some food.
If Sashka, for example, had said, scratching the top of his blond head, “shouldn’t they fly to, say, the Moon, there’s a lot of oilcake there,” Kolka would not have said right away: “No.” He would first think about this business with the Moon, which airship to fly there on, and then he would ask; “Why? You can steal it closer... “But it used to be that Sashka would look dreamily at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would catch Sashka’s thought on the air. And then he would figure out how to implement it.
Sashka has a golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! The brothers saw this in the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers a hundred floors below are at hand. We are the very first, the highest!
And the Kuzmenyshis are the first in something else. They were the first to understand how to get through the winter of 1944 without dying.
When they made a revolution in St. Petersburg, I suppose, in addition to 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 for the first time, by the way. But it was painfully unbearable that day! Although such walks added their torment.
“Oh, how I want to eat... You can even gnaw on the door! At least eat the frozen ground under the threshold!” - so it was said out loud. Sashka said, and suddenly it dawned on him. Why eat it if... If it... Yes, yes! That's it! If you need to dig it!
Dig! Well, of course, dig!
He didn’t say anything, 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 out loud, only his eyes flashed predatorily.
Anyone who has experienced it will believe: there is no more inventive and focused person in the world than a hungry person, especially if he is an orphanage who has grown his brains during the war on where and what to get.
Without saying a word (there are crooks all around, they will hear it, they will destroy it, and then any, even Sashka’s most brilliant idea, will be screwed), the brothers headed straight to the nearest shed, located a hundred meters from the orphanage, and twenty meters from the bread slicer. The shed was located right behind the bread slicer.
In the barn, the brothers looked around. At the same time, they looked to the farthest corner, where, behind a worthless iron scrap, behind a broken brick, there was Vaska Smorochka’s stash. When the firewood was stored, no one knew, only the Kuzmenyshi knew: a soldier, Uncle Andrei, was hiding here, whose weapons were stolen.
Sashka asked in a whisper; - Isn’t it far?
- Where is closer? - Kolka asked in turn.
Both understood that there was nowhere closer. Breaking a lock is much easier. Less labor, less time needed. There were crumbs of strength left. But they already tried to knock the lock off the bread slicer; not only the Kuzmenysh had such a bright answer come to mind! And the management hung a barn lock on the doors! Weighing half a pound!
You can only tear it off with a grenade. Hang it 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 - unless with an autogenous one!
And Kolka thought about the autogen, he noticed carbide in one place. But you can’t drag it down, you can’t light it up, there are a lot of eyes around.
Only there are no strangers' eyes underground! The other option - to completely abandon the bread slicer - did not suit the Kuzmenyshes.
Neither the store, nor the market, and especially private houses were now suitable for obtaining food. Although such options were floating around in a swarm in Sashka’s head. The trouble is that Kolka did not see ways of their real implementation.
There's a watchman at the store all night, an evil old man. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t sleep, a day is enough for him. Not a watchman - a dog in the manger.
The houses around, too many to count, are full of refugees. But eating is just the opposite. They themselves look to see where they can snatch something.
The Kuzmenysh had a house in mind, so the elders cleaned it when Sych was there.
True, they stole God knows what: rags and a sewing machine. For a long time, the shantrap turned it one by one here, in the barn, until the handle flew off and everything else fell apart in pieces.
We're not talking about the machine. About the bread slicer. Where there were no scales, no weights, but only bread - he alone forced the brothers to work furiously in two heads.
And it came out: “Nowadays, all roads lead to a bread slicer.”
Strong, not a bread slicer. It is well known that there are no fortresses, that is, bread slicers, that a hungry orphanage cannot take.
In the dead of winter, when all the punks, desperate to find anything edible at the station or at the market, were freezing around the stoves, rubbing their butts, backs, and backs of their heads against them, absorbing fractions of degrees and seemingly warming up - the lime had been wiped down to the brick - The Kuzmenysh began to implement their incredible plan, and in this improbability lay the key to success.
From a distant stash in the barn, they began stripping work, as an experienced builder would define it, using a crooked crowbar and plywood.
Grasping the crowbar (here they are - four hands!), they lifted it and lowered it with a dull sound onto the frozen ground. The first centimeters were the hardest. The earth was humming.
They carried it on the plywood to the opposite corner of the barn until a whole mound had formed there.
The whole day, so stormy that the snow drifted obliquely, blinding their eyes, the Kuzmenyshi dragged the earth further into the forest. They put it in their pockets, in their bosoms, but they couldn’t carry it in their hands. Until we figured it out: use a canvas bag from school.
Now we took turns going to school and digging in turns: one day Kolka did the digging and one day Sashka did it.
The one whose turn it was to study, served two lessons for himself (Kuzmin? Which 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! You want to live fat! The main thing is that they don’t leave anyone in the orphanage without lunch!
But whether it’s lunch or dinner, they won’t let you eat it in turn; the jackals will immediately snatch it up and leave no trace. At this point they stopped digging, and the two of them went to the canteen as if on an attack.
No one will ask, no one will be interested in whether Sashka is being naughty or Kolka. Here they are united: Kuzmenyshi. If suddenly there is one, then it seems like half. But they were rarely seen alone, and one might say that they were not seen at all!
They walk together, eat together, go to bed together.
And if they hit, they hit both of them, starting with the one who gets caught first at that awkward moment.

2
The excavation was in full swing when these strange rumors about the Caucasus began to spread.
For no reason, but persistently, in different ends of the bedroom, the same thing was repeated, either more quietly or more loudly. It’s as if they will remove the orphanage from their home in Tomilino and transfer it en masse, every single one, to the Caucasus.
They will send the teachers, the foolish cook, the mustachioed musician, and the disabled director... (“A mentally disabled person!” it was pronounced quietly.) They will take everyone, in a word.
They gossiped a lot, chewed them like last year's potato peels, but no one could imagine how it was possible to drive this entire wild horde into some mountains.
The Kuzmenysh listened to the chatter moderately, but believed even less. There was no time. Driven, they frantically dug their holes.
And what is there to talk about, and a fool understands: it is impossible to take a single orphanage child anywhere against his will! They won’t be taken to a cage like Pugacheva!
The hungry people will pour out in all directions at the very first stage and catch them like water with a sieve!
And if, for example, it was possible to persuade one of them, then no Caucasus would suffer from such a meeting; They will strip you to the skin, eat them to bits, and smash their Kazbeks into pieces... They will turn them into a desert! To the Sahara!
So the Kuzmenyshis decided and went to hammer.
One of them was picking at the earth with a piece of iron, now it was loose and falling off on its own, and the other was dragging the rock out in a rusty bucket. By spring, we came up against the brick foundation of the house where the bread slicer was located.
One day the Kuzmenyshis were sitting at the far end of the excavation.
The dark red, anciently fired brick with a bluish tint crumbled with difficulty, each piece bleeding. Blisters swelled on my hands. And it turned out to be difficult to ram it from the side with a crowbar.
It was impossible to turn around in the excavation; earth was pouring out of the gate. A homemade smokehouse in an ink bottle, stolen from the office, ate out my eyes.
At first they had a real wax candle, also stolen. But the brothers themselves ate it. Somehow they couldn’t stand it, their guts were turning 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, leaving one inedible string left.
Now a rag string was smoking: a recess had been made in the wall of the excavation - Sashka guessed - and from there it flickered bluely, there was less light than soot.
Both Kuzmenysh sat slumped, sweaty, grimy, knees tucked under their chins.
Sashka suddenly asked:
- Well, what about the Caucasus? Are they chattering?
“They’re chattering,” answered Kolka.
- They'll drive, right? - Since Kolka did not answer, Sashka asked again: “Wouldn’t you like to?” Should I go?
- Where? - asked the brother.
- To the Caucasus!
- What’s there?
- I don’t know... Interesting.
- I’m interested in where to go! - And Kolka angrily poked his fist at the brick. There, a meter or two meters from the fist, no further, was the treasured bread slicer.
On the table, striped with knives and smelling of a sour bread spirit, there are crackers: a lot of crackers of a grayish-golden color. One is more beautiful than the other. Break off the crust, and that’s happiness. Suck it, swallow it. And there’s a whole carload of crumb and crust, pinch it and put it in your mouth.
Never in their lives have Kuzmenysh had to hold a whole loaf of bread in their hands! I didn't even have to touch it.
But they saw, from afar, of course, how in the bustle of the store they were rationing it using cards, how they were weighing it on scales.
A lean, ageless saleswoman grabbed colored cards: workers', employees', dependent's, children's, and, glancing briefly - she had such an experienced spirit level eye - at the attachment, at the stamp on the back where the store number was written, at least of her own, probably, all attached knows by name, she used scissors to make “chick-chick”, two or three coupons per box. And in that drawer she has a thousand, a million of these coupons with numbers of 100, 200, 250 grams.
But each coupon, two or three, is only a small part of a whole loaf, from which the saleswoman will economically cut off a small piece with a sharp knife. And it’s not good for her to stand next to the bread, she’s dried up and not gotten fat!
But the entire loaf, untouched by the knife, no matter how hard the brothers looked at it, no one in their presence managed to take it away from the store.
Whole - such wealth that it’s scary to even think about it! But what kind of paradise will open then if there are not one, and not two, and not three Bukhariks! A real paradise! True! Blessed! And we don’t need any Caucasus!
Moreover, this paradise is nearby; unclear voices can already be heard through the brickwork.
Although blind from soot, deaf from the earth, from sweat, from anguish, our brothers heard one thing in every sound: “Bread. Bread..."At such moments the brothers don't dig, they're not fools, I suppose. Heading past the iron doors into the barn, they'll make an extra hinge to know that that pound lock is in place: you can see it a mile away!
Only then do they start to destroy this damn foundation.
They built them in ancient times, I suppose, and did not suspect that someone would use a strong word to defend them for their strength.
As soon as the Kuzmeyishs get there, when the whole bread slicer opens up to their enchanted eyes in the dim evening light, consider that you are already in heaven.
Then... The brothers knew exactly what would happen then.
It was thought out in two heads, probably not in one.
Buharik, but only one, they will eat on the spot. So that such wealth does not turn our stomachs. And they will take two more biscuits with them and hide them securely. This is what they can do. Just three buns, that is. The rest, even if it itches, you can’t touch. Otherwise, the brutal boys will destroy the house.
And three biscuits is what, according to Kolka’s calculations, is stolen from them every day anyway.
The part for the fool of the cook, everyone knows that he is a fool and was in a madhouse. But he eats just like a normal person. Another part is stolen by bread cutters and those jackals who hang around 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 feed, there are also relatives and hangers-on there. And all of them are dragged from the orphanage, dragged, dragged... The orphanage residents themselves drag. But those who drag have their crumbs from dragging.
The Kuzmenys accurately calculated that the disappearance of three Bukhariks would not cause any noise in the orphanage. They will not offend themselves, they will deprive others. That's all.
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 are stealing, and why the orphanage residents are not getting enough of their allotted food, and why the director’s animals-dogs are as tall as calves.
But Sashka only sighed, looking in the direction where Kolka’s fist was pointing.
“Nope...” he said thoughtfully. - It’s still 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. There's no time for mountains here, no matter what they are. It seemed to him that he could smell the smell of fresh bread through the earth.
Both were silent.
“Today we taught rhymes,” recalled Sashka, who had to sit through school for two. - Mikhail Lermontov, it’s called “The Cliff”.
Sashka did not remember everything by heart, even though the poems were short. Not like “The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the young guardsman and the daring merchant Kalashnikov”... Phew! One name is half a kilometer long! Not to mention the poems themselves!
And from “The Cliff” Sashka remembered only two lines.
The golden cloud spent the night
On the chest of a giant rock...
- About the Caucasus, or what? - Kolka asked boredly.
- Yeah. The cliff...
“If he’s as bad as this one...” And Kolka thrust his fist into the foundation again. - The cliff is yours!
- He's not mine!
Sashka fell silent, thinking.
He had not thought about poetry for a long time. He didn’t understand anything about poetry, and there wasn’t much to understand in them. If you read it on a full stomach, maybe it will make sense. That shaggy woman in the choir is tormenting them, and if they hadn’t left them without lunch, they would have all lathered their heels from the choir long ago. They need these songs, poems... Whether you eat or read, you still think about food. The hungry godfather has all the chickens on his mind!
- So what? - Kolka suddenly asked.
- What-what? - Sashka repeated after him.
- Why is he there, a cliff? Has it fallen apart or not?
“I don’t know,” Sashka said somehow stupidly.
- How do you not know? What about poetry?
- Why the poems... Well, there, this one... What's her name... The cloud, then, has hit the cliff...
- How do we get to the foundation?
- Well, it got stuck... flew away... Kolka whistled.
- All??
- All.
- They don’t make shit up for themselves! Either about the chicken, then I’ll leak it...
- What do I have to do with it! - Sashka was now angry. - Am I your writer, or what? - But I wasn’t very angry. And it’s my own fault: I was daydreaming and didn’t hear the teacher’s explanation.
During class, he suddenly imagined the Caucasus, where everything was different from their rotten Tomilino.
Mountains the size of their orphanage, and between them there are bread slicers everywhere. And none of them are locked. And there’s no need to dig, I went in, hung it for myself, and ate it for myself. I came out, and there was another bread slicer, and again without a lock. And the people are all in Circassian coats, mustachioed, and so cheerful. They watch Sashka enjoying his food, smile, and hit him on the shoulder:
“Yakshi,” they say. Or something else! But the meaning is the same: “Eat, they say, more, we have a lot of bread slicers!” It was summer. The grass in the yard was green. No one saw off the Kuzmenysh, except for the teacher Anna Mikhailovna, who probably wasn’t thinking about their departure either, looking somewhere over their heads cold blue eyes.
Everything happened unexpectedly. It was planned to send two older ones, the most thugs, from the orphanage, but they immediately left, as they say, disappeared into space, and the Kuzmenyshi, on the contrary, said that they wanted to go to the Caucasus.
The documents were rewritten. No one asked why they suddenly decided to go, what kind of need was driving our brothers to a distant land. Only pupils from junior group came to see them. They stood at the door and, pointing their finger at them, said: “These!” And after a pause: “To the Caucasus!” The reason for leaving was solid, thank God, no one knew about it.
A week before all these events, the tunnel under the bread slicer suddenly collapsed. Failed in the most visible place. And with him, the Kuzmenysh’s hopes for another collapsed, better life.
We left in the evening, everything seemed to be fine, the wall had already been finished, all that was left was to open up the floor.
And in the morning they rushed out of the house: the director and the entire kitchen were assembled, staring: what a miracle, the earth has settled under the wall of the bread slicer.
And - they guessed it: my dear mother. But this is a tunnel!
Under their kitchen, under their bread slicer!
They didn’t know anything like this in the orphanage.
They began to drag students to the director. While we looked at the older ones, we couldn’t even think about the younger ones.
Military sappers were called in for consultation. Is it possible, they asked, for children to dig this themselves?
They inspected the tunnel, walked from the barn to the bread slicer and climbed inside, where there was no collapse. Shaking off the yellow sand, they threw up their hands: “It is impossible, without equipment, without special training, it is in no way possible to dig such a metro. Here an experienced soldier gets a month’s work, if, say, with an entrenching tool and auxiliary means... And children... Yes, we would take such children to us if they really knew how to perform such miracles.”
- They are still my miracle workers! - said the director gloomily. - But I will find this magician-creator!
The brothers stood right there, among other pupils. Each of them knew what the other was thinking.

Anatoly Pristavkin

The golden cloud spent the night

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

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

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

I was looking for a crust of bread from the wounded to pick up, and I saw: “KAZBEK”!

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

Nothing to do with it at all.

And they were appointed there, just as God would appoint, say, to heaven! The most chosen, the luckiest, or you can define it this way: the happiest on earth!

Kuzmenyshi was not among them.

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

That's all. All!

It was not at all possible for them to get through this door legally. It was from the realm of abstract fiction, but the brothers were realists. Although the specific dream was not alien to them.

And this is what this dream brought Kolka and Sashka to in the winter of forty-four: to penetrate 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 there is a mountain of bread, it means the world exists... And you can endure, and be silent, and live on.

A small ration, even with an additive pinned to it with a sliver, did not reduce hunger. He was getting stronger.

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

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

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

And who didn’t remember that Vaska Smorchok, the same age as the Kuzmenyshes, also about eleven years old, before the arrival of a relative-soldier, he once served for the back crust for six months. He gave away everything he could eat, and ate buds from trees so as not to die completely.

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

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