It was...
One summer day in 2001, which foreshadowed nothing, a story happened to me that I will not forget for a long, long time.
I met four friends in the middle of the day and decided to have a get-together at the dacha with a group of men. To bring our plans into reality, it was necessary to correctly send off all the available girls, for which we bought a bottle of cheap vodka and glasses and we settled down in a cozy garden under the scorching rays of the sun. As I drank, I remembered that I had not eaten anything all day and noticed a pleasant smoothness of what was happening around me. The girls gradually dispersed, and we went to the dacha. Due to the lack of transport, the father of one of us was hired as a cab driver. For a bottle of beer we were taken outside the city, with an honest desire to get well drunk, for which an enormous amount of vodka and even more unlimited beer were taken. Seeing all this put on the table, I imagined my own outcome in two versions: number one, the emission of the soul due to the complete replacement of blood with fermentation products. Number two, strangulation by the hands of the owner of the dacha due to a destroyed house in a fit of fun.
They drank a lot and quickly, especially by me and one of my comrades: a dispute was concluded about the maximum volume of liquid placed in the body, apparently I won, since my opponent had already been lying for an hour and a half, grunting peacefully under the table. Then everything was vague. It seems that I had a quarrel with someone and was sent in a deranged state, to sleep on the second floor, as it turned out, it was boring to sleep, and I decided to return to the company. The door was locked from the outside, as the torn off handle told me. With thoughts: “where our people don’t disappear,” I began to go down through the balcony and at the very moment when I hung over the railing they made a terrible sound and with ominous acceleration began to approach the ground, then I saw the stars and, shouting something, landed on the miracles country agronomy in the form of zucchini and squash. In the eyes of my comrades it looked like this: peaceful drinking and interesting conversations were interrupted by a roar, my somersault, which they watched through the window, a cry: “pour vodka,” followed by b...d and a fallen balcony. A hoe immediately flew at me, the somersault I performed in the “matrix was not even close” style freed the hoe to move further towards the glass greenhouse, breaking two glasses and cutting off tomatoes, it landed neatly without causing me any harm. Turning around, I saw the owner of the dacha, with a shovel in his hand, with shouts showing all the delights of the Russian language, running towards me. But then luck turned to me, he fell, trampling the remains of the surviving crops into the ground, which allowed me to retreat. The entire team, worried about my escape, began to wander around the area in search. After half an hour, the company was stopped due to the inappropriateness of pursuit in the dark. Having gathered at the porch, after a smoke break, they began to enter the house, at the very moment when I began my landing with a broken pear branch in my hand, having landed, I disappeared in an unknown direction. It later turned out that the tree seedling was no more than five centimeters in diameter, three meters in height and was more like a bush. How I managed to sit on the top for about 30 minutes is not known... crossing another stream, I realized that I had to move far from the place of deployment my comrades are not worth it, approaching back to the dacha building, having heard a lot of good things about myself and in order not to tempt the owner of the dacha to kill, I decided to settle down with the neighbors, who fortunately were not there. Having woken up in the morning from malaise and due to the lack of anything thirst-quenching, the neighbor’s strawberry planting was unconditionally destroyed. At the very moment when I finished absorbing the green berry, I heard the receding rumble of the same engine that delivered us yesterday. The return journey on foot, with a headache, tinnitus, and trembling hands, took two hours and about 12 km of travel. I avoided my comrades for another two weeks. Everything ended well, with joint efforts the dacha was restored and was waiting for the next visit.
AUGUST 2009
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Excerpts from the diary
May 25. No amount of prayer helped. The joy from the beginning of the summer holidays faded: it became clear that in the summer I would be at the dacha again. “That’s why a “family nest” exists, to spend the summer in it!” - said mom.
The “family nest” has become askew, roofing felt has been torn off in places from the roof, revealing prehistoric shingles, and I have to spend the summer in the “family nest” with the animals: my mother works and has visits. The only thing that makes me happy is the large garden, wild and overgrown, and the sea beyond the fence. But my mother’s desire to dig up the garden with me and plant something in it is absolutely uninspiring.
Every year it’s the same thing - shocking spring work, but then everything somehow fades away: either cold and dull rains, or heat and hordes of caterpillars destroy our labors.
For some reason, it was a water rat that settled in our garden, which in the fall, as the potatoes ripen, digs tunnels under them and takes away all the worthy fruits. In summer, the rat is terribly worried about “its” harvest and emits streams of musk, with a sweet and pungent aroma reminiscent of French perfume. I have to dig up the potatoes, suffocating from this smell, and I don’t even know whether it’s pleasant or disgusting - something in between. Then the rat collects the crop and hides it under the neighbor's toilet. And we are forced, returning to the city, to buy potatoes along the way.
June 1st. The only people who enjoy getting ready for the dacha are our black cats Sasha and Dasha (whom we baptized into Shura and Dura), the dog - the glorious Scotch terrier Mitya and the tame jackdaw Kukken. Mom loves Mitya, but only tolerates cats and jackdaws. It's probably worth telling a little about yourself. My mother and I live alone. I want to become a biologist, or maybe I’ll be an artist - I like both. At least I have more or less decent grades in biology, drawing, and for some reason in physical education. The rest is darkness! Dogs and cats love me, birds recognize me, and forest animals often come out to meet me just to show themselves. My motto: “Don’t offend anyone, love everyone and feed everyone if possible!” But my relationships with the people around me are complicated. Who might be interested in a lanky, bespectacled teenager who always travels to the country with a bag filled with various reference books about flora and fauna? “It seems they forgot the Great Soviet Encyclopedia at home!” - Mom gets angry when my books don’t fit in the car.
2 June. Hooray! Mom softened in relation to Shura and Dura! Mom came to the dacha without me, only with the animal. I took "tails" at school. At night, she was woken up by the cats, who leaked through the window and began to madly jump on their sleeping mother. She first fought off the cats in her sleep, and then got up with a stern desire to give them a good beating and then discovered that the external wire on the house was sparking and that a fire was about to start. The cats selflessly saved both the house and the mother. Now the mother feeds the cats fish to the fullest and admires their feat.
June 3. June is the dullest month of the summer, usually cold and rainy. You can’t swim in the sea, there’s nothing to do in the forest, and the village is dominated by tedious gardeners, busy in their plots from morning to night. But the gardens are blooming, and the birds are singing, and in our north this is the most beautiful month of the year. Only in June can you hear the cuckoo, a funny bird - a cross between a dove and a hawk. Today I quietly disappeared from the garden, where my mother was cheerfully shoveling another vacant lot, and fell on the sofa. Suddenly a cuckoo plopped down on the frame, looked into the room, saw me and yelled: “Whoa!”, counting out exactly one minute for me to lie on the sofa, because my mother was already looming menacingly at the door.
June 10th. June begins with my mother’s cheerful calls to lead a correct lifestyle. Fresh air, eating wild and, naturally, very healthy herbs, for example, dandelions and shepherd's purse, getting up at dawn and wiping with salty sea water - this is the motto of our stay at the dacha. It’s clear that you immediately want to die young. Today I experienced some poisonous joy: my mother returned from her friend, who treated her to dandelion jam. I looked at my mother’s face incredulously - swollen, all covered in bright crimson spots and dots. Well, definitely an illustration from the book “Childhood Infectious Diseases: Rubella, Measles and Mumps”! Naturally, I flatly refused to try the “delicacy” sent especially for me - a mass of childish surprise color in a mayonnaise jar. Mom was offended.
June 15. Oddly enough, the idea that on warm summer days it is better to wash clothes and dishes in the bay, and not in the house, belonged to my mother. “Life is short, and there is no need for us to waste rare minutes of sunshine! Let’s turn boring dishwashing into a holiday!” - she said and, putting all the dishes in the basket, she went to our favorite sandbank in front of the house. We followed suit: me and Kukken in the cage, Mitya and both cats. It was a brilliant idea! Now our dishes, polished with sand (especially old, smoky pots), shine in the sun like new, and we are already wonderfully tanned.
June 16. As soon as we emerge from the house with a large basket, a noisy family of crows takes up a lookout post on an old alder tree and comments on our progress along the path leading to the sea. As soon as we put the dishes out of the basket, a crow flies forward to reconnoiter, followed by the whole madly screaming brood of three youngsters. Mom and dad always fly on the sides. Porridge is highly valued, which parents stuff large portions into their children's greedily blushing and constantly screaming (even with porridge!) mouths. But don’t think that this unafraid “bird paradise” just flew to our leftovers. No. It's all about the tame jackdaw Kukken, which we bring with us in a small cage. On the shore, I let him out, and he digs in the sand, sorts through reed debris, pecks at shells, admires cow dung, and is terribly happy about everything. In nature, jackdaws are very cautious birds. Seeing the calmness of the Kukken, other birds lose their vigilance. That is, in the literal sense, we have a “decoy” jackdaw. True, we are not going to offend anyone.
June 17. Not only the birds became interested in our “management”, but also large flocks of no less voracious and varied fry. Stupid fry swallow both crumbs and the remains of laundry soap during washing. The duvet covers, inflated with sails and carried by the surf into the sea like seines, collect schools of fry inside, and you have to carefully shake the fish out of the linen. The small creek is simply teeming with an incredible amount of fish and birds. Sometimes a herd of cows comes and tries to lick the pots. Mitya, growling menacingly, strictly makes sure that they do not get too close. Puzzled by some bucket or basin, the cows thoughtfully raise their tails and with a bang “decorate” our shallows with steaming cakes. Starlings fly with cows. They quickly mince with their legs along the wide backs of cows and peck horse flies.
June 18. Today the black and white cow Swallow grabbed the sheet with her lips and, thoughtfully rolling her eyes, began to chew it. The sheet slowly disappeared into the cow's throat when mom, grabbing it by the other edge, began to pull it towards her. The swallow is not only gluttonous, but also energetic, so the mother jumped in front of her like a real bullfighter. With a painful moo, the Swallow finally spat out the chewed edge, but the sheet had already turned a poisonous yellow-green color in her throat. It was not possible to wash her, and she was condemned to banishment into floor rags.
June 19. We are suffering losses. Our bowls and forks are washed away by the surf, handles break off cups during transportation, and plates break. Quite quickly, a shortage of tableware became noticeable. “Probably, soon we will have to eat from burdock leaves instead of plates, with chopsticks, like the Chinese, and drink tea from cans,” my mother stated today, seeing yet another damage done to us by the sea waves. True, we now have a new pink bucket in our daily use, which floated to our sandbank in the morning, an excellent coil of Finnish rope tangled in the reeds, and a very beautiful bottle of an imported drink. And yesterday our thermometer for measuring water temperature floated away. “He swims for himself and constantly measures and measures the temperature of the water, but no one is interested in this. What a meaningless life! — Mom said thoughtfully, looking at the horizon.
June 20. Oh those dreary, cold and damp June days! My mother and I resolutely put on our jackets and went for a walk. We had already gone far from the village when Jack, our very beloved white dog, caught up with us. By origin - a cross between a shepherd and a husky, smart and cheerful. Jack decided to please us. Sensing something in the bushes, he dived into the hazel grove. There was a crash, a stomp, a grunt... and two small young wild pigs flew out of the bushes, followed by Jack. Silently, without the usual barking, the dog rushed with the wild boars across the meadow, as if playing tag, occasionally colliding with the pigs on the sides, which is why very soon from white he became as black as his playmates. And this was a real game, because the boars, which surpassed Jack in both weight and size, could have easily rushed back into the hazel grove, but they did not do this, but, with their tails up and not embarrassed by our presence, rushed around with the dog. We stood huddled in the center of the meadow, frantically wondering which way to run. But Jack decided to bring the boars closer to us so that we too could take part in this fun. He successfully completed the task, and now there were six of us rushing chaotically across the meadow. Mom shouted as she ran: “Grab Mitya! They'll trample him! Let's run! What idiots you are! Where did you run?! Back!" Mitya was eager to fight, but his small legs got tangled in the thick and tall grass. In the center of the meadow there was a large boulder, and I, picking up Mitya, climbed onto it. Mom continued to cheerfully cut circles. In the bustle, my glasses flew off my nose and fell into the grass, under a stone, and my mother safely stepped on them. Remembering that the binoculars were hanging around my neck, I pointed them at the wild boars, wanting to get a better look at them, and almost fell off the rock in amazement. I forgot that the binoculars had a high magnification, and suddenly what appeared before my eyes was... only one snout, all covered in dirt, or rather, a nickel of the nose, wet and with thick black stubble sticking out from the nostrils. The snout moved and foamed. Well, just a horror movie! Finally everyone was tired. The wild boars burst back into the hazel tree with a crash and rushed off. Mom fell to a stone and couldn’t catch her breath. A joyful Jack came running with his eyes squinted from running and his tongue hanging out. It was unrecognizable from the adhered black mud and smelled horribly of a pig farm. "No! Do not dare!" - Mom screamed, catching Jack’s desire to kiss her, but it was too late. Jack happily plopped his paws on her shoulders and licked her nose. “Ugh, what a disgusting smell!” - Mom winced, trying to clean off the dirt that had stuck to her jacket after the dog’s hugs. “Merced with nature!” - I said sarcastically. We crawled through the grass for a while looking for my glasses. Fortunately, the glass was intact, only the shackle broke off.
June 25. Today a tragicomic story happened with a hawk. Kukken was sitting on his favorite apple tree, and I, two meters away from him, tried to nail a mouse-proof grate onto the entrance to the bee house. With each careful blow of the hammer, angry bee guards flew out of the hive, and I darted into the bushes. To avoid being bitten, I had to put on a robe and a bee hat. At that moment, a huge goshawk appeared and rushed at the jackdaw. Because of the attached wing, the Kukken does not fly, but only runs. He began to quickly jump along the branches around the trunk of the apple tree. But the hawk overtook him and knocked him to the ground. Another second, and the robber would have torn it apart, but then I crawled out of the bushes - in a beekeeper's suit and with a hammer in my hand. The hawk, seeing such an unprecedented monster, widened his already round eyes and wrinkled his forehead, wondering what kind of scarecrow had appeared from the bushes. Then he casually shook the jackdaw from his claws and slowly took off, without taking his wide eyes off my person. He was so surprised, he was simply stunned! Poor Kukken was wounded, he had to be fed with fresh milk for a long time and held on his chest in order to warm him with warmth, caress and console him.
June 26. A little about Kukken. We picked him up on the highway, in a village with the beautiful name Kipen. He stood doomedly in the middle of the road, and the cars following us would most likely have crushed him. We stopped and took the bird. The jackdaw had a broken wing in his shoulder, which was reattached to him at a veterinary hospital for a lot of money, and the disabled man stayed with us, to the displeasure of his mother: “He just shits and misbehaves! I’m sure that in a past life he was a convict!” I don’t know who he was in a past life, but in this life Kukken suffered a lot. In addition to getting hit by a car, over the years of his life with us he was twice grabbed and wounded by a hawk, Kukken managed to break his leg, and Mitya accidentally closed his jaws and made a “tobacco chicken” out of the jackdaw! And every time Kukken, like a Phoenix bird, was reborn from the ashes, continuing to misbehave and misbehave. The cats are afraid of him, Mitya angrily endures it. Kukken simply adores Mitya. As soon as Mitya falls asleep somewhere in a secluded place, Kukken immediately finds him and begins to sing him songs and gently finger his wool. Poor Mitya could not even dream of such a thing in his worst nightmare. Sometimes Kukken (by the way, in Finnish it means “Flower”) even helps. When I dig up the beds, he runs around the shovel and looks for all sorts of caterpillars and worms. But it happens that this “Flower” pulls out my plantings. Once I was crawling along a long ridge and carefully planting seedlings - these are such small onions. When she finished landing, she gasped. It turns out that the damn Flower was walking behind and just as diligently pulling everything back.
Mom treated the jackdaw coldly for quite a long time. She did not always have a pleasant relationship with corvid representatives. While walking one day at the zoo, we came to an enclosure where a large black raven was bored. Mom stood on tiptoe and handed him candy through the net. The raven instantly moved forward, snatched the candy and threw it aside, and immediately grabbed my mother’s index finger with its beak, squeezing it tightly. Mom stood in an uncomfortable position and winced in pain. She could not free her finger from the grip of the powerful raven beak. She was angry at her stupidity, and at the harmful bird, and at me, dying of laughter. Her finger turned blue and became almost the same color as the raven's beak. And the bully rolled his eyes with pleasure and did not think of letting him go. Then he suddenly spat out, slyly tilted his head to the side and said: “Ku-ku!” For some reason, it was the mysterious “kuckoo!” especially angered my mother. “What a scoundrel!” - she was indignant, shaking her black and swollen finger in front of my nose for a whole week.
Mom also had a disgusting relationship with the tame, talking magpie Varvar, who (even before the jackdaw) lived in our house for some time. The barbarian continuously shouted various phrases he had memorized and stole everything. He constantly rummaged through my mother's bag, stole money from it and immediately tore it into small pieces, and buried my mother's lipstick and ballpoint pens in flower pots. When my mother was eating soup, Varvar made a disgusting blowing noise. If mom tried on a new dress, then Varvar would giggle vilely. But most importantly, he always shouted after his mother: “Where?” when she hurriedly ran out of the house to work or on errands. Mom believes in the stupid superstition that if you ask a person WHERE he is going, then he “will have no way.” Complete nonsense, of course, but because of this “where?” there were endless scandals in the house. I locked Varvara and took him to another room, but every time, as soon as he heard his mother open the front door, he managed to muffledly shout out: “Where?” Mom was terribly angry: “Can’t you explain to this vile creature once and for all that I go to work every morning?!”
One day, a colleague, a professor from the Czech Republic, was visiting my mother. First, Varvar, when everyone went into the kitchen, quickly stole all the dark chocolate bars cut into strips from the vase on the table and stuffed it into the cracks around the perimeter of the sofa. When the chocolate was discovered missing, the guest was already sitting imposingly on the sofa. Mom had to, with an apologetic smile, remove the chocolate supplies from the sofa back into the vase, and at the same time clean the professor’s light-colored trousers from the not-so-aesthetically sticky chocolate. It is clear that the next day my mother did not talk to me, and for this reason I lay on the sofa and cried. And then Varvar quietly and touchingly said to me: “Hello!” and, to console me, he placed a gift next to me - a very expensive pen with a gold nib. From horror, I even stopped crying - Varvar quietly stole this pen from the professor’s portfolio! No wonder he hung around all evening! "Oh my God! We also robbed the professor! This is not a house, but just some kind of gangster den! - Mom wringed her hands. “What are we going to do, he flew to his home in the Czech Republic this morning!” “Be silent as if you were stabbed to death! - cheered up by such a magpie “gift” (and I had long dreamed of such a pen), I said, “it wasn’t we who robbed his briefcase, but forty!”
Therefore, my mother was not happy with Kukken’s appearance: “Are dogs and cats really not enough for us?” But everything is changing for the better. Aunt Dusya recently came to us and began to complain to my mother about her loneliness and in the end, sobbing, she said: “Maybe you can at least give me your Kuku? Otherwise I'm all alone! It will be more and more fun!” And here my mother surprised me. She frowned: “Kukkena? Never! He's part of our family!" I was just happy!
27th of June. Bees bring extraordinary liveliness to our summer holidays. When others are lounging on the beach, we, dressed in special white robes and stuffy bee hats, catch swarms, move houses or change canvases and mattresses in the hive.
There are many different breeds of bees: some that are more biting and some that are less. We, of course, have the most biting ones - an explosive cross between a Russian and a Bashkir bee. I instantly swell from any bite. Allergy! Mom gets bitten too, but she doesn’t get bloated. On the contrary, she is very proud that she completed the course and can now work as a beekeeper.
This morning the sky was clear and everything promised a hot day. The bees were not working, but were flying around the hive excitedly. At twelve o'clock in the afternoon there was a roar resembling the roar of a helicopter flying at low altitude, and thousands of bees rushed into the sky like a festive fireworks display. I looked sadly at these fireworks and waited to see where all this horror would go. The fact is that if an old queen bee flies out with a swarm, then the whole bunch of bees usually lands not far from their native hive. The old queen flies poorly and is generally tired of life. Another thing is the young leader of the bees - with her servants, she flies away in search of happiness, sometimes tens of kilometers from the apiary. The old lady was supposed to fly out today, and I hoped that she would land in our garden.
A roaring cloud of bees floated slowly over the apple trees towards the neighbor's orchard. The sunbathing neighbors, hearing the rumble, jumped up from their sun loungers with a squeal and immediately took refuge in the house. Roy passed their garden and began to go down to Uncle Petya's house, where he took a fancy to the apple tree growing in front of the entrance to the veranda, exotically decorating one of the branches with a large buzzing beard. Uncle Petya and his immense wife rushed from the garden to the veranda with amazing speed. They quickly slammed the windows and door and through the glass they stared in horror at the moving beard of bees.
I waved my hand at them and shouted that I would be back soon, just to go get the swarm. But when I returned home, I felt that I was hungry, and Mitya and I happily decided to have a snack. If the bees have chosen a place for themselves, they will sit for a while until the scout bees inform the queen about the new home they have found for the family. So Mitya and I had lunch, rested, and only then did I go after the swarm. From behind the glass of the veranda, the crimson-red and extremely angry faces of the neighbors, who were still sitting walled up on the veranda, hot from the sun, looked at me. I didn’t delve into their angry cries, but started swarming. The swarm was grafted quite high, on the top branch of an old apple tree. Mom rushed over and immediately ordered to bring a table, and then a stool. I had to climb this shaky structure: I am taller than my mother, but I also had difficulty reaching the bee’s “beard.” From the outside, thanks to my white robe and beekeeping hat, I reminded everyone of the well-known American Statue of Liberty. In one hand I held a hacksaw to cut off a branch with a swarm, and in the other I had a swarm, which I placed under this very swarm, so that at the moment when the branch broke, it would fall into it. Mom from below supervised the process and continuously gave valuable instructions. At that moment when the branch broke, I just turned my head in its direction, and the swarm deviated: the swarm safely fell on my head and clung to my entire hat and shoulders. It was a dark night for my unfortunate head: through the window on my hat covered with thick tulle, nothing was visible because of the thousands of moving furry bee bodies. And they weighed three kilograms, no less. I was scared that I was going to suffocate. Out of surprise and because of the absurdity of what happened, my mother began to have a fit of hysterical laughter. She sank to the ground and laughed until her tears flowed. "Very funny!" - I howled. My voice sounded muffled, like coming from a tank. “Very, very funny! Ooo!" - echoed my mother, still laughing. My teeth were chattering from horror, and I was afraid to move, so as not to crush some bee, because then they would start biting furiously.
Moreover, some of the bees fell on the stool, and now with a sad howl they were climbing up my legs to the general heap. Some have already managed to stuff themselves into their trouser legs. “Do something!” - I hissed pleadingly. But my mother couldn’t even reach my feet, because I was standing on the table with a stool. Finally, she gathered her strength and rushed like an arrow into our house and, tearing the tablecloth off the dining table, managed to drag it through the bushes to the ill-fated apple tree. Only a mother is capable of this at a moment when her baby is in danger of death! Still sobbing with laughter, my mother climbed onto the table and, carefully turning away my pant legs, scraped off the idiots that had gotten into them with a ladle. Then I was able to sit down on a stool, and my mother collected the bees into a swarm from my hat and my shoulders. Fortunately, in one of the “portions” there was also a queen bee, and then the bees remaining on my clothes flew off to the swarm. I was free!
5'th of July. Aunt Lena came to visit us. And Aunt Lena wanted to relax in a hammock. She and my mother looked expressively in my direction. I was tired of attaching the hammock to the maples, and with my commands - “Lower!” Higher! Pull this rope, pull that rope!” — my relatives bothered me to death.
Aunt Lena twirled large curlers and, addressing me: “In the village, too, you need to be beautiful, and not walk around with unkempt hair,” she packed herself into a sleeping bag with buttons. To protect her from mosquitoes, I threw a piece of thick tulle over her face - it looked like a fresh Egyptian mummy. And she dozed off.
Shura and Dura were the first to discover this “bale” between the maples. They gently jumped into the hammock and began to swing pleasantly in it. Then Mitya climbed into the hammock. (The weight of the cats is 5 and 3 kg, Mitya’s is 12 kg.) Aunt Lena began kicking in vain in the sleeping bag, as Mitya immediately quickly began playing his favorite game, “Gnaw the enemy under the blanket!” and with a loud growl grabbed his aunt’s foot.
The cats unanimously moved away from Mitya’s stupid games and lay down on the tulle that covered Auntie’s face. (I later told her that she just had to bite Shura’s fat butt through the tulle, and he would have left.) Aunt began to frantically fight and roll, but this only led to the fact that her curlers and buttons on the bag were tightly entangled in the ropes of the hammock , and she found herself in the role of a fly wrapped in a web.
The additional weight of three pleasantly well-fed animals pulled the hammock to the ground, and here, between the maples, there is just an ant road, and the insects joyfully attacked my aunt from below.
“Go and see how Aunt Lena is resting there. Shouldn’t I bring her fruit juice?” - Mom shouted to me from the kitchen. I finished reading the chapter and left the house. Even from a distance, by the way the unfortunate maples shook and bent in the calm, I suspected something was wrong. I was even more puzzled by the fact that our dear aunt was constantly swearing in a low bass voice, so I did not dare to approach the hammock, but returned for my mother. “It seems to me that she doesn’t need fruit juice anymore,” I said carefully. “What-oh?!” - Mom exclaimed and rushed to the maples. With three loud slaps, she freed her aunt from the beast and began to untangle her from the ropes and rags and shake her off the ants. “I’ve already said goodbye to life!” - the shaggy and flushed Aunt Lena whispered, sobbing. Mom threw a stern look in our direction, and the cats, Mitya and I chose to immediately disappear.
July 15. Mom said that today we must definitely look at the green ray. Every year in July, when the upper layers of the sea warm up, the last glow of the setting sun is green. It can be seen in clear weather and only when the sea is calm. In mid-summer the sea is bright, it still retains the reflection of the white night, and yellow sand and pink stones shine through the clear water.
When the red ball of the sun sank to the horizon, mom, me, Mitya, Kukken in the cage and the cats huddled on the hill. We were surrounded by hordes of mosquitoes and began to frantically drink blood, swelling up and becoming like a setting sun. But it hovered above the horizon and did not seem to move. “The earth has stopped!” — I joked darkly. The neighbors were returning from the sea after swimming and, seeing our “family portrait” surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, they stopped in unison. “What are you looking at there? We want it too!” - and they screamed and climbed up to us on the hill. It was getting a bit crowded. The sun sank only half into the sea. Another neighbor joined us. The dog Vanya rushed with her, who instantly drove the cats onto the maple tree. From the sun, a pink path stretched across the water towards the shore, and a family of swans with three children swam into it. Beauty!
At that very moment, when the water closed over the sun, Mitya started a fight with Vanya, but we didn’t have to separate them - they themselves ran away in fright, because everyone shouted: “Hurray!” The last ray of sun was bright green. My neighbors and I started shouting and hugging joyfully, and no one wanted to leave. And for a long time in the pink twilight we all sat on a hillock and talked quietly, while birds screamed on the sea and fishermen’s boats swayed. What a pity that summer in the north is so short!..
July 20. A neighbor, fisherman Uncle Volodya, came to us and, theatrically wringing his hands, said: “We pulled a wounded bird out of the nets. The fishermen might make soup out of it, you know them,” and made big, expressive eyes. I ran to the shore. Under the fish box sat a large bird, the size of a goose. Having difficulty getting it out of there, I took the bird home. Luckily for me, the bird was very heavy and pulled my hands away, so when it suddenly straightened its long neck and tried to peck me in the eye, it only reached my lip, which it successfully grabbed with its beak and pulled down, tearing it somewhat. I steadfastly endured the pain and, hugging the bird even tighter to me, ran home. Mom, who was reading on the veranda, dropped her book when she saw us. “Lord, look at yourself!” - she was horrified. Taking a quick glance in the mirror, I saw that blood was flowing from my torn lip, my mouth was swollen and looked like a painted smile of a clown.
A loon (we learned later that it was a loon from the reference book “Birds of the USSR”), with its neck drawn in, was intensely watching us with two red and angry eyes. Periodically, she uttered loud vile screams, somewhat reminiscent of a cat, and pecked. I sat her down on the grass, and she crawled on her belly, pushing off with her paws, as if she were swimming. “Maybe she has something broken? “Put it in the bathtub for watering,” my mother gave advice, trying not to get close to the bird. In the bath, the loon quickly moved its paws and flapped its quite healthy wings. The bird had amazing plumage, similar to fish scales: dense and shiny. The juvenile loon was white with gray spots. We decided to take it to the bay and there, on the shallows, to see if the bird could swim.
Back to the sea, I carried her under my arm, tail first, so that her head was behind my back. But even here the loon managed to pinch me painfully on the buttock and leg a couple of times. Mom walked sternly behind her, and Mitya trailed behind her. I went knee-deep into the water and carefully released the bird. Having frozen for a second, the loon suddenly dived and... disappeared! She was nowhere to be found! “Where did she go? Maybe she drowned? - Mom looked around the bay in amazement. Several minutes passed, seemingly endless. Suddenly we saw a bird emerge about fifty meters from us, take a convulsive breath of air and dive again, and now it appeared almost on the horizon. “It’s good that she is safe and sound. We would have suffered with this crocodile,” I said tiredly, remembering my torn lip and the loon’s beak, covered on the inside with small hooked teeth (so that the caught fish would not slip out). Shifting from foot to foot, Uncle Volodya came up to us, but when he saw my mother’s reproachful look, and most importantly, my bloody face, he groaned and quickly took out a huge, about five kilograms, bream from the box. Then he “bleated”: “Well, you know, it so happened that, well, we were, in general, joking! Don't be angry!" But we didn’t even think about it. When else will it be possible to get such a close look at such a rare and amazing bird as the loon?
August 19. I was just about to go to bed when I heard Kutya, who was chained up, barking furiously at the neighbors. I didn’t want to crawl out of the house in the rain, but I still took a bucket and a poker and went to the doghouse.
I don’t know why, but it is in August that hedgehogs come down from the mountain. It seems to me that they are attracted by the smell of rotten fish, always lying in front of Kutina’s booth. Kutya, bored and chained, sadly looks at his bowls of food. While the dog is dozing, impudent magpies and crows sneak from all sides to his bowls and steal food across the lawn, but as soon as the dog opens one eye, they noisily fly up onto the fence. And the stupid hedgehogs keep climbing onto this lawn in front of the booth. It is clear that Kutya hates them because he smells rats in them. If the hedgehog does not have time to curl up into a ball, then everything ends tragically.
This is true! I quickly wrapped Kutin’s chain around the fence post and pulled the dog away from the hedgehog. Kutya was furious, but now he could no longer reach the animal. Then, with a poker, I rolled the hedgehog with its crumpled and slobbered needles from Kutya into a bucket and took it to my site.
My animals are indifferent to hedgehogs. Mitya makes big eyes and backs away, and Shura, who had an unpleasant experience with hedgehogs, immediately runs away. One day he decided to sniff the hedgehog, and he jumped up and stuck his needles into the cat's nose. Shura screamed, flew a meter into the air, rushed into the house and pressed his paw to his wounded nose all night in his sleep.
In the morning the hedgehog did not leave, but, gloomily curled up in a ball, remained in the same place where I left him. He was not tempted by the food - he was very scared. I decided to take him to the mountain where he came from. Having rolled the hedgehog into an old jacket, I began to climb the slippery mountain after the rain. During the ascent, I told him not to be afraid, that he would soon rest and get better, the main thing is that he should no longer get carried away with rotten fish, and everything like that. My feet were slipping and sliding on the wet clay, and I was panting like a hedgehog. Finally, I chose a place that was safe for the animal and unfolded my jacket. And suddenly the lump of hedgehog quickly spun in my hands and, in turn, turned around - to face me. The hedgehog looked at me very carefully and reached his nose towards my face. We looked at each other for a few seconds - eye to eye! He had a wonderful red face and big brown eyes. Then I lowered the hedgehog to the ground, and he cheerfully disappeared under the roots of the trees.
All day I remembered this hedgehog's look. It was stupid to think (I'm not a complete idiot!) that he wanted to thank me for saving me. But my heart all the time sank with horror at the thought that if I had suddenly been too lazy to go out to the furious Kutin barking, then there would be one less wonderful beast in the world.
The best thing is to watch falling stars in nature, somewhere in a field or on the seashore. In the city, even on a clear night, the sky is cloudy and not so beautiful.
The radio announced that an intense meteor shower was expected that night, and I, of course, was excited to see it.
“You can make a wish on a falling star,” I said joyfully to my mother.
I spent the whole day in anticipation of the night, but already at eleven my mother began to fall asleep and resolutely declared that she was going to go to bed immediately and did not give a damn about these stars. She didn't want to make any wishes because her only desire was to sleep. I was indignant at such prose of life and began to wait alone for the middle of the night.
At one in the morning, yawning and shivering from the coolness of the night, I went out onto the village road so that the sky would not be obscured by trees, and, raising my head, began to look. The village was already asleep, it was very quiet, and the sky, which seemed huge and dense, all dotted with pulsating stars, covered me like a cup. I looked at him without blinking until I felt dizzy, but the stars were in no hurry to fall to the ground.
And then they suddenly slid down one after another, disappearing into the forest on the mountain. They fell so quickly that I didn’t have time to make wishes, and I forgot about them at the sight of such beauty!
Suddenly, among the small stars, a large neon blue star sparkled and, tracing the sky with a zigzag tail, also bright blue, fell into the forest. I couldn’t stand it and rushed to wake up my mother.
Yawning displeasedly, mother appeared on the threshold. Having turned off the light on the veranda, I went to the gate, but on the path I suddenly stepped on something large and soft. This “something” howled in a bad voice and grabbed my leg. I also screamed in horror and tore my cat Shura off my leg, which I stepped on in the dark. Mom started laughing hysterically and finally woke up.
We went out the gate and looked at the stars. And we were lucky - we saw a huge orange-red star with a long fiery trail. She traced the sky in the east and lingered in the sky longer than the others. My wish to see a miracle has come true!
And then our neighbor Aunt Nina quietly approached us, who was reading on the veranda and heard our wild screams, and we all began to look at the sky, rejoicing in it, and the stars, and the beauty of the August night.
August 31. Summer has quickly come to an end. I no longer regret that I spent it at the dacha, although I didn’t read anything, didn’t draw anything, didn’t see anything except what I told about. No overseas countries, noisy parties, glossy magazines and fashionable celebrities. But now I wouldn’t trade my summer life in this small northern village for all the joys of the capital for anything in the world. I look out the window at the gray city houses around me, and I keep wondering how my animals and birds are doing without me. Maybe they remember me too? It’s unlikely, they just live for themselves and are happy.
Many people love animals, but somehow abstractly, from books or movies, completely not noticing in everyday life that there are many eyes, paws, and tails around them.
Life is a strange thing. Take and dye strands of hair in different colors - nothing could be easier! It’s easy to be rude to a nosy woman who decides to make a remark! But picking up a dirty, unhappy kitten on the street (and not necessarily taking him in, but just making the poor fellow’s life better) is difficult.
“Where do you hang around all the time?” - Mom is angry. Where? In the clouds, of course, away from this stupid, dirty and dark city in the fall. I’m still thinking about how to make one of my dreams come true: when migratory birds return in the spring, especially geese, which are vilely hunted, then along the entire route of their flight - stand hand in hand with those people who care about the fate of the still “living” nature , and thus protect and protect the birds flying home. Hey, join me!
The story is published in abbreviation.
This story was written for the short story competition “Good luck!” on the server http://www.fantasy-worlds.ru. Topic: Cybernetization of space and personality, but the topic was not very suitable and what happened was what happened... And please don’t judge too harshly... summer, heat, dacha and nostalgia...
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There are no dachas in any country except the post-Soviet ones. “There” people rent villas, bungalows to take a break from the bustle of the city... Moreover, the key word in the previous phrase is “relax”! But only our citizens are looking forward to the weekend - and after a week of work they go to work on their dacha acres. This is the national pastime... But not everyone has fun like this - some summer residents indulge in doing nothing, using the labor of relatives. Take our family for example...
We have a rather large family: my husband and I, my mother Antonina Grigorievna and three offspring: daughter Yulia. A very smart young lady of twenty years old. Eighteen-year-old son Nikita and youngest, fourteen-year-old Lenchik. The tradition of spending every weekend from May to October at the dacha is so old that no one even tries to break it. We are going there in full force. My husband gets behind the wheel of the car, my mother sits next to me, Yulia and Lenchik sit behind me, and Nikita accompanies us, like distinguished foreign guests, on a motorcycle. The honor escort is supposed to ride in the back, but I get nervous when I don't see my son on the highway and he rides in front. Sometimes Nikita gets tired of being dragged along, and he tries to break away from us. The husband gives a warning signal, and the son immediately slows down: if he doesn’t do this, then a control signal will follow - his father’s slap on the head.
At the dacha, everyone always does the same thing. Mom stands at the stove. Tolik, my husband, having had a quick bite to eat, declares: “Well, I’m off,” and plays preference with the neighbors. Lenchik - for the fishing rods and to the pond. He never brought a decent catch, but he manages to get inspired on the shore. After dinner, he writes poetry until the evening. As far as I know, they are all dedicated to the girl Tanya, with whom Lenchik has been in love since the sixth grade, but does not dare admit it to her. He wants to write a masterpiece so that when she reads it, she immediately understands everything. But the masterpieces still don’t come out, the scribbled pages are mercilessly burned by the author in the fire, and Tanya continues to be in the dark about Lenchik’s feelings.
Nikita lies in the cold from morning to evening with some science fiction novel. Yulia (she studies at the Faculty of Biology), having changed clothes, rushes to her favorite flower beds. She planted such flower beds in front of the house that all the inhabitants of the holiday village come to see it. Only on our site there are not only flower beds - there are also twenty-four fruit trees and beds on four acres. Guess which member of the household tends the garden? Oh, have you figured it out yet?
One day, having worked myself into a sweat at the dacha, I decided: this can’t go on any longer!
All week she hatched a plan for the revolution, and on Friday she called family members for a big meeting. “Tomorrow we’re going to the dacha,” she announced solemnly. - Everyone looked at each other: they say, what would you think, she discovered America! “I want everything to be fair.”
What do you mean?
What is unfair: some work hard. And others are throwing their weight around.
Well, you don’t have to work either...
Yes? - Mom was indignant. - With what. I wonder, will you eat if I don’t cook? You'll be the first to ask for food!
“And at home you’ll want some pickled cucumber or strawberry jam for your pancakes,” I assented. — Someone needs to grow cucumbers and strawberries.
So what do you suggest? So that everyone at the dacha is hunched over?
I suggest a game: switch roles at least for a day. A drawing of lots will decide who will play whose role. Whoever draws the short match will start counting.
I got the short match. And I began to sing a nursery rhyme:
On the golden porch sat the king, the prince, the king, the prince, the shoemaker, the tailor... Who will you be? Speak quickly, don’t detain good and honest people... So, let’s write down: we have a king, Julia, Tsarevich
Nikita, the king - Tolya, the prince - mother, the shoemaker - me and the tailor - Lenchik. Now pull! “I put the hat with the papers I had prepared in advance on the table.
My daughter drew the lot first.
Tsar! - she read joyfully and, for clarity, placed an empty metal candy bowl on her head.
Well, if everyone is like Yulia. If he pulls out his “code”, the game won’t work!
But surprises began...
What? Should I cook the food? - Lenchik howled. - But I can’t!
It’s okay, I’ll tell you what and how. - Grandmother encouraged. She looked extremely pleased: she got a piece of paper with the word “King”, and, therefore. Neighbors' preference.
Fishing and poetry? - Nikita drawled. - And what. Not the worst option. It might even be funny.
According to the law of supreme justice, my husband got a garden and a vegetable garden, but I
lying on the grass with a book.
Shall we start the game? - I asked on Saturday morning, opening the country house.
Let's begin! - Yulia shouted, grabbed flower seedlings from the trunk and rushed to her favorite flower beds.
“Easy,” Nikita chuckled, fiddling with fishing rods on the veranda.
Lenochka, I put a certified book with bookmarks on the table in the summer kitchen for you. Not small, you'll figure it out. Well, I'm off. - Mom said.
This could no longer continue: some work hard, while others have fun! So I decided to offer my family a game: switch roles and see what happens. The result exceeded expectations...
Antonina Grigorievna, preference game is difficult. You'll be blown to smithereens! - Tolya could not resist the malicious teasing.
Do you think I only know how to roll cutlets? - Mom retorted no less sarcastically. - And I’ll lose, that’s okay.
Lenchik, whining a little, finally began peeling the potatoes. Tolya, with the air of a great martyr, went to the garden to collect Colorado beetles from potato tops. And I lay down on a blanket spread under a spreading apple tree and opened the book.
Nikita, passing by with fishing rods and a bucket in his hands, suddenly bent down and looked at the cover.
Hey, we agreed: don’t break the rules! Now I’ll bring you my reading instead of this crap.
With a sigh, I looked at the romance novel I had bought the day before, and a minute later, with an equally heavy sigh, I placed the volume my son had brought in front of me. "Robert Sheckley. Stories,” I read on the cover. I've never been into science fiction. Surely some kind of nonsense...
You may not believe it, but I was so carried away that I stopped reading only a few hours later, when Nikita returned from fishing and brought two hefty tench. And I cleaned them myself. And then Lenchik, who was introduced to the culinary art for the first time and suddenly developed a taste for it, began to fry fish with pleasure.
What kind of poetry do you usually write?
- Nikita loomed over him. — Love lyrics, or what? So, we need something like a sonnet or text for a serenade... Well, I'm off...
When I finished reading the last story. the day was drawing to a close. “We need to ask Nikita for something else about this Sheckley. He writes great!” - I thought, stretching sweetly.
Ma, will you eat? - asked the surprisingly cheerful Lenchik. — I made soup. And fried the fish. And marinated the meat for kebabs...
Make me some tea. - I asked and sat down on the porch. She just sat and looked at the red disk of the sun, its lower end caught on the neighbor’s roof.
Groaning, Tolya hobbled over.
Tired? — I asked sympathetically.
My back hurts a lot.
This is out of habit. Sit down... Would you like me to apply some ointment to your lower back?
Later. Let’s sit...” He put his arm around my shoulders. — Do you think the potato harvest will be good?
This had never interested him before! Apparently, the fight against the Colorado potato beetle had such an impact...
Lenchik came running with his eyes burning with excitement.
Mom, dad, Nikita wrote such cool poems!!!
It’s a pity to burn... - I was upset.
What are you burning?! I'll rewrite them and put them in Tanya's mailbox.
Son, do you know what it's called? Pure plagiarism! - said Tolya.
And I admit that I didn’t write them. Then, when she loves me...
The older children came up, sat down on the railing, and began to whisper: Nikita was asking Yulia about one of her classmates.
Mom was the last to catch up. She defiantly waved several bills in front of Tolina’s nose. "Here! I won twenty-seven hryvnia!” She sank down to the bottom step, humming softly.
The air smelled of fire smoke, Julian lilies, and a little pine needles. These familiar dacha smells were clearly mixed with another one - the smell of love, friendship, joy. This is the aroma that should hover over every happy family.
And the porch on which we were sitting was not gold at all, but the most ordinary one - wooden, but there was more than enough room on it for six good and honest people.
She calls the crow.
She loves the dog. Still would! Every time she digs potatoes, Charlie tries to help her. sits next to him and digs the ground with his front paws.
Helper! The best nanny for Alik, a friend of the girls. And no other dog dares to approach. Charlie bravely attacks even those dogs that are much larger than him.
Having had enough of a swim, everyone climbs up the rocky shore and goes home, taking with them canisters of spring water. Grandma has a lot of things to do. We need to cook dinner, weed and water the beds, and pick the berries.
-Karrla, Karrla!
Registration number 0054228 issued for the work:
Carla, Carla! - early in the morning Katya, a fair-haired girl in a short chintz dress, calls the crow. And almost immediately from the side of the forest, behind the vegetable gardens, an answer is heard:
-Karr!, karr! - and soon, slowly flapping its large gray wings, an old wise crow flies to a nearby birch tree. On summer mornings, the dazzling, gentle sun rolls out from behind the sharp fir tops to the accompaniment of a polyphonic bird orchestra. Somewhere in the distance a nightingale clicked.
Katyusha can't sleep. The younger sister, Anyutka, is sleeping sweetly, her wavy golden hair scattered across the white pillow. Sonya, she doesn’t see wonderful sunrises. Katyusha gets up early, taking with her a handful of cereals or crumbs stored yesterday.
She calls the crow.
Now Karla will fly up to feast on her. But for some reason the bird is in no hurry. Katya looked around. It's clear. At her call, Charlie ran out of the house - a black dachshund, with short legs, long luxurious ears and a tail as sharp as a car radio antenna, the favorite and darling of the family. Of course, the crow sees him and is afraid. Charlie thought the girl was calling him. And now they have already started the game, while the grandmother is preparing breakfast, and the grandfather is going to work.
Katyusha loves to dream. She will now come up with a fairy tale or a play, and then she herself will play all the roles in front of the attentive, grateful spectator Anyuta. When will your sister finally wake up? Then all six of them - the girls, grandmother, brother Alka, Charlie and the cat Murzik - will go to the spring for water. In the meantime, we'll have to wait.
I remembered Murzik’s tricks. Their cat is a scientist. All the neighborhood kids know him and come to see him bring things. Grandfather will throw him a piece of candy.
- Murzik, fetch! - the cat will quickly climb up the carpet onto the closet, take a piece of paper in its teeth and walk backwards down the carpet. He gets to the middle, looks down: how far is it still? And he goes down again. He will bring the piece of paper to his grandfather’s feet to the enthusiastic exclamations of the children.
And Charlie doesn't really like bringing things. He hates being ordered around. Only when they ask him nicely, and then if he is in a good mood. But Charlie can sing. And how he sings! He doesn't howl, but sings. Without words, of course. But he repeats sounds like notes and gets angry if he falsifies. Then he will bark and pause to get back into the rhythm. He especially loves gentle, drawn-out melodies. He ignores modern hits, as if they weren’t music, as if he didn’t hear anything. Or he’ll even go into another room, where his sensitive, royal ears will rest from the cacophony. Charlie loves to sing to the pipe. He rests his head on his short paws and echoes the melody with great feeling. If the pipe plays sharply and loudly, he breaks into barking.
Alka, a strong eight-month-old, looks with surprise at the singing dog, his faithful nanny, his soft living toy. Katya remembers with a smile how yesterday Charlie and Alka tried to pull over a large plush monkey with its ears torn off. Charlie pulled her towards him carefully, carefully so as not to drop the baby. And Alka, not having achieved his goal, began to whine. Charlie (what can you take from a fool?) threw the toy and went into another room. Alka quickly crawled after him. Charlie, making sure that his favorite toy was now free, returned and took it under the chair, put his head on it and fell asleep completely out of reach of the baby.
And yesterday Anya got lost. I was just here and now I’m nowhere to be found. They shouted, called her, looked for her in the closet, under the beds, in the attic, the girls’ favorite place to play. Nowhere. Katya even ran to the neighbors to ask if they had seen the girl. Nobody has seen. Grandma was already seriously alarmed.
And this eccentric girl calmly stood behind the tall peas and silently feasted, perfectly aware that they were looking for her.
-Why didn’t you respond, Anya?
-I ate. When I eat, I am deaf and dumb.
- Well, I taught you on my own. - Grandma grumbled.
Finally everyone woke up. Having washed and had breakfast, the cavalcade moved towards the lake. The grandmother and Alik and granddaughters walked ahead. Behind is Charlie. The last one was the cat Murzik. A short path wound between vegetable gardens and went down steeply. And then the expanse of the purest forest lake - a pond - opened before them.
The remains of the centuries-old taiga guarded this treasure day and night. What a beauty! There is a spring next to the lake. Drink from it and your thirst in the heat will be gone. No soda or Pepsi can quench your thirst like that. And there’s nothing to say about chlorinated city water. At the dacha you forget about ice cream. What is worse than scarlet garden strawberries? And the fragrant wild strawberries that melt in your mouth?
The lake is deep, the girls are afraid to swim in it, and therefore everyone walks further along the stream flowing from the lake to a small pool. Here the banks are high and steep. Don't go down. But you will walk a little through the undergrowth of young birches and aspen trees, there will be no-no silk meadows, and you will also enjoy drops of strawberries.
But here is a ravine along which you can go down to the stream. There is a favorite pool there with clean, washed fine sand, knee-high water and cattails growing along the shore. You won't find a better place for girls to swim. Charlie the dog has work here too. After all, although he is a city dweller, he is a hunting mink dog. And even though there is no game here except mice, there is still work to be done. He tries to dig out mice nests, stuffing his mouth with grass and earth. Then the grandmother grumbles, but patiently cleans it.
Having had enough of a swim, everyone climbs up the rocky shore and goes home, taking with them canisters of spring water. Grandma has a lot of things to do. We need to cook dinner, weed and water the beds, and pick the berries.
- Bab, show us the rainbow! - the girls ask. And now, in the grandmother’s hands, a stream of water from a hose breaks the sun’s rays and lights up a man-made rainbow. After all, their grandmother is not just a grandmother, but a physics teacher. She can tell a lot about this wonderful world.
The girls try to help her. They will sweep the floor and help sort out the berries. But you also need to play. To get to a secluded place - the attic, you need to climb up a long rickety ladder. And it's not that simple. A neighbor girl who was visiting them somehow got stuck on the third step. Grandma took it out herself. And Katya and Anya climb the stairs like two nimble monkeys. Still would! If in their city apartment there is a crossbar hanging in the doorway, which they have mastered well. All their free time they hung on it. And in the attic there was a secret unknown to adults.
Autumn was coming. The girls were taken home to a large distant city. how hard it is to leave... But what can you do - it's time to go to school.
The empty dacha stood with the windows boarded up for the winter.
But as before, two crows flew to the feeder, where now rarely, the visiting grandmother sprinkled food for Karla and her friend. But Karla continued to talk to her, laughingly shaking her head up and down, clearly pronouncing:
-Karrla, Karrla!