Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin spent the night with a golden cloud. Read online the book “The golden cloud spent the night And the golden cloud spent the night in Pristavkin” read
The golden cloud spent the night Anatoly Pristavkin
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Title: The golden cloud spent the night
Author: Anatoly Pristavkin
Year: 1987
Genre: Russian classics, Soviet literature, 20th century literature
About the book “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” Anatoly Pristavkin
A stronger, heavier, more painful theme than orphans in war, perhaps, cannot be found. It is impossible to remain silent about this, and there is no strength to shout, especially if you are a participant in the events you are talking about. Honestly, I don’t envy Anatoly Pristavkin. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is the apogee of what the author himself saw, experienced and suffered in childhood. This magnificent, but incredibly difficult work is included in. I recommend that you read “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.”
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The main characters of the book are the orphan brothers Kuzmina (in the orphanage they are called Kuzmenyshami). Actually, the story is told on their behalf. The world they live in is incredibly cruel. Children's thoughts also become corresponding: the brothers trust no one but each other; fight, cheat and steal. Dreaming of one day inhaling the smell of freshly baked bread...
Kolka and Sashka are constantly tormented by hunger, and all their thoughts are aimed only at getting food. For the sake of their goal, they do not disdain any methods. However, they do not disgust the reader; rather, on the contrary, they make them sympathize and understand. Are they guilty for being born at such a time? Are they guilty of being left without parents, in the cold and hunger of the post-war period? No. But there are still culprits.
And only adults can be blamed for all this. Having started the war, the higher-ups did not even think about taking care of millions of innocent lives. Well, those below them immediately began to steal from the completely poor, suffocating with their own greed. And only children, trying to survive, seem noble compared to all the others.
Children teach mercy and patience, love and respect for one's neighbor. Nationality is not important for them - a Chechen and a Russian can easily become best friends. However, the guys also let adults into their world - but only if they prove that they are worthy.
Anatoly Pristavkin himself visited the orphanage, on this train, and felt hunger, loneliness and the indescribable bitterness of loss. I am very, very sorry that he went through such an ordeal. But I can’t help but thank him for sharing his experience with the readers, if only so that we know about it...
What is it like to be hungry, to flee, to see the death of the only one loved one?.. Lord, let us never know this. Anatoly Pristavkin’s book “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is simply a must-read for all people in the world! So that the events described in it will never happen again.
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Quotes from the book “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” by Anatoly Pristavkin
“I think that all people are brothers,” Sashka will say, and they will sail far, far away, to where the mountains descend into the sea and people have never heard of a war, where brother kills brother.
There are no bad nations, only bad people.
For some reason, weapons are always beautiful. And even the more dangerous, the more beautiful it is usually.
We were afraid not because we could die. This is what happens to a terribly driven animal, which is overtaken by an unknown mechanical monster, without letting the light out of the corridor! We, like little animals, felt in our skin that we were driven into this night, into this corn, into these explosions and fires...
... and only the train knocked its wheels, confirming something: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...”
He would never reveal the secret of his stash to anyone. It's like giving yourself away. But Alkhuzur was now Sashka...
He couldn't stand this. He screamed, howled, screamed and, no longer remembering anything, as if he were the most hated enemy, he rushed at this crow...
Maybe from a terrible guess that no happiness awaits us in the new place... We just wanted to live...
Is it possible to extract from yourself, sitting in a comfortable Moscow apartment, that feeling of hopeless horror, which was the stronger the more of us there were! It seemed to multiply by the fear of each of us, we were together, but each of us had our own, personal fear! Taking by the throat!
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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.
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, looked 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 height of desire and dream, a crust of bread in order to subsist, 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 were dumped and fragilely rubbing their rough sides. 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 mangled 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.
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're talking about about soldering, a tiny piece that looks like a flat 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.
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
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, looked 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 left over 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 was 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 height of desire and dream, a crust of bread in order 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’ll 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 the Lord 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 on the table.
And - inhale, not with your chest, with your stomach, inhale the intoxicating, intoxicating smell of bread...
I didn’t dream about any tiny little things that could not help but remain after the dumplings were dumped and fragilely rubbing their rough sides. 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 mangled 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 twisted even more, and they forever lost faith in writers: if they don’t eat their 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; 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.
But the Kuzmenyshis 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 is lying!
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 vines, nimble, slippery, 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, what kind of airship to fly there on, and then he would ask: “Why? You can steal it closer..."
But it happened that Sashka would look dreamily at Kolka, and he, like a radio, would pick up Sashka’s thought on the air. And then he wonders 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 will be crooked throats all around, and then any, even Sashka’s most brilliant idea, will be screwed), the brothers headed straight to the nearest shed, located about 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 firewood was stored here, no one knew, only the Kuzmenysh 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 there was already an attempt to knock the lock off the bread slicer, and not only the Kuzmenys came up with such a bright answer! 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 Kuzmyonyshes.
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. This improbability was 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: adapt a canvas bag, a school bag.
Now we took turns going to school and taking turns digging: Kolka did the digging one day and Sashka did the digging one day.
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 if you have lunch or dinner there, 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 parts 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.
The teachers will be sent away, and the foolish cook, and 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. Urgently, furiously, they 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 were possible to persuade one of them, then no Caucasus would suffer from such a meeting. They will strip you down to the skin, eat them to bits, and smash their Kazbeks into pieces... They will turn them into a desert! To the Sahara!
That's what the Kuzmenyshi thought 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 Kuzmyonyshis 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 only one inedible string left.
Now a rag string was smoking: there was a recess made in the wall of the excavation - Sashka guessed - and from there there was a blue flicker, 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 is there?
– I don’t know... Interesting.
– I’m interested in where to go! - And Kolka angrily jabbed 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 loaves of bread: a lot of loaf of greyish-golden color. One is more beautiful than the other. Breaking off the crust is happiness. Suck it, swallow it. And behind the crust there’s a whole carload of crumbs, pinch them and put them 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 the 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, although she probably knew all those attached by name, with scissors she made “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.
For each coupon, two or three - 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, but she hasn’t gained weight!
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, I’m sure they’re not fools. Heading past the iron doors to the barn, they will make an extra hinge so that they 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, probably without even suspecting that someone would use a strong word to defend them for their strength.
As soon as the Kuzmenysh 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 probably thought out in two heads, not in one.
Buharik - but only one - they will eat on the spot. So that your stomach doesn't turn out from such wealth. And they will take two more biscuits with them and hide them securely. This is what they can do. Just three boogers, 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. 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 (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 just sighed and looked 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 is not mine!
Sashka fell silent, thinking.
The main events of this story are described in a brief summary. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is a work that is certainly worth getting acquainted with in the original. It raises important issues that are still relevant today. You will see this by reading the summary.
“The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” begins as follows. The author says that it was planned to send two older children from the orphanage to the Caucasus. However, they suddenly disappeared. But the twins Kolka and Sashka Kuzmin (Kuzmenyshi in orphanage) agreed to go. The fact is that the tunnel under the bread slicer, which they had made a week before, collapsed. The guys dreamed of eating their fill at least once in their lives, but it didn’t work out. Military sappers were called to inspect this tunnel. They said that without training and equipment it was impossible to dig it, especially for children. However, just in case, it was better to disappear from this war-torn Moscow region.
Arrival at Caucasian Waters
Caucasian Waters is the name of the station where they arrived. It was written on a piece of plywood nailed to a telegraph pole with charcoal. It is on the Caucasian waters that the action of the work created by Anatoly Pristavkin (“The Golden Cloud Spent the Night”) continues. Summary introduces the reader only to general outline with this place. The station building burned down during the fighting that took place here recently. During the many-hour journey made by the guys from the station to the village where the street children were located, they did not come across a single cart, car, or traveler. It was empty all around... The fields were ripening. Someone plowed them, sowed them, weeded them. Who are these people? Why is it so deaf and deserted on such a beautiful land?
The guys visit Regina Petrovna, and then go to a boarding school
The children arrived at the place and went to visit Regina Petrovna, a teacher whom they met on the road and whom they really liked. Then they headed to the village. It turned out that people still live in it, but secretly: they do not go out into the street, they do not sit on the rubble. No lights are lit in the huts at night. There is news at the boarding school: Pyotr Anisimovich, the director, has agreed to work at a cannery. Regina Petrovna enrolled the Kuzmenyshes there, although, in fact, they only sent the older ones, students in grades five to seven.
Unexpected meeting
Regina Petrovna also showed the guys an old Chechen strap and a hat, found in the back room. She gave the strap and sent the Kuzmenysh to bed, and she herself sat down to sew winter hats for the children from papakhas. And Regina Petrovna from the work “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night,” a summary of which we describe chapter by chapter, did not notice how the window sash silently opened, and then a black barrel appeared in it.
Fire and work at a cannery
There was a fire at night. Regina Petrovna was taken somewhere in the morning. And Sashka Kolke showed the cartridge case and many traces of horse hooves. Vera, a cheerful driver, began taking the children to the cannery. It was good there: the settlers were working, they weren’t guarding anything. The guys immediately picked up apples, plums, pears, and tomatoes. “Blessed” caviar is given by Aunt Zina (eggplant, but Sashka forgot its name). And one day Aunt Nina admitted that local residents were afraid of the Chechens who were sent to Siberia. Perhaps some of them managed to escape and hid in the mountains.
Relations with settler colonists
Relations with the settlers became very strained, as Pristavkin notes (“The golden cloud spent the night”). The summary continues with the fact that the colonists, always hungry, began to steal potatoes from the gardens, then the collective farmers caught one colonist in the melon patch. Pyotr Anisimov planned to hold an amateur concert for the collective farm. The last number showed Mitek's tricks. Suddenly, hooves began to clatter nearby, and guttural cries and neighing of a horse were heard. Then there was a crash and silence reigned. There was a cry from the street: “They blew up the car! The house is burning! Our Faith is there!”
Colony attack
The next morning it turned out that Regina Petrovna had returned. She invited the guys to go to the farm together. The guys got down to business. They took turns going to the spring, driving the herd to the meadow, and grinding corn. Then Demyan, a one-legged man, arrived, and Regina Petrovna managed to beg him to give him a ride to the Kuzmenysh colony to get food. The guys fell asleep on the cart. Waking up at dusk, they at first could not understand where they were. For some reason, Demyan was sitting on the ground, his face was pale. Noticing them, he told them not to make any noise. It turned out that the colony was ruined. The Kuzmenys entered her territory. The colony's yard was littered with junk, windows were broken, and doors were ripped off their hinges. There are no people. Quiet and scary.
Death of Sashka
The guys rushed back to Demyan. They walked around the gaps through the corn. Demyan was in front, and suddenly he disappeared, suddenly jumping somewhere to the side. Sashka rushed after him, only the gift belt sparkled. Kolka, suffering from diarrhea, sat down. And then from the side, above the corn, a horse's muzzle appeared. The boy fell to the ground. He saw, opening his eyes, a hoof right in front of his face. The horse suddenly jumped aside. Kolka ran, then fell into a hole, after which he fell into unconsciousness.
It's a peaceful blue morning. Kolka headed to the village to find Sashka and Demyan. He saw his brother standing, leaning against the fence, at the end of the street. Kolka ran to him. However, as he walked, his step began to slow down on its own: Sashka was standing in a very unusual way. The boy froze as he came close.
It turned out that his brother was hanging, and not standing, attached to the points of the fence under his arms. A bunch of corn was sticking out of the boy's stomach. Another cob was stuffed into the mouth. Sashka’s tripe hung down his pants below his stomach. It was later discovered that it was not wearing a silver strap.
Alkhuzur and Kolka
Kolka brought a cart a few hours later. He took his brother’s body to the station and sent it on the train: Sashka dreamed of going to the mountains. As you probably already guessed, the work “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is approaching its finale. A summary of the final events is as follows.
Much later, a soldier who had turned off the road came across Kolka. The boy slept in an embrace with another boy, Chechen in appearance. Only Alkhuzur and Kolka knew how they wandered between the mountains, in which the Chechens could easily kill a Russian boy, and the valley, in which the Chechen was already in danger, and how they saved each other from death. The children did not allow themselves to be separated and were called brothers - Kolya and Sasha Kuzmin.
The children were transferred from the children's clinic in Grozny to an orphanage. Street children were kept here before being sent to various orphanages and colonies.
The summary ends with these events. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is now included in the list of literature recommended for Russian schoolchildren for extracurricular reading. Nevertheless, it would be useful not only for children to get acquainted with the story school age. For wide range The work "The Golden Cloud Spent the Night" is intended for readers. The summary of this story was described only in general terms, and by turning to the original, you will find out the details of the events.
Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin is a representative of the generation of “children of war.” And not just those living in their families amid the devastation of war, but children from an orphanage, where everyone is for himself from an early age. The writer grew up in conditions in which it was easier to die than to survive.
This bitter childhood memory gave rise to a number of painfully truthful works describing poverty, vagrancy, hunger and the early adulthood of children and adolescents of that cruel time. One of them was the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night,” the analysis of which will be discussed below.
Prose of A. I. Pristavkin in world literature
Over the years, Pristavkin’s works were published in Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, France, the Czech Republic, and Finland. In December 2001, he became a presidential adviser Russian Federation. The writer is the USSR, as well as a number of literary Russian and foreign awards. Pristavkin was awarded the national German prize for youth literature.
His autobiographical prose is close and understandable to young readers. In modern schools, children are taught not only the analysis of the work “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.” Other stories are included in the range of youth reading: “Portrait of a Father”, “Between the Lines”, “Stars”, “Shard”, “Baby Relatives”, “Doctor”, “Steps Behind You”, “Shurka”, etc. All of them poignant, lyrical, revealing a person from the deepest, sometimes most unexpected side.
Subject of the work
In 1981, A. Pristavkin created his own famous work, which reached the general reader only in 1987. Analysis of the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is carried out in lessons; its study is included in many author’s literature programs for high school. Along with the general theme of war, the writer talks about the harsh and difficult childhood of the war generation, reflects on friendship and camaraderie, and love for his native land.
The most vivid feeling of the tragedy of life and the constant will to overcome it are visible precisely in the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin). The analysis of the work is carried out in the context of the drama of the difficult orphanage years, wartime, where, in spite of everything, lies a huge charge of optimism, faith in man, his strength, resilience, intelligence, faith in goodness. The story included the development of the theme of homeless orphanage childhood, which subsequently brought Pristavkin wide fame.
The main characters of the story
The main characters of the story, Sashka and Kolka Kuzmin, are pupils of an orphanage. They go to the North Caucasus, where they subsequently find themselves drawn into the terrible, even tragic realities of the mass resettlement of North Caucasian peoples. It was undertaken in our country in 1943 - 1944. This is how the description of the boys begins in the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin), the analysis of which follows below: “... The brothers’ names were Kuzmenyshi, they were eleven years old, and they lived in an orphanage near Moscow. There, the children’s lives revolved around the frozen potatoes they found, rotten potato peelings and, as the pinnacle of desire and dream, a crust of bread, just to survive, to snatch an extra war day from fate.”
Theme of moving and roads
At the beginning of the story, the director of the orphanage invites the brothers to go to the Caucasus, which has just been liberated from the Germans. Naturally, the guys were attracted by adventure, and they did not miss this opportunity. And so the brothers travel through the war, completely destroyed and the land that has not yet had time to rise after the fascist raids on an amazing, insanely fun train.
It is not by chance that A. Pristavkin touches on the theme of the road in his work. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night,” the analysis of which includes the problems of the road and life path heroes - this is a story-memory. The author complains: “There were half a thousand of us in that composition! Hundreds then, right before my eyes, began to disappear, simply die on that distant new land where we were brought at that time.”
Even on the road of the twin brothers to the Caucasus, a strange, ominous meeting took place - on the neighboring tracks at one of the stations Kolka Kuzmenysh discovered carriages. Black-eyed children's faces looked out from the barred windows, hands were stretched out, and incomprehensible screams were heard. Kolka, not really understanding that they are asking for something to drink, hands someone some blackthorn berries. Only a homeless boy abandoned by everyone is capable of such a touching, sincere impulse. The description of a child's soul torn to pieces runs through the entire story, complementing it literary analysis. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin) is a story of contradiction, where parallels are drawn between essentially opposite phenomena.
The Science of Survival: The Realities of War Through the Eyes of Children
During the war years, hunger overtook both children and adults, but for people like Kuzmenyshi, orphans from the orphanage, food was the main dominant feature of life. Hunger drives the brothers’ actions, pushes them to steal, to desperate and cunning acts, and sharpens their senses and imagination.
Kuzmenysh comprehend the science of survival, so they have a special value system - it is counted “from food.” And contact with adults begins with this: he didn’t take away, but fed, which means he’s good, you can trust him. In the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night,” the analysis is based on seeing military reality and the people in it through children’s eyes.
A dramatic turn in the fate of the heroes
It was difficult for the Kuzmenis to understand what was happening around them, to which they were eyewitnesses. When the worst thing happened to Kolka (he saw the brother of the murdered man hanged by the armpits on the edge of a fence, and fell ill from the shock), Sashka’s place was taken by the same eleven-year-old orphan Alkhuzor - a Chechen.
Kolka calls him his brother, first to save him from Russian soldiers, and then out of deeper feeling, when Alkhuzor saved Kolka from a Chechen gun aimed at him. This brotherhood of children is what A. Pristavkin exalts.
“The golden cloud spent the night”: analysis
The main leitmotif of the work is the friendship of lonely children who are in danger from everywhere, but who with all the strength of their souls defend their right to love and affection. Kolka and Alkhuzor were not the only ones in the orphanage, where they were taken, having been picked up half-dead in the mountains. Already lived there and Crimean Tatar Musa, and the German Lida Gross “from the big river,” and the Nogai Balbek. They all had a common bitter and terrible fate.
Children from orphanages, abandoned by the war to Caucasian regions far from their native places, are tragically faced with something that they are not yet able to understand or comprehend - an attempt by a totalitarian system to exterminate the lives of entire peoples. This is what runs like a “red thread” through the story, complementing its analysis.
“The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin) is a story in which constantly hungry, ragged boys who do not know the warmth and comfort of home learn from their own bitter experience the price of severe social injustice. They learn the lessons of spiritual warmth, black human hatred and unexpected mercy, cruelty and great spiritual brotherhood. The history of the Tomilino orphanage is only a small part of this tragic and inhumane process. But even in such cruel conditions, the colonists received lessons in eternal values: morality, goodness, justice, compassion.
Connection of times
The main characters of the story, Sashka and Kolka Kuzmina, go through many adventures and difficulties. They - street children - display the features of early maturation, so characteristic of the entire generation of children of the 1940s, who were faced with problems that were not at all childish. The story leaves a feeling of the indissoluble unity of the child with the adult world.
If we touch more deeply on the work “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” (Pristavkin), the analysis of the story should be completed by indicating main idea. In his story, Anatoly Pristavkin tries to show that the war and everything connected with it have not become reality. “I won’t hide,” writes the author, “more than once the thought came to me that they were alive, that somewhere there existed all these people who, without thought or fear, did His will in His (Stalin’s) name.”
Conclusion
By expressing the truth, exposing it in all its terrible guise, the writer may have removed some of the burden from his own soul, but he certainly did not lighten the reader’s soul. Although this is the whole of A. Pristavkin (“The Golden Cloud Spent the Night”) - everyone has their own analysis of his works, this is what the author sought. According to the writer, the meaning of real literature is not to delight the ear, not to “inspire a golden dream,” but to urge the reader in every possible way to think, feel, sympathize and draw conclusions. The book encourages spiritual work, the birth of doubts within oneself, and a re-evaluation of the familiar world. It serves not just as a description of “that present,” but also as a warning to the future.