The main idea of ​​the story of Paustovsky is a rook in a trolley bus. K. Paustovsky Grach in a trolleybus

...There was still that early spring, when one could guess the approach of heat only by barely noticeable signs - by the fog on the streets of Moscow, by the drops of this fog flowing from the black branches of recently planted lindens, and by the loose wind. Snow settles from it and becomes spongy. But this last sign, perhaps, does not apply to Moscow. Snow in Moscow by the end of March remains only in some yards, and on warm asphalt it has long been gone. Winter in Moscow is collected by conveyor machines on dump trucks and taken out of the city without a trace.

The incident I want to tell you about happened in trolley bus number five.

Muscovites, as you know, in trolleybuses and buses talk little, and read more. And in that trolleybus number five, which departed from the stop on Teatralny Proyezd, there was also the usual mood. But suddenly the conductor shouted:

Wait! What is it?

It’s a rook,” said a girl of about eight in fright.

Rook sat, warmed up, under the coat on the girl's chest, and only for a minute stuck his nose out from under the coat. But this was enough for the vigilant conductor to notice a bird in the trolleybus that was forbidden for transportation.

If you can’t take him, then I’ll get down, ”the girl said and blushed.

What are you, daughter! - exclaimed the conductor, stopped giving tickets and squeezed her way to the girl. - Sit down, don't worry. Oh what a good bird! What's this? Is it a rook?

The rook grew bolder and looked out. The conductor gently stroked his chiseled head with her finger and laughed.

Don't be afraid, he doesn't bite, - said the girl and beamed all over. He is very serious but kind...

In the section on the question of a rook in a trolleybus summary and the main characters urgently given by the author dry out the best answer is 1. Strict trolley bus conductor.
2. Girl with a rook.
Trolley bus passengers:
3. An old man with a cardboard folder.
4. An elderly railway worker.
5. An old woman in a headscarf.
6. Severe general.
7. A thin young man without a cap.
8. Young lieutenant.
9. Girl with laughing eyes.
10. Dissatisfied passenger.
A story about how an eight-year-old girl with a rook rode in trolley bus No. 5 in early spring. She was taking him to the zoo to be released into the wild. The girl was afraid that the conductor would not allow the bird to be taken, but the woman was delighted and even stroked the rook's chiseled head. And the passengers also approached the girl, admired and stroked the bird. And the stern general even talked about how, during the days of the war, the Nazis opened fire on starlings, whose cry interfered with them. And our soldiers returned fire and silenced the Fritz.
The little rook did not even suspect what feelings he aroused in the souls of ordinary passengers. Their spirits rose, smiles lit up their faces, and the general even drove past his stop, so he wanted to be close to the harbinger of spring.
And the passengers talked for a long time about the bird, Savrasov’s painting “The Rooks Have Arrived”, that “Moscow is gradually turning into a garden where every bird will be free, and soon the whole city will ring from morning to night with birdsong.”

It was no longer theft, but robbery in broad daylight. We swore to catch the cat and blow it up for gangster antics.

The cat was caught that evening. He stole a piece of liverwurst from the table and climbed up the birch with it.

We started shaking the birch. The cat dropped the sausage, it fell on Reuben's head. The cat looked at us from above with wild eyes and howled menacingly.

But there was no salvation, and the cat decided on a desperate act. With a terrifying howl, he fell off the birch, fell to the ground, bounced like a soccer ball, and rushed under the house.

The house was small. He stood in a deaf, abandoned garden. Every night we were awakened by the sound of wild apples falling from the branches onto its boarded roof.

The house was littered with fishing rods, shot, apples and dry leaves. We only slept in it. All days, from dawn to dusk, we spent on the banks of countless channels and lakes. There we fished and made fires in the coastal thickets.

To get to the shore of the lakes, one had to trample down narrow paths in fragrant tall grasses. Their corollas swung over their heads and showered their shoulders with yellow flower dust.

We returned in the evening, scratched by the wild rose, tired, burned by the sun, with bundles of silvery fish, and each time we were greeted with stories about the red cat's new tramp antics.

But, finally, the cat got caught. He crawled under the house through the only narrow hole. There was no way out.

We blocked the hole with an old fishing net and began to wait. But the cat didn't come out. He howled disgustingly, like an underground spirit, howling continuously and without any fatigue.

An hour passed, two, three ... It was time to go to bed, but the cat was howling and cursing under the house, and it got on our nerves.

Then Lyonka, the son of a village shoemaker, was called. Lenka was famous for his fearlessness and dexterity. He was instructed to pull the cat out from under the house.

Lenka took a silk fishing line, tied to it by the tail a raft caught during the day and threw it through a hole into the underground.

The howl stopped. We heard a crunch and a predatory click - the cat grabbed a fish's head with its teeth. He grabbed it with a death grip. Lenka pulled the line. The cat resisted desperately, but Lenka was stronger, and besides, the cat did not want to release the tasty fish.

A minute later the head of a cat with a raft clamped between its teeth appeared in the opening of the manhole.

Lyonka grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and lifted it above the ground. We took a good look at it for the first time.

The cat closed his eyes and flattened his ears. He kept his tail just in case. It turned out to be a skinny, despite the constant theft, a fiery red stray cat with white marks on his stomach.

Having examined the cat, Reuben thoughtfully asked:

What are we to do with it?

Rip out! - I said.

It won't help, - said Lenka. - He has such a character since childhood. Try to feed him properly.

The cat waited with closed eyes.

We followed this advice, dragged the cat into the closet and gave him a wonderful dinner: fried pork, perch aspic, cottage cheese and sour cream.

The cat has been eating for over an hour. He staggered out of the closet, sat down on the threshold and washed, glancing at us and at the low stars with his impudent green eyes.

After washing, he snorted for a long time and rubbed his head on the floor. It was obviously meant to be fun. We were afraid that he would wipe his fur on the back of his head.

Then the cat rolled over on its back, caught its tail, chewed it, spat it out, stretched out by the stove and snored peacefully.

From that day on, he took root with us and stopped stealing.

The next morning, he even performed a noble and unexpected act.

The chickens climbed onto the table in the garden and, pushing each other and quarreling, began to peck buckwheat porridge from the plates.

The cat, trembling with indignation, crept up to the hens and, with a short triumphant cry, jumped onto the table.

The chickens took off with a desperate cry. They overturned the jug of milk and rushed, losing their feathers, to flee from the garden.

Ahead rushed, hiccuping, an ankle-legged rooster-fool, nicknamed "The Gorlach".

The cat rushed after him on three paws, and with the fourth, front paw, hit the rooster on the back. Dust and fluff flew from the rooster. Something buzzed and buzzed inside him from every blow, like a cat hitting a rubber ball.

After that, the rooster lay in a fit for several minutes, rolling his eyes, and groaning softly. They poured cold water over him and he walked away.

Since then, chickens have been afraid to steal. Seeing the cat, they hid under the house with a squeak and hustle.

The cat walked around the house and garden, like a master and watchman. He rubbed his head against our legs. He demanded gratitude, leaving patches of red wool on our trousers.

We renamed him from Thief to Policeman.

Although Reuben claimed that this was not entirely convenient, we were sure that the policemen would not be offended by us for this.

Rook in a trolleybus

There was still that early spring when one could guess the approach of heat only by barely noticeable signs - by the fog on the streets of Moscow, by the drops of this fog flowing from the black branches of recently planted lindens, and by the loose wind. Snow settles from it and becomes spongy. But this last sign, perhaps, does not apply to Moscow. Snow in Moscow by the end of March remains only in some yards, and on warm asphalt it has long been gone. Winter in Moscow is collected by conveyor machines on dump trucks and taken out of the city without a trace.

The incident I want to tell you about happened in trolley bus number five.

Muscovites, as you know, in trolleybuses and buses talk little, and read more. And in that trolleybus number five, which departed from the stop on Teatralny Proyezd, there was also the usual mood. But suddenly the conductor shouted:

Wait! What is it?

It’s a rook,” said a girl of about eight in fright.

Rook sat, warmed up, under the coat on the girl's chest, and only for a minute stuck his nose out from under the coat. But this was enough for the vigilant conductor to notice a bird in the trolleybus that was forbidden for transportation.

If you can’t take him, then I’ll get down, ”the girl said and blushed.

What are you, daughter! - exclaimed the conductor, stopped giving tickets and squeezed her way to the girl. - Sit down, don't worry. Oh what a good bird! What's this? Is it a rook?

The rook grew bolder and looked out. The conductor gently stroked his chiseled head with her finger and laughed.

Don't be afraid, he doesn't bite, - said the girl and beamed all over. He is very serious but kind.

What kind of rook is it, - said the old man with a cardboard folder, - when it is a starling.

And you, citizen, if you do not know the appearance of birds, do not say so, - answered old man in the shape of a railroad.

Where do we know about birds in Moscow, - the old woman in the headscarf sighed. - We don't care about a rook, a starling, a sparrow or a swift.

Passengers began to get up and crowd around the girl. Everyone tried to stroke the rook. The rook let himself be stroked, but looked at everyone contemptuously and arrogantly.

Through the crowd, a stout, stern general struggled his way back from the exit door.

Where are you going, comrade general, - noticed a thin young man without a cap, - against the current?

And I'm going to the rook, young man, - the general answered and repeated in an impressive voice: - To the rook!

The general squeezed his way to the girl, took the rook from her, held it in his palm, as if weighing it, returned it to the girl and said:

Where are you taking him?

To the zoo. I will release it there.

We have a real feathered kingdom on the Seima River, - the young lieutenant suddenly said and respectfully looked at the general. The rook, of course, is a smart and independent bird, but it has no voice. And we have nightingales. Nightingales of the world. In the spring, our region sings at night.

Have you heard of Professor Manteuffel? asked the lieutenant general.

That's right, I heard, Comrade General!

He knows every bird habit. And he can explain. Well, as for all sorts of knees, whistles, chimes, trills, chokhs and all other bird music, there is no other connoisseur and lover in the Soviet Union. Just a magical old man!

Are you going here? a young woman with laughing eyes asked the general. - Or are you staying?

Current page: 11 (total book has 17 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 10 pages]

Rook in a trolleybus

There was still that early spring when one could guess the approach of heat only by barely noticeable signs - by the fog on the streets of Moscow, by the drops of this fog flowing from the black branches of recently planted lindens, and by the loose wind. Snow settles from it and becomes spongy. But this last sign, perhaps, does not apply to Moscow. Snow in Moscow by the end of March remains only in some yards, and on warm asphalt it has long been gone. Winter in Moscow is collected by conveyor machines on dump trucks and taken out of the city without a trace.

The incident I want to tell you about happened in trolley bus number five.

Muscovites, as you know, in trolleybuses and buses talk little, and read more. And in that trolleybus number five, which departed from the stop on Teatralny Proyezd, there was also the usual mood. But suddenly the conductor shouted:

- Wait! What is it?

“It’s a rook,” said a girl of about eight in fright.

Rook sat, warmed up, under the coat on the girl's chest, and only for a minute stuck his nose out from under the coat. But this was enough for the vigilant conductor to notice a bird in the trolleybus that was forbidden for transportation.

“If you can’t take him, then I’ll get down,” said the girl and blushed.

- What are you, daughter! - the conductor exclaimed, stopped giving tickets and squeezed her way to the girl. - Sit down, don't worry. Oh what a good bird! What's this? Is it a rook?

The rook grew bolder and looked out. The conductor gently stroked his chiseled head with her finger and laughed.

“Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite,” the girl said, and she beamed all over. He is very serious but kind.

- What kind of rook is it, - said the old man with a cardboard folder, - when it is a starling.

“And you, citizen, if you don’t know the appearance of birds, don’t say so,” answered an elderly man in the uniform of a railway worker.

“Where can we know about birds in Moscow,” the old woman in the headscarf sighed. - We don’t care about a rook, a starling, a sparrow or a swift.

Passengers began to get up and crowd around the girl. Everyone tried to stroke the rook. The rook let himself be stroked, but looked at everyone contemptuously and arrogantly.

Through the crowd, a stout, stern general struggled his way back from the exit door.

“Where are you going, Comrade General,” remarked a thin young man without a cap, “against the current?”

- And I'm going to the rook, young man, - the general answered and repeated in an impressive voice: - To the rook!

The general squeezed his way to the girl, took the rook from her, held it in his palm, as if weighing it, returned it to the girl and said:

- Where are you taking him?

- To the zoo. I will release it there.

“We have a real feathered kingdom on the Seimas River,” the young lieutenant suddenly said and respectfully looked at the general. The rook, of course, is a smart and independent bird, but it has no voice. And we have nightingales. Nightingales of the world. In the spring, our region sings at night.

Have you heard of Professor Manteuffel? asked the lieutenant general.

“That’s right, I heard it, Comrade General!”

- He knows every bird habit. And he can explain. Well, as for all sorts of knees, whistles, chimes, trills, chokhs and all other bird music, there is no other connoisseur and lover in the Soviet Union. Just a magical old man!

- Are you going here? a young woman with laughing eyes asked the general. Or are you staying?

"I'll get off at the next stop," the general replied, not in the least embarrassed by the young woman's question. “You think it’s important to walk two blocks back. I, you know, witnessed an amazing story. Near Leningrad during the war. It was in the spring. Starlings have flown in and are curling up, screaming over their birdhouses. And birdhouses, as a sin, in an empty lane between us and the Nazis. So they opened fire on the starlings from machine guns. You see, they were disturbed by the cry of starlings. Nervous youngsters got caught. Then our hearts could not stand it. "Ah well!" And our fighters opened such fire on the Fritz that they instantly calmed down.

“They stood up, then, for the starlings,” said the conductor. “That's what I thought as soon as you started talking, Comrade General.

- But how! After all, the starling has been accompanying the Russian people since ancient times.

“Now,” the conductor replied displeasedly. She still stood beside the girl and stroked the rook on the head. “People don’t have hearts!”

“Be quiet, citizen,” the old woman said to the displeased passenger.

“Spring, then, is coming soon,” the railroad worker sighed. - Cherry will bloom. And the birds will fly over Russia, carry their songs.

“Well, it’s time for me to leave,” the general said. - Goodbye, comrades!

Everyone said goodbye to the general. He went out, smiling at something, and so, smiling, and walked down the street to the long-missing stop.

And the passengers talked for a long time about the rook - a harbinger of spring, about Savrasov's painting "The Rooks Have Arrived", about the fact that Moscow is gradually turning into a garden where every bird will be free, and soon the whole city will ring from morning to night from bird singing.

“How amazing it is for us,” said the old man with the cardboard folder. - The government cares about the welfare of the people, and from this good, you see, something will fall even to the songbirds.

“That’s how it should work,” the thin young man without a cap replied with conviction.

- It's true! said the old woman in the headscarf. – I know it myself.

But here another story begins, which I will tell sometime later.

blue

A lame man in a small cap walked along the pebbles along the seashore and laughed out loud.

The boys fished for gobies and greenfinches from the rocks and shouted to each other about the fact that the red-haired Zhorka had borrowed a large crab from Vitka the captain for bait and had not returned it for days.

Noticing a laughing man on the beach, the boys became alert and fell silent. Apparently they were considering whether to stay on the rocks or whether it would be better to run away.

- No! shouted the smallest boy, stuttering with haste. - Not at all! This is a miner from Gorlovka. The one in the rest home.

Suddenly the boys shaded their eyes with their palms from the sun:

- He carries three flounders! From Quiet Bay. He laughs out of luck. And Vitka yells - "crazy!". He himself is a psycho, Vitka.

The boys, hurrying and pushing, climbed from the rocks to the shore and ran towards the lame man. As they ran, they shouted:

- Uncle, where did you catch them? For what? For salted kamsa or fresh? Oh, uncle, let us carry them. And don't pull! He let me carry it, not you. What a grip!

Surrounded by boys, the miner approached us. He was a tall, slightly stooped man with a thin face and narrowed eyes. He smiled, was proud of his prey and, obviously, was waiting for questions. And we - the Ukrainian writer Gorlenko and I - asked him, trying to hide our envy, how he caught these flounders, touched the prickly growths on their backs and were generally surprised at the unusual, as if flattened fish. The boys were noisy around.

It was a cheerful and restless tribe of little Black Sea people. Classes at school ended, and the boys all day long disappeared in deserted bays, cut off from the village by sheer cliffs.

Wild pigeons nested in the rocks overgrown with orange lichen. Flocks of thrushes flew up over the blossoming wild rose. There was a bitter smell of thyme and the coolness of the deep sea. Dolphins, snoring, somersaulted near the shore, chasing kamsa.

The boys sat out in these wild bays from the just wrath of their mothers and numerous aunts, from bored threats and reproaches: “Here, you wait, I'll get to you!”, “Look, what a clean boy Petya is. And who do you look like! .. "

The boys knew everything that happened twenty kilometers around. Everything was thoroughly known to them: when the mullet would go, how the fishermen caught the Black Sea katran shark (the dried tail of this shark served as the subject of a lively exchange for fishing cords, hooks and weights among the boys), who came to the rest house, how much power the fishing motorboat “Doves ", where you can dig up pieces of sulfur pyrites, "shimmering like gold", and in which strip of the beach are the most carnelian rolled by the sea.

They were very disposed to us vacationers, these little Black Sea people, and simply asked for various services, such as catching and drying a seahorse for us or unhooking a fishing cord with hooks, the so-called samolov, that was stuck among the pitfalls.

As soon as one of us caught a samolov while fishing, an incomprehensible cry: “Merekop!” Was carried along the shore, and all the boys rushed into the water to unhook (or, as they expressed it in fishing jargon, “to save up”) the samolov.

Merekop! Hook! This word amused visitors. The boys even began to be called "merekopshchik". Research undertaken to find the roots of the word "merekop" yielded nothing. The attempt to find out where the boys got the word "bonaclia" from, which meant complete calm in their language, failed.

In those days, "bonation" stood over the shores of the Eastern Crimea. The calm at dawn was especially good. It seemed as if the sky had descended overnight to the very earth and covered the mountains, steep capes, distant shores and the resting sea with its blue. Breathed cool and easy. A huge sun would rise, and in a light haze, here and there, a trembling brilliance would light up and immediately go out: either a sunbeam flashed on a rock washed by the surf, sparkled in the glass of a mountain gatehouse covered with tiles, or a bush of pink tamarisk shone through through.

Eastern Crimea was full of flowering and silence. It was a special closed country, not like all other parts of the Crimea. A country of dry ash mountains, fields glowing with red poppy corollas, thick sea blue and silence.

Hearing got used to the sound of the sea very quickly. He soon ceased to notice. Then, perhaps, only the only sound remained on these shores - the rustle of grass in the wind.

Eastern Crimea is a rich land. One could guess what was hidden in the local soil and in the depths of the only extinguished volcano Karadag in the Crimea from the many stones washed out by the sea from underwater caves.

Everything was there: blue granite, marble - sometimes yellow like ivory, sometimes pink, sometimes snow-white, smoky chalcedony, variegated agate, healing carnelian, chrysoprase, stones with a strange name "fernonpix", painted with complex patterns, green jasper, rock crystal, like water crystals, pumice, lava, small corals and many other stones sparkling on the sands damp after the storm.

Eastern Crimea is the land of history. Here the waves throw out Scythian earrings, shards of Greek vases, coins from the time of Catherine, bayonets of the defenders of Sevastopol, fragments of depth charges and rusty Nazi helmets. Fishermen now boil var for grinding scows in them.

People from various parts of the Union have now come to rest in this ancient and rich land. Recreation brings people together no less than work. We all quickly became friends, and it seemed to us that we had known each other for a long time. Only a miner from Gorlovka, due to his shyness, kept himself apart for the time being.

But now he sat down with us and said that for the first time he came to rest to the Black Sea with his wife Frosya, a nursery worker, and simply goes blind here from the blue and the sun. Until then, he had seen only one sea - the Sea of ​​Azov, and even then during the war, when he was wounded in a battle near Chongar.

As he spoke, he took several deep breaths and laughed. It was evident that he was resting here undividedly.

“My Frosya is still lagging behind,” he remarked and pointed to a thin young woman; she was walking along the beach and reading a book. - Everything counts. I will throw the cords into the drink, and she will sit in the shade of the rock and read. I'll change the place, but sometimes she won't notice. And even then, the book is good: “The sail is whitening” by Kataev.

Frosya came up to us, greeted us, took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat on the miner's forehead.

“Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry,” the miner muttered, and Frosya smiled weakly at us, as if justifying herself, and said:

He can't overheat. And he goes crazy with his flounder. From dawn until dark, sits on the sea. Dine - and then I drag him by force. That at work in the mine, that by the sea - my Styopa has one character.

She put a sea pebble on the open book so that the wind would not turn the pages, paused and smiled again:

- I noticed that when a person is resting, no matter how old he is, he becomes just like a little one. Here you are too,” she turned to Gorlenko, “every day you change the boys’ hooks for crabs. And once I even saw how you helped the beetle.

Gorlenko blushed and agreed that yes, there really was such a case.

The beetle worked for a long time, rolled up a large ball from all sorts of seeds, manure and the remnants of dry anchovy - a food supply for the winter - and rolled it up the steep path to its hole. The beetle groaned, strained, suffered, fell several times, but did not release the ball. Only at the very hole, the beetle, obviously, was exhausted, the ball slipped out of its tenacious paws, rolled down the mountain and fell into a deep ravine.

The beetle thrashed about in despair. Then Gorlenko went down into the ravine, found the ball, brought it and laid it near the hole.

The beetle moved its antennae, ran several times around the ball and finally rolled it into the hole.

- Lost work is always a pity - said Frosya. - And I read you. And I know it too. My sister told me about you. She is a gardener and works on a collective farm near Sumy.

- What did she say about me? Gorlenko asked apprehensively.

- As if you walked around the entire Kharkiv and Poltava regions. With an iron stick and a bag behind his back. Is this true?

The writer muttered something indistinct. He was taken by surprise.

- And my sister told me how in one village you cut hay for old women, for the mothers of our dead soldiers.

I heard about it too. I also heard that Gorlenko walks around many collective farms in Ukraine every summer, and there is, perhaps, no other such connoisseur of collective farm life among our writers.

On the collective farms he was well known - a thin, dusty, sun-black man with gray keen eyes. He had many friends among the peasants - from gray-haired grandfathers to young women and "little lads", those very well-known lads who, out of shyness, in response to questions, only scratched one bare foot on the other and, in exceptional cases, answered in a hoarse whisper.

Collective farmers consulted with Gorlenko about all their everyday affairs, and the women, sighing, said:

“Here, a man casts a heart of gold for the joy of people.

Gorlenko's knowledge agriculture were extensive and experienced. Whatever he talks about: about varieties of wheat, water mills, "mlyny", lack of water in rivers, towers and sugar content of beets - all this is due to some elusive features born of love for work, for people, for his amazing southern country, acquired in his transmission the features of real poetry.

Collective-farm life was not only material for books for him. She was his direct business, his biography. He "sick" for the "best life" for his fellow countrymen, not only in articles and books, but also in practice. Work was a sacred thing for him, an honorable duty, whether it was the long-term cultivation of a new breed of dairy cattle or the cultivation of a mirror carp.

Everywhere he brought captivating Ukrainian humor. It cannot be said that his path was strewn with periwinkles and marigolds. Everything predatory that was still hiding somewhere in the collective farms - crooked bookkeepers, exaggerated "heroes" who rubbed glasses Soviet power- all this was afraid of him and took revenge on him. The chairmen of other collective farms, arrogant and unfairly favored by gullible leaders, laughed at the fact that he went around Ukraine on foot, and did not come in his personal shiny car, as, in their opinion, a “real writer” was supposed to do. Yes, and some of the writers laughed at Gorlenko.

With whomever Gorlenko met, he imperceptibly for the interlocutor elicited from him everything that concerned his work, life, his knowledge. There was not so little from which he would not try to extract life experience.

Now in the Crimea he was interested in everything: multi-colored lichen on the rocks, iodine algae, caring for vineyards, varieties of Crimean Tobacco, the local names of each wind, and even the structure of the lungs of the divers, who hid for a long time under the water at the first whistle of a stone thrown into them by the “merekopshchiks”.

Sometimes We talked with Gorlenko about the future. This conversation most often arose in the morning on the shore. Perhaps because the silence and the brilliance of light over the still unawakened sea evoked confidence in the coming of new beautiful days.

“The future is determined not by lofty words about the welfare of people,” Gorlenko said, “but by painstaking and daily care for every ordinary person without exception.

A few days later, the four of us (not counting the all-seeing and ubiquitous boys) became so good friends that we went almost everywhere together. And it turned out that we, completely different people, have a lot of common thoughts and interesting stories for each other - about mines, the past of Donbass, steppe mounds, the recent war, the town of Genichesk, where Frosya grew up, collective farm forests, fishing traditions, poetry, writing craftsmanship and other equally remarkable things.

Frosya loved poetry most of all. Once, when Gorlenko, lying on the beach, began to read Pushkin's lines in an undertone: "The flying ridge is thinning the clouds ..." - she turned away and began to cry. But then she laughed, and the gleam of grateful tears in her eyes and the radiance of her smile, as it were, illuminated with new warmth the familiar words: “Evening star, sad star, your beam has silvered the withered plains ...”

We pretended not to notice Frosya's tears, and the miner said:

- That's amazing! Whatever the day, it is more interesting to live in the world.

Soon Gorlenko and I left by car to our north.

The poplars rustled along the sides of the road. The leaves of the forests rushed in fragrant heaps outside the windows of the car. Suddenly, in this greenery, lilac granite rocks, entwined with ivy, appeared. Flowed and tinkled, crossing the highway, transparent streams. Each time, in front of such a stream, the car slowed down, as if it wanted to get drunk.

Poppy petals flew in the wind in light flocks, like moths. A sheer stone threshold rose in the distance in the trembling hot air, and the driver seriously told that he saw mooring rings screwed into stones on this smooth mountain wall, since here, they say, there was a sea in ancient times.

At the morning market in Simferopol, everything shone with dew: jugs of milk, cold radishes, bunches of onions and huge peonies.

We were leaving, but the rest continued. The blessed Crimea did not want to let go of the pass to the north. For a long time the soft ridges of its mountains turned blue in the steppe.

We said goodbye to the Crimea only off the coast of Sivash, behind the Chongar bridge.

The hot car rested on a hillock in the feathery shade of the acacias. From there one could see the Sea of ​​Azov, filled with thick azure to the very brim in the red clay shores. On a cape above the sea, a village gleamed white, as if the gulls had sat down to rest among the curly greenery of low-growing gardens. Ego was the fishing town of Genichesk - the birthplace of Frosya.

Maybe that's why Gorlenko remembered Fros and the miner from Gorlovka and told me the story of their love and life. It turns out that he already managed to find out all this, ahead of me. I also noticed an almost childlike tenderness in Frosya's treatment of the miner.

Their story was amazing and quite simple.

In the battle near Chongar, the miner was seriously wounded. A nurse crawled over to him. It was Frosya. She bandaged him, but was immediately wounded by a shell fragment herself. Then the miner, almost losing consciousness, bandaged his savior.

Then they lay in the steppe for a long time until they were picked up and sent to the medical battalion. Frosya told Gorlenko that she had grown up an orphan, lived alone, and then on that windy night she heard the man she saved was breathing heavily next to her, and realized that he was not a stranger to her now, that they were related by a great power of compassion.

Muddy stars shone over the Sivash, reflected in its dead water, and Frosya thought that right now in the icy steppe among the prickly grasses near the shore of this rotten sea, lit by flashes of gunfire, she had found something that was stronger than death, stronger than grief, stronger than anything on earth. light, - a native human soul.

"That's all," Gorlenko said. “Life has not added any ornaments to their love. Let the writers invent decorations. But I think it's completely redundant.

I agreed with him.

Then, when the car was speeding along the wide highway and at twilight the Zaporizhzhya steppes were drowning on the sides, wrapping themselves in fogs and smokes, I thought that nothing special had happened during these days of rest on the seashore, except that the most simple people met there. Soviet people, their simplicity revealed so much mutual goodwill, fun, spiritual purity and devotion to their work that no extraordinary deeds are needed to appreciate and love this high tribe of people.

So sometimes the sound of a shepherd's horn is closer to the heart than the solemn roars of an orchestra, and a modest chamomile is dearer than all the fragrant splendor of tropical gardens.

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