I studied dictation well with French. Rasputin's "French Lessons". Literary dictation according to the story of V.G. Rasputin
I studied well, but I didn’t get along well with French because of pronunciation. I could easily remember the words, but the pronunciation with my head betrayed my hangar origin. French teacher Lidia Mikhailovna helplessly frowned and closed her eyes.
“No, I’ll have to deal with you separately,” she said.
So began the painful days for me. I covered myself later, blushed and gasped, and Lidia Mikhailovna, without respite, made me callous to my poor tongue.
Gradually, I began to pronounce the words fairly well, and they no longer broke off at my feet with heavy cobblestones, but called and tried to fly somewhere.
Involuntarily and imperceptibly, I felt a taste for the language and in my free minutes without any compulsion climbed into the dictionary, looked into the distant texts of the textbook. Punishment turned into pleasure.
(V. Rasputin) (110 words)
Assignment (student choice)
- Define the topic and the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe text, head it;
- what type and style of speech this text belongs to, prove your thought;
- define the type and means of communication proposals.
- Prove that the highlighted word is an adverb;
- parse the selected sentence;
- what spelling and punctuation rules can be illustrated by examples from the text?
- perform different types of analysis (phonetic, morphemic, morphological);
- explain the punctuation in a sentence with direct speech.
- Read the story of V. Rasputin, "French Lessons." Describe your impressions of what you read.
I studied well, but I didn’t get along well with French because of pronunciation. I could easily remember the words, but the pronunciation with my head betrayed my hangar origin. French teacher Lidia Mikhailovna helplessly frowned and closed her eyes.
“No, I’ll have to deal with you separately,” she said.
So began the painful days for me. I covered myself later, blushed and gasped, and Lidia Mikhailovna, without respite, made me callous to my poor tongue.
Gradually, I began to pronounce the words fairly well, and they no longer broke off at my feet with heavy cobblestones, but called and tried to fly somewhere.
Involuntarily and imperceptibly, I felt a taste for the language and in my free minutes without any compulsion climbed into the dictionary, looked into the distant texts of the textbook. Punishment turned into pleasure.
(V. Rasputin) (110 words)
Assignment (student choice)
It is strange: why do we, like our parents, each time feel guilty before the teachers? And not for everything that was at school - no, but for what happened to us after.
I went to fifth grade in forty-eight. It’s more correct to say that I went: in our village there was only an elementary school, therefore, in order to study further, I had to equip from home fifty kilometers to the district center. A week earlier my mother had gone there, convinced my friend that I would be staying with her, and on the last day of August, Uncle Vanya, the driver of the only one and a half truck, unloaded me on Podkamennaya Street, where I was to live, helped me bring a knot into the house with bed, encouragingly patted a goodbye on the shoulder and drove off. So, at eleven, my independent life began.
Hunger that year has not yet let go, and my mother had three, I am the oldest. In the spring, when it was especially hard, I swallowed it myself and forced the little sister to swallow the eyes of sprouted potatoes and grains of oats and rye to plant plantings in the stomach - then you won’t have to think about food all the time. All summer we carefully watered our seeds with clean Angara water, but for some reason we did not wait for the harvest or it was so small that we did not feel it. However, I think that this venture is not entirely useless and it will come in handy to a person someday, and out of inexperience we did something wrong there.
It is difficult to say how my mother decided to let me go to the district (we called the district center a district). We lived without a father, we lived very poorly, and she apparently judged that there would be no worse — nowhere. I studied well, I went to school with pleasure and admitted to reading and writing in the village: I wrote for old women and read letters, went through all the books that ended up in our plain library, and in the evenings I told them all sorts of stories, adding more from myself. But they especially believed in me when it came to bonds. A lot of people accumulated them during the war, pay tables often came, and then the bonds were brought to me. It was believed that I had a happy eye. Winnings did happen, most often small ones, but the collective farmer in those years was glad for any penny, and then completely unexpected luck fell out of my hands. The joy from her involuntarily passed to me. I was isolated from the village guys, even fed; one day, Uncle Ilya, a generally mean, squeezed old man, won four hundred rubles and, in the heat of time, heated a bucket of potatoes for me - in the spring it was a considerable wealth.
And all because I understood the numbers of bonds, my mother said:
Your brainy guy is growing. You are this ... let's teach him. The letter will not be wasted in vain.
And mother, contrary to all the misfortunes, gathered me, although before that no one from our village in the area had studied. I was the first. Yes, I did not understand how it should be, what was ahead of me, what tests awaited me, darling, in a new place.
I studied well here. What was left for me? - then I came here and I had no other business here, but I still did not know how to relate after what was assigned to me. I hardly dared to go to school, if I had not learned at least one lesson, therefore, in all subjects, except French, I kept fives.
I didn’t get along with French because of pronunciation. I easily memorized words and phrases, quickly translated, coped with spelling difficulties very well, but pronunciation with my head showed all my Angarsk descent right up to the last knee, where no one had uttered foreign words for the first time, if I even suspected their existence. I spied in French in the manner of our village tongue twisters, swallowing half of the sounds as unnecessary, and firing off the other half with short barking bursts. Lydia Mikhailovna, a French teacher, listened to me, helplessly wrinkled and closed her eyes. Of course, she had never heard anything like it. Again and again, she showed how the nasal pronunciations, vowel combinations were pronounced, she asked to repeat - I was lost, my tongue in my mouth became stiff and did not move. Everything was wasted. But the worst thing started when I came from school. There I was involuntarily distracted, all the time I was forced to do something, the guys slowed me down there, along with them - you want to, you had to move, play, and work in the lessons. But as soon as I was left alone, a longing immediately fell upon me - homesickness for the village. Never before even for a day did I go out of my family and, of course, was not ready to live among strangers. So I felt bad, so bitter and shameful! - worse than any disease. I wanted only one thing, dreamed of one thing - home and home. I lost a lot of weight; my mother, who arrived in late September, was scared for me. With her I fastened, did not complain and did not cry, but when she began to leave, I could not stand it and chased the car with a roar. My mother waved my hand from the body, so that I fell behind, did not disgrace myself and her, I did not understand anything. Then she made up her mind and stopped the car.
Get ready, ”she demanded as I approached. Enough, weaned off, let's go home.
I came to my senses and ran away.
But I lost weight not only because of homesickness. In addition, I was constantly malnourished. In the fall, while Uncle Vanya was transporting bread on his lorry to Zagotzerno, which was not far from the district center, they sent me food quite often, about once a week. But the trouble is that I missed her. There was nothing there, except for bread and potatoes, occasionally the mother stuffed cottage cheese into a jar, which she took from someone for something: she did not keep a cow. They seem to bring a lot, if you grab in two days - it's empty. I soon began to notice that a good half of my bread was disappearing in some mysterious way. Checked - it is: it was not. The same thing happened with potatoes. Who was begging - Aunt Nadia, a loud, coiled woman, who alone poked around with three children, one of her older girls or the youngest, Fedka - I did not know, I was afraid to even think about it, not to follow. It was only a shame that my mother was tearing the last off from her, from my sister and brother, but she still walks by. But I forced myself to accept this. It will not be easier for a mother if she hears the truth.
Hunger here was not at all like a famine in a village. There always, and especially in the fall, it was possible to intercept, tear, dig, lift something, a fish went in the Angara, a bird flew in the forest. Here, everything around me was empty: alien people, alien gardens, alien land. A small rivulet on ten rows was filtered with nonsense. I once sat on a Sunday all day with a fishing rod and I caught three little minnows, with a teaspoon, of minnows - you won’t get too much from such fishing. I didn’t go anymore - what a waste of time to translate! In the evenings he hung around at the teahouse, in the bazaar, remembering how much they were selling, choked on his saliva and walked back with nothing. Aunt Nadi stood on the stove with a hot kettle; tossing a boiling hot water and warming his stomach, went to bed. In the morning, back to school. And he reached that happy hour when a lorry drove up to the gate and Uncle Vanya knocked on the door. Having become hungry and knowing that my grub still will not last long, no matter how much I save it, I ate up to the blade, to the cramps and stomach, and then, after a day or two, I again set my teeth on the shelf.
* * *
Once, back in September, Fedka asked me:
Are you not afraid to play "chick"?
What kind of "chick"? I did not understand.
The game is like that. For the money. If there is money, let's go play.
And I don’t have it. Let’s go so, at least let's see. You will see how great.
Fedka led me out of the gardens. We walked along the edge of an oblong, ridge, hill, completely overgrown with nettles, already black, tangled, with drooping poisonous bunches of seeds, we got over, jumping in heaps, through an old dump and in a lowland, in a clean and even small glade, we saw the guys. We have come. The guys were wary. They were all about the same age as me, except for one - tall and strong, noticeable by his strength and power, a guy with a long red bangs. I remembered: he went to seventh grade.
Why else did you bring this? he said displeasedly to Fedka.
He is his own, Vadik, his own - Fedka began to make excuses. - He lives with us.
Will you play? - asked me Vadik.
There is no money.
Look do not blather to someone that we are here.
Here's another! - I was offended.
They no longer paid attention to me, I stepped aside and began to observe. Not all six or seven played, the rest only stared, rooting mostly for Vadik. He hosted here, I understood this immediately.
Understanding the game was worthless. Each put ten kopeks on the stake, the stack of coins was tilted upside down to a platform limited by a thick line two meters from the cash register, and, on the other hand, a round stone washer was thrown from a boulder, which had grown into the ground and served as a stop for the front leg. It was necessary to throw it in such a way that it rolled as close to the line as possible, but did not go beyond it - then you got the right to be the first to break the cash register. They beat everything with the same puck, trying to turn it over. coins on an eagle. Turned over - yours, beat further, no - give this right to the next. But the most important thing was to cover the coin with the puck even when throwing, and if at least one of them was on the eagle, the whole cash register would go into your pocket without talking, and the game would start again.
Vadik was cunning. He walked to the boulder after all, when a complete picture of the sequence was before his eyes and he saw where to throw in order to go forward. Money was delivered first, to the last they rarely reached. Probably, everyone understood that Vadik was cunning, but no one dared to tell him about it. True, he played well. Approaching the stone, he squatted a little, squinted, pointed the puck at the target and slowly, smoothly straightened up - the puck slipped out of his hand and flew to where he was aiming. With a quick movement of his head, he threw the bangs that had moved upstairs, casually spat out to the side, indicating that the job was done, and with a lazy, deliberately slowed-down step he went to the money. If they were in a heap, he beat abruptly, with a jingle, but he touched single coins with a puck carefully, with a knurling, so that the coin would not break and spin in the air, but, without rising high, would just roll over to the other side. No one else knew how. The guys beat at random and got new coins, and who had nothing to get, went to the audience.
It seemed to me that if I had money, I could play. In the village we were busy with grandmas, but even there we need an accurate eye. And I, in addition, liked to think up amusements for myself: pick up a handful of stones, find a harder target and throw it into it until I reach the full result - ten out of ten. He threw both from above, over his shoulder, and from below, hanging a stone over the target. So I had some dexterity. There was no money.
Because mother sent me bread because we had no money, otherwise I would have bought it here. Where do they come from on the collective farm? Nevertheless, two times she put five in my letter - for milk. It’s fifty kopeks today, you won’t get hold of it, but anyway money, you could buy five half-liter jars of milk for them in the bazaar, a ruble for a jar. I was ordered to drink milk from anemia, I often for no reason suddenly started to feel dizzy.
But, having received the five for the third time, I did not go for milk, but exchanged it for a trifle and went to the landfill. The place here was rightly chosen, you can’t say anything: a glade, enclosed by hills, was not visible from anywhere. In the village, in full view of adults, they drove for such games, threatened the director and the police. Nobody bothered us here. And not far, in ten minutes you will reach.
The first time I lost ninety cents, the second sixty. Money was, of course, a pity, but I felt that I was adjusting to the game, my hand gradually got used to the puck, I learned to release just as much force as the puck needed to go right, my eyes also learned in advance to know where it would fall and how much more will ride on the ground. In the evenings, when everyone was dispersing, I returned here again, pulled out a washer hidden from under the stone, pulled out my trifle from my pocket and threw it until it got dark. I made sure that out of ten shots, three or four guessed exactly for money.
And finally the day came when I won.
Autumn was warm and dry. Even in October, it warmed so that it was possible to walk in a shirt, rains seldom fell and seemed random, inadvertently brought from somewhere out of the weather by a weak passing breeze. The sky turned blue quite summer-like, but it became as if already, and the sun set early. Above the hills, during clean hours, air smoked, spreading the bitter, stupefying smell of dry wormwood, distant voices clearly sounded, and flying birds screamed. The grass in our meadow, yellowed and smitten, still remained lively and soft, free from the game, or rather, losers, fussed at it.
Now every day after school I ran here. The guys changed, newcomers appeared, and only Vadik did not miss a single game. She did not start without him. Vadik, like a shadow, was followed by a big-headed, stocky-haired, stocky guy, nicknamed Ptah. I hadn’t met Ptakh at school before, but looking ahead, I’ll say that in the third quarter he suddenly fell to our class, like snow on his head. It turns out that he remained in the fifth in the second year and, under some pretext, arranged a vacation until January. Ptah also usually won, although not as much as Vadik, smaller, but did not remain at a loss. Yes, because, probably, he didn’t stay because he was at the same time with Vadik and he was helping him on the sly.
From our class, Tishkin sometimes ran into the clearing, a fussy boy with blinking eyes, who liked to raise his hand in the classroom. He knows, he doesn’t know - he still pulls. Call - silent.
Why did you raise your hand? - they ask Tishkin.
He smacked his eyes:
I remembered, and while getting up, I forgot.
I was not friends with him. From timidity, silence, excessive rural isolation, and most importantly - from wild homesickness that did not leave me with any desires, I did not meet any of the guys then. They were not drawn to me either, I was left alone, not understanding and not distinguishing loneliness from my bitter position: one - because here, and not at home, not in the village, I have many comrades there.
Tishkin, it seemed, did not notice me in the clearing. Quickly losing, he disappeared and did not appear again soon.
And I won. I began to win constantly, every day. I had my own calculation: do not roll the puck around the court, seeking the right to a first strike; when there are a lot of people playing, it’s not easy: the closer you get to the line, the greater the danger is to get over it and remain the last. It is necessary to cover the cash when throwing. So I did. Of course, I took a chance, but with my knack it was a justifiable risk. I could lose three, four times in a row, but on the fifth, taking the cash register, I returned my loss three times. Lost again and returned again. I rarely had to pound coins on the puck, but even here I used my trick: if Vadik beat with a thrust on himself, on the contrary, I would bale away from myself - it was unusual, but the puck held the coin, did not let it spin and, leaving, turned after her.
Now I have money. I did not allow myself to get too carried away with the game and hang around in the meadow until the evening, I needed only a ruble, every day a ruble. Having received it, I ran away, bought a can of milk at the bazaar (aunts grumbled, looking at my bent, beaten, tormented coins, but they poured milk), dined and sat down for lessons. I didn’t get enough of the fill anyway, but the mere thought that I was drinking milk added strength to me and restrained my hunger. It began to seem to me that now my head is spinning much less.
At first, Vadik was calm about my winnings. He himself did not remain unprofitable, and it was unlikely that anything would fall from his pockets. Sometimes he even praised me: here, they say, how to throw, study, muffs. However, Vadik soon noticed that I quit the game too quickly, and once stopped me:
What are you - zagreg box office and tear? What a nimble one! Play.
I need to do homework, Vadik, ”I began to dissuade.
Anyone who needs to do homework doesn’t go here.
And Ptaha sang:
Who told you that they play for money like that? For this, you want to know, they beat a little. Got it
More Vadik did not give me the puck before himself and let me go to the stone only the last. He threw well, and often I reached into my pocket for a new coin without touching the puck. But I was throwing better, and if I already had the opportunity to throw, the puck, like magnetized, flew for money. I myself was surprised at my accuracy, I would have to guess to hold it, play inconspicuously, and I went on bombing the box office in a simple and ruthless way. How did I know that it had never been forgiven to anyone, if in his business he pulled himself forward? Do not wait for mercy then, do not seek intercession, for others he is an upstart, and the one who follows him most hates him. I had to comprehend this science that fall in my own skin.
I just got into money again and was going to collect it when I noticed that Vadik had stepped his foot on one of the coins scattered on the sides. All the rest lay up in tails. In such cases, when throwing, they usually shout “to the warehouse!” So \u200b\u200bthat - if there is no eagle - to collect money in one pile for the blow, but, as always, I hoped for good luck and did not shout.
Not to the warehouse! - announced Vadik.
I went up to him and tried to move his foot off the coin, but he pushed me away, quickly grabbed it from the ground and showed me the tails. I managed to notice that the coin was on an eagle - otherwise he would not have covered it.
You turned it over, ”I said. - She was on an eagle, I saw.
He stuck a fist under my nose.
Have you not seen this? Smell what it smells like.
I had to come to terms. Insisting on it was pointless; if a fight starts, no one, no soul will intercede for me, not even Tishkin, who was spinning right there.
Vadik's angry, narrowed eyes were staring at me. I bent down, softly hit the near coin, turned it over and pushed the second one. “Hlyuzda will bring the truth,” I decided. “Anyway, I'll take them all now.” Again, he pointed the puck to hit, but didn’t have time to lower it: someone suddenly gave me a strong knee from behind, and I awkwardly bent down with my head and pushed into the ground. They laughed around.
Behind me, expectantly smiling, stood Ptah. I decided:
What about you ?!
Who told you it's me? - He unlocked. - Had a dream, or what?
Come here! - Vadik held out his hand for the puck, but I did not give it away. Resentment overwhelmed me with fear of nothing in the world, I was no longer afraid. For what? Why are they doing this to me? What did I do to them?
Come here! - demanded Vadik.
You flipped that coin! I shouted to him. - I saw that I turned. Saw.
Well, repeat, - approaching me, he asked.
You turned it over, ”I said in a quieter voice, knowing well what would follow.
The first, again from behind, was struck by Ptah. I flew to Vadik, he quickly and deftly, without trying on it, put his head in my face, and I fell, blood spattered from my nose. As soon as I jumped up, Ptah attacked me again. You could still escape and run away, but for some reason I did not think about it. I spun between Vadik and Ptah, almost not defending myself, clutching my nose with a palm that blew blood, and in despair, adding to their rage, stubbornly shouting the same thing:
Flipped over! Flipped over! Flipped over!
They beat me in turn, one and two, one and two. Someone third, small and vicious, kicked my legs, then they were almost completely bruised. I tried not only to fall, never fall for anything, even in those minutes it seemed to me a shame. But in the end they threw me to the ground and stopped.
Get out of here while alive! - ordered Vadik. - Quickly!
I got up and sobbing, flinging my dead nose, trudged uphill.
Just blather to someone - kill! - Vadik promised me after.
I did not answer. Everything in me somehow hardened and closed in resentment, I did not have the strength to get the word out of me. And, just climbing up the mountain, I could not stand it and, as if fooling, cried out that there was urine - so I probably heard the whole village:
I'll turn it over!
Ptakh rushed after me, but immediately returned - apparently, Vadik reasoned that I had enough, and stopped him. For about five minutes I stood and sobbed, looked at the clearing where the game began again, then went down the other side of the hill to a hollow, drawn around by black nettles, fell on hard, dry grass and, unable to restrain myself anymore, bitterly burst into tears.
There was not that day and could not be in all the white light of a person more unhappy than me.
* * *
In the morning I looked at myself in fear in the mirror: my nose was swollen and swollen, there was a bruise under my left eye, and below it, on my cheek, a fat bloody abrasion bent. I did not imagine how to go to school in this form, but somehow I had to go, skip classes for whatever reason, I did not dare. Suppose people’s noses and by nature happen cleaner than mine, and if it weren’t for a familiar place, you won’t guess that it’s a nose, but you can’t justify an abrasion and a bruise: you can immediately see that they show off here not of my own free will.
Covering my eyes with my hand, I whisked into the classroom, sat down at my desk and lowered my head. The first lesson, as luck would have it, was French. Lidia Mikhailovna, rightfully the class teacher, was more interested in us than other teachers, and it was difficult to hide anything from her. She came in, said hello, but before she sat down in class, she had the habit of carefully examining almost every one of us, making seemingly humorous but obligatory remarks. And of course, she saw the signs on my face right away, although I, as I could, hid them; I understood this because the guys began to turn to me.
Well, ”said Lidia Mikhailovna, opening the magazine. Today among us there are wounded.
The class laughed, and Lidia Mikhailovna looked up at me again. They mowed down at her and looked as if by, but by then we had already learned to recognize where they were looking.
What happened? she asked.
Fell, ”I blurted out, for some reason not having guessed in advance to come up with at least a decent explanation.
Oh, how unsuccessful. Yesterday fell or today?
Today. No, last night when it was dark.
Hee, fell! Tishkin cried out, choking with joy. - This is Vadik from the seventh grade. They played for money, and he began to argue and earned. I saw it. And he said he fell.
I was dumbfounded by such a betrayal. Does he not understand anything at all, or is he on purpose? We could be kicked out of school for a game of money. Got Game In my head, from fear, everything aroused and buzzed: gone, now gone. Well, Tishkin. Here is Tishkin so Tishkin. I was glad. Clarity - nothing to say.
Tishkin, I wanted to ask you something completely different - without being surprised and not changing my calm, slightly indifferent tone, Lidia Mikhailovna stopped him. “Go to the board, since you’ve gotten a talk, and get ready to answer.” She waited until Tyskin, confused and immediately unhappy, came out to the blackboard and told me briefly: “After the lessons you will stay.”
Most of all I was afraid that Lidia Mikhailovna would drag me to the director. This means that, in addition to today's conversation, tomorrow I will be taken out in front of the school line and forced to tell me what prompted me to do this dirty business. The director, Vasily Andreevich, asked the perpetrator, no matter what he did, broke the window, got into a fight or smoked in the restroom: “What prompted you to do this dirty business?” He paced in front of the ruler, with his hands behind his back, taking his shoulders forward to the beat of broad steps, so that it seemed as if a tightly buttoned, protruding dark jacket was moving independently slightly ahead of the director, and urged: “Answer, answer. We are waiting. look, the whole school is waiting for you to tell us. ” The student began to mumble something in his defense, but the director cut him off: “You answer my question, the question. How was the question asked? ” “What prompted me?” - Exactly: what prompted? We are listening to you. ” Things usually ended in tears, only after that the director calmed down, and we dispersed to classes. It was more difficult with high school students who did not want to cry, but could not answer the question of Vasily Andreevich.
Once, the first lesson started ten minutes late, and all this time the principal interrogated one ninth-grader, but, having not obtained anything intelligible from him, he took him to his office.
And what, interestingly, I say? It would be better to be kicked out right away. I briefly touched this thought, thought that then I could return home, and then, as if having burned myself, I was frightened: no, you can’t go home with such a shame. Another thing is if I dropped out of school myself ... But even then you can say about me that I am an unreliable person, if I could not stand what I wanted, and then everyone will start to shy at me. No, just not like that. I would still suffer here, I would be used to it, but you can’t go home like that.
After the lessons, freezing with fear, I waited for Lydia Mikhailovna in the corridor. She left the teacher's room and, nodding, took me to class. As always, she sat down at the table, I wanted to get a third desk, away from her, but Lidia Mikhailovna showed me the first, right in front of her.
Is it true that you gamble? she began immediately. She asked too loudly, it seemed to me that in school I need to talk about this only in a whisper, and I was even more scared. But there was no sense in locking up; Tishkin managed to sell me with giblets. I mumbled:
So how do you win or lose? I hesitated, not knowing which was better.
Let’s tell how it is. Losing, probably?
You ... win.
Well, even so. You win, then. And what do you do with the money?
At first, at school, for a long time I could not get used to the voice of Lydia Mikhailovna, he confused me. They spoke in our village, wraping the voice deep inside, and therefore it sounded like a lol, and for Lidia Mikhailovna it was somehow small and light, so I had to listen to it, and not out of powerlessness at all - she could sometimes say it all in all , but as if from staleness and unnecessary savings. I was ready to blame everything on the French language: of course, while I was studying, while I was adjusting to someone else's speech, the voice sat down without freedom, weakened, like a bird in a cage, wait now, when it again disperses and gets stronger. And now Lidia Mikhailovna asked as if she were at this time busy with something else, more important, but she still could not get away from the questions.
Well, so what do you do with the money you win? Are you buying sweets? Or books? Or save up for something? After all, you probably have a lot of them now?
No, not much. I only win the ruble.
And do not play anymore?
And the ruble? Why the ruble? What are you doing with him?
I'm buying milk.
She sat in front of me neat, all smart and beautiful, beautiful in clothes and in her young female pore, which I dimly felt, I could smell perfume from her, which I took for my breath; besides, she was a teacher not of arithmetic of some kind, not of history, but of the mysterious French language, which also emanated something special, fabulous, not subject to anyone, like me. Not daring to raise my eyes to her, I did not dare to deceive her. And why, in the end, did I have to cheat?
She was silent for a moment, examining me, and with my skin I felt how, when I looked at her squinting attentive eyes, all my troubles and absurdities really swell and fill up with my evil strength. Of course, there was something to look at: a skinny, wild-looking boy with a broken face, untidy without a mother and lonely, in an old, worn jacket on his drooping shoulders, which fit on his chest, but from which his hands got far away, hooked on her desk; in light-green pants tucked from his father’s breeches and tucked into teal with traces of yesterday’s fight. I had noticed earlier how curiously Lidia Mikhailovna was looking at my shoe. Of the entire class, only I went in teal. Only the next fall, when I flatly refused to go to school, my mother sold a sewing machine, our only value, and bought me tarpaulin boots.
And yet, you don’t have to play for money, ”Lidia Mikhailovna thoughtfully said. “Would you manage without it somehow?” Can I get along?
Not daring to believe in my salvation, I easily promised:
I spoke sincerely, but what can you do if our sincerity cannot be tied with ropes.
In fairness, I must say that in those days I had a really bad time. Our collective farm in early autumn paid off early deliveries, and Uncle Vanya did not come again. I knew that at home my mother does not find a place for herself, worrying about me, but this made it not easier for me. The bag of potatoes, brought back for the last time by Uncle Vanya, evaporated as quickly as if it had been fed by cattle. It’s good that, having caught myself, I guessed to hide a little in an abandoned shed standing in the courtyard, and now I lived only with this soldering iron. After school, sneaking like a thief, I darted into a shed, put some potatoes in my pocket and ran out into the hills to make a fire somewhere in a convenient and hidden lowland. I was hungry all the time, even in a dream, I felt convulsive waves roll through my stomach.
Hoping to stumble upon a new company of players, I began to slowly explore the neighboring streets, wandered around the wastelands, watched the guys who were brought into the hills. Everything was in vain, the season was over, the cold October winds blew. And it was only in our clearing that the guys continued to gather. I circled nearby, saw a puck gleaming in the sun, as Wadik commands, waving his arms, and familiar figures bend over the cash register.
In the end, I could not stand it and went down to them. I knew that I was going to humiliation, but it was not less humiliation once and for all to come to terms with the fact that I was beaten and kicked out. I was itchy to see how Vadik and Ptah would react to my appearance and how I could keep myself. But most of all drove hunger. I needed a ruble - not for milk, but for bread. I did not know other ways to get it.
I approached, and the game stopped on its own, everyone stared at me. The bird was wearing a hat with his ears tucked up, sitting, like everyone else on it, carefree and bold, in a checkered, worn shirt with short sleeves; Vadik Forsil in a beautiful thick jacket with a lock. Nearby, piled in one pile, lay sweatshirts and little coats, on them, cowering in the wind, sat a small, about five or six years old, boy.
The first to meet me was Ptah:
What has come? Have you been beaten for a long time?
I came to play, - I answered as calmly as possible, looking at Vadik.
Who told you that with you, - Ptaha swore, - they will play here?
What, Vadik, will we beat right away or will we wait a bit?
Why are you pestering a person, Ptah? - squinting at me, said Vadik. - Got it, the man came to play. Maybe he and I want to win ten rubles with you?
You don’t have ten rubles each, just not to seem like a coward, I said.
We have more than you dreamed of. Set, don't talk until Ptah gets angry. And then he is a hot man.
Give it to him, Vadik?
No, let him play. - Vadik winked at the guys. - He plays great, we are not good for him.
Now I was a scientist and understood what it was - the kindness of Vadik. Apparently, he was tired of a boring, uninteresting game, therefore, in order to tickle his nerves and feel the taste of a real game, he decided to let me into it. But as soon as I touch on his pride, I will not be too good again. He will find something to complain about, next to him is Ptah.
I decided to play carefully and not go too far at the checkout. Like everything, so as not to stand out, I rolled the puck, being afraid to inadvertently hit the money, then gently poked at the coins and looked around to see if Ptah had come in behind. In the early days, I did not allow myself to dream of a ruble; kopecks twenty-thirty, on a piece of bread, and then good, and then come here.
But what was to happen sooner or later, of course, happened. On the fourth day, when I won the ruble and was about to leave, they beat me again. True, this time it was easier, but one trace remained: my lip was swollen greatly. At school I had to bite her constantly. But no matter how I hid it, no matter how I bit it, Lydia Mikhailovna could make out. She purposely called me to the blackboard and made me read the French text. I couldn’t pronounce it with ten healthy lips, and there’s nothing to talk about.
Enough, oh, enough! - Lidia Mikhailovna was frightened and waved her hands at me like an unclean force. - What is it ?! No, you have to deal with you separately. There is no other way.
* * *
So began for me painful and awkward days. In the morning, I waited with fear for the hour when I would have to be alone with Lidia Mikhailovna, and breaking my tongue, repeat after her uncomfortable pronunciation, invented only for punishment words. Well, why, if not for bullying, merge the three vowels into one thick, viscous sound, the same “o”, for example, in the word “beaucoup” (a lot), which can be choked on? Why, with some kind of squad, make sounds through the nose when, from time immemorial, he served a man for a completely different need? What for? There must be limits to the rational. I covered myself later, blushed and gasped, and Lidia Mikhailovna, without respite or pity, made me callous to my poor tongue. And why me alone? There were as many children as needed in the school who spoke French no better than I did, but they walked free, did what they wanted, and I, like a damn, swelled one by one.
It turned out that this is not the worst. Lidia Mikhailovna suddenly decided that we had no time left before school for the second shift, and said that I should come to her apartment in the evenings. She lived next to the school, in teacher's houses. On the other, more than half of Lydia Mikhailovna’s house, the director himself lived. I went there as a torture. And without that, by nature, timid and shy, lost from any trifle, in this clean, tidy teacher’s apartment, I was literally stony at first and was afraid to breathe. I had to say that I undress, go into the room, sit down - I had to be moved, like a thing, and almost by force to extract words from me. This did not contribute to my success in French. But, strange thing, we did less here than at school, where the second shift seemed to interfere with us. Moreover, Lidia Mikhailovna, while clapping something around the apartment, asked me questions or told about herself. I suspect she purposely came up with it for me as if she had gone to the French faculty only because she hadn’t been given this language at school either and she decided to prove to herself that she could master it no worse than others.
Huddled in a corner, I listened without waiting for tea when they let me go home. There were a lot of books in the room; on the nightstand by the window there was a large beautiful radio; with a player - a rare thing at the time, but for me an unprecedented miracle. Lydia Mikhailovna put down the records, and the clever male voice again taught the French language. One way or another, there was no getting away from him. Lydia Mikhailovna in a simple home dress, in soft felt shoes walked around the room, making me startle and freeze as she approached me. I could not believe that I was sitting in her house, everything here was too unexpected and unusual for me, even the air saturated with light and unfamiliar smells of a different life than I knew. Involuntarily I had the feeling that I was peeping at this life from the side, and from shame and awkwardness for myself I smelled even deeper into my curly jacket.
Lydia Mikhailovna was then probably twenty-five years old or so; I well remember her correct and therefore not too lively face with screwed up eyes to hide the braid in them; a tight smile, rarely revealed to the end, and completely black, short-cropped hair. But with all this, her stiffness was not visible in her face, which, as I later noticed, became over the years almost a professional sign of teachers, even the kindest and softest by nature, but there was some cautious, cunning, perplexity related to herself and as if saying: I wonder how I ended up here and what am I doing here? Now I think that by that time she had managed to be married; by her voice, by her gait - soft, but confident, free, through all her behavior courage and experience were felt in her. And besides, I have always been of the opinion that girls studying French or Spanish become women earlier than their peers who study, say, Russian or German.
I am ashamed now to recall how I was scared and lost when Lidia Mikhailovna, having finished our lesson, called me to supper. If I was hungry a thousand times, any appetite jumped out of me with a bullet. Sit down at the same table with Lidia Mikhailovna! No no! Better tomorrow by day I will learn the whole French language by heart, so that I will never come here again. A piece of bread would probably be stuck in my throat. It seems that before that I did not suspect that Lidia Mikhailovna, too, like all of us, eats the most ordinary food, and not some manna from heaven, as it seemed to me an unusual person, unlike everyone else.
I jumped up and, muttering that I was full, that I did not want to, backed away along the wall to the exit. Lidia Mikhailovna looked at me with surprise and resentment, but it was impossible to stop me by any means. I was running away. This was repeated several times, then Lidia Mikhailovna, in desperation, stopped inviting me to the table. I sighed more freely.
Once they told me that below, in the locker room, for me lies a package that some guy brought to school. Uncle Vanya, of course, our driver - what a man! Probably, our house was closed, and Uncle Vanya could not wait for me from the lessons - so he left me in the locker room.
I barely endured until the end of classes and rushed down. Aunt Vera, a school cleaning lady, showed me a white plywood box in the corner, which was used to equip mail packages. I was surprised: why in a box? - Mother usually sent food in an ordinary bag. Maybe this is not for me at all? No, my class and my last name were displayed on the lid. It can be seen that Uncle Vanya already inscribed here - so as not to confuse, for whom. What did this mother think up to drop food in a box ?! Look how intelligent she has become!
I could not carry the package home without knowing what was in it: not that patience. Clearly there is no potato. For bread, the container is also, perhaps, small, and uncomfortable. In addition, they sent me bread recently; I still had it. Then what is there? Immediately, at school, I climbed under the stairs, where, as I remembered, the ax was lying, and, finding it, tore off the lid. It was dark under the stairs, I climbed back out and, looking around furtively, set the box on the near windowsill.
Glancing at the parcel, I was dumbfounded: on top, covered with a neatly large white sheet of paper, were pasta. Wow! Long yellow tubes stacked one into another in even rows flashed in the light of such wealth, more expensive than which for me nothing existed. Now it’s clear why the mother gathered the box: so that the pasta would not break, not crumble, they would come to me safe and sound. I carefully pulled out one tube, looked, blew into it, and, unable to restrain myself anymore, began to gorge eagerly. Then, in the same way, he took up the second, the third, wondering where to hide the box so that the pasta would not go to the too gluttonous mice in the pantry of my mistress. Not for that, mother bought them, spent the last money. No, I just won’t get pasta so easily. This is not some potato.
And suddenly I choked. Pasta ... Indeed, where did the mother get the pasta? There weren’t any of them in our village, you can’t buy them for any shisha. What then turns out? Hurriedly, in despair and hope, I scooped up the pasta and found at the bottom of the drawer several large pieces of sugar and two tiles of hematogen. The hematogen confirmed: it was not the mother who sent the parcel. Who, then, who? Once again I looked at the lid: my class, my last name - to me. Interesting, very interesting.
I squeezed the nails of the lid into place and, leaving the box on the windowsill, went up to the second floor and knocked on the teacher's room. Lidia Mikhailovna has already left. Nothing, we’ll come, we know where he lives, we’ve been. So, this is how: if you don’t want to sit down at the table, get food at home. So it is. Will not work. No one else. This is not a mother: she would not forget to put a note, would tell where, from which mines such wealth came from.
When I got in sideways with the parcel at the door, Lidia Mikhailovna pretended to understand nothing. She looked at the drawer, which I put in front of her on the floor, and asked in surprise:
What is it? What are you bringing? What for?
You did it, ”I said in a trembling, breaking voice.
What have I done? What are you talking about?
You sent this package to school. I know you.
I noticed that Lidia Mikhailovna blushed and was embarrassed. This was the only, obviously, case when I was not afraid to look her in the eye. I didn't give a damn whether she was a teacher or my second cousin. Here I asked, and not she, and asked not in French, but in Russian, without any articles. Let him answer.
Why did you decide that it was me?
Because we don’t have any pasta there. And hematogen does not happen.
How! It doesn’t happen at all ?! - She was amazed so sincerely that she betrayed herself headlong.
It doesn’t happen at all. It was necessary to know.
Lydia Mikhailovna suddenly laughed and tried to hug me, but I pulled away. from her.
Indeed, one had to know. How am I doing this ?! - She thought for a moment. - But here it was hard to guess - honestly! I’m an urban man. Absolutely, you say it doesn’t happen? What then happens to you?
Peas happen. Radish happens.
Peas ... radish ... And we have apples in the Kuban. Oh, how many apples are there right now. Today I wanted to go to the Kuban, and for some reason I came here. - Lidia Mikhailovna sighed and squinted at me. - Do not get mad. I wanted the best. Who knew you could get caught in pasta? Nothing, now I’ll be smarter. And you take these pasta ...
I won’t take it, ”I interrupted her.
Well, why are you like this? I know that you are starving. But I live alone, I have a lot of money. I can buy whatever I want, but I’m alone ... I eat something little by little, I'm afraid to get fat.
I'm not starving at all.
Please do not argue with me, I know. I spoke with your mistress. What is wrong if you take these pasta now and cook yourself a good lunch today. Why can't I help you once in my life? I promise not to slip any more packages. But please take this one. You must have enough fillings to learn. How many well-fed slammers at our school who think nothing and will probably never think, and you are a capable boy, you can’t leave school.
Her voice began to act on me; I was afraid that she would persuade me, and, angry with myself for understanding Lidia Mikhailovna’s point, and for the fact that I was going to still not understand her, I ran out the door, shaking my head and muttering something.
* * *
Our lessons on this did not stop, I continued to go to Lydia Mikhailovna. But now she really took on me. She apparently decided: well, French is so French. True, there was no sense in this, gradually I began to pronounce French words rather tolerably, they no longer cut off heavy cobblestones at my feet, but, trying to ring, tried to fly somewhere.
Good, ”Lidia Mikhailovna encouraged me. - In this quarter, the five will not work out yet, but in the next - it is necessary.
We did not recall the package, but just in case, I was on my guard. Is it not enough that Lidia Mikhailovna will undertake to come up with more? I myself knew: when something does not work out, you will do everything in order to make it happen, so you won’t just give up. It seemed to me that Lidia Mikhailovna was constantly looking at me expectantly, and when she looked closely, she chuckled at my wildness — I was angry, but this anger, oddly enough, helped me to be more confident. I was already not that unrequited and helpless boy who was afraid to take a step here, little by little I got used to Lydia Mikhailovna and her apartment. Still, of course, hesitated, hid in a corner, hiding his teal under a chair, but the former stiffness and oppression receded, now I dared to ask Lidia Mikhailovna questions and even enter into disputes with her.
She made another attempt to put me at the table - in vain. Here I was adamant, the stubbornness in me was enough for ten.
Probably, it was already possible to stop these classes at home, the most important thing I learned, my tongue became soft and stirred, the rest would eventually be added to school lessons. Ahead years and years. What will I do afterwards if I learn everything from start to finish all at once? But I did not dare to say this to Lydia Mikhailovna, and she, apparently, did not at all consider our program to be completed, and I continued to pull my French strap. However, is it a strap? Somehow, involuntarily and imperceptibly, without expecting it myself, I felt a taste for the language and in my free minutes without any prompting I climbed into the dictionary, looked into the texts distant in the textbook. Punishment turned into pleasure. I was encouraged by pride: it didn’t work out - it will work out, and it will work out - no worse than the best. From another I test, or what? If you still didn’t have to go to Lydia Mikhailovna ... I myself, myself ...
Once, two weeks after the story of the parcel, Lidia Mikhailovna, smiling, asked:
Well, and you don’t play for money anymore? Or are you going to play aside somewhere?
How to play now ?! I was surprised, looking out the window where the snow lay.
And what was this game? What does it consist of?
Why do you need? I warned.
Interesting. We used to play in childhood too, So I want to know if this is a game or not. Tell, tell, do not be afraid.
I talked about, of course, keeping silent about Vadik, about Ptah and about my little tricks that I used in the game.
No, ”Lidia Mikhailovna shook her head. - We played the “wall”. Do you know what it is?
Here look. - She easily jumped out from the table at which she was sitting, found coins in her purse and pushed the chair away from the wall. Come here, look. I hit a coin against the wall. - Lidia Mikhailovna lightly struck, and the coin, tinkling, flew in an arc to the floor. Now, - Lidia Mikhailovna slipped the second coin into my hand, you beat. But keep in mind: you need to beat so that your coin is as close to mine as possible. To be able to measure them, reach out with the fingers of one hand. In a different way the game is called: measurements. If you get it, it means you won. Bay.
I hit - my coin, hitting a rib, rolled into a corner.
Oh, ”Lidia Mikhailovna waved her hand. - Long away. Now you are starting. Please note: if my coin touches yours, at least a little bit, by the edge, I will win twice. Do you understand?
What is incomprehensible here?
Will we play?
I did not believe my ears:
How am I going to play with you?
What is it?
You are a teacher!
So what? Is the teacher a different person, or what? Sometimes it bothers to be only a teacher, to teach and learn without end. Constantly pulling herself: it’s impossible, it’s impossible, - Lidia Mikhailovna narrowed her eyes more than usual and looked out the window thoughtfully, detached. “Sometimes it’s useful to forget that you are a teacher, - you’ll not become so flabby and floggy that living people will get bored with you.” Perhaps the most important thing for a teacher is not to take himself seriously, to understand that he can teach quite a bit. - She shook herself and immediately became amused. - And in childhood I was a desperate girl, my parents suffered with me. Even now I often feel like jumping, jumping, racing somewhere, doing something not according to the program, not according to the schedule, but according to my desire. I’m here, sometimes, jumping, jumping. A man does not grow old when he lives to old age, but when he ceases to be a child. I would love to jump every day, but Vasily Andreyevich lives behind the wall. He is a very serious person. In no case is it necessary for him to know that we are playing "zameryashki".
But we do not play any "measurements". You just showed me.
We can play as simple as they say, make-believe. But you still don’t give me to Vasily Andreyevich.
Lord, what's going on in this world! How long have I been afraid to death that Lidia Mikhailovna will drag me to the director for a game for money, and now she asks me not to give her away. Doomsday - not otherwise. I looked around, for some unknown reason, frightened, and clapped my eyes bewilderedly.
Well - try? Do not like it - quit.
Come on, ”I hesitantly agreed.
Get started.
We took up the coins. It was evident that Lidia Mikhailovna once really played, and I was just trying on the game, I had not yet figured out for myself how to beat a coin against the wall with a rib, or flat, at what height and with what force, when is it better to throw. My blows went blindly; if they had scored, in the first minutes I would have lost quite a lot, although there was nothing tricky in these “measures”. Most of all, of course, I was constrained and depressed, it did not allow me to get used to the fact that I play with Lidia Mikhailovna. Not in a dream could such a dream, not a single bad thought to think. I came to my senses not immediately and not easily, but when I came to my senses and began to take a closer look at the game, Lidia Mikhailovna took and stopped her.
No, it’s not interesting, ”she said, straightening up and removing the hair that had come to her eyes. - To play - so for real, but the fact that you and I are like three-year-olds.
But then it will be a game for money, ”I reminded timidly.
Of course. And what are we holding in our hands? Money game can not be replaced with anything else. By this she is good and bad at the same time. We can agree on a very small rate, but interest will still appear.
I was silent, not knowing what to do and how to be.
Are you afraid? - Lidia Mikhailovna puzzled me.
Here's another! I'm not afraid of anything.
I had some little thing with me. I gave the coin to Lydia Mikhailovna and took it out of my pocket. Well, let's play for real, Lidia Mikhailovna, if you want. To me something - I was not the first to start. Vadik perevorosti also zero attention to me, and then he came to his senses, climbed with his fists. I learned there, I will learn here. This is not French, but I will soon tidy up French too.
I had to accept one condition: since Lidia Mikhailovna’s hand is larger and her fingers are longer, she will measure with the thumb and middle finger, and I, as expected, with my thumb and little finger. It was fair, and I agreed.
The game has started anew. We moved from the room to the hallway, where it was freer, and beat on a flat boardwalk. They beat, knelt down, crawled, but on the floor, touching each other, stretched their fingers, measuring coins, then rising to their feet again, and Lidia Mikhailovna announced the bill. She played noisily: she screamed, clapped her hands, teased me - in a word, acted like an ordinary girl, not a teacher, I even sometimes wanted to cry out. But she won nonetheless, and I lost. I didn’t have time to come to my senses, as eighty kopecks ran up to me, with great difficulty I managed to get this debt down to thirty, but Lidia Mikhailovna from afar hit my coin, and my account immediately jumped to fifty. I started to worry. We agreed to pay at the end of the game, but if things continue this way, my money will not be enough soon, I have a little more ruble. So, you can’t overload the ruble - not that shame, shame and shame for life.
And then I suddenly noticed that Lidia Mikhailovna was not trying to beat me at all. When measuring, her fingers hunched, not lined up to the full length, - where she supposedly could not reach the coin, I reached out without any exertion. It offended me, and I got up.
No, ”I declared,“ so I do not play. ” Why are you playing along with me? It's not fair.
But I really can’t get them, ”she began to refuse. - I have some kind of wooden fingers.
Ok, ok, I will try.
I don’t know how in mathematics, but in life the best proof is from the contrary. When the next day I saw that Lidia Mikhailovna, in order to touch the coins, quietly pushing her to the finger, I was stupefied. Looking at me and for some reason not noticing that I clearly see her pure fraud, she continued to move the coin as if nothing had happened.
What are you doing? - I was indignant.
I AM? And what am I doing?
Why did you move her?
But no, she was lying there, - in the most unscrupulous way, with some even joy, Lydia Mikhailovna opened her back no worse than Vadik or Ptahi.
Wow! The teacher is called! I saw with my own eyes at a distance of twenty centimeters that she touched the coin, and she assures me that she did not touch the coin, and even laughs at me. Is she accepting me as a blind man? For the little one? French teaches, called. I immediately completely forgot that just yesterday Lidia Mikhailovna tried to play along with me, and made sure that she did not deceive me. Well well! Lidia Mikhailovna, called.
On this day, we studied French for about fifteen to twenty minutes, and then even less. We got a different interest. Lidia Mikhailovna made me read the passage, made comments, listened to the comments again, and without hesitation we proceeded to the game. After two small losses, I began to win. I quickly got used to the “measurements”, figured out all the secrets, knew how and where to beat, what to do as a point guard, so as not to substitute my coin for measurement.
And again, I got money. Again I ran to the market and bought milk - now in ice cream mugs. I carefully cut off the influx of cream from the mug, popped crumbling ice slices into my mouth and, feeling their well-fed sweetness all over my body, closed my eyes with pleasure. Then he turned the circle upside down and pecked with a knife sweetish milk sucks. He allowed the remains to melt and drank them, seizing a piece of black bread.
Nothing, it was possible to live, but in the near future, as we heal the wounds of the war, they promised a happy time for everyone.
Of course, taking money from Lydia Mikhailovna, I felt awkward, but every time I was reassured that it was an honest win. I never asked for a game, Lidia Mikhailovna offered it myself. I did not dare to refuse. It seemed to me that the game gives her pleasure, she was cheerful, laughed, slowed me down.
If we knew how it would all end ...
... Kneeling against each other, we argued about the score. Before, too, it seems, they were arguing about something.
Understand you, garden head, - crawling at me and waving my arms, Lidia Mikhailovna argued, - why should I deceive you? I am counting, not you, I know better. I lost three times in a row, and before that there was a “chika”.
- "Chika" is not counting.
Why is this not counting?
We shouted, interrupting each other, when an astonished, if not say, startled, but firm, ringing voice came to us:
Lidia Mikhailovna!
We froze. Vasily Andreyevich stood in the doorway.
Lidia Mikhailovna, what is the matter with you? What's going on here?
Lidia Mikhailovna slowly, very slowly rose from her knees, reddened and disheveled, and, smoothing her hair, said:
I, Vasily Andreyevich, hoped that you would knock before entering here.
I pounded. No one answered me. What's going on here? Explain, please. I have the right to know as a director.
We play in the “wall”, - Lidia Mikhailovna calmly answered.
Do you play for money with this? .. - Vasily Andreevich poked a finger at me, and I crawled out of the wall with fear to hide in the room. - Play with the student ?! Did I understand you correctly?
Correctly.
Well, you know ... - The director was suffocating, he did not have enough air. “I'm lost right away to name your act.” It is a crime. Corruption. Seduction. And more, more ... I’ve been working at school for twenty years, I’ve seen everything, but that ...
And he lifted his hands above his head.
* * *
Three days later, Lidia Mikhailovna left. The day before she met me after school and escorted me home.
I’ll go to my Kuban, ”she said, saying goodbye. - And you study quietly, nobody will touch you for this stupid incident. It’s my fault. Learn, ”she patted my head and left.
And I never saw her again.
In the middle of winter, after the January holidays, I received a parcel in the school by mail. When I opened it, again taking an ax out from under the stairs, there were neat, dense rows of pasta tubes in it. Downstairs, in a thick cotton wrapper, I found three red apples.
I used to see apples only in pictures, but I guessed that it was them.
1. What is the style of the text (prove the opinion) 2. Type of text (prove the opinion)
I studied well, but I did not get along well with French - because of pronunciation. I could easily remember the words, but the pronunciation with my head betrayed my hangar origin, and Lidia Mikhailovna, a French teacher, wrinkled and closed her eyes helplessly.
“No, I have to deal with you separately,” she said.
So began the painful days for me. I covered myself later, blushed and gasped, and Lidia Mikhailovna, without respite, made me callous to my poor tongue. Gradually, I began quite pronouncedly pronouncing French words, and they no longer broke off at my feet with heavy cobblestones, but, while ringing, they tried to fly somewhere.
Probably, it was already possible to stop these classes at home, but I did not dare to tell Lidia Mikhailovna about this, and she apparently did not consider our program to be completed. And I continued to pull my French strap. However, is it a strap? Somehow, involuntarily and imperceptibly, I felt a taste for the language and in my free moments without any compulsion climbed into the dictionary, looking into the distant texts of the textbook. Punishment turned into pleasure.
- 1. The style of art, because it is a fragment of fiction.
2. type of storytelling, as there is a plot.
Rasputin Valentine
French lessons
Valentin Rasputin
FRENCH LESSONS
(Anastasia Prokopyevna Kopylova)
It is strange: why do we, like our parents, each time feel guilty before the teachers? And not for everything that was at school - no, but for what happened to us after.
I went to fifth grade in forty-eight. It’s more correct to say that I went: in our village there was only an elementary school, therefore, in order to study further, I had to equip from home fifty kilometers to the district center. A week earlier my mother had gone there, talked with my friend that I would be staying with her, and on the last day of August, Uncle Vanya, the driver of the only one and a half truck, unloaded me on Podkamennaya Street, where I was to live, helped bring a knot into the house with bed, encouragingly patted a goodbye on the shoulder and drove off. So, at eleven, my independent life began.
Famine had not yet released that year, and my mother had three, I am the oldest. In the spring, when it was especially hard, I swallowed it myself and forced my sister to swallow the eyes of sprouted potatoes and grains of oats and rye to plant plantings in the stomach - then you won’t have to think about food all the time. All summer we carefully watered our seeds with clean Angara water, but for some reason we did not wait for the harvest or it was so small that we did not feel it. However, I think that this venture is not entirely useless and it will someday come in handy for a person, and out of inexperience we did something wrong there.
It is difficult to say how my mother decided to let me go to the district (we called the district center a district). We lived without a father, we lived very poorly, and she apparently judged that there would be no worse — nowhere. I studied well, I went to school with pleasure and admitted to reading and writing in the countryside: I wrote for old women and read letters, went through all the books that ended up in our plain library, and in the evenings I told them all kinds of stories from the guys, adding more from myself. But they especially believed in me when it came to bonds. A lot of people accumulated them during the war, pay tables often came, and then the bonds were brought to me. It was believed that I had a happy eye. Winnings did happen, most often small ones, but the collective farmer in those years was glad for any penny, and then completely unexpected luck fell out of my hands. The joy from her involuntarily passed to me. I was isolated from the village guys, even fed; one day, Uncle Ilya, a generally mean, squeezed old man, having won four hundred rubles, hastily planted a bucket of potatoes for me - in the spring it was considerable wealth.
And all because I understood the numbers of bonds, my mother said:
Your brainy guy is growing. You are this ... let's teach him. The letter will not be wasted in vain.
And mother, contrary to all the misfortunes, gathered me, although before that no one from our village in the area had studied. I was the first. Yes, I did not understand how it should be, what was ahead of me, what tests awaited me, darling, in a new place.
I studied well here. What was left for me? - then I came here, I had no other business here, and I still did not know how to relate to what was entrusted to me through my sleeves. I hardly dared to go to school, if I had not learned at least one lesson, therefore, in all subjects except French, I kept five.
I didn’t get along with French because of pronunciation. I easily memorized words and phrases, quickly translated, coped with spelling difficulties very well, but pronunciation with my head showed all my Angarsk descent right up to the last knee, where no one had spoken foreign words for the first time, if at all, I suspected their existence. I spied in French in the manner of our village tongue twisters, swallowing half of the sounds as unnecessary, and firing off the other half with short barking bursts. Lydia Mikhailovna, a French teacher, listened to me, helplessly wrinkled and closed her eyes. Of course, nothing like that was heard. Again and again, she showed how the nasal pronunciations, vowel combinations were pronounced, she asked to repeat - I was lost, my tongue in my mouth became stiff and did not move. Everything was wasted. But the worst thing started when I came from school. There I was involuntarily distracted, all the time I was forced to do something, the guys slowed me down there, along with them - you want to, you had to move, play, and work in the lessons. But as soon as I was left alone, a longing immediately fell upon me - homesickness for the village. Never before even for a day did I go out of my family and, of course, was not ready to live among strangers. So I felt bad, so bitter and shameful! - worse than any disease. I wanted only one thing, dreamed of one thing - home and home. I lost a lot of weight; my mother, who arrived in late September, was scared for me. With her I fastened, did not complain and did not cry, but when she began to leave, I could not stand it and chased the car with a roar. My mother waved my hand from the body, so that I fell behind, did not disgrace myself and her, I did not understand anything. Then she made up her mind and stopped the car.
Get ready, ”she demanded as I approached. Enough, weaned off, let's go home.
I came to my senses and ran away.
But I lost weight not only because of homesickness. In addition, I was constantly malnourished. In the fall, while Uncle Vanya was carrying bread on his lorry to Zagotzerno, which was not far from the regional center, they sent me food quite often, about once a week. But the trouble is that I missed her. There was nothing there, except for bread and potatoes, occasionally the mother stuffed cottage cheese into a jar, which she took from someone for something: she did not keep a cow. They seem to bring a lot, if you grab in two days - it's empty. I soon began to notice that a good half of my bread was disappearing in some mysterious way. Checked - it is: it was not. The same thing happened with potatoes. Who was begging - Aunt Nadia, a loud, coiled woman who was bobbing with three children, one of her older girls or the youngest, Fedka - I did not know, I was afraid to even think about it, not to follow. It was only a shame that my mother was tearing the last off from her, from her sister and brother, but she still goes by. But I forced myself to accept this. It will not be easier for a mother if she hears the truth.
Hunger here was not at all like a famine in a village. There always, and especially in the fall, it was possible to intercept, tear, dig, lift something, a fish went in the Angara, a bird flew in the forest. Here, everything around me was empty: alien people, alien gardens, alien land. A small rivulet on ten rows was filtered with nonsense. I once sat on a Sunday with a fishing rod all dey and caught three small, with a teaspoon, minnows - from such fishing, too, you can’t get enough. I didn’t go anymore - what a waste of time to translate! In the evenings he hung around at the teahouse, in the bazaar, remembering how much they were selling, choked on his saliva and walked back with nothing. Aunt Nadi stood on the stove with a hot kettle; tossing a boiling hot water and warming his stomach, went to bed. In the morning, back to school. And he reached that happy hour when a lorry drove up to the gate and Uncle Vanya knocked on the door. Having become hungry and knowing that my grub still will not last long, no matter how much I save it, I ate up to the blade, to the cramps and stomach, and then, after a day or two, I again set my teeth on the shelf.
