Horsemen of the inaccessible mountains (Gaidar Arkady). Arkady Gaidarriders of the inaccessible mountains Riders of the inaccessible mountains

Books enlighten the soul, elevate and strengthen a person, awaken in him the best aspirations, sharpen his mind and soften his heart.

William Thackeray, English satirist

A book is a huge force.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Soviet revolutionary

Without books, we can now neither live, nor fight, nor suffer, nor rejoice and win, nor confidently move towards that reasonable and beautiful future in which we unshakably believe.

Many thousands of years ago, the book, in the hands of the best representatives of humanity, became one of the main weapons in their struggle for truth and justice, and it was this weapon that gave these people terrible strength.

Nikolai Rubakin, Russian bibliologist, bibliographer.

A book is a working tool. But not only. It introduces people to the lives and struggles of other people, makes it possible to understand their experiences, their thoughts, their aspirations; it makes it possible to compare, understand the environment and transform it.

Stanislav Strumilin, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences

There is no better way to refresh the mind than to read the ancient classics; As soon as you take one of them in your hands, even for half an hour, you immediately feel refreshed, lightened and cleansed, lifted and strengthened, as if you had refreshed yourself by bathing in a clean spring.

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

Anyone who was not familiar with the creations of the ancients lived without knowing beauty.

Georg Hegel, German philosopher

No failures of history and blind spaces of time are able to destroy human thought, enshrined in hundreds, thousands and millions of manuscripts and books.

Konstantin Paustovsky, Russian Soviet writer

The book is a magician. The book transformed the world. It contains the memory of the human race, it is the mouthpiece of human thought. A world without a book is a world of savages.

Nikolai Morozov, creator of modern scientific chronology

Books are a spiritual testament from one generation to another, advice from a dying old man to a young man beginning to live, an order passed on to a sentry going on vacation to a sentry taking his place.

Without books, human life is empty. The book is not only our friend, but also our constant, eternal companion.

Demyan Bedny, Russian Soviet writer, poet, publicist

A book is a powerful tool of communication, labor, and struggle. It equips a person with the experience of life and struggle of humanity, expands his horizon, gives him knowledge with the help of which he can force the forces of nature to serve him.

Nadezhda Krupskaya, Russian revolutionary, Soviet party, public and cultural figure.

Reading good books is a conversation with the best people of past times, and, moreover, such a conversation when they tell us only their best thoughts.

René Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist

Reading is one of the sources of thinking and mental development.

Vasily Sukhomlinsky, an outstanding Soviet teacher-innovator.

Reading for the mind is the same as physical exercise for body.

Joseph Addison, English poet and satirist

A good book is like a conversation with an intelligent person. The reader receives from her knowledge and a generalization of reality, the ability to understand life.

Alexei Tolstoy, Russian Soviet writer and public figure

Do not forget that the most colossal weapon of multifaceted education is reading.

Alexander Herzen, Russian publicist, writer, philosopher

Without reading there is no real education, there is no and there can be no taste, no words, no multifaceted breadth of understanding; Goethe and Shakespeare are equal to a whole university. By reading a person survives centuries.

Alexander Herzen, Russian publicist, writer, philosopher

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RIDER OF THE INCREASABLE MOUNTAINS

Tale

PART ONE

Yes, of course, if that’s the case... It’s all the same kind of people.” And he waved his hand.

This is what I read in the newspaper - I was alone in Moscow not long ago. “Of course, I can,” I believed. -Why, there’s one, they’re going to be hanging around so many of them soon, because the people are still unbalanced, since -there’s only one Ma-Yakov-s-... Have you heard about Ma-Yakov-s-who? - About who? - About Mayakov-s-ko-go, I say. “No,” he said, thinking. -It’s as if I knew my fa-mi-lia, but I can’t say for sure. I liked this calm, phlegmatic mi-li-tsi-oner. We will be released soon, but on Niko-laya sos-ta-vi-li they still pro-counted and took from him obligatory s-t-up-la-ti 25 rubles fine upon arrival at the place-of-the-yan-no-th resident-s-t-va. We lived in this city like heavenly birds. In the afternoon, before the end of the day, bro-di-li, va-la-la-ly in the sun, along the steep hills near the city. Sometimes during the day I or Ni-ko-lay ear-di-li to the editorial office, write-sa-essays, fel-et-ons, take three-rub-left advances sy in the account of go-no-ra-ra, and go-no-rar sa-my we left-tav-la-li for the purchase of bi-le-tov on the further path. We managed to spend the night like this: the station there is small, not a knot. The last train leaves at ten o'clock in the evening, after which you leave the station with all the public, and then let them in -there are twenty-thirty people who, for the purposes of eco-no-mia, came here without the-p-lac-car-t-to-va- ro-pas-sa-fat-with-kim-on-the-house, so that here we can board the reserved-car-car-t-car going further. Then I went to the agent, asked for the cor- respons-den-t-with-cer-ve-re-re-tion and spoke I realized that there were no free rooms in the city, and we couldn’t go further until tomorrow. The agent gave me a note for one night. Agent-you-de-zhu-ri-li-pos-men-but. There were seven of them, and seven times, seven nights, whose permission I received; but for the eighth time I saw de-zhu-riv-she-go on the first night... In a small, dark train-hall in the place It was then that we met a man who called it “the third year.” Here is how it was. We were lying on the stone floor near the table and were about to go to sleep, when suddenly someone’s huge holey head -Mac felt at the end of a sk-me-ki above my head and there was a flash of black, overgrown hair on me- ma-that-sweet-face-person, bes-tse-re-mon-but forgot-to-sleep on the table. - Hey, hey, man, get off the table! - the sleepy red-but-ar-met-e-mets-lez-but-before-the-roared-screamed. -Where did you come from here? But due to the fact that the man did not pay any attention to the ok-rik, the red-no-ar-me-ets-do- walked towards us and, not being able to get to the table, took off the screw and lightly pushed it close to the house once again. liv-she-go-xya nez-na-kom-tsa. He raised his head and said unhappily: “Please don’t interrupt the tired man’s rest.” - Give it to me! The man dug, pulled out a bottle of grease, and gave it to him. - What year of birth? -surprised-len-but said red-no-ar-me-ets, about-chi-tav boo-ma-gu. “1903,” he answered. “There, apparently, na-pi-sa-but, then-va-rich.” - Third year! Well well! - the oh-ran-nick's voice was chattering. -Yes, my dear, you can’t give less than three tens! Well, dude! -And, going back to the kitchen, he asked with love-of-experience. -Will you at least be some kind of governor? - Please do not ask me questions that are not from the fulfillment of your direct obligations. ! - he answered proudly and, having returned calmly, went to bed. From that time on, we met here with him every evening. We met. “Nekoparov,” he introduced himself to us. -An artist in general, but at this moment, following people, he was forced to use force about-the-cases-to-drink to the despised service in ka-ches-t-ve account with the iron-and-road department equal. He was wearing torn, huge boots, tight-fitting trousers, fluttering -sya on her knees, in an old, oily pa-ja-ma, and on his huge, tousled head, li-ho si -de-la slightly holding-sha-ya on the back of the head pa-na-ma. His suit was also notable for the fact that it didn’t have a single button, even where they were most likely to be -sya, and everything he had rested on a whole system of broken strings and ropes and on pins. He spoke in a thick modulating voice, av-to-ri-tet-but, calmly and a little vi-ti-eva. At six o'clock in the morning no-strong-schi-ki appeared with met-la-mi, scream-cha-li, bes-tse-re-mon-but pulled for the but- gi especially-ben-but strong-to-ra-zos-fallen-sya. In the clubs under the dusty floor there was a time of coughing and yawning that popped out into the street dey. We went out onto the porch of the wok-hall. It was early to go - not a single har-chev-nya had yet been from-to-ry-that. The sol-n-tse is still just on-the-n-low-under-the-green-hats-on-the-lay-, and would- lo cool-okay-but. “It’s cold,” our new acquaintance said, shuddering. - My kos-tyum is defective and doesn’t warm well. Game of fate. Was in the re-vo-lu-tion of the up-rod-ko-mis-sa-rum, then after-le ne-pa - an agent for monitoring the collection of nuts -le Athos-from-who-mo-us-you-rya, was at last an art-tis-tom, and now is an artist at heart. And before you, Nes-happy-tse-va played in the corpse of Sa-ro-ko-my-she-va! How many cities have you traveled to, and success everywhere! Po-pa-li to Baku. But this happened to Sa-ro-ko-we-she-va for something, and the corpse was dissipated. I then met a certain number of people. Once upon a time. So, I tell him, and so. “Ba-shadow!” he says to me. “But you are the very person I’ve been looking for, maybe for three years.” . Let's go to Tash-kent! There I have a corpse almost dead. They can't wait. See, te-leg-ram-mu for te-leg-ram-my send!" There are two halls. There, de-st-vi-tel-but, briefly and clearly: “C-come. You can’t wait any longer.” Well, na-tu-ral-but, where did we bi-le-you, cross-re-rode Kas-piy, did we go to-here, he and -vo-rit: “We’ll have to do it for three days before we settle it. There’s one life here, we’ll catch it with you.” . Well, os-ta-no-vi-lis. We live a day in the state, we live another day. Why, I tell him, don’t you get along with me and Ak-t-ri-soy? “You can’t,” he answers me, “be patient with him. She’s a proud woman and doesn’t like anyone to come to her without business.” "flies." And I’m thinking to myself: you’re lying that you’re proud, but most likely, you started a sh-t-mash with her and in some way, with mo- she can see it from the outside, you're afraid to approach me with her. And it’s only when I wake up on the third day and look: my God! And where are my trousers, as well as all the other things that come with it? - So it disappeared? -breathing with laughter, asked Rita. - And so he disappeared! - Did they declare? - No. That is, I wanted to, but I preferred to keep silent because of all the falsehoods. - What kind of lies? - I asked. But he ignored this question and continued: “Then I knock on the wall.” Some kind of monster comes to me, and I say: call me the owner of the state. So and so, - I say to the owner, - I have nothing to do with the theft, be- those are the only people who love us, come into the world! “What do I care about your opinion?” he replies. “You’d better tell me who’s my number.” now you will have to pay, yes, besides that, for sa-mo-var, and forty kopecks for pro-piss?” - I see, I say, no one! And, besides, do you have any new trousers? -He didn’t want to listen to anything, but then I, be- ing to-do-with-them-to-be-ti-yami, told him : ok, in that case, without them, in the real world, I’ll go out now to your station, followed by t-vii, what's the co-lo-salty scan-dal, since I saw through the door that the one who arrived just now passed yes-ma with her daughter, from three-above-the-number, and besides that, your pres-ta-re is sitting there behind the buffet -bark aunt - woman, respect-ten-naya and po-lo-zhi-tel-naya. Then he broke up with ru-ga-tel-with-t-va-mi, left and, returning, brought me this burdock. I was horrified, but you weren't there. - What are you thinking of doing now? - Suit... First of all, as soon as the first look comes on, immediately a suit. Otherwise, no one wants to talk to me like this. And then, I'll say it. - Wha-oh? - I'm getting married, I say. There are a lot of widows in this city. They come here specially for this. All are former officers' wives, and their husbands are in exile. Here you can do it in no time. My courier promised to get me together with one. The house, he says, she has her own, pa-li-garden with flowers and pi-ani-no. Kos-tyum only on-do. After all, you won’t show up to get married in such a way? -And he was upset, but shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t mind having a glass of tea,” Rita said, getting up. -The buffet in the third grade has already started. We stood up and invited him with us. “It would be my pleasure,” he answered, gal-lan-t-but ras-k-la-ni-va-ya. -However, I warn you: for the time being I am poor, like a church rat, and I have no dignity, but, if pos- those... With Rita he was polite to the extreme, he carried himself with dignity, like a real gentleman -man, although my right hand now and then doesn’t catch my pants under my pants. Subsequently, when you fetched us hopelessly from the wok-hall, he gave us an unappreciated favor: for spare parts - he looked somewhere for an old commercial van, in which there were usually lubricants - chi-ki, under-drinking arrows and random railway workers who arrived. He slept there himself, then he kicked for us in front of ta-mosh-ni-mi obi-ta-te-la-mi , and we moved in the same way. One evening, all the dirty-looking holes were clapping and encouraging tel-ny-mi scream-ka-mi hello-with-t-vo-va-whether the return to Ne-ko-pa-ro-va. He was dressed in new striped trousers, an apache ru-ba-hu, and on his feet were yellow Jim-mi boots. with a narrow, long nose. All the hair was taken off, his hair was pulled back, and he looked proud and free. - It's over! -auto-ri-tet-but from the rivers he is. -I don’t intend to hold on to this pathetic existence any longer. From now on the era of new life is not upon us. Well, how are you doing with me? - And he came to us. - You are awesome! - I told him. “Your infantry is at the widow’s ga-ran-ti-ro-van, and you can boldly launch an attack.” Nekoparov pulled out a pack of pa-pi-ros "Java, 1st grade, b" and suggested having a smoke; then he took an orange out of his pocket and presented it to Ri-ta. Obviously, he was pleased that, in turn, he could do something nice for us. All evening long he had been listening to the obi-ta-te-lei va-go-na ari-yami from “Strength.” He didn't have a strong, but pleasant ba-ri-tone. A tipsy de-pov-s-s-f-locker who lives here for the reason that he hasn’t been let in for the third day since -la-to-my-wife, felt-s-at-all-at-all, took half-a-bottle out of his pocket and ate in front of everyone -but-personally-but drank straight from the mountain "for the health and happiness of respect-to-va-ri-sha - artist Ne-ko-pa -ro-va". And Ne-ko-pa-rov gave an answering speech, in which he bla-go-da-drilled everyone present for their services. A welcome reception for him. Then someone made a sensible proposal that it wouldn’t be bad for such a happy co-existence. drink generously. The offer was there. And Ne-ko-pa-rov, like a vi-nov-nik tor-zhe-t-va, found out two intact ones, and the rest - some half-teen-nick, some double-vein. In general, we have collected. They sent Pet-ku-bes-p-ri-zor-no-go for a quarter of vodka, for a strainer and for jelly. Not for that jelly, which the vok-hall merchants sell dirty la-pa-mi for a gri-ven-ni-ku per pound, but for those who are in co-opera-tiv-nom ki-os-ke from-ve-shi-va-yut in bu-ma-gu for three-tsa-ti ko-pe-ek for ki -lo. And what a fun night it was! It goes without saying that Ne-ko-pa-rov, alone, depicted the entire first act of the play Os-t-rov- s-ko-th "Forest"! Or that chu-ma-zy Sing-ka-bes-p-ri-zor-ny-, us-tu-ki-vaya about-g-lo-given-my-kos-ty-mi, like a kas-tan -eta-mi, sang Ro-tov-s-ko “Yabloch-ko”! I finally got it from a gar-mo-niya. And Ne-ko-pa-rov, sha-you-va-ya, stood up and said: “I ask for your attention, dear citizens!” By chance, about the events in our dark and unrigid shelter, pos-re-di rude and low-cultural, but at the same time very nice people... - In the middle of crayfish, someone popped. - That’s right, after people, as fate would have it, would have descended to the dirty floor that smelled like oil... go-na, turned out to be a woman from another, not-from-the-world, the world of arts and beauty ! And I take the liberty, on behalf of everyone here, to ask her to take part in our modest feast. He walked up to Rita and, bowing politely, gave her his hand. Gar-mo-nist du-nul "tan-go". And Ne-ko-pa-drov, proud of his yes-my, high-drank in the gray . It was semi-dark, but in the dark, tuss-to-lom va-go-not. In the corner, a fiery flame was cracking in a red-hot dock on an iron stove, and behind the -grown cheeky faces had red spots and black shadows, and in the eyes, greedily looking at out of the gloomy dance, yellow lights flashed. - Dance... - the locksmith kicked out thoughtfully, in a drunken voice. - This is that... - What's that? - So... Eh, there are people living here! - he said with a hint of silence. But no one understood what he was talking about. Then Ri-ta, to the accompaniment of the pri-lo-py-va-niya and the pri-vis-you-va-niya, dance-tse-va-la with Pet-koy-bes-p-ri-zor-nym “Rus” -skuyu". Oh-ran-nick came to va-go-nu and, po-s-t-chapping at the door, screamed, so as not to make a noise. But the oh-ran-ni-ka friendly chorus po-la-li further, and he left, swearing. However, in the end they had a great time: before going to bed, some women got into the carriage, then they watched the lights and romped with the ba-ba-mi in the dark corners until the dawn. The city started to eat. The city is boring, sleepy. One day I opened the newspaper and laughed: there was a statement about the fact that “there is a special baya inter-du-ve-house-s-t-ven-naya commission on ure-gu-li-ro-va-niy street traffic." What is there to re-gu-li-ro-vat here? Only once in a while the os-ta-but-comes to marry another naked sak-sa-ulom isha-kov and pro-empty to teach the de-currently-born believers, from-to-the-sands of Mer-to-the oasis. Three days later, we took bi-let-you to Kras-no-vod-s-ka with the money we earned from work. Do you want to say goodbye to the carriage? Ne-ko-par-drov was sad. - The devil knows! -he said. -I received a pity, bought a braid, and there are still ten days before the next one. There's nothing to eat. Next, the manager will come tomorrow to sell bo-tin-ki. I think that by the time of the sun he was again in his za-me-cha-tel-norm. On the left are mountains, on the right are sands. On the left are green meadows irrigated by mountain streams, on the right are deserted areas. On the left - ki-bit-ki, like brown mushrooms, on the right - vet-vi sak-sa-ula, like dead snakes, withered sun-n-cem. Then the bare, ras-t-res-can clay went out. Under the ras-ka-len-sun, just like a spot on the earth, the white salt fell for a long time. -Are you hot, Ri-ta? - It's hot, Gaidar! Yes, it’s not better on the square. Dust and wind. I'm waiting for everything - we'll come to the sea, we'll go swimming. Look out the window, there it is. Well, what kind of life is this? I watched. On the flat, salt-eaten clay, surrounded by tufts of gray herbs, one stood a ditch. Naya ki-bit-ka. Near her sit-de-la rim-wound so-ba-ka, tucking her legs under herself, honey-flax-but about-you-rolled the chewing gum -shiy-, exactly osh-pa-ren-ny ki-pyat-kom, ver-b-people; not in the right way, he settled down like a soul, but in the last thousand years, to a dead end to the wall of the endless chain of per-sid-from-the-mountains. For two weeks now, Niko-la-e and I have been working on loads in Kras-no-vod-s-ke. Two long sacks of salt and dried fish, bo-chon-ki with hot oil and ty-ki ko-lu-che-go press-so-van-no-go se-na. We return home to a tiny room on the outskirts of the city, near the sad mountains, and there is a -he gives us some meat and porridge. Two fish soups and porridge made from millet groats in a row. Niko-la and I earn twenty rubles a day, and we need to save money at all costs, in order to cross the sea, because there is no way anywhere else from Kras-no-vod-s-ka. “Cursed by God”, “ka-tor-zh-naya exile”, “ty-rem-naya ka-zar-ma” - that’s not all the epi-those-you, pri- la-ga-emye na-se-le-ni-em to Kras-no-vod-s-ku. The city is close to the Asian shore of the Caspian Sea, the sea, near the shores of something There is more fatty oil than water. Around the city there is a dead desert - not a single de-re-va, not a single green village. Square, ka-zar-men-no-go type of house; dust, eating into the throat, and a permanent yellow shine from the dust, the heat of the merciless sun -tsa. “We wish we could leave sooner! We just wish we could move on sooner!” we dream. “There, across the sea, the Caucasus, soft greenery, there’s rest, there’s -coy-, everything is there. And here there’s only ka-tor-z-la-ra-bo-ta and ras-ka-la-na-empty-you-nya, and sticky, fat-from-oil dust". In the evening, when we got a little cold, we scattered the raincoats on the sand of the yard, prepared dinner, were impressed and hurt. - Well, how much more money do we need? - Ten more. So it’s not like you’re going to work with you for food. - Wow, hurry up! Every day, when the pa-ro-movement leaves from here, I don’t find a place for myself! I would go crazy if I were forced to live here. Well, how can one live here? - They live, Rita, they live and don’t go crazy. Being born, getting married, falling in love - everything is honorable. Rita remembered something and fell asleep. - You know, I was on the b-za-re this-year-nya. The Greek came up to me. So, quite an in-tel-gen-t-face. He sells fruit. In general, we talked. He took me all the way home. But the cunning one kept inviting him to visit him. Everything hinted that he liked me and all that. Then I went to his shop and pop-ro-si-la him to weigh me a pound of stuff. I look, he weighed not a pound, but two, and, besides that, he put on a full sack of apples. I ask him: how much? And he fell asleep and said: “A ruble for everyone, but nothing for you.” I took everything, said “thank you” and left. - Did you take it? -with no-go-to-va-ni-em per-res-p-ro-sil Ni-ko-bark. -Are you crazy, or what? - What a stupidity! Of course, I took it. Who pulled him by the tongue? What does a ruble mean to him? And for us, look, we’ll leave one day earlier. However, Ni-ko-lai huffed and fell silent. And he was silent until she whispered something quietly in his ear. Before going to bed, Rita came up to me and hugged my neck. - Why are you so strange? - Why is it strange, Ri-ta? - So. -Then, mol-cha-la and suddenly, ba-vi-la: - And yet, still, I love you very much. - Why “all the same”, Ri-ta? She became embarrassed, caught at her word: “Why are you going to eat?” Darling, no way! Better tell me, what are you thinking? And I answered: “I’m thinking that tomorrow the Karl Marx ship should come with a load, and we’ll have a lot of work.” -bo-you. - And nothing else? Well, talk to me, ask me about anything? I saw that she wanted to call me for a conversation, I felt that I would ask her about what I was talking about I've been wanting to ask for a long time now. And for some reason I answered with restraint: - Ask a person who himself is standing on the crossroads, useless. And I won’t ask you anything, Rita, but when you want to tell me something, tell me yourself. She became thoughtful and left. I was left alone. Si-did, smoked pa-pi-ro-su for pa-pi-ro-soi-, listened to the rustling of wasps-s-s-s-s-s-from-a-ly-sand-re -what are the pebbles along the coastline? Entered the room. Ri-ta was already asleep. For a long time, the smoke of drooping eyelashes was silent. He looked at the familiar features of the dark-skinned face, then he wrapped the blanket around her legs and... - hit her on the forehead - carefully, carefully, so as not to hear. That day we had a lot of work. Bo-chon-ki moved like ke-gel balls, sacks of salt almost ran, we were dragged along bending under -mos-t-kam, and clouds of white dust, one after another, soared over the five-pu-do-vi-ka-mi mu-ki. We are working in the hold, helping the mat-ro-to fasten the load onto the hook of the steel cable to lift the crane. We were sweating it out, our wet chests seemed sticky from the flour dust, but there was no time to rest. “Myna,” shouted the tru-mo-voy mat-ros in a cha-yang voice, “may-na po-ma-lu... Stop... Vi-ra.” Iron chains cr-na squeak-pe-li, hiss-sang you-bi-va-sya steam, hundred-pu-do-ve packs of gro-for every now and then take-off to the top. - I can not take it anymore! -pe-re-soh-shi-mi gu-ba-mi pro-bor-mo-tal, approaching me, No-barking. -My throat is full of dirt and my eyes are full of flour. “It’s okay, hold on,” I said, licking my tongue around my lips. -C'mon, Kolya, just another day or two. - Polundra! -screamed once-g-not-van-but try-mo-howl. -Down with the pros-ve-ta! And Ni-ko-bark barely had time to s-s-c-ch-it, because the deflated pack came crashing down from above. la-female bags; one of them, having quarreled, hit Nikolai on the arm with a dry, hard edge. - Oh, you!... God loved your mother! -evil you-ru-gal-sya mat-ros. -Don't put your head under the tap! A few minutes later, Niko-bark, sucking on the pain in his bruised elbow, went home. We worked for about two more hours. Mat-ros now and then covered me with strong swearing, now in the form of pre-dos-te-re-same, now in the form of encouragement, then just. I worked like a na-vo-chik-artil-le-rist in the fu-ro-ho-vom smoke. He rummaged through the bags, rushed to the boxes, pulled off the felt bales. All this had to be quickly put together on the chains on the floor, and immediately everything flew out of the hold and up into the square is yellow, burnt, not-ba... - Basta! - the mat-ros said in a hoarse voice, as he hooked the last part of the load. -It's been a while now. Yes-wai-, bra-talk, smoke up! Staggering from the mouth-ta-los-ti, they climbed out onto the pa-lu-bu, sat down on the bench, and ate. The body is sticky, hot, aching and itching. But I didn’t want to wash myself or go down the gangway to the shore. I wanted to sit in silence, smoke and not move. And only when the si-re-na ko-rab-la was over, he went down and went home. The siren roared again, there was a clang of chains, screams of commands, a clutter of boiling water and, sparkling with fire, the pa-ro-movement of the honey-flax-but-pop-lyed further, to the shores of Per-sia. Rita and Ni-ko-lay si-de-li at the fire-t-ra. They didn't notice that I was approaching them. Ni-ko-bark said: - It’s all the same... Ra-but or pos-d-but... You, Ri-ta, are sensitive, vo-p-ri-im-chi -vaya, but he is dry and callous. “Not always,” said Rita, “sometimes he would be different.” Do you know, Niko-lay, what I like about him? He is stronger than many and stronger than you. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but it seems to me that without him it would be more difficult for us now. - What does power have to do with it? He’s just more about-t-re-pan. What is this for him, for the first time, or what? Get used to it, and that’s it! I went. They stopped talking. Ri-ta brought me something to wash. The cold water really got on my head, and I asked: “Did you have lunch?” - Not yet. We've been waiting for you. - Now, what else would you expect? You are hungry, you must be like a dog! Before going to bed, Ri-ta unexpectedly pop-ro-si-la: - Gaidar, you know fairy tales. Tell me! - No, Ri-ta, I don’t know fairy tales. I knew when I was still very lazy, but since then I have forgotten. - Why does he know, why didn’t he forget? He's older than you! Why are you smiling? Tell me, please, what is it about your ma-ne-ra that is always somehow condescending, as if about a little one, talk about Niko-bark? He notices the same thing. He just doesn’t know how to make sure this doesn’t happen. - Grow up a little. There's nothing else to do here, Rita. Where did you get these flowers from? - He got it. You know, he hurt his hand this year and, not caring about it, climbed up that top over there. There is a spring flowing there, and some grass is growing around it. It's very difficult to get up there. Why don't you ever get me flowers? I answered her: “I don’t have much time for flowers.” The next day there was light. The manager is leaving tomorrow. I feel just right. Let's go swimming. Ri-ta-la-ve-se-la, swam-wa-la along the waves ru-sal-koy-, splashed-ha-la and screamed-cha-la, so that we wouldn’t dare to lo- twist it. One day I found some kind of nonsense on Niko-laya. Regardless of Ri-you's pre-dup-direction, he approached her. And either because I was swimming at that time for a long time, and she felt uneasy being alone with Niko, then Is it because she was so angry that his fa-mil-brightness was under-the-blue, but only she screamed something sharp . A few strong swings - and Ri-ta fell away, behind her mouth, to the place where she had undressed. We got dressed, Niko-lai was gloomy and didn’t say a word. - We have to go buy bi-le-you for to-morrow. Who will go? “I am,” he answered sharply. Apparently, it was hard for him to settle down with us. - Go. -I took out the money and gave it to him. - We'll probably be home. He left. We basked and dried in the sun for a long time. Ri-ta you-do-ma-la new for-nya-tie - throw pebbles into the sea. She was angry that she got no more than two laps, while I got three and four. When a stone launched by her accidentally soared over the water five times, she gasped in la-do-shi, announced -be-di-tel-no-tsei and declared that she didn’t want to throw anymore, but wanted to climb the mountain. For a long time that evening we lazed with her, laughed, talked, and went home, well-groomed, contented, Squeezing each other's hands tightly. Nikolai, however, has not yet existed. “He probably already came, didn’t miss us and went to look for us,” we decided. However, an hour passed, then another, and he still did not come back. We got mad. Nikolai returned at two o'clock in the morning. He couldn't stand on his feet, he was absolutely drunk, he scolded me like a bastard, he told Rita that he loved her like mad. , then he called... get out of here and, swaying, crashed onto the floor. He mumbled about something for a long time and finally fell asleep. Rita was silent, burying her head in the shower, and I saw that she was about to burst into tears. In Nikolai’s pockets I found twenty-seven kopecks; there were no bi-le-tov, and everything else was gone, obviously, in a ca-b-ka with a load. The morning was hard. Niko-bark was silent for a long time, apparently, only now he-can-know what he-did. “I’m a scoundrel,” he said dully, “and my best choice would be to throw myself head-first down the mountain.” “Nonsense,” I said calmly. - Nonsense... Who wouldn’t be with. Well, it happened... Well, you can't eat anything. I'll go to the office this year and tell them to count us for the shipment again. Let's eat again. Damn it! During the day, Ni-ko-bark lay-sting. He had a headache after yesterday. And I again carried sacks, barrels of hot oil and rolls of wet, not-you-made leathers. When I returned, Ri-you weren't home. - How do you feel, Ni-ko-bark? Where is Ri-ta? - My headache is gone, but I feel bad. But Ri-you are not. She went somewhere while I was still sleeping. Ri-ta returned about two hours later. She sat down, without going into the room, on a stone in the yard, and only by chance did I see her. “Rita,” I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder. -What's wrong, baby? She shuddered, silently squeezed my hand... I quietly stroked her head, without asking anything, but... I felt like a large, warm tear fell on my palm. - What happened to you-? What are you talking about? -And I pulled her towards me. But instead, she buried her head in my shoulder and burst into sobs. “So,” she said after a few minutes. -So, that's it. Damn city, dogs... Hurry, hurry, get away from here! “Okay,” I said firmly. -We'll work on the subway for over six hours, but we'll make sure we don't spend more time here... Xia days. However, everything turned out somewhat differently. The next day, when I returned, Niko-bark hmu-ro re-gave me the money. - Where did you get it? - I asked in surprise. “It’s all the same,” he answered, without looking me in the eyes. -It doesn’t matter where! And ever-great old ka-lo-sha - the rusty ship "Ma-rat" - from the yellow white - re-gov, from the clay rocks of the "ka-tor-zh-no-go" city. The Caucasus greeted us with a warm welcome. In three days in Baku we paid almost the same amount of work as in two days of work in Kras-no-vod-s-ka . We sat down in a bad room for some reason. We were talking, you were exhausted, and the punks, having filled the neighboring pubs, passed for our own. Ri-ta, in front of the ge-ro-ev fi-nok and ko-ka-ina, was our shma-roy, and was not attached to her. ..Are we both in dirty, s-b-ro-san circles of ba-za-ra har-chev-nyakh. In them, for two years you could get "ha-shi" - a dish, to which Ri-ta and Niko-lay owe You didn’t dare to pretend, but then you got used to it. “Hashi” is a dish of kav-kaz-s-ko-go pro-le-ta-riya. This is you-los-can-naya, cut-re-zan-naya into small pieces-so-ki-va-re-naya tre-bu-ha, pre-important-t-ven-but -lu-dok and ram-ranya go-lo-va. They're shaking a full cup, and then there's liquid mustard and it's all thick. add coarse salt and thick garlic. These taverns are always crowded. There are unemployed people, heavy-duty people, and people without op-re-de-linen profession, those who are about-la-chi- va-yut-sya near someone else's che-mo-da-nov in the pri-ta-nyams and wok-za-lams. Shn-ry-yut us-lu-s-ly personal-noses in thick coats, in the internal pockets of which you always find-dut- Xia bottle with strong sa-mo-go-nom. A ten-kopeck piece in the hand - and un-noticed, in an un-possible way, the tea-glass is full, then quickly t-ro op-ro-ki-dives into the throat for-ku-pa-te-la, and again the thick finger stuck with the tag, and further, to the neighboring table. Sometimes there seems to be a mi-li-tsi-oner in the doorway, looking with an inquisitive look at those sitting, hopelessly-but-for- he starts talking and leaves: drunk people don’t go around, there are no fights, there are no obvious ban-di-ts in sight, in general, si-di- those, they say, sit-di-te, go-lub-chi-ki, until the time is up. And so, in one of those har-che-vens, I happened to meet Yash-ka Ser-gu-ni-ny - with the dear one from the past, friend of the fire of Yash-koi. The gram-mo-fon wheezed, like a horse panting from the sa-pa. Thick clouds smelled like garlic and the same steam under the ta-rel-ka-mi. Yash-ka sat at the end of the counter and, vop-re-ki pre-dos-te-re-same-ni-yam ho-zia-ina-gree-ka, dos-ta-val from-to-ry-from-a-pocket to half-a-head, from-to-pi-val straight out of the gor-lysh-ka and pri-not-small-va again for food. For a long time I stared at that puffed-up, blue-necked face, looking at the bags under the bulging eyes. I recognized Yash-ku, and could not recognize him. Only when he turned back to the right-hand side towards the light, when he saw a wide-eyed sa-bel-no-go a scar across his neck, I stood up and walked up to him, slapped him on the shoulder and shouted joyfully: - Yashka Ser-gu-nin ... Dear friend! Tease-me-me? He, not having heard the question, raised a hostile debate at me with his tussocks, poisoned with co-kain and vodka. for, I wanted to swear, and maybe even hit, but I stopped, I looked at you with half-my attention. but, for example, I can see all my memory. Then he hit the table with his ku-la-com, crossed his lips and shouted: “I’ll die if it’s not you, Gaidar!” - It's me, Yashka. Get the hell out of here! You bastard... Dear friend, how many years have we not seen each other? After all, since then... “Yes,” he answered. “That’s right.” Since then... Since then. He fell silent, gasped, pulled out the bottle, drank from the bottle and repeated: “Yes, ever since.” But there was something put into these words that stopped me from living. Pain, like a drop of blood, dripping from an old wound on the street, and hostility towards me, like a stone, from -for someone this r-w-has been done... - Do you remember? - I told him. But he cut me off right away. - Leave it! You never know. Here, drink if you want, -and then ba-wil with the maiden-: -You-drink for the peace. - For repose, what? - Total! - he said rudely. Then, still hot and sharp: “Yes, that’s all, that’s all!” “Wouldn’t it be good,” I began again. -Do you remember Ki-ev, do you remember Bel-gorod-ku? Do you remember how you and I kept cooking and couldn’t finish cooking the goose? So they ate it half-baked! And all because of Ze-le-no-go. “Because of An-ge-la,” he frowned. - No, because of Ze-le-no-go. You forgot, Yashka. It was under Ti-ras-po-lem. And na-shu bri-ga-doo? And So-ro-ki-na? Do you remember how you pulled me out when that damn thing got me in the locker? ? - I remember. I remember everything! - he answered. And the pale shadow of Yash’s good, former smile lay on her dull face. -Isn’t this all... Isn’t this all for-you, Gai-dar! Eh-eh! - exactly the groan of a quarrel with him after-the-least-resurrection. There was a murmur of lips, and a wheezing sound, but he said to me: “Leave it, I told you!... There’s no point in it all.” This. Leave it alone, you bastard! Wrapped in club-ba-mi ma-ho-roch-no-go-dy-ma, drank his glass-can of sa-mo-go-na to the end, and gave away the prize forever -the shadow of Yash-ka’s smile. - Why are you in Baku? So are you walking around or are you climbing around? - No. - What, are you still in the party? - And what? - So. The scoundrel is sitting on horseback. Bu-rock-ra-you're all... - Is that really all? He remained silent. - I was at the ki-che. You went out, you wanted to work, but no. Here you are, unemployed, wandering around the port. I went to Vaska. Do you remember Vas-ka, he was our co-mis-sa-rum in the second battle? Here now. In the Council of People's Commissars there is work here. They waited for him at the reception for two hours. Well, he didn’t let me in, but he went out himself. “Sorry,” he says, “I was busy. You know it yourself. And despite us, we can’t do anything. There’s no work here.” "Ti-tsa, hundreds of people come a day. And besides, you are not a member of the union." I almost choked. I hold on for two hours, and then: “I can’t do anything!” You bastard, I tell him, even though I’m not a member of the union, you know me, who I am and what I’m like! Pere-der-der-nu-lo him. The people are in the reception, and I brought it back. “Go away,” he says, “I can’t do anything. And oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, this is not the headquarters of the division.” in de-vyat-above-tsa-that". A! - I say to him. - Not the headquarters of the division, you scoundrel! He just came back and hit him in the face! - Well? - I sat there for three months. I don’t care, at least three years. Now I don’t care about anything at all. We live our own lives. - Who are we? “We,” he answered stubbornly. -Those who are not there. .. didn’t know anything, didn’t look at anything, didn’t look ahead and fought like devils, but now -to-mu and for-nothing... - Yashka! But you’re not red anymore! - No! -he answered with a blank expression. -I would strangle everyone in a row - the red ones, the white ones, the blue ones, and the green ones! He fell silent. I fumbled with my hand in the bottomless torn pockets and pulled out half a bottle again. I wake up. It would have been hard. And I looked again at Yash-ka, the one whose head was standing next to mine, whose head was rya-whose mo-ey-! Yash-ku-kur-san-ta, Yash-ku - ta-lan-t-li-vo-go pu-le-met-chi-ka, the best friend of the og-new years! I remembered how, near Kiev, with his head over his head, he was writhing in agony and smiling. And he became even heavier with pain because he did not die then with a proud smile, with a lock tightly clasped in his hand, vykh-va-chen-nym from the ko-ro-ba to the pet-lu-rov-tsam pu-le-me-ta... Kur-ra rushes about, squeezing the pli- ta-mi stone banks, beats muddy waves against the stone walls of the ancient villages of Tif-li-sa. He turns over stones, breathes foam, hits rocks, and the old witch, Kura, gets angry. There are more lights in Tif-li-s at night than there are stars in August. The Tiflis night is like a owl: it trembles, it screams in the dark, it roars, it roars, it doesn’t let you sleep... But with us, everything is the same: wok-halls, stone slabs, the floor is cold, sleep is like after a portion of chlor-ro-for -ma, - and a push in the back. - Hey, get up, citizen! In Tif-li-se, the agent of the Cheka for-you-go-well-you narrow-ki-mi re-mesh-ka-mi in ryu-moch-ku. Ma-user with a silver-plate-tin-coy, spurs with a polished ringing, sa-po-gi in star-spangled sparkles, and a face - always just from pa-rik-ma-he-ra. - Get up and you-me-tai-sya with wok-za-la, then-va-risch! Who are you? I give it to you - you don’t look. - Give me another one. Tell me, what is this thick book you have in your notebook? - This... this is a do-go-thief. - What kind of deal? - Spit, you're an agent! Nothing is dangerous: before-the-thief is not yet for-the-thief. I just wrote a book, sold it and closed the conversation. Grin: - Oh, so, that means you’re a book dealer! No, you can’t go to the wok. You-me-those! There are stars in the sky, under the stars there is earth. On the ground in the corner, behind the wok-wall, there is a pile of logs. Se-li. Mi-li-tsi-oner floats like a black, evil shadow. It passed once, passed twice, and stopped. And he didn’t even say a word, but simply waved his hand, which meant: “Come on, you’re not supposed to-” There’s no reason to sit here, it’s not okay.” Gone. But understand, then-va-risch mi-li-tsi-oner! In as-fal-those damp tro-tu-ara, in the logs for building there will be no holes because three mustaches will die on them -tav-shih bro-dag. Striped, like kos-tyu-we ka-tor-zh-ni-kov, are you sure that we got through the first hundred. Yes-so-beyond Tif-lis, yes-so-sunny to the ancient Mtskheta, just beyond-the-stone-cre- post once-va-liv-she-go-sya Ana-uri. And the road all the way winds, circles, goes into the mountains, and the snowy peaks Gu-da-ur-s-to-re -va-la is getting closer and closer. We are walking across Georgia. We've been going for five days, but we're eating in the mountains near the fire. Let's drink cheap, but cold and tasty hot water, brew some stew, boil some smoky tea and go further -she. - Gaidar! -Tell me, finally, the sun-loved and wicked Ri-ta. -Tell me, what is all this for? Why did you think about this do-ro-gu? I don’t want any more Georgia, or Kav-kaz, or the once-va-len towers. I'm tired and I want to go to my place! Nikolai once again echoed: “It would be so much easier to take the train in Tif-li-s and go to Sta-lin-g-ra-da.” , and from-to-yes - to-my. You're torturing her, and in general, forcing women to climb these damn mountains is stupid. I got angry: “It’s even simpler and smarter to sleep on a soft floor in a first-class room or sit at home.” Is not it? Look, Ri-ta, do you see the white peak of a snowy mountain ahead? The sun is burning in your back, and a cold, snowy wind is blowing from there! But Niko-bark continued to babble: “What good did you find?” Madness! This will end with her getting pneumonia. You play and eat her healthily! It’s always like this: the more tender, the more care-like he is, the colder and more restrained I am... When Ri-te pon-ra -a flower fluttered, No-barking barely broke its head, climbing up a heavy rock. He picked it and brought it to her. And that same evening, fiddling around with a piece of ba-ran-meat, bought in the house, until , if you get in a row twice, then on the third you’ll die, I saw that Ni-ko-barking by the fireplace kisses Ri-tu On the lips. “Obviously, for the flower,” I thought and, with a mustache, I looked at my hands, but in my hands there was no color, but only some meat for dinner... In the evening of that day, an oncoming detachment of cavalry mi-li-tia prevented us that somewhere nearby there are riders from the gang of Cha-la-ka-eva - the mountain is ster-vyat-ni-ka, not-e-lo-vi-mo-go and from-yav-len-no-go kon-t-r-re-vo-lu-tsi-one-ra. I couldn't sleep that night. All the time I heard a rustling sound below, someone's whispering and a lo-sha-di-snorting. I went down to the stream and, suddenly, I saw a bush, and saw five horsemen in the moonlight. Alarmed, I quickly climbed back to prevent the sleeping people and sew the coals of the fire. As I was running, I bumped into someone who hit me in the shoulder with all the speed . In the dark we grabbed each other with a tenacious grip. I was, obviously, stronger, because I hit the man and strangled him by the throat, drinking us together -nom on the hand, squeezing the dagger. The man could not swing, and, pointing a blade at my right thigh, slowly pressed the point into my body. And the blade went deeper and deeper. Oka-me-nev, gritting my teeth, I continued to squeeze his throat until he began to choke. Finally, he put his left hand under my chest and popped the blade into it. If he had succeeded, I would have died for sure. I released my throat and twisted his hand; the blade, clanking, fell somewhere on the rocks, and we, squeezing each other, began to cross the ground . I saw that he was trying to get a re-vol-ver out of the co-bug. “It’s good, I have a quick thought, let you go.” I quickly let go of his hands. While he was unwinding the knob, I picked up a heavy stone and hit him on the head with all my might -ve. He screamed, tore: the broken bushes, and without letting go of each other, we both went down . When I came to my senses, the stranger was lying in front of me and was not breathing. He crashed on a rock. I opened my fingers. Hurry to the top, hurry to Ri-ta. He stood up, took a step, but immediately staggered and sat down. “Okay,” I thought, “good, but still, I’m going to make a big noise, and they’ll manage to hide.” Having pulled out a gun from behind my belt, I pressed my hand and banged into the air twice. The mountain echo zag-ro-ho-ta-lo along the gorge thunder-mo-you-mi-re-ka-ta-mi. And hasn’t it died down yet, behind the pu-tav-shi-esya in the mouths of the rocks from the voices of the high-t-re-lovs, how far to the right you heard alarming cries. They are rushing here now, all wa-ta-ga, it must be. But I can’t run! I feel dizzy from the impact of my head. But immediately I remembered Rita. Ri-ta, who needed to be saved at all costs! Having sat down on a stone, I settled down and, raising my black hot gun, began to plant it in the stars, shooting high -t-re-break. About five minutes later there was a loud noise. I crawled two steps towards the bank, under which the waves of the sur-mas-shed-shei of Arag-va cloaked. The riders were talking about something in Georgian-s-ki, but I only understood the two words that I needed the most -va: “They ran away!” I didn’t need anything else. The next second, the horse of one of the riders began to groan, tripping over the corpse of his opponent. Os-ta-no-vi-lis, sos-ko-chi-li with se-del. There were screams and ru-ga-tel-s-t-va. Then a match was lit. And it flashed brightly, lit by someone, boo-ma-ha. But before the ban-di-tov could do anything, I, closing my eyes, rushed down into the black the new waves of the wild Arag-you.

PART TWO

20
Jul
2017

Horsemen inaccessible mountains(Gaidar Arkady)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 128kbps
Gaidar Arkady
Year of release: 2017
Genre: Adventure story
Publisher: Radio Zvezda
Performer: Bespaliy Denis
Duration: 03:03:36
Description: Arkady Gaidar's rarely published "exotic" story "Riders of the Impenetrable Mountains" tells about the adventures of two friends and a girl, Rita, in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
The hanging was written in 1927, and according to the author himself, it is unsuccessful and he dislikes it for its artificiality.

20
but I
2014

Horsemen from Nowhere 01. Horsemen from Nowhere (Alexander Abramov and Sergey Abramov)

Author: Alexander Abramov and Sergey Abramov
Year of manufacture: 2014
Genre: Science fiction
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: Margarita Ivanova
Duration: 09:37:18
Description: In the novel “Riders from Nowhere,” on Earth, in the sky over Antarctica, mysterious pink “clouds” suddenly appear, “cutting” the ice, which turn out to be representatives of an extraterrestrial, non-galactic civilization. When trying to come into contact with them, people encounter inexplicable phenomena. A scientific expedition was formed to study them.
Add. Information: Release of the Auto Fans Club...

28
Dec
2017

Governor of the Mountains (Khoruev Yu.V.)

Format: DjVu
Quality: Scanned pages + recognized text layer
Author: Khoruev Yu.V.
Year of manufacture: 2011
Genre: Journalism
Publisher: IPO SOIGSI (Vladikavkaz)
Russian language
Number of pages: 286
Description: This book is about the most famous abrek in the Caucasus, a Chechen from Kharachoy, who terrorized the entire local administration at the beginning of the 20th century. The civilian authorities, unable to cope with terrorist No. 1 alone, equipped an entire army of more than several thousand soldiers and Cossacks. To achieve the goal set by the Russian administration, this military armada needed as many as four...

19
but I
2015

Treasure of the Blue Mountains (Salgari Emilio)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96 Kbps
Author: Salgari Emilio
Year of manufacture: 2011
Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: Muzyr Lina
Duration: 09:13:45
Description: The action of the exciting novel by the wonderful author Emilio Salgari (1863-1911) takes place on the island of New Caledonia. Captain Fernando de Belgrano is shipwrecked off the coast of New Caledonia. He miraculously escapes, ends up among the savages and even becomes their leader. However, his days are numbered, and the last thing he can do for his children is to send them a letter and a map indicating where...

29
Oct
2017

Captives of Alien Mountains (Stony Artem)

Author: Kamenisty Artem
Year of manufacture: 2016
Genre: Action fantasy
Cycle/series: Border River
Book number: 5
Publisher: MediaKniga
Performer: Boris Avdeev
Duration: 11:56:53
Description: You live in a prosperous city, you have rich plans for tonight, and you also have a lot planned for the rest of your life. Forget it, the cosmos itself has intervened in your life, and now you have no future. More precisely, there is, but sad and most likely short. The most unlucky ones are given only a few minutes, while the agony of others can drag on for days and months. The place where it took you...

26
Oct
2014

People of the Misty Mountains (Lyon Sprague De Camp, Nyberg Bjorn)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 192kbps
Author: Lyon Sprague De Camp, Nyberg Bjorn
Year of manufacture: 2014
Genre: Fantasy

Artist: Eugnik, Elance
Duration: 00:50:51
Description: Conan, serving in the Turanian Guard, accompanies the ambassador. The squad is ambushed and only two escape: Conan and Jamil. They need to go through a pass, forever hidden by fog, but huge monsters are already waiting for travelers there.
Add. information: Another story about Conan related to the classical saga, but not included in the first scroll.

12
Jul
2014

Stone belt 3. Master of the stone mountains (Evgeniy Fedorov)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96 kbps
Author: Fedorov Evgeniy
Year of manufacture: 2014
Genre: Historical novel
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: Budevich Valery
Duration: 40:53:08
Description: Tsar Peter sometimes picked up a blacksmith’s hammer himself. How could he not notice the skilled Tula blacksmith Nikita. It was with him that the famous family of industrialists, the Demidovs, began - people who served the glory and greatness of Russia. In the Urals - the Stone Belt - anvils were ringing, life was in full swing with its joys and sorrows. If they worked here, then so that sparks of red-hot metal would fly; if they walked, then before after...

18
Apr
2016

Border River-05. Captives of foreign mountains (KaministyiArtyom)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 64kbps
Author: Kamenisty Artyom
Year of manufacture: 2016
Genre: Science Fiction, Action Fiction
Publisher: MediaKniga
Performer: Boris Avdeev
Duration: 11:56:53
Description: You live in a prosperous city, you have rich plans for tonight, and you also have a lot planned for the rest of your life. Forget it, the cosmos itself has intervened in your life, and now you have no future. More precisely, there is, but sad and most likely short. The most unlucky ones are given only a few minutes, while the agony of others can drag on for days and months. The place you've been taken to is a perfect trap...

12
Feb
2012

Riders from Nowhere (Alexander and Sergey Abramov)

Year of manufacture: 2009
Genre fiction
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: M. Ivanova
Duration: 8 hours 58 minutes
Description: In Antarctica, strange pink clouds appear in the sky, “cutting” the ice. A scientific expedition has been formed to study them. At the same time, phantom cities and doubles of people appear all over the Earth...
Add. information: In the novel “Riders from Nowhere,” mysterious pink clouds appear on Earth, which turn out to be representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization. When trying to make contact with them, people became...

11
Dec
2015

Riders from Nowhere (Alexander and Sergey Abramov), Dmitry Avilov]

Format: audiobook, MP3, 128-192kbps
Author: Alexander and Sergey Abramov
Year of manufacture: 2015
Genre fiction
Publisher: DIY Audiobook
Performer: Dmitry Avilov
Duration: 11:06:20
Description: Trilogy "Riders from Nowhere", book one. A typical novel about contact between earthlings and representatives of an extragalactic civilization. Strange pink clouds appear in the Antarctic sky, “cutting” the ice. An expedition of experienced scientists has been formed to study them. At the same time, phantom ghost towns and doubles of people appear all over the Earth... 1. Horsemen from nowhere - in front of you 2. Paradise without...

12
Dec
2016

Riders of the night. Prince 5 (Prozorov Alexander)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 128kbps
Author: Prozorov Alexander
Year of manufacture: 2016
Genre: Historical fantasy, hit and miss
Publisher: "Abcool" free book
Performer: Sergey Larionov (babay7)
Duration: 12:11:21
Description: The trick of the necromancer Belurg forced Andrei Zverev to go home, to Velikiye Luki, not on the usual road, but through Dorogobuzh, along narrow country roads through dense forests that stretch between the Smolensky tract and the Pupovsky way. Here, far from the beaten path, he will encounter the horsemen of the night - brave and immortal warriors who managed to defeat many enemies superior...

17
Feb
2015

Ship in the Fjord: Roots of the Mountains (book 4 of 9) (Elizaveta Dvoretskaya)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96kbps
Author: Elizaveta Dvoretskaya
Year of manufacture: 2015
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: DIY Audiobook
Performer: Alexey Medvedev
Duration: 26:17:14
Description: The book is the fourth part of the epic “Ship in the Fjord”, written based on the history and mythology of Ancient Scandinavia. Two years of war between the Kvitt and Fjall tribes required the exertion of all the forces of both tribes; and it was little easier for those who won it than for those who lost. Herdis the Witch stole from her husband, the giant Svalnir, his wonderful sword “Battle Dragon”, which always brings victory to the saint...

29
Jul
2016

Leo 2: Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Edward Morgan Forster, Stephen King, etc.)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 192 - 320 kbps
Author: Edward Morgan Forster, Stephen King and others.
Year of manufacture: 2016
Genre fiction
Publisher: DIY Audiobook
Performer: Buldakov Oleg
Duration: 19:43:29
Description: For more than a century, people's minds have been occupied by the thought of the coming end of the world. What worries us is not even the exact date of the apocalypse, but how it will turn out for all living things? Threat from space? Global natural disasters? Ecological catastrophy? Technogenic? Or will a ruthless virus break free, against which medicine will be powerless? There can be many versions, and some of them are presented...

Year of release: 2016 Author: Valentin Pikul
Performer: Vladimir Sushkov
Publisher: Publishing house "VECHE"
Year of manufacture: 2004
Number of pages: 25 h
Add. information: Total playing time: 25 hours 26 minutes
Audio: MP3 audio_bitrate: 112 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo, 11
Description: The novel “Bayazet” is dedicated to one of the dramatic and heroic episodes of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 - the defense of the Bayazet fortress by a small Russian garrison, which went down in history under the name “Glorious Bayazet Seat”. This was the talented author's first attempt at...

Part one

For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .

And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.

But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman is life, raising in wrinkled strong hands the green flag - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.

And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.

Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.

All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.

I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.

That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.

I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of ​​leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.

I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.

And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.

- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.

“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”

“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.

Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.

She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:

- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.

“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.

- What am I?

- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.

Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.

I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!

– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.

But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat”, even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because twice and thrice last years the world is broken. And I answered him:

– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.

Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.

On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.

It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.

“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.

- What?

– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.

- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.

Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.

- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.

- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!

- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.

“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.

“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.

- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:

“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”

- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:

- Don't know.

And she said:

- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.

The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.

At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of a strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.

Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.

One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.

Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.

“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.

“It’s not true,” I answered, throwing away the cigarette butt. - You're fantasizing. From the European part of the city a narrow-gauge railway already reaches the skullcap shops of the dilapidated bazaar. Near the box stores where sleepy traders smoke chili, I have already seen signs of state trade stores, and across the street near the Koshchi union there will be a red banner.

Nikolai threw away his cigarette butt in annoyance and answered:

“I know all this, and I see all this myself.” But the red poster does not stick well to the clay walls, and it seems out of time, thrown here from the distant future, and in any case, not reflecting today. Yesterday I was at the grave of the great Tamerlane. There, at the stone entrance, gray-bearded old men play ancient chess from morning to night, and a blue banner and a ponytail bend over a heavy gravestone. This is beautiful, at least because there is no falsehood here, as there would be if they put a red flag there instead of a blue one.

“You’re stupid,” I answered him calmly. “The lame Tamerlane has only the past, and the traces of his iron heel are erased from the face of the earth by life day after day. His blue banner has long faded, and his ponytail is moth-eaten, and the old sheikh-gatekeeper probably has a son, a Komsomol member, who, perhaps still secretly, but already eats flatbread before sunset on the great fast of Ramadan and knows Budyonny’s biography better , who took Voronezh in the nineteenth, than the story of Tamerlane, who destroyed Asia five hundred years ago.

- No, no, it’s not true! – Nikolai objected hotly. – What do you think, Rita?

She turned her head to him and answered briefly:

– I probably agree with you on this. I also love beautiful things...

I smiled.

– You are obviously blinded by the sun, Rita, because...

But at that moment, an old, hunched woman wrapped in a burqa came out from around the bend like a blue shadow. Seeing us, she stopped and muttered something angrily, pointing her finger at a broken stone exit in the wall. But, of course, we didn’t understand anything.

“Gaidar,” Nikolai told me, standing up embarrassedly. - Maybe it’s not allowed here... Maybe this is some kind of sacred stone, and we sat on it and lit a cigarette?

We got up and went. We found ourselves in dead ends, walked through narrow streets along which two people could just barely pass each other, and finally came out onto a wide outskirts. On the left there was a small cliff, on the right there was a hill on which old people were sitting. We walked along the left side, but suddenly screams and howls were heard from the mountain. We turned around.

The old men jumped up from their seats, shouting something to us, waving their arms and staves.

“Gaidar,” Nikolai said, stopping. - Maybe it’s not allowed here, maybe there’s some kind of sacred place here?

- Nonsense! – I answered sharply, “What a sacred place is this, when horse manure is piled up all around!”

I didn’t finish, because Rita screamed and jumped back in fear, then a crash was heard, and Nikolai fell waist-deep into some dark hole. We barely managed to pull him out by the arms, and when he got out, I looked down and understood everything.

We had long since turned off the road and were walking along the rotten, earth-covered roof of the caravanserai. There were camels below, and the entrance to the caravanserai was from the side of the cliff.

We got back out and, guided by the glances of the silently seated and calmed old men, we walked on. We entered the empty and crooked street again and suddenly, around a bend, we came face to face with a young Uzbek woman. She quickly threw the black veil over her face, but not completely, but halfway; then she stopped, looked at us from under the veil and, quite unexpectedly, threw it back again.

– Russian is good, Sart is bad.

We walked side by side. She knew almost nothing in Russian, but we still talked.

- And how they live! - Nikolai told me. – Closed, cut off from everything, locked in the walls of the house. Still, what a wild and unapproachable East it is! It’s interesting to know how she lives, what she’s interested in...

“Wait,” I interrupted him. - Listen, girl, have you ever heard about Lenin?

She looked at me in surprise, not understanding anything, and Nikolai shrugged.

“About Lenin...” I repeated.

Suddenly a happy smile appeared on her face, and, pleased that she understood me, she answered warmly:

- Lelnin, Lelnin I know!.. - She nodded her head, but did not find the appropriate Russian word and continued to laugh.

Then she became wary, jumped to the side like a cat, dully threw on her veil and, bowing her head low, walked along the wall with a small, hasty gait. She obviously had good hearing, because a second later a thousand-year-old mullah came out from around the corner and, leaning on his staff, he silently looked for a long time, first at us, then at the blue shadow of the Uzbek woman; he was probably trying to guess something, he was probably guessing, but he was silent and with dull glassy eyes he looked at the two strangers and at the European girl with a laughing open face.

Nikolai has slanting Mongolian eyes, a small black beard and an active dark face. He is thin, wiry and tenacious. He's four years older than me, but that doesn't mean anything. He writes poems that he doesn’t show to anyone, dreams of the nineteenth year and automatically dropped out of the party in the twenty-second.

And as a motivation for this departure, he wrote a good poem, full of sorrow and pain for the “dying” revolution. Thus, having fulfilled his civic “duty,” he washed his hands of it and stepped aside to watch with bitterness the impending, in his opinion, death of everything that he sincerely loved and had lived by until now.

But this aimless observation soon tired of him. Death, despite all his forebodings, did not come, and he embraced the revolution a second time, remaining, however, with the deep conviction that the time would come, the years of fire would come, when at the cost of blood it would be necessary to correct the mistake committed in the twenty-first damned year.

He loves the tavern and, when he drinks, he certainly bangs his fist on the table and demands that the musicians play the revolutionary Budennovsky March: “About how on clear nights, how on stormy days we are bold and proud”... etc. But since this march for the most part is not included in the repertoire of entertainment venues, it is reconciled on the favorite gypsy romance: “Eh, everything that was, everything that ached, everything floated away a long time ago.”

During a musical performance, he taps his foot to the beat, spills his beer, and, worse, makes repeated attempts to rip his shirt collar. But due to the categorical protest of his comrades, he does not always succeed, but he still manages to tear off all the buttons from his collar. He is a soulful guy, a good comrade and a good journalist.

And it's all about him.

However, one more thing: he loves Rita, he has loved her for a long time and deeply. Ever since the time when Rita rang recklessly with a tambourine and threw her hair over her shoulders, performing the gypsy dance of Brahms - a number that caused mad clapping of tipsy people.

I know that he privately calls her “the girl from the tavern,” and he really likes this name because it’s... romantic.

We walked through a field strewn with pieces of moldy brick. Underfoot in the ground lay the bones of Tamerlane’s once buried thirty thousand soldiers. The field was gray and dry; every now and then we came across holes in fallen graves, and gray stone mice, at the rustle of our steps, silently hid in dusty holes. It was just the two of us. Me and Rita. Nikolai disappeared somewhere else in the early morning.

“Gaidar,” Rita asked me, “why do you love me?”

I stopped and looked at her with surprised eyes. I didn't understand this question. But Rita stubbornly took my hand and persistently repeated the question.

“Let’s sit on a rock,” I suggested. “It’s true that it’s too hot here, but there’s still no shadow anywhere.” Sit here, relax and don't ask me stupid questions.

Rita sat down, but not next to me, but opposite. With a sharp blow of her bamboo cane, she knocked down the thorny flower at my feet.

“I don’t want you to talk to me like that.” I ask you, and you must answer.

- Rita! There are questions that are difficult to answer and which are also unnecessary and useless.

“I don’t know at all what you want from me?” When Nikolai talks to me, I see why he likes me, but when you are silent, I see nothing.

- And why do you need it?

Rita threw her head back and, without squinting her eyes from the sun, looked into my face.

“Then to make you love me longer.”

“Okay,” I replied. - Fine. I'll think about it and tell you later. Now let’s go and climb to the top of the old mosque, and from there we will be able to see the gardens of all of Samarkand. The stone steps of the staircase had collapsed there, and with no girl but you, I would not have risked climbing there.

The sun's rays instantly smoothed out the wrinkles between Rita's dark eyebrows, and, pushing off my shoulder with her hand, hiding a smile, she jumped onto a nearby stone cliff.

The wind blew from the sandy deserts from the mountain peaks sprinkled with sugar snow. With the fury of a caressed puppy, he unwound Rita’s red scarf and tugged at her short gray skirt, throwing it just above her knees. But Rita... just laughs, choking slightly from the wind:

I agree. I now need the story of thirty thousand decayed skeletons less than one warm smile from Rita.

And we, laughing, climb onto the mosque. The steep curves are dark and cool. I feel Rita in front of me stop, lingering for a minute, and then my head falls into the loop of her flexible arms.

- Cute! How nice and what a wonderful city Samarkand is!..

And below, under the gray slabs, under the yellow earth, iron Timur sleeps in centuries-old peace in the rust of unsmoothed wrinkles.

Money was running out. But this did not upset us much, we had long known that sooner or later we would have to be left without them. We decided to take tickets to Bukhara, and whatever happens there.

The fading disk of the evening sun swayed among the petals of falling apricots and the greenery of blossoming gardens. Finally, we sat on the balcony, saturated with the spicy smell of a stuffy evening, and chatted peacefully. It was calm and warm. Ahead there was a long road, mysterious, like a haze of snow-capped mountains, glittering with white peaks, like horizons beyond a yellow sea of ​​shifting sand, like any other road not yet traveled and unexperienced.

- Hell no! - Nikolai said, slamming his notebook. – Are you going to lure me to Russia now? What is Russia? Is there anything like that there?...” And he vaguely waved his hand around him. - Everything is the same, yes, the same. Tired, disgusted and in general... Look, just look... Down below, the old sheikh is sitting at the gate, and his beard hangs to the ground. He reminds me of the sorcerer from One Thousand and One Nights. You know how it is there... well, where is Ali-Akhmet...

– Did you take the change from the owner? – I interrupted him.

– I took it... I heard a legend today. The old man was talking. Interesting. Do you want me to tell you?

- No. You will certainly misrepresent and then add half of your own.

- Nonsense! – he was offended. – Do you want me to tell you, Rita?

He sat down next to her and, apparently imitating the monotonous voice of the narrator, began to speak. Rita listened attentively at first, but then he captivated her and lulled her to sleep with a fairy tale.

“Once upon a time there lived a prince who loved a certain beauty. And the beauty loved another. After a whole series of tricks in order to persuade the unapproachable girl, he kills her lover. Then the beauty dies of melancholy, ordering her to be buried next to her loved one before her death. Her wish is fulfilled. But the proud prince kills himself and out of spite orders himself to be buried between them, and then... Two white roses grew over the outermost graves and, bending their tender stems, tenderly reached out to each other. But a few days later a wild red rose hip grew among them and... And so after his death, his criminal love separated them. And who is right and who is wrong - may the great Allah judge on the Day of Judgment...

When Nikolai finished telling his story, his eyes sparkled, and his hand tightly squeezed Rita’s hand.

“There is no such love now,” Rita answered slowly and lazily, either mockingly or bitterly.

- Yes... Yes, Rita! – he objected hotly. “There are people who are capable of...” But he broke off and fell silent.

– Are you hinting at your abilities? – I said, patting him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, standing up. - Let's go to bed, we'll have to get up early tomorrow.

Nikolai left. Rita stayed.

“Wait,” she said, pulling my sleeve. - Sit with me, sit for a while.

I sat down. She was silent.

“You recently promised to tell me why you love me.” Tell!..

I was amazed. I thought it was a momentary whim and forgot about it; I was not at all prepared for the answer, and therefore I said at random:

- For what? What a weirdo you are, Rita! Because you are young, because you are a good skier, because you love me, for your laughing eyes and stern eyebrows and, finally, because you have to love someone.

- Someone! So you don't care?

- Why doesn’t it matter?

- So, if you had not met me, you would still love someone now?

- Maybe…

Rita fell silent, reached out to the flowers, and I heard a broken apricot branch crunch in the darkness.

“Listen,” she said, “but somehow this doesn’t turn out well.” Like animals. The time has come - it means, like it or not, love. That's how it turns out in your opinion!

“Rita,” I answered, getting up, “it seems to me that over the past few days you have been strangely suspicious and nervous.” I don't know why this is. Maybe you're not feeling well, or maybe you're pregnant?

She flushed. The twig, broken into pieces, crunched again. Rita stood up and shook the crumbled twigs from her hem.

- You are saying nonsense! You will always find nastiness in everything. You are a callous and dry person at heart!

Then I put her on my lap and did not let her go until she was convinced that I was not as callous and dry as she thought.

On the way, in a dark fourth-class carriage, someone stole a suitcase with our things.

Nikolai discovered this loss. Waking up at night, he rummaged around on the top shelf, cursed several times, then pushed me away:

- Get up, get up! Where is our suitcase? He's gone!

- Stolen, or what? – I asked in my sleep, raising myself onto my elbow. - Sadly. Let's have a smoke.

We lit a cigarette.

- What bestiality! There are such crooks. If I had noticed, I would have smashed the son of a bitch all over his face. You need to tell the conductor. He steals candles, you scoundrel, and it’s dark in the carriage... Why are you silent?

Rita woke up. She scolded us both as idiots, then said that she was having an interesting dream, and so as not to be disturbed, she covered herself with a blanket and turned on her other side.

The rumor about the missing suitcase went around every corner of the carriage. People woke up, frightenedly rushed to their things and, finding them in place, sighed with relief.

- Who was it stolen from? – someone asked in the darkness.

- Over there, on the middle shelf.

- Well, what about them?

- Nothing, they lie and smoke.

The carriage came to life. A conductor arrived with candles, and the stories of eyewitnesses, victims and doubters began. There should have been enough conversation to last the whole night. Individuals tried to express sympathy and condolences to us. Rita was fast asleep and smiling at something in her sleep. The indignant Nikolai began to argue with the conductor, accusing him of money-grubbing and greed, and I went out onto the platform of the carriage.

He lit a cigarette again and leaned out of the window.

A huge disk of the moon hung over the desert like a Japanese lantern. The sandy hills running towards the distant horizons were sprinkled with blue moon dust, the stunted bushes froze in the stony calm and did not bend.

Blown by the wind of the rushing carriages, the cigarette decayed and was consumed in half a minute. I heard a cough behind me, I turned around and only now noticed that I was not alone on the site. Before me stood a man in a raincoat and one of those wide, holey hats that shepherds in the southern provinces often wear. At first he seemed young to me. But, looking closer, I noticed that his poorly shaven face was covered with deep wrinkles and that he was breathing quickly and unevenly.

- May I have a cigarette, young man? – he said politely, but at the same time demandingly.

I gave. He lit a cigarette and cleared his throat.

“I heard that something bad happened to you.” Of course it's mean. But pay attention to the fact that now thefts on the roads, and not only on the roads, but everywhere, have become commonplace. The people have lost all understanding of the law, of morality, of honor and decency.

He cleared his throat, blew his nose into a huge handkerchief and continued:

– And what can you ask the people if those in power themselves set an example in their time by legitimizing robbery and violence?

I became wary.

“Yes, yes,” he continued again with sudden sharpness. - They broke everything, incited the masses: take it, they say, rob it. And now you see what they have led to... A tiger that has tasted blood will not eat apples! So it is here. There is nothing left to rob someone else's. Everything has been plundered, so now they are sharpening their teeth on each other. Has there been theft before? Do not deny. But then who stole? A thief, a professional, and now the calmest person, no, no, and he’ll think: can’t I heat up my neighbor? Yes, yes... Don't interrupt, young man, I'm older than you! And don't look suspicious, I'm not afraid. I'm used to it already. At one time I was dragged to both the Cheka and the GPU, and I say straight out: I hate, but I am powerless. Counter-revolutionary, but I can’t do anything. Old and weak. If he were young, he would do everything possible in defense of order and honor... Prince Ossovetsky,” he introduced himself, changing his voice. - And mind you, not the former, as many scoundrels who have joined the service now write, but the real one. The way I was born is the way I will die. I could do it myself, but I don’t want to. I am an old horse breeder, a specialist. I was invited to your People's Commissariat of Agriculture, but I didn’t go - my grandfather’s servants are sitting there, and I said: no, I’m poor, but I’m proud.

Arkady Gaidar

Horsemen of the inaccessible mountains

Part one

For eight years now I have been scouring the territory of the former Russian Empire. I do not have the goal of carefully exploring every nook and cranny and comprehensively exploring the entire country. It's just a habit for me. Nowhere do I sleep so soundly as on the hard shelf of a swinging carriage, and never am I as calm as at the open window of the carriage platform, a window through which the fresh night wind rushes in, the frantic clatter of wheels, and the cast-iron roar of a steam locomotive breathing fire and sparks .

And when I happen to find myself in a calm home environment, I, having returned from another trip, as usual, exhausted, torn and tired, enjoy the soft peace of room silence, lie, without taking off my boots, on the sofas, on the beds and, wrapped in incense-like blue smoke of pipe tobacco, I swear to myself in my mind that this trip was the last, that it was time to stop, bring everything I had experienced into the system and, on the gray-green landscape of the calmly lazy Kama River, give my eyes a rest from the bright shine of the rays of the sunny Mtskheta valley or from the yellow sands of the Kara desert -Kum, from the luxurious greenery of the palm parks of the Black Sea coast, from the change of faces and, most importantly, from the change of impressions.

But a week or two passes, and the colored clouds of the fading horizon, like a caravan of camels setting off across the sands to distant Khiva, begin to ring monotonous copper bells again. The locomotive whistle, coming from behind the distant cornflower fields, reminds me more and more often that the semaphores are open. And the old woman-life, raising a green flag in her wrinkled strong hands - the green expanse of endless fields, gives a signal that the path is clear in the area provided to me.

And then the sleepy peace of a clock-measured life and the calm ticking of the alarm clock set for eight in the morning ends.

Let no one think that I am bored and have nowhere to put myself, and that, like a pendulum, I am swinging back and forth only in order to stupefy my head, which does not know what it needs, in a monotonous motion sickness.

All this is nonsense. I know what I need. I am 23 years old, and my chest volume is ninety-six centimeters, and I can easily squeeze a two-pound weight with my left hand.

I want, until the first time I have a runny nose or some other illness that condemns a person to the need to go to bed exactly at nine, having first taken aspirin powder - until this period comes, to turn over as much as possible, to twist in a whirlpool so that I would be thrown onto the green velvet shore, already exhausted, tired, but proud from the consciousness of my strength and from the knowledge that I managed to see and learn more than others saw and learned during the same time.

That's why I'm in a hurry. And therefore, when I was 15 years old, I already commanded the 4th company of a brigade of cadets, surrounded by a ring of serpentine Petliurism. At the age of 16 - a battalion. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the fifty-eighth special regiment, and at the age of 20 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.

I finished the book in the spring. Two circumstances pushed me to the idea of ​​leaving somewhere. Firstly, my head was tired from work, and secondly, contrary to the hoarding inherent in all publishing houses, this time the money was paid without any hassle and all at once.

I decided to go abroad. For two weeks of practice, I communicated with everyone, right down to the editorial courier, in a certain language that probably had a very vague resemblance to the language of the inhabitants of France. And in the third week I received a visa refusal.

And together with the Paris guide, I pushed the annoyance of the unexpected delay out of my head.

- Rita! - I said to the girl I loved. – We will go with you to Central Asia. There are the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, as well as pink apricots, gray donkeys and all sorts of other exotic things. We will go there the day after tomorrow night with an ambulance, and we will take Kolka with us.

“It’s clear,” she said, after thinking a little, “it’s clear that the day after tomorrow, that we’re going to Asia, but it’s not clear why we should take Kolka with us.”

“Rita,” I answered reasonably. - Firstly, Kolka loves you, secondly, he is a good guy, and thirdly, when in three weeks we don’t have a penny of money, you won’t be bored while one of us is chasing food or money for food.

Rita laughed back, and while she laughed, I thought that her teeth were quite suitable for chewing a dry ear of corn if the need arose.

She paused, then put her hand on my shoulder and said:

- Fine. But let him just throw fantasies about the meaning of life and other vague things out of his head for the entire journey. Otherwise I will still be bored.

“Rita,” I answered firmly, “for the entire journey he will throw the above thoughts out of his head, and also will not recite to you the poems of Yesenin and other modern poets.” He will collect wood for the fire and cook porridge. And I'll take care of the rest.

- What am I?

- And you’re okay. You will be enlisted “in the reserve of the Red Army and Navy” until circumstances require your possible assistance.

Rita put her other hand on my other shoulder and looked intently into my eyes.

I don’t know what kind of habit she has of looking into other people’s windows!

– In Uzbekistan, women walk with their faces covered. The gardens there are already blooming. In smoky teahouses, Uzbeks with turbans entwined in them smoke chilim and sing oriental songs. In addition, there is Tamerlane's grave there. “All this must be very poetic,” Nikolai told me enthusiastically, closing the pages of the encyclopedic dictionary.

But the dictionary was shabby, ancient, and I had lost the habit of believing everything that was written with hard signs and with “yat,” even if it was an arithmetic textbook, because the world had broken down twice and thrice in recent years. And I answered him:

– Tamerlane’s grave probably remained a grave, but in Samarkand there is already a women’s department that tears off the veil, a Komsomol that does not recognize the great holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and then, probably, there is not a single place on the territory of the USSR where it would be to the detriment of “Bricks” were not sung in national songs.

Nikolai frowned, although I don’t know what he could have against the women’s department and revolutionary songs. He is ours - red to the soles, and in the nineteenth, while on patrol with him, we once threw away a full half-eaten bowl of dumplings, because it was time to go report the results of reconnaissance to our own.

On a blizzard night in March, snow flakes hit the shaking windows of a speeding carriage. We passed Samara at midnight. There was a snowstorm, and the frosty wind was throwing pieces of ice in our faces when Rita and I walked out onto the station platform.

It was almost empty. Shivering from the cold, the station duty officer hid his red cap in his collar, and the station watchman kept his hand ready at the bell rope.

“I can’t believe it,” said Rita.

- What?

– The fact that where we are going is warm and sunny. It is so cold here.

- And it’s so warm there. Let's go to the carriage.

Nikolai stood at the window, drawing something with his finger on the glass.

- What are you talking about? – I asked, tugging at his sleeve.

- Buran, blizzard. It can't be that roses are already blooming there!

- You're both talking about the same thing. I don’t know anything about roses, but it’s clear that there is greenery there.

“I love flowers,” Nikolai said and carefully took Rita’s hand.

“Me too,” she answered him and took her hand away even more carefully.

- And you? - And she looked at me. - What do you like? I answered her:

“I love my saber, which I took from a killed Polish uhlan, and I love you.”

- Who is there more? – she asked, smiling. And I answered:

- Don't know.

And she said:

- Not true! You must know. – And, frowning, she sat down by the window, through which the black hair of the winter night, sprinkled with snowy flowers, softly beat.

The train caught up with spring with every new hundred miles. Orenburg had slush. It was dry near Kyzyl-Orda. Near Tashkent the steppes were green. And Samarkand, entangled in labyrinths of clay walls, swam in the pink petals of the already fading apricot.

At first we lived in a hotel, then we moved to a teahouse. During the day we wandered through the narrow blind streets of a strange eastern city. They returned in the evening tired, with their heads full of impressions, with faces aching from the sun, and with eyes covered with the sharp dust of the sun's rays.

Then the owner of the teahouse spread a red carpet on a large stage, on which during the day the Uzbeks, closed in a ring, slowly drink liquid kok-tea, passing the cup around, eat flatbreads thickly sprinkled with hemp seeds, and, to the monotonous sounds of a two-stringed dombra-dyutor, sing viscous, incomprehensible songs.

One day we were wandering around the old city and came somewhere to the ruins of one of the ancient towers. It was quiet and empty. From afar one could hear the roar of donkeys and the squealing of camels and the tapping of street blacksmiths near the covered bazaar.

Nikolai and I sat down on a large white stone and lit a cigarette, and Rita lay down on the grass and, raising her face to the sun, closed her eyes.

“I like this city,” said Nikolai. – I have dreamed of seeing such a city for many years, but until now I have only seen it in pictures and movies. Nothing is broken here yet; everyone continues to sleep and have beautiful dreams.