Vladimir BELYAEV
old fortress
A HISTORY TEACHER
We have recently become high school students.
Previously, all our lads studied at the city higher primary school.
Its yellow walls and green fence are clearly visible from the District.
If they rang at the school yard, we heard the bell at home, in the District. You grab books, a pencil case with pencils - and let's go run in order to be in time for lessons.
And they hurried.
You rush along Steep Lane, fly over a wooden bridge, then up the rocky path - to the Old Boulevard, and now the school gates are in front of you.
As soon as you have time to run into the classroom and sit down at your desk, the teacher enters with a magazine.
Our class was small, but very bright, the aisles between the desks were narrow, and the ceilings were low.
Three windows in our class overlooked the Old Fortress and two - on the District.
Tired of listening to the teacher - you can look out the windows.
I looked to the right - the Old Fortress with all its nine towers rises above the rocks.
And look to the left - there is our native District. From the windows of the school you can see every street, every house.
Here in the Old Estate, Petka's mother went out to hang clothes: you can see how the wind inflates the big shirts of Petka's father, the shoemaker Maremukha, with bubbles.
But from Krutoy Lane, the father of my friend Yuzik, the bow-legged Starodomsky, went out to catch dogs. You can see how his black oblong van is bouncing on the stones - a dog prison. Starodomsky turns his skinny horse to the right and drives past my house. Blue smoke billows from our kitchen chimney. This means that Aunt Marya Afanasyevna has already melted the stove.
Wondering what's for lunch today? Young potatoes with sour milk, hominy with uzvar or corn on the cob?
“Now, if only fried dumplings!” - I dream. Fried dumplings with offal I love the most. Is it really possible to compare young potatoes or buckwheat porridge with milk with them? Never!
Once I was daydreaming during a lesson, looking out the windows at the Zarechye, and suddenly, just above my ear, the voice of the teacher:
Well, Manjura! Go to the blackboard - help Bobyr...
I slowly leave my desk, look at the guys, and I don’t know what to help, for the life of me.
Freckled Sasha Bobyr, shifting from foot to foot, is waiting for me at the blackboard. He even smeared his nose with chalk.
I go up to him, take the chalk, and so that the teacher does not notice, I blink at my friend Yuzik Starodomsky, nicknamed Marten.
The marten, following the teacher, folds her hands in a boat and whispers:
Bisector! Bisector!
And what kind of bird is this, a bisector? Also called, prompted!
The mathematician has already approached the blackboard with even, calm steps.
Well, young man, thought?
But suddenly, at that very moment, a bell rings in the yard.
Bisector, Arkady Leonidovich, this is ... - I begin briskly, but the teacher no longer listens to me and goes to the door.
“Deftly twisted out,” I think, “otherwise I would have slapped a unit ...”
We loved the historian Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev more than all the teachers in the higher education.
He was not tall, white-haired, always walked in a green sweatshirt with sleeves patched at the elbows - he seemed to us at first glance the most ordinary teacher, so-so - neither fish nor meat.
When Lazarev first came to class, before speaking to us, he coughed for a long time, rummaged through the class magazine and wiped his pince-nez.
Well, the goblin brought another four-eyed ... - Yuzik whispered to me.
We were already going to invent a nickname for Lazarev, but when we got to know him better, we immediately recognized him and fell in love deeply, truly, just as we had not loved any of the teachers until now.
Where has it been seen before that the teacher easily walked around the city with his students?
And Valerian Dmitrievich was walking.
Often, after history lessons, he would gather us and, slyly squinting, would suggest:
Today I'm going to the fortress after school. Who wants to come with me?
There were many hunters. Who will refuse to go there with Lazarev?
Valerian Dmitrievich knew every stone in the Old Fortress.
One day Valerian Dmitrievich and I spent the whole Sunday, until evening, in the fortress. He told us many interesting things that day. We then learned from him that the smallest tower is called Ruzhanka, and the half-ruined one that stands near the fortress gates was nicknamed Donna by a strange name. And near Donna, the tallest tower of all, the Papal Tower, rises above the fortress. It stands on a wide quadrangular foundation, octagonal in the middle, and round at the top, under the roof. Eight dark loopholes look out of the city, into the District, and into the depths of the fortress yard.
Already in ancient times, - Lazarev told us, - our region was famous for its wealth. The land here gave birth very well, such tall grass grew in the steppes that the horns of the largest ox were invisible from afar. The plow, often forgotten on the field, was covered with thick, lush grass in three or four days. There were so many bees that they could not all fit in the hollows of the trees and therefore swarmed right in the ground. It happened that jets of excellent honey splashed from under the feet of a passerby. Tasty wild grapes grew without any supervision along the entire coast of the Dniester, native apricots and peaches ripened.
Our region seemed especially sweet to Turkish sultans and neighboring Polish landlords. They rushed here with all their might, started their own land here, wanted to conquer the Ukrainian people with fire and sword.
Lazarev said that just about a hundred years ago there was a transit prison in our Old Fortress. In the walls of the ruined white building in the fortress yard, there are still gratings. Behind them were prisoners who, by order of the tsar, were sent to Siberia for hard labor. In the Papal Tower, under Tsar Nicholas I, the famous Ukrainian rebel Ustin Karmelyuk languished. With his brothers-in-arms, he caught lords, police officers, priests, bishops passing through the Kalinovsky forest, took away their money, horses, and distributed everything taken away to poor peasants. The peasants hid Karmelyuk in cellars, in shocks on the field, and for a long time none of the royal detectives could catch the brave rebel. He escaped from distant penal servitude three times. They beat him, how they beat him! Karmelyuk's back withstood more than four thousand blows with gauntlets and batogs. Hungry, wounded, each time he broke out of prison and through the frosty deaf taiga, for weeks without seeing a piece of stale bread, made his way to his homeland - to Podolia.
The first book of the novel The Old Fortress tells about teenagers living in a small Ukrainian border town. The children go to the city elementary school. The story is told on behalf of Vasil Manjura, one of the main characters of the novel. The action of the work develops during the civil war and each of the heroes of the novel becomes witnesses, and sometimes active participants in the ongoing revolutionary events.
The second book of the trilogy "Haunted House" continues the story of the formation of teenagers. Soviet power has already been established, and the matured heroes of the novel become active participants in the formation of the Komsomol and are trained to receive working specialties. Main character Vasil Manjura decided to study as a foundry worker, his friend Maremukha wants to stand up for lathe. Sasha Bobyr will be a repairman of motors, Galina went into plumbing. In the struggle for the ideals of the revolution, the characters of the guys are manifested and, as it turns out, not everyone has a place in the Komsomol.
The third book of the novel "City by the Sea" continues the story about the fate of the heroes, about their Komsomol youth. Various unforeseen events happen to them and, even, meetings with enemy agents. The guys finish their training and receive distribution and start working at the plant.
The book tells about everyday work, personal relationships of the heroes of the novel. Some of them will even have to catch the enemy spy. The main leitmotif of the story is the formation of personality, the ability to overcome difficulties. The novel ends with an epilogue.
In the epilogue, Vasil Mandzhura, who returned to his native city twenty years later, meets with Peter Maremukha. Old friends learn about the difficult fate of their childhood friends.
Picture or drawing Belyaev - Old fortress
Other retellings for the reader's diary
- Summary Fifteen-year-old Captain Jules Verne
While hunting for whales, the captain and sailors of the schooner Pilgrim died. The ship was led by 15-year-old captain Dick Send. On board was the criminal Negoro, who took advantage of the young sailor's inexperience and led everyone to a dead end.
- Summary of Astafiev Spring Island
The theme of renewal in nature and in life itself is very important for a person. The most famous scene in Russian literature devoted to this topic is, of course, the conversation between Prince Andrei and the revived oak. Astafiev in his story illustrating the same theme
- Summary of Sholokhov Nakhalenok
The life of eight-year-old Minka passes in the company of his mother and grandfather. "Nakhalenok" got such a nickname because of the restless nature and because his mother gave birth to him out of wedlock. Soon, Minka's father, a member of the Red Guard, comes from the war.
- Summary of Hesse Steppenwolf
The entire book is a collection of the diaries of a man named Harry Galler. These papers are found in an empty room by the nephew of a woman with whom Galler lived for some time.
- Summary of Fro Platonov
in the story main character Frosya is a twenty-five-year-old girl, but her relatives call her simply “Fro”. Frosya was married girl, whose husband went very far and for a long time.
Belyaev Vladimir Pavlovich
Old fortress (Old fortress - 1)
Vladimir Pavlovich Belyaev
old fortress
Book One
old fortress
In the first and second books of the famous novel Soviet writer, laureate of the State Prize of the USSR and the T. Shevchenko Prize, tells about the life of the children of a small border town in Western Ukraine during the civil war. Young heroes become witnesses, and sometimes participants in revolutionary battles for Soviet power.
For senior school age.
A history teacher
Night guest
Empty lesson
Tower Koniecpolsky
Director
When the evening comes
In the old fortress
Maremukha was whipped
Arsonists
Gotta get away!
In Nagoryany
Fox caves
The Story of the Night Visitor
Unexpected meeting
Fight at the Broken Oak
We leave the village
Forelocks are running
New acquaintances
They call me to the Cheka
Eleventh verst
joyful autumn
BOOK ONE
OLD FORTRESS
A HISTORY TEACHER
We have recently become high school students.
Previously, all our lads studied at the city higher primary school.
Its yellow walls and green fence are clearly visible from the District.
If they rang at the school yard, we heard the bell at home, in the District. You grab books, a pencil case with pencils - and let's go run in order to be in time for lessons.
And they hurried.
You rush along Steep Lane, fly over a wooden bridge, then up the rocky path - to the Old Boulevard, and now the school gates are in front of you.
As soon as you have time to run into the classroom and sit down at your desk, the teacher enters with a magazine.
Our class was small, but very bright, the aisles between the desks were narrow, and the ceilings were low.
Three windows in our class overlooked the Old Fortress and two - on the District.
Tired of listening to the teacher - you can look out the windows.
I looked to the right - the Old Fortress with all its nine towers rises above the rocks.
And look to the left - there is our native District. From the windows of the school you can see every street, every house.
Here in the Old Estate, Petka's mother went out to hang clothes: you can see how the wind inflates the big shirts of Petka's father, the shoemaker Maremukha, with bubbles.
But from Krutoy Lane, the father of my friend Yuzik, the bow-legged Starodomsky, went out to catch dogs. You can see how his black oblong van is bouncing on the stones - a dog prison. Starodomsky turns his skinny horse to the right and drives past my house. Blue smoke billows from our kitchen chimney. This means that Aunt Marya Afanasyevna has already melted the stove.
Wondering what's for lunch today? Young potatoes with sour milk, hominy with uzvar or corn on the cob?
"Now if fried dumplings!" - I dream. Fried dumplings with offal I love the most. Is it really possible to compare young potatoes or buckwheat porridge with milk with them? Never!
Once I was daydreaming during a lesson, looking out the windows at the Zarechye, and suddenly, just above my ear, the voice of the teacher:
Well, Manjura! Go to the blackboard - help Bobyr...
I slowly leave my desk, look at the guys, but I don’t know what to help for the life of me.
Freckled Sasha Bobyr, shifting from foot to foot, is waiting for me at the blackboard. He even smeared his nose with chalk.
I go up to him, take the chalk, and so that the teacher does not notice, I blink at my friend Yuzik Starodomsky, nicknamed Marten.
The marten, following the teacher, folds her hands in a boat and whispers:
Bisector! Bisector!
And what kind of bird is this, a bisector? Also called, prompted!
The mathematician has already approached the blackboard with even, calm steps.
Well, young man, thought?
But suddenly, at that very moment, a bell rings in the yard.
Bisector, Arkady Leonidovich, this is ... - I begin briskly, but the teacher no longer listens to me and goes to the door.
"Deftly wriggled out, - I think, - otherwise I would have slapped a unit ..."
We loved the historian Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev more than all the teachers in the higher education.
He was not tall, white-haired, always walked in a green sweatshirt with sleeves patched at the elbows - he seemed to us at first glance the most ordinary teacher, so-so - neither fish nor meat.
When Lazarev first came to class, before speaking to us, he coughed for a long time, rummaged through the class magazine and wiped his pince-nez.
Well, the goblin brought another four-eyed one ... - Yuzik whispered to me.
We were already going to invent a nickname for Lazarev, but when we got to know him better, we immediately recognized him and fell in love deeply, truly, just as we had not loved any of the teachers until now.
Where has it been seen before that the teacher easily walked around the city with his students?
And Valerian Dmitrievich was walking.
Often, after history lessons, he would gather us and, slyly squinting, would suggest:
Today I'm going to the fortress after school. Who wants to come with me?
There were many hunters. Who will refuse to go there with Lazarev?
Valerian Dmitrievich knew every stone in the Old Fortress.
One day Valerian Dmitrievich and I spent the whole Sunday, until evening, in the fortress. He told us many interesting things that day. We then learned from him that the smallest tower is called Ruzhanka, and the half-ruined one that stands near the fortress gates was nicknamed Donna by a strange name. And near Donna, the tallest of all the Papal Tower rises above the fortress. It stands on a wide quadrangular foundation, octagonal in the middle, and round at the top, under the roof. Eight dark loopholes look out of the city, into the District, and into the depths of the fortress yard.
Already in ancient times, - Lazarev told us, - our region was famous for its wealth. The land here gave birth very well, such tall grass grew in the steppes that the horns of the largest ox were invisible from afar. The plow, often forgotten on the field, was covered with thick, lush grass in three or four days. There were so many bees that they could not all fit in the hollows of the trees and therefore swarmed right in the ground. It happened that jets of excellent honey splashed from under the feet of a passerby. Tasty wild grapes grew without any supervision along the entire coast of the Dniester, native apricots and peaches ripened.
Vladimir BELYAEV
old fortress
Book One
old fortress
A HISTORY TEACHER
We have recently become high school students.
Previously, all our lads studied at the city higher primary school.
Its yellow walls and green fence are clearly visible from the District.
If they rang at the school yard, we heard the bell at home, in the District. You grab books, a pencil case with pencils - and let's go run in order to be in time for lessons.
And they hurried.
You rush along Steep Lane, fly over a wooden bridge, then up the rocky path - to the Old Boulevard, and now the school gates are in front of you.
As soon as you have time to run into the classroom and sit down at your desk, the teacher enters with a magazine.
Our class was small, but very bright, the aisles between the desks were narrow, and the ceilings were low.
Three windows in our class overlooked the Old Fortress and two - on the District.
Tired of listening to the teacher - you can look out the windows.
I looked to the right - the Old Fortress with all its nine towers rises above the rocks.
And look to the left - there is our native District. From the windows of the school you can see every street, every house.
Here in the Old Estate, Petka's mother went out to hang clothes: you can see how the wind inflates the big shirts of Petka's father, the shoemaker Maremukha, with bubbles.
But from Krutoy Lane, the father of my friend Yuzik, the bow-legged Starodomsky, went out to catch dogs. You can see how his black oblong van is bouncing on the stones - a dog prison. Starodomsky turns his skinny horse to the right and drives past my house. Blue smoke billows from our kitchen chimney. This means that Aunt Marya Afanasyevna has already melted the stove.
Wondering what's for lunch today? Young potatoes with sour milk, hominy with uzvar or corn on the cob?
“Now, if only fried dumplings!” - I dream. Fried dumplings with offal I love the most. Is it really possible to compare young potatoes or buckwheat porridge with milk with them? Never!
Once I was daydreaming during a lesson, looking out the windows at the Zarechye, and suddenly, just above my ear, the voice of the teacher:
Well, Manjura! Go to the blackboard - help Bobyr...
I slowly leave my desk, look at the guys, and I don’t know what to help, for the life of me.
Freckled Sasha Bobyr, shifting from foot to foot, is waiting for me at the blackboard. He even smeared his nose with chalk.
I go up to him, take the chalk, and so that the teacher does not notice, I blink at my friend Yuzik Starodomsky, nicknamed Marten.
The marten, following the teacher, folds her hands in a boat and whispers:
Bisector! Bisector!
And what kind of bird is this, a bisector? Also called, prompted!
The mathematician has already approached the blackboard with even, calm steps.
Well, young man, thought?
But suddenly, at that very moment, a bell rings in the yard.
Bisector, Arkady Leonidovich, this is ... - I begin briskly, but the teacher no longer listens to me and goes to the door.
“Deftly twisted out,” I think, “otherwise I would have slapped a unit ...”
We loved the historian Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev more than all the teachers in the higher education.
He was not tall, white-haired, always walked in a green sweatshirt with sleeves patched at the elbows - he seemed to us at first glance the most ordinary teacher, so-so - neither fish nor meat.
When Lazarev first came to class, before speaking to us, he coughed for a long time, rummaged through the class magazine and wiped his pince-nez.
Well, the goblin brought another four-eyed ... - Yuzik whispered to me.
We were already going to invent a nickname for Lazarev, but when we got to know him better, we immediately recognized him and fell in love deeply, truly, just as we had not loved any of the teachers until now.
Where has it been seen before that the teacher easily walked around the city with his students?
And Valerian Dmitrievich was walking.
Often, after history lessons, he would gather us and, slyly squinting, would suggest:
Today I'm going to the fortress after school. Who wants to come with me?
There were many hunters. Who will refuse to go there with Lazarev?
Valerian Dmitrievich knew every stone in the Old Fortress.
One day Valerian Dmitrievich and I spent the whole Sunday, until evening, in the fortress. He told us many interesting things that day. We then learned from him that the smallest tower is called Ruzhanka, and the half-ruined one that stands near the fortress gates was nicknamed Donna by a strange name. And near Donna, the tallest tower of all, the Papal Tower, rises above the fortress. It stands on a wide quadrangular foundation, octagonal in the middle, and round at the top, under the roof. Eight dark loopholes look out of the city, into the District, and into the depths of the fortress yard.
Already in ancient times, - Lazarev told us, - our region was famous for its wealth. The land here gave birth very well, such tall grass grew in the steppes that the horns of the largest ox were invisible from afar. The plow, often forgotten on the field, was covered with thick, lush grass in three or four days. There were so many bees that they could not all fit in the hollows of the trees and therefore swarmed right in the ground. It happened that jets of excellent honey splashed from under the feet of a passerby. Tasty wild grapes grew without any supervision along the entire coast of the Dniester, native apricots and peaches ripened.
Our region seemed especially sweet to Turkish sultans and neighboring Polish landlords. They rushed here with all their might, started their own land here, wanted to conquer the Ukrainian people with fire and sword.
Lazarev said that just about a hundred years ago there was a transit prison in our Old Fortress. In the walls of the ruined white building in the fortress yard, there are still gratings. Behind them were prisoners who, by order of the tsar, were sent to Siberia for hard labor. In the Papal Tower, under Tsar Nicholas I, the famous Ukrainian rebel Ustin Karmelyuk languished. With his brothers-in-arms, he caught lords, police officers, priests, bishops passing through the Kalinovsky forest, took away their money, horses, and distributed everything taken away to poor peasants. The peasants hid Karmelyuk in cellars, in shocks on the field, and for a long time none of the royal detectives could catch the brave rebel. He escaped from distant penal servitude three times. They beat him, how they beat him! Karmelyuk's back withstood more than four thousand blows with gauntlets and batogs. Hungry, wounded, each time he broke out of prison and through the frosty deaf taiga, for weeks without seeing a piece of stale bread, made his way to his homeland - to Podolia.
Very briefly Ukraine, 1920s. The teenager is involved in civil war, studies, gets a working profession. The fight against gangs and imperialist spies makes the boy an ideological Komsomol member.
Book one. old fortress
The story is told from the perspective of Vasya Manjura.
Previously, twelve-year-old Vasya Mandzhura and his friends - Yuzik Starodomsky, nicknamed Marten, Petka Maremukha and Sasha Bobyr - studied at the city higher primary school. Most of the teachers, the guys loved the historian Lazarev. He told a lot of interesting things about the Old Fortress, towering over the Ukrainian border town, and even promised to take the guys to the underground passage, which began near the fortress.
Lazarev did not have time to fulfill his promise - Petlyura's army entered the city. Shortly before this, Vasya's neighbor, Ivan Omelyusty, brought a stranger to their house and asked them to hide until the return of the Red Army. The next morning, the stranger disappeared, and a new government was established in the city. First of all, the Petliurists tried to capture all the communists who remained in the town, including Omelyusty. Vasya and Kunitsa saw how he fired back from the Petliurists from the tower of the Old Fortress.
It soon became known that the new authorities were going to force Vasya's father, the typographic compositor Miron Mandzhura, to print Petliura's money. Not wanting to become a counterfeiter, Miron went to his brother in the village of Nagoryany, and Vasya stayed with his aunt Marya Afanasyevna. Vasya also had to part with his beloved teacher. The secondary school became a gymnasium with a new teaching staff. Lazarev with the Petliura government was not on the way.
From the very first days of study, the company of friends broke up. Petka Maremukha joined the "dexterous and boastful high school student Kotka Grigorenko", the son of the head physician of the city hospital. The Maremukha family rented an outbuilding in the Old Manor that belonged to Dr. Grigorenko. Then Sashka Bobyr went over to Kotka. He was afraid that the doctor's son would tell the Petliura officers about his main wealth - a bulldog revolver. In the gymnasium, the study of the Russian language and general history was banned, and portraits of Russian writers were removed from the walls.
Soon Vasya got into trouble. During the gala evening, which was attended by Petlyura himself, the boy read the wrong verses, for which he was beaten and thrown into a school punishment cell. From there, the boy was rescued by true friends, giving a bribe to the watchman Nicephorus. After that, a fight broke out between Vasya and Kotka, because of which Manjura was expelled from the gymnasium. Aunt Vasya lied that he had ringworm. He did not tell the truth to his best friend Kunitsa either.
One day, friends gathered on a hike for cherries that grew in the courtyard of the Old Fortress. Having made their way past the watchman at dawn, the guys saw how a gang of Petliurists shot a thin and sick man in the fortress yard. Vasya recognized him as a stranger whom Omelyusty had brought to their house one night, and Marten - a Bolshevik who had been caught the day before near the Old Manor. The death of the executed was witnessed by Dr. Grigorenko.
In the morning the whole gymnasium learned that Manjura had been expelled. In the afternoon, Maremukha asked to join their company. The head of the scouts ordered him to be flogged, and Petka did not want to return to them. In the evening, having secured the consent of the watchman of the Old Fortress, the guys covered the grave of the executed hero with flowers and swore to always protect each other and help those who are fighting for Soviet power. Then the guys went to Grigorenko's house and committed Skoda - they knocked over a burning lamp on the veranda, which caused a small fire.
Vasya did not sleep at night. He remembered his father. When the boy's mother was alive, the Manjurs lived in another city. Myron drank heavily. He was not expelled from the printing house just because he knew how to type texts on different languages. Unable to bear such a life, the mother went to her sister in Odessa, intending to later pick up her son, but on the way the ship ran into a German mine, and the woman died. Then Miron moved to live with his sister.
In the morning, Petka and Kunitsa informed Vasya that they wanted to arrest him for arson. Marten advised to go to the Reds, and Vasya agreed, but first he decided to visit his father. The uncle greeted the guests joyfully and whispered to his nephew that they wanted to arrest Miron, so he was hiding. The uncle was also at odds with the Petliura authorities and supported his brother.
In the morning, Vasya took his friends to the Fox Caves, famous throughout the region, where he met his father. Miron and Ivan Omelyusty hid a small printing house in these caves, where revolutionary newspapers were printed. The guys told Omelustomy about the execution of an unknown communist. This man, Timofey Sergushin, was sheltered by the Omelyusty family when he, sick and dying of hunger, returned from German captivity. After the Reds expelled the Hetmans from the city, Sergushin joined the army, where he met many fellow countrymen from the Donbass. Ivan went with him to the Reds. When Petlyura's troops broke into the city, Timofey was seriously ill and did not have time to leave with the Reds. After spending the night at Miron's, he hid at Maremukh, where he was discovered by Dr. Grigorenko.
Suddenly, a detachment of scouts approached the Nagoryans. The guys were afraid that the “panichi” would climb into the Fox caves. They gathered a detachment of local boys and attacked the scouts. Using bottles of water and lime instead of bombs, the guys gave the Panichs a decisive battle and captured their banner.
The guys returned to the city on time - unrest began. The streets were teeming with armed Petliurists, the Reds were approaching the city. Then another "defector" joined the guys - Sasha Bobyr. The guys decided to observe the offensive of the Reds from the wing of the shoemaker Maremukha. There they stumbled upon Miron with his brother and Omelyusty, who were preparing to shoot at the retreating Petliurists from a machine gun.
By evening the city was taken. A lodger moved in with Mandzhur - red commander Nestor Varnaevich Polevoy. Two weeks later, Maremukha reported that Dr. Grigorenko lives in their wing, whose house was requisitioned by the Bolsheviks. The guys showed Sergushin's grave to Omelyusty, and a week later it was already decorated with a simple monument made of smooth marble, surrounded by an iron grate.
A week later, Dr. Grigorenko and his wife were arrested. On the same day, Vasya by registered mail invited to the county Cheka. Arriving there the next day, the boy was happy to see that the Chekists also called Kunitsa. The guys testified against the doctor, talking about his participation in the execution of Sergushin.
A few days later, Kunitsa announced that he was leaving for Kyiv to visit an uncle who undertook to arrange a nephew in a nautical school. A friend was escorted by the whole company. Maremukha said that Kotka, together with his mother, settled with the former director of the gymnasium, but the doctor was never released.
In late autumn, classes began at the Taras Shevchenko First Labor School, which replaced the gymnasium, and the beloved historian became its director. He fulfilled his promise and showed the guys the underground passage. A little later, Kotka Grigorenko appeared in Vasya's class, and they began to study political literacy at school.
Book two. House with the ghosts
The county committee of the party sent Miron Manjura to work with the Soviet party school, where he was supposed to set up a small printing house. Since all the employees of the Soviet party school lived in state-owned apartments, the Miron family also had to move. Before leaving, Vasya bartered a Sauer pistol from Maremukha. Going to Petka for Sauer, the boys passed by the tinning workshop, where Kotka Grigorenko worked as an apprentice. Having publicly abandoned his parents, Kotka became a simple worker and settled with the gardener Korybko. Giving Vasya the gun, Petka told about the ghost of a nun who lives in the building of the Soviet party school - a former convent.
The Manjurs were given a spacious three-room apartment with two kitchens. One of them, separated from the rooms by a corridor, was occupied by Vasya. While exploring the school's large garden, the boy came across Kotka - Korybko let him in here. Soon, Vasya once again ran into his enemy. Grigorenko courted Galya Kushnir, who really liked the boy.
Soon Maremukha visited Vasya. When it got dark, the friends went to the garden to test the Sauer. They frightened off a man with a shot, who shot back and ran away. In the morning Vasya found a spoon and an aluminum bowl in the bushes.
Meeting with Galya again, Vasya found out that Kotka took her to the most expensive confectionery in the city. The boy decided to outdo Kotka. Aunt Marya Afanasyevna's only wealth was six silver spoons. She kept them as a "dowry" for Vasya. Deciding that the spoons were already his, the boy stole three and sold them to the jeweler.
Meanwhile, Polevoy allowed Vasya to visit the Komsomol cell, but Vasya got to the first meeting without him, and the boy was kicked out. That same evening, Vasya invited Galya to a confectionery. They were feasting on cakes when Myron saw them through a large window. Vasya returned home when everyone was asleep. Suddenly, shots were heard from behind the Old Fortress, and the cadets rose in alarm. Soon, only one sentry, cadet Marushchak, remained in the courtyard of the Soviet party school. Suddenly, Vasya heard a bell ring in the school building. They ran for a long time along the dark corridors, but they did not find either the bell or the joker who rang it. Vasya told Marushchak how he and Petka found an armed stranger in the garden, and about a ghost that lives in the Soviet party school.
Soon Marya Afanasyevna discovered that the spoons were missing. Then the father came into Vasya's kitchen and began to inquire about how much money his son feasted in the confectionery. It was not possible to get out, I had to confess. We went to buy the spoons together. On the way back, Vasya began to ask his father not to tell anyone about the spoons, but he did not promise anything, and, angry, threw the spoons into the river. Aunt Miron said that he gave them to the commission for helping the homeless.
Before entering the workers' faculty, his father offered him to work at the state farm sponsored by the Soviet party school, and Vasya left without having time to say goodbye to his friends. The whole brigade spent the first night in the hayloft. In the evening, Polevoy sent Vasya into the garden to break plum branches for tea. The boy decided to return to his people by the street. Jumping over the fence, he scared off a man with a rifle in his hand. The cadets combed the garden, but found no one.
Vasya was assigned as an assistant to Nikita Fyodorovich Kolomeits, the same cadet who put the boy out of the Komsomol meeting. At first they knitted sheaves, then they worked at the threshing machine. Nikita was not much older than Vasya, and the guys became friends. The brigade settled in the former landowner's estate, and the friends occupied a cozy balcony entwined with wild grapes. Soon there were wasps on the balcony, and the guys moved under a stack of straw near the threshing machine. After a couple of days, Kolomeets was too lazy to go to the haystack, and Vasya decided to spend the night alone. At night, the boy was awakened by a collective farm dog - he was barking at strangers who had crept up to the threshing machine. The bandits wanted to set fire to the stack and shoot the cadets who had fled to the fire. Vasya started to run to warn his comrades, but he stumbled and sprained his leg. He had to open fire from the sauer. In response, the bandits threw a grenade, which exploded next to Vasya.
The boy woke up in the hospital. He did not remember how he was transported to the city, and how the doctor removed the fragments stuck in the skull bone, cut out a broken rib and set his dislocated leg. Vasya learned from Kolomeyets that the people who had wounded him had gone to the aid of a local gang. In the city, the bandits had an accomplice - the gardener Korybko. No one guessed that the gardener had an adult son who had once served under General Pilsudski. When the general was expelled from Ukraine, the guy was recruited by British intelligence. This is where the agent came in handy with his father. It was him that Vasya and Petka scared away in the garden of the Soviet party school. Suspecting Korybko, Maruschak found in his closet a note from his son and a Mauser hidden in the chimney. After the arrest of the old man, the closet was searched again and they found an iron ring in the chimney, pulling for which they heard a bell ringing - the ring was connected to a bell immured in the wall. With the ringing of bells, which used to frighten superstitious nuns, Korybko decided to frighten the communists.
Galya and Maremukha, who came to visit the boy, reported that Kotka Grigorenko was going to become a Komsomol member. Here Polevoy entered the ward and suggested that the children go to study at the factory apprenticeship school, of which he was appointed director.
The guys agreed to jointly challenge Kotka Grigorenko at the Komsomol meeting, but it turned out that Kotka wrote the whole truth about himself in the questionnaire, and Manjura had nothing to add. Here Kolomeets came forward and proved Kotka's connection with the gardener. Grigorenko was not accepted into the Komsomol.
A month later, the guys were already studying at the fabzavuch. Vasya decided to become a foundry worker, Maremukha became a turner, Sashka Bobyr learned to repair motors, and Galya took up a bench.
Book three. City by the sea
Vasya Mandzhura lived with friends in the dormitory of the head teacher. Father and aunt moved to Cherkasy, where a new printing house was opened. Walking on Sunday along the main street of the city, friends saw a fight in one of the pubs. The scandal was arranged by a classmate of the guys in the factory teacher Yashka Tiktor. The Komsomolets was drunk. The guys tried to take Tiktor away before the police arrived.
The guys were dragging Yashka home when shots rang out - a signal of Chon's alarm. They hurried to the main headquarters of CHON, where everyone was given weapons. The elder Chonovites went to the border with pan-Poland, and the students were ordered to guard the armories. Vasya got the most dangerous post. Suddenly, he heard the cry of Sasha Bobyr - he noticed someone, but did not have time to shoot, the unknown person left on the roofs. The pursuers found a blood stain on the porch of one of the houses and fuse fuses in the attic of the warehouse.
Six months before the end of the school teacher, a new head of the district department of public education, Pecheritsa, suddenly arrived in the town from Kharkov, a short man with a very lush red mustache. He ordered the dismissal of all Russian-speaking teachers, and then decided to completely close the fabzavuch. The nationalist Pecheritsa did not believe that Ukraine would soon need workers. At the Komsomol meeting, the guys decided to send Manjura to the Kharkov Central Committee of the Komsomol.
On the way, Vasya collected a large sum of money. On the train, the boy had an unexpected companion - Pecheritsa. He had no mustache, spoke Russian, and pretended not to recognize Manjura. Pecheritsa asked Vasya to show his ticket to the controller, lay down on the shelf and fell asleep. Vasya soon fell asleep too. Waking up, the boy found that his neighbor had disappeared. The ticket that Vasya had left was issued in the name of the student Prokopy Shevchuk.
Arriving in Kharkov, Vasya could not resist and decided to go to the cinema. After the session, the boy discovered that he had been robbed. He spent the night at the station, and in the morning went to the Central Committee. Wandering around the large building, Vasya stumbled upon the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine, whose photograph he had seen in the newspaper. The boy told him about Pecheritsa and that he had been robbed. The secretary promised to help the head teacher and arranged for the boy to spend the night.
Manjura returned home as a winner. Having learned that the boy was traveling to Kharkov with Pecheritsa, Kolomeets dragged him to the authorized frontier detachment Vukovich. Then the boy got to the head of the regional GPU, to whom he repeated his story about Pecheritsa. After Kolomeets said that Pecheritsa was an enemy agent. It was on his porch that they found a bloody stain. The blood belonged to a wounded bandit who was never arrested that night. Bandit Vukovich detained, and Pecheritsa managed to escape. Vasya regretted for a long time that he had not guessed to detain him.
After some time, Vasya found out that Yashka Tiktor insisted on his expulsion from the Komsomol because he was traveling in the same carriage with Pecheritsa and deliberately did not detain him. At the meeting, Tiktor's statement was not taken seriously, and he himself was expelled from the Komsomol for drunkenness and casting in working time parts for handicraft workshops.
A week before the end of the faculty teacher, referrals came from Kharkov. The students were assigned to factories in large cities of Ukraine. Vasya with Petka Meremukha, Sasha Bobyr and Tiktor ended up in the Azov city. Yashka did not want to stay in their company, and the guys rented a cozy attic from an elderly woman. Going down to the sea, the guys saw a girl who swam despite the storm.
The next day, the friends went to the machine-building plant, but the head of the labor department, a dressed-up and pomaded dandy, told them that there were no places at the plant. The only vacancy was taken by Yashka Tiktor, who was the first to appear. Deciding not to give up, Vasya went to the director of the plant. He listened to the guys and found them places in their specialty. So Manjura became a student of an experienced foundry worker Vasily Naumenko. Yashka Tiktor got to the factory drunkard Enuta, nicknamed Kashket.
Soon, friends discovered that a girl who was swimming in a stormy sea lives in a beautiful house next door. It was Angelica, the daughter of the plant's chief engineer. She was courted by the dandy Zyuzya Trituzny from the labor department, who was kept at the factory only because he played football well.
All this time, Sasha Bobyr dreamed of catching Pecheritsa, which is why he “saw” him at every station. He saw the enemy at the station of the seaside town, but the guys did not believe him, and then Sasha decided to write a statement to the head of the city department of the GPU.
Vasya met the local Komsomol leader Anatoly Golovatsky. Tolya dreamed of liquidating the dancing salon of Madame Rogal-Piontkovskaya, where almost all the youth of the city disappeared. He believed that the two-steps, foxtrots and mazurkas taught by Madame corrupted young people. Promising to take a look at what was going on with Madame, Vasya went to the salon and on the way he saw a man who was strikingly similar to Vukovich.
In the salon, Vasya met Angelica. Making sure that the Charleston was not given to the guy, Lika invited him to ride a boat. During the walk, Vasya realized that Angelica was brought up in a bourgeois family. She dreamed of a cozy home, peace, "to forget the worldly bustle and go into the realm of dreams." The girl liked Vasya, but they spoke different languages. The guy decided that Lika was incorrigible. He was finally convinced of this at a dinner with the chief engineer Andrykhnevich, who worked at the plant during the tsarist government. Stefan Medarovich believed that the young Soviet Republic had no future, and was looking forward to the return of the old days.
Every day Manjura became more and more involved in the hard work of a caster. His friends weren't far behind either. Bobyr even enrolled in an aviation club. Tiktor, meanwhile, finally fell under the influence of Kashket - the most malicious "scumbag" in the shop. Vasya constantly corresponded with classmates in the head teacher and Kolomeyets. In one of his response letters, Nikita asked for help in buying five self-seeding harvesters for the sponsored state farm. On behalf of Kolomeyts, Vasya went to the director of the plant, but he refused - there was not enough cast iron at the plant. And then Vasya remembered the scrap iron, which was very much in the vicinity of his native town. He sent a telegram to Kolomeits with instructions to collect as much of this scrap as possible.
To cast the details of the reapers from the collected scrap that Nikita brought, they organized a community work day. It was attended not only by Komsomol members, but also by experienced workers. After the subbotnik, Nikita spoke about Pecheritsa. Fleeing from the persecution of the GPU, the traitor killed the student Prokopy Shevchuk and, under his name, settled in one of the German colonies of Tavria. Then, changing his name again, Pecheritsa went to the town of Azov, where he was seen by Bobyr, whose statement greatly helped the investigation. Following the traitor, Vukovich appeared in the city, accidentally caught the eye of Vasya. Soon Pecheritsa was arrested.
Having talked somehow with one of the oldest foundry workers and communists of the plant, Vasya realized with surprise that he did not consider the eighteen-year-old Yashka Tiktor to be lost, and believed that he could be directed to the right path. Manjura was convinced of this by accidentally overhearing a conversation between Tiktor and Golovatsky. It turned out that the stepmother did not let Yashka eat, and he had to take private orders in order to feed himself. He started drinking when his friends turned away from him.
Soon, the Komsomol members of the foundry organized a Sunday, to which Tiktor also came. The guys cleared the workshop of dry sand and debris, making room for new molding machines. Under the sand, Komsomol members discovered a mine laid under Wrangel. Apparently, during the retreat, the enemies of the Soviet government wanted to blow up the open-hearth, but did not have time.
Soon the Komsomol members gave battle to the dance salon. The artists of the drama circle showed a parody of the regulars of the salon. Everyone got it, including Zyuz Trituzny, who came to the performance with Angelica. Zyuzya left the hall in indignation, and Lika remained with Vasya. The guy has long decided that Angelica, like Yashka Tiktor, is worth fighting for. Lika admitted that such a life does not tire her, but she herself cannot free herself, and is waiting strong man who will help her. She counted on Vasya's help and was very upset when he waved his hand at her. Manjura advised her to start life over in another city. Soon Lika went to her aunt in Leningrad and entered the conservatory.
After the performance, the Komsomol members were urgently gathered by the director of the plant and reported about the sabotage. Mines were found in the boiler room and near the foundry furnaces, which Kashket was supposed to blow up. He was recruited by Madame Rogal-Piontkovskaya, who covered "secret subversive work against the Soviet state with a sign of a peaceful dance class." It was to her that Pecheritsa made his way. By arresting him, Vukovich tied together all the threads of this complicated case. Madame Rogal-Piontkovskaya did not have time to escape.
Some time later, the guys were sent to Mariupol for the district conference of the Komsomol. They sailed on the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamer, whose navigator turned out to be Yuzik Starodomsky. Kunitsa has been swimming for a long time, and even managed to become a communist. All night friends talked, shared plans. Yuzik was going to go to the Black Sea, and Vasya wanted to enter a working university and study on the job.
Epilogue. twenty years later
Twenty years later, engineer Vasily Manjura returned to his hometown to wander the familiar streets and visit the Old Fortress. Vasily survived the blockade of Leningrad, during which his father died, by that time he had moved in with his son and worked at the Printing House. Rummaging through old magazines, Manjura came across an article about a German henchman, Kostya Grigorenko.
During a walk around the city, Vasily remembered his friends. His first love, Galya Kushnir, even before the war, became a candidate of historical sciences. Manjura still did not know if she managed to leave Odessa in time. In the fortress, Vasily discovered a historical museum-reserve. At Sergushin's grave, he ran into Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Maremukha. Soon an old director of the museum approached them, in which friends recognized Lazarev. He told how the Red Army defended the Old Fortress, holding back the German offensive. The fortress was surrounded when a local resident made his way into it and offered to show the exact location of the enemy batteries. During this operation, the conductor, who was Yuzik Starodomsky, was killed. He came to his hometown after a severe concussion.
They also remembered Sasha Bobyr - he died helping Republican Spain. Angelica survived the blockade. Her first husband had died, and now she and Manjura were about to get married.