Prolog
History which I want to tell occurred in one of the cities. What is the city, not important. It could occur in each city of the world. History began long ago, and never it will be the end. It will not end because it is old as the world. Dispute of fathers and children: who wants to make for whom better, than it is actually.
This history is heard and told by me. I tell it as heard from people − heroes of this history. Heroes all different, many will find in them themselves. You take a detached view of yourself: what you represent actually. Still here I communicate with heroes of this history only yours faithfully. Only on "you" − and anything else. We forgot about respect for the family, and we always communicate with them on "you", and it is so humiliating when to you even the family sticks. Remember works by classics. There everywhere speak validly, on "you". Let's carry on this tradition and we will speak with each other validly, on "you".
So, this history began long ago, I do not know when, but it ended so.
The cemetery, the silent fresh winter breeze blew. We stood at a grave. This was Nadezhda's grave. The novel, having leaned the elbows on trust, stood at a grave of the mother. It was difficult for it to stand. He could not believe in any way that it does not exist with it any more. She died and lay in this grave.
Sadly, isn't that so? As it is terrible to lose any of relatives. But it is inevitable. All of us die. Nobody can live forever.
So, we will begin since my children's years.
Chapter-1
School days are wonderful
I live in the city which is called the city of a dream! Do you ask why it so is called? Just each of the cities in which there lives this or that person is called the city of a dream. It so. For each person where he lived, his city will be the most beautiful city on the earth. City of a dream! Stories which I will tell happened in the different cities, and from it the story becomes more fascinating.
It is a pity that that beautiful city is unfortunate. People just do not feel sorry for him. Cut down trees, litter the rivers and lakes and just sneeze on it. Claim that the house will sustain everything, all to it at all. But these people are mistaken. The house − not rubber which can be stretched, it − the house, and anything else. It is a pity that we do not appreciate that wealth which surrounds us. We spend it for nothing.
But it is fine. I will begin the history. The city in which I live, very good. I will not write its name to be fair to those cities where there could be a same story. So, my city is beautiful, the truth it has problems, but they are not in what cities. Housing problem, question of corruption of officials and just pressing problems. However, them it is much bigger, than it was possible to imagine.
Near it peacefully there is one of settlements, gloomy, not lit, teeming there with dashing children. It was a disgrace the area though had a reputation for the settlement where there live his masters. However, all one after another.
I always lived in this settlement, I liked to live very much there. I was young and full of strength. Little girl of years of seven. Today the first of September. First call, first teacher. Little girl tot. Costs with a bouquet of flowers of scarlet peonies. She looks at some woman telling something from steps of school. Beautiful! Yes, it is similar to my sister. Do you ask what she told? She congratulated all on the beginning of academic year. Wished good marks and new knowledge. The good speech, you will tell nothing. Parents shot the offsprings with the video cameras. The invited photographer removed all of us together, and at additional expense − everyone separately.
And here the meeting came to an end, our teachers approached us, and we with them went to classes. We were conducted by other teacher, not that teacher who told the speech from a ladder of school: we were led in a class by the corpulent lady, she had a severe looking. She entered us into a light class, and, told "sit down where you want". Without having managed to finish a phrase and (though she was also a strong woman, but nevertheless could not keep) having leaned against a table, could avoid that first graders with wild squeal as a hurricane, with wild shout rushed on a class, throwing a portfolio on a school desk to secure the place in the first row. Yes! Day promised to be roast, however, as well as all year of study.
I got the place at the end of a class, in a corner, at a window. The place, of course, not from the best, but brightly shines the sun. I look in a window and I see outside the window the schoolyard. It is empty. Anybody. Only the janitor swept the street sidewalk. At a window the oak grew. It was elderly. It is proud and stately it razmakhnut the branches trees on which leaves already turned yellow. How many he saw for the life, how many pleasures and a grief. Everything was in his life?
Meanwhile the teacher told about study at school. About knowledge which we will gain in it. About the fact that we have to preserve the nature, keep clean a class and behave at lessons well. Generally, she spoke about everything, including that the school for ten years will become ours the second house. Then it issued us textbooks, and we accompanied by the parents went home.
Having come home, I long told how there passed the first lesson. The world lesson − so it was called by teachers. Well, tomorrow in school, days of work of study, homeworks, the first estimates will begin. First acquaintances to the same first graders, as well as I; however, it will be only tomorrow, and today − the last day of fun, games. Tomorrow in school.
Next day exactly at eight o'clock in the morning when the first call rang out, I sat at the school desk, at a window. Soon the teacher entered a class. She was presented and told that we have to get up every time as it enters and leaves a class. Also she told that we have to get up, every time when enters a class and leaves any of teachers. She explained that so we greet and say goodbye to teachers, also she told that now in this school our life will change. We will acquire knowledge which will help to study us further and to become that whom we would like to become. So it to us punished to study well, not to shirk occupation and if something urgent, then there has to be a note from parents. And if somebody gets sick, then the reference from the local pediatrician is obligatory, or the truancy and the second year will be considered. Then the teacher told us that we have to be trained. She left a class and, having entered it again, greeted us. We got up because of school desks, greeted it, then she asked us to sit down.
Now I am obliged to tell about my first teacher, called her Shchepak Valentina Semenovna. Slightly more than forty years were it at that time. The well-fed woman, she always was on the ball. Tried to put on as the teacher needs to put on. Any прикрас, only dress or skirt. Any excess jewelry, only a wedding ring on a hand.
So, first lesson. Literature lesson. Many fairy tales to us were read by our parents to us in the childhood, they were a set of sets. One of such fairy tales also became our first lesson. However, I do not remember what the fairy tale and it was and it is not important. Let's pass to a lesson number two: Russian. Here it is possible to tell at once that according to the abc-book to study it was interesting and entertaining. We learned the first letter of the alphabet, it was the letter "A". We learned to write it in the notebooks, removed each hyphen and learned what words begin on a letter "A". Third lesson − mathematics. Here explained us numerals and learned to put one and one. The fourth −урок work became one of darlings. In the pleasure cut out from paper any intricate figures and all.
End of school day. I left a class, ran in a locker room where my mother waited for me: it also took away me home until the end of academic year.
Generally, the whole year of occupations passed in the first class interestingly and interestingly. First graders always learn something new, to them the whole world of knowledge, stories opens. And there passed the whole year. We studied, taken knowledge. All as usual, all as always.
New year. We prepared number. Father Frost and Snow Maiden. Outside the window there was a frost, at windows it decorated windows in fancy white patterns. We addressed in the class the parents. Each of us wanted not to lag behind another, to play if it is not better, then and it is not worse than the partner. All had a joyful mood. New Year! Children's holiday of fun and good mood!
Outside the window the moon lit a way to the wanderer, stars flickered in a night firmament. Calm around, it is only heard a snow crunch. The hare little rogue runs on the night wood. In the house there is a fir-tree decorated with toys. It blinks multi-colored fires. New year!!!
Last call! Joyful mood for graduates of school. As I envied them! Here they, enter adulthood, school days behind. How many knowledge did they gain? And how many still will receive? We gathered in the big gym that was in school. There were all: from us first graders to graduates of the tenth classes. There was a big gala concert. All of us congratulated graduates of the tenth class on the termination of academic year and their introduction in adulthood. I remember how they took us on hands, and then put to themselves on shoulders and carried by on all hall, and we, first graders, rang a small hand bell. The last call for tenth-graders − farewell school, hi adulthood.
Vacation! Summer vacation! What can be better, than vacation? Perhaps, for the person who passed into the second class nothing the best can exist as three months to take a walk before new academic year. Fun! Mischief! What can be better, than be heated on the lake under a bright sun? Trip to giving? To have a rest on the personal site. To kindle a fire in a brazier, on coals to make brochettes, and then to enjoy them. Silence. Wood and silence. It is heard somewhere the woodpecker with a red beak knocks on a tree trunk. Birds sing the morning song. The rooster uttered a crow five o'clock in the morning. It is time to milk a cow. Life is fine! Who could brag of all this?
And here again school. Now I am already a vtoroklashka. What new waits for me this year? What new will be opened by me for myself? What knowledge will I acquire? Everything was interesting, and I with new forces began to learn lessons and to receive estimates. The second class differed from the first. If in the first class treated us with degression and forgave certain errors in study, then in the second class we received less privileges, and I had to comprehend an event and not to lag behind others. My five which I received in the first class in the first quarter some became the fours, and only at the end of the half-year I corrected them on the five.
Here I am obliged to tell the story which happened in the second class. Our teacher could not be present at the first lesson or at the second, I do not remember. To us entered a class the director of studies. The young woman, that that on the first of September last year was told by the speech on steps of school. It entered not one, with it there was a senior pupil, I knew it. Sometimes, when it was cold in the winter, I ran on a ladder where there were senior pupils and, having leaned the elbows on the warm battery, were heated and kept order. However, it was impossible to tell whether they kept order. They just stood and, without paying attention to anybody, went about everyone the own business. Who stirred about today's task, who discussed it. Someone reduced gossips, and someone just read. Generally, did not do nothing. But we will return to a class where now there was a director of studies and the senior pupil. The director of studies told us that Valentina Semenovna will not be able to be present at this lesson and it will be carried out by the schoolgirl of the tenth class Lena. Then it left. Lena, having looked that we passed, told that today it will not ask us concerning last material. It will be better if we just sit and we will write something from the textbook. She read some story from a teacher's notebook and told that we retold it in writing, that is wrote statement. There passed a quarter of hour, one pupil raised a hand and asked how the letter "e" is written: I do not know whether he really forgot how this letter "e" is written or just decided to check Lena? I do not know. We were second-graders and quite could forget how this letter, the letter "e" is written. It is so similar to other letter of the Russian alphabet, especially capital. This letter "e". Yes, they are twins in specular reflection, and it played a dirty trick with Lena. She took chalk and having drawn the letter "e" on a board, told that so it is written. Then, having seen in eyes at pupils a puzzled look, Lena, looked at a board, thought, erased the letter "e", and, having written the letter "e", again thought. It seemed what she does not know how in general this letter is written, its specular reflection of other letter of the Russian alphabet, "э", and the letter "e" − they are so similar. Both of them are two vowels, a sin not to be mistaken to us, pupils of initial classes. But how Lena could forget? Schoolgirl of the tenth class? There is a shame! What only it was taught to? She looked stupidly at a board for a long time, trying to think how this letter of the Russian alphabet is written? Anyway? Question? Eventually, after long five-minute reflections on a subject as this letter is written, it was resolved. She agreed with though she was not sure for all hundred percent that this letter is written quite so. "Э". Then she added that this option is more real, or something in this spirit. Then I thought that Lena just never taught so many children. She just became puzzled. However, there could be also other reasons. Who knows why she forgot how this letter is written. Letter, "э". Thirtieth letter of the Russian alphabet.
So I studied at school three years.
Days developed in weeks, and those − in months. Year after year, and here I passed into the fourth class.
In high school there was such history. I will tell it as I remember. At a biology lesson. The teacher − the representative woman who graduated the polytechnical university and working at school, teaching biology. Her name was rare − Nesle. She was the leading expert of the business. And honestly taught children. Once, when I wrote the term paper, having checked it, she told that my work is the best of all. Once she asked: tell when the sun heats is hotter? Having raised a hand I answered: the sun heats is hotter if it is higher. All burst out laughing. And the teacher was surprised, told: what do you laugh? She speaks truly. The sun is higher, the is hotter.
Everything would be nothing, but? Always is but? Even if it is absent, it steadily is present everywhere and always. And at me. My family was the English family. But do not think that all of us were from England. No. Just all my family learned English. My mother and the father knew it on teeth, from "A" to "Z". And I was forced to study German. Do you ask why? I just had no choice. I got in a year when at school learned two German. Tell why so do, alternate the English and German languages, in one year study either English, or German language. I cannot understand it, and you? There was nothing to do to me, and I began to learn German. But I hoped when I graduate from school, I will learn English.
My school days passed rather quietly. In them there was everything: both first kiss, and fight. However what to tell − school. As we were said by Valentina Semenovna that school − our second house. Here you learn everything that you have to awake the nobility when time to abandon her comes.