Hare's feet Konstantin Paustovsky. Konstantin Paustovsky

Story Hare's feet for children to read Paustovsky

Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you fool!”

“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.

What to treat for?

His paws are burned.

The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:

Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.

Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.

What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. - Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones? Oh what happened?

“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - On forest fire He burned his paws and can't run. Look, he's about to die.

“Don’t die, little one,” Anisya mumbled. “Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to see Karl Petrovich.”

Vanya wiped away his tears and walked home through the forests to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. A recent forest fire burned north near the lake. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. She large islands grew up in the meadows.

The hare moaned.

Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.

What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.

The hare was silent.

The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.

Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.

There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.

The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots[i] and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.

The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.

The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.

Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.

They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. Thick old man wearing pince-nez and a short white robe, he shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:

I like this! Enough strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped seeing patients for three years now. Why do you need it?

The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.

I like this! - said the pharmacist. -- There are some interesting patients in our city. I like this great!

He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.

Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book. - Three!

Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched across the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders and reluctantly shaking the ground. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.

Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.

A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.

“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.

“A child, a hare, it’s all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!

A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.

Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.

A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later everyone already knew about it small town, and on the third day a tall young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.

The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in cotton rags and took him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:

The hare is not for sale, living soul, let him live in freedom. At the same time, I remain Larion Malyavin.

This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.

Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and repaired the torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally in his sleep loudly clapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.

We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.

In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.

The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire was racing across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.

Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.

Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.

The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, grandfather knew that animals are much more better than man they sense where the fire is coming from and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.

Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”

The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.

Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”

What have you done wrong?

And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!

I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I leaned over him with a flashlight and noticed that left ear the hare's is torn. Then I understood everything.

© Paustovsky K. G., heirs, 1937–1962
© Epishin G.I., illustrations, 1987
© Compilation. Publishing house "Children's Literature", 1998
© Design of the series. Publishing house "Children's Literature", 2002

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Opening remarks

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky (1892–1968) was born in Moscow. In addition to him, there were three more children in the family - two brothers and a sister. The writer's father was a railway employee, and the family often moved from place to place: after Moscow they lived in Pskov, Vilna, and Kyiv.
Konstantin studied at the 1st Kyiv Classical Gymnasium. His favorite subject was Russian literature, and, as the writer himself admitted, he spent more time reading books than preparing lessons.
In 1911, in last class gymnasium, K. G. Paustovsky wrote his first story, and it was published in the Kiev literary magazine “Lights”.
Konstantin Georgievich changed many professions: he was a leader and conductor of the Moscow tram, a worker at metallurgical plants in Donbass and Taganrog, a fisherman, a nurse in the old army during the First World War, an employee, a teacher of Russian literature, and a journalist.
After October Revolution K. Paustovsky, as a reporter, attended meetings of the Soviet government, “witnessed all the events in Moscow at that unprecedented, young and turbulent time.”
IN Civil War Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky fought in the Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War was a war correspondent on the Southern Front.
During his long writing life, he visited many parts of our country. “Almost every book of mine is a trip. Or, rather, every trip is a book,” said K. G. Paustovsky. He traveled to the Caucasus and Ukraine, was on the Volga, Kama, Don, Dnieper, Oka and Desna, in Central Asia, in Altai, Siberia, the Onega region, and the Baltic.
But he fell in love with Meshchera especially passionately - fabulously beautiful region between Vladimir and Ryazan, where he came for the first time in 1930. There was everything that attracted the writer from childhood - “dense forests, lakes, winding forest rivers, abandoned roads and even inns.” K. G. Paustovsky wrote that he “owes to Meshchera many of his stories, “Summer Days” and the short story “Meshchera Side”.
The book “Hare's Paws” includes stories from the series “ Summer days"and several fairy tales. They teach you to love native nature, be observant, see the unusual in the ordinary and be able to fantasize, be kind, honest, able to admit and correct one’s own guilt. These important human qualities are so necessary in life.
Our reader is well aware of other wonderful works by Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky: “Kara-Bugaz”, “Colchis”, “Black Sea”, “Taras Shevchenko”, “Northern Tale”, “The Tale of Forests”, “Birth of the Sea”, autobiographical stories " Distant years", "Restless Youth", "The Beginning of an Unknown Century", a book about the writer's work "Golden Rose", etc.

STORIES

Summer days

Everything that is told here can happen to anyone who reads this book. To do this, you just need to spend the summer in those places where there are ancient forests, deep lakes, rivers with clean water overgrown with tall grasses along the banks, forest animals, village boys and chatty old men. But this is not enough. Everything that is told here can only happen to fishermen!
Me and Reuben, described in this book, we are both proud to belong to the great and carefree tribe of fishermen. In addition to fishing, we also write books.
If someone tells us that they don't like our books, we won't be offended. One person likes one thing, another likes something completely different - nothing can be done about it. But if some bully says that we don’t know how to fish, we won’t forgive him for a long time.
We spent the summer in the forests. There was a strange boy with us; his mother went to the sea for treatment and asked us to take her son with us.
We willingly took this boy, although we were not at all suited to messing with children.
The boy turned out to be good friend and comrade. He arrived in Moscow tanned, healthy and cheerful, accustomed to spending the night in the forest, to rain, wind, heat and cold. The rest of the boys, his comrades, later envied him. And they were jealous for good reason, as you will now see from several short stories.

Golden tench

When the meadows are mowed, it is better not to fish in the meadow lakes. We knew this, but still went to Prorva.
Troubles began immediately behind the Devil's Bridge. Multi-colored women piled up hay. We decided to avoid them, but they noticed us.
- Where to, falcons? - the women shouted and laughed. - Whoever fishes will have nothing!

- Believe me, the butterflies have come to Prorva! - shouted the tall and thin widow, nicknamed Pear the Prophetess. - They have no other way, my wretches!
The women tormented us all summer. No matter how many fish we caught, they always said with pity:
- Well, at least you caught yourself in trouble, and that’s happiness. And my Petka brought ten crucian carp, and they were so smooth - fat was literally dripping from the tail!
We knew that Petka brought only two skinny crucian carp, but we were silent. We had our own scores to settle with this Petka: he cut off Reuben’s hook and tracked down the places where we fed the fish. For this, Petka, according to fishing laws, was supposed to be whipped, but we forgave him.
When we got out into the unmown meadows, the women became quiet.
Sweet horse sorrel lashed our chests. The lungwort smelled so strongly that sunlight, which flooded the Ryazan expanse, seemed like liquid honey.
We breathed the warm air of the grass, bumblebees buzzed loudly around us and grasshoppers chattered.
The leaves of hundred-year-old willows rustled overhead like dull silver. Prorva smelled of water lilies and clean cold water.
We calmed down, cast our fishing rods, but suddenly a grandfather, nicknamed Ten Percent, came dragging in from the meadows.
- Well, how is the fish? - he asked, squinting at the water sparkling from the sun. - Is it getting caught?
Everyone knows that you can’t talk while fishing.
Grandfather sat down, lit a cigarette and began to take off his shoes.
- No, no, you won’t get a bite today, the fish are full today. The jester knows what kind of attachment she needs!
Grandfather was silent. A frog screamed sleepily near the shore.
- Look, it's chirping! - the grandfather muttered and looked at the sky.
Dull pink smoke hung over the meadow. A pale blue shone through this smoke, and a yellow sun hung above the gray willows.
“Dry man!” sighed the grandfather. - We must think that by the evening it will rain heavily.
We were silent.
“The frog doesn’t scream in vain either,” explained the grandfather, slightly worried by our gloomy silence. - The frog, my dear, is always worried before a thunderstorm and jumps anywhere. Nadysya I spent the night with the ferryman, we cooked fish soup in a cauldron by the fire, and the frog - it weighed a kilo, no less - jumped straight into the cauldron, and was cooked there. I say: “Vasily, you and I are left without fish soup,” and he says: “What the hell do I care about that frog! I'm on time German war I was in France, and there they eat frog for nothing. Eat, don’t be scared.” So we drank that fish soup.
- And nothing? - I asked. - Can I eat?
“Tasty food,” answered the grandfather. - And-and-them, darling, I look at you, you’re still wandering around Prorvy. Would you like me to weave you a jacket from bast? I wove, my dear, a whole three-piece from bast - a jacket, trousers and a vest - for the exhibition. Opposite me there is no better master in the entire village.
Grandfather left only two hours later. Of course, the fish didn’t bite us.
No one in the world has as many different enemies as fishermen. First of all, the boys. At best, they will stand behind you for hours, sniffling and staring numbly at the float.
We noticed that under this circumstance the fish immediately stops biting.
In the worst case scenario, the boys will start swimming nearby, blowing bubbles and diving like horses. Then you need to reel in the fishing rods and change the place.
In addition to boys, women and talkative old men, we had more serious enemies: underwater snags, mosquitoes, duckweed, thunderstorms, bad weather and the flow of water in lakes and rivers.
Fishing in snags was very tempting - large and lazy fish were hiding there. She took it slowly and surely, sank the float deeply, then tangled the line on a snag and broke it off along with the float.
The subtle mosquito itch made us tremble. The first half of the summer we walked around covered in blood and swelling from mosquito bites. On windless, hot days, when the same plump, cotton-like clouds stood in the same place for days in the sky, a small algae similar to mold, duckweed, appeared in the creeks and lakes. The water was covered with a sticky green film, so thick that even the sinker could not break through it.
Before a thunderstorm, the fish stopped biting - it was afraid of a thunderstorm, a lull when the earth trembles dully from distant thunder.
In bad weather and when the water arrived there was no bite.
But how beautiful the foggy and fresh mornings were, when the shadows of the trees lay far on the water and flocks of leisurely, goggle-eyed chubs walked close to the shore! On such mornings, dragonflies loved to sit on feather floats, and we watched with bated breath as the float with the dragonfly suddenly slowly and slanted into the water, the dragonfly took off, soaking its paws, and at the end of the fishing line a strong and cheerful fish walked tightly along the bottom.
How beautiful were the rudds, falling like living silver into the thick grass, jumping among the dandelions and porridge! The sunsets in the full sky over the forest lakes, the thin smoke of clouds, the cold stems of lilies, the crackling of a fire, the quacking were beautiful. wild ducks.
Grandfather turned out to be right: in the evening a thunderstorm came. It grumbled for a long time in the forests, then rose to the zenith like an ashen wall, and the first lightning struck the distant haystacks.
We stayed in the tent until nightfall. At midnight the rain stopped. We lit a big fire, dried off and lay down to take a nap.
Night birds screamed sadly in the meadows, and a white star shimmered over Prorva in the clear pre-dawn sky.
I dozed off. The cry of a quail woke me up.
“It's time to drink! It's time to drink! It's time to drink!" - he shouted somewhere nearby, in the thickets of rose hips and buckthorn.
We walked down the steep bank to the water, clinging to roots and grass. The water shone like black glass; Paths made by snails were visible on the sandy bottom.
Reuben cast his fishing rod not far from me. A few minutes later I heard his quiet calling whistle. This was our fishing language. A short whistle three times meant: “Drop everything and come here.”
I cautiously approached Reuben. He silently pointed to the float. Some kind of peck strange fish. The float swayed, carefully moved first to the right, then to the left, trembled, but did not sink. He turned obliquely, dipped a little and emerged again.
Reuben froze - he only bites so much big fish.
The float quickly moved to the side, stopped, straightened up and began to slowly sink.
“It’s drowning,” I said. - Drag!
Reuben hooked him. The rod bent into an arc, the line crashed into the water with a whistle. The invisible fish drew the line tightly and slowly in circles. Sunlight fell on the water through the willow thickets, and I saw a bright bronze shine under the water: it was a caught fish bending and backing into the depths. We pulled her out only after a few minutes. It turned out to be a huge lazy tench with dark golden scales and black fins. He lay in the wet grass and slowly moved his thick tail.
Reuben wiped the sweat from his forehead and lit a cigarette.
We didn't fish anymore, we reeled in our fishing rods and went to the village.
Reuben carried the line. It hung heavily from his shoulder. Water dripped from the line, and its scales sparkled as dazzlingly as golden domes. former monastery. IN clear days the domes were visible thirty kilometers away.
We deliberately walked through the meadows past the women. When they saw us, they stopped working and looked at the tench, covering their eyes with their palms, as they look at the unbearable sun. The women were silent. Then a light whisper of delight passed through their colorful rows.
We walked through the line of women calmly and independently. Only one of them sighed and, taking up the rake, said after us:
- What a beauty they took - it hurts my eyes!
We took our time and carried the line through the entire village. Old women leaned out of the windows and looked at our backs. The boys ran after and whined:
- Uncle, uncle, where did you smoke? Uncle, uncle, what did you fall for?
Grandfather Ten Percent clicked the tench’s golden hard gills and laughed:
- Well, now the women will hold their tongues! Otherwise they are all hahaha and giggles. Now the matter is different, serious.
Since then we stopped going around women. We walked straight towards them, and they shouted to us affectionately:
- You can’t catch too much! It would not be a sin to bring us some fish.
Thus justice prevailed.

The last devil

Grandfather went to Deaf Lake to pick wild raspberries and returned with his face twisted with fear. He shouted around the village for a long time that there were devils on the lake. As proof, the grandfather showed his torn pants: the devil allegedly pecked the grandfather in the leg, tore it in a row and caused a large abrasion on his knee.
Nobody believed grandfather. Even angry old women mumbled that devils never had beaks, that devils don’t live in lakes, and, finally, that after the revolution there are no devils at all and cannot be - they were driven out to the last root.
But still, the old women stopped going to Deaf Lake to buy berries. They were ashamed to admit that in the seventeenth year of the revolution they were afraid of devils, and therefore, in response to the old women’s reproaches, they answered in a singsong voice, hiding their eyes:
- E-and-and, dear, there are no berries now even on Deaf Lake. Such an empty summer has never happened before. Judge for yourself: why should we walk in vain?
They didn’t believe grandfather also because he was an eccentric and a loser. Grandfather's name was Ten Percent. This nickname was incomprehensible to us.

“That’s why they call me that, my dear,” my grandfather once explained, “because I have only ten percent of my former strength left.” The pig killed me. Well, there was a pig - just a lion! As soon as he goes outside, he grunts - everything is empty all around! The women grab the boys and throw them into the hut. The men go out into the yard only with pitchforks, and those who are timid do not go out at all. Straight out war! That pig fought hard. Hear what happened next. That pig crawled into my hut, sniffling, glaring at me with an evil eye. I, of course, pulled her with a crutch: go, honey, to the devil, come on! That's where it came up! Then she rushed at me! Knocked me off my feet; I’m lying there, screaming out loud, and she’s tearing me apart, she’s tormenting me! Vaska Zhukov shouts: “Give us a fire truck, we’ll drive it away with water, because now it’s forbidden to kill pigs!” The people are milling around, shouting, and she is tearing me apart, she is tormenting me! The men forcibly beat me away from her with flails. I was in the hospital. The doctor was positively surprised. “From you,” he says, “Mitriy, according to medical evidence, there is no more than ten percent left of you.” Now I’m just making do with these percentages. That's how it is, honey! And they killed that pig with an explosive bullet: the other one didn’t take it.
In the evening we called my grandfather over to ask about the devil. Dust and smell fresh milk hung over the village streets - cows had been driven from the forest clearings, women shouted mournfully and affectionately at the gates, calling out to the calves:
- Tyalush, tyalush, tyalush!
Grandfather said that he met the devil on the channel, near the lake. There he rushed at the grandfather and hit him so hard with his beak that the grandfather fell into the raspberry bushes, screamed in a voice that was not his own, and then jumped up and ran all the way to the Burnt Swamp.
- My heart almost sank. This is how the wrap turned out!
- What kind of devil is this?
Grandfather scratched the back of his head.
“Well, it looks like a bird,” he said hesitantly. - The voice is harmful, hoarse, as if from a cold. A bird is not a bird - the dog will sort it out.
- Shouldn't we go to Deaf Lake? Still, it’s interesting,” said Reuben when the grandfather left, having drunk tea with bagels.
“There’s something here,” I answered.
We left the next day. I took the double-barreled shotgun.
We were going to Deaf Lake for the first time and therefore took our grandfather with us as our guide. At first he refused, citing his “ten percent”, then he agreed, but asked that the collective farm give him two days of work for this. The chairman of the collective farm, Komsomol member Lenya Ryzhov, laughed:
- You'll see there! If you knock the crap out of the women’s heads with this expedition, then I’ll write you out. Until then, keep walking!
And grandfather, bless you, walked off. On the road, he spoke reluctantly about the devil and kept quiet.
- Does he eat anything, damn it? - asked Reuben.
“It must be assumed that he feeds little by little on fish, climbs on the ground, and eats berries,” said the grandfather. - He also needs to earn something, even though evil spirits.
- Is he black?
“If you look, you’ll see,” the grandfather answered mysteriously. - Whatever he pretends to be, that’s how he will show himself.
We walked all day pine forests. We walked without roads, crossed dry swamps - mosslands, where our feet sank knee-deep in dry brown mosses, and listened to the subtle whistling of birds.
The heat was thick in the needles. The bears screamed. In the dry clearings, grasshoppers rained down from under our feet. The grass was weary, it smelled of hot pine bark and dry strawberries. Hawks hung motionless in the sky above the tops of the pine trees.
The heat has tormented us. The forest was hot, dry, and it seemed that it was quietly smoldering from the heat of the sun. It even seemed to smell like burning. We didn’t smoke - we were afraid that from the very first match the forest would burst into flames and crackle like dry juniper, and white smoke would lazily creep towards the yellow sun.
We rested in the dense thickets of aspen and birch trees, made our way through the thickets to damp places and breathed in the mushroom, rotten smell of grass and roots. We lay at rest for a long time and listened to the tops of the pine trees rustling with the ocean surf - a slow summer wind was blowing high above our heads. He must have been very hot.
Only towards sunset we went to the shore of the lake. The silent night was carefully approaching the forests in a deep blue. The first stars sparkled, barely noticeable, like drops of silver water. The ducks flew to roost for the night with a heavy whistle. The lake, enclosed by a belt of impenetrable thickets, glittered below. By black water Wide circles spread out - fish were playing at sunset. The night began over the forest edge, a long twilight thickened in the thickets, and only the fire crackled and flared up, breaking the forest silence.
Grandfather was sitting by the fire.
- Well, where is your devil, Mitri? - I asked.
- Tama... - Grandfather vaguely waved his hand into the aspen thickets. -Where are you going? We'll look for it in the morning. Today it’s nighttime, dark, we have to wait.
At dawn I woke up. Warm fog dripped from the pines. Grandfather sat by the fire and hastily crossed himself. His wet beard trembled slightly.
- What are you doing, grandfather? - I asked.
- I'm going to die with you! - muttered the grandfather. - Hear, he screams, anathema! Do you hear? Wake everyone up!
I listened. A fish splashed awake in the lake, then a piercing and furious cry rang out.
“Wack! - someone shouted. - Wack! Wack!
A fuss began in the darkness. Something living thrashed heavily in the water, and again the evil voice shouted in triumph: “Wack! Wack!
- Save, Lady Three-Handed! - the grandfather muttered, stammering. - Do you hear how his teeth click? I was tempted to come here with you, you old fool!
A strange clicking and wooden knocking sound came from the lake, as if boys were fighting with sticks there.
I pushed Reuben away. He woke up and said in fear:
- We have to catch it!
I took the gun.
“Well,” said the grandfather, “act as you wish.” I don't know anything! I will also have to answer for you. Well, to hell with you!
Grandfather was completely stunned with fear.
“Go and shoot,” he muttered angrily. - The bosses won’t hit you on the head for this either. Is it possible to shoot the devil? Look what they came up with!
"Wack!" - the devil shouted desperately.
Grandfather pulled his coat over his head and fell silent.
We crawled to the shore of the lake. The fog rustled in the grass. A huge white sun slowly rose over the water.
I parted the wolfberry bushes on the shore, peered into the lake and slowly pulled the gun:
- Strange... What kind of bird I don’t understand.
We rose carefully. A huge bird swam on the black water. Her plumage shimmered with lemon and pink. The head was not visible - it was all long neck, was under water.
We were numb. The bird pulled out of the water a small head, the size of an egg, overgrown with curly down. It was as if a huge beak with a red leather bag was glued to the head.
- Pelican! - Reuben said quietly. - This is a Dalmatian pelican. I know people like that.
"Wack!" - the pelican shouted in warning and looked at us with a red eye.

The tail of a fat perch protruded from the pelican's beak. The pelican shook its neck to push the snapper into its stomach.
Then I remembered the newspaper - it was wrapped in smoked sausage. I rushed to the fire, shook out the sausage from my backpack, straightened out the greasy newspaper and read the announcement in bold letters:

DURING THE TRANSPORTATION OF THE MENAGERIE ON A NARROW-GAE RAILWAY, AN AFRICAN PELICAN BIRD ESCAPED. SIGNS: PINK AND YELLOW FEATHER, LARGE BEAKE WITH A FISH BAG, FLUFF ON THE HEAD. THE BIRD IS OLD, VERY ANGRY, DOES NOT LIKE AND BEATS CHILDREN, RARELY TOUCHES ADULTS. REPORT YOUR FIND TO THE MENAGERINE FOR A DECENT REWARD.

Well,” said Reuben, “what shall we do?” It would be a shame to shoot, and in the fall he would die from the cold.
“Grandfather will inform the menagerie,” I answered. - And, by the way, he will receive gratitude.
We followed our grandfather. For a long time the grandfather could not understand what was the matter. He was silent, blinked his eyes and kept scratching his thin chest. Then, when I understood, I went with caution to the shore to look for the devil.
“Here he is, your goblin,” said Reuben. - Look!
- E-and-and, dear!.. - Grandfather giggled. - What am I saying? Of course - not the devil. Let him live in freedom and catch fish. And thank you. The people were weakened by fear. Now the girls will come here for berries - just hold on! A stray bird, I've never seen one like it.
During the day we caught fish and took them to the fire. The pelican hurriedly crawled ashore and hobbled towards our rest stop. He looked at his grandfather with narrowed eyes, as if trying to remember something. Grandfather trembled. But then the pelican saw the fish, opened its beak, clicked it with a wooden sound, and shouted “wek!” and began to frantically beat his wings and stamp his duck paw. From the outside it looked like the pelican was pumping a heavy pump.
Coals and sparks flew from the fire.
- Why is he? - Grandfather was scared. - Freaky, or what?
“He asks for fish,” Reuben explained.
We gave the pelican fish. He swallowed it, but still managed to casually pinch me in the back and hiss.
Then he again began pumping air with his wings, squatting and stamping his feet - begging for fish.
- Let's go, let's go! - the grandfather grumbled at him. - Look, he swung it!
All day the pelican wandered around us, hissing and screaming, but did not give in to our hands.
In the evening we left. The pelican climbed onto a hummock, beat its wings after us and angrily shouted: “Whack, Whack!” He was probably unhappy that we were leaving him on the lake and demanded that we return.
Two days later, the grandfather went to the city, found a menagerie in the market square and told about the pelican. A pockmarked man came from the city and took the pelican.
Grandfather received forty rubles from the menagerie and bought new pants with them.
- My ports are first class! - he said and pulled down his trouser leg. - The conversation about my ports goes all the way to Ryazan. They say that even the newspapers published about this foolish bird. This is what our life is like, my dear!

Hare's feet

“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, kid,” Anisya mumbled. - Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take it to the city to Karl Petrovich.
Vanya wiped his tears and walked home through the forests, to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. The recent forest fire passed away, to the north, near the lake itself. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.

Opening remarks

Konstantin studied at the 1st Kyiv Classical Gymnasium. His favorite subject was Russian literature, and, as the writer himself admitted, he spent more time reading books than preparing lessons.

In 1911, in the last class of the gymnasium, K. G. Paustovsky wrote his first story, and it was published in the Kiev literary magazine “Lights”.

Konstantin Georgievich changed many professions: he was a leader and conductor of the Moscow tram, a worker at metallurgical plants in Donbass and Taganrog, a fisherman, a nurse in the old army during the First World War, an employee, a teacher of Russian literature, and a journalist.

After the October Revolution, K. Paustovsky, as a reporter, attended meetings of the Soviet government, “witnessed all the events in Moscow at that unprecedented, young and turbulent time.”

During the Civil War, Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky fought in the Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War he was a war correspondent on the Southern Front.

During his long writing life, he visited many parts of our country. “Almost every book of mine is a trip. Or, rather, every trip is a book,” said K. G. Paustovsky. He traveled to the Caucasus and Ukraine, was on the Volga, Kama, Don, Dnieper, Oka and Desna, in Central Asia, Altai, Siberia, the Onega region, and the Baltic.

But he especially fell in love with Meshchera - a fabulously beautiful region between Vladimir and Ryazan - where he came for the first time in 1930. There was everything that had attracted the writer since childhood - “dense forests, lakes, winding forest rivers, abandoned roads and even inns.” K. G. Paustovsky wrote that he “owes to Meshchera many of his stories, “Summer Days” and the short story “Meshchera Side”.

The book "Hare's Paws" includes stories from the "Summer Days" series and several fairy tales. They teach you to love your native nature, to be observant, to see the unusual in the ordinary and to be able to fantasize, to be kind, honest, and able to admit and correct your own guilt. These important human qualities are so necessary in life.

Our reader is well aware of other wonderful works by Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky: “Kara-Bugaz”, “Colchis”, “Black Sea”, “Taras Shevchenko”, “Northern Tale”, “The Tale of Forests”, “Birth of the Sea”, autobiographical stories “Distant Years”, “Restless Youth”, “The Beginning of an Unknown Century”, a book about the writer’s work “Golden Rose”, etc.

STORIES

Summer days

Me and Reuben, described in this book, we are both proud to belong to the great and carefree tribe of fishermen. In addition to fishing, we also write books.

If someone tells us that they don't like our books, we won't be offended. One person likes one thing, another likes something completely different – there’s nothing you can do about it. But if some bully says that we don’t know how to fish, we won’t forgive him for a long time.

We spent the summer in the forests. There was a strange boy with us; his mother went to the sea for treatment and asked us to take her son with us.

We willingly took this boy, although we were not at all suited to messing with children.

The boy turned out to be a good friend and comrade. He arrived in Moscow tanned, healthy and cheerful, accustomed to spending the night in the forest, to rain, wind, heat and cold. The rest of the boys, his comrades, later envied him. And they were jealous for good reason, as you will now see from several short stories.

Golden tench

When the meadows are mowed, it is better not to fish in the meadow lakes. We knew this, but still went to Prorva.

Troubles began immediately behind the Devil's Bridge. Multi-colored women piled up hay. We decided to avoid them, but they noticed us.

-Where to, falcons? – the women shouted and laughed. - Whoever fishes will have nothing!

– Believe me, the butterflies have come to Prorva! - shouted the tall and thin widow, nicknamed Pear the Prophetess. “They have no other way, my wretches!”

The women tormented us all summer. No matter how many fish we caught, they always said with pity:

- Well, at least you caught yourself in trouble, and that’s happiness. And my Petka brought ten crucian carp, and they were so smooth - fat was literally dripping from the tail!

We knew that Petka brought only two skinny crucian carp, but we were silent. We had our own scores to settle with this Petka: he cut off Reuben’s hook and tracked down the places where we fed the fish. For this, Petka, according to fishing laws, was supposed to be whipped, but we forgave him.

When we got out into the unmown meadows, the women became quiet.

Sweet horse sorrel lashed our chests. The lungwort smelled so strongly that the sunlight that flooded the Ryazan distances seemed like liquid honey.

We breathed the warm air of the grass, bumblebees buzzed loudly around us and grasshoppers chattered.

The leaves of hundred-year-old willows rustled overhead like dull silver. Prorva smelled of water lilies and clean cold water.

We calmed down, cast our fishing rods, but suddenly a grandfather, nicknamed Ten Percent, came dragging in from the meadows.

- How's the fish? – he asked, squinting at the water sparkling from the sun. - Is it getting caught?

Everyone knows that you can’t talk while fishing.

Grandfather sat down, lit a cigarette and began to take off his shoes.

- No, no, you won’t get a bite today, the fish are full today. The jester knows what kind of attachment she needs!

Grandfather was silent. A frog screamed sleepily near the shore.

- Look, it's chirping! – the grandfather muttered and looked at the sky.

Dull pink smoke hung over the meadow. A pale blue shone through this smoke, and a yellow sun hung above the gray willows.

“Dry man!” sighed the grandfather. - We must think that by the evening it will rain heavily.

We were silent.

“It’s not for nothing that the frog screams,” explained the grandfather, slightly worried by our gloomy silence. “The frog, my dear, is always worried before a thunderstorm and jumps anywhere.” Nadysya I spent the night with the ferryman, we cooked fish soup in a cauldron by the fire, and the frog—it weighed a kilo, no less—jumped straight into the cauldron and was cooked there. I say: “Vasily, you and I are left without fish soup,” and he says: “What the hell do I care about that frog! I was in France during the German war, and they eat frog there for nothing. Eat, don’t be scared.” So we drank that fish soup.

Konstantin Georgievich is a great Russian writer. He loved to travel and reflected his impressions of what he saw and people in his stories. His animals teach people kindness, compassion, responsiveness, love for native land. You will become acquainted with one of his works by reading summary. Paustovsky wrote “Hare's Paws” in 1937. But until now this story cannot leave the reader indifferent.

Brief biography: the development of a writer

To understand why K. G. Paustovsky wrote “Hare’s Paws,” you need to know at least a little about the author himself.

He was born in Moscow in 1892, on May 31. Konstantin's father worked as a railway statistician. According to the writer himself, his mother was a stern and domineering woman. Talking about his family, Konstantin Georgievich said that they loved to engage in various arts - they played the piano a lot, visited theaters.

Due to the fact that the family broke up, Konstantin, from the sixth grade, was forced to work on an equal basis with adults in order to earn money for his studies and for a living. The boy became a tutor. And he wrote his first story in 1911, it was published in the magazine “Lights”.

Even as a child, Kostya dreamed of traveling. Over time, he realized his dream, visiting many countries. Impressions from these trips, meetings with different people formed the basis of many of his essays. But, as the writer himself later admitted, it’s better Central Russia there are no places.

Paustovsky said that he writes more and more willingly about simple unknown people - shepherds, ferrymen, artisans, forest guards, “watchmen and village children - his bosom friends.” That’s why K. G. Paustovsky created “Hare’s Paws” - a story in which a boy and an old man are trying to save a little hare. But not everything is so simple in this work...

The beginning of the story

It's time to reveal the summary. Paustovsky wrote “Hare's Paws” to clearly show that there is no need to do evil, as you will regret it later. This piece shows nobility ordinary people, one of whom stumbled, but then corrected himself.

Paustovsky’s work “Hare’s Paws” begins with an introduction. The reader is presented with a boy living in a village on Lake Urzhenskoye. The child's name is Vanya Malyavin.

A child brought a small bunny wrapped in a boy’s cotton jacket to the veterinarian. From the very first lines there is pity for this little creature; the author writes that the hare was crying, his eyes were red from tears. But the veterinarian didn’t even ask what happened; he shouted at the boy, saying that he would soon be carrying mice to him. The child could not stand it and replied that there was no need to swear, this hare was special, his grandfather had sent him to cure him.

When the veterinarian asked what happened, the boy replied that his paws were burned. Instead of helping the animal, the veterinarian pushed the child in the back and shouted after him that he did not know how to treat them and advised them to roast the hare. The boy did not respond to such cruel words. This is how the story begins: The hare's paws were damaged due to a forest fire. The reader will learn about this incident later.

Ivan's compassion

After leaving the veterinarian, the boy also began to cry. Grandma Anisya saw him. The child shared his sadness with her, to which the old woman advised him to contact Dr. Karl Petrovich, who lives in the city. Vanya quickly went to his grandfather to tell him everything.

On the way, the child picked herbs for the pet and asked him to eat. Ivan thought that the bunny was thirsty, so he ran with him to the lake so that he could quench his thirst. Let's continue with the summary. Paustovsky also created “Hare’s Paws” so that children would learn compassion from a young age. After all, the boy Vanya felt sorry for his long-eared friend, so he tried to cure him, feed him and give him something to drink.

Searching for a doctor

At home, the child told grandfather Larion everything, and the next morning they set off. Arriving in the city, the old man and grandson began asking passers-by where Karl Petrovich lived, but no one knew it.

Then they went to the pharmacy, the pharmacist gave the doctor’s address, but upset the travelers by the fact that he had not been accepting patients for three years. Larion and Vanya found the doctor, but he told them that he was not a veterinarian, but a specialist in childhood diseases. What for? old man He replied, “What difference does it make who is treated, a child or a bunny?”

Meeting with a doctor, recovery

The doctor began to treat the hare. Vanya stayed with Karl Petrovich to look after his ward, and Larion went to the lake in the morning. Soon the whole street learned about this incident, and after 2 days the whole city. On the third day, a newspaper employee came to the doctor and asked for an interview about the hare.

When the little ear finally recovered, Vanya took him home. This story was quickly forgotten, only a professor from Moscow really wanted his grandfather to sell him a four-legged celebrity. But Larion refused.

What happened then in the forest?

Next, a brief summary moves on to the main events. Paustovsky wrote “Hare's Paws” in such a way that the reader learns about the cause of the eared ear burns closer to the end. From this moment it becomes clear that the story is being told on behalf of Konstantin Georgievich himself. He says that in the fall he visited his grandfather Larion and spent the night in his house on the lake. The old man could not sleep, and he told about the incident.

This was back in August. One day my grandfather went hunting, saw a hare and shot. But providence wanted him to miss and the hare to run away. The old man moved on, but soon he smelled burning, saw smoke and realized that it was a forest fire. Hurricane wind contributed to the rapid spread of fire. The old man ran, but began to stumble and fall. The fire overtook him.

Will the old man be saved?

Larion felt that the fire was already grabbing him by the shoulders, but then he saw a hare jump out from under his feet. He ran slowly, it was clear that his hind legs were injured, as he was dragging them. The old man rejoiced at the beast as if it were his own. He knew that animals have a special sense; they sense where to run to escape a fire.

With the last of his strength, the elderly man ran after the hare, asking him not to run quickly. So the little eared one brought Larion out of the fire. Once on the shore of the lake, both fell exhausted. Then it was time for the old man to take care of his savior. He took his little friend in his arms and carried him home. When Ushastika was cured, the old man kept him with him.

The ending of the story is predictable for some, unexpected for others. Larion repented that he was guilty before the animal. After all, it was the same hare with a torn ear that he almost shot.

Like this interesting story written by K. G. Paustovsky.

"Hare's Paws": main characters

The work begins with an acquaintance with Vanya Malyavin. The author then talks very briefly about his grandfather. These are the two main characters of the story. Undoubtedly, the third is the hare, who behaved heroically and nobly - he saved Larion, despite the fact that he almost killed him at the beginning of their meeting. But good begets good. And in a difficult moment for the animal, the old man did not leave his savior, he overcame various obstacles - the indifference of people, the long way to help the animal.

There are also minor characters here. Some of them, like grandmother Anisya, Karl Petrovich, are positive, since they did not remain indifferent to the misfortune of others. Against the background of the nobility of these people, the murderous indifference of the veterinarian, who almost killed the animal, because he did not even examine it, is especially clearly visible.

Analysis: “Hare's Paws”, Paustovsky

In his work, the writer raises important issues, talking about the indifference of some people and the kindness of others, about the close relationship between nature and man. Analyzing the internal form of the story, it can be argued that at the very beginning the story is impersonal. Towards the end of the work it becomes clear that it is written on behalf of the author.

Analyzing the main characters, we can say that the author told a little about them appearance, but gave the reader the opportunity to see the inner state of these noble people. The writer said that the old man walked in boots and with a stick. It was with a high sense of responsibility. Vanya is also a good and caring boy, he sincerely worries about the hare, which speaks of the child’s responsiveness and kind heart.

If you analyze natural landscapes, it is clear that the author presented them in two forms. The first is the heat, the hurricane, which started a strong fire. Second - cold autumn, October night, when it is so good to sit with a cup of tea in the house and talk, as Konstantin Georgievich and Larion did. Natural descriptions help the reader to be completely immersed in the story, to be at the scene of the events with the characters. This concludes the brief retelling.

Paustovsky wrote “Hare's Paws” for readers of all age categories. Both adults and children will benefit from reading this interesting and instructive story.

Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you fool!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door,
pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. - Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones? Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, kid,” Anisya mumbled. - Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take it to the city to Karl Petrovich.
Vanya wiped his tears and walked home through the forests, to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. The recent forest fire passed away, to the north, near the lake itself. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
- What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
“You should eat,” Vanya repeated, and his voice trembled. - Maybe you want a drink?
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of dense white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind.
The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. A fat old man in pince-nez and a short white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like this! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped seeing patients for three years now. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like this! - said the pharmacist. - There are some interesting patients in our city! I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stomped around. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
- Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched beyond the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders, and reluctantly shaking the earth. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.
“A child, a hare, it’s all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about this, and on the third day a long young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
oskazkah.ru - website
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in a cotton rag and took him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
“The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. With this I remain Larion Malyavin.”
This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut, and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, clattered his teeth and bounced away - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally in his sleep loudly clapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
Grandfather moved on. But suddenly he became alarmed: from the south, from the side of Lopukhov, there was a strong smell of smoke. The wind rose. The smoke was thickening, it was already drifting like a white veil through the forest, engulfing the bushes. It became difficult to breathe.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire was racing across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, my grandfather knew that animals sense where the fire is coming from much better than humans and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home.
The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
- What did you do wrong?
- Go out, look at the hare, my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.