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Oh, time, how quick is your run. Rushed another year. It was time to say farewell to the kindergarten. After lunch, in the dining room, the teacher announced to all children who reached the age of seven, including me, that today they are the last day in the garden. That until the first of September they had exactly one month left, that they were almost schoolchildren.

In a month, the first of September. I'm 7 years old. The First Class is waiting for me. Newest comrades, almost adult cares.

"And how will I read and write?" And how to count? " – I thought anxiously. – Von Ponomarenko Kolya already knows the alphabet, Lenya Ochkolyas knows how to count to ten. "

With a bitter heart complained to Ponomarenko Vasya, his brother Kolya. No, not that Coley, who slipped me a boiled bacon, and another Kolya, already a first- class student.

To which Vasya authoritatively stated:

"My brother did not even know the first letter." And now he is reading the primer. Vasily proudly declared.

– Really?! – I was delighted. And my heart became calmer. With all my heart I reached out to Vasya, but Vasya was still in the kindergarten, he would go to school only next year. That's how friends get to know, on the very last day.

"Tell me everything that's in school." To me, already for the next year. Vasilis’s asked me. Vasya and Kolya Ponomarenko lived next door to us, and I often went to play with them. It is necessary to go through the neighbor's garden and I already have Ponomarenko …

Dead hour. Children sleep in their beds. The last dead hour in kindergarten, the last day of preschool childhood I sighed and turned, could not fall asleep, I was worried. I was still racked with fears:

"How can I go to school?" I thought, tossing and turning on my bed, during a dead hour. "I cannot read or write, I do not even know the letters."

I began to recall the letters. It was easy to remember the letter "A", like two telegraph poles, topped and fastened with a crossbar. It's easier to remember, there are such poles out there, as long as you want on the sovkhoz fields. I easily remember the letter "O", similar to the hoop, with which Uncle Fyodor fastens the barrels for pickling tomatoes and cucumbers at my mother's at work. As Valik did not try to remember even one, at least some letter, nothing came to mind. He began to toss and turn. He lay on his back, looked at the ceiling, remembered, for some reason, the grandmother by the stove and her poker.

«Yeah, it seems like the letter" G «. – I thought, the heap in the memory of the device, with which the grandmother deftly manipulates, putting in the stove cast- iron, rakes the heat. But nothing more could not really remember. I turned my fair head to one side, listened. The hay crackled in the cushion. In the bedroom, the sniffling of sleeping children was heard. The fly flew by. Everywhere reigned sleepy silence. Suddenly a crumpled green leaf of the lime flopped on the pillow next to my head. I lifted my head, the springs creaked treacherously. Carefully looking around, he found that everyone was asleep:

«Pavlik? It does not seem to be sleeping like killing. "I thought. The glance slid over the cots in the far corner of the bedroom, then stopped at the neighbor on the right. But the blanket of Vasya Ponomarenko rose slightly in time to snuffle, the boy was asleep. Two white teeth were visible in his open mouth, and he looked like a rabbit, peacefully asleep on a pillow, with all his sleeping form. I turned to the right, looked at the bunk of Leni Ochkolyas. There, rustling, the edge of the blanket moved away and black eyes flashed beady under it.

«Oh, that's a whore! From you to me! " – my little hand grabbed the edge of the pillow and in an instant a soft projectile, describing the arc in the air, sank to the sheltered head of Lenya. The blanket flew open with lightning speed. Lena's wide- open black eyes stared at me.

"I'll give you some," said her face. And in return, Leni's pillow flew to me. The fighters stopped the hurried steps behind the door. When Aunt Olya entered the room, the picture that appeared before her seemed, did not disturb the sleepy atmosphere. The tutor examined the sleeping ones anxiously. When her gaze settled on my bunk, there were faint flashes in her eyes. I lay on the crumpled blanket of the crib with my feet toward the pillow. The head was lying where the legs should lie. My eyes closed treacherously for centuries. With all his might trying to make a dream, I tried not to blink for centuries. However, in vain, treacherous eyelashes with their trembling spoiled pretense. Strict aunt Olya already and so she understood everything. She quietly went out and in a moment appeared again. In her hand, swaying with a long stem, the gift of Leni Ochkolyas, squeezed in her right hand, nettles. She is coming up to me "sleeping" and began to drag nettles over my bare stomach. The eyelashes of my closed eyes fluttered desperately, but the body lay motionless. Lenya Ochkolyas watched with emotion from his "hiding place" behind what was happening. He was very flattered that the nettle, which he so lovingly chose this morning on the road to kindergarten, did not fade in vain. Thus ended my preschool childhood …

My grandmother met me at home.

"Tomorrow is Sunday, we'll go to Buzovaya Farm, to the bazaar." – My grandmother Eugenia Lavrentyevna solemnly informed me.

The bazaar was far away, six kilometers from Spitec. Local residents called this place "Bazaar on Buzovaya". The settlement of the Buzovaya hamlet is located from Kiev on the thirtieth- thirty first kilometer of the Brest- Litovsk highway.

Grandmother announced this news and with a pleased look added:

– Maybe I cannot go next time. I'll go for the last time …

Early in the morning, I woke up from a light grandmother's touch.

– Get up now it's time. She leaned over me in a white clean kerchief and stroked my head.

I rubbed my eyes. He rose, drowsily went to the kitchen. There on the stool stood a bucket of water and a mug, and next to it, near the stool, a garbage can. Having scooped up a mug of water, he took it in his mouth, then poured water from his mouth into his hands over the garbage can. And, soaping his wet hands with soap and soap, he washed himself. For the grandmother came two middle- aged women.

They were two aunts in white colorful handkerchiefs. One distant relative, Aunt Manya from the neighboring village Lychanka. And the other, my grandmother's eldest daughter, Aunt Maria, or, as everyone called her, was also Aunt Many. They were like my grandmother in white kerchiefs. Aunt Mate from Lychanka is wearing a red woolen skirt and brown shoes without heels. And aunt Manya from Spitec is dressed in a light long and spacious cotton skirt in gray- brown peas. She has sandals on her legs. And my grandmother wore soft home slippers, in which, as she said, it would be convenient for her to go the country road.

The sun touched the tops of trees with its rays, coloring them gently pink. Dew glistened on the grass. Potatoes in the garden blossomed with white flowers. There was a lull in field work. That time, when the harvest absorbed moisture, fertilizer and heat – ripened.

The peasants could make a break. End of July, beginning of August. Then, to gather strength and harvest, stock up for the winter.

The road slowly swam under the unhurried steps of the women. With curious eyes I peered into the surrounding world, so amazing and huge, full of the incessant singing of birds and the chirring of grasshoppers. The screams of scurrying swallows and the blue- blue sky. The day promised to be hot. Behind the coolness of the village the road turned into a field. Then my grandmother took off her slippers and went on barefoot. The women followed suit, saying that they would reach the bazaar and put on shoes. Slowly walked the field road through the space towards the bluish sinuous line of the horizon. The sun had not yet risen to its hot splendor, and it was easy and pleasant to walk, although soft sand underfoot. On Smolianka, on the way to the bazaar, we met a teenage girl Katya. Smolianka, this place has acquired this area from time immemorial, when in the place of the old Lybyd river bed, now covered with lush grass, spacious river flowed along which fishermen's boats swam. On the bank of this river there was a fishing village, and a place where the fishing boats were crooked and were washed down. And this place called Smolianka. Now it was a good place for grazing cows. Here Katia drove out Shpitkovo herd to Smolianka. She ran up to us and cheered with greetings. Just two kilometers from Spitec, Katya kicked out a herd of cows early. Grandmother, having found our Zorka, looked in her direction. Zorka stopped grazing and raised her face, and she began to hum down granny. Evgenia Lavrentyevna commanded her detachment: