Technology of writing an essay in the Russian language. Source text problem

It must be that now, when he was thinking about this, an expression so unusual appeared on his usually calm face of a naturally kind, middle-aged, intelligent man that he suddenly heard Serpilin's voice:

- Sergey Nikolaevich! What happened to you? What happened?

Serpilin was lying on the grass, his eyes wide open, looking at him.

- Absolutely nothing. Shmakov put on his glasses, and his face assumed its usual expression.

- And if nothing, then tell me what time it is: isn't it time? It’s too lazy to move your limbs in vain,” Serpilin grinned.

Shmakov looked at his watch and said that seven minutes remained before the end of the halt.

- Then I sleep. Serpilin closed his eyes.

After an hour's rest, which Serpilin, despite the fatigue of the people, did not allow to drag out even for a minute, we moved on, gradually turning to the southeast.

Before the evening halt, another three dozen people wandering through the forest joined the detachment. No one else from their division was caught. All thirty people met after the first halt were from the neighboring division, which was stationed south along the left bank of the Dnieper. All of these were people from different regiments, battalions and rear units, and although among them were three lieutenants and one senior political instructor, no one had any idea where the division headquarters was, or even in what direction he was retreating. However, according to fragmentary and often contradictory stories, it was still possible to present a general picture of the catastrophe.

Judging by the names of the places from which the encirclement came, by the time of the German breakthrough, the division was stretched in a chain for almost thirty kilometers along the front. In addition, she did not have time or failed to properly strengthen herself. The Germans bombed it for twenty hours in a row, and then, throwing several landings into the rear of the division and disrupting control and communications, at the same time, under the cover of aviation, they began crossing the Dnieper at once in three places. Parts of the division were crushed, in places they ran, in places they fought fiercely, but this could no longer change the general course of affairs.

The men from this division walked in small groups, twos and threes. Some were armed, others were unarmed. Serpilin, after talking with them, put everyone in line, mixing with his own fighters. He put the unarmed into service without weapons, saying that they themselves would have to get it in battle, it was not stored for them.

Serpilin spoke coolly to people, but not offensively. Only to the senior political commissar, who justified himself by saying that he was walking, although without weapons, but in full uniform and with a party card in his pocket, Serpilin biliously objected that a communist at the front should keep weapons on a par with his party card.

“We are not going to Golgotha, dear comrade,” said Serpilin, “but we are at war. If it is easier for you to have the fascists put you against the wall than to pluck the commissar stars with your own hand, this means that you have a conscience. But this alone is not enough for us. We do not want to stand against the wall, but put the Nazis against the wall. And you can't do it without a weapon. So here it is! Get in line and I expect you to be the first to get your hands on a weapon in combat.

When the embarrassed senior political instructor walked a few steps away, Serpilin called out to him and, unhooking one of the two lemon grenades hanging from his belt, held it out in his palm.

- Take it first!

Sintsov, who as adjutant wrote down names, ranks, and unit numbers in a notebook, silently rejoiced at the reserve of patience and calmness with which Serpilin spoke to people.

It is impossible to penetrate a person's soul, but during these days it seemed to Sintsov more than once that Serpilin himself did not experience the fear of death. It probably wasn't, but it looked like it.

At the same time, Serpilin did not pretend that he did not understand how people were afraid, how they could run, get confused, throw down their weapons. On the contrary, he made them feel that he understood this, but at the same time he persistently instilled in them the thought that the fear they experienced and the defeat experienced were all in the past. That it was so, but it will not be so anymore, that they lost their weapons, but they can acquire them again. Perhaps that is why people did not leave Serpilin depressed, even when he spoke coolly to them. He rightly did not remove the blame from them, but he did not shift all the blame only on their shoulders. People felt it and wanted to prove that he was right.

Before the evening halt there was another meeting, unlike all the others. A sergeant came from a side patrol moving through the very thicket of the forest, bringing with him two armed men. One of them was a short Red Army soldier, wearing a shabby leather jacket over his tunic and with a rifle on his shoulder. The other is tall beautiful person about forty years old, with an aquiline nose and a noble gray hair visible from under the cap, giving significance to his youthful, clean, wrinkle-free face; he was wearing good riding breeches and chrome boots, a brand new PPSh, with a round disk, hung on his shoulder, but the cap on his head was dirty, greasy, and the Red Army tunic, awkwardly sitting on it, did not converge around the neck and short in the sleeves, was just as dirty and greasy. .

“Comrade brigade commander,” the sergeant said, approaching Serpilin together with these two people, looking askance at them and holding his rifle at the ready, “may I report? He brought the detainees. Detained and brought under escort, because they do not explain themselves, as well as by their appearance. They didn’t disarm because they refused, and we didn’t want to unnecessarily open fire in the forest.

“Deputy chief of the operational department of the army headquarters, Colonel Baranov,” the man with the machine gun said angrily, with a hint of resentment, throwing his hand to the cap and stretching out in front of Serpilin and Shmakov, who was standing next to him.

“We apologize,” the sergeant who brought the detainees said, hearing this and, in turn, putting his hand on the cap.

- Why are you sorry? Serpilin turned to him. “They did the right thing by detaining me, and they did the right thing by bringing me to me. So proceed in the future. You can go. I’ll ask for your documents,” releasing the sergeant, he turned to the detainee, without naming him by rank.

His lips twitched, and he smiled bewilderedly. It seemed to Sintsov that this man must have known Serpilin, but only now recognized him and was struck by the meeting.

So it was. The man who called himself Colonel Baranov, and who actually bore that name and rank, and held the position he named when he was brought to Serpilin, was so far from thinking that in front of him here, in the forest, in military uniform, surrounded by other commanders, it may turn out to be Serpilin, who for the first minute only noted to himself that the tall brigade commander with a German machine gun on his shoulder very much reminds him of someone.

- Serpilin! he exclaimed, spreading his arms, and it was difficult to understand whether this was a gesture of utter astonishment, or whether he wanted to embrace Serpilin.

“Yes, I am brigade commander Serpilin,” Serpilin said in an unexpectedly dry, tinny voice, “the commander of the division entrusted to me, but I don’t see who you are yet. Your documents!

- Serpilin, I'm Baranov, are you out of your mind?

“For the third time, I ask you to show your documents,” Serpilin said in the same tinny voice.

“I have no documents,” Baranov said after a long pause.

- How come there are no documents?

- It so happened, I accidentally lost ... I left it in that tunic when I exchanged it for this ... Red Army one. - Baranov moved his fingers along his greasy, tight tunic.

- Left the documents in that tunic? Do you also have colonel's insignia on that tunic?

“Yes,” Baranov sighed.

- And why should I believe you that you are the deputy chief of the operational department of the army, Colonel Baranov?

“But you know me, you and I served together at the academy!” Baranov muttered already completely lost.

“Suppose that’s the case,” Serpilin said without relenting in the slightest, with the same tinny harshness unusual for Sintsov, “but if you didn’t meet me, who could confirm your identity, rank and position?”

“Here he is,” Baranov pointed to a Red Army soldier in a leather jacket standing next to him. - This is my driver.

- Do you have documents, comrade fighter? Serpilin turned to the Red Army soldier without looking at Baranov.

“Yes...” the Red Army soldier stammered for a second, not immediately deciding how to address Serpilin, “Yes, Comrade General!” He opened his leather jacket, took out a Red Army book wrapped in a rag from the pocket of his tunic, and held it out.

“Yes,” Serpilin read aloud. - "Red Army soldier Zolotarev Pyotr Ilyich, military unit 2214". Clearly. - And he gave the book to the Red Army soldier. - Tell me, Comrade Zolotarev, can you confirm the identity, rank and position of this person, with whom you were detained? - And he, still not turning to Baranov, pointed to him finger.

- That's right, Comrade General, this is really Colonel Baranov, I'm his driver.

“So you certify that this is your commander?”

“That’s right, Comrade General.

- Stop mocking, Serpilin! Baranov shouted nervously.

But Serpilin did not even glance in his direction.

- It's good that at least you can verify the identity of your commander, otherwise, not even an hour, you could have shot him. There are no documents, no insignia, a tunic from someone else's shoulder, boots and breeches of commanders ... - Serpilin's voice became harder and harder with each phrase. Under what circumstances did you come here? he asked after a pause.

"Now I'll tell you everything..." began Baranov.

But Serpilin, this time half-turning, interrupted him:

Until I ask you. Speak ... - he again turned to the Red Army soldier.

It was a sunny morning. One and a half hundred people left from the Serpilinsky regiment walked through the dense forests of the Dnieper left bank, hurrying to get away from the crossing point as soon as possible. Among these one hundred and fifty people, one in three was slightly wounded. Five seriously wounded, who miraculously managed to be dragged to the left bank, changing, were carried on a stretcher by twenty of the most healthy fighters allocated for this by Serpilin.

They also carried the dying Zaichikov. He then lost consciousness, then, waking up, looked at the blue sky, at the tops of pines and birches swaying overhead. Thoughts were confused, and it seemed to him that everything was swaying: the backs of the fighters carrying him, the trees, the sky. He listened with an effort to the silence; he could see the sounds of a battle in it, then suddenly, when he came to himself, he heard nothing, and then it seemed to him that he had become deaf - in fact it was just real silence.

It was quiet in the forest, only the trees creaked in the wind, and the steps of tired people were heard, and sometimes kettles clinked. The silence seemed strange not only to the dying Zaichikov, but to everyone else. They were so unaccustomed to her that she seemed dangerous to them. Recalling the pitch hell of the crossing, a park still smoked over the column from the uniforms drying out on the move.

After sending patrols forward and to the sides and leaving Shmakov to move with rear guards, Serpilin himself walked at the head of the column. He moved his legs with difficulty, but to those who followed him it seemed that he was walking lightly and quickly, with the confident gait of a man who knows where he is going and is ready to walk like this for so many days in a row. This walk was not easy for Serpilin: he was not young, worn out by life and very tired. last days fights, but he knew that from now on, surrounded, there is nothing unimportant and inconspicuous. Everything is important and noticeable, this gait, which he walks at the head of the column, is also important and noticeable.

Surprised at how easily and quickly the brigade commander walked, Sintsov followed him, shifting his machine gun from his left shoulder to his right and back: his back, neck, shoulders ached from fatigue, everything that could hurt.

Sunny July forest was a miracle how good! It smelled of resin and warm moss. The sun, breaking through the swaying branches of the trees, moved on the ground in warm yellow spots. Among last year's needles, bushes of wild strawberries with cheerful red droplets of berries were green. The fighters now and then on the move bent over them. For all his weariness, Sintsov walked on and never tired of noticing the beauty of the forest.

Alive, he thought, still alive! Serpilin ordered him three hours ago to draw up a list of names of all those who had crossed. He made a list and knew that one hundred and forty-eight people remained alive. Of every four who went to break through at night, three died in battle or drowned, and only one remained alive - the fourth, and he himself was like that - the fourth.

To go and go like this through this forest and by the evening, no longer meeting with the Germans, go straight to your own - that would be happiness! And why not? The Germans are not everywhere, after all, and ours, perhaps, did not retreat so far!

- Comrade brigade commander, what do you think, maybe we will reach ours today?

“When we get there, I don’t know,” Serpilin half-turned as he walked, “I know that someday we’ll get there.” For now, thanks for that!

He began seriously, but ended with sullen irony. His thoughts were directly opposite to Sintsov's. Judging by the map, it was possible to walk at most another twenty kilometers in continuous forest, bypassing the roads, and he expected to pass them before evening. Moving further east, it was necessary to cross the highway not there, but here, which means meeting the Germans. To go deeper into the green forests on the other side of the highway without meeting them again would be too amazing luck. Serpilin did not believe in her, which meant that at night, when entering the highway, he would have to fight again. And he walked and thought about this future battle amid the silence and greenery of the forest, which had brought Sintsov to such a blissful and trusting state.

- Where is the brigade commander? Comrade commander! - Seeing Serpilin, a Red Army soldier from the head patrol, who ran up to him, shouted cheerfully. - Lieutenant Khoryshev sent me! We were met, from the Five Hundred and Twenty-seventh!

- Check this out! Serpilin replied happily. – Where are they?

- Out, out! - The Red Army soldier pointed forward with his finger, to where the figures of the military marching towards appeared in the thickets.

Forgetting his fatigue, Serpilin quickened his pace.

People from the 527th regiment were led by two commanders - a captain and a junior lieutenant. All of them were in uniform and with weapons. Two even carried light machine guns.

- Hello, comrade brigade commander! - stopping, the curly-haired captain in the cap shifted to one side said valiantly.

Serpilin remembered that he had once seen him at the headquarters of the division - if memory serves, he was a representative of the Special Department.

- Hello dear! Serpilin said. - Welcome to the division, you for everyone! And he hugged him and kissed him hard.

“Here they are, comrade brigade commander,” said the captain, touched by this caress that was not prescribed by the charter. “They say the division commander is here with you.

“Here,” Serpilin said, “they carried out the division commander, only...” He interrupted himself without finishing: “Now let's go to him.

The column stopped, everyone happily looked at the new arrivals. There were not many of them, but it seemed to everyone that this was just the beginning.

“Keep moving,” Serpilin said to Sintsov. “It’s still twenty minutes before we have to rest,” he glanced at his large wristwatch.

“Put it down,” Serpilin said quietly to the soldiers carrying Zaichikov.

The soldiers lowered the stretcher to the ground. Zaichikov lay motionless, his eyes closed. The happy expression vanished from the captain's face. Khoryshev immediately told him at the meeting that the division commander was wounded, but the sight of Zaichikov struck him. The division commander's face, which he remembered as fat and tanned, was now thin and deathly pale. The nose is pointed like a dead man's, but on a bloodless lower lip there were black marks of teeth. A white, weak, inanimate hand lay over the overcoat. The division commander was dying, and the captain understood this as soon as he saw him.

“Nikolai Petrovich, and Nikolai Petrovich,” Serpilin called softly, bending his aching legs from fatigue and kneeling next to the stretcher.

Zaichikov first rummaged around the overcoat with his hand, then bit his lip, and only after that did he open his eyes.

- Our met, from the Five hundred and twenty-seventh!

- Comrade division commander, authorized by the Special Department, Sytin, has come to your disposal! He brought with him a unit of nineteen people.

Zaichikov silently looked up and made a short, weak movement with his white fingers lying on his overcoat.

“Go lower,” Serpilin said to the captain. - Calling.

Then the commissioner, like Serpilin, got down on one knee, and Zaichikov, lowering his bitten lip, said something to him in a whisper, which he did not immediately catch. Realizing from his eyes that he hadn't heard, Zaichikov repeated what he had said with an effort.

“Brigade commander Serpilin took over the division,” he whispered, “report to him.

- Allow me to report, - without getting up from his knee, but now addressing both Zaichikov and Serpilin at the same time, the representative said, - they carried the banner of the division with them.

One of Zaichikov's cheeks quivered slightly. He wanted to smile, but he couldn't.

- Where is it? he moved his lips. No whisper was heard, but the eyes asked: “Show me!” – and everyone understood it.

“Sergeant Major Kovalchuk took it out on himself,” said the commissioner. - Kovalchuk, get the banner.

But Kovalchuk already, without waiting, unfastened his belt and, dropping it to the ground and lifting up his tunic, unwound the banner wrapped around his body. Having unwound it, he grabbed it by the edges and stretched it so that the division commander could see the whole banner - crumpled, soaked in soldier's sweat, but saved, with the well-known words embroidered in gold on red silk: "176th Red Banner Rifle division Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army.

Looking at the banner, Zaichikov began to cry. He wept as an exhausted and dying man might weep—quietly, without moving a single muscle of his face; tear after tear slowly rolled from both of his eyes, and tall Kovalchuk, holding the banner in his huge, strong hands and looking over this banner into the face of the division commander lying on the ground and crying, also began to cry, as a healthy, powerful man, shocked by what had happened, can cry, - his throat was convulsively constricted from the approaching tears, and his shoulders and large hands holding the banner were shaking from sobs. Zaichikov closed his eyes, his body trembled, and Serpilin grabbed his arm in fright. No, he did not die, a weak pulse continued to beat in his wrist - he just lost consciousness for the umpteenth time that morning.

“Pick up the stretcher and go,” Serpilin said quietly to the soldiers, who, turning to Zaichikov, silently looked at him.

The fighters took hold of the handles of the stretcher and, smoothly lifting them, they carried them.

“Take back the banner,” Serpilin turned to Kovalchuk, who continued to stand with the banner in his hands, “once they carried it out, carry it further.”

Kovalchuk carefully folded the banner, wrapped it around his body, lowered his tunic, picked up the belt from the ground and girded himself.

“Comrade junior lieutenant, line up with the soldiers at the tail of the column,” Serpilin said to the lieutenant, who had also been crying a minute before, and now stood beside him in embarrassment.

When the tail of the column passed by, Serpilin held the commissioner by the hand and, leaving an interval of ten steps between himself and the last fighters walking in the column, walked next to the commissioner.

Now report what you know and what you have seen.

The commissioner began to talk about the last night battle. When the chief of staff of the division, Yushkevich, and the commander of the 527th regiment, Ershov, decided to break through to the east at night, the battle was heavy; broke through in two groups with the intention of connecting later, but did not connect. Yushkevich died before the eyes of the commissioner, having run into German submachine gunners, but the commissioner did not know whether Yershov, who commanded another group, was alive and where he went, if alive. By morning, he himself made his way and went out into the forest with twelve people, then he met six more, led by a junior lieutenant. That was all he knew.

“Well done, commissioner,” said Serpilin. - The banner of the division was taken out. Who cares, you?

“Well done,” repeated Serpilin. - The division commander was pleased before his death!

- Will he die? the commissioner asked.

- Can't you see? Serpilin asked in his turn. That's why I took orders from him. Increase your pace, let's go catch up with the head of the column. Can you add a step or no strength?

“I can,” smiled the commissioner. - I am young.

- Which year?

- Since the sixteenth.

“Twenty-five years,” whistled Serpilin. - Your brother's ranks are quickly falling off!

At noon, as soon as the column had time to settle down for the first big halt, there was another meeting that pleased Serpilin. All the same, the big-eyed Khoryshev, walking in the lead patrol, noticed a group of people located in a dense bush. Six were sleeping side by side, and two - a fighter with a German machine gun and a female military doctor sitting in the bushes with a revolver on her knees - guarded the sleeping ones, but guarded poorly. Khoryshev quarreled - he crawled out of the bushes right in front of them, shouted: “Hands up!” - and almost got a burst from a machine gun for it. It turned out that these people were also from their division, from the rear units. One of the sleepers was a quartermaster technician, head of the food warehouse, he brought out the entire group, which consisted of him, six storekeepers and drivers, and a female doctor who accidentally spent the night in a neighboring hut.

When they were all brought to Serpilin, the quartermaster technician, a middle-aged, bald man, already mobilized in the days of the war, told how three nights ago they broke into the village where they were standing. german tanks with landing on the armor. He and his people got out with their backs to the gardens; not everyone had rifles, but the Germans did not want to surrender. He, himself a Siberian, in the past a red partisan, undertook to lead people through the forests to his own.

- So I brought it out, - he said, - though not all of them - I lost eleven people: they ran into a German patrol. However, four Germans were killed and their weapons were taken. She shot one German with a revolver, - the quartermaster technician nodded at the doctor.

The doctor was young and so tiny that she looked like a girl. Serpilin and Sintsov, who was standing next to him, and everyone who was around, looked at her with surprise and tenderness. Their astonishment and tenderness were further intensified when, chewing a crust of bread, she began to tell about herself in response to questions.

She spoke of everything that had happened to her as a chain of things, each of which she absolutely needed to do. She told how she graduated from the dental institute, and then they began to take Komsomol members into the army, and she, of course, went; and then it turned out that during the war no one treated her teeth, and then she turned from a dentist into a nurse, because it was impossible to do nothing! When a doctor was killed in the bombing, she became a doctor because he had to be replaced; and she herself went to the rear for medicines, because it was necessary to get them for the regiment. When the Germans broke into the village where she spent the night, she, of course, left with everyone else, because she could not stay with the Germans. And then, when they met with the German patrol and a firefight began, one soldier was wounded in front, he groaned heavily, and she crawled to bandage him, and suddenly a large German jumped out right in front of her, and she pulled out a revolver and killed him. The revolver was so heavy that she had to shoot with both hands.

She told all this quickly, in a childish patter, then, having finished her crust, she sat down on a stump and began to rummage in a sanitary bag. First she pulled out several individual bags, and then a small black lacquered handbag. From the height of his height, Sintsov saw that in her purse were a compact of powder and lipstick black with dust. Pushing her powder box and lipstick deep so that no one could see them, she pulled out a mirror and, removing her cap, began to comb her childish, soft as fluff hair.

- That's a woman! - said Serpilin, when the little doctor, combing her hair and looking at the men around her, somehow imperceptibly moved away and disappeared into the forest. - That's a woman! he repeated, slapping Shmakov, who had caught up with the column and sat down beside him at the halt, on the shoulder. - I understand it! With such a coward, something ashamed! He smiled broadly, flashing his steel teeth, leaned back, closed his eyes and fell asleep at the same moment.

Sintsov, riding his back along the trunk of a pine tree, sank down on his haunches, looked at Serpilin, and yawned sweetly.

– Are you married? Shmakov asked him.

Sintsov nodded and, chasing sleep away from himself, tried to imagine how everything would have turned out if Masha had insisted on her desire to go to war with him then, in Moscow, and they would have succeeded ... So they would have climbed out with her from the train in Borisov... And what's next? Yes, it was hard to imagine... And yet, in the depths of his soul, he knew that on that bitter day of their farewell, she was right, and not he.

The force of anger that he, after everything he had experienced, felt towards the Germans, erased many of the boundaries that previously existed in his mind; for him there were no thoughts about the future without the thought that the fascists must be destroyed. And why, in fact, Masha could not feel the same as he? Why did he want to take away from her that right that he would not let anyone take away from himself, that right that you should try to take away from this little doctor!

- Do you have children or not? Shmakov interrupted his thoughts.

Sintsov, all the time, all this month, stubbornly convincing himself at every recollection that everything was in order, that his daughter had been in Moscow for a long time, briefly explained what had happened to his family. In fact, the more forcefully he convinced himself that everything was fine, the weaker he believed in it.

Shmakov looked at his face and realized that it was better not to ask this question.

- Okay, sleep - the halt is short, and you won’t have time to see the first dream!

"What a dream now!" thought Sintsov angrily, but after sitting for a minute with his eyes open, he pecked his nose at his knees, shuddered, opened his eyes again, wanted to say something to Shmakov, and instead, dropping his head on his chest, fell into a dead sleep.

Shmakov looked at him enviously and, taking off his spectacles, began rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger: his eyes ached from insomnia, it seemed that daylight pricked them even through his closed eyelids, but sleep would not come and go.

Over the past three days, Shmakov saw so many dead peers of his murdered son that paternal grief, driven by willpower into the very depths of the soul, came out of these depths and grew into a feeling that no longer applied only to his son, but also to those others who died. before his eyes, and even to those whose death he did not see, but only knew about it. This feeling grew and grew and finally became so great that it turned from grief into anger. And this anger now choked Shmakov. He sat and thought about the fascists, who everywhere, on all the roads of the war, were now trampling to death thousands and thousands of the same age of October as his son, one after another, life after life. Now he hated these Germans as he had once hated the whites. He did not know a greater measure of hatred, and, probably, it did not exist in nature.

Even yesterday he needed an effort on himself to give the order to shoot the German pilot. But today, after the heartbreaking scenes of the crossing, when the Nazis, like butchers, cut water from machine guns around the heads of drowning, wounded, but still not finished off people, something turned over in his soul, before this last minute still unwilling to completely turn over, and he made an ill-considered oath to himself in the future not to spare these murderers anywhere, under any circumstances, neither in the war, nor after the war - never!

It must be that now, when he was thinking about this, an expression so unusual appeared on his usually calm face of a naturally kind, middle-aged, intelligent man that he suddenly heard Serpilin's voice:

- Sergey Nikolaevich! What happened to you? What happened?

Serpilin was lying on the grass, his eyes wide open, looking at him.

- Absolutely nothing. Shmakov put on his glasses, and his face assumed its usual expression.

- And if nothing, then tell me what time it is: isn't it time? It’s too lazy to move your limbs in vain,” Serpilin grinned.

Shmakov looked at his watch and said that seven minutes remained before the end of the halt.

- Then I sleep. Serpilin closed his eyes.

After an hour's rest, which Serpilin, despite the fatigue of the people, did not allow to drag out even for a minute, we moved on, gradually turning to the southeast.

Before the evening halt, another three dozen people wandering through the forest joined the detachment. No one else from their division was caught. All thirty people met after the first halt were from the neighboring division, which was stationed south along the left bank of the Dnieper. All of these were people from different regiments, battalions and rear units, and although among them were three lieutenants and one senior political instructor, no one had any idea where the division headquarters was, or even in what direction he was retreating. However, according to fragmentary and often contradictory stories, it was still possible to present a general picture of the catastrophe.

Judging by the names of the places from which the encirclement came, by the time of the German breakthrough, the division was stretched in a chain for almost thirty kilometers along the front. In addition, she did not have time or failed to properly strengthen herself. The Germans bombed it for twenty hours in a row, and then, throwing several landings into the rear of the division and disrupting control and communications, at the same time, under the cover of aviation, they began crossing the Dnieper at once in three places. Parts of the division were crushed, in places they ran, in places they fought fiercely, but this could no longer change the general course of affairs.

The men from this division walked in small groups, twos and threes. Some were armed, others were unarmed. Serpilin, after talking with them, put everyone in line, mixing with his own fighters. He put the unarmed into service without weapons, saying that they themselves would have to get it in battle, it was not stored for them.

Serpilin spoke coolly to people, but not offensively. Only to the senior political commissar, who justified himself by saying that he was walking, although without weapons, but in full uniform and with a party card in his pocket, Serpilin biliously objected that a communist at the front should keep weapons on a par with his party card.

“We are not going to Golgotha, dear comrade,” said Serpilin, “but we are at war. If it is easier for you to have the fascists put you against the wall than to pluck the commissar stars with your own hand, this means that you have a conscience. But this alone is not enough for us. We do not want to stand against the wall, but put the Nazis against the wall. And you can't do it without a weapon. So here it is! Get in line and I expect you to be the first to get your hands on a weapon in combat.

When the embarrassed senior political instructor walked a few steps away, Serpilin called out to him and, unhooking one of the two lemon grenades hanging from his belt, held it out in his palm.

- Take it first!

Sintsov, who as adjutant wrote down names, ranks, and unit numbers in a notebook, silently rejoiced at the reserve of patience and calmness with which Serpilin spoke to people.

It is impossible to penetrate a person's soul, but during these days it seemed to Sintsov more than once that Serpilin himself did not experience the fear of death. It probably wasn't, but it looked like it.

At the same time, Serpilin did not pretend that he did not understand how people were afraid, how they could run, get confused, throw down their weapons. On the contrary, he made them feel that he understood this, but at the same time he persistently instilled in them the thought that the fear they experienced and the defeat experienced were all in the past. That it was so, but it will not be so anymore, that they lost their weapons, but they can acquire them again. Perhaps that is why people did not leave Serpilin depressed, even when he spoke coolly to them. He rightly did not remove the blame from them, but he did not shift all the blame only on their shoulders. People felt it and wanted to prove that he was right.

Before the evening halt there was another meeting, unlike all the others. A sergeant came from a side patrol moving through the very thicket of the forest, bringing with him two armed men. One of them was a short Red Army soldier, wearing a shabby leather jacket over his tunic and with a rifle on his shoulder. The other was a tall, handsome man of about forty, with an aquiline nose and a noble gray hair visible from under his cap, giving significance to his youthful, clean, wrinkle-free face; he was wearing good riding breeches and chrome boots, a brand new PPSh, with a round disk, hung on his shoulder, but the cap on his head was dirty, greasy, and the Red Army tunic, awkwardly sitting on it, did not converge around the neck and short in the sleeves, was just as dirty and greasy. .

“Comrade brigade commander,” the sergeant said, approaching Serpilin together with these two people, looking askance at them and holding his rifle at the ready, “may I report? He brought the detainees. Detained and brought under escort, because they do not explain themselves, as well as by their appearance. They didn’t disarm because they refused, and we didn’t want to unnecessarily open fire in the forest.

“Deputy chief of the operational department of the army headquarters, Colonel Baranov,” the man with the machine gun said angrily, with a hint of resentment, throwing his hand to the cap and stretching out in front of Serpilin and Shmakov, who was standing next to him.

“We apologize,” the sergeant who brought the detainees said, hearing this and, in turn, putting his hand on the cap.

- Why are you sorry? Serpilin turned to him. “They did the right thing by detaining me, and they did the right thing by bringing me to me. So proceed in the future. You can go. I’ll ask for your documents,” releasing the sergeant, he turned to the detainee, without naming him by rank.

His lips twitched, and he smiled bewilderedly. It seemed to Sintsov that this man must have known Serpilin, but only now recognized him and was struck by the meeting.

So it was. The man who called himself Colonel Baranov and really bore this name and rank and was in the position that he called when he was brought to Serpilin was so far from thinking that in front of him here, in the forest, in military uniform, surrounded by other commanders , it may turn out to be Serpilin, who for the first minute only noted to himself that the tall brigade commander with a German machine gun on his shoulder very much reminds him of someone.

- Serpilin! he exclaimed, spreading his arms, and it was difficult to understand whether this was a gesture of utter astonishment, or whether he wanted to embrace Serpilin.

“Yes, I am brigade commander Serpilin,” Serpilin said in an unexpectedly dry, tinny voice, “the commander of the division entrusted to me, but I don’t see who you are yet. Your documents!

- Serpilin, I'm Baranov, are you out of your mind?

“For the third time, I ask you to show your documents,” Serpilin said in the same tinny voice.

“I have no documents,” Baranov said after a long pause.

- How come there are no documents?

- It so happened, I accidentally lost ... I left it in that tunic when I exchanged it for this ... Red Army one. - Baranov moved his fingers along his greasy, tight tunic.

- Left the documents in that tunic? Do you also have colonel's insignia on that tunic?

“Yes,” Baranov sighed.

- And why should I believe you that you are the deputy chief of the operational department of the army, Colonel Baranov?

“But you know me, you and I served together at the academy!” Baranov muttered already completely lost.

“Suppose that’s the case,” Serpilin said without relenting in the slightest, with the same tinny harshness unusual for Sintsov, “but if you didn’t meet me, who could confirm your identity, rank and position?”

“Here he is,” Baranov pointed to a Red Army soldier in a leather jacket standing next to him. - This is my driver.

- Do you have documents, comrade fighter? Serpilin turned to the Red Army soldier without looking at Baranov.

“Yes...” the Red Army soldier stammered for a second, not immediately deciding how to address Serpilin, “Yes, Comrade General!” He opened his leather jacket, took out a Red Army book wrapped in a rag from the pocket of his tunic, and held it out.

“Yes,” Serpilin read aloud. - "Red Army soldier Zolotarev Petr Ilyich, military unit 2214." It's clear. And he gave the book to the Red Army soldier. - Tell me, Comrade Zolotarev, can you confirm the identity, rank and position of this person, with whom you were detained? - And he, still not turning to Baranov, pointed at him with his finger.

- That's right, Comrade General, this is really Colonel Baranov, I'm his driver.

“So you certify that this is your commander?”

“That’s right, Comrade General.

- Stop mocking, Serpilin! Baranov shouted nervously.

But Serpilin did not even glance in his direction.

- It's good that at least you can verify the identity of your commander, otherwise, not even an hour, you could have shot him. There are no documents, no insignia, a tunic from someone else's shoulder, boots and breeches of commanders ... - Serpilin's voice became harder and harder with each phrase. Under what circumstances did you come here? he asked after a pause.

"Now I'll tell you everything..." began Baranov.

But Serpilin, this time half-turning, interrupted him:

Until I ask you. Speak ... - he again turned to the Red Army soldier.

The Red Army soldier, at first stammering, and then more and more confidently, trying not to forget anything, began to tell how three days ago, having arrived from the army, they spent the night at the headquarters of the division, how in the morning the colonel went to the headquarters, and bombing immediately began all around, how soon one arrived from the rear, the driver said that German troops had landed there, and he, having heard this, pulled the car out just in case. And an hour later the colonel ran up, praised him that the car was already at the ready, jumped into it and ordered to quickly drive back to Chausy. When they drove onto the highway, there was already heavy shooting and smoke ahead, they turned onto a country road, drove along it, but again they heard shooting and saw German tanks at the crossroads. Then they turned onto a deaf forest road, drove off it straight into the forest, and the colonel ordered the car to be stopped.

Telling all this, the Red Army soldier sometimes looked askance at his colonel, as if looking for confirmation from him, and he stood silently, his head bowed low. It was the hardest part for him, and he knew it.

“He ordered the car to stop,” he repeated. last words Red Army soldier Serpilin - and what's next?

- Then Comrade Colonel ordered me to take out my old tunic and cap from under the seat, I just recently received a new uniform, and left the old tunic and cap with me - just in case if I lie under the car. The comrade colonel took off his tunic and cap and put on my garrison cap and tunic, said that now I would have to leave the encirclement on foot, and ordered me to douse the car with gasoline and set it on fire. But only I,” the driver stammered, “but only I, Comrade General, didn’t know that Comrade Colonel had forgotten the documents there, in my tunic, I would, of course, remind him if I knew, otherwise everything together with the car and lit .

He felt guilty.

- You hear? Serpilin turned to Baranov. - Your fighter regrets that he did not remind you of your documents. There was mockery in his voice. “I wonder what would happen if he reminded you of them?” He turned back to the driver: “What happened next?”

“Thank you, Comrade Zolotarev,” said Serpilin. - Put him on the list, Sintsov. Catch up with the column and get in line. You will receive satisfaction at a halt.

The driver started to move, then stopped and looked inquiringly at his colonel, but he still stood with his eyes on the ground.

– Go! Serpilin said commandingly. - You are free.

The driver left. There was a heavy silence.

"Why did you have to ask him in front of me?" They could ask me without compromising the Red Army.

“And I asked him because I trust more the story of a soldier with a Red Army book than the story of a disguised colonel without insignia and documents,” said Serpilin. Now, at least, the picture is clear to me. We arrived at the division to follow the orders of the army commander. Right or wrong?

“Yes,” said Baranov, stubbornly looking at the ground.

“And instead they fled at the first danger!” All abandoned and fled. Right or wrong?

- Not really.

- Not really? But as?

But Baranov was silent. As much as he felt offended, there was nothing to object to.

“I compromised him in front of a Red Army soldier!” Do you hear, Shmakov? Serpilin turned to Shmakov. - Like a laugh! He got scared, took off his commander's tunic in front of a Red Army soldier, threw away his documents, and I, it turns out, compromised him. I didn’t compromise you in front of the Red Army, but with your shameful behavior you compromised in front of the Red Army command staff army. If my memory serves me right, you were a party member. What, the party card was also burned?

“Everything burned down,” Baranov spread his hands.

- You say that you accidentally forgot all the documents in the tunic? - Shmakov, who entered into this conversation for the first time, asked quietly.

- By chance.

- I think you're lying. In my opinion, if your driver reminded you of them, you would still get rid of them at the first opportunity.

- For what? Baranov asked.

- You can see it better.

But I was walking with a weapon.

- If you burned the documents when there was no real danger, then the weapon would have been thrown in front of the first German.

“He kept his weapons because he was afraid of wolves in the forest,” said Serpilin.

- I left weapons against the Germans, against the Germans! Baranov shouted nervously.

"I don't believe it," said Serpilin. - You, the staff commander, had a whole division at hand, so you escaped from it! How can you fight the Germans alone?

- Fyodor Fyodorovich, what is there to talk about for a long time? I'm not a boy, I understand everything, - Baranov suddenly said quietly.

But it was precisely this sudden humility, as if a man who had just considered it necessary to justify himself with all his strength, suddenly decided that it would be more useful for him to speak differently, caused a sharp surge of distrust in Serpilin.

- What do you understand?

- Your fault. I will wash it with blood. Give me a company, finally, a platoon, after all, I didn’t go to the Germans, but to my own, can you believe that?

"I don't know," said Serpilin. I don't think you went to anyone. They just walked depending on the circumstances, how it turns out ...

“I curse the hour when I burned the documents...” Baranov began again, but Serpilin interrupted him:

- What do you regret now - I believe. You regret that you were in a hurry, because you got to your own people, but if it had turned out differently, I don’t know, you would have regretted it. How, commissar, - he turned to Shmakov, - let's give this former colonel under the command of a company?

“No,” Shmakov said.

- In my opinion, too. After everything that has happened, I would rather trust your driver to command you than you them! Serpilin said, and for the first time turned to Baranov, softer than anything he had said before, for the first time: “Go and get in line with this brand new machine gun of yours and try, as you say, to wash away your guilt with the blood of ... the Germans,” he added after a pause. - And you will need your own. Given the power given to us here with the commissar, you have been demoted to the rank and file until we go out to our own. And there you explain your actions, and we explain our arbitrariness.

- All? Do you have anything more to say to me? Baranov asked, raising his angry eyes to Serpilin.

Something trembled in Serpilin's face at these words; he even closed his eyes for a second to hide their expression.

“Say thanks for not being shot for cowardice,” Shmakov snapped instead of Serpilin.

"Sintsov," said Serpilin, opening his eyes, "put Baranov's troops on the lists." Go with him, - he nodded towards Baranov, - to Lieutenant Khoryshev and tell him that the fighter Baranov is at his disposal.

- Your power, Fyodor Fyodorovich, I will do everything, but do not expect me to forget this for you.

Serpilin folded his hands behind his back, cracked them in his wrists, and said nothing.

“Come with me,” Sintsov said to Baranov, and they began to catch up with the column that had gone ahead.

Shmakov looked intently at Serpilin. Excited himself by what had happened, he felt that Serpilin was even more shocked. Apparently, the brigade commander was very upset by the shameful behavior of an old colleague, about whom, probably, he had a completely different, high opinion before.

- Fedor Fedorovich!

- What? Serpilin replied as if half asleep, even with a start: he was lost in his thoughts and forgot that Shmakov was walking beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

- What are you upset about? How long did you serve together? Did you know him well?

Serpilin looked at Shmakov with an absent-minded glance and answered with an evasiveness unlike himself, which surprised the commissar:

- And few people knew who! Let's better add a step to the halt!

Shmakov, who did not like to be imposed, fell silent, and both of them, quickening their pace, walked side by side until the very halt, without saying a word, each occupied with his own thoughts.

Shmakov did not guess. Although Baranov did indeed serve with Serpilin at the academy, Serpilin not only did not have a high opinion of him, but, on the contrary, was of the worst kind. He considered Baranov not a careerist without abilities, who was not interested in the benefit of the army, but only in his own promotion. While teaching at the academy, Baranov was ready today to support one doctrine, and tomorrow another, to call white black and black white. Deftly applying himself to what, as it seemed to him, might please "above", he did not disdain to support even direct errors based on ignorance of the facts, which he himself knew very well.

His forte was reports and reports on the armies of alleged opponents; looking for real and imaginary weaknesses, he obsequiously hushed up all the strengths and dangerous aspects of the future enemy. Serpilin, despite all the then complexity of conversations on such topics, scolded Baranov twice for this in private, and the third time publicly.

He then had to recall this under completely unexpected circumstances; and God only knows what difficulty it cost him now, during a conversation with Baranov, not to express all that suddenly stirred up in his soul.

He did not know whether he was right or wrong, thinking about Baranov what he thought about him, but he knew for sure that now was not the time and place for memories, good or bad - it does not matter!

The most difficult moment in their conversation was the moment when Baranov suddenly looked inquiringly and angrily straight into his eyes. But, it seems, he withstood this look, and Baranov left reassured, at least judging by his parting impudent phrase.

Well, so be it! He, Serpilin, does not want and cannot have any personal accounts with the fighter Baranov, who is under his command. If he fights bravely, Serpilin will thank him before the formation; if he honestly lays down his head, Serpilin will report about it; if he gets scared and runs, Serpilin will order to shoot him, just as he would have ordered to shoot any other. Everything is correct. But how hard on the soul!

A halt was made near human habitation, which for the first time in a day was found in the forest. On the edge of the wasteland plowed under the garden stood the old hut of the forester. Immediately, nearby, there was a well, which delighted people exhausted by the heat.

Sintsov, taking Baranov to Khoryshev, went into the hut. It consisted of two rooms; the door to the second was closed; from there came the lingering, aching cry of a woman. The first room was pasted over the logs with old newspapers. In the right corner hung a goddess with poor, without riza, icons. On a wide bench next to two commanders who had entered the hut before Sintsov, a stern, eighty-year-old man, dressed in everything clean - a white shirt and white trousers, sat motionless and silent. His whole face was cut with wrinkles as deep as cracks, and on his thin neck a pectoral cross hung on a worn copper chain.

The little nimble grandmother, probably the same age as the old man, but who seemed much younger than him because of her quick movements, greeted Sintsov with a bow, removed another faceted glass from the wall shelf hung with towels and placed it in front of Sintsov on the table, where two glasses were already standing. and a bucket. Before the arrival of Sintsov, the grandmother treated the commanders who entered the hut with milk.

Sintsov asked her if it was possible to gather something to eat for the commander and commissar of the division, adding that they had their own bread.

- What to treat now, only milk. Grandma spread her hands in dismay. - Unless you light the oven, boil potatoes, if there is time.

Sintsov didn't know if there was enough time, but he asked to boil the potatoes just in case.

“The old potatoes are still left, last year’s ones ...” said the grandmother and began to fuss at the stove.

Sintsov drank a glass of milk; he wanted to drink more, but, looking into the bucket, which was less than half left, he felt ashamed. Both commanders, who also probably wanted to drink another glass, said goodbye and left. Sintsov stayed with his grandmother and the old man. After fussing around the stove and putting a torch under the firewood, the grandmother went to adjoining room and returned a minute later with matches. Both times, when she opened and closed the door, a loud aching cry burst out from there.

- What is it with you, who is crying? Sintsov asked.

Dunka is singing, my granddaughter. Her boyfriend was killed. He is dry-handed, they did not take him to the war. They drove the collective farm herd from Nelidovo, he went with the herd, and as they crossed the highway, bombs were dropped on them and killed. The second day howls, - the grandmother sighed.

She kindled a torch, put on the fire a cast-iron with already washed potatoes, probably for herself, then sat down next to her old man on the bench and, leaning on the table, became sad.

All of us are at war. Sons at war, grandchildren at war. Will the German come here soon, eh?

- I do not know.

- And then they came from Nelidovo, they said that the German was already in Chausy.

- I do not know. Sintsov didn't really know what to answer.

“It must be soon,” said the grandmother. - The herds have been driven for five days, they wouldn’t stop in vain. And here we are, - she pointed to the bucket with a dry hand, - we are drinking the last milk. They also gave away a cow. Let them drive, God willing, when they drive back. The neighbor said that there were few people left in Nelidovo, everyone was leaving...

She said all this, and the old man sat silent; for all the time that Sintsov was in the hut, he did not say a single word. He was very old and seemed to want to die now, without waiting for the Germans to follow these people in Red Army uniform into his hut. And such melancholy was seized upon looking at him, such melancholy was heard in the aching sobs of women behind the wall, that Sintsov could not stand it and went out, saying that he would be right back.

As soon as he got down from the porch, he saw Serpilin approaching the hut.

“Comrade brigade commander…” he began.

But, ahead of him, the old little doctor ran up to Serpilin and, agitated, said that Colonel Zaichikov asked to come to him at once.

“Then I’ll come in if I have time,” Serpilin waved his hand in response to Sintsov’s request to come in to rest in the hut, and with leaden steps followed the little doctor.

Zaichikov was lying on a stretcher in the shade, under thick hazel bushes. He had just been given water to drink; he probably swallowed it with difficulty: the collar of his tunic and his shoulders were wet.

- I'm here, Nikolai Petrovich. Serpilin sat down on the ground next to Zaichikov.

Zaichikov opened his eyes so slowly, as if even this movement required an incredible effort from him.

“Listen, Fedya,” he said in a whisper, addressing Serpilin for the first time in this way, “shoot me. No strength to suffer, do a favor.

“If I only suffered myself, otherwise I burden everyone. Zaichikov breathed out every word with difficulty.

"I can't," repeated Serpilin.

Give me the gun, I'll shoot myself.

Serpilin was silent.

Are you afraid of responsibility?

“You can’t shoot yourself,” Serpilin finally gathered his courage, “you don’t have the right. It will affect people. If you and I walked together...

He did not finish the sentence, but the dying Zaichikov not only understood, but also believed that, if they were alone, Serpilin would not have denied him the right to shoot himself.

“Oh, how I suffer,” he closed his eyes, “how I suffer, Serpilin, if you only knew that I have no strength!” Put me to sleep, order the doctor to put me to sleep, I asked her - she doesn’t give, she says, no. You check, maybe he's lying?

Now he lay still again, his eyes closed and his lips pressed together. Serpilin stood up and, stepping aside, called the doctor to him.

– Hopeless? he asked quietly.

She just threw up her little hands.

- What are you asking? I thought three times that I was completely dead. A few hours left to live, the longest.

- Do you have anything to put him to sleep? Serpilin asked quietly but decisively.

The doctor looked at him fearfully with large, childish eyes.

- It's impossible!

– I know that it is impossible, my responsibility. Is there or not?

“No,” the doctor said, and it seemed to him that she had not lied.

“I don’t have the strength to watch a person suffer.

Do you think I have strength? she answered, and, unexpectedly for Serpilin, she burst into tears, smearing tears down her face.

Serpilin turned away from her, went up to Zaichikov and sat down beside her, peering into his face.

This face was haggard before death and rejuvenated from thinness. Serpilin suddenly remembered that Zaichikov was a whole six years younger than he was, and by the end of his civilian life he was still a young platoon commander, when he, Serpilin, was already in command of the regiment. And from this distant memory, the bitterness of the elder, in whose arms the younger was dying, seized the soul of one, no longer young, man over the body of another.

“Ah, Zaichikov, Zaichikov,” thought Serpilin, “there weren’t enough stars from the sky when he was with me on an internship, he served in different ways - both better and worse than others, then he fought in Finnish, probably bravely: they won’t give two orders for nothing, and near Mogilev he didn’t get scared, didn’t lose his head, he commanded while he stood on his feet, and now you’re lying and dying here in the forest, and you don’t know and you will never know when and where this war will end ... on which you are from the very began to sip such grief ... "

No, he was not in a state of oblivion, he lay there and thought about almost the same things that Serpilin was thinking about.

“It’s all right,” Zaichikov closed his eyes, “only it hurts a lot.” Go, you've got things to do! - Quite already quietly, through force, he said and again bit his lip from pain ...

At eight o'clock in the evening, Serpilin's detachment approached the southeastern part of the forest. Further, judging by the map, there were two more kilometers of undergrowth, and behind it lay a highway that could not be bypassed in any way. Across the road was a village, a strip of arable land, and only then the forests began again. Not reaching the undergrowth, Serpilin arranged for people to rest, in anticipation of a battle and a night march immediately after the battle. People needed to eat and sleep. Many had been dragging their feet for a long time, but they were walking with all their might, knowing that if they did not reach the highway before evening and cross it at night, then all their previous efforts were meaningless - they would have to wait for the next night.

Having bypassed the location of the detachment, checked the patrols and sent reconnaissance to the highway, Serpilin, in anticipation of her return, decided to rest. But he did not immediately succeed. He had hardly chosen a place for himself on the grass under a shady tree, when Shmakov sat down beside him and, pulling a riding breeches from his pocket, thrust into his hand a withered German leaflet that had probably been lying in the woods for several days.

- Come on, be curious. The soldiers found, brought. They must be being dropped from planes.

Serpilin rubbed his sleepless eyes and conscientiously read the entire leaflet, from beginning to end. It reported that Stalin's armies defeated, that six million people were taken prisoner, that German troops took Smolensk and are approaching Moscow. This was followed by the conclusion: further resistance is useless, and after the conclusion there are two promises: “to save life for everyone who voluntarily surrenders, including for command and political composition” and “feed the prisoners three times a day and keep them under conditions generally accepted in the civilized world.” On the reverse side the flyer was imprinted with a sweeping diagram; of the names of the cities, only Minsk, Smolensk and Moscow were on it, but in general terms, the northern arrow of the advancing German armies drove far beyond Vologda, and the southern one fell somewhere between Penza and Tambov. The middle arrow, however, barely reached Moscow - the compilers of the leaflet still did not dare to occupy Moscow.

“Yes, yes,” Serpilin drawled mockingly and, bending the leaflet in half, returned it to Shmakov. “Even you, commissar, it turns out, are promised life. How can we give up, huh?

- Denikin's smarter ones cooked such pieces of paper. Shmakov turned to Sintsov and asked if he had any matches left.

Sintsov pulled matches out of his pocket and wanted to burn the leaflet Shmakov held out without reading it, but Shmakov stopped him:

- And you read it, it's not contagious!

Sintsov read the leaflet with a kind of insensitivity that surprised even him. He, Sintsov, the day before yesterday and yesterday, first with a rifle, and then with a German machine gun, killed two fascists with his own hands, maybe more, but he killed two - that's for sure; he wanted to keep killing them, and that flyer didn't apply to him...

Meanwhile, Serpilin, like a soldier, without wasting too much time, settled down to rest under the tree he had chosen. To Sintsov's surprise, among the few essentials in Serpilin's field bag was a rubber pad folded in four. Ridiculous bubble thin cheeks, Serpilin puffed it up and put it under his head with pleasure.

I take it everywhere with me, a gift from my wife! He smiled at Sintsov, who was looking at these preparations, without adding that the pillow was especially memorable for him: sent by his wife several years ago from home, she traveled with him to Kolyma and back.

Shmakov did not want to go to bed while Serpilin was sleeping, but Serpilin persuaded him.

“Anyway, we won’t take turns with you today. You don't have to sleep at night - what good, you have to fight. And no one can fight without sleep, even commissars! At least for an hour, and, be kind, close your eyes, like a chicken on a perch.

Ordering to wake himself up as soon as intelligence returned, Serpilin blissfully stretched out on the grass. Turning slightly from side to side, Shmakov also fell asleep. Sintsov, to whom Serpilin had given no orders, with difficulty overcame the temptation to lie down and fall asleep as well. If Serpilin had directly told him that it was okay to sleep, he would have broken down and lay down, but Serpilin said nothing, and Sintsov, struggling with sleep, began pacing up and down the little clearing where the brigade commander and the commissar were lying under a tree.

Previously, he only heard that people fall asleep on the go, now he experienced it himself, sometimes suddenly stopping and losing his balance.

“Comrade political instructor,” he heard Khoryshev’s low, familiar voice behind him.

- What happened? asked Sintsov, turning around and noticing with alarm the signs of deep emotion on the lieutenant's usually imperturbably cheerful boyish face.

- Nothing. The weapon was found in the forest. I want to report to the brigade commander.

Khoryshev was still speaking in a low voice, but Serpilin must have been woken up by the word "weapon." He sat down, leaning on his hands, looked back at the sleeping Shmakov and quietly got up, making a sign with his hand so that they would not report at the top of their voices, would not wake the commissar. Straightening his tunic and beckoning Sintsov to follow him, he walked a few steps into the depths of the forest. And only then did he finally give Khoryshev the opportunity to report.

- What kind of weapon? German?

- Is our. And with him five fighters.

- What about shells?

- One shell left.

- Not rich. How far from here?

- Steps five hundred.

Serpilin shrugged his shoulders, shaking off the remnants of sleep, and told Khoryshev to escort him to the gun.

On the way Sintsov wanted to know why the always calm lieutenant had such an agitated face, but Serpilin walked all the way in silence, and Sintsov felt uncomfortable breaking this silence.

After five hundred paces, they really saw a 45-mm anti-tank gun standing in the thick of a young spruce forest. Near the cannon, on a thick layer of reddish old pine needles, Khoryshev's fighters and the five gunners whom he reported to Serpilin were sitting interspersed.

When the brigade commander appeared, everyone stood up, the gunners a little later than the others, but still before Khoryshev had time to give the command.

Hello, fellow gunners! Serpilin said. - Who is your senior?

A foreman stepped forward in a cap with a visor broken in half and a black artillery band. There was a swollen wound where one eye should have been, and the upper eyelid of the other eye was trembling with tension. But he stood firmly on the ground, as if his feet in tattered boots were nailed to it; and he raised his hand with the torn and burnt sleeve to the broken visor, as if on a spring; and in a thick and strong voice, he reported that he, the foreman of the ninth separate anti-tank division Shestakov, was currently the senior in command, having withdrawn the remaining materiel from the city of Brest with fighting.

- Where from, where from? asked Serpilin, who thought he had misheard.

- From under the city of Brest, where the first battle with the Nazis was accepted in full strength of the division, - the foreman did not say, but chopped off.

There was silence.

Serpilin looked at the gunners, wondering if what he had just heard might be true. And the longer he looked at them, the clearer it became to him that this incredible story and there is the real truth, and what the Germans write in their leaflets about their victory is only a plausible lie and nothing more.

Five blackened faces, touched by hunger, five pairs of tired, overworked hands, five exhausted, dirty tunics whipped with branches, five German machine guns taken in battle and a cannon, the last cannon of the division, not in the sky, but on the ground, not by a miracle, but by soldiers dragged here by hand from the border, more than four hundred miles away... No, you're lying, gentlemen fascists, it won't be your way!

- On yourself, right? Serpilin asked, swallowing the lump in his throat and nodding at the cannon.

The foreman answered, and the rest, unable to stand it, supported him in chorus, which happened in different ways: they walked on horseback, and dragged by hand, and again got hold of horses, and again on their hands ...

- And how about through water barriers, here, across the Dnieper, how? Serpilin asked again.

“The raft, the night before last...

“But we didn’t transport a single one,” Serpilin suddenly said, but although he glanced around at all of his people, they felt that he was now reproaching only one person - himself.

Then he looked back at the gunners.

- They say you have shells?

“One, the last one,” the foreman said guiltily, as if he overlooked and did not restore the ammunition in time.

- And where did you spend the penultimate one?

“Here, ten kilometers away. - The foreman pointed his hand back, to where the highway passed beyond the forest. - Last night rolled out to the highway into the bushes, on direct fire, and along the convoy, into the lead car, right into the headlights!

- And that they will comb the forest, are you not afraid?

- Tired of being afraid, comrade brigade commander, let them be afraid of us!

- So you didn’t comb it?

- Not. They just threw mines all around. The division commander was wounded to death.

- And where he? Serpilin asked quickly, and before he could finish, he himself understood where...

Away, where the foreman led his eyes, under a huge, old, bare pine tree to the very top, a grave that had just been filled up turned yellow; even the German wide cleaver, which was used to cut the sod to cover the grave, which had not yet been taken out, stuck out of the ground like an unsolicited cross. A rough, criss-cross notch still oozed resin on the pine. And two more such evil notches were on the pine trees to the right and left of the grave, like a challenge to fate, like a silent promise to return.

Serpilin went up to the grave and, pulling off his cap, looked at the ground for a long time silently, as if trying to see through it something that no one else had ever been able to see - the face of a man who, with battles, brought everything from Brest to this Zadneprovsky forest, what was left of his division: five fighters and a cannon with the last shell.

Serpilin had never seen this man, but it seemed to him that he knew very well what kind of person he was. The one for whom the soldiers go into fire and water, the one whose dead body, sacrificing life, is taken out of battle, the one whose orders are carried out even after death. The way you have to be to get this gun and these people out. But even these people, whom he brought out, were worth their commander. He was like that because he went with them...

Serpilin put on his cap and silently shook hands with each of the gunners. Then he pointed to the grave and abruptly asked:

- What's your last name?

- Captain Gusev.

- Don't write it down. - Serpilin saw that Sintsov took up the tablet. And so I will not forget until the hour of death. And by the way, we are all mortal, write it down! And put the gunners on the combat list! Thank you for your service, comrades! And your last projectile, I think, will be fired tonight, in battle.

Serpilin had long noticed Baranov's gray head among Khoryshev's gunners, but only now met his gaze - eye to eye and read in these eyes that did not have time to hide from him the fear of the thought of a future battle.

- Comrade brigade commander, - a small figure of a doctor's wife appeared from behind the backs of the fighters, - the colonel is calling you!

- Colonel? Serpilin asked. He was now thinking about Baranov and did not immediately realize which colonel was calling him. “Yes, let’s go, let’s go,” he said, realizing that the doctor’s wife was talking about Zaichikov.

- What happened? Why didn't they invite me? – the doctor's wife exclaimed, sadly squeezing her palms in front of her, noticing people crowding over a fresh grave.

- Nothing, let's go, it was too late to call you! Serpilin, with a rude caress, laid his large hand on her shoulder, turned it almost by force, and, still holding his hand on her shoulder, went along with her.

“Without faith, without honor, without conscience,” he continued to think about Baranov, walking next to the doctor. - While the war seemed far away, he shouted that we would throw hats on him, but when he came, he ran first. Since he was frightened, since he was afraid, it means that everything has already been lost, we will not win! No matter how! In addition to you, there is also Captain Gusev, and his gunners, and we, sinners, the living and the dead, and this little doctor who holds a revolver with both hands ... "

Serpilin suddenly felt that his heavy hand was still resting on the doctor's thin shoulder, and was not only lying, but even leaning on that shoulder. And she goes to herself and does not seem to notice, even, it seems, deliberately raised her shoulder. He goes and does not suspect, probably, that there are people like Baranov in the world.

“You see, I forgot my hand on your shoulder,” he said to the doctor in a muffled, kind voice, and removed his hand.

- And you're fine, you lean on if you're tired. I know how strong.

“Yes, you are strong,” Serpilin thought to himself, “we won’t be lost with people like you, that’s true.” He wanted to say something affectionate and confident to this little woman, which would be an answer to his own thoughts about Baranov, but he could not find what exactly to say to her, and they silently walked to the place where Zaichikov lay.

“Comrade Colonel, I brought it,” the doctor’s wife said quietly, kneeling first by the stretcher with Zaichikov.

Serpilin also knelt beside her, and she moved aside so as not to hinder him from leaning closer to Zaichikov's face.

Is that you, Serpilin? Zaichikov asked in an indistinct whisper.

"Listen to what I'm going to tell you," Zaichikov said even more quietly and fell silent.

Serpilin waited for a minute, two, three, but he was never destined to find out what exactly her former commander wanted to say to the new division commander.

"He's dead," the doctor said in a barely audible voice.

Serpilin slowly took off his cap, stood on his knees for a minute with his head uncovered, straightening his knees with an effort, rose to his feet, and, without saying a word, went back.

The returning scouts reported that there were German patrols on the highway and the movement of cars towards Chaus.

"Well, apparently, we'll have to fight," said Serpilin. – Raise and build people!

Now, having learned that his assumptions were confirmed and the highway could hardly be crossed without a fight, he finally shook off the feeling of physical fatigue that had been oppressing him since morning. He was determined to lead all these people rising from their sleep with weapons in their hands to where he was supposed to take them - to his own! He did not think of anything else and did not want to think about it, for nothing else suited him.

He did not know and could not yet know that night the full price of everything already committed by people his regiment. And, like him and his subordinates, thousands of other people did not yet know the full value of their deeds, in thousands of other places they fought to the death with stubbornness unplanned by the Germans.

They did not know and could not know that the generals of the victoriously advancing on Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv German army in fifteen years this July of the forty-first year will be called the month of deceived expectations, of successes that did not become a victory.

They could not foresee these future bitter confessions of the enemy, but almost every one of them then, in July, had a hand in ensuring that all this happened just like that.

Serpilin stood listening to the low voices reaching him. The column moved discordantly in the darkness that had descended on the forest. A flat crimson moon rose above its jagged tops. The first days of the exit from the encirclement were coming to an end...

2017-06-12 00:22:18 - Lyubov Andreevna Zachetnova
It was in the morning. The battalion commander Koshelev called Semyon Shkolenko to him and explained, as always, without long words:
`Language` must be obtained.
I'll get it, said Shkolenko.
He returned to his trench, checked his machine gun, hung three disks on his belt, prepared five grenades, two simple ones and three anti-tank grenades, put them in a bag, then looked around and, after thinking, took the copper wire stored in the soldier’s bag and hid it in his pocket.
We had to walk along the coast. He walked slowly, with an eye. All around was quiet. Shkolenko quickened his pace and, in order to shorten the distance, began to cross the hollow straight ahead, through small bushes. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets passed somewhere close. Shkolenko lay down and lay motionless for a minute.
So they went back ahead of the German with a machine gun slung over his shoulders, behind Shkolenko. The German walked slowly, stumbling; he did not resist, but apparently did not lose hope of meeting someone who would help him out, and was playing for time. Shkolenko, who had done everything before slowly, was now in a hurry. The feeling of loneliness and fear that every minute they could shoot him in the back because of any bush was not alien to him. Now he wanted to return as soon as possible, and he impatiently pushed the German in the back.
He jumped up to his full height, holding his machine gun at the ready. The explosion was very strong, and the Germans, as in last time, the dead were lying, only this time no one remained on their feet, everyone was lying. Then one, the one who remained by the phone, stirred. Shkolenko went up to him and touched him with his foot. The German rolled over, lying on the ground, raised his hands and spoke, but Shkolenko could not make out what he was in a fever.
Did you shoot? Satarov asked.
I nodded Shkolenko.
Here, he hurt them, Satarov showed his hand to the bloody people. Where is everyone?
And I'm alone, answered Shkolenko. What are you doing here?
We were digging our own grave, said Satarov. We were guarded by two submachine gunners. They ran as soon as they heard the explosion. So you are alone?
One, Shkolenko repeated and looked at the mortars. There was no time to lose, that was the first thing he thought of at that moment. And the result of that thought was an instant decision. Rather, take the mortars, he said, why are you wasting your time. Now let's go to ours.
He walked behind those rescued from captivity and saw the bloodied bodies of the wounded. `It's good that he hasn't killed yet, he thought. And who knew them, the Germans thought. And he repeated this aloud to Satarov, who was walking beside him.
I didn't know, thought the Germans.
Of course, Satarov simply answered. And then how.
An hour and a half later they reached the battalion. Shkolenko reported and, after listening to the captain's gratitude, walked five steps away and lay face down on the ground.
Fatigue immediately hit him. With open eyes he looked at the blades of grass growing around him, and it seemed strange that all this had come to an end, and yet he lived, and grass grew all around him, and everything around him was the same as it had been in the morning.
https://vk.com/topic-10175642_35809989

(16) How come there are no documents?

(22) Yes, Baranov sighed.






(40) The Red Army soldier, at first stammering, and then more and more confidently, trying not to forget anything, began to tell how three days ago, having arrived from the army, they spent the night at the headquarters of the division, how in the morning the colonel went to the headquarters, and all around immediately began

(1) Before the evening halt, another meeting took place, unlike all the others. (2) A sergeant came from a side patrol moving through the thicket itself, bringing with him two armed men. (3) One of them was a short Red Army soldier, in a shabby leather jacket over a tunic and with a rifle on his shoulder. (4) Another tall, handsome man of about forty, with an aquiline nose and noble gray hair visible from under the cap, giving significance to his youthful, clean, wrinkle-free face; he was wearing good riding breeches and chrome boots, a brand new PPSh, with a round disk, hung on his shoulder, but the cap on his head was dirty, greasy, and the Red Army tunic, awkwardly sitting on it, did not converge around the neck and short in the sleeves, was just as dirty and greasy. .
(5) Comrade brigade commander, approaching Serpilin together with these two people, looking sideways at them and holding his rifle at the ready, said the sergeant, may I report? (6) He brought the detainees. (7) Detained and brought under escort, because they do not explain themselves, and also by their appearance. (8) They didn’t disarm because they refused, and we didn’t want to unnecessarily open fire in the forest.
(9) Deputy chief of the operational department of the army headquarters, Colonel Baranov, abruptly, throwing his hand to the cap and stretching out in front of Serpilin and Shmakov, who was standing next to him, angrily, with a touch of resentment, said the man with the machine gun.
(10) Serpilin! he exclaimed, spreading his arms, and it was difficult to understand whether this was a gesture of utter astonishment, or whether he wanted to embrace Serpilin.
(11) Yes, I am brigade commander Serpilin, - Serpilin, the commander of the division entrusted to me, said in an unexpectedly dry, tinny voice, but I still don’t see who you are. (12) Your documents!
(13) Serpilin, I'm Baranov, are you crazy?
(14) For the third time, I ask you to present your documents, Serpilin said in the same tinny voice.
(15) I have no documents, Baranov said after a long pause.
(16) How come there are no documents?
(17) It so happened, I accidentally lost ... (18) I left it in that tunic when I changed it to this ... Red Army one. (19) Baranov moved his fingers along his greasy, not tall, tight tunic.
(20) Left the documents in that tunic? (21) Do you also have colonel's insignia on that tunic?
(22) Yes, Baranov sighed.
(23) And why should I believe you that you are the deputy chief of the operational department of the army, Colonel Baranov?
(24) But you know me, you and I served together at the academy! muttered Baranov already quite lost.
(25) Suppose that is so, - without softening at all, Serpilin said with the same tin harshness unusual for Sintsov, but if you hadn’t met me, who could confirm your identity, rank and position?
(26) Here he is, Baranov pointed to a Red Army soldier standing next to him in a leather jacket. (27) This is my driver.
(28) Do you have documents, comrade soldier? Serpilin turned to the Red Army soldier without looking at Baranov.
(29) Yes ... the Red Army soldier hesitated for a second, not immediately deciding how to turn to Serpilin, yes, Comrade General! (30) He opened his leather jacket, took out a Red Army book wrapped in a rag from the pocket of his tunic and held it out.
(31) So, Serpilin read aloud. (32) `Red Army soldier Pyotr Ilyich Zolotarev, military unit 2214`. (33) Clear. (34) And he gave the book to the Red Army soldier.
(35) Tell me, Comrade Zolotarev, can you confirm the identity, rank and position of this person, with whom you were detained? and he, still not turning to Baranov, pointed his finger at him.
(36) That's right, Comrade General, it's really Colonel Baranov, I'm his driver.
(37) So you certify that this is your commander?
(38) That's right, Comrade General.
(39) Under what circumstances did you end up here? he asked after a pause.
(40) The Red Army soldier, at first stammering, and then more and more confidently, trying not to forget anything, began to tell how three days ago, having arrived from the army, they spent the night at the headquarters of the division, how in the morning the colonel went to the headquarters, and all around immediately began

In my time, I entered the Church as a rusted blade enters its sheath. With gnashing, external and internal resistance, pain from breaking ties and breaking stereotypes. At first, I prayed in my own words. Then I suddenly felt that I lacked them to express before God the state of my heart. I bought a prayer book and began to pray little by little, like a baby learning to walk.

I took the shortest prayers from the morning and evening rule and read them two or three at a time. A few weeks later I changed them to others. But gradually my timid and clumsy steps became more confident, I plunged more and more into the world of prayer. The first real shock for me was the discovery penitential canon“I have passed the water, as if I am dry.” Prayer changed me and everything around me.

Prayer rule. How peace and constancy, calmness and meekness breathe from these words! How much work was put into the student period in order to somehow pray! Where only did not have to pray in the hostel! In the kitchen, on the balcony, in the forest, in the self-study room, under the stairs. Prayer in public transport has become commonplace. All this was done out of necessity, in the absence of other possibilities. It was a rare pleasure to pray quietly alone.

AT large family solitary prayer is still the lot of the night. You have to wait until everything already sleeping or yet are sleeping. Then no one interferes with their screams and running around, the phone is silent, and no business distracts.

It happens that you hear from parishioners that, they say, they are bored with the daily rule, that the heart does not respond to the words of prayer. At the same time, they usually ask permission to replace the evening and morning prayers with the reading of the Psalter or something else.

I fully understand this state of affairs. I, like everyone else, am at times overly busy, cold, despondent, when prayer is perceived as a heavy duty. Then the words of the prayer are compressed to the rule of St. Seraphim of Sarov, and I voluntarily put myself in line with the illiterate and sick, for whom in the first place Reverend Seraphim this rule and taught. And it has never happened that when reading this minimum rule I felt at least a little bit the state that happens (unfortunately, also not always) when reading the complete prayer rule.

Why is it sometimes so painful for us to rule? At times it is easy and pleasant to pray, as if the guardian angel himself moves us to prayer, and at times it seems to us the hardest thing. Why does this happen, and does everyone have such defilement? It turns out it happens to everyone. St. Macarius the Great says this about it: “Changes happen in everyone, as in the air.” And again: “And with those standing in the rank of purity, falls always happen, as cooling happens with air, and without them being in carelessness and debauchery, but on the contrary, when they walk in their order, falls happen to them, contrary to the goals of their striving. » .

So in everyone changes happen to us. The reasons for this are different, and sometimes you don’t even understand what the reason is. Basically it is laziness, idleness, negligence, inattention. There is also demonic temptation. After a day spent without a single thought about God, standing up for prayer is a feat. If we add to this the fatigue accumulated during the working day, then the feat becomes frightening. We all know perfectly well what prayer should be: attentive and not distracted. For prayer to be like this, mental and heart tension is needed. It is necessary to gather the mind together and let each word of prayer pass through the heart, and this is a work that our soul refuses to lift. It's already eleven o'clock in the evening, getting up early for work tomorrow, and it seems that both the legs and the heart are piercingly squealing: “Rule! The rule of Seraphim of Sarov - and to bed! And you give up.

What main mistake praying? That we expect a "prayerful mood"

What is the main mistake of the one who prays? In that we expect a "prayerful mood." Waiting for when we will hunting pray. But if in the spiritual life you always wait for the “hunt”, then where will an effort about which Christ speaks (Matt. 11:12)?

Indeed, of all spiritual activities, the most difficult is prayer and active abstinence, the second being impossible without the first. It is difficult to pray, and even more difficult to pray in such a way that prayer has the fruit that the apostle Paul speaks of in Galatians 5:22-23. Often we say a prayer, but it becomes an empty flower and does not bear fruit due to mistakes in prayer practice. Let's try to analyze some of the most common mistakes together.

First. You need to prepare for prayer. What does it mean? You can’t immediately get up from a secular movie, any entertainment or vain business and start a prayer, like hacking into a thicket of reeds with a machete. You need to “cool down” from the boiling of daytime passions. Remember how it is written in the prayer book before the start of morning prayers: “until all feelings subside ...” Sit for five minutes and remember your sins in the past day and breathe from the depths of your soul. If there is a conflict with someone in the family, reconcile with all your heart. Praying without peace in the soul is an empty exercise.

In general, it must be remembered that there is greatest goal of all spiritual exercises - connection with God in the Spirit, but there are private goals that lead to the main one. private purpose prayers are repentance. As St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) marvelously says: “Repentance gives birth to prayer and is born in pure quantity from one’s daughter.” He who seeks repentance in prayer will not be deceived, because he remembers his sins and is thereby brought into humility.

Preparation for prayer must also be physical. It is not for nothing that in the expanded prayer books it is written: “Begin the rule for everyone, bowing and doing bows to the limits ...” That is, before starting prayers, warm your heart with bows. Man is arranged in such a way that the body is inextricably linked with the mind and heart. When the mind starts to float or is strongly involved in something, the body seems to become numb. At the same time, when we are intensely passionate about some physical work mind is focused on it. We will return to this phenomenon, but for now we will note that the bows that precede the prayer with some brief prayer (for example: “God, cleanse me of a sinner”) are called upon to cleanse the mind from soaring and lead to God.

So, the first mistake is prayer without proper preparation.

The second common mistake is to look for "high" states of the heart in prayer. We know from spiritual literature that ascetics experienced unearthly states in prayer, and sometimes subconsciously strive for them. And then, not receiving them, we cool down to prayer.

The main thing you need to focus your attention on is a repentant mood and concentration of the mind on the words of the prayer. Each word must be passed through the heart. This is the most hard work because our fast-moving mind strives to fly away from the shackles of prayer and start wandering around the wide world.

How to deal with it? Let's start with the fact that the prayer, if possible, should be a vowel. Prayers must be read aloud. Man is two-part, as we have already said. Both the body and the soul must pray. When we hear the words of a prayer, it is easier to concentrate on them than when we simply read the text with our eyes. “Do you want to succeed in intelligent and heartfelt prayer? Learn to listen in oral and vowel: attentive oral prayer by itself turns into intellectual and heartfelt,” says St. Ignatius. Another thing is that sometimes we cannot pray out loud, because this will interfere with others. But if possible, one should choose a vowel prayer, and one should pronounce the words of the prayer slowly.

However, even in this case, attention begins to dissipate. Sometimes the worshiper begins to understand in the middle of the prayer that he has been distracted, and sometimes he even strays from one prayer to another. Then he again returns to the beginning of that prayer, where the mind "ran away", but it happens, and this does not help much. What to do? Again, remember the bows. Here is what St. Isaac the Syrian says about this: “Any prayer, in which the body does not become weary, and the heart does not come into contrition, is recognized as an unripe fruit: because such a prayer is without a soul.”

The work of prayer must be carried equally by the body and the soul

That is, the work of prayer must be carried equally by the body and the soul. The body is through bows. Basically we all know the morning and evening prayers by heart, so we are not glued to the page. This makes it possible, when the mind is distracted, to begin to bow. Bowing to the ground somewhat diverts attention to itself, so I recommend that you bow down at the same time as you read the prayer - until you again feel that your attention is being held on the words of the prayer. This will happen after some fatigue. And this, in turn, depends on physical strength each person. For the weak, it is enough to put 3-4 bows, and for the strong, twenty may not be enough.

Of course, this recipe is not a panacea, but just one of many ways. Someone collects attention when he forces himself to read the words of the prayer with his eyes, even if he knows them by heart, someone kneels, someone prostrates himself crosswise, someone comes up with other feats. Sometimes you have to alternate them. But the goal is the same - to gather the mind into one point, connect it with the tongue and the heart, and so pray. The goal is to turn your whole self into a mouth that praises the Lord.

Third. We often do not evaluate the result of our prayer, when this is the most important thing. The result is the goal of any business. The farmer sows not for the sake of sowing, but for the harvest. So we must pray, not because it is necessary, but in order to receive fruit. What is the fruit of prayer? Approximately this: “The fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5: 22-23). And everyone who prays correctly, after prayer, feels in himself, to one degree or another, the presence of these fruits. If you have moved away from prayer and feel "empty", then the prayer was wrong. Like in math: there can be many in an equation different actions, but there is always a result after the equals sign. Spiritual actions also have a result. If the result is zero, then all actions were in vain. Or all the actions to "zero" turned absent-mindedness and inattention.

The result of prayer is the silence of thoughts, peace in the soul, love for everyone without distinction, a sense of beauty. God's peace and each person in particular. The result of prayer is the absence of hostility even towards those who harbor enmity towards us. For example, the same Saint Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) writes in one of his writings that at a certain moment he saw the faces of his enemies “like the faces of angels.” This is the result of attentive and deep prayer, when prayer, by its action, changes a person’s outlook on the world.

The result of correct evening prayer is the weakening of night dreams, the ability to control your thoughts at night. The result of proper morning prayer is a prayerful mood throughout the day.

It is also important to keep in mind that prayers have different purpose. We all tend to turn to God with short prayers during the day: “Lord, have mercy”, “Lord, bless”, “Glory to You, Lord”, etc. We try to accomplish each of our deeds with the blessing of God and ask for His help to us, and this is good and normal. Fathers say that broad sense prayer can also be called the reading of spiritual books (and especially Holy Scripture), and contemplation of God, and the fear of death, and contrition for one's sins. During such actions, it seems that we do not offer a direct petition to the Lord, but the soul seems to tune in to a prayerful mood.

However, all these pious movements of the heart and mind should still be distinguished from the prayer that we alone offer up to God. Prayers during the day are, rather, "protective" in nature. They are needed so that at work, deeds and meetings we do not forget about God, so that the mind does not fuss, in order to finally save us from demonic temptations. And home (or "cell") prayer rule- this is the "contemplative" level. It places the one who prays before the Lord at the tribunal of his conscience. Deep and attentive prayer at home reveals the secrets of the conscience of the one who prays, and all the errors made during the past day or night are revealed to the eyes of the heart with special force. Prayers during the day, by their nature, can in no way be compared with the depth of those in the cell, since we are constantly distracted by worldly affairs and communication.

If you keep this in mind, then you begin to look at the home “rule” in a completely different way. It becomes for a person not a “rule”, but a “rule”, which straightens out all the distortions accumulated during the day. A simple analogy can be drawn from modern world. While the computer is running, a lot of junk files and errors accumulate in the system registry, which slow down the work of all programs. Then you need to "clean" the computer and start debugging the registry. We are all similar. All kinds of sins and vanity in the same way damage our spiritual organization, and the cell rule cleanses us of “garbage” thoughts and sets us up for desired fret. Therefore, a person who, due to an imaginary lack of time, reads morning or evening prayers on the go, in transport on the way to work or home, not only deceives himself, but, much worse, robs himself. He reduces contemplative prayer to the level of short prayers with which we shield ourselves during work. It turns out that he does not pray at home, because he “does not have time”, and on the street he prays somehow.

The result of an impoverished prayer life will not be long in coming: general relaxation in the spiritual, the indulgence of ever greater sins, heart stiffness and insensibility, total immersion in the earthly

The result of such a prayer life will not be long in coming. Sin will accumulate like a snowball. General relaxation in the spiritual, the indulgence of more and more sins, heart petrification and insensitivity, total immersion in the earthly. Such a person, either by the permission of God, falls into various temptations to wake up from a sinful sleep, or, over time, completely moves away from the Church.

However, one should not think that sorrows visit only negligent prayer books. For fervent prayers, the enemy of the human race can attack with particular fury, weaving temptations around us. “But we overcome all these things by the power of Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). And the one who received grace during prayer is ready for anything, just to enter the same state again: “Neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor Principles, nor Powers, nor the present, nor the future, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

For some reason, we have an opinion that only the Jesus Prayer communicates grace and compunction. However, if hesychast prayer is far from being the lot of everyone, then an attentive sober mind during the rule is the norm of Christian life, which, unfortunately, has already been lost almost everywhere. We somehow condescendingly look at the rule, often not understanding what kind of treasure we hold in our hands. How convenient is the rule? By the fact that we know it by heart, we studied all the stylistic turns of speech, we felt every word. When reading other prayers, canons or akathists, it happens that you suddenly stumble over an expression that is difficult to understand and do not know whether to find out what it means, or to continue the prayer without understanding. This is not the case with the rule. It is all its own, native.

Sometimes I think: how can we finally begin to live according to the commandments? You visit holy places, you try to pray with the rosary, and so on. However, the beginning of everything is an inconspicuous humble rule. It is like a spiritual thread, on which the rest of the feats of Christianity are strung like pearls: sobriety, unceasing prayer, struggle with thoughts. It sometimes seems to us an insignificant matter, but Christ the Savior corrects us: “He who is faithful in a little and in much is faithful, but he who is unfaithful in a little is unfaithful and in much” (Luke 16: 10).

Before the evening halt there was another meeting, unlike all the others. A sergeant came from a side patrol moving through the very thicket of the forest, bringing with him two armed men. One of them was a short Red Army soldier, wearing a shabby leather jacket over his tunic and with a rifle on his shoulder. The other is a tall, handsome man of about forty, with an aquiline nose and a noble gray hair visible from under his cap, giving significance to his youthful, clean, wrinkle-free face; he was wearing good riding breeches and chrome boots, a brand new PPSh, with a round disk, hung on his shoulder, but the cap on his head was dirty, greasy, and the Red Army tunic, awkwardly sitting on it, did not converge around the neck and short in the sleeves, was just as dirty and greasy. .

Comrade brigade commander,” the sergeant said, approaching Serpilin together with these two people, looking askance at them and holding his rifle at the ready, “may I report? He brought the detainees. Detained and brought under escort, because they do not explain themselves, as well as by their appearance. They didn’t disarm because they refused, and we didn’t want to unnecessarily open fire in the forest.

Colonel Baranov, deputy chief of the operational department of the army headquarters, - abruptly, throwing his hand to the cap and stretching out in front of Serpilin and Shmakov, who was standing next to him, angrily, with a touch of resentment, said the man with the machine gun.

We apologize, - having heard this and, in turn, putting his hand to the cap, said the sergeant who brought the detainees.

What are you apologizing for? Serpilin turned to him. - They did the right thing by detaining me, and it was right that they brought me to me. So proceed in the future. You can go. I'll ask for your documents, - releasing the sergeant, he turned to the detainee, without naming him by rank.

His lips twitched, and he smiled bewilderedly. It seemed to Sintsov that this man must have known Serpilin, but only now recognized him and was struck by the meeting.

So it was. The man who called himself Colonel Baranov and really bore this name and rank and was in the position that he called when he was brought to Serpilin was so far from thinking that in front of him here, in the forest, in military uniform, surrounded by other commanders , it may turn out to be Serpilin, who for the first minute only noted to himself that the tall brigade commander with a German machine gun on his shoulder very much reminds him of someone.

Serpilin! he exclaimed, spreading his arms, and it was difficult to understand whether this was a gesture of utter astonishment, or whether he wanted to embrace Serpilin.

Yes, I am brigade commander Serpilin,” Serpilin said in an unexpectedly dry, tinny voice, “the commander of the division entrusted to me, but I don’t see who you are yet. Your documents!

Serpilin, I'm Baranov, are you out of your mind?

For the third time, I ask you to show your documents,” Serpilin said in the same tinny voice.

I have no documents, - Baranov said after a long pause.

How come there are no documents?

It so happened, I accidentally lost ... I left it in that tunic when I changed it for this ... Red Army one. - Baranov moved his fingers along his greasy, tight tunic.

Left the documents in that tunic? Do you also have colonel's insignia on that tunic?

Yes, Baranov sighed.

And why should I believe you that you are the deputy chief of the operational department of the army, Colonel Baranov?

But you know me, we served together at the academy! Baranov muttered already completely lost.

Let's suppose that's the case,” Serpilin said without softening, still with the same tinny harshness unusual for Sintsov, “but if you didn't meet me, who could confirm your identity, rank and position?

Here he is, - Baranov pointed to a Red Army soldier in a leather jacket standing next to him. - This is my driver.

Do you have documents, comrade fighter? Serpilin turned to the Red Army soldier without looking at Baranov.

There is ... - the Red Army soldier hesitated for a second, not immediately deciding how to address Serpilin, - there is, Comrade General! He opened his leather jacket, took out a Red Army book wrapped in a rag from the pocket of his tunic, and held it out.

Yes,” Serpilin read aloud. - "Red Army soldier Zolotarev Petr Ilyich, military unit 2214." It's clear. - And he gave the book to the Red Army soldier. - Tell me, Comrade Zolotarev, can you confirm the identity, title and position of this person, with whom you were detained? - And he, still not turning to Baranov, pointed at him with his finger.

That's right, Comrade General, it's really Colonel Baranov, I'm his driver.

So you certify that this is your commander?

That's right, Comrade General.

Stop mocking, Serpilin! shouted Baranov nervously.

But Serpilin did not even glance in his direction.

It's good that at least you can verify the identity of your commander, otherwise, it's not even an hour, you could have shot him. There are no documents, no insignia, a tunic from someone else's shoulder, boots and breeches of commanders ... - Serpilin's voice became harder and harder with each phrase. - Under what circumstances did you come here? he asked after a pause.

Now I'll tell you everything ... - began Baranov.

But Serpilin, this time half-turning, interrupted him:

Until I ask you. Speak ... - he again turned to the Red Army soldier.

The Red Army soldier, at first stammering, and then more and more confidently, trying not to forget anything, began to tell how three days ago, having arrived from the army, they spent the night at the headquarters of the division, how in the morning the colonel went to the headquarters, and bombing immediately began all around, how soon one arrived from the rear, the driver said that German troops had landed there, and he, having heard this, pulled the car out just in case. And an hour later the colonel ran up, praised him that the car was already at the ready, jumped into it and ordered to quickly drive back to Chausy. When they drove onto the highway, there was already heavy shooting and smoke ahead, they turned onto a country road, drove along it, but again they heard shooting and saw German tanks at the crossroads. Then they turned onto a deaf forest road, drove off it straight into the forest, and the colonel ordered the car to be stopped.

Telling all this, the Red Army soldier sometimes looked askance at his colonel, as if looking for confirmation from him, and he stood silently, his head bowed low. It was the hardest part for him, and he knew it.

He ordered to stop the car, - Serpilin repeated the last words of the Red Army soldier, - and what's next?

Then Comrade Colonel ordered me to take out my old tunic and cap from under the seat, I had just recently received a new outfit, and left my old tunic and cap with me - just in case, if I lie under the car. The comrade colonel took off his tunic and cap and put on my garrison cap and tunic, said that now I would have to leave the encirclement on foot, and ordered me to douse the car with gasoline and set it on fire. But only I, - the driver faltered, - but only I, Comrade General, did not know that Comrade Colonel had forgotten the documents there, in my tunic, I would, of course, remind you if I knew, otherwise everything together with the car and lit .

He felt guilty.

You hear? Serpilin turned to Baranov. - Your fighter regrets that he did not remind you of your documents. There was mockery in his voice. - I wonder what would happen if he reminded you of them? - He turned back to the driver: - What happened next?

Thank you, Comrade Zolotarev,” said Serpilin. - Put him on the list, Sintsov. Catch up with the column and get in line. You will receive satisfaction at a halt.

The driver started to move, then stopped and looked inquiringly at his colonel, but he still stood with his eyes on the ground.

Go! Serpilin said commandingly. - You are free.

The driver left. There was a heavy silence.

Why did you have to ask him in front of me? They could ask me without compromising the Red Army.