LITMIR.BIZ

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of a saleswoman. There was not enough time for the garden, nor for the children, nor for myself. Vadim and his sister Anya did not go hungry, but their food on the table became noticeably poorer in its variety.

      Reluctantly, Elena Nikolaevna gave Vadim to an orphanage. The boy didn’t cry. He was young, but he knew exactly what was going on. He understood that he was seeing his mother and sister for the last time and said goodbye properly, without yawning and shouts of indignation. Vadim understood that without him, Anya would be able to get enough food and warmth from her mother, but he would somehow cope on his own.

      It was raining fine that day, and Elena Nikolaevna had no face. She gives her blood, her son to an unfamiliar place. Then orphanages were poorly funded, and it was great luck to live under a good roof and eat soup with bread and meat.

      A year passed, and Vadim got used to his situation. He did not stop thinking about his family and often poured those unshed tears into his pillow, he was madly homesick for his father. The orphanage was not poor and not rich, often the boys were driven to work in the fields or to repair holes in the fence and roof. So they gained experience in construction and not only.

      The building was brick with an iron roof, these plates were rusty and some had holes. The walls were covered with charcoal, there were not only inscriptions, but also children’s drawings that no one erased. The perimeter was surrounded by a fence, which was painted once a year. There was a garden where children could play and eat the fruits of apple trees.

      The situation inside was quite good. Because of the l-shaped shape of the building, a lot of children who lost their parents could be placed there. There was a kitchen, a common dining room, common rooms for sleeping, and the playground was on the street, as our reader remembers. The teachers had their own room, there was a samovar and an old radio.

      Vadim continued to go to school, but to another one. The boy dreamed of becoming a fisherman and catching the best fish and selling it. He talked about this to his friends in the common room, and they talked for a long time about which fish is more expensive. The teachers only quietly laughed at him, because now you can’t get normal money in this profession. Sometimes they spoke directly to Vadim, saying that he would be an excellent teacher of the Russian language, because he had good grades in this subject. The boy then did not really understand the difference in professions, despite the mature outlook on life.

      Vadim was respected in their orphanage, there were many children who asked him for help with Russian. Of course, he helped them just like that, because he appreciated their friendship, and he didn’t know how to take something in return yet.

      In his spare time, Vadim did various things like climbing trees and helping the cook in the kitchen. The cook was an extremely pleasant person to communicate with. He was bearded and spoke with a funny accent, only then the boy at an already mature age will understand that he was talking to a Kazakh man. His name was Davlet, and he was a former cook and sailed in very distant lands. A cook is a position on a ship, this man cooked food for the whole crew, but when necessary, he fought on cables, boarded ships and received his share in robberies on various merchant ships. It seems that such people were called pirates and it was safe to say that Davlet looked like him.

      He was scarred and healthy, but gray-haired and smelled of alcohol all the time. He talked a lot about his adventures and instilled in the boy a passion for reading adventure books, headed by a story about sailors, pirates and treasures.

      Vadim changed his mind about the profession and decided that he would become a sailor and sail, blown by a cold breeze and feel a salty taste on his lips all the time.

      At school, he had problems with the exact sciences, such as mathematics and drawing. With the rest, he more or less coped. And it just so happened that he got into a class where there were children with their parents, and Vadim became a frequent object of ridicule and bullying. The boy was calm and quiet during his school years, but could have rebuffed even three bullies in the classroom. He just didn’t want to have problems with the director, with their parents, and to be ambushed after school by grown-up guys who decided to avenge younger friends or brothers. Therefore, he came with bruises, but with a smile on his face, because the day was still interesting.

      Vadim was also good at telling stories when he and his friends went to the forest to burn sticks and fry sausages, which they hid in the pockets of shorts or pants to carry past adults. The boy told stories about pirates and their adventures.

      In the summer, when the forest bloomed with its greenery, when the river finally froze and the ice melted, the boys went fishing and swimming. The stream there was not so strong and there were a lot of fish, Vadim caught them more than once with his bare hands or accidentally stepped on the fry while he was getting out of the water.

      The boy didn’t need anything and he grew up like an ordinary child, but some emptiness and resentment towards his mother still remained. Vadim did not try to find her or escape from the orphanage, no one adopted him. He saw his future without his mother and sister, but he still loved and missed them, they sometimes dream of him in a dream, in them he imagines a house, father, mother and sister with smiles from ear to ear, and a vegetable garden and fragrant trees with grass and flowers bloom around.

      The orphanage was also surrounded by greenery, but not as lush as at home, it was sparse and yellowish, and the trees grew far away in the forest a kilometer away. Firs, oaks, and birches grew there. The boys made swords out of their sticks and played knights or pirates.

      Such was Vadim’s childhood and youth. But soon his life will change unexpectedly and irrevocably…

      Chapter two. Teacher

      At the age of twenty-two, Vadim was well built and had some popularity. But nevertheless, he did not allow himself to look at anyone. It was like a mantra that he repeated every time. And it wasn’t that he didn’t like the girls, on the contrary, he noticed their beauty and strength, but he was afraid of something more and didn’t really like children.

      It is a strange irony that he eventually joined the Russian language teacher after graduation. Vadim had a rented house and moved to Tver, where he taught his subject. The apartment was small and rather dusty. The air here was musty, so as soon as Vadim arrived here, he opened the windows on the balcony. No one lived in this apartment and therefore the man was left to himself and only. He came here with a heavy, black briefcase, which he still had since his studies. In this briefcase he kept a mug, a brush, toothpaste, a diary, a pen and clothes.

      Life played a cruel joke with the young teacher, already at twenty-eight, when Vadim had experience in teaching and settled in the city, he was diagnosed with a hereditary disease, because of which his vision was lost faster. Therefore, he wore glasses and began to look older, and when he began to grow a beard, he looked like a forty-year-old.

      At school, he showed good abilities in communicating with children, he taught in high school, and students always thanked him for his patience and calm character. In the circle of teachers, he was remembered as a gloomy and thoughtful man who, when he was on duty in the corridor of the school, wrote something in his diary.

      The school itself was old, built since the war. Its walls were with peeling wallpaper, but gradually they were replaced with newer ones. The ceiling was crumbling, but this was also fixed. The floor was stone, the doors were wooden. The school was not very big, but it could accommodate more than three hundred children, which is the limit for this school personally.

      Vadim gradually settled into a new place, as already mentioned, old things began to appear in his musty apartment. There wasn’t much that could be bought for a teacher’s salary, but over time Vadim learned to be content with little. He had a small kitchen combined with a dining room, there was a samovar on the table. Vadim was sleeping on the sofa, which he bought at a discount, because the spring in it was broken. What the man was proud of was an old radio, it was covered with duct tape and peeling paint, but for him this purchase was very successful.

      He did not go outside, just looked through the balcony at how children

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