Paustovsky Konstantin
Konstantin Paustovsky
Hare's feet
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare cried and often blinked his eyes, red from tears...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you bastard!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she brought her only one to the vet...
Reader! We sincerely hope that you decided to read the book "Hare's Paws" by Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky at the call of your heart. Vibrant landscapes, vast horizons and rich colors - all this enhances the depth of perception and excites the imagination. The idea of the superiority of good over evil, light over darkness, with the obvious victory of the first and defeat of the second, is visible, relevant at all times. It is interesting to observe how heroes with low morality, having gone through difficult trials, were transformed spiritually and radically changed their outlook on life. It would seem that such frequent abstract scenes could be excluded from the text, but without them, witty remarks would not be so appropriate and satirical. The created images reveal entire universes that are incredibly complex, each with its own laws, ideals, and tragedies. You involuntarily live through the book - then you disappear completely in it, then you are renewed, finding parallels and your own foundation, and unexpectedly for yourself you grow in soul. It is written so captivatingly and vividly that all the pictures and protagonists are remembered for a long time and even after quite a long time, they are instantly remembered. You have to puzzle over the main riddle for a long time, but with the help of hints, you can solve it yourself. The dialogues of the characters are interesting and meaningful due to their different views on the world and the differences in their characters. In the process of reading, individual conjectures and guesses appear, but it is impossible to connect everything together, and only in the end everything falls into place. “Hare's Paws” by Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich is fascinating to read online for free, sometimes it reminds us of our life, you see yourself in it, and you already look at what you are reading as if it were a manual.
Konstantin Paustovsky
Hare's feet
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you fool!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she brought her only goat to the veterinarian. “Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones?” Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, kid,” Anisya muttered. “Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to see Karl Petrovich.”
Vanya wiped away his tears and walked home through the forests to Lake Urzhenskoye. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. A recent forest fire burned north near the lake. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
- What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
“You should eat,” Vanya repeated, and his voice trembled. - Maybe you want a drink?
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots[i] and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. Thick an old man wearing pince-nez and a short white robe, he shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped seeing patients for three years now. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like it! - said the pharmacist. -- There are some interesting patients in our city. I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
- Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched across the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders and reluctantly shaking the ground. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.
“A child and a hare are all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later everyone already knew about it Small town, and on the third day a tall young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in cotton rags and carried him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. At the same time, I remain Larion Malyavin.
...This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoye. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally, in his sleep, loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
Grandfather moved on. But suddenly he became alarmed: from the south, from the side of Lopukhov, there was a strong smell of smoke. The wind got stronger. The smoke was thickening, it was already drifting like a white veil through the forest, engulfing the bushes. It became difficult to breathe.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, my grandfather knew that animals sense where the fire is coming from much better than humans and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
- What did you do wrong?
- And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.
[i] Onuchi - foot wraps for boots or bast shoes, foot wraps
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you fool!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
What to treat for?
His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. - Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones? Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, little one,” Anisya muttered. “Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to see Karl Petrovich.”
Vanya wiped away his tears and walked home through the forests to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. A recent forest fire burned north near the lake. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots[i] and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.
Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. A fat old man in pince-nez and a short white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped seeing patients for three years now. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
I like it! - said the pharmacist. -- There are some interesting patients in our city. I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched across the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders and reluctantly shaking the ground. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.
“A child, a hare, it’s all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about this, and on the third day a long young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in cotton rags and carried him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. At the same time, I remain Larion Malyavin.
This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally, in his sleep, loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, my grandfather knew that animals sense where the fire is coming from much better than humans and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
What have you done wrong?
And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.
All day the pelican wandered around us, hissing and screaming, but did not give in to our hands.
In the evening we left. The pelican climbed onto a hummock, beat its wings after us and angrily shouted: “Whack, Whack!” He was probably unhappy that we were leaving him on the lake and demanded that we return.
Two days later, the grandfather went to the city, found a menagerie in the market square and told about the pelican. A pockmarked man came from the city and took the pelican.
Grandfather received forty rubles from the menagerie and bought new pants with them.
– My ports are first class! - he said and pulled down his trouser leg. – The conversation about my ports goes all the way to Ryazan. They say that even the newspapers published about this foolish bird. This is what our life is like, my dear!
Hare's feet
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
-Are you crazy? – the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you bastard!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
-What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. - Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones? Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandpa’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. “He burned his paws in a forest fire and can’t run.” Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, darling,” Anisya mumbled. “Tell your grandfather that if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to see Karl Petrovich.”
Vanya wiped his tears and walked home through the forests, to Lake Urzhenskoye. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. The recent forest fire passed away, to the north, near the lake itself. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
-What are you doing, gray? – Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of dense white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind.
The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. A fat old man in pince-nez and a short white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped seeing patients for three years now. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like it! - said the pharmacist. – There are some interesting patients in our city! I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stomped around. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
– Poshtovaya street, three! – the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book shut. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched beyond the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders, and reluctantly shaking the earth. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. “All my life I’ve been treating children, not hares.”
“A child, a hare, it’s all the same,” muttered the grandfather stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about this, and on the third day a long young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in a cotton rag and took him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
“The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. With this I remain Larion Malyavin.”
This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoe. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar. It immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, clattered his teeth and bounced away - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally, in his sleep, loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, my grandfather knew that animals sense where the fire is coming from much better than humans and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
-What have you done wrong?
- And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.
Thief cat
We were in despair. We didn't know how to catch this red cat. He stole from us every night. He hid so cleverly that none of us really saw him. Only a week later it was finally possible to establish that the cat’s ear was torn and a piece of his dirty tail was cut off.
It was a cat who had lost all conscience, a cat - a tramp and a bandit. Behind his back they called him Thief.
He stole everything: fish, meat, sour cream and bread. One day he even dug up a tin can of worms in the closet. He didn’t eat them, but the chickens came running to the opened jar and pecked our entire supply of worms.
The overfed chickens lay in the sun and moaned. We walked around them and argued, but fishing was still disrupted.
We spent almost a month tracking down the ginger cat.
The village boys helped us with this. One day they rushed over and, out of breath, said that at dawn a cat had rushed, crouching, through the gardens and dragged a kukan with perches in its teeth.
We rushed to the cellar and discovered that the kukan was missing; on it were ten fat perches caught on Prorva.
This was no longer theft, but robbery in broad daylight. We vowed to catch the cat and beat him up for gangster tricks.
The cat was caught that same evening. He stole a piece of liverwurst from the table and climbed up a birch tree with it.
We started shaking the birch tree. The cat dropped the sausage; it fell on Reuben's head. The cat looked at us from above with wild eyes and howled menacingly.
But there was no salvation, and the cat decided on a desperate act. With a terrifying howl, he fell from the birch tree, fell to the ground, bounced up like a soccer ball, and rushed under the house.
The house was small. He stood in a remote, abandoned garden. Every night we were awakened by the sound of wild apples falling from the branches onto his plank roof.
The house was littered with fishing rods, shot, apples and dry leaves. We only spent the night in it. We spent all our days, from dawn to dark, on the banks of countless streams and lakes. There we fished and made fires in the coastal thickets. To get to the shores of the lakes, they had to trample down narrow paths in the fragrant tall grasses. Their corollas swayed above their heads and showered their shoulders with yellow flower dust.
We returned in the evening, scratched by rose hips, tired, burned by the sun, with bundles of silver fish, and each time we were greeted with stories about the new antics of the red cat.
But finally the cat was caught. He crawled under the house into the only narrow hole. There was no way out.
We blocked the hole with an old fishing net and began to wait.
But the cat didn't come out. He howled disgustingly, howled continuously and without any fatigue.
An hour passed, two, three... It was time to go to bed, but the cat howled and cursed under the house, and it got on our nerves.
Then Lyonka, the son of the village shoemaker, was called. Lenka was famous for his fearlessness and agility. He was tasked with getting a cat out from under the house.
Lyonka took a silk fishing line, tied a fish caught during the day to it by the tail, and threw it through the hole into the underground.
The howling stopped. We heard a crunch and a predatory click - the cat grabbed the fish’s head with its teeth. He held on with a death grip. Lyonka was pulled by the fishing line. The cat desperately resisted, but Lyonka was stronger, and, besides, the cat did not want to release the tasty fish.
A minute later, the cat’s head with flesh clamped in its teeth appeared in the hole of the manhole.
Lenka grabbed the cat by the collar and lifted him above the ground. We took a good look at it for the first time.
The cat closed his eyes and laid back his ears. He tucked his tail under himself just in case. It turned out to be a skinny, despite the constant theft, fiery red stray cat with white markings on his stomach.
Having examined the cat, Reuben thoughtfully asked:
- What should we do with him?
- Rip it out! - I said.
“It won’t help,” said Lyonka, “he’s had this kind of character since childhood.”
The cat waited, closing his eyes.
Then Reuben suddenly said:
- We need to feed him properly!
We followed this advice, dragged the cat into the closet and gave him a wonderful dinner: fried pork, perch aspic, cottage cheese and sour cream. The cat ate for more than an hour. He came out of the closet staggering, sat down on the threshold and washed himself, looking at us and at the low stars with green, impudent eyes.
After washing, he snorted for a long time and rubbed his head on the floor. This was obviously supposed to signify fun. We were afraid that he would rub the fur on the back of his head.
Then the cat rolled over onto his back, caught his tail, chewed it, spat it out, stretched out by the stove and snored peacefully.
From that day on, he settled in with us and stopped stealing.
The next morning he even performed a noble and unexpected act.
The chickens climbed onto the table in the garden and, pushing each other and quarreling, began to peck buckwheat porridge from the plates.
The cat, trembling with indignation, crept up to the chickens and jumped onto the table with a short cry of victory.
The chickens took off with a desperate cry. They overturned the jug of milk and rushed, losing their feathers, to run away from the garden.
A long-legged rooster, nicknamed Gorlach, rushed ahead, hiccupping.
The cat rushed after him on three paws, and with the fourth, front paw, he hit the rooster on the back. Dust and fluff flew from the rooster. Inside him, with each blow, something thumped and hummed, as if a cat was hitting a rubber ball.
After this, the rooster lay in a fit for several minutes, his eyes rolled back, and moaned quietly. They poured cold water on him and he walked away.
Since then, chickens have been afraid to steal. Seeing the cat, they hid under the house, squeaking and jostling.
The cat walked around the house and garden like a master and watchman. He rubbed his head against our legs. He demanded gratitude, leaving tufts of red fur on our trousers.
At home we have already read Konstantin Paustovsky’s story “Hare’s Paws.” Let's talk about it and find out what the author wanted to tell us.
For the story “Hare's Paws” you can make the following plan:
1. Vanya at the veterinarian.
2. Karl Petrovich cured the hare.
Let's read an episode of the story that talks about the first event, i.e. the fire (Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. Forest fire ()
Reading the episode evokes feelings such as fear and horror. Grandfather and the hare were tired because they were fleeing from the fire, they were very, very scared.
Let's find out what the path of grandfather and Vanya was on the way to getting the hare cured. Let's read the episode of the meeting with the veterinarian.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
After reading this episode, I feel very sorry for Vanya, it’s a pity that he could not fulfill his grandfather’s request - to cure the hare. We can also say that the veterinarian is an evil, cruel, unkind person.
Grandmother Anisya helped Vanya and the hare. Let's read this episode.
We can say about Grandma Anisya that she is compassionate, curious, but sincere and kind. And her speech was melodious, she mumbled.
Let's read the episode about how Vanya runs with his hare (Fig. 2).
The hare moaned.
Rice. 2. Vanya and the hare ()
The hare was silent.
Rice. 3. Hare
We see that Vanya is worried, resilient, persistent, caring, diligent, quick, and very kind. From the boy's speech it is clear that he is worried, he is whispering. From this passage it is clear that the hare is feeling bad.
A pharmacist helped grandfather and Vanya find a doctor for the hare (Fig. 4).
Rice. 4. Pharmacist
Let's remember what he is like. The pharmacist is nervous, angry, strict, irritated, but kind. He spoke angrily.
The hare was cured by Dr. Karl Petrovich (Fig. 5). He is intelligent, educated, strict, kind. Karl Petrovich spoke sternly.
Rice. 5. Doctor Karl Petrovich ()
The author describes Grandfather Larion to us as a sympathetic, kind, timid person. When grandfather talks, he stubbornly mumbles.
At the center of the story's events is a hare. But the story “Hare's Paws” is not only about him. This is a story about human kindness, about responsiveness, about the ability to empathize, sympathize with the grief of others, about the best human qualities. Some people pass this test of kindness and responsiveness, while others do not. There are more good people in life, kind and sympathetic, so the hare is saved.
The writer broke the sequence of events in the story in order to emphasize the most important episodes. This is a story about how you need to love nature and treat animals with care, because animals sometimes help people, and sometimes even save lives.
Let's read the story “Hare's Paws” expressively.
K. Paustovsky “Hare's Paws”
Vanya Malyavin came to the veterinarian in our village from Lake Urzhenskoe and brought a small warm hare wrapped in a torn cotton jacket. The hare was crying and blinking his eyes red from tears often...
-Are you crazy? - the veterinarian shouted. “Soon you’ll be bringing mice to me, you fool!”
“Don’t bark, this is a special hare,” Vanya said in a hoarse whisper. - His grandfather sent him and ordered him to be treated.
- What to treat for?
- His paws are burned.
The veterinarian turned Vanya to face the door, pushed him in the back and shouted after him:
- Go ahead, go ahead! I don't know how to treat them. Fry it with onions and grandpa will have a snack.
Vanya didn’t answer. He went out into the hallway, blinked his eyes, sniffed and buried himself in the log wall. Tears flowed down the wall. The hare quietly trembled under his greasy jacket.
- What are you doing, little one? - the compassionate grandmother Anisya asked Vanya; she took her only goat to the vet. - Why are you two shedding tears, dear ones? Oh what happened?
“He’s burned, grandfather’s hare,” Vanya said quietly. - He burned his paws in a forest fire, he can’t run. Look, he's about to die.
“Don’t die, kid,” Anisya muttered. - Tell your grandfather, if he really wants the hare to go out, let him take him to the city to Karl Petrovich.
Vanya wiped away his tears and walked home through the forests to Lake Urzhenskoe. He did not walk, but ran barefoot along the hot sandy road. A recent forest fire burned north near the lake. It smelled of burning and dry cloves. It grew in large islands in the clearings.
The hare moaned.
Vanya found fluffy leaves covered with soft silver hair along the way, tore them out, put them under a pine tree and turned the hare around. The hare looked at the leaves, buried his head in them and fell silent.
- What are you doing, gray? - Vanya asked quietly. - You should eat.
The hare was silent.
The hare moved his ragged ear and closed his eyes.
Vanya took him in his arms and ran straight through the forest - he had to quickly let the hare drink from the lake.
There was unheard-of heat over the forests that summer. In the morning, strings of white clouds floated in. At noon, the clouds quickly rushed upward, towards the zenith, and before our eyes they were carried away and disappeared somewhere beyond the boundaries of the sky. The hot hurricane had been blowing for two weeks without a break. The resin flowing down the pine trunks turned into amber stone.
The next morning the grandfather put on clean boots and new bast shoes, took a staff and a piece of bread and wandered into the city. Vanya carried the hare from behind. The hare became completely silent, only occasionally shuddering with his whole body and sighing convulsively.
The dry wind blew up a cloud of dust over the city, soft as flour. Chicken fluff, dry leaves and straw were flying in it. From a distance it seemed as if a quiet fire was smoking over the city.
The market square was very empty and hot; The carriage horses were dozing near the water shed, and they had straw hats on their heads. Grandfather crossed himself.
- Either a horse or a bride - the jester will sort them out! - he said and spat.
They asked passersby for a long time about Karl Petrovich, but no one really answered anything. We went to the pharmacy. A fat old man in pince-nez and a short white robe shrugged his shoulders angrily and said:
- I like it! Quite a strange question! Karl Petrovich Korsh, a specialist in childhood diseases, has stopped accepting patients for three years. Why do you need it?
The grandfather, stuttering from respect for the pharmacist and from timidity, told about the hare.
- I like it! - said the pharmacist. - There are some interesting patients in our city. I like this great!
He nervously took off his pince-nez, wiped it, put it back on his nose and stared at his grandfather. Grandfather was silent and stood still. The pharmacist was also silent. The silence became painful.
- Poshtovaya street, three! - the pharmacist suddenly shouted in anger and slammed some disheveled thick book. - Three!
Grandfather and Vanya reached Pochtovaya Street just in time - a high thunderstorm was setting in from behind the Oka River. Lazy thunder stretched across the horizon, like a sleepy strongman straightening his shoulders and reluctantly shaking the ground. Gray ripples went down the river. Silent lightning surreptitiously, but swiftly and strongly struck the meadows; Far beyond the Glades, a haystack that they had lit was already burning. Large drops of rain fell on the dusty road, and soon it became like the surface of the moon: each drop left a small crater in the dust.
Karl Petrovich was playing something sad and melodic on the piano when his grandfather’s disheveled beard appeared in the window.
A minute later Karl Petrovich was already angry.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he said and slammed the lid of the piano. Immediately thunder roared in the meadows. - All my life I have been treating children, not hares.
“A child and a hare are all the same,” the grandfather muttered stubbornly. - It’s all the same! Heal, show mercy! Our veterinarian has no jurisdiction over such matters. He horse-rided for us. This hare, one might say, is my savior: I owe him my life, I must show gratitude, but you say - quit!
A minute later, Karl Petrovich, an old man with gray ruffled eyebrows, worriedly listened to his grandfather’s stumbling story.
Karl Petrovich eventually agreed to treat the hare. The next morning, the grandfather went to the lake, and left Vanya with Karl Petrovich to go after the hare.
A day later, the entire Pochtovaya Street, overgrown with goose grass, already knew that Karl Petrovich was treating a hare that had been burned in a terrible forest fire and had saved some old man. Two days later the whole small town already knew about this, and on the third day a long young man in a felt hat came to Karl Petrovich, introduced himself as an employee of a Moscow newspaper and asked for a conversation about the hare.
The hare was cured. Vanya wrapped him in cotton rags and carried him home. Soon the story about the hare was forgotten, and only some Moscow professor spent a long time trying to get his grandfather to sell him the hare. He even sent letters with stamps in response. But the grandfather did not give up. Under his dictation, Vanya wrote a letter to the professor:
The hare is not corrupt, he is a living soul, let him live in freedom. At the same time, I remain Larion Malyavin.
...This fall I spent the night with Grandfather Larion on Lake Urzhenskoye. Constellations, cold as grains of ice, floated in the water. The dry reeds rustled. The ducks shivered in the thickets and quacked pitifully all night.
Grandfather couldn't sleep. He sat by the stove and mended a torn fishing net. Then he put on the samovar - it immediately fogged up the windows in the hut and the stars turned from fiery points into cloudy balls. Murzik was barking in the yard. He jumped into the darkness, flashed his teeth and jumped back - he fought with the impenetrable October night. The hare slept in the hallway and occasionally, in his sleep, loudly tapped his hind paw on the rotten floorboard.
We drank tea at night, waiting for the distant and hesitant dawn, and over tea my grandfather finally told me the story about the hare.
In August, my grandfather went hunting on the northern shore of the lake. The forests were as dry as gunpowder. Grandfather came across a little hare with a torn left ear. The grandfather shot at him with an old gun tied with wire, but missed. The hare ran away.
The grandfather realized that a forest fire had started and the fire was coming straight towards him. The wind turned into a hurricane. The fire raced across the ground at an unheard of speed. According to the grandfather, even a train could not escape such a fire. Grandfather was right: during the hurricane, the fire moved at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
Grandfather ran over the bumps, stumbled, fell, the smoke ate his eyes, and behind him a wide roar and crackle of flames could already be heard.
Death overtook the grandfather, grabbed him by the shoulders, and at that time a hare jumped out from under the grandfather’s feet. He ran slowly and dragged his hind legs. Then only the grandfather noticed that the hare’s hair was burnt.
The grandfather was delighted with the hare, as if it were his own. As an old forest dweller, my grandfather knew that animals sense where the fire is coming from much better than humans and always escape. They die only in those rare cases when fire surrounds them.
Grandfather ran after the hare. He ran, cried with fear and shouted: “Wait, honey, don’t run so fast!”
The hare brought the grandfather out of the fire. When they ran out of the forest to the lake, the hare and grandfather both fell from fatigue. Grandfather picked up the hare and took it home. The hare's hind legs and stomach were singed. Then his grandfather cured him and kept him with him.
“Yes,” said the grandfather, looking at the samovar so angrily, as if the samovar was to blame for everything, “yes, but before that hare, it turns out that I was very guilty, dear man.”
- What did you do wrong?
- And you go out, look at the hare, at my savior, then you will know. Take a flashlight!
I took the lantern from the table and went out into the hallway. The hare was sleeping. I bent over him with a flashlight and noticed that the hare’s left ear was torn. Then I understood everything.
Bibliography
- Klimanova L.F., Vinogradskaya L.A., Boykina M.V. Literary reading. 4. - M.: Enlightenment.
- Buneev R.N., Buneeva E.V. Literary reading. 4. - M.: Balass.
- Vinogradova N.F., Khomyakova I.S., Safonova I.V. and others / Ed. Vinogradova N.F. Literary reading. 4. - VENTANA-COUNT.
- Litra.ru ().
- Peskarlib.ru ().
- Paustovskiy.niv.ru ().
Homework
- Prepare an expressive reading of the story “Hare's Paws.” Think about what you would do in this situation.
- Give a description of each character in the story.
- * Draw Vanya and the hare. How do you see them?