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Maria Vasilievna is returning home. She walks across the front, past the positions of the Germans, who are lazily looking at her, not wanting to waste bullets on the life of a worthless old woman. Maria Vasilievna lost three children. The caterpillar of a German tank rolled them on the ground. And now the mother is going home to visit the grave of her children. The mother's grief is immeasurable, it made her fearless. Not only Germans, but also animals and dashing people do not touch a woman distraught with grief. She calmly continues her way home.

Maria Vasilievna comes to her native village. Her home was razed to the ground by German tanks. On the ruins of her house, she meets her neighbor, Evdokia Petrovna. Evdokia over the years of the war has grown old and haggard, she lost her young children during the bombing, and her husband disappeared during earthworks. Evdokia lives in an empty, ruined village. Two women begin a dialogue about life and death.

Evdokia tells how the Germans came to the village, how they killed almost all the inhabitants. How the dead were buried. Lazy German soldiers threw the corpses into the shell crater, sprinkled it with earth, rolled the earth with a tank, and put the dead bodies on top again. At the site of the mass grave, Evdokia erected a wooden cross. A young and beautiful woman, Evdokia turned into an old woman in a couple of years. She lives not for something, but in spite of. Together with Mary, they do not live, but exist, because, unlike the body, their souls are already dead.

Maria Vasilyeva goes to the mass grave, she sees a cross over the ground smoothly rammed by tank tracks. The mother falls to the ground and tries to hear the whispers of the dead. But they are silent. Maria Vasilievna presents a conversation with her deceased daughter. She realizes that her duty to the dead is to no longer allow this bloody, senseless and merciless massacre called the Great Patriotic War.

Maria falls asleep in eternal sleep, hugging the piece of land under which her children are buried. An old soldier walks past a mass grave. He sees a woman lying at the cross, time and grief did not spare her. The soldier realizes that the woman is dead and covers her face with a handkerchief, which he previously used as a footcloth. He leaves, he must save the others from such a terrible fate.

Essay on literature on the topic: Summary of the Recovery of the dead Platonov

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1. We can say that the story of A. P. Platonov “The Seeking of the Lost” is named in Orthodox Christian traditions - there is an icon of the Mother of God bearing the same name. Moreover, the writer chose the following lines as an epigraph to the story: “I cry out of the abyss”. Indeed, the whole story, by Read More ......
2. Sandy teacher Maria Nikiforovna spent her cloudless childhood in her parents' house. Father-teacher did everything to make little Mary happy. Soon Maria graduated from pedagogical courses and entered adulthood. According to the distribution, the young teacher ends up in the village of Khoshutovo, located on the border with Read More ......
3. Return Having served the entire war, Guard Captain Aleksey Alekseevich Ivanov leaves the army after demobilization. At the station, waiting for the train for a long time, he meets the girl Masha, the daughter of a spaceman, who served in the canteen of their unit. For two days they go together, and for Read More ......
4. Fro The main character of the work is Frosya, a twenty-year-old girl, the daughter of a railway worker. Her husband has gone far and for a long time. Frosya is very sad for him, life loses all meaning for her, she even gives up the courses of railway communication and signaling. Frosya's father, Nefed Stepanovich Read More ......
5. Intimate person "Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife's coffin, getting hungry due to the absence of the hostess." After the burial of his wife, having prayed up, Pukhov goes to bed. Someone knocks loudly to him. The caretaker of the distance chief's office brings a ticket to the cleaning work Read More ......
6. Cow In the story "The Cow" the main character is Vasya Rubtsov. Vasya's father is a travel guard. Vasya grew up a good and kind boy. The guy studied in the fourth grade. The school was located five kilometers from home. Vasya had to cover this distance every day. Study Read More ......
7. Markun In each story by A.P. Platonov, the reader will discover a lot of new and interesting things. Here are interesting philosophical considerations and interesting forms of presentation of the material. The title of the story "Markun" comes from the name of the main character. Markun is a young inventor. The guy knows the price and Read More ......
8. Pit “On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life, Voshchev was given a calculation from a small mechanical plant, where he raised funds for his existence. In the release document he was told that he was being removed from production due to the growth of weakness in him and thoughtfulness among the general pace Read More ......

We can say that the story of A.P. Platonov's "The Seeking of the Perished" is named in Orthodox Christian traditions - there is an icon of the Mother of God bearing the same name. Moreover, the writer chose the following lines as an epigraph to the story: "I cry out of the abyss." Indeed, the whole story, in fact, boils down to a single thought - about the memory to the dead people and about the duty of the living to them.

In the center of the story is the image of an old woman - mother Maria Vasilievna, who lost three children in the war: “How old was Matvey? The twenty-third was walking, and Vasily was twenty-eighth. And my daughter was eighteen ... ”The heroine walked thousands of kilometers in order to return to her home - to the place where her children died.

Grief made Maria Vasilievna fearless and unharmed. Even animals and enemies did not touch this woman - they felt that she no longer belonged to this world, although physically she was still alive. The soul of the heroine died: she was where her children lay - dead, rammed by cruel tanks: "I myself am now like dead."

That is why the connection between Marya Vasilievna and her children has not been lost - the writer cites a mental conversation between a woman and her daughter Natalya: “How, daughter, will I help you? I myself am barely alive ... if all the people fell in love with you and corrected all the untruths on earth, then he would have raised you and all the righteously dead to life: after all, death is the first untruth! "

In these words, in my opinion, is the meaning of Platonov's story - the duty of the living is to prevent more of the great grief and injustice that the war brought. It is not for nothing that the writer introduces into the story the image of another mother who has lost her children - the image of Evdokia Petrovna. This young and once beautiful woman full of life has now turned into "weakened, quiet and indifferent." The woman's two young children were killed by a bomb, and her husband went missing while excavating, "and she came back to bury the children and live out her time in a dead place."

It is Evdokia Petrovna who talks about how their loved ones were buried: “Then they drove a tank through the grave on the dead, the dead were washed, the place became, and they still put whoever remained there. They have no desire to dig, they save their strength. "

It seems that this blasphemy does not touch women at all - the tone of the whole story is Platonic measured and calm. However, we understand that behind this calmness lies the most terrible devastating grief, the broken lives of millions of people who have lost their loved ones. Physically, the heroines still continue to live - to do something, to talk about something. But all this is only an appearance: all their thoughts are with relatives of the dead.

Not only millions of mothers' souls died, the whole earth turned into one charred piece. However, in spite of everything, there are some higher forces in the world that are able to help and support hope in a person: “The autumn stars shone in the sky, as if, having cried, surprised and kind eyes opened there, motionlessly peering into the dark earth, so sad and enticing that out of pity and painful affection, no one can take their eyes off her. "

It seems as if God sympathizes with his unreasonable children, strives with all his might to guide them on the true path, to somehow help. But people still bear the main responsibility for their actions - only they can change something, never again allow such grief and atrocities. And people, according to the whole story of Platonov, are simply obliged to do this - in the name of the memory of loved ones who died unjustly, taking with them the lives and souls of their relatives.

In the story, the writer connects these changes for the better with the Soviet regime - it is not for nothing that Marya Vasilievna thinks: “... let the Soviet regime be there again, she loves the people, she loves work, she teaches people everything, she is restless; maybe a century will pass, and the people will learn so that the dead become alive. " And at the end of the story, in continuation of this thought, it is the Soviet soldier who is entrusted with the mission of destroying evil, improving life, fulfilling the covenant of the dead: justified by the happy and free fate of our people, and thus their death was recovered. "

Thus, the meaning of the title of Platonov's story "The Seizure of the Perished" is the thought of the duty of the living to the perished, first of all, in the Great Patriotic War. According to the author, the memory of the dead should be confirmed by the actions of the living, by their desire to build a new happy life for their children. Only then will the recovery of the dead be exhaustive.

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Andrey Platonov
Recovery of the dead

I call out from the abyss.

Words of the dead

The mother returned to her home. She was a refugee from the Germans, but she could not live anywhere except her native place, and returned home. She walked twice in intermediate fields past the German fortifications, because the front here was uneven, and she walked a straight short road. She had no fear and was not afraid of anyone, and her enemies did not harm her. She walked through the fields, yearning, simple-haired, with a vague, as if blinded, face. And she didn’t care what was in the world now and what was happening in it, and nothing in the world could either disturb or please her, because her grief was eternal and unquenchable sorrow - her mother had lost all her children dead. She was now so weak and indifferent to the whole world that she walked along the road like a withered blade of grass carried by the wind, and everything that she met also remained indifferent to her. And it became even more difficult for her, because she felt that she did not need anyone, and for that, no one needed her anyway. This is enough for a person to die, but she did not die; she needed to see her home, where she lived her life, and the place where her children died in battle and execution.

On her way she met the Germans, but they did not touch this old woman; it was strange for them to see such a sad old woman, they were horrified at the sight of humanity on her face, and they left her unattended so that she would die on her own. In life there is this vague alienated light on the faces of people, frightening the beast and the hostile person, and no one can destroy such people, and it is impossible to approach them. The beast and man are more willing to fight with those who are like themselves, but he leaves the unlikely aside, fearing to be afraid of them and to be defeated by an unknown force.

After going through the war, the old mother returned home. But her native place was now empty. A small poor house for one family, smeared with clay, painted with yellow paint, with a brick chimney that looked like a pensive head of a man, was burned long ago by a German fire and left behind coals that were already overgrown with the grass of the grave. And all the neighboring residential places, this whole old city also died, and it became light and sad everywhere around, and you can see far away on the silenced earth. A little more time will pass, and the place of people's life will be overgrown with free grass, the winds will blow it, the rain streams will even out, and then there will be no trace of a person, and there will be no one to understand and inherit all the torment of his existence on earth in goodness and a lesson for the future, because no one will be alive. And the mother sighed from this last thought of hers and from the pain in her heart for her unconscious dying life. But her heart was kind, and out of love for the lost, it wanted to live for all the dead, in order to fulfill their will, which they took with them to the grave.

She sat down in the middle of the cooled conflagration and began to sort out the ashes of her dwelling with her hands. She knew her share, that it was time for her to die, but her soul did not accept this share, because if she dies, where will the memory of her children be preserved and who will save them in her love when her heart also stops breathing?

Mother did not know, and she thought alone. A neighbor, Evdokia Petrovna, a young woman, pretty and plump before, and now weakened, quiet and indifferent, came up to her; Two young children killed her with a bomb when she left the city with them, and her husband disappeared without a trace on earthworks, and she came back to bury the children and live out her time in a dead place.

- Hello, Maria Vasilievna, - said Evdokia Petrovna.

“It's you, Dunya,” Maria Vasilievna told her. - Sit down with me, let's talk to you. Look in my head, I haven't bathed for a long time.

Dunya obediently sat down beside her; Maria Vasilievna put her head on her lap, and the neighbor began to look in her head. Both were now easier for this occupation; one worked diligently, and the other clung to her and dozed off alone from the proximity of a familiar person.

- Have you all died? Maria Vasilievna asked.

- Everything, but how! - answered Dunya. - And all of yours?

“That's it, no one is there,” said Maria Vasilievna.

“You and I have no one equally,” said Dunya, satisfied that her grief is not the greatest in the world: other people have the same.

“I’ll have more grief than yours: I have lived as a widow before,” said Maria Vasilievna. - And two of my sons here at the posad went to bed. They entered the workers' battalion when the Germans left Petropavlovka on the Mitrofanievsky tract ... And my daughter took me wherever they looked, she loved me, she was my daughter, then she moved away from me, she fell in love with others, she fell in love with everyone, she regretted one thing - she was a kind girl, she is my daughter, - she bent down to him, he was sick, he was wounded, he became like inanimate, and she was also then killed, killed from above from the airplane ... But I came back, what is it to me! What is it to me now! I do not care! I myself am now like dead ...

“But what can you do: live like a dead woman, I also live like that,” said Dunya. - Mine are lying, and yours are lying ... I know where yours are - they are there, where they were dragged and buried, I was here, I saw with my own eyes. At first they counted all the dead dead, made up the paper, put their own people separately, and dragged ours away further. Then we were all stripped naked and in a paper all the income from our belongings was written down. They cared for this for a long time, and then they began to carry it around to bury ...

- And who dug the grave? - Maria Vasilievna was worried. - Did you dug deeply? After all, they buried naked, chilly, a deep grave would be warmer!

- No, what is there deep

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Andrey Platonov

Recovery of the dead

From the abyss I call the dead again
The mother returned to her home. She was a refugee from the Germans, but she could not live anywhere except her native place, and returned home.
She walked twice in intermediate fields past the German fortifications, because the front here was uneven, and she walked a straight short road. She had no fear and was not afraid of anyone, and her enemies did not harm her. She walked through the fields, yearning, simple-haired, with a vague, as if blinded, face. And she didn’t care what was in the world now and what was happening in it, and nothing in the world could either disturb or please her, because her grief was eternal and unquenchable sorrow - her mother had lost all her children dead. She was now so weak and indifferent to the whole world that she walked along the road like a withered blade of grass carried by the wind, and everything that she met also remained indifferent to her. And it became even more difficult for her, because she felt that she did not need anyone, and for that, no one needed her anyway. This is enough for a person to die, but she did not die; she needed to see her home, where she lived her life, and the place where her children died in battle and execution.
On her way she met the Germans, but they did not touch this old woman; it was strange for them to see such a sad old woman, they were horrified at the sight of humanity on her face, and they left her unattended so that she would die on her own. In life there is this vague alienated light on the faces of people, frightening the beast and the hostile person, and no one can destroy such people, and it is impossible to approach them. The beast and man are more willing to fight with those who are like themselves, but he leaves the unlikely aside, fearing to be afraid of them and to be defeated by an unknown force.
After going through the war, the old mother returned home. But her native place was now empty. A small poor house for one family, smeared with clay, painted with yellow paint, with a brick chimney that looked like a pensive head of a man, was burned long ago by a German fire and left behind coals that were already overgrown with the grass of the grave. And all the neighboring residential places, this whole old city also died, and it became light and sad everywhere around, and you can see far away on the silenced earth. A little more time will pass, and the place of people's life will be overgrown with free grass, the winds will blow it, the rain streams will even out, and then there will be no trace of a person, and there will be no one to understand and inherit all the torment of his existence on earth in goodness and a lesson for the future, because no one will be alive. And the mother sighed from this last thought of hers and from the pain in her heart for her unconscious dying life. But her heart was kind, and out of love for the lost, it wanted to live for all the dead, in order to fulfill their will, which they took with them to the grave.
She sat down in the middle of the cooled conflagration and began to sort out the ashes of her dwelling with her hands. She knew her share, that it was time for her to die, but her soul did not accept this share, because if she dies, where will the memory of her children be preserved and who will save them in her love when her heart also stops breathing?
Mother did not know, and she thought alone. A neighbor, Evdokia Petrovna, a young woman, pretty and plump before, and now weakened, quiet and indifferent, came up to her; Two young children killed her with a bomb when she left the city with them, and her husband disappeared without a trace on earthworks, and she came back to bury the children and live out her time in a dead place.
- Hello, Maria Vasilievna, - said Evdokia Petrovna.
“It's you, Dunya,” Maria Vasilievna told her. - Come with me, let's talk to you. Look in my head, I haven't bathed for a long time.
Dunya submissively sat down next to her: Maria Vasilievna laid her head on her lap, and the neighbor began to look in her head. Both were now easier for this occupation; one worked diligently, and the other clung to her and dozed off alone from the proximity of a familiar person.
- Have you all died? Maria Vasilievna asked.
- Everything, but how! - answered Dunya. - And all of yours?
- That's it, no one is there. - said Maria Vasilievna.
“You and I have no one equally,” said Dunya, satisfied that her grief is not the greatest in the world: other people have the same.
“I’ll have more grief than yours: I have lived as a widow before,” said Maria Vasilievna. - And two of my sons here at the posad went to bed. They entered the workers' battalion when the Germans left Petropavlovka on the Mitrofanievsky tract. she was a kind girl, she is my daughter, - she bent down to him, he was sick, he was wounded, he became like inanimate, and she was also then killed, killed from above from the airplane And I came back, what is it to me! What is it to me now! I do not care! I'm like dead myself now
- And what do you do something: live like a dead woman, I also live like that, said Dunya. - Mine are lying, and yours are lying. I know where yours are - they are there, where they were dragged and buried, I was here, I saw with my own eyes. First, they counted all the dead dead, they made up the paper, put our own ones separately, and dragged ours away. Then we were all stripped naked and in a paper all the income from our belongings was written down. They cared for this for a long time, and then they began to carry them to bury.
- And who dug the grave? - Maria Vasilievna was worried. - Did you dug deeply? After all, they buried naked, chilly, a deep grave would be warmer!
- No, how deep it is! - said Dunya. - Pit from the projectile, here's your grave. They piled there in addition, but there was not enough space for others. Then they drove with a tank through the grave on the dead, the dead were washed, the place became, and they still put whoever remained there. They have no desire to dig, they save their strength. And on top they threw a little earth, the dead lie there, freezing now; only the dead will endure such torment - to lie naked for centuries in the cold
- And mine were also mutilated with a tank or were they placed on top in one piece? Maria Vasilievna asked.
- Yours? - Dunya responded. - Yes, I did not notice that. There, behind the posad, everyone is lying by the very road, if you go, you will see. I tied a cross for them from two branches and put it, but it’s useless: the cross will fall down, even if you make it iron, and people will forget the dead Maria Vasilievna got up from Dunya’s knees, put her head to her and began to look in her head hair. ... And from work it became easier for her; handicraft heals a sick yearning soul.
Then, when it was already light, Maria Vasilievna got up; she was an old woman, she is tired now; she said goodbye to Dunya and went into the dusk, where her children lay - two sons in the near land and a daughter in the distance.
Maria Vasilievna went out to the posad that was adjacent to the city. In the posad, gardeners and truck farmers used to live in wooden houses; they ate from the lands adjacent to their dwellings, and thus existed here from time immemorial. Today there is nothing left here, and the earth on top was caked from fire, and the inhabitants either died, or went into wandering, or they were taken prisoner and taken to work and death.
The Mitrofanievsky tract went from the posad to the plain. In the old days, willows grew along the side of the tract, now their war gnawed at the stumps, and now the deserted road was boring, as if the end of the world was already close and rarely anyone came here.
Maria Vasilyevna came to the place of the grave, where there was a cross made of two plaintive, trembling branches tied across. Mother sat down by this cross; beneath him lay her naked children, slain, mocked, and thrown into the dust by someone else's hands.
Evening came and turned into night. The autumn stars shone in the sky, as if, having wept, surprised and kind eyes opened there, motionlessly peering into the dark earth, so woeful and enticing that out of pity and painful affection, no one can take their eyes off it.
“If you were alive,” the mother whispered to the ground to her dead sons, “if you were alive, how much work you did, how much fate you experienced! And now, well, now you are dead - where is your life, which you have not lived, who will live it for you? .. How old was Matvey? The twenty-third was walking, and Vasily was twenty-eighth. And my daughter was eighteen, now she would have gone nineteen, she was the birthday girl yesterday. She did not keep her children alive and did not save them from death. What are they, they are my children, they did not ask to live in the world. And I gave birth to them - I didn't think; I gave birth to them, let them live themselves. And apparently, it’s impossible to live on earth, there’s nothing ready for the children: they only cooked, but they didn’t manage! gave birth to children. Otherwise, how else? I suppose to live alone and to nothing. She touched the grave ground and lay down to her face. It was quiet in the ground, nothing was heard.
- Are sleeping, - his mother whispered, - no one will move, - it was difficult to die, and they were worn out. Let them sleep, I will wait — I cannot live without children, I don’t want to live without the dead. Maria Vasilievna took her face from the ground; she heard that her daughter Natasha had called her; she called to her without uttering a word, as if she had uttered something with her one faint sigh. The mother looked around, wanting to see where her daughter was calling from, whence her meek voice sounded - from a quiet field, from the depths of the earth, or from the height of the sky, from that clear star. Where is she now, her dead daughter? Or is she nowhere else and her mother only fancies Natasha's voice, which sounds like a memory in her own heart?
Maria Vasilievna listened again, and again from the silence of the world she heard her daughter's calling voice, so distant that it was like silence, and, however, pure and intelligible in meaning, speaking of hope and joy, that everything that did not come true and the dead will return to live on earth and the separated will embrace each other and will never part again.
The mother heard that her daughter's voice was cheerful, and understood that this meant the hope and trust of her daughter to return to life, that the deceased expects the help of the living and does not want to be dead.
“How, daughter, will I help you? I myself am barely alive, - said Maria Vasilievna; she spoke calmly and intelligibly, as if she were in her house, at peace, and conducted a conversation with the children, as was the case in her recent happy life. - I alone will not lift you, daughter; If all the people fell in love with you and corrected all the untruths on earth, then he would have raised you and all the righteously dead to life: after all, death is the first untruth! .. And how can I help you alone? I'll just die of grief and then I'll be with you! " The mother spoke to her daughter for a long time words of reasonable consolation, as if Natasha and two sons in the ground were listening attentively to her. Then she dozed off and fell asleep on the grave.
The midnight dawn of war rose in the distance, and the rumble of cannons rang out from there; there the battle began. Maria Vasilievna woke up, and looked towards the fire in the sky, and listened to the rapid breathing of the cannons. “These are ours,” she believed. - Let them come sooner, let there be Soviet power again, she loves the people, she loves work, she teaches people everything, she is restless; maybe a century will pass, and the people will learn so that the dead become alive, and then they will sigh, then the orphaned heart of the mother will rejoice. "
Maria Vasilievna believed and understood that everything would come true, as she wished and as she needed to comfort her soul. She saw flying airplanes, and they were also difficult to invent and make, and all the dead could be brought back from earth to life in the sunlight, if the minds of people turned to the need of a mother who gives birth and buries her children and dies from separation from them.
She again fell to the soft earth of the grave to be closer to her silent sons. And their silence was a condemnation to the whole world, the villain who killed them, and grief for the mother, who remembers the smell of their childish body and the color of their living eyes. By noon, Russian tanks came out onto the Mitrofanievskaya road and stopped near the embankment for inspection and refueling; they now did not shoot in front of themselves, because the German garrison of the perished town saved themselves from the battle and retreated to their troops ahead of time.
One Red Army soldier from the tank walked away from the car and went to walk on the ground, over which the peaceful sun was now shining. The Red Army soldier was no longer so young, he was in his years, and he liked to see how the grass lives, and to check if there were still butterflies and insects to which he was accustomed.
Near the cross, tied from two branches, the Red Army soldier saw an old woman, her face down to the ground. He bent down to her and listened to her breathing, and then turned the woman's body on her back and, for correctness, put his ear to her breast. “Her heart is gone,” the Red Army soldier realized and covered his calmed face with a deceased clean canvas, which he had with him as a spare footcloth.
- She had nothing to live with: look how hunger and grief swallowed her body - the bone shines out through the skin. "
- Live while, - the Red Army soldier said aloud at parting. - Whatever mother you are, and without you, I also became an orphan.
He stood still for a little while, languishing in his separation from someone else's mother.
- It’s dark for you now, and you’ve gone far from us. What to do! Now we have no time to grieve for you, we must first put the enemy down. And then the whole world must enter in reason, otherwise it will not be possible, otherwise - everything is useless! ..
The Red Army soldier went back. And it became boring for him to live without the dead. However, he felt that now it became all the more necessary for him to live. It is necessary not only to exterminate the enemy of human life, we must also be able to live after victory that higher life that the dead silently bequeathed to us; and then, for the sake of their eternal memory, it is necessary to fulfill all their hopes on earth, so that their will is fulfilled and their heart, ceasing to breathe, is not deceived. The dead have no one to trust but the living, and we need to live in such a way that the death of our people is justified by the happy and free fate of our people, and thus their death is recovered.

"Recovery of the lost"

The mother returned to her home. She was a refugee from the Germans, but she could not live anywhere except her native place, and returned home.

She walked twice in intermediate fields past the German fortifications, because the front here was uneven, and she walked a straight short road. She had no fear and was not afraid of anyone, and her enemies did not harm her. She walked through the fields, yearning, simple-haired, with a vague, as if blinded, face. And she didn’t care what was in the world now and what was happening in it, and nothing in the world could either disturb or please her, because her grief was eternal and unquenchable sorrow - her mother had lost all her children dead. She was now so weak and indifferent to the whole world that she walked along the road like a withered blade of grass carried by the wind, and everything that she met also remained indifferent to her. And it became even more difficult for her, because she felt that she did not need anyone, and for that, no one needed her anyway.

This is enough for a person to die, but she did not die; she needed to see her home, where she lived her life, and the place where her children died in battle and execution.

On her way she met the Germans, but they did not touch this old woman; it was strange for them to see such a sad old woman, they were horrified at the sight of humanity on her face, and they left her unattended so that she would die on her own. In life there is this vague alienated light on the faces of people, frightening the beast and the hostile person, and no one can destroy such people, and it is impossible to approach them. The beast and man are more willing to fight with those who are like themselves, but he leaves the unlikely aside, fearing to be afraid of them and to be defeated by an unknown force.

After going through the war, the old mother returned home. But her native place was now empty. A small poor house for one family, smeared with clay, painted with yellow paint, with a brick chimney that looked like a pensive head of a man, was burned long ago by a German fire and left behind coals that were already overgrown with the grass of the grave. And all the neighboring residential places, this whole old city also died, and it became light and sad everywhere around, and you can see far away on the silenced earth. A little more time will pass, and the place of people's life will be overgrown with free grass, the winds will blow it, the rain streams will even out, and then there will be no trace of a person, and there will be no one to understand and inherit all the torment of his existence on earth in goodness and a lesson for the future, because no one will be alive. And the mother sighed from this last thought of hers and from the pain in her heart for her unconscious dying life. But her heart was kind, and out of love for the lost, it wanted to live for all the dead, in order to fulfill their will, which they took with them to the grave.

She sat down in the middle of the cooled conflagration and began to sort out the ashes of her dwelling with her hands. She knew her share, that it was time for her to die, but her soul did not accept this share, because if she dies, where will the memory of her children be preserved and who will save them in her love when her heart also stops breathing?

Mother did not know, and she thought alone. A neighbor, Evdokia Petrovna, a young woman, pretty and plump before, and now weakened, quiet and indifferent, came up to her; Two young children killed her with a bomb when she left the city with them, and her husband disappeared without a trace on earthworks, and she came back to bury the children and live out her time in a dead place.

Hello, Maria Vasilievna, - said Evdokia Petrovna.

It's you, Dunya, ”Maria Vasilievna told her. - Come with me, let's talk to you. Look in my head, I haven't bathed for a long time.

Dunya submissively sat down next to her: Maria Vasilievna laid her head on her lap, and the neighbor began to look in her head. Both were now easier for this occupation; one worked diligently, and the other clung to her and dozed off alone from the proximity of a familiar person.

Have you all died? Maria Vasilievna asked.

Everything, but how is it! - answered Dunya. - And all of yours?

That's it, no one is there. - said Maria Vasilievna.

You and I have no one equally, ”said Dunya, satisfied that her grief is not the greatest in the world: other people have the same.

I will have more grief than yours: I have lived as a widow before, -

said Maria Vasilievna. - And two of my sons here at the posad went to bed.

They entered the workers' battalion when the Germans left Petropavlovka on the Mitrofanievsky tract. she was a kind girl, she is my daughter, - she bent down to him, he was sick, he was wounded, he became like inanimate, and she was also then killed, killed from above from the airplane And I came back, what is it to me! What is it to me now! I do not care!

I'm like dead myself now

And what are you going to do: live like a dead woman, I also live like that, said Dunya. - Mine are lying, and yours are lying. I know where yours are - they are there, where they were dragged and buried, I was here, I saw with my own eyes. First, they counted all the dead dead, made up the paper, put theirs separately, and dragged ours away further. Then we were all stripped naked and in a paper all the income from our belongings was written down. They cared for this for a long time, and then they began to carry them to bury.

And who dug the grave? - Maria Vasilievna was worried. - Did you dug deeply? After all, they buried naked, chilly, a deep grave would be warmer!

No, how deep it is! - said Dunya. - Pit from the projectile, here's your grave. They piled there in addition, but there was not enough space for others. Then they drove with a tank through the grave on the dead, the dead were washed, the place became, and they still put whoever remained there. They have no desire to dig, they save their strength. And on top they threw a little earth, the dead lie there, freezing now;

only the dead will endure such torment - to lie naked for centuries in the cold

And mine, too, were mutilated with a tank, or were they placed on top in one piece? -

asked Maria Vasilievna.

Yours? - Dunya responded. - Yes, I did not notice that. There, behind the posad, everyone is lying by the very road, if you go, you will see. I tied a cross for them from two branches and put it, but it’s useless: the cross will fall down, even if you make it iron, and people will forget the dead Maria Vasilievna got up from Dunya’s knees, put her head to her and began to look in her head hair. ... And from work it became easier for her;

handicraft heals a sick yearning soul.

Then, when it was already light, Maria Vasilievna got up; she was an old woman, she is tired now; she said goodbye to Dunya and went into the dusk, where her children lay - two sons in the near land and a daughter in the distance.

Maria Vasilievna went out to the posad that was adjacent to the city. In the posad, gardeners and truck farmers used to live in wooden houses; they ate from the lands adjacent to their dwellings, and thus existed here from time immemorial. Today there is nothing left here, and the earth on top was caked from fire, and the inhabitants either died, or went into wandering, or they were taken prisoner and taken away to work and death.

The Mitrofanievsky tract went from the posad to the plain. In the old days, willows grew along the side of the road, now their war gnawed at the stumps, and now the deserted road was boring, as if the end of the world was already close and rarely anyone came here.

Maria Vasilyevna came to the place of the grave, where there was a cross made of two plaintive, trembling branches tied across. Mother sat down by this cross;

beneath him lay her naked children, slain, mocked, and thrown into the dust by someone else's hands.

Evening came and turned into night. The autumn stars shone in the sky, as if, having wept, surprised and kind eyes opened there, motionlessly peering into the dark earth, so woeful and enticing that out of pity and painful affection, no one can take their eyes off it.

If you were alive, - the mother whispered to the ground to her dead sons, -

if you were alive, how much work you did, how much fate you experienced! And now, well, now you are dead - where is your life, which you have not lived, who will live it for you? .. How old was Matvey? The twenty-third was walking, and Vasily was twenty-eighth. And my daughter was eighteen, now she would have gone nineteen, she was the birthday girl yesterday. She did not keep her children alive and did not save them from death. What are they, they are my children, they did not ask to live in the world.

And I gave birth to them - I didn't think; I gave birth to them, let them live themselves. And apparently, it’s impossible to live on earth, there’s nothing ready for the children: they only cooked, but they didn’t manage! gave birth to children. Otherwise, how else? I suppose to live alone and to nothing. She touched the grave ground and lay down to her face. It was quiet in the ground, nothing was heard.

Yat, - his mother whispered, - no one will move, - it was difficult to die, and they were worried. Let them sleep, I will wait — I cannot live without children, I don’t want to live without the dead. Maria Vasilievna took her face from the ground; she heard that her daughter Natasha had called her; she called to her without uttering a word, as if she had uttered something with her one faint sigh. The mother looked around, wanting to see where her daughter was calling from, whence her meek voice sounded - from a quiet field, from the depths of the earth, or from the height of the sky, from that clear star. Where is she now, her dead daughter? Or is she nowhere else and her mother only fancies Natasha's voice, which sounds like a memory in her own heart?

Maria Vasilievna listened again, and again from the silence of the world she heard her daughter's calling voice, so distant that it was like silence, and, however, pure and intelligible in meaning, speaking of hope and joy, that everything that did not come true and the dead will return to live on earth and the separated will embrace each other and will never part again.

"How, daughter, will I help you? I myself am barely alive," said Maria Vasilievna; she spoke calmly and intelligibly, as if she was in her house, alone, and was talking with children, as was the case in her recent happy life. - I alone will not raise you, daughter; if all the people fell in love with you, but would correct all the untruths on earth, then he would have raised you and all the righteously dead to life: after all, death is the first untruth! .. How can I help you alone? I'll just die of grief and then I'll be with you! "

The mother spoke to her daughter for a long time words of reasonable consolation, as if Natasha and two sons in the ground were listening attentively to her. Then she dozed off and fell asleep on the grave.

The midnight dawn of war rose in the distance, and the rumble of cannons rang out from there; there the battle began. Maria Vasilievna woke up, and looked towards the fire in the sky, and listened to the rapid breathing of the cannons. "These are ours, -

she believed. - Let them come sooner, let there be Soviet power again, she loves the people, she loves work, she teaches people everything, she is restless;

maybe a century will pass, and the people will learn so that the dead become alive, and then they will sigh, then the orphaned heart of the mother will rejoice. "

Maria Vasilievna believed and understood that everything would come true, as she wished and as she needed to comfort her soul. She saw flying airplanes, and they were also difficult to invent and make, and all the dead could be brought back from earth to life in the sunlight, if the minds of people turned to the need of a mother who gives birth and buries her children and dies from separation from them.

She again fell to the soft earth of the grave to be closer to her silent sons. And their silence was a condemnation to the whole world, the villain who killed them, and grief for the mother, who remembers the smell of their childish body and the color of their living eyes. By noon, Russian tanks came out onto the Mitrofanievskaya road and stopped near the embankment for inspection and refueling; they now did not shoot in front of themselves, because the German garrison of the perished town saved themselves from the battle and retreated to their troops ahead of time.

One Red Army soldier from the tank walked away from the car and went to walk on the ground, over which the peaceful sun was now shining. The Red Army soldier was no longer so young, he was in years, and he liked to see how the grass lives, and to check -

are there still butterflies and insects to which he is accustomed.

Near the cross, tied from two branches, the Red Army soldier saw an old woman, her face down to the ground. He bent down to her and listened to her breathing, and then turned the woman's body on her back and, for correctness, put his ear to her breast. "Her heart is gone," the Red Army soldier realized and covered his calmed face with a deceased clean canvas, which he had with him as a spare footcloth.

She had nothing to live with: look how hunger and grief swallowed her body - the bone shines out through the skin. "

And for now, - the Red Army man said aloud at parting. - Whatever mother you are, and without you, I also became an orphan.

He stood still for a little while, languishing in his separation from someone else's mother.

It is dark for you now, and you have gone far from us. What can you do! Uhcha we have no time to grieve for you, we must first put the enemy down. And then the whole world must enter in reason, otherwise it will not be possible, otherwise - everything is useless! ..

The Red Army soldier went back. And it became boring for him to live without the dead. However, he felt that now it became all the more necessary for him to live. It is necessary not only to exterminate the enemy of human life, we must also be able to live after victory that higher life that the dead silently bequeathed to us; and then, for the sake of their eternal memory, it is necessary to fulfill all their hopes on earth, so that their will is fulfilled and their heart, ceasing to breathe, is not deceived. The dead have no one to trust but the living, and we need to live in such a way that the death of our people is justified by the happy and free fate of our people, and thus their death is recovered.

Platonov Andrey - Recovery of the dead, read text

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