The Black Stone
Oh, how they smelled pleasantly, it could have died.
With what a wooden knock they rub each other – just music, nothing more delightful I have never heard.
We are a dense group of five-year-old kindergartens, looking at them, not even able to blink. Lippa Vasilyevna – head of kindergarten, long promised to bring them for a day to show us. They seemed to be more beautiful than our most brave childhood fantasies. Thirty small detailed wooden handcrafted figures. Teens in pairs with uncles, dressed in national costumes of the peoples of the USSR. In the shops and close to such were not sold, probably - it was a gift of generous aliens.
The figures were not given into the hands, and we, surrounding the post, slightly knocking on our foreheads, breathed hard, considering the pinch of the Georgian and the colorful hollow of the Turkmen.
If we knew then about the existence of a dry hunger strike, we would immediately announce it at the moment when the happy session ended and the head began to gather and hide the humanchips in the large safe standing in our group.
The teacher wiped out the children's riot, promising that if we will sleep perfectly in a quiet hour and on a walk run not faster than the koal, then in the evening, maybe Lippa Vasilyevna will show us his magical humans again.
The sleeping hour came.

All small children are prone to kleptomania, not because they are bad, simply, until a certain age they do not see the point of not stealing a good thing... And then how lucky someone will be: one in five years will understand the meaninglessness of theft and stop forever, another in ten, and the third - the poor and in forty years will behave like a little...

Sleeping in neither eye, I lie on the counter and think: if these figures were mine, I would then... I would... In a word, it is not a pity to have this wealth and die.
Now or never. I was expecting a friendly child snoring, and most importantly the snoring of the teacher sleeping with us out of solidarity (we respected her very much for this. She said, “Of course, adults don’t sleep during the day, but so that you don’t get so upset, I’m going to sleep with you.” It was wildly frightening, in the sight of half a hundred sleeping eyes, to get into the pocket of the white coat of the teacher, to pull out the clock-calling clock of the keys and start to open an old Austrian safe. The safe didn’t love me, he knocked and clicked, trying to awaken somebody, but as a true Austrian, he was forced to obey the right key and with a iron breath opened his treasure.
In addition to “my” figures, there was a thick pack of money, but why do I have money when I had happiness in my hands in a concentrated form?
He loaded thirty joyful Soviet men in a maïka, stole into the dressing room and put the men in his closet with cherries. He closed the safe, put the keys in place and barely had time to go to bed.
During the walk, our whole group depicted sluggish mannequins in order to earn another evening viewing of the figures, to say that I ran like a sparkle, cutting all with sand and provoking mass battles. did not help.
In the evening, everyone was gathered at the safe, waiting for a miracle. The chief opened with her key and... the atomic war began in the kindergarten.
The general Brownian movement ran, shouted, the head of the school threw on the teacher and began to blame her, because she had a second key.
Stones, screams, insults and excuses.
My parents began to come and my dad came to me. I quickly put the stolen figures in my pockets and the jacket cap. The crying teacher sadly complained to my dad that I was behaving badly, and calmly let us out of the “gold storage” on the street.
On the way home, I was so excited to open up right in the yard, but decided to wait until home. I understood that stealing was not good, but I was firmly convinced that when Mom and Dad see what I stole, they will radically change their views on the unacceptability of theft.
You can see it, open your eyes!! to
The parents opened, saw a squad of fun colored people on the table and... crowded.
Father, asking for the details of the “operation”, grabbed me in the head and said:
My life is divided into “before and after.” As in the morning everything
It was good... Now you will be sought and found, maybe today, maybe today.
In a month, the police will come in the night with the dog and take him to jail.
But you cannot wait for them, your conscience will torment you and you will surrender yourself. To remove a stone from the soul, you will have to sit for five years. Now you’re almost six, you’ll sit down and go out at ten. Don’t worry, my mom and I will wait, if we are alive, but you’ll come out almost as a happy person. No loads on the soul. How well it was this morning...
I stayed alone with these ugly trees and how ugly they smelled of acetone paint. That’s why I have to go to jail...
Dad came into the room and said:
There is still a small chance to lighten your guilt a little, you need to.
Take them to the kindergarten tomorrow and return them to the safe in the same way.
If they succeed, they will not be put in jail, but the stone on the soul will remain on the ground.
All the life.

It's good that five-year-olds very rarely die from a heart attack, or else I would give the next day there in a hug with a safe.

The magical figures miraculously found themselves in their rightful place.
So again I almost returned to my happy, restless yesterday, and since then I have never even thought of stealing. I already knew the simple secret that theft does not give, but takes.

P.S

Once a long time ago, immediately after the army, I passed by my native kindergarten and saw behind the fence my old gray teacher who taught children to wrap crowns. I greeted, explained who I was and removed the old black stone from my soul – repented, told how I stole and how I put it back. I asked forgiveness.
She hugged me, grabbed my head and said:
I know it was you. Your father came in the morning and told me,
Not to “notice.” Well, stop, don’t worry little boy, you are.
You won’t be like that anymore...?