House in the desert. Children's stories online

Stranger, we advise you to read the fairy tale “House in the Desert” by Gianni Rodari for yourself and your children, this is a wonderful work created by our ancestors. All descriptions environment created and presented with a feeling of deepest love and gratitude to the object of presentation and creation. Main character always wins not through deceit and cunning, but through kindness, kindness and love - this is the most important quality of children's characters. Quite a lot important role For children's perception, visual images play a role, with which this work, quite successfully, abounds. Devotion, friendship and self-sacrifice and other positive feelings overcome all that oppose them: anger, deceit, lies and hypocrisy. It is very useful when the plot is simple and, so to speak, life-like, when similar situations arise in our everyday life, this contributes to better memorization. Folk legend cannot lose its vitality, due to the inviolability of such concepts as friendship, compassion, courage, bravery, love and sacrifice. The fairy tale “House in the Desert” by Gianni Rodari is certainly useful to read for free online, it will bring up only good and good people in your child. useful qualities and concepts.

Once upon a time there was a very rich gentleman. Richer than the richest American billionaire. In a word, rich, very rich! He kept his money in huge warehouses. They were filled to the ceiling with gold, silver and nickel coins. There were Italian lira, Swiss francs, British pounds sterling, American dollars, Russian rubles, Polish zlotys, Yugoslav dinars - centners, tons of coins from all countries of the world and all nationalities. Paper money he, too, had countless quantities—thousands of tightly stuffed bags, sealed with wax seals. This man's name was Signor Monetti.

And then one day he wanted to build himself a house.

“I’ll build it in the desert,” he decided, “away from people.”

But in the desert there is no stone for construction, no bricks, lime, boards, marble... There is nothing - just sand.

- Doesn't matter! - Signor Monetti said to himself. – I’ll build a house from my money. Instead of stones, bricks, boards and marbles I use coins.

He called an architect and told him to make a plan for the house.

“Let it have three hundred and sixty-five rooms,” ordered Signor Monetti, “one for each day of the year.” And twelve floors - one for each month of the year. And fifty-two staircases - one for each week of the year. And let it all be made from coins, okay?

- But nails... You can’t do without them... You’ll have to bring them.

- No way! Need nails? Take my gold coins and cast them into gold nails.

- And the roof needs tiles...

- No tiles! Take my silver coins and you will get a very good roof.

And the architect made a plan. It took three thousand five hundred road trains to bring all the coins needed to build a house to the desert.

And to accommodate the construction workers, four hundred tents had to be erected.

And the work began to boil. First, they dug a pit for the foundation, but did not drive reinforced concrete piles into it and lay slabs, but filled it with coins. One after another, dump trucks loaded with money drove up and dumped their precious cargo into the pit. Then they began to lay the walls: coin by coin, one on top of the other. A coin - a little bit of solution - another coin... The entire first floor was laid out from Italian silver coins of 500 lire. The second floor is made entirely of dollars...

The doors were also made from coins; they were carefully glued together. Then we started working on the windows, but there was no need for glass. It was replaced with paper money - Austrian schillings were folded with German marks and from the inside, from the side of the room, they were covered, like a curtain, with Turkish and Swedish banknotes.

The roof, chimneys and fireplaces were also made of metal money. Furniture, bathtubs, water taps, carpets, stair steps, bars on basement windows, toilets - everything was made from coins. Coins, coins, coins everywhere, just coins...

And in the evening, Signor Monetti certainly searched the workers leaving the construction site: what if one of them took away several soldi in his pocket or shoe?!

He even forced them to stick out their tongues, because if you wanted, you could hide a rupee, a piastre or a pezetta in your mouth.

When the construction was completed, there were still whole mountains of metal money left. Signor Monetti ordered them to be poured into the cellars, stacked in the attic and filled almost all the rooms with them, leaving only a narrow passage between the piles of coins so that one could get to them and count them if necessary.

And then everyone left - the architect, the foreman, the workers, the truck drivers. And Signor Monetti was left alone in his huge house, standing in the middle of the desert - in this money palace. Wherever you look - at the floor, at the ceiling, right, left, forward, backward, wherever you turn - everywhere you see only money, money, money. Because even the hundreds of precious paintings that hung on the walls were made of money. And the hundreds of statues that stood in the halls were also cast from bronze, copper or nickel coins.

Around Signor Monetti's house there was an endless desert. It stretched far, in all directions of the world. It happened that a strong wind would blow from the north or south, and then the shutters and doors would slam, making an unusual sound, similar to a light musical chime. And Signor Monetti, with his exquisite hearing, was able to discern the clinking of coins in it different countries peace.

“This kind of ‘ding!’,” he noted, “is made by Danish kroner. This is “ding!” - Dutch florins... But the voices of Brazil, Zambia, Guatemala are heard..."

When Signor Monetti walked up the stairs, he recognized the coins he walked on without looking - by their sound under his heels (he had very sensitive feet). And, rising with his eyes closed, he muttered: “Romania, India, Indonesia, Iceland, Ghana, Japan, South Africa...”

Signor Monetti slept on a bed, which, of course, was also made of coins: the headboard was lined with ancient gold coins - marenges, and the sheets were banknotes of one hundred thousand lire sewn with double thread. He changed his sheets every day because he was an extremely clean person. He put the used sheets in the safe.

Before going to bed, he usually read some book from his library. The volumes consisted of neatly bound banknotes from countries on all five continents.

One night, while he was reading a book consisting of Australian State Bank notes...

First end

One night, Signor Monetti suddenly heard someone knocking on the door. And he immediately unmistakably determined: “They are knocking on the door, which is made of old thalers of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.”

He went to look and made sure that he was not mistaken. It turned out to be robbers.

- Trick or Treat!

“Please, gentlemen, come in and make sure I don’t have a wallet.”

The robbers entered the house, but did not even think to look at the walls, doors, windows, furniture, but immediately rushed to look for the safe. They found it, but it contained only sheets. The robbers will not study what material they are made of - linen or paper with watermarks. In the entire house, from the first to the twelfth floor, there really wasn’t a single purse, not a single bag or sack. There were just piles of things lying everywhere in the rooms, and in the basements too, and in the attic, but in the darkness it was impossible to see what they were. And besides, the robbers already knew very well what they needed - they needed a wallet. But Signor Monetti didn’t have it.

At first the robbers got angry, and then they even burst into tears with frustration. After all, they had come all the way across the desert for the sake of this robbery and now they were forced to return empty-handed. Signor Monetti, to calm them down, offered them lemonade with ice. The robbers quenched their thirst and went into the darkness of the night, shedding bitter tears into the sand.

Second end

One night Signor Monetti heard someone knocking at the house. And he immediately unmistakably determined: “They are knocking on the door, which is made of ancient Ethiopian thalers.” He went downstairs and opened this door. In front of him stood two children lost in the desert. Hungry and cold, they cried bitterly.

- Help us, please...

Signor Monetti angrily slammed the door on them. But the children continued to knock and knocked for a very long time. In the end, Signor Monetti took pity on them.

- Well, take this door!

The children took the door. It turned out to be very heavy because it was entirely made of gold. But if they bring it home, they can buy bread and milk and even some coffee.

A few days later two more poor children came to Signor Monetti, and he gave them another door. And then, when everyone found out that he had become kind and generous, the poor people rushed to him from everywhere, from all corners of the earth. And no one left empty-handed. To whom he gave a window, to whom a chair made of 50 centesimo coins, and so on. A year later the turn came to the roof and the top floor.

And the poor people kept coming to him and coming, from all over the earth, and lined up in a long line.

“I didn’t know there were so many of them!” - Signor Monetti was surprised.

And he helped them year after year, gradually destroying his palace. When nothing remained of the palace, he moved into a tent, like a Bedouin or a tourist. And his soul felt light, light, just completely joyful.

Third end

One night, when Signor Monetti was leafing through a book of banknotes before going to bed, he suddenly discovered a counterfeit banknote among them. How did she end up here? And maybe there is more than one fake one here? With excitement, he began to leaf through all his books one by one and found about twelve more of the same counterfeit banknotes.

“Are there any counterfeit coins in my house by any chance?” We need to take a closer look!

And he, as you already know, felt everything very subtly. And the very thought that somewhere, in some corner of his palace, whether on the roof, in the parquet, in the door or in the wall, there might be a counterfeit coin, did not give him peace, literally deprived him of sleep.

And he began to dismantle his palace in search of counterfeit coins. I started from the roof and went down floor by floor. And if I found a counterfeit coin, I was very happy!

– I’ll find out! This coin was slipped to me by a scammer so-and-so!

He knew his coins inside out. And there were very few fake ones among them, because he was always very careful and attentive when dealing with money. But for a moment, of course, everyone can get distracted.

In the end, Signor Monetti tore the entire house into pieces and found himself sitting on a pile of silver and gold rubble. He no longer wanted to build the house again. It's just not interesting. And it was a pity for the mountain of money. So he sat there angry and despicable, not knowing what to do. And then, either from anger, or from sitting for a long time on this pile of coins, suddenly began to gradually decrease - it became less and less, until he himself eventually turned into a coin. Into a counterfeit coin. And the people who later took his money simply threw it away into the desert.

Thinker, writer, public figure Henry David Thoreau writes in his book Walden:

“Each family of savages has shelter, no worse than that of others, satisfying the simplest needs. Birds have nests, foxes have holes, savages have wigwams, and modern civilized society, I will say without exaggerating, provides shelter for no more than half of families. IN major cities, where civilization has finally won, the number of people who have shelter is a very small proportion. The rest pay annually for this outer shell, which has become necessary both in winter and in summer, such money as could buy a whole village of Indian wigwams, and because of this they live in need all their lives.

Is this really the best thing imaginable?»

Is it really impossible to imagine a future where humans, like other animals, have free reign over their homes without strings attached and do not have to pay huge sums of money their entire lives just to be protected from the elements? Of course not! This is crazy!

Faktrum publishes a list in which you will find examples of houses that “savages” around the world build with their own hands, using scrap materials that Mother Nature offers for free.

Tipi

Tipis are American Indian tent-like houses used by Plains tribes. The tipi is built from a cone-shaped wooden base covered with buffalo hides, and real tipis were up to 12 feet tall. Like modern tents, teepees can be quickly rolled up and unfolded. As the tribe moved from place to place, each family carried with it the stakes and skins from its tipi.

Plains Indians often moved from place to place to follow herds of buffalo. The whole village could pack up their tipis in an hour and be ready to move.

Vezha

Externally, the vezha resembles an Indian tipi, but less elongated and more stable in strong winds. This is a temporary shelter used by the Sami tribes who lived on the treeless plains of northern Scandinavia, and wandered after the reindeer. The vezha is made of wooden stakes covered with reindeer skins or, more often, with fabric.

In modern vezhas, wooden stakes have been replaced with aluminum ones, and heavier fabrics with lighter ones. Today, many people prefer to heat the vezha with a stove instead of an open fire, the advantage of this method is that it produces less smoke, but also less light, which is why it is quite dark inside.

Wigwam

Wigwams, sometimes known as "birch bark houses," are American Indian houses used by Algonquian tribes in forested regions. These dwellings are small, usually 8–10 feet in height, and are built on a frame of curved wooden stakes that are covered with a variety of available materials—grass, bark, twigs, mats, reeds, hides, or cloth.

The body can be in the form of a dome, in the form of a cone, or in the form of a rectangle with an arched roof. The curved surfaces provide ideal shelter in any weather and, although teepees are permanent, they are small and easy to construct.

In 1674, Gookin, who was in charge of the affairs of the Indian subjects of the Massachusetts Colony, wrote: “The best of their houses are very densely and carefully covered with tree bark, which is torn off when the tree is filled with sap, and immediately pressed into large pieces while it is green. Worse houses are covered with mats woven from special reeds; they are also quite warm and do not leak, although not as good as the first ones... I have seen buildings reaching 60 and even 100 feet in length and 30 in width... I often spent the night in wigwams, and they turned out to be no less warm than the best English ones Houses".

Hogan

The hogan is the main traditional home of the Navajo tribe. It can be round, cone-shaped, polyhedral or rectangular. It may or may not have interior posts, log or stone walls, and is covered with dirt with a variety of bark roof options. Everything fits.

The Old Hogans can be considered the founders of the idea of ​​an energy-efficient home. “Using a thick layer of clay on top of the wooden structure allows the house to remain cool in the summer due to natural air circulation and a damp floor. Hearth in winter for a long time retains internal heat. This approach is called thermal mass.”

In 2001, the hogan began its revival through a joint venture involving the Navajo Nation, Northern Arizona University, the US Forest Service and other private and public partners.

Half-dugout

The history of half-dugouts begins 6000 years ago. Dwellings of this type are half a cross between a turf house and a log house; the floor in them is usually buried 1–1.5 meters underground. Such dwellings are found in the Carpathians and on the wooded slopes of eastern Europe, but have also been found in North America.

Many of the first migrants from Ukraine to Canada at the end of the 19th century built their first homes in their new homeland this way. The same houses were built by Mennonites from Russian Empire, who settled in the Hillsboro region of Kansas.

The weekly national newspaper Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of March 20, 1875 describes the structure as follows: “...an attractively old-fashioned new village in Gnadenu, where about twenty farmers have built the strangest but most comfortable cheap houses that can be seen in the West, using a small quantity of logs. The red roof is built on the ground and covered with prairie grass. These houses serve both people and animals, being separated from the inside by a partition made of adobe bricks.”

Barabara

Barabara was the traditional home of the Aleuts, the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands. Just like a half-dugout. Barabara is partially located underground, making it easier to withstand strong winds.

Klochan

A clochan is a dry-built stone hut with a projecting roof, usually associated with the south-west border of Ireland. Dry building is a method where stones are laid without a binding mortar; the strength of such buildings is achieved due to the pressure of the stones on each other and their adhesion to each other. The shelters are usually round, resembling beehives in appearance, with very thick walls, up to 1.5 meters. Some klochans are not entirely made of stone, but have a covered roof.

log house

Some of the log buildings were built in Northern Europe thousands of years ago, and they are mainly associated with Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. They are constructed from logs stacked horizontally on top of each other, with an indentation at both ends to enhance traction. A thick trunk provides much better protection than a wooden frame covered with hides, boards or shingles.

Given the necessary tools, a family could build a log home from scratch in a matter of days that could potentially last for centuries. Not far from where I live there is one of the best preserved Swedish farms with log houses dating back to the 1700s that are still in good condition.

Just like a log house, a log house gains its strength from the pressure of the logs on each other, and has a tendency to sag slightly over time.

Longhouse

Reconstruction of a longhouse at the Viking Museum in Borg, on the island of Vestvågøy in Norway.

Longhouses were built throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, but are most associated with the Iroquois tribes of North America, as well as the ancient Norsemen of Scandinavia, better known as the Vikings.

They are built in the same way as tepees, with a frame of trunks and a covering of bark. The main difference is that longhouses are much, much larger. They can reach 200 feet in length, 20 in width and 20 in height.

Bamboo house

In this house, it is not the design that is important, but the excellent building material. Bamboo has a high strength/weight ratio. It is lightweight, grows quickly, and is a long-term renewable source of building material.

Bamboo, as a building material, is traditionally associated with the cultures of South Asia, East Asia and Southern Pacific Ocean, with some entry into Central and South America.

Pueblo

Pueblos are built by Indian tribes of the same name in the southwestern United States. These are modular, two- to three-story dwellings made of adobe (strong bricks made from baked clay mixed with straw) or large stones held together with adobe.

The complex of pueblo buildings can accommodate the entire clan, each family lives in its own adobe compartment, as in modern apartment buildings. These homes can last for dozens of generations in a warm, dry climate.

Earth house

In days gone by, there were a variety of mud houses all over the world, including American Indian houses such as Navajo hogans, Sioux mud dens, twig-roofed pits on the West Coast, and subarctic sod houses in Alaska, Canada, and in Iceland.

All these are semi-underground houses, covered with the surrounding earth on three or four sides and with a roof on top. The main advantage of an earthen house is that you are protected from the cold and wind by the earth, and if you place large windows on the sunny side, you can heat the house with the help of the sun.

Igloo

Igloos are snow houses used by the Inuit people of northern Canada. They are dome-shaped shelters built from blocks of ice installed in a spiral pattern and compacted with snow.

You'll be surprised how warm it can be inside when it's freezing outside! “The temperature outside can be -45C, but inside the air can heat up from +7C to +16C, only due to heat human bodies" - Cornell University, 2003.

Yurt

A yurt is a portable dwelling used by nomads on the slopes of central Asia for at least 3,000 years. Yes, you read that right, three thousand years.

A traditional yurt consists of a round wooden frame covered with felt covering. full installation takes only 2 hours.

Valipini

Not as ancient as others on this list, the valipini is worth mentioning because it is a simple but brilliant idea and can be done for as little as $300.

Valipini is an underground greenhouse that allows you to grow vegetables all year round. This idea first appeared in Bolivia. It uses the same earthen covering as many of the ancient houses on our list.

What makes valipini better than regular greenhouses? First, by placing the plant area 6 to 8 feet underground, you gain the advantage constant temperature ground below the freezing level. Secondly, the surrounding land retains daytime heat and then releases it back during the long, cold nights.

What can we learn?

These ancient houses are in many ways better than modern ones because they are adapted to their surroundings. Houses from the Arizona desert are very different from houses from the tundra of Alaska, and nomadic tribes have different needs than settled tribes.

The point is that our ancestors were one with their surroundings and coexisted with nature. These people were native to the land, while modern man behaves like an aggressive species that does not know its place in nature.

But perhaps the most important thing about these houses is that their builders knew when to stop. They clearly understood that a house was needed to be protected from precipitation and to have a safe place to sleep, and they did not waste their vital energy to build ever larger and more impressive houses.

And in conclusion, let us once again give the floor to Henry David Thoreau:

“You can create a house even more comfortable and luxurious than the current one, but everyone will be forced to admit that no one can afford it. Should we always strive to get more of all these things, and not sometimes try to be content with less? Will respectable citizens always solemnly instill in young men, both by advice and example, the need to acquire, before they die, a certain number of unnecessary galoshes and umbrellas or empty living rooms for empty guests?..”

This stunning home is located practically in the middle of the desert in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. Despite this, the windows of the house offer stunning views of the beauty of the desert, which stretches for 60 km. Originally thought out roof overhangs and the orientation of the house protect the interior of the villa from the unforgiving desert sun. When building the house, the architects tried to realize one condition of the owners: “Outdoor living,” so a summer kitchen, a terrace, an outdoor pool and a jacuzzi were thought out here.

House with an area of ​​520 sq. m. was built in 2012 according to the design of architect Mark Tate. He says: “My clients are parents and grandparents who love spending time with their family. So they planned to build their dream home in the desert mountains of Arizona. At the same time, they asked to create, as it were, three separate living spaces for each age group of a single family.

Mark Tate says: “I wanted to bring the desert landscape into my clients' homes so they could enjoy nature. We were very careful to integrate the house into the landscape.”

The home sits on 5 acres and features stunning views of the wild desert and Arizona mountains. Architect Tate managed to balance the interior space of the villa and the surrounding desert landscape, creating a harmonious and beautiful structure.

Mark Tate says: “I wanted to create a house that was a mystery and didn’t reveal all its secrets right away, but at the same time the house needed to be cozy. A large entrance made of steel attracts guests to the front door, and a small fountain fascinates with its murmur. What is located inside such a house is a mystery.”

The lower two-thirds of the house is made of glass, allowing light in as well as privacy. privacy. “Glass creates a beautiful shine,” says Tate. “The glass has iridescent dichroic flakes that make it iridescent and change color throughout the day.”

A small fountain is located between two cacti in the middle of the courtyard. The window from the dining room overlooks the fountain, so the whole family loves to admire the overflow of water during lunch.

The plaster on the wall here is part of a long, curved wall that extends the entire length of the house; sandblasted concrete blocks make up the wall on the right. The square hole design is repeated throughout the house.

The plan shows how the curved wall runs through the house. The windows frame the vast landscape, while the walls mask the view of the road and neighboring houses.

The large fireplace attracts with its coziness in the evenings.

The large living room also has its own fireplace.

The living room offers sweeping views of the surrounding landscape.

Bathroom design.

“We’re going to Sid, tomorrow we’re going to Sid” - you fall asleep with this thought and anticipate that you’ll wake up with it too, and it will be that same tomorrow, and we’ll be in it. And so it happens, and at first Sid means leaving the city and ice cream in a special foam box, three servings for each. The first - we are in the car, waiting for mom. She checks to see if they forgot to lock front door. Then the car starts moving, our windows pass by. They glow, but it’s the sun, we’re not at home. The second is a ruined fortress on the seashore. I climb the tower and look far away. The sky is shining, the sun is reflected from the sea with thousands of sparkling blades; I try not to squint; A sharp white sail is moving along the horizon, under the overhanging sky. A cool red drop drips onto your fingers, then another - the ice cream melts. Third portion - we'll arrive soon, the sun is sinking into the sand. Sid are dunes to the right and left of the highway, and behind them are ridges of hills that look like stale bread crusts. Sid is an unexpected patch of bright green grass here, it smells of stagnant water, a little further you can see the skeleton of a truck, ants are swarming in the former engine. The older I get, the closer the word “Sid” comes to the man who, seeing our car coming around the bend, rises from his sagging straw chair under the acacia tree and waves to us.

We get out of the car and the doors slam. I try to take a breath, but I can't feel the air entering my lungs. Living beings die in such a situation, but this does not happen to us. The hot air just fills us; and we would fly up like balloons, but it’s just as hot around us, so we stay on the ground and head towards the house. Sid shouts to us: “Welcome!”

The road ends at Sid’s house and touches his front garden with tongues of cracked asphalt. The desert is everywhere, we are in it, but the road is surrounded by hills, and this is not visible. To understand where we are, we need to walk around the house or go into it and look out the window opposite the entrance. And then you see another horizon, not sparkling, but absorbing light in the line that separates the sky from what approaches it. The wind blows from there, carrying dust into the house - it pours out of cracks in the plaster walls, lies on the floor - whitish and transparent. On the bathroom door, the previous owners of the house - it seems, some kind of bankrupt geological office - even posted a sign: “Before entering the shower, shake the sand out of your head.” I automatically run my hand through my hair and hear the sound of hundreds of grains of sand falling to the floor. Dad says that one day the plaster house will be filled to the top with sand, and in winter it will rain heavily, and the plaster house will melt in it like a cube of yellowed refined sugar. Sid invites us to drink lemonade.

Early in the morning we go behind the house to see what the wind has brought during the night. The sun has just risen, and the space in front of us is lined with gray-blue shadows - from the house, from the hills, from the clouds sliding across the sky that has not yet separated from the earth, brightening from within, from us. I turn around and look at the house. On this side it is indeed covered with sand almost to the windows. We walk along the facade and look at our feet, looking for the “catch” - what was left lying when the wind retreated to the horizon. We find a dried plant with branches towards the house. On other mornings, Sid found rusted tin cans, burst helium balloons, sanded teeth of small animals, a square mirror, a crumpled postcard with a tower by a mountain river, pebbles with shellfish bodies imprinted on them, a photograph of a boy on a wooden horse, gun casings, worn-out coins , scraps of wool. One day he discovered the skeleton of a medium-sized bird - with folded wings and a “compact” head lying neatly between them. It looked like a watch in a glass case, inside of which its entire mechanism was visible. Sid entered the house, holding it in his palms, and saw that a bird was darting about in the room - a nondescript, pockmarked bird with a curved beak. A few seconds later she flew out the window facing the road, on the leeward side. Sid stood in the room with a skeleton in his hands, and then swung and threw it out the opposite window - for symmetry. The skeleton lay there for several days, and then disappeared somewhere. Since then, Sid has not kept anything he found behind the house; he has returned everything to the sand. “An empty house is a point of balance,” he said. Another time, on a dune that had formed by morning behind the house, he discovered a living bird - wounded with a broken wing. He brought her into the house and settled her in cardboard box. The wound gradually healed; the bird lived with him for several years. In the morning he sat her on the windowsill, always on the window that looked out onto the front garden and the road. She spent there long hours, moved reluctantly. When we visited Sid, we drove up to his house, I noticed her cautious profile, her black wide-open eye above the window frame. The bird also became "Sid". When she died, her body, which Sid discovered in the morning in a cardboard box, was shriveled, dull - almost a skeleton. Sid buried this bird in the front garden, under an acacia tree.

One morning Joseph came out of the desert. It so happened that I noticed him first. Sid gave me his binoculars and I was just setting them up. There was also sand in the binoculars, and everything that I saw - dunes, dunes, ridges of hills to the right and left of me - was under a sandy shower and had no clear outlines. Suddenly, a blurry yellow dot appeared right in front of me. I tried to see it without binoculars, but I only saw a grain of sand, brighter than the rest. I could not determine how far away she was from me. Finally, I managed to set up the binoculars. The sandy shower behind the lenses did not stop, but I saw a man approaching us from the desert. We met him behind the house. The man became bigger and bigger. He was barefoot, wearing canvas hiking pants that were torn at the knees and, for some reason, wearing a yellow shirt with some kind of bears, trains, stars, and flowers. I looked at them without looking away. Joseph slowly approached, I saw tangled, bleached hair, red skin, black, cracked lips and mica-like, motionless eyes. We set him up in the house, under a fan, and gave him water. Two days later, Joseph smiled, told us his name, said that winter was coming, and so it was, but we didn’t find out anything more about him. True, there was no one to find out, because we soon returned home, and Sid, it seems, did not try to find out anything.

The next time we headed out into the desert, it was winter. I was driving the car, my parents were sitting in the back seat. On the way, I bought them ice cream. When, late in the evening, a familiar house finally appeared around the bend, Joseph rose from his straw chair under the acacia tree and waved his hand to us. He treated us to lemonade and told us that Sid had left - not long after us: Joseph woke up one morning and Sid was nowhere to be found and his things were gone. However, he did not have things in every sense of the word. We were sitting under an acacia tree, and a gray dog ​​on three legs came out of the house, hobbled towards us, lay down heavily by the straw chair, and put its muzzle on Joseph’s shoe. I went into the house and went to the opposite window; sand spilled over the window sill.

***
We return after dark. Mom looks for the key in her bag, can’t find it, even dumps its contents on the steps - there is no key. “He probably stayed in the desert,” says dad. “There’s nothing left!” I take the key out of my jacket pocket and hand it to my mother. It has gotten colder, but the key is warm to the touch.

_____
Subject:
“A shirt with yellow flowers and four cucumbers” from