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In the first short chapter, the two parts are separated by a dot; they contain the most expressive touches of Russian life: foolishness and holy fools are described, but also Russian artisans and artisans. "Beggars,
seers, beggars, sorcerers, lazarians, wanderers, wretched, empty saints, kaliks, prophets, fools,
fools, holy fools - these are the unambiguous names of pretzels of the life of holy Rus', beggars in holy Rus', kaliks-passing, miserable for Christ's sake, holy fools for Christ's sake of holy Rus' - these pretzels have adorned life since the emergence of Rus', from the first tsars Ivanov, the life of the Russian millennium. All Russian historians, ethnographers and writers dipped their feathers on the blessed. “And there are other eccentrics in St. Petersburg, in other large Russian cities. Their pedigree is imperial, not royal. From Elizabeth arose started Petromiskusstvo - Russian furniture. This serf art has no written history, and the names of the masters have been destroyed by time. This art was the work of singles, cellars in cities, back closets in a people's hut on estates. This art existed in bitter vodka and cruelty ... "So, in Rus' there are eccentrics and ... eccentrics. Both can be seen in the city of Uglich, called by the author Russian Bruges or Russian Kamakura. Two hundred miles from Moscow, and Railway fifty versts. It is here that the ruins of manors and mahogany are stuck. Of course, a museum has been created ancient life, but the most beautiful things are kept in the houses of former owners. In the city of not a little unfortunate, forced to exist by selling Russian antiquities for next to nothing. This is used by businessmen-appraisers from the capital who visit the wilderness, feeling like benefactors, saviors folk art and world culture. On a tip from Skudrin Yakov Karpovich, “with a lousy smile, servile and malicious at the same time,” they go from house to house, visiting either old women, or single mothers, or old people who have gone out of their minds, urging them to give away the most valuable of what they have. As a rule, these are the things of the old masters, for which, if not now, they will later earn a lot of money.
And tiles, and beads, and porcelain, and mahogany, and tapestries - everything is in use. With a register created by the obliging Yakov Karpovich, some Bezdetov brothers silently enter the house. Looking around themselves as if with blind eyes, they shamelessly begin to knead and feel everything - ask the price. Out of poverty and poverty, these fools fish out sweet morsels for themselves. Strictly materialists, they firmly know what is worth today under the new regime and how much they will have. The great local thinker Yakov Karpovich Skudrin is actually sure that the proletariat should disappear very soon: “The whole revolution is useless, a mistake, khe, history. Because, yes, two or three more generations, and the proletariat will disappear, first of all, in the United States, in England, in Germany.
Marx wrote his theory of the flourishing of muscular labor. Now machine labor will replace muscles. Here's my thought. Soon, only engineers will remain around the machines, and the proletariat will disappear, the proletariat will turn into only engineers. Well, here's my thought. And an engineer is not a proletarian, because the more cultured a person is, the fewer Fanaber needs he has, and it is convenient for him to live equally with everyone materially, to equalize wealth to free the thought, yes, there, the English, rich and poor, sleep the same in jackets and live in the same houses, but with us - it used to be - compare a merchant with a man - a merchant, like a priest, dresses up and lives in mansions. And I can walk barefoot and it won't make me worse. You say, khe, yes, exploitation will remain? - how will it stay? - a man who can be exploited, because - like a beast - you won’t let him into the car, he will break it, and it costs millions. The car is worth more than that, so that with it a penny per person can be saved - a person must know the car, to the car knowledgeable person needed - and instead of the previous hundred, only one. Such a person will be groomed. The proletariat will perish!” If the forecast of the future proletariat, given by the mouth of an unsympathetic, but very reasonably thinking hero, is given, as it were, with the hope of the triumph of wisdom, then the forecast of the future modern woman not optimistic. With the collapse of the family, caused by the collapse of social foundations, there will be a lot of single mothers and just single women. The new state supports and will continue to support single mothers. Having met his sister Claudia, younger son Skudrina, runaway communist Akim,
listens to her monologue: “I'm twenty-four. In the spring, I decided that it was time to become a woman, I became her. The brother is indignant: “But do you have a loved one?” - “No, no! There were several. I was curious… But I got pregnant and I decided not to have an abortion.” - "And you don't know who the husband is?" “I can't decide who. But it doesn't matter to me. I am a mother. I can do it, and the state will help me, but morality ... I don’t know what morality is, I have been taught to understand this. Or I have my own morals. I answer only for myself and myself. Why surrender is not moral? I do what I want and I am not obligated to anyone.
Husband? .. I do not need him in night shoes and to give birth. People will help me - I believe in people. People love the proud and those who don't weigh them down. And the state will help ... "Akim-communist - wanted to know what was going on new way of life- life was ancient. But the morality of Claudia for him is both unusual and new.” However, is there anything on earth that remains unchanged? No doubt it's the sky, the clouds
heavenly spaces. But ... also "the art of mahogany, the art of things." “They get drunk and die, but things remain alive, live, love around them, die, they keep the secrets of sorrows, loves, deeds, joys. Elizabeth, Catherine - Rococo, Baroque. Pavel is Maltese. Pavelstrog, strict calm, mahogany, dark empire, classic. Hellas. People die, but things live, and from the things of antiquity come the "fluids" of antiquity, bygone eras. In 1928 - in Moscow, Leningrad, provincial cities- antiquities shops appeared, where antiquities were bought and sold by pawnshops, the state trade, the state fund, museums: in 1928 there were many people who collected "fluids".
People who bought antiques after the thunders of the revolutions, in their homes, choosing antiquity, inhaled living life dead things. And Pavel the Maltese was held in high esteem - direct and strict, without bronze and curlicues.
Meanings in other dictionaries
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Boris Pilnyak
Red tree
CHAPTER FIRST
Beggars, seers, beggars, swindlers, lazars, wanderers, wanderers, wretched, empty saints, kaliks, prophets, fools, fools, holy fools - these are the unambiguous names of the pretzels of the life of Holy Russia, beggars in Holy Russia, kaliks passable, wretched for Christ's sake, holy fools for the sake of Holy Christ of Russia, - these pretzels have adorned life since the days of the emergence of Russia, from the first kings of Ivanov, the life of the Russian millennium. All Russian historians, ethnographers and writers soaked their feathers on the blessed. These madmen or swindlers - beggars, empty saints, prophets - were considered the beauty of the church, the brethren of Christ, prayers for peace, as they were called in classical Russian history and literature.
The well-known Moscow holy fool, who lived in Moscow in the middle of the nineteenth century, a half-educated student of the theological academy, Ivan Yakovlevin, died in the Preobrazhensky hospital. Reporters, poets and historians wrote about his funeral. The poet wrote in Vedomosti.
“What celebration is the Yellow House preparing?
Why do waves of people flow there
In carts and landau, in droshky and on foot,
And all hearts are full of gloomy anxiety?
And sometimes a vague voice is heard between them,
Filled with heartfelt, severe pain:
- “Ivan Yakovlevich died out untimely!
A prophet worthy of a better fate is gone!”
The chronicler Skavronsky in his “Essays on Moscow” says that for five days, until the corpse was buried, more than two hundred memorial services were served near the corpse. Many spent the night near the church. N. Barkov, the author of a study entitled “26 Moscow false prophets, false holy fools, fools and fools”, an eyewitness to the funeral, says that it was proposed to bury Ivan Yakovlevich on Sunday, “as it was announced in the Police Vedomosti”, and on this day, than light, admirers began to flock, but the burial did not take place due to disputes that arose about where exactly to bury him. It almost came to a fight, but there was already scolding, and decent. Some wanted to take him to Smolensk, to the place of his homeland, others tried to have him buried in the Pokrovsky monastery for men, where a grave was even dug for him under the church, others tenderly asked to give his ashes to the Alekseevsky women's monastery, and the fourth, clinging to coffin, dragged him to the village of Cherkizovo. - "They were afraid that the bodies of Ivan Yakovlevich would not be stolen." – The historian writes: “All this time it rained and there was terrible mud, but, despite the fact that during the transfer of the body from the apartment to the chapel, from the chapel to the church, from the church to the cemetery, women, girls, young ladies in crinolines fell prostrated, crawled under the coffin. - Ivan Yakovlevich - during his lifetime - defecated under himself, - “it flowed from under him (as the historian writes) and the watchmen were ordered to sprinkle sand on the floor. This sand, soaked from under Ivan Yakovlevich, was collected by his fans and taken home, and the sand began to exert healing power. The child's tummy ached, the mother gave him half a spoonful of sand in a porridge, and the child recovered. Cotton wool, with which the dead man's nose and ears were plugged, after the funeral, was divided into small pieces for distribution to believers. Many came to the coffin with bubbles and collected in them the moisture that flowed from the coffin due to the fact that the deceased died of dropsy. Srachitsa, in which Ivan Yakovlevich died, was torn to pieces. - By the time they were taken out of the church, freaks, fools, bigots, wanderers, wanderers had gathered. They did not enter the church, due to crowding, and stood on the streets. And then, in broad daylight, among those gathered, teachings were made to the people, phenomena and visions were made, prophecies and blasphemy were uttered, money was collected and ominous roars were made. - Ivan Yakovlevich last years of his life he ordered his worshipers to drink the water in which he washed: they drank. Ivan Yakovlevich not only made oral divinations, but also written ones, which are preserved for historical research. They wrote to him, asked: “Does such and such get married?” - he answered: - "Without pratsi, not bandy kololatsi" ...
Kitay-gorod in Moscow was the cheese where the worms of the fools lived. Some wrote poetry, others sang with roosters, peacocks and snigirs, still others cursed everyone in the name of the Lord, others knew only one phrase, which was considered prophetic and gave the prophets names, for example, “a person’s life is a fairy tale, a coffin is a stroller, to go - not shaky!” - There were amateurs barking dogs, barking prophesying God's commands. There were beggars, beggars, providos, sorcerers, lazarus, empty saints-poor of all holy Rus' in this class - there were peasants, and burghers, and nobles, and merchants - children, old men, hefty peasants, fertile women. They were all drunk. All of them were covered with the onion-like blue calmness of the Asiatic Russian kingdom, they were bitter like cheese and onions, for the onions in the churches, of course, are a symbol of the onion Russian life.
... And there are in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in other large Russian cities - other eccentrics. Their pedigree is imperial, not royal. From Elizabeth arose, begun by Peter, the art of Russian furniture. This serf art has no written history, and the names of the masters have been destroyed by time. This art was the work of singles, cellars in cities, back closets in a people's hut on estates. This art existed in bitter vodka and in cruelty. Jacob and Boule became teachers. Serf teenagers were sent to Moscow and St. Petersburg, to Paris, to Vienna - there they learned the art. Then they returned - from Paris to the St. Petersburg cellars, from St. Petersburg to the out-of-the-way closets - and - they created. For dozens of years, another master made some kind of samoson or a toilet, or a burzo, or a bookcase - he worked, drank and died, leaving his art to his nephew, because the master was not supposed to have children, and the nephew either copied the art of his uncle, or continued it. The master was dying, and things lived for a century in landowners' estates and mansions, they loved around them and died on samosons, they hid in secret boxes of secretaries secret correspondence, brides looked at their youth in dressing mirrors, old women - old age. Elizabeth - Catherine - rococo, baroque - bronze, curlicues, rosewood, pink, black, Karelian wood, Persian walnut. Pavel is strict, Pavel is a Maltese; Pavel has soldier lines, strict calm, darkly polished mahogany, green skin, black lions and vultures. Alexander - Empire, classical, Hellas. Nikolai is again Pavel, crushed by the greatness of his brother Alexander. So the epochs fell on the mahogany. In 1861 fell serfdom. Serf craftsmen were replaced by furniture factories - Levinson, Thonet, Viennese furniture. But the nephews of the masters - through vodka remained to live. These masters are not building anything now, they are restoring old things, but they have left all the skills and traditions of their uncles. They are loners and they are silent. They are proud of their work, like philosophers, and they love it, like poets. They still live in basements. You cannot send such a craftsman to a furniture factory, you cannot force him to repair a thing made after Nicholas the First. He is an antique dealer, he is a restorer. He will find in the attic of a Moscow house or in the shed of an unburnt estate - a table, a trellis, a sofa - Catherine's, Pavlov's, Alexander's - and he will dig over them for months in his basement, smoke, think, try on with his eye - in order to restore a living life of the dead of things. He will love this thing. What good, he will find a yellowed bundle of letters in the secret drawer of the burtz. He is a restorer, he looks back at the time of things. He is necessarily an eccentric - and he will eccentrically sell the restored thing to the same eccentric collector, with whom - in the deal he will drink cognac, poured from a bottle into Catherine's bottle and from a glass - a former imperial - diamond service.
CHAPTER TWO
1928
The city is Russian Bruges and Russian Kamakura. Three hundred years ago, the last prince of the Rurik dynasty was killed in this city, on the day of the murder, the boyar children of the Tuchkovs played with the prince, and the Tuchkov family is alive in the city to this day, like monasteries and many other families, less noble birth... - Russian antiquities, Russian province, the upper reaches of the Volga, forests, swamps, villages, monasteries, landowners' estates - a chain of cities - Tver, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great. City - monastic Bruges of Russian destinies and alleys in a healing chamomile, stone monuments murders and centuries. Two hundred miles from Moscow, and the railway is fifty miles away.
The ruins of manors and mahogany are stuck here. The head of the museum of antiquity here walks in a top hat, a swing, in plaid trousers, and let go of his sideburns, like Pushkin, - in the pockets of his swing are the keys to the museum and monasteries - he drinks tea in a tavern, vodka alone - in a closet, in bibles, icons, archimandrite hoods and mitres, surplices, orarii, handrails, cassocks, vestments, airs, covers, throne robes - of the thirteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth centuries - in his office he has a Karazin mahogany, an ashtray on his desk - a noble cap with a red band and a white crown.
Barin Karazin, Vyacheslav Pavlovich, once served in the cavalry guard regiment and retired twenty five years before the revolution because of his honesty, because his colleague was stealing, he was sent to investigate, he reported the truth to the authorities, the authorities covered the thief, - master Karazin did not bear it, filed a second report - on his dismissal - and settled in the estate, coming from there once a week to his county town for shopping, rode in a hutch carriage with two footmen, pointed with a white glove to the clerk in the shop to wrap him half a pound of grain, three-quarters of a salmon, a piece of stellate sturgeon - one footman paid, the other footman took things; once the merchant reached out to the master with his hand, the master did not give his hand, arguing that he did not give his hand short word, - "it will cost!" - Barin Karazin walked in a noble cap, in a Nikolaev overcoat; the revolution evicted him from the estate to the city, but left him his overcoat and cap; in the lines the gentleman stood, in a noble cap, having his wife in front of him instead of lackeys.
There was Barin Karazin selling antiques; on these matters he went to the museologist; at the museologist's he saw things taken from him from the estate by the will of the revolution, looked at them disdainfully, but once he saw on the museologist's table an ashtray of the style of a nobleman's cap.
"Take it off," he said curtly.
- Why? the museum specialist asked.
“The cap of a Russian nobleman cannot be a spittoon,” master Karazin replied.
Connoisseurs of antiquity argued. Barin Karazin left with anger. More he did not cross the threshold of a museologist. - A saddler lived in the city, who gratefully remembered how master Karazin, when the saddler was a minor and lived with the master in the service of a Cossack, how the master knocked out seven teeth for his sluggishness with one blow of his left hand.
A dense silence froze in the city, calling out of anguish twice a day with steamship whistles, and calling back the antiquities of church belfries: - until 1928, - for in 1928, the bells were taken from many churches for the Rudmetalltorg trust. Blocks, logs and hemp ropes high up on the bell towers, the bells were pulled out from the belfries, hung above the ground, then they were thrown down. And while the bells were crawling on the ropes, they sang with a dense cry - and this cry stood over the denseness of the city. The bells fell with a roar and an ear, and went into the ground when a arshin fell by two.
During the days of this story, the city was groaning with precisely these bells of antiquities.
The most needed in the city was the trade union book; there were two queues in the shops - professional tutors and those who did not have them; boats on the Volga for hire were for professional tutors - a dime, for others - forty kopecks an hour; movie tickets for others - twenty-five, forty and sixty kopecks, professional tutors - five, ten and fifteen. The trade book, where it was, lay in the first place, next to the bread card, moreover, bread cards, and, consequently, bread, were issued only to those who had an elective vote, four hundred grams a day, to those who did not have a vote and their children - Bread was not given. The cinema was located in a professional garden, in an insulated shed - and there were no calls to the cinema, but they signaled from the power plant - to the whole city at once: the first signal - you have to finish drinking tea, the second - get dressed and go out into the street. The power station worked until one o'clock - but on name days, October days and other unexpected celebrations at the chairman of the executive committee, at the chairman of the industrial complex, at other authorities - the electricity was late to go out sometimes for the whole night - and the rest of the population then adjusted their celebrations to these nights. In the cinema, once a representative of the internal trade, something like Sats, something like Katz, in a completely sober state, accidentally pushed the wife of the chairman of the executive committee out of awkwardness, - she said to him, full of contempt: - "I am Kuvarzina," - authorized Sats, being not aware of the strength of this surname, he apologized in surprise - and was subsequently fucked out of the county for his surprise. The authorities in the city lived crowded, being wary, in natural suspicion, of the rest of the population, replacing the public with squabbles and re-electing themselves every year from one district leadership post to another, depending on the groupings of squabbling personalities according to the trishkin caftan principle. The economy was combined according to the same principle of trishkin caftan. He managed the plant (the plant arose in the year when Ivan Ozhogov, the hero of the story, went into okhlomony). The members of the board of the plant were the chairman of the executive committee (husband of the wife) Kuvarzin and the representative of the worker's krin Presnukhin, the chairman was Nedosugov. They ran the slow ruin of pre-revolutionary wealth, bungling and lovingly. The oil mill worked - at a loss, the sawmill - at a loss, the tannery - without a loss, but also without profits, and without a depreciation account. In winter, in the snow, with forty-five horses, half the county population, they dragged fifty miles away - a new boiler for this tannery - they dragged it and left it - for inappropriateness, writing off its cost on account of profits and losses; they bought a bark crusher - and also abandoned it - as unusable, writing it off to profit and loss; then they bought a straw cutter for crushing bark - and abandoned it, because bark is not straw - they wrote it off. Improved working life, lived-construction; bought a two-story wooden house, they transported it to the factory and - sawn it for firewood, sawed five cubes, because the house turned out to be rotten, - it turned out to be suitable logs - thirteen pieces; nine thousand rubles were added to these thirteen - and the house was built: just at the time when the plant was closed due to it, although breakeven, like other enterprises, but also unprofitable, - new house remained empty. The plant covered its losses by selling the equipment of enterprises that had been inactive since the pre-revolutionary period, as well as by such combinations: - Kuvarzin - the chairman sold the forests to Kuvarzin - a member at fixed prices with a 50% discount - for 25 thousand rubles, - Kuvarzin - a member sold the same the forest itself to the population and to Kuvarzin, the chairman, in particular - at fixed prices without a discount - for fifty too thousand rubles. - By 1927, the board wished to rest on its laurels: they gave Kuvarzin a briefcase, the money for the briefcase was taken from the accountable amounts, and then they ran around with the signature sheet to the natives in order to return the money to the cashier. In view of the isolation of their interests and the life that flows secretly from the rest of the population, the authorities are of no interest to the story. Alcohol in the city was sold only in two types - vodka and church wine, there were no others, a lot of vodka was consumed, and church wine, although less, but also a lot - for Christ's blood and warmth. Cigarettes were sold in the city - "Cannon" eleven kopecks a pack, and "Box", fourteen kopecks, there were no others. Both for vodka and for cigarettes there were queues - professional and non-professional. Steamships passed twice a day, where you could buy Sapho cigarettes, port wine and ryabinovka in the buffet - and Sapho smokers were obvious embezzlers, because there was no private trade in the city, and the budgets for Sapho were not calculated. The city lived in the hope of becoming a supernumerary, vegetable gardens and mutual assistance serving each other.
Skudrin's house stood at the Skudrin Bridge and Yakov Karpovich Skudrin, a walker in peasant affairs, a man of eighty-five years old, lived in the house - in addition to Yakov Karpovich Skudrin, his two younger sisters, Kapitolina and Rimma, and his brother Okhlomon lived in the city separately from Yakov Karpovich Ivan, who renamed himself Ozhogov, is discussed below.
For the past forty years, Yakov Karpovich suffered from a hernia and, when he walked, supported this hernia with his right hand through a hole in his pants, - his hands were plump and green, - he salted bread thickly from a common salt shaker, crunching with salt, carefully pouring the rest of the salt back into the salt shaker. For the past thirty years, Yakov Karpovich has forgotten how to sleep normally, waking up at night and then staying awake with the Bible until dawn, and then sleeping until noon, but at noon he always went to the reading room, to read newspapers: newspapers were not sold in the city, there was not enough money for a subscription, - Newspapers were read in the reading rooms. Yakov Karpovich was fat, completely gray and bald, his eyes watered, and he wheezed and sniffed for a long time while he was preparing to speak. The house of the Skudrins once belonged to the landowner Vereisky, who went bankrupt after the abolition of serfdom in the elective position of justice of the peace: Yakov Karpovich, having served the pre-reform soldiery, served as a clerk from Vereisky, learned to judge hook-making and bought the house from him along with the position when he went bankrupt. The house stood intact from Catherine's time, for a century and a half of its existence it darkened like its mahogany, turning green with glass. Yakov Karpovich remembered serfdom. The old man remembered everything - from the master of his serf village, from the sets to Sevastopol; over the past fifty years, he remembered all the patronymic names and surnames of all Russian ministers and people's commissars, all ambassadors to the imperial Russian court and the Soviet Central Executive Committee, all foreign ministers of the great powers, all prime ministers, kings, emperors and popes. The old man lost count of years and said:
- I survived Nikolai Pavlovich, Alexander Nikolaevich, Alexander Alexandrovich, Nikolai Alexandrovich, Vladimir Ilyich - I will survive Alexei Ivanovich too!
The old man had a very lousy smile, servile and malicious at the same time, his whitish eyes watered when he smiled. The old man was cool, as his sons were cool in him. The eldest son Alexander, long before 1905, being sent with an urgent letter to the steamship office, being late to the ship, received a slap from his father under the words: “Get out, scoundrel!” - this slap in the face was the last drop of honey, - the boy was fourteen years old, - the boy turned around, left the house - and came home - only six years later, a student of the Academy of Arts. Over the years, the father sent a letter to his son, where he ordered his son to return and promised to deprive his son of his parental blessing, cursing him forever: on the same letter, just below the father’s signature, the son wrote: “To hell with him, with your blessing,” and returned father's letter to father. When Alexander - six years after leaving, on a sunny spring day - entered the living room, his father went to him (to meet him with a joyful smile and with a raised hand to beat his son: the son with a cheerful smile took his father by the wrists with his hands, smiled again, strength shone merrily in his smile, his father's hands were in pincers, - the son seated his father, slightly pressing on his wrists, to the table, in an armchair, and the son said:
“Hello, papa, why should you worry, papa?” - sit down papa!
The father wheezed, giggled, sniffled, evil kindness passed over his face, - the old man shouted to his wife:
- Maryushka, yes, hee-hee, vodka, bring us vodka, my dear, cold from the cellar, with a cold snack, - grown up, son, grew up, - my son came to our grief, son of a bitch!
His sons went: an artist, a priest, a ballet actor, a doctor, an engineer. The younger two brothers became the eldest - the artist and the father, the two youngest left home as the eldest, and the youngest became a communist, engineer Akim Yakovlevich - and he never returned to his father, and, running into his native city, lived at aunts Kapitolina and Rimma. By 1928, the elder grandchildren of Yakov Karpovich were married, but youngest daughter was twenty years old. The daughter was the only one, and no education was given to her, in the thunder of the revolution.
An old man, his wife Maria Klimovna and daughter Katerina lived in the house. Half of the house and the mezzanine were not heated in winter. The house lived the way people lived - long before Catherine, even before Peter, even if the house was silent with Catherine's mahogany. The old people lived in the garden. From the industry in the house there were matches, kerosene and salt, only: matches, kerosene and salt were disposed of by the father. Maria Klimovna, Katerina, and the old man worked from spring to autumn on cabbages, beets, turnips, cucumbers, carrots, and on malt root, which was used instead of sugar. In the summer, at dawn, one could meet an old man. - in nightwear, barefoot, with right hand in a hole, with a twig in his left hand - outside the outskirts in the dew and fog, grazing cows. In winter, the old man lit the lamp only during those hours when he was awake - at other hours, mother and daughter sat in darkness. At noon, the old man went to the reading room to read newspapers, absorbing the names and news of the communist revolution. - Katerina then sat down at the harpsichords and learned the spiritual chants of Kostalsky, she sang in the church choir. The old man came home at dusk, ate and went to bed. The house fell into the whispers of women and into darkness. Katerina then went to the cathedral for rehearsals. Father woke up at midnight, lit a lamp, ate and delved into the Bible, read aloud by heart. At six o'clock the old man fell asleep again. The old man lost time, having ceased to be afraid of death, having forgotten how to be afraid of life. Mother and daughter were silent in front of the old man. The mother cooked porridge and cabbage soup, baked pies, drowned and fermented milk, cooked jelly (and hid grandmothers for her grandchildren), that is, she existed as it was among the Russians in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and she cooked food in the same way. fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Maria Klimovna, a dry old woman, she was a wonderful woman, the type of women who are kept in Russia by villages along with ancient icons of the Mother of God. The cruel will of her husband, who fifty years ago, on the day after the wedding, when she put on a velvet, raspberry-colored jacket, asked her: “What is this for?” (- she did not understand the question then) - "What is this for?" the husband asked, “take it off! - I know you even without outfits, but there is nothing for others to look at! - having slobbered then thumb, painfully, the husband showed his wife how to comb her whiskey - the cruel will of the husband, which forced the velvet shower warmer to be put into the chest forever, sent the wife to the kitchen - did she break the will of the wife - or hardened her by submission? - the wife was forever unquestioning, worthy, silent, sad, - and she was never crooked. Her world did not go out from behind the gate - and there was only one way behind the gates - into the church, like a grave. She sang Kostalsky's psalms with her daughter, she was sixty-nine years old. It's cold in the house pre-Petrine Rus. The old man read the Bible by heart at night, having ceased to be afraid of life. Very rarely, after months, in the silent hours of the night, the old man would go to his wife's bedside - he would then whisper:
- Maryushka, yes, - khe, um! .. yes, khe, Maryushka, this is life, Maryushka!
He held a candle in his hands, his eyes watered and laughed, his hands trembled.
- Maryushka, khe, here I am, yes, this is life, Maryushka, khe!
Maria Klimovna was baptized.
- Be ashamed, Yakov Karpovich! ..
Yakov Karpovich put out the light.
Katerina's daughter had little yellow eyes that seemed motionless from endless sleep. Near her swollen eyelids, freckles bred all year round. Her arms and legs were like logs, her breasts were as large as the udders of Swiss cows.
... The city is Russian Bruges and Russian Kamakura.
Pilnyak Boris
Red tree
BORIS PILNYAK
Red tree
CHAPTER FIRST
Beggars, seers, beggars, swindlers, lazars, wanderers, wanderers, wretched, empty saints, kaliks, prophets, fools, fools, holy fools - these are the unambiguous names of pretzels of the life of Holy Russia, beggars in Holy Russia, kaliks passable, poor for Christ's sake, holy fools for the sake of Holy Christ of Russia, - these pretzels have adorned life since the days of the emergence of Russia, from the first kings of Ivanov, the life of the Russian millennium. All Russian historians, ethnographers and writers soaked their feathers on the blessed. These crazy or crooks - beggars, empty saints, prophets - were considered the beauty of the church, the brethren of Christ, prayers for peace, as they were called in classical Russian history and literature.
The famous Moscow holy fool, who lived in Moscow in the middle of the nineteenth century, a half-educated student of the theological academy, Ivan Yakovlevin, died in the Preobrazhensky hospital. Reporters, poets and historians wrote about his funeral. The poet wrote in Vedomosti.
"What celebration is the Yellow House preparing?
Why do waves of people flow there
In carts and landau, in droshky and on foot,
And all hearts are full of gloomy anxiety?
And sometimes a vague voice is heard between them,
Filled with heartfelt, severe pain:
- "Ivan Yakovlevich died out untimely!
A prophet worthy of a better fate is gone!"
The chronicler Skavronsky in "Essays on Moscow" says that in the course of five days, until the corpse was buried, more than two hundred memorial services were served near the corpse. Many spent the night near the church. N. Barkov, the author of a study entitled - "26 Moscow false prophets, false holy fools, fools and fools", an eyewitness to the funeral, says that it was proposed to bury Ivan Yakovlevich on Sunday, "as it was announced in the Police Vedomosti", and on this day, than light, admirers began to flock, but the burial did not take place due to disputes that arose over where exactly to bury him. , others strove for him to be buried in the Pokrovsky monastery, where a grave was even dug for him under the church, others tenderly asked to give his ashes to the Alekseevsky monastery for women, and the fourth, clinging to the coffin, dragged him to the village of Cherkizovo. - "They were afraid that the bodies of Ivan Yakovlevich would not be stolen." - The historian writes: “During all this time it rained and there was terrible mud, but, despite the fact that during the transfer of the body from the apartment to the chapel, from the chapel to the church, from the church to the cemetery, women, girls, young ladies in crinolines fell prostrated, crawled under the coffin. - Ivan Yakovlevich - during his lifetime - defecated under himself, "it flowed from under him (as the historian writes) and the watchmen were ordered to sprinkle sand on the floor. This sand, soaked from under Ivan Yakovlevich, his fans collected and took home, and the sand began to provide medical power. The baby's stomach ached, the mother gave him half a spoonful of sand in a porridge, and the child recovered. Cotton wool, which was used to plug the nose and ears of the deceased, after the funeral was divided into small pieces for distribution to believers. Many came to the coffin with vials and they collected in them the moisture that flowed from the coffin due to the fact that the deceased died of dropsy. The srachitsa in which Ivan Yakovlevich died was torn to pieces. - By the time they were taken out of the church, freaks, fools, bigots, wanderers, wanderers had gathered. they did not enter, because of crowding, and stood in the streets. And then, in broad daylight, among those gathered, teachings were made to the people, phenomena and visions were made, prophecies and blasphemy were uttered, money was collected and ominous roars were issued. - Ivan Yakovlevich in the last years of his life ordered his admirers to drink the water in which he washed himself: they drank. Ivan Yakovlevich not only made oral divinations, but also written ones, which are preserved for historical research. They wrote to him, asked: "Will such and such marry?" - he answered: - "Without pratsi, not bandy kololatsi" ...
Kitay-gorod in Moscow was the cheese where the worms of the fools lived. Some wrote poetry, others sang with roosters, peacocks and snigirs, still others cursed everyone in the name of the Lord, others knew only one phrase, which was considered prophetic and gave the prophets names, - for example, - "a person's life is a fairy tale, the coffin is a stroller, to go - not shaky!" - There were amateurs of dog barking, barking prophesying God's commands. There were beggars, beggars, providos, swindlers, lazarus, empty saints-wretched of all holy Rus' in this estate - there were peasants, and philistines, and nobles, and merchants, - children, old men, hefty peasants, fertile women. They were all drunk. All of them were covered with the onion-like blue calmness of the Asiatic Russian kingdom, they were bitter like cheese and onions, for the onions in the churches, of course, are a symbol of the onion Russian life.
Heroes doing archaeological excavations often discuss Russian history and culture. “Our greatest masters,” Gleb says quietly, “who stand above da Vinci, Correggio, Perugino, are Andrey Rublev, Prokopy Chirin and those nameless ones that are scattered around Novgorod, Pskov, Suzdal, Kolomna, in our monasteries and churches. What art they had, what skill! How they solved the most difficult problems. Art must be heroic. Artist, craftsman. And you have to choose for your work - majestic and beautiful. What is greater than Christ and the Mother of God? - especially the Mother of God. Our old masters interpreted the image of the Mother of God as the sweetest mystery, the most spiritual mystery of motherhood - motherhood in general.
However, the modern rebels, the renewers of the world, the authors of the reforms in the life of the Horde are uncultured and alien to Russia. What is Commissar Laitis worth, who came to Ordynin from afar with a quilted satin blanket and a pillow sewn by his mother, which he, at the instigation of Semyon Matveich Zilotov, who declares himself a Mason, spreads in the altar of the monastery chapel in order to indulge in love with the co-servant, typist Olechka Kuns, an involuntary scammer against her neighbors . After a night of love at the altar, someone set fire to the monastery, and another religious building was destroyed. Having read only a few Masonic books, Zealots, like an old warlock, senselessly repeats: "Pentagram, pentagram, pentagram ..." happy mistress Olechka Koons will be arrested, like many other innocents...
One of the characters is sure that a new life must be resisted, one must resist what has burst in so powerfully, one must break away from time, remain free internally (“refuse things, have nothing, not desire, do not regret, be a beggar, only live with with potatoes sauerkraut, doesn't matter"). Another anarchist and romantically minded heroine, Irina, argues that in modern times one must live with the body: “There are no thoughts - languor is instilled in the body, as if the whole body is numb, as if someone is stroking it with a soft brush, and it seems that all objects are covered with soft suede: and the bed, and the sheet, and the walls, all covered in suede. These days bring only one thing: the struggle for life is not on the stomach, but on death, which is why there is so much death. To hell with fairy tales about some kind of humanism! I don’t have a chill when I think about it: let only the strong remain and there will be a woman forever on the pedestal.
In this, the heroine is mistaken. For the communists, the young ladies whom they give tea with landrin have always been and will be "interpolitical". What chivalry is there, what a pedestal! On the screen, Vera Kholodnaya can die of passion, but in real life, girls die of hunger, unemployment, violence, hopeless suffering, the inability to help loved ones, finally start a family. In the penultimate chapter “Commutators, and who are commuters”, the Bolsheviks are clearly and categorically inscribed, styled by the author as “leather jackets”: folds at the lips, the movements of each are ironed. From the Russian loose and clumsy nationality - selection. You can't get wet in leather jackets. So we know, so we want, so we set it up - and that's it. Pyotr Oreshin, the poet, told the truth: "Either the will of the naked or in the field on a pole." One of the heroes of this kind at meetings diligently pronounces new words: constant, energetically, lithophonogram, function. The word "can" sounds like "might" to him. Declaring his love to a beautiful, scholarly woman from the former, he affirmatively says: “Both of us are young, healthy. And our child will grow up as it should. In the dictionary foreign words, included in the Russian language, taken by him to study before going to bed, in vain he is looking for the word "comfort", this was not posted. But ahead in the very last chapter without a title, there are only three important and defining future life concepts: "Russia. Revolution. Blizzard".
The author optimistically depicts three Kitaygorods: in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Ordynina. All of them allegorically go back to the Heavenly Empire that existed for many millennia, which does not and will not end. And if the passing minute of eternity begins with a bare year, which, most likely, will be followed by another one (discord, darkness and chaos), this does not mean that Russia has disappeared, having lost its basic moral values.
Tale of the Unextinguished Moon (1927)
In the preface, the author emphasizes that the reason for writing this work was not the death of M. V. Frunze, as many people think, but simply a desire to reflect. Readers do not need to look for true facts and living persons in the story.
Early in the morning, in the saloon of an emergency train, Army Commander Gavrilov, who was in charge of victories and death, “gunpowder, smoke, broken bones, torn meat,” receives reports from three staff officers, allowing them to stand at ease. To the question: “How is your health?” - he simply answers: “I was in the Caucasus, I was treated. Now recovered. Now he's healthy." Officials temporarily leave him, and he can chat with his old friend Popov, who is hardly allowed into a luxurious carriage that has come from the south. The morning newspapers, which, despite the early hour, are already being sold on the street, cheerfully report that Army Commander Gavrilov has temporarily left his troops to operate on a stomach ulcer. "The health of Comrade Gavrilov inspires concern, but the professors vouch for the favorable outcome of the operation."
An editorial in a major newspaper also said that hard currency could exist when all economic life will be built on a firm calculation, on a firm economic basis. One of the headlines read "China's Struggle Against the Imperialists," a large article titled "The Question of Revolutionary Violence" stood out in the basement, and then there were two pages of ads and, of course, the repertoire of theaters, variety shows, outdoor scenes and cinema.
In “house number one”, the commander meets with a “non-hunched man”, who began a conversation about the operation with healthy Gavrilov with the words: “It’s not for us to talk about the millstone of the revolution, the historical wheel - unfortunately, I believe, to a very large extent it is driven by death and blood - especially the wheel of revolution. It's not for me to talk to you about death and blood."
And now, at the behest of the "non-hunching man", Gavrilov gets to the consultation of surgeons, who hardly ask questions and do not examine him. However, this does not prevent them from making an opinion "on a sheet of yellow, badly torn, without rulers paper made of wood dough, which, according to the information of specialists and engineers, should decay in seven years." The council proposed to operate on the patient Professor Anatoly Kuzmich Lozovsky, Pavel Ivanovich Kokosov agreed to assist.
After the operation, it becomes clear to everyone that none of the specialists, in fact, found it necessary to perform the operation, but at the consultation everyone was silent. Those who directly had to take up the matter, however, exchanged remarks like: “Of course, you can not do the operation ... But the operation is safe ...”
In the evening, after the council, “the useless frightened moon” rises over the city, “ White moon in blue clouds and black gaps in the sky. Commander Gavrilov visits his friend Popov at the hotel and has a long talk with him about life. Popov's wife left "because of the silk stockings, because of the perfume," leaving him with her little daughter. In response to the confessions of a friend, the commander spoke about his "aged, but only girlfriend for life." Before going to bed in his saloon car, he reads Tolstoy's Childhood and Adolescence, and then writes several letters and puts them in an envelope, seals them and inscribes: "Open after my death." In the morning, before going to the hospital, Gavrilov orders a racing car to be brought to him, on which he rushes for a long time, "tearing through space, bypassing fogs, time, villages." From the top of the hill, he looks around "the city in the reflections of muddy lights", the city seems to him "unfortunate".
Before the “operation” scene, B. Pilnyak introduces the reader to the apartments of professors Kokosov and Lozovsky. One apartment "conserved in itself the turn of the nineties and nine hundred Russian years”, the other arose in the summer from 1907 to 1916. “If Professor Kokosov refuses the car that the staff officers politely want to send him: “You know, my friend, I don’t serve private individuals and go to clinics by tram,” then the other, Professor Lozovsky, on the contrary, is glad that they will come for him: “ I have to go before the operation on business.”
For anesthesia, the commander is put to sleep with chloroform. Having discovered that Gavrilov did not have an ulcer, as evidenced by a white scar on clenched hand stomach surgeon, the stomach of the "sick" is urgently sewn up. But it was too late, he was poisoned by an anesthetic mask: he suffocated. And no matter how much they inject him with camphor and physiological saline, Gavrilov's heart does not beat. Death occurs under an operating knife, but to divert suspicion from "experienced professors" "alive dead man are placed in the operating room for several days.
Here the corpse of Gavrilov is visited by a "non-hunching person". He sits nearby for a long time, having calmed down, then shakes the icy hand with the words: “Farewell, comrade! Farewell, brother! Having settled into his car, he orders the driver to rush out of the city, not knowing that Gavrilov was driving his car in the same way just recently. The “non-hunching man” also gets out of the car, wanders through the forest for a long time. "The forest freezes in the snow, and the moon hurries over it." He, too, takes a cold look at the city. “From the moon in the sky - at this hour - there was a little noticeable melting block of ice ...”
Popov, who opened the letter addressed to Gavrilov after Gavrilov's funeral, cannot take his eyes off him for a long time: “Alyosha, brother! I knew that I would die. Forgive me, I'm not very young anymore. I rocked your girl and thought about it. My wife is also an old woman, and you have known her for twenty years. I wrote to her. And you write to her. And you settle down to live together, get married, or something. Raise kids. I'm sorry, Alyosha."
“Popov’s daughter stood on the windowsill, looked at the moon, blew on it. "What are you doing, Natasha?" asked the father. “I want to extinguish the moon,” Natasha replied. The full moon floated behind the clouds like a merchant's wife, tired of hurrying.
Mahogany - A Tale (1929)
In the first short chapter, the two parts are separated by a dot; they contain the most expressive touches of Russian life: foolishness and holy fools are described, but also Russian artisans and artisans. “Beggars, seers, beggars, swindlers, lazars, wanderers, wretched, empty saints, kaliks, prophets, fools, fools, holy fools - these are the unambiguous names of pretzels of the life of Holy Russia, beggars in Holy Russia, kaliks passable, poor for Christ's sake, holy fools for Christ's sake Holy Russia - these pretzels have adorned life since the emergence of Russia, from the first tsars Ivanov, the life of the Russian millennium. All Russian historians, ethnographers and writers dipped their feathers on the blessed. “And there are other eccentrics in St. Petersburg, in other large Russian cities. Their pedigree is imperial, not royal. From Elizabeth arose the art begun by Peter - Russian furniture. This serf art has no written history, and the names of the masters have been destroyed by time. This art was the work of singles, cellars in cities, back closets in a people's hut on estates. This art existed in bitter vodka and cruelty ... "
So, in Rus' there are eccentrics and ... eccentrics. Both can be seen in the city of Uglich, called by the author Russian Bruges or Russian Kamakura. Two hundred versts from Moscow, and the railway is fifty versts. It is here that the ruins of manors and mahogany are stuck. Of course, a museum of ancient life has been created, but the most beautiful things are kept in the houses of the former owners. There are many unfortunate people in the city who are forced to exist by selling Russian antiquity for next to nothing. This is used by appraisers from the capital who visit the wilderness and feel themselves to be benefactors, saviors of folk art and world culture. On a tip from Skudrin Yakov Karpovich, “with a lousy smile, servile and malicious at the same time,” they go from house to house, visiting either old women, or single mothers, or old people who have gone out of their minds, urging them to give away the most valuable of what they have. As a rule, these are the things of the old masters, for which, if not now, then later they will earn a lot of money. And tiles, and beads, and porcelain, and mahogany, and tapestries - everything is in use. With a register created by the obliging Yakov Karpovich, some Bezdetov brothers silently enter the house. Looking around themselves as if with blind eyes, they shamelessly begin to knead and feel everything - ask the price. Out of poverty and misery itself, these fools fish out sweet morsels for themselves. Purely materialists, they know for sure what is worth today under the new regime and how much they will have.
The great local thinker Yakov Karpovich Skudrin is generally sure that the proletariat should disappear very soon: “The whole revolution is useless, a mistake, ahem, history. Because, yes, two or three more generations, and the proletariat will disappear, first of all, in the United States, in England, in Germany. Marx wrote his theory of the flourishing of muscular labor. Now machine labor will replace muscles. Here is my thought. Soon, only engineers will remain around the machines, and the proletariat will disappear, the proletariat will turn into only engineers. Well, here's my thought. And an engineer is not a proletarian, because the more cultured a person is, the less fanatical needs he has, and it is convenient for him to live the same materially with everyone, to equalize material wealth in order to free thought, yes, there, the British, rich and poor, sleep the same in jackets and they live in the same houses, but with us - it used to be - compare a merchant with a peasant - a merchant, like a priest, dresses up and lives in mansions. And I can walk barefoot and it won't make me worse. You say, khe, yes, exploitation will remain? - how will it stay? - a peasant who can be exploited, because - like a beast - you won’t let him into the car, he will break it, and it costs millions. A car is worth more than that, in order to save a penny per person with it - a person must know the car, a knowledgeable person is needed for the car - and instead of the previous hundred, there is only one. Such a person will be groomed. The proletariat will perish!”
If the forecast of the future of the proletariat, given by the mouth of an unsympathetic, but very reasonable thinking hero, is given, as it were, with the hope of the triumph of wisdom, then the forecast for the future of a modern woman is not very optimistic. With the collapse of the family, caused by the collapse of social foundations, there will be a lot of single mothers and just single women. The new state supports and will continue to support single mothers.
Having met his sister Claudia, the youngest son of Skudrin, the communist Akim who ran away from home, listens to her monologue: “I'm twenty-four. In the spring, I decided it was time to become a woman, and I became her. The brother is indignant: “But do you have a loved one?” - “No, no! There were several. I was curious... But I got pregnant and I decided not to have an abortion.” - "And you don't know who the husband is?" “I can't decide who. But it doesn't matter to me. I am a mother. I can handle it, and the state will help me, but morality... I don't know what morality is, I've been taught to understand it. Or I have my own morals. I am only responsible for myself and myself. Why surrender is not moral? I do what I want and I am not obligated to anyone. Husband? .. I do not need him in night shoes and to give birth. People will help me - I believe in people. People love the proud and those who do not weigh them down. And the state will help ... "
Akimkommunist - wanted to know that a new way of life was going on - the way of life was ancient. But the morality of Claudia for him is both unusual and new.
However, is there anything on earth that remains unchanged? Without a doubt, this is the sky, clouds, heavenly spaces. But... also "the art of mahogany, the art of things." “Masters get drunk and die, but things remain alive, live, love around them, die, they keep the secrets of sorrows, loves, deeds, joys. Elizabeth, Catherine - Rococo, Baroque. Pavel is Maltese. Pavel is strict, strict calm, mahogany, dark empire, classic. Hellas. People die, but things live, and from the things of antiquity come the "vibes" of antiquity, bygone eras. In 1928 - in Moscow, Leningrad, in provincial cities - antiquities shops arose, where antiquities were bought and sold by pawnshops, state trade, state fund, museums: in 1928 there were many people who collected "fluids". People who bought antiques after the thunders of the revolutions, in their homes, taking a fancy to antiquities, breathed in the living life of dead things. And Pavel Maltese was held in high esteem - direct and strict, without bronze and curlicues.
Boris Andreevich Pilnyak 1894-1941
The Naked Year - A Novel (1922)
Tale of the Unextinguished Moon (1927)
Mahogany - A Tale (1929)
Pilnyak Boris
Red tree
BORIS PILNYAK
Red tree
CHAPTER FIRST
Beggars, seers, beggars, swindlers, lazars, wanderers, wanderers, wretched, empty saints, kaliks, prophets, fools, fools, holy fools - these are the unambiguous names of pretzels of the life of Holy Russia, beggars in Holy Russia, kaliks passable, poor for Christ's sake, holy fools for the sake of Holy Christ of Russia, - these pretzels have adorned life since the days of the emergence of Russia, from the first kings of Ivanov, the life of the Russian millennium. All Russian historians, ethnographers and writers soaked their feathers on the blessed. These crazy or crooks - beggars, empty saints, prophets - were considered the beauty of the church, the brethren of Christ, prayers for peace, as they were called in classical Russian history and literature.
The famous Moscow holy fool, who lived in Moscow in the middle of the nineteenth century, a half-educated student of the theological academy, Ivan Yakovlevin, died in the Preobrazhensky hospital. Reporters, poets and historians wrote about his funeral. The poet wrote in Vedomosti.
"What celebration is the Yellow House preparing?
Why do waves of people flow there
In carts and landau, in droshky and on foot,
And all hearts are full of gloomy anxiety?
And sometimes a vague voice is heard between them,
Filled with heartfelt, severe pain:
- "Ivan Yakovlevich died out untimely!
A prophet worthy of a better fate is gone!"
The chronicler Skavronsky in "Essays on Moscow" says that in the course of five days, until the corpse was buried, more than two hundred memorial services were served near the corpse. Many spent the night near the church. N. Barkov, the author of a study entitled - "26 Moscow false prophets, false holy fools, fools and fools", an eyewitness to the funeral, says that it was proposed to bury Ivan Yakovlevich on Sunday, "as it was announced in the Police Vedomosti", and on this day, than light, admirers began to flock, but the burial did not take place due to disputes that arose over where exactly to bury him. , others strove for him to be buried in the Pokrovsky monastery, where a grave was even dug for him under the church, others tenderly asked to give his ashes to the Alekseevsky monastery for women, and the fourth, clinging to the coffin, dragged him to the village of Cherkizovo. - "They were afraid that the bodies of Ivan Yakovlevich would not be stolen." - The historian writes: “During all this time it rained and there was terrible mud, but, despite the fact that during the transfer of the body from the apartment to the chapel, from the chapel to the church, from the church to the cemetery, women, girls, young ladies in crinolines fell prostrated, crawled under the coffin. - Ivan Yakovlevich - during his lifetime - defecated under himself, "it flowed from under him (as the historian writes) and the watchmen were ordered to sprinkle sand on the floor. This sand, soaked from under Ivan Yakovlevich, his fans collected and took home, and the sand began to provide medical power. The baby's stomach ached, the mother gave him half a spoonful of sand in a porridge, and the child recovered. Cotton wool, which was used to plug the nose and ears of the deceased, after the funeral was divided into small pieces for distribution to believers. Many came to the coffin with vials and they collected in them the moisture that flowed from the coffin due to the fact that the deceased died of dropsy. The srachitsa in which Ivan Yakovlevich died was torn to pieces. - By the time they were taken out of the church, freaks, fools, bigots, wanderers, wanderers had gathered. they did not enter, because of crowding, and stood in the streets. And then, in broad daylight, among those gathered, teachings were made to the people, phenomena and visions were made, prophecies and blasphemy were uttered, money was collected and ominous roars were issued. - Ivan Yakovlevich in the last years of his life ordered his admirers to drink the water in which he washed himself: they drank. Ivan Yakovlevich not only made oral divinations, but also written ones, which are preserved for historical research. They wrote to him, asked: "Will such and such marry?" - he answered: - "Without pratsi, not bandy kololatsi" ...
Kitay-gorod in Moscow was the cheese where the worms of the fools lived. Some wrote poetry, others sang with roosters, peacocks and snigirs, still others cursed everyone in the name of the Lord, others knew only one phrase, which was considered prophetic and gave the prophets names, - for example, - "a person's life is a fairy tale, the coffin is a stroller, to go - not shaky!" - There were amateurs of dog barking, barking prophesying God's commands. There were beggars, beggars, providos, swindlers, lazarus, empty saints-wretched of all holy Rus' in this estate - there were peasants, and philistines, and nobles, and merchants, - children, old men, hefty peasants, fertile women. They were all drunk. All of them were covered with the onion-like blue calmness of the Asiatic Russian kingdom, they were bitter like cheese and onions, for the onions in the churches, of course, are a symbol of the onion Russian life.
And there are other eccentrics in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in other large Russian cities. Their pedigree is imperial, not royal. From Elizabeth arose, begun by Peter, the art of Russian furniture. This serf art has no written history, and the names of the masters have been destroyed by time. This art was the work of singles, cellars in cities, back closets in a people's hut on estates. This art existed in bitter vodka and in cruelty. Jacob and Boule became teachers. Serf teenagers were sent to Moscow and St. Petersburg, to Paris, to Vienna - there they learned the craft. Then they returned - from Paris to the St. Petersburg cellars, from St. Petersburg to the people's closets - and - they created. For dozens of years, another master made one kind of samoson or a toilet, or a burzo, or a bookcase - he worked, drank and died, leaving his art to his nephew, because the master was not supposed to have children, and the nephew either copied the art of his uncle, or continued it. The master died, and things lived for a century in landowners' estates and mansions, people loved them and died on samosons, secret correspondence was hidden in secret boxes of secretaries, brides looked at their youth in dressing mirrors, old women - old age. Elizabeth - Catherine - rococo, baroque bronze, curlicues, rosewood, pink, black, Karelian wood, Persian walnut. Pavel is strict, Pavel is a Maltese; Pavel has soldier lines, strict calm, darkly polished mahogany, green skin, black lions and vultures. Alexander - Empire, classical, Hellas. Nikolai is again Pavel, crushed by the greatness of his brother Alexander. So the epochs fell on the mahogany. In 1861, serfdom fell. Serf craftsmen were replaced by furniture factories - Levinson, Thonet, Viennese furniture. But the nephews of the masters - through vodka remained to live. These masters are not building anything now, they are restoring old things, but they have left all the skills and traditions of their uncles. They are loners and they are silent. They are proud of their work, like philosophers, and they love it, like poets. They still live in basements. You cannot send such a craftsman to a furniture factory, you cannot force him to repair a thing made after Nicholas the First. He is an antique dealer, he is a restorer. He will find in the attic of a Moscow house or in the shed of an unburnt estate - a table, a trellis, a sofa - Catherine's, Pavlovsk, Alexander's - and he will dig over them for months in his basement, smoke, think, try on with his eye - in order to restore the living life of the dead of things. He will love this thing. What good, he will find a yellowed bundle of letters in the secret drawer of the burtz. He is a restorer, he looks back at the time of things. He is necessarily an eccentric - and he will eccentrically sell the restored thing to the same eccentric collector, with whom - in the deal he will drink cognac, poured from a bottle into Catherine's bottle and from a glass - the former imperial diamond service.
