Easy breath. “At the cemetery, over a fresh earthen embankment, there is a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.” On cold, gray April days, the monuments of the spacious county cemetery are clearly visible through the bare trees. The porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross rings sadly and lonely. “A rather large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded in the very cross, and in the medallion there is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes. This is Olya Meshcherskaya.
She did not stand out among her peers, although she was "one of the pretty, rich and happy girls." Then she suddenly began to blossom and surprisingly prettier: “At the age of fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed; at fifteen she was already known as a beauty. Everything was to her liking, and it seemed that nothing could harm her beauty: neither the ink stains on her fingers, nor her flushed face, nor her disheveled hair. Olya Meshcherskaya was the best dancer at balls and skating, no one was looked after as much as she was, and no one was loved by the younger classes as much as she was. They said about her that she was windy and could not live without fans, that one of the schoolboys was madly in love with her, who, because of her changeable treatment of him, even attempted suicide.
“Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun during her last winter, as they said in the gymnasium.” The winter was beautiful - snowy, frosty and sunny. Pink evenings were beautiful, when music sounded and a smart crowd merrily glided over the ice of the rink, "in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest."
Once, when Olya Meshcherskaya was playing with first-graders at a big break, she was summoned to the head of the gymnasium. Stopping in a hurry, she took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, straightened her apron, and ran up the stairs with shining eyes. “The boss, youthful, but gray-haired, calmly sat with knitting in her hands at the desk, under the royal portrait,”
She began to reprimand Meshcherskaya: it is not befitting for her, a schoolgirl, to behave like that, to wear expensive combs, “shoes worth twenty rubles”, and, finally, what kind of hairstyle does she have? It's a woman's hair! “You are no longer a girl,” the boss said pointedly, “... but not a woman either ...” Without losing her simplicity and calmness, Meshcherskaya boldly objected: “Forgive me, madame, you are mistaken: I am a woman. And to blame for this - you know who? Dad's friend and neighbor, and your brother Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin. It happened last summer in the village ... "
And a month after this conversation, the incredible confession that stunned the boss was unexpectedly and tragically confirmed. “... A Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance, who had absolutely nothing to do with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her on the station platform, among a large crowd of people who had just arrived with a train.” He told the investigator that Meshcherskaya was close to him, swore to be his wife, and at the station, seeing him off to Novocherkassk, she suddenly told him that she had never thought to love him, that all the talk about marriage was just her mockery of him, and let me read that page of her diary, which spoke about Milyutin.
On a page labeled July 10 last year, Meshcherskaya described what had happened in detail. That day her parents and brother left for the city, and she was left alone in their village house. It was a wonderful day. Olya Meshcherskaya walked for a long time in the garden, in the field, was in the forest. She was as good as ever in her life. She fell asleep in her father's study, and at four o'clock the maid woke her up and said that Alexei Mikhailovich had arrived. The girl was very happy to see him. Despite his fifty-six years, he was "still very handsome and always well dressed." He smelled pleasantly of English cologne, and his eyes were very young, black. Before tea, they walked in the garden, he held her by the arm and said that they were like Faust and Marguerite. What happened afterwards between her and this elderly man, a friend of her father, was impossible to explain: “I don’t understand how this could happen, I went crazy, I never thought that I was like that! ... I feel such disgust for him I can't bear this!.."
Having given the diary to the officer, Olya Meshcherskaya walked along the platform, waiting for him to finish reading. Here she died...
Every Sunday, after mass, a little woman in mourning goes to the cemetery, which looks like “a large low garden, surrounded by a white fence, above the gate of which is written “The Assumption of the Mother of God”. Smallly crossing herself on the go, the woman walks along the cemetery alley to the bench opposite the oak cross over the grave of Meshcherskaya. Here she sits in the spring wind for an hour or two, until she becomes completely cold. Listening to the singing of birds and the sound of the wind in a porcelain wreath, a little woman sometimes thinks that she would not regret half her life if only this “dead wreath” were not in front of her eyes. It is hard for her to believe that under the oak cross lies “the one whose eyes shine so immortally from this convex porcelain medallion on the cross, and how to combine with this pure look that terrible thing that is now connected with the name of Olya Meshcherskaya?”
This woman is the cool lady Olya Meshcherskaya, "a middle-aged girl who has long been living in some kind of fiction that replaces her real life." Previously, she believed in the brilliant future of her brother, "an unremarkable ensign." After his death near Mukden, the sister began to convince herself "that she is an ideological worker." The death of Olya Meshcherskaya gave her food for new dreams and fantasies. She recalls a conversation that Meshcherskaya accidentally overheard with her beloved friend, plump, tall Subbotina. Walking around the gymnasium garden during the big break, Olya Meshcherskaya excitedly recounted to her the description of perfect female beauty, read in one of the old books. Much seemed so true to her that she even learned by heart. Among the obligatory qualities of the beauty were mentioned: “black eyes boiling with resin - black as night, eyelashes, gently playing blush, thin waist, longer than an ordinary arm ... a small leg, moderately large breasts, correctly rounded calf, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders ... but most importantly… easy breathing!” “But I have it,” Olya Meshcherskaya said to her friend, “you listen to me sigh, is it true?”
“Now that light breath has been scattered again in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind.”
The question of the meaning of life is eternal, in the literature of the early twentieth century, the discussion of this topic also continued. Now the meaning was seen not in achieving some clear goal, but in something else. For example, according to the theory of "living life", the meaning of human existence is in itself, regardless of what this life is. This idea was shared by V. Veresaev, A. Kuprin, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev. I. Bunin also reflected “Living Life” in his writings, his “Easy Breath” is a vivid example.
However, the reason for creating the story was not life at all: Bunin conceived the short story while walking around the cemetery. Seeing a cross with a portrait of a young woman, the writer was struck by how her cheerfulness contrasts with the surrounding sad environment. What was life like? Why did she, so alive and joyful, leave this world so early? Nobody could answer these questions. But Bunin's imagination drew the life of this girl, who became the heroine of the short story "Light Breath".
The plot is outwardly unpretentious: the cheerful and precocious Olya Meshcherskaya arouses a burning interest in the opposite sex with her female attractiveness, her behavior irritates the head of the gymnasium, who decides to conduct an instructive conversation for the pupil about how important modesty is. But this conversation ended unexpectedly: the girl said that she was no longer a girl, she became a woman after meeting the brother of the boss and friend of Father Malyutin. It soon turned out that this was not the only love story: Olya met with a Cossack officer. The latter planned a quick wedding. However, at the station, before her lover left for Novocherkassk, Meshcherskaya said that their relationship was insignificant for her and she would not marry. Then she offered to read the diary entry about her fall. The military man shot the windy girl, and it is with the description of her grave that the short story begins. A cool lady often goes to the cemetery, the fate of the student has become a meaning for her.
Themes
The main themes of the novel are the value of life, beauty and simplicity. The author himself interpreted his story as a story about the highest degree of simplicity in a woman: "naivety and lightness in everything, both in audacity and in death." Olya lived without limiting herself to rules and principles, including moral ones. It was in this simple-heartedness, reaching the level of depravity, that the charm of the heroine lay. She lived as she lived, true to the theory of "living life": why restrain yourself if life is so beautiful? So she sincerely rejoiced at her attractiveness, not caring about neatness and decorum. She also had fun courting young people, not taking their feelings seriously (school student Shenshin was on the verge of suicide because of her love for her).
Bunin also touched upon the theme of the meaninglessness and dullness of being in the form of a teacher Olya. This “old girl” is contrasted with her student: the only pleasure for her is a suitable illusory idea: “At first, her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, was such an invention - she connected her whole soul with him, with his future, which for some reason she looked brilliant. When he was killed near Mukden, she convinced herself that she was an ideological worker. The death of Olya Meshcherskaya captivated her with a new dream. Now Olya Meshcherskaya is the subject of her relentless thoughts and feelings.
Issues
- The issue of balance between passions and propriety is rather controversially revealed in the short story. The writer clearly sympathizes with Olya, who chooses the first, sings in her "easy breathing" as a synonym for charm and naturalness. In contrast, the heroine is punished for her frivolity, and severely punished - by death. From this follows the problem of freedom: society with its conventions is not ready to give the individual permissiveness even in the intimate sphere. Many people think that this is good, but they are often forced to carefully hide and suppress the hidden desires of their own souls. But to achieve harmony, a compromise is needed between the society and the individual, and not the unconditional primacy of the interests of one of them.
- You can also highlight the social aspect in the problematics of the novel: the bleak and dull atmosphere of a provincial town, where anything can happen if no one finds out. There really is nothing else to do in such a place, except to discuss and condemn those who want to break out of the gray routine of being, if only through passion. Social inequality manifests itself between Olya and her last lover (“ugly and plebeian-looking, who had absolutely nothing to do with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged”). Obviously, the same class prejudices served as the reason for the refusal.
- The author does not dwell on relations in Olya's family, but judging by the feelings of the heroine and the events in her life, they are far from ideal: “I was so happy that I was alone! In the morning I walked in the garden, in the field, was in the forest, it seemed to me that I was alone in the whole world, and I thought as well as never before in my life. I dined alone, then I played for an hour, to the music I had the feeling that I would live without end and be as happy as anyone. Obviously, no one was involved in raising the girl, and her problem lies in abandonment: no one taught her, at least by his own example, how to balance between feelings and reason.
Characteristics of heroes
- The main and most revealed character of the novel is Olya Meshcherskaya. The author pays great attention to her appearance: the girl is very beautiful, graceful, graceful. But little is said about the inner world, the emphasis is only on windiness and frankness. Having read in a book that the basis of female charm is light breathing, she began to actively develop it both externally and internally. She not only sighs shallowly, but also thinks, fluttering through life like a moth. Moths, circling around the fire, invariably scorch their wings, so the heroine died in her prime.
- The Cossack officer is a fatal and mysterious hero, nothing is known about him, except for a sharp difference from Olya. How they met, the motives for the murder, the course of their relationship - all this can only be guessed at. Most likely, the officer is a passionate and enthusiastic nature, he fell in love (or believed that he loved), but he was clearly not satisfied with Olya's frivolity. The hero wanted the girl to belong only to him, so he was even ready to take her life.
- The classy lady unexpectedly appears in the finale, as an element of contrast. She never lived for pleasure, she sets goals for herself, living in a fictional world. She and Olya are two extremes of the problem of balance between duty and desire.
Composition and genre
The genre of “Easy Breathing” is a short story (short plot story), many problems and topics are reflected in a small volume, a picture of the life of different groups of society is drawn.
The composition of the story deserves special attention. The narrative is sequential, but it is fragmentary. First, we see Olya's grave, then her fate is told, then we return to the present again - a visit to the cemetery by a classy lady. Speaking about the life of the heroine, the author chooses a special focus in the narrative: he describes in detail the conversation with the head of the gymnasium, the seduction of Olya, but her murder, acquaintance with the officer is described in a few words. Bunin concentrates on feelings, sensations, colors, his story is as if written in watercolor, it is filled with airiness and softness, therefore the impartial is described captivatingly.
The meaning of the name
“Light breathing” is the very first component of female charm, according to the creators of the books that Olya’s father has. Ease, turning into frivolity, the girl wanted to learn. And she reached the goal, although she paid the price, but "this light breath again dissipated in the world, in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind."
Also, lightness is associated with the style of the novel: the author diligently avoids sharp corners, although he speaks of monumental things: true and far-fetched love, honor and dishonor, illusory and real life. But this work, according to the writer E. Koltonskaya, leaves the impression of "bright gratitude to the Creator for the fact that there is such beauty in the world."
One can treat Bunin in different ways, but his style is full of imagery, beauty of presentation and courage - this is a fact. He talks about everything, even the forbidden, but knows how not to go beyond the brink of vulgarity. That is why this talented writer is still loved today.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!In the cemetery, over a fresh earthen mound, there is a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, the days are gray; the monuments of the cemetery, spacious, county, are still far away visible through the bare trees, and the cold wind tinkles and tinkles the china wreath at the foot of the cross.
A rather large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded in the cross itself, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya.
As a girl, she did not stand out in the crowd of brown gymnasium dresses: what could be said about her, except that she was one of the pretty, rich and happy girls, that she was capable, but playful and very careless about the instructions that a classy lady gives her ? Then it began to flourish, to develop by leaps and bounds. At fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed; at fifteen she was already a beauty. How carefully some of her friends combed their hair, how clean they were, how they watched their restrained movements! And she was not afraid of anything - not ink spots on her fingers, not a flushed face, not disheveled hair, not a knee that became naked when she fell on the run. Without any of her worries and efforts, and somehow imperceptibly, everything that so distinguished her in the last two years from the whole gymnasium came to her - grace, elegance, dexterity, a clear sparkle in her eyes ... Nobody danced at balls like Olya Meshcherskaya , no one ran on skates like she did, no one was looked after at balls as much as she was, and for some reason no one was loved as much by the lower classes as she was. She imperceptibly became a girl, and her gymnasium fame imperceptibly strengthened, and there were already rumors that she was windy, could not live without admirers, that the schoolboy Shenshin was madly in love with her, that she seemed to love him too, but was so changeable in her treatment of him. that he attempted suicide...
During her last winter, Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun, as they said in the gymnasium. The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun set early behind the high spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising frost and sun tomorrow, a walk on Cathedral Street, a skating rink in the city garden, pink evening, music and this in all directions the crowd sliding on the skating rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest. And then one day, at a big break, when she was running like a whirlwind around the assembly hall from the first-graders chasing after her and squealing blissfully, she was unexpectedly called to the headmistress. She stopped in a hurry, took only one deep breath, straightened her hair with a quick and already familiar female movement, pulled the corners of her apron to her shoulders and, beaming her eyes, ran upstairs. The headmistress, youthful but gray-haired, sat calmly with knitting in her hands at the desk, under the royal portrait.
“Hello, mademoiselle Meshcherskaya,” she said in French, without looking up from her knitting. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have been forced to call you here to speak with you about your behavior.
“I’m listening, madam,” Meshcherskaya replied, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as easily and gracefully as she alone could.
“It will be bad for you to listen to me, I, unfortunately, was convinced of this,” said the headmistress, and, pulling the thread and twisting a ball on the lacquered floor, at which Meshcherskaya looked with curiosity, she raised her eyes. “I won't repeat myself, I won't talk at length,” she said.
Meshcherskaya really liked this unusually clean and large office, which on frosty days breathed so well with the warmth of a brilliant Dutch and the freshness of lilies of the valley on the desk. She looked at the young king, painted to his full height in the midst of some brilliant hall, at the even parting in the milky, neatly frilled hair of the boss, and was expectantly silent.
“You are no longer a girl,” the headmistress said meaningfully, secretly starting to get annoyed.
“Yes, madam,” Meshcherskaya answered simply, almost cheerfully.
“But not a woman either,” the headmistress said even more significantly, and her matte face flushed slightly. First of all, what is this hairstyle? It's a woman's hairstyle!
“It’s not my fault, madame, that I have good hair,” Meshcherskaya answered, and slightly touched her beautifully trimmed head with both hands.
“Ah, that’s how it is, it’s not your fault! - said the headmistress. “You are not to blame for your hair, you are not to blame for these expensive combs, you are not to blame for ruining your parents for shoes worth twenty rubles!” But, I repeat to you, you completely lose sight of the fact that you are still only a schoolgirl...
And then Meshcherskaya, without losing her simplicity and calmness, suddenly politely interrupted her:
“Excuse me, madame, you are mistaken: I am a woman. And to blame for this - you know who? Friend and neighbor of the pope, and your brother Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin. It happened last summer in the village...
And a month after this conversation, a Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance, who had absolutely nothing to do with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her on the station platform, among a large crowd of people who had just arrived with the train. And the incredible confession of Olya Meshcherskaya, which stunned the boss, was completely confirmed: the officer told the judicial investigator that Meshcherskaya had lured him, was close to him, swore to be his wife, and at the station, on the day of the murder, seeing him off to Novocherkassk, she suddenly told him that she and never thought to love him, that all this talk about marriage was just her mockery of him, and gave him to read that page of the diary that spoke about Malyutin.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870 - 1953)
Easy breath
In the cemetery, over a fresh earthen embankment, there is a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, the days are gray; the monuments of the cemetery, spacious, county, are still far away visible through the bare trees, and the cold wind tinkles and tinkles the china wreath at the foot of the cross.
A fairly large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded in the cross itself, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya.
As a girl, she did not stand out in the crowd of brown gymnasium dresses: what could be said about her, except that she was one of the pretty, rich and happy girls, that she was capable, but playful and very careless about the instructions that a classy lady gives her ? Then it began to flourish, to develop by leaps and bounds. At fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed: at fifteen she was already known as a beauty. How carefully some of her friends combed their hair, how clean they were, how they watched their restrained movements! And she was not afraid of anything - neither ink stains on her fingers, nor a flushed face, nor disheveled hair, nor a knee that became naked when she fell on the run. Without any of her worries and efforts, and somehow imperceptibly, everything that had distinguished her so much in the last two years from the whole gymnasium came to her - grace, elegance, dexterity, a clear sparkle in her eyes ... No one danced at balls like she, no one at the balls was looked after as much as she was, and for some reason no one was loved as much by the lower classes as she was. She imperceptibly became a girl, and her gymnasium fame imperceptibly strengthened, and there were already rumors that she was windy, could not live without admirers, that the schoolboy Shenshin was madly in love with her, that she seemed to love him too, but was so changeable in her treatment of him. that he attempted suicide...
During her last winter, Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun, as they said in the gymnasium. The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun set early behind the high spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising frost and sun tomorrow, a walk on Cathedral Street, a skating rink in the city garden, pink evening, music and this in all directions the crowd sliding on the skating rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest. And then, one day, at a big break, when she was rushing around the assembly hall in a whirlwind from the first-graders chasing after her and squealing blissfully, she was unexpectedly called to the headmistress. She stopped in a hurry, took only one deep breath, straightened her hair with a quick and already familiar female movement, pulled the corners of her apron to her shoulders and, beaming her eyes, ran upstairs. The headmistress, youthful but gray-haired, sat calmly with knitting in her hands at the desk, under the royal portrait.
Hello, mademoiselle Meshcherskaya,” she said in French, without looking up from her knitting. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have been forced to call you here to talk to you about your behavior.
After dinner they left the brightly and hotly lit dining room on deck and stopped at the rail. She closed her eyes, put her hand outward to her cheek, laughed with a simple, charming laugh—everything was lovely about that little woman—and said:
I seem to be drunk... Where did you come from? Three hours ago, I didn't even know you existed. I don't even know where you sat. In Samara? But still... Is it my head spinning or are we turning somewhere?
Ahead was darkness and lights. From the darkness a strong, soft wind beat in the face, and the lights rushed somewhere to the side: the steamer, with Volga panache, abruptly described a wide arc, running up to a small pier.
The lieutenant took her hand and raised it to his lips. The hand, small and strong, smelled of sunburn. And my heart sank blissfully and terribly at the thought of how strong and swarthy she must have been all under that light linen dress after a whole month of lying under the southern sun on the hot sea sand (she said she was coming from Anapa). The lieutenant muttered:
Let's get off...
Where? she asked in surprise.
At this pier.
He said nothing. She again put the back of her hand to her hot cheek.
Madness...
Let's go," he repeated stupidly. "I beg you...
Oh, do as you please,” she said, turning away.
The steamer ran with a soft thud into the dimly lit pier, and they almost fell on top of each other. The end of the rope flew over their heads, then it rushed back, and the water boiled with noise, the gangway rattled ... The lieutenant rushed for things.
A minute later they passed the sleepy desk, stepped out onto the deep, hub-deep sand, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle ascent uphill, among the rare crooked lanterns, along the road soft from dust, seemed endless. But then they got up, drove off and crackled along the pavement, here was some kind of square, government offices, a tower, warmth and smells of a summer district town at night ... The cab driver stopped near the illuminated entrance, behind the open doors of which an old wooden staircase rose steeply, old, unshaven a footman in a pink blouse and frock coat took the things with displeasure and walked forward on his trampled feet. They entered a large, but terribly stuffy room, hotly heated during the day by the sun, with white curtains drawn down on the windows and two unburned candles on the under-mirror, and as soon as they entered and the footman closed the door, the lieutenant rushed to her so impetuously and both suffocated so frantically in a kiss that for many years they later remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.
At ten o'clock in the morning, sunny, hot, happy, with the ringing of churches, with a market on the square in front of the hotel, with the smell of hay, tar, and again all that complex and odorous smell of a Russian county town, she, this little nameless woman, and without saying her name, jokingly calling herself a beautiful stranger, she left. They slept little, but in the morning, coming out from behind the screen near the bed, having washed and dressed in five minutes, she was as fresh as at seventeen. Was she embarrassed? No, very little. She was still simple, cheerful and - already reasonable.
No, no, dear, - she said in response to his request to go further together, - no, you must stay until the next boat. If we go together, everything will be ruined. It will be very unpleasant for me. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It's like an eclipse hit me... Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke...
And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her. In a light and happy spirit, he drove her to the pier - just in time for the departure of the pink "Airplane", - kissed her on deck in front of everyone and barely managed to jump onto the gangway, which had already moved back.
Just as easily, carefree, he returned to the hotel. However, something has changed. The room without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was strange! There was still the smell of her good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still on the tray, and she was gone... And the lieutenant's heart suddenly contracted with such tenderness that the lieutenant hurried to light a cigarette and walked up and down the room several times.
Strange adventure! - he said aloud, laughing and feeling that tears were welling up in his eyes. - “I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think ...” And she has already left ...
The screen was drawn back, the bed had not yet been made. And he felt that he simply did not have the strength to look at this bed now. He closed it with a screen, closed the windows so as not to hear the bazaar talk and the creak of wheels, lowered the white bubbling curtains, sat down on the sofa ... Yes, that's the end of this "road adventure"! She left - and now it’s already far away, probably sitting in a glassy white salon or on deck and looking at the huge river shining under the sun, at the oncoming rafts, at the yellow shallows, at the shining distance of water and sky, at all this immense expanse of the Volga. .. Forgive me, and already forever, forever... Because where can they meet now? “I can’t,” he thought, “I can’t, for no reason at all, come to this city, where her husband is, where her three-year-old girl is, in general her whole family and her whole ordinary life!” And this city seemed to him some kind of special, reserved city, and the thought that she would continue to live her lonely life in it, often, perhaps, remembering him, remembering their chance, such a fleeting meeting, and he would never will not see her, this thought amazed and struck him. No, it can't be! It would be too wild, unnatural, implausible! And he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair.
"What the hell! he thought, getting up, again beginning to pace the room and trying not to look at the bed behind the screen. “But what is the matter with me? And what is special about it and what actually happened? In fact, just some kind of sunstroke! And most importantly, how can I now, without her, spend the whole day in this outback?
He still remembered her all, with all her slightest features, remembered the smell of her tan and canvas dress, her strong body, the lively, simple and cheerful sound of her voice ... The feeling of the just experienced pleasures of all her feminine charms was still unusually alive in him. but now the main thing was still this second, completely new feeling - that strange, incomprehensible feeling, which he could not even imagine in himself, starting yesterday, as he thought, only an amusing acquaintance, and about which it was no longer possible to tell her Now! “And most importantly,” he thought, “you can never tell! And what to do, how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment, in this God-forsaken town above that very shining Volga, along which this pink steamer carried her away!
I had to escape, something to do, distract myself, somewhere to go. He resolutely put on his cap, took a stack, quickly walked, clinking his spurs, along an empty corridor, ran down a steep staircase to the entrance ... Yes, but where to go? At the entrance stood a cab driver, young, in a dexterous coat, calmly smoking a cigarette. The lieutenant looked at him in confusion and amazement: how is it possible to sit on the box so calmly, smoke, and in general be simple, careless, indifferent? "Probably, I'm the only one so terribly unhappy in this whole city," he thought, heading towards the bazaar.
The market has already left. For some reason, he walked through the fresh manure among the carts, among the carts with cucumbers, among the new bowls and pots, and the women sitting on the ground vied with each other to call him, take the pots in their hands and knock, ringing their fingers in them, showing their quality factor, peasants deafened him, shouted to him: “Here are the first grade cucumbers, your honor!” It was all so stupid, absurd that he fled from the market. He went to the cathedral, where they were already singing loudly, merrily and resolutely, with a sense of accomplishment of duty, then he walked for a long time, circling around the small, hot and neglected garden on the cliff of the mountain, over the boundless light-steel expanse of the river ... Shoulder straps and buttons of his tunic so hot that they could not be touched. The band of the cap was wet inside with sweat, his face was on fire ... Returning to the hotel, he entered with pleasure into the large and empty cool dining room on the ground floor, took off his cap with pleasure and sat down at a table near the open window, which smelled of heat, but that was all. - still breathed in the air, ordered botvinya with ice ... Everything was fine, there was immense happiness in everything, great joy; even in this heat and in all the smells of the marketplace, in all this unfamiliar town and in this old county inn, there was this joy, and at the same time, the heart was simply torn to pieces. He drank several glasses of vodka, eating lightly salted cucumbers with dill, and feeling that he would die without hesitation tomorrow if it were possible by some miracle to bring her back, to spend one more day with her, this day - to spend only then, only then, in order to tell her and prove something, to convince her how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her ... Why prove it? Why convince? He didn't know why, but it was more necessary than life.
The nerves have gone wild! - he said, pouring his fifth glass of vodka.
He pushed the botvinia away from him, asked for black coffee and began to smoke and think hard: what should he do now, how to get rid of this sudden, unexpected love? But to get rid of - he felt it too vividly - was impossible. And suddenly he quickly got up again, took a cap and a stack, and, asking where the post office was, hurriedly went there with the telegram phrase already ready in his head: “From now on, my whole life forever, to the grave, yours, in your power.” But, having reached the old thick-walled house, where there was a post office and a telegraph office, he stopped in horror: he knew the city where she lives, knew that she had a husband and a three-year-old daughter, but did not know her name or surname! He asked her about it several times yesterday at dinner and at the hotel, and each time she laughed and said:
Why do you need to know who I am, what is my name?
On the corner, near the post office, there was a photographic display case. He looked for a long time at a large portrait of some military man in thick epaulettes, with bulging eyes, with a low forehead, with amazingly magnificent sideburns and the broadest chest, completely decorated with orders ... How wild, terrible everything is everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck, - yes, amazed, he now understood it - this terrible "sunstroke", too much love, too much happiness! He glanced at the newlywed couple - a young man in a long frock coat and white tie, with crew cut, stretched out to the front arm in arm with a girl in wedding gauze - he turned his eyes to the portrait of some pretty and perky young lady in a student cap on one side ... Then, languishing with tormenting envy of all these unknown to him, not suffering people, he began to stare intently along the street.
Where to go? What to do?
The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-storied, merchants', with large gardens, and it seemed that there was not a soul in them; thick white dust lay on the pavement; and all this was blinding, everything was flooded with hot, fiery and joyful, but here, as if by an aimless sun. In the distance the street rose, stooped and rested against a cloudless, grayish, gleaming sky. There was something southern in it, reminiscent of Sevastopol, Kerch ... Anapa. It was especially unbearable. And the lieutenant, with lowered head, squinting from the light, intently looking at his feet, staggering, stumbling, clinging to spur with spur, walked back.
He returned to the hotel so overwhelmed with fatigue, as if he had made a huge transition somewhere in Turkestan, in the Sahara. Gathering the last of his strength, he entered his large and empty room. The room was already tidied up, devoid of the last traces of her - only one hairpin, forgotten by her, lay on the night table! He took off his tunic and looked at himself in the mirror: his face - the usual officer's face, gray from sunburn, with a whitish mustache burned out from the sun and bluish whiteness of the eyes, which seemed even whiter from sunburn - now had an excited, crazy expression, and in There was something youthful and profoundly unhappy about a thin white shirt with a stand-up starched collar. He lay on his back on the bed, put his dusty boots on the dump. The windows were open, the curtains were lowered, and a light breeze from time to time blew them in, blew into the room the heat of the heated iron roofs and all this luminous and now completely empty, silent Volga world. He lay with his hands behind the back of his head, staring intently ahead of him. Then he clenched his teeth, closed his eyelids, feeling the tears roll down his cheeks from under them, and finally fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the evening sun was already reddish yellow behind the curtains. The wind died down, it was stuffy and dry in the room, like in an oven ... And yesterday and this morning I remembered as if they were ten years ago.
He slowly got up, slowly washed himself, raised the curtains, rang the bell and asked for the samovar and the bill, and drank tea with lemon for a long time. Then he ordered a cab to be brought in, things to be carried out, and, getting into the cab, on its red, burnt-out seat, he gave the lackey a whole five rubles.
And it seems, your honor, that it was I who brought you at night! - the driver said cheerfully, taking up the reins.
When they went down to the pier, the blue summer night was already turning blue over the Volga, and already many multi-colored lights were scattered along the river, and the lights hung on the masts of the approaching steamer.
Delivered exactly! said the driver ingratiatingly.
The lieutenant gave him five rubles too, took a ticket, went to the pier... Just like yesterday, there was a soft knock on its pier and a slight dizziness from unsteadiness underfoot, then a flying end, the noise of water boiling and running forward under the wheels a little back of the steamer that was moving forward ... And it seemed unusually friendly, good from the crowd of this steamer, already lit everywhere and smelling of kitchen.
The dark summer dawn was dying away far ahead, gloomy, sleepy and multi-colored reflected in the river, which still shone here and there in trembling ripples far below it, under this dawn, and the lights scattered in the darkness all around floated and floated back.
The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.
The Moscow gray winter day was getting dark, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up; cab sledges rushed thicker and more cheerfully, crowded, diving trams rattled harder, - in the dusk it was already clear how green stars hissed from the wires, - dully black passers-by hurried along the snowy sidewalks ... Every evening I was rushing at this hour on stretching trotter my coachman - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dine in Prague, in the Hermitage, in the Metropol, in the afternoon to theaters, to concerts, and then to Yar in Strelna ... How it all should end, I don’t knew and tried not to think, not to think it over: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all dismissed conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, our relations with her were also strange - we were still not quite close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in painful expectation - and at the same time I was incredibly happy every hour spent near her.
For some reason, she studied at the courses, quite rarely attended them, but she did. I once asked: "Why?" She shrugged her shoulders: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? In addition, I am interested in history ... "She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Church of the Savior, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor for the sake of a view of Moscow, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano, on which she kept rehearsing the slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the "Moonlight Sonata" - only one beginning - on the piano and on the under-mirror elegant flowers bloomed in faceted vases - on my order fresh ones were delivered to her every Saturday, and when I came to see her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, over which for some reason hung a portrait of the barefoot Tolstoy, slowly held out her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: “Thank you for the flowers. ..” I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - by Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeier, Pshibyshevsky - and received all the same “thank you” and an outstretched warm hand, sometimes an order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said thoughtfully, stroking my beaver collar, “but it seems that nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard ...” It looked like she didn’t need anything : no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city, although, nevertheless, she had favorite and unloved flowers, all the books that I brought her, she always read, ate a whole box of chocolate a day, for at lunch and dinner she ate no less than me, she loved pies with burbot fish soup, pink hazel grouses in hard-fried sour cream, sometimes she said: “I don’t understand how people don’t get tired of it all their lives, to have lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with the Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silks, expensive fur ...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants, at concerts, they saw us off with their eyes. I, being a native of the Penza province, was at that time beautiful for some reason, a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor once said to me, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and clever. “The devil knows who you are, some kind of Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a swarthy amber face, magnificent and somewhat sinister in its thick black hair, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded by a dark fluff; when leaving, she most often put on a pomegranate velvet dress and the same shoes with gold clasps (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on the Arbat); and how prone I was to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking something, everything seemed to delve into something mentally: lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often put it down and looked inquiringly in front of myself: I saw this when I sometimes stopped by her during the day, because every month she did not go out at all for three or four days and did not leave the house, she lay and read, forcing me to sit down in an armchair near the sofa and silently read.
You are terribly talkative and restless,” she said, “let me finish reading the chapter ...
If I hadn’t been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you, ”I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: once in December, when I got into the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it while running and as I danced on the stage, I twirled and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her cheerfully.
It's all right," she said, "but all the same, be quiet for a while, read something, smoke...
I can't be silent! You can't imagine the power of my love for you! You don't love me!
I represent. As for my love, you know very well that apart from my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that. You can’t read in front of you, let’s drink tea ...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on a table behind the sofa blade, took cups and saucers from a nut hill that stood in the corner behind the table, saying whatever came to mind:
Have you read Fire Angel?
Finished it. It's so pompous that it's embarrassing to read.
He was too pissed off. And then I don’t like yellow-haired Rus' at all.
You don't like everything!
Yes, a lot...
"Odd love!" - I thought, and while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and it combined for me with their scent; behind one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of the riverside snow-gray Moscow; in the other, to the left, a part of the Kremlin was visible, on the contrary, somehow too close, the too new bulk of Christ the Savior was white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws eternally curling around it were reflected in bluish spots ... “Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. - St. Basil the Blessed and Spas-on-Bora, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... "
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa in only one silk arkhaluk trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said - I sat near her in the semi-darkness, without lighting the fire, and kissed her hands, feet, amazing in their smoothness body ... And she did not resist anything, but everything was silent. I constantly searched for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing already impetuously, but all in silence. When she felt that I was no longer able to control myself, she pushed me away, sat down and, without raising her voice, asked me to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat down on a revolving stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot dope. A quarter of an hour later, she came out of the bedroom dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to today? In the Metropol, maybe?
And again the whole evening we talked about something extraneous.
Shortly after we got close, she told me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not fit to be a wife. I'm not good, I'm not good...
This didn't discourage me. "We'll see!" - I said to myself in the hope of changing her mind over time and did not talk about marriage anymore. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even here - what was left for me but hope for time? Once, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I clutched my head:
No, it's beyond me! And why, why do you have to torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She said nothing.
Yes, it's not love, it's not love...
She called out evenly from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! - I exclaimed. - And I will wait until you know what love, happiness is!
Happiness, happiness ... "Our happiness, my friend, is like water in a delusion: you pull - it puffed up, but you pull it out - there's nothing."
What's this?
This is how Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand.
Oh, God bless her, with this Eastern wisdom!
And again, the whole evening he talked only about outsiders - about a new production of the Art Theater, about a new story by Andreev ... Again it was enough for me that at first I was sitting closely with her in a flying and rolling sled, holding her in a smooth fur coat , then I enter with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant to the march from "Aida", I eat and drink next to her, I hear her slow voice, I look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I kissed, I said to myself, with enthusiastic gratitude looking at them, at the dark fluff above them, at the pomegranate velvet of the dress, at the slope of the shoulders and the oval of her breasts, smelling some slightly spicy scent of her hair, thinking: "Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!" In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when everything was getting noisier all around in tobacco smoke, she, also smoking and getting drunk, sometimes led me to a separate room, asked to call the gypsies, and they entered deliberately noisy, cheeky: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Cossack coat with galloons, with a bluish muzzle of a drowned man, with a head as bare as a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy sang with a low forehead under tar bangs ... She listened to the songs with a languid, strange smile .. At three or four o'clock in the morning I drove her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes from happiness, kissed the wet fur of her collar and in some kind of enthusiastic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought, - all the same torment and all the same happiness ... Well, all the same, happiness, great happiness!
So January passed, February, Maslenitsa came and passed.
On Forgiveness Sunday, she ordered me to come to her at five o'clock in the evening. I arrived, and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, astrakhan hat, and black felt boots.
All Black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully.
Her eyes were joyful and quiet.
How do you know this? Ripids, trikiriyas!
It's you who don't know me.
Didn't know you were so religious.
This is not religiosity. I don't know what... But, for example, I often go in the mornings or in the evenings, when you don't drag me to restaurants, to the Kremlin cathedrals, and you don't even suspect it... So: what deacons! Peresvet and Oslyabya! And on two choirs there are two choirs, also all Peresvets: tall, powerful, in long black caftans, they sing, calling to each other - now one choir, then another, - and all in unison and not according to notes, but according to “hooks”. And the grave was lined inside with shiny spruce branches, and outside it was frost, sun, snow blinding ... No, you don’t understand this! Let's go...
The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees; on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws resembling nuns chatted in silence, the chimes now and then played thinly and sadly on the bell tower. Creaking in silence through the snow, we entered the gate, walked along the snowy paths through the cemetery - the sun had just set, it was still quite light, marvelously drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset with gray coral, branches in hoarfrost, and mysteriously glowed around us with calm, sad lights inextinguishable lamps scattered over the graves. I followed her, looked with tenderness at her little footprint, at the stars that left her new black boots in the snow - she suddenly turned around, sensing this:
It's true how you love me! she said, shaking her head in quiet perplexity.
We stood near the graves of Ertel and Chekhov. Holding her hands in her muff lowered, she looked for a long time at the Chekhov grave monument, then shrugged her shoulder:
What a nasty mixture of Russian leaf style and the Art Theater!
It began to get dark, it was freezing, we slowly went out of the gate, near which my Fedor meekly sat on the goats.
We'll drive a little more, - she said, - then we'll go to eat the last pancakes at Yegorov's ... Just not too much, Fyodor, - right?
Somewhere on Ordynka there is a house where Griboyedov lived. Let's go look for him...
And for some reason we went to Ordynka, drove for a long time along some alleys in the gardens, were in Griboedovsky lane; but who could tell us in what house Griboyedov lived - there were not a soul of passers-by, and besides, which of them could need Griboyedov? It had long been dark, the trees were turning pink through the hoarfrost-lit windows...
There is also the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent here,” she said.
I laughed.
Again in the monastery?
No, that's me...
The ground floor of Yegorov's tavern in Okhotny Ryad was full of shaggy, thickly dressed cabbies slicing stacks of pancakes drenched in excess butter and sour cream; In the upper rooms, also very warm, with low ceilings, old-time merchants washed down fiery pancakes with grainy caviar with frozen champagne. We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front of the black board of the icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God, a lamp was burning, we sat down at a long table on a black leather sofa ... The fluff on her upper lip was frosted, the amber of her cheeks turned slightly pink, the blackness of the paradise completely merged with pupil, - I could not take my enthusiastic eyes from her face. And she said, taking out a handkerchief from a fragrant muff:
Fine! Below are wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Virgin of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India!
You are a gentleman, you cannot understand all this Moscow the way I do.
I can, I can! - I answered. - And let's order a strong dinner!
How is it "strong"?
It means strong. How can you not know? "Gyurgi's speech..."
Yes, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. “Gyurgi’s speech to Svyatoslav, Prince of Seversky:“ Come to me, brother, in Moscow ”and commanded to arrange a strong dinner.”
How good. And now only in some northern monasteries this Rus' remains. Yes, even in church hymns. Recently I went to the Zachatievsky Monastery - you cannot imagine how wonderfully the stichera are sung there! And Chudovoe is even better. Last year I went there all the time on Strastnaya. Ah, how good it was! There are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, the soul is somehow tender, sad, and all the time this feeling of the homeland, its antiquity ... All the doors in the cathedral are open, the common people come in and out all day, the whole day of the service ... Oh, I’ll leave I'm going somewhere to a monastery, to some of the most deaf, Vologda, Vyatka!
I wanted to say that then I would either leave or slaughter someone, so that they would drive me to Sakhalin, lit a cigarette, forgetting from excitement, but a sexual officer in white trousers and a white shirt, belted with a raspberry cord, came up, respectfully reminded:
Excuse me, sir, we are not allowed to smoke...
And immediately, with particular obsequiousness, he began in a patter:
What do you want for pancakes? Homemade herbalist? Caviar, seeds? Our sherry is extremely good for our ribs, but for the navka...
And sherry for the oil,” she added, delighting me with her kind talkativeness, which did not leave her all evening. And I listened absentmindedly to what she had to say next. And she spoke with a quiet light in her eyes:
I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that until then I re-read what I especially like until I memorize it. “There was a city in the Russian land, the name of Murom, in which a noble prince, named Pavel, ruled. And the devil instilled in his wife a flying serpent for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, very beautiful ... "
I jokingly made scary eyes:
Oh, what a horror!
This is how God tested her. “When the time came for her blessed death, this prince and princess begged God to repose them in one day. And they agreed to be buried in a single coffin. And they ordered to carve out two coffin beds in a single stone. And they clothed themselves, at the same time, in a monastic robe ... "
And again my absent-mindedness was replaced by surprise and even anxiety: what is the matter with her today?
And so, this evening, when I took her home at a completely different time than usual, at eleven o'clock, she, after saying goodbye to me at the entrance, suddenly detained me when I was already getting into the sleigh:
Wait. Come see me tomorrow night no earlier than ten. Tomorrow is a skit at the Art Theatre.
So? - I asked. - Do you want to go to this "skit"?
But you said that you don’t know anything more vulgar than these “skewers”!
And now I don't know. And yet I want to go.
I mentally shook my head - all quirks, Moscow quirks! - and cheerfully responded:
Ol Wright!
At ten o'clock in the evening the next day, having gone up in the elevator to her door, I opened the door with my key and did not immediately enter from the dark hallway: it was unusually light behind it, everything was lit - chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under the light lampshade behind the head of the sofa, and the piano sounded the beginning of the "Moonlight Sonata" - all rising, sounding further, the more wearying, more inviting, in somnambulistic-blissful sadness. I slammed the door of the hallway, - the sounds broke off, the rustle of a dress was heard. I entered - she was standing straight and somewhat theatrical near the piano in a black velvet dress that made her thinner, shining with its elegance, the festive dress of resinous hair, the swarthy amber of bare arms, shoulders, the tender, full beginning of the breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along slightly powdered cheeks, coal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; glossy black pigtails curled up to her eyes in half-rings, giving her the appearance of an oriental beauty from a popular print.
Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage,” she said, looking at my confused face, “I would answer the applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and to the stalls, and I myself would imperceptibly, but carefully, push away with my foot a train so as not to step on it ...
On the skiff she smoked a lot and sipped champagne all the time, staring intently at the actors, with lively cries and refrains, depicting what seemed to be Parisian, at big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and dense Moskvin in pince-nez on a trough-shaped face - both with deliberate seriousness and diligence, falling back, made a desperate can-can to the laughter of the public. Kachalov approached us with a glass in his hand, pale from hops, with large sweat on his forehead, on which a tuft of his Belarusian hair hung down, raised his glass and, looking at her with mock gloomy greed, said in his low acting voice:
Tsar Maiden, Queen of Shamakhan, your health!
And she slowly smiled and clinked glasses with him. He took her hand, leaned drunkenly on it and almost fell off his feet. He managed and, clenching his teeth, looked at me:
And what is this handsome man? I hate.
Then she wheezed, whistled and rattled, the hurdy-gurdy stomped skippingly with a polka - and a small Sulerzhitsky, always hurrying somewhere and laughing, flew up to us, bent, imitating Gostinodvor gallantry, hurriedly muttered:
Let me invite you to Tranblanc...
And she, smiling, got up and, deftly, briefly stomping, flashing her earrings, her blackness and her bare shoulders and arms, walked with him among the tables, accompanied by admiring glances and applause, while he, raising his head, shouted like a goat:
Let's go, let's go quickly
Polka dance with you!
At three o'clock in the morning she got up, closing her eyes. When we were dressed, she looked at my beaver hat, stroked the beaver collar and went to the exit, saying, half jokingly, half seriously:
Of course it's beautiful. Kachalov told the truth... "A snake in human nature, very beautiful..."
She was silent on the way, bowing her head from the bright moon blizzard that was flying towards her. I spent a full month diving in the clouds over the Kremlin - "some kind of luminous skull," she said. On the Spasskaya Tower, the clock struck three, - she also said:
What an ancient sound - something tin and cast iron. And just like that, the same sound struck three in the morning in the fifteenth century.
And in Florence, the battle was exactly the same, it reminded me of Moscow there ...
When Fyodor besieged at the entrance, she ordered lifelessly:
Let him go...
Struck, - she never allowed to go up to her at night, - I said in confusion:
Fedor, I'll be back on foot...
And we silently reached up in the elevator, entered the night warmth and silence of the apartment with tapping hammers in the heaters. I took off her fur coat, slippery from the snow, she threw a wet downy shawl from her hair onto my hands and quickly went, rustling with her silk bottom skirt, into the bedroom. I undressed, entered the first room, and with my heart sinking as if over an abyss, sat down on a Turkish sofa. I could hear her steps outside the open doors of the lighted bedroom, how she, clinging to the hairpins, pulled off her dress over her head ... I got up and went to the door: she, in only swan shoes, stood with her back to me, dressing-glass, combing with a tortoiseshell comb the black strands of long hair that hung along her face.
Everyone said that I don’t think much about him, ”she said, throwing the comb on the mirror, and, throwing her hair back, turned to me:“ No, I thought ...
At dawn I felt her move. I opened my eyes and she was staring at me. I rose from the warmth of the bed and her body, she leaned towards me, quietly and evenly saying:
Tonight I'm leaving for Tver. How long, God only knows...
And she pressed her cheek against mine, - I felt her wet eyelash blinking.
I will write everything as soon as I arrive. I will write about the future. I'm sorry, leave me now, I'm very tired ...
And lay down on the pillow.
I dressed carefully, kissed her timidly on the hair, and tiptoed out onto the stairs, which were already brightening with a pale light. He walked on young sticky snow - there was no more snowstorm, everything was calm and already far away you could see along the streets, there was a smell of snow and from bakeries. I reached Iverskaya, the inside of which burned hotly and shone with whole bonfires of candles, knelt in a crowd of old women and beggars on the trampled snow, took off my hat ... Someone touched my shoulder - I looked: some unfortunate old woman was looking at me , grimacing from pitiful tears:
Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!
The letter I received two weeks after that was brief - an affectionate but firm request not to wait for her any longer, not to try to look for her, to see: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for the time being, then maybe I’ll decide to be tonsured .. May God give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment ... "
I fulfilled her request. And for a long time he disappeared in the dirtiest taverns, drank himself, sinking more and more in every possible way. Then he began to recover little by little - indifferently, hopelessly ... Almost two years have passed since that clean Monday ...
In 1914, on New Year's Eve, there was an evening just as quiet and sunny as the unforgettable one. I left the house, took a cab and went to the Kremlin. There he went into the empty Cathedral of the Archangel, stood for a long time, without praying, in its dusk, looking at the faint shimmer of the old gold of the iconostasis and the tombstones of the Moscow tsars, - he stood, as if waiting for something, in that special silence of the empty church, when you are afraid to breathe in her. Leaving the cathedral, he ordered the cab driver to go to Ordynka, he drove at a pace, as then, along the dark alleys in the gardens with windows lit under them, he drove along Griboedovsky lane - and he kept crying, crying ...
On Ordynka, I stopped a cab at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent: there in the yard black carriages were visible, the open doors of a small illuminated church were visible, the singing of a maiden choir wafted mournfully and tenderly from the doors. For some reason, I really wanted to go there. The janitor at the gate blocked my way, asking softly, imploringly:
You can't, sir, you can't!
How can you not? Can't go to church?
It is possible, sir, of course, it is possible, only I ask you for God's sake, do not go, Grand Duchess Elzavet Fedrovna and Grand Duke Mitri Palych are there right now ...
Arriving in Moscow, I thievishly stayed in inconspicuous rooms in a lane near the Arbat and lived languidly, a recluse - from date to date with her. During these days she visited me only three times, and each time she came in hastily, with the words:
I'm just for one minute...
She was pale with the beautiful pallor of a loving, agitated woman, her voice broke, and the way she, throwing her umbrella at random, hastening to lift her veil and embrace me, shook me with pity and delight.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that he suspects something, that he even knows something, perhaps he read some of your letters, picked up the key to my table ... I think that he capable of his cruel, selfish nature. Once he told me directly: "I will stop at nothing, defending my honor, the honor of my husband and officer!" Now, for some reason, he literally follows my every step, and in order for our plan to succeed, I have to be terribly careful. He already agrees to let me go, so I inspired him that I would die if I did not see the south, the sea, but, for God's sake, be patient!
Our plan was audacious: to leave in the same train for the Caucasian coast and live there in some completely wild place for three or four weeks. I knew this coast, once lived for some time near Sochi, - young, lonely - for the rest of my life I remember those autumn evenings among the black cypresses, by the cold gray waves ... And she turned pale when I said: "And now I I will be with you there, in the mountain jungle, by the tropical sea ... "We did not believe in the implementation of our plan until the last minute - it seemed to us too great happiness.
Cold rains were falling in Moscow, it seemed that summer had already passed and would not return, it was dirty, gloomy, the streets were wet and black, with the open umbrellas of passers-by and the tops of cabs raised, trembling on the run. And it was a dark, disgusting evening, when I was driving to the station, everything inside me froze from anxiety and cold. I ran through the station and the platform, pulling my hat over my eyes and burying my face in the collar of my overcoat.
In the small first-class compartment I had booked in advance, the rain was noisily pouring down on the roof. I immediately lowered the window curtain, and as soon as the porter, wiping his wet hand on his white apron, took the tea and went out, I locked the door. Then he opened the curtain a little and froze, not taking his eyes off the diverse crowd, scurrying back and forth with things along the car in the dark light of station lamps. We agreed that I would arrive at the station as early as possible, and she as late as possible, so that somehow I would not run into her and him on the platform. Now it was time for them to be. I looked more and more tensely - they were all gone. The second bell rang - I went cold with fear: I was late or he suddenly did not let her in at the last minute! But immediately after that, he was struck by his tall figure, an officer's cap, a narrow overcoat and a hand in a suede glove, with which he, walking wide, held her arm. I staggered away from the window, fell into the corner of the sofa. There was a second-class carriage nearby - I mentally saw how he entered it economically with her, looked around - whether the porter arranged her well - and took off his glove, took off his cap, kissing her, baptizing her ... The third call deafened me , the moving train plunged me into a stupor ... The train diverged, dangling, swaying, then began to carry smoothly, at full speed ... To the conductor, who escorted her to me and transferred her things, I slipped a ten-ruble note with an icy hand ...
When she entered, she did not even kiss me, she only smiled pitifully, sitting down on the sofa and taking off her hat, unhooking it from her hair.
“I couldn't have dinner at all,” she said. “I thought that I would not be able to endure this terrible role to the end. And I'm terribly thirsty. Give me narzan,” she said, saying “you” to me for the first time. I am convinced that he will follow me. I gave him two addresses, Gelendzhik and Gagra. Well, he will be in Gelendzhik in three or four days ... But God is with him, death is better than these torments ...
In the morning, when I went out into the corridor, it was sunny and stuffy in it, from the toilets it smelled of soap, cologne, and everything that a crowded car smells like in the morning. Behind the dust-clouded and heated windows there was an even scorched steppe, one could see dusty wide roads, carts drawn by oxen, railway booths flashed by with canary circles of sunflowers and scarlet mallows in the front gardens ... Then came the boundless expanse of naked plains with mounds and burial grounds, a dry sun, a sky like a dusty cloud, then the ghosts of the first mountains on the horizon...
From Gelendzhik and Gagra, she sent him a postcard, wrote that she still did not know where she would stay.
Then we went down along the coast to the south.
We found a primeval place, overgrown with plane trees, flowering shrubs, mahogany, magnolias, pomegranates, among which fan palms rose, cypresses blackened ...
I woke up early and, while she slept, until tea, which we drank at seven o'clock, I walked along the hills into the forest thickets. The hot sun was already strong, pure and joyful. In the forests, the fragrant fog shone azurely, dispersed and melted, behind the distant wooded peaks the eternal whiteness of the snowy mountains shone ... Back I walked through the sultry bazaar of our village, smelling of burning dung from the pipes: trade was in full swing there, it was crowded with people, from riding horses and donkeys, - in the mornings many mountaineers of different tribes gathered there to the market, - Circassian women in black clothes long to the ground, in red dudes, with heads wrapped in something black, with quick birdlike glances, flickering sometimes from this mourning wrapping.
Then we went to the shore, always completely empty, bathed and lay in the sun until breakfast. After breakfast - all grilled fish, white wine, nuts and fruit - in the sultry twilight of our hut under the tiled roof, hot, cheerful streaks of light stretched through the through shutters.
When the heat subsided and we opened the window, the part of the sea, visible from it between the cypress trees that stood on the slope below us, was the color of a violet and lay so evenly, peacefully, that it seemed there would never be an end to this peace, this beauty.
At sunset, wonderful clouds often piled up behind the sea; they burned so splendidly that she sometimes lay down on the couch, covered her face with a gas scarf and cried: another two, three weeks - and again Moscow!
The nights were warm and impenetrable, in the black darkness floated, flickered, fire flies shone with topaz light, tree frogs rang like glass bells. When the eye got used to the darkness, stars and mountain ridges appeared above, trees loomed over the village, which we did not notice during the day. And all night long there was heard from there, from the dukhan, a dull knock on the drum and a throaty, mournful, hopelessly happy cry, as if all of the same endless song.
Not far from us, in a coastal ravine, descending from the forest to the sea, a small, transparent river quickly jumped over a rocky bed. How wonderfully its brilliance shattered, boiled in that mysterious hour, when from behind the mountains and forests, like some wondrous creature, the late moon gazed intently!
Sometimes at night terrible clouds moved in from the mountains, there was a vicious storm, in the noisy grave blackness of the forests every now and then magical green abysses opened up and antediluvian thunderclaps cracked in the heavenly heights. Then the eaglets woke up in the forests and meowed, the leopard roared, the yappers yelped... Once a whole flock of them ran to our illuminated window - they always run to the shelter on such nights - we opened the window and looked at them from above, and they stood under in a brilliant downpour and yapped, asked to come to us ... She wept joyfully, looking at them.
He was looking for her in Gelendzhik, in Gagra, in Sochi. The next day, upon arrival in Sochi, he swam in the sea in the morning, then shaved, put on clean linen, a snow-white tunic, had breakfast at his hotel on the restaurant terrace, drank a bottle of champagne, drank coffee with chartreuse, slowly smoked a cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the sofa and shot himself in the whiskey with two revolvers.
Ivan Bunin
Easy breath
In the cemetery, over a fresh earthen mound, there is a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, the days are gray; the monuments of the cemetery, spacious, county, are still far away visible through the bare trees, and the cold wind tinkles and tinkles the china wreath at the foot of the cross.
A rather large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded in the cross itself, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya.
As a girl, she did not stand out in the crowd of brown gymnasium dresses: what could be said about her, except that she was one of the pretty, rich and happy girls, that she was capable, but playful and very careless about the instructions that a classy lady gives her ? Then it began to flourish, to develop by leaps and bounds. At fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms were already well outlined, the charm of which the human word had never yet expressed; at fifteen she was already a beauty. How carefully some of her friends combed their hair, how clean they were, how they watched their restrained movements! And she was not afraid of anything - not ink spots on her fingers, not a flushed face, not disheveled hair, not a knee that became naked when she fell on the run. Without any of her worries and efforts, and somehow imperceptibly, everything that so distinguished her in the last two years from the whole gymnasium came to her - grace, elegance, dexterity, a clear sparkle in her eyes ... Nobody danced at balls like Olya Meshcherskaya , no one ran on skates like she did, no one was looked after at balls as much as she was, and for some reason no one was loved as much by the lower classes as she was. She imperceptibly became a girl, and her gymnasium fame imperceptibly strengthened, and there were already rumors that she was windy, could not live without admirers, that the schoolboy Shenshin was madly in love with her, that she seemed to love him too, but was so changeable in her treatment of him. that he attempted suicide...
During her last winter, Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun, as they said in the gymnasium. The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun set early behind the high spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising frost and sun tomorrow, a walk on Cathedral Street, a skating rink in the city garden, pink evening, music and this in all directions the crowd sliding on the skating rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest. And then one day, at a big break, when she was running like a whirlwind around the assembly hall from the first-graders chasing after her and squealing blissfully, she was unexpectedly called to the headmistress. She stopped in a hurry, took only one deep breath, straightened her hair with a quick and already familiar female movement, pulled the corners of her apron to her shoulders and, beaming her eyes, ran upstairs. The headmistress, youthful but gray-haired, sat calmly with knitting in her hands at the desk, under the royal portrait.
“Hello, mademoiselle Meshcherskaya,” she said in French, without looking up from her knitting. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have been forced to call you here to speak with you about your behavior.
“I’m listening, madam,” Meshcherskaya replied, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as easily and gracefully as she alone could.
“It will be bad for you to listen to me, I, unfortunately, was convinced of this,” said the headmistress, and, pulling the thread and twisting a ball on the lacquered floor, at which Meshcherskaya looked with curiosity, she raised her eyes. “I won't repeat myself, I won't talk at length,” she said.
Meshcherskaya really liked this unusually clean and large office, which on frosty days breathed so well with the warmth of a brilliant Dutch and the freshness of lilies of the valley on the desk. She looked at the young king, painted to his full height in the midst of some brilliant hall, at the even parting in the milky, neatly frilled hair of the boss, and was expectantly silent.
“You are no longer a girl,” the headmistress said meaningfully, secretly starting to get annoyed.
“Yes, madam,” Meshcherskaya answered simply, almost cheerfully.
“But not a woman either,” the headmistress said even more significantly, and her matte face flushed slightly. First of all, what is this hairstyle? It's a woman's hairstyle!
“It’s not my fault, madame, that I have good hair,” Meshcherskaya answered, and slightly touched her beautifully trimmed head with both hands.
“Ah, that’s how it is, it’s not your fault! - said the headmistress. “You are not to blame for your hair, you are not to blame for these expensive combs, you are not to blame for ruining your parents for shoes worth twenty rubles!” But, I repeat to you, you completely lose sight of the fact that you are still only a schoolgirl...
And then Meshcherskaya, without losing her simplicity and calmness, suddenly politely interrupted her:
“Excuse me, madame, you are mistaken: I am a woman. And to blame for this - you know who? Friend and neighbor of the pope, and your brother Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin. It happened last summer in the village...
And a month after this conversation, a Cossack officer, ugly and plebeian in appearance, who had absolutely nothing to do with the circle to which Olya Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her on the station platform, among a large crowd of people who had just arrived with the train. And the incredible confession of Olya Meshcherskaya, which stunned the boss, was completely confirmed: the officer told the judicial investigator that Meshcherskaya had lured him, was close to him, swore to be his wife, and at the station, on the day of the murder, seeing him off to Novocherkassk, she suddenly told him that she and never thought to love him, that all this talk about marriage was just her mockery of him, and gave him to read that page of the diary that spoke about Malyutin.
“I ran through these lines and right there, on the platform where she was walking, waiting for me to finish reading, I shot at her,” said the officer. - This diary is here, look what was written in it on the tenth of July last year.
The following was written in the diary:
“It is now the second hour of the night. I fell asleep soundly, but immediately woke up ... Today I have become a woman! Dad, mom and Tolya, they all left for the city, I was left alone. I was so happy to be alone! In the morning I walked in the garden, in the field, was in the forest, it seemed to me that I was alone in the whole world, and I thought as well as never before in my life. I dined alone, then played for an hour, to the music I had the feeling that I would live without end and be as happy as anyone. Then I fell asleep in my father's office, and at four o'clock Katya woke me up and said that Alexei Mikhailovich had arrived. I was very happy with him, it was so pleasant for me to receive him and occupy him. He arrived on a pair of his vyatki, very beautiful, and they stood at the porch all the time, he stayed because it was raining, and he wanted it to dry out by evening. He regretted that he did not find dad, was very animated and behaved like a gentleman with me, he joked a lot that he had been in love with me for a long time. When we were walking in the garden before tea, the weather was lovely again, the sun shone through the whole wet garden, although it became quite cold, and he led me by the arm and said that he was Faust with Marguerite. He is fifty-six years old, but he is still very handsome and always well dressed - the only thing I did not like was that he arrived in a lionfish - he smells of English cologne, and his eyes are very young, black, and his beard is elegantly divided into two long parts and completely silver. We were sitting at tea on the glass veranda, I felt as if I was unwell and lay down on the couch, and he smoked, then moved to me, began again to say some courtesies, then to examine and kiss my hand. I covered my face with a silk handkerchief, and he kissed me several times on the lips through the handkerchief ... I don’t understand how this could happen, I went crazy, I never thought that I was like that! Now there is only one way out for me ... I feel such disgust for him that I can’t survive this! .. ”
During these April days, the city became clean, dry, its stones turned white, and it is easy and pleasant to walk on them. Every Sunday after mass, a little woman in mourning, wearing black kid gloves, and carrying an ebony umbrella, walks down Cathedral Street, which leads out of the city. She crosses along the highway a dirty square, where there are many smoky forges and fresh field air blows; farther, between the monastery and the prison, the cloudy slope of the sky turns white and the spring field turns gray, and then, when you make your way among the puddles under the wall of the monastery and turn to the left, you will see, as it were, a large low garden, surrounded by a white fence, over the gates of which the Assumption of the Mother of God is written. The little woman makes a small cross and habitually walks along the main avenue. Having reached the bench opposite the oak cross, she sits in the wind and in the spring cold for an hour or two, until her feet in light boots and her hand in a narrow husky are completely cold. Listening to the spring birds singing sweetly even in the cold, listening to the sound of the wind in a porcelain wreath, she sometimes thinks that she would give half her life if only this dead wreath were not in front of her eyes. This wreath, this mound, this oak cross! Is it possible that under him is the one whose eyes shine so immortally from this convex porcelain medallion on the cross, and how to combine with this pure look that terrible thing that is now connected with the name of Olya Meshcherskaya? But in the depths of her soul, the little woman is happy, like all people devoted to some passionate dream.
