I. Bunin "Easy breathing" - plot and analysis
One of the outstanding works of Ivan Bunin is considered to be the story "Easy breathing". This short story tells about a beautiful young girl and her tragic fate.
The composition of the work is unusual and original. The author's intention is conveyed by violating the traditional chronological framework of the narrative. The text also uses contrast and antithesis techniques. From the first words, a gloomy and sad picture of the cemetery opens before the reader. “... the monuments of the cemetery, a spacious county one, are still far away visible through the bare trees, and the cold wind rings a porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross.” And right there, in contrast to the cemetery landscape, "a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes." Life and death, joy and sorrow - all this seems to be a symbol of the fate of the main character of the novel.
Further, the author introduces us to the heroine, Olya Meshcherskaya. He describes in sufficient detail her appearance, that extraordinary natural ease with which Olya turns from a girl into a beautiful girl. “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.” The author puts her liveliness and naturalness in contrast with the gray and conventional world. Everyone admires Olya's beauty and charm, her students like her, she has many fans. At the same time, everyone considers the girl windy, many envy her. There were rumors about her that she could not live without admirers, but at the same time she treated them very cruelly. The headmistress of the gymnasium made a remark to Olya about her behavior and appearance, accused her of behaving like an adult woman, and not a student. To which Olya openly stated that she had already become a woman.
The author presents an excerpt from the girl's diary, which tells how her parents' friend Malyutin, a man many years older, seduced her. Olya's easy attitude to life and carelessness led her to a dead end. It didn't take long for her to realize what she was missing. Only later, realizing the horror of the situation, did she feel fear, shame, and disappointment. “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! .. ”
Olga's life ends tragically. Malyutin shot Olga at the station. He explained this by saying that he was in a state of passion, because she showed him her diary describing the events and her attitude to the situation. The author does not give his explanations for Malyutin's act. Perhaps he simply could not forgive her hurt pride.
At the end of the story, we again find ourselves in a cemetery. Cool lady Olya Meshcherskaya every holiday comes to visit her grave. This woman lives in a fictional world in which Olya has become for her the ideal of femininity, beauty and tragedy at the same time.
What distinguished Olya Meshcherskaya from the gray everyday world? She radiated cheerfulness and good spirits, courage and happiness. She lived for today and enjoyed every minute of her life. “…But the main thing, you know what? Easy breath! But I have it, - you listen to how I sigh, - is it true, is there? Olya said to her friend. The tragedy of Olya's fate is that, living an easy and carefree life, she forgot about the cruel reality of society, which broke all her dreams.
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 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 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 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 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 fans, 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, shining in 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, madame," Meshcherskaya replied, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as lightly and gracefully as she alone could.
“You won’t listen to me well, 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 speak 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 boss 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 dull face turned slightly red. - 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.
- Oh, that's how, you're not to blame! - said the boss. - 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, madam, 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, here it is, 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 ever 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. 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 - I only did not like 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 gate 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.
This woman is a classy lady Olya Meshcherskaya, a middle-aged girl who has long been living in some kind of fiction that replaces her real life. At first, her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, was such an invention - she united her whole soul with him, with his future, which for some reason seemed brilliant to her. 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. She goes to her grave every holiday, keeps her eyes on the oak cross for hours, recalls the pale face of Olya Meshcherskaya in the coffin, among the flowers - and what she once overheard: once, at a big break, walking in the gymnasium garden, Olya Meshcherskaya quickly, she quickly said to her beloved friend, plump, tall Subbotina:
In one of my father's books - he has a lot of old funny books - I read what beauty a woman should have ... There, you know, so much is said that you can’t remember everything: well, of course, black, resin-boiling eyes, - by golly , and it is written: boiling with pitch! - black as night, eyelashes, gently playing a blush, a thin camp, longer than an ordinary arm, - you know, longer than usual! - a small leg, moderately large breasts, correctly rounded calves, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders - I learned a lot almost by heart, so all this is true! But more importantly, you know what? - Easy breath! But I have it, - you listen to how I sigh, - is it true, is it?
Now that light breath has dissipated again in the world, in that cloudy sky, in that cold spring wind.
The story was suggested by our reader,
Alyona
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 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 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 like that at balls,
like Olya Meshcherskaya, 
no one skated as much as she did, 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 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, shining in 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, madame," Meshcherskaya replied, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as lightly and gracefully as she alone could.
“You won’t listen to me well, 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 speak 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 woman 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 dull 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.
- Oh, that's how, you're not to blame! - said the boss. - 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 a 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 here it is, 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 I 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 came 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.
This woman is a classy lady Olya Meshcherskaya, a middle-aged girl who has long been living in some kind of fiction that replaces her real life. At first, her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, was such an invention - she united her whole soul with him, with his future, which for some reason seemed brilliant to her. 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. She goes to her grave every holiday, keeps her eyes on the oak cross for hours, remembers the pale face of Olya Meshcherskaya in the coffin, among the flowers - and what she once overheard: once at a big break, walking in the gymnasium garden, Olya Meshcherskaya quickly, quickly she said to her beloved friend, plump, tall Subbotina:
- I read in one of my father's books - he has a lot of old, funny books - what beauty a woman should have ... There, you know, so much is said that you can’t remember everything: well, of course, black eyes boiling with tar - by golly , and it is written: boiling with pitch! - black as night, eyelashes, gently playing a blush, a thin camp, longer than an ordinary arm, - you know, longer than usual! - a small leg, moderately large breasts, correctly rounded calves, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders - I learned a lot almost by heart, so all this is true! But more importantly, you know what? Easy breath! But I have it, - you listen to how I sigh, - is it true, is it?
Now that light breath has dissipated again in the world, in that cloudy sky, in that cold spring wind.
Bunin Ivan Alekseevich
Easy breath
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 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 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 stains 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 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 like that at balls, like Olya Meshcherskaya, no one skated 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 younger 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, shining in 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 lifting her eyes 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.
I’m listening, madam,” Meshcherskaya answered, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as lightly and gracefully as she alone could.
You will listen to me badly, 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 will not repeat myself, I will not speak wide, 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 beginning to get annoyed.
Yes, madame, Meshcherskaya answered simply, almost cheerfully.
But not a woman either,” the headmistress said even more significantly, and her dull face turned slightly red. “First of all, what kind of hairstyle is this? It's a woman's hairstyle!
It’s not my fault, madame, that I have good hair,” Meshcherskaya answered, and lightly touched her beautifully trimmed head with both hands.
Oh, that's how, you're not to blame! - said the headmistress. - You are not to blame for the hair, not to blame for these expensive combs, 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, madam, 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 a 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, here it is, 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 became a woman! Dad, mom and Tolya, everyone left for the city, I was left alone. 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 ever in my life. I had a 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 he came in 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. and behaved like a cavalier with me, joking 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 again lovely, the sun shone through the whole wet garden, although it became quite cold, and he led me by the arm and spoke that he is 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 not 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 gate 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.
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 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 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 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 ... 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, shining in 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 answered, going up to the table, looking at her clearly and vividly, but without any expression on her face, and sat down as lightly and gracefully as she alone could.
You will listen to me badly, I, unfortunately, was convinced of this, ”said the boss, and, pulling the thread and wrapping a ball on the lacquered floor, which Meshcherskaya looked at with curiosity, she raised her eyes. "I won't repeat myself, I won't speak 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 boss said meaningfully, secretly starting to get annoyed.
Yes, madame, - Meshcherskaya answered simply, almost cheerfully.
But not a woman either,” the headmistress said even more significantly, and her dull face turned slightly red. - 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.
Oh, that's how, you're not to blame! - said the boss. - 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, madam, 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 a 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, here it is, 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 ever 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. 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 came 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 gate 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.
This woman is a classy lady Olya Meshcherskaya, a middle-aged girl who has long been living in some kind of fiction that replaces her real life. At first, her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, was such an invention - she united her whole soul with him, with his future, which for some reason seemed brilliant to her. 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. She goes to her grave every holiday, does not take her eyes off the oak cross for hours, recalls the pale face of Olya Meshcherskaya in the coffin, among the flowers - and what she once overheard: once, at a big break, walking in the gymnasium garden, Olya Meshcherskaya quickly, she quickly said to her beloved friend, plump, tall Subbotina:
In one of my father's books - he has a lot of old funny books - I read what beauty a woman should have ... There, you know, so much is said that you can’t remember everything: well, of course, black, resin-boiling eyes, - by golly , and it is written: boiling with pitch! - black as night, eyelashes, gently playing a blush, a thin camp, longer than an ordinary arm, - you know, longer than usual! - a small leg, moderately large breasts, correctly rounded calves, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders - I learned a lot almost by heart, so all this is true! But more importantly, you know what? - Easy breath! But I have it, - you listen to how I sigh, - is it true, is it?
Now that light breath has dissipated again in the world, in that cloudy sky, in that cold spring wind.
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