Is that you, Vasil Likseich? And I’m alone here, the cook quarreled with the broadsword and went home, and dad took the worker and left for the city on business, they’re unlikely to return today ... I was scared to death by a thunderstorm, and then, I hear, someone drove up, more I was more frightened... Hello, please excuse me...
Krasilshchikov struck a match, illuminating her black eyes and swarthy face:
Hello fool. I’m also going to the city, yes, you see, what’s going on, I stopped by to wait it out ... And you, then, thought the robbers had arrived?
The match began to burn out, but you could still see that embarrassedly smiling face, the coral necklace around her neck, her small breasts under a yellow print dress ... She was almost half his height and seemed quite a girl.
I'll light the lamp now,' she said hurriedly, even more embarrassed by Krasilshchikov's keen gaze, and rushed to the lamp over the table. “God himself sent you, what would I do here alone,” she said in a melodious voice, rising on tiptoe and awkwardly pulling a light bulb out of the crenellated grille, out of her tin mug, glass.
Krasilshchikov lit another match, looking at her stretched and curved figure.
Wait a minute, don't," he said suddenly, throwing down the match and taking her by the waist. Wait, turn around for a minute to me ...
She glanced at him fearfully over her shoulder, dropped her hands, and turned around. He pulled her to him - she did not break out, only wildly and surprised threw her head back. From above, directly and firmly, he looked through the twilight into her eyes and laughed:
Even more frightened?
Vasil Likseich ... - she muttered pleadingly and reached out from his hands.
Wait a minute. Don't you like me? Because I know I'm always glad when I stop by.
There is no one better than you in the world, ”she said softly and ardently.
You see now...
He kissed her long on the lips, and his hands slid lower.
Vasil Likseich... for Christ's sake... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch... papa will come... Oh, don't!
Half an hour later, he left the hut, led the horse into the yard, put it under a shed, took off its bridle, gave it wet mowed grass from a cart standing in the middle of the yard, and returned, looking at calm stars in the cleared sky. In the hot darkness of the quiet hut, weak, distant lightnings were still peeping from different directions. She lay on the bunk, all huddled, with her head buried in her chest, weeping hotly from horror, delight and the suddenness of what had happened. He kissed her wet cheek, salty from tears, lay down on his back and laid her head on his shoulder, holding a cigarette in his right hand. She lay quietly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absent-mindedly smoothed her hair with his left hand, which tickled his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smugly grinned: "But dad left for the city ..." So they left for you! It's bad, he will understand everything at once - such a dry and quick old man in a gray undershirt, a snow-white beard, and thick eyebrows are still completely black, his eyes are unusually lively, he speaks without stopping when he is drunk, but he sees through everything ...
He lay without sleep until the hour when the darkness of the hut began to faintly lighten in the middle, between the ceiling and the floor. Turning his head, he saw the east, whitening greenishly outside the windows, and already discerned in the twilight of the corner above the table big image saint in church vestments, his raised blessing hand and adamantly menacing look. He looked at her: she was lying, still curled up, her legs crossed, she forgot everything in a dream! Sweet and pathetic girl...
When it became quite light in the sky and the rooster different voices began to yell behind the wall, he made a movement to rise. She jumped up and, half-sitting sideways, with unbuttoned breasts, with matted hair, stared at him with eyes that did not understand anything.
Styopa, - he said cautiously. - I have to go.
Are you going already? she whispered senselessly.
And suddenly she came to herself and crisscrossed herself in the chest with her hands:
Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What am I to do now?
Stepa, I'll be back soon...
But papa will be at home - how can I see you! I would come to the forest beyond the highway, but how can I leave home?
He gritted his teeth and pulled her over. She threw her arms wide, exclaimed in sweet, as if dying despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood in front of the bunk, already in a coat, in a cap, with a whip in his hand, with his back to the windows, to the thick brilliance of the sun that had just appeared, and she knelt on the bunk and, sobbing, childishly and ugly, opening her mouth, abruptly said:
Vasil Likseich... for the sake of Christ... for the sake of the king of heaven himself, marry me! I will be your last slave! I will sleep at your doorstep - take it! I would have gone to you anyway, but who will let me go like that! Vasil Likseich...
Shut up,” Krasilshchikov said sternly. - One of these days I will come to your father and say that I will marry you. Heard?
She sat on her feet, breaking off her sobs at once, stupidly opening her wet, radiant eyes:
Of course it's true.
I’m already sixteenth at Epiphany,” she said hastily.
Well, that means that in six months you can get married ...
Returning home, he immediately began to pack up and in the evening left in a troika for the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
I was then no longer the first youth, but I decided to study painting - I always had a passion for it - and, leaving my estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a mediocre, but rather famous artist, an untidy fat man , who perfectly mastered everything that is supposed to be: long hair, thrown back in large greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a velvet pomegranate jacket, dirty gray leggings on his shoes - I especially hated them - carelessness in address, condescending glances with narrowed eyes at work student, and this is, as it were, to himself:
Amusing, amusing ... Undoubted successes ...
I lived on the Arbat, next to the Prague restaurant, in the Stolitsa rooms. During the day he worked for the artist and at home, he often spent his evenings in cheap restaurants with various new bohemian acquaintances, both young and shabby, but equally committed to billiards and crayfish with beer ... I lived unpleasantly and boringly! This effeminate, unscrupulous artist, his “artistically” neglected workshop, littered with all sorts of dusty props, this gloomy “Capital” ... It remains in my memory: snow is constantly falling outside the windows, the horse-drawn carriages are ringing sourly along the Arbat, in the evening it stinks sourly of beer and gas in a dimly lit restaurant ... I don’t understand why I led such a miserable existence - I was then far from poor.
But then one day in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the open windows of the double frames there was no longer the winter dampness of sleet and rain, horseshoes were clattering on the pavement, and as if the horse-drawn horses rang more musically, someone knocked on my hallway door. I shouted: who is there? - but there was no answer. I waited, shouted again - again silence, then another knock. I got up, opened it: at the threshold stands a tall girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, staring point-blank, eyes the color of an acorn, on long eyelashes, on the face and on the hair under the hat, drops of rain and snow glisten; looks and says:
I am a conservative, Muse Graf. I heard that you are an interesting person, and I came to meet you. Do you have anything against it?
Quite surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
Very flattered, please. I must only warn you that the rumors that have reached you are hardly correct: there seems to be nothing interesting about me.
Anyway, let me in, don't keep me in front of the door, she said, still looking straight at me. - Flattered, so take it.
And, entering, she began, as at home, to take off her hat in front of my gray-silver, in places blackened mirror, straighten her rusty hair, took off her coat and threw it on a chair, remaining in a checkered flannel dress, sat down on the sofa, sniffing her nose wet from snow and rain, and ordered:
Take off my boots and give me a handkerchief from my coat.
I gave her a handkerchief, she wiped herself off and held out her legs to me.
I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert, - she said indifferently.
In a cold autumn storm, on one of the big Tula roads, flooded with rain and cut by many black ruts, to a long hut, in one connection of which there was a state postal station, and in the other a private room where you could relax or spend the night, dine or ask for a samovar , a tarantass with a half-raised top rolled up, thrown with mud, a trio of fairly simple horses with their tails tied up from the slush. On the goats of the carriage sat a strong peasant in a tightly belted coat, serious and dark-faced, with a sparse resin beard, resembling an old robber, and in the carriage was a slender old military man in a large cap and in a gray Nikolaev greatcoat with a beaver stand-up collar, still black-browed, but with white mustaches, which were connected with the same sideburns; his chin was shaved, and his whole appearance had that resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military at the time of his reign; his eyes were also inquiring, stern and at the same time tired.
When the horses stopped, he threw his leg in a military boot with a flat top out of the tarantass and, holding the hem of his greatcoat with his hands in suede gloves, ran up to the porch of the hut.
- To the left, Your Excellency! the coachman shouted rudely from the goat, and he, bending slightly on the threshold from his tall stature, went into the porch, then into the upper room to the left.
It was warm, dry and tidy in the upper room: a new golden image in the left corner, under it a table covered with a clean, harsh tablecloth, cleanly washed benches behind the table; the kitchen stove, which occupied the far right corner, was again white with chalk, closer stood something like an ottoman, covered with piebald blankets, resting with its blade against the side of the stove, behind the stove damper, sweetly smelling of cabbage soup - boiled cabbage, beef and bay leaves.
The visitor threw off his overcoat on the bench and turned out to be even slimmer in one uniform and boots, then he took off his gloves and cap and with a tired look ran his pale, thin hand over his head - his gray hair, combed at the temples, slightly curled to the corners of his eyes, his handsome elongated face with dark eyes kept in some places small traces of smallpox. There was no one in the room, and he shouted hostilely, opening the door to the entrance hall:
- Hey, who's there!
Immediately afterwards, a dark-haired woman, also black-browed and also still beautiful beyond her age, resembling an elderly gypsy, with dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light in walking, but plump, with large breasts under a red blouse, with triangular belly, like a goose's, under a black woolen skirt.
“Welcome, Your Excellency,” she said. - Would you like to eat, or will you order a samovar?
The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs in worn red Tatar shoes and curtly, inattentively answered:
- Samovar. Is the hostess here or do you work?
“Mistress, Your Excellency.
“You mean you keep it?”
- Yes sir. Herself.
- What is it? A widow, or something, that you yourself are doing business?
“Not a widow, Your Excellency, but you have to live with something. And I love to manage.
- So. So. This is good. And how clean, nice you have.
The woman kept looking at him inquisitively, squinting slightly.
“And I love cleanliness,” she replied. - After all, she grew up under the masters, how not to be able to behave decently, Nikolai Alekseevich.
He straightened up quickly, opened his eyes and blushed.
– Hope! You? he said hastily.
“I am Nikolai Alekseevich,” she replied.
- My God, my God! he said, sitting down on the bench and looking straight at her. - Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years?
- Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich. I'm forty-eight now, and you're under sixty, I think?
“Like this… My God, how strange!”
"What's strange, sir?"
- But everything, everything ... How can you not understand!
His fatigue and absent-mindedness disappeared, he got up and resolutely walked along the room, looking at the floor. Then he stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to say:
“I don’t know anything about you since then. How did you get here? Why didn't she stay with the masters?
- The gentlemen gave me my freedom soon after you.
- Where did you live then?
“A long story, sir.
- Married, you say, was not?
- No, it wasn't.
- Why? With the beauty that you had?
- I couldn't do it.
Why couldn't she? What do you want to say?
- What is there to explain. Remember how much I loved you.
He blushed to tears and, frowning, walked again.
“Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. - Love, youth - everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. Everything passes over the years. How does it say in the book of Job? "How will you remember the water that has flowed."
- What does God give to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter.
He lifted his head and paused, smiling painfully.
- After all, you could not love me all the time!
“So she could. No matter how much time passed, all lived one. I knew that you were gone for a long time, that it was as if there was nothing for you, but ... It’s too late to reproach now, but it’s true that you left me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself from resentment from one, already not to mention everything else. After all, there was a time, Nikolai Alekseevich, when I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me? And I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of "dark alleys," she added with an unkind smile.
- Oh, how good you were! he said, shaking his head. How hot, how beautiful! What a camp, what eyes! Do you remember how everyone looked at you?
- I remember, sir. You were also very good. And after all, I gave you my beauty, my fever. How can you forget that.
- BUT! Everything passes. Everything is forgotten.
Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.
“Go away,” he said, turning away and going to the window. – Leave, please.
And, taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes, he added quickly:
If only God would forgive me. And you seem to have forgiven.
She walked to the door and paused.
- No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched upon our feelings, I will say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as there was nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so it was not later. That's why I can't forgive you. Well, what to remember, the dead are not carried from the churchyard.
“Yes, yes, there’s nothing to it, order the horses to be brought in,” he answered, moving away from the window with a stern face. “I’ll tell you one thing: I have never been happy in my life, don’t think, please. Sorry that maybe I offend your pride, but I will say frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. He adored his son - while he was growing up, what hopes he did not place on him! And a scoundrel, a waste, an insolent one, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience, came out ... However, all this is also the most ordinary, dirty story. Be well, dear friend. I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.
She came up and kissed his hand, he kissed hers.
- Order to serve ...
When we drove on, he thought gloomily: “Yes, how lovely she was! Magically adorable!" With shame he remembered his last words and that he had kissed her hand and was immediately ashamed of his shame. "Isn't it true that she gave me the best moments of my life?"
By sunset, a pale sun peeped through. The coachman drove at a trot, constantly changing black ruts, choosing less dirty ones, and he was also thinking something. Finally he said with serious rudeness:
“And she, Your Excellency, kept looking out the window as we drove away. Is it true, how long have you been wanting to know her?
- A long time ago, Klim.
- Baba - mind chamber. And everyone, they say, is getting richer. Gives money in growth.
- This means nothing.
- How does it not mean! Who doesn't want to live better! If you give with a conscience, there is little harm. And she is said to be right about it. But cool! If you don't give it back on time, blame yourself.
- Yes, yes, blame yourself ... Drive, please, so as not to be late for the train ...
The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses evenly splashed through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
“Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?
And closing his eyes, he shook his head.
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 anywhere, hastened to lift her veil and embrace me, shocked 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 is capable of anything with 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 remembered those autumn evenings among the black cypresses, by the cold gray waves ... And she turned pale when I said: “And now I will be there with you, in the mountain jungle, by the tropical sea ...” We did not believe in the implementation of our plan until the last minute - it seemed too great happiness us it.
Cold rains were falling in Moscow, it looked as if 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, his eyes fixed on the diverse crowd, scurrying back and forth with things along the carriage in the dark light of the 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 tall figure, an officer's cap, a narrow overcoat and a suede-gloved hand, with which he, walking with wide strides, held her arm. I staggered away from the window, fell into the corner of the sofa. Nearby was a second-class carriage - 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, moving the train plunged into a stupor ... The train diverged, dangling, swaying, then began to carry smoothly, at full speed ... I thrust a ten-ruble note with an icy hand to the conductor, who escorted her to me and transferred her things ...
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 bless 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 a flat, 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 bare plains with mounds and burial grounds, the unbearable 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 tree forests, 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, 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 azure, dispersed and melted, behind the distant wooded peaks the eternal whiteness of the snowy mountains shone ... Back I walked through the sultry and smelling of burning dung from the pipes of the bazaar of our village: 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 walked smoothly in black, long clothes to the ground, in red dudes, with their heads wrapped in something black, with quick bird-like glances that sometimes flickered 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, glass bells rang tree frogs. 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 mewed, the leopard roared, the yappers yelped ... Once a whole flock of them ran to our illuminated window - they always run to shelter on such nights - we opened the window and looked at them from above, and they stood under a brilliant downpour and yapped, asked to come to us ... She cried 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.
Under big winter holidays was always, like a bath, heated country house and showed a strange picture, for it consisted of spacious and low rooms, the doors of which were all wide open, from the entrance hall to the sofa room, located at the very end of the house, and shone in the red corners wax candles and lamps in front of the icons.
On these holidays, smooth oak floors were washed everywhere in the house, which soon dried from the firebox, and then they covered them with clean blankets, in best order furniture that had been shifted for the duration of the work was placed in its place, and in the corners, in front of the gilded and silver frames of the icons, lampadas and candles were lit, while all other fires were extinguished. By this hour, the winter night was already dark blue outside the windows, and everyone dispersed to their sleeping rooms. At that time, complete silence reigned in the house, reverent and, as it were, waiting for something, peace, which could not be more befitting of the sacred night view of the icons, illuminated mournfully and touchingly.
In winter, the wanderer Mashenka sometimes visited the estate, gray-haired, dry and fractional, like a girl. And only she alone in the whole house did not sleep on such nights: coming after dinner from the servants' room to the hallway and taking off her little legs in woolen stockings felt boots, she silently walked around all these hot, mysteriously lit rooms on soft blankets, knelt down everywhere, crossed herself, bowed before the icons, and there she again went into the hallway, sat down on a black chest, which had stood in it for a century, and read prayers in an undertone, psalms or just talking to herself. So I once learned about this "God's beast, the Lord's wolf": I heard Mashenka praying to him.
I could not sleep, late at night I went out into the hall to go to the sofa room and take something to read from the bookcases there. Mashenka did not hear me. She said something, sitting in a dark hallway. I paused and listened. She recited the psalms by heart.
“Hear, Lord, my prayer and heed my cry,” she said without any expression. - Do not be silent to my tears, for I am a stranger with You and a stranger on earth, like all my fathers ...
Tell God: how terrible are you in your deeds!
He who lives under the roof of the Almighty rests under the shadow of the Almighty... You will step on an asp and a basilisk, you will trample on a lion and a dragon...
On the last words she quietly but firmly raised her voice, pronounced them with conviction: trample the lion and the dragon. Then she paused and, sighing slowly, said as if she were talking to someone:
“For all the beasts of the forest and the cattle on a thousand mountains are His.”
I glanced into the hallway: she was sitting on the chest, her small legs in woolen stockings straight down from him and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked ahead of her, not seeing me. Then she raised her eyes to the ceiling and said separately:
- And you, God's beast, the Lord's wolf, pray for us the Queen of Heaven.
I approached and said softly:
- Masha, don't be afraid, it's me.
She dropped her hands, stood up, bowed low:
- Hello, sir. No, sir, I'm not afraid. Why should I be afraid now? It was in her youth that she was stupid, she was afraid of everything. The dark demon was embarrassing.
“Sit down, please,” I said.
“No way,” she replied. - I'll stand.
I put my hand on her bony shoulder with a large collarbone, forced her to sit up and sat down next to her.
"Sit down, or I'll leave." Tell me, who are you praying to? Is there such a saint - the Lord's wolf?
She wanted to get up again. I held her again:
- Oh, what are you! And you say you're not afraid of anything! I ask you: is it true that there is such a saint?
She thought. Then she answered seriously:
“So there is, sir. There is also the beast Tigris-Ephrat. Since it is written in the church, therefore, it is. I saw him myself.
- How did you see it? Where? When?
“A long time ago, sir, in time immemorial. And where - and I don’t know how to say: I remember one thing - we went there for three days. There was a village Krutye Gory there. I myself am distant, - perhaps, they deigned to hear: Ryazan, - and that region will be even lower, in the Zadonshchina, and what a rough terrain there, you won’t find a word for that. It was there that the village behind the eyes of our princes, their grandfather's favorite, - a whole, maybe a thousand clay huts along bare hillocks-slopes, and on the very high mountain, on its crown, over the Kamennaya River, the master's house, also all naked, three-tiered, and the church is yellow, columned, and in that church this very God's wolf: in the middle, therefore, a cast-iron slab over the grave of the prince, who was slaughtered by him, and on the right pillar - he himself, this wolf, written to his full height and warehouse: he sits in a gray fur coat on a thick tail and stretches upwards, rests his front paws on the ground - and shines into his eyes: the necklace is gray, awned, thick, his head is large, sharp-eared, bared with fangs, her eyes are ardent, bloody, and around her head there is a golden radiance, like that of saints and saints. It's scary to even remember such a marvelous marvel! So alive he sits, looking, as if he is about to rush at you!
“Wait, Mashenka,” I said, “I don’t understand anything, why and who wrote this terrible wolf in the church?” You say - he stabbed the prince: so why is he a saint and why does he need to be a prince's grave? And how did you get there, in this terrible village? Tell me everything.
And Mashenka began to tell:
- I got there, sir, for the reason that I was then a serf girl, I served at the house of our princes. I was an orphan, my parent, they were baiting, there was some passerby - a runaway, most likely - illegally seduced my mother, and God knows where, and my mother, after giving birth to me, soon died. Well, the gentlemen took pity on me, took me from the servants into the house as soon as I was thirteen years old, and put me on errands to the young mistress, and she fell in love with me so much that she did not let me go for an hour from her grace. So she took me with her on a voyage, as the young prince planned to go with her to his grandfather's heritage, to this very village behind the eyes, to Steep Mountains. There was that patrimony in a long-standing desolation, in desertion - and the house was packed, abandoned since the death of grandfather - well, our young gentlemen wanted to visit it. Which one then terrible death grandfather died, we all knew about it according to legend.
Something slightly cracked in the hall and then fell, slightly knocked. Mashenka kicked off her legs from the chest and ran into the hall: there was already a smell of burning from a fallen candle. She hushed up the candle wick, which was still fuming, trampled the smoldering pile of the blanket, and, jumping up on a chair, again lit the candle from the other burning candles stuck in the silver holes under the icon, and fitted it into the one from which it had fallen: she turned it upside down with a bright flame, dripped into leaky hole like hot honey, waxed, then inserted, deftly removed thin fingers soot from other candles and again jumped to the floor.
“Look how merrily it’s glowing,” she said, making the sign of the cross and looking at the revived gold of the candle flames. - And what a spirit of the church went!
There was a smell of sweet fumes, the lights were trembling, the face of the ancient image looked out from behind them in an empty silver mug. In the upper, clean panes of the windows, thickly frosted from below with gray hoarfrost, the night was turning black, and the paws of the branches in the front garden, weighed down by layers of snow, were close to white. Mashenka looked at them, crossed herself again, and went back into the hallway.
“It’s time for you to rest, sir,” she said, sitting down on the chest and holding back a yawn, covering her mouth with her dry hand. “The night has become ominous.
- Why ugly?
- But because hidden, when only an elector, a rooster, in our opinion, and even a nocturnal crow, an owl, can not sleep. Here the Lord himself listens to the earth, the most important stars begin to play, ice-holes freeze over the seas and rivers.
- Why don't you sleep at night?
“And I, sir, sleep as long as necessary. Does an old man need much sleep? Like a bird on a branch.
- Well, lie down, just tell me about this wolf.
- Why, this is a dark, long-standing matter, sir, - maybe there is only one ballad.
- How did you say?
- Ballad, sir. That's how all our gentlemen used to say, they loved to read these ballads. I used to listen - frost on head goes:
Cheese-boron howls behind the mountain,
Sweeps in a white field,
It became a blizzard-bad weather,
The road is sunk...
How good, Lord!
- What's good, Mashenka?
- That's good, sir, that you yourself do not know what. Creepy.
- In the old days, Mashenka, everything was terrible.
- How to say, sir? Maybe it’s true that it’s creepy, but now everything seems cute. After all, when was that? Already so long ago - all the kingdoms-states have passed, all the oaks have crumbled from antiquity, all the graves have been razed to the ground. That's the thing - the servants told him word for word, but is it true? It was as if this was still under the great queen, and as if the prince was sitting in Krutye Gory because she was angry with him for something, imprisoned him away from herself, and he became very fierce - most of all for the execution of his slaves and fornication . He was still very strong, and in terms of appearance he was excellently handsome, and as if there was not a single girl in his household, nor in his villages, no matter what he demanded for himself, in his seraglio, on the first night. Well, he fell into the most terrible sin: he was flattered even by the newlywed of his own son. He was in St. Petersburg in the tsarist military service, and when he found his betrothed, received permission from his parent for marriage and got married, then, therefore, he came with the newlywed to bow to him, in these very Steep Mountains. And he will be seduced by her. About love, sir, it is not for nothing that they sing:
The heat of love in every kingdom,
loves earthly whole a circle…
And what kind of sin can there be, even if an old man thinks about his beloved, sighs about her? But here it was a completely different matter, it seems like own daughter was, and he extended his greedy intentions to fornication.
- So what?
- And then, sir, that, noticing such parental intent, the young prince decided to flee secretly. He persuaded the grooms, gave them all kinds of gifts, ordered them to harness the troika frolic by midnight, went out, stealthily, as soon as he fell asleep old prince, from his native home, brought his young wife out - and was like that. Only the old prince did not even think of sleeping: he had learned everything from his headphones since the evening and immediately went in pursuit. Night, unspeakable frost, already the rings around the moon lie, the snow in the steppe is higher than a man’s height, but he doesn’t care: he flies, all hung with sabers and pistols, on horseback, next to his beloved traveler, and he already sees a troika ahead with his son. He screams like an eagle: stop, I will shoot! And there they don’t listen, they drive the troika with all their might and ardor. Then the old prince began to shoot at the horses and killed at a gallop, first one harness, the right one, then the other, the left one, and he was about to dump the rooter, but he looked sideways and sees: a great, unprecedented wolf, with eyes, rushes at him through the snow, under the moon like fire, red and shining around the head! The prince let's fire at him too, but he didn't even bat an eyelid: he lashed out at the prince like a whirlwind, rushed to his chest - and in a single moment crossed his Adam's apple with a fang.
“Oh, what passions, Mashenka,” I said. - Truly a ballad!
“Sin, don’t laugh, sir,” she answered. “God has a lot.
- I do not argue, Mashenka. It’s only strange, after all, that this wolf was written just near the grave of the prince who was slaughtered by him.
- It was written, sir, by own will prince: they brought him home still alive, and before his death he managed to repent and take communion, and at his last moment he ordered that wolf to be written in the church over his grave: as a warning, therefore, to all the prince's offspring. Who could disobey him at that time? Yes, and the church was his home, built by him.
Before evening, on the way to Chern, the young merchant Krasilshchikov was seized by a downpour with a thunderstorm.
He, in a coat with a raised collar and a deeply pulled down cap, from which streams flowed, rode briskly on a racing droshky, sitting on horseback near the shield, firmly resting his feet in high boots on the front axle, pulling wet, slippery belt reins with wet, frozen hands, hurrying the already frisky horse; to his left, near the front wheel, which was spinning in a fountain of liquid mud, a brown pointer ran smoothly, with its tongue hanging out long.
At first, Krasilshchikov drove along the black earth track along the highway, then, when it turned into a continuous gray stream with bubbles, he turned onto the highway, rattling along its fine gravel. Neither the surrounding fields nor the sky had been visible for a long time behind this flood, smelling of cucumber freshness and phosphorus; before my eyes every now and then, like a sign of the end of the world, with a blinding ruby fire, sinuously burned from top to bottom great wall a cloud of sharp, branched lightning, and a hissing tail flew with a crack overhead, bursting after that with blows of extraordinary power in its crushing force. Every time the horse jerked forward from them, pressing its ears, the dog was already galloping ... Krasilshchikov grew up and studied in Moscow, graduated from the university there, but when he came to his Tula estate in the summer, which looked like a rich summer house, he liked to feel like a merchant landowner, who had come out of the peasantry, drank lafitte and smoked from a golden cigarette case, but wore oiled boots, a kosovorotka and undercoat, was proud of his Russian article and now, in the downpour and the roar, feeling how cold it was pouring from his visor and nose, he was full of the energetic pleasure of the countryside life. That summer, he often recalled the summer of last year, when, due to a connection with a famous actress, he suffered in Moscow until July, before her departure for Kislovodsk: idleness, heat, hot stench and green smoke from burning in iron vats asphalt in the ruined streets, breakfasts in Troitsky low with the actors of the Maly Theater, who were also going to the Caucasus, then sitting in the Tremblay coffee house, in the evening waiting for her in his apartment with furniture in covers, with chandeliers and paintings in muslin, with the smell of mothballs ... Moscow summer the evenings are endless, it gets dark only at eleven, and then you wait, you wait - she's still not there. Then finally a call - and she, in all her summer attire, and her breathless voice: “Forgive me, please, I lay flat all day with a headache, your tea rose completely withered, she was in such a hurry that she took a scorcher, she was terribly hungry ...”
When the downpour and the trembling rolls of thunder began to subside, to recede and it began to clear all around, ahead, to the left of the highway, the familiar inn of an old widower, the tradesman Pronin, appeared. There were still twenty versts to go to the city—we must wait a little longer, thought Krasilshchikov, the horse is all covered in soap, and it is not yet known what will happen again, look how black it is in that direction and still lights up... At the crossing to the inn, he turned at a trot and reined in near wooden porch.
- Grandfather! he shouted loudly. - Have a guest!
But the windows in the log house under the rusty iron roof were dark, no one answered the cry. Krasilshchikov wrapped the reins on the shield, climbed onto the porch after a dirty and wet dog jumped up there - he looked furious, his eyes shone brightly and senselessly - pushed his cap from his sweaty forehead, took off his chuyka, heavy from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in one undershirt with a belt belt in a silver set, he wiped his face, motley from dirty splashes, and began to clean the dirt from the tops with a whip. The door to the vestibule was open, but it was felt that the house was empty. It’s true, they’re taking away the cattle, he thought, and, straightening up, looked into the field: shouldn’t we go further? The evening air was still and damp, quails chirped cheerfully in the distance in the moisture-laden loaves from different directions, the rain had ceased, but night was approaching, the sky and the earth darkened gloomily, behind the highway, behind the low inky ridge of the forest, the cloud darkened even thicker and gloomier, wide and a red flame flared ominously - and Krasilshchikov stepped into the vestibule, groped in the darkness for the door to the chamber. But the upper room was dark and quiet, only a ruble clock on the wall was tapping somewhere. He slammed the door, turned to the left, groped around and opened another, into the hut: again no one, only flies hummed sleepily and displeasedly in the hot darkness on the ceiling.
- How dead! - he said aloud - and immediately heard the quick and melodious, half-childish voice of Styopa, the owner's daughter, slipping off the bunk in the darkness:
“Is that you, Vasil Likseich?” And I’m here alone, the cook quarreled with dad and went home, and dad took a worker and left for the city on business, they’re unlikely to return today ... I was scared to death by a thunderstorm, and then, I hear, someone drove up, I was even more frightened ... Hello , excuse me please…
Krasilshchikov struck a match, illuminating her black eyes and swarthy face:
- Hello, fool. I’m also going to the city, yes, you see, what’s going on, I stopped by to wait it out ... And you, then, thought the robbers had arrived?
The match began to burn out, but you could still see that embarrassedly smiling face, the coral necklace around her neck, her small breasts under a yellow print dress ... She was almost half his height and seemed like a girl.
"I'll light the lamp now," she said hurriedly, even more embarrassed by Krasilshchikov's keen gaze, and rushed to the lamp over the table. “God himself sent you, what would I do here alone,” she said in a melodious voice, rising on tiptoe and awkwardly pulling a light bulb out of the crenellated grille, out of her tin mug, glass.
Krasilshchikov lit another match, looking at her stretched and curved figure.
“Wait, don’t,” he said suddenly, throwing down the match and taking her by the waist. “Wait, turn around for a minute to me…
She glanced at him fearfully over her shoulder, dropped her hands, and turned around. He pulled her to him, she didn't break out, she just threw her head back wildly and in surprise. From above, directly and firmly, he looked through the twilight into her eyes and laughed:
- Are you even more frightened?
“Vasil Likseich…” she muttered imploringly and reached out from his arms.
- Wait a minute. Don't you like me? I know I'm always happy when I visit.
“There is no one better in the world than you,” she said softly and ardently.
- You see now…
He kissed her long on the lips, and his hands slid lower.
- Vasil Likseich ... for Christ's sake ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch ... papa will call in ... Oh, don't!
Half an hour later, he left the hut, led the horse into the yard, put it under a shed, took off its bridle, gave it wet mowed grass from a cart standing in the middle of the yard, and returned, looking at calm stars in the cleared sky. In the hot darkness of the quiet hut, weak, distant lightnings were still peeping from different directions. She lay on the bunk, all huddled, with her head buried in her chest, weeping hotly from horror, delight and the suddenness of what had happened. He kissed her wet cheek, salty from tears, lay down on his back and laid her head on his shoulder, holding a cigarette in his right hand. She lay quietly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absent-mindedly smoothed her hair with his left hand, which tickled his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and grinned smugly: “But dad left for the city ...” So they left for you! It’s bad, he will understand everything right away - such a wizened and quick old man in a gray undershirt, a snow-white beard, and thick eyebrows are still completely black, his eyes are unusually lively, he talks when he is drunk, incessantly, but he sees through everything ...
He lay without sleep until the hour when the darkness of the hut began to faintly lighten in the middle, between the ceiling and the floor. Turning his head, he saw the east gleaming greenish outside the windows, and in the twilight of the corner above the table he could already make out the large image of the saint in clerical vestments, his raised hand in blessing, and his inexorably menacing gaze. He looked at her: she was lying, still curled up, her legs crossed, she forgot everything in a dream! Sweet and pathetic girl...
When it became completely light in the sky and the rooster began to yell in different voices behind the wall, he made a movement to rise. She jumped up and, half-sitting sideways, with unbuttoned breasts, with matted hair, stared at him with eyes that did not understand anything.
"Styopa," he said cautiously. - I have to go.
- Are you going? she whispered senselessly.
And suddenly she came to herself and crisscrossed herself in the chest with her hands:
– Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What am I to do now?
Stepa, I'll be back soon...
- Why, papa will be at home - how can I see you! I would come to the forest beyond the highway, but how can I leave home?
He gritted his teeth and pulled her over. She threw her arms wide, exclaimed in sweet, as if dying despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood in front of the bunk, already in a coat, in a cap, with a whip in his hand, with his back to the windows, to the thick brilliance of the sun that had just appeared, and she knelt on the bunk and, sobbing, childishly and ugly, opening her mouth, abruptly said:
“Vasil Likseich… for the sake of Christ… for the sake of the Heavenly King himself, marry me!” I will be your last slave! I will sleep at your doorstep - take it! I would have gone to you anyway, but who will let me go like that! Vasil Likseich ...
“Shut up,” Krasilshchikov said sternly. - One of these days I will come to your father and say that I will marry you. Heard?
She sat on her feet, breaking off her sobs at once, stupidly opening her wet, radiant eyes:
- Truth?
- Of course it's true.
“I’m already on my sixteenth birthday at Epiphany,” she said hastily.
- Well, that means that in six months you can get married ...
Returning home, he immediately began to pack up and in the evening left in a troika for the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
I was then no longer the first youth, but I decided to study painting - I always had a passion for it - and, leaving my estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a mediocre, but rather famous artist, an untidy fat man , who perfectly mastered everything that is supposed to be for himself: long hair, thrown back in large greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a velvet pomegranate jacket, dirty gray leggings on his shoes - I especially hated them - carelessness in manner, condescending glance with narrowed eyes at work student, and this is, as it were, to himself:
- Amusing, amusing ... Undoubted successes ...
I lived on the Arbat, next to the Prague restaurant, in the Stolitsa rooms. During the day he worked for the artist and at home, he often spent his evenings in cheap restaurants with various new bohemian acquaintances, both young and shabby, but equally committed to billiards and crayfish with beer ... I lived unpleasantly and boringly! This effeminate, unscrupulous artist, his “artistically” neglected workshop, littered with all sorts of dusty props, this gloomy “Capital” ... It remains in my memory: snow is constantly falling outside the windows, horse-drawn carriages rattle dully, ringing along the Arbat, in the evening it stinks sourly of beer and gas in the dim illuminated restaurant ... I don’t understand why I led such a miserable existence - I was then far from poor.
But then one day in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the open windows of the double frames there was no longer the winter dampness of sleet and rain, horseshoes were clattering on the pavement, and as if the horse-drawn horses rang more musically, someone knocked on my hallway door. I shouted: who is there? - but there was no answer. I waited, shouted again - again silence, then another knock. I got up and opened it: at the threshold stood a tall girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looking at point-blank range, her eyes the color of an acorn, on her long eyelashes, on her face and on her hair under her hat, drops of rain and snow gleamed; looks and says:
- I'm a conservative, Muse Graf. I heard that you are an interesting person, and I came to meet you. Do you have anything against it?
Quite surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
“Very flattered, please. I must only warn you that the rumors that have reached you are hardly correct: there seems to be nothing interesting about me.
“Anyway, let me in, don’t keep me in front of the door,” she said, still looking directly at me. - You're flattered, so take it.
And, entering, she began, as at home, to take off her hat in front of my gray-silver, in places blackened mirror, straighten her rusty hair, took off her coat and threw it on a chair, remaining in a checkered flannel dress, sat down on the sofa, sniffing her nose wet from snow and rain, and ordered:
- Take off my boots and give me a handkerchief from my coat.
I gave her a handkerchief, she wiped herself off and held out her legs to me.
“I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert,” she said indifferently.
Holding back a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment - what a strange guest! I dutifully took off my boots one by one. The air still smelled fresh from her, and I was excited by this smell, I was excited by the combination of her masculinity with all that feminine youth that was in her face, in her direct eyes, in her large and beautiful hand - in everything that I looked around and felt, pulling off her boots from under her dress, under which her knees lay round and full, seeing bulging calves in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open patent leather shoes.
Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, apparently intending to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask, from whom and what did she hear about me and who is she, where and with whom does she live? She answered:
- From whom and what I heard, it does not matter. I went more because I saw it at the concert. You are quite beautiful. And I'm the doctor's daughter, I live not far from you, on Prechistensky Boulevard.
She spoke abruptly and briefly. Again, not knowing what to say, I asked:
– Do you want tea?
“I want to,” she said. - And order, if you have money, to buy apples from Belov will runet - here on the Arbat. Just hurry up the bellboy, I'm impatient.
- You seem so calm.
- Doesn't seem like much...
When the bellboy brought a samovar and a bag of apples, she brewed tea, ground cups and spoons... And after eating an apple and drinking a cup of tea, she moved deeper on the sofa and clapped her hand beside her:
“Now sit next to me.
I sat down, she hugged me, slowly kissed me on the lips, pulled away, looked and, as if convinced that I was worthy, closed her eyes and kissed me again - diligently, for a long time.
“Here,” she said, as if relieved. - Nothing more is possible. Day after tomorrow.
It was already completely dark in the room - only the sad half-light from the street lamps. What I felt is easy to imagine. Where did such happiness come from! Young, strong, the taste and shape of the lips are unusual ... As if in a dream, I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves ...
“I want to dine with you at the Prague the day after tomorrow,” she said. “I've never been there and I'm generally very inexperienced. I imagine that you think of me. In fact, you are my first love.
- Love?
- What is another name for it?
Of course, I soon abandoned my studies, she continued hers somehow. We did not part, lived like newlyweds, walked along art galleries, at exhibitions, listened to concerts and even public lectures for some reason ... In May, at her request, I moved to an old estate near Moscow, where small dachas were set up and rented out, and she began to come to me, returning to Moscow at one in the morning. I did not expect this at all - a dacha near Moscow: I had never lived as a summer resident, without any business, in an estate so unlike our steppe estates, and in such a climate.
Rain all the time, pine forests all around. Every now and then, in the bright blue, white clouds accumulate above them, thunder rolls high, then a brilliant rain begins to pour through the sun, quickly turning from the heat into fragrant pine steam ... Everything is wet, greasy, mirror-like ... In the park of the estate, the trees were so large that the dachas , built in some places in it, seemed small under them, like dwellings under trees in tropical countries. The pond stood like a huge black mirror, half covered with green duckweed... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My log dacha was not quite completed - unpaved walls, unplaned floors, stoves without dampers, almost no furniture. And from constant dampness, my boots, lying under the bed, were overgrown with velvet mold.
It got dark in the evenings only towards midnight: the half-light of the west stands and stands through the motionless, quiet forests. On moonlit nights, this half-light mixed strangely with the moonlight, also motionless, enchanted. And from the calmness that reigned everywhere, from the purity of the sky and air, it seemed that there would be no more rain. But now I was falling asleep, having escorted her to the station, and suddenly I heard: a downpour with thunder peals was again falling on the roof, darkness was all around and lightning falling in a plumb line ... flycatchers, thrushes crackled hoarsely. By noon it was soaring again, clouds were found and it began to rain. Before sunset, it became clear, on my log walls, the crystal-gold grid of the low sun trembled, falling through the windows through the foliage. Then I went to the station to meet her. A train was approaching, countless summer residents were pouring onto the platform, it smelled of the coal of a steam locomotive and the damp freshness of the forest, she showed up in the crowd, with a net burdened with packets of snacks, fruits, a bottle of Madeira ... We dined together eye to eye. Before her late departure we wandered through the park. She became somnambulistic, walked with her head on my shoulder. black pond, ancient trees, leaving in the starry sky ... An enchanted-bright night, infinitely silent, with infinitely long shadows of trees on silver glades, similar to a lake.
In June, she went with me to my village - without getting married, she began to live with me as a wife, began to manage. I spent a long autumn without being bored, in everyday worries, reading. Of our neighbors, one Zavistovsky most often visited us, a lonely, poor landowner who lived two versts from us, frail, red-haired, timid, narrow-minded - and a good musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I had known him since childhood, but now I was so used to him that the evening without him was strange. We played checkers with him, or he played four hands with her on the piano.
Before Christmas I once went to the city. Came back by moonlight. And when he entered the house, he did not find her anywhere. Sat at the samovar alone.
- And where is the mistress, Dunya? Gone to play?
- I don't know. They haven't been home since breakfast.
“Get dressed and left,” she said gloomily, walking through the dining room and not raising her head, my old nanny.
“It’s true, she went to Zavistovsky,” I thought, “it’s true, she will soon come with him - it’s already seven o’clock ...” And I went and lay down in the office and suddenly fell asleep - I was cold all day on the road. And just as suddenly I woke up an hour later - with a clear and wild thought: “Why, she left me! She hired a peasant in the village and went to the station, to Moscow - everything will come from her! But maybe she's back? Went through the house - no, did not return. Shame on the servants...
At ten o'clock, not knowing what to do, I put on a sheepskin coat, for some reason took a gun and went along the high road to Zavistovsky, thinking: "As if on purpose, he didn't come today, but I still have a whole terrible night ahead! Has the truth left, abandoned? No, it can't be!" I walk, creaking along a well-trodden path among the snows, snow fields glisten on the left under a low, poor moon ... I turned off the main road, went to the miserable estate of Zavistovsky: an alley of bare trees leading to it across the field, then the entrance to the courtyard, on the left is an old, impoverished house , it’s dark in the house ... He went up to the icy porch, with difficulty opened the heavy door in tufts of upholstery - in the hallway the open burned-out stove blushes, it’s warm and dark ... But it’s dark in the hall.
- Vikenty Vikentich!
And noiselessly, in felt boots, he appeared on the threshold of the office, which was also lit only by the moon through the triple window:
“Ah, it’s you… Come in, come in, please… And as you can see, I’m twilight, while away the evening without a fire…”
I went in and sat down on the bumpy sofa.
“Imagine, the Muse has disappeared somewhere…
Yes, yes, I understand you...
- So what do you understand?
And immediately, also silently, also in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders, Muse came out of the bedroom adjoining the office.
“You with a gun,” she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not at him, but at me.
She sat down on the other sofa opposite.
I looked at her boots, at her knees under a gray skirt - everything was clearly visible in the golden light falling from the window - I wanted to shout: “I can’t live without you, for these knees alone, for a skirt, for boots, I’m ready to give my life !"
“The matter is clear and finished,” she said. The scenes are useless.
“You are monstrously cruel,” I said with difficulty.
“Give me a cigarette,” she said to Zavistovsky. He cowardly poked his head towards her, held out a cigarette case, began to fumble through his pockets for matches ...
“You are already talking to me in “you,” I said, panting, “you could at least not speak to him in front of me.
- Why? she asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette out of the way.
My heart was already pounding in my throat, beating in my temples. I got up and staggered out.
late hour
Oh, how long have I been there, I said to myself. From the age of nineteen. He once lived in Russia, felt it as his own, had complete freedom to travel anywhere, and it was not great work to travel some three hundred miles. But he didn’t go, he put everything off. And years and decades went by. But now it is no longer possible to postpone any longer: either now or never. It is necessary to use the only and last opportunity, since the hour is late and no one will meet me.
And I went over the bridge over the river, seeing far away in the moonlight of the July night.
The bridge was so familiar, the old one, as if I had seen it yesterday: rudely ancient, humpbacked and as if not even stone, but some kind of petrified from time to time to eternal invincibility - I thought as a schoolboy that he was still under Batu. However, only some traces of the city walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak of the antiquity of the city. Everything else is old, provincial, nothing more. One thing was strange, one thing indicated that, after all, something had changed in the world since I was a boy, a young man: before the river was not navigable, but now it must have been deepened and cleared; the moon was to my left, quite far above the river, and in its shaky light and in the flickering, trembling brilliance of the water, the paddle steamer was white, which seemed empty - it was so silent - although all its portholes were lit, like motionless golden eyes and everything was reflected in the water with streaming golden pillars: the steamer stood exactly on them. It was in Yaroslavl, and in the Suez Canal, and on the Nile. In Paris, the nights are damp, dark, a hazy glow turns pink in the impenetrable sky, the Seine flows under the bridges with black tar, but under them, too, streaming pillars of reflections from the lanterns on the bridges hang, only they are tricolor: white, blue, red - Russian national flags. There are no lights on the bridge here, and it is dry and dusty. And ahead, on a hillock, the city darkens with gardens, a fire tower sticks out above the gardens. My God, what an inexpressible happiness it was! It was during the night fire that I kissed your hand for the first time and you squeezed mine in response - I will never forget this secret consent. The whole street was black with people in an ominous, unusual illumination. I was visiting you when the alarm suddenly sounded and everyone rushed to the windows, and then behind the gate. It burned far away, beyond the river, but terribly hot, greedily, hastily. Clouds of smoke were thickly pouring down there in a black-purple rune, and red cloths of flame escaped high from them, near us, trembling, they shivered coppery in the dome of Michael the Archangel. And in the cramped quarters, in the crowd, amid the anxious, now pitiful, now joyful conversation of the common people who had come running from everywhere, I heard the smell of your girlish hair, neck, canvas dress - and then suddenly I made up my mind, took, freezing, your hand ...
Behind the bridge, I climbed the hill, went to the city by a paved road.
There was not a single fire anywhere in the city, not a single living soul. Everything was silent and spacious, calm and sad - the sadness of the Russian steppe night, the sleeping steppe city. Some gardens barely audibly, carefully fluttered their leaves from the even current of a weak July wind, which pulled from somewhere in the fields, gently blew on me. I walked - the big moon also walked, rolling and passing through the blackness of the branches in a mirrored circle; the broad streets lay in shadow—only in the houses to the right, to which the shadow did not reach, white walls were lit and black windows shimmered with a mournful sheen; and I walked in the shade, stepped on the spotty pavement - it was translucently covered with black silk lace. She had such Evening Dress, very elegant, long and slender. It unusually went to her thin figure and black young eyes. She was mysterious in him and insultingly paid no attention to me. Where was it? Visiting who?
My goal was to visit Old Street. And I could go there by a different, middle way. But I turned into these spacious streets in the gardens because I wanted to look at the gymnasium. And, having reached it, he again wondered: and here everything remained the same as half a century ago; a stone fence, a stone yard, a large stone building in the yard - everything is just as official, boring, as it used to be with me. I hesitated at the gate, I wanted to evoke sadness in myself, the pity of memories - and I could not: yes, a first grader with a comb-cut hair in a brand new blue cap with silver palms over the visor and in a new overcoat with silver buttons entered these gates, then a thin young man in a gray jacket and smart drawstring trousers; but is it me?
The old street seemed to me only a little narrower than it seemed before. Everything else was unchanged. A bumpy pavement, not a single tree, dusty merchants' houses on both sides, the sidewalks are also bumpy, such that it is better to walk in the middle of the street, in full moonlight ... And the night was almost the same as that one. Only that one was at the end of August, when the whole city smells of apples that lie in the mountains in the markets, and it is so warm that it was a pleasure to walk in one blouse, belted with a Caucasian strap ... Can you remember that night somewhere there, as if in the sky?
I still didn't dare to go to your house. And he, it is true, has not changed, but it is all the more terrible to see him. Some strangers, new people live in it now. Your father, your mother, your brother - all outlived you, young, but also died in their time. Yes, and I have all died; and not only relatives, but also many, many with whom I, in friendship or friendship, began life, how long ago did they begin, confident that there would be no end to it, and everything began, flowed and ended before my eyes, - so fast and before my eyes! And I sat down on a pedestal near some merchant's house, impregnable behind its castles and gates, and began to think about what it was like in those distant, our times: just tied up dark hair, a clear look, a light tan young face, a light summer dress, under which the purity, strength and freedom of a young body ... This was the beginning of our love, a time of unclouded happiness, intimacy, gullibility, enthusiastic tenderness, joy ...
There is something very special about the warm and bright nights of Russian county towns at the end of summer. What a world, what prosperity! An old man with a mallet wanders around the night cheerful city, but only for his own pleasure: there is nothing to guard, sleep peacefully, kind people, you are guarded by God's favor, this high shining sky, at which the old man carelessly glances, wandering along the pavement heated during the day and only occasionally, for fun, launching a dance trill with a mallet. And on such a night, at that late hour, when he was the only one who did not sleep in the city, you were waiting for me in your garden, which had already dried up by autumn, and I secretly slipped into it: I quietly opened the gate, previously unlocked by you, quietly and quickly ran through the yard and behind the barn in the depths of the yard he entered the motley twilight of the garden, where your dress was faintly white in the distance, on a bench under the apple trees, and, quickly approaching, with joyful fright met the gleam of your waiting eyes.
And we sat, sat in a kind of bewilderment of happiness. With one hand I hugged you, hearing the beating of your heart, in the other I held your hand, feeling through it all of you. And it was already so late that not even a beater could be heard - the old man lay down somewhere on a bench and dozed off with a pipe in his teeth, basking in the moonlight. When I looked to the right, I saw how high and sinlessly the moon was shining above the yard, and the roof of the house was shining like a fish. When he looked to the left, he saw a path overgrown with dry grasses, disappearing under other grasses, and behind them a lone green star peering low from behind some other garden, glimmering impassively and at the same time expectantly, saying something silently. But I saw only a glimpse of the courtyard and the star - there was only one thing in the world: a slight twilight and a radiant flicker of your eyes in the twilight.
And then you walked me to the gate, and I said:
- If there is a future life and we meet in it, I will kneel there and kiss your feet for everything that you gave me on earth.
I went out into the middle of the bright street and went to my farmstead. Turning around, I saw that he was still turning white in the gate.
Now, having risen from the pedestal, I went back the way I had come. No, besides Old Street, I also had another goal, which I was afraid to admit to myself, but the fulfillment of which, I knew, was inevitable. And I went to take a look and leave forever.
The road was familiar again. Everything is straight, then to the left, along the bazaar, and from the bazaar - along Monastyrskaya - to the exit from the city.
The bazaar is like another city within a city. Very smelly rows. In Glutton Row, under awnings over long tables and benches, it is gloomy. In Skobyan, an icon of the big-eyed Savior in a rusty setting hangs on a chain over the middle of the aisle. In Flour in the morning they always ran, pecking on the pavement with a whole flock of pigeons. You go to the gymnasium - how many of them! And all the fat ones, with rainbow-colored goiters, peck and run, feminine, pinch wagging, swaying, monotonously twitching their heads, as if not noticing you: they take off, whistling their wings, only when you almost step on one of them. And at night, large dark rats, ugly and terrible, quickly and preoccupiedly rushed about here.
Monastyrskaya street - span to the fields and the road: one from the city home, to the village, the other - to City of the dead. In Paris, for two days, a house number such and such on such and such a street stands out from all other houses with a plague props of the entrance, its mourning frame with silver, for two days lies in the entrance on the mourning cover of the table a sheet of paper in a mourning border - they sign on it as a sign of sympathy polite visitors; then, in some deadline, stops at the entrance of a huge, with a mourning canopy, a chariot, the tree of which is black and resinous, like a plague coffin, the rounded carved floors of the canopy testify to the heavens with large white stars, and the corners of the roof are crowned with curly black sultans - ostrich feathers from the underworld; tall monsters in charcoal horned blankets with white rings of eye sockets are harnessed to the chariot; an old drunkard sits on infinitely high goats and waits to be carried out, also symbolically dressed up in a fake coffin uniform and the same triangular hat, inwardly, no doubt, he always smirks at these solemn words: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luseat eis” Give them eternal rest, Lord, and let eternal light shine on them (lat.).. - Everything is different here. A breeze blows from the fields along Monastyrskaya, and an open coffin is carried towards it on towels; So they carried her.
At the exit, to the left of the highway, there is a monastery from the times of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, fortress, always closed gates and fortress walls, behind which the gilded turnips of the cathedral shine. Further, quite in the field, there is a very spacious square of other walls, but not high: they contain a whole grove, broken by intersecting long avenues, on the sides of which, under old elms, lindens and birches, everything is dotted with various crosses and monuments. Here the gates were wide open, and I saw the main avenue, smooth, endless. I timidly took off my hat and entered. How late and how mute! The moon was already low behind the trees, but everything around, as far as the eye could see, was still clearly visible. The whole space of this grove of the dead, its crosses and monuments, was patterned in a transparent shade. The wind died down by the predawn hour - light and dark spots, all dazzling under the trees, were sleeping. In the distance of the grove, behind the cemetery church, something suddenly flashed and with furious speed, a dark ball rushed at me - I, beside myself, shied to the side, my whole head immediately froze and tightened, my heart rushed and stopped ... What It was? It passed and disappeared. But the heart in the chest remained standing. And so, with a stopped heart, carrying it in me like a heavy cup, I moved on. I knew where I had to go, I kept walking straight along the avenue - and at the very end of it, already a few steps from the back wall, I stopped: in front of me, on level ground, among dry grasses, an elongated and rather narrow stone lay alone, heading to Wall. From behind the wall, a small green star looked like a wondrous gem, radiant, like the former one, but mute, motionless.
When the downpour and the trembling rolls of thunder began to subside, to recede and it began to clear all around, ahead, to the left of the highway, the familiar inn of an old widower, the tradesman Pronin, appeared. There were still twenty versts to the city, - we must wait a little longer, thought Krasilshchikov, the horse is covered in soap and it is still unknown what will happen again, look at what blackness in that direction and still lights up ... At the crossing to the inn, he turned at a trot and reined in near the wooden porch.
Grandfather! he shouted loudly. - Have a guest!
But the windows in the log house under the rusty iron roof were dark, no one answered the cry. Krasilshchikov wrapped the reins on the guard, went up to the porch after a dirty and wet dog that had jumped up there - she looked furious, her eyes shone brightly and senselessly - pushed his cap off his sweaty forehead, took off his scent, which had become heavy from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in one undershirt with a belt belt in a silver set, he wiped his face motley from dirty splashes and began to clean the dirt from the tops with a whip. The door to the vestibule was open, but it was felt that the house was empty. It’s true, they’re taking away the cattle, he thought, and, straightening up, looked into the field: shouldn’t we go further? The evening air was still and damp, quails chirped cheerfully in the distance in the moisture-laden loaves from different sides, the rain stopped, but night was approaching, the sky and the earth darkened gloomily, behind the highway, behind the low inky ridge of the forest, the cloud blackened even thicker and gloomier, wide and a red flame flared ominously - and Krasilshchikov stepped into the vestibule, groped in the darkness for the door to the chamber. But the upper room was dark and quiet, only a ruble clock on the wall was tapping somewhere. He slammed the door, turned to the left, groped around and opened another, into the hut: again no one, only flies hummed sleepily and displeasedly in the hot darkness on the ceiling.
How dead! - he said aloud - and immediately heard the quick and melodious, half-childish voice of Styopa, the owner's daughter, slipping off the bunk in the darkness:
Is that you, Vasil Likseich? And I’m here alone, the cook quarreled with the broadsword and went home, and dad took the worker and left for the city on business, they’re unlikely to return today ... I was frightened to death by a thunderstorm, and then, I hear, someone drove up, I was even more frightened … Hello, please excuse me…
Krasilshchikov struck a match, illuminating her black eyes and swarthy face:
Hello fool. I’m also going to the city, yes, you see, what’s going on, I stopped by to wait it out ... And you, then, thought the robbers had arrived?
The match began to burn out, but you could still see that embarrassedly smiling face, the coral necklace around her neck, her small breasts under a yellow print dress... She was almost half his height and seemed like a girl.
I'll light the lamp now," she said hurriedly, even more embarrassed by Krasilshchikov's vigilant gaze, and rushed to the lamp over the table. “God himself sent you, what would I do here alone,” she said in a melodious voice, rising on her tiptoes and awkwardly pulling a glass out of the jagged grille of a light bulb, from her tin mug.
Krasilshchikov lit another match, looking at her stretched and curved figure.
Wait, don't, - he suddenly said, throwing a match, and took her by the waist. - Wait, turn around for a minute to me ...
She glanced at him fearfully over her shoulder, dropped her hands, and turned around. He pulled her to him - she did not break out, only wildly and surprised threw her head back. From above, directly and firmly, he looked through the twilight into her eyes and laughed:
Even more frightened?
Vasil Likseich ... - she muttered pleadingly and reached out from his hands.
Wait a minute. Don't you like me? Because I know I'm always glad when I stop by.
There is no one better than you in the world, ”she said softly and ardently.
You see now…
He kissed her long on the lips, and his hands slid lower.
Vasil Likseich... for the sake of Christ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch... papa will come... Oh, don't!
Half an hour later, he left the hut, led the horse into the yard, put it under a shed, took off its bridle, gave it wet mowed grass from a cart standing in the middle of the yard, and returned, looking at the calm stars in the cleared sky. In the hot darkness of the quiet hut, weak, distant lightnings were still peeping from different directions. She lay on the bunk, all huddled, with her head buried in her chest, weeping hotly from horror, delight and the suddenness of what had happened. He kissed her wet cheek, salty from tears, lay down on his back and laid her head on his shoulder, holding a cigarette with his right hand. She lay quietly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absently smoothed her hair with his left hand, tickling his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and grinned smugly: “But dad left for the city ...” So they left for you! It’s bad, he will understand everything right away - such a dry and fast old man in a gray undershirt, a snow-white beard, and thick eyebrows are still completely black, his eyes are unusually lively, he speaks when he is drunk, incessantly, but he sees through everything ...
He lay without sleep until the hour when the darkness of the hut began to faintly lighten in the middle, between the ceiling and the floor. Turning his head, he saw the east gleaming greenish outside the windows, and in the twilight of the corner above the table he could already make out the large image of the saint in clerical vestments, his raised hand in blessing, and his inexorably menacing gaze. He looked at her: she was lying, still curled up, her legs crossed, she forgot everything in a dream! Sweet and pathetic girl...
When it became completely light in the sky and the rooster began to yell in different voices behind the wall, he made a movement to rise. She jumped up and, half-sitting sideways, with unbuttoned breasts, with matted hair, stared at him with eyes that did not understand anything.
Styopa, - he said cautiously. - I have to go.
Are you going already? she whispered senselessly.
And suddenly she came to herself and crisscrossed herself in the chest with her hands:
Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What am I to do now?
Stepa, I'll be back soon...
But papa will be at home - how can I see you! I would come to the forest beyond the highway, but how can I leave home?
He gritted his teeth and pulled her over. She threw her arms wide, exclaimed in sweet, as if dying despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood in front of the bunks, already in a coat, in a cap, with a whip in his hand, with his back to the windows, to the thick brilliance of the sun that had just appeared, and she knelt on the bunks and, sobbing, opening her mouth like a child and ugly, abruptly said:
Vasil Likseich... for the sake of Christ... for the sake of the king of heaven himself, marry me! I will be your last slave! I will sleep at your doorstep - take it! I would have gone to you anyway, but who will let me go like that! Vasil Likseich ...
Shut up,” Krasilshchikov said sternly. - One of these days I will come to your father and say that I will marry you. Heard?
She sat on her feet, breaking off her sobs at once, stupidly opening her wet, radiant eyes:
Of course it's true.
I already went to the sixteenth for Epiphany, ”she said hastily.
Well, that means that in six months you can get married ...
Returning home, he immediately began to pack up and in the evening left in a troika for the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
I was then no longer the first youth, but I decided to study painting - I always had a passion for it - and, leaving my estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a mediocre, but rather well-known artist, an untidy fat man , who perfectly mastered everything that is supposed to be: long hair, thrown back in large greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a velvet pomegranate jacket, dirty gray leggings on his shoes - I especially hated them - negligence in address, condescending glances with narrowed eyes at work student, and this is, as it were, to himself:
Amusing, amusing ... Undoubted successes ...
I lived on the Arbat, next to the Prague restaurant, in the Stolitsa rooms. During the day he worked for the artist and at home, he often spent his evenings in cheap restaurants with various new bohemian acquaintances, both young and shabby, but equally committed to billiards and crayfish with beer ... I lived unpleasantly and boringly! This effeminate, unscrupulous artist, his “artistically” neglected workshop, littered with all sorts of dusty props, this gloomy “Capital” ... It remains in my memory: snow is constantly falling outside the windows, horse-drawn carriages rattle dully, ringing along the Arbat, in the evening it stinks sourly of beer and gas in the dim illuminated restaurant ... I don’t understand why I led such a miserable existence - I was then far from poor.
But then one day in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the open windows of the double frames there was no longer the winter dampness of sleet and rain, horseshoes were clattering on the pavement, and the horse-drawn horses seemed to ring more musically, someone knocked on my hallway door. I shouted: who is there? - but there was no answer. I waited, shouted again - again silence, then another knock. I got up and opened it: at the threshold stood a tall girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looking at point-blank range, her eyes the color of an acorn, on her long eyelashes, on her face and on her hair under her hat, drops of rain and snow gleamed; looks and says:
I am a conservative, Muse Graf. I heard that you are an interesting person, and I came to meet you. Do you have anything against it?
Quite surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
Very flattered, please. I must only warn you that the rumors that have reached you are hardly correct: there seems to be nothing interesting about me.
In any case, let me in, don't keep me in front of the door,” she said, still looking directly at me. - Flattered, so take it.
And, entering, she began, as at home, to take off her hat in front of my gray-silver, in places blackened mirror, straighten her rusty hair, took off her coat and threw it on a chair, remaining in a checkered flannel dress, sat down on the sofa, sniffing her nose wet from snow and rain, and ordered:
Take off my boots and give me a handkerchief from my coat.
I gave her a handkerchief, she wiped herself off and held out her legs to me.
I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert, - she said indifferently.
Holding back a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment - what a strange guest! I dutifully took off my shoes one by one. She still smelled of fresh air, and I was excited by this smell, I was excited by the combination of her masculinity with all that feminine youthfulness that was in her face, in her direct eyes, in her large and beautiful hand - in everything that I looked around and felt, pulling off her boots from under her dress, under which her knees lay round and weighty, seeing bulging calves in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open patent leather shoes.
Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, apparently intending to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask from whom and what she heard about me and who she is, where and with whom she lives. She answered.
From whom and what I heard, it does not matter. I went more because I saw it at the concert. You are quite beautiful. And I'm the doctor's daughter, I live not far from you, on Prechistensky Boulevard.
She spoke abruptly and briefly. Again, not knowing what to say, I asked:
Do you want tea?
I want it, she said. - And order, if you have money, to buy apples from Belov, - here, on the Arbat. Just hurry up the bellboy, I'm impatient.
And you seem so calm.
Doesn't seem like much...
When the bellboy brought a samovar and a bag of apples, she made tea, ground the cups and spoons...
And after eating an apple and drinking a cup of tea, she moved deeper on the sofa and clapped her hand beside her:
Now sit next to me.
I sat down, she hugged me, slowly kissed me on the lips, pulled away, looked and, as if convinced that I was worthy, closed her eyes and kissed me again - diligently, for a long time.
There you go, she said, sounding relieved. - Nothing more is possible. Day after tomorrow.
It was already completely dark in the room - only the sad half-light from the street lamps. What I felt is easy to imagine. Where did such happiness come from! Young, strong, the taste and shape of the lips are unusual ... As if in a dream, I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves ...
I want to dine with you at Prague the day after tomorrow,” she said. “I have never been there and am generally very inexperienced. I imagine that you think of me. In fact, you are my first love.
What else is it called?
Of course, I soon abandoned my studies, she continued hers somehow. We did not part, lived like newlyweds, went to art galleries, exhibitions, listened to concerts and even public lectures for some reason ... In May, at her request, I moved to an old estate near Moscow, where small dachas were set up and rented out, and she began to visit me, returning to Moscow at one in the morning. I did not expect this at all - a dacha near Moscow: I had never lived as a summer resident, without any business, in an estate so unlike our steppe estates, and in such a climate.
Rain all the time, pine forests all around. Every now and then, in the bright blue, white clouds accumulate above them, thunder rolls high, then a brilliant rain begins to pour through the sun, quickly turning from the heat into fragrant pine steam ... Everything is wet, greasy, mirror-like ... In the park of the estate, the trees were so large that the dachas , built in some places in it, seemed small under them, like dwellings under trees in tropical countries. The pond stood like a huge black mirror, half covered with green duckweed... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My log dacha was not quite completed - unpaved walls, unplaned floors, stoves without dampers, almost no furniture. And from constant dampness, my boots, lying under the bed, were overgrown with velvet mold.
It got dark in the evenings only towards midnight: the half-light of the west stands and stands through the motionless, quiet forests. On moonlit nights, this half-light mixed strangely with the moonlight, also motionless, enchanted. And from the calmness that reigned everywhere, from the purity of the sky and air, it seemed that there would be no more rain. But now I was falling asleep, having escorted her to the station, - and suddenly I heard: a downpour again collapsed on the roof with thunder peals, darkness was all around and lightning falling in a plumb line ... flycatchers, thrushes crackled hoarsely. By noon it was soaring again, clouds were found and it began to rain. Before sunset, it became clear, on my log walls, the crystal-gold grid of the low sun trembled, falling through the windows through the foliage. Then I went to the station to meet her. A train approached, countless summer residents poured out onto the platform, it smelled of the coal of a steam locomotive and the damp freshness of the forest, she showed up in the crowd, with a net burdened with packets of snacks, fruits, a bottle of Madeira ... We dined together eye to eye. Before her late departure, we wandered through the park. She became somnambulistic, walked with her head on my shoulder. A black pond, age-old trees stretching into the starry sky… An enchanted-light night, infinitely silent, with infinitely long shadows of trees on silver glades that look like lakes.
In June, she went with me to my village - without getting married, she began to live with me, like a wife, began to manage. I spent a long autumn without being bored, in everyday worries, reading. Of our neighbors, one Zavistovsky most often visited us, a lonely, poor landowner who lived two versts from us, frail, red-haired, timid, narrow-minded - and not a bad musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I had known him since childhood, but now I was so used to him that an evening without him was strange to me. We played checkers with him or he played four hands with her on the piano.
Before Christmas I once went to the city. Came back by moonlight. And when he entered the house, he did not find her anywhere. Sat at the samovar alone.
And where is the mistress, Dunya? Gone to play?
I don't know. They haven't been home since breakfast.
Get dressed and left, - my old nanny said gloomily, walking through the dining room and not raising her head.
“It’s true, she went to Zavistovsky,” I thought, “it’s true, she’ll come with him soon - it’s already seven o’clock ...” And I went and lay down in the office and suddenly fell asleep - I was cold all day on the road. And just as suddenly I woke up an hour later - with a clear and wild thought: “Why, she left me! She hired a peasant in the village and went to the station, to Moscow - everything will come from her! But maybe she's back? Went through the house - no, did not return. Shame on the servants...
At ten o'clock, not knowing what to do, I put on a sheepskin coat, for some reason took a gun and went along the high road to Zavistovsky, thinking: “How on purpose, he didn’t come today, but I still have a whole terrible night ahead of me! Has the truth left, abandoned? No, it can't be!" I walk, creaking along a well-trodden path among the snows, snow fields glisten on the left under a low, poor moon ... I turned off the main road, went to the Zavistovsky estate: an alley of bare trees leading to it across the field, then the entrance to the courtyard, on the left is an old, impoverished house, it's dark in the house... He went up to the icy porch, with difficulty opened the heavy door in tufts of upholstery, - in the hallway the open burned-out stove blushes, it's warm and dark... But it's dark in the hall.
Vikenty Vikentich!
And he noiselessly, in felt boots, appeared on the threshold of the office, which was also lit only by the moon through the triple window.
Oh, it's you... Come in, come in, please... And as you can see, I'm twilight, while away the evening without a fire...
I went in and sat down on the bumpy sofa.
Imagine. The music has disappeared...
Yes, yes, I understand you...
That is, what do you understand?
And immediately, also silently, also in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders, Muse came out of the bedroom adjoining the office.
You with a gun, she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not at him, but at me.
She sat down on the other sofa opposite.
I looked at her felt boots, at her knees under a gray skirt - everything was clearly visible in the golden light falling from the window - I wanted to shout: “I can’t live without you, for these knees alone, for a skirt, for felt boots, I’m ready to give my life !"
The matter is clear and finished,” she said. - Scenes are useless.
You are monstrously cruel,” I said with difficulty.
Give me a cigarette, she said to Zavistovsky.
He cowardly poked his head towards her, held out a cigarette case, began to fumble through his pockets for matches ...
You are already talking to me on “you,” I said, panting, “you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me.
Why? she asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette out of the way.
My heart was already pounding in my throat, beating in my temples. I got up and staggered out.
LATE HOUR
Oh, how long have I been there, I said to myself. From the age of nineteen. He once lived in Russia, felt it as his own, had complete freedom to travel anywhere, and it was not great work to travel some three hundred miles. But he didn’t go, he put everything off. And years and decades went by. But now it is no longer possible to postpone any longer: either now or never. It is necessary to use the only and last opportunity, since the hour is late and no one will meet me.
And I went along the bridge over the river, seeing everything around in the moonlight of the July night.
The bridge was so familiar, the old one, as if I had seen it yesterday: rudely ancient, humpbacked and as if not even stone, but some kind of petrified from time to time to eternal invincibility - I thought as a high school student that he was still under Batu. However, only some traces of the city walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak of the antiquity of the city. Everything else is old, provincial, nothing more. One thing was strange, one thing indicated that, after all, something had changed in the world since I was a boy, a young man: before the river was not navigable, but now it must have been deepened and cleared; the moon was to my left, quite far above the river, and in its shaky light and in the flickering, trembling brilliance of the water, the paddle steamer was white, which seemed empty - it was so silent - although all its portholes were lit, like motionless golden eyes and everything was reflected in the water with streaming golden pillars: the steamer stood exactly on them. It was in Yaroslavl, and in the Suez Canal, and on the Nile. In Paris, the nights are damp, dark, a hazy glow turns pink in the impenetrable sky, the Seine flows under the bridges with black tar, but under them there are also jet columns of reflections from the lanterns on the bridges, only they are tricolor: white, blue and red - Russian national flags. There are no lights on the bridge here, and it is dry and dusty. And ahead, on a hillock, the city darkens with gardens, a fire tower sticks out above the gardens. My God, what an inexpressible happiness it was! It was during the night fire that I kissed your hand for the first time and you squeezed mine in response - I will never forget this secret consent. The whole street was black with people in an ominous, unusual illumination. I was visiting you when the alarm suddenly sounded and everyone rushed to the windows, and then behind the gate. It burned far away, beyond the river, but terribly hot, greedily, hastily. Clouds of smoke were thickly pouring down there in a black-purple rune, and red cloths of flame were escaping high from them, near us, trembling, they shivered coppery in the dome of Michael the Archangel. And in the cramped quarters, in the crowd, amid the anxious, now pitiful, now joyful conversation of the common people who had come running from everywhere, I heard the smell of your girlish hair, neck, canvas dress - and then suddenly I decided, took, all fading, your hand ...
Behind the bridge, I climbed the hill, went to the city by a paved road.
There was not a single fire anywhere in the city, not a single living soul. Everything was silent and spacious, calm and sad - the sadness of the Russian steppe night, the sleeping steppe city. Some gardens barely audibly, carefully fluttered their leaves from the even current of a weak July wind, which pulled from somewhere in the fields, gently blew on me. I walked - the big moon also walked, rolling and passing through the blackness of the branches in a mirror circle; the wide streets lay in shadow - only in the houses to the right, to which the shadow did not reach, white walls were lit and black glass shimmered with a mournful gloss; and I walked in the shade, stepped on the spotted sidewalk - it was transparently covered with black silk lace. She had such an evening dress, very elegant, long and slender. It unusually went to her thin frame and black young eyes. She was mysterious in him and insultingly ignored me. Where was it? Visiting who?
My goal was to visit Old Street. And I could go there by another, middle way. But I turned into these spacious streets in the gardens because I wanted to look at the gymnasium. And, having reached it, he again wondered: and here everything remained the same as half a century ago; a stone fence, a stone yard, a large stone building in the yard - everything is just as official, boring, as it was once with me. I hesitated at the gate, I wanted to evoke sadness in myself, the pity of memories - and I couldn’t: yes, a first grader with a comb-cut hair in a brand new blue cap with silver palms over the visor and in a new overcoat with silver buttons entered these gates, then a thin young man in a gray jacket and smart drawstring trousers; but is it me?
The old street seemed to me only a little narrower than it seemed before. Everything else was unchanged. A bumpy pavement, not a single tree, dusty merchants' houses on both sides, the sidewalks are also bumpy, such that it is better to walk in the middle of the street, in full moonlight ... And the night was almost the same as that one. Only that one was at the end of August, when the whole city smells of apples that lie in the mountains in the markets, and it is so warm that it was a pleasure to walk in one blouse, belted with a Caucasian strap ... Can you remember that night somewhere there, as if in the sky?
I still didn't dare to go to your house. And he, it is true, has not changed, but it is all the more terrible to see him. Some strangers, new people live in it now. Your father, your mother, your brother - all outlived you, young, but also died in their time. Yes, and I have all died; and not only relatives, but also many, many with whom I, in friendship or friendship, began life; how long ago did they start, confident that there would be no end to it, but everything began, flowed and ended before my eyes - so quickly and before my eyes! And I sat down on a pedestal near some merchant's house, impregnable behind its locks and gates, and began to think what it was like in those distant, our times: just tied up dark hair, a clear look, a light tan of a young face, a light summer a dress under which the purity, strength and freedom of a young body ... This was the beginning of our love, a time of unclouded happiness, intimacy, gullibility, enthusiastic tenderness, joy ...
There is something very special about the warm and bright nights of Russian county towns at the end of summer. What a world, what prosperity! An old man wanders around the cheerful city at night with a mallet, but only for his own pleasure: there is nothing to guard, sleep peacefully, good people, God's favor guards you, this is a high shining sky, at which the old man carelessly glances, wandering along the pavement heated during the day and only occasionally, for fun, launching a dance trill with a mallet. And on such a night, at that late hour, when he was the only one who did not sleep in the city, you were waiting for me in your garden, which had already dried up by autumn, and I secretly slipped into it: I quietly opened the gate, previously unlocked by you, quietly and quickly ran through the yard and behind the shed in the depths of the yard he entered the motley twilight of the garden, where your dress was faintly white in the distance, on a bench under the apple trees, and, quickly approaching, with joyful fright met the gleam of your waiting eyes.
And we sat, sat in a kind of bewilderment of happiness. With one hand I hugged you, hearing the beating of your heart, in the other I held your hand, feeling through it all of you. And it was already so late that not even a beater could be heard - the old man lay down somewhere on a bench and dozed off with a pipe in his teeth, basking in the moonlight. When I looked to the right, I saw how high and sinlessly the moon was shining above the yard, and the roof of the house was shining like a fish. When he looked to the left, he saw a path overgrown with dry herbs, disappearing under other apple trees, and behind them a lone green star peering low from behind some other garden, glimmering impassively and at the same time expectantly, saying something soundlessly. But I saw only a glimpse of the court and the star - there was only one thing in the world: a light twilight and a radiant flicker of your eyes in the twilight.
And then you walked me to the gate, and I said:
If there is a future life and we meet in it, I will kneel there and kiss your feet for everything you have given me on earth.
I went out into the middle of the bright street and went to my courtyard. Turning around, I saw that he was still turning white in the gate.
Now, having risen from the pedestal, I went back the way I had come. No, besides Old Street, I also had another goal, which I was afraid to admit to myself, but the fulfillment of which, I knew, was inevitable. And I went - to look and leave forever.
The road was familiar again. Everything is straight, then to the left, along the bazaar, and from the bazaar - along Monastyrskaya - to the exit from the city.
The bazaar is like another city within a city. Very smelly rows. In Glutton Row, under awnings over long tables and benches, it is gloomy. In Skobyan, an icon of the big-eyed Savior in a rusty setting hangs on a chain over the middle of the aisle. In Flour in the morning they always ran, pecking on the pavement with a whole flock of pigeons. You go to the gymnasium - how many of them! And all the fat ones, with rainbow goiters, peck and run, feminine, pinch wagging, swaying, monotonously twitching their heads, as if not noticing you: they take off, whistling their wings, only when you almost step on one of them. And at night, large dark rats, nasty and scary, rushed about here quickly and anxiously.
Monastyrskaya street - a flight to the fields and the road: one from the city home, to the village, the other - to the city of the dead. In Paris, for two days, a house number such and such on such and such a street stands out from all other houses with a plague props of the entrance, its mourning frame with silver, for two days lies in the entrance on the mourning cover of the table a piece of paper in a mourning border - they sign on it as a sign of sympathy polite visitors; then, at a certain deadline, a huge chariot with a mourning canopy stops at the entrance, the tree of which is black and resinous, like a plague coffin, the rounded carved floors of the canopy testify to the heavens with large white stars, and the corners of the roof are crowned with curly black sultans - ostrich feathers from hell; tall monsters in charcoal horned blankets with white rings of eye sockets are harnessed to the chariot; on infinitely high goats sits and waits for the removal of an old drunkard, also symbolically dressed up in a fake coffin uniform and the same triangular hat, inwardly, must be, always grinning at these solemn words! "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis". - Everything is different here. A breeze blows from the fields along Monastyrskaya, and an open coffin is carried towards it on towels; So they carried her.
At the exit, to the left of the highway, there is a monastery from the time of Alexei Mikhailovich, fortified, always closed gates and fortress walls, because of which the gilded turnips of the cathedral shine. Further, quite in the field, there is a very spacious square of other walls, but not high: they contain a whole grove, broken up by intersecting long avenues, on the sides of which, under old elms, lindens and birches, everything is dotted with various crosses and monuments. Here the gates were wide open, and I saw the main avenue, smooth, endless. I timidly took off my hat and entered. How late and how mute! The moon was already low behind the trees, but everything around, as far as the eye could see, was still clearly visible. The entire space of this grove of the dead, its crosses and monuments, was patterned in a transparent shade. The wind died down by the predawn hour - light and dark spots, all dazzling under the trees, were sleeping. In the distance of the grove, behind the cemetery church, something suddenly flashed and rushed at me with furious speed, in a dark ball - I, beside myself, shied to the side, my whole head immediately froze and tightened, my heart rushed and sank ... What It was? It passed and disappeared. But the heart in the chest remained standing. And so, with a stopped heart, carrying it in me like a heavy cup, I moved on. I knew where I had to go, I kept walking straight along the avenue - and at the very end of it, already a few steps from the back wall, I stopped: in front of me, on level ground, among dry grasses, an elongated and rather narrow stone lay alone, heading to Wall. From behind the wall, a low green star looked like a wondrous gem, radiant, like the former one, but mute, motionless.
Maybe it’s true that it’s creepy, but now everything seems cute. After all, when was that? Already so long ago - all the kingdoms-states have passed, all the oaks have crumbled from antiquity, all the graves have been razed to the ground. That's the thing, - in the household they said it word for word, but is it true? It was as if this was still under the great queen, and as if the prince was sitting in Krutye Gory because she was angry with him for something, imprisoned him away from herself, and he became very fierce - most of all for the execution of his slaves and fornication. He was still very strong, and in terms of appearance he was excellently handsome and as if there was not a single girl in his household, nor in his villages, no matter what he demanded for himself, in his seraglio, on the first night. Well, he fell into the most terrible sin: he was flattered even by the newlywed of his own son. He was in St. Petersburg in the tsarist military service, and when he found his betrothed, received permission from his parent for marriage and got married, then, therefore, he came with the newlywed to bow to him, in these very Steep Mountains. And he will be seduced by her. About love, sir, it is not for nothing that they sing:
The heat of love in every kingdom,
The whole circle loves the earth ...
And what sin can there be if even an old man thinks about his beloved, sighs about her? Why, here it was a completely different matter, it seemed like her own daughter was here, and he extended his greedy intentions to fornication.
- So what?
- And then, sir, that, noticing such parental intent, the young prince decided to flee secretly. He persuaded the grooms, gave them all kinds of gifts, ordered them to harness the troika frolic by midnight, went out, stealthily, as soon as the old prince fell asleep, from his home, brought his young wife out - and that was it. Only the old prince did not even think of sleeping: he had learned everything from his headphones since the evening and immediately went in pursuit. Night, inexpressible frost, already the ring around the moon lies, the snow in the steppe is higher than a man’s height, but he doesn’t care: he flies, all hung with sabers and pistols, on horseback, next to his beloved traveler, and he already sees a troika ahead with his son. He screams like an eagle: stop, I will shoot! And there they don’t listen, they drive the troika with all their might and ardor. Then the old prince began to shoot at the horses and killed at a gallop, first one harness, the right one, then the other, the left one, and he was about to dump the rooter, but he looked sideways and sees: a great, unprecedented wolf, with eyes, rushes at him through the snow, under the moon , like fire, red and with radiance around the head! The prince let's shoot at him too, but he didn't even bat an eyelid: he swooped down on the prince like a whirlwind, rushed to his chest - and in a single moment crossed his Adam's apple with a fang.
“Oh, what passions, Mashenka,” I said. - Truly a ballad!
"Sin, don't laugh, sir," she replied. - God has a lot.
- I do not argue, Mashenka. It’s only strange, after all, that this wolf was written just near the grave of the prince who was slaughtered by him.
- It was written, sir, at the prince’s own request: they brought him home while still alive, and before his death he managed to repent and take communion, and at his last moment he ordered that wolf to be painted in the church over his grave: as an edification, therefore, to all posterity princely. Who could disobey him at that time? Yes, and the church was his home, built by him.
February 3, 1938
STEPA
Before evening, on the way to Chern, the young merchant Krasilshchikov was seized by a downpour with a thunderstorm.
He, in a coat with a raised collar and a deeply pulled down cap, from which streams flowed, rode briskly on a racing droshky, sitting on horseback near the shield, firmly resting his feet in high boots on the front axle, pulling wet, slippery belt reins with wet, frozen hands, hurrying the already frisky horse; to his left, near the front wheel, which was spinning in a fountain of liquid mud, a brown pointer ran smoothly, with its tongue hanging out long.
At first, Krasilshchikov drove along the black earth track along the highway, then, when it turned into a continuous gray stream with bubbles, he turned onto the highway, rattling along its fine gravel. Neither the surrounding fields nor the sky had been visible for a long time behind this flood, smelling of cucumber freshness and phosphorus; before my eyes every now and then, as if a sign of the end of the world, with a blinding ruby fire, a sharp, branched lightning burned from top to bottom along the great wall of clouds, and a hissing tail flew overhead with a crack, torn after it by blows unusual in its crushing force. Every time the horse jerked forward from them, pressing its ears, the dog was already galloping ... Krasilshchikov grew up and studied in Moscow, graduated from the university there, but when he came to his Tula estate in the summer, which looked like a rich summer house, he liked to feel like a landowner - a merchant who came out of the muzhiks, drank lafitte and smoked from a golden cigarette case, and wore oiled boots, a kosovorotka and undercoat, was proud of his Russian article, and now, in the downpour and roar, feeling how cold it was pouring from his visor and nose, he was full energetic pleasures of country life. That summer, he often recalled the summer of last year, when, due to a connection with a famous actress, he suffered in Moscow until July, before her departure for Kislovodsk: idleness, heat, hot stench and green smoke from burning in iron vats asphalt in the ruined streets, breakfasts in Troitsky low with the actors of the Maly Theater, who were also going to the Caucasus, then sitting in the Tremblay coffee house, in the evening waiting for her in her apartment with furniture in covers, with chandeliers and paintings in muslin, with the smell of mothballs ... Summer Moscow evenings are endless, it gets dark only at eleven, and then you wait, you wait - she's still not there. Then finally the call - and she, in all her summer smartness, and her breathless voice: "Forgive me, please, I lay flat all day with a headache, your tea rose completely wilted, she was in such a hurry that she took a scorcher, she was terribly hungry ..."
When the downpour and the trembling rolls of thunder began to subside, to recede and it began to clear all around, ahead, to the left of the highway, the familiar inn of an old widower, the tradesman Pronin, appeared. There were still twenty versts to go to the city—we had to wait a little longer, thought Krasilshchikov, the horse was covered in soap and it was still unknown what would happen again, look how black it was in that direction and it was still lighting up... At the crossing to the inn, he turned at a trot and reined in near the wooden porch.
- Grandfather! he shouted loudly. - Have a guest!
But the windows in the log house under the rusty iron roof were dark, no one answered the cry. Krasilshchikov wrapped the reins on the shield, climbed onto the porch after a dirty and wet dog jumped up there - he looked furious, his eyes shone brightly and senselessly - pushed his cap from his sweaty forehead, took off his chuyka, heavy from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in one undershirt with a belt belt in a silver set, he wiped his face, motley from dirty splashes, and began to clean the dirt from the tops with a whip. The door to the vestibule was open, but it was felt that the house was empty. It’s true, they’re taking away the cattle, he thought, and, straightening up, looked into the field: shouldn’t we go further? The evening air was still and damp, quails chirped cheerfully in the distance in the moisture-laden loaves from different directions, the rain had ceased, but night was approaching, the sky and the earth darkened gloomily, behind the highway, behind the low inky ridge of the forest, the cloud darkened even thicker and gloomier, wide and a red flame flared ominously - and Krasilshchikov stepped into the vestibule, groped in the darkness for the door to the chamber. But the upper room was dark and quiet, only a ruble clock on the wall was tapping somewhere. He slammed the door, turned to the left, groped around and opened another, into the hut: again no one, only flies hummed sleepily and displeasedly in the hot darkness on the ceiling.
- How dead! - he said aloud - and immediately heard the quick and melodious, half-childish voice of Styopa, the owner's daughter, slipping off the bunk in the darkness:
- Is that you, Vasil Likseich? And I’m alone here, the cook quarreled with the broadsword and went home, and dad took the worker and left for the city on business, they’re unlikely to return today ... I was scared to death by a thunderstorm, and then, I hear, someone drove up, more I was more frightened... Hello, please excuse me...
Krasilshchikov struck a match, illuminating her black eyes and swarthy face:
- Hello, fool. I’m also going to the city, yes, you see, what’s going on, I stopped by to wait it out ... And you, then, thought the robbers had arrived?
The match began to burn out, but you could still see that embarrassedly smiling face, the coral necklace around her neck, her small breasts under a yellow print dress ... She was almost half his height and seemed quite a girl.
"I'll light the lamp now," she said hurriedly, even more embarrassed by Krasilshchikov's vigilant gaze, and rushed to the lamp over the table. “God himself sent you, what would I do here alone,” she said in a melodious voice, rising on tiptoe and awkwardly pulling a light bulb out of the crenellated grille, out of her tin mug, glass.
Krasilshchikov lit another match, looking at her stretched and curved figure.
"Wait, don't," he said suddenly, throwing down the match and taking her by the waist. Wait, turn around for a minute to me ...
She glanced at him fearfully over her shoulder, dropped her hands, and turned around. He pulled her to him - she did not break out, only wildly and surprised threw her head back. From above, directly and firmly, he looked through the twilight into her eyes and laughed:
- Are you even more frightened?
“Vasil Likseich…” she muttered imploringly and reached out from his arms.
- Wait a minute. Don't you like me? Because I know I'm always glad when I stop by.
“There is no one better than you in the world,” she said softly and ardently.
- You see now...
He kissed her long on the lips, and his hands slid lower.
- Vasil Likseich ... for Christ's sake ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch ... papa will come ... Oh, don't!
Half an hour later, he left the hut, led the horse into the yard, put it under a shed, took off its bridle, gave it wet mowed grass from a cart standing in the middle of the yard, and returned, looking at calm stars in the cleared sky. In the hot darkness of the quiet hut, weak, distant lightnings were still peeping from different directions. She lay on the bunk, all huddled, with her head buried in her chest, weeping hotly from horror, delight and the suddenness of what had happened. He kissed her wet cheek, salty from tears, lay down on his back and laid her head on his shoulder, holding a cigarette in his right hand. She lay quietly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absent-mindedly smoothed her hair with his left hand, which tickled his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smugly grinned: "But dad left for the city ..." So they left for you! It's bad, he will understand everything at once - such a dry and quick old man in a gray undershirt, a snow-white beard, and thick eyebrows are still completely black, his eyes are unusually lively, he speaks without stopping when he is drunk, but he sees through everything ...
He lay without sleep until the hour when the darkness of the hut began to faintly lighten in the middle, between the ceiling and the floor. Turning his head, he saw the east gleaming greenish outside the windows, and in the twilight of the corner above the table he could already make out the large image of the saint in clerical vestments, his raised hand in blessing, and his inexorably menacing gaze. He looked at her: she was lying, still curled up, her legs crossed, she forgot everything in a dream! Sweet and pathetic girl...
When it became completely light in the sky and the rooster began to yell in different voices behind the wall, he made a movement to rise. She jumped up and, half-sitting sideways, with unbuttoned breasts, with matted hair, stared at him with eyes that did not understand anything.
- Styopa, - he said cautiously. - I have to go.
- Are you going? she whispered senselessly.
And suddenly she came to herself and crisscrossed herself in the chest with her hands:
- Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What am I to do now?
Stepa, I'll be back soon...
- Why, papa will be at home - how can I see you! I would come to the forest beyond the highway, but how can I leave home?
He gritted his teeth and pulled her over. She threw her arms wide, exclaimed in sweet, as if dying despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood in front of the bunk, already in a coat, in a cap, with a whip in his hand, with his back to the windows, to the thick brilliance of the sun that had just appeared, and she knelt on the bunk and, sobbing, childishly and ugly, opening her mouth, abruptly said:
- Vasil Likseich... for the sake of Christ... for the sake of the king of heaven himself, marry me! I will be your last slave! I will sleep at your doorstep - take it! I would have gone to you anyway, but who will let me go like that! Vasil Likseich...
"Shut up," said Krasilshchikov sternly. - One of these days I will come to your father and say that I will marry you. Heard?
She sat on her feet, breaking off her sobs at once, stupidly opening her wet, radiant eyes:
- Truth?
- Of course it's true.
“I’m already on my sixteenth for Epiphany,” she said hastily.
- Well, that means that in six months you can get married ...
Returning home, he immediately began to pack up and in the evening left in a troika for the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
October 5, 1938
MUSE
I was then no longer the first youth, but I decided to study painting - I always had a passion for it - and, leaving my estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a mediocre, but rather famous artist, an untidy fat man , who perfectly mastered everything that is supposed to be: long hair, thrown back in large greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a velvet pomegranate jacket, dirty gray leggings on his shoes - I especially hated them - carelessness in address, condescending glances with narrowed eyes at work student, and this is, as it were, to himself:
- Amusing, amusing ... Undoubted successes ...
I lived on the Arbat, next to the Prague restaurant, in the Stolitsa rooms. During the day he worked for the artist and at home, he often spent his evenings in cheap restaurants with various new bohemian acquaintances, both young and shabby, but equally committed to billiards and crayfish with beer ... I lived unpleasantly and boringly! This effeminate, unscrupulous artist, his “artistically” neglected workshop, littered with all sorts of dusty props, this gloomy “Capital” ... It remains in my memory: snow is constantly falling outside the windows, the horse-drawn carriages are ringing sourly along the Arbat, in the evening it stinks sourly of beer and gas in a dimly lit restaurant ... I don’t understand why I led such a miserable existence - I was then far from poor.
But then one day in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the open windows of the double frames there was no longer the winter dampness of sleet and rain, horseshoes were clattering on the pavement, and as if the horse-drawn horses rang more musically, someone knocked on my hallway door. I shouted: who is there? - but there was no answer. I waited, shouted again - again silence, then another knock. I got up and opened it: at the threshold stood a tall girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looking at point-blank range, her eyes the color of an acorn, on her long eyelashes, on her face and on her hair under her hat, drops of rain and snow gleamed; looks and says:
- I'm a conservative, Muse Graf. I heard that you are an interesting person, and I came to meet you. Do you have anything against it?
Quite surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
- Very flattered, you are welcome. I must only warn you that the rumors that have reached you are hardly correct: there seems to be nothing interesting about me.
"Anyway, let me in, don't keep me in front of the door," she said, still looking directly at me. - Flattered, so take it.
And, entering, she began, as at home, to take off her hat in front of my gray-silver, in places blackened mirror, straighten her rusty hair, took off her coat and threw it on a chair, remaining in a checkered flannel dress, sat down on the sofa, sniffing her nose wet from snow and rain, and ordered:
- Take off my boots and give me a handkerchief from my coat.
I gave her a handkerchief, she wiped herself off and held out her legs to me.
- I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert, - she said indifferently.
Holding back a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment - what a strange guest! I dutifully took off my shoes one by one. She still smelled of fresh air, and I was excited by this smell, I was excited by the combination of her masculinity with all that feminine youthfulness that was in her face, in her straight eyes, in her large and beautiful hand - in everything that I looked around and felt, pulling off her boots from under her dress, under which her knees lay round and full, seeing bulging calves in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open patent leather shoes.
Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, apparently intending to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask from whom and what she heard about me and who she is, where and with whom she lives. She answered.
- From whom and what I heard, it doesn't matter. I went more because I saw it at the concert. You are quite beautiful. And I'm the doctor's daughter, I live not far from you, on Prechistensky Boulevard.
She spoke abruptly and briefly. Again, not knowing what to say, I asked:
- Do you want tea?
“I want to,” she said. - And order, if you have money, to buy apples from Belov, - here, on the Arbat. Just hurry up the bellboy, I'm impatient.
- You seem so calm.
- Doesn't seem like much...
When the bellboy brought the samovar and the sack of apples, she made tea, ground cups and spoons...
And after eating an apple and drinking a cup of tea, she moved deeper on the sofa and clapped her hand beside her:
- Now sit next to me.
I sat down, she hugged me, slowly kissed me on the lips, pulled away, looked and, as if convinced that I was worthy, closed her eyes and kissed me again - diligently, for a long time.
"Here you are," she said, as if relieved. - Nothing more is possible. Day after tomorrow.
It was already completely dark in the room - only the sad half-light from the street lamps. What I felt is easy to imagine. Where did such happiness come from! Young, strong, the taste and shape of the lips are extraordinary ... As if in a dream, I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves ...
“I want to dine with you the day after tomorrow at Prague,” she said. “I have never been there and am generally very inexperienced. I imagine that you think of me. In fact, you are my first love.
- Love?
- What is another name for it?
Of course, I soon abandoned my studies, she continued hers somehow. We did not part, lived like newlyweds, went to art galleries, exhibitions, listened to concerts and even public lectures for some reason ... In May, at her request, I moved to an old estate near Moscow, where small dachas were set up and rented , and she began to visit me, returning to Moscow at one in the morning. I did not expect this at all - a dacha near Moscow: I had never lived as a summer resident, without any business, in an estate so unlike our steppe estates, and in such a climate.
Rain all the time, pine forests all around. Every now and then, in the bright blue, white clouds accumulate above them, thunder rolls high, then a brilliant rain begins to pour through the sun, quickly turning from the heat into fragrant pine steam ... Everything is wet, greasy, mirror-like ... In the park of the estate, the trees were so so large that the dachas built in some places in it seemed small under them, like dwellings under trees in tropical countries. The pond stood like a huge black mirror, half covered with green duckweed... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My log dacha was not quite completed - unpaved walls, unplaned floors, stoves without dampers, almost no furniture. And from constant dampness, my boots, lying under the bed, were overgrown with velvet mold.
It got dark in the evenings only towards midnight: the half-light of the west stands and stands through the motionless, quiet forests. On moonlit nights, this half-light mixed strangely with the moonlight, also motionless, enchanted. And from the calmness that reigned everywhere, from the purity of the sky and air, it seemed that there would be no more rain. But here I was falling asleep, having escorted her to the station, and suddenly I heard: a downpour with thunder crashes again, darkness was all around and lightning falling in a plumb line ... , called flycatchers, the thrushes crackled hoarsely. By noon it was soaring again, clouds were found and it began to rain. Before sunset, it became clear, on my log walls, the crystal-gold grid of the low sun trembled, falling through the windows through the foliage. Then I went to the station to meet her. A train was approaching, countless summer residents were pouring out onto the platform, it smelled of the coal of a steam locomotive and the damp freshness of the forest, she appeared in the crowd, with a net burdened with packets of snacks, fruits, a bottle of Madeira ... We dined together eye to eye. Before her late departure we wandered through the park. She became somnambulistic, walked with her head on my shoulder. A black pond, age-old trees stretching into the starry sky... An enchanted-light night, infinitely silent, with infinitely long shadows of trees on silver glades that look like lakes.
In June, she went with me to my village - without getting married, she began to live with me, like a wife, began to manage. I spent a long autumn without being bored, in everyday worries, reading. Of our neighbors, one Zavistovsky most often visited us, a lonely, poor landowner who lived about two versts from us, frail, red-haired, timid, narrow-minded - and a good musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I had known him since childhood, but now I was so used to him that an evening without him was strange to me. We played checkers with him or he played four hands with her on the piano.
Before Christmas I once went to the city. Came back by moonlight. And when he entered the house, he did not find her anywhere. Sat at the samovar alone.
- And where is the mistress, Dunya? Gone to play?
- I don't know. They haven't been home since breakfast.
“Get dressed and left,” my old nanny said gloomily, walking through the dining room without raising her head.
"It's true, she went to Zavistovsky," I thought, "it's true, she will soon come with him - it's already seven o'clock ..." And I went and lay down in the office and suddenly fell asleep all day freezing on the road. And just as suddenly I woke up an hour later - with a clear and wild thought: “Why, she left me! She hired a peasant in the village and went to the station, to Moscow - everything will come of her! Went through the house - no, did not return. Shame on the servants...
At ten o'clock, not knowing what to do, I put on a sheepskin coat, for some reason took a gun and went along the high road to Zavistovsky, thinking: "As luck would have it, he didn't come today, and I still have a whole terrible night ahead of me! Is it really true left, left? No, it can't be!" I walk, creaking along a well-trodden path among the snows, snow fields shine on the left under a low, poor moon ... I turned off the high road, went to the Zavistovsky estate: an alley of bare trees leading to it across the field, then the entrance to the courtyard, on the left is an old, beggar house, it's dark in the house... He climbed the icy porch, with difficulty opened the heavy door in tufts of upholstery, - in the hallway the open burned-out stove blushes, it's warm and dark... But it's dark in the hall.
- Vikenty Vikentich!
And he noiselessly, in felt boots, appeared on the threshold of the office, which was also lit only by the moon through the triple window.
- Oh, it's you ... Come in, come in, please ... And as you can see, I am twilight, while away the evening without a fire ...
I went in and sat down on the bumpy sofa.
- Imagine. The music has disappeared...
He said nothing. Then in an almost inaudible voice:
Yes, yes, I understand you...
- That is, what do you understand?
And immediately, also silently, also in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders, Muse came out of the bedroom adjoining the office.
“You are with a gun,” she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not at him, but at me.
She sat down on the other sofa opposite.
I looked at her felt boots, at her knees under a gray skirt - everything was clearly visible in the golden light falling from the window - I wanted to shout: "I can't live without you, for these knees alone, for a skirt, for boots, I'm ready to give my life !"
“The matter is clear and finished,” she said. - Scenes are useless.
“You are monstrously cruel,” I said with difficulty.
"Give me a cigarette," she said to Zavistovsky.
He leaned cowardly towards her, held out a cigarette case, began to fumble through his pockets for matches...
“You are already talking to me on “you,” I said, panting, “you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me.
- Why? she asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette out of the way.
My heart was already pounding in my throat, beating in my temples. I got up and staggered out.
October 17, 1938
LATE HOUR
Oh, how long have I been there, I said to myself. From the age of nineteen. He once lived in Russia, felt it as his own, had complete freedom to travel anywhere, and it was not great work to travel some three hundred miles. But he didn’t go, he put everything off. And years and decades went by. But now it is no longer possible to postpone any longer: either now or never. It is necessary to use the only and last opportunity, since the hour is late and no one will meet me.
And I went over the bridge over the river, seeing far away in the moonlight of the July night.
The bridge was so familiar, the old one, as if I had seen it yesterday: rudely ancient, humpbacked and as if not even stone, but some kind of petrified from time to time to eternal invincibility - I thought as a schoolboy that he was still under Batu. However, only some traces of the city walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak of the antiquity of the city. Everything else is old, provincial, nothing more. One thing was strange, one thing indicated that after all something had changed in the world since I was a boy, a young man.
Slideshow presentation:
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He unexpectedly showed aptitude for mathematics, especially when he became interested in chess. She was unpleasantly shocked by this news, apparently because tears came to her eyes. (The introductory word refers to the main part). She pursed her lips involuntarily, apparently because she was afraid to burst into tears. (The introductory word refers to the subordinate clause.)
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And it seemed to everyone that there would be joy, that in a quiet backwater all the ships, that in a foreign land tired people found a bright life for themselves. (A.A. Blok) We know what is now on the scales and what is happening now. (A.A. Akhmatova) When burdocks rustle in a ravine and a bunch of yellow-red rowan droops, I compose cheerful poems about life perishable, perishable and beautiful. (A.A. Akhmatova)
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Task 4 Write down, placing the missing punctuation marks. Draw sentence outlines and graphically explain the conditions for punctuation / non-punctuation between parts complex sentences. 1. The troika moved to the Patriarchal, and the cat moved on hind legs. 2. It suddenly seemed to me that the autumn darkness would squeeze out the glass, pour into the room and I would drown in it, like in ink. 3. It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians ... 4. And the foreigner looked around at the tall houses with a square bordering the pond, and it became noticeable that he was seeing this place for the first time and that it interested him. 5. He looked with bleary eyes at the prisoner and for some time was silent painfully remembering why, in the merciless morning sun of Yershalaim, the prisoner was standing in front of him with a face disfigured by beatings and what other useless questions he would have to ask. 6. Pilate raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun was already quite high above the hippodrome, that a ray had made its way into the colonnade and crawled up to Yeshua's worn-out sandals, and that he kept away from the sun. 7. The procurator realized that there, on the square, a huge crowd of residents of Yershalaim, excited by the latest riots, had already gathered, that this crowd was impatiently waiting for the verdict, and that restless water sellers were shouting in it. 8. When he [Styopa Likhodeev] opened his eyes properly, he realized that the sea was making noise and that, even Moreover, - the wave sways at his very feet ... 9. There is nothing easier than to forward your application to the right place, and if, as you think, we are dealing with a criminal, all this will become clear very soon. (M.A. Bulgakov) 10. Krasilshchikov grew up and studied in Moscow, graduated from the university there, but when he came to his Tula estate in the summer, he liked to feel like a merchant landowner ... 11. When the downpour and shaking thunder began to subside and all around it began to clear up ahead, to the left of the highway, the familiar yard of an old widower, the tradesman Pronin, appeared. 12. When it became completely light in the sky and the rooster began to yell in different voices behind the wall, he made a movement to rise. 13. But one day in March, when I was sitting at home working with pencils and in the open windows of the double frames it was no longer winter dampness of sleet and rain, horseshoes were clattering on the pavement, as if horseshoes were ringing more musically, someone knocked on the door of my hallway . 14. I was visiting you when the alarm suddenly sounded and everyone rushed to the windows and then behind the gate. 15. When I looked to the right, I saw how high and sinlessly the moon shines over the courtyard and the roof of the house shines like a fish. (I.A. Bunin)
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PUNCIATION SIGNS IN NON-UNIONAL COMPLEX SENTENCES A comma is put if the parts are equal in meaning (the meaning of simultaneity or sequence). , , . and and 2. A semicolon is put if the parts are more independent in meaning or are significantly common (there are already commas inside the parts). [ , ]; [ , ]. Evening comes, the fields turn blue, the earth becomes orphaned. (Ars. Tarkovsky) The sea splashed and rustled, all in white lace shavings; the sun was shining, passing over noon. (M. Gorky)
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COLONS ARE PUT: [clarification] namely, that is: [reason]. because because [feel ] : [addition ]. I see what I hear, I understand, etc. And suddenly a miracle happened: I crossed the street and found myself in a completely different city. (Yu.O. Dombrovsky) However, there was no time to yearn: Small child did not allow. (L.E. Ulitskaya) They published “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, everyone read it and understood: other times have come. (V.S. Tokareva).
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PUT A DASH - [unexpected and joining, quick change of events] 2. - [opposition] but 3. - [comparison] as if exactly 4. - [conclusion, consequence] so therefore 5. [time] - when 6. [ condition] - if Zinochka sat down - the stump under her settled like a pillow (M.M. Prishvin) Summer stores - winter eats. (Proverb) Look - he will give a ruble. (N.A. Nekrasov) The book is like water - the road will break through everywhere. (Proverb) The time will come - I will enter the round dance of rocks and trees, plains and waters. (V.A. Rozhdestvensky) If you say, we'll let you through. No - blame yourself. (Yu.O. Dombrovsky)
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REMEMBER! Sometimes the value of time and conditions in the 1st part can be combined. - [attachment]. this (sometimes the word is already in the sentence itself) If in an allied complex sentence, two colons are needed, then a dash is put instead of the second colon. If you are in Rostov Veliky, be sure to visit the Kremlin. (if/when) They will break up, they have already broken up -0 this thought stunned both of them. (D.A.Granin) In the morning there was a sudden, cheerful awakening: everything is light, calm, the train is standing - already Smolensk, a large station. (I.A. Bunin)
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Task 4 Explanatory dictation. Make diagrams first three sentences of the 3rd paragraph. Vlasovsky from the theater immediately sent for a Cossack platoon, begged with such humiliation; his deputy, Colonel Rudnev, who was called from home, also arrived. Vlasovsky himself managed to call home and do some minor things: he drank a cup of tea, warned his wife not to wait for breakfast, and possibly for dinner. And already at the first sun he went to the Khodynka field ... His carriage with great difficulty and belatedly broke through to Khodynka bypass, through All Saints. Having arrived, he began to look straight from the carriage: screams and groans, the crack of broken structures, a menacing rumble, the tramp of thousands of feet and the dust raised by them. Everything seen immediately gave an experienced policeman an idea of the size of the disaster. Wasting no time, he ordered Rudnev to besiege the crowd as much as possible; dispersed onlookers; took care of the wounded who were nearby. Then Vlasovsky sent a Cossack to sound the alarm in all fire brigades and send carts to transport the victims; after which he had to rush to the hospitals and warn them to get ready to provide assistance and accept corpses. And he himself - again around, only this time through Khoroshevo - hastened to the Governor-General with a brief report and a request for urgent and very serious help. They managed to wake up Sergei Alexandrovich only at eight o'clock: the adjutant stood to the death, and no arguments helped. And Moscow was already rattling with hundreds of studded wheels: all twelve fire brigades rushed to the Khodynka field. Do not rush - something terrible will happen. The yellow-piebald bityugi1 of the Tver part were the first. Behind them flew the crow-piebald Rogozhsky team, the nightingales with white tails - from Sretenka, the blacks in white stockings - from the Pyatnitsky part, whites without marks - City, gray in apples - from Yakimanka Vasily Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, according to his correspondent duties, should be on the Khodynka field and personally be present at all the exits of the sovereign to the people, now he hurried to the stands. The anxiety in his soul grew. The source of this anxiety was now far from him - it was not possible to see anything with his own eyes, but he, as an experienced correspondent, treated rumors with great distrust. Meanwhile, his soul shrank in anticipation of the inevitable terrible blow. (According to B.L. Vasilyev “Assuage my sorrows ...”)
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Task 1 Write down, placing the missing punctuation marks. Explain the placement of signs. Make diagrams of the 6th, 11th, 19th and 21st sentences. 1. The days were foggy, strange across Russia in the north, poisonous October passed with a frozen tread; and in the south he hung rotten mists. | (A. Bely) 2. I remember one autumn night for some reason I woke up and saw a light and mysterious half-light in the room ... 3. Our plan was daring to leave in the same train to the Caucasian coast and live there in some quite a wild place three to four weeks. 4. She entered the alley, she was still naked, winding short shadows calmly lie on dry ground, which is so pleasant to walk on. 5. Recently, I was walking up Volkhovskaya and there was such a picture of the sunset freezing the western sky clearing and from there, from this green, transparent and cold sky, the bright evening light illuminates the whole city, the incomprehensible longing of which cannot be expressed; and on the pavement stands a tattered old organ-grinder, blue from the cold, and announces this frosty evening with the sounds of his decrepit hurdy-gurdy ... 6. The second bell struck, I went cold with fear, late, or at the last minute he suddenly did not let her in! 7. On the way, I remembered the dream that I had that night was Shrovetide, I again lived with the Rostovtsevs, sat with my father in the circus, looked at the arena to which a whole small herd of black ponies ran, as many as six pieces ... (I.A. Bunin) 8. Here the foreigner broke off such a thing, stood up and shook hands with the astonished editor... 9. Berlioz's plan should be recognized as correct; Patriarch's Ponds in an obviously abnormal state. 10. Neither the conductor nor the passengers were struck by the very essence of the matter, not that the cat climbs into the tram, which would be half the trouble, but the fact that he was going to pay! 11. Ivan Nikolaevich's fears were fully justified; passers-by paid attention to him and turned around. 12. And two years ago, inexplicable incidents began in the apartment; from this apartment, people began to disappear without a trace. 13. Let times social revolution no need to heat. 14. He listened the theater building was silent. (M.A. Bulgakov) 15. Then I see in the middle of the house growing out of a long hall-like room or inner gallery, immediately behind the vestibule, a cast-iron staircase rises to the second floor... estate; political affairs detain father in the capital. (V.V. Nabokov) 17. He did not worry about lodging for the night, he had an old friend who could always stay, and there was an academic hotel on Khalturin Street where he would always be given a place ... 18. The speed with which he was transformed was amazing the former children's house was finished in a week... 19. As a child, I drew and was praised, then I was engaged in music and was praised. Father's books began to read again praised. 20. Forest field pond combined in her experience with hard work in the forest sent to pick berries for sale in the field to help clean up the pond to rinse clothes. (LE Ulitskaya) 21. At home, March 8 was despised and considered a public holiday. 22. A pilgrim cannot be disappointed, having never happened that a pilgrim did not like a shrine. (T.N. Tolstaya)
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