Preface Childhood Safeguard.

"LONG DAYS"

Luvers was born and raised in Perm. Just like once her boats and dolls, so, later, her memories were drowned in the shaggy bear skins, of which there were many in the house. Her father ran the business of the Lunievsky mines and had a wide clientele among the factory owners from Chusovaya.

The donated skins were black-brown and lush. The polar bear in her nursery looked like a huge crumbling chrysanthemum. It was a skin created for the “Groom’s Room” - chosen, bargained for in a store and sent by messenger.

During the summers we lived on the other side of the Kama in a dacha. In those years, Zhenya was put to bed early. She could not see the lights of Motovilikha. But one day the Angora cat, frightened by something, moved sharply in her sleep and woke Zhenya up. Then she saw adults on the balcony. The alder hanging over the beams was thick and iridescent, like ink. The tea in the glasses was red. The cuffs and cards are yellow, the cloth is green. It looked like nonsense, but this nonsense had its own name, which was also known to Zhenya: a game was being played.

But it was impossible to determine in any way what was happening on that bank, far, far away: it had no name and did not have a distinct color or precise outline; and worried, it was sweet and dear, and was not delirium, like the one that muttered and tossed in the clouds of tobacco smoke, casting fresh, windy shadows on the red logs of the gallery. Zhenya burst into tears. The father came in and explained to her. The Englishwoman turned to the wall. The father’s explanation was short. This is Motovilikha. Ashamed. Such a big girl. Sleep. The girl did not understand anything and contentedly swallowed a tear that was rolling. This, after all, was all that was required: to find out the name of the incomprehensible: - Motovilikha. - That night it explained everything, because on that night the name still had a full, childishly soothing meaning.

But in the morning she began asking questions about what Motovilikha was and what they were doing there at night, and she found out that Motovilikha was a factory, a state-owned factory, and that they made cast iron there, and from cast iron..., it wasn’t that that didn’t interest her anymore, but she was interested in whether what they call “factories” were special countries, and who lived there; but she did not ask these questions and for some reason deliberately hid them.

That morning she emerged from the infancy in which she had been the night before. For the first time in her years, she suspected the phenomenon of something that the phenomenon either leaves to itself, or, if it reveals itself to someone, then only to those people who know how to shout and punish, smoke and lock the doors. For the first time, like this new Motovilikha, she did not say everything she thought, and hid the most important, necessary and restless things to herself.

Years passed. The children were so accustomed to their father's departures from birth that in their eyes it became a special branch of fatherhood to rarely have lunch and never have dinner. But more and more often they played and quarreled, drank and ate in completely empty, solemnly deserted rooms, and cold the Englishwoman's teachings could not replace the presence of her mother, who filled the house with the sweet burden of passion and perseverance, like some kind of familiar electricity. A quiet northern day flowed through the curtains. He did not smile. The oak sideboard seemed gray. The silver was heavy and stern. Above the tablecloth, people washed in lavender moved hands of an Englishwoman, she did not deprive anyone and had an inexhaustible supply of patience; and a sense of justice was characteristic of her to the high degree to which her room and her books were always clean and tidy. The maid, having served the food, stagnated in the dining room and went into the kitchen only for the next dish. It was convenient and good, but terribly sad.

And since for the girl these were years of suspicion and loneliness, a sense of sinfulness and what one would like to designate in French as “Christianism”, due to the impossibility of calling all this Christianity, it sometimes seemed to her that it could not and should not be better in her opinion. corruption and unrepentance; that it serves it right. And yet - but this never dawned on the children - meanwhile, just the opposite, their whole being shuddered and wandered, completely confused by the attitude of their parents towards them when they were at home; when they were not exactly returning home, but returning to the house.

Father's rare jokes generally went poorly and were not always appropriate. He felt it and felt that the children understood it. A touch of sad confusion never left his face. When he became irritated, he became a decided stranger, a complete stranger, and at the very moment in which he lost his self-control. The stranger does not touch. The children never spoke insolently back to him.

But for some time the criticism that came from the nursery and stood silently in the eyes of the children found him insensitive. He didn't notice her. Invulnerable in any way, somehow unrecognizable and pathetic - this father was - scary, in contrast to the irritated father - a stranger. He touched the girl more, the son less. But the mother embarrassed them both.

She showered them with caresses and gifts and spent whole hours with them when they least wanted it; when it suppressed their childish conscience with its undeservingness, and they did not recognize themselves in those affectionate nicknames that her instinct eccentrically showered.

And often, when an unusually clear peace came to their souls, and they did not feel the criminals in themselves, when all the mysterious, avoiding detection, similar to the heat before a rash, was removed from their conscience, they saw their mother aloof, shunning them and being hot-tempered for no reason. The postman appeared. The letter was intended for its intended purpose - to my mother. She accepted without thanking. “Go to your place.” The door slammed. They quietly hung their heads and, bored, surrendered to long, sad bewilderment.

At first, it happened that they cried; then, after one particularly sharp outburst, they began to be afraid; then, over the years, this turned into a secret, increasingly deeply rooted hostility.

Everything that went from parents to children came at random, from the outside, caused not by them, but by some extraneous reasons, and smacked of distance, as it always happens, and a mystery, like whining around gates at night when everyone goes to bed .

This circumstance raised children. They did not realize this because few adults know and hear what builds, gets along and sews it. Life devotes very few to what it does to them. She loves this business too much and while working only talks to those who wish her success and love her workbench. No one has the power to help her, but anyone can hinder her. How can you stop her? That's how. If you entrust a tree with the care of its own growth, the tree will completely sprout or go entirely to the root or be wasted on one leaf, because it will forget about the universe, from which it must take an example, and, having produced one thing out of a thousand, it will become thousands produce the same thing.

And so that there are no bitches in the soul, so that its growth does not stagnate, so that a person does not mix his stupidity into the structure of his immortal essence, many things are instituted that distract his vulgar curiosity from life, which does not like to work with him and avoids him in every possible way. For this purpose, all the real religions and all the general concepts and all the prejudices of people were created, and the brightest of them, the most entertaining - psychology.

Children have already emerged from primitive infancy. The concepts of punishment, retribution, reward and justice penetrated their souls like children and distracted their consciousness, allowing life to do with them what it considered necessary, weighty and beautiful.

Miss Hawthorn wouldn't do that. But in one of her attacks of causeless tenderness for the children, Mrs. Luvers, for the most trivial reason, said harsh words to the Englishwoman, and she was no longer in the house. Soon and somehow imperceptibly, some stunted Frenchwoman grew up in her place. Subsequently, Zhenya only remembered that the Frenchwoman looked like a fly, and no one loved her. Her name was completely lost, and Zhenya could not say among what syllables and sounds this name could be found. She only remembered that the French woman first shouted at her, and then took scissors and cut off the place in the bearskin that was bloody.

It seemed to her that now they would always shout at her, and her headache would never go away, and would constantly hurt, and that page in her favorite book, which stupidly floated in front of her like a textbook after lunch, would never again be understood.

That day dragged on for a terribly long time. Mother was not there that day. Zhenya did not regret this. It even seemed to her that she was glad of her absence.

Soon the long day was forgotten among the forms of passe and futur anterieur, watering hyacinths and walks along the Sibirskaya and Okhanskaya. He was so forgotten that she noticed and felt the longevity of the other, the second in her life, only in the evening, while reading by the lamp, when the lazily moving story led her to hundreds of the most idle thoughts. When she later recalled that house on Osinskaya, where they then lived, it always seemed to her as she saw it on that second long day, at its end. It was really long. It was spring outside. Difficult to mature and painful, spring in the Urals then breaks out widely and violently, in the course of one night, and then proceeds violently and widely. The lamps only highlighted the emptiness of the evening air. They gave no light, but were swollen from the inside, like diseased fruits, from that cloudy and light dropsy that swelled their puffy caps. They were absent. They came across where necessary, in their places, on tables and descended from the stucco ceilings in the rooms where the girl was accustomed to seeing them. Meanwhile, the lamps had much less connection to the rooms than to the spring sky, to which they seemed to be pushed close, like drinking to a sick bed. In their souls they were on the street, where the chatter of the servants swarmed in the wet earth and where, freezing, the thinning drops froze at night. This is where the lamps disappeared in the evenings. The parents were away. However, the mother was expected, it seems, on this day. On this long day, or in the next ones. Yes, probably. Or, perhaps, she showed up inadvertently. Maybe those.

Zhenya began to get into bed and saw that the day was long from the same thing as that one, and at first she thought about getting scissors and cutting off these places in the shirt and on the sheet, but then she decided to take the powder from the French woman and rub it with white, and already grabbed the powder compact, when a French woman came in and hit her. All the sin was concentrated in the powder. “She powders herself. Only this was missing. Now she finally understood. She noticed for a long time!” - Zhenya burst into tears from the beatings, from the screaming and from the resentment; because, feeling innocent of what the Frenchwoman suspected her of, she knew something behind herself that was - she felt it - much worse than her suspicions. It was necessary - it was felt to the point of stupefaction, urgently, felt in the calves and temples - it was necessary, for some unknown reason and why, to hide it, in any way and at any cost. The joints, aching, floated in a single hypnotic suggestion. Tormenting and exhausting, this suggestion was the work of the organism, which hid the meaning of everything from the girl and, behaving like a criminal, forced her to believe in this bleeding some kind of sickening, vile evil. "Menteuse!" “I only had to deny it, stubbornly locking myself in what was the nastiest of all and was somewhere in the middle between the shame of illiteracy and the shame of a street incident.” I had to shudder, clenching my teeth, and, choking on tears, huddle against the wall. It was impossible to rush into the Kama, because it was still cold and the last surges were going down the river.

Neither she nor the French woman heard the call. The commotion that arose disappeared into the darkness of the black-brown skins, and when the mother entered, it was already too late. She found her daughter in tears, the Frenchwoman in color. She demanded an explanation. The Frenchwoman bluntly told her that - not Zhenya, no - votre enfant, she said, that her daughter was powdering herself and that she had noticed and guessed before - her mother did not let her finish - her horror was unfeigned - the girl was not yet thirteen - “Zhenya - are you?” - Lord, what has it come to (at that moment it seemed to the mother that this word made sense, as if she already knew before that her daughter was degrading and sinking, and she just didn’t give orders - time - and now it finds her at such a low level of decline) - Zhenya, tell the whole truth - it will be worse - what did you do - with the powder compact, Mrs. Luvers probably wanted to say, but she said - with this thing - and grabbed “this thing " and waved it in the air. “Mom, don’t trust m-lle, I never” - and she burst into tears. But the mother heard evil notes in this cry that were not in it; and she felt guilty, and was internally horrified ; it was necessary, in her opinion, to correct everything, it was necessary, albeit against maternal nature, “to rise to pedagogical and prudent measures”: she decided not to succumb to compassion. She decided to wait for the flow of these tears that deeply tormented her to flow.

And she sat down on the bed, fixing a calm and empty gaze on the edge of the bookshelf. She smelled of expensive perfume. When the daughter came to her senses, she again started asking her questions. Zhenya threw teary eyes on the window and sobbed. The ice was moving and probably making noise. The star was shining. It was malleable and cold, but without ebb, the desert night was rough and black. Zhenya looked away from the window. There was a threat of impatience in the mother's voice. The Frenchwoman stood against the wall, all seriousness and concentrated pedagogy. Her hand, like hell, rested on the watch cord. Zhenya again looked at the stars and at Kama. She made up her mind. Despite the cold and the snoring. And she rushed. She, confused in her words, told her mother about it in a strange and scary way. ". The mother allowed her to finish speaking only because she was struck by how much soul the child put into this message. She understood everything from the first word. No, no: by the way the girl swallowed deeply when she began the story. The mother listened , rejoicing, loving and pining with tenderness for this thin little body. She wanted to throw herself on her daughter’s neck and cry. But - pedagogy; she got out of bed and tore the blanket off the bed. She called her daughter and began to stroke her head slowly, slowly, affectionately. “Good girl...” she burst out quickly - she walked noisily and widely to the window and turned away from them. Zhenya did not see the Frenchwoman. There were tears - the mother stood - all over the room. - “Who makes the bed?” The question made no sense. The girl trembled. She felt sorry for Grusha. Then, on a familiar note, French, something was said in an unfamiliar language: strict expressions. And then again to her, in a completely different voice: “Zhenichka, go to the dining room, baby, I’ll come there now too, and I’ll tell you what a wonderful dacha we rented for you and dad for the summer.”

The lamps were again their own, as in winter, at home, with grommets - hot, zealous, devoted. Mom’s marten frolicked on the blue woolen tablecloth. “Won, I’ll linger on Grace, wait for the end of Passion if -”, the rest could not be read, the dispatch was folded into the corner. Zhenya sat on the edge of the sofa, tired and happy. She sat down modestly and well, just as she sat down six months later, in the corridor of the Yekaterinburg gymnasium, on the edge of a cold yellow bench, when, having answered the oral exam in the Russian language with an A, she learned that “she could go.”

The next morning, her mother told her what she would need to do in such cases and that it was nothing, there was no need to be afraid that this would happen more than once again. She didn’t name anything or explain anything to her, but added that now she herself would take care of things with her daughter, because she wouldn’t be leaving anymore.

The Frenchwoman was punished for her negligence, having spent only a few months in the family. When they hired a cab for her and she began to go down the stairs, she met on the landing with a doctor who was rising. He answered her bow very unfriendly and did not say anything to her in parting; She guessed that he already knew everything, frowned and shrugged her shoulders.

A maid stood at the door, waiting to let the doctor in, and therefore in the hall, where Zhenya was, there was the sound of footsteps and the sound of a stone being released for longer than expected. And so the story of her first girlhood was imprinted in her memory: the full echo of the chirping morning street, lingering on the stairs, freshly penetrating the house; a Frenchwoman, a maid and a doctor, two criminals and one initiate, washed, disinfected by light, coolness and the sonority of shuffling marches.

It was a warm, sunny April. “Feet, wipe your feet,” the bare, bright corridor ran from end to end. The skins were put away for the summer. The rooms stood up clean, transformed and sighed with relief and sweetness. All day, all the languidly sunsetless day, which bogged down for a long time, in all the corners and middles of rooms, on glass leaning against the wall and in mirrors, in glasses of water and in the blue garden air, insatiably and insatiably, squinting and preening, the bird cherry tree laughed and raged. Honeysuckle washed herself, choking. The boring chatter of the courtyards continued all day and night; they declared the night to be overthrown and repeated, small and fractionally, day after day, with drips that acted like a sleepy decoction, that there would never be an evening again, and they would not let anyone sleep. - “Legs, legs!” - but they were burning, they came drunk from the outside, with a ringing in their ears, behind which they missed to properly understand what was said and were eager to sip and chew quickly, so that, with a fighting noise, pushing their chairs, they would run back again, into this rushing day for dinner, where the drying tree made its short knock, where the blue chirped piercingly and the earth shone richly, like melted water. The boundary between the house and the yard was erased. The rag did not wash what was left behind. The floors were covered with dry and light daub and crunched.

Father brought sweets and miracles. The house felt wonderfully good. The stones, with a wet rustling sound, announced their appearance from the tissue paper, which was gradually colored, becoming more and more transparent as layer after layer of these white, gas-soft packages were unwrapped. Some looked like drops of almond milk, others like splashes of blue watercolor, others like hardened cheese tears. Those were blind, sleepy and dreamy, these were with a playful spark, like the frozen juice of beetles. I didn't want to touch them. They looked good on the foaming paper, which made them stand out like a plum's dull glint.

The father was unusually affectionate with the children and often accompanied the mother to the city. They returned together and seemed joyful. And most importantly, both were calm, even-tempered and friendly, and when the mother glanced at the father in fits and starts, with a playful reproach, it seemed that she drew this world from his eyes, small and ugly, and then poured it out with her large and beautiful eyes on the children and others.

Once the parents got up very late. Then, for some unknown reason, they decided to go to breakfast on the ship standing at the pier, and took the children with them. Serezha was given a taste of cold beer. They liked all this so much that they went on the ship for breakfast one day. The children did not recognize their parents. What happened to them? The girl was perplexedly blissful and it seemed to her that it would always be like this now. They were not sad when they learned that they would not be taken to the dacha this summer. Soon the father left. Three traveling chests appeared in the house, huge, yellow, with strong overlay rims.

The train left late at night. Luvers moved in a month earlier and wrote that the apartment was ready. Several cab drivers were jogging down to the station. His proximity was reflected in the color of the pavement. It turned black and the street lights hit the brown cast iron. At this time, a view of the Kama opened up from the viaduct, and a pit, black as soot, crashed under them and ran out, all in heaviness and anxiety. She ran away like an arrow and there, far, far away, at the other end, frightened, rolled and shook with the blinking beads of signaling distances.

It was windy. Their outlines flew off houses and fences, like shells from sieves, and swayed and fluttered in the dull air. It smelled like potatoes. Their driver got out of the series of baskets and tails bouncing in front and began to overtake them. From a distance they recognized the shelves with their luggage; caught up; Ulyasha shouted something loudly to the lady with the cart, but the roar of the wheels covered her, and she shook and jumped, and her voice jumped.

The girl did not notice the sadness behind the novelty of all these night noises and blackness and freshness. Far, far away, something mysteriously turned black. Lights dangled behind the barracks of the dock; the city rinsed them in the water, from the shore and from boats. Then there were a lot of them and they swarmed thickly and fatly, blind as worms. On the Lyubimovskaya pier, the chimneys, warehouse roofs, and decks were soberly blue. They lay looking at the stars - the barges. “There’s a rat house here,” Zhenya thought. They were surrounded by white artel workers. Seryozha was the first to jump off. He looked around and was very surprised to see that the drayman with their luggage was already there too - the horse lifted its muzzle, the collar grew, stood up straight, like a rooster, it rested on its hindquarters and began to pull back. And all the way he was interested in how far behind them they would fall.

The boy stood, reveling in the proximity of the trip, in a white school shirt. Travel was new to both of them, but he already knew and loved the words: depot, locomotives, sidings, direct, and the sound combination: class - it seemed to him to taste sour-sweet. My sister was also interested in all this, but in her own way, without the boyish systematicity that characterized her brother’s hobbies.

Suddenly, a mother appeared nearby, as if out of the ground. It was ordered to take the children to the buffet. From there, making her way like a peahen through the crowd, she went straight to what was called for the first time in freedom loudly and threateningly “the station master” and was often mentioned later in various places, with variations, among the diversity of the crush.

They were overcome by yawning. They sat at one of the windows, which were so dusty, so prim and so huge that they seemed like some kind of bottle glass establishments where you couldn’t wear a hat. The girl saw: outside the window was not the street, but also a room, only more serious and gloomy than this one - in the countess; and steam locomotives slowly drive into that room and stop, casting darkness; and when they leave and clear the room, it turns out that this is not a room, because there is sky there, behind the posts, and on the other side there is a hill, and wooden houses , and people are walking there, moving away; there, perhaps, the roosters are crowing now, and recently there was a water tanker that muddied...

It was a provincial station, without the bustle and glow of the capital, with people leaving the night city arriving in advance, with a long wait; with silence and settlers sleeping on the floor among hunting dogs, chests, matted cars and uncovered bicycles.

The children lay down on top places. The boy immediately fell asleep. The train was still standing. It was getting light, and gradually it became clear to the girl that the carriage was blue, clean and cool. And gradually it became clear to her - but she, too, was already asleep.

He was a very plump man. He was reading a newspaper and swaying. When looking at him, the swaying with which, like the sun, permeated and flooded everything in the compartment, became obvious. Zhenya looked at him from above with that lazy precision with which he thinks about something, or looks at something, a completely asleep, fresh person, remaining lying down only because he is waiting for the decision to get up to come by itself, without his help, clear and unconstrained, like the rest of his thoughts. She looked at him and wondered where he came from in their compartment, and when did he manage to get dressed and wash up? She had no idea of ​​the true hour of the day. She just woke up, therefore it is morning. She looked at him, but he could not see her; The floors were inclined towards the wall. He didn’t see her, because he, too, occasionally looked up, sideways, sideways from behind the sheets - and when he raised his eyes to her bed, their gazes did not meet, he either saw one mattress, or else..., but she quickly she picked them up and pulled on her loose stockings. Mom is in this corner. She has already cleaned up and is reading a book, Zhenya decided reflectively, studying the fat man’s views. But Seryozha isn’t even downstairs. So where is he? And she yawned sweetly and stretched. “It’s terribly hot,” she realized only now and looked out of her head through the half-lowered window. “Where is the land?” gasped in her soul.

What she saw defies description. The noisy hazel tree into which their train flowed snakingly became the sea, the world, anything, everything. It ran down, bright and grumbling, wide and sloping, and, having shredded, thickened and darkened, ended abruptly, completely black. And what towered there, on the other side of the breakdown, looked like some kind of huge, green-fawn thundercloud, all covered in curls and ringlets, deep in thought and dumbfounded. Zhenya held her breath and immediately felt the speed of this boundless, forgotten air, and immediately realized that that thundercloud was some kind of region, some kind of area, that it had a loud, mountainous name, rolling around, with stones and sand thrown down into the valley; that the hazel tree only knows that it whispers and whispers to him; here and there and ta-aam over there; only him.

“Is this the Ural?” - she asked the entire compartment, overweight.

She spent the rest of the way, without looking up, at the corridor window. She grew close to him and poked her head out every minute. She was greedy. She discovered that looking back is more pleasant than looking forward. Majestic acquaintances become misty and recede into the distance. After a short separation from them, during which with a vertical roar, on rattling chains, pouring cold on the back of the head, a new wonder is served right before your very nose, you look for them again. The mountain panorama resounded, and everything grew and expanded. Some have become black, others have been refreshed, some are darkened, some are darkened. They converge and diverge, descend and ascend. All this is done in some slow circle, like the rotation of stars, with the careful restraint of giants, on the verge of catastrophe, with concern for the integrity of the earth. These complex movements are driven by a smooth, great hum, inaccessible to the human ear and all-seeing. He looks over them with an eagle's eye, mute and dark, he inspects them. This is how the Urals are built, built and rebuilt.

She walked into the compartment for a moment, squinting her eyes from the harsh light. Mom was talking with an unfamiliar gentleman and laughing. Seryozha fidgeted on the crimson plush, holding on to some sort of wall-mounted belt. Mom spat the last bone into her fist, knocked the dropped ones from her dress and, bending flexibly and swiftly, threw all the rubbish under the bench. The fat man, contrary to expectations, had a hoarse, cracked voice. He apparently suffered from shortness of breath. His mother introduced Zhenya to him and handed her a tangerine. He was funny and probably kind and, while talking, constantly raised his plump hand to his mouth. His speech bulged and, suddenly spiraling, was often interrupted. It turned out that he himself was from Yekaterinburg, had traveled around the Urals at random and knew very well, and when, taking a gold watch from his vest pocket, he brought it to his very nose and began to put it back, Zhenya noticed how good-natured his fingers were. plump in nature, he took the giver with a movement, and his hand sighed all the time, as if given for a kiss, and softly jumped, as if hitting a ball on the floor. “Now soon,” he squinted his eyes, crookedly extended to the side of the boy, although he was addressing specifically towards him, and stretched out his lips.

You know, a pillar, they say, on the border of Asia and Europe, and it says: “Asia,” Seryozha blurted out, rolling off the sofa and running into the corridor.

Zhenya did not understand anything, and when the fat man explained to her what was the matter, she also ran to the other side to wait for the post, fearing that she had already missed it. In her enchanted head, the “border of Asia” arose in the form of some kind of phantasmagoric boundary, like those iron bars that create a line of menacing, black as night, and stinking danger between the audience and the cage with pumas. She was waiting for this pillar, as if the curtain was going up on the first act of a geographical tragedy, about which she had heard many tales from those who had seen it, solemnly worried that she, too, had been caught, and would soon see it herself.

Meanwhile, what had previously forced her to go into the compartment with the elders continued monotonously: the gray alder forest that had crossed the road half an hour ago was not expected to die, and nature was not preparing for what was quickly awaiting it. Zhenya was annoyed at boring, dusty Europe, which was slowly delaying the onset of a miracle. How taken aback she was when, as if in response to Serezha’s frantic cry, something like a grave monument flashed past the window and stood sideways towards them and ran away, carrying the long-awaited fabulous name! At that moment, many heads, as if by agreement, poked their heads out of the windows of all classes and the train, rushing downhill, came to life like a cloud of dust. For a long time now, more than a dozen runs had been registered behind Asia, and the scarves on the flying heads were still fluttering, and people were looking at each other, and they were smooth and overgrown with beards, and they were all flying, in clouds of spinning sand, flying and flying past the same dusty, just recently European, and for a long time Asian alder.

Life took a new turn. Milk was not delivered to the home, to the kitchen, by a peddler; Ulyasha brought it in the mornings in pairs, and special, different, non-Perm rolls. The sidewalks here were somehow either marble or alabaster, with a wavy white gloss. Even in the shadows, the slabs dazzled like icy suns, greedily absorbing the shadows of elegant trees, which spread, melting and liquefying on them. Here it was completely different to look out onto the street, which was wide and bright, with plantings, like in Paris,” Zhenya repeated after her father.

He said this on the first day of their arrival. It was nice and spacious. Father had a snack before leaving for the station and did not take part in lunch. His device remained clean and bright, like Yekaterinburg, and he just laid out a napkin and sat sideways and told something. He unbuttoned his vest, and his shirtfront arched fresh and powerful. He said that this was a wonderful European city and called when it was necessary to clean up and serve something else, and he called and told us. And through unknown passages, from still unknown rooms, a silent white maid, all starchy and dark, came in, she said “you” and, new, she smiled at the lady and the children as if they were acquaintances. And she was given some orders about Ulyasha, who was there, in an unknown and probably very, very dark kitchen, where there was probably a window from which something new could be seen: some bell tower, or a street, or birds . And Ulyasha is probably asking this young lady there now, putting on something worse, so that later she can start arranging things; asks and gets used to it and looks at which corner the stove is in, whether it’s like in Perm or somewhere else.

The boy learned from his father that it was not far to go to the gymnasium - very close - and they should have seen it while passing; Father drank Narzan and, after taking a sip, continued: “Didn’t you really show it? but you can’t see her from here, maybe from the kitchen (he figured it out in his head), and then maybe it’s just the roof” - he drank more Narzan and called.

The kitchen turned out to be fresh, bright, exactly the same - after a minute it seemed to the girl - that she had imagined in advance in the dining room and imagined - the tiled stove had a blue-white cast, there were two windows, in the order in which she waited, Ulyasha threw something over her bare hands, the room was filled with children's voices, people were walking on the roof of the gymnasium and the tops of scaffolding were sticking out. “Yes, it’s being renovated,” said the father, when they all walked one by one, noisily and jostling, into the dining room, along the already known, but still unexplored corridor, which she will have to visit again tomorrow, when she lays out her notebooks and hangs her washbasin by the ear glove and, in a word, will put an end to this thousand affairs.

“Amazing oil,” said the mother, sitting down, and they went into the classroom, which they had only just arrived to see in their caps. “What is this - Asia?” she thought out loud. But for some reason Seryozha did not understand what he probably would have understood at another time: until now they had lived as a couple. He rolled to the hanging map and ran his hand from top to bottom along the Ural ridge, looking at it, struck, as it seemed to him, by this argument. “We agreed to draw a natural boundary, that’s all.” She remembered about today's afternoon, already so distant. I couldn’t believe that the day that contained all this - this same one, which is now in Yekaterinburg, and here, not all of it, was not over yet. At the thought that all this had receded back, maintaining its lifeless order, into its proper distance, she experienced a feeling of amazing mental fatigue, as her body feels in the evening after a hard day. It was as if she, too, had participated in the pressing and moving of those heavy beauties, and had torn herself. And for some reason, confident that he, her Ural, was there, she turned and ran into the kitchen through the dining room, where there were fewer dishes, but there was still amazing butter with ice on sweaty maple leaves and angry mineral water.

The gymnasium was being renovated, and the air, like a seamstress's teeth, was flogged by sharp swifts, and below, she leaned out, the carriage shone by the open barn and sparks were falling from the grinding wheel, and the smell of everything that had been eaten was better and more entertaining than when it was served, it smelled sad and for a long time, like in a book. She forgot why she ran in, and did not notice that her Urals were not in Yekaterinburg, but she noticed how it was gradually getting dark in Yekaterinburg and how they were singing below, under them, at what was probably easy work: They must have washed the floor and laid down the mats with hot hands, and how they splashed water from the scullery tub, and although it was splashed downstairs, it was so quiet all around! And how the tap gurgled there, like: “Well, young lady,” but she was still aloof from the new girl and didn’t want to listen to her, - as she thought out her thought, down below they know and, probably, say: “here, the gentlemen have arrived in the second room today.” Ulyasha entered the kitchen.

The children slept soundly that first night, and woke up: Seryozha - in Yekaterinburg, Zhenya - in Asia, as she again thought broadly and strangely. Layered alabaster played freshly on the ceilings.

It started in the summer. It was announced to her that she would go to the gymnasium. It was only pleasant. But it was announced to her. She did not call the tutor into the classroom, where the sunny colors stuck so tightly to the walls painted with glue paint that the evening only managed to tear off the sticking day with blood. She did not call him when, accompanied by his mother, he came here to meet “his future student.” She did not give him the ridiculous surname Dikikh. And is it really what she wanted, that from now on the soldiers would always study at noon, stiff, snoring and sweaty, like the red spasm of a faucet when a water supply is damaged, and that their boots would be crushed by a purple thundercloud, which knew a lot about guns and wheels, much more than their white shirts , white tents and whitest officers? Did she ask that now always two things: a basin and a napkin, coming into combination, like coals in an arc lamp, would cause a third thing to instantly evaporate: the idea of ​​death, like that sign at the barber's, where this happened to her for the first time? And was it with her consent that the red, “forbidden to stop” slingshots became the site of some urban, forbiddenly stopped mysteries, and the Chinese - something personally terrible, something Zhenya and terrible? Not everything, of course, weighed so heavily on the soul. Many things, like her imminent entry into high school, were pleasant. But, like it, all this appeared to her. Having ceased to be a poetic trifle, life fermented into a cool black fairy tale insofar as it became prose and turned into fact. Dull, aching and dull, as if in a state of eternal sobering, the elements of everyday existence fell into the knotted soul. They sank to its bottom, real, hardened and cold, like sleepy tin spoons. There, at the bottom, this tin began to float, merging into lumps, dripping with obsessions.

Belgians often began to visit them for tea. That's what they were called. That's what their father called them, saying: today there will be Belgians. There were four of them. The beardless man visited rarely and was taciturn. Sometimes he came alone, inadvertently, on weekdays, choosing some bad, rainy time. The other three were inseparable. Their faces looked like pieces of fresh soap, unopened, out of the wrapper, fragrant and cold. One had a beard, thick and bushy, and fluffy brown hair. They always appeared in the company of their father, from some meetings. Everyone in the house loved them. They spoke as if they were spilling water on a tablecloth: noisy, fresh and immediately, somewhere to the side, where no one was waiting, with long-drying traces of their jokes and anecdotes, always understandable to children, always quenching thirst and clean.

There was noise all around, a sugar bowl, a nickel coffee pot, clean strong teeth, thick underwear. They joked kindly and politely with their mother. Father's colleagues, they had a very subtle ability to restrain him when, in response to their quick hints and mentions of affairs and people known at this table only to them, professionals, father began heavily, in very unclean French, at length, with hesitations talk about counterparties, about references approuvees, and about ferocites, i.e. bestialites, ce que veut dire en russe - theft on Grace.

Bezusy, who for some time had been interested in studying the Russian language, often tried himself in this new field, but it did not yet hold him. It was awkward to laugh at French periods father and all his ferocites were seriously burdened; but it seemed that the situation itself was sanctified by the laughter that covered Negarat’s attempts.

His name was Negarath. He was a Walloon from the Flemish part of Belgium. The Wild Ones were recommended to him. He wrote down his address in Russian, funnyly writing out complex letters like yu, ya, “yat”. He had some kind of double ones, different and splayed out. The children allowed themselves to kneel on the leather cushions of the chairs and put their elbows on the table - everything became permissible, everything was mixed up, it was not a ten, but some kind of ten, they roared and burst into tears, Evans hit the table with his fist and wiped away tears, father shaking and, red-faced, pacing around the room, repeating: no, I can’t, and crumpling his handkerchief. “Faites de nouveau,” Evans turned up the heat. “Commencez,” and Negarat opened his mouth slightly, hesitating like a stutterer and pondering how to give birth to this unexplored, like the colonies in the Congo, Russian “era.”

Ouvoui, nievoui.

Entends tu? - ouvoui nievoui - ouvoui, nievoui - oui, oui, - chose inouie, charmant, the Belgians rolled up.

Summer has passed. The exams were passed successfully, and others were passed excellently. The cold, transparent noise of the corridors flowed as if from springs. Everyone here knew each other. The leaf in the garden turned yellow and golden. Cool glass loomed in its bright, dancing glow. Half matte, they were foggy and agitated at the bottom. The forts were cramping with blue cramps. Their icy clarity was furrowed by bronze branches of maples.

She didn't know that all her worries would be turned into such funny joke. Divide this number of arshins and vershoks by seven! Was it worth going through shares, spools, lots, pounds and poods? Grains, drachms, scruples and ounces, which always seemed to her to be the four ages of the scorpion? Why is the word useful written “e” and not “yat”! She found it difficult to answer only because all her powers of reasoning converged in the effort to imagine the unfortunate reasons why the word “useful” could ever have arisen in the world, wild and shaggy in such an outline. She remained unknown why she was never sent to the gymnasium then, although she was accepted and enrolled, and was already cut out coffee color the form and then tried it on with pins, sparingly and tediously, for hours; and in her room she had such things as a bag, a pencil case, a lunch basket and a wonderfully disgusting photograph.

STRANGER.

The girl was wrapped up in a thick woolen scarf that reached her knees, and walked around the yard like a chicken. My wife wanted to go up to the Tatar girl and talk to her. At this time, the shutters of the shattered window banged. “Kolka,” Aksinya called. The child, who looked like a peasant bundle with his felt boots hastily stuck in, quickly scurried into the janitor's room.

Taking work to the yard always meant, dulling some note to the rule until it lost its meaning, then going upstairs and starting all over again in the rooms. They immediately, from the threshold, felt the special twilight and coolness, the special, always unexpected familiarity with which the furniture, having taken its once-for-all prescribed places, remained there. The future cannot be predicted. But you can see it when you enter the house from outside. Here his plan is already evident, that arrangement to which, disobedient in everything else, he will submit. And there was no such dream, inspired by the movement of air on the street, which would not be quickly shaken off by the vigorous and fatal spirit of the house, suddenly striking from the threshold of the hallway.

This time it was Lermontov. Zhenya crumpled the book, folding it with the binding inward. In the rooms, if Seryozha had done this, she herself would have rebelled against the “ugly habit.” Another thing is in the yard.

Prokhor put the ice cream maker down and went back into the house. When he opened the door to the Spitsynsky vestibule, a swirling, devilish barking of the general’s naked dogs poured out. The door slammed shut with a short chime.

Meanwhile, Terek, jumping like a lioness, with a shaggy mane on his back, continued to roar as he should, and Zhenya began to have doubts only about whether all this was happening on his back or on his ridge. I was too lazy to finish the book, and the golden clouds southern countries, from afar, barely having time to escort him north, they were already met at the threshold of the general’s kitchen with a bucket and washcloth in hand.

The orderly put down the bucket, bent down and, having disassembled the ice cream maker, began to wash it. The August sun, breaking through the tree foliage, settled in the soldier’s sacrum. It penetrated, red, into the withered uniform cloth and, like turpentine, greedily soaked it with itself.

The yard was wide, with intricate nooks and crannies, intricate and heavy. Paved towards the middle, it had not been re-paved for a long time, and the cobblestones were thickly overgrown with flat, curly grass, which in the afternoon gave off a sour medicinal smell, such as happens in the heat near hospitals. At one end, between the janitor's room and the carriage house, the yard adjoined someone else's garden.

It was here that Zhenya headed for firewood. She propped the ladder up from below with a flat piece of wood so that it wouldn’t slide down, balanced it on the moving wood, and sat on the middle rung awkwardly and interestingly, like in a yard game. Then she got up and, climbing higher, laid the book on the top, ruined row, preparing to take on “The Demon”; then, finding that it had been better to sit earlier, she went down again and forgot the book on the wood and didn’t remember about it, because now she only noticed on the other side of the garden something that she had not previously imagined was behind it, and stood with her mouth open, as if enchanted .

There were no bushes in someone else’s garden, and the centuries-old trees, having carried their lower branches high into the foliage, as if on some night, exposed the garden from below, although it stood in constant twilight, airy and solemn, and never left went out. Long-haired, purple in a thunderstorm, covered with gray lichen, they made it possible to clearly see that deserted, little-travelled street into which someone else’s garden opened up on that side. There was a yellow acacia growing there. Now the bush was drying up, twisting and crumbling.

Brought out by the gloomy garden from this world to the next, the lonely street shone in the same way that incidents are illuminated in a dream; that is, very brightly, very painstakingly and very silently, as if the sun there, wearing glasses, was groping through the blind.

Why is Zhenya so gaping? To her discovery, which occupied her more than the people who helped her make it.

There's a shop there, then? Behind the gate, on the street. On such a street! “Happy,” she envied the strangers. There were three of them.

They turned black, like the word “recluse” in the song. Three straight heads, combed under round hats, bent over as if the outer one, half hidden by a bush, was sleeping, leaning against something, and the other two were also sleeping, clinging to it. The hats were black and gray, and faded and sparkled in the sun, like insects. They were covered in black crepe. At this time, the strangers turned their heads in the other direction. That's right, something at the other end of the street caught their attention. They looked at the other end for a minute the way they look in summer, when the moment is dissolved by light and lengthened, when you have to squint and protect your eyes with your palm - for such a minute they looked, and fell back into their previous state of friendly drowsiness.

Zhenya was about to go home, but she missed the book and did not immediately remember where the book was left. She returned after her, and when she went behind the firewood, she saw that the strangers had gotten up and were about to leave. They walked through the gate one by one, one after another. A short man followed them with a strange, crippled gait. He carried a huge album or atlas under his arm. So that's what they were doing, looking over each other's shoulders, and she thought - they were sleeping. The neighbors walked through the garden and disappeared behind the services. The sun had already gone down. Taking out the book, Zhenya disturbed the woodpile. Fathom woke up and moved as if alive. Several logs of wood rolled down and fell onto the turf with a light thud. This served as a sign, like a guard blow on a mallet. Evening was born. Many sounds were born, quiet, foggy. The air began to whistle something ancient, from beyond the river.

The yard was empty. Prokhor worked. He walked out the gate. There, low, low above the grass itself, the strumming of a soldier’s balalaika lay, stringy and sad. Above her it hovered and danced, broke off and fell, freezing in the air, and fell and froze, and then, not reaching the ground, a thin swarm of quiet midges rose up. But the strumming of the balalaika was even more subtle and quiet. It sank below the midges to the ground, and without becoming dusty, better and more airy than a swarm, it launched back into the heights, flickering and breaking off, with falls, slowly.

Zhenya returned to the house. “Lame,” she thought about the stranger with the album, “lame, and of the gentlemen, without crutches.” She went out the back door. The smell of chamomile in the yard was infused and cloying. “For some time now, my mother has built up a whole pharmacy, a mass of blue bottles with yellow caps.” She slowly walked up the stairs. The iron railings were cold, the steps creaked in response to shuffling. Suddenly something strange occurred to her. She took two steps and paused on the third. It occurred to her that recently there had been some unmistakable resemblance between her mother and the janitor. Something completely elusive. She stopped. Something like this - she thought - something like this, what do they mean when they say: we are all people... or, supposedly, we are smeared with the same world... or fate does not sort out bones, - she threw away the bottle that was lying around with her toe, the bottle flew down , fell into the dusty coolies and did not break - in something, in a word, something that is very, very common, common to all people. But then why not between herself and Aksinya? Or Aksinya, for example, and Ulyasha? This seemed all the more strange to Zhenya because it was difficult to find more dissimilar people: there was something earthy about Aksinya, like in vegetable gardens, something reminiscent of the swelling of a potato or the greenness of a mad pumpkin. Whereas mom... - Zhenya grinned at the thought of comparison.

Meanwhile, it was Aksinya who set the tone for this imposing comparison. She took the advantage in this rapprochement. The woman did not win from him, but the lady lost. For a moment Zhenya imagined something wild. It seemed to her that some beginning of common people had entered into her mother, and she imagined her mother pronouncing shuka instead of pike, rabotem instead of work; and suddenly - she imagined - the day would come and in her new silk hood without a sash, like a ship, she would take it and blurt out “lean against the doors!”

The corridor smelled of medicine. Zhenya went to her father.

The situation was being updated. Luxury appeared in the house. The grommets started the carriage and began to hold the horses. The coachman's name was Davletsha.

Rubber tires were completely new back then. During walks, everyone turned around and followed the stroller with their eyes: people, fences, chapels, roosters.

They didn’t unlock Mrs. Eyelets for a long time, and while the stroller, out of respect for her, walked away at a pace, she shouted after them: “Don’t roll too far, to the barrier and back; be careful going down the hill"; and the whitish sun, having taken her from the doctor’s porch, stretched further along the street and, reaching out to Davletsha’s tight, freckled, crimson neck, warmed and shivered her.

They drove to the bridge. There was a conversation between the beams, crafty, round and folded, once folded for all times, sacredly cut down by the ravine and remembered by him always, at noon and at night.

The fosterling, climbing the mountain, began to take hold of the hesitating, unyielding flint; he stretched out, he was unable to, and suddenly, in this climbing, reminiscent of a crawling locust, he, like this creature, by nature flying and jumping, became lightningly beautiful in the humiliation of his unnatural efforts; It seemed that at any moment he could not stand it, he would angrily flash his wings and take off. And indeed. The horse jerked, threw its front legs and rushed at a short gallop across the wastelands. Davletsha began to pick her up, shortening the reins. A decrepit, shaggy, and dull dog barked at them. The dust was like gunpowder. The road turned sharply to the left.

The black street dead-ended against the red fence of the railway depot. She freaked out. The sun was shining from the side from behind the bushes and swaddling a crowd of strange figures in women's sweaters. The sun bathed them in a white, lashing light, which seemed to pour out of the boot of an overturned bucket, like liquid lime, and ran like a wave along the ground. The street was in turmoil. The horse walked at a walk. “Turn right,” Zhenya ordered. “There will be no crossing,” answered Davletsha, pointing to the red end with his whip, “a dead end.” - “Then stand, I’ll take a look.” These are our Chinese. “I see.” Davletsha, realizing that the young lady did not want to talk to him, sang with a drawl, “Whoa,” and the horse, swaying with its whole body, stood rooted to the spot, and Davletsha whistled subtly and charmingly, intermittently, urging it to do what it needed.

The Chinese ran across the road, holding huge rye mats in their hands. They were in blue and looked like women in pants. Their bare heads ended in a knot at the crown of the head and seemed to be twisted out of handkerchiefs. Some were delayed. These could be seen. Their faces were pale, sallow, and bowing. They were dark and dirty, like copper oxidized by need. Davletsha took out his pouch and settled down to make a roll. At this time, several women came out from around the corner, from where the Chinese were walking. That's right, and they were going for bread. Those on the road began to cackle and approach them, squirming as if their arms were tied behind their backs with a rope. The flexibility of their movements was especially emphasized by the fact that all over their bodies, from the neck to the very ankles, they were dressed in one thing, like acrobats. There was nothing wrong with that; The women did not run away, but stood there themselves, laughing.

“Listen, Davletsha, what are you doing?” - The horse rushed! rushed! don't stop, don't stop! - once again warming up the reins of the Foster, Davletsha pulled and threw. “Hush, you'll fall out. Why are you whipping her? - “It is necessary,” and, as soon as he rode out into the field and calmed the horse, which was already dancing, the cunning Tatar, who carried the young lady away from the shameful spectacle with an arrow, took the reins in his right hand and put the pouch, which had been in his hand all the time, behind the floor.

They returned by a different route. Mrs. Luvers probably saw them from the doctor's window. She went out onto the porch at that very moment when the bridge, having told them its whole tale, began it all over again under the water carrier’s cart.

With Defendova, with the girl who brought rowan berries to class, on her broken way to school, Zhenya took one of the exams. The psalm-reader's daughter took the re-examination in French. Luvers Evgenia was seated in the first empty seat. That’s how they met, sitting as a couple and sharing the same phrase:

Est-ce Pierre qui a vole la pomme?

Oui. C,est Pierre qui vola etc.

The fact that Zhenya was left to study at home did not put an end to the girls’ acquaintance. They started dating. Their meetings, by the grace of mother’s views, were one-sided: Lisa was allowed to visit them, Zhenya was forbidden to visit the Defendovs, for now.

Such sporadic meetings did not prevent Zhenya from quickly becoming attached to her friend. She fell in love with Defendova, that is, she became the suffering face in the relationship, their pressure gauge, vigilant and heated and anxious. Any mention of Liza about classmates unknown to Zhenya evoked in her a feeling of emptiness and bitterness. Her heart sank: these were the first attacks of jealousy. Without reason, by the force of her suspiciousness alone, convinced that Liza was cunning, outwardly straightforward, but in her soul she laughed at everything that was Luversovsky in her, and behind her back, in class and at home, she amused herself with this, Zhenya took it for granted, like something that lies in the nature of attachment. Her feeling was as random in the choice of the subject as in its source it responded to the imperious need of instinct, which does not know self-love and only knows how to suffer and burn itself for the glory of the fetish, while it feels for the first time.

Neither Zhenya nor Liza had any decisive influence on each other, and Zhenya Zhenya, Lisa Liza, they met and parted, the one with a strong feeling, the other without any.

The Akhmedyanovs' father traded in iron. In the year between the births of Nuretdin and Smagil, he suddenly became rich. Then Smagil began to be called Samoila and it was decided to give his sons Russian upbringing. Father did not miss a single feature of the free lordly life, and during the ten-year race, in all respects it was intercepted over the edge. The children were a great success, that is, they followed suit, and the tremendous scope of their father’s will remained in them, noisy and crushing, like in a pair of flywheels whirled and at the mercy of inertia. The most accomplished fourth-graders in the fourth grade were the Akhmedyanov brothers. They consisted of breaking chalk, interlinear words, gunshots, rattling desks, obscene curses and red-cheeked, snub-nosed self-confidence that peeled off in the cold. Seryozha became friends with them in August. By the end of September the boy's face was gone. This was par for the course. To be a typical high school student, and then to do something else, meant to be at one with the Akhmedyanovs. But Seryozha wanted nothing more than to be a high school student. The grommet did not interfere with his son's friendship. He did not see a change in him, and if he noticed anything, he attributed it to the action adolescence. Besides, his head was occupied with other concerns. For some time now he began to realize that he was sick and that his illness was incurable.

She didn't feel sorry for him, although everyone around her was just saying how incredibly inopportune and annoying it really was. Negarat was too wise for the parents, and everything that the parents felt in relation to strangers was vaguely transmitted to the children, like spoiled pets. The only thing that saddened Zhenya was that now not everything would remain the same, and there would be three Belgians, and there would no longer be such laughter as there was before.

It happened at the table that evening when he announced to his mother that he had to go to Dijon to serve some kind of training camp. “How are you still young in that case,” said his mother and immediately began to feel sorry for him in every possible way ". And he sat with his head down. The conversation did not go well. “Tomorrow they will come to seal the windows,” said his mother and asked him if she should close it. He said that there was no need, the evening was warm, and they don’t cover them for the winter. Soon he came up and father. He, too, was overwhelmed with regret at this news. But before he began to complain, he raised his eyebrows and asked in surprise: “To Dijon? Aren’t you a Belgian?” - “Belgian, but with French citizenship." And Negarat began to tell the story of the resettlement of “his old people" so entertainingly, as if he were not their son, and so warmly, as if he was talking from a book about strangers. “Sorry, I’ll interrupt you,” she said mother. - "Zhenyura, you still close the window. Vika, tomorrow they will come to cover it up. Well, continue. However, this uncle of yours is a decent scoundrel! Is it really so, literally under oath? " - “Yes." And he returned to the interrupted story. When he got to the point, to the paper he received yesterday by mail from the consulate, he guessed that the girl here didn’t understand anything and was trying to understand. Then he turned to her and began explain to her, and without showing it, what his goal is, so as not to hurt her pride, what this military service is all about. "Yes Yes. Understand. Yes. I understand, I understand,” the girl repeated gratefully and mechanically.

Why travel so far? Be a soldier here, learn where everyone is,” she corrected herself, vividly imagining the meadows that opened from the monastery hill.

"Yes Yes. Understand. Yes. Yes, yes,” the girl charged again, and the Eyelets, who were sitting idle and finding that the Belgian was filling the child’s head with unnecessary details, inserted their sleepy and simplifying remarks. And suddenly the moment came when she felt sorry for all those who, once upon a time or more recently, were Negaraths in various distant places and then, saying goodbye, set off on an unexpected path that fell from the sky here to become soldiers here, in a place alien to them. Yekaterinburg. This man explained everything to the girl so well. No one had ever explained it to her like that. A touch of soullessness, a stunning touch of clarity disappeared from the picture of white tents; the companies faded and became a collection of individual people in soldier’s dress, whom one felt sorry for at the very moment when they were introduced in them, meaning animated them, elevated them, made them close and discolored them.

They said goodbye. “I will leave some of the books with Tsvetkov. This is the friend I told you so much about. Please continue to use them, madame. Your son knows where I live, he visits the landlord’s family, and I give my room to Tsvetkov. I I'll warn him.

Let him come in, - Tsvetkov, you say?

"Tsvetkov."

Let him come in. Let's get acquainted. In my early youth, I knew people like that,” and she looked at her husband, who stopped in front of Negarat, putting his hands behind the side of his thick jacket and absentmindedly waiting for a convenient turn in order to finally agree with the Belgian about tomorrow.

Let him come in. Just not now. I'll call. Yes, take it, it's yours. I didn't finish. I read and cried. The doctor advised me to quit altogether. To avoid excitement. - And she again looked at her husband, who lowered his head and began, crunching his collar and puffing up, to inquire whether his boots were on both feet and whether they were well cleaned.

So that. Here you go. Don't forget your cane. We'll see you again, I hope.

O, sure. Until Friday after all. What day is today? - he was frightened, as in such cases those leaving are frightened.

Wednesday. Vika, Wednesday?.. Vika, Wednesday? Wednesday. Ecoutez,” the father finally waited for his turn, “demain,” and both went out onto the stairs.

They walked and talked, and from time to time she had to break into a light jog in order to keep up with Seryozha and fall into step with him. They walked very quickly and her coat fidgeted, because she worked with her hands to help her walk, and kept her hands in her pockets. It was cold, thin ice cracked loudly under her galoshes. They went on mom’s errand to buy a gift for someone who was leaving, and talked.

So they took him to the station?

Why was he sitting in the hay?

So how?

In a cart. All. With legs. They don't sit like that.

I already said. Because he is a criminal.

Are they taking him to hard labor?

No. To Perm. We don't have a prison department. Look at your feet.

Their path lay across the road, past a copper metalworks establishment. All summer, the doors of the establishment stood wide open, and Zhenya got used to seeing this intersection in the friendly and general animation that the hotly open maw of the workshop endowed it with. Throughout July, August and September, carts stopped here, making travel difficult; men, more than Tatars, were trampled; buckets and pieces of roofing gutters, torn and rusted, were lying around; here more often than anywhere else, turning the crowd into a camp, and the Tatars painted over gypsies, the eerie, thick sun was setting in the dust at the hours when chickens were being slaughtered behind the fence next door; here the limbers, freed from under the bodies, with circles rubbed at the pins, were dipped into the dust with their shafts.

The same buckets and iron lay unpicked and now covered with frost. But the doors were closed tightly, as on a holiday, on the occasion of cold weather, and it was deserted at the crossroads, and only through the round vent came the familiar smell of some kind of musty mine gas, which filled with an explosive screech and, hitting the nose, was deposited in the sky as a cheap pear fizz.

Is there a prison board in Perm?

Yes. Department. In my opinion, that’s how it goes. Closer. In Perm - there is, because it is provincial town, and Ekaterinburg is a district town. Small.

The path past the mansions was lined with red bricks and lined with bushes. Traces of a powerless, muddy sun appeared on it. Seryozha tried to walk as noisily as possible.

If you tickle this barberry in the spring, when it is blooming, with a pin, it quickly flaps all its petals, as if alive.

Are you afraid of tickling?

So you're nervous. The Akhmedyanovs say that if anyone is afraid of tickling...

And they walked, Zhenya running, Seryozha with unnatural steps, and her coat fidgeted. They saw the Wild at that very moment when a gate, running like a cross on a pillar dug across the path, detained them. They saw him from a distance, he came out of the very store, to which they were still half a block away. Dikikh was not alone; after him came a short man, who, as he walked, tried to hide the fact that he was falling on his leg. It seemed to my wife that she had already seen him somewhere before. They passed without greeting. They took it diagonally. He didn’t notice any wild children; he walked in deep galoshes and often raised his hands with his fingers spread out. He did not agree and proved with all ten that his interlocutor... (But where did she see him? A long time ago. But where? It’s true, in Perm, in childhood.)

Wait! - Seryozha got into trouble. He dropped to one knee. - Wait a minute.

Got it?

Well, yes. Idiots, they can’t really hammer a nail!

Wait, I couldn’t find where. I know that lame one. Here you go. God bless.

Torn?

No, it's intact, thank God. And the hole in the lining is old. It's not me. Well, let's go. Wait, I’ll just clean my knee. Well, okay, let's go.

I know him. This is from Akhmedyanov's yard. Negaratov. Remember, I told you, people gather, they drink all night, there is light in the window. Do you remember? Do you remember when I spent the night with them? In Samoilovo birth. Well, here's one of these. Do you remember?

She remembered. She realized that she was mistaken, that in this case the lame man could not have been seen by her in Perm, that she had imagined it that way. But it continued to seem to her, and in such feelings, silent, turning over everything Perm in her memory, she, following her brother, made some movements, took hold of something and stepped over something and, looking around, found herself in the semi-darkness of the counters , light boxes, shelves, fussy greetings and services - and... Seryozha spoke.

The bookseller who sold all sorts of tobacco did not have the title they needed, but he reassured them by assuring them that Turgenev had been promised to him, had been expelled from Moscow and was already on his way, and that he had just - well, a minute ago - spoken about the same thing with Mr. Tsvetkov, their mentor. The children were amused by his agility and the delusion in which he was, and, having said goodbye, they left with nothing.

When they left him, Zhenya turned to her brother with the following question:

Seryozha! I forget everything. Tell me, do you know the street that you can see from our wood?

No. Never been.

It's not true, I saw you myself.

On wood? You…

No, not on the wood, but on that street, behind the Cherep-Savvichevsky Garden.

Ah, that's what you're talking about! But it's true. As you walk by, they show up. Behind the garden, in the depths. There are some sheds and firewood there. Wait a minute. So this means our yard?! That yard? Our? That's clever! And how many times I go, I thought, I’d like to climb up there once, and to the firewood, and from the firewood to the attic, I saw a ladder there. So this is our own yard?

Seryozha, can you show me the way there?

Again. After all, the yard is ours. What to show? You yourself…

Seryozha, you don’t understand again. I'm talking about the street, and you're talking about the yard. I'm talking about the street. Show the way to the street. Show me how to get there. Will you show me, Seryozha?

And again I don’t understand. But today we walked... and soon we’ll be passing by again.

Yes that is. And the coppersmith?.. On the corner.

So it’s dusty, that means...

Well, yes, she is the one you are asking about. And the Skull-Savvichi are at the end, to the right. Don't lag behind, you won't be late for lunch. Today is crayfish.

They started talking about something else. The Akhmedyanovs promised to teach him how to tin samovars. As for her question about “polud”, this is a kind of rock, in a word, ore, like tin, dull. It is used to solder tins and fire pots, and the Akhmedyanovs can do all this.

They had to run across, otherwise the convoy would have detained them. So they forgot, she - about her request about the little-travelled street, Seryozha - about his promise to show it. They walked past the very door of the establishment and then, breathing in the warm and greasy fumes that happen when cleaning copper handles and candlesticks, Zhenya instantly remembered where she had seen the lame man and three strangers, and what they were doing, and the next minute she realized that it was Tsvetkov The one the bookseller was talking about is this lame one.

Negarath left in the evening. His father went to see him off. He returned from the station late at night and in the janitor's room his appearance caused a great commotion that did not soon subside. They came out with lights and called someone. It was pouring rain and the geese that had been missed by someone were cackling.

The morning arose cloudy and shaking. The gray wet street was jumping like rubber, the nasty rain was dangling and splashing with mud, carts were jumping up and people in galoshes were splashing as they crossed the pavement.

Zhenya was returning home. The echoes of the night's commotion still affected the yard in the morning: she was denied a stroller. She set off on foot to her friend, saying that she would go to the store to buy hemp seeds. But halfway there, making sure that she alone could not find the way from the trading part to the Defendovs, she turned back. Then she remembered that it was early and Lisa was still at school. She was pretty wet and chilled. The weather was getting better. But it hasn't cleared up yet. A cold white sheen flew along the street and stuck like a leaf to the wet slabs. Muddy clouds hurried out of the city, crowded and windy, panic-stricken at the end of the square, behind the three-armed lantern.

The person who moved was probably a slovenly person or without rules. The accessories of the modest office were not loaded, but simply placed on the shelves as they stood in the room, and the wheels of the chairs, looking out from under the white covers, moved along the shelf, as if on a parquet floor with every shake of the cart. The covers were snow-white, despite the fact that they were wet to the last thread. They caught the eye so sharply that when you looked at them, they became the same color: weather-gnawed cobblestones, chilled intake water, birds flying from the horse yards, trees flying behind them, scraps of lead, and even that ficus in the tub, which was swaying, awkwardly bowing from the cart to everyone flying by.

Woz was wild. He involuntarily drew attention to himself. A man walked next to him and, leaning widely, moved at a pace and touched the curbstones. And above all the croaking rags floated the wet and leaden word: city, giving rise in the girl’s head to many ideas that were fleeting, like the cold October shine flying along the street and falling into the water.

“He’ll catch a cold, he’ll just put things away,” she thought about the unknown owner. And she imagined a man - a man in general, rolling around, placing his belongings in the corners with a scattered gait. She vividly imagined his grasp and movements, especially how he would take a rag and, hobbling around the tub, begin to wipe the ficus leaves fogged with drizzle. And then he gets a runny nose, chills and fever. He'll definitely grab it. Zhenya imagined this very vividly. Very lively. The cart rumbled downhill towards Iset. My wife was to the left.

This probably happened from someone’s heavy steps outside the door. The tea in the glass on the table by the bed rose and fell. A slice of lemon rose and fell in the tea. The sunny stripes on the wallpaper swayed. They swayed in columns, like the syrup columns in the shops behind the signs of a Turk smoking a pipe.

In which a Turk... smokes... a pipe. Smokes... a pipe.

This probably happened from someone's steps. The patient fell asleep again.

Zhenya fell ill the day after Negarat’s departure; on the very day when she learned after a walk that Aksinya had given birth to a boy at night; on the day when, at the sight of a cart of furniture, she decided that rheumatism was lurking for the owner. She spent two weeks in the heat, thick with sweat, sprinkled with heavy red pepper, which burned and stuck to her eyelids and the edges of her lips. She was tormented by perspiration, and the feeling of ugly fatness mixed with the sensation of a bite. As if the flame that fanned her had been poured into her by a summer wasp. As if thin , in a gray hair, her sting remained in her and she wanted to take it out, more than once and in different ways. Either from her lilac cheekbone, then from the inflamed shoulder groaning under her shirt, then from somewhere else. Now she was recovering. The feeling of weakness affected everything.

The feeling of weakness, for example, was indulged, at its own risk and fear, by some country, its geometry. She felt slightly dizzy and nauseous.

Starting, for example, with some episode on a blanket, a feeling of weakness began to layer upon it rows of gradually growing voids, which soon became incredible in the desire of the twilight to take the form of the square that lay at the basis of this madness of space. Or, separating from the pattern on the wallpaper, it, stripe by stripe, passed before the girl the latitudes smoothly, like butter, replacing each other, and also, like all these sensations, exhausting with a regular, gradual increase in size. Or it tormented the patient with depths that descended endlessly, betraying its bottomlessness from the very beginning, from the first thing in the parquet, and letting the bed sink quietly, quietly; and with a bed - a girl. Her head fell into the position of a piece of sugar thrown into the abyss of insipid, stunningly empty chaos, and dissolved and became upset in it.

This was due to the increased sensitivity of the ear labyrinths.

It came from someone's steps. The lemon sank and rose. The sun rose and fell on the wallpaper. Finally, she woke up. The mother came in and, congratulating her on her recovery, gave the girl the impression of reading into other people's thoughts. When she woke up, she had already heard something similar. It was a congratulation from her own hands and feet, elbows and knees, which she accepted from them, stretching. It was their greeting that woke her up. So does mom. The coincidence was strange.

Households came in and out, sat down and stood up. She asked questions and received answers. There were things that changed during her illness, and there were things that remained unchanged. She didn’t touch these ones, she didn’t leave those ones alone. Apparently mom hasn't changed. Father hasn't changed at all. They changed: she herself, Seryozha, the distribution of light in the room, the silence of everyone else, something else, a lot of things. Has it snowed? No, it fell, melted, froze, you couldn’t tell what was going on, it was bare, snowless. She barely noticed who she was asking what. The answers were all over the place. Healthy people came and went. Lisa has arrived. They bickered. Then they remembered that measles does not happen again, and they let me in. Visited the Wild. She barely noticed who was giving what answers. When everyone went out to dinner and she was left alone with Ulyasha, she remembered how everyone in the kitchen laughed at her stupid question. Now she was careful not to ask such a question. She asked in a smart and efficient, adult tone. She asked if Aksinya was pregnant again. The girl clinked her spoon, putting away the glass and turned away. “Mi-il..! Give it a rest. It’s not all for her, Zhenechka, in one direction ...” and she ran out, closing the door poorly, and the whole kitchen exploded, as if shelves with dishes had collapsed there, and the laughter was followed by nakedness, and threw itself into the hands of the charwoman and Galim, and caught fire under the hands of them, and began to jingle, quickly and with enthusiasm, as if they had rushed to fight out of a fight, and then someone came up and closed the forgotten door.

This shouldn't have been asked. This was even more stupid.

What is this, isn’t it melting again? So today they’ll go out on wheels and you still can’t put them in the sleigh? With a cold nose and chilly hands, Zhenya stood at the window for hours. Dikikh recently left. Today he was dissatisfied with her. Please study here when the roosters crow in the yards and the sky roars, and when the ringing ceases, the roosters take up their task again. The clouds are shabby and dirty, like a bald cavity. Day pokes its snout into the glass, like a heifer in a steam stall. Why not spring? But since lunch, the air is caught in a gray cold like a hoop, the sky rises and falls, you can hear the clouds whistling; like a rush towards the winter twilight, to the north, the flying hours tear off the last leaf from the trees, mow the lawns, prick through the cracks, cut the chest. The muzzles of the northern depths turn black behind the houses; they are aimed at their yard, charged with a huge November. But it’s still only October.

But it's still only October. They won't remember a winter like this. They say they died in the winter and are afraid of famine. It was as if someone had waved and circled the pipes and roofs and birdhouses with a staff. There will be smoke there, snow there, frost here. But there is neither one nor the other yet. The deserted, haggard twilight yearns for them. They strain their eyes, the earth aches from the early lanterns and fire in the houses, just as the head aches during long waits from the melancholy staring eyes. Everything is tense and waiting, the firewood has already been carried to the kitchens, the clouds have been overflowing with snow for the second week now, the air is fraught with darkness. When will he, the sorcerer, who has encircled everything that the eye can see with witchcraft circles, cast his spell and summon winter, the spirit of which is already at the door?

How, however, did they launch it! True, no attention was paid to the calendar in the classroom. He came off as a child. But still! The twenty-ninth of August! Clever! - as Seryozha would say. Red number. Beheading Ch. John the Baptist. It came off easily from the nail. Having nothing else to do, she busied herself tearing off the sheets of paper. She made these movements bored and soon ceased to understand what she was doing, but from time to time she repeated to herself: thirtieth; tomorrow is the thirty-first.

“She hasn’t been home for three days now!..” These words, heard from the corridor, brought her out of her reverie, she saw how far she had gone in her occupation. For the very Introduction. Her mother touched her hand. “Please tell me, Zhenya...”, the rest disappeared as if unsaid. The mother, vying with each other, as if from a dream, the daughter asked Mrs. Luvers to say: “The beheading of John the Baptist.” The mother repeated, perplexed. She did not say: “Predteicha.” That's what Aksinya said.

The next minute Zhenya was overcome with wonder. What was that? Who pushed? Where did it come from? Was it she, Zhenya, who asked? Or could she have thought that mom?.. How fabulous and improbable! Who composed it?..

And the mother still stood. She couldn't believe her ears. She looked at her widely with open eyes. This trick stumped her. The question seemed like a mockery; Meanwhile, there were tears in my daughter’s eyes.

Her vague premonitions came true. As she walked, she clearly heard the air softening, the clouds softening and the sound of horseshoes softening. They had not yet lit it when dry gray fluff began to float in the air. But before they had time to cross the bridge, the individual snowflakes disappeared and a solid, floating stucco fell down. Davletsha got off the box and lifted the leather top. It became dark and cramped for my wife and Seryozha. She wanted to rage in the manner of the bad weather raging around her. They noticed that Davletsha was taking them home only because they again heard the bridge under Vykormysh. The streets became unrecognizable; the streets simply disappeared. Night immediately fell and the city, going mad, began to move with countless thousands of thick, white lips. Seryozha leaned out and, leaning on his knee, ordered to be taken to the craftsman. Zhenya froze with admiration, recognizing all the secrets and delights of winter in the way Serezha’s words sounded in the air. Davletsha shouted in response that he had to go home so as not to torture the horses, the gentlemen were going to the theater, they would have to transfer them to the sleigh. Zhenya remembered that her parents would leave and they would be left alone. She decided to sit comfortably behind the lamp until late at night with that volume of “Tales of the Purring Cat,” which is not for children. I'll have to take it from my mother's bedroom. And chocolate. And read, sucking, and listen to how the streets will be swept away.

And it’s already shallow, and in earnest, even now. The sky shook and white kingdoms and lands fell from it, there was no count of them, and they were mysterious and terrible. It was clear that these countries, falling out of nowhere, had never heard about life and about the earth, and the midnight, blind ones fell asleep over it, not seeing it and not knowing it.

They were intoxicatingly terrible, these kingdoms; absolutely satanically delicious. Zhenya choked, looking at them. And the air staggered, grasping at whatever it could find, and far, far away the heated fields howled painfully, painfully, as if lashed by whips. Everything was mixed up. The night rushed at them, furious from the low-lying gray hair, which spotted and blinded her. Everything went separately, with a squeal, without making out the road. The shout and the response disappeared without meeting, perishing, carried by a whirlwind to different roofs. Melo.

They stomped in the hallway for a long time, knocking snow off their white, swollen sheepskin coats. And how much water flowed from the galoshes onto the checkered linoleum! There were a lot of eggshells lying on the table and the pepper shaker, taken out of the bowl, was not put back in place, and a lot of pepper was spilled on the tablecloth, on the leaked yolks and into the tin with half-eaten “centres”. The parents had already had dinner, but were still sitting in the dining room, hurrying up the delayed children. They weren’t blamed; they had dinner ahead of time, getting ready for the theater. The mother hesitated, not knowing whether to go or not, and sat sad, sad. When looking at her, Zhenya remembered that she, in fact, was not at all happy - she finally unfastened that nasty hook - but rather sad, and, entering the dining room, she asked where the nut cake had been put away. And the father looked at the mother and said that no one would captivate them and then better at home stay. “No, why, let’s go,” said the mother, “we need to disperse; because the doctor allowed it.” “We need to decide.” “Where is the cake?” Zhenya got involved again and heard in response that the cake wouldn’t run away, that before the cake there was also something to eat, that there was no point in starting with the cake, that it was in the cupboard; as if she had just arrived to them and didn’t know their rules - that’s what her father said and, turning again to his mother, he repeated: “We need to decide.” “It’s decided, we’re going,” and, smiling sadly at Zhenya, the mother went to get dressed. And Seryozha, tapping the egg with a spoon and looking to avoid being missed, warned in a businesslike manner, as if he were busy. father that the weather had changed - a snowstorm, so he meant it, and he laughed; something was wrong with his thawed nose, he began to fidget, taking a handkerchief from the pocket of his tight uniform trousers; he blew his nose, as his father taught him, “without harm to the eardrums,” he took the spoon and, looking straight at his father, flushed and washed by the walk, said: “How to leave, we saw Negaratov’s acquaintance. Do you know?” - “Evans?” the father dropped absently. “We don’t know this man,” Zhenya blurted out hotly. “Vika,” was heard from the bedroom. The father got up and left to answer the call. At the door, Zhenya ran into Ulyasha, who was carrying a lit lamp to her. Soon the next one slammed. This Seryozha walked in. He was excellent today, my sister loved it when the Akhmedyanovs’ friend became a boy, when you could say about him that he was in a gymnasium suit.

The doors were moving. They were drowning in boots. Finally, they left on their own. The letter informed that she “wasn’t lacking until now and that, as before, they asked for what to get”; and when the dear sister, hung with bows and assurances of memory, went to distribute them by name to her relatives, Ulyasha, who this time turned out to be Ulyana, thanked the young lady, screwed on the lamp and left, taking the letter, a bottle of ink and the rest of the oiled octam.

Then she took up the task again. She did not put the period in brackets. She continued the division, writing out period after period. There was no end in sight. The fraction in the quotient grew and grew. “What if measles recurs,” flashed through her head. “Today Dikikh said something about infinity.” She stopped understanding what she was doing. She felt that something like this had already happened to her this afternoon, and she also wanted to sleep or cry, but she couldn’t figure out when it happened and what exactly, because she wasn’t able to think. The noise outside the window died down. The snowstorm gradually subsided. Decimals were completely new to her. There weren't enough fields on the right. She decided to start again, write smaller and check every link. The street became completely quiet. She was afraid that she would forget what was occupied by the next number and would not retain the work in her mind. “The window will not run away,” she thought, continuing to pour threes and sevens into the bottomless private, “and I will hear them in time; there is silence all around; they won’t rise soon; in fur coats, and mom is pregnant; but here’s the thing, 3773 is repeated, you can just rewrite it or mix it.” Suddenly she remembered that Dikikh had actually told her today that they “shouldn’t be made, but simply thrown away.” She got up and went to the window.

It became clearer outside. Rare flakes floated out of the black night. They swam to street lamp, swam around him and, swerving, disappeared from sight. New ones swam in their place. The street shone, covered with a snowy sleigh carpet. He was white, shining and sweet, like gingerbread in fairy tales. Zhenya stood at the window, looking at the rings and shapes that Andersen’s silver snowflakes made by the lantern. She stood and stood and went to my mother’s room to get the “Cat.” She entered without fire. It was clear that way. The roof of the barn bathed the room in a moving sparkle. The beds froze under the sigh of this huge roof and shone. Smoky silk lay scattered here in disarray. The tiny blouses emitted an oppressive and oppressive smell of armpits and calico. It smelled of violets and the cupboard was as blue-black as the night outside and like that dry and warm darkness in which these chilling brilliances moved. The metal ball of the bed sparkled like a lonely bead. Another was extinguished by a thrown shirt. Zhenya narrowed her eyes, the bead separated from the floor and floated towards the wardrobe. Zhenya remembered what she came for. With a book in her hands, she walked to one of the bedroom windows. The night was starry. Winter has arrived in Yekaterinburg. She looked into the yard and began to think about Pushkin. She decided to ask the tutor to assign her an essay about Onegin.

Seryozha wanted to chat. He asked: “Have you put on perfume? Give it to me too." He was very nice all day. Very blush. She thought that there might not be another evening like this. She wanted to be left alone.

Zhenya returned to her room and took up Fairy Tales. She read the story and began to read another, holding her breath. She got carried away and did not hear her brother laying down behind the wall. A strange game took possession of her face. She didn't realize it. Then it blurred like a fish; she hung her lip and her dead pupils, chained in horror to the page, refused to rise, afraid to find this very thing behind the chest of drawers. Then suddenly she began to nod to the seal, sympathetically, as if approving of her, as one approves of an action and as one rejoices at the turn of affairs. She would slow down her reading over the descriptions of the lakes and rush headlong into the thick of the night scenes with a piece of scorching sparkler on which their illumination depended. In one place, a lost person shouted intermittently, listening to see if there would be a response, and heard an echo response. My wife had to clear her throat from the silent pressure of her larynx. The non-Russian name “Mirra” brought her out of her stupor. She put the book aside and thought. “This is what winter is like in Asia. What are the Chinese doing now? dark night? Zhenya's gaze fell on the clock. “How eerie it must be with the Chinese in such darkness.” Zhenya again looked at the clock and was horrified. The parents could appear any minute. It was already twelve o'clock. She unlaced her shoes and remembered that she needed to take the book to her place.

Zhenya jumped up. She sat up on the bed, wide-eyed. This is not a thief. There are a lot of them and they stomp and talk loudly, like during the day. Suddenly, as if someone had been stabbed to death, someone screamed at the voice, and something was dragged, overturning chairs. It was a woman screaming. Zhenya gradually recognized everyone; everyone except the woman. There was an incredible rush of activity. Doors began to slam. When one of the distant ones slammed shut, it seemed as if the woman was being gagged. But it swung open again and the house was scalded with a burning, slashing screech. Zhenya's hair stood on end: the woman was a mother; she guessed. Ulyasha wailed, and once she heard her father’s voice, she heard no more. They were pushing Seryozha somewhere and he was yelling: “Don’t you dare look at the key.” - “Everyone is ours”; and as she was, Zhenya, barefoot and wearing only a shirt, rushed into the corridor. Her father almost knocked her over. He was still in his coat and shouted something to Ulyasha as he ran. "Dad!" She saw him run back with a marble jug from the bathroom. "Dad!" - “Where is Lipa?” He shouted in a voice that was not his own as he ran. Splashing onto the floor, he disappeared behind the door, and when a moment later he leaned out wearing cuffs and without a jacket, Zhenya found herself in Ulyasha’s arms and did not hear the words spoken in that desperately deep, heart-rending whisper.

“What’s wrong with mom?” Instead of answering, Ulyasha kept repeating one thing: “You can’t, Zhenechka, you can’t, honey, sleep, sleep, cover yourself, lie on your side, a-ah, oh, Lord!.. mi-il!” It’s impossible, it’s impossible, she kept saying, covering her like a little girl and getting ready to leave; It’s impossible, it’s impossible, and what’s not allowed - she didn’t say and her face was wet and her hair was disheveled. The lock on the third door behind her clicked.

Zhenya lit a match to see how soon it would get light. It was only one o'clock. This surprised her very much. Has she really not slept for an hour? And the noise did not subside there, in the parents' half. The screams burst, hatched, shot. Then, for a brief moment, there was a wide, eternal silence. Hasty steps and frequent, careful talking fell into it. Then the bell rang. Then another. Then there were so many words, arguments and orders that it began to seem as if the rooms were burning out in voices, like tables under a thousand extinct candelabra.

Zhenya fell asleep. She fell asleep crying. She dreamed that they were guests. She counts them and everything is calculated. Every time it turns out that there is one more. And every time she makes this mistake, she is seized with the same horror as when she realized that it was not someone else, but her mother.

How could one not rejoice at the clean and clear morning. Serezha imagined games in the yard, snowball fights, battles with the yard kids. Tea was served to them in the classroom. They said there were polishers in the dining room. Father came in. It immediately became clear that he knew nothing about floor polishers. He certainly didn't know anything about them. He told them the real reason for the move. Mother fell ill. Needs silence. Crows flew over the white veil of the street with a free, communicative cawing. A sled ran past, pushing the horse. She had not yet gotten used to the new harness and lost her step. “You will go to the Defendovs, I have already given orders. And you...” - “Why?” Zhenya interrupted him. But Seryozha guessed why, and warned his father: “so as not to get infected,” he admonished his sister; but the people from the street didn’t let him finish; he ran to the window, as if he had been beckoned there. The Tatar, released in the update, was beautiful and dressed like a pheasant. He was wearing a sheepskin hat, his sheepskin burned hotter than morocco, he walked with a waddle, swaying, and it is therefore true that the crimson painting of his white pinions knew nothing about the structure of the human foot; so freely did these stains scatter, caring little whether they were feet or tea cups or porch roofs. But most remarkable of all,” at this time the groans faintly coming from the bedroom intensified and the father went out into the corridor, forbidding them to follow him, “but most remarkable of all were the footprints that he traced in a narrow and clean low area along the cornered clearing. They, molded and neat, made the snow seem even whiter and more satiny. “Here is a letter. You will give it to Defendov. Myself. Understand? Well, get dressed. They'll bring it here for you now. You will exit by the back door. And the Akhmedyanovs are waiting for you.”

Are they already waiting? - the son asked mockingly.

Yes. You will get dressed in the kitchen. He spoke absentmindedly and leisurely led them into the kitchen, where their sheepskin coats, hats and mittens lay in a heap on a stool. The winter air blew in from the stairs. "Heyyoh!" The icy cry of the passing sled remained in the air. They were in a hurry and did not fall into the sleeves. The things smelled of chests and sleepy fur. “Why are you bothering!” - “Don’t put it on the edge. Upanet. Well?" “Everything is moaning,” the maid picked up her apron and, bending down, threw some logs under the flames of the gasping stove. “It’s none of my business,” she said indignantly and went back into the room. Lying in a thin black bucket broken glass and the recipes turned yellow. The towels were soaked with shaggy, crumpled blood. They were blazing. I wanted to trample them down like puffing decay. Empty water was boiling in pots. There were white bowls and stupas of unprecedented shapes all around, like in a pharmacy. In the entryway little Galim was breaking ice. “Is there a lot of it left from the summer?” asked Seryozha. “There will be a new one soon.” - "Give me. You're wasting your time." - “For cha in vain? Talchi is necessary. Talk to bottles."

Well! Are you ready?

But Zhenya still ran into the rooms. Seryozha went out onto the stairs and, while waiting for his sister, began drumming a log on the iron railing.

They sat down to dinner at the Defendovs'. Grandmother, crossing herself, swayed into a chair. The lamp burned dimly and swayed; she was either twisted or released too much. Defendov’s dry hand often reached out to the screw, and when he slowly removed it from the lamp, he slowly sank into place, his hand shook, slightly and not in an old man’s way, as if he were lifting a glass that had been poured. The ends of my fingers and nails were trembling.

The swollen neck of the lamp glowed, surrounded by tendrils of geranium and heliotrope. Cockroaches flocked to the heat of the glass and the clock hands carefully reached out. Time was creeping towards winter. Here it burst. It was numb and smelly outside. Outside the window there was a scurrying, mincing, two and three times in the lights.

Defendova put the liver on the table. The dish was steaming, seasoned with onions. Defendov said something, often repeating the word “I recommend,” and Lisa chattered incessantly, but Zhenya did not hear them. The girl wanted to cry since yesterday. And now she craved it. In this blouse, sewn according to my mother’s instructions.

Defendov understood what was wrong with her. He tried to entertain her. But either he spoke to her as if he were a small child, or he went to the opposite extreme. His humorous questions frightened and confused her. It was he who felt the soul of his daughter’s friend in the dark, as if asking her heart how old he was. He intended, having unmistakably caught one of Zhenya’s traits, to play on what he had noticed and help the child forget about home, and with his searches he reminded her that she was with strangers.

Suddenly she couldn’t stand it and, standing up, childishly embarrassed, she muttered: “Thank you. I'm really full. Can I see the pictures?" And, blushing deeply at the sight of everyone’s bewilderment, she added, shaking her head towards the adjacent room: “Walter Scott. Can?"

Go, go, darling! - Grandma chewed, pinning Lisa to the spot with her eyebrows. “It’s a pity, child,” she turned to her son when the halves of the burgundy curtain came together for Zhenya.

The stern set of “Sever” tilted the bookcase and below it a full-length Karamzin gleamed dimly. A pink lantern descended from the ceiling, leaving a pair of shabby armchairs unlit, and the rug, disappearing in complete darkness, was a surprise to the foot.

It seemed to my wife that she would come in, sit down and burst into tears. But tears welled up in my eyes, but the sadness did not break through. How can she get rid of this lingering melancholy from yesterday? Tears numb her and she is unable to lift the dams. To help them, she began to think about her mother.

For the first time in her life, preparing to spend the night with strangers, she measured the depth of her affection for this dear, most precious creature in the world.

Suddenly she heard Lisa’s laughter behind the curtain. “Uh, fidget, he shot you...”, the grandmother swayed, coughing. Zhenya was amazed how she could have previously thought that she loved a girl whose laughter was heard nearby and so far away, so unnecessary to her. And something in her turned upside down, giving vent to tears at the very moment when her mother came out in her memories: suffering, left standing in a string of yesterday’s facts, as in a crowd of mourners and spinning there, behind, like a train of time, carrying away Zhenya.

But the soulful gaze that Mrs. Luvers fixed on her yesterday in the classroom was completely, completely unbearable. It was engraved into memory and did not leave it. Everything that Zhenya was now experiencing was connected to him. As if it were a thing that should have been taken, treasured, and which was forgotten, neglected.

One could lose one's head from this feeling, such was the drunken naughtiness of his bitterness and hopelessness. Zhenya stood at the window and cried silently; the tears flowed, and she did not wipe them away: her hands were busy, although she was not holding anything in them. They were straightened, energetically, impetuously and stubbornly.

A sudden thought struck her. She suddenly felt that she was terribly like her mother. This feeling was combined with a feeling of living infallibility, with the power to make speculation a fact, if it is not already there, to liken her to her mother by the sheer force of an amazingly sweet state. This feeling was piercing, sharp to the point of groaning. It was the feeling of a woman seeing her appearance and beauty from within or internally. Zhenya could not give herself a sense of it. She was experiencing it for the first time. She wasn't wrong about one thing. So, excitedly, turning away from her daughter and governess, one day Mrs. Luvers stood at the window and bit her lips, hitting her kid's palm with her lorgnette.

She came out to the Defendovs, drunk with tears and enlightened, and entered with a different gait, wide, dreamily scattered and new. When he saw her come in, Defendov felt that the concept of the girl that he had formed in her absence was worthless. And he would have started compiling a new one, if not for the samovar.

Defendova went to the kitchen to get the tray, leaving it on the floor, and everyone’s eyes focused on the puffing copper, as if it were a living thing, the wretched waywardness of which ended the very minute it was placed on the table. Zhenya took her place. She decided to start a conversation with everyone. She vaguely felt that the choice of conversation was now hers. Otherwise, they will maintain her in her former loneliness, not seeing that her mother is here, with her and in herself. And this myopia will hurt her, and most importantly, her mother. And as if encouraged by the latter, “Vassa Vasilyevna,” she turned to Defendova, who had heavily lowered the samovar onto the edge of the tray...

“Can you give birth?” - Lisa did not immediately answer Zhenya. - “Shh, be quiet, don’t shout. Well, yes, like all girls.” She spoke in an intermittent whisper. Zhenya did not see her friend’s face. Lisa rummaged around the table and couldn’t find any matches.

She knew much more than Zhenya about this; she knew everything; as children know, learning this from other people's words. In such cases, those natures that are favored by the Creator rebel, become indignant and run wild. Without pathology, they will not get through this test. The opposite would be unnatural, and childish madness at this time is only a seal of deep service.

One day they told Liza various passions and nasty things in a whisper in a corner. She didn’t choke on what she heard, carried everything in her brain down the street and brought it home. On the way, she didn’t miss anything that was said, and she kept all this rubbish. She found out everything. Her body didn’t flare up, her heart didn’t sound alarmed, and her soul didn’t beat her brain because it dared to learn something on the side, past her, not from her own lips, her soul, without being asked.

I know (“you don’t know anything,” thought Lisa). “I know,” Zhenya repeated, “I’m asking the wrong thing. And about whether you feel like you’re going to take a step and suddenly give birth, well…” “Come in,” Lisa croaked, overcoming her laughter. - I found a place to yell. After all, they can hear from the doorway!”

This conversation took place in Lisa's room. Lisa spoke so quietly that you could hear the drip from the washstand. She had already found matches, but still hesitated to light them, not being able to give seriousness to her diverging cheeks. She didn't want to offend her friend. And she spared her ignorance because she did not even suspect that it could be talked about otherwise than in those expressions that were unutterable here, at home, in front of a friend who did not go to school. She lit the lamp. Fortunately, the bucket turned out to be overflowing, and Liza rushed to wipe the floor, hiding a new fit of laughter in her apron, in the slap of a rag, and finally laughed openly, having found a reason. She dropped the comb into the bucket.

All these days she only knew that she was thinking about her own people and waiting for the hour when they would send for her. And while doing this, in the afternoon, when Liza went to the gymnasium, and only her grandmother remained in the house, Zhenya also got dressed and went out alone into the passage.

The life of the settlement was not much like the life of the places where the Luvers lived. It was bare and boring here most of the day. There was nothing for the eye to see. Everything he encountered was not suitable for anything except a rod or a broom. There was coal lying around. Black slop poured out onto the street and immediately turned white, turning into ice. At certain times the street was filled with ordinary people. Factory workers crawled through the snow like cockroaches. They walked on the blocks of teahouse doors and soapy steam poured out from there, like from a laundry. It was strange, as if it was getting warmer on the street, as if things were turning towards spring, when steamed shirts slouched across it and felt boots on thin ports flashed. The pigeons were not afraid of these crowds. They flew to the road, where there was also food. You never know how much millet, oats and manure were scattered across the snow? The pie-maker's stall was shiny with grease and warmth. This gloss and heat entered the fusel-rinsed mouths. The lard warmed the larynx. And then it burst forth dearly from rapidly breathing breasts. Wasn't that what warmed the street?

Just as suddenly it became empty. Dusk was coming. Empty logs passed by, sledges passed by with bearded men drowning in fur coats, who, foolishly, threw them on their backs, cuddling them like bears. What they left on the road were clumps of dreary hay and the slow, sweet melting of a receding bell. The merchants disappeared at the turn, behind the birch trees, which from here looked like a torn palisade.

The crows that flew over their house, cawing at length, flew here. Only here they didn’t croak. Here, raising a cry and lifting their wings, they skipped and sat down on the fences and then, suddenly, as if on a sign, they rushed in a cloud to dismantle the trees and, pushing, settled down on the fallen branches. Oh, how it felt then, what a late, late hour in the whole wide world! So, - oh, how no watch can express this!

So a week passed and towards the end of another, on Thursday at dawn, she saw him again. Lisa's bed was empty. Waking up, Zhenya heard the gate rattle behind her. She stood up and, without lighting the fire, went to the window. It was still completely dark. But it was felt that in the sky, in the branches of the trees and in the movements of the dogs there was the same heaviness as the day before. This cloudy weather had been going on for three days now and there was no strength to pull it off the loose street, like cast iron from a clumsy floorboard.

A lamp was burning in the window across the road. Two bright stripes, falling under the horse, lay on the shaggy pasterns. Shadows moved across the snow, the sleeves of the ghost, wrapping his fur coat, moved, the light in the curtained window moved. The horse stood motionless and dozed.

Then she saw him. She immediately recognized him by his silhouette. The lame man picked up the lamp and began to walk away with it. Behind him moved, warping and lengthening, both bright stripes, and behind the stripes a sleigh, which quickly flared up and darted even faster into the darkness, slowly driving behind the house to the porch.

It was strange that Tsvetkov continued to catch her eye here in the settlement. But Zhenya was not surprised. He didn't bother her much. Soon the lamp appeared again and, having smoothly passed through all the curtains, began to move back again, when suddenly it found itself behind the curtain itself, on the windowsill from where it had been taken.

This was on Thursday. And on Friday they finally sent for her.

When, on the tenth day after returning home, after a break of more than three weeks, classes were resumed, Zhenya learned everything else from the tutor. After dinner, the doctor turned up and left, and she asked him to bow to the house in which he examined her in the spring, and to all the streets and Kama. He expressed the hope that he would no longer have to be discharged from Perm. She walked to the gate of the man who had given her such a shudder on the very first morning of her move from the Defendovs, while her mother was sleeping and was not allowed to see her, when, in response to her question about what she was sick with, he began with a reminder that that night my parents were at the theater. And when, at the end of the performance, they began to come out, their stallion...

Fosterling?!.

Yes, if this is his nickname... then the Foster began to fight, reared up, knocked down and crushed a random passer-by and...

How? To death?

And my mother fell ill with a nervous disorder,” and he smiled, barely having time to adapt his Latin “partus praematurus” to the girl in this form.

And then a dead brother was born?!

Who told you?.. Yes.

And when? With them? Or did they find him already lifeless? Do not answer. Oh, what horror! I understand now. He was already dead, otherwise I would have heard him without them. After all, I read it. Until late at night. I would have heard. But when did he live? Doctor, do such things really exist? I even went into the bedroom! He was dead. Without a doubt!

What a blessing that this observation from the Defendovs, at dawn, happened only yesterday, and the horror at the theater is the third week. What a blessing that she recognized him. She vaguely thought that if he had not caught her eye during this entire period, now, after the doctor’s words, she would certainly have decided that a lame man had been crushed near the theater.

And so, after staying with them for so long and becoming completely at home, the doctor left. And in the evening the tutor came. During the day there was laundry. There was laundry rolling around in the kitchen. The frost left its frames and the garden came close to the windows and, entangled in the lace curtains, approached the table itself. Short rumbles of the roll broke into the conversation. Dikikh, like everyone else, found her changed. She noticed a change in him too.

Why are you so sad?

Really? Anything is possible. I lost a friend.

Are you also in grief? How many deaths - and all of a sudden,” she sighed.

But just as he was about to tell what he had, something inexplicable happened. The girl suddenly began to have other thoughts about their number, and apparently forgetting what kind of support she had in the lamp she saw that morning, she said excitedly: “Wait. then you were at the tobacconist’s, Negarat was leaving; I saw you with someone else. This one?” She was afraid to say: “Flowers?”

Dikikh was taken aback when he heard how these words were uttered, brought what was mentioned to memory and remembered that they had actually come to get the paper and asked all Turgenev for Madame Luvers; and definitely, together with the deceased. She trembled and tears came out. But the main thing was yet to come.

When, with interruptions during which the ribbed rumble of a rolling pin could be heard, what kind of young man he was and from what good family, Dikikh lit a cigarette, Zhenya realized with horror that only this puff separated the tutor from repeating the doctor’s story, and when he made an attempt and said a few words, among which was the word theater, Zhenya screamed in a voice that was not her own and rushed out of the room.

Dikikh listened. Apart from the rolling of laundry, not a sound was heard in the house. He stood up looking like a stork. He craned his neck and raised his leg, ready to rush to the rescue. He rushed to look for the girl, deciding that no one was home, and she had fainted. Meanwhile, as he poked around in the dark at riddles made of wood, wool and metal, Zhenya sat in a corner and cried. He continued to fumble and feel, in his thoughts already raising her dead from the carpet. He flinched when behind his elbows he heard loudly, through sobs: “I’m here. Be careful, there's a slide there. Wait for me in the classroom. I'll come now."

The curtains fell to the floor and the winter starry night outside the window hung to the floor, and low, waist-deep in the snowdrifts, dragging sparkling chains of branches through the deep snow, the dense trees wandered towards the clear light in the window. And somewhere behind the wall, tightly bound by the sheets, the solid rumble of rolling went back and forth. “How can we explain this excess of sensitivity,” the tutor thought. “Obviously, the deceased was in a special position with the girl. She has changed a lot. Periodic fractions were explained to the child, while the one who sent him now to the classroom ... and is this the deal of the month? Obviously, the deceased once made a particularly deep and indelible impression on this little woman. This kind of impression has a name. How strange! He gave her lessons every other day and didn't notice anything. She is terribly nice, and I feel terribly sorry for her. But when will she cry and finally come? That's right, everyone else is visiting. I feel sorry for her from the bottom of my heart. Wonderful night!”

He was wrong. The impression he suggested was not at all relevant. He wasn't wrong. The impression behind everything was indelible. It was distinguished by greater depth than he thought... It lay beyond the girl’s knowledge, because it was vitally important and significant, and its meaning lay in the fact that another person, a third person, completely indifferent, without a name or with random, not causing hatred and not inspiring love, but the one that the commandments mean when referring to names and consciousnesses when they say: do not kill, do not steal, and everything else. “You, special and living one,” they say, “don’t do this, vague and general, what you don’t want for yourself, special and living.” Dikikh was most seriously mistaken in thinking that there was a name for impressions of this kind. They don't have it.

And Zhenya cried because she considered herself to be to blame for everything. After all, she introduced him into the life of the family on that day when, noticing him outside someone else’s garden, and noticing him needlessly, without benefit, without meaning, she then began to meet him at every step, constantly, directly and indirectly, and even, as happened in last time, against the odds.

When she saw what book Wild was taking from the shelf, she frowned and said, “No. I won’t answer this today. Put it back in place. Guilty: please.”

And without further words, Lermontov was squeezed back into the rickety row of classics with the same hand.

Luvers was born and raised in Perm. Just as her boats and dolls had once been, so later her memories were drowned in the shaggy bear skins, of which there were many in the house. Her father ran the business of the Lunievsky mines and had a wide clientele among factory owners from Chusovaya.

The donated skins were black-brown and lush. The polar bear in her nursery looked like a huge crumbling chrysanthemum. It was a skin purchased for “Zhenya’s room” - chosen, bargained for in a store and sent by messenger.

During the summers we lived on the other side of the Kama in a dacha. In those years, Zhenya was put to bed early. She could not see the lights of Motovilikha. But one day the Angora cat, frightened by something, moved sharply in her sleep and woke Zhenya up. Then she saw adults on the balcony. The alder hanging over the beams was thick and iridescent, like ink. The tea in the glasses was red. The cuffs and cards are yellow, the cloth is green. It looked like nonsense, but this nonsense had its own name, which was also known to Zhenya: a game was being played.

But it was impossible to determine in any way what was happening on the other bank, far, far away: it had no name and did not have a distinct color or precise outline; and worried, it was sweet and dear and was not delirium, like the one that muttered and tossed in the clouds of tobacco smoke, casting fresh, windy shadows on the red logs of the gallery. Zhenya burst into tears. The father came in and explained to her. The Englishwoman turned to the wall. The father's explanation was short:

- This is Motovilikha. Ashamed! Such a big girl... Sleep.

The girl did not understand anything and contentedly swallowed a tear that was rolling. This was all that was required: to find out the name of the incomprehensible person - Motovilikha. That night it explained everything, because that night the name still had a full, childishly soothing meaning.

But the next morning she began asking questions about what Motovilikha was and what they were doing there at night, and found out that Motovilikha was a factory, a state-owned factory, and what they made cast iron there, and from cast iron... But this no longer interested her, but interested her, aren’t countries special in what they call “factories” and who lives there; but she did not ask these questions and for some reason deliberately hid them.

That morning she emerged from the infancy in which she had been the night before. For the first time in her years, she suspected the phenomenon of something that the phenomenon either leaves to itself, or if it reveals itself to someone, then only to those people who know how to shout and punish, smoke and lock the doors. For the first time, like this new Motovilikha, she did not say everything she thought, and hid the most important, necessary and restless things to herself.

Years passed. Children have become so accustomed to their father's departures from birth that in their eyes it has become a special branch of fatherhood to rarely have lunch and never have dinner. But more and more often they played and quarreled, drank and ate in completely empty, solemnly deserted rooms, and the cold teachings of the Englishwoman could not replace the presence of the mother, who filled the house with the sweet burden of passion and perseverance, as if with some kind of familiar electricity. A quiet northern day flowed through the curtains. He didn't smile. The oak sideboard seemed gray. The silver was heavy and stern. The Englishwoman's lavender-washed hands moved over the tablecloth; she did not deprive anyone and had an inexhaustible supply of patience; and a sense of justice was characteristic of her to the high degree to which her room and her books were always clean and tidy. The maid, having served the food, stagnated in the dining room and only went to the kitchen for the next dish. It was comfortable and good, but terribly sad.

And since for the girl these were years of suspicion and loneliness, a sense of sinfulness and what one would like to designate in French as “Christianism”, due to the impossibility of calling all this Christianity, it sometimes seemed to her that it could not and should not be better in her opinion. corruption and unrepentance; that it serves it right. And meanwhile - but this never dawned on the children - meanwhile, just the opposite, their whole being shuddered and wandered, completely confused by the attitude of their parents towards them when they were at home; when they were not exactly returning home, but returning to the house.

Rarely were my father's jokes generally unsuccessful and were not always appropriate. He felt it and felt that the children understood it. A touch of sad confusion never left his face. When he became irritated, he became a decided stranger, a complete stranger at the very moment in which he lost his self-control. The stranger does not touch. The children never spoke insolently back to him.

But for some time the criticism that came from the nursery and stood silently in the eyes of the children found him insensitive. He didn't notice her. Vulnerable in no way, somehow unrecognizable and pitiful, this the father was scary, as opposed to the irritated father - a stranger. He touched the girl more, his son less.

But the mother embarrassed them both. She showered them with caresses, and made gifts, and spent whole hours with them when they least wanted it; when it suppressed their childish conscience with its undeservingness and they did not recognize themselves in those affectionate nicknames that her instinct eccentrically showered.

And often, when an unusually clear peace came into their souls and they did not feel the criminals in themselves, when everything mysterious, escaping detection, similar to the heat before a rash, was removed from their conscience, they saw their mother aloof, shunning them and being hot-tempered for no reason. The postman appeared. The letter was intended for its intended purpose - to my mother. She accepted without thanks. “Go to your place!” She slammed the door. They quietly hung their heads and, bored, surrendered to long, sad bewilderment.

At first, it happened that they cried; then, after one particularly sharp outburst, they began to be afraid; then, over the years, this turned into a secret, increasingly deeply rooted hostility.

Everything that went from parents to children came at random, from the outside, caused not by them, but by some extraneous reasons, and smacked of distance, as it always happens, and a mystery, like whining around the outposts at night when everyone goes to bed.

This circumstance raised children. They did not realize this because few adults know and hear what builds, gets along and sews it. Life devotes very few to what it does to them. She loves this business too much and while working only talks to those who wish her success and love her workbench. No one has the power to help her, but anyone can hinder her. How can you stop her? That's how. If you entrust a tree with the care of its own growth, the tree will completely sprout, or go entirely to the root, or be wasted on one leaf, because it will forget about the universe, from which it must take an example, and, having produced one thing out of a thousand, will begin to produce the same thing in thousands.

And so that there are no bitches in the soul, so that its growth does not stagnate, so that a person does not mix his stupidity into the structure of his immortal essence, many things are instituted that distract his vulgar curiosity from life, which does not like to work with him and avoids him in every possible way. For this purpose, all real religions, and all general concepts, and all the prejudices of people were created, and the brightest of them, the most entertaining, is psychology.

Children have already emerged from primitive infancy. The concepts of punishment, retribution, reward and justice penetrated their souls like children and distracted their consciousness, allowing life to do with them what it considered necessary, weighty and beautiful.

Miss Hawthorn wouldn't do that. But in one of her attacks of causeless tenderness for the children, Mrs. Luvers, for the most trivial reason, said harsh words to the Englishwoman, and she was no longer in the house. Soon and somehow imperceptibly, some stunted Frenchwoman grew up in her place. Subsequently, Zhenya only remembered that the Frenchwoman looked like a fly and no one loved her. Her name was completely lost, and Zhenya could not say among what syllables and sounds this name could be found. She only remembered that the French woman first shouted at her, and then took scissors and cut off the place in the bearskin that was bloody.

Where do biographies of famous people usually begin - be they autobiographies, books about them, or just mean ones? encyclopedic references? Of course, with a story about the family and childhood of those to whom they are dedicated. This is not the idle curiosity of researchers. It’s just that it is in the first years of a person’s life that the complex process of crystallization of what will later be called talent begins. It is not without reason that the theme of childhood, one of the most important and constant for Boris Pasternak, is closely connected with another, no less important – the theme of creativity. The poet attached great importance to first impressions, then measuring his entire life not by years, but by shocks, each of which became for him a milestone and turning point on the path of life.

The family of the future poet was by no means ordinary. Father Leonid Osipovich Pasternak

A famous painter, graphic artist, illustrator, whose creative style, according to connoisseurs, was close to the impressionists, so new for those years.

Mother - Rosalia Isidorovna Kaufman, a wonderful pianist, who at the age of 22 became a professor at the Imperial Russian musical society. In a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva dated April 26, 1926, Boris Pasternak told a family legend about how his mother

“...at the age of 12 I played a Chopin concerto, and it seems Rubinstein conducted. Or he was present at a concert at the St. Petersburg Conservatory... When she finished, he lifted the girl over the orchestra in his arms and, kissing her, turned to the audience (there was a rehearsal, the musicians were listening) with the words: “This is how it should be played.”

Rosalia Isidorovna's concerts always became an event, but she rarely performed, leaving art more than once for a long time for the sake of her family: in addition to her eldest son, Boris, who was born on February 10 (January 29, old style), 1890, she had three more children. Second son, Alexander (1893), later became famous architect. Daughter Josephine (1900), having found herself in exile after the revolution, gained fame as a poet, philosopher and translator under the pseudonym Anna Ney. Finally, the youngest daughter, Lydia Pasternak-Slater (1902), a biochemist, poet, prose writer, translator, together with her sister, did a lot to popularize the work of Boris Pasternak abroad.

Even knowing what difficulties the Pasternak family sometimes had to face, it can, without a doubt, be called happy: a warm, creative atmosphere usually reigned in the house. Among the family's close friends were: famous artists like N. Ge, V. Serov, V. Polenov, I. Levitan and others. Leonid Osipovich established a trusting relationship with L. Tolstoy: the artist’s illustrations for Tolstoy’s novels “War and Peace” and “Resurrection” brought him world fame, The writer himself repeatedly invited the Pasternaks to his place and visited them.

The hospitable house of the Pasternaks was always open to friends and acquaintances; drawing and musical evenings were especially popular, where many people gathered famous people that time. One of these evenings, dedicated to the memory of composer Anton Rubinstein, became the first clear childhood impression of four-year-old Bory: the boy slept in the nursery while his mother, along with other musicians, played the Tchaikovsky Trio; L. Tolstoy was also among the audience. Loud music woke up the boy, and the nanny carried him out crying in her arms to calm him down:

“Why did I cry so much and my suffering is so memorable to me? I got used to the sound of the piano in the house; my mother played it artistically. The voice of the piano seemed to me an integral part of the music itself. The timbres of the strings, especially in the chamber connection, were unusual to me and alarmed me, as if there were actual calls for help and news of misfortune coming through the window outside. This night marked a milestone between the unconsciousness of infancy and my subsequent childhood. With it, my memory came into action and my consciousness began to work, from now on without major breaks and failures, like an adult’s.”

This is how Pasternak later recalled this episode in his autobiographical essay “People and Positions.” The poet attached great importance to it, because from that moment it was revealed to him that music could excite, shock, and rare impressionability was generally in the nature of the future writer. Pasternak's memory retained many details of the first years of his life, scattered throughout his later letters, poems and prose. It is not surprising that the home environment, permeated with currents of creativity, formed a bright, multi-talented personality.

In their games, children copied the lives of their parents and their immediate environment. They organized “vernissages” of their drawings, published a handwritten magazine, the chief editor and author of most of the materials was, of course, Boris, and his brother usually acted as an illustrator. However, Boris himself was a good drawer. “I could become an artist if I worked,” his father repeated more than once, but he did not contribute or hinder his son’s experiments in painting, being sure that “if it is given to a person, he will choose it himself.” This talent, although not directly developed, still found its refraction in the poet’s lyrics. From his first poems, Pasternak was concerned with avoiding the speculativeness of his predecessors in his lyrics, using the language of a verbal landscape, rather than philosophy, to talk about his feelings.

Also, the passionate childhood passion for botany and entomology - the science of insects - has not been forgotten. The desire for specificity in poetry and dislike for general words led, according to L. Ozerov, to the fact that “for Pasternak it was not enough to say: “plant”, “grass”, “cereal”. He will say: “anemone”, “celandine”, “twisted panych”, “horsetail”, “horseradish”, “centifolia”, “night beauty”.

On our own behalf, we would add that the poet’s early poems could include both the exotic butterfly “mortuum caput” – “Death’s Head” and the more well-known silkworm.

A strong shock to Boris’s childhood was the demonstration in the Zoological Garden, a favorite vacation spot for Muscovites, of an ethnographic troupe of African Amazons - female warriors from the Dahomey tribe. Despite the fact that these women were more actresses, acting out scenes from their lives and performing primitive dances, the boy was forever wounded by the sight of humiliated women - and not realizing their humiliation. In his autobiographical essay “Safety Certificate,” Pasternak wrote:

“...My first sensation of a woman was associated with the feeling of a naked formation, closed suffering, a tropical parade to the drum... Earlier than necessary, I became a slave of the forms, because too early I saw the uniform of slaves on them.”

The theme of female suffering, the difficult and yet holy fate of a woman will become a cross-cutting theme in the writer’s work, finding its artistic conclusion in his main work - the novel “Doctor Zhivago”.

From the age of seven, Boris began to be prepared to enter Moscow Gymnasium No. 5, one of the best at that time. Only graduating from a government gymnasium with a gold medal at that time gave the right to enter Moscow University. Home schooling bore fruit: preliminary exams in the summer of 1900 were passed successfully. However, the quotas existing at that time for the number of Jewish students became a serious obstacle to the boy’s enrollment in the 1st grade of the gymnasium; even the petitions of very influential persons and the wide fame of his father did not help. Only thanks to the director of the gymnasium, a year later Boris was enrolled in the 2nd grade in the place that had become vacant by that time.

In the summer, the Pasternaks usually rented a dacha. In 1903, their neighbors in the dacha were the Scriabins. More than once Borya and Shura secretly listened to how composer A. Scriabin worked. One of the adventures of this summer almost cost Boris his life, which must have become one of the most important milestones in his creative life. Leonid Osipovich had long wanted to paint the picture “At Night”, planning to depict young peasant women from a neighboring village who, every evening, riding bareback horses, rushed past the dacha towards the river. Boris was obsessed with the idea of ​​going to the night himself, trying his hand at a mad gallop. However, the attempt ended tragically: the young man could not stay on his horse and, at full gallop, fell under the hooves of a rushing herd. With a broken hip, he was taken to the dacha and was forced to lie in a cast for a month and a half.

Ten years after this event, which, by the way, took place on the church holiday of the Transfiguration of the Lord (August 6, Art. Art.), Boris Pasternak, in one of his early prose experiments, conveyed his state that followed his awakening in “orthopedic fetters”:

“I feel sorry for the 13-year-old boy with his accident on August 6th. This is how he now lies in his unhardened plaster cast, and the three-beat, syncopated rhythms of galloping and falling rush through his delirium. From now on, rhythm will be an event for him, and vice versa - events will become rhythms; melody, tonality and harmony are the setting and substance of the event. Just the day before, I remember, I had no idea of ​​the taste of creativity. There were only works, as inspired states that could only be experienced for yourself. And the first awakening in orthopedic fetters brought with it something new: the ability to dispose of what was unbidden, to begin with oneself what had hitherto come without a beginning and, at the first discovery, was already standing there, like nature.”

From that moment on, Boris Pasternak counted down his life in creativity, because awakening, after he came to his senses, became the moment of realization that it is possible not only to perceive what someone wrote, but also to become a creator of beauty himself. In the autumn of 1903, under the guidance of Julius Engel, a music critic and music theorist, Boris began serious studies in music. The goal of the classes was to enter the Moscow Conservatory.

The Moscow events of the autumn of 1905 were a real shock for the impressionable young man. Peaceful demonstrations and clashes with gendarmes, the funeral of the revolutionary Bauman and the construction of barricades on Presnya - all this was imprinted in his memory for a long time. One evening, Boris, rushing to the epicenter of events that blew up the entire country, found himself in a group of people fleeing from a mounted patrol and even received several blows with a whip. The events of this autumn were subsequently refracted in Pasternak’s poem “1905”.

Fearing for their children (they were afraid of more frequent pogroms), the Pasternaks were forced to go abroad for a while, to Germany, to Berlin. Here Boris improved his German, mastering the peculiarities of the Berlin dialect. Here he continued his music studies with Engel: at least two preludes written by Pasternak at that time are known. Upon returning to Moscow in the summer of 1906, Leonid Osipovich was awarded a diploma from the Academy of Arts, which recognized the painter as its academician.

In the spring of 1908, Boris Pasternak brilliantly, with a gold medal, completed a full (eight-year) course at the gymnasium and, without exams, was enrolled in the first year of the Faculty of Law at Moscow University. Boris's musical director during this period was the composer Reinhold Gliere, with whom he completed the full conservatory course as an external student, with the exception of orchestration. However, Pasternak himself was not sure of the correctness of the path he had chosen: doubts arose when comparing his own musical technology with his mother's performing skills. The second source of doubt was the lack of absolute pitch - the ability to determine by ear the pitch of any arbitrary note. According to Boris, absolute pitch was necessary for those who make music the main content of their life. Studying at the Faculty of Law also did not bring satisfaction. On the advice of his idol, the composer Scriabin, who had returned from Paris at that time, Boris transferred to the philosophy department of the university's philological faculty. Scriabin, being convinced that the sphere of music is much broader than just art, considered a philosophical education necessary for a composer. However, Scriabin did not approve of Pasternak's penchant for musical improvisation, believing that musical thought should be cast into a complete and polished form. Besides famous composer Once, against his will, he showed that he himself was deprived of absolute hearing. All this, coupled with the need to delve deeper into the study of philosophy, predetermined Boris’s internal readiness to abandon professional music studies. There was one more circumstance that alienated Pasternak from her: in the fall of 1909 he was accepted into the Serdard circle, which was headed by the poet and artist Yulian Anisimov. The first of Boris’s famous poetic experiments dates back to the same year - the poem “Twilight... like squires of roses...”. A number of other early poems, as well as sketches of prose, appear on the back of the university essay “Hume's Psychological Skepticism.”

However, serious studies in poetry were still far away: Boris tried to keep his poetic experiments a secret, trusting them only to his closest people. At this time, he was seriously involved in philosophy: he attended the seminars of Gustav Shpet, later a major Russian thinker, and participated in the work of a philosophical circle under the leadership of F. Stepun. On November 8, 1910, together with his father, he went to the Astapovo station to say goodbye to L. Tolstoy, who died there. Illness on the way crippled the great writer, who had recently left Yasnaya Polyana in an effort to untie the complex knot of domestic disagreements and his own internal contradictions. This decisive act of the writer, like his tragic death, had a strong effect on the young man: Tolstoy’s moral and ethical views, especially his call to “live according to conscience,” were close to Pasternak.

The next turning point in Boris’s life was his trip to Marburg, where he intended to continue his philosophical education at the University of Marburg under the guidance of one of the greatest thinkers of our time, the founder of neo-Kantianism, Hermann Cohen and his students Paul Natorp and Nikolai Hartmann, whose works the young man studied in Moscow. The successes of the Russian student attracted the attention of the 70-year-old professor. Hermann Cohen invited him to dinner to discuss with him the possibilities of a future career as a philosopher. However, by that time Pasternak already knew that philosophy was not his field. The very idea of ​​becoming a respectable burgher, earning his bread through professional, systematic thinking, was alien to his impulsive character.

Not last role The visit to Marburg of longtime acquaintance Ida Vysotskaya and her younger sister. Boris had a difficult relationship with Ida, the seriousness of which he was aware of from the age of 14. The girls stayed in the city for five days; On the eve of his departure, Boris asked Ida to decide his fate. There was a refusal. Seeing his sisters off, he jumped on the footboard of the departing train and rode with the girls to Berlin. Pasternak always considered his return to Marburg to be his “rebirth”

This time as a real poet. He dedicated the poem “Marburg” to this event: a strong experience changes the perception of the environment so much that for true creativity it is enough just to accurately convey how the world around has changed. This idea, which formed the basis of this poem, was later clearly expressed by the poet in the “Safety Certificate”:

“Pointed at reality, displaced by feeling, art is a record of this displacement. It copies him from life... Direct speech of feeling is allegorical, and there is nothing to replace it.”

However, Pasternak postpones the decision to leave philosophy for the sake of poetry until Moscow, although internally he is strengthened in it after the second meeting with Ida at her birthday in Kissingen, where the young man goes to make sure of the refusal he received for the last time. Old Professor Cohen was also skeptical about the young man’s decision to return to Moscow:

“He was interested in my plans. He didn't approve of them. In his opinion, he should have stayed with them until the doctoral exam, passed it, and only after that returned home to take the state exam, with the expectation that perhaps later he would return to the West and settle there. I thanked him with all ardor for his hospitality... But how could I tell him that I was abandoning philosophy irrevocably, that I was going to finish in Moscow, like the majority, just to finish, and that I wasn’t even thinking about a subsequent return to Marburg?”

At home, Pasternak immersed himself in poetry. He read modern poets and their predecessors, attended literary evenings and meetings, participated in discussions on issues of literature and art. In February 1913, in a circle for studying problems aesthetic culture and symbolism in art, he read the report “Symbolism and Immortality,” the main provisions of which formed the basis of the poet’s emerging aesthetic system. The essence of the report is the conviction that, refracted in creativity, the poet’s subjective experience is cleared of everything personal and rises to the level of universal significance, universal humanity, thereby becoming a form of the artist’s immortality. By conveying his impressions of the world around him, the poet thereby actually conveys his mental condition, which predetermined the nature of these impressions, so that others could recognize their own in these states. Pasternak’s understanding of immortality is partly close to Pushkin’s

No, all of me will not die - the soul in the treasured lyre will survive my ashes and escape decay...

The report was enthusiastically received by those listening.

In the spring of 1913, Boris passed the state exams. History of Greece, ancient and medieval philosophy, new Russian literature, as well as new history and new philosophy - all subjects were passed with the highest grade - “very satisfactory”. On June 7, Pasternak received a graduation certificate stating that he was awarded a first-degree Candidate of Philosophy diploma. And a little earlier, he made his debut as a poet: the almanac “Lyrics” was published, in which 5 of his poems were presented.

The vacation summer of 1913 was almost entirely devoted to creativity: I didn’t want to think about starting a career yet. At this time, Pasternak became especially close friends with the Anisimov couple - Julian and his wife Vera Stanevich, as well as with Sergei Bobrov, a poet and critic, Lately dedicated themselves to publishing. It was Sergei Bobrov who came up with the idea to publish the first book of poems by Boris Pasternak, “Twin in the Clouds.” It was printed in an edition of 200 copies on December 19, 1913 and mainly included poems written during the previous summer.

The poems were preceded by a friendly preface by N. Aseev. The main themes of the collection are love and friendship, creativity and space, death and immortality, sleep and dreams. Later, the poet was dissatisfied with the book; about the essay “People and Positions” he wrote, in particular:

“...I wrote the poems of my first book over the course of two or three summer months.

The book was called, stupidly pretentious, “Twin in the Clouds,” in imitation of the cosmological intricacies that distinguished the book titles of the Symbolists and the names of their publishing houses.

Writing these poems, erasing and restoring what had been crossed out was a deep need and brought incomparable pleasure that brought me to tears.

I tried to avoid romantic play, extraneous interest... I did not express anything, did not reflect, did not display, did not depict... my constant concern was turned to the content, my constant dream was that the poem itself would contain something, that it contained a new thought or a new picture.”

Only a few of the poems in this collection, significantly revised, were subsequently allowed by the demanding author to be republished; he preferred not to remember the rest. However, many contemporaries, although they recognized the overcomplication, incomprehensibility of the book, the clumsiness of individual images and formal moves, generally greeted “Twin in the Clouds” quite favorably. Even a master as stingy with praise as Bryusov, in a review article in 1914, noted the originality of the aspiring poet’s gift. Publication in Lyrics and the first book of poems completed the initial period of Pasternak’s work, defined by the author himself as the “Initial time” of his poetic activity.

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Pasternak Boris Leonidovich

Preface

Childhood safety certificate

In one of my early poetry books, “Themes and Variations” (1923), a classic of Russian literature of the 20th century, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890–1960) included the poem “This is how they begin. About two years...":

That's how they start. About two years old
From the mother melodies burst into the darkness,
They chirp, whistle, and the words
Are about the third year...

What should a terrible beauty do?
Sitting on a lilac bench,
When is it really wrong to steal children?
This is how suspicions arise...

So they open, soaring
On top of the fence, where houses would be,
Sudden, like a sigh, seas.
This is how the iambs will begin.

So on summer nights, prone
Having fallen into the oats with a prayer: be fulfilled,
They threaten the dawn with your pupil.
This is how you start quarrels with the sun.

This is how they begin to live in verse.

When these poems were written, Pasternak had long since completed work on the story “Childhood of Eyelets” (1918), which tells about the growing up of the girl Zhenya, the nervous kinks of her childhood world, and the first awakening of the “little woman” in her. And it was still a long way from the creation of the autobiographical prose “Safety Certificate” (1930), and even more so the essay that continued it, “People and Positions” (1957). And still a poem predicted the future relationship of these very different works- a story about a girl from the first years of her life to a sudden tragic growing up and a story about a poet - also from infancy to a tragic-enlightening crisis in creativity. For in it are found the only true and, for all their complexity, simple words for the deep philosophy of childhood, directed into adulthood. creative world, and poetic creativity rooted in childhood. After this poem, direct plot echoes between a fictional story and autobiographical prose no longer seem unexpected; their heroes have a common “denominator” - a heightened sense of mystery, a painful sense of the “terrible beauty” of the world, involvement in the “darkness of melodies” from which words are born. There is an equal sign here between the girl and the poet, the “genius and the beauty” (in the chivalrous language of Pasternak himself).

It is not for nothing that “Childhood Grommets” opens with an episode that repeats the first stanza of the poem almost word for word. Suddenly awakened, Zhenya feels with horror: “... there was no way to determine what was happening on the other side... it had no name... Zhenya burst into tears... The father’s explanation was short:

This is Motovilikha...

...That’s all that was required: to find out the name of the incomprehensible thing - Motovilikha.” The word that appeared to the tiny Zhenya “about the third year” changes something very important in her life: “That morning she came out of the infancy in which she was still at night...” And with exactly the same episode the essay “People and Positions” opens. : Pasternak remembers visiting his father, the future academician of painting L. O. Pasternak, in 1894 - also “about the third year”! - Leo Tolstoy arrived and a home concert took place, in which the mother of the future poet, R.I. Kaufman, took part. In the middle of the night, Pasternak recalls, “I woke up from a sweet, aching torment, never experienced to such an extent before... This night lay like a milestone between the unconsciousness of infancy and my subsequent childhood.” Complete kinship of sensations! For “normal” creativity, according to Pasternak, should be nourished by the reserves of childish openness to the “darkness of melodies,” and “normal” childhood should stretch into the adult world, like a sprout stretches to the sun.

But neither one nor the other is given just like that, by itself. It is not difficult to notice that the mood in “This is how they begin. About two years…” - it’s alarming that the usual serenity and tender idyll intonation with which it is customary to talk about children is not in evidence here. On the contrary - a mysterious torment, a night atmosphere, "dark melodies" overwhelm the poem. In the same way, the stories about the girl Zhenya and the poet Pasternak are not at all rosy: the child and the artist live in the “passive voice” and the dramatic “curves” of their destinies practically coincide. Both he and she are constantly struggling with themselves, always at a turning point, in a state of transition from one calling to another.

As mentioned, we meet Zhenya Luvers at the moment when she turns from a baby into a girl. Then, together with her, we experience the process of “germinating” into girlhood. And we part precisely when she, having experienced the bitterness of two losses, suddenly feels like an adult girl, a “little woman” - and childhood leaves her forever.

Pasternak also begins his story about himself and his generation in “Safety Certificate” and “People and Positions” with an episode that opens a new dimension in his infant consciousness - from a meeting with Leo Tolstoy. The climactic emphasis of the plot is on the story of his sudden break with the dream of his entire youth, philosophy and break with his former love. And it ends with a farewell to Mayakovsky, friend and opponent.

A continuous chain of losses - both here and here, and the most precious thing, otherwise what kind of losses would they be?

The second part of “Childhood Grommets” - “Stranger” - is dedicated to Zhenya’s strange meeting with a limping stranger, an “outsider”. She accidentally notices him in a neighbor's garden, then just as accidentally runs into him in a bookstore and, without knowing why, she singles him out from the crowd and begins to think about him. The word “falling in love” is not spoken in the story, it is implied, but is completely unsuitable for defining the feeling that awakened in Zhenya’s soul! Generally in art world Pasternak, the most important things are not usually named out loud; they are only allowed to be hinted at. For what is given a name ceases to be a secret: let us remember Motovilikha. And it’s not for nothing that Zhenya doesn’t want to say the name of the stranger - Tsvetkov, but calls him in the third person: “this one.” In a conversation about mystery, uncertainty is more accurate than directness.

But here's what's especially important. The stranger, having barely entered Zhenya’s life, immediately “leaves” it. The stallion, harnessed to the carriage of his parents, “reared up, knocked down and crushed a random passer-by” - this dead passer-by turned out to be Tsvetkov. Not only that: after the experience, Zhenya’s mother went into premature labor and Zhenya Luvers’ dead brother was born. They try to hide all this from her, resettle her with her friends, the Defendovs, but she guesses what happened, and the secret of death, like the secret of love, enters her consciousness also “without words,” by hint. However, the effect it has on the girl is by no means indirect. Zhenya “suddenly felt that scary looks like my mother... The feeling was piercing, sharp to the point of groaning. It was the feeling of a woman seeing her appearance and beauty from within or internally.”

At the very beginning of the second part we meet Zhenya reading Lermontov. At the very end we see how “without further words Lermontov was squeezed back into the rickety row of classics by the same hand.” Together with Lermontov, Zhenino was also pushed into the past childhood, which means the plot of the story called “ Childhood Eyelet."

And now - an unexpected but natural coincidence. The “outsider,” Tsvetkov, is limping. Pasternak emphasizes this: “Dikikh was not alone; after him came a short man who, as he walked, tried to hide that he was falling on his foot.” Now let’s open the “Safety Certificate” and read in it a story about a turning point in the life of thirteen-year-old Pasternak. A turning point both literally and figuratively. “I will not describe in detail...”, how, “when I broke... my leg, having dropped out of two future wars in one evening, and lay motionless in a cast, my acquaintances were burning across the river, and the thin rural man was acting like a fool, shaking in a fever. alarm... How, riding that night with a doctor from Maloyaroslavets, my father turned gray at the sight of a swirling glow... instilling the conviction that it was a woman close to him with three children who was burning..." The feverish rhythm of the phrase, the description, making one remember Luversov's Motovilikha... And most importantly - there is an undoubted connection between the image of the limping Outsider, who died under the hooves of a horse, and the image of the limping poet, kicked out of the saddle by a horse. The roots of what happened at the behest of Pasternak with Zhenya Luvers go back to his own childhood, and the shocks that befell the heroine were experienced by the author himself. In the same year, 1903, when the house across the river was burning and the father turned gray, a student drowned nearby, saving a pupil of Pasternak’s acquaintances, “and she then went crazy, after several attempts at suicide from the same cliff...”. As Zhenya would exclaim: “Are you also in grief? How many deaths - and all of a sudden!” Only after going through tragedy, Pasternak was able to succeed both as a person and as a poet. Naturally, he prepared the same path for his heroine. Favorite heroine.