Essay Bunin I.A. Analysis of the story “Clean Monday” (I
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. He was excellent at both poetry and prose, both short stories and novels. But still, I appreciate Ivan Alekseevich’s talent precisely for that part of his work that can be called the “small” genre. And I especially like Bunin’s stories, the main theme of which is love.
These works most clearly reveal the author's talent for describing everything intimate, sometimes quite unusual, for conveying ideas and thoughts. Extraordinary poetry brings sensuality to the narrative, which is so necessary for works with such themes. If you trace Bunin's entire work from beginning to end, you can divide it into periods, based on what theme he prefers in his works. I am interested in the collection “Dark Alleys,” written during the Second World War, because it is entirely devoted to the theme of love; after reading the stories from it, you can try to formulate the main idea, the author’s thought. In my opinion, the main “thesis” of Bunin’s work lies in the quote: “All love is great happiness, even if it is not divided.” But in the love dramas of the collection, and it is they that form its basis, one can also be convinced that Bunin values only natural, pure love, high human feeling, rejecting far-fetched false impressions. Ivan Alekseevich also in his stories inextricably connects love with death, connects the beautiful and the terrible. But this is not a far-fetched composition, the author is thus trying to show readers how close love borders on death, how close the two extremes are to each other.
The most famous stories among readers are “Sunstroke”, “Clean Monday” and “Natalie”. All of them perfectly fit the description of a tragic love story with a sad ending, but in each of them Bunin reveals to us a new aspect, a new perspective on love.
The heroes of “Sunstroke” meet completely by chance on a ship. But their fleeting attraction does not pass without a trace for both characters. She tells the lieutenant: “Nothing even similar to what happened has ever happened to me, and there never will be again. The eclipse definitely hit me... Or, rather, we both got something like sunstroke.” But this shock affects him only when he, having escorted her to the ship, returns to the hotel. His heart “squeezed with an incomprehensible tenderness,” and “he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by horror and despair,” because he did not know her name or surname. The love that the lieutenant realized too late almost destroys him; he is ready to die for one more day spent with her. But we are convinced that in fact love is a blessing, despite the fact that it ends so quickly, we understand how strong and comprehensive this feeling is.
In the short story “Clean Monday,” so beloved by the author, we are told about the hero’s unrequited love for the mysterious heroine. She is not interested in and even rejects many things accepted in their circle; her complex nature haunts the hero. The heroine’s alienation (“she doesn’t need anything: neither flowers, nor books, nor dinners, nor theaters, nor dinners outside the city...”) is explained on Forgiveness Sunday, when the heroes go together to the cemetery. We learn about her passion for antiquity, Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries. The heroine tries to find meaning and support in the world around her, but she doesn’t find it, even the hero’s love does not bring her happiness. The meaning of the title is that the heroine, not finding beauty and spirituality in the modern world, is cleansed of her previous life and goes to a monastery, where, as it seems to her, she will be happy.
The main character of the third story, Vitaly Meshchersky, turns out to be himself guilty of the love tragedy that played out between him, his cousin Sonya and her friend Natalie. The student cannot decide whether to prefer “passionate bodily intoxication” for Sonya or a sincere and sublime feeling for Natalie. Avoiding choice ends in a tragic ending. The author shows us that Vitaly’s feeling for Sonya is feigned, but his love for Natalie is true, proving her superiority.
In stories about love, I. A. Bunin claims that love is a high and beautiful feeling, and a person who is capable of love is highly moral. Despite the fact that love brings not only joy and happiness, but also grief and suffering, it is a great feeling. And I completely agree with this.
For I. A. Bunin, the feeling of love is always a secret, great, unknowable and miracle beyond the control of human reason. In his stories, no matter what love is: strong, real, mutual, it never reaches marriage. He stops it at the highest point of pleasure and immortalizes it in prose.
From 1937 to 1945 Ivan Bunin writes an intriguing work, which will later be included in the collection “Dark Alleys”. While writing the book, the author emigrated to France. Thanks to the work on the story, the writer was to some extent distracted from the dark streak that was going on in his life.
Bunin said that “Clean Monday” is the best work that he wrote:
I thank God for giving me the opportunity to write “Clean Monday.”
Genre, direction
“Clean Monday” was written in the direction of realism. But before Bunin they didn’t write about love like that. The writer finds those only words that do not trivialize feelings, but each time rediscover emotions familiar to everyone.
The work “Clean Monday” is a short story, a small everyday work, somewhat similar to a short story. The difference can only be found in the plot and compositional structure. The short story genre, unlike the short story, is characterized by the presence of a certain turn of events. In this book, such a turn is a change in the heroine’s outlook on life and a sharp change in her lifestyle.
Meaning of the name
Ivan Bunin clearly draws a parallel with the title of the work, making the main character a girl who rushes between opposites and does not yet know what she needs in life. She changes for the better on Monday, and not just the first day of the new week, but a religious celebration, that turning point, which is marked by the church itself, where the heroine goes to cleanse herself of the luxury, idleness and bustle of her former life.
Clean Monday is the first holiday of Lent in the calendar, leading to Forgiveness Sunday. The author draws the thread of the turning point in the heroine’s life: from various amusements and unnecessary fun, to the adoption of religion, and leaving for a monastery.
The essence
The story is told in the first person. The main events are as follows: every evening the narrator visits a girl who lives opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, for whom he has strong feelings. He is extremely talkative, she is very silent. There was no intimacy between them, and this keeps him in bewilderment and some kind of expectation.
For some time they continue to go to theaters and spend evenings together. Forgiveness Sunday is approaching, and they go to the Novodevichy Convent. Along the way, the heroine talks about how yesterday she was at the schismatic cemetery, and with admiration describes the burial ceremony of the archbishop. The narrator had not previously noticed any religiosity in her, and therefore listened attentively, with glowing, loving eyes. The heroine notices this and is amazed at how much he loves her.
In the evening they go to a skit party, after which the narrator accompanies her home. The girl asks to let the coachmen go, which she hasn’t done before, and come up to her. It was just their evening.
In the morning, the heroine says that she is leaving for Tver, to the monastery - there is no need to wait or look for her.
The main characters and their characteristics
The image of the main character can be viewed from several angles of the narrator: a young man in love evaluates his chosen one as a participant in the events, and he also sees her in the role of a person who only remembers the past. His views on life after falling in love, after passion, change. By the end of the story, the reader now sees his maturity and depth of thoughts, but at the beginning the hero was blinded by his passion and did not see the character of his beloved behind it, did not feel her soul. This is the reason for his loss and the despair into which he plunged after the disappearance of the lady of his heart.
The girl's name cannot be found in the work. For the storyteller, this is simply the same one - unique. The heroine is an ambiguous nature. She has education, sophistication, intelligence, but at the same time she is withdrawn from the world. She is attracted by an unattainable ideal, to which she can only strive within the walls of the monastery. But at the same time, she fell in love with a man and cannot just leave him. The contrast of feelings leads to an internal conflict, which we can glimpse in her tense silence, in her desire for quiet and secluded corners, for reflection and solitude. The girl still cannot understand what she needs. She is seduced by a luxurious life, but at the same time, she resists it and tries to find something else that will illuminate her path with meaning. And in this honest choice, in this loyalty to oneself lies great strength, there is great happiness, which Bunin described with such pleasure.
Topics and issues
- The main theme is love. It is she who gives a person meaning in life. For the girl, the guiding star was divine revelation, she found herself, but her chosen one, having lost the woman of his dreams, lost his way.
- The problem of misunderstanding. The whole essence of the tragedy of heroes lies in misunderstanding each other. The girl, feeling love for the narrator, does not see anything good in this - for her this is a problem, and not a way out of a confusing situation. She is looking for herself not in the family, but in service and spiritual calling. He sincerely does not see this and tries to impose on her his vision of the future - the creation of marriage bonds.
- Theme of choice also appears in the novella. Every person has a choice, and everyone decides for themselves what to do right. The main character chose her own path - entering a monastery. The hero continued to love her, and could not come to terms with her choice, because of this he could not find inner harmony, find himself.
- Also I. A. Bunin can be traced theme of human purpose in life. The main character does not know what she wants, but she feels her calling. It is very difficult for her to understand herself, and because of this, the narrator also cannot fully understand her. However, she follows the call of her soul, vaguely guessing her destiny - the destiny of higher powers. And this is very good for both of them. If a woman made a mistake and got married, she would remain unhappy forever and blame the one who led her astray. And the man would suffer from unrequited happiness.
- The problem of happiness. The hero sees him in love with the lady, but the lady moves along a different coordinate system. She will find harmony only alone with God.
the main idea
The writer writes about true love, which ultimately ends in breakup. The heroes make such decisions themselves; they have complete freedom of choice. And the meaning of their actions is the idea of the entire book. Each of us must choose exactly that love that we can worship without complaint throughout our lives. A person must be true to himself and the passion that lives in his heart. The heroine found the strength to go to the end and, despite all doubts and temptations, to reach her cherished goal.
The main idea of the novel is an ardent call for honest self-determination. There is no need to be afraid that someone will not understand or judge your decision if you are sure that this is your calling. In addition, a person must be able to resist those obstacles and temptations that prevent him from hearing his own voice. Fate depends on whether we are able to hear him, both our own fate and the position of those to whom we are dear.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!The theme of love in the works of I.A Bunin I.A Bunin “Clean Monday” “Easy Breathing” “Sunstroke” “Dark Alleys” “Mitya’s Love” “Grammar of Love” Author of the work: Deputy Director for Educational Management, teacher of Russian language and literature of the State Educational Institution Secondary school 924 Southern Administrative District of Moscow Meshcheryakova Natalya Aleksandrovna
If no one knows why we smile, And no one knows why we cry. If no one knows why we are born, And no one knows why we die... If we are moving towards the abyss, where we will cease to be, If the night before us is silent and voiceless... Come on, let's at least love! Perhaps, at least it will not be in vain... Amado Nervo
“Dark Alleys” () is the highest creative achievement. I. Bunin considered the collection “Dark Alleys” (Dark Alleys) his highest creative achievement. the world collapses when reality is unbearable - stable, constant, eternal" "...Most of the stories in this cycle were created during the Second World War. When the world collapses, when reality is unbearable, Bunin turns to the theme of love, i.e. sustainable, constant, eternal” by D. Malysheva
The author’s focus in all the stories in the “Dark Alleys” series is the love of a man and a woman, shown through the prism of time. Plot formula: Meeting Sudden rapprochement A dazzling flash of feelings Inevitable separation, accompanied by the death of one of the lovers
In each story, I. Bunin finds more and more new shades of love feelings: A feeling of adoration (“Natalie”) A feeling of adoration (“Natalie”) A feigned game of love (Riviera) A feigned game of love (Riviera) Corrupt love (“The Young Lady” Clara" Corrupt love ("Young lady Clara" Love-enmity ("Saratov Steamship") Love-enmity ("Saratov Steamboat") Love-despair ("Zoika and Valeria") Love-despair ("Zoika and Valeria" ) Love-witchcraft (“Iron Wool”) Love-witchcraft (“Iron Wool”) Love-self-forgetfulness (“Cold Autumn”) Love-self-forgetfulness (“Cold Autumn”) Love-pity, love-compassion Love-pity, love- compassion (“Three rubles”) (“Three rubles”) Bunin’s love is not only spiritual unity, but also physical intimacy, and love never lasts, does not develop into a state of lasting earthly bliss
“Easy Breathing”, 1916 Read three judgments about the story and compare them. K. Paustovsky: “This is not a story, but an insight, life itself with its trembling and love, a sad and calm reflection of the writer - an epitaph for girlish beauty” N. Klyuchevsky: ““Easy breathing” is not just and not only “an epitaph for girlish beauty” , but also an epitaph for the spiritual “aristocratism” of existence, which in life is opposed by the brute and helpless force of “plebeianism”. I. Bunin: “... we call it the womb, but I called it light breathing. Such naivety and lightness in everything, both in audacity and in death, is a light breath, “bewilderment.” How do you explain the meaning of the title of the story? What is the symbolism of the name “Easy Breathing”?
“The Grammar of Love” What is special about the title of the story? What event is the story based on? What question does the hero (a certain Ivlev) ask when entering the house of a recently deceased landowner? Has he solved this mystery? And what is this secret? In what mood does the hero observe everything in the house? With what feeling does he leave? How can we explain why Khvoshchinsky’s son, having initially refused to sell the book, still sells it?
“Dark Alleys” How is the story structured? What is its plot? Why didn't the love of the heroes of this story take place? What is the source of the tragedy that accompanies this love? Compare the descriptions of the characters’ appearances. What impression do they make? Re-read the episode of the meeting of heroes. Why did Nadezhda so accurately determine the time during which they did not see each other? Why didn’t this beautiful and not yet old woman get married? What feelings do the characters experience after breaking up? What features of the plot and composition can be noted in this story?
“Clean Monday”, 1944 How is the story structured? What is its plot? What time period does the story take us to, what evidence indicates this? What is known about the hero and heroine? When do the central events of the story take place? Explain the meaning of the title of the story. Is the conflict in the souls of the heroes resolved?
List of used literature and Internet sources: 1. Yandex - pictures slide N.V. Egorova, I.V. Zolotarev "Lesson developments in Russian literature, grade 11." Moscow "Wako" 2003 "Lesson developments in Russian literature, grade 11." Moscow "Waco" 2003
Preview:
QUESTIONS TO BUNIN'S STORIES
"Sunstroke"
Can you convey in a few words what happened to the characters? What is the mood of the story and the state of the characters at the beginning of the story? What do they set up or what questions do the words “and the heart sank blissfully and terribly”; “For many years later they remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives”? Why is the morning of the next day called happy? What word becomes the key word that conveys the state of the lieutenant upon parting? When does the narrative break occur? What “strange, incomprehensible feeling that did not exist at all while they were together” writes I.A. Bunin? Why did it come only when the heroes broke up? What torments the hero the most? What would change if the heroine told the lieutenant her first and last name? Why does the author describe in such detail the day the lieutenant spent in the county town waiting for the ship? Does the hero experience happiness or suffering? Why does he feel ten years older at the end of the story? Why, of the two definitions of what happened given by the heroine (“sunstroke” and “eclipse”), was the first chosen as the title of the story?
"Clean Monday"
Why don't the heroes have names? What is the atmosphere at the beginning of the story and by what means is it created? What feeling is the main one in a story about the relationships between the characters? What words can be called key words? What causes the hero’s happiness and torment? How are episodes related to religion and the life of Moscow bohemia combined in the story? Does the heroine fit into them equally organically? Why, when deciding to be intimate with her beloved, the heroine “ lifeless ordered” him to let the crew go? Why does the hero wait at the bedroom door “with his heart sinking as if over an abyss”? What does a night spent together become for the heroes? Why is it that in the morning, when his passion has found resolution, when he has achieved what he so desired, the hero is close to despair? Why I.A. Bunin does not explain the motives for the heroine’s action? Does the heroine’s act seem paradoxical to you and what is its paradox? What colors are dominant in this story and how does this help reveal the author’s intent of the work? How does their relationship in the depiction of the world and the heroine change throughout the narrative? Clean Monday - Christian symbolism of the concept? Did the heroine go to the monastery and how does the fact that the story is told from the hero’s point of view reveal the author’s intention? What is the heroine's tragic mistake?
"Mr. from San Francisco"
Why does the story completely unexpectedly end with a seemingly inappropriate and yet completely “natural”, and not at all allegorical appearance of the Devil?
(“The devil was huge, like a cliff, but the ship was huge too...”)? What images in the story have symbolic meaning? In what country does the story "The Man from San Francisco" take place? What is hidden behind the description of the life of Atlantis passengers? What is the meaning of the allusion to the Titanic disaster (the name of the ship - "Atlantis" focused two "reminders": about the place of death - in the Atlantic Ocean, the mythical island-state mentioned by Plato, and the real unsinkable "Titanic" in 1912) ? Why does fate (and in its person the author) punish the hero, the gentleman from San Francisco, so cruelly? Why are there so few characters named in the story? What remains beyond the control of the modern New Man, according to the author’s plan of the story? What is the reaction of the Atlantis passengers to the death of the gentleman from San Francisco? What role does the description of the ocean and the dancing couple play in the story? How does the story describe the hero’s state of mind and how does it relate to the motive of the impending disaster? How does the author interpret the problem of death and the meaning of life? How does the world appear through the eyes of a man without a name (= gentleman from S-F)?
"Easy breath" Why is the novella called "Easy Breathing"? What kind of light breathing is being talked about here? Who does it belong to? What “this breath” are we talking about at the end of the story? Who does it belong to? Why did this breath “scatter again into the world”? Has it really disappeared from the world somewhere? If it disappeared, then where and why did it return? Who owns the point of view expressed in the last paragraph? Reproduce (in writing) the sequence of all the main events of the work. You probably noticed that the author violates their chronology. Now try to write down all the highlighted events in chronological order. Compare your reconstruction of events with the author's version of their unfolding. Why do you think (for what purpose) does the author tell the story about the life and death of Olya Meshcherskaya in such an unusual way? Why does he refuse the more natural and seemingly familiar course of the narrative? By the way, what event is the most important for the author, the heroine, and the reader? Carefully re-read the first five paragraphs of the novella. Watch the narrator's position change. Whose point of view is conveyed in his words? Who at the beginning of the story looks at the grave, the cross, the photograph of Olya Meshcherskaya, peers into her eyes? Whose point of view is depicted in the fifth paragraph? Try to substantiate your assumptions by analyzing the text. Why is the story told from this (and not another) point of view? You must have already noticed that it is important for the author not to talk about his heroine in general, but in a special way. It is on the relationship of points of view that he manipulates (i.e., on the features of the composition of the entire work) that the artistic meaning of “Easy Breathing” depends. List all the main points of view that illuminate the heroine’s life. Who do they belong to? Why did the author need to correlate so many different points of view with each other in one small work? What role does time play in the story (calendar, natural, biographical)? Using the list of main events in the story, try to determine the movement of narrative time from the present (at the grave) to the restoration of the past (Oli’s high school life) and beyond. Why does Bunin’s time, on the one hand, seem to be stopped (at the grave), and on the other hand, does it move unevenly and even in different directions (establish which ones)? Is it possible to say that the author in this work speaks of “lightness” as liberation, firstly, from the usual passage of time in general and, secondly, from the traditional reader’s interest, which is usually expressed in questions like “What will happen next? " and "How will it all end?"? Justify your point of view. Why does the author cut off the event connections: he does not tell what the attempted suicide of high school student Shenshin led to, how Olya’s conversation with the boss, interrupted on a dramatic note by the narrator, ended, what happened to Olya’s arrested killer , how did the relationship of Olya and her parents with their friend and her seducer Malyutin develop? What open places of action are the landscapes of the story connected with? How does the life of Olya Meshcherskaya “fit” into these landscapes? What closed places of action form the interiors? How does the life of Olya Meshcherskaya “fit” into these interiors? Name the portraits and portrait details that you encountered in this work. What is their role? Why does the narrator pay so much attention to the portrait characteristics of the heroine? How are these characteristics related to the landscapes of the story? Find air motifs in the landscapes, interiors and portraits of the story / / wind // breathing. What significance does the author attach to them? List all the episodes in the story where the crowd is mentioned. In what cases does the narrator pay attention to the fact that Olya Meshcherskaya blends in with the crowd, and when to the fact that she stands out from the crowd? What is the significance of the motifs of memory/death/book words in the short story (see Olya’s conversation with her friend about “easy breathing”)? How are they related to the motives listed above? How do the images of the world and man in the realistic works you know and Bunin’s “Easy Breathing” differ from each other?
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870 – 1953)
Easy breath
In the cemetery, over a fresh clay mound, there stands a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, gray days; The monuments of the cemetery, spacious, county, are still visible far away through the bare trees, and the cold wind rings and rings the porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross.
A rather large, convex porcelain medallion is embedded in the cross itself, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya.
As a girl, she did not stand out in any way in the crowd of brown school dresses: what could be said about her, except that she was one of the pretty, rich and happy girls, that she was capable, but playful and very careless about the instructions that the classy lady gave her ? Then she began to blossom and develop by leaps and bounds. At fourteen, with a thin waist and slender legs, her breasts and all those forms, the charm of which had never yet been expressed by human words, were already well outlined: at fifteen she was already known as a beauty. How carefully some of her friends combed their hair, how clean they were, how careful they were about their restrained movements! But she was not afraid of anything - not ink stains on her fingers, not a flushed face, not disheveled hair, not a knee that became bare when falling while running. Without any of her worries or efforts, and somehow imperceptibly, everything that had so distinguished her from the entire gymnasium in the last two years came to her - grace, elegance, dexterity, the clear sparkle of her eyes... No one danced at balls like she, no one at the balls was courted as much as she was, and for some reason no one was loved as much by the lower classes as she was. Imperceptibly she became a girl, and her high school fame was imperceptibly strengthened, and rumors had already spread that she was flighty, could not live without admirers, that the school student Shenshin was madly in love with her, that she supposedly loved him too, but was so changeable in her treatment of him that he attempted suicide...
During her last winter, Olya Meshcherskaya went completely crazy with fun, as they said in the gymnasium. The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun set early behind the tall spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising frost and sun for tomorrow, a walk on Sobornaya Street, an ice skating rink in the city garden, a pink evening, music and this in all directions the crowd gliding on the skating rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest. And then, one day, during a big break, when she was rushing around the assembly hall like a whirlwind from the first-graders chasing her and squealing blissfully, she was unexpectedly called to the boss. She stopped running, took only one deep breath, straightened her hair with a quick and already familiar feminine movement, pulled the corners of her apron to her shoulders and, her eyes shining, ran upstairs. The boss, young-looking but gray-haired, sat calmly with knitting in her hands at her desk, under the royal portrait.
“Hello, Mademoiselle Meshcherskaya,” she said in French, without raising her eyes from her knitting. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have been forced to call you here to talk to you about your behavior.”
After lunch, we walked out of the brightly and hotly lit dining room onto the deck and stopped at the railing. She closed her eyes, put her hand to her cheek with her palm facing outwards, laughed a simple, charming laugh - everything was charming about this little woman - and said:
I think I'm drunk... Where did you come from? Three hours ago I didn’t even know you existed. I don't even know where you sat down. In Samara? But still... Is it my head spinning or are we turning somewhere?
There was darkness and lights ahead. From the darkness, a strong, soft wind beat in the face, and the lights rushed somewhere to the side: the steamer, with Volga panache, abruptly described a wide arc, running up to a small pier.
The lieutenant took her hand and raised it to his lips. The hand, small and strong, smelled of tan. And her heart sank blissfully and terribly at the thought of how strong and dark she must be under this light canvas dress after a whole month of lying under the southern sun, on the hot sea sand (she said that she was coming from Anapa). The lieutenant muttered:
Let's go...
Where? - she asked in surprise.
On this pier.
He said nothing. She again put the back of her hand to her hot cheek.
Madness...
Let’s get down,” he repeated stupidly. “I beg you...
“Oh, do as you wish,” she said, turning away.
The runaway steamer hit the dimly lit dock with a soft thud, and they almost fell on top of each other. The end of the rope flew over their heads, then it rushed back, and the water boiled noisily, the gangway rattled... The lieutenant rushed to get his things.
A minute later they passed the sleepy office, came out onto sand deep as deep as the hub, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle climb uphill, among rare crooked streetlights, along a road soft with dust, seemed endless. But then they got up, drove out and crackled along the pavement, there was some kind of square, public places, a tower, the warmth and smells of a night summer provincial town... The cab driver stopped near the illuminated entrance, behind the open doors of which an old wooden staircase rose steeply, old, unshaven the footman in a pink blouse and frock coat took his things with displeasure and walked forward on his trampled feet. They entered a large, but terribly stuffy room, hotly heated by the sun during the day, with white drawn curtains on the windows and two unburnt candles on the mirror - and as soon as they entered and the footman closed the door, the lieutenant so impulsively rushed to her and both of them suffocated so frantically in a kiss , that for many years later they remembered this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives.
At ten o'clock in the morning, sunny, hot, happy, with the ringing of churches, with the bazaar on the square in front of the hotel, with the smell of hay, tar and again all that complex and odorous smell that a Russian district town smells of, she, this little nameless woman, who did not say her name, jokingly calling herself a beautiful stranger, left. We slept little, but in the morning, coming out from behind the screen near the bed, washing and dressing in five minutes, she was as fresh as she was at seventeen. Was she embarrassed? No, very little. She was still simple, cheerful and - already reasonable.
No, no, honey,” she said in response to his request to go further together, “no, you must stay until the next ship.” If we go together, everything will be ruined. This will be very unpleasant for me. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. Nothing even similar to what happened has ever happened to me, and there never will be again. The eclipse definitely hit me... Or, rather, we both got something like sunstroke...
And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her. In a light and happy spirit, he took her to the pier - just in time for the departure of the pink "Airplane", - kissed her on the deck in front of everyone and barely had time to jump onto the gangplank, which had already moved back.
Just as easily, carefree, he returned to the hotel. However, something has changed. The room without her seemed somehow completely different than it was with her. He was still full of her - and empty. It was strange! There was still the smell of her good English cologne, her unfinished cup was still standing on the tray, but she was no longer there... And the lieutenant’s heart suddenly sank with such tenderness that the lieutenant hurried to light a cigarette and walked back and forth around the room several times.
Strange adventure! - he said out loud, laughing and feeling that tears were welling up in his eyes. “I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think...” And she already left...
The screen had been pulled back, the bed had not yet been made. And he felt that he simply had no strength to look at this bed now. He covered it with a screen, closed the windows so as not to hear the market talk and the creaking of wheels, lowered the white bubbling curtains, sat down on the sofa... Yes, that’s the end of this “road adventure”! She left - and now she’s already far away, probably sitting in the glass white salon or on the deck and looking at the huge river glistening in the sun, at the oncoming rafts, at the yellow shallows, at the shining distance of water and sky, at this entire immeasurable Volga expanse. .. And forgive, and forever, forever... Because where can they meet now? “I can’t,” he thought, “I can’t, out of the blue, come to this city, where her husband is, where her three-year-old girl is, in general her whole family and her whole ordinary life!” And this city seemed to him like some kind of special, reserved city, and the thought that she would live her lonely life in it, often, perhaps, remembering him, remembering their chance, such a fleeting meeting, and he would never will not see her, this thought amazed and amazed him. No, this can't be! It would be too wild, unnatural, implausible! And he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by horror and despair.
"What the hell! - he thought, getting up, again starting to walk around the room and trying not to look at the bed behind the screen. - What is this with me? And what is special about it and what actually happened? In fact, it looks like some kind of sunstroke! And most importantly, how can I now spend the whole day in this outback without her?”
He still remembered all of her, with all her slightest features, he remembered the smell of her tan and canvas dress, her strong body, the lively, simple and cheerful sound of her voice... The feeling of the pleasures he had just experienced with all her feminine charm was still unusually alive in him , but now the main thing was still this second, completely new feeling - that strange, incomprehensible feeling that he could not even imagine in himself, starting yesterday this, as he thought, only a funny acquaintance, and about which it was no longer possible to tell her Now! “And most importantly,” he thought, “you’ll never be able to tell!” And what to do, how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment, in this God-forsaken town above the very shining Volga along which this pink steamer carried her away!
I needed to save myself, do something, distract myself, go somewhere. He resolutely put on his cap, took the stack, quickly walked, jingling his spurs, along the empty corridor, ran down the steep stairs to the entrance... Yes, but where to go? At the entrance stood a cab driver, young, in a smart suit, and calmly smoking a cigarette. The lieutenant looked at him in confusion and amazement: how can you sit so calmly on the box, smoke and generally be simple, careless, indifferent? “I’m probably the only one so terribly unhappy in this whole city,” he thought, heading towards the bazaar.
The market was already leaving. For some reason he walked through the fresh manure among the carts, among the carts with cucumbers, among the new bowls and pots, and the women sitting on the ground vied with each other to call him, took the pots in their hands and knocked, rang them with their fingers, showing their good quality, men they stunned him, shouted to him: “Here are the first grade cucumbers, your honor!” It was all so stupid and absurd that he fled from the market. He went to the cathedral, where they were singing loudly, cheerfully and decisively, with the consciousness of a fulfilled duty, then he walked for a long time, circling around the small, hot and neglected garden on the cliff of a mountain, above the boundless light steel expanse of the river... Shoulder straps and buttons of his jacket it was so hot that it was impossible to touch them. The inside of his cap was wet from sweat, his face was burning... Returning to the hotel, he entered with pleasure into the large and empty cool dining room on the ground floor, took off his cap with pleasure and sat down at a table near the open window, through which there was a heat, but everything - there was a whiff of air, I ordered a botvinya with ice... Everything was good, there was immeasurable happiness, great joy in everything; even in this heat and in all the smells of the market, in this whole unfamiliar town and in this old county hotel there was it, this joy, and at the same time the heart was simply torn to pieces. He drank several glasses of vodka, snacked on lightly salted cucumbers with dill and felt that he, without a second thought, would die tomorrow, if by some miracle he could return her, spend another, this day, with her - spend only then, only then, to tell her and prove it somehow, to convince her how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her... Why prove it? Why convince? He didn’t know why, but it was more necessary than life.
My nerves were completely gone! - he said, pouring his fifth glass of vodka.
He pushed his shoe away from him, asked for black coffee and began to smoke and think intensely: what should he do now, how to get rid of this sudden, unexpected love? But getting rid of it - he felt it too vividly - was impossible. And he suddenly quickly stood up again, took his cap and riding stack and, asking where the post office was, hurriedly went there with the phrase of the telegram already prepared in his head: “From now on, my whole life is forever, until the grave, yours, in your power.” But, having reached the old thick-walled house where there was a post office and telegraph, he stopped in horror: he knew the city where she lived, he knew that she had a husband and a three-year-old daughter, but he did not know her last name or first name! He asked her about this several times yesterday at dinner and at the hotel, and each time she laughed and said:
Why do you need to know who I am, what my name is?
On the corner, near the post office, there was a photographic showcase. He looked for a long time at a large portrait of some military man in thick epaulets, with bulging eyes, a low forehead, with amazingly magnificent sideburns and a wide chest, completely decorated with orders... How wild, scary is everything everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck, - Yes, he was amazed, he now understood it, by this terrible “sunstroke,” by too much love, by too much happiness! He looked at the newlywed couple - a young man in a long frock coat and white tie, with a crew cut, stretched out in front on the arm of a girl in a wedding gauze - he turned his eyes to the portrait of some pretty and perky young lady in a student’s cap at an askew... Then, languishing with painful envy of all these unknown, non-suffering people, he began to look intently along the street.
Where to go? What to do?
The street was completely empty. The houses were all the same, white, two-story, merchant houses, with large gardens, and it seemed that there was not a soul in them; white thick dust lay on the pavement; and all this was blinding, everything was flooded with hot, fiery and joyful, but here it seemed like an aimless sun. In the distance the street rose, hunched over and rested on a cloudless, grayish sky with a reflection. There was something southern about it, reminiscent of Sevastopol, Kerch... Anapa. This was especially unbearable. And the lieutenant, with his head bowed, squinting from the light, intently looking at his feet, staggering, stumbling, clinging spur to spur, walked back.
He returned to the hotel so overwhelmed with fatigue, as if he had made a huge trek somewhere in Turkestan, in the Sahara. He, gathering his last strength, entered his large and empty room. The room was already tidy, devoid of the last traces of her - only one hairpin, forgotten by her, lay on the night table! He took off his jacket and looked at himself in the mirror: his face - an ordinary officer’s face, gray from the tan, with a whitish mustache, bleached from the sun, and bluish white eyes, which seemed even whiter from the tan - now had an excited, crazy expression, and in There was something youthful and deeply unhappy about the thin white shirt with a standing starched collar. He lay down on the bed on his back and put his dusty boots on the dump. The windows were open, the curtains were drawn, and a light breeze blew them in from time to time, blowing into the room the heat of heated iron roofs and all this luminous and now completely empty, silent Volga world. He lay with his hands under the back of his head and looked intently in front of him. Then he clenched his teeth, closed his eyelids, feeling the tears rolling down his cheeks from under them, and finally fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the evening sun was already turning reddish yellow behind the curtains. The wind died down, the room was stuffy and dry, like in an oven... And yesterday and this morning were remembered as if they had happened ten years ago.
He slowly got up, slowly washed his face, raised the curtains, rang the bell and asked for the samovar and the bill, and drank tea with lemon for a long time. Then he ordered a cab driver to be brought, things to be taken out, and, sitting in the cab, on its red, faded seat, he gave the footman five whole rubles.
And it looks like, your honor, that it was I who brought you at night! - the driver said cheerfully, taking the reins.
When we went down to the pier, the blue summer night was already shining over the Volga, and many colorful lights were already scattered along the river, and the lights were hanging on the masts of the approaching steamship.
Delivered promptly! - the cab driver said ingratiatingly.
The lieutenant gave him five rubles, took a ticket, walked to the pier... Just like yesterday, there was a soft knock on its pier and slight dizziness from the unsteadiness underfoot, then a flying end, the sound of water boiling and running forward under the wheels a little back the steamer pulled up... And the crowd of people on this ship, already everywhere lit and smelling of kitchen, seemed unusually friendly and good.
The dark summer dawn faded far ahead, gloomily, sleepily and multi-coloredly reflected in the river, which in some places still glowed like trembling ripples in the distance beneath it, under this dawn, and the lights floated and floated back, scattered in the darkness around.
The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.
The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow flared up, freed from daytime affairs; The cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the dusk one could already see how green stars hissed from the wires, - the dull black passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks... Every evening rushed me at this hour to the stretching trotter is my coachman - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner in Prague, the Hermitage, the Metropol, after dinner to theaters, concerts, and then to Yar in Strelna... How all this should end, I don’t know knew and tried not to think, not to think: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all put aside conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation - and at the same time I was incredibly happy with every hour spent near her.
For some reason, she took courses, attended them quite rarely, but attended them. I once asked: “Why?” She shrugged her shoulder: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? In addition, I am interested in history...” She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Church of the Savior, for the sake of the view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano, on which she kept practicing the slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - only one beginning - on the piano and on the mirror-glass, elegant flowers bloomed in cut vases - on my order fresh ones were delivered to her every Saturday - and when I came to see her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, above which for some reason hung a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy, slowly extended her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: “Thank you for the flowers. ..” I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmeier, Przybyszewski - and received the same “thank you” and an outstretched warm hand, sometimes an order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said thoughtfully, stroking my beaver collar, “but it seems that nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard...” It looked like she didn’t need anything : no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had flowers that she liked and didn’t like, she always read all the books that I brought her, she ate a whole box of chocolate in a day, At lunch and dinner she ate as much as I did, she loved pies with burbot fish soup, pink hazel grouse in deep-fried sour cream, sometimes she said: “I don’t understand how people won’t get tired of this all their lives, having lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever man once told me. “The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when going out, she most often put on a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold buckles (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat); and as much as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be mentally delving into something: lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of her. myself: I saw this, sometimes visiting her during the day, because every month she did not leave the house for three or four days at all, she lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read silently.
“You are terribly talkative and restless,” she said, “let me finish reading the chapter...
If I hadn’t been talkative and restless, I might never have recognized you,” I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: one day in December, when I got to the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it while running and dancing on the stage, I spun and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her cheerfully.
“That’s all right,” she said, “but still be silent for a while, read something, smoke...
I can't remain silent! You can’t imagine the full power of my love for you! You don't love me!
I present. As for my love, you know very well that besides my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about that. We can’t read in front of you, let’s drink tea...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the sofa, took cups and saucers from the walnut pile that stood in the corner behind the table, saying whatever came to mind:
Have you finished reading “Fire Angel”?
I finished watching it. It’s so pompous that I’m ashamed to read it.
He was too daring. And then I don’t like yellow-haired Rus' at all.
You don't like everything!
Yes, a lot...
"Odd love!" - I thought and, while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and for me she connected with their smell; outside one window, a huge picture of the snow-gray Moscow across the river lay low in the distance; in the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible; on the contrary, somehow too close, the too-new bulk of Christ the Savior loomed white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws forever hovering around it were reflected with bluish spots... “Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil. - St. Basil and Spas-on-Boru, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...”
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa in only one silk archaluk trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said - I sat next to her in the semi-darkness, without lighting the fire, and kissed her hands and feet, amazing in their smoothness body... And she did not resist anything, but all in silence. I constantly searched for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing fitfully, but all in silence. When she felt that I was no longer able to control myself, she pushed me away, sat down and, without raising her voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat on a swivel stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot intoxication. A quarter of an hour later she came out of the bedroom, dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to today? To Metropol, maybe?
And again we spent the whole evening talking about something unrelated.
Soon after we became close, she said to me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not fit to be a wife. I'm not good, I'm not good...
This didn't discourage me. “We’ll see from there!” - I said to myself in the hope that her decision would change over time and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even here, what was left for me except hope for time? One day, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head:
No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why do you have to torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She remained silent.
Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...
She evenly responded from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! - I exclaimed. “And I will wait for you to know what love and happiness are!”
Happiness, happiness... “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
What's this?
This is what Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand.
Oh, God bless her, with this eastern wisdom!
And again, the whole evening he talked only about strangers - about the new production of the Art Theater, about Andreev's new story... Again, it was enough for me that I was first sitting closely with her in a flying and rolling sleigh, holding her in the smooth fur of a fur coat , then I enter with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant accompanied by a march from “Aida”, eat and drink next to her, hear her slow voice, look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I kissed, I told myself, with enthusiastic gratitude looking at them, at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when the tobacco smoke all around became noisier, she, also smoking and tipsy, would sometimes take me to a separate office, ask me to call the gypsies, and they would enter deliberately noisily, cheekily: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Cossack coat with braid, with the gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head as bare as a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singer with a low forehead under tar bangs... She listened to the songs with a languid, strange smile... At three or four o'clock in the morning I took her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes in happiness, kissing the wet fur of her collar and in some kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought - all the same torment and all the same happiness... Well, still happiness, great happiness!
So January and February passed, Maslenitsa came and went.
On Forgiveness Sunday, she ordered me to come to her at five o’clock in the evening. I arrived, and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, astrakhan hat, and black felt boots.
All Black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully.
Her eyes were joyful and quiet.
How do you know this? Ripids, trikiriyas!
It's you who don't know me.
I didn't know you were so religious.
This is not religiosity. I don’t know what... But I, for example, often go out in the mornings or evenings, when you don’t drag me to restaurants, to the Kremlin cathedrals, and you don’t even suspect it... So: deacons - yes what! Peresvet and Oslyabya! And on two choirs there are two choirs, also all Peresvets: tall, powerful, in long black caftans, they sing, calling to each other - first one choir, then the other - and all in unison and not according to notes, but according to “hooks”. And the inside of the grave was lined with shiny spruce branches, and outside it was frosty, sunny, blinding snow... No, you don’t understand this! Let's go...
The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees; on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws chattered in silence, looking like nuns, and the chimes played subtly and sadly every now and then in the bell tower. Creaking in silence through the snow, we entered the gate, walked along the snowy paths through the cemetery - the sun had just set, it was still quite light, the branches in the frost were marvelously drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset like gray coral, and mysteriously glowed around us with calm, sad lights unquenchable lamps scattered over the graves. I followed her, looking with emotion at her little footprint, at the stars that her new black boots left in the snow - she suddenly turned around, feeling it:
It's true how you love me! - she said, shaking her head in quiet bewilderment.
We stood near the graves of Ertel and Chekhov. Holding her hands in her lowered muff, she looked for a long time at the Chekhov grave monument, then shrugged her shoulder:
What a nasty mixture of Russian leaf style and the Art Theater!
It began to get dark and freezing, we slowly walked out of the gate, near which my Fyodor was obediently sitting on a box.
“We’ll drive a little more,” she said, “then we’ll go eat the last pancakes at Yegorov’s... But it won’t be too much, Fedor, right?”
Somewhere on Ordynka there is a house where Griboyedov lived. Let's go look for him...
And for some reason we went to Ordynka, drove for a long time along some alleys in the gardens, were in Griboyedovsky Lane; but who could tell us which house Griboedov lived in - there wasn’t a soul passing by, and who of them could need Griboyedov? It had long since gotten dark, the frost-lit windows behind the trees were turning pink...
There is also the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent here,” she said.
I laughed:
Back to the monastery again?
No, that's just me...
On the ground floor of Yegorov's tavern in Okhotny Ryad it was full of shaggy, thickly dressed cab drivers cutting up stacks of pancakes, doused in excess with butter and sour cream; it was steamy, like in a bathhouse. In the upper rooms, also very warm, with low ceilings, the Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with grainy caviar with frozen champagne. We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front of the black board of the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands, a lamp was burning, we sat down at a long table on a black leather sofa... The fluff on her upper lip was frosted, the amber of her cheeks turned slightly pink, the blackness of the paradise completely merged with pupil, - I could not take my enthusiastic eyes off her face. And she said, taking a handkerchief from her fragrant muff:
Fine! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India!
You are a gentleman, you cannot understand this whole Moscow the way I do.
I can, I can! - I answered. “And let’s order lunch!”
How do you mean “strong”?
This means strong. How come you don't know? “Gyurgi’s speech...”
Yes, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. “Gyurga’s speech to Svyatoslav, Prince of Seversky: “Come to me, brother, in Moscow” and ordered a strong dinner.”
How good. And now only this Rus' remains in some northern monasteries. Yes, even in church hymns. Recently I went to the Conception Monastery - you can’t imagine how wonderfully the stichera are sung there! And in Chudovoy it’s even better. Last year I kept going there for Strastnaya. Oh, how good it was! There are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, my soul is somehow tender, sad, and all the time there is this feeling of the homeland, its antiquity... All the doors in the cathedral are open, all day long ordinary people come and go, all day long the service... Oh, I’ll leave I’m going somewhere to a monastery, to some very remote one, in Vologda, Vyatka!
I wanted to say that then I too would leave or kill someone so that they would drive me to Sakhalin, I lit a cigarette, lost in excitement, but a floor guard in white pants and a white shirt, belted with a crimson tourniquet, approached and respectfully reminded:
Sorry, sir, smoking is not allowed here...
And immediately, with special obsequiousness, he began quickly:
What would you like with the pancakes? Homemade herbalist? Caviar, salmon? Our sherry is exceptionally good for ears, but for navazhka...
And to the sherry,” she added, delighting me with her kind talkativeness, which did not leave her all evening. And I was already absent-mindedly listening to what she said next. And she spoke with a quiet light in her eyes:
I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that I keep re-reading what I especially like until I know it by heart. “There was a city in the Russian land called Murom, and a noble prince named Paul reigned in it. And the devil introduced a flying serpent to his wife for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, extremely beautiful...”
Jokingly, I made scary eyes:
Oh, what a horror!
This is how God tested her. “When the time came for her blessed death, this prince and princess begged God to repose before them on one day. And they agreed to be buried in a single coffin. And they ordered to carve two grave beds in a single stone. And they also put on the monastic robe at the same time...”
And again my absent-mindedness gave way to surprise and even anxiety: what’s wrong with her today?
And so, that evening, when I took her home at a completely different time than usual, at eleven o’clock, she, saying goodbye to me at the entrance, suddenly detained me when I was already getting into the sleigh:
Wait. Come see me tomorrow evening no earlier than ten. Tomorrow is the “cabbage party” of the Art Theater.
So? - I asked. “Do you want to go to this “cabbage party”?
But you said that you don’t know anything more vulgar than these “cabbages”!
And now I don’t know. And still I want to go.
I mentally shook my head - all quirks, Moscow quirks! - and cheerfully responded:
Ol right!
At ten o'clock in the evening the next day, having gone up in the elevator to her door, I opened the door with my key and did not immediately enter from the dark hallway: behind it it was unusually light, everything was lit - chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under the light lampshade behind the head of the sofa, and the piano sounded the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - increasingly rising, sounding the further, the more languid, more inviting, in somnambulist-blissful sadness. I slammed the hallway door - the sounds stopped and the rustling of a dress was heard. I entered - she stood straight and somewhat theatrically near the piano in a black velvet dress, which made her look thinner, shining with its elegance, the festive headdress of her jet-black hair, the dark amber of her bare arms, shoulders, the tender, full beginning of her breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along her slightly powdered cheeks, coal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; At her temples, black, shiny braids curled in half-rings toward her eyes, giving her the look of an oriental beauty from a popular print.
Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage,” she said, looking at my confused face, “I would respond to applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and to the stalls, and I would imperceptibly but carefully push away with my foot a train so as not to step on it...
At the "cabbage party" she smoked a lot and kept sipping champagne, looked intently at the actors, with lively cries and choruses portraying something as if Parisian, at the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the thick-set Moskvin in pince-nez on his trough-shaped face - both with deliberate With seriousness and diligence, falling backwards, they performed a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience. Kachalov came up to us with a glass in his hand, pale from hops, with heavy sweat on his forehead, on which a tuft of his Belarusian hair hung, raised his glass and, looking at her with feigned gloomy greed, said in his low actor’s voice:
Tsar Maiden, Queen of Shamakhan, your health!
And she smiled slowly and clinked glasses with him. He took her hand, drunkenly fell towards her and almost fell off his feet. He managed and, gritting his teeth, looked at me:
What kind of handsome guy is this? I hate it.
Then the organ wheezed, whistled and thundered, the barrel organ skipped and stomped its polka - and a small Sulerzhitsky, always in a hurry and laughing, flew up to us, gliding, bending over, feigning Gostiny Dvor gallantry, and hastily muttered:
Allow me to invite Tranblanc to the table...
And she, smiling, stood up and, deftly, with a short stamp of her feet, sparkling with her earrings, her blackness and bare shoulders and arms, walked with him among the tables, followed by admiring glances and applause, while he, raising his head, shouted like a goat:
Let's go, let's go quickly
Polka dance with you!
At three o'clock in the morning she stood up, closing her eyes. When we got dressed, she looked at my beaver hat, stroked the beaver collar and went to the exit, saying either jokingly or seriously:
Of course he is beautiful. Kachalov said the truth... “The serpent is in human nature, extremely beautiful...”
On the way she was silent, bowing her head from the bright moonlit snowstorm flying towards her. For a full month he dived in the clouds above the Kremlin - “some kind of glowing skull,” she said. The clock on the Spasskaya Tower struck three, and she also said:
What an ancient sound - something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century.
And in Florence there was exactly the same battle, it reminded me of Moscow...
When Fyodor stopped at the entrance, she lifelessly ordered:
Let him go...
Amazed, - she never allowed her to go up to her at night, - I said in confusion:
Fedor, I'll return on foot...
And we silently reached up in the elevator, entered the night warmth and silence of the apartment with hammers clicking in the heaters. I took off her fur coat, slippery from the snow, she threw a wet down shawl from her hair onto my hands and quickly walked, rustling her silk underskirt, into the bedroom. I undressed, entered the first room and, with my heart sinking as if over an abyss, sat down on the Turkish sofa. Her steps could be heard behind the open doors of the illuminated bedroom, the way she, clinging to the stilettos, pulled her dress over her head... I stood up and went to the doors: she, wearing only swan slippers, stood with her back to me, in front of dressing table, combing with a tortoiseshell comb the black threads of long hair hanging along her face.
“He kept saying that I don’t think much about him,” she said, throwing the comb on the mirror-glass, and, throwing her hair over her back, turned to me: “No, I thought...
At dawn I felt her movement. I opened my eyes and she was staring at me. I rose from the warmth of the bed and her body, she leaned towards me, quietly and evenly saying:
This evening I'm leaving for Tver. For how long, only God knows...
And she pressed her cheek to mine - I felt her wet eyelash blink.
I'll write everything as soon as I arrive. I will write everything about the future. Sorry, leave me now, I'm very tired...
And she lay down on the pillow.
I dressed carefully, timidly kissed her hair and tiptoed out onto the stairs, already brightening with a pale light. I walked on foot through the young sticky snow - there was no longer a blizzard, everything was calm and already visible far along the streets, there was a smell of snow and from the bakeries. I reached Iverskaya, the inside of which was burning hotly and shining with whole bonfires of candles, stood in the crowd of old women and beggars on the trampled snow on my knees, took off my hat... Someone touched me on the shoulder - I looked: some unfortunate old woman was looking at me , wincing with pitiful tears:
Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!
The letter I received two weeks after that was brief - an affectionate but firm request not to wait for her any longer, not to try to look for her, to see: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then, maybe, I’ll decide to take monastic vows.. May God give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment...”
I fulfilled her request. And for a long time he disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, became an alcoholic, sinking more and more in every possible way. Then he began to recover little by little - indifferently, hopelessly... Almost two years have passed since that clean Monday...
In the fourteenth year, on New Year’s Eve, there was the same quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one. I left the house, took a cab and went to the Kremlin. There he went into the empty Archangel Cathedral, stood for a long time, without praying, in its twilight, looking at the faint shimmer of the old gold iconostasis and the tombstones of the Moscow kings - stood, as if waiting for something, in that special silence of an empty church when you are afraid to breathe in her. Coming out of the cathedral, he ordered the cab driver to go to Ordynka, drove at a pace, as then, along dark alleys in gardens with windows illuminated under them, drove along Griboedovsky Lane - and kept crying and crying...
On Ordynka, I stopped a cab at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery: there were black carriages in the courtyard, the open doors of a small illuminated church were visible, and the singing of a girls’ choir flowed sadly and tenderly from the doors. For some reason I definitely wanted to go there. The janitor at the gate blocked my path, asking softly, pleadingly:
You can't, sir, you can't!
How can you not? Can't go to church?
You can, sir, of course you can, I just ask you for God’s sake, don’t go, Grand Duchess Elzavet Fedrovna and Grand Duke Mitriy Palych are there right now...
Arriving in Moscow, I thievishly stayed in inconspicuous rooms in an alley near Arbat and lived painfully, as a recluse, from date to date with her. She visited me only three times these days and each time she entered hastily, saying:
- I’m just for one minute...
She was pale with the beautiful paleness of a loving, excited woman, her voice broke, and the way she, throwing her umbrella anywhere, hurried to lift her veil and hug me, shocked me with pity and delight.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that he suspects something, that he even knows something—maybe he read one of your letters, picked up the key to my desk... I think he’s ready for anything.” capable given his cruel, proud character. Once he directly told me: “I will stop at nothing to defend my honor, the honor of my husband and officer!” Now for some reason he is literally watching my every move, and for our plan to succeed, I have to be terribly careful. He already agrees to let me go, so I inspired him that I would die if I didn’t see the south, the sea, but, for God’s sake, be patient!
Our plan was daring: to leave on the same train to the Caucasian coast and live there in some completely wild place for three or four weeks. I knew this coast, I once lived for some time near Sochi - young, lonely - I remembered those autumn evenings among the black cypress trees, by the cold gray waves for the rest of my life... And she turned pale when I said: “And now I I’ll be there with you, in the mountain jungle, by the tropical sea...” We didn’t believe in the implementation of our plan until the last minute - it seemed to us too much happiness.
It was raining coldly in Moscow, it looked as if summer had already passed and would not return, it was dirty, gloomy, the streets were wet and black, glittering with the open umbrellas of passers-by and the raised tops of cabbies, trembling as they ran. And it was a dark, disgusting evening when I was driving to the station, everything inside me froze from anxiety and cold. I ran through the station and along the platform, pulling my hat over my eyes and burying my face in the collar of my coat.
In the small first class compartment that I had booked in advance, the rain poured noisily on the roof. I immediately lowered the window curtain and, as soon as the porter, wiping his wet hand on his white apron, took the tip and went out, I locked the door. Then he opened the curtain slightly and froze, not taking his eyes off the diverse crowd scurrying back and forth with their things along the carriage in the dark light of the station lamps. We agreed that I would arrive at the station as early as possible, and she as late as possible, so that I would somehow avoid running into her and him on the platform. Now it was time for them to be. I looked more and more tensely - they were all gone. The second bell rang and I was frozen with fear: I was late or he suddenly didn’t let her in at the last minute! But immediately after that I was struck by his tall figure, officer’s cap, narrow overcoat and hand in a suede glove, with which he, striding widely, held her arm. I staggered away from the window and fell into the corner of the sofa. There was a second-class carriage nearby - I mentally saw how he economically entered it with her, looked around to see if the porter had arranged for her well - and took off his glove, took off his cap, kissing her, baptizing her... The third bell deafened me , the moving train plunged me into a daze... The train dispersed, rocking, swaying, then began to move smoothly, at full steam... I thrust a ten-ruble note into the conductor who escorted her to me and carried her things with an icy hand...
When she entered, she didn’t even kiss me, she just smiled pitifully, sitting down on the sofa and taking off her hat, unhooking it from her hair.
“I couldn’t have lunch at all,” she said. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand this terrible role to the end.” And I'm terribly thirsty. Give me Narzana,” she said, saying “you” to me for the first time. “I am convinced that he will follow me.” I gave him two addresses, Gelendzhik and Gagra. Well, in three or four days he will be in Gelendzhik... But God be with him, death is better than this torment...
In the morning, when I went out into the corridor, it was sunny, stuffy, the restrooms smelled of soap, cologne and everything that a crowded carriage smells of in the morning. Behind the windows, clouded with dust and heated, there was a flat, scorched steppe, dusty wide roads were visible, carts drawn by oxen, railway booths with canary circles of sunflowers and scarlet hollyhocks in the front gardens flashed... Then went the boundless expanse of naked plains with mounds and burial grounds, an unbearable dry sun, a sky like a dusty cloud, then the ghosts of the first mountains on the horizon...
She sent him a postcard from Gelendzhik and Gagra, writing that she did not yet know where she would stay.
Then we went down along the coast to the south.
We found a primeval place, overgrown with plane tree forests, flowering bushes, mahogany, magnolias, pomegranates, among which rose fan palms and black cypresses...
I woke up early and, while she was sleeping, before tea, which we drank at seven o’clock, I walked through the hills into the forest thickets. The hot sun was already strong, pure and joyful. In the forests, the fragrant fog glowed azurely, dispersed and melted, behind the distant wooded peaks the eternal whiteness of the snowy mountains shone... Back I walked through the sultry bazaar of our village, smelling of burning dung from the chimneys: trade was in full swing there, it was crowded with people, with riding horses and donkeys - in the mornings many different mountaineers gathered there for the market - Circassian women walked smoothly in black clothes long to the ground, in red boots, with their heads wrapped in something black, with quick bird-like glances that sometimes flashed from this mournful wrapping.
Then we went to the shore, which was always completely empty, swam and lay in the sun until breakfast. After breakfast - all the fish fried on a scallop, white wine, nuts and fruits - in the sultry darkness of our hut under the tiled roof, hot, cheerful streaks of light stretched through the through shutters.
When the heat subsided and we opened the window, the part of the sea visible from it between the cypress trees standing on the slope below us was the color of violet and lay so evenly, peacefully that it seemed there would never be an end to this peace, this beauty.
At sunset, amazing clouds often piled up beyond the sea; they glowed so magnificently that she sometimes lay down on the ottoman, covered her face with a gauze scarf and cried: another two, three weeks - and again Moscow!
The nights were warm and impenetrable, fire flies swam, flickered, and shone with topaz light in the black darkness, tree frogs rang like glass bells. When the eye got used to the darkness, stars and mountain ridges appeared above, trees that we had not noticed during the day loomed above the village. And all night long one could hear from there, from the dukhan, the dull knocking of a drum and a guttural, mournful, hopelessly happy cry, as if all of the same endless song.
Not far from us, in a coastal ravine that descended from the forest to the sea, a small, transparent river quickly jumped along a rocky bed. How wonderfully its brilliance shattered and simmered at that mysterious hour when the late moon gazed intently from behind the mountains and forests, like some wondrous creature!
Sometimes at night terrible clouds would roll in from the mountains, a vicious storm would blow, and in the noisy, deathly blackness of the forests magical green abysses would continually open up and antediluvian thunderclaps would crack in the heavenly heights. Then eaglets woke up and meowed in the forests, the leopard roared, the chicks yelped... Once a whole flock of them came running to our illuminated window - they always run to their homes on such nights - we opened the window and looked at them from above, and they stood under a brilliant shower and yapped, asking to come to us... She cried joyfully, looking at them.
He looked for her in Gelendzhik, Gagra, and Sochi. The next day, after arriving in Sochi, he swam in the sea in the morning, then shaved, put on clean underwear, a snow-white jacket, had breakfast at his hotel on the restaurant terrace, drank a bottle of champagne, drank coffee with chartreuse, and slowly smoked a cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the sofa and shot himself in the temples with two revolvers.
