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“Everything was different before,” Bernard said, “before, when you want, you gasp and enter the river.” And now - how many postcards there were, how many telephone calls it took to drill this well, this tunnel through which we converged, all together, in Hampton Court! How quickly life flies from January to December! We have all been caught up and carried along by a stream of utter nonsense, so familiar that it no longer casts a shadow; no time for comparisons; God forbid you and I remember in a hurry; and in such a half-asleep we are carried along with the current, and we raked with our hands the reeds that surrounded the backwater. We fight, we gallop like fish flying above the water to catch the train to Waterloo. But no matter how you take off, you will still flop into the water again. I can no longer sail away South Seas, never, never. A trip to Rome is the limit of my pilgrimages. I have sons and daughters. I fit like a wedge into the predetermined gap in the folding picture.
But it is only my body, the appearance - the elderly gentleman whom you call Bernard, is fixed once and for all - so I would like to think. I think now more abstractly, more freely than in my youth, when, with the Christmas anticipation of a child rummaging in a stocking, I searched for myself: “Oh, what’s here? And here? Is that all? Is there another surprise there? - and further in the same spirit. Now I know what is in the packages; and I don't really care about it. I scatter left and right, widely, like a fan, like a sower scatters seeds, and they fall through the purple sunset, fall into the glossy, bare, plowed earth.
Phrase. An uncooked phrase. And what are phrases? They left me so little, and nothing to lay out on the table next to Susan's hand; together with Neville's safe conduct, pull it out of his pocket. I am not an authority on law, or medicine, or finance. I am covered with phrases like damp straw; I glow with phosphoric brilliance. And each of you feels when I say: “I glow. I am enlightened." The boys, I remember, felt: “Nice job! I bent this! ”, when the phrases boiled on my lips under those elms near the cricket field. And they themselves boiled; they ran away after my phrases. But I'm withering alone. Loneliness is my death.
I go from door to door, like those monks in the Middle Ages who fooled gullible maidens and wives with tirades and ballads. I am a wanderer who pays for his overnight stay with a ballad; I am undemanding, I am an indulgent guest; sometimes I recline in the best chambers under a canopy; otherwise I’m lying on the bare straw in the barn. I have nothing against fleas, but I don't mind silks either. I'm exceptionally tolerant. I'm not a moralist. I understand too much how fleeting life is and how many temptations there are to put everything on the shelf. Although - I’m not such a mug as you conclude - right? - according to my chatter. Just in case of emergency, I have a truly devastating blade of mockery in stock. But I'm easily distracted. That's the thing. I make up stories. I can make toys out of nothing. Girl sitting by the door village house; waiting; but who? Did they seduce her, poor thing, or not? The director sees a hole in the carpet. Sighs. His wife, running her still luxuriant hair through her fingers, is thinking... et cetera. A wave of the hand, a pause at an intersection, someone throwing a cigarette into a gutter - all the stories. But which one is worth it? I don't know. That’s why I keep my phrases like rags in a closet and wait: maybe someone will like them. So I wait, I think, I make one note, then another, and I don’t really cling to life. I will be shaken off like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, forever absorbing, boiling every second, spreads like mercury in different directions, in different directions at once. But Louis, tough and strict for all his wild look, in his attic, in his office, came up with unshakable verdicts about everything that should be known.
It breaks, Louis said, the thread that I spin; your laughter tears her up, your indifference, and also your beauty. Ginny broke that thread a long time ago when she kissed me in the garden. Those braggers at school made fun of my Australian accent and they tore her up. “The point is,” I say; but immediately I stumble painfully: from vanity. “Listen,” I say, “to the nightingale who sings among the trampling crowds; conquests and travels. Believe me...” - and immediately I’m torn in two. I make my way over broken tiles and broken glass. In the light of strange lights, everyday life becomes spotted, like a leopard, and alien. Here, let’s say, a moment of reconciliation, a moment of our meeting, a sunset moment, and wine, and the leaves are swaying, and a boy in white flannel trousers is coming from the river, carrying a pillow for the boat - but for me everything turns black from the shadows of dungeons, from torment and atrocities what one person does to another. I am so unfortunate that I cannot shield myself with the sunset purple from the most serious accusations that my mind makes and makes against us - even now, even when we are sitting together like this. Where is the exit, I ask myself, where is that bridge...? How can I bring these blinding, dancing visions into one line that would absorb and connect everything? So I think hard; and meanwhile you take a bad look at my compressed mouth, my sunken cheeks, my always cloudy forehead.
But, I pray you, finally pay attention to my cane, to my vest. I inherited a solid mahogany desk in a map-lined office. Our ships are enviably famous for the luxury of their cabins. There are swimming pools and gymnasiums. I now wear a white vest and consult a notepad before making an appointment.
In this ironic, cunning manner, I distract you from my trembling, tender, infinitely young and defenseless soul. After all, I am always the youngest, naive; I am the easiest to be taken aback; I get ahead of myself, keeping my sympathy ready for everything awkward and funny: like soot on my nose, like an unzipped fly. I feel all the humiliation of the world inside me. But I’m also tough, I’m made of stone. I don’t understand how you can blab that life itself is luck. Your childishness, your delight: ah! like a kettle boiling, ah! how gently the wind picked up Ginny’s spotted scarf, it floats like a cobweb - yes, for me, this is the same as throwing silk ribbons into the eyes of an angry bull. I condemn you. And yet, my heart yearns for you. I would go with you to the ends of the world. And yet, it’s best for me to be alone. I am luxurious in gold and purple attire. And yet what I love most is the view of the chimneys; cats scratching their skinny backs on spongy tiles; broken windows; the hoarse jingle of bells falling from some inconspicuous belfry.
“I see what’s in front of me,” Ginny said. - This scarf, these wine-red stains. This glass. Mustard. Flower. I love things that I can touch and taste. I love when the rain turns into snow and you can touch it. But, you know, I’m dashing, and I’m much braver than all of you, and therefore I don’t dilute my beauty with tediousness for fear of getting burned. I swallow it undiluted; it is made of flesh; that's what. The body rules my fantasies. They are not as intricate and snowy as Louis's. I don't like your skinny cats and shabby pipes. The pitiful beauty of these roofs makes me sad. Men and women, in uniforms, wigs and robes, bowler hats, tennis shirts with a beautifully open collar, an endless variety of women's rags (I won't miss a single one) - that's what I adore. Together with them I join the halls, halls, here and there, wherever they go. He shows a horse's horseshoe. This one locks and unlocks the drawers of his collection. I'm never alone. I follow the regiment of my brothers. My mother, no less, went to the call of the drum, my father to the call of the sea. I’m like a dog who marches along the street to the beat of regimental music, but then he stops to study the smell of wood, then he sniffs at an interesting spot, then he suddenly blows across the street after a vulgar mongrel, and then, raising his paw, he catches a charming breath from the door of the butcher shop. Wherever it took me! Men - and how many there were! - they looked up from the walls and hurried towards me. You just have to raise your hand. They fly like little darlings to the place of the appointed meeting - whether to a chair on the balcony, to a shop window on the corner. Your torment, your doubts are resolved for me from night to night, sometimes with a single touch of a finger under the tablecloth when we are sitting at dinner - my body has become so fluid that from a simple touch of a finger a drop fills, and it sparkles, trembles and falls into oblivion.
I sat in front of the mirror, the way you sit and write or add up numbers at a desk. And so, in front of the mirror, in my temple, in the bedroom, I critically examined my nose and my chin; and lips - they open so much that the gums are visible. I peered. I noticed. I selected: yellow, white, shiny or matte, straight or curvy - whichever suits best. With one I am flighty, with the other I am tense, I am cold, like a silver icicle, I burn like a golden candle flame. As I ran, I flew like an arrow, I rushed with all my strength, until I dropped. His shirt, over there in the corner, was white; then it was red; flames and smoke enveloped us; after a raging fire - we did not raise our voices, we sat on the rug by the fireplace and whispered the secrets of the soul quietly, as if into a sink, so that no one in the sleepy house would hear us, only once I heard the cook tossing and turning, and since we accepted the ticking hours for steps - we burned to the ground, and there was no trace left, not a bone, not a curl to store in a locket, as is your custom. And now I’m turning gray; I'm getting stupid; but in the bright sun I look at my face in the mirror, I perfectly see my nose, chin, lips, which open so that my gums are visible. But I'm not afraid of anything.
There were lanterns there, Rhoda said, and the trees had not yet shed their leaves, there, along the road from the station. It was still possible to hide behind these leaves. But I didn't. I walked straight to you, I didn’t zigzag, as always, to delay the horror of the first minute. But I only trained my body. My gut is not trained in anything; I fear, hate, love, despise you - and I envy you, and it will never, never be easy for me with you. Approaching from the station, abandoning the protective shade of foliage and postal stands, I saw from afar, by your raincoats and umbrellas, that you were standing, leaning on something old, common; that you stand firmly on your feet; you have your own attitude towards children, towards power, towards fame, love and society; and I have nothing. I have no face.
Here in the hall you see deer antlers, glasses; salt shakers; yellow stains on the tablecloth. "Waiter!" - Bernard says. "Bread!" - says Susan. And the waiter comes up. He brings bread. And I see the edge of the cup, like a mountain, and only part of the horns, and the highlight on this vase, like a chasm of darkness - with bewilderment and horror. Your voices are like the crackling of trees in the forest. It's the same with your faces, their bulges and hollows. How beautiful they were, distant, motionless, at midnight, near the fence of the park! Behind you, white, foamy, the newborn moon glides, fishermen at the end of the world choose their nets and cast them. The wind ruffles the upper leaves of pristine trees. (We are sitting in Hampton Court.) The parrots scream, breaking the dead silence of the jungle. (The tram screeched as it turned.) The swallow dips its wings in the midnight pools. (We are talking.) I try to embrace these limits while we sit together. We must undergo this penance - Hampton Court - at seven thirty sharp.
But since these cute bagels and bottles of wine, and your faces, beautiful with all their bulges and hollows, and a pleasant tablecloth, cozy yellow spots - they smash into a gloss the attempts of the mind in the end (as I dream, when the bed floats beneath me in space) to hug the whole world - you will have to delve into the antics of individuals. I will shudder when you come to me with your children, your poems, chills - well, what else amuses and torments you. But you can't fool me. No matter how you climb or cry out to me, I will still fall through the thin sheet into the fiery depths - alone. And you won't rush to help. More heartless than medieval executioners, you will let me fall, and when I fall, you will tear me to pieces. And yet, there are moments when the walls of the soul become thinner; and it is not separated from anything, it absorbs everything into itself; and it seems then that together we could blow such an incredible soap bubble so that the sun would rise and set in it, and we would take with us the blue of noon and the shadow of midnight and run away from here and now.
Drop by drop, Bernard said, minutes of silence are falling. Souls flow under the slope and splash down into the puddles. Forever alone, alone, alone - I listen as the pauses fall and diverge in circles, circles. Well-fed and drunk, at peace and respectable age. Loneliness is my death, but here I am, dropping pauses, drop by drop.
But these pauses, falling, make me pockmarked, spoil my nose, like a snowman left in the yard in the rain. I am spreading out, I am losing my features, I can no longer be distinguished from others. Eka importance. Well, what's important? We had an excellent dinner. Fish, veal cutlets, wine dulled the sharp teeth of selfishness. The worries have subsided. Louis, the most vain of us, is no longer worried about what they will think of him. Neville's torment calmed down. Let others prosper - that's what he thinks. Susan hears the sweet snoring of all her sleepy children at once. Go to sleep, she whispers. Rhoda brought her ships to the shore. They drowned, they anchored - it doesn’t matter to her anymore. We are ready, without any whims, to accept what the world offers us. And it even seems to me that our earth is simply a pebble that accidentally fell off the face of the sun, and throughout all the depths of space, there is no life anywhere, anywhere.
In such silence it seems, - Susan said, - that not a leaf will ever fall, and a bird will never fly.
It was as if some miracle had happened, - Ginny said, - and life took over and stopped in place.
And,” Rhoda said, “we don’t have to live anymore.”
But just listen,” Louis said, “how the world passes through the abysses of space.” It thunders; Illuminated stripes of the past flash by, our kings, queens; we left; our civilization; Nile; and all life. We dissolved - separate drops; we became extinct, lost in the abyss of time, in the darkness.
The pauses fall; the pauses fall, - Bernard spoke. - But listen; tick-tock, tick-tock; tu-u, tu-u; the world is calling us back to itself. I heard for a moment the thundering wind of darkness as we passed beyond life; and then - tick-tock, tick-tock (clock), toot, toot (cars). We landed; went ashore; All six of us are sitting at a table. The thought of my own nose brings me to my senses. I get up; “We have to fight,” I yell, remembering the shape of my nose. “We must fight!” - and belligerently hit the table with a spoon.
Oppose yourself to this immense chaos, - Neville said, - this formless stupidity. That soldier cuddling with his nanny under a tree is more charming than all the stars in heaven. But sometimes a trembling star rises in the sky, and suddenly you think how wonderfully beautiful the world is, and we ourselves are larvae, distorting even the trees with our lust.
(- But still, Louis, - Rhoda said, - it wasn’t quiet for long. Here they are smoothing out the napkins near their cutlery. “Who’s coming?” - Ginny says; and Neville sighs, remembering that Percival will never come. Ginny’s mirror took it out, looked at herself like an artist, slid the powder down her nose and, after a moment's hesitation, gave her lips just the right amount of redness - just as Susan, watching this preparation with contempt and fear, unbuttoned the top button on her coat. , then she’ll button it up again. She’s getting ready for something, but something else.
They say to themselves, Louis said, “It's time. “I’m nothing yet,” that’s what they say. “My face will look glorious on the blackness of endless spaces...” They do not finish their sentences. “It’s time, it’s time,” they repeat. “Otherwise the park will be closed.” And we will go with them, Rhoda, caught up in the current, but we will be a little behind, right?
Like conspirators who have something to whisper about, Rhoda said.)
Yes, indeed,” Bernard said, “here we are walking along this alley, and I definitely remember that some king fell from his horse onto a molehill here.” But isn’t it strange - against the backdrop of the swirling abysses of endless time, imagining a tiny figure with a golden teapot on his head? The figurines, let’s say, are gradually regaining their importance in my eyes, but here’s what they wear on their heads! Our English past is a momentary glow. And people put teapots on their heads and say: “I am the king!” No, as we walk along the alley, I honestly try to restore my understanding of time, but because of this fluttering darkness in my eyes, it eludes me. This palace for a moment becomes weightless, like a cloud floating in the sky. It’s such a mind game to place kings on thrones, one after another, with crowns on their heads. Well, what are we ourselves, when we walk side by side, against what? With a stray, fugitive fire in ourselves, which we call mind and soul, how can we cope with such an avalanche? And what is eternal? Our lives also spread away along unlit alleys, during this strip of time, unidentified. Neville once launched poetry into my head. Suddenly believing in immortality, I shouted: “And I know what Shakespeare knew.” But when was it...
It’s incomprehensible, funny,” Neville said, “we are wandering, and time is moving backwards.” Runs like a long dog gallop. The car is working. The gates are turning gray from antiquity. Three centuries melt away like a blink. King William climbs onto his horse in a wig, the ladies of the court sweep the dirt with embroidered crinolines. I am ready to believe that the fate of Europe is a matter of colossal importance, and, although it is still terribly funny, the basis of the foundations is the Battle of Blenheim. Yes, I declare as we pass through these gates - this is the real thing; I am a subject of King George.
As we walk along the alley, - Louis said, - I lean slightly towards Ginny, Bernard is on the arm with Neville, and Susan squeezes my palm - it’s so hard not to cry, calling ourselves little children, praying that God will protect us, while we are sleeping. How sweet it is to sing together, holding hands, afraid of the dark, while Miss Curry plays the harmonium.
The cast iron gate opened - Ginny spoke. - The terrible jaws of time no longer clang. So we conquered the abyss of space with lipstick, powder, gauze handkerchiefs.
“I’m holding on, I’m holding on,” Susan said. - I hold tightly to this hand, to someone’s hand, with hatred, with love; does it matter?
The spirit of silence, the spirit of disembodiment has come upon us, - Rhoda said, - and we enjoy momentary relief (it’s not very often that you get rid of anxiety), and the walls of the soul become transparent. Ren's palace - like the quartet that played for the unhappy and callous people in that hall - forms a rectangle. A square is placed on a rectangle, and we say: “This is our home. The structure is already visible. Everyone almost fits in.”
That flower,” Bernard said, “that carnation that stood in the vase then, on the table, in the restaurant, when we dined with Percival, became a six-sided flower; from six lives.
And a mysterious illumination, Louis said, shines through behind these yew trees.
And how difficult it is, with what labor it was built,” Ginny said.
Marriage, death, travel, friendship, - Bernard said, - the city, nature; children and all that; a multifaceted substance carved from darkness; double flower. Let's stand a moment; Let's see what we've built. Let it sparkle against the backdrop of yew trees. Life. Here! And it passed. And it went out.
They disappear, Louis said. - Susan and Bernard. Neville and Ginny. Well, you and I, Rhoda, let’s stand near this stone urn. I wonder what song we'll hear now that these couples have disappeared under the shadow of the groves and Ginny, pretending to distinguish water lilies, points at them with a gloved hand, and Susan says to Bernard, whom she loves all her life: “My ruined life, my lost life.” life?" And Neville, holding Ginny’s hand with crimson marigolds, over the pond, over the moonlit water, calls out: “Love, love,” and she, imitating the famous bird, echoes: “Love, love?” What song are we hearing?
“They disappear, go to the pond,” Rhoda said. - They glide through the grass, furtively and yet confidently, as if our pity was presented with its ancient right: not to be disturbed. There was a rush to my soul; they were picked up; they left us, they could not do otherwise. Darkness closed in behind them. Whose song do we hear - an owl, a nightingale, a wren? The steamer is humming; sparks slide along the wires; the trees sway heavily and bend. A glow hung over London. The old woman peacefully wanders away, and a belated fisherman comes down the terrace with a fishing rod. Neither movement, nor sound - nothing can hide from us.
The bird is flying home,” Louis said. - The evening opens its eyes and runs around the bushes with a misty gaze before falling asleep. How to understand, how to accommodate that inarticulate, that collective message that they send to us, and not only them, but how many more dead, girls, boys, adult men and women, wandered here under that king, under the other?
A load fell into the night, Rhoda said, and pulled her all down. Every tree is heavy with shadow, and not the one it casts. We hear the beating of drums on the rooftops of a hungry city, and the Turks are treacherous and greedy. We hear them bark as if they were dogs barking: “Open up! Open up!” Do you hear how the tram squealed, how the sparks rustled along the rails? We hear the birches and beeches lifting their branches, as if the bride has thrown off her silk nightgown, comes to the door and says: “Open, open.”
“Everything is as if it were alive,” Louis said, “there is no death tonight—nowhere.” Stupidity on this male face, old age on this female, it seems, could resist the spell and reintroduce death into circulation. But where is death, tonight? All the rudeness, all the nonsense and dregs, this and that, like glass shards, are caught up in this blue, red-finned surf, and it rolls towards the shore, carrying away countless fish, and breaks at our feet.
If only we could rise like this, together, high, high, look down, - Rhoda said, - and without anyone supporting, just not touching, stand and stand; but in your ears there is a rustle of praise and ridicule, and I hate concessions and deals, the good and evil of human lips, I believe in only loneliness and also in the power of death, and therefore we are separated.
Forever, - Louis said, - forever separated. Hugs among the ferns, and love, love, love over the pond - we sacrificed everything and stand like conspirators who have something to whisper about next to this stone urn. But look, while we are standing, a swell passes along the horizon. Higher, higher they pull the net. Here she came to the surface of the water. Small silver fish flash across the surface. They jump, fight, and are thrown ashore. Life dumps its catch on the grass. But someone is coming towards us. Men or women? They are still covered in the indistinct covering of the surf into which they plunged.
Well, - Rhoda said, - we passed by this tree and acquired an ordinary human appearance. Just men, just women. They remove the covers of the surf, and amazement goes away, horror goes away. Pity returns when they, like the remnants of a defeated army, step into the moonlight - our representatives who every night (here or in Greece) go out to battle and return wounded, with dead faces. Here the light falls on them again. They have faces. It's Bernard, Susan, Ginny and Neville again, the ones we know. But where does this fear come from? This trembling? Where does such humiliation come from? I’m trembling again, as I always trembled, from hatred and horror, when I feel like they’re hooking me with a hook and dragging me; they recognize you, call out to you, grab your hands, stare at you. But as soon as they speak, and from the very first words the unforgettable, unsteady tone that always deceives expectations, and the hands, raking in thousands of sunk days with every movement, disarms me.
“Something is shining and dancing,” Louis said. - The illusion returns as they walk towards us along this alley. Again, excitement, questions. What do I think about you? What do you think of me? Who am I? And you? - and the pulse quickens, and the eyes sparkle, and off we go again, and the madness of an inherently personal existence, without which life would collapse and perish, begins all over again. Here they are nearby. The southern sun shines on this urn; we are diving into the tide of an angry, merciless sea. Lord, help us play our parts as we greet them upon our return - Bernard and Susan, Ginny and Neville.
We violated something with our presence,” Bernard said. - The whole world, maybe.
But we can barely breathe,” Neville said, “we are so tired.” Such dullness, such torment that we only want to unite with the body of our mother, from which we were torn away. Everything else is disgusting, strained and boring. Ginny's yellow scarf turned moth-grey in this light; Susan's eyes went dark. We are almost indistinguishable from the river. For some reason, only the light of a cigarette marks us with a cheerful emphasis. And sadness is mixed with pleasure: why left you, to tear the pattern; yielding to the temptation to squeeze out, in private, such a blacker, more bitter juice, but it also contains sweetness. And now we are dead tired.
After our fire, - Ginny said, - there was nothing left that was stored in medallions.
I stand, dissatisfied, with my mouth open, catching everything, - Susan said, - what escaped me was not given to me: like a chick opening its beak.
Let's stay here a little longer, Bernard said, before we leave. Let's wander over the river - almost alone. After all, it’s almost night time. People returned home. How comforting it is to watch when the lights go out in the windows of shopkeepers on the other side. Here - one fire went out, here's another. What do you think their revenue is today? Just enough to pay rent, food, light and clothes for the children. But just right. What a feeling of portability of life these lights in the windows of the shopkeepers on the other side give us! Saturday will come, and maybe we can even afford cinema. Probably, before turning off the lights, they go out into the courtyard to admire the gigantic rabbit curled up comfortably in its wooden cage. This is the same rabbit that will be eaten at Sunday lunch. And then they turn off the lights. And they fall asleep. And for thousands, sleep is only warmth, and silence, and momentary fun with some outlandish dream. “I sent a letter,” the greengrocer thinks, “to the Sunday newspaper. What if I get lucky with this football betting and get five hundred pounds? And we'll kill the rabbit. Life is a pleasant thing. Life is a good thing. I sent a letter. We'll kill the rabbit." And he falls asleep.
And so on. But just listen. There's a sound like clutch plates clinking. This is a happy concatenation of events, one after another following on our path. Tink-knock-knock-knock. We must, we must, we must. We must go, we must sleep, we must wake up, get up - a sober, merciful word that we pretend to scold, which we press to our chests, without which we are subhuman. How we idolize this sound - the clang-knock-knock-knock of clutch plates.
But now - far away on the river I hear a choir; the song of those same braggarts, they are returning on buses after a day's boat trip. But they sing resolutely the same way as they used to sing for the whole winter, night courtyard, or in the summer open windows when they got drunk, they destroyed furniture - everyone wore striped hats, and their heads turned in one direction, as if on command, when that ruler turned the corner; and how I wanted to go to them.
Because of this chorus, and the swirling water, and the wind growling more and more noticeably - we are leaving. Somehow we crumble. Here! Something important has fallen off. I want to sleep. But we have to go; I have to catch the train; go back to the station - must, must, must. We stumble side by side, completely empty. I'm not there - only my heels are burning and my overworked thighs are aching. We seem to have been wandering for an eternity. But where? I can't remember. I'm like a log quietly sliding into a waterfall. I'm not a judge. Nobody needs my judgment. Houses and trees twilightly mixed into one. What is this pillar? Or is it someone coming? Here it is, the station, and if the train cuts me in two, I will grow together on the other side, single, indivisible. But what’s strange is that I’m still squeezing the return half of the ticket to Waterloo in my fingers right hand, even now, even when I sleep.
The sun has set. The sky and sea became indistinguishable. The waves, having broken, covered the shore with large white fans, sent white shadows into the depths of the ringing grottoes and, sighing, ran back along the pebbles.
The tree shook its branches and shook off the leaves from the rain. The leaves were laid down quietly, doomed, laid down to die. Gray and black fell into the garden from the vessel that previously held the red light. Black shadows lay between the stems. The blackbird fell silent, and the worm was sucked back into its narrow hole. Every now and then, gray, empty straw blew from the old nest, and it lay on the dark grass, between rotten apples. The light had gone from the wall of the barn, and the viper's skin hung empty from the nail. Everything in the room shifted, changed beyond recognition. The clear line of the brush swelled and became crooked; the cabinets and chairs melted into one continuous, heavy blackness. Everything hung from floor to ceiling in a wide, trembling curtain of darkness. The mirror became dark, like the entrance to a cave, obscured by hanging ivy.
The mountains melted and became insubstantial. Will-o'-the-wisps crashed into invisible, sunken roads like fluffy wedges, but there was not a light in the folded wings of the mountains and not a sound except the cry of a bird calling out to the loneliest tree. At the edge of the cliffs, having combed the forest, the air rumbled evenly, and the water, cooled in the countless icy depressions of the sea, rumbled.
Darkness rolled through the air in waves; it covered houses, mountains, trees, like waves washing the sides of a sunken ship. Darkness washed the streets, swirled around late-arriving loners, and swallowed them up; washed couples hugging under the rainy darkness of an elm tree in full summer foliage. The darkness rolled its waves along the overgrown alleys, along the wrinkled grass, flooding the lonely thorn bush and the empty snail houses at its roots. Climbing higher and higher, the darkness flooded the bare slopes of the highlands and came across the jagged peaks, where the snow always lies on the cliffs, even when the streams boil in the valley, and the yellow grape leaves, and the girls look from the verandas at this snow, covering their faces with fans. They too were covered in darkness.
Well, - Bernard said, - let's draw a line. I will explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we don’t know each other (although I met you once, it seems to me, on board a ship sailing to Africa), we can talk without hiding. I was overcome by the illusion that something was fixed for a moment, that it had weight, depth, that something was complete. And it seems that this is my life. If only it were possible, I would give it to you in its entirety. I would break it off like a bunch of grapes is broken off. He would say: “If you please. Here's my life."
But unfortunately, what I see (this full of images ball), you can't see. You see the one sitting opposite you at the table, an elderly gentleman, in full body, with gray temples. You see how I take a napkin and straighten it. I pour myself a glass of wine. You see how the door opens behind me, someone enters and leaves. And in order for you to understand me, to give you an idea of my life, I must tell you a story - and there are so many of them, so many of them - about childhood, about school, about love, marriage, about death and so on; and it's all completely untrue. But no, we, like children, tell each other stories and, in order to decorate them, we compose funny, colorful, beautiful phrases. How tired I am of these stories, these phrases, charmingly plopping onto the ground with all their paws! Yes, but clear sketches of life on a sheet of notepaper also bring little joy. So, involuntarily, you begin to dream about the conventional babble that lovers use, about abrupt, unintelligible speech, like shuffling along a panel. You begin to look for a plan that is more appropriate to those moments of victories and failures that irrefutably run into one another. When, say, I’m lying in a ditch, it’s a windy day, and it’s been raining, and clouds are floating across the sky, huge clouds, torn clouds, tufts. It is this confusion, this height, this detachment and rage that fascinates me. Large clouds endlessly change and float away; something ominous, eerie swirls, breaks off, rears up, tumbles and crawls away, and I, forgotten, tiny, lie in the ditch. And I don’t see any story, no plan then.
And yet, while we are having dinner, let’s look through these scenes, like children turning the pages of a picture book, and the nanny points her finger and says: “Here is a dog. Here is the steamboat." Let's turn these pages, and to amuse you, I will write explanations in the margins.
At first there was a nursery, and the windows looked out onto the garden, and then, beyond it, there was the sea. I saw something shining - the dresser handle, no less. And then Mrs. Constable lifts the sponge over her head, she squeezes it out, and sharp arrows prick me, left, right, all over the ridge. And from the time we breathe, until the end of our days, when we bump into a chair, a table, a woman, we are pierced through and through by these arrows - when we wander through the garden, we drink this wine. Sometimes I pass by a lit window in the house where a child was born, and I’m ready to pray that they don’t wring out the sponge on this brand new little body. Yes, and then there was that garden, and a canopy of currant leaves seemed to cover everything; flowers burned like sparks in the green depths; and a rat covered in worms under a rhubarb leaf; and the fly was buzzing and buzzing in the nursery under the ceiling, and there were plates and plates with innocent sandwiches in a row. All these things happen in a moment and last forever. Faces appear. Darting around the corner, “Hello,” you say, “here’s Ginny.” Here comes Neville. Here is Louis in gray flannel pants, with a snake clasp on the trouser belt. Here's Rhoda." She had this bowl and she let white petals float across it. It was Susan who cried that day when I was in the barn with Neville; and my indifference melted away. Neville didn't melt. “Consequently,” I said, “I am not Neville, I am on my own,” an amazing discovery. Susan was crying and I followed her. Her handkerchief was all wet, her narrow back was shaking like a pump handle, she was crying because she couldn’t do it - and my nerves couldn’t stand it. “This is unbearable,” I said, sitting next to her on those beech roots, and they were hard as a skeleton. Then for the first time I felt the presence of those enemies who change, but they are always nearby; the forces we are fighting against. Surrendering without complaint is out of the question. “You take this road, peace,” you say, “and I go there.” And - “Let's explore the area!” - I shouted, and I jumped up and ran down the hill, Susan after me, and we saw the groom splashing around the yard in rubber boots. Far, far below, behind the thick foliage, gardeners were sweeping the meadow with huge brooms. The lady was sitting, writing. Shocked, dumbfounded, I thought: “I cannot stop a single swing of the broom. They sweep and sweep. And the lady writes and writes.” How strange - you can’t stop these brooms or drive this lady away. So they stuck with me for the rest of my life. It's like suddenly waking up in Stonehenge, in a circle of giant stones, in a circle of spirits and enemies. And then that wood pigeon fluttered out of the foliage. And - having fallen in love for the first time in my life - I composed a phrase - a poem about a wood pigeon from one single phrase, because something suddenly appeared in my mind, a window, a transparency through which everything is visible. And then - again bread and butter, and again the buzzing of flies in the nursery under the ceiling, and islands of light tremble on it, unsteady, iridescent, and from the sharp fingers of the chandelier blue puddles flow into the corners, by the fireplace. Day after day, sitting over tea, we observed this picture.
But we were all different. That wax, that virgin wax that covers the ridge, melted on each in its own way. The rumbling of a groom who has thrown a girl into the gooseberry bushes; laundry tearing from the line; dead man in a ditch; an apple tree frozen under the moon; rat in worms; a chandelier pouring blue - different things were imprinted differently on the wax for everyone. Louis was horrified by the properties of human flesh; Our kind is cruelty; Susan couldn't share; Neville wanted order; Ginny - love; and so on. We suffered terribly as we became separate beings.
I, however, saved myself from such extremes, outlived many of my friends, blurred, turned grey, a shot sparrow, as they say, for the panorama of life, no, not from the roof, but from the fourth floor - that’s what delights me, and not that a woman told the man, even if this man is myself. And therefore - how could they harass me at school? How could they poison me? Let's say our director entered the chapel, leaning forward as if in a stormy wind he went out onto the deck of a warship and gave commands through a megaphone, because people in power are always theatrical - did I hate him like Neville, did I hate him did you read it, like Louis? I took notes as we sat together in the chapel. There were columns, and shadows, and brass tombstones, and the boys were teasing each other and exchanging stamps under the cover of prayer books; the pump wheezed; the director spoke about immortality and that we should behave as men should; Percival scratched his thigh. I took notes for my stories; he drew portraits in the margins of his notebook and thus became even more independent. Here is one or two images that my memory has preserved.
Percival sat looking straight ahead in the chapel that day. His manner was to raise his hand and smear himself on the back of his head. Every movement he made was an unimaginable miracle. We all tried to slap ourselves on the back of the head in the same way - no matter what! He possessed that special beauty that shies away from affection. Without thinking about the future, he swallowed everything that was written for our edification, without any comment (Latin just begs to be spoken), and with a majestic inviolability, which later protected him from so many basenesses and humiliations, he believed that flaxen braids and rosy cheeks Lucy is the height of beauty and femininity. So guarded, his taste later became remarkably subtle. But here we need music, some kind of wild choir. So that the hunting song flies out the window, the distant echo of a fast, unexpected life, like a cry in the mountains, sweeps away, and it is not there. What stuns, what pains, what we cannot understand, what turns symmetry into absurdity - everything suddenly falls on my soul when I think about it. That surveillance device is broken. The columns collapsed; the director floats away; I suddenly feel an incomprehensible delight. He was thrown from his horse at full gallop, and as I walked along Shaftesbury Avenue today, those dim, indistinct faces that emerge from the underground door, and the many indistinguishable Indians, and people dying of hunger and disease, and abandoned women, and beaten dogs and sobbing children - everyone seemed to mourn him. He would have established justice. I would be their protector. By the age of forty, he would have shaken those in power. It never occurred to me what kind of lullaby could calm him down.
But let me dive back in and scoop up another one of those little things we presumptuously call “the characters of our friends”: Louis. He sat without taking his eyes off the preacher. He seemed to be all one tense thought; lips compressed; the eyes were motionless, but how they suddenly lit up with laughter. And his joints were swollen, a problem of poor blood circulation. Without happiness, without friends, in exile, in moments of frankness, he sometimes talked about how the surf rolled onto his distant native shore. And the merciless gaze of youth bored into his swollen joints. Yes, but very soon we realized how capable and sharp he was, how meticulous and strict he was, and how naturally, lying under the elms and supposedly watching cricket, we waited for his approval and rarely did. His dominance was infuriating, just as Percival's power was fascinating. Prim, wary, walking with the gait of a rooster... But there was a legend that he broke some door with his bare fist. But this peak was too rocky and bare for such fog to cling to it. He was deprived of those simple devices that bind one person to another. He remained aloof; mysterious; a scientist capable of inspired, even some kind of frightening, scrupulousness. My phrases (how to describe the moon?) did not meet with a favorable response from him. On the other hand, he was sadly jealous of how easily I treated the servants. Of course, he knew the value of his achievements. It was commensurate with his respect for discipline. Hence his success - in the end. Although his life was not happy. But look, his eyes turned white as he lay in my palm. But here I am confused and my head is spinning. I return him to the element where he will shine again.
Next is Neville, lying on his back, looking up at that summer sky. He hovered between us like the fluff of a sow thistle, settled languidly in the corner of the playing field, did not listen, but did not withdraw into himself. It was from him that I picked up concepts about the Latin poets, without giving myself the trouble to verify them on my own, and adopted that rapid train of thought that leads to God knows where: that crucifixes, say, are an instrument of the devil. Our sour love, cool hatred and uncertainty in this matter were an irredeemable betrayal for him. The heavy, loud director, whom I sat down with his suspenders dangling by the fireplace, was for him nothing less than an instrument of the Inquisition.
With a passion that completely redeemed laziness, he pounced on Catullus, Horace, Lucretius, lay half asleep, yes, but carefully, enthusiastically watched the cricket players, and his mind, like an anteater's tongue - sharp, fast, sticky, explored every turn , every bend Latin phrase, and he was looking for one person, always one person, to sit next to.
And the long skirts of the teachers' wives whistled past, menacing, like mountains; and our hands flew up to our caps. And a huge, gray, unshakable thinness hung. And nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, not a single fin flashed on the leaden desert waves. Nothing happened to lift this burden of unbearable boredom from us. The trimesters passed. We grew up; we changed; We are animals, after all. We are not conscious of ourselves forever; we breathe, eat and sleep completely automatically. And not only do we exist separately, but also as indistinguishable lumps of matter. One ladle scoops up a line of boys at once, and off we go, they play cricket and football. The army is marching across Europe. We gather in parks and halls and diligently condemn the apostates (Neville, Louis, Rhoda) who prefer a separate existence. The way I am made is that, although I can distinguish a couple of intelligible melodies that Louis sings, or Neville, I am irresistibly drawn to the sounds of the choir, howling their old, howling their almost wordless, almost meaningless song, which flies through the yard at night; which is still buzzing around you and me, while buses and cars carry people to theaters. (Listen; cars are rushing past the restaurant; suddenly a siren sounds on the river: the ship is leaving for the open sea.) If a traveling salesman treats me to tobacco on the train, well, I’ll be happy; I love everything that is not too subtle, beaten almost to the point of flatness, marketable almost to the point of vulgarity; conversations between men in clubs and pubs; or miners, half naked, in long johns - straight, unpretentious, for whom dinner, a woman, earnings - all they care about, and as long as it doesn’t get worse; and no great hopes, ideals, or similar things for you; and no pretensions, and most importantly, just don’t hang your nose. I love everything like that. So he hung around with them, and Neville sulked, and Louis, great, who can argue, turned his back on them.
So, not exactly evenly, in some order, but in large stripes, my wax cover melted from me, here a drop would fall, there another. And in this transparency, blissful pastures began to appear, at first moon-white, shining, where no foot had gone before; meadows full of roses and crocuses, but also stones and snakes; and there was something spotted and dark there; discouraged, perplexed, confused. You jump out of bed and jerk open the window; with what a whistle the birds take off! You know, this rustle of wings, this cry, delight, confusion; the soaring and boiling of voices; and every drop shines, trembles, as if the garden is a split mosaic, and it disappears, flickers; not yet collected; and one bird sings right under the window. I heard these songs. I ran after these phantoms. I saw Anna, Dorothy and Pamela, I forget their names, wandering along the alleys, stopping on curved bridges and looking at the water. And several individual figures stand out among them, birds, who sang in the ecstasy of youthful egoism right under the window; they killed snails on stones; they plunged their beaks into the sticky, viscous stuff; greedily, harshly, cruelly; Ginny, Susan, Rhoda. Did they go to boarding school on the East Bank, or was it on the South Bank? They grew long braids and found this look of a frightened foal - a mark of adolescence.
Ginny was the first to sneak up to the gate to nibble on some sugar. She took it very deftly from the palm of her hand, but her ears were pressed down - she was about to bite. Rhoda was wild, Rhoda could not be caught. Shy and awkward. Susan is the one who became a woman first, femininity itself. It was she who first dropped those tears that are terrible and beautiful on my face; all at once; what nonsense. She was born for the adoration of poets, after all, give reliability to poets; those who sit and sew, who say: “I love, I hate,” not happy, not prosperous, but endowed with something that is akin to the high, discreet beauty of an impeccable style, to which poets are so enamored. Her father shuffled from room to room, down tiled corridors, wearing a flapping robe and worn-out slippers. On quiet nights, a wall of water collapsed with a roar a mile from the house. The ancient dog crawled onto his chair with difficulty. Suddenly the laughter of the foolish maid rushed from above, while the sewing wheel circled and circled.
I noticed all this even in my confusion, when, tormenting the handkerchief, Susan sobbed: “I love; I hate it." “The wicked servant,” I noticed, noticed, “is laughing in the attic,” and this little dramatization shows how incompletely we are immersed in our own experiences. On the outskirts of the most acute pain the observer sits and pokes; and whispers, as he whispered to me that summer morning, in that house where the bread sighs right under the windows: “That willow tree grows by the river. The gardeners sweep the lawn with huge brooms, and the lady sits and writes.” So he sent me to what lies outside our own tossing and torment; what is symbolic and, perhaps, unchangeable, if there is anything unchangeable in our consisting of food, breath and sleep, such an animal, such a spiritual and impossible life.
That willow grew by the river. I sat on that soft turf with Neville, Baker, Larpent, Hughes, Percival and Ginny. Through the thin feathers, all with pricked ears, green in spring and bright orange in autumn, I saw boats; buildings; I saw old women hurrying somewhere, swaying. I buried matches in the turf, one after another, marking one or another step in the comprehension of a subject (be it philosophy, science, or myself), until the loose edge of my thought, floating freely, absorbed those distant sensations that the mind would later extract to discern ; the ringing of bells; rustle, rustle; melting images; here is that girl on a bicycle who suddenly pulled back the edge of the curtain on the fly, hiding the indistinguishable, teeming chaos of life that flowed to the silhouettes of my friends, to our willow tree.
That willow alone held back our continuous fluidity. Because I kept changing and changing; was Hamlet, Shelley, was that hero, oh, I forgot the name, from Dostoevsky’s novel; spent a whole trimester, forgive me, as Napoleon; but mostly I was Byron. For many weeks in a row I played my part, striding into the living rooms with an absent-minded sour expression and throwing my gloves and cloak onto a chair. Every now and then I jumped up to the bookshelf to refresh myself with the divine elixir. And then he fired wildly with his phrases at a completely inappropriate target - now she is married; Well, God be with her; all the window sills were littered with sheets of unfinished letters to the woman who made me Byron. Well, how do you end a letter in the style of someone else? I rushed to her, lathered; everything was decided; but I never married her: I had not matured, of course, to such depth.
But here I would like music again. Not that wild hunting song - Percival's music; but sad, guttural, uterine, and yet soaring like a lark, and chiming, here it would be instead of these stupid, boring attempts - how strained! and how inexpensive they are! - hold in words the fleeting moment of first love. A purple net glides across the surface of the day. Look at the room before she entered, look after. Look at the simpletons outside the window, going their way. They don’t see anything, they don’t hear anything; go to yourself. When you yourself walk in this shining, but sticky air, you are aware of your every movement! Something sticks, something firmly grows to your hands, even when you just grab the newspaper. And this emptiness - they pull you, spin you with a web and painfully wrap you around a thorn. Then, like a thunderclap - complete indifference; lights off; then the impossible, absurd happiness returns; some fields seem to glow green forever, and innocent views arise as if in the light of the first morning - for example, that emerald seam on Hampstead; and all faces shine; everyone conspired to hide their tender joy; and then this mystical feeling of completeness, and then this lashing, tearing, rough feeling - black arrows of chilling fear: she didn’t answer the letter, she didn’t come. Suspicion, horror, horror, horror grow like stubble - but what's the point of diligently deducing these logical phrases when no logic will help, just barking, just moaning? And years later, watching a middle-aged woman take off her coat in a restaurant.
Yes, so what am I talking about? Let's pretend again that life is such a solid thing, like a globe that we twirl in our fingers. Let's pretend that a simple, logical story is available to us, and when we are finished with one topic - say, with love - we move decorously and nobly to another. It was, as I said, the same willow tree. The strands falling like a shower, the knotted, folded bark - the willow embodied what remains on the other side of our illusions, cannot hold them and, changing for a moment by their grace, quietly, unshakably shines through behind them - with an inflexibility that is not so true in our lives enough. That's where her silent comment comes from; the scale it proposes; that’s why, while we change and flow, it’s like she’s taking our measurements. Neville, let’s say, was sitting on that turf then, and - what’s more understandable? - I said to myself, following his gaze through these branches to the skiff sliding along the river, and to the young man taking bananas out of a bag. The scene was so clearly cut out and so saturated with the peculiarities of his gaze that for a minute I saw it all; skiff, bananas, well done - through the willow branches. Then everything went dark.<...>
Translation from English by E. Surits
The novel “Waves” and the story “Flush” by the English modernist writer Virginia Woolf are combined under one cover. I read the book at the age of 15 and immediately took the place of apotheosis of genius.
The novel and the story came together on the basis of originality. “Waves” is quite complex, built on endless chains of images, paintings, and even almost musical epithets; a very experimental novel. “Flush” is “a kind of literary joke”: a biography of a real-life English poetess of the 19th century, presented to the reader through the perception of her favorite, the purebred cocker spaniel Flush.
Flush was created by Virginia as a kind of respite between writing complex, deep novels. “Waves” was edited by the author several times, and when it was published, it caused a very mixed reaction among critics and readers. Subsequently, after Woolf’s death, “Waves” was recognized as perhaps the most brilliant novel of the writer.
"Waves" is in no way an easy read. The novel requires complete immersion and dedication from the reader. I must say that this work is very, very unusual in composition. “Waves” is divided into nine chapters with incredibly picturesque and beautiful landscape sketches, always depicting the sea and the shore. The chapters themselves are continuous alternating monologues of the main characters.
In the unimaginably beautiful verbal “ridges,” Virginia Woolf’s unusual author’s signature seems to be discerned, like an emotion expressed in the images of waves or sun rays.
The novel tells the story of six people, six friends. In principle, like Flush, it is a kind of biographical film, but that’s where the similarities end.
Three men and three women throughout their lives search for themselves, diverge and unite again, as parts of one whole, while at the same time being very different. What struck me in the novel was Woolf's skill, her ability to create completely different characters, with radically different personalities and worldviews - and yet leave some kind of connecting thread, almost imperceptible to the reader's eye.
Bernard. For some reason, it seemed to me that Virginia especially loved this hero. I can’t say that it is shown more deeply than the others, and I can’t even notice any manifestations of the author’s love in the text as such. But still, his monologues are more extensive; sometimes there are a lot of interesting thoughts in them. It is with Bernard's spatial monologue that the novel ends.
Actor. He is entirely, entirely composed of invented phrases, without the birth of which not a day goes by, from the images of heroes of books that he once read, and he himself, in the greatest period of his life, is Lord Byron.
Rhoda. An incomprehensible woman. Lonely, fearful, very changeable and a little childish. I was always afraid of this life and ultimately left it voluntarily. She really wasn't like that.
Rhoda is very sweet and touching, just as the fragile pattern of a snowflake is touching. There is no confusion or lack of meaning in her confusion, there is no room for complete recluse in her aloofness, and her fears are not paranoia.
Louis. This guy has a complex throughout the novel because of his Australian accent and the phrase (and in the speech of others - the memory of the phrase) “My father is a Brisbane banker.” He connected his life with business, everything was collected and neat. However, the fact that Rhoda was his mistress for some time says a lot. He, like her, is lost and alone.
Ginny. An ordinary narcissist, for whom practically nothing except his own appearance matters. She loves to be admired. She simply cannot remain unnoticed. After reading the novel, I feel antipathy towards her, because she is empty. She doesn't have the depth that Bernard, Rod or Neville have...
Susan. There is firmness in appearance. It's the same in green eyes. it seems she should have become a lawyer or businesswoman. But she chose a calm and measured life in the village, with children and a husband. No confusion. No fuss. I like her precisely because of the firmness of her character, the invariability of her beliefs, the constancy of her feelings and a certain pragmatism.
Neville. Let his words speak for me.
"- People are coming, coming. But you will not break my heart. After all, only for this moment, one single moment - we are together. I press you to my chest. Devour me, pain, torment me with your claws. Tear me to pieces. I cry , I'm crying."
The reader, enchanted, walks hand in hand with each of the six along their path from childhood to old age. Experiences every event" outside world": a new meeting, Bernard's marriage, the death of Percival (a mutual friend), the death of Rhoda - as if this were happening to people close to him. The text of "waves" is captivating, fascinating. And some phrases are involuntarily etched in the memory forever.
I recommend this particular novel to all people in whose souls the percentage of romance exceeds 40%.
The story "Flash" is radically different from "Waves" both in its compositional structure and emotional coloring. The life of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett-Browning is shown not from the person, but through the perception of her dog Flush. Therefore, this story in no way can be classified with “Beethoven”, “Garfield” and other similar creations. It is written in an elegant and sophisticated language, very easy, almost straight forward, read and perceived with a bang.
In addition to biographical details from Elizabeth’s life, the reader learns about Flush’s fate, his experiences, relationships with his mistress and the people around him (and a little bit with dogs), about the sorrows and joys of a purebred cocker spaniel.
Sometimes funny, sometimes touching to tears, the story will be interesting to anyone.
The article by N. Morzhenkova, given as an afterword, is pleasantly surprising. Morzhenkova also talks about Woolf herself, and analyzes each of her works in detail. This article will help you better understand the novel “Waves” and its concept, understand some details for yourself, and also look at the story “Flash” through the eyes of an experienced literary critic.
A great book to start learning about Virginia Woolf.
Woolf Virginia
Virginia Woolf
Translation from English by E. Surits
From the editor
"Waves" (1931) is, in terms of artistic structure, the most unusual novel by the English writer Virginia Woolf, whose name is well known to readers of "IL". Throughout her creative life, Woolf strove for a radical update of traditional narrative models, believing that the time had passed for the “novel of environment and characters” with its typical socio-psychological conflicts, a carefully written background of action and a leisurely unfolding of intrigue. The new “point of view” in literature - Woolf’s most important essays were written in support of it - meant the desire and ability to convey the life of the soul in its spontaneity and confusion, at the same time achieving the internal integrity of both the characters and the entire picture of the world, which is captured “without retouching.” ", but as the heroes see and realize it.
In the novel "Waves" there are six of them, their lives are traced from childhood, when they were all neighbors in a house located on the seashore, until old age. However, this reconstruction was carried out exclusively through the internal monologues of each of the characters, and the monologues are brought together by associative connections, repeated metaphors, echoes of often the same, but each time perceived events in their own way. A end-to-end internal action arises, and six human destinies pass before the reader, and it arises not due to external authenticity, but through polyphonic construction, when the most important goal is not so much the depiction of reality, but the reconstruction of the heterogeneous, whimsical, often unpredictable reactions to what is happening in each of the characters. Like waves, these reactions collide, flow - most often barely noticeably - into one another, and the movement of time is indicated by pages or paragraphs in italics: they also outline the atmosphere in which the dramatic plot unfolds.
Having long ago become one of the canonical texts of European modernism, Woolf’s novel to this day provokes debate about whether the artistic solution proposed by the writer is creatively promising. However, the significance of the experiment carried out in this book, which served as a school of excellence for several generations of writers, is unconditionally recognized by the history of literature.
Below we publish excerpts from V. Wulf’s diaries during the creation of the novel “Waves”.
The first mention of “Waves” was 03/14/1927.
V.V. finished “To the Lighthouse” and writes that she feels “the need for escapade” (which she soon satisfied with the help of “Orlando”) before embarking on “a very serious, mystical, poetic work.”
On May 18 of the same year, she already writes about “Butterflies” - that’s what she initially intended to call her novel:
"...a poetic idea; the idea of some kind of constant flow; not only human thought flows, but everything flows - the night, the ship, and everything flows together, and the flow grows when bright butterflies fly in. A man and a woman are talking at the table. Or they are silent ?It will be a love story."
Thoughts about “Waves” (“Butterflies”) do not let her go, no matter what she writes. Every now and then individual mentions flash in the diary.
11/28/1928 recorded:
"...I want to saturate, saturate every atom. That is, to expel all futility, deadness, everything superfluous. Show the moment in its entirety, no matter what it is filled with. Futility and deadness come from this eerie realistic narrative: a sequential presentation of events from dinner before dinner. This is false, conventional. Why allow into literature everything that is not poetry? Is it because they don’t bother themselves with the selection of novelists? They usually select so that they leave almost nothing. to contain everything; but to saturate, to saturate. That’s what I want to do in “Butterflies.”
Entry 04/09/1930:
“I want to convey the essence of each character in a few lines... The freedom with which “To the Lighthouse” or “Orlando” was written is impossible here due to the unimaginable complexity of the form. It seems that it will be new stage, new step. I think I'm sticking to the original idea."
Entry 04/23/1930:
“This is a very important day in the history of the Waves. I seem to have led Bernard to the corner where the last part of the journey begins. He will now go straight, straight and stop at the door: and for the last time there will be a picture of the waves.”
But how many times she rewrote, added, corrected!
Entry 02/04/1931:
“A few more minutes and I, thank Heaven, will be able to write - I finished “Waves”! Fifteen minutes ago I wrote - oh, Death!..”
Of course, the work didn't end there...
There was still a lot of rewriting, corrections...
Entry 07/19/1931:
“This is a masterpiece,” said L. (Leonard), coming in to me. “And the best of your books.” But he also said that the first hundred pages are very difficult and it is unknown whether they will be tough for the average reader."
The sun hasn't risen yet. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, only the sea lay in light folds, like a crumpled canvas. But then the sky turned pale, a dark line cut through the horizon, cutting off the sky from the sea, the gray canvas was covered with thick strokes, strokes, and they ran, galloping, launching, overlapping, excitedly.
At the very shore, the strokes stood up, swelled, broke and covered the sand with white lace. The wave will wait and wait, and again it will recoil, sighing, like a sleeper, not noticing either his inhalations or exhalations. The dark streak on the horizon gradually became clearer, as if sediment had fallen out of an old bottle of wine, leaving the glass green. Then the whole sky cleared up, as if that white sediment had finally sank to the bottom, or maybe it was someone who had lifted a lamp, hidden behind the horizon, and fanned out flat stripes of white, yellow and green over it. Then the lamp was raised higher, and the air became loose, red and yellow feathers emerged from the green and flickered, flaring up like puffs of smoke over a fire. But then the fiery feathers merged into one continuous haze, one white heat, a boil, and it moved, lifted the heavy, woolly gray sky and turned it into millions of atoms of the lightest blue. Little by little the sea also became transparent; it lay, swayed, sparkled, trembled, until it shook off almost all the stripes of darkness. And the hand holding the lamp rose higher and higher, and now a wide flame became visible; A fiery arc appeared above the horizon, and the entire sea around flashed gold.
The light washed over the trees in the garden; one leaf became transparent, then another, then a third. Somewhere in the sky a bird chirped; and everything was quiet; then, lower down, another squeaked. The sun made the walls of the house sharper, lay like a fan on the white curtain, and under the sheet by the bedroom window it cast a blue shadow - like an inky fingerprint. The curtain fluttered slightly, but inside, behind it, everything was still vague and vague. Outside, birds sang without rest.
Virginia Woolf is an iconic figure in world literature of the twentieth century. And, like many outstanding people, the writer’s fate – both personal and creative – was very difficult, full of contradictions, joys and tragedies, achievements and bitter disappointments.
Childhood and youth spent in a respectable house in the center of London, in an atmosphere of art worship (the guests of his father, the historian and philosopher Sir Leslie Stephen, were first figures in British culture of that time); amazing home education - and constant sexual harassment from stepbrothers, the unexpected death of mom, difficult affairs with dad and severe nervous breakdowns, which were often accompanied by suicide attempts. Close affairs with the ladies - and a long, according to Virginia Woolf herself, happy marriage with a writer Leonard Wolf. Productive creative activity, lifetime recognition - and constant doubts about one’s own writing capabilities. An illness that exhausted her and took away precious energy and time from her creativity, and a catastrophic end - suicide. And the immortality of written works. Year after year, the number of research works devoted to various aspects of Virginia Woolf’s work is growing exponentially, as are the ranks of her researchers. But hardly anyone dares to talk about the exhaustion of the topic under the title “Virginia Woolf phenomenon.”
Virginia Woolf was an innovator, a bold experimenter in the field of verbal art, but at the same time she was distant from the general rejection of tradition, like many of her modernist contemporaries. Janet Intersan notes: “Virginia Woolf deeply respected cultural traditions past, but she understood that these traditions required reworking. Each new generation needs its own living art, which is connected with the art of the past, but without copying it.” Woolf's creative discoveries are still vital to this day, and the works themselves continue to have a tangible influence on modern creators. The South American writer Michael Cunningham has repeatedly admitted in interviews that it was reading V. Woolf’s novels that encouraged him to write, and his most recognizable novel, “The Hours,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is for the heroine of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. the writer turns out to be one of the heroines of the work.
Readers all over the world know Virginia Woolf first thanks to the novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” but, according to the fair assertion of many researchers - both Russian and foreign - the most complex, the most experimental, the most “intense” both in poetics and in problem-thematic filling, there is the novel “The Waves” (The Waves, 1931).
It is clear that not a single work was easy for Virginia Woolf: her diary entries are a chronicle of painful fluctuations, sharp changes in creative activity and creative impotence, endless rewritings and revisions. But the novel “Waves” was especially difficult to write. This was due both to the fact that work on the text, which began in 1929, was always interrupted by exacerbation of the disease, and to the fact that the idea required indescribable mental stress from the writer. Diary entries for the period from 1928 (the time when plans for the upcoming novel were still being formed) to 1931 fully allow you to feel how hard the work was.
At first, Virginia Woolf intended to call her novel “Butterflies.” And in notes dated November 7, 1928, V. Wolf writes that the future novel should become a “poem-drama,” in which one could “allow oneself to be affected,” “allow oneself to be very magical, very abstract.” But how to accomplish such an undertaking? Doubts about the form of the work, about the correctness of the choice of artistic method, accompanied the writer from the first to the last page of the new novel. On May 28, 1929, she writes: “About my “Butterflies.” How do I get started? What should this book be? I don’t feel a huge upsurge, in the heat of the moment, just an unbearable burden of difficulties.” But here is another entry, dated June 23 of the same year: “As soon as I think about “Butterflies,” everything inside me turns green and comes to life.” Bursts of creative energy alternate with periods of complete impotence. The uncertainty about the title of the novel prevents me from starting full-fledged work on the text - here is an entry dated September 25, 1929: “Yesterday morning I tried to start “Butterflies” again, but it is necessary to change the title.” In the October entries of the same year, the novel already appears under the title “Waves.” Entries for 1930 and 1931 are full of conflicting emotions caused by work on “Waves” - from interest to complete despair. And finally, on February 7, 1931: “I only have a couple of minutes to note, thank God, the end of “Waves.” The physical feeling of victory and freedom! Excellent or bad - the job is done; and, as I felt in the first minute, not just made, but complete, completed, formulated.” But this was far from the end - the manuscript was corrected for a long time, pieces were rewritten again and again (only the beginning of the novel was rewritten 18 times!), and after, as in the case of every previous work by V. Wolf, a period of agonizing anticipation began for the public’s reaction and criticism of the new creation.
In a certain sense, “Waves” was an attempt to reach a new level, to summarize everything that had been created previously, and to make a high-quality leap. And the writer succeeded. IN artistically This is the most fascinating, most unusual novel by V. Woolf, in which the text itself breaks out of its specific boundaries. In relation to the problem-thematic field, we can say that the sound of such cross-cutting themes for creativity as loneliness reaches its apogee here.
The novel is not easy to read, and because it is not an ordinary story, equipped with a complex plot and system of morals, but a typical synthesis of words, music and painting. The fact that the novel appeals to sight and hearing is already evidenced by the first pages. The work opens with an impressionistic description sea coast before sunrise, full of colors and sounds.
And the first words of the heroes of the novel are “I see” and “I hear.” And this is no coincidence - the novel, with every line, every word, calls on the reader to create and hear, to catch every image, every sound of the world around us, because this is exactly how, according to V. Wolf, - through sounds and colors - we comprehend the world.
There are six heroes in the novel, and the entire text describes one day by the sea, from dawn to sunset (transparent symbolism: one day by the sea is human life, and the waves are the same people: they live for a moment, but belong to the endless element called sea, entitled life), represents the expressions of the heroes. In other words, we can say that V. Wolfe here again recreates a polyphonic structure already familiar from previous works. But in “Waves” this structure becomes more complicated. Firstly, despite the frequent introduction of the introduced verb “to speak”, which precedes the words of the heroes (“Bernard spoke”, “Rhoda spoke”, etc.), the reader quite quickly realizes that the expressions of the heroes are not expressions in ordinary awareness, in other words, not out loud expressions addressed to the interlocutor. These are typical internal monologues that absorb what was once spoken in reality, thought out, also seen and heard, but not spoken either out loud or to oneself (after all, in reality, from afar, not everything that we see and hear is “pronounced” , in other words, is realized in words), cherished and obvious - in other words, here we have a complex textual substance, a typical “inner speaking”, which is neither an internal monologue in classical awareness, nor a stream of consciousness (after all, the precision of phrases, their saturation with poetic metaphors, rhythmicity, aliteration uncharacteristic of the sparse information and formally imperfect flow of consciousness). Francesco Mulla calls “Waves” a “novel of silence”, and this definition seems reasonable. The characters in the work speak in turn, which from the outside creates the illusion of dialogue, but there is no real dialogue - the characters practically talk to themselves, which is a revelation of a failure of communication and complete loneliness among people similar to themselves.
Formally, the heroes in the novel go from youth to maturity, but if in a classic realistic novel such a plot is accompanied by the development of morals, then this does not happen here. And an indicator of this is the language of the heroes. It is believed that the novel is first spoken by children, but this language is very far from ordinary children's.
Of course, there are still characters in the novel - if only because they have names, gender, even if they are sketches, they still have a personal story. But, like sea waves, they are separated from each other only for a short period of time, so that later they will unite again into a single stream. And it brings together the feeling of loneliness and the tormenting search for oneself.
The novel “Waves” is a poetic expression that human life is the life of a wave, an instant, but it is also a particle of eternity, and the essence of life is in life itself; Living, every person challenges death.
Virginia Woolf
Waves
Novel
Translation from English by E. Surits
From the editor
"Waves" (1931) is, in terms of artistic structure, the most unusual novel by the English writer Virginia Woolf, whose name is well known to readers of "IL". Throughout her creative life, Woolf strove for a radical update of traditional narrative models, believing that the time had passed for the “novel of environment and characters” with its typical socio-psychological conflicts, a carefully written background of action and a leisurely unfolding of intrigue. The new “point of view” in literature - Woolf’s most important essays were written in support of it - meant the desire and ability to convey the life of the soul in its spontaneity and confusion, at the same time achieving the internal integrity of both the characters and the entire picture of the world, which is captured “without retouching.” ", but as the heroes see and realize it.
In the novel "Waves" there are six of them, their lives are traced from childhood, when they were all neighbors in a house located on the seashore, until old age. However, this reconstruction was carried out exclusively through the internal monologues of each of the characters, and the monologues are brought together by associative connections, repeated metaphors, echoes of often the same, but each time perceived events in their own way. A end-to-end internal action arises, and six human destinies pass before the reader, and it arises not due to external authenticity, but through polyphonic construction, when the most important goal is not so much the depiction of reality, but the reconstruction of the heterogeneous, whimsical, often unpredictable reactions to what is happening of each of the actors persons Like waves, these reactions collide, flow - most often barely noticeably - into one another, and the movement of time is indicated by pages or paragraphs in italics: they also outline the atmosphere in which the dramatic plot unfolds.
Having long ago become one of the canonical texts of European modernism, Woolf’s novel to this day provokes debate about whether the artistic solution proposed by the writer is creatively promising. However, the significance of the experiment carried out in this book, which served as a school of excellence for several generations of writers, is unconditionally recognized by the history of literature.
Below we publish excerpts from V. Wulf’s diaries during the creation of the novel “Waves”.
The first mention of “Waves” was 03/14/1927.
V.V. finished “To the Lighthouse” and writes that she feels “the need for escapade” (which she soon satisfied with the help of “Orlando”) before embarking on “a very serious, mystical, poetic work.”
On May 18 of the same year, she already writes about “Butterflies” - that’s what she initially intended to call her novel:
"...a poetic idea; the idea of some kind of constant flow; not only human thought flows, but everything flows - the night, the ship, and everything flows together, and the flow grows when bright butterflies fly in. A man and a woman are talking at the table. Or they are silent ?It will be a love story."
Thoughts about “Waves” (“Butterflies”) do not let her go, no matter what she writes. Every now and then individual mentions flash in the diary.
11/28/1928 recorded:
"...I want to saturate, saturate every atom. That is, to expel all futility, deadness, everything superfluous. Show the moment in its entirety, no matter what it is filled with. Futility and deadness come from this eerie realistic narrative: a sequential presentation of events from dinner before dinner. This is false, conventional. Why allow into literature everything that is not poetry? Is it because they don’t bother themselves with the selection of novelists? They usually select so that they leave almost nothing. to contain everything; but to saturate, to saturate. That’s what I want to do in “Butterflies.”
Entry 04/09/1930:
“I want to convey the essence of each character in a few lines... The freedom with which “To the Lighthouse” or “Orlando” was written is impossible here due to the unimaginable complexity of the form. It seems that this will be a new stage, a new step. In my opinion, I firmly adhere to the original plan."
Entry 04/23/1930:
“This is a very important day in the history of the Waves. I seem to have led Bernard to the corner where the last part of the journey begins. He will now go straight, straight and stop at the door: and for the last time there will be a picture of the waves.”
But how many times she rewrote, added, corrected!
Entry 02/04/1931:
“A few more minutes and I, thank Heaven, will be able to write - I finished “Waves”! Fifteen minutes ago I wrote - oh, Death!..”
Of course, the work didn't end there...
There was still a lot of rewriting, corrections...
Entry 07/19/1931:
“This is a masterpiece,” said L. (Leonard), coming in to me. “And the best of your books.” But he also said that the first hundred pages are very difficult and it is unknown whether they will be tough for the average reader."
WAVES
The sun hasn't risen yet. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, only the sea lay in light folds, like a crumpled canvas. But then the sky turned pale, a dark line cut through the horizon, cutting off the sky from the sea, the gray canvas was covered with thick strokes, strokes, and they ran, galloping, launching, overlapping, excitedly.
At the very shore, the strokes stood up, swelled, broke and covered the sand with white lace. The wave will wait and wait, and again it will recoil, sighing, like a sleeper, not noticing either his inhalations or exhalations. The dark streak on the horizon gradually became clearer, as if sediment had fallen out of an old bottle of wine, leaving the glass green. Then the whole sky cleared up, as if that white sediment had finally sank to the bottom, or maybe it was someone who had lifted a lamp, hidden behind the horizon, and fanned out flat stripes of white, yellow and green over it. Then the lamp was raised higher, and the air became loose, red and yellow feathers emerged from the green and flickered, flaring up like puffs of smoke over a fire. But then the fiery feathers merged into one continuous haze, one white heat, a boil, and it moved, lifted the heavy, woolly gray sky and turned it into millions of atoms of the lightest blue. Little by little the sea also became transparent; it lay, swayed, sparkled, trembled, until it shook off almost all the stripes of darkness. And the hand holding the lamp rose higher and higher, and now a wide flame became visible; A fiery arc appeared above the horizon, and the entire sea around flashed gold.
The light washed over the trees in the garden; one leaf became transparent, then another, then a third. Somewhere in the sky a bird chirped; and everything was quiet; then, lower down, another squeaked. The sun made the walls of the house sharper, lay like a fan on the white curtain, and under the sheet by the bedroom window it cast a blue shadow - like an inky fingerprint. The curtain fluttered slightly, but inside, behind it, everything was still vague and vague. Outside, birds sang without rest.
“I see the ring,” Bernard said. - It hangs above me. It trembles and hangs like a loop of light.
“I see,” Susan said, “how the yellow liquid smear spreads, spreads, and it runs into the distance until it hits a red stripe.”
“I hear,” Rhoda said, “the sound: chirp-tweet; chirp-tweet; up and down.
“I see a ball,” Neville said, “it hung like a drop on the huge side of the mountain.”
“I see a red tassel,” Ginny said, “and it’s all intertwined with gold threads.”
“I hear,” Louis said, “someone stomping.” A huge beast is chained by the leg. And he stomps, stomps, stomps.
“Look, there’s a cobweb there, on the balcony, in the corner,” Bernard said. - And there are water beads on it, drops of white light.
“The sheets gathered under the window and pricked up their ears,” Susan said.
“The shadow leaned on the grass,” Louis said, “with a bent elbow.”
“Islands of light float on the grass,” Rhoda said. - They fell from the trees.
“The eyes of birds burn in the darkness between the leaves,” Neville said.
“The stems are overgrown with such short, hard hairs,” Ginny said, and dewdrops got stuck in them.
“The caterpillar curled up in a green ring,” Susan said, “all covered in stupid legs.”
“The snail drags its heavy gray shell across the road and crushes the blades of grass,” Rhoda said.
“And the windows either light up or go out in the grass,” Louis said.
“The stones make my feet cold,” Neville said. - I feel each one: round, sharp, - separately.
“My hands are all burning,” Ginny said, “my palms are just sticky and wet with dew.”
“The rooster crowed, as if a red, tight stream flashed in a white splash,” Bernard said.
“The birds are singing,” Susan said, up and down, back and forth, everywhere, everywhere.
- The beast stomps everything; the elephant is chained by the leg; “A terrible beast is stomping on the shore,” Louis said.
“Look at our house,” Ginny said, “how white all the windows are from the curtains.”
- Already dropped it cold water from the kitchen tap,” Rhoda said, “into the basin, onto the mackerel.”
“The walls began to crack like gold,” Bernard said, “and the shadows of the leaves lay like blue fingers on the window.”
“Mrs. Constable is now pulling on her thick black stockings,” Susan said.
“When smoke rises, it means: a dream is curling up with fog over the roof,” Louis said.
“The birds used to sing in chorus,” Rhoda said. - And now the kitchen door has opened. And they immediately scurried away. As if someone had thrown a handful of grains. Only one sings and sings under the bedroom window.
“Bubbles form at the bottom of the pan,” Ginny said. - And then they rise, faster, faster, like a silver chain right under the lid.
“And Biddy scrapes fish scales onto a wooden board with a chipped knife,” Neville said.
“The dining room window is now dark blue,” Bernard said. - And the air shakes over the pipes.
“The swallow perched on the lightning rod,” Susan said. - And Biddy plopped a bucket on the kitchen stoves.
“Here is the first bell,” Louis said. - And others followed him; boom-bom; boom-bom.
“Look how the tablecloth runs across the table,” Rhoda said. - It’s white, and there are circles of white porcelain on it, and silver lines near each plate.
- What is this? A bee is buzzing in my ear,” Neville said. - Here she is, here; so she flew away.
“I’m burning all over, I’m shaking from the cold,” Ginny said. - Now this is the sun, now this shadow.
“So they all left,” Louis said. - I'm alone. Everyone went into the house to have breakfast, and I was alone, by the fence, among these flowers. It’s still very early, before classes. Flower after flower flashes in the green darkness. The foliage dances like a harlequin and the petals jump. The stems extend from the black abysses. Flowers swim through the dark, green waves like fish made of light. I am holding the stem in my hand. I am this stem. I take root into the very depths of the world, through the brick-dry, through the wet soil, along veins of silver and lead. I'm all fibrous. The slightest swell shakes me, the earth presses heavily on my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves and they see nothing. I'm a boy in a gray flannel suit with a brass snake clasp on the trouser belt. There, in the depths, my eyes are the eyes of a stone statue in the Nile desert, devoid of eyelids. I see women walking with red jugs towards the Nile; I see camels rocking, men in turbans. I hear stomping, rustling, rustling around.
Here Bernard, Neville, Ginny and Susan (but not Rhoda) launch rampettes into the flower beds. They shave butterflies from still sleepy flowers with rampettes. Scouring the surface of the world. The flutter of wings strains the nets. They shout: "Louis! Louis!", but they don't see me. I'm hidden behind the hedge. There are only tiny gaps in the foliage. Oh Lord, let them pass by. Oh Lord, let them dump their butterflies on a handkerchief on the road. Let them count their admirals, cabbage girls and swallowtails. If only they wouldn't see me. I am green as a yew in the shade of this hedge. Hair is made from leaves. The roots are in the center of the earth. Body - stem. I squeeze the stem. The drop is squeezed out of the mouth, slowly pours, swells, and grows. Something pink flashes by. A quick glance slides between the leaves. The beam scorches me. I'm a boy in a gray flannel suit. She found me. Something hit me in the back of my head. She kissed me. And everything fell over.
“After breakfast,” Ginny said, “I started running.” Suddenly I see: the leaves on the fence are moving. I thought - a bird is sitting on a nest. I straightened the branches and looked in; I look - there is no bird. And the leaves are still moving. I was scared. I run past Susan, past Rhoda and Neville and Bernard, they were talking in the barn. I cry myself, but I run and run, faster and faster. Why were the leaves jumping like that? Why is my heart jumping so much and my legs won’t calm down? And I rushed here and I see you standing, green as a bush, standing quietly, Louis, and your eyes are frozen. I thought: “What if he died?” - and I kissed you, and my heart was pounding under my pink dress and trembling, like the leaves trembled, even though they don’t understand now why. And so I smell the geranium; I smell the soil in the garden. I'm dancing. I'm streaming. I was thrown over you like a net, like a net of light. I flow, and the net thrown over you trembles.
“Through a crack in the foliage,” Susan said, “I saw: she was kissing him.” I raised my head from my geranium and looked through a crack in the leaves. She kissed him. They kissed - Ginny and Louis. I will squeeze my sadness. I'll hold it in a handkerchief. I'll roll it into a ball. I’ll go to the beech grove before classes, alone. I don't want to sit at the table adding numbers. I don't want to sit next to Ginny, next to Louis. I will lay my melancholy at the roots of the beech tree. I will touch it, tug at it. Nobody will find me. I will eat nuts, look for eggs in brambles, my hair will become dirty, I will sleep under a bush, drink water from a ditch, and I will die.
“Susan passed by us,” Bernard said. - She walked past the barn door and squeezed her handkerchief. She didn’t cry, but her eyes, they are so beautiful, narrowed, like a cat’s when it’s about to jump. I'll go get her, Neville. I’ll quietly follow her so that I can be on hand and console her when she gets upset, starts crying and thinks: “I’m alone.”
Here she is walking through the meadow, seemingly as if nothing had happened, trying to deceive us. Reaches the slope; thinks no one will see her now. And he starts running, clutching his chest with his fists. She is clutching this knotted scarf of hers. I headed towards the beech grove, away from the morning shine. Now she’s reached it, spreads her arms - now she’ll float along the shadows. But he sees nothing from the light, stumbles over roots, falls under the trees, where the light seems to be exhausted and suffocating. The branches move up and down. The forest is worried, waiting. Darkness. The light is shaking. Scary. Creepy. The roots lie on the ground like a skeleton, and rotten leaves are piled on the joints. It was here that Susan laid out her melancholy. The handkerchief lies on the roots of the beech tree, and she cowers where she fell and cries.
“I saw her kissing him,” Susan said. - I looked through the leaves and saw. She danced and shimmered like diamonds, light as dust. And I'm fat, Bernard, I'm short. My eyes are close to the ground, I can distinguish every bug, every blade of grass. The golden warmth in my side turned to stone when I saw Ginny kissing Louis. I’ll eat grass and die in a dirty ditch where last year’s leaves rot.
“I saw you,” Bernard said, “you were walking past the barn door, I heard you cry: “I’m unhappy.” And I put down my knife. Neville and I carved boats out of wood. And my hair is shaggy because Mrs. Constable told me to comb my hair, and I saw a fly in the web and thought: “Should I free the fly? Or leave it for the spider to eat?” That's why I'm always late. My hair is shaggy, and in addition there are splinters in it. I hear you crying, and I followed you, and saw how you put down the handkerchief, and all your hatred, all your resentment was squeezed in it. It's okay, everything will pass soon. Now we are very close, we are close. Can you hear me breathing? You see how the beetle drags the leaf on its back. He rushes about, cannot choose roads; and while you are watching the beetle, your desire to possess the one and only thing in the world (now it is Louis) will waver, like the light swinging between the beech leaves; and the words will roll darkly in the depths of your soul and break through the hard knot with which you clenched your handkerchief.
“I love,” Susan said, “and I hate.” I only want one thing. I have such a strong opinion. Ginny's eyes spread like thousands of lights. Rhoda's eyes are like those pale flowers on which butterflies descend in the evening. Your eyes are full to the brim, and they will never spill. But I already know what I want. I see bugs in the grass. Mom also knits me white socks and hems my aprons - I’m little - but I love it; and I hate it.
“But when we sit next to each other, so close,” Bernard said, “my phrases flow through you, and I melt into yours.” We are hidden in the fog. On shifting ground.
“Here’s a bug,” Susan said. - He's black, I see; I see it's green. I'm tied up in simple words. And you are leaving somewhere; you're slipping away. You climb higher, higher and higher on words and phrases from words.
“Now,” Bernard said, “let’s scout out the area.” Here is a white house, it is located among the trees. It's deep below us. We will dive and swim, slightly checking the bottom with our feet. We'll dive through the green light of the leaves, Susan. Let's dive while running. The waves close above us, the leaves of the beech trees clash over our heads. The clock in the stables glows with gold hands. And here is the roof of the manor’s house: slopes, eaves, gables. The groom splashes around the yard in rubber boots. This is Elvedon.
We fell between the branches to the ground. The air no longer rolls over us in its long, poor, purple waves. We are walking on the ground. Here is the nearly trimmed hedge of the owner's garden. Behind her are the mistresses, ladies. They walk at noon, with scissors, cutting roses. We entered the forest, surrounded by a high fence. Elvedon. There are signs at the intersections, and the arrow points to “To Elvedon,” I saw. No one has set foot here yet. What a bright smell these ferns have, and hidden underneath them are red mushrooms. We scared away the sleeping jackdaws; they had never seen humans in their lives; We are walking on ink nuts, red and slippery with age. The forest is surrounded by a high fence; no one comes here. Listen! It's a giant toad plopping down in the undergrowth; these primeval cones rustle and fall to rot under the ferns.
Put your foot on this brick. Look over the fence. This is Elvedon. A lady sits between two high windows and writes. Gardeners sweep the lawn with huge brooms. We came here first. We are discoverers of new lands. Freeze; When the gardeners see it, they will shoot you instantly. Crucified with nails like stoats on the stable door. Carefully! Do not move. Grab the fern on the hedge tighter.
- I see: there is a lady writing there. “I see the gardeners sweeping the lawn,” Susan said. - If we die here, no one will bury us.
- Let's run! - Bernard spoke. - Let's run! The gardener with the black beard noticed us! Now we will be shot! They'll shoot you like jays and nail you to the fence! We are in the camp of enemies. We need to hide in the forest. Hide behind beech tree trunks. I broke a branch when we were coming here. There's a secret path here. Bend down low. Follow me and don't look back. They'll think we're foxes. Let's run!
Well, we are saved. You can straighten up. You can reach out your hands and touch the high canopy in a huge forest. I can't hear anything. Only the talk of distant waves. And a wood pigeon breaks through the crown of a beech tree. The dove beats the air with its wings; The dove beats the air with its forest wings.
“You’re going somewhere,” Susan said, “composing your own phrases.” You rise like slings hot air balloon, higher, higher, through layers of leaves, you are not given to me. I've been delayed. You tug at my dress, look around, make up phrases. You are not with me. Here is the garden. Hedge. Rhoda is on the path shaking flower petals in a dark basin.
“White, white are all my ships,” Rhoda said. - I don’t need red petals of hollyhocks and geraniums. Let the white ones swim when I rock my pelvis. My armada is sailing from shore to shore. I'll throw a chip - a raft for a drowning sailor. I'll throw a pebble and bubbles will rise from the bottom of the sea. Neville went somewhere and Susan left; Ginny is picking currants in the garden, probably with Louis. You can be alone for a while while Miss Hudson lays out her textbooks on the school table. To be free for a little while. I collected all the fallen petals and let them swim. Raindrops will float on some. Here I will place a beacon - a sprig of euonymus. And I will rock my dark basin back and forth so that my ships can overcome the waves. Some will drown. Others will be dashed to pieces on the rocks. There will only be one left. My ship. He swims to the icy caves, where he barks polar bear and stalactites hang in a green chain. The waves rise; the breakers are foaming; where are the lights on the top masts? Everyone scattered, everyone drowned, everyone except my ship, and it cuts through the waves, it leaves the storm and rushes to a distant land, where parrots chatter, where vines curl...
-Where is this Bernard? - Neville spoke. - He left and took my knife. We were in the barn carving boats and Susan walked past the door. And Bernard abandoned his boat, went after her, and grabbed my knife, and it’s so sharp, they use it to cut the keel. Bernard - like a dangling wire, like a torn door bell - rings and rings. Like seaweed hung outside the window - sometimes it is wet, sometimes it is dry. Lets me down; runs after Susan; Susan will cry, and he will pull out my knife and start telling her stories. This big blade is the emperor; broken blade - black man. I can't stand anything loose; I hate everything wet. I hate confusion and confusion. Well, the bell rings, we'll be late now. We need to give up our toys. And everyone enters the classroom together. Textbooks are laid out side by side on green cloth.
“I won’t conjugate this verb,” Louis said, “until Bernard conjugates it.” My father is a Brisbane banker and I speak with an Australian accent. I'd rather wait, listen to Bernard first. He's English. They are all English. Susan's father is a priest. Rhoda has no father. Bernard and Neville both come from good families. Ginny lives with her grandmother in London. Here - everyone is chewing pencils. They fiddle with notebooks, glance sideways at Miss Hudson, and count the buttons on her blouse. Bernard has a sliver in his hair. Susan looks teary. Both are red. And I'm pale; I am neat, my breeches are fastened with a belt with a brass serpentine clasp. I know the lesson by heart. They all don’t know as much in life as I know. I know all cases and types; I would know everything in the world, if only I wanted to. But I don’t want to answer the lesson in front of everyone. My roots branch out like fibers in a flower pot, branch out and entangle the whole world. I don’t want to be in front of everyone, in the rays of this huge clock, it’s so yellow and ticking, ticking. Ginny and Susan, Bernard and Neville are intertwined in a whip to whip me. They laugh at my neatness, at my Australian accent. I’ll try, like Bernard, to coo gently in Latin.
“These are white words,” Susan said, “like pebbles that you collect on the beach.”
“They twirl their tails, strike left and right,” Bernard said. They twirl their tails; beat with tails; they fly into the air in a flock, turn, fly together, fly apart, and unite again.
“Oh, what yellow words, words like fire,” Ginny said. - I would like a dress like this, yellow, fiery, to wear in the evening.
“Each verb tense,” Neville said, “has its own special meaning.” There is order in the world; there are differences, there are divisions in the world on the edge of which I stand. And everything is ahead of me.
“Well,” Rhoda said, “Miss Hudson slammed the textbook shut. Now the horror will begin. Here, she took the chalk and drew her numbers, six, seven, eight, and then a cross, then two lines on the board. What's the answer? They are all watching; look and understand. Louis writes; Susan writes; Neville writes; Ginny writes; even Bernard began to write. And I have nothing to write. I just see the numbers. Everyone submits their answers, one after another. Now it's my turn. But I don't have any answer. They were all released. They slam the door. Miss Hudson left. I was left alone to look for the answer. The numbers don't mean anything anymore. The meaning is gone. The clock is ticking. The riflemen are moving in a caravan across the desert. The black lines on the dial are oases. The long arrow stepped forward to scout the water. The short one stumbles, poor thing, over the hot stones of the desert. She's going to die in the desert. The kitchen door slams. Stray dogs bark in the distance. This is how the loop of this number swells, swells with time, turns into a circle; and holds the whole world within itself. While I write out the number, the world falls into this circle, and I remain on the sidelines; So I bring it together, close the ends, tighten it, secure it. The world is rounded, finished, and I remain on the sidelines and shout: “Oh! Help, save me, I was thrown out of the circle of time!”
“Rhoda is sitting there, staring at the blackboard in the classroom,” Louis said, “while we wander away, picking off a leaf of thyme, a bunch of wormwood, and Bernard telling stories.” Her shoulder blades meet on her back, like the wings of a small butterfly. She looks at the numbers, and her mind gets bogged down in these white circles; slips away through the white loops, alone, into the void. The numbers don't tell her anything. She doesn't have an answer to them. She doesn't have a body like others do. And I, the son of a banker in Brisbane, I, with my Australian accent, do not fear her as much as I fear others.
“And now we’ll crawl under the canopy of the currant trees,” Bernard said, “and we’ll tell stories.” Let's populate the underground world. Let us enter as masters into our secret territory, illuminated like candelabra by hanging berries, shimmering scarlet on one side and rabble on the other. You see, Ginny, if you bend down well, we can sit side by side under the canopy of currant leaves and watch the censers swing. This is our world. The others are all walking along the road. The skirts of Miss Hudson and Miss Curry float by like candle extinguishers. Here are Susan's white socks. Louis's polished canvas shoes leave hard footprints in the gravel. Rotten leaves and rotten vegetables send out the smell in gusts. We stepped into the swamps; into the malarial jungle. Here is an elephant, white with maggots, struck by an arrow that hit him in the eye. The eyes of birds - eagles, hawks - jumping in the leaves glow. They mistake us for fallen trees. They peck at a worm - this is a spectacled snake - and leave it with a purulent scar for the lions to tear to pieces. This is our world, illuminated by sparkling stars and moons; and large, cloudy transparent leaves close the passages with purple doors. Everything is unprecedented. Everything is so huge, everything is so tiny. The blades of grass are as powerful as the trunks of centuries-old oak trees. The leaves are high, high, like the spacious dome of a cathedral. You and I are giants; if we want, we will make the whole forest tremble.