title: Buy: feed_id: 3854 pattern_id: 1079 book_author: Osorgin Mikhail book_name: Sivtsev Vrazhek
drunken my soul. Nikolai knew him personally and severely condemned him for his unrestrained
drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And here are Romanova's boots
the work is over. It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, signs of what threatens them
old age has been planned before, and more than once. Three pairs of heels and two soles
Nikolai changed them to them. There were patches on both legs in the place where
A person's good crooked little finger is supposed to have calluses. One patch - from
cutting a boot with an ax; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but she saved
strong skin. Another patch on a place worn down by time. And heels and
Roman himself changed the soles. IN last time he put Nikolai on a new one
the heel is such a hefty horseshoe that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many
years ahead. And he filled the soles with a dozen forged nails with thick
caps, and fitted a cast iron strip on the side. The boots have become heavy,
heavy, loud - but since then Nikolai forgot to think about demolishing them. And how it happened is unknown, but it only happened once a day
When the thaw begins, change your felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove,
where they lay, carefully smeared with wooden oil since the fall, so as not to
skin cracked. He took it out and saw that the soles on both feet had fallen behind,
one completely, the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust,
and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without
creaking. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that
shines through, but if you poke it harder with your finger, it turns out to be a hump, and not
is straightening out. He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov’s heir, but the heir to the workshop, and
not talent. When he saw it, holding it up to the light, he immediately said that there was more
There’s nothing to fix, the skin won’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and there was no special
I didn't hold out hope. - So it's a done deal? Nikolai returned with boots, put them on the bench and not so much
I was sad, but deep in thought. I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple
was torn down - what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - as if the boots were the same, and
They will walk on their feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no, these aren’t boots, but they’re rubbish, not
suitable for patches, not to mention janitor work. But it’s like a horseshoe
not completely worn out, and the nail is intact; It's rusty inside too. What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred.
When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death,
he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply, sew, the edges from now on
will smooth out. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. There would be a struggle - and
the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly. - Looks like it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And
carefully. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Now
they won’t sew it that way. While I was filling the wick in the lamp, I kept thinking, and not so much about what
you need to sew new ones, so much about the frailty of the earthly. It seems that nothing can crush you,
and everything is fine outside. And the day came, the wind blew, the rain got wet, - inside
dust, here are your boots. And that's it! And the house stands, stands, and may fall. AND
It’s the same with the person himself. In the evening, a neighboring janitor came in, also elderly and unconscripted.
Nikolai told him about the boots. We looked at them and picked them: “There’s nothing to do here.” We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now this
the product is not in the factory. - I can handle it. It's not the money that I feel sorry for, it's the work that I feel sorry for. The work was famous. We smoked. The janitor's room immediately became smoky, sour and satisfying. “That’s it too,” said Fyodor, “is that all?” things are fragile right now. And it’s war for you, and
You're in trouble. Today the guard reported: and what is being done!
Tomorrow, he says, maybe they’ll remove us. And at the post, he says, no one
Let's go out and sit at home and drink tea. - I heard. - And in St. Petersburg, he says what is being done - and it is impossible to find out. Maybe even a king
will be removed. What is it like without a king? It's not clear. “How is it possible to dismiss the Tsar,” said Nikolai and looked again
on boots - it was not put there by us. - Who knows, the time is now like this. And everything comes from the war, from it. Coming out
janitor, Fyodor once again picked at the worst boot with his finger, shook
head: - Kaput business! “Yes, I can see it myself,” Nikolai said dissatisfied. After the neighbor left, he threw the boots into the box and gloomily heard the sound of
horseshoe on a tree. It’s good that the felt boots were lined with leather. Took it in the hallway
scraper and went out to evening work.
"PLI"
Vasya Boltanovsky early, at the beginning of ten, called at the entrance to the house on
Sivtsev Vrazhek. Dunyasha opened the door with her hem tucked up and said: “The young lady and the gentleman are in the dining room.” Don't bump into the bucket, master, I'm flooring
mine. Tanyusha met: - What happened, Vasya, that you are so early? Would you like to get coffee? Well, tell me. - A lot has happened. Hello, professor. Congratulations: revolution! The professor raised his head from his book. - What new did you learn, Vasya? Are the newspapers out again today? Vasya told. The newspapers did not come out because the editors were all bargaining with
Mrozovsky. And even “Russian Vedomosti” is a real disgrace! In St. Petersburg
coup, power in the hands of the Duma, a provisional government was formed,
they even say that the king abdicated the throne. - The revolution won, professor. Accurate news. Now already
finally. - Well, let's see... It's not that simple, Vasya. And the professor again delved into his book. Tanyusha readily agreed to go for a walk around Moscow. These days at home
couldn't sit. Despite the hour still early for Moscow, there were people on the streets
a lot, and clearly not busy with business. Tanyusha and Vasya walked along the boulevards to Tverskaya, along Tverskaya to the city
Duma There was a crowd in the square, in groups, not interfering with the passage; there are quite a few in the crowd
officers. Something was happening in the Duma. It turned out that it was possible to go there
free. In the oblong hall, people were sitting at a table, clearly not from here, not from the Duma.
Those entering were required to have a pass, but since there were no passes, they filtered
the public based on simple verbal statements. Vasya said that he is "a representative
press,” and muttered about Tanyusha: “secretary.” It was clear that at the table
The selection of faces is quite random. However, to the question: “Who is sitting?” - answered:
"Council of Workers' Deputies". The meeting was not very lively; some kind
Confusion held back speech. The soldier from the outside, who, however, was also called
"delegate". The soldier shouted angrily: - What to talk about? You need to not talk, but act. We go to the barracks - and
All. You will see that ours will join. What else to expect! You're used to being in the rear in vain
talk. They came out in a small crowd. But already at the very entrance it grew. Somebody,
having climbed higher, he spoke to the audience, but the words came poorly.
It felt like an ordinary philistine job. Only the presence was encouraging
several soldiers and an officer with an empty coat sleeve. Small group
moved in the direction Theater Square, there's a crowd behind her. First we looked around
on the sides, whether horsemen would appear, but not even a single one was visible
policeman. The crowd grew, and from Lubyanka Square, along Lubyanka and Sretenka,
Several thousand people were already walking. In separate groups they sang "La Marseillaise"
and “You have fallen a victim,” but it came out discordantly; The revolution does not have its own anthem
was. We came to Sukharevka, but in sight of the Spassky barracks the crowd thinned out again;
they said that they would shoot from the barracks. Vasya and Tanyusha walked with those in front. It was creepy and entertaining. -Aren’t you afraid, Tanya? - Don't know. I think they won't. After all, they already know that in St. Petersburg
the revolution won. - Why don’t they come out, soldiers? - Well, they probably haven’t decided yet. And now, when they see the people, they will come out. The barracks gates were locked, the gates were open. I felt here
indecision, or perhaps an order was given - not to irritate the crowd.
We talked to the sentry. To the surprise of those in front, the sentries missed, and some
A crowd of about two hundred people entered the courtyard of the barracks. The rest are prudent
remained behind the gate. Only a few windows in the barracks were open. You could see in the windows
soldiers, in greatcoats, with excitedly curious faces. The soldiers were
locked. - Come out, comrades, there is a revolution in St. Petersburg. The king has been overthrown! - Come out, come out! They waved sheets of paper and tried to throw sheets of paper to the windows. They asked to send
officers to talk. And, sending friendly and cheerful smiles to the soldiers, they themselves
they didn’t know who they were talking to: enemies or new friends. It fluttered timidly
mistrust from windows and into windows. The barracks were silent. The crowd approached the doors. Suddenly the doors opened and the crowd
recoiled when she saw an officer in a field uniform and a whole platoon of soldiers with bayonets,
occupying the stairs. The soldiers' faces were pale; the officer stood like a stone, not
answering questions without saying a single word. It was strange and ridiculous. The noisy crowd is allowed to shout in the barracks courtyard,
and shout terrible, new, rebellious, seductive words - but the soldiers did not
She didn’t stroke him, he didn’t die, and both went upstairs to Tanya’s room. It has become easier here. The mirror looked at Vasya without his pathetic beard and thought: “Hey, he’s really in love.”
- Like a grandma?
- Grandma is better today, but generally not well.
- Is the professor not there yet?
- Grandfather is on exams. You will definitely wait for him, he asked about you. What are you doing in the evening?
Good question! Vasya has nothing to do at all, not in the evening, not all summer.
- I'm not doing anything.
- Will you stay with us? Stay, I'm free today too.
The cat came in. Vasya grabbed her by the collar, lifted her to his face, and the cat scratched his freshly shaved chin. Vasya threw the cat, dried himself with a handkerchief and said:
- That damned beast! Tanyusha, I love you just like a dog...
And he blushed, knowingly thinking that he had said something stupid. He would have simply said “I love you,” but for some reason he dragged in a dog.
Always truthful, he corrected himself:
- Tanya, I dragged the dog here in vain. And I’m just, without a dog, really to hell...
It turned out even more ridiculous. But, of course, if I wanted to understand, I would understand. But she said calmly:
- Would you rather use cologne... Show me. Yes, she scratched you badly! Well, it's my own fault...
If Vasya had not shaved his beard, the scratch would not have been noticeable. Now I've found time to shave! And it hurts. Vasya's love began to subside.
They sat next to each other on the couch. They talked about how everyone would spend the summer. Perhaps, because of my grandmother’s illness, I will have to stay in the city. We remembered mutual friends who are now at war. Erberg died a long time ago - he was the first relative of those killed. There were more. And now there are many old friends at the front. Stolnikov rarely, but still writes - good he, Stolnikov! Lenochka is a sister of mercy, but not at the front, but in Moscow; He doesn’t go to the dacha in the summer either. Helen talks a lot about the wounded and is in love with several doctors. A white suit with a red cross suits her very well.
- You know, Vasya, but I couldn’t. That is, I could, of course, but this... how to say... Somehow it’s not for me... I don’t know...
Tanyusha is serious today; I'm also tired of exams. We went downstairs to the dining room. The professor returned, hungry, hugged Vasya, and congratulated him. While grandfather was having dinner, Tanyusha, at the request of the sick old woman who was lying in the bedroom, played her favorite. Grandmother was fading away without great suffering, even without a real major illness, but somehow in such a way that her imminent end was clear to everyone. The vital forces in her were exhausted and were slowly leaving. As far as possible, we even got used to it. During the months of her illness, the professor also began to hunch heavily, but he strengthened himself.
In the evening, Tanyusha’s friend, a conservative, came to see her. Vasya told them fortunes:
- There is an eight of clubs in your heart, and soon you will receive a letter of red.
The conservative was pleased, she was waiting for the letter.
Afterwards, I took Tanya’s friend home. And, left alone, he didn’t know who he was actually in love with, Tanyusha or her friend? Still, I decided: to Tanyusha! Although this is strange - after all, he has known her since childhood, they were just like brother and sister. But, having decided, he again regretted that he had dragged the dog for some reason:
- Out of embarrassment!
Returned home to Girshi. There is a pile of books and an unwashed cup on the table. The remains of liquid tea contained several flies and a yellow cigarette butt. Tomorrow I need to give the laundry to the laundress. And in general, I need to go somewhere for the summer. I decided to visit my relatives tomorrow; still necessary.
And suddenly - as if during the day, love for Tanyusha - life stood before him. Youth is over - a new and difficult path begins. Maybe it’s true that you will need a life companion? Who? Tanyusha? Childhood friend? I thought about her now with real tenderness. He thought and admitted to himself with surprise that he didn’t know Tanyusha at all. Previously he knew, now he doesn’t know.
It was a revelation. How did it happen? And one more thing: he is still a boy, and Tanya is a woman. This is what he overlooked behind the books.
Out of embarrassment I wanted to pat my beard, but my chin was smooth, and there was a scratch on it.
It is impossible not to love Tanyusha, but he, Vasya Boltanovsky, also cannot love her in a special way, as in the novels. Well, how can this be; It’s even somehow bad, uncomfortable!
It was very sad. Then he took the book and read until his eyes began to close.
Vasya Boltanovsky had a lucky ability: he slept like a groundhog and woke up as fresh as early morning. That's why he loved life and didn't know it.
BEHIND THE CURTAINS
There was a cat sitting on the table by the door, which yesterday had scratched the shaved chin of the man left at the university. Don't grab me by the collar! The cat licked its lips and was bored. There was a major misfortune of the night: the old rat, the famous old rat of the underground, escaped her clutches.
She left very bruised. She was already in her clutches... and how could this happen? There is no taste in an old rat, and that’s not the point. But how could this happen? The hunter's pride was offended in the cat. In such cases, she was bored, yawned, and her eyes dimmed: eyes that usually glowed green in the dark.
Having made herself comfortable, but without bending her front paws in order to remain in combat readiness, the cat began to doze, leaving only her ears awake. There are still two hours until light.
The old rat was still trembling from the horror he had experienced. Huddled in the tightest crevice of the underground, she licked her wounds. It is not the wounds themselves that are dangerous, but young rats must not notice them. They will watch, follow on your heels, and at the first weakness they will bite you to death. That's what's most dangerous. They won't spare gray hair and bald back. It's been a damn night today!
A long, thin figure in gray bent over Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bed. She reached out her hand and with a sharp nail pressed the nipple of her flabby breast under the blanket. Grandma gasped and moaned in pain.
Death stood by the bed, listened to the old woman’s groan and went into a corner. For the second month now, she has been on duty at Tanya’s grandmother’s bedside, protecting her from the temptation of life, preparing her to accept emptiness. When the nurse falls asleep, Death gives the old woman a drink, covers her with a blanket, and winks at her lovingly. And the old woman, not recognizing death, says to her in a weak voice: “Thank you, dear, thank you!”
And when the old woman falls asleep, Death wants to play a prank: he will throw back the blanket, pinch the old woman in the side, and cover her mouth with the knuckles of his palm so that her breathing becomes difficult. And he laughs quietly, sobbing and revealing rotten teeth.
By morning, death melts, hides in the folds of the blanket, in the chest of drawers, in the cracks of the windows. If someone quickly throws back the blanket or pulls out a dresser drawer, they still won’t find anything except a speck of dust or a dead fly. During the day, death is not visible.
The old rat was surrounded by young ones: they looked with black balls, listened to its squeals. She bares her teeth and her long tail trembles. If he moves, the semicircle of baby rats immediately becomes wider; They are afraid of the old one: there is still strength in it. But they don’t take their eyes off, they look at the licked fur, where you can see the red, from where a drop is oozing.
The cat hears the squeal of a rat and moves its ear. But everything is quiet, everyone in the house is sleeping. The rats are scared and won't come out today.
The old woman reaches her hand towards the night table, towards a glass of sour drink. The bony hand helps, and for a minute the two dry joints of the old woman and her death collide. A chill runs down my hand.
“Here I am, here, lie still,” says the thin woman in gray. And he consoles the old woman: “There’s nothing there, and there’s nothing to be afraid of! You’ve outlived your time, don’t eat someone else’s time. In your younger years, you had fun, danced, wore beautiful dresses, the sun smiled at you. Did you live badly? And isn’t your old man happy with Was he? And your children - weren’t they joyful?”
“I took away my son, Tanyushin’s father, too early,” complains Aglaya Dmitrievna.
“I cleaned up my son when I needed it; but I left my granddaughter to you, the old people, for joy and consolation.”
- How can she live without us? Also, the old man does not last forever. “Well, the old man will still live, the old man is strong. And she has become quite big. The girl is smart, she will not be lost.”
- How can I live without him in the next world? How can he stay at this without me? How long have you lived together?
Here death laughs, even sobs with pleasure, but without malice:
“That’s what you’re thinking about! What do you care about - lie in your grave, rest. They’ll get along without you, nothing. What joy is there from a sick person, from an old woman? What is there of you but a hindrance? All this is nothing!”
You can hear the cuckoo cuckooing four times in the office. It’s probably light outside, but the window is covered with heavy curtains.
“Oh, my death,” moans Aglaya Dmitrievna.
“The pad needs to be corrected,” says the nurse. “Everything is out of whack.”
He straightens the pillows and again sits down to doze in the chair by the bed.
Light entered the basement. The little rats scattered into the back streets. The old wounded rat also dozed off. The cat on the window lazily catches a large sleepy fly. He will press and leave; she's crawling again. It's summer time - it's already quite light.
Tanyusha has a third dream in the morning; and again Stolnikov, cheerful, satisfied, laughs.
- On vacation? For how long?
Stolnikov happily answers:
- Now forever!
- Like forever? Why?
Stolnikov extends his hand, long and flat, like a board; written on the palm in red:
"Indefinite leave."
And suddenly Tanyusha is scared: why “indefinite”? And recently I wrote that I won’t have to see you soon, since I refused to go on a business trip. “It’s impossible to leave the front now, and I don’t want to; the time is not like that.”
Stolnikov wipes his hand with a handkerchief; Now the hand is small, and the red has faded onto the scarf. Tanyusha wakes up: what a strange dream!
Only six hours. Tanyusha threw her arms up and fell asleep again. A strip of light through a hole in the curtains crossed the white sheet like a bright ribbon and stood like a column on the wall above the bed. The hair has fallen off and lies separately on the pillow. There is a small birthmark on Tanyusha’s right shoulder, below the collarbone. And exactly, from the girl’s breathing, the sheet rises.
FIFTH CARD
Stolnikov felt with his foot the steps carved into the ground and descended into the common officers' dugout under a light dugout. It was stuffy and smoky inside. On a nearby bench the doctor was playing chess with a young ensign. At the table, a group of officers continued the game that had begun after lunch. Stolnikov walked up to the table and squeezed himself between the players.
- You must miss twice, Sasha. Will you play?
- Will. I know.
When the circle began to approach him, he touched the pieces of paper in his pocket and said:
- All the leftovers. How many are there?
- You are one hundred and thirty, with a map.
- Give.
The eyes of the players, as if on command, moved from the ATM card to the card of Stolnikov, who said:
- Well, well, give me the card.
- You are fat, we... are fat too. Two points.
“Three,” Stolnikov said and extended his hand to the bet.
The cards moved on to the next one.
The war has stopped. In general, everything disappeared except the surface of the table, money passing from hand to hand, and a tattered “sausage” of cards. Stolnikov was never a student, did not dance at Tanyusha’s party, did not turn from a fresh officer into a battle captain with Georgy, was not at the opera yesterday and will not return to the rear. The tobacco curtain cut off the world. He also lit a cigarette.
- Yours, Sasha, the bank.
- Well, here you go, I bet you all the winnings. For starters... nine. I'm not filming. You're a three, I'm nine again. There are three hundred and sixty in the bank. You get half, you get a hundred; Do you need the leftovers, Ignatov? Eh, I should do nine again... Yours... here, take it.
Stolnikov handed over a “machine” made from a Katyk cartridge case. Ten people played, now we have to wait. Everyone's eyes turned to the hands of his neighbor on the left. Ears heard:
- Pure fat... damn it! Six each? - No, we only have seven. I'm taking half off. Where are you going? That is, never a third card! - I didn’t even have a second one... We need to reverse the happiness.
They ruined their happiness, scolded their “rotten waist,” tried to skip two banks, stuffed pieces of paper into the pockets of their jacket (as a last resort). The fourth card came - and the person rose, became kinder, better, agreed to give the card for recording. Then, in three big flashes, his money flowed away, and he nervously fingered the piece of paper that had been put aside “for emergencies.”
The ensign at the end of the table allowed both the bank and the show-off. They no longer contacted him.
- Burnt out?
- Completely.
- This, brother, happens. This is the strip.
- I always have such a streak.
But he didn’t leave. Watched. As if happiness could fall on the head of a non-player. Or... someone will get rich and offer a loan; but I don’t want to ask.
Stolnikov was lucky.
- I'm lucky for the second day. Yesterday in action, today in the cards.
At the words “in action,” everyone woke up for a minute, but only for a minute; and it was unpleasant. There should be no other life other than this.
A soldier came in and said:
- It's buzzing, your honor.
- German? I'm coming. Damn it, right in front of my bank.
- Give him a hard time, Osipov!
The artilleryman left, and no one looked after him. As he walked out the door, the long-familiar sound of a distant engine in the sky was heard outside. A few minutes later the gun thundered.
- Osipov is trying. Why do the Germans fly at night?
It thumped. This was the response of the German pilot. But Osipov had already spotted the enemy in the sky: the clicking of machine guns could be heard. It came closer. Everyone raised their heads.
- Come on... Give me the card. Seven. Sell the bank, otherwise they will break it after seven. Well, then give me the card...
Thumped with terrible force very close to the dugout. The candle overturned, but did not go out. The officers jumped up, taking the money. Earth fell from the ceiling through the beams.
- Damn, he almost hit us in the head. We need to go out and have a look.
Stolnikov said loudly:
- The bank is behind me, I didn’t hold out enough! The officers poured out. The spotlight illuminated the sky almost overhead, but the strip of light was already deviating. The gun roared and the machine gun crackled incessantly. The older officer said:
- Don’t stand in a bunch, gentlemen, you can’t.
- He's already flown away.
- He might come back. And he moves the glass.
The explosion pit was very close. Fortunately, there were no casualties; the German scared for nothing.
Stolnikov remembered that he had run out of cigarettes and went to his dugout. Having reached it, he stopped. The sky was extremely clear. The searchlight beam fell into the depths and now led the enemy back - a barely brightened dot against a dark background. It thumped again - the first cast-iron leg was placed on the ground by the heavenly giant. The glass of the return shot fell nearby.
“Why isn’t it scary?” Stolnikov thought. “But he can easily kill! In reality, yes, it’s scary there, but there’s no time to think. And these toys are from the sky...” Then he remembered: “And the bank is behind me. Four I beat the cards. I’ll leave it all. It would be nice to beat the fifth... It will be a healthy jackpot!”
And he imagined himself opening the nine. He smiled involuntarily.
When the German's last gift struck, the officers instinctively rushed to the dugout. We listened at the door as the noise of the engine faded away and the machine guns died down. Then everything calmed down and they returned to the table. Apparently, the German, having perfectly sensed the location of the reserve, still played in vain, only frightening the young soldiers.
- Osipov will return. Where can he shoot this bird?
- I flew too high.
- Let's sit down, shall we? Whose bank?
- Stolnikova. He beat four cards.
-Where is Stolnikov? Shall we wait for him?
- We must wait.
Someone said:
“He went to get some cigarettes, he’ll be right back.”
The messenger ran in: to the doctor.
- Your Honor, Mr. Captain Stolnikov was wounded.
And, lowering his hand from the visor, he added more quietly to the first person to leave:
“It’s almost as if their legs were completely torn off, your honor!” German bonboy...
MINUTE
Dark night has surrounded the house and is pressing on its old walls. It penetrated everywhere - into the basements, under the roof, into the attic, into the large hall where a cat was guarding the door. Twilight spread across my grandmother’s bedroom, illuminated by a night lamp. Only Tanyushina’s open bright window frightens and drives away the night.
And it’s so quiet that you can hear the silence.
With her feet in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, Tanyusha does not see the lines of the books. Her face seems thin, her eyes look forward intently, as if at a screen. Pictures of the former and the non-existent quietly pass on the screen, people briefly look at Tanya from the screen and their hands draw invisible letters of thoughts.
Vasya Boltanovsky flashed with a healed scratch, Eduard Lvovich turned the notes, Lenochka with a red cross on a snow-white robe and an arch of surprised eyebrows under a scarf. And the front: a black line, greatcoats, bayonets, silent shots. A hand draws on the screen: there have been no letters from Stolnikov for a long time. And she herself, Tanyusha, is on the screen: she looks serious, like a stranger.
And again the fog: this is fatigue. She closed her eyes and opened them: all the objects pulled themselves up and returned to their original places. When minutes and hours of silence pass, something new will be born. Maybe the sound of a carriage, maybe a scream, or just the rustling of a rat. Or the gate in the alley will slam. And the dead minute will pass.
Again on the screen is Vasya with a shaved chin. He breaks the matchbox and says:
- Taking into account that you, Tanyusha, will get married anyway, it’s interesting to know if you would marry me? Damn it, go out anyway.
The slivers fly to the floor, and Vasya picks them up one at a time, so as not to raise his head right away.
- Well, no, Tanyusha, seriously. This is stupidly interesting...
Tanyusha answers seriously:
- No.
After thinking some more, he adds:
- In my opinion, no.
“So, sir,” says Vasya. “Of course.” Good slap in the face, damn it! And why? I'm really, really interested.
- Because... somehow... why for you, Vasya? We just know each other... and then suddenly we get married.
Vasya laughs not very naturally:
- Are you sure you are for a stranger? This is clever!
Vasya is looking for something else to break. All that was left of the box was dust.
Tanyusha wants to clarify:
- In my opinion, getting married is someone... or in general it becomes clear that you cannot part with this person and you can live your whole life.
Vasya tries to be a cynic:
- Well, for the rest of my life! They come together and diverge...
-- I know. But this is if you made a mistake.
Vasya gloomily breaks a feather.
- All this is vanity of vanities. We were wrong, we weren't wrong. And in general - to hell. I personally am unlikely to get married. Freedom is more valuable.
Tanyusha clearly sees that Vasya is offended. But he absolutely does not understand why he is offended. Of all my friends, he is the best. That's who you can rely on.
Vasya melts on the screen. The shadow of “he who is” slides in the fog, but does not want to emerge any clearer. And it would be infinitely scary if a real image appeared, with eyes, a nose, maybe a mustache... And he would be completely unfamiliar.
And suddenly Tanyusha closes her eyes and freezes. A chill runs throughout the body, the chest is tight, and the mouth, trembling, half-opens. Just a minute. Then the blood rushes to her cheeks, and Tanyusha cools them with her still trembling hand.
Maybe it's the chill from the window? What a strange, what a secret feeling. Secret for body and soul.
The screen is closed. Intermission. Tanyusha tries to pick up a book:
"The above passage is quite eloquent..."
What is the "quoted passage"? An excerpt of what?
Tanyusha turns the page back and looks for the initial quotation marks. She absolutely does not remember whose words the author quotes and for what purpose.
A nurse's steps on the stairs:
- Young lady, go to grandma...
DEATH
There is a huge event in the underground: the old rat has not returned. No matter how weak she was, she still squeezed into the pantry at night through a hole gnawed by the mouse generation, which had now completely disappeared from the underground.
In the storeroom there were chests, a baby stroller, and bundles of old newspapers and magazines were piled up - there was no gain. But nearby, across the corridor, there was a kitchen, the door of which was not so difficult to crawl under. The rat did not go to other rooms, especially the big one, remembering how it had already fallen into the paws of a cat once. At dawn the old rat of the underground did not return. But the sensitive ears of the young heard her squeal at night.
When Dunyasha took out the chewed rat in the trash in the morning, the janitor said:
- What a winner! Well, Vaska! She will be a hundred years old.
For years, the rat was younger than a human teenager. Age has taken over the age of the young.
No one came out for coffee. The professor was sitting in a chair by Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bed. The nurse came up twice and straightened out the folds. Tanyusha looked with big surprised eyes at the wrinkles of her wax grandmother smoothed out by death. The old woman's hands were folded in a cross, and her fingers were thin and sharp.
The nurse didn’t know whether the jaw needed to be inserted and didn’t dare ask. And my chin is too sunken. The jaw lay in a glass of water and seemed to be the only living thing left of the grandmother.
A tear rolled down the professor's beard; hung on a curl of hair, swayed and hid deeper. Along the same path, but without delay, another ran away. When grandfather sobbed, Tanyusha turned her eyes to him, blushed and suddenly fell on his shoulder. At that moment, Tanyusha was a little milk child, whose face was looking for the warmth of her chest: in this new world he was so scared; she never listened to lectures on history, and her thoughts only learned to swim in the salty solution of tears. At that moment, the learned ornithologist was a little gnome, fighting off an evil rat with his legs, in vain offended, looking for protection from a girl-granddaughter, just as small, but probably brave. And half the world was occupied in front of them by the gigantic bed of an alien old woman, wiser and abruptly breaking with them. At that moment the sun went out and disintegrated in one soul, the bridge between eternities collapsed, and a new fussy work began in the body, the only immortal one.
There were two children left at Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bedside, one very old and one very young. Everything is gone from the old one; The young man has his whole life left. On the window in the next room, the cat was licking its lips and looking without curiosity at the fly, which was making toilet with its paws before flying.
The real event took place only in the bedroom of the professor’s house in Sivtsev Vrazhek. In the rest of the world everything was fine: although lives were also cut short, creatures were born, mountains crumbled, but all this was done in a general, inaudible harmony. Here, in the laboratory of grief, a cloudy tear mixed with a transparent tear.
Only here was the real:
Grandmother died beloved.
...from the earth we were created from the earth, and to another earth we will go, as you commanded, who created me and gave me: for you are the earth and you went back to the earth, but let us all go, singing a funeral lament: Hallelujah...*
*... We are created from the earth... - a fragment of the funeral prayer “He Himself is the One Immortal who created and created man...” (Psalm. Following the departure of the soul from the body. Song 6. Ikos.).
NIGHT
A night bird spread its two wings over the house of the old widowed bird professor. And covered the starry shine and Moonlight. Two wings: to protect him from the world, to honor the old man’s great sadness.
In a chair, sitting comfortably, in a halo of gray hairs, shaded by the lamp - and quietly, quietly all around, from the local thought to the borders of the World - sits an old man, thousands of years older than yesterday, when Tanya’s grandmother, Aglaya, was still clinging to life with weak breath Dmitrievna. And in the hall, where the piano looks with its shining legs at the burning candles at the coffin, in an even, intelligible voice, a calm stream, the nun pours a babbling stream of important, unnecessary words to the silent listener under the dark brocade. And the deceased’s chin was pressed tightly to her nose.
The professor is all in his memory, all in the past. He looks deep into himself and writes page after page in his thoughts in small handwriting. He will write, put it aside, re-read what he wrote before, sew notebooks together with strong, harsh thread - and still he will not reach the end of his everyday story, until a new meeting. He does not believe, of course, in union in a new being, and it is not necessary. And soon it will be in oblivion. Years, days and hours are counted - and hours, and days, and years pass. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.
Walls of books and shelves of writings - everything was loved and everything was the fruit of life. This too will go away when “she” calls. And he sees her as a young girl, laughs with a dimple on her cheek, shouts to him over the rye strip:
- Go around, don’t crush! And so be it, I’ll wait.
And we walked across the border together... and where and when was that? And what - was it not the light of the sun that I remember so much?
And together they walked and came. But now she didn’t wait - she went ahead. And again he, now with an old man’s gait, walks around the strip of golden rye...
Tanyusha came in wearing a robe and sleeping shoes. They can't sleep tonight. A night bird above the house fenced off the grandfather and granddaughter from the rest of the World. In that small world sadness does not sleep.
- We will now live without grandmother, Tanyusha. And we got used to living with my grandmother. It will be difficult.
Tanyusha is at her feet, on a bench, with her head on her grandfather’s lap. I didn’t pin up the soft braids and left them over my shoulders.
-What was good about grandma? And she was good because she was kind to you and me. Our grandmother; poor.
And they sit for a long time, they’ve already cried for the day.
- Can’t sleep, Tanyusha?
- Grandpa, I want to sit with you. After all, you’re not sleeping either... And if you lie down, even on the sofa, I’ll still sit next to you. Let's lie down.
- I’ll lie down; but for now I sat somehow, maybe it would be better this way.
And again they are silent for a long time. You can’t say this, but the two of us have a common idea. When the murmur of verbal streams of nuns comes through the walls, they see candles and a coffin, and then they wait for fatigue. Grandma was so kind to both of them, now lying in the hall, under dark brocade, with trembling candles around the flame.
They enter the world through a narrow door, fearful, crying that they had to leave the resting chaos of sounds, simple, comfortable incomprehensibility; They enter the world, stumbling over the stones of desires, and go in crowds straight, like sleepwalkers, to another narrow door. There, before leaving, everyone would like to explain that this was a mistake, that his path lay upward, upward, and not into a terrible meat grinder, and that he had not yet had time to look around. There is a grin at the door, and the turnstile counter clicks.
That's all.
There is no sleep, but there is no clarity of images either. Between sleep and nightmares, the old man hears a girl’s voice on the other side of the last door:
- I'll wait here...
I should go straight after her, but I can’t crush the rye. And everything is flooded with sun. And the old man hurries along the narrow boundary to where she is waiting, stretching out his thin arms.
He opened his eyes and met Tanyusha’s large, questioning rays of eyes:
- Grandfather, lie down and rest!
BOOTS
The janitor Nikolai sat in the janitor's room and looked for a long time, carefully, thoughtfully at the boots lying on the bench in front of him.
- So it's a done deal?
- Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
- There is nothing to do here. We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now there is no such product in the factory.
Sivtsev Vrazhek
the day Roman fell down the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and wouldn’t straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
- So it's a done deal?
- Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no - these are not boots, but just rubbish, not suitable for patches, let alone for janitor work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
- Looks like it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
While I was filling the wick in the lamp,
A strange, almost incredible thing happened. The boots were not sewn, but built long ago by the great architect-shoemaker Roman Petrov, an incredible drunkard, but also a master, the likes of which have not remained since the day when Roman fell from the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. . Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and wouldn’t straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
So it's a done deal?
Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. but no - these are not boots, but just rubbish, not suitable for patches, let alone for janitor's work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
Apparently it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
While I was filling the wick in the lamp, I kept thinking, and not so much about the need to sew new ones, but about the frailty of earthly things. It seems that nothing can crush you, and everything is fine outside. And the day came, the wind blew, the rain got wet - there was dust inside, and here are your boots. And that's it! And the house stands, stands, and may fall. And it’s the same with the person himself.
In the evening, a neighboring janitor came in, also elderly and unconscripted. Nikolai told him about the boots. We looked at them and picked them:
There's nothing to do here. We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now there is no such product in the factory.
I can handle it. It's not the money that I feel sorry for, it's the work that I feel sorry for. The work was famous.
We smoked. The janitor's room immediately became smoky, sour and satisfying.
“That’s it too,” said Fyodor, “that’s all?” things are fragile right now. There is war for you, and there is all sorts of chaos for you. Today the guard reported: and what is being done! Tomorrow, he says, maybe they’ll remove us. And, he says, no one will go out to fast, we will sit at home and drink tea.
And in St. Petersburg, he says what is being done - and it is impossible to find out. Maybe the king will be removed too. What is it like without a king? It's not clear.
“How is it possible to dismiss the tsar,” said Nikolai and again looked at the boots, “he was not appointed by us.”
Who knows, the time is now like this. And everything comes from the war, from it. Coming out of the janitor's room, Fyodor once again picked at the worst boot with his finger and shook his head:
Kaput business!
“Yes, I can see it myself,” Nikolai said displeasedly.
After the neighbor left, he threw the boots into the box and gloomily heard the horseshoe hitting the tree. It’s good that the felt boots were lined with leather. In the entryway he picked up a scraper and went out to work for the evening.
Pass us away more than all sorrows / Both lordly anger and lordly love
From the comedy “Woe from Wit (1824)” by A. S. Griboedov (1795-1829). Words of the maid Lisa (act. 1, appearance 2):
Ah, far away from the masters;
They prepare troubles for themselves at any time,
Pass us away more than all sorrows
And lordly anger, and lordly love.
Allegorically: it is better to stay away from special attention people on whom you depend, because from their love to their hatred is one step.
encyclopedic Dictionary winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.
See what “Pass us beyond all sorrows / Both lordly anger and lordly love” in other dictionaries:
Wed. Left: Ah! away from the gentlemen! Pass us away more than all sorrows, And lordly anger, and lordly love. Griboyedov. Woe from the mind. 1, 2. Lisa. Wed. Mit grossen Herrn ist schlecht Kirschen essen … Michelson's Large Explanatory and Phraseological Dictionary
A; m. Feeling of strong indignation, indignation; state of irritation, anger. Tantrum. Don't remember yourself from anger. Bring upon yourself someone. d. Burn, boil, fill with anger. Speak with anger in your eyes and in your voice. Who l. scary in anger... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Aya, oh. 1. to Barin (1 digit) and Lady (1 digit). Bed estate. That's his will. From the master's shoulder (about clothes donated by a master, a wealthy or high-ranking person). The second lady (the landowner's senior maid, housekeeper). * Pass us by... encyclopedic Dictionary
lordly- oh, oh. see also lordly, lordly 1) to master 1) and lady 1) Bai estate. That's his will. From the master's shoulder (about clothes donated by a master, wealthy or high-ranking... Dictionary of many expressions
BARIN- 1) Before October revolution 1917* everyday name for a representative of one of the privileged classes, nobleman*, landowner or high-ranking official (see rank*), etc. Derived from the word boyar*. IN literary speech form… … Linguistic and regional dictionary
Griboyedov A.S. Griboyedov Alexander Sergeevich (1790 or 1795 1829) Russian writer, poet, playwright, diplomat. 1826 was under investigation in the Decembrist case. 1828 appointed ambassador to Persia, where he was killed by Persian fanatics. Aphorisms, quotes...
Aya, oh. adj. to the master [Lisa:] Pass us away more than all sorrows, And lordly anger, and lordly love. Griboedov, Woe from Wit. [Belokurov] lived in an outbuilding in the garden, and I lived in an old manor house, in a huge hall with columns. Chekhov, House with a mezzanine. ||… … Small academic dictionary
PASS, I pass, you pass, owls. and (rarely) nonsense. 1. who what. Pass, pass by someone or something, leave someone or something. behind or to the side. Pass the passerby. Skip the ground. Pass the village. “The coachman passed the capital.” Nekrasov. “Interlocutors, ... ... Dictionary Ushakova
- (1795 1829) writer and poet, playwright, diplomat But by the way, he will reach the famous levels, After all, nowadays they love the dumb. Who are the judges? Oh! If someone loves someone, Why bother searching and traveling so far? Oh! gossips scarier than a pistol. Blessed... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
and... and...- conjunction If the repeated conjunction “and... and...” connects homogeneous members sentences, then a comma is placed before the second and subsequent members of the sentence. Oh! away from the gentlemen; // They have troubles prepared for themselves at every hour, // Pass us by more than all sorrows //... ... Dictionary-reference book on punctuation
One day, janitor Nikolai Fedorov was repairing a metal fence in the yard of his house. The man called out to the local boy:
Hey, can you help me? I'll pay you!
This scary man! - the neighbors whisper. - He was sitting. I killed someone a long time ago...
Nikolai was released from prison, but with a criminal record behind him, he got a job Good work it was unreal. That's why Fedorov became a janitor. He worked in the same place where he lived. He greeted everyone politely, behaved modestly, and loved his current job. There was not a speck in the yard on Rozhdestvensky Street, near the Leninsky Market.
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The investigator talks about psychological tests the janitor and his love letters to children.
True, the man could not cope with the entire volume of work on his own, since he was not physically strong. Therefore, in order to take out the garbage, weed the lawn, or move something heavy, I asked teenagers from the area to help. And the 47-year-old man thanked them with money or a treat. The youngest received 20 rubles, ice cream and candy. For more adults - from 50 to 200 rubles. Boyko simply fed the kids for some time...
His new acquaintance once asked that same yard boy Andrei to fill out the “Friend Questionnaire.”
There were items about favorite activities, attitude to alcohol, favorite food, and all sorts of fears,” the young man recalls. - And on the back of the questionnaire you had to draw a house. Well, I drew it! At first I didn’t know why. And then this man told me everything. If there is a foundation for a house, it means you live with your father and everything is fine. And if not, or he is on chicken legs, you either have problems with your dad, or the family in general, in short, incomplete, bad relationships.
Fedorov preferred to communicate with those boys who drew houses without foundations. It was easier with them. At first he seemed to replace their father, and then it came to intimate fun...
The first two years he didn’t pester me, but he seemed to do it to others,” says current ninth-grader Andrei. - It was obvious that there was something wrong in his head. And then we were at his house, he began to threaten us with a gas canister and ordered us to do something to him...
Afterwards, the janitor unfastened the student’s money, and he told his grandmother about everything. The pensioner immediately ran to the police - and Fedorov was detained.
If they hadn’t found out about anything there, I would have dealt with him in my own way! - the guy repeats menacingly. “Now I wish him the maximum punishment.” Yes, he and I were friends. So what? Friends don't do that!
As investigators found out, Fedorov first “probed” the children - allegedly inadvertently touching them on the hips or buttocks. I watched the reaction. Then he invited me home to eat or drink tea. And then he pestered the boys. Cassettes and discs with pornography, which he watched with his children, were confiscated from the accused. And he even dedicated love poems to some of them. Apparently, all the victims were silent and only Andrei told his family about everything!
The man first admitted that he had seduced dozens of boys over several years, and then began to deny it.
However, during a search in the apartment where Fedorov lived, material evidence was found, says Pavel Vengrzhenek, investigator of the investigative department for the Leninsky District of Omsk of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for the Omsk Region. - “Friend Questionnaires,” judging by the signatures, were filled out already in 2007. Currently, the case contains 54 counts under the article “Depraved acts” and one for “Violent acts of a sexual nature.”
/
Sivtsev Vrazhek
the day Roman fell down the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
- So it's a done deal?
While I was filling the wick in the lamp,
Only here was the real:
Grandmother died beloved.
We were created from the earth, and we will go to another earth, as you commanded, who created me and gave me: for you are the earth and you went back to the earth, but let us all go, singing a funeral lament: Hallelujah...*
Go around, don't crush! And so be it, I’ll wait.
We will now live without grandmother, Tanyusha. And we got used to living with my grandmother. It will be difficult.
What was good about grandma? And she was good because she was kind to you and me. Our grandmother; poor.
Can't sleep, Tanyusha?
Grandpa, I want to sit with you. After all, you’re not sleeping either... And if you lie down, even on the sofa, I’ll still sit next to you. Let's lie down.
I'll lie down; but for now I sat somehow, maybe it would be better this way.
That's all.
I'll wait here...
Grandfather, lie down and rest!
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and wouldn’t straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
So it's a done deal?
Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no - these are not boots, but just rubbish, not suitable for patches, let alone for janitor work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
Apparently it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
She didn’t stroke him, he didn’t die, and both went upstairs to Tanya’s room. It has become easier here. The mirror looked at Vasya without his pathetic beard and thought: “Hey, he’s really in love.”
- Like a grandma?
- Grandma is better today, but generally not well.
- Is the professor not there yet?
- Grandfather is on exams. You will definitely wait for him, he asked about you. What are you doing in the evening?
Good question! Vasya has nothing to do at all, not in the evening, not all summer.
- I'm not doing anything.
- Will you stay with us? Stay, I'm free today too.
The cat came in. Vasya grabbed her by the collar, lifted her to his face, and the cat scratched his freshly shaved chin. Vasya threw the cat, dried himself with a handkerchief and said:
- That damned beast! Tanyusha, I love you just like a dog...
And he blushed, knowingly thinking that he had said something stupid. He would have simply said “I love you,” but for some reason he dragged in a dog.
Always truthful, he corrected himself:
- Tanya, I dragged the dog here in vain. And I’m just, without a dog, really to hell...
It turned out even more ridiculous. But, of course, if I wanted to understand, I would understand. But she said calmly:
- Would you rather use cologne... Show me. Yes, she scratched you badly! Well, it's my own fault...
If Vasya had not shaved his beard, the scratch would not have been noticeable. Now I've found time to shave! And it hurts. Vasya's love began to subside.
They sat next to each other on the couch. They talked about how everyone would spend the summer. Perhaps, because of my grandmother’s illness, I will have to stay in the city. We remembered mutual friends who are now at war. Erberg died a long time ago - he was the first relative of those killed. There were more. And now there are many old friends at the front. Stolnikov rarely writes, but he still writes - he’s good, Stolnikov! Lenochka is a sister of mercy, but not at the front, but in Moscow; He doesn’t go to the dacha in the summer either. Helen talks a lot about the wounded and is in love with several doctors. A white suit with a red cross suits her very well.
- You know, Vasya, but I couldn’t. That is, I could, of course, but this... how to say... Somehow it’s not for me... I don’t know...
Tanyusha is serious today; I'm also tired of exams. We went downstairs to the dining room. The professor returned, hungry, hugged Vasya, and congratulated him. While grandfather was having dinner, Tanyusha, at the request of the sick old woman who was lying in the bedroom, played her favorite. Grandmother was fading away without great suffering, even without a real major illness, but somehow in such a way that her imminent end was clear to everyone. The vital forces in her were exhausted and were slowly leaving. As far as possible, we even got used to it. During the months of her illness, the professor also began to hunch heavily, but he strengthened himself.
In the evening, Tanyusha’s friend, a conservative, came to see her. Vasya told them fortunes:
- There is an eight of clubs in your heart, and soon you will receive a letter of red.
The conservative was pleased, she was waiting for the letter.
Afterwards, I took Tanya’s friend home. And, left alone, he didn’t know who he was actually in love with, Tanyusha or her friend? Still, I decided: to Tanyusha! Although this is strange - after all, he has known her since childhood, they were just like brother and sister. But, having decided, he again regretted that he had dragged the dog for some reason:
- Out of embarrassment!
Returned home to Girshi. There is a pile of books and an unwashed cup on the table. The remains of liquid tea contained several flies and a yellow cigarette butt. Tomorrow I need to give the laundry to the laundress. And in general, I need to go somewhere for the summer. I decided to visit my relatives tomorrow; still necessary.
And suddenly - as if during the day, love for Tanyusha - life stood before him. Youth is over - a new and difficult path begins. Maybe it’s true that you will need a life companion? Who? Tanyusha? Childhood friend? I thought about her now with real tenderness. He thought and admitted to himself with surprise that he didn’t know Tanyusha at all. Previously he knew, now he doesn’t know.
It was a revelation. How did it happen? And one more thing: he is still a boy, and Tanya is a woman. This is what he overlooked behind the books.
Out of embarrassment I wanted to pat my beard, but my chin was smooth, and there was a scratch on it.
It is impossible not to love Tanyusha, but he, Vasya Boltanovsky, also cannot love her in a special way, as in the novels. Well, how can this be; It’s even somehow bad, uncomfortable!
It was very sad. Then he took the book and read until his eyes began to close.
Vasya Boltanovsky had a lucky ability: he slept like a groundhog and woke up as fresh as early morning. That's why he loved life and didn't know it.
BEHIND THE CURTAINS
There was a cat sitting on the table by the door, which yesterday had scratched the shaved chin of the man left at the university. Don't grab me by the collar! The cat licked its lips and was bored. There was a major misfortune of the night: the old rat, the famous old rat of the underground, escaped her clutches.
She left very bruised. She was already in her clutches... and how could this happen? There is no taste in an old rat, and that’s not the point. But how could this happen? The hunter's pride was offended in the cat. In such cases, she was bored, yawned, and her eyes dimmed: eyes that usually glowed green in the dark.
Having made herself comfortable, but without bending her front paws in order to remain in combat readiness, the cat began to doze, leaving only her ears awake. There are still two hours until light.
The old rat was still trembling from the horror he had experienced. Huddled in the tightest crevice of the underground, she licked her wounds. It is not the wounds themselves that are dangerous, but young rats must not notice them. They will watch, follow on your heels, and at the first weakness they will bite you to death. That's what's most dangerous. Gray hair and bald backs will not be spared. It's been a damn night today!
A long, thin figure in gray bent over Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bed. She reached out her hand and with a sharp nail pressed the nipple of her flabby breast under the blanket. Grandma gasped and moaned in pain.
Death stood by the bed, listened to the old woman’s groan and went into a corner. For the second month now, she has been on duty at Tanya’s grandmother’s bedside, protecting her from the temptation of life, preparing her to accept emptiness. When the nurse falls asleep, Death gives the old woman a drink, covers her with a blanket, and winks at her lovingly. And the old woman, not recognizing death, says to her in a weak voice: “Thank you, dear, thank you!”
And when the old woman falls asleep, Death wants to play a prank: he will throw back the blanket, pinch the old woman in the side, and cover her mouth with the knuckles of his palm so that her breathing becomes difficult. And he laughs quietly, sobbing and revealing rotten teeth.
By morning, death melts, hides in the folds of the blanket, in the chest of drawers, in the cracks of the windows. If someone quickly throws back the blanket or pulls out a dresser drawer, they still won’t find anything except a speck of dust or a dead fly. During the day, death is not visible.
The old rat was surrounded by young ones: they looked with black balls, listened to its squeals. She bares her teeth and her long tail trembles. If he moves, the semicircle of baby rats immediately becomes wider; They are afraid of the old one: there is still strength in it. But they don’t take their eyes off, they look at the licked fur, where you can see the red, from where a drop is oozing.
The cat hears the squeal of a rat and moves its ear. But everything is quiet, everyone in the house is sleeping. The rats are scared and won't come out today.
The old woman reaches her hand towards the night table, towards a glass of sour drink. The bony hand helps, and for a minute the two dry joints of the old woman and her death collide. A chill runs down my hand.
“Here I am, here, lie still,” says the thin woman in gray. And he consoles the old woman: “There’s nothing there, and there’s nothing to be afraid of! You’ve outlived your time, don’t eat someone else’s time. In your younger years, you had fun, danced, wore beautiful dresses, the sun smiled at you. Did you live badly? And isn’t your old man happy with Was he? And your children - weren’t they joyful?”
“I took away my son, Tanyushin’s father, too early,” complains Aglaya Dmitrievna.
“I cleaned up my son when I needed it; but I left my granddaughter to you, the old people, for joy and consolation.”
- How can she live without us? Also, the old man does not last forever. “Well, the old man will still live, the old man is strong. And she has become quite big. The girl is smart, she will not be lost.”
- How can I live without him in the next world? How can he stay at this without me? How long have you lived together?
Here death laughs, even sobs with pleasure, but without malice:
“That’s what you’re thinking about! What do you care about - lie in your grave, rest. They’ll get along without you, nothing. What joy is there from a sick person, from an old woman? What is there of you but a hindrance? All this is nothing!”
You can hear the cuckoo cuckooing four times in the office. It’s probably light outside, but the window is covered with heavy curtains.
“Oh, my death,” moans Aglaya Dmitrievna.
“The pad needs to be corrected,” says the nurse. “Everything is out of whack.”
He straightens the pillows and again sits down to doze in the chair by the bed.
Light entered the basement. The little rats scattered into the back streets. The old wounded rat also dozed off. The cat on the window lazily catches a large sleepy fly. He will press and leave; she's crawling again. It's summer time - it's already quite light.
Tanyusha has a third dream in the morning; and again Stolnikov, cheerful, satisfied, laughs.
- On vacation? For how long?
Stolnikov happily answers:
- Now forever!
- Like forever? Why?
Stolnikov extends his hand, long and flat, like a board; written on the palm in red:
"Indefinite leave."
And suddenly Tanyusha is scared: why “indefinite”? And recently I wrote that I won’t have to see you soon, since I refused to go on a business trip. “It’s impossible to leave the front now, and I don’t want to; the time is not like that.”
Stolnikov wipes his hand with a handkerchief; Now the hand is small, and the red has faded onto the scarf. Tanyusha wakes up: what a strange dream!
Only six hours. Tanyusha threw her arms up and fell asleep again. A strip of light through a hole in the curtains crossed the white sheet like a bright ribbon and stood like a column on the wall above the bed. The hair has fallen off and lies separately on the pillow. There is a small birthmark on Tanyusha’s right shoulder, below the collarbone. And exactly, from the girl’s breathing, the sheet rises.
FIFTH CARD
Stolnikov felt with his foot the steps carved into the ground and descended into the common officers' dugout under a light dugout. It was stuffy and smoky inside. On a nearby bench the doctor was playing chess with a young ensign. At the table, a group of officers continued the game that had begun after lunch. Stolnikov walked up to the table and squeezed himself between the players.
- You must miss twice, Sasha. Will you play?
- Will. I know.
When the circle began to approach him, he touched the pieces of paper in his pocket and said:
- All the leftovers. How many are there?
- You are one hundred and thirty, with a map.
- Give.
The eyes of the players, as if on command, moved from the ATM card to the card of Stolnikov, who said:
- Well, well, give me the card.
- You are fat, we... are fat too. Two points.
“Three,” Stolnikov said and extended his hand to the bet.
The cards moved on to the next one.
The war has stopped. In general, everything disappeared except the surface of the table, money passing from hand to hand, and a tattered “sausage” of cards. Stolnikov was never a student, did not dance at Tanyusha’s party, did not turn from a fresh officer into a battle captain with Georgy, was not at the opera yesterday and will not return to the rear. The tobacco curtain cut off the world. He also lit a cigarette.
- Yours, Sasha, the bank.
- Well, here you go, I bet you all the winnings. For starters... nine. I'm not filming. You're a three, I'm nine again. There are three hundred and sixty in the bank. You get half, you get a hundred; Do you need the leftovers, Ignatov? Eh, I should do nine again... Yours... here, take it.
Stolnikov handed over a “machine” made from a Katyk cartridge case. Ten people played, now we have to wait. Everyone's eyes turned to the hands of his neighbor on the left. Ears heard:
- Pure fat... damn it! Six each? - No, we only have seven. I'm taking half off. Where are you going? That is, never a third card! - I didn’t even have a second one... We need to reverse the happiness.
They ruined their happiness, scolded their “rotten waist,” tried to skip two banks, stuffed pieces of paper into the pockets of their jacket (as a last resort). The fourth card came - and the person rose, became kinder, better, agreed to give the card for recording. Then, in three big flashes, his money flowed away, and he nervously fingered the piece of paper that had been put aside “for emergencies.”
The ensign at the end of the table allowed both the bank and the show-off. They no longer contacted him.
- Burnt out?
- Completely.
- This, brother, happens. This is the strip.
- I always have such a streak.
But he didn’t leave. Watched. As if happiness could fall on the head of a non-player. Or... someone will get rich and offer a loan; but I don’t want to ask.
Stolnikov was lucky.
- I'm lucky for the second day. Yesterday in action, today in the cards.
At the words “in action,” everyone woke up for a minute, but only for a minute; and it was unpleasant. There should be no other life other than this.
A soldier came in and said:
- It's buzzing, your honor.
- German? I'm coming. Damn it, right in front of my bank.
- Give him a hard time, Osipov!
The artilleryman left, and no one looked after him. As he walked out the door, the long-familiar sound of a distant engine in the sky was heard outside. A few minutes later the gun thundered.
- Osipov is trying. Why do the Germans fly at night?
It thumped. This was the response of the German pilot. But Osipov had already spotted the enemy in the sky: the clicking of machine guns could be heard. It came closer. Everyone raised their heads.
- Come on... Give me the card. Seven. Sell the bank, otherwise they will break it after seven. Well, then give me the card...
It hit with terrible force very close to the dugout. The candle overturned, but did not go out. The officers jumped up, taking the money. Earth fell from the ceiling through the beams.
- Damn, he almost hit us in the head. We need to go out and have a look.
Stolnikov said loudly:
- The bank is behind me, I didn’t hold out enough! The officers poured out. The spotlight illuminated the sky almost overhead, but the strip of light was already deviating. The gun roared and the machine gun crackled incessantly. The older officer said:
- Don’t stand in a bunch, gentlemen, you can’t.
- He's already flown away.
- He might come back. And he moves the glass.
The explosion pit was very close. Fortunately, there were no casualties; the German scared for nothing.
Stolnikov remembered that he had run out of cigarettes and went to his dugout. Having reached it, he stopped. The sky was extremely clear. The searchlight beam fell into the depths and now led the enemy back - a barely brightened dot against a dark background. It thumped again - the first cast-iron leg was placed on the ground by the heavenly giant. The glass of the return shot fell nearby.
“Why isn’t it scary?” Stolnikov thought. “But he can easily kill! In reality, yes, it’s scary there, but there’s no time to think. And these toys are from the sky...” Then he remembered: “And the bank is behind me. Four I beat the cards. I’ll leave it all. It would be nice to beat the fifth... It will be a healthy jackpot!”
And he imagined himself opening the nine. He smiled involuntarily.
When the German's last gift struck, the officers instinctively rushed to the dugout. We listened at the door as the noise of the engine faded away and the machine guns died down. Then everything calmed down and they returned to the table. Apparently, the German, having perfectly sensed the location of the reserve, still played in vain, only frightening the young soldiers.
- Osipov will return. Where can he shoot this bird?
- I flew too high.
- Let's sit down, shall we? Whose bank?
- Stolnikova. He beat four cards.
-Where is Stolnikov? Shall we wait for him?
- We must wait.
Someone said:
“He went to get some cigarettes, he’ll be right back.”
The messenger ran in: to the doctor.
- Your Honor, Mr. Captain Stolnikov was wounded.
And, lowering his hand from the visor, he added more quietly to the first person to leave:
“It’s almost as if their legs were completely torn off, your honor!” German bonboy...
MINUTE
The dark night has surrounded the house and is pressing on its old walls. It penetrated everywhere - into the basements, under the roof, into the attic, into the large hall where a cat was guarding the door. Twilight spread across my grandmother’s bedroom, illuminated by a night lamp. Only Tanyushina’s open bright window frightens and drives away the night.
And it’s so quiet that you can hear the silence.
With her feet in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, Tanyusha does not see the lines of the books. Her face seems thin, her eyes look forward intently, as if at a screen. Pictures of the former and the non-existent quietly pass on the screen, people briefly look at Tanya from the screen and their hands draw invisible letters of thoughts.
Vasya Boltanovsky flashed with a healed scratch, Eduard Lvovich turned the notes, Lenochka with a red cross on a snow-white robe and an arch of surprised eyebrows under a scarf. And the front: a black line, greatcoats, bayonets, silent shots. A hand draws on the screen: there have been no letters from Stolnikov for a long time. And she herself, Tanyusha, is on the screen: she looks serious, like a stranger.
And again the fog: this is fatigue. She closed her eyes and opened them: all the objects pulled themselves up and returned to their original places. When minutes and hours of silence pass, something new will be born. Maybe the sound of a carriage, maybe a scream, or just the rustling of a rat. Or the gate in the alley will slam. And the dead minute will pass.
Again on the screen is Vasya with a shaved chin. He breaks the matchbox and says:
- Taking into account that you, Tanyusha, will get married anyway, it’s interesting to know if you would marry me? Damn it, go out anyway.
The slivers fly to the floor, and Vasya picks them up one at a time, so as not to raise his head right away.
- Well, no, Tanyusha, seriously. This is stupidly interesting...
Tanyusha answers seriously:
- No.
After thinking some more, he adds:
- In my opinion, no.
“So, sir,” says Vasya. “Of course.” Good slap in the face, damn it! And why? I'm really, really interested.
- Because... somehow... why for you, Vasya? We just know each other... and then suddenly we get married.
Vasya laughs not very naturally:
- Are you sure you are for a stranger? This is clever!
Vasya is looking for something else to break. All that was left of the box was dust.
Tanyusha wants to clarify:
- In my opinion, getting married is someone... or in general it becomes clear that you cannot part with this person and you can live your whole life.
Vasya tries to be a cynic:
- Well, for the rest of my life! They come together and diverge...
-- I know. But this is if you made a mistake.
Vasya gloomily breaks a feather.
- All this is vanity of vanities. We were wrong, we weren't wrong. And in general - to hell. I personally am unlikely to get married. Freedom is more valuable.
Tanyusha clearly sees that Vasya is offended. But he absolutely does not understand why he is offended. Of all my friends, he is the best. That's who you can rely on.
Vasya melts on the screen. The shadow of “he who is” slides in the fog, but does not want to emerge any clearer. And it would be infinitely scary if a real image appeared, with eyes, a nose, maybe a mustache... And he would be completely unfamiliar.
And suddenly Tanyusha closes her eyes and freezes. A chill runs throughout the body, the chest is tight, and the mouth, trembling, half-opens. Just a minute. Then the blood rushes to her cheeks, and Tanyusha cools them with her still trembling hand.
Maybe it's the chill from the window? What a strange, what a secret feeling. Secret for body and soul.
The screen is closed. Intermission. Tanyusha tries to pick up a book:
"The above passage is quite eloquent..."
What is the "quoted passage"? An excerpt of what?
Tanyusha turns the page back and looks for the initial quotation marks. She absolutely does not remember whose words the author quotes and for what purpose.
A nurse's steps on the stairs:
- Young lady, go to grandma...
DEATH
There is a huge event in the underground: the old rat has not returned. No matter how weak she was, she still squeezed into the pantry at night through a hole gnawed by the mouse generation, which had now completely disappeared from the underground.
In the storeroom there were chests, a baby stroller, and bundles of old newspapers and magazines were piled up - there was no gain. But nearby, across the corridor, there was a kitchen, the door of which was not so difficult to crawl under. The rat did not go to other rooms, especially the big one, remembering how it had already fallen into the paws of a cat once. At dawn the old rat of the underground did not return. But the sensitive ears of the young heard her squeal at night.
When Dunyasha took out the chewed rat in the trash in the morning, the janitor said:
- What a winner! Well, Vaska! She will be a hundred years old.
For years, the rat was younger than a human teenager. Age has taken over the age of the young.
No one came out for coffee. The professor was sitting in a chair by Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bed. The nurse came up twice and straightened out the folds. Tanyusha looked with big surprised eyes at the wrinkles of her wax grandmother smoothed out by death. The old woman's hands were folded in a cross, and her fingers were thin and sharp.
The nurse didn’t know whether the jaw needed to be inserted and didn’t dare ask. And my chin is too sunken. The jaw lay in a glass of water and seemed to be the only living thing left of the grandmother.
A tear rolled down the professor's beard; hung on a curl of hair, swayed and hid deeper. Along the same path, but without delay, another ran away. When grandfather sobbed, Tanyusha turned her eyes to him, blushed and suddenly fell on his shoulder. At that moment, Tanyusha was a little milk child, whose face was looking for the warmth of her chest: in this new world he was so scared; she never listened to lectures on history, and her thoughts only learned to swim in the salty solution of tears. At that moment, the learned ornithologist was a little gnome, fighting off an evil rat with his legs, in vain offended, looking for protection from a girl-granddaughter, just as small, but probably brave. And half the world was occupied in front of them by the gigantic bed of an alien old woman, wiser and abruptly breaking with them. At that moment the sun went out and disintegrated in one soul, the bridge between eternities collapsed, and a new fussy work began in the body, the only immortal one.
There were two children left at Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bedside, one very old and one very young. Everything is gone from the old one; The young man has his whole life left. On the window in the next room, the cat was licking its lips and looking without curiosity at the fly, which was making toilet with its paws before flying.
The real event took place only in the bedroom of the professor’s house in Sivtsev Vrazhek. In the rest of the world everything was fine: although lives were also cut short, creatures were born, mountains crumbled, but all this was done in a general, inaudible harmony. Here, in the laboratory of grief, a cloudy tear mixed with a transparent tear.
Only here was the real:
Grandmother died beloved.
...from the earth we were created from the earth, and to another earth we will go, as you commanded, who created me and gave me: for you are the earth and you went back to the earth, but let us all go, singing a funeral lament: Hallelujah...*
*... We are created from the earth... - a fragment of the funeral prayer “He Himself is the One Immortal who created and created man...” (Psalm. Following the departure of the soul from the body. Song 6. Ikos.).
NIGHT
A night bird spread its two wings over the house of the old widowed bird professor. And blocked out the starry shine and moonlight. Two wings: to protect him from the world, to honor the old man’s great sadness.
In a chair, sitting comfortably, in a halo of gray hairs, shaded by the lamp - and quietly, quietly all around, from the local thought to the borders of the World - sits an old man, thousands of years older than yesterday, when Tanya’s grandmother, Aglaya, was still clinging to life with weak breath Dmitrievna. And in the hall, where the piano looks with its shining legs at the burning candles at the coffin, in an even, intelligible voice, a calm stream, the nun pours a babbling stream of important, unnecessary words to the silent listener under the dark brocade. And the deceased’s chin was pressed tightly to her nose.
The professor is all in his memory, all in the past. He looks deep into himself and writes page after page in his thoughts in small handwriting. He will write, put it aside, re-read what he wrote before, sew notebooks together with strong, harsh thread - and still he will not reach the end of his everyday story, until a new meeting. He does not believe, of course, in union in a new being, and it is not necessary. And soon it will be in oblivion. Years, days and hours are counted - and hours, and days, and years pass. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.
Walls of books and shelves of writings - everything was loved and everything was the fruit of life. This too will go away when “she” calls. And he sees her as a young girl, laughs with a dimple on her cheek, shouts to him over the rye strip:
And we walked across the border together... and where and when was that? And what - was it not the light of the sun that I remember so much?
And together they walked and came. But now she didn’t wait - she went ahead. And again he, now with an old man’s gait, walks around the strip of golden rye...
Tanyusha came in wearing a robe and sleeping shoes. They can't sleep tonight. A night bird above the house fenced off the grandfather and granddaughter from the rest of the World. In this small world, sadness does not sleep.
Tanyusha is at her feet, on a bench, with her head on her grandfather’s lap. I didn’t pin up the soft braids and left them over my shoulders.
-What was good about grandma? And she was good because she was kind to you and me. Our grandmother; poor.
And they sit for a long time, they’ve already cried for the day.
And again they are silent for a long time. You can’t say this, but the two of us have a common idea. When the murmur of verbal streams of nuns comes through the walls, they see candles and a coffin, and then they wait for fatigue. Grandma was so kind to both of them, now lying in the hall, under dark brocade, with trembling candles around the flame.
They enter the world through a narrow door, fearful, crying that they had to leave the resting chaos of sounds, simple, comfortable incomprehensibility; They enter the world, stumbling over the stones of desires, and go in crowds straight, like sleepwalkers, to another narrow door. There, before leaving, everyone would like to explain that this was a mistake, that his path lay upward, upward, and not into a terrible meat grinder, and that he had not yet had time to look around. There is a grin at the door, and the turnstile counter clicks.
That's all.
There is no sleep, but there is no clarity of images either. Between sleep and nightmares, the old man hears a girl’s voice on the other side of the last door:
- I'll wait here...
I should go straight after her, but I can’t crush the rye. And everything is flooded with sun. And the old man hurries along the narrow boundary to where she is waiting, stretching out his thin arms.
He opened his eyes and met Tanyusha’s large, questioning rays of eyes:
- Grandfather, lie down and rest!
BOOTS
The janitor Nikolai sat in the janitor's room and looked for a long time, carefully, thoughtfully at the boots lying on the bench in front of him.
A strange, almost incredible thing happened. The boots were not sewn, but built long ago by the great architect-shoemaker Roman Petrov, an incredible drunkard, but also a master, the likes of which have not remained since the day when Roman fell from the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. . Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and wouldn’t straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
- So it's a done deal?
- Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no - these are not boots, but just rubbish, not suitable for patches, let alone for janitor work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
- Looks like it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
While I was filling the wick in the lamp, I kept thinking, and not so much about the need to sew new ones, but about the frailty of earthly things. It seems that nothing can crush you, and everything is fine outside. And the day came, the wind blew, the rain got wet - there was dust inside, and here are your boots. And that's it! And the house stands, stands, and may fall. And it’s the same with the person himself.
In the evening, a neighboring janitor came in, also elderly and unconscripted. Nikolai told him about the boots. We looked at them and picked them:
- There is nothing to do here. We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now there is no such product in the factory.
Pass us away more than all sorrows / Both lordly anger and lordly love
From the comedy “Woe from Wit (1824)” by A. S. Griboedov (1795-1829). Words of the maid Lisa (act. 1, appearance 2):
Ah, far away from the masters;
They prepare troubles for themselves at any time,
Pass us away more than all sorrows
And lordly anger, and lordly love.
Allegorically: it is better to stay away from the special attention of people on whom you depend, since there is only one step from their love to their hatred.
Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.
See what “Pass us beyond all sorrows / Both lordly anger and lordly love” in other dictionaries:
Wed. Left: Ah! away from the gentlemen! Pass us away more than all sorrows, And lordly anger, and lordly love. Griboyedov. Woe from the mind. 1, 2. Lisa. Wed. Mit grossen Herrn ist schlecht Kirschen essen … Michelson's Large Explanatory and Phraseological Dictionary
A; m. Feeling of strong indignation, indignation; state of irritation, anger. Tantrum. Don't remember yourself from anger. Bring upon yourself someone. d. Burn, boil, fill with anger. Speak with anger in your eyes and in your voice. Who l. scary in anger... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Aya, oh. 1. to Barin (1 digit) and Lady (1 digit). Bed estate. That's his will. From the master's shoulder (about clothes donated by a master, a wealthy or high-ranking person). The second lady (the landowner's senior maid, housekeeper). * Pass us by... encyclopedic Dictionary
lordly- oh, oh. see also lordly, lordly 1) to master 1) and lady 1) Bai estate. That's his will. From the master's shoulder (about clothes donated by a master, wealthy or high-ranking... Dictionary of many expressions
BARIN- 1) Before the October Revolution of 1917*, the everyday name of a representative of one of the privileged classes, nobleman*, landowner or high-ranking official (see rank*), etc. Derived from the word boyar*. In literary speech, the form... ... Linguistic and regional dictionary
Griboyedov A.S. Griboyedov Alexander Sergeevich (1790 or 1795 1829) Russian writer, poet, playwright, diplomat. 1826 was under investigation in the Decembrist case. 1828 appointed ambassador to Persia, where he was killed by Persian fanatics. Aphorisms, quotes...
Aya, oh. adj. to the master [Lisa:] Pass us away more than all sorrows, And lordly anger, and lordly love. Griboedov, Woe from Wit. [Belokurov] lived in an outbuilding in the garden, and I lived in an old manor house, in a huge hall with columns. Chekhov, House with a mezzanine. ||… … Small academic dictionary
PASS, I pass, you pass, owls. and (rarely) nonsense. 1. who what. Pass, pass by someone or something, leave someone or something. behind or to the side. Pass the passerby. Skip the ground. Pass the village. “The coachman passed the capital.” Nekrasov. “Interlocutors, ... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
- (1795 1829) writer and poet, playwright, diplomat But by the way, he will reach the famous levels, After all, nowadays they love the dumb. Who are the judges? Oh! If someone loves someone, Why bother searching and traveling so far? Oh! Evil tongues are worse than a gun. Blessed... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
and... and...- conjunction If the repeated conjunction “and... and...” connects homogeneous members of the sentence, then a comma is placed before the second and subsequent members of the sentence. Oh! away from the gentlemen; // They have troubles prepared for themselves at every hour, // Pass us by more than all sorrows //... ... Dictionary-reference book on punctuation
Sivtsev Vrazhek
They will be tied together with a strong, harsh thread, and everything will not reach the end of its everyday story, until a new meeting. He does not believe, of course, in union in a new being, and it is not necessary. And soon it will be in oblivion. Years, days and hours are counted - and hours, and days, and years pass. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.
Walls of books and shelves of writings - everything was loved and everything was the fruit of life. This too will go away when “she” calls. And he sees her as a young girl, laughs with a dimple on her cheek, shouts to him over the rye strip:
- Go around, don’t crush! And so be it, I’ll wait.
And we walked across the border together... and where and when was that? And what - was it not the light of the sun that I remember so much?
And together they walked and came. But now she didn’t wait - she went ahead. And again he, now with an old man’s gait, walks around the strip of golden rye...
Tanyusha came in wearing a robe and sleeping shoes. They can't sleep tonight. A night bird above the house fenced off the grandfather and granddaughter from the rest of the World. In this small world, sadness does not sleep.
- We will now live without grandmother, Tanyusha. And we got used to living with my grandmother. It will be difficult.
Tanyusha is at her feet, on a bench, with her head on her grandfather’s lap. I didn’t pin up the soft braids and left them over my shoulders.
- What was good about grandma? And she was good because she was kind to you and me. Our grandmother; poor.
And they sit for a long time, they’ve already cried for the day.
- Can’t sleep, Tanyusha?
- Grandpa, I want to sit with you. After all, you’re not sleeping either... And if you lie down, even on the sofa, I’ll still sit next to you. Let's lie down.
- I’ll lie down; but for now I sat somehow, maybe it would be better this way.
And again they are silent for a long time. You can’t say this, but the two of us have a common idea. When the murmur of verbal streams of nuns comes through the walls, they see candles and a coffin, and then they wait for fatigue. Grandma was so kind to both of them, now lying in the hall, under dark brocade, with trembling candles around the flame.
They enter the world through a narrow door, fearful, crying that they had to leave the resting chaos of sounds, simple, comfortable incomprehensibility; They enter the world, stumbling over the stones of desires, and go in crowds straight, like sleepwalkers, to another narrow door. There, before leaving, everyone would like to explain that this was a mistake, that his path lay upward, upward, and not into a terrible meat grinder, and that he had not yet had time to look around. There is a grin at the door, and the turnstile counter clicks.
That's all.
There is no sleep, but there is no clarity of images either. Between sleep and nightmares, the old man hears a girl’s voice on the other side of the last door:
- I'll wait here...
I should go straight after her, but I can’t crush the rye. And everything is flooded with sun. And the old man hurries along the narrow boundary to where she is waiting, stretching out his thin arms.
He opened his eyes and met Tanyusha’s large, questioning rays of eyes:
- Grandfather, lie down and rest!
The janitor Nikolai sat in the janitor's room and looked for a long time, carefully, thoughtfully at the boots lying on the bench in front of him.
A strange, almost incredible thing happened. The boots were not sewn, but built long ago by the great architect-shoemaker Roman Petrov, an incredible drunkard, but also a craftsman, the likes of which no longer exist since
They enter the world through a narrow door, fearful, crying that they had to leave the resting chaos of sounds, simple, comfortable incomprehensibility; They enter the world, stumbling over the stones of desires, and go in crowds straight, like sleepwalkers, to another narrow door. There, before leaving, everyone would like to explain that this was a mistake, that his path lay upward, upward, and not into a terrible meat grinder, and that he had not yet had time to look around. There is a grin at the door, and the turnstile counter clicks.
That's all.
There is no sleep, but there is no clarity of images either. Between sleep and nightmares, the old man hears a girl’s voice on the other side of the last door:
I'll wait here...
I should go straight after her, but I can’t crush the rye. And everything is flooded with sun. And the old man hurries along the narrow boundary to where she is waiting, stretching out his thin arms.
He opened his eyes and met Tanyusha’s large, questioning rays of eyes:
Grandfather, lie down and rest!
The janitor Nikolai sat in the janitor's room and looked for a long time, carefully, thoughtfully at the boots lying on the bench in front of him.
A strange, almost incredible thing happened. The boots were not sewn, but built long ago by the great architect-shoemaker Roman Petrov, an incredible drunkard, but also a master, the likes of which have not remained since the day when Roman fell from the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. . Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and wouldn’t straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
So it's a done deal?
Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? From a distance I looked - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no - these are not boots, but just rubbish, not suitable for patches, let alone for janitor work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
Apparently it was rotting inside. And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
While I was filling the wick in the lamp, I kept thinking, and not so much about the need to sew new ones, but about the frailty of earthly things. It seems that nothing can crush you, and everything is fine outside. And the day came, the wind blew, the rain got wet - there was dust inside, and here are your boots. And that's it! And the house stands, stands, and may fall. And it’s the same with the person himself.
In the evening, a neighboring janitor came in, also elderly and unconscripted. Nikolai told him about the boots. We looked at them and picked them:
There's nothing to do here. We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now there is no such product in the factory.
I can handle it. It's not the money that I feel sorry for, it's the work that I feel sorry for. The work was famous.
We smoked. The janitor's room immediately became smoky, sour and satisfying.
“That’s it too,” said Fyodor, “that’s all?” things are fragile right now. There is war for you, and there is all sorts of chaos for you. Today the guard reported: and what is being done! Tomorrow, he says, maybe they’ll remove us. And, he says, no one will go out to fast, we will sit at home and drink tea.
And in St. Petersburg, he says what is being done - and it is impossible to find out. Maybe the king will be removed too. What is it like without a king? It's not clear.
“How is it possible to dismiss the tsar,” said Nikolai and again looked at the boots, “he was not appointed by us.”
Who knows, the time is now like this. And everything comes from the war, from it. Coming out of the janitor's room, Fyodor once again picked at the worst boot with his finger and shook his head:
Kaput business!
“Yes, I can see it myself,” Nikolai said displeasedly.
After the neighbor left, he threw the boots into the box and gloomily heard the horseshoe hitting the tree. It’s good that the felt boots were lined with leather. In the entryway he picked up a scraper and went out to work for the evening.
Vasya Boltanovsky rang early, at the beginning of nine, at the entrance of the house on Sivtsev Vrazhek. Dunyasha opened the door with the hem tucked up and said:
The young lady and the gentleman in the dining room. Don't bump into the bucket, sir, I'm cleaning the floors.
Tanyusha met:
What happened, Vasya, that you are so early? Would you like to get coffee? Well, tell me.
A lot has happened. Hello, professor. Congratulations: revolution!
The professor raised his head from his book.
What new did you learn, Vasya? Are the newspapers out again today?
Vasya told. The newspapers did not come out because the editors were all bargaining with Mrozovsky. And even “Russian Vedomosti” is a real disgrace! In St. Petersburg there was a coup, power was in the hands of the Duma, a provisional government was formed, they even say that the tsar abdicated the throne.
The revolution has won, professor. Accurate news. Now it’s final.
Well, let's see... It's not that simple, Vasya.
And the professor again delved into his book.
Tanyusha readily agreed to go for a walk around Moscow. There was no sitting at home these days. Despite the still early hour for Moscow, there were a lot of people on the streets, and it was clear that they were not busy with business.
Tanyusha and Vasya walked along the boulevards to Tverskaya, along Tverskaya to the City Duma. There was a crowd in the square, in groups, not interfering with the passage; there are many officers in the crowd. Something was happening in the Duma. It turned out that it was free to go there.
In the oblong hall, people were sitting at a table who were clearly not from here, not from the Duma. Those entering were required to have a pass, but since there were no passes, the public was filtered through simple verbal statements. Vasya said that he was a “representative of the press”, and about Tanyusha he muttered: “secretary”. It was clear that the selection of faces at the table was quite random. However, to the question: “Who is sitting?” - they answered: “Council of Workers’ Deputies.” The meeting was not very lively; some kind of confusion restrained speech. Bolder
others were spoken by a soldier from the side, who, however, was also called a “delegate.” The soldier shouted angrily:
What to talk about? You need to not talk, but act. We go to the barracks - that's all. You will see that ours will join. What else to expect! You are used to talking in vain in the rear.
They came out in a small crowd. But already at the very entrance it grew. Someone, having climbed higher, was making a speech to the audience, but the words were coming through poorly. It felt like an ordinary philistine job. The only encouragement was the presence of several soldiers and an officer with an empty coat sleeve. A small group moved towards Theater Square, followed by a crowd. At first they looked around to see if the horsemen would appear, but not even a single policeman was visible. The crowd grew, and several thousand people were already walking from Lubyanka Square, along Lubyanka and Sretenka. In some groups they sang “Marseillaise” and “You have fallen a victim,” but it came out out of tune; The revolution did not have its own anthem. We came to Sukharevka, but in sight of the Spassky barracks the crowd thinned out again; they said that they would shoot from the barracks.
Vasya and Tanyusha walked with those in front. It was creepy and entertaining.
Are you, Tanya, not afraid?
Don't know. I think they won't. After all, they already know that the revolution was victorious in St. Petersburg.
Why don't they come out, soldiers?
Well, they probably haven’t decided yet. And now, when they see the people, they will come out.
Current page: 6 (book has 22 pages in total)
DEATH
There is a huge event in the underground: the old rat has not returned. No matter how weak she was, she still squeezed into the pantry at night through a hole gnawed by the mouse generation, which had now completely disappeared from the underground.
In the storeroom there were chests, a baby stroller, and bundles of old newspapers and magazines were piled up - no loot. But nearby, across the corridor, there was a kitchen, the door of which was not so difficult to crawl under. The rat did not go to other rooms, especially the big one, remembering how it had already fallen into the paws of a cat once. At dawn the old rat of the underground did not return. But the sensitive ears of the young heard her squeal at night.
When Dunyasha took out the chewed rat in the trash in the morning, the janitor said:
- What a winner! Well, Vaska! She will be a hundred years old.
For years, the rat was younger than a human teenager. Age has taken over the age of the young.
No one came out for coffee. The professor was sitting in a chair by Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bed. The nurse came up twice and straightened out the folds. Tanyusha looked with big surprised eyes at the wrinkles of her wax grandmother smoothed out by death. The old woman's hands were folded in a cross, and her fingers were thin and sharp.
The nurse didn’t know whether the jaw needed to be inserted and didn’t dare ask. And my chin is too sunken. The jaw lay in a glass of water and seemed to be the only living thing left of the grandmother.
A tear rolled down the professor's beard; hung on a curl of hair, swayed and hid deeper. Along the same path, but without delay, another ran away. When grandfather sobbed, Tanyusha turned her eyes to him, blushed and suddenly fell on his shoulder. At that moment, Tanyusha was a little milk child, whose face was looking for the warmth of her chest: in this new world he was so scared; she never listened to lectures on history, and her thoughts only learned to swim in the salty solution of tears. At that moment, the learned ornithologist was a little gnome, fighting off an evil rat with his legs, in vain offended, looking for protection from a girl-granddaughter, just as small, but probably brave. And half the world was occupied in front of them by the gigantic bed of an alien old woman, wiser and abruptly breaking with them. At that moment the sun went out and disintegrated in one soul, the bridge between eternities collapsed, and a new fussy work began in the body, the only immortal one.
There were two children left at Aglaya Dmitrievna’s bedside, one very old and one very young. Everything is gone from the old one; The young man has his whole life left. On the window in the next room, the cat was licking its lips and looking without curiosity at the fly, which was making toilet with its paws before flying.
The real event took place only in the bedroom of the professor’s house in Sivtsev Vrazhek. In the rest of the world everything was fine: although lives were also cut short, creatures were born, mountains crumbled, but all this was done in a general, inaudible harmony. Here, in the laboratory of grief, a cloudy tear mixed with a transparent tear.
Only here was the real:
Grandmother died beloved.
We were created from the earth, and we will go to the other earth, as you commanded, who created me and gave me: for you are the earth and you went back to the earth, but let us all go, weeping at the grave, creating the song: Hallelujah... 10
Earthlings are created from the earth... – a fragment of the funeral prayer “He Himself is the One Immortal, who created and created man...” (Psalm. Following the departure of the soul from the body. Song 6. Ikos.).
NIGHT
A night bird spread its two wings over the house of the old widowed bird professor. And blocked out the starry shine and moonlight. Two wings: to protect him from the world, to honor the old man’s great sadness.
In a chair, sitting comfortably, in a halo of gray hairs, shaded by the lamp - and quietly all around, from the local thought to the borders of the World - sits an old man, thousands of years older than yesterday, when Tanya’s grandmother, Aglaya, was still clinging to life with weak breath Dmitrievna. And in the hall, where the piano looks with its shining legs at the burning candles at the coffin, in an even, intelligible voice, a calm stream, the nun pours a babbling stream of important, unnecessary words to the silent listener under the dark brocade. And the deceased’s chin was pressed tightly to her nose.
The professor is all in his memory, all in the past. He looks deep into himself and writes page after page in his thoughts in small handwriting. He will write, put it aside, re-read what he wrote before, sew notebooks together with strong, harsh thread - and still he will not reach the end of his everyday story, until a new meeting. He doesn’t believe, of course, in union in a new being—and there’s no need for it. And soon it will be in oblivion. Years, days and hours are counted - and hours, and days, and years pass. For you are dust, and to dust you will return.
Walls of books and shelves of writings - everything was loved and everything was the fruit of life. This too will go away when “she” calls. And he sees her as a young girl, laughs with a dimple on her cheek, shouts to him over the rye stripe:
- Go around, don’t crush! And so be it, I’ll wait.
And we walked across the border together... and where and when was that? And what - was it not the light of the sun that I remember so much?
And they walked together - and they came. But now she didn’t wait - she went ahead. And again he, now with an old man’s gait, walks around the strip of golden rye...
Tanyusha came in wearing a robe and sleeping shoes. They can't sleep tonight. A night bird above the house fenced off the grandfather and granddaughter from the rest of the World. In this small world, sadness does not sleep.
– We will now live without grandmother, Tanyusha. And we got used to living with my grandmother. It will be difficult.
Tanyusha is at her feet, on a bench, with her head on her grandfather’s lap. I didn’t pin up the soft braids and left them over my shoulders.
– What was good about grandma? And she was good because she was kind to you and me. Our grandmother; poor.
And they sit for a long time, they’ve already cried for the day.
– Can’t sleep, Tanyusha?
- Grandpa, I want to sit with you. After all, you’re not sleeping either... And if you lie down, even on the sofa, I’ll still sit next to you. Let's lie down.
- I’ll lie down; but for now I sat somehow, maybe it would be better this way.
And again they are silent for a long time. You can’t say this, but the two of us have a common idea. When the murmur of the nuns’ verbal streams is heard through the walls, they see the candles and the coffin, and then they wait for fatigue. Grandma was so kind to both of them, now lying in the hall, under dark brocade, with trembling candles around her.
They enter the world through a narrow door, fearful, crying that they had to leave the resting chaos of sounds, simple, comfortable incomprehensibility; They enter the world, stumbling over the stones of desires, and go in crowds straight, like sleepwalkers, to another narrow door. There, before leaving, everyone would like to explain that this was a mistake, that his path lay upward, upward, and not into a terrible meat grinder, and that he had not yet had time to look around. There is a grin at the door, and the turnstile counter clicks.
That's all.
There is no sleep, but there is no clarity of images either. Between sleep and nightmares, the old man hears a girl’s voice on the other side of the last door:
- I'll wait here...
I should go straight after her, but I can’t crush the rye. And everything is flooded with sun. And the old man hurries along the narrow boundary to where she is waiting, stretching out his thin arms.
He opened his eyes and met Tanyusha’s large, questioning rays of eyes:
- Grandfather, lie down and rest!
BOOTS
The janitor Nikolai sat in the janitor's room and looked for a long time, carefully, thoughtfully at the boots lying on the bench in front of him.
A strange, almost incredible thing happened. The boots were not sewn, but built long ago by the great architect-shoemaker Roman Petrov, an incredible drunkard, but also a master, the likes of which have not remained since the day when Roman fell from the stairs on a winter night, broke his head and froze, returning his drunken soul to where it should be. . Nikolai knew him personally, severely condemned him for his constant drunkenness, but was also respectfully surprised at his talent. And now, Romanova’s boots have run out.
It’s not like they ended completely unexpectedly. No, the signs of old age threatening them had been visible before, and more than once. Nikolai replaced three pairs of heels and two soles. There were also patches on both feet in the place where there are supposed to be calluses on a person’s good, crooked little finger. One patch is from a boot cut with an axe; Nikolai almost lost half a finger then, but his strong skin saved him. Another patch on a place worn down by time. Roman himself changed the heels and soles. The last time he put such a huge horseshoe on Nikolai’s new heel that it ensured the integrity of the heel for many years to come. And he stuffed a dozen forged nails with thick heads into the soles, and fitted a cast-iron strip on the side. The boots became heavy, heavy and loud, but from then on Nikolai forgot to think about taking them down.
And how it happened is unknown, but only one day on the day of the thaw I had to change my felt boots to boots. Nikolai took them out of the box near the stove, where they had been lying, carefully smeared with wood oil since the fall so that the skin would not crack. He took it out and saw that the sole on both feet had come off, on one completely, on the other less, and among the nail teeth there was only dust, and there was a hole through it. Nikolai bent the sole - and the hole went further, without a creak. And then he saw for the first time that the boot was so worn out that it was see-through, but if you poked it harder with your finger, it turned out to be a hump and would not straighten out.
He took them to the shoemaker, Romanov's heir, but the heir of the workshop, not the talent. When he saw it, he brought it up to the light and immediately said that there was nothing more to repair, the skin couldn’t stand it. Nikolai saw this himself and did not have any special hope.
– So it’s a done deal?
– Yeah... it’s not worth thinking about. It's time to think about new ones.
Nikolai returned with the boots, put them on the bench and was not so much sad, but deep in thought.
I thought about boots and, in general, about the fragility of earthly things. If such a couple got together, what lasts forever? I looked from a distance - it was as if the boots were the same, and they would fit on my feet in a familiar and businesslike manner. But no, these aren’t boots, they’re just trash, not even suitable for patches, let alone janitor work. But it’s as if the horseshoe wasn’t completely worn out, and the nail was intact; It's rusty inside too.
What struck Nikolai most of all was the suddenness of the hopelessness that occurred. When putting on the last patch, the shoemaker did not shake his head, without predicting death, he simply pointed with his finger that he would apply it from now on, sew it on, smooth out the edges. This was a simple repair, not a fight against death. If there had been a struggle, the loss would have been easier. And so - complete destruction came suddenly.
“It looks like it was rotting inside.” And the nails rusted, and the leather rotted. And it's neat. And, the main thing, the work is not simple, but Romanov’s, famous. Nowadays they won’t sew it like that.
While I was filling the wick in the lamp, I kept thinking, and not so much about the need to sew new ones, but about the frailty of earthly things. It seems that nothing can crush you, and everything is fine outside. And the day came, the wind blew, the rain got wet - there was dust inside, and here are your boots. And that's it! And the house stands, stands, and may fall. And it’s the same with the person himself.
In the evening, a neighboring janitor came in, also elderly and unconscripted. Nikolai told him about the boots. We looked at them and picked them:
- There is nothing to do here. We need new ones. Lay out the money. Now there is no such product in the factory.
- I can handle it. It’s not the money that I feel sorry for, it’s the work that I feel sorry for. The work was famous.
We smoked. The janitor's room immediately became smoky, sour and satisfying.
“Also,” said Fyodor, “all things are fragile now.” There is war for you, and there is all sorts of chaos for you. Today the guard reported: and what is being done! Tomorrow, he says, maybe they’ll remove us. And, he says, no one will go out to fast, we will sit at home and drink tea.
- I heard.
- And in St. Petersburg, he says what is being done - and it is impossible to find out. Maybe the king will be removed too. What is it like without a king? It's not clear.
“How is it possible to dismiss the tsar,” said Nikolai and again looked at the boots, “he was not appointed by us.”
– Who knows, the time is now like this. And everything comes from the war, from it. Coming out of the janitor's room, Fyodor once again picked at the worst boot with his finger and shook his head:
- Kaput business!
“Yes, I can see it myself,” Nikolai said displeasedly.
After the neighbor left, he threw the boots into the box and gloomily heard the horseshoe hitting the tree. It’s good that the felt boots were lined with leather. In the entryway he picked up a scraper and went out to work for the evening.
"PLI"
Vasya Boltanovsky rang early, at the beginning of nine, at the entrance of the house on Sivtsev Vrazhek. Dunyasha opened the door with the hem tucked up and said:
- The young lady and the gentleman are in the dining room. Don't bump into the bucket, sir, I'm cleaning the floors.
Tanyusha met:
- What happened, Vasya, that you are so early? Would you like to get coffee? Well, tell me.
- A lot has happened. Hello, professor. Congratulations: revolution!
The professor raised his head from his book.
– What new did you learn, Vasya? Are the newspapers out again today?
Vasya told. The newspapers did not come out because the editors were all bargaining with Mrozovsky. And even “Russian Vedomosti” is a real disgrace! In St. Petersburg there was a coup, power was in the hands of the Duma, a provisional government was formed, they even say that the tsar abdicated the throne.
– The revolution won, professor. Accurate news. Now it’s final.
- Well, let's see... It's not that simple, Vasya.
And the professor again delved into his book.
Tanyusha readily agreed to go for a walk around Moscow. There was no sitting at home these days. Despite the still early hour for Moscow, there were a lot of people on the streets, and it was clear that they were not busy with business.
Tanyusha and Vasya walked along the boulevards to Tverskaya, along Tverskaya to the City Duma. There was a crowd in the square, in groups, not interfering with the passage; there are many officers in the crowd. Something was happening in the Duma. It turned out that it was free to go there.
In the oblong hall, people were sitting at a table who were clearly not from here, not from the Duma. Those entering were required to have a pass, but since there were no passes, the public was filtered through simple verbal statements. Vasya said that he was a “representative of the press”, and about Tanyusha he muttered: “secretary”. It was clear that the selection of faces at the table was quite random. However, to the question: “Who is sitting?” - they answered: “Council of Workers’ Deputies.” The meeting was not very lively; some kind of confusion restrained speech. The soldier from the side, who, however, was also called the “delegate,” spoke more boldly than the others. The soldier shouted angrily:
- What to talk about? You need to not talk, but act. We go to the barracks - that’s all. You will see that ours will join. What else to expect! You are used to talking in vain in the rear.
They came out in a small crowd. But already at the very entrance it grew. Someone, having climbed higher, was making a speech to the audience, but the words were coming through poorly. It felt like an ordinary philistine job. The only encouragement was the presence of several soldiers and an officer with an empty coat sleeve. A small group moved towards Theater Square, followed by a crowd. At first they looked around to see if the horsemen would appear, but not even a single policeman was visible. The crowd grew, and several thousand people were already walking from Lubyanka Square, along Lubyanka and Sretenka. In some groups they sang “Marseillaise” and “You have fallen a victim,” but it came out out of tune; The revolution did not have its own anthem. We came to Sukharevka, but in sight of the Spassky barracks the crowd thinned out again; they said that they would shoot from the barracks.
Vasya and Tanyusha walked with those in front. It was creepy and entertaining.
– Are you afraid, Tanya?
- Don't know. I think they won’t. After all, they already know that the revolution was victorious in St. Petersburg.
- Why don’t they come out, soldiers?
- Well, they probably haven’t decided yet. And now, when they see the people, they will come out.
The barracks gates were locked, the gates were open. There was a sense of indecision here, or perhaps an order was given not to irritate the crowd. We talked to the sentry. To the surprise of those in front, the guards let them through, and part of the crowd, about two hundred people, entered the barracks courtyard. The rest wisely remained outside the gates.
Only a few windows in the barracks were open. In the windows one could see soldiers in greatcoats, with excitedly curious faces. The soldiers were locked in.
- Come out, comrades, there is a revolution in St. Petersburg. The king has been overthrown!
- Come out, come out!
They waved sheets of paper and tried to throw sheets of paper to the windows. They asked to send officers to talk. And, sending friendly and cheerful smiles to the soldiers, they themselves did not know who they were talking to: enemies or new friends. Mistrust fluttered fearfully out of and into the windows.
The barracks were silent.
The crowd approached the doors. Suddenly the doors burst open, and the crowd recoiled, seeing an officer in a marching uniform and a whole platoon of soldiers, with bayonets, occupying the stairs. The soldiers' faces were pale; the officer stood like a stone, not answering questions, not uttering a single word.
It was strange and ridiculous. The noisy crowd is allowed to scream in the courtyard of the barracks, and shout terrible, new, rebellious, seductive words - but the soldiers do not come out. From some windows they shout:
- We're locked. We can't go out.
Skeptical exclamations are heard from others:
- Okay, chat! That's how they blow you away with machine guns - that's a revolution for you.
As if in response, a platoon of soldiers quickly ran out of the side door, one after another, rifles hanging, and stood in a chain against the crowd. A young officer was in command. You could see his chin shaking. The young soldiers were pale and confused.
Almost at the same moment the command was heard:
Tanyusha and Vasya stood in front, right in front of the muzzles of the guns. Both, clutching their hands, involuntarily recoiled. The crowd scattered from the sides and ran towards the gate. Those who were in the center backed away and pressed themselves against the wall.
- Fire! Fire! - two more salvos.
- Tanyusha, Tanyusha, they are shooting, they are shooting at us, at their own people, it can’t be, Tanyusha.
There was nowhere to run, either they would kill me or a miracle would happen.
When the volleys stopped, Vasya looked around: no groans, no wounded, no dead. There was a minute of deathly silence. Only screams were heard from the gate: people were running away there.
- They fire with blanks, blanks!
And, jumping forward, the boy began to grimace in front of the soldiers:
- You're firing blanks, blanks!
Following them, several workers ran up to the soldiers, began to grab them by the rifles, tangled their chain, shouted something to them, convinced them of something. Somehow, obeying the officer’s shout, they fought off the crowd and disappeared into the entrance.
The noise began again, screams in the windows, again a crowd poured from the street into the gate.
- Come out, comrades, come out to us!
Tanyusha stood pressed against the wall of the barracks and trembled. There were tears in her eyes. Vasya held her hand:
- Tanyusha, dear, what is this! Horrible! What nonsense! How is it possible to shoot today? True, single, but is that really possible? Shoot at the people! Tanyusha!
Still trembling, she tugged at his sleeve.
- Vasya, let's get out of here. I'm cold.
Keeping close to the wall, they quickly left the barracks yard, passed the noisy crowd, silently, arm in arm, walked back to Sretenka and boarded the first cab they came across.
- To Sivtsev Vrazhek.
Tanyusha took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and, smiling, looked guiltily at Vasya:
– Don’t be angry, Vasya.
- But am I...
- No, but I was just very excited. It's my first time...
“I fell apart myself, Tanyusha.”
– You know, Vasya, for some reason I felt sad and sad. I wasn't scared, even when they were shooting. But they have such unhappy faces, the soldiers, that I felt sorry for the whole world, Vasya. Not animals at all, but pathetic people. And what a shame...
- They are not to blame, Tanya.
– I don’t blame you, but... how terrible it is, Vasya, when there’s a crowd and when people have guns. I thought that revolution was heroic. And here everyone is afraid and doesn’t understand...
And she added, after a pause:
– You know, Vasya, I don’t like your revolution!
"MIRACLE"
His legs are rounded into wheels, in his veins there is steam and oil, in his heart there is fire. He has been working these years for blood, only for blood, but he himself is clean and bright: they took care and polished all his copper parts and number until they shine. He brought today the living remnant of the one who was in the former world the young officer Stolnikov, who did not guess the fifth card.
No longer with the same zeal, the secular sisters greet the wounded at the Moscow train station more formally. It’s no longer a theater: it’s an everyday affair. They come up and start talking more to the officers. But they didn’t approach Stolnikov: his orderly Grigory was fiddling with the terrible stump, helping to put him on a stretcher.
The senior doctor said to the junior doctor:
“It’s a miracle that this one... is alive.” And he will survive!
The doctor wanted to say: “this man,” but did not finish: the stump was not a man. The stump was the stump of a man.
When Grigory arrived, he wanted to pin the St. George Cross on Stolnikov’s chest. But he shook his head, and Grigory put the cross in the box, and the box in his bosom.
There were no relatives, no acquaintances, they didn’t know. Stolnikov did not notify anyone. And he was weak, although he was a miracle. I spent six months in a hospital in a small town; they were afraid to take me. Now he will survive.
He was transported to the hospital. And there the doctors were surprised by the “miracle”. No one dared to console the legless and armless officer. Young doctors came to make sure that the bones of the knee were covered with a blue scar, and the rest of the right shoulder could move. Not knowing why, they massaged me anyway. Stolnikov looked at their faces, at their mustaches, and nimble hands. When they left, I looked after them: they were walking on their feet, just as he walked: one-two, one-two...
Like a miracle, he was given a separate room. Grigory was always with him, outright dismissed; His conscription age has expired.
Two of my old university friends visited; He was grateful to both of them, but said that there was no need to come anymore, that he didn’t want to see people for now. Got it. And it was hard for them: what to talk to him about? About the joys or hardships of life? About future? Flowers were sent from Tanyusha. He said:
- Tell her thanks. When it gets better, I'll notify her.
I will be discharged from here soon, there is nothing to treat. Healthy. I’ll settle somewhere... with Gregory. Then come.
He lay there for another three months. He was “healthy”, even put on weight. The doctors said: “A miracle! Look how he looks. This is nature!”
And Stolnikov left the hospital. In the student quarter, on Bronnaya Lane, Grigory rented two rooms for him and himself. And he was a gentle nanny with him.
What connected them? The helplessness of one is the homelessness of another. Both learned something special, the simple-minded soldier and the stumped officer. They talked for a long time in the evenings. Stolnikov did most of the talking, and Grigory listened. In the darkness, he struck a match, stuck a cigarette into Stump’s mouth, and placed a saucer under his head for the ashes. I didn't smoke myself. Otherwise, Stolnikov read aloud, and Grigory, devoutly listening to an incomprehensible book, turned the pages at a sign. Little by little, Stolnikov himself learned to do this with a pencil and an eraser, his “magic wand,” which he put in his mouth. I read almost all of Shakespeare aloud to Gregory. Grigory listened with surprise and importance: strange images, incomprehensible conversations. I understood it in my own way.
Like a child, Stump learned to live. His brain was always busy with inventions. He came up with the idea of installing an inclined ladder above the headboard, rising on the muscles of the neck; without this, the body outweighed the stumps of its legs, although there was no need for it to rise. He knew how to take a cigarette from a wall shelf with his mouth and, holding it in his teeth along with a “magic wand,” press the button of a lighter attached to the shelf and light it. He studied this for more than a week, once almost burned out in bed and learned.
Stolnikov had small funds that were enough for such a life. He bought himself a chair on wheels and came up with an engine that was accessible to him - but only within the confines of the room; in the same chair, Grigory took him for a walk around Tverskoy Boulevard and to the Patriarch's Ponds. He got himself a typewriter and learned to write by holding a curved stick with an eraser in his mouth and moving the carriage with a lever attached to the chair at his left shoulder. He was angry that Grigory still had to insert the paper, he ordered long sheets of paper to be glued together, and he wrote in dense lines. His entire table was covered with a collection of strange devices he had invented, made either by Gregory or by a master - to order. Grigory Stump silently put a hoop with an adapted spoon and fork on his head, and with a movement of the skin of his forehead Stump learned to use these tools, which were difficult for him. He drank water and tea through a straw. Often, seeing his tired helplessness, Gregory said:
- Yes, allow me, your honor, I will feed you. Why are you straining yourself in vain?
- Wait. And for good reason! Alive means we must learn to live. Understand?
Their business conversations were brief.
Stump did not have prosthetics. Doctors declared them useless:
– If you want, for decoration. And so... You can still get it abroad, and then only for right hand; there is some hope for her...
But for decoration he could wear a jacket with filled sleeves.
He wanted to wear it when he was waiting for Tanyusha's first visit. But he changed his mind and accepted it for the first time, remaining in bed.
And Tanyusha, who knew exactly about Stolnikov’s misfortune, was surprised. “How healthy he looks, even though he lies motionless.”
Came to visit with Tanyusha young man and an old ornithologist. They didn't sit for long. When leaving, Tanyusha promised to come when he called her again.
At home she cried for a long time, remembering her visit, but Tanyusha rarely cried. Stolnikov was nothing to her, just a casual and recent acquaintance. But, of course, he was the most unhappy person she knew and could imagine.
Going to bed, half naked, she went to the mirror and saw beautiful hands, easily tossed around to braid your hair into a thick braid. In his hands was life, and youth, and strength. What a blessing it is to have hands! And suddenly, imagining the blue scars over the sawed-off bone, Tanyusha shuddered, recoiled, fell face down into the pillows and sobbed with pity, with terrible pity for Stump, which he could not express. This is worse than seeing a dead person... a person crushed by life and still writhing under it.
"He hates me, of course; he must hate everyone..."