Bunin clean monday read online. Analysis of the product I
Bunin Ivan Alekseevich
Clean Monday
Ivan Bunin
Clean Monday
The gray Moscow winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from day-to-day affairs, flared up: sledges rushed thicker and more vigorously, overcrowded diving trams thundered more heavily - in the dusk it was already clear how green stars were hissing from the wires - the dull black passers-by hurried along the snowy sidewalks more briskly ... Every evening my coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner in Prague, the Hermitage, the Metropol, after dinner to theaters, to concerts, and there to Yar, to Strelna ... How should all this end, I did not know and tried not to think, not to think out: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all took away conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in agonizing anticipation - and at the same time I was unspeakably happy with every hour I spent next to her.
For some reason she studied at the courses, rarely attended them, but attended. I once asked: "Why?" She shrugged her shoulder: "Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? Besides, I am interested in history ..." She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in peace in Tver, he collected something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Cathedral of the Savior, for the sake of a view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot of space, there was an expensive piano on which she learned everything slow, somnambulically beautiful beginning " Moonlight Sonatas", only one beginning, - elegant flowers bloomed in faceted vases on the piano and on the mirror, - by my order, fresh flowers were delivered to her every Saturday, - and when I came to her on Saturday evening, she was lying on the sofa, over which why- then a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hung, slowly stretched out her hand for a kiss and absentmindedly said: "Thank you for the flowers ..." I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hoffmannsthal, Schnitzler, Tetmayer, Przybyshevsky - and received all the same "thank you "and outstretched warm hand, sometimes the order to sit near the sofa without taking off your coat. "It is not clear why," she said in thought, stroking my beaver collar, "but it seems that nothing can be better smell winter air with which you enter the room from the courtyard ... "It seemed as if she did not need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city, although she still had flowers beloved and unloved, all the books that I brought her, she always read, ate a whole box of chocolate in a day, ate no less than me at lunches and dinners, loved pies with burbot ear, pink hazel grouses in hard-fried sour cream, sometimes said: "Don't I understand how people will not get tired of this all their lives, to have lunch and dinner every day ", but I myself had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur ...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants, at concerts we were watched. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time beautiful for some reason southern, hot beauty, was even "indecently handsome", as one day told me famous actor, monstrous fat person, a great glutton and clever. "The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian," he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for good joke... And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety-crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when leaving, she most often wore a pomegranate velvet dress and the same shoes with gold fasteners (and went to courses as a modest student, had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on the Arbat); and as far as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, so often she was taciturn: she was all thinking, as if she was mentally penetrating into something; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of me: I saw this, sometimes stopping by her in the daytime, because every month she did not go out and did not leave the house at all for three or four days, lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read in silence.
You are terribly talkative and restless, - she said, - let me finish the chapter ...
If I had not been talkative and restless, I would never, perhaps, have recognized you, '' I replied, reminding her of our acquaintance: Art circle to the lecture of Andrei Bely, who sang it, running and dancing on the stage, I turned and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned cheerfully to her.
Everything is so, - she said, - but all the same, be quiet a little, read something, have a smoke ...
I can’t be silent! You cannot imagine all the power of my love for you! You do not love me!
I can imagine. As for my love, you know very well that apart from your father and you, I have no one in the world. Anyway, you are my first and last. Isn't that enough for you? But enough about that. You can't read in front of you, let's drink tea ...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the couch moldboard, took cups and saucers from the walnut slide that stood in the corner at the table, saying what would come to mind:
Have you finished reading The Fiery Angel?
I looked at it. So pompous that it’s ashamed to read.
And why did you suddenly leave Shalyapin's concert yesterday?
I was too thin. And then I don't like yellow-haired Russia at all.
You don't like everything!
Yes, a lot ...
"Strange Love!" - I thought, and while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and she combined for me with their scent; behind one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of the snow-gray Moscow beyond the river; to the other, to the left, a part of the Kremlin was visible, on the contrary, somehow too close, the too new bulk of Christ the Savior gleamed, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws were reflected with bluish spots, eternally curling around him ... " Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about Basil the Blessed. - Basil the Blessed - and Spas-na-Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... "
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa only in one silk arhaluk, trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said, - sat next to her in the twilight, without lighting a fire, and kissed her hands, legs, amazing in their smoothness body ... And she did not oppose anything, but all in silence. I was constantly looking for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing already impetuously, but all in silence. When I felt that I was no longer able to control myself, I pushed me aside, sat down and, without raising my voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat down on a swiveling stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot dope. A quarter of an hour later, she left the bedroom dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to now? The Metropol, maybe?
And again all evening we talked about something extraneous. Soon after we got closer, she told me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not a wife. Not fit, not fit ...
This did not discourage me. "It will be seen there!" - I said to myself, hoping for a change in her mind over time, and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even then - what was left for me, except for the hope of time? Once, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head:
No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why should you torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She said nothing.
Yes, after all, this is not love, not love ...
She answered evenly from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! I exclaimed. - And I will wait for you to learn what love, happiness is!
Happiness, happiness ... "Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it out, it puffs up, but when you pull it out, there is nothing."
What's this?
This is how Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand:
Oh, God bless her, with this Eastern wisdom!
And again all evening he spoke only of a stranger - oh new production Art theater, about Andreev's new story ... Again it was enough for me that at first I sit closely with her in a flying and rolling sled, holding her in a smooth fur coat, then I walk with her into a crowded restaurant hall on a march from Aida ", I eat and drink next to her, I hear her slow voice, I look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago, - yes, I kissed, I said to myself, looking at them with enthusiastic gratitude, at the dark fluff above them, at the pomegranate velvet of the dress , on the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: "Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!" In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when everything was getting louder around in the tobacco smoke, she, too, smoking and getting drunk, sometimes took me to a separate room, asked me to call the gypsies, and they came in deliberately noisy. cheeky: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Kazakin with braids, with a gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head naked like a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singing with a low forehead under tarry bangs ... She listened songs with a languid, strange grin ... At three, at four o'clock in the morning I drove her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes with happiness, kissing the wet fur of her collar and in a kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought, the same torment and the same happiness ... Well - after all, happiness, great happiness!
The gray Moscow winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from the daily affairs of the green stars were hissing from the wires - the dull black passers-by hurried along the snowy sidewalks more briskly ... Every evening my coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner at Prague, the Hermitage, the Metropol, after dinner to theaters, to concerts, and then to Yar, to Strelna ... How should all this end, I did not know and tried not to think, not to think out: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all turned away from talking about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in agonizing anticipation - and at the same time I was unspeakably happy with every hour I spent with her. For some reason she studied at the courses, rarely attended them, but attended. I once asked: "Why?" She shrugged her shoulder: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? Besides, I am interested in history ... ”She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in retirement in Tver, collecting something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Cathedral of the Savior, for the sake of a view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot, there was an expensive piano, on which she was learning the slow, somnambulically beautiful beginning of the Moonlight Sonata - only one beginning - elegant flowers bloomed in faceted vases on the piano and on the mirror, - by my order she was delivered fresh every Saturday - and when I came to her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, over which for some reason hung a portrait of barefoot Tolstoy, slowly stretched out her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: “Thank you for the flowers .. . "I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - Hoffmannstahl, Schnitzler, Tetmayer, Przybyshevsky - and received the same" thank you "and an extended warm hand, sometimes the order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said in thought, stroking my beaver collar, “but it seems that nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard ...” It seemed as if she didn’t need anything : no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city, although she still had flowers that she loved and did not love, she always read all the books that I brought her, she ate a whole box of chocolate in a day, for lunches and dinners ate no less than me, loved pies with burbot soup, pink hazel grouses in hard-fried sour cream, sometimes said: “I don’t understand how people will not get tired of this all their lives, to have lunch and dinner every day,” but she herself had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur ... We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants, at concerts we were watched. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time handsome for some reason southern, hot beauty, was even "indecently handsome", as one famous actor once told me, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever girl. “The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian,” he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety-crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when leaving, she most often wore a pomegranate velvet dress and the same shoes with gold fasteners (and went to courses as a modest student, had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on the Arbat); and as far as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, so often she was silent: she was all thinking, as if she was mentally penetrating into something; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of me: I saw this, sometimes stopping by her in the daytime, because every month she did not go out and did not leave the house at all for three or four days, lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read in silence. - You are terribly talkative and restless, - she said, - let me finish the chapter ... `` If I hadn't been talkative and restless, I would never, perhaps, have recognized you, '' I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: somehow in December, when I got into the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it, running and dancing on the stage, I spun and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her merrily. “That's all right,” she said, “but still, be quiet for a while, read something, have a smoke ... - I can’t be silent! You cannot imagine all the power of my love for you! You do not love me! - I can imagine. As for my love, you know very well that besides your father and you, I have no one in the world. Anyway, you are my first and last. Isn't that enough for you? But enough about that. You can't read in front of you, let's drink tea ... And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the couch moldboard, took cups and saucers from the walnut slide that stood in the corner at the table, saying what would come to mind: - Have you finished reading The Fiery Angel? - I looked at it. So pompous that it’s ashamed to read. - And why did you suddenly leave Shalyapin's concert yesterday? - I was too distracted. And then I don't like yellow-haired Russia at all. “You don’t like everything!- Yes, a lot ... "Strange Love!" - I thought, and while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and she combined for me with their scent; behind one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of the snow-gray Moscow beyond the river; to the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible, on the contrary, somehow too close, the too new bulk of Christ the Savior gleamed, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws were reflected with bluish spots, eternally winding around it ... “Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about Basil the Blessed. - Basil the Blessed - and Spas-na-Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... " Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa only in one silk arhaluk, trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said, - sat next to her in the twilight, without lighting a fire, and kissed her hands, legs, amazing in their smoothness body ... And she did not oppose anything, but all in silence. I was constantly looking for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing already impetuously, but all in silence. When I felt that I was no longer able to control myself, I pushed me aside, sat down and, without raising my voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat down on a swiveling stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot dope. A quarter of an hour later, she left the bedroom dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before: - Where to now? The Metropol, maybe? And again all evening we talked about something extraneous. Soon after we got closer, she told me when I started talking about marriage: - No, I'm not a wife. Not fit, not fit ... This did not discourage me. "It will be seen there!" - I said to myself, hoping for a change in her mind over time, and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even then - what was left for me, except for the hope of time? Once, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head: - No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why should you torture me and yourself so cruelly! She said nothing. - Yes, after all, this is not love, not love ... She answered evenly from the darkness: - May be. Who knows what love is? - I, I know! I exclaimed. - And I will wait for you to learn what love, happiness is! - Happiness, happiness ... "Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it out, it puffs up, but when you pull it out, there is nothing."- What's this? - This is how Platon Karataev told Pierre. I waved my hand: - Oh, God bless her, with this Eastern wisdom! And again the whole evening I talked only about a stranger - about a new production of the Art Theater, about a new story by Andreev ... Again it was enough for me that at first I was closely sitting with her in a flying and rolling sled, holding her in the smooth fur of a fur coat , then I walk with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant under the march from Aida, eat and drink next to her, hear her slow voice, look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I did, I told myself, with enthusiastic gratitude looking at them, at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: "Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!" In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when everything was getting noisier around in the tobacco smoke, she, too, smoking and hopping, sometimes took me to a separate room, asked to call the gypsies, and they entered deliberately noisy, cheeky: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Kazakin with braids, with a gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head bare like a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singing with a low forehead under tarry bangs ... She listened to songs with a languid, strange smile ... At three, at four o'clock in the morning I drove her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes with happiness, kissing the wet fur of her collar and in a kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow it will be all the same, I thought, - all the same torment and all the same happiness ... Well - after all, happiness, great happiness! So January and February passed, the Shrovetide came and went. On Pardon Sunday, she ordered me to come to her at five o'clock in the evening. I arrived, and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, astrakhan hat, and black felt boots. - All Black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully. Her eyes were gentle and quiet. - After all, tomorrow already clean monday, - she answered, taking it out of the astrakhan muff and giving me a hand in a black kid glove. - "Lord, the lord of my belly ..." Do you want to go to the Novodevichy Convent? I was surprised, but hastened to say:- Want! "Well, all the taverns and taverns," she added. - Yesterday morning I was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery ... I was even more surprised: - At the cemetery? What for? Is this the famous schismatic? - Yes, schismatics. Pre-Petrine Rus! They buried their archbishop. And just imagine: the coffin is an oak log, as in antiquity, the golden brocade is as if forged, the face of the deceased is covered with white "air", embroidered with large black ligature - beauty and horror. And at the tomb there are deacons with ripids and tricirias ... - How do you know that? Ripids, Tricirias! “You don’t know me. “I didn't know you were so religious. - This is not religiosity. I don’t know what ... But I, for example, often go in the mornings or evenings, when you don’t take me to restaurants, to the Kremlin cathedrals, and you don’t even suspect it ... So: deacons - what a hell! Peresvet and Oslyabya! And on two kliros there are two choirs, also all Peresvets: tall, mighty, in long black caftans, singing, calling out one chorus, then another, and all in unison, and not according to notes, but according to "hooks." And the grave was lined with shiny spruce branches inside, and in the yard there was frost, sun, snow blinding ... No, you don't understand that! Let's go ... The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees; on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws, similar to nuns, chattered in the silence, chimes now and then played subtly and sadly on the bell tower. Creaking in silence on the snow, we entered the gate, walked along the snowy paths through the cemetery - the sun had just set, it was still quite light, branches in hoarfrost were marvelously drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset with gray coral, and mysteriously glimmered around us with calm, sad lights unquenchable lamps scattered over the graves. I followed her, looking with affection at her small footprint, at the stars that new black boots left in the snow - she suddenly turned around, feeling this: - True, how you love me! She said with quiet bewilderment, shaking her head. We stood near the graves of Ertel and Chekhov. Holding her hands in the lowered muff, she looked for a long time at the Chekhov's grave monument, then shrugged her shoulder: - What a disgusting mixture of Russian leafy style and the Art Theater! It began to get dark, it was freezing, we slowly left the gate, near which my Fyodor was meekly sitting on the box. “Let's go a little more,” she said.- Yes, sir. - Somewhere on Ordynka there is a house where Griboyedov lived. Let's go look for him ... And for some reason we went to Ordynka, drove for a long time along some side streets in the gardens, were in Griboyedovsky lane; but who could tell us in which house Griboyedov lived — there were not a soul bystanders, and who of them could need Griboyedov? It had long been dark, they turned pink behind the trees in the frost-lit windows ... “There is also the Martha and Mary monastery,” she said. I laughed: - Back to the monastery? - No, that's me ... The lower floor in Yegorov's tavern in Okhotny Ryad was full of shaggy, thickly dressed cabbies cutting stacks of pancakes, overflowing with butter and sour cream, it was steamy, like in a bathhouse. In the upper rooms, also very warm, with low ceilings, Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with granular caviar with frozen champagne. We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front of the black board of the icon of the Virgin of the Three-handed, an icon was burning, we sat down at a long table on a black leather sofa... The fluff on her upper lip was covered with frost, the amber of her cheeks turned slightly pink, the blackness of the rayon completely merged with the pupil - I could not take my enthusiastic eyes off her face. And she said, taking out a handkerchief from a fragrant muff: - Good! Downstairs there are wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God three-handed. Three hands! This is India! You are a gentleman, you cannot understand, as I do, all this Moscow. - I can, I can! - I answered. - And let's order sílen dinner! - How is Silen? - It means strong. How can you not know? "Gyurga's speech ..." - How good! Gyurgi! - Yes, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. "Gyurga's speech to Svyatoslav, Prince Seversky:" Come to me, brother, to Moscow "and ordered to arrange a strong dinner." - How good. And only in some northern monasteries this Russia now remained. And even in church chants. Recently I went to the Conception Monastery - you cannot imagine how wonderful the stichera are singing there! And in Chudovoy it is even better. I AM last year everyone went there on Passionate. Oh, how good it was! There are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, the soul is somehow tender, sad, and all the time there is this feeling of the homeland, its antiquity ... All the doors in the cathedral are open, common people come and go all day, all day of service ... Oh, I'll leave I'm somewhere in a monastery, in some of the most deaf, Vologda, Vyatka! I wanted to say that then I would either leave or kill someone so that they would drive me to Sakhalin, lit a cigarette, forgetting myself from excitement, but a woman in white trousers and a white shirt approached, belted with a crimson cord, respectfully recalled: - Excuse me, sir, we cannot smoke ... And immediately, with special obsequiousness, he began with a patter: - For the pancakes, what do you want? Home herbalist? Caviar, semushki? We have an extremely good sherry to the ears, but to the fat ... “And to the pile of sherry,” she added, delighting me with the kind talkativeness that did not leave her all evening. And I already absentmindedly listened to what she said next. And she spoke with a quiet light in her eyes: - I love Russian chronicles, Russian legends so much that until then I re-read what I especially like, until I memorize it. “There was a city in the Russian land called Murom, in which a noble prince named Pavel ruled. And the devil brought a flying serpent to his wife for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, very beautiful ... " I jokingly made scary eyes: - Oh, what a horror! She continued without listening: “This is how God tested her. “When the time came for her blessed death, this prince and princess pleaded with God to repose them in one day. And they conspired to be buried in a single coffin. And they ordered to hew two grave beds in a single stone. And they put on, at the same time, in a monastic robe ... " And again my absent-mindedness was replaced by surprise and even anxiety: what is it with her today? And so, this evening, when I took her home, not at all in usual time At eleven o'clock, she, saying goodbye to me at the entrance, suddenly detained me when I was already getting into the sleigh: - Wait. Come and see me tomorrow night, don't be early ten. Tomorrow is the "skit" of the Art Theater. - So? I asked. - Do you want to go to this "skit"?- Yes. - But you said that you do not know anything more vulgar than these "skits"! “And now I don’t know. And yet I want to go. I mentally shook my head - all the quirks, Moscow quirks! - and cheerfully responded:- Ol Wright! At ten o'clock in the evening the next day, going up in the elevator to her door, I opened the door with my key and did not immediately enter from the dark hallway: it was unusually light behind it, everything was lit - chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under the lung the lampshade behind the headboard of the sofa, and the piano sounded like the beginning of the "Moonlight Sonata" - rising all the way, sounding more and more, the more weary, inviting, in somnambulistic blissful sadness. I slammed the door of the hallway - the sounds stopped, the rustle of a dress was heard. I entered - she stood straight and somewhat theatrically near the piano in a black velvet dress, which made her thinner, shining with its elegance, a festive dress of resin hair, the dark amber of her bare arms, shoulders, gentle, full start breasts, sparkling diamond earrings along slightly powdered cheeks, charcoal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; on the temples, glossy black pigtails curled in half rings to her eyes, giving her the appearance of an oriental beauty from a popular print. - Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage, - she said, looking at my confused face, - I would answer the applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and down, and I would imperceptibly, but carefully remove foot train so as not to step on it ... On the "skit" she smoked a lot and sipped champagne all the time, gazed intently at the actors, with brisk shouts and choruses portraying something as if Parisian, at the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the dense Moskvin in pince-nez on a trough-like face, both with deliberate with seriousness and diligence, falling backwards, they made a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience. Kachalov came up to us with a glass in his hand, pale with hops, with large sweat on his forehead, on which a lock of his Belarusian hair hung, raised his glass and, looking at her with mock gloomy greed, said in his low actor's voice: - Tsar Maiden, Shamakhan Queen, your health! And she smiled slowly and clinked glasses with him. He took her hand, drunkenly leaned against her and nearly fell off his feet. He did it and, clenching his teeth, looked at me: - And what is this handsome man? I hate it. Then the hurdy-gurdy began to wheeze, whistled and thundered, the hurdy-gurdy jumped with a polka - and a small Sulerzhitsky, always hurrying and laughing somewhere, flew up to us, bent over, imitating the courtesy gallantry, hastily muttered: - Allow me to invite Tranblan to the regiment ... And she, smiling, got up and, deftly, briefly tapping, sparkling with earrings, her blackness and bare shoulders and arms, walked with him among the tables, escorted by admiring glances and applause, while he, lifting his head, shouted like a goat:Let's go, let's go quickly
Dance the polka with you!
Every evening in the winter of 1912, the narrator visits the same apartment opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. There lives a woman whom he madly loves. The narrator takes her to fancy restaurants, presents books, chocolates and fresh flowers, but does not know how it will all end. She does not want to talk about the future. There was no real, last intimacy between them, and this keeps the narrator "in an insoluble tension, in agonizing anticipation." Despite this, he is happy with her.
She studies history courses and lives alone - her father, a widowed enlightened merchant, settled “at rest in Tver”. She accepts all the gifts of the narrator carelessly and absent-mindedly.
It seemed that she did not need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city.
She has favorite flowers, she reads books, eats chocolate and dines with great pleasure, but her only real weakness is “good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur”.
Both the narrator and his beloved are young and very beautiful. The narrator is like an Italian, bright and mobile. She is dark and black-eyed like a Persian. He is "prone to talkativeness and simple-hearted gaiety", she is always restrained and silent.
The narrator often recalls how they met at a lecture by Andrei Bely. The writer did not give a lecture, but sang it, running around the stage. The narrator "spun and laughed so hard" that he attracted the attention of the girl sitting in the next chair, and she laughed with him.
Sometimes she silently, but not resisting, allows the narrator to kiss "her hands, feet, amazingly smooth body." Feeling that he can no longer control himself, she pulls away and leaves. She says that she is not suitable for marriage, and the narrator no longer speaks to her about it.
Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable, but even here - what was left for me but hope for time?
The fact that he looks at her, accompanies her to restaurants and theaters, is torment and happiness for the narrator.
This is how the narrator spends January and February. Shrovetide comes. On Forgiveness Sunday, she orders to pick her up earlier than usual. They go to the Novodevichy Convent. On the way, she says that yesterday morning she was at the schismatic cemetery, where their archbishop was buried, and recalls the whole rite with delight. The narrator is surprised - until now he has not noticed that she is so religious.
They come to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent and walk for a long time between the graves. The narrator looks at her adoringly. She notices this and is genuinely surprised: he really loves her so much! In the evening they eat pancakes in the Okhotny Ryad tavern, she again with admiration tells him about the monasteries she has seen, and threatens to go to the most remote of them. The narrator does not take her words seriously.
The next evening, she asks the narrator to take her to the theatrical skits, although she considers such gatherings to be extremely vulgar. All evening she drinks champagne, looks at the antics of the actors, and then dashingly dances a polka with one of them.
In the middle of the night, the narrator brings her home. To his surprise, she asks to release the coachman and go up to her apartment - she did not allow this before. They are coming together completely. Towards morning, she informs the narrator that she is leaving for Tver, promises to write and asks to leave her now.
The narrator receives the letter in two weeks. She says goodbye to him and asks not to wait and look for her.
I will not return to Moscow, I will go to obedience for the time being, then, perhaps, I will decide to tonsure ... May God give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment ...
The narrator fulfills her request. He begins to disappear in the dirtiest taverns, gradually losing his human appearance, then for a long time, indifferently and hopelessly comes to his senses.
Two years pass. On New Year's Eve, the narrator, with tears in his eyes, repeats the path that he once made with his beloved on Forgiveness Sunday. Then he stops at the Martha and Mary Convent and wants to enter. The janitor will not let the narrator in: a service for the Grand Duchess and the Grand Duke is going on inside. The narrator still enters, thrusting a ruble into the janitor.
In the courtyard of the monastery, the narrator sees a procession of the cross. It is headed by the Grand Duchess, followed by a line of singing nuns or sisters with candles near their pale faces. One of the sisters suddenly raises her black eyes and looks directly at the narrator, as if sensing his presence in the darkness. The narrator turns and quietly exits the gate.
The gray Moscow winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from day-to-day affairs, flared up: sledges rushed thicker and more vigorously, overcrowded diving trams thundered more heavily - in the dusk it was already clear how green stars were hissing from the wires - the dull black passers-by hurried along the snowy sidewalks more briskly ... Every evening my coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter - from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived opposite him; every evening I took her to dinner in Prague, the Hermitage, the Metropol, after dinner to theaters, to concerts, and there to Yar, to Strelna ... How should all this end, I did not know and tried not to think, not to think out: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all took away conversations about our future; she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, and our relationship with her was strange - we were still not very close; and all this endlessly kept me in unresolved tension, in agonizing anticipation - and at the same time I was unspeakably happy with every hour I spent next to her.
For some reason she studied at the courses, rarely attended them, but attended. I once asked: "Why?" She shrugged her shoulder: "Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? Besides, I am interested in history ..." She lived alone - her widowed father, an enlightened man of a noble merchant family, lived in peace in Tver, he collected something, like all such merchants. In the house opposite the Cathedral of the Savior, for the sake of a view of Moscow, she rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor, only two rooms, but spacious and well furnished. In the first, a wide Turkish sofa occupied a lot, there was an expensive piano, on which she was learning the slow, somnambulically beautiful beginning of the Moonlight Sonata, only one beginning - elegant flowers bloomed in faceted vases on the piano and on the mirror, - by my order to her every Saturday they delivered fresh ones - and when I came to her on Saturday evening, she, lying on the sofa, over which for some reason hung a portrait of barefoot Tolstoy, slowly stretched out her hand to me for a kiss and absentmindedly said: "Thank you for the flowers ... “I brought her boxes of chocolate, new books - by Hoffmannstahl, Schnitzler, Tetmayer, Przybyshevsky - and received the same“ thank you ”and an extended warm hand, sometimes the order to sit near the sofa without taking off my coat. “It’s not clear why,” she said in thought, stroking my beaver collar, “but it seems that nothing can be better than the smell of winter air with which you enter the room from the yard ...” It seemed that she didn’t need anything : no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city, although she still had flowers that she loved and did not like, she always read all the books that I brought her, she ate a whole box of chocolate in a day, for lunches and dinners ate no less than me, loved pies with burbot soup, pink hazel grouses in hard-fried sour cream, sometimes said: "I don't understand how people won't get tired of this all their lives, to have lunch and dinner every day," but I myself had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur ...
We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants, at concerts we were watched. I, being from the Penza province, was at that time beautiful for some reason southern, hot beauty, was even "indecently handsome", as one famous actor once said to me, a monstrously fat man, a great glutton and a clever girl. "The devil knows who you are, some Sicilian," he said sleepily; and my character was southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, eyes black as velvet coal; the mouth, captivating with velvety-crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; when leaving, she most often wore a pomegranate velvet dress and the same shoes with gold fasteners (and went to courses as a modest student, had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on the Arbat); and as far as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, so often she was silent: she was all thinking, as if she was mentally penetrating into something; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked inquiringly in front of me: I saw this, sometimes stopping by her in the daytime, because every month she did not go out and did not leave the house at all for three or four days, lay and read, forcing me to sit in a chair near the sofa and read in silence.
You are terribly talkative and restless, - she said, - let me finish the chapter ...
If I had not been talkative and restless, I would never, perhaps, have recognized you, '' I answered, reminding her of our acquaintance: somehow in December, I got into the Art Circle for a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang it while running and while dancing on the stage, I turned and laughed so much that she, who happened to be in the chair next to me and at first looked at me with some bewilderment, also finally laughed, and I immediately turned to her merrily.
Everything is so, - she said, - but all the same, be quiet a little, read something, have a smoke ...
I can’t be silent! You cannot imagine all the power of my love for you! You do not love me!
I can imagine. As for my love, you know very well that apart from your father and you, I have no one in the world. Anyway, you are my first and last. Isn't that enough for you? But enough about that. You can't read in front of you, let's drink tea ...
And I got up, boiled water in an electric kettle on the table behind the couch moldboard, took cups and saucers from the walnut slide that stood in the corner at the table, saying what would come to mind:
Have you finished reading The Fiery Angel?
I looked at it. So pompous that it’s ashamed to read.
And why did you suddenly leave Shalyapin's concert yesterday?
I was too thin. And then I don't like yellow-haired Russia at all.
You don't like everything!
Yes, a lot ...
"Strange Love!" - I thought, and while the water was boiling, I stood and looked out the windows. The room smelled of flowers, and she combined for me with their scent; behind one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of the snow-gray Moscow beyond the river; to the other, to the left, a part of the Kremlin was visible, on the contrary, somehow too close, the too new bulk of Christ the Savior gleamed, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws were reflected with bluish spots, forever curling around it ... "Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, Iverskaya, St.Basil the Blessed. - St.Basil the Blessed - and Spas-na-Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... "
Arriving at dusk, I sometimes found her on the sofa only in one silk arhaluk, trimmed with sable - the inheritance of my Astrakhan grandmother, she said, - sat next to her in the twilight, without lighting a fire, and kissed her hands, legs, amazing in their smoothness body ... And she did not oppose anything, but all in silence. I was constantly looking for her hot lips - she gave them, breathing already impetuously, but all in silence. When I felt that I was no longer able to control myself, I pushed me aside, sat down and, without raising my voice, asked to turn on the light, then went into the bedroom. I lit it, sat down on a swiveling stool near the piano and gradually came to my senses, cooled down from the hot dope. A quarter of an hour later, she left the bedroom dressed, ready to leave, calm and simple, as if nothing had happened before:
Where to now? The Metropol, maybe?
And again all evening we talked about something extraneous. Soon after we got closer, she told me when I started talking about marriage:
No, I'm not a wife. Not fit, not fit ...
This did not discourage me. "It will be seen there!" - I said to myself, hoping for a change in her mind over time, and no longer talked about marriage. Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable to me, but even then - what was left for me, except for the hope of time? Once, sitting next to her in this evening darkness and silence, I grabbed my head:
No, this is beyond my strength! And why, why should you torture me and yourself so cruelly!
She said nothing.
Yes, after all, this is not love, not love ...
She answered evenly from the darkness:
May be. Who knows what love is?
I, I know! I exclaimed. - And I will wait for you to learn what love, happiness is!
Happiness, happiness ... "Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it out, it puffs up, but when you pull it out, there is nothing."
What's this?
This is how Platon Karataev told Pierre.
I waved my hand:
Oh, God bless her, with this Eastern wisdom!
And again the whole evening I talked only about an outsider - about a new production of the Art Theater, about a new story by Andreev ... Again it was enough for me that at first I was closely sitting with her in a flying and rolling sled, holding her in the smooth fur of a fur coat , then I walk with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant under the march from Aida, eat and drink next to her, hear her slow voice, look at the lips that I kissed an hour ago - yes, I did, I said to myself, with enthusiastic gratitude looking at them, at the dark fluff above them, at the garnet velvet of the dress, at the slope of the shoulders and the oval of the breasts, smelling some slightly spicy smell of her hair, thinking: "Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!" In restaurants outside the city, towards the end of dinner, when everything was getting louder around in the tobacco smoke, she, too, smoking and getting drunk, sometimes took me to a separate room, asked me to call the gypsies, and they came in deliberately noisy. cheeky: in front of the choir, with a guitar on a blue ribbon over his shoulder, an old gypsy in a Kazakin with braids, with a gray muzzle of a drowned man, with a head naked like a cast-iron ball, behind him a gypsy singing with a low forehead under tarry bangs ... She listened songs with a languid, strange grin ... At three, at four o'clock in the morning I drove her home, at the entrance, closing my eyes with happiness, kissing the wet fur of her collar and in a kind of ecstatic despair flew to the Red Gate. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everything will be the same, I thought, the same torment and the same happiness ... Well - after all, happiness, great happiness!
So January and February passed, the Shrovetide came and went. On Pardon Sunday, she ordered me to come to her at five o'clock in the evening. I arrived, and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, astrakhan hat, and black felt boots.
All Black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully.
Her eyes were gentle and quiet.
After all, tomorrow is already clean Monday, - she answered, taking out of the astrakhan muff and giving me a hand in a black kid glove. - "Lord, the lord of my belly ..." Do you want to go to the Novodevichy Convent?
I was surprised, but hastened to say:
Well, all the taverns and taverns, ”she added. - Yesterday morning I was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery ...
I was even more surprised:
At the cemetery? What for? Is this the famous schismatic?
Yes, schismatics. Pre-Petrine Rus! They buried their archbishop. And just imagine: the coffin is an oak log, as in antiquity, the golden brocade is as if forged, the face of the deceased is covered with white "air", embroidered with large black ligature - beauty and horror. And at the tomb there are deacons with ripids and tricirias ...
How do you know this? Ripids, Tricirias!
You don't know me.
Didn't know you were so religious.
This is not religiosity. I don’t know what ... But I, for example, often go in the mornings or evenings, when you don’t take me to restaurants, to the Kremlin cathedrals, and you don’t even suspect it ... So: deacons - what a hell! Peresvet and Oslyabya! And on two kliros there are two choirs, also all Peresvets: tall, mighty, in long black caftans, singing, calling out to each other. - then one chorus, then another, - and all in unison, and not according to notes, but according to "hooks". And the grave was lined with shiny spruce branches inside, and in the yard there was frost, sun, snow blinding ... No, you don't understand that! Let's go ...
The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees; on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws, similar to nuns, chattered in the silence, chimes now and then played subtly and sadly on the bell tower. Creaking in silence on the snow, we entered the gate, walked along the snowy paths through the cemetery - the sun had just set, it was still quite light, branches in hoarfrost were marvelously drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset with gray coral, and mysteriously glimmered around us with calm, sad lights unquenchable lamps scattered over the graves. I followed her, looking with affection at her small footprint, at the stars that new black boots left in the snow - she suddenly turned around, feeling this:
Really, how you love me! she said with quiet bewilderment, shaking her head.
We stood near the graves of Ertel and Chekhov. Holding her hands in the lowered muff, she looked for a long time at the Chekhov's grave monument, then shrugged her shoulder:
What a disgusting mixture of Russian leafy style and the Art Theater!
It began to get dark, it was freezing, we slowly left the gate, near which my Fyodor was meekly sitting on the box.
Let's go a little more, ”she said,“ then we'll go eat the last pancakes at Yegorov's ... Just not too much, Fyodor, right?
I'm listening, sir.
Somewhere on Ordynka there is a house where Griboyedov lived. Let's go look for him ...
And for some reason we went to Ordynka, drove for a long time along some side streets in the gardens, were in Griboyedovsky lane; but who could tell us in which house Griboyedov lived — there were not a soul bystanders, and who of them could need Griboyedov? It had long been dark, they turned pink behind the trees in the frost-lit windows ...
There is also the Martha and Mary monastery, - she said.
I laughed:
Back to the monastery?
No, that's me ...
The lower floor in Yegorov's tavern in Okhotny Ryad was full of shaggy, thickly dressed cabbies cutting stacks of pancakes, overflowing with butter and sour cream, it was steamy, like in a bathhouse. In the upper rooms, also very warm, with low ceilings, Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with granular caviar with frozen champagne. We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front of the black board of the icon of the Virgin of the Three-handed, an icon burned, sat down at a long table on a black leather sofa ... pupil, - I could not take my enthusiastic eyes from her face. And she said, taking out a handkerchief from a fragrant muff:
OK! Downstairs there are wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God three-handed. Three hands! This is India! You are a gentleman, you cannot understand, as I do, all this Moscow.
I can, I can! - I answered. - And let's order lunch strong!
How strong is it?
It means strong. How can you not know? "Gyurga's speech ..."
How good! Gyurgi!
Yes, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. "Gyurga's speech to Svyatoslav, prince Seversky:" Come to me, brother, to Moscow, "and ordered to arrange a strong dinner."
How good. And only in some northern monasteries this Russia now remained. And even in church chants. Recently I went to the Conception Monastery - you cannot imagine how wonderful the stichera are singing there! And in Chudovoy it is even better. Last year I went there on Passionate. Oh, how good it was! There are puddles everywhere, the air is already soft, the soul is somehow tender, sad, and all the time there is this feeling of the homeland, its antiquity ... All the doors in the cathedral are open, common people come and go all day, all day of service ... Oh, I'll leave I'm somewhere in a monastery, in some of the most deaf, Vologda, Vyatka!
I wanted to say that then I would either leave or kill someone so that they would drive me to Sakhalin, lit a cigarette, forgetting myself from excitement, but a woman in white trousers and a white shirt approached, belted with a crimson cord, respectfully recalled:
Sorry, sir, we can't smoke ...
And immediately, with special obsequiousness, he began with a patter:
For the pancakes, what would you like? Home herbalist? Caviar, semushki? We have an extremely good sherry to the ears, but to the fat ...
And to the pile of sherry, ”she added, delighting me with the kind talkativeness that did not leave her all evening. And I already absentmindedly listened to what she said next. And she spoke with a quiet light in her eyes:
I love Russian chronicles, Russian legends so much that until then I re-read what I especially like, until I memorize it. "There was a city in the Russian land called Murom, in which a noble prince named Paul ruled. And the devil brought a flying serpent to his wife for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, exceedingly beautiful ..."
I jokingly made scary eyes:
Oh, what a horror!
She continued without listening:
This is how God tested her. "When the time of her blessed end came, this prince and princess begged God to repose to them in one day. And they agreed to be buried in a single coffin. And they ordered to hew two grave beds in a single stone. And they clothed themselves, in the same way, in monastic attire .." . "
And again my absent-mindedness was replaced by surprise and even anxiety: what is it with her today?
And so, that evening, when I took her home at a very unusual time, at eleven o'clock, she, saying goodbye to me at the entrance, suddenly detained me when I was already getting into the sleigh:
Wait. Come and see me tomorrow night, don't be early ten. Tomorrow "skit" of the Art Theater.
So? I asked. - Do you want to go to this "skit"?
But you said that you do not know anything more vulgar than these "skits"!
And now I don’t know. And yet I want to go.
I mentally shook my head - all the quirks, Moscow quirks! - and cheerfully responded:
All Wright!
At ten o'clock in the evening the next day, going up in the elevator to her door, I opened the door with my key and did not immediately enter from the dark hallway: it was unusually bright behind it, everything was lit - chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under the lung the lampshade behind the headboard of the sofa, and the piano sounded like the beginning of the "Moonlight Sonata" - rising all the way, sounding more and more, the more agonizing, inviting, in somnambulically blissful sadness. I slammed the door of the hallway - the sounds stopped, the rustle of a dress was heard. I entered - she stood straight and somewhat theatrically near the piano in a black velvet dress, which made her thinner, shining with its elegance, a festive dress of resin hair, dark amber bare arms, shoulders, tender, full beginning of breasts, sparkling diamond earrings along slightly powdered cheeks, charcoal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; on the temples, glossy black pigtails curled in half rings to her eyes, giving her the appearance of an oriental beauty from a popular print.
Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage, - she said, looking at my bewildered face, - I would respond to the applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and down, and I would imperceptibly, but carefully put my foot away train so as not to step on it ...
On the "skit" she smoked a lot and sipped champagne all over, stared at the actors, with brisk cries and choruses portraying something as if Parisian, at the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the dense Moskvin in pince-nez on a trough-like face, both with deliberate with seriousness and diligence, falling backwards, they made a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience. Kachalov came up to us with a glass in his hand, pale with hops, with large sweat on his forehead, on which a lock of his Belarusian hair hung, raised his glass and, looking at her with mock gloomy greed, said in his low actor's voice:
Tsar Maiden, Queen of Shamakhan, your health!
And she smiled slowly and clinked glasses with him. He took her hand, drunkenly leaned against her and nearly fell off his feet. He did it and, clenching his teeth, looked at me:
And what is this handsome man? I hate it.
Then the hurdy-gurdy began to wheeze, whistled and thundered, the hurdy-gurdy jumped with a polka - and a small Sulerzhitsky, always hurrying and laughing somewhere, flew up to us, bent over, imitating the courtesy gallantry, hastily muttered:
Allow me to invite Tranblanc to the regiment ...
And she, smiling, got up and, deftly, briefly tapping, sparkling with earrings, her blackness and bare shoulders and arms, walked with him among the tables, escorted by admiring glances and applause, while he, lifting his head, shouted like a goat:
Let's go, let's go quickly
Dance the polka with you!
At three o'clock in the morning, she got up, closing her eyes. When we got dressed, she looked at my beaver cap, stroked my beaver collar and went to the exit, saying, half jokingly, half seriously:
Of course, handsome. Kachalov told the truth ... "The serpent is in human nature, very beautiful ..."
The dear was silent, bowing her head from the light moon blizzard that flew towards her. Full month diving in the clouds over the Kremlin - "some kind of glowing skull" - she said. On the Spasskaya Tower the clock struck three, - she also said:
What an ancient sound, something tinny and cast iron. And just like that, the same sound beat three o'clock in the morning in the fifteenth century. And in Florence there is exactly the same battle, he reminded me of Moscow there ...
When Fyodor laid siege to the entrance, lifelessly ordered:
Let it go ...
Struck, - she never allowed to go up to her at night, - I said in confusion:
Fedor, I'll be back on foot ...
And we silently reached up in the elevator, entered the night warmth and silence of the apartment with tapping hammers in the heaters. I took off her fur coat, slippery from the snow, she threw a wet downy shawl from her hair onto my arms and quickly walked, rustling her silk underskirt, into the bedroom. I undressed, entered the first room, and with my heart sinking right over an abyss, sat down on the Turkish sofa. Her footsteps could be heard behind the open doors of the illuminated bedroom, the way she, clinging to the hairpins, pulled off her dress over her head ... dressing table, combing with a tortoiseshell comb the black threads of long hair hanging along the face.
He kept saying that I don't think much about him, '' she said, throwing the comb onto the mirror, and, throwing her hair back, turned to me: `` No, I thought ...
At dawn, I felt her move. I opened my eyes - she stared at me. I got up from the warmth of the bed and her body, she leaned towards me, quietly and evenly:
This evening I am leaving for Tver. How long, God knows ...
And pressed her cheek to mine - I felt her wet eyelash blinking.
I'll write everything down as soon as I get there. I'll write everything about the future. Forgive me, leave me now, I am very tired ...
And lay down on the pillow.
I dressed carefully, kissed her shyly on the hair, and tiptoed out onto the stairs, already brightening with a pale light. I walked on the young sticky snow - the blizzard was gone, everything was calm and could be seen far along the streets, it smelled of both snow and bakeries. He reached Iverskaya, the interior of which was hotly burning and shone with whole fires of candles, kneeled in the crowd of old women and beggars on the trampled snow, took off his hat ... Someone touched my shoulder - I looked: some unfortunate old woman was looking at me wincing with pitiful tears.
Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!
The letter I received two weeks later was a briefly affectionate but firm request not to wait for her anymore, not to try to look for it, to see: "I will not return to Moscow, I will go to obedience for the time being, then, perhaps, I will decide to tonsure ... May God give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment ... "
I fulfilled her request. And for a long time he disappeared in the dirtiest taverns, drank himself to death, dropping more and more in every possible way. Then he began to recover a little - indifferently, hopelessly ... Almost two years have passed since that clean Monday ...
In the fourteenth year, on New Year's Eve, there was a quiet, sunny evening like that unforgettable one. I left the house, took a cab and drove to the Kremlin. There I went into the empty Archangel Cathedral, stood for a long time, without praying, in its gloom, looking at the faint flickering of the old gold of the iconostasis and the gravestones of the Moscow tsars, - stood, as if expecting something, in that special silence of the empty church, when you are afraid to breathe in her. Leaving the cathedral, he ordered the cabman to go to Ordynka, walked at a pace, as then, through the dark alleys in the gardens with the windows illuminated under them, he drove along Griboyedovsky Lane - and kept crying, crying ...
On Ordynka, I stopped a cab at the gates of the Martha-Mariinsky monastery: there in the courtyard the carriages were black, the doors of a small illuminated church were open, the singing of the girl's choir was heard sadly and tenderly from the doors. For some reason I wanted to go there without fail. The janitor at the gate barred my way, asking softly, pleadingly:
You can't, sir, you can't!
How is it impossible? Can't you go to church?
It is possible, sir, of course, it is possible, only I ask you for God's sake, do not go, the Grand Duchess Elzavet Fedrovna and the Grand Duke Mitri Palych are there for a moment ...
I shoved him a ruble - he sighed in sorrow and let it go. But as soon as I entered the courtyard, icons, banners, carried on my hands, appeared from the church, behind them, all in white, long, thin-faced, in a white obrus with a gold cross sewn on it on the forehead, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with downcast eyes , with a large candle in her hand, the Grand Duchess; and behind her was the same white line of singers, with candles on their faces, nuns or sisters - I don't know who they were and where they were going. For some reason I looked at them very carefully. And then one of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white cloth, blocking the candle with her hand, fixed her dark eyes into the darkness, as if just at me ... What could she see in the dark, how could she feel my presence? I turned and quietly left the gate.
"Clean Monday" I.A. Bunin considered his best work. Largely because of its semantic depth and ambiguity of interpretation. The story takes an important place in the cycle “ Dark alleys". May 1944 is considered the time of its writing. During this period of his life, Bunin was in France far from his homeland, where the Great Patriotic War.
In this light, it is unlikely that the 73-year-old writer has dedicated his work solely to the theme of love. It is more correct to say that through the description of the relationship between two people, their views and worldviews, the truth is revealed to the reader modern life, its tragic background and the urgency of many moral issues.
In the center of the story is the story of the relationship of a completely wealthy man and woman, between whom feelings for each other appear. They have an interesting and pleasant time visiting restaurants, theaters, taverns and many others. others. The narrator and the main character in one person is drawn to her, but the possibility of marriage is immediately excluded - the girl clearly believes that she is not suitable for family life.
One day on the eve of Clean Monday, Forgiveness Sunday, she asks to pick her up a little earlier. After which they go to the Novodevichy Convent, visit local cemetery, walk among the graves and remember the funeral of the archbishop. The heroine understands how much the narrator loves her, and the man himself notices the great religiosity of his companion. The woman talks about life in the monastery and herself threatens to go to the most deaf of them. True, the narrator does not attach much importance to her words.
The next day, in the evening, at the request of the girl, they go to the theatrical skits. Quite a strange choice of place - especially considering that the heroine does not like and does not recognize such gatherings. There she drinks champagne, dances and has fun. After that, at night, the narrator brings her home. The heroine asks the man to rise to her. They are coming together completely.
In the morning, the girl reports that she is leaving for a short while to Tver. After 2 weeks, a letter comes from her, in which she says goodbye to the narrator, asks not to look for her, since "I will not return to Moscow, I will go to obedience for the time being, then, perhaps, I will decide to tonsure."
The man fulfills her request. However, he does not hesitate to spend time in dirty taverns and taverns, indulging in an indifferent existence - "drank himself intoxicated, sinking in every possible way, more and more." Then he comes to his senses for a long time, and after two years he decides to go to all those places that they visited with their beloved on that Forgiveness Sunday. At some point, the hero is seized by a kind of hopeless humility. Arriving at the Martha-Maryinsky monastery, he learns that a service is going on there and even goes inside. Here, in last time the hero sees his beloved, who participates in the service together with other nuns. At the same time, the girl does not see the man, but her gaze is just directed into the darkness, where the narrator is standing. Then he quietly leaves the church.
Story composition
The composition of the story is based on three parts... The first serves to represent the characters, describe their relationships and pastime. The second part is dedicated to the events of Goodbye Sunday and Clean Monday. The shortest, but meaningfully important, third movement completes the composition.
Reading the works and moving from one part to another, one can see the spiritual maturation of not only the heroine, but also the narrator himself. At the end of the story, we are no longer a frivolous person, but a man who experienced the bitterness of parting with his beloved, able to experience and comprehend his past actions.
Considering that the hero and the narrator are one person, you can even see the changes in him with the help of the text itself. After a sad love story, the hero's outlook changes dramatically. Talking about himself in 1912, the narrator resorts to irony, showing his limitations in the perception of his beloved. Only physical intimacy is important, and the hero himself does not try to understand the feelings of a woman, her religiosity, outlook on life, and many others. dr.
In the final part of the work, we see a narrator and a man who understands the meaning of the experience. He evaluates his life retrospectively and the general tone of writing the story changes, which speaks of the inner maturity of the narrator himself. When reading the third part, one gets the impression that it was written by a completely different person.
By genre peculiarities most researchers attribute "Clean Monday" to a novella, because in the center of the plot there is a turning point that makes it necessary to interpret the work in a different way. We are talking about the departure of the heroine to the monastery.
Novella I.A. Bunin is distinguished by a complex spatio-temporal organization. The action takes place in late 1911 - early 1912. This is confirmed by the mention of specific dates and textual references to real historical figures that were famous and recognizable at the time. For example, the heroes first meet at a lecture by Andrei Bely, and at a theatrical skit in front of the reader appears the art worker Sulerzhitsky, with whom the heroine is dancing.
The time range of a small piece is wide enough. There are three specific dates: 1912 - the time of the plot events, 1914 - the date of the last meeting of the heroes, and also a certain "today" of the narrator. The entire text is filled with additional temporary landmarks and references: "the graves of Ertel, Chekhov", "the house where Griboyedov lived", mentions of pre-Petrine Rus, Shalyapin's concert, the schismatic Rogozhskoye cemetery, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky and much more. It turns out that the events of the story fit into the general historical context, turn out to be not just a concrete description of the relationship between a man and a woman, but personify an entire era.
It is no coincidence that a number of researchers call to see in the heroine the image of Russia itself, and to interpret her act as a call to the author to go not in a revolutionary way, but to seek repentance and do everything to change the life of an entire country. Hence the title of the novel "Clean Monday", which, as the first day of Great Lent, should become a starting point on the path to the best.
The main actors in the story "Clean Monday" there are only two. This is the heroine and the narrator himself. The reader will never know their names.
In the center of the work is the image of the heroine, and the hero is shown through the prism of their relationship. The girl is smart. He often speaks philosophically wisely: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it out, it puffs up, but when you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
Opposite essences coexist in the heroine, there are many contradictions in her image. On the one hand, she likes luxury Savor, visiting theaters, restaurants. However, this does not interfere with the inner craving for something else, significant, beautiful, religious. She is interested in literary heritage, and not only domestic, but also European. Frequently quoted famous works world classics, hagiographic literature talks about ancient rites and a funeral.
The girl categorically denies the possibility of marriage, believes that she is not suitable for a wife. The heroine is looking for herself, often in thought. She is smart, beautiful and prosperous, but the narrator was convinced every day: “it seemed as if she didn’t need anything: no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city ...” In this world, she is constantly and up to some pores senselessly looking for itself. She is attracted by a luxurious, cheerful life, but at the same time she is disgusting to her: “I don’t understand how people will not get tired of this all their lives, to have lunch and dinner every day”. True, she herself “ate lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur ... ". Exactly like this controversial image the heroine is created by I.A. Bunin in his work.
Wanting to find something different for herself, she visits churches and cathedrals. The girl manages to escape from the familiar environment, albeit not thanks to love, which turns out to be not so sublime and omnipotent. Faith and withdrawal from worldly life helps her to find herself. Such an act confirms the strong and strong-willed character of the heroine. This is how she responds to her own reflections on the meaning of life, realizing the uselessness of the one that leads to secular society... In a monastery, the main thing for a person is love for God, serving him and people, while everything vulgar, base, unworthy and ordinary will no longer bother her.
The main idea of I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday"
In this work, Bunin brings to the fore the history of relations between two people, but the main meanings are hidden much deeper. It will not be possible to unambiguously interpret this story, since it is simultaneously devoted to love, and morality, and philosophy, and history. However, the main direction of the writer's thought is reduced to questions of the fate of Russia itself. According to the author, the country should be cleansed of its sins and reborn spiritually, as the heroine of the work "Clean Monday" did.