Bunin Ivan Alekseevich - Dark Alleys. Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

He was written, sir, own willing Prince: his home was still brought to his home, and he managed to repent before his death and take the communion, and in the last MiG, he ordered to write that wolf in the church over his grave: in the edification, it became to be all the offspring of the prince. Who could heal him at that time? And the church was his home, they themselves struggled.
February 3, 1938.

Before the evening, on the way to Cherniy, the young merchant, the dykellikova captured a shower with a thunderstorm.
He, in a chuke with a raised gate and deeply with a high-speed Kartuze, from which the jets flowed, chibko drove on bearing shivers, sitting riding near the shield itself, riding his legs in high boots into the front axle, pulling wet, frozen wet, slippery beltenis, a hurry hood; To the left of it, near the front wheel, twisted in the whole fountain of liquid dirt, smoothly fled, longing the tongue long, brown Poistter.
At first, dyed workers drove along a black membrane rut along the highway, then, when it turned into a solid gray stream with bubbles, turned on the highway, asked his fine rubble. Neither the neighboring fields nor the sky has long been visible for this flood, smelling cucumber freshness and phosphorus; Before the eyes, the point is exactly the sign of the end of the world, blinding the ruby \u200b\u200bfire to the winding shredder from the top of the Great Wall, clouds, branching lightning, and over his head with a crash, a hissing tail, tearing after, was then unusual for his crushing strength. The horse every time he twitched from them forward, pressing her ears, the dog was already in the scough ... Dieselkers grew and studied in Moscow, cumshot there University, but when he came in the summer in his Tula estate, like a rich cottage, loved to feel like a landowner who came out of men, drank Lafit and smoked out of the Golden Cortigar, and wore lubricants, spots and the fake, proud of his Russian article, and now, in a shower and crash, feeling how he has a cold pouring with a visor and nose, full of vigorous pleasure rustic life. In this summer, he often recalled the summer last year, when he, due to one famous actress, Mattered in Moscow until July, before his departure to Kislovodsk: idleness, heat, hot stench and a green smoke from the asphalt burning in the stalls, breakfast in Troitsk Low with the actors of the Small Theater, which also collected in the Caucasus, then seat Tribe's coffee shop, in the evening the expectation of her in his apartment with furniture in the covers, with chandeliers and paintings in Krasi, with the smell of naphthalene ... The summer Moscow evenings are infinite, it dares only to eleven, and now we are waiting for it - it's not all. Then the call is finally the call - and she, in all its summer chosenness, and her inacked voice: "Sorry, please, all day lay from the headache, I completely called your tea rose, so in a hurry that Likhach took, hungry terribly ..."
When the shower and shocking thunder rolls began to be merged, to move and the circle began to be cleared, ahead, to the left of the highway, it seemed a familiar innovation Yard Starikovanov, Promannina Prona. Twenty-wool remained to the city, "the dyees thought, the horse was thought, the horse is all in the soap and it is still unknown, what will happen again, what a black thing in the other side and still lights up ... On moving to a parlorian yard, he turned on triyah and besieged near wooden porch.
- Grandfather! He shouted loudly. - Take a guest!
But the windows in a log house under an iron rusty roof were dark, no one responded to the cry. Moodyers climbed to the shield of the entrance, rose to the porch after the jumped out of the dirty and wet dog, - she had a mad, eyes glittered brightly and meaninglessly, "Kartuz moved from the sweaty forehead, he removed the chuka-tired from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in one jerk with a belt belt in a silver set, wiped the face from dirty splashes and began to consider whipped dirt from the top. The door to the Senza was converted, but it was felt that the house was empty. True, the cattle is cleaned, he thought and, breaking down, looked in the field: Doesn't go further? Evening air was stationary and cheese, from different sides, cheerfully beat the quail in the aggravated moisture bread, the rain stopped, but the night, the sky and the earth were sullenly dark, behind the highway, behind the low ink grade of the forest, and more thick and gloomy An ominous flame broke out - and the dyeers stepped into the Senza, nailed the door in the darkness in the dark. But the barbell was dark and quiet, only somewhere told the ruble clock on the wall. He slapped the door, turned left, nasoyed and challenged another, in Hiswa: Again anyone, one flies sleepily and displeased in the roasting darkness on the ceiling.
- How came good! - he said out loud - and immediately he heard the speedy and singers, the semi-tech voice of the rapidly in the dark with Narodoye, the daughter of the owner:
- Is it you, Vasil Liksovich? And here I am alone, the streets knighted from the Falls and went home, and the dad took the worker and left the case to the city, it is unlikely that they will return now ... Thunderstorms frightened to death, and here I hear Ktatato drove up, I'm still frightened ... Hello, sorry Me, please ...
The dyeers chirped the match, illuminated her black eyes and dark licho:
- Hello, fool. I am also going to the city, yes, you wish what is being done, I drove to wait ... And you, it means, thought, the robbers arrived?
The match began to get to her, but it was even seen that it was embarrassed by a smiling face, a coral necklace on the neck, small breasts under a yellow-sided dress ... She was almost twice as much as his growth and seemed quite a girl.
"I am now a bulge lamp," she hurriedly spoke, laughing even more from the dressed glance, and rushed to the light bulb over the table. "The God himself sent you that I would do alone here," she said singer, rising to chicks and embarrassing the light bulbs out of the gear, from her tin mug, glass.
Dieselkers lit another mat, looking at her stretching and curved figure.
"Wait," not, "he said, throwing a match, and took her waist. - Wait, turning for a minute to me ...
She looked at him with fear over his shoulder, dropped his hands and turned. He pulled her to himself, - she did not break down, only wildly and surprisedly threw her head back. He topped, straight and firmly looked through the dusk in her eyes and laughed:
- Stone frightened?
"Vasil Liksovich ..." she murmured imploringly and reached out of his hands.
- Wait a minute. Don't I like me? After all, I know, always glad when I come.
"It's better not in the world," she said quietly and hot.
- You see now…
He kissed it for a long time in his lips, and his hands slid below.
- Vasil Liksovich ... Zaughty Christ ... You have forgotten, your horse stayed under the porch ... dad will be shown ... ah, no need!
After half an hour he left the hut, he dug the horse into the courtyard, put it under the shed, took a bridle with her, asked her wet grass from a cart, standing in the middle of the courtyard, and returned, looking at the calm stars in the celestial sky. In the hot darkness, a quiet hut still looked from different sides of weak, distant Zarnitsa. She lay on the horses, all squeezing, bugged her head in the chest, he shook himself warmly from horror, delight and suddenness of what happened. He kissed her wet, salty from the tears of his cheek, Lyg Navit and put her head to his shoulder, right hand Holding a cigarette. She lay smartly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absently smoothed her hair with his left hand, who tied his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smiled smuggled: "And the dad went to the city ..." So you left! Bad, he will understand everything immediately - such a dry and fast elder in a ceremony, white beard, and thick eyebrows are still very black, the look is unusually alive, says, when drunk, without silence, but everything sees ...
He slapped without sleep before the hour, when the darkness of the hut was weakly blonded in the middle, between the ceiling and floor. Having turned his head, he saw greenishly whitewaying around the windows east and already distinguished in the gloom of an angle over the table a large image of the home church Outlines, His raised blessing hand and a faithful look. He looked at her: Lies, still curled up, pursing her legs, forgot everything in a dream! Cute and pathetic girl ...
When in the sky, it became completely light and the rooster on different voices began to yell over the wall, he made a movement to climb. She jumped up and, by half sidewood, with an estaguted breast, with confused hair, stared at him with nothing with eyes.
"Stepa," he said carefully. - I have to go.
- Do you go? She whispered pointlessly.
And suddenly came to his senses and crossed himself hit herself in her chest hands:
- Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What should I do now?
- Stepa, I will come again soon ...
- Yes, because the dad will be at home, - How can I see you! I would come to the forest behind the highway, but how can I get out of the house?
He grieved his teeth, knocked her overnight. She widely scattered his hands, exclaimed in sweet, as if death despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood before the holes, already in the jet, in the Kartuze, with a whip in his hand, back to the windows, to the thick brilliance justly shown the sun, and she stood on the lanes on his knees and, sobbing, lifeline and ugly revealing his mouth, disbelived:
- Vasil Liksovich ... Zakam Christ ... Zarakad the king of Heaven, take me marriage! I'll be you the very last slave! Your threshold will sleep - take! I would go to you so much, yes who will let me go! Vasil Liksovich ...
"Saluch," said dyeers strictly. - The other day I will come to your father and I will say that I get married to you. I heard?
She sat on his feet, immediately breaking sobs, stupidly opened the wet radiant eyes:
- Truth?
- Of course it's true.
"I went to baptism for my baptism," she said hastily.
- Well, it means, in six months, you can get married ...
Going home, he immediately began to gather and went to the troik to the evening railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
October 5, 1938.

I was then not the first youth, but he decided to learn paintings, "I always had a passion for her," and, throwing his estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: took lessons from one mediocre, but pretty famous artist, untidy fatty, perfectly learned everything that relies: long hair, large row curls thrown back, the tube in the teeth, the velvet grenade jacket, on the shoes are dirty gunners, - I especially hated them - negligence in circulation, condescending glances to the sorcered eyes to work a student and it would be like that:
- Busy, interesting ... undoubted success ...
I lived on Arbat, next to the restaurant "Prague", in the rooms "Capital". Day worked by the artist and at home, the evening often spent in cheap restaurants with different new friends from Bohemia, and young and sweat, but equally committed billiards and beer cancers ... Unpleasant and bored I lived! This shameful, unclean artist, his "artistically" launched, littered with every dusty workshop, this dawn "capital" ... It remains in the memory: the snow is incessantly behind the windows, they rarely rare, call the arbat on the arbat, in the evening, the ox Lighted restaurant ... I do not understand why I led such a miserable existence, I was far from being poorly.
But once in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the winding fingernings of double frames, it was no longer winter dampness of wet snow and rain, not as long as the caskets on the pavement horseshoe and as if the kinks called musical more, Ktoto knocked on the door of my hallway. I shouted: Who is there? - But the answer did not follow. I waited, I shouted again - again silence, then a new knock. I got up, challenged: the threshold is worth tall girl In a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looks at the focus, the eyes of a yellow, on long eyelashes, on his face and on her hair under a hat, rain and snow droplets shine; Looks and says:
- I am a conservative, Muza Count. I heard that you interesting personAnd came to meet. Do you have anything against?
Pretty surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
- Very flattering, mercy please. It should only warn that rumors that have come down to you are unlikely to be correct: nothing interesting in me seems to not.
"In any case, let me fit, do not keep me in front of the door," she said, everything just looks at me. - Floored, so take.
And, by going, it became like at home, to shoot in front of my serosreribist, places with a blackened mirror hat, straighten rusty hair, threw off and threw a coat on a chair, left in the plaid flannel dress, sat down on the sofa, shyring wet from snow and rain with a nose, and ordered :
- Remove the boots from me and give a handkerchief from the coat.
I gave a handkerchief, she got drunk and stretched my legs.
"I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert," she said indifferently.
Having restraining a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment, - what a strange guest! - I obedically removed one at other boots. It still freshly smelled of air, and I was worried about this smell, I worried about the connection of her masculinity with all those feminine, which was in her face, in straight eyes, in large and beautiful hand- In all, that I looked around and felt, painting the boots of the heart of her dress, under which it was rounded and full of her knees, seeing convex caviar in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open lacquer shoes.
Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, gathering, apparently, not to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask, from whom and what she heard about me and who she, where and whom he lives. She answered.
- From whom and what heard, it does not matter. I went more because I saw at the concert. You are pretty beautiful. And I am a doctor's daughter, I live from you near, on Prechistensky Boulevard.

Before the evening, on the way to Cherniy, the young merchant, the dykellikova captured a shower with a thunderstorm.

He, in a chuka with a raised gate and deeply with a downtrotal Kartuze, from which he flowed with jets, was chiebko on running shodops, sitting on a riding near the shield itself, firmly by foot in high boots in the front axle, pulling wet, frozen wet, slippery belt, frozen, a hurry hood; To the left of it, near the front wheel, twisted in the whole fountain of liquid dirt, smoothly fled, longing the tongue long, brown Poistter.

At first, the dyeers chased along the black membrane rut along the highway, then, when it turned into a solid gray stream with bubbles, turned on the highway, he dreamed of his fine rubble. Neither the neighboring fields nor the sky has long been visible for this flood, smelling cucumber freshness and phosphorus; Before the eyes, the point, exactly the conclusion of the end of the world, blinding the ruby \u200b\u200bfire to the winding shredder from top to bottom down the Great Wall clouds a sharp, branched lightning, and above his head with a crash, a hissing tail, who burst after that unusual on his crushing strengths. Horse every time he twitched from them forward, pressing her ears, the dog was already in the whole ... Dieselkers grew and studied in Moscow, cumshot there university, but when he came in the summer in his Tula estate, like a rich country, loved to feel like a merchant landlord, came out of the men, drank Lafit and smoked out of the Golden Portsigar, and wore lubricant boots, the spinner and the young man, proud of his Russian article and now, in a shower and crash, feeling how he is coldly pours with a visor and nose, full of vigorous rustic pleasure Life. In this summer, he often recalled the summer last year, when he, because of his connection with one famous actress, was grieving in Moscow until July, before his departure in Kislovodsk: idleness, heat, hot stench and green smoke from burning in iron chains Asphalt in the raced streets, breakfasts in Troitsk Low with the actors of the Small Theater, who also collected in the Caucasus, then sitting in the Coffee shop of the Tribe, in the evening expecting her in his apartment with furniture in the covers, with chandeliers and paintings in Krasi, with the smell of naphthalene ... Summer Moscow The evenings are infinite, darkens only to eleven, and you are waiting for, waiting - everything is not. Then the call will finally - and she, in all its summer elegacity, and her inaccier voice: "I'm sorry, please, all day lay from the headache, I completely called your tea rose, so in a hurry that Likhach took, hungry terribly ..."

When the shower and shocking thunder rolls began to be merged, to move and turn around, ahead, to the left of the highway, it seemed a familiar innoch-widower courtyard, Promnina Prona. Twenty-miles remained to the city, "it is necessary to overdue, the dyeers thought, the horse is all in the soap, and it is still unknown, what will happen again, what a black thing in the other side and still lights up ... On moving to a parlorian yard, he turned on Ryshi and besieged near Wooden porch.

- Grandfather! He shouted loudly. - Take a guest!

But the windows in a log house under an iron rusty roof were dark, no one responded to the cry. Moodyers climbed to the shield of the entrance, rose to the porch after the jumped dirty and wet dog, "the appearance of her was mad, the eyes glittered brightly and meaninglessly," Kartuz moved away from the sweaty forehead, he removed the chuka's tickling from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in the same fashion with a belt belt in a silver set, wiped the face motley on the dirty spray and began to consider whipped dirt from the top. The door to the Senza was converted, but it was felt that the house was empty. True, the cattle is cleaned, he thought and, breaking down, looked in the field: Doesn't go further? Evening air was stationary and cheese, from different sides, cheerfully beat the rain in the aggravated moisture bread, the rain stopped, but the night was coming, the sky and the earth sullenly dark, behind the highway, behind the low ink grade of the forest, and more thick and gloomy An ominous flame broke out - and the dyeers stepped into the Senza, nailed the door in the darkness in the dark. But the barbell was dark and quiet, only somewhere told the ruble clock on the wall. He slapped the door, turned left, nasoyed and challenged another, in Hiswa: Again anyone, one flies sleepily and displeased in the roasting darkness on the ceiling.

- How came good! - he said out loud - and immediately he heard the speedy and singers, the semi-tech voice of the rapidly in the dark with Narodoye, the daughter of the owner:

- Is it you, Vasil Liksovich? And here I am alone, the Strayapukha was knightened with the dad and went home, and the dad took the worker and left the case to the city, it is unlikely that they will return now ... Thunderstorms have come back to death, and here, I hear KTO, drove up, was still frightened ... Hello , excuse me please…

The dyeers chirped the match, illuminated her black eyes and dark liqueciful:

- Hello, fool. I am also going to the city, yes, you wish what is being done, I drove to wait ... And you, it means, thought, the robbers arrived?

The match began to get to go, but it was even more visible. It was embarrassed by a smiling face, a coral necklace on the neck, small breasts under the yellow-sided dress ... She was almost twice as much as his height and seemed quite a girl.

"I am now a bulge lamp," she hurriedly spoke, laughing even more from a dressed glance, and rushed to the light bulb over the table. "God himself sent you that I would do alone here," she said singer, rising to the tiptoe and embarrassing the bulbs out of the gear lattice, from her tin mug, glass.

Moodyers lit another match, looking at her stretching and curved figure.

"Wait," not, "he said suddenly, throwing a match, and took her to waist. - Wait, turn for a minute to me ...

She looked at him with fear over his shoulder, dropped his hands and turned. He pulled her to himself, - she did not break down, only wildly and surprised his head back. He is above, straight and firmly looked through the dusk in her eyes her and laughed:

- Stonely frightened?

"Vasil Liksovich ..." she murmured imploringly and reached out of his hands.

- Wait a minute. Don't I like me? After all, I know, always glad when I come.

"It's better not in the world," she said quietly and hot.

- You see now…

He kissed it for a long time on her lips, and his hands slid below.

- Vasil Liksovich ... For the sake of Christ ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch ... dad will be shown ... ah, do not!

After half an hour, he left the hut, took the horse to the courtyard, put it under the canopy, took the bridle from her, asked her wet grass from a cart, standing in the middle of the courtyard, and returned, looking at calm stars in the clearing sky. In the hot darkness of a quiet hut still looked from different sides of weak, distant Zarnitsa. She lay on the horses, all squeezing, bugged her head in the chest, he shook himself warmly from horror, delight and suddenness of what happened. He kissed her wet, salty from tears cheek, lay back and put her head to his shoulder, his right hand holding a cigarette. She lay smartly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absently smoothed her hair with her left hand, tickling his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smiled smuggled: "And the dad went to the city ..." So you left! Bad, he will immediately understand - such a dry and fast elder in the sulfur, the beard is snow-white, and the thick eyebrows are still very black, the look is unusually alive, says when drunk, without silence, and everything sees through ...

He lay without sleep before the hour when the darkness of the hut was weakly blonded in the middle, between the ceiling and floor. Having turned his head, he saw greenishly whitewowed outside the windows east and already distinguished in the gloom of an angle over the table a large image of the depot in church closure, his raised blessing hand and an adamant look. He looked at her: Lies, still curled up, pursing his legs, forgot everything in a dream! Cute and pathetic girl ...

When in the sky, it became completely light and the rooster on different voices began to yell over the wall, he made a movement to climb. She jumped up and, half-sidewood, with an unbuttoned breast, with confused hair, stared at him with nothing with her eyes.

"Stepa," he said carefully. - I have to go.

- Do you go? She whispered pointlessly.

And suddenly she came into his senses and the cross-stroke hit herself in her chest:

- Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What should I do now?

- Stepa, I will come again soon ...

- Yes, because the dad will be at home, - How can I see you! I would come to the forest behind the highway, but how can I get out of the house?

He, grieving his teeth, overturned her back. She widely scattered his hands, exclaimed in sweet, as if death despair: "Ah!"

Then he stood before the narns, already in the young man, in the Kartuze, with a whip in his hand, back to the windows, to the thick brilliance just that was the sun, and she stood on the lanes on his knees and, sobbing, childishly and ugly opening his mouth, passibly Provided:

- Vasil Liksovich ... For the sake of Christ ... For the sake of the King of Heaven, take me marriage! I'll be you the very last slave! Your threshold will sleep - take! I would go to you so much, yes who will let me go! Vasil Liksovich ...

"Saluch," said dyeers strictly. - The other day I will come to your father and I will say that I get married to you. I heard?

She sat on his feet, immediately breaking sobs, stupidly opened the wet radiant eyes:

- Truth?

- Of course it's true.

"I went to baptism for my baptism," she said hastily.

- Well, it means, in six months, you can get married ...

Going home, he immediately began to gather and left for the troika on the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.

• 32.

Maybe the truth is that terribly, and now everything seems nice. After all, when was it? So long ago, - all the kingdoms-states passed, all the oaks from ancient times were crumbled, all the graves were hundreds of Earth. That's the thing, - on the palace, his word was told in the word, and is it true? The point is as if there was still a great prince in the steep mountains, it was sitting on something at him, I sharpened him in the distance from myself, and he became very lying - the most on the execution of his slaves and on love for love. It was still very in force, and there was no excellence in force and as if he had neither on his palace, nor in the villages of his own girl, whatever he to himself, in his solera, did not require the first night. Well, he fell into the most scary sin: I even had a newlyworked son of my native. That in St. Petersburg in the royal military service Was, and when I found myself, I received a permission from my parent and married, then it became, came with a newlywedheld to him on the bow, in these the most steep mountains. And he is getting on her. About love, sir, no wonder:
The fever of love in every kingdom
Love earth all a circle...
And what a sin may be, if albeit an old man Mummolitis about his beloved, sighs about her? Why was there something very different, it seems like native daughter Was, and he stretched over his intentions to the Blud.
- So what?
- And then, sir, that, noticing such parent intent, I decided to run a young prince to run. Grew harsh, set them up in every way, ordered to midnight to harze the top three cuts, came out, sneak, as soon as he fell asleep old prince, from the native house, brought a young wife - and was such. Only the old prince did not think to sleep: he had ever learned everything from his headphones from his headphones and immediately went to the pursuit. Night, frost is an unspecified, Already the ring of the district of the month lies, snows in the steppe above the growth of the human, and it is not necessary for him: flies, all those who fucked with sabers and pistols, riding a horse, next to his beloved, and he sees a troika with her son. Screams like an eagle: Stop will shoot! And there are not listening, they chase the top three in the whole spirit and dust. Then the old prince shoot in the horses and killed on the race at first one Parshi, right, then the other, left, and I wanted to dump the root, and I looked to the sideline and sees: rushes on him on snow, under the month, the great, unprecedented wolf, with eyes like fire, red and with the Siagan head of the head! Prince let's fall into it, and he didn't even blinked by the eye: the swirl was shown on the prince, she shone to him on his chest - and in a single moment crossed him Kadyk Klyk.
"Oh, what passions, Masha," I said. - True ballad!
"Sin, do not laugh, sir," she replied. - God has a lot.
- I do not argue, Masha. Only strange after all, that they wrote this wolf just near the grave of the prince, slaughtered by him.
- He was written, sir, at his own request of the prince: his home was still alive, and he managed to repent and take the communion, and in the last moment he ordered to write that wolf in the church over his grave: in the edification, it became to be all the offspring Prince. Who could heal him at that time? Yes, and the church was his home, they themselves struggled.
February 3, 1938.
Step
Before the evening, on the way to Cherniy, the young merchant, the dykellikova captured a shower with a thunderstorm.
He, in a chuka with a raised gate and deeply with a downtrotal Kartuze, from which he flowed with jets, was chiebko on running shodops, sitting on a riding near the shield itself, firmly by foot in high boots in the front axle, pulling wet, frozen wet, slippery belt, frozen, a hurry hood; To the left of it, near the front wheel, twisted in the whole fountain of liquid dirt, smoothly fled, longing the tongue long, brown Poistter.
At first, the dyeers chased along the black membrane rut along the highway, then, when it turned into a solid gray stream with bubbles, turned on the highway, he dreamed of his fine rubble. Neither the neighboring fields nor the sky has long been visible for this flood, smelling cucumber freshness and phosphorus; Before the eyes, the point, exactly the conclusion of the end of the world, blinding the ruby \u200b\u200bflames of the winding shut-down, top-down, branching lightning, and over his head with a crash, a hissing tail, taped, then, who was unusual for his crushing strength. The horse every time he twitched from them forward, pressing her ears, the dog was already choking ... Dreeshrigs grew and studied in Moscow, cumshots there, but when he came in the summer in his Tula estate, like a rich cottage, loved to feel a landlord A merchant, who came out of the men, drank Lafit and smoked from the Golden Cortigar, and wore lubricant boots, a sphere overgrowth, was proud of his Russian article, and now, in a shower and crash, feeling how he is coldly pours with a visor and nose, full Energetic pleasure of rustic life. In this summer, he often recalled the summer last year, when he, because of his connection with one famous actress, was grieving in Moscow until July, before his departure in Kislovodsk: idleness, heat, hot stench and green smoke from burning in iron chains Asphalt in the raced streets, breakfasts in Troitsk Low with the actors of the Small Theater, who also collected in the Caucasus, then sitting in the Coffee Shop of the Tribe, in the evening expecting her in his apartment with furniture in the covers, with chandeliers and paintings in Krasi, with the smell of naphthalene ... Summer Moscow evenings endlessly, darkens only to eleven, and you are waiting for, waiting - it's not all. Then the call will finally - and she, in all its summer child, and her inacked voice: "I'm sorry, please, all day lay from the headache, I completely called your tea rose, so in a hurry that Likhach took, hungry terribly ..."
When the shower and shocking thunder rolls began to be merged, to move and turn around, ahead, to the left of the highway, it seemed a familiar innoch-widower courtyard, Promnina Prona. Twenty-miles remained to the city, "it is necessary to overdue, the dyeers thought, the horse is all in the soap and it is still unknown, what will happen again, what a black one is in the other side and still lights up ... On moving to a parlorian yard, he turned on Ryakh and besieged Near the wooden porch.
- Grandfather! He shouted loudly. - Take a guest!
But the windows in a log house under an iron rusty roof were dark, no one responded to the cry. Moodyers climbed to the shield of the entrance, rose to the porch after the jumped dirty and wet dog, "the appearance of her was mad, the eyes glittered brightly and meaninglessly," Kartuz moved away from the sweaty forehead, he removed the chuka's tickling from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in the same fashion with a belt belt in a silver set, wiped the face motley on the dirty spray and began to consider whipped dirt from the top. The door to the Senza was converted, but it was felt that the house was empty. True, the cattle is cleaned, he thought and, breaking down, looked in the field: Doesn't go further? Evening air was stationary and cheese, from different sides, cheerfully beat the rain in the aggravated moisture bread, the rain stopped, but the night was coming, the sky and the earth sullenly dark, behind the highway, behind the low ink grade of the forest, and more thick and gloomy An ominous flame broke out - and the dyeers stepped into the Senza, nailed the door in the darkness in the dark. But the barbell was dark and quiet, only somewhere told the ruble clock on the wall. He slapped the door, turned left, nasoyed and challenged another, in Hiswa: Again anyone, one flies sleepily and displeased in the roasting darkness on the ceiling.
- How came good! - he said out loud - and immediately he heard the speedy and singers, the semi-tech voice of the rapidly in the dark with Narodoye, the daughter of the owner:
- Is it you, Vasil Liksovich? And here I am alone, the Strayapuha quarreled with the Palags and went home, and the dad took the worker and left the case to the city, it is unlikely that they will return now ... Thunderstorms have frightened to death, and here, I hear someone drove away, still Forest was frightened ... Hello, excuse me, please ...
The dyeers chirped the match, illuminated her black eyes and dark liqueciful:
- Hello, fool. I am also going to the city, yes, you wish what is being done, I drove to wait ... And you, it means, thought, the robbers arrived?
The match began to get to go, but it was even more visible. It was embarrassed by a smiling face, a coral necklace on the neck, small breasts under the yellow-sided dress ... She was almost twice as much as his height and seemed quite a girl.
"I am now a bulge lamp," she hurriedly spoke, laughing even more from a dressed glance, and rushed to the light bulb over the table. "God himself sent you that I would do alone here," she said singer, rising to the tiptoe and embarrassing the bulbs out of the gear lattice, from her tin mug, glass.
Moodyers lit another match, looking at her stretching and curved figure.
"Wait," not, "he said suddenly, throwing a match, and took her to waist. Wait, turn for a minute to me ...
She looked at him with fear over his shoulder, dropped his hands and turned. He pulled her to himself, - she did not break down, only wildly and surprised his head back. He is above, straight and firmly looked through the dusk in her eyes her and laughed:
- Stonely frightened?
"Vasil Liksovich ..." she murmured imploringly and reached out of his hands.
- Wait a minute. Don't I like me? After all, I know, always glad when I come.
"It's better not in the world," she said quietly and hot.
- You see now...
He kissed it for a long time on her lips, and his hands slid below.
- Vasil Liksovich ... For the sake of Christ ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch ... dad will be shown ... ah, do not!
After half an hour, he left the hut, took the horse to the courtyard, put it under the canopy, took the bridle from her, asked her wet grass from a cart, standing in the middle of the courtyard, and returned, looking at calm stars in the clearing sky. In the hot darkness of a quiet hut still looked from different sides of weak, distant Zarnitsa. She lay on the horses, all squeezing, bugged her head in the chest, he shook himself warmly from horror, delight and suddenness of what happened. He kissed her wet, salty from tears cheek, lay back and put her head to his shoulder, his right hand holding a cigarette. She lay smartly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absently smoothed her hair with her left hand, tickling his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smugged smuggling: "And the dad went to the city ..." So you left! Bad, he will immediately understand - such a dry and fast elder in a sulfur sweep, a beard snow-white, and thick eyebrows are still very black, the look is unusually alive, says when drunk, without silence, and everything sees through ...
He slapped without sleep before the hour, when the darkness of the hut was weakly blonded in the middle, between the ceiling and floor. Having turned his head, he saw greenishly whitewowed outside the windows east and already distinguished in the gloom of an angle over the table a large image of the depot in church closure, his raised blessing hand and an adamant look. He looked at her: Lies, still curled up, pursing his legs, forgot everything in a dream! Cute and pathetic girl ...
When in the sky, it became completely light and the rooster on different voices began to yell over the wall, he made a movement to climb. She jumped up and, half-sidewood, with an unbuttoned breast, with confused hair, stared at him with nothing with her eyes.
"Stepa," he said carefully. - I have to go.
- Do you go? She whispered pointlessly.
And suddenly she came into his senses and the cross-stroke hit herself in her chest:
- Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What should I do now?
- Stepa, I will come again soon ...
- Yes, because the dad will be at home, - How can I see you! I would come to the forest behind the highway, but how can I get out of the house?
He, grieving his teeth, overturned her back. She widely scattered his hands, exclaimed in sweet, as if death despair: "Ah!"
Then he stood before the narns, already in the young man, in the Kartuze, with a whip in his hand, back to the windows, to the thick brilliance just that was the sun, and she stood on the lanes on his knees and, sobbing, childishly and ugly opening his mouth, passibly Provided:
- Vasil Liksovich ... For the sake of Christ ... For the sake of the King of Heaven, take me marriage! I'll be you the very last slave! Your threshold will sleep - take! I would go to you so much, yes who will let me go! Vasil Liksovich ...
"Saluch," said dyeers strictly. - The other day I will come to your father and I will say that I get married to you. I heard?
She sat on his feet, immediately breaking sobs, stupidly opened the wet radiant eyes:
- Truth?
- Of course it's true.
"I went to baptism for my baptism," she said hastily.
- Well, it means, in six months, you can get married ...
Going home, he immediately began to gather and left for the troika on the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
October 5, 1938.
MUSE
I was then not the first youth, but he decided to learn paintings, "I always had a passion for her," and, having threw his estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took the lessons from one mediocre, but a rather famous artist, an untidy fatty , well-learned everything that relies: long hair, large row curls thrown back, the tube in the teeth, the velvet grenade jacket, on the shoes of dirty gray leggings, - I did not hate them, - negligence in circulation, condescending glance to work Pupil and it would be like that:
- Busy, interesting ... undoubted success ...
I lived on Arbat, next to the restaurant "Prague", in the rooms "Capital". The day worked by the artist and at home, the evening often spent in cheap restaurants with different new acquaintances from Bohemia, and young and battered, but equally committed billiards and beer cancers ... Unpleasant and bored I lived! This shameful, unclean artist, his "artistically" launched, littered with all the dusty stuffing workshop, this dawn "capital" ... It remains in memory: the snow is incessantly behind the windows, they rarely rare, call the arbat on the arbat, in the evening, the ox In a dimly lit restaurant ... I do not understand why I led such a miserable existence, - I was then far away.
But one day in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the dispersed fins of double frames, it was no longer winter dampness of wet snow and rain, not in winter slats on the pavement horseshoe and as if the kinks rang muslier, someone knocked The door of my hallway. I shouted: Who is there? - But the answer did not follow. I waited, I shouted again - again silence, then a new knock. I got up, challenged: the threshold is worth a high girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looks at the stop, eyes of a stomach, on long eyelashes, on his face and on her hair under a hat, raindrops and snow shine; Looks and says:
- I am a conservative, Muza Count. I heard that you are an interesting person, and came to meet. Do you have anything against?
Pretty surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:
- Very flattering, please. It should only warn that rumors that have come down to you are unlikely to be correct: nothing interesting in me seems to not.
"In any case, let me fit, do not hold me in front of the door, she said, everything just looks at me. - Floored, so take.
And, by entering, it became like at home, to shoot in front of my gray-silver, places with a blackened mirror with a hat, straighten rusty hair, threw off and threw a coat on a chair, staying in the checkered flannel dress, sat on the sofa, shrimp wet from snow and rain nose, And ordered:
- Remove the boots from me and give a handkerchief from the coat.
I gave a handkerchief, she slept and stretched my legs.
"I saw you yesterday at Shor's concert," she said indifferently.
Having restraining a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment, - what a strange guest! - I obedically removed one at other boots. It still smells of air freshly, and this smell was worried, worried about the connection of her masculinity with all those feminine-young, which was in her face, in straight eyes, in a large and beautiful hand, - in all that I looked around and felt, Stowing the boots from under her dress, under which it was rounded and full of her knees, seeing convex caviar in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open lacquer shoes.
Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, gathering, apparently, not to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask who and that she heard about me and who she lives with whom. She answered.
- From whom and what heard, it does not matter. I went more because I saw at a concert. You are pretty beautiful. And I am a doctor's daughter, I live from you near, on Prechistensky Boulevard.
She said somehow unexpectedly and briefly. I, I'm not knowing again, what to say, asked:
- Do you want tea?
"I want," she said. "And order if you have money to buy apples from Belov," here, on Arbat. Just hurry the corridor, I am impatient.
- And seem so calm.
- You never seem to ...
When the corridor brought a samovar and a bag of apples, she brewed tea, overcrowding cups, spoons ...
And eat an apple and drinking a cup of tea, it moved deeper on the sofa and praised her hand near myself:
- Now sit down to me.
I sat down, she hugged me, slowly kissed her lips, pulled away, looked and, as if making sure that I was worthy of closed my eyes and again kissed - diligently, long.
"Well," she said as if he was lightweight. - nothing else can not. Day after tomorrow.
In the room it was already completely dark - only the sad semi-light from the lanterns from the street. What I felt, easy to imagine. Where suddenly such happiness! Young, strong, taste and shape of the lips are extraordinary ... I, as in a dream, heard a single conquest of the end, the cocan of hoofs ...
"I want to dine with you in Prague," she said. - Never there was not and in general very inexperienced. Imagine what you think about me. And in fact you are my first love.
- Love?
- But how is it otherwise called?
I, of course, threw my study, she continued his own way. We did not part, lived as newlyweds, went on picture gallery, in exhibitions, listened to concerts and even for some reason, I moved public lectures ... In May, I moved, at her desire, in the old Moscow region estate, where small cottages were told and surrendered, and she began to ride me, returning to Moscow per hour night. I did not expect this and this - cottages near Moscow: I have never lived with a summer house, without anything, in the estate, so much like our steppe estates, and in such a climate.
All the time rain, circle pine forests. That's the thing in a bright blue blue clouds, white clouds climb, highly rolled through the thunder, then it starts to pour brilliant rain through the sun, quickly turning from the heat in fragrant pine couples ... All wet, oily, mirrored ... In the park estates, trees were so Great that giving, in some places built in it, seemed to be small, like housing under the trees in tropical countries. The pond stood a huge black mirror, half tightened was a green rock ... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My dacha was not entirely completed, - unconfaciated walls, unstored floors, stoves without dampers, furniture almost no. And from constant dampness my boots, floating under the bed, overgrown with mold velvet.
Dropelly in the evenings only by midnight: it is worth and worth the semi-flower of the West in fixed, quiet forests. IN moon Nights This half-light strangely interfered with lunar light, also fixed, enchanted. And according to the calm, which reigned throughout the purity of the sky and air, it all seemed that it would no longer be rain. But I fell asleep, having spent it to the station, - and suddenly heard: a shower with thunder rollers, circle of darkness and falling lightning around the roof, and in a plumbing lightning ... in the morning on a lilac earth in raw alleys, Darking the shadows and dazzling stains of the Sun, Tsokali , called muholovki, hoarse frozard trembled. By noon, Pariil again, there were clouds and began to pour rain. Before the sunset it became clear, on my log walls trembling, falling into the windows through the foliage, the crystal-golden mesh of the low sun. Here I walked to the station to meet her. The train approached, looked at the platform unmearable dackets, smelled of stone coal of the locomotive and the crude freshness of the forest, was shown in the crowd. She, with a grid, burdened with snack packages, fruit, bottle of maders ... We have dinner eyes on the eyes. Before her late departure wandered in the park. She became somnambulous, walked, a clone head on my shoulder. Black pond, age-old trees leaving in the starry sky ... Enchanted-bright night, infinite-silent, with endless long shadows of trees on silver glades, like lakes.
In June, she left me to my village, - not married, began to live with me, like a wife, began to worry. Long autumn spent not bored, on everyday worries, reading. From the neighbors most often we had some kind of deuction, lonely, poor landowner, who lived from us versets in two, plump, redhead, frozen, not far away - and a cheap musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I knew him since childhood, now it's so used to him that evening without him was strange to me. We played with him in checkers or he played with her four hands on the piano.
Before Christmas, I somehow drove into the city. Returned already under the moon. And by entering the house, I did not find it anywhere. Selo for samovar one.
- Where is the lady, Dunya? Walking gone?
- I do not know-s. They are not at home from the breakfast.
"Dressed and left," said dawnly, passing through the dining room and not raising his heads, my old nannik.
"True, I went to the viguing," I thought, "right, he will soon come together with him - already seven hours ..." And I went and facilitated in the office and suddenly fell asleep all day Merz on the road. And just as suddenly woke up in an hour - with clear and wild thought: "Yes, because she threw me! Hired a man on the village of the village and left for the station, to Moscow, - everything will turn from her! But maybe he returned?" He passed around the house - no, did not return. Shame servants ...
Waste at ten, not knowing what to do, I was walking a fur coat, I needed a rifle and went on a big road to the vigorous, thinking: "As for the purpose, and he did not come now, and I still have a whole terrible night ahead! Is it true I left, threw me? Yes No, it can not be! " I go, creaking on the path running among the snow, shine on the left of the snow fields at a low, poor moon ... turned with big expensive, I went to the estate walker: Alley of naked trees leading to her on the field, then entry into the courtyard, on the left old, the beggar house, in the house dark ... rose to the icing porch, hardly challenged the heavy door in the upholstery flocks, - in the hallway Blows open running stove, warmth and darkness ... but dark and in the hall.
- Vintage Vintich!
And he silently, in the boots, appeared on the threshold of the office, lit too, only the moon in the triple window.
- Oh, it's you ... enter, enter, please ... And I, as you can see, heaven, I trot the evening without fire ...
I entered and sat on a buggy sofa.
- Imagine. Muza disappeared somewhere ...
He was silent. Then almost a sick voice:
- Yes, yes, I understand you ...
- That is, what do you understand?
And immediately, too silently, also in the boots, with a shawn on the shoulders, left the bedroom, adjacent to the office, muse.
"You and a gun," she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not in it, but in me.
And sat on another sofa, on the contrary.
I looked at her boots, knees under the gray skirt, - everything was well visible in a golden light that fell out of the window, - wanted to shout: "I can't live without you, for some of these knees, for a skirt, for the boots is ready to give life ! "
"It's clear and over," she said. - Scenes are useless.
"You are monstrously cruel," I said hardly.
"Give me a cigarette," she said to the viller.
He trustly jumped to her, stretched his cigarette, began to smoke matches ...
"You're already talking to me on" you "," I said, I said, "you could, even if I don't talk to him on" you. "
- Why? She asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette on the departure.
My heart was clogged already in my throat, I beat in whiskey. I rose and, staggering, went out.
October 17, 1938.
Late hour
Oh, how long ago I was not there, I said to myself. From nineteen years old. He once lived in Russia, felt her his own, had complete freedom to drive around anywhere, and was not great to travel some three hundred miles. And everything did not go, everything was postponed. And we went and passed years, decades. But already you can not postpone more: or now, or never. It is necessary to use the only and most recent case, the benefit of the hour later and no one will meet me.
And I went on the bridge across the river, Far seeking everything around in the monthly light of the July night.
The bridge was such a friend, the former, for sure I saw him yesterday: Grub-ancient, humpbalance and as if not even a stone, and some kind of petrifying from time to eternal disadvantage, I thought the gymnasium that he was still with Bat. However, only some traces of urban walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak about the antiquity of the city. All other old, provincial, no more. One thing was strange, one indicated that something had changed something in the world since I was a boy, boys.

When the shower and shocking thunder rolls began to be merged, to move and turn around, ahead, to the left of the highway, it seemed a familiar innoch-widower courtyard, Promnina Prona. Twenty-wool remained to the city, "the dyees thought, the horse was thought, the horse is all in the soap and it is still unknown, what will happen again, what a black thing in the other side and still lights up ... On moving to a parlorian yard, he turned on triyah and besieged near wooden porch.

Grandfather! He shouted loudly. - Take a guest!

But the windows in a log house under an iron rusty roof were dark, no one responded to the cry. Moodyers climbed to the shield of the entrance, rose to the porch after the jumped out of the dirty and wet dog, - she had a mad, eyes glittered brightly and meaninglessly, "Kartuz moved from the sweaty forehead, he removed the chuka-tired from the water, threw it on the porch railing and , remaining in one jerk with a belt belt in a silver set, wiped the face from dirty splashes and began to consider whipped dirt from the top. The door to the Senza was converted, but it was felt that the house was empty. True, the cattle is cleaned, he thought and, breaking down, looked in the field: Doesn't go further? Evening air was stationary and cheese, from different sides, cheerfully beat the quail in the aggravated moisture bread, the rain stopped, but the night, the sky and the earth were sullenly dark, behind the highway, behind the low ink grade of the forest, and more thick and gloomy An ominous flame broke out - and the dyeers stepped into the Senza, nailed the door in the darkness in the dark. But the barbell was dark and quiet, only somewhere told the ruble clock on the wall. He slapped the door, turned left, nasoyed and challenged another, in Hiswa: Again anyone, one flies sleepily and displeased in the roasting darkness on the ceiling.

How to go! - he said out loud - and immediately he heard the speedy and singers, the semi-tech voice of the rapidly in the dark with Narodoye, the daughter of the owner:

Is it you, Vasil Liksovich? And here I am alone, the Strayapukha was knightened with the Falls and went home, and the dad took the worker and left the case to the city, it is unlikely that they will return now ... Thunderstorms are frightened to death, and here, I hear someone drove away, was afraid ... Hello, excuse me, please ...

The dyeers chirped the match, illuminated her black eyes and dark licho:

Hello, fool. I am also going to the city, yes, you wish what is being done, I drove to wait ... And you, it means, thought, the robbers arrived?

The match began to get to her, but it was even seen that it was embarrassed by a smiling face, a coral necklace on the neck, small breasts under a yellow-sided dress ... She was almost twice as much as his growth and seemed quite a girl.

I am now a light bulb, "she hurriedly spoke, laughing even more from a dressed glance, and rushed to the light bulb over the table. "The God himself sent you that I would do alone here," she said singer, rising to chicks and embarrassing the light bulbs out of the gear, from her tin mug, glass.

Dieselkers lit another mat, looking at her stretching and curved figure.

Wait, you don't need, "he suddenly said, throwing a match, and took her on his waist. - Wait, turn for a minute to me ...

She looked at him with fear over his shoulder, dropped his hands and turned. He pulled her to himself, - she did not break down, only wildly and surprisedly threw her head back. He topped, straight and firmly looked through the dusk in her eyes and laughed:

Still frightened?

Vasil Liksovich ... - she mumbled imploringly and stretched out of his hands.

Wait a minute. Don't I like me? After all, I know, always glad when I come.

It is better not in the world, "she said quietly and hotly.

You see now…

He kissed it for a long time in his lips, and his hands slid below.

Vasil Liksovich ... For the sake of Christ ... You forgot, your horse remained under the porch ... Dad will send ... ah, do not!

After half an hour he left the hut, he dug the horse into the courtyard, put it under the shed, took a bridle with her, asked her wet grass from a cart, standing in the middle of the courtyard, and returned, looking at the calm stars in the celestial sky. In the hot darkness, a quiet hut still looked from different sides of weak, distant Zarnitsa. She lay on the horses, all squeezing, bugged her head in the chest, he shook himself warmly from horror, delight and suddenness of what happened. He kissed her wet, salty from the tears of the cheek, Lyugeny and put her head to his shoulder, with his right hand holding a cigarette. She lay smartly, silently, he, smoking, affectionately and absently smoothed her hair with his left hand, who tied his chin ... Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay, looking into the darkness, and smiled smuggled: "And the dad went to the city ..." So you left! Bad, he will understand everything immediately - such a dry and fast elder in a ceremony, white beard, and thick eyebrows are still very black, the look is unusually alive, says, when drunk, without silence, but everything sees ...

He slapped without sleep before the hour, when the darkness of the hut was weakly blonded in the middle, between the ceiling and floor. Having turned his head, he saw greenishly whitewowed outside the windows east and already distinguished in the gloom of an angle over the table a large image of the depot in church closure, his raised blessing hand and an adamant look. He looked at her: Lies, still curled up, pursing her legs, forgot everything in a dream! Cute and pathetic girl ...

When in the sky, it became completely light and the rooster on different voices began to yell over the wall, he made a movement to climb. She jumped up and, by half sidewood, with an estaguted breast, with confused hair, stared at him with nothing with eyes.

Stepa, "he said carefully. - I have to go.

Care? She whispered pointlessly.

And suddenly she came into his senses and the cross-stroke hit herself in her chest:

Where are you going? How will I be without you now? What should I do now?

Stepa, I'll come again soon ...

Why, dad will be at home, - How can I see you! I would come to the forest behind the highway, but how can I get out of the house?

He grieved his teeth, knocked her overnight. She widely scattered his hands, exclaimed in sweet, as if death despair: "Ah!"

Then he stood before the holes, already in the jet, in the Kartuze, with a whip in his hand, back to the windows, to the thick brilliance just that the sun just appeared, and she stood on the lanes on his knees and, sobbing, childishly and ugly revealing his mouth, Provided:

Vasil Likseich ... For the sake of Christ ... For the sake of the King of Heaven, take me married! I'll be you the very last slave! Your threshold will sleep - take! I would go to you so much, yes who will let me go! Vasil Liksovich ...

Saluch, - strictly said the dyeers. - The other day I will come to your father and I will say that I get married to you. I heard?

She sat on his feet, immediately breaking sobs, stupidly opened the wet radiant eyes:

Of course it's true.

I went to baptism for my baptism, "she said hastily.

Well, it means, after six months, you can get married ...

Going home, he immediately began to gather and left for the troika on the railway. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.

I was then not the first youth, but he decided to learn paintings, "I always had a passion for her," and, throwing his estate in the Tambov province, spent the winter in Moscow: I took the lessons from a medalist, but a rather famous artist, an untidy fatty , well-learned everything that relies: long hair, large rigorous curls thrown back, the tube in the teeth, the velvet pomegranate jacket, on the shoes of dirty gray leggings, - I especially hated them - negligence in circulation, condescending glance pretty eyes to work Pupil and it would be like that:

Busy, interesting ... undoubted success ...

I lived on Arbat, next to the restaurant "Prague", in the rooms "Capital". Day worked by the artist and at home, the evening often spent in cheap restaurants with different new friends from Bohemia, and young and sweat, but equally committed billiards and beer cancers ... Unpleasant and bored I lived! This shameful, unclean artist, his "artistically" launched, littered with every dusty workshop, this dawn "capital" ... It remains in the memory: the snow is incessantly behind the windows, they rarely rare, call the arbat on the arbat, in the evening, the ox Lighted restaurant ... I do not understand why I led such a miserable existence, I was far from being poorly.

But once in March, when I was sitting at home, working with pencils, and in the winding fines of double frames, it was no longer winter dampness of wet snow and rain, not in winter slats on the pavement horseshoe and as if the kinks called, someone knocked musical The door of my hallway. I shouted: Who is there? - But the answer did not follow. I waited, I shouted again - again silence, then a new knock. I got up, challenged: The threshold is worth a high girl in a gray winter hat, in a gray straight coat, in gray boots, looks at the focus, the eyes of a yellow, on the long eyelashes, on the face and on her hair under the hat, raindrops and snow shine; Looks and says:

I am a conservative, Muza Count. I heard that you are an interesting person, and came to meet. Do you have anything against?

Pretty surprised, I answered, of course, courtesy:

Very flattering, mercy please. It should only warn that rumors that have come down to you are unlikely to be correct: nothing interesting in me seems to not.

In any case, let me fit, do not keep me in front of the door, "she said, everything just looks at me. - Floored, so take.

And, by entering, it became like at home, to shoot in front of my gray-silver, places with a blackened mirror with a hat, straighten rusty hair, threw off and threw a coat on a chair, staying in the checkered flannel dress, sat on the sofa, shrimp wet from snow and rain nose, And ordered:

Remove the boots from me and give the nasal handkerchief from the coat.

I gave a handkerchief, she got drunk and stretched my legs.

I saw you yesterday at Shura's concert, she said indifferently.

Having restraining a stupid smile of pleasure and bewilderment, - what a strange guest! - I obedically removed one at other boots. From her still freshly smelled air, and this smell worried me, worried about the connection of her masculinity with all the feminine-young, which was in her face, in straight eyes, in a large and beautiful hand, - in everything that looked and felt, Stowing the boots from her dress, under which it rounded and most fully lay her knees, seeing convex caviar in thin gray stockings and elongated feet in open lacquer shoes.

Then she sat down comfortably on the couch, gathering, apparently, not to leave soon. Not knowing what to say, I began to ask, from whom and what she heard about me and who she, where and whom he lives. She answered.

From whom and what heard, no matter. I went more because I saw at a concert. You are pretty beautiful. And I am a doctor's daughter, I live from you near, on Prechistensky Boulevard.

She said somehow unexpectedly and briefly. I, I'm not knowing again, what to say, asked:

Do you want some tea?

I want, "she said. "And order if you have money to buy apples from Belov," here, on Arbat. Just hurry the corridor, I am impatient.

And seem so calm.

You never seem to ...

When the corridor brought a samovar and a bag with apples, she brewed tea, stuck cups, spoons ...

And eat an apple and drinking a cup of tea, it moved deeper on the sofa and praised her hand near myself:

Now sit down to me.

I sat down, she hugged me, slowly kissed her lips, pulled away, looked and, as if making sure that I was worthy of closed my eyes and again kissed - diligently, long.

Well, "she said as if he was facilitated. - nothing else can not. Day after tomorrow.

In the room it was already completely dark - only the sad semi-light from the lanterns from the street. What I felt, easy to imagine. Where suddenly such happiness! Young, strong, taste and shape of the lips are extraordinary ... I, as in a dream, heard a single conquest of the end, the cocan of hoofs ...

I want to dine with you in Prague, "she said. - Never there was not and in general very inexperienced. Imagine what you think about me. And in fact you are my first love.

But how is it otherwise called?

The study of my own, of course, soon threw it, she continued to be somehow. We did not part, they lived, as newlyweds, went through art gallery, on the exhibitions, listened to concerts and even for some reason, I moved public lectures ... In May, I moved, at her wish, in the old town of the estate, where small cottages were told and surrendered, and She began to ride me, returning to Moscow at one o'clock. I did not expect this and this - cottages near Moscow: never lived with a giftmail, without anything, in the estate, so much like our steppe estates, and in such a climate.

All the time rain, the pine forests around. Now and then in a bright blue blue clouds, white clouds are cliated above them, the thunder is high, then the brilliant rain begins to roll through the sun, quickly turning from the heat in fragrant pine couples ... All wet, oily, mirrored ... In the park estates, the trees were so great that cottages , in some places built in it, seemed to be small as dwellings under the trees in tropical countries. The pond stood a huge black mirror, half tightened was a green rock ... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My dacha was not entirely completed, - unconfaciated walls, unstored floors, stoves without dampers, furniture almost no. And from constant dampness my boots, floating under the bed, overgrown with mold velvet.

Dropelly in the evenings only by midnight: it is worth and worth the semi-flower of the West in fixed, quiet forests. In the lunar nights, this semicolon strangely interfered with the lunar light, also fixed, enchanted. And according to the calm, which reigned throughout the purity of the sky and air, it seemed that it would no longer be rain. But I fell asleep, having spent it to the station, - and suddenly heard: a shower with thundering racks, round darkness and in a plumb of falling lightning ... In the morning on the lilac earth in the raw alleys, Darling the shadows and dazzling stains of the Sun, Plumbals, called Mukholovka, hoarse frozard trembled. By noon, Pariil again, there were clouds and began to pour rain. Before the sunset it became clear, on my log walls trembling, falling into the windows through the foliage, the crystal-golden mesh of the low sun. Here I went to the station to meet her. The train was approached, looked at the platform of unmearable daches, smelled stone coal The locomotive and crude freshness of the forest, showed in the crowd, with a grid, burdened with packs of snacks, fruit, bottle of maders ... We have dinner eyes on the eyes. Before her late departure roamed the park. She became somnambulous, walked, a clone head on my shoulder. Black pond, century-old trees, leaving in a starry sky ... Enchanted-bright night, infinite-silent, with infinite-long shadows of trees on silver glades, similar to lakes.

In June, she left me to my village, - not married, began to live with me, like a wife, began to worry. Long autumn spent not bored, on everyday worries, reading. From the neighbors most often we had some kind of deuction, lonely, a poor landowner, who lived from us versets in two, plump, redhead, frozen, not far away - and a cheap musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I knew him since childhood, now it's so used to him that evening without him was strange to me. We played with him in checkers or he played with her four hands on the piano.

Before Christmas, I somehow drove into the city. Returned already under the moon. And by entering the house, I have not found it anywhere. Selo for samovar one.

And where is the lady, Dunya? Walking gone?

I do not know-s. They are not at home from the breakfast.

Delog and left, - Susomoy said, passing through the dining room and not raising the heads, my old nannik.

"True, I went to the viguing," I thought, "right, I'll come soon with him - already seven hours ..." And I went and arrive in the office and suddenly fell asleep - all day murz on the road. And just as suddenly woke up in an hour - with a clear and wild thought: "Yes, she threw me! Hired a man on the village and went to the station, to Moscow, - everything will be launched from her! But maybe returned? " She passed home - no, did not return. Shame servants ...

There are ten hours, not knowing what to do, I walked a fur coat, I needed a rifle and went on a big road to Vustovsky, thinking: "As for the purpose, and he did not come now, and I still have a whole terrible night ahead! Is it really true left, threw? No, can not be! " I am going, creaking on the path running among the snow, shine on the left of the snow fields at a low, poor moon ... turned off the big road, went to the prevailing estate: Alley of naked trees, leading to her on the field, then enter the courtyard, on the left, The house is dark ... rose to the icing porch, hardly challenged the heavy door in the upholstery flocks, - in the hallway there is an open running stove, warmth and darkness ... but dark and in the hall.

Vintage Vintich!

And he silently, in the boots, appeared on the threshold of the cabinet, illuminated too, only the moon in the triple window.

Oh, it's you ... Enter, enter, please ... And I, as you can see, heaven, I ride the evening without fire ...

I entered and sat on a hill sofa.

Imagine. Muza disappeared somewhere ...

Yes, yes, I understand you ...

That is, what do you understand?

And immediately, too silently, also in the boots, with a shawn on the shoulders, left the bedroom, adjacent to the office, muse.

You and a gun, she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not in it, but in me.

And sat on another sofa, on the contrary.

I looked at her boots, knees under a gray skirt, - everything was well visible in a golden light that fell out of the window, - wanted to shout: "I can't live without you, for some of these knees, for a skirt, for the boots ready to give life ! "

It is clear and over, - she said. - Scenes are useless.

You are monstrously cruel, - I learned with difficulty.

Give me a cigarette, "she said in vigil.

He trustly jumped to her, stretched his cigarette, began to smoke matches ...

You are talking to me already on "You," - I choke, I said, - you could at least do not talk to him with him.

Why? She asked, lifting her eyebrows, holding a papiro floor.

My heart was clogged already in my throat, I beat in whiskey. I rose and, staggering, went Won.

Late hour

Oh, how long ago I was not there, I said to myself. From nineteen years old. He once lived in Russia, felt her his own, had complete freedom to drive around anywhere, and was not great to drive some three hundred wool. And everything did not go, everything was postponed. And we went and passed years, decades. But already you can not postpone more: or now, or never. It is necessary to use the only and most recent case, the benefit of the hour later and no one will meet me.

And I went on the bridge across the river, Far seeking everything around in the monthly light of the July night.

The bridge was such a familiar, the former, for sure I saw it yesterday: Grub-ancient, humpbalance and as if not even a stone, and some kind of petrifying from time to the eternal disadvantage, I thought the gymnasium that he was still with Bat. However, only some traces of urban walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak about the antiquity of the city. All other old, provincial, no more. One thing was strange, one indicated that I still had something in the world since I was a boy, boys: before the river was not shipping, and now it, right, looked down, cleared; The month was to the left of me, pretty far over the river, and in his brightness of the light and in a shimmering, trembling shine of Water Bell Wheel steamer, which seemed empty, was so silent, - although all his portholes were illuminated, like fixed golden eyes And everyone was reflected in the water with a laid gold column: a steamer exactly on them and stood. It was in Yaroslavl, and in Suez Channel, and at Nile. In Paris, the nights are raw, dark, pose with a hazy glow on the impenetrable sky, the hay is flowing under the black resin bridges, but the string pillars from the lanterns on the bridges are also hanging under them, only they are three-color: white, blue and red - Russian national flags. There is no lanterns on the bridge, and it is dry and dusty. And ahead, at the waters, darkening the garden, the fire calans sticks out above the gardens. Oh my God, what it was an unspeakable happiness! This, during a night fire, I first kissed your hand and you squeezed my answer - I will never forget this secret consent. The whole street of Chernela from the people in ominous, unusual insight. I was visiting you when suddenly scored a nabath and rushed to the windows, and then for the gate. It was burning far behind the river, but it's terribly hot, greedily hastily. There were thickly piled by the black-bug man's rune clubs of smoke, the coumenary panels of flames were highly broke out, near us, trembling, trembling, copperly chosen in the dome of Mikhail Archangel. And in the cramped, in the crowd, among the alarming, then a lifelby, then a joyful show from everywhere escaped common people, I heard the smell of your maiden hair, neck, a canvas dress - and so suddenly decided, I took it all silence, your hand ...

Behind the bridge, I rose at the waters, went to the city with a powerful way.

There was no single fire anywhere in the city, not a single living soul. Everything was neo and spacious, calm and sad - sadness of the Russian steppe night, sleeping steppe city. Some gardens are slightly audible, carefully trembled by foliage from the smooth current of the weak July wind, which drove from somewhere with the fields, gently blowing me. I walked - a big month was also walking, riding and through the branches in the black branches; The wide streets lay in the shadows - only in the houses to the right, to which the shadow did not reach, were covered with white walls and a mourning gloss was blown in black glasses; And I walked into the shadows, stepped on a spotted sidewalk, - he Skivoryo User was black silk lace. She had such an evening dress, very elegant, long and slim. It unusually went to her thin mill and black young eyes. She was mysterious in him and offensively did not pay attention to me. Where was it? Visiting who?

My goal was to visit the old street. And I could go there to others, near. But I turned out to turn into these spacious streets in the gardens that I wanted to look at the gymnasium. And, having reached her, again wound up: and then everything remains like half a century ago; Stone fence, a stone courtyard, a large stone building in the yard - everything is also treason, boring, as it was once, with me. I remembered at the gate, I wanted to call sadness, the pity of the memories - and could not: Yes, he entered the first-grader who was cut in a new blue card with silver attachments to the visor and in a new cinema with silver buttons in this world, gray jacket and in the pantle pantals with strips; But is it me?

The old street seemed to me only a little already, what seemed before. All the other was invariably. The bumpy pavement, not a single tree, on both sides, dyed merchant houses, sidewalks are also bumpy, such that it is better to go among the streets, in a complete monthly light ... and the night was almost the same as that. Only that was at the end of August, when the whole city smells like apples, which mountains lie in the bazaars, and so the heat that the pleasure was to go in one spite of overgrown with the Caucasian strap ... Is it possible to remember this night somewhere in the sky?

I still did not decide to walk to your home. And he, right, did not change, but the worst of seeing him. Some strangers, new people live in it now. Your father, your mother, your brother - everyone survived you, young, but in his time they died too. Yes, and I all died; And not only relatives, but many, many, with whom I, in friendship or friendship, began life; Li had long been started, confident that she would not be end, but it all began, he fell and ended in my eyes, "so quickly and in my eyes! And I sat down at the end of some merchant home, impregnable for my castles and gates, and began to think what she was in those distant, our times with her: just cradted dark hair, a clear look, light tan of a young face, light summer The dress under which the impaired, fortress and freedom of the young body ... It was the beginning of our love, time is still no darkened happiness, intimacy, gullibility, enthusiastic tenderness, joy ...

There is something quite special in warm and bright nights of Russian county cities at the end of summer. What a world, what well-being! It wanders the old man with a beater, but only for his own pleasure: there is nothing to spin, sleep quietly, kind peopleYou wakes up God's favor, this is a high shining sky, which is careless to look at the old man, wandering around the bridge heated per day and only occasionally, for fun, launching a beater dance towers. And here in this night, in that late hourwhen he didn't sleep in the city alone, you waited for me in your already sniffed to the fall of the garden, and I secretly slipped into it: quietly took the gate, in advance with you, quietly and quickly ran around the yard and went in the yard in the courtyard in the depths of the courtyard Pierre Dusk Garden, where weakly Belelo away, on the bench under the apple trees, your dress, and, quickly approach, with joyful fright met the shine of your waiting eyes.

And we sat, sat in some perplexity of happiness. I hugged you with one hand, hearing the beat of your heart, he kept your hand, feeling all of you through it. And it was already so late that even the beaters were not heard, - Loe somewhere on the bench and hand over with a tube in the teeth of the old man, basking in the monthly light. When I looked to the right, I saw how high and sinlessly shines over the courtyard month and the roof of the house glitter. When I looked left, I saw the track with dry herbs, which disappeared under other apple trees, and there was a lonely green star with a low green star because of some kind of garden, and at the same time, the very thoughtful, something silently said. But the courtyard and the star I saw only a glimpse - one was in the world: light dusk and radiant flickering of your eyes in dusk.

And then you spent me to the wicket, and I said:

If there future life And we will meet in her, I will be there on your knees and kiss your feet for everything you gave me on earth.

I left the middle of a light street and went to my house. Wrapped, I saw that everything else whites in the gate.

Now, having risen from the cabinet, I went back the same way, which came. No, I was except Old street, and another goal in which I was scared to admit myself, but the execution of which, I knew was inevitably. And I went to look and leave already forever.

The road was familiar again. Everything is straight, then to the left, in the bazaar, and from the bazaar - in monastic - to the departure from the city.

Bazaar as if another city in the city. Very odorous ranks. In the root row, under the canopies over long tables and benches, gloomy. In the hardware hanging on the chain over the middle passage of the icon of the big-eyed rescue in a rusty salary. In the fluttering in the morning they always ran, roared on the pavement of the whole packs of pigeons. Go to the gymnasium - how many of them! And all the fat, with rainbow goiter - be cooled and run, feminine, pinching, swaying, swaying the heads very much, as if not noticing you: take off, whistling with wings, only when you almost come to some of them. And at night, large dark rats, nasty and terrible were quickly and concerned.

Monastery Street - spans in the fields and the road: one of the city home, to the village, others - to the city of Dead. In Paris, two days highlighted the house number so on such a street from all other houses of the plague of the porch, his mourning with silver framing, two days lies in the entrance on the mourning cover of the table of paper in a mourning bundle - on it sign in sympathy polite visitors; Then, in some deadline, it stops at the entrance to a huge, mourning cannon, a chariot, the tree of which is black and resin, like a plane coffin, rounded-cut Baldakhin's floors testify to the heavens with large white stars, and the roof corners are crowned with coarse black sultans - the face of ostrich from the underworld; In the chariot, the tall monsters in coal horned abacks with white rings of the eye were pronounced; On infinitely high goats sits and waiting for the end of the old Raideta, also symbolically dressed in the butaforous sobric uniform and the same triangular hat, internally, should always be grinning for these solemn words! "REQUIEM AETERNAM DONA EIS, DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EIS". - everything is different. Blowing from the fields in the monastic breeze, and they carry the open coffin on the towels towels, shakes rice face With a pedestrian wedding on the forehead, over closed convex centuries. So carried it and her.

On the road to the left of the highway, the monastery of the time of Alexei Mikhailovich, the fortress, always closed gates and the fortress walls, because of which gilded reins of the cathedral are shiny. Further, completely in the field, a very extensive square of other walls, but low: a whole grove was concluded, broken down by intersecting long prospectuses, on the sides of which, under old knitters, limes and birches, are all diverse with various crosses and monuments. The gate was revealed here, and I saw the main prospectus, even, endless. I looked at the hat and entered. As late and as a nebo! The month stood behind the trees is already low, but everything around, as far as the eyes grabbed, it was still clearly visible. The entire space of this grove of the dead, crosses and monuments of its patterns was a variety of transparent shadow. The wind verse to the predestrous hour is light and dark spots, all those who twisted under the trees, slept. In gave groves, because of the cemetery church, suddenly something flashed and with mad speed, the dark club rushed to me - I, beyond myself, staggering aside, my head immediately glaced and strung out, the heart rushed and froze ... that It was? Swept and disappeared. But the heart in the chest remains standing. And so, with a heart stopped, carrying him in himself as a serious bowl, I moved further. I knew where to go, I walked right on the avenue - and at the very end of him, already a few steps from the back wall, stopped: in front of me, in a flat place, among dry herbs, lonely lay an extended and pretty narrow stone, head to Wall. Because of the wall, the wonderful gem was glared a low green star, radiant, like that, former, but dumb, fixed.