It rains all the time, there are pine forests all around. Every now and then, white clouds accumulate above them in the bright blue, thunder rolls high, then a brilliant rain begins to pour through the sun, quickly turning from the heat into a fragrant pine fallow ... Everything is wet, greasy, mirrored ... In the park of the estate the trees were like this large, that the dachas built here and there seemed small beneath them, like dwellings under trees in tropical countries. The pond stood as a huge black mirror, half covered with green duckweed ... I lived on the outskirts of the park, in the forest. My log dacha was not completely completed - the walls were not heaped, the floors were not planed, there were no stoves without dampers, there was almost no furniture. And from the constant dampness, my boots, lying under the bed, were overgrown with velvet mold.
It got dark in the evenings only at midnight: the half-light of the west stood and still stands through the motionless, quiet forests. On moonlit nights, this half-light strangely mixed with the moonlight, also motionless, enchanted. And by the calmness that reigned everywhere, by the purity of the sky and the air, everything seemed that there would be no more rain. But then I fell asleep, escorting her to the station, and suddenly I heard: a downpour again collapsed on the roof with thunderous peals, darkness was all around and lightning fell into a plumb line ... the blackbirds, called flycatchers, crackled hoarsely. Towards noon it was hovering again, clouds were found and it began to rain. Before sunset it became clear, on my log walls the crystal-gold netting of the low sun trembled, falling through the foliage through the windows. Then I went to the station to meet her. A train approached, countless summer residents tumbled onto the platform, it smelled of coal of a steam locomotive and the damp freshness of the forest, she showed up in the crowd, with a net burdened with packages of snacks, fruit, a bottle of Madeira ... We dined together eye to eye. Before her late departure, we wandered through the park. She became somnambulistic, walked with her head on my shoulder. A black pond, age-old trees stretching into the starry sky ... An enchanted light night, endlessly silent, with endlessly long shadows of trees on silver glades, similar to lakes.
In June she left with me to my village - without getting married, she began to live with me like a wife, began to manage. I spent the long autumn without boredom, in everyday worries, reading. Of the neighbors, most often there was a certain Zavistovsky, a lonely, poor landowner who lived two miles away from us, a puny, red-haired, timid, narrow-minded - and not a bad musician. In winter, he began to appear with us almost every evening. I knew him from childhood, but now I got so used to him that an evening without him was strange to me. We played checkers with him or he played four hands on the piano with her.
Before Christmas, I once drove into town. He returned already at the moonlight. And entering the house, he did not find her anywhere. He sat down at the samovar alone.
- And where is the lady, Dunya? Have you gone for a walk?
“I don’t know, sir. They haven't been home since breakfast.
“Get dressed and gone,” my old nurse said gloomily, walking through the dining room without raising her head.
“True, I went to Zavistovsky,” I thought, “it’s true, she’ll come with him soon - it’s already seven o'clock…” And I went and lay down in the office and suddenly fell asleep - I was freezing all day on the road. And just as suddenly I woke up an hour later - with a clear and wild thought: "Why, she left me! She hired a peasant in the village and went to the station, to Moscow - everything will be done with her! But maybe she returned?" I walked around the house - no, I didn’t come back. The servants are ashamed ...
At ten o'clock, not knowing what to do, I put on a sheepskin coat, for some reason took a gun and walked along the high road to Zavistovsky, thinking: "How deliberately, and he did not come today, but I still have a whole terrible night ahead! Is it really true left, left? No, it can't be! " I walk, creaking along a path beaten among the snow, snow fields glisten on the left under a low, poor moon ... I turned off the high road, went to the Zavistovsky estate: an alley of bare trees leading to it across the field, then an entrance to the courtyard, on the left, an old beggar the house, the house is dark ... I climbed the icy porch, with difficulty opened the heavy door, covered with shreds of upholstery, - an open burned-out stove blushes in the hallway, warmth and darkness ... But it is dark in the hall too.
- Vikenty Vikentich!
And he silently, in felt boots, appeared on the threshold of the office, also illuminated only by the moon through the triple window.
- Oh, it's you ... Come in, come in, please ... And, as you can see, I am dusk, passing the evening without fire ...
I went in and sat down on the bumpy sofa.
- Imagine. The muse disappeared somewhere ...
He said nothing. Then in an almost inaudible voice:
- Yes, yes, I understand you ...
- That is, what do you understand?
And immediately, also noiselessly, also in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders, Muse left the bedroom adjacent to the study.
“You are with a gun,” she said. - If you want to shoot, then shoot not at him, but at me.
And she sat down on the other sofa opposite.
I looked at her boots, on her knees under a gray skirt, - everything was clearly visible in the golden light falling from the window, - I wanted to shout: "I cannot live without you, for these knees alone, for a skirt, for boots I am ready to give my life ! "
“It's clear and over,” she said. - The scenes are useless.
“You are monstrously cruel,” I said with difficulty.
“Give me a cigarette,” she said to Zavistovsky.
He cowardly poked his head towards her, held out his cigarette case, began fumbling in his pockets for matches ...
- You already speak to me in "you", - I said breathlessly, - you could at least not speak with him in "you" in front of me.
- Why? she asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette on the fly.
My heart was already pounding in my throat, beating in my temples. I got up and staggered out.
October 17, 1938

LATE HOUR

Oh, how long have I been there, I told myself. From the age of nineteen. Once he lived in Russia, felt it as his own, had complete freedom to travel wherever he wanted, and it was not great work to travel some three hundred miles. But he didn’t go, he put everything off. And years, decades passed and passed. But now it is no longer possible to postpone: either now or never. We must use the only and last opportunity, since the hour is late and no one will meet me.
And I walked across the bridge over the river, seeing far away in the monthly light of the July night.
The bridge was so familiar, the old one, as if I saw it yesterday: it was rudely ancient, hunchbacked and as if not even stone, but some kind of petrified from time to eternal invincibility - as a gymnasium student, I thought that he was still under Batu. However, only some traces of the city walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak about the antiquity of the city. Everything else is old, provincial, no more. One thing was strange, one indicated that after all, something had changed in the world since I was a boy, a youth: before the river was not navigable, but now it must have been deepened, cleared; the month was to my left, quite far above the river, and in its wavering light and in the shimmering, trembling glitter of the water a paddle steamer appeared white, so silent it was, although all its windows were illuminated, like motionless golden eyes and all were reflected in the water by streaming golden pillars: the steamer was exactly on top of them. It was in Yaroslavl, and in the Suez Canal, and on the Nile. In Paris, the nights are damp, dark, a hazy glow turns pink in the impenetrable sky, the Seine flows under the bridges with black tar, but under them there are also streaky columns of reflections from the lanterns on the bridges, only they are three-colored: white, blue and red - Russian national flags. There are no streetlights on the bridge, and it is dry and dusty. And ahead, on the hill, the city grows dark with gardens, a fire tower sticks out over the gardens. My God, what unspeakable happiness it was! It was during the night fire that I kissed your hand for the first time and you squeezed mine in return - I will never forget this secret consent. The whole street was blackened by the people in an ominous, unusual illumination. I was visiting you when suddenly the alarm sounded and everyone rushed to the windows, and then through the gate. It was burning far, across the river, but terribly hot, greedy, hastily. There, clouds of smoke poured thickly with a black-crimson fleece, kumak cloths of flame burst out of them high, shivering nearby, they gleamed coppery in the dome of the Archangel Michael. And in the cramped quarters, in the crowd, amid the anxious, now pitiful, now joyful talk of the common people who had run up everywhere, I heard the smell of your girl's hair, neck, linen dress - and then suddenly I made up my mind, took your hand, all still dying ...
Over the bridge, I climbed a hill and walked into the city by a paved road.
There was not a single fire anywhere in the city, not a single living soul. Everything was dumb and spacious, calm and sad - the sadness of the Russian steppe night, the sleeping steppe city. Some of the gardens, barely audible, gently trembled with foliage from the even current of the weak July wind, which was pulling from somewhere from the fields, gently blowing on me. I walked - a long month also walked, rolling and showing through the blackness of the branches in a mirror-like circle; wide streets lay in shadow - only in the houses to the right, to which the shadow did not reach, white walls were illuminated and black glass shimmered with a mournful gloss; and I walked in the shade, stepped on the dappled sidewalk - it was covered with black silk lace. She had such an evening dress, very smart, long and slender. It went unusually to her slender figure and black young eyes. She was mysterious in him and insultingly did not pay attention to me. Where was it? Visiting who?
My goal was to visit the Old Street. And I could go there in a different, closer way. But that is why I turned into these spacious streets in the gardens, because I wanted to look at the gymnasium. And when he reached her, he was again amazed: and here everything remained the same as half a century ago; a stone fence, a stone courtyard, a large stone building in the courtyard - everything is just as official, boring, as it once was with me. I hesitated at the gate, wanted to evoke sadness, the pity of memories - and I could not: yes, a first-grader in a brand new blue cap with silver palms over the visor and in a new overcoat with silver buttons entered these gates first, a first-grader with a comb-cut a gray jacket and smart trousers with stripes; but is it me?
The old street seemed to me only a little narrower than it seemed before. Everything else was unchanged. A bumpy pavement, not a single tree, dusty merchant houses on either side, the sidewalks are also bumpy, such that it is better to walk in the middle of the street, in full moonlight ... And the night was almost the same as that. Only that one was at the end of August, when the whole city smells of apples, which lie in the mountains in the bazaars, and so warm that it was a pleasure to walk in one blouse, belted with a Caucasian strap ... Is it possible to remember this night somewhere there, as if in the sky?
All the same, I did not dare to walk to your house. And he, it is true, has not changed, but it is all the more terrible to see him. Some strangers, new people live in it now. Your father, your mother, your brother - all survived you, young, but they also died in due time. Yes, and everyone died for me; and not only relatives, but also many, many with whom I, in friendship or friendship, began my life; How long have they begun, confident that there will be no end to it, but everything began, proceeded and ended before my eyes - so quickly and before my eyes! And I sat down on a curbstone near some merchant's house, impregnable behind its locks and gates, and began to think what it was like in those distant, our times with her: just tucked away dark hair, a clear look, a slight tan of a young face, a light summer dress, under which the purity, strength and freedom of a young body ... This was the beginning of our love, a time of still unclouded happiness, intimacy, trustfulness, enthusiastic tenderness, joy ...
There is something very special in the warm and bright nights of Russian county towns at the end of summer. What peace, what prosperity! An old man with a mallet is wandering around the cheerful night city, but only for his own pleasure: there is nothing to guard, sleep well, good people, God's favor is guarding you, this is a high shining sky, at which the old man glances carelessly, wandering along the pavement heated during the day and only occasionally, for fun, launching a dance trill with a mallet. And on such a night, at that late hour, when only he alone did not sleep in the city, you were waiting for me in your garden, which had already dried up by the fall, and I secretly slipped into it: I quietly opened the gate, which you had unlocked in advance, quietly and quickly ran Through the courtyard and behind the shed in the back of the courtyard, I entered the motley gloom of the garden, where your dress was faintly white in the distance, on a bench under the apple trees, and, quickly approaching, with joyful fright met the sparkle of your waiting eyes.
And we sat, sat in a kind of bewilderment of happiness. With one hand I hugged you, hearing the beating of your heart, with the other I held your hand, feeling all of you through it. And it was already so late that even the beater could not be heard - the old man lay down somewhere on a bench and dozed off with a pipe in his teeth, basking in the monthly light. When I looked to the right, I saw how the moon shines high and sinlessly over the courtyard and the roof of the house shines like a fish. When I looked to the left, I saw a path overgrown with dry grasses, disappearing under other apple trees, and behind them a lone green star peeping low from behind some other garden, glowing impassively and at the same time expectantly, saying something silently. But I saw both the courtyard and the star only in passing - one thing was in the world: a light twilight and a radiant twinkling of your eyes in the twilight.
And then you walked me to the gate, and I said:
- If there is a future life and we meet in it, I will kneel there and kiss your feet for everything that you have given me on earth.
I went out into the middle of the bright street and went to my courtyard. Turning around, I saw that he was still gleaming in the gate.
Now, having risen from the curbstone, I went back the same way that I had come. No, I had, besides Old Street, another goal, which I was afraid to admit to myself, but the fulfillment of which, I knew, was inevitable. And I went to take a look and leave forever.
The road was familiar again. All straight ahead, then to the left, along the bazaar, and from the bazaar - along Monastyrskaya - to the exit from the city.
The bazaar is like another city in the city. Very odorous rows. In Obzhorny Ryad, under awnings over long tables and benches, it is gloomy. In Skobyanoy, an icon of the big-eyed Savior in a rusty setting is hanging on a chain over the middle of the aisle. In Muchny, in the morning they always ran, pecked on the pavement with a whole flock of pigeons. You go to the gymnasium - how many there are! And all the fat ones, with iridescent goiters, peck and run, femininely, wagging a pinch, swaying, twitching their heads monotonously, as if not noticing you: they fly up, whistling their wings, only when you almost step on one of them. And at night, large dark rats, disgusting and scary, rushed about here quickly and anxiously.
Monastyrskaya street - a flight into the fields and the road: one from the city home, to the village, the other - to the city of the dead. In Paris, for two days, house number such and such on such and such street stands out from all other houses with a plague props of an entrance, its mourning frame with silver, for two days a sheet of paper in a mourning border lies in the entrance on the mourning cover of a table - they sign on it as a sign of sympathy polite visitors; then, at some last time, a huge chariot with a mourning canopy stops at the entrance, the tree of which is black and resinous, like a plague coffin, the rounded canopy floors indicate heaven with large white stars, and the corners of the roof are crowned with curly black sultans - ostrich feathers from the underworld; tall monsters in coal horned blankets with white rings of eye sockets are harnessed to the chariot; an old drunkard, also symbolically dressed in a fake coffin uniform and the same triangular hat, sits on an infinitely high box and waits for removal, who must always be grinning inwardly at these solemn words! "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis" 1. - It's all different. A breeze blows from the fields along the Monastery, and an open coffin is carried towards him on towels, a rice face with a variegated corolla on the forehead sways over the closed convex eyelids. So they carried her.
At the exit, to the left of the highway, there is a monastery of the time of Alexei Mikhailovich, fortress, always closed gates and fortress walls, because of which the gilded turnips of the cathedral shine. Further, completely in the field, there is a very spacious square of other walls, but not high: they contain a whole grove, broken by intersecting long avenues, on the sides of which, under old elms, lindens and birches, everything is dotted with various crosses and monuments. Here the gates were wide open, and I saw the main avenue, flat, endless. I hesitantly took off my hat and entered. How late and how dumb! The moon was already low behind the trees, but everything around, as far as the eye could see, was still clearly visible. The entire space of this grove of the dead, crosses and monuments glittered in a patterned transparent shadow. The wind died down by the hour before dawn - light and dark spots, all dazzling under the trees, slept. In the distance of the grove, from behind the cemetery church, suddenly something flashed and with a frantic speed, a dark ball rushed towards me - I, beside myself, jumped aside, my whole head immediately froze and tightened, my heart jerked and sank ... . What was it? It swept and disappeared. But the heart in the chest remained standing. And so, with a stopped heart, carrying it in me like a heavy cup, I moved on. I knew where to go, I walked all right along the avenue - and at the very end of it, already a few steps from the back wall, I stopped: in front of me, out of the blue, among dry grasses, an elongated and rather narrow stone lay alone, with the head to Wall. From behind the wall a small green star gazed like a marvelous gem, radiant like the old one, but mute, motionless.
October 19, 1938

At eleven o'clock in the evening, the Moscow-Sevastopol express train stopped at a small station outside Podolsk, where it was not supposed to stop, and was waiting for something on the second track. On the train, a gentleman and a lady came up to the lowered window of the first-class carriage. A conductor with a red lantern in a hanging hand crossed the rails, and the lady asked:
- Listen, why are we standing?
The conductor replied that the oncoming courier was late.
It was dark and sad at the station. Dusk had long come, but in the west, beyond the station, beyond the blackening wooded fields, the long Moscow summer dawn was still shining deathly. There was a damp smell of swamp through the window. In the silence, a uniform and as if also damp creak of a jerk could be heard from somewhere.
He leaned against the window, she on his shoulder.
“I once lived in this area on vacation,” he said. - Was a tutor in a country estate, five versts from here. Boring area. Small forest, magpies, mosquitoes and dragonflies. There is no sight anywhere. In the estate, one could admire the horizon only from the mezzanine, The house, of course, was in the Russian country style and very neglected - the owners were impoverished people, - behind the house there is some semblance of a garden, behind the garden there is a lake, or a swamp overgrown with a bunch of water lilies, and the inevitable punt near the swampy shore.
- And, of course, the bored country girl whom you rolled through this swamp.
- Yes, everything is as it should be. Only the girl was not at all bored. I rolled it more and more at night, and it even came out poetically. In the west, the sky is greenish and transparent all night, and there, on the horizon, just like it is now, everything smolders and smolders ... There was only one oar and something like a shovel, and I rowed it like a savage, then to the right, then to the left. On the opposite bank it was dark from a small forest, but behind it all night long this strange semi-light stood. And everywhere there is unimaginable silence - only mosquitoes whine and dragonflies fly. I never thought that they fly at night - it turned out that for some reason they fly. Downright scary.
Finally the oncoming train made a noise, flew in with a roar and wind, merging into one golden strip of illuminated windows, and swept past. The car started at once. The conductor entered the compartment, illuminated it and began to prepare the beds,
- Well, what happened to you with this girl? A real romance? For some reason you never told me about her. What was she like?
- Thin, tall. She wore a yellow chintz sundress and peasant chunks on her bare feet, woven from some kind of multi-colored wool.
- Also, in the Russian style?
- I think most of all in the style of poverty. There is nothing to dress in, well, a sundress. In addition, she was an artist, she studied at the Stroganov School of Painting. Yes, she herself was picturesque, even icon-painting. A long black braid on the back, a swarthy face with small dark moles, a narrow regular nose, black eyes, black eyebrows ... Hair is dry and coarse, slightly curled. All this, with a yellow sundress and white muslin sleeves of a shirt, stood out very beautifully. The ankles and beginning of the foot in chunks are all dry, with bones protruding under the thin dark skin.
- I know this guy. I had such a friend in my courses. She must be hysterical.
- Perhaps. Moreover, her face was similar to her mother, and her mother, some sort of princess with oriental blood, suffered from something like black melancholy. I went out only to the table. Comes out, sits down and is silent, clears his throat, without raising his eyes, and everything shifts the knife, then the fork. If he suddenly speaks, then so unexpectedly and loudly that you will shudder.
- And the father?
- Also silent and dry, high; retired military man. Only their boy, whom I rehearsed, was simple and sweet.
The conductor left the compartment, said that the beds were ready, and wished good night.
- What was her name?
- Rusya.
- What is this name?
- Very simple - Marusya.
- So what, you were very in love with her?
- Of course, it seemed terrible,
- And she?
He paused and answered dryly:
“Probably she thought so too. But let's go to bed. I am terribly tired for the day.
- Very nice! Only interested in nothing. Well, tell me in a few words how and how your romance ended.
- Yes, nothing. Left, and business is over.
- Why didn't you marry her?
- Obviously, I had a presentiment that I would meet you.
- No seriously?
- Well, because I shot myself, and she stabbed herself with a dagger ...
And, having washed and brushed their teeth, they shut up in the cramped compartment that had formed, undressed and lay down with the joy of the road under the fresh, glossy sheet of the sheet and on the same pillows, all sliding from the raised headboard.
A mauve peephole above the door gazed quietly into the darkness. She soon fell asleep, he did not sleep, lay, smoked and mentally looked at that summer ...
She also had many small dark moles on her body — that was a charming feature. Because she walked in soft shoes, without heels, her whole body was agitated under the yellow sundress. The sundress was wide, light, and her long girlish body was so free in it. Once she got her feet wet in the rain, ran from the garden into the living room, and he rushed to take off her shoes and kiss her wet narrow feet - there was no such happiness in his whole life. The fresh, smelly rain rustled faster and thicker behind the open doors to the balcony, everyone slept in the darkened house after dinner - and how terribly he and her were frightened by some black cock with a metallic green tint in a large crown of fire, which suddenly also ran from the garden with the clatter of claws on the floor at that very hot moment when they forgot all caution. Seeing how they jumped off the sofa, he hastily and bent over, as if out of delicacy, ran back into the rain with his shiny tail down ...
At first she kept looking at him; when he spoke to her, she blushed darkly and answered with a mocking murmur; at the table she often hurt him, loudly addressing her father:
- Do not treat him, dad, in vain. He doesn't like dumplings. However, he does not like okroshka, and does not like noodles, and despises yogurt, and hates cottage cheese.
In the mornings he was busy with the boy, she was doing the housework - the whole house was on her. They dined at one o'clock, and after dinner she would go to her mezzanine or, if there was no rain, to the garden, where her easel stood under a birch, and, brushing off mosquitoes, painted from nature. Then she began to go out onto the balcony, where after dinner he sat with a book in a slanting reed chair, stood with her hands behind her back, and looked at him with an indefinite grin:
- Can you find out what wisdom you deign to study?
- History of the French Revolution.
- Oh, my God! I didn’t know that there was a revolutionary in our house!
- Why did you abandon your painting?
- Just about and completely abandon. I was convinced of my mediocrity.
- And you show me something from your writings.
- Do you think you know anything about painting?
- You are terribly proud.
- There is that sin ...
Finally, she invited him to ride on the lake one day, and suddenly she said resolutely:
- It seems that the rainy period of our tropical places is over. Let's have some fun. Our gas chamber, however, is rather rotten and with a hole in the bottom, but Petya and I filled all the holes with a bunch of holes ...
The day was hot, soaring, the coastal grasses dotted with the yellow flowers of night blindness were stiflingly heated by the damp heat, and innumerable pale green moths hovered low above them.
He assimilated her constant mocking tone and, going up to the boat, said:
- Finally, you condescended to me!
- Finally, you are going to answer me! she answered briskly and jumped on the bow of the boat, scaring away the frogs, splashing into the water from all sides, but suddenly screeched wildly and grabbed the sundress to her knees, stamping her feet:
- Oh! Oh!
He caught a glimpse of the shiny swarthiness of her bare legs, grabbed an oar from the bow, hit the snake wriggling along the bottom of the boat with it, and, prying it off, threw it far into the water.
She was pale with a kind of Hindu pallor, the moles on her face became darker, the blackness of her hair and eyes seemed even blacker. She breathed a sigh of relief:
- Oh, what disgusting. No wonder the word horror comes from the snake. They are everywhere here, both in the garden and under the house ... And Petya, imagine, takes them in his hands!
For the first time she spoke to him simply, and for the first time they looked directly into each other's eyes.
- But what a fine fellow you are! How good you hit him!
She completely came to her senses, smiled and, running from prow to stern, sat down merrily. In her fright, she struck him with her beauty, now he thought with tenderness: yes, she is still quite a girl! But, pretending to look indifferent, he stepped anxiously into the boat, and, resting the oar against the gelatinous bottom, turned it forward with his nose and pulled it along the tangled thick of underwater grasses onto the green brushes of coats and flowering water lilies, all in front covered with a continuous layer of their thick, round foliage, brought her on the water and sat on the bench in the middle, rowing right and left.
- Really, okay? she shouted.
- Highly! - he replied, removing his cap, and turned to her: - Be so kind as to throw it beside me, otherwise I will sweep it into this trough, which, excuse me, still leaks and is full of leaks.
She put the cap on her lap.
- Don't worry, throw it anywhere.
She pressed the cap to her chest:
- No, I will take care of him!
His heart again gave a gentle tremor, but again he turned away and began to vigorously throw the oar into the water glistening among the kuga and water lilies.
Mosquitoes clung to your face and hands, everything around was blinded with warm silver: steamy air, unsteady sunlight, curly whiteness of clouds, softly shining in the sky and in the glades of water among the islands of kuga and water lilies; everywhere it was so shallow that one could see the bottom with underwater grasses, but it somehow did not interfere with the bottomless depth into which the reflected sky with clouds went. Suddenly she screamed again - and the boat fell on its side: she thrust her hand into the water from the stern and, catching the stalk of the water lily, pulled it to herself so that it collapsed along with the boat - he barely had time to jump up and catch her armpits. She laughed and, falling on the stern with her back, splashed from her wet hand directly into his eyes. Then he again grabbed her and, not understanding what he was doing, kissed her laughing lips. She quickly hugged his neck and kissed him awkwardly on the cheek ...
Since then, they began to swim at night. The next day she summoned him after dinner to the garden and asked:
- Do you love me?
He replied fervently, remembering yesterday's kisses on the boat:
- From the first day of our meeting!
“And me,” she said. - No, at first I hated it - it seemed to me that you did not notice me at all. But, thank God, all this is already past. This evening, after everyone has settled down, go there again and wait for me. Just leave the house as carefully as possible - my mother watches my every step, she is jealous to madness.
At night she came ashore with a rug on her hand. With joy he greeted her in confusion, only asked:
- Why a blanket?
- What a stupid one. We will be cold. Well, hurry to sit down and row to that bank ...
They were silent all the way. When we swam to the forest on the other side, she said:
- Well. Now come to me. Where is the blanket? Ah, he's under me. Cover me, I'm cold, and sit down. So ... No, wait, yesterday we kissed somehow stupidly, now I will kiss you myself first, only quietly, quietly. And you hug me ... everywhere ...
Under a sundress she had only a shirt. She gently, barely touching, kissed him on the edges of his lips. He, with a dull head, threw it to the stern. She hugged him frantically ...
After lying down in exhaustion, she got up and, with a smile of happy weariness and still pain that had not yet subsided, said:
- Now we are husband and wife. Mom says that she will not survive my marriage, but I don’t want to think about it now ... You know, I want to swim, I love it terribly at night ...
She undressed over her head, turned white in the gloom with all her long body and began to tie her head with a scythe, raising her arms, showing dark mice and raised breasts, not ashamed of her nakedness and dark toe under her belly. Having tied him up, she quickly kissed him, jumped to her feet, fell flat into the water, threw her head back and noisily nailed her legs.
Then he hurriedly helped her dress and wrap herself in a blanket. In the gloom, her black eyes and black hair, tied in a braid, were fabulously visible. He no longer dared to touch her, only kissed her hands and was silent with intolerable happiness. It all seemed that someone was in the darkness of the coastal forest, silently smoldering in some places with fireflies - standing and listening. Sometimes something rustled there cautiously. She raised her head:
- Wait, what is it?
- Do not be afraid, it’s right, the frog is crawling ashore. Or a hedgehog in the forest ...
- And if a capricorn?
- What Capricorn?
- I do not know. But just think: some ibex comes out of the forest, stands and looks ... I feel so good, I want to talk terrible nonsense!
And he again pressed her hands to her lips, sometimes, like something sacred, he kissed her cold chest. What a completely new creature she had become for him! And behind the blackness of the low forest stood a greenish half-light, weakly reflected in the flat white water in the distance, abruptly, of celery, the smell of dewy coastal plants, mysteriously, pleadingly invisible mosquitoes - and flew, flew with a quiet crackle above the boat and beyond, above this glowing water at night, terrible, sleepless dragonflies. And everything somewhere rustled, crept, made its way ...
A week later, he was disgraced, in shame, stunned by the horror of a completely sudden separation, kicked out of the house.
One afternoon they were sitting in the living room and, touching their heads, looked at pictures in the old rooms of the Niva.
- You haven't stopped loving me yet? he asked quietly, pretending to be looking attentively.
- Silly. Terribly stupid! she whispered.
Suddenly, softly running footsteps were heard - and on the threshold stood in a tattered black silk dressing gown and frayed morocco shoes her crazy mother. Her black eyes sparkled tragically. She ran, as if on stage, and shouted:
- I understood everything! I felt, I followed! Scoundrel, she will not be yours!
And, throwing up her hand in a long sleeve, she fired a deafening shot from an old pistol, with which Petya frightened the sparrows, loading it only with gunpowder. He, in the smoke, rushed to her, grabbed her tenacious hand. She broke free, hit him in the forehead with a pistol, cut his eyebrow in blood, threw it at him and, hearing that they were running around the house to scream and shoot, she began to shout with foam on her gray lips even more theatrically:
- Only over my corpse will she step over to you! If he runs away with you, I'll hang myself on the same day, I'll throw myself off the roof! Scoundrel, get out of my house! Marya Viktorovna, choose: mother or him!
She whispered:
- You, you, mom ...
He woke up, opened his eyes - all the same steadily, mysteriously, gravely looking at him from the black darkness, the blue-purple peephole above the door, and all with the same steadily rushing forward speed the carriage rushed, springing, swaying. Already far, far away was that sad stop. And as many as twenty years ago there was all this - copses, magpies, swamps, water lilies, snakes, cranes ... Yes, there were still cranes - how did he forget about them! Everything was strange in that amazing summer, strange and a couple of some cranes, from somewhere from time to time, flew to the coast of the swamp, and the fact that they only let her close to them and, arching thin, long necks with a very strict, but with benevolent curiosity they looked at her from above, when she, softly and easily scattering towards them in her multi-colored chunks, suddenly squatted down in front of them, spreading her yellow sundress on the wet and warm green of the coast, and with childish fervor looked into their beautiful and formidable black pupils, narrowly enclosed by a ring of dark gray ryka. He looked at her and at them from a distance, through binoculars, and clearly saw their small shiny heads - even their bony nostrils, the wells of strong, large beaks with which they killed snakes with one blow. Their kurguz bodies with fluffy tufts of tails were tightly covered with steel plumage, the scaly canes of their legs were excessively long and thin - one was completely black, the other was greenish. Sometimes they both stood for hours on one leg in an incomprehensible immobility, sometimes for no reason they jumped up, spreading their huge wings; or else they walked, acted slowly, steadily, raised their paws, squeezing three of their fingers into a ball, and set them apart, spreading their fingers like predatory claws, and shaking their heads all the time ... However, when she ran up to them, he was already I didn’t think about anything and didn’t see anything - I saw only her blossoming sundress, shuddering with mortal languor at the thought of her dark body under it, of the dark moles on it. And on that last day of theirs, on that last sitting next to them in the living room on the sofa, over the volume of the old Niva, she also held his cap in her hands, pressed it to her chest, as then, in the boat, and spoke, shining in his eyes with joyful black-mirrored eyes:
- And I love you so much now that there is nothing dearer to me even this smell inside the cap, the smell of your head and your disgusting cologne!

Outside Kursk, in the restaurant car, when after breakfast he drank coffee and brandy, his wife said to him:
- What are you drinking so much? This is already, it seems, the fifth glass. Are you still sad, remember your dacha girl with bony feet?
“I’m sad, sad,” he replied, grinning unpleasantly. -Dacha girl ... Amata nobis quantum arnabitur nulla! 2
- Is that in Latin? What does it mean?
“You don’t need to know that.
“How rude you are,” she said, sighing casually, and began to look out the sunny window.
September 27, 1940

GORGEOUS

An official of the treasury, a widower, elderly, married a young, beautiful, daughter of a military commander. He was silent and modest, and she knew her own worth. He was thin, tall, consumptively built, wore iodine-colored glasses, spoke a little hoarsely, and, if he wanted to say something louder, fell into a fistula. And she was small, well-built and strong, always well dressed, very attentive and household chores, she had a keen eye. He seemed as uninteresting in all respects as many provincial officials, but he was married to a beauty for the first time - everyone just threw up their hands: for what and why did such people go for him?
And now the second beauty calmly hated his seven-year-old boy from the first, pretended that she did not notice him at all. Then the father, out of fear of her, also pretended that he did not and never had a son. And the boy, naturally lively, affectionate, began to be afraid to say a word in their presence, and there he completely hid himself, became, as it were, non-existent in the house.
Immediately after the wedding, he was transferred from his father's bedroom to a sofa in the living room, a small room near the dining room, decorated with blue velvet furniture. But his sleep was restless, every night he knocked down the sheet and blanket on the floor. And soon the beauty said to the maid:
- This is a disgrace, he will scrub all the velvet on the sofa. Lay him, Nastya, on the floor, on that mattress, which I ordered you to hide in the large chest of the deceased lady in the corridor.
And the boy, in his round solitude in the whole world, healed a completely independent life, completely isolated from the whole house, - inaudible, imperceptible, the same day after day: he meekly sits in the corner of the living room, draws houses on a slate board or reads in a whisper in warehouses all the same little book with pictures, bought during the late mother's time, looks out the windows ... He sleeps on the floor between the sofa and a tub with a palm tree. He makes his own bed in the evening and diligently cleans it himself, rolls it up in the morning and takes it into the corridor to his mother’s chest. All the rest of his goodness is hidden there.
September 28, 1940

Fool

Dyakonov's son, a seminarian who came to the village to visit his parents on vacation, woke up one dark hot night from severe bodily excitement and, lying down, inflamed himself even more with his imagination: the work of the girl and, throwing them off the sweaty white bodies over the head of the shirt, with noise and laughter, lifting their faces, arching their backs, threw themselves into the hot shining water; then, unable to control himself, he got up, crept in the dark through the senses into the kitchen, where it was black and hot, like in a baked oven, fumbled, stretching out his hands, the bunks on which the cook was sleeping, a beggar, rootless girl who was reputed to be a fool, and she , out of fear, did not even shout. He lived with her since then all summer and took in a boy, who began to grow up with his mother in the kitchen. The deacon, the deaconess, the priest himself and his whole house, the whole family of the shopkeeper and the sergeant with his wife, everyone knew who this boy was from, and the seminarian, coming on vacation, could not see him out of spiteful shame for his past: he lived with a fool!
When he finished the course - "brilliantly!" As the deacon told everyone - and again came to his parents for the summer before entering the academy, on the very first holiday they called guests for tea in order to be proud of the future academician in front of them. The guests also talked about his brilliant future, drank tea, ate various jams, and the happy deacon started a gramophone, hissing and then loudly screaming, in the midst of their lively conversation.
Everyone fell silent and with smiles of pleasure began to listen to the washing away sounds "Along the street pavement", when suddenly the kitchen boy flew into the room and clumsily, out of tune, danced, stomped on the kitchen boy, to whom his mother, thinking to touch everyone, foolishly whispered: "Run, dance, child ". Everyone was confused by surprise, and the deacon's son, turning purple, rushed at him like a tiger and threw him out of the room with such force that the boy rolled head over heels into the hallway.
The next day the deacon and the deaconess, at his request, drove the cook away. They were kind and compassionate people, very accustomed to her, loved her for her irresponsibility, obedience and in every possible way asked their son to have mercy. But he remained adamant, and they did not dare to disobey him. Towards evening, the cook, crying softly and holding her bundle in one hand and the boy's hand in the other, left the yard.
All summer after that she walked with him through the villages and villages, begging for Christ's sake. She was worn out, frayed, sintered in the wind and in the sun, emaciated to the bone and skin, but was tireless. She walked barefoot, with a sack bag over her shoulder, propping herself up with a high stick, and in the villages and villages bowed silently in front of every hut. The boy followed her behind, also carrying a sack over a shoulder in her old shoes, broken and hardened like those supports that lie somewhere in the ravine.
He was a freak. It had a large, flat crown covered with red boar fur, a flattened nose, with wide nostrils, and hazel eyes and very shiny. But when he smiled, he was very sweet.
September 28, 1940

ANTIGONE

In June, from his mother’s estate, the student went to his uncle and aunt — he had to visit them, find out how they were doing, how the health of his uncle, who had lost his legs to a general. The student served this duty every summer and now rode with submissive calm, leisurely reading in a second-class carriage, putting a young round thigh on the couch, Averchenko's new book, absentmindedly looked out the window as telegraph poles with white porcelain cups in the form of lilies of the valley. He looked like a young officer - only he had a student's white cap with a blue band, everything else was military-style: a white tunic, greenish leggings, boots with lacquered tops, a cigarette case with an incendiary orange cord.
Uncle and aunt were rich. When he came home from Moscow, a heavy tarantass, a couple of work horses and not a coachman, but a worker were sent to the station for him. And at his uncle's station, he always entered for a while into a completely different life, in the pleasure of great wealth, began to feel handsome, cheerful, mannered. So it was now. He involuntarily sat down in a light rubber carriage, pulled by a frisky Karak troika, driven by a young coachman in a blue sleeveless jacket and a yellow silk shirt.
A quarter of an hour later, the troika flew in, softly playing with a scattering of bells and hissing tires in the sand around the flower garden, into the round courtyard of the vast estate, to the platform of a spacious new two-story house. A tall servant in mid-sleeved jackets, in a red vest with black stripes and boots came out to the platform to take his things. The student made a dexterous and incredibly wide jump out of the carriage: smiling and swaying as he walked, an aunt appeared on the threshold of the lobby - a wide tousled robe on a large flabby body, a large sagging face, an anchored nose and yellow markings under brown eyes. She kindly kissed him on the cheeks, he clung to her soft dark hand with feigned joy, quickly thinking: for three whole days to lie like this, and in your free time you don't know what to do with yourself! Feigningly and hastily answering her feigned caring questions about his mother, he followed her into the large lobby, looked with cheerful hatred at the somewhat hunched over stuffed brown bear with glittering glass eyes, clubfoot standing at full height at the entrance to the wide staircase to the upper floor and obligingly holding a bronze dish for business cards in its clawed front paws, and suddenly even paused from gratifying surprise: a chair with a plump, pale, blue-eyed general was rolling towards him evenly by a tall, stately beauty in a gray linen dress, in a white apron and a white kerchief, with big gray eyes, all radiant with youth, strength, purity, the shine of sleek hands, the matte whiteness of the face. Kissing his uncle's hand, he managed to look at the extraordinary slenderness of her dress and legs. The general joked:
- And this is my Antigone, my kind guide, although I am not blind, like Oedipus, and especially for pretty women. Meet young people.
She smiled slightly, only responding with a bow to the student's bow.
A tall servant in mid-jackets and a red waistcoat led him upstairs past the bear, up a staircase with a red carpet in the middle and a shiny dark yellow tree, and along the same corridor, led him into a large bedroom with a marble dressing room next to it - this time to some other one. than before, and with windows to the park, and not to the courtyard. But he walked without seeing anything. The cheerful nonsense with which he drove into the estate was still spinning in his head - "my uncle of the most honest rules" - but there was already something else: this is a woman!
Humming, he began to shave, wash and change clothes, put on trousers with strips, thinking:
"There are such women! And what can you give for the love of such a woman! And how can it be with such beauty to roll old men and women in armchairs on wheels!"
And absurd thoughts went into my head: take it and stay here for a month, for two, secretly from everyone, enter into friendship with her, into intimacy, arouse her love, then say: be my wife, I am all and forever yours. Mom, aunt, uncle, their amazement when I declare to them about our love and our decision to unite our lives, their indignation, then persuasion, screams, tears, curses, disinheritance - everything for me is nothing for you ...
Running down the stairs to his aunt and uncle - their chambers were downstairs - he thought:
"What nonsense, however, creeps into my head! To remain here under some pretext, of course, you can ... you can start courting imperceptibly, pretend to be madly in love ... But will you achieve anything? And if you do, what's next?" ? How to get rid of this story? Is it true, perhaps, to marry? "
For an hour he sat with his aunt and uncle in his huge office with a huge writing table, with a huge ottoman, covered with Turkestan fabrics, with a carpet on the wall above it, criss-cross hung with oriental weapons, with inlaid smoking tables, and on the fireplace with a large a photographic portrait in a rosewood frame under a gold crown, on which there was a free handwritten stroke: Alexander.
“How glad I am, uncle and aunt, that I am with you again,” he said at the end, thinking of his sister. - And how wonderful it is with you! It will be terribly sorry to leave.
- And who is driving you? - answered the uncle. - Where are you in a hurry? Live yourself until you get bored.
“Of course,” said my aunt absently.
Sitting and talking, he incessantly waited: she was about to come in - the maid would announce that tea was ready in the dining room, and she would come to roll my uncle. But tea was brought into the study - a table with a silver teapot on an alcohol lamp was wheeled in, and my aunt poured it herself. Then he kept hoping that she would bring some medicine to her uncle ... But she never came.
`` Well, to hell with her, '' he thought, leaving the office, went into the dining room, where the servant lowered the curtains on the high sunny windows, looked for some reason to the right, at the door of the hall, where glass cups on the legs of a piano gleamed in the afternoon light on the parquet floor , then walked to the left, into the living room, behind which there was a sofa; from the living room I went out onto the balcony, went down to a multi-colored flower garden, walked around it and wandered along a high shady alley ... It was still hot in the sun, and there were still two hours before dinner.

It gets dark, a blizzard rises by night ...

Tomorrow is Christmas, a big merry holiday, and this makes the stormy twilight, an endless back road and a field drowning in the mist of drift, seem even sadder. The sky looms below him; the bluish-leaden light of the dying day dawns faintly, and in the misty distance those pale, elusive lights that always flash before the strained eyes of the traveler on winter steppe nights are already beginning to appear ...

Apart from these ominous mysterious lights, nothing can be seen in half a mile ahead. It's good that it's frosty and the wind easily blows hard snow off the road. But on the other hand, he hits them in the face, falls asleep with a hiss of roadside oak sticks, tears off and carries away their blackened, dry leaves in the smoke of the drift, and, looking at them, you feel lost in the desert, among the eternal northern twilight ...

There is a farm in a field, far from large carriageways, far from big cities and railways. Even the village, which once was near the farm itself, now nests about five versts from it. The Baskakovs called this farm many years ago Luchezarovka, and the village - Luchezarovsky Dvoriki.

Luchezarovka! The wind around it rustles like the sea, and in the courtyard, through the high white snowdrifts, like over the grave hills, drifting snow smokes. These drifts are surrounded by scattered buildings far from each other: a manor house, a "coach" shed and a "human" hut. All the buildings are low and long in the old fashion. The house is sheathed with boards; its front facade looks into the courtyard with only three small windows; porch - with awnings on pillars; the large thatched roof turned black with age. It was the same on a human, but now only the skeleton of this roof remains and a narrow brick pipe rises above it, like a long neck ...

And it seems that the estate has become extinct: no signs of human habitation, except for the started sweeping near the barn, not a single trace in the yard, not a single sound of human speech! Everything is clogged with snow, everything is asleep in a lifeless sleep to the tunes of the steppe wind, among the winter fields. Wolves roam around the house at night, come from the meadows through the garden to the very balcony.

Once upon a time ... However, who does not know what was "once!" Now, at Luchezarovka, there are already only twenty-eight dessiatines of swing and four dessiatines of manor land. The family of Yakov Petrovich Baskakov moved to the city: Glafira Yakovlevna is married to a surveyor, and Sofia Pavlovna lives with her almost all year round. But Yakov Petrovich is an old steppe dweller. In his lifetime, he skipped several estates in the city, but did not want to end there "the last third of his life," as he said about human old age. With him lives his former serf, talkative and strong old woman Daria; she nursed all the children of Yakov Petrovich and remained forever at the Baskakov house. In addition to her, Yakov Petrovich also keeps an employee who replaces the cook: cooks do not live in Luchezarovka for more than two or three weeks.

Someone will live with him! they say. - There, from one melancholy, the heart will wear out!

That is why Sudak, a man from Yards, replaces them. He is a lazy and quarrelsome person, but here he got along. Carrying water from the pond, heating the stoves, cooking "bread", kneading cutting with a white gelding and smoking makhorka in the evenings with a master is not a lot of work.

Yakov Petrovich rents all the land to the peasants, his household is extremely simple. Before, when there were barns, a cattle yard and a barn in the manor, the manor still looked like a human habitation. But what are barns, barns and stockyards for with twenty-eight tithes pledged, re-pledged in a bank? It was wiser than them

Yabluchansky Electronic Library . It gets dark, a blizzard rises towards night. Tomorrow is Christmas, a big merry holiday, and this makes the stormy twilight, an endless back road and a field drowning in the mist of drift, seem even sadder. The sky looms below him; the bluish-leaden light of the dying day dawns faintly, and in the misty distance those pale, elusive lights that always flash before the strained eyes of the traveler on winter steppe nights are already beginning to appear ... Apart from these ominous mysterious lights, nothing can be seen half a mile ahead. It's good that it's frosty, and the wind blows off easily. hard snow roads. But on the other hand, he hits them in the face, falls asleep with a hiss of roadside oak sticks, tears off and carries away their blackened, dry leaves in the smoke of the drift, and, looking at them, you feel lost in the desert, among the eternal northern twilight ... In a field, far away far from big cities and railways, there is a hamlet. Even the village, which once was near the farm itself, now nests five versts from it. The Baskakovs called this farm many years ago Luchezarovka, and the village - Luchezarovsky Dvoriki. Luchezarovka! The wind around it rustles like the sea, and in the courtyard, through the high white snowdrifts, like over the grave hills, drifting snow smokes. These drifts are surrounded by scattered buildings far from each other, a manor house, a "coach" shed and a "human" hut. All the buildings are in the old way - low and long. The house is sheathed with boards; its front facade looks into the courtyard with only three small windows; porch - with awnings on pillars; the large thatched roof turned black with age. It was the same on a human, but now only the skeleton of that roof remains and a narrow, brick chimney rises above it, like a long neck ... And it seems that the estate has died out: there are no signs of human habitation, except for the started sweeping near the barn, not a single trace in the yard, not a single sound of human speech! Everything is clogged with snow, everything is asleep in a lifeless sleep to the tunes of the steppe wind, among the winter fields. Wolves roam around the house at night, come from the meadows through the garden to the very balcony. Once upon a time ... However, who does not know what was "once"! Now, at Luchezarovka, there are already only twenty-eight dessiatines of swing and four dessiatines of manor land. The family of Yakov Petrovich Baskakov moved to the city: Glafira Yakovlevna is married to a surveyor, and Sofia Pavlovna lives with her almost all year round. But Yakov Petrovich is an old steppe dweller. In his lifetime, he skipped several estates in the city, but did not want to end there "the last third of his life," as he said about human old age. With him lives his former serf, talkative and strong old woman Daria; she nursed all the children of Yakov Petrovich and remained forever at the Baskakov house. In addition to her, Yakov Petrovich also keeps an employee who replaces the cook: cooks do not live in Luchezarovka for more than two or three weeks. - He's going to live with him! they say. - There, from one melancholy, the heart will wear out! That is why Sudak, a man from Yards, replaces them. He is a lazy and quarrelsome person, but here he got along. Carrying water from the pond, heating the stoves, cooking "bread", kneading cutting with a white gelding and smoking makhorka in the evenings with a master is not a lot of work. Yakov Petrovich rents all the land to the peasants, his household is extremely simple. Before, when there were barns, a cattle yard and a barn in the manor, the manor still looked like a human habitation. But what are barns, barns and stockyards for with twenty-eight tithes pledged, re-pledged in a bank? It was more prudent to sell them and live on them for a while more fun than usual. And Yakov Petrovich sold first the barn, then the barns, and when he used the entire top from the barnyard for the firebox, he sold its stone walls. And it became uncomfortable in Luchezarovka! It would have been terrible even for Yakov Petrovich among this devastated nest, since from hunger and cold Daria used to go to the village for all the big winter holidays to her nephew, a shoemaker, but by the winter Yakov Petrovich was rescued by his other, more faithful friend. - Selam Alekyum! - an old man's voice was heard on some gloomy day to the "girl's" Luchezarov's house. How livened up at this, familiar from the Crimean campaign itself, the Tatar greeting Yakov Petrovich! A small gray-haired man, already broken, frail, but always cheerful, like all former courtyard people, stood at the threshold respectfully and, smiling, bowed. This is Yakov Petrovich's former orderly, Kovalev. Forty years have passed since the Crimean campaign, but every year he appears before Yakov Petrovich and greets him with those words that remind them both of the Crimea, pheasant hunting, spending the night in Tatar saklyas ... - Alekyum mudflows! - Yakov Petrovich exclaimed cheerfully. - Alive? - But the Sevastopol hero, then, - answered Kovalev. Yakov Petrovich with a smile examined his sheepskin coat, covered with a soldier's cloth, an old under-girl in which Kovalev was swinging as a gray-haired boy, bright felt boots, which he loved to boast about, because they are bright ... - How God has mercy on you? Kovalev asked. Yakov Petrovich examined himself as well. And he is still the same: a solid figure, a gray-haired, shaved head, a gray mustache, a good-natured, carefree face with small eyes and a "Polish" shaved chin, a goatee. .. - Baibak still, - Yakov Petrovich joked in response. - Well, take off your clothes, take off your clothes! Where had you been? Did you bit, garden? - Udil, Yakov Petrovich. There the dishes have been carried away by hollow water this year - and God forbid! - So, he was sitting in the dugouts again? - In dugouts, in dugouts ... - Is there any tobacco? - There is little. - Well, sit down, let's wrap it up. - How is Sofya Pavlovna? - In the town. I was with her recently, but I ran away soon. Here the boredom is mortal, and there it is even worse. Yes, and my dear son-in-law ... You know what a person is! A terrible slave, interested! - You can't make a pan out of a boor! - You won't do it, brother ... Well, to hell with him! - How is your hunt? - Yes, all gunpowder, no fraction. The other day I got hold of it, went, knocked down one club-headed ... - Their this year is a passion! - About that and sense. Tomorrow we will fill up with light. - Necessarily. - I really am glad to you, by God! Kovalev grinned. - Are the checkers intact? he asked, rolling the cigarette and handing it to Yakov Petrovich. - Whole, whole. Let's have lunch and cut it off! It gets dark. The pre-holiday evening comes. A blizzard is playing out in the courtyard, more and more snow covers the window, it becomes colder and darker in the "girl's". This is an old room with a low ceiling, with log walls, black from time to time and almost empty: under the window there is a long bench, next to the bench there is a simple wooden table, a chest of drawers against the wall, in the upper drawer of which there are plates. In all fairness, it was called maiden's name a long time ago, about forty or fifty years ago, when the courtyard girls were sitting here and weaving lace. Now the maiden is one of the living rooms of Yakov Petrovich himself. One half of the house, overlooking the courtyard, consists of a girl's, a footman's and an office among them; the other, overlooking the cherry orchard, from the drawing room and the hall. But in winter the servants' room, drawing room and hall are not heated, and it is so cold there that both the card table and the portrait of Nicholas I freeze through and through. On this nasty pre-holiday evening, the girl's room is especially uncomfortable. Yakov Petrovich sits on a bench and smokes. Kovalev stands by the stove with his head bowed. Both are in hats, felt boots and fur coats; Yakov Petrovich's lamb coat is worn directly on the linen and is belted with a towel. Dimly visible in the dusk, floating bluish tobacco smoke. The broken glass in the living room windows can be heard rattling from the wind. The motel rages around the house and cleanly breaks through the conversation of its inhabitants: it all seems that someone has arrived. - Wait! - Yakov Petrovich suddenly stops Kovalev. “It must be him. Kovalev falls silent. And he fancied the creak of a sled by the porch, a voice, indistinctly coming through the noise of a blizzard. .. - Come and see - he must have arrived. But Kovalev does not want to run out into the cold at all, although he also looks forward to the return of Sudak from the village with purchases. He listens very carefully and strongly objects: - No, it's the wind. - What is it, is it difficult for you to see? - But what to watch when no one is there? Yakov Petrovich shrugs his shoulders; he begins to get annoyed ... So everything went well ... A rich man came from Kalinovka with a request to write a petition to the zemstvo chief (Yakov Petrovich is famous in the neighborhood as a petitioner) and brought a chicken, a bottle of vodka and a ruble of money for this. True, the vodka was drunk during the very composition and reading of the petition, the chicken was slaughtered and eaten on the same day, but the ruble remained intact, - Yakov Petrovich saved it for the holiday ... Then yesterday morning Kovalev suddenly appeared and brought with him a half dozen pretzels eggs, and even sixty kopecks. And the old people were cheerful and discussed for a long time what to buy. In the end, they lit up the soot from the stove in a cup, lighted up a match and in bold, large letters wrote to the shopkeeper in the village: "To Nikolay Ivanov's tavern. Let go 1 lb. semi-selected tobacco, 1,000 matches, 5 pickled herrings, 2 lb. hemp oil, 2 eighths of fruit tea, 1 lb. sugar, and 1 1/2 lb. crumpled mint. " But Sudak hasn't been there since morning. And this entails the fact that the pre-holiday evening will not pass at all the way it was thought, and, most importantly, you will have to go to fetch straw in the oomet yourself; from yesterday there was little straw left in the senets. And Yakov Petrovich gets annoyed, and everything begins to paint him in gloomy colors. Thoughts and recollections come to mind the most gloomy ... For about six months he has not seen either his wife or daughter ... Living on the farm is getting worse and more boring every day ... - Ah, damn it at all! - says Yakov Petrovich his favorite soothing phrase. But today it doesn’t soothe ... - Well, the cold has turned down! - says Kovalev. - Awful cold! - Yakov Petrovich picks up. - After all, here at least the wolves are freezing! Look ... xx! The steam from the breath is visible! - Yes, - continues Kovalev monotonously. - But, remember, on New Year's Eve we once tore flowers in some uniforms! Under Balaklava ... And lowers his head. “And apparently he won't come,” says Yakov Petrovich, not listening. - We are in stupid agitation, no more, no less! - He will not stay overnight in the tavern! - And what do you think? He really needs it! - Let's say it sweeps great ... - Sweeps nothing there. Usually not summer. .. - Why, the state coward! Afraid of freezing ... - But how is it to freeze? Day, service road ... - Wait! - interrupts Kovalev. - It seems he drove up ... - I'm telling you, come out, look! You, by God, are completely worn out today! You have to put on the samovar and pull on the straw. - Why, of course, it is necessary. And then what can you do there at night? Kovalev agrees that it is necessary to go for straw, but he confines himself to preparations for the firebox: he puts a chair to the stove, climbs onto it, opens the flap and takes out the view. In the trumpet, the wind begins to howl in different voices. - Let the dog in, though! - says Yakov Petrovich. - What dog? - asks Kovalev, groaning and getting off his chair. - Why are you pretending to be a fool? Flembo, of course - you hear, squeals. True, Flembo, the old bitch, whines plaintively in the senses. - You must have God! - adds Yakov Petrovich. - After all, she will freeze ... And also a hunter! You are a quitter, brother, as I can see! It's really a bobak. - Yes, it and you must be from the same breed, - smiles Kovalev, opens the door to the senses and lets in the girl's Flembo. - Shut up, shut up, please! - Yakov Petrovich shouts. - And so it went cold on my legs ... Kush is here! - he menacingly turns to Flembo, pointing his finger under the bench. Kovalev, slamming the door, mutters: - There he bears - the light of God is not visible! .. And, probably, soon they will drag us to Bogoslovskoe! Father Vasily is about to come to pick us up. I can see. We all fight. This is before death. “Well, doom yourself to yourself, please,” objected Yakov Petrovich thoughtfully. And again he expresses his thoughts aloud: - No, I will no longer be a watchman in this queer! It seems that soon, soon this damned Luchezarovka will crackle ... He unfolds the pouch, sprinkles the cigarette with makhorka and continues: - It got to the point that you blindfold and run out of the yard! And all my power of attorney is stupid and my friends-buddies! All my life I was honest, like a bulat, I did not refuse anyone anything ... And now what will you order me to do? Stand on the bridge with a cup? Shoot a bullet in the forehead? "Player's Life" to play out? Over there his nephew, Arsentiy Mikhalych, has a thousand dessiatines, but do they have any idea to help the old man? And I myself will not bow to strangers! I'm as proud as gunpowder! And, finally irritated, Yakov Petrovich adds quite angrily: “However, there is nothing to calve, we must go for straw! Kovalev hunches even more and runs his hands into the sleeves of the sheepskin coat. He is so cold that he has a chill on the tip of his nose, but he still hopes he can "get by" somehow. .. maybe Pike perch will drive up ... He understands perfectly well that Yakov Petrovich offers him alone to go for straw. - Why, calf! he says. - The wind knocks down from your feet ... - Well, now you don't have to reign! - You will be in a rush when you cannot unbend your lower back. Not young too! Thank God, two of us will be under one hundred and forty. - Oh, please, do not pretend to be a frozen ram! Yakov Petrovich, too, understands perfectly well that Kovalev alone will not do anything about a sweep of snow covered with snow. But he also hopes that he will somehow manage without him ... Meanwhile, it is already completely dark in the girl's room, and Kovalev finally decides to see if Sudak is coming. Shuffling with his broken legs, he goes to the door ... Yakov Petrovich blows smoke through his mustache, and since he already really wants tea, his thoughts take a somewhat different direction. - Hm! he mutters. - How will it seem to you? Good holiday! I want to burst like a dog. After all, there is no tedious kingdom ... Before, at least the Hungarians traveled! .. Well, wait a minute, Sudak! The doors in the senets are slamming, Kovalev runs in. - There is not! he exclaims. - How failed! What to do now? There is a little straw in the senets! In the snow, in a heavy sheepskin coat, small and hunched over, he is so pitiful and helpless. Yakov Petrovich suddenly rises. - But I know what to do! - he says, overshadowed by some good idea, - bends down and takes out an ax from under the bench. “This problem is very easy to solve,” he adds, knocking over a chair near the table and swinging an ax. - Bring the straw for now! Damn him completely, my health is dearer to me than a chair! Kovalev, who also immediately perked up, watches with curiosity as the chips fly from under the ax. - I suppose there is still a lot on the ceiling? - he picks up. - Go to the attic and shake the samovar! It carries cold through the open door, it smells of snow ... Kovalev, stumbling, drags the handles of old armchairs from the attic into the girl's straw ... - There are still pretzels ... I would like to bake eggs! - Bring them to the stake. And then we sit with weeping willows! The winter evening passes slowly. The motel is raging outside the windows without stopping ... But now the old people no longer listen to her noise. They put a samovar in the senz, flooded the kidney in the study, and both sat down on their haunches near it. Nicely covers the body with warmth! Sometimes, when Kovalev was stuffing a large heap of straw into the stove, the eyes of Flembo, who had also come to warm up to the office door, like two emerald stones, sparkled in the darkness. And there was a dull hum in the stove; shining here and there through the straw and throwing dull red, trembling streaks of light onto the ceiling of the office, the humming flame slowly grew and approached the mouth, sprinkled, bursting with a crash, grain grains. .. Little by little the whole room lit up. The flame completely took possession of the straw, and when only a trembling pile of "heat" remained of it, like red-hot, golden-fiery wires, when this pile fell and faded, Yakov Petrovich threw off his coat, sat with his back to the stove and lifted his shirt on his back. “Aa-aa,” he said. - Nice to fry your back! And when his thick back turned crimson, he bounced off the stove and threw on a sheepskin coat. - That's how it got through! And that is the trouble without a bath ... Well, yes, I will definitely put this year! Kovalev hears this "must" every year, but every year he takes the idea of ​​a bath with delight. - Good, dear! The trouble is without a bath, - he agrees, warming up his thin back by the stove. When the wood and straw burned out, Kovalev roasted pretzels in the oven, deflecting his flaming face from the heat. In the darkness, illuminated by the reddish vent of the stove, he seemed bronze. Yakov Petrovich was busy about the samovar. So he poured himself into a mug of tea, put it on the couch beside him, lit a cigarette and, after a little pause, suddenly asked: - Is there something now doing a nice owl? What kind of owl? Kovalev knows very well what an owl is! About twenty-five years ago, he shot an owl and somewhere at an overnight stay said this phrase, but for some reason this phrase has not been forgotten and, like dozens of others, is repeated by Yakov Petrovich. By itself, of course, it does not make sense, but from long use it became funny and, like others like it, entails many memories. Obviously, Yakov Petrovich has become quite cheerful and begins to peacefully talk about the past. And Kovalev listens with a wistful smile. - Do you remember, Yakov Petrovich? - he begins ... The evening flows slowly, warm and light in a small office. Everything about it is so simple, unpretentious, old-fashioned, yellow wallpaper on the walls, decorated with faded photographs, paintings embroidered with wool (dog, Swiss look), the low ceiling is pasted over with "Son of the Fatherland"; in front of the window is an oak writing table and an old, high and deep armchair; by the wall there is a large mahogany bed with drawers; over the bed there is a horn, a gun, a powder flask; in the corner of an obraznichka with dark icons ... And all this is dear, familiar for a long time! The old people are well fed and warm. Yakov Petrovich sits in felt boots and only underwear, Kovalev - in felt boots and underwear. They played checkers for a long time, did their favorite thing for a long time - they examined their clothes - couldn’t it somehow be turned out? - Sparked an old jacket on the hat; they stood at the table for a long time, measured, drew with chalk ... Yakov Petrovich's mood is the most complacent. Only in the depths of my soul is some sad feeling stirring. Tomorrow is a holiday, he is alone ... Thanks to Kovalev, although he has not forgotten! - Well, - says Yakov Petrovich, - take this hat for yourself. - How about you? - asks Kovalev. - I have. - Why, one is knitted? - So what? An incomparable hat! - Well, thank you most humbly. Yakov Petrovich has a passion for making gifts. And he doesn't want to sew ... - What time is it now? he muses aloud. - Now? Kovalev asked. - It's ten now. Just like in a pharmacy. I already know. Sometimes, in Petersburg, I sewed two silver watches ... - Yes, and you are making a gap, brother! - notes Yakov Petrovich affectionately. - No, excuse me, don't frap right away! Yakov Petrovich smiles absently. - That must be in the city now! - he says, sitting down on a couch with a guitar. - Revitalization, brilliance, vanity! Meetings everywhere, masquerades! And the memories of the clubs begin, about how much when Yakov Petrovich won and lost, how sometimes Kovalev tried to persuade him to leave the club in time. There is a lively conversation about the former welfare of Yakov Petrovich. He says: - Yes, I made a lot of mistakes in my life. I have no one to blame. And it will probably be God who will judge me, not Glafira Yakovlevna and not my dear son-in-law. Well, I would give them a shirt, but I don't have any shirts either ... So I never had anger at anyone ... Well, yes, everything passed, flew by ... How many relatives, acquaintances, how many friends - friends - and all this is in the grave! Yakov Petrovich's face is pensive. He plays guitar and sings an old sad romance. Why are you silent and lonely? - he sings in thought. Duma lies on a gloomy brow ... Or don't you see the glass on the table? And he repeats with special sincerity: Or don't you see the glass on the table? Kovalev comes in slowly. For a long time in the world I did not know the shelter, - he draws in a broken voice, hunched over in an old chair and looking at one point in front of him. For a long time in the world I did not know the orphanage, - Yakov Petrovich echoes with a guitar: For a long time the land carried an orphan, For a long time I had emptiness in my soul ... The wind is raging and tearing the roof. Noise at the porch ... Eh, if only someone would come! Even an old friend, Sofya Pavlovna, forgot ... And, shaking his head, Yakov Petrovich continues: Once in an unforgettable moment in life, Once I saw one creature, In which my whole heart is contained ... In which my whole heart is contained ... Everything passed, flew by ... Sad thoughts bow their heads ... But the song sounds with sad boldness: Why are you silent and sitting alone? Let's knock glass on glass and drink Sad Duma with cheerful wine! “The lady wouldn't have come,” says Yakov Petrovich, tugging at the strings of the guitar and putting it on the couch. And he tries not to look at Kovalev. - Whom! - responded Kovalev. - Very simple. - God forbid straying ... I should blow the horn ... just in case ... Maybe Pike perch is going. After all, it won't take long to freeze. One must judge by humanity ... A minute later, the old men are standing on the porch. The wind tears their clothes off. The old sonorous horn is poured wildly and loudly into different voices. The wind picks up the sounds and carries them into the impenetrable steppe, into the darkness of a stormy night. - Gop-gop! - Yakov Petrovich shouts. - Gop-gop! - echoes Kovalev. And for a long time afterwards, in a heroic mood, the old people do not calm down. One can only hear: - Do you understand? Thousands of them from the swamp to the oat field! Caps knock off! .. Yes, all hardened, mallard! No matter how I give it - I'll just cook porridge! Or: - Here, you know, I stood behind the pine tree. And the night is monthly - even count the money! And suddenly it rushes ... Lobishche like this ... How I will sprinkle it! Then there are cases of freezing, unexpected salvation ... Then the praise of Luchezarovka. - I will not part to death! - says Yakov Petrovich. - I'm still my own head here. The estate, it must be said, is a gold mine. If only I could turn over a little! Now all twenty-eight acres - potatoes, the bank - down, and again I am godfather to the king! Throughout the long night, a blizzard raged in the dark fields. It seemed to the old people that they went to bed very late, but something was not sleeping for them. Kovalev coughs dully, his head covered with a sheepskin coat; Yakov Petrovich tosses and turns and puffs; he's feeling hot. Yes, and the storm is too formidable shaking the walls, blinding and covering the windows with snow! Broken glass in the living room rattles too unpleasantly! It's tough there now, in this cold, uninhabited living room! It is empty, gloomy - the ceilings are low, the embrasures of the small windows are deep. The night is so dark! They gleam dimly with a leaden glitter of glass. Even if you clung to them, you can barely make out a garden filled with snowdrifts ... And then darkness and blizzard, blizzard ... And the old people in their sleep feel how lonely and helpless their little farm in this raging sea of ​​steppe snows. - Oh, God, God! - Kovalev mutters at times. But again the sound of a blizzard sweeps over him in a strange slumber. He coughs more and more less and less, slowly dozing off, as if plunging into some kind of endless space ... And again he feels something ominous through his sleep ... He hears ... Yes, footsteps! Heavy steps upstairs somewhere. .. Someone is walking on the ceiling ... Kovalev quickly regains consciousness, but heavy footsteps are clearly audible and now ... The mother creaks ... - Yakov Petrovich! he says. - Yakov Petrovich! - A? What? - asks Yakov Petrovich. - But someone is walking on the ceiling. - Who walks? - And you listen! Yakov Petrovich listens: walks! “No, it’s always like that,” the wind, ”he says at last, yawning. - Yes, and you are a coward, brother! Let's sleep better. Indeed, there has already been a lot of talk about these steps on the ceiling. Every bad night! But all the same, Kovalev, dozing off, whispers with deep feeling: - Alive in the help of the highest, in the roof of the heavenly god ... Do not fear the fear of the night, from the arrows flying in the days ... Step on the asp and the basilisk and trample the lion and snake ... And Yakov Petrovich is worried about something in his sleep. Under the sound of a blizzard, he sees now the rumble of a century-old pine forest, now the ringing of a distant bell; one can hear the indistinct barking of dogs somewhere in the steppe, the cry of a worker Sudak ... There are sledges rustling at the porch, someone's bast shoes creak over the frozen snow in senets ... in the sleigh - Sofya Pavlovna, Glasha ... they drive up slowly, clogged with snow, barely visible in the dark of a stormy night ... they go, go, for some reason, past the house, further and further ... They are carried away by a blizzard, falling asleep snow, and Yakov Petrovich is hastily looking for a horn, wants to blow the trumpet, call them ... - The devil knows what it is! he mutters, waking up and panting. - What are you, Yakov Petrovich? - I can't sleep, brother! And the night must be long ago! - Yes, a long time ago! - Light a candle and light it! The study lights up. Squinting from the candle, the flame of which vibrates in front of sleepy eyes, like a radiant, dull red star, old people sit, smoke, itch with pleasure and rest from dreams ... It's good to wake up on a long winter night in a warm, family room, smoke, talk, to disperse the creepy sensations with a cheerful twinkle! - And I, - says Yakov Petrovich, yawning sweetly, - and now I see in a dream, what do you think? Kovalev sits on the floor, hunched over (how old and small he is without a girl and sleep!), He answers in thought: “No, what’s that - at the Turkish Sultan’s! I just saw ... Do you believe? One by one, one by one ... with horns, in jackets ... small is small ... But what a tranche they are cutting around me! Both are lying. They saw these dreams, they even saw them more than once, but not at all that night, and too often they tell them to each other, so that they do not believe each other for a long time. And yet they tell. And, having said enough, in the same good-natured mood, they extinguish the candle, pack, dress warmly, pull their hats over their foreheads and fall asleep in the sleep of the righteous man ... Slowly the day comes. It is dark, gloomy, the storm does not abate. The drifts under the windows almost adjoin the glass and rise to the very roof. Because of this, there is a strange, pale gloom in the office ... Suddenly, bricks are flying from the roof with a noise. The wind knocked down the pipe ... This is a bad sign: soon, soon, there must be no trace of Luzezarovka! 1 8 95

565. Read an excerpt from Crime and Punishment. Determine the type of speech. Indicate the characteristic features of this type of speech.

It was a tiny cage, six paces long, which had the most pitiful appearance with its yellow, dusty and everywhere wallpaper that had lagged behind the wall, and so low that a slightly tall man felt creepy in it, and everything seemed to be about bump your head against the ceiling. The furniture corresponded to the room: there were three old chairs, not entirely serviceable, a painted table in the corner, on which lay several notebooks and books; just by the way they were dusty, it was evident that no hand had touched them for a long time; and, finally, a clumsy large sofa, occupying almost the entire wall and half the width of the entire room, once upholstered in chintz, but now in rags and serving as Raskolnikov's bed. Often he slept on it as he was, without undressing, without a sheet, covered with his old, shabby, student coat and with one small pillow in his head, under which he put everything he had, clean and worn out, so that the headboard was higher. There was a small table in front of the sofa. It was more difficult to get down and get naked; but Raskolnikov was even pleased with this in his present state of mind. He resolutely left everyone, like a turtle in its shell, and even the face of the servant who was obliged to serve him and who sometimes looked into his room, aroused bile and convulsions in him. This happens with some monomaniacs who are too focused on something.

(F. Dostoevsky)

1. Explain the setting of punctuation marks in the highlighted sentence.
2. Find in the text an occasional word (individual author's neologism), explain its meaning and method of education.
3. Break the text into paragraphs and formulate their micro themes.

566. Analyze the text, determine its type and style of speech. What genre does it belong to? What is the stylistic and syntactic function of the first and last paragraphs?

"RUSSIAN HANDS DEAR WORK -
THE GOLDEN STRENGTH OF THE KREMLIN ... "

“Whoever has never been to the top of Ivan the Great, who has never had a chance to look at our entire ancient capital from end to end with one glance, who has never admired this majestic, almost immense panorama, has no idea of ​​Moscow, for Moscow is not ordinary city, what a thousand; Moscow is not a silent bulk of cold stones arranged in a symmetrical order ... no! she has her own soul, her own life, ”wrote M.Yu. Lermontov.

The first mention of Moscow in the annals dates back to 1147; this is also the first mention of the Kremlin. Only in those distant times was it called "city" ("city of Moscow").

For eight and a half centuries, the appearance of the Kremlin has repeatedly changed. The name Kremlin appeared not earlier than the XIV century. Under Prince Dmitry Donskoy in 1367, new walls of white stone were erected around the Kremlin; Moscow becomes white-stone and retains this name to this day.

The modern architectural ensemble of the Kremlin began to take shape at the end of the 15th century: brick walls and towers were erected around the Kremlin, which still exist today. The total length of the Kremlin walls with towers is 2235 m; the walls have 1045 teeth.

The Kremlin is a witness to the heroic past of the Russian people. Today it is the center of state and political life in Russia. The Moscow Kremlin is a unique architectural and artistic ensemble, the largest museum in the world, which carefully preserves the “cherished traditions of generations”.

There are many artistic and historical monuments on the territory of the Kremlin. Here are just a few of them: the Ivan the Great bell tower (its height is 81 m, with a cross - about 100 m), only in the XX century in Moscow there were buildings above this bell tower; next to Ivanovskaya Square, on which the tsar's decrees were read out loudly (hence: shouting at all Ivanovskaya); The Tsar Bell, which, if it rang, would be heard 50-60 km away; Tsar Cannon is a monument of foundry art and ancient Russian artillery; The Grand Kremlin Palace and the Faceted Chamber; Cathedral Square with the Archangel Cathedral, the Assumption and Annunciation Cathedrals; The Armory Chamber - the first Moscow museum - and other "witnesses of the centuries".

In the words of M.Yu. Lermontov, "... neither the Kremlin, nor its battlements, nor its dark passages, nor its magnificent palaces, it is impossible to describe it ... One must see, see ... one must feel everything that they say to the heart and imagination! ..".

567. Read the text and headline it. Determine the type of speech. Why does the author, among other pictorial and expressive means, assign a special role to epithets? Write out the words with parentheses, expanding them and explaining the spelling.

It gets dark, a blizzard rises towards night.

Except for ominous mysterious lights, in (half) verst (nothing) is not visible (in) in front. It's good that it's frosty and the wind easily blows hard snow off the road. But for (that) he hits in the face, falls asleep with a hiss of roadside oak branches, tears off and carries away their blackened dry leaves in the smoke of drizzling, and, looking at them, you feel lost in a desert world among the eternal northern twilight.

In the field, (in) far from the roadways, far from big cities and railways, there is a farm. Further, the village, which was once near the farm itself, now nests about five (eight) versts from it. The farm has long been called Luchezarovka.

Luchezarovka! Rustling like the sea, the wind around it; and in the courtyard on high blue (white) snowdrifts, like on grave hills, drizzling smoke is smoked. These drifts are surrounded by scattered buildings far from each other. All buildings are in the old way, long and low. The facade of the house looks into the courtyards with only three small (small) windows. The large thatched roof has turned black with age. A narrow brick chimney rises above the house like a long neck.

It seems that the estate is extinct: (no) signs of human habitation, not a single trace in the yard, not a single sound of human speech! Everything is clogged with snow, everything is asleep in lifeless sleep to the tunes of the wind among winter plain fields. Wolves roam around the house at night, come from the meadows through the garden to the very balcony.

(According to I. Bunin)

1. Find in the text and write down simple one-part sentences and one-part sentences in complex sentences, highlight their grammatical bases and determine the type.
2. In the highlighted sentence, define the colon function and specify the part of speech of words with nor.
3. Find in the text sentences complicated by: 1) comparative turnover; 2) a separate agreed definition. Write them down graphically explaining punctuation marks.

568. Read the text. Determine his main idea. Title the text. What will it express - a theme or a main idea?

Pushkin is the subject of eternal contemplation of the Russian people. They thought about him, they still think about him now, more than about any other of our writers: probably because, touching, for example, Tolstoy, we are limited in our thoughts by him, Tolstoy, and going to Pushkin , we see before us the whole of Russia, her life and her destiny (and therefore, our life, our destiny). The most elusiveness of Pushkin's "essence", the roundness and completeness of his work - attract and confuse. It would seem that everything is said about Pushkin. But you take his book, start rereading it, and you feel that almost nothing has been said. It is truly scary to "open your mouth", to write at least a few words about him, so much is known here in advance and at the same time only approximately, deceptively true.

It is no coincidence that two speeches about Pushkin, spoken on the eve of death, when a person sums up, checks himself, are remembered in Russian literature: the speeches of Dostoevsky and Blok. Both spoke not exactly about Pushkin, or rather - about his. But they could not talk about anyone else so, with such excitement, in such a tone, because before death they apparently wanted to talk about everything "in essence", "about the most important", and only Pushkin represents in this area is freedom.

Will we now accept what is contained in these speeches? Hardly. Especially what Dostoevsky said. It is remarkable that, in general, none of the past assessments, none of the past reflections on Pushkin are now completely satisfying. Undoubtedly, in our criticism, starting with Belinsky, there are many very approximate judgments about him. Some are rightfully recognized as “classic” and remain valuable. But another era is making itself felt.

(G. Adamovich)

1. Explain the setting of punctuation marks. Parse the second sentence thoroughly.
2. Determine the style of speech, give reasons for your answer. What are the most striking features of this style of speech?
3. Indicate examples of parceling in the text.
4. Find compositional elements: 1) thesis; 2) arguments; 3) conclusion. What type of speech is this composition typical for?
5. Make an outline of the text, indicating the micro-themes.

569. Determine the style and type of speech. Make a text outline, indicating compositional elements and micro themes. Analyze the vocabulary of this text. What styles of speech can it be attributed to?

It is generally accepted that the telegraph, telephone, trains, cars and liners are designed to save a person his precious time, to free up leisure, which can be used to develop his spiritual abilities. But an amazing paradox occurred. Can we, in all honesty, say that each of us, using the services of technology, has more time than people had before the telephone, pre-telegraph, pre-aviation time? Yes, my God! Everyone who lived then in relative prosperity (and we all live in relative prosperity now) had many times more time, although everyone then spent a week, or even a month, on the road from city to city instead of our two or three hours.

They say that Michelangelo or Balzac did not have enough time. But that is why they lacked him because there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and in life there are only sixty or seventy years. We, give us free rein, will wake up and forty-eight hours in one day, we will flutter as if we were winding up from city to city, from mainland to mainland, and we will not choose an hour to calm down and do something leisurely, thorough, in the spirit of a normal human nature.

Technology made every state as a whole and humanity as a whole powerful. In terms of fire destruction and all kinds of power, America of the twentieth century is not the same as America of the nineteenth, and humanity, if it were necessary to fight off, well, at least from the Martians, would meet them differently than two or three centuries ago. But the question is whether technology made more powerful just a person, one person, a person as such, the biblical Moses, who brought his people out of a foreign land, was powerful, Jeanne d'Arc was powerful, Garibaldi and Raphael, Spartacus and Shakespeare, Beethoven and Petofi, Lermontov and Tolstoy. But you never know ... Discoverers of new lands, the first polar travelers, great sculptors, painters and poets, giants of thought and spirit, devotees of ideas. Can we say that all our technical progress has made man more powerful precisely from this, the only correct point of view? Of course, powerful tools and devices ... but after all, a spiritual insignificance, a coward can pull the desired lever or press the desired button. Perhaps the coward will pull at first.

Yes, all together, possessing modern technology, we are more powerful. We hear and see for thousands of kilometers, our arms are monstrously elongated. We can hit someone even on another continent. We have already reached the moon with the hand with the camera. But that's all of us. When “you” are left alone with yourself without radioactive and chemical reactions, without nuclear submarines and even without a spacesuit - just alone, can you say to yourself that you are ... more powerful than all your predecessors on planet Earth?

Humanity can collectively conquer the Moon or antimatter, but still, a person sits at the desk individually.

(V. Soloukhin "Letters from the Russian Museum")

570. Title the text. Highlight keywords. Determine the theme and main idea of ​​the text. Write a miniature essay (essay) on the topic.

Teacher and student ... Remember what Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky wrote on his portrait presented to young Alexander Pushkin: "To the winner-student from the defeated teacher." A student must certainly surpass his teacher, this is the highest merit of the teacher, his continuation, his joy, his right, even if illusory, to immortality. And this is what Vitaly Valentinovich Bianki said to his best student Nikolai Ivanovich Sladkov during one of his last walks: “It is known that old and experienced nightingales teach young people to sing. As the birders say, "put them on a good song." But how they put it! Do not poke your nose, do not force or compel. They just sing. With all their avian strength, they try to sing as best and purely as possible. The main thing is cleaner! They value the purity of the whistle above all else. Old people sing, and young people listen and learn. Learn to sing, not sing along! "

(M. Dudin)

571. Read an excerpt from the story "The White Steamer" by the famous Russian and Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov.

Old man Momun, whom many-wise people called the Smart Momun, was known by everyone in the neighborhood, and he knew everyone. Momun earned such a nickname for his invariable friendliness to everyone he knew at least in the slightest degree, his willingness to always do something for anyone, to serve anyone. And yet his diligence was not appreciated by anyone, just as gold would not be appreciated if suddenly they began to distribute it for free. No one treated Momun with the respect that people of his age enjoy. They treated him easily. He was instructed to slaughter cattle, meet guests of honor and help them get off the saddle, serve tea, or even chop wood, and carry water.

It’s his own fault that he’s Eager Momun.

That was how he was. Agile Momun!

Both the old and the small were on "you" with him, it was possible to play a trick on him - the old man is harmless; he could not be reckoned with - an unrequited old man. It is not in vain, they say, that people do not forgive someone who does not know how to force them to respect themselves. But he could not.

He knew a lot in life. He was a carpenter, he played a saddle, and he was a rickety man; when I was even younger, he put such ricks on the collective farm, which was a pity to disassemble them in winter: the rain flowed down from the rick, like off a duck, and the snow fell with a gable roof. In the war he laid the factory walls as a labor army in Magnitogorsk, and called him a Stakhanovite. I came back, cut down houses at the cordon, I was engaged in the forest. Although he was listed as an auxiliary worker, he looked after the forest, and Orozkul, his son-in-law, for the most part visited the guests. Unless when the authorities appear, then Orozkul himself will show the forest and arrange the hunt, here he was already the master. Momun went after cattle, and he kept an apiary. Momun lived all his life from morning till night at work, in troubles, but he did not learn to make himself respect him.

And Momun's appearance was not at all aksakal. No gravity, no importance, no severity. He was a good-natured person, and at first glance this ungrateful human property could be discerned in him. At all times they teach such: “Don't be kind, be evil! Here's to you, here's to you! Be evil, ”and he, unfortunately, remains incorrigibly kind. His face was smiling and wrinkled-wrinkled, and his eyes were always asking: “What do you want? Do you want me to do something for you? So I am now, you just tell me what your need is. "

The nose is soft, duck, as if completely without cartilage. Yes, and a small, nimble, old man, like a teenager.

What a beard - and that failed. One laughingstock. On a bare chin, two or three reddish hairs - that's the whole beard.

Whether it's the case - you suddenly see a dignified old man driving along the road, and his beard is like a sheaf, in a spacious fur coat with a wide merlushka lapel, in an expensive hat, and even with a good horse, and a silver-plated saddle - what is not a sage, what is not a prophet, such and such and bow no shame, such honor is everywhere! And Momun was born just a Quick Momun. Perhaps his only advantage was that he was not afraid to drop himself in someone's eyes. (He sat down wrong, said wrong, answered wrong, smiled wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong ...) In this sense, Momun, without suspecting it, was an unusually happy person.

Many people die not so much from diseases as from the irrepressible, eternal passion that eats them up - to pretend to be more than they are. (Who doesn't want to be reputed to be smart, dignified, handsome and, moreover, formidable, fair, decisive? ..)

And Momun was not like that.

Momun had his own troubles and sorrows, from which he suffered, from which he cried at night. Outsiders knew almost nothing about this.

1. What is this text about? What problem does the author raise? Formulate it.
2. What lexical, morphological, syntactic means of the language confirm the belonging of this text to the language of fiction?
3. With what expressive means of language does Chingiz Aitmatov draw the portrait of old man Momun? Name them and give examples from the text.
4. Write a review on this text, express your attitude to the hero of the story, and to the problem raised by the author.
5. Write an essay on the topic "If All People Treat Each Other With Respect."