Chapter 13 Chapter Twelve

Tapping, scraping, something breaking somewhere woke him up.It's like going to sleep last night in good health and waking up with a fever after midnight.For a while he listened carefully to the sounds--crack, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck--without thinking what they were, simply because they woke him up, because his sense of hearing had nothing else to do. things to do.Crack, tap, scrape, crumble, crumble.Where is the sound coming from?from the right?from the left?Cincinnatus raised himself a little. He listened intently—his whole head became an auditory organ, his whole body a tense heart.As he listened, he was already beginning to grasp the meaning of certain signs: the darkness in the cell was distilling faintly... the darkness sank to the bottom... beyond the bars of the window, the gray light of dawn—it meant it was three o'clock Or half past three... The guards are asleep in the cold... The sound is coming from somewhere below... No, maybe from above, no, from below, just outside the wall, close to the ground, Scratching like a great rat with its iron claws.

What particularly excites Cincinnatus is the strong self-confidence and unremitting earnestness expressed in those voices. The goal they pursued in this silent night in the fortress may be distant, but it is still achievable.Cincinnatus held his breath, light as a ghost, like a thin sheet of paper, and slid out of bed--footed along the sticky, sticky--to the corner where he thought the sound was coming from. — he thought so — but it was only when he got closer that he realized he was wrong — the tapping was farther to the right and higher.He walked around, confused again, fooled by an auditory trick, a voice passing diagonally through his head and being heard by the wrong ear.

With a clumsy step, Cincinnatus touched the plate on the floor by the wall. "Cincinnatus!" said the plate reproachfully.At this point the tapping stops abruptly, sending an uplifting rational message to the listener.Standing motionless against the wall, with his toes on the spoon on the plate, he tilted his open, empty head, feeling the unknown digger standing silently listening too. After half a minute the voices came again, this time softer and more restrained, but more expressive and intelligent.Cincinnatus turned and slowly moved his heels away from the zinc plate, trying to locate the source of the sound again: if you were standing opposite the door, it would be on the right...yes, it was on the right, anyway. Far... After listening for a long time, that was all he could conclude.At last he went back to the bed to put on his slippers—bare feet were too much for him—and he stumbled rather loudly on the legs of a chair that never stayed in one place all night long.The voices stopped again, this time for good.That is to say, the voices might have resumed after a careful pause, but the morning had begun to shine brightly, and Cincinnatus saw—with his usual imaginative eye—Rodion, who had never Coming from a humid environment, steaming all over his body, yawning with his bright red mouth open, he sat on his stool in the living room and stretched.

All morning, Cincinnatus listened, thinking about how to let the other party know his attitude when those voices reappeared.There was a summer thunderstorm outside, simple but elegant.The cell was as dark as night, and thunder could be heard, sometimes solid and loud, sometimes sharp and crisp, and the lightning cast the shadows of the iron bars on the windows in unexpected places.At noon Rodrigo Ivanovitch arrived. "You have a visitor," he said, "but first I want to make sure..." "Who?" Cincinnatus asked, thinking to himself: Please don't... (i.e. please don't let the tapping sound again at this time).

"Here comes, you see," said the warden, "I'm not sure if you want... You see, your mother—your mother." "My mother?" Cincinnatus asked. "Yes, that's right—Mother, Mummy, in short, the woman who gave birth to you. Shall I let her in? Make up your mind, please." "...I've only seen her once in my life," Cincinnatus said, "and I really have no feelings... No, no, not worth seeing, meaningless." "As you please," said the warden, and went out. A minute later, in a polite murmur, he ushered in the diminutive Cecilia C, who was wearing a black raincoat. "I won't bother you both," he added kindly, "though it's against our rules, sometimes there are...exceptions...mothers and sons...I obey..."

Get out, get out like a courtier. Cecilia C, wearing a shiny black raincoat and a similar low-brimmed waterproof hat (it looks like a sailor's wide-brimmed waterproof hat), has been standing in the center of the cell, gazing brightly looking at her son.She unbuttoned, sniffed, and said in a fast and incoherent way: "The storm was too strong and muddy, I thought I couldn't come to you, the water on the road was rushing down, towards me..." "Sit down," said Cincinnatus, "don't stand like that." "Whatever you think about it, this place of yours is quiet," she continued, sniffing and rubbing her fingers under her nose as if it were a cheese grater, wrinkling and twisting the tip of her nose Swing over. "Just one thing, it's quiet and pretty clean. By the way, in our maternity ward, the individual rooms aren't that big. Oh, that bed—my dear, look what a mess your bed is. !” She put down the midwife bag with a snap, quickly took off the black cotton gloves from her moving little hands, bent down beside the bed, and began to make the bed again.Her belted coat back had the sheen of sealskin, her mended stockings...

"Look, it's better now," she said, straightening up, and standing for a moment with her hands on her hips, looking contemptuously at the table piled with books. She had a youthful air about her, and Cincinnatus' features resembled those of his mother's, but they had their own peculiarities.Cincinnatus himself was vaguely aware of the resemblance when he saw her small pointed face and prominent, bright eyes.The neckline of her dress was open, revealing a triangle of tanned, freckled skin.But, on the whole, the skin of the two men was so similar that it was as though the mother had given Cincinnatus a piece of skin--light and thin, with sky-blue veins.

"Tsk, tsk, a little more tidying up here, everything will be in order..." While chattering non-stop, she was busy doing other things with her hands and feet, busy arranging the books and stacking them neatly.Inadvertently, an illustration in an open magazine piqued her interest.She took out a small waist-shaped box from the pocket of her raincoat, curled up her mouth, and put on a pair of pince-nez. "It was published in 2006," she said with a smile. "It's so old, it's hard to believe." (There are two photographs: one of the grinning President of the British Isles shaking hands at Manchester Station with the terrific and venerable granddaughter of the last inventor. The other of a two-headed baby in a Danube village Cattle.)

Sighing for no reason, she pushed the magazine aside, knocked the pencil off, reached for it and missed it, and said "Oops!" "That's all," said Cincinnatus. "There's no mess here—it's just things moving around." "Look, I've brought you this." (She takes a pouch from her coat pocket and pulls the lining out, too.) "Look, here's some candy. Suck it all you want." She sat down, panting. "I've been climbing hard and I've finally climbed up, and I'm really exhausted now," she said, pretending to be out of breath.Then she froze suddenly, staring at the cobweb above with dazed longing.

"Why did you come here?" asked Cincinnatus, circling the cell. "It doesn't do you any good, and it doesn't do me any good. Why? It's neither nice nor amusing. Because I see very clearly that you are like everyone and everything, except that A poor imitation. If they try to win me over by cleverly imitating a mother... But you can imagine, say, that I'm pinning my hopes on some distant voice—if even you're a liar, I'm not ashamed of it What confidence would there be? You mentioned 'candy'! Why didn't you say 'delicious stuff'? Why did your raincoat get wet and your shoes dry - look, careless. Please tell me Props manager."

She said guiltily, "But I was wearing galoshes—I took them off and left them in the office, and I'm telling the truth." "Yo, that's enough, that's enough. No more explaining. Play your part--keep babbling, and be carefree--you don't have to worry, it'll pass." "I came to see you because I am your mother," she said softly.Cincinnatus laughed out loud: "No, no, don't let it turn into a farce. It's a play, you have to remember. A little comedy is all right, but don't go too far—the play can go on without you. You still... ok, let me tell you what to do, why don't you tell me stories about my father anymore. He disappeared in the night and you never found out who he was or where he came from , is this believable—it's so strange..." "I only remember his voice—I haven't seen his face," she replied, as softly as before. "That's right, that's right, you give me a supporting role—I think we can imagine him as a runaway sailor," continued Cincinnatus despondently, pacing up and down, snapping his fingers, "Or it could be a woodland robber coming to the park to make a cameo. Or it could be a capricious craftsman, a carpenter . . . Come on, come on, come up with something." "You don't understand," she cried (she stood up excitedly, but sat down again immediately). "Really, I don't know who he is - bum, deserter, anything... But why don't you understand... By the way, it was a holiday, it was dark in the park, and I was a kid, But that's beside the point. The important thing is that it's impossible to make a mistake! A man who's being burned alive knows best that he's not bathing in our Strop River. Hey, I mean, that's unmistakable Oh... hey, don't you really understand?" "Don't understand what?" "Why, Cincinnatus, he too..." "What do you mean, 'he too'?" "He's just like you, Cincinnatus..." She buried her head so low that the pince-nez fell into the cupped hand. Cold field. "How do you know that?" asked Cincinnatus gloomily. "Why did you suddenly notice..." "I won't tell you anything anymore," she said without lifting her eyes. Cincinnatus sat down on the bed, lost in thought.His mother blew her nose so loudly that it sounded like a trumpet, and it was hard to imagine that such a small woman could make such a loud noise.She looked up at the recessed window.The weather is clearly clearing up, because you feel the blue sky is approaching, and there are streaks of sunlight on the walls--now dim, now bright. "There are cornflowers growing in the rye fields now," she said quickly, "and everything is so beautiful—the clouds are passing by, everything is moving, everything is bright. I live in Doktotan , is far from here. When I come to your city, when I drive through the fields in my battered buggy, and see the sparkling Strop, and see this hill and the fort on it, see All this time, I always felt like there was a wonderful story that was being repeated over and over again. I either didn't have the time or the ability to understand it, but someone kept repeating it to me with great patience! I spent the whole day in the ward. The day is busy, I take it all in my stride, I have lovers, I love ice cold lemonade, but quit smoking because of a heart attack - I sit with you at this moment... I sit here, but I Don't know why I'm sitting here, why I'm yelling, why I'm telling you all this, and now I'm going downhill with this coat and this wool dress, and after a storm like this, The sun must be poisonous..." "No, you're just an imitation," whispered Cincinnatus. She gave a puzzled smile. "Like this spider, like those bars, like that chiming clock," whispered Cincinnatus. "So," she said, blowing her nose again. "So that's the case," she repeated. Both of them remained silent and did not look at each other, and the clock struck the hour, echoing meaningless echoes. "While you go out," said Cincinnatus, "look at the clock in the corridor. The face is blank, but every hour the night watchman washes off the hands and paints new ones— This is how our days are lived by tar brushes, and the ringing of the bells is the work of the night watchmen, so the night watchmen may also be called 'bell' men." "You shouldn't make jokes like that," Cecilia C said. "You should know that there are all kinds of wonderful gadgets in the world. For example, I still remember when I was a child, there was something called 'four different images', which was popular not only among children, but also among adults. You know, then Then came a special kind of mirror that was not only distorted but completely distorted. You couldn't see anything through it, it was all cracks and clutter that couldn't make any meaningful visual image—but The distortion is extraordinary, but precisely calculated to fit... so to speak, to match the twisted mirror they made... no, wait a minute, I can't explain that well. Let's just say you have such a grotesque mirror, and at the same time you have a collection of all sorts of 'four images', absolutely absurd things, oddly shaped, mottled, pockmarked, lumpy, like some kind of fossil - although such a mirror would Distort and distort ordinary objects completely, but you have to understand that once there is something really suitable, that is, when you put this incomprehensible monster in the right place and let it be reflected in the incredible strange mirror, the miracle immediately Appears. Negative and positive, everything is back to normal, everything is perfect, and the grotesque dense spots suddenly become wonderful and reasonable images in the mirror: flowers, boats, people, scenery. You can customize your own portrait, that is, see To this grotesque mess of something that is you, except that the key to you is held by a mirror. I still remember how funny it was, and also kind of scary - what if suddenly nothing came out What should I do now? ——Find a new incomprehensible 'four different images', hold it in front of the mirror, you will see your hands become a mess, and at the same time see the meaningless 'four different images' change into a fascinating image, very, very clear..." "Why are you telling me all this?" asked Cincinnatus. She said nothing. "What's the point of all this? Don't you know that in just a few days, maybe tomorrow..." He suddenly noticed the expression in Cecilia C's eyes - just for a moment, just a moment - but something flashed as if something real, unquestionable (in this world, everything is suspicious), just Life like this is tucked up to give you a glimpse of the lining.Cincinnatus suddenly saw in his mother's eye the last, sure, explaining, undisturbed sign, and he knew how to find it in himself.What is it about this sign that is so pungent now?It didn't matter what was shown--call it terror or pity... But we might as well say it this way: it was a sign of such a shocking truth that Cincinnatus' heart beat wildly with joy.That moment disappeared in a flash.Cecilia C stood up and made an incredible little gesture of spreading her hands apart and extending each index finger, as if to indicate size—say, the length of a baby... and immediately she got to work, from Floor picked up her bulging black bag and straightened the pocket lining. "That's it," she said again in her old babbling tone, "I've been around a while, now I should go. You eat my candy. I've stayed too long. I should go ,Time is up." "You're right, the time has come!" Rodrigo Ivanovitch burst out laughing wildly, and flung the door open. She bowed her head and left quietly.Cincinnatus was trembling all over, and was about to rush forward... "Don't worry," the warden said, raising a palm, "This little midwife is no threat to us, go back!" "But I still..." began Cincinnatus. "Go back!" roared Rodrigo Ivanovitch. At the same time, a short, sturdy figure in a striped prison uniform appeared in the depths of the corridor.He was laughing happily in the distance, but he controlled his steps a little, and his eyes looked around stealthily, like a person sneaking into the queue without attracting attention.He was carrying a chess board and a box, with a harlequin doll and other things under his arm. "Did you have a visitor just now?" the warden asked Cincinnatus very politely when they left the cell. "Your mother came to see you? That's good, that's good. Now I, poor little Monsieur Pierre, am here to entertain you and amuse myself. See how my punch looks." Look at you. Say hello to Uncle. He's funny isn't he? Sit up, my friend. Look, I've brought you a lot of fun. How about a game of chess first? Or cards? Can you play brakes? It's fun Great! Come on, I'll teach you."