Chapter 56 genius

genius The painter Yegor Savage, who lived in the dacha of a lieutenant's widow, was sitting on the bed, full of the melancholy that often arose in the morning.It's autumn outside.Layers of heavy, unsightly clouds obscured the sky, and a bitterly cold wind kept blowing.The trees leaned to one side with a mournful cry.One could see yellow leaves hovering in the air and above the ground.Farewell, summer! This bleakness in nature, if viewed with the eyes of a painter, has a different kind of beauty and poetry, but Yegor Savage has no intention of appreciating beauty.He was full of boredom, and he was relieved only to think that he would no longer live in this villa tomorrow.On the bed, on the chair, on the table, on the floor, there were piles of pillows, crumpled quilts, and baskets everywhere.The room had not been cleaned, and the calico curtains on the windows had been taken down.Moving to town tomorrow!

The widowed landlady was away.She has already gone out to rent a cart and is going to carry her luggage tomorrow.Her daughter Katya, a girl of about twenty, had already been sitting in the young man's room while the stern mother was away.The painter will leave tomorrow, and she has a lot to say to him.She talked and talked, but she felt that she didn't finish even a tenth of what she should say.Tears welled up in her eyes, and she looked at his disheveled head with a mixture of sadness and joy.Yegor Savage's hair was shaggy and he looked like a wild animal.His hair fell to his shoulder blades, he had a mustache on his neck, in his nostrils, and in his ears, and his eyes were hidden under two prominent thick eyebrows.His beard and hair were so thick and unkempt that if a fly or cockroach got in, it would never come out of this lush wood for eternity.

Yegor Savage yawned as he listened to Katya.He is tired.When Katya burst into sobbing, he frowned, looked at her sullenly from under his downturned brows, and said in a deep, powerful voice: "I can't marry." "Why is that?" Katya asked softly. "Because painters, and people who live for art in general, cannot marry. A painter must be free. " "But where can I hinder you, Yegor Savage?" "I'm not talking about myself, I'm speaking in general terms. . . . Famous writers and painters never marry." "You will be famous in the future, I know that very well, but you have to put yourself in my place. I'm afraid of my mother. . . . She is very strict and gets angry at every turn.

As long as she knows that you don't plan to get married, and it's just a waste of time...then she will take care of me.Oh, I am so miserable!Besides, you haven't paid her for the room! " "To hell with her, I'll pay her.  …" Yegor Savage got up and began to walk up and down. "If only I could go abroad for a trip!" he said. The painters followed up and said that there is nothing easier than going abroad. To do this, just paint a picture and sell it. "Of course!" Katya agreed. "Then why aren't you painting this summer?" "But how can you work in such a bad house?" the painter said angrily. "And where can I find a model in this place?"

Downstairs, someone slammed the door viciously.Katya was always worried that her mother would come back, so she stood up and ran out.There is only one painter left in the room.He went from corner to corner, and back and forth for a long time, bypassing chairs and piles of household junk along the way.He heard the returning widow rattling the pans and yelling at the peasants for asking her to pay two rubles for each cart.Yegor Savage, sullen, stopped by the cupboard, frowned, and looked at a wine bottle for a long time. "Oh, I wish you could be shot!" he heard the widow say to Katya in a fit of temper. "Why don't you die!"

The painter drank a glass of wine, and the dark clouds hanging over his heart gradually dissipated.He felt as if all the internal organs in his stomach were smiling slightly in unison.He began to fantasize. ...his imagination pictured how he would become famous later on.He couldn't imagine what his future works would look like, but he clearly saw that the newspapers were talking about him, his photos were being sold in shops, and his friends looked at him jealously behind him.He tried to imagine himself surrounded by beautiful admirers in a luxurious drawing room, but his imagination was a little blurry, for he had never seen a drawing room in his life.The beautiful admirers were not so clear either, because he had never seen any other admirers, nor any other decent girls, except Katya.People who are not familiar with life usually describe life from books, but Yegor Savage does not even read books. He was going to read Gogol's works, but he fell asleep on the second page. ... "It doesn't burn, damn it!" cried the widow, who was burning a samovar downstairs. "Katya, bring the charcoal!"

A painter who is fantasizing feels the need to talk to outsiders about his hopes and fantasies.He went downstairs to the kitchen, where the samovar was burning, and there was a lot of smoke, and the fat widow and Katya were busy by the black stove.He just sat down on a bench next to the big earthen pot, and said, "It's great to be a painter! I can go wherever I want, and do whatever I want. I don't have to go to work, and I don't have to plow the land.  … Boss, no one cares at all.... I am my own master. But my work brings benefits to mankind!" After the meal he lay down to "rest".As usual, he slept until dark.But shortly after the meal this time, he felt someone pulling his leg, and someone calling his name with a smile.

He opened his eyes, and saw his friend, the landscape painter Ukreykin, who had been away all summer in the Kostroma province, arriving. "Ah!" he said happily. "Who did I see?" The handshake and questioning began. "Oh, what did you bring back? I'm afraid you have drawn hundreds of sketches?" Yegor Savage said, watching Ukreykin take out daily necessities from the suitcase. "Well, yes. . . . At least I drew a little. . . . How are you doing? What did you draw?" Yegor Savage rummaged behind the bed, his face flushed, and there he took out an oil painting, stretched on a wooden frame, covered with dust and cobwebs.

"Here... "Girl Sitting Alone by the Window After Breaking Up with Her Fiancé"..." he said. "It's been painted three times. But it's far from finished." The outline of Katya is outlined in the picture, she is sitting by the open window, looking out on the flowerbed and the lavender distance.Ukreykin did not like the picture. "Well. . . the atmosphere is intense and . . . a little expressive," he said. "The distance is drawn, but...the bushes are dazzling,...too dazzling!" Here comes the wine bottle. Toward evening Kostelev, a history painter and friend of Yegor Savage's who lived in a neighboring dacha, came to his house.He was a man of about thirty-five, also a novice, with a promising future.He had long hair, wore overalls with a Shakespearean collar, and carried himself with dignity.When he saw Baijiu, he frowned and complained of chest pains, but he couldn't stand the persuasion of his friends and drank a glass.

"I want to come up with a picture topic, two brothers,..." he said with a hint of alcohol. "I'd like to draw a Nero, ... Herod, or Kreptichian, in short, you know, just such a villain ... and to fight him with Christian thought.  … Rome on the one hand, and Christianity on the other, you know. . . . I want to paint that spirit. . . . Get it? Spirit!" Downstairs, the widow cried out from time to time: "Katya, bring cucumbers! Mare! Go to Sidorov's shop and buy kvass!" The three walked together, like wolves in a cage, walking from corner to corner in the room.They talked without a break, earnestly and fiercely.The three people were excited and beaming.If you listen to what they say, they already have a future, fame, and money.None of them thought that time flies, day by day, they eat a lot of other people's bread, but they haven't made any achievements in their work.Nor did it occur to them that all three of them were bound by an inexorable law, according to which only two or three of a hundred promising novices would make it to the top, and the rest would be worthless, playing the role of cannon fodder. Annihilated without a trace. . . . but they are jubilant, joyful, and boldly facing the future!

It was past one o'clock in the night when Kostlev took leave, turned up his Shakespeare collar, and went home.The landscape novice stays and spends the night with the genre novice. Before going to bed, Yegor Savage took a candle and groped into the kitchen for water.In the long, dark passage, Katya sat on a box, folded her hands on her knees, and looked up at him.There was a happy smile on her pale and tired face, and her eyes were shining. ... "Is that you? What are you thinking?" Yegor Savage asked her. "I'm thinking about how you will become famous in the future..." She lowered her throat. "I've been thinking about what kind of person you will become. . . . I heard everything you said just now. . . . I can't help but fantasize, . . . fantasize..." Katya let out a series of happy laughter, Then wept again, and respectfully laid her hand on the shoulder of her idol. "Notes" ① Nero (37-68), the emperor of the ancient Roman Empire, was known for his tyranny and persecution of Christians. ② According to Christian legend, Herod was the king of Judea who persecuted Jesus. ③This is a name invented to imitate the pronunciation of the name of the Roman emperor for the sake of laughter. ——Russian text editor's note