Chapter 7 "Duel" VI

six We agreed to go out of the city by car, walk seven versts along the main road going south, and stop near a small restaurant where two small rivers—the Black River and the Yellow River—confluence, and cook fish soup.A little after five o'clock, they set off.In the leading chaise sat Samoylenko and Laevsky.Behind them sat Marya Konstantinovna, Nadezhda Fyodorovna, Katya, and Kostya in a carriage drawn by three horses.Beside them are food baskets and utensils.In the rear, in a buggy, were police superintendent Kirilin and young Atchmianov, the son of the merchant Atchmianov, who owed three hundred rubles to Nadezhda Fyodorovna. It was to this merchant; on the seat opposite them sat Nikodim Alexandritch, huddled up, with his feet under the seat, a small, neatly dressed man with combed hair. sideburns.In the last car sat von Koren and the deacon.At the feet of the deacon lay a basket of fish.

"Keep to the right!" Samoylenko yelled at the top of his voice whenever he encountered an Abkhaz on a cart or on a donkey. "After two years, when I have accumulated money and got a group of people, I will go out to do research work," von Koren said to the deacon. "I'm going along the coast from Vladivostok to the Bering Strait, and from the Bering Strait to the mouth of the Yenisei River. We draw maps, study animals and plants, carefully study geology, anthropology, and ethnology.You have to decide whether you will come with me or not. " "That won't work," said the deacon.

"why?" "I'm a caring, family-oriented person." "Your wife will let you go. We will pay for her living expenses. It would be better if you could convince her to become a monk for the sake of everyone's interests. In this way, you can also rely on your status as a monk and priest. Going to investigate. I can do it for you." The deacon was silent. "Are you well acquainted with your theology?" asked the zoologist. "Not very familiar." "Oh. . . . I can't give you any advice on this, since I'm not familiar with theology myself. Make a list of the books you want and send them to me from Petersburg this winter. You too Need to read the notes of religious travellers, among them are excellent ethnologists and experts in oriental languages. Once you are familiar with their methods, it will be easy for you to do the work. However, even if you do not have books at present, do not waste them in vain Time. You come to my place, and we study the compass and learn meteorology. These are all indispensable."

"That's a good word..." the deacon hesitated and laughed. "I have asked to be transferred to central Russia. My uncle is the high priest and has promised to clear it for me. If I go with you, I will trouble them for nothing." "I don't understand your hesitation. If you continue to be an ordinary deacon, working only on holidays and having nothing else to do at ordinary times, ten years from now you will be exactly the same as you are now, except perhaps with a mustache and beard; But if you do research work, then when you come back ten years later, you will be another person, and you will feel enriched when you think that you have done something."

Shouts of terror and joy came from the buggy in which the woman sat. The carriage took a road that cut out on a very steep rocky bank, which everyone thought was like a long plank fastened to a high wall, and on this long plank their carriage galloped. Like falling into an abyss.On the right was the ocean, and on the left a high, uneven wall of dark brown with black spots, red veins, and creeping rhizomes.The gloomy conifers above bent their trunks and looked down, as if afraid and curious.A minute later there were screams and laughter again: it turned out that the carriage was going to pass under a large raised rock.

"Damn it, I don't understand why I'm here with you," said Laevsky. "How stupid and vulgar! I should have gone North, run away, and saved myself, but for some reason I've come to this stupid picnic in a car." "But look, what a beautiful scenery!" Samoylenko said to him. At this time, the carriage turned left, and the valley of the Yellow River opened before him. The water was shining, yellow, muddy, and frantic flow. ... "I don't see any good in this view, Sasha," Laevsky replied. "To be always admiring nature is a sign of poverty of imagination. These streams and rocks are nothing but a heap of rubbish compared with what my imagination can give me."

The four-wheeled carriage was already driving along the river bank.The mountains on both sides of the strait gradually approached, the valleys became narrower and narrower, and the front became a narrow valley.The carriage was going close to a mountain of rocks, a mountain made of natural heaps of gigantic stones, which pressed against each other with such terrible force that Samoylenko could not help moaning whenever he saw them. Voice.The gloomy and beautiful mountains were cut in places by chasms and ravines, and from there a damp and mysterious air blew towards the people in the cars.Looking out from the valley, there were other hills, dark brown, pink, lavender, smoky, and bathed in bright sunlight.Travelers passing through those narrow valleys could hear water falling from nowhere and splashing on the stones.

"Oh, damned mountains," sighed Laevsky, "how I hate them!" Where the Black River flows into the Yellow River, and the water as black as ink pollutes and fights against the Yellow River, beside the road, there is a small restaurant of the Tatar Kerbalai, with the Russian flag flying on the roof, There was a sign written in chalk: "Jolly's Restaurant."Near the restaurant there was a small garden, surrounded by a fence, with a few tables and chairs, and a single cypress tree, beautiful and dark, standing among a poor-looking thorny bush. Kerbalai is a short and flexible Tatar man, wearing a blue shirt and a white apron, standing in the middle of the avenue, facing the carriage, holding his belly, bowing deeply, smiling, showing a white and bright the teeth of.

"Hello, Kerbalay!" Samoylenko called to him. "Let's go a little further, and you send the samovar and chairs over there! Quick!" Kerbale nodded his head with cropped hair and muttered in his mouth, only the people sitting in the last carriage could hear his words: "We have salmon, my lord." "Bring it, bring it!" von Koren called to him. The carriage drove to a distance of about five hundred steps from the small restaurant and stopped.Samoylenko chose a small meadow with rocks on it, which was convenient for sitting on. There was also a tree that had been toppled by the storm, its hairy roots had been pulled out, and there were some yellow needles on the tree.There was a thin wooden bridge over the creek here to the opposite bank.There is a wooden shed on the opposite bank, supported by four low wooden stakes, for drying corn, reminiscent of the small wooden house supported by chicken legs in the myth.There is a small staircase leading to the ground at the door of the shed.

Everyone's first impression is that it seems that there is no way to get out of this place.No matter where you look, there are overlapping mountains in all directions, which are tightly surrounded.Beyond the tavern and the black cypress trees, the shadows of evening slipped by, very quickly.As a result, the narrow and curved valleys of the Heihe River became narrower and narrower, and the mountains became higher and steeper.People can hear the gurgling of the river, and the cicadas keep calling for a moment. "Excellent!" said Marya Konstantinovna, sighing deeply in excitement. "Look, boys! How quiet it is!"

"Yes, it's nice here," agreed Laevsky.He liked the scenery in this area. He looked up at the sky, then at the blue smoke rising from the chimney of the small restaurant, and suddenly became melancholy for some reason. "Yes, very good!" he said again. "Ivan Andreitch, describe the scenery here!" Marya Konstantinovna said tearfully. "Why?" asked Laevsky. "Impressions are better than any description. The treasures of colors and sounds of nature that everyone acquires through impressions become disfigured and unrecognizable as soon as they come under the pen of a writer." "Is that so?" asked Von Koren coldly.He had already chosen a big rock by the river, and was trying to climb up it, trying to sit down. "Is that so?" he asked again, looking straight at Laevsky. “What about Romeo and Juliet? What about, say, Pushkin’s Ukrainian nights? Nature should bow at their feet.” "Perhaps ..." Laevsky agreed, not bothering to think and argue. "And yet," he said after a moment, "what is Romeo and Juliet actually? That beautiful, poetic, divine love that people try to cover up for what is corrupt." Roses. Romeo is an animal, like all men." "No matter what you're talking about, you always attribute it to..." Von Koren glanced back at Katya, and said nothing further. "What does it all come down to?" asked Laevsky. "Suppose someone says to you: "How beautiful this bunch of grapes is! ’ And you said: “Yes, but when it’s in your mouth and digested in your stomach, it’s not going to look like it.” Why do you say that? It’s nothing new, and… it’s all queerness. " Laevsky knew that von Koren did not like him, so he was afraid of von Koren. In the presence of this person, he always felt that everyone felt restrained, as if there was someone standing behind him.He didn't answer anything, but stepped aside, regretting that he should not have come here. "Gentlemen, go and gather some orange branches for the bonfire!" Samoylenko ordered. Everyone separated to pick them up, and only Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandritch remained.Kerbale sent chairs, a rug on the floor, and bottles of wine.The police chief, Killilin, is a tall and burly man who always wears a military overcoat over his uniform no matter what the weather is. Outback young police chief.His expression was sad and sleepy, as if someone had just woken him against his will. "Why did you send this, beast?" he asked Kerbalay, slurring each word. "I told you to bring Kvalery, but what did you bring, you ugly Tartar? What? What?" "We have a lot of wine of our own, Yegor Alexeyitch," said Nikodim Alexandritch timidly and politely. "What? But I wish I had my wine here too. Since I'm at the picnic, I think I have every right to have my wine. I think so! You bring me ten kvalerys!" "Why so much?" said Nikodim Alexandritch in amazement, knowing that Kirilin had no money. "Twenty bottles here! Thirty bottles!" yelled Killilin. "Never mind, let him take it," Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandritch. "Anyway, I'll pay for it." Nadezhda Fyodorovna was in a cheerful, eager mood.She wanted to jump up and down, laugh, yell, play tricks, flirt with people.She was wearing a cheap cloth dress with light blue flowers printed on it, a pair of red slippers on her feet, and a straw hat still on her head.She felt herself small, simple, nimble, and light, like a butterfly.She ran up the thin wooden bridge and looked at the river for a minute, in order to make her head dizzy. Then she screamed and ran to the corn shed on the other side with a smile. She felt that all men, Lian Kai Urbane, too, admired her.As the sky darkened quickly, trees and mountains merged into one, horses and carriages mingled indistinguishably, and lights flickered in the windows of the tavern, she followed a road that wound up among rocks and brambles. The path climbed to the top of the hill and sat down on the rock.A bonfire has been lit below.Beside the fire, the deacon rolled up his sleeves and walked up and down, his slender shadow moving like a radius around the fire.He added dead branches to the fire, and stirred the contents of the pot with a ladle attached to a long wooden stick.Samoylenko, with a copper-colored face, busied himself by the fire as if in his own kitchen.He shouted angrily: "Gentlemen, where is the salt? Don't you forget to bring it? Why are you sitting there like landlords enjoying blessings and leaving me alone?" Laevsky and Nikodim Alexandritch were sitting side by side on the trunk of a fallen tree, gazing dreamily at the flames.Marya Konstantinovna, Katya, and Kostya were taking tea-things and dishes from the baskets.Von Koren stood close to the bank, arms folded, one foot on a stone, thinking.The red light of the campfire moved with the shadows around the dark figure on the ground, trembling on the hills, trees, bridges, cornsheds, and the steep and rough slope of the opposite bank was all illuminated, reflected in the river, shining Shaking, the rushing and turbulent river tore Yingying into pieces. The deacon went to fetch the fish, while Kerbalay was gathering and washing them on the bank; but the deacon stopped halfway and looked around. "My God, how good!" he thought to himself. "People, stones, darkness, grotesque trees, and nothing else, but how nice it is!" Next to the cornshed on the opposite bank, some strangers appeared.Because of the flickering of the flames and the thick smoke from the campfire drifting to the other side, no one could see the people clearly at once, but only in bits and pieces, now a furry hat and a white beard, now a blue suit. A black shirt, at one moment saw a tattered dress from shoulders to knees and a dagger hanging slantly from his stomach, at another moment he saw a young and dark face with two jet-black eyebrows, so black So glaring, as if drawn with black charcoal.Five of them sat on the ground in a circle, and five others went into the cornshed.One was standing in the doorway, with his back to the bonfire, hands behind his back, talking about something, and it must have been very interesting, because when Samoylenko added a few dead branches, the bonfire ignited and burst into flames. Mars, brightly illuminated the cornshed, and one could see two faces in the door with a calm expression of concentration, and one could see those sitting in a circle on the ground turning their heads back and listening intently to the story.After a while, those who sat in a circle sang softly a melodious, drawn-out song, like a church song during Lent. ... The deacon listened to their singing and imagined what it would be like when he returned from his investigation ten years later: he was a monk priest and a missionary, and he became a writer with a famous and glorious experience.He would rise to the rank of monk-high priest and, later, bishop.He would preside over mass in the cathedral, with a golden crown on his head and a small statue of the Virgin Mary adorned with jewels on his chest, and he would hold up the two-branched candlestick and the three-branched candlestick to bless the people, and read aloud: "God, from heaven Come and see, come to the vineyard that you planted with your own hands." The children chorused with angelic voices: "Holy God..." "Deacon, where are the fish?" Moylenko's voice. The deacon returned to the bonfire and imagined a religious procession walking down a dusty avenue on a hot day in July, with peasants holding up banners in front, village women and girls holding up statues of gods, and behind them singing boys and the chant with his cheeks covered and hay in his hair, and then, in order, his deacon, then the priest in his cap and holding a cross, and in the rear a group of peasants, women, boys, who A cloud of dust kicked up underfoot.The priest and the deacon's wife, wearing turbans, were also among the crowd.The singers sang, the children cried, the quails twittered, and the larks sang. …then they stopped and sprinkled holy water on a herd of cattle. ...they went on again, then knelt down and begged for rain.Later, we ate cold meat dishes and talked. ... "This is quite good, ..." the deacon thought to himself. "Notes" ① Alexander's pet name. ②A kind of wine. ③ Kirilin's name and father's name, but in another place in this novella, Kirilin's first name and father's name are Ilya Mihalich.