Chapter 7 "Black Friars" II

two In the country he continued to lead the nervous, restless life of the city. He read a lot, wrote a lot, learned Italian, and whenever he went for a walk, he thought with pleasure that soon he would be able to sit down to work again.He slept so little that everyone was surprised.If he occasionally sleeps for half an hour during the day, he will suffer from insomnia all night. Moreover, even if he does not sleep all night, it seems that there is nothing wrong afterwards, but he feels energetic and happy. He talked a lot, drank a lot of wine, and smoked a lot of expensive cigars.The girls who lived in the neighborhood used to come to the Pisotskys almost every day to play the piano and sing with Tanya.Sometimes, a young man from the neighbor's house also comes here. He is good at playing the violin.Kovrin listened greedily to the music and singing, and then grew tired, and this weariness manifested itself physically: his eyes closed and his head turned on one side.

One evening, after drinking tea, he sat on the terrace reading a book.Meanwhile, in the living room, Tanya sang soprano, another lady sang alto, the young man played the violin, and the three were practicing Braga's famous serenade.Kovrin listened to the lyrics, which were in Russian, but he could not understand the meaning of the lyrics anyway.At last he put down the book and listened intently, and then he understood: it turned out that a girl heard some mysterious voice in the garden one night with her morbid imagination. It was so beautiful and strange that people could only think it was divine. The harmonies, in short, we mortals can not understand, so it flew back to the sky.Kovrin's eyes began to close.

He got up and walked wearily up and down the living room, then the hall.When the singing had ceased, he took Tanya's arm and walked with her out onto the terrace. "I've been thinking about a legend since early morning today," he said. "I don't remember which book I read or heard about this legend. In short, this legend is a bit bizarre and absurd. At the beginning, this legend was vague. A thousand years ago, there was a man wearing A monk in black walks on the deserts of Syria or Arabia.... The fishermen see another black monk walking slowly on the lake a few miles away from the desert where the monk walks. The second monk is a phantom. Now please forget all the laws of optics, the legend does not seem to recognize those laws. Please listen. This apparition made another apparition, and then another apparition, so that the image of the Black Friar passed from one atmosphere to the other , endlessly. He was seen now in Africa, now in Spain, now in India, now at the North Pole.... At last he came out of the earth's atmosphere, and is now wandering all over the universe, never meeting a single object that might make him disappear Circumstances. Maybe he can be seen today on Mars or on a star in the Southern Cross. But, my dear, the point of the legend is that a whole thousand years have passed since the monk walked the desert, Phantom He will fall into the Earth's atmosphere again, and he will be seen again. The millennium seems to have expired.  …According to that legend, we will see the Black Friar soon."

"Strange phantom," said Tanya, who did not like the legend. "But the strangest thing," said Kovrin, laughing, "is that I can no longer remember how this legend came to my mind. In what book did I read it? I heard it told." Or maybe I dreamed about the black friars? I swear to God: I can't remember. But the legend is stuck in my head. I've been thinking about it all day today. " He sent Tanya back to her guests, and then went out of the main room alone, lost in thought, and paced up and down by a flower-bed.The sun has set.The flowers have just been watered, emitting a moist and pungent aroma.The people in the main room started singing again.From a distance, the sound of the violin seems to be a human singing.Kovrin was thinking nervously, trying to recall where he had heard or read about this legend.As he thought, he walked leisurely towards the garden and came to the bank without knowing it.

He followed a path down the steep bank between exposed tree roots.He went to the water's edge, startled the snipe there, and scared away the two ducks. Here and there on the gloomy pines the last rays of the setting sun were still glinting, but the river was already twilight.Kovrin walked across the river by a small bridge.Before him lay a vast field, covered with young rye that had not yet blossomed.There are no houses in the distance, and there is no one.If one followed the path, one seemed to come to some unknown, mysterious place, where the sun was setting and the evening glow was burning in splendor.

"How spacious, how free, how quiet it is here!" thought Kovrin, walking along the path. "It seemed like the whole world was watching me, hiding there waiting for me to find out. ..." But at this moment, waves were breaking up in the rye field, and the fresh evening wind was blowing gently on his hatless head.A minute later there was another gust of wind, but much stronger this time, and the rye began to rustle, and behind him came the muffled murmur of the pines.Kovrin stopped in surprise.There seemed to be a whirlwind or tornado on the horizon, and a tall, black column rose from the ground to the sky, its outline unclear, but at the first glance it was clear that it was not standing still, but was moving very rapidly. Moving, just this way, straight towards Kovrin.

The closer it gets, the smaller and clearer it becomes.Kovrin hastened to dodge into the nearby rye field to let it pass, but he was almost too late. ... A monk, dressed in black, with white hair and black eyebrows, with his arms folded across his chest, flew past. ...his bare feet didn't touch the ground. He had flown two or three yards away, but he turned his head to look at Kovrin, nodded to him, and smiled at him kindly and cunningly.But how pale, terribly pale was that thin face!He grew bigger and bigger again, flew across the river, bumped noiselessly against the clay banks and pine trees, got in, and disappeared like smoke.

"Hey, look . . . " muttered Kovrin. "It can be seen that the legend is true." He made no effort to understand the origin of this strange phenomenon, but secretly rejoiced that he had seen the monk so close and so clearly, not only his black clothes, but his face and eyes, He walked back to the main room happily and excitedly. The people in the garden and the orchard were walking peacefully about, and the people in the house were having fun, so that he was the only one who saw the monk.He would have liked to tell Tanya and Yegor Semyonitch about it, but then he thought that they would take his words for a dream, which would frighten them, and it would be better not to mention them. .He laughed, sang, danced the mazurka, and was happy.Everyone, including guests and Tanya, found his face today to be something special, radiant, inspired, and endearing.

"Notes" ① Refers to "Legends of Wallachia", written by the Portuguese composer Braga (1834-1924).According to Mikhail Chekhov's recollection in "Around Chekhov", Chekhov thought that "the song is a bit mysterious and full of beautiful romanticism". ——Russian text editor's note ②1 mile is equal to 1.609 kilometers.