Chapter 5 barriers to compensation

barriers to compensation one All night prayers were being held at the house of the chief nobleman of the county, Mikhail Ilyich Pendarev.The presiding officer was a plump young priest, with long, curly fair hair, and a broad nose like a lion's.Only one deacon and one clerk sang. Mikhail Ilyich was very ill, and sat motionless in an arm-chair, pale, with eyes closed, like a dead man.His wife, Vera Andreevna, was standing beside him, her head on one side, with the sluggishness of a person who is indifferent to religion and yet is obliged to stand there and occasionally cross himself. And the demeanor of obedience.Vera Andreyevna's own brother, Alexander Andreevich Yang Xin, and his wife Lenovchka stood behind the armchair, beside the patient.It was the eve of Pentecost.The trees in the garden rustled slightly, and the beautiful sunset glowed across half of the sky, making it festive.

Whether one hears the festive bells of the town and the monastery from the open window, the peacocks in the courtyard, or someone coughing in the hall, everyone cannot help thinking of Micha. Il Ilyich was very ill, and the doctor ordered him to be sent abroad as soon as his condition improved a little, but his condition has been going up and down these days, and no one can tell what happened, But time is passing, and this kind of mystery that does not know whether it is good or bad has annoyed everyone.Yang Xin came here on Easter to help his sister send her husband abroad, but he and his wife have lived here for almost two months. I have prayed almost three times, but the prospects are still bleak and unpredictable.No one can guarantee that this nightmare will not drag on until autumn. ... Yang Xin was dissatisfied and depressed.This daily preparation to go abroad annoyed him, and he wanted to go home, to his village of Novosergi.It was not pleasant at home, to be sure, but after all there was no empty hall with four columns in the corner, no armchairs with gold covers, yellow curtains, chandeliers, and all that vulgar, Pursue stately and magnificent decorations, without the echoes caused by every step at night, and the main thing is that there is no such sick, yellow, swollen face and closed eyes.At home you can laugh, talk nonsense, quarrel loudly with your wife or mother, in a word, you can live as you want; here, as in a boarding school, you have to walk on tiptoe, talk in a low voice, Only serious things are to be said, or you have to stand here as you are now and listen to all-night prayers, which are not done out of religious sentiments, but, as Mikhail Ilyich himself said, according to the rules. To do things... to have to obey a person whom one feels insignificant in the depths of one's soul, and to have to take care of a patient whom one does not feel pity for, is even more tiresome and aggrieved. ...Yang Xin remembered one more thing: last night his wife Lenovchka told him that she was pregnant.This news is interesting only because it brings a new complication to the problem of travel.What now?Should Lenotchka go abroad with him, or should she be sent back to his mother in the village of Novoselgi?But in her condition, traveling is inconvenient, and as for going home, she will never agree to it, because she is at odds with her mother-in-law, and she will not agree that she lives alone in that village without her husband. inside.

"Or should I simply use this excuse to go home with her?" Yang Xin thought to himself, trying not to listen to the church deacon's singing. "No, it would not be right to leave Vera here alone, . . . " he decided, glancing at his sister's well-proportioned figure. "But what to do?" He pondered, asking himself: "What to do?" Then he felt that his life was extremely complicated and confused.All these questions about travel, his sister, his wife, his brother-in-law, etc., each taken separately, may be easy and convenient to solve, but these problems are entangled, as if one went in A swamp that can't get out, as long as one of the problems is solved, the other problems will be more confused.

The priest, before reading the Gospel, turned around and said, "Peace be with you," when Mikhail Ilyich, who was ill, suddenly opened his eyes and began to move about in his armchair. "Sasha!" he cried. Yang Xin quickly walked up to him and bent down. "I don't like him presiding over prayers..." Mikhail Ilyich whispered, but his words could be heard clearly throughout the hall; his breathing was labored, wheezing and wheezing. "I'm getting out of here. You walk out with me, Sasha." Yang Xin helped him stand up and held his arm. "You stay, dear," Mikhail Ilyich said in a weak, imploring voice to his wife, who wanted to support him on the other side of the sick man. "You stay!" he repeated angrily, looking into her indifferent face. "I can get by without you!"

The priest stood there, opened the Gospel, and waited.In the ensuing silence the harmonious singing of a chorus of male voices resounds distinctly.Someone was singing somewhere outside the garden, probably on the river.Suddenly, a bell in a nearby monastery rang. The soft and melodious bells mixed with the singing sounded very pleasant.Yang Xin felt happily that something good was coming, his heart tightened, he almost forgot that he had to help the patient walk.For some reason this sound coming into the hall from outside reminded him of how little joy and freedom there was in the life before him, how trivial and insignificant the problems he struggled to solve from morning till night, Not interesting.He was helping the sick as they walked, while the servants made way for them, and looked at them with the sullen curiosity that peasants usually see when they see a dead body, when a sudden hatred came over him, and he He hated the patient's puffy, shaved, actor's face, his sallow hands, his plush robe, his breathing, the sound of his black cane hitting the ground. . ... Now, as he experienced this feeling for the first time in his life, and because it had come so suddenly, his head and legs were cold, and his heart was beating violently.He was eagerly looking forward to the immediate death of Mikhail Ilyich, to the last cry and a thump on the floor, but the moment he imagined such a death, he was so frightened that he threw it away. opened. ... When they walked out of the hall, he was no longer thinking of the patient's death, but of his own life: he wished he could take his hand from the patient's warm armpit and run away, away, without looking back. run away. ... Mihail Ilyich's quilt was spread out on a Turkish sofa in the study.The patient found the bedroom to be hot and inconvenient.

"It's almost the same thing: to be a priest or to be a hussar!" he said, sinking heavily on the divan. "What grace is that! Oh, my God. . . . If I had my own way, I would relegate such patrician priests to the ranks of the church clerks. " Yang Xin looked at his willful and unlucky face, and planned to refute him, say something against him, express his hatred, but remembered the doctor's order not to allow the patient to be excited, so he fell silent.But that's not the doctor's business.What could not be freely said, what could not be freely cursed, if the fate of his sister Vera had not been forever and hopelessly bound up with this hateful man?Mikhail Ilyich had acquired a habit of puckering up his tight mouth, and then turning the corners of it to the sides, as if sucking candy; This action made Yang Xin unhappy.

"You, Sasha, go back there . . . " said Mikhail Ilyich. "You're in good health, and you seem to be indifferent to church...it doesn't matter to you whoever leads the prayers. Go ahead." "But you are also indifferent to the church..." Yang Xin said softly, trying to restrain himself. "No, I believe in the destiny and recognize the church." "Exactly. As I feel it, what you need in religion is not God, nor truth, but words like 'Mandate of Heaven,' 'God-given,' . . . and things like that." Yang Xin wanted to add something: "Otherwise you wouldn't have insulted that priest for no reason today", but he didn't say it.He felt that even if he didn't add this sentence, he had let himself go and said too much.

"Go, please!" said Mikhail Ilyich impatiently, for he did not like to be disagreed with, or to speak of himself. "I don't want to give anyone trouble. . . . I know how hard it is to keep an eye on the sick. . . . Holy labor. Go, please!" Yang Xin walked out of the study.He went downstairs to his room, put on his overcoat and hat, and went out the front door into the garden.It's past eight o'clock.Upstairs hymns were being sung.He walked among flower beds, rose bushes, and the pale blue flowers of the heliotrope Vera and Mikhail (that is, Vera and Mikhail), seeing many wonderful flowers along the way, which in the This house does not bring any happiness to anyone, they grow and bloom, probably "following the rules".

Yang Xin walked hurriedly, afraid that his wife would call him upstairs.It was easy for her to see him.But he walked a short way in the garden, and walked into a spruce-lined avenue, which was long and dark, and from here you could see the sunset every evening.Here, even on a still day, the old spruces always rustled softly and sternly, smelling of resin, and one's feet slid over the dry needles. As Yang Xin walked away, he thought to himself: The hatred that came to him so unexpectedly when he prayed all night today will never leave him again, and he must take it seriously; it has brought new meanings to his life. Complexity, the future is not good.But these spruces, this calm and distant sky, this festive evening glow, all exude an air of peace and happiness.He happily listened to the lonely and dull sound of his own footsteps on the dark boulevard, and no longer asked himself "what to do".

Almost every evening he had to go to the train station to fetch newspapers and letters, which became his only pastime during the period when he lived at his brother-in-law's house.The mail arrived at a quarter past nine, just at the time when the unbearable boredom of the evening began at home.At this time, I can't find my opponent when I want to play cards, dinner has not been served, and sleep has not come yet. Out of helplessness, I can only sit next to the patient.Or read to Lenotchka her favorite novel in translation.The train station is huge, with a snack bar and bookcases.There you can eat something, drink some beer, read a book. ...Yang Xin likes to meet that train the most, and envies those passengers who don't know where they are going and who, in his opinion, are happier than him.

When he arrived at the station, there were already some people walking on the platform, waiting for the train to come, and he always met them here every evening.Among them were residents of a dacha near the railway station, two or three officers from the city, and a landowner with spurs on his right foot, followed by a big savage dog, shaking its head mournfully.The men and women who lived in the villa obviously knew each other very well, talking and laughing loudly.As usual, the liveliest and loudest laugher among them was an engineer who lived in the villa, a fat man of about forty-five years old, with whiskers, a wide pelvis, and a jacket on his upper body. A calico shirt untucked in the bottom of the trousers, and a pair of plush knickerbockers.Whenever he showed his big belly, stroked his beard, walked in front of Yang Xin, and looked at Yang Xin affectionately with his bright eyes, Yang Xin always felt that this person lived with relish.There is even a special expression on the engineer's face, which cannot be interpreted as other meanings, but can only be: "Ah, what a taste!" His last name is quite awkward, divided into three parts, so Yang Xin can remember The surname is only because loud political and argumentative engineers often swear, saying: "Then my name will not be Bitney-Kushly-Suvremovich!" He was said to be a man of amusement, hospitable, and fond of playing "Vent."Yang Xin wanted to get acquainted with him a long time ago, but he didn't dare to go up to him and talk to him, although he expected that the engineer would not refuse this kind of acquaintance. ...Yang Xin wandered alone on the platform, listening to the conversations of those who lived in the villa. At this time, for some reason, every time he remembered that he was thirty-one years old, and that he graduated from college at the age of twenty-four Since the year in which he lived, he has not lived a day in peace, now he is in a lawsuit with his neighbors over a field boundary, now his wife has a miscarriage, now he feels that his sister Vera is unhappy, and now Mikhail Ilyich is sick. , he must be sent abroad; he reasoned that the situation would continue, reappear in different forms, endlessly, at forty and fifty, as at thirty-one, Such cares and such thoughts, in a word, he would not be able to get out of this hard shell until his death.You have to be good at deceiving yourself to think otherwise.All he wanted was to stop cooking oysters, even for an hour; all he wanted was to see the world, to be attracted by things that did not concern him personally, to talk to people who had nothing to do with him, even this one. Fat engineers or those women who live in villas, those women look so beautiful, happy, and above all young in the twilight. The train is coming.The landowner with the spur on one foot greeted an elderly fat lady who embraced him and repeated several times in excited tones: "Alexis!" ④ Presumably the lady was his mother.And he, clinking his spurs politely like a leune premier in a ballet, stretched out his hand to her, took her arm, and said to a porter in a soft, sweet voice: "Take care, Please go and pick up our luggage!" The train left quickly. . . . Those who lived in the dacha got their newspapers and letters, dispersed and went home.All around returned to silence. ...Yang Xin strolled on the platform for a while, then went to the waiting room of the first-class bus.He wasn't hungry, but he still ate a portion of veal and drank some beer.The polite and refined demeanor of the landowner with spurs, his cloyingly sweet tone and unnatural politeness left Yang Xin with a nasty and morbid impression.He thought of his long moustache, of his kind, not stupid, but somewhat queer, incomprehensible face, and the way he kept rubbing his hands together as though feeling cold, and he couldn't help thinking: what if that If the old fat lady is really the man's mother, then she must be very unfortunate.Her excited voice said only one word, "Alexis!", but her timid, flustered face and her loving eyes said the rest. ... two From the window Vera Andreyevna saw her brother go away.Knowing that he was going to the train station, she imagined the spruce-lined avenue, which ended in a slope, and below it was the river and the vast scenery. Beyond the meadow was the railway station and a birch grove in which the residents of the villas lived; in the distance to the right was a small county town and a monastery with golden domes. ... Then she imagined the avenue, the gloom, her fear and shame, the familiar footsteps, and all the things that could happen again, maybe today. . . . She went out of the hall for a while to order tea for the priests.She went into the dining room and took out from her pocket a stiff envelope folded in two with foreign stamps on it.The letter came to her five minutes before Vigil, and she had managed to read it twice. "My dear, dear, my tribulations, my troubles," she read, cupping the letter in both hands, letting them enjoy the lovely warm words happy. "My darling," she began again, "precious darling, my troubles, my troubles, you wrote earnestly, but I still didn't know what to do. You Said that you would come to Italy, and I, like a madman, ran here beforehand to meet you and express my longing for my darling. I thought, here, on a moonlit night, you will not Worry no more about your husband or your brother seeing my shadow through the window. Here I can walk the streets with you, and you needn't be afraid that the Romans or the Venetians will know that we love each other. Forgive me for being so Say, my dear, there is indeed such a timid, cowardly, and indecisive Vera; but there is another Vera, who is indifferent, cold, and arrogant, and I call you "you" in front of outsiders , pretending to hardly care about me. I want this other one, this proud and beautiful one to love me.  … I don't want to be an owl that has a right to pleasure only in the evening and night. Give me the light Oh! the darkness oppresses me, my dear, this intermittent and furtive love of ours makes me half-starved, angry, miserable, mad.... Well, in a word, I think: my Vera (not The first but the other) here, abroad, where it is easier to hide from public eyes than at home, will give me even an hour of perfect, true, unscrupulous love, which will make me even once serious Feeling more like a lover, not a sneak, so that when you hug me you don't say, "It's time for me to go now!" ' That's what I thought, but I've been here, in Florence, for a full month, and you haven't come, and I don't know if you'll come or not.You write, "We may not make it this month." What does that mean? What are you doing to me, you who make me despair?! You see, I can't live without you, I can't live, I can't live!!! Italy is said to be beautiful, but I'm unhappy, I'm exiled, my passionate love suffers like an exile. You'll say: my quip is not funny, but I'm like Clowns are so ridiculous. I was running around, now in Bologna, now in Venice, now in Rome, always looking to see if there was anyone who looked like you among the women. I went to the painting hall and the museum five times each, and in those paintings I saw only you. I climbed up the Pincio Hill panting in Rome, and there I watched the eternal city, but eternal, beautiful, sky , all these are in my mind one with your face, your clothes. Here, in Florence, I go through the shops where statues are sold, and I often hug you when there is no one in the shop. A statue, I think it's you I'm holding. I need you now, I need you right now... Vera, I'm crazy, but I'm sorry, I can't take it anymore, I'm going to find you tomorrow.  … ...This letter is superfluous, hey, just write it! My dear, it means that I have made up my mind: I will go tomorrow.”⑧ "Notes" ① A Christian holiday, the fiftieth day after Easter. ② Alexander's pet name. ③This animal hides in a shell. ④ French: Alexei (man's name). ⑤French: An actor who plays the role of the main lover. ⑥ A city in central Italy. ⑦ A city in northern Italy. ⑧The manuscript is interrupted here.