Chapter 4 The first part 16-21 (16 missing)

Sixteen (missing) seventeen In the last year we lived in Kamenka, I became seriously ill for the first time—the first time I knew of this strange thing, which people are used to calling simply a serious illness, but actually a wandering in the kingdom of heaven. After a while.I got sick in late autumn.What happened?I suddenly felt weak physically and mentally. At this time, the five senses of people: sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch all had strange changes.I felt a sudden loss of desire to live: I didn't want to move, I didn't want to eat or drink, I didn't have joy or sorrow, and I didn't like even those closest to me.Later, she passed out in a coma all day and all night, as if she was dead, but sometimes she was awakened by some strange dreams.These dreams were often indecent, absurd, and promiscuous, and seemed to concentrate in me all the bodily brutality in the world.And this barbarity can only be destroyed in a febrile, febrile state (which no doubt reminds one of the torments of hell) when it differentiates itself and struggles violently with itself.Alas, I remember the scene: when I woke up sometimes, I saw my mother as a huge ghost, or saw that the bedroom had become a dark grain drying room, with countless ugly figures, faces, beasts, and plants at the head of the bed. Fly and tremble in the flames of the candles above!When I returned to the world after falling into hell, and returned to the ordinary, lovely and familiar life in the world, my heart was filled with all the brightness, tranquility and excitement that is not in the world for a long time!That is why I now eat with particular relish the black bread, which was given to me with rustic simplicity, and whose taste alone is enough to make me jump with joy.

Then Nadja died, two months after my illness, after the Christmas festivities.Had a great time at Christmas.My father drank, and our house was full of people from morning to night, and there were so many guests... Mother was very happy when the whole family was happy, when Georgi's brother came back for the holidays.And this time my brother came back, and my mother felt very happy.Suddenly, in the midst of the festive debauchery, Nadja fell ill.Before her illness she had run about the house with her strong little legs, her boldness, her blue eyes, her shouts and her laughter, and had been admired by all.The festival is over, the guests have long been separated, and her brother has left, but she is still lying unconscious on the bed with a fever all over her body.Curtains hung in the nursery, the room half-dark, a magic lamp burning...Why did God choose her alone—the joy of our family?The whole family was very distressed and depressed, but after all, no one expected that this distress would be solved so suddenly by the nanny's screaming in a dark night.That night the nurse suddenly slammed the dining-room door open and shouted frantically that Nadya was dead.Yes, it was the first time I had heard the hideous word "she died" in a lonely manor on a dark desert snowy field in the depths of winter!Late at night, when the frenzied panic that had once engulfed the whole family subsided, I saw, on the tables in the hall, by the somber light of a magic lamp, a motionless and beautifully dressed doll. Lying, her little face was expressionless, bloodless, her black eyelashes loosely closed... There was never a wilder night in my life.

In the spring, my grandmother also passed away.It was a beautiful May day, and my mother was sitting near the open window, dressed in black, thin and pale.Suddenly, a strange farmer ran out from behind the granary, riding a horse, and he yelled something cheerfully to his mother.The mother opened her eyes wide, let out a soft, almost equally joyful cry, and slapped the window sill with her palm... The peaceful life on the estate was suddenly and violently disrupted.Here and there there was a peculiar commotion -- well, I'm familiar with that.Workers ran to harness the horses, mothers and fathers ran to get dressed... thank goodness they didn't take us kids with them...

nineteen That August, I had already put on a blue cap with a silver badge on the brim.Only there was no Alyosha—this time it was Arsenyev Alexei, a first-year student at a boys' secondary school. The physical and mental pain I experienced in winter seemed to have disappeared in summer.I am calm and happy.It was in perfect harmony with the sunny, dry weather that had been going on all summer that year, with the light-hearted mood of our family.Nadja was no more (even to my mother and nurse) than a fond memory, a figure imagined as a cherub who happily lived forever in heaven.When the mother and the nurse chatted, they often mentioned her, but it was completely different before, sometimes even with a smile, and they sometimes cried, but not the same tears as before.As for Grandma, Mother simply smiled, and one could even say that her death was one of the reasons for our family's lightheartedness.Because, firstly, Baturino is now ours, which has greatly improved our situation, and secondly, we are going to move there in the autumn, and as a change of scenery always makes people happy, everyone is secretly happy, Because this kind of transformation often brings people hope for good things, and perhaps unconsciously recalls the ancient life of nomadic times.

According to my mother's narration, I can vividly imagine the scene of Baturino, where my parents were eager to go: It was a day in May, a cozy courtyard surrounded by a row of old mixed-use houses, and there was an old house in the courtyard. Old style buildings.Round wooden columns stood on the steps on either side, and the upper panes of the hall windows were dark blue and crimson.Beneath the window, two tables were pushed together, leaning against the corner of the front door, and on top of it was a bed made of straw, on which lay a pale old woman.She wore a white toothed nightcap, and a pair of clean hands were folded on her chest.Beside the head of the bed stood a "nun," a neat old girl with long, drooping eyelashes.The scriptures were spoken monotonously in that high-pitched, queer, doctrinal tone that my father maliciously derided as the tone of a seraphim... I thought of that word so often that I had a vague feeling that the thing was extremely serious. Horrible, mind-blowing and at the same time very frustrating.The whole picture I'm painting is deeply unpleasant.But just unpleasant, nothing else.And this unpleasure was more than compensated for by a pleasant, if sinful, thought.Because I often think that now that my grandmother's beautiful manor is in our name, I can go there for the first time during the holidays.And, God forbid, I was already in the second grade, and my father would give me a riding mare from what used to be Grandma's herd.This horse will be very fond of me, and will come to me anytime and anywhere as soon as I whistle.

That summer, I was always worried about parting from my mother, Olya, Baskakov and other relatives. Heartless teachers, fearful of so called middle school.I used to feel nervous when I saw my mother and Baskakov, and naturally they felt the same when they saw me.However, I immediately said to myself happily: It's still early!And the future still has such a temptation for myself: I will be a middle school student, put on a uniform, live in the city, and have many classmates, from whom I can choose a reliable friend.Thinking of this, I am very happy... My brother Georgi encouraged me and seduced me with the beauty of this new life.In my opinion, he was already an extraordinary person at that time; with elegant features, thin face, full sky, bright eyes, and faint blush on his cheeks, he looked like a handsome young man.At that time he was no longer an unknown junior, but a student of the Imperial Moscow University, with a gold medal for graduation from high school hanging on his chest.I'm about to enter this middle school.

I was finally sent for the exam in early August.When they heard the noise of a carriage near the steps, the faces of my mother, the nurse, and Baskakov all changed. Olya burst into tears, and my father and brother looked at each other and smiled awkwardly. "Here, let's sit down!" said the father decisively, and everyone sat down timidly. "Well, God bless you!" said the father, after a while, in a more determined tone.Then they all crossed themselves and stood up.I was so frightened that my legs went weak, and I hurriedly made the sign of the cross reverently.At this time, my mother came to kiss me with tears in her eyes.Cross me.However, when she was crying, kissing me, and crossing me, I had already returned to normal, thinking: "God bless, I may not pass the exam..."

————— ① Russian custom: Before seeing off relatives, everyone should sit quietly for a while. Alas, I actually passed the exam.It took me three years to train for this momentous day.Forced me to count thirty times fifty-five, to describe what kind of people the Amalikites were, to write "neatly": "Snow is white, but tasteless," and To recite: "The crimson morning glow is all over the east..." I didn't let me stop until I finally read "The cattle woke up on the soft pasture".Maybe the teacher (red hair, gold-rimmed glasses, big nostrils) knows the meaning of the word "wake up", so he interrupted me:

————— ① The Amalikites are an ancient tribe belonging to the Bethun tribe and have blood relations with the Israelite tribe. "Here, very well--enough, enough, I can see. You already know--" Yes, brother was right, in fact "there was nothing terrible", everything was much simpler than I thought, everything was solved exceptionally quickly, easily and lightly.At the same time, what limit have I exceeded! The roads to the city are charming, and I haven't been to a city since my first trip.Nothing fascinated me anymore in the city that had been so fascinating.I found a rather ugly hotel near Mikhail Alhangar.The three-story secondary school building sits behind a high wall in a stone-paved compound.Although I have never entered such a tall, clean and echoing building.But I found something deja vu.The teachers in gold-buttoned tuxedos, some with fiery red hair and some with jet-black hair, were all of the same burly physique, and even the hyena-like principal himself was not very strange or terribly scary.

Immediately after the exam was over, my father and I were notified that I had passed the exam and that I was allowed to go on vacation until September 1st. My father was relieved and sat very depressed in the "teacher's lounge" where my knowledge was tested) , I am more relaxed.Now everything is fine: I have passed the secondary school and I have three full weeks of freedom!It seemed that I must have been surprised at the time.For all my life.I have always been obedient and obedient, and I have no freedom. Who knows that I will be given three weeks off suddenly, allowing me to fully enjoy complete freedom.Although it was only three weeks, I kept thinking: Thank God, three weeks! ——As if these three weeks would never end.

"Okay, let's go find a tailor now, and go to lunch!" said my father happily after walking out of the middle school. We found a little guy with short legs.I was dumbfounded by the quickness of his questions and the flexibility of his sizing techniques.He draws out his intonation at the end of every sentence.As if by a little wronged.Then he went into the "hat-making department," where the windows were dusty and hot from the city sun, and the inside was stuffy and cramped, and it was a mess, and there were so many hat-boxes that the proprietor rummaged through them agonizingly. for a long time.He got angry and yelled at a woman in the other room with a lazy white fat face in words I couldn't understand.They were Jewish, but of a different kind altogether.The old man had bushy long hair, wore a long black serge frock coat, and a serge cap tilted to the back of his head. On his chest and under his armpits was a mass of coarse hair, from the corners of his eyes to his chin. With a beard as black as oily smoke, he looked gloomy and depressed.In short, he seemed a terrible, sad thing.Finally, he picked out a very beautiful blue cap for me, with two silver and white twigs shining on the hat ring.I came home with this hat, trying to make everyone and mother happy.Their joy was inexplicable, for the father was quite right when he said: "What use are those Amarikits to him?" twenty One day at the end of August, my father put on his boots, strapped on his ammunition belt, and slung a hunting bag over his shoulder. Hound, fair Charma.So together we walked along the road to the pond, over the harvested fields. My father wore a floral slanted shirt and a white cap, and I, despite the hot, dry weather, still wore my middle school uniform.The father, tall and strong, walked ahead with vigorous strides, making the yellow stubble rustle, and the smoke from his breath drifted behind him.I followed him on the right, according to hunting rules.Bouncers are supposed to walk on the right, and I think there's great joy in following those rules.He whistles from time to time.Encouraging everyone's energy, Charma was a little excited, often swaying her body, shaking her tightly curled tail, concentrating on listening, seeing, and smelling, and quickly darting around in front of us, searching both sides.The desert fields were as bright and cheerful as summer.Sometimes a hot wind dies down altogether, and the sun is so hot that you can hear the hissing of the heat all around you, the ticking of watches, and the sound of blacksmiths striking iron.Sometimes a dry and hot breeze blows gently, and the breeze gradually increases, blowing around us.Suddenly, on the road pressed out during the harvest, a puff of dust was rolled up, and the dust was teased and raised high and high.The wind swirls, rolls into a funnel shape, and blows fiercely forward.We followed Charma warily.It always walked ahead like that, and nothing happened on the way.We go further and further without realizing it.It often stands still suddenly, leans its whole body forward, lifts its right foot, and stares at something we can't see in front of it.Father said softly, "Grab it!" and Charma rushed towards the invisible thing.In an instant, hey!A large, short-tailed quail struggled and clumsily (due to obesity) to free itself from under it, and before it had flown five paces, the mass fell to the harvested field again with the sound of a shot.I ran to pick it up and put it in my father's hunting bag... So we came to the end of the rye field, and then across the potato field, past a bog whose long surface shone sultry.The bog was in a gorge between the slopes to our right, which had been bare by the trampling of cattle.On the hillside, a group of rooks stood on the open high ground, nowhere to go, silently meditating.Father looked at it for a while and said, Bai.The crows, who had planned to go to the meeting as soon as autumn came, were now thinking of going far away.At this moment I could not help feeling a sense of parting again, not only from the fading summer, but from the fields, from all that was dear and dear to me in the remote and lovely outskirts.I have seen no other place in the world than this remote frontier.In such a secluded abode, the flowers of my infancy and childhood, unknown and needed by no one in the world, bloom quietly and alone... Then we moved on to the left, along the endless ridges of the plowed and oily plowed fields towards Zakaz, which was still our field.A bay red one-year-old foal was pulling a rake on the dry and hard black soil. It was still a slender-legged suckling beast, and the base of its tail was still curled softly and smoothly.This horse once promised to give it to me, but now it doesn't discuss it with me, and after asking for my consent, it is released to work.A scorching breeze was blowing, and the August sun was shining over the plowed fields, still in the old summer style, but much less powerful.The black colt has grown very tall (although it is a bit strangely tall, but it still looks like a colt), and it is stepping obediently on the plowed field, pulling the rope, and the rake is swinging and jumping behind it , the curved tines of the iron rake broke up the clods.A boy of fifteen or sixteen, wearing bark shoes, was walking with a limp, holding the rein awkwardly with both hands.I watched this scene for a long time, and felt an unspeakable sadness... Zakaz is a rather large wild grove owned by a landowner who is a bit insane.A loner, hater of the whole world, he lived as if in a castle, on his own estate near Rozhdestov, guarded by ferocious shepherd dogs.He always litigated with native or newly arrived peasants, never agreeing with them on wages.Therefore, his crops are often left uncut in large tracts and rotted in the field in late autumn, or destroyed in thousands of stacks under snowdrifts.This situation remains unchanged.We were trampled and trampled along a stretch of land.The unharvested fields of golden oats went to Zakaz.At this time, Charma caught a few more quails, and I ran over to pick them up again, and then we walked forward along the dense millet fields to Zakaz.The millet fields shone like silk in the sun, and the dark brown, grainy ears hung down to the ground, and they crackled especially crisply under our feet like small glass beads.My father unbuttoned his collar, his face flushed, and he said, "It's so hot and thirsty, let's go into Zakaz to find the pond!" So we skipped the road that separated the millet field from the woods. into the woods, into the kingdom of August, bright, mild, already a little yellow, cheerful and wonderful. There were not many birds left--only a few thrushes flying about in flocks, feigning anger, chirping and clucking their fill with merriment.The woods are extremely empty, the trees are not dense, the sun is everywhere, and the distance can be seen through the branches and leaves.Sometimes we walked through an old birch tree, and sometimes we walked through a wide open forest.In these forest clearings, several huge oak trees stand dottedly, and the leaves on the numerous branches are already sparse. It is far from being as opaque as in summer, and it is starting to wither.We walked along the smooth dry grassland, in the shade of the colorful trees, breathed in the dry fragrance, looked up and saw the hot radiance reflected in the open forest grassland ahead.Across the meadow, a small cluster of young maple bushes trembled and shone with dazzling gold.A path leading to a pond ran through the maple grove, and as we stepped on the path a red-gold woodcock suddenly snapped from under the young maples, from the palm-shaped hazels, and almost from our feet. He rushed out with a sound.The father was taken aback by the unexpected visitor and panicked.Naturally, at that moment he fired a shot, but it missed.He wondered why a woodsnipe flew out suddenly at this moment.Annoyed that he had fired a shot in vain, he went to the pond, put the gun down, squatted on a thick tree trunk submerged in the water, and began to drink water by the handful.Then, panting happily, wiping his lips with his sleeve, he lay on the bank of the pond and smoked.The water in the pool is clear and transparent, and it is rare to find such pool water in a lonely forest pond where no one cares about it except for birds and animals.The water of the enchanting pool, as transparent and deep as the sky, calmly reflects and drowns the tops of the surrounding birches and oaks.There was a gentle breeze in the fields, and the treetops rustled.Amidst the rustling of trees, my father rested his head on one hand, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.Charma also had a drink in the pond before plopping into the water.It swam forward, carefully raised its head out of the water, its ears pricked up like two burdock leaves, suddenly it turned around, as if afraid of the depth of the water, it jumped back to the bank and shook its body vigorously, the water sprayed us all over.At this moment, it sticks out its long red tongue, sits beside my father, looks at me inquiringly for a while, and looks around impatiently for a while... I stood up, wandered in the woods, and walked to our place. The place where I just followed the oat field into the woods... twenty one Beyond the woods, beyond the trees, from under the shaded broadleaves, the fields of yellow and orange gleamed with hot dry sunlight, and from there blew the warmth and light and happiness of the last days of summer.On my right, a huge white cloud suddenly appeared.It floated out from behind the woods, forming an irregular and strange circle in the blue sky, slowly fluttering and changing.I took a few steps and lay down on the smooth grass.The trees, brightly illuminated by the sun, spread out in all directions, as if walking around me.I lay between them, in the thin shade of the two connected birches.The two white-trunked sisters have grayish leaves and clusters of catkins.I, too, put one hand under my head, and looked out at the golden fields beyond the woods, at this cloud.A dry, hot air blows gently over the field, the bright woods sway and flow, and you can hear the drowsy clattering as if they are going somewhere.Sometimes the sound rises and increases, so that the net-shaped tree shadows are colorful and swaying back and forth, the sun spots on the ground and on the trees are shining and shining, and the branches hang down, revealing the bright sky... If this is just brooding, what am I thinking?Of course, I was thinking about middle school and the strange characters I was going to meet there.These characters are called teachers, and belong to an entirely special class of characters.Their whole mission is to teach, and to place students in eternal terror.So, an inexplicable fear came over me.Why should I be sent to be their slave, why should our dear homeland be separated from Kamenka, from this wood... I thought of the plowing horse I saw in the plowed field, and I vaguely felt , everything in the world is unreliable.I feel like the colt was mine and they dumped it without me asking as if they were their own property... yes it's still a slender-legged dark gray pony Like all ponies, he is timid and timid, but he is optimistic and trusting, with bright, black plum eyes.It only yearns for its mother, who always neighs with suppressed joy and sorrow and love whenever it sees it. In other respects, it is infinitely free and carefree... One day they took this horse The foal was given to me to be at my sole disposal forever.I was happy for it for a time, had fantasies about it, our future, and our friendship.This friendship is not only future, but has been established since it was given to me.But then I gradually forgot about it—everyone also forgot that it belonged to me, isn't it natural?Yeah, I finally completely forgot about it.Probably, I will forget Baskakov and Olya in the same way, and even my father (I love him so much now, I am so happy to hunt with him), and I will forget the whole of Kamenka too. , although every corner of this place is familiar and familiar to me... Two years have passed--as if these two years have never existed!Now where is it - this bewildered and carefree foal?He is now a three-year-old pony, where is his former will and freedom?Now that he's put on his collar plowing and dragging a rake behind him... won't the same thing happen to me with this colt? What use is the Amarikit to me?I am often terrified and amazed, but what can I do?A very white cloud appeared from behind the birch forest, changing its outline from time to time... Could it not change?The bright woods flowed, swayed, and ran with a sleepy rustle somewhere...to what and why?Can it be stopped?I closed my eyes, and then I vaguely felt that everything was a dream, an incomprehensible dream!Whether it is the city beyond the distant fields, whether it is the city where I must inevitably stay, whether it is my future in that city, whether it is my past in Kamenka, Whether it is me, my thoughts, dreams, feelings - everything is a dream!Is it a sad, heavy dream?No, it is still a happy, relaxing dream after all... As if to confirm this, there was a sudden bang of a gun behind me, and the sound of the gun engulfed the entire forest like a clattering iron ring, rolling in all directions, and then I heard a particularly violent scream and clucking, evidently the cry of a flock of startled thrushes and the ecstatic bark of Charma.It must have been a shot from my waking father.So at once I threw away all my contemplation, and ran to him as fast as I could—and picked up the dead, bloody, warm thrushes, which smelled of wild fowl, and gunpowder smell.