Chapter 12 Part Four 1-5

one The end of my life in Baturino was also the end of the whole past life of my family. We all understand that everything that was there is coming to an end.The father said to the mother: "My dear, our nest is about to break up!" In fact, Nikolai has abandoned the nest, and Georgy plans to abandon it completely-his "surveillance" period has expired. Full.Now I'm the only one left, but it's my turn... two It's another spring.Again, this spring was unprecedented in my eyes, and something started to happen unlike anything I had ever seen. With any recovery from illness, there is usually a special morning.When you wake up and feel exactly like normal, your body is back to normal, albeit differently than it was before the illness.But you have new experience and wisdom.One day I also woke up on such a quiet, warm May morning, lying in my corner room with no curtains drawn because of my youth.I lifted the quilt and felt that I was full of youthful vitality, very comfortable, vigorous, and warm—I used this youthful heat to warm the quilt and myself all night long.The sun shone through the window, through the stained glass above, and onto the floor, flashing many spots of red, blue and blue.I lifted the lower window frame—it was already like a summer morning, with the tranquility and simplicity of summer.The morning air is fresh and soft, and the garden is bathed in sunlight, filled with the scent of flowers, plants and butterflies.I washed and dressed, and began to pray to the image of the god that hung in the south corner of the room.These idols are antiques from the Arsenyev family, and they always aroused in me a hope, and they always made me submit to the endless and irresistible currents of the world.There was tea and conversation on the balcony, and brother Nikolay came again—he came to us every morning.He was talking, apparently about me:

"What else is there to think about? Of course, to work, to find a job... I think that when Georgi himself settles down, he will always be placed somewhere... What a distant day this is!When I think of their friendship for me now, I really feel that they are my closest relatives.I always want to record them in these notes with this kind of friendship, and I don't know why I always want to reproduce the image of some distant youth.Whose image is this?He seemed like some imaginary brother of mine, a man who disappeared from the world along with his own infinitely distant age. This is often the case: you will see an old photo album in someone's home.People who look at you from faded photographs can make you feel strange and complicated!First of all, I feel very alienated from these people, because people will be very strange to each other at different times.Later, out of this feeling came a very keen sense of themselves and their time.Who are these people?These are people who have lived in a certain era and a certain place. Each has its own destiny, each has its own era, and each place has its own characteristics: clothing, habits, characters, social emotions and history. Event... Look, here is a grim, official old man with a medal on his breast, a bow tie, a frock coat with a high collar, and a shaved face piled up in thick flesh.Look, this well-dressed man of Herzen's time, with slightly curly hair and sideburns, holds a top hat in his hand, wears a baggy frock coat and a pair of equally baggy trousers, his The soles of the feet are too small compared to the hems of the trousers.Here, here is a bust of a beautiful lady with a melancholy face, a high bun, a strange hat, a frilly silk gown, tight breasts and a slender waist, and earrings Wearing a pair of long earrings... This one is a slender seventeen-year-old young man, wearing a starched shirt with the collar parted to reveal his Adam's apple. The laziness of young people can be seen in the mysterious big eyes, and the wavy hair is cut long... All these characters and their lives and times can be regarded as myths and legends! ...

————— ①Refers to Russia under the serf system in the 1840s. three One day in early summer, I met Donika's sister-in-law in the village.She stood down and said to me: "A person greets you..." When I heard this, I forgot all about it, and as soon as I got home, I put on the Kabalzinka and started making a fuss.I remember, I was in Malinowo, I walked to the Livinsk Avenue... It was a quiet evening in early summer, and the fields were peaceful, happy, and beautiful.I stood by the road and thought for a while: Where else should I go? —I crossed the avenue and started to go further.Taking advantage of the afterglow of the setting sun, I walked into a large forest of someone's house. There is a long valley here. The ravines and small valleys on both sides are overgrown with vegetation, as deep as the belly of the horse. It is cool in the evening and emits a green air of vegetation.In the surrounding bushes and dense forests, nightingales sang joyously, melodiously.In the distance, a cuckoo cooed continuously, calmly but tenaciously, as if it alone had reason to express its loneliness and homeless sorrow among the meaningless joys of these nightingales.Its call came and went, sometimes sad, sometimes strange, and echoed long in the twilight woods.I listened as I walked, and then I started to count how many years this cuckoo has prophesied to me, and how many things do I still not understand?What is life, love, parting, loss, memory and hope... and the cuckoo is still cooing - cooing, prophesying to me something that is far away.But what is hidden in this far-off thing?There is even something terrible in the midst of all the mystery and indifference that surrounds me.I looked at Kabaldzinka's neck, at the side-spread mane and the high-raised head, which swayed steadily to the beat of the walk.In those fabled days of old, the horse's head sometimes uttered a prophetic sound.Its doomed silence is irretrievable and terrible. This kind of silence that can never be shaken off is so similar to me, just like me who is alive, rational, and emotional.Silent as a man who can think.Even more frightening is the unexpected possibility that it will suddenly break its own silence... The nightingales around are singing meaninglessly, the cuckoos are cooing obstinately in the distance as if using magic, In vain to seek a nest of longing day and night for the rest of my life...

Four In the summer, when I went to the Tikhvinsk fair in the city, I encountered Balavin again.He walked side by side with a speculator.The speculator was ragged and dirty.But he was well-dressed and very neat--all new from head to toe, with a new straw hat on his head, and a shiny walking stick in his hand.The speculator followed him closely, swore at him excitedly, and looked at him with surprise and questioning eyes from time to time.Balavin walked, not listening to him, his pale green eyes staring straight ahead, impassive. "It's all nonsense!" He finally ignored him and came over to greet me, as if we had met yesterday instead of two years ago.He took my hand and suggested "have a cup of tea and talk a little bit".So we walked into a tea shed, and during the conversation, he asked me with a smile. "Oh, how are you, what's the deal?" Then he started talking about my family's "difficult situation"—from somewhere he knew better than we did!Then he talked about what I would do in the future personally.I was very sad after parting from him, and resolved to go home at once.It was already late at that time, and the temples rang the bells for all-night prayers, and the markets on the pastures near the temples were also closed.The cows pulling the wagon were panting and roaring, the wagon creaked and climbed up the road with difficulty, and the wagon coming home bumped over the dusty and rough pastures, desperately trying to get past me Running... I jumped into a cab and drove it to the station--just as there was an evening train going in the direction of our home town. "Yes, what should we do?" I think, recalling those words of Balavin, I am even more convinced that the meaning of his words is actually pessimistic and desperate. "I don't know what to do with you," he said to me. "Your grandparents have served in the Caucasus for generations under these circumstances, applying to various diplomatic agencies, but where can you go, or what can you apply for? I think that, generally speaking, you will not To serve—this is not your ideal. As the divination book says, you aspire too far. I see only one way out for Baturino: sell it as soon as possible before others have auctioned it. In this case, your father, poor as he is, still has some. As for yourself, you should think about it... "But what can I think of? I asked myself. "Should I go to the warehouse to beg him?" "

This meeting even chilled my work on translating Hamlet a little.I translated it for myself, into prose.This work was not my favourite, it was just something I picked up at a time when I wanted to start living a sincere, laboring life again.I set about translating without delay, and the work soon attracted me, and its difficulties delighted and excited me.Apart from the fact that I always wanted to be a translator at that time, I also wanted to develop a source of life for myself in the future, not just for the enjoyment of art that cannot be changed.Now, as soon as I got home, it suddenly dawned on me that none of these wishes could be relied upon.I also understand that the years passed and those "fantasies" that Balavin inadvertently stirred up in me are still fantasies.I quickly forgot about the "hardship" of my family.And "fantasies" are another matter... what am I actually fantasizing about?For example, Balavin accidentally mentioned the Caucasus—“Your grandparents have all gone to serve in the Caucasus under such circumstances.” ... At the fair, a young gypsy woman showed me my palm.These gypsy women are by no means new!But when she took my hand with her strong black fingers, I felt many things, and always reminded me of her afterwards!She is colorful all over, naturally, wearing yellow and red tattered clothes.She took the shawl from her oiled little head, and from time to time, shaking her legs slightly, she babbled at me some usual nonsense.It was not only the thighs, and the half-sleeping, cheerful eyes, and the vermilion lips that bothered me, but all the antiquity of some distant land that showed about her.What also troubles me is that my "grandparents" appear here again - which one of them has not had a fortune-telling in the hands of these gypsy women?This is my secret connection to my grandparents, the longing to feel that connection, because if the world seemed so new to us, would we love it as much as we do now?

Fives In those days I often felt as if I were standing still, and I often asked myself with the impetuous wonder of youth: In this inexplicable and eternal world around me, in the infinity of past and future, in Batu Lin Nuo and my personal space and time constraints, what is my life?I see that my life with anyone is just the alternation of day and night, work and rest, meeting and chatting, pleasure and trouble, sometimes some so-called big events, a chaotic accumulation of various impressions, scenes and faces, And somehow and how only the tiniest part of these things remain with us.Our lives are just a constant flow of incoherent thoughts and feelings that never let us be quiet for a moment.It is a disordered memory of the past and vague speculations about the future.Moreover, it is still such a thing, which seems to contain some truth, meaning and purpose of life, but mainly something that cannot be grasped and expressed in any way.Life is therefore an eternal waiting, not only for happiness, for perfect happiness, but for something which, when it arrives, suddenly reveals the true meaning and meaning of life in its entirety. "You, as According to the divination book, yearning is too far.” Indeed, I yearn for life completely in my heart.Why?Perhaps, it is precisely to pursue this meaning?