Chapter 13 Part Four 6-10

six Brother Georgi was in Kharkov again, on another bright, cold October day, the day he had been taken to prison.I will take him to the station.We galloped on some broken and bright roads, talking about the future with great interest, so as to drive away the sadness of parting and the hidden pain in our hearts for the wasted years. This is the final conclusion of any kind of parting. End this life forever. "God, everything will be all right!" said the older brother, who was too self-loving to hurt himself and dilute his hopes for life in Kharkov. "I'll write to ask you to come as soon as I've cleared up the situation and got some money. I'll see how it goes... Do you want to smoke?" he said, watching me happily for the first time in my life. Smoke up.

I went home alone, feeling particularly sad and dull.It’s even a little unbelievable that what we have been secretly worrying about for a long time has really happened. My brother is no longer by my side. I am driving back alone, and I will wake up tomorrow in Baturino alone.But there was even greater misfortune waiting for me at home.I came home in the cold, crimson twilight.Kabal Jinkala put on the side cover, and did not let the shaft horse rest along the way.After I came back, I didn't take care of it, and they didn't take it for a walk and gave it water.It was sweating profusely and shivering desperately. It stood for a cold night without a horse coat, and died in the morning.At noon I went to the little meadow behind the garden, where Kabaldzinka had been dragged.Oh, how empty and bright the world is, how silent and sepulcher-like the sun is, how cold and transparent the air, how radiant and silent the fields!Kabaldinka had turned into a corpse, lying ungainly on the grass, with his swollen waist protruding high, his long thin horse's neck and flat lying head twisted far away.Some of the puppies were already fucking on its belly, walking around greedily, tearing its belly open.Flocks of crows stood by, waiting for their moment.When the puppies were brawling and barking shamelessly there, the old crows sometimes flew up ferociously, and suddenly pounced on their bared, blood-stained faces... After breakfast, I lay in a daze On the sofa in my room, outside the small square window, the autumn sky is blue and the bare trees are black.At this moment, there was the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps in the corridor—father suddenly walked into my room.In his hand he held a beloved Belgian-made double-barreled gun, the only treasure he had left from the valuables of the past.

"Here," he said, resolutely laying the gun beside me. "I'll give you everything I can, don't feel bad about it. Maybe this can comfort you..." I jumped up and took his hand, but before I could kiss it, he withdrew it, bent down hastily, and kissed my temple awkwardly. "In short, don't be too sad," he added, trying to speak with the usual spirit. "Of course, I'm not talking about the horse, but about you... Do you think I saw nothing, didn't think about you? I think about you more than everyone else: I'm sorry Brother, let you all go out to earn a living, but they must have something. After all, Nikolai has some security, Georgi has knowledge, and you, what do you have but your good heart? But they How about it? Nikolai is just an ordinary guy, Georgi is a university student who will never graduate, and you... what's worse, you won't be with us for long, what will happen to you , only God knows! But you must remember my words: there is no misfortune more pitiful than sorrow..."

seven That autumn, our house was empty and deserted.It seems that I have never felt such tenderness towards my parents.But in those days, only sister Olia saved me from the utter loneliness.I started walking with her, talking, dreaming about the future.I am increasingly convinced that, to my surprise and delight, she is much older, spiritually and intellectually mature, and much closer to me than I had imagined.In this new relationship of ours there is also a miraculous reappearance of our past childhood affections... My father said of me: "God alone knows what will happen to you!" So what was the future of her so young and beautiful, so poor and lonely in Baturino?

However, I was thinking mostly about myself. Eight I quit my job.I spent a lot of time visiting the village and often hunting—sometimes with my brother Nikolai, sometimes by myself.We have run out of horses, and only a pair of hounds are left.Large-scale hunting persisted in some parts of the county, and we hunted jackals and foxes for a long time away from the hunting grounds of the landowners' estates to more favorable places than our own.We usually like to hunt gray rabbits the most. To be more precise, we often run back and forth in the autumn fields and autumn air to hunt down gray rabbits.

Once, at the end of November, I ran around in this way near Yefiremov.Early in the morning, after I ate some poor potatoes for breakfast in the servants' room, I slung my shotgun, mounted an old gelding, called two dogs, and set off.My brother is going to win the wheat, so I will go alone.It was a very warm, sunny day, but the fields were dreary, and as far as hunting was concerned, utterly hopeless.The reason why it is melancholy is that there is a dead silence and desolation all around, and everything is remnant, pitiful, and depressed, which is only available in late autumn.It was hopeless because it had just rained heavily, and everywhere was muddy and sticky, not only on the main road, but also on the grassland, plowed land, and stubble fields. My two dogs and I had to walk from the ridge of the field to the ground. Barely walked over.I soon gave up hunting, but my two dogs kept running.They know very well that, if there is anything to hunt, it is impossible to pursue it in such a field.It was only when we came to a bare grove with the damp smell of decaying leaves, or through a grove of red-leafed oaks, over a canyon and hills, that we perked up a little.But there's nothing here, desert, silence, sparseness, lifelessness, despite the warm weather, the sunshine, and the suburbs being clear and autumnal, and all the fields that criss-cross the stubble fields, the vegetable gardens, and the plowed fields. , the fire-like bushes, and the isolated islands of gray-blue birches and poplars in the distance all appear low, flat, and clear at a glance...

I finally turned back from Lobanovo, passed Spovo, and entered Kroptoka, the ancestral estate of Lermontov.I rested at the house of a peasant I knew and sat on the steps with him drinking kvass.In front of us is a pasture, and behind the pasture is a small landowner's manor that has been unoccupied for a long time. This manor has only one garden, which is somewhat beautiful, and it stands motionless against the light blue sky.Behind the small dilapidated house, some treetops were blackly exposed.I sit.As usual when he came to Kroptovka, he gazed and wondered: Is it true that Lermontov had spent his childhood in this house, and that his father had spent most of his life here? of it?

"It is said that this house is going to be auctioned," said the farmer, also squinting at the manor. "I heard that Kamenev of Yerfimov bought it..." He narrowed his eyes even more, looked at me and asked: "How are you? No auction yet?" "It's my father's business," I faltered. "Of course, of course," said the farmer, thinking to himself. "I'm just saying. Everyone is selling things now. It's hard for the lords. The people are lazy. They only do their own work, or what they find handy, instead of the lord's work. When the fields are busy The asking price is so high that people dare not approach them, and they have to pay wages in advance, how can the master pay, even he himself is pitifully poor..."

I went on, and decided for fun to make a sharp detour, past Vasilievskoe, to spend the night at Pisarev's.But as I walked, I kept thinking about the extreme poverty in our area.All around was poverty, decay and desolation.I took a high road, and I was astonished at its desolation.I walked some country lanes, past villages and manor houses, not only fields and dirty roads, but equally filthy country streets and deserted manor house yards, barren and barren.You don't even know where are the people, how do they spend the boredom and boredom of this autumn, do they just stay in these cottages and manors?Then I remembered my meaningless life in the middle, and at the same time I suddenly thought of Lermontov, and I was astonished at my life.Yes, here is Kroptovka, that forgotten house, and I can never look at it without being unmoved, always full of sorrows and inexpressible feelings... This is his poor cradle, that is His first days, like mine, were restless, his young mind was troubled, "full of fantastic fantasies," and his first poems, like mine, were feeble... But what happened afterwards?Then suddenly appeared, "The Boy Monk", "Taman", "Sail", "An Oak Leaf Falls from the Branch...", how can all these works of Lermontov be connected with this Kroptovka up?Let me think about it: what kind of person is Lermontov?I first saw his poems in two volumes, his portrait, his strange young face, his dark, immobile eyes, and then I saw his poem after poem, not only the surface of them I saw the forms of these poems, but also saw the scenes connected with these poems, that is, I felt Lermontov's earthly life: I saw the snowy peaks of Kazbek, the valley of Daryal, and what I did not know. That bright Georgian valley, where "the surging waves of the Aragua and Kura rivers are like two sisters embracing each other", seeing the cloudy nights and huts of Taman, seeing the blue sea with smoke and mist , there is a solitary sail shining white light, and I see a young and bright green sycamore growing on the shore of the mythical Black Sea... What a life, what a fate!Until the last day of his life, until that dark evening, on a deserted road at the foot of Mashuk, when that old Martynov's pistol roared like a cannon, "Lermontov fell down. He has only lived a total of twenty-seven years until the "earth", but he has infinitely rich and the most beautiful things.Having considered all this sensitively and imaginatively, I was suddenly overwhelmed with such joy and admiration that I even said aloud to myself, I've had enough of Baturino!

Nine The day after I got home, I was still thinking about it. At night, I sat in my room, thinking, and reading—rereading.The weather has changed a lot this day.It was windy and cold at night.It was late at night, and the whole house was silent and dark.I lit the stove, and the fire was burning and humming.Winds battered gardens and houses, shaking windows.The harder the wind blows, the hotter the fire burns.I sat and read while thinking about myself.I am melancholy enjoying the silence of the night, the night, the stove, and the wind.Presently I got up, dressed, went outside through the living room, and walked up and down the thin and frozen grass in the front yard.The garden was dark and noisy all around, and the grass was shrouded in a pale light.It was a moonlit night, but it was a miserable, Ocion night.The north wind was blowing fiercely, the old treetops howled melancholy and confusedly, and the bushes screamed dryly, as if running before them.On the whitened sky, in a great rainbow circle (in which were two small spots of the moon), came flying from the particularly sinister and gloomy north, dark clouds of grotesque shapes, unlike It belongs to our place, but it is like the sea, like the clouds when the shipwreck was described by ancient painters at night.And I sometimes walk against the strong wind to appreciate its icy freshness, and sometimes walk with my back against the wind and be driven by it.As I walked, I was thinking again—my thoughts were disordered and innocent, as in my youth I have always been so innocently brooding on my most secret thoughts.I think roughly like this:

"No, I've never read anything better! But what about The Cossacks, Eroshka, Maryanka? Or what about Pushkin's Voyage to Arterum? Yes, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov— ————— ① See Lermontov's poem "Ossion's Grave". ②Eroshka and Maryanka are characters in Leo Tolstoy's novella "Cossack".How happy they are! "It is said that a man passed us yesterday with the young Tolstoys, and went hunting along the road into the fields far from the landowner's estate. How strange that is!—I am Tolstoy's contemporary But it's the same anyway. Live in the same era as Pushkin, live with him, so what? You must know that it's all his—whether it's the Rostov , Pierre, Austerlitz Field, or the dying Prince Andrew ① said: "Except for the trivial things that I understand, and the great things that I do not understand but are very important, in the There is nothing in life...' Someone said to Pierre in a dream, 'Life is love... To love life is to love God...' And someone has always said the same to me, so love everything, even such a Crazy night! I want to see and love the whole world, the whole world and all Natasha and Maryanka, and I should get out of this place anyway!  …” ————— ① Rostov, Pierre, and Prince Andrew are all characters in Leo Tolstoy's novels. What should I decide to do?After searching in vain for a long time, I returned to the house, completely lost in confused and fruitless meditation.The fire was extinguished, the lamp oil was burned out, and there was a smell of kerosene. The light was already very dim, and only the flickering brilliance of this pale and frightened night could be vaguely seen in the room.I sat down at the desk for a while, then took up my pen and suddenly began to write a letter to Georgi, saying that I would be looking for a position in Orel's Golo in a few days... ten This letter sealed my fate. Of course, I went, but not "in the near future", because I need to prepare a little travel expenses first, but anyway, I went anyway. I remember my last breakfast at home.Immediately after breakfast, I remember, I heard a dull bell ringing under the window, and at the same time a pair of shaggy horses, which are common in country winters, appeared outside the window.The reason why the horse hair was disheveled was because of Fengxue's blowing.On this day, there was heavy milky white goose feather snow, so thick that you can't stretch your fingers... My God, how old this kind of going out is, but how new it is to me!Even the snow on this day seemed to me to be very special, and I was amazed at its whiteness and freshness when my family came out in my father's raccoon fur coat to see me off into the sleigh. Then it was like a dream: in this white kingdom covered with goose feathers and snow, a long, silent road stretched, and a sleigh swayed rhythmically.There is neither sky nor land in this kingdom, only the snow that keeps falling and the smell of the charming winter journey: the stench of horses, the damp collar of raccoon fur, and the smell of broken matches and horse tobacco when smoking... Later, the first telegraph pole appeared faintly in this white world, and some snow-covered snow fences protruded from the snowdrifts on the roadside, which means that this place is no longer the things that live in the grassland, but another One kind of thing, the so-called railway that the Russians have always been particularly excited about... As soon as the train arrived, I said goodbye to the servant, handed him the fur coat, and told him to go back to Baturino. I greeted everyone.So I walked into the crowded third-class carriage, feeling as if I was going out with an unpredictable return date.I was even amazed for a long time by the indifference in the car.Some passengers were drinking tea and eating indifferently, others were sleeping, and some kept throwing firewood into the already hot iron stove because they had nothing to do, making the whole carriage glow red with flames.I sat and enjoyed the heat of this dry iron stove and smelled the smell of birch wood and pig iron.From time to time there was heavy gray snow outside the window, and the whole day was like dusk... I was in the right mood when I stepped into the carriage: I've walked quite a bit since then, and my journey has been nothing short of extraordinary.Years of wandering, nowhere to live, a life of uncertainty and disorganization, of infinite bliss or extreme pain, in short, it all seemed to suit me, perhaps, but on the surface it was futile and meaningless that's all...