Chapter 4 Chapter 3 Pavel (1)

He sat in his son's room, with the calico suit on his lap, breathing evenly, concentrating on trying to conjure a ghost that must not have left the place. Time passed minute by minute.From the next room, through the partition, came the muffled conversation of the woman and the child, and the sound of utensils on which the table was set.He put the clothes aside and knocked on the door.The conversation stopped immediately.He entered the room and said, "I'm leaving now." "Look, we're going to dinner. You're welcome to join us." Her food preparation was simple: soup, potatoes, salt and butter.

"How did my son come to live with you?" he asked during the meal.He still uses the title of my son very carefully: if the name is said directly, he will not be able to bear it. She hesitated for a moment, and he understood why.She could say: He was a lovely young man; we liked him.But the word "before she was alive" was an obstacle, a big stone on her way.She wouldn't say it outright to his face until she had avoided the word. "Introduced by an old lodger," she said at last.That's it. She gave him the impression that she was dry, as dry as a butterfly's wing.It was as if between her skin and her petticoat, between her skin and the black stockings she must have been wearing, there was a very thin layer of white ash, and if it was loosened at the shoulders, it would not take much trouble, and all the clothes would fall off to the floor. superior.

He really wanted to see her naked, this woman exuding the last breath of youth. She was not what is called a well-bred woman; but who ever heard Russian better than she?The tongue in her mouth is like a flapping bird: fluffy feathers, fluttering softly. But he couldn't see his mother's gentle dryness in his daughter.On the contrary, the daughter has a fluid feeling like a young doe, easy to trust others but anxious, stretching her neck to sniff a stranger's hand, but ready to jump away at any time.How could this dark-haired woman have a blond-haired child?But many tell-tale signs were evident: tiny fingers that had barely grown into shape; dark eyes as bright as a Byzantine saint's portrait; eyebrows with sculptural delicacy; even that sullen expression.

It is strange that a certain feature of the face can be perfect in the child, but it is like a copy in the parents! The girl raised her eyes, met his probing gaze, and immediately avoided in a panic.A rush of anger rose in him.He wanted to grab her hand and shake her body.look at me, boy!He wants to say: Look at me, learn! His knife fell to the ground.Relieved, he took the opportunity to bend down to pick it up.The skin on his face seemed to be peeled off, and he seemed compelled to keep thrusting a bloody, ghastly mask in front of the two of them, to force them to see. The woman spoke again. "Matrona and Pavel Alexandrovitch are good friends," she said calmly and cautiously.Then turning to the kid: "He gives you lessons, doesn't he?"

"He taught me French and German. Mainly French." Matrona: The name doesn't suit her.An old crone's name, a small, wrinkled old crone's name. "I want you to keep something of him," he said, "as a keepsake." The child raised his eyes again, and looked at him in bewilderment, as a dog looks at a stranger, as if he hadn't heard what he said.That is how the matter?The answer was: she couldn't think of me as Pavel's father.She tried to find something of Pavel in me, but couldn't.He thought again: Pavel was not dead to her.He still lived somewhere inside her, exuding the warmth and sweetness of youth.I'm so dark and bony and bearded that I must be as nasty as death with a scythe.Death bared his inch-long teeth, and his hips and ankles creaked as he walked.

He doesn't want to talk about his son.But willing to listen to others, yeah, of course I would.By counting, today is the tenth day since Pavel's death.As the days passed, the memories of Pavel that still hung in the air like autumn leaves would be trampled into the mud or swept away by the wind into the blinding air.He wants to collect these memories and preserve them.Death, mourning, and forgetting are the laws that everyone must follow.Some people say that if there is no forgetting, the world will soon become nothing but a huge library.That being said, the thought of Pavel being forgotten made him flail, like a cranky old bull, staring dangerously.

He wants to listen to what people have to say.It was unbelievable that the child was going to say it. "Pavel Alexandrovitch,"—she glanced at her mother to make sure she could pronounce the dead name—"said he was staying in Petersburg for a short time, and then he was going to France. " She stopped.He waited anxiously for her to continue. "Why is he going to France?" she asked, addressing him now alone. "What's the matter with France?" France? "He doesn't want to go to France, he just wants to leave Russia," he replied. "When people are young, they are annoyed by everything around them. People are annoyed by their own country because it seems old and boring. People want new visions, new ideas. People think they can find their future in France, Germany or England, and their own country Too dull to find."

The kid frowned.He spoke of France, of his country, but she heard something else, something hidden in the words: resentment. "My son's education was fragmented," he said, now not to the child but to his mother. "I keep making him change schools. Simple reason: he won't get up in the morning. No way to wake him up. Maybe I'm taking it too seriously. But if you don't have classes, you can't expect to enroll." Strange enough to say such a thing at such a time!Nevertheless, he turned to his daughter and continued. "His French is shaky—you must have noticed. Perhaps that's why he's going to France—to improve his French."

"He reads a lot," said my mother. "Sometimes the lights are on all night in his house." Her voice was low and steady. "We don't mind. He was always considerate. We liked Pavel Alexandrovitch very much—didn't we?" Her smile on the child seemed to him like a caress. During his lifetime.She finally said it. She frowned. "What I never understood was..." There was an awkward silence.He makes no effort to alleviate it.Instead, he bristled like a wolf protecting its pup.You have to be careful, he thought: you are willing to take the risk and say something against him, and you will bear the consequences yourself!I am both his mother and his father. To him, I am everything and more!He wanted to stand up and yell.what is it then?Who is the enemy he is fighting against?

Something in his throat—a moan—was coming up, and he couldn't hold it in any longer.He covered his face with his hands; tears trickled down between his fingers. He heard the woman get up from the table.He waited for the child to stand up too, but she didn't move. After a while, he dried his eyes and blew his nose. "Sorry, I lost my temper," he whispered to the kid, who was still sitting there, looking down at the empty plate. He went into Pavel's room and closed the door.sad?No, the truth is he's not upset.Not sad at all: he was outraged that all the men were alive while his son was dead.He was especially angry with the little girl, and despite her docile appearance, he wanted to tear her to pieces.

Lying on the bed with his arms folded, he breathed heavily, trying to drive out the demon that was trying to control him.He knew that he looked like a dead body, and that the devil he was talking about might just be his own soul flapping its wings.It's kind of disgusting to be alive right now.He wants to die.More than death: he wanted to be wiped out, to disappear completely. As for the afterlife, he didn't believe it.He was going to stay by the river with hordes of other dead souls, waiting for the barge that would never come.The air was cold and damp, the black water lapped against the banks, his clothes would rot and fall to his feet, and he would never see his son again. He counted the days again with cold fingers clasped across his chest.ten days.That's how it feels after ten days. Poetry might remind him of his son.He had a vague sense of the rhythm and music of the poem that might apply.But he is no poet: he is more like a dog who digs here and there, forgets where to bury his bones. He waited until the light under the crack of the door disappeared, then quietly left the room and returned to his boarding house.