Read a love story book for free - Shmelev Ivan. Ivan Shmelev: Love Story

Current page: 1 (the book has 18 pages in total)

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
love story

I

It was spring, the sixteenth in my life, but for me it was the first spring: the former were all mixed up. A blue radiance in the sky, behind the still bare poplars of the garden, the pouring sparkle of drops, gurgling in ice-covered pits, golden puddles in the yard with splashing ducks, the first grass by the fence, which you look at, look at, a thawed patch in the garden, pleasing new - black earth and crosses of chicken legs, - the dazzling glare of glasses and the fluttering of "bunnies", the joyful chime at Easter, the red-blue balls thumping against each other in the breeze, through the thin skin of which one can see red and blue trees and many blazing suns ... - all mingled in a wonderful and sonorous brilliance.

And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a light blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.

The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...

On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Outside the open window - the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with tightly packed snowdrops, thick, blue. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Aimard and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and if my sisters didn't argue - who should read, and if the shaggy librarian didn't say, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would I would have given up the first page and would have taken up Seagull Rock. But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...

Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with canes, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. And she is, elusively beautiful, light as a marshmallow, captivated with her smile ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. Radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking from the past sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glass, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled with her leg, stretched with her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a light shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - “Mika, Mika!” - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner I thought of an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves who was carrying there a plate with a backbone of a herring, and it seemed unbelievable to me that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and kvass, of course, them do not put, but Lanin's water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a gold frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And the box with green onions on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!

I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, which I recently saw in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "exams" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have! - I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. -“You count flies”, “examinations” ... After all, there are people who are completely different ... subtle, noble, gentle ... but we only have nasty things! There they say to the servants - you, the lackey, do not interfere in the conversation, bring it on a silver platter business card... - "Will you order me to accept?" - "Ask for the living room!" - What delicacy! If all alone, on a desert island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "

And Zinaida spoke again. Not really ta, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

... As if we are in the ocean, on a ship. She is stands proudly on the deck, not noticing me. She is tall and slim. Thin, noble features tell her face something heavenly and angelic. She is wearing a blue dress and a wide, light "sombrero" of golden straw. A light but fresh breeze plays playfully with her lush ash-colored curls, beautifully framing her naive-virgin face, on which no life's adversity has yet laid its depressing mark. I am dressed like a prairie hunter, with my inseparable carbine, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low, such as the Mexicans usually wear. Near her elegant cavaliers with walking sticks twinkle. The blue of the sky is clear as the eyes of a baby, and the boundless ocean breathes calmly and evenly. But the barometer has long since fallen. The captain, an old sailor tramp, puts his rough hand on my shoulder. "What do you say, old man?" - he points with an eyebrow at a barely distinguishable speck on the horizon, and his open honest face expresses grave concern. "Masters will have to dance!" I succinctly respond, casting contempt on the twining cavaliers with canes. “You're right, buddy…” the captain says sternly, and an alarming shadow runs across his weather-beaten, ocean-salted face. But you are with me. Providence itself…” and his voice trembled. - Premonition does not deceive me: it is last flight! ... No, my friend ... your consolations are in vain. Or do you not know the old vagabond Jim? ... But this beautiful señorita ... - he pointed to the place under the awning, from where came the serene laughter of a young girl playfully playing with a fan, - entrusted to me by the noble Count d "Alonzo, from Buenos Aires, an old friend of our family. May all perish, but…" and a traitorous tear welled up in his eyes. "I entrust her to you, my friend. Swear on the sacred memory of your mother, and my foster sister, to deliver her safe and sound to her noble father and say that Old Jim's last dying breath...was a farewell to his friends!" Without words, I firmly shake an honest hand sea ​​dog and unruly tears boil in my eyes. "Now I'm calm!" the captain whispers in relief as he heads for his bridge, but I can see from his hurried steps how excited he is. A speck on the horizon has already turned into a cloud, the wind grows stronger, begins to whistle in gear, flies in gusts and turns into a storm. With a sudden flurry, it throws the ship like a piece of wood. A creeping monstrous wave washes away the cavaliers with canes, and the main mast that collapsed before my eyes drags the captain into the raging abyss. “Sink! Let’s go to the bottom!!…” – the sailors roar with wild voices and cut the “ends” on the boats. She is, with marvelous hair flowing, stretches out her hands with mute prayer. But she is indescribably beautiful. I approach calmly and say: “Senorita, in front of you is a friend! Providence itself ... ”- and excitement interrupts my words. "Ah, is that you?!" she exclaims pleadingly, and her eyes filled with tears make her even more beautiful, like a creature from another world! “You were not mistaken, señorita… before you is the same stranger who already once, when the bandits of Don Santo d Arrogazzo, that despicable scoundrel… But you shouldn’t talk about it. Take heart! Providence itself…”

- Eat some pancakes ... - I heard a familiar whisper.

This is Pasha. She put a plate on the bed and ran away, interrupted my dreams.

Without much pleasure, I ate pancakes. The overwhelming sadness did not go away. I began to read First Love again, but they sent me to the library to change the books. Sister said:

- Ask for a continuation of Turgenev, two volumes.

I thought it would continuation, and I cheerfully ran to the library. I no longer wanted to part with First Love, and instead carried the still unread Seagull Rock.

Ashamed to look into his eyes, I asked the shaggy man:

- Please, a continuation of Turgenev ... two volumes! The shaggy one sniffed the books, poking his glasses into each one, looked at me mockingly, it seemed to me, and, humming under his breath, “continuation ... continuation!” - noted and issued books.

- Do not delay, everyone asks for "First Love"! he said sternly from under his hair, and it seemed that he was chuckling. I went down to the Alexander Garden, sat down on a bench and began to look for a "continuation". But there was no continuation.

On the way back, I went, as always, to the chapel and venerated all the icons, "so that everything would be fine." And then there was the thought of Zinaida. The old man in the jacket patted me on the shoulder:

- The Pleasant Father will send you for your zeal!

I was so moved that I put a kopeck on a plate, and I did not have enough for the top of the horse. Dear, I contritely thought that God, perhaps, will punish for such thoughts. So I’m walking, maybe as a punishment? And it became scary: not to fail in the exams!

At home I took up the book again. When I finished reading how Volodya jumped from the high greenhouse to her feet and how she showered him with kisses, I felt such excitement that letters began to flow and my heart beat terribly. I was afraid that now there would be a heart failure, like our baker's at Easter, and I began to be baptized, calling on the Great Martyr Barbara. “Maybe this is a warning for bad thoughts? Lord, forgive me my sins!” I feel better. I wet my forehead with kvass and went to the garden to cool off.

I ran around it three times, but my thoughts did not leave me. “Honey!…” – I said to the sky, caressing the word. And what happened yesterday seemed miraculous now.

Yesterday I walked around the garden, breaking the ice with my heels. The very last stripe, and now - spring. Our "Redhead" was sitting on the shed, he ruled the cat's spring, as Pasha said. And suddenly I heard an exclamation: “My God, they will tear Mika apart! Wow! Mika! From this I shuddered. It was a gentle voice, a heavenly voice! He reached for his heart, and my heart began to pound. "For God's sake, young man... scare Mika out of there... run in behind and scare!" I turned my head and saw nothing. Which Mika? Where is the voice from? “Ah! ... - I heard a capricious whisper, - what are you ... right! Yes, she is on a column, in a blue bow! Well, kitty!” And I finally understood: they were shouting from the neighbors, behind the fence.

"Redhead" had already risen and was walking along the roof. On the pavilion, with its mouth open, a black cat, unfamiliar to me, was stooping and wagging its tail, disheveled and prickly, vicious. And between them, on a fence post, Mika was licking her chest, in a blue bow. I immediately realized what was the matter. I ran out of the garden, scared Miku from the side of the yard, shot a black cat with buckshot and earned a "bravo"! “Mika, Mikochka… silly! Go, Mika!… Please, scare me more!…” Mika was still sitting on the fence, where her voice was coming from. I gave her a quick fright and she disappeared behind the fence. “Oh, how I thank you, young man! I heard a caressing, gentle voice. - You saved Mika for me, my joy! She is still a perfect girl, and these cats are terrible ... They would tear her to pieces! Oh, how I thank you, dear! The fence prevents us, otherwise it seems I would kiss you! Oh, you, you kind of stupid, Mikushka! And I heard Mika being kissed. “Thank you and… goodbye!” I heard a juicy, lovely voice, as if I had been kissed myself. I mumbled something, I don't remember. When I clung to the fence, it was too late: a blue skirt flashed, and heels clattered on the gallery. And in the ears played affectionately - "Goodbye!".

It seemed wonderful now.

The slotted fence to the neighbors seemed completely - like there. And it seemed that fate was here, that we had the same fence, and an outbuilding behind the fence, and sometimes she is. It seemed joyful and eerie that if I looked now, I would see a slender girl, and now - will begin…

And in agonizing expectation and fear, I kissed the cracks in the fence.

There was a courtyard of one swirling, strange person. The swirling one from morning till night rattled his props around the yard, chasing a rooster with a whisk, and shouted at the tenants for the disturbances. Sometimes a new tenant, a fat woman in warts, responded to him from the gallery, that she and her daughter were the most noble and always carried out slops to the right place, “and not in the middle of the yard, God forgive me!”. Twisted, scraping with a whisk, carrying props, pressed his hand to his heart and assured that this did not apply to them, but to these fringed pigs from the lower floor. Grishka recently called him "a heart-rending fool," and recent times I looked at him with interest. And after one conversation, I even hated it.

Even before Mika, the tenants had just moved in, I was surprised at what a thin voice the swirling one suddenly spoke.

- I them, be calm, I'll finish them! I heard a stupid voice. The swirling one stood under the gallery like a general, shaking his whisk furiously. The fat woman was watching from the gallery. “Pigs are uneducated!” The air is so luxurious ... the most spring climate, it's nice to drink tea outside ... and spoil it with all sorts of sewage! Well, tell me, please?!.

- Yes, how is it possible! Hygiene itself begins ... - the fat woman agreed to him.

- And pour and pour! And noble people cannot have slops! ...

- What kind of slop do we have. My daughter is educated, there are doctors ... we always have the smartest conversations ...

- Yes, I ... For God's sake, don't take it at your expense ... I beg you! - All of us, as noble people, and accept an apologetic bow for the trouble, and ... if your young lady is worried, and I don’t chase the pay, I’ll drive the pigs! My dream… in my house, to only noble like family! And before female beauty I always bow. Keep in mind… I am a determined person!

I was outraged by his audacity. To talk like that about a young lady! ... Heart-rending fool!

His last name was Karikh, and for a while I thought he was a German, until this Karikh pulled me off the fence. But it happened before. He pulled my leg so hard that he flew off with his boot, and cursed so much that I immediately realized what a German he was.

In the karikhin yard and lived she is, even before "First Love" and before the story with the cat, she attracted my attention with luxurious brown hair, loose all over her back, and a knitted white blouse that wonderfully fitted her. Her face remained elusive to me. But I noticed a blouse-blouse for a long time. We called such blouses - "jersey", and for some reason this mysterious word worried me. Pasha bought the same blouse for Easter, only blue with stripes - “blue is better for a blonde!” - and I saw from behind the door how she was spinning in front of the mirrors in the hall, hugging her sides and giggling:

- Fathers, how can you see breasts ... mothers, it’s scary to look! ...

She saw that I was peeping—and there was no one in the house—and she began to fidget more and preen herself like a fool.

“Well, I’ve become pretty, haven’t I? ... What a blonde! ... - she said, turning around, and leaned out like a drunk.

I was embarrassed and ran away, and Pasha jumped up and laughed. I really liked her, but it was something ashamed.

The janitor Grishka, who revealed a lot to me in life, once said that this is “everything for the lure of love, special wine things ... women love them so much to show all their giblets.”

Was at her also a cherry-colored velvet cap, like the students in Faust, with a bow on the barrel, and gave her such a daring look that sometimes it seemed to me that he was a pretty mummer boy.

That evening of “First Love” I hung around for a long time near the fence, where there was still a glass strip of snow, but the gooseberries were already green, and Grishka inquired if I had lost a nickel to play against the wall. I said that I had lost a dime, and he looked with me. The place itself seemed extraordinary to me. spoke here she is with me! "Oh, how grateful I am to you, young man!" trembled sweetly in my soul. What an inviting voice! Is she a beauty? It seemed to me from her voice that she was a true beauty, that she had blue-blue eyes, a pink mouth and a noble expression on the face of an aristocrat. How amazingly she said: "Oh, what you ... right!" Capriciously proud. I was annoyed that I didn't see her. He showed his bad manners and savagery. She will think - what an undeveloped boy! But she must have liked me, she surprisingly said: “The fence is preventing us, otherwise I would kiss you!” I should say: "Let me introduce myself ... your neighbor ... I'm so pleased to provide you with this little service, and I'm happy ..." It always starts with trifles, and this kitty, just the case ... Kiss! I should have said to that: "Oh, I'm happy to hear you ... this musical voice!" Well, what would she say for a compliment? I would know right away what I like. And now you don't know...

I was also very sad that something unusual would never happen to me, which I was even afraid to think about, then my heart sank with joy: what if it happens? ... But what could happen ?! I was afraid to imagine: it was so creepy, wonderfully creepy! But what is her face like? Does she look like Zinaida? But what kind of face does Zinaida have? I couldn't imagine. A lovely, tender face ... I enthusiastically pictured to myself how she bends over me and showers me with crazy kisses, as in "First Love" with Volodya, and froze with happiness. With what delight I would have rushed from the highest greenhouse to her feet. But we didn’t have a greenhouse, and from the barn it wasn’t quite that, a terrible disgrace, and some boxes and barrels ... and also this stupid Karikh in his props. Everything seemed so nasty that I was ashamed and wanted to cry. So, it used to be that you return from the theater after magical ballet, and the sleepy cook angrily thrusts a plate with the remains of a pig with porridge:

- Nate, eat up ... and the noodles are sour.

I waited by the fence until dark, but she never showed up.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev

love story

It was spring, the sixteenth in my life, but for me it was the first spring: the former were all mixed up. A blue radiance in the sky, behind the still bare poplars of the garden, the pouring sparkle of drops, gurgling in ice-covered pits, golden puddles in the yard with splashing ducks, the first grass by the fence, which you look at, look at, a thawed patch in the garden, pleasing new - black earth and crosses of chicken legs, - the dazzling glare of glasses and the fluttering of "bunnies", the joyful chime at Easter, the red-blue balls thumping against each other in the breeze, through the thin skin of which one can see red and blue trees and many blazing suns ... - all mingled in a wonderful and sonorous brilliance.

And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a light blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.

The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...

On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Outside the open window - the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with tightly packed snowdrops, thick, blue. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Aimard and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and if my sisters didn't argue - who should read, and if the shaggy librarian didn't say, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would I would have given up the first page and would have taken up Seagull Rock. But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...

Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with canes, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. And she is, elusively beautiful, light as a marshmallow, captivated with her smile ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. The radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking out of the past like a sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glass, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched out her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a bright shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - “Mika, Mika!” - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

The main plot of the book is the struggle between Good and Evil, purity and sin. The hero of the work of I.S. Shmeleva, a fifteen-year-old high school student, a "poor knight," enters into this struggle.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
love story

I

It was spring, the sixteenth in my life, but for me it was the first spring: the former were all mixed up. A blue radiance in the sky, behind the still bare poplars of the garden, the pouring sparkle of drops, gurgling in ice-covered pits, golden puddles in the yard with splashing ducks, the first grass by the fence, which you look at, look at, a thawed patch in the garden, pleasing new - black earth and crosses of chicken legs, - the dazzling glare of glass and the fluttering of "bunnies", the joyful chime at Easter, the red-blue balls thumping against each other in the breeze, through the thin skin of which one can see red and blue trees and many blazing suns ... - all mingled in a wonderful and sonorous brilliance.

And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a light blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.

The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...

On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Outside the open window - the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with tightly packed snowdrops, thick, blue. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Emar and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and, don't argue with my sisters - who should read, and don't say the shaggy librarian, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would gave up the first page and would have taken up the "Rock of the Seagulls". But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...

Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with canes, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. And she is, elusively beautiful, light as a marshmallow, captivated with her smile ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. The radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking out of the past like a sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glass, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched out her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a bright shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - "Mika, Mika!" - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner I thought of an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves who was carrying there a plate with a backbone of a herring, and it seemed unbelievable to me that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and kvass, of course, them do not put, but Lanin's water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a golden frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And the box with green onions on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!

I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, whom I saw recently in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "examinations" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have!” I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. -"Counting flies", "examinations"... After all, there are people who are completely different... subtle, noble, gentle... but we only have nasty things! There, they say to the servants - you, the lackey, do not interfere in the conversation, bring a business card on a silver platter ... - "Will you order me to accept it?" - "Ask for the living room!" - What delicacy! If all alone, on an uninhabited island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "

And Zinaida spoke again. Not really ta, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

"Love Story" - Shmelev's main novel

The basis of the novel "Love Story" was Shmelev's memories of his youth, which passed in the atmosphere of his native Zamoskvorechye, about the first love that ended dramatically, very specific events were widely generalized by the writer, as they revealed the eternal values ​​​​and stable tragic dissonances of human existence as such. In this novel, the writer made an attempt to consider the life of a person as an individual expression of the plans of the Orthodox dogma.

I.S. Shmelev spoke of this novel as follows: “The thing is easy. As if you are sitting in a cinema and - all sorts of performances!<…>I don't ask questions and I don't answer. I don’t rush to heaven on a children’s airplane. I just run the monk and the kite. There are no heroes, but residents. Love is more than enough ... Romanticism - good share there is. But ... with a squint.

In "History of Love" Shmelev came close to discovering the ways of enlightenment of "darkness", for the first time he draws "the struggle of the spirit and its Platonic dream of purity - with the dark element that surrounded it. Main character sees her beloved and characterizes her: “... She appeared on the porch! She laughed... A cherry-coloured cap sat playfully on her lush head, and luxurious hair of golden-dark chestnut beautifully framed her virginal face, on which the implacable life had not yet laid its indelible traces. I, in hunting boots, with a gun, will lead the guests to hunt for black grouse and hares ... And Pasha, like a forest queen, in a wreath of forest flowers, will be waiting for us for dinner, simple but satisfying - capercaillie on a spit and "forest" stew with mushrooms - and rock the baby's cradle. And the guests will say: “Yes, you created amazing life full of amazing poetry, in friendly unity with nature.

The ironic tonality of the text is enhanced by the collision of high vocabulary and pseudo-romantic clichés with colloquial everyday vocabulary. The hero's dreams are often interrupted by the sounds of a Moscow street, the multilingualism of the courtyard, enthusiastic internal monologues and dialogues are replaced by "prosaic" everyday situations: "Oh, is that you?!." - she exclaims with a prayer, and her eyes filled with tears make her even more beautiful, like a creature from another world! - “You were not mistaken, signorita ... Take heart! Providence itself…”.

She will certainly play with her hand. Women always "play with their hands", in all novels ... "She thoughtfully played with his hand!" or - "she gently touched his hand" ... "She took his courageous hand and, playing, put it to her eyes!".

The narrator's letters to Seraphim create comic effect and are based on works in the style of "violent" romanticism and include their characteristic speech means: “Oh, let me at least mentally kiss the edges of your dress!. I burn slowly, I don't sleep and I don't eat, I think about you night and day, and your bodily image divinely fills my soul! Oh, pink-fingered Eos! The dawn of my morning life!”

"Love Story" develops, as it were, at a reduced level of Turgenev's "First Love". It is at this level, not being compared with the noble admirers of Princess Zinaida, that Seraphim's "boyfriends" appear. The mother of Seraphim, although of a different origin than the mother of Zinaida Zasekina, is also perceived in the light of this Turgenev character. Even the games of forfeits at the Zasekins find a peculiar response in the drinking parties at the Seraphim's house. The situations of Turgenev's story are consistently projected onto the situations of Shmelev's novel and are commented on by the narrator, who finds in them either features of similarity, or features of difference with what he is experiencing.

In 1927, the novel by I.S. Shmelev "Love Story". In this (largely autobiographical) work, the writer turned to the years of his youth, to the theme of first love.

The narrative of the novel is often interrupted by the internal monologues of the hero-gymnasium student, in whose imagination there are various paintings. “The opposition “real-imaginary” underlies the technique of montage - the combination of elements that are dissimilar in content or stylistic terms. This creates the effect of "cinema".

On the other hand, the novel, to a greater extent than other works of the writer, is riddled with references to "foreign" texts: quotations, allusions, reminiscences. The reader also encounters special manifestations of intertextuality - free retelling literary works, "playing" with pretexts, travestying their plot situations and ironic reduction or "elevation" of images. Thus, melodramatically spectacular scenes from adventurous or pseudo-romantic stories and novels are played out in the hero's dreams. In internal monologues The narrator constantly uses numerous lexical and phraseological clichés, the source of which is fiction of various genres.

The lyrical plot of Shmelev's novel is the search for Zinaida in the world surrounding the hero. It is characteristic that this proper name is repeatedly extended by the adjective elusive. The name Zinaida is also regularly combined with evaluative epithets. wondrous, radiant, beautiful. In the text, thus, the motive of searching not only true love but also of elusive beauty.

The contextual synonym for the name Zinaida is the word she is , which appears in the text in traditional meaning"beloved", ascending to romantic poetry. The pronominal nature of this word allows it to refer to different referents, while in the text of the novel it is more often used to refer to perfect dream hero: “Above the mud that troubled the soul, she rose, wonderful ... hidden from me somewhere ...”

The image of Zinaida in the text is bifurcated: either the midwife Seraphim or the maid Pasha correlate with him: “I leaned over the snowdrops and kissed their freshness. They smelled so sweet. Thin, like bread. I saw - "First Love"! And passionately kissed the page - Zinaida. In a blue dress, slender, with scarlet fresh lips, like Pasha's, she smiled at me; The halves of the window opened, and I saw... a vision! She (Seraphim) was regally beautiful ... On a white face like snow, her lips were brightly reddened ... "

At the same time, the portraits of the heroines and their characteristics are opposed to each other. The leitmotif of Pasha's descriptions is the names of spring flowers (snowdrops, forget-me-nots, lilies of the valley, lilacs). The dominant color designations in her portrait are white and blue. Indicative epithet forget-me-not used in text. It combines the metonymic meaning relative adjective, the associative-figurative meaning "spring" and the meaning that actualizes the internal form of the original word ("one that will not be forgotten"). The images of spring flowers symbolize the "morning of life", "the first, purest ... love" of the hero.

The leitmotif of the descriptions of the Seraphim is a bluish pince-nez hiding the bloody eyelids and the motionless glass eye. In the contexts dedicated to Seraphim, the motif of blindness develops, uniting the heroine and the narrator. It is significant that he, blinded by love, kisses "both the mold and the rot" of the "slotted fence."

The “world of purity” is surrounded in the novel by the same element of laughter as the “world of dirt” (vulgarity, “sin”), which is adopted in the novel by a childishly naive look and a straightforwardly categorical syllable that remove both polarized views on life to ridiculousness.

For example, the seductress of the young hero, the midwife with gentle name Seraphim, sentimental and illiterate (her Love letters decorate "aramat", "towns", etc.), but Tonya himself looks ridiculous: having read adventure books and romantically inclined, he idealizes a woman ("like the sky, like ... a goddess, like an ideal") - and falls in love with " Dulcinea with a rag "and ends up in the" retinue " beautiful lady- "midwives". Ridiculous in the novel are not only “scientific” attempts to equate love with dark, viscous abysses of lust (a man, seeing “beautiful meat” and “feeling a surge ... um !. of physical need, takes a woman as prey! It’s completely simple”), but also platonic concepts and dreams (“the love of poets is to revere”, somewhere on a desert island “to protect her quiet sleep, standing at the head with a carbine”, if you are lucky - “to merge with her in a friendly holy embrace”, but if fate is against - “to shed tears over her lonely, timeless grave").

In Tony's love fantasies, against the background of a "noble" nature, she appears, "with delicate, noble features", entrusted to a certain ship captain by the "noble Count d" Alonzo "for delivery to the" noble "father ... But the circle of the midwife Seraphim abuses this word: it raises the bar for claims to a place in society (“My dream ... in my house, so that only noble ones, like a family!”), It is regarded as a pass to the chosen circle (according to the fat woman with warts, “she and her daughter are the most noble and endure slops always in the right place”), provokes discussions about the standard of “bontonness” (“And noble people cannot have slops!.”), however, sets the height clearly unbearable (“The window opened and the kettle leaned out. I saw a small handle and a white cuff. The handle was shaking out the teapot. And immediately Karikh ran up and gently swept it with a whisk.") When "slop" turns into a criterion of nobility, the image takes on a satirical tinge, but in general, dreams of "nobility" evoke the irony of stories ovatela - a complex dual relationship.

As E. Tikhomirova notes, “the appearance of the characters from Seraphim’s entourage is exceptionally ugly mother - a fat woman with warts; in Mug, the mother's lover, instead of a face "a blistered mug is a bluish-red piece of meat" ... Everything suggests that external, bodily deformity cannot give consequences other than spiritual impurity, lustful inclinations and a mortal threat to everything pure; ugly, as it were, a nursery of "sin" and "dirt". For beauty, on the contrary, “purity” and sinlessness seem to be the most natural.

It is no coincidence that beauty in the “Love Story” is usually marked with a sky-blue color purified from blood (“sin”) color: the hero’s “objects” must have blue or blue dresses, blouses, skirts, eyes or neck with bluish veins. (Let's add shine in the sky, puddles, morning, snowdrops, alive and painted on a crystal glass, curtains, a stream of sunshine, etc. - it is clear that the abundance of blue and blue is not accidental and significant, it sets a festive mood and a premonition of "purity" and turns the "heavenly" color into one of christian symbols novel). Finally: people who are outwardly ugly, but spiritually beautiful in the "History of Love" are not supposed. “An amazing state of mind (especially since it seems to be difficult to combine with Christian faith)! Taken seriously, it would greatly simplify moral life: it would be possible to judge spiritual virtues by appearance, the slightest damage to beauty would be morally suspicious - so to speak, if there is sin, then it means on the face; and sinners would hide their ugliness as evidence.

However, it is clear that the peculiar moral aestheticism revealed in the composition is a projection of the mental make-up of the young hero-narrator, this “esthete” is in love with the maid Pasha, but only when he sees her clean and well-dressed; when Pasha - on weekdays - is forbidden to dress up in front of her, everything annoys her: illiterate phrases ("they take into account the exams", "really you said it yourself ?!"), "hard hands", "shabby dress", "worn-out shoes, eared" . “But it is interesting that the author is in no hurry to impose young hero the experience of liberation from "aestheticism", moreover, it even serves as a guide in a situation of some serious choice.

“It would seem that a face-to-face encounter with “sin” should inspire an ascetic condemnation of everything that is connected with the flesh. But ... asceticism in the eyes of Shmelev's heroes is devoid of beauty. New worker, a righteous man by nature, Stepan, bathing a recovering boy, inspires him: “It is printed in books - hermits did not wash .... But I believe that this is not from the Lord, but from opinion. Wash yourself, eat, rejoice ... - be like a lily of the field, wash yourself with dew-beauty, wipe yourself with the sun ... - and the soul will sing to the Lord His beauty! As for "sin" - no, it is not justified, but ... its relevance in the world order is being clarified (Shmelev will write about this later, in Heavenly Ways, for example). Stepan the Righteous assures that a fire of temptation is sent to a person (“scorch the body, like a pig is scorched for a holiday”), so that the action of the resurrecting “living water” (“I am living water!”) Was all the more beneficial, so that a person was miraculously reborn, clean and updated.

The element of passion is inseparable from the world; it is needed not so much as a test, but as an experience of death and resurrection, a purifying catastrophe. This, perhaps, is the most important thing in the "History of Love": with disgust perceiving the destructive "sin" and spiritual dirt. The version of the interweaving of the earthly and the heavenly gives the "Love Story" a genuine originality.

Thus, in the "Love Story" the conflict goes back to the image of a shamefully sinful and criminal life, caused by its (conscious or unconscious) rejection from the saving Christian plans and ideals.

The main plot of the book is the struggle between Good and Evil, purity and sin. The hero of the work of I.S. Shmeleva, a fifteen-year-old high school student, a "poor knight", enters into this struggle.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev

love story

It was spring, the sixteenth in my life, but for me it was the first spring: the former were all mixed up. A blue radiance in the sky, behind the still bare poplars of the garden, the pouring sparkle of drops, gurgling in icy pits, golden puddles in the yard with splashing ducks, the first grass by the fence, which you look at, look at, a thawed patch in the garden, pleasing with new - black earth and crosses chicken paws, - the dazzling glare of glass and the fluttering of "bunnies", the joyful chime at Easter, the red-blue balls thumping against each other in the breeze, through the thin skin of which one can see red and blue trees and many blazing suns ... - everything mixed up in a wonderful and resounding brilliance.

And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a light blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.

The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...

On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Outside the open window - the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with tightly packed snowdrops, thick, blue. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Aimard and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and if my sisters didn't argue - who should read, and if the shaggy librarian didn't say, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would I would have given up the first page and would have taken up Seagull Rock. But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...

Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with canes, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. And she, subtly beautiful, light as a marshmallow, carried away with her smile ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. The radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking out of the past like a sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glass, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched out her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a bright shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - “Mika, Mika!” - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner I thought of an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves, who was carrying a plate with a spine of herring there, and it seemed to me incredible that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and, of course, they don’t sell kvass, but Lanin’s water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a gold frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And the box with green onions on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!

I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, which I recently saw in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "exams" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have! - I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. - “You count flies”, “examinations” ... After all, there are people who are completely different ... subtle, noble, gentle ... but we only have nasty things! There they say to the servants - you, the lackey do not interfere in the conversation, bring a business card on a silver platter ... - “Will you order me to accept it?” - “Ask for the drawing room!” - What delicacy! If all alone, on a desert island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "

And Zinaida spoke again. Not exactly the same, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

... As if we are in the ocean, on a ship. She proudly stands on the deck, not noticing me. She is tall and slim. Thin, noble features tell her face something heavenly and angelic. She is wearing a blue dress and a wide, light "sombrero" of golden straw. A light but fresh breeze plays playfully with her lush ash-colored curls, beautifully framing her naive-virgin face, on which no life's adversity has yet laid its depressing mark. I am dressed like a prairie hunter, with my inseparable carbine, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low, such as the Mexicans usually wear. Elegant gentlemen with walking sticks curl around her. The blue of the sky is clear as the eyes of a baby, and the boundless ocean breathes calmly and evenly. But the barometer has long since fallen. The captain, an old sailor tramp, puts his rough hand on my shoulder. "What do you say, old man?" - he points an eyebrow at a barely visible speck on the horizon, and his open honest face expresses severe concern. "Masters will have to dance!" I succinctly respond, casting contempt on the twining cavaliers with canes. “You're right, buddy…” the captain says sternly, and an alarming shadow runs across his weather-beaten, ocean-salted face. But you are with me. Providence itself…” and his voice trembled. - Premonition does not deceive me: this is the last flight! ... No, my friend ... your consolations are in vain. Or do you not know the old vagabond Jim? ... But this beautiful señorita ... - he pointed to the place under the awning, from where came the serene laughter of a young girl playfully playing with a fan, - entrusted to me by the noble Count d "Alonzo, from Buenos Aires, an old friend of our family. May all perish, but…" and a traitorous tear welled up in his eyes. "I entrust her to you, my friend. Swear on the sacred memory of your mother, and my foster sister, to deliver her safe and sound to her noble father and say that Old Jim's last dying breath...was a farewell to his friends!" Without a word, I firmly shake the honest hand of the sea dog, and defiant tears boil in my eyes. "Now I am calm!" - the captain whispers with relief, heading for his bridge, but I can see from his hurried steps how excited he is. The speck on the horizon has already turned into a cloud, the wind grows stronger, begins to whistle in gear, flies in gusts and turns into a storm. the ship is like a piece of wood, the crept monstrous wave washes away the cavaliers with canes, and the main mast that collapsed before my eyes drags the captain into the raging abyss. “Sink! Let’s go to the bottom!!…” – the sailors roar with wild voices and cut the “ends” on the boats. She, with marvelous hair flowing, stretches out her hands with mute prayer. But she is indescribably beautiful. I approach calmly and say: “Senorita, in front of you is a friend! Providence itself ... ”- and excitement interrupts my words. "Ah, is that you?!" she exclaims pleadingly, and her eyes filled with tears make her even more beautiful, like a creature from another world! “You were not mistaken, señorita… before you is the same stranger who already once, when the bandits of Don Santo d Arrogazzo, that despicable scoundrel… But you shouldn’t talk about it. Take heart! Providence itself…”

- Eat some pancakes ... - I heard a familiar whisper.

This is Pasha. She put a plate on the bed and ran away, interrupted my dreams.

Without much pleasure, I ate pancakes. The overwhelming sadness did not go away. I began to read First Love again, but they sent me to the library to change the books. Sister said:

- Ask for a continuation of Turgenev, two volumes.

It seemed to me that there would be a sequel, and I cheerfully ran to the library. I no longer wanted to part with First Love, and instead carried the still unread Seagull Rock.

Ashamed to look into his eyes, I asked the shaggy man:

- Please, a continuation of Turgenev ... two volumes! The shaggy one sniffed the books, poking his glasses into each one, looked at me mockingly, it seemed to me, and, humming under his breath, “continuation ... continuation!” - noted and issued books.

- Do not delay, everyone asks for "First Love"! he said sternly from under his hair, and it seemed that he was chuckling. I went down to the Alexander Garden, sat down on a bench and began to look for a "continuation". But there was no continuation.

On the way back, I went, as always, to the chapel and venerated all the icons, "so that everything would be fine." And then there was the thought of Zinaida. The old man in the jacket patted me on the shoulder:

- The Pleasant Father will send you for your zeal!

I was so moved that I put a kopeck on a plate, and I did not have enough for the top of the horse. Dear, I contritely thought that God, perhaps, will punish for such thoughts. So I’m walking, maybe as a punishment? And it became scary: not to fail in the exams!

At home I took up the book again. When I finished reading how Volodya jumped from the high greenhouse to her feet and how she showered him with kisses, I felt such excitement that letters began to flow and my heart beat terribly. I was afraid that now there would be a heart failure, like our baker's at Easter, and I began to be baptized, calling on the Great Martyr Barbara. “Maybe this is a warning for bad thoughts? Lord, forgive me my sins!” I feel better. I wet my forehead with kvass and went to the garden to cool off.

I ran around it three times, but my thoughts did not leave me. “Honey!…” – I said to the sky, caressing the word. And what happened yesterday seemed miraculous now.

Yesterday I walked around the garden, breaking the ice with my heels. The very last stripe, and now - spring. Our "Redhead" was sitting on the shed, he ruled the cat's spring, as Pasha said. And suddenly I heard an exclamation: “My God, they will tear Mika apart! Wow! Mika! From this I shuddered. It was a gentle voice, a heavenly voice! He reached for his heart, and my heart began to pound. "For God's sake, young man... scare Mika out of there... run in behind and scare!" I turned my head and saw nothing. Which Mika? Where is the voice from? “Ah! ... - I heard a capricious whisper, - what are you ... right! Yes, she is on a column, in a blue bow! Well, kitty!” And I finally understood: they were shouting from the neighbors, behind the fence.

"Redhead" had already risen and was walking along the roof. On the pavilion, with its mouth open, a black cat, unfamiliar to me, was stooping and wagging its tail, disheveled and prickly, vicious. And between them, on a fence post, Mika was licking her chest, in a blue bow. I immediately realized what was the matter. I ran out of the garden, scared Miku from the side of the yard, shot a black cat with buckshot and earned a "bravo"! “Mika, Mikochka… silly! Go, Mika!… Please, scare me more!…” Mika was still sitting on the fence, where her voice was coming from. I gave her a quick fright and she disappeared behind the fence. “Oh, how I thank you, young man! I heard a caressing, gentle voice. - You saved Mika for me, my joy! She is still a perfect girl, and these cats are terrible ... They would tear her to pieces! Oh, how I thank you, dear! The fence prevents us, otherwise it seems I would kiss you! Oh, you, you kind of stupid, Mikushka! And I heard Mika being kissed. “Thank you and… goodbye!” I heard a juicy, lovely voice, as if I had been kissed myself. I mumbled something, I don't remember. When I clung to the fence, it was too late: a blue skirt flashed, and heels clattered on the gallery. And in the ears played affectionately - "Goodbye!".

It seemed wonderful now.

The slotted fence to the neighbors seemed completely - like there. And it seemed that fate was here, that we had the same fence, and an outbuilding behind the fence, and sometimes it appears. It seemed joyful and eerie that if I looked now, I would see a slender girl, and now it would begin ...

And in agonizing expectation and fear, I kissed the cracks in the fence.

There was a yard of a tall, strange man. The swirling one from morning till night rattled his props around the yard, chasing a rooster with a whisk, and shouted at the tenants for the disturbances. Sometimes a new tenant, a fat woman in warts, responded to him from the gallery, that she and her daughter were the most noble and always carried out slops to the right place, “and not in the middle of the yard, God forgive me!”. Twisted, scraping with a whisk, carrying props, pressed his hand to his heart and assured that this did not apply to them, but to these fringed pigs from the lower floor. Grishka recently called him "a heart-rending fool," and lately I've been looking at him with interest. And after one conversation, I even hated it.

Even before Mika, the tenants had just moved in, I was surprised at what a thin voice the swirling one suddenly spoke.

- I them, be calm, I'll finish them! I heard a stupid voice. The swirling one stood under the gallery like a general, shaking his whisk furiously. The fat woman was watching from the gallery. “Pigs are uneducated!” The air is so luxurious ... the most spring climate, it's nice to drink tea outside ... and spoil it with all sorts of sewage! Well, tell me, please?!.

- Yes, how is it possible! Hygiene itself begins ... - the fat woman agreed to him.

- And pour and pour! And noble people cannot have slops! ...

- What kind of slop do we have. My daughter is educated, there are doctors ... we always have the smartest conversations ...

- Yes, I ... For God's sake, don't take it at your expense ... I beg you! - All of us, as noble people, and accept an apologetic bow for the trouble, and ... if your young lady is worried, and I don’t chase the pay, I’ll drive the pigs! My dream… in my house, to only noble like family! And I always bow before female beauty. Keep in mind… I am a determined person!

I was outraged by his audacity. To talk like that about a young lady! ... Heart-rending fool!

His last name was Karikh, and for a while I thought he was a German, until this Karikh pulled me off the fence. But it happened before. He pulled my leg so hard that he flew off with his boot, and cursed so much that I immediately realized what a German he was.

She lived in Karikha’s yard, even before “First Love” and before the story with the cat, she attracted my attention with her luxurious chestnut hair, loose all over her back, and a knitted white blouse that wonderfully fitted her. Her face remained elusive to me. But I noticed a blouse-blouse for a long time. We called such blouses - "jersey", and for some reason this mysterious word worried me. Pasha bought the same blouse for Easter, only blue with stripes - “blue is better for a blonde!” - and I saw from behind the door how she was spinning in front of the mirrors in the hall, hugging her sides and giggling:

- Fathers, how can you see breasts ... mothers, it’s scary to look! ...

She saw that I was peeping—and there was no one in the house—and she began to fidget more and preen herself like a fool.

“Well, I’ve become pretty, haven’t I? ... What a blonde! ... - she said, turning around, and leaned out like a drunk.

I was embarrassed and ran away, and Pasha jumped up and laughed. I really liked her, but it was something ashamed.

The janitor Grishka, who revealed a lot to me in life, once said that this is “everything for the lure of love, special wine things ... women love them so much to show all their giblets.”

She also had a cherry-coloured velvet cap, like the students in Faust, with a bow on the barrel, and gave her such a daring look that sometimes it seemed to me as if he was a pretty, dressed-up boy.

That evening of “First Love” I hung around for a long time near the fence, where there was still a glass strip of snow, but the gooseberries were already green, and Grishka inquired if I had lost a nickel to play against the wall. I said that I had lost a dime, and he looked with me. The place itself seemed extraordinary to me. Here she spoke to me! "Oh, how grateful I am to you, young man!" trembled sweetly in my soul. What an inviting voice! Is she a beauty? It seemed to me from her voice that she was a true beauty, that she had blue-blue eyes, a pink mouth and a noble expression on the face of an aristocrat. How amazingly she said: "Oh, what you ... right!" Capriciously proud. I was annoyed that I didn't see her. He showed his bad manners and savagery. She will think - what an undeveloped boy! But she must have liked me, she surprisingly said: “The fence is preventing us, otherwise I would kiss you!” I should say: "Let me introduce myself ... your neighbor ... I'm so pleased to provide you with this little service, and I'm happy ..." It always starts with trifles, and this kitty, just the case ... Kiss! I should have said to that, "Oh, I'm happy to hear you... that musical voice!" Well, what would she say for a compliment? I would know right away what I like. And now you don't know...

I was also very sad that something unusual would never happen to me, which I was even afraid to think about, then my heart sank with joy: what if it happens? ... But what could happen ?! I was afraid to imagine: it was so creepy, wonderfully creepy! But what is her face like? Does she look like Zinaida? But what kind of face does Zinaida have? I couldn't imagine. A lovely, tender face ... I enthusiastically pictured to myself how she bends over me and showers me with crazy kisses, as in "First Love" with Volodya, and froze with happiness. With what delight I would have rushed from the highest greenhouse to her feet. But we didn’t have a greenhouse, and from the barn it wasn’t quite that, a terrible disgrace, and some boxes and barrels ... and also this stupid Karikh in his props. Everything seemed so nasty that I was ashamed and wanted to cry. So, it happened, you would return from the theater after a magical ballet, and the sleepy cook angrily thrusts a plate with the remains of a pig with porridge:

- Nate, eat up ... and the noodles are sour.

I waited by the fence until dark, but she never showed up.