Gooseberry
Tortured by doubts for a long time thought to post it here or not. This is the story of A. P. Chekhov - "Gooseberry". You are already at a loss as to why I uploaded fiction here? My answer: reading the topics from the blog "It's time to dump!" I remembered this story. Please do not judge strictly.
Early in the morning rain clouds surrounded the whole sky; it was quiet, not hot and boring, as happens on gray cloudy days, when clouds are hanging over the field a long time ago, waiting for rain, but it is not there. Veterinary doctor Ivan Ivanovich and gymnasium teacher Burkin were already tired of walking, and the field seemed endless to them. Far ahead, windmills of the village of Mironositsky were barely visible, to the right stretched and then disappeared far beyond the village a number of hills, and both of them knew that it was the river bank, there were meadows, green willows, homesteads, and if you stand on one of the hills, you can see from there the same huge field, telegraph and train, which from a distance looks like a creeping caterpillar, and in clear weather even the city can be seen from there. Now, in calm weather, when all nature seemed gentle and thoughtful, Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin were imbued with love for this field, and both were thinking about how great, how beautiful this country is.
“The last time we were in the barn of the headman Prokofy,” said Burkin, “you were going to tell a story.”
- Yes, I wanted to tell you about my brother then.
Ivan Ivanovitch sighed loudly and lit a pipe to start telling, but just at that time it started to rain. And after five minutes it was already pouring rain, heavy, and it was difficult to foresee when it would end. Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin stopped in thought; the dogs, already wet, stood with tails between their legs and looked at them with tenderness.
“We need to hide somewhere,” said Burkin.
- Let's go to Alekhin. It's close here.
- Come on.
They turned aside and walked all along a sloping field, now straight, then taking it to the right, until they reached the road. Soon the poplars, the garden, then the red roofs of the barns appeared; a river glistened, and a view of a wide stretch with a mill and a white bath-house opened. This was Sofyino, where Alekhine lived.
The mill worked, drowning out the sound of rain; the dam was trembling. Here, near the carts, there were wet horses, their heads bowed, and people were walking, covered with bags. It was damp, dirty, uncomfortable, and the view of the reach was cold and angry. Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin were already feeling sputum, uncleanness, inconvenience in their whole body, their legs were heavy with mud, and when, after passing the dam, they rose to the manor barns, they were silent, as if they were angry with each other.
In one of the barns there was a roar; the door was open and dust was falling out of it. On the threshold stood Alekhin himself, a man of about forty, tall, full, with long hair, looking more like a professor or artist than a landowner. He was wearing a white shirt that had not been washed for a long time with a rope belt, instead of pants his pants, and mud and straw also stuck on his boots. The nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognized Ivan Ivanich and Burkina and, apparently, was very happy.
“Welcome, gentlemen, to the house,” he said, smiling. - I am now, this minute.
The house was large, two-story. Alekhine lived below, in two rooms with arches and with small windows, where the clerks once lived; there was a simple setting, and it smelled of rye bread, cheap vodka and harness. Upstairs, in the front rooms, he was rarely, only when guests came. Ivana and Burkina met a maid in the house, a young woman so beautiful that they both stopped at once and looked at each other.
“You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen,” said Alekhine, entering behind them in the anteroom. - I didn’t expect it! Pelagia, ”he said to the maid,“ let the guests change into something. ” By the way, I will change. Just need to first go to wash, but then I, it seems, from the spring did not wash. Would you, gentlemen, want to go to the bathhouse, but here they will cook it.
Beautiful Pelagia, so delicate and seemingly so soft, brought sheets and soap, and Alekhine and the guests went to the bathhouse.
“Yes, I haven’t washed for a long time,” he said, undressing. “As you see, I have a good bath, my father still built, but somehow there is no time to wash.”
He sat down on the step and lather his long hair and neck, and the water around him turned brown.
“Yes, I confess ...” said Ivan Ivanovich, looking significantly at his head.
“I haven’t been washed for a long time ...” repeated Alekhin embarrassedly and once more soaped, and the water around him turned dark blue like ink.
Ivan Ivanovitch went outside, rushed into the water with a noise and swam in the rain, his arms wide-spreading, and from him came waves, and white lilies swayed on the waves; he swam to the very middle of the reach and dived, and a minute later he appeared in another place and swam further, and everything dived, trying to reach the bottom. “Oh, my God ...” he repeated, enjoying. “Oh, my God ...” He swam to the mill, talked with the peasants about something and turned back, and in the middle of the reach he lay down, exposing his face to the rain. Burkin and Alekhin got dressed and got ready to leave, but he all swam and dived.
“Oh dear ...” he said. - Oh, God have mercy.
- Will you! Shouted Burkin to him.
Returned to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the big living room upstairs, both Burkin and Ivan Ivanovich, dressed in silk dressing gowns and warm shoes, sat in armchairs, and Alekhine himself, washed, brushed, in a new coat, walked around the living room, evidently feeling the warmth with pleasure. clean, dry dress, light shoes, and when beautiful Pelagia, walking silently on the carpet and smiling softly, served tea with jam on a tray, only then Ivan Ivanovitch began the story, and it seemed that not only Burkin and Alekhin listened to him, but also old and young ladies and military, calmly and strictly looking gold frames.
“We are two brothers,” he began, “I, Ivan Ivanitch, and the other, Nikolai Ivanovich, two years younger.” I went to the academic department, became a veterinarian, and Nikolai had already been in the state chamber from the age of nineteen. Our father Chimsh-Himalayan was from cantonists, but after serving as an officer, he left us a hereditary nobility and a little name. After his death, the little one was ransacked for debts, but, no matter how, we spent our childhood in the village in the wild. We, like peasant children, spent our days and nights in the fields, in the woods, watched the horses, plowed our bones, fished, and the like ... Did you know who, at least once in their life, caught a ruff or saw in the autumn migratory thrushes like them on clear, cool days, they rush in flocks above the village, he is no longer a city dweller, and until death he will be smacked at will. My brother missed the state chamber. Years passed, and he still sat in one place, wrote all the same papers and thought everything about the same thing as in the village. And this longing in him gradually resulted in a certain desire, a dream to buy a small mansion somewhere on the bank of a river or a lake.
He was a kind, meek person, I loved him, but I never sympathized with this desire to lock myself up for life in my own estate. It is customary to say that a person needs only three arshin of the earth. But after all, three arshins are needed by the corpse, and not by man. And they also say now that if our intelligentsia has a tendency to land and is striving into the homesteads, then this is good. But after all these estates are the same three arshins of the earth. To leave the city, from the struggle, from everyday noise, to leave and hide in the manor is not life, it is egoism, laziness, it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without achievement. A man needs not three arshins of the earth, not a manor, but the entire globe, all nature, where in the open he could manifest all the properties and characteristics of his free spirit.
My brother Nicholas, sitting in his office, dreamed of how he would eat his own soup, from which such a delicious smell came from all over the yard, eat on green grass, sleep in the sun, sit for hours at a gate on a bench and look at the field and the forest. Agricultural books and all these calendars made up his joy, his beloved spiritual food; he liked to read newspapers, but he read only announcements about the fact that so many dessiatines of arable land and meadows were sold with a manor, a garden, a mill, and flow ponds. And in his head, he painted paths in the garden, flowers, fruits, birdhouses, crucians in ponds and, you know, all this stuff. These imaginary pictures were different, depending on the ads that came across to him, but for some reason in each of them there was certainly a gooseberry. Not a single manor, not a single poetic corner, he could not imagine without the fact that there was no gooseberry.
“Village life has its comforts,” he said, it happened. “You sit on the balcony, drink tea, and on the pond your ducks swim, it smells so good, and ... and the gooseberry grows.
He drew a plan for his estate, and every time he had the same thing on the plan: a) a manor house, b) a human, c) a garden, d) a gooseberry. He lived sparingly: undernourished, underfed, dressed God knows how, like a beggar, he saved everything and put it in the bank. Terribly greedy. It was painful to look at him, and I gave him something and sent it on holidays, but he also hid it. If a person had an idea, then nothing can be done about it.
The years went by, transferred him to another province, he had passed forty years, and he still read ads in newspapers and saved. Then, I hear, got married. All with the same goal, in order to buy a manor house with gooseberries, he married an old, ugly widow, without any feeling, and only because she had a lot of money. He also lived sparingly with her, holding her hand in hand, and put her money in his name in the bank. Previously, she was a postmaster and got used to him to pies and liqueurs, but she didn't have enough bread for her second husband; I began to wither away from such a life, and after three years I took and gave my soul to God. And, of course, my brother did not think for a single moment that he was to blame for her death. Money, like vodka, makes a person an eccentric. A merchant died in our town. Before his death, he ordered me to give myself a plate of honey and ate all my money and winning tickets along with honey so that no one could get it. Once at the train station, I examined the herds, and at that time one young lady got under the locomotive, and his leg was cut off. We carry him to the emergency room, blood pours - a terrible thing, but he still asks for his leg to be found, and everything worries: in a boot on his severed leg twenty rubles, no matter how they disappear.
“You are from another opera,” said Burkin.
“After the death of his wife,” continued Ivan Ivanovich, after thinking for half a minute, “my brother began to look out for his estate. Of course, at least five years of looking out for, but in the end you will make a mistake and buy something you didn’t dream about. Brother Nicholas, through a commission agent, with a debt transfer, bought one hundred and twelve acres with a grand house, with a human, with a park, but neither an orchard, nor a gooseberry, nor a pond with ducks; there was a river, but the water in it was the color of coffee, because on one side of the estate there is a brick factory, and on the other - kostopalny. But my Nikolai Ivanovich didn’t have much sorrow; he wrote out twenty gooseberry bushes to himself, planted and healed the landowner.
Last year I went to see him. I will go, I think, I will look, as well as that there. In the letters of his brothers called his estate as: Chumbaroklova wasteland, Himalayan identity. I arrived at the Himalayan identity in the afternoon. It was hot. Near the ditch, fences, hedges, are packed with rows of Christmas trees - and you do not know how to get to the yard, where to put the horse. I go to the house, and to meet me a red dog, fat, like a pig. I want her to bark, but laziness. The cook came out of the kitchen, bare-legged, fat, also resembling a pig, and said that the master was resting after dinner. I went to my brother, he was sitting in bed, his knees covered with a blanket; aged, stout, flabby; cheeks, nose and lips are pulled forward, - and look, grunts at the blanket.
We embraced and wept with joy and with the sad thought that we were once young, and now both are gray, and it's time to die. He got dressed and led me to show my estate.
- Well, how are you doing here? - I asked.
- Yes, nothing, thank God, I live well.
It was not the former timid poor bureaucrat, but a real landowner, sir. He already settled down here, got used and got a taste; he ate a lot, washed himself in a bath, became full, already had legal proceedings with society and with both factories, and was very offended when the men did not call him "Your Honor". And he cared about his soul solidly, in a lordly manner, and he did good deeds not simply, but with importance. And what good things? He treated men from all diseases with soda and castor oil, and on his birthday day he served a prayer of thanksgiving in the village, and then he put a half-bucket, he thought it was necessary. Ah, those horrible polvedra! Today, the fat landlord drags the muzhiks to the district chief for harm, and tomorrow, on a solemn day, puts them half a bucket, and they drink and shout “Hurray,” and the drunken ones bow to his feet. The change of life for the better, satiety, idleness develop self-esteem in the Russian man, the most arrogant. Nikolay Ivanych, who was once afraid to have his own views for himself personally in the government chamber, was now speaking only truths, and in such a tone, as if the minister: “Education is necessary, but for the people it is premature,” “corporal punishment is generally harmful, but in some cases, they are useful and irreplaceable. "
“I know the people and can handle them,” he said. - The people love me. It costs me only a finger to move, and for me the people will do whatever they want.
And all this, mind you, was spoken with an intelligent, kind smile. He repeated twenty times: "we are nobles", "I am like a nobleman"; obviously, he no longer remembered that our grandfather was a peasant, and his father was a soldier. Even our surname Chimshah-Himalayan, in essence incongruous, now seemed to it sonorous, noble and very pleasant.
But it's not about him, but about me. I want to tell you what a change occurred in me in these few hours while I was in his estate. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook served a full plate of gooseberries on the table. It was not purchased, but its own gooseberry, collected for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolai Ivanovich laughed and looked at the gooseberry silently, with tears for a minute - he could not speak with emotion, then put one berry in his mouth, looked at me with the triumph of a child who finally got his favorite toy, and said:
- So tasty!
And he ate greedily and repeated everything:
- Oh, how delicious! You try!
It was harsh and sour, but, as Pushkin said, “darkness of truths are more precious to us than our exalting deception.” I saw a happy man, whose cherished dream came true so obviously, who achieved his goal in life, got what he wanted, who was satisfied with his fate, with himself. For some reason, something sad was always mixed with my thoughts about human happiness, but now, at the sight of a happy person, I was overwhelmed by a heavy feeling close to despair. It was especially hard at night. I was given a bed in the room next to my brother's bedroom, and I could hear how he didn’t sleep and how he got up and went to the plate with gooseberries and picked it up by the berries. I thought: how, in essence, a lot of happy, happy people! What an overwhelming force! You look at this life: arrogance and idleness of the strong, ignorance and bestiality of the weak, impossible poverty around, cramped, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lies ... Meanwhile, in all houses and on the streets, silence, calmness; of the fifty thousand who live in the city, not one who would have cried out, loudly indignant. We see those who go to the market for food, eat during the day, sleep at night, who speak their nonsense, marry, grow old, complacently drag their dead men to the cemetery; but we do not see and do not hear those who suffer, and that which is terrible in life happens somewhere behind the curtain. Everything is quiet, calm, and only one mute statistic protests: so many crazy things, so many buckets drunk, so many children died from malnutrition ... And such an order is obviously needed; obviously, happy feels good only because the unfortunate bear their burden in silence, and without this silence, happiness would not have been possible. This is general hypnosis. It is necessary that behind the door of every contented, happy person there was someone with a hammer and constantly reminded with a knock that there are unhappy people, that no matter how happy he is, life will show him his claws sooner or later, trouble will be shaken - illness, poverty , loss, and no one will see and hear, as he now does not see or hear others. But there is no man with a hammer, he lives happily for himself, and small everyday concerns worry him a little, like the wind aspen, and everything is fine.
“That night it became clear to me that I, too, was pleased and happy,” continued Ivan Ivanovich, getting up. - I also at lunch and on the hunt taught how to live, how to believe, how to rule the people. I also said that learning is light, that education is necessary, but for ordinary people, one diploma is enough for now. Freedom is a blessing, I said, it is impossible without it, as without air, but we must wait. Yes, I said so, and now I ask: in the name of what to expect? - Ivan Ivanovich asked, looking angrily at Burkina. - In the name of what to expect, I ask you? For what reasons? I am told that not all at once, every idea is carried out in life gradually, in due time. But who says that? Where is the evidence that this is true? You refer to the natural order of things, to the legitimacy of phenomena, but is there any order and legitimacy in the fact that I, a living, thinking person, stand by a moat and wait for him to grow over or to tighten with silt, Could I jump over it or build a bridge over it? And again, in the name of what to expect? To wait, when there is no strength to live, and meanwhile you need to live and want to live!
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- Pavel Konstantinich! He said in a pleading voice. - Do not calm down, do not let us put to sleep! While young, strong, vigorous, do not get tired to do good! Happiness is not and should not be, and if in life there is a meaning and purpose, then this meaning and purpose is not at all in our happiness, but in something more reasonable and great. Do good!
And all this Ivan Ivanovitch spoke with a pitiful, begging smile, as if asking for it personally.
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Early in the morning rain clouds surrounded the whole sky; it was quiet, not hot and boring, as happens on gray cloudy days, when clouds are hanging over the field a long time ago, waiting for rain, but it is not there. Veterinary doctor Ivan Ivanovich and gymnasium teacher Burkin were already tired of walking, and the field seemed endless to them. Far ahead, windmills of the village of Mironositsky were barely visible, to the right stretched and then disappeared far beyond the village a number of hills, and both of them knew that it was the river bank, there were meadows, green willows, homesteads, and if you stand on one of the hills, you can see from there the same huge field, telegraph and train, which from a distance looks like a creeping caterpillar, and in clear weather even the city can be seen from there. Now, in calm weather, when all nature seemed gentle and thoughtful, Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin were imbued with love for this field, and both were thinking about how great, how beautiful this country is.
“The last time we were in the barn of the headman Prokofy,” said Burkin, “you were going to tell a story.”
- Yes, I wanted to tell you about my brother then.
Ivan Ivanovitch sighed loudly and lit a pipe to start telling, but just at that time it started to rain. And after five minutes it was already pouring rain, heavy, and it was difficult to foresee when it would end. Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin stopped in thought; the dogs, already wet, stood with tails between their legs and looked at them with tenderness.
“We need to hide somewhere,” said Burkin.
- Let's go to Alekhin. It's close here.
- Come on.
They turned aside and walked all along a sloping field, now straight, then taking it to the right, until they reached the road. Soon the poplars, the garden, then the red roofs of the barns appeared; a river glistened, and a view of a wide stretch with a mill and a white bath-house opened. This was Sofyino, where Alekhine lived.
The mill worked, drowning out the sound of rain; the dam was trembling. Here, near the carts, there were wet horses, their heads bowed, and people were walking, covered with bags. It was damp, dirty, uncomfortable, and the view of the reach was cold and angry. Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin were already feeling sputum, uncleanness, inconvenience in their whole body, their legs were heavy with mud, and when, after passing the dam, they rose to the manor barns, they were silent, as if they were angry with each other.
In one of the barns there was a roar; the door was open and dust was falling out of it. On the threshold stood Alekhin himself, a man of about forty, tall, full, with long hair, looking more like a professor or artist than a landowner. He was wearing a white shirt that had not been washed for a long time with a rope belt, instead of pants his pants, and mud and straw also stuck on his boots. The nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognized Ivan Ivanich and Burkina and, apparently, was very happy.
“Welcome, gentlemen, to the house,” he said, smiling. - I am now, this minute.
The house was large, two-story. Alekhine lived below, in two rooms with arches and with small windows, where the clerks once lived; there was a simple setting, and it smelled of rye bread, cheap vodka and harness. Upstairs, in the front rooms, he was rarely, only when guests came. Ivana and Burkina met a maid in the house, a young woman so beautiful that they both stopped at once and looked at each other.
“You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen,” said Alekhine, entering behind them in the anteroom. - I didn’t expect it! Pelagia, ”he said to the maid,“ let the guests change into something. ” By the way, I will change. Just need to first go to wash, but then I, it seems, from the spring did not wash. Would you, gentlemen, want to go to the bathhouse, but here they will cook it.
Beautiful Pelagia, so delicate and seemingly so soft, brought sheets and soap, and Alekhine and the guests went to the bathhouse.
“Yes, I haven’t washed for a long time,” he said, undressing. “As you see, I have a good bath, my father still built, but somehow there is no time to wash.”
He sat down on the step and lather his long hair and neck, and the water around him turned brown.
“Yes, I confess ...” said Ivan Ivanovich, looking significantly at his head.
“I haven’t been washed for a long time ...” repeated Alekhin embarrassedly and once more soaped, and the water around him turned dark blue like ink.
Ivan Ivanovitch went outside, rushed into the water with a noise and swam in the rain, his arms wide-spreading, and from him came waves, and white lilies swayed on the waves; he swam to the very middle of the reach and dived, and a minute later he appeared in another place and swam further, and everything dived, trying to reach the bottom. “Oh, my God ...” he repeated, enjoying. “Oh, my God ...” He swam to the mill, talked with the peasants about something and turned back, and in the middle of the reach he lay down, exposing his face to the rain. Burkin and Alekhin got dressed and got ready to leave, but he all swam and dived.
“Oh dear ...” he said. - Oh, God have mercy.
- Will you! Shouted Burkin to him.
Returned to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the big living room upstairs, both Burkin and Ivan Ivanovich, dressed in silk dressing gowns and warm shoes, sat in armchairs, and Alekhine himself, washed, brushed, in a new coat, walked around the living room, evidently feeling the warmth with pleasure. clean, dry dress, light shoes, and when beautiful Pelagia, walking silently on the carpet and smiling softly, served tea with jam on a tray, only then Ivan Ivanovitch began the story, and it seemed that not only Burkin and Alekhin listened to him, but also old and young ladies and military, calmly and strictly looking gold frames.
“We are two brothers,” he began, “I, Ivan Ivanitch, and the other, Nikolai Ivanovich, two years younger.” I went to the academic department, became a veterinarian, and Nikolai had already been in the state chamber from the age of nineteen. Our father Chimsh-Himalayan was from cantonists, but after serving as an officer, he left us a hereditary nobility and a little name. After his death, the little one was ransacked for debts, but, no matter how, we spent our childhood in the village in the wild. We, like peasant children, spent our days and nights in the fields, in the woods, watched the horses, plowed our bones, fished, and the like ... Did you know who, at least once in their life, caught a ruff or saw in the autumn migratory thrushes like them on clear, cool days, they rush in flocks above the village, he is no longer a city dweller, and until death he will be smacked at will. My brother missed the state chamber. Years passed, and he still sat in one place, wrote all the same papers and thought everything about the same thing as in the village. And this longing in him gradually resulted in a certain desire, a dream to buy a small mansion somewhere on the bank of a river or a lake.
He was a kind, meek person, I loved him, but I never sympathized with this desire to lock myself up for life in my own estate. It is customary to say that a person needs only three arshin of the earth. But after all, three arshins are needed by the corpse, and not by man. And they also say now that if our intelligentsia has a tendency to land and is striving into the homesteads, then this is good. But after all these estates are the same three arshins of the earth. To leave the city, from the struggle, from everyday noise, to leave and hide in the manor is not life, it is egoism, laziness, it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without achievement. A man needs not three arshins of the earth, not a manor, but the entire globe, all nature, where in the open he could manifest all the properties and characteristics of his free spirit.
My brother Nicholas, sitting in his office, dreamed of how he would eat his own soup, from which such a delicious smell came from all over the yard, eat on green grass, sleep in the sun, sit for hours at a gate on a bench and look at the field and the forest. Agricultural books and all these calendars made up his joy, his beloved spiritual food; he liked to read newspapers, but he read only announcements about the fact that so many dessiatines of arable land and meadows were sold with a manor, a garden, a mill, and flow ponds. And in his head, he painted paths in the garden, flowers, fruits, birdhouses, crucians in ponds and, you know, all this stuff. These imaginary pictures were different, depending on the ads that came across to him, but for some reason in each of them there was certainly a gooseberry. Not a single manor, not a single poetic corner, he could not imagine without the fact that there was no gooseberry.
“Village life has its comforts,” he said, it happened. “You sit on the balcony, drink tea, and on the pond your ducks swim, it smells so good, and ... and the gooseberry grows.
He drew a plan for his estate, and every time he had the same thing on the plan: a) a manor house, b) a human, c) a garden, d) a gooseberry. He lived sparingly: undernourished, underfed, dressed God knows how, like a beggar, he saved everything and put it in the bank. Terribly greedy. It was painful to look at him, and I gave him something and sent it on holidays, but he also hid it. If a person had an idea, then nothing can be done about it.
The years went by, transferred him to another province, he had passed forty years, and he still read ads in newspapers and saved. Then, I hear, got married. All with the same goal, in order to buy a manor house with gooseberries, he married an old, ugly widow, without any feeling, and only because she had a lot of money. He also lived sparingly with her, holding her hand in hand, and put her money in his name in the bank. Previously, she was a postmaster and got used to him to pies and liqueurs, but she didn't have enough bread for her second husband; I began to wither away from such a life, and after three years I took and gave my soul to God. And, of course, my brother did not think for a single moment that he was to blame for her death. Money, like vodka, makes a person an eccentric. A merchant died in our town. Before his death, he ordered me to give myself a plate of honey and ate all my money and winning tickets along with honey so that no one could get it. Once at the train station, I examined the herds, and at that time one young lady got under the locomotive, and his leg was cut off. We carry him to the emergency room, blood pours - a terrible thing, but he still asks for his leg to be found, and everything worries: in a boot on his severed leg twenty rubles, no matter how they disappear.
“You are from another opera,” said Burkin.
“After the death of his wife,” continued Ivan Ivanovich, after thinking for half a minute, “my brother began to look out for his estate. Of course, at least five years of looking out for, but in the end you will make a mistake and buy something you didn’t dream about. Brother Nicholas, through a commission agent, with a debt transfer, bought one hundred and twelve acres with a grand house, with a human, with a park, but neither an orchard, nor a gooseberry, nor a pond with ducks; there was a river, but the water in it was the color of coffee, because on one side of the estate there is a brick factory, and on the other - kostopalny. But my Nikolai Ivanovich didn’t have much sorrow; he wrote out twenty gooseberry bushes to himself, planted and healed the landowner.
Last year I went to see him. I will go, I think, I will look, as well as that there. In the letters of his brothers called his estate as: Chumbaroklova wasteland, Himalayan identity. I arrived at the Himalayan identity in the afternoon. It was hot. Near the ditch, fences, hedges, are packed with rows of Christmas trees - and you do not know how to get to the yard, where to put the horse. I go to the house, and to meet me a red dog, fat, like a pig. I want her to bark, but laziness. The cook came out of the kitchen, bare-legged, fat, also resembling a pig, and said that the master was resting after dinner. I went to my brother, he was sitting in bed, his knees covered with a blanket; aged, stout, flabby; cheeks, nose and lips are pulled forward, - and look, grunts at the blanket.
We embraced and wept with joy and with the sad thought that we were once young, and now both are gray, and it's time to die. He got dressed and led me to show my estate.
- Well, how are you doing here? - I asked.
- Yes, nothing, thank God, I live well.
It was not the former timid poor bureaucrat, but a real landowner, sir. He already settled down here, got used and got a taste; he ate a lot, washed himself in a bath, became full, already had legal proceedings with society and with both factories, and was very offended when the men did not call him "Your Honor". And he cared about his soul solidly, in a lordly manner, and he did good deeds not simply, but with importance. And what good things? He treated men from all diseases with soda and castor oil, and on his birthday day he served a prayer of thanksgiving in the village, and then he put a half-bucket, he thought it was necessary. Ah, those horrible polvedra! Today, the fat landlord drags the muzhiks to the district chief for harm, and tomorrow, on a solemn day, puts them half a bucket, and they drink and shout “Hurray,” and the drunken ones bow to his feet. The change of life for the better, satiety, idleness develop self-esteem in the Russian man, the most arrogant. Nikolay Ivanych, who was once afraid to have his own views for himself personally in the government chamber, was now speaking only truths, and in such a tone, as if the minister: “Education is necessary, but for the people it is premature,” “corporal punishment is generally harmful, but in some cases, they are useful and irreplaceable. "
“I know the people and can handle them,” he said. - The people love me. It costs me only a finger to move, and for me the people will do whatever they want.
And all this, mind you, was spoken with an intelligent, kind smile. He repeated twenty times: "we are nobles", "I am like a nobleman"; obviously, he no longer remembered that our grandfather was a peasant, and his father was a soldier. Even our surname Chimshah-Himalayan, in essence incongruous, now seemed to it sonorous, noble and very pleasant.
But it's not about him, but about me. I want to tell you what a change occurred in me in these few hours while I was in his estate. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook served a full plate of gooseberries on the table. It was not purchased, but its own gooseberry, collected for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolai Ivanovich laughed and looked at the gooseberry silently, with tears for a minute - he could not speak with emotion, then put one berry in his mouth, looked at me with the triumph of a child who finally got his favorite toy, and said:
- So tasty!
And he ate greedily and repeated everything:
- Oh, how delicious! You try!
It was harsh and sour, but, as Pushkin said, “darkness of truths are more precious to us than our exalting deception.” I saw a happy man, whose cherished dream came true so obviously, who achieved his goal in life, got what he wanted, who was satisfied with his fate, with himself. For some reason, something sad was always mixed with my thoughts about human happiness, but now, at the sight of a happy person, I was overwhelmed by a heavy feeling close to despair. It was especially hard at night. I was given a bed in the room next to my brother's bedroom, and I could hear how he didn’t sleep and how he got up and went to the plate with gooseberries and picked it up by the berries. I thought: how, in essence, a lot of happy, happy people! What an overwhelming force! You look at this life: arrogance and idleness of the strong, ignorance and bestiality of the weak, impossible poverty around, cramped, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lies ... Meanwhile, in all houses and on the streets, silence, calmness; of the fifty thousand who live in the city, not one who would have cried out, loudly indignant. We see those who go to the market for food, eat during the day, sleep at night, who speak their nonsense, marry, grow old, complacently drag their dead men to the cemetery; but we do not see and do not hear those who suffer, and that which is terrible in life happens somewhere behind the curtain. Everything is quiet, calm, and only one mute statistic protests: so many crazy things, so many buckets drunk, so many children died from malnutrition ... And such an order is obviously needed; obviously, happy feels good only because the unfortunate bear their burden in silence, and without this silence, happiness would not have been possible. This is general hypnosis. It is necessary that behind the door of every contented, happy person there was someone with a hammer and constantly reminded with a knock that there are unhappy people, that no matter how happy he is, life will show him his claws sooner or later, trouble will be shaken - illness, poverty , loss, and no one will see and hear, as he now does not see or hear others. But there is no man with a hammer, he lives happily for himself, and small everyday concerns worry him a little, like the wind aspen, and everything is fine.
“That night it became clear to me that I, too, was pleased and happy,” continued Ivan Ivanovich, getting up. - I also at lunch and on the hunt taught how to live, how to believe, how to rule the people. I also said that learning is light, that education is necessary, but for ordinary people, one diploma is enough for now. Freedom is a blessing, I said, it is impossible without it, as without air, but we must wait. Yes, I said so, and now I ask: in the name of what to expect? - Ivan Ivanovich asked, looking angrily at Burkina. - In the name of what to expect, I ask you? For what reasons? I am told that not all at once, every idea is carried out in life gradually, in due time. But who says that? Where is the evidence that this is true? You refer to the natural order of things, to the legitimacy of phenomena, but is there any order and legitimacy in the fact that I, a living, thinking person, stand by a moat and wait for him to grow over or to tighten with silt, Could I jump over it or build a bridge over it? And again, in the name of what to expect? To wait, when there is no strength to live, and meanwhile you need to live and want to live!
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- Pavel Konstantinich! He said in a pleading voice. - Do not calm down, do not let us put to sleep! While young, strong, vigorous, do not get tired to do good! Happiness is not and should not be, and if in life there is a meaning and purpose, then this meaning and purpose is not at all in our happiness, but in something more reasonable and great. Do good!
And all this Ivan Ivanovitch spoke with a pitiful, begging smile, as if asking for it personally.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/29065/
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