Visual analyzer visual hygiene. Visual analyzer and its hygiene. Endocrine glands
· "The head of the family, Vladimir Mikhailovich Golovlev, from a young age was known for his careless and mischievous character, and for Arina Petrovna, who was always distinguished by her seriousness and efficiency, he never imagined anything attractive. He led an idle and idle life, most often locked himself in his office, imitated the singing of starlings, roosters, etc., and wrote so-called “free poetry.”<…>Arina Petrovna immediately did not fall in love with these poems of her husband, calling them foul play and clowning, and since Vladimir Mikhailovich actually got married in order to always have a listener at hand for his poems, it is clear that the disagreement did not take long to happen. Gradually growing and becoming bitter, these quarrels ended, on the wife’s part, with complete and contemptuous indifference to her buffoon husband, on the husband’s part - with sincere hatred of his wife, hatred, which, however, included a significant share of cowardice.”- M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
· « Arina Petrovna- a woman of about sixty, but still vigorous and accustomed to living at her own discretion. She behaves menacingly; single-handedly and uncontrollably manages the vast Golovlev estate, lives solitary, prudently, almost stingily, does not make friends with neighbors, is kind to the local authorities, and demands from her children that they be in such obedience to her that with every action they ask themselves: something Will mommy tell you about this? In general, she has an independent, unyielding and somewhat obstinate character, which, however, is greatly facilitated by the fact that in the entire Golovlev family there is not a single person from whom she could encounter opposition.” -M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
· « Stepan Vladimirovich, eldest son,<…>, was known in the family under the name Stepki-boobs and Styopka the mischievous one. He very early became one of the “hateful” and from childhood played in the house the role of either a pariah or a jester. Unfortunately, he was a gifted fellow who too readily and quickly accepted the impressions generated by the environment. From his father he inherited an inexhaustible prankishness, from his mother the ability to quickly guess people’s weaknesses. Thanks to the first quality, he soon became his father's favorite, which further strengthened his mother's dislike for him. Often, during Arina Petrovna’s absences to do housework, the father and teenage son retired to the office, decorated with a portrait of Barkov, read free poetry and gossiped, and the “witch”, that is, Arina Petrovna, especially got it. But the “witch” seemed to instinctively guess their activities; she silently drove up to the porch, tiptoed to the office door and overheard cheerful speeches. This was followed by an immediate and brutal beating of Styopka the dunce. But Styopka did not let up; he was insensitive to either beatings or admonitions, and after half an hour he began to play tricks again. Either he will cut the girl Anyutka’s scarf into pieces, then sleepy Vasyutka will put flies in his mouth, then he will climb into the kitchen and steal a pie there (Arina Petrovna, out of economy, kept the children from hand to mouth), which, however, she will immediately share with her brothers.” -M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
· “After Stepan Vladimirovich, the eldest member of the Golovlev family was a daughter, Anna Vladimirovna, which Arina Petrovna also didn’t like to talk about. The fact is that Arina Petrovna had designs on Annushka, and Annushka not only did not live up to her hopes, but instead caused a scandal throughout the entire district. When her daughter left the institute, Arina Petrovna settled her in the village, hoping to make her a gifted home secretary and accountant, and instead, Annushka, one fine night, fled from Golovlev with the cornet Ulanov and got married to him. After two years, the young capital lived, and the cornet fled to God knows where, leaving Anna Vladimirovna with two twin daughters: Anninka and Lyubonka. Then Anna Vladimirovna herself died three months later, and Arina Petrovna, willy-nilly, had to shelter the orphans at home. Which she did, placing the little ones in the outbuilding and assigning the crooked old woman Palashka to them.” -M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
· « Porfiry Vladimirovich was known in the family under three names: Judas, a blood drinker and an outspoken boy, which were nicknames given to him by Styopka the dunce as a child. From his infancy, he loved to cuddle up to his dear friend Mama, sneak a kiss on her shoulder, and sometimes even talk a little bit about her. He would silently open the door of his mother's room, silently sneak into the corner, sit down and, as if enchanted, do not take his eyes off his mother while she was writing or fiddling with accounts. But Arina Petrovna, even then, was somewhat suspicious of these filial ingratiations. And then this gaze fixed intently on her seemed mysterious to her, and then she could not determine for herself what exactly he was exuding from himself: poison or filial piety" -M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
· “His brother was in complete contrast to Porfiry Vladimirovich, Pavel Vladimirovich. It was the complete personification of a person devoid of any actions. As a boy, he did not show the slightest inclination to study, or to play, or to be sociable, but he loved to live alone, alienated from people. He used to hide in a corner, pout and start fantasizing. It seems to him that he has eaten too much oatmeal, that this has made his legs thin, and he is not studying. Or - that he is not Pavel the noble son, but Davydka the shepherd, that a bologna has grown on his forehead, like Davydka’s, that he clicks the arapnik and does not study. Arina Petrovna would look and look at him, and her mother’s heart would boil.”M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"Messrs. Golovlevs."
One day, the mayor from a distant estate, Anton Vasiliev, having finished his report to lady Arina Petrovna Golovleva about his trip to Moscow to collect taxes from peasants living on passports and having already received permission from her to go to the people’s quarters, suddenly somehow mysteriously hesitated in place, as if for He had some other word and deed that he both decided and did not dare to report. Arina Petrovna, who thoroughly understood not only the slightest movements, but also the secret thoughts of her close people, immediately became worried. - What else? - she asked, looking at the bailiff point-blank. “That’s it,” Anton Vasiliev tried to wriggle out. - Do not lie! there is also! I see it in your eyes! Anton Vasiliev, however, did not dare to answer and continued to shift from foot to foot. - Tell me, what other business do you have? - Arina Petrovna shouted at him in a decisive voice, - speak up! don't wag your tail... it's a saddlebag! Arina Petrovna loved to give nicknames to the people who made up her administrative and household staff. She nicknamed Anton Vasilyev “the saddle bag” not because he had ever actually been seen as a traitor, but because he was weak-tongued. The estate that he managed had as its center a significant trading village, in which there were a large number of taverns. Anton Vasiliev loved to drink tea in a tavern, boast about the omnipotence of his mistress, and during this boasting he unnoticedly cheated. And since Arina Petrovna constantly had various lawsuits in progress, it often happened that the talkativeness of a trusted person brought out the mistress’s military tricks before they could be carried out. “Yes, indeed...” Anton Vasiliev finally muttered. - What? what's happened? - Arina Petrovna got excited. As a powerful woman and, moreover, highly gifted with creativity, in one minute she painted herself a picture of all sorts of contradictions and oppositions and immediately internalized this idea so much that she even turned pale and jumped out of her chair. “Stepan Vladimirych, the house in Moscow was sold...” the mayor reported with the arrangement.- Well? - Sold, sir. - Why? How? don't worry! tell me! - For debts... so one must assume! It is known that they will not sell people for good deeds. - So the police sold it? court? - So it is so. They say the house went to auction for eight thousand. Arina Petrovna sank heavily into a chair and stared out the window. In the first minutes, this news apparently took away her consciousness. If they had told her that Stepan Vladimirych had killed someone, that the Golovlev peasants had rebelled and refused to go to corvee, or that serfdom was collapsing, then she would not have been so amazed. Her lips moved, her eyes looked somewhere into the distance, but saw nothing. She didn’t even notice that at that very time the girl Dunyashka was about to rush past the window, covering something with her apron, and suddenly, seeing the lady, for a moment she spun in one place and with a quiet step turned back (at another time this action would have caused whole consequence). Finally, however, she came to her senses and said: - What fun! After which several minutes of thunderous silence followed again. “So you’re saying that the police sold the house for eight thousand?” - she asked again.- Yes sir. - This is a parental blessing! Good... bastard! Arina Petrovna felt that, in view of the news she had received, she needed to make an immediate decision, but she could not come up with anything, because her thoughts were confused in completely opposite directions. On the one hand, I thought: “The police sold out! After all, she didn’t sell in one minute! tea, was there an inventory, an assessment, calls for bidding? She sold it for eight thousand, whereas she paid twelve thousand for this very house two years ago with her own hands, like one penny! If only I knew, I could have bought it myself for eight thousand at auction!” On the other hand, the thought also came to mind: “The police sold it for eight thousand! This is a parental blessing! Scoundrel! I got my parents’ blessing for eight thousand!” —Who did you hear it from? - she finally asked, finally settling on the thought that the house had already been sold and that, therefore, the hope of acquiring it at a cheap price was lost for her forever. - Ivan Mikhailov, the innkeeper, said. - Why didn’t he warn me in time? - So I was afraid. - I was afraid! So I’ll show him: “I was afraid”! Summon him from Moscow, and when he appears, immediately go to the recruiting office and shave his forehead! “I was afraid”! Although serfdom was already on its way out, it still existed. More than once it happened to Anton Vasiliev to listen to the most peculiar orders from the lady, but her real decision was so unexpected that even he was not entirely smart. At the same time, the nickname “saddle bag” involuntarily came to mind. Ivan Mikhailov was a thorough man, of whom it never even occurred to anyone that any misfortune could befall him. Moreover, this was his spiritual friend and godfather - and suddenly he became a soldier, just because he, Anton Vasilyev, like a saddlebag, could not hold his tongue! - Sorry... Ivan Mikhailych! - he interceded. - Go... potter! - Arina Petrovna shouted at him, but in such a voice that he did not even think of persisting in further defending Ivan Mikhailov. But before continuing my story, I will ask the reader to take a closer look at Arina Petrovna Golovleva and her marital status. Arina Petrovna is a woman of about sixty, but still vigorous and accustomed to living at her own discretion. She behaves menacingly; single-handedly and uncontrollably manages the vast Golovlevsky estate, lives alone, prudently, almost stingily, does not make friends with neighbors, is kind to local authorities, and demands from her children that they be in such obedience to her that with every action they ask themselves: something Will mommy tell you about this? In general, she has an independent, unyielding and somewhat obstinate character, which, however, is greatly facilitated by the fact that in the entire Golovlev family there is not a single person from whom she could encounter opposition. Her husband is a frivolous and drunken man (Arina Petrovna readily says about herself that she is neither a widow nor a husband’s wife); the children partly serve in St. Petersburg, partly they take after their father and, as “hateful” ones, are not allowed to take part in any family affairs. Under these conditions, Arina Petrovna felt lonely early on, so that, to tell the truth, she was completely unaccustomed to even family life, although the word “family” never leaves her tongue and, outwardly, all her actions are exclusively guided by constant worries about organizing family affairs . The head of the family, Vladimir Mikhailych Golovlev, was known from a young age for his careless and mischievous character, and for Arina Petrovna, who was always distinguished by her seriousness and efficiency, he never imagined anything attractive. He led an idle and idle life, most often locked himself in his office, imitated the singing of starlings, roosters, etc., and wrote so-called “free poetry.” In moments of frank outpouring, he boasted that he was a friend of Barkov and that the latter even blessed him on his deathbed. Arina Petrovna immediately did not fall in love with her husband’s poems, calling them foul play and clowning, and since Vladimir Mikhailych actually got married in order to always have a listener at hand for his poems, it is clear that the disagreement did not take long to happen. Gradually growing and becoming bitter, these quarrels ended, on the wife’s part, with complete and contemptuous indifference to her buffoon husband, on the husband’s part - with sincere hatred of his wife, hatred, which, however, included a significant amount of cowardice. The husband called his wife “witch” and “devil,” the wife called her husband “windmill” and “stringless balalaika.” Being in such a relationship, they enjoyed life together for more than forty years, and it never occurred to either of them that such a life contained anything unnatural. Over time, Vladimir Mikhailych’s mischief not only did not decrease, but even acquired an even more malicious character. Regardless of the poetic exercises in the Barkian spirit, he began to drink and willingly stalked the maids' girls in the corridor. At first, Arina Petrovna reacted to this new occupation of her husband with disgust and even with excitement (in which, however, the habit of power played more of a role than direct jealousy), but then she waved her hand and only watched to ensure that the toadstool girls did not wear the master's clothes. Erofeich. From then on, having told herself once and for all that her husband was not her comrade, she focused all her attention exclusively on one subject: rounding up the Golovlev estate, and indeed, during the course of her forty-year married life, she managed to increase her fortune tenfold. With amazing patience and vigilance, she kept watch over distant and nearby villages, found out in secret about the relationship of their owners to the guardianship council, and always, out of the blue, showed up at auctions. In the whirlwind of this fanatical pursuit of wealth, Vladimir Mikhailych retreated further and further into the background, and finally went completely wild. At the moment when this story begins, he was already a decrepit old man who almost never left his bed, and if occasionally he left the bedroom, it was only to stick his head into the half-open door of his wife’s room and shout: “Damn!” - and hide again. Arina Petrovna was a little happier with her children as well. She had too independent, so to speak, a single nature, for her to see in children anything other than an unnecessary burden. She only breathed freely when she was alone with her accounts and business enterprises, when no one interfered with her business conversations with bailiffs, elders, housekeepers, etc. In her eyes, children were one of those fatalistic life situations, the totality of which she was against did not consider herself to have the right to protest, but which nevertheless did not touch a single string of her inner being, who completely surrendered to the countless details of life-building. There were four children: three sons and a daughter. She didn’t even like to talk about her eldest son and daughter; she was more or less indifferent to her youngest son and only the middle one, Porfish, was not so much loved, but rather feared. Stepan Vladimirych, the eldest son, who is mainly discussed in this story, was known in the family as Styopka the dunce and Styopka the mischievous one. He very early became one of the “hateful” and from childhood played in the house the role of either a pariah or a jester. Unfortunately, he was a gifted fellow who too readily and quickly accepted the impressions generated by the environment. From his father he inherited an inexhaustible prankishness, from his mother the ability to quickly guess people’s weaknesses. Thanks to the first quality, he soon became his father's favorite, which further strengthened his mother's dislike for him. Often, during Arina Petrovna’s absences to do housework, the father and teenage son retired to the office, decorated with a portrait of Barkov, read free poetry and gossiped, and the “witch”, that is, Arina Petrovna, especially got it. But the “witch” seemed to instinctively guess their activities; she silently drove up to the porch, tiptoed to the office door and overheard cheerful speeches. This was followed by an immediate and brutal beating of Styopka the dunce. But Styopka did not let up; he was insensitive to either beatings or admonitions, and after half an hour he began to play tricks again. Either he will cut the girl Anyutka’s scarf into pieces, then sleepy Vasyutka will put flies in his mouth, then he will climb into the kitchen and steal a pie there (Arina Petrovna, out of economy, kept the children from hand to mouth), which, however, she will immediately share with her brothers. - We must kill you! - Arina Petrovna constantly told him, “I’ll kill you and I won’t answer!” And the king will not punish me for this! Such constant belittlement, meeting soft, easily forgotten soil, was not in vain. The result was not bitterness or protest, but rather the formation of a slavish character, habitual to the point of buffoonery, ignorant of a sense of proportion and devoid of any forethought. Such individuals readily succumb to any influence and can become anything: drunkards, beggars, jesters and even criminals. At twenty years old, Stepan Golovlev completed a course at one of the Moscow gymnasiums and entered the university. But his student life was bitter. Firstly, his mother gave him exactly as much money as he needed so as not to perish from hunger; secondly, there was not the slightest urge to work in him, and instead of that there was a cursed talent, expressed mainly in the ability to imitate; thirdly, he constantly suffered from the need of society and could not remain alone with himself for a minute. Therefore, he settled on the easy role of a hanger-on and a pique-assiette and, thanks to his pliability for all sorts of things, soon became a favorite of rich students. But the rich, allowing him into their midst, still understood that he was not a match for them, that he only a buffoon, and it was in this sense that his reputation was established. Having once set foot on this ground, he naturally gravitated lower and lower, so that by the end of the 4th year he was completely joking. However, thanks to the ability to quickly grasp and remember what he heard, he passed the exam with success and received a candidate's degree. When he came to his mother with a diploma, Arina Petrovna just shrugged her shoulders and said: I’m amazed! Then, after keeping him in the village for a month, she sent him to St. Petersburg, assigning him one hundred rubles in banknotes per month for subsistence. Wanderings began among departments and offices. He had no patronage, no desire to make his way through personal labor. The young man's idle thoughts were so unaccustomed to concentration that even bureaucratic tests, such as memos and extracts from cases, turned out to be beyond her strength. Golovlev struggled in St. Petersburg for four years and finally had to tell himself that the hope of one day getting a job higher than a clerical official did not exist for him. In response to his complaints, Arina Petrovna wrote a menacing letter, beginning with the words: “I was sure of this in advance” and ending with an order to appear in Moscow. There, in the council of beloved peasants, it was decided to appoint Stepka the dunce to the court court, entrusting him to the supervision of the clerk, who had long interceded in Golovlevsky cases. What Stepan Vladimirych did and how he behaved in court is unknown, but three years later he was no longer there. Then Arina Petrovna decided on an extreme measure: she “threw out a piece to her son,” which, however, at the same time was supposed to represent a “parental blessing.” This piece consisted of a house in Moscow, for which Arina Petrovna paid twelve thousand rubles. For the first time in his life, Stepan Golovlev breathed freely. The house promised to give a thousand rubles in silver income, and compared with the previous amount, this amount seemed to him something like real prosperity. He enthusiastically kissed his mother’s hand (“that’s the same, look at me, you fool! Don’t expect anything more!” Arina Petrovna said at the same time) and promised to justify the favor shown to him. But, alas! he was so little used to handling money, he understood the dimensions of real life so absurdly that the fabulous annual thousand rubles did not last long. In some four or five years he completely burned out and was glad to join the militia, which was being formed at that time, as a deputy. The militia, however, only reached Kharkov, when peace was concluded, and Golovlev returned to Moscow again. His house was already sold at that time. He was wearing a militia uniform, quite shabby, however, with boots on his feet and a hundred rubles of money in his pocket. With this capital, he started speculating, that is, he began to play cards, and soon lost everything. Then he began to visit his mother’s wealthy peasants who lived on their own farms in Moscow; from whom he dined, from whom he begged a quarter of tobacco, from whom he borrowed small things. But finally the moment came when he, so to speak, found himself face to face with a blank wall. He was already approaching forty, and he was forced to admit that a further wandering existence was beyond his strength. There was only one way left - to Golovlevo. After Stepan Vladimirych, the eldest member of the Golovlev family was a daughter, Anna Vladimirovna, about whom Arina Petrovna also did not like to talk. The fact is that Arina Petrovna had designs on Annushka, and Annushka not only did not live up to her hopes, but instead caused a scandal throughout the entire district. When her daughter left the institute, Arina Petrovna settled her in the village, hoping to make her a gifted household secretary and accountant, and instead, Annushka, one fine night, fled from Golovlev with the cornet Ulanov and got married to him. - So, without parental blessing, like dogs, they got married! - Arina Petrovna complained on this occasion. - Yes, it’s good that hubby circled the leopard! Another would have used it - and he was! Look for him then and get a fistula! And Arina Petrovna acted with her daughter just as decisively as with her hateful son: she took it and “threw out a piece of it to her.” She gave her a capital of five thousand and a village of thirty souls with a fallen estate, in which there was a draft from all the windows and there was not a single living floorboard. After two years, the young capital lived, and the cornet fled to God knows where, leaving Anna Vladimirovna with two twin daughters: Anninka and Lyubinka. Then Anna Vladimirovna herself died three months later, and Arina Petrovna, willy-nilly, had to shelter the orphans at home. Which she did, placing the little ones in the outbuilding and assigning the crooked old woman Broadsword to them. “God has many mercies,” she said at the same time, “God knows what bread the orphans will eat, but it’s a consolation for me in my old age!” God took one daughter and gave two! And at the same time she wrote to her son Porfiry Vladimirych: “Just as your sister lived dissolutely, so she died, leaving her two puppies on my neck...” In general, no matter how cynical this remark may seem, justice requires one to admit that both of these cases, in connection with which the “throwing away of pieces” took place, not only did not cause any damage to Arina Petrovna’s finances, but indirectly even contributed to the rounding up of the Golovlev estate, reducing the number shareholders in it. For Arina Petrovna was a woman of strict rules and, having once “thrown away a piece,” she already considered all her duties regarding her hateful children finished. Even when thinking about her orphan granddaughters, she never imagined that over time she would have to devote something to them. She only tried to squeeze as much as possible out of the small estate allocated to the late Anna Vladimirovna, and put what she had squeezed into the board of guardians. And she said: “So I save up money for the orphans, but for what they cost in food and care, I don’t take anything from them!” Apparently, God will pay me for my bread and salt! Finally, the youngest children, Porfiry and Pavel Vladimirych, were in service in St. Petersburg: the first in the civil service, the second in the military. Porfiry was married, Pavel was single. Porfiry Vladimirych was known in the family under three names: Judas, the blood drinker and the frank boy, which nicknames were given to him by Styopka the dunce as a child. From his infancy, he loved to cuddle up to his dear friend Mama, sneak a kiss on her shoulder, and sometimes even talk a little bit about her. He would silently open the door of his mother's room, silently sneak into the corner, sit down and, as if enchanted, do not take his eyes off his mother while she was writing or fiddling with accounts. But Arina Petrovna, even then, was somewhat suspicious of these filial ingratiations. And then this gaze fixed intently on her seemed mysterious to her, and then she could not determine for herself what exactly he was exuding from himself: poison or filial piety. “And I myself can’t understand what kind of eyes he has,” she sometimes reasoned to herself, “he’ll look—well, as if he’s throwing a noose.” So it pours poison and lures you in! And at the same time she recalled the significant details of the time when she was still “heavy” with Porfisha. There lived in their house at that time a certain pious and perspicacious old man, who was called Porfisha the blessed one and to whom she always turned when she wanted to foresee something in the future. And this same old man, when she asked him whether the birth would soon follow and God would give her someone, a son or a daughter, did not answer her directly, but crowed three times like a rooster and then muttered: - Cockerel, cockerel! Voster marigold! The rooster crows and threatens the hen; hen - cluck-cack-cack, but it will be too late! But only. But three days later (here it is - he shouted three times!) she gave birth to a son (here it is - a cockerel cockerel!), who was named Porfiry, in honor of the old seer... The first half of the prophecy was fulfilled; but what could the mysterious words mean: “mother hen - cluck-tah-tah, but it will be too late”? - This is what Arina Petrovna was thinking about, looking from under her arm at Porfisha, while he sat in his corner and looked at her with his mysterious gaze. But Porfisha continued to sit meekly and silently, and kept looking at her, looking so intently that his wide-open and motionless eyes twitched with tears. He seemed to have foreseen the doubts stirring in his mother’s soul, and behaved with such calculation that the most captious suspicion—even she had to admit that she was unarmed before his meekness. Even at the risk of annoying his mother, he constantly hovered in front of her eyes, as if saying: “Look at me! I'm not hiding anything! I am all obedience and devotion, and, moreover, obedience is not only out of fear, but also out of conscience.” And no matter how strongly the confidence spoke within her that Porfishka the scoundrel was only fawning with his tail, but still throwing a noose with his eyes, but in view of such selflessness, her heart could not stand it. And involuntarily her hand searched for the best piece on the platter in order to pass it on to her affectionate son, despite the fact that the very sight of this son raised in her heart a vague anxiety of something mysterious, unkind. His brother, Pavel Vladimirych, was in complete contrast to Porfiry Vladimirych. It was the complete personification of a person devoid of any actions. As a boy, he did not show the slightest inclination to study, or to play, or to be sociable, but he loved to live alone, alienated from people. He used to hide in a corner, pout and start fantasizing. It seems to him that he has eaten too much oatmeal, that this has made his legs thin, and he is not studying. Or - that he is not Pavel the noble son, but Davydka the shepherd, that a bolon has grown on his forehead, like Davydka’s, that he clicks the arapnik and does not study. Arina Petrovna would look and look at him, and her mother’s heart would boil. - Are you pouting like a mouse on a rump! - he can’t stand it, she will shout at him, “or from now on the poison is acting in you!” There is no point in approaching your mother: Mama, caress me, darling! Pavlusha left his corner and with slow steps, as if he was being pushed in the back, approached his mother. “Mama,” he repeated in a bass voice unnatural for a child, “caress me, darling!” - Get out of my sight... quiet one! you think you'll hide in a corner, I don't understand? I understand you through and through, my dear! I can see all your plans in full view! And Pavel went back with the same slow step and hid again in his corner. Years passed, and Pavel Vladimirych gradually developed into that apathetic and mysteriously gloomy personality, from which, in the end, a person devoid of actions emerges. Perhaps he was kind, but he did no good to anyone; Perhaps he was not stupid, but he never committed a single smart act in his entire life. He was hospitable, but no one was flattered by his hospitality; he willingly spent money, but neither useful nor pleasant results from these expenses ever occurred for anyone; he never offended anyone, but no one imputed this to his dignity; he was honest, but they never heard anyone say: how honestly Pavel Golovlev acted in such and such a case! To top it all off, he often snapped at his mother and at the same time feared her like fire. I repeat: he was a gloomy man, but behind his gloominess hid a lack of action - and nothing more. In adulthood, the difference in the characters of both brothers was most pronounced in their relationship to their mother. Every week Judas carefully sent an extensive message to his mother, in which he informed her at length about all the details of St. Petersburg life and in the most refined terms assured her of selfless filial devotion. Pavel wrote rarely and briefly, and sometimes even mysteriously, as if he was pulling every word out of himself with pincers. “My dear friend Mama, I received so much money for such and such a period from your trusted friend, the peasant Erofeev,” Porfiry Vladimirych notified, for example, “and for sending it, for use for my maintenance, according to you, dear Mama With your permission, I offer my most sensitive gratitude and kiss your hands with unfeigned filial devotion. I’m sad and tormented by only one thing: aren’t you overburdening your precious health with constant worries about satisfying not only our needs, but also our whims?! I don’t know about my brother, but I”... etc. And Pavel, on the same occasion, expressed himself: “Dearest mother, I received so much money for such and such a period, and, according to my calculations, it should I still have six and a half to go, for which I ask you to respectfully forgive me.” When Arina Petrovna reprimanded the children for their wastefulness (this happened often, although there were no serious reasons), Porfisha always humbly submitted to these remarks and wrote: “I know, dear friend Mama, that you are bearing unbearable hardships for the sake of us, your unworthy children. ; I know that very often by our behavior we do not justify your maternal care for us, and, worst of all, due to the delusion inherent in people, we even forget about this, for which I offer you a sincere filial apology, hoping over time to get rid of this vice and be , in the use of the money sent by you, dear friend, mother, for maintenance and other expenses of the money prudently.” And Paul answered like this: “Dearest mother! although you have not yet paid your debts for me, I freely accept the reprimand in calling me a spendthrift, of which I ask you to most sensitively accept the assurance.” Even to Arina Petrovna’s letter, informing her of the death of sister Anna Vladimirovna, both brothers responded differently. Porfiry Vladimirych wrote: “The news of the death of my dear sister and good childhood friend Anna Vladimirovna struck my heart with sorrow, which sorrow intensified even more at the thought that you, dear friend Mama, are being sent another new cross, in the person of two little orphans. Is it really not enough that you, our common benefactor, deny yourself everything and, not sparing your health, direct all your strength to provide your family not only with what is necessary, but also with what is unnecessary? Indeed, although it is sinful, sometimes you involuntarily grumble. And the only refuge, in my opinion, for you, my dear, in this case, is to remember as often as possible what Christ himself endured.” Paul wrote: “I received news of the death of my sister, who died as a victim. However, I hope that the Almighty will calm her down in his passage, although this is unknown.” Arina Petrovna re-read these letters from her sons and kept trying to guess which of them would be her villain. He reads Porfiry Vladimirych’s letter, and it seems that he is the real villain. - Look how he writes! Look how he twirls his tongue! - she exclaimed, - it was not for nothing that Styopka the dunce called him Judas! Not a single word is true! He's still lying! and “mama’s dear friend,” and about my hardships, and about my cross... he doesn’t feel any of it! Then she starts reading Pavel Vladimirych’s letter, and again it seems that he is her future villain. - Stupid, stupid, look how mother stealthily trumps! “In which I ask you to most sensitively accept the assurance...”, you are welcome! So I’ll show you what it means to “receive assurance most sensitively”! I’ll throw you a piece like Styopka the dunce - then you’ll find out how I understand your “assurances”! And in conclusion, a truly tragic cry burst from her maternal breast: - And for whom am I saving all this money? for whom am I saving! I don’t get enough sleep at night, I don’t get enough to eat... for whom?! Such was the family situation of the Golovlevs at the moment when the mayor Anton Vasiliev reported to Arina Petrovna about Styopka the dunce’s squandering of a “discarded piece,” which, due to its cheap sale, already received the strict meaning of “parental blessing.” Arina Petrovna sat in the bedroom and could not come to her senses. Something was stirring inside her, of which she could not give herself a clear account. Whether the pity for her hateful, but still son, was involved here by some miracle or whether it was just a naked feeling of offended autocracy - this could not be determined by the most experienced psychologist: all the feelings and sensations in her were so confused and quickly replaced. Finally, from the total mass of accumulated ideas, the fear that the “hateful” one would again sit on her neck stood out more clearly than others. “Anyutka forced her puppies on her, and what a fool he is...” she mentally calculated. She sat like this for a long time, without saying a word and looking out the window at one point. They brought dinner, which she barely touched; they came to say: please give the master some vodka! - She, without looking, threw the key to the pantry. After lunch, she went into the figurative room, ordered all the lamps to be lit, and closed the door, having previously ordered the bathhouse to be heated. All these were signs that undoubtedly proved that the lady was “angry,” and therefore everything in the house suddenly fell silent, as if it had died. The maids walked on tiptoes; The housekeeper Akulina was fussing around like crazy: it was planned to make jam after dinner, and now the time has come, the berries are peeled and ready, but there is no order or refusal from the lady; the gardener Matvey came to ask if it was time to pick the peaches, but in the girls' room they pointed at him so much that he immediately retreated. Having prayed to God and washed herself in the bathhouse, Arina Petrovna felt somewhat at peace and again demanded Anton Vasilyev to answer. - Well, what is the dunce doing? she asked. - Moscow is great - and you can’t see it all in a year! - Yes, do you need tea, drink, or eat? - They feed themselves around their peasants. From whom they will have lunch, from whom they will beg for ten kopeks for tobacco. - Who allowed you to give? - Have mercy, madam! Are the guys offended? They give it to other people's poor people, but they can't refuse it to their masters! - Here I am for them... the servers! I’ll send the dunce to your estate, and support him with the whole society at your own expense! - All power is yours, madam. - What? what did you say? - All power, they say, is yours, madam. If you order, we will feed you! - That's it... we'll feed you! talk to me, but don’t start talking! Silence. But it was not for nothing that Anton Vasilyev received the nickname of a saddlebag from his lady. He cannot stand it and again begins to mark time, burning with the desire to report something. - And what a prosecutor! - he finally says, - they say how he returned from a trip and brought a hundred rubles of money with him. One hundred rubles is not a lot of money, but you could live on it for a while...- Well? - To get better, you see, I thought I was going into a scam... - Speak, don’t mutter! - I took the meeting to the German one. I thought I could find a fool to beat at cards, but instead I fell for the smart one. He ran away, but in the hallway, they say, he was detained. Whatever money there was, they took it all! - Tea, did your sides get it? - There was everything. The next day he comes to Ivan Mikhailych and tells it himself. And this is even surprising: he laughs... cheerful! as if someone had stroked him on the head! - Nothing for him! As long as he doesn't show his face to me! - And we must assume that it will be so. - What you! Yes, I won’t let him on my doorstep! - It’s not otherwise that it will happen! - Anton Vasiliev repeats, - and Ivan Mikhailych said that he let it slip: it’s a Sabbath! He says, I’ll go to the old woman to eat some dry bread! Yes, madam, to be honest, he has nowhere to go except here. Because of his peasants, he doesn’t stay in Moscow for a long time. I also need clothes, calm down... This is exactly what Arina Petrovna was afraid of, this is exactly what constituted the essence of that unclear idea that unconsciously worried her. “Yes, he will appear, he has nowhere else to go - this cannot be avoided! He will be here, forever before her eyes, cursed, hateful, forgotten! Why did she throw him a “piece” at that time? She thought that, having received “what was due,” he sank into eternity - but he is reborn! He will come, he will demand, he will be an eyesore for everyone with his beggarly appearance. And it will be necessary to satisfy his demands, because he is an arrogant person, ready for any violence. You can’t hide “him” under lock and key; “he” is capable of appearing like a rabble in front of strangers, capable of causing a brawl, running to the neighbors and telling them all the secrets of Golovlev’s affairs. Should he be sent to the Suzdal Monastery? “But who knows, does this Suzdal monastery still exist, and does it really exist to free distressed parents from seeing obstinate children?” They also say that there is a strait house... but a strait house - well, how are you going to bring him there, this forty-year-old stallion?” In a word, Arina Petrovna was completely at a loss at the mere thought of the adversities that threaten to disturb her peaceful existence with the arrival of Styopka the dunce. “I’ll send him to your estate!” feed at your own expense! - she threatened the mayor, - not at the estate’s expense, but at her own expense! - Why is this, madam? - And for not croaking. Kra! kra! “It’s not otherwise that this will happen”... get out of my sight... the crow! Anton Vasiliev was about to turn left around, but Arina Petrovna stopped him again. - Stop! wait a minute! So is it true that he sharpened his skis in Golovlevo? she asked. - Shall I, madam, lie! It was true what he said: I’ll go to the old woman to eat some dry bread! “Now I’ll show him what kind of bread the old woman has in store for him!” - Why, madam, he won’t stay with you for long!- What is it? - Yes, he coughs very badly... he keeps grabbing at his left breast... It won’t heal! - These, my dear, live even longer! and will outlive us all! He coughs and coughs - what can he do, the lanky stallion! Well, we'll see there. Go now: I need to make an order. Arina Petrovna thought all evening and finally came up with an idea: to convene a family council to decide the dunce’s fate. Such constitutional habits were not in her morals, but this time she decided to deviate from the traditions of the autocracy in order to protect herself from the criticism of good people by the decision of the whole family. She, however, had no doubt about the outcome of the upcoming meeting, and therefore, with a light spirit, she sat down to write the letters that ordered Porfiry and Pavel Vladimirych to immediately arrive in Golovlevo. While all this was happening, the culprit of the mess, Styopka the dunce, was already moving from Moscow towards Golovlev. He sat down in Moscow, near Rogozhskaya, in one of the so-called “delezhans”, in which small merchants and trading peasants traveled in some places in the past, and even now, on their way to their place on leave. “Delezhan” was driving towards Vladimir, and the same compassionate innkeeper Ivan Mikhailych was driving Stepan Vladimirych at his own expense, taking a place for him and paying for his grub throughout the entire journey. “So you, Stepan Vladimirych, do just that: get off at the turn, and on foot, as if in a suit, report to your mother!” - Ivan Mikhailych agreed with him. - So so so! - Stepan Vladimirych also confirmed, - it’s a long way to go - fifteen miles on foot! I'll grab it right away! In dust, in manure - that’s how I will appear! “If Mama sees her in a suit, she might even regret it!” - He will regret it! how not to regret it! Mother - she’s a kind old woman! Stepan Golovlev is not yet forty years old, but in appearance it is impossible to give him less than fifty. Life had worn him out to such an extent that it did not leave on him any sign of a noble son, not the slightest trace that he had once been at the university and that the educational word of science had also been addressed to him. This is an overly long, unkempt, almost unwashed fellow, thin from lack of nutrition, with a sunken chest, and long, raked arms. His face is swollen, the hair on his head and beard is disheveled, with strong graying, his voice is loud, but hoarse, cold, his eyes are bulging and inflamed, partly from excessive consumption of vodka, partly from constant exposure to the wind. He is wearing a dilapidated and completely worn-out gray militia jacket, the braid from which has been torn off and sold for burning; on his feet - worn out, rusty and patched boots; from behind the open militia one can see a shirt, almost black, as if smeared with soot - a shirt that he himself, with true militia cynicism, calls a “flea.” He looks from under his brows, gloomily, but this gloominess does not express internal dissatisfaction, but is a consequence of some vague anxiety that in just another minute he, like a worm, will die of hunger. He talks incessantly, without connection, jumping from one subject to another; speaks both when Ivan Mikhailych listens to him, and when the latter falls asleep to the music of his conversation. It's terribly awkward for him to sit. The “share” fit four people, and therefore they have to sit with their legs curled, which already produces unbearable pain in the knees over the course of three or four miles. However, despite the pain, he constantly talks. Clouds of dust rush into the side openings of the cart; From time to time, slanting rays of the sun creep in there, and suddenly, like a blaze, they burn the entire inside of the “division,” and he still talks. “Yes, brother, I’ve suffered grief in my lifetime,” he says, “it’s time to go to the side!” It’s not the volume of it, but a piece of bread, tea, how could I not find it! How do you, Ivan Mikhailych, think about this? - Your mother has a lot of pieces! - Just not about me - is that what you want to say? Yes, my friend, she has a whole lot of money, but for me it’s a pity for a copper nickel! And she, the witch, always hated me! For what? Well, now, brother, you're being naughty! Bribes are fine with me, I’ll take them by the throat! If he decides to kick me out, I won’t go! If he doesn’t give you food, I’ll take it myself! I, brother, served my fatherland - now everyone is obliged to help me! I'm afraid of one thing: he won't give me tobacco - it's bad! - Yes, apparently I’ll have to say goodbye to tobacco! - So I’m the mayor for the sides! Maybe the bald devil can give it to the master! - Why not give as a gift! Well, how is she, your mother, even forbidding the mayor? - Well, then I’m completely swearing; I have only one luxury left from my former splendor - tobacco! Brother, when I had money, I smoked a quarter of Zhukov a day! - So you’ll have to say goodbye to vodka too! - Also bad. And vodka is even good for my health - it breaks up phlegm. We, brother, were on a march to Sevastopol - we hadn’t even reached Serpukhov, and we already got a bucket of each of our brothers!- Tea, are you crazy? - I do not remember. It seems like something happened. Brother, I made it all the way to Kharkov, but for the life of me I don’t remember anything. I only remember that we walked through villages and cities, and also that in Tula the tax farmer gave us a speech. Tears, you scoundrel! Yes, our Orthodox Mother Rus' bit into grief at that time! Farmers, contractors, receivers - as soon as God saved! - But your mother made a profit here too. More than half of the warriors from our patrimony did not return home, so for each, they say, they are now ordered to issue a recruitment receipt. But this receipt is worth more than four hundred in the treasury. - Yes, brother, our mother is smart! She should have been a minister, and not skim the foam from the jam in Golovlev! Do you know what? She was unfair to me, she offended me, but I respect her! Smart as hell, that's the main thing! If it weren't for her, where would we be now? If only Golovlev had been there, there would have been a hundred and one souls and a half! And she - look what a damn abyss she bought! - Your brothers will have capital! - They will. So I’ll be left with nothing to do with it - that’s true! Yes, I'm out, brother, I'm dead! And the brothers will be rich, especially Blooddrinker. This one will get into your soul without soap. However, he, the old witch, will solve it in time; he will suck both the property and the capital out of her - I am a seer for these things! Here is Pavel the brother - that soul-man! he'll slowly send me tobacco - you'll see! As soon as I arrive in Golovlevo, I’ll tell him now: so and so, dear brother, calm down! Eh-eh, ehma! If only I were rich! - What would you do? - First of all, now I would make you rich... - Why me? You are talking about yourself, but I, by the grace of your mother, am happy. - Well, no - this, brother, is attande! - I would make you commander-in-chief over all the estates! Yes, friend, you fed and warmed the serviceman - thank you! If it weren’t for you, I would now be punting on foot to the house of my ancestors! And if I could give you a free hand now, and I would open all my treasures before you - drink, eat and be merry! What did you think of me, my friend? - No, leave it to me, sir. What else would you do if you were rich? - Secondly, I would like to get myself a little thing now. In Kursk, I went to the Lady to serve a prayer service, and I saw one... ah, good thing! Can you believe it, there wasn’t a single moment where she stood still calmly! - Or maybe she wouldn’t have gone into the tricks? - What's the money for? despicable metal for what? One hundred thousand is not enough - take two hundred! Brother, if I have money, I won’t regret anything, just to live for my own pleasure! I must admit, even at that time, through the corporal, I promised her three rubles - five, the beast, she asked for it! - Apparently it didn’t happen at five? - And I don’t know, brother, how to say it. I’m telling you: it was like I saw everything in a dream. Maybe I even had it, but I forgot. All the way, two whole months - I don’t remember anything! Apparently this didn’t happen to you? But Ivan Mikhailych is silent. Stepan Vladimirych peers and makes sure that his companion is nodding his head rhythmically and, from time to time, when his nose almost touches his knees, he shudders somehow absurdly and again begins to nod to the beat. - Ehma! - he says, - you’re already seasick! you're asking to go to the side! You've grown fat, brother, on tea and tavern grub! And I still have no sleep! I have no sleep - and the Sabbath! Now, however, what something to do! Is it from the fruit of this vine... Golovlev looks around and makes sure that the other passengers are also sleeping. The merchant who sits next to him has his head pounding on the crossbar, but he still sleeps. And his face became glossy, as if covered with varnish, and flies were all around his mouth. “What if all these flies were escorted to him in Hailo - the sky would seem the size of a sheepskin!” - suddenly a happy thought dawns on Golovlev, and he already begins to sneak up on the merchant with his hand in order to carry out his plan, but halfway along the way he remembers something and stops. - No, no more pranks - that's it! Sleep, friends, and rest in peace! And while I... and where did he put half a bottle? Bah! here he is, my dear! Get in, get in here! God bless you, your people! - he sings in an undertone, taking the vessel out of the canvas bag attached to the side of the wagon, and putting the neck to his mouth, - well, okay now! It's warm! Or more? No, okay... it's still about twenty miles to the station, I'll have time to get ready... or else? Oh, take her ashes, this vodka! When you see half a glass, it’s just tempting! Drinking is bad, and it’s impossible not to drink - that’s why there’s no sleep! If only sleep, damn it, would kill me! After gurgling a few more sips from the neck, he puts half a glass back in its original place and begins to fill the pipe. - Important! - he says, - first we drank, and now we’ll smoke pipes! The witch won't give me tobacco, he won't give me tobacco - he said that correctly. Will there be anything? Leftovers, tea, something from the table will be sent! Ehma! We had money and we don’t have it! There was a man - and he is no more! So that’s all in this world! Today you are both full and drunk, you live for your own pleasure, you smoke a pipe...And tomorrow - where are you, man?
However, it would be necessary to have something to eat. You drink and drink like a barrel with a flaw, but you can’t get a bite to eat. And the doctors say that drinking is beneficial if you also have a healthy snack with it, as the Right Reverend Smaragd said when we passed through Oboyan. Is it through Oboyan? And who knows, maybe through Kromy! That’s not the point, however, but how to get snacks now. I remember that he put sausage and three French breads in the bag! I probably regretted buying caviar! Look how he sleeps, what songs he brings out with his nose! Tea and provisions for myself!
He fumbles around and doesn't find anything. - Ivan Mikhailych! and Ivan Mikhailych! - he calls out. Ivan Mikhailych wakes up and for a minute does not seem to understand how he ended up vis-a-vis with the master. - And the dream just started to turn me on! - he finally says. - Nothing, friend, sleep! I just have to ask, where is our bag of provisions hidden here? - Do you want to eat? But first, you need to drink tea! - And that’s it! where do you have half a bottle? Having drunk, Stepan Vladimirych begins to eat the sausage, which turns out to be hard like a stone, salty like salt itself, and wrapped in such a strong bubble that you need to resort to the sharp end of a knife to pierce it. “White fish would be good now,” says ok. - Excuse me, sir, completely out of my memory. I remembered all morning, I even told my wife: be sure to remind me of the whitefish - and now, as if a sin had happened! - It’s okay, we’ll eat sausages. We walked or ate. Dad told me: an Englishman and an Englishman made a bet that they would eat a dead cat - and they did!- Shh... did you eat it? - Ate it. He just felt sick afterwards! Rom was cured. I drank two bottles in one gulp and it was like a breeze. Another Englishman bet that he would live on sugar alone for a whole year.- Did you win? - No, I didn’t live two days to be a year old - I died! Why are you on your own? Would you like some vodka? - I haven’t had a drink in a long time. — Are you pouring yourself some tea? Not good, brother; That’s why your belly is growing. You also need to be careful with tea: drink a cup and cover it with a glass on top. Tea accumulates phlegm, but vodka breaks it down. So, what? - Don't know; You are scientists, you know better. - That's it. We went on a hike - we had no time to bother with teas and coffees. And vodka is a sacred thing: you unscrew the bottle, pour it, drink it - and it’s a sabbath. They drove us away very quickly at that time, so quickly that I went ten days without washing! - You, sir, have taken a lot of work! - Not much, but try to show off along the pillar! Well, there was no point in going forward after all: they made sacrifices, fed them dinners, and had plenty of wine. But how can we go back? They’ve already stopped celebrating! Golovlev gnaws the sausage with effort and finally chews one piece. - Salty sausage, brother! - he says, - however, I am unpretentious! The mother, too, won’t treat her to pickles: a plate of soup and a cup of porridge - that’s all! - God is merciful! Maybe he'll give you some pie on holiday! - No tea, no tobacco, no vodka - you said that correctly. They say that these days she has begun to love playing fools - is that really it? Well, he’ll invite you to play and give you some tea. And as for other things - oh, brother! We stopped at the station for about four hours to feed the horses. Golovlev managed to finish half a magnum, and he was overcome by severe hunger. The passengers went into the hut and settled down to have lunch. After wandering around the yard, looking into the backyard and into the manger for the horses, scaring away the pigeons and even trying to sleep, Stepan Vladimirych is finally convinced that the best thing for him is to follow the other passengers into the hut. There, on the table, cabbage soup is already smoking, and off to the side, on a wooden tray, lies a large piece of beef, which Ivan Mikhailych crumbles into small pieces. Golovlev sits a little further away, lights a pipe, and for a long time does not know what to do regarding his satiation. - Bread and salt, gentlemen! - finally, he says, - the cabbage soup seems fatty? - No cabbage soup! - Ivan Mikhailych responds, - yes, sir, you should ask yourself! - No, just by the way, I’m full! - Why are you full? We ate a piece of sausage, and with her, with the damned one, my stomach swells even more. Eat it! So I’ll order a table to be set aside for you - eat to your health! Mistress! cover the master aside - like this! The passengers silently begin to eat and only look at each other mysteriously. Golovlev guesses that he was “infiltrated,” although he, not without impudence, played the master all the way and called Ivan Mikhailych his treasurer. His eyebrows are furrowed and tobacco smoke is pouring out of his mouth. He is ready to refuse food, but the demands of hunger are so urgent that he somehow predatorily pounces on the cup of cabbage soup placed in front of him and instantly empties it. Along with satiety, self-confidence returns to him, and he, as if nothing had happened, says, turning to Ivan Mikhailych: - Well, brother treasurer, you just pay for me, and I’ll go to the hayloft to talk to Khrapovitsky! Waddled, he goes to the hay field and this time, since his stomach is burdened, he falls asleep in a heroic sleep. At five o'clock he was on his feet again. Seeing that the horses are standing by the empty mangers and scratching their muzzles on the edges of them, he begins to wake up the coachman. - He's sleeping, you bastard! - he shouts, - we are in a hurry, but he sees pleasant dreams! This is how it goes until the station, from which the road turns to Golovlevo. Only here Stepan Vladimirych calms down somewhat. He clearly loses heart and becomes silent. This time Ivan Mikhailych encourages him and, most of all, convinces him to hang up. - As soon as you approach the estate, sir, throw your pipe into the nettles! you will find it later! Finally, the horses that are supposed to carry Ivan Mikhailych further are ready. The moment of parting comes. - Goodbye, brother! - says Golovlev in a trembling voice, kissing Ivan Mikhailych, - she will eat me! - God is merciful! Don't be too scared either! - It'll get stuck! - Stepan Vladimirych repeats in such a convinced tone that Ivan Mikhailych involuntarily lowers his eyes. Having said this, Golovlev turns sharply in the direction of the dirt road and begins to walk, leaning on a gnarled stick, which he had previously cut from a tree. Ivan Mikhailych watches him for some time and then rushes after him. - That's it, master! - he says, catching up with him, - just now, as I was cleaning your militia, I saw three rubles in my side pocket - don’t accidentally drop it! Stepan Vladimirych apparently hesitates and does not know what to do in this case. Finally he extends his hand to Ivan Mikhailych and says through tears: - I understand... to the servant for tobacco... thank you! As for that... she will eat me, dear friend! Mark my words - it will eat! Golovlev finally turns to face the dirt road, and five minutes later his gray militia cap is already flashing far away, then disappearing, then suddenly appearing from behind the thicket of the forest. The time is still early, the sixth hour at the beginning; golden morning fog curls over the country road, barely letting in the rays of the sun that has just appeared on the horizon; the grass shines; the air is filled with the smells of spruce, mushrooms and berries; The road zigzags through the lowlands, which are teeming with countless flocks of birds. But Stepan Vladimirych does not notice anything: all frivolity has suddenly left him, and he walks as if to the Last Judgment. One thought fills his entire being to the brim: another three or four hours - and there is nowhere to go further. He remembers his old Golovlev life, and it seems to him that the doors of the damp basement are dissolving before him, that as soon as he steps over the threshold of these doors, they will now slam shut - and then it’s all over. I also recall other details, although not directly related to him, but undoubtedly characterizing the Golovlev order. Here is uncle Mikhail Petrovich (in common parlance “Brawler Bear”), who also belonged to the “hateful” group and whom grandfather Pyotr Ivanovich imprisoned with his daughter in Golovlevo, where he lived in the people’s room and ate from the same cup with the dog Trezorka. Here is Aunt Vera Mikhailovna, who out of mercy lived in the Golovlev estate with her brother Vladimir Mikhailych and who died “of moderation” because Arina Petrovna reproached her with every piece eaten at dinner and with every log of firewood used to heat her room. He will have to experience approximately the same thing. An endless series of dawnless days, drowning in some yawning gray abyss, flashes in his imagination - and he involuntarily closes his eyes. From now on he will be alone with an evil old woman, and not even evil, but only numb in the apathy of power. This old woman will eat him up, eat him up not with torment, but with oblivion. There is no one to say a word to, nowhere to run - she is everywhere, imperious, numb, despising. The thought of this inevitable future filled him with melancholy to such an extent that he stopped near a tree and banged his head against it for some time. His whole life, full of antics, idleness, buffoonery, suddenly seemed to illuminate before his mental eye. He is now going to Golovlevo, he knows what awaits him there, and yet he goes, and cannot help but go. He has no other way. The last of the people can do something for himself, can get bread for himself - he is alone can't do anything. It was as if this thought had awakened in him for the first time. And before he had happened to think about the future and imagine all sorts of prospects for himself, but these were always the prospects of free contentment and never the prospects of work. And now he was facing retribution for the frenzy in which his past had sunk without a trace. The retribution is bitter, expressed in one terrible word: it will seize! It was about ten o'clock in the morning when the white Golovlevskaya bell tower appeared from behind the forest. Stepan Vladimirych's face turned pale, his hands shook: he took off his cap and crossed himself. He remembered the Gospel parable about the prodigal son returning home, but he immediately realized that, when applied to him, such memories amounted to only one deception. Finally, with his eyes he found a boundary post placed near the road and found himself on Golovlevsky land, on that hateful land that gave birth to him hateful, nurtured him hateful, released him hateful on all four sides and now, hateful, again accepts him into its bosom. The sun was already high and mercilessly scorched the endless Golovlev fields. But he grew paler and paler and felt that he was beginning to shiver. Finally he reached the churchyard, and then his cheerfulness finally left him. The manor's estate looked out from behind the trees so peacefully, as if nothing special was happening in it; but her appearance had the effect of a jellyfish head on him. He imagined a coffin there. Coffin! coffin! coffin! - he repeated unconsciously to himself. And he did not dare to go straight to the estate, but first went to the priest and sent him to notify him of his arrival and find out whether his mother would accept him. The priest began to spin at the sight of him and began to fuss about scrambled eggs; the village boys crowded around him and looked at the master with amazed eyes; the men, passing by, silently took off their hats and looked at him somehow mysteriously; some old servant even ran up and asked the master to kiss his hand. Everyone understood that before them was a hateful man who had come to a hateful place, had come forever, and there was no way out for him from here except feet first to the graveyard. And everyone felt sorry and terrible at the same time. Finally the priest came and said that “mama is ready to receive” Stepan Vladimirych. Ten minutes later he was already there. Arina Petrovna greeted him solemnly and strictly and looked him up and down with an icy gaze; but she did not allow herself any useless reproaches. And she didn’t allow him into the rooms, but on the maiden porch she met and parted, ordering the young master to be escorted through the other porch to daddy. The old man was dozing in a bed covered with a white blanket, wearing a white cap, all white, like a dead man. Seeing him, he woke up and laughed idiotically. - What, my dear! fell into the witch's clutches! - he shouted while Stepan Vladimirych kissed his hand. Then he crowed like a rooster, laughed again and repeated several times in a row: “He’ll eat it!” eat it! eat it! - He will eat it! - like an echo, responded in his soul. His predictions came true. He was placed in a special room in the wing that housed the office. There they brought him home-made linen and his father's old robe, which he immediately put on. The doors of the crypt opened, let him through, and slammed shut. A series of sluggish, ugly days stretched out, one after another drowning in the gray, yawning abyss of time. Arina Petrovna did not accept him; He was also not allowed to see his father. Three days later, the mayor Finogey Ipatych announced to him from his mother the “situation”, which was that he would receive board and clothing and, in addition, a pound of Faler a month. He listened to his mother’s will and only remarked: - Look, old man! She caught wind that Zhukov was two rubles, and Faler was worth ninety rubles - and then she snatched ten kopecks in banknotes a month! That’s right, she was going to give to a beggar on my account! The signs of moral sobering that appeared in those hours while he was approaching Golovlev along the country road again disappeared somewhere. Frivolity again came into its own, and at the same time came reconciliation with the “mother’s position.” The future, hopeless and hopeless, which once flashed upon his mind and filled him with trepidation, became more and more shrouded in fog every day and finally ceased to exist altogether. The urgent day appeared on the stage, with its cynical nakedness, and appeared so importunately and brazenly that it completely filled all thoughts, the entire being. And what role can the thought of the future play when the course of one’s entire life has already been irrevocably decided in the smallest details in Arina Petrovna’s mind? All day long he walked back and forth in the allotted room, without letting his pipe out of his mouth and humming some snatches of songs, and church tunes suddenly gave way to rollicking ones, and vice versa. When the zemstvo was present in the office, he came to him and calculated the income received by Arina Petrovna. - And where does she put such a ton of money? - he was surprised, counting up to the figure of more than eighty thousand on the banknotes, - I know he doesn’t send much to his brothers, she lives stingily, she feeds her father with salted strips... To the pawnshop! there is nowhere else to put it but in a pawn shop. Sometimes Finogey Ipatych himself came to the office with quitrents, and then on the office table the very money at which Stepan Vladimirych’s eyes lit up was laid out in bundles. - What an abyss of money! - he exclaimed, - and everyone will go to her in praise! there is no way to give my son a pack! they say, my son, who is in grief! here's some wine and tobacco for you! And then endless and cynicism-filled conversations began with Yakov-Zemsky about how to soften the mother’s heart so that she doted on him. “I had a tradesman acquaintance in Moscow,” said Golovlev, “so he knew the “word”... It happened that when his mother didn’t want to give him money, he would say this “word”... And now it will start to make all her sense , arms, legs - in a word, everything! - So I let go of all sorts of damage! - Yakov-Zemsky guessed. “Well, put it as you wish, but it’s just the truth that there is such a “word.” And then another man said: take, he says, a live frog and put it in the dead of midnight in an anthill; By morning the ants will have eaten it all, leaving only one bone; Take this bone, and as long as it’s in your pocket, ask any woman what you want, you won’t be denied anything. - Well, at least this can be done now! - That's it, brother, that you first need to put a curse on yourself! If it weren’t for this... the witch would have danced like a little demon in front of me. Whole hours were spent in such conversations, but still no funds were found. That's all - you either had to put a curse on yourself, or sell your soul to the devil. As a result, there was nothing else left to do but to live in the “mama’s position,” correcting it with some arbitrary exactions from the village chiefs, whom Stepan Vladimirych completely imposed tribute in his favor, in the form of tobacco, tea and sugar. He was fed extremely poorly. Usually, they brought the leftovers from Mama’s dinner, and since Arina Petrovna was moderate to the point of stinginess, it was natural that there would be little left for his share. This was especially painful for him, because since wine became a forbidden fruit for him, his appetite quickly increased. From morning to evening he was hungry and only thought about how to eat. He would watch the hours when Mama was resting, run into the kitchen, even look into the people's room and fumble for something everywhere. From time to time he would sit by the open window and wait to see if anyone would pass. If a peasant of his own was passing by, he would stop him and impose a tribute: an egg, a cheesecake, etc. Even on their first date, Arina Petrovna in short words explained to him the full program of his life. - For now - live! - she said, - here’s a corner in the office, you’ll drink and eat from my table, but don’t be angry about the rest, my dear! I’ve never had a pickle shop since I was a child, and I won’t even start one for you. The brothers will already arrive: whatever position they recommend between themselves for you, that’s what I’ll do with you. I don’t want to take any sin on my soul; whatever my brothers decide, so be it! And now he was looking forward to the arrival of his brothers. But at the same time, he did not think at all about what impact this visit would have on his future fate (apparently, he decided that there was nothing to think about this), but only wondered whether brother Pavel would bring him tobacco, and exactly how much . “Or maybe he’ll get some money!” - he added mentally, - The blood-drinking porfish won’t give it, but Pavel... I’ll tell him: give it, brother, to the servant for wine... he’ll give it! Why, don’t give me tea!” Time passed without him noticing it. It was absolute idleness, which, however, hardly bothered him. Only in the evenings it was boring, because the zemstvo went home at eight o’clock, and Arina Petrovna did not let go of candles for him, on the grounds that it was possible to walk back and forth in the room without candles. But he soon got used to this and even fell in love with the darkness, because in the dark his imagination ran stronger and carried him far away from the hateful Golovlev. One thing worried him: his heart was restless and fluttered somehow strangely in his chest, especially when he went to bed. Sometimes he would jump out of bed, as if stunned, and run around the room, holding his hand on the left side of his chest. “Oh, if only I could die! - he thought at the same time, - no, I won’t die! Maybe..." But when one morning the Zemsky mysteriously reported to him that the brothers had arrived at night, he involuntarily shuddered and changed his face. Something childish suddenly awoke in him; he wanted to run into the house as quickly as possible, to see how they were dressed, what beds were made for them, and whether they had the same travel bags as he had seen with one militia captain; I wanted to listen to how they would talk to their mother, to see what they would be served at dinner. In a word, he wanted once again to join the life that so stubbornly swept him away from itself, to throw himself at his mother’s feet, to beg her forgiveness and then, in joy, perhaps, to eat the well-fed calf. Everything was still quiet in the house, and he ran to the cook in the kitchen and found out what was ordered for dinner: for hot cabbage soup, a small pot, and yesterday’s soup was ordered to be heated, for cold - a salted sheet and two pairs of cutlets on the side, for the roast - lamb and four snipe on the side, for the cake - raspberry pie with cream. - Yesterday's soup, soup and lamb - this, brother, is hateful! - he said to the cook, - I guess they won’t give me any pie either! “It’s as mamma pleases, sir.” - Ehma! There was a time when I ate great snipes too! ate, brother! Once I even made a bet with Lieutenant Gremykin that I would eat fifteen great snipes in a row - and I won! Only after that I couldn’t look at them for a whole month without disgust! “Would you like to eat again now?” - Will not give! Why, it seems, to regret! The great snipe is a free bird: neither feed it nor look after it - it lives on its own! And the snipe is not bought, and the ram is not bought - but here you go! The witch knows that snipe is tastier than lamb, but she won’t give it! It will rot, but it won’t give! What did you order for breakfast? — Liver has been ordered, mushrooms in sour cream, juice... - You should at least send me a bud... try, brother! - We have to try. And here's what you say, sir. As soon as the brothers sit down to breakfast, send the zemstvo here: he will bring you a couple of sochens in his bosom. Stepan Vladimirych waited all morning to see if the brothers would come, but the brothers did not come. Finally, around eleven o’clock, the zemstvo brought the two promised juices and reported that the brothers had now had breakfast and locked themselves in the bedroom with their mother. Arina Petrovna greeted her sons solemnly, overwhelmed with grief. Two girls supported her by the arms; gray hair came out in strands from under his white cap, his head drooped and swayed from side to side, his legs barely dragged. In general, she loved to play the role of a respectable and dejected mother in the eyes of the children, and in these cases she dragged her feet with difficulty and demanded that she be supported by the arms of the girls. Styopka the dunce called such ceremonial receptions the bishop's service, his mother called the bishop's service, and the girls Polka and Yulka were the bishop's baton-bearers. But since it was already two o’clock in the morning, the meeting took place without words. Silently she offered her hand to the children to kiss, silently kissed them and crossed them, and when Porfiry Vladimirych expressed his readiness to spend the rest of the night scribbling away with his mother’s dear friend, she waved her hand, saying: - Go! take a break from the road! There’s no time for talking now, we’ll talk tomorrow. The next day, in the morning, both sons went to kiss daddy’s hand, but daddy didn’t give him his hand. He lay on the bed with his eyes closed and, when the children came in, he shouted: - Have you come to judge the publican?.. out, Pharisees... out! Nevertheless, Porfiry Vladimirych left papa’s office excited and tearful, and Pavel Vladimirych, like a “truly insensitive idol,” just picked his nose with his finger. - He’s not good for you, good friend Mama! oh, how not good! - Porfiry Vladimirych exclaimed, throwing himself on his mother’s chest. -Are you very weak today? - So weak! so weak! He is not your tenant! - Well, it will creak again! - No, my dear, no! And although your life has never been particularly joyful, when you think that there are so many blows at once... you really even wonder how you have the strength to endure these trials! “Well, my friend, you can endure it, if God pleases!” You know, the Scripture says: bear each other’s burdens - so he chose me, father, to bear the burdens for his family! Arina Petrovna even closed her eyes: it seemed so good to her that everyone lived on everything that was ready, everyone had everything in stock, and she was alone, toiling all day and bearing burdens for everyone. - Yes my friend! “- she said after a minute’s silence, “it’s hard for me in my old age!” I’ve saved enough for the children for my share - it’s time to relax! It’s a joke to say - four thousand souls! such a colossus to manage at my age! Look at everyone! keep track of everyone! walk and run! If only these mayors and our managers: don’t look at him looking you in the eye! With one eye he’s looking at you, and with the other he’s aiming for the forest! These are the people... of little faith! Well, what about you? - she suddenly interrupted, turning to Pavel, - are you picking your nose? - Well, what do I need! - Pavel Vladimirych snapped, worried in the midst of his work. - Like what! after all, you are your father - you might even regret it! - Well, father! Father is like father... as always! He's been like this for ten years! You always oppress me! - Why should I oppress you, my friend, I am your mother! Here's Porfisha: he caressed and regretted it - he did everything as a mark for his good son, but you don’t even want to look at your mother, all from under your brows and from the side, as if she were not your mother, but your enemy! Don't bite, do me a favor!- Why am I... - Wait! shut up for a minute! let your mother speak! Do you remember that the commandment says: honor your father and your mother - and good will come to you... therefore, you don’t want “good” for yourself? Pavel Vladimirych was silent and looked at his mother with perplexed eyes. “You see, you’re silent,” Arina Petrovna continued, “so you yourself feel that there are fleas behind you.” Well, God be with you! For a joyful date, let's leave this conversation. God, my friend, sees everything, and I... oh, how long ago I understood you through and through! Oh, kids, kids! remember your mother, how she will lie in the grave, remember - but it will be too late! - Mama! - Porfiry Vladimirych intervened, - leave these dark thoughts! leave it! - Everyone will have to die, my friend! - Arina Petrovna said sententiously, - these are not black thoughts, but the most, one might say... divine! I'm fading, kids, oh, how I'm fading! There is nothing left in me that was the same - only weakness and sickness! Even the toadstool girls noticed this - and they don’t blow my mustache! I am the word - they are two! I say - they are ten! The only threat I have against them is that I will complain to the young gentlemen! Well, sometimes they get quiet! Tea was served, then breakfast, during which Arina Petrovna kept complaining and being touched at herself. After breakfast, she invited her sons into her bedroom. When the door was locked, Arina Petrovna immediately got down to business, about which a family council was convened. - The dunce has appeared! - she began. - We heard, mama, we heard! - Porfiry Vladimirych responded, either with irony or with the complacency of a man who has just eaten a hearty meal. “He came, as if he had done the job, as if it should have been so: no matter how much I caroused or stirred up, my old mother always had a piece of bread for me!” How much hatred I have seen from him in my life! How much torment she suffered from his buffoonery and tricks alone! What hard work did I put in at that time to get him into the service? - and everything is like water off a duck’s back! Finally, I struggled and struggled, and I thought: Lord! but if he doesn’t want to take care of himself, am I really obliged to kill my life because of him, the lanky dunce? Give it to me, I think, I’ll throw him a piece, maybe my penny will fall into his hands - it will be more gradual! And threw it away. She herself looked out for a house for him, with her own hands she laid out twelve thousand in silver like one penny! So what! Not even three years had passed after that - and he was hanging around my neck again! How long will I have to endure these abuses? Porfisha raised his eyes to the ceiling and sadly shook his head, as if saying: “A-ah-ah! affairs! affairs! And you have to bother your dear friend Mama like that! If everyone would sit quietly, in peace and in peace - none of this would happen, and mamma wouldn’t be angry... ah-ah, business, business!” But Arina Petrovna, as a woman who cannot tolerate the flow of her thoughts being interrupted by anything, did not like Porfisha’s movement. “No, wait a minute and turn your head,” she said, “listen first!” How did it feel for me to find out that he threw his parent’s blessing, like a gnawed bone, into the trash heap? What was it like for me to feel that, if I may say so, I didn’t get enough sleep at night, didn’t have enough to eat, but he just didn’t! It’s as if he took it, bought a spilliyka at the market - he didn’t need it, and threw it out the window! This is a parental blessing! - Oh, mummy! This is such an act! such an act! - Porfiry Vladimirych began, but Arina Petrovna stopped him again. - Stop! wait a minute! When I order, then tell me your opinion! And at least he, the bastard, warned me! It’s my mother’s fault, so and so - I didn’t refrain! I myself, if only on time, would have been able to buy a house for next to nothing! The unworthy son failed to take advantage - let the worthy children take advantage! After all, he, jokingly, jokingly, will bring interest to the house fifteen percent a year! Maybe I would have thrown him another thousand rubles for poverty for this! Otherwise - that's it! I’m sitting here, neither in sleep nor in action, but he already gave orders! She paid twelve thousand for the house with her own hands, and he brought it down at auction for eight thousand! “And the main thing, mama, is that he acted so basely with his parents’ blessing!” - Porfiry Vladimirych hastened to add quickly, as if fearing that his mother would interrupt him again. - And that, my friend, and that too. My darling, my money is not crazy; I didn’t acquire them through dancing and chimes, but through the ridge and then. How did I achieve wealth? As if I were following my daddy, all he had was Golovlevo, a hundred and one souls, and in distant places, where there were twenty, where there were thirty, there were about one and a half hundred souls! But for me, for myself, nothing at all! And well, with such and such means, what a colossus she has built! Four thousand souls - you can’t hide them! And I would like to take it to the grave with me, but I can’t! Do you think it was easy for me to get these four thousand souls? No, my dear friend, it’s so difficult, so difficult that sometimes you can’t sleep at night - you keep imagining how to manage this business so cleverly that no one could get wind of it before the time comes! So that someone doesn’t interrupt, and so that you don’t spend an extra penny! And what haven’t I tried! and slush, and mud, and ice - I tasted it all! It’s just recently that I’ve started to feel luxurious in tarantasses, but at first they would assemble a peasant’s cart, they’d tie some kind of kibitchon to it, they’d harness a couple of horses - and I’d trudge along to Moscow! I trudge along, but I keep thinking: well, how will someone take my property! And when you come to Moscow, you stop at an inn at Rogozhskaya, the stench and dirt - I, my friends, endured it all! It used to be a pity for a cab driver to pay a ten-kopeck piece, but on our own two people would be able to go from Rogozhskaya to Solyanka! Even the janitors are amazed: lady, they say you are young and wealthy, and yet you take on such work! But I remain silent and endure. And the first time I had only thirty thousand money on banknotes - I sold daddy’s distant pieces, about a hundred souls - and with this amount I set out, just to say a joke, to buy a thousand souls! I served a prayer service at Iverskaya and went to Solyanka to try my luck. And so what! As if the intercessor saw my bitter tears - she left the estate behind me! And what a miracle: how I gave thirty thousand, in addition to the government debt, as if I had cut off the entire auction! Before they were noisy and excited, but then they stopped making more noise, and it suddenly became quiet all around. This person present stood up and congratulated me, but I don’t understand anything! The solicitor was here, Ivan Nikolaich, and came up to me: with a purchase, he said, madam, and I seemed to be standing like a wooden post! And how great is God’s mercy! Just think: if, in such a frenzy of mine, someone suddenly shouted out of mischief: I give thirty-five thousand! - after all, I, perhaps, in unconsciousness, would have given all forty! Where would I get them?! Arina Petrovna had already told the children the epic of her first steps in the arena of wealth acquisition many times, but, apparently, even to this day she has not lost the interest of novelty in their eyes. Porfiry Vladimirych listened to his mother, now smiling, now sighing, now rolling his eyes, now lowering them, depending on the nature of the vicissitudes through which she passed. And Pavel Vladimirych even opened his big eyes, like a child who is being told a familiar but never boring fairy tale. “And you guys think that your mother got her fortune for nothing!” - continued Arina Petrovna, - no, my friends! It’s no wonder I won’t even get a pimple on my nose: after the first purchase I was in a fever for six weeks! Now judge: how does it feel for me to see that after such and such, one might say, torture, my labor money, for whatever reason, was thrown into a garbage pit! A moment of silence followed. Porfiry Vladimirych was ready to tear his vestments, but he was afraid that there would probably be no one in the village to repair them; Pavel Vladimirych, as soon as the “fairy tale” about the acquisition ended, immediately sank, and his face took on its former apathetic expression. “So then I called you,” Arina Petrovna began again, “you judge me with him, with the villain!” As you say, so it will be! Condemn him - he will be guilty, judge me - I will be guilty. But I won’t let the villain offend me! - she added quite unexpectedly. Porfiry Vladimirych felt that the holiday had arrived on his street, and went like a nightingale. But, like a true bloodsucker, he did not get down to business directly, but began in roundabout ways. “If you allow me, dear friend Mama, to express my opinion,” he said, “then here it is in a nutshell: children are obliged to obey their parents, blindly follow their instructions, rest them in old age - that’s all.” What are children, dear mother? Children are loving beings in whom everything, from themselves to the last rag they wear, all belongs to their parents. Therefore, parents can judge children; children of parents - never. Children's responsibility is to honor, not judge. You say: judge me with him! This is generous, dear mother, beautiful! But can we even think about this without fear, we, who have been blessed by you from head to toe from our first birthday? Your will, but it will be sacrilege, not justice! It would be such sacrilege, such sacrilege... - Stop! wait a minute! If you say that you cannot judge me, then set me free and condemn him! - Arina Petrovna interrupted him, who listened attentively and could not figure out what kind of trick Porfishka the bloodsucker had stuck in his head. - No, my dear mother, I can’t do that either! Or, better said, I don’t dare and don’t have the right. I can’t justify or blame - I can’t judge at all. You are a mother, you alone know what to do with us, your children. If we deserve it, you will reward us; if we are guilty, punish us. Our job is to obey, not to criticize. Even if you had to overstep, in a moment of parental anger, the measure of justice - and here we do not dare to grumble, because the ways of Providence are hidden from us. Who knows? Maybe this is how it should be! So it is here: brother Stepan acted basely, even, one might say, blackly, but you alone can determine the degree of retribution that he deserves for his action! - So you refuse? Get out, dear mother, as you know! - Oh, mummy, mummy! and it’s not a sin for you! Ah-ah-ah! I say: however you wish to decide the fate of brother Stepan, so be it - and you... oh, what dark thoughts you assume in me! - Fine. Well, how are you? - Arina Petrovna turned to Pavel Vladimirych. - Well, what do I need! Will you listen to me? - Pavel Vladimirych spoke as if in a dream, but then he suddenly became brave and continued: “It’s known, he’s guilty... torn into pieces... pounded in a mortar... I know ahead of time... Well, I’m sure!” Having muttered these incoherent words, he stopped and looked at his mother with his mouth open, as if he himself could not believe his ears. - Well, my dear, with you - later! - Arina Petrovna interrupted him coldly, - I see, you want to follow in Stepka’s footsteps... oh, don’t be mistaken, my friend! If you repent later, it will be too late! - Well, what am I doing! I’m okay!.. I say: whatever you want! What's... disrespectful here? — Pavel Vladimirych gave up. - Later, my friend, we’ll talk to you later! You think that you are an officer, and there will be no justice for you! You will find it, my dear, oh, how you will find it! So, does that mean you both refuse fate? - I, dear mother... - And me too. Me, what! For me, perhaps, at least in pieces... - Shut up, for Christ's sake... you are an unkind son! (Arina Petrovna understood that she had the right to say “scoundrel,” but, for the sake of a joyful meeting, she refrained.) Well, if you refuse, then I have to judge him in my own court. And this is what my decision will be: I’ll try and be kind to him again: I’ll give him daddy’s Vologda village, I’ll order him to put a small outbuilding there - and let him live, seemingly wretched, supported by the peasants! Although Porfiry Vladimirych refused to put his brother on trial, his mother’s generosity impressed him so much that he did not dare to hide from her the dangerous consequences that the now proposed measure entailed. - Mama! - he exclaimed, - you are more than generous! You see before you an act... well, the lowest, blackest act... and suddenly everything is forgotten, everything is forgiven! Well-made. But excuse me... I’m afraid, my dear, for you! Judge me as you wish, but if I were you... I wouldn’t do that!- Why? “I don’t know... Maybe I don’t have this generosity... this, so to speak, maternal feeling... But everything somehow gives up: what if brother Stepan, due to his inherent depravity, and with this second will your parental blessing be treated exactly the same as with the first? It turned out, however, that Arina Petrovna already had this consideration in mind, but that, at the same time, there was another secret thought, which now had to be expressed. “The Vologda estate is papa’s family estate,” she muttered through clenched teeth, “sooner or later he will still have to allocate a part of papa’s estate.” - I understand this, dear friend Mama... “And if you understand, then you also understand that by allocating him a village in Vologda, you can demand an obligation from him that he is separated from his daddy and is happy with everything?” “I understand that too, my dear mother.” Then, out of your kindness, you made a big mistake! It was necessary then, when you bought the house, then it was necessary to take an obligation from him that he was not a contributor to daddy’s estate! - What to do! I didn't guess! “Then, to be happy, he would have signed any paper!” And you, out of your kindness... oh, what a mistake that was! such a mistake! such a mistake! - “Ah” and “ah” - you would at that time, aah, aah, as the time was. Now you’re ready to blame everything on your mother’s head, but as soon as it gets to the point, you’re not there! But by the way, it’s not about paper: I’ll probably be able to demand paper from him even now. Daddy is not going to die now, tea, but until then the dunce also needs to drink and eat. If he doesn’t give out the paper, you can even point him to the door: wait for daddy’s death! No, I still want to know: don’t you like that I want to give him the Vologda village? “He’ll squander it, my dear!” he squandered the house and he will squander the village! - If he squanders it, then let him blame himself! - He’ll come to you then! - Well, no, these are pipes! And I won’t let him on my doorstep! I won’t send him not only bread, but also water to him, who is hateful! And people will not judge me for this, and God will not punish me. That's it! I’ve lived in the house, I’ve lived in the estate - but am I really his serf, so that I can provide for him alone all my life? Tea, I have other children too! - And yet he will come to you. He’s impudent, my dear mother! “I’m telling you: I won’t let you in!” What have you, like a magpie, set up: “he’ll come” and “he’ll come” - I won’t let him in! Arina Petrovna fell silent and stared out the window. She herself vaguely understood that the Vologda village would only temporarily free her from the “hateful” thing, that in the end he would squander her too, and would come to her again, and that, like a mother she can not refuse him coal, but the thought that her hater would remain with her forever, that he, even imprisoned in the office, would, like a ghost, haunt her imagination every moment - this thought oppressed her to such an extent that she involuntarily shuddered with her whole body. - Never! - she finally shouted, slamming her fist on the table and jumping up from her chair. And Porfiry Vladimirych looked at his dear friend, his mother, and mournfully shook his head to the beat. - But you, Mama, are angry! - he finally said in such a touching voice, as if he was going to tickle his mother’s belly. - Do you think I should start dancing? - A-ah-ah! But what does Scripture say about patience? In patience, it is said, win your souls! in patience - that's how! Do you think God doesn’t see? No, he sees everything, dear friend Mama! We, perhaps, don’t suspect anything, we’re sitting here: we’ll figure it out this way, and try it on this way, and then he decided: let me send her a test! Ah-ah-ah! and I thought that you, Mama, were a good girl! But Arina Petrovna understood very well that Porfishka the bloodsucker was only throwing a noose, and therefore she became completely angry. - Are you trying to make a joke out of me? - she shouted at him, - his mother is talking about business, and he is acting up! There’s no point in talking my mouth off! tell me what your thought is! Do you want to leave him in Golovlev, around his mother’s neck? - Exactly so, mamma, if your grace will. Leave him in the same position as now, and demand the paper regarding the inheritance from him. - So... so... I knew that you would recommend this. OK then. Let's assume it happens your way. No matter how unbearable it will be for me to always see my hater next to me, well, apparently there is no one to feel sorry for me. She was young and carried a cross, but an old woman would never refuse a cross. Let's admit this, let's now talk about something else. As long as daddy and I are alive, well, he will live in Golovlev and will not die of hunger. And then how? - Mama! My friend! Why black thoughts? - Whether they are black or white - you still need to think about it. We are not young. Let's both die - what will happen to him then? - Mama! Don’t you really have hope in us, your children? Were we brought up by these rules? And Porfiry Vladimirych looked at her with one of those mysterious glances that always embarrassed her. - Throws it in! - responded in her soul. - I, Mama, will help the poor with even greater joy! what to the rich! Christ is with him! The rich have enough of their own! And the poor man - do you know what Christ said about the poor! Porfiry Vladimirych stood up and kissed his mother’s hand. - Mama! Let me give my brother two pounds of tobacco! - he asked. Arina Petrovna did not answer. She looked at him and thought: is he really such a bloodsucker that he would throw his own brother out into the street? - Well, do as you please! He can live in Golovlevo so he can live in Golovlevo! “- she finally said, “you surrounded me!” entangled! I started with: as you please, mummy! and in the end he made me dance to his tune! Well, just listen to me! He is a hater to me, all his life he executed me and disgraced me, and finally he violated my parental blessing, but still, if you kick him out of the door or force him to go public, you don’t have my blessing! No, no and NO! Now both of you go to him! tea, he even overlooked his burkali, looking out for you! The sons left, and Arina Petrovna stood at the window and watched as they, without saying a word to each other, crossed the red courtyard to the office. Porfisha constantly took off his cap and crossed himself: now at the church, which was whitening in the distance, now at the chapel, now at the wooden post to which a begging cup was attached. Pavlusha, apparently, could not take his eyes off his new boots, on the tips of which the rays of the sun shimmered. - And for whom did I save it? I didn’t get enough sleep at night, I didn’t have enough to eat... for whom? - a scream burst from her chest. The brothers left; The Golovlev estate was deserted. With increased jealousy, Arina Petrovna began her interrupted household chores; the clattering of chef's knives in the kitchen subsided, but activity in the office, barns, storerooms, cellars, etc. doubled. The summer harvest was drawing to a close; there was jam, pickles, and cooking for future use; Supplies for the winter flocked from everywhere; women's goods in kind were brought from all estates by cartload: dried mushrooms, berries, eggs, vegetables, etc. All this was measured, accepted and added to the reserves of previous years. It was not for nothing that the Golovlevskaya lady had a whole line of cellars, storerooms and barns built; All of them were completely empty, and there was a lot of spoiled material in them, which could not be touched because of the rotten smell. All this material was sorted by the end of summer, and that part of it that turned out to be unreliable was handed over to the table. “The cucumbers are still good, but they look a little slimy on top, they’re smelling, well, let the servants enjoy it,” said Arina Petrovna, ordering them to leave first one tub or the other. Stepan Vladimirych surprisingly got used to his new position. At times, he passionately wanted to “kick,” “kick,” and generally “roll off” (he, as we will see later, even had the money for this), but he selflessly refrained, as if calculating that “the time” had not yet come . Now he was busy every minute, for he took a lively and fussy part in the process of provisioning, disinterestedly rejoicing and saddening at the successes and failures of Golovlev’s hoarding. In some kind of excitement, he made his way from the office to the cellars, in only a dressing gown, without a hat, hiding from his mother behind the trees and all sorts of cages that cluttered the red yard (Arina Petrovna, however, more than once noticed him in this form, and she began to boil parental heart, so as to thoroughly upset Styopka the dunce, but, on reflection, she gave up on him), and there with feverish impatience he watched how the carts were unloaded, jars, barrels, tubs were brought from the estate, how it was all sorted and, finally, disappeared into the yawning abyss of the cellars and... storerooms. Most of the time he was satisfied. - Today two carts of saffron milk caps were brought from Dubrovin - that’s how saffron milk caps are, brother! - he told the zemstvo in admiration, - and we already thought that we would be left without saffron milk caps for the winter! Thank you, thank you Dubrovinites! Well done Dubrovintsy! helped out! Or: - Today the mother ordered to catch crucian carp in the pond - ah, good old people! There is more than half a larshina! We'll probably be eating crucian carp all this week! Sometimes, however, he was sad. - The cucumbers, brother, weren’t a success today! Clumsy and with spots - there is no real cucumber, and it’s a sabbath! Apparently, we’ll eat last year’s food, and this year’s food will go to the table, there’s nowhere else to go! But in general, Arina Petrovna’s economic system did not satisfy him. - How much, brother, she has rotted away - passion! Today they carried and carried: corned beef, fish, cucumbers - she ordered everything to be given to the table! Is this the case? Is this really the way to run a business? There is an abyss of fresh stock, and she won’t even touch it until all the old rot is eaten away! Arina Petrovna’s confidence that she could easily demand any kind of paper from Styopka the dunce was fully justified. He not only signed all the papers sent to him by his mother without objection, but even boasted to the zemstvo that same evening: - Today, brother, I signed all the papers. All rejected - now clean! Neither a bowl, nor a spoon - I don’t have anything now, and I don’t expect to in the future! Calmed the old woman down! He parted with his brothers peacefully and was delighted that he now had a whole supply of tobacco. Of course, he could not refrain from calling Porfisha a blood drinker and a Judas, but these expressions completely unnoticed were drowned in a whole stream of chatter, in which it was impossible to catch a single coherent thought. At parting, the brothers became generous and even gave money, and Porfiry Vladimirych accompanied his gift with the following words: “If you need oil in the lamp, or if God wants to light a candle, that’s money!” That's it, brother! Live, brother, quietly and peacefully - and mamma will be pleased with you, and you will be at peace, and we will all be happy and joyful. Mother - she’s kind, my friend! “She’s kind,” Stepan Vladimirych agreed, “but she feeds her rotten corned beef!” - Who is to blame? who violated the parental blessing? - It’s his own fault, he let the property go! And what a little estate it was: a round, extremely profitable, wonderful little estate! If only you had behaved modestly and okay, you would have eaten both beef and veal, otherwise you would have ordered sauce. And you would have enough of everything: potatoes, cabbage, and peas... Is that right, brother, what I’m saying? If Arina Petrovna had heard this dialogue, she probably would not have refrained from saying: well, she rammed the tarant! But Styopka the dunce was happy precisely because his hearing, so to speak, did not stop extraneous speech. Judas could talk as much as he wanted and be quite sure that not a single word of his would reach its destination. In a word, Stepan Vladimirych saw off the brothers in a friendly manner and, not without self-satisfaction, showed Yakov-Zemsky two twenty-five-ruble bills that ended up in his hand after parting. “Now, brother, I’ll be here for a long time!” - he said, - we have tobacco, we are provided with tea and sugar, only wine was missing - if we want it, there will be wine! However, I’ll hold on for now - there’s no time now, I have to run to the cellar! If you don’t look after the little one, they’ll immediately take you away! And she saw me, brother, she saw me, the witch, how I once made my way along the wall near the table! It’s standing by the window, looking at the tea, and thinking at me: I don’t have enough cucumbers, but that’s it! But now it’s finally October: the rains started pouring down, the street turned black and became impassable. Stepan Vladimirych had nowhere to go out, because he had his daddy’s worn-out shoes on his feet and his daddy’s old robe on his shoulders. He sat hopelessly at the window in his room and looked through the double frames at a peasant village drowned in mud. There, among the gray vapors of autumn, like black dots, people nimbly flashed by, whom the summer suffering had not had time to break. The suffering did not stop, but only received a new setting in which the jubilant tones of summer were replaced by uninterrupted autumn twilight. The barns were smoking past midnight, and the sound of the flails echoed in a dismal beat throughout the entire neighborhood. Threshing was also going on in the master's barns, and in the office they said that it was unlikely that it would be closer than Maslenitsa to cope with the entire mass of the master's grain. Everything looked gloomy, sleepy, everything spoke of oppression. The doors of the office were no longer wide open, as in the summer, and in the premises itself there was a bluish fog from the fumes of wet sheepskin coats. It is difficult to say what impression the picture of a working village autumn made on Stepan Vladimirych, and whether he even recognized in it the suffering that continued among the mess of mud, under the continuous downpour of rain; but it is certain that the gray, ever-watery autumn sky oppressed him. It seemed that it was hanging directly above his head and threatening to drown him in the open abyss of the earth. He had nothing else to do but look out the window and follow the heavy masses of clouds. In the morning, as soon as the light began to break, the entire horizon was completely covered with them; the clouds stood as if frozen, enchanted; An hour passed, two, three, and they still stood in one place, and not even the slightest change was noticeable either in color or in their outlines. There is this cloud, which is lower and blacker than the others: and just now it had a torn shape (like a priest in a cassock with his arms outstretched), clearly protruding against the whitish background of the upper clouds - and now, at noon, it retained the same shape. The right hand, however, has become shorter, but the left one has stretched out ugly, and it pours from it, pours so much that even against the dark background of the sky an even darker, almost black stripe appears. There’s another cloud further away: just now it hung in a huge shaggy lump over the neighboring village of Naglovka and seemed to threaten to strangle it - and now it hangs in the same shaggy lump in the same place, and stretched out its paws downward, as if it were about to jump off. Clouds, clouds and clouds - all day long. Around five o'clock in the afternoon, a metamorphosis takes place: the surroundings gradually become clouded, clouded, and finally disappear completely. First the clouds will disappear and everything will be covered with an indifferent black veil; then the forest and Naglovka will disappear somewhere; behind it will disappear a church, a chapel, a nearby peasant village, an orchard, and only an eye that closely follows the process of these mysterious disappearances can still discern the manor’s estate standing several fathoms away. The room is completely dark; It’s still twilight in the office, they don’t light the fire; All that remains is to walk, walk, walk endlessly. A painful languor fetters the mind; in the whole body, despite inactivity, a causeless, inexpressible fatigue is felt; Only one thought rushes about, sucks and crushes - and this thought: a coffin! coffin! coffin! Those dots that just now flashed against the dark background of dirt, near the village barns - this thought does not oppress them, and they will not perish under the burden of despondency and languor: if they are not directly fighting the sky, then at least they are floundering, they are arranging something, protecting them, making fun of them. Is it worthwhile to protect and seize that which they are exhausted day and night to construct - it did not occur to him, but he was aware that even these nameless points stood immeasurably higher than him, that he could not even flounder, that he There is nothing to protect or reduce. He spent the evenings in the office, because Arina Petrovna, as before, would not release candles for him. Several times he asked through the mayor to send him boots and a sheepskin coat, but received the answer that there were no boots in stock for him, but if frost came, he would be given felt boots. Obviously, Arina Petrovna intended to literally carry out her program: to support the hateful person to such an extent that he would just not die of hunger. At first he scolded his mother, but then he seemed to forget about her; At first he remembered something, then he stopped remembering. Even the light of the candles lit in the office became disgusting to him, and he shut himself up in his room to be left alone with the darkness. He had only one resource ahead of him, which he was still afraid of, but which was pulling him toward itself with uncontrollable force. This resource is to get drunk and forget. To forget deeply, irrevocably, to plunge into a wave of oblivion until it is impossible to climb out of it. Everything drew him in this direction: the violent habits of the past, and the violent inactivity of the present, and a sick body with a suffocating cough, with unbearable, unprovoked shortness of breath, with constantly intensifying pounding heartbeats. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. “Today, brother, we need to get damask at night,” he once said to the zemstvo in a voice that did not bode well. Today's bottle brought with it a whole succession of new ones, and from then on he carefully got drunk every night. At nine o'clock, when the lights in the office were turned off and people went to their lairs, he put on the table the stock of damask with vodka and a slice of black bread, thickly sprinkled with salt. He did not immediately start drinking vodka, but seemed to sneak up on it. Everything around fell asleep in a dead sleep; only the mice scratched behind the wallpaper that had come loose from the walls and the clock ticked annoyingly in the office. Having taken off his dressing gown and wearing only his shirt, he scurried back and forth across the hotly heated room, stopping from time to time, going up to the table, groping for the damask in the dark, and starting walking again. He drank his first glasses with jokes, voluptuously sucking in the burning moisture; but little by little the heart beat quickened, the head lit up - and the tongue began to mutter something incoherent. The dulled imagination tried to create some images, the deadened memory tried to break into the region of the past, but the images came out torn, meaningless, and the past did not respond with a single memory, neither bitter nor bright, as if a thick wall had stood between it and the present moment once and for all. Before him was only the present in the form of a tightly locked prison, in which both the idea of space and the idea of time had sunk without a trace. A room, a stove, three windows in the outer wall, a creaky wooden bed with a thin trampled mattress on it, a table with damask standing on it - the thought did not think of any other horizons. But, as the contents of the damask diminished, as the head became inflamed, even this meager sense of the present became beyond his strength. The muttering, which at first had at least some form, completely disintegrated; the pupils of the eyes, trying to distinguish the outlines of darkness, expanded immensely; the darkness itself finally disappeared, and in its place was space filled with phosphorescent brilliance. It was an endless emptiness, dead, not responding to a single vital sound, ominously radiant. She followed on his heels, every turn of his steps. No walls, no windows, nothing existed; one endlessly stretching, luminous emptiness. He was getting scared; he needed to suppress the sense of reality in himself to such an extent that even this emptiness did not exist. A few more efforts and he was there. Stumbling legs carried the numb body from side to side, the chest emitted not a muttering, but a wheezing, and very existence seemed to cease. That strange numbness set in, which, bearing all the signs of the absence of conscious life, at the same time undoubtedly indicated the presence of some special life, developing independently of any conditions. Moans after moans escaped from the chest, without disturbing sleep in the least; the organic disease continued its corrosive work, apparently without causing physical pain. In the morning, he woke up with light, and with him they woke up: melancholy, disgust, hatred. Hatred without protest, not conditioned by anything, hatred of something vague, without an image. Inflamed eyes senselessly stop first at one object or another and stare for a long time and intently; hands and legs tremble; The heart will either freeze, as if it will roll down, or begin to pound with such force that your hand involuntarily grabs your chest. Not a single thought, not a single desire. There is a stove before your eyes, and your thought is so filled with this idea that it does not accept any other impressions. Then the window replaced the stove, like a window, window, window... Nothing, nothing, nothing is needed. The pipe is filled and lit mechanically, and the half-smoked one again falls out of your hands; the tongue mutters something, but obviously only out of habit. The best thing: sit and be silent, be silent and look at one point. It would be nice to get a hangover at such a moment; It would be nice to raise the body’s temperature so much that at least for a short time you could feel the presence of life, but during the day you can’t get vodka for any money. You have to wait for the night to again reach those blissful moments when the earth disappears from under your feet and instead of four hateful walls, a boundless luminous emptiness opens before your eyes. Arina Petrovna did not have the slightest idea how the “dumb” spent his time in the office. A chance glimmer of feeling that flashed in a conversation with the bloodsucker Porfishka went out instantly, so that she did not even notice. There was not even a systematic course of action on her part, but simple oblivion. She completely lost sight of the fact that next to her, in the office, there lived a being connected with her by blood, a being who, perhaps, was languishing in longing for life. Just as she herself, once she had entered the rut of life, almost mechanically filled it with the same content, so, in her opinion, others should have done the same. It did not occur to her that the very nature of life’s content changes in accordance with many conditions that have developed in one way or another, and that finally for some (including her) this content represents something beloved, voluntarily chosen, while for others it is hateful and hateful. involuntary. Therefore, although the mayor repeatedly reported to her that Stepan Vladimirych was “not good,” these reports slipped past her ears, leaving no impression on her mind. Much, much if she answered them with a stereotypical phrase: “He’ll probably catch his breath, and he’ll outlive you and me!” What is he, the lanky stallion, doing? Coughing! Some people have been coughing for thirty years in a row, and it’s like water off a duck’s back! Nevertheless, when she was informed one morning that Stepan Vladimirych had disappeared from Golovlev at night, she suddenly came to her senses. She immediately sent out the entire house to search and personally began the investigation, starting with an inspection of the room in which the hateful man lived. The first thing that struck her was the damask standing on the table, at the bottom of which there was still a little liquid splashing and which in their haste they did not think to remove. - What's this? - she asked, as if not understanding. “So... we were busy,” answered the mayor, hesitatingly. - Who got it? - she began, but then she came to her senses and, concealing her anger, continued her inspection. The room was dirty, black, and so dirty that even she, who did not know or recognize any requirements for comfort, felt uncomfortable. The ceiling was smoked, the wallpaper on the walls was cracked and hung in shreds in many places, the window sills were blackened under a thick layer of tobacco ash, the pillows were lying on the floor covered with sticky dirt, on the bed lay a crumpled sheet, all gray from the sewage that had settled on it. In one window, the winter frame was exposed, or, better said, torn out, and the window itself was left ajar: this is how the hateful one apparently disappeared. Arina Petrovna instinctively looked at the street and became even more frightened. It was already early November, but autumn this year was especially long, and frost had not yet set in. Both the road and the fields - everything stood black, wet, impossible to climb. How did it go? Where? And then she remembered that he was wearing nothing except a robe and shoes, one of which was found under the window, and that all last night, as luck would have it, it had been raining incessantly. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here with you, my dears!” - she said, inhaling into herself instead of air some disgusting mixture of fusel, tutyun and sour sheepskins. All day, while people were rummaging through the forest, she stood at the window, peering with dull attention into the naked distance. Because of a dunce, such a mess! - It seemed to her that this was some kind of ridiculous dream. She said then that he should be exiled to the Vologda village - but no, the damned Judas fawns: leave him, mamma, in Golovlevo! - now go swimming with him! If only he had lived there behind his eyes, as he wanted, - and Christ would have been with him! She did her job: she squandered one piece and threw away the other! And the other one would have squandered it - well, don’t be angry, father! God - even he will not feed on an insatiable womb! And everything would be quiet and peaceful with us, but now - how easy is it to escape! look for him in the forest and fistulas! It’s good that they bring someone alive into the house - after all, with drunken eyes, it won’t take long to end up in a noose! He took a rope, hooked it on a branch, wrapped it around his neck, and that was it! The mother didn’t get enough sleep at night, didn’t have enough to eat, but he, of course, came up with a fashion - he decided to hang himself. And it would be bad for him, they wouldn’t give him anything to eat or drink, they would exhaust him with work - otherwise he wandered back and forth around the room all day long, like a catechumen, eating and drinking, eating and drinking! Anyone else wouldn’t have known how to thank his mother, but he decided to hang himself - that’s how my dear son lent me! But this time, Arina Petrovna’s assumptions regarding the violent death of the dunce did not come true. Towards evening, a wagon drawn by a pair of peasant horses appeared in sight of Golovlev and took the fugitive to the office. He was in a semi-conscious state, all beaten, cut, with a blue and swollen face. It turned out that during the night he reached the Dubrovin estate, twenty miles from Golovlev. He slept for a whole day after that, and woke up the next day. As usual, he began to pace back and forth around the room, but did not touch the receiver, as if he had forgotten, and did not utter a single word in response to all the questions. For her part, Arina Petrovna was so moved that she almost ordered him to be transferred from the office to the manor house, but then she calmed down and again left the dunce in the office, ordering his room to be washed and cleaned, his bed linen changed, curtains hung on the windows, etc. The next day in the evening, when she was informed that Stepan Vladimirych had woken up, she ordered him to be called into the house for tea and even found gentle tones to explain to him. - Where did you leave your mother? - she began, - do you know how you worried your mother? It’s good that daddy didn’t find out about anything - what would it have been like for him in his position? But Stepan Vladimirych, apparently, remained indifferent to his mother’s affection and stared with motionless, glassy eyes at the tallow candle, as if watching the soot that was gradually forming on the wick. - Oh, fool, fool! - Arina Petrovna continued more and more affectionately, - if only you could think about the fame your mother will gain through you! After all, she has envious people - thank God! and who knows what they'll tell! They will say that she didn’t feed her or clothe her... oh, you fool, you fool! The same silence, and the same motionless gaze, meaninglessly fixed at one point. “And what’s wrong with your mother?” You are dressed and fed - thank God! And it’s warm and nice for you... what do you think you’re looking for! If you're bored, don't get angry, my friend, that's what a village is for! We don’t have festivities or balls - and we all sit in the corners and get bored! So I would be glad to dance and sing songs - but you look at the street, and there’s no desire to go to God’s church in such a wet place! Arina Petrovna stopped in anticipation that the dunce would at least mumble something; but the dunce seemed petrified. Little by little her heart begins to boil within her, but she still holds back. “And if you were dissatisfied with something—maybe there wasn’t enough food, or maybe there wasn’t enough linen—couldn’t you explain it to your mother frankly?” Mama, they say, darling, order some cookies or make some cheesecakes - would your mother really refuse you a piece? Or even just some wine - well, you want wine, well, and Christ is with you! A glass, two glasses - do you really feel sorry for your mother? Otherwise, it’s not a shame to ask a slave, but it’s hard to say a word to a mother! But all the flattering words were in vain: Stepan Vladimirych not only did not become emotional (Arina Petrovna hoped that he would kiss her hand) and did not show remorse, but he did not even seem to hear anything. From then on he became absolutely silent. For whole days he walked around the room, wrinkling his brow sullenly, moving his lips and not feeling tired. At times he stopped, as if wanting to express something, but could not find the words. Apparently he had not lost his ability to think; but the impressions lingered so weakly in his brain that he immediately forgot them. Therefore, failure to find the right word did not even make him impatient. Arina Petrovna, for her part, thought that he would certainly set fire to the estate. - He's been silent all day! - she said, - after all, the dunce is thinking about something while he is silent! Mark my words if he doesn’t burn down the estate! But the dunce just didn’t think at all. It seemed that he was completely plunged into a dawnless darkness, in which there was no place not only for reality, but also for fantasy. His brain was producing something, but this something had nothing to do with the past, the present, or the future. It was as if a black cloud had enveloped him from head to toe, and he peered at him, at him alone, followed his imaginary vibrations and at times shuddered and seemed to defend himself from him. In this mysterious cloud, the entire physical and mental world drowned for him... In December of the same year, Porfiry Vladimirych received a letter from Arina Petrovna with the following content: “Yesterday morning we were faced with a new test sent from the Lord: my son, and your brother, Stepan, died. From the evening before he was completely healthy and even had dinner, and the next morning he was found dead in bed - such is the transience of this life! And what is most regrettable for a mother’s heart: so, without any parting words, he left this vain world in order to rush into the realm of the unknown. Let this serve as a lesson to us all: whoever neglects family ties must always expect such an end for himself. And failures in this life, and vain death, and eternal torment in the next life - everything comes from this source. For no matter how highly intelligent and even noble we may be, if we do not honor our parents, then they will turn both our arrogance and our nobility into nothing. These are the rules that every person living in this world must confirm, and slaves, moreover, are obliged to respect their masters. However, despite this, all honors to the one who passed into eternity were given in full, like a son. The veil was ordered from Moscow, and the burial was performed by the father, Archimandrite Cathedral, known to you. Sorokoust and the commemoration and offering are performed as follows, according to Christian custom. I feel sorry for my son, but I don’t dare grumble, and I don’t advise you, my children. For who can know this? “We grumble here, but his soul rejoices in those above!”Freeloader. A well-known tobacco manufacturer at that time who competed with Zhukov. (Approx. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrin.)
This work has entered the public domain. The work was written by an author who died more than seventy years ago, and was published during his lifetime or posthumously, but more than seventy years have also passed since publication. It may be freely used by anyone without anyone's consent or permission and without payment of royalties.
M. Gorky, the founder of socialist realism, highly valued the socio-political content of Shchedrin's satire and its artistic mastery. Back in 1910, he said: “The significance of his satire is enormous, both in its truthfulness and in the sense of almost prophetic foresight of the paths along which Russian society should have followed and has followed throughout the 60s right up to the present day.” . Among Shchedrin's works, an outstanding place belongs to the socio-psychological novel "The Golovlevs" (1875-1880).
The basis of the plot of this novel is the tragic story of the landowner Golovlev family. The novel tells the story of the life of a Russian landowner family in the conditions of the post-reform bourgeois development of Russia. But Shchedrin, as a truly great writer - a realist and a progressive thinker, has such an amazing power of artistic typification that his specific picture of individual destinies acquires a universal meaning. (This material will help you write competently on the topic Analysis of the novel by Lord Golovleva. A brief summary does not allow you to understand the whole meaning of the work, so this material will be useful for a deep understanding of the work of writers and poets, as well as their novels, stories, plays, poems. ) The brilliant writer created such a prophetic artistic chronicle in which the historical doom of not only Russian landowners, but also all exploiting classes in general is easily discerned. Shchedrin saw the decomposition of these classes and foresaw their inevitable death. The family chronicle about the Golovlevs turns into a socio-psychological novel that has a deep political and philosophical meaning.
Three generations of Golovlevs pass before the reader of Shchedrin's novel. In the life of each of them, as in their more distant ancestors, Shchedrin sees “three characteristic features”: “idleness, unsuitability for any work and hard drinking. The first two led to idle talk, dullness and emptiness, the latter was, as it were, a mandatory conclusion to the general turmoil of life.”
The novel’s very harmonious, harmonious composition serves the purpose of consistently depicting this process of gradual degeneration, the moral and physical dying of the Golovlev family.
The novel opens with the chapter “Family Court.” It contains the plot of the entire novel. Life, living passions and aspirations, energy are still noticeable here. But the basis of all this is zoological egoism, selfishness of owners, animal morals, soulless individualism.
The center of this chapter is Arina Petrovna Golovleva, formidable to everyone around her, an intelligent landowner-serf, an autocrat in the family and on the farm, physically and morally completely absorbed by the energetic; persistent struggle to increase wealth. Porfiry here is not yet an “escheat” person. His hypocrisy and idle talk cover up a certain practical goal - to deprive brother Stepan of the right to a share in the inheritance. All this existence of the landowner's nest is unnatural and meaningless from the point of view of truly human interests, hostile to creative life, creative work, humanity; something dark and disastrous lurks in the depths of this empty life. Here is Arina Petrovna’s husband with all the signs of embittered savagery and degradation.
A strong reproach to Golovlevism is Stepan, his dramatic death, which ends the first chapter of the novel. Of the young Golovlevs, he is the most gifted, impressionable and intelligent person who received a university education. But from childhood, he experienced constant oppression from his mother, and was known as a hateful son-clown, “Styopka the dunce.” As a result, he turned out to be a man with a slavish character, capable of being anyone: a drunkard and even a criminal.
Stepan’s student life was also difficult. The absence of a working life, the voluntary buffoonery of rich students, and then the empty departmental service in St. Petersburg, resignation, revelry, and finally an unsuccessful attempt to escape in the militia, physically and morally wore out Stepan, made him a man who lives with the feeling that he, like a worm, is here... “He’ll die of hunger.”
And the only fatal road left before him was to his native, but hateful Golovlevo, where complete loneliness, despair, hard drinking, and death awaited him. Of all the Golovlevs of the second generation, Stepan turned out to be the most unstable, the most lifeless. And this is understandable - nothing connected him with the interests of the surrounding life. And how amazingly the landscape and the whole setting harmonize with this dramatic story of Stepan - a pariah in the Golovlev family.
The next chapter, “Kindly,” takes place ten years after the events described in the first chapter. But how the faces and the relationships between them changed! The imperious head of the family, Arina Petrovna, turned into a modest and powerless hanger-on in the house of Pavel Vladimirovich’s youngest son in Dubrovinki. Judushka-Porfiry took possession of the Golovlevsky estate. He now becomes almost the main figure of the story. As in chapter one, here we are also talking about the death of another representative of the young Golovlevs - Pavel Vladimirovich.
Shchedrin shows that the initial cause of his premature death is his native, but disastrous Golovlevo. He was not a hateful son, but he was forgotten, they did not pay attention to him, considering him a fool. Paul fell in love with life apart, in embittered alienation from people; he had no inclinations or interests; he became the living personification of a man “devoid of any actions.” Then fruitless, formal military service, retirement and lonely life in the Dubrovinsky estate, idleness, apathy towards life, towards family ties, even towards property, finally some senseless and fanatical bitterness destroyed, dehumanized Paul, led him to binge drinking and physical death.
Subsequent chapters of the novel tell about the spiritual disintegration of personality and family ties, about “deaths.” The third chapter - “Family Results” - includes a message about the death of Porfiry Golovlev’s son, Vladimir. The same chapter shows the reason for the later death of Judas’s other son, Peter. It tells about the spiritual and physical withering of Arina Petrovna, about the savagery of Judushka himself.
In the fourth chapter - “Niece” - Arina Petrovna and Peter, the son of Judas, die. In the fifth chapter - “Illegal family joys” - there is no physical death, but Judushka kills maternal feelings in Evprakseyushka. In the climactic sixth chapter - “Escaped” - we are talking about the spiritual death of Judas, and in the seventh - his physical death occurs (here we talk about Lyubinka’s suicide, about Anninka’s death agony).
The life of the youngest, third generation of Golovlevs turned out to be especially short-lived. The fate of the sisters Lyubinka and Anninka is indicative. They escaped from their cursed nest, dreaming of an independent, honest and hard-working life, of serving high art. But the sisters, who were formed in the hateful Golovlev nest and received an operetta education at the institute, were not prepared for the harsh struggle of life for the sake of lofty goals. The disgusting, cynical provincial environment (“garbage pit” instead of “sacred art”) swallowed up and destroyed them.
The most tenacious among the Golovlevs turns out to be the most disgusting, the most inhumane of them - Judushka, “a pious dirty tricker”, “a stinking ulcer”, “a blood drinker”. Why is this so?
Shchedrin not only predicts the death of Judas. The writer does not at all want to say that Judas is just a nonentity who will be easily eliminated by the progressive development of an ever-renewing life that does not tolerate deadness. No, Shchedrin also sees the strength of the Judas, the sources of their special vitality. Yes, Judas is a nonentity, but this empty-hearted man oppresses, torments and torments, kills, dispossesses, destroys. It is he who is the direct or indirect cause of the endless “deaths” in the Golovlevsky house.
Repeatedly the writer emphasized in his novel that the immense despotism of Arina Petrovna and the “uterine”, death-bringing hypocrisy of Judushka did not receive a rebuff and found favorable soil for their free triumph. This “kept” Judas in life, gave him vitality. His strength lies in resourcefulness, in the far-sighted cunning of a predator.
Look how he, the feudal landowner, deftly adapts to the “spirit of the times”, to the bourgeois methods of enrichment! The wildest landowner of old times in him merges with the kulak, the world-eater. And this is the strength of Judas. Finally, the insignificant Judas has powerful allies in the form of law, religion and prevailing customs. It turns out that the abomination has full support in law and religion. Judas looks at them as his faithful servants. For him, religion is not an internal conviction, but an image convenient for deception, curbing and self-deception. And the law for him is a bridling, punishing force, serving only the strong and oppressing the weak. Family rituals and relationships are also just a formality. They have neither true high feeling nor ardent conviction. They serve the same oppression and deception. Judas put everything at the service of his empty, deadening nature, in the service of oppression, torment, and destruction. He is truly worse than any robber, although formally he did not kill anyone, committing his robbery and murder “according to the law.”
Another question arises. Why did the great sociologist writer choose a tragic outcome in the fate of Judas?
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