At early dawn, when they are still screaming. Bunin Antonov apples

August, the smell of honey and apples, a deep breath, hope for the best, the ringing of bells, the manifestation of Divine majesty in nature and in the soul. All this fleeting, all this important inspired the great Russian writers and poets to solemn, special works.

Boris Pasternak "August"

I remembered for what reason
The pillow is slightly damp.
I dreamed that to see me off
You walked through the forest with each other.

You walked in a crowd, apart and in pairs,
Suddenly someone remembered that today
sixth of august old
Transfiguration.

Ordinarily light without flame
Comes on this day from Tabor,
And autumn, clear as a sign,
It catches the eye...

Alexander Blok "Transformation"

On the bright day of the Transfiguration
The spirit of the madman is struck:
Out of dismay, out of confusion
He heard your voice.
Now mournful, now poor,
In the bosom of the Eternal Father,
Near you, in pale blue
Longing for a new end...

Ivan Shmelev "Summer of the Lord"

The Transfiguration of the Lord... Tender, quiet light from him in the soul - until now. It must be from the morning garden, from the bright blue sky, from heaps of straw, from pear apples buried in greenery, in which individual leaves are already turning yellow - green-golden, soft ... Golden and blue morning in the cold. In the church - do not push through. Knots float overhead - all apples, prosvirki, apples ... In the stale hot air it smells special now - fresh apples. They are everywhere, even on the kliros, even on banners. Unusually, fun - like guests, and the church is not a church at all. And everyone, it seems to me, only thinks about apples. And the Lord is here with everyone, and He also thinks about apples: They brought them to Him - look, Lord, what kind! And He will look and say to everyone: "Well, that's good, and eat healthy, kids!" And they will eat completely different, not purchased, but church apples, saints. This is the Transformation.

Sergei Yesenin "Transformation"

The hour of the Transfiguration is ripening,
He will descend, our Bright Guest,
Of crucified patience
Pull out the cracked nail.
From morning and from noon
Under the thunder in the sky
Like buckets, our everyday life
He fills with milk.

Ivan Myatlev

... Our Savior on Tabor.
And in His eyes shines
Revelation celebration,
He has clothed himself in the Divine!
In a bright robe, He is brilliant,
Like snow, shining all around!

Ivan Bunin "Antonov apples"

“...I remember early fine autumn. August was with warm rains... Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled on the fields... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a big, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, as if it were not there at all ... And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed clucking of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming clatter of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, a road to a large hut strewn with straw is visible. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here ... On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red dresses constantly flash behind the trees.

I remember early fine autumn

August was with warm rains, as if on purpose for sowing, with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is calm and rainy on Lavrentiya."

Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled on the fields. This is also a good sign: "There are a lot of nethers in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a big, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, as if it were not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are tarkhans, philistine gardeners, who have hired peasants and pour apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look at the starry sky, smell tar in fresh air and listen to the long wagon train carefully creaking in the dark along the high road. The peasant pouring apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the institution - the tradesman will never cut him off, and he will also say: - Go ahead, eat your fill - there is nothing to do! At the drain, everyone drinks honey. And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed clucking of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming clatter of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to the big hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired a whole household over the summer, are far visible. There is a strong smell of apples everywhere, especially here. In the hut beds are arranged, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, in the corner - dishes. Mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings are lying around the hut, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and in the garden, between the trees, bluish smoke spreads in a long strip. On holidays, the hut is a whole fair, and behind the trees red hats flash every minute. Lively odnodvorki girls in sundresses strongly smelling of paint are crowding, “masters” come in their beautiful and coarse, savage costumes, a young elder, pregnant, with a wide sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On her head are "horns" - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; legs, in half boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is plush, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black-purple with brick-colored stripes and overlaid on the hem with a wide golden "grip" ... - An economic butterfly! the tradesman says of her, shaking his head. “Now people like that are being transferred too... And the boys in white slouchy shirts and short trousers, with their white heads open, all fit. They walk in twos, threes, finely pawing their bare feet, and squinting at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Buys, of course, one, because purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and a consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes, and even sometimes "touches" on the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, laughter and talk are heard near the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing ...

Universal systems: installation of air ducts, clamps. Network of official distributors.

A fable is a short story, most often in verse, mainly satirical. A fable is an allegorical genre, therefore, moral and social problems are hidden behind the story about fictional characters (most often about animals).

Updated 31 Jan 2015. Created 03 Dec 2013

The narrator reminisces about what was once in the past the place of childhood. After all, when he was little, he lived in a village, which was then considered even a very rich village, because it was in it that a lot of things grew and were sold.

The village was called Vyselki. The houses, oddly enough for the village, were made of brick, and this was the first sign at that time that the village was rich. And people lived there for a long time, especially old people and grandmothers. This also showed that the village was very wealthy. By the way, the provision for all the people who lived in this village, oddly enough, was similar. Even those who were supposed to be on the social level in the poor, in fact, were quite well off, almost like the richest people in the village.

Also, he remembered his aunt Anna Gerasimovna. And especially her estate. Her estate, which was not too big, but beautiful, and also solid, and also her dwelling place seemed so old, and therefore very unusual.

Also, what the children really remembered and liked was the fact that centennial trees had been standing around her house for a long time, which was very beautiful and natural. Also, she had a garden in which there were many apple trees, because this is what he was famous for in the first place. There were even nightingales and turtledoves there, because the birds also liked the garden.

The roof was thatched and very thick, and therefore everyone admired this roof. And what smells were in Aunt Anna's house. After all, in the house, first of all, the smell old furniture, and also - apples, ripe, juicy and tasty.

Even the brother-in-law was remembered by the narrator. After all, he was a man who loved to hunt. And, besides, in his house there were always a lot of people, friends and their acquaintances. It was always noisy there, or almost always, everyone was having fun at the dinner parties that he gave as a landowner.

Also, he always had many dogs, as he needed them for hunting. The narrator remembers himself at such a dinner party, as he and everyone after hearty lunch- on a black horse that rushes too fast, as it seems. Everything around flickers - trees, people on horseback, and the path ahead is barely visible.

The dogs are barking, everyone is running, there is no stopping. Then, when it gets very dark, all the hunters simply have nowhere to go, tired, tumble into the house of some hunter near the forest, and stay there for the night. It happens that they live there for several days.

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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Antonovskie apples I ...I remember early fine autumn. August was with warm rains, as if on purpose for sowing, with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is calm and rainy on Lavrentiya." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled on the fields. This is also a good sign: “There are a lot of tenets in Indian summer - vigorous autumn” ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a big, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, as if it were not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are tarkhans, philistine gardeners, who hired peasants and pour apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look at the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to the gentle creaking in the dark a long convoy along the high road. A peasant pouring apples eats them with a juicy crackle one by one, but such is the institution - the tradesman will never cut him off, and he will also say: - Wali, eat your fill - there is nothing to do! At the drain, everyone drinks honey. And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed clucking of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming clatter of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to the big hut strewn with straw is far visible, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired a whole household during the summer. There is a strong smell of apples everywhere, especially here. In the hut beds are arranged, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, in the corner - dishes. Mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings are lying around the hut, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and in the garden, between the trees, bluish smoke spreads in a long strip. On holidays, the hut is a whole fair, and behind the trees red hats flash every minute. Lively odnodvorki girls in sundresses strongly smelling of paint are crowding, “masters” come in their beautiful and coarse, savage costumes, a young elder, pregnant, with a wide sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On the head of her "horns" - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; legs, in half boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is plush, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black-lilac with brick-colored stripes and overlaid with a wide gold "groove" on the hem. .. - Household butterfly! the tradesman says of her, shaking his head. “Now people like that are also being transferred... And the boys in white slouchy shirts and short trousers, with their white heads open, all fit. They walk in twos and threes, finely pawing their bare feet, and squinting at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Buys, of course, one, because purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and a consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes, and even sometimes "touches" on the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, laughter and talk are heard near the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing ... By night, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having breathed on the threshing floor the rye aroma of new straw and chaff, you cheerfully walk home to dinner past the garden rampart. The voices in the village or the creaking of the gates resound through the icy dawn with unusual clarity. It's getting dark. And here's another smell: in the garden - a fire, and strongly pulls the fragrant smoke of cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden - a fabulous picture: just in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone's black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, move around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk through the apple trees. . Either a black hand a few arshins in size will lie down all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this slips from the apple tree - and the shadow falls along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate ... Late at night, when the lights go out in the village, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will once again run into the garden. Rustling through dry foliage, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. It is a little lighter in the clearing there, and the Milky Way is white overhead. - Is that you, barchuk? someone calls softly from the darkness. - Me. Are you still awake, Nikolai? - We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Vaughn, say passenger train goes ... We listen for a long time and distinguish a trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already behind the very garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it starts to subside, stall, as if going into the ground ... - And where is your gun, Nikolai? - But near the box, sir. Throw up a heavy, like a crowbar, single-barreled shotgun and shoot with a flurry. A crimson flame with a deafening crackle will flash towards the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clear and sensitive air. - Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend, spend, barchuk, otherwise it's just a disaster! Again, the whole muzzle on the shaft was shaken ... And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes by shooting stars. For a long time you look into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the earth floats under your feet. Then you will start up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, you will quickly run along the alley to the house ... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world! II "Violent Antonovka - for a merry year". Rural affairs are good if Antonovka is born: it means that bread has also been born ... I remember a harvest year. which shines brightly in some places the morning sun, and you can’t stand it - you order the horse to be saddled as soon as possible, and you yourself will run to wash yourself. to the pond. The small foliage has almost completely flown from the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines has become transparent, icy and as if heavy. It instantly drives away night laziness, and, after washing and having breakfast in the servants' room with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you feel with pleasure the slippery leather of the saddle under you, driving through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, happy, the view of the village is not at all the same as at another time.If, however, the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floor, and on the river they cackle loudly and sharply geese in the morning, so in the village and not bad at all. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, since the time of my grandfather, were famous for "wealth". Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white as a harrier. You only hear, it happened: "Yes, - here Agafya waved her eighty-three years old!" - or conversations like this: - And when will you die, Pankrat? Hebos you will be a hundred years old? - How would you like to say, father? - How old are you, I ask! - I don't know, sir. - Do you remember Plato Apollonych? “Well, sir, father,” I distinctly remember. - Well, you see. You must be at least a hundred. The old man, who is standing in front of the master, stretched out, meekly and guiltily smiles. Well, they say, to do - to blame, healed. And he probably would have gotten even more rich if he hadn’t overate on Petrovka onions. I also remember his old woman. Everyone used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, panting, and holding onto the bench with his hands - everyone was thinking about something. “I suppose about your good,” the women said, because, however, there was a lot of “good” in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; looks blindly into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. There was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva - almost from the last century, chunks - mortuary, neck - yellow and dried up, shirt with canine jambs is always white-white - "just put it in the coffin." And near the porch there was a large stone: she herself bought a shroud for her grave, as well as a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed around the edges. The yards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by grandfathers. And rich men - Saveliy, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they kept bees, were proud of the gray-iron-coloured bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors thick and fat hemp plants grew dark, there were barns and barns covered with hair; were in punkas and barns iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new short fur coats, typesetting harness, measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember sometimes it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a peasant. When you used to ride through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday to get up with the sun, under the thick and musical blasphemy from the village, wash yourself near the barrel and put on a clean suede shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, it was thought, to add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire, and a trip to mass, and then dinner with a bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb and homebrew, - so much more to wish for. impossible! The warehouse of average noble life even in my memory - very recently - had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in its homeliness and rural old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. Until, it used to be, you get to this estate, it is already completely depleted. You have to walk with dogs in packs, and you don’t want to rush, it’s so fun in open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat and can be seen far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun is shining from the side, and the road, rolled after the rains by carts, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winters are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering with sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run away into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. There are little cats sitting on them - completely black icons on music paper. I didn’t know and didn’t see serfdom, but I remember I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You will drive into the courtyard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by hundred-year-old birches and willows. Outbuildings - low, but homely - are numerous, and all of them are exactly merged from dark oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out for its size, or, rather, for its length, only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans look out.

Current page: 1 (total book has 2 pages)

Ivan Bunin
Antonov apples

I

... I remember early fine autumn. August was filled with warm rains, as if on purpose for sowing, with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is calm and raining on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled on the fields. This is also a good sign: “There are a lot of nethers in Indian summer - vigorous autumn” ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a big, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, a delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, as if it were not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are tarkhans, philistine gardeners, who hired peasants and pour apples to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in the fresh air and listen to the gentle creaking in the dark a long convoy along the high road. A peasant pouring apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never cut him off, but will also say:

“Vali, eat your fill, there’s nothing to do!” At the drain, everyone drinks honey.

And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed clucking of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming clatter of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to the big hut strewn with straw is far visible, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired a whole household during the summer. There is a strong smell of apples everywhere, especially here. Beds are arranged in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, dishes are in the corner. Mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings are lying around the hut, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and in the garden, between the trees, bluish smoke spreads in a long strip. On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red dresses constantly flash behind the trees. Lively odnodvorki girls in sundresses strongly smelling of paint crowd, “masters” come in their beautiful and coarse, savage costumes, a young elder, pregnant, with a wide sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On her head are “horns”, - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; legs, in half boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is plush, the curtain is long, and the paneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and overlaid on the hem with a wide gold “groove” ...

- Household butterfly! the tradesman says of her, shaking his head. - They are now being translated ...

And the boys in white slouchy shirts and short trousers, with open white heads, all fit. They walk in twos and threes, finely pawing their bare feet, and squinting at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and a consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes, and even sometimes "touches" on the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, laughter and talk are heard near the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing ...

By night in the weather it becomes very cold and dewy. Breathing in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home to dinner past the garden rampart. The voices in the village or the creaking of the gates resound through the icy dawn with unusual clarity. It's getting dark. And here is another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and it strongly pulls with fragrant smoke of cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: just in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone's black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, move around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk along apple trees. Either a black hand a few arshins will lie down all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slip from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate ...

Late at night, when the lights go out in the village, when the diamond seven-star Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will once again run into the garden. Rustling through dry foliage, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. It is a little lighter in the clearing there, and the Milky Way is white overhead.

- Is that you, barchuk? someone calls quietly from the darkness.

– Me. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can't sleep. And it must be too late? There, it seems, a passenger train is coming ...

We listen for a long time and distinguish a tremor in the ground. The trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already beyond the garden, the wheels are rapidly beating out a noisy beat: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and more angry ... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if leaving in the ground …

- And where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But near the box, sir.

Throw up a heavy, like a crowbar, single-barreled shotgun and shoot with a flurry. A crimson flame with a deafening crackle will flash towards the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clear and sensitive air.

- Wow, great! the tradesman will say. - Spend, spend, barchuk, otherwise it's just a disaster! Again, the whole muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...

And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes of shooting stars. For a long time you look into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the earth floats under your feet. Then you will start up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, you will quickly run along the alley to the house ... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

II

"A vigorous Antonovka - for a merry year." Rural affairs are good if Antonovka is born: it means that bread is born ... I remember a harvest year.

At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking black, you used to open a window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly in some places, and you can’t bear it - you order the horse to be saddled as soon as possible, and you yourself will run wash in the pond. The small foliage has almost completely flown from the coastal vines, and the branches show through in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and as if heavy. She instantly drives away the night's laziness, and, having washed and having breakfast in the servants' room with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you feel with pleasure the slippery leather of the saddle under you, driving through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, satisfied, the view of the village is not at all the same as at another time. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese rumble loudly and sharply in the morning on the river, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, since the time of my grandfather, were famous for their “wealth”. Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white as a harrier. You could only hear: “Yes, - here Agafya waved her eighty-three years old!” or conversations like this:

“And when will you die, Pankrat?” Will you be a hundred years old?

- How would you like to say, father?

How old are you, I ask!

“I don’t know, sir.”

- Do you remember Platon Apollonitch?

“Well, sir, father,” I distinctly remember.

- You see now. You must be at least a hundred.

The old man, who is standing in front of the master, stretched out, meekly and guiltily smiles. Well, they say, to do - to blame, healed. And he probably would have gotten even more rich if he hadn’t overate on Petrovka onions.

I also remember his old woman. Everyone used to sit on a bench, on the porch, hunched over, shaking his head, panting, and holding onto the bench with his hands—everyone was thinking about something. “I suppose about your good,” the women said, because, however, there was a lot of “good” in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; looks blindly into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. There was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva - almost from the last century, the chunks are mortuary, the neck is yellow and dried up, the shirt with canine jambs is always white and white - "just put it in the coffin." And near the porch there was a large stone: she herself bought a shroud for her grave, as well as a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed around the edges.

The yards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by grandfathers. And the rich men - Saveliy, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they kept bees, were proud of the gray-iron-coloured bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors thick and fat hemp-growers grew dark, barns and barns covered with hair stood in the dark; in punkas and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new short fur coats, typesetting harness, measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember sometimes it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a peasant. When you used to ride through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday to get up with the sun, under the thick and musical blasphemy from the village, wash yourself near the barrel and put on a clean suede shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, it was thought, to add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire and a trip to mass, and then dinner with a bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb and mash, it’s impossible to wish for more !

The warehouse of the average noble life even in my memory - very recently - had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in its homeliness and rural old-world well-being. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. By the time you used to get to this estate, it was already quite fresh. You have to walk with dogs, in packs, and you don’t want to rush, it’s so much fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat and can be seen far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun is shining from the side, and the road, rolled after the rains by carts, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winters are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering with sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run away into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. There are little cats sitting on them - completely black badges on music paper.

I didn’t know and didn’t see serfdom, but I remember I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You will drive into the courtyard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. Outbuildings - low, but homely - are numerous, and they all seem to be merged from dark, oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out for its size or, better to say, for its length, only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the court class look out - some dilapidated old men and old women, a decrepit retired cook, similar to Don Quixote. All of them, when you drive into the yard, pull themselves up and bow low, low. The gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage house to pick up a horse, takes off his hat at the barn and walks around the yard with his head bare. He traveled with his aunt as a postilion, and now he takes her to mass, in the winter in a cart, and in the summer in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those on which the priests ride. The aunt's garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, doves and apples, and the house for its roof. He stood at the head of the yard, by the very garden—the branches of the lindens embraced him—he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not live forever—he looked so thoroughly from under his extraordinarily high and thick thatched roof, blackened and hardened with time. Its front façade always seemed to me alive: as if an old face was looking out from under a huge hat with hollow eyes, windows with mother-of-pearl glasses from rain and sun. And on the sides of these eyes were porches - two old large porches with columns. Fully fed doves always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained from roof to roof ... And the guest felt comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!

You enter the house and first of all you hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried lime blossom, which has been lying on the windows since June ... that the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass of the windows is colored: blue and purple. Everywhere is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that armchairs, inlaid tables and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never moved. And then a cough is heard: an aunt comes out. It is small, but also, like everything around, strong. She wears a large Persian shawl over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but affably, and now, under endless talk about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, "blowing", apples - Antonov, "bell lady", borovinka, "prodovitka" - and then an amazing dinner : whole pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass - strong and sweet-sweet ... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there it blows a cheerful autumn coolness ...

III

In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting.

Previously, such estates as the estate of Anna Gerasimovna were not uncommon. There were also crumbling, but still living in grand style estates with huge estates, with a garden of twenty acres. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but there is no life in them anymore ... There are no troikas, no riding "Kirghiz", no hounds and greyhounds, no domestics, and there is no owner of all this - a landowner-hunter, like mine late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych.

Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floor have been empty, the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and ruffled the trees for whole days, the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became pure and clear, and the sunlight shone dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and waved from the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above heavy lead clouds, and behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated up. You stand at the window and think: "Perhaps, God willing, the weather will clear up." But the wind did not let up. It disturbed the garden, tore at the stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney, and again caught up the ominous wisps of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, clouded the sun. Its brilliance faded, the window closed into the blue sky, and the garden became deserted and dull, and the rain began to sow again ... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly, and, finally, turned into a downpour with a storm and darkness. A long, unsettling night has come...

From such a beating, the garden came out almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow hushed, resigned. But on the other hand, how beautiful it was when the clear weather came again, the transparent and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees until the first winters. The black garden will shine through in the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine. And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with overgrown winter crops ... It's time to hunt!

And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semenych, in big house, in a hall full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are a lot of people - all people are tanned, with weather-beaten faces, in undercoats and long boots. We just had a very hearty dinner, flushed and excited by noisy talk about the upcoming hunt, but they don’t forget to drink vodka after dinner. And in the yard a horn blows and dogs howl in different voices. The black greyhound, Arseny Semyonitch's favorite, climbs up on the table and begins to devour the remains of the hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible squeal and, knocking over plates and glasses, falls off the table: Arseniy Semyonitch, who has come out of the office with a rapnik and a revolver, suddenly stuns the hall with a shot. The hall is even more filled with smoke, and Arseny Semyonitch is standing and laughing.

- I'm sorry I missed it! he says, playing with his eyes.

He is tall, thin, but broad-shouldered and slender, and his face is a handsome gypsy. His eyes sparkle wildly, he is very dexterous, in a crimson silk shirt, velvet trousers and long boots. Having frightened both the dog and the guests with a shot, he playfully-importantly recites in a baritone:

It's time, it's time to saddle the nimble bottom
And throw a ringing horn over your shoulders! -

and says loudly:

- Well, however, there is nothing to waste golden time!

I still feel how greedily and capaciously the young chest breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when, it happened, you were riding with a noisy gang of Arseny Semenych, excited by the musical din of dogs thrown into the black forest, into some Red Hillock or Gremyachiy Island, Exciting hunter by its name alone. You ride an evil, strong and squat "Kyrgyz", tightly restraining him with the reins, and you feel almost one with him. He snorts, asks for a lynx, noisily rustles his hooves along the deep and light carpets of black crumbling leaves, and each sound resounds in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog yelped somewhere in the distance, another, a third answered passionately and plaintively, and suddenly the whole forest rumbled, as if it were all glass, from stormy barking and screaming. A shot rang out loudly amidst this uproar - and everything “brewed up” and rolled somewhere into the distance.

"Ah, take care!" An intoxicating thought flashes through my head. You will yell at the horse and, as if off the chain, you will rush through the forest, not understanding anything along the way. Only the trees flash before my eyes and sculpt in the face with mud from under the hooves of the horse. You will jump out of the forest, you will see a motley flock of dogs stretching along the ground on the greenery and you will push the "Kirghiz" even harder to cut across the beast - through the greenery, uplifts and stubbles, until, finally, you cross over to another island and the flock disappears from the eyes along with its furious barking and moaning. Then, all wet and trembling with exertion, you rein in the frothy, wheezing horse and greedily swallow the icy dampness of the forest valley. In the distance, the screams of hunters and the barking of dogs fade away, and around you there is dead silence. The half-opened timber stands motionless, and it seems that you have fallen into some reserved halls. There is a strong smell from the ravines of mushroom dampness, rotten leaves and wet tree bark. And the dampness from the ravines is becoming more and more noticeable, it is getting colder and darker in the forest ... It's time for an overnight stay. But it is difficult to collect the dogs after the hunt. The horns ring in the forest for a long and hopelessly-dreary ring, for a long time one can hear the scream, scolding and squealing of dogs ... Finally, already completely in the dark, a gang of hunters tumble into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor landowner and fill the entire courtyard of the estate with noise, which is illuminated by lanterns, candles and lamps brought out to meet the guests from the house…

It happened that such a hospitable neighbor had hunting for several days. In the early morning dawn, in the icy wind and the first wet winter, they would leave for the forests and the fields, and by dusk they would return again, all covered in mud, with flushed faces, reeking of horse sweat, the fur of a hunted animal, and the drinking began. It is very warm in a bright and crowded house after a whole day in the cold in the field. Everyone walks from room to room in unbuttoned undershirts, drinking and eating randomly, noisily conveying to each other their impressions of the killed seasoned wolf, who, baring his teeth, rolling his eyes, lies with his fluffy tail thrown to the side in the middle of the hall and stains with his pale and already cold floor with blood After vodka and food, you feel such sweet fatigue, such bliss. young sleep that you hear a voice like through the water. The weather-beaten face burns, and if you close your eyes, the whole earth will float under your feet. And when you lie down in bed, in a soft featherbed, somewhere in an ancient corner room with an icon and a lamp, the ghosts of fiery-colored dogs flash before your eyes, a feeling of jumping aches all over your body, and you won’t notice how you drown along with all these images and sensations in sweet and healthy sleep, even forgetting that this room was once the prayer room of an old man, whose name is surrounded by gloomy fortress legends, and that he died in this prayer room, probably on the same bed.

When it happened to oversleep the hunt, the rest was especially pleasant. You wake up and lie in bed for a long time. The whole house is silent. You can hear the gardener walking cautiously through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots. Ahead - a whole day of peace in the already silent winter estate. You will slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find in the wet foliage an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple, and for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you'll get down to books - grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, resembling church breviaries, smell gloriously of their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume... Marginal notes are also good, large and with round soft strokes made with a quill pen. You unfold the book and read: “A thought worthy of ancient and new philosophers, the color of reason and feelings of the heart” ... And you will involuntarily be carried away by the book itself. This is the "Noble Philosopher", an allegory published a hundred years ago by the dependency of some "cavalier of many orders" and printed in the printing house of the order of public charity - a story about how "a nobleman-philosopher, having time and the ability to reason, to what the mind of a person can ascend, once received a desire to compose a plan of light in the spacious place of his village ”... Then you come across“ the satirical and philosophical writings of Mr. Voltaire ”and for a long time you revel in the sweet and mannered syllable of the translation:“ My lords! Erasmus composed in the sixteenth century a praise of tomfoolery (a mannered pause, a semicolon); you order me to exalt reason before you ... ”Then you will move from Catherine’s antiquity to romantic times, to almanacs, to sentimental, pompous and long novels ... The cuckoo jumps out of the clock and mockingly sadly crows over you in an empty house. And little by little, a sweet and strange longing begins to creep into the heart ...

Here is "The Secrets of Alexis", here is "Victor, or the Child in the Forest": "Midnight strikes! Sacred silence takes the place of daytime noise and cheerful songs of the villagers. Sleep spreads its dark wings over the surface of our hemisphere; he shakes poppies and dreams from them ... Dreams ... How often they continue only the suffering of the evil one! “the pranks and playfulness of young naughty ones”, the lily hand, Lyudmila and Alina ... And here are the magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, the lyceum student Pushkin. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her clavichord polonaises, her languid recitation of poems from Eugene Onegin. And the old dreamy life will rise before you... Nice girls and women once lived in noble estates! Their portraits look at me from the wall, their aristocratically beautiful heads in ancient hairstyles meekly and femininely long eyelashes to sad and tender eyes ...