Ivan Bunin “Cold Autumn. Bunin I.A. Cold autumn Cold autumn read
A. Akhmatova. LOVE.
A. Akhmatova
Now like a snake, curled up in a ball,
At the very heart he conjures
That whole days dove
Cooing on a white window,
Then it will flash in the bright frost,
Seems in a slumber Levkoy ...
But faithfully and secretly leads
From joy and from peace.
Knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin
And it's scary to guess her
In a still unfamiliar smile.
Tsarskoe Selo
M. Tsvetaeva. RACE - STANDING: VORST, MILE ...
B. Pasternak
Race - standing: miles, miles ...
We were raced, they were raced, they were planted,
To be quiet
On two different ends of the earth.
Race - standing: miles, given ...
We were pasted, unsoldered,
Divided into two hands, crucified,
And they did not know that it was an alloy
Inspiration and Tendon ...
Not rass O rili - quarrel and whether,
Layered ...
Wall and moat.
Settled us like eagles
Conspirators: miles, they gave ...
Not upset - lost.
Through the slums of earthly latitudes
They took us away as orphans.
Which is - well, which is March ?!
They smashed us - like a deck of cards!
M. Lermontov. AND BORING AND SAD.
M. Lermontov
AND BORING AND SAD
And it's boring and sad, and there is no one to give a hand
In a moment of mental adversity ...
Desires! .. What is the use of wanting in vain and forever? ..
And the years go by - all the best years!
To love ... but who? .. for a while is not worth the trouble,
And it is impossible to love forever.
Will you look into yourself? - there is no trace of the past:
And joy, and torment, and everything there is insignificant ...
What is passion? - because sooner or later their sweet affliction
Disappear at the word of reason;
And life, as you look around with cold attention, -
Such an empty and stupid joke ...
A. Tarkovsky. HERE AND THE SUMMER PASSED ...
A. Tarkovsky
So the summer has passed
As if it had never happened.
Warm up on heating.
Only this is not enough.
Everything that could come true
To me, like a five-fingered leaf,
It fell right into my hands.
Only this is not enough.
In vain not evil,
No good was lost
Everything was burning light.
Only this is not enough.
Life took me under my wing
She took care and saved.
I was really lucky.
Only this is not enough.
The leaves did not burn
The branches did not break off ...
The day is washed like glass.
Only this is not enough.
Listen:
A.S. Pushkin. WINTER EVENING.
A.S. Pushkin
WINTER EVENING
The storm covers the sky with darkness,
Whirling snow whirlwinds;
How a beast she will howl
It will cry like a child
Then on the dilapidated roof
Suddenly it will rustle with straw,
How a belated traveler
He will knock at our window.
Our dilapidated hovel
And sad and dark.
What are you, my old lady,
Has it fallen silent by the window?
Or howling storms
You, my friend, are weary
Or do you slumber under the buzz
Your spindle?
Let's have a drink, good friend
Poor youth of mine,
The heart will be more cheerful.
Sing me a song like a tit
She lived quietly across the sea;
Sing me a song like a girl
In the morning I went to fetch water.
The storm covers the sky with darkness,
Whirling snow whirlwinds;
How a beast she will howl
It will cry like a child.
Let's have a drink, good friend
Poor youth of mine,
Let's drink from grief; where is the mug?
The heart will be more cheerful.
I. Bunin. COLD AUTUMN.
http://ilibrary.ru/text/1055/p.1/index.html
COLD AUTUMN
In June of that year, he stayed with us on the estate - he was always considered our own man: his late father was a friend and neighbor of my father. On June 15, Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the sixteenth, the newspapers were brought from the post office. Father left the office with a Moscow evening newspaper in his hands into the dining room, where he, mother and I were still sitting at the tea table, and said:
Well, my friends, war! The Austrian crown prince was killed in Sarajevo. This is war!
On Petrov's day, a lot of people came to us - it was my father's name day - and at dinner he was declared my fiancé. But on July 19, Germany declared war on Russia ...
In September, he came to us only for a day - to say goodbye before leaving for the front (everyone then thought that the war would end soon, and our wedding was postponed until spring). And then came our farewell evening. After supper, as usual, a samovar was brought in, and looking at the windows fogged up from its steam, the father said:
Surprisingly early and cold autumn!
We sat quiet that evening, only occasionally exchanging insignificant words, exaggeratedly calm, hiding our secret thoughts and feelings. With feigned simplicity, my father also said about autumn. I went to the balcony door and wiped the glass with a handkerchief: in the garden, in the black sky, pure ice stars sparkled brightly and sharply. Father smoked, leaning back in a chair, absentmindedly looking at a hot lamp hanging over the table, mother, in glasses, diligently sewed under her light a small silk bag - we knew which one - and it was touching and eerie. The father asked:
So you still want to go in the morning, not after breakfast?
Yes, if you will, in the morning, ”he replied. - It’s very sad, but I haven’t completely ordered around the house.
The father sighed lightly:
Well, as you wish, my soul. Only in this case it is time for my mother and me to sleep, we certainly want to see you off tomorrow ...
Mom got up and baptized her future son, he bowed to her hand, then to his father's. Left alone, we spent a little more time in the dining room - I decided to play solitaire, - he silently walked from corner to corner, then asked:
Do you want to walk a little?
My heart was getting harder and harder, I responded indifferently:
Good...
While dressing in the hallway, he continued to think something, with a sweet smile he recalled Fet's verses:
What a cold autumn!
Put on your shawl and hood ...
I do not remember. It seems so:
Look - among the blackening pines
As if a fire is rising ...
What kind of fire?
Moonrise, of course. There is some kind of village autumn charm in these verses: "Put on your shawl and hood ..." The times of our grandfathers and grandmothers ... Oh, my God, my God!
Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good. I very-very love you...
Having dressed, we went through the dining room to the balcony, went down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held onto his sleeve. Then black branches began to appear in the brightening sky, showered with minerally shining stars. He paused and turned to the house:
Look how the windows of the house shine in a very special way, in an autumn way. I will live, I will forever remember this evening ...
I looked and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I took the downy shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he would kiss me. After kissing, he looked me in the face.
How bright your eyes are, ”he said. - Are you cold? The air is completely wintry. If they kill me, you still won't forget me right away?
I thought: “What if they really kill? and will I really forget him in some short time - after all, in the end everything is forgotten? " And hastily answered, frightened by her thought:
Do not say that! I will not survive your death!
After a pause, he said slowly:
Well, if they kill you, I will wait for you there. You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me.
I cried bitterly ...
In the morning he left. Mom put that fatal bag around his neck that she sewed in the evening - it had a golden icon that her father and grandfather wore in the war - and we crossed it with a kind of impetuous despair. Looking after him, we stood on the porch in that dullness that always happens when you accompany someone to a long separation, feeling only an amazing incompatibility between us and the joyful, sunny, sparkling frost on the grass in the morning that surrounded us. After standing, they entered the empty house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now and whether to weep or sing at the top of my voice ...
They killed him - what a strange word! - in a month, in Galicia. And now, as many as thirty years have passed since then. And much, much has been experienced over the years, which seem so long, when you carefully think about them, sort out in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by the mind or by the heart, which is called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive, I lived in Moscow, in the basement of a tradeswoman at the Smolensk market, who kept mocking me: "Well, your Excellency, how are your circumstances?" I was also engaged in trade, selling, as many sold then, to soldiers in hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, some of the remaining with me - now some ring, now a cross, now a fur collar, beaten with a moth, and here, trading on the corner Arbat and the market, met a man of rare, beautiful soul, an elderly retired military man, whom she soon married and with whom she left in April for Yekaterinodar. We drove there with him and his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who also made his way to the volunteers, for almost two weeks - I was a woman, in bast shoes, he was wearing a worn Cossack zipun, with a loose black and gray beard - and stayed on the Don and on Kuban is more than two years old. In winter, in a hurricane, they sailed with an innumerable crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey, and on the way to the sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, only three people remained close to me in the whole world: my husband's nephew, his young wife and their girl, a child of seven months. But my nephew and his wife sailed away after a while to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my arms. There they disappeared without a trace. And I lived in Constantinople for a long time, earning for myself and for the girl with very hard black labor. Then, how many, wherever I wandered with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice ... The girl grew up a long time ago, stayed in Paris, became completely French, very pretty and completely indifferent to me, served in a chocolate store near Madlene, wrapped boxes in satin with sleek hands with silver nails paper and tied them with gold laces; and I lived and still live in Nice than God will send ... I was in Nice for the first time in nine hundred and twelve - and could I think in those happy days what she would once become for me!
This is how I survived his death, once recklessly saying that I would not survive it. But, remembering all that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did he ever exist? It was all the same. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. And I believe, I fervently believe: somewhere out there he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. "You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me ..." I lived, I was glad, now I will come soon.
In June of that year, he stayed with us on the estate - he was always considered our own man: his late father was a friend and neighbor of my father. On June 15, Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the sixteenth, the newspapers were brought from the post office. Father left the office with a Moscow evening newspaper in his hands into the dining room, where he, mother and I were still sitting at the tea table, and said:
Well, my friends, war! The Austrian crown prince was killed in Sarajevo. This is war!
On Petrov's day, a lot of people came to us - it was my father's name day - and at dinner he was declared my fiancé. But on July 19, Germany declared war on Russia ...
In September, he came to us only for a day - to say goodbye before leaving for the front (everyone then thought that the war would end soon, and our wedding was postponed until spring). And then came our farewell evening. After supper, as usual, a samovar was brought in, and looking at the windows fogged up from its steam, the father said:
Surprisingly early and cold autumn!
We sat quiet that evening, only occasionally exchanging insignificant words, exaggeratedly calm, hiding our secret thoughts and feelings. With feigned simplicity, my father also said about autumn. I went to the balcony door and wiped the glass with a handkerchief: in the garden, in the black sky, pure ice stars sparkled brightly and sharply. Father smoked, leaning back in a chair, absentmindedly looking at a hot lamp hanging over the table, mother, in glasses, diligently sewed under her light a small silk bag - we knew which one - and it was both touching and eerie. The father asked:
So you still want to go in the morning, not after breakfast?
Yes, if you will, in the morning, ”he replied. - It’s very sad, but I haven’t completely ordered around the house.
The father sighed lightly:
Well, as you wish, my soul. Only in this case it is time for my mother and me to sleep, we certainly want to see you off tomorrow ...
Mom got up and baptized her future son, he bowed to her hand, then to his father's. Left alone, we spent a little more time in the dining room - I decided to play solitaire, - he silently walked from corner to corner, then asked:
Do you want to walk a little?
My heart was getting harder and harder, I responded indifferently:
Good…
While dressing in the hallway, he continued to think something, with a sweet smile he recalled Fet's verses:
What a cold autumn!
Put on your shawl and hood ...
I do not remember. It seems so:
Look - among the blackening pines
As if a fire is rising ...
What kind of fire?
Moonrise, of course. There is some kind of rustic autumn charm in these verses. "Put on your shawl and hood ..." The times of our grandfathers and grandmothers ... Oh, my God, my God!
Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good. I very-very love you…
Having dressed, we went through the dining room to the balcony, went down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held onto his sleeve. Then black branches began to appear in the brightening sky, showered with minerally shining stars. He paused and turned to the house:
Look how the windows of the house shine in a very special way, in an autumn way. I will live, I will forever remember this evening ...
I looked and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I took the downy shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he would kiss me. After kissing, he looked me in the face.
How bright your eyes are, ”he said. - Are you cold? The air is completely wintry. If they kill me, you still won't forget me right away?
I thought: “What if they really kill? and will I really forget it at some time - after all, everything is forgotten in the end? " And hastily answered, frightened by her thought:
Do not say that! I will not survive your death!
After a pause, he said slowly:
Well, if they kill you, I will wait for you there. You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me.
I cried bitterly ...
In the morning he left. Mom put that fatal sack around his neck that she sewed in the evening - it had a golden icon that her father and grandfather wore in the war - and we all baptized it with a kind of impetuous despair. Looking after him, we stood on the porch in that dullness that always happens when you accompany someone to a long separation, feeling only an amazing incompatibility between us and the joyful, sunny, sparkling frost on the grass in the morning that surrounded us. After standing, they entered the empty house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now and whether to cry or sing at the top of my voice ...
They killed him - what a strange word! - in a month, in Galicia. And now, as many as thirty years have passed since then. And much, much has been experienced over the years, which seem so long, when you carefully think about them, sort out in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by the mind or by the heart, which is called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive, I lived in Moscow, in the basement of a tradeswoman at the Smolensk market, who kept mocking me: "Well, your Excellency, how are your circumstances?" I was also engaged in trade, selling, as many sold then, to soldiers in hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, some of the remaining with me - now some ring, now a cross, now a fur collar, beaten with a moth, and here, trading on the corner Arbat and the market, met a man of rare, beautiful soul, an elderly retired military man, whom she soon married and with whom she left in April for Yekaterinodar. We drove there with him and his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who also made his way to the volunteers, for almost two weeks - I was a woman, in bast shoes, he was wearing a worn Cossack zipun, with a loose black and gray beard - and stayed on the Don and on Kuban is more than two years old. In winter, in a hurricane, they sailed with an innumerable crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey, and on the way to the sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, only three people remained close to me in the whole world: my husband's nephew, his young wife and their girl, a child of seven months. But my nephew and his wife sailed away after a while to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my arms. There they disappeared without a trace. And I lived in Constantinople for a long time, earning for myself and for the girl with very hard black labor. Then, how many, wherever I wandered with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice ... The girl grew up a long time ago, stayed in Paris, became completely French, very cute and completely indifferent to me, served in a chocolate store near Madlene, wrapped boxes in satin paper with sleek silver-clawed handles and tied them with golden cords; and I lived and still live in Nice than God will send ... I was in Nice for the first time in nine hundred and twelve - and could I think in those happy days what she would once become for me!
This is how I survived his death, once recklessly saying that I would not survive it. But, remembering all that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did he ever exist? It was all the same. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. And I believe, I fervently believe: somewhere out there he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. "You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me ..." I lived, I was glad, now I will come soon.
Ivan BUNIN
Cold autumn
In June of that year, he stayed with us on the estate - he was always considered our own man: his late father was a friend and neighbor of my father. On June 15, Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the sixteenth, the newspapers were brought from the post office. Father left the office with a Moscow evening newspaper in his hands into the dining room, where he, mother and I were still sitting at the tea table, and said:
Well, my friends, war! The Austrian crown prince was killed in Sarajevo. This is war!
On Petrov's day, a lot of people came to us - it was my father's name day - and at dinner he was declared my fiancé. But on July 19, Germany declared war on Russia ...
In September, he came to us only for a day - to say goodbye before leaving for the front (everyone then thought that the war would end soon, and our wedding was postponed until spring). And then came our farewell evening. After supper, as usual, a samovar was brought in, and looking at the windows fogged up from its steam, the father said:
Surprisingly early and cold autumn!
We sat quiet that evening, only occasionally exchanging insignificant words, exaggeratedly calm, hiding our secret thoughts and feelings. With feigned simplicity, my father also said about autumn. I went to the balcony door and wiped the glass with a handkerchief: in the garden, in the black sky, pure ice stars sparkled brightly and sharply. Father smoked, leaning back in a chair, absentmindedly looking at a hot lamp hanging over the table, mother, in glasses, diligently sewed under her light a small silk bag - we knew which one - and it was both touching and eerie. The father asked:
So you still want to go in the morning, not after breakfast?
Yes, if you will, in the morning, ”he replied. - It’s very sad, but I haven’t completely ordered around the house. The father sighed lightly:
Well, as you wish, my soul. Only in this case it is time for my mother and me to sleep, we certainly want to see you off tomorrow ...
Mom got up and baptized her future son, he bowed to her hand, then to his father's. Left alone, we spent a little more time in the dining room, I decided to play solitaire, - he silently walked from corner to corner, then asked:
Do you want to walk a little?
My heart was getting harder and harder, I responded indifferently:
Good...
While dressing in the hallway, he continued to think something, with a sweet smile he recalled Fet's verses:
What a cold autumn!
Put on your shawl and hood ...
I do not remember. It seems so:
Look - among the blackening pines
As if a fire is rising ...
What kind of fire?
Moonrise, of course. There is some kind of village autumn charm in these verses: "Put on your shawl and hood ..." The times of our grandfathers and grandmothers ... Oh, my God, my God!
Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good. I very-very love you...
Having dressed, we went through the dining room to the balcony, went down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held onto his sleeve. Then black branches began to appear in the brightening sky, showered with minerally shining stars. He paused and turned to the house:
Look how the windows of the house shine in a very special way, in an autumn way. I will live, I will forever remember this evening ...
I looked and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I took the downy shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he would kiss me. After kissing, he looked me in the face.
How bright your eyes are, ”he said. - Are you cold? The air is completely wintry. If they kill me, you still won't forget me right away?
I thought: "What if they really kill him, and will I really forget him in some short time - after all, everything is forgotten in the end?" And hastily answered, frightened by her thought:
Do not say that! I will not survive your death! After a pause, he said slowly:
Well, if they kill you, I will wait for you there. You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me.
I cried bitterly ...
In the morning he left. Mom put that fatal bag around his neck that she sewed in the evening - it had a golden icon that her father and grandfather wore in the war - and we crossed it with a kind of impetuous despair. Looking after him, we stood on the porch in that dullness that always happens when you accompany someone to a long separation, feeling only an amazing incompatibility between us and the joyful, sunny, sparkling frost on the grass in the morning that surrounded us. After standing, they entered the empty house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now and whether to weep or sing at the top of my voice ...
They killed him - what a strange word! - in a month, in Galicia. And now, as many as thirty years have passed since then. And much, much has been experienced over the years, which seem so long, when you carefully think about them, sort out in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by the mind or by the heart, which is called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive, I lived in Moscow, in the basement of a tradeswoman on the Smolensk market, who kept mocking me: "Well, your Excellency, how are your circumstances?"
I, too, was engaged in trade, sold, as many sold then, to soldiers in hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, some of the remaining with me, then some ring, then a cross, then a fur collar battered with moths, and here, trading on the corner of the Arbat and the market, met a man of rare, beautiful soul, an elderly retired military man, whom she soon married and with whom she left in April for Yekaterinodar. We drove there with him and his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who also made his way to the volunteers, for almost two weeks - I was a woman, in bast shoes, he was wearing a worn Cossack zipun, with a loose black and gray beard - and stayed on the Don and on Kuban is more than two years old. In winter, in a hurricane, they sailed with an innumerable crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey, and on the way to the sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, only three people remained close to me in the whole world: my husband's nephew, his young wife and their girl, a child of seven months. But my nephew and his wife sailed away after a while to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my arms. There they disappeared without a trace. And I lived in Constantinople for a long time, earning for myself and for the girl with very hard black labor. Then, how many, wherever I wandered with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice ...
The girl grew up a long time ago, stayed in Paris, became completely French, very pretty and completely indifferent to me, served in a chocolate shop near Madlaine, wrapped boxes in satin paper with sleek hands with silver nails and tied them with gold strings; and I lived and still live in Nice than God will send ... I was in Nice for the first time in nine hundred and twelve - and could I think in those happy days what she would once become for me!
This is how I survived his death, once recklessly saying that I would not survive it. But, remembering all that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did he ever exist? It was all the same. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. And I believe, fervently believe: somewhere he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. "You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me ..." I lived, I was glad, now I will come soon.
Look - among the blackening pines
As if a fire is rising ...
What kind of fire?
Moonrise, of course. There is some kind of village autumn charm in these verses: "Put on your shawl and hood ..." The times of our grandfathers and grandmothers ... Oh, my God, my God!
Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good. I very-very love you...
Having dressed, we went through the dining room to the balcony, went down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held onto his sleeve. Then black branches began to appear in the brightening sky, showered with minerally shining stars. He paused and turned to the house:
Look how the windows of the house shine in a very special way, in an autumn way. I will live, I will forever remember this evening ...
I looked and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I took the downy shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he would kiss me. After kissing, he looked me in the face.
How bright your eyes are, ”he said. - Are you cold? The air is completely wintry. If they kill me, you still won't forget me right away?
I thought: "What if they really kill him, and will I really forget him in some short time - after all, everything is forgotten in the end?" And hastily answered, frightened by her thought:
Do not say that! I will not survive your death! After a pause, he said slowly:
Well, if they kill you, I will wait for you there. You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me.
I cried bitterly ...
In the morning he left. Mom put that fatal bag around his neck that she sewed in the evening - it had a golden icon that her father and grandfather wore in the war - and we crossed it with a kind of impetuous despair. Looking after him, we stood on the porch in that dullness that always happens when you accompany someone to a long separation, feeling only an amazing incompatibility between us and the joyful, sunny, sparkling frost on the grass in the morning that surrounded us. After standing, they entered the empty house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now and whether to weep or sing at the top of my voice ...
They killed him - what a strange word! - in a month, in Galicia. And now, as many as thirty years have passed since then. And much, much has been experienced over the years, which seem so long, when you carefully think about them, sort out in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by the mind or by the heart, which is called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive, I lived in Moscow, in the basement of a tradeswoman on the Smolensk market, who kept mocking me: "Well, your Excellency, how are your circumstances?"
I, too, was engaged in trade, sold, as many sold then, to soldiers in hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, some of the remaining with me, then some ring, then a cross, then a fur collar battered with moths, and here, trading on the corner of the Arbat and the market, met a man of rare, beautiful soul, an elderly retired military man, whom she soon married and with whom she left in April for Yekaterinodar. We drove there with him and his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who also made his way to the volunteers, for almost two weeks - I was a woman, in bast shoes, he was wearing a worn Cossack zipun, with a loose black and gray beard - and stayed on the Don and on Kuban is more than two years old. In winter, in a hurricane, they sailed with an innumerable crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey, and on the way to the sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, only three people remained close to me in the whole world: my husband's nephew, his young wife and their girl, a child of seven months. But my nephew and his wife sailed away after a while to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my arms. There they disappeared without a trace. And I lived in Constantinople for a long time, earning for myself and for the girl with very hard black labor. Then, how many, wherever I wandered with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice ...
The girl grew up a long time ago, stayed in Paris, became completely French, very pretty and completely indifferent to me, served in a chocolate shop near Madlaine, wrapped boxes in satin paper with sleek hands with silver nails and tied them with gold strings; and I lived and still live in Nice than God will send ... I was in Nice for the first time in nine hundred and twelve - and could I think in those happy days what she would once become for me!
This is how I survived his death, once recklessly saying that I would not survive it. But, remembering all that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did he ever exist? It was all the same. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. And I believe, fervently believe: somewhere he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. "You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me ..." I lived, I was glad, now I will come soon.
IVAN BUNIN: COLD AUTUMN. (story) In June of that year, he stayed with us at our estate - he was always considered our own man: his late father was a friend and neighbor of my father. On June 15, Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the sixteenth, the newspapers were brought from the post office. Father left the office with a Moscow evening newspaper in his hands into the dining room, where he, mother and I were still sitting at the tea table, and said: - Well, my friends, war! The Austrian crown prince was killed in Sarajevo. This is war! On Petrov's day, a lot of people came to us - it was my father's name day - and at dinner he was declared my fiancé. But on July 19, Germany declared war on Russia ... In September he came to us only for a day - to say goodbye before leaving for the front (everyone then thought that the war would end soon, and our wedding was postponed until spring). And then came our farewell evening. After supper, as usual, a samovar was served, and, looking at the windows fogged up from its steam, the father said: - Surprisingly early and cold autumn! We sat quiet that evening, only occasionally exchanging insignificant words, exaggeratedly calm, hiding our secret thoughts and feelings. With feigned simplicity, my father also said about autumn. I went to the balcony door and wiped the glass with a handkerchief: in the garden, in the black sky, pure ice stars sparkled brightly and sharply. Father smoked, leaning back in a chair, absentmindedly looking at a hot lamp hanging over the table, mother, in glasses, diligently sewed under her light a small silk bag - we knew which one - and it was touching and eerie. The father asked: - So you still want to go in the morning, and not after breakfast? “Yes, if I may, in the morning,” he replied. - It’s very sad, but I haven’t completely ordered around the house. Father sighed lightly: - Well, as you wish, my soul. Only in this case it is time for my mother and me to sleep, we certainly want to see you off tomorrow ...
Mom got up and baptized her future son, he bowed to her hand, then to his father's. Left alone, we spent a little more time in the dining room - I decided to play solitaire, - he silently walked from corner to corner, then asked: - Do you want to walk a little? My heart was becoming more and more difficult, I responded indifferently: - Well ... Dressing in the hallway, he continued to think something, with a sweet smile he recalled Fet's verses: What a cold autumn! Put on your shawl and hood ... - No hood, - I said. - How next? - I do not remember. It seems like this: Look - between the blackening pines As if a fire is rising ... - What kind of fire? - Moonrise, of course. There is some kind of village autumn charm in these verses: "Put on your shawl and hood ..." The times of our grandfathers and grandmothers ... Oh, my God, my God! - What you? - Nothing, dear friend. Still sad. Sad and good. I love you very, very much ... Having dressed, we went through the dining room to the balcony, went down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held onto his sleeve. Then black branches began to appear in the brightening sky, showered with minerally shining stars. He, pausing, turned to the house: - Look how the windows of the house shine in an especially autumnal way. I will live, I will forever remember this evening ... I looked, and he hugged me in my Swiss cape. I took the downy shawl away from my face, tilted my head slightly so that he would kiss me. After kissing, he looked me in the face. “How bright your eyes are,” he said. - Are you cold? The air is completely wintry. If they kill me, you still won't forget me right away? I thought: “What if they really kill you? and will I really forget it in some short time - after all, everything is forgotten in the end? " And hastily answered, frightened by her thought: - Don't say that! I will not survive your death! After a pause, he said slowly: - Well, if they kill you, I will wait for you there. You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me. I cried bitterly ... In the morning he left. Mom put that fatal bag around his neck that she sewed in the evening - it had a golden icon that her father and grandfather wore in the war - and we crossed it with a kind of impetuous despair. Looking after him, we stood on the porch in that dullness that always happens when you accompany someone to a long separation, feeling only an amazing incompatibility between us and the joyful, sunny, sparkling frost on the grass in the morning that surrounded us. After standing, they entered the empty house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now and whether to weep or sing out loud. ..
They killed him - what a strange word! - in a month, in Galicia. And now, as many as thirty years have passed since then. And much, much has been experienced over the years, which seem so long, when you carefully think about them, sort through in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by the mind or by the heart, which is called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive, I lived in Moscow, in the basement of a tradeswoman at the Smolensk market, who kept mocking me: "Well, your Excellency, how are your circumstances?" I was also involved in trade, selling, as many did then, to soldiers in hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, some of the things I had left with me - now a ring, now a cross, now a fur collar, beaten with a moth, and here, trading on the corner Arbat and the market, met a man of rare, beautiful soul, an elderly retired military man, whom she soon married and with whom she left in April for Yekaterinodar. We drove there with him and his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who was also making his way to the volunteers, for almost two weeks - I was a woman, in bast shoes, he was wearing a worn Cossack zipun, with a loose black and gray beard - and stayed on the Don and on Kuban is more than two years old. In winter, in a hurricane, they sailed with an innumerable crowd of other refugees from Novorossiysk to Turkey, and on the way to the sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, only three people remained close to me in the whole world: my husband's nephew, his young wife and their girl, a child of seven months. But my nephew and his wife sailed away after a while to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my arms. There they disappeared without a trace. And I lived in Constantinople for a long time, earning for myself and for the girl with very hard black labor. Then, how many, wherever I wandered with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Paris, Nice ... The girl grew up a long time ago, stayed in Paris, became completely French, very pretty and completely indifferent to me, served in a chocolate store near Madlene, wrapped boxes in satin with sleek hands with silver nails paper and tied them with gold laces; and I lived and still live in Nice than God will send ... I was in Nice for the first time in nine hundred and twelve - and could I think in those happy days what she would once become for me! This is how I survived his death, once recklessly saying that I would not survive it. But, remembering all that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did he ever exist? It was all the same. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. And I believe, I fervently believe: somewhere out there he is waiting for me - with the same love and youth as that evening. "You live, rejoice in the world, then come to me ..." I lived, I was glad, now I will come soon. Author: Ivan Bunin May 3, 1944