Читать книгу Shackles - S. Skitalec - Страница 6

The city, all timbered, except the main street, stood in deep snowdrifts. Glavnaya Street came to an end in a market and a push with the wrapped-up dealers sitting at the trays at the bottom of a high osmiugolny tower.

From a tower the street abruptly turned downhill to the bridge through the small river. Closely shops with market goods – with buckets, pots, shovels, valenoks nested. In a smithy knocked hammers, the horn breathed.

Here new dwelling of parents of Vukol. In the depth of the yard of the gloomy brick house with an inscription on a column of gate: “Kolchina’s house” there was a superstructure over the coach maker, in the form of a svetelka, the external wooden ladder conducted there.

In a svetelka there were three small rooms from which Elizar’s family occupied one.

Elizar worked at foundry, did models of difficult mechanisms. He usually stayed at home at a table and wrote with a pencil on the sheet of paper, sometimes taking compasses in hand, measuring something in the drawing developed before it. Work it demanded the accuracy of calculations and special technical knowledge.

Vukol climbed on a chair, laid down on a table all breast. The pencil left ranks of interesting, various signs on paper.

– What is it? – the son asked once.

– Figures! – absent-mindedly the father answered. Having looked at the son, thought and added: – You want, I will teach you to figures?

– I want! – Vukol was joyfully delivered on a chair.

Elizar put work aside.

– Well, look: this stick – one, here with a head and a tail – two, and this big-bellied – the three!

The father densely and largely drew figures, and Vukol remembered them at once. It seemed to it that they as people, everyone has the person: the three – thick, with a pointed nose – is similar to a duck, the five – cheerful, six – with a pot-belly and a small head, eight – as the dealer on a market, and the nine – the same six, only down a head – ridiculous.

Having examined the pupil, the teacher was surprised.

– Э, the brother and you are retentive? And you want to know letters?.

Letters were even more entertaining: the father drew them and shaded as though cut out from a tree, such Vukol saw on signs. The artist drew long, lovingly trimming with a soft pencil each drawing. While drew, Vukol remembered all alphabet.

– Well, it is enough for today! tomorrow I will ask you – as call each letter if you do not forget – I will learn you to read.

And then told mother:

– I will try on new, by a sound method which began to be applied only recently! much easier and leaves rather!

Thus Vukol’s training in the diploma began. Soon he already read magic fairy tales.

And here at Vukol desire with own hand to draw heroes, athletes, supernatural beauties such by what they were presented to it for the first time was.

Model of picturesque art the picture printed in paints, hanging on a wall of their room in a frame under glass seemed to it: “The Bay of Naples has a family of fishermen”. There everything was fine: the azure waves running on the sandy coast, a bright sun and in particular the reclining fisherman’s daughter. Hair at it dense, black, on hair a scarlet bandage, a dark face, thinly and gently outlined, fine and proud. Vukol represented it as live, and she seemed to him one of those beauties because of whom in basten fairy tales knights and heroes made the surprising feats. Someone forgot this picture at Elizar when he lived in Siberia.

There passed two more years.

Behind a partition there lived the mail carrier with the krivoglazy wife, a young soldatka and the master of musical instruments – it and the musician: the man of huge growth, with a big fair-haired beard, doing violins. Will make, will play and will sell, then begins to make new. In the evenings the master went to theater to play in orchestra. Often it played and at home. Vukol listened to his game for hours and hours. The musician showed it receptions of a game. Then announced Elizara:

– At your fellow perfect ear appeared! Give I позаймусь with it! Yes, here still that: children it is necessary on the stage! There is “The Russian wedding”! Release with me Vukol: the fifty-kopeck piece on gingerbreads or on books will receive and start up orchestra listens. Who knows? Perhaps bread will be for it later.

Vukol had no concept about theater and went there mainly because of an opportunity to earn a fifty-kopeck piece.

The building was theater old, a strange look. Got together with the musician illegally there and came to be behind the scenes. There was a turmoil, narrowness, noise and abuse.

The scene which it was visible between the scenes represented an interior of very strange room with stranger people: boyars and boyars in bright suits of country breed talked unnaturally loudly, and from the underground doghouse someone prompted to them loud whisper.

Vukol with greed watched at all this from the scenes waiting, what will be farther. It together with other children was dressed in a color kosovorotka with a corbel, by wide trousers and yellow boots, with a hare soft pad spread and powdered cheeks and prepared all for an exit.

On the stage it was noisy: boyars drank from empty wooden gilded ladles, the striped clown in a yellow cap with bells played a balalaika without strings, and actually played violins in orchestra, then on a scene at the opened door pushed out children and Vukol together with them. All of them sat down on a floor along a linen wall which began to hesitate when Vukol tried to lean against it a back, strong holding an own cap in hand.

Directly against a scene the enormous dark hole filled with the audience blackened. Vukol very much was embarrassed, feeling awkwardly before such big confluence of people.

Bright light of a set of the lamps throwing the light only on the stage blinded him. Heart is disturbing fought for nervousness, hands and legs grew cold.

Nothing could be understood from this what boyars shouted of and sang to the sound of music the orchestra driving the bows in a low hole over which, sitting on a high chair, raged, swinging a small stick, the uneasy person in a suit having a tail. It was unknown why released on the stage of children in a special dress, and when time to leave came, Vukol so began to bustle that forgot a cap on a floor, but the old woman who remained on the stage in an elegant sundress threw it behind the scenes, having told: “take a cap” though the underground person who was looking out of the doghouse did not prompt it these words.

Home Vukol was turned back together with the musician late at night when in a svetelka all slept, except his mother who was patiently waiting for return of the little actor.

After this case of Vukol called in theater to step on the stage in different representations, and soon he became the person: all actors and actresses knew it.

Changed clothes and made up, he participated in theatrical processions, was the queen’s page, jumped among little imps or angels with white wings.

It was always unpleasant to step on the stage, but free minutes of expectation of the exit he fell in love to watch and listen from the scenes to the events on the stage.

During the winter Vukol saw a set of various representations – ridiculous, sad and terrible.

The play “Prince Serebryany” seemed the fairy tale in persons. “Thirty years, or the player’s Life” concerned. But here put “Auditor”, and Vukol to tears laughed together with public of theater. Looking from the scenes at the mad father offended by ignoble children – the king Lear – cried with pity. The execution of “Maria Stewart” shook. On “Richard Tretyem” blood was paralyzed in veins with fright.

In theater human life – misfortunes, sufferings, quarrels, tears, crimes, murders and suicides was represented. Even in vaudevilles comic actresses played барынь, fainting because of pure trifles.

– I do not love actresses! – sincerely Vukol’s mother spoke. – Slightly what now crack in a faint, is also ready! And here at us in the village and slykhy not to hear about faints! It is visible, only actresses also fall in a faint!

The father smiled, listening to it.

Everything that was represented in theater, was interesting, often sad, sometimes – is terrible or ridiculous and silly, but it seemed invented.

On boondocks of the city where the poor, the working people lived, nobody ever fainted and if cried, suffered and died, then really, without monologues and it is absolutely ugly.

* * *

Studying at the musician to playing a violin, Vukol daily brought from the house in a workshop a lunch to the father; waiting until he eats, walked on huge, similar to a shed, squeal of saws, knock of axes and hammers, chisels and chisels stood a workshop where weight to the people in linen aprons worked with bibs. People planed, sawed, worked behind workbenches and lathes.

Elizar was in the same apron, as well as all. Through work noise, mixing up with it, under a high ceiling of the huge building loud human voices floated.

Elizar came back from work only in the evening, tired, with the hardened callosities on hands long ago.

Over a cup of tea spoke to the wife:

– Work is strict, difficult, exhausts all force, and, by the way, pay cheap. I want more piecework on holidays to do!

– Yes then it will be even more difficult! – Masha objected.

– Well! There is enough force while! It is necessary to raise children!

Three-year-old Vovka captured all attention of mother. Thought of himself extremely because it on a forehead had a scrofula. Vukol who is eternally shipped in reading and drawing looked a senior in the house.

Elizar often spoke:

– I did not get an education – I want that children studied! For children it is necessary to live! I do not want that children semiliterate were. Vukol, to read, draw and likes to play a violin to passion! In school it would be time to attach it – eight years to the fellow! But means are necessary! What to me holidays? Empty days! Not to go to a tavern to the family person as all at us go! Wild also our dark working people! Even such as I, am a little: at all plant – one-two and miscalculated! The others everything – as a holiday, so to drink, and then all barefoot yes fragmentary go, starve!

Elizar began to go to a workshop for all day on holidays. It caused displeasure and condemnation of companions: work on holidays was considered as a sin and a sign of godlessness. The baptized person still could not go to church, but in a tavern – it is obligatory. In a tavern there was the only communication of workers: there were on friendly terms, quarreled and fought, then were reconciled.

Elizar had well-wishers from elderly and those who are more sober, but such there was a little: alcoholism on holidays considered the majority a religious duty.

Wildly and apart treated Elizar, the scientific worker who was not observing posts, not going neither in church, nor in a tavern, differing from the companions in a flowery language in which along with proverbs foreign words met, names of scientists, writers and poets were mentioned.

About Elizar said that he is an atheist and probably some switch or the Molokan.

Once on Sunday it as usual worked in a workshop – whized boards for model. The workshop was empty. There were only a watchman and two elderly workers who incidentally came behind some business.

Suddenly in a workshop the drunk joiner Andrey Maslennikov, from the company sacredly observing custom of Sunday alcoholism, people of years of thirty with a small blond beard became hollow.

Slightly reeling and being drawn by the intoxication, it approached Elizar and as if unintentionally pushed it with a shoulder. That discharged it the left hand, without ceasing to whiz right.

– Do not disturb, Andrey! – he told quietly. – Drank on четвертак, and you break for seven hryvnias!

– I will disturb here! you знашь why I came?

– I do not know! – Elizar frowned, continuing to work.

– Not знашь? Well, so I will tell why: came to disturb! To dismiss you! The artel sent me! You пошто do not go with us, turn back a snout from artel? Ya-hundred scientific! such, syaky, nemazany, dry, in Peterburkh worked! And for what you in Siberia were? We know all! The Molokan you, do not believe in God, on a holiday alone work! Well, we efty will not allow! Artel on you in offense, Elizar! Ours all now in a trakhtira sit and talk about you!

Drunk threateningly moved on Elizar and gave a hand to stop the jointer plane.

Elizar took away his hand again.

– Do not disturb, I speak; you walk, so go from here, walk!

– Have you ever seen anything like it – Andrey increased tone, trying to razdrazhit himself – where slykhano that the working person супротив artels went? The artel speaks to me: “Go, Andrey, you are more sober than others, give him in a muzzle that blood washed!” – Andrey threateningly clenched fists. – We will set those as artel not to esteem! We so will blow up those – to new brooms will not forget, will remember!

He seized Elizar by the rolled-up sleeve baring unusually brawny hand, drunk, but too a strong and strong hand.

– Let’s go in трахтир, put artels a food! ask from us forgiveness!

Elizar silently continued to move the jointer plane, askance watchfully monitoring Andrey’s actions.

– So you so, материн son? Molokan, stolover!

Three people stood in the doorway of a workshop, is indifferent listening to a dispute.

Elizar solved, povidimy, not to answer stickings drunk, but all this more inflamed Andrey.

– I speak to them: you want, now I will go and I will give it a box on the ears? And they purposely provoke: “Where to you? You will not go!” Here I will go! Here both came and I will give in a muzzle if you will not stop working! You turn back a snout, the swine!

Elizar was silent.

– Throw the jointer plane, I speak! Well!

Andrey, panting, suddenly turned pale, grabbed from a workbench the iron hammer on the short handle and with the face distorted by rage very much hit Elizar with the hammer in a temple. The blow of a drunk hand was incorrect, Elizar otkachnutsya instinctively and resisted standing though on the person its wide stream blood rushed. Drunk, at most own blow, fell, but immediately jumped and with a roar rushed on Elizar covered with blood again.

Then the modeller, being protected, lifted a heavy oak bar of the jointer plane in a hand and, appear, slightly only touched them Andrey’s forehead.

That was unexpectedly burst backwards and заскреб by legs.

Only here the audience ran up.

Elizar, pale as a cloth, with the lowered jointer plane in a hand, was motionless, frightened and amazed. The blood beating from a temple filled in to it a face and a shoulder of a shirt.

Andrey last time bryknut legs in the grounded boots, shuddered all over and calmed down. Terribly blown up bruise covered a half of his forehead over the left eye.

– Killed! – Elizar whispered, dropping the jointer plane. In eyes darkened. Hands and legs weakened. For a minute he fainted, but regained consciousness soon, having felt the wet towel which quickly reddened from blood on the head.

At this time in the doorway Vukol with a food small knot appeared.

The boy stopped, without understanding that he happened and that the red turban on the father’s head means. His face twitched.

Andrey moved.

– Breathes! – the elderly worker, склонясь over him told. – Mozhe, оту́ dobet! waters it is necessary! To cast!

The watchman ran behind water.

To Andrey directly from a bucket poured over the head. He poorly moaned.

All joyfully began to make a racket.

– It is live! not to death! it oklematsya! Means, and from us to the answer will not be! In hospital, and about a fight – mum’s the word! so our way!

Andrey lay unconscious. His breast hard rose. From time to time weak plaintive groans escaped from it. The left side of a forehead and person was blown up, absolutely closing an eye.

– Christened! indeed!

– Well and it – it is good that missed, and that would cut out the hammer the head as a pot with Russian cabbage soup!

– And this – flatwise struck with the jointer plane: if an edge – a cover!

Lifted mutilated and incurred on the carrier.

Elizar spoke to the son:

– Nothing, the sonny, worry… My head – it nothing, will manage… will heal!. now together home we will go!

The elderly worker approached Elizar and told, swinging the head:

– Well, you got off lightly, Elizar! Seem, the guy will survive!

Then stroked a direct goatee with strong streaks of gray and added meditatively:

– Long ago I look at you: good you, the intellectual, correct person, but the goner here in our places! With all the heart I speak: you will serve month – pay off! What people at us – you see. Everyone behind a top, has a knife without Ali’s passports with forgeries, there are which in a jail not once of a sizhivala! Vagrant people, bessemeyny! and the head is not expensive to them and not that others!

* * *

In Zaymishche there was no church: the village belonged to arrival of Petty-bourgeois Farms, and went for seven versts to a mass only for a Trinity there, in the spring when all floor in church was covered with a new-mown fragrant grass, and outside decorated with just cut off branches of birches. Still there went to church on Flora and Monastery or on Ivan Kupava. For a bestial holiday, too in the spring when to the river drove horses, cows, calfs and sheep and all of them humbly stood in water, listening as the priest – in a peaked calotte, hook-nosed, with a long wedge of a beard, similar to the Tatar, coming to Zaymishche three times a year on collecting voluntary donations – served after a mass a prayer in health of canine country friends ashore. Then the whole day guys and maids tried to pour unawares over each other water, ran with buckets from a log hut in a log hut, with laughter pushed stood gaping to the small river, boated on the century oak wood flooded with a high water.

Here everything that the grandmother Anna remembered by a church part: spring, joyful holidays with participation of the nature, the pets, children and youth who were coming to an end by the evening in melodious round dances after which burned down fires, jumped through fire, and in dark spring night till the dawn walked guys with maids, retiring couples: You look – by fall and the village who to whom will transfer matchmakers where wedding feasts are going to feast knew.

Was in these holidays of churchism a little – escaped the remains of cheerful Slavic paganism more. Because also these beautiful forest holidays together with her youth and a spring flood of mighty Volga running between the dense woods to which nobody knew neither the end, nor edge were remembered by it. It was possible to get lost in these Middle Volga woods forever. In them still there lived the laughing loudly wood goblins, and in the forest rivers and lakes the mermaid’s beauties bathed. In spring sunny days the invisible cuckoo cuckooed-cried about the abandoned children, and girls long looked for its blue slezk in backwoods.

Nearly sixteen years married Anyuta to the athlete Matvei, and life passed in hard country work, without coming off mother earth. It was life of patriarchal country way, in a kurny smoky log hut, and still it was fanned by unconscious poetry of agricultural work. The concept about church god was vague – in the form of as if sprinkler of shoots on green country fields. The grandmother trusted in the Kingdom of Heaven, and a serious obstacle for eternal life in heaven only non-compliance with church formalities seemed it, and the main misfortune was – to die, not поговев the Lent, without having received remission of the collected sins and not “причастившись” in church.

Having remembered it after fifty years of absolute indifference to the priest and church, the grandmother on a case of death decided to correct this omission which came from its eternal employment and remoteness of the church building from the village of Zaymishche.

Now it was possible to go to the city, to stay for a while to the daughter and the son-in-law and there to pogovet. The grandmother was not going to die yet, but decided to use an opportunity.

At the same time also other purpose of a travel joined: in the city the grandmother was not since young years, overcame thoughts that life changed, the kurny log hut is replaced new, burning “in a white way” long ago, the splinter was replaced by a lamp, pestryadinny sundresses – print dresses, across Volga steamships went, somewhere the chugunka close goes, and illiterate parents find necessary to send children to school. Also the grandmother solved: time in the city there live the family, close now whether not to send Lavrusha to school? Gramotya Elizar by all means by a scientific part will let the Vukol.

As a result of her such reflections Yafim Chalku in sledge-rozvalni harnessed and carried mother and the brother through winter Volga. Hardly found Kolchina’s house and a svetelka in the yard, asked for the yard and, having left a raspryazhenny horse under a canopy, got on a ladder.

They with surprise were met by Masha and six-year-old Vovka with traces of the begun to live scrofula on a forehead. Elizar did not return from the plant yet, and Vukol incurred to it a lunch.

The meeting was joyful. From congenital country good manners Masha told nothing about the hard work Elizara at the plant, about fragility of its situation. She sincerely rejoiced, having learned that mother came on week to fast, told her, as the church is close, namely – in the semibasement floor of a tower on a market, no distance from Kolchina’s house. Sending to the Monastery school, told that Elizar himself also went to the teacher with a request to accept the son. The teacher agreed, though in half of winter, to put the boy in special such office for the youngest. Here and the grandmother Anna let will go to school to the teacher and will tell that she came from Elizara from foundry sending both boys to school. The teacher Elizara knows and respects for the fact that he well and cheap worked at repair of school in the fall.

The conversation took place for small a copper samovarchik of an ancient form. Mother and the daughter spoke without stopping, but the others only listened, smiling and sweating from hot tasty tea. Not talkative Yafim, without having said almost words, except interjections with stutter, overturned a cup a bottom up, put on it a bit of sugar and, having risen because of a table, unexpectedly uttered very probably on the grandfather Matvei: “It is time to go!”

Having seen off Yafima, the grandmother before going to the teacher, the Monastery took by hand and went before such business to tower church.

But hardly they left gate of the house of Kolchina as became interested in a strange procession: towards to them from under the mountain slowly carried on the wood sledge of not movably lying young man with a black small beard and long hair. The big, strong body was covered with wide clothes.

The wood sledge was followed by crowd of the people, and the man driving the horse went near the wood sledge, pulling reins.

– The monk was drowned! – spoke in crowd.

The counter woman, having stopped, started talking to mother of Laurels:

– Hear, he drank, zapoyny was, and young still, zdorovushchiya! His Odezhu – the cassock and a calotte – on the river were found, at the ice-hole, and in a pocket – a note and as it is harmoniously written, exactly the song: “Do not look for, speaks, me anywhere! My body in water, an odezha on the edge, and soul in paradise!”

The laurels sedately followed mother holding it by a hand and long looked back, on the wood sledge where the dead person with long lay, as at the woman, hair, with a small dark small beard.

– What is it? – he asked – why it?

But mother answered only:

– Be silent!

They approached a tower. In its first floor through narrow long windows with the color glasses which are taken away by a figured iron lattice the burning wax candles dimly shone, and at low semicircular doors there were simple people, the most part of the woman.

Lavrusha’s mother, leading him by the hand, entered the close dark room with the low arches and sparks of candles shining ahead.

– Mother! what is it? – Lavrusha asked again.

– Church! – the grandmother Anna whispered, having stroked his head.

The laurels remembered how it once happened long ago to mother in church where to it the unclear word of “verb” which was often flashing in loud and lingering reading the person with a gray-haired beard dressed in the long heavy skirt embroidered in thick gold flowers was remembered. The word it was given by a dense echo under the high top of church decorated inside with unclear pictures which the Laurels liked to consider, showering the head up and being perplexed that this sonorous word of “verb” means. At the end of long reading and lingering singing mother took it on hands, bringing bearded people in long clothes with a gold bowl and a spoon in hands. One tied up to it under a chin a big zolototkanny crimson napkin, and another, without asking consent, violently put in a mouth a spoon with bitterish yellow-red liquid. The laurels always resisted and cried during this unclear operation.

Now he remembered former troubles in church and pricked up the ears though dangerous people in painted skirts were not here. Nobody read and sang.

– Let’s go! – whispered mother and, having climbed together with it stone steps on the eminence lit with a set of thin candles, told: – Be put to god!

The laurels did not know how to do it and where there is god.

Suddenly he saw not movably sitting barefoot person similar to just seen monk, in a long shirt from gray thick matter at which is around the head with the long hair and the small small beard framing a pale, lifeless face lying on shoulders the wreath from rods with the sharp prickles stuck to the person into the head was put on.

Prickles were in blood, several drops and spots of blood stiffened on a forehead, a face, a beard and clothes of the person.

The laurels frowningly looked at the silent, blood-stained figure and, having started back, nestled facing mother’s short fur coat, looking for protection against terrible vision.

– What you? what you? – whispered mother, is god!

– No! – firmly the Laurels objected, are the dead! – And again rested – with a hostile frown.

From the twilight people and between them the comely old man in a long semi-caftan appeared.

– Do not force! – he said to the grandmother in low tones – this statue of work of the great artist! It is small, does not understand!

– It is silly still! – she confirmed – it ispuzhatsya…

When they left a tower, the Laurels calmed down and did not ask about dead god any more.

* * *

The big gloomy room of school was full of boys of different age – from small to healthy teenagers. Monastery put with the smallest. The teacher – with the person in a silver bristle, with a section behind, in high stockings and boots with buckles – walked in a dark green suit of unprecedented breed before pupils and constantly beat them with a big ruler the heads. It gave to laurels a goose quill, an inkwell and the fragmentary leaf which is used up by serpentine lines not clear to Laurels.

At school there was a hubbub. One wrote, others loud chorus shouted drawlingly:

– Bra-vra! gra! Wad Dra!

It was reading on warehouses.

Seniors the teacher of one caused to solve problems to a big black board. There were big guys and, quickly knocking chalk on a board, covered it with ugly, negligent signs.

In a few minutes the teacher approached Laurels. The new pupil not movably and sadly sat before an empty leaf.

– Well what you do not write? – And itself read aloud the first line: – “Once sovereign Peter the Great…”

The laurels answered nothing. He cannot read any letter, and the teacher does not even know about it!

Behind the back of the teacher big pupils built grimaces, pulled each other hair. There passed hour. The laurels wrote nothing.

Change came. Bustle, fuss, a fight, laughter, shout and squeal did not stop. Dust dense fog was groundless.

Two biggest pupils who were called persons on duty selected several same big pupils who did not learn lessons and, having taken on a bunch розог, moved in a corridor. Guilty in turn put on a floor, they lowered cloth trousers, laid down, and companions of a sekla their long rods.

Istyazuyemye shouted, but some endured pain silently.

The crowd of boys surrounding a sekution laughed at shouting and praised courage of those which were silent under birches. Them called inveterate.

“Inveterate”, putting on trousers, boasted that it is trifles that they and not that still can bear.

The laurels were surprised, but not frightened by an execution show: he perplexedly waited when it are сечь birches, and resolved to endure pain silently. The pale face of the boy with the frowned eyebrows stored persistence expression.

He gloomy sat down on a threshold of the opened door. Pupils surrounded the beginner, exchanging remarks.

– It seems as waits for a sekution for a start! very ha!

– Teardrops! that’s our way!

– To see, inveterate will be!

– Be not afraid, the newcomer! To you nothing will be!

– Yes he is also not afraid, on a snout it is visible!

At this time Anna with a breakfast in a small knot came. Her heart clenched at the sight of the son surrounded with the school students considering it.

Long could not achieve from it to sense that happened to it. At last, the Laurels told that the head hurts it. Drearily, frowningly looked at mother, asked home.

Lavrusha did not get to city school.