Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Antonov apples I ... I am reminded of an 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 still and rain on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs sat on the fields. It is too good sign: "There is a lot of shade in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried 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 clear, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are the Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired peasants and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly at night when it is so glorious to lie on a wagon, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in fresh air and listen to the long train carriage creaking cautiously in the dark along the main road. A man pouring apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the institution - a bourgeoisie will never cut him off, and he will also say: - Go down, eat your fill, there is nothing to do! At the pouring, everyone drinks honey. And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to a large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut near which the bourgeois have acquired a whole farm over the summer is far visible. Everywhere it smells strongly of apples, here - especially. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Beside the hut there are matting, boxes, all sorts of frayed belongings, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with bacon is cooked on it, a samovar is heated in the evening, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, the kolo hut is a whole fair, and red hats flicker through the trees every minute. A crowd of lively one-yard girls in sarafans smelling strongly of paint, the "gentlemen" come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young head woman, pregnant, with a wide sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On her head there are "horns" - the braids are laid on the sides of the crown and covered with several kerchiefs, so that the head seems huge; legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand bluntly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is pleated, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with stripes of brick color and lined at the hem with wide gold "prose" ... - Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head. - Now these are being transferred too ... And the boys in white manly shirts and short pantyhose, with white open heads, all fit. They walk in twos, threes, shallowly touching their bare feet, and look sideways at a shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or for an egg, but there are many buyers, the trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burly, nimble half-idiot who lives with him "out of mercy", he trades with jokes, jokes and even sometimes "touches" the Tula harmonica. And until evening, people crowd in the garden, you can hear laughter and talk near the hut, and sometimes the stomp of dancing ... By nightfall, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having breathed in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for supper past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creak of the gates can be heard in the cold dawn with extraordinary clarity. It gets dark. And here's another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and the cherry twigs are tugging with fragrant smoke. In the dark, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame, surrounded by darkness, burns near the hut, and someone's black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony, move around the fire, while gigantic shadows from them walk over the apple trees ... Either a black hand of several arshins will lie 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 a shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself ... 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 on dry foliage, like a blind man, you will get to the hut. There, in the clearing, it is a little brighter, and the Milky Way is whitening overhead. - Is that you, barchuk? - Someone quietly calls out from the darkness. - Me. Are you still awake, Nikolay? - We can't, sir sleep. Must it be too late? Look, it seems passenger train goes ... We listen for a long time and distinguish trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already behind the garden, the noisy beat of the wheel is quickly knocked out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it begins to subside, go deaf, as if going into the ground ... - And where is your gun, Nikolai? - And here near the box, sir. Throw up a single-barrel, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot with a fell swoop. A crimson flame with a deafening crack will flash to the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a vigorous echo will burst out in a ring and roll along the horizon, dying 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. You gaze for a long time into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the ground 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 "Vigorous Antonovka - for a Merry Year". Village affairs are good if Antonovka is ugly: it means "the bread has ugly ... I remember a harvest year. which shines brightly here and there with the morning sun, and you cannot bear it - you tell the horse to ride as soon as possible, and you yourself will run to wash. to the pond. Almost all small foliage has flown from the coastal vines, and twigs are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines has become transparent, icy and She instantly chases away the laziness of the night, and after washing and having breakfast in the room with the workers with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, with pleasure you feel the slippery skin of the saddle under you, driving along Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time of patronal holidays, and the people at this time are tidied up, happy, the look 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 floor, geese in the mornings, so it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, even from the time of 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, like a harrier. You only hear, it happened: "Yes, - here Agafya waved eighty-three years old!" - or conversations like this: - And when will you die, Pankrat? Are you going to 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, I clearly remember. - Well, you see. You, then, are no less than a hundred. The old man, who stands stretched out in front of the master, smiles meekly and guiltily. Well, they say, to do, - to blame, healed. And he probably would have healed even more if he had not overeat on Petrovka onions. I remember his old woman too. Everybody used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, gasping for breath and holding on to the bench with his hands - all thinking about something. "About her good, I suppose," - said the women, because she had a lot of "good" in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; blindly looks somewhere into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and as if tries to remember something. She was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Paneva is almost of the last century, the chunks are dead, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white and white - "just put it in the coffin." And near the porch, a large stone lay: she had bought herself for her grave, as well as a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, crosses and a prayer printed on the edges. There were also yards in Vyselki to match the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich peasants - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they drove bees, were proud of the gray iron-colored bityug stallion, and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floors the thick and fat hemp-stands were dark, barns and barns stood, covered in good condition; in punka and barns there were iron doors, behind which were kept canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, typesetting harness, measures, bound with copper hoops. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember that at times it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a man. When, it happened, you drive around the village on a sunny morning, you keep thinking about how well it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omets, and on a holiday to get up with the sun, under a thick and musical message from the village, wash near the barrel and put on a clean shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, to add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire, and a trip to mass, and then lunch with a bearded father-in-law, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb and mash, so more and wish impossible! 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 terms of its homeliness and rural old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived twelve versts from Vyselki. Until, it used to be, you get to this estate, it is already completely impoverished. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don't want to rush, - it's so much fun in open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat, you can see far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun shines from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and glistens like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide shoals. A hawk will rise from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering its 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. On them sit kobchiks - completely black badges on music paper. I did not know and did not see serfdom, but I remember that I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna's. You enter the courtyard and immediately feel that here it is still quite alive. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. There are many outbuildings - low but homely - and all of them are as if merged from dark oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out in size, or, better to say, in length, only a blackened human, from which the last Mohicans look out

I am reminded of an 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 still and rain on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs sat on the fields. that is also a good sign: "There is a lot of shade in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a large, all golden, dried 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 clear, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are the Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired peasants and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so glorious to lie on the wagon, look into starry sky, to feel the smell of tar in the fresh air and listen to the long train carriage creaking cautiously in the dark along the main road. A man pouring apples eats them with a juicy bang one by one, but such is the institution - a bourgeois will never cut it off, but 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 cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to the big shalash, strewn with straw, and the very hut, near which the bourgeoisie acquired a whole farm over the summer, is far visible. Everywhere it smells strongly of apples, here - especially. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Beside the hut there are matting, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with bacon is cooked on it, a samovar is heated in the evening, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, the kolo hut is a whole fair, and red hats flicker through the trees every minute. A crowd of lively one-yard girls in sarafans smelling strongly of paint, the "lords" come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young head woman, pregnant, with a broad sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. There are “horns” on her head - the braids are laid on the sides of the crown and covered with several kerchiefs, so that the head looks huge; legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand bluntly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is velvety, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with stripes of brick color and lined with wide gold "prose" on the hem ...

Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head, howling. - Now these are being translated ...

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

By nightfall, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Breathing in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner, past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creak of the gates can be heard in the icy dawn with extraordinary clarity. It gets dark. And here's another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and cherry twigs with fragrant smoke are tightly pulling. In the dark, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in the corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone's black, like silhouettes carved from ebony, move around the fire, while gigantic shadows from them walk over the apple trees ... Either a black hand of several arshins will lie all over the tree, then two legs will be clearly drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this slides from the apple tree - and a 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 on dry foliage, like a blind man, you will get to the hut. There, in the clearing, it is a little brighter, and the Milky Way is whitening overhead.

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

I. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

We can't sleep. It must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train going ...

We listen for a long time and distinguish tremors in the ground. the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already behind the garden itself, the noisy beat of the wheels is quickly knocked out: thundering and knocking, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it begins to subside, to stall, as if going into the ground ...

Where is your gun, Nikolai?

But near the box, sir.

Throw up a single-barrel, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot with a fell swoop. A crimson flame with a deafening crack will flash to the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a vigorous echo will burst out in a ring and roll over the horizon, dying 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 all the muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...

And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes of shooting stars. You gaze for a long time 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

"Nuclear Antonovka - by a Merry Year". Village affairs are good if Antonovka is ugly: it means that bread has been ugly too ... I remember a harvest year.

At early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking in a black way, you would open a window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you cannot bear it - you tell the horse to sit down as soon as possible, and you yourself will run wash in the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown from the coastal vines, and the twigs are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and as if heavy. She instantly drives away the laziness of the night, and after washing and having breakfast in the room with the workers with hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, with pleasure you feel the slippery skin of the saddle under you, driving along 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 of owls is not the same as at another time. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and harshly in the morning on the river, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki from time immemorial, even from the time of grandfather, were famous for their "wealth". Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. You only hear, it used to be: "Yes, - here Agafya waved eighty-three years old!" - or conversations like this:

And when are you going to die, Pankrat? Perhaps you will be a hundred years old?

How do you please say, father?

How old are you, I ask!

But I don’t know, sir.

Do you remember Platon Apollonovich?

Well, sir, I clearly remember.

The old man, who stands stretched out in front of the master, smiles meekly and guiltily. Well, they say, to do, - to blame, healed. And he probably would have healed even more if he had not overeat on Petrovka onions.

I also remember his old woman. Everything used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, gasping for breath and holding on to the bench with his hands - everything is thinking about something. “About her good, I suppose,” the women said, because she had a lot of “good” in her chests. And she doesn't seem to hear; blindly looks somewhere into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and as if tries to remember something. She was a big old woman, all kind of dark. Poneva - almost of the last century, chunki - dead, neck - yellow and dry, shirt with kanifas jambs is always white and white, - "at least in the coffin." And near the porch, a large stone lay: she had bought herself for her grave, as well as a shroud - an excellent shroud, with angels, crosses and a prayer printed on the edges.

There were also yards in Vyselki to match the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich men - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families, they drove bees, were proud of the gray-iron-colored bull stallion and kept the estates in order. On the threshing floor, thick and fat hemp-stands were dark, barns and barns stood, well-covered; in punka and barns there were iron doors, behind which were kept canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, typesetting harness, measures, bound with copper hoops. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sledges. And I remember that at times it seemed to me extremely tempting to be a man. When, it used to be, you drive around the village on a sunny morning, you keep thinking about how well it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in omelets, and on a holiday get up with the sun, under a thick and musical message from the village, wash near the barrel and put on a clean 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 lunch with a bearded father-in-law, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash, it’s impossible to wish for more. !

The warehouse of an average noble life, even in my memory, very recently, had much in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in terms of its homeliness and rural old-world well-being. Such, for example, was the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, who lived two eleven versts from Vyselki. While, it used to be, you get to this estate, it is already completely hugging. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, 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, you can see far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun shines from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and glistens like rails. Suddenly fresh, lush-green winter grapes are spreading out in wide shoals. A hawk will rise from somewhere in the clear air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. On them sit kobchiks - completely black badges on music paper.

I did not know and did not see serfdom, but I remember I felt it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna's. You enter the courtyard and immediately feel that here it is still quite alive. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by century-old birches and willows. Outbuildings - low, but homely - are many, and all of them are as if merged from dark oak logs under thatched roofs. It stands out for the size or, better to say, the length of only the blackened human, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peep out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, similar to Don Quixote. All of them, when you enter the courtyard, pull themselves up and bow low and low. The gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage shed to take the horse, takes off his hat at the shed and walks around the yard with his head bared. He drove with his aunt as a postman, and now he takes her to mass - in a cart in winter, and in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those on which priests ride. My aunt's garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, turtle doves and apples, and the house was famous for its roof. He stood at the head of the courtyard, right next to the garden, - the branches of the lindens embraced him, - he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not even last, - he looked so thoroughly from under his unusually tall and thick thatched roof blackened and hardened with age. Its front façade seemed to me always alive, as if an old face looked out from under a huge cap with hollows of eyes - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from rain and sun. And on the sides of those eyes were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained down from roof to roof ... And the guest felt sullenly in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!

You go into the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old furniture mahogany, dried lime color, which has been on the windows since June ... In all the rooms - in the servants' room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is because the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass of the windows is colored: blue and purple. Everywhere there is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that the chairs, inlaid tables and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames never budged. And then you can hear on coughing: aunt comes out. It is small, but also, like everything around, strong. She has a large Persian shawl draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but friendly, and now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, "blew" apples, - Antonovs, "pain-lady", boletus, "fertile" - and then amazing lunch: all through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, pickles and red kvass - strong and sweet, sweet ... The windows to the garden are raised, and from there it blows cheerful autumn coolness ...

III

Per last years one thing supported the dying spirit of the landlords - hunting. Formerly dark manors, like the manor of Anna Gerasimovna. were not uncommon. There were also decaying, but still living on a grand scale with a huge estate, with a garden of twenty dessiatines. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but they no longer have life ... There are no triplets, there are no riding "Kirghiz", there are no hounds and greyhounds, there is no courtyard and there is no owner of all this - a landowner-hunter, like my late brother-in-law Arseny Semyonitch.

From the end of September our gardens and threshing floor were emptied, the weather, as usual, changed abruptly. The wind tore and ruffled the trees for whole days, the rains poured them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening between gloomy low clouds the trembling golden light of the low sun made its way in the west, the air became clean and clear, and sunlight it sparkled dazzlingly between the leaves, howling, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. Coldly and brightly in the north, above the heavy leaden clouds, the liquid blue sky shone, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds were slowly floating out. Stopin, at the window you think: "Perhaps, God willing, it will clear up." But the wind did not abate. He agitated the garden, tore a stream of human smoke continuously running from the chimney and again caught up with the ominous hair 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 again began to sow rain ... at first quietly, carefully, then ever thicker and, finally, turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was falling ...

The garden emerged from such a scuffle almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow subdued, resigned. But on the other hand, how beautiful he was when the clear weather set in again, the transparent and cold days of early October, the farewell festival of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees even before the first winter. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and humbly wait for winter, warming up in the sun's shine. And the fields are already sharply turning black with arable land and bright green with sprouted winter crops ... It's time to hunt!

And now I see myself in the estate of Arseny Semyonitch, in big house, in the room, full of sun and smoke from pipes and cigarettes. There are many people - all people are tanned, with weathered faces, in jackets and long boots. They had just had a very satisfying dinner, flushed and excited by noisy conversations about the upcoming hunt, but they do not forget to finish their vodka after dinner. And in the yard the horn blows and the dogs howl at different voices. A black greyhound, Arseny Semyonitch's favorite, climbs onto the table and begins to devour the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. But suddenly he lets out a terrible squeal and, knocking over the plates and glasses, rushes off the table: Arseny Semyonitch, who has left the office with an arapnik and a revolver, suddenly deafens the audience with a shot. The hall fills even more with smoke, and Arseny Semyonitch stands and laughs.

It's a pity that he missed! - 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 humorously and importantly recites in a baritone:

It's time, it's time to saddle the nimble bottom

And throw the sonorous 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 breast breathed in the cold of a clear and damp day in the evening, when, it happened, you ride with a noisy gang of Arseny Semyonitch, excited by the musical din of dogs thrown in the black forest, to some Red Bugor or Gremyachy Island, by its name alone, an exciting hunter. You ride an evil, strong and squat "Kirghiz", tightly restraining it with the reins, and you feel almost merged with it. He snorts, asks for a trot, rustles his hooves noisily on the deep and light carpets of black crumbling foliage, and each sound is echoing in the empty, damp and fresh forest. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, another, a third, answered passionately and pitifully - and suddenly the whole forest thundered, as if it were all glass, from violent barking and shouting. A shot rang out in the midst of this din - and everything "welded" and rolled somewhere into the distance.

"Oh, take care!" - an intoxicating thought flashes in my head. You whine on a horse and, as if you have fallen off the chain, you will rush through the forest, without taking apart anything along the way. Only trees flicker in front of my eyes and molds in the face with mud from under the horse's hooves. You jump out of the forest, see a motley flock of dogs stretching out on the ground on the greens, and push the "Kirghiz" even harder across the beast - over the greens, ups and downs, until finally you roll over to another island and the flock disappears from your eyes along with its frantic barking and groan. Then, all wet and trembling with exertion, you sit up the foaming, wheezing horse and greedily swallow the icy dampness of the forest valley. In the distance, the cries of hunters and the barking of dogs freeze, and around you there is a dead silence. The half-open timber stands motionless, and it seems that you are in some kind of reserved palaces. It smells strong from the ravines of mushroom dampness, decayed leaves and wet tree bark... And the dampness from the ravines is becoming more and more noticeable, it gets colder and darker in the forest ... It's time to spend the night. But collecting the dogs after the hunt is difficult. For a long time and hopelessly dreary horns ring in the forest, for a long time shouts, cursing and squealing of dogs are heard ... Finally, already completely in the dark, a band of hunters rushes into the estate of some almost unfamiliar bachelor-landowner and fills the whole courtyard with noise, which lights up lanterns, candles and lamps brought out to greet the guests from the house ...

It happened that such a hospitable neighbor had a hunt for several days. In the early morning dawn, in the icy wind and the first wet winter, they left for the forests and fields, and by dusk they returned again, all covered in mud, with flushed faces, smelling of horse sweat, the hair 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 jackets, randomly drinking and eating, noisily transmitting to each other their impressions of the killed hardened wolf, which, showing its teeth, rolling its eyes, lies with its fluffy tail thrown back in the middle of the hall and paints its pale and already cold blood on the floor. After vodka and food, you feel such sweet fatigue, such a bliss of youthful sleep, that you can hear a talk like through water. A weathered face is on fire, and if you close your eyes, the whole earth will float under your feet. And when you go to bed, in a soft feather bed, in an old corner room with a small picture and an icon lamp, ghosts of fiery-motley dogs flash before your eyes, the sensation of a jump will start throughout your whole body, and you will not notice how you will drown along with all these images and sensations in a sweet and a healthy dream, even forgetting that this room was once the prayer room of an old man, whose name is surrounded by gloomy serf 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. There is silence throughout the house. You can hear how the gardener carefully walks through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots. Ahead - a whole day of rest in the already silent winter estate. You 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 will tackle books - grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church missal books, smell gloriously of their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume... The notes in their margins are also good, large and with round soft strokes made goose feather... You unfold the book and read: "A thought worthy of the ancient and new philosophers, the color of reason and the feeling of the heart" ... And you will not be willingly carried away by the book itself. This is "The Noble Philosopher", an allegory published a hundred years ago by the sponsorship of some "holder of many orders" and printed in the printing house of the order of public charity, - a story about how "a nobleman-philosopher, having the time and ability to reason, to what a man's mind can ascend, once received the desire to compose a plan of light in the vast place of his village "... Then you stumble upon" the satirical and philosophical works of Monsieur Voltaire "and revel in the sweet and mannered style of translation for a long time:" My sovereigns! Erasmus composed, in the sixth to ten centuries, a praise for tomfoolery (mannered pause - semicolon); you order me to exalt reason before you ... ”Then from Catherine's antiquity you will move on to romantic times, to almanacs, to sentimentally pompous and long novels ... The cuckoo jumps out of the clock and mockingly and sadly cokes over you in an empty house. And little by little a sweet and strange longing begins to creep into my heart ...

Here is "The Secrets of Alexis", here is "Victor, or the Child in the Woods": "It strikes midnight! Sacred silence takes the place of daytime noise and cheerful songs of the villagers. Sleep spreads its gloomy wings over the surface of our hemisphere; he shakes off poppies and dreams from them ... Dreams ... How often do they continue only with the suffering of an evil one! .. "And favorite ancient words flash before my eyes: rocks and oak groves, a pale moon and loneliness, ghosts and ghosts," erots ", roses and lilies, "the leprosy and agility of young sha moons", the lily hand, Lyudmila and Alina ... And here are the magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Lyceum student Pushkin. And with sadness you will remember your grandmother, her polonaises on the clavichord, her languid reading of poems from "Eugene Onega na". 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, aristocratic-beautiful heads in old hairstyles meekly and femininely lower their long eyelashes over sad and tender eyes ...

IV

The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the manor houses. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a century has passed since then. The old people died in Vyselki, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semyonich shot himself ... The kingdom of the small-class people, impoverished to begging, is coming. But this beggarly small-scale life is also good!

So I see myself again in the village, in late autumn. The days are blue and cloudy. In the morning I sit down in the saddle and with one dog, a gun and a horn, I leave for the field. The wind is ringing and humming into the muzzle of the gun, the wind is blowing hard against, sometimes with dry snow. A whole Laziness I wander across the empty plains ... Hungry and vegetated, I return to the dusk in the estate, and my soul becomes so warm and joyful when the Vyselok lights flash and pulls from the estate with the smell of smoke, housing. I remember that they beat us in the house at this time to "twilight", not to light a fire and conduct conversations in the semi-darkness. Entering the house, I find the winter frames already packed, and this sets me up even more for a peaceful winter mood. In the servants' room the worker now eats the stove, and, as in childhood, I squat down beside a heap of straw, which smells sharply already of winter freshness, and I look now into the blazing stove, now into the windows, behind which, blue, the dusk is sadly dying. Then I go to the human. It's light and crowded there: girls chop cabbage, chippings flicker, I listen to their fractional, friendly knocking and friendly, sadly funny, village songs ... Sometimes some small-scale neighbor will drop in and take me away for a long time ... life!

Small people get up early. Stretching tight, he gets out of bed and twirls a thick cigarette made of cheap black tobacco or just makhorka. The pale light of an early November morning illuminates a simple, bare-walled study, the yellow and hardened skins of foxes above the bed and a stocky figure in wide trousers and a loose-fitting blouse, and a sleepy Tatar-like face is reflected in the mirror. In the semi-dark warm house dead silence. Outside the door in the corridor, snoring is the old cook, who lived in the manor house as a girl. This, however, does not prevent the master from shouting hoarsely to the whole house:

Lukerya! Samovar!

Then, putting on his boots, throwing a jersey over his shoulders and not buttoning his shirt in his mouth, he goes out onto the porch. It smells like a dog in the locked entryway; Stretching lazily, yawning yawning and smiling, the hounds surround him.

Burp! he says slowly, in an indulgent bass, and goes through the garden to the threshing floor. His chest breathes widely with the harsh air of dawn and the smell of a naked garden that has chilled over the night. Leaves curled up and blackened from frost rustle under boots in a birch alley, already cut in half. Looming in the low gloomy sky, the cuddly jackdaws are sleeping on the ridge of the barn ... It will be a glorious day for hunting! And, stopping in the middle of the alley, the master gazes for a long time into the autumn field, at the deserted green winter crops along which the calves wander. Two hound bitches squeal at his feet, and Fill is already behind the garden: jumping over the prickly stubble, he seems to be calling and asking in the field. But what are you going to do with the hounds now? The beast is now in the field, flying up, on the black trail, but in the forest he is afraid, because in the forest the wind rustles the leaves ... Oh, if only the greyhounds!

Threshing begins in the riga. Slowly, the thresher drum hums. Lazily pulling the strings, resting their feet on the dung circle and swaying, the horses are driven. In the middle of the drive, spinning on a bench, the driver sits and monotonously shouts at them, always whipping with his whip only one brown gelding, who is the laziest of all and is completely asleep on the move, since his eyes are blindfolded.

Well, well, girls, girls! - the sedate clerk sternly shouts, putting on a wide linen shirt.

The girls hastily scatter the current, run around with stretchers and brooms.

With God! - says the handler, and the first bunch of starnovka, launched for testing, flies into the drum with a buzz and squeal and rises upward from under it in a disheveled fan. And the drum hums more and more persistently, the work begins to boil, and soon all the sounds merge into a common pleasant threshing noise. The master stands at the gates of the barn and watches as red and yellow shawls, hands, rakes, straw flicker in its darkness, and all this moves and fusses about rhythmically to the sound of a drum and the monotonous cry and whistle of the driver. Proboscis flies like clouds to the gate. The master stands, all gray from him. Often he glances in the field ... Soon, soon the fields will turn white, soon the winter will cover them ...

Zazimok, first snow! There are no greyhounds, there is nothing to hunt with in November; but winter comes, "work" with the hounds begins. And here again, as in the old days, the small people come to each other, drink with their last money, and disappear for days on end in the snowy fields. And in the evening on some remote farm they shine far away in the dark winter night outbuilding windows. There, in this little outhouse, clouds of smoke are floating, tallow candles are dimly burning, the guitar is tuning ...

At dusk the wind took a spree,
He opened my gates wide, - someone begins in a chest tenor. And others awkwardly, pretending that they are joking, pick up with sad, hopeless prowess:
Opened my gates wide.
White snow covered the way-road ...

The impressions of Bunin's visit to his brother's estate formed the basis and became the main motive of the story. The work is deservedly considered the pinnacle of the writer's style. The story was repeatedly reworked, the syntactic periods were shortened, some details were removed that characterize the noble-manor world that was going into the past, phrases were perfected, etc. The story opens with a description of an early fine autumn. “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a large, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate scent of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden ... And the cool silence of the morning is broken only by the well-fed cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples poured into measures and a barrel. The author with undisguised admiration describes autumn in the village "giving not only landscape" but also portrait sketches (old people, long-lived, white "like a moon" is a sign of a rich village; rich men "who built huge huts for large families, etc.). The writer compares the warehouse of noble life with the warehouse of a rich peasant life on the example of his aunt's estate - she still had a sense of serfdom in her house and how the peasants took off their hats in front of the gentlemen. The description of the interior of the estate follows “rich in details - blue and purple glass in the windows” old mahogany furniture with inlays, mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames ”“ The fading spirit of the landowners ”supports only hunting. The author recalls the "rite" of hunting in the house of his brother-in-law Arseny Semenovich "especially pleasant rest, when" it happened to oversleep the hunt "- silence in the house" reading old books in thick leather bindings " meekly and femininely lower their long eyelashes to sad and tender eyes ... ”). Regretting “that noble estates are dying”, the narrator is surprised ”how quickly this process goes:“ These days were so recently ”and meanwhile it seems to me“ that almost a whole century has passed since then ... ... But this beggarly small-scale life is also good! " The writer admires the way of life of the "small local", his daily routine, habits, sad "hopeless" songs.

The narrator is the "I" of the writer, in many respects similar to the lyric hero in poetry / Bunin. "Antonov apples" - a symbol of the receding into the past Russia, similar to Chekhov's "Cherry Orchard": "I remember the big, all golden, dried and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate scent of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness" ... In Bunin, a seemingly insignificant detail - the smell of Antonov apples - awakens a string of memories of childhood. The hero again feels like a boy thinking “how good it is to live in the world!”.

In the second chapter, which begins with the belief "Vigorous Antonovka - for a Merry Year", Bunin recreates the outgoing atmosphere of the manor house of his aunt Anna Gerasimovna. "When you enter the house, first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried lime blossom, which has been lying on the windows since June ..."

The theme of Antonov's apples and the orchards empty in the fall is replaced in the third chapter by another - hunting, which one "supported the fading spirit of the landowners." Bunin recreates in detail the life in the estate of Arseny Semyonich, the prototype of which was one of the writer's relatives. An almost fabulous portrait of his uncle is given: “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. " Late for the hunt, P. remains in the old manor house. He goes through old, grandfather's books, "magazines with the names of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, the Lyceum student Pushkin", looks at the portraits. "And the old dreamy life will rise before you", - reflects P. This detailed poetic description of one day in the village reminds Pushkin's poem "Winter. What should we do in the village. I meet...". However, this "dreamy life" is becoming a thing of the past. At the beginning of the final, fourth chapter, he writes: “The smell of Antonov's apples disappears from the manor houses. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a century has passed since then. The old people in Vyselki died, Anna died

Gerasimovna, Arseny Semyonich shot himself ... The kingdom of the small local people, impoverished to begging, is coming. " He further declares that "this small-scale life is also good," and describes it. But the smell of Antonov's apples at the end of the story is gone.

I. A. Bunin, "Antonovskie apples" ( summary follows) is a memory picture in which juicy autumn apples become the main actor, because without their suffocating aroma, the author himself would not exist. Why? Sounds, smells, random pictures, bright images... It would seem that thousands, millions of them rush through their whole life. Something is kept in memory for a long time and is gradually forgotten. Something passes without a trace, is erased, as if it never happened. And something remains with us forever. It seeps in an incomprehensible way through the thickness of our consciousness, penetrates deeply and becomes an integral part of ourselves.

Abstract "Antonovskie apples", Bunin I. A.

Early mild autumn. It seemed as though it was August yesterday with its frequent warm rains. The peasants were happy, because when it rains on Lawrence, autumn and winter will be good. But time passes, and now a lot of cobwebs have appeared in the fields. The golden gardens have thinned out, shriveled up. The air is clean, transparent, as if it is not there at all, and at the same time it is filled to the brim with the smells of fallen leaves, honey and Antonov's apples ... This is how Ivan Bunin begins his story.

"Antonov apples": the first memory.

Village Vyselki, the estate of the author's aunt, where he loved to visit and spent his best years... The hubbub and the creak of carts in the garden: the harvest of autumn apples is in progress. Bourgeois gardeners recruited peasants to pour apples and send them to the city. The work is in full swing, even though the night is outside. A cautious creak of a long train is heard, in the darkness here and there a juicy crack is heard - this is a man eating apples one after another. And no one stops him, on the contrary, the owners encourage this irrepressible appetite: "Go away, eat your fill, there is nothing to do!" The thinned garden opens the way to a large hut - real home with your farm. Everywhere it smells incredible of apples, but in this place - especially. In the afternoon, people gather near the hut, and there is a brisk trade. Who is there only: one-house girls in sundresses smelling of paint, and "lordly" ones in beautiful and rough suits, and a young pregnant elder, boys in white shirts ... By the evening the hustle and bustle and noise subside. Cold and dewy. A crimson flame in the garden, fragrant smoke, cherry twigs crackling ... "How good it is to live in the world!"

IA Bunin, "Antonov apples" (read the summary below): second memory.

That year in the village of Vyselki was fruitful. As it was said, if Antonovka is ugly, it means that there will be a lot of bread, and village affairs will be good. So they lived, from harvest to harvest, although it cannot be said that the peasants were in poverty, on the contrary, Vyselki was considered a rich land. Old men and women lived for a long time, which was the first sign of well-being: and Pankrat would be a hundred years old, and Agafya was eighty-three years old. There were also houses in the village to match the old people: large, brick, two or three under one roof, because it was not customary to live separately. They kept bees, were proud of the stallions, for iron doors kept new sheepskin coats, canvases, spinning wheels, harness. I also remember the estate of Anna Gerasimovna's aunt, which stood about twelve versts from Vyselki. In the middle of the yard was her house, around a linden tree, and then the famous Apple orchard with nightingales and doves. Sometimes, you cross the threshold, and before other smells you feel the aroma of Antonov apples. Everywhere cleanliness and order. A minute, then another, a coughing sound is heard: Anna Gerasimovna comes out, and now, under endless judgments and gossip about antiquity and inheritance, treats appear. First, Antonov's apples. And then a delicious lunch: boiled ham, pink with peas, pickles, turkey, stuffed chicken and strong sweet kvass.

IA Bunin, "Antonov apples" (summary): the third recollection.

End of September. The weather is getting worse. It rains more and more often. Standing like this by the window. The street is deserted and boring. The wind never stops. It starts to sow the rain. Quiet at first, then stronger, stronger, and turns into a thick downpour with leaden darkness and storm. A disturbing night is falling. The next morning after such a fight, the apple orchard is almost completely naked. Wet leaves everywhere. The surviving foliage, already quieted down and resigned, will wander in the trees until the first frost. Well, it's time to hunt! Usually by this time everyone was gathering at Arseny Semyonitch's estate: hearty dinners, vodka, flushed, weather-beaten faces, lively conversations about the upcoming hunt. They went out into the courtyard, and there the horn was already blowing, and a noisy band of dogs was howling at different voices. It happened - you oversleep, you miss the hunt, but the rest was no less pleasant. You lie in bed for a long time. Around the silence, which is broken only by the crackling of wood in the oven. Dressing slowly, you go out into the wet garden, where you will surely find a cold, wet Antonov apple accidentally dropped. Strange, but it seems unusually sweet and tasty, completely different from others. Later you start reading books.

Fourth recollection.

The settlements were empty. Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semyonitch shot himself, and those village old men are gone. The aroma of Antonov apples is gradually disappearing from the once wealthy landowners' estates. But this poor small-scale life is also good. In late autumn in the house they liked not to light a fire at dusk and to conduct quiet intimate conversations in the semi-darkness. Leaves, blackened by frost, rustle under the boots in the street. Winter is coming, and that means, as in the old days, the small people will come to each other, they will drink with their last money and disappear all day hunting in the snow-covered fields, and in the evening they will sing with a guitar.

I. A. Bunin, "Antonovskie apples", summary: conclusion

Antonov apples are the first link in an endless chain of memories. Behind it, other pictures invariably emerge, which, in turn, raise to the surface long-forgotten feelings and emotions, happy, tender, sometimes sad, and sometimes painful. Everything around is literally saturated with the juicy aroma of Antonov apples. But this is at the beginning of autumn, during the period of dawn and prosperity in the village. Then their smell gradually disappears, deep autumn sets in, the village becomes poorer. But life goes on, and perhaps this smell will soon be felt again before others. Who knows?

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

Antonov apples

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Antonov apples

I am reminded of an 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 still and rain on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs sat on the fields. This is also a good sign: "There is a lot of shade in Indian summer - vigorous autumn" ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a large, all golden, dried 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 clear, as if it is not at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden. These are tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired peasants and poured apples to send them to the city at night - certainly at night when it is so glorious to lie on a wagon, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully a long train on the high road creaks in the dark. A man pouring apples eats them with a juicy bang one by one, but such is the institution - a bourgeois will never cut him off, but 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 cackling of thrushes on coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden, the road to a large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut near which the bourgeois have acquired a whole farm over the summer is far visible. Everywhere it smells strongly of apples, here - especially. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Beside the hut there are matting, boxes, all sorts of frayed belongings, an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with bacon is cooked on it, a samovar is heated in the evening, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, the kolo hut is a whole fair, and red hats flicker through the trees every minute. A crowd of lively one-yard girls in sarafans smelling strongly of paint, the "gentlemen" come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young head woman, pregnant, with a broad sleepy face and important, like a Kholmogory cow. On her head there are "horns" - the braids are laid on the sides of the crown and covered with several kerchiefs, so that the head seems huge; legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand bluntly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is pleated, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black-purple with stripes of brick color and lined at the hem with a wide gold "prose" ...

Household butterfly! - says the tradesman about her, shaking his head. - Now these are being translated ...

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

By nightfall, the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Breathing in the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for supper past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creak of the gates can be heard in the cold dawn with extraordinary clarity. It gets dark. And here's another smell: there is a fire in the garden, and the cherry twigs are tight with fragrant smoke. In the dark, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if 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, move around the fire, while gigantic shadows from them walk over the apple trees ... Either a black hand of several arshins will lie 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 a 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 constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you once again run into the garden.

Rustling on dry foliage, like a blind man, you will get to the hut. There, in the clearing, it is a little brighter, and the Milky Way is whitening overhead.

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

I. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

We can't sleep. It must be too late? Looks like there is a passenger train going ...

We listen for a long time and discern a tremor in the ground, the tremor turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already behind the garden, the noisy beat of the wheel is quickly knocked out: thundering and clattering, the train rushes ... closer, closer, louder and angrier ... And suddenly it starts to subside, go deaf, as if going into the ground ...

Where is your gun, Nikolai?

But near the box, sir.

Throw up a single-barrel, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot at a stroke. A crimson flame with a deafening crack will flash to the sky, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a vigorous echo will burst out in a ring and roll over the horizon, dying 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 all the muzzle on the shaft was shaken off ...

And the black sky is drawn with fiery stripes of shooting stars. You gaze for a long time into its dark blue depth, overflowing with constellations, until the ground 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!

"Vigorous Antonovka - for a Merry Year". Village affairs are good, if Antonovka is ugly: it means "the bread has been ugly too ... I remember a fruitful year.