Summary Telegram
KG Paustovsky
Telegram
October was unusually cold, rainy. The cinder roofs turned black. The tangled grass in the garden lay down, and everything blossomed and there was no way to knead it and showered only one small sunflower near the fence. Over the meadows dragged from behind the river, clinging to the flying windy clouds of loose clouds. Rain poured out from them, It was impossible to pass or drive on the roads, and the herdsmen ceased to drive a herd into the meadows.
The shepherd’s horn died down until spring. It became even more difficult for Katerina Petrovna to get up in the mornings and see everything the same: the rooms where the bitter smell of unheated stoves, the dusty “Herald of Europe”, the yellowed cups on the table, the long-not cleaned samovar and pictures on the walls, may have been too dark, and in the eyes of Katerina Petrovna already appeared dark water, or, perhaps, the paintings dimmed from time, but nothing could be disassembled
Katerina Petrovna lived out her life in an old house built by her father, a famous artist. In his old age the artist returned from Petersburg to his native village, lived alone and was engaged in a garden. He could not write anymore: his hand trembled, and his vision weakened, his eyes often hurt. The house was, as Katerina Petrovna said, a “memorial”. He was under the protection of the regional museum. But what will happen to this: the house when she dies, her last inhabitant, Katerina Petrovna did not know.
And in the village – it was called Zaborje – there was no one with whom you could talk about paintings, about Petersburg life, about that summer when Katerina Petrovna lived with her father in Paris and saw Victor Hugo’s funeral. You can not tell about this to Maniushka, the daughter of a neighbor, a collective cobbler, a girl who resorted every day to bring water from
– What do I need it for? – Manyushka asked hoarsely and sniffed her nose. – I’m a rag, or what?
– And you sell, dear, – whispered Katerina Petrovna. For a year now, she had grown weak and could not speak loudly. – You sell.
– I’ll hand over the scrap, – decided Maniushka, took everything and left.
Occasionally the watchman came by the fire-shed – Tikhon, skinny, red-haired. He still remembered how Katerina Petrovna’s father came from Petersburg, built a house, started a farm.
Tikhon was then a boy, but he respected the old artist for life. Looking at his picture, he sighed loudly:
– The work is natural!
Tikhon bothered often, miserably, with pity, but still helped with housework: he chopped dead trees in the garden, sawed them, chopped them for wood. And every time he left he stopped at the door and asked:
“I can not hear you, Katerina Petrovna, does Nastya write what or not?”
Katerina Petrovna was silent, sitting on the couch – hunched, small, – and all sorted through some papers in a red leather reticule. Tikhon blew his nose for a long time, staggered at the door.
“Well, then,” he said, without waiting for an answer. “I think I’ll go, Katerina Petrovna.”
“Go, Tisha,” Katerina Petrovna whispered. “Go – God be with you!”
He withdrew, carefully closing the door, and Katerina Petrovna began to cry softly. The wind whistled outside the windows in the bare branches, knocking down the last leaves. The kerosene nightlight shuddered on the table. He was, it seemed, the only living being in the abandoned house – without this weak fire Katerina Petrovna and would not know how to live until morning.
The nights were already long, heavy, like insomnia. The dawn more and more delayed, everything was late and reluctantly trickled into unwashed windows, where, since the previous year, the yellow autumn leaves and now the decaying and black leaves lay on top of cotton wool.
Nastya, daughter of Katerina Petrovna and the only native person, lived far away, in Leningrad. Last time she came three years ago. Katerina Petrovna knew that Nastya was no longer up to her, the old women. At them, at young, the affairs, the not clear interests, the happiness. It is better not to interfere. Therefore, Katerina Petrovna very rarely wrote to Ha’ste, but she thought about her all the days, sitting on the edge of the sofy sofa so quietly that the mouse, deceived by the silence, ran out from behind the stove, stood on its hind legs and sniffed the stagnant air for a long time with its nose. There were no letters from Nastya either, but every two or three months the cheerful young postman Vasily brought a translation of two hundred rubles to Katerina Petrovna. He cautiously held Katerina Petrovna by the hand, when she signed, so that she did not sign where she did not need it.
Vasily left, and Katerina Petrovna sat confused, with money in her hands. Then she put on her glasses and read a few words on the postal order. The words were all the same: there are so many cases that there is not time to come and even write a real letter.
Katerina Petrovna cautiously looked through the puffy papers. From old age, she forgot that the money was not at all what Nastia had in her hands, and it seemed to her that money smelled of Nastya spirits.
Somehow, at the end of October, at night, someone long pounded on a gate already boarded for several years in the depths of the garden. Katerina Petrovna became worried, she tied her head for a long time with a warm kerchief, put on an old hood, for the first time this year she left the house. She walked slowly, groping. The cold head blew from cold air. The forgotten stars pierced the ground. The fallen leaves prevented them from walking.
Near the gate Katerina Petrovna said quietly:
“Who’s knocking?”
But behind the fence no one answered.
“It must have seemed,” said Katerina Petrovna, and wandered back.
She gasped, stopped at the old tree, took hold of the cold, wet branch and found out: it was a maple. She planted it long ago, still a girl-laughter, and now he was flown around, frozen, he had nowhere to get away from this homeless, windy night. Katerina Petrovna regretted the maple, touched the rough trunk, wandered into the house, and the same night she wrote a letter to Nastya.
“My dear,” wrote Katerina Petrovna, “I will not survive this winter.” Come for a day, let me look at you, hold your hands. “I became old and weak until it’s hard for me not to walk, but even to sit and to lie, death has forgotten my way, the garden is drying – it’s not quite the same, – yes, I do not see it. “Autumn is bad today, it’s so hard, all life seems to have not been as long as this autumn alone.”
Manyushka, sniffing her nose, took this letter to the post office, put it in the mailbox for a long time and looked inside. “What’s there?” But nothing could be seen inside – one tin hollow.
Nastya worked as a secretary in the Union of Artists. There was a lot of work. The arrangement of exhibitions, competitions – all this passed through her hands. A letter from Katerina Petrovna Nastya received in the service. She hid it in her purse without reading, “she decided to read after work. Letters from Katerina Petrovna made Nastia sigh of relief: as her mother writes, she means she is alive. But at the same time, they began a deaf concern, as if every letter were a silent reproach.
After work, Nastya had to go to the studio of the young sculptor Timofeev, to see how he lived, to report this to the Union’s rule. Timofeev complained of the cold in the workshop and in general that he was being overwritten and was not allowed to turn around. On one of the sites Nastya took out a mirror, puffed and smiled, – now she liked herself. The artists called her Solveig for her fair hair and big cold eyes.
Timofeev himself discovered – small, decisive, evil. He was wearing a coat. He wrapped his neck with a huge scarf, and on her feet Nastya noticed lady felt boots.
“Do not undress,” muttered Timofeyev. – And then freeze. I beg!
He led Nastya along the dark corridor, climbed up several steps and opened a narrow door to the workshop. From the studio smelled like a child. On the floor near the barrel with wet clay burned kerosene. On the machines stood sculptures, covered with damp rags. The snow was falling obliquely out of the wide window, it filled the Neva with mists, melted in its dark water. The wind whistled in the frames and moved old newspapers on the floor.
“My God, how cold!” – said Nastya, and it seemed to her that the workshop was even colder than white marble bas-reliefs, disorderly hung on the walls.
– Here, take a look! – said Timofeyev, pushing Nastia clay-stained armchair. “I do not understand how I have not died in this den.” And at Pershin in the workshop from the heaters blowing heat, like from the Sahara.
“You do not like Pershin?” Nastya asked cautiously.
– Upstart! Timofeyev said angrily. – Craftsman! His figures do not have shoulders, but coat hangers. His collective farmer is a stone woman in a tucked apron. His workman is like a Neanderthal man. He sculpts a wooden shovel. And cunning, my dear, is cunning, like a cardinal!
– Show me your Gogol, – Nastya asked to change the conversation.
– Go! the sculptor ordered sullenly. – No, not there! Back in that corner. So!
He took off wet cloths from one of the figures, meticulously examined it from all sides, squatted down near the kerosene, warming his hands, and said:
“Well, there he is, Nikolai Vasilyevich!” Now, please!
Nastya shuddered. Mockingly, knowing it through, looked at her sharp-pointed stoop-faced man. Nastya saw the thin sclerotic vein beating on his temple.
“And the letter in my purse is unopened,” seemed the gogol’s eyes glaring. “Oh, you forty!”
– Well? Timofeyev asked. “Serious uncle, yes?”
– Great! – With difficulty answered Nastya. “It’s really excellent.” Timofeyev laughed bitterly.
“Excellent,” he repeated. – Everyone says: excellent. And Pershin, and Matyash, and all experts from all sorts of committees. A sense of what? Here – it is excellent, and where my fate as a sculptor is decided, there the same Pershin only vaguely hmnyknet – and ready. And Pershin snorted – it means the end! .. You can not sleep at night! – shouted Timofeev and ran around the workshop, stamping bots. – Rheumatism in the hands of wet clay. Three years you read every word about Gogol. Pig snouts are dreaming!
Timofeyev picked up a pile of books from the table, shook them in the air and threw them back with force. Gypsum dust flew from the table.
“It’s all about Gogol!” he said and suddenly calmed down. – What? I seem to have frightened you? Forgive me, dear, but, by God, I’m ready to fight.
“Well, let’s fight together,” Nastya said and stood up.
Timofeyev shook her hand firmly, and she left with a firm decision to wrest at all costs this talented man from obscurity.
Nastya returned to the Artists’ Union, went to the chairman and talked with him for a long time, was excited, argued that it was necessary to arrange an exhibition of Timofeev’s works at once. The chairman tapped his pencil on the table, thought about something for a long time, and finally agreed.
Nastya returned home, to her ancient room on the Moika, with a stucco gilded ceiling, and only there she read the letter from Katerina Petrovna.
– Where there now to go! she said and stood up. “Unless you get out of here!”
She thought about the crowded trains, the transplant to a narrow-gauge railway, the jolting cart, the dried up garden, the inevitable maternal tears, the taut, uninspired boredom of rural days – and put the letter in the drawer of the desk.
For two weeks Nastya was busy with the arrangement of Timofeev’s exhibition.
Several times during this time, she quarreled and reconciled with an unruly sculptor. Timofeyev sent his works to the exhibition with such a kind, as if he condemned them to destruction.
“You will not get a damn, my dear,” he said to Nastya with a gloating, as if she was not arranging it, but her exhibition. “I just do not waste time, honestly.”
Nastya first came to despair and resented until she realized that all these whims of wounded pride, that they are faked and deep down in his soul Timofeev is very pleased with his future exhibition.
The exhibition opened in the evening. Timofeev was angry and said that you can not watch the sculpture with electricity.
“Dead light!” he grumbled. “Deadly boredom!” Kerosene is better.
“What kind of light do you need, the impossible type?” – Nastya flared up.
– Candles are needed! Candles! cried Timofeyev, suffering. – How can you put Gogol under an electric lamp. Absurd!
At the opening were sculptors, artists. The uninitiated, having heard the conversations of the sculptors, could not always have guessed whether they praised Timofeyev’s work or scolded. But Timofeev understood that the exhibition was a success.
A grumpy, quick-tempered artist approached Nastya and patted her hand:
“Thank you.” I heard that it was you who took Timofeyev into the light of God. Well done. And then we, you know, talk a lot about attention to the artist, about care and sensitivity, but as it comes to business, you stumble upon empty eyes. Thank you again!
The discussion began. They talked a lot, praised and fired, and the thought thrown by the old artist about attention to a man, to a young, undeservedly forgotten sculptor, was repeated in every speech.
Timofeyev sat puffed up, examined the parquet, but still looked askance at the speakers, not knowing if they could be trusted or too early.
In the doorway came the courier from the Union – they got stupid Dasha. She made some signs to Nastya. Nastya approached her and Dasha smiled and gave her a telegram.
Nastya returned to her seat, unseen the telegram, read it and did not understand:
“Katya is dying.” Tikhon. ”
” What kind of Katya? “Thought Nastya thought in perplexity.” What kind of Tikhon? It must be not me. ”
She looked at the address-no, the telegram was to her. Then only she noticed the thin printed letters on the paper tape: “The fence.”
Nastya crumpled the telegram and frowned. Peršin performed.
“Nowadays,” he said, rocking and holding his glasses, “caring for a man becomes that beautiful reality that helps us grow and work.” I am happy to note in this environment, among sculptors and artists, the manifestation of this concern. I’m talking about an exhibition of works by Comrade Timofeev. We are entirely indebted to this exhibition – let it not be offended to our leadership – one of the ordinary employees of the Union, our dear Anastasia Semyonovna.
Pershin bowed to Nastya, and everyone applauded. Applauded for a long time. Nastya was embarrassed to tears.
Someone touched her hand behind her. It was an old quick-tempered artist.
– What? – he asked in a whisper and pointed to the crumpled telegram in Nastya’s hand. “Nothing unpleasant?”
“No,” answered Nastya. – It’s so… From a friend…
– Aha! muttered the old man and again listened to Pershin.
Everyone was looking at Pershin, but someone’s eyes, heavy and piercing, Nastya felt the weight of herself and was afraid to raise her head: “Who could this be?” She thought. “Did anyone guess? How stupid. .
She struggled to his eyes, and immediately took them: Gogol looked at her, grinning Nastya seemed that Gogol said softly, through clenched teeth.. “Hey, you”
Nastya got up quickly, went out hurriedly dressed downstairs and ran into the street.
Snow was falling watery snow. There was a gray frost on St. Isaac’s Cathedral. e descend on the city, at Nastya, the Neva.
“My darling, – remembered Anastasia recent letter. “That’s useless!”
Nastya sat down on a bench in the park near the Admiralty and wept bitterly. Snow melted on his face, mixed with tears.
Nastya flinched from the cold and suddenly realized that no one loved her so much, like this decrepit, abandoned old woman, there, in a boring Zaborie.
“It’s too late, I will not see my mother again,” she said to herself, and remembered that for the past year she had spoken for the first time this childish sweet word – “mother.”
She jumped up, walked quickly against the snow, whipped in the face.
“What is it, Mom?” “What?” She thought, not seeing anything. “Mom, how could this happen, because I have no one in my life.” “No, and it will not be my own.” If only she had time to see me, just to forgive. ”
Nastya went to Nevsky Prospekt, to the city railroad station.
She was late. Tickets were gone.
Nastya stood near the cash register, her lips trembled, could not speak, could not speak, feeling that from the first words she said she would burst into tears sobbing.
The old cashier in glasses peeked out of the window.
“What’s the matter, citizen?” she asked discontentedly.
– Nothing, – answered Nastya, – I have a mother… Nastya turned and quickly went to the exit.
– Where are you going? cried the cashier. “You had to tell me right away.” Wait a minute.
The same evening, Nastya left. All the way to her it seemed to her that the “Red Arrow” was hardly dragging, while the train rushed through the nocturnal forests, pouring them by the steam and making a long warning cry.
… Tikhon came to the post office, whispered to the postman Vasily, took a telegraph form from him, turned it over and for a long time wiping his mustache with his sleeve, wrote something on the letterhead in clumsy letters. Then carefully folded the form, put it into his hat and staggered to Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna did not get up for the tenth day. Nothing hurted, but a faint weakness pressed on his chest, on his head, on his feet, and it was difficult to breathe.
Maniushka did not leave Katerina Petrovna for six days. At night, she did not undress, she slept on the crock of a sofa. Sometimes it seemed to Manyushka that Katerina Petrovna was no longer breathing. Then she began to whimper in fright and called:
“Grandma?” And grandmother? You are alive?
Katerina Petrovna moved her hand under the blanket, and Maniushka calmed down.
In the rooms from the very morning stood the November darkness in the corners, but it was warm. Mnjushka drowned the stove. When the cheerful fire illuminated the log walls, Katerina Petrovna cautiously sighed – from the fire the room was made cozy, habitable, which she had been a long time ago, still under Nastya. Katerina Petrovna closed her eyes, and from them she rolled out and slid over the yellow temple, a single teardrop tangled in her gray hair.
Tikhon came. He coughed, blew his nose and, apparently, was excited.
“What, Tisha?” asked Katerina Petrovna helplessly.
“It’s getting colder, Katerina Petrovna!” said Tikhon cheerfully, and looked anxiously at his cap. “The snow will soon fall out.” It is for the better. I will drive down the road to the frost, which means that she will be more able to go.
“To whom?” – Katerina Petrovna opened her eyes and began to stroke the blanket with her dry hand.
“But to someone else, but not to Nastasya Semyonovna,” Tikhon answered, wryly grinning, and pulled out a telegram from the cap. – Who, if not her.
Katerina Petrovna wanted to get up, but could not, fell back on the pillow.
– Here! – said Tikhon, carefully unfolded the telegram and handed it to Katerina Petrovna.
But Cathernna Petrovna did not take it, but still looked imploringly at Tikhon.
“Read it,” said Manyushka hoarsely. “Grandmother does not know how to read.” She’s weak in her eyes.
Tikhon looked around with frightened eyes, straightened the gate, smoothed the red hair of his rare hair, and read in a deaf, uncertain voice: “Wait, I left.” I always remain your loving daughter Nastya. “
“Do not, Tisha! Katerina Petrovna said quietly. “Do not, darling. God be with you. Thank you for your kind words, for affection.
Katerina Petrovna turned to the wall with difficulty, then she seemed to fall asleep.
Tikhon was sitting in a cold hallway on a bench, smoking, lowering his head, spitting and sighing until Maniushka came out and beckoned Katerina Petrovna into the room.
Tikhon entered on tiptoe and wiped his face with all his five fingers. Katerina Petrovna lay pale, small, as though serenely asleep.
“I did not wait,” muttered Tikhon. – Oh, her grief is bitter, the suffering is unwritten! And look, you fool, “he said angrily to Manyushka,” do good for paying good, do not be a kestrel. ” Sit here, and I’ll run to the village soviet, I’ll report.
He left, and Manyushka was sitting on a stool, picking up her knees, shaking and watching without looking away at Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna was buried the next day. It was freezing. A thin snowball fell. The day was white, and the sky was dry, light, but gray, as if stretched over his head washed, frozen canvas. They gave the blue across the river. They were drawn by the sharp and cheerful smell of snow caught by the first frost of the willow bark.
The funeral was attended by old women and children. The coffin in the cemetery was carried by Tikhon, Vasily and two brothers of Malyavina – old men, like overgrown with clean pakley. Manyushka and her brother Volodka carried the lid of the coffin and stared without blinking in front of them.
The cemetery was beyond the village, above the river. On it grew tall yellow from the willow deer.
A teacher met on the way. She recently came from a regional city and did not know anyone else in the Zabor.
“The teacher is coming, teacher!” whispered the boys.
The teacher was very young, shy, gray-eyed, quite a girl. She saw the funeral and timidly stopped, looked frightened at the little old woman in the coffin. On the face of the old woman fell and did not melt tattered snowflakes. There, in the regional city, the teacher had a mother – that’s the same small, always worried about caring for her daughter and the same completely gray-haired.
The teacher stood and walked slowly after the coffin. The old women looked back at her, whispered that here, they say, is a quiet girl and it will be difficult for her to first time with the guys – they are very independent and mischievous in Zabore.
The teacher finally decided and asked one of the old women, Grandma Matryona:
– Lonely, must have been this old lady?
“And-and, my dear,” Matryona immediately sang, “read that it’s all alone.” And so sincere, so heartfelt. Everything, happened, sits and sits at itself on a sofa one, with whom to her words to tell. Such a pity! She has a daughter in Leningrad, yes, apparently, she has flown high. So she died without people, without relatives.
At the cemetery, the coffin was placed near a fresh grave. Old women bowed to the coffin, touched the ground with dark hands. The teacher went to the coffin, bent down and kissed Katerina Petrovna in a dried yellow hand. Then she straightened up quickly, turned away and went to the ruined brick fence.
Behind the fence, in a light fluttering snow lay a beloved, slightly sad, native land.
The teacher looked for a long time, listened to the old people talking behind her, how the earth pounded the lid of the coffin and far-away cocks were shouting along the yards – predicted clear days, light frosts, winter silence.
In Zabore, Nastia came on the second day after the funeral. She found a fresh burial mound in the cemetery – the ground on it was frozen with lumps – and the cold, dark room of Katerina Petrovna, from which it seemed life had gone away a long time ago.
In this room, Nastya cried all the night long, until a dull and heavy dawn bloomed outside the windows.
Nastia left Zaborya stealthily, trying not to be seen by anyone and asked about anything. It seemed to her that no one, except Katerina Petrovna, could remove her incorrigible guilt, unbearable heaviness.
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