“Three Deaths” by Tolstoy in Brief Content
One autumn, two crews were traveling along the main road. In the front carriage were two women. One was a mistress, thin and pale. Another maid, rosy and full.
She folded her hands on her knees and closed her eyes, swaying weakly on the pillows and coughing. She wore a white night cap, parted straight through her blond, extremely flat, pomaded hair, and there was something dry and deadly in the whiteness of this parting. A flaccid, yellowish skin covered the delicate and beautiful outlines of the face and blushed on cheeks and cheekbones. The face of the lady expressed fatigue, irritation and habitual suffering.
It was stuffy in the carriage. The patient slowly opened her eyes. With brilliant dark eyes, she eagerly watched the movements of the maid. The lady rested her hands on the seat to sit higher, but her strength refused. And her whole face was distorted by an expression of impotent, evil irony. The maid, looking at her, bit her red lip. A heavy sigh rose from the
The carriage and the carriage drove into the village, the sick woman, looking at the village church, began to be baptized. They stopped at the station. Out of the carriage came the husband of a sick woman and a doctor, approached the carriage and inquired sympathetically:
How are you feeling?
If I’m unwell, this is not the reason that you do not have breakfast, sick. “No one cares about me,” she added to herself as soon as the doctor trotted up the steps of the station.
I said: it is not only up to Italy, it can not reach Moscow, the doctor said.
What is there to do? objected the husband. She makes plans for living abroad, as healthy. Tell her everything to kill her.
Yes, she is already killed, a confessor is needed.
Aksyusha! the caretaker’s daughter screamed, let’s go to the mistress, let’s see that they’re taking overseas from a chest disease. I have not yet seen what is consumed in consumption.
“It seems that the patient has become terrible, thought the patient, if only
Will not we come back? said the husband, coming to the carriage and chewing a piece.
And what about home? To die at home? the patient flared up. But the word “die” frightened her, she looked pleadingly and inquiringly at her husband, he silently lowered his eyes. The patient burst into tears.
No, I’m going. She prayed long and fervently, but her chest was also painfully and cramped, in the sky, in the fields it was just as gray and cloudy, and the same autumn mist was falling on coachmen who, talking in strong, cheerful voices, laid the carriage
The coach was laid, but the coachman hesitated. He went into the stuffy, dark Yamskoy hut. Several coachmen were in the room, the cook was fumbling around the stove, a sick man lay on the stove.
I want to ask for a boot, I beat my own, the guy said. Uncle Fyodor? he asked, walking to the stove.
Chavo? there was a faint voice, and a red, thin face bent down from the stove.
You do not need new boots now, changing, the guy said. Give it to me.
The sulky, dim eyes of Fedor rose with difficulty to the boy, something began to pour in his chest and grumble; he leaned over and began to choke on a cough.
Where, really, unexpectedly angrily and loudly cracked the cook, the second month from the stove does not peel off. In the new boots will not be buried. And it’s high time, took the whole angle!
You take your boots, Seryoga, said the patient, suppressing the cough. Only, you hear, buy a stone, as I die, wheezing, he added.
Thank you, uncle, but I’ll buy a stone, for her.
Serega quickly took off his broken boots and threw it under the bench. The new boots of Uncle Fedor were just right.
In the hut until the evening the patient was not heard. Before the night the cook climbed onto the stove.
Do not be angry with me, Nastasya, told her patient, I’ll soon open up your corner.
Okay, well, nichavo, Nastasya muttered.
At night, the night light in the hut faded, everyone was asleep, only the patient weakly grunted, coughed and turned. By morning he had calmed down.
I saw a wonderful dream, the cook said the next morning. It was as if Uncle Fyodor had come down from the stove with tears and went to chop wood. Well, I say, you were sick after all. No, he says, I’m healthy, but I can swing an ax. I’m not dead yet? Uncle Fyodor!
His relatives did not have a distant family, so the next day he was buried. Nastasya told me about her dream for several days, and about the fact that Uncle Fyodor was the first to miss.
Spring came, it was joyful in heaven, on earth, and in the heart of man. In a large manor house on one of the main streets was the same patient who was hurrying abroad. At the door of her room stood a husband and an elderly woman. On the couch sat a priest. In the corner, her mother cried bitterly. The husband in great excitement and confusion asked the cousin to persuade the sick to confess. The priest looked at him, raised his eyebrows to the sky and sighed.
I’ll tell you, in my parish there was a sick woman, much worse than Marya Dmitrievna, the priest said, and what, a simple petty bourgeois cured in a short time.
No, she did not have to live anymore, the old woman said, and her feelings left her. The patient’s husband covered his face with his hands and ran out of the room.
In the corridor, he met a six-year-old boy, running into catch-up with the girl. When asked by the nurse, he said that the patient does not want to see the children, that it will upset her. The boy stopped for a moment, gazed intently at his father and ran off with a cheerful cry.
And in another room the cousin skillfully talked to prepare the patient for death. The doctor at the window interfered with drinking. The patient, all covered in pillows, was sitting on the bed.
If my husband had listened to me before, I would have been in Italy and would have been healthy. How much I have suffered. I tried to patiently endure my sufferings
The cousin came out and blinked at her father. Five minutes later he left the sick room, and the cousin and husband came. The patient was crying quietly, looking at the image.
As I now feel good, the patient said, and a slight smile played on her thin lips. Is not God merciful and all-powerful? And she again, with a greedy entreaty, looked with tear-filled eyes at the image.
Then she said, as if remembering something:
How many times have I said that these doctors do not know anything, there are simple medicines, they cure
The doctor came up and took her hand, the pulse was beating ever weaker. The doctor blinked at her husband, the patient noticed and looked around in fright. Cousin turned away and cried.
The same evening the patient lay in a coffin in the hall, in which sat one deacon and read the psalms. A bright light fell on the pale forehead of the deceased, on her waxen hands. The sexton, not understanding his words, read it gently, from time to time a child’s voices and footfall came from a distant room.
The deceased’s face was strict, calm, majestic and motionless. She was all attention. But did she even understand these great words now?
A month later, over the grave of the deceased, a stone chapel was erected. Over the grave of the coachman there was still no stone
You would put a cross on the cross, and blame Serega. Boots you wear. Take the ax and go to the grove early, and you will wipe out the cross.
Early in the morning, Serega took an ax and went into the grove. Nothing broke the silence of the forest. Suddenly, a strange, strange sound to the nature spread on the edge. One of the tops trembled, then the tree shuddered all over, bent and quickly straightened. For a moment everything was quiet, but again the tree bent, again there was a crack in its trunk, and, breaking the branch and lowering the branches, it fell to the damp earth.
The first rays of the sun made their way through the cloud and ran through the earth. The birds were shouting, something happy was chattering; the leaves whispered joyfully and quietly in the summits, and the branches of the living trees slowly, staggeringly moved over the dead, drooping tree
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