After dinner, among all that happy, aimless, free and calm that looked out of the fat through the open windows - sky, greenery, sun - after a long dinner with okroshka, fried chicken and raspberries with cream, over which I secretly froze from the presence of Natalie and from waiting for the hour when the whole house would be quiet for the afternoon and Sonya (who had come out for dinner with a dark red velvety rose in her hair) would secretly come running to me in order to continue yesterday’s work, no longer hastily and somehow, I immediately went to my room and closed the through shutters, began to wait for her, lying on the Turkish sofa, listening to the hot silence of the estate and the already languid, afternoon singing of birds in the garden, from which the sweet air from flowers and herbs went into the shutters, and hopelessly thought: how can I live now in this duality - in secret rendezvous with Sonya and next to Natalie, one thought of which already seizes me with such pure love delight, a passionate dream of looking at her only with that joyful adoration with which I just now ate at her thin bent body, at the sharp girlish elbows, with which she, half standing, leaned on the old stone of the balustrade heated by the sun? Sonya, leaning on her elbows and embracing her by the shoulder, was in her cambric peignoir with frills and looked like a young woman who had just married, and she, in a canvas skirt and an embroidered Little Russian shirt, under which all the youthful perfection of her constitution was guessed, seemed a little not a teenager. That was the supreme joy, that I did not even dare to think about the possibility of kissing her with the same feelings with which I kissed Sonya yesterday! In the light and wide sleeve of the shirt, embroidered on the shoulders in red and blue, her thin hand was visible, to the dry golden skin of which reddish hairs lay - I looked and thought: what would I feel if I dared to touch them with my lips! And, feeling my gaze, she threw up at me the brilliant blackness of her eyes and her whole bright head, entwined with a whip of a rather large braid. I moved away and hurriedly lowered my eyes, seeing her legs through the hem of her skirt, translucent in the sun, and thin, strong, thoroughbred ankles in a gray transparent stocking ...

Sonya, with a rose in her hair, quickly opened and shut the door, quietly exclaimed: "How, did you sleep?" I jumped up - what are you, what are you, could I sleep! grabbed her hands. "Lock the door with a key ..." I rushed to the door, she sat on the sofa, closing her eyes, - "Well, come to me" - and we immediately lost all shame and reason. We hardly uttered a word during these minutes, and she, in all the charm of her hot body, allowed herself to be kissed everywhere - only to kiss - and closed her eyes more and more gloomily, her face flared up more and more, and again, leaving and straightening her hair, threatened in a whisper :

As for Natalie, I repeat: beware of going over to pretense. My character is not as cute as you might think!

Rose lay on the floor. I hid it in the table, and by the evening its dark red velvet became sluggish and purple.

III

My life went outwardly ordinary, but inwardly I did not know a moment of peace, becoming more and more attached to Sonya, to the sweet habit of exhaustingly passionate meetings with her at night - she now came to me only late in the evening, when the whole house fell asleep, - and more and more painfully and enthusiastically watching Natalie secretly, her every movement. Everything went on in the usual summer order: meetings in the morning, bathing before dinner and dinner, then resting in their rooms, then a garden - they embroidered something, sitting in a birch alley and forcing me to read Goncharov aloud, or they cooked jam in a shady clearing under oaks , not far from the house, to the right of the balcony; at five o'clock tea in another shady clearing, to the left, in the evening walks or croquet in the wide courtyard in front of the house, - me with Natalie against Sonya or Sonya with Natalie against me - at dusk, dinner in the dining room ... After dinner, the lancer went to bed, and we still We sat for a long time in the dark on the balcony, Sonya and I joking and smoking, and Natalie was silent. Finally Sonya said: "Well, sleep!" - and, having said goodbye to them, I went to my room, with cold hands waiting for that cherished hour, when the whole house would become dark and so quiet that you could hear the ticking thread of a pocket watch running at my head under a burning candle, and everyone was amazed, I was horrified: for what God punished me so, for which he gave me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such an agonizing beauty of Natalie's adoration and such bodily ecstasy of Sonya. I felt that just about we could not stand our incomplete intimacy and that then I would completely go crazy from waiting for our nightly meetings and from feeling them all day later, and all this next to Natalie! Sonya was already jealous, sometimes flared menacingly, and at the same time she said to me in private:

I'm afraid that you and I at the table and with Natalie are not simple enough. Dad, I think he's starting to notice something. Natalie, too, and the nanny, of course, is already sure of our romance and is probably trying to trick dad. Sit more in the garden with Natalie together, read this unbearable "Cliff" to her, take her sometimes for a walk in the evenings ... It's terrible, I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, ready, like some Odarka, grab your hair in front of everyone, but what should I do?

The most terrible thing was that, as it seemed to me, she began to either suffer, or be indignant, to feel that there was something secret between me and Sonya, Natalie. She, already silent, became more and more silent, playing croquet or embroidering too intently. We seemed to get used to each other, we became close, but I somehow joked, sitting with her alone in the living room, where she leafed through the notes, reclining on the sofa:

And I heard, Natalie, that maybe you and I will be related.

She looked sharply at me.

Like this?

My cousin, Alexey Nikolayevich Meshchersky...

She didn't let me finish.

Ah, that's it! Your cousin, this, excuse me, plump, all overgrown with black shiny hair, a burring giant with a red juicy mouth ... And who gave you the right to have such conversations with me?

I was scared:

Natalie, Natalie, why are you so strict with me1 You can't even joke! Well, forgive me, - I said, taking her hand.

She did not remove her hand and said:

I still don’t understand… I don’t know you… But enough about that…

In order not to see her languidly attracting white tennis shoes, randomly picked up on the sofa, I got up and went out onto the balcony. A cloud came in from behind the garden, the air grew dim, a soft summer noise went wider and closer through the garden, a sweet field rain wind blew, and I was suddenly so sweet, young and free :

Natalie, just a minute!

She walked up to the threshold.

Take a breath - what a wind! What a joy it could be!

She paused.

Natalie, how unkind you are to me! Do you have something against me?

She shrugged proudly.

What and why can I have against you?

In the evening, lying in the dark in wicker chairs on the balcony, all three of us were silent - the stars only flickered here and there in the dark clouds, a weak wind blew from the direction of the river, frogs murmured drowsily.

By the rain, I want to sleep, - said Sonya, suppressing a yawn. - The nanny said that a young month was born and now it will "wash itself" for a week. - And, after a pause, she added: - Natalie, what do you think about first love?

Natalie answered from the darkness:

I am convinced of one thing: in the terrible difference between the first love of a young man and a girl.

Sonya thought:

Well, girls are different ... And she stood up resolutely:

No, sleep, sleep!

And I'll take a nap here, I like the night, - said Natalie.

Ways of transmitting someone else's speech

someone else's speech- this is the speech of the interlocutor, a third person, or the speaker's own speech, uttered earlier. Alien speech is also called what a person thinks that he writes.
Alien speech is transmitted in various ways: with the help of sentences with direct speech, indirect speech, as well as a simple sentence.

Direct speech — this is an accurately reproduced someone else's speech, transmitted on behalf of the one who uttered it (aloud or mentally). A sentence with direct speech consists of two parts: the speech of a stranger and the words of the author that accompany direct speech. For example: “Live Grisha! Our dear one is alive!” - Dunyashka yelled in a sobbing voice from afar(Sholokhov).

Direct speech is enclosed in quotation marks.

• A colon is placed between the words of the author and direct speech, when direct speech comes after the words of the author,
• and a dash when it precedes the words of the author or is broken by the words of the author. For example: Grigory, perking up, blinked at Natalya: "Petro will cut the Cossack at once, look." "Did everyone leave?" thought Irina. “I will go with the Cossacks,” Listnitsky warned the platoon officer. - Tell me to saddle the black(Sholokhov).

Each sentence in direct speech is written with a capital letter and at the end of it is put the sign that is needed for the purpose of utterance and intonation of this sentence.(period, question mark, or exclamation mark).

Punctuation marks in sentences with direct speech

A: "P". A: "P?" A: "P!" A: "P..."	"P" - a. "P?" - a. "P!" - a. "P..." - a.	"P, - a, - p." "P-a. - P". "P? - a. - P". "P! - a. - P". “P ... - a. - P".	A: "P" - a. A: "P?" - a. A: "P!" - a.
The hostess very often turned to Chichikov with the words: "You took very little."A: "P". “Flattery and cowardice are the worst vices,” Asya said loudly. "P" - a. "Do you write poetry?" asked Pyotr Ivanovich suddenly. "P?" - a. “Don’t scare me…” she asked indifferently. "P..." - a. “Today,” the sister said, “we have to leave.” "P, - a, - p." “We will have to spend the night here,” he said. “You can’t cross the mountains in such a snowstorm.”"P-a. - P".

Dialog. Dialogue punctuation marks

Dialog is a conversation between two or more people.
The words of each person participating in the conversation are called replicas . The words of the author may accompany the replica, or they may be absent. Each replica of the dialogue usually begins on a new line, a dash is placed before the replica, and quotes are not put. For example:
Pan pointed to a chair with his pen:
— Sit down.
Gregory sat on the edge.
— How do you like our horses?
— Good horses. Gray is good too.
— You drive it more often(Sholokhov).

Sentence with indirect speech

Offers from indirect speech serve to convey someone else's speech on behalf of the speaker, and not the one who actually said it. Unlike sentences with direct speech, they convey only the content of someone else's speech, but cannot convey all the features of its form and intonation.
Sentences with indirect speech are complex sentences consisting of two parts (the words of the author and indirect speech), which are connected by conjunctions what, as if to, or pronouns and adverbs who, what, what, how, where, when, why etc., or a particle whether.
Indirect speech with unions what, as if expresses the content of the narrative sentences of someone else's speech. For example: The hunter said what he saw swans on the lake. The hunter said as if he saw swans on the lake.
Indirect speech with union to expresses the content of the incentive sentences of someone else's speech. For example: The captain ordered to the boats were launched.
Indirect speech with pronouns and adverbs what, who, what, how, where, where, when, why etc. or a particle whether expresses the content of interrogative sentences of someone else's speech. For example: I asked, which the hour;We asked the people we met where they are going; I asked a friend, decided whether he this task.
A question expressed in indirect speech is called indirect question. There is no question mark after an indirect question.
When replacing sentences with direct speech with sentences with indirect speech, special attention should be paid to the correct use of personal and possessive pronouns, since in indirect speech we convey other people's words on our own behalf. It is also important to understand that not all features of someone else's speech can be conveyed indirectly. For example, in indirect speech there can be no appeals, interjections, forms of the imperative mood, and many other forms characteristic of oral speech. When translating direct speech into indirect speech, such words and forms are either omitted altogether or replaced by others. For example: The teacher said: "Alyosha, go get some chalk." The teacher told Alyosha to go get some chalk.
The words of the author usually precede indirect speech and are separated from it by a comma.

Quotes and punctuation marks attached to them

quotes called verbatim (accurate) excerpts from the statements and writings of someone, cited to confirm or clarify their thoughts.
Quotations can stand at the words of the author and represent direct speech. In this case, punctuation marks in quotations are placed, as in sentences with direct speech. For example: AT. G. Belinsky wrote: "Pushkin's verse is noble, elegantly simple, nationally true to the spirit of the language." But a quotation can also be introduced into the author's speech as part of a sentence. Then it is separated by quotation marks and is written with a lowercase letter. For example: Thought L. N. Tolstoy "time is the relation of the movement of one's life to the movement of other beings", expressed in his diary, has a deep philosophical content. According to F. AND. Shalyapin, art can go through times of decline, but "it is eternal, like life itself."

Exercises

Ex. 79. Make diagrams of the following sentences with direct speech.

1. More and more often the words were recalled: “And maybe - at my sad sunset, love will flash with a farewell smile” (Pushkin). 2. “Follow me,” she said, taking my hand (Lermontov). 3. "Let me..." whispered Emil in a trembling voice, "let me go with you." 4. “Conductor! shouted an angry voice. Why don't you give tickets? (Paustovsky). 5. “Well, this is positively interesting,” the professor said, shaking with laughter, “what is it with you, whatever you miss, there is nothing!” (Bulgakov). 6. He said: “I already heard it!” - and asked not to repeat.

Ex. 80. Rewrite sentences with direct speech, placing punctuation marks.

1. Shut up sternly said Dyers. 2. I want to dine with you the day after tomorrow at Prague, she said. Never been there and generally very inexperienced. I imagine what you think of me. In fact, you are my first love. 3. You are already talking to me on “you”, gaspingly, I said you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me. Why did she ask raising her eyebrows. 4. Finally, Sonya said Well, go to sleep and, saying goodbye to them, I went to my place ... 5. When I ran up to them, he looked at me and managed to shout cheerfully And the doctor, hello, while she turned pale to deathly blue ... 6. How shining eyes he said You are not cold.

Ex. 81. Make sentences with direct speech using these replicas.

Ex. 82. Make up several sentences with indirect speech.

1. Will we have time to arrive at the station? 2. We have enough time. 3. His friend will not go with us. 4. They can be envied. 5. These places are better than Crimea. 6. When will they arrive? 7. How did they rest?

Ex. 83. Rewrite the text, replacing direct speech with indirect speech.

"Do you like our city?" the children asked. “I like it, especially the flowers decorate it,” I said. “We already have fifty thousand rose bushes. We will complete the plan next year. "And here's the plan," I wondered. “But how? How many inhabitants in the city - so many bushes should bloom! - "Who came up with this?" - "Ivan Ivanovich". "And who is he, this Ivan Ivanovich?" I asked. “He is one of the first builders of the city,” the girl proudly announced. He plants flowers himself.

Ex. 84. Compose and write down sentences with these quotes according to the rules of punctuation, accompanying them with the words of the author. Use different verbs that introduce quotations.

1. Strictly speaking, the language is never finally established: it constantly lives and moves, developing and improving ... (Belinsky). 2. Grammar does not prescribe laws to the language, but explains and approves its customs (Pushkin). 3. ... Our extraordinary language itself is still a mystery (Gogol). 4. In the linguistic sense, the people are all people who speak the same language (Chernyshevsky). 5. Brevity is the sister of talent (Chekhov).

Test tasks

1. In which sentence is someone else's speech incorrectly framed?a) Napoleon once remarked that "I can lose this battle, but I cannot lose a minute."b) “Madame, do you need to wrap up or will you fly like that?” the shop assistant asked a woman who had been choosing a broom for more than two hours.c) According to Maupassant, "love is as strong as death, but as fragile as glass."d) Talent! Talent! he said. - Definitely a talent. You will positively succeed!”2. In which sentence is someone else's speech incorrectly framed?a) “Hey, lad,” she said sadly. - How is it going?"b) The old man walked and, stumbling over the grass, repeated: “What a fragrance, citizens! What an intoxicating aroma!c) According to Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “Only the heart is vigilant: you cannot see the most important thing with your eyes.”d) He wanted to ask the coachman where they had gone.3. In which sentence is someone else's speech incorrectly framed?a) In a letter to A. S. Suvorin, A. P. Chekhov wrote about his play "The Seagull" that it "... was written contrary to all the rules of dramatic art."b) As P. I. Tchaikovsky stated, “inspiration is born only from labor and during labor.”c) According to Leo Tolstoy, "art is the highest manifestation of power in man."d) Art, according to F. M. Dostoevsky, “is the same need for a person as eating and drinking.”

I

That summer, for the first time, I put on a student cap and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young free life, which happens only at this time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the countryside, and as a young man, passionately dreaming of love, I was still pure in body and soul, blushed at the free conversations of my gymnasium comrades, and they frowned: "You, Meshchersky, would go to the monks!" I wouldn't have blushed that summer. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to violate my purity, to seek love without romance, and, by virtue of this decision and the desire to show my blue band, began to travel in search of love meetings on neighboring estates , by relatives and friends. So I ended up on the estate of my maternal uncle, a retired and long-widowed ulan Cherkasov, father of my only daughter, and my cousin Sonya...

I arrived late, and only Sonya met me at the house. When I jumped out of the carriage and ran into the dark hallway, she came out in a night flannel dressing gown, holding a candle high in her left hand, turned her cheek to me for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:

Ah, the young man who is always and everywhere late!

Well, it's not my fault this time, I replied. - It was not the young man who was late, but the train.

Hush, everyone is sleeping. The whole evening they were dying of impatience, waiting, and finally they gave up on you. Papa went to bed angry, cursing you as a helipad, and Ephraim, who apparently remained at the station until the morning train, an old fool. Natalie left offended, the servants also dispersed, I alone turned out to be patient and faithful to you. Well, undress and let's go to dinner.

I answered, admiring her blue eyes and her raised hand, open to the shoulder:

Thank you dear friend. It is now especially pleasant for me to be convinced of your fidelity - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious views on you. What a hand, what a neck, and how seductive is this soft dressing gown, under which, surely, there is nothing!

She laughed.

Almost nothing. But you have become at least where and very matured. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache ... But what is it with you? For these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy who is always flashing from shyness into negaa, an interesting impudent. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers used to say, if it were not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.

Who is Natalie? I asked, following her into the dining room, lit by a bright hanging lamp, with the windows open into the blackness of a warm and quiet summer night.

This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to visit me. And this is really a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, the so-called "golden" hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. Eyelashes, of course, huge and also black, and amazing golden complexion, shoulders and everything.

What else? I asked, admiring the tone of our conversation more and more.

But tomorrow morning we will go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you will see what. And built like a young nymph...

On the table in the dining room were cold meatballs, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.

Don't be angry, there's nothing else,” she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. - And no vodka. Well, give the south, we'll clink glasses at least with wine.

And what exactly, God forbid?

Find me as soon as possible such a groom that would come to us "in the yard." After all, I’m already twenty-one years old, and I can’t get married somewhere on the side: with whom will dad stay?

Well, God bless!

And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the whole glass, she again began to look at me with a strange smile, at how I worked with a fork, began, as it were, to say to herself:

Yes, you are wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome, before you were already very thin and green-faced. In general, it has changed a lot, it has become light, pleasant. Only here the eyes run.

It's because you embarrass me with your charms. You weren't quite the same before...

And I looked at her cheerfully. She was sitting on the other side of the table, all up on a chair, tucking her leg under her, putting her full knee on her knee, a little sideways to me, under the lamp the even tan of her hand shone, her blue-purple smiling eyes shone and her thick and soft hair shone reddish chestnut , braided at night in a large braid; The collar of her open dressing gown revealed a round, tanned neck and the beginning of a plump chest, on which also lay a triangle of tanning: on her left cheek she had a mole with a beautiful curl of black hair.

Well, what about dad?

She continued to stare with the same smile, took out of her pocket a small silver cigarette case and a silver box of matches and lit a cigarette with some even excessive dexterity, straightening her tucked thigh under her:

Dad, thank God, well done. As before, he is straight, firm, taps with a crutch, whips up his gray-haired cook, secretly tints his mustache and sideburns with something brown, looks gallantly at Christya ... Only even more than before and even more insistently shakes, shakes his head. It seems like he never agrees with anyone,” she said and laughed.

Do you want a cigarette?

I lit a cigarette, although I had not yet smoked then, she poured me another drink for herself and looked into the darkness outside the open window:

Yes, for now, thank God. And a beautiful summer - what a night, huh? Only the nightingales were already silent. And I'm really happy for you. I sent for you at six o'clock, I was afraid that Ephraim, who had gone out of his mind, would not be late for the train. Waiting for you most impatiently. And then I was even pleased that everyone had left, and that you were late, that if you came, we would sit alone. For some reason, I thought that you had changed a lot, with people like you, it always happens like that. And you know, it’s such a pleasure to sit alone in the whole house on a summer night, when you are waiting for someone from the train, and finally hear that they are coming, bells rumble, roll up to the porch ...

I firmly took her hand across the table and held it in mine, also feeling the pull to her whole body. She blew rings of smoke from her lips with cheerful calmness. I threw out my hand and, as if jokingly, said:

You're talking about Natalie... No Natalie can compare with you... By the way, who is she, where does she come from?

Our Voronezh, from a wonderful family, once very rich, now just a beggar. They speak English and French in the house, but there is nothing to eat ... A very touching girl, slender, still fragile. Clever, only very secretive, it’s not immediately clear whether she is smart or stupid ... These Stankevichs are close-minded neighbors of your dearest cousin Alexei Meshchersky, and Natalie says that he often began to call on them and complain about his single life. But she doesn't like him. And then - rich, they will think that they left because of the money, sacrificed themselves for their parents.

Yes, I said. - But back to business. Natalie, Natalie, what about our romance with you?

Natalie will still not interfere with our romance, ”she answered. - You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss with me. You will cry on my chest from her cruelty, and I will comfort you.

But you know that I've been in love with you for a long time.

Yes, but after all, it was an ordinary love for a cousin, and, moreover, it was too subdued, you were only ridiculous and boring then. But God bless you, I forgive you your previous stupidity and I am ready to start our romance tomorrow, despite Natalie. In the meantime, we go to bed, I have to get up early tomorrow to do housework.

And she got up, wrapping her dressing gown around her, took an almost burnt out candle in the hallway and led me to my room. And on the threshold of this room, rejoicing and marveling at what I marveled at in my soul and rejoiced over the whole dinner - such a happy success of my love hopes, which suddenly fell to my lot at the Cherkasovs - I kissed her long and greedily and pressed her to the lintel, and she closed her eyes gloomily, lowering the dripping candle lower and lower. Leaving me with a crimson face, she shook her finger at me and said quietly:

Just look now: tomorrow, in front of everyone, do not dare to devour me with "passionate eyes"! God forbid if dad notices anything. He is terribly afraid of me, and I am even more afraid of him. And I don't want Natalie to notice anything. I'm very bashful, please don't judge by the way I behave with you. If you don't follow my orders, you'll immediately become disgusted with me...

I undressed and fell into bed with dizziness, but fell asleep sweetly and instantly, overwhelmed by happiness and fatigue, not at all suspecting what a great misfortune awaited me ahead, that Sonya's jokes would turn out to be no jokes.

Subsequently, I repeatedly recalled, as a kind of ominous omen, that when I entered my room and flicked a match to light a candle, a large bat darted at me. She rushed to my face, so close that even by the light of a match I clearly saw her vile dark velvety and eared, snub-nosed, death-like, predatory muzzle, then with a smooth trembling, breaking, dived into the blackness of the open window. But then I immediately forgot about her.

II

The first time I saw Natalie, and the other day in the morning, only briefly: she suddenly jumped up from the hallway into the dining room, looked - she was not yet combed and in one light vest of something orange - and, sparkling with this orange, golden brightness of her hair and black eyes, disappeared. I was alone in the dining-room that minute, I had just finished drinking coffee, the lancer had finished early and left, and, getting up from the table, I happened to turn around...

I woke up quite early that morning, in the still complete silence of the whole house. There were so many rooms in the house that I sometimes needed them. I woke up in some distant room, with windows overlooking the shady part of the garden, having slept soundly, washed myself with pleasure, dressed in everything clean, - it was especially pleasant to put on a new red silk blouse, - combed my black wet hair more beautifully, cut yesterday in Voronezh, went out into the corridor, turned into another and found himself in front of the door to the study and, together with the lancer's bedroom. Knowing that he gets up at five o'clock in the summer, he knocked. No one answered, and I opened the door, looked in and was satisfied with the invariance of this old spacious room with a triple Italian window under a hundred-year-old silver poplar: to the left the whole wall is in oak book scales, between them in one place rises a mahogany clock with a copper disk of a fixed pendulum , in another there is a whole bunch of pipes with beaded chibouks, and a barometer hangs above them, in the third a bureau of ancient times is pushed in with a rusty cloth of a walnut board thrown back, and on the cloth there are flares, hammers, nails, a copper spyglass, on the wall near the door, above a hundred-pound wooden sofa, a whole gallery of faded portraits in oval frames; under the window there is a desk, a deep armchair - both of which are also of enormous size; to the right, above the widest oak bed, a wall-sized painting: a blackened lacquer background, on it are barely visible swirls of swarthy smoky clouds and greenish-blue poetic trees, and in the foreground a naked, portly beauty, almost life-size, shines like a petrified egg white, standing half-turned to the viewer with a proud face and all the bulges of a full back, a steep butt and rear of powerful legs, seductively covering the nipple of the chest with elongated fingers of one hand, and the other lower abdomen in fatty folds. Glancing over all this, I heard behind me the strong voice of a lancer, with a crutch coming up to me from the hallway:

No, brother, you won't find me in the bedroom at this time. It's you lying on the beds up to three oaks.

I kissed his broad dry hand and asked:

What oaks, uncle?

That's what the peasants say,' he replied, shaking his gray-haired cook and looking at me with his yellow eyes, still sharp-sighted and intelligent. - The sun has risen by three oaks, and you are still on the pillow with your face, the men say. Well, let's go get some coffee...

"Wonderful old man, wonderful house," I thought, following him into the dining room, through the open windows of which looked out the greenery of a mortal garden and all the summer prosperity of a country estate. An old nanny, small and hunchbacked, served, the lancer drank strong tea with cream from a thick glass in a silver glass holder, holding in the glass with a wide finger the thin and long, twisted stem of a round golden old spoon, I ate slice after slice of black bread with butter and poured everything on myself from a hot silver coffee pot; the uhlan, being interested only in himself, without asking me anything, talked about the landlord neighbors, scolding and ridiculing them in every way, I pretended to listen, looked at his mustache, sideburns, at the large hair at the end of his nose, and I was waiting for Natalie and Sonya, which couldn’t sit still: who is this Natalie and how will we meet Sonya after yesterday? I felt admiration for her, gratitude, I viciously thought about her and Natalie's bedrooms, about everything that happens in the morning mess of the women's bedroom ... Maybe Sonya did say something to Natalie about our love that began yesterday? If so, then I feel something like love for Natalie, and not because she is allegedly beautiful, but because she has already become our secret accomplice with Sonya - why can’t we love two? Now they will enter in all their morning freshness, they will see me, my Georgian beauty and a red blouse, they will talk, laugh, sit down at the table, beautifully pouring from this hot coffee pot - young morning appetite, young morning excitement, the gleam of sleepy eyes, a light touch powder on their cheeks, as if still rejuvenated after sleep, and this laughter behind every word, not quite natural and all the more charming ... And before breakfast they will go through the garden to the river, they will undress in the bath, illuminated over their naked bodies from above by the blue sky, and from below by a gleam of clear water... My imagination was always alive, I mentally saw how Sonya and Natalie would, holding on to the railing of the stairs to the bathhouse, awkwardly go down its steps, immersed in water, wet, cold and slippery from the nasty green velvet slime that has grown on them, like Sonya, throwing back her thick-haired head, suddenly decisively falls into the water with raised breasts - and, all strangely visible in the water with a bluish-purple body, askance will lead the corners of the arms and legs in different directions, just like a frog ...

Well, before dinner, you remember: dinner is at twelve,” said the lancer, shaking his head negatively, and stood up with his shaved chin, in a brown mustache connected to the same sideburns, tall, senilely hard, in a spacious flaky suit and blunt shoes, with a crutch in his broad hand covered with buckwheat, he patted me on the shoulder and left with a quick step. And just then, when I also got up to go through the next room to the balcony, she jumped up, flashed and disappeared, immediately striking me with joyful admiration. I went out onto the balcony amazed: in fact, a beauty! - and stood for a long time as if gathering his thoughts. I was so waiting for them in the dining room, but when I finally heard them in the dining room from the balcony, I suddenly ran into the garden - I was seized by some kind of fear, not only in front of both, with one of whom I already had a captivating secret, or most of all in front of Natalie, before the instant she blinded me half an hour ago with her swiftness. I walked around the garden, which, like the rest of the estate, lay in the lowlands of the river, finally overcame myself, entered with mock simplicity and met Sonya’s cheerful courage and Natalie’s sweet joke, who with a smile threw up at me from her black eyelashes the radiant blackness of her eyes, especially striking by the light of her hair:

We've already met!

Then we stood on the balcony, leaning on the stone balustrade, feeling with summer pleasure how hot our open heads were baking, and Natalie stood beside me, and Sonya, embracing her and as if absent-mindedly looking somewhere, hummed with a grin: "In the midst of a noisy ball , by chance ... "Then she straightened up:

Well, swim! First of all, we, then you go ...

Natalie ran for the sheets, but she lingered and whispered to me:

From now on, please pretend that you have fallen in love with Natalie. And watch out if it turns out you don't have to pretend.

And I almost answered with cheerful insolence that yes, it was no longer necessary, and she, glancing sideways at the door, added quietly:

I'll come to you after lunch...

When they returned, I went to the bathhouse - first along a long birch avenue, then among various old trees of the shore, where there was a warm smell of river water and rooks yelling on tree tops, I walked and again thought with two completely opposite feelings about Natalie and Sonya, that I will bathe in the same water that they just bathed in...

After dinner, among all that happy, aimless, free and calm that looked out of the fat through the open windows - sky, greenery, sun - after a long dinner with okroshka, fried chicken and raspberries with cream, over which I secretly froze from the presence of Natalie and from waiting for the hour when the whole house would be quiet for the afternoon and Sonya (who had come out for dinner with a dark red velvety rose in her hair) would secretly come running to me in order to continue yesterday’s work, no longer hastily and somehow, I immediately went to my room and closed the through shutters, began to wait for her, lying on the Turkish sofa, listening to the hot silence of the estate and the already languid, afternoon singing of birds in the garden, from which the air, sweet from flowers and herbs, went into the shutters, and hopelessly thought: how can I live now in this duality - in secret rendezvous with Sonya and next to Natalie, one thought of which already seizes me with such pure love delight, a passionate dream of looking at her only with that joyful adoration with which I just now ate at her slender bent body, at the sharp girlish elbows with which she, half standing, leaned on the old stone of the balustrade heated by the sun? Sonya, leaning on her elbows and embracing her by the shoulder, was in her cambric peignoir with frills and looked like a young woman who had just married, and she, in a canvas skirt and an embroidered Little Russian shirt, under which all the youthful perfection of her constitution was guessed, seemed a little not a teenager. That was the supreme joy, that I did not even dare to think about the possibility of kissing her with the same feelings with which I kissed Sonya yesterday! In the light and wide sleeve of the shirt, embroidered on the shoulders in red and blue, her thin hand was visible, to the dry golden skin of which reddish hairs lay - I looked and thought: what would I feel if I dared to touch them with my lips! And, feeling my gaze, she threw up at me the brilliant blackness of her eyes and her whole bright head, entwined with a whip of a rather large braid. I moved away and hurriedly lowered my eyes, seeing her legs through the hem of her skirt, translucent in the sun, and thin, strong, thoroughbred ankles in a gray transparent stocking ...

Sonya, with a rose in her hair, quickly opened and shut the door, quietly exclaimed: "How, did you sleep?" I jumped up - what are you, what are you, could I sleep! grabbed her hands. "Lock the door with a key ..." I rushed to the door, she sat on the sofa, closing her eyes, - "Well, come to me" - and we immediately lost all shame and reason. We hardly uttered a word during these minutes, and she, in all the charm of her hot body, allowed herself to be kissed everywhere - only to kiss - and closed her eyes more and more gloomily, flared up her face more and more, and again, leaving and straightening her hair, threatened in a whisper :

As for Natalie, I repeat: beware of going over to pretense. My character is not as cute as you might think!

Rose lay on the floor. I hid it in the table, and by evening its crimson velvet had become dull and purple.

III

My life went outwardly ordinary, but inwardly I did not know a moment of peace, becoming more and more attached to Sonya, to the sweet habit of exhaustingly passionate meetings with her at night - she now came to me only late in the evening, when the whole house fell asleep, - and more and more painfully and enthusiastically watching Natalie secretly, her every movement. Everything went on in the usual summer order: meetings in the morning, swimming before dinner and dinner, then resting in their rooms, then the garden - they embroidered something, sitting in a birch alley and forcing me to read Goncharov aloud, or they cooked jam in a shady clearing under oaks , not far from the house, to the right of the balcony; at five o'clock tea in another shady clearing, to the left, in the evening walks or croquet in the wide courtyard in front of the house - me with Natalie against Sonya or Sonya with Natalie against me - at twilight dinner in the dining room ... After dinner, the lancer went to bed, and we sat for a long time in the dark on the balcony, Sonya and I joking and smoking, and Natalie was silent. Finally Sonya said: "Well, sleep!" - and, having said goodbye to them, I went to my room, with cold hands I waited for that cherished hour when the whole house would become dark and so quiet that you could hear the ticking thread of a pocket watch running at my head under a burning candle, and I kept wondering, I was horrified: for what God punished me so, for which he gave me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such an agonizing beauty of Natalie's adoration and such bodily ecstasy of Sonya. I felt that just about we could not stand our incomplete intimacy and that then I would completely go crazy from waiting for our nightly meetings and from feeling them all day later, and all this next to Natalie! Sonya was already jealous, sometimes flared menacingly, and at the same time she said to me in private:

I'm afraid that you and I at the table and with Natalie are not simple enough. Dad, I think he's starting to notice something. Natalie, too, and the nanny, of course, is already sure of our romance and is probably trying to trick dad. Sit more in the garden with Natalie together, read this unbearable "Cliff" to her, take her sometimes for a walk in the evenings ... It's terrible, I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, ready, like what Someday, Odarka, grab your hair in front of everyone, but what should I do?

The most terrible thing was that, as it seemed to me, she began to either suffer, or be indignant, to feel that there was something secret between me and Sonya, Natalie. She, already silent, became more and more silent, playing croquet or embroidering too intently. We seemed to get used to each other, we became close, but I somehow joked, sitting with her alone in the living room, where she leafed through the notes, reclining on the sofa:

And I heard, Natalie, that maybe you and I will be related.

She looked sharply at me.

Like this?

My cousin, Alexey Nikolayevich Meshchersky...

She didn't let me finish.

Ah, that's it! Your cousin, this, forgive me, plump, all overgrown with black shiny hair, a burring giant with a red, juicy mouth ... And who gave you the right to talk like that with me?

I was scared:

Natalie, Natalie, why are you so strict with me1 You can't even joke! Well, forgive me, - I said, taking her hand.

She did not remove her hand and said:

I still don't understand... I don't know you... But enough about that...

In order not to see her languidly attracting white tennis shoes, randomly picked up on the sofa, I got up and went out onto the balcony. A cloud came in from behind the garden, the air grew dim, a soft summer noise went wider and closer through the garden, a sweet field rain wind blew, and I was suddenly so sweet, young and free :

Natalie, just a minute!

She walked up to the threshold.

Take a breath - what a wind! What a joy it could be!

She paused.

Natalie, how unkind you are to me! Do you have something against me?

She shrugged proudly.

What and why can I have against you?

In the evening, lying in the dark in wicker chairs on the balcony, all three of us were silent - the stars only flickered here and there in dark clouds, a weak wind blew from the direction of the river, frogs murmured drowsily.

By the rain, I want to sleep, - said Sonya, suppressing a yawn. - The nanny said that a young month was born and now it will "wash itself" for a week. - And, after a pause, she added: - Natalie, what do you think about first love?

Natalie answered from the darkness:

I am convinced of one thing: in the terrible difference between the first love of a young man and a girl.

Sonya thought:

Well, girls are different too... And she stood up resolutely:

No, sleep, sleep!

And I'll take a nap here, I like the night, - said Natalie.

I whispered, listening to Sonya's retreating steps:

Something bad we said today with you!

She answered:

Yes, yes, we spoke badly ...

The next day we met as if calmly. It rained lightly at night, but in the morning the weather cleared up, in the afternoon it became dry and hot. Before tea at five o'clock, when Sonya was doing some household calculations in the lancer's office, we sat in the birch avenue and tried to continue reading "The Cliff" aloud. She, bending down, was sewing something, flickering with her right hand, I read, and from time to time I looked with sweet melancholy at her left hand, visible in the sleeve, at the reddish hairs that adjoined it above the hand and at the same ones where the neck is. behind passed into the shoulder, and read more and more animatedly, not understanding a word. Finally said:

Well, now you read...

She straightened up, points of her breasts showed under her thin blouse, put down her sewing and, bending down again, lowering her strange and wonderful head low and showing me the back of her head and the beginning of her shoulder, put the book on her knees, began to read in a quick and unsteady voice. I looked at her hands, at her knees under the book, exhausted by the fierce love for them and the sound of her voice. Orioles screamed in flight in different parts of the evening garden, against us hung high, clinging to the trunk of a pine tree that grew alone in an alley among birches, a reddish-gray woodpecker ...

Natalie, what an amazing hair color you have! And the braid is a little darker, the color of ripe corn ...

Natalie, woodpecker, look!

She looked up.

Yes, yes, I have already seen him, and I saw him today, and I saw him yesterday... Don't interfere with reading.

I paused, then again:

See how it looks like withered gray worms.

What do you mean where?

I pointed to the bench between us, to the dried bird droppings of lime:

And he took and squeezed her hand, muttering and laughing with happiness:

Natalie, Natalie!

She looked at me quietly and for a long time, then said:

But you love Sonya!

I blushed like a caught swindler, but I disavowed Sonya with such ardent haste that she even parted her lips slightly:

It is not true?

Not true, not true! I love her very much, but as a sister, because we have known each other since childhood!

IV

The next day she did not come out either in the morning or at dinner.

Sonya, what about Natalie? - asked the uhlan, and Sonya answered, laughing badly:

She has been lying all morning in a vest, unkempt, her face shows that she was crying, they brought her coffee - she didn’t finish her drink ... What is it? "My head hurts". Haven't you fallen in love!

Very simple, - said the lancer cheerfully, with an approving hint of looking at me, but denying it with his head.

Natalie came out only for evening tea, but she entered the balcony lightly and lively, smiled at me affably and as if a little apologetically, surprising me with this liveliness, smile and some new smartness: her hair was tied up tightly, a little curled in front, wavy touched with tongs, the dress was different, from something green, whole, very simple and very dexterous, especially in the interception at the waist, black shoes, high heels, - I inwardly gasped with new delight. I, sitting on the balcony, was looking through the Historical Bulletin, several books of which the uhlan had given me, when she suddenly entered with this liveliness and somewhat embarrassed friendliness:

Good evening. Let's go drink tea. Today I am behind the samovar. Sonya is unwell.

How? You, then her?

I just had a headache in the morning. I'm embarrassed to say, I've just got it right now...

How amazing is this green in your eyes and hair! - I said. And suddenly he asked, blushing: - Did you believe me yesterday?

She, too, blushed - thinly and scarlet - and turned away:

Not right away, not really. Then I suddenly realized that I have no reason not to believe you ... and that, in essence, what do I care about your feelings with Sonya? But let's go...

Sonya also came out to dinner and took a moment to say to me:

I got sick. It always goes very hard for me, I lie down for five days. She could still go out today, but not tomorrow. Be smart without me. I love you terribly and terribly jealous.

Why don't you even look at me today?

You're stupid!

It was both happiness and misfortune: five days of complete freedom with Natalie and five days of not seeing Sonya at night!

She ruled the house for a week, took charge of everything, walked in a white apron across the yard to Natalie's cook's - I had never seen her so businesslike, it was clear that the role of Sonya's deputy and caring hostess gave her great pleasure and that she seemed to be resting from secret attentiveness to the way Sonya and I talk, we look at each other. All these days, having experienced at dinner, first anxiety about whether everything was fine, and then contentment that everything was fine, and the old cook and Christya, the Ukrainian maid, brought and served on time, without annoying the lancer, after dinner she went to Sonya, where I was not allowed in, and stayed with her until evening tea, and after dinner all evening. She obviously avoided being alone with me, and I was perplexed, bored and suffered in solitude. Why did she become affectionate, but avoid? Afraid of Sonya or of himself, of his feelings for me? And I passionately wanted to believe that I was myself, and I reveled in the ever-growing dream: I’m not connected with Sonya forever, I’m not forever - and Natalie too - to stay here, in a week or two I will still have to leave - and then the end of my torment ... I will find an excuse to go to meet the Stankevichs as soon as Natalie returns home ... To leave Sonya, and even with deceit, with this secret dream of Natalie, with the hope of her love and hand, will, of course, be very painful, - Is it only with one passion that I kiss Sonya, do I not love her too? - but what to do, sooner or later, you still can’t avoid it ... And constantly thinking this way, in constant emotional excitement, in anticipation of something, I tried to behave when meeting with Natalie as restrained, sweeter as possible - to endure endure for the time being. I suffered, I was bored - as if on purpose, it rained for three days, ran measuredly, pounded on the roof with thousands of paws, it was gloomy in the house, flies were sleeping on the ceiling and on the lamp in the dining room - but I held on, sometimes I sat for hours in the lancer's office, listening to his stories...

Sonya began to go out at first in her dressing gown, for an hour or two, with a languid smile to her weakness, lay down on the balcony in a linen armchair and, to my horror, spoke to me capriciously and excessively tenderly, not embarrassed by the presence of Natalie:

Sit next to me, Vitik, it hurts me, I'm sad, tell me something funny... I really washed myself for a month, and I think I washed myself; the weather has cleared up and how sweetly the flowers smell...

Secretly irritated, I replied:

Since the flowers smell strongly, it will be washed again.

She hit me on the arm.

Don't you dare object sick!

At last she began to go out both for dinner and for evening tea, only still pale and ordering an armchair to be brought to her. But for dinner and on the balcony after dinner, she still did not go out. And once Natalie said to me after evening tea, when she went to her room and Christya carried the samovar from the table to the cook's room:

Sonya is angry that I'm still sitting next to her, that you are all alone. She's not quite recovered yet, and you miss her.

I only miss you, - I answered. - When you're not...

She changed her face, but managed it, smiled with an effort:

But we agreed not to quarrel anymore ... Listen, you’d better listen to this: you stayed at home, go for a walk until dinner, and then I’ll sit with you in the garden, the predictions about the month, thank God, did not come true, the night will be beautiful ...

Sonya is sorry for me, and you? Not at all?

Terribly sorry, - she answered and laughed awkwardly, putting tea utensils on the tray. - But, thank God, Sonya is already healthy, you won’t be bored soon ...

At the words "and in the evening I will sit with you," my heart contracted sweetly and mysteriously, but I immediately thought: no! it's just a sweet word! I went to my room and lay for a long time, looking at the ceiling. Finally he got up, took a cap and someone's stick from the hallway, and unconsciously left the estate on a wide path that ran between the estate and the Khokhlatskaya village a little higher than it, on a bare steppe hill. The path led to empty evening fields. Everywhere it was hilly, but spacious, far off. To my left lay the river lowland, behind it also empty fields slightly rose to the horizon, the sun had just set there, the sunset was burning. To his right, a regular row of white, identical huts of an almost extinct village blushed against him, and I looked longingly at the sunset, then at them. When he turned back, a warm, then almost hot wind blew towards him, and the young moon was already shining in the sky, promising nothing good: one half of it shone, but the other was visible like a transparent cobweb, and all together it resembled an acorn.

At supper—we dined this time also in the garden, it was hot in the house—I said to the lancer:

Uncle, what do you think about the weather? I think it will rain tomorrow.

Why, my friend?

I just walked in the field, sadly thought that I would soon leave you ...

Why?

Natalie looked up at me too.

Are you leaving?

I feigned a laugh.

I can't...

Ulan shook his head especially vigorously, this time by the way:

Nonsense, nonsense! Mom and dad can perfectly tolerate separation from you. I won't let you go before two weeks. Yes, she won't let go.

I have no rights to Vitaly Petrovich, - said Natalie.

I exclaimed plaintively:

Uncle, forbid Natalie to call me that! Ulan slammed his hand on the table.

I forbid. And enough talking about your departure. You are right about the rain, it is quite possible that the weather will deteriorate again.

The field was already too clean, clear, - I said. - And the moon is very clear half and looks like an acorn, and the wind was blowing from the south. And now, you see, the clouds are already finding ...

Ulan turned, looked into the garden, where the moonlight flared up, then dimmed:

From you, Vitaly, the second Bruce will come out ...

At ten o'clock she went out onto the balcony, where I sat waiting for her, thinking in despondency: all this is nonsense, if she has any feelings for me, they are completely frivolous, changeable, fleeting ... The young moon, also clean , without a web, played higher and brighter in the piles of more and more accumulated clouds, smoky white, majestically cluttered the sky, and when he emerged from behind them with his white half, similar to a human face in profile, bright and deathly pale, everything lit up , flooded with phosphorescent light. Suddenly I looked around, I felt something: Natalie was standing on the threshold, her hands behind her back, silently looking at me. I got up, she asked indifferently:

Are you still awake?

But you told me...

Sorry, I'm very tired today. Walk down the alley and I'll go to bed.

I followed her, she paused on the steps of the balcony, looking at the tops of the garden, from behind which the clouds were already rising in clouds, twitching, sparkling with soundless lightning. Then she went under the long transparent canopy of the birch alley, into the variegation, into patches of light and shadow. Equal to her, I said, to say something:

How magically the birch trees glisten in the distance. There is nothing stranger and more beautiful than the interior of the forest on a moonlit night and this white silky sheen of birch trunks in its depths...

She stopped, her eyes turning black in the twilight point-blank at me:

Are you really leaving?

Yes, it's time.

But why so soon and so soon? I am not hiding: you struck me just now by saying that you were leaving.

Natalie, can I come and introduce myself to you when you get home?

She said nothing. I took her hands, kissed her, all fading, right.

Natalie...

Yes, yes, I love you,” she said hurriedly and inexpressively, and went back to the house. I lunatically followed her.

Leave tomorrow,” she said as she walked, without turning around. - I'll be back home in a few days.

V

Entering my room, without lighting a candle, I sat down on the sofa and froze, numb in that terrible and wondrous thing that happened so suddenly and unexpectedly in my life. I sat, having lost all idea of ​​the place and time. The room and the garden were already drowned in darkness from the clouds, in the garden, behind the open windows, everything was noisy, trembling, and more and more often and brighter I was illuminated by a fast and at the same moment disappearing green-blue flame. The speed and strength of this thunderless light increased, then the room suddenly lit up to an unbelievable visibility, I was carried by a fresh wind and such a noise of the garden, as if he was seized with horror: here it is, the earth and sky are on fire! I jumped up, with difficulty closed the windows one by one, catching their frames, overcoming the wind that whipped me, and ran on tiptoe along the dark corridors to the dining room: it seemed to me that at that hour I was not up to the open windows in the dining room and living room, where the storm I could have broken the windows, but I still ran, and even with great concern. All the windows in the dining room and living room were closed - I saw this in that green-blue illumination, in a color whose brightness was truly something unearthly, immediately opening everywhere, like quick eyes, and making all the window frames huge and visible to the last binding. , and then immediately flooded with thick darkness, for a second leaving a trace of something tinny, red in blinded vision. When I quickly, as if afraid that something had happened there without me, entered my room, an angry whisper was heard from the darkness:

Where have you been? I'm scared, light a fire soon...

I struck a match and saw Sonya sitting on the sofa in one nightgown, in shoes on her bare feet.

Or no, no, don’t,” she said hurriedly, “come quickly to me, hug me, I’m afraid ...

I obediently sat down and put my arms around her cold shoulders. She whispered:

Well, kiss me, kiss me, take it completely, I haven't been with you for a whole week!

And with force she threw me and herself back on the sofa cushions. At the same moment, Natalie rushed to the threshold of the open door in her vest, with a candle in her hand. She immediately saw us, but still unconsciously shouted:

Sonya, where are you? I'm terribly afraid...

And immediately disappeared. Sonya rushed after her.

VI

A year later, she married Meshchersky. They married her in his Blagodatny with an empty church - and we and other relatives and friends from him and from her side did not receive an invitation to the wedding. And the young people did not make the usual visits after the wedding, they immediately left for the Crimea.

In January of the following year, on Tatiana's Day, there was a ball of Voronezh students at the Noble Assembly in Voronezh. I, already a Moscow student, spent Christmas time at home, in the village, and arrived that evening in Voronezh. The train came all white, smoking with snow from a blizzard, on the way from the station to the city, while the cab sleigh carried me to the Noble Hotel, the lights of lanterns flickering through the blizzard were barely visible. But after the village, this city blizzard and city lights excited, promised close pleasure to enter the warm, even too warm room of the old provincial hotel, ask for a samovar and start changing clothes, get ready for a long ballroom night, student drunkenness until dawn. During the time that had passed since that terrible night at the Cherkasovs, and then since her marriage, I gradually recovered - in any case, I got used to the state of a mentally ill person that I secretly was, and outwardly lived like everyone else.

When I arrived, the ball had just begun, but the front staircase and the landing on it were already full of arriving people, and from the main hall, with its choir, everything was covered, drowned out by regimental music, loudly thundering with sadly triumphant waltz beats. Still fresh from the cold, in a brand new uniform, and because of this, too elegantly, with excessive politeness, making my way through the crowd along the red carpet of the stairs, I went up to the platform, entered the especially dense and already hot crowd, shy in front of the doors of the hall, and for some reason I began to make my way further so persistently that they took me, probably, for a manager who had urgent business in the hall. And I finally made my way, stopped on the threshold, listening to the spills and peals of the orchestra above my very head, looking at the sparkling swell of the chandeliers and at dozens of couples flashing variously under them in a waltz - and suddenly leaned back: from this swirling crowd suddenly stood out for me one pair, flying with fast and dexterous glide paths among all the others, getting closer to me. I recoiled, looking at how he, somewhat stooped in waltzing, was large, portly, all black with shiny black hair and a tailcoat and light with the lightness that some overweight people surprise in dancing, and how tall she was in a ball high hairstyle, in a ball white dress and in slender golden shoes, circling somewhat leaning back, lowering her eyes, placing a hand in a white glove up to the elbow on his shoulder in such a bend that made the hand look like the neck of a swan. For a moment her black eyelashes waved straight at me, the blackness of her eyes flashed very close, but then, with the diligence of a overweight man, deftly sliding on patent socks, he turned her sharply, her lips parted with a sigh at the turn, the hem of her dress flashed silvery, and they, receding, went glide paths back. I again squeezed my way into the crowd on the landing, got out of the crowd, stood for a moment ... At the door of the hall obliquely opposite me, still quite empty and cool, two female students in Little Russian outfits were standing in idle expectation at the champagne buffet - a pretty blonde and dry , a dark-faced beauty of a Cossack woman, almost twice her height. I entered, with a bow held out a hundred-ruble note. Head-butting and laughing, they pulled out a heavy bottle from a bucket of ice under the counter and looked at each other hesitantly - there were no uncorked bottles yet. I went behind the counter and a minute later valiantly slammed the cork. Then he cheerfully offered them a glass each - Gaudeamus igitur!18 - the rest he drank glass after glass alone. They looked at me at first with surprise, then with pity:

Oh, but you are already terribly pale! I drank and left immediately. At the hotel, he asked for a bottle of Caucasian brandy in the room and began to drink tea cups, in the hope that my heart would break ...

And another year and a half passed. And one day at the end of May, when I returned home from Moscow again, a courier from the station brought her a telegram from Blagodatnoe: "This morning Alexei Nikolayevich died suddenly from a stroke." The father crossed himself and said:

Kingdom of heaven. Horrible. Forgive me, God, I never loved him, but still it's terrible. After all, he was not yet forty. And she is terribly sorry - a widow at such a age, with a child in her arms ... I never saw her - he was so sweet that he never even brought her to me - but, they say, she is charming. How to be now? Neither I nor my mother, in our old age, can travel a hundred and fifty miles, of course, you have to go...

It was impossible to refuse - by virtue of what could I refuse? Indeed, I could not have refused the half-madness into which this unexpected news suddenly plunged me again. I knew one thing: I would see her! The pretext for the meeting was terrible, but legitimate.

We sent a reply telegram, and the next day, at the dawn of May in May, horses from Blagodatny delivered me from the station to the estate in half an hour. Driving up to it along the hillside along the water meadows, I saw from a distance that along the western wall of the house, facing the still bright sunset, all the windows in the hall were closed with shutters, and I shuddered at the terrible thought: behind them lay he and there she was! In the yard, densely overgrown with young grass, two troikas rattled their bells near the carriage house, but there was not a soul, except for the coachmen on the goats, and the visitors and the servants were already standing in the house for a memorial service. Everywhere there was the silence of a rural May dawn, the purity of spring, the freshness and novelty of everything - the field and river air, this young dense grass in the yard, the dense flowering garden that moved over the house from behind and from the south side, and on the low front porch, at the wide open in in the hallway of the door, leaning upright against the wall was a large yellow glazed coffin lid. In the thin chill of the evening air, there was a strong smell of the sweet color of pears, milky white with their white density in the southeastern part of the garden on a flat and matte sky from this milkiness, where only pink Jupiter burned. And youth, the beauty of all this, and the thought of her beauty and youth, and that she once loved me, suddenly tore my heart so much with sorrow, happiness, and the need for love, that, jumping out of the carriage at the porch, I felt myself just before the abyss - how to enter this house, to see her again face to face after three years of separation and already a widow, a mother! And yet I entered the dusk and incense of this terrible hall, dotted with yellow candle lights, into the blackness standing with these lights in front of the coffin, its head obliquely rising into the front corner, illuminated from above by a large red lamp in front of the golden robes of icons, and below by a silver fluid luster three high church candles, - he entered under the exclamations and singing of the clergy, who went around the coffin with incense and bows, and immediately lowered his head so as not to see the yellow brocade on the coffin and the face of the deceased, most of all afraid to see her. Someone handed me a lighted candle, I took it and began to hold it, feeling how, trembling, it warms and illuminates my face, which is tight with pallor, and listening with dull obedience to these exclamations and the rattling of the censer, frowningly seeing floating towards the ceiling solemnly and cloyingly smelling of smoke, and suddenly, raising his face, he nevertheless saw her - in front of everyone, in mourning, with a candle in her hand, illuminating her cheek and golden hair - and already, as if from an icon, he could not take his eyes off her. When everything was silent, there was a smell of extinguished candles, and everyone moved cautiously and went to kiss her hand, I waited to be the last to come up. And, approaching, with horror of delight, he looked at the monastic harmony of her black dress, which made her especially immaculate, at the pure, youthful beauty of her face, eyelashes and eyes, which fell down at the sight of me, bowed low, low, kissing her hand, said in a barely audible voice everything , which I had to say, following decency and kinship, and asked permission to immediately leave and spend the night in the garden, in that old rotunda, in which I spent the night as a schoolboy, arriving in Blagodatnoye - there was Meshchersky's bedroom on hot summer nights. She answered without looking up:

I will now arrange for you to be escorted there and served dinner.

In the morning, after the funeral and burial, I immediately left. Saying goodbye, we again exchanged only a few words and again did not look into each other's eyes.

VII

I finished the course, soon after almost simultaneously lost my father and mother, settled in the countryside, managed, got along with the peasant orphan Gasha, who grew up in our house and served in my mother’s rooms ... Now she, together with Ivan Lukich, our former yard, gray-haired old man with large shoulder blades, served me. She still looked like a child - small, thin, black-haired, with soot-colored eyes that did not express anything, mysteriously silent, as if indifferent to everything and so dark with thin skin that her father once said: "That's right, Hagar was like that" . She was infinitely sweet to me, I loved to carry her in my arms, kissing; I thought: "That's all I have left in my life!" And she seemed to understand what I was thinking. When she gave birth to a little black boy, and stopped serving, settled in my former nursery, I wanted to marry her. She answered:

No, I don’t need this, I’ll only be ashamed in front of everyone, what a lady I am! Why would you? You will love me even more then. You need to go to Moscow, otherwise you will completely miss me. And now I won’t be bored, ”she said, looking at the child who was sucking her breast in her arms. - Go, live at your pleasure, just remember one thing: if you fall in love with someone properly and think about marrying, I won’t hesitate a minute, I’ll drown myself with him.

I looked at her - it was impossible not to believe her. And he bowed his head: yes, but I’m only twenty-six years old ... Falling in love, getting married - I couldn’t even imagine this, but Gashi’s words once again reminded me of my finished life.

In early spring I went abroad and spent four months there. Returning home through Moscow at the end of June, I thought like this: I will live the autumn in the countryside, and again I will go somewhere for the winter. On the way from Moscow to Tula, I was calmly sad: here I am again at home, but why? I remembered Natalie - and thought: yes, that love "to the grave", which Sonya mockingly predicted to me, exists; only I have already got used to it, as someone gets used over the years to the fact that they cut off, for example, an arm or a leg ... And, sitting at the station in Tula, waiting for a transplant, he suddenly sent a telegram: you, I'll be at your station at nine in the evening, let me stop by, see how you are doing."

She met me on the porch, - behind her the maid shone a lamp, - and with a half smile held out both hands to me:

I'm terribly glad!

Oddly enough, you have grown up a little, - I said, kissing and feeling them already with anguish. And he looked at her in full by the light of the lamp, which the maid raised and around the glass of which, in the soft air after the rain, small pink butterflies circled: black eyes now looked more firmly, more confidently, she was already in full bloom of young female beauty, slender, modestly elegant, in a green shawl dress.

Yes, I'm still growing, - she answered, smiling sadly.

In the hall, as before, a large red lampada hung in the front corner in front of the old golden icons, only it was not lit. I hastily averted my eyes from that corner and followed her into the dining room. There, on a shiny tablecloth, stood a teapot on an alcohol lamp, and thin tea-ware gleamed. The maid brought cold veal, pickles, a decanter of vodka, a bottle of lafite. She took up the teapot.

I don't have supper, I only drink tea, but you should eat first... Are you from Moscow? Why? What is there to do in the summer?

I'm returning from Paris.

That's how! And how long did they stay there? Oh, if only I could go somewhere! But after all, my girl is only four years old ... You, they say, are diligent in housekeeping?

I drank a glass of vodka without eating and asked for permission to smoke.

Oh please! I lit up and said:

Natalie, you don't need to be polite to me, don't pay any special attention to me, I just stopped by to look at you and disappear again. And do not feel embarrassed - after all, everything that was, was overgrown and passed without a return. You can't; not to see that I am again blinded by you, but now my admiration cannot in any way constrain you - it is now disinterested and calm ...

She bowed her head and her eyelashes—one could never get used to the wondrous contrast of the two—and her face slowly began to turn pink.

That's absolutely true, - I said, turning pale, but in a strengthening voice, assuring myself that I was telling the truth. - After all, everything in the world passes. As for my terrible guilt before you, I am sure that it has long since become indifferent to you and is much more understandable, forgivable than before: my guilt was still not entirely free and even in at that time deserved indulgence due to my extreme youth and the amazing coincidence in which I found myself. And besides, I have already been punished enough for this guilt - with all my death.

Doom?

Isn't that right? You still don't understand, you don't know me, as you once said?

She paused.

I saw you at the ball and Voronezh ... How young I was then and how surprisingly unhappy! Although is there an unhappy love? - she said, raising her face and asking with all the black opening of her eyes and eyelashes. - Doesn't the most mournful music in the world give happiness? But tell me about yourself, have you really settled in the countryside forever? I forcefully asked:

So you still loved me then?

I paused, feeling that my face was on fire now.

Is it true what I heard... that you have love, baby?

This is not love, I said. - Terrible pity, tenderness, but nothing more.

Tell me everything.

And I told everything - up to what Gasha told me, advising me "to go, live for my own pleasure." And ended like this:

Now you see that I have perished in every possible way...

Fullness! she said, thinking something of her own. - You still have your whole life ahead of you. But marriage is, of course, impossible for you. She, of course, is one of those who will not spare a child, let alone herself.

It's not about marriage, I said. - My God! Me to marry!

She looked at me thoughtfully.

Yes Yes. And how strange. Your prediction came true - we became related. Do you feel that you are my cousin now?

And put her hand on my hand

But you are terribly tired from the road, you have not even touched anything. There is no face on you, enough talk for today, go, the bed is prepared for you in the pavilion ...

I obediently kissed her hand, she called the maid, and she with a lamp, although it was quite light from the moon that stood low behind the garden, led me first by the main, then by the side alley to a spacious clearing, into this ancient rotunda with wooden columns. And I sat down by the open window, in an armchair near the bed, and began to smoke, thinking: I should have done this stupid, sudden act, I should have called in, relied on my calmness, on my strength ... The night was unusually quiet, it was already late. There must have been some more rain - even warmer, the air became softer. And in delightful harmony with this motionless warmth and silence, the first roosters sang long and cautiously in the distance, in different parts of the village. The bright circle of the moon, standing opposite the rotunda, behind the garden, seemed to freeze in one place, as if looking expectantly, shone among the distant trees and nearby sprawling apple trees, interfering with their light with their shadows. Where the light was shed, it was bright, glassy, ​​but in the shade it was colorful and mysterious... And she, in something long, dark, silky shining, went up to the window, also so mysteriously, inaudibly...

Then the moon shone already over the garden and looked straight into the rotunda, and we spoke in turn - she, lying on the bed, I, kneeling beside her and holding her hand:

On that terrible night with lightning, I already loved only you alone, I no longer had any other passion, except for the most enthusiastic and pure passion for you.

Yes, I figured it out over time. And yet, when I suddenly remembered those lightning bolts immediately after remembering what had happened in the alley an hour before...

There is no one like you anywhere in the world. When I looked at this green scab and at your knees under it just now, I felt that I was ready to die for one touch of her lips, only to her.

Have you never, never forgotten me all these years?

I forgot only the way you forget that you live and breathe. And you said the truth: there is no unhappy love. Oh, this orange vest of yours and all of you, still almost a girl, flashed through me that morning, the first morning of my love for you! Then your hand is in the sleeve of a Little Russian shirt. Then the tilt of your head as you read "The Break" and I muttered, "Natalie, Natalie!"

And then you were at the ball - so tall and so terrible in your already feminine beauty - how I wanted to die that night in the delight of my love and death! Then you with a candle in your hand, your mourning and your purity in it. It seemed to me that the candle at your face became a saint.

And here you are again with me and forever. But even we will rarely see each other - how can I, your secret wife, become your obvious mistress for everyone?

In December, she died on Lake Geneva in a premature birth.

Exercise 1.

Read the sentences. What ways of transmitting someone else's speech do they use?

1) They said on the radio that rain is expected tomorrow. 2) “Rain is possible tomorrow,” they said on the radio. 3) The radio reported about possible precipitation. 4) Tomorrow, as the radio said, precipitation is expected. 5) Tomorrow, according to my neighbor, precipitation is possible.

Exercise 2.

Write with the missing punctuation marks. Explain punctuation in sentences with direct speech.

Once I asked the guys at one outpost if it was possible to determine how much time had passed since the tracks were left. And immediately one of the boys laughed: here we need the most accurate boundary device!
Which one I asked.

Dog! the boys shouted almost in unison. No device can follow the trail like a dog! Lieutenant Vitaly Gurov also told me.(V. Korzhikov)

How can punctuation marks be placed in sentences with direct speech, if they are presented as a dialogue between the author and the guys?
Find sentences with indirect speech in the text.

Exercise 3

Hello. Please ask Lyuba on the phone.
Sorry to bother you. Could you tell me how to get to Belorussky railway station?
Good evening! Let's get acquainted. My name is Ivan Fedorovich.

Reference words: 1. An unfamiliar voice spoke. 2. A passer-by approached me. 3. Said, smiling, my coupe neighbor

Exercise 4

Complete the sentences with direct speech and the missing punctuation marks.

one) ... ! - the cries of the audience, subdued by the play of the actress, broke through the applause. - ... !
2) ..., - the captain of our team spoke with conviction. - ....
3) ... ? asked a passer-by politely. - ... ?

Exercise 5

Rearrange these sentences by putting the words of the author after or before direct speech. In each sentence, replace the verb introducing direct speech with a suitable synonym. How has the meaning of the sentence with direct speech changed? Specify the ways of transferring someone else's speech in these sentences.

1) The artist Alexander Deineka said that he loves sports. For hours, he said, he could admire runners, pentathletes, swimmers, skiers. 2) My fellow traveler, an artist, said that he was going near the city of Tikhvin, where he had a friend, a forester, would live with him on the cordon and paint autumn.

1) “You have to be extremely careful while driving: in the gorge the road winds along the very edge of the cliff.” 2) "This is not a blue fog, this is a view of the sea from a mountain height." 3) "In winter we hang out a bird feeder." 4.) "Forest edges delight the eye with primroses." 5) "A blizzard will start in two hours."

Exercise 7

Make diagrams of the following sentences with direct speech.

1) More and more often the words were recalled: “And maybe - at my sad sunset, love will flash with a farewell smile” (P.). 2) “Follow me,” she said, taking my hand (L.). 3) "Let me ... - Emil whispered in a trembling voice, - let me go with you." 4) “Conductor! shouted an angry voice. Why don't you give tickets? (Paust.). 5) “Well, this is positively interesting,” the professor said, shaking with laughter, “what is it with you, whatever you miss, there is nothing!” (Bulg.). 6) He said: “I already heard that!” - and asked not to repeat.

Exercise 8

Rewrite, punctuating and replacing lowercase letters with uppercase where necessary. The boundaries of direct speech are marked //...//.

1) And where is my friend // Oleg said // tell me where is my zealous horse (P.) 2) And what do you understand in this, let me ask // he said in a voice that seemed contrary to himself // what do you find in this daub ( Paust.) 3) Yes...// he said and turned sharply to me// yes... well, let's see (Paust.) 4) You know// interrupted the owner excitedly// I'm sitting on Here, take a look at what he understands in journalism // the owner grabbed Korotkov by the button // please tell me what he understands (Bulg.) ) 6) No, oh no, comrade / / the stunned Korotkov spoke out and stepped towards the net / / don’t detain me (Bulg.) 7) One of my acquaintances who knows Arabic well, he compared Arabic sayings with Russian and the most curious parallels were obtained. For example, the Arabs say / / honor is a diamond that makes a beggar equal to a sultan / / but in Russian it comes out / / what an honor if there is nothing to eat / / the Arab proverb says the same about hospitality / / Voskresensky suddenly stood up (Cupr.) 8) Wait- a little Sergey// he called out to the boy// no way there people move like this story (Cupr.) 9) You are a nasty man Mikhalenko// he said indifferently (Cupr.) 10) Romashov was alert and looking not at Peterson but at the chairman answered rudely // yes, I have been, but I don’t understand what this has to do with the matter (Cupr.) 11) And I tell her // how sweet you are // but I think // how I love you (P.) 12) What a noisy book // he said and frowned// in it people unbearably yelling, arguing, crying, no strength to understand this cry (Paust.) 13) The night is already dark enough// he said// to look at ancient statues (Paust.)

Exercise 9

Rewrite sentences with direct speech, placing punctuation marks.

1) Shut up sternly said Dyers. 2) I want to dine with you the day after tomorrow at Prague, she said. Never been there and generally very inexperienced. I imagine what you think of me. In fact, you are my first love. 3) You are already talking to me on “you”, gaspingly, I said you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me. Why did she ask raising her eyebrows. 4) Finally, Sonya said Well, go to sleep and, saying goodbye to them, I went to my place ... 5) When I ran up to them, he looked at me and managed to shout cheerfully And the doctor, hello, while she turned pale to deathly blue ... 6.) How shining eyes he said You are not cold.

Exercise 10

Read an excerpt from Yu. Yakovlev's story "Knight Vasya". What means does the author use to emphasize the intensity of the depicted moment? What is the role of dialogue in a passage? Explain punctuation when using dialogue.

His friends called him "the bastard". For his slowness, sluggishness and awkwardness.<...>
The attention of the "mattress" was attracted by the screams that came from the river. He quickened his pace and, out of breath, went ashore.
There he saw Dimka Kovalyov waving his arms and shouting:
Drowning! Drowning!
Who is drowning? - slowly asked "mattress".
Can't you see, right? Dima snapped. - The boy is drowning. Failed under the ice. What are you standing?
Another would immediately ask Dimka Kovalev himself: “Why don’t you help him?” But he was a “mattress” and did not think of doing this.<...>
The mattress was thicker and heavier than Dimka, but he stepped onto the ice.

Exercise 11

1) One of the houndsmen was offended. “We don’t complain about our life,” he said, “thanks to God and the master, and what’s true is true, it would not be bad for another and a nobleman to exchange the estate for any local kennel. It would be more satisfying and warmer for him.” 2) “So, it’s all over,” he said to himself, “even in the morning I had a corner and a piece of bread. Tomorrow I will have to leave the house where I was born and where my father died, the culprit of his death and my poverty. 3) “Maksimych! the captain told him. “Take the apartment to Mr. Officer, and clean it.”(A Pushkin.)

Exercise 12

1) Mr. Ensign said I was as strict as possible Don't you see that I came to you? 2) The horses were exhausted, we chilled; the blizzard hummed stronger and stronger, just like our dear northern one, only her wild melodies were sadder and more mournful. And you, an exile, thought I was crying about my wide expanse steppes! There is where to unfold cold wings, but here you are stuffy and cramped like an eagle, which screams against the bars of its iron cage. 3) We took about five soldiers and left early in the morning. Until ten o'clock they darted through the reeds and there was no animal in the forest. Hey, don't come back, I said Why be stubborn You can see what an unfortunate day has been set.(M. Lermontov.)

Exercise 13

Consider how direct speech is framed. Put in the missing punctuation marks.

1) “We decided the assessor continued with your permission to stay here to spend the night, otherwise it’s already dark and your peasants might attack us on the way. Do such a favor, order us to spread at least hay in the living room before light, we will go up again. ”
- Do what you want answered them dryly Dubrovsky, I'm not the master here. With these words, he retired to his father's room and locked the door behind him.(A Pushkin.)

2) - ...Fix society and there will be no disease.
Bazarov said all this with an air as if at the same time he was thinking to himself, “Believe me or not, it’s all the same to me!” He slowly ran his long fingers over his sideburns and his eyes darted around the corners.
- And do you think Anna Sergeevna said that when society improves, there will no longer be either stupid or evil people?
(I. Turgenev.)

Exercise 14

The writer A. Platonov in the story "Nikita" presented a village dreamer boy. Read the text. Why is direct speech in it framed either by quotation marks or dashes?

Left alone, Nikita went around the whole quiet hut: the upper room, then another room where there was a Russian stove, and went out into the hallway. Big fat flies buzzed in the passage, a spider dozed in a corner in the middle of the cobwebs, a sparrow came on foot through the threshold and was looking for a grain in the habitable earth of the hut. Nikita knew all of them: the sparrow, and the spiders, and the flies, and the chickens in the yard; he was tired of them already, and he was bored of them. He wanted to know now what he did not know. Therefore, Nikita went further into the yard and came to a barn where there was an empty barrel in the dark. Someone probably lived in it, some kind of small person; during the day he slept, and at night he went outside, ate bread, drank water and thought something, and in the morning he again hid in a barrel and slept.

“I know you, you live there,” Nikita said, rising to his feet, from above into the dark resonant barrel, and then, in addition, he pounded on it with his fist. - Get up, don't sleep, loafer! What will you eat in winter? Go millet weeding, they will give you a workday!
Nikita listened. The barrel was quiet. "He's dead!" thought Nikita.
But what was he like - the one who lived in the barrel? My mother recently lost her scissors. He must have taken the scissors to trim his beard.
- Give me the scissors! - quietly asked Nikita. - Father will come from the war - he will take everything, he is not afraid of you. Give it back!
The barrel was silent.
Nikita ran out of the shed into the yard. A good sun shone in the sky ... and Nikita looked in fright at the sun so that it would protect him.
- There's a resident in a barrel lives! - said Nikita, looking at the sky.

Exercise 15

Analyze the dialogues. How is direct speech related to the author's speech? How is direct speech separated from the author's speech? Explain punctuation marks.

1.Once I walked through the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. I took off my heavy bag from my shoulders and began to spread my goods on the table.<...>And Zinochka, when she saw black bread under my hare cabbage, was stunned:
- Where did the bread come from in the forest?
- What's so amazing about that? After all, there is cabbage there!
- Hare...
- And the bread is lisichkin. Taste. Carefully tasted and began to eat.
- Good chanterelle bread!
(M. Prishvin.)

2. Vilenka, as if through a fog, saw around him the blue uniforms of schoolchildren, their red collars. And, as if from afar, their cheerful voices sang in chorus:
- Wilhelm, read your poems, so that I can fall asleep sooner!
But then a white shirt appeared among the blue uniforms. Pushkin jumped out of bed and ran to his friend.
What should I do to make you forgive me? he exclaimed. - Well, speak! Why are you silent? Oh, how I despise myself! What I should do?
Pushkin's eyes burned. His small hands clutched the shirt over his broad chest. It was evident that he was ready for anything.
- What I should do? Well, speak!
- I'll forgive you if you...
- Well?
- If you are...
- Well, speak!
- If you read this marvelous poem again! Ah, Pushkin, Pushkin...
And Vilenka hugged his friend.
(Yu. Olesha.)

3. The next year I settled with the Pozhalostins. I rented an old bathhouse in the garden from the old women.<...>
Once an old woman in a poneva came to my bathhouse - she brought sour cream to sell.
- If you still need sour cream, - she said affectionately, - so you come to me. I have. Ask the church where Tatyana Yesenina lives. Everyone will show you.
- Yesenin Sergey is not your relative?
- Poet?
Yes, poet.
“My nephew,” the grandmother sighed and wiped her mouth with the end of her handkerchief. - He was a good poet, only painfully freaky. So if you need sour cream, you come to me, dear.
(K. Paustovsky.)

Exercise 16

Read the sentences, highlighting the participants' remarks. What is in quotation marks? What is highlighted by the dash? What genres of speech are reflected in this passage?

1. Vladimir seethed with indignation. "Let me know what this means," he asked the merry police officer with feigned composure. - “And this means,” answered the intricate official, “that we have come to take possession of this Kiril Petrovich Troekurov and ask other others to get out in a good way.” - "But you could, it seems, treat me before my peasants, and announce the abdication of the landowner from power ..." - "And who are you," said Shabashkin with a defiant challenge. “The former landowner Andrey Gavrilov son Dubrovsky will die by the will of God, we don’t know you, and we don’t want to know.”
“Vladimir Andreevich is our young master,” said a voice from the crowd.
(A Pushkin.)

2. From the open door came a man who belonged to the category of customers. Since Kashtanka squealed and fell under his feet, he could not but pay attention to her. He leaned over to her and asked:
- Dog, where are you from? Did I hurt you? Oh, poor, poor... Well, don't be angry, don't be angry... I'm sorry.
(And Chekhov.)

Exercise 17

Write the dialogue with the missing punctuation marks. What answers of the great artist made the greatest impression on you?

On January 10, 189_, the Petersburg Newspaper turned to the great Russian artist Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin with a request to answer a number of questions:
What is the main feature of your character //
Straightforward simplicity // the artist answered frankly //
What dignity do you prefer in a man //
courage, mind
What dignity do you prefer in a woman //
honesty //
Your main advantage //
Frankness //
Your main disadvantage //
Suspicion, suspiciousness //
What is your ideal of happiness //
peace of mind //
what would be your greatest misfortune //
Loneliness //
Who would you like to be //
really great //
In which country would you like to live forever //
This country is my fatherland //
name your favorite prose writers //
Aksakov, Gogol, Tolstoy //
Who are your favorite poets //
Pushkin, Koltsov, Nekrasov //
name your favorite composers and artists //
Schumann and Serov //
What are your favorite names //
names of my children //
How would you like to die
Painless and calm. Instantly //
What are you most interested in now?
Life and its manifestations, now, as always //
Death caught the artist at work at the easel.
(From "Memories of contemporaries about I. I. Shishkin")

Exercise 18

Replace direct speech with indirect speech.

1) In the spring, the tit started a song for half-asleep frogs and lizards: “Gather around the old stump to bask in the sun!” 2) The teacher warned: "Come early, because the lecture hall will be crowded with students." 3) “The artist's drawings reflect the entire history of the northern region,” visitors of the exhibition noted. 4) “You can only go to the place of landing of interplanetary ships in the Pamirs along mountain paths,” the locals claimed. 5) The radar in the captain's cabin showed: "There is an unknown obstacle ahead on the ship's course."

Exercise 19

Change direct questions into indirect ones.

1) At the stadium, Nina was asked: “How many seconds do you run a hundred meters?” 2) The mother asked her daughter: “Do you want to learn how to bake pies?” 3) Tourists asked: “What was the name of this street before?” 4) The father asked his son: “Do you like working in a carpentry shop?”

Exercise 20

Write down the sentences, replacing direct speech with indirect speech.

1) Vanya came up to me at a break and said quietly: “You, Vera Matveevna, didn’t ask us what you asked about.” 2) "Did something happen?" - asked the mother, as if holding her heart with her hand. 3) “I am shocked by the anger of a man who gets angry once a year,” said one of those whose sayings are worth remembering. 4) “For two minutes… Stop, please,” I again asked the taxi driver. 5) “Monuments should be erected during his lifetime,” dad joined in the conversation. 6) “Cheap costs more!” - looking around, Vladik revealed to me the secret of life. 7) “Beautiful faces are not interesting for an artist,” Olya answered. “But I didn’t notice inner beauty in Antonina.” 8) The Prince of Denmark came up to me at recess, put a piece of paper in my hand and said: “Here ... something came to mind. Maybe you'll enjoy it?" (From the works of A. Aleksin).

Tests on the topic "Methods of transmitting someone else's speech"

1. A sentence with indirect speech is:

1) a simple sentence;
2) a compound sentence;
3) complex sentence;
4) a simple complicated sentence.

2. In the sentence scheme with direct speech “P - a, - P” is missing:

1) points;
2) comma;
3) question mark;
4) exclamation point.

3. Indicate the method of transmitting someone else's speech in the sentence

The radio said that rain is expected tomorrow.

1) A sentence with direct speech;
2) a sentence with indirect speech;
3) a sentence with introductory words and sentences to convey the source of the message;
4) a simple sentence with an addition naming the topic of someone else's speech.

4. When replacing direct speech with indirect speech in a sentence "I'll be waiting for you somewhere nearby," Valya said.you need to use:

1) union what;
2) union-particle whether;
3) union to.

5. Indicate an incorrectly constructed sentence with indirect speech.

1) N.V. Gogol was convinced that the writer has only one teacher: the reader himself.
2) Nikita asked, or I will not help him solve the problem.
3) The neighbor asked the guys to help him start the motorcycle.

6. Indicate which scheme corresponds to this sentence with direct speech:

It's already evening, the artist said dreamily. Soon it will become dark and the first stars will appear in the sky.

1) "P", - a.
2) "P, - a. - P".
3) "P, - a, - p."

7. Indicate a sentence with a punctuation error

1) In the silence it was heard: “Follow me! Fight!"
2) He made a request: “Please give this book to the library.”
3) "It's good that I hid the revolver in the crow's nest." thought Pavel.
4) “Irina, you are crying again,” Litvinov began with concern.

8. Indicate a sentence with a punctuation error

1) The overjoyed mother answered confidently: “I’ll find something to say!”
2) “I will, I will fly!” rang and sang in Alexei's head.
3) Zhukhrai stood on the platform and said: "Comrades, we have gathered you for a serious and responsible business."
4) "Why aren't you going?" I asked the driver impatiently.

9. Indicate a sentence with a punctuation error

1) To my question: “Is the old caretaker still alive?” - no one could give me a satisfactory answer.
2) “I have been vaping for the eleventh year!” Dad said angrily.
3) “Say what you want, Mikhail, but I know one thing,” the mother repeated.
4) “We will have to spend the night here. - said Maxim Maksimych - you can’t move through the mountains in such a snowstorm.

10. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) “The most important pages have been inscribed in the history of the exploration of the North through the works of Russians,” said G.Ya. Sedov.
2) “Do what you want,” Dubrovsky answered them dryly, “I am no longer the master here.”
3) “It’s not for nothing that he is wearing this chain mail,” I thought, “he must be plotting something.”
4) Yashka got drunk and his father thumped right in the eyes: “The thief!”

11. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) A crowd of thousands barked: "To the answer"!
2) “I wanted to live with four hands!” - bubbled in her.
3) Sitting over the drawings, he occasionally sighed: "I am glad that I will live to see the end of the work."
4) And the fighter said: “Understood!”

12. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) “And why did you take me with you!” - Kostya whined all the way.
2) “Just think,” Ilka said sarcastically, “I also have those, only even better.”
3) “Never! Katya screamed. “Never do that!”
4) "Well, what did you get?" Olga asked.

13. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) “You will answer for everything!” mother said sternly.
2) He quietly said: “Can I come to you in the evening?”
3) “Terrible weather,” grumbled the grandmother, “a good owner will not take the dog out in such weather.”
4) “Go away!” Pashka said firmly.

14. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) "Hurrah!" shouted the people in the square.
2) "Finally, spring," my mother thought, "the son will return soon."
3) Olga was surprised: “Is it already evening? It's still so light!"
4) Many said: "He is the unfortunate son of rich parents."

15. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) The trees are noisy, as if whispering to each other: “How scary it is in the garden!”
2) "What kind of bird is this?" - asked Zinochka.
3) “I can read,” Petrus began, “and I will soon learn to write with a pen.”
4) “Excuse me,” one skeptic remarked, is this box from a lemon?

16. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) Look, - he said, - that's how blown it is!
2) Pavka said sharply: “Be quiet!”
3) “Wait a minute ... - Lenka shouted. - As you say? Dust?"
4) “No,” Yermolai said, “it’s not all right.”

17. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) Napoleon once remarked that "I can lose this battle, but I can't lose a minute."
2) “Madame, do you want to wrap up or will you fly like that?” - the seller asked the woman, who had been choosing a broom in the store for more than two hours.
3) According to Maupassant, "love is as strong as death, but as fragile as glass."
4) “Talent! Talent! he said. - Definitely a talent. You will positively succeed!”

18. Point out a sentence with a punctuation error

1) “Hey, boy,” she said sadly. - How is it going?"
2) The old man walked and, stumbling over the grass, repeated: “What a fragrance, citizens! What an intoxicating aroma!
3) According to Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “Only the heart is vigilant: you cannot see the most important thing with your eyes.”
4) He wanted to ask the coachman where they had gone.

The shine of sleepy eyes, a slight touch of powder on the cheeks that seemed to be rejuvenated after sleep, and this laughter behind every word, not quite natural and all the more charming ... And before breakfast, they will go through the garden to the river, will undress in the bath, illuminated by the naked body from above the blue of the sky, and from below the reflection of transparent water ... My imagination was always alive, I mentally saw how Sonya and Natalie would, holding on to the railing of the stairs to the bathhouse, awkwardly go down its steps, immersed in water, wet, cold and slippery from the opposite green velvet mucus that has grown on them, like Sonya, throwing back her thick-haired head, suddenly decisively falls into the water with raised breasts - and, all strangely visible in the water with a bluish-lilac body, she obliquely spreads the corners of her arms and legs in different directions, just like a frog ...

Well, before dinner, you remember: dinner is at twelve,” said the lancer, shaking his head negatively, and stood up with his shaved chin, in a brown mustache connected to the same sideburns, tall, old-fashionedly hard, in a spacious flaky suit and blunt shoes, with a crutch in his broad hand covered with buckwheat, he patted me on the shoulder and left with a quick step. And just then, when I also got up to go through the next room to the balcony, she jumped up, flashed and disappeared, immediately striking me with joyful admiration. I went out onto the balcony amazed: in fact, a beauty! - and stood for a long time as if gathering his thoughts. I was so waiting for them in the dining room, but when I finally heard them in the dining room from the balcony, I suddenly ran into the garden - I was seized by some kind of fear, not only in front of both, with one of whom I already had a captivating secret, or most of all in front of Natalie, before the instant she blinded me half an hour ago with her swiftness. I walked around the garden, which, like the rest of the estate, lay in the lowlands of the river, finally overcame myself, entered with mock simplicity and met Sonya’s cheerful courage and Natalie’s sweet joke, who with a smile threw up at me from her black eyelashes the radiant blackness of her eyes, especially striking by the light of her hair:

We've already met!

Then we stood on the balcony, leaning on the stone balustrade, feeling with summer pleasure how hot our open heads were baking, and Natalie stood next to me, and Sonya, embracing her and as if absent-mindedly looking somewhere, hummed with a grin: “Among the noisy ball accidentally…” Then she straightened up:

Well, swim! First of all, we, then you will go ...

Natalie ran for the sheets, but she lingered and whispered to me:

From now on, please pretend that you have fallen in love with Natalie. And watch out if it turns out you don't have to pretend.

And I almost answered with cheerful insolence that yes, it was no longer necessary, and she, glancing sideways at the door, added quietly:

I'll come to you after lunch...

When they returned, I went to the bathhouse - first along a long birch avenue, then among various old trees of the shore, where there was a warm smell of river water and rooks yelling on tree tops, I walked and again thought with two completely opposite feelings about Natalie and Sonya, that I will bathe in the same water in which they just bathed ...

After dinner, among all that happy, aimless, free and calm that looked out of the fat through the open windows - sky, greenery, sun - after a long dinner with okroshka, fried chicken and raspberries with cream, over which I secretly froze from the presence of Natalie and from waiting for the hour when the whole house would be quiet for the afternoon and Sonya (who had come out for dinner with a dark red velvety rose in her hair) would secretly come running to me in order to continue yesterday’s work, no longer hastily and somehow, I immediately went to my room and closed the through shutters, began to wait for her, lying on the Turkish sofa, listening to the hot silence of the estate and the already languid, afternoon singing of birds in the garden, from which the sweet air from flowers and herbs went into the shutters, and hopelessly thought: how can I live now in this duality - in secret rendezvous with Sonya and next to Natalie, one thought of which already seizes me with such pure love delight, a passionate dream of looking at her only with that joyful adoration with which I just now ate at her thin bent body, at the sharp girlish elbows, with which she, half standing, leaned on the old stone of the balustrade heated by the sun? Sonya, leaning on her elbows and embracing her by the shoulder, was in her cambric peignoir with frills and looked like a young woman who had just married, and she, in a canvas skirt and an embroidered Little Russian shirt, under which all the youthful perfection of her constitution was guessed, seemed a little not a teenager. That was the supreme joy, that I did not even dare to think about the possibility of kissing her with the same feelings with which I kissed Sonya yesterday! In the light and wide sleeve of the shirt, embroidered on the shoulders in red and blue, her thin hand was visible, to the dry golden skin of which reddish hairs lay - I looked and thought: what would I feel if I dared to touch them with my lips! And, feeling my gaze, she threw up at me the brilliant blackness of her eyes and her whole bright head, entwined with a whip of a rather large braid. I moved away and hurriedly lowered my eyes, seeing her legs through the hem of her skirt, translucent in the sun, and thin, strong, thoroughbred ankles in a gray transparent stocking ...

Sonya, with a rose in her hair, quickly opened and shut the door, quietly exclaimed: “How, were you asleep?” I jumped up - what are you, what are you, could I sleep! grabbed her hands. “Lock the door with a key ...” I rushed to the door, she sat on the sofa, closing her eyes, “Well, come to me,” and we immediately lost all shame and reason. We hardly uttered a word during these minutes, and she, in all the charm of her hot body, allowed herself to be kissed everywhere - only to kiss - and closed her eyes more and more gloomily, her face flared up more and more, and again, leaving and straightening her hair, threatened in a whisper :

As for Natalie, I repeat: beware of going over to pretense. My character is not as cute as you might think!

Rose lay on the floor. I hid it in the table, and by the evening its dark red velvet became sluggish and purple.

My life went outwardly ordinary, but inwardly I did not know a moment of peace, becoming more and more attached to Sonya, to the sweet habit of exhaustingly passionate meetings with her at night - she now came to me only late in the evening, when the whole house fell asleep, - and more and more painfully and enthusiastically watching Natalie secretly, her every movement. Everything went on in the usual summer order: meetings in the morning, bathing before dinner and dinner, then resting in their rooms, then a garden - they embroidered something, sitting in a birch alley and forcing me to read Goncharov aloud, or they cooked jam in a shady clearing under oaks , not far from the house, to the right of the balcony; at five o'clock tea in another shady clearing, to the left, in the evening walks or croquet in the wide courtyard in front of the house, - me with Natalie against Sonya or Sonya with Natalie against me - at dusk, dinner in the dining room ... After dinner, the lancer went to bed, and we still We sat for a long time in the dark on the balcony, Sonya and I joking and smoking, and Natalie was silent. Finally Sonya said: "Well, sleep!" - and, having said goodbye to them, I went to my room, with cold hands waiting for that cherished hour, when the whole house would become dark and so quiet that you could hear the ticking thread of a pocket watch running at my head under a burning candle, and everyone was amazed, I was horrified: for what God punished me so, for which he gave me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such an agonizing beauty of Natalie's adoration and such bodily ecstasy of Sonya. I felt that just about we could not stand our incomplete intimacy and that then I would completely go crazy from waiting for our nightly meetings and from feeling them all day later, and all this next to Natalie! Sonya was already jealous, sometimes flared menacingly, and at the same time she said to me in private:

I'm afraid that you and I at the table and with Natalie are not simple enough. Dad, I think he's starting to notice something. Natalie, too, and the nanny, of course, is already sure of our romance and is probably trying to trick dad. Sit more in the garden with Natalie together, read this unbearable "Cliff" to her, take her sometimes for a walk in the evenings ... It's terrible, I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, ready, like some Odarka, grab your hair in front of everyone, but what should I do?

The most terrible thing was that, as it seemed to me, she began to either suffer, or be indignant, to feel that there was something secret between me and Sonya, Natalie. She, already silent, became more and more silent, playing croquet or embroidering too intently. We seemed to get used to each other, we became close, but I somehow joked, sitting with her alone in the living room, where she leafed through the notes, reclining on the sofa:

And I heard, Natalie, that maybe you and I will be related.

She looked sharply at me.

Like this?

My cousin, Alexey Nikolayevich Meshchersky...

She didn't let me finish.

Ah, that's it! Your cousin, this, excuse me, plump, all overgrown with black shiny hair, a burring giant with a red juicy mouth ... And who gave you the right to have such conversations with me?

I was scared:

Natalie, Natalie, why are you so strict with me1 You can't even joke! Well, forgive me, - I said, taking her hand.

She did not remove her hand and said:

I still don’t understand… I don’t know you… But enough about that…

In order not to see her languidly attracting white tennis shoes, randomly picked up on the sofa, I got up and went out onto the balcony. A cloud came in from behind the garden, the air grew dim, a soft summer noise went wider and closer through the garden, a sweet field rain wind blew, and I was suddenly so sweet, young and free :

Natalie, just a minute!

She walked up to the threshold.

Take a breath - what a wind! What a joy it could be!

She paused.

Natalie, how unkind you are to me! Do you have something against me?

She shrugged proudly.

What and why can I have against you?

In the evening, lying in the dark in wicker chairs on the balcony, all three of us were silent - the stars only flickered here and there in the dark clouds, a weak wind blew from the direction of the river, frogs murmured drowsily.

By the rain, I want to sleep, - said Sonya, suppressing a yawn. - The nanny said that a young month was born and now it will “wash itself” for a week. - And, after a pause, she added: - Natalie, what do you think about first love?

Natalie answered from the darkness:

I am convinced of one thing: in the terrible difference between the first love of a young man and a girl.

Sonya thought:

Well, girls are different ... And she stood up resolutely:

No, sleep, sleep!

And I'll take a nap here, I like the night, - said Natalie.

I whispered, listening to Sonya's retreating steps:

Something bad we said today with you!

She answered:

Yes, yes, we talked badly ...

The next day we met as if calmly. It rained lightly at night, but in the morning the weather cleared up, and in the afternoon it became dry and hot. Before tea at five o'clock, when Sonya was doing some household calculations in the lancer's office, we sat in the birch avenue and tried to continue reading "The Cliff" aloud. She, bending down, was sewing something, flickering with her right hand, I read, and from time to time I looked with sweet melancholy at her left hand, visible in the sleeve, at the reddish hairs that adjoined it above the hand and at the same ones where the neck is. from behind passed into the shoulder, and read more and more animatedly, without understanding a word. Finally said:

Well, now you read...

She unbent, the points of her breasts showed under her thin blouse, put down her sewing and, bending down again, lowering her strange and wonderful head low and showing me the back of her head and the beginning of her shoulder, put the book on her knees, began to read in a quick and unsteady voice. I looked at her hands, at her knees under the book, exhausted by the fierce love for them and the sound of her voice. Orioles screamed in flight in different parts of the evening garden, against us hung high, clinging to the trunk of a pine tree that grew alone in an alley among birches, a reddish-gray woodpecker ...

Natalie, what an amazing hair color you have! And the braid is a little darker, the color of ripe corn ...

Natalie, woodpecker, look!

She looked up.

Yes, yes, I have already seen him, and I saw him today, and I saw him yesterday ... Do not bother reading.

I paused, then again:

See how it looks like withered gray worms.

What do you mean where?

I pointed to the bench between us, to the dried bird droppings of lime:

And he took and squeezed her hand, muttering and laughing with happiness:

Natalie, Natalie!

She looked at me quietly and for a long time, then said:

But you love Sonya!

I blushed like a caught swindler, but with such ardent haste I disavowed Sonya that she even parted her lips slightly:

It is not true?

Not true, not true! I love her very much, but as a sister, because we have known each other since childhood!

The next day she did not come out either in the morning or at dinner.

Sonya, what about Natalie? - asked the uhlan, and Sonya answered, laughing badly:

She has been lying all morning in a vest, unkempt, her face shows that she was crying, they brought her coffee - she didn’t finish her drink ... What is it? "My head hurts". Haven't you fallen in love!

Very simple, - said the lancer cheerfully, with an approving hint of looking at me, but denying it with his head.

Natalie came out only for evening tea, but she entered the balcony lightly and lively, smiled at me affably and as if a little apologetically, surprising me with this liveliness, smile and some new smartness: her hair was pulled back tightly, a little curled in front, wavy touched with tongs, the dress was different, from something green, solid, very simple and very dexterous, especially in the interception at the waist, black shoes, high heels, - I inwardly gasped with new delight. I, sitting on the balcony, was looking through the Historical Bulletin, several books of which the uhlan had given me, when she suddenly came in with this liveliness and somewhat embarrassed friendliness:

Good evening. Let's go drink tea. Today I am behind the samovar. Sonya is unwell.

How? You, then her?

I just had a headache in the morning. I'm embarrassed to say, I've only just got it right now...

How amazing is this green in your eyes and hair! - I said. And suddenly he asked, blushing: - Did you believe me yesterday?

She, too, blushed - thinly and scarlet - and turned away:

Not right away, not really. Then I suddenly realized that I have no reason not to believe you ... and that, in essence, what do I care about your feelings with Sonya? But let's go...

Sonya also came out to dinner and took a moment to say to me:

I got sick. It always goes very hard for me, I lie down for five days. Today she could still go out, but tomorrow she won’t. Be smart without me. I love you terribly and terribly jealous.

Why don't you even look at me today?

You're stupid!

It was both happiness and misfortune: five days of complete freedom with Natalie and five days of not seeing Sonya at night!

She ruled the house for a week, took charge of everything, walked in a white apron across the yard to Natalie's cook's - I had never seen her so businesslike, it was clear that the role of Sonya's deputy and caring hostess gave her great pleasure and that she seemed to be resting from secret attentiveness to the way Sonya and I talk, we look at each other. All these days, having experienced at dinner, first anxiety about whether everything was fine, and then contentment that everything was fine, and the old cook and Christya, the Ukrainian maid, brought and served on time, without annoying the lancer, after dinner she went to Sonya, where I was not allowed in, and stayed with her until evening tea, and after dinner all evening. She obviously avoided being alone with me, and I was perplexed, bored and suffered in solitude. Why did she become affectionate, but avoid? Afraid of Sonya or of himself, of his feelings for me? And I passionately wanted to believe that I was myself, and I reveled in the ever-growing dream: I’m not connected with Sonya forever, I’m not forever - and Natalie too - to stay here, in a week or two I’ll still have to leave - and then the end of my torment ... I will find an excuse to go to meet the Stankeviches as soon as Natalie returns home ... To leave Sonya, and even with deceit, with this secret dream of Natalie, with the hope of her love and hand, will, of course, be very painful - except With one passion I kiss Sonya, don't I love her too? - but what to do, sooner or later, you still can’t avoid it ... And constantly thinking like this, in constant emotional excitement, in anticipation of something, I tried to behave when meeting with Natalie as restrained, sweeter as possible - endure, endure for the time being. I suffered, I was bored - as if on purpose, it rained for three days, ran measuredly, pounded on the roof with thousands of paws, it was gloomy in the house, flies were sleeping on the ceiling and on the lamp in the dining room - but I held on, sometimes I sat for hours in the lancer's office, listening to his stories...

Sonya began to go out at first in her dressing gown, for an hour or two, with a languid smile to her weakness, lay down on the balcony in a linen armchair and, to my horror, spoke to me capriciously and excessively tenderly, not embarrassed by the presence of Natalie:

Sit next to me, Vitik, it hurts me, I'm sad, tell me something funny... I really washed myself for a month, and I think I washed myself; the weather has cleared up and how sweetly the flowers smell ...

Secretly irritated, I replied:

Since the flowers smell strongly, it will be washed again.

She hit me on the arm.

Don't you dare object sick!

At last she began to go out both for dinner and for evening tea, only still pale and ordering to give herself an armchair. But for dinner and on the balcony after dinner, she still did not go out. And once Natalie said to me after evening tea, when she went to her room and Christya carried the samovar from the table to the cook's room:

Sonya is angry that I'm still sitting next to her, that you are all alone. She's not quite recovered yet, and you miss her.

I only miss you, - I answered. - When you're not...

She changed her face, but managed it, smiled with an effort:

But we agreed not to quarrel anymore ... Listen, you’d better listen to this: you stayed at home, go for a walk until dinner, and then I’ll sit with you in the garden, the predictions about the month, thank God, did not come true, the night will be beautiful ...

Sonya is sorry for me, and you? Not at all?

Terribly sorry, - she answered and laughed awkwardly, putting tea utensils on the tray. - But, thank God, Sonya is already healthy, you won’t be bored soon ...

At the words “and in the evening I will sit with you,” my heart contracted sweetly and mysteriously, but I immediately thought: no! it's just a sweet word! I went to my room and lay for a long time, looking at the ceiling. Finally he got up, took a cap and someone's stick from the hallway, and unconsciously left the estate on a wide path that ran between the estate and the Khokhlatskaya village a little higher than it, on a bare steppe hill. The path led to empty evening fields. Everywhere it was hilly, but spacious, far off. To my left lay the river lowland, behind it also empty fields slightly rose to the horizon, the sun had just set there, the sunset was burning. To his right, a regular row of white, identical huts of an almost extinct village blushed against him, and I looked longingly at the sunset, then at them. When he turned back, a warm, then almost hot wind blew towards him, and the young moon was already shining in the sky, promising nothing good: one half of it shone, but the other was visible like a transparent web, and all together it resembled an acorn.

At supper—we dined this time also in the garden, it was hot in the house—I said to the lancer:

Uncle, what do you think about the weather? I think it will rain tomorrow.

Why, my friend?

I just walked in the field, sadly thought that I would soon leave you ...

Why?

Natalie looked up at me too.

Are you leaving?

I feigned a laugh.

Can't I...

Ulan shook his head especially vigorously, this time by the way:

Nonsense, nonsense! Mom and dad can perfectly tolerate separation from you. I won't let you go before two weeks. Yes, she won't let go.

I have no rights to Vitaly Petrovich, - said Natalie.

I exclaimed plaintively:

Uncle, forbid Natalie to call me that! Ulan slammed his hand on the table.

I forbid. And enough talking about your departure. You are right about the rain, it is quite possible that the weather will deteriorate again.

The field was already too clean, clear, - I said. - And the moon is very clean half and looks like an acorn, and the wind was blowing from the south. And now, you see, the clouds are already finding ...

Ulan turned, looked into the garden, where the moonlight flared up, then dimmed:

From you, Vitaly, the second Bruce will come out ...

At ten o'clock she went out onto the balcony, where I sat, waiting for her, thinking in despondency: all this is nonsense, if she has any feelings for me, they are completely frivolous, changeable, fleeting ... The young moon, also clean, without cobwebs, played higher and brighter in the piles of more and more accumulated clouds, smoky white, majestically cluttered the sky, and when he emerged from behind them with his white half, similar to a human face in profile, bright and deathly pale, everything lit up, flooded phosphoric light. Suddenly I looked around, I felt something: Natalie was standing on the threshold, her hands behind her back, silently looking at me. I got up, she asked indifferently:

Are you still awake?

But you told me...

Sorry, I'm very tired today. Walk down the alley and I'll go to bed.

I followed her, she paused on the steps of the balcony, looking at the tops of the garden, from behind which the clouds were already rising in clouds, twitching, sparkling with soundless lightning. Then she went under the long transparent canopy of the birch alley, into the variegation, into patches of light and shadow. Equal to her, I said, to say something:

How magically the birch trees glisten in the distance. There is nothing stranger and more beautiful than the interior of the forest on a moonlit night and this white silky sheen of birch trunks in its depths...

She stopped, her eyes turning black in the twilight point-blank at me:

Are you really leaving?

Yes, it's time.

But why so soon and so soon? I am not hiding: you struck me just now by saying that you were leaving.

Natalie, can I come and introduce myself to you when you get home?

She said nothing. I took her hands, kissed her, all fading, right.

Natalie…

Yes, yes, I love you,” she said hurriedly and inexpressively, and went back to the house. I lunatically followed her.

Leave tomorrow,” she said as she walked, without turning around. - I'll be back home in a few days.

Entering my room, without lighting a candle, I sat down on the sofa and froze, numb in that terrible and wondrous thing that happened so suddenly and unexpectedly in my life. I sat, having lost all idea of ​​the place and time. The room and the garden were already drowned in darkness from the clouds, in the garden, behind the open windows, everything was noisy, trembling, and I was illuminated more and more brightly by a fast and at the same moment disappearing green-blue flame. The speed and strength of this thunderless light increased, then the room suddenly lit up to an unbelievable visibility, I was carried by a fresh wind and such a noise of the garden, as if he was seized with horror: here it is, the earth and sky are on fire! I jumped up, with difficulty closed the windows one by one, catching their frames, overcoming the wind that ruffled me, and ran on tiptoe along the dark corridors to the dining room: it would seem that at that hour I was not up to the open windows in the dining room and living room, where the storm I could have broken the windows, but I still ran, and even with great concern. All the windows in the dining room and living room were closed - I saw this in that green-blue illumination, in a color whose brightness was truly something unearthly, immediately opening everywhere, like quick eyes, and making all window frames huge and visible to the last binding , and then immediately flooded with thick darkness, for a second leaving a trace of something tinny, red in blinded vision. When I quickly, as if afraid that something had happened there without me, entered my room, an angry whisper was heard from the darkness:

Where have you been? I'm scared, light a fire soon ...

I struck a match and saw Sonya sitting on the sofa in one nightgown, in shoes on her bare feet.

Or no, no, don’t,” she said hurriedly, “come quickly to me, hug me, I’m afraid ...

I obediently sat down and put my arms around her cold shoulders. She whispered:

Well, kiss me, kiss me, take it completely, I haven't been with you for a whole week!

And with force she threw me and herself back on the sofa cushions. At the same moment, Natalie rushed to the threshold of the open door in her vest, with a candle in her hand. She immediately saw us, but still unconsciously shouted:

Sonya, where are you? I'm terribly afraid...

And immediately disappeared. Sonya rushed after her.

A year later, she married Meshchersky. They married her in his Blagodatny at an empty church - and we and other relatives and acquaintances from him and from her side did not receive an invitation to the wedding. And the young people did not make the usual visits after the wedding, they immediately left for the Crimea.

In January of the following year, on Tatiana's Day, there was a ball of Voronezh students at the Noble Assembly in Voronezh. I, already a Moscow student, spent Christmas time at home, in the village, and arrived that evening in Voronezh. The train came all white, smoking with snow from the blizzard, on the way from the station to the city, while the cab sleigh carried me to the Noble Hotel, the lights of the lanterns flickering through the blizzard were barely visible. But after the village, this city blizzard and city lights excited, promised close pleasure to enter the warm, too warm room of the old provincial hotel, ask for a samovar and start changing clothes, get ready for a long ballroom night, student drunkenness until dawn. During the time that had passed since that terrible night at the Cherkasovs, and then since her marriage, I gradually recovered - in any case, I got used to the state of a mentally ill person that I secretly was, and outwardly lived like everyone else.

When I arrived, the ball had just begun, but the main staircase and the platform on it were already full of arriving people, and from the main hall, with its choir, everything was covered, drowned out by regimental music, loudly thundering with sadly triumphant waltz beats. Still fresh from the cold, in a brand new uniform, and because of this, too elegantly, with excessive politeness, making my way in the crowd along the red carpet of the stairs, I went up to the platform, entered the especially dense and already hot crowd, shy in front of the doors of the hall, and for some reason I began to make my way further so persistently that they took me, probably, for a manager who had urgent business in the hall. And I finally made my way, stopped on the threshold, listening to the spills and peals of the orchestra above my very head, looking at the sparkling swell of the chandeliers and at dozens of couples flashing variously under them in a waltz - and suddenly leaned back: from this swirling crowd suddenly stood out for me one pair, flying with fast and dexterous glide paths among all the others, getting closer to me. I recoiled, looking at how he, somewhat stooped in waltzing, was large, portly, all black with shiny black hair and a tailcoat, and light with that lightness that some overweight people surprise in dancing, and how tall she was in a ball high hairstyle, in a ball white dress and in slender golden shoes, circling somewhat leaning back, lowering her eyes, placing a hand in a white glove up to the elbow on his shoulder in such a bend that made the hand look like the neck of a swan. For a moment her black eyelashes waved straight at me, the blackness of her eyes flashed very close, but then, with the diligence of a overweight man, deftly sliding on patent socks, he turned her sharply, her lips parted with a sigh at the turn, the hem of her dress flashed silvery, and they, receding, went glide paths back. I again squeezed my way into the crowd on the landing, got out of the crowd, stood for a moment ... At the door of the hall obliquely opposite me, still completely empty and cool, two female students in Little Russian outfits were standing in idle expectation behind a buffet with champagne - a pretty blonde and a dry, dark-faced a beautiful Cossack woman, almost twice her height. I entered, with a bow I held out a hundred-ruble note. Having clashed their heads and laughed, they pulled out a heavy bottle from a bucket of ice under the counter and looked at each other hesitantly - there were no uncorked bottles yet. I went behind the counter and a minute later valiantly slammed the cork. Then he cheerfully offered them a glass of Gaudeamus igitur! I drank the rest glass after glass alone. They looked at me at first with surprise, then with pity:

Oh, but you are already terribly pale! I drank and left immediately. At the hotel, he asked for a bottle of Caucasian cognac in the room and began to drink tea cups, in the hope that my heart would break ...

And another year and a half passed. And one day at the end of May, when I came home from Moscow again, a messenger from the station brought her a telegram from Blagodatnoe: “This morning Alexei Nikolaevich died suddenly from a blow.” The father crossed himself and said:

Kingdom of heaven. Horrible. Forgive me, God, I never loved him, but still it's terrible. After all, he was not yet forty. And she is terribly sorry - a widow at such years, with a child in her arms ... I have never seen her, - he was so sweet that he never even brought her to me, - but, they say, she is charming. How to be now? Neither I nor my mother can travel a hundred and fifty miles in our old age, of course, you have to go ...

It was impossible to refuse - by virtue of what could I refuse? Indeed, I could not have refused the half-madness into which this unexpected news suddenly plunged me again. I knew one thing: I would see her! The pretext for the meeting was terrible, but legitimate.

We sent a reply telegram, and the next day, at the dawn of May, horses from Blagodatnoe delivered me from the station to the estate in half an hour. Driving up to it along the hillside along the water meadows, I saw from a distance that along the western wall of the house, facing the still bright sunset, all the windows in the hall were closed with shutters, and I shuddered at the terrible thought: behind them lay he and there she was! In the yard, densely overgrown with young grass, two troikas rattled their bells near the carriage house, but there was not a soul, except for the coachmen on the goats, and the visitors and the servants were already standing in the house for a memorial service. Everywhere there was the silence of a rural May dawn, the purity of spring, the freshness and novelty of everything - the field and river air, this young dense grass in the yard, the dense flowering garden that moved over the house from behind and from the south side, and on the low front porch, at the wide open in in the hallway of the door, leaning upright against the wall was a large yellow glazed coffin lid.