Bunin gentleman from san francisco full content. Online reading of the book gentleman from san francisco. And everyone will be rewarded according to his sins

gentleman from san francisco

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

The gentleman from San Francisco has always been convinced that pleasure can be bought, and now that he has a lot of money, there will be a lot of pleasure.

The gentleman from San Francisco is a typical person, but how are you different from him? Maybe this story will help you understand who you really are and change your life.

The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" was written by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in 1915. 18 years later, in November 1933, Bunin will be awarded the Nobel Prize for the books "The Gentleman from San Francisco" and "The Life of Arseniev". In his acceptance speech, the writer will say: “There must be areas of complete independence in the world. Undoubtedly, around this table are representatives of all kinds of opinions, all kinds of philosophical and religious beliefs. But there is something unshakable that unites us all: freedom of thought and conscience, something to which we owe civilization.”

I.A. Bunin

gentleman from san francisco

Apocalypse

A gentleman from San Francisco - no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri - went to the Old World for two whole years, with his wife and daughter, solely for the sake of entertainment.

He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to pleasure, to a long and comfortable journey, and who knows what else. For such confidence, he had the reason that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, he had just embarked on life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until that time, he had not lived, but only existed, though not badly, but still placing all his hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he ordered to work for him by the thousands, knew well what this meant! - and, finally, he saw that a lot had already been done, that he was almost equal to those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged used to start enjoying life with a trip to Europe, to India, to Egypt. He did and he did the same. Of course, he wanted to reward himself first of all for the years of work; however, he was also happy for his wife and daughter. His wife was never particularly impressionable, but all elderly American women are passionate travelers. And as for the daughter, an aged and slightly sickly girl, for her the trip was absolutely necessary - not to mention the health benefits, isn't there happy meetings in travel? Here sometimes you sit at the table or look at the frescoes next to the billionaire.

The route was developed by a gentleman from San Francisco extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of itinerant singers and what people at his age feel! Especially subtly - with the love of young Neapolitan women, even if not entirely disinterested, he thought of holding a carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that time the most selective society flocks - the very one on which all the benefits of civilization depend: and the style of tuxedos , and the strength of thrones, and the declaration of wars, and the well-being of hotels - where some enthusiastically indulge in automobile and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and fourth in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from the cages over the emerald lawn, against the background of the sea, the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately knock white lumps on the ground; he wanted to dedicate the beginning of March to Florence, to come to Rome to the passions of the Lord, to listen to the Miserere there; Venice, and Paris, and a bullfight in Seville, and swimming in the English Isles, and Athens, and Constantinople, and Palestine, and Egypt, and even Japan were included in his plans - of course, already on the way back ... And everything went first Great.

It was the end of November, and all the way to Gibraltar we had to sail now in icy haze, now in the middle of a storm with sleet; but sailed quite safely. There were many passengers, the steamer - the famous "Atlantis" - looked like a huge hotel with all the amenities - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper - and life on it proceeded very measuredly: they got up early, with trumpet sounds, sharply resounding along the corridors even in that gloomy hour, when the dawn was so slow and unfriendly over the gray-green water desert, which was heavily agitated in the fog; having put on flannel pajamas, they drank coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then they sat down in the marble baths, did gymnastics, stimulating the appetite and feeling good, made daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; up to eleven o'clock it was supposed to walk briskly on the decks, breathing the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheffle-board and other games to re-stimulate the appetite, and at eleven to refresh themselves with broth sandwiches; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; the next two hours were devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long chairs, on which travelers lay, covered with rugs, looking at the cloudy sky and at the foamy hillocks flashing overboard, or dozing sweetly; at five o'clock they, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea with biscuits; at seven they announced with trumpet signals what constituted the main goal of this entire existence, its crown ... And then the gentleman from San Francisco, rubbing his hands from a surge of vitality, hurried to his rich luxury cabin - to get dressed.

Page 2 of 2

delicate pink pimples near the lips and between the shoulder blades, a little powdered ... The dinner lasted more than an hour, and after dinner dances opened in the ballroom, during which men - including, of course, the gentleman from San Francisco - with their legs up, decided on the basis of the latest exchange news of the fate of peoples, they smoked up to crimson red Havana cigars and got drunk with liquors in a bar where Negroes in red camisoles served, with whites that looked like peeled hard-boiled eggs. The ocean rumbled behind the wall in black mountains, the blizzard whistled hard in the heavy gear, the steamer trembled all over, overcoming both it and these mountains, as if with a plow breaking their unsteady sides, now and then boiling up and flying high with foamy tails, into a siren choked with mist groaned in mortal anguish, the watchmen on their tower froze from the cold and went crazy from the unbearable strain of attention, the gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld, its last, ninth circle was like the underwater womb of a steamboat - the one where the gigantic fireboxes, devouring with their red-hot mouths of heaps of coal, with a roar thrown into them, drenched in acrid, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, crimson from the flames; and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their legs on the arms of their chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs, swam in waves of spicy smoke, everything in the dance hall shone and poured out light, warmth and joy, couples either spun in waltzes, or bent into tango - and the music insistently, in a kind of sweet, shameless sadness, she prayed all about one thing, all about the same ... Among this brilliant crowd there was a certain great rich man, shaven, long, like a prelate, in an old-fashioned tailcoat, there was a famous Spanish writer, there was a universal beauty, there was an elegant couple in love, whom everyone watched with curiosity and who did not hide their happiness: he danced only with her, and everything came out with them so subtly, charmingly, that only one commander knew that this couple was hired by Lloyd to play love for good money and has long been floating on one ship or another.

In Gibraltar everyone was delighted by the sun, it was like early spring; a new passenger appeared on board the Atlantis, arousing general interest in himself - the crown prince of an Asian state, traveling incognito, a small man, all made of wood, broad-faced, narrow-eyed, wearing gold glasses, slightly unpleasant - because his large black mustache showed through his him, like a dead man, in general, sweet, simple and modest. The Mediterranean smelled of winter again, there was a large and flowery wave, like a peacock's tail, which, with a bright brilliance and a completely clear sky, was parted by a tramontana merrily and furiously flying towards. Then, on the second day, the sky began to turn pale, the horizon became foggy: the earth was approaching, Ischia, Capri appeared, through binoculars Naples, piled at the foot of something gray-gray, was already visible in lumps of sugar ... Many ladies and gentlemen had already put on light fur coats; unanswered, always in a whisper, fighting-Chinese, bow-legged teenagers with tar braids to the toes and girlish thick eyelashes, gradually pulled blankets, canes, suitcases, travel bags up the stairs ... The daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco stood on the deck next to the prince, last night, by a lucky chance presented to her, she pretended to stare intently into the distance, where he pointed to her, explaining something, telling something hastily and quietly; he seemed like a boy among the others in stature, he was not at all good-looking and strange - glasses, a bowler hat, an English coat, and the hair of a rare mustache looked like a horse, dark, thin skin on a flat face seemed to be stretched and as if slightly varnished - but the girl listened to him and from excitement did not understand what he was saying to her; her heart beat with an incomprehensible delight before him: everything, everything in him was different from the others - his dry hands, his clean skin, under which flowed ancient royal blood, even his European, quite simple, but as if especially neat clothes were fraught with an inexplicable charm. And the gentleman from San Francisco himself, in gray leggings on patent-leather boots, kept looking at the famous beauty standing near him, a tall, amazingly built blonde with eyes painted in the latest Parisian fashion, holding a tiny, bent, mangy dog on a silver chain and talking all the time. with her. And the daughter, in some kind of vague awkwardness, tried not to notice him.

He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, forestalling his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, dragged his things, called for him porters, delivered him chests in hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was in navigation, so it should have been in Naples. Naples grew and approached; the musicians, shining with copper wind instruments, already crowded on the deck and suddenly deafened everyone with the triumphant sounds of the march, the giant commander, in full dress, appeared on his bridges and, like a merciful pagan god, waved his hand in greeting to the passengers - and to the gentleman from San Francisco, just like everyone else, it seemed that it was for him alone that the march of proud America was thundering, that it was his commander who greeted him with a safe arrival. And when the Atlantis finally entered the harbor, rolled up to the embankment with its multi-storey bulk dotted with people, and the gangway rumbled - how many porters and their assistants in caps with gold galloons, how many all kinds of commission agents, whistling boys and hefty ragamuffins with bundles colored postcards in their hands rushed to meet him with an offer of services! And he grinned at these ragamuffins, going to the car of the very hotel where the prince could also stay, and calmly spoke through his teeth in English, then in Italian:

Read this book in its entirety by purchasing the full legal version (https://www.litres.ru/ivan-bunin/gospodin-iz-san-francisko/?lfrom=279785000) on Litres.

Notes

"Have mercy" - Catholic prayer (lat.).

End of introductory segment.

Text provided by LitRes LLC.

Read this book in its entirety by purchasing the full legal version on LitRes.

You can safely pay for the book bank card Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, from account mobile phone, from a payment terminal, in the MTS or Svyaznoy salon, via PayPal, WebMoney, Yandex.Money, QIWI Wallet, bonus cards or in another way convenient for you.

Here is an excerpt from the book.

Only part of the text is open for free reading (restriction of the copyright holder). If you liked the book, the full text can be obtained from our partner's website.

A gentleman from San Francisco - no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri - went to the Old World for two whole years, with his wife and daughter, solely for the sake of entertainment. He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to enjoy, to travel in every way excellent. For such confidence, he had the argument that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, he had just embarked on life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until that time, he had not lived, but only existed, though not badly, but still pinning all his hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he signed out to work for him by the thousands, knew well what this meant! - and finally saw that a lot had already been done, that he had almost caught up with those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged used to start enjoying life with a trip to Europe, to India, to Egypt. He did and he did the same. Of course, he wanted to reward himself first of all for the years of work; however, he was also happy for his wife and daughter. His wife was never particularly impressionable, but all elderly American women are passionate travelers. And as for the daughter, an aged and slightly sickly girl, for her the trip was absolutely necessary: not to mention the health benefits, isn’t there happy meetings in travel? Here sometimes you sit at the table and look at the frescoes next to the billionaire. The route was developed by a gentleman from San Francisco extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of itinerant singers, and what people at his age feel especially sensitively - the love of young Neapolitans, even if not entirely disinterested; he thought of holding a carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that time the most selective society flocks, where some enthusiastically indulge in automobile and sailing races, others in roulette, still others in what is commonly called flirting, and fourth in shooting pigeons, which very beautifully soar from the cages over the emerald lawn, against the background of the sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately knock white lumps on the ground; he wanted to dedicate the beginning of March to Florence, to come to Rome to the passions of the Lord, to listen to the Miserere there; Venice, and Paris, and a bullfight in Seville, and swimming in the English Isles, and Athens, and Constantinople, and Palestine, and Egypt, and even Japan were included in his plans - of course, already on the way back ... And that’s all went great at first. It was the end of November, and all the way to Gibraltar we had to sail now in icy haze, now in the middle of a storm with sleet; but sailed quite well. There were many passengers, the steamer - the famous "Atlantis" - looked like a huge hotel with all the conveniences - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper - and life on it proceeded very measuredly: they got up early, with trumpet sounds, abruptly resounding along the corridors even in that gloomy hour, when the dawn was so slow and unfriendly over the gray-green water desert, which was heavily agitated in the fog; having put on flannel pajamas, they drank coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then they sat in the baths, did gymnastics, stimulating the appetite and feeling good, made daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; until eleven o'clock it was necessary to walk briskly on the decks, breathing the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheflboard and other games to stimulate the appetite again, and at eleven to refresh themselves with broth sandwiches; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; the next two hours were devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long reed chairs, on which the travelers lay, covered with rugs, looking at the cloudy sky and at the foamy hillocks flashing overboard, or dozing sweetly; at five o'clock they, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea with biscuits; at seven they announced with trumpet signals what constituted the main goal of this entire existence, its crown ... And then the gentleman from San Francisco hurried to his rich cabin - to dress. In the evenings, the floors of the Atlantis gaped in the darkness with countless fiery eyes, and a great many servants worked in the cooks, scullery and wine cellars. The ocean that went beyond the walls was terrible, but they did not think about it, firmly believing in the power over it of the commander, a red-haired man of monstrous size and weight, always as if sleepy, similar in his uniform with wide gold stripes to a huge idol and very rarely appeared on people from their mysterious chambers; on the forecastle, the siren was constantly wailing with hellish gloominess and screeching with furious malice, but few of the diners heard the siren - it was drowned out by the sounds of a beautiful string orchestra, exquisitely and tirelessly playing in a two-light hall, festively flooded with lights, overflowing with decollete ladies and men in tailcoats and tuxedos , slender footmen and respectful maitre d's, among which one, the one who took orders only for wine, walked even with a chain around his neck, like a lord mayor. The tuxedo and starched underwear made the gentleman from San Francisco very young. Dry, short, oddly tailored, but strongly sewn, he sat in the golden-pearl radiance of this hall behind a bottle of wine, behind glasses and goblets of the finest glass, behind a curly bouquet of hyacinths. There was something Mongolian in his sallow face with trimmed silver mustaches, his large teeth glittered with gold fillings, his strong bald head was old ivory. Richly, but according to the years, his wife was dressed, a woman large, wide and calm; complicated, but light and transparent, with innocent frankness - a daughter, tall, thin, with magnificent hair, charmingly done up, with aromatic breath from violet cakes and with the most delicate pink pimples near her lips and between her shoulder blades, slightly powdered ... Dinner lasted more than an hour , and after dinner, dances opened in the ballroom, during which men - including, of course, the gentleman from San Francisco - with their legs up, their faces crimson red, smoked Havana cigars and drank liquors in a bar where Negroes served in red camisoles, with squirrels like peeled hard-boiled eggs. The ocean roared behind the wall in black mountains, the blizzard whistled hard in the heavy gear, the steamer trembled all over, overcoming both it and these mountains, as if with a plow breaking apart their unsteady, now and then boiling and foamy tails, huge masses, the siren choked with mist moaned in mortal anguish, the watchmen on their tower froze from the cold and went crazy from the unbearable strain of attention, to the gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld, its last, ninth circle was like the underwater womb of a steamer, - the one where the gigantic fireboxes, devouring with their red-hot mouths of heaps of coal, with a roar thrown into them, drenched in acrid, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, crimson from the flames; and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their legs on the arms of their chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs, floated in waves of spicy smoke, everything in the dance hall shone and poured out light, warmth and joy, couples either spun in waltzes, then bent into tango - and the music insistently, in sweet, shameless sadness, she prayed all about one thing, all about the same. .. Among this brilliant crowd there was a certain great rich man, shaved, long, in an old-fashioned tailcoat, there was a famous Spanish writer, there was an all-world beauty, there was an elegant couple in love, whom everyone watched with curiosity and who did not hide her happiness: he danced only with her, and everything came out of them so subtly, charmingly, that only one commander knew that this couple was hired by Lloyd to play love for good money and had been sailing on one ship or another for a long time. In Gibraltar, everyone was happy with the sun, it was like early spring; a new passenger appeared on board the Atlantis, arousing general interest in himself - the crown prince of an Asian state, traveling incognito, a small man, all made of wood, broad-faced, narrow-eyed, wearing gold glasses, slightly unpleasant because his large mustache showed through like a dead man, in general, sweet, simple and modest. In the Mediterranean Sea there was a large and flowery wave, like a peacock's tail, which, with a bright brilliance and a completely clear sky, was spread merrily and furiously flying towards the tramontana ... Then, on the second day, the sky began to turn pale, the horizon became foggy: the earth was approaching, Ischia, Capri appeared, through binoculars Naples was already visible in lumps of sugar, piled at the foot of something dove-gray ... Many ladies and gentlemen had already put on light, fur-lined coats; unanswered, always in a whisper speaking Chinese fighters, bow-legged teenagers with tar to toe braids and girlish thick eyelashes, gradually pulled blankets, canes, suitcases, travel bags up the stairs ... The daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco stood on the deck next to the prince, yesterday in the evening, by a lucky chance, presented to her, and pretended to stare intently into the distance, where he pointed to her, explaining something, something hurriedly and quietly telling; he seemed like a boy among the others in stature, he was not at all good-looking and strange - glasses, a bowler hat, an English coat, and the hair of a rare mustache looked like a horse, the dark, thin skin on a flat face seemed to be stretched and seemed to be slightly varnished - but the girl listened from his excitement she did not understand what he was saying to her; her heart was beating with an incomprehensible delight before him: everything, everything in him was not the same as in the others - his dry hands, his clean skin, under which ancient royal blood flowed; even his European, quite simple, but as if especially neat clothes were fraught with an inexplicable charm. And the gentleman from San Francisco himself, in gray leggings on his boots, kept looking at the famous beauty standing next to him, a tall, amazingly built blonde with eyes painted in the latest Parisian fashion, holding a tiny, bent, mangy dog on a silver chain and talking to her. And the daughter, in some kind of vague awkwardness, tried not to notice him. He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, forestalling his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, dragged his things, called for him porters, delivered him chests in hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was in navigation, so it should have been in Naples. Naples grew and approached; the musicians, shining with copper wind instruments, already crowded on the deck and suddenly deafened everyone with the triumphant sounds of the march, the giant commander, in full dress, appeared on his bridges and, like a merciful pagan god, waved his hand in greeting to the passengers. And when the Atlantis finally entered the harbor, rolled up to the embankment with its multi-storey bulk, strewn with people, and the gangway rumbled - how many porters and their assistants in caps with gold galloons, how many all kinds of commission agents, whistling boys and hefty ragamuffins with packs of colored postcards in hands rushed to meet him with an offer of services! And he grinned at these ragamuffins, going to the car of the very hotel where the prince could also stay, and calmly spoke through his teeth in English, then in Italian:— Go away! Via! Life in Naples immediately went on as usual: early in the morning - breakfast in a gloomy dining room, cloudy, unpromising sky and a crowd of guides at the lobby door; then the first smiles of the warm pinkish sun, the view from the high-hanging balcony of Vesuvius, shrouded to the foot in radiant morning vapors, of the silver-pearl ripples of the bay and the thin outline of Capri on the horizon, of the tiny donkeys running down the embankment in gigs and detachments of small soldiers marching somewhere with cheerful and defiant music; then - going out to the car and slowly moving along the crowded narrow and damp corridors of the streets, among the tall, multi-windowed houses, examining the deadly clean and even, pleasant, but boring, snow-lit museums or cold, wax-smelling churches, in which everywhere one and the same thing: a majestic entrance, covered with a heavy leather curtain, and inside - a huge emptiness, silence, quiet lights of the menorah, reddening in the depths on a throne decorated with lace, a lonely old woman among dark wooden desks, slippery tombstones underfoot and someone else " Descent from the Cross”, certainly famous; at one o'clock - second breakfast on Mount San Martino, where by noon many people of the very first class come together and where one day the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco almost became ill: it seemed to her that a prince was sitting in the hall, although she already knew from the newspapers, that he is in Rome; at five, tea in the hotel, in a smart salon, where it is so warm from the carpets and blazing fireplaces; and there again preparations for dinner - again the powerful, authoritative rumble of the gong on all floors, again the lines rustling silks on the stairs and reflected in the mirrors of low-cut ladies, Again the wide and hospitable hall of the dining room, and the red jackets of the musicians on the stage, and the black crowd of lackeys next to the maître d', with extraordinary skill pouring thick pink soup onto plates ... The dinners were again so plentiful and mineral waters, and sweets, and fruits, that by eleven o'clock in the evening maids carried rubber bladders with hot water to warm the stomach. However, December “turned out” not entirely successful: the porters, when they talked to them about the weather, only raised their shoulders guiltily, muttering that they would not remember such a year, although for more than a year they had to mutter this and refer to what is happening everywhere something terrible: unprecedented downpours and storms on the Riviera, snow in Athens, Etna is also all covered and shines at night, tourists from Palermo, fleeing the cold, scatter ... The morning sun deceived every day: from noon it invariably turned gray and began to sow the rain is getting thicker and colder; then the palm trees at the entrance of the hotel shone with tin, the city seemed especially dirty and cramped, the museums were too monotonous, the cigar butts of fat cabbies in rubber capes fluttering in the wind were unbearably smelly, the vigorous clapping of their whips over thin-necked nags was clearly false, the shoes of the lords sweeping tram rails, terrible, and women splashing in the mud, in the rain with black heads uncovered, ugly short-legged; about the dampness and the stench of rotten fish from the foaming sea near the embankment and there is nothing to say. The gentleman and lady from San Francisco began to quarrel in the morning; their daughter either went about pale, with a headache, then came to life, admired everything and was then both sweet and beautiful: beautiful were those tender, complex feelings that a meeting with an ugly man, in whom unusual blood flowed, aroused in her, in the end, and it doesn’t matter what exactly awakens a girl’s soul, whether it’s money, fame, or nobility of the family ... Everyone assured that it’s not at all the same in Sorrento, on Capri - it’s warmer and sunny there, and lemons bloom , and morals are more honest, and wine is more natural. And so the family from San Francisco decided to go with all their trunks to Capri, so that, after examining it, walking on the stones on the site of the palaces of Tiberius, visiting the fabulous caves of the Azure Grotto and listening to the Abruzzo pipers wandering around the island for a whole month before Christmas and singing praises to the Virgin Mary, to settle in Sorrento. On the day of departure - very memorable for the family from San Francisco! Even in the morning there was no sun. A heavy fog hid Vesuvius to its very foundation, low gray over the leaden swell of the sea. The island of Capri was not visible at all - as if it had never existed in the world. And the little steamboat heading towards it was so swaying from side to side that the family from San Francisco was lying in layers on the sofas in the miserable wardroom of this steamboat, wrapping their legs in rugs and closing their eyes from dizziness. The Mrs. suffered, as she thought, most of all; still indefatigable, she only laughed. Miss was terribly pale and held a slice of lemon in her teeth. Mister, who was lying on his back, in a wide coat and a large cap, did not open his jaws all the way; his face became dark, his mustache white, his head ached severely: the last days, thanks to bad weather, he drank too much in the evenings and admired too much "living pictures" in some brothels. And the rain fell on the rattling glass, it flowed from them on the sofas, the wind howled at the masts and sometimes, together with the oncoming wave, laid the steamer completely on its side, and then something rolled down with a roar. At the stops, at Castellammare, at Sorrento, it was a little easier; but even here it waved terribly, the coast with all its cliffs, gardens, pines, pink and white hotels, and smoky, curly-green mountains flew up and down outside the window, as on a swing; boats banged against the walls, a damp wind blew in the doors, and, not for a moment ceasing, a burry boy screamed piercingly from a rocking barge under the flag of the Royal Hotel, luring travelers. And the gentleman from San Francisco, feeling the way he should, a very old man, was already thinking with anguish and malice about all those greedy, garlic-smelling little people called Italians; once during a stop, opening his eyes and rising from the sofa, he saw under a rocky sheer a bunch of such miserable, moldy stone houses stuck to each other near the water, near the boats, near some rags, tins and brown nets, that, remembering that this was the real Italy he had come to enjoy, he felt despair... Finally, already at dusk, the island began to move in its blackness, as if drilled through with red lights at the foot, the wind became softer, warmer, fragrant, along the humble waves , shimmering like black oil, golden boas flowed from the lanterns of the pier ... Then suddenly an anchor rattled and plopped into the water, furious cries of boatmen rushed from everywhere - and immediately it became easier on the soul, the wardroom shone brighter, I wanted to eat, drink, smoke, move ... Ten minutes later the family from San Francisco stepped into a large barge, fifteen minutes later they stepped onto the stones of the embankment, and then got into a bright trailer and buzzed up the slope, among the stakes in the vineyards, dilapidated stone fences and wet, gnarled, covered with something where straw canopies of orange trees, with the brilliance of orange fruits and thick glossy foliage, glided downhill, past the open windows of the trailer ... The land in Italy smells sweet after rain, and each of its islands has its own special smell! The island of Capri was damp and dark tonight. But then he came to life for a moment, lit up in some places. On the top of the mountain, on the platform of the funicular, there was again a crowd of those whose duty it was to worthily receive the gentleman from San Francisco. There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention - several Russians who settled in Capri, slovenly and absent-minded, with glasses, beards, with the collars of old coats turned up, and a company of long-legged, round-headed German youths in Tyrolean suits and with canvas bags over their shoulders. who do not need anyone's services and are not at all generous in spending. A gentleman from San Francisco, calmly avoiding both of them, was immediately noticed. He and his ladies were hurriedly helped out, they ran ahead of him, showing the way, he was again surrounded by boys and those hefty Capri women who carry suitcases and chests of respectable tourists on their heads. There was a pounding in a small, like an opera square, over which an electric ball was swaying from a damp wind, their wooden footstools, a horde of boys whistled like a bird and tumbled over their heads - and how a gentleman from San Francisco walked along the stage among them to some medieval an arch under the houses merged into one, behind which a ringing street with a swirl of palm trees above flat roofs to the left and blue stars in the black sky above, in front. And everything looked like it was in honor of the guests from San Francisco that a damp stone town on a rocky island in the Mediterranean came to life, that they made the owner of the hotel so happy and hospitable that only a Chinese gong was waiting for them, howling on all floors of the collection for dinner, as soon as they entered the lobby. The polite and elegant bow of the host, the remarkably elegant young man who met them, for a moment struck the gentleman from San Francisco: he suddenly remembered that this night, among other confusion that besieged him in a dream, he had seen precisely this gentleman, exactly in - exactly the same as this one, in the same business card and with the same mirror-combed head. Surprised, he almost stopped. But since not even the mustard seed of any so-called mystical feelings remained in his soul for a long time, his surprise immediately faded: he jokingly told his wife and daughter about this strange coincidence of dream and reality, walking along the corridor of the hotel. His daughter, however, looked at him with alarm at that moment: her heart was suddenly gripped by melancholy, a feeling of terrible loneliness on this strange, dark island ... A high-ranking personage, Flight XVII, who was visiting Capri, has just departed. And the guests from San Francisco were given the very apartments that he occupied. They were assigned the most beautiful and skillful maid, a Belgian, with a thin and hard waist from the corset and in a starched cap in the form of a small jagged crown, and the most prominent of the footmen, a coal-black, fire-eyed Sicilian, and the most efficient bellhop, small and plump Luigi , which has changed many similar places in its lifetime. And a minute later, a French maitre d' lightly knocked on the door of the gentleman's room from San Francisco, who had come to find out whether the gentlemen would have dinner, and in the case of an affirmative answer, in which, however, there was no doubt, to report that today was lobster, roast beef. , asparagus, pheasants and so on. Paul was still walking under the gentleman from San Francisco—that wretched Italian steamboat rocked him like that—but he slowly, with his own hand, although out of habit and not quite dexterously, closed the window that had slammed at the entrance of the maitre d', from which smelled the smell of a distant kitchen and wet flowers in the garden, and with unhurried distinctness answered that they would dine, that a table for them should be placed away from the doors, in the very back of the hall, that they would drink local wine, and the maitre d' assented to every word of his in a wide variety of intonations that had , however, only the meaning that there is not and cannot be any doubt about the correctness of the desires of the gentleman from San Francisco and that everything will be executed exactly. Finally, he bowed his head and delicately asked:- Everything, sir? And, having received a slow “yes” in response, he added that today they had a tarantella in their lobby - Carmella and Giuseppe, known throughout Italy and “the whole world of tourists”, are dancing. "I've seen her on postcards," said the gentleman from San Francisco in an expressionless voice. “And this Giuseppe is her husband?” — Cousin sir, the maitre d' replied. And after a pause, after thinking something, but without saying anything, the gentleman from San Francisco dismissed him with a nod of his head. And then he again began to get ready for the wedding: he turned on electricity everywhere, filled all the mirrors with reflections of light and brilliance, furniture and open chests, began to shave, wash and ring every minute, while other impatient calls rushed and interrupted him along the entire corridor - from the rooms of his wife and daughter. And Luigi, in his red apron, with the ease characteristic of many fat men, making grimaces of horror, laughing to tears the maids who ran past with tiled buckets in their hands, rolled head over heels at the bell and, knocking on the door with his knuckles, with feigned timidity, brought to idiocy respectfully asked:— Ha sonato, signore? And from behind the door came a slow and creaky, insultingly polite voice: Yes, come in... What did the gentleman from San Francisco feel, what did he think on this so significant evening for him? He, like anyone who has experienced a toss, only really wanted to eat, dreamed with pleasure of the first spoonful of soup, the first sip of wine, and performed the usual business of the toilet even in some excitement, which left no time for feelings and reflections. Having shaved, washed, properly inserted a few teeth, standing in front of the mirrors, he moistened and cleaned with brushes in a silver frame the remnants of pearl hair around a swarthy-yellow skull, pulled on a strong senile body with a waist plump from increased nutrition, and on dry legs with flat feet - black silk socks and ballroom shoes, crouching, he put in order the black trousers and snow-white shirt with a protruding chest, which were highly pulled up with silk straps, set the cufflinks into the shiny cuffs and began to suffer with catching under the hard collar of the cufflinks of the neck. The floor was still swaying under him, his fingertips were very painful, the cufflink sometimes bit hard on the flabby skin in the recess under the Adam's apple, but he was persistent and, finally, with eyes shining from tension, all gray from the excessively tight collar that squeezed his throat, still finished the job - and in exhaustion sat down in front of the dressing table, all reflected in it and repeated in other mirrors. - Oh, it's terrible! he muttered, lowering his strong bald head and not trying to understand, not thinking what exactly was terrible; then habitually and attentively examined his short fingers, with gouty hardening in the joints, their large and protruding almond-coloured nails, and repeated with conviction: "It's terrible..." But then loudly, as if in a pagan temple, the second gong hummed throughout the house. And, hastily getting up from his seat, the gentleman from San Francisco pulled his collar even more with a tie, and his stomach with an open waistcoat, put on a tuxedo, straightened his cuffs, looked at himself in the mirror once more ... This Carmella, swarthy, with feigned eyes, like a mulatto , in a flowery outfit, where prevails Orange color must be dancing unusually, he thought. And, cheerfully leaving his room and walking along the carpet to the next, his wife, he loudly asked if they were soon? - In five minutes! - a girl's voice answered loudly and already cheerfully from behind the door. “Very well,” said the gentleman from San Francisco. And he slowly walked down the corridors and stairs, covered with red carpets, down, looking for a reading room. Oncoming servants huddled against him against the wall, and he walked, as if not noticing them. An old woman, already stooped for dinner, with milky hair, but low-cut, in a light gray silk dress, hurried ahead of him with all her might, but funny, like a chicken, and he easily overtook her. Near glass doors in the dining room, where everyone was already assembled and began to eat, he stopped in front of a table cluttered with boxes of cigars and Egyptian cigarettes, took a large manilla and threw three lira on the table; on the winter veranda he casually glanced through the open window: from the darkness a gentle air blew on him, he imagined the top of an old palm tree, spreading its fronds across the stars, which seemed gigantic, he heard the distant steady sound of the sea ... In the reading room, cozy, quiet and bright only above the tables A gray-haired German, resembling Ibsen, in round silver glasses and with crazy, astonished eyes, was rustling the newspapers while standing. After examining him coldly, the gentleman from San Francisco sat down in a deep leather armchair in the corner, near a lamp under a green cap, put on his pince-nez and, twitching his head from the collar that choked him, covered himself with a sheet of newspaper. He skimmed through the titles of some articles, read a few lines about the never-ending Balkan war, turned over the newspaper with a habitual gesture, when suddenly the lines flashed in front of him with a glassy sheen, his neck tensed up, his eyes bulged, his pince-nez flew off his nose ... He rushed forward, wanted to take a breath of air - and groaned wildly; his lower jaw fell off, illuminating his entire mouth with gold fillings, his head fell on his shoulder and rolled around, his shirt chest bulged out like a box - and his whole body, wriggling, raising the carpet with his heels, crawled to the floor, desperately fighting with someone. If there hadn’t been a German in the reading room, they would have quickly and deftly managed to hush up this terrible incident in the hotel, instantly, in reverse, would have dashed off by the legs and head of the gentleman from San Francisco to hell - and not a single soul from the guests would have known what he had done He. But the German broke out of the reading room with a cry, he aroused the whole house, the whole dining room. And many jumped up for food, many, turning pale, ran to the reading room, in all languages it was heard: “What, what happened?” - and no one answered plainly, no one understood anything, because people still marvel even more than anything and do not want to believe in death for anything. The host rushed about from one guest to another, trying to delay the fleeing and calm them down with hasty assurances that this was so, a trifle, a small swoon with one gentleman from San Francisco ... But no one listened to him, many saw how lackeys and bellboys tore off this gentleman's tie, waistcoat, crumpled tuxedo, and even for some reason ballroom shoes with black silk legs with flat feet. And he still fought. He persistently struggled with death, for no reason did he want to succumb to it, which had so unexpectedly and rudely fallen on him. He shook his head, wheezed as if stabbed to death, rolled his eyes like a drunk... a daughter, with loose hair, bare-breasted, lifted up by a corset, then a large and already fully dressed up for dinner wife, whose mouth was round with horror ... But then he stopped shaking his head. A quarter of an hour later everything was somehow in order in the hotel. But the evening was irreparably ruined. Some, returning to the dining room, finished their dinner, but silently, with offended faces, while the owner approached one person after another, shrugging his shoulders in impotent and decent irritation, feeling guilty without guilt, assuring everyone that he perfectly understands “how unpleasant it is,” and giving the word that he will take “every measure in his power” to eliminate the trouble; the tarantella had to be canceled, the extra electricity was turned off, most of the guests went to the city, to the pub, and it became so quiet that the knock of the clock in the lobby was clearly audible, where only one parrot woodenly muttered something, fiddling before going to bed in his cage, managing to fall asleep with with an absurdly raised paw on the upper pole... The gentleman from San Francisco was lying on a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen blankets, on which a single horn shone dimly from the ceiling. An ice pack hung down on his wet and cold forehead. The gray, already dead face gradually cooled, the hoarse gurgling that escaped from the open mouth, illuminated by the reflection of gold, weakened. It was no longer the gentleman from San Francisco—he was no longer there—but someone else. Wife, daughter, doctor, servants stood and looked at him. Suddenly, what they expected and feared happened - the wheezing stopped. And slowly, slowly, in front of everyone's eyes, pallor flowed over the face of the deceased, and his features began to thin, brighten ... The owner entered. "Già é morto," the doctor whispered to him. The owner shrugged his shoulders with an impassive face. Mrs., with tears quietly rolling down her cheeks, went up to him and timidly said that now it was necessary to transfer the deceased to his room. “Oh no, madam,” the owner objected hastily, correctly, but already without any courtesy and not in English, but in French, who was not at all interested in those trifles that those who came from San Francisco could now leave in his cashier. “It is absolutely impossible, madam,” he said, and added in explanation that he greatly appreciated these apartments, that if he granted her desire, then all of Capri would know about it and tourists would begin to avoid them. Miss, who had been looking at him strangely all the time, sat down on a chair and, covering her mouth with a handkerchief, began to sob. Mrs.'s tears immediately dried up, her face flushed. She raised her voice, began to demand, speaking her own language and still not believing that respect for them was completely lost. The owner, with polite dignity, rebuked her: if Madame does not like the order of the hotel, he does not dare to detain her; and firmly stated that the body should be taken out this very day at dawn, that the police had already been given to know that their representative would immediately appear and carry out the necessary formalities ... Can even a simple ready-made coffin be obtained in Capri, Madame asks? Unfortunately, no, in no case, and no one will have time to do it. He'll have to do something else... Soda English water, for example, he gets in big and long boxes... partitions can be removed from such a box... The whole hotel was asleep at night. They opened the window in room forty-three—it looked out into a corner of the garden, where a stunted banana grew under a high stone wall studded along the ridge with broken glass—they put out the electricity, locked the door, and left. The dead man remained in the dark, blue stars looked at him from the sky, a cricket sang with sad carelessness on the wall ... In the dimly lit corridor, two maids were sitting on the windowsill, mending something. Luigi entered with a bunch of dresses on his arm, in shoes. — Pronto? (Ready?) - he asked in a worried whisper, pointing with his eyes at the terrible door at the end of the corridor. And gently shook free hand in that direction. — Partenza! he shouted in a whisper, as if seeing off a train, what is usually shouted in Italy at the stations when trains depart, - and the maids, choking on soundless laughter, fell their heads on each other's shoulders. Then, bouncing softly, he ran up to the very door, knocked lightly on it, and, tilting his head to one side, in an undertone respectfully asked:— Íà sonato, signore? And, squeezing his throat, thrusting out his lower jaw, creakingly, slowly and sadly answered himself, as if from behind a door: Yes, come in... And at dawn, when it turned white outside the window of number forty-three and the damp wind rustled the torn banana leaves, when the blue morning sky rose and stretched over the island of Capri and turned golden against the sun rising behind the distant blue mountains of Italy, the clean and clear peak of Monte Solaro, when the masons went to work, fixing the paths for tourists on the island - they brought a long box of soda water to the forty-third room. Soon he became very heavy - and firmly crushed the knees of the junior porter, who drove him very fast in a one-horse cab along a white highway, winding back and forth along the slopes of Capri, among stone fences and vineyards, all the way down and down to the sea. The driver, a scrawny man with red eyes, in an old short-sleeved jacket and knocked-down shoes, was hungover - he played dice in the trattoria all night - and kept whipping his strong horse, dressed in Sicilian style, hastily rattling all sorts of bells on a bridle in colored woolen pompoms and on the points of a high copper saddle, with a yard-long bird feather shaking as it runs, sticking out of a trimmed bang. The driver was silent, depressed by his dissoluteness, his vices, by the fact that he had lost to the last penny at night. But the morning was fresh, in such air, in the midst of the sea, under the morning sky, the hop soon disappears and carelessness soon returns to the person, but the driver was consoled by the unexpected income that some gentleman from San Francisco gave him, shaking his dead head in a box behind him ... The steamer, lying far below like a beetle, on the tender and bright blue that fills the Gulf of Naples so thickly and so full, was already giving its last whistles - and they cheerfully echoed throughout the island, every bend of which, every crest, each stone was so clearly visible from everywhere, as if there was no air at all. Near the pier, the junior porter was overtaken by the senior porter, who was speeding in a car with Miss and Mrs, pale, with eyes that had fallen from tears and a sleepless night. And ten minutes later the steamboat again rustled with water and again ran to Sorrento, to Castellammare, forever taking away the family from San Francisco from Capri ... And peace and tranquility again settled on the island. On this island two thousand years ago there lived a man who was unspeakably vile in satisfying his lust and for some reason had power over millions of people, who inflicted cruelty on them beyond measure, and humanity will forever remember him, and many, many from all over the world come to watch on the remains of the stone house where he lived on one of the steepest slopes of the island. On this wonderful morning, everyone who had come to Capri for this very purpose was still sleeping in the hotels, although little mouse donkeys under red saddles were already being led to the entrances of the hotels, on which again, young and old Americans and American women, having woken up and ate, were to perch again today. , Germans and Germans, and after whom they again had to run along rocky paths, and all uphill, right up to the very top of Monte Tiberio, beggar Capri old women with sticks in veiny hands, in order to drive the donkeys with these sticks. Reassured by the fact that the dead old man from San Francisco, who was also going to go with them, but instead of only scaring them with a reminder of death, had already been sent to Naples, the travelers slept soundly, and the island was still quiet, the shops in the city were still closed . Only the market on a small square sold fish and herbs, and they were alone on it. simple people, among whom, as always, without doing anything, stood Lorenzo, a tall old boatman, a carefree reveler and a handsome man, famous throughout Italy, who more than once served as a model for many painters: he brought and already sold for a pittance two lobsters caught by him at night, rustling in the apron of the cook of the same hotel where the family from San Francisco spent the night, and now he could stand quietly until evening, looking around with regal habit, showing off with his tatters, a clay pipe and a red woolen beret pulled down on one ear. And along the cliffs of Monte Solaro, along the ancient Phoenician road carved into the rocks, along its stone steps, two Abruzzo mountaineers descended from Anacapri. One had a bagpipe under a leather cloak, a large goat fur with two pipes, the other had something like a wooden tong. They walked - and a whole country, joyful, beautiful, sunny, stretched under them: and the rocky humps of the island, which lay almost entirely at their feet, and that fabulous blue in which he swam, and shining morning vapors over the sea to the east, under the dazzling sun, which was already warming hotly, rising higher and higher, and the misty-azure, unsteady massifs of Italy, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which is powerless to express the human word. Halfway they slowed down: over the road, in the grotto of the rocky wall of Monte Solaro, all illuminated by the sun, all in its warmth and brilliance, stood in snow-white plaster robes and in a royal crown, golden-rusty from bad weather, the Mother of God, meek and merciful , with eyes raised to heaven, to the eternal and blessed abodes of her thrice-blessed son. They bared their heads - and naive and humbly joyful praises poured out to their sun, morning, to her, the immaculate intercessor of all those who suffer in this evil and beautiful world, and who was born from her womb in the cave of Bethlehem, in a poor shepherd's shelter, in the distant land of Judah .. . The body of the dead old man from San Francisco was returning home, to the grave, on the shores of the New World. Having experienced many humiliations, a lot of human inattention, after a week of wandering from one port shed to another, it finally landed again on the same famous ship on which it had been transported so recently, with such honor, to the Old World. But now they were already hiding him from the living - they lowered him deep into a black hold in a tarred coffin. And again, again, the ship went on its distant sea route. At night he sailed past the island of Capri, and his lights, slowly hiding in the dark sea, were sad for him who looked at them from the island. But there, on the ship, in the bright halls shining with chandeliers, there was, as usual, a crowded ball that night. He was on the second, and on the third night - again in the midst of a furious blizzard, sweeping over the ocean, humming like a funeral mass, and walking mournful from the silver foam mountains. The countless fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible behind the snow to the Devil, who was watching from the rocks of Gibraltar, from the stony gates of the two worlds, behind the ship leaving into the night and blizzard. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but so was the ship, many-tiered, many-trumpeted, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart. A blizzard beat on his tackle and wide-mouthed pipes, whitened from snow, but he was steadfast, firm, majestic and terrible. On its uppermost roof, among the snow whirlwinds, those cozy, dimly lit chambers rose alone, where, immersed in a sensitive and anxious slumber, its overweight driver, resembling a pagan idol, sat over the whole ship. He heard heavy howls and furious squeals of a siren choked by a storm, but reassured himself with the proximity of that, ultimately for him the most incomprehensible, what was behind his wall: that armored cabin, which was constantly filled with a mysterious rumble, trembling and dry crackling. blue lights flashing and bursting around a pale-faced telegraph operator with a metal half-hoop on his head. At the very bottom, in the underwater womb of the Atlantis, the thousand-pound bulks of boilers and all sorts of other machines oozed dully with steel, steam whistled and oozed with boiling water and oil, that kitchen, heated from the bottom by infernal furnaces, in which the movement of the ship was brewing - terrible in their concentration bubbling forces transmitted into its very keel, into an infinitely long dungeon, into a round tunnel, faintly illuminated by electricity, where slowly, with rigor overwhelming the human soul, a gigantic shaft rotated in its oily bed, like a living monster stretching in this tunnel, similar to a vent. . And the middle of the "Atlantis", its dining rooms and ballrooms poured out light and joy, buzzed with the dialect of a smart crowd, fragrant with fresh flowers, sang with a string orchestra. And again writhing painfully and sometimes convulsively collided among this crowd, among the brilliance of lights, silks, diamonds and naked female shoulders, a thin and flexible pair of hired lovers: a sinfully modest girl with lowered eyelashes, with an innocent hairstyle, and a tall young man with black, as if with glued hair, pale with powder, in the most elegant patent leather shoes, in a narrow tailcoat with long tails - a handsome man, like a huge leech. And no one knew either what this couple had long been bored with pretending to suffer their blissful torment to shamelessly sad music, nor what stands deep, deep under them, at the bottom of the dark hold, in the vicinity of the gloomy and sultry bowels of the ship, hard overcome the darkness, the ocean, the blizzard. .. October. 1915

gentleman from san francisco

Woe to you, Babylon, strong city

Apocalypse

A gentleman from San Francisco - no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri - went to the Old World for two whole years, with his wife and daughter, solely for the sake of entertainment.

He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to pleasure, to a long and comfortable journey, and who knows what else. For such confidence, he had the reason that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, he had just embarked on life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until that time, he had not lived, but only existed, though not badly, but still placing all his hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he ordered to work for him by the thousands, knew well what this meant! - and, finally, he saw that a lot had already been done, that he had almost caught up with those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged used to start enjoying life with a trip to Europe, to India, to Egypt. He did and he did the same. Of course, he wanted to reward himself first of all for the years of work; however, he was also happy for his wife and daughter. His wife has never been particularly impressionable, but all elderly American women are passionate travelers. And as for the daughter, an aged and slightly sickly girl, the journey was absolutely necessary for her - not to mention the health benefits, isn't there happy meetings in travel? Here sometimes you sit at the table or look at the frescoes next to the billionaire.

The route was developed by a gentleman from San Francisco extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of itinerant singers and what people at his age feel! especially subtly - with the love of young Neapolitan women, even if not entirely disinterested, he thought of holding a carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that time the most selective society flocks - the very one on which all the blessings of civilization depend: and the style of tuxedos , and the strength of thrones, and the declaration of wars, and the well-being of hotels - where some indulge with passion in automobile and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and fourth in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from the cages over the emerald lawn, against the background of the sea, the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately knock white lumps on the ground; he wanted to dedicate the beginning of March to Florence, to come to Rome to the passions of the Lord, to listen to the Miserere there; Venice, and Paris, and a bullfight in Seville, and swimming in the English Isles, and Athens, and Constantinople, and Palestine, and Egypt, and even Japan were included in his plans - of course, already on the way back ... And everything went first Great.

It was the end of November, and all the way to Gibraltar we had to sail now in icy haze, now in the middle of a storm with sleet; but sailed quite well. There were many passengers, the ship - the famous "Atlantis" - looked like a huge hotel with all the amenities - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper - and life on it proceeded very measuredly: they got up early, with trumpet sounds, abruptly resounding along the corridors even in that gloomy hour, when the dawn was so slow and unfriendly over the gray-green water desert, which was heavily agitated in the fog; having put on flannel pajamas, they drank coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then they sat down in the marble baths, did gymnastics, stimulating the appetite and feeling good, made daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; up to eleven o'clock it was supposed to walk briskly on the decks, breathing the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheffle board and other games to re-stimulate the appetite, and at eleven to refresh themselves with broth sandwiches; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; the next two hours were devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long chairs, on which travelers lay, covered with rugs, looking at the cloudy sky and at the foamy hillocks flashing overboard, or dozing sweetly; at five o'clock they, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea with biscuits; at seven they announced with trumpet signals what constituted the main goal of this entire existence, its crown ... And then the gentleman from San Francisco, rubbing his hands from a surge of vitality, hurried to his rich luxury cabin - to get dressed.

In the evenings, the floors of the Atlantis gaped in the darkness as if with countless fiery eyes, and a great many servants worked in the cooks, scullery and wine cellars. The ocean that went beyond the walls was terrible, but they did not think about it, firmly believing in the power over it of the commander, a red-haired man of monstrous size and weight, always as if sleepy, similar in his uniform, with wide gold stripes to a huge idol and very rarely appearing to people from his mysterious chambers; a siren on the forecastle kept screaming with hellish gloominess and squealing with furious malice, but few of the diners heard the siren - it was drowned out by the sounds of a beautiful string orchestra, exquisitely and tirelessly playing in a double-height marble hall, lined with velvet carpets, festively flooded with lights, overflowing with low-cut ladies and men in tailcoats and tuxedos, slender footmen and respectful maitre d's, among which one, the one who took orders only for wine, even walked around with a chain around his neck, like some kind of lord mayor. The tuxedo and starched underwear made the gentleman from San Francisco very young. Dry, short, oddly cut, but strongly tailored, polished to a gloss and moderately lively, he sat in the golden-pearl radiance of this hall behind a bottle of amber Joganisberg, behind glasses and goblets of the finest glass, behind a curly bouquet of hyacinths. There was something Mongol in his yellowish face with trimmed silver mustaches, his large teeth glittered with gold fillings, his strong bald head was old ivory. Richly, but according to the years, his wife was dressed, a woman large, wide and calm; complex, but light and transparent, with innocent frankness - a daughter, tall, thin, with magnificent hair, charmingly done up, with aromatic breath from violet cakes and with the most delicate pink pimples near the lips and between the shoulder blades, slightly powdered ... The dinner lasted more than an hour, and after dinner, dances opened in the ballroom, during which men - including, of course, the gentleman from San Francisco - with their legs up, decided the fate of nations on the basis of the latest stock exchange news, smoked up to raspberry redness on Havana cigars and drank liqueurs in a bar where Negroes in red coats served, with squirrels like peeled hard-boiled eggs. The ocean roared behind the wall in black mountains, the blizzard whistled strongly in the heavy gear, the steamer trembled all over, overcoming both it and these mountains, - as if with a plow, tearing apart their unsteady, now and then boiling up and high foamy tails huge masses, the siren, choked with mist, groaned in mortal anguish, the watchmen on their tower froze from the cold and went crazy from the unbearable strain of attention, to the gloomy and sultry bowels of the underworld, its last, ninth circle was like the underwater womb of a steamboat, - the one where the gigantic fireboxes, devouring with their red-hot mouths of heaps of coal, with a roar thrown into them, drenched in acrid, dirty sweat and waist-deep naked people, crimson from the flames; and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their legs on the arms of their chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs, floated in waves of spicy smoke, everything in the dance hall shone and poured out light, warmth and joy, couples either spun in waltzes, then bent into tango - and the music insistently, in a kind of sweet, shameless sadness, she prayed all about one thing, all about the same ... Among this brilliant crowd there was a certain great rich man, shaven, long, like a prelate, in an old-fashioned tailcoat, there was a famous Spanish writer, there was a universal beauty, there was an elegant couple in love, whom everyone watched with curiosity and who did not hide their happiness: he danced only with her, and everything came out with them so subtly, charmingly, that only one commander knew that this couple was hired by Lloyd to play love for good money and has long been floating on one ship or another.

In Gibraltar, everyone was happy with the sun, it was like early spring; a new passenger appeared on board the Atlantis, arousing general interest in himself - the crown prince of an Asian state, traveling incognito, a small man, all made of wood, broad-faced, narrow-eyed, wearing gold glasses, slightly unpleasant - because his large black mustache showed through his him, like a dead man, in general, sweet, simple and modest. The Mediterranean smelled of winter again, there was a large and flowery wave, like a peacock's tail, which, with a bright brilliance and a completely clear sky, was parted by a tramontana merrily and furiously flying towards. Then, on the second day, the sky began to turn pale, the horizon became foggy: the earth was approaching, Ischia, Capri appeared, through binoculars Naples, piled at the foot of something gray-gray, was already visible in lumps of sugar ... Many ladies and gentlemen had already put on light fur coats; unanswered, always in a whisper speaking Chinese fights, bow-legged teenagers with tar to toe braids and girlish thick eyelashes, gradually pulled blankets, canes, suitcases, travel bags up the stairs ... The daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco stood on the deck next to the prince, last night, by a lucky chance presented to her, she pretended to stare intently into the distance, where he pointed to her, explaining something, telling something hastily and quietly; he seemed like a boy among the others in stature, he was not at all good-looking and strange - glasses, a bowler hat, an English coat, and the hair of a rare mustache looked like a horse, the dark, thin skin on a flat face seemed to be stretched and as if slightly varnished - but the girl listened to him and from excitement did not understand what he was saying to her; her heart beat with an incomprehensible delight before him: everything, everything in him was different from the others - his dry hands, his clean skin, under which flowed ancient royal blood, even his European, quite simple, but as if especially neat clothes were fraught with an inexplicable charm. And the gentleman from San Francisco himself, in gray leggings on patent-leather boots, kept looking at the famous beauty standing near him, a tall, amazingly built blonde with eyes painted in the latest Parisian fashion, holding a tiny, bent, mangy dog on a silver chain and talking all the time. with her. And the daughter, in some kind of vague awkwardness, tried not to notice him.

He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, forestalling his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, dragged his things, called for him porters, delivered him chests in hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was in navigation, so it should have been in Naples. Naples grew and approached; the musicians, shining with copper wind instruments, already crowded on the deck and suddenly deafened everyone with the triumphant sounds of the march, the giant commander, in full dress, appeared on his bridges and, like a merciful pagan god, waved his hand in greeting to the passengers - and to the gentleman from San Francisco, just like everyone else, it seemed that it was for him alone that the march of proud America was thundering, that it was his commander who greeted him with a safe arrival. And when the Atlantis finally entered the harbor, rolled up to the embankment with its multi-storey bulk dotted with people, and the gangway rumbled - how many porters and their assistants in caps with gold galloons, how many all sorts of commission agents, whistling boys and hefty ragamuffins with packs colored postcards in their hands rushed to meet him with an offer of services! And he grinned at these ragamuffins, going to the car of the very hotel where the prince could also stay, and calmly spoke through his teeth in English, then in Italian:

Life in Naples immediately went on as usual: early in the morning - breakfast in a gloomy dining room, cloudy, unpromising sky and a crowd of guides at the lobby door; then the first smiles of the warm pinkish sun, the view from the high-hanging balcony of Vesuvius, shrouded to the foot in radiant morning vapors, of the silver-pearl ripples of the bay and the thin outline of Capri on the horizon, of the tiny donkeys in gigs running down the sticky embankment and of the detachments small soldiers marching somewhere with cheerful and defiant music; then - exit to the car and slow movement along the crowded narrow and gray corridors of the streets, among the tall, multi-windowed houses, viewing the deadly clean and evenly, pleasantly, but boringly, snow-lit, museums or cold, wax-smelling churches, in which everywhere one and the same: a majestic entrance, covered with a heavy leather curtain, and inside - a huge emptiness, silence, quiet lights of the menorah, reddening in the depths on a throne decorated with lace, a lonely old woman among dark wooden desks, slippery coffin slabs underfoot and someone " Descent from the Cross”, certainly famous; at one o'clock in the afternoon on Mount San Martino, where many people of the very first class gather by noon and where one day the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco almost became ill: it seemed to her that a prince was sitting in the hall, although she already knew from the newspapers, that he is in Rome; at five o'clock in the hotel, in a smart salon, where it is so warm from the carpets and blazing fireplaces; and there again preparations for dinner - again the powerful, authoritative rumble of a gong on all floors, again strings of low-necked ladies rustling down the stairs with silks and reflected in the mirrors, again the wide and hospitable hall of the dining room, and the red jackets of musicians on the stage, and a black crowd of lackeys near head waiter, with extraordinary skill pouring thick pink soup on plates ... Dinners were again so plentiful and foods, and wines, and mineral waters, and sweets, and fruits, that by eleven o'clock in the evening maids carried rubber bladders with hot water to all rooms to warm stomachs.

However, December turned out to be not entirely successful that year: the porters, when they talked to them about the weather, only raised their shoulders guiltily, muttering that they would not remember such a year, although for more than a year they had to mutter this and refer to the fact that “ something terrible is happening everywhere ”: unprecedented downpours and storms on the Riviera, snow in Athens, Etna is also all covered and shines at night, tourists from Palermo, fleeing the cold, scatter ... The morning sun deceived every day: from noon it invariably turned gray and began sow rain, but it’s getting thicker and colder: then the palm trees at the entrance of the hotel shone with tin, the city seemed especially dirty and cramped, the museums were too monotonous, the cigar butts of fat cabbies in rubber capes fluttering in the wind with wings - unbearably smelly, the vigorous clapping of their whips over with thin-necked nags obviously false, the shoes of the gentlemen who sweep the tram rails are terrible, and the women splashing in the mud, in the rain, with black open heads, are ugly short-legged; about the dampness and the stench of rotten fish from the foaming sea near the embankment and there is nothing to say. The gentleman and lady from San Francisco began to quarrel in the morning; their daughter either went about pale, with a headache, then came to life, admired everything and was then both sweet and beautiful: beautiful were those tender, complex feelings that awakened in her meeting with an ugly man in whom unusual blood flowed, for after all, in the end - in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter what exactly awakens the girl’s soul - is it money, is it fame, is it nobility of the family ... Everyone assured that it’s not at all the same in Sorrento, on Capri - it’s warmer, and sunny, and lemons bloom , and morals are more honest, and wine is more natural. And so the family from San Francisco decided to go with all their chests to Capri, so that, after examining it, walking on the stones on the site of the palaces of Tiberius, visiting the fabulous caves of the Azure Grotto and listening to the Abruzzo bagpipers, wandering around the island for a whole month before Christmas and singing praises to the Virgin Mary, to settle in Sorrento.

On the day of departure - very memorable for the family from San Francisco! - even in the morning there was no sun. A heavy fog hid Vesuvius to its very foundation, low gray over the leaden swell of the sea. Capri was not visible at all - as if he had never existed in the world. And the little steamboat heading towards it was so swaying from side to side that the family from San Francisco was lying in layers on the sofas in the miserable wardroom of this steamboat, wrapping their legs in rugs and closing their eyes from dizziness. Mrs. suffered, as she thought, most of all; she was overwhelmed several times, it seemed to her that she was dying, and the maid, who came running to her with a basin, - for many years, day after day, swaying on these waves in heat and cold, and yet tireless, - only laughed. Miss was terribly pale and held a slice of lemon in her teeth. Mister, who was lying on his back, in a wide coat and a large cap, did not open his jaws all the way; his face became dark, his mustache white, his head ached severely: the last days, thanks to bad weather, he drank too much in the evenings and admired too much "living pictures" in some brothels. And the rain fell on the rattling glass, it flowed from them on the sofas, the wind howled at the masts and sometimes, together with the oncoming wave, laid the steamer completely on its side, and then something rolled down with a roar. At the stops, at Castellammare, at Sorrento, it was a little easier; but even here it waved terribly, the coast with all its cliffs, gardens, pines, pink and white hotels and smoky, curly-green mountains flew up and down outside the window, as if on a swing; boats banged against the walls, third-graders screamed excitedly, somewhere, as if crushed, a child choked on a cry, a damp wind blew at the doors, and, not ceasing for a minute, piercingly screamed from a rocking barge under the flag of the Royal Hotel, a burry boy who lured travelers : "Kgoya-al! Hotel Kgoya-al!..” And the gentleman from San Francisco, feeling himself as he should be - quite an old man - was already thinking with longing and malice about all these "Royal", "Splendid", "Excelsior" and about those greedy, garlic-smelling little people called Italians; once during a stop, opening his eyes and rising from the sofa, he saw under a rocky sheer a bunch of such miserable, moldy stone houses stuck to each other near the water, near the boats, near some rags, tins and brown nets, that, remembering that this was the real Italy he had come to enjoy, he felt despair... Finally, already at dusk, the island began to move with its blackness, as if drilled through with red lights at the foot, the wind became softer, warmer, more fragrant, like black oil, golden boas flowed from the lanterns of the pier ... Then suddenly an anchor thundered and splashed into the water, furious cries of boatmen rushed from everywhere - and immediately it became easier on the soul, the wardroom shone brighter, I wanted to eat, drink, smoke, move ... Ten minutes later, the family from San Francisco got into a large barge, fifteen minutes later stepped on the stones of the embankment, and then got into a light trailer and buzzed up the slope, among the stakes in the vineyards, dilapidated stone fences and wet, clumsy, covered in some places straw canopies of orange trees, with a gleam of orange fruits and thick glossy foliage, gliding downhill, past the open windows of the trailer ... The land in Italy smells sweet after rain, and each of its islands has its own special smell!

The island of Capri was damp and dark tonight. But then he came to life for a moment, lit up in some places. On the top of the mountain, on the platform of the funicular, there was again a crowd of those whose duty it was to worthily receive the gentleman from San Francisco. There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention - a few Russians who settled in Capri, slovenly and absent-minded, with glasses, beards, with turned up collars of old coats, and a company of long-legged, round-headed German youths in Tyrolean suits and with canvas bags over their shoulders. , who do not need anyone's services, feel at home everywhere and are not at all generous in spending. The gentleman from San Francisco, who calmly avoided both of them, was immediately noticed. He and his ladies were hurriedly helped out, they ran ahead of him, showing the way, he was again surrounded by boys and those hefty Capri women who carry suitcases and chests of respectable tourists on their heads. There was a pounding on a small, like an opera square, over which an electric ball was swaying from a damp wind, their wooden footstools, whistling like a bird and somersaulting over their heads, a crowd of boys - and how a gentleman from San Francisco walked among them to some medieval an arch under the houses merged into one, behind which a ringing street led slopingly to the hotel entrance shining ahead with a swirl of palm trees over flat roofs to the left and blue stars in the black sky above, in front. And again it seemed that it was in honor of the guests from San Francisco that a damp stone town on a rocky island in the Mediterranean came to life, that it was they who made the owner of the hotel so happy and hospitable that only a Chinese gong was waiting for them, howling on all floors of the gathering for dinner as soon as they entered the lobby.

The gentleman bowing politely and gracefully, the elegant young man who met them, struck the San Francisco gentleman for a moment: looking at him, the San Francisco gentleman suddenly remembered that this night, among other confusion that besieged him in a dream, he saw this particular gentleman, exactly the same as this one, in the same business card with round edges and with the same mirror-combed head.

Surprised, he almost stopped. But since not even the mustard seed of any so-called mystical feelings remained in his soul for a long time, his surprise immediately faded: he jokingly told his wife and daughter about this strange coincidence of dream and reality, walking along the corridor of the hotel. His daughter, however, looked at him with alarm at that moment: her heart was suddenly gripped by melancholy, a feeling of terrible loneliness on this alien, dark island ...

A high-ranking person who was visiting Capri has just departed - Flight XVII. And the guests from San Francisco were given the very apartments that he occupied. They were assigned the most beautiful and skillful maid, a Belgian, with a thin and hard waist from a corset and in a starched cap in the form of a small jagged crown, the most prominent of the footmen, a coal-black, fire-eyed Sicilian, and the most efficient bellhop, small and plump Luigi, who has changed many such places in his lifetime. And a minute later, a French maitre d' lightly knocked on the door of the gentleman's room from San Francisco, who had come to find out if the gentlemen would have dinner, and in the case of an affirmative answer, in which, however, there was no doubt, to report that today lobster, roast beef, asparagus, pheasants and so on. Paul was still walking under the gentleman from San Francisco—that wretched Italian steamboat rocked him like that—but he slowly, with his own hand, though unaccustomed and not quite deftly, closed the window that slammed at the head waiter’s entrance, from which smelled the smell of the distant Kitchen and wet flowers in the garden, and with leisurely distinctness answered that they would dine, that a table for them should be placed away from the doors, in the very back of the hall, that they would drink local wine, and the head waiter echoed his every word in a wide variety of intonations, which, however, had only the meaning that there is not and cannot be any doubt about the correctness of the desires of the gentleman from San Francisco and that everything will be executed exactly. Finally, he bowed his head and delicately asked:

All sir?

And, having received a slow “yes” in response, he added that today they had a tarantella in their lobby - Carmella and Giuseppe, famous tourists throughout Italy and the whole world, are dancing.

I saw her on postcards,” said the gentleman from San Francisco in an expressionless voice. “And this Giuseppe is her husband?”

Cousin, sir, the head waiter replied.

And after a pause, after thinking something, but without saying anything, the gentleman from San Francisco dismissed him with a nod of his head.

And then he again began to get ready for the wedding: he turned on electricity everywhere, filled all the mirrors with the reflection of light and brilliance, furniture and open chests, began to shave, wash and call every minute, while other impatient calls rushed and interrupted him along the entire corridor - from the rooms of his wife and daughter. And Luigi, in his red apron, with the ease characteristic of many fat men, making grimaces of horror that amused the maids who ran past with tiled buckets in their hands to tears, rolled head over heels at the bell and, knocking on the door with his knuckles, with feigned timidity, with idiocy respectfully asked:

And from behind the door came a slow and creaky, insultingly polite voice:

What did the gentleman from San Francisco feel, what did he think on this so significant evening for him? He, like anyone who has experienced a toss, only really wanted to eat, dreamed with pleasure of the first spoonful of soup, the first sip of wine, and performed the usual business of the toilet even in some excitement, which left no time for feelings and reflections.

Having shaved, washed, properly inserted several teeth, he, standing in front of the mirrors, moistened and pinched with brushes in a silver frame the remnants of pearl hair around a swarthy-yellow skull, pulled on a strong senile body with a waist plump from enhanced nutrition, and on dry legs with flat feet - black silk stockings and ballroom shoes, crouching, he put in order black trousers and a snow-white shirt with a protruding chest, which were highly pulled up with silk straps, set the cufflinks in the shiny cuffs and began to suffer with catching under the hard collar of the cufflinks of the neck. The floor was still swaying under him, his fingertips were very painful, the cufflink sometimes bit hard on the flabby skin in the recess under the Adam's apple, but he was persistent and, finally, with eyes shining from tension, all gray from the excessively tight collar that squeezed his throat, still finished the job - and in exhaustion sat down in front of the dressing table, all reflected in it and repeated in other mirrors.

Oh, it's terrible! - he muttered, lowering his strong bald head and not trying to understand, not thinking what exactly was terrible, then habitually and attentively looked at his short fingers, with arthritic hardening on the joints, their large and protruding almond-colored nails and repeated with conviction: - This is terrible. …

But then, loudly, as if in a pagan temple, a second gong rang throughout the house And, hastily getting up, the gentleman from San Francisco pulled his collar even more with a tie, and his stomach with an open waistcoat, put on a tuxedo, straightened his cuffs, once again looked at himself in the mirror . “This Carmella, swarthy, with feigned eyes, resembling a mulatto, in a flowery outfit, where orange color predominates, must be dancing unusually,” he thought, and, cheerfully leaving his room and walking across the carpet to the neighboring wife, loudly asked if they were soon?

In five minutes! - a girl's voice answered loudly and already cheerfully from behind the door.

Great, said the gentleman from San Francisco.

And he slowly walked down the corridors and stairs, covered with red carpets, down, looking for a reading room. Oncoming servants huddled against him against the wall, and he walked, as if not noticing them. An old woman late for dinner, already stooped, with milky hair, but low-cut, in a light gray silk dress, hurried with all her might, but funny, like a chicken, and he easily overtook her Near the glass doors of the dining room, where everyone was already assembled and began to eat, he stopped in front of a table cluttered with boxes of cigars and Egyptian cigarettes, took a large manilla and threw three lire on the table; on the winter veranda he casually glanced out the open window: from the darkness a gentle air blew on him, he imagined the top of an old palm tree, spreading its fronds across the stars, which seemed gigantic, he heard the distant steady sound of the sea ... In the reading room, cozy, quiet and bright only above the tables, standing a grey-haired German resembling Ibsen, in round silver glasses and with crazy, astounded eyes, was rustling through the newspapers. his head from the collar that was choking him, covered himself with a sheet of newspaper. He quickly skimmed through the titles of some articles, read a few lines about the never-ending Balkan war, turned over the newspaper with a habitual gesture, when suddenly the lines flashed in front of him with a glassy sheen, his neck tensed up, his eyes bulged, his pince-nez flew off his nose ... He rushed forward, wanted to take a sip air - and wildly wheezed; his lower jaw fell off, illuminating his entire mouth with gold fillings, his head fell on his shoulder and rolled around, his shirt chest bulged out like a box - and his whole body, wriggling, raising the carpet with his heels, crawled to the floor, desperately fighting with someone.

If there hadn’t been a German in the reading room, they would have quickly and deftly managed to hush up this terrible incident in the hotel, instantly, in reverse, they would have dashed off by the legs and head of the gentleman from San Francisco to hell - and not a single soul from the guests would have known what they had done He. But the German burst out of the reading room with a cry, he aroused the whole house, the whole dining room, and many jumped up for food, overturning chairs, many, turning pale, ran to the reading room, in all languages it was heard: “What, what happened?” - and no one answered plainly, no one understood anything, because people still marvel even more than anything and do not want to believe in death for anything. The host rushed from one guest to another, trying to delay the fleeing and calm them down with hasty assurances that this was so, a trifle, a small swoon with one gentleman from San Francisco ... But no one listened to him, many saw how lackeys and bellboys tore off this gentleman a tie, a waistcoat, a crumpled tuxedo, and even for some reason ballroom shoes with black silk legs with flat feet. And he still fought. He persistently struggled with death, did not want to succumb to it for anything, right. Suddenly and rudely fell on him. He shook his head, wheezed, as if stabbed to death, rolled his eyes like a drunk ... When they hurriedly carried him in and laid him on the bed in room forty-three - the smallest, worst, dampest and coldest, at the end of the lower corridor - his daughter came running, with her hair loose, in a bonnet open, with a bare chest raised by a corset, then a big, heavy wife, already completely dressed up for dinner, whose mouth was round with horror ... But then he stopped shaking his head.

A quarter of an hour later everything was somehow in order in the hotel. But the evening was irreparably ruined. Some, returning to the dining room, finished their dinner, but silently, with offended faces, while the owner approached one person after another, shrugging his shoulders in impotent and decent irritation, feeling guilty without guilt, assuring everyone that he perfectly understands “how unpleasant it is,” and giving the word that he will take “every measure in his power” to eliminate the trouble; the tarantella had to be canceled, the excess electricity was turned off, most of the guests went to the pub, and it became so quiet that the ticking of the clock in the lobby was clearly audible, where only one parrot woodenly muttered something while fiddling in his cage before going to bed, managing to fall asleep with the ridiculously raised up on the top a pole with a paw... A gentleman from San Francisco was lying on a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen blankets, on which a single horn shone dimly from the ceiling. An ice pack hung down on his wet and cold forehead. The gray, already dead face gradually cooled, the hoarse gurgling that escaped from the open mouth, illuminated by the reflection of gold, weakened. It was no longer the gentleman from San Francisco - he was no longer there - but someone else. Wife, daughter, doctor, servants stood and looked at him. Suddenly, what they expected and feared happened - the wheezing stopped. And slowly, slowly, in front of everyone's eyes, pallor flowed over the face of the deceased, and his features began to thin, brighten, - a beauty that had long been fitting for him.

The owner entered. "Gia e morto," the doctor told him in a whisper. The owner shrugged his shoulders with an impassive face. Mrs., with tears quietly rolling down her cheeks, went up to him and timidly said that now it was necessary to transfer the deceased to his room.

Oh no, madam, - hastily, correctly, but already without any courtesy, and not in English, but in French, the owner objected, who was not at all interested in those trifles that visitors from San Francisco could now leave in his cashier. “It is absolutely impossible, madam,” he said, and added in explanation that he greatly appreciated these apartments, that if he granted her desire, then all of Capri would know about it and tourists would begin to avoid them.

Miss, who had been looking at him strangely all the time, sat down on a chair and, covering her mouth with a handkerchief, began to sob. Mrs.'s tears immediately dried up, her face flushed. She raised her tone, began to demand, speaking in her own language and still not believing that respect for them was finally lost. The owner, with polite dignity, rebuked her: if Madame does not like the order of the hotel, he does not dare to detain her; and firmly stated that the body should be taken out this very day at dawn, that the police had already been given to know that their representative would immediately appear and carry out the necessary formalities ... Is it possible to get at least a simple ready-made coffin in Capri, Madame asks? Unfortunately, no, in no case, and no one will have time to do it. He'll have to do something else... Soda English water, for example, he gets in big and long boxes... partitions can be removed from such a box...

The whole hotel was asleep at night. They opened the window in the forty-third room - it looked out into the corner of the garden, where a stunted banana grew under a high stone wall, studded along the ridge with broken glass - they put out the electricity, locked the door with a key and left. The dead man remained in the dark, blue stars looked at him from the sky, a cricket sang with sad carelessness in the wall ... In the dimly lit corridor, two maids sat on the windowsill, darning something. Luigi entered with a bunch of dresses on his arm, in shoes.

Pronto? (Ready?) - he asked anxiously in a ringing whisper, pointing with his eyes at the terrible door at the end of the corridor. He waved his free hand lightly in that direction. - Partenza! - he shouted in a whisper, as if seeing off a train, what is usually shouted in Italy at the stations when trains depart, - and the maids, choking on soundless laughter, fell their heads on each other's shoulders.

Then, bouncing softly, he ran up to the very door, knocked lightly on it, and, tilting his head to one side, in an undertone, respectfully asked:

On sonato, signore?

And, squeezing his throat, thrusting out his lower jaw, creakingly, slowly and sadly answered himself, as if from behind a door:

Yes, come in…

And at dawn, when it turned white outside the window of number forty-three and the damp wind rustled the torn banana leaves, when the blue morning sky rose and stretched over the island of Capri and turned golden against the sun rising behind the distant blue mountains of Italy, the clean and clear peak of Monte Solaro, when the masons went to work, fixing the paths for tourists on the island, - they brought a long box of soda water to the forty-third room. Soon he became very heavy - and firmly crushed the knees of the junior porter, who drove him very fast in a one-horse cab along a white highway, winding back and forth along the slopes of Capri, among stone fences and vineyards, all the way down and down to the sea. The driver, a scrawny man with red eyes, in an old short-sleeved jacket and knocked-down shoes, was hungover - he played dice all night in the trattoria - and kept whipping his strong horse, dressed in Sicilian style, hastily rattling all sorts of bells on a bridle in colored woolen pompoms and on the points of a high copper saddle, with a yard-long bird feather shaking as it runs, sticking out of a trimmed bang. The driver was silent, depressed by his dissoluteness, his vices, by the fact that he had lost every last penny of all those coppers with which his pockets were full during the night. But the morning was fresh, in such air, in the midst of the sea, under the morning sky, the hop soon disappears and carelessness soon returns to the person, but the driver was consoled by the unexpected income that some gentleman from San Francisco gave him, shaking his dead head in a box behind him ... The steamboat, lying far below like a beetle, on the tender and bright blue of which the Gulf of Naples is poured so thickly and completely, was already giving its last whistles - and they cheerfully echoed throughout the island, every bend of which, every ridge, every stone was so clearly visible from everywhere, as if there was no air at all. Near the pier, the younger porter was overtaken by the older one, who was speeding in the car with Miss and Mrs., pale eyes with tears and a sleepless night. And ten minutes later the steamboat again rustled with water and again ran to Sorrento, to Castellammare, forever taking away the family from San Francisco from Capri ... And peace and tranquility again settled on the island.

On this island, two thousand years ago, there lived a man who was completely entangled in his cruel and dirty deeds, who for some reason took power over millions of people and who, himself confused by the senselessness of this power and fear that someone would kill him from around the corner, did cruelty beyond all measure - and humanity will forever remember him, and those who, in their totality, are just as incomprehensible and, in essence, just as cruel as he, now rule the world, from all over the world come to look at the remains of the stone house where he lived on one of the steepest slopes of the island. On this wonderful morning, everyone who had come to Capri for this very purpose was still sleeping in the hotels, although little mouse donkeys under red saddles were already being led to the entrances of the hotels, on which again, young and old Americans and American women, having woken up and ate, were to perch again today. , Germans and Germans, and after whom they again had to run along stony paths, and all uphill, right up to the very top of Monte Tiberio, impoverished old Capri women with sticks in their sinewy hands. Reassured by the fact that the dead old man from San Francisco, who was also going to go with them, but instead of only scaring them with a reminder of death, had already been sent to Naples, the travelers slept soundly, and the island was still quiet, the shops in the city were still closed . Only the market in a small square traded - fish and greens, and there were only ordinary people among whom, as always, without any business, stood Lorenzo, a tall old boatman, a carefree reveler and a handsome man, famous throughout Italy, who more than once served as a model many painters: he brought and already sold for a song two lobsters he had caught at night, rustling in the apron of the cook of the very hotel where the family from San Francisco spent the night, and now he could calmly stand until evening, glancing around with regal habit, showing off his rags , a clay pipe and a red woolen beret, lowered over one ear. And along the cliffs of Monte Solaro, along the ancient Phoenician road carved into the rocks, along its stone steps, two Abruzzo mountaineers descended from Anacapri. One, under a leather cloak, had a bagpipe - a large goat fur with two pipes, the other - something like a wooden tong. They walked - and a whole country, joyful, beautiful, sunny, stretched under them: and the rocky humps of the island, which lay almost entirely at their feet, and that fabulous blue in which he swam, and the shining morning vapors over the sea to the east, under the dazzling sun, which was already warming hotly, rising higher and higher, and the misty-azure, unsteady massifs of Italy, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which is powerless to express the human word. Halfway they slowed down: over the road, in the grotto of the rocky wall of Monte Solaro, all illuminated by the sun, all in its warmth and brilliance, stood in snow-white plaster robes and in a royal crown, golden-rusty from bad weather, the Mother of God, meek and merciful , with eyes raised to heaven, to the eternal and blessed abodes of her thrice-blessed son. They bared their heads, put their tarsins to their lips - and naive and humbly joyful praises poured out to their sun, to the morning, to her, the immaculate intercessor of all those who suffer in this evil and beautiful world, and who was born from her womb in the cave of Bethlehem, in a poor shepherd's shelter, in the distant land of Judah...

The body of the dead old man from San Francisco was returning home, to the grave, on the shores of the New World. Having experienced many humiliations, a lot of human inattention, after a week of space from one port warehouse to another, it finally landed again on the same famous ship on which so recently, with such honor, they carried it to the Old World. But now they were already hiding him from the living - they lowered him deep into a black hold in a tarred coffin. And again, again, the ship went on its distant sea route. At night he sailed past the island of Capri, and his lights, slowly hiding in the dark sea, were sad for those who looked at them from the island. But there, on the ship, in bright halls shining with chandeliers and marble, there was, as usual, a crowded ball this night.

He was on the second and on the third night - again in the midst of a furious blizzard, sweeping over the ocean, humming like a funeral mass, and walking mournful from the silver foam mountains. The countless fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible behind the snow to the Devil, who was watching from the rocks of Gibraltar, from the stony gates of the two worlds, behind the ship leaving into the night and blizzard. The Devil was huge as a cliff, but even bigger than him was the ship, many-tiered, many-trumpeted, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart. On its uppermost roof rose alone among the whirlwinds of snow those cozy, dimly lit chambers, where, immersed in a sensitive and anxious drowsiness, its overweight driver, resembling a pagan idol, sat over the whole ship. He heard heavy howls and furious squeals of a siren choked by a storm, but he calmed himself by the proximity of that, ultimately for him the most incomprehensible, what was behind his wall of that large, as it were, armored cabin, which every now and then was filled with a mysterious rumble, trembling and dry crackling blue lights flashing and bursting around a pale-faced telegraph operator with a metal half-hoop on his head. At the very bottom, in the underwater womb of the Atlantis, the thousand-pound bulks of boilers and all kinds of other machines oozed dully with steel, steam whistled and oozed with boiling water and oil, that kitchen, heated from the bottom by hellish furnaces, in which the movement of the ship was cooked, - terrible in their concentration bubbling forces transmitted into its very keel, into an infinitely long dungeon, into a round tunnel, faintly illuminated by electricity, where slowly, with rigor overwhelming the human soul, a gigantic shaft rotated in its oily bed, like a living monster stretching in this tunnel, similar to a vent. . And the middle of the "Atlantis", its dining rooms and ballrooms poured out light and joy, buzzed with the dialect of a smart crowd, fragrant with fresh flowers, sang with a string orchestra. And again writhing painfully and sometimes convulsively collided among this crowd, among the brilliance of lights, silks, diamonds and naked female shoulders, a thin and flexible pair of hired lovers: a sinfully modest, pretty girl with lowered eyelashes, with an innocent hairstyle and a tall young man with black, as if with glued hair, pale from powder, in the most elegant patent leather shoes, in a narrow tailcoat with long tails - a handsome man, like a huge leech. And no one knew either that this couple had long been bored with pretending to suffer their blissful torment to shamelessly sad music, or that the coffin stands deep, deep below them, at the bottom of the dark hold, in the vicinity of the gloomy and sultry bowels of the ship, heavily overcoming the darkness, the ocean, the blizzard...

Vasilevskoe. 10.1915

I. Bunin is one of the few figures of Russian culture appreciated abroad. In 1933 he was awarded Nobel Prize Literature "For the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose." One can relate differently to the personality and views of this writer, but his skill in the field of belles-lettres is undeniable, therefore his works are at least worthy of our attention. One of them, namely "The Gentleman from San Francisco", received such a high rating from the jury that awards the most prestigious prize in the world.

An important quality for a writer is observation, because from the most fleeting episodes and impressions you can create a whole work. Bunin accidentally saw the cover of Thomas Mann's book "Death in Venice" in the store, and a few months later, having come to visit his cousin, he remembered this name and connected it with an even older memory: the death of an American on the island of Capri, where the author himself was resting. And so one of the best Bunin stories turned out, and not just a story, but a whole philosophical parable.

This literary work was enthusiastically received by critics, and the outstanding talent of the writer was compared with the gift of L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov. After that, Bunin stood with venerable connoisseurs of the word and the human soul in the same row. His work is so symbolic and eternal that it will never lose its philosophical focus and relevance. And in the age of the power of money and market relations, it is doubly useful to remember what life leads to, inspired only by hoarding.

What a story?

The main character, who has no name (he's just a gentleman from San Francisco), spent his whole life increasing his wealth, and at the age of 58 he decided to devote time to rest (and at the same time family). They go on the steamer "Atlantis" on their entertaining journey. All passengers are immersed in idleness, but the attendants work tirelessly to provide all these breakfasts, lunches, dinners, teas, card games, dances, liqueurs and cognacs. The stay of tourists in Naples is also monotonous, only museums and cathedrals are added to their program. However, the weather does not favor tourists: the Naples December turned out to be rainy. Therefore, the Lord and his family rush to the island of Capri, which pleases with warmth, where they check into the same hotel and are already preparing for routine “entertainment” activities: eating, sleeping, chatting, looking for a groom for their daughter. But suddenly the death of the protagonist breaks into this "idyll". He died suddenly while reading a newspaper.

And here the main idea of the story is revealed to the reader that in the face of death everyone is equal: neither wealth nor power can save from it. This Gentleman, who only recently wasted money, contemptuously spoke to the servants and accepted their respectful bows, lies in a cramped and cheap room, respect has disappeared somewhere, the family is being kicked out of the hotel, because his wife and daughter will leave “trifles” at the cash desk. And now his body is being taken back to America in a soda box, because even a coffin is not to be found in Capri. But he is already riding in the hold, hidden from high-ranking passengers. And no one is particularly grieving, because no one will be able to use the dead man's money.

The meaning of the name

At first, Bunin wanted to name his story "Death on Capri" by analogy with the title "Death in Venice" that inspired him (the writer read this book later and rated it as "unpleasant"). But already after writing the first line, he crossed out this title and called the work by the “name” of the hero.

From the first page, the attitude of the writer to the Lord is clear, for him he is faceless, colorless and soulless, therefore he did not even get a name. He is the master, the top of the social hierarchy. But all this power is fleeting and unsteady, the author recalls. The hero, useless for society, who has not done a single good deed for 58 years and thinks only of himself, remains after death only an unknown gentleman, about whom they only know that he is a rich American.

Characteristics of heroes

There are few characters in the story: the gentleman from San Francisco as a symbol of eternal fussy hoarding, his wife, depicting gray respectability, and their daughter, symbolizing the desire for this respectability.

The gentleman “worked tirelessly” all his life, but these were the hands of the Chinese, who were hired by the thousands and died just as plentifully in hard service. Other people generally mean little to him, the main thing is profit, wealth, power, savings. It was they who gave him the opportunity to travel, live at the highest level and do not give a damn about others who were less fortunate in life. However, nothing saved the hero from death, you can’t take money to the next world. Yes, and respect, bought and sold, quickly turns into dust: nothing has changed after his death, the celebration of life, money and idleness continued, even there is no one to worry about the last tribute to the dead. The body travels through the authorities, this is nothing, just another piece of luggage that is thrown into the hold, hiding from "decent society".
The hero's wife lived monotonously, in a philistine way, but with chic: without any problems and difficulties, no worries, just a lazily stretching string of idle days. Nothing impressed her, she was always completely calm, probably having forgotten how to think in the routine of idleness. She is only worried about the future of her daughter: she needs to find a respectable and profitable party for her, so that she can also comfortably go with the flow all her life.
The daughter did her best to portray innocence and at the same time frankness, attracting suitors. That was what interested her the most. Meeting with an ugly, strange and uninteresting man, but a prince, plunged the girl into excitement. Perhaps this was one of the last strong feelings in her life, and then the future of her mother awaited her. However, some emotions still remained in the girl: she alone had a premonition of trouble (“her heart was suddenly squeezed by melancholy, a feeling of terrible loneliness on this alien, dark island”) and wept for her father.

Main themes

Life and death, everyday life and exclusivity, wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness - these are the main themes of the story. They immediately reflect the philosophical orientation of the author's intention. He encourages readers to think about themselves: are we chasing something frivolously small, are we mired in routine, missing out on true beauty? After all, a life in which there is no time to think about yourself, your place in the Universe, in which there is no time to look at the surrounding nature, people and notice something good in them, is lived in vain. And you can't fix a life you've lived in vain, and you can't buy a new one for any amount of money. Death will come anyway, you can’t hide from it and you can’t pay off, so you need to have time to do something really worthwhile, something to be remembered kind word and not indifferently thrown into the hold. Therefore, it is worth thinking about everyday life, which makes thoughts banal, and feelings faded and weak, about wealth that is not worth the effort, about beauty, in the venality of which ugliness lies.

The wealth of the “masters of life” is contrasted with the poverty of people who live just as ordinary, but suffer poverty and humiliation. Servants who secretly mimic their masters, but grovel before their eyes. Gentlemen who treat servants like inferior beings, but who grovel before even richer and nobler people. A couple hired on a steamboat to play passionate love. Daughter of the Lord, depicting passion and trepidation to lure the prince. All this dirty, base pretense, although presented in a luxurious wrapper, is opposed by the eternal and pure beauty of nature.

Main problems

The main problem of this story is the search for the meaning of life. How to spend your short earthly vigil not in vain, how to leave behind something important and valuable for others? Everyone sees his destiny in his own way, but no one should forget that a person’s spiritual baggage is more important than material. Although it has been said at all times that all eternal values have been lost in modern times, every time this is not true. Both Bunin and other writers remind us readers that life without harmony and inner beauty is not life, but a miserable existence.

The problem of transience of life is also raised by the author. After all, the Gentleman from San Francisco spent his spiritual strength, made money, made money, postponing some simple joys, real emotions for later, but this "later" did not begin. This happens with many people who are mired in everyday life, routine, problems, and affairs. Sometimes you just need to stop, pay attention to loved ones, nature, friends, feel the beauty in the environment. After all, tomorrow may never come.

The meaning of the story

It is not for nothing that the story is called a parable: it has a very instructive message and is intended to give a lesson to the reader. The main idea of the story is the injustice of class society. Most of it is interrupted from bread to water, and the elite mindlessly burns life. The writer states the moral squalor of the existing order, because most of the "masters of life" achieved their wealth in a dishonest way. Such people bring only evil, as the Master from San Francisco pays and ensures the death of Chinese workers. The death of the protagonist emphasizes the thoughts of the author. Nobody is interested in this recently so influential person, because his money no longer gives him power, and he has not committed any respectable and outstanding deeds.

The idleness of these rich people, their effeminacy, perversion, insensitivity to something living and beautiful prove the accidental and injustice of their high position. This fact is hidden behind the description of tourists' leisure time on the steamer, their entertainment (the main of which is lunch), costumes, relationships with each other (the origin of the prince, whom the protagonist's daughter met, makes her fall in love).

Composition and genre

"The Gentleman from San Francisco" can be seen as a story-parable. What is a story (a short work in prose containing a plot, conflict and having one main storyline) is known to most, but how can a parable be characterized? A parable is a small allegorical text that guides the reader on the right path. Therefore, the work in terms of plot and form is a story, and in philosophical, meaningful terms - a parable.

Compositionally, the story is divided into two large parts: the journey of the Lord from San Francisco from the New World and the stay of the body in the hold on the way back. The climax of the work is the death of the hero. Prior to this, describing the ship "Atlantis", tourist places, the author gives the story an anxious mood of expectation. In this part, a sharply negative attitude towards the Master is striking. But death deprived him of all privileges and equated his remains with luggage, so Bunin softens and even sympathizes with him. It also describes the island of Capri, its nature and local residents, these lines are filled with beauty and understanding of the beauty of nature.

Symbols

The work is replete with symbols confirming Bunin's thoughts. The first of them is the steamship Atlantis, on which an endless celebration of luxurious life reigns, but there is a storm, a storm, even the ship itself is trembling overboard. So at the beginning of the twentieth century, the whole society was seething, experiencing a social crisis, only the indifferent bourgeois continued to feast during the plague.

The island of Capri symbolizes real beauty (therefore, the description of its nature and inhabitants is fanned with warm colors): a “joyful, beautiful, sunny” country filled with “fabulous blue”, majestic mountains, the charm of which cannot be conveyed by human language. The existence of our American family and people like them is a pathetic parody of life.

Features of the work

Figurative language, vivid landscapes are inherent in Bunin's creative manner, the skill of the artist of the word was reflected in this story. At first, he creates an unsettling mood, the reader expecting that, despite the splendor of the rich environment around the Master, something irreparable will soon happen. Later, the tension is erased by natural sketches, painted with soft strokes, reflecting love and admiration for beauty.

The second feature is the philosophical and topical content. Bunin castigates the senselessness of the existence of the top of society, its spoiledness, disrespect for other people. It was precisely because of this bourgeoisie, cut off from the life of the people, having fun at its expense, that two years later a bloody revolution broke out in the writer's homeland. Everyone felt that something needed to be changed, but no one did anything, which is why so much blood was shed, so many tragedies happened in those difficult times. And the topic of searching for the meaning of life does not lose its relevance, which is why the story is still of interest to the reader even after 100 years.

In Bunin's letters, the history of the Titanic was not reflected in any way; he writes the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" three years and four months after the sinking of the ship. The steamer on which the gentleman is sailing is called "Atlantis", as the legendary island-state that has gone under water. Similarly, "Titanic" refers to the titans - mythical creatures, who opposed themselves to the Greek gods, entered into a fight with them and lost. As one newspaper recalled, reacting to the symbolic name of the steamer, “Zeus overthrew the strong and daring titans with thunderous blows. The place of their last repentance was a gloomy abyss, darkness lying below the deepest depths of Tartarus.

There is a motive in the story, rather uncharacteristic for Bunin, the motive of premonition:

“The politely and elegantly bowed host, the remarkably elegant young man who met them, for a moment struck the gentleman from San Francisco: looking at him, the gentleman from San Francisco suddenly remembered that this night, among other confusion that besieged him in a dream, he I saw exactly this gentleman, exactly like this one, in the same business card with round edges and with the same mirror-combed head.
Surprised, he almost stopped. But since not even the mustard seed of any so-called mystical feelings remained in his soul for a long time, his surprise immediately faded: he jokingly told his wife and daughter about this strange coincidence of dream and reality, walking along the corridor of the hotel. The daughter, however, looked at him with alarm at that moment: her heart was suddenly squeezed by melancholy, a feeling of terrible loneliness on this alien, dark island ... "

Ivan Bunin."The Gentleman from San Francisco"

A story about how naive and deadly is the pride of a man of civilization, his self-confidence, his feeling that everything is subject to him. The gentleman from San Francisco, who calculates his entire journey, is faced with something that cannot be calculated - with death, and death is stronger. And the whole story is written under the sign of death.

“It is no coincidence that Bunin's hero has no name. This is a man of Western civilization. This is a consumer society man, as they would say now. This is a man of comfort and hotel thinking. He becomes a consumer, and for him, in general, listening to mass in Naples or shooting pigeons are all in the same row, these are all similar pleasures, about which he reflects with the same interest.

And Western civilization is on the brink of disaster—that seems to be the meaning of The Gentleman from San Francisco. Of course, this is not so much due to the death of the Titanic, which Bunin, of course, could not ignore.<...>First World War as if she marked for Bunin this very crisis of Western civilization.

Lev Sobolev

Nevertheless, Bunin also shows an alternative - these are the highlanders praying to the statue of the Virgin, or the fisherman Luigi. The simple life is still important to them.

Abstract

Vyacheslav Ivanov - poet, theorist of Russian symbolism - local, "circle" classic. He studied in Berlin with Theodor Mommsen, studied Roman history, and then retrained as a poet and turned from Rome to Greece. He began to study the history of religion - and, in particular, explained the origin of the ancient Greek tragedy through the cult of Dionysus. In his interpretation, Dionysus was a kind of forerunner of Christ: he is a dying and resurrecting god. The priestesses and worshipers of Dionysus who participated in the rites of the symbolic murder of the god were called maenads; during these rites they entered into sacred ecstasy. About this Ivanov wrote the poem "Manada", which was extremely popular:

Sorrow found and confusion on Manadu;
Her heart sank with sadness.
Motionless by the greedy cave
Became a verbless Manada.
He looks with a gloomy eye - and does not see;
Stuffy mouth opened - and does not breathe.

In the appeal of the maenad to God, a break in the rhythm stands out:

“I froze with a sharp-breasted rock,
Breaking the black mists
Carving a beam from blue abysses...
You are carnage
slash
With a lightning tooth my stone, Dionysus!

Ivanov originally wrote this part of the poem for the tragedy "Niobe", which suggests that this text is not for reading, but for pronouncing. When the actress Valentina Shchegoleva first read "Manada" at Ivanov's party, everyone was delighted.

The rhythmic technique from "Manada" was remembered, then moved on to Mandelstam's verses and Chukovsky's "Barmaley". But where did he come from? Ivanov lectured on poetry and, according to the recollection of listeners, describing the rhythmic richness of Russian folklore, he cited the song “Oh you, canopy, my canopy” as an example, which could well serve as a source for the rhythm of “Manada”.

Abstract

"The Lost Tram" is the most mysterious poem by Nikolai Gumilyov. The poet wrote it in 40 minutes: he said that someone seemed to dictate it to him without a single blot. The poem obviously describes a dream, but what does this dream mean? It is known that in literature the tram is a symbol of the movement of history; and with Gumilyov it becomes a symbol of the Russian revolution. Gumilyov really jumped on the bandwagon of the Russian revolution: in 1917 he was not in Russia, but in 1918 he returned, although he was dissuaded. At that moment, it was no longer possible to turn off the path of the revolution, just as a tram cannot turn off.

“For Gumilyov, an acmeist who always strives for clarity, clarity of a poetic plot, this story about a dream is really quite surprising, because this is an impressionistic, confused story - these are dying verses, by and large.”

Dmitry Bykov

The tram carries the author through three key moments human history: across the Neva, where the October Revolution took place, across the Seine, where the Great French revolution, and takes him to the Nile, where, starting with the flight of the Jews from Egypt, the centuries-old struggle against slavery was born.

But there are two specifically Russian subtexts in the poem - Pushkin's. The first is The Captain's Daughter.

“This is a hint at the fate of a person in the revolution, at the fate of Grinev. His biography here is guessed unusually accurately. The person who has solid concepts on honor, the person who answers Pugachev: “Think for yourself how I can swear allegiance to you,” this is, in fact, Gumilyov in 1918 and 1919, a man with an iron officer’s code of honor who ended up in Pugachev’s camp. And all he can do here is give lectures to the studio students and translate for Gorky's World Literature by Coleridge or Voltaire.

Dmitry Bykov

The second Pushkin subtext, more unexpected, is The Bronze Horseman.

“After all, what, in fact, is Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman about? Of course, not about the fact that the little man is paying for the pride of Peter, who built the city on the Neva. The entire figurative structure of Pushkin's poem says that Peter is right, because as a result, St. Petersburg towers and gardens were erected over the shelter of the wretched Finn. But the point is that the little man is paying for this, and he is paying not for Petersburg, but for the violence of the enslaved elements. When the enslaved Neva goes back to the city, this is described in the same terms in which the uprising is described in The Captain's Daughter. The flood in the Bronze Horseman is a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless, and Evgeny becomes a victim of this revolution, because his beloved has died.

Dmitry Bykov

Blok and Gumilyov have little in common, but they have a common perception of the revolution: a revolution is the death of a woman, beautiful lady, Strangers, Katya, Parasha or Masha. The hero of Gumilyov tries to save his beloved and realizes that he himself is doomed.

“The revolution, this stray tram that rolls through living destinies, does not bring freedom, but carries a terrible predestination. All the time I want to shout: “Stop, wagon driver, stop the car now,” but he does not stop, because the revolution has its own law, not human. And our freedom is only a beating light from there, only a heavenly promise, only stellar messages that we are trying to decipher. There is no freedom on earth, there is no freedom in reality - freedom is always from somewhere. And in the zoological garden of the planets, the magical cosmic future.”

Dmitry Bykov

"The Lost Tram" is the first and only suggestive poem written by the rationalist Gumilyov. It seemed to be dictated to him from the future, and the poet would have written in this manner later, but Gumilyov's insights and India of the spirit remained unknown to us.

Abstract

It is logical to assume that the authorities in the 1930s had to hide information about mass repressions, such as the Holodomor. It is hard to imagine, for example, a theatrical play about the Gulag, but there was such a thing - and even became a theatrical hit in 1935. This is the play "Aristocrats" by Nikolai Pogodin. The playwright wrote it to order, they called him, offered to write a work about prisoners - the builders of the White Sea Canal, they gave him a day to think, and he did not refuse.

The construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal was indicative: it was supposed to demonstrate the advantages of the Soviet regime and the success of industrialization. At the same time, it was carried out at a difficult time - and they decided to build without imported equipment, expensive materials and by the forces of prisoners whose work was not paid. Maxim Gorky was inspired by the construction site, and 120 Soviet writers set off on a journey through the LBC, who then described the idealized life of the builders and the reforging of former criminals.

After returning from the White Sea Canal, Pogodin decided to write a comedy about the Gulag. The "aristocrats" from its name are two groups of prisoners who refuse to be reforged: one is former criminals, the other is former intellectuals.

“Since it was a comedy, Nikolai Pogodin did his best to entertain the audience. There are a lot of puns, thieves' language, witty jokes and various attractions in the play. For example, the virtuosity of pocket fraud is repeatedly demonstrated on stage. The heroes are constantly stealing something from someone, hiding it, and some important objects - they change hands many times over the course of several seconds of the stage action. Or the prisoners just as easily deceive the camp authorities. For example, main character Kostya Kapitan, in order to arrange a date with the girl he is in love with, deceives the warden, dresses up as a girl, goes to bed in a scarf and thus amuses the Soviet public.
In addition, there were deliberately brutal moments in the play, which were supposed to frap the Soviet public. The heroes openly admit to murders, teach each other fatal blows, and in one of the scenes the hero, refusing to work, cripples himself: he takes a knife, tears his shirt and cuts his chest and arms.

Ilya Venyavkin

Everything ends well: the criminals begin to work together and compete for the banner of the shock workers of labor, and the intellectuals use their special knowledge in design. The real heroes are the Chekists - "engineers of human souls" who can find an approach to a person so that he is reborn. At the end, the play becomes even sentimental: the reforged criminals cry.

“Thus, the Gulag was openly shown to the Soviet public. But at the same time, he appeared as another platform for creating a new person: no horrors were shown that really happened there, and in a rather cheerful and light atmosphere, the main characters told about their rebirth.
It couldn't go on for too long. Literally a year after the play hit the stage, official rhetoric took another turn. In 1936, the first Moscow show trial took place against Zinoviev and Kamenev. And the newspapers changed their tone dramatically. It turned out that it was impossible to talk more about the correction of criminals. The rhetoric shifted from correcting misguided citizens to ruthlessly rooting out enemies. It was already impossible to imagine on the Soviet stage a story about how a convicted person repented and was reborn. And Pogodin's play was quietly removed from the repertoire.

Ilya Venyavkin

Abstract

"Christmas Romance" of 1961 or 1962 is one of Joseph Brodsky's calling cards; he did not stop reading this poem even in exile.

Floats in inexplicable anguish
in the midst of a brick garden
night boat unquenchable
from Alexander Garden,
night flashlight unsociable,
like a yellow rose
over the heads of your loved ones,
at the feet of passers-by.

What is this flashlight? This, of course, is not the Eternal Flame, which has not yet been in the Alexander Garden. Most likely the moon. The moon looks like a yellow rose, and the moon is shaped like the sail of a ship that sails in the Moscow night sky. Sleepwalkers are sleepwalkers, and the word "newlywed" suggests a honeymoon; the “yellow staircase” is a staircase illuminated by moonlight, and the moon also looks like a “night cake”.

But why does the moon appear in the Christmas poem and not the star? Because in the sky above the Alexander Garden there is already a star - the Kremlin one. And Brodsky resorts to substitution, which becomes an important device in the poem. We remember that Brodsky is from Petersburg. The poem does not name, but constantly implies a river, yellow- this is the color of Dostoevsky's Petersburg, the poet calls the city the capital. There is also an Alexander Garden in St. Petersburg, near the Admiralty, on the spire of which there is a boat. Thus, there is one more doubling in the poem - these are two capitals: the real capital, Petersburg, and the illusory one - Moscow.

“And then the time has come to ask, perhaps, the most important question - why does Brodsky need a chain of these doublings? The answer is actually very simple. The poem is called "Christmas romance", and in the finale there are the words "Your New Year in dark blue." Here it is, the key doubling, the main doubling. Muscovites, contemporary with Brodsky in 1962, Petersburgers, and indeed all Soviet people in general, celebrated not the main, not a real holiday. According to Brodsky, the real holiday is Christmas. Instead, they celebrated a substitute holiday, they celebrated the New Year.
And in the light of this interpretation, let's carefully look again at the end of the poem:
Your New Year in dark blue
wave amid the noise of the city
floats in an inexplicable longing,
like life starts again
as if there will be light and glory,
good day and plenty of bread,
as if life will swing to the right,
swinging to the left.
In these final lines are collected motifs associated with Christ. “As if life would begin again” – resurrection. “Light and Glory” are motifs associated in the Christian tradition with the figure of Jesus Christ. “Have a good day and plenty of bread” is the famous story about the five loaves. But all these images associated with Christ and Christmas are accompanied by a terrible and tragic “as if”. As if, because in this country this year, instead of Christmas, they celebrate the New Year.

Oleg Lekmanov

Abstract

By 1969, Fazil Iskander was already a well-known writer, the author of the satirical "Constellation of Kozlotur". The Thaw creative freedom was gradually shrinking - the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel had already taken place - and there were few ways of creative realization left: samizdat, tamizdat or Aesopian language. He wrote the story "Summer Day".

"In the case of Aesopian literature, the creative task of the artist was twofold - to write as best and as clearly as possible what you want, and to please the censors in order to get the text into print."

Alexander Zholkovsky

The narrator meets a handsome German tourist, who tells how the Gestapo tried to convince him to cooperate during the war years. He does not act like a hero, but he does not agree to inform on his colleagues - for the sake of "preserving the moral muscles of the nation." However, morality is still not going smoothly: the hero lies to his wife and almost kills a friend suspected of betrayal.

“On careful reading, it turns out that the word, literature, literature is at the center of the narrative. And not just because literature likes to talk about itself, to be metaliterature, but also in a more essential, existential and literary original sense. The physicist and his friend did not just write anti-Hitler leaflets, which is already some kind of literary act. But they ridiculed the bad German and the style of the book "Mein Kampf". That is, they criticized the Fuhrer from an aesthetic and literary point of view. Further, a German speaks to a narrator in excellent Russian, which he learned in order to read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, great authors who wrote on ethical topics.
Thus, Iskander solves two central tasks at once. This German physicist is essentially a Russian intellectual in disguise, since the whole situation of the story is an artificial, Aesopian disguised Soviet situation: it says "Gestapo" - read "KGB". Aesop's writing is ready to disguise the actual plot as a fairy tale, as life on another planet, as ancient times, as events in the world of insects, but in such a way that everything is perfectly recognizable to the reader.

Alexander Zholkovsky

And the “intermediate” position of the German physicist, who refuses both direct cooperation with the Gestapo and direct heroism, repeats the half-heartedness of the situation in which the writer who writes in Aesop, that is, Iskander himself, finds himself.

The German physicist in the story has a negative double - this is a pink Soviet pensioner sitting at a nearby table in a cafe and talking about literature with an elderly woman with the obvious goal of showing his education and power.

“He is also aged, which means he also survived the era of totalitarianism (in his case, Stalinism) and also loves literature. But he has learned absolutely nothing, he cannot read at all, and as a result he still believes in Soviet newspapers. His attention to the word is purely superficial, formal, fruitless. His interest, his interest in literature, is not ethical, not serious, not existential, but directed exclusively to power games with a pitiful and helpless woman.

Alexander Zholkovsky

Abstract

Contrary to the rumors that appeared after the publication of "House on the Embankment" in 1976 in the journal "Friendship of Peoples", this story (or a short novel) easily passed the censorship. The action takes place in three time slices: 1937, 1947, 1972. Stalin's name is never mentioned in the novel, but everyone understands that the novel is about Stalinism, fear, political choice and the moral collapse of a person who has entered into a deal with the system.

The story of Trifonov himself and his work is sewn into the novel. In 1950, at the height of the anti-Semitic campaign against cosmopolitans, he wrote the opportunistic story "Students" - about MSU students who encounter and condemn cosmopolitan teachers. Thus, Trifonov stepped over himself: his parents were repressed. "Students" receive the Stalin Prize, and Trifonov perceives this success as a catastrophe and falls silent for a long time.

The hero of The House on the Embankment, Vadim Glebov, must make a choice: he is with his teacher Ganchuk, who has fallen under a political campaign, or not with him. At the same time, Ganchuk is not an angel - and it is easy to retreat, but betraying him, you betray yourself. In another timeline, the hero breaks the lives of classmates by denouncing them.

“And Trifonov begins to reveal the mechanisms of political terror. Political terror, according to Trifonov, is not based on ideals, albeit misunderstood, and not even on simple human weakness, but is strongly implicated in envy.<...>The hero Glebov actually lives in a barracks house. And he envies the children of high-ranking nomenklatura figures who study with him in the same class. He dreams of living in the Waterfront House. This is a symbol of Soviet power, this is a symbol of Soviet success, this is a symbol of power, to which he wants to join, and he sets himself the goal - he will live in the House on the embankment.
And with his teacher Ganchuk, he is connected not so much by relations of scientific continuity, but by the dream of getting into the House on the embankment, where this Ganchuk lives. For the sake of this, a love affair unfolds, and he betrays love. For the sake of this, his scientific career unfolds, and he betrays science. For this he is either ready or not ready to betray his teacher.

Alexander Arkhangelsky

A chance will save the hero from direct betrayal, but he can no longer become a man again. And Trifonov's novel is saved from excessive moralism by the fact that the hero is a projection of the writer himself. Merciless to himself, he turns out to have the right to present moral scores to his time.