Garnet bracelet by Alexander Kuprin. Kuprin garnet bracelet
A.I. KUPRIN
GARNET BRACELET
I
In mid-August, before the birth of the new moon, the bad weather suddenly set in, which is so characteristic of the northern coast of the Black Sea. Sometimes for whole days a thick fog lay heavily over the land and the sea, and then the huge siren in the lighthouse roared day and night like a mad bull. Then from morning till morning it rained incessantly, fine as water dust, turning clay roads and paths into solid thick mud, in which carts and carriages got stuck for a long time. Then a fierce hurricane blew from the northwest, from the side of the steppe; from it the tops of the trees swayed, bending down and straightening up, like waves in a storm, the iron roofs of the dachas rattled at night, and it seemed as if someone was running along them in shod boots; window frames trembled, doors slammed, and howled wildly in chimneys. Several fishing boats got lost in the sea, and two did not return at all: only a week later the corpses of fishermen were thrown out in different places on the coast.
The inhabitants of the suburban seaside resort - mostly Greeks and Jews, cheerful and suspicious, like all southerners - hastily moved to the city. Cargo drogs stretched endlessly along the softened highway, overloaded with all sorts of household items: mattresses, sofas, chests, chairs, washstands, samovars. It was pitiful, and sad, and disgusting to look through the muddy muslin of rain at this miserable belongings, which seemed so worn out, dirty and beggarly; on the maids and cooks sitting on top of the wagon on a wet tarpaulin with some kind of irons, tins and baskets in their hands, on sweaty, exhausted horses, which now and then stopped, trembling at the knees, smoking and often carrying sides, on hoarsely cursing quails, wrapped up from the rain in mats. It was even sadder to see the abandoned dachas with their sudden spaciousness, emptiness and bareness, with mutilated flower beds, broken glasses, abandoned dogs and all sorts of dacha rubbish from cigarette butts, pieces of paper, shards, boxes and pharmaceutical vials.
But by the beginning of September, the weather suddenly changed abruptly and quite unexpectedly. Quiet, cloudless days immediately set in, so clear, sunny and warm that there were none even in July. On the dry, compressed fields, on their prickly yellow bristles, autumn cobwebs shone with a mica sheen. The calmed trees silently and obediently dropped their yellow leaves.
Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina, the wife of the marshal of the nobility, could not leave the dachas, because the repairs in their city house had not yet been completed. And now she was very happy about the lovely days that had come, the silence, the solitude, clean air chirping on the telegraph wires of swallows, scurrying to fly away, and a gentle salty breeze, weakly pulling from the sea.
II
In addition, today was her name day - the seventeenth of September. According to sweet, distant memories of childhood, she always loved this day and always expected something happy and wonderful from him. Her husband, leaving in the morning on urgent business in the city, put a case with beautiful pear-shaped pearl earrings on her night table, and this gift amused her even more.
She was alone in the whole house. Her unmarried brother Nikolai, a fellow prosecutor, who usually lived with them, also went to the city, to the court. For dinner, the husband promised to bring a few and only the closest acquaintances. It turned out well that the name day coincided with summer time. In the city, one would have to spend money on a big ceremonial dinner, perhaps even on a ball, but here, in the country, one could manage with the smallest expenses. Prince Shein, despite his prominent position in society, and perhaps thanks to him, could barely make ends meet. The huge family estate was almost completely upset by his ancestors, and he had to live above his means: to make receptions, do charity, dress well, keep horses, etc. Princess Vera, who had a former passionate love to her husband has long passed into a feeling of strong, faithful, true friendship, tried with all her might to help the prince refrain from complete ruin. She in many ways, imperceptibly for him, denied herself and, as far as possible, economized in the household.
Now she was walking in the garden and carefully cutting flowers for the dinner table with scissors. The flower beds were empty and looked disordered. Multi-colored terry carnations were blooming, as well as levka - half in flowers, and half in thin green pods that smelled of cabbage, rose bushes still gave - for the third time this summer - buds and roses, but already shredded, rare, as if degenerated. On the other hand, dahlias, peonies and asters bloomed magnificently with their cold, arrogant beauty, spreading an autumnal, grassy, sad smell in the sensitive air. The rest of the flowers, after their luxurious love and excessive summer maternity, quietly showered countless seeds on the ground. future life.
Close by on the highway came the familiar sound of a three-ton car horn. It was the sister of Princess Vera, Anna Nikolaevna Friesse, who had promised in the morning to come by phone to help her sister receive guests and take care of the house.
Subtle hearing did not deceive Vera. She walked towards. A few minutes later a graceful carriage came to an abrupt halt at the dacha gate, and the driver, deftly jumping down from the seat, flung open the door.
The sisters kissed happily. They are from the very early childhood were attached to each other by a warm and caring friendship. In appearance, they were strangely not similar to each other. The eldest, Vera, took after her mother, a beautiful Englishwoman, with her tall, flexible figure, gentle, but cold and proud face, beautiful, although rather large hands, and that charming sloping of her shoulders, which can be seen in old miniatures. The youngest - Anna, - on the contrary, inherited the Mongolian blood of her father, a Tatar prince, whose grandfather was baptized only at the beginning of the 19th century and whose ancient family went back to Tamerlane, or Lang-Temir, as her father proudly called her, in Tatar, this great bloodsucker. She was half a head shorter than her sister, somewhat broad in the shoulders, lively and frivolous, a mocker. Her face is of a strongly Mongolian type, with rather noticeable cheekbones, with narrow eyes, which, moreover, she squinted due to myopia, with an arrogant expression in her small, sensual mouth, especially in the slightly protruding full lower lip, face this, however, captivated by some elusive and incomprehensible charm, which consisted, perhaps, in a smile, perhaps in the deep femininity of all features, perhaps in a piquant, provocatively coquettish facial expression. Her graceful ugliness excited and attracted the attention of men much more often and stronger than her sister's aristocratic beauty.
She was married to a very rich and very stupid person, who did absolutely nothing, but was listed at some charitable institution and had the title of chamber junker. She could not stand her husband, but gave birth to two children from him, a boy and a girl; She decided not to have any more children, and never did. As for Vera, she greedily wanted children and even, it seemed to her, the more the better, but for some reason they were not born to her, and she painfully and ardently adored the pretty anemic children of her younger sister, always decent and obedient, with pale mealy faces and curled flaxen doll hair.
Anna consisted entirely of cheerful carelessness and sweet, sometimes strange contradictions. She willingly indulged in the most risky flirting in all the capitals and in all the resorts of Europe, but she never cheated on her husband, whom, however, she contemptuously ridiculed both in the eyes and behind the eyes; she was extravagant, terribly fond of gambling, dancing, strong impressions, sharp spectacles, visited dubious cafes abroad, but at the same time she was distinguished by generous kindness and deep, sincere piety, which forced her even to secretly accept Catholicism. She had a rare beauty back, chest and shoulders. Going to big balls, she was exposed much more than the limits allowed by decency and fashion, but it was said that under the low neckline she always wore a sackcloth.
Vera, on the other hand, was strictly simple, coldly and a little condescendingly kind to everyone, independent and royally calm.
III
My God, how good are you here! How good! - Anna said, walking with quick and small steps next to her sister along the path. - If possible, let's sit a little on a bench above the cliff. I haven't seen the sea in such a long time. And what a wonderful air: you breathe - and your heart rejoices. In the Crimea, in Miskhor, last summer I made an amazing discovery. Do you know what it smells like? sea water during the surf? Imagine - mignonette.
Vera smiled softly.
- You're a dreamer.
- No no. I also remember the time everyone laughed at me when I said that there is some kind of pink tint in the moonlight. And the other day the artist Boritsky - that's the one who paints my portrait - agreed that I was right and that artists have long known about this.
- Is the artist your new hobby?
- You always come up with! - Anna laughed and, quickly going to the very edge of the cliff, which fell like a sheer wall deep into the sea, looked down and suddenly screamed in horror and recoiled back with a pale face.
- Oh, how high! she said in a weakened and trembling voice. When I look from such a height, my chest always tickles somehow sweetly and disgustingly ... and my toes ache ... And yet it pulls, pulls ...
She wanted to bend over the cliff again, but her sister stopped her.
- Anna, my dear, for God's sake! It makes my head spin when you do that. Please sit down.
- Well, well, well, sat down ... But just look, what beauty, what joy - just the eye can not get enough. If you knew how grateful I am to God for all the miracles that he has done for us!
Both thought for a moment. Deep, deep beneath them lay the sea. The shore was not visible from the bench, and therefore the feeling of infinity and grandeur of the expanse of the sea intensified even more. The water was tenderly calm and cheerfully blue, brightening only in oblique smooth stripes in the places of the current and turning into a deep blue color on the horizon.
Fishing boats, hardly marked by the eye - they seemed so small - dozed motionless in the sea surface, not far from the coast. And then, as if standing in the air, not moving forward, a three-masted vessel, all dressed from top to bottom with uniform white slender sails, bulging from the wind.
I understand you, - the older sister said thoughtfully, - but somehow it’s not the same with me as with you. When I see the sea for the first time after a long time, it both excites me, and pleases, and amazes me. As if for the first time I see a huge, solemn miracle. But then, when I get used to it, it starts to crush me with its flat emptiness... I miss looking at it, and I try not to look anymore. Bored. Anna smiled.
- What are you? the sister asked.
“Last summer,” Anna said slyly, “we rode from Yalta in a big cavalcade on horseback to Uch-Kosh. It's there, behind the forestry, above the waterfall. First we got into the cloud, it was very damp and hard to see, and we all climbed up the steep path between the pines. And suddenly, somehow, the forest ended immediately, and we came out of the fog. Imagine: a narrow platform on a rock, and under our feet we have an abyss. The villages below seem no bigger than a matchbox, the forests and gardens look like fine grass. The whole area descends to the sea, like a geographical map. And then there is the sea! Fifty versts, a hundred ahead. It seemed to me that I hung in the air and was about to fly. Such beauty, such ease! I turn around and say to the guide in delight: "What? All right, Seyid-ogly?" And he only smacked his tongue: "Oh, sir, how tired of all this mine. We see it every day."
- Thank you for the comparison, - Vera laughed, - no, I just think that we northerners will never understand the charms of the sea. I love the forest. Do you remember the forest we have in Yegorovsky?.. How can he ever get bored? Pine trees!.. And what mosses!.. And fly agarics! Accurately made of red satin and embroidered with white beads. The silence is so... cool.
- I don't care, I love everything, - Anna answered. - And most of all I love my little sister, my prudent Verenka. There are only two of us in the world.
She hugged older sister and snuggled up to her, cheek to cheek. And suddenly she caught on.
- No, how stupid I am! You and I, as if in a novel, are sitting and talking about nature, but I completely forgot about my gift. Here look. I'm just afraid, will you like it?
She took out from her handbag a small notebook in a surprising binding: on the old blue velvet, worn and gray with time, a dull gold filigree pattern of rare complexity, subtlety and beauty curled - obviously, the love work of the hands of a skillful and patient artist. The book was attached to a gold chain as thin as a thread, the pages in the middle were replaced by ivory tablets.
- What a wonderful thing! Charm! - Vera said and kissed her sister. Thank you. Where did you get such a treasure?
- In an antique shop. You know my weakness for rummaging through old junk. So I came across this prayer book. Look, you see how the ornament here makes the figure of a cross. True, I found only one binding, I had to invent everything else - leaves, fasteners, a pencil. But Mollinet did not at all want to understand me, no matter how I interpreted him. The clasps had to be in the same style as the whole pattern, matte, old gold, fine carving, and God knows what he did. But the chain is real Venetian, very ancient.
Vera affectionately stroked the beautiful binding.
- What a deep antiquity! .. How long can this book be? she asked.
- I'm afraid to be precise. Approximately the end of the seventeenth century, the middle of the eighteenth ...
- How strange, - said Vera with a thoughtful smile. - Here I am holding in my hands a thing that, perhaps, the hands of the Marquise Pompadour or Queen Antoinette herself touched ... But you know, Anna, only you could come up with a crazy thought remake the prayer book into a lady's carnet [notebook; French]. However, let's go and see what's going on there.
They entered the house through a large stone terrace, closed on all sides by thick trellises of Isabella grapes. Plentiful black clusters, emitting a faint smell of strawberries, hung heavily between the dark, in some places gilded by the sun greenery. A green half-light spread over the entire terrace, from which the faces of the women immediately turned pale.
- You order to cover here? Anna asked.
- Yes, I myself thought so at first ... But now the evenings are so cold. It's better in the dining room. And let the men go here to smoke.
- Will anyone be interesting?
- I do not know yet. I only know that our grandfather will be.
Ah, dear grandfather. Here is joy! Anna exclaimed and threw up her hands. “I don’t think I’ve seen him for a hundred years.”
- There will be Vasya's sister and, it seems, Professor Speshnikov. Yesterday, Annenka, I just lost my head. You know that they both love to eat - both the grandfather and the professor. But neither here nor in the city - you can't get anything for any money. Luka found quails somewhere - he ordered a familiar hunter - and something is wiser over them. The roast beef came out relatively good - alas! - the inevitable roast beef. Very good crayfish.
- Well, not so bad. You don't worry. However, between us, you yourself have a weakness for delicious food.
- But there will be something rare. This morning the fisherman brought a gurnard. I saw it myself. Just some kind of monster. Even scary.
Anna, greedily curious about everything that concerned her and what did not concern her, immediately demanded that they bring her a gurnard.
The tall, clean-shaven, yellow-faced cook Luka came in with a large, oblong white tub, which he held with difficulty by the ears, afraid to splash water on the parquet.
“Twelve and a half pounds, Your Excellency,” he said with a special chef's pride. “We weighed just now.
The fish was too big for the pelvis and lay on the bottom with its tail curled up. Its scales shone with gold, the fins were bright red, and from the huge predatory muzzle two pale blue, folded, like a fan, long wings went to the sides. Gurnard was still alive and worked hard with his gills.
Younger sister gently touched her little finger to the head of the fish. But the rooster suddenly flapped its tail, and Anna with a squeal pulled her hand away.
- Don't you worry, Your Excellency, all in at its best arrange, said the cook, obviously understanding Anna's anxiety. - Now the Bulgarian brought two melons. Pineapple. Kind of like cantaloupe, but the smell is much more fragrant. And I also dare to ask Your Excellency, what sauce would you like to serve with a rooster: tartar or Polish, otherwise you can just crackers in oil?
- Do as you like. Go! - ordered the princess.
IV
After five o'clock guests began to arrive. Prince Vasily Lvovich brought with him his widowed sister Lyudmila Lvovna, after her husband Durasov, a plump, good-natured and unusually silent woman; a secular young rich varmint and reveler Vasyuchkb, whom the whole city knew under this familiar name, very pleasant in society with his ability to sing and recite, as well as arrange lively pictures, performances and charity bazaars; the famous pianist Jenny Reiter, a friend of Princess Vera Smolny Institute, as well as his brother-in-law Nikolai Nikolaevich. They were followed by Anna's husband in a car with a shaved, fat, ugly huge professor Speshnikov and with the local vice-governor von Seck. Later than the others, General Anosov arrived, in a good hired landau, accompanied by two officers: Staff Colonel Ponamarev, a prematurely old, thin, bilious man, exhausted by excessive clerical work, and Guards Hussar lieutenant Bakhtinsky, who was famous in St. Petersburg as the best dancer and incomparable manager of balls .
General Anosov, a fat, tall, silver old man, was heavily climbing down from the footboard, holding on to the railing of the goat with one hand, and with the other on the back of the carriage. In his left hand he held an auditory horn, and in his right a stick with a rubber tip. He had a large, coarse, red face with fleshy nose and with that good-natured, majestic, slightly contemptuous expression in narrowed eyes, located in radiant, swollen semicircles, which is characteristic of courageous and ordinary people who have seen danger and death often and close before their eyes. The two sisters, who had recognized him from afar, ran up to the carriage just in time to half-jokingly, half-seriously support him from both sides under the arms.
- Exactly... the bishop! - said the general in an affectionate hoarse bass.
- Grandpa, dear, dear! - Vera said in a tone of slight reproach. Every day we are waiting for you, but at least you showed your eyes.
Our grandfather in the south has lost all conscience, - Anna laughed. - One could, it seems, remember the goddaughter. And you keep yourself a Don Juan, shameless, and completely forgot about our existence ...
The general, baring his majestic head, kissed the hands of both sisters in turn, then kissed them on the cheeks and again on the hand.
"Girls... wait... don't scold me," he said, interspersing each word with sighs emanating from long-standing shortness of breath. ... jelly ... smells terrible ... And they didn’t let you out ... You are the first ... to whom you came ... Terribly glad ... to see you ... How are you jumping? .. You, Verochka .. ... quite a lady ... she became very similar ... to her dead mother ... When will you call for baptism?
- Oh, I'm afraid, grandfather, that never...
- Do not despair ... everything is ahead ... Pray to God ... And you, Anya, have not changed at all ... You and at sixty ... will be the same dragonfly-egoza. Wait a minute. Let me introduce you to the officers.
- I have had this honor for a long time! - said Colonel Ponamarev, bowing.
- I was introduced to the princess in St. Petersburg, - picked up the hussar.
- Well, I'll introduce you, Anya, Lieutenant Bakhtinsky. A dancer and a brawler, but a good cavalryman. Take it out, Bakhtinsky, my dear, out of the carriage... Let's go, girls... What, Verochka, will you feed? I have... after the estuary regime... an appetite, like a graduation... an ensign.
General Anosov was a comrade-in-arms and devoted friend of the late Prince Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky. After the death of the prince, he transferred all tender friendship and love to his daughters. He knew them when they were very young, and even baptized the younger Anna. At that time - as still - he was the commandant of a large, but almost abolished fortress in the city of K. and daily visited the Tuganovskys' house. Children simply adored him for pampering, for gifts, for lodges in the circus and theater, and for the fact that no one knew how to play with them so excitingly as Anosov. But most of all they were fascinated and most strongly imprinted in their memory by his stories about military campaigns, battles and bivouacs, about victories and retreats, about death, wounds and severe frosts - unhurried, epicly calm, simple-hearted stories told between evening tea and that boring hour when the children are called to bed.
According to modern customs, this piece of antiquity seemed to be a gigantic and unusually picturesque figure. He combined precisely those simple, but touching and profound features, which even in his time were much more common in privates than in officers, those purely Russian, muzhik features that, when combined, give an exalted image that sometimes made our soldier not only invincible , but also a great martyr, almost a saint - features that consisted of a simple, naive faith, a clear, good-natured and cheerful outlook on life, cold and businesslike courage, humility in the face of death, pity for the defeated, endless patience and amazing physical and moral endurance.
Anosov, starting from Polish war, participated in all campaigns except the Japanese one. He would have gone to this war without hesitation, but he was not called, and he always had a great rule of modesty: "Do not climb to death until you are called." In all his service, he not only never flogged, but even hit a single soldier. During the Polish uprising, he once refused to shoot prisoners, despite the personal order of the regimental commander. "I'll not only shoot the spy," he said, "but if you order, I'll personally kill it. And these are prisoners, and I can't." And he said it so simply, respectfully, without a hint of defiance or showmanship, looking directly into the eyes of the chief with his clear, hard eyes, that instead of being shot himself, they left him alone.
During the war of 1877-1879, he very quickly rose to the rank of colonel, despite the fact that he was little educated, or, as he himself put it, he graduated only from the “bear academy”. He participated in the crossing of the Danube, crossed the Balkans, sat out on Shipka, was at the last attack of Plevna; they wounded him once seriously, four lightly, and, in addition, he received a severe concussion in the head with a fragment of a grenade. Radetsky and Skobelev knew him personally and treated him with exceptional respect. It was about him that Skobelev once said: "I know one officer who is much braver than me - this is Major Anosov."
He returned from the war almost deaf due to a grenade fragment, with a sore leg, on which three fingers, frostbitten during the Balkan crossing, were amputated, with the most severe rheumatism acquired on Shipka. They wanted to retire him after two years of peaceful service, but Anosov became stubborn. Here he was very opportunely helped with his influence by the head of the region, a living witness of his cold-blooded courage when crossing the Danube. In St. Petersburg, they decided not to upset the honored colonel, and he was given a life-long post of commandant in the city of K. - a position more honorable than necessary for the purposes of national defense.
In the city, everyone knew him from young to old and good-naturedly laughed at his weaknesses, habits and manner of dressing. He always went about unarmed, in an old-fashioned frock coat, in a cap with large brim and with a huge straight visor, with a stick in right hand, with an auditory horn in the left and certainly accompanied by two obese, lazy, hoarse pugs, in which the tip of the tongue was always stuck out and bitten. If during his usual morning walk he had to meet with acquaintances, then passers-by for several blocks heard the commandant screaming and how his pugs barked in unison after him.
Like many deaf people, he was a passionate lover of opera, and sometimes, during some languid duet, his resolute bass would suddenly be heard throughout the theater; "But he took it clean, damn it! It's like he cracked a nut." Restrained laughter swept through the theater, but the general did not even suspect this: in his naivety, he thought that he had exchanged fresh impressions with his neighbor in a whisper.
As a commandant, he quite often, together with his wheezing pugs, visited the main guardhouse, where the arrested officers rested quite comfortably over screw, tea and jokes from the hardships of military service. He carefully asked everyone: "What is the last name? By whom was he imprisoned? For how long? For what?" Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, he praised an officer for a brave, albeit illegal, act, sometimes he began to scold, shouting so that he could be heard on the street. But, having shouted his fill, without any transitions or pauses, he inquired where the officer was getting dinner from and how much he pays for it. It happened that some misguided second lieutenant, sent for a long term in prison from such a backwater, where there was not even a guardhouse of his own, admitted that, due to lack of money, he was content from a soldier's cauldron. Anosov immediately ordered that lunch be brought to the poor fellow from the commandant's house, from which the guardhouse was no more than two hundred steps away.
In the city of K., he became close to the Tuganovsky family and became attached to the children with such close ties that it became a spiritual need for him to see them every evening. If it happened that the young ladies went somewhere or the service delayed the general himself, then he sincerely yearned and could not find a place for himself in the large rooms of the commandant's house. Every summer he took a vacation and spent a whole month at the Tuganovsky estate, Yegorovsky, fifty miles away from K..
Russian writer, translator.
Date and place of birth - September 7, 1870, Narovchatsky district, Penza province, Russian Empire.
Kuprin's first literary experience was poetry, which remained unpublished. The first printed work is the story "The Last Debut" (1889).
In 1910, Kuprin wrote the story "Garnet Bracelet". which was based on real events.
"Garnet bracelet"
Heroes
Prince Vasily Lvovich Shein
Is one of the main characters, the husband of Vera Nikolaevna Sheina, and the brother of Lyudmila Lvovna Durasova; prince and marshal of the nobility. Vasily Lvovich is highly revered in society. He has a well-established life and outwardly prosperous family in all respects. In fact, his wife has nothing but friendly feelings and respect for him. Financial position Prince also leaves much to be desired. Princess Vera tried with all her might to help Vasily Lvovich refrain from complete ruin.
Vera Nikolaevna Sheina
Georgy Stepanovich Zheltkov
Anna Nikolaevna Friesse
Nikolai Nikolaevich Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovskiy
General Yakov Mikhailovich Anosov
Ludmila Lvovna Durasova
Gustav Ivanovich Friesse
Ponamarev
Bakhtinsky
"Garnet Bracelet" summary
Source - I
In September, a small festive dinner was being prepared at the dacha in honor of the name day of the hostess. Vera Nikolaevna Sheina received earrings as a gift from her husband in the morning. She was glad that the holiday was to be arranged at the dacha, since her husband's financial affairs were not in the best way. Sister Anna came to help Vera Nikolaevna prepare dinner. Guests were arriving. The weather turned out to be good, and the evening passed with warm, sincere conversations. The guests sat down to play poker. At this time, the messenger brought a bundle. It contained a gold bracelet with garnets and a small green stone in the middle. The gift was accompanied by a note. It said that the bracelet is a family heirloom of the donor, and the green stone is a rare garnet that has the properties of a talisman.
The holiday was in full swing. The guests played cards, sang, joked, looked at an album with satirical pictures and stories made by the host. Among the stories was a story about a telegraph operator who was in love with Princess Vera, who pursued his beloved, despite the refusal. The unrequited feeling drove him to a madhouse.
Almost all the guests have left. Those who remained had a conversation with General Anosov, whom the sisters called grandfather, about his military life and love affairs. Walking in the garden, the general tells Vera about the story of his unsuccessful marriage. The conversation turns to understanding true love. Anosov tells stories about men who valued love more than their own lives. He is interested in Vera's story about the telegraph operator. It turned out that the princess had never seen him and did not know who he really was.
Returning, Vera found her husband and brother Nikolai having an unpleasant conversation. Together they decided that these letters and gifts defame the name of the princess and her husband, so this story must be put to an end. Knowing nothing about the admirer of the princess, Nikolai and Vasily Lvovich Shein tracked him down. Vera's brother attacked this pathetic man with threats. Vasily Lvovich showed generosity and listened to him. Zheltkov admitted that he loves Vera Nikolaevna hopelessly, but too much to be able to overcome this feeling. In addition, he said that he would no longer disturb the princess, as he had squandered government money and was forced to leave. The next day, from a newspaper article, it became known about the suicide of an official. The postman brought a letter from which Vera learned that love for her was for Zheltkov the greatest joy and grace. Standing at the coffin, Vera Nikolaevna understands that the wonderful deep feeling that Anosov spoke of has passed her by.
Source - II
en.wikipedia.org
On the day of her name day, Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina received from her longtime anonymous admirer a golden bracelet as a gift, with five large cabochon garnets of deep red color, surrounding a green stone - a rare variety of garnet. Being a married woman, she considered herself not entitled to receive any gifts from strangers.
Her brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, an assistant prosecutor, together with her husband, Prince Vasily Lvovich, found the sender. It turned out to be a modest official Georgy Zheltkov. Many years ago, at a circus performance, he accidentally saw Princess Vera in a box and fell in love with her with pure and unrequited love. Several times a year for big holidays he allowed himself to write letters to her.
When brother Nikolai Nikolaevich, having appeared at Zheltkov’s dwelling with her husband, returned him a garnet bracelet and in a conversation mentioned the possibility of turning to the authorities to stop the persecution, according to him, of Princess Vera Nikolaevna, Zheltkov asked permission from her husband and the brother of the princess to call her. She told him that if he were not there, she would be calmer. Zheltkov asked to listen to Beethoven's Sonata No. 2. Then he took the bracelet returned to him to the landlady with a request to hang the decoration on the icon. Mother of God(according to Catholic custom), locked himself in his room and shot himself so that Princess Vera could live in peace. He did it all out of love for Vera and for her good. Zheltkov left a suicide note in which he explained that he had shot himself because of the waste of state money.
Vera Nikolaevna, having learned about Zheltkov’s death, asked her husband’s permission and went to the suicide’s apartment to look at least once at the person who had loved her unrequitedly for so many years. Returning home, she asked Jenny Reiter to play something, no doubt that she would play exactly the part of the sonata that Zheltkov wrote about. Sitting in the flower garden to the sound of beautiful music, Vera Nikolaevna clung to the trunk of an acacia tree and wept. She realized that the love that General Anosov spoke about, which every woman dreams of, passed her by. When the pianist finished playing and went out to the princess, she began to kiss her with the words: “No, no, he has forgiven me now. Everything is fine".
Source - III
A bundle with a small jewelry case in the name of Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina was handed over by the messenger through the maid. The princess reprimanded her, but Dasha said that the messenger immediately ran away, and she did not dare to tear the birthday girl away from the guests.
Inside the case was a gold, low-grade puffy bracelet covered with garnets, among which was a small green stone. The letter enclosed in the case contained congratulations on the day of the angel and a request to accept the bracelet that belonged to the great-grandmother. A green stone is a very rare green garnet that communicates the gift of providence and protects men from violent death. The letter ended with the words: “Your obedient servant G.S.Zh. before death and after death.”
Vera took the bracelet in her hands - inside the stones, alarming dense red living lights lit up. "Just like blood!" she thought as she returned to the living room.
Prince Vasily Lvovich was demonstrating at that moment his humorous home album, which had just been opened on the “tale” “Princess Vera and the Telegraph Operator in Love”. “Better not,” she pleaded. But the husband has already begun commenting on his own drawings full of brilliant humor. Here a girl named Vera receives a letter with kissing doves, signed by the telegraph operator P.P.Zh. Here young Vasya Shein returns to Vera wedding ring: "I dare not interfere with your happiness, and yet it is my duty to warn you: telegraphers are seductive, but insidious." But Vera marries the handsome Vasya Shein, but the telegraph operator continues to persecute. Here he, disguised as a chimney sweep, enters the boudoir of Princess Vera. Here, having changed clothes, he enters their kitchen as a dishwasher. Here, at last, he is in a lunatic asylum, etc.
"Gentlemen, who wants tea?" Vera asked. After tea, the guests began to leave. The old general Anosov, whom Vera and her sister Anna called grandfather, asked the princess to explain what was true in the prince's story.
G.S.Z. (and not P.P.Z.) began harassing her with letters two years before her marriage. Obviously, he constantly watched her, knew where she was at the parties, how she was dressed. When Vera, also in writing, asked not to bother her with his persecutions, he fell silent about love and limited himself to congratulations on holidays, as well as today, on her name day.
The old man was silent. "Could it be a maniac? Or maybe, Verochka, your life path crossed precisely the kind of love that women dream of and that men are no longer capable of.”
After the guests left, Vera's husband and her brother Nikolai decided to find an admirer and return the bracelet. The next day they already knew the address of G.S.Zh. It turned out to be a man of about thirty to thirty-five. He did not deny anything and recognized the indecency of his behavior. Finding some understanding and even sympathy in the prince, he explained to him that, alas, he loves his wife and neither deportation nor prison will kill this feeling. Except death. He must confess that he has squandered government money and will be forced to flee the city, so that they will not hear from him again.
The next day, in the newspaper, Vera read about the suicide of G. S. Zheltkov, an official of the control chamber, and in the evening the postman brought his letter.
Zheltkov wrote that for him all life consisted only in her, in Vera Nikolaevna. It is the love that God rewarded him for something. Leaving, he repeats in delight: “Let the your name". If she remembers him, then let her play the D major part of Beethoven's Appassionata, he thanks her from the bottom of his heart for the fact that she was his only joy in life.
Vera could not help but go to say goodbye to this man. Her husband fully understood her impulse.
The face of the person lying in the coffin was serene, as if he had learned a deep secret. Vera raised his head, placed a large red rose under his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She understood that the love that every woman dreams of had passed her by.
Returning home, she found only her college friend, the famous pianist Jenny Reiter. "Play something for me," she asked.
And Jenny (wonder!) began to play the part of "Appassionata", which Zheltkov indicated in the letter. She listened, and in her mind words were composed, like couplets, ending with a prayer: “Hallowed be thy name.” "What happened to you?" asked Jenny, seeing her tears. “…He has forgiven me now. Everything is fine,” Vera replied.
The story "Garnet Bracelet", written in 1910, occupies a significant place in the writer's work and in Russian literature. Paustovsky called the love story of a petty official to a married princess one of "the most fragrant and languishing stories about love." True, eternal love, which is a rare gift, is the theme of Kuprin's work.
In order to get acquainted with the plot and the characters of the story, we suggest reading summary"Pomegranate Bracelet" chapter by chapter. It will provide an opportunity to comprehend the work, to comprehend the charm and lightness of the writer's language and to penetrate into the idea.
main characters
Vera Sheina- Princess, wife of the leader of the nobility Shein. She married for love, over time, love grew into friendship and respect. She began to receive letters from the official Zheltkov, who loved her, even before her marriage.
Zheltkov- official. Unrequitedly in love with Vera for many years.
Vasily Shein- Prince, provincial marshal of the nobility. Loves his wife.
Other characters
Yakov Mikhailovich Anosov- General, friend of the late Prince Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky, father of Vera, Anna and Nikolai.
Anna Friesse- sister of Vera and Nikolai.
Nikolay Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky- assistant prosecutor, brother of Vera and Anna.
Jenny Reiter- a friend of Princess Vera, a famous pianist.
Chapter 1
In mid-August, bad weather came to the Black Sea coast. Most of residents of coastal resorts began to hastily move to the city, leaving their dachas. Princess Vera Sheina was forced to stay at her dacha, as repairs were going on in her city house.
Along with the first days of September, it was warm, it became sunny and clear, and Vera was very happy wonderful days early autumn.
Chapter 2
On the day of her name day, September 17, Vera Nikolaevna was expecting guests. The husband left in the morning on business and had to bring guests for dinner.
Vera was glad that the name day fell on the summer season and there was no need to arrange a magnificent reception. The Shein family was on the verge of ruin, and the position of the prince obliged a lot, so the spouses had to live beyond their means. Vera Nikolaevna, whose love for her husband long ago degenerated into "a feeling of lasting, faithful, true friendship", supported him as best she could, saved money, and denied herself in many ways.
Her sister Anna Nikolaevna Friesse came to help Vera with the housework and to receive guests. Not similar in appearance or characters, the sisters were very attached to each other from childhood.
Chapter 3
Anna had not seen the sea for a long time, and the sisters briefly sat down on a bench above the cliff, “falling like a sheer wall deep into the sea” - to admire the lovely landscape.
Remembering the prepared gift, Anna handed her sister a notebook in an old binding.
Chapter 4
By evening, guests began to arrive. Among them was General Anosov, a friend of Prince Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky, the late father of Anna and Vera. He was very attached to his sisters, they, in turn, adored him and called him grandfather.
Chapter 5
Those gathered in the Sheins' house were entertained at the table by the host, Prince Vasily Lvovich. He had a special gift for storytelling: humorous stories were always based on an event that happened to someone he knew. But in his stories, he so "exaggerated", so bizarrely combined truth and fiction, and spoke with such a serious and businesslike look that all listeners laughed non-stop. This time his story concerned the failed marriage of his brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich.
Rising from the table, Vera involuntarily counted the guests - there were thirteen of them. And, since the princess was superstitious, she became restless.
After dinner everyone except Vera sat down to play poker. She was about to go out onto the terrace when the maid called her. On the table in the office, where both women entered, the servant laid out a small package tied with a ribbon, and explained that a messenger had brought it with a request to hand it over to Vera Nikolaevna personally.
Vera found a gold bracelet and a note in the bag. First, she began to examine the decoration. In the center of a low-grade gold bracelet stood out several magnificent garnets, each about the size of a pea. Looking at the stones, the birthday girl turned the bracelet, and the stones flared up like "charming dense red living lights." With anxiety, Vera realized that these fires looked like blood.
He congratulated Vera on Angel Day, asked him not to be angry with him for daring to write letters to her a few years ago and expect an answer. He asked to accept as a gift a bracelet, the stones of which belonged to his great-grandmother. From her silver bracelet, he, exactly repeating the location, transferred the stones to the gold one and drew Vera's attention to the fact that no one had yet worn the bracelet. He wrote: “however, I believe that there is no treasure in the whole world worthy of decorating you” and admitted that all that is now left in him is “only reverence, eternal admiration and slavish devotion”, every minute desire for happiness to the Faith and joy if she is happy.
Vera pondered whether to show the gift to her husband.
Chapter 6
The evening passed smoothly and lively: they played cards, talked, listened to the singing of one of the guests. Prince Shein showed several guests a home album with his own drawings. This album was an addition to the humorous stories of Vasily Lvovich. Those looking at the album laughed so loudly and contagiously that the guests gradually moved towards them.
The last story in the drawings was called "Princess Vera and the telegraph operator in love", and the text of the story itself, according to the prince, was still "prepared". Vera asked her husband: “It’s better not to,” but he either did not hear, or did not pay attention to her request and began his cheerful story about how Princess Vera received passionate messages from a telegraph operator in love.
Chapter 7
After tea, a few guests left, the rest settled on the terrace. General Anosov told stories from his army life, Anna and Vera listened to him with pleasure, as in childhood.
Before going to see off the old general, Vera invited her husband to read the letter she had received.
Chapter 8
On the way to the crew waiting for the general, Anosov talked with Vera and Anna about the fact that he had not met true love in his life. According to him, “love should be a tragedy. The greatest secret in the world."
The general asked Vera about what was true in the story told by her husband. And she gladly shared with him: "some madman" pursued her with his love and sent letters even before marriage. The princess also told about the parcel with the letter. In thought, the general noted that it was quite possible that Vera's life was crossed by "a single, all-forgiving, ready for anything, modest and selfless" love that any woman dreams of.
Chapter 9
After seeing off the guests and returning to the house, Sheina joined in the conversation between her brother Nikolai and Vasily Lvovich. The brother believed that the "nonsense" of the fan should be stopped immediately - the story with the bracelet and letters could ruin the family's reputation.
After discussing what to do, it was decided that the next day Vasily Lvovich and Nikolai would find Vera's secret admirer and, demanding to leave her alone, would return the bracelet.
Chapter 10
Shein and Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky, Vera's husband and brother, paid a visit to her admirer. It turned out to be an official Zheltkov, a man of thirty or thirty-five.
Nikolai immediately explained to him the reason for the arrival - with his gift, he crossed the line of patience of Vera's relatives. Zheltkov immediately agreed that he was to blame for the persecution of the princess.
Turning to the prince, Zheltkov spoke about the fact that he loves his wife and feels that he can never stop loving her, and all that remains for him is death, which he will accept "in any form". Before speaking further, Zheltkov asked permission to leave for a few minutes to call Vera.
During the official’s absence, in response to Nikolai’s reproaches that the prince was “limp” and sorry for his wife’s admirer, Vasily Lvovich explained to his brother-in-law what he felt. “This person is not capable of deceiving and lying knowingly. Is he to blame for love, and is it possible to control such a feeling as love - a feeling that has not yet found an interpreter for itself. The prince was not just sorry for this man, he realized that he had witnessed "some kind of enormous tragedy of the soul."
Returning, Zheltkov asked permission to write last letter Vera and promised that the visitors would never hear or see him again. At the request of Vera Nikolaevna, he "as soon as possible" stops "this story."
In the evening, the prince gave his wife the details of the visit to Zheltkov. She was not surprised by what she heard, but was slightly agitated: the princess felt that "this man will kill himself."
Chapter 11
The next morning, Vera learned from the newspapers that the official Zheltkov committed suicide due to the waste of state money. All day Sheina thought about the “unknown person”, whom she never had a chance to see, not understanding why she foresaw the tragic denouement of his life. She also remembered the words of Anosov about true love, which may have met on her way.
The postman brought Farewell letter Zheltkov. He admitted that he regards love for Vera as a great happiness, that his whole life lies only in the princess. He asked for forgiveness for the fact that “an uncomfortable wedge crashed into Vera’s life”, thanked her simply for the fact that she lives in the world, and said goodbye forever. “I tested myself - this is not a disease, not a manic idea - this is love, which God was pleased to reward me for something. Leaving, I say in delight: “Hallowed be thy name,” he wrote.
After reading the message, Vera told her husband that she would like to go and see the man who loved her. The prince supported this decision.
Chapter 12
Vera found an apartment that Zheltkov rented. The landlady came out to meet her, and they started talking. At the request of the princess, the woman spoke about last days Zheltkova, then Vera went into the room where he was lying. The expression on the face of the deceased was so peaceful, as if this man "before parting with his life learned some deep and sweet secret that resolved his whole human life."
In parting, the landlady told Vera that if she suddenly died and a woman came to say goodbye, Zheltkov asked me to tell her that best work Beethoven - his name he wrote down - "L. van Beethoven. Son. No. 2, op. 2. Largo Appassionato.
Vera wept, explaining her tears by the painful "impression of death."
Chapter 13
Vera Nikolaevna returned home late in the evening. At home, only Jenny Reiter was waiting for her, and the princess rushed to her friend with a request to play something. Without doubting that the pianist would perform “the very passage from the Second Sonata that this dead man with the funny surname Zheltkov asked for,” the princess recognized the music from the first chords. Vera's soul seemed to be divided into two parts: at the same time she was thinking about the love that had passed by once in a thousand years, and why she should listen to this particular work.
“The words were forming in her mind. They so coincided in her thoughts with the music that they were like couplets that ended with the words: “Hallowed be thy name.” These words were about great love. Vera cried about the past feeling, and the music excited and calmed her at the same time. When the sounds of the sonata died down, the princess calmed down.
To Jenny's question why she was crying, Vera Nikolaevna answered only to her with an understandable phrase: “He has forgiven me now. Everything is fine" .
Conclusion
Telling the story of a sincere and pure, but unrequited love of the hero to married woman, Kuprin pushes the reader to think about what place a feeling occupies in a person’s life, what it gives the right to, how it changes inner world one who has the gift of love.
Acquaintance with the work of Kuprin can begin with brief retelling"Pomegranate Bracelet" And then, already knowing storyline, having an idea of the heroes, with pleasure to dive into the rest of the writer's story about wonderful world true love.
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A. I. Kuprin
Garnet bracelet
L. van Beethoven. 2 Son. (op. 2, no. 2).
Largo Appassionato
In mid-August, before the birth of the new moon, the bad weather suddenly set in, which is so characteristic of the northern coast of the Black Sea. Sometimes for whole days a thick fog lay heavily over the land and the sea, and then the huge siren in the lighthouse roared day and night like a mad bull. Then from morning till morning it rained incessantly, fine as water dust, turning clay roads and paths into solid thick mud, in which carts and carriages got stuck for a long time. Then a fierce hurricane blew from the northwest, from the side of the steppe; from him the tops of the trees swayed, bending down and straightening up, like waves in a storm, the iron roofs of the dachas rattled at night, it seemed as if someone was running on them in shod boots, the window frames trembled, the doors slammed, and the chimneys howled wildly. Several fishing boats got lost in the sea, and two did not return at all: only a week later the corpses of fishermen were thrown out in different places on the coast.
The inhabitants of the suburban seaside resort - mostly Greeks and Jews, cheerful and suspicious, like all southerners - hastily moved to the city. Cargo drogs stretched endlessly along the softened highway, overloaded with all sorts of household items: mattresses, sofas, chests, chairs, washstands, samovars. It was pitiful, and sad, and disgusting to look through the muddy muslin of rain at this miserable belongings, which seemed so worn out, dirty and beggarly; on the maids and cooks sitting on top of the wagon on a wet tarpaulin with some kind of irons, tins and baskets in their hands, on sweaty, exhausted horses, which now and then stopped, trembling at the knees, smoking and often carrying sides, on hoarsely cursing quails, wrapped up from the rain in mats. It was even sadder to see the abandoned dachas with their sudden spaciousness, emptiness and bareness, with mutilated flowerbeds, broken glass, abandoned dogs and all sorts of dacha rubbish from cigarette butts, pieces of paper, shards, boxes and apothecary's vials.
But by the beginning of September, the weather suddenly changed abruptly and quite unexpectedly. Quiet, cloudless days immediately set in, so clear, sunny and warm that there were none even in July. On the dry, compressed fields, on their prickly yellow bristles, autumn cobwebs shone with a mica sheen. The calmed trees silently and obediently dropped their yellow leaves.
Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina, the wife of the marshal of the nobility, could not leave the dachas, because the repairs in their city house had not yet been completed. And now she was very glad of the lovely days that had come, the silence, the solitude, the clean air, the chirping on the telegraph wires of the swallows flocking to fly away, and the gentle salty breeze that weakly blew from the sea.
In addition, today was her name day - September 17th. According to sweet, distant memories of childhood, she always loved this day and always expected something happy and wonderful from him. Her husband, leaving in the morning on urgent business in the city, put a case with beautiful pear-shaped pearl earrings on her night table, and this gift amused her even more.
She was alone in the whole house. Her unmarried brother Nikolai, a fellow prosecutor, who usually lived with them, also went to the city, to the court. For dinner, the husband promised to bring a few and only the closest acquaintances. It turned out well that the name day coincided with summer time. In the city, one would have to spend money on a big ceremonial dinner, perhaps even on a ball, but here, in the country, one could manage with the smallest expenses. Prince Shein, despite his prominent position in society, and perhaps thanks to him, could barely make ends meet. The huge family estate was almost completely upset by his ancestors, and he had to live above his means: to make receptions, do charity, dress well, keep horses, etc. Princess Vera, whose former passionate love for her husband had long since passed into a strong, faithful feeling, true friendship, tried with all her might to help the prince refrain from complete ruin. She in many ways, imperceptibly for him, denied herself and, as far as possible, economized in the household.
Now she was walking in the garden and carefully cutting flowers for the dinner table with scissors. The flower beds were empty and looked disordered. Multi-colored terry carnations were blooming, as well as levka - half in flowers, and half in thin green pods that smelled of cabbage, rose bushes still gave - for the third time this summer - buds and roses, but already shredded, rare, as if degenerated. On the other hand, dahlias, peonies and asters bloomed magnificently with their cold, arrogant beauty, spreading an autumnal, grassy, sad smell in the sensitive air. The rest of the flowers, after their luxurious love and excessive abundant summer motherhood, quietly showered countless seeds of a future life on the ground.
Close by on the highway came the familiar sound of a three-ton car horn. It was the sister of Princess Vera, Anna Nikolaevna Friesse, who had promised in the morning to come by phone to help her sister receive guests and take care of the house.
Subtle hearing did not deceive Vera. She walked towards. A few minutes later a graceful carriage came to an abrupt halt at the dacha gate, and the driver, deftly jumping down from the seat, flung open the door.
The sisters kissed happily. From early childhood, they were attached to each other by a warm and caring friendship. In appearance, they were strangely not similar to each other. The eldest, Vera, took after her mother, a beautiful Englishwoman, with her tall, flexible figure, gentle, but cold and proud face, beautiful, although rather large hands, and that charming sloping of her shoulders, which can be seen in old miniatures. The youngest - Anna, - on the contrary, inherited the Mongolian blood of her father, a Tatar prince, whose grandfather was baptized only at the beginning of the 19th century and whose ancient family went back to Tamerlane himself, or Lang-Temir, as her father proudly called her, in Tatar, this great bloodsucker. She was half a head shorter than her sister, somewhat broad in the shoulders, lively and frivolous, a mocker. Her face was of a strongly Mongolian type, with rather noticeable cheekbones, with narrow eyes, which she, moreover, screwed up due to myopia, with an arrogant expression in her small, sensual mouth, especially in her full lower lip slightly protruding forward - this face, however, captivated some then an elusive and incomprehensible charm, which consisted, perhaps, in a smile, perhaps in the deep femininity of all features, perhaps in a piquant, provocatively coquettish facial expression. Her graceful ugliness excited and attracted the attention of men much more often and stronger than her sister's aristocratic beauty.
She was married to a very rich and very stupid man who did absolutely nothing, but was registered with some charitable institution and had the title of chamber junker. She could not stand her husband, but she gave birth to two children from him - a boy and a girl; She decided not to have any more children, and never did. As for Vera, she greedily wanted children and even, it seemed to her, the more the better, but for some reason they were not born to her, and she painfully and ardently adored the pretty anemic children of her younger sister, always decent and obedient, with pale mealy faces and curled flaxen doll hair.
Anna consisted entirely of cheerful carelessness and sweet, sometimes strange contradictions. She willingly indulged in the most risky flirting in all the capitals and in all the resorts of Europe, but she never cheated on her husband, whom, however, she contemptuously ridiculed both in the eyes and behind the eyes; she was extravagant, terribly fond of gambling, dancing, strong impressions, sharp spectacles, visited dubious cafes abroad, but at the same time she was distinguished by generous kindness and deep, sincere piety, which forced her even to secretly accept Catholicism. She had a rare beauty back, chest and shoulders. Going to big balls, she was exposed much more than the limits allowed by decency and fashion, but it was said that under the low neckline she always wore a sackcloth.
Vera, on the other hand, was strictly simple, coldly and a little condescendingly kind to everyone, independent and royally calm.
My God, how good are you here! How good! - said Anna, walking with quick and small steps next to her sister along the path. - If possible, let's sit a little on the bench above the cliff. I haven't seen the sea in such a long time. And what a wonderful air: you breathe - and your heart rejoices. In the Crimea, in Miskhor, last summer I made an amazing discovery. Do you know what sea water smells like during the surf? Imagine - mignonette.
Vera smiled softly.
You are a dreamer.
No no. I also remember the time everyone laughed at me when I said that there is some kind of pink tint in the moonlight. And the other day the artist Boritsky - that's the one who paints my portrait - agreed that I was right and that artists have known about this for a long time.
Is the artist your new hobby?
You always come up with! - Anna laughed and, quickly going to the very edge of the cliff, which fell like a sheer wall deep into the sea, looked down and suddenly screamed in horror and recoiled back with a pale face.
Wow, how high! she said in a weak and trembling voice. - When I look from such a height, it always tickles somehow sweetly and disgustingly in my chest ... and my toes ache ... And yet it pulls, pulls ...
She wanted to bend over the cliff again, but her sister stopped her.
Anna, my dear, for God's sake! It makes my head spin when you do that. Please sit down.
Well, well, well, sat down ... But just look, what beauty, what joy - just the eye is not satiated. If you knew how grateful I am to God for all the miracles that he has done for us!
Both thought for a moment. Deep, deep beneath them lay the sea. The shore was not visible from the bench, and therefore the feeling of infinity and grandeur of the expanse of the sea intensified even more. The water was tenderly calm and cheerfully blue, brightening only with oblique smooth stripes in the places of the current and turning into a deep deep blue color on the horizon.
Fishing boats, hardly marked by the eye - they seemed so small - dozed motionless in the sea surface, not far from the coast. And then, as if standing in the air, not moving forward, a three-masted ship, all dressed from top to bottom with monotonous white slender sails, bulging from the wind.
I understand you, - the older sister said thoughtfully, - but somehow it’s not the same with me as with you. When I see the sea for the first time after a long time, it both excites me, and pleases, and amazes me. As if for the first time I see a huge, solemn miracle. But then, when I get used to it, it starts to crush me with its flat emptiness ... I miss looking at it, and I try not to look anymore. Bored.
Anna smiled.
What are you? the sister asked.
Last summer,” Anna said slyly, “we rode from Yalta in a big cavalcade on horseback to Uch-Kosh. It's there, behind the forestry, above the waterfall. First we got into the cloud, it was very damp and hard to see, and we all climbed up the steep path between the pines. And suddenly, somehow, the forest ended immediately, and we came out of the fog. Imagine; a narrow platform on a rock, and under our feet we have an abyss. The villages below seem no bigger than a matchbox, the forests and gardens look like fine grass. The whole area descends to the sea, like a geographical map. And then there is the sea! Fifty versts, a hundred ahead. It seemed to me that I hung in the air and was about to fly. Such beauty, such ease! I turn around and say to the guide in delight: “What? Okay, Seyid-ogly?” And he only smacked his tongue: “Oh, master, how tired all this mine is. We see it every day."
Thank you for the comparison, - Vera laughed, - no, I just think that we northerners will never understand the charms of the sea. I love the forest. Do you remember the forest we have in Yegorovsky?.. How can he ever get bored? Pine trees!.. And what mosses!.. And fly agarics! Accurately made of red satin and embroidered with white beads. The silence is so… cool.
I don't care, I love everything, - Anna answered. - And most of all I love my little sister, my prudent Verenka. There are only two of us in the world.
She hugged her older sister and snuggled up to her, cheek to cheek. And suddenly she caught on.
No, how stupid I am! You and I, as if in a novel, are sitting and talking about nature, but I completely forgot about my gift. Here look. I'm just afraid, will you like it?
She took out from her hand bag a small notebook in a surprising binding: on the old blue velvet, worn and gray with time, a dull gold filigree pattern of rare complexity, subtlety and beauty curled - obviously, the love work of the hands of a skillful and patient artist. The book was attached to a gold chain as thin as a thread, the pages in the middle were replaced by ivory tablets.
What a wonderful thing! Charm! Vera said and kissed her sister. - Thank you. Where did you get such a treasure?
In an antique shop. You know my weakness for rummaging through old junk. So I came across this prayer book. Look, you see how the ornament here makes the figure of a cross. True, I found only one binding, I had to invent everything else - leaves, fasteners, a pencil. But Mollinet did not at all want to understand me, no matter how I interpreted him. The clasps had to be in the same style as the whole pattern, matte, old gold, fine carving, and God knows what he did. But the chain is real Venetian, very ancient.
Vera affectionately stroked the beautiful binding.
What a deep antiquity! .. How long can this book be? she asked.
I'm afraid to be precise. Approximately the end of the seventeenth century, the middle of the eighteenth ...
How strange,” Vera said with a thoughtful smile. - Here I am holding in my hands a thing that, perhaps, the hands of the Marquise Pompadour or Queen Antoinette herself touched ... But you know, Anna, it was only you who could come up with a crazy idea to convert a prayer book into a lady's carnet. However, let's go and see what's going on there.
They went into the house through a large stone terrace, closed on all sides by thick trellises of Isabella grapes. Plentiful black clusters, emitting a faint smell of strawberries, hung heavily between the dark, in some places gilded by the sun greenery. A green half-light spread over the entire terrace, from which the faces of the women immediately turned pale.
Yes, I myself thought so at first ... But now the evenings are so cold. It's better in the dining room. And let the men go here to smoke.
Will anyone be interesting?
I do not know yet. I only know that our grandfather will be.
Ah, dear grandfather. Here is joy! Anna exclaimed, throwing up her hands. I don't think I've seen him for a hundred years.
There will be Vasya's sister and, it seems, Professor Speshnikov. Yesterday, Annenka, I just lost my head. You know that they both love to eat - both the grandfather and the professor. But neither here nor in the city - you can't get anything for any money. Luka found quails somewhere - he ordered a familiar hunter - and something is wiser over them. The roast beef came out relatively good, alas! - the inevitable roast beef. Very good crabs.
Well, not so bad. You don't worry. However, between us, you yourself have a weakness for delicious food.
But there will be something rare. This morning a fisherman brought a sea detukh. I saw it myself. Just some kind of monster. Even scary.
Anna, greedily curious about everything that concerned her and what did not concern her, immediately demanded that they bring her a gurnard.
The tall, clean-shaven, yellow-faced cook Luka came in with a large, oblong white tub, which he held with difficulty by the ears, afraid to splash water on the parquet.
Twelve and a half pounds, Your Excellency,” he said with a special chef's pride. - We've been weighing.
The fish was too big for the pelvis and lay on the bottom with its tail curled up. Its scales shone with gold, the fins were bright red, and from the huge predatory muzzle two pale blue, folded, like a fan, long wings went to the sides. The gurnard was still alive and worked hard with its gills.
The younger sister gently touched the head of the fish with her little finger. But the rooster suddenly flapped its tail, and Anna with a squeal pulled her hand away.
Don't worry, Your Excellency, we'll arrange everything in the best possible way, - said the cook, obviously understanding Anna's anxiety. - Now the Bulgarian brought two melons. Pineapple. Kind of like cantaloupe, but the smell is much more fragrant. And I also dare to ask Your Excellency, what sauce would you like to serve with a rooster: tartar or Polish, otherwise you can just crackers in oil?
Do as you know. Go! - said the princess.
After five o'clock the guests began to arrive. Prince Vasily Lvovich brought with him his widowed sister Lyudmila Lvovna, after her husband Durasov, a plump, good-natured and unusually silent woman; a secular young rich varmint and reveler Vasyuchka, whom the whole city knew under this familiar name, very pleasant in society with his ability to sing and recite, as well as arrange lively pictures, performances and charity bazaars; the famous pianist Jenny Reiter, a friend of Princess Vera at the Smolny Institute, as well as her brother-in-law Nikolai Nikolayevich. They were followed by Anna's husband in a car with a shaved, fat, ugly huge professor Speshnikov and with the local vice-governor von Seck. Later than the others, General Anosov arrived, in a good hired landau, accompanied by two officers: Staff Colonel Ponamarev, a prematurely old, thin, bilious man, exhausted by excessive clerical work, and Guards Hussar lieutenant Bakhtinsky, who was famous in St. Petersburg as the best dancer and incomparable manager of balls .
General Anosov, a fat, tall, silver old man, was heavily climbing down from the footboard, holding on to the railing of the goat with one hand, and with the other on the back of the carriage. In his left hand he held an auditory horn, and in his right a stick with a rubber tip. He had a large, rough, red face with a fleshy nose and that good-natured, majestic, slightly contemptuous expression in his narrowed eyes, located in radiant, swollen semicircles, which is characteristic of courageous and simple people who have often seen danger and close before their eyes and death. The two sisters, who had recognized him from afar, ran up to the carriage just in time to half-jokingly, half-seriously support him from both sides under the arms.
Exactly… a bishop! - said the general in an affectionate hoarse bass.
Grandpa, dear, dear! Vera said in a tone of slight reproach. - Every day we are waiting for you, and at least you showed your eyes.
Our grandfather in the south has lost all conscience, - Anna laughed. - One could, it seems, remember the goddaughter. And you keep yourself a Don Juan, shameless, and completely forgot about our existence ...
The general, baring his majestic head, kissed the hands of both sisters in turn, then kissed them on the cheeks and again on the hand.
Girls ... wait ... do not scold, - he said, interspersing each word with sighs that came from long-standing shortness of breath. “Honestly… the unfortunate doctors… bathed my rheumatism all summer… in some kind of dirty… jelly, it smells awful… And they didn’t let me out… You are the first… to whom I came… I’m terribly glad… to see you… How are you jumping?.. You, Verochka ... quite a lady ... she became very similar ... to her dead mother ... When will you call for baptism?
Oh, I'm afraid, grandfather, that never ...
Don't despair... everything is ahead... Pray to God... And you, Anya, haven't changed at all... Even at sixty you'll be the same dragonfly-egoza. Wait a minute. Let me introduce you to the officers.
I have had this honor for a long time! - said Colonel Ponamarev, bowing.
I was introduced to the princess in Petersburg, - picked up the hussar.
Well, I'll introduce you, Anya, Lieutenant Bakhtinsky. A dancer and a brawler, but a good cavalryman. Take it out, Bakhtinsky, my dear, out of the carriage there ... Let's go, girls ... What, Verochka, will you feed? I… after the firth regime… have an appetite, like a graduation… an ensign.
General Anosov was a comrade-in-arms and devoted friend of the late Prince Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky. After the death of the prince, he transferred all tender friendship and love to his daughters. He knew them when they were very young, and even baptized the younger Anna. At that time - as still - he was the commandant of a large, but almost abolished fortress in the city of K. and daily visited the Tuganovskys' house. Children simply adored him for pampering, for gifts, for lodges in the circus and theater, and for the fact that no one knew how to play with them so excitingly as Anosov. But most of all they were fascinated and most strongly imprinted in their memory by his stories about military campaigns, battles and bivouacs, about victories and retreats, about death, wounds and severe frosts - unhurried, epicly calm, simple-hearted stories told between evening tea and that boring hour when the children are called to bed.
According to modern customs, this piece of antiquity seemed to be a gigantic and unusually picturesque figure. He combined precisely those simple, but touching and profound features, which even in his time were much more common in privates than in officers, those purely Russian, muzhik features that, when combined, give an exalted image that sometimes made our soldier not only invincible , but also a great martyr, almost a saint - features that consisted of an ingenuous, naive faith, a clear, good-natured and cheerful outlook on life, cold and businesslike courage, humility in the face of death, pity for the defeated, endless patience and amazing physical and moral endurance.
Anosov, starting from the Polish war, participated in all campaigns except the Japanese one. He would have gone to this war without hesitation, but he was not called, and he always had a great rule of modesty: "Do not climb to death until you are called." In all his service, he not only never flogged, but even hit a single soldier. During the Polish uprising, he once refused to shoot prisoners, despite the personal order of the regimental commander. “I will not only shoot the spy,” he said, “but, if you order, I will personally kill him. And these are prisoners, and I can’t.” And he said it so simply, respectfully, without a hint of defiance or showmanship, looking directly into the eyes of the chief with his clear, hard eyes, that instead of being shot himself, they left him alone.
But what is "love"? A terrible question that Mitya asks himself. He himself does not find the answer, and, perhaps, even the author, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, does not know him. Bunin's friend Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin fought over the same problem. His story "Garnet Bracelet" is often perceived as a hymn of sacrificial, unrequited love. It is possible that Kuprin himself in his mind built it in the same way. In any case, the famous refrain "Hallowed be thy name" allows us to make such an assumption. But Kuprin himself was by no means a platonic personality and understood how terribly love can disfigure a person. Let us recall two stories of General Anosov, a friend of the father of the heroine of the story: about officers who became victims of women who are commonly called “vamps”. The word comes from the title of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Vampire". It was translated into Russian by Konstantin Simonov, titled “Fool”. He had the right to do so, since the original also begins with a mention of a fool: “A fool there was ...” (“Once upon a time there was a fool ...”) The English poet tells about a man who had the difficult fate of falling in love with a woman who sucked all his strength out of him. “What a fool squandered, you can’t count everything, // (However, like you and me) // Future, faith, money and honor, // But a lady could eat more, // And a fool is a fool for that // (However, like you and me) ... "
Stories about such fools are offered to us by Kuprin in the first part of the story. And then a reasonable question arises - does not Zheltkov himself act as the third fool? He devoted his life to a woman who cannot even look at him and does not want to hear about him. Too unequal social roles both. At first, the attention of an outsider is even painful for Princess Vera. After all, she does not show signs of attention Grand Duke, and - a petty official. And the garnet bracelet itself - a symbol of great love - in the eyes of her husband and brother looks like only a tasteless craft: "this idiotic bracelet ... this monstrous priestly little thing ...".
Kuprin kills his Zheltkov, since this story cannot get any development. “A fool didn't put a barrel to his temple…” – Kipling and Simonov rejoiced for their character. But to stay alive difficult situation, you need forces almost greater than for suicide. The lover commits suicide, allegedly wasting government money. And Princess Vera has a memory of something great: “The love that every woman dreams of has passed her by ...” Of course, she regrets, she is upset, but let's look at things realistically: could a titled lady and a nondescript employee get closer? What happens to people, even equals, who decide to realize this great love, was clearly shown by Leo Tolstoy in the novel Anna Karenina.
No, for the characters of Russian stories, love brings only misfortunes. Having fallen in love, they die, like a slave from Heine's poem. Is it possible to love great and eternal? Contemporary writer Frederic Begbeder claims that love only lasts for three years. This is the title of one of his books. The approach is definitely not romantic. The heroes of famous novels sought the desired object and intended to live happily ever after with it. However, Nikolai Gogol is trying to show us the way of existence of people who are unconditionally in love with each other. But in order to save their lives, both of them closed themselves off from the world. “Not a single desire will fly over the palisade ...” - the author notes. Vissarion Belinsky at first looked at Gogol's characters almost with disgust. Petty feelings dominate these people, no social movement they won't be attracted. Therefore, they say, they could live to old age in serene contentment. But not everyone aspired to the same romantic heroes? Recall the famous novels: "The Black Arrow" by Robert Stevenson and "Quentin Dorward" by Sir Walter Scott. Joanna Sadley and Dick Shelton in one book, Quentin Dorward and Isabella de Croix in another, as soon as they join, they immediately hide in the family estates, forgetting both the Duke of Gloucester and King Louis Eleventh. Could it be that Gogol's story was originally conceived as a satirical response to contemporary romanticism? Like, look, dear brother-reader, what fate awaits the heroes with whom you empathized and sympathized; what kind of roses the Greek god of marriage prepared for them. That is why, we can conclude, the Chekhov artist did not dare to go in search of Zhenya, but only sighed: “Miss, where are you?”
A century later, romantically minded people reappeared in Russian literature, concluding the life of a character with a heroic death. They did not want to write about insignificant people, and the conscience of the artist did not allow them to bring two strong natures into one pair. Not only in friendship, but also in love, one turns out to be the slave of the other. What to do if no one wants to submit? It was then that Maxim Gorky in the story “Makar Chudra” forces Loiko Zobar to slaughter the proud beauty Radda, and after that he kills the hero ... But if two people want to live together to a natural end, they have to humble themselves, descend to the level of old-world landowners. Perhaps, in such humility lies the wisdom of life ...