Bitter. Brief summaries of works
- In people
- Barbarians
- Vassa Zheleznova
- Sparrow
- Summer residents
- Grandfather Arkhip and Lyonka
- Artamonov case
- Children of the Sun
- Childhood
- Life of Klim Samgin
- Confession
- Konovalov
- The Legend of Danko
- The Legend of Larra
- Makar Chudra
- Mallow
- Mother
- Bourgeois
- My universities
- My companion
- At the bottom
- Untimely thoughts
- Pepe
- Song of the Petrel
- Song of the Falcon
- About Ivanushka the Fool
- Birth of Man
- Samovar
- Tales of Italy
- The case of Evseyka
- Old Isergil
- Passion-face
- The Orlov couple
- Foma Gordeev
- Chelkash
“Konovalov”, brief description
The narrator Maxim tells us about his meeting with a certain Konovalov, and the reason for the story was a newspaper article that Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov, a tradesman from the city of Murom, who was arrested for vagrancy, hanged himself in a prison cell, probably due to melancholy. Maxim, with his story, decided to illuminate somewhat more clearly the reason for the suicide of this “glorious fellow”...
* * *
Maxim was eighteen when he met Konovalov. Then Maxim lived in a small Volga town and worked as an assistant to a baker, a soldier from the “musical team” and a heavy drunkard. When the owner of the bakery reproached him for spoiled or delayed baked goods, he scolded the owner and always pointed out his musical talent: “I am a musician! Sometimes the viola gets drunk - I play the viola; The oboe is under arrest - I’m blowing the oboe!” The owner responded by threatening to kill the “musician,” but the threats remained threats: in the summer it was difficult to find a good replacement baker.
And so the soldier drank, the owner gnashed his teeth, and Maxim had to work for two. But one fine day the owner hired the soldier, and with such a recommendation that he would hardly have found any work in this city. In his place, the owner took his former assistant, a skilled baker, but also a drunkard. True, unlike the soldier, he drank heavily: for three or four months he worked like a bear, working and singing... And then he started drinking and drinks until he gets sick or drinks himself dry...
* * *
The new baker, whom the owner introduced as Sasha Konovalov, was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about thirty. In appearance - a typical tramp, in face - a real Slav. His light brown hair was tangled, his light brown beard covered his chest like a fan. The long, pale, emaciated face was illuminated by large blue, gentle eyes. His beautiful lips smiled slightly guiltily under his brown mustache. His hand, extended for a handshake, was long, with a wide hand.
The owner, introducing the new baker, left, and Maxim and Konovalov were left alone in the bakery. The bakery was located in the basement: there was little light and air, but there was a lot of dampness, dirt and flour dust. There were long chests of dough against the walls, and a huge oven occupied almost a third of the bakery. The vaulted, smoky ceiling pressed with its weight... Konovalov looked around the bakery and suggested going outside: “... I came from the sea... I worked in gangs in the Caspian Sea... and suddenly, right from the latitude, I fell into a hole!” On the street, Konovalov sat silently and thought about something, peering intently at passers-by, and sadness shone in his clear eyes. Maxim looked at his pale face and thought: “What kind of man is this?”, but did not dare to speak, because Konovalov inspired strange respect.
Then they returned to the bakery and got to work. Having hung out one mountain of dough and kneaded another, they sat down to drink tea, and Konovalov suddenly asked: “Can you read? Here you go, read it,” and handed Maxim a crumpled piece of paper—a letter. It was a letter from Capitolina, a former merchant’s daughter, and now a prostitute, with whom Konovalov had a relationship at one time and promised to marry her (and then she could return to an honest life), but did not keep his promise: he started drinking and suddenly ended up in Astrakhan . At Konovalov’s request, Maxim wrote a touching message in response. Konovalov did not like the message, and Maxim had to rewrite it, adding a tear to the letter. Konovalov approved the letter, but then admitted in a conversation that he would not marry Kapitolina, although he would definitely send money to get her out of the brothel.
Konovalov generally had many women, many different professions and jobs, he could have lived well, even prosperously. But only sometimes a melancholy suddenly came over him, such that “it was absolutely impossible to live at that time.” It’s as if he is the only person in the whole wide world. And it was from this melancholy, from this “planet” or “illness” that Konovalov began to drink. With the same melancholy, he left Vera, the owner of the circus, to whom he was strongly attached. Vera often read various stories aloud to Konovalov (for example, about a mute serf who, on the orders of his lady, drowned a dog), and in parting she bit his hand so hard that it left a scar.
Maxim usually didn’t really believe such stories: every tramp had a mythical “merchant’s wife” or “lady” in his past. But in Konovalov’s story about Vera there was something truthful, unusual (for example, reading books), and finally, his sad and soft tone when remembering the “merchant’s wife” - an exceptional tone. A true tramp loves to show that for him there is no such thing on earth that he would not dare to curse.
“You believe me...” Konovalov finished his story. “Although our brother, the tramp, is a master at telling tales.” But if a person has nothing good in his life, it won’t hurt if he invents a fairy tale for himself... Without some kind of love, it is impossible for a person to live: then a soul is given to him so that he can love...
* * *
A week later, Maxim and Konovalov were already friends. Konovalov worked artistically. You had to see how he handled the dough, rolling it out with his powerful hands. He could bake three ovens and not one of the hundred and twenty lush, rosy loaves had a “press.” He loved to work, was passionate about his work, became depressed when the oven did not bake well or the dough rose slowly, and was childishly cheerful and pleased if the loaves came out correctly round, tall, and with a crispy crust. It was pleasant to look at this gigantic child, putting his whole soul into his work - as every person should do in any work...
Once Maxim asked Konovalov to sing. Konovalov refused, saying that when he gets bored, then he will start singing; and if he just starts singing, he’ll feel sad, and then he’ll start drinking. And it’s better not to sing in front of him, not to tease him. Maxim agreed, but sometimes he whistled or purred under his breath, and then Konovalov cut him off...
* * *
One day Maxim took out a book and, perched against the window, began to read. Konovalov asked him to read aloud. Maxim read, and sometimes through the book he looked into Konovalov’s face and met his eyes - wide open, tense, full of deep attention. Maxim tried to read as clearly and graphically as possible, but he soon got tired and closed the book. Konovalov begged him to read to the end. Maxim read, Konovalov listened attentively and eagerly; when they paused to work, they worked with feverish speed and almost silently in order to quickly return to reading. By morning Maxim finished the book. Konovalov sat on a sack of flour and looked at Maxim with strange eyes: “Who composed this? Did they give him a reward or something?” When Maxim explained that they didn’t give anything, Konovalov sighed sadly:
- How wise all this is! A man wrote a book... He wrote it and... he died. But the book remains and is being read. And the writer died without a reward.
Maxim got angry at Konovalov’s lack of understanding and spoke about the fatal role of the tavern in the life of the Russian writer, which shocked the naive Konovalov:
- Do people like this drink? What do they do... after they write books, do they drink? Of course after. They live, look at life, absorb other people's grief. They must have eyes. special... And the heart too... They will look at life and become sad... And they will pour their melancholy into books... This no longer helps, because the heart is touched... All that remains is to pour vodka over it... For this they should be distinguished, because they understand more than others and point to disorder. Here I am, for example, a tramp, a drunkard and a touched person. Why do I live on earth and who needs me on it? Neither his corner, nor his wife, nor children, and he doesn’t even want to do anything like that. I live, I miss... Why? Unknown. I don’t have an inner path... I don’t have a spark in my soul... strength, or what? So I’m looking for this spark and yearning for it, but what it is is unknown... Now, if some writer took a closer look at me, he could explain my life to me, huh?
Maxim thought that he himself was able to explain his life to him. He passionately began to prove that Konovalov is not to blame for what he is. He is a sad victim of conditions, a being with equal rights, reduced to the level of social zero by historical injustice. Konovalov, listening to this, was silent, and a good, bright smile arose in his eyes:
- How easy it is for you, brother! How do you know all these things? This is the first time I have heard such a speech. Everyone blames each other, and you blame your whole life. It turns out, in your opinion, that a person is not guilty of anything, but it was written for him in his birth to be a tramp - that’s why he is a tramp. How pitiful all this is for you! You are obviously weak in heart!... But here I am - a special case... Who is to blame for the fact that I drink? Pavelka, my brother, doesn’t drink - he has his own bakery in Perm. But I work better than him - but I am a tramp and a drunkard. But we are children of the same mother! It turns out that something is wrong with me... And I’m not alone - there are many of us like that. We will be special people... we will not be included in any order. We need a special account... and special laws... very strict laws - to eradicate us from life! Therefore, there is no benefit from us, but we take up space in it and stand on the path of others... We ourselves are to blame...
Maxim was stunned by such self-deprecation, unprecedented in a tramp, the bulk of his being isolated from everything, hostile to everything and ready to test the power of his embittered skepticism over everything. But the harder Maxim tried to prove to Konovalov that he was a “victim of the environment,” the more persistently Konovalov convinced Maxim of his guilt before himself for his share. It was original, but it also infuriated Maxim. And Konovalov took pleasure in beating himself... And their heated argument led nowhere, each remained with his own opinion.
* * *
The next day in the morning, Konovalov again asked to read aloud, and then promised to give Maxim half his salary so that he could buy books. Maxim began reading “The Revolt of Stenka Razin” by Kostomarov. At first Konovalov did not like the book (“there is no talk”), but as the figure of Stepan Razin emerged more and more clearly, Konovalov was reborn. Now his eyes burned greedily and sternly from under frowning brows; Everything soft and childish disappeared in him, something lion-like and fiery appeared in him. One might have thought that it was Konovalov, and not Frolka, who was Razin’s brother, so piercingly did he experience Stenka’s melancholy and the resentment of captivity. When the story reached the scene of Razin’s torture, Konovalov cried, and since he was ashamed of tears, he somehow growled so as not to cry. He was especially struck by the scene when Stenka gritted his teeth so hard that he spat them out on the floor along with his blood...
And the whole day passed with Maxim and Konovalov in a strange fog: they all talked about Razin, remembered his life, songs written about him, torture. They became even closer from that day...
* * *
Maxim then read “The Revolt of Stenka Razin” to Konovalov several more times, then “Taras Bulba”, “Poor People”. Konovalov also really liked Taras, but could not dim the impression of Kostomarov’s book. Konovalov didn’t understand “poor people”; he also rejected Pugachev: “Oh, you branded scoundrel!” He’s hiding behind the Tsar’s name and is making trouble...”
He generally understood time poorly, and in his mind all his favorite heroes existed together. When Maxim clarified this issue, Konovalov was sincerely upset.
On holidays, Maxim and Konovalov went across the river into the meadows. They took with them some vodka, bread, a book and in the morning they went “out into the free air,” as Konovalov called these excursions. They especially enjoyed visiting the “glass factory.” For some reason, that was the name of a dilapidated building that stood not far from the city. Greenish-gray, as if drooping, it looked at the city through the dark hollows of the windows and seemed crippled, offended by fate, maybe that’s why it gave shelter to various dark and homeless people. Maxim and Konovalov were welcome guests there because they brought the “glass people,” as Konovalov called them, bread, vodka and “hot food” - liver, heart, tripe.
The “glass people” paid to be treated to stories in which the terrible, soul-shattering truth was fantastically mixed up with the most naive lies. Maxim often read different books to them, and almost always they listened carefully and thoughtfully to the reading. And Maxim listened just as carefully to their stories, and Konovalov listened in order to again resume the previous dispute:
“Your reasoning is wrong... you tell it in such a way that you have to understand that all your life it was not you yourself, but the sabers that were made.” Where were you at that time? We must build our own lives! But how will we build it if we don’t know how to do it and our life has not been successful? And it turns out that all the support is us! Well, we know that we are...
They objected to him, but Konovalov persistently insisted on his point. Often, such disputes, which began at noon, ended around midnight, and Maxim and Konovalov returned from the “glass people” in the dark and knee-deep in mud.
When they didn’t feel like philosophizing, they went to the meadows, to small lakes, lit a fire, read a book or talked about life. And sometimes they looked at the sky... Konovalov loved nature with a deep, wordless love, and was always imbued with some kind of peaceful and affectionate mood, which further increased his resemblance to a child.
* * *
Two months have passed. Maxim talked about a lot with Konovalov, read a lot. He read “The Revolt of Stenka Razin” so often that he almost knew it by heart. But about Kapitolina, whose letter Maxim read on the first day of meeting Konovalov, almost no mention was made during all this time. Konovalov, as promised, sent her money, but there was no answer.
And then one evening a round-faced, pretty woman in a white headscarf entered the bakery and asked for “the baker Konovalov.” Konovalov suddenly and somehow very noisily rejoiced at her, came up, hugged her, and then took the visitor out of the bakery... Maxim was left alone and did not expect Konovalov before the morning, but, to his considerable amazement, three hours later he appeared sour, boring and tired :
“Here she is, Capitolina, what line she’s pushing: “I want,” she says, “to live with you like a wife.” And I have a drinking habit, I’m a tramp, I can’t live in one place... And she started threatening, then swearing, and then crying... Well, what should I do with her now? Go to her, tell her...
And he threw up his hands in such bewilderment and fear that it was clear that he had nowhere to put his wife! Apparently, the tramp instinct began to speak in him, the feeling of the eternal desire for freedom, which had been attempted:
- Maksim! Let's go to Kuban?! - he suddenly suggested.
Maxim never expected this. He had great “literary and pedagogical intentions” in relation to Konovalov (first of all, to teach him to read and write). Konovalov himself promised not to move all summer, and suddenly...
Maxim began to explain to Konovalov what to do with Capitolina. And late at night, a huge cobblestone suddenly broke the glass of the bakery - it was Capitolina in the company of some drunken man. Capitolina was also drunk, disheveled, her white scarf was knocked to the side, her bodice was torn. She swayed, swore obscenely, squealing hysterically:
- Sashka, you ruined me... Damn you! You laughed at me!... Sashka, can you kill me? Drown me!
Then the night watchman's whistle intervened, and Capitolina and her boyfriend were taken to the police.
Depressed by this scene, Maxim and Konovalov could not come to their senses for a long time. Konovalov was scared and ashamed: “Tell me, what happened?” - he asked.
And Maxim said that you need to understand what you want to do, and at the beginning of something you need to imagine its possible end. Konovalov did not understand this, and now everyone is to blame. Maxim did not spare his friend: the screams of Capitolina were still in his ears.
Konovalov listened with fear and amazement, with an expression of a purely childish sincerity of consciousness of his guilt before this girl. Then he resolutely put on his cap and went to the police to “take care of her.”
When Maxim woke up in the morning, Konovalov was not there yet. He appeared only in the evening - gloomy, disheveled, with sharp wrinkles on his forehead and with some kind of fog in his blue eyes. He was silent all day, only uttering brief words related to work when necessary, and walked dejectedly around the bakery. Something seemed to have gone out in him; he worked slowly and sluggishly, bound by his thoughts.
Only in the evening he asked to read about Stenka. But he listened gloomily, looking without blinking at the ceiling vaults. Then he spoke briefly about Capitolina:
- Again she returned to her point and no more... Everything is as before. Only she didn’t drink before, but now she started drinking...
They went to bed, but Maxim could not sleep. Suddenly he saw Konovalov silently approach the shelf, take Kostomarov’s book, and bring it to his eyes. He thoughtfully ran his finger along the lines and shook his head. There was something strange, tense and questioning in his thoughtful and haggard face. Suddenly he noticed that Maxim was watching him and asked:
- Is there any book about the order of life? I need to explain the actions, which are harmful, which - wow... I, you see, am embarrassed by my actions... Which at first seems good to me, turns out to be bad in the end. At least about Kapka...
Then he returned to his mat, laid directly on the floor, got up several times, smoked, and lay down again. Maxim fell asleep, and when he woke up, Konovalov was no longer in the bakery, and again he appeared only in the evening - he went to see Kapitolina:
“I am an infectious person... It’s not my lot to live in the world... A poisonous spirit emanates from me,” he said, looking at the floor.
Maxim began to dissuade him, but Konovalov only became more convinced of his unfitness for life...
* * *
He changed quickly and dramatically. He became thoughtful, lethargic, lost interest in books, worked no longer with the same ardor, but was silent and uncommunicative. In his free time, he lay down on the floor and looked into the vaults of the ceiling. His face became haggard, his eyes lost their clear, childlike sparkle—he was starting to binge...
Maxim noticed that Konovalov seemed to have become alienated from him. Once, having listened to his project for reorganizing life for the hundred and first time, he even got angry: “It’s not about life, it’s about the person. Teach him to find his path..."
One day he left in the evening and did not come to work that night or the next day. Instead, the owner appeared with a concerned face and announced that Konovalov was sitting in the “Wall”.
A “wall” was a tavern, cleverly built into a stone fence; it was, in fact, a hole dug in the ground and covered with planks on top. Its regulars were the most ignorant people, who hung around there all day long, waiting for the carpenter to go on a spree so that they could drink him naked.
Maxim went to the “Wall” and found Konovalov sitting at a large table, surrounded by six gentlemen in fantastically torn suits, with the faces of Hoffmann’s heroes. They drank beer and vodka and ate boiled meat, which looked more like dry lumps of clay.
Konovalov's determination to drink himself completely was visible. He was not yet drunk, only his blue eyes sparkled with excitement. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned, small drops of sweat glistened on his white forehead, and the hand held out for a glass of beer was shaking. To Maxim’s entreaties he answered loudly:
“I’ll drink it all away and... it’s a Sabbath!” I don’t want to work anymore and I don’t want to live here. If you had come ten years earlier, maybe everything would have been different... After all, I feel, I feel everything, every movement of life... but I can’t understand anything and I don’t know my path... I feel and drink, because I have nothing else to do ...
The tramps surrounding him looked at Maxim with hostility, afraid that he would steal the treat that they had been waiting for, perhaps, for a whole week. And Konovalov drank beer with vodka, wanting to stun himself with this mixture as soon as possible. When Maxim refused to drink with him, he roared: “Get away from me!” and his eyes flashed brutally.
Maxim left, but returned three hours later - Konovalov was still in the “Wall”. He sang mournfully, leaning on the table and looking at the sky through a hole in the ceiling. It seemed that those buried alive in the crypt were feasting and one of them was singing for the last time before death, saying goodbye to the sky. Hopeless sadness, despair, and melancholy sounded in Konovalov’s song.
Maxim left them for the bakery, and after him a clumsy drunken song moaned and cried for a long time in the night. Two days later, Konovalov disappeared somewhere from the city...
* * *
You need to be born into a cultured society in order to find the patience to live all your life among conventions, legitimized little lies. Maxim was born outside this society, and from time to time he had the need to leave its framework. That is why he plunged into the slums of cities, and sometimes simply walked along the fields and roads of his homeland.
Five years later, having taken such a walk, Maxim ended up in Feodosia, where a pier was being built. He climbed the mountain and looked from there at the work as at a picture: at the endless, mighty, eternal sea and tiny people, obsessed with the eternal desire to build, a desire that creates miracles, but does not give people shelter and bread. The entire rocky shore in front of the bay was dug up, people scurried along it like ants, blowing up the mountain with dynamite and now clearing the area for the railway. Lines of people moved along the scattered boards, bent over wheelbarrows loaded with stone; a pile driver was working nearby, driving piles.
From all over Russia, famine drove thousands of people to the construction site, and they all tried to stick together as fellow countrymen, and only the cosmopolitan tramps immediately stood out - with their independent appearance, costume and special way of speaking. Most of them gathered at the piledriver - easier work compared to working with wheelbarrows and with a pick.
Maxim approached them to find out who they needed to contact in order to “get to work.” And then he heard a familiar voice, saw a familiar broad-shouldered figure with an oval face and large blue eyes. Konovalov? But Konovalov did not have a scar from his right temple to the bridge of his nose, Konovalov’s hair was lighter and did not curl in small curls; Konovalov had a beautiful wide beard, he shaved and wore his mustache with the ends downwards, like a crest. When they stopped beating the pile, Maxim called out to the man:
- Konovalov!
- Maksim! — he flashed a joyful and kind smile. “And I, brother, have been walking around the world ever since.” I thought about sneaking with my comrades across the Romanian border, to see how it was there in Romania. Then one soldier hit me on the head... And my curls became curled after typhus. They put me in prison in Chisinau, and there I fell ill. And he would have died if it weren’t for the nurse. She read to me sometimes. I once read about an English sailor who escaped from a shipwreck on a deserted island and made a life for himself on it... Well, tell you what: I’m not working anymore today! I have money, let’s come to us... We are not in a barracks, but here in the mountain... There is a hole there, very convenient. The two of us are living in it, but our friend is sick—he’s got a fever.
He was all new, lively, calmly confident and strong. And two hours later Maxim was already lying in the “hole” - a small niche formed during the mining of the stone. A block of stone hung dangerously over the entrance to the “hole.” They positioned themselves like this: they put their legs and torsos into the hole, where it was cool, and left their heads in the sun. And the sick tramp went out into the sun, his teeth chattering from fever. It was a dry and long crest “from Piltava”.
Konovalov tried to welcome his dear guest as cordially as possible. Maxim spoke about his life, Konovalov in response offered to leave the cities and go with him to wander to Tashkent or the Amur...
When the sun set, Konovalov lit a fire, put a kettle in it and, hugging his knees, began to look thoughtfully into the fire. The crest, like a huge lizard, crawled up to him.
“They need cities for the winter,” Konovalov said suddenly, “but big cities are of no use.” People still can't get along with each other. In general, neither in the city, nor in the steppe, anywhere, there is no place for a person. But it’s better not to think about such things... you won’t invent anything, but you’ll tear your soul...
Maxim thought that Konovalov had changed from his wandering life. But the tone of his last phrase showed that he remained the same person looking for his “point”. The same rust of bewilderment before life and the poison of thoughts about it corroded the powerful figure, born, unfortunately, with a sensitive heart. There are many such “thoughtful” people in Russian life, and all of them are more unhappy than anyone else, because the severity of their thoughts is increased by the blindness of their mind. In confirmation of this, Konovalov exclaimed sadly:
“I remembered our life... How much land have I walked since then, how much have I seen... There is nothing convenient for me on earth!” I couldn't find a place for myself! Why can't I be calm? Why do I feel sick?
The fire went out. Maxim and Konovalov climbed into the “hole” and lay down, sticking their heads out into the air. Maxim looked at the dying fire and thought: “So do we all... If only it would burn brighter!”
Three days later he said goodbye to Konovalov. Maxim went to Kuban, but Konovalov did not want to. But both parted in the belief that they would meet.
I didn't have to...
