The story “Telegram” - Konstantin Paustovsky
October was unusually cold and stormy. The plank roofs turned black.
The tangled grass in the garden died down, and only the small sunflower by the fence was blooming and could not bloom and fall off.
Above the meadows, loose clouds dragged along from across the river, clinging to the willows that had flown around. Rain poured down from them annoyingly.
It was no longer possible to walk or drive along the roads, and the shepherds began to drive their flocks into the meadows.
The shepherd's horn died down until spring. It became even more difficult for Katerina Petrovna to get up in the morning and see everything the same: rooms where the bitter smell of unheated stoves stagnated, the dusty “Bulletin of Europe”, yellowed cups on the table, a samovar that had not been cleaned for a long time and paintings on the walls. Perhaps the rooms were too gloomy, and Katerina Petrovna’s eyes had already seen dark water, or perhaps the paintings had faded with time, but nothing could be made out on them. Katerina Petrovna knew only from memory that this one was a portrait of her father, and this one, small, in a gold frame, was a gift from Kramskoy, a sketch for his “Unknown.” Katerina Petrovna lived out her life in an old house built by her father, a famous artist.
In old age, the artist returned from St. Petersburg to his native village, lived in retirement and tended to his garden. He could no longer write: his hand trembled, his vision weakened, and his eyes often hurt.
The house was, as Katerina Petrovna said, “memorial.” It was under the protection of the regional museum. But what would happen to this house when she, its last inhabitant, died, Katerina Petrovna did not know. And in the village - it was called Zaborye - there was no one with whom one could talk about the paintings, about life in St. Petersburg, about that summer when Katerina Petrovna lived with her father in Paris and saw the funeral of Victor Hugo.
You can’t tell about this to Manyushka, the daughter of a neighbor, a collective farm shoemaker, a girl who came running every day to fetch water from the well, sweep the floors, and put on the samovar.
Katerina Petrovna gave Manyushka wrinkled gloves, ostrich feathers, and a black glass bead hat for her services.
- What do I need this for? – Manyushka asked hoarsely and sniffled. - Am I a rag picker, or what?
“Sell it, my dear,” Katerina Petrovna whispered. It has been a year since she became weak and could not speak loudly. - You sell it.
“I’ll scrap it,” Manyushka decided, took everything and left.
Occasionally, the watchman at the fire shed came in - Tikhon, skinny, red-haired. He still remembered how Katerina Petrovna’s father came from St. Petersburg, built a house, started an estate.
Tikhon was a boy then, but he retained his respect for the old artist throughout his life. Looking at his paintings, he sighed loudly: “The work is natural!”
Tikhon often worked to no avail, out of pity, but still helped with the housework: he cut down withered trees in the garden, sawed them, chopped them for firewood. And every time he left, he stopped at the door and asked:
– I can’t hear you, Katerina Petrovna, is Nastya writing something or not?
Katerina Petrovna was silent, sitting on the sofa - hunched over, small - and kept going through some papers in a red leather reticule. Tikhon blew his nose for a long time, hovering around the threshold.
“Well,” he said without waiting for an answer. “I think I’ll go, Katerina Petrovna.”
“Go, Tisha,” Katerina Petrovna whispered. - Go, God bless you!
He went out, carefully closing the door, and Katerina Petrovna began to cry quietly. The wind whistled through the bare branches outside the windows, knocking down the last leaves. The kerosene nightlight shuddered on the table. He seemed to be the only living creature in the abandoned house - without this weak fire, Katerina Petrovna would not have known how to survive until the morning.
The nights were already long, heavy, like insomnia. The dawn slowed down more and more, became more and more late and reluctantly leaked into the unwashed windows, where between the frames, since last year, once yellow autumn leaves, now rotted and black, lay on top of cotton wool.
Nastya, Katerina Petrovna’s daughter and only relative, lived far away, in Leningrad. The last time she came was three years ago.
Katerina Petrovna knew that Nastya now had no time for her, the old woman. They, the young people, have their own affairs, their own incomprehensible interests, their own happiness. It's better not to interfere. Therefore, Katerina Petrovna very rarely wrote to Nastya, but thought about her all the days, sitting on the edge of the dented sofa so quietly that the mouse, deceived by the silence, ran out from behind the stove, stood on its hind legs and sniffed the stagnant air for a long time, moving its nose.
There were no letters from Nastya either, but once every two or three months the cheerful young postman Vasily brought Katerina Petrovna a transfer for two hundred rubles. He carefully held Katerina Petrovna’s hand while she was signing, so that she wouldn’t sign where she shouldn’t.
Vasily left, and Katerina Petrovna sat, confused, with money in her hands. Then she put on her glasses and re-read a few words on the postal order. The words were all the same: there is so much to do that there is no time, let alone to come, or even to write a real letter.
Katerina Petrovna carefully sorted through the plump pieces of paper. Because of her old age, she forgot that this money was not at all the same as what Nastya had in her hands, and it seemed to her that the money smelled of Nastya’s perfume. One night at the end of October, someone knocked for a long time on a gate that had been boarded up for several years in the depths of the garden.
Katerina Petrovna became worried, tied a warm scarf around her head for a long time, put on an old cloak, and left the house for the first time this year. She walked slowly, feeling her way. The cold air gave me a headache. Forgotten stars looked piercingly at the earth. Fallen leaves made it difficult to walk.
Near the gate, Katerina Petrovna quietly asked:
- Who's knocking?
But no one answered behind the fence.
“It must have been my imagination,” said Katerina Petrovna and wandered back.
She gasped, stopped at an old tree, put her hand on a cold, wet branch and recognized it: it was a maple. She had planted it a long time ago, when she was still a laughing girl, and now it stood flaccid, chilled, and had nowhere to escape from this homeless, windy night.
Katerina Petrovna took pity on the maple tree, touched the rough trunk, wandered into the house and that same night wrote Nastya a letter.
“My beloved,” wrote Katerina Petrovna. “I won’t survive this winter.” Come at least for a day. Let me look at you, hold your hands. I have become old and weak to the point that it is difficult for me not only to walk, but even to sit and lie down - death has forgotten the way to me. The garden is drying up - it’s not the same at all - but I don’t even see it. It's a bad autumn. So hard; my whole life, it seems, has not been as long as this one autumn.”
Manyushka, sniffling, took this letter to the post office, spent a long time stuffing it into the mailbox and looked inside - what was there? But nothing was visible inside - just a tin void. Nastya worked as a secretary at the Union of Artists. There was a lot of work, organizing exhibitions, competitions - all this passed through her hands.
Nastya received a letter from Katerina Petrovna at the service. She hid it in her purse without reading it - she decided to read it after work. Katerina Petrovna’s letters brought a sigh of relief from Nastya: since her mother was writing, it meant she was alive. But at the same time, a dull anxiety began from them, as if each letter was a silent reproach.
After work, Nastya had to go to the workshop of the young sculptor Timofeev, see how he lives, in order to report this to the board of the Union. Timofeev complained about the cold in the workshop and, in general, about the fact that he was being bullied and not allowed to turn around.
On one of the platforms, Nastya took out a mirror, powdered herself and grinned - now she liked herself. The artists called her Solveig for her brown hair and large, cold eyes.
Timofeev himself opened it - small, determined, angry. He was wearing a coat. He wrapped a huge scarf around his neck, and Nastya noticed ladies’ felt boots on his feet. “Don’t take off your clothes,” Timofeev muttered. - Otherwise you'll freeze. Ask!
He led Nastya along a dark corridor, went up a few steps and opened the narrow door into the workshop.
There was a smell of smoke coming from the workshop. A kerosene stove was burning on the floor near a barrel of wet clay. There were sculptures on the machines, covered with damp rags. Outside the wide window, snow flew slantingly, covered the Neva with fog, and melted in its dark water. The wind whistled through the frames and stirred old newspapers on the floor.
- My God, how cold it is! - Nastya said, and it seemed to her that the studio was even colder because of the white marble bas-reliefs hung in disarray on the walls.
- Look at it! - Timofeev said, pushing a clay-stained chair towards Nastya. “It’s unclear how I haven’t died in this den yet.” And in Pershin’s workshop the air heaters blow heat like from the Sahara.
-You don’t like Pershin? – Nastya asked carefully.
- Upstart! – Timofeev said angrily. - Craftsman! His figures do not have shoulders, but coat hangers. His collective farmer is a stone woman in a tucked apron. His worker looks like a Neanderthal man. Sculpts with a wooden shovel. And he is cunning, my dear, as cunning as a cardinal!
“Show me your Gogol,” Nastya asked to change the conversation.
- Move over! – the sculptor ordered gloomily. - No, not there! Over there in that corner. So!
He removed the wet rags from one of the figures, meticulously examined it from all sides, squatted down near the kerosene stove, warming his hands, and said:
- Well, here he is, Nikolai Vasilyevich! Now please!
Nastya shuddered. A sharp-nosed, stooped man looked at her mockingly, knowing her through and through. Nastya saw a thin sclerotic vein beating on his temple.
“And the letter is unopened in my purse,” Gogol’s drilling eyes seemed to say. “Oh, you magpie!”
- Well? - asked Timofeev. - Serious uncle, huh?
- Amazing! – Nastya answered with difficulty. – This is truly excellent.
Timofeev laughed bitterly.
“Excellent,” he repeated. - Everyone says: excellent. And Pershin, and Matyasch, and all sorts of experts from all sorts of committees. What's the point? Here it’s excellent, but where my fate as a sculptor is being decided, the same Pershin will just grunt vaguely - and it’s done. And Pershin chuckled - that means it’s over!... You can’t sleep at night! – Timofeev shouted and ran around the workshop, stomping his boots. – Rheumatism in hands from wet clay. For three years you read every word about Gogol. I dream about pig snouts!
Timofeev picked up a pile of books from the table, shook them in the air and threw them back with force. Plaster dust flew off the table.
- It's all about Gogol! - he said and suddenly calmed down. - What? I think I scared you? Sorry, honey, but by God, I'm ready to fight.
“Well, we’ll fight together,” Nastya said and stood up.
Timofeev shook her hand firmly, and she left with a firm decision to snatch this talented man from obscurity at any cost.
Nastya returned to the Union of Artists, went to the chairman and talked to him for a long time, got excited, and argued that it was necessary to immediately organize an exhibition of Timofeev’s works. The chairman tapped his pencil on the table, thought about something for a long time and finally agreed.
Nastya returned home to her old room on the Moika, with a stucco gilded ceiling, and only there did she read Katerina Petrovna’s letter.
-Where should we go now? - she said and stood up. “How can you escape from here?”
She thought about the crowded trains, the transfer to a narrow-gauge railway, the shaking cart, the withered garden, the inevitable tears of her mother, the drawn-out, unadorned boredom of rural days - and she put the letter in the desk drawer.
For two weeks, Nastya tinkered with the arrangement of Timofeev’s exhibition.
Several times during this time she quarreled and made peace with the quarrelsome sculptor. Timofeev sent his works to the exhibition with such an air as if he was dooming them to destruction.
“You won’t succeed in hell, my dear,” he told Nastya with gloating, as if she was organizing her own exhibition, not his. “I’m just wasting my time, honestly.”
At first Nastya was in despair and offended, until she realized that all these whims were from wounded pride, that they were feigned, and in the depths of his soul Timofeev was very happy about his future exhibition.
The exhibition opened in the evening. Timofeev was angry and said that one should not look at the sculpture under electricity.
- Dead light! - he grumbled. - Deadly boredom! Kerosene is even better.
– What kind of light do you need, you impossible type? – Nastya flared up.
- We need candles! Candles! – Timofeev shouted painfully. - How can you put Gogol under an electric lamp? Absurd!
There were sculptors and artists at the opening. The uninitiated, hearing the conversations of the sculptors, could not always guess whether they praised Timofeev’s work or scolded it. But Timofeev understood that the exhibition was a success.
The gray-haired, hot-tempered artist approached Nastya and patted her hand:
- Thank you. I heard that it was you who brought Timofeev into the light of day. Well done. Otherwise, you know, we have a lot of talk about attention to the artist, about care and sensitivity, but when it comes down to it, you come across empty eyes. Thank you again!
The discussion began. They talked a lot, praised, got excited, and the idea thrown by the old artist about attention to the person, to the young undeservedly forgotten sculptor, was repeated in every speech.
Timofeev sat ruffled, looking at the parquet floor, but still looked sideways at the speakers, not knowing whether he could trust them or whether it was too early.
A courier from the Union appeared at the door - the kind and stupid Dasha. She made some signs to Nastya. Nastya approached her, and Dasha, grinning, handed her a telegram.
Nastya returned to her place, quietly opened the telegram, read it and did not understand anything:
“Katya is dying. Tikhon."
“Which Katya? – Nastya thought in confusion. - Which Tikhon? It should hit, it’s not for me.”
She looked at the address: no, the telegram was for her. Only then did she notice the thin block letters on the paper tape: “Fence.”
Nastya crumpled the telegram and frowned. Pershiy spoke.
“Nowadays,” he said, swaying and holding his glasses, “caring for a person becomes that wonderful reality that helps us grow and work.” I am happy to note in our environment, among sculptors and artists, the manifestation of this concern. I'm talking about the exhibition of works by Comrade Timofeev. We are entirely indebted for this exhibition—no offense intended to our leadership—to one of the ordinary employees of the Union, our dear Anastasia Semyonovna.
The first one bowed to Nastya, and everyone applauded. They applauded for a long time. Nastya was embarrassed to the point of tears.
Someone touched her hand from behind. He was an old, hot-tempered artist.
- What? – he asked in a whisper and pointed with his eyes at the telegram crumpled in Nastya’s hand. - Anything unpleasant?
“No,” Nastya answered. - This is so... From one friend...
- Yeah! - the old man muttered and began to listen to Pershin again.
Everyone was looking at Pershin, but Nastya felt someone’s gaze, heavy and piercing, on her all the time and was afraid to raise her head. "Who could it be? - she thought. - Did anyone really guess? So silly. My nerves were fraying again.”
She raised her eyes with an effort and immediately looked away: Gogol was looking at her, grinning. A thin sclerotic vein seemed to be beating heavily on his temple. It seemed to Nastya that Gogol said quietly through clenched teeth: “Oh, you!”
Nastya quickly got up, went out, hastily dressed downstairs and ran out into the street.
Watery snow was falling. Gray frost appeared at St. Isaac's Cathedral. The gloomy sky sank lower and lower over the city, over Nastya, over the Neva.
“My beloved,” Nastya recalled a recent letter. “Beloved!”
Nastya sat down on a bench in the park near the Admiralty and cried bitterly. The snow melted on his face and mixed with tears.
Nastya shuddered from the cold and suddenly realized that no one loved her as much as this decrepit old woman, abandoned by everyone, there in boring Zaborye.
"Late! I won’t see my mother again,” she said to herself and remembered that over the past year she uttered that sweet childish word “mom” for the first time.
She jumped up and quickly walked against the snow lashing her face.
“So what, mom? What? - she thought, not seeing anything. - Mother! How could this happen? After all, I don’t have anyone in my life. It is not and will not be dearer. If only I could make it in time, if only she could see me, if only she would forgive me.”
Nastya went out onto Nevsky Prospekt, to the city railway station.
She was late. There were no more tickets.
Nastya stood near the cash register, her lips were trembling, she could not speak, feeling that from the very first word she said she would burst into tears.
An elderly cashier with glasses looked out the window.
– What’s wrong with you, citizen? – she asked displeasedly.
“Nothing,” Nastya answered. “I have a mother...” Nastya turned and quickly walked towards the exit.
- Where are you going? – the cashier shouted. – I should have said it right away. Wait a minute.
That same evening Nastya left. All the way it seemed to her that the Red Arrow was barely dragging along, while the train was rushing rapidly through the night forests, pouring steam over them and resounding with a drawn-out warning cry.
... Tikhon came to the post office, whispered with the postman Vasily, took the telegraph form from him, turned it over and for a long time, wiping his mustache with his sleeve, wrote something on the form in clumsy letters. Then he carefully folded the form, put it in his hat and trudged off to Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna did not get up for the tenth day. Nothing hurt, but fainting weakness pressed on my chest, head, legs, and it was difficult to breathe.
Manyushka did not leave Katerina Petrovna’s side for six days. At night, she slept on a sagging sofa without undressing. Sometimes Manyushka thought that Katerina Petrovna was no longer breathing. Then she began to whine in fear and called: is she alive?
Katerina Petrovna moved her hand under the blanket, and Manyushka calmed down.
In the rooms from the very morning there was November darkness in the corners, but it was warm. Manyushka lit the stove. When the cheerful fire illuminated the log walls, Katerina Petrovna sighed cautiously - the fire made the room cozy, lived-in, as it had been a long time ago, back under Nastya. Katerina Petrovna closed her eyes, and a single tear rolled out of them and slid along her yellow temple, becoming entangled in her gray hair.
Tikhon arrived. He was coughing, blowing his nose and was apparently agitated.
- What, Tisha? – Katerina Petrovna asked powerlessly.
– It’s getting colder, Katerina Petrovna! - Tikhon said cheerfully and looked at his hat with concern. - It will snow soon. It's for the better. The frost will block the road, which means she will be able to drive better.
- To whom? – Katerina Petrovna opened her eyes and with a dry hand began to frantically stroke the blanket.
“Who else if not Nastasya Semyonovna,” Tikhon answered, grinning wryly, and pulled a telegram from his hat. - Who else if not her?
Katerina Petrovna wanted to get up, but couldn’t, and fell onto the pillow again.
- Here! - said Tikhon, carefully unfolded the telegram and handed it to Katerina Petrovna.
But Katerina Petrovna did not take it, but still looked at Tikhon pleadingly.
“Read it,” Manyushka said hoarsely. - Grandma can’t read anymore. She has weakness in her eyes.
Tikhon looked around in fear, straightened his collar, smoothed his sparse red hair and read in a dull, uncertain voice: “Wait, she’s leaving. I will always remain your loving daughter Nastya.”
- No need, Tisha! – Katerina Petrovna said quietly. - No need, honey. God be with you. Thank you for your kind word, for your affection.
Katerina Petrovna turned away from the wall with difficulty, then seemed to fall asleep.
Tikhon sat in the cold hallway on a bench, smoking, with his head down, spitting and sighing, until Manyushka came out and beckoned Katerina Petrovna into the room.
Tikhon walked in on tiptoes and wiped his face with all his fingers. Katerina Petrovna lay pale, small, as if serenely asleep.
“I didn’t wait,” muttered Tikhon. - Oh, her grief is bitter, her suffering is unwritten! “And look, you fool,” he said angrily to Manyushka, “repay good for good, don’t be a kestrel... Sit here, and I’ll run to the village council and report.”
He left, and Manyushka sat on a stool, her knees drawn up, shaking and looking fixedly at Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna was buried the next day. It's frozen. A thin snow fell. The day had turned white, and the sky was dry, bright, but gray, as if a washed, frozen canvas had been stretched overhead. The distances beyond the river were gray. They smelled of the sharp and cheerful smell of snow, captured by the first frost of willow bark.
Old women and boys gathered for the funeral. The coffin was carried to the cemetery by Tikhon, Vasily and two Malyavin brothers - old men, as if overgrown with pure tow. Manyushka and her brother Volodka carried the coffin lid and looked ahead without blinking.
The cemetery was behind the village, above the river. Tall willows, yellow with lichen, grew on it.
On the way I met a teacher. She had recently arrived from a regional town and didn’t know anyone else in Zaborye.
- The teacher is coming, teacher! – the boys whispered.
The teacher was young, shy, gray-eyed, just a girl. She saw the funeral and timidly stopped, looking fearfully at the little old woman in the coffin. Stinging snowflakes fell on the old woman’s face and did not melt. There, in the regional city, the teacher left her mother - just as small, always worried about caring for her daughter, and just as completely gray-haired.
The teacher stood and slowly followed the coffin. The old women looked at her, whispering that she was such a quiet girl and that it would be difficult for her at first with the boys - they were very independent and mischievous in Zaborye.
The teacher finally made up her mind and asked one of the old women, Grandma Matryona:
– This old lady must have been lonely?
“And-and, my dear,” Matryona immediately sang, “I’m almost completely alone.” And she was so sincere, so heartfelt. She used to sit and sit on her sofa alone, with no one to say a word to. Such a pity! She has a daughter in Leningrad, and apparently she has flown high. So she died without people, without relatives.
At the cemetery, the coffin was placed near a fresh grave. The old women bowed to the coffin and touched the ground with their dark hands. The teacher approached the coffin, bent down and kissed Katerina Petrovna’s withered yellow hand. Then she quickly straightened up, turned away and walked towards the destroyed brick fence.
Behind the fence, in the light fluttering snow, lay the beloved, slightly sad, native land.
The teacher watched for a long time, listened to how the old people were talking behind her back, how the earth was knocking on the lid of the coffin, and roosters of different voices were crowing far away in the courtyards - they predicted clear days, light frosts, winter silence.
Nastya arrived in Zaborye on the second day after the funeral. She found a fresh grave mound in the cemetery - the earth on it was frozen in lumps - and Katerina Petrovna’s cold, dark room, from which it seemed that life had left a long time ago.
In this room, Nastya cried all night until the windows turned blue with a cloudy and heavy dawn.
Nastya left Zaborye stealthily, trying so that no one would see her or ask her anything. It seemed to her that no one except Katerina Petrovna could relieve her of irreparable guilt and unbearable heaviness.
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October was unusually cold and stormy. The plank roofs turned black.
The tangled grass in the garden died down, and only the small sunflower by the fence was blooming and could not bloom and fall off. Above the meadows, loose clouds dragged along from across the river, clinging to the willows that had flown around. Rain poured down from them annoyingly.
It was no longer possible to walk or drive along the roads, and the shepherds stopped driving their flocks into the meadows.
The shepherd's horn died down until spring. It became even more difficult for Katerina Petrovna to get up in the morning and see everything the same: rooms where the bitter smell of unheated stoves stagnated, the dusty “Bulletin of Europe”, yellowed cups on the table, a long-uncleaned samovar and paintings on the walls. Perhaps the rooms were too gloomy, and Katerina Petrovna’s eyes had already seen dark water, or perhaps the paintings had faded with time, but nothing could be made out on them. Katerina Petrovna knew only from memory that this one was a portrait of her father, and this one, small, in a gold frame, was a gift from Kramskoy, a sketch for his “The Unknown.” Katerina Petrovna lived out her life in an old house built by her father, a famous artist.
In old age, the artist returned from St. Petersburg to his native village, lived in retirement and tended to his garden. He could no longer write: his hand trembled, his vision weakened, and his eyes often hurt.
The house was, as Katerina Petrovna said, “memorial.” It was under the protection of the regional museum. But what would happen to this house when she, its last inhabitant, died, Katerina Petrovna did not know. And in the village - it was called Zaborye - there was no one with whom one could talk about the paintings, about life in St. Petersburg, about that summer when Katerina Petrovna lived with her father in Paris and saw the funeral of Victor Hugo.
You can’t tell about this to Manyushka, the daughter of a neighbor, a collective farm shoemaker, a girl who came running every day to fetch water from the well, sweep the floors, and put on the samovar.
Katerina Petrovna gave Manyushka wrinkled gloves, ostrich feathers, and a black glass bead hat for her services.
- What do I need this for? - Manyushka asked hoarsely and sniffed. Am I a rag picker, or what?
“Sell it, my dear,” Katerina Petrovna whispered. It has been a year since she became weak and could not speak loudly. You sell it.
“I’ll scrap it,” Manyushka decided, took everything and left.
Occasionally, the watchman at the fire shed, Tikhon, a skinny, red-haired man, would come by. He still remembered how Katerina Petrovna’s father came from St. Petersburg, built a house, started an estate.
Tikhon was a boy then, but he retained his respect for the old artist throughout his life. Looking at his paintings, he sighed loudly:
- The work is natural!
Tikhon often worked to no avail, out of pity, but still helped with the housework: he cut down withered trees in the garden, sawed them, chopped them for firewood. And every time he left, he stopped at the door and asked:
- Can’t hear, Katerina Petrovna, is Nastya writing something or not?
Katerina Petrovna was silent, sitting on the sofa - hunched over, small - and kept going through some papers in a red leather reticule. Tikhon blew his nose for a long time, hovering around the threshold.
“Well,” he said without waiting for an answer. “I think I’ll go, Katerina Petrovna.”
“Go, Tisha,” Katerina Petrovna whispered. - Go, God bless you!
He went out, carefully closing the door, and Katerina Petrovna began to cry quietly. The wind whistled through the bare branches outside the windows, knocking down the last leaves. The kerosene nightlight shuddered on the table. He seemed to be the only living creature in the abandoned house, without this weak fire Katerina Petrovna would not have known how to survive until the morning.
The nights were already long, heavy, like insomnia. The dawn slowed down more and more, became more and more late and reluctantly leaked into the unwashed windows, where between the frames, since last year, once yellow autumn leaves, now rotted and black, lay on top of cotton wool.
Nastya, Katerina Petrovna’s daughter and only relative, lived far away, in Leningrad. The last time she came was three years ago.
Katerina Petrovna knew that Nastya now had no time for her, the old woman. They, the young people, have their own affairs, their own incomprehensible interests, their own happiness. It's better not to interfere. Therefore, Katerina Petrovna very rarely wrote to Nastya, but thought about her all the days, sitting on the edge of the dented sofa so quietly that the mouse, deceived by the silence, ran out from behind the stove, stood on its hind legs and sniffed the stagnant air for a long time, moving its nose.
There were no letters from Nastya either, but once every two or three months the cheerful young postman Vasily brought Katerina Petrovna a transfer for two hundred rubles. He carefully held Katerina Petrovna’s hand when she signed, so as not to sign where it was not necessary.
Vasily left, and Katerina Petrovna sat, confused, with money in her hands. Then she put on her glasses and re-read a few words on the postal order. The words were all the same: there is so much to do that there is no time, let alone to come, or even to write a real letter.
Katerina Petrovna carefully sorted through the plump pieces of paper. Because of her old age, she forgot that this money was not at all the same as what Nastya had in her hands, and it seemed to her that the money smelled of Nastya’s perfume.
One day at the end of October, at night, someone knocked for a long time on a gate that had been boarded up for several years in the depths of the garden.
Katerina Petrovna became worried, tied a warm scarf around her head for a long time, put on an old cloak and left the house for the first time this year. She walked slowly, feeling her way. The cold air gave me a headache. Forgotten stars looked piercingly at the earth. Fallen leaves made it difficult to walk.
Near the gate, Katerina Petrovna quietly asked:
-Who's knocking?
But no one answered behind the fence.
“It must have been my imagination,” said Katerina Petrovna and wandered back.
She gasped, stopped at an old tree, put her hand on a cold, wet branch and recognized it: it was a maple. She had planted it a long time ago, when she was still a laughing girl, and now it stood flaccid, chilled, and had nowhere to escape from this homeless, windy night.
Katerina Petrovna took pity on the maple tree, touched the rough trunk, wandered into the house and that same night wrote Nastya a letter.
“My beloved,” wrote Katerina Petrovna. “I won’t survive this winter.” Come at least for a day. Let me look at you, hold your hands. I have become old and weak to the point that it is difficult for me not only to walk, but even to sit and lie down, death has forgotten the way to me. The garden is drying up - it’s not the same at all, and I don’t even see it. It's a bad autumn. So hard; “My whole life, it seems, has not been as long as this one autumn.”
Manyushka, sniffling, took this letter to the post office, put it in the mailbox for a long time and looked inside, what was there? But nothing was visible inside - just a tin void.
Nastya worked as a secretary at the Union of Artists. There was a lot of work, organizing exhibitions, competitions - all this passed through her hands.
Nastya received a letter from Katerina Petrovna at the service. She hid it in her purse without reading it and decided to read it after work. Katerina Petrovna’s letters brought a sigh of relief from Nastya: since her mother was writing, it meant she was alive. But at the same time, a dull anxiety began from them, as if each letter was a silent reproach.
After work, Nastya had to go to the workshop of the young sculptor Timofeev, see how he lives, in order to report this to the board of the Union. Timofeev complained about the cold in the workshop and, in general, about the fact that he was being bullied and not allowed to turn around.
On one of the platforms, Nastya took out a mirror, powdered herself and grinned - now she liked herself. The artists called her Solveig for her brown hair and large, cold eyes.
Timofeev himself opened it - small, determined, angry. He was wearing a coat. He wrapped a huge scarf around his neck, and Nastya noticed ladies’ felt boots on his feet.
“Don’t take off your clothes,” Timofeev muttered. - Otherwise you'll freeze. Ask!
He led Nastya along a dark corridor, went up a few steps and opened the narrow door into the workshop.
There was a smell of smoke coming from the workshop. A kerosene stove was burning on the floor near a barrel of wet clay. There were sculptures on the machines, covered with damp rags. Outside the wide window, snow flew slantingly, covered the Neva with fog, and melted in its dark water. The wind whistled through the frames and stirred old newspapers on the floor.
- My God, how cold it is! - Nastya said, and it seemed to her that the studio was even colder because of the white marble bas-reliefs hung in disarray on the walls.
- Look, look at it! - Timofeev said, pushing a clay-stained chair towards Nastya. It’s unclear how I haven’t died in this den yet. And in Pershin’s workshop the air heaters blow heat like from the Sahara.
-You don’t like Pershin? - Nastya asked carefully.
- Upstart! - Timofeev said angrily. Craftsman! His figures do not have shoulders, but coat hangers. His collective farmer is a stone woman in a tucked apron. His worker looks like a Neanderthal man. Sculpts with a wooden shovel. And he is cunning, my dear, as cunning as a cardinal!
“Show me your Gogol,” Nastya asked to change the conversation.
- Move over! - the sculptor ordered gloomily. - No, not there! Over there in that corner. So!
He removed the wet rags from one of the figures, meticulously examined it from all sides, squatted down near the kerosene stove, warming his hands, and said:
- Well, here he is, Nikolai Vasilyevich! Now please!
Nastya shuddered. A sharp-nosed, stooped man looked at her mockingly, knowing her through and through. Nastya saw a thin sclerotic vein beating on his temple.
“And the unopened letter in the purse seemed to be spoken by Gogol’s drilling eyes. Oh, you magpie!“
- Well? - asked Timofeev. Serious guy, huh?
- Amazing! - Nastya answered with difficulty. This is truly excellent.
Timofeev laughed bitterly.
“Excellent,” he repeated. Everyone says: excellent. And Pershin, and Matyasch, and all sorts of experts from all sorts of committees. What's the point? Here it’s excellent, but where my fate as a sculptor is being decided, the same Pershin will just grunt vaguely and it’s done. And Pershin chuckled - that means it’s over! You can't sleep at night! - Timofeev shouted and ran around the workshop, stomping his boots. - Rheumatism in hands from wet clay. For three years you read every word about Gogol. I dream about pig snouts!
Timofeev picked up a pile of books from the table, shook them in the air and threw them back with force. Plaster dust flew off the table.
- It's all about Gogol! - he said and suddenly calmed down. What? I think I scared you? Sorry, honey, but by God, I'm ready to fight.
“Well, we’ll fight together,” Nastya said and stood up.
Timofeev shook her hand firmly, and she left with a firm decision to snatch this talented man from obscurity at any cost.
Nastya returned to the Union of Artists, went to the chairman and talked to him for a long time, got excited, and argued that it was necessary to immediately organize an exhibition of Timofeev’s works. The chairman tapped his pencil on the table, thought about something for a long time and finally agreed.
Nastya returned home to her old room on the Moika, with a stucco gilded ceiling, and only there did she read Katerina Petrovna’s letter.
-Where should we go now? - she said and stood up, how can you escape from here!
She thought about the crowded trains, the transfer to a narrow-gauge railway, the shaking cart, the withered garden, the inevitable tears of her mother, the drawn-out, unadorned boredom of rural days, and she put the letter in her desk drawer.
For two weeks, Nastya tinkered with the arrangement of Timofeev’s exhibition.
Several times during this time she quarreled and made peace with the quarrelsome sculptor. Timofeev sent his works to the exhibition with such an air as if he was dooming them to destruction.
“You won’t succeed in hell, my dear,” he told Nastya with gloating, as if she was organizing her own exhibition, not his. I'm just wasting my time, honestly.
At first Nastya was in despair and offended, until she realized that all these whims were from wounded pride, that they were feigned, and in the depths of his soul Timofeev was very happy about his future exhibition.
The exhibition opened in the evening. Timofeev was angry and said that one should not look at the sculpture under electricity.
- Dead light! - he grumbled. Deadly boredom! Kerosene is even better.
- What kind of light do you need, you impossible type? - Nastya flared up.
- We need candles! Candles! - Timofeev shouted painfully. How can you put Gogol under an electric lamp? Absurd!
There were sculptors and artists at the opening. The uninitiated, hearing the conversations of the sculptors, could not always guess whether they praised Timofeev’s work or scolded it. But Timofeev understood that the exhibition was a success.
The gray-haired, hot-tempered artist approached Nastya and patted her hand:
- Thank you. I heard that it was you who brought Timofeev into the light of day. Well done. Otherwise, you know, we have a lot of talk about attention to the artist, about care and sensitivity, but when it comes down to it, you come across empty eyes. Thank you again!
The discussion began. They talked a lot, praised, got excited, and the idea thrown by the old artist about attention to the person, to the young undeservedly forgotten sculptor, was repeated in every speech.
Timofeev sat ruffled, looking at the parquet floor, but still looked sideways at the speakers, not knowing whether he could trust them or whether it was too early.
A courier from the Union appeared at the door - the kind and stupid Dasha. She made some signs to Nastya. Nastya approached her, and Dasha, grinning, handed her a telegram.
Nastya returned to her place, quietly opened the telegram, read it and did not understand anything:
“Katya is dying. Tikhon."
“Which Katya? - Nastya thought in confusion. What Tikhon? It has to be beaten, it’s not for me.”
She looked at the address: no, the telegram was for her. Only then did she notice the thin block letters on the paper tape: “Fence.”
Nastya crumpled the telegram and frowned. Pershiy spoke.
“Nowadays,” he said, swaying and holding his glasses, caring for a person becomes that wonderful reality that helps us grow and work. I am happy to note in our environment, among sculptors and artists, the manifestation of this concern. I'm talking about the exhibition of works by Comrade Timofeev. We owe this exhibition entirely—no offense to our leadership—to one of the ordinary employees of the Union, our dear Anastasia Semyonovna.
The first one bowed to Nastya, and everyone applauded. They applauded for a long time. Nastya was embarrassed to the point of tears.
Someone touched her hand from behind. He was an old, hot-tempered artist.
- What? - he asked in a whisper and pointed with his eyes at the telegram crumpled in Nastya’s hand. Anything unpleasant?
“No,” Nastya answered. This is so... From one friend...
- Yeah! - the old man muttered and began to listen to Pershin again.
Everyone was looking at Pershin, but Nastya felt someone’s gaze, heavy and piercing, on her all the time and was afraid to raise her head. "Who could it be? - she thought. Did anyone really guess? So silly. My nerves were fraying again.”
She raised her eyes with an effort and immediately looked away: Gogol was looking at her, grinning. A thin sclerotic vein seemed to be beating heavily on his temple. It seemed to Nastya that Gogol said quietly through clenched teeth: “Oh, you!”
Nastya quickly got up, went out, hastily dressed downstairs and ran out into the street.
Watery snow was falling. Gray frost appeared at St. Isaac's Cathedral. The gloomy sky sank lower and lower over the city, over Nastya, over the Neva.
“My beloved,” Nastya recalled a recent letter. “Beloved!”
Nastya sat down on a bench in the park near the Admiralty and cried bitterly. The snow melted on his face and mixed with tears.
Nastya shuddered from the cold and suddenly realized that no one loved her as much as this decrepit old woman, abandoned by everyone, there in boring Zaborye.
"Late! “I won’t see my mother again,” she said to herself and remembered that over the past year she uttered that sweet childish word “mom” for the first time.
She jumped up and quickly walked against the snow lashing her face.
“So what, mom? What? - she thought, not seeing anything. Mother! How could this happen? After all, I don’t have anyone in my life. No, and it won’t be dearer. If only I could make it in time, if only she could see me, if only she would forgive me.”
Nastya went out onto Nevsky Prospekt, to the city railway station.
She was late. There were no more tickets.
Nastya stood near the cash register, her lips were trembling, she could not speak, feeling that from the very first word she said she would burst into tears.
An elderly cashier with glasses looked out the window.
- What's wrong with you, citizen? - she asked displeasedly.
“Nothing,” Nastya answered. I have a mother... Nastya turned and quickly walked towards the exit.
- Where are you going? - the cashier shouted. I should have said it right away. Wait a minute.
That same evening Nastya left. All the way it seemed to her that the “Red Arrow” was barely dragging along, while the train was rapidly rushing through the night forests, dousing them with steam and resounding with a drawn-out warning cry.
Tikhon came to the post office, whispered with the postman Vasily, took the telegraph form from him, turned it over and for a long time, wiping his mustache with his sleeve, wrote something on the form in clumsy letters. Then he carefully folded the form, put it in his hat and trudged off to Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna did not get up for the tenth day. Nothing hurt, but fainting weakness pressed on my chest, head, legs, and it was difficult to breathe.
Manyushka did not leave Katerina Petrovna’s side for six days. At night, she slept on a sagging sofa without undressing. Sometimes Manyushka thought that Katerina Petrovna was no longer breathing. Then she began to whine in fear and called: is she alive?
Katerina Petrovna moved her hand under the blanket, and Manyushka calmed down.
In the rooms from the very morning there was November darkness in the corners, but it was warm. Manyushka lit the stove. When the cheerful fire illuminated the log walls, Katerina Petrovna sighed cautiously - the fire made the room cozy, lived-in, as it had been a long time ago, back under Nastya. Katerina Petrovna closed her eyes, and a single tear rolled out of them and slid along her yellow temple, becoming entangled in her gray hair.
Tikhon arrived. He was coughing, blowing his nose and was apparently agitated.
- What, Tisha? - Katerina Petrovna asked helplessly.
- It’s getting colder, Katerina Petrovna! - Tikhon said cheerfully and looked at his hat with concern. Snow will fall soon. It's for the better. The frost will block the road, which means she will be able to drive better.
- To whom? - Katerina Petrovna opened her eyes and with a dry hand began to frantically stroke the blanket.
“Who else but Nastasya Semyonovna,” Tikhon answered, grinning wryly, and pulled a telegram out of his hat. Who else but her?
Katerina Petrovna wanted to get up, but couldn’t, and fell onto the pillow again.
- Here! - said Tikhon, carefully unfolded the telegram and handed it to Katerina Petrovna.
But Katerina Petrovna did not take it, but still looked at Tikhon pleadingly.
“Read it,” Manyushka said hoarsely. - Grandma can’t read anymore. She has weakness in her eyes.
Tikhon looked around in fear, straightened his collar, smoothed his sparse red hair and read in a dull, uncertain voice: “Wait, she’s leaving.” I always remain your loving daughter Nastya.”
- No need, Tisha! - Katerina Petrovna said quietly. No need, honey. God be with you. Thank you for your kind word, for your affection.
Katerina Petrovna turned away from the wall with difficulty, then seemed to fall asleep.
Tikhon sat in the cold hallway on a bench, smoking, with his head down, spitting and sighing, until Manyushka came out and beckoned Katerina Petrovna into the room.
Tikhon walked in on tiptoes and wiped his face with all his fingers. Katerina Petrovna lay pale, small, as if serenely asleep.
“I didn’t wait,” muttered Tikhon. - Oh, her grief is bitter, her suffering is unwritten! And look, you fool, he said angrily to Manyushka, pay for good with good, don’t be a kestrel... Sit here, and I’ll run to the village council and report.
He left, and Manyushka sat on a stool, her knees drawn up, shaking, and looking without taking her eyes off Katerina Petrovna.
Katerina Petrovna was buried the next day. It's frozen. A thin snow fell. The day had turned white, and the sky was dry, bright, but gray, as if a washed, frozen canvas had been stretched overhead. The distances beyond the river were gray. They smelled of the sharp and cheerful smell of snow, captured by the first frost of willow bark.
Old women and boys gathered for the funeral. The coffin was carried to the cemetery by Tikhon, Vasily and two Malyavin brothers, old men who seemed overgrown with pure tow. Manyushka and her brother Volodka carried the coffin lid and looked ahead without blinking.
The cemetery was behind the village, above the river. Tall willows, yellow with lichen, grew on it.
On the way I met a teacher. She had recently arrived from a regional town and didn’t know anyone else in Zaborye.
- The teacher is coming, teacher! - the boys whispered.
The teacher was young, shy, gray-eyed, just a girl. She saw the funeral and timidly stopped, looking fearfully at the little old woman in the coffin. Stinging snowflakes fell on the old woman’s face and did not melt. There, in a regional city, the teacher still had a mother - just as small, always worried about caring for her daughter, and just as completely gray-haired.
The teacher stood and slowly followed the coffin. The old women looked at her, whispering that she was such a quiet girl and that it would be difficult for her at first with the guys - they were very independent and mischievous in Zaborye.
The teacher finally made up her mind and asked one of the old women, Grandma Matryona:
— This old lady must have been lonely?
“And-and, my dear,” Matryona immediately sang, “consider that you are completely alone.” And she was so sincere, so heartfelt. She used to sit and sit on her sofa alone, with no one to say a word to. Such a pity! She has a daughter in Leningrad, and apparently she has flown high. So she died without people, without relatives.
At the cemetery, the coffin was placed near a fresh grave. The old women bowed to the coffin and touched the ground with their dark hands. The teacher approached the coffin, bent down and kissed Katerina Petrovna’s withered yellow hand. Then she quickly straightened up, turned away and walked towards the destroyed brick fence.
Behind the fence, in the light fluttering snow, lay the beloved, slightly sad, native land.
The teacher watched for a long time, listened to how the old people were talking behind her back, how the earth was knocking on the lid of the coffin and how roosters of different voices were crowing far away in the courtyards - they predicted clear days, light frosts, winter silence.
Nastya arrived in Zaborye on the second day after the funeral. She found a fresh grave mound in the cemetery - the earth on it was frozen in lumps - and Katerina Petrovna’s cold, dark room, from which it seemed that life had left a long time ago.
In this room, Nastya cried all night, until a cloudy and heavy dawn began to turn blue outside the windows.
Nastya left Zaborye stealthily, trying not to let anyone see her or ask her anything. It seemed to her that no one except Katerina Petrovna could relieve her of irreparable guilt and unbearable heaviness.
Comment. If my memory serves me right, it was for this story that Brigitte Bardot knelt before the author as a sign of admiration and gratitude!
