"Children of the Underground"

1. Ruins - Children of the Underground

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.

The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.

If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by a traditional "outpost" - the usual outpost). A sleepy disabled person lazily raises a barrier (A barrier is a lifting bar that blocks traffic on the road) - and you are in the city, although you may not notice it right away. “Gray fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind-eyed huts that have sunk into the ground. Further, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish “visiting houses”; state institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-even lines. wooden bridge, thrown across a narrow stream, groans, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Behind the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, little shops and with sheds of kalachnitsa. Stink, dirt, heaps of kids crawling in the street dust. But here's another minute - and you're out of town. The birch trees whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind agitates the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.

The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. On the island - an old, dilapidated castle.

I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on the bones of men,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we would come closer to it, it often inspired panic attacks in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; a mysterious rustle went around in the empty halls: pebbles and plaster, breaking off, fell down, waking up a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.

And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.

On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.

There was a time when old lock served as a free refuge for every poor man without the slightest restriction. Everything that could not find a place for itself in the city, which for one reason or another had lost the opportunity to pay at least a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.

However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and "chamarkas" (Chamarka - old Polish clothes, a kind of frock coat), with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but retaining their bonnets and coats in complete impoverishment. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous citizens, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near the churches (the Church is a Polish church) and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "pan Jesus" and "panna of the Mother of God".

Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. Cloud hanging over high peaks poplars, it was already raining. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, shouting and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.

And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.

Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, at least from a distance, admire its gray walls and old moss-covered roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.

I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.

But from that evening both the castle and Janusz appeared before me in a new light. Meeting me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a satisfied look that now "the son of such respectable parents" can safely visit the castle, as he will find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I tore my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the top floor were boarded up, and the bottom was in the possession of hoods and salopes. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattering me so cloyingly, cursing among themselves so loudly. But the main thing - I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove their unfortunate cohabitants, and at the memory of dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank.

Several nights after the described upheaval on the island, the city spent very restless: dogs barked, the doors of houses creaked, and the townsfolk, every now and then going out into the street, banged on the fences with sticks, letting someone know that they were on their guard. The city knew that in its streets, in the stormy darkness of a rainy night, people were wandering about, hungry and cold, shivering and wet; realizing that cruel feelings must be born in the hearts of these people, the city became alert and sent its threats towards these feelings. And the night, as if on purpose, descended to the ground in the midst of a cold downpour and left, leaving low running clouds above the ground. And the wind raged in the midst of bad weather, shaking the tops of the trees, banging the shutters and singing to me in my bed about dozens of people deprived of warmth and shelter.

But then spring finally triumphed over the last gusts of winter, the sun dried up the earth, and at the same time the homeless wanderers subsided somewhere. The barking of dogs subsided at night, the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and the life of the city, sleepy and monotonous, went on its own track.

Only the unfortunate exiles did not find their own track even now in the city. True, they did not loiter in the streets at night; they said that they found shelter somewhere on the mountain, near the chapel, but how they managed to settle down there, no one could say for sure. Everyone saw only that from the other side, from the mountains and ravines surrounding the chapel, the most incredible and suspicious figures descended into the city in the mornings, which disappeared in the same direction at dusk. With their appearance, they disturbed the quiet and dormant course of city life, standing out against a gray background with gloomy spots. The townsfolk glanced at them with hostile anxiety. These figures did not at all resemble the aristocratic beggars from the castle - the city did not recognize them, and their relations with the city were of a purely militant nature: they preferred to scold the layman than to flatter him, to take themselves than to beg. Moreover, as is often the case, among this ragged and ignorant crowd of unfortunates there were people who, in intelligence and talents, could do honor to the most chosen society of the castle, but did not get along in it and preferred the democratic society of the chapel.

In addition to these people who stood out from the crowd, a dark mass of miserable ragamuffins huddled around the chapel, whose appearance in the bazaar always caused great alarm among the merchants, who hastened to cover their goods with their hands, just as hens cover chickens when a kite appears in the sky. There were rumors that these poor people, completely deprived of any means of life since the expulsion from the castle, made up a friendly community and were engaged, among other things, in petty theft in the city and its environs.

The organizer and leader of this community of unfortunate people was Pan Tyburtsy Drab, the most remarkable personality of all those who did not get along in the old castle.

The origin of Drab was shrouded in the most mysterious obscurity. Some attributed to him an aristocratic name, which he covered with disgrace and therefore was forced to hide. But Pan Tyburtsiy's appearance had nothing aristocratic about it. He was tall, his large features were coarsely expressive. Short, slightly reddish hair stuck out; a low forehead, a somewhat protruding lower jaw, and a strong mobility of the face resembled something of a monkey; but the eyes that gleamed from under the overhanging brows looked stubbornly and gloomily, and sharp insight, energy and intelligence shone in them, along with slyness. While a whole series of grimaces changed on his face, these eyes always kept one expression, which is why it always happened to me, somehow unconsciously, terribly, to look at the antics of this strange man. There seemed to be a deep, permanent sadness flowing underneath him.

Pan Tyburtsy's hands were rough and covered with calluses, his big feet walked like a man's. In view of this, most of the inhabitants did not recognize his aristocratic origin. But then how to explain his amazing learning, which was obvious to everyone? There was not a tavern in the whole city in which Pan Tyburtius, in order to instruct the crests gathered on market days, did not utter, standing on a barrel, whole speeches from Cicero (Cicero is a famous ancient Roman statesman, famous for his eloquence. His speeches were considered a model of oratory) , entire chapters from Xenophon (Xenophon is an ancient Greek historian and commander). Khokhols, generally endowed by nature with a rich imagination, were able to somehow put their own meaning into these animated, albeit incomprehensible speeches ... And when, hitting his chest and sparkling with his eyes, he addressed them with the words: "Patres conscripti" ("Patres conscripti" - fathers senators (lat.)), - they also frowned and said to each other:

Well, the enemy's son, how barks!

When then Pan Tyburtius, raising his eyes to the ceiling, began to recite the longest Latin texts, the mustachioed listeners watched him with timid and pitiful sympathy. It seemed to them then that the soul of Tyburtius was hovering somewhere in an unknown country where they did not speak Christian, and that she was experiencing some kind of woeful adventures there. His voice sounded so muffled, beyond the grave, that the listeners who sat in the corners and were the most weakened by the vodka (Gorilka - vodka (Ukrainian)) lowered their heads, hung their long "chuprins" and began to sob.

Oh, mother, she is plaintive, give him an encore! - And tears dripped from the eyes and flowed down the long mustache.

And when the speaker, suddenly jumping off the barrel, burst into merry laughter, the gloomy faces of the crests suddenly cleared up and their hands reached for the pockets of their wide trousers for coppers. Delighted by the happy ending of the tragic adventures of Pan Tyburtsy, the Khokhols gave him vodka to drink, hugged him, and coppers fell into his cap, ringing.

In view of such amazing learning, a new legend appeared that Pan Tyburtsy was once a courtyard boy of some count who sent him, along with his son, to the school of the Jesuit fathers (Jesuits are Catholic monks), in fact, on the subject of cleaning the boots of a young panich. It turned out, however, that while the young count was idle, his lackey intercepted all the wisdom that was assigned to the barchuk's head.

No one also knew where Pan Tyburtsiy's children came from, and meanwhile the fact was obvious, even two facts: a boy of about seven, but tall and developed beyond his years, and a little three-year-old girl. Pan Tyburtsy brought the boy with him from the first days, as he himself appeared. As for the girl, he was absent for several months before she appeared in his arms.

A boy named Valek, tall, thin, with black hair, sometimes wandered sullenly around the city without much to do, his hands in his pockets and throwing glances from side to side that embarrassed the hearts of the kalachnitsa. The girl was seen only once or twice in the arms of Pan Tyburtsy, and then she disappeared somewhere, and no one knew where she was.

There was talk of some kind of dungeons on the mountain near the chapel, and since such dungeons are not uncommon in those parts, everyone believed these rumors, especially since all these people lived somewhere. And they usually disappeared in the evening in the direction of the chapel. There, with his sleepy gait, a half-mad old beggar hobbled, who was nicknamed the "professor", Pan Tyburtsy strode resolutely and quickly. Other dark personalities also went there in the evening, drowning in twilight, and there was no brave person who would dare to follow them along the clay cliffs. The mountain, riddled with graves, was notorious. In the old cemetery, on damp autumn nights, blue lights lit up, and in the chapel the owls screamed so piercingly and loudly that even the fearless blacksmith's heart sank from the cries of the damned bird.

2. Me and my father - Children of the Underground

Bad, young man, bad! - old Janusz from the castle often told me, meeting me on the streets of the city among the listeners of Pan Tyburtsy.

And the old man shook his gray beard at the same time.

It's bad, young man - you are in bad company! .. It's a pity, it's a pity for the son of respectable parents.

Indeed, ever since my mother died and my father's stern face grew even more sullen, I have very rarely been seen at home. On late summer evenings, I would creep through the garden, like a young wolf cub, avoiding meeting with his father, using special devices to open his window, half-closed by the dense green of lilacs, and quietly lie down in bed. If the little sister was still awake in her rocking chair in the next room, I went up to her, and we softly caressed each other and played, trying not to wake the grouchy old nanny.

And in the morning, at a little light, when everyone was still sleeping in the house, I was already laying a dewy trail in the thick, tall grass of the garden, climbed over the fence and went to the pond, where the same tomboyish comrades were waiting for me with fishing rods, or to the mill, where the sleepy the miller had just pushed back the sluices and the water, sensitively shuddering on the mirror surface, rushed into the "tray" (tray - here the blade of the mill wheel) and cheerfully set to day's work.

The big mill wheels, awakened by noisy jolts of water, also trembled, somehow reluctantly moved, as if they were too lazy to wake up, but after a few seconds they were already spinning, splashing foam and bathing in cold jets. Behind them, thick shafts moved slowly and solidly, gears began to rumble inside the mill, millstones rustled, and white flour dust rose in clouds from the cracks of the old, old mill building.

Then I moved on. I liked to meet the awakening of nature; I was glad when I managed to frighten off a sleeping lark, or drive a cowardly hare out of the furrow. Drops of dew fell from the tops of the shaker, from the heads of meadow flowers, as I made my way through the fields to the country grove. The trees greeted me with a whisper of lazy slumber.

I managed to make a long detour, and yet in the city every now and then I met sleepy figures opening the shutters of houses. But now the sun has already risen over the mountain, a noisy bell is heard from behind the ponds, calling the schoolboys, and hunger calls me home for morning tea.

In general, everyone called me a vagabond, a worthless boy, and I was so often reproached for various bad inclinations that I finally became imbued with this conviction myself. My father also believed this and sometimes made attempts to educate me, but these attempts always ended in failure.

At the sight of a stern and gloomy face, on which lay the stern stamp of incurable grief, I became shy and closed in on myself. I stood in front of him, shifting, fiddling with my panties, and looked around. At times something seemed to rise in my chest, I wanted him to embrace me, put me on his knees and caress me. Then I would cling to his chest, and perhaps we would cry together - a child and a stern man - about our common loss. But he looked at me with hazy eyes, as if over my head, and I shrank all under this incomprehensible look for me.

Do you remember mother?

Did I remember her? Oh yes, I remember her! I remembered how I used to wake up at night, I searched in the dark for her tender hands and pressed tightly against them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her when she sat ill in front of the open window and looked sadly at the wonderful spring picture, saying goodbye to her in Last year own life.

Oh yes, I remembered her!.. When she, all covered with flowers, young and beautiful, lay with the seal of death on her pale face, I, like an animal, huddled in a corner and looked at her with burning eyes, before which for the first time the whole horror of the mystery was revealed. about life and death.

And now often, at the dead of midnight, I woke up, full of love, which was crowded in my chest, overflowing my child's heart, woke up with a smile of happiness. And again, as before, it seemed to me that she was with me, that I would now meet her loving, sweet caress.

Yes, I remembered her! .. But when asked by a tall, gloomy man in whom I desired, but could not feel my own soul, I cringed even more and quietly pulled my little hand out of his hand.

And he turned away from me with annoyance and pain. He felt that he did not have the slightest influence on me, that there was some kind of wall between us. He loved her too much when she was alive, not noticing me because of his happiness. Now I was shielded from him by heavy grief.

And little by little the abyss that separated us became wider and deeper. He became more and more convinced that I was a bad, spoiled boy, with a callous, selfish heart, and the consciousness that he must, but cannot take care of me, must love me, but does not find this love in his heart, still increased his dislike. And I felt it. Sometimes, hiding in the bushes, I watched him; I saw how he walked along the alleys, faster and faster, and groaned muffledly from unbearable mental anguish. Then my heart lit up with pity and sympathy. Once, when, squeezing his head in his hands, he sat down on a bench and sobbed, I could not bear it and ran out of the bushes onto the path, obeying a vague impulse that pushed me towards this man. But, hearing my footsteps, he looked sternly at me and besieged me with a cold question:

What do you need?

I didn't need anything. I quickly turned away, ashamed of my impulse, afraid that my father would not read it in my embarrassed face. Running away into the thicket of the garden, I fell on my face into the grass and wept bitterly from annoyance and pain.

Since the age of six I have experienced the horror of loneliness.

Sister Sonya was four years old. I loved her passionately, and she repaid me with the same love; but the established view of me, as of an inveterate little robber, erected a high wall between us as well. Every time I started to play with her, noisily and briskly in her own way, the old nanny, always sleepy and always tearing, with her eyes closed, chicken feathers for pillows, immediately woke up, quickly grabbed my Sonya and carried away to her, throwing at me angry looks; in such cases, she always reminded me of a disheveled mother hen, I compared myself with a predatory kite, and Sonya with a small chicken. I became very sad and annoyed. No wonder, therefore, that I soon stopped all attempts to entertain Sonya with my criminal games, and after a while it became crowded in the house and in the garden, where I did not meet greetings and affection in anyone. I started wandering. My whole being trembled then with some strange foreboding of life. It seemed to me that somewhere out there, in that great and unknown light, behind the old fence of the garden, I would find something; it seemed that I had to do something and could do something, but I just did not know what it was. I instinctively began to run from the nurse with her feathers, and from the familiar lazy whisper of apple trees in our little garden, and from the stupid clatter of knives chopping cutlets in the kitchen. Since then, the names of a street boy and a tramp have been added to my other unflattering epithets, but I did not pay attention to this. I got used to the reproaches and endured them, as I endured the sudden rain or the heat of the sun. I sullenly listened to the remarks and acted in my own way. Staggering through the streets, I peered with childishly curious eyes at the unpretentious life of the town with its shacks, listened to the rumble of wires on the highway, trying to catch what news was rushing through them from distant big cities, or into the rustle of ears of corn, or into the whisper of the wind on the high Haidamak graves. More than once my eyes opened wide, more than once I stopped with a painful fright before the pictures of life. Image after image, impression after impression fell on the soul like bright spots; I learned and saw a lot of things that children much older than me have not seen.

When all the corners of the city became known to me down to the last dirty nooks and crannies, then I began to look at the chapel that could be seen in the distance, on the mountain. At first, like a timid animal, I approached her from different directions, still not daring to climb the mountain, which was notorious. But, as I got to know the area, only quiet graves and ruined crosses appeared before me. There were no signs of any habitation or human presence anywhere. Everything was somehow humble, quiet, abandoned, empty. Only the chapel itself looked, frowning, through empty windows, as if thinking some sad thought. I wanted to examine it all, look inside to make sure that there was nothing there but dust. But since it would be both frightening and inconvenient for one to undertake such an excursion, I gathered on the streets of the city a small detachment of three tomboys, attracted by the promise of rolls and apples from our garden.

3. I make a new acquaintance - Children of the Underground

We went on an excursion after lunch and, approaching the mountain, began to climb the clay landslides, dug up by the shovels of the inhabitants and spring streams. The landslides exposed the slopes of the mountain, and in some places white, decayed bones protruded out of the clay. In one place a wooden coffin was exposed, in another a human skull bared its teeth.

Finally, helping each other, we hurriedly climbed the mountain from the last cliff. The sun was beginning to set. Oblique rays gently gilded the green ant of the old cemetery, played on the rickety crosses, shimmered in the surviving windows of the chapel. It was quiet, calm and deep peace abandoned cemetery. Here we have not seen any skulls, no bones, no coffins. The green, fresh grass, with an even canopy, lovingly hid the horror and ugliness of death.

We were alone; only sparrows fussed about, and swallows silently flew in and out of the windows of the old chapel, which stood, sadly bowed, among graves overgrown with grass, modest crosses, dilapidated stone tombs, on the ruins of which dense greenery spread, multi-colored heads of buttercups, porridge, violets.

There is no one, - said one of my companions.

The sun is setting,” another remarked, looking at the sun, which had not yet set, but was standing over the mountain.

The door of the chapel was firmly boarded up, the windows high above the ground; however, with the help of my companions, I hoped to climb them and look inside the chapel.

No need! cried one of my companions, suddenly losing all his courage, and grabbed my arm.

Go to hell, baba! yelled at him the eldest of our small army, willingly turning his back.

I climbed up bravely, then he straightened up and I put my feet on his shoulders. In this position, I easily took out the frame with my hand and, making sure of its strength, went up to the window and sat down on it.

Well, what is there? they asked me from below with lively interest.

I was silent. Leaning over the jamb, I looked inside the chapel, and from there I smelled the solemn silence of an abandoned church. The inside of the tall, narrow building was devoid of any decoration. The rays of the evening sun, freely breaking through the open windows, painted the old, peeled walls with bright gold. I saw the inner side of the locked door, the collapsed choir stalls, the old decayed columns, as if swaying under an unbearable weight. The corners were woven with cobwebs, and in them huddled that special darkness that lies in all the corners of such old buildings. From the window to the floor it seemed much further than to the grass outside. I looked exactly into a deep hole and at first I could not make out any objects that barely stood out on the floor with strange outlines.

Meanwhile, my comrades were tired of standing below, waiting for news from me, and therefore one of them, having done the same as I had done before, hung next to me, holding on to the window frame.

What is there? - with curiosity he pointed to a dark object, seen next to the throne.

Pop's hat.

No, a bucket.

Why is there a bucket?

Maybe it once had coals for the censer.

No, it's really a hat. However, you can see. Let's tie a belt to the frame, and you'll go down it.

Yes, well, I’ll go down ... Climb yourself if you want.

Well! Do you think I won't?

And climb!

Acting on my first impulse, I tightly tied two straps, touched them behind the frame, and, having given one end to my friend, I hung on the other myself. When my foot touched the floor, I shuddered; but a glance at my friend's sympathetic face restored my vigor. The sound of a heel rang under the ceiling, echoed in the emptiness of the chapel, in its dark corners. Several sparrows fluttered up from their homes in the choir stalls and flew out into a large hole in the roof. From the wall, on the windows of which we were sitting, a stern face with a beard and a crown of thorns suddenly looked at me. It was a gigantic crucifix leaning from under the very ceiling. I was terrified; my friend's eyes sparkled with breathtaking curiosity and concern.

Will you come? he asked quietly.

I'll come, - I answered in the same way, gathering my courage. But at that moment something completely unexpected happened.

At first there was a knock and the noise of crumbled plaster on the choir stalls. Something hovered above, shook a cloud of dust in the air, and a large gray mass, flapping its wings, rose to a hole in the roof. The chapel seemed to darken for a moment. A huge old owl, worried about our fuss, flew out of a dark corner, flashed against the blue sky in the flight and shied away.

I felt a surge of convulsive fear.

Raise! I shouted to my comrade, grabbing my belt.

Don't be afraid, don't be afraid! he soothed, preparing to lift me into the light of day and the sun.

But suddenly his face contorted with fear; he screamed and instantly disappeared, jumping from the window. I instinctively looked round and saw a strange phenomenon, which struck me, however, more with surprise than with horror.

The dark object of our dispute, a hat or a bucket, which in the end turned out to be a pot, flashed in the air and disappeared under the throne before my eyes.

I only had time to make out the outlines of a small, as if a child's hand.

It is difficult to convey my feelings at that moment, the feeling that I experienced cannot even be called fear. I was in that light. From somewhere, as if from another world, for a few seconds I could hear the alarming clatter of three pairs of children's feet in rapid rumble. But soon he calmed down. I was alone, as if in a coffin, in view of some strange and inexplicable phenomena.

Time didn't exist for me, so I couldn't tell if I soon heard a discreet whisper under the throne:

Why doesn't he climb back?

What will he do now? - I heard the whisper again.

Something was moving strongly under the throne, it even seemed to sway, and at the same moment a figure emerged from under it.

It was a boy of about nine years old, bigger than me, lean and thin as a reed. He was dressed in a dirty shirt, his hands were in the pockets of his tight and short pants. Dark curly hair ruffled over black thoughtful eyes.

Although the stranger, who appeared on the scene in such an unexpected and strange way, approached me with that carefree, perky air with which boys always approached each other in our market, ready to start a fight, nevertheless, when I saw him, I was greatly encouraged. I was even more emboldened when, from under the same altar, or rather from the hatch in the floor of the chapel, which it covered, a still dirty face appeared behind the boy, framed by blond hair and sparkling at me with childishly curious blue eyes.

I moved a little away from the wall and put my hands in my pockets too. This was a sign that I was not afraid of the enemy and even partly hinted at my contempt for him.

We stood facing each other and exchanged glances. Looking at me from head to toe, the boy asked:

Why are you here?

Yes, I replied. - Do you care?

My opponent moved his shoulder, as if intending to take his hand out of his pocket and hit me.

I didn't blink an eye.

I'll show you! he threatened.

I pushed my chest forward.

Well, hit ... try! ..

The moment was critical; the nature of further relations depended on it. I waited, but my opponent, giving me the same searching look, did not move.

I, brother, and myself ... too ... - I said, but more peacefully.

Meanwhile, the girl, resting her little hands on the floor of the chapel, also tried to climb out of the hatch. She fell, rose again, and finally moved with unsteady steps towards the boy. Coming close, she grabbed hold of him tightly and, clinging to him, looked at me with surprised and somewhat frightened eyes.

This decided the matter; it became quite clear that in this position the boy could not fight, and I, of course, was too generous to take advantage of his uncomfortable position.

What is your name? the boy asked, stroking the girl's blond head with his hand.

Vasya. And who are you?

I'm Valek... I know you: you live in a garden over a pond. You have big apples.

Yes, it's true, we have good apples... Don't you want to?

Taking out of my pocket two apples, which were appointed for retribution with my shamefully fleeing army, I gave one of them to Valek, and handed the other to the girl. But she hid her face, clinging to Valek.

He's afraid, - he said, and he himself handed the apple to the girl.

Why did you come in here? Have I ever climbed into your garden? he then asked.

Well, come! I'll be glad, - I answered cordially. This answer puzzled Valek; he thought about it.

I'm not your company, - he said sadly.

From what? I asked, genuinely distressed at the sad tone in which those words were spoken.

Your father is a pan judge.

Well, so what? - I was frankly amazed. - After all, you will play with me, not with your father.

Valek shook his head.

Tyburtsiy won't let him in,” he said, and as if the name reminded him of something, he suddenly caught himself: “Listen... You seem like a nice lad, but still you'd better leave. If Tyburtius finds you, it will be bad.

I agreed that it was really time for me to leave. The last rays of the sun were already leaving through the windows of the chapel, and it was not close to the city.

How can I get out of here?

I will show you the way. We will go out together.

And she? I pointed at our little lady.

Marusya? She will also come with us.

How, through the window?

Valek thought.

No, here's the thing: I'll help you up the window, and we'll go out the other way.

With the help of my new friend, I went up to the window. I untied the strap, wrapped it around the frame and, holding on to both ends, hung in the air. Then, letting go of one end, I jumped down to the ground and yanked out the strap. Valek and Marusya were already waiting for me under the wall outside.

The sun has recently set behind the mountain. The city was drowned in a purple-foggy shade, and only the tops of the tall poplars on the island stood out sharply in pure gold, painted with the last rays of sunset. It seemed to me that at least a day had passed since I arrived here, at the old cemetery, that it was yesterday.

How good! - I said, embraced by the freshness of the coming evening and inhaling the damp coolness with full breasts.

It's boring here... - Valek said sadly.

Do you all live here? I asked as the three of us began to descend the mountain.

Where is your home?

I could not imagine that children could live without a "home".

Valek grinned with his usual sad look and did not answer.

We passed steep landslides, as Valek knew a more convenient road. Passing between the reeds in a dried-up swamp and crossing a stream on thin planks, we found ourselves at the foot of a mountain, on a plain.

Here we had to part. Shaking hands with my new acquaintance, I extended it to the girl as well. She affectionately gave me her tiny little hand and, looking up with her blue eyes, asked:

Will you come to us again?

I will come, - I answered, - by all means! ..

Well, - said Valek thoughtfully, - come, perhaps, only at a time when our people will be in the city.

Who is "yours"?

Yes, ours ... all: Tyburtsiy, "professor" ... although he, perhaps, will not hurt.

Fine. I'll take a look when they're in town and then I'll come. Until then, goodbye!

Hey, listen! - Valek shouted to me when I walked a few steps away. “Aren’t you going to talk about what happened with us?”

I won't tell anyone, I answered firmly.

Well, that's good! And to these fools of yours, when they start pestering, tell them that you saw the devil.

Okay, I'll tell you.

Well, goodbye!

Thick twilight fell over Knyazhiy-Ven when I approached the fence of my garden. A thin crescent of the moon appeared above the castle, the stars lit up. I was about to climb the fence when someone grabbed my arm.

Vasya, friend, - my fled comrade spoke in an excited whisper. - How are you? .. My dear! ..

But as you can see... And you all left me!..

He looked down, but curiosity got the better of shame, and he asked again:

What was there?

What! I answered in a tone that did not admit of doubt. - Of course, devils ... And you are cowards.

And, shrugging off the embarrassed comrade, I climbed the fence.

A quarter of an hour later I was already in a deep sleep, and in my dream I saw real devils merrily jumping out of a black hatch. Valek chased them away with a willow twig, and Marusya, merrily sparkling in her eyes, laughed and clapped her hands.

4. Acquaintance continues - Children of the dungeon

Since then, I have been completely absorbed in my new acquaintance. In the evening, going to bed, and in the morning, getting up, I only thought about the upcoming visit to the mountain. I now roamed the streets of the city with the sole purpose of finding out if the whole company, which Janusz characterized with the words "bad company", was here. And, if Tyburtsiy ranted before his listeners, and the dark personalities from his company darted around the bazaar, I immediately set off at a run through the swamp to the mountain, to the chapel, after filling my pockets with apples, which I could pick in the garden without a ban, and delicacies that I always saved for my new friends.

Valek, generally very respectable and instilling respect in me with his grown-up manners, accepted these offerings simply and for the most part put them away somewhere, saving them for his sister, but Marusya clasped her little hands every time, and her eyes lit up with a twinkle of delight; the girl's pale face flushed with a blush, she laughed, and this laughter of our little friend resounded in our hearts, rewarding for the sweets that we donated in her favor.

It was a pale, tiny creature, like a flower that grew without the rays of the sun. Despite her four years, she still walked poorly, stepping uncertainly with crooked legs and staggering like a blade of grass; her hands were thin and transparent; the head swayed on a thin neck, like the head of a field bell; my eyes sometimes looked so unchildishly sad, and her smile so reminded me of my mother in the last days, when she used to sit against the open window and the wind stirred her blond hair, that I myself became sad, and tears came to my eyes.

I involuntarily compared her to my sister; they were the same age, but my Sonya was round as a donut and elastic as a ball. She ran so briskly when she used to play out, she laughed so loudly, she always wore such beautiful dresses, and every day the maid wove a scarlet ribbon into her dark braids.

And my little friend almost never ran and laughed very rarely, but when she laughed, her laughter sounded like the smallest silver bell, which is no longer audible for ten steps.

Her dress was dirty and old, there were no ribbons in the braid, but her hair was much larger and more luxurious than Sonya's, and Valek, to my surprise, knew how to braid it very skillfully, which he did every morning.

I was a big tomboy. “This little fellow,” the elders said of me, “has mercury in his arms and legs,” which I myself believed, although I did not clearly imagine who and how performed this operation on me. In the very first days I brought my revival into the society of my new acquaintances. It is unlikely that the echo of the old chapel has ever repeated such loud cries as at the time when I tried to stir up and lure Valek and Marusya into my games. However, this did not work well. Valek looked seriously at me and at the girl, and once, when I made her run with me, he said:

No, she's crying now.

Indeed, when I stirred her up and made her run, Marusya, hearing my steps behind her, suddenly turned to me, raising her little hands above her head, as if for protection, looked at me with the helpless gaze of a slammed bird, and wept loudly.

I'm completely lost.

You see, - said Valek, - she doesn't like to play.

He made her sit down on the grass, picked flowers and threw them to her; she stopped crying and quietly sorted through the plants, said something, addressing the golden buttercups, and raised blue bells to her lips. I also calmed down and lay down next to Valek near the girl.

Why is she like this? I finally asked, pointing with my eyes at Marusya.

Sad? - Valek asked again and then said in the tone of a completely convinced person. - And this, you see, from a gray stone.

Yes, - the girl repeated, like a faint echo, - this is from a gray stone.

What gray stone? I asked, not understanding.

The gray stone sucked the life out of her,” Valek explained again, still looking at the sky. - That's what Tyburtius says... Tyburtius knows well.

Yes, - the girl repeated in a low echo again. - Tyburtsy knows everything.

I did not understand anything in these mysterious words that Valek repeated after Tyburtsy, but Valek's conviction that Tyburtsy knew everything had an effect on me too. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at Marusya. She sat in the same position in which Valek had seated her, and still sorted through the flowers; the movements of her thin hands were slow; the eyes stood out a deep blue in the pale face; long eyelashes were lowered. When I looked at this tiny, sad figure, it became clear to me that in the words of Tyburtius - although I did not understand their meaning - there was a bitter truth. Undoubtedly, someone is sucking the life out of this strange girl who cries when others in her place laugh. But how can a gray stone do this?

It was a mystery to me, more terrible than all the ghosts of the old castle. Terrible as the Turks were, languishing underground, they all resounded like an old fairy tale. And here something unknown-terrible was evident. Something shapeless, inexorable, hard and cruel as a stone, bent over the small head, sucking out of it the blush, the sparkle of the eyes and the liveliness of the movements. "It must be happening at night," I thought, and a feeling of regret, aching to the point of pain, squeezed my heart.

Under the influence of this feeling, I also moderated my agility. Applying to the quiet solidity of our lady, both Valek and I, having seated her somewhere on the grass, collected flowers for her, multi-colored pebbles, caught butterflies, sometimes made traps for sparrows out of bricks. Sometimes, stretching out beside her on the grass, they looked into the sky, how the clouds floated high above the shaggy roof of the old chapel, told Marusa tales or talked to each other.

These conversations every day more and more consolidated our friendship with Valek, which grew, despite the sharp contrast of our characters. To my impetuous playfulness he contrasted melancholy solidity and inspired me with respect in the independent tone with which he spoke of his elders. In addition, he often told me a lot of new things that I had not thought about before. Hearing how he speaks of Tyburtsia as though he were talking about a comrade, I asked:

Tyburtsy is your father?

It must be my father,” he answered thoughtfully, as if the question had not occurred to him.

He loves you?

Yes, he loves, - he said already much more confidently. - He constantly takes care of me, and, you know, sometimes he kisses me and cries ...

And she loves me, and she cries too, ”added Marusya with an expression of childish pride.

And my father does not love me, - I said sadly. - He never kissed me... He's not good.

It's not true, it's not true, - objected Valek, - you don't understand. Tyburtsy knows better. He says the judge is the most best person in the city ... He even condemned one count ...

Yes, it's true... The Count was very angry, I heard.

You see now! But the count is not a joke to sue.

Why? Valek asked, somewhat puzzled. - Because the count is not an ordinary person ... The count wants what he wants, and rides in a carriage, and then ... the count has money; he would have given money to another judge, and he would not have condemned him, but would have condemned the poor.

Yes it's true. I heard the count shouting in our apartment: "I can buy and sell you all!"

What about the judge?

And his father says to him: "Get away from me!"

Well, here, here! And Tyburtsy says that he will not be afraid to drive the rich man away, and when old Ivanikha came to him with a crutch, he ordered a chair to be brought to her. Wow he is!

All this made me think deeply. Valek showed me my father in a way I had never thought of looking at him: Valek's words struck a chord of filial pride in my heart; I was pleased to hear praises to my father, and even on behalf of Tyburtsiy, who “knows everything”, but at the same time, a note of aching love mixed with a bitter consciousness trembled in my heart: my father never loved and will never love me like Tyburtsiy loves his children.

5. Among the "gray stones" - Children of the Underground

A few more days passed. Members of the "bad society" ceased to appear in the city, and in vain I staggered, bored, through the streets, waiting for their appearance in order to flee to the mountain. I completely missed it, because not seeing Valek and Marusya has already become a great deprivation for me. But when I once walked with my head bowed down a dusty street, Valek suddenly put his hand on my shoulder.

Why did you stop visiting us? - he asked.

I was afraid... you are not visible in the city.

Ah... I didn't even think to tell you: there are no ours, Come... But I was thinking something completely different.

I thought you were bored.

No, no ... I, brother, will run now, - I hurried, - even the apples are with me.

At the mention of apples, Valek quickly turned to me, as if he wanted to say something, but did not say anything, but only looked at me with a strange look.

Nothing, nothing, - he waved it off, seeing that I was looking at him with expectation. - Go straight to the mountain, and I'll go somewhere - there's business. I'll catch up with you on the road.

I walked quietly and often looked back, expecting Valek to catch up with me; however, I managed to climb the mountain and went to the chapel, but he was still not there. I stopped in bewilderment: in front of me was only a cemetery, deserted and quiet, without the slightest signs of habitation, only sparrows chirped in freedom and dense bushes of bird cherry, honeysuckle and lilac, clinging to the south wall of the chapel, whispered softly about something densely overgrown dark foliage .

I looked around. Where am I to go now? Obviously, we must wait for Valek. In the meantime, I began to walk between the graves, looking at them from nothing to do and trying to make out the erased inscriptions on the tombstones overgrown with moss. Staggering in this way from grave to grave, I came across a dilapidated spacious crypt. Its roof was thrown off or torn off by bad weather and lay right there. The door was boarded up. Out of curiosity, I put an old cross against the wall and, climbing it, looked inside. The tomb was empty, only in the middle of the floor was a window frame with panes, and through these panes the dark emptiness of the dungeon gaped.

While I was examining the tomb, wondering at the strange purpose of the window, Valek, out of breath and tired, ran up the mountain. He had a large Jewish bun in his hands, something protruded in his bosom, drops of sweat dripped down his face.

Aha! he called out when he saw me. - There you are... If Tyburtsy saw you here, he would be angry! Well, now there's nothing to do... I know you're a good lad and won't tell anyone how we live. Let's go to us!

Where is it, far away? I asked.

But you'll see. Follow me.

He parted the honeysuckle and lilac bushes and disappeared into the green under the wall of the chapel; I followed him there and found myself on a small, densely trampled area, which was completely hidden in the greenery. Between the trunks of bird cherry, I saw a rather large hole in the ground with earthen steps leading down. Valek went down there, inviting me to go with him, and in a few seconds we both found ourselves in darkness, underground. Taking my hand, Valek led me along some narrow, damp corridor, and turning sharply to the right, we suddenly entered a spacious dungeon.

I stopped at the entrance, struck by an unprecedented sight. Two streams of light poured sharply from above, streaked against the dark background of the dungeon; this light passed through two windows, one of which I saw in the floor of the crypt, the other, farther away, was apparently attached in the same way; the rays of the sun did not penetrate here directly, but were previously reflected from the walls of the old tombs; they spilled in the damp air of the dungeon, fell on the stone slabs of the floor, were reflected and filled the whole dungeon with dull reflections; the walls were also made of stone; large, wide columns rose massively from below and, spreading their stone arcs in all directions, firmly closed upwards with a vaulted ceiling. On the floor, in the lighted spaces, sat two figures. The old "professor", bowing his head and muttering something to himself, was picking with a needle in his rags. He did not even raise his head when we entered the dungeon, and if not for the slight movements of the hand, then this gray figure could be mistaken for a stone statue.

Under another window sat with a bunch of flowers, sorting through them, as usual, Marusya. A jet of light fell on her blond head, flooding it all, but, despite this, she somehow faintly stood out against the background of the gray stone with a strange and small misty speck that seemed to be about to blur and disappear. When there, above, above the ground, clouds passed, obscuring the sunlight, the walls of the dungeon sank into complete darkness, and then again stood out as hard, cold stones, closing in strong embraces over the tiny figure of a girl. I involuntarily remembered Valek's words about the "gray stone" that sucked her joy out of Marusya, and a feeling of superstitious fear crept into my heart; it seemed to me that I felt on her and on myself an invisible stony gaze, fixed and greedy.

Outrigger! Marusya was quietly delighted when she saw her brother.

When she noticed me, a lively spark flashed in her eyes.

I gave her the apples, and Valek, having broken the bun, gave some to her, and took the other to the "professor." The unfortunate scientist indifferently accepted this offering and began to chew, not looking up from his work. I shifted and shivered, feeling as if bound under the oppressive gaze of the gray stone.

Let's go... let's get out of here, - I pulled Valek. - Take her...

Let's go upstairs, Marusya, - Valek called his sister.

And the three of us climbed out of the dungeon. Valek was sadder and more silent than usual.

Did you stay in the city to buy rolls? I asked him.

Buy? Valek chuckled. - Where does my money come from?

So how? Did you beg?

Yes, you will beg!.. Who will give it to me?.. No, brother, I pulled them off the stall of the Jewess Sura at the market! She didn't notice.

He said this in an ordinary tone, lying stretched out with his hands clasped under his head. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him.

You mean you stole it?

I leaned back on the grass, and for a minute we lay in silence.

It’s not good to steal,” I then said in sad reflection.

All of us left... Marusya was crying because she was hungry.

Yes, hungry! repeated the girl with plaintive simplicity.

I didn’t know what hunger was, but at the last words of the girl something turned in my chest, and I looked at my friends, as if I saw them for the first time. Valek was still lying on the grass and thoughtfully watching the hawk soaring in the sky. And when I looked at Marusya, holding a piece of bread in both hands, my heart sank.

Why, - I asked with an effort, - why didn't you tell me about it?

I wanted to say, and then changed my mind: you don’t have your own money.

Well, so what? I would take a roll from home.

How, slowly?

So you would steal too.

I... at my father's.

It's even worse! Valek said with confidence. - I never steal from my father.

Well, so I would ask ... They would give me.

Well, maybe they would give it once - where to stock up on all the beggars?

Are you... beggars? I asked in a low voice.

Beggars! Valek snapped sullenly.

I stopped talking and after a few minutes began to say goodbye.

Leaving so soon? Valek asked.

Yes, I'm leaving.

I left because I could not play with my friends that day as before, serenely. My pure childish affection somehow became muddied... Although my love for Valek and Marusya did not become weaker, but a sharp stream of regret was mixed with it, reaching a heartache. At home, I went to bed early. Buried in my pillow, I wept bitterly until sound sleep drove away my deep grief with its breath.

6. Pan Tyburtsy appears on the stage - Children of the Underground

Hello! And I thought - you will not come again - this is how Valek met me when I again appeared on the mountain the next day.

I understood why he said it.

No, I ... I will always go to you, - I answered decisively, in order to put an end to this issue once and for all.

Valek noticeably cheered up, and both of us felt freer.

Well? Where are yours? I asked. - Still not back?

Not yet. God knows where they go.

And we merrily set about building an ingenious trap for sparrows, for which I brought some thread with me. We gave the thread into Marusya's hands, and when the careless sparrow, attracted by the grain, carelessly jumped into the trap, Marusya pulled the thread, and the lid slammed the bird, which we then let go.

Meanwhile, around noon, the sky grew sullen, a dark cloud moved in, and a downpour rustled under the merry peals of thunder. At first I really did not want to go down to the dungeon, but then, thinking that Valek and Marusya live there all the time, I overcame the unpleasant feeling and went there with them. It was dark and quiet in the dungeon, but from above you could hear the booming roar of a thunderstorm rolling over, as if someone were driving there in a huge cart along the pavement. In a few minutes I got comfortable with the underground, and we listened cheerfully as the earth received the wide torrents of the downpour; hum, splashes and frequent peals tuned our nerves, caused a revival that demanded an outcome.

Let's play hide and seek, I suggested.

I was blindfolded; Marusya rang with the faint tints of her pitiful laughter and slapped the stone floor with sluggish little legs, and I pretended that I could not catch her, when I suddenly stumbled upon someone's wet figure and at that very moment I felt that someone had grabbed my leg. . A strong hand lifted me from the floor, and I hung upside down in the air. The bandage from my eyes fell off.

Tyburtius, wet and angry, was even more terrible because I looked at him from below, held my leg, and wildly rolled my pupils.

What else is that, huh? he asked sternly, looking at Valek. - You are here, I see, having fun ... They got a pleasant company.

Let me go! I said, surprised that even in such an unusual position I could still speak, but Pan Tyburtsiy's hand only squeezed my leg even more tightly.

Answer! he turned menacingly again to Valek, who in this difficult situation stood, stuffing two fingers into his mouth, as if to prove that he absolutely had nothing to answer.

I only noticed that he was watching with great interest my unfortunate figure, which was swinging like a pendulum in space.

Pan Tyburtsy lifted me up and looked into my face.

Ege-ge! Sir, judge, if my eyes do not deceive me ... Why did you deign to welcome this?

Let it go! I spoke stubbornly. - Now let go! - And at the same time I made an instinctive movement, as if about to stomp my foot, but this only made me flutter in the air.

Tyburtius laughed.

Wow! Pan Judge deign to be angry... Well, yes, you don't know me yet. I am Tyburtius. I'll hang you over the fire and roast you like a pig.

The desperate look of Valek seemed to confirm the idea of ​​the possibility of such a sad outcome. Fortunately, Marusya came to the rescue.

Don't be afraid, Vasya, don't be afraid! she encouraged me, going up to the very feet of Tyburtius. - He never roasts boys on fire... It's not true!

Tyburtius turned me around with a quick movement and put me on my feet; at the same time, I almost fell, as my head was spinning, but he supported me with his hand and then, sitting on a wooden stump, put me between my knees.

And how did you get here? he continued to interrogate. - How long ago? .. You speak! - he turned to Valek, since I did not answer.

A long time ago, he replied.

How long ago?

Days six.

This answer seemed to give Pan Tyburtius some pleasure.

Wow, six days! he said, turning me to face him. - Six days is a lot of time. And you still haven't told anyone where you're going?

Nobody, I repeated.

It is commendable! .. You can count on not blabbing and forward. However, I always considered you a decent fellow, meeting you on the streets. A real "street" albeit a "judge"... And you will judge us, tell me?

He spoke quite good-naturedly, but I still felt deeply offended and therefore answered rather angrily:

I'm not a judge at all. I am Vasya.

One does not interfere with the other, and Vasya can also be a judge - not now, then after ... So, brother, it has been conducted from time immemorial. You see: I am Tyburtsy, and he is Valek. I am a beggar and he is a beggar. I steal, frankly, and he will steal. And your father is judging me - well, you will someday judge ... here it is!

I will not judge Valek, - I objected sullenly. - Not true!

He won't," Marusya also interceded, with complete conviction averting a terrible suspicion from me.

The girl trustingly clung to the legs of this freak, and he affectionately stroked her blond hair with a sinewy hand.

Well, don’t talk about it ahead of time, ”said the strange man thoughtfully, addressing me in such a tone, as if he were talking to an adult. - Don't say, friend!.. To each his own, each goes his own way, and who knows... maybe it's good that your path ran through ours. It’s good for you, because it’s better to have a piece of a human heart in your chest instead of a cold stone, do you understand? ..

I did not understand anything, but nevertheless fixed my eyes on the face of the strange man; Pan Tyburtsiy's eyes gazed intently into mine.

You don’t understand, of course, because you are still a kid ... Therefore, I’ll tell you briefly: if someday you have to judge him, then remember that even when you were both fools and played together, that even then you were walking along the road in trousers and with a good supply of provisions, and he ran along his ragamuffin and with an empty belly ... However, - he began, abruptly changing his tone, - remember this very well: if you tell your judge or at least a bird that flies past you in the field, about what you saw here, then if I weren’t Tyburtsy Drab, if I didn’t hang you by the feet in this fireplace and make a smoked ham out of you. I hope you understand this?

I won't tell anyone... I... Can I come back?

Come, let me... on condition... However, I already told you about the ham. Remember!..

He released me and stretched himself out with a weary look on a long bench that stood near the wall.

Take it over there, - he pointed to Valek at a large basket, which, having entered, he left at the threshold, - and light a fire. We will cook dinner today.

Now he was no longer the same person who frightened me for a minute by rolling his pupils, and not the jester who amused the public because of handouts. He ordered as the owner and head of the family, returning from work and giving orders to the household.

He seemed very tired. His dress was wet from the rain, exhaustion was visible in his whole figure.

Valek and I quickly set to work. Valek lit a torch, and we went with him into a dark corridor adjoining the dungeon. There, in the corner, pieces of half-decayed wood, fragments of crosses, old boards were piled up; from this stock we took a few pieces and, putting them in the fireplace, lit a fire. Then Valek, already with skillful hands, began to cook. Half an hour later, some kind of brew was already boiling in the fireplace, and while waiting for it to ripen, Valek put a frying pan on a three-legged table, on which pieces of fried meat were smoking.

Tyburtius got up.

Ready? - he said. - So that's great. Sit down, little one, with us - you have earned your lunch ... Mr. teacher, - he then shouted, turning to the "professor", - drop the needle, sit down at the table!

The old man stuck a needle into the rags and indifferently, with a dull look, sat down on one of the wooden stumps that replaced chairs in the dungeon. Marusya Tyburtsy was holding in his arms. She and Valek ate with greed, which clearly showed that a meat dish was an unprecedented luxury for them; Marusya even licked her greasy fingers. Tyburtsiy ate at intervals and, apparently obeying an irresistible need to speak, now and then turned to the "professor" with his conversation. At the same time, the poor scientist showed amazing attention and, bending his head, listened to everything with such a reasonable air, as if he understood every word. Sometimes even he expressed his agreement with a nod of his head and a low moo.

That's how little a person needs, - said Tyburtsiy. - Is not it? So we are full, and now we just have to thank God and the Klevan priest (Ksendz is a Polish priest) ...

Sure sure! - the "professor" agreed.

Here you agree, but you yourself don’t understand what the Klevan priest has to do with it - I know you. Meanwhile, if there hadn’t been a Klevan priest, we wouldn’t have had a roast and something else ...

Did the Klevan priest give you this? I asked, suddenly remembering the round, good-natured face of the Klevan priest who used to visit my father.

This fellow has an inquisitive mind,” continued Tyburtsy, still addressing the “professor.” - Indeed, his priesthood gave us all this, although we did not ask him, and even, perhaps, not only his left hand did not know what the right hand gives, but both hands did not have the slightest idea about it ...

From this strange and confused speech, I only understood that the method of acquisition was not quite ordinary, and could not restrain myself from inserting the question again:

Did you take it... yourself?

The young one is not devoid of insight,” continued Tyburtsiy as before. “It’s only a pity that he didn’t see the priest: he has a belly like a real fortieth barrel, and, therefore, overeating is very harmful to him. Meanwhile, all of us who are here suffer rather from excessive thinness, and therefore we cannot consider a certain amount of provisions to be superfluous for ourselves ... Am I saying so?

Sure sure! the "professor" mumbled thoughtfully again.

Here you go! This time we expressed our opinion very successfully, otherwise I was already beginning to think that this fellow had a smarter mind than some scientists ... However, - he suddenly turned to me, - you are still stupid and don’t know much. understand. But she understands: tell me, my Marusya, did I do well that I brought you a roast?

Fine! - answered the girl, slightly sparkling turquoise eyes. - Manya was hungry.

In the evening of that day, with a hazy head, I returned thoughtfully to my room. The strange speeches of Tyburtius did not for one moment shake my conviction that "stealing is not good." On the contrary, the painful sensation that I experienced before intensified even more. Beggars ... thieves ... they have no home! .. From those around me, I have long known that contempt is combined with all this. I even felt all the bitterness of contempt rising from the depths of my soul, but I instinctively protected my affection from this bitter admixture. As a result, the regret for Valek and Marusya intensified and escalated, but the attachment did not disappear. The belief that "it is not good to steal" remained. But when my imagination painted for me the lively face of my friend, licking her greasy fingers, I rejoiced in her joy and the joy of Valek.

In the dark alley of the garden, I accidentally stumbled upon my father. He, as usual, sullenly paced back and forth with the usual strange, as if hazy look. When I was near him, he took me by the shoulder:

Where does it come from?

I was walking...

He looked at me attentively, wanted to say something, but then his eyes clouded again, and, waving his hand, he walked along the alley. It seems to me that even then I understood the meaning of this gesture:

"Ah, it doesn't matter. She's already gone! .."

I lied for almost the first time in my life.

I have always been afraid of my father, and now even more so. Now I carried the whole world vague questions and feelings. Could he understand me? Could I confess anything to him without cheating on my friends? I trembled at the thought that he would ever know about my acquaintance with "bad company", but I was not able to change Valeka and Marusa. If I had been unfaithful to them, violating this word, I would not have been able to raise my eyes at them from shame at the meeting.

7. Autumn - Children of the Underground

Autumn was coming. The field was harvesting, the leaves on the trees turned yellow. At the same time, our Marusya began to get sick.

She did not complain about anything, only kept losing weight; her face grew paler, her eyes darkened, became larger, the eyelids lifted with difficulty.

Now I could come to the mountain, not embarrassed by the fact that members of the "bad society" were at home. I completely got used to them and became my own person on the mountain. Dark young personalities made bows and crossbows for me from elm; a tall cadet with a red nose turned me around in the air like a piece of wood, accustoming me to gymnastics. Only the "professor", as always, was immersed in some deep considerations.

All these people were placed separately from Tyburtius, who occupied "with his family" the dungeon described above.

Autumn is coming into its own more and more. The sky was becoming increasingly overcast with clouds, the surroundings were drowning in a foggy twilight; streams of rain poured noisily on the ground, giving off a monotonous and sad rumble in the dungeons.

It cost me a lot of trouble to break out of the house in such weather; however, I only tried to get away unnoticed; when he returned home all wet, he himself hung his dress against the fireplace and humbly lay down in bed, philosophically silent under a whole hail of reproaches that poured from the lips of nannies and maids.

Every time I came to my friends, I noticed that Marusya was getting sicker and thinner. Now she did not go out into the air at all, and the gray stone - the dark, silent monster of the dungeon - continued its terrible work without interruption, sucking the life out of the small calf. The girl now spent most of her time in bed, and Valek and I exhausted all our efforts to amuse and amuse her, in order to evoke the soft ripples of her weak laughter.

Now that I have finally come to terms with "bad society," Marusya's sad smile has become almost as dear to me as my sister's smile; but here no one put me forever in the form of my depravity, there was no grumpy nurse, here I was needed - I felt that every time my appearance causes a blush of animation on the girl's cheeks. Valek hugged me like a brother, and even Tyburtsy looked at the three of us from time to time with some strange eyes, in which something flickered, like a tear.

For a while the sky cleared up again; the last clouds fled from it, and over the drying earth, for the last time before the onset of winter, sunny days shone. Every day we carried Marusya upstairs, and here she seemed to come to life; the girl looked around with wide eyes, a blush lit up on her cheeks; it seemed as if the wind, blowing over her with its fresh strokes, returned to her the particles of life stolen by the gray stones of the dungeon. But it didn't last long...

Meanwhile, clouds began to gather over my head, too. One day, when, as usual, I was walking along the alleys of the garden in the morning, I saw my father in one of them, and next to me was old Janusz from the castle. The old man obsequiously bowed and said something, while the father stood with a gloomy look, and on his forehead a wrinkle of impatient anger was sharply indicated. Finally, he held out his hand, as if pushing Janusz out of his way, and said:

Go away! You're just an old gossip!

The old man somehow blinked and, holding his hat in his hands, again ran ahead and blocked his father's way. Father's eyes flashed with anger. Janusz spoke quietly, and I could not hear his words, but my father's fragmentary phrases came clearly, falling like whiplashes.

I don't believe a single word... What do you want from these people? Where is the evidence?.. I don't listen to verbal denunciations, but you must prove it in writing... Silence! It's my business... I don't want to listen.

Finally, he so resolutely pushed Janusz aside that he did not dare to bother him anymore, my father turned into a side alley, and I ran to the gate.

I greatly disliked the old owl from the castle, and now my heart trembled with foreboding. I realized that the conversation I had overheard referred to my friends and perhaps also to me. Tyburtius, to whom I told about this incident, made a terrible grimace.

Whoo, kid, this is bad news! Oh, damned old hyena!

His father drove him away, I remarked in the form of consolation.

Your father, little one, is the best of all judges in the world. He has a heart; he knows a lot... Perhaps he already knows everything that Janusz can tell him, but he is silent; he does not consider it necessary to poison the old toothless beast in his last lair ... But, little one, how can you explain this? Your father serves a master whose name is law. He has eyes and a heart only as long as the law sleeps on his shelves; When will this gentleman come down from there and say to your father: "Come on, Judge, why don't we take on Tyburtius Drab, or whatever his name is?" - from this moment on, the judge immediately locks his heart with a key, and then the judge has such firm paws that the world will soon turn in the other direction than Pan Tyburtsiy wriggles out of his hands ... Do you understand, little one? .. My whole trouble is that I had some clash with the law some time ago... that is, you understand, an unexpected quarrel... ah, fellow, it was a very big quarrel!

With these words, Tyburtsiy got up, took Marusya in his arms, and, going with her to far corner, began to kiss her, pressing his ugly head against her small chest. But I remained where I was and stood in one position for a long time under the impression of the strange speeches of a strange man. Despite the bizarre and incomprehensible turnarounds, I perfectly captured the essence of what Tyburtsy was saying about father, and the figure of the father in my imagination still grew, clothed in an aura of formidable, but sympathetic strength and even some kind of grandeur. But at the same time, another, bitter feeling intensified ...

"Here he is," I thought. "But still he doesn't love me."

8. Doll - Children of the Underground

The clear days passed, and Marusa felt worse again. At all our tricks with the aim of occupying her, she looked indifferently with her large, darkened and motionless eyes, and we have not heard her laughter for a long time. I began to carry my toys in the dungeon, but they entertained the girl only for a short time. Then I decided to turn to my sister Sonya.

Sonya had a large doll, with a brightly painted face and luxurious flaxen hair, a gift from her late mother. I had high hopes for this doll, and therefore, having called my sister to a side alley of the garden, I asked her to give it to me for a while. I so convincingly asked her about this, so vividly described to her the poor sick girl who never had her own toys, that Sonya, who at first only pressed the doll to herself, gave it to me and promised to play with other toys for two or three days, without mentioning anything about the doll.

The effect of this elegant faience young lady on our patient exceeded all my expectations. Marusya, who was fading like a flower in autumn, seemed suddenly to come to life again. She hugged me so tightly, laughed so loudly, talking with her new acquaintance ... The little doll did almost a miracle: Marusya, who had not left bed for a long time, began to walk, leading her blond daughter, and at times even ran, still slapping the floor with weak legs.

But this doll gave me a lot of anxious minutes. First of all, when I was carrying her in my bosom, heading with her to the mountain, on the way I came across old Janusz, who followed me with his eyes for a long time and shook his head. Then, two days later, the old nanny noticed the loss and began to poke around in the corners, looking everywhere for the doll. Sonya tried to appease her, but with her naive assurances that she did not need the doll, that the doll had gone for a walk and would return soon, only aroused the maids' bewilderment and aroused the suspicion that it was not a simple loss. The father did not yet know anything, but Janusz again came to him and was driven away - this time with even greater anger; however, on the same day, my father stopped me on my way to the garden gate and told me to stay at home. The next day the same thing happened again, and only four days later I got up early in the morning and waved over the fence while my father was still sleeping.

On the mountain, things were bad, Marusya again fell ill, and she became even worse; her face burned with a strange blush, her blond hair was scattered over the pillow; she didn't recognize anyone. Next to her lay the ill-fated doll, with rosy cheeks and silly sparkling eyes.

I told Valek my fears, and we decided that the doll must be taken back, especially since Marusya would not notice this. But we were wrong! As soon as I took the doll out of the hands of the girl lying in oblivion, she opened her eyes, looked in front of her with a vague look, as if not seeing me, not realizing what was happening to her, and suddenly began to cry softly, softly, but at the same time so plaintively, and in the emaciated face, under the cover of delirium, an expression of such deep grief flashed that I immediately, with fright, put the doll back in its original place. The girl smiled, pressed the doll to her and calmed down. I realized that I wanted to deprive my little friend of the first and last joy of her short life.

Valek looked at me timidly.

How will it be now? he asked sadly.

Tyburtius, sitting on a bench with a sadly bowed head, also looked at me with an inquiring look. So I tried to look as nonchalant as possible and said:

Nothing! Nanny must have forgotten.

But the old woman did not forget. When I returned home this time, I again ran into Janusz at the gate; I found Sonya with tear-stained eyes, and the nurse threw an angry, oppressive look at me and grumbled something with her toothless, mumbling mouth.

My father asked me where I went, and, having listened attentively to the usual answer, limited himself to repeating the order to me under no circumstances to leave the house without his permission. The order was categorical and very resolute; I did not dare to disobey him, but I also did not dare to turn to my father for permission.

Four agonizing days have passed. I walked sadly in the garden and looked longingly towards the mountain, expecting, moreover, a thunderstorm that was gathering over my head. I didn't know what would happen, but my heart was heavy. No one has ever punished me in my life; father not only did not touch me with his finger, but I never heard a single harsh word from him. Now I had a heavy premonition. Finally, I was called to my father, to his office. I entered and timidly stopped at the lintel. The sad autumn sun peeked through the window. My father sat for some time in his armchair in front of the portrait of his mother and did not turn to me. I heard the alarming beat of my own heart.

Finally he turned. I raised my eyes to him and immediately lowered them to the ground. My father's face looked terrible to me. About half a minute passed, and during this time I felt a heavy, motionless, overwhelming gaze on me.

Did you take the doll from your sister?

These words suddenly fell on me so distinctly and sharply that I shuddered.

Yes, I answered quietly.

Do you know that this is a gift from your mother, which you should cherish like a shrine? .. You stole it?

No, I said, raising my head.

How not? suddenly cried out the father, pushing the chair away. - You stole it and demolished it!.. To whom did you demolish it?.. Speak!

He quickly walked over to me and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head with an effort and looked up. The father's face was pale, his eyes burned with anger. I cringed all over.

Well, what are you?.. Speak! - And the hand that held my shoulder squeezed it tighter.

I-I won't tell! I answered quietly.

I won't tell, - I whispered even quieter.

Say it, say it!

No, I won't... never, never tell you... No way!

At that moment, the son of my father spoke in me. He would not have obtained from me a different answer by the most terrible torments. In my chest, to meet his threats, a barely conscious, offended feeling of an abandoned child and some kind of burning love for those who warmed me there, in the old chapel, rose.

The father took a deep breath. I cringed even more, bitter tears burned my cheeks. I was waiting.

I knew that he was terribly quick-tempered, that at that moment fury was seething in his chest. What will he do to me? But now it seems to me that I was not afraid of this ... Even at that terrible moment I loved my father and at the same time I felt that right now he would smash my love to smithereens with frenzied violence. Now I am no longer afraid. It seems that I was waiting and wishing that the catastrophe would finally break out ... If so - so be it ... so much the better - yes, so much the better.

The father sighed again. Whether he coped with the frenzy that had taken possession of him, I still do not know. But at this critical moment Tyburtsy's sharp voice suddenly rang out outside the open window:

Ege-ge! .. My poor little friend...

"Tyburtsy has come!" - flashed through my head, but even feeling my father's hand trembling, lying on my shoulder, I did not imagine that the appearance of Tyburtius or any other external circumstance could come between me and my father, could reject what which I considered inevitable.

Meanwhile, Tyburtsiy quickly unlocked the front door and, stopping on the threshold, looked at us both in one second with his sharp, lynx eyes.

Ege-ge! .. I see my young friend in a very difficult situation ...

His father met him with a gloomy and astonished look, but Tyburtsiy bore this look calmly. Now he was serious, did not grimace, and his eyes looked somehow especially sad.

Pan Judge! he spoke softly. - You are a fair person ... let the child go. The fellow was in "bad company", but, God knows, he did no bad deed, and if his heart lies with my ragged poor fellows, then, I swear, it's better to order me to be hanged, but I will not allow the boy to suffer because of this. . Here's your doll, kid!

He untied the bundle and took out the doll.

My father's hand on my shoulder loosened. There was amazement on his face.

What does it mean? he finally asked.

Let the boy go, - repeated Tyburtsy, and his wide palm lovingly stroked my lowered head. - You will not achieve anything from him by threats, but meanwhile I will gladly tell you everything that you want to know ... Let's go out, pan judge, into another room.

The father, who kept looking at Tyburtius with astonished eyes, obeyed. Both of them left, and I remained, overwhelmed by the sensations that filled my heart. At that moment, I didn't realize anything. There was only a little boy whose heart was shaken by two different feelings: anger and love - so much that this heart became cloudy. That boy was me, and I felt sorry for myself. Moreover, there were two voices, a vague, though lively conversation, sounding outside the door...

I was still standing in the same place when the office door opened and both interlocutors entered. I again felt someone's hand on my head and shuddered. It was my father's hand gently caressing my hair.

Tyburtius took me in his arms and, in the presence of my father, placed me on his knees.

Come to us, - he said, - your father will let you say goodbye to my girl ... She ... she died.

I looked up questioningly at my father. Now another person stood in front of me, but in this particular person I found something dear, which I had searched in vain for before. He looked at me with his usual pensive look, but now there was a hint of surprise and, as it were, a question in this look. It seemed that the storm that had just swept over both of us had dispelled the heavy fog that hung over the soul of my father. And only now did my father begin to recognize in me the familiar features of his own son.

I confidently took his hand and said:

I didn't steal... Sonya herself gave me a loan...

Y-yes, - he answered thoughtfully, - I know ... I am guilty before you, boy, and you will try to forget it someday, won't you?

I seized his hand eagerly and began to kiss it. I knew that now he would never again look at me with those terrible eyes that he looked at a few minutes before, and long-restrained love gushed in a flood into my heart.

Now I was no longer afraid of him.

Will you let me go up the mountain now? I asked, suddenly remembering Tyburtius's invitation.

Yes, yes ... Go, go, boy, say goodbye, - he said affectionately, still with the same shade of bewilderment in his voice. - Yes, however, wait ... please, boy, wait a little.

He went into his bedroom and, a minute later, came out of there and thrust several pieces of paper into my hand.

Give this... to Tyburtsia... Say that I humbly ask him - do you understand? .. I humbly ask him - to take this money... from you... Do you understand? hesitate, say that if he knows one here ... Fedorovich, then let him say that it is better for this Fedorovich to leave our city ... Now go, boy, go quickly.

I caught up with Tyburtius already on the mountain and, out of breath, clumsily carried out my father's order.

He humbly asks ... father ... - And I began to thrust the money given by my father into his hand.

I didn't look him in the face. He took the money and gloomily listened to the further instructions regarding Fyodorovich.

In the dungeon, in a dark corner, Marusya was lying on a bench. The word "death" does not yet have its full meaning for children's hearing, and only now, at the sight of this lifeless body, bitter tears squeezed my throat. My little friend was lying serious and sad, with a sadly long face. The closed eyes sunk a little and were tinted blue even more sharply. The mouth opened a little, with an expression of childish sadness. Marusya seemed to answer our tears with this grimace.

The "professor" stood at the head of the bed and shook his head indifferently. Someone was pounding in the corner with an ax, preparing a coffin from old boards torn from the roof of the chapel. Marusya was cleaned with autumn flowers. Valek slept in a corner, his whole body shuddering through his sleep, and from time to time he sobbed nervously.

Conclusion

Soon after the events described, the members of the "bad society" scattered in different directions.

Tyburtsy and Valek disappeared completely unexpectedly, and no one could say where they went now, just as no one knew where they came from to our city.

The old chapel has suffered greatly from time to time. First, her roof collapsed, pushing through the ceiling of the dungeon. Then collapses began to form around the chapel, and it became even gloomier; the eagle owls howl even louder in it, and the lights on the graves on dark autumn nights flash with a blue ominous light.

Only one grave, fenced with a palisade, every spring turned green with fresh turf, full of flowers.

Sonya and I, and sometimes even with my father, visited this grave; we liked to sit on it in the shade of a vaguely murmuring birch, overlooking the city quietly sparkling in the fog. Here my sister and I read together, thought, shared our first young thoughts, the first plans of a winged and honest youth.

When it's time for us to leave quiet hometown, here, for the last time, both of us, full of life and hope, pronounced our vows over a small grave.

Vladimir Korolenko - Children of the Underground, read text

See also Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich - Prose (stories, poems, novels ...):

Behind the icon
I There was bad weather for several days. Even on the night of the nineteenth of June, the issue ...

Temptation
Page from the past I August 15, 1881 at about six o'clock in the evening ...

Children of the Underground

1. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.
The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.
If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. "Gray fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind-sighted huts that have gone into the ground. Further, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-even lines. A wooden bridge, thrown across a narrow stream, groans, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Behind the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, stalls and overhanging kalachniks. Stink, dirt, heaps of children crawling in the street dust. But here's another minute - and you are already outside the city. The birches whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.
The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. On the island - an old, dilapidated castle.
I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on the bones of men,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we would come closer to it, it often inspired panic attacks in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; a mysterious rustle went around in the empty halls: pebbles and plaster, breaking off, fell down, waking up a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.
And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.
On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.
There was a time when the old castle served as a free haven for every poor person without the slightest restriction. Everything that could not find a place for itself in the city, which for one reason or another had lost the opportunity to pay at least a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.
However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their bonnets and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".
Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, shouting and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.
And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.
Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, at least from a distance, admire its gray walls and old moss-covered roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.
I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.
But from that evening both the castle and Janusz appeared before me in a new light. Meeting me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a satisfied look that now "the son of such respectable parents" can safely visit the castle, as he will find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I tore my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the top floor were boarded up, and the bottom was in the possession of hoods and salopes. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattering me so cloyingly, cursing among themselves so loudly. But the main thing - I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove their unfortunate cohabitants, and at the memory of dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank.
Several nights after the described upheaval on the island, the city spent very restless: dogs barked, the doors of houses creaked, and the townsfolk, every now and then going out into the street, banged on the fences with sticks, letting someone know that they were on their guard. The city knew that in its streets, in the stormy darkness of a rainy night, people were wandering about, hungry and cold, shivering and wet; realizing that cruel feelings must be born in the hearts of these people, the city became alert and sent its threats towards these feelings. And the night, as if on purpose, descended to the ground in the midst of a cold downpour and left, leaving low running clouds above the ground. And the wind raged in the midst of bad weather, shaking the tops of the trees, banging the shutters and singing to me in my bed about dozens of people deprived of warmth and shelter.
But then spring finally triumphed over the last gusts of winter, the sun dried up the earth, and at the same time the homeless wanderers subsided somewhere. The barking of dogs subsided at night, the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and the life of the city, sleepy and monotonous, went on its own track.
Only the unfortunate exiles did not find their own track even now in the city. True, they did not loiter in the streets at night; they said that they found shelter somewhere on the mountain, near the chapel, but how they managed to settle down there, no one could say for sure. Everyone saw only that from the other side, from the mountains and ravines surrounding the chapel, the most incredible and suspicious figures descended into the city in the mornings, which disappeared in the same direction at dusk. With their appearance, they disturbed the quiet and dormant course of city life, standing out against a gray background with gloomy spots. The townsfolk glanced at them with hostile anxiety. These figures did not at all resemble the aristocratic beggars from the castle - the city did not recognize them, and their relations with the city were of a purely militant nature: they preferred to scold the layman than to flatter him, to take themselves than to beg. Moreover, as is often the case, among this ragged and ignorant crowd of unfortunates there were people who, in intelligence and talents, could do honor to the most chosen society of the castle, but did not get along in it and preferred the democratic society of the chapel.
In addition to these people who stood out from the crowd, a dark mass of miserable ragamuffins huddled around the chapel, whose appearance in the bazaar always caused great alarm among the merchants, who hastened to cover their goods with their hands, just as hens cover chickens when a kite appears in the sky. There were rumors that these poor people, completely deprived of any means of life since the expulsion from the castle, made up a friendly community and were engaged, among other things, in petty theft in the city and its environs.
The organizer and leader of this community of unfortunate people was Pan Tyburtsy Drab, the most remarkable personality of all those who did not get along in the old castle.
The origin of Drab was shrouded in the most mysterious obscurity. Some attributed to him an aristocratic name, which he covered with disgrace and therefore was forced to hide. But Pan Tyburtsiy's appearance had nothing aristocratic about it. He was tall, his large features were coarsely expressive. Short, slightly reddish hair stuck out; a low forehead, a somewhat protruding lower jaw, and a strong mobility of the face resembled something of a monkey; but the eyes that gleamed from under the overhanging brows looked stubbornly and gloomily, and sharp insight, energy and intelligence shone in them, along with slyness. While a whole series of grimaces changed on his face, these eyes always kept one expression, which is why it always happened to me, somehow unconsciously, terribly, to look at the antics of this strange man. There seemed to be a deep, permanent sadness flowing underneath him.
Pan Tyburtsy's hands were rough and covered with calluses, his big feet walked like a man's. In view of this, most of the inhabitants did not recognize his aristocratic origin. But then how to explain his amazing learning, which was obvious to everyone? There was not a tavern in the whole city in which Pan Tyburtsy, in order to instruct the crests who had gathered on the market days, did not utter, standing on a barrel, whole speeches from Cicero, whole chapters from Xenophon. Khokhols, generally endowed by nature with a rich imagination, were able to somehow put their own meaning into these animated, albeit incomprehensible speeches ... And when, hitting his chest and sparkling with his eyes, he addressed them with the words: “Patres conscripti”, - they too frowned and said to each other:
- Oh, the enemy's son, how to bark!
When then Pan Tyburtius, raising his eyes to the ceiling, began to recite the longest Latin texts, the mustachioed listeners watched him with timid and pitiful sympathy. It seemed to them then that the soul of Tyburtius was hovering somewhere in an unknown country where they did not speak Christian, and that she was experiencing some kind of woeful adventures there. His voice sounded in such muffled, otherworldly peals that the listeners sitting in the corners and the most weakened from the vodka lowered their heads, hung their long "chuprin" and began to sob.
- Oh, mother, she is plaintive, give him an encore! - And tears dripped from the eyes and flowed down the long mustache.
And when the speaker, suddenly jumping off the barrel, burst into merry laughter, the gloomy faces of the crests suddenly cleared up and their hands reached for the pockets of their wide trousers for coppers. Delighted by the happy ending of the tragic adventures of Pan Tyburtsy, the Khokhols gave him vodka to drink, hugged him, and coppers fell into his cap, ringing.
In view of such amazing learning, a new legend arose that Pan Tyburtsy was once a courtyard boy of some count, who sent him, along with his son, to the school of the Jesuit fathers, in fact, to clean the boots of the young panich. It turned out, however, that while the young count was idle, his lackey intercepted all the wisdom that was assigned to the barchuk's head.
No one also knew where Pan Tyburtsiy's children came from, and meanwhile the fact was obvious, even two facts: a boy of about seven, but tall and developed beyond his years, and a little three-year-old girl. Pan Tyburtsy brought the boy with him from the first days, as he himself appeared. As for the girl, he was absent for several months before she appeared in his arms.
A boy named Valek, tall, thin, with black hair, sometimes wandered sullenly around the city without much to do, his hands in his pockets and throwing glances from side to side that embarrassed the hearts of the kalachnitsa. The girl was seen only once or twice in the arms of Pan Tyburtsy, and then she disappeared somewhere, and no one knew where she was.
There was talk of some kind of dungeons on the mountain near the chapel, and since such dungeons are not uncommon in those parts, everyone believed these rumors, especially since all these people lived somewhere. And they usually disappeared in the evening in the direction of the chapel. There, with his sleepy gait, a half-mad old beggar hobbled, who was nicknamed the "professor", Pan Tyburtsy strode resolutely and quickly. Other dark personalities also went there in the evening, drowning in twilight, and there was no brave person who would dare to follow them along the clay cliffs. The mountain, riddled with graves, was notorious. In the old cemetery, on damp autumn nights, blue lights lit up, and in the chapel the owls screamed so piercingly and loudly that even the fearless blacksmith's heart sank from the cries of the damned bird.

2. Me and my father

Bad, young man, bad! - old Janusz from the castle often told me, meeting me on the streets of the city among the listeners of Pan Tyburtsy.
And the old man shook his gray beard at the same time.
- It's bad, young man - you are in bad company! .. It's a pity, it's a pity for the son of respectable parents.
Indeed, ever since my mother died and my father's stern face grew even more sullen, I have very rarely been seen at home. On late summer evenings, I would creep through the garden, like a young wolf cub, avoiding meeting with his father, using special devices to open his window, half-closed by the dense green of lilacs, and quietly lie down in bed. If the little sister was still awake in her rocking chair in the next room, I went up to her, and we softly caressed each other and played, trying not to wake the grouchy old nanny.
And in the morning, at a little light, when everyone was still sleeping in the house, I was already laying a dewy trail in the thick, tall grass of the garden, climbed over the fence and went to the pond, where the same tomboyish comrades were waiting for me with fishing rods, or to the mill, where the sleepy the miller had just pushed back the locks and the water, trembling sensitively on the mirror surface, rushed into the "tray" and cheerfully set to work during the day.
The big mill wheels, awakened by noisy jolts of water, also trembled, somehow reluctantly moved, as if they were too lazy to wake up, but after a few seconds they were already spinning, splashing foam and bathing in cold jets. Behind them, thick shafts moved slowly and solidly, gears began to rumble inside the mill, millstones rustled, and white flour dust rose in clouds from the cracks of the old, old mill building.
Then I moved on. I liked to meet the awakening of nature; I was glad when I managed to frighten off a sleeping lark, or drive a cowardly hare out of the furrow. Drops of dew fell from the tops of the shaker, from the heads of meadow flowers, as I made my way through the fields to the country grove. The trees greeted me with a whisper of lazy slumber.
I managed to make a long detour, and yet in the city every now and then I met sleepy figures opening the shutters of houses. But now the sun has already risen over the mountain, a noisy bell is heard from behind the ponds, calling the schoolboys, and hunger calls me home for morning tea.
In general, everyone called me a vagabond, a worthless boy, and I was so often reproached for various bad inclinations that I finally became imbued with this conviction myself. My father also believed this and sometimes made attempts to educate me, but these attempts always ended in failure.
At the sight of a stern and gloomy face, on which lay the stern stamp of incurable grief, I became shy and closed in on myself. I stood in front of him, shifting, fiddling with my panties, and looked around. At times something seemed to rise in my chest, I wanted him to embrace me, put me on his knees and caress me. Then I would cling to his chest, and perhaps we would cry together - a child and a stern man - about our common loss. But he looked at me with hazy eyes, as if over my head, and I shrank all under this incomprehensible look for me.
- Do you remember your mother?
Did I remember her? Oh yes, I remember her! I remembered how I used to wake up at night, I searched in the dark for her tender hands and pressed tightly against them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her when she sat sick in front of the open window and looked sadly at the wonderful spring picture, saying goodbye to her in the last year of her life.
Oh yes, I remembered her!.. When she, all covered with flowers, young and beautiful, lay with the seal of death on her pale face, I, like an animal, huddled in a corner and looked at her with burning eyes, before which for the first time the whole horror of the mystery was revealed. about life and death.
And now often, at the dead of midnight, I woke up, full of love, which was crowded in my chest, overflowing my child's heart, woke up with a smile of happiness. And again, as before, it seemed to me that she was with me, that I would now meet her loving, sweet caress.
Yes, I remembered her! .. But when asked by a tall, gloomy man in whom I desired, but could not feel my own soul, I cringed even more and quietly pulled my little hand out of his hand.
And he turned away from me with annoyance and pain. He felt that he did not have the slightest influence on me, that there was some kind of wall between us. He loved her too much when she was alive, not noticing me because of his happiness. Now I was shielded from him by heavy grief.
And little by little the abyss that separated us became wider and deeper. He became more and more convinced that I was a bad, spoiled boy, with a callous, selfish heart, and the consciousness that he must, but cannot take care of me, must love me, but does not find this love in his heart, still increased his dislike. And I felt it. Sometimes, hiding in the bushes, I watched him; I saw how he walked along the alleys, faster and faster, and groaned muffledly from unbearable mental anguish. Then my heart lit up with pity and sympathy. Once, when, squeezing his head in his hands, he sat down on a bench and sobbed, I could not bear it and ran out of the bushes onto the path, obeying a vague impulse that pushed me towards this man. But, hearing my footsteps, he looked sternly at me and besieged me with a cold question:
- What do you need?
I didn't need anything. I quickly turned away, ashamed of my impulse, afraid that my father would not read it in my embarrassed face. Running away into the thicket of the garden, I fell on my face into the grass and wept bitterly from annoyance and pain.
Since the age of six I have experienced the horror of loneliness.
Sister Sonya was four years old. I loved her passionately, and she repaid me with the same love; but the established view of me, as of an inveterate little robber, erected a high wall between us as well. Every time I started to play with her, noisily and briskly in her own way, the old nanny, always sleepy and always tearing, with her eyes closed, chicken feathers for pillows, immediately woke up, quickly grabbed my Sonya and carried away to her, throwing at me angry looks; in such cases, she always reminded me of a disheveled mother hen, I compared myself with a predatory kite, and Sonya with a small chicken. I became very sad and annoyed. No wonder, therefore, that I soon stopped all attempts to entertain Sonya with my criminal games, and after a while it became crowded in the house and in the garden, where I did not meet greetings and affection in anyone. I started wandering. My whole being trembled then with some strange foreboding of life. It seemed to me that somewhere out there, in that great and unknown light, behind the old fence of the garden, I would find something; it seemed that I had to do something and could do something, but I just did not know what it was. I instinctively began to run from the nurse with her feathers, and from the familiar lazy whisper of apple trees in our little garden, and from the stupid clatter of knives chopping cutlets in the kitchen. Since then, the names of a street boy and a tramp have been added to my other unflattering epithets, but I did not pay attention to this. I got used to the reproaches and endured them, as I endured the sudden rain or the heat of the sun. I sullenly listened to the remarks and acted in my own way. Staggering through the streets, I peered with childishly curious eyes at the unpretentious life of the town with its shacks, listened to the rumble of wires on the highway, trying to catch what news was rushing through them from distant big cities, or into the rustle of ears of corn, or into the whisper of the wind on the high Haidamak graves. More than once my eyes opened wide, more than once I stopped with a painful fright before the pictures of life. Image after image, impression after impression fell on the soul like bright spots; I learned and saw a lot of things that children much older than me have not seen.
When all the corners of the city became known to me down to the last dirty nooks and crannies, then I began to look at the chapel that could be seen in the distance, on the mountain. At first, like a timid animal, I approached her from different directions, still not daring to climb the mountain, which was notorious. But, as I got to know the area, only quiet graves and ruined crosses appeared before me. There were no signs of any habitation or human presence anywhere. Everything was somehow humble, quiet, abandoned, empty. Only the chapel itself looked, frowning, through empty windows, as if thinking some sad thought. I wanted to examine it all, look inside to make sure that there was nothing there but dust. But since it would be both frightening and inconvenient for one to undertake such an excursion, I gathered on the streets of the city a small detachment of three tomboys, attracted by the promise of rolls and apples from our garden.

3. I get a new acquaintance

We went on an excursion after lunch and, approaching the mountain, began to climb the clay landslides, dug up by the shovels of the inhabitants and spring streams. The landslides exposed the slopes of the mountain, and in some places white, decayed bones protruded out of the clay. In one place a wooden coffin was exposed, in another a human skull bared its teeth.
Finally, helping each other, we hurriedly climbed the mountain from the last cliff. The sun was beginning to set. Oblique rays gently gilded the green ant of the old cemetery, played on the rickety crosses, shimmered in the surviving windows of the chapel. It was quiet, breathed with calmness and the deep peace of an abandoned cemetery. Here we have not seen any skulls, no bones, no coffins. The green, fresh grass, with an even canopy, lovingly hid the horror and ugliness of death.

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.

The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.

If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. "Gray fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind-sighted huts that have gone into the ground. Further, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-even lines. A wooden bridge, thrown across a narrow stream, groans, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Behind the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, stalls and overhanging kalachniks. Stink, dirt, heaps of children crawling in the street dust. But here's another minute - and you are already outside the city. The birches whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.

The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. On the island - an old, dilapidated castle.

I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on the bones of men,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we would come closer to it, it often inspired panic attacks in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; a mysterious rustle went around in the empty halls: pebbles and plaster, breaking off, fell down, waking up a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.

And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.

On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.

There was a time when the old castle served as a free haven for every poor person without the slightest restriction. Everything that could not find a place for itself in the city, which for one reason or another had lost the opportunity to pay at least a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.

However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some sort of old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their bonnets and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".

Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, shouting and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

Children of the Underground

Novels, short stories and essays

clear mirror

(Writer V. G. Korolenko)

The literary path of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853-1921) is equally divided between two centuries. He devoted twenty-one years of his life in culture to the nineteenth century and exactly the same to the twentieth.

He spent his childhood in Little Russia - first in Zhytomyr, and then in Rovno. Three cultures, three national traditions met and crossed here - Russian, Polish and Ukrainian. All of them turned out to be relatives for Korolenko: his mother was Polish, his father, an extremely honest and respected judge by all, was Ukrainian. And the native language of the writer was Russian.

Ukraine, with its natural softness, calmness, balance, lost its state of blissful southern peace in these years. The expectation of turning points in history was in the air: the peasant reform (1861) was being prepared, and people felt it. An anxious feeling could not but be transmitted to children. So History entered Korolenko's life, entered simply and naturally - through disputes between father and mother about inevitable changes, through father's stories about court proceedings in which he had to participate ...

The student years spent by the future prose writer, first in St. Petersburg, at the Technological Institute, and then in Moscow, at the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy, fell on the very upsurge, a surge in the liberation movement. Korolenko did not remain aloof from the common cause. His revolutionary activity actually began with the events that took place in 1876 at the Petrovsky Academy. Their essence was as follows. Students who did not have a residence permit were arrested in the office. The indignation of fellow students turned out to be spontaneous and therefore ineffectual. Then Korolenko, together with one of his comrades, submitted a letter to the rector, where he called the academy's office "a branch of the Moscow gendarme administration." It was a challenge. To intimidate the majority, "demonstrative" victims were required. Korolenko and his comrade were offered either not to show themselves at the academy until everything calmed down, or to be subjected to immediate arrest.

They preferred the latter.

Long before Korolenko, a student of the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg, the future great critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov, found himself in a similar situation. None of the students dared to complain about the terrible food, and he alone dared to do so. He, too, was in for an unpleasant conversation with a deputy minister, threatened with expulsion from the institute, a life-long title of junior teacher, work in the provincial wilderness ... What pushed them, these very young people, to reckless - from a philistine point of view - actions? Inexperience? Youthful hotness? No. It was an early awakened sense of responsibility for everything that is happening in the world. They took from their native literature moral pain for the "little man", heightened conscience, a thirst for justice.

It was conscientiousness that made the young Korolenko prefer endless exile to dishonor, conciliation, silent obedience.

Later, when he already became a well-known prose writer and publicist, he happened to write essays about the most important and sometimes the most dramatic events of the latest Russian history: about the pacification of peasant unrest ("Calm Village", 1911), about the general October strike of 1905 ("What we had and should have", 1905). By the way, he was the only one who managed to bypass the censorship and respond in the press to the tragedy of Bloody Sunday (the essay "January 9, 1905") ...

In covering any events, the writer remained faithful to the guiding idea, the main principles of his life.

Korolenko's principles were honesty, justice, philanthropy.

Anyone who reads the main book of his life a little later, on which he worked until the last days, the four-volume autobiographical History of My Contemporary, will easily be convinced of this. It was a heightened sense of justice that made the high school student Volodya Korolenko steal from his neighbor, Pan Ulyanitsky, his little servant, the boy Memrik, whom the owner mercilessly flogged with rods, then hide him and not give him away until his parents received a promise from Ulyanitsky to treat the servant with respect. humanly.

And the same feeling decades later, when the name of Korolenko was surrounded by universal respect, prompted him to refuse - along with Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - the title of honorary academician, because the government forbade the election of the "unreliable" writer Maxim Gorky to the Academy. The scale of these two acts is incomparable, but they equally are important for understanding the whole and pure nature of Korolenko.

It is not known whether he would have found his “guiding idea” or not, if he had not had an example of his father in front of his eyes in childhood. It is no secret that the provincial judges, with a certain amount of shamelessness, could live happily ever after. Do not think about who is right and who is wrong, but first of all meet by clothes, look not into the eyes, but into the wallet of the petitioner ... But Galaktion Korolenko preferred noble poverty to unrighteous wealth and an honest name to hospitable offerings. Sometimes, returning from court, he limped up and down the room, and was offended by the questions of his family and angrily answered with his favorite proverb: "Interpret the sick with the doctor's assistant!" This meant that the next trial ended not according to conscience, not according to the law that he idolized, but according to the whim of the authorities or the power of gold.

The father's life was in full view. And probably, with no notations and punishments, the Zhytomyr (and then Rovno) judge could not so firmly instill in his son the idea of ​​​​honor and dishonor, about how a person should dispose of the life allotted to him.

Is it any wonder that Vladimir Korolenko disposed of his life more than worthily. That behind him, in the words of M. Gorky, the glory of "the most honest Russian writer" was entrenched.

He always remained true to himself. And when, three years after the first expulsion - to Kronstadt - he was again exiled to the city of Glazov, Vyatka province; and when, on a false accusation of escaping, they imprisoned them in the Vyshnevolotsk political prison; and when they were transferred to Perm; and when, for refusing to swear allegiance to Emperor Alexander III, they were sent to the "end of the world" in 1881 - to icy Yakutia, cut off from the then civilized world, and when, upon returning to St. Petersburg in 1885, they were illegally detained in a house of pre-trial detention ...

It was here that Korolenko completed the story “In Bad Society”, begun back in Yakutia and first published in the journal “Russian Thought” (1885, No. 10), - this is the name of the work, which is published in an abbreviated version for children under the title “Children of the Underground”.

The story was created in conditions not at all suitable for literary creativity. The more justified is the writer's appeal to the most important, "painful" problem of his life - the question of the contradiction between the legal institutions of tsarist Russia and the inner craving of a person for justice, fraternal unity. When you are surrounded by people who are - for a variety of reasons - in a difficult relationship with the law, it is most natural to think about it. And it is even more natural to recall the principles of his father, a judge who firmly believed in the inviolability of existing legal norms and defended this belief in practice with his characteristic chivalrous conscientiousness. An attentive reader can easily recognize the features of Korolenko Sr. in the image of the judge, the father of the protagonist - Vasya. The same severity, the same crystal honesty, incorruptibility. Even representatives of the “bad society” speak of him, the guardian of the law, and therefore their enemy, more than respectfully: “The judge is the best person in the city ... he even condemned one count ... and when old Ivanikha came to him with a crutch, he ordered bring her a chair." Almost the same thing was said by the Zhytomyr people about their judge-legalist. (The writer himself admitted that the plot of the story is fictitious, “but many features are taken from life, and, by the way, the scene itself is described exactly from the city where I had to finish the course.”)

Such devotion to the law is commendable. But it is no coincidence that Korolenko built his story in such a way that each of her heroes must make a choice for himself, make the only right decision.

Vasya, who has just lost his mother, is not interested in his father, left to himself, gets acquainted with the inhabitants of the old chapel, with the poor children - Valek and Marusya. If he, the son of a judge, does not tell the house where he disappears for days on end, he will lie. And if he does, then he will betray his friends. If Valek, in turn, steals bread for his little sister from the merchant, he will commit a crime. And if he does not steal, then Marusya will starve. If Vasya and his sister Sonya do not secretly give away the doll to the sick Marusya, then the girl will become even worse. And so on…

It would seem that the law judges regardless of the person. When the law is not on the side of the rich count, it's good. But when he judges Valek, Marusya, Vasya, Sonya, everything turns out to be much more complicated.

Yes, the law rises above all the heroes of the story, like a stone slab with unshakable and eternal truths inscribed on it. But remember: it was the gray, motionless stone that "sucked" the life out of Marusya, ruined her. And therefore Pan Tyburtsiy, the "leader" of the "bad company", says to Vasya: "It is better to have a human heart in your chest instead of a cold stone." He himself has such a heart. Knowing that Vasya is threatened with punishment for the doll, for forced lies, he brings it after Marusya's death directly to the judge's house. And this despite the fact that he faces a prison!

A person is first of all a person, the writer suggests, and only then a judge, "leader", servant or nanny. “I am not a judge. I am Vasya,” the protagonist expresses this humane thought in his own way, childishly. But his father, who is “completely a judge,” also in the end transgresses the letter of the law he respects, so as not to commit an inhuman act. He releases Pan Tyburtsy to all four sides and even warns of the danger threatening his friends. And just at this very moment, love for his son finally awakens in his heart. Not the cold, stone impregnability of the law, but the warmth of human participation - this is what will help people cope with their troubles, as Korolenko tells us.

This is especially important for his hero, Vasya, because he lives in a world where people have forgotten how to be Just people. The judge is a representative of the authorities; Janusz - a representative of the "noble" beggars; Tyburtsy is a representative of "garbage", "bad society". They live and do not even feel all the savagery of such a situation. But then a misfortune happened - Marusya died. What do all the titles, all the “distribution” among the strata of society mean before the bitterness of this loss? Mean nothing! It is so easy to understand, but so difficult to make a practical basis for human life...

It is no coincidence that the writer paid so much attention to the feelings of his heroes, their experiences, suffering, troubles. What is the description of the torments of little Marusya - when she cannot run or when she cries when she is separated from the doll! And Vasino's loneliness? And Sonino's explanation with the nanny? In our readers' hearts, sympathy and compassion are also awakened. We seem to respond to the impulse of the writer, who believed in the power of human participation, in the power of justice, almost as adamantly as his father, the judge, believed in the power of legality.

So two artistic lines are intertwined in the story. On the one hand, the narrative is directed into the depths of a very contradictory, almost hopelessly bogged down reality in its own problems. An extremely analytical, clear and strict style is needed to tell about it. On the other hand, it is directed into the depths of the human soul, full of happy and unpredictable possibilities and "yielding" only to a very excited, lyrical and romantically elevated description. Therefore, we will not be surprised when we encounter phrases so dissimilar in their emotional mood and stylistic appearance side by side: “The old chapel has suffered greatly from time to time. First, her roof collapsed, pushing through the ceiling of the dungeon. Then collapses began to form around the chapel ... the eagle owls howl even louder in it, and the lights on the graves on dark autumn nights flash with an ominous blue light. In the artistic world of Korolenko, a very accurate, realistic detail is naturally combined - a roof that has collapsed from dilapidation - with something mysterious - with a "blue ominous light".

Exactly one year after the publication of the story "In Bad Society", in 1886, the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti" began publishing a new study by V. G. Korolenko - "The Blind Musician". The publication was a surprise not only for readers, but also for the author himself. He gave the newspaper the beginning of an unwritten thing just for review, and as a result, the story had to be completed in a terrible hurry. It was very difficult, but the effort paid off a hundredfold: the newspapers were in great demand, and the Russian Thought magazine, without waiting for the completion of publication in the newspaper, began to reprint the story. In the future, the writer revised its text more than once: during the life of the author, The Blind Musician went through fifteen editions.

Here, too, the story is based on real impressions. In a letter dated November 9, 1894, Korolenko spoke about them: “As a boy, I first met a blind girl ... The episode with a falling star in the evening ... is given entirely from childhood memories of this poor girl ... Finally, a blind ringer in the Sarov desert, born blind, with stories about his feelings confirmed that side of my observations, which concerns an objectless and burning longing, flowing from the pressure of an unfulfilled and vague need for light. It is about this “need of light” that The Blind Musician was written.

The blind boy was born into a wealthy family and lives on a small estate. Here it is easy to remember every object, every bend in the road, every obstacle on the way, so as not to feel almost blind. And what wonderful people surround him! A gentle, sadly affectionate mother, the coachman Johim, who teaches the boy Ukrainian melodies, Uncle Maxim, who does not have a soul in his nephew ... As soon as Petrus gets to know the neighbor girl Evelina, a cordial friendship is immediately struck up, and then, when they grow up, love comes to them .

Nothing disturbing, heavy, vague. Everything is light, easy, gratifying. Whether it was in the "Children of the Underground"! There is the best architectural decoration of the city - jail, there all people are divided into rich and poor, there even the beggars are "divided" into "noble" and "dregs", "bad society". And in The Blind Musician, the clear blue sky never seems to darken. But its blue is getting thicker and deeper. This is what happens in nature just before a thunderstorm. And she will explode. True, a little later.

In the meantime ... while love for music wakes up in Petrus' soul. He does not see the world that surrounds him. But he is great hears him and with the help of sound can even understand the structure of a bird's wing. Music for him is everything. In the clear Little Russian nature, in the whistle that Joachim makes, in the ringing of bells, in Evelina's voice he hears the music of life itself. That is why for so long the young musician gave preference not to the Viennese piano bought by his mother, but to the coachman’s pipe made from a “piece of Ukrainian willow”. After all, this pipe has one wonderful advantage: it grew nearby, it absorbed the sounds that the boy heard, and absorbed the sun that warmed him.

Everything in the story is permeated with music. Listen how melodious, how musical the speech of the writer himself is: “And the trees in the garden whispered over her head, the night flared up with lights in the blue sky and spread over the earth in blue darkness ...” The phrase moves in waves, it has its own unique melodic structure. Yes, and Korolenko finds comparisons not just any, but sound, musical: “Everything in him trembled, and he himself trembled, like a tightly stretched string trembles under a sudden blow ...”

So maybe only Is music capable of restoring the happiness of a full-blooded life to Petrus?

When the Popelsky family is heading to the monastery, they stop at the gravestone, and Petrus with his sensitive fingers makes out the inscription, which the eyes of sighted people could not read. So everyone will know about the blind bandura player. During the time of the Zaporozhian Sich, he accompanied the ataman in his campaigns, lived in common with all the misfortunes and successes of the Cossacks - on a par with other people. And then the family meets with a blind bell ringer, who also loves music very much, does not care for his soul in his bells. He also suffers and, it would seem, deserves all sympathy. And it causes hostility: he is too angry at the world, there is no love for people in his heart. The ringer with hatred drives the children from the bell tower, cursing them.

Here are two roads, at the crossroads of which the matured Petrus finds himself! Here is the thunderstorm that finally broke out in his soul! Either he, like an ancient bandura player, “unfairly offended by fate, will eventually raise the weapon available to him in defense of others who are disadvantaged by life,” or he will separate from everyone, like a bell ringer, he will become isolated in his misfortune.

For this Uncle Maxim sent Petrus on a journey to Pochaev together with the blind beggars, so that, faced with the hardships of real life, the musician would discover in himself another - the main - gift: sympathy, compassion, so that he would hear music of the human heart, as her tenderly loving Petrus Evelina, mother, uncle heard her ...

It is not the blindness of the eyes that is terrible - the blindness of the soul is terrible. The musician who defeated her finally managed to remember a fragment of a dream that he had been dreaming of since childhood and which had eluded consciousness since childhood. As Uncle Maxim exclaimed: “He received his sight, yes, it’s true, he received his sight!” - although Petrus' eyes still do not see anything. The pain of other people echoed in his heart. more majestic this music is nothing.

... There is an expression: "literature is a mirror of life." V. G. Korolenko believed that this mirror “should be even, transparent and clean, so that the phenomena of the outside world penetrate into its depths without being broken, perverted or dim.”

The “Phenomena of the Outer World” in his books are not dim because it is a “smooth, transparent and pure” mirror of his own life.

And now, when more than a century has passed since the creation of his most famous works - "In Bad Society" and "The Blind Musician" - we turn to them again, we not only empathize with their heroes, but also communicate with the author himself, talk with him about the main thing: about justice, honesty, philanthropy and purity.

Alexander Arkhangelsky

Children of the Underground

(From the story "In Bad Society")

1. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.

The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.

If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. Gray fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind-eyed huts that have sunk into the ground. Further on, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are despondent with their white walls and barracks-smooth lines. The wooden bridge thrown over a narrow stream grunts, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Behind the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, little shops and with sheds of kalachnitsa. Stink, dirt, heaps of kids crawling in the street dust. But here's another minute - and you're out of town. The birch trees whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind agitates the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.

The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. There is an old, dilapidated castle on the island.

I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on human bones,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrifying, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we would come closer to it, it often inspired fits of panic horror on us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; a mysterious rustle went around in the empty halls: pebbles and plaster, breaking off, fell down, waking up a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.

And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spilled from the old castle and hovered over the whole city.

On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a booming, high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.

There was a time when the old castle served as a free haven for every poor person without the slightest restriction. Everything that did not find a place for itself in the city, which for one reason or another lost the opportunity to pay even a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.

However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed that the Turks had escaped from the underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and "chamarks", with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their hoods and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".

Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, shouting and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.

And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.

Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, although from afar, admire its gray walls and mossy old roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.

I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.

But from that evening both the castle and Janusz appeared before me in a new light. Meeting me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a satisfied look that now "the son of such respectable parents" can safely visit the castle, as he will find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I tore my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the top floor were boarded up, and the bottom was in the possession of hoods and salopes. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattering me so cloyingly, cursing among themselves so loudly. But the main thing is that I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove their unfortunate cohabitants, and at the memory of dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank.

Several nights after the described upheaval on the island, the city spent very restless: dogs barked, the doors of houses creaked, and the townsfolk, every now and then going out into the street, banged on the fences with sticks, letting someone know that they were on their guard. The city knew that in its streets, in the stormy darkness of a rainy night, people were wandering about, hungry and cold, shivering and wet; realizing that cruel feelings must be born in the hearts of these people, the city became alert and sent its threats towards these feelings. And the night, as if on purpose, descended to the ground in the midst of a cold downpour and left, leaving low running clouds above the ground. And the wind raged in the midst of bad weather, shaking the tops of the trees, banging the shutters and singing to me in my bed about dozens of people deprived of warmth and shelter.

It is very easy to talk about some topics when you look at everything only from your own side. But if you learn to look wider, try to put yourself in the place of other people, then you understand that not everything is so simple. Involuntarily, you will think about what is more important: comfort or love, money or warmth of the soul? And there can be many such questions. When you read the story of Vladimir Korolenko "Children of the Underground", you feel how deeply it penetrates into the heart. And you can no longer look at this world the way you used to.

In the story, the writer tells about a family that lives very poorly. The children, Valek and Marusya, have known what poverty is since childhood. They have nothing and seem to be very unhappy. But they know how to enjoy life, know how to love. Their father, forced to break the law in order to feed them, can give them the care, warmth and affection that children need so much. The guys get acquainted with the boy Vasya, whose father works as a judge. And although Vasya has no worries about what he will eat tomorrow, he is unhappy. The boy was very tired of the coldness and indifference of his father. Children support each other, become good friends. Valek and Marusya remain kind, despite the fact that the people around them treat them with disgust. This story reminds of human feelings, of friendship and love, of compassion and help, forcing us to remember what is really important.

The work belongs to the genre of short story, prose. It was published in 1885 by AST. The book is part of the "Extracurricular Reading" series. On our site you can download the book "Children of the Underground" in epub, fb2, pdf, txt format or read online. The rating of the book is 4.3 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also refer to the reviews of readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In the online store of our partner you can buy and read the book in paper form.