Ivan Shmelev: A love story. Read a love story book for free - Shmelev Ivan

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
love story

The main plot of the book is the struggle between Good and Evil, purity and sin. The hero of the work of I.S. Shmeleva, a fifteen-year-old high school student, a "poor knight", enters into this struggle.

It was spring, the sixteenth in my life, but for me it was the first spring: the former were all mixed up. A blue radiance in the sky, behind the still bare poplars of the garden, the pouring sparkle of drops, gurgling in ice-covered pits, golden puddles in the yard with splashing ducks, the first grass by the fence, which you look at, look at, a thawed patch in the garden, pleasing with the new - black earth and crosses chicken paws - the dazzling glare of glass and the fluttering of "bunnies", the joyful chime at Easter, the red-blue balls thumping against each other in the breeze, through the thin skin of which one can see red and blue trees and many blazing suns ... - everything mixed up in a wonderful and resounding brilliance.
And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a bright blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.
The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...
On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Behind open window- the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with dense, blue snowdrops tightly packed. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.
I just read First Love.
After the wonderful Jules Verne, Emar and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and if my sisters didn't argue - who should read, and if the shaggy librarian didn't say, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would I would have given up the first page and would have taken up Seagull Rock. But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in pink dress with stripes, as she snapped the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...
Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...
Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with walking sticks, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. And she, subtly beautiful, light as a marshmallow, carried away with her smile ...
I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. Radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking from the past sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glasses, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slid on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a light shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - “Mika, Mika!” - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.
Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.
At dinner I thought of an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves who was carrying a plate with a spine of herring there, and it seemed to me incredible that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and, of course, they don’t sell kvass, but Lanin’s water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a gold frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And a box with green onion on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!
I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, which I recently saw in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.
At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:
- Why are you counting all the flies?
“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.
I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:
- Firstly, "exams" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...
What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.
Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have! - I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. - “Counting flies”, “exams” ... After all, there are people who are completely different ... subtle, noble, gentle ... but we only have nasty things! There they say to the servants - you, the lackey, do not interfere in the conversation, bring it on a silver platter business card... - "Will you order me to accept?" - "Ask for the living room!" - What delicacy! If all alone, on desert island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "
And Zinaida spoke again. Not exactly the same, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...
Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.
... As if we are in the ocean, on a ship. She proudly stands on the deck, not noticing me. She is tall and slim. Thin, noble features tell her face something heavenly and angelic. On her blue dress and a wide, light sombrero made of golden straw. A light but fresh breeze playfully plays with her lush ash-colored curls, beautifully framing her naive-virgin face, on which no life's adversity has yet laid its depressing mark. I am dressed like a prairie hunter, with my inseparable carbine, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low, such as the Mexicans usually wear. Elegant gentlemen with walking sticks curl around her. sky blue pure as the eyes of a baby, and the boundless ocean breathes calmly and evenly. But the barometer has long since fallen. The captain, an old sailor tramp, puts his rough hand on my shoulder. "What do you say, old man?" - he points an eyebrow at a barely visible speck on the horizon, and his open honest face expresses severe concern. "Masters will have to dance!" I succinctly respond, casting contempt on the twining cavaliers with canes. “You're right, buddy…” the captain says sternly, and an alarming shadow runs across his weather-beaten, ocean-salted face. But you are with me. Providence itself…” and his voice trembled. - Premonition does not deceive me: this is the last flight! ... No, my friend ... your consolations are in vain. Or do you not know the old vagabond Jim? ... But this beautiful señorita ... - he pointed to the place under the awning, from where came the serene laughter of a young girl playfully playing with a fan, - entrusted to me by the noble Count d "Alonzo, from Buenos Aires, an old friend of our family. Let them all perish, but…" and a traitorous tear welled up in his eyes. "I entrust her to you, my friend. Swear on the sacred memory of your mother, and my foster sister, to deliver her safe and sound to her noble father and say that Old Jim's last dying breath...was a farewell to his friends!" Without words, I firmly shake an honest hand sea dog and unruly tears boil in my eyes. "Now I'm calm!" the captain whispers in relief as he heads for his bridge, but I can see from his hurried steps how excited he is. A speck on the horizon has already turned into a cloud, the wind grows stronger, begins to whistle in gear, flies in gusts and turns into a storm. With a sudden flurry, it throws the ship like a piece of wood. A creeping monstrous wave washes away the cavaliers with canes, and the main mast that collapsed before my eyes drags the captain into the raging abyss. “Sink! Let’s go to the bottom!!…” – the sailors roar with wild voices and cut the “ends” on the boats. She, with marvelous hair flowing, stretches out her hands with mute prayer. But she is indescribably beautiful. I approach calmly and say: “Senorita, in front of you is a friend! Providence itself ... ”- and excitement interrupts my words. "Ah, is that you?!" she exclaims pleadingly, and her eyes filled with tears make her even more beautiful, like a creature from another world! “You were not mistaken, señorita… before you is the same stranger who already once, when the bandits of Don Santo d Arrogazzo, that despicable scoundrel… But you shouldn’t talk about it. Take heart! Providence itself…”
- Eat some pancakes ... - I heard a familiar whisper.
This is Pasha. She put a plate on the bed and ran away, interrupted my dreams.
Without much pleasure, I ate pancakes. The overwhelming sadness did not go away. I began to read First Love again, but they sent me to the library to change the books. Sister said:
- Ask for a continuation of Turgenev, two volumes.
It seemed to me that there would be a sequel, and I cheerfully ran to the library. I no longer wanted to part with First Love, and instead carried the still unread Seagull Rock.
Ashamed to look into his eyes, I asked the shaggy man:
- Please, a continuation of Turgenev ... two volumes! The shaggy one sniffed the books, poking his glasses into each one, looked at me mockingly, it seemed to me, and, humming under his breath, “continuation ... continuation!” - noted and issued books.
- Do not delay, everyone asks for "First Love"! he said sternly from under his hair, and it seemed that he was chuckling. I went down to the Alexander Garden, sat down on a bench and began to look for a "continuation". But there was no continuation.
On the way back, I went, as always, to the chapel and venerated all the icons, "so that everything would be fine." And then there was the thought of Zinaida. The old man in the jacket patted me on the shoulder:
- The Pleasant Father will send you for your zeal!
I was so moved that I put a kopeck on a plate, and I did not have enough for the top of the horse. Dear, I contritely thought that God, perhaps, will punish for such thoughts. So I’m walking, maybe as a punishment? And it became scary: not to fail in the exams!
At home I took up the book again. When I finished reading how Volodya jumped from the high greenhouse to her feet and how she showered him with kisses, I felt such excitement that letters began to flow and my heart beat terribly. I was afraid that now there would be a heart failure, like our baker's at Easter, and I began to be baptized, calling on the Great Martyr Barbara. "Perhaps this is a warning, for bad thoughts? Lord, forgive me my sins!” I feel better. I wet my forehead with kvass and went to the garden to cool off.
I ran around it three times, but my thoughts did not leave me. “Honey!…” – I said to the sky, caressing the word. And what happened yesterday seemed miraculous now.
Yesterday I walked around the garden, breaking the ice with my heels. The very last stripe, and now - spring. Our "Redhead" was sitting on the shed, he ruled the cat's spring, as Pasha said. And suddenly I heard an exclamation: “My God, they will tear Mika apart! Wow! Mika! From this I shuddered. It was a gentle voice, a heavenly voice! He reached for his heart, and my heart began to pound. "For God's sake, young man... scare Mika out of there... run in behind and scare!" I turned my head and saw nothing. Which Mika? Where is the voice from? “Ah! ... - I heard a capricious whisper, - what are you ... right! Yes, she is on a column, in a blue bow! Well, kitty!” And I finally understood: they were shouting from the neighbors, behind the fence.
"Redhead" had already risen and was walking along the roof. On the arbor, with its mouth wide open, a black cat, unfamiliar to me, hunched over and drove its tail, disheveled and prickly, vicious. And between them, on a fence post, Mika was licking her chest, in a blue bow. I immediately realized what was the matter. I ran out of the garden, scared Miku from the side of the yard, shot a black cat with buckshot and earned a "bravo"! “Mika, Mikochka… silly! Go, Mika! ... Please, scare me more! ... ”Mika was still sitting on the fence, from where her voice was pouring out. I gave her a quick fright and she disappeared behind the fence. “Oh, how I thank you, young man! I heard a caressing, gentle voice. - You saved Mika for me, my joy! She is still a perfect girl, and these cats are terrible ... They would tear her to pieces! Oh, how I thank you, dear! The fence prevents us, otherwise it seems I would kiss you! Oh, you, you kind of stupid, Mikushka! And I heard Mika being kissed. “Thank you and… goodbye!” I heard a juicy, lovely voice, as if I had been kissed myself. I muttered something, I don't remember. When I clung to the fence, it was too late: a blue skirt flashed, and heels clattered on the gallery. And in the ears played affectionately - "Goodbye!".

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev

love story

And this spring everything seemed to stop and let me look at myself, and spring itself looked into my eyes. And I saw and felt all of her, as if she were mine, for me alone she was. For me - blue and gold puddles, and spring splashes in them; and the seedy snow in the garden, crumbling into grains, into beads; and a caressing gentle voice, from which the heart stops, calling for a cat in a blue bow, who has gone to our garden; and a bright blouse on the gallery, exciting with its flickering, and the air, unusually light, with warmth and chill. For the first time I felt - here is spring, and it is calling somewhere, and it is wonderful for me, and I live.

The smells of that spring are unusually fresh in me - blossoming poplars, blackcurrant buds, uprooted earth in flowerbeds and golden darlings in a thin glass duck, smelling of monpensier, which I furtively, tremblingly presented to our beautiful Pasha at Easter. The breeze from her starched dress, white with forget-me-nots, and the amazingly fresh smell that she brought with her into the rooms from the yard - like the smell of raw nuts and Crimean apples - live firmly in me. I remember the spring air that blew through the windows in the evenings, the pearly rim of the moon caught in the poplar trees, the greenish-blue sky, and the stars so clear, twinkling with happiness. I remember the anxious expectation of something, inexplicably joyful, and incomprehensible sadness, longing ...

On a dazzling white window sill, a golden stripe of the sun. Outside the open window - the first bright leaves on poplars, sharp and juicy. Fresh, fragrant bitterness gently wafts into the room. On the open book of Turgenev there is a bright iridescent spot from a crystal glass with dense, blue snowdrops tightly packed. A festive radiance pours from this joyful spot, from crystal and snowdrops, and from these two words on the book, so alive and wonderfully new to me.

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Emar and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and if my sisters didn't argue - who should read, and if the shaggy librarian didn't say, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would I would have given up the first page and would have taken up Seagull Rock. But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

Having read to the end without a break, I walked around our garden as if deafened, as if looking for something. It was unbearably boring and terribly ashamed of something. The garden, which I loved so much, seemed to me miserable, miserable, with tattered apple trees and raspberry twigs, with heaps of litter and dung over which chickens roamed. What poverty! If Zinaida had looked...

Where I had just been, stretched an ancient, centuries-old park with noble lindens and maples, as in Neskuchny, greenhouses sparkled with fragrant peaches and spanish cherries, graceful young people strolled with walking sticks, and a venerable footman in gloves importantly served food. AND she, elusively beautiful, light as a marshmallow, captivated with her smile ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. The radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking out of the past like a sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glasses, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a “miracle of the sea”, which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched out her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a light shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - “Mika, Mika!” - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner, I thought about an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves, who was carrying there a plate with a backbone of a herring, and it seemed unbelievable to me that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and kvass, of course, them do not put, but Lanin's water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a gold frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And the box with green onions on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!

I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, which I recently saw in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "exams" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have! - I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. -“You count flies”, “examinations” ... After all, there are people who are completely different ... subtle, noble, gentle ... but we only have nasty things! There they say to the servants - you, the lackey, do not interfere in the conversation, bring a business card on a silver platter ... - “Would you like to receive it?” - “Ask for the drawing room!” - What delicacy! If all alone, on a desert island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "

And Zinaida spoke again. Not really ta, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

... As if we are in the ocean, on a ship. She stands proudly on the deck, not noticing me. She is tall and slim. Thin, noble features tell her face something heavenly and angelic. She is wearing a blue dress and a wide, light "sombrero" of golden straw. A light but fresh breeze playfully plays with her lush ash-colored curls, beautifully framing her naive-virgin face, on which no life's adversity has yet laid its depressing mark. I am dressed like a prairie hunter, with my inseparable carbine, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low, such as the Mexicans usually wear. Near her elegant cavaliers with walking sticks twinkle. The blue of the sky is clear as the eyes of a baby, and the boundless ocean breathes calmly and evenly. But the barometer has long since fallen. The captain, an old sailor tramp, puts his rough hand on my shoulder. "What do you say, old man?" - he points an eyebrow at a barely visible speck on the horizon, and his open honest face expresses severe concern. "Masters will have to dance!" I succinctly respond, casting contempt on the twining cavaliers with canes. “You're right, buddy…” the captain says sternly, and an alarming shadow runs across his weather-beaten, ocean-salted face. But you are with me. Providence itself…” and his voice trembled. - Premonition does not deceive me: it is last flight! ... No, my friend ... your consolations are in vain. Or do you not know the old vagabond Jim? ... But this beautiful señorita ... - he pointed to the place under the awning, from where came the serene laughter of a young girl playfully playing with a fan, - entrusted to me by the noble Count d "Alonzo, from Buenos Aires, an old friend of our family. Let them all perish, but…" and a traitorous tear welled up in his eyes. "I entrust her to you, my friend. Swear on the sacred memory of your mother, and my foster sister, to deliver her safe and sound to her noble father and say that Old Jim's last dying breath...was a farewell to his friends!" Without a word, I firmly shake the honest hand of the sea dog, and defiant tears boil in my eyes. "Now I am calm!" - the captain whispers with relief, heading for his bridge, but I can see from his hurried steps how excited he is. The speck on the horizon has already turned into a cloud, the wind grows stronger, begins to whistle in gear, flies in gusts and turns into a storm. the ship is like a chip. A creeping monstrous wave washes away the cavaliers with canes, and the main mast that collapsed before my eyes drags the captain into the raging abyss. "Sinking! We are going to the bottom !!..." - the sailors roar with wild voices and cut the "ends" on the boats. She, with marvelous hair flowing, stretches out her hands with mute prayer. But she is indescribably beautiful. I approach calmly and say: “Senorita, in front of you is a friend! Providence itself ... ”- and excitement interrupts my words. "Ah, is that you?!" she exclaims pleadingly, and her eyes filled with tears make her even more beautiful, like a creature from another world! “You were not mistaken, señorita… before you is the same stranger who already once, when the bandits of Don Santo d Arrogazzo, that despicable scoundrel… But you shouldn’t talk about it. Take heart! Providence itself…”

Current page: 1 (the book has 18 pages in total)

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
love story

I

I just read First Love.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "exams" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

And Zinaida spoke again. Not really ta, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

- Eat some pancakes ... - I heard a familiar whisper.

This is Pasha. She put a plate on the bed and ran away, interrupted my dreams.

Without much pleasure, I ate pancakes. The overwhelming sadness did not go away. I began to read First Love again, but they sent me to the library to change the books. Sister said:

- Ask for a continuation of Turgenev, two volumes.

I thought it would continuation, and I cheerfully ran to the library. I no longer wanted to part with First Love, and instead carried the still unread Seagull Rock.

Ashamed to look into his eyes, I asked the shaggy man:

- Please, a continuation of Turgenev ... two volumes! The shaggy one sniffed the books, poking his glasses into each one, looked at me mockingly, it seemed to me, and, humming under his breath, “continuation ... continuation!” - noted and issued books.

- Do not delay, everyone asks for "First Love"! he said sternly from under his hair, and it seemed that he was chuckling. I went down to the Alexander Garden, sat down on a bench and began to look for a "continuation". But there was no continuation.

On the way back, I went, as always, to the chapel and venerated all the icons, "so that everything would be fine." And then there was the thought of Zinaida. The old man in the jacket patted me on the shoulder:

- The Pleasant Father will send you for your zeal!

I was so moved that I put a kopeck on a plate, and I did not have enough for the top of the horse. Dear, I contritely thought that God, perhaps, will punish for such thoughts. So I’m walking, maybe as a punishment? And it became scary: not to fail in the exams!

At home I took up the book again. When I finished reading how Volodya jumped from the high greenhouse to her feet and how she showered him with kisses, I felt such excitement that letters began to flow and my heart beat terribly. I was afraid that now there would be a heart failure, like our baker's at Easter, and I began to be baptized, calling on the Great Martyr Barbara. “Maybe this is a warning for bad thoughts? Lord, forgive me my sins!” I feel better. I wet my forehead with kvass and went to the garden to cool off.

I ran around it three times, but my thoughts did not leave me. “Honey!…” – I said to the sky, caressing the word. And what happened yesterday seemed miraculous now.

Yesterday I walked around the garden, breaking the ice with my heels. The very last stripe, and now - spring. Our "Redhead" was sitting on the shed, he ruled the cat's spring, as Pasha said. And suddenly I heard an exclamation: “My God, they will tear Mika apart! Wow! Mika! From this I shuddered. It was a gentle voice, a heavenly voice! He reached for his heart, and my heart began to pound. "For God's sake, young man... scare Mika out of there... run in behind and scare!" I turned my head and saw nothing. Which Mika? Where is the voice from? “Ah! ... - I heard a capricious whisper, - what are you ... right! Yes, she is on a column, in a blue bow! Well, kitty!” And I finally understood: they were shouting from the neighbors, behind the fence.

"Redhead" had already risen and was walking along the roof. On the arbor, with its mouth wide open, a black cat, unfamiliar to me, hunched over and drove its tail, disheveled and prickly, vicious. And between them, on a fence post, Mika was licking her chest, in a blue bow. I immediately realized what was the matter. I ran out of the garden, scared Miku from the side of the yard, shot a black cat with buckshot and earned a "bravo"! “Mika, Mikochka… silly! Go, Mika! ... Please, scare me more! ... ”Mika was still sitting on the fence, from where her voice was pouring out. I gave her a quick fright and she disappeared behind the fence. “Oh, how I thank you, young man! I heard a caressing, gentle voice. - You saved Mika for me, my joy! She is still a perfect girl, and these cats are terrible ... They would tear her to pieces! Oh, how I thank you, dear! The fence prevents us, otherwise it seems I would kiss you! Oh, you, you kind of stupid, Mikushka! And I heard Mika being kissed. “Thank you and… goodbye!” I heard a juicy, lovely voice, as if I had been kissed myself. I muttered something, I don't remember. When I clung to the fence, it was too late: a blue skirt flashed, and heels clattered on the gallery. And in the ears played affectionately - "Goodbye!".

It seemed wonderful now.

The slotted fence to the neighbors seemed quite - like there. And it seemed that fate was here, that we had the same fence, and an outhouse behind the fence, and sometimes she. It seemed joyful and eerie that if I looked now, I would see a slender girl, and now - will begin…

And in agonizing expectation and fear, I kissed the cracks in the fence.

There was a courtyard of one swirling, strange person. The swirling one from morning to evening rattled his props around the yard, chasing a rooster with a whisk, and shouted at the tenants for the disturbances. Sometimes a new vein, a fat woman with warts, spoke to him from the gallery, that she and her daughter were the most noble and endure slops always in required space, "and not in the middle of the yard, God forgive me!". Twisted, scraping with a whisk, carrying props, pressed his hand to his heart and assured that this did not apply to them, but to these fringed pigs from the lower floor. Grishka recently called him "a heart-rending fool," and Lately I looked at him with interest. And after one conversation, I even hated it.

Even before Mika, the tenants had just moved in, I was surprised at what a thin voice the swirling one suddenly spoke.

- I them, be calm, I'll finish them! I heard a stupid voice. The swirling one stood under the gallery like a general, shaking his whisk furiously. The fat woman was watching from the gallery. “Pigs are uneducated!” The air is so luxurious ... the most spring climate, it's nice to drink tea outside ... and spoil it with all sorts of sewage! Well, tell me, please?!.

- Yes, how is it possible! Hygiene itself begins ... - the fat woman agreed to him.

- And pour and pour! And noble people cannot have slops! ...

- What kind of slop do we have. My daughter is educated, there are doctors ... the most smart conversations we always have...

- Yes, I ... For God's sake, don't take it at your expense ... I beg you! - We are all like noble people, and accept an apologetic bow for the trouble, and ... if your young lady is worried, and I’m not chasing a pay, I’ll drive the pigs! My dream… in my house, to only noble like family! And before female beauty I always bow. Keep in mind… I am a determined person!

I was outraged by his audacity. To talk like that about a young lady! ... Heart-rending fool!

His last name was Karikh, and for a while I thought he was a German, until this Karikh pulled me off the fence. But it happened before. He pulled my leg so hard that he flew off with his boot, and cursed so much that I immediately realized what a German he was.

In the karikhin yard and lived she, even before "First Love" and before the story with the cat, she attracted my attention with luxurious brown hair, loose all over her back, and a knitted white blouse that wonderfully fitted her. Her face remained elusive to me. But I noticed a blouse-blouse for a long time. We called such blouses - "jersey", and for some reason this mysterious word worried me. Pasha bought the same blouse for Easter, only blue with stripes - “blue is better for a blonde!” - and I saw from behind the door how she was spinning in front of the mirrors in the hall, hugging her sides and giggling:

- Fathers, how can you see breasts ... mothers, it’s scary to look! ...

She saw that I was peeping - and there was no one in the house - and she began to turn around more and preen herself like a fool.

“Well, I’ve become pretty, haven’t I? ... What a blonde! ... - she said, turning around, and leaned out like a drunk.

I was embarrassed and ran away, and Pasha jumped up and laughed. I really liked her, but it was something ashamed.

The janitor Grishka, who revealed a lot to me in life, once said that this is “everything for the lure of love, special wine things ... women love them so much to show all their giblets.”

Was at her also a cherry-colored velvet cap, like the students in Faust, with a bow on the barrel, and gave her such a daring look that sometimes it seemed to me that he was a pretty mummer boy.

That evening of “First Love” I hung around for a long time near the fence, where there was still a glass strip of snow, but the gooseberries were already green, and Grishka inquired if I had lost a nickel to play against the wall. I said that I had lost a dime, and he looked with me. The place itself seemed extraordinary to me. spoke here she with me! "Oh, how grateful I am to you, young man!" trembled sweetly in my soul. What an inviting voice! Is she a beauty? It seemed to me from her voice that she was a true beauty, that she blue-blue eyes, a pink mouth and a noble expression on the face of an aristocrat. How amazingly she said: "Oh, what you ... right!" Capriciously proud. I was annoyed that I didn't see her. He showed his bad manners and savagery. She will think - what an undeveloped boy! But she must have liked me, she surprisingly said: “The fence is preventing us, otherwise I would kiss you!” I should say: "Let me introduce myself ... your neighbor ... I'm so pleased to provide you with this little service, and I'm happy ..." It always starts with trifles, and this kitty, just the case ... Kiss! I should have said to that: "Oh, I'm happy to hear you ... this musical voice!" Well, what would she say for a compliment? I would immediately know what I like. And now you don't know...

I was also very sad that something unusual would never happen to me, which I was even afraid to think about, then my heart sank with joy: what if it happens? ... But what could happen ?! I was afraid to imagine: it was so creepy, wonderfully creepy! But what is her face like? Does she look like Zinaida? But what kind of face does Zinaida have? I couldn't imagine. A lovely, tender face ... I enthusiastically pictured to myself how she bends over me and showers me with crazy kisses, as in "First Love" with Volodya, and froze with happiness. With what delight I would have rushed from the highest greenhouse to her feet. But we didn’t have a greenhouse, and from the barn it wasn’t quite that, a terrible disgrace, and some boxes and barrels ... and also this stupid Karikh in his props. Everything seemed so nasty that I was ashamed and wanted to cry. So, it used to be that you would return from the theater after a magical ballet, and the sleepy cook angrily thrusts a plate with the remains of a pig with porridge:

- Nate, eat up ... and the noodles are sour.

I waited by the fence until dark, but she never showed up.

The main plot of the book is the struggle between Good and Evil, purity and sin. The hero of the work of I.S. Shmeleva, a fifteen-year-old high school student, a "poor knight," enters into this struggle.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
love story

I

I just read First Love.

After the wonderful Jules Verne, Emar and Zagoskin's novels, the beginning seemed uninteresting, and, don't argue with my sisters - who should read, and don't say the shaggy librarian, screwing up his eyes, - "yeah, you want about" first love "?", - I would gave up the first page and would have taken up the "Rock of the Seagulls". But these two circumstances and the surprisingly gentle voice that recently called for the kitty disturbed me so much that I read up to the wing against Neskuchny - in our places just right! - to a tall and slender girl in a pink dress with stripes, as she clicked the clappers on the foreheads of the gentlemen who were kneeling before her - and then I was picked up and carried away ...

I looked at the gray sheds and sheds with reddish roofs, with the sledges tucked away for the winter, at the broken boxes and barrels in the corner of the yard, at my soiled gymnasium jacket, and I was disgusted to tears. What greyness! On the pavement, behind the garden, an old peddler shouted his favorite - "and-ex-and pears-ki-dulki boiled! ..." - and from his hoarse cry it was even more disgusting. Pears-dulki! I wanted something completely different, something unusual, festive, like there, something new. The radiant Zinaida was with me, speaking out of the past like a sweet dream. It was she who dozed in greenish water, behind glasses, in something large crystal, in diamond scales, in lights, attracted with pearly hands, sighed with her satin chest, an unprecedented fish-woman, a "miracle of the sea", which we looked at somewhere. It was she who shone, flew under the roof of the circus, rang with a crystal dress, sent air kisses - to me. She fluttered out in the theater like a fairy, slipped on her toes, trembled her leg, stretched out her beautiful hands. Now she looked out from behind the fence into the garden, flickered in the twilight as a bright shadow, gently beckoned the kitty - "Mika, Mika!" - whitened in the gallery with a blouse.

Darling!… – I called someone in my dreams.

At dinner, I thought about an old footman in a tailcoat and gloves, who was carrying there a plate with a backbone of a herring, and it seemed unbelievable to me that the wonderful Zinaida would eat this herring. It was her mother, who, of course, looked like a Moldavian, gnawed at a herring, and she was served a chicken wing and roses with jam. I looked around the table and thought that she would not like it with us, it would seem dirty, rude; that Pasha, although beautiful, is still not as decent as a respectable lackey in gloves, and kvass, of course, them do not put, but Lanin's water. The picture embroidered with beads - "The Wedding of Peter the Great": in a golden frame, perhaps, she would have liked it, but the terrible sofa in the hallway and the annoying fuchsia on the windows are terribly ignoble. And the box with green onions on the windowsill - horror, horror! If Zinaida had seen it, she would have thrown it contemptuously - shopkeepers!

I tried to imagine what her face is like? Princess, beauty ... Thin, waxy, proud? And it appeared nobly proud, a little arrogant, like Mary Vechera, with a crescent moon in her hair, which I saw recently in the Niva; sometimes roguishly sweet, like Pasha's, but only much more noble; then - mysteriously interesting, elusive, like a neighbor with a surprisingly gentle voice.

At dinner I ate absently. Mother said:

- Why are you counting all the flies?

“We learned a lot, exams teach everything ...” Pasha intervened.

I was horrified by her ignobleness, and I answered:

- Firstly, "examinations" are not y-chut, but pass! And ... it's time to learn like a human being! ...

What kind of people do you think! - Pasha was rude and hit me with a plate.

Everyone laughed stupidly, and it pissed me off. I said my head hurts! - left the table, went to his room and thumped his head into the pillow. I wanted to cry. “God, what rudeness we have!” I repeated in anguish, remembering how it was there. -“Counting flies”, “examinations”… After all, there are people who are completely different… subtle, noble, gentle… but we only have nasty things! There they say to the servants - you, the footman does not interfere in the conversation, brings a business card on a silver platter ... - "Would you like me to accept it?" - "Ask for the living room!" - What delicacy! If all alone, on an uninhabited island somewhere ... so that only one noble nature, the breath of a boundless ocean ... and ... "

And Zinaida spoke again. Not really ta, but similar to her, collected in me from everywhere, tender, like a dream, beautiful ...

Somewhere she was, somewhere waiting for me.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev

love story

I just read First Love.