Lyanka Panteleev. "Lyanka Panteleev

It often happens that writers come up with their heroes - give them fictional names and are sent to search for incredible adventures, which in fact never had. But in this book everything is different. Lenka Panteleev is a pseudonym author, Alexey Ivanovich Eremeeva (1908-1987). And all that is written in this story is true.

The hero and the author of this book, Lenka Panteleev, was born in St. Petersburg. He would like to live like an ordinary person - to love parents, go to school, be friends with good children. But he was not lucky - he grew up in a difficult time for the country. The First World War began (1914-1918), then two revolutions happened in the Russian Empire in one 1917 year, after which the bloody civil war broke out (1918-1922).

A new life has come in Russia. The city of St. Petersburg was renamed, turned into Petrograd, and then to Leningrad. That's just it was impossible to live there. Hunger raged, rear unemployment. People died from the cold, because there was nothing to trample, dying from infectious diseases, because there were not enough doctors and medicines. Many children stayed without parental care and found themselves on the street. The army of the torn, hungry, the poor children produced with small thefts and was a constant headache of urban inhabitants.

From this book you will learn how Lenka Panteleev became a unworker. He met a lot of wonderful people who helped him survive and remain man. He was lucky to get into the number of pupils of the Dostoevsky school commune (Skid).

As the further fate of Lenka and his friends, tells the story of Leonid Panteleeva and Grigory White "Republic of the Skid", on which the famous artistic film of the same name was shot.

All this winter day, the boys were not very lucky. Wandering around the city and already returning home, they wandered into the courtyard of a large, multi-storey house on a joiner's alley. The yard was similar to all Petrogradsky yards of that time - it was not covered, looked in snow, littered with firewood ... In a few windows, the electric light burned dimly, from the submarines here, then there were stuck with a knee pipe, from the pipes in the dark, boring a boring gray haze, whisening red Sparks. It was quiet and empty.

"We will pass on the staircase," suggested Lenka, Kartuv in the letter "P".

"And, quit," wolves shook angrily. - What are you not seeing? Dark, like Arap for the sinus.

- And nevertheless? ..

- Well, all the same. Let's watch.

They rose to the very top of the black staircase.

The wolves were not mistaken: there was nothing to begin.

They descended slowly, looking for cold railing in the dark, stumbled on the walls covered with a thick layer of Inea, chirkali matches.

- Devil! - Ground wolves. - Hamye! Live as ... I do not know ... as self-named some. If only one light bulb on the entire staircase hung.

- Looking! - interrupted his lamentage. - And for some reason it burns! ..

When they rose upstairs, downstairs, as on the entire staircase, it was dark, now there is dim, like a bloated corner, frightened the tight carbon light.

- Stop, wait! - whispered wolves, grabbing her hand and peeping through the railing down.

Behind a simple single door, which does not happen in residential apartments, heard the noise of water flowing from the tap. On the latch of the door hung, slightly swaying, a big shiny castle with a keys stuck in a well. The boys stood the platform above and, having frowning through the iron railing, looked down.

- Leshka! By God! Five hundred "lemons", no less! - Wolves whispered feverishly. And he did not have time to figure out what was the matter, as a friend, having broken down from his place, rearranged a dozen steps, threw the castle on the go with a crash and ran into the courtyard. Lenka wanted to follow his example, but at that time a single door with noise swung open and a thick red-skinned woman jumped out from there in a tied triangle. Catching your hands for a place where a few seconds have hung a castle in a few seconds, and seeing that there is no castle, a woman has shone a wild piercing voice:

- Batyushki! Cute my! Guard!

Later, Lenka mercilessly scolded himself for the error he did. The woman ran into the courtyard, and he, instead of climbing up and trunks on the stairs, rushed after her next.

Jumping into the courtyard and almost faced with a woman, he made a calm and indifferent face and asked a kind voice:

- Blame, Madame. What happened?

- Lock? - Lenka was surprised. - Stole? What are you talking about? I saw ... Honestly, I saw. He was removed some kind of boy. I thought it was your boy. True thought that yours. Allow, I will catch it, "he suggested him, trying to push the woman and whisk to the goal. The woman was already ready to skip him, but suddenly she said, blew him over the sleeve and shouted:

- No, brother, stand, wait! Who are you? BUT? Where are you from? Together I stole! .. eh? Speak! Together?!

And, thumping his head, the same strong, thick, like a fire pipe, she screamed voice:

- Car Raul!

Lenka made an attempt to escape.

- Let me! He shouted. - How dare you? Release! But already clapped around the window and doors, people already fled from the street and from the courtyard. And someone's unfortunate voice already shouted:

- The thief caught!

Lenka realized that he would not be able to escape. The crowd surrounded it.

- Who? Where? - noisy around.

- This?

- The castle broke.

- I got into the laundry ...

- Many burned? BUT?

- What? Show.

- Is this Schake? Snub?

- ha ha! Here they are - please, please - the children of the revolution!

- beat him!

- Bay thief!

Lenka absorbed his head in the shoulders, squeezed. But no one hit him. A fat woman, the owner of the castle, tightly held the boy for the collar of the fur coil and buzzed over his ear:

- You know this, which castle burned? Do you know? BUT? Is this a comrade? Right?

- What do you invent! Nothing like this! - shouted Lenka.

- lying! - noisy the crowd.

- in the eyes you can see - lying!

- By the police!

- in the plot!

- In the commandant's office!

- Please please. Very chokhosho. Come to the police, "Lenka was delighted. - What are you? Please go. There will find out, I or not VOG.

He did not have anything else to do. In bitter experience, he knew that no matter how bad in the police, but still there is better, more reliable than in the hands of an angry crowd.

"You're better than an accomplice of your mend," said some kind of woman. - Then we let you go.

- What more! - Lenka grinned. - accomplice! I go, okay ...

And although a fat woman still held him for a tear, he first stepped towards the goal.

In the police, his crowd was led by ten.

Lenka walked calmly, the face did not give it out - on his face, frozen Mina froze on his face, and in addition, in his fourteen years he experienced so many different differences that he did not see any reason to worry and worry.

"Okay. Spit. Somehow gets out, "he thought and, having missed, carelessly put his hands in the pockets of torn shubey.

In his pocket, he groped something solid.

"Knife," he remembered.

It was a long and thin, like stiletto, a sausage knife, which they enjoyed the wolf instead of a screwdriver when they had to twist the chandeliers and caps on the top stairs of rich houses.

Lenka Panteleev

Head from Tale

There was no electricity yet. True, on the streets, in stores and in luxury apartments already sparkled in the evenings, white pear-shaped "economic" light bulbs, but where Lenka was born and smashed, for a long time, almost to the most imperialist war, hung vintage kerosene lamps under the ceilings. These lamps were some clumsy and heavy, they rose and lowered in blocks using large cast iron balls filled with a fraction. Once, all the lamps in the apartment suddenly ceased to descend and rise ... There were holes in the cast-iron balls, through which the whole fraction moved into the pockets of Lenka pants. And without framed, the balls dangled like children's balloons. And then the father in the first and for the last time the lamentage. He was stealing with his suspicious suspenses and with every silence of his hands more and more rapidly.

- Will you? He shouted. - Will you still? Speak: Will you?

The tears of the streams flowed along the Lenican face, it seemed that they were flowing from the eyes, and from the nose, and from the mouth. Lenka spoiled by the belly, clamped by her father's knees, he chuckled, he shouted:

- Daddy! Oh, daddy! Oh, nice!

- Will you?

- Will! - Lazhka answered.

- Will you?

- Will! - Lazhka answered. - Oh, daddy! Pretty! .. I will! Will!..

In the next room, Nyanka disappeared with water Leniculus Mom, Ohala, was baptized and said that "in Lessia, the demon sits, not otherwise." But this very nurse assured that the father sits on the father. And, it means, two Besa faced - this time, when the Father Lynaka's Father. Nevertheless, Lenicin demon is overworked. After making sure the stubbornness and stubbornness of the Son, the father never touched his belt. He is often the junior son, Vasya, even glanced, sometimes "monkey" Lyalya, "everyone got everyone, his father had a hard one, and the temper was also hard. But he no longer touched.

... he did otherwise. For dinner, winter evening, children give cold milk soup. This is a nasty soup, he does not climb into the throat. (Even now he can't remember him without disgust.)

Vasi had an appetite better. They have overwhelmed their plates, and the langets have a plate - almost to the edges.

Father breaks away from the newspaper:

- Why are you digging?

- I can not. I do not want…

Tolstipid Vasya jumps up like a little clockwork soldier.

- Well, in prophesion to him two tablespoons - for memory.

Vasya licks his greater melchior spoon, waving and hit his brother twice on the forehead. Probably, he is not very sorry for Lenka. He knows that Lenka is loved not only mother, but also the Father. He is the firstborn. And then - after all, he never takes it. And what is a spoon on the forehead - compared to the suede suspenders ...

There was no friendship between the brothers. Rather, there was a host.

It happened, Sunday morning father causes them to his office.

- Well, believe.

- French or footboard?

- Not. Gypsy.

The boys begin to fight - first in the clamp, joking, then, to climb on the floor, clogging somewhere under the table or under the cover of the chairs, they begin to be beast. Already started in the course of the fists. Scratches already appear. Already someone crying.

Vasya was two years younger, but a lot more lamentage. He rarely turned out to be defeated in these Sunday martial arts. Lenka saved rage. If he gets angry, if blood appears on his hand, if the pain will blind him, - then hold on. Then his eyes are made by wolf, Vasya is frightened, retreats, runs, crying ...

Father developed courage in sons. Also very small, he sled them on a large wardrobe, standing in the hallway. The boys cried, oral, mother crying too. Father sat in the office and looked at the clock. These "brave lessons" lasted fifteen minutes.

All this is nothing. It was worse when my father began to drink. And he drank a lot - the farther, the more. The rusters lasted for months, his father threw out, disappeared, appeared, led strangers ...

Nights Lenka woke up - from the roar, from drunk songs, from the screams of the mother, from the ringing of the dishes.

Drunk father soldered the wildest things. "Ivan Adrianovich Drinkom - the Sea of \u200b\u200bKnee," the nannik spoke about him. Lenka did not see everything, not everyone knew and did not understand everything, but often in the morning he looked at his father with horror, who sat, bolding in the newspaper, and somehow especially, greedily and hastily, not raising her eyes, killya tea from a glass in Silver cup holder. Lenka himself did not know why, but at these moments he was sad by his father. He understood that his father suffers, it was passed to him with some sown little. He wanted to jump, stroke the father's hedgehog, cuddled to him, shake. But it was impossible to do it, it was impossible, Lenka drank coffee, chewed a French boulder or sepik and was silent, like all at the table.

... Once in winter, Uncle Seryozha arrived in Maslenitsa. It was a fleet brother of the Father. The nurse called him another one-utilized brother (one-utility - this means from one mother). The expression it was terribly liked, although he didn't quite understand what it means. It seemed to him that this should mean - a man with one belly, with one wicker. But why these words only apply only to Uncle Sergei, and not to all the rest of the people, he could not understand. Especially since the uncle Serge has a belly was not so small. It was a fat, cheerful and good-natured man, a drive engineer, big favorite children.

From Moscow, he brought gifts to children: He gave his doll to his liars, the fire helmet, and Lenka, as the oldest, the book - "Magic Almanac".

In the afternoon, he walked with nephews to walk, routing them on Waik, treated patties in the confectionery filipov at Voznesensky. After lunch, when a kerosene lamp was already lit in the nursery, he showed the children of the focuses that he had no choice for some reason, although he did them on a scientific basis - according to the book "Magic Almanac."

There were pancakes for dinner, and his father treated Brother Shustovsky Ryabinovka. Probably, after dinner, something drank. Children have long laid to sleep, and when they fell asleep, the sounds of the piano and the singing of the mother came from the living room. Mother sang "When I served in the mail". It was a favorite song of the Father, and the fact that her mother sang now, meant that his father was drunk. Sober, he never asked and did not listen to the songs.

And again, as it often happened, Lenka woke up among the night - from the roar, from the loud laughter, from drunk shouts and mother's tears. Then suddenly shook the doors. Something with the ringing fell and crumbled. In the next room, the nannik in the field persuaded someone to go somewhere. Then suddenly again began screams. Slammed the front door. Someone fled down the stairs. Someone disgusting, in piggy, squeezed in the yard. A horse rushed in the stable. Lenka could not fall asleep for a long time ...

And in the morning neither mother nor father went into the dining room to tea. In the kitchen, the nannika shusked with a kitchen. Lenka tried to find out what's the matter. He was told: "Go play, Leshenka."

In the living room, a cheerful maid was wiping parquet with a wet gender rag. Lenka saw blood on a rag.

- Is this why blood? He asked the steha.

"And you will talk about it with the dad," the stesh advised him.

Lazhka went to the father did not dare. He broke it several times to do this, approached the door of the office, but lacked courage.

And suddenly suddenly the father himself called him to his office.

He lay on the couch - in a bathrobe and in night shoes - and smoked a cigar. A decanter - with water or with vodka - stood at his headboard on the chair.

Lenka greeted and stopped in the doorway.

- Well? Said Father. - Slept?

"Yes, thank you," Lenka replied. The father was silent, Silay Sigar and said:

- Well, come here, we kiss.

He took out the mouth of the cigar, put an unshaven cheek, and Lenka kissed him. At the same time, he noticed that from his father smells not only tobacco and not only the venerable, which he watched his hair every morning. She smelled something else, and Lenka guessed that in a decanter on a chair, no water was nanite.

- You called me, dad? - He said when his father was silent again.

"Yes, called," the father replied. - Look out the box.

- What is the box? ..

- This one is left, in a writing desk. Lenka with difficulty put forward a heavy oak box. Elash reigned in the box. There were some folders, accounts, savings books. Under the books lay a revolver in leather holster, green boxes with cartridges, copper and silver coins, wrapped in newsprint, cigarette, wooden cigar box, switches, suede suspenders ...

"Yes, I opened," Lenka said.

- We look for a box from under cigars.

"Yes," Lenka said. - Found. There are envelopes and brands.

- Well, look, if there is no clean postcard there. There is, it seems.

Lenka found a postcard. It was a fashionable English card, depicting some embarrassing eyes with stacked eyes and on thin legs, shown in huge shoes.

"Sit, write," the father ordered.

- What to write?

- And here I am now a predictory ...

Lenka sat down for a written table and opened the inkwell. On the blackened silver ink lid sat the same black silver boy with small wings on his back. Ink in the inkwell was dry and thickened, - father did not often wrote.

"Well, write, brother," he said. - "Dear Uncle Seryozha!" Do you know where to write? Left. And to the right we will write the address.

"Dear Uncle Seryozha," Lenka's father wrote under the dictation, "our dad knew to sleep, wander and sends you his heart apologies. In the morning he hurts his head and do not want to live. And in general - he spits in the fireplace. Bye. Calym you and wait for the visit. Baby bow. Loving you nephew Alexey. "

By writing the address, Lenka put a small, but not very beautiful klyaksu in the words "His Welfare". He frightened himself; Father did not look at him. Throwing the head, he looked into the ceiling - with such a sour and dull expression, which one could think that the cigar cigarette cigarette, which he at that time was lazily suiced, smeared mustard.

Lenka attached a blotpapir, lied by the language of the blots and rose.

- Well - wrote? - Father was fixed.

- Yes, wrote.

- Will you go with a nanny to walk - put it in the box. Do not show anyone only. Go.

Lenka headed for the door. Already opening the door, he suddenly gained courage, coughed and said:

- What happened? Why do you apologize in front of Uncle Serie?

Father with surprise and even looked at him with curiosity. He brought himself, shook, threw the butcher of the cigarette, poured out of a decanter to a glass and drank a volley. Wastered mustache, squinted and said:

- What happened? And I, brother, yesterday the fool sank. I almost sent your uncle to Adam.

He said it is so scary and so bad laughed at the same time that Lenka involuntarily backed up. He did not understand what it means "to Adam sent", but I realized that last night my father shed the blood of a single brother ...

Several times a year, before the holidays and before leaving for the cottage, the mother disassembled in the chests. The fur coats were smunched, unnecessary things were selected for sale by Tatarin or for distribution by the poor, and some things, those who were not suitable and poor, were simply thrown out or burned. Lenka loved at this time to spin around his mother. True, most chests were packed with completely stupid, boring and ordinary things. Here they lay some faded dresses, semi-silant artificial flowers, fringe, sequins, pharmacy bubbles, ladies' shoes with semi-friendly heels, broken flower vases, plates, dishes ... But almost always among these stupid and unnecessary things there was some employee or even useful thing Then the penny knife with a blurred cutter, then a broken machine for piercing holes on business papers, then some old-fashioned leather wallet with an intricate secret lock, then something else ...

But the most important pleasure began when it came to the "Cossack Chest". Thus, it was called on the Lenkane language of the chest, in which for many years in a row was kept under prior, filled with naphtalin, the military ammunition of the father. It was a whole Tseykhgauz - this big oblong chest, upholstered brass, and on brass more iron brackets and heavy forged nails. What was not here! And bright green, lonely cloths, uniforms, and the same bright green bekeshes, and snow-white lush dads, and Cossack saddle, and spurs, and strive, and currices Cossack checkers, and felt poppons, and Siberian Bolsheki, and round baratic hats With striped cockarks, and finally, small lacquered peasons, shabby, cracked, mad powder and horsepower.

In these old, long-time things that have already come out of consumption and already touched, some unusual charm, something that caused it for one form of the Cossack chest to inflate the nostrils and listen to the tick of the heart. It seemed to give him will, and he was able to learn all his life on squatting near this chest, like some savage near his wooden idol. He was ready to play for hours with sweatpad spurs or with a leather peason, stinging it, instead of cartridges, stages of pencils, or standing in front of a mirror in a round barathop hat or in a fluffy dad, while having caught the curve of the Cossack saber and heavy tessel in wide raw sheaths. These old things told him about the times he no longer found, and about the events that happened when he was also not in the world, but about which he heard so much from the mother, and from the grandmother, and from the nurse and about which only one father never said anything. The same events foggy told the photograph for which Lenka once accidentally stumbled upon the magazine "Nature and People".

Young, smiling, unfamiliar father looked at him with magazine pages. On his shoulders, he had epaulets, on the head - Barashkin "Siberian".

Beltiness belts dragged his slender junior chest.

Lenka managed to read only the signature under the photo: "The heroic feat of a young Cossack officer." At this time, the father entered the room. He was without a pursuit and without a bother - in a bathrobe and in Stopanted homemade shoes. Seeing Lenka in his hands the magazine, he rushed to him with such a violent look that the boy had a fear of fear.

- Canal! - shouted father. - Who allowed you to dig in my things?!

He pulled out the magazine and hit the slope so much with this magazine that Lenka squatted.

"I just wanted to see pictures," he mumbled, he mumbled.

- Fool! - Father laughed. - Go to the nursery and never dare to go to the office in my absence. These pictures are not for you.

- Why? Lazhka asked.

"Because it is debauchery," said Father. Lenka did not understand, but he did not dare to ask. Going out of the office, he heard the door of a bookcase slap behind his back and turned the key in the well several times.

... Lenkin Father, Ivan Adrianovich, was born in the Old Believer Petersburg trading family. And grandfather and father traded him to firewood. Stepfather, that is, the second father, traded brick and panel tiles.

Among the relatives of Ivan Adrianovich did not have no nobles nor officials, nor the military: they were all the Old Believers, that is, held the faith for which their grandfathers and great-grandfather, while Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, burned to the fires. Three hundred years in a row was configured and pursued by their royal government, and the Orthodox government church clerk, called heretics and splitters.

Therefore, the Old Believers, even the richest, lived a special, closed byulates, extinguishing himself off the high wall from the rest of Russian society. Even in their home everyday, they until recently kept customs and rites of antiquity. In the church, I was not different in the church as in the long-foligable old cafts, and women in the sundresses and in white handkerchiefs in the dissolution. They married and married only in their, old-supplied medium. Teach children in their, old-supplied schools. Nothing new, ingenic and "adorable" was not recognized. The theaters did not go. Tobacco did not smoke. Tea, coffee did not drink. Even potatoes did not eat ...

True, by the end of the XIX century, when Ivan Adrianovich was adjusted, all this was no longer so strict. Many wealthy old supplies began to give children to government gymnasiums. Some of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Raskolnikov have already traveled slowly to the theater, and there for a bottle of wine, you look, and I smoked the cigar ...

But after all, it was very boring, dark and harsh life, the interests of which were limited to the church and progress.

Ivan Adrianovich studied in a real school. Monotonous domestic life and fate that expected him ahead, did not satisfy it. He did not want to trade. He understood that the life that his fathers and grandfathers lived, not a real life. It seemed to him that could live better.

Having not needed, he left the real and entered the Elisavetradigs Military School. He did it against the will of his parents, "he seemed to him that he would run away from the plower, whipped crypt to wide, bright expanses. Career Martial experienced to him as something very beautiful, bright, noble, able to glorify and inspire.

He studied well. The school graduated one of the first. And just as well, almost brilliantly began service in the Vladimir Dragoon shelf.

But soon there was disappointment. The officer's environment turned out to be not much better merchant. Without listens to the first officer, Ivan Adrianovich was already thinking about retired care.

Implement this temporarily prevented one event: the war batted. And again, against the will of the parents, the young man makes a decision: to the front, on the position, on the Manchurian fields, where the Japanese guns rose and pour Russian blood. Who knows, perhaps, here he will find that life sense, the goal, to which he sought and whom he could not even find.

The part in which Ivan Adrianovich served, did not go to war. With great works, it was possible to translate the young Cornet to the Amur Cossack Regiment. He received the title of Horugego, died to the Siberian Cossack shape and with the first echelon went to the Far East.

And here, on the fields of the battle, he also showed himself as a capable and brave officer. Estimated by a small Cossack train, he was supposed to deliver important operational reports to the headquarters of the Russian command. On the way to the Cossacks, the Japanese cavalry detachment was attacked. The shootout started. Having lost half of the people and himself wounded in the chest, Ivan Adrianovich fell off the enemy and delivered a valuable package to the location of the Russian headquarters. On the first day of Easter, when Ivan Adrianovich lay in the field Lazarut, the adjutant General Kuropatkina brought him a combat order "Vladimir with swords." Getting this order, which was given only for very serious military merit, made it nobleman. It seemed that in front of Ivan Adrianovich, a wide, tempting path was opened: Glory, career, ranks, money, rewards ... But he did not go through this path. He did not return to the regiment. War, which costs Russia so much blood was lost. And Ivan Adrianovich, like any honest Russian man, could not not understand why it happened. The Russian army fought under the entry of the radical and selling royal generals. And in the rear, and on the front flourished theft, bribery, soldiers were poorly trained, poorly supplied with food, and ammunition. It was not only meaningless to serve in such an army, but also suffer. Young Khorunzhiy Forever Cool to the military profession. Somehow hearing his wound, he donated to the civil suit and took up the work that his father was engaged in, and his grandfather and from whom he could not run away: he began to trade firewood and baroque forest. The consciousness that his life is divided, that she turned out not as he shoulded and I would like, no longer left him. He began to drink. His character began to deteriorate. And although he was previously considered an eccentric and originally, now he mounded and smoleed already openly and at every step. From this wild watery life did not save him and marriage. He married, as he did everything, quickly, speakingly, without hesitation for a long time. I saw the girl, fell in love, I met, and in five days, I quit spurs, I was already going to make a sentence. He married him without the blessing of the mother, besides, on the Orthodox, on Nikonianka, "he finally restored against himself and was already quite angry at him, an objected birth.

And immediately started discord. Maybe already on the second day after the wedding Lenkin, the mother understood what a terrible mistake she made. She had a lot of grooms, the choice was big, and there was no need for her to go for this dark-level Cossack officer.

Alexandra Sergeevna also brought up a merchant family. But how not these families were similar! As if not in one city and did not live in one country. As if they spoke in different languages.

The houses were always fun, noisy, lively. Even stepmother, evil, like all stepmothers, could not poison this eternal holiday.

Even with a stepmother Ladylah Ladylah ladied: she had an angel, - the grooms who woven it for her almost every month, did not pick up and were caught and did not beautify, but the character of Shurochkin. In the gymnasium, Shurachochi adored, the cuzzles in the store fell in love with her, gave her bouquets into the folder; Flowers did not have time to wither in a small rugged spoolroom.

From here, it looked at the world, and it seemed to her that this world is simple and transparent and that it is very easy and pleasant to step along his direct roads.

And life did not contradict her. Life gave her more than she was supposed to her, and dismissed her fellow times, according to which it really feared easily, gently and silently.

Talents Shurokhok did not shine, but finished the gymnasium with a silver medal. The beauty was not famous and the coquets did not differ, but I conquered my hearts not for a joke, so in one summer in the country in Shuvalov two students and one Kommersant-Petrovalets shot because of her. But here, like everywhere, the fate was shouted by Shurachochka: as purpose, all three missed, without leaving sin on a rugged conscience.

Life was cheerful - you do not invent more fun. Dancing, balls, charitable evenings, country trips, amateur performances, picnics, dance again, again evenings ... No wonder if Shurakah and bored with such fun. And maybe, I liked Ivan Adrianovich, the twentieth in the account of the bridegroom, that he was not like others: I didn't know how to dance, I did not joke, I didn't have a punishment and thoughtful. And in a summer cloudless day and black cloud can please. Alexandra Sergeyevna did not think. Yes, and was no longer able to think, it was time to get married, it was impossible without the end to deny the grooms.

And here she left his father's house and moved to her husband! And - as if the door slammed her back.

There, behind the door, stayed and laughter, and flowers, and French water, and country picnics, and cheerful parties with light wine and student acunts ...

As if in the cellar, she entered into this alien who did not like other apartments, where he smelled of mushrooms and a surgiah, where he hurt the harsh man's nanny, where even on a sunny day was overcast and sadly, where even the icons were some extraordinary - terrible, dark , with yellow, softened faces ...

And the black cloud, which adorn her with his coolness, broke out with such a thunderstorm, so unexpected lead shower, which Alexander Sergeyevna did not read in the books.

The husband, with whom she did not say before the wedding and ten words, did not open her after the wedding. Very soon she decided that he was a bad person: drunkard, Grubian, despot, sometimes - almost a beast.

She could not think differently, because this man taught her crying: For all his virgas, she did not shed so much tears so much as she had to shed in one first month in her husband's house.

With all his angelic character, she could not and adapt to her husband, to find a common language with him. They prevented her youth, inexperience, and most often - just fear. After all, it happened that she could not distort the words in the presence of her husband. Ivan the same Adrianovich who loved his wife in his own way, could not explain to her - from pride, from stubbornness, and also because for some time he really became coarse, and evil, and cruel ...

... But was there always this man with everyone? Is everything good for life in him, medium, adding to vodka? Is it really nothing left in this soul, except for worn and cruelty? For what happened so passionately, so hotly adored his lamentage?

Of course not. It was in this big, strong and unfortunate man a lot of things for which he was forgated by the sins even the enemies of him and ill-wishers.

Ivan Adrianovich was honest. That is why it probably never could learn to trade. Even a little wrong led him to rage. Itself incorruptible - direct, truthful, wasteful-generous, he did not tolerate the slightest manifestation of falsehood, miserism, low-stones.

He had a school comrade balls. For many years they were friends. But somehow, the jaw the balls admitted that two wallets were constantly carrying in his pocket: one for himself - with money, and the other, empty, for buddies - in case he is asked to be borrowed. Ivan Adrianovich listened to him, paused and said:

- You know, brother ... Get out of here.

- Where to? - Surprised balls.

Ivan Adrianovich did not answer, got up and left the room. Embarrassed balls sat, finished a glass and left. Since then, they have never met.

One day, when Lenka was still quite small, they returned with her father from the bath. The case was late in the fall, the snow fell. On the fountain, the Egyptian bridge approached them half-lit, torn, barefoot guy.

"Feed a penny, your Sorodie," by her teeth, he said, for some reason smiling. Ivan Adrianovich looked at the young, swollen and messenger face and angrily said:

- Need to work. Young still Christarads.

"I, Barin, did not run from work," the guy grinned. - You give me a job.

- factory?

- Ka? Tal I ... The thunder's last barge rolled. Out of our work.

Lenka stood next to his father and looked at the completely purple bare feet of this man, who, who, not stopping for a minute, was asked on a pure white snow.

- Cut the boots? Father asked.

"Propil," the guy smiled. - I wanted to warm up.

- What a fool. In Obukhovskaya you will fall, there you will be warm - in Pokoynitsky.

The guy was still standing nearby. Ivan Adrianovich put his hand in his pocket. There was one little thing. He gave her all the guy and went. Then he stopped, looked around. The guy stood in the same place, considered the money on his palm. Naked shoulders were scary twenty.

- Hey you, Dutch cheese! - he called him Ivan Adrianovich.

The guy looked incompeted.

"At, hold," Ivan Adrianovich ordered, stretching his black adhesive sac linake. Then he unbuttoned his new blue bekem, threw it off him and sketched her naked shoulders unemployed.

- Barin ... You are joking! - exclaimed the one.

"Okay, go," Ivan Adrianovich said angrily. - We offer - you will be fool. And however, - your business ...

Ahali's houses and were horrified - mother, maid, nannik. And Lenka walked happy all day. He himself did not understand why he was so good, but all day he fought with the desire to go to his father, rush to him on the neck, tightly kiss him, tell him how he loves him heavily. However, he did not, - could not and did not bold.

... did his father loved? And did he like someone from loved ones to his wife, mother, buddies? Answer the boy could not answer this question. But the fact that his father was capable of big, strong love, he knew.

There was an attachment, deep, touching and gentle in the life of this person.

Ft is Nyanka Lizaveta died two years before the appearance of Lenes on the light. He knew that this woman, about which no one, besides his father, has never said a good word, Lydanich and raised Ivan Adrianovich. The fact that the Father loved and continues to love her, it was possible and not to say, - it felt all over what was done in the house. Buckwheat porridge for dinner was cooked "like a nurse of lichen." Mushrooms Solili and apples urinated "in Niankina". Between the windows for the winter, Moss was laid out, and not cotton - also "like with a nurse Lizaweet."

The portrait of this woman in the house was not, Lenka never saw her and could not see, but for some reason in his memory and still kept her image: High, straight, with proud, like a boait, face, beautiful, more, than grandmother like father ...

He remembered the winter day when his father entered the nursery, stood in the middle of the room, swaying on socks, and asked:

- What are you doing?

"So ... nothing," murmured Lenka. - I look at the pictures ...

- Dress ... We go ...

Lenka was surprised and delighted. Father rarely took him somewhere with him.

- And where to? - he asked.

- At the cemetery.

Lenka was surprised even more. Father never walked to church, never went to the cemetery - on the graves of relatives.

Safding in the cabin sledge, he briefly ordered:

- at Gromovskoye.

- Eh, Barin. Once what! From there and the saddle will not pick up. Put halfnets.

- Okay. Drive! ..

Well remembers this soft, frosty day, painted St. Petersburg streets, factory pipes, beeps of steam locomotives on the Warsaw road.

For a long time they wander with the Father on the snow-covered cemetery paths. On the wide eight-pointed old supplies crosses, black daws are sitting. In the bushes of elds, some tiny birds make some tiny birds. It smells like snow, from silence and deserted a little silent hearts.

Father stops, removes the header. Behind the cast-iron grille is a small black monument.

At the top of his little gilded cross, and under him, on the Labradorite blushing, three words: Three words:

"Nian? From Vanya. "

Lenka also paints his eared hat and schos on his father from his head. He does not recognize him. What is his soft, cute, kind and smoking face! So he saw the Father, perhaps, only once - in the magazine "Nature and People" ... And suddenly he noticing in almost horror that tears ride on this face. The lamentage is very beginning to twitch his lips.

"Well, we go, my son," says Ivan Adrianovich and, finely trimmed his chest, puts his doodle hat.

... This day, saturated with the winter sun, the Siain of the February Snow, which began so nice and serene, remembered Lenka also because he ended, this day, terribly, wildly and ugly.

From the cemeteries went home. Father was cheerful, joked with the cabovka, called him the squeeze (because for some reason "Vanki" in St. Petersburg) ... From halfway, he suddenly thoughtful and ordered me to go to Kolomna, and at the other end of the city Large stable, in the universal store of the Guards Economic Society.

Here, they wandered for a long time in various departments and floors. Father chose a tie and cufflinks, bought the mother of Brocarovsky Spirits, and the children are small, similar to Kegley bottles.

Then with these purchases went to the restaurant, which was located right there, in one of the floors of the store.

Lenka has never been in the restaurant. All his surprised him here and occupied. And the waiters are cut under the typewriter in black, like cinematic beauties, frisms. And the brilliance of Melchioric dishes. And special, sharp odors of restaurant kitchen, mixed with smells of cigars and wine fumes.

Father ordered lunch: sailor borsch and befstrogen. Lenka drank fruit laninskaya water from a small, like a bow, bottles, and father - Shustovsky Ryabinovka. Lenka has already understood in these things, he saw that his father ordered wine too much: a whole bottle - a high, faceted, similar to the bell tower of the Catholic church.

With Claus, the father quickly zamhel; At first he joked and laughed at Lenka, then suddenly he immediately became gloomy. From a soft and good-natured expression on his face, nothing remains. He drank a glass behind a glass, climbed black bread, thought about something silent.

Lenka did not notice how the company officers appeared behind the next table. These were all young people in the beautiful shape of the Guards Guards.

Officers drank champagne, choped, proclaimed toasts.

One of them, quite a young, with blond, twisted up the beggars, rose with a glass in his hand and loudly, on the whole restaurant, announced:

- Lord! For the health of the sovereign of the emperor! ..

Ivan Adrianovich, who, too, at that time he kept a piled wine glass in his hand, turned on a chair, squinted and mockingly looked at the young Kavalearg. At the same time, he somehow overwhelmed loudly coughed or chuckled. Everyone around one after another rose, and he sat. Moreover - he did not drink, but put a glass - and even pushed her to the middle of the table.

- Hey you ... honorable! - shouted an officer. - Do not you hear?

- What? You to me? - Ivan Adrianovich asked, and Lenka was frowning, seeing his wild light, who flashed in his father's eyes.

"Daddy ... dad ... don't, please," he fences.

"I ask you: don't you hear that a toast is proclaimed for whose person?" - Heaven to the cavalugard.

- What kind of person? - Ivan Adrianovich was pretended to be pretended.

Due to the adjacent table, another officer jumped out.

- Burning! Shpak! This is a minute to get up! - He shouted, jumping to Ivan Adrianovich.

Ivan Adrianovich pushed the table with a rumble.

"Ensure ... Now ... Your words are back," he said in some very quiet and terrible voice.

Lenka climbed. He managed to see how the officer swung on his father, as his father caught his hand ... What happened next, he badly remembers. Several people threw on the Father. Lenka saw Ivan Adrianovich grabbed a heavy bag with kegs from the chair and raised him above his head. He heard the ringing, roar, female crying ... in the nose he hit the sharp smell of spirits. For a few seconds, he saw the face of his father. His cheek and his temple were in the blood.

The boy cried, rushing, grab someone for his hands ...

What happened further and how they got home, he did not remember. Vitrably remembers him that they were driving on the cabovka that his father hugged him and cried and that he was sharply stigma, stumbled with vodka and hyacinths. Probably, Brocaric Spirits crushed in the landfill.

At night, Lenka could not fall asleep for a long time. Cutting a nose into the pillow, he cried quietly - from pity to his father and from hatred to those who beat him ...

For many years later, when Lenka grew up, he understood what an outstanding man was his father and how much good was destroyed in it, killed, crushed the oppression of the environment and in order, in which he grew up and lived ...

After this incident, Ivan Adrianovich did not spend several days at home. Where he disappeared this time - Lenka did not know. However, it used to happen. Happened later. Father sawpowders.

Lenka was five years old when his mother fell ill. It was a nervous, almost mental illness. It lasted six and a half years.

Mother had their teeth. And no one could cure her. No doctor managed to even make a diagnosis and say what's the matter. She suffered, suffered, drove from one celebrity to another. It didn't seem to be a professor in St. Petersburg, in the reception of which she would not have visited. She tried and homeopaths, and hypnotists, and psychiatrists. Prayed. Made deposits in monasteries. I went to a manty. Applying to the signs. I idle the nights in the queues at some retired general. Then - by the janitor in Izmailovsky Roths, which he treated all the people who wanted a conspiracy and chicken litter.

No one helped her - neither the janitor nor the general nor Professor Bekhterev, because no one knew that the cause of her disease was an unsuccessful family life, Nalada and her husband.

Only one medicine was slightly quenched - a bitter greenish powder, which smelled to the valley and garlic. This smell pursued Lenka throughout his childhood.

Sad, creamy mother with a black dressing on his cheek - his first childhood memories. She sits at the open piano. And good hands lie on the keys.

Children lived a mansion, in the nursery, but also there through cooks and nannies came rumors and a sense of nonlands at the parent half. Yes, and Lenka himself very early to understand that the mother and father live badly. He saw it. He saw how, clogging into the pillow, cried her mother. He saw the Father, who skewed from the rage face, not getting his hands in the sleeve, put his coat in the hallway and flew, slamming the front door. Late at midnight, he returned. Clapped corks. Ranked dishes. Trembling from the tears voice mother sang: "When I served in the mail ..."

It happened that the mother had to run away from the house. It happened when the father was drinking particularly strongly. Sometimes at night, without sustaining, the mother sent the maid behind the cab, she said goodbye to children and left for her sister or to a stepmother.

It happened that the children had remained alone for several days, with a servant: mother and father drove around, lived on different apartments.

Then they converged again. World consisted. After the storm passed the lull. Sometimes this lull lasted weeks and even months. Then life began like others. Led the farm. Accepted guests. Ourselves went to visit. Engaged in cases. Raised children. Walked to theaters ...

In the fitness of tenderness and repentance, the father took money and bought a mother of some extraordinary gift: a diamond brooch, earrings or sable coupling.

But it almost always turned out that already in a month this diamond brooch or coupling is sent to Lombard, and the money received from the mortgage is moving into the pockets of St. Petersburg restaurants, winegogs and cards and cards.

The truce ended. War begins again.

Father launches business. Enters debts. And still drinks, drinks without wake up ...

Increasingly and more often talk about divorce. It comes to the point that the property is already divided. Make children.

But with Delete, nothing comes out. There would be two children or four - then nothing. But it is impossible to divide three for two without a residue. Someone from them, or mother, or father, should stay with one child.

These conversations occur in the presence of lamentage. He listens with her horror to these compilations, to these endless disputes, during which his fate is solved. He loves the mother and father equally and does not want to lose any other. But, fortunately, it turns out that the Father does not want a divorce. He does not give a mother of money. And she has nothing. Did you live. And she does not know how to do anything. Is that playing on the piano yes to embroider with cross-babes on canvas ...

Mother is flashing, looking for an exit ...

She begins to make savings in the farm, refuses the cook, tries to sew, cook ... With that neither from this - in search of earnings and profession - she suddenly begins to study the shoe craft. In her small cozy bedroom, where beautiful silk furniture, soft baffies, nutty tremors, pink curtains, - strange things appear: hammers, sewn, ticks, wooden nails, a wax duvera ... Then all this as suddenly, as it appeared, suddenly disappears.

Mother goes to courses, learns, reads books.

But the father is protesting. He throws these books outside the window. It wakes up the spirit of his ancestors, splitters. Woman, Baba, did not stick to sciences. Children, the economy, the church - that's the whole world that prepared by her - do not fall further.

Mother tries to humble. In full night, it prays in front of the lit lamps. Long all-in-bed and suitrena is idle in the surrounding churches.

And her teeth still hurt. A black bandage does not come off with her losing weight, looked like. And still when she kisses the night of children, it smells of garlic and lily of her lily ...

And Lenkina life at this time goes to her!

He lives not entirely as the boy is supposed to live at his age and in his position. Therefore, he is not entirely similar to other children.

- Dad, buy me letters!

Father laughed, but promised to buy. On another day, he got somewhere black cut-off letters that are used for posters and alllands. These letters were stuck on the wall in the nursery, the headboard is a lankina bed. The next morning, Lenka knew all the alphabet. And a few days later, during a walk with a nanny, he already read the signs: "beer and crayfish", "green", "bakery", "pharmacy", "plot".

He had little books. The only children's book that came to him, he studied in a month to the holes. She was called "the story about Goshu long arms." Some words in this book, Father stuck in the ink, but since Lenka was curious, he saw the printed letters who had witnessed through ink. The stricken words were "fool" and "fool" - the most delicate words that the father consumed when was drunk.

In the office of the father stood a large bookcase. Because of the glass doors, his appetizing leather roots peered. Lenka has long been looking at this forbidden wealth. Once, when a father left for a few days to Shlisselburg on shopping affairs, he climbed into the office, found the keys and opened the closet. He was comprehended by terrible disappointment. Tolstick books in leather bindings were written in the Slavic language, which Lenka did not know. These were old solo books that were inherited by inheritance, never read them and standing in the office "for furniture."

But in the same place in the closet, he came across a whole bunch of thin little books in bluish-gray paper covers. It was a complete collected Works Mark Twain and Charles Dickens - a free app to the magazine "Nature and People". Nobody read these books - only "Tom Sawyer" was cut to half. Lenka took these books to the nursery and read the furtively in the absence of a father. He was afraid to cut the books - I tried to read without cutting. With the danger to spoil the eyes and dislocate the neck, he thus read the "Tale of two cities" of Dickens. But already at David Copperfield, he waved his hand, brought the knife from the dining room and for half an hour the entire dickens was cut and everything. For a long time, after that he was flutter, waiting for the reprisals. But the father did not notice the disappearance of books. He did not notice the changes that happened to them after returning to the closet. Most likely, he did not even remember their existence.

The first books got a good lamentage. But then he read already without parsing, which will come. Almost all the books that the mother read at this time, re-read the little and lagnure. Thus, when in the eighth year he went to the preparatory classes, he had already met not only with Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Maupassant, but also with such authors, like Merezhkovsky, Pisem, Amphitherators, Leonid Andreev ...

He read a lot, drink. Brother and sister called his eyes - Bookcase.

But lanka's painka has never been. He had such a character that for more than two months no governess did not get along in the house. Wherever he was, wherever he was, there was always some story with him: it will break an expensive fragile thing in the store, for which the mother has to pay from his wallet; it will fall apart in the dacha in a pit with lime; or get lost in the forest; Or breaks at the neighbors a ball above the flower flower club ...

The first son, Mother and Father's favorites, he was still different in diapers, which was called "unsuccessful", "terrible", "despotic," and most often "Father's".

Even father scarecrow his stubbornness. And about the mother and there is nothing to say. When the lamentage "attacked the verse," she flew into the bedroom, stuck on the key and cried, bolding in the pillow.

It became especially difficult to her when the Father finally left the family, leaving all the trinity on her hands: And Lenka, and Vasya, and Lyalya. Severatus with her husband, Alexander Sergeyevna did not feel freedom. Health has not improved. There was never enough money. And then, Leshechnaya smasted - unavaevy, wild, indomitable ... Every day, fatherly character was more and more affected. And more and more often exclaimed exhausted, desperate mother:

- The Lord's second Ivan Adrianovich awarded me! ..

1938–1954