In London in 1920, in winter, on the corner of Piccadilly and One Lane, two well-dressed middle-aged people stopped. They had just left an expensive restaurant. There they had dinner, drank wine and joked with artists from the Drurilensky Theater.

Now their attention was drawn to a motionless, poorly dressed man of about twenty-five, around whom a crowd began to gather.

Stilton cheese! - the fat gentleman said disgustedly to his tall friend, seeing that he had bent down and was peering at the man lying down. - Honestly, you shouldn’t spend so much time on this carrion. He's drunk or dead.

“I’m hungry... and I’m alive,” muttered the unfortunate man, rising to look at Stilton, who was thinking about something. - It was a faint.

Reimer! - said Stilton. - Here's a chance to make a joke. I came up with an interesting idea. I'm tired of ordinary entertainment, and there's only one way to joke well: making toys out of people.

These words were spoken quietly, so that the man lying and now leaning against the fence did not hear them.

Reimer, who did not care, shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, said goodbye to Stilton and went to while away the night at his club, and Stilton, with the approval of the crowd and with the help of a policeman, put the homeless man into a cab.

The crew headed to one of Gaystreet's taverns. The poor guy's name was John Eve. He came to London from Ireland to seek service or work. Yves was an orphan, raised in the family of a forester. Except primary school, he did not receive any education. When Yves was 15 years old, his teacher died, the adult children of the forester left - some to America, some to South Wales, some to Europe, and Yves worked for some time for a farmer. Then he had to experience the work of a coal miner, a sailor, a servant in a tavern, and at the age of 22 he fell ill with pneumonia and, upon leaving the hospital, decided to try his luck in London. But competition and unemployment soon showed him that finding work was not so easy. He spent the night in parks, on piers, became hungry, became emaciated and was, as we saw, raised by Stilton, the owner commercial warehouses in the City.

At the age of 40, Stilton experienced everything that a single man can experience for money, not knowledgeable of worries about lodging and food. He owned a fortune of 20 million pounds. What he came up with to do with Yves was complete nonsense, but Stilton was very proud of his invention, since he had the weakness of considering himself a man of great imagination and cunning imagination.

When Yves drank wine, ate well and told Stilton his story, Stilton said:

I want to make you an offer that will immediately make your eyes sparkle. Listen: I’m giving you ten pounds on the condition that tomorrow you rent a room on one of the central streets, on the second floor, with a window onto the street. Every evening, exactly from five to twelve at night, on the windowsill of one window, always the same, there should be a lit lamp, covered with a green lampshade. While the lamp burns for the designated period of time, you will not leave the house from five to twelve, you will not receive anyone and you will not speak to anyone. In a word, the work is not difficult, and if you agree to do so, I will send you ten pounds every month. I won't tell you my name.

If you’re not joking,” answered Yves, terribly amazed at the proposal, “then I agree to forget even given name. But tell me, please, how long will this prosperity of mine last?

This is unknown. Maybe a year, maybe a lifetime.

Better. But - I dare to ask - why did you need this green illumination?

Secret! - Stilton replied. - Great mystery! The lamp will serve as a signal for people and things about which you will never know anything.

Understand. That is, I don’t understand anything. Fine; drive the coin and know that tomorrow at the address I provided, John Eve will illuminate the window with a lamp!

Thus a strange deal took place, after which the tramp and the millionaire parted, quite satisfied with each other.

Saying goodbye, Stilton said:

Write post restante like this: "3-33-6". Also keep in mind that who knows when, maybe in a month, maybe in a year, in a word, completely unexpectedly, suddenly you will be visited by people who will make you wealthy man. Why and how this is - I have no right to explain. But it will happen...

Damn it! - Yves muttered, looking after the cab that was taking Stilton away, and thoughtfully twirling the ten-pound ticket. - Either this man has gone crazy, or I am a special lucky guy. Promise such a heap of grace just for the fact that I burn half a liter of kerosene a day.

The next evening, one second-floor window of the gloomy house number 52 River Street shone with a soft green light. The lamp was moved close to the frame.

Two passersby looked for a while at the green window from the sidewalk opposite the house; then Stilton said:

So, dear Reimer, when you are bored, come here and smile. There, outside the window, sits a fool. A fool bought cheaply, in installments, for a long time. He will get drunk from boredom or go crazy... But he will wait, not knowing what. Yes, here he is!

Indeed, a dark figure, leaning his forehead against the glass, looked into the semi-darkness of the street, as if asking: “Who is there? What should I expect? Who will come?”

However, you are also a fool, my dear,” said Reimer, taking his friend by the arm and dragging him towards the car. - What's funny about this joke?

A toy... a toy made from a living person,” said Stilton, “the sweetest food!”

INTRODUCTION

I NOVELS AND STORIES

SCARLET SAILS

RUNNING ON THE WAVES

BRILLIANT WORLD

GOLD CHAIN

II STORIES

III CREATIVE METHOD OF A. GREEN

CONCLUSION

Adventurous in their plots, Greene's books are spiritually rich and sublime, they are charged with dreams of everything high and beautiful and teach readers courage and the joy of life. And in this Green is deeply traditional, despite all the originality of his characters and the whimsicality of his plots. Sometimes it even seems that he deliberately heavily emphasizes this moralistic traditionalism of his works, their kinship with old books and parables. So, two of my stories, " Pillory" and "One Hundred Miles Along the River", the writer, of course, not by accident, but quite deliberately, concludes with the same solemn chord of ancient stories about eternal love: "They lived a long time and died on the same day..."

This colorful mixture of the traditional and the innovative, this bizarre combination of the book element and a powerful, one-of-a-kind artistic invention, probably consists of one of the most original features of Green’s talent. Starting from the books he read in his youth, from a great variety of life observations, Green created his own world, his own land of imagination, which, of course, does not exist on geographical maps, but which undoubtedly exists, which undoubtedly exists - the writer firmly believed in this - on the maps of youthful imagination, in that special world, where dream and reality exist side by side.

The writer created his own country of imagination, as someone happily said, his “Greenland”, created it according to the laws of art, he determined its geographical outlines, gave it shining seas, sent snow-white ships with scarlet sails, taut from the overtaking north, across the steep waves. Vesta, marked the shores, set up harbors and filled them with human boiling, boiling passions, meetings, events...

But are his romantic fiction really so far from reality, from life? The heroes of Green's story "Watercolor" - the unemployed steamship fireman Klasson and his laundress wife Betsy - accidentally end up in art gallery, where they discover a sketch in which, to their deep amazement, they recognize their house, their unprepossessing dwelling. The path, the porch, the brick wall overgrown with ivy, the windows, the branches of maple and oak, between which Betsy stretched the ropes - everything was the same in the picture... The artist just threw stripes of light on the foliage, on the path, colored the porch, the windows, brick wall colors of the early morning, and the fireman and washerwoman saw their house with new, enlightened eyes: “They looked around with a proud look, terribly regretting that they would never dare to declare that this housing belonged to them. “We are renting for the second year,” flashed through their minds. Klasson straightened up . Betsy wrapped a scarf around her exhausted chest..." The painting by an unknown artist straightened out their souls, crumpled by life, "straightened" them.

Green’s “Watercolor” evokes Gleb Uspensky’s famous essay “Straightened Up,” in which the statue of the Venus de Milo, once seen by the village teacher Tyapushkin, illuminates his dark and poor life and gives him “the happiness of feeling like a human being.” This feeling of happiness from contact with art and a good book is experienced by many of the heroes of Green’s works. Let us remember that for the boy Gray from " Scarlet Sails"the painting depicting the stormy sea was "that with the right word in the conversation of the soul with life, without which it is difficult to understand oneself." And a small watercolor - a deserted road among the hills, called "The Road to Nowhere" amazes Tirrey Davenant. The young man, full of bright hopes, resists the impression, although the ominous watercolor "attracts like well"... Like a spark from a dark stone, a thought is struck: to find a road that would lead not anywhere, but “here,” fortunately, which was what Tirreus dreamed of at that moment.

And perhaps it would be more accurate to say this: Green believed that every real person has a romantic flame glimmering in their chest. And it's just a matter of inflating it. When a Grinovsky fisherman catches a fish, he dreams of catching big fish, such a big one, “the likes of which no one has ever caught.” A charcoal miner, piling up a basket, suddenly sees that his basket has blossomed, from the branches he has burned, “buds have spread and sprinkled with leaves”... A girl from a fishing village, having heard enough fairy tales, dreams of an extraordinary sailor who will sail for her on a ship with scarlet sails. And her dream is so strong, so passionate that everything comes true. And an extraordinary sailor and scarlet sails.

Green was strange and unusual in the usual circle of realist writers, everyday writers, as they were called then. He was a stranger among the Symbolists, Acmeists, Futurists... "The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau" by Greene, a piece that I left conditionally with the editors, warning that it may or may not work, a beautiful thing, but too exotic... “These are lines from a letter from Valery Bryusov, who edited the literary department of the magazine “Russian Thought” in 1910-1914. They are very revealing, these lines that sound like a sentence. Even if Bryusov, a great poet, sensitive and responsive to literary novelty, is Green’s thing Although it seemed beautiful, it was too exotic, which may or may not work, then what was the attitude towards the works of a strange writer in other Russian magazines?

Meanwhile, for Greene, his story “The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau” (1911) was an ordinary thing: he wrote like that. Invading the unusual, the “exotic,” into the ordinary, familiar in the everyday life around him, the writer sought to more sharply indicate the splendor of its miracles or the monstrosity of its ugliness. It was his artistic manner, in his creative handwriting.

Moral monster Bloom, main character The story, dreaming of a time “when a mother does not dare to stroke her children, and whoever wants to smile will first write a will,” was not a particularly literary novelty. The misanthropes, homegrown Nietzscheans at that time, “on the night after the battle” of 1905, became fashionable figures. “A revolutionary by chance,” Blum is related in his inner essence to the terrorist Alexey from Leonid Andreev’s “Darkness,” who wished “for all the lights to go out,” and the notorious cynic Sanin from novel of the same name M. Artsybasheva, and the obscurantist and sadist Trirodov, whom Fyodor Sologub presented as a Social Democrat in his “Navi Charms”.

Greene's subjects were defined by time. With all the exoticism and whimsicality of the patterns of the artistic fabric of the writer’s works, in many of them the spirit of modernity, the air of the day in which they were written, is clearly felt. The features of time are sometimes so noticeably, so emphatically written out by Green that for him, a recognized science fiction writer and romantic, they even seem unexpected. At the beginning of the story “Hell Returned” (1915) there is, for example, the following episode: to famous journalist Galien Mark, sitting alone on the deck of the ship, is approached with clearly hostile intentions by a certain party leader, “a man with a triple chin, black hair combed over a low forehead, dressed baggy and rudely, but with a pretense of panache, expressed by a huge crimson tie... ". After this portrait characteristics you can already guess what kind of party this leader represents. But Green considered it necessary to say more precisely about this game (the story is told in the form of notes from Galien Mark).

“I saw that this man wanted a quarrel,” we read, “and I knew why. last issue"Meteora" published my article exposing the activities of the Autumn Month party."

Green's literary heritage is much wider and more diverse than one might assume, knowing the writer only from his romantic short stories, stories and novels. Not only in his youth, but also at the time of wide fame, Green, along with prose, wrote lyrical poems, poetic feuilletons and even fables. Along with romantic works, he published essays and stories of everyday life in newspapers and magazines. The last book, on which the writer worked was his " Autobiographical story", where he depicts his life strictly realistically, in all its genre colors, with all its harsh details.

He started his literary path as an “everyday worker”, as the author of stories, the themes and plots of which he took directly from the reality around him. He was overwhelmed life impressions, amplely accumulated during the years of wandering around the world. They urgently demanded a way out and lay down on paper, it seems, in their original appearance, not in the least transformed by imagination; as it happened, so it was written. In the "Autobiographical Tale", on those pages where Green describes the days he spent at the Ural iron foundry, the reader will find the same pictures of the unsightly morals of the workers' barracks as in the story "Brick and Music", even some situations and details coincide. And in the partner of the young man Grinevsky, the gloomy and angry “heavy man”, with whom he sifted coal in sieves from morning until late at night (“75 kopecks per day”), one can easily recognize the prototype of the shaggy and angry, black with soot Evstigney.

The story about Evstigney was included in the writer’s first book, “The Invisible Cap” (1908). It contains ten stories, and about almost each of them we have the right to assume that it was, to one degree or another, copied from life. From his direct experience, Green knew the joyless life of the workers' barracks, sat in prisons, without receiving news from the outside for months ("At Leisure"), he was familiar with the vicissitudes of the "mysterious romantic life" of the underground, as depicted in the stories "Marat" , “Underground”, “To Italy”, “Quarantine”... There is no such work that would be called “The Invisible Cap” in the collection. But this title was, of course, not chosen by chance. Most of the stories depict “illegal immigrants” who, in the author’s opinion, live as if under an invisible cap. Hence the name of the collection. A fairy-tale title on the cover of a book where life is shown in a completely different way from fairy-tale twists... This is a very indicative touch for the early Greene.

Of course, Greene’s impressions of existence were not put on paper in a naturalistic way; of course, they were transformed by his artistic imagination. Already in the first of his purely “prosaic” household things The seeds of romance sprout, people with a spark of dreams appear. In the same shaggy, embittered Evstigney, the writer saw this romantic spark. Halakha music ignites his soul. Image romantic hero The story "Marat", which opens "The Invisible Cap", was undoubtedly prompted to the writer by the circumstances of the famous "Kalyaev case". The words of Ivan Kalyaev, who explained to the judges why he did not throw a bomb at the Moscow governor’s carriage the first time (a woman and children were sitting there), are repeated almost verbatim by the hero of Grinov’s story. Works written in a romantic-realistic vein, in which the action takes place in Russian capitals or in some Okurov district, Green has a lot, more than one volume. And, had Green followed this already well-trodden path, he would certainly have developed into an excellent writer of everyday life. Only then Green would not have been Green, a writer of the most original type, as we know him now.

The running formula “Writer N occupies special place in literature" was invented in time immemorial. But it could have been rediscovered in Green's time. And this would be exactly the case when a standard phrase, a gray stamp is filled with vital juices, finds its original appearance, acquires its true meaning. Because Alexander Greene occupies a truly special place in Russian literature. It is impossible to remember any writer similar to him (neither Russian nor foreign). However, pre-revolutionary critics, and later Rapp’s critics, persistently compared Greene with Edgar Allan Poe, the American romantic of the 19th century, the author of the popular poem “The Raven” during Greene’s youth, each stanza of which ends with the hopeless “Nevermore!” ("Never!").

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The boss hasn't come to the office yet. This was to the advantage of the clerk and the senior warden. Man is not born to work. Labor, even for the benefit of the state, is a curse, and nothing more. Otherwise, God would not have wished Adam, in the form of a farewell farewell, to “eat bread by the sweat of his brow.”
This thought incidentally reminded the exhausted clerk that it was unbearably hot and that his red, calf-like face with his protruding ears was drenched in sweat. Thoughtfully he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped himself melancholy. Really, it’s not worth coming so early for a thirty-ruble salary. His years are young, ebullient... Sitting and copying numbers and fiddling with arrest tickets is such a boring task. Either way it’s evening. Colorful lights flash on the boulevard. The plates in the buffet clink appetizingly and the young ladies walk around. Various young ladies. In scarves and hats, thick, thin, short, tall, to choose from. The clerk walks, twirls his mustache, twitches his butt and plays with his cane.
- Sorry, mademoiselle! Young, but alone... And not boring, sir?..
- Hee, hee! What kind of punishment is this, really!.. Such gentlemen, but you pester!..
- And you, young lady, don’t be prissy!.. It’s so nice to walk with you arm in arm on a May evening!.. And it’s so nice to drink Chinese tea with your sweetheart!..
- Hee, hee!..
- Hehe!..
The clerk's light thoughts are disturbed by the yawning of the warden, an old prison rat with a gray protruding mustache and red, watery eyes. He yawns as if he wants to swallow all the flies flying in the room. Finally, his toothless mouth closes and he mutters:
- But they don’t deliver coal... It turns out that we need to go to the contractor...
He has some deals with the contractor on the basis of sinless income. Here's more firewood - also a profitable item. You won't get fat on prison cereals and potatoes. No, no - and “bagpipes”, a riot. The beasts don’t want to eat “economical” food. So, with breaks, you feed it, and then it goes back into your pocket. Restless. Whether it’s firewood, kerosene, coal... A sacred occupation, one might say...
The clock strikes ten. The heat intensifies. Poplar trees, bathed in a hot shine, stand motionless in the lattice windows. There are cabinets all around, books with labels, old shackles in the corner. The fly flounders helplessly in the ink. Silence.
The clerk sleepily numbs, lounging on a chair, and opens his mouth, exhausted from the heat. The warden stands with his legs apart, moves his mustache and mentally counts the lamp oil. Silence, boredom; both yawn, cross their mouths, say: “ugh, damn!” - and yawn again.
On the porch there are quick, measured steps; a shadow flashed outside the window. The door opens slowly, squealing as a block. The frail figure of a delivery boy with a black briefcase and a delivery book enters the office and bares his sweaty head.
- From a comrade prosecutor... Letters to political...
The silence is broken. Joyful animation bares the white, horse-like teeth of the clerk. The pen is boldly and playfully scrawled in the book, and the screeching door slams again. On the table there is a small pile of letters, postcards, smeared with stamps. The clerk rummages through them, brings them to his eyes, moves his lips and puts them aside.
- That's it! - he exclaims triumphantly, casually, as if accidentally raising a large blue envelope with two fingers. - So, you, Ivan Palych, said that father would not write to Abramson! I immediately recognized his handwriting!..
“Something I don’t know,” the warden yawns lazily, wiggling his mustache: “what he wrote in last time?..
- What did you write? - the clerk continues loudly, pulling out the letter. - And then he wrote that you, so to speak, are no longer my son. I, he says, consider your ideas to be mere fantasy... And therefore, he says, don’t expect any more letters from me...
“Well,” the “senior” resonates melancholy, sitting down at the table. - When there is such resistance on the part of your child... Forgetting God, for example, the king...
- Ivan Pavlych! - the clerk squeals joyfully, grabbing the warden by the sleeve. - A letter from the fiancée to Kozlovsky!.. Well, they write interesting things, my God!..
“That means he won’t go for a walk today,” Ivan Pavlych squints. - He's always like that. I looked through the peephole. He reads letters for a long time...
The clerk hastily, with greedy curiosity in his eyes, runs through the postcard, finely written in nervous, feminine handwriting. The postcard shows a foreign view, wooded mountains, bridges, a waterfall.
“I looked through the peephole,” continues Ivan Pavlych and squints, grinning maliciously, causing his toothless, black mouth to collapse and his thin, goatee to jump. - When she cries, when she laughs. Then he hides it so that it won’t be taken away during a search... He’ll roll it up into a small tube - and even into a boot... Laughter! ! - “I, he says, won’t go today”... - “What, I say, won’t you go? According to the instructions, I say, you are obliged to take the required time off!” - He’ll scream, he’ll tremble... Laugh!..
- “My dear... m... my. Pe...cha...” the clerk reads solemnly, trying to give his voice a natural, amused expression. - I'm sorry it took so long for you not to write. Ma-ma-la-pain-on-and...
The clerk coughs and winks at the warden.
- Mom had a mustache! We know! - he says, and both laugh. Reading continues.
- ... I'll be waiting for you... you'll go to Siberia... We'll see you there... You know, you can't- why...
- He's lying! - Ivan Pavlych decides categorically. - What does she need in this brainchild? Thin as a cockroach... I saw her card in Kozlovsky's cell... Beautiful!.. Can a woman get by without a man? He's lying! He just puts the fog in his eyes so that he doesn’t bother me with letters...
- By itself! - the clerk nods. - I also think: they have it there - ideas, all sorts of fantasies... And about the crib, go ahead - no, no - and they will remember!..
“Like a lord’s bone,” says Ivan Pavlych impressively, “like a bourgeois bone, like a peasant’s bone.” Everything is one. This means that nature requires one position...
- Wait for him! - the clerk exclaims indignantly. - Yes, he will be good for anything until Siberia! He'll be completely exhausted! It won’t be a man, but... ugh! She also wants, I suppose, ha, ha, ha!..
- He-he-he!.. Love, then, is such a thing... Be-e-dy!..
- Here! - the clerk raises his finger. - It is written: “there are many-interesting-people here”... See? So it goes: you are here, my dear, sit, and I’ll wave my tail there!.. Ha-ha!..
- He-he-he!..
- What a panorama! - says the clerk, examining the Swiss view. - Different types!..
- Ugh!.. - The warden jumps up and suddenly spits with fury. - What do people do! They are cheating romances!.. Different cupids, Jewish bastards, they let you in... And you answer for them, worry... Pa-a-litika!..
He narrows his eyes disdainfully and moves his mustache excitedly. Then he sits down again and says:
- But this Kozlovsky is not worth giving him letters... More contrary than everyone else... The day before yesterday: “End your walk,” I say, it was time to drive it in. - “He says, half an hour has not passed yet!” - A scream, a noise made... The boss ran out... And what, - Ivan Pavlych changes his tone and smiles sweetly, maliciously, - is he waiting for a letter?
The clerk raises his eyebrows.
- It doesn’t wait, it dries! - he says gravely. - Every day he hangs around in the office to see if there’s anything, if they’ve sent him to the prosecutor for inspection...
- So please, don’t give it to him, huh? Because I didn’t deserve it, by God!.. After all, am I... perhaps out of malice? But the person just doesn’t have any respect...
The clerk thinks for a minute, holding his nose with two fingers and closing his eyes tightly.
- Why? - he finally drops, casually but decisively. - It’s possible... I’ll take the picture for myself...
The heat in the cell is scorching. The blue, shameless sky sparkles dazzlingly in the lattice binding.
The man walks around the cell and, stopping for a long time at the window, looks longingly at the distant, purple mountains, at the blue, swell of the sea, where the melted, golden air lulls huge, milky clouds.
His lips whisper:
- Katya, honey, where are you, where? Write to me, write, write!..

NOTES

At leisure. For the first time - in the newspaper “Comrade”, 1907, July 20 (August 2).
Be prim - here: from prim, strictly observing the rules of decency.
Comrade Prosecutor - in pre-revolutionary Russia the word “comrade” in combination with the name of the position meant the concept of “deputy”.

Alexander Stepanovich Green

At leisure

The boss hasn't come to the office yet. This was to the advantage of the clerk and the senior warden. Man is not born to work. Labor, even for the benefit of the state, is a curse, and nothing more. Otherwise, God would not have wished Adam, in the form of a farewell farewell, to “eat bread by the sweat of his brow.”

This thought incidentally reminded the exhausted clerk that it was unbearably hot and that his red, calf-like face with his protruding ears was drenched in sweat. Thoughtfully he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped himself melancholy. Really, it’s not worth coming so early for a thirty-ruble salary. His years are young, ebullient... Sitting and copying numbers and fiddling with arrest tickets is such a boring task. Either way it’s evening. Colorful lights flash on the boulevard. The plates in the buffet clink appetizingly and the young ladies walk around. Various young ladies. In scarves and hats, thick, thin, short, tall, to choose from. The clerk walks, twirls his mustache, twitches his butt and plays with his cane.

Sorry, mademoiselle! Young, but alone... And not boring, sir?..

Hee, hee! What kind of punishment is this, really!.. Such gentlemen, but you pester!..

And you, young lady, don’t be prissy!.. It’s so nice to walk arm in arm with you on a May evening!.. And it’s so nice to drink Chinese tea with your sweetheart!..

The clerk's light thoughts are disturbed by the yawning of the warden, an old prison rat with a gray protruding mustache and red, watery eyes. He yawns as if he wants to swallow all the flies flying in the room. Finally, his toothless mouth closes and he mutters:

But they don’t deliver coal... It turns out that we need to go to the contractor...

He has some deals with the contractor on the basis of sinless income. Here's more firewood - also a profitable item. You won't get fat on prison cereals and potatoes. No, no - and “bagpipes”, a riot. The beasts don’t want to eat “economical” food. So, with breaks, you feed it, and then it goes back into your pocket. Restless. Whether it’s firewood, kerosene, coal... A sacred occupation, one might say...

The clock strikes ten. The heat intensifies. Poplar trees, bathed in a hot shine, stand motionless in the lattice windows. There are cabinets all around, books with labels, old shackles in the corner. The fly flounders helplessly in the ink. Silence.

The clerk sleepily numbs, lounging on a chair, and opens his mouth, exhausted from the heat. The warden stands with his legs apart, moves his mustache and mentally counts the lamp oil. Silence, boredom; both yawn, cross their mouths, say: “ugh, damn!” - and yawn again.

On the porch there are quick, measured steps; a shadow flashed outside the window. The door opens slowly, squealing as a block. The frail figure of a delivery boy with a black briefcase and a delivery book enters the office and bares his sweaty head.

From a comrade prosecutor... Letters to political...

The silence is broken. Joyful animation bares the white, horse-like teeth of the clerk. The pen is boldly and playfully scrawled in the book, and the screeching door slams again. On the table there is a small pile of letters, postcards, smeared with stamps. The clerk rummages through them, brings them to his eyes, moves his lips and puts them aside.

That's it! - he exclaims triumphantly, casually, as if accidentally raising a large blue envelope with two fingers. - So, you, Ivan Palych, said that father would not write to Abramson! I immediately recognized his handwriting!..

“Something I don’t know,” the warden lazily yawns, moving his mustache: “what did he write last time?”

What he wrote! - the clerk continues loudly, pulling out the letter. - And then he wrote that you, so to speak, are no longer my son. I, he says, consider your ideas to be mere fantasy... And therefore, he says, don’t expect any more letters from me...

Well, - the “senior” resonates melancholy, sitting down at the table. - When there is such resistance on the part of your child... Forgetting God, for example, the king...

Ivan Pavlych! - the clerk squeals joyfully, grabbing the warden by the sleeve. - A letter from the fiancée to Kozlovsky!.. Well, they write interesting things, my God!..

That means he won’t go for a walk today,” Ivan Pavlych squints. - He's always like that. I looked through the peephole note 1. He reads letters for a long time...

The clerk hastily, with greedy curiosity in his eyes, runs through the postcard, finely written in nervous, feminine handwriting. The postcard shows a foreign view, wooded mountains, bridges, a waterfall.

“I looked through the peephole,” Ivan Pavlych continues and squints, grinning maliciously, causing his toothless, black mouth to collapse and his thin goatee to jump. - When she cries, when she laughs. Then he hides it so that it won’t be taken away during a search... He’ll roll it up into a small tube - and even into a boot... Laughter! ! - “I, he says, won’t go today”... - “What, I say, won’t you go? According to the instructions, I say, you are obliged to take the required time off!” - He’ll scream, he’ll tremble... Laugh!..

- “My dear... m... my. Pe...cha...” the clerk reads solemnly, trying to give his voice a natural, amused expression. - I'm sorry it took so long for you not to write. Ma-ma-la-pain-on-and...

The clerk coughs and winks at the warden.

Mom had a mustache! We know! - he says, and both laugh. Reading continues.

- ... I'll be waiting for you... you'll go to Siberia... We'll see you there... You know, you can't- why...

He's lying! - Ivan Pavlych decides categorically. - What does she need in this brainchild? Thin as a cockroach... I saw her card in Kozlovsky's cell... Beautiful!.. Can a woman get by without a man? He's lying! He just puts the fog in his eyes so that he doesn’t bother me with letters...

By itself! - the clerk nods. - I also think: they have it there - ideas, all sorts of fantasies... And about the crib, go ahead - no, no - and they will remember!..

Like a lord's bone, says Ivan Pavlych impressively, like a bourgeois bone, like a peasant's bone. Everything is one. This means that nature requires one position...

Wait for him! - the clerk exclaims indignantly. - Yes, he will be good for anything until Siberia! He'll be completely exhausted! It won’t be a man, but... ugh! She also wants, I suppose, ha, ha, ha!..

He-he-he!.. Love, then, is such a thing... Be-e-dy!..

Here! - the clerk raises his finger. - It is written: “there are many-interesting-people here”... See? So it goes: you are here, my dear, sit, and I’ll wave my tail there!.. Ha-ha!..

Hehehehe!..

What a panorama! - says the clerk, examining the Swiss view. - Different types!..

Ugh!.. - The warden jumps up and suddenly spits with fury. - What do people do! They are cheating romances!.. Different cupids, Jewish bastards, they let you in... And you answer for them, worry... Pa-a-litika!..

He narrows his eyes disdainfully and moves his mustache excitedly. Then he sits down again and says:

But this Kozlovsky is not worth giving him letters... The opposite of everyone... The day before yesterday: “End your walk,” I say, it was time to drive it. - “He says, half an hour has not passed yet!” - A scream, a noise made... The boss ran out... And what, - Ivan Pavlych changes his tone and smiles sweetly, maliciously, - is he waiting for a letter?

The clerk raises his eyebrows.

It doesn't wait, it dries! - he says gravely. - Every day he hangs around in the office to see if there’s anything, if they’ve sent him to the prosecutor for inspection...

So, please, don’t give it to him, huh? Because I didn’t deserve it, by God!.. After all, am I... perhaps out of malice? But the person just doesn’t have any respect...

The clerk thinks for a minute, holding his nose with two fingers and closing his eyes tightly.

Why? - he finally drops, casually but decisively. - It’s possible... I’ll take the picture for myself...

The heat in the cell is scorching. The blue, shameless sky sparkles dazzlingly in the lattice binding.

The man walks around the cell and, stopping for a long time at the window, looks longingly at the distant, purple mountains, at the blue, swell of the sea, where the melted, golden air lulls huge, milky clouds.

His lips whisper:

Katya, honey, where are you, where? Write to me, write, write!..

NOTES

Be prim - here: from prim, strictly observing the rules of decency.

Comrade prosecutor - in pre-revolutionary Russia, the word “comrade” in combination with the name of the position meant the concept of “deputy”.

A peephole is a round hole in the cell door.

Chuiko Alexandra Nikolaevna
Teacher of a separate discipline (Russian language and literature) FGKOU "Moscow Cadet Corps" Boarding school for students of the RF Ministry of Defense"
Moscow.
Analysis of Alexander Green's story “At Leisure”
After reading the title of the story “At Leisure”, you tune in to a light and enjoyable reading, without in any way suggesting what the author presents to us.
Alexander Green wrote the story in 1907. In November 1903, Green was arrested for the first time for membership in the underground Socialist Revolutionary organization and propaganda work; he was exiled twice in 1907 and 1910. What attracted him to the Socialist Revolutionary program was the lack of strict party discipline and the promise of universal happiness after the revolution. The story “At Leisure” probably reflects an episode from the life of the author himself, his cellmates or fellow sufferers.
The action takes place in a confined space, in a prison office. Characters at first there were two: a clerk and a senior overseer. The situation is depressing. The leitmotif of terrible, unbearable heat, heat, when the air seems to melt and the mind becomes clouded, runs like a red thread through the story. You even begin to feel sympathy for the young man who is forced to vegetate in such a place for a 30-ruble salary.
But the author does not allow us to do this. At the very beginning of the story, there is a discussion about work that clearly characterizes the clerk: a person is not born to work, work for the benefit of the state is a curse, otherwise God would not have wished Adam to “eat bread by the sweat of his brow.” Next comes the portrait young man: a red calf's face with protruding ears (it is no coincidence that the author intersperses epithets with comparisons with an animal - harmless, but stupid). And also his thoughts about the young ladies on the boulevard in the evening: vulgar conversations, meager speech (very important detail author's characteristics), sprinkled with “laughs-s”, “hee-hee” and “he-he”. In several stages, Green presents us with an empty creature that is already unpleasant to us.
Here the senior guard appears, endowed by the author with the following portrait: an old prison rat (a very offensive talking animal comparison), with gray protruding mustaches and red, watery eyes, yawns as if he wants to swallow all the flies in the room. To top it all off, the warden is a thief, he makes money from firewood, kerosene, coal, but not so much from food: the beast prisoners don’t want to eat “economical” food.
A messenger appears and brings letters to political prisoners, and the following action unfolds, which gives the story its name. So, in their spare time, the clerk and the senior warden read other people's letters and decide other people's destinies. In this way they relieve their boredom and escape, among other things, from the sweltering heat.
The chronotope is clearly defined: space is a prison, signs of time are political prisoners, not robbers, not murderers, but, one might say, the advanced part of society, those who suffered for the idea, the engines of progress, the elite. Perhaps their letters should be examined, but we are witnessing unpleasant scenes - the letters are not just read for anything inappropriate, they are discussed, they are mocked. The author, speaking about reading letters, uses many epithets that help to describe the readers: the clerk squeals joyfully, grabs the letter with greedy curiosity, the warden squints, grinning maliciously with his hollow, toothless mouth, his thin, goatee jumps (another animal comparison!)
The space seems to be expanding, new characters appear: those to whom they write, and those who write. The first couple of unfortunates are Abramson and his father. The second is Kozlovsky and his fiancee Katya.
In the scene of reading letters, the author uses the technique of antithesis, contrasting the heroes-readers and the heroes, participants in the correspondence. Every detail of the letters, accompanied by comments and chuckles from the clerk and the warden, draws out their negative images even more clearly, and, on the contrary, creates a certain halo around the unfamiliar but already sympathetic images on the other side of the letter and their addressees. We begin to love people without knowing them, we already sympathize with them.
The fate of the long-awaited letter depends on the desire and attitude of the readers, and it is not difficult to guess about the attitude. So, Abramson is not worthy of a letter, even his father wrote in the previous one (which means we were not mistaken, letters are always “inspected”) that he will not write again. But the parent’s heart softened, because whoever loves your child will forgive him, if not he himself.
The warden likes to watch Kozlovsky through a peephole when he receives a letter. The observer receives true pleasure from seeing other people's experiences: he cries, laughs, hides them in his boot, “and I use the keys - fuck: for a walk!” The letter is written in nervous female handwriting, this is how the off-screen heroine’s experience is conveyed. The bride writes about love, that her mother is sick, so she cannot visit him, but “I’ll see you in Siberia.” Narrow-minded people cannot understand such sacrifices and relationships, so they trivialize everything, but we can sympathize with Kozlovsky and Katya, and the unfortunate readers, the makers of destinies.
The writer raises the problem of the personal tragedy of a man who ended up in prison, separated from outside world who lost his freedom. Only love and faith hold him, but he can lose them too, because his fate is in the hands of low people who decided that Kozlovsky is not worth a letter because he is too obstinate and proud. Warden: “I... was it out of malice? ...There is no respect in a person...” And the clerk: “I’ll take the picture for myself...”
The story ends with a scene in the cell. We see Kozlovsky suffering. The author expands the space even further: the heat is scorching in the cell, and shameless in the lattice window blue sky. Again the antithesis: horror - beauty, prison - freedom. A man is deprived of everything, lives in hope, his lips whisper: “Katya, honey, where are you? Write to me, write!..”
This is how the story ends. What is it: screaming hopelessness or faith in spite of everything?
I would like to answer the hero: wait, dear, and believe!

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