Goals: general to bring students to an understanding of what a person is. Extracurricular reading lesson within the framework of the implementation of the Federal State Basic Education Standard "Tales of Italy" m

The eleventh story in the "Tales of Italy" series. “Tales of Italy” - cycle of 27 short stories Maxim Gorky. The cycle was created in the period 1911-1913, during the writer’s first emigration. Gorky lived in Italy on the island of Capri, but traveled a lot to other cities of the country. The impressions from what he saw formed the basis of “Tales of Italy.”

In 1906, Maxim Gorky left for Italy due to tuberculosis. In October he arrives on the island of Capri, where he will live for the next seven years. In 1911, Gorky began writing stories for the future cycle. They are based on the writer’s impressions of what he saw during his trip to Italy. In addition, many stories were taken from materials of the Italian labor movement and from newspaper reports about trials. The tales were published separately in Bolshevik periodicals. Only in 1912 the first separate edition series called "Fairy Tales". The stories in the collection were subject to censorship removal and were not presented in the sequence that Gorky insisted on. On title page An epigraph from Andersen was printed: “There are no fairy tales better than those that life itself creates.” The book was dedicated to the author’s common-law wife A.F. Andreeva.

In addition to Russia, fairy tales became widespread in Italy, France, and Germany. Unlike the labor press, the stories were attacked in bourgeois criticism. The themes of the stories, as well as their titles, were criticized. Gorky continued working on the stories until his return to Russia in 1913. After the 1917 revolution, the tales were published uncensored and in Gorky's sequence. The cycle received its name “Tales of Italy” only in 1923.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Italy
http://www.bookol.ru/proza-main/russkaya_klassicheskaya_proza/19894.htm

Maxim Gorky, also known as Alexey Maksimovich Gorky (born Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov; March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world. On turn of the 19th century and XX centuries, he became famous as the author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats and in opposition to the tsarist regime.

Initially, Gorky was skeptical about October revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia (in Petrograd he directed the publishing house “World Literature”, interceded with the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Berlin, Marienbad, Sorrento), he returned to the USSR, where in recent years life received official recognition as a “petrel of the revolution” and a “great proletarian writer”, the founder of socialist realism.

He supported the ideas of God-building, and in 1909 he helped participants in this movement maintain a factional school on the island of Capri (Capri School) for workers, which Lenin called “a literary center for God-building.”
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorky,_Alexey_Maksimovich

Natalya Sergeevna Rashevskaya (October 26, 1893, Dvina Fortress (now Daugavpils), Russian Empire - March 18, 1962, Leningrad, USSR) - Russian, Soviet theater and film actress, director, screenwriter, theater teacher. People's Artist RSFSR (1957).

Http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashevskaya,_Natalia_Sergeevna_

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1 The problem of honor and betrayal (based on the story of M. Gorky “Mother of the Traitor”) Lesson objectives Educational: continue acquaintance with the writer’s work; continue training in literary text analysis; deepen the concept of " heroic character" Developmental: development of creative thinking; development of skills to compare, generalize, and trace the feelings of the main character; teach schoolchildren to understand their world and actions through a work of art. Educational: formation of moral qualities: kindness, responsiveness, compassion; discussion of difficult life situations; awakening the ability to self-esteem. General didactic: create conditions for awareness and comprehension of a block of new information. Combined lesson type. Throughout the lesson, concepts will be practiced: heroic character, author’s position, comparing oneself with the heroes. Teaching methods: partially search, research, verbal, visual. Means of education: artistic text, illustrations for the work, presentation. Progress of the lesson Strength and weakness of man, honor and dishonor, betrayal and feat in the name of the Motherland. We touched on these issues several times in literature lessons this year. Let's remember in which works of Russian and foreign literature these questions are raised. (M.Yu. Lermontov “The Fugitive”, N.V. Gogol “Taras Bulba”, P. Merime “ Matteo Falcone") What moral conclusions have we come to? (Dishonor, disrespect, betrayal have been the subject of condemnation, shame, and rejection in all centuries. And the ability to love the Motherland, one’s people, to carry a high sense of self-worth and honor has always been worthy of deep respect.)

2 Today we will continue our conversation. We will talk about the work of M. Gorky “Mother of the Traitor”. We already started getting acquainted with the works of this writer last year. What story did we study? (“Childhood”) I propose to recall a little moments from the biography of M. Gorky. (Student message). Let's look at one of these stories. What could be more sacred in the world than the name of a mother!.. All the most precious shrines are illuminated by her name, because the very concept of life is associated with it. During the difficult years of the war, in the minds of the people the concepts of “Motherland” and “mother” merge together. Mothers bless their sons to fight to save the Motherland. Is it possible to remain a faithful son after becoming a traitor to the Motherland? Is it possible to betray one's Motherland without betraying one's mother? Today we will try to answer these questions. Reading Part 1 You can talk endlessly about Mothers. For several weeks now the city had been surrounded by a close ring of enemies clad in iron; At night, fires were lit, and the fire looked out of the black darkness at the walls of the city with many red eyes - they glowed with malicious joy, and this lurking combustion evoked gloomy thoughts in the besieged city. From the walls they saw how the noose of enemies was shrinking ever closer, how their black shadows flashed around the lights; you could hear the neighing of well-fed horses, you could hear the clink of weapons, loud laughter, you could hear the cheerful songs of people confident in victory - and what is more painful to hear than the laughter and songs of the enemy? The enemies covered all the streams that fed the city with water, they burned out the vineyards around the walls, trampled the fields, cut down the gardens - the city was open on all sides, and almost every day the guns and muskets of the enemies showered it with cast iron and lead. Troops of soldiers, battle-weary and half-starved, walked gloomily along the narrow streets of the city; From the windows of the houses poured out the groans of the wounded, the cries of delirium, the prayers of women and the cries of children. They talked depressedly, in an undertone and, stopping each other's speech mid-sentence, listened intently - were the enemies going to attack?... Without expecting help, exhausted by labor and hunger, people lost hope every day. People were afraid to turn on lights in the houses, thick darkness filled the streets, and in this darkness, like a fish in the depths of a river, a woman silently flashed, her head wrapped in a black cloak. People, seeing her, asked each other: Is this her? She! and hid in niches under the gates or, with their heads down, silently ran past her, and the patrol commanders sternly warned her: Are you on the street again, Monna Marianna? Look, they can kill you, and no one will look for the culprit.... She straightened up, waited, but the patrol passed by, not daring or disdainful to raise a hand against her; armed people walked around her like a corpse, and she remained in the darkness and again quietly, lonelyly walked somewhere, from street to street, dumb and black, like the embodiment of the misfortunes of the city, and around, pursuing her, sad sounds crawled pitifully: moans, crying, prayers and gloomy talk of soldiers who had lost hope of victory.

3 What questions arise when reading part 1? (What kind of woman is this, whom all the people of the besieged city know and avoid?) Why did Marianne walk around the city only at night? Why did she become a stranger in her hometown? (Because her son is a traitor, the leader of the enemies who besieged the city). How can you title the 1st part? (Unbearable life in the ring of enemies.) Please note that in this passage there are 3 groups of heroes: enemies, defenders of the city and mother, Monna Marianna. Let's try to characterize each group. Maybe someone will try to do this using syncwine. 1. Enemies 2. cruel, confident 3. clad in iron 4. surrounded the city with a tight ring 5. destroyers. 1. Monna Marianna, mother 2. mute, black 3. flashed, straightened, waited 4. walked alone through the city 5. the embodiment of the city’s misfortunes. 1. Defenders 2. half-starved, exhausted 3. talking, listening intently 4. sullenly walking along the streets 5. soldiers Reading part 2. A citizen and mother, she thought about her son and homeland: at the head of the people who were destroying the city, stood her son, a cheerful and ruthless handsome man; just recently she looked at him with pride, as if she were her precious gift to her homeland, as if she were good power, born by her to help the people of the city - the nest where she herself was born, gave birth to and fed him. Hundreds of inextricable threads connected her heart with the ancient stones from which her ancestors built houses and laid the walls of the city, with the earth where the bones of her blood lay, with legends, songs and hopes of people - the heart of the mother of the person closest to him lost and cried: it was like scales, but, weighing the love for his son and the city, he could not understand what was easier, what was harder. So she walked the streets at night, and many, not recognizing her, were frightened, mistook the black figure for the personification of death, which was close to everyone, and when they recognized her, they silently walked away from the traitor’s mother. But one day, in a remote corner, near the city wall, she saw another woman: kneeling near a corpse, motionless, like a piece of earth, she prayed, raising her mournful face to the stars. The traitor's mother asked: Husband? No. Brother? Son. The husband was killed thirteen days ago, and this one today, and, rising from her knees, the mother of the murdered man humbly said: Madonna sees everything, knows everything, and I thank her! For what? asked the first one, and she answered her:

4 Now that he honestly died fighting for his homeland, I can say that he aroused fear in me: frivolous, he loved a cheerful life too much, and I was afraid that for this he would betray the city, as did the son of Marianne, the enemy of God and people, the leader of our enemies, damn him, damn the womb that carried him!.. Covering her face, Marianne walked away, and in the morning... How can you call this part? Write a phrase suitable for the title. (The heart of a mother is like a scale; The mother of a traitor is like the personification of death.) What do you think can happen after, because it ends with the word a in the morning...? Reading part 3. The next day, the mother appeared to the defenders of the city and said: Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gates for me, I will go to him... They answered: You are a man, and your homeland should be dear to you; your son is as much an enemy for you as he is for each of us. I am a mother, I love him and I consider myself to blame for the fact that he is what he has become. Then they began to consult what to do with her, and decided: In honor, we cannot kill you for your son’s sin, we know that you could not instill this in him. terrible sin, and we can guess how you must suffer. But the city doesn’t need you even as a hostage, your son doesn’t care about you, we think he forgot you, the devil, and here’s your punishment if you think you deserve it! This seems worse to us than death! Yes! she said. It's scarier! They opened the gates in front of her, let her out of the city and watched for a long time from the wall as she walked through her native land, thickly saturated with the blood shed by her son: she walked slowly, with great difficulty lifting her feet from this land, bowing to the corpses of the city’s defenders, disgustedly pushing away broken weapons with their feet, mothers hate offensive weapons, recognizing only those that protect life. It was as if she was carrying in her hands under her cloak a cup full of moisture, and was afraid of spilling it; As she moved away, she became smaller and smaller, and to those who looked at her from the wall, it seemed as if despondency and hopelessness were leaving them with her. They saw how she stopped halfway and, throwing the hood of her cloak from her head, looked at the city for a long time, and there, in the enemy camp, they noticed her, alone in the middle of the field, and, slowly, carefully, black figures like her were approaching her . What would you call this part? (Punishment is worse than death; Mothers recognize only weapons that protect life; The hard road to her son.) What made Marianne leave the city? (In the city they took her for death itself, did not want to communicate with her, but the main thing that made her leave the city was that she was a “citizen and mother” and she did not want to hear any more curses addressed to her son). What could happen next? How can a meeting between mother and son go?

5 Reading part 4. They came up and asked who she was and where she was going? Your leader is my son, she said, and not a single soldier doubted it. They walked next to her, praising how smart and brave her son was. She listened to them, proudly raising her head, and was not surprised; her son should be like that! And here she is in front of the man whom she knew nine months before his birth, in front of the one whom she had never felt outside her heart, in silk and velvet he is before her, and his weapon is in precious ones. Everything is as it should be; This is exactly how she saw him many times in her dreams, rich, famous and loved. Mother! he said, kissing her hands. You came to me, it means you understood me, and tomorrow I will take this damned city! In which you were born, she reminded. Intoxicated by his exploits, maddened by the thirst for even greater glory, he told her with the daring fervor of youth: I was born in the world and for the world, in order to amaze it with surprise! I spared this city for your sake; it is like a thorn in my foot and prevents me from moving as quickly to glory as I want. But now tomorrow I will destroy the nest of stubborn people! Where every stone knows and remembers you as a child, she said. The stones are mute, if a person doesn’t make them speak, let the mountains talk about me, that’s what I want! But people? she asked. Oh yes, I remember them, mother! And I need them, because only in the memory of people are heroes immortal! She said: A hero is one who creates life in spite of death, who conquers death... No! he objected. He who destroys is as glorious as he who builds cities. Look, we don’t know whether Aeneas or Romulus built Rome, but we definitely know the name of Alaric and other heroes who destroyed this city. Who survived all the names, the mother reminded. So he spoke to her until sunset, she interrupted his crazy speeches less and less, and her proud head sank lower and lower. The mother creates, she protects, and to talk about destruction in front of her means to speak against her, but he did not know this and denied the meaning of her life. Mother is always against death; the hand that introduces death into people’s homes is hateful and hostile to Mothers; her son did not see this, blinded by the cold brilliance of glory that kills the heart. And he did not know that the Mother is a beast as smart, merciless as fearless, if it comes to the life that she, the Mother, creates and protects. She sat bent over, and through the open canvas of the leader’s rich tent she could see the city where she first experienced the sweet trembling of conception and the painful spasms of the birth of a child who now wants to destroy. The crimson rays of the sun drenched the walls and towers of the city with blood, the glass windows shone ominously, the whole city seemed wounded, and the red juice of life flowed through hundreds of wounds; Time passed, and then the city began to turn black, like a corpse, and, like funeral candles, the stars lit up above it.

6 She saw there in dark houses where they were afraid to light a fire so as not to attract the attention of enemies, on streets full of darkness, the smell of corpses, the suppressed whispers of people awaiting death, she saw everything and everyone; something familiar and dear stood close to her, silently awaiting her decision, and she felt like a mother to all the people of her city. Clouds descended from the black peaks of the mountains into the valley and, like winged horses, flew towards the city, doomed to death. Maybe we will fall on him at night, her son said, “if the night is dark enough!” It’s inconvenient to kill when the sun is looking into your eyes and the shine of the weapon blinds them, always with a lot of wrong blows, he said, examining his sword. His mother told him: Come here, lay your head on my chest, rest, remembering how cheerful and kind you were as a child and how everyone loved you... He obeyed, lay down on her lap and closed his eyes, saying: I love only fame and you, for giving birth to me as I am. What about women? she asked, leaning over him. There are a lot of them, they quickly get boring, like everything too sweet. She asked him in last time: And you don't want to have children? For what? To be killed? Someone like me will kill them, and it will hurt me, and then I will be old and weak to avenge them. You are beautiful, but barren as lightning, she said, sighing. Yes, like lightning... he answered, smiling, and dozed off on his mother’s chest, like a child. What were you thinking while listening to this part of the text? What did you experience? How did she try to awaken in her son a feeling of love for the Motherland, her city, and repentance for betrayal? (She tried to persuade him and said that this was his hometown, where “every stone knows and remembers you as a child”). Why couldn't the mother convince her son to lift the siege and stop spreading death? (The son thought of nothing but fame). Note the comparison of the son to lightning. Why do you think the dialogue between mother and son ends with these words? What would you call this part? (Cold brilliance of glory, killing the heart.) Describe the woman’s son and the city that is about to be destroyed (syncwine): 1. The son is the leader of the army 2. rich, daring 3. intoxicated with glory, maddened 4. heroes are immortal in memory 5. destroyer. 1. City 2. doomed, bleeding 3. blackening like a corpse 4. stars, like funeral candles, 5. life, nest. What do you think a mother will do to protect her beloved city from her own son? (Students talk about possible actions of the mother.) Reading part 5. Then she, covering him with her black cloak, stuck a knife into his heart, and he, shuddering, died immediately because she knew well where her son’s heart beats. And, throwing the corpse from her knees at the feet of the astonished guards, she said towards the city:

7 Man, I did everything I could for my homeland; Mother I stay with my son! It’s too late for me to give birth to another, no one needs my life. And she plunged the same knife, still warm from her blood, into her chest with a firm hand and also surely hit her heart; if it hurts, it’s easy to hit. What impression did this story make on you? Reflection. To summarize, let's go back to the beginning of our conversation and remember the heroes of the works that we named. Strong people on whom hopes were pinned. What was the reason for the betrayal in each case? What prompted the hero of our lesson today to betray? How did a mother save her hometown? (She killed her son by plunging a knife into his heart “because she knew where her son’s heart beat”). Why did she plunge this same knife into her heart? (It ached and was torn between love for the Motherland and her son, because the son killed, and “A mother is always against death; the hand that introduces death into people’s homes is hateful and hostile”). Pierre Buast French philosopher early 19th century. Miniature essay How should you live your life in order to remain in people’s memory? Students write for 5-10 minutes and read each other’s essays. How should you live your life to remain in people's memory? Why does a person live? Very often life is compared to a road that must be walked with dignity from beginning to end, from birth to death. On this road there are stations at different times: childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, old age. How to go this way? What is his ultimate goal? What do you need to be like for people to remember? kind words? Probably the greatest purpose of life is to benefit people, near and far, to increase the goodness in those around us. And goodness is, first of all, the happiness of all people. It is made up of many things, and every time life presents a person with a task that one must be able to solve. M. Gorky wrote about the suffering of a mother who raised a traitorous son in his story Mother of a Traitor. The mother creates and protects life, dreams of the glory and well-being of her son. The woman feels guilty that she raised a cruel, proud man who wants to destroy his hometown. Unable to reason with, convince, or stop her son, the mother first kills him and then herself. This double murder gives life to the hometown, convinces enemies of the senselessness of destruction, and restores the good name of the mother who protects LIFE. So, the path to goodness is the meaning of human life. Be faithful to your family, friends, city, country, people and walk this path with dignity. Thank you all for your frankness, we will continue the conversation about the work of M. Gorky in the next lesson, for which you are invited to read the stories “Nuncha”, “Children of Parma”, “Simplon Tunnel” Homework.

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8th grade (2 lessons) Goal: to expand students’ understanding of the work of M. Gorky Objectives:  to expand the reading range of eighth-graders, continuing to shape their reading interests; enrich students' understanding of art world M. Gorky;  strengthen the skills of analyzing a literary work through commenting individual fragments works;  expand the understanding of the fairy tale genre; - develop expressive reading skills.

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Lesson extracurricular reading within the framework of the implementation of the Federal State Educational Standards of the main general education

“Tales of Italy” by M. Gorky (“Mother of the Traitor”)

8th grade (2 lessons)

Goal: to expand students’ understanding of the works of M. Gorky

expand the reading range of eighth-graders, continuing to shape their reading interests; enrich students’ understanding of the artistic world of M. Gorky;

consolidate the skills of analyzing a literary work by commenting on individual fragments of the work;

expand your understanding of the fairy tale genre;

develop expressive reading skills.

Lesson type: lesson in mastering new knowledge and comprehensive application of previously acquired knowledge.

Main activities: expressive reading excerpts of the work; conversation on issues; drawing up a definition; essay writing

Achievement of the following results in the process of getting acquainted with the work of M. Gorky “Mother of the Traitor”.

Personal

Formation of a conscious, respectful and friendly attitude towards another person, his opinion; willingness and ability to conduct a dialogue with other people and achieve mutual understanding in it;

Formation of moral feelings and moral behavior, a conscious and responsible attitude towards one’s own actions;

Formation of communicative competence in communication and cooperation with peers;

Metasubject

the ability to independently plan ways to achieve goals, consciously choose the most effective ways to solve educational and cognitive problems;

the ability to correlate one’s actions with the planned results, monitor one’s activities in the process of achieving results, determine methods of action within the framework of the proposed conditions and requirements, and adjust one’s actions in accordance with the changing situation;

the ability to evaluate the correctness of completing a learning task and one’s own capabilities to solve it;

mastery of the basics of self-control and self-esteem;

the ability to define concepts, create generalizations, build logical reasoning, inference (inductive, deductive and by analogy) and draw conclusions;

semantic reading;

ability to work individually and in a group: find common decision and resolve conflicts based on coordination of positions and taking into account interests; formulate, argue and defend your opinion;

ability to consciously use speech means in accordance with the communication task, to express your feelings, thoughts and needs; mastery of oral and written language; monologue contextual speech;

Subject

understanding key issues studied works of Russian writers of the 19th-20th centuries;

identifying the enduring values inherent in works moral values and their modern sound;

the ability to analyze a literary work: determine its belonging to one of the literary genres and genres; understand and formulate the theme, idea, moral pathos of a literary work; characterize its heroes; compare the heroes of one or more works;

identifying the elements of plot, composition, visual and expressive language in a work, understanding their role in revealing the ideological and artistic content of the work (elements philological analysis); mastery of elementary literary terminology when analyzing a literary work;

familiarization with the spiritual and moral values of Russian literature and culture, comparing them with the spiritual and moral values of other peoples;

listening comprehension of literary works of different genres, meaningful reading and adequate perception;

Technology used: technology for developing critical thinking (reading with stops)

Methods and techniques of TRKM: story-assumption using keywords; definition; reading with stops; organization various types discussions; Bloom's chamomile; essay writing.

Equipment: printed texts of the fairy tale “Mother of the Traitor”; presentation; paper version of Bloom's daisy with questions; audio recording of F. Schubert “Ave Maria”

General algorithm for working with the reading with stops strategy:

1.Challenge.Construction of the proposed text based on key words, discussion of the title and forecast of its content and issues.

2. Understanding the content. Reading the text in small passages with a discussion of the content of each and a forecast of plot development. The questions asked by the teacher should cover all levels. The obligatory question is “What will happen next and why?”

3. Reflection. At this stage, the text again represents a single whole. It is important to comprehend this text. Forms of work can be different: discussion, joint search, written creative work.

During the classes

Call stage.

1. Introductory speech by the teacher.

In 1906, M. Gorky settled on Capri, a small island in the Bay of Naples. A steamboat runs from the mainland to Capri with rows of benches darkened by the sun, moisture, and time. After 3 hours of travel, it reaches high, steep mountains, in the hollow between which a small village nestles. On the narrow street there are small shops selling colorful beads, straw hats, vegetables, lemons, oranges.

Roses bloom all year round. Every little piece of stone, where there is a little earth and sand, is covered with evergreen vegetation... Lemon groves, cypress trees, palm trees...

There are especially many different flowers... Vesuvius smokes in the distance, and the smell of fish and algae comes from the sea. You can hear the songs of fishermen. It was here in 1911-1913 that Gorky’s “Tales of Italy” were born. One of which we will meet today. To continue working on the topic that you will later formulate, we need to remember the theory.

2.Repetition literary terms, the use of which is necessary in the lesson. Drawing up a definition (see Appendix 1). Work in pairs using handouts. The correct option based on the results of the work is presented on the screen for verification.

3. Drawing up a story-assumption using keywords (see Appendix 2). You can work in pairs or individually.

4. Determining the topic of the lesson (Reading M. Gorky’s fairy tale “Mother of the Traitor”)

and goal statement. Discussion of the genre of the work (fairy tale) and reference to epigraphs. Collect the epigraph (see Appendix 3) and explain it.

Teacher's word.

The topic of motherhood has always worried artists, composers, poets, and writers. The image of the mother as a symbol of eternal truth, beauty, and life affirmation is found in the works of masters of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and modern times.

Leonardo da Vinci, Santi Raphael, Lucas Cranach...It is from their canvases that the tender, sincere, strong faces of the Mother look at us (use of presentation). And how touching are the musical compositions of F. Schubert “Ave Maria” and S.V. Rachmaninov “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice.” They will be the musical background for our lesson.

Understanding the content. Using the “Reading with Stops” strategy (see Appendix 4). Students are offered a text divided into passages. They read part 1 and, stopping, analyze it based on the proposed questions. The work is accompanied by an audio recording of the musical composition “Ave Maria” by F. Schubert

Reflection. Using the "Bloom's Chamomile" technique. The class is divided into 6 groups, and each group chooses a petal with a question (see Appendix 5). A chamomile with questions is attached to the board. The group has the right to choose the petal.

Writing an essay based on your impressions of a fairy tale.

Summing up the work in the lesson on the following questions:

1. Did the assumptions about the plot of the fairy tale coincide?

3.What are your impressions of the work you read? and others.

Recording homework - copy out aphorisms about mother from the work.

Annex 1

Collect definitions from the given words

Words included in the definition	The order of words in the definition (numbers)	Literary term name
4.Item 5.Images 2.taken 7.for 1.display 6.in 3.product
1.this is 5.home 2.thought 4.works 3. in 6. which 8.expresses 7.evaluative-emotional 9.attitude 11.of the writer 10. to 13. those 12.phenomena 15.which 14.are 16.depicted.
1.this is 3.system 6.events 8. and 11. relations 12. between 10. heroes 9.developing 7.in 5.time 4.i 2.space
1. Saying 2. Brief 3. quote 5.before 4.product 6.or 7.its 11.part 12. characterizing 10. basic 9.idea 8.work.
1.Original 2.Finished 6.thought 8.expressed 9.and 7.recorded 10. in 5. concise 4.text 3.form
1.one 10.of 7.folklore12.mainly 3.prose 8.work 4. magical 9. heroic 5.or 11.household 6. character
1. Written 4. tradition 5.about 6.any 9.historical 10.events 14.or 12.personalities.11.In 15.broad 13.sense - 17. unreliable 16. narrative 8.about 7.facts 3.real 2.reality.

Correct answer

Appendix 2

Enemies, a besieged city, detachments of soldiers, Marianne, another woman and her murdered son, defenders of the city, leader, son, conversation, knife, mother’s heart.

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

You can talk endlessly about Mothers.

1. How do you understand this idea of M. Gorky?

For several weeks now the city had been surrounded by a close ring of enemies clad in iron; At night, fires were lit, and the fire looked out of the black darkness at the walls of the city with many red eyes - they glowed with malicious joy, and this lurking fire evoked gloomy thoughts in the besieged city.

From the walls they saw how the enemy’s noose was shrinking ever closer, how their black shadows flickered around the lights; you could hear the neighing of well-fed horses, you could hear the clink of weapons, loud laughter, you could hear the cheerful songs of people confident in victory - and what is more painful to hear than the laughter and songs of the enemy?

The enemies covered all the streams that fed the city with water, they burned out the vineyards around the walls, trampled the fields, cut down the gardens - the city was open on all sides, and almost every day the guns and muskets of the enemies showered it with cast iron and lead.

Troops of soldiers, battle-weary and half-starved, walked gloomily along the narrow streets of the city; From the windows of the houses poured out the groans of the wounded, the cries of delirium, the prayers of women and the cries of children. They talked depressedly, in a low voice and, stopping each other's speech mid-sentence, listened intently - were the enemies about to attack?

Life became especially unbearable in the evening, when in the silence moans and cries sounded clearer and more abundantly, when blue-black shadows crawled out of the gorges of the distant mountains and, hiding the enemy’s camp, moved towards the half-broken walls, and over the black battlements of the mountains the moon appeared like a lost shield , beaten by blows of swords.

Without expecting help, exhausted by labor and hunger, losing hope every day, people looked in fear at this moon, the sharp teeth of the mountains, the black mouths of the gorges and the noisy camp of the enemies - everything reminded them of death, and not a single star shone comfortingly for them. them.

People were afraid to light lights in the houses, thick darkness filled the streets, and in this darkness, like a fish in the depths of a river, a woman silently flashed, her head wrapped in a black cloak. People, seeing her, asked each other:

That's her? - She!

And they hid in niches under the gates or, with their heads down, silently ran past her, and the patrol commanders sternly warned her:

Are you on the street again, Monna Marianna?

2.What do you think the name means? main character? (Her name was formed by merging two Hebrew names: Mary and Anna, which mean “bitter, sad” and “grace, beauty”). Do you think this choice of the author is accidental? Why do people avoid meeting her?

Look, they can kill you, and no one will look for the culprit... She straightened up, waited, but the patrol passed by, not daring or disdainful to raise a hand against her; armed people walked around her like a corpse, and she remained in the darkness and again quietly, lonelyly walked somewhere, moving from street to street, dumb and black, like the embodiment of the misfortunes of the city, and around, chasing her, sad sounds crawled pitifully: groans , crying, prayers and gloomy talk of soldiers who had lost hope of victory.

3. What made Marianne wander the streets of the besieged city at night?

A citizen and mother, she thought about her son and homeland: at the head of the people who were destroying the city, stood her son, a cheerful and ruthless handsome man; Until recently, she looked at him with pride, as her precious gift to her homeland, as a good force born by her to help the people of the city - the nest where she herself was born, gave birth to and nurtured him. Hundreds of inextricable threads connected her heart with the ancient stones from which her ancestors built houses and laid the walls of the city, with the ground where the bones of her blood relatives lay, with legends, songs and hopes of people - the heart of the mother of the person closest to him lost and cried: it was like scales, but, weighing the love for his son and the city, he could not understand what was easier, what was heavier.

4.What thoughts tormented the unhappy woman? Why does the author compare a mother's heart to a scale?

So she walked the streets at night, and many, not recognizing her, were frightened, mistook the black figure for the personification of death, which was close to everyone, and when they recognized her, they silently walked away from the traitor’s mother. But one day, in a remote corner, near the city wall, she saw another woman: kneeling near a corpse, motionless, like a piece of earth, she prayed, raising her mournful face to the stars, and on the wall, above her head, the guards were quietly talking and grinding weapons, hitting the stones of the battlements.

The traitor's mother asked:

Son. The husband was killed thirteen days ago, and this one was killed today.

And, rising from her knees, the mother of the murdered man humbly said:

Madonna sees everything, knows everything, and I thank her!

For what? - asked the first one, and she answered her:

Now that he died honestly fighting for his homeland, I can say that he aroused fear in me: frivolous, he loved too much have a fun life, and it was fearful that for the sake of this he would betray the city, as did the son of Marianne, the enemy of God and people, the leader of our enemies, damn him, and damn the womb that bore him!..

5. What aroused fear for her son in Marianna’s unknown interlocutor?

How could a craving for a fun and carefree life make a person a traitor?

Covering her face, Marianna walked away, and the next morning she appeared to the defenders of the city and said:

Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gates for me, I will go to him...

They have replyed:

You are a human being, and your homeland should be dear to you; your son is as much an enemy for you as he is for each of us.

I am a mother, I love him and I consider myself guilty that he is what he has become.

Then they began to consult what to do with her, and decided:

In honor, we cannot kill you for your son’s sin, we know that you could not instill this terrible sin in him, and we can guess how you must suffer. But the city does not need you even as a hostage - your son does not care about you, we think that he has forgotten you, the devil, and - here is your punishment if you find that you deserve it! This seems worse to us than death!

Yes! - she said. - This is worse.

6. Why did the atmosphere of love give rise to cruelty and anger?

Why weren’t hundreds of unbreakable threads tied to the Motherland of my son?

They opened the gates in front of her, let her out of the city and watched for a long time from the wall as she walked through her native land, thickly saturated with the blood shed by her son: she walked slowly, with great difficulty lifting her feet from this ground, bowing to the corpses of the city’s defenders, disgustedly pushing away broken weapons with their feet, mothers hate offensive weapons, recognizing only those that protect life. It was as if she was carrying a cup full of moisture in her hands under her cloak, and was afraid of spilling it; As she moved away, she became smaller and smaller, and to those who looked at her from the wall, it seemed as if despondency and hopelessness were leaving them with her.

They saw how she stopped halfway and, throwing off the hood of her cloak from her head, looked at the city for a long time, and there, in the enemy camp, they noticed her, alone in the middle of the field, and, slowly, carefully, black figures like her were approaching her .

7.What does Marianne feel at this moment?

They came up and asked who she was, where is he going?

Your leader is my son,” she said, and not a single soldier doubted it. They walked next to her, praising how smart and brave her son was, she listened to them, proudly raising her head, and was not surprised - this is how her son should be!

And here she is before the man whom she knew nine months before his birth, before the one whom she had never felt outside her heart - he is in silk and velvet before her, and his weapon is in precious stones. Everything is as it should be; This is exactly how she saw him many times in her dreams - rich, famous and loved.

8. What is the danger of this kind of maternal dreams?

What keyword connects the images of Marianne and her son? (Pride).

Mother! - he said, kissing her hands. - You came to me, it means you understood me, and tomorrow I will take this damned city!

In which you were born,” she reminded. Intoxicated by his exploits, maddened by the thirst for even greater glory, he spoke to her with the daring fervor of youth:

I was born into the world and for the world, to amaze it! I spared this city for your sake - it is like a thorn in my foot and prevents me from moving as quickly to glory as I want. But now - tomorrow - I will destroy the nest of stubborn people!

Where every stone knows and remembers you as a child,” she said.

Stones are mute, if a person doesn’t make them speak, let the mountains talk about me, that’s what I want!

But - people? - she asked.

Oh yes, I remember them, mother! And I need them, because only in the memory of people are heroes immortal!

She said:

A hero is one who creates life in spite of death, who conquers death...

No! - he objected.

He who destroys is as glorious as he who builds cities. Look - we don’t know whether Aeneas or Romulus built Rome, but the name of Alaric and other heroes who destroyed this city is definitely known.

“Who has survived all the names,” the mother recalled.

9. Why does Marianne enter into this clearly useless argument?

How did you understand her words: “A hero is one who creates life in spite of death, who conquers death...”?

So he spoke to her until sunset, she interrupted his crazy speeches less and less, and her proud head sank lower and lower.

Mother creates, she protects, and to talk about destruction in front of her means to speak against her, but he did not know this and denied the meaning of her life.

Mother is always against death; the hand that introduces death into people's homes is hateful and hostile to Mothers - her son did not see this, blinded by the cold brilliance of glory that kills the heart.

And he did not know that the Mother is an animal as intelligent, merciless as fearless, if it comes to the life that she, the Mother, creates and protects. She sat bent over, and through the open canvas of the leader’s rich tent she could see the city where she first experienced the sweet trembling of conception and the painful spasms of the birth of a child who now wants to destroy.

10. Why did her proud head sink lower and lower from her son’s “crazy speeches”? Explain Gorky’s comparison: “Mother is an animal as intelligent, ruthless as fearless.”

The crimson rays of the sun drenched the walls and towers of the city with blood, the glass of the windows shone ominously, the whole city seemed wounded, and the red juice of life flowed through hundreds of wounds; Time passed, and then the city began to turn black, like a corpse, and the stars lit up above it, like funeral candles.

She saw there, in dark houses where they were afraid to light a fire so as not to attract the attention of enemies, on streets full of darkness, the smell of corpses, the suppressed whispers of people awaiting death - she saw everything and everyone; something familiar and dear stood close to her, silently awaiting her decision, and she felt like a mother to all the people of her city.

Clouds descended from the black peaks of the mountains into the valley and, like winged horses, flew towards the city, doomed to death.

“Perhaps we will fall upon him at night,” said her son, “if the night is dark enough!” It’s inconvenient to kill when the sun is looking into your eyes and the shine of the weapon blinds them - there are always a lot of wrong blows,” he said, examining his sword.

His mother told him:

Come here, lay your head on my chest, rest, remembering how cheerful and kind you were as a child and how everyone loved you...

He obeyed, lay down on her lap and closed his eyes, saying:

I love only fame and you, because you gave birth to me as I am.

What about women? - she asked, leaning over him.

There are a lot of them, they quickly get boring, like everything too sweet.

She asked him for the last time:

And you don't want to have children?

For what? To be killed? Someone like me will kill them, and it will hurt me, and then I will be old and weak to avenge them.

You are beautiful, but barren as lightning,” she said with a sigh. He answered, smiling: - Yes, like lightning...

11. How does he explain his reluctance to have children? Is it apt to compare a hero to lightning? Is Marianne right to consider herself to blame for what her son has become?

And he dozed off on his mother’s chest like a child. Then she, covering him with her black cloak, stuck a knife into his heart, and he, shuddering, died immediately - after all, she knew well where her son’s heart beats. And, throwing his corpse from her knees at the feet of the astonished guards, she said towards the city:

Man - I did everything I could for my homeland; Mother - I stay with my son! It’s too late for me to give birth to another, no one needs my life.

And the same knife, still warm from his blood - her blood - she plunged into her chest with a firm hand and also correctly hit her heart - if it hurts, it’s easy to hit.

12.What impression did the ending of the “fairy tale” make on you?

Appendix 5

Simple question. This is a question in response to which you need to name some facts, remember and reproduce certain information.

Clarifying question. The purpose of this question is to provide the person with opportunities for feedback on what they just said.

Interpretive (explanatory) question. Usually begins with the word “Why?”

Creative question. If a question contains a particle “would”, elements of convention, assumption, forecast, then such a question is called creative.

Evaluation question. This question is aimed at clarifying the criteria for evaluating certain events, phenomena, facts.

A practical question. The question aims to establish the relationship between theory and practice.

Questions for Bloom's Daisy

Simple question. What is M. Gorky's fairy tale about?

Clarifying question. Is this the outcome you expected? Could the ending of the story have been fundamentally different?

Interpretive (explanatory) question. Can we say that Marianne did this precisely out of love for her son?

Creative question. What would you do if you were Marianne?

Evaluation question. Did Marianne do the right thing?

A practical question. Why did M. Gorky choose the fairy tale genre for his work? Which is closer ideological content fairy tale or legend?

Current page: 4 (book has 13 pages in total)

XI

You can talk endlessly about Mothers.

The enemies covered all the streams that fed the city with water, they burned out the vineyards around the walls, trampled the fields, cut down the gardens - the city was open on all sides, and almost every day the cannons and muskets of the enemies showered it with cast iron and lead.

People, seeing her, asked each other:

- That's her?

And they hid in niches under the gates or, with their heads down, silently ran past her, and the patrol commanders sternly warned her:

– Are you on the street again, Monna Marianna? Look, you can be killed, and no one will look for the culprit...

She straightened up and waited, but the patrol passed by, not daring or disdainful to raise a hand against her; armed people walked around her like a corpse, and she remained in the darkness and again quietly, lonelyly walked somewhere, moving from street to street, dumb and black, like the embodiment of the misfortunes of the city, and around, chasing her, sad sounds crawled pitifully: groans , crying, prayers and gloomy talk of soldiers who had lost hope of victory.

So she walked the streets at night, and many, not recognizing her, were frightened, mistaking the black figure for the personification of death, which was close to everyone, and when they recognized her, they silently walked away from the traitor’s mother.

But one day, in a remote corner, near the city towers, she saw another woman: kneeling near a corpse, motionless, like a piece of earth, she prayed, raising her mournful face to the stars, and on the wall, above her head, the guards were quietly talking and grinding weapons, hitting the stones of the battlements.

The traitor's mother asked:

- Son. The husband was killed thirteen days ago, and this one is killed today.

And, rising from her knees, the mother of the murdered man humbly said:

– Madonna sees everything, knows everything, and I thank her!

- For what? – asked the first one, and she answered her:

- Now that he honestly died fighting for his homeland, I can say that he aroused fear in me: frivolous, he loved a cheerful life too much, and it was afraid that for this he would betray the city, as did Marianne’s son, the enemy God and people, the leader of our enemies, cursed be he, and cursed be the womb that bore him!..

Covering her face, Marianne walked away, and the next morning she appeared to the defenders of the city and said:

- Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gates for me, I will go to him...

They have replyed:

– You are a human being, and your homeland should be dear to you; your son is as much an enemy for you as he is for each of us.

“I am a mother, I love him and I consider myself guilty that he is what he has become.”

Then they began to consult what to do with her, and decided:

- In honor, we cannot kill you for your son’s sin, we know that you could not instill this terrible sin in him, and we can guess how you must suffer. But the city does not need you even as a hostage - your son does not care about you, we think that he has forgotten you, the devil, and - here is your punishment if you think that you deserve it! This seems worse to us than death!

- Yes! - she said. - This is worse.

It was as if she was carrying a cup full of moisture in her hands under her cloak, and was afraid of spilling it; As she moved away, she became smaller and smaller, and to those who looked at her from the wall, it seemed as if despondency and hopelessness were leaving them with her.

They came up and asked who she was and where she was going?

“Your leader is my son,” she said, and not one of the soldiers doubted it. They walked next to her, praising how smart and brave her son was, she listened to them, proudly raising her head, and was not surprised - her son should be like that!

- Mother! - he said, kissing her hands. “You came to me, it means you understood me, and tomorrow I will take this damned city!”

“The one you were born in,” she reminded.

Intoxicated by his exploits, maddened by the thirst for even greater glory, he spoke to her with the daring fervor of youth:

“I was born in the world and for the world, to amaze it!” I spared this city for your sake - it is like a thorn in my foot and prevents me from moving as quickly to glory as I want. But now - tomorrow - I will destroy the nest of stubborn people!

“Where every stone knows and remembers you as a child,” she said.

- Stones are mute, if a person does not make them speak, let the mountains talk about me, that’s what I want!

- But people? – she asked.

- Oh yes, I remember them, mother! And I need them, because only in the memory of people are heroes immortal!

She said:

– A hero is one who creates life in spite of death, who conquers death...

- No! - he objected. “He who destroys is as glorious as he who builds cities.” Look - we don’t know whether Aeneas or Romulus built Rome, but the name of Alaric and other heroes who destroyed this city is definitely known.

“Who survived all the names,” the mother reminded. So he spoke to her until sunset, she interrupted his crazy speeches less and less, and her proud head sank lower and lower.

Mother creates, she protects, and to talk about destruction in front of her means to speak against her, but he did not know this and denied the meaning of her life.

And he did not know that the Mother is an animal as intelligent, merciless as fearless, if it comes to the life that she, the Mother, creates and protects.

She sat bent over, and through the open canvas of the leader’s rich tent she could see the city where she first experienced the sweet trembling of conception and the painful spasms of the birth of a child who now wants to destroy.

Clouds descended from the black peaks of the mountains into the valley and, like winged horses, flew towards the city, doomed to death.

“Perhaps we will fall on him at night,” said her son, “if the night is dark enough!” It’s inconvenient to kill when the sun is looking into your eyes and the shine of the weapon blinds them - there are always a lot of wrong blows,” he said, examining his sword.

His mother told him:

- Come here, lay your head on my chest, rest, remembering how cheerful and kind you were as a child and how everyone loved you...

He obeyed, lay down on her lap and closed his eyes, saying:

– I love only fame and you, because you gave birth to me as I am.

- And women? – she asked, leaning over him.

– There are a lot of them, they quickly get boring, like everything too sweet.

She asked him for the last time:

- And you don’t want to have children?

- For what? To be killed? Someone like me will kill them, and it will hurt me, and then I will be old and weak to avenge them.

“You are beautiful, but barren as lightning,” she said, sighing.

He answered smiling:

- Yes, like lightning...

And he dozed off on his mother’s chest like a child.

Then she, covering him with her black cloak, stuck a knife into his heart, and he, shuddering, died immediately - after all, she knew well where her son’s heart beats. And, throwing his corpse from her knees at the feet of the astonished guards, she said towards the city:

- Man - I did everything I could for my homeland; Mother - I stay with my son! It’s too late for me to give birth to another, no one needs my life.

And the same knife, still warm from his blood - her blood - she plunged into her chest with a firm hand and also correctly hit her heart - if it hurts, it’s easy to hit.

XII

The cicadas are ringing.

As if thousands of metal strings are stretched through the dense foliage of olive trees, the wind shakes the hard leaves, they touch the strings, and these light continuous touches fill the air with a hot, intoxicating sound. This is not yet music, but it seems that invisible hands are tuning hundreds of invisible harps, and all the time you are tensely waiting for a moment of silence to come, and then a powerful string hymn to the sun, sky and sea will burst out.

The wind blows, the trees sway and seem to go from the mountain to the sea, shaking their tops. The wave hits the coastal stones evenly and dully; the sea is all in living white spots, as if countless flocks of birds have descended onto its blue plain, they all swim in one direction, disappear, diving into the depths, appear again and ring barely audibly. And, as if carrying them along with them, two ships, also similar, sway on the horizon, raising high three-tiered sails gray birds; all this - reminiscent of an old, half-forgotten dream - does not look like life.

- By nightfall there will be a strong wind! - says the old fisherman, sitting in the shade of stones, on a small beach dotted with ringing pebbles.

The surf threw fibers of fragrant sea grass - red, golden and green - onto the stones; the grass withers in the sun and hot stones, the salty air is filled with the tart smell of iodine. Curly waves run onto the beach one after another.

The old fisherman looks like a bird - a small, clenched face, a hooked nose and invisible in the dark folds of his skin, round, must be very keen eyes. The fingers are hooked, inactive and dry.

“Fifty years ago, sir,” says the old man, in tune with the rustling of the waves and the ringing of the cicadas, “there was once such a cheerful and sonorous day, when everyone was laughing and singing.” My father was forty, I was sixteen, and I was in love, which is inevitable at sixteen and in good sunshine.

“Let’s go, Guido, for pezzoni,” said the father. - Pezzoni, signore, is very thin and delicious fish with pink fins, it is also called coral fish because it lives where there are corals, very deep. It is caught while standing at anchor, using a hook with a heavy sinker. Beautiful fish.

“And we went, expecting nothing but good luck.” My father was a strong man, an experienced fisherman, but shortly before this he was ill - his chest hurt, and his fingers were damaged by rheumatism - a fishermen's disease.

“This is a very cunning and evil wind, this one that blows so gently on us from the shore, as if quietly pushing us into the sea - there it approaches you unnoticed and suddenly rushes at you, as if you had insulted it.” The barge is immediately torn off and flies with the wind, sometimes upside down, and you are in the water. This happens in one minute, you don’t have time to curse or mention the name of God before you are already spinning around and being driven into the distance. The robber is more honest than this wind. However, people are always more honest than the elements.

- Yes, so this wind hit us four kilometers from the coast - very close, as you can see, it hit us unexpectedly, like a coward and a scoundrel.

- “Guido! - said the parent, grabbing the oars with his mutilated hands. -Hold on, Guido! Alive - anchor!

“But while I was choosing an anchor, my father was hit in the chest with an oar - the oars were torn out of his hands - he fell to the bottom without memory. I had no time to help him; every second we could have been knocked over. At first, everything was done quickly: when I sat down on the oars, we were already rushing somewhere, surrounded by water dust, the wind tore off the tops of the waves and sprinkled us, like a priest, only with the best zeal and not at all in order to wash away our sins.

- “This is serious, my son! - said the father, coming to his senses and looking towards the shore. “This will last a long time, my dear.”

- If you are young, you don’t easily believe in danger, I tried to row, did everything that needs to be done in the water at a dangerous moment, when this wind - the breath of evil devils - kindly digs thousands of graves for you and sings a requiem for free.

“Sit still, Guido,” said the father, grinning and shaking water from his head. - What is the use of picking the sea with matches? Save your strength, otherwise they will wait for you at home in vain.”

“The green waves throw our little boat like children throwing a ball, look over the sides at us, rise above our heads, roar, shake, we fall into deep holes, climb white ridges - and the shore runs away from us further and further and also dances, like ours.” barge. Then my father says to me:

“You may return to earth, but I won’t!” Listen to what I will tell you about fish and work..."

- And he began to tell me everything he knew about the habits of these and other fish - where, when and how to catch them more successfully.

- “Maybe we better pray, father?” - I suggested when I realized that our affairs were bad: we were like a pair of rabbits in a pack of white dogs, grinning at us from everywhere.

- “God sees everything! - he said. “He knows that people created for the earth are dying at sea and that one of them, not hoping for salvation, must pass on to his son what he knows. Work is needed by the earth and people - God understands this..."

“And, having told me everything he knew about work, my father began to talk about how to live with people.

– “Is now the time to teach me? - I said. “You didn’t do this on earth!”

“On earth I have not felt death so close.”

“The wind howled like an animal and splashed the waves—my father had to shout for me to hear, and he shouted:

- “Always act as if there is no one better than you and no one worse - this will be true! The nobleman and the fisherman, the priest and the soldier are one body, and you are as necessary a member of it as all the others. Never approach a person thinking that there is more bad in him than good - think that there is more good in him - and so it will be! People give what is asked of them.”

- This, of course, was not said right away, but as the team knows for sure: we were thrown from wave to wave, and now from below, now from above, through the splashes of water, I heard these words. Much was carried away by the wind before it reached me, much I could not understand - is it time to study, sir, when every minute threatens death! I was scared, it was the first time I had seen the sea so furious and I felt so powerless in it. And I cannot say whether then or after, remembering these hours, I experienced a feeling that is still alive in the memory of my heart.

“As I see my parent now: he sits at the bottom of the barge, with his sore arms outstretched, clutching the sides with his fingers, his hat has been washed off him, the waves rush over his head and shoulders, now from the right, now from the left, hitting him from behind and in front, he shakes his head, snorts.” and shouts to me from time to time. Wet, he became small, and his eyes were huge from fear, or maybe from pain. I think - from pain.

- "Listen! - shouted to me. - Hey, do you hear?

“Sometimes I answered him:

- “I hear!”

- “Remember - all good things come from man.”

- "OK!" - I answer.

“He never spoke to me like that on earth.” He was cheerful and kind, but it seemed to me that he was looking at me mockingly and distrustfully, that I was still a child for him. Sometimes this offended me - youth is proud.

“His screams tamed my fear, which must be why I remember everything so well.”

The old fisherman paused, looked into the white sea, smiled and said with a wink:

- Having looked closely at people, I know, sir, remembering is the same as understanding, and the more you understand, the more good you see - this is so, believe me!

- Yes, so - I remember his dear wet face and huge eyes - they looked at me seriously, with love, and so that I knew then - I was not destined to die on this day. I was afraid, but I knew that I would not die.

“Of course, we were upset.” Here we are both in boiling water, in foam that blinds us, the waves throw our bodies, hitting them against the keel of the barge. Even earlier we tied everything that could be tied to the banks, we have ropes in our hands, we will not tear ourselves away from our barge as long as we have the strength, but it’s difficult to stay on the water. Several times he or I was thrown onto the keel and immediately washed off it. The most important thing here is that you feel dizzy, deaf and blind - your eyes and ears are flooded with water, and you swallow a lot of it.

“It lasted a long time—seven hours—then the wind immediately changed, rushed thickly toward the shore, and we were carried toward the ground. Then I was delighted and shouted:

- “Hold on!”

“My father also shouted something, I understood one word:

- “It will break...”

“He was thinking about the stones, they were still far away, I didn’t believe him.” But he knew the matter better than me - we rushed among the mountains of water, clinging like snails to our nurse, having been beaten up by her, already exhausted and numb. This lasted a long time, but when the dark mountains of the coast became visible, everything went with indescribable speed. Swinging, they moved towards us, bent over the water, ready to topple over on our heads - once, once - the white waves tossed our bodies, our barge crunched like a nut under the heel of a boot, I was torn from it, I saw the broken black ribs of the rocks, sharp , like knives, I see my father’s head high above me, then above these claws of the devils. He was caught about two hours later, with a broken back and a skull smashed to the brain. The wound on the head was huge, part of the brain was washed out of it, but I remember gray, with red veins, pieces in the wound, like marble or foam with blood. He was terribly mutilated, all broken, but his face was clean, calm, and his eyes were well and tightly closed.

- I? Yes, I was also pretty beaten up, they dragged me ashore without memory. We were brought to the mainland, beyond Amalfi 28
Amalfi- a city on the coast of the Gulf of Salerno.

- an alien place, but, of course, their own people are also fishermen, such cases do not surprise them, but make them kind: people who lead a dangerous life are always kind!

“I think I couldn’t tell about my father the way I feel, and what I’ve kept in my heart for fifty-one years requires special words, maybe even a song, but we are simple people, like fish, and not We can speak as beautifully as we would like! You always feel and know more than you can say.

“The whole point is that he, my father, at the hour of death, knowing that he could not avoid it, was not afraid, did not forget about me, his son, and found the strength and time to convey to me everything that he considered important. I lived sixty-seven years and I can say that everything he instilled in me is true!

The old man took off his knitted cap, once red, now brown, took out a pipe from it and, tilting his bare bronze skull, said strongly:

- That's right, dear sir! People are the way you want them to be, look at them with kind eyes, and you will feel good, they will too, this will make them even better, and so will you! It's simple!

The wind became stronger, the waves were higher, sharper and whiter; The birds have grown up on the sea, they are sailing more and more hastily into the distance, and two ships with three-tiered sails have already disappeared beyond the blue horizon.

Steep shores of the island in the foam of the waves, rowdy, splashing blue water, and the cicadas ring tirelessly and passionately.

Part I

1

Every day, above the workers' settlement, in the smoky, oily air, the factory whistle trembled and roared, and, obedient to the call, gloomy people who had not had time to refresh their muscles with sleep ran out of small gray houses into the street, like frightened cockroaches. In the cold darkness they walked along the unpaved street towards the tall stone cages of the factory; she was waiting for them with indifferent confidence, illuminating the dirt road with dozens of fat square eyes. The dirt smacked underfoot. Hoarse exclamations from sleepy voices were heard, coarse swearing angrily tore the air, and other sounds floated to meet the people - the heavy fuss of cars, the grumbling of steam. Tall black pipes loomed gloomily and sternly, rising above the settlement like thick sticks.

In the evening, when the sun was setting and its red rays shone wearily on the windows of the houses, the factory threw people out of its stone depths, like waste slag, and they again walked along the streets, smoked, with black faces, spreading the sticky smell of machine oil in the air, shining hungry teeth. Now there was revival, and even joy, in their voices - hard labor was over for today, dinner and rest awaited at home.

The day was swallowed up by the factory, the machines sucked as much strength from the people's muscles as they needed. The day was erased from life without a trace, the man took another step towards his grave, but he saw close in front of him the pleasure of relaxation, the joy of a smoky tavern, and he was satisfied.

On holidays they slept until ten o'clock, then respectable and married people dressed in their best dress and went to listen to mass, simultaneously scolding the youth for their indifference to the church. They returned home from church, ate pies and went back to bed until evening.

The fatigue accumulated over the years deprived people of appetite, and in order to eat, they drank a lot, irritating the stomach with the sharp burns of vodka. In the evening they walked lazily along the streets, and the one who had galoshes put them on, even if it was dry, and if he had a rain umbrella, he carried it with him, even if the sun was shining.

When they met each other, they talked about the factory, about the machines, scolded the craftsmen - they talked and thought only about what was related to work. Lonely sparks of inept, powerless thought barely flickered in the boring monotony of days. Returning home, they quarreled with their wives and often beat them, not sparing their fists. Young people sat in taverns or held parties at each other's houses, played harmonicas, sang obscene, ugly songs, danced, cursed and drank. People exhausted by work quickly became drunk, and an incomprehensible, painful irritation awoke in all their chests. It needed a way out. And, tenaciously grasping at every opportunity to defuse this anxious feeling, people, over trifles, rushed at each other with the embitterment of animals. Arose bloody fights. Sometimes they ended in serious injuries, and occasionally in murder.

In people's relationships, there was most of all a feeling of lurking anger; it was as old as incurable muscle fatigue. People were born with this disease of the soul, inheriting it from their fathers, and it accompanied them like a black shadow to the grave, prompting them throughout their lives to a series of actions disgusting in their aimless cruelty.

On holidays, young people came home late at night in torn clothes, in dirt and dust, with broken faces, gloatingly boasting of the blows inflicted on his comrades, or offended, in anger or tears of resentment, drunk and pathetic, unhappy and disgusting. Sometimes the boys were brought home by their mothers and fathers. They would find them somewhere under a fence on the street or in taverns, insensibly drunk, cursed them badly, beat the children’s soft, vodka-liquefied bodies with their fists, then more or less carefully put them to bed so that early in the morning, when the angry roar of a whistle would flow in the air like a dark stream , wake them up for work.

They scolded and beat children hard, but drunkenness and fights among young people seemed to the old people to be a completely legitimate phenomenon - when the fathers were young, they also drank and fought, they were also beaten by their mothers and fathers. Life has always been like this - it flowed smoothly and slowly somewhere in a muddy stream for years and years and was all connected by strong, long-standing habits of thinking and doing the same thing, day after day. And no one had the desire to try to change it.

Occasionally strangers would come to the settlement from somewhere. At first, they attracted attention simply because they were strangers, then they aroused a slight, external interest in themselves with stories about the places where they worked, then the novelty was erased from them, they got used to them, and they became invisible. From their stories it was clear: the life of a worker is the same everywhere. And if this is so, what is there to talk about?

But sometimes some of them said something unheard of in the settlement. They didn’t argue with them, but they listened to their strange speeches incredulously. These speeches aroused blind irritation in some, vague anxiety in others, still others were disturbed by a slight shadow of hope for something unclear, and they began to drink more in order to expel unnecessary, disturbing anxiety.

Having noticed something unusual in a stranger, the Sloboda residents could not forget it for a long time and treated a person who was not like them with unaccountable fear. They were definitely afraid that a person would throw something into life that would disrupt its sadly correct course, although difficult, but calm. People were accustomed to life always pressing on them with the same force, and, not expecting any changes for the better, they considered all changes to only increase the oppression.

Sloboda residents silently avoided people who spoke new things. Then these people disappeared, going somewhere else again, and remaining at the factory, they lived on the sidelines if they did not know how to merge into one with the monotonous mass of Sloboda residents...

Having lived such a life for fifty years, the man died.

2

This is how Mikhail Vlasov lived, a mechanic, hairy, gloomy, with small eyes; they looked suspiciously from under thick eyebrows, with a nasty grin. The best mechanic in the factory and the first strong man in the settlement, he behaved rudely with his superiors and therefore earned little, beat someone every holiday, and everyone did not like him, they were afraid of him. They also tried to beat him, but to no avail. When Vlasov saw that people were coming at him, he grabbed a stone, a board, a piece of iron in his hands and, spreading his legs wide, silently waited for the enemies. His face, overgrown from eyes to neck with a black beard, and hairy arms inspired fear in everyone. They were especially afraid of his eyes - small, sharp, they drilled into people like steel gimlets, and everyone who met their gaze felt a wild force in front of them, inaccessible to fear, ready to strike mercilessly.

- Well, leave, you bastard! - he said dully. Through Thick hair large yellow teeth glittered on his face. People dispersed, cursing him with cowardly howling curses.

- Bastard! - he spoke briefly after them, and his eyes sparkled with a smile as sharp as an awl. Then, holding his head defiantly straight, he followed them and called:

- Well, who wants death?

Nobody wanted to.

He spoke little, and “bastard” was his favorite word. He called it the factory management and the police, and he addressed his wife with it:

“You bastard, don’t you see, your pants are torn!”

When Pavel, his son, was fourteen years old, Vlasov wanted to pull him by the hair. But Paul took the heavy hammer in his hands and said briefly:

- Don’t touch...

- What? - asked the father, approaching the high slim figure son, like a shadow on a birch tree.

- Will! - said Pavel. - I won’t give in anymore...

And he swung the hammer.

His father looked at him, hid his shaggy hands behind his back and, grinning, said:

- Oh, you bastard...

Soon after this he said to his wife:

- Don’t ask me for money anymore, Pashka will feed you...

-Are you going to drink everything away? – she dared to ask.

- None of your business, bastard! I'll take a mistress...

He did not take a mistress, but from that time, for almost two years, until his death, he did not notice his son and did not speak to him.

He had a dog, as big and shaggy as he himself. She accompanied him to the factory every day and waited at the gate every evening. On holidays, Vlasov went to the taverns. He walked silently and, as if wanting to find someone, scratched people’s faces with his eyes. And the dog followed him all day, drooping his big, bushy tail. Returning home drunk, he sat down to dinner and fed the dog from his cup. He didn’t beat her, didn’t scold her, but he never caressed her either. After dinner, he would throw the dishes off the table onto the floor if his wife did not have time to remove them in time, put a bottle of vodka in front of him and, leaning his back against the wall, howled a song in a dull voice that made him sad, opening his mouth wide and closing his eyes. Mournful, ugly sounds tangled in his mustache, knocking bread crumbs off it, the mechanic straightened the hair of his beard and mustache with his thick fingers and sang. The words of the song were somehow incomprehensible, drawn out, the melody was reminiscent of the winter howl of wolves. He sang until there was vodka in the bottle, and then he fell sideways on the bench or lowered his head on the table and slept until the bell rang. The dog was lying next to him.

He died from a hernia. For five days, all blackened, he tossed and turned on his bed, closing his eyes tightly and grinding his teeth. Sometimes he told his wife:

- Give arsenic, poison...

The doctor ordered to put a poultice on Mikhail, but said that an operation was necessary, and the patient needed to be taken to the hospital today.

- Go to hell - I’ll die myself!.. Bastard! – Mikhail wheezed.

And when the doctor left and his wife tearfully tried to persuade him to agree to the operation, he clenched his fist and, threatening her, said:

- I’ll get better - it’ll be worse for you!

He died in the morning, in those minutes when the buzzer called for work. He lay in the coffin with his mouth open, but his eyebrows were furrowed angrily. They buried his wife, son, dog, old drunkard and thief Danila Vesovshchikov, driven out of the factory, and several suburban beggars. The wife cried quietly and a little, Pavel did not cry. Slobozhans, meeting the coffin on the street, stopped and, crossing themselves, said to each other:

- Tea, Pelageya is glad that he died...

Some corrected:

- He didn’t die, but died...

When the coffin was buried, the people left, but the dog remained and, sitting on the fresh soil, silently sniffed the grave for a long time. A few days later, someone killed her...

3

Two weeks after his father’s death, on Sunday, Pavel Vlasov came home very drunk. Swinging, he crawled into the front corner and, hitting the table with his fist, as his father did, shouted to his mother:

- Have supper!

The mother came up to him, sat down next to him and hugged her son, pulling his head to her chest. He, resting his hand on her shoulder, resisted and shouted:

- Mom, come on!..

- You fool! – the mother said sadly and affectionately, overcoming his resistance.

- And - I will smoke! Give me my father’s pipe...” Pavel muttered, moving his naughty tongue heavily.

He got drunk for the first time. Vodka weakened his body, but did not extinguish his consciousness, and the question pounded in his head: “Drunk? Drunk?

He was embarrassed by his mother’s caresses and touched by the sadness in her eyes. He wanted to cry, and in order to suppress this desire, he tried to pretend to be more drunk than he was.

And his mother stroked his sweaty, tangled hair with her hand and said quietly:

- You shouldn’t need this...

He started to feel sick. After a violent fit of vomiting, his mother put him to bed, covering his pale forehead with a wet towel. He sobered up a little, but everything under him and around him swayed like waves, his eyelids became heavy and, feeling a bad, bitter taste in his mouth, he looked through his eyelashes at his mother’s big face and thought incoherently:

“Apparently, it’s still too early for me. Others drink and - nothing, but I feel sick ... "

- What kind of provider will you be for me if you start drinking...

Closing his eyes tightly, he said:

- Everyone drinks...

The mother sighed heavily. He was right. She herself knew that other than the tavern, people had nowhere to find joy. But still she said:

- Don’t drink! Father drank as much as necessary for you. And he tormented me quite a lot... so you would feel sorry for your mother, huh?

Listening to the sad soft words, Pavel recalled that during his father’s life, his mother was invisible in the house, silent and always lived in anxious anticipation of beatings. Avoiding meetings with his father, he was rarely at home Lately, had lost the habit of seeing his mother and now, gradually sobering up, looked at her intently.

She was tall, slightly stooped, her body, broken by long work and beatings from her husband, moved silently and somehow sideways, as if she was always afraid of touching something. wide, Oval face, wrinkled and puffy, was illuminated by dark eyes, anxiously sad, like most women in the settlement. Above right eyebrow there was a deep scar, it raised the eyebrow slightly upward, it seemed that her right ear was higher than her left; this gave her face such an expression, as if she was always listening timidly. In thick dark hair gray strands glistened. She was all soft, sad, submissive...

And tears slowly flowed down her cheeks.

- Do not Cry! – the son asked quietly. - Give me a drink.

- I'll bring you some ice water...

But when she returned, he had already fallen asleep. She stood over it for a minute, the ladle in her hand trembled, and the ice quietly beat against the tin. Placing the ladle on the table, she silently knelt in front of the images. The sounds of drunken life beat against the glass windows. In the darkness and dampness of the autumn evening, a harmonica screeched, someone sang loudly, someone swore rotten words, the irritated, tired voices of women sounded alarmingly...

Life in the Vlasovs’ small house flowed more quietly and calmly than before, and somewhat differently than elsewhere in the settlement. Their house stood on the edge of the settlement, at a low but steep slope to the swamp. A third of the house was occupied by the kitchen and a small room separated from it by a thin partition in which the mother slept. The remaining two thirds are a square room with two windows; in one corner there is Pavel’s bed, in the front there is a table and two benches. Several chairs, a chest of drawers for linen, a small mirror on it, a chest with a dress, a clock on the wall and two icons in the corner - that’s all.

Pavel did everything he needed to do to a young guy: I bought a harmonica, a shirt with a starched chest, a bright tie, galoshes, a cane and became the same as all the teenagers of his age. I went to parties, learned to square dance and polka, returned home drunk on holidays and always suffered greatly from vodka. The next morning I had a headache, suffered from heartburn, and my face was pale and dull.

One day his mother asked him:

- Well, did you have fun yesterday?

He replied with sullen irritation:

- Green melancholy! I'd rather fish. Or I’ll buy myself a gun.

He worked diligently, without absenteeism or fines, was silent, and his blue eyes, large, like his mother’s, looked displeased. He didn’t buy himself a gun and didn’t start fishing, but he noticeably began to deviate from everyone’s beaten path: he attended parties less often, and although he went somewhere on holidays, he returned sober. The mother, vigilantly watching him, saw that her son’s dark face was becoming sharper, his eyes were looking more and more seriously and his lips were compressed strangely sternly. He seemed to be silently angry about something or was suffering from illness. Previously, his comrades would come to see him, but now, not finding him at home, they stopped coming. The mother was pleased to see that her son was becoming different from the factory youth, but when she noticed that he was intently and stubbornly swimming somewhere to the side from the dark stream of life, this aroused a feeling of vague apprehension in her soul.

- Are you perhaps unwell, Pavlusha? – she asked him sometimes.

- No, I'm healthy! - he answered.

- You are very skinny! - the mother said, sighing. He started bringing books and tried to read them unnoticed, and after reading them, he hid them somewhere. Sometimes he would copy something out of the books onto a separate piece of paper and hide it too...

They spoke little and saw little of each other. In the morning he silently drank tea and went to work, at noon he appeared for dinner, insignificant words were exchanged at the table, and again he disappeared until the evening. And in the evening I washed myself thoroughly, had dinner and then read my books for a long time. On holidays he left in the morning and returned late at night. She knew that he went to the city, visited the theater there, but no one came to see him from the city. It seemed to her that over time her son spoke less and less, and, at the same time, she noticed that sometimes he used some new words that were incomprehensible to her, and the rude and harsh expressions that were familiar to her dropped out of his speech. There were many little things in his behavior that attracted her attention: he abandoned his ostentation, began to take more care of the cleanliness of his body and dress, moved more freely, more agilely, and, becoming outwardly simpler and softer, aroused anxious attention from his mother. And there was something new in his attitude towards his mother: he sometimes swept the floor in the room, made his bed himself on holidays, and generally tried to make her work easier. No one in the settlement did this.

One day he brought and hung a picture on the wall - three people, talking, walking somewhere lightly and cheerfully.

– This is the risen Christ going to Emmaus! – Pavel explained.

The mother liked the picture, but she thought: “You revere Christ, but you don’t go to church...”

There were more and more books on the shelf, beautifully made for Pavel by a fellow carpenter. The room took on a pleasant appearance.

He called her “you” and called her “mama,” but sometimes, suddenly, he addressed her affectionately:

“You, mother, please don’t worry, I’m getting home late...

She liked it; in his words she felt something serious and strong.

But her anxiety grew. Without becoming clearer over time, it tickled my heart more and more acutely with a premonition of something unusual. Sometimes the mother was dissatisfied with her son, she thought: “All people are like people, and he is like a monk. Very strict. This is beyond his years...”

Sometimes she thought: “Maybe he got himself some girl?”

But messing around with girls requires money, and he gave her almost all of his earnings.

So weeks and months passed, and unnoticed two years of strange, silent life passed, full of vague thoughts and ever-increasing fears.

4

One day after dinner, Pavel pulled down the curtain on the window, sat in the corner and began to read, hanging a tin lamp on the wall above his head. The mother put away the dishes and, leaving the kitchen, carefully approached him. He raised his head and looked questioningly into her face.

- It’s okay, Pasha, it’s me! – she said hastily and left, moving her eyebrows in embarrassment. But, after standing motionless in the kitchen for a minute, thoughtful, preoccupied, she washed her hands clean and went out to her son again.

“I want to ask you,” she said quietly, “what are you all reading?”

He folded the book.

- Sit down, mom...

His mother sat down heavily next to him and straightened up, alert, expecting something important.

Without looking at her, quietly and for some reason very sternly, Pavel spoke:

– I read forbidden books. They are forbidden to read because they tell the truth about our working life... They are published quietly, secretly, and if they are found on me, they will put me in prison - in prison because I want to know the truth. Understood?

She suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Opening her eyes wide, she looked at her son; he seemed alien to her. He had a different voice - lower, thicker and more sonorous. He plucked his thin, fluffy mustache with his fingers and strangely, from under his brows, looked somewhere in the corner. She felt scared for her son and felt sorry for him.

- Why are you doing this, Pasha? - she said. He raised his head, looked at her and quietly, calmly answered:

- I want to know the truth.

His voice sounded quiet but firm, his eyes sparkled stubbornly. She understood in her heart that her son had doomed himself forever to something secret and terrible. Everything in life seemed inevitable to her, she was used to obeying without thinking, and now she just cried quietly, unable to find words in her heart, compressed by grief and melancholy.

- Do not Cry! - Pavel spoke tenderly and quietly, and it seemed to her that he was saying goodbye. - Think about what kind of life we live? You are forty years old, but have you really lived? Your father beat you - I now understand that he took out his grief on your sides - the grief of his life; it was pressing on him, but he didn’t understand where it came from? He worked for thirty years, started working when the entire factory was located in two buildings, and now there are seven of them!

She listened to him with fear and greed. The son's eyes glowed beautifully and brightly; Leaning his chest on the table, he moved closer to her and spoke directly into her face, wet with tears, his first speech about the truth that he understood. With all the strength of youth and the fervor of a student, proud of knowledge, sacredly believing in its truth, he spoke about what was clear to him - he spoke not so much for his mother as testing himself. Sometimes he stopped, unable to find words, and then he saw in front of him a saddened face, on which kind eyes, clouded with tears, shone dully. They looked with fear and bewilderment. He felt sorry for his mother, he began to talk again, but about her, about her life.

– What joys did you know? - he asked. – How can you remember your past?

She listened and sadly shook her head, feeling something new, unknown to her, sorrowful and joyful - it gently caressed her aching heart. She heard such speeches about herself, about her life for the first time, and they awakened in her long-dormant, unclear thoughts, quietly inflating the faded feelings of vague dissatisfaction with life - the thoughts and feelings of distant youth. She talked about life with her friends, talked for a long time, about everything, but everyone - and she herself - only complained, no one explained why life was so hard and difficult. But now her son is sitting in front of her, and what his eyes, face, words say - all this touches the heart, filling it with a feeling of pride for the son, who correctly understood the life of his mother, tells her about her suffering, takes pity on her .

Mothers are not spared.

She knew it. Everything the son said about women's life, - there was a bitter, familiar truth, and a ball of sensations quietly trembled in her chest, warming her more and more with an unfamiliar caress.

- What do you want to do? – she asked, interrupting his speech.

– Learn, and then teach others. We workers need to learn. We must find out, we must understand why life is so hard for us.

It was sweet for her to see that he Blue eyes, always serious and strict, now burned so softly and affectionately. A contented, quiet smile appeared on her lips, although tears still trembled in the wrinkles of her cheeks. She had an ambivalent sense of pride in her son, who sees the sorrows of life so well, but she could not forget about his youth and the fact that he speaks differently from everyone else, that he alone decided to enter into an argument with this familiar to everyone - and for her - life. She wanted to tell him: “Darling, what can you do?”

But she was afraid to prevent herself from admiring her son, who suddenly revealed himself to her as so smart... although a little stranger to her.

Pavel saw the smile on his mother’s lips, the attention on her face, the love in her eyes; it seemed to him that he had made her understand his truth, and youthful pride through the power of words elevated his faith in himself. Seized with excitement, he spoke, now grinning, now frowning, sometimes there was hatred in his words, and when the mother heard her ringing, harsh words, she, frightened, shook her head and quietly asked her son:

- Is that right, Pasha?

- So! - he answered firmly and firmly. And he told her about people who, wishing good to the people, sowed truth in them, and for this the enemies of life caught them like animals, put them in prison, sent them to hard labor...

- I have seen such people! – he exclaimed hotly. – These are the best people on earth!

These people aroused fear in her, she again wanted to ask her son: “Is it so?”

But she did not dare and, frozen, listened to stories about people, incomprehensible to her, who taught her son to speak and think so dangerously for him. Finally she told him:

- It will be dawn soon, you should lie down and fall asleep!

- Yes, I’ll go to bed now! – he agreed. And, leaning towards her, he asked: “Do you understand me?”

- Understood! – she answered with a sigh. Tears rolled down from her eyes again, and, sobbing, she added:

- You will be lost!

He stood up, walked around the room, then said:

- Well, now you know what I do, where I go, I told you everything! I ask you, mother, if you love me, don’t bother me!..

- My darling! - she exclaimed. “Maybe it would be better for me not to know anything!”

He took her hand and squeezed it tightly in his.

She was shocked by the word “mother,” spoken by him with ardent force, and by this handshake, new and strange.

- I won’t do anything! – she said in a broken voice. - Just take care of yourself, take care!

Not knowing what to watch out for, she added sadly:

- You're losing weight...

And, hugging his strong, slender body with a caressing, warm gaze, she spoke hastily and quietly:

- God be with you! Live as you want, I won’t bother you. I only ask you one thing - don’t talk to people without fear! You have to be afraid of people - they all hate each other! They live by greed, they live by envy. Everyone is happy to do evil. As soon as you begin to denounce and judge them, they will hate you and destroy you!

The son stood in the doorway, listening to the melancholy speech, and when the mother finished, he said, smiling:

- People are bad, yes. But when I found out that there is truth in the world, people became better!..

He smiled again and continued:

– I don’t understand how this happened! Since childhood, I was afraid of everyone, and as I began to grow up, I began to hate them, some for their meanness, some for their meanness, I don’t know why, it’s as simple as that! And now everyone stands differently for me - I feel sorry for everyone, or what? I can’t understand, but my heart became softer when I learned that not everyone is to blame for their filth...

He fell silent, as if listening to something within himself, then said quietly and thoughtfully:

– This is how the truth breathes!

She looked at him and said quietly:

“You’ve changed dangerously, oh my God!”

When he lay down and fell asleep, his mother carefully got up from her bed and quietly approached him. Pavel lay with his chest up, and his dark, stubborn and stern face. With her hands pressed to her chest, his mother, barefoot and wearing only a shirt, stood at his bedside, her lips moved silently, and large muddy tears flowed from her eyes slowly and evenly, one after another.