Dark Avenues / Темные аллеи. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Dark Avenues / Темные аллеи. Книга для чтения на английском языке
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin

Чтение в оригинале (Каро)Russian Classic Literature
Сборник рассказов «Тёмные аллеи» (1937–1944) был написан Иваном Алексеевичем Буниным во время эмиграции, большинство произведений – в годы войны. Рассказы различны по структуре, объёму, характеру персонажей, отражают разные временные пласты. Тем не менее, все они повествуют о любви как величайшем даре, человеческих взаимоотношениях, воспоминаниях, и пронизаны любовью к родине.

Рассказы переведены на английский язык Х. Аплиным. В книгу включены комментарии и словарь.

Для широкого круга читателей.

Ivan Bunin / Иван Бунин

Dark Avenues / Темные аллеи

“I have been keeping an eye on Bunin’s brilliant talent. He really is the enemy.”

    Andrei Bely

“Your influence is truly beyond words… I do not know any other writer whose external world is so closely tied to another, whose sensations are more exact and indispensable, and whose world is more genuine and also more unexpected than yours.”

    André Gide

“He was a great stylist who wrote very suggestively. He didn’t spray us with ideologies or worries. His writing is pure poetry.”

    Andrei Makine

“A most powerful ‘connoisseur of colours’. One could write an entire dissertation on his colour schemes.”

    Vladimir Nabokov

“You have, Mr Bunin, thoroughly explored the soul of vanished Russia, and in doing so you have most deservedly continued the glorious traditions of the great Russian literature.”

    Professor Wilhelm Nordenson, at the 1933 Nobel Prize banquet

Part One

Translation Copyriht © Hugh Aplin, 2008

Published by Alma Classics Ltd

© КАРО, 2019

Dark Avenues

In the cold, foul weather of autumn, on one of Tula’s highways, flooded by rains and indented with many black ruts, up to a long hut with a government posting station in one wing and private living quarters where one could rest or spend the night, have dinner or ask for the samovar in the other, there drove a tarantass[1 - tarantass: A large, springless carriage. (прим. перев.)], bespattered with mud and with its top half-raised, pulled by three quite ordinary horses with their tails tied up out of the slush. On the box of the tarantass sat a sturdy peasant in a tightly belted, heavy cloth coat, serious and dark-faced, with a sparse, jet-black beard, looking like a robber of old, and inside the tarantass sat a svelte old military man in a large peaked cap[2 - peaked cap – фуражка] and a grey greatcoat with an upright beaver collar of Nicholas I’s time, still black-browed, but with white whiskers which joined up with similar sideburns; his chin was shaved, and his appearance as a whole bore that resemblance[3 - to bear resemblance – иметь сходство] to Alexander II[4 - Nicholas I’s… Alexander II: Russian Emperors of the nineteenth century: Nicholas I (b.1796) ruled 1825–55 and was succeeded by his son Alexander II (b.1818), who ruled until his assassination in 1881. (прим. перев.)] which was so prevalent among military men at the time of his reign; his gaze was both enquiring, stern and at the same time weary.

When the horses came to a halt[5 - to come to a halt – остановиться], he threw a leg in a level-topped military boot out of the tarantass and, holding back the skirts of the greatcoat with suede-gloved hands, ran up onto the porch of the hut.

“To the left, Your Excellency,” the coachman cried out rudely from the box and, stooping slightly on the threshold because of his height, the man went into the little entrance hall, then to the left into the living quarters.

The living quarters were warm, dry and tidy: there was a new, goldcoloured icon in the left-hand corner, beneath it a table covered with a clean, unbleached tablecloth, and at the table there were benches, scrubbed clean; the kitchen stove, occupying the far right-hand corner, was newly white with chalk; nearer stood something like an ottoman, covered with mottled rugs, with its folding end resting against the side of the stove; from behind the stove door came the sweet smell of cabbage soup – cabbage boiled down until soft, beef and bay leaves.

The new arrival threw his greatcoat down on a bench and proved to be still more svelte in just his dress uniform[6 - dress uniform – мундир] and long boots; then he took off the gloves and cap, and with a weary air ran a pale, thin hand over his head – his grey hair, combed down on his temples towards the corners of his eyes, was slightly curling; his attractive, elongated face with dark eyes retained here and there minor traces of smallpox. There was nobody in the living quarters and, opening the door into the entrance hall a little, he cried out in an unfriendly way:

“Hey, anybody there?”

Immediately thereafter into the living quarters came a dark-haired woman, also black-browed and also still unusually attractive for her age, looking like an elderly gypsy, with dark down on her upper lip and alongside her cheeks, light on her feet, but plump, with large breasts under her red blouse and a triangular stomach like a goose’s under her black woollen skirt.

“Welcome, Your Excellency,” she said. “Would you be wanting to eat, or would you like the samovar?”

The new arrival threw a cursory glance at her rounded shoulders and light feet in worn, red Tatar slippers, and curtly, inattentively replied:

“The samovar. Are you the mistress here or a servant?”

“The mistress, Your Excellency.”

“The place is yours then?”

“Yes, sir. Mine.”

“How’s that, then? A widow, are you, that you run things yourself?”

“Not a widow, Your Excellency, but you do have to make a living[7 - to make a living – зарабатывать на жизнь]. And I like being in charge.”

“Right, right. That’s good. And how clean and pleasant you have it.”

The woman was all the time looking at him searchingly, with her eyes slightly narrowed.

“I like cleanliness too,” she replied. “I grew up with gentlefolk, after all, so how could I fail to know how to keep myself respectable, Nikolai Alexeyevich?”

He straightened up quickly, opened his eyes wide and blushed.

“Nadezhda! Is it you?” he said hurriedly.

“It’s me, Nikolai Alexeyevich,” she replied.

“My God, my God!” he said, sitting down on a bench and staring straight at her. “Who could have thought it! How many years since we last saw one another? About thirty-five?”

“Thirty, Nikolai Alexeyevich. I’m forty-eight now, and you’re getting on for sixty, I think.”

“Something like that… My God, how strange!”

“What’s strange, sir?”

“But everything, everything… How can you not understand!”

His weariness and absent-mindedness had vanished; he stood up and began walking decisively around the room, gazing at the floor. Then he stopped and, blushing through his grey hair, began to speak:

“I know nothing about you from that time on. How did you end up here? Why didn’t you stay with your owners?”