Read the story of a lady with a dog. Online reading of the book lady with a dog lady with a dog. Drama on the hunt. true incident

DRAMA ON THE HUNT. TRUE INCIDENT

One April afternoon in 1880, the watchman Andrei entered my office and mysteriously reported to me that some gentleman had come to the editorial office and earnestly asked to see the editor.

“Ask him to come at another time,” I said. - I'm busy today. Say that the editor only works on Saturdays.

“He came the other day and asked you.” He says it's a big deal. He asks and almost cries. On Saturday, he says, he is not free... Will you order him to accept it?

I sighed, put down my pen and began to wait for the gentleman with the cockade. Beginning writers and people in general who are not privy to editorial secrets, who come into sacred awe at the word “editorial”, are forced to wait for a considerable time. After the editor’s “ask,” they cough for a long time, blow their nose for a long time, open the door slowly, enter even more slowly, and this takes up a lot of time. The gentleman with the cockade did not keep us waiting. Before the door had closed behind Andrei, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in my office, holding a paper bundle in one hand and a cap with a cockade in the other.

The man who sought a meeting with me in this way plays a very prominent role in my story. It is necessary to describe his appearance.

He is, as I said, tall, broad-shouldered and stocky, like a good workhorse. His whole body breathes health and strength. The face is pink, the arms are large, the chest is wide, muscular, the hair is thick, like that of a healthy boy. He's about forty. He is dressed tastefully and latest fashion in a brand new, recently sewn tricot suit. There is a large gold chain with key rings on the chest, and a diamond ring flashes like tiny bright stars on the little finger. But, most importantly, and what is so important for any more or less decent hero of a novel or story, he is extremely handsome. I'm not a woman or an artist. I don't know much about male beauty, but the gentleman with the cockade made an impression on me with his appearance. His big muscular face remained forever in my memory. On this face you will see a real Greek nose with a hump, thin lips and good blue eyes, in which kindness shines and something else that is difficult to find a suitable name for. This “something” can be seen in the eyes of small animals when they are sad or in pain. Something pleading, childish, patiently enduring... Among the cunning and very smart people There are no such eyes.

The whole face exudes simplicity, a broad, simple nature, truth... If it is not a lie that the face is the mirror of the soul, then on the first day of meeting with the gentleman with the cockade I could give my word of honor that he does not know how to lie. I might even bet.

Whether I lost the bet or not - the reader will see further.

His brown hair and beard are thick and soft as silk. They say that soft hair is a sign of a soft, gentle, “silky” soul... Criminals and evil, stubborn characters, in most cases, have coarse hair. Whether this is true or not - the reader will again see further... Neither his facial expression, nor his beard - nothing is so soft and gentle in the gentleman with the cockade as the movements of his large, heavy body. These movements convey good manners, lightness, grace, and even—pardon the expression—some femininity. My hero doesn’t need much effort to bend a horseshoe or flatten a sardine box in his fist, and yet not a single movement of his reveals that he is physically strong. He takes hold of a doorknob or a hat like a butterfly: gently, carefully, lightly touching with his fingers. His steps are silent, his handshakes are weak. Looking at him, you forget that he is powerful, like Goliath, that with one hand he can lift something that five editorial Andreys cannot lift.

I

They said that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had lived in Yalta for two weeks and was accustomed to it, also became interested in the new faces. Sitting in the pavilion near Berne, he saw a young lady, short, blonde, wearing a beret, walk along the embankment; A white spitz ran after her.

And then he met her in the city garden and in the square, several times a day. She was walking alone, still wearing the same beret, with a white Spitz; no one knew who she was, and they simply called her: the lady with the dog.

“If she is here without a husband and without acquaintances,” Gurov thought, “then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to know her.”

He was not yet forty, but he already had a twelve-year-old daughter and two school-going sons. He was married early, when he was still a second-year student, and now his wife seemed one and a half times older than him. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, straight, important, respectable and, as she called herself, thoughtful. She read a lot, did not write in letters, called her husband not Dmitry, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her narrow-minded, narrow, ungraceful, was afraid of her and did not like to be at home. He began cheating on her a long time ago, cheated on her often, and that’s probably why he almost always spoke badly about women, and when people talked about them in his presence, he called them like this:

- Inferior race!

It seemed to him that he had been taught enough by bitter experience to call them whatever he liked, but still, without the “inferior race” he could not live even two days. In the company of men he was bored, uncomfortable, with them he was taciturn and cold, but when he was among women, he felt free and knew what to talk about with them and how to behave; and it was easy for him even to remain silent with them. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature there was something attractive, elusive, which attracted women to him, attracted them; he knew about this, and he himself was also drawn to them by some force.

Repeated experience, indeed bitter experience, taught him long ago that any rapprochement, which at first so pleasantly diversifies life and seems like a sweet and easy adventure, among decent people, especially among Muscovites, slow-moving, indecisive, inevitably grows into a whole task, extremely difficult, and the situation eventually becomes difficult. But no matter what new meeting With an interesting woman, this experience somehow slipped from memory, and I wanted to live, and everything seemed so simple and funny.

And then one day, in the evening, he was having dinner in the garden, and a lady in a beret slowly approached to take the next table. Her expression, gait, dress, hairstyle told him that she was from a decent society, married, in Yalta for the first time and alone, that she was bored here... There was a lot of untruth in the stories about the uncleanliness of local morals, he despised them and knew that such stories in the majority they are composed by people who would willingly sin themselves if they could; but when the lady sat down at the next table three steps away from him, he remembered these stories about easy victories, about trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought about a quick, fleeting connection, about an affair with unknown woman, whose name you don’t know, suddenly took possession of him.

He affectionately beckoned the Spitz to him and, when he approached, shook his finger at him. Spitz grumbled. Gurov threatened again.

The lady looked at him and immediately lowered her eyes.

“He doesn’t bite,” she said and blushed.

-Can I give him a bone? - And when she nodded her head affirmatively, he asked affably: “Have you deigned to come to Yalta for a long time?”

- Five days.

“And I’m already in my second week here.” There was a little silence.

– Time is running quickly, and yet it’s so boring here! - she said without looking at him.

“It’s just common to say that it’s boring here.” The average person lives somewhere in Belev or Zhizdra - and he is not bored, but will come here: “Oh, boring! oh, dust! You'd think he came from Grenada.

She laughed. Then they both continued to eat in silence, like strangers; but after dinner they walked side by side - and a playful, easy conversation began between free, happy people, who didn’t care where they went or what they talked about. They walked and talked about how strangely the sea was lit; there was water lilac color, so soft and warm, and a golden stripe ran along it from the moon. They talked about how stuffy it was after a hot day. Gurov said that he was a Muscovite, a philologist by training, but he worked in a bank; once prepared to sing in a private opera, but gave up, has two houses in Moscow... And from her he learned that she grew up in St. Petersburg, but got married in S., where she has been living for two years, that she will stay in Yalta for another a month and perhaps her husband will come for her, who also wants to relax. She could not explain where her husband served - in the provincial government or in the provincial zemstvo government, and this was funny to her. And Gurov also found out that her name was Anna Sergeevna.

Then, in his room, he thought about her, about the fact that tomorrow she would probably meet him. It should be. Going to bed, he remembered that so recently she had been a college student, studying, just like his daughter now, he remembered how much timidity and angularity there was in her laughter, in conversation with a stranger - this must be the first time in her life that she she was alone, in such an environment when people were following her, looking at her, and talking to her only for one secret purpose, which she could not help but guess about. He remembered her thin, weak neck, beautiful gray eyes.

“There’s something pathetic about her after all,” he thought and began to fall asleep.

II

A week has passed since we met. It was a holiday. The rooms were stuffy, and dust swirled in the streets and hats were blown off. I was thirsty all day, and Gurov often came into the pavilion and offered Anna Sergeevna either water with syrup or ice cream. There was nowhere to go.

They said that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had lived in Yalta for two weeks and was used to it here, also became interested in new faces. Sitting in the pavilion near Berne, he saw a young lady, short, blonde, wearing a beret, walk along the embankment; A white spitz ran after her.

And then he met her in the city garden and in the square, several times a day. She was walking alone, still wearing the same beret, with a white Spitz; no one knew who she was, and they simply called her: the lady with the dog.

“If she is here without a husband and without acquaintances,” Gurov thought, “then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to know her.”

He was not yet forty, but he already had a twelve-year-old daughter and two high school-age sons. He was married early, when he was still a second-year student, and now his wife seemed one and a half times older than him. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, straight, important, respectable and, as she called herself, thoughtful. She read a lot, did not write in letters, called her husband not Dmitry, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her narrow-minded, narrow, ungraceful, was afraid of her and did not like to be at home. He began cheating on her a long time ago, cheated on her often, and that’s probably why he almost always spoke badly about women, and when people talked about them in his presence, he called them like this:

Inferior race!

It seemed to him that he had been taught enough by bitter experience to call them whatever he liked, but still, without the “inferior race” he could not live even two days. In the company of men he was bored, uncomfortable, with them he was taciturn and cold, but when he was among women, he felt free and knew what to talk about with them and how to behave; and it was easy for him even to remain silent with them. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature there was something attractive, elusive, which attracted women to him, attracted them; he knew about this, and he himself was also drawn to them by some force.

Repeated experience, indeed bitter experience, taught him long ago that any rapprochement, which at first so pleasantly diversifies life and seems like a sweet and easy adventure, among decent people, especially among Muscovites, slow-moving, indecisive, inevitably grows into a whole task, extremely difficult, and the situation eventually becomes difficult. But with every new meeting with an interesting woman, this experience somehow slipped from memory, and I wanted to live, and everything seemed so simple and funny.

And then one day, in the evening, he was having dinner in the garden, and a lady in a beret slowly approached to take the next table. Her expression, gait, dress, hairstyle told him that she was from a decent society, married, in Yalta for the first time and alone, that she was bored here... There was a lot of untruth in the stories about the uncleanliness of local morals, he despised them and knew that Such stories are mostly written by people who would willingly sin themselves if they could; but when the lady sat down at the next table three steps away from him, he remembered these stories about easy victories, about trips to the mountains, and the seductive thought about a quick, fleeting connection, about an affair with an unknown woman whom you don’t know by name and surname, suddenly took possession of it.

He affectionately beckoned the Spitz to him and, when he approached, shook his finger at him. Spitz grumbled. Gurov threatened again. The lady looked at him and immediately lowered her eyes.

“He doesn’t bite,” she said and blushed.

Can I give him a bone? - and when she nodded her head affirmatively, he asked affably: “Have you deigned to come to Yalta for a long time?”

Five days.

And I’m already in my second week here.

There was a little silence.

Time goes by quickly, and yet it’s so boring here! - she said without looking at him.

It's just common to say that it's boring here. The average person lives somewhere in Belev or Zhizdra - and he is not bored, but will come here: “Oh, boring! Oh, dust!” You'd think he came from Grenada.

She laughed. Then they both continued to eat in silence, like strangers; but after dinner they walked side by side - and a playful, easy conversation began between free, happy people, who didn’t care where they went or what they talked about. They walked and talked about how strangely the sea was lit; the water was lilac in color, so soft and warm, and there was a golden stripe running along it from the moon. They talked about how stuffy it was after a hot day. Gurov said that he was a Muscovite, a philologist by training, but he worked in a bank; once prepared to sing in a private opera, but gave up, has two houses in Moscow... And from her he learned that she grew up in St. Petersburg, but got married in S, where she has been living for two years, that she will stay in Yalta for another about a month and perhaps her husband will come for her, who also wants to relax. She could not explain in any way where her husband served - in the provincial government or in the provincial zemstvo government, and this was funny to her. And Gurov also found out that her name was Anna Sergeevna. Then, in his room, he thought about her, about the fact that tomorrow she would probably meet him. It should be. Going to bed, he remembered that she had only recently been a college student, studying just like his daughter now, he remembered how much timidity and angularity there was in her laughter, in conversation with a stranger - this must have been the first time in her life that she alone, in such an environment, when people follow her and look at her, and speak to her only with one secret purpose, which she cannot help but guess about. He remembered her thin, weak neck, beautiful gray eyes.

“There’s something pathetic about her after all,” he thought and began to fall asleep.

A week has passed since we met. It was a holiday. The rooms were stuffy, and dust swirled in the streets and hats were blown off. I was thirsty all day, and Gurov often came into the pavilion and offered Anna Sergeevna either water with syrup or ice cream. There was nowhere to go.

In the evening, when it had calmed down a little, they went to the pier to watch the ship arrive. There were a lot of people walking on the pier; gathered to meet someone, held bouquets. And here two features of the elegant Yalta crowd clearly caught the eye: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones, and there were many generals.

Due to rough seas, the steamer arrived late, when the sun had already set, and took a long time to turn around before landing at the pier. Anna Sergeevna looked through her lorgnette at the ship and the passengers, as if looking for acquaintances, and when she turned to Gurov, her eyes sparkled. She talked a lot, and her questions were abrupt, and she herself immediately forgot what she asked; then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.

The well-dressed crowd dispersed, their faces were no longer visible, the wind died down completely, and Gurov and Anna Sergeevna stood as if waiting to see if anyone else would get off the ship. Anna Sergeevna was already silent and smelled the flowers, without looking at Gurov.

The weather became better in the evening, he said. -Where will we go now? Shouldn't we go somewhere?

She didn't answer.

Then he looked at her intently and suddenly hugged her and kissed her on the lips, and he was overwhelmed with the smell and moisture of flowers, and immediately he fearfully looked around: had anyone seen?

Let’s go to you...” he said quietly. And they both walked quickly.

Her room was stuffy and smelled of perfume that she had bought in a Japanese store. Gurov, looking at her now, thought: “There are so many meetings in life!” From the past he retained memories of carefree, good-natured women, cheerful with love, grateful to him for happiness, even if it was very short; and about those, like his wife, for example, who loved without sincerity, with unnecessary talk, manneredness, with hysteria, with such an expression as if it were not love, not passion, but something more significant; and about these two or three, very beautiful, cold, who suddenly had a predatory expression on their face, a stubborn desire to take, snatch from life more than it can give, and these were not the first youth, capricious, not reasoning, domineering, not smart women, and when Gurov grew cold towards them, their beauty aroused hatred in him, and the lace on their underwear seemed to him then like scales.

But there is still the same timidity, the angularity of inexperienced youth, the awkward feeling; and there was an impression of confusion, as if someone suddenly knocked on the door. Anna Sergeevna, this “lady with the dog,” took what happened in a special way, very seriously, as if she were dealing with her fall - so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her features sank and withered, and sad hangings hung on the sides of her face. long hair, she thought in a sad pose, like a sinner in an old painting.

Not good,” she said. “You’re the first to disrespect me now.”

There was a watermelon on the table in the room. Gurov cut himself a slice and began to eat slowly. At least half an hour passed in silence.

Anna Sergeevna was touching, she exuded the purity of a decent, naive woman who had lived little; the lone candle burning on the table barely illuminated her face, but it was clear that she was not well in her soul.

Why could I stop respecting you? - asked Gurov. - You yourself don’t know what you’re saying.

May God forgive me! - she said, and her eyes filled with tears. - It's horrible.

You're definitely making excuses.

How can I justify it? I am a bad, low woman, I despise myself and don’t think about justification. I didn’t deceive my husband, but myself. And not just now, but I’ve been deceiving for a long time. My husband may be honest good man, but he’s a lackey! I don’t know what he does there, how he serves, but I only know that he is a footman. When I married him, I was twenty years old, I was tormented by curiosity, I wanted something better; After all, there is, I told myself, another life. I wanted to live! To live, to live... Curiosity burned me... you don’t understand this, but, I swear to God, I could no longer control myself, something was happening to me, I couldn’t be restrained, I told my husband that I was sick and went here... And here I kept walking around as if in a frenzy, like crazy... and so I became a vulgar, trashy woman whom anyone can despise...

Gurov was already bored listening, he was irritated by the naive tone, this repentance, so unexpected and inappropriate; If it weren't for the tears in her eyes, you would think she was joking or playing a role.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, “what do you want?” She hid her face in his chest and pressed herself against him.

Believe, believe me, I beg you... - she said. - I love honest clean life, but sin is disgusting to me, I myself don’t know what I’m doing. Simple people They say: the unclean one has misled. And I can now say to myself that I was led astray by the evil one.

Full, full... - he muttered.

He looked into her motionless, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly and affectionately, and she gradually calmed down, and her gaiety returned to her; They both started laughing.

Then, when they left, there was not a soul on the embankment; the city with its cypress trees had absolutely dead looking, but the sea was still noisy and beating against the shore; one longboat rocked on the waves, and a lantern flickered sleepily on it.

We found a cab and went to Oreanda.

“I just now recognized your name in the hallway: von Diederitz is written on the board,” said Gurov. - Is your husband German?

No, it seems his grandfather was German, but he himself is Orthodox.

In Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at the sea and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning fog; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain tops. The leaves did not move on the trees, the cicadas screamed, and the monotonous, dull sound of the sea coming from below spoke of peace, of the eternal sleep that awaits us. It was so noisy below, when there was neither Yalta nor Oreanda here, now it is noisy and will be noisy just as indifferently and dully when we are not there. And in this constancy, in complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, lies, perhaps, the guarantee of our eternal salvation, the continuous movement of life on earth, continuous perfection. Sitting next to a young woman who seemed so beautiful at dawn, calmed and enchanted by this fabulous setting - the sea, mountains, clouds, wide sky, Gurov thought about how, in essence, if you think about it, everything is beautiful in this world, everything except what we think and do in our own minds, when we forget about the highest goals of existence, about our human dignity.

A man came up - probably a watchman - looked at them and left. And this detail seemed so mysterious and also beautiful. It was seen how the steamer arrived from Feodosia, illuminated by the morning dawn, already without lights.

“There’s dew on the grass,” Anna Sergeevna said after a silence.

Yes. Time to go home. They returned to the city.

Then every afternoon they met on the embankment, had breakfast together, had lunch, walked, admired the sea. She complained that she was sleeping poorly and that her heart was beating anxiously, asking all the same questions, worried either by jealousy or by fear that he did not respect her enough. And often in the square or in the garden, when no one was near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses among broad daylight, with a glance and fear, as if someone would see, the heat, the smell of the sea and the constant flashing before the eyes of idle, smart, well-fed people seemed to regenerate him; he told Anna Sergeevna about how good she was, how seductive, he was impatiently passionate, did not leave her a single step, and she often thought and kept asking him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at all, but only saw her in her a vulgar woman. Almost every evening later they went somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to a waterfall; and the walk was a success, the impressions were invariably beautiful and majestic every time.

They were waiting for my husband to arrive. But a letter came from him in which he informed that his eyes hurt and begged his wife to return home as soon as possible. Anna Sergeevna was in a hurry.

It’s good that I’m leaving,” she told Gurov. - This is fate itself.

She rode off on horseback and he accompanied her. We drove all day. When she boarded the courier train and when the second bell rang, she said:

Let me look at you again... I'll look again. Like this. She didn’t cry, but she was sad, as if she was sick, and her face was trembling.

“I will think about you... remember you,” she said. - The Lord is with you, stay. Don't remember it badly. We say goodbye forever, this is so necessary, because we should not have met at all. Well, God be with you.

The train left quickly, its lights soon disappeared, and a minute later the noise was no longer heard, as if everything had conspired on purpose to end this sweet oblivion, this madness, as quickly as possible. And, left alone on the platform and looking into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the cry of grasshoppers and the hum of telegraph wires with a feeling as if he had just woken up. And he thought that there had been one more adventure or adventure in his life, and it, too, had already ended, and now only a memory remained... He was touched, sad and felt slight remorse; after all, this young woman, whom he would never see again, was not happy with him; he was friendly and cordial with her, but still in his treatment of her, in his tone and caresses, there was a shadow of light mockery, the rude arrogance of a happy man, who was also almost twice her age. All the time she called him kind, extraordinary, sublime; obviously, he seemed to her not what he really was, which means he was unwittingly deceiving her...

Here at the station there was already a smell of autumn, the evening was cool.

“It’s time for me to go north,” thought Gurov, leaving the platform, “It’s time!”

At home in Moscow, everything was already like winter, the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready for school and drinking tea, it was dark, and the nanny briefly lit the fire. The frost has already begun. When the first snow falls, on the first day of sledding, it’s nice to see the white earth, white roofs, breathing softly, nicely, and at this time

are remembered early years. Old lindens and birches, white with frost, have a good-natured expression; they are closer to the heart than cypresses and palm trees, and near them you no longer want to think about the mountains and the sea.

Gurov was a Muscovite, he returned to Moscow on a nice, frosty day, and when he put on a fur coat and warm gloves and walked around Petrovka and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of bells, then the recent trip and the places he had been to lost all their charm for him . Little by little he plunged into Moscow life, already greedily read three newspapers a day and said that he did not read Moscow newspapers out of principle. He was already drawn to restaurants, clubs, dinner parties, anniversaries, and he was already flattered that he had famous lawyers and artists and that in the Doctor's Club he played cards with the professor. He could already eat a whole portion of selyanka in a frying pan...

Some month would pass, and it seemed to him that Anna Sergeevna would be covered in a fog in his memory and only occasionally would he be dreamed of with a touching smile, as others had dreamed of. But more than a month passed, deep winter set in, and everything was clear in his memory, as if he had broken up with Anna Sergeevna just yesterday. And the memories flared up more and more. Whether in the evening silence the voices of children preparing their lessons could be heard in his office, whether he heard a romance or an organ in a restaurant, or a blizzard howled in the fireplace, how suddenly everything was resurrected in his memory: both what was on the pier and early morning with fog on the mountains, and a steamer from Feodosia, and kisses. He walked around the room for a long time, and remembered, and smiled, and then the memories turned into dreams, and the past in his imagination got mixed up with what would happen. Anna Sergeevna did not dream of him, but followed him everywhere like a shadow and watched him. Closing his eyes, he saw her as if alive, and she seemed more beautiful, younger, more tender than she was; and he himself seemed better than he was then in Yalta. In the evenings she looked at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner; he heard her breathing, the gentle rustle of her clothes. On the street, he followed the women with his eyes, looking for someone like her...

The role of a veil does not suit you at all, Dimitri.

One night, leaving the Doctor's Club with his partner, an official, he could not resist saying:

If only you knew what a charming woman I met in Yalta!

The official got into the sleigh and drove off, but suddenly turned around and called out:

Dmitry Dmitrich!

And just now you were right: the sturgeon is fragrant!

These words, so ordinary, for some reason suddenly outraged Gurov and seemed humiliating and unclean to him. Which wild customs, what faces! What stupid nights, what uninteresting, unnoticeable days! Furious card playing, gluttony, drunkenness, constant conversations all about one thing. Unnecessary things and conversations all about one thing consume the best part of the time, the best forces, and in the end what remains is some kind of short, wingless life, some kind of nonsense, and you can’t leave and run, as if you were sitting in a madhouse or in a prison cell. rotah!

Gurov stayed up all night and was indignant, and then spent the whole day with a headache. And in the following nights he slept poorly, kept sitting in bed and thinking or pacing from corner to corner. He was tired of the children, tired of the bank, he didn’t want to go anywhere or talk about anything.

In December, during the holidays, he got ready to travel and told his wife that he was leaving for St. Petersburg to work for one young man- and left for S. Why? He didn't know well himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeevna and talk, arrange a date, if possible.

He arrived in S. in the morning and checked into a hotel best number, where the entire floor was covered with gray soldier's cloth, and on the table there was an inkwell, gray with dust, with a rider on a horse, whose hand with his hat was raised, and his head was broken off. The doorman gave him the necessary information: von Diederitz lives on Staro-Goncharnaya Street, in own home, - this is not far from the hotel, he lives well, richly, has his own horses, everyone knows him in the city. The doorman pronounced it like this: Drydyrits.

Gurov slowly walked to Staro-Goncharnaya and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a fence, gray, long, with nails.

“You’ll run away from such a fence,” thought Gurov, looking first at the windows and then at the fence.

He realized: today is a private day and the husband is probably at home. And anyway, it would be tactless to enter the house and cause confusion. If you send a note, then it will probably fall into the hands of your husband, and then everything can be ruined. It's best to rely on chance. And he kept walking along the street and near the fence and waited for this opportunity. He saw a beggar enter the gate and be attacked by dogs, then, an hour later, he heard the piano playing, and the sounds came from faint, unclear. Anna Sergeevna must have been playing. The front door suddenly opened and an old woman came out, followed by a familiar white Spitz. Gurov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to beat, and from excitement he could not remember the name of the Spitz.

He walked and hated the gray fence more and more, and was already thinking with irritation that Anna Sergeevna had forgotten about him and, perhaps, was already having fun with someone else, and this is so natural in the position of a young woman who is forced to see this damn fence. He returned to his room and sat on the sofa for a long time, not knowing what to do, then had dinner, then slept for a long time.

“How stupid and restless all this is,” he thought, waking up and looking at the dark windows: it was already evening. “So I got some sleep for some reason. What am I going to do now at night?”

He sat on the bed, covered with a cheap gray blanket, like a hospital one, and teased himself with annoyance:

“Here’s a lady with a dog... Here’s an adventure for you... So sit here.”

In the morning, at the station, a poster with very large letters caught his eye: “Geisha” was showing for the first time. He remembered this and went to the theater.

“It’s very possible that she comes to the first performances,” he thought.

The theater was full. And here, as in all provincial theaters, there was fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisily disturbed; In the front row before the start of the performance, local dandies stood with their hands behind them; and here, in the governor’s box, in the first place sat the governor’s daughter in a boa, and the governor himself modestly hid behind the curtain, and only his hands were visible; the curtain swayed, the orchestra took a long time to tune up. All the time while the audience entered and took their seats, Gurov eagerly searched with his eyes.

Anna Sergeevna also came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart sank, and he clearly understood that for him now in the whole world there was no one closer, dearer and more important than a person; she, lost in the provincial crowd, this little woman, unremarkable in any way, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hands, now filled his whole life, was his grief, joy, the only happiness that he now wanted for himself; and to the sounds of a bad orchestra, crappy philistine violins, he thought about how good she was. I thought and dreamed.

Together with Anna Sergeevna, a young man with small sideburns, very tall and stooped, came in and sat down next to him; He shook his head with every step and seemed to be constantly bowing.

It was probably her husband whom she then in Yalta, in a fit of bitter feeling, called a lackey. And in fact, in his long figure, in his sideburns, in his small bald spot, there was something lackey-modest; he smiled sweetly, and in his buttonhole some kind of scholarly badge glittered, like a lackey’s number.

During the first intermission, the husband left to smoke, she remained in the chair. Gurov, who was also sitting in the stalls, approached her and said in a trembling voice, smiling forcibly:

Hello.

She looked at him and turned pale, then looked again with horror, not believing her eyes, and tightly clutched her fan and lorgnette in her hands, obviously struggling with herself so as not to faint. Both were silent. She sat, he stood, frightened by her embarrassment, not daring to sit next to her. The tuned violins and flutes began to sing, it suddenly became scary, it seemed as if they were watching from all the boxes. But then she got up and quickly walked towards the exit; he followed her, and both walked confusedly along the corridors, along the stairs, now going up, now going down, and some people in judge's, teacher's and appanage uniforms flashed before their eyes, and all with badges; ladies flashed by, fur coats on hangers, a draft wind blew, dousing them with the smell of tobacco cigarette butts. And Gurov, whose heart was beating strongly, thought: “Oh my God! And what are these people, this orchestra for?”

And at that moment he suddenly remembered how that evening at the station, after seeing Anna Sergeevna off, he told himself that it was all over and they would never see each other again. But how far away it was from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase, where it was written “entry to the amphitheater,” she stopped.

How you scared me! - she said, breathing heavily, still pale, dazed. - Oh, how you scared me! I'm barely alive. Why have you come? For what?

But understand, Anna, understand... - he said in a low voice, hurrying. - I beg you, understand...

She looked at him with fear, with prayer, with love, looking intently in order to retain his features more firmly in her memory.

I'm suffering so much! - she continued, not listening to him. - I thought only about you all the time, I lived in thoughts about you. And I wanted to forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?

Higher up, on the landing, two high school students were smoking and looking down, but Gurov didn’t care, he drew Anna Sergeevna to him and began kissing her face, cheeks, and hands.

What are you doing, what are you doing! - she said in horror, pushing him away from her. - You and I are crazy. Leave today, leave now... I adjure you to all the saints, I beg you... They are coming here!

Someone was walking up the stairs.

You must leave... - Anna Sergeevna continued in a whisper. - Do you hear, Dmitry Dmitrich? I will come to you in Moscow. I have never been happy, I am now unhappy and I will never, never be happy, never! Don't make me suffer even more! I swear I will come to Moscow. Now let's part! My dear, kind, my dear, let's part!

She shook his hand and began to quickly go downstairs, still looking back at him, and it was clear from her eyes that she really was not happy... Gurov stood for a while, listened, then, when everything calmed down, he found his hanger and left from the theater.

And Anna Sergeevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two or three months she left S. and told her husband that she was going to consult with a professor about her female illness - and her husband believed and did not believe. Arriving in Moscow, she stopped at the Slavic Bazaar and immediately sent a man in a red hat to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew about it.

One day he walked towards her in this way winter morning(the messenger was at his place the night before and didn’t find him). His daughter was walking with him, whom he wanted to see off to the gymnasium; it was on the way. Heavy wet snow was falling.

Now it's three degrees warm, and yet snowing, - Gurov said to his daughter. - But this heat is only on the surface of the earth; in the upper layers of the atmosphere the temperature is completely different.

Dad, why is there no thunder in winter?

He explained that too. He talked and thought about how he was going on a date and no one alive soul doesn't know about it and probably never will. He had two lives: one open life, which was seen and known by everyone who needed it, full of conventional truth and conventional deception, completely similar to the life of his acquaintances and friends, and the other, which took place secretly. And by some strange coincidence of circumstances, perhaps accidental, everything that was important, interesting, necessary for him, about which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, that constituted the grain of his life, happened secretly from others, yet, what was his lie, his shell in which he hid to hide the truth, such as his work in the bank, disputes in the club, his “inferior race,” going to anniversaries with his wife - all this was obvious. And he judged others by himself, did not believe what he saw, and always assumed that for every person, under the cover of secrecy, as if under the cover of darkness, his real, most interesting life. Every personal existence is kept secret, and perhaps that is partly why cultured person so nervously concerned about ensuring that personal privacy is respected.

After seeing his daughter off to the gymnasium, Gurov went to the Slavic Bazaar. He took off his fur coat downstairs, went upstairs and quietly knocked on the door. Anna Sergeevna, dressed in his favorite gray dress, tired from the road and waiting, had been waiting for him since yesterday evening; she was pale, looked at him and did not smile, and as soon as he entered, she fell to his chest. It was as if they had not seen each other for two years, their kiss was long, long.

Well, how are you living there? - he asked. - What's new?

Wait, I’ll tell you now... I can’t.

She couldn't speak because she was crying. She turned away from him and pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.

“Well, let him cry, and I’ll sit for now,” he thought and sat down in a chair.

Then he called and said to bring him some tea; and then, when he drank tea, she still stood, turning to the window... She cried from excitement, from the sorrowful consciousness that their life had turned out so sadly; they see each other only secretly, hiding from people like thieves! Isn't their life ruined?

Well, stop it! - he said.

It was obvious to him that this love of theirs would not end soon, no one knows when. Anna Sergeevna became more and more attached to him, adored him, and it would have been unthinkable to tell her that all this must someday have an end; Yes, she wouldn’t have believed it. He walked up to her and took her by the shoulders to caress her and joke, and at that time he saw himself in the mirror.

His head was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so old in last years, so stupid. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and trembling. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably already close to beginning to fade and wither, like his life. Why does she love him so much? He always seemed to women not to be who he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the person whom their imagination created and whom they greedily sought in their lives; and then, when they noticed their mistake, they still loved. And none of them were happy with him. Time passed, he met, got together, broke up, but never fell in love; there was everything, but not love.

And only now, when his head had turned gray, did he fall in love properly, truly - for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeevna and he loved each other like very close relatives, like husband and wife, like tender friends; It seemed to them that fate itself had destined them for each other, and it was not clear why he was married and she was married; and it was definitely two migratory birds, a male and female who were captured and forced to live in separate cages. They forgave each other what they were ashamed of in their past, forgave everything in the present and felt that this love of theirs had changed both of them.

Previously, in sad moments, he calmed himself down with all sorts of reasoning that came to his mind, but now he had no time for reasoning, he felt deep compassion, he wanted to be sincere, gentle...

Stop, my dear,” he said, “cry and it will be... Now let’s talk, we’ll come up with something.”

Then they consulted for a long time, talked about how to rid themselves of the need to hide, deceive, live in different cities, and not see each other for a long time. How to free yourself from these unbearable fetters?

How? How? - he asked, grabbing his head. - How? And it seemed that a little more - and a solution would be found, and then a new one would begin, wonderful Life; and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far away and that the most difficult and difficult thing was just beginning.

On our website you can read a summary of the story “The Lady with the Dog”. Links to texts and summary other works by A.P. Chekhov - see below in the block “More on the topic...”

I

They said that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had lived in Yalta for two weeks and was accustomed to it, also became interested in the new faces. Sitting in the pavilion near Berne, he saw a young lady, short, blonde, wearing a beret, walk along the embankment; A white spitz ran after her.

And then he met her in the city garden and in the square, several times a day. She was walking alone, still wearing the same beret, with a white Spitz; no one knew who she was, and they simply called her: the lady with the dog.

“If she is here without a husband and without acquaintances,” Gurov thought, “then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to know her.”

A.P. Chekhov “Lady with a Dog.” Audiobook

He was not yet forty, but he already had a twelve-year-old daughter and two school-going sons. He was married early, when he was still a second-year student, and now his wife seemed one and a half times older than him. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, straight, important, respectable and, as she called herself, thoughtful. She read a lot, did not write in letters, called her husband not Dmitry, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her narrow-minded, narrow, ungraceful, was afraid of her and did not like to be at home. He began cheating on her a long time ago, cheated on her often, and that’s probably why he almost always spoke badly about women, and when people talked about them in his presence, he called them like this:

- Inferior race!

It seemed to him that he had been taught enough by bitter experience to call them whatever he liked, but still, without the “inferior race” he could not live even two days. In the company of men he was bored, uncomfortable, with them he was taciturn and cold, but when he was among women, he felt free and knew what to talk about with them and how to behave; and it was easy for him even to remain silent with them. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature there was something attractive, elusive, which attracted women to him, attracted them; he knew about this, and he himself was also drawn to them by some force.

Repeated experience, indeed bitter experience, taught him long ago that any rapprochement, which at first so pleasantly diversifies life and seems like a sweet and easy adventure, among decent people, especially among Muscovites, slow-moving, indecisive, inevitably grows into a whole task, extremely difficult, and the situation eventually becomes difficult. But with every new meeting with an interesting woman, this experience somehow slipped from memory, and I wanted to live, and everything seemed so simple and funny.

And then one day, in the evening, he was having dinner in the garden, and a lady in a beret slowly approached to take the next table. Her expression, gait, dress, hairstyle told him that she was from a decent society, married, in Yalta for the first time and alone, that she was bored here... There was a lot of untruth in the stories about the uncleanliness of local morals, he despised them and knew that such stories in the majority they are composed by people who would willingly sin themselves if they could; but when the lady sat down at the next table three steps away from him, he remembered these stories about easy victories, about trips to the mountains, and the seductive thought about a quick, fleeting connection, about an affair with an unknown woman whom you don’t know by name and surname, suddenly took possession of it.

He affectionately beckoned the Spitz to him and, when he approached, shook his finger at him. Spitz grumbled. Gurov threatened again.

The lady looked at him and immediately lowered her eyes.

“He doesn’t bite,” she said and blushed.

-Can I give him a bone? - And when she nodded her head affirmatively, he asked affably: “Have you deigned to come to Yalta for a long time?”

- Five days.

“And I’m already in my second week here.” There was a little silence.

- Time goes by quickly, and yet it’s so boring here! - she said without looking at him.

“It’s just common to say that it’s boring here.” The average person lives somewhere in Belev or Zhizdra - and he is not bored, but will come here: “Oh, boring! oh, dust! You'd think he came from Grenada.

She laughed. Then they both continued to eat in silence, like strangers; but after dinner they walked side by side - and a playful, easy conversation began between free, happy people, who didn’t care where they went or what they talked about. They walked and talked about how strangely the sea was lit; the water was lilac in color, so soft and warm, and there was a golden stripe running along it from the moon. They talked about how stuffy it was after a hot day. Gurov said that he was a Muscovite, a philologist by training, but he worked in a bank; once prepared to sing in a private opera, but gave up, has two houses in Moscow... And from her he learned that she grew up in St. Petersburg, but got married in S., where she has been living for two years, that she will stay in Yalta for another a month and perhaps her husband will come for her, who also wants to relax. She could not explain where her husband served - in the provincial government or in the provincial zemstvo government, and this was funny to her. And Gurov also found out that her name was Anna Sergeevna.

Then, in his room, he thought about her, about the fact that tomorrow she would probably meet him. It should be. Going to bed, he remembered that so recently she had been a college student, studying, just like his daughter now, he remembered how much timidity and angularity there was in her laughter, in conversation with a stranger - this must be the first time in her life that she she was alone, in such an environment when people were following her, looking at her, and talking to her only for one secret purpose, which she could not help but guess about. He remembered her thin, weak neck, beautiful gray eyes.

“There’s something pathetic about her after all,” he thought and began to fall asleep.

II

A week has passed since we met. It was a holiday. The rooms were stuffy, and dust swirled in the streets and hats were blown off. I was thirsty all day, and Gurov often came into the pavilion and offered Anna Sergeevna either water with syrup or ice cream. There was nowhere to go.

In the evening, when it had calmed down a little, they went to the pier to watch the ship arrive. There were a lot of people walking on the pier; gathered to meet someone, held bouquets. And here two features of the elegant Yalta crowd clearly caught the eye: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones, and there were many generals.

Due to rough seas, the steamer arrived late, when the sun had already set, and took a long time to turn around before landing at the pier. Anna Sergeevna looked through her lorgnette at the ship and the passengers, as if looking for acquaintances, and when she turned to Gurov, her eyes sparkled. She talked a lot, and her questions were abrupt, and she herself immediately forgot what she asked; then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.

The well-dressed crowd dispersed, their faces were no longer visible, the wind died down completely, and Gurov and Anna Sergeevna stood as if waiting to see if anyone else would get off the ship. Anna Sergeevna was already silent and smelled the flowers, without looking at Gurov.

“The weather got better in the evening,” he said. -Where do we go now? Shouldn't we go somewhere?

She didn't answer.

Then he looked at her intently and suddenly hugged her and kissed her on the lips, and he was overwhelmed with the smell and moisture of flowers, and immediately he fearfully looked around: had anyone seen?

“Let’s go to you...” he said quietly.

And they both walked quickly.

Her room was stuffy and smelled of perfume that she had bought in a Japanese store. Gurov, looking at her now, thought: “There are so many meetings in life!” From the past he retained memories of carefree, good-natured women, cheerful with love, grateful to him for happiness, even if it was very short; and about those, like his wife, for example, who loved without sincerity, with unnecessary talk, in a mannered manner, with hysteria, with such an expression as if it were not love, not passion, but something more significant; and about these two or three, very beautiful, cold, who suddenly had a predatory expression on their face, a stubborn desire to take, snatch from life more than it can give, and these were not the first youth, capricious, not reasoning, domineering, not smart women, and when Gurov lost interest in them, their beauty aroused hatred in him and the lace on their underwear seemed to him then like scales.

But there is still the same timidity, the angularity of inexperienced youth, the awkward feeling; and there was an impression of confusion, as if someone suddenly knocked on the door. Anna Sergeevna, this “lady with the dog,” took what happened in a special way, very seriously, as if she were dealing with her fall - so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her features drooped and withered and her long hair hung sadly on the sides of her face; she was lost in thought in a sad pose, like a sinner in an old painting.

“It’s not good,” she said. “You’re the first to disrespect me now.”

There was a watermelon on the table in the room. Gurov cut himself a slice and began to eat slowly. At least half an hour passed in silence.

Anna Sergeevna was touching, she exuded the purity of a decent, naive woman who had lived little; the lone candle burning on the table barely illuminated her face, but it was clear that she was not well in her soul.

- Why could I stop respecting you? – asked Gurov. “You yourself don’t know what you’re saying.”

- May God forgive me! - she said, and her eyes filled with tears. - It's horrible.

- You're definitely making excuses.

- How can I justify it? I am a bad, low woman, I despise myself and don’t think about justification. I didn’t deceive my husband, but myself. And not just now, but I’ve been deceiving for a long time. My husband may be an honest, good man, but he is a lackey! I don’t know what he does there, how he serves, but I only know that he is a footman. When I married him, I was twenty years old, I was tormented by curiosity, I wanted something better; After all, there is, I told myself, another life. I wanted to live! To live and live... Curiosity burned me... you don’t understand this, but, I swear to God, I could no longer control myself, something was happening to me, I couldn’t be restrained, I told my husband that I was sick and went here... And here I kept walking around as if in a frenzy, like crazy... and so I became a vulgar, trashy woman whom anyone can despise.

Gurov was already bored listening, he was irritated by the naive tone, this repentance, so unexpected and inappropriate; If it weren't for the tears in her eyes, you would think she was joking or playing a role.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, “what do you want?”

She hid her face in his chest and pressed herself against him.

“Believe, believe me, I beg you...” she said. “I love an honest, clean life, but sin is disgusting to me, I myself don’t know what I’m doing.” Ordinary people say: the evil one has misled you. And I can now say to myself that I was led astray by the evil one.

“Full, full...” he muttered.

He looked into her motionless, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly and affectionately, and she gradually calmed down, and her gaiety returned to her; They both started laughing.

Then, when they came out, there was not a soul on the embankment, the city with its cypress trees had a completely dead look, but the sea was still noisy and beating against the shore; one longboat rocked on the waves, and a lantern flickered sleepily on it.

We found a cab and went to Oreanda.

“I just now recognized your name downstairs in the hallway: von Diederitz is written on the board,” said Gurov. – Is your husband German?

– No, it seems his grandfather was German, but he himself is Orthodox.

In Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at the sea and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning fog; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain tops. The leaves did not move on the trees, the cicadas screamed, and the monotonous, dull sound of the sea coming from below spoke of peace, of the eternal sleep that awaits us. It was so noisy below, when there was neither Yalta nor Oreanda here, now it is noisy and will be noisy just as indifferently and dully when we are not there. And in this constancy, in complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, lies, perhaps, the guarantee of our eternal salvation, the continuous movement of life on earth, continuous perfection. Sitting next to a young woman who seemed so beautiful at dawn, calmed and enchanted by this fabulous setting - the sea, mountains, clouds, wide sky, Gurov thought about how, in essence, if you think about it, everything is beautiful in this world, everything , except for what we ourselves think and do when we forget about the highest goals of existence, about our human dignity.

A man came up—probably a watchman—looked at them and left. And this detail seemed so mysterious and also beautiful. It was seen how the steamer arrived from Feodosia, illuminated by the morning dawn, already without lights.

“There’s dew on the grass,” Anna Sergeevna said after a silence.

- Yes. Time to go home.

They returned to the city.

Then every afternoon they met on the embankment, had breakfast together, had lunch, walked, admired the sea. She complained that she was sleeping poorly and that her heart was beating anxiously, asking all the same questions, worried either by jealousy or by fear that he did not respect her enough. And often in the square or in the garden, when no one was near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight, with a glance and fear that no one would see, the heat, the smell of the sea and the constant flashing before the eyes of idle, smart, well-fed people seemed to regenerate him; he told Anna Sergeevna about how good she was, how seductive, he was impatiently passionate, did not leave her a single step, and she often thought and kept asking him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at all, but only saw her in her a vulgar woman. Almost every evening later they went somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to a waterfall; and the walk was a success, the impressions were invariably beautiful and majestic every time.

They were waiting for my husband to arrive. But a letter came from him in which he informed that his eyes hurt and begged his wife to return home as soon as possible. Anna Sergeevna was in a hurry.

“It’s good that I’m leaving,” she told Gurov. - This is fate itself.

She rode off on horseback and he accompanied her. We drove all day. When she boarded the courier train and when the second bell rang, she said:

- Let me look at you again... I’ll look again. Like this.

She didn’t cry, but she was sad, as if she was sick, and her face was trembling.

“I will think about you... remember you,” she said. - The Lord is with you, stay. Don't remember it badly. We say goodbye forever, this is so necessary, because we should not have met at all. Well, God be with you.

The train left quickly, its lights soon disappeared, and a minute later the noise was no longer heard, as if everything had conspired on purpose to end this sweet oblivion, this madness, as quickly as possible. And, left alone on the platform and looking into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the cry of grasshoppers and the hum of telegraph wires with a feeling as if he had just woken up. And he thought that there was another adventure or adventure in his life, and it, too, had already ended, and now only a memory remained... he was touched, sad and felt slight remorse; after all, this young woman, whom he would never see again, was not happy with him; he was friendly and cordial with her, but still in his treatment of her, in his tone and caresses, there was a shadow of light mockery, the rude arrogance of a happy man, who was also almost twice her age. All the time she called him kind, extraordinary, sublime; obviously, he seemed to her not what he really was, which means he was unwittingly deceiving her...

Here at the station there was already a smell of autumn, the evening was cool.

“It’s time for me to go north,” thought Gurov, leaving the platform. - It's time!

III

At home in Moscow, everything was already like winter, the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready for school and drinking tea, it was dark, and the nanny briefly lit the fire. The frost has already begun. When the first snow falls, on the first day of sledding, it’s nice to see the white earth, white roofs, you can breathe softly, nicely, and at this time you remember your youth. Old lindens and birches, white with frost, have a good-natured expression; they are closer to the heart than cypresses and palm trees, and near them you no longer want to think about the mountains and the sea.

Gurov was a Muscovite, he returned to Moscow on a nice, frosty day, and when he put on a fur coat and warm gloves and walked around Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of bells, then the recent trip and the places he had been to lost everything for him Charm. Little by little he plunged into Moscow life, already greedily read three newspapers a day and said that he did not read Moscow newspapers out of principle. He was already drawn to restaurants, clubs, dinner parties, anniversaries, and he was already flattered that he had famous lawyers and artists and that in the Doctor's Club he played cards with the professor. He could already eat a whole portion of selyanka in a frying pan...

Some month would pass, and it seemed to him that Anna Sergeevna would be covered in a fog in his memory and only occasionally would he be dreamed of with a touching smile, as others had dreamed of. But more than a month passed, deep winter set in, and everything was clear in his memory, as if he had broken up with Anna Sergeevna just yesterday. And the memories flared up more and more. Whether in the evening silence the voices of children preparing their homework could be heard in his office, whether he heard a romance or an organ in a restaurant, or a blizzard howling in the fireplace, how suddenly everything was resurrected in his memory: what was on the pier, and the early morning with fog on the mountains , and a steamer from Feodosia, and kisses. He walked around the room for a long time, and remembered, and smiled, and then the memories turned into dreams, and the past in his imagination got mixed up with what would happen. Anna Sergeevna did not dream of him, but followed him everywhere like a shadow and watched him. Closing his eyes, he saw her as if alive, and she seemed more beautiful, younger, more tender than she was; and he himself seemed better than he was then in Yalta. In the evenings she looked at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner; he heard her breathing, the gentle rustle of her clothes. On the street, he followed the women with his eyes, looking for someone like her...

“Dimitri, the role of a veil does not suit you at all.”

One night, leaving the Doctor's Club with his partner, an official, he could not resist saying:

– If you only knew what a charming woman I met in Yalta!

The official got into the sleigh and drove off, but suddenly turned around and called out:

- Dmitry Dmitrich!

– And just now you were right: the sturgeon is fragrant!

These words, so ordinary, for some reason suddenly outraged Gurov and seemed humiliating and unclean to him. What wild customs, what faces! What stupid nights, what uninteresting, unnoticeable days! Furious card playing, gluttony, drunkenness, constant conversations all about one thing. Unnecessary things and conversations all about one thing take up the best part of the time, the best forces, and in the end what is left is some kind of short, wingless life, some kind of nonsense, and you can’t leave or run, as if you were sitting in a madhouse or in a prison cell. rotah!

Gurov stayed up all night and was indignant, and then spent the whole day with a headache. And in the following nights he slept poorly, kept sitting in bed and thinking or pacing from corner to corner. He was tired of the children, tired of the bank, he didn’t want to go anywhere or talk about anything.

In December, during the holidays, he got ready to travel and told his wife that he was leaving for St. Petersburg to work for a young man - and he left for S. Why? He didn't know well himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeevna and talk, arrange a date if possible.

He arrived in S. in the morning and took the best room in the hotel where the entire floor was covered with gray soldier's cloth and on the table there was an inkwell, gray with dust, with a rider on a horse, whose hand with his hat was raised, and his head was broken off. The doorman gave him the information he needed: von Diederitz lives on Staro-Goncharnaya Street, in his own house, not far from the hotel, he lives well, richly, has his own horses, everyone in the city knows him. The doorman pronounced it like this: Drydyrits.

Gurov slowly walked to Staro-Goncharnaya and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a fence, gray, long, with nails.

“You’ll run away from such a fence,” Gurov thought, looking first at the windows, then at the fence.

He realized: today is a private day and the husband is probably at home. And anyway, it would be tactless to enter the house and cause confusion. If you send a note, then it will probably fall into the hands of your husband, and then everything can be ruined. It's best to rely on chance. And he kept walking along the street and near the fence and waited for this opportunity. He saw a beggar enter the gate and be attacked by dogs, then, an hour later, he heard the piano playing, and the sounds came faint, indistinct. Anna Sergeevna must have been playing. The front door suddenly opened and an old woman came out, followed by a familiar white Spitz. Gurov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to beat, and from excitement he could not remember the name of the Spitz.

He walked and hated the gray fence more and more, and was already thinking with irritation that Anna Sergeevna had forgotten about him and, perhaps, was already having fun with someone else, and this is so natural in the position of a young woman who is forced to see this damn fence. He returned to his room and sat on the sofa for a long time, not knowing what to do, then had dinner, then slept for a long time.

“How stupid and restless all this is,” he thought, waking up and looking at the dark windows: it was already evening. - So I slept for some reason. What am I going to do at night now?”

He sat on the bed, covered with a cheap gray blanket, like a hospital one, and teased himself with annoyance:

“Here’s a lady with a dog... Here’s an adventure for you... So sit here.”

In the morning, at the station, a poster with very large letters caught his eye: “Geisha” was showing for the first time. He remembered this and went to the theater.

“It’s very possible that she comes to the first performances,” he thought.

The theater was full. And here, as in all provincial theaters in general, there was fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisily agitated; In the front row before the start of the performance, local dandies stood with their hands behind them; and here, in the governor’s box, in the first place sat the governor’s daughter in a boa, and the governor himself modestly hid behind the curtain, and only his hands were visible; the curtain swayed, the orchestra took a long time to tune up. All the time while the audience entered and took their seats, Gurov eagerly searched with his eyes.

Anna Sergeevna also came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart sank, and he clearly understood that for him now in the whole world there was no person closer, dearer or more important; she, lost in the provincial crowd, this little woman, unremarkable in any way, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hands, now filled his whole life, was his grief, joy, the only happiness that he now wanted for himself; and to the sounds of a bad orchestra and crappy philistine violins, he thought about how good she was. I thought and dreamed.

Together with Anna Sergeevna, a young man with small sideburns, very tall and stooped, came in and sat down next to him; He shook his head with every step and seemed to be constantly bowing. It was probably her husband whom she then in Yalta, in a fit of bitter feeling, called a lackey. And in fact, in his long figure, in his sideburns, in his small bald spot, there was something lackey-modest; he smiled sweetly, and in his buttonhole some kind of scholarly badge glittered, like a lackey’s number.

During the first intermission, the husband left to smoke, she remained in the chair. Gurov, who was also sitting in the stalls, approached her and said in a trembling voice, smiling forcibly:

- Hello.

She looked at him and turned pale, then looked again with horror, not believing her eyes, and tightly clutched her fan and lorgnette in her hands, obviously struggling with herself so as not to faint. Both were silent. She sat, he stood, frightened by her embarrassment, not daring to sit next to her. The tuned violins and flutes began to sing, it suddenly became scary, it seemed as if they were watching from all the boxes. But then she got up and quickly walked towards the exit; he followed her, and both walked confusedly along the corridors, along the stairs, now going up, now going down, and some people in judge's, teacher's and appanage uniforms flashed before their eyes, and all with badges; ladies flashed by, fur coats on hangers, a draft wind blew, dousing them with the smell of tobacco cigarette butts. And Gurov, whose heart was beating strongly, thought: “Oh my God! And what are these people, this orchestra for?”

And at that moment he suddenly remembered how that evening at the station, after seeing Anna Sergeevna off, he told himself that it was all over and they would never see each other again. But how far away it was from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase, where it was written “access to the amphitheater,” she stopped.

- How you scared me! - she said, breathing heavily, still pale, dazed. - Oh, how you scared me! I'm barely alive. Why have you come? For what?

“But understand, Anna, understand...” he said in a low voice, hurrying. - I beg you, understand...

She looked at him with fear, with prayer, with love, looking intently in order to retain his features more firmly in her memory.

- I'm suffering so much! – she continued, not listening to him. – I thought only about you all the time, I lived in thoughts about you. And I wanted to forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?

Higher up, on the landing, two high school students were smoking and looking down, but Gurov didn’t care, he drew Anna Sergeevna to him and began kissing her face, cheeks, and hands.

- What are you doing, what are you doing! – she said in horror, pushing him away from her. - You and I are crazy. Leave today, leave now... I conjure you with all the saints, I beg you... They are coming here!

Someone was walking up the stairs.

“You must leave...” Anna Sergeevna continued in a whisper. - Do you hear, Dmitry Dmitrich? I will come to you in Moscow. I have never been happy, I am now unhappy and I will never, never be happy, never! Don't make me suffer even more! I swear I will come to Moscow. Now let's part! My dear, kind, my dear, let's part!

She shook his hand and began to quickly go downstairs, still looking back at him, and it was clear from her eyes that she really was not happy. Gurov stood for a while, listened, then, when everything calmed down, he found his hanger and left the theater.

IV

And Anna Sergeevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two or three months she left S. and told her husband that she was going to consult with a professor about her female illness - and her husband believed and did not believe. Arriving in Moscow, she stopped at the Slavic Bazaar and immediately sent a man in a red hat to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew about it.

One day he walked to her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger had been with him the night before and did not find her). His daughter was walking with him, whom he wanted to see off to the gymnasium; it was on the way. Heavy wet snow was falling.

“Now it’s three degrees warm, and yet it’s snowing,” Gurov told his daughter. – But this heat is only on the surface of the earth, in the upper layers of the atmosphere the temperature is completely different.

- Dad, why isn’t there thunder in winter?

He explained that too. He talked and thought that he was going on a date and not a single living soul knew about it and, probably, would never know. He had two lives: one open life, which was seen and known by everyone who needed it, full of conventional truth and conventional deception, completely similar to the life of his acquaintances and friends, and the other, which took place secretly. And by some strange coincidence of circumstances, perhaps accidental, everything that was important, interesting, necessary for him, about which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, that constituted the grain of his life, happened secretly from others, yet, what was his lie, his shell in which he hid to hide the truth, such as his work in the bank, disputes in the club, his “inferior race,” going to anniversaries with his wife - all this was obvious. And he judged others by himself, did not believe what he saw, and always assumed that each person lived his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy, as if under the cover of darkness. Every personal existence is kept in secret, and perhaps this is partly why a cultured person is so nervous about ensuring that personal secrets are respected.

After taking his daughter to the gymnasium, Gurov went to the Slavic Bazaar. He took off his fur coat downstairs, went upstairs and quietly knocked on the door. Anna Sergeevna, dressed in his favorite gray dress, tired from the road and waiting, had been waiting for him since yesterday evening; she was pale, looked at him and did not smile, and as soon as he entered, she fell to his chest. It was as if they had not seen each other for two years, their kiss was long, long.

- Well, how do you live there? - he asked. - What's new?

- Wait, I’ll tell you now... I can’t.

She couldn't speak because she was crying. She turned away from him and pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.

“Well, let him cry, and I’ll sit for now,” he thought and sat down in a chair.

Then he called and said to bring him some tea; and then, when he drank tea, she still stood, turning to the window... She cried from excitement, from the sorrowful consciousness that their life had turned out so sadly; they see each other only secretly, hiding from people like thieves! Isn't their life ruined?

- Well, stop it! - he said.

It was obvious to him that this love of theirs would not end soon, no one knows when. Anna Sergeevna became more and more attached to him, adored him, and it would have been unthinkable to tell her that all this must someday have an end; Yes, she wouldn’t have believed it.

He walked up to her and took her by the shoulders to caress her and joke, and at that time he saw himself in the mirror.

His head was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had aged so much in recent years, had become so ugly. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and trembling. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably already close to beginning to fade and wither, like his life. Why does she love him so much? He always seemed to women not to be who he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the person whom their imagination created and whom they greedily sought in their lives; and then, when they noticed their mistake, they still loved. And none of them were happy with him. Time passed, he met, got together, broke up, but never fell in love; there was everything, but not love.

And only now, when his head had turned gray, did he fall in love properly, truly - for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeevna and he loved each other like very close, dear people, like husband and wife, like tender friends; It seemed to them that fate itself had destined them for each other, and it was not clear why he was married and she was married; and they were definitely two migratory birds, a male and a female, who had been caught and forced to live in separate cages. They forgave each other what they were ashamed of in their past, forgave everything in the present and felt that this love of theirs had changed both of them.

Previously, in sad moments, he calmed himself down with all sorts of reasoning that came to his mind, but now he had no time for reasoning, he felt deep compassion, he wanted to be sincere, gentle...

“Stop, my dear,” he said, “I cried and it will be... Now let’s talk, we’ll come up with something.”

Then they consulted for a long time, talked about how to rid themselves of the need to hide, deceive, live in different cities, and not see each other for a long time. How to free yourself from these unbearable fetters?

- How? How? – he asked, grabbing his head. - How?

And it seemed that a little more - and a solution would be found, and then a new, wonderful life would begin; and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far away and that the most difficult and difficult thing was only just beginning.